A Very Scary Thought
by TheAlteredDestiniesFan
Summary: When Nabiki was only seven her father exchanged her for a boy named Ranma. Now, ten years later, she comes home with a few surprises...
1. Chapter 1

Nabiki 1/2

. /~tritscwa - shadowmane

(A Very Scary Thought)

by

Jim Robert Bader

Based Upon the Altered Destinies Storyline

Inspired by the works of such fans as

Wade Tritshler

Richard Lawson

James Jones

And Many Others

Standard Disclaimer: This is inspired by the work of Takahashi

Rumiko and is not my original Creation. All characters belong to

her. This is Only a Fanfictional work,

And is not intended to compromise the rights of the original

owners,

Distributors and Publishers of the Ranma series. I have no

money to Spare and would very much appreciated if no one tries to sue me.

Prologue:

Derek leaned back with a smile as he regarded the

readings on reality 593427. Matters were far from perfect there,

but they seemed to be stabilizing and no one on that plane of

existence had any thought that there was something unusual

going on...or at least more so than they would have otherwise

noticed. It was one thing to propose an alternate history for a

world, it was another thing to see it blossom out in new

directions as new possibilities began to be imagined.

"Don't rest on your laurels just yet," his companion

reminded, "This reality still has a ways to go before it proves its

viability."

"Oh posh," Derek said dismissively, "You have no faith,

and besides, this was your idea in the first place."

"I may have posed you the challenge," said Serena, "But

you constructed affairs in just such a way that you left another

possibility open for exploration. Recall that they had a choice

between two alternate siblings?"

"I see," Derek leaned forward, intrigued by the new

proposal, "And you think the other one could possibly have

managed things more suitably than her older sister?"

"Why not?" Serena chuckled, "After all this one thinks as

well as acts, but in all the other realities she merely sits on the

sidelines and plays the casual observer. What if she were to take

a more active part in historical affairs?"

"Yes," Derek stroked his chin, "It would hardly require

much in the way of intervention to get things started, and you are

quite right that it is long since time that we see if she might be

the one we are after. Very well, how do you propose to begin

this?"

"Same as all the others," Serena smiled, "We begin at the

beginning..."

Nabiki 1/2

Chapter One, part 1: Homecoming.

"Lay off, old man, I told you I'm going back, and that's

final."

The young boy who made this declaration trudged

through the rain-soaked streets of Nerima, ignoring the giant

panda who trudged after him on two legs, too all appearances

trying to dissuade him from further progress. Finally, in what

might have been desperation had the creature been human, the

Panda interposed his massive bulk directly in his path. The boy

reacted by assuming a fighting crouch, his face set and

determined with a gleam in his eyes that promised bloody

murder.

"All right, Ojisama," he growled, "If that's the way you

want to play it, prepare to get hurt!"

He launched a direct attack against the Panda, which

blocked his kicks and strikes with a skill far beyond that of any

mere animal. The Panda backed away, forcing the boy to advance

in order to maintain his onslaught. Passers-by stopped and stared

at the spectacle, for this was not exactly something one saw every

day, even in a place like Nerima.

By rights a human being attacking a Panda should have

logically been in trouble, but the boy not only was holding his

own, he was forcing the animal back until a spinning kick

managed to penetrate the creature's guard and knock it sprawling.

"Hah!" the boy mocked the Panda, "Guess that should

show you who's boss here."

He started to resume his original course when combat

instincts fell into play. He ducked quickly as something went

whizzing over his head, then straightened up to find the Panda

was clutching a stop sign, which it had grabbed up and attempted

to use like a brick bat.

"Nice try, Pops, but I'm wise to your tricks," the boy

snapped, "I'm going home to my family and that's final!"

So saying he turned and sprinted way. The Panda stood

where he was, looking stricken, and then he dropped his sign and

started running on all fours, attempting to overtake the fleet-

footed figure...

"At last!" cried Tendo Soun as he clutched the post card

in both hands and wept as he re-read the terse message written in

neatly printed kanji, "After all this time...ten years of waiting and

hoping...my little girl is finally coming home!"

"What was that, Soun-kun?" asked Nodoka as she came

into the room from the kitchen carrying a tea tray.

"Nodoka-chan," Soun beamed brightly, "Nabiki has

written to inform me that she is returning home after all this time!

That means Genma is bound to be coming with her! You can

finally be together, just as my family will at long last be united!"

"That's wonderful," Nodoka replied as she set the tea tray

down and began to pour for herself and Soun, "Ranma hasn't

seen his father since he was a child, and it will be so nice for

Kasumi and Akane to have their sister back. We must tell them

at once."

"Yes, of course," Soun said, then glanced around, "Where

are the children?"

"Kasumi was helping me in the kitchen," Nodoka replied,

"I believe Akane and Ranma were still working out in the dojo.

Shall I get them?"

"Yes, please," Soun grinned broadly, almost bursting with

happiness. Finally all of his dreams would be realized when his

baby girl returned to the Tendo household...

"Hiyaa!" cried Akane as she kicked the punching bag

being held by her reluctant iinazuke. She kicked the bag again

especially hard, forcing him back a half-step as the force

staggered him a little.

"Hey, Akane, take it easy!" Ranma protested, "I know you

want to stay in shape, but don't take it out on me..."

"Why shouldn't I?" Akane snarled as she kicked the bag

again, even harder than before, "It's all your fault I have to train

this hard!"

"Me?" Ranma protested, now holding onto the bag to

keep from landing flat on his back, "What did I do?"

"It's what you haven't done!" Akane snapped, "I've asked

you dozens of time to try and get Kuno to lay off, but so far you

haven't lifted a finger to help me!"

"Hey, I talk to him all the time," Ranma assured her, "But

it's not my fault he's got a crush on you. So the guy carries things

a little far, you could at least give him a chance..."

"Give me a break!" Akane all but exploded as her next

kick did just that to the bag, tearing it open as the chain holding

it above the floor snapped, sending Ranma tumbling backwards

in a hail of sawdust. Akane assumed a fighting crouch as she

continued to snarl, "You just want to worm out of our

engagement so you can crawl up to Kodachi! I'm not taking this

any more, Ranma! Get over here and fight me!"

"I've told you before, you stupid Tomboy," Ranma griped

as he got back to his feet, clearing sawdust out of his eyes, hair

and clothing, "I don't fight girls! I'll help you work out, but I

won't trade punches..."

"Fine!" she cried, already leaping to the attack as Ranma

saw her in time to evade her first punch, "Then I'll do all the

punching!"

"Hey, quit that!" Ranma complained as he moved to avoid

her onslaught, skillfully avoiding each kick and punch from long

practice, "You know that's not fair!"

"Then fight me!" Akane cried, "I can whip your tailbone! I

can beat any guy! I'm just as good as you are..."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," Ranma said patiently, "I've heard it

all before. Look, I'm sorry if I-yikes!"

Only his considerable speed and agility allowed him to

avoid her next strike as he ducked low under her swing and came

up on the opposite side, causing her to spin around with a back-

kick that narrowly avoided connecting.

Before she could renew her attack, however, a very calm

and level voice said, "Ranma, Akane, that is enough! Bow to one

another and come inside. Your father has something he wants to

tell you."

"What does Otosan want now, Aunt Nodoka?" Akane

asked, not exactly calming down so much as backing away with

one eye still intent on Ranma.

"It is for your father to say, Akane-chan," Nodoka smiled,

then gave Ranma a reproving look and said, "This concerns you as well, Ranma. "

"Me?" Ranma looked surprise, but dutifully followed

them out of the dojo.

Soun's expression was beaming with happiness as the

others took their place around him, all except for Kasumi, who

was watching a pot of ramen to make sure it did

not overboil. That was why she heard the brief knock at the door

and was first able to answer it, finding a very nice looking boy

standing on the veranda. The boy seemed somehow familiar, but

Kasumi could not place him, except for his eyes.

Those eyes were searching her face as if trying to make a

connection, then the boy cleared his throat and said, "Kasumi? Is

that you, Oneechan?"

"Oh my," Kasumi replied, giving this boy a more

thorough study. Not bad looking, and very muscular, perhaps a

year or so younger than herself with a lean frame that was very

compact and wiry. Short brown hair framed a somewhat angular

face, and the boy was wearing Chinese style clothing, making

him look both handsome and exotic. He was very tan and healthy

looking, and for no reason Kasumi could name she felt a certain

thrill at the familiarity of his greeting.

Then she stepped back in mild alarm, for a Giant Panda

lumbered up behind the boy and snuffled. Rather than react with

alarm, the boy turned back and snarled, "Don't you start with me,

Ojisama! I'm going inside to talk to my father!"

"Father?" Kasumi asked, blinking slightly. Was this

stranger somehow confused to be calling a Panda his Uncle?

"It's a long story, Oneechan," the boy sighed, then looked

at her again with soulful brown eyes, "I may not look the same to

you now, but I'm your sister, Nabiki."

"Sister?" Kasumi blinked in even greater confusion. Was

she somehow mistaken in thinking this stranger a boy? But he-

she-sounded so masculine...

"Can I come inside," the boy asked with weariness in his-

-her-tone, "It's been a long trip and I..."

Suddenly Soun was at the door, all smiles as he caught

sight of the stranger and beamed brightly, "Nabiki-chan? Is that

you?"

"Uh, yeah, Dad," the boy replied, "It's me..."

"My daughter!" Soun lunged forward and hugged the

stranger close to his body, earning a very awkward and

embarrassed look from the boy, who seemed reluctant to return

the gesture.

Then Soun caught sight of the Panda, and his expression

altered abruptly. He stiffened for a moment, then backed away,

drawing the boy with him as if to thrust him behind himself for

protected.

"Relax, Otosan," the boy assured him, "That's uncle

Saotome."

"That's...?" Soun hesitated, "It is?"

The Panda stood erect on its hind legs, towering over

them all, then turned at the waist in order to reach behind itself so

that it could draw out a sign that Soun had not at first noticed

was being carried on the creature in a backpack it was somehow

wearing.

Holding the sign somehow in one clawed hand, it took out a felt

tip pen and began writing something on the smooth white surface

in Kanji.

"What is it doing?" asked Akane, who hovered nervously

near to her father.

"Looks like its trying to write something," said an equally

astonished Ranma.

"Just wait and see," said the boy, and sure enough the

Panda held up the sign, which read, "I am Saotome Genma."

"Genma?" gasped Nodoka as she stepped past the

astonished Soun to look up into the face of the creature, "Is that

you, husband?"

Very sadly the Panda nodded, then turned the sign

around, which read, "A long story."

"That it is," the boy sighed, then said, "Look, do you think

it would be all right if we had a hot bath before we explain

things?"

Akane turned to the stranger and said, "Who are you?"

"Tendo Nabiki," the boy replied, "And you're Akane?"

"Nabiki," Ranma said, "Isn't that a girl's name?"

"Yeah?" the boy flashed him a look, "So what's your

point?"

"Uh, nothing," Ranma hastily said, "Look, I'm sorry if I

didn't know who you were. It's just...well...you don't exactly look

like a girl..."

"Neither do you," the stranger calling himself Nabiki

smiled, giving him a lookover, "You're Saotome Ranma, right?

Uncle's told me all about you."

"Uncle?" Ranma slowly turned to look in dismay at the

Panda, "You mean...that really is my father?"

"He's under a curse," the boy sighed, "Look, it would help

a lot if we could both have a nice hot bath..."

"Oh, sorry," Kasumi said, recovering her manners, "We

were having some difficulties with the plumbing. Someone is

coming over later today to fix it, but until then all we have is cold

water."

"I see," Nabiki sighed, "Well then, Sis, maybe you could

heat some water for us instead? It rained on the way here, and..."

"Oh, of course," Kasumi said in relief, "I'll do that right

away...Nabiki."

Nabiki sighed. It was definitely going to take some

explaining to make them all aware of her situation...

"Um...Nabiki?" Akane said reluctantly.

"Yeah, Sis?" Nabiki looked down at her with a neutral

expression.

Akane hesitated, looked at the ground for a minute, then

looked up and said, "Can you show us some proof that you're my

sister? I mean, no offense, but..."

"Hey, lay off, Akane," Ranma said, looking to Nabiki

apologetically, "She's usually like this. I guess it's hard to be sure

about some things, being so many years and all..."

"Oh, I understand," Nabiki replied, "I'd feel the same way

in your position. Look, it'll take a few minutes for that water to

heat. Is there somewhere we can go to talk? I've got a few

questions of my own I'd like to ask."

"Sure," Akane recovered, sounding relieved that Nabiki

was not offended, "You can join us in the dojo. We were just

working out when you showed up, right Ranma?"

"Oh yeah," Ranma snorted, "More like you were trying to

attack me."

"I wasn't attacking you!" Akane protested, "I was chasing

you because you're too much of a coward to stand and face me..."

"I wasn't running!" Ranma got angry, "It's just like I told

you, I don't hit girls!"

"That's very interesting," Nabiki inclined his/her head and

studied Ranma carefully, "Must be hard to spar if you're not

going to hit somebody."

"Well..." Ranma faltered, but Nabiki clapped him on the

arm and gave him a half-smile.

"Never mind," Nabiki assured, "Let's go. I'd like to get as

far away from the grownups as possible for now."

"No problem...Oneechan," Akane said with some

reluctance.

"You studied Kempo with Dad, right?" Ranma asked

after they entered the dojo.

"Yes," Nabiki acknowledged, giving the place a long

study as if trying to square it with his/her memories, "Musubetsu

Kakuto Ryu, Saotome style. Your father's a good teacher, no

matter his other faults."

"Faults?" Ranma looked at Nabiki sharply, "What do you

mean by that?"

"Never mind," Nabiki smiled at him again, "It's just that

I've been with Uncle for the past ten years since...Mom died...and

I've gotten to know him pretty well."

"Really?" Ranma was suddenly quite interested, "I

mean...before he turned into a Panda, I mean...?"

"Before that," Nabiki replied, looking somewhat reluctant

as if deciding to elaborate. Ranma's expression gave away an

ardent hunger to know everything he could about the man who

had not been a part of his life for ten long years. He did not

realize how much Nabiki envied him for that.

"I'll bet you've had a lot of interesting stories, Oneechan,"

Akane said with a somewhat more relaxed tone, turning to face

Nabiki with a meaningful posture.

"Oh yeah," Nabiki replied, studying her sister's posture

and marking the obvious readiness, "Been over nearly all of

Japan and Okinawa, training with the best, wherever we could

find them. Seen other parts of the Orient as well, even been to

Korea, Singapore Thailand, Malaysia and China..."

"China?" said Ranma with obvious interest, "That's great! I've

always wanted to travel myself, but I've hardly been that far from

Nerima."

"You must be pretty good, then," Akane smiled, "Would

you like to spar?"

"Well," Nabiki replied, having anticipated the question,

"Maybe, but I don't usually fight without good reason."

"Nothing wrong with a little practice, is there?" Ranma

asked him.

"Not with practice, no," Nabiki replied, "But what I mean

is that I usually do it professionally these days, for money."

"For money?" Ranma gasped, and Akane looked at

Nabiki with an equally shocked expression.

"It's partly how I earn a living," Nabiki explained, "I don't

do stuff like that for free, you know. If I did, your Uncle and I'd

be living like a couple of vagabonds all the time. If it were up to

him we'd have to steal food for our survival."

"But it's not honorable," Ranma said, "Martial Arts

should be studied for the purity of the art..."

"In a perfect world, maybe," Nabiki chuckled, giving him

a more friendly study as she added, "You look like you'd be pretty

good in a fight yourself. Tell you what, if I win against Akane,

how about you spar with me next."

"Well," Ranma said with reluctance, "Okay. I just gotta

warn you, Akane plays rough..."

"So do I," Nabiki turned and acknowledged Akane's

threatening posture, seeing a flash of anger in the girl's face

without being entirely certain of the reason, "Ready whenever you

are, Sis."

"Sis, huh?" Akane said, all but voicing her suspicions as

she bowed to Nabiki, then moved to attack, snarling, "What kind

of an idiot do you take me for? You're not my sister!"

Her attack was flawless, but Nabiki was no where near

Akane's thrust. Without hardly seeming to move at all she

avoided Akane's next attack, then the follow up kick, with such

ease that she could just as well have been as ethereal as a

shadow.

"I'm hurt, Sis," Nabiki said evenly, without a trace of

concern in her voice, "What makes you say that?"

"Because you're really a boy!" Akane snarled, attacking

again, only to find Nabiki standing right behind her.

"You think so?" Nabiki sounded mildly hurt at the

accusation.

"Of course," Akane turned to look at her, then pointed,

"You've got an Adam's Apple! No girl has that!"

"What?" Ranma gasped, looking at Nabiki's throat with

open confusion.

"Things aren't what they seem, Akane-chan," Nabiki tried

to explain when Akane launched herself into a flying kick that

should have connected, only Nabiki was in the air sailing over

her head with such grace that would have put shame to a

professional gymnast.

Akane landed, looking around in confusion, only to feel a

finger touch her on the back of her neck. She turned around and

saw Nabiki smile at her, holding up the finger to inspection.

"Tag, you're it."

Ranma let out a breath he did not even know he had been

holding in. Nabiki had just demolished Akane's entire attack

without more than that single touch, and all three of them knew

it. Then he saw Nabiki smile his way, and for some reason he felt

suddenly quite nervous.

"You're turn," she smiled, waving him over, after giving

Akane a reassuring look as she said, "I'll explain everything in a

bit, Akane-chan. Just trust me for now, okay? There is a

reasonable explanation."

"There sure is," Ranma took a stance opposite to where

Nabiki was positioned, "Akane's right, you really are a boy."

"Think so?" Nabiki eyed him smugly, "Is that important?"

"It is to me," Ranma smiled back, "It means I can go all

out. Ready-?"

Suddenly before he could move Nabiki was standing

directly in his face, still smiling that smug little smile of hers.

From two inches away she said, "I like guys who go all the way,

reminds me of me. You know, you're kind of cute for a

homebody..."

"What?" Ranma asked in shock, then his reaction became

near instantaneous. He got angry!

Nabiki avoided the swipe he made, but Ranma came on

with twice the speed and power of Akane, so Nabiki did not so

easily avoid the next thrust and had to pivot on one heel in order

to slide around the punch, blocking the kick that followed.

Ranma was angry, but he fought with discipline and control,

altering his attack strategy to match Nabiki's defenses. He was a

formidable fighter, and Nabiki was actually pushed into using

more skill than it had taken to defeat Akane.

In the end, however, Nabiki outlasted his opponent.

Ranma got careless as he slowed to correct his balance, and

Nabiki changed strategies abruptly by lashing out with a side-

kick that caught him totally unawares. He went down with a

solid thump at the far end of the dojo while Nabiki corrected his

posture and resumed a casual stance, breathing in and out very

slowly with his nostrils.

"Ow," Ranma winded as he slowly got back to his feet

while Akane stood with her mouth hanging open. Then Ranma

smiled and bowed to Nabiki, who returned the bow, the fight

clearly having ended.

"Not bad," Ranma said, breathing hard but not appearing

to mind it, "You're pretty good. Did you learn some of that stuff

in China?"

"I mostly picked things up here or there," Nabiki

answered.

"You're incredible!" Akane all but blurted, "Can you teach

me to do that?"

Nabiki eyed her curiously, then said, "We'll see, Sis.

Maybe we can work something out later."

"So she can try and kick my ass?" Ranma sniffed, "No

thank you!"

"Shut up, Ranma!" Akane snarled, "Nobody asked you!"

Nabiki looked at them both curiously, then said, "Aren't

you two supposed to be engaged or something?"

Both Ranma and Akane looked sourly at each other, then

Ranma said, "That was a dumb idea Tendo-sama worked out

with my father when we were just kids..."

"Don't call my father stupid, Baka!" Akane retorted, then

to Nabiki she added, "He may be my iinazuke, but it wasn't my

idea to get engaged to this stuck-up pig..."

"I am not a pig!" Ranma protested.

"Well, you sure make enough noise for one!" Akane

retorted then to Nabiki she added, "I still don't believe you're my

long lost sister. You're a guy, there's no doubt about it."

"Actually, I'm glad he is," Ranma said gruffly.

"Why?" Nabiki asked him.

"Because you won," Akane clarified for her, giving

Ranma a scathing look, "And Ranma hates to lose to anybody..."

"There's nothing wrong to losing to somebody who's

good," Ranma retorted, "I just wouldn't want to lose to a girl or

nothing. It's too embarrassing..."

"Ah..." Nabiki faltered, when a scream was heard coming

from the main house.

"Mother!" Ranma cried, already in full motion.

"Saotome-Sama!" Akane also said, doing likewise.

Nabiki hesitated for only a second, then sighed to herself,

"This is going to be a problem..."

Inside the Kitchen Ranma and Akane came to an abrupt

stop, staring at the sight of Nodoka laying on the floor of the

kitchen as though she had just passed out. Kasumi was backing

away almost to the exit, her eyes very wide as she gasped, "Oh

my..."

"Mother!" Ranma looked down at her, then up at a

complete stranger standing before him holding a kettle in both

hands, a very heavyset man in his middle years wearing glasses

with his head wrapped up in a kind of turban. He was also

wearing the same backpack that the Panda had sported, complete

with sign slung in a kind of rack.

Beyond that he was standing in the middle of a puddle

with a worn Karate Gi in place, held up by a thick black belt. He

turned with as much dignity as he could and regarded Ranma

solemnly, then very softly said, "My son."

Soun appeared with a look of astonishment, "Genma, my

old friend! When did you arrive? And where is the Panda?"

"Well, Soun-kun," the man turned solemnly to begin

when he paused in mid-statement, his eyes going back to the

figure of Nabiki.

"Well, Pops?" he snorted, "What are you going to tell

him?"

Soun looked from Genma to Nabiki with a look of

puzzlement while Ranma and Akane knelt down to check on

Nodoka. Kasumi was watching them all with a very puzzled

expression. Genma just stood where he was, as if afraid to say

anything, so Nabiki sighed and took a step towards the nearby

teakettle.

Suddenly Genma became animated as he reached for the

kettle, only to have Nabiki snatch it up before he could stop him.

"No-nonononono!" Genma hastily protested.

"Back off, Ojisama!" Nabiki snarled, then upended the

kettle over himself, shuddering at having hot water land on top of

his head.

Genma backed away as something very strange

happened, and whimpered faintly, "I'm going to die..." in a

plaintive voice.

Ranma and Akane gasped, Soun's jaw hit the floor while

Kasumi's eyes got even wider than before as Nabiki set the kettle

down and turned to face them, her features and frame much

altered as she appeared to even have shrunk a few inches.

"Daughter?" Soun managed to gasp out.

"Oneechan?" Akane asked in disbelief.

"I'm going to die!" Genma whimpered more loudly than

before.

"Who are you?" asked Ranma.

Nabiki just heaved a sigh and looked down at her entirely

feminine curves, then said, "I'm Tendo Nabiki...sorry about

this..."

Continued

Comments/Criticism: shadowmane

Nabiki 1/2

(An Altered Destiny)

Chapter 1, Part 2: Setting a Routine.

By

Jim Robert Bader

(Inspired by the works of

Wade Tritshler

Richard Lawson

James Jones

John Walter Biles

Sebastian Weinberg

And many others)

(Standard Disclaimer: Inspired by the works of Rumiko

Takahashi, all rights go to her and Her associates. I only claim

credit for this Story, so please don't sue me)

Nabiki sighed as she leaned back into the bathwater,

enjoying a good soak for the first time in what felt like ages. Only

now, alone by herself in the House she had not lived in since her

childhood, after all the excitement and shouting of the day, she

finally had privacy and peace to sort matters out. The jumble of

emotions welling up inside her could be sorted out and logically

dealt with at last, beginning with the reactions of the other

members of this house when they heard the story of Jusenkyo,

beginning with her father...

"Saotome!" Soun had cried, pressing his longtime friend

up against one of the support beams of the house, "This is all

your fault! How could you let something like this happen to my

daughter?"

"Calm down, Otosan," Nabiki had urged him, "It wasn't

entirely his fault. Uncle Saotome can't read or speak a word of

Chinese, like I can."

"You speak Chinese?" Ranma asked in surprise.

Nabiki's reply sounded to him like a strange set of noises,

then she smiled and said, "I picked up a little Mandarin when we

spent a few weeks in Hong Kong doing...business."

"What has that got to do with what happened to you and

Saotome-sama?" Akane asked her.

"I should have known what we were getting into," Nabiki

explained, "And I would have if Uncle had let me read the travel

brochure instead of hogging it to himself. That's why I usually

insisted on doing all our travel arrangements...he was forever

making blunders like this that got us both into trouble."

"Then why didn't he allow you to read up about this

place," Nodoka hesitated, "I believe you called it...?"

"Jusenkyo," Nabiki helpfully supplied, "The Cursed

Springs of Jusenkyo, to be more precise, so named because it has

over a hundred pools bubbling up from a natural aquifer, only

there's some kind of legend about it being cursed in a war

between the ancient Gods of China..."

"I have heard of this place, Nabiki-chan," Kasumi said

pleasantly, "It was in one of the books I borrowed from Tofu-

Sensei. It seems a great number of tragic stories are connected

somehow with these pools of which you speak."

"That's right, Oneechan," Nabiki replied, nodded, "As the

legend goes, whatever falls into one of the cursed springs will

take the form of the person or creature who last drowned there.

As it so happened, I fell into a spring called Nannichuan, the

Spring of the drowned man, about a young boy who died there

over a thousand years ago, a very tragic story."

"Fell in?" Akane asked, "Or were you pushed?" she eyed

Genma with suspicion, noticing his nervous reaction.

"Actually," Nabiki eyed Genma as well, "A little of both,

really. We were fighting at the time, one of our endless training

missions, when I knocked him off a bamboo pole into the pool

called Shonmaoniichuan, or Spring of the drowned Panda. The

next thing I know, a Panda is attacking me, and I get knocked

into the other pool. I come out looking like the boy you met a

little while ago. It happens every time I get splashed with cold

water."

"And hot water reverses the spell?" asked Kasumi.

"Hai, Oneechan," Nabiki sighed, "And in case you can't

guess by now, life hasn't been a picnic ever since."

"Surely there is a cure for this?" Nodoka asked, "A way to

break the curse?"

"Not according to the guide who showed us to the

springs," Nabiki sighed,

"He said that there was an elder in a nearby village who might

know of a way to break the curse, but Ojisama over here messed

that up and got us in trouble with the locals. That's when I

decided I'd had enough of his stupid training mission and made

my mind up to come back home. I want to get my life back in

order, which means, Old Man, that our partnership is definitely

over!"

"Partnership?" Ranma asked in confusion, "I thought

Otosan was your trainer?"

"A little of that," Nabiki smiled, "But mostly we worked

as a team, fifty-fifty, dividing up the spoils of whatever fortune

we came into. Don't worry, Pops, you'll get your share of the take,

minus a few expenses that I've been keeping a careful tab about.

Considering all you've cost me, be glad with what I give you."

Genma's expression went through a series of comical

transformations, from elation that Nabiki had even considered

sharing their combined assets to depression as he considered just

how much she would deduct from his share of the profits.

"Saotome," Soun's growl brought him back into focus as

he felt his back once more make rude contact with the wooden

support beam, "Just what have you been teaching my daughter?

What unnatural habits has she picked up from being around

you?"

"Tendo-kun..." Saotome tried to explain, wanting to

convince his old friend that it really was not his fault, that he

could hardly be blamed for Nabiki having the acquisitive

instincts of a barracuda, and that she was hardly the great

innocent she was pretending to be at the moment, but words

failed him. Besides that, with the incriminating evidence already

compiled against him, it was doubtful he could convince Soun-

let alone Nodoka-of anything he told them.

He silently appealed to Nabiki, who watched him back

with that calculating look in her eyes that he knew so well and

dreaded. This was going to cost him in some way, but he silently

surrendered to her unvoiced comment. Anything was better than

the fate that awaited him if she did not bail him out right then

and there. Better to deal with the devil he knew, and he sighed,

resigning his soul to permanent indenturement.

Nabiki had enjoyed watching him sweat, but in all truth

she was not angry enough to want to get him into too much

trouble. No matter his faults, he was still her Sensei and partner,

and he owed her too much to just cast him aside before she had

finished milking his market potential. Besides which, it was

convenient having someone in her permanent debt that could

back her up when needed.

So she just smiled and said, "He's not to blame for

everything, Father. I take responsibility for my own conduct,

thank you. Besides, Saotome-Sama is a very good Sensei. I've

learned a lot from him, and we have so many interesting things in

common, isn't that right, Uncle?"

Genma swallowed, then forced himself to smile and said,

"H-hai! Hai, Nabiki-chan. Your daughter is a very fine student,

Tendo-kun, the best I have ever had or could ask for, and you

would be proud of her having a good business sense and an

ability to deal intelligently with her problems."

"Tendo-Sama," Ranma suddenly spoke up, kneeling

before Soun and bowing his head with as much dignity as he

could, "Please forgive Otosan for not being as careful as he could

with Nabiki-san. I know it was wrong, but he is still my father."

Nabiki stared at the boy with interest. Such fine manners,

she thought, so unlike his behavior a few minutes ago in the

dojo...

Soun finally relaxed his grip on his old friend, his anger

vanishing as quickly as it had appeared. He looked to Nabiki,

then Ranma and said, "Very well, since you both have asked this

of me, I will try to abide my temper. Provided I hear a more

reasonable explanation for what he allowed to happen."

"Like I said," Nabiki replied, "It's as much my fault as

his. I should have asked the guide for more details, but who'd

believe in Cursed Springs that could turn a man into a panda and

me into...a guy," she said the last part, wincing.

"Has it been very hard for you, Nabiki-chan?" Kasumi

asked her.

"Well..." Nabiki hesitated, then said, "It has made my life

a bit more complicated, but there are a few advantages in being

able to switch genders. For one thing it helps if someone's

chasing you to be able to change appearance..."

"Who would be chasing you?" Nodoka asked her in

puzzlement.

In reply Nabiki just smiled and said, "It's been known to

happen...sometimes when Uncle and me wore out our

welcome..."

"Well, yes," Genma stammered, "Sometimes the natives

aren't always friendly..." he silenced himself as he saw the

reproving stare from Nabiki...

Nabiki sighed again. Uncle Genma was going to be a

problem. She would have to coach him better to avoid his

annoying habit of always putting his foot in his mouth, which

could have been a rather endearing trait had it not tended to wind

them both up in so much trouble with the wrong sort of people.

She sank back into the bath, enjoying the luxury of being

in her natural shape. Warm water was much harder to come

across than cold, she had discovered with annoying regularity,

and it was good to take advantage of such a pleasant sensation of

being clean with unsnarled hair. She had kept it deliberately short

and manageable in the front, only allowing it to grow long in the

back, where she bound it up in a pigtail braid, which was a trait

she had picked up during their sojourn in China.

She combed her unbound hair down the back with her

fingers then stretched her legs out again, studying them critically

and wondering if they needed shaving. Now that she was home

she intended to make full use of all the feminine pleasures she

had been denied on the open road, and she wanted especially to

look good for the boys, should she ever consider doing normal

girl things like dating. Her legs were one of her best attractive

features, she well knew, long and shapely with graceful, athletic

curves and well rounded feet that-while hardened from many

years of wandering barefoot over harsh terrain-still appeared as

attractively feminine as the rest of her. It would serve her needs

well to preserve such qualities, like any good investment.

Maybe I can get a job as a model, she thought to herself.

They did very well showing off their looks for outrageous sums of

money. Body parts could be marketed just as well as the rest of

her in one package, and there was never any shortage of

commercial applications to arm and leg-shots. Then again there

were stars that paid a lot of money to body-doubles who could

sub for them in non-facial close-ups...

Well, that was one option to consider anyway. In truth

she had a lot of other potential careers that were worth pursuing.

Time enough to sort that out later, for now she decided to

concentrate on her family and what she had learned in the brief

time since her arrival.

Her father seemed jumpy and nervous, barely in control of

his emotions and tended to veer wildly from one extreme to the

next. That was not a very good quality in a martial artist, but she

decided not to rush to any conclusions. His paternally protective

attitude could be a problem if he intended to interfere in her

personal business. On the other hand, it also meant that he would

be easy to manipulate, so perhaps there were advantages here that

were worth a more careful study.

Saotome Nodoka, on the other hand, was shrewd and very

alert to small details, if a bit too conventional in her thinking. She

would be a more challenging party when it came to negotiations,

assuming she and Ranma intended to continue living in the

Tendo House now that Genma was returned. Aunt Nodoka was

friendly and congenial company, which might make her a very

good ally, but Nabiki sensed that there was steel behind her

gentle frame, which meant that crossing her would definitely not

be in anyone's best interests.

And then there was Kasumi...her older sibling. Kasumi

disturbed Nabiki in a way she did not know how to grapple. She

was...nice...maybe a bit too nice, and overly cheerful, as though

she could find the bright spot in almost any situation. That was a

quality Nabiki was not used to encountering, and there was

something else about Kasumi's manner that puzzled her greatly.

It took a moment to grasp one part of the significance of her

behavior, especially when it came to how she and Akane acted

together.

Kasumi was more than Akane's older sister, she acted

almost like a surrogate mother. She helped Nodoka around the

house and clearly shared the domestic chores while her father did

not appear to do much of anything at the moment. Nabiki

wondered if Soun Tendo was even running the dojo like in the

old days. If not, then this raised some serious questions about the

family's financial situation.

Like the problem with the plumbing that had caused so

much confusion in the beginning. The plumbers had shown up

and fixed the pipes, but when it came to payment Nodoka had

been ready to haggle about delaying the payment. She and Soun

had been very surprised when Nabiki offered to pay them in cash,

explaining that she carried a little "pocket change" with her, not

elaborating on where exactly she had gotten the several hundred

thousand yen she just "happened" to be carrying on her person.

The family financial picture was definitely something she

was going to have to look into. With that in mind she turned to

the last two members of the Household.

Akane was first, of course, being her sister by blood.

Akane was harsh, slightly bitter, very quick to anger and not very

feminine in her behavior. She was, however, rather cute for her

age, and a competent Martial Artist. Her defenses were weak but

her attack pattern was formidable. She had to work a bit on her

speed and maybe learn some more complicated maneuvers, but

overall there was a lot of raw talent there to work with...

She smiled as she caught herself appraising her younger

sister's combat potential, feeling almost like Genma. He was

always sizing people up in terms of their ability to fight. Most

people he would dismiss out of hand as not worth bothering over,

and there was something almost charming about his chivalric

interpretation of Bushido. She had learned a lot from his

teaching, not least of which was that a Martial Artist only used

their skills against other fighters. Not that it wasn't still handy

once in a while to know the value of intimidating non-fighters...

She thought of Akane again, seeing in her a basically nice

girl who seemed to have a few emotional issues that would

require further exploration. Her temper was, perhaps, her greatest

weakness, and that was something else to be considered. The

thing that bothered Nabiki the most though was the way she

behaved around Ranma, her iinazuke.

And that brought up the final member of the family

equation: Ranma himself. Nabiki had avoided thinking about

him until now, but when she did she found herself confronted by

several conflicting emotions. On the one hand he seemed like a

very nice, if average, boy who could be so polite one minute and

then turn around and be as rude as a six-year-old brat. He acted

like he and Akane genuinely resented each other, and that

condescending Macho attitude of his...yes, it was definitely clear

that he and Akane did not get along that well together.

But the boy did have his good points. For one thing he

was a very good fighter, perhaps the best she had seen of late,

almost as good as his father. For another thing he was very brave

and obviously no bully. He did not like to hit girls, and had

Nabiki not been a boy at the time when they sparred he would

obviously not have gone so all-out, which was a useful thing to

know about him.

Last of all...he was cute.

She stifled that thought. Ranma was Akane's iinazuke.

No matter what else Nabiki knew herself capable of, she would

never hurt family, at least not deliberately. Or in any way

permanent.

She sighed again. Thinking too much was one of her

greatest problems. She was tired and it did not help to make

decisions without sufficient rest to recharge the old brain cells.

Time to get up out of the tub and get dressed in her spare

traveling clothes so she could ask Kasumi to find a bedroll or

Tami mat on which to sleep. Akane had offered to share her room

for the night since Kasumi slept in the same room with Nodoka

and Ranma had another room to himself.

Genma would probably sleep out in the dojo, she thought

with a smile. If it weren't for his snoring, she'd gladly join him.

At least she was used to having him around in case of intruders,

both as alarm system and an alternate target.

She got herself out of the tub and began to reach for the

nearby towel when the door to the bathroom opened. More

curious than alarmed, she turned to find Ranma striding in,

halting in mid-step when he caught sight of her. The expression

on the young man's face was comical dismay, which was why

Nabiki checked her normal impulse to cover herself up in the

presence of a stranger.

His mouth was working like a fish while his eyes

remained wide open. Nabiki felt a bit like an exhibitionist as she

turned to him with arms held at her side, then with a tilt of her

head said, "See anything you like?"

"Gah!" Ranma finally burst out, backing away with such

haste that he tripped over his owns feet and went sprawling out

into the hallway. He kept on backing up until he was pressed

against the hallway wall, still staring at Nabiki, who just

watched him pointedly and wondered if the boy really was

having a nosebleed or was that just her imagination?

"What is it, Ranma?" asked Akane, which startled Nabiki

into hastily grabbing up the towel to cover herself before Akane

looked in to find out what had caused Ranma to behave in such a

fright. Akane saw Nabiki clutching the towel, her eyes widened,

and then she turned back to Ranma and her expression became

livid.

"You-you-PERVERT!" she screamed, "My own

sister!"

"Ah," Nabiki started to say with a somewhat guilty sense

of having unintentionally given Akane the entirely wrong picture,

but Akane yanked the door closed, which spared her the sight of

what happened next. Instead she heard Ranma stammer some

lame explanation, only to wind up on the receiving of what

sounded like a lot of very violent conduct on the part of Akane.

Nabiki stood there listening to Ranma make lame excuses for not

having known that the bathroom was in use before fleeing in

evident terror for his life. She sighed to herself then and decided

to wait for Akane to calm down before assuring her that no actual

harm had happened. After all, it would not do to have her

younger sister believe that it was Nabiki who was some kind of a

pervert.

Instead she began to dress herself, then went to speak

with Kasumi...

Nabiki had awoken early, as was near habitual from her

years of training, which allowed her to escape the treatment

Genma instead visited upon his son. Ranma had very loudly

protested getting up a whole hour earlier than he usually did. The

three of them met outside in the garden area outside of the dojo,

where Genma and Nabiki squared off for their usual way of

working out their aggressions.

Namely beating the Hell out of one another!

"I warn you, old man!" Nabiki snarled as she and Genma

squared off, "Things aren't like they used to be! I'm home, which

means I don't have to obey your stupid orders!"

"Insolent girl," Genma said sternly, "I talked with your

father last night and he is in total agreement that you should not

be allowed to grow slack in your training regimen. That means,

at least for the first two hours of this morning, you're still mine to

do with as I see fit!"

"What?" Nabiki reacted, "You worked this out with my

father instead of me?"

"He is your father," Genma replied, "But it was agreed

between us that I should have responsibility for seeing that your

ten years of training do not amount to nothing."

"But that's my decision to make, not his!" Nabiki

protested.

"Foolish child," Genma responded, "He is your father.

You must obey his wishes."

"Like Hell!" Nabiki snapped, "You just bought yourself a

world of pain, old man! Sensei or no, you're going down for

messing with my life!"

"You talk just like a woman, girl," Genma retorted, "Try

backing your words up with some action!"

"You asked for it!" Nabiki snarled, and the two of them

came together in a flurry of punches and kicks, dodging and

darting about the yard trading blows with a speed and ferocity

that was highly motivated and almost seemed to be part of a

blood feud.

"Wow," Ranma gasped from where he stood watching

this exchange, then he flinched as he became aware that Akane

was standing near to him and said, "If you're going to beat me up

some more..."

"I'm sorry, Ranma," Akane said with unusual hesitation,

"I...didn't mean to overreact like that...Nabiki explained that you

were surprised..."

"Yeah, sure," Ranma said, keeping his attention focused

on the fight rather than show Akane his bruises.

Akane did not speak again for a while until after Genma

and Nabiki separated to recover their wind and calculate their

next movements, and when she did it was plain her thoughts

paralleled those of Ranma, "They're both very good. No wonder

Nabiki-chan was able to make us both look so..."

"Yeah, whatever," Ranma said neutrally, not wanting to

admit that he was just as impressed.

"Your father really is as good as Dad always said he

was," Akane noted matter-of-factly, "It should be interesting

having him and Nabiki around."

"I'll say," Ranma said casually, but something in his tone

told Akane he meant a lot more than he was saying.

Akane sighed and sat down beside him. They were not

always the best of friends, but they had spent most of their life

together and knew each other as well as any brother and sister.

She could tell something was bothering Ranma, and knew him

well enough to know he would have to be the one who decided to

tell her what it was. It took another moment during which they

watched Nabiki and Genma exchange blows that would have

taxed either one of them, neither one holding back to all

appearance, and then finally Ranma sighed and said, "This isn't

what I expected."

"Oh," Akane replied, "You mean...your father...?"

"Look at what he's done to her," Ranma said, "I don't

mean teaching her to fight, which he's obviously done a very

good job at. I mean...things they were telling us...and other stuff

they kept hinting at all night..."

"I understand," Akane said with equal sadness, "Nabiki

hasn't exactly turned out like I thought she would either."

"It's not the same thing!" Ranma insisted, "She's only

your sister...that man there is supposed to be my father, a father I

haven't seen in ten years. You haven't seen your sister since she

was eight..."

"Well, so what?" Akane asked, "I may not have a very

good memory of her, but she's still my sister..."

"I didn't think you'd understand," Ranma looked away.

"Understand?" Akane retorted, losing control of her

fragile temper, "You can be such an insensitive..."

"That's enough!" Genma called out suddenly, bringing the

fight to a sudden halt.

"The Hell it is, old man," Nabiki growled, "I haven't

finished pounding on you yet."

Genma flashed a stern look her way, and Nabiki faltered.

He might not be her master in other things, but when it came to

training missions, he was her Sensei. Long habit took over and

she backed down, obeying his instructions.

"Ranma!" Genma turned around, putting a stern tone in

his voice, "Your turn to spar with me. Nabiki-chan tells me you

have some skill at fighting. It is time for your father to decide

how much skill that is. Step forward. Nabiki, go sit down with

your sister."

As angry as she was, Nabiki could not miss the hostile

stares being exchanged between Ranma and Akane as Ranma

took her place in the garden. She decided a talk with her younger

sister was just the thing she needed to cool down, so she sat

down on the porch once her breathing returned to normal. She

nodded to Akane, who nodded back, then said, "Good morning,

Sis. I hope you slept well."

"Well enough," Akane said evenly, then more tentatively

asked, "Do you do this every morning?"

"Do what?" Nabiki blinked, then answered her own

question, "Oh, you mean sparring? Sure, Ojisama and me, we've

been doing it since I was very little."

"He seems awfully strict with you," Akane paused,

fumbling for her next words, then just said the first thing that

came into her mind, "He wasn't pulling any punches, was he?"

"Nope," Nabiki sniffed, "And I wasn't pulling any

punches with him."

"You...seemed pretty angry out there," Akane hesitated

again.

"Anger makes a good focus," Nabiki replied, "As long as

it doesn't control you, and where Pops is concerned, I have a lot

of pent-up aggression."

Meanwhile Ranma was sizing up this man who was his

father, unable as yet to get his mind in focus at the idea that this

stocky, balding man was the very man he and his mother had

waited ten years to meet again. He knew, of course, better than to

judge by appearance, and the fact that Genma was not breathing

very hard from having gone out with Nabiki said a lot by itself.

Genma adjusted the glasses he perpetually wore fastened

around his head and smiled as if anticipating his son's thoughts,

"Ranma, you feel uneasy looking at me. Am I so very different

from what you thought I might look like?"

"Ah," Ranma hesitated, staying on his guard as he

considered his reply, then just said what came into his mind,

"Not really...Otosan."

"It is good that you can say this," Genma replied, "There

is no shame in admitting your feelings. I will have to work to

rebuild your image of me, to earn your respect so that you can

have no doubt that I am your father. I can freely say that I am

proud of what I see in you, my boy. Your mother and Tendo-san

have raised you well. You are a son any father could be proud of.

Now, show me what you know and I will teach you what I

should have taught you the last ten years of your existence."

"H-hai, Otosan," Ranma said, feeling a strange mix of

pride and awe at the praise he had just been given.

The next second he was almost flat on his back, having

been overcome with the suddenness of Genma's charge, not to

mention the punch that had knocked him sprawling.

"Too slow, my son," Genma said sternly, "You must have

better defenses than that! Get back to your feet and we will try

this again."

Ranma wasted no time flipping himself back onto his

feet. Genma's blow had not really hurt him very much and was

obviously meant to shake him up, which Ranma was expert

enough to recognize as a warning shot. The next blow would

most likely take his head off.

Genma allowed himself one smile of pleasure. His son

was a fighter, there was no doubting it. Now all he had to do was

bring out the best that was within Ranma. There was a very

promising beginning in the boy, and all it would take was to

make Ranma call upon his own potential, the duty of a father.

He came at Ranma with as much speed as he felt the boy

could handle, and Ranma leaped to one side and counter-

attacked. This went on for several moments before Ranma got

serious in his offensive. At no point did he come anywhere near

to connecting with his Father, but Genma was pressed hard

keeping up his defenses. Only when the boy slackened, showing

signs of fatigue, did Genma lash out at him in earnest, sending

Ranma sprawling in the dirt, and only then did he relent in order

to allow the boy to regain his bearings.

"Too slow, Ranma," Genma deliberately taunted,

"Nabiki-chan could take you in her sleep! Get up and fight me for

real!"

"Hai!" Ranma cried, in spite of being nearly winded

feeling a surge of renewed spirit. No matter if he were tired, he

would not allow himself to look weak in the eyes of his father.

"Good," Genma praised, then tweaked the boy's pride a

little more, "An enemy will not allow you time to rest in a serious

fight. We're going to have to work on building up your reserves if

you want to be worthy of carrying on the Saotome School of

Anything Goes Martial Arts."

"Hai!" Ranma cried more fiercely then came at Genma for

real, only to wind up sprawling in the dirt nearest to the Koi

pond.

"A fighter must use his brain as well as his body,

Ranma!" Genma continued to taunt, "Get angry if you must, but

stay in control and use your anger to strengthen your

movements!"

"Wow," Akane said with rounded eyes, "Uncle Saotome

really doesn't take it easy on anyone."

"Pops just knows how to push all the right buttons,"

Nabiki smiled, thinking privately that she would never allow

Genma to provoke her that easily. She knew most of his tricks

intimately, which was unfortunately not true of poor Ranma.

Akane was looking at her curiously, then asked, "Why do

you call him Pops?"

"Habit mostly," Nabiki replied, "On the road he always

told everyone that I was his niece, but sometimes he also

pretended I was his daughter. I got in the habit of calling him

Pops any time I felt like ribbing him. It was mostly a reminder

that I wasn't really his daughter, and that there were only some

things he could get away with around me."

"He doesn't seem like the type to..." Akane started to say,

jumping to the incorrect conclusion.

"How would you know?" Nabiki challenged, "I've met all

kinds in my travels, but no, Ranma's Dad isn't the kind of man

who'd take advantage of any woman. That often worked to my

advantage, but sometimes...it could really get annoying."

"Annoying?" Akane asked in confusion.

"I mean he could sometimes wind up practically useless

in situations he'd get us both in when he did something dumb,

like think with his stomach," Nabiki replied, "I've lost count of all

the indignities I've had to put up with bailing the both of us out of

his messes, but he's never done anything intentionally wrong that

I can remember. In fact that's his biggest problem: good

intentions, poor execution."

"So, what was it like traveling to all the places you've

been to?" Akane asked her.

"Educational, mostly," Nabiki smiled, "Sometimes very

profitable, which is a good thing, or else I'd have sold him to a

Zoo the minute I wound up with this curse."

"Enough!" Genma suddenly cried, stepping back as

Ranma fought bravely against the urge to collapse from

exhaustion, "You have potential boy, but you're an

embarrassment as you are. Get your breath back then we'll try

this again, only this time I think you should spar with Nabiki."

"N-nani?" Ranma stammered, badly winded.

"I won't have my heir in worse shape than my other star

pupil," Genma told him solemnly, "I am proud of the way you

fight, but pride alone won't preserve you in a real battle. From

now on you will train with Nabiki and Akane until all three of

you are worthy of the Anything Goes School."

"I'm not fighting with them!" Ranma protested, able to get

the words out now that he wasn't struggling for his life, "I can't

fight against girls..."

"And what if you are attacked by a woman?" Genma

asked him, then sighed, "I understand your feeling son, and they

do your father proud. But you should know that women are every

bit as dangerous as a man. Underestimating one has gotten me

into situations I am rather reluctant to talk about. I would not see

you suffer the same humiliation as your father."

The words obviously stung Ranma, for he straightened up

and clearly made an effort to regain full command of his

breathing. Genma saw this but resisted the temptation to smile,

instead nodding to the two girls watching them and said,

"Akane-chan, Nabiki-chan, indulge us both by sparring together

until Ranma is ready to fight the winner."

"Hai, Ojisama," both girls replied, stepping out into the

garden while Ranma walked off his fatigue, making practice

punches and kicks at the air to keep himself limber while Genma

supervised the next match.

Soun and Nodoka came out onto the porch just then,

having watched the whole thing from inside, and Ranma was

pleased to see his mother smiling at him before turning to Genma

and saying, "That was a very good thing you just did, husband.

Ranma has always been difficult to control, but he seems to

respond to your voice like the obedient son I have always wanted

him to be."

"It's nothing, Nodoka-chan," Genma beamed proudly,

"You are to be praised for teaching our boy to be as manly as he

is. In no time at all I will have him fighting with the same

tenacity as Nabiki."

"Saotome-kun, you are indeed a wonder," Soun said in

praise, "I had my doubts about you last night, but I can see that

Nabiki has turned out well in spite of her...um...problem."

"I only did what I thought was best, Tendo-kun," Genma

replied, "I am sorry for my lack of caution that lead to both

our...problems...but in spite of this, she has proven an excellent

student. There is not too much more that I will soon be able to

teach her."

"If only..." Soun's voice faltered, then he spoke again

more firmly, "If only Akane-chan could learn to fight with the

same spirit. She is very good, make no mistake, but she

has...difficulties that I have not been able to help her master."

"So I see," Genma said as diplomatically as he could,

having already defined a dozen problem areas from the way

Akane was trying to lay a hand on the quick-moving Nabiki,

"She has good control over her power, but her movements are

controlled by her anger. Her defense is pitiful, and her speed is

inadequate. She needs to slow down more and work on building

up her reflexes."

He half feared that Soun would take his words the wrong

way, but instead his old friend responded with enthusiastic

confirmation, "Hai, Saotome-san! That is it exactly! You have hit

the nail on the head, my friend. That is why I ask that you take it

upon yourself to train her. I...have done as much as I could, but

she needs a Sensei who will not spare criticism or go lax on her

because she is my daughter."

"I thought as much, Tendo-kun," Genma sighed, "It will

be an honor to help her learn to be more like her sister.

But...something puzzles me greatly."

"Yes?" asked Soun, as if anticipating the question.

"She and Ranma..." he did not elaborate, nor did it seem

that he needed to.

"I know," Soun replied in droll understatement, "Things

have not turned out quite the way we had intended.'

"If you are referring to that iinazuke business," Nodoka

said with just a slight edge to her otherwise pleasant voice, "Then

you must know how I feel about the matter. Uniting our families

in marriage would be a good idea if both parties were in total

agreement. However, perhaps there is still a chance that Ranma

and Akane will grow out of this angry phase they are going

through and realize that they truly do care for one another."

"Perhaps," said Genma.

"Hai," Soun agreed, "Perhaps," but he was nonetheless

studying his middle daughter with a look of speculation.

Akane could not remain on her feet any longer and

collapsed to her knees, panting fiercely as she snarled, "Why

won't you hit me, Oneechan?"

"Because it wouldn't be fair," Nabiki replied, not even

breathing hard, which infuriated her sister.

"Fair?" Akane snarled, trying to summon up the strength

to renew her onslaught, "I'll show you..."

"Akane-chan!" Genma barked out, "Trade places with

Ranma!"

"But all she's done is warm Nabiki up!" Ranma protested.

"Shut up, Ranma!" Akane snapped.

"Uncute Tomboy!"

"You...!"

"Did you just call my sister a Tomboy?" Nabiki asked

Ranma curiously.

"It's just a nick-name I give her," Ranma replied as

Akane sat down beside Nodoka.

"That's what I thought," Nabiki smiled, and suddenly

Ranma had a close inspection of the bottom of her foot, which

was one inch away from the bridge of his nose. He tried not to

flinch but could not help swallowing. Akane smiled in spite of

herself and wanted to cheer her sister, but Genma was not

amused by the display of restraint on Nabiki's part, or Ranma's

sudden paralysis.

"What are you waiting for, Boy?" he called out, "Defend

yourself and hit back!"

"B-but I can't!" Ranma protested as Nabiki withdrew her

leg, allowing him to get a better look at her from no more than

two arms lengths distance. She winked at him and he swallowed,

feeling his stomach knot up for some reason.

"Foolish boy!" Genma growled as he stalked up to both of

them, then casually kicked Nabiki into the Koi pond, "If you

won't fight her as a girl, will a boy do instead?"

"What did you go and do that for!" snarled Nabiki as he

splashed around in the pond, his voice now two octaves lower

than before with no trace of femininity about him.

Ranma just blinked, startled more than before at the

sudden transformation.

"Enough of your bellyaching," Genma said sternly to

Nabiki, "Get out of there and work off your aggression. Show

Ranma you're twice the man he is and maybe he'll really start to

learn something."

Ranma was staring at his father in disbelief, then back to

Nabiki. Genma could not be serious! Male body or no, that was

still Nabiki!

"All right," Nabiki said as he leaped out of the pond and

came to stand, soaking wet in his Chinese style clothing as he

turned with a furious look towards Ranma, "Better get your guard

up kid or you're going to get pounded!"

At that moment Kasumi appeared to call out, "Breakfast

is ready everyone...oh my!"

"We'll be there in another minute, Kasumi-chan," Soun

said with a smile, "Let's watch this last match, then I really will

have an appetite."

Kasumi said nothing. Her eyes were focused on the two

fighters, but she seemed intensely concerned with her

transformed sister.

Genma returned to the porch, then folded his arms while

he watched his son come out of his daze to fight back in earnest

against the now-male Nabiki. Without turning his head he spoke,

"Akane-chan?"

Akane was surprised as she looked up at him and asked,

"Hai, Ojisama?"

"You need work," Genma replied, "But you have many

good points to work from, almost as many as Ranma."

"Ranma," Akane growled his name and looked sullenly at

the fight, "He never goes all-out like that with me..."

"You don't turn into a boy, dear," Nodoka said patiently,

"It's my fault, really. I always told Ranma that a man does not

prove himself by fighting with women. Perhaps I should have

taught him to make more of an exception in your case."

"Because I'm not very lady like?" Akane said with both

anger and sadness.

"Any fool with eyes could see that you are a young

woman entering the flower of your beauty," Genma replied, "You

have the heart and soul of a warrior. You will make Ranma a

good wife..."

"I'm not marrying him!" Akane protested.

"Akane!" Soun said sternly.

"I'm not!" Akane said more loudly, "He's arrogant,

opinionated, insufferable and..."

"In other words much like most young men his age,"

Nodoka said sweetly, though her smile was all but transparent,

"He will grow out of it in time, you'll see."

"I doubt it!" Akane said flatly, "Sometimes I just want to

beat some sense into his fool head..."

"Good," said Genma, "Then that gives us something to

work with. If you can learn to restrain your anger it could be one

of your most devastating weapons."

"You think so?" Akane asked with a hint of pleasure in

her voice.

"I have trained the best," Genma smiled, "I know I can

train you to be as good a fighter as you want to be, just so long as

you listen to my teaching."

"I will, Ojisama!" Akane said enthusiastically, standing

up with a broad grin, "I'll go wash up and get myself ready for

school. Now..."

"Please be sure to eat your breakfast first, Akane-chan,"

Kasumi reminded her without taking her eyes off the two

combatants.

"I will, Oneechan, I promise," Akane smiled as she

headed into the House.

There was a pause before Soun spoke in a level tone,

"Saotome-kun?"

"Hai, Tendo-kun?"

"What you said just now," Soun remarked, "About

Ranma and Akane...did you mean that?"

There was a very long pause before Genma replied

evenly, "What do you think, old friend?"

Soun just sighed, "That was what I was afraid of..."

Continued. Comments/Criticism: shadowmane

If you wish to check out my other works, Please check out my

Fanfiction webpage at: . or

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All related chapters of this series can be found there along with my

other works.


	2. Chapter 2

Nabiki 1/2

Chapter 2, Part 1.

By

Jim Robert Bader

Inspired by the works of

Rumiko Takahashi

And the creative works of:

Wade Tritschler

Richard Lawson

John Walter Biles

And many others!

(Standard disclaimer: Not my characters, please don't sue me)

"I'm what?" Nabiki asked after stepping out of the

bathroom, toweling her hair off.

"You're going to school," Genma replied as somberly as if

he was ordering her to go into battle.

"This isn't a joke, right?" Nabiki asked him, "You're

serious?"

"Hai," her longtime mentor replied, handing her a ready-

made school bag.

A very slow smile crossed Nabiki's lips, and then she grinned,

"Great! I can't wait to get started!"

"Are you serious?" asked Ranma, who was standing just

to the side of his father, waiting for his turn to use the bathroom,

"You want to go to school?"

"Of course," she replied, "I've been falling behind and I

was half afraid I'd never get the chance to get my grades back up.

I've missed too many days because of that stupid training

mission..."

"We'll talk about that another time," Genma said

diplomatically, not wanting to be berated again for his faults,

both real and imagined, "Perhaps you'd like to go on ahead to

your first class?"

"No, I'll wait for Akane-chan and walk with her," Nabiki

said as she got out of Ranma's way, making a point to hold her

nose as he passed, which earned a dirty look from his direction,

"We are going to the same school, right?"

"Furinkan High, Oneechan," said Akane brightly, already

in her school dress and holding her bag in both hands, looking

rather pretty as she did so, "Ranma and I are in the same Home

room."

"That's good," Nabiki smiled as she walked with her

towards the stairway, "Fiancées should spend a lot of time

together..."

"Will you stop that?" Akane snapped.

"Stop what?" Nabiki looked at her in surprise.

"I don't want you on my case, too," Akane said, then

sighed, "Sorry, didn't mean to bite your head off, but this whole

iinazuke business...'

"Touchy subject, huh?" Nabiki asked, "Okay, I won't

mention it again unless you want to."

"Domo Arigato," Akane said, smiling in relief.

"Although..." Nabiki made a point of adding, "If you ever

really want to talk about it with somebody..."

"Domo," Akane said with even more sincerity, then

sighed, "Not that you can do much about it. Ranma and

me...we've tried talking our folks out of this whole stupid

marriage..."

"Doesn't sound like you've had too much success," Nabiki

observed.

Akane was about to say something more when Kasumi

popped out of the kitchen with her usual cheerful smile and said,

"Akane-chan, you weren't thinking of going on to school without

Ranma-kun?"

The pained look in Akane's eyes intensified, "I'll wait for

the slowpoke, Kasumi," to Nabiki she sighed, "Ranma's always

late getting out, although usually its from oversleeping.'

"Somehow I don't think that will be too much of a

problem with his father around," Nabiki said with smug

certainty. She was not much of a morning person herself, but ten

years on the road with Genma had made it practically impossible

for her to sleep past sunrise.

"I envy you being that certain about yourself," Akane

sighed in what seemed like a complete change of subject matter,

"Do you really mean it when you say you're looking forward to

going back to school?"

"Hai," Nabiki replied, "I'm very serious about graduating

with a good grade point average so I can make it into the college

of my preference. I intend to get a degree in Business with a

minor in Economics."

"Oho?" Akane looked at her with a knowing smile, "Don't

tell me my sister intends to be a rising Corporate Robber Baron?"

"Well, why not?" Nabiki asked her, "What's so bad about

making a lot of honest money? I've had to do more distasteful

things in my travels."

"About that," Akane hesitated, then said, "Oneechan...is it

true you and Ojisama had some...shady dealings in the places

you went to?"

"If you mean did we get involved with some sordid types

along the way," Nabiki said cautiously, "I'd have to reply in the

affirmative. Don't worry, we're not criminals, and we're certainly

not Yakuza."

"That's good," Akane sighed with relief, "I didn't mean to

suspect you of anything, it's just..."

"No apology needed," Nabiki assured her, "There are a lot

of crooked types in this world, and it never helps to let your guard

down."

Ranma finally came down the stairs dressed in a school

uniform clutching his bag and moving in a great hurry. He

caught up with Akane and said, "I'm ready, let's get go!"

"About time," Akane snorted as the three of them exited

the house together.

Not long after this they came upon a storm drain system,

and out of both habit and reflex Nabiki jumped up on the fence and

began walking it like a tightrope. She noticed Akane and Ranma

giving her funny looks and she smiled, easily keeping pace with

them even though the thin soles of her shoes afforded only

minimal protection for her feet against the railing.

"Why are you doing that?" Ranma asked her after a few

awkward moments.

"Doing what?" she feigned innocence, then smiled and

said, "Mostly habit, mainly to work some more on my balance.

Pop always said that I should treat every situation as if it were a

part of the training mission."

"You're pretty good," Akane admitted.

"Hah, I could do that!" Ranma scoffed.

"Oh really?" Akane grinned at him, "I'd like to see you

try."

"No problem," Ranma said, vaulting up onto the fence

behind Nabiki and actually managing to remain upright as he

fought to control his balance, "Whooah! See, no problem!"

"Is that a fact?" Nabiki smiled as she turned around then

touched him with an index finger.

"WHOOOAH!" Ranma cried out, followed by a splash

as he landed in the running water of the storm drain.

"Better work some more on your balance, Ranma-kun,"

Nabiki called down at him with clinical detachment.

"That's just great!" Akane snarled, "Now he has to change

into some dry clothing before we get to school. We're going to be

late because of that Baka!"

"My fault, I guess," Nabiki shrugged, "But I just couldn't

help doing that. Good thing for him he doesn't have a Jusenkyo

curse."

"Har-har!" replied a soggy-wet Ranma from down below

her, "You think it's so funny, why not come down here with me?"

"No thanks," Nabiki replied, "I'm registered as a girl,

remember? Wouldn't do to look like a boy on my first day...I'd

have trouble getting dates."

"Not with the other girls in school you wouldn't," Ranma

snarled as he got back onto dry ground, then climbed up the fence

to land beside them, wringing his shirt out as he did so.

"What's so great about getting dates?" Akane wondered

with a shrug.

"You're kidding, right?" Nabiki looked at her younger

sister in surprise, "You must have a lot of boys after you...'

"Hah!" Ranma snorted, "If you only knew...!"

"Shut up, Ranma!" Akane snapped at him.

"Yeah, right," Ranma sniffed as he picked up his school

bag, which he had dropped by good fortune before falling over

the fence. His shoes made a sort of squishing sound as he

resumed his walk, being sure to put as much distance as he could

between himself and Nabiki.

In spite of the considerable amusement she had just

derived out of deflating Ranma's ego, she felt a certain guilty

sense of having wronged him, so Nabiki tried to be coy as she

said, "You must have a lot of girls asking you out on dates,

Ranma-kun."

"A few," he said tersely, then sighed, his expression as

forlorn as he was soggy.

"He only has eyes for one girl who won't give him the

time of day," Akane snorted, "She's one of my best friends, but

she goes to another school, a private all-girl school named Saint

Hebereke."

"Kodachi," Ranma sighed, then caught himself and said,

"I wasn't thinking of her! I was just...um...thinking about what I

learned from Otosan."

"There's a lot you can learn about Martial Arts from your

father, Ranma-kun," Nabiki replied, but silently added to herself

that there were a lot of things both male Saotomes could learn on

the subject of women. Despite his protests, Ranma looked pretty

forlorn at the mention of this Kodachi person. She was surprised

that Akane did not voice a louder protest at having her best friend

for a rival. Definitely not a good sign, yet for some reason Nabiki

felt mildly irritated, and not just because of the slight to her

sister.

Akane signaled a detour, and they stopped by a local

clinic where a curious fellow with horn rim glasses and long

brown hair showed them inside, rather attractive looking and

clearly in his early thirties. Akane started to act very girlish for

some reason, explaining how Ranma had gotten wet on the way

to school and asking politely if the Doctor would allow him to

dry off inside his office.

"Certainly," said the man who was introduced as Doctor

Tofu Ono, then when she was introduced to him he smiled and

said, "So you're Tendo Nabiki, eh? I've heard you were abroad

on some kind of training mission?"

"Uncle Saotome, Ranma's father," Nabiki nodded as

Ranma disappeared into the Doctor's office, "He's raised me for

the past ten years, but now I'm home again to try and get my life

back to whatever passes for normal around here."

"Well, well," Tofu studied her more carefully, then said,

"You've been to China?"

She said a few words in Mandarin, which caused him to

smile and reply in the same language. Akane began to look

crossly at her, so Nabiki switched back to Japanese and said,

"I've spent a few months on the mainland learning my way from

one place to the other. I just got back the other day, but I'm

surprised you knew that."

"Just a lucky guess," he said, "But your clothing was a

giveaway. It's not a typical School uniform."

"Ah," Nabiki said, "Guess I'm not quite that typical just

yet. Haven't had time to get a uniform in my size, but I'll

probably be wearing it as soon as it's issued."

Ranma suddenly appeared again with a towel in hand,

rubbing it through his hair vigorously as he said, "Well, I'm done,

so let's get going.'

"But you're still soaking wet, Ranma," Akane protested.

"I'll dry off on the way to school," Ranma insisted matter-

of-factly, "But we'd better get going if we're going to make the

last minute rush."

"Why bother," Akane said in exasperation as they said

their good-byes to Doctor Tofu, then hurried on their way, Nabiki

following them since she did not as yet know her way to the

school grounds.

"What a nice man," Nabiki mused matter-of-factly, then

saw Akane tense once again and said, "What did I say now?"

"Not your fault, Nabiki-san," Ranma snorted, "Akane's

just got this thing about Doctor Tofu..."

"Shut up, Ranma!" Akane snapped.

"Oh," Nabiki said nonchalantly, "You mean like a

schoolgirl crush?"

"I..." Akane's anger faded out, causing her to sigh, "I

guess maybe it seems like it...but he doesn't even notice me. He

only seems to notice...somebody else he's hung up about."

"What's his problem, then?" Nabiki asked, "Doesn't he

like school girls?"

"He's not that kind of guy!" Akane protested.

"Don't mind her, Nabiki-san," Ranma continued to say in

a tone that sounded calculated to rile Akane, "She just hates boys

her own age. I guess an older man is what she's after.'

"Why should I like boys?" Akane growled, "You're such a

fine example..."

"At least I don't have to fight off my own dates," Ranma

retorted.

"And whose fault is that?" Akane's temper seemed to be

deteriorating badly, "If you'd only help by getting Kuno to lay

off..."

"There's nothing I can do about it," Ranma protested,

"He's got this major crush on you..."

"Well, I don't want him!" Akane snarled, quickening her

pace as they got nearer to a building that Nabiki recognized as a

local High School that had a placard that read "Furinkan High

School."

"Is there something I should know here?" Nabiki asked,

feeling suddenly uneasy for no definable reason.

"Well, yeah," Ranma said with a shrug, "It's kind of

complicated..."

"What's complicated?" Akane growled in a feral snarl as

she tossed her book bag back towards Ranma, who caught it one-

handed as if from considerable practice, "I-HATE-BOYS!"

As though on cue the schoolyard was suddenly filled by

an army of students all dressed up in athletic gear. They charged

right at Akane as she set food on the school grounds, while

Akane continued on a direct heading their way, running flat out

as Nabiki and Ranma fell behind, the former with her mouth

hanging open.

Before she could ask what the heck was going on, Akane

was laying out her attackers with savage blows that contained a

lot of power and anger. Akane demolished her assailants one or

two at a time with well-placed kicks and punches that sent more

than forty boys sprawling, some looking injured, others flat out

unconscious. Nabiki started to rush to her sister's aid when

Ranma restrained her with a hand to her forearm.

Very calmly he said, "Don't worry about it. She goes

through this every morning, so its not like she's in any real

danger."

In spite of her well-earned reputation as an Ice Queen in

ports as remote as Canton, Nabiki looked at Ranma, totally

appalled by his seeming indifference to the welfare of her sister.

Then she turned and saw the last of Akane's attackers go down

and realized at once that Ranma was speaking from experience.

The attackers had been very clumsy, which meant that Akane

was never in any real danger.

Never the less, she could not keep her emotions entirely in

check as she said, "Every morning?"

Then something went speeding through the air at Akane,

who reflexively caught the object, groaning audibly as she held

up the single rose before turning to say, "Don't you ever get tired

of this, Kuno?"

Nabiki sensed before she saw the new arrival, a tall, good

looking man of about her age, only dressed in a Kendo outfit,

complete with bokken.

"Tendo Akane-chan," the young man said with grand

flourish, "Such an unexpected pleasure to see you here yet again,

as fragrant as the wondrous flower you are holding."

Akane crushed the rose in one hand then said, "Don't

know why you'd be surprised, Kuno. After all, we go through

this every day!"

"Alas, but thy beauty grows more exceedingly wondrous

every morning that I behold you," Kuno replied, "Nay, it is like

meeting you for the first time, which makes my warrior's heart

beat quicker with desire..."

"Oh, give me a break!" Nabiki snorted, "Is this guy for

real?"

"Unfortunately, yes," Ranma sighed, "But he's a friend of

mine, so give him a few points if you can look past his poetry

obsession."

Nabiki had thought the young man quite handsome, even

intriguing, but the fact that he was hitting upon her sister-who

quite obviously did not appreciate the attention-disgusted her in

a way that was not characteristic. In fact, something about this

whole situation seemed disturbingly familiar...

Akane took a fighting stance and said, "Let's just cut the

poetry for once and get down to it, shall we, Kuno-Sempai? I'm

running late this morning and I don't want to stand out in the

Hall, like last time."

"Alas," said Kuno, extending his bokken in an expert

manner that made Nabiki's combat reflexes go to full alert, "You

know that I cannot permit you to pass without at least once

challenging you to test my mettle. I will allow you to date me if

you..."

"Kuno, right?" Nabiki asked as she slipped away from

Ranma and approached the young man with her best imitation of

a "normal" school girl, "Is he bothering you, Sis?"

"Stay out of this, Oneechan," replied Akane without

taking her eyes off Kuno.

"Oneechan?" Kuno repeated as he looked to the new

stranger with a curious expression, "Who are you?"

"I'm Tendo Nabiki," Nabiki smiled in a disarming

fashion, "Akane-chan's older sister."

"Tendo Nabiki?" the young man repeated, as if trying to

make the connection, "I had thought your only other sibling was

Tendo Kasumi, fair Akane."

"Nabiki's been away for ten years training with my Uncle

Saotome," Akane explained, "She just arrived here yesterday.

Now would you let me pass so I can walk with her to her Home

room."

"Perhaps that honor should fall to me," Kuno said as he

extended his bokken towards Nabiki, but not in a threatening

fashion, "I am Kuno Tatewaki, Senior Classman and Captain of

the Furinkan Kendo club, Blue Thunder and avenger of the

heavens!"

He struck a heroic posture, and suddenly there was a

rumble in the sky. Nabiki did not dare to look up but she tensed

inwardly from reflex, then forced herself to smile and bat her eyes

as she said, "Are you offering to walk me to my Homeroom?"

"A fair rose such as yourself can hardly go unsheltered

from the ruffians who unfortunately populate our fair school,"

he said, turning back towards Akane as he added, "But first

Honor demands that I contend for the privilege of dating with

your sister..."

"Really?" Nabiki asked, and suddenly she snatched his

bokken out of his grasp while pivoting to plant a kick that

knocked him five meters, sending him sprawling on his backside.

Ranma winced in sympathy, though neither Tendo sister caught

his reaction.

"That's too bad," Nabiki smiled as she turned away,

resting the bokken against one shoulder, "You're kind of cute.

Let me know when you're ready to date women your own age,

Sempai."

Akane just looked at her, then at Kuno, then turned and

caught up with her sister, who only paused long enough by the

door to slip the bokken into a rack normally reserved for

umbrellas.

All around her there were muted whispers, which Nabiki

caught as she passed unwary gossips. The general tone

conveyed that she had just done something they considered

exceptional. She smiled inwardly at that. Maybe this place had

some interesting potential for a betting pool. Something else she

would have to look into.

"Oneechan," Akane hesitantly murmured as they

continued down the hallway, "It's not that I mind you trying to

look out for me, but I wish you hadn't done that."

"Hey," Nabiki smiled, "I just wanted to meet him. Like I

said, he's kind of cute."

"He's a rich, obnoxious, thick-witted jerk is what he is!"

Akane snorted, "He's been after me since the beginning of the

semester! It's his stupid idea that causes me to get challenged

like that every morning!"

"Excuse me?" Nabiki blinked. Her mind had stopped

following Akane's diatribe once the words "he's rich" had been

uttered, "What does he have to do with your fight?"

"It's a long story," Akane sighed, "I'll explain it when we

have more time. I just wanted to warn you that Kuno's going to

be after you for this. He's got an ego the size of this building...'

"Oh really?" Nabiki smiled, already sensing market

potential...

Ranma waited until the girls were out of sight before

approaching Kuno, kneeling down and murmuring, "I have to say

it, Tatewaki, old buddy, that was a pretty pathetic performance."

"Who was that beauteous woman?" Kuno murmured

without attempting to rise from where he was still sprawling,

then answered his own question, "Tendo Nabiki...so rare a flower

can only grow from the same root source as her equally fair

sister."

Normally Ranma would have taken great amusement in

seeing his best friend once more smitten by the love bug, but for

some reason-this time-Kuno's comment left him feeling oddly

agitated, "Well, you might as well forget her. She's way out of

your league, trust me on that..."

"Out of my league?" Kuno snorted with indignation,

"Surely you must jest, Saotome-kun! I am the Blue Thunder of

Furinkan High! No woman can resist my charms! I will make

my suit to the fair Nabiki at my earliest opportunity..."

"Ah," Ranma wondered why he suddenly felt like

punching Kuno, "Like I said, that's not a good idea. My father's

been training her in the Martial Arts for ten years, and I have to

say that she's pretty good..."

"Maybe to a peasant such as yourself, Saotome," Kuno

scoffed, "But I shall make it my mission to win her to my side!

Mark me well, Ranma-kun, I will win the fair Nabiki's hand or

die trying!"

"You mean you're giving up on Akane?" Ranma was

more appalled than he dared to admit. This was definitely not

going the way he wanted...

"Akane," a pained expression crossed Kuno's face, "I

cannot forgo the pleasure of her company, having fought so hard

to win her to me. Oh, alas! I must have both of them or the

humiliation will be my end!"

Unaware of just how near his end would be if Ranma had

not worked on gaining self-control, he continued to rant,

oblivious of Ranma's slowly darkening expression. At last

Ranma could stand no more and said, "You can't have both of

them, you idiot! Akane would kick your ass just for suggesting

she share you with her sister!"

As usual Kuno did not understand what Ranma was

trying to tell him, but he did know insubordination when he

heard it and scowled, "What brings this on, Saotome? Surely you

have not come to your senses and relented of your intentions to

end your relationship with fair Akane?"

"What?" Ranma blinked, then said, "That isn't it! I-

arrrgh! You can be so thick sometimes!"

"Love clouds my senses," Kuno said as he slowly rose to

his feet, then looked around, finding his wooden sword was no

where in sight. He squared his shoulders then said, "Come, it is

almost time for class, and it would do neither of us proudly to be

sent to detention."

"I'll agree on that point," Ranma growled, beginning to

wonder why he ever put up with a major-class jerk such as

Kuno...

Nabiki saw Kuno arrive at their Homeroom but briefly

before the besotted fool made a fuss trying to pass notes to her

and got sent into the hallway. By that time lunch came around

she already devised a plan she wanted to set into motion, so she

smiled rather than tense up at his approach, while Akane scowled

and looked ready to leave the area.

Ranma had a sullen look about his eyes when he glanced

at the boy who was reputedly his best friend, and Nabiki

wondered what could be the matter there. She kept her attention

focused mainly on Kuno, however, who was holding a bouquet of

roses that he must have gotten from somewhere. When he came

up to their table he extended this to both herself and Akane.

"What do you want, Kuno?" Akane growled her

displeasure.

"Forgive this intrusion, fair ones," Kuno replied suavely,

"But time is fleeting and I wished to spare none of it in extending

my warmest courtesies to you both. I most especially wish to

greet you, fair Tendo Nabiki, and welcome you to Furinkan High,

being class President and therefore the only man fit enough to

meet you as an equal."

"Really?" Nabiki purred, "That's very nice of you, Sempai.

I've been receiving a lot of warm greetings from the other

students today. They seem to think I did something rather

noteworthy."

"I cannot imagine what it may be," Kuno replied, "But I

am certain it was of quality worthy of such a beautiful lady as

yourself. Allow me the honor of asking you to date me."

Ranma had been on the verge of exploding, but Nabiki's

reply took him totally by surprise, "Sure thing, Kuno-chan. I

haven't had time for socializing as yet, but it's nice for a girl to

waste as little time as possible getting to know her fellow

classmates."

Ranma's jaw nearly hit the table, which was even truer of

Akane, who was looking at Nabiki as though she had taken leave

of her senses. Both looked in dismay at the casual display of

affection they saw written on Nabiki's face. Of course, had either

of them known her any better they might have instantly

developed an acute case of sympathy...for Kuno Tatewaki!

Nabiki had just finished off the delicious lunch that

Kasumi had packed for her (both Ranma and Akane had been

astonished at the speed with which she had wolfed down the

excellent fare, but neither one of them had spent as much time as

she had fighting over scraps with Genma), so she set it down and

rose to her feet, still smiling, "Matter of fact, I was wondering if

you could show me around for a bit? I need to learn my way

around, after all, it is such a large building and I might get lost

here.."

"A-are you feeling okay, Oneechan?" Akane asked her in

a very tiny voice.

"Never felt better," Nabiki said as she came up beside

Kuno and took the arm he extended to her, "I'll check back with

both of you later. Right now Kuno and me have a little business

to discuss."

Ranma and Akane continued to stare as the much-

bemused Kuno found himself being led by the arm by the woman

he had just met. Then Akane started, for Ranma had just crushed

the remains of his box lunch in both hands and murmured

something darkly about the probable ancestry of the Kuno family.

She wondered, oddly, if that was a good sign, or did this

mean real trouble brewing in the very near future...?

"And here we have the baseball diamond," Kuno was

explaining a short time later as they walked side-by-side across

the school grounds. Nabiki was not really paying much attention

to his flowery explanations, but she was studying the man

himself, trying to discern his likes and dislikes, his strengths and

weaknesses. It was an interesting study and it helped support a

budding suspicion she had developed concerning Kuno's unusual

behavior.

For one thing Kuno was quick to mention his family in a

general sense, but when she asked any personal question

concerning other members of his House he quickly changed the

subject. He was very good at promoting what he imagined to be

his own strong points, but she sensed that there was greater

insecurity there than he was letting on, as if it were as much an

act for himself as it was to promote himself above the level of his

fellow classmates.

Nabiki was trying to determine if his problems were

related to upbringing, or did he simply enjoy living in his own

personal fantasies where he was a noble Samurai living out the

heroic reputation of his ancient forebears. He did have some

pride underneath his pompous self-deceit, but it seemed more

like a defensive cocoon he used to keep the world itself at bay,

which went a long way towards explaining how he could justify

laying an ambush for Akane as some twisted idea of winning her

affections.

In truth there were aspects about Kuno that fairly

disgusted her, but on the whole she sensed that he was not truly a

bad person. She had known a lot of people in her time who had

emotional disorders and serious cases of dementia, and compared

with many of these Kuno was an isle of sanity. At least he was

functional, and he did get good grades in his studies.

Of course the woman who would actually claim the jerk

would have to have nerves of steel and a stomach to match it.

Nabiki knew just enough psychology to understand something

about his mental workings, enough to know how much work it

would take to get him over his obsessions. That was more of an

investment than she was quite ready for at the present. She

decided that she would lead him on for a while and milk a semi-

relationship for as much commercial potential as she could

manage, then she would dump him hard and make certain he

forgot all about her. It was a reasonable enough strategy, one she

had employed in the past, and she had no doubt that it would be

effective.

Unfortunately she had failed to take into account one

factor, which sprang to life with a suddenness that even her skills

at evasion could not protect her against. Without warning the

sprinkler system came on line as an automatic timer somewhere

decided that this was just the right moment to keep the baseball

diamond green.

Kuno sputtered and complained bitterly about the poor

peasants they employed as janitors for the school when he turned

around and found a stranger standing beside him. Tendo Nabiki

was no where to be seen, but this stranger bore an odd likeness to

her, which made Kuno frown as though trying to figure

something out. As was typical for him, he made an incorrect

assumption.

"Who are you, and what have you done with Tendo

Nabiki!"

Nabiki had been cursing herself for failing to consider the

possibility of getting wet without warning. Great, she thought to

herself, another lucrative opportunity spoiled by the muse of Fate!

She had turned towards Kuno expecting the same reaction that

she had gotten the last time when she almost had a guy snared,

but she was totally unprepared for the evident hostility of Kuno's

tone, so she gasped out the word, "Nani?"

"Bounder!" Kuno took a half-step back and reached

behind his head, pulling out his bokken from wherever it had

been hidden and used it to threaten the masculine Nabiki, "Cad!

Tell me at once what you have done with my lady love or I shall

thrash you senseless!"

"Ah..." Nabiki hesitated, not quite able to believe the

extent of Kuno's dementia. She tentatively said, "I'm...a friend of

hers. Actually, more like a Cousin. My name is Kaneda."

She had drawn the first name that popped into her head,

which somehow felt right for some reason, and it worked like a

charm as Kuno swallowed the bait, hook, line and sinker,

"Kaneda? Of what family name are you?"

"Tendo," she replied, "Like I said...I'm Nabiki's cousin."

"Then tell me, Tendo Kaneda, what became of your fair

cousin?" Kuno asked sternly.

"She, um, had to go inside rather sudden-like," Nabiki

thought quickly, "She needed to dry off..."

"Without a word to me?" Kuno frowned, "That is most

suspicious. You would not, by chance, be attempting to hide her

from me?"

"Why would I do a thing like that?" Nabiki wondered.

"Why indeed?" Kuno's frown deepened as he leveled his

bokken to just under Nabiki's chin, "Very well, I will accept your

explanation for now, but should I learn that you have attempted

to deceive me, my vengeance will be terrible to behold! You had

best stay out of my way until I know what has become of my

sweet flower."

"Sure," Nabiki said, "Whatever," then she watched Kuno

strut away, head held high with a look as stern as the Samurai he

fancied himself to be. She let out a massive sigh at the last the

said, "Just great...like I need this?"

She privately wondered if Ranma or Akane ever had days

such as this, but she doubted it sincerely...

Continued.

Comments? Criticism? Hey-I'm a fast typist, and I've got too

much time on my hands, so let me know if you think this story is

getting somewhere. Have I fudged up the characters, or will

Takahashi shoot me?

I can be E-Mailed at: shadowmane

Let me know what you think about the direction of this story.

Oh, and sorry that this isn't proofread yet. I'm a somewhat

indifferent speller who makes a lot of use of the Spell checker,

not to mention a handy Dictionary. Please forgive any

unmentionable errors in text or grammar.

Nabiki 1/2

Chapter 2, Part 2.

By

Jim Robert Bader

(Based on the Characters created by

Rumiko Takahashi

Wade Tritschler

Richard Lawson

John Walter Biles

And others whose names

I have trouble remembering just now)

All rights belong to the creators/distributors.

Please don't sue me!

The sound of a harsh scream shattered the quiet of the

Tendo Dojo, just before Saotome Ranma set about the task of

taking perfectly good building materials and reducing them to

their constituent components.

Ranma effortlessly shattered ten cinderblocks with a

single blow of his hand, then calmly scraped the remains off the

hard calluses of his skin as he considered going for a new record

of eleven. The way he was feeling at the moment, he wouldn't

even mind using his head to try for an even dozen. Akane often

said his head was hard enough to break boulders, so maybe he

should try it?

He cast around the dojo, looking for new release,

surveying the other remains of his previous victims, and instead

found Nabiki standing a short distance away eyeing him in a

speculative manner.

"What do you want?" he asked, more harshly than he

meant to.

Nabiki actually blinked as she registered the anger in his

tone, then said, "Cool your heels, Saotome. I just wanted to

know what you were up to is all. Sure seems like a lot of

destruction in here, or is this just the way you feel like venting

your tensions?"

"What do you care?" Ranma asked, then relented

somewhat as he realized how coarse he was behaving. He tried

again, but found himself typically saying the first thing that came

into his mind, "What was that business between you and Kuno?

Don't tell me you actually fell for that line of bull he was

feeding?"

"Is that what's bothering you?" Nabiki almost laughed,

but the experience was still an unpleasant subject for her, so she

just idly shrugged it off and said, "He's a client, nothing more

than that. I thought I'd sound him out to find out what makes

him act the way he does around Akane. It was convenient that he

seems to have gotten some notions about me, but that doesn't

mean I'm going steady or anything like that."

"Oh?" Ranma asked, trying not to sound like he cared too

much about her answer.

"Relax, Ranma-kun," Nabiki nodded in her best

reassuring manner, "I'm not going to take your friend to the

cleaners, unless he gives me too hard a time. I just wanted to

know more about him. Hey, can I help if I've got a thing for rich,

eligible bachelors?"

The word Rich brought a scowl to Ranma's face, but he

turned away rather than show how much it upset him and said,

"Well, you could have asked me to introduce you two. I go by his

House all the time, and I can visit whenever he lets me."

"Oh, really?" Nabiki was suddenly at his side as though

she had willed the distance between them to vanish, "So good of

you to offer, Ranma! When do you plan on next stopping by?"

"I...uh..." Ranma found himself unprepared for this

sudden change in direction. That was his basic problem in

dealing with Nabiki: she was too Mercurial. He had trouble

figuring her out, let alone predicting her behavior.

"You know," she leaned forward, giving him a rather coy

look that was almost flirtatious, "You're not really that bad a guy,

you know. Fact is, I think you're really kind of nice, offering to

help me out like this when you barely even know me."

"I, um..." Ranma faltered, his mind seizing up as he tried

to figure out just what she was trying to tell him.

"Come on," she said as she patted him on the arm, "Let's

spar. That should help you loosen up those tensions. Then we

can talk about our visit to the Kuno place, and you can look up

your girl friend, Kodachi."

"K-Kodachi?" Ranma had almost forgotten Kuno's

beautiful sister. The sight of long black hair and a trim athletic

form in a green leotard danced across his mind before he was

snapped back to reality as he saw Nabiki begin to limber up in

preparation for some sparring.

"Ah," he finally got his mind back in working order, "You

sure you want to do this? I mean, didn't we do enough this

morning?"

"Are you kidding?" Nabiki chuckled, "Don't let Uncle

hear you say that or we'll both be on the floor doing finger

pushups! We only fought for a few minutes, tops, barely enough

for a warming-up exercise. I need to stay in top form if I'm to put

my talents to get use."

"Are you planning on fighting someone else?" Ranma

asked in deepening confusion.

"Tatewaki," she answered, then sighed as she said, "He

ran into my male half and I think he got some pretty funny ideas.

Maybe I'm paranoid, but I think I'd better be ready just in case he

challenges me the next time he see me."

"You mean he knows you turn into a...?" Ranma started

to say, then saw her shake her head negatively.

"Nope," she said emphatically, "I told him I was a cousin

named Tendo Kaneda. The surprising thing is...he bought it."

Ranma could not suppress the chuckle that escaped him,

"Yeah that's Tatewaki all right! I don't think he could handle the

idea of you changing into a guy, so he'd probably invent some

reason not to believe it. He's done stuff like this before, you

know, like the way he twists all the fights he's had with Akane

into some pervert idea of a love match."

"He sounds like a real wacko," Nabiki said, "How did you

ever meet him?"

"Long story," Ranma said as he watched her continue to

stretch out, finding the sight a lot more interesting than breaking

bricks with his forehead, "Actually the thing you've gotta know is

that the Kuno family isn't really the great success story they'd like

everyone to believe. Sure his dad made a lot of money before he

disappeared six years ago, and he left it all in trust to Tachi and

Kodachi. They've got guardians who see to their every need, and

a staff of faithful retainers, including one guy who thinks he's

some kind of Ninja, and yeah their monthly allowance is bigger

than the budget for the city council, but even with all of that those

two aren't really all that happy."

"They're not?" Nabiki asked with some surprise. In her

mind being rich was part of the formulae for being happy. To be

rich and unhappy was, for her, a contradiction.

"No way," Ranma sighed, "Which is why I don't exactly

envy Kuno for his millions. You see...their mother committed

suicide when they were ten and eleven. It's affected them both

pretty badly."

Nabiki stopped flexing her legs over the level of her chin

and turned to look at Ranma with an appalled expression.

"That's...that's terrible," she said sincerely, several

theories falling neatly into place.

"From what I've been able to figure out," Ranma

continued, "She wasn't really all that nice a person. She taught

Kodachi gymnastics with the intent of making her Olympic level,

but she was too much of a perfectionist and when 'Dachi didn't

do things as good as she was supposed to she'd...um...get

punished pretty bad. Their father was never around to look after

them, and I think that's partly why her mind snapped. Anyway,

we met the Kunos when we were visiting Mrs. Tendo's grave.

Their mother was being buried when Akane stumbled by and got

into trouble. She and Kodachi were starting to argue when I got

involved, and somehow I wound up getting into a fight with

Kuno. I won, naturally," he added matter-of-factly.

"And that's how you both became friends?" Nabiki asked

him.

"Well, Kuno respects strength, just as long as it makes

him look good and noble," Ranma explained, "I think he does the

Samurai bit because he wants to believe in something shiny and

noble about the Bushido code his mother lived and died with. He

gets these funny ideas, but so far he's never really hurt anybody,

and I do what I can to keep him out of trouble."

"Sounds like he needs a friend like you," Nabiki said,

"What about Kodachi?"

"Kodachi..." Ranma sighed, looking away, "I wish I could

figure her out. She's actually kind of nice in some ways, but she's

so aloof and hard to handle. I don't know how Akane manages to

get through to her, some girl-thing, I guess. All I know is that

she's so pretty, but she won't even look at me without calling me

a peasant."

"And you just fall all over her when she does it, right?"

Nabiki smiled, as if it were not even a question.

Ranma wanted very much to know how she had figured

that out, but was too annoyed to ask her, "Well, 'Dachi has her

share of faults, I'll admit. For one thing she's very sneaky, and

for another thing she can be very cruel to people who cross her.

Sometimes I don't think she's all that different from Kuno, and

other times they're like day and night. At least Kuno believes in

behaving honorably, even when he doesn't always fight fair, like

with guys who are weaker than him. Kodachi is a notorious

cheater, always playing cruel jokes on other girls she competes

with in Rhythmic Gymnastics. She never did make the Olympic

team...they disqualified her for using some special roses coated

with drugs. She's a very good chemist and knows a lot of things

about herbal medicine..."

"Think I'll keep that in mind," Nabiki nodded, "You never

know when you might need somebody who's good with drugs. I

take it she isn't an addict?"

"Never touches the illegal stuff," Ranma assured her, "Her

style is more like Paralysis than hallucination. She's never

actually hurt anybody too bad, but I think that's mostly because

Akane tries to keep her out of trouble. Akane even saved her life,

once, when there was a fire in her laboratory that did a lot of

damage to her greenhouse."

"What did Akane do?" Nabiki wondered.

"Carried her to safety when 'Dachi got hit with one of her

own agents," Ranma explain, "The doctors think she might have

suffered permanent brain damage if Akane hadn't gotten to her in

time."

"Sounds like Sis is a budding hero," Nabiki smiled, then

assumed a fighting crouch, "Let's spar. I'm feeling the urge to

test my limits."

"Oh?" Ranma asked, trying not to sound as worried as he

felt, "Lucky me."

"Hey," Nabiki grinned, "Look at it as a compliment.

You've given me the best workout I've had in a long while, not

counting your father. Why, in no time at all I'll bet you'll be

giving me instructions."

Ranma had the vague suspicion that he was being

buttered up, but in spite of this his ego was massaged, so he just

smiled back and said, "Okay, but this time I'll try and pretend

you're not a girl."

"Gee, thanks," Nabiki snorted.

"Um," Ranma wondered how to best say what came to

mind right then, but in true Ranma fashion he just blurted out, "I

mean, it's hard not to think of you as a girl...I mean...you do look

like one...a lot...I just...well...you're not exactly fragile..."

"Why, Saotome Ranma," Nabiki smiled sweetly, "Is that

a compliment you're trying to pay me? To what do I owe this

pleasure, or do you always hit on your fiancée‚ sister?"

"I..." Ranma started to protest when he discovered too late

that he had again been suckered. Instead of concentrating on her

movements he had let himself be distracted by his emotions, and

he paid for that mistake by landing flat on his rump, having had

both legs kicked out from under him before he could even notice.

"Why you..." he lunged to his feet, now intending to wipe

that smug look off her face. For no reason he could determine he

found himself grinning like an idiot, then attacked her in

earnest...

"I don't know, Saotome-kun," Soun said gravely as they

both concentrated on their game of Shogi, "At the time it seemed

like such a good idea, but..."

"I see," Saotome replied, studying his pieces without

seeming to notice as Soun palmed one to even up the balance.

"I mean," Soun continued as though nothing had

happened, "Who could know it would turn out this way? They

are both the same age, have many of the same interests, and most

of the time seem agreeable to each other. It is just..." he let his

voice trail off.

"I understand, Tendo-kun," Genma studied the Shogi

board without hardly seeming to notice that he was losing at the

moment, "I saw it the first night I was here. There is no spark, no

life, just mutual antagonism."

Soun heaved a fatherly sigh, "It has been like this for a

very long while between them. It's like they are actively

opposing the marriage..."

"Couples can disagree and still be joined in happiness,"

Genma said solemnly, "My own marriage is ample testament to-

WHAT IN THE WORLD IS THAT?"

"Eh?" Soun turned to look in the direction is friend was

pointing but saw nothing. By the time he looked back something

had changed on the Shogi board, and Soun discovered that he

was now missing a few pieces.

"Must have been my imagination," Genma mumbled

evasively, "As I was saying, a couple can argue and fight yet still

remain loving and devoted to one another."

"Perhaps so," Soun said grimly, "But you have to admit

that it would not be much of a marriage, save a marriage of

convenience."

"Very true," Genma sighed, looking down in a thoughtful

manner.

"Things cannot continue as they are," Soun said gravely,

"Akane and Ranma may defy us only so far, but if a Father

neglects taking into consideration the emotional needs of his

child-Ah Megami-sama! Is that a UFO I see?"

"Where?" Genma turned around, then paused a moment

before saying, "It's only a flock of birds, Tendo-kun. Are you

sure you are not the one who needs glasses?"

"Perhaps you are right," Tendo said, sitting as placidly as

the Buddha while Genma studied the board in front of him with a

look of dawning suspicion.

"Come back here!" they heard Ranma cry, sounding either

excited or very angry.

"Make me!" Nabiki teased, vaulting into a tree as Ranma

ran smack into the trunk, then she alighted behind him with a

knowing smirk that somehow speeded his recovery.

"They get along very well," Tendo mused speculatively,

neither one paying attention to the Shogi board, while their hands

deftly rearranged the pieces.

"They do indeed," Genma remarked, his thoughtful tone

resolving into a firmer reply, "Tendo-kun..."

"Hai?" Soun said as if anticipating his friend's next

statement.

"Is it possible that we might have been in error thinking

that it was your youngest daughter that my only son should

marry?"

Tendo took only a moment before replying, "No one is

perfect."

"Very true," Genma nodded sagely, his glasses gleaming

as he added, "Then you must know what we should do to resolve

this."

Tendo nodded his head once, then squared his shoulders,

"Hai. I will speak to them at dinner."

"Good," Genma agreed, "I will go talk to Nodoka..."

Dinnertime at the Tendo House was usually a warm and

cheerful occasion when the family got together to enjoy a

delicious meal prepared by the culinary team of Kasumi and

Nodoka. This night was no exception, except that the two new

parties at the table seemed to come with appetites far in excess of

anything anticipated.

Ranma and Akane just stared in disbelief at the speed

with which Genma and Nabiki devoured their portions, then

politely asked for seconds. Nodoka herself raised both eyebrows

when she caught Genma trying to steal some food from Nabiki,

but before she could say anything in protest she saw Nabiki

snatch back an even greater portion. Rice disappeared as though

it were evaporating out of their bowls, the two competing

bottomless pits pausing only long enough to wash it down with

mouthfuls of hot tea, which they scarfed as though their mouths

were heavily insulated.

It was Nabiki who first noticed the silent looks being

fixed her way. A strong student of observation, she realized at

once that her behavior was both shocking and irregular, so she

paused in mid bite, washed it down with a single swallow of hot

beverage, then looked innocently at them and asked, "What? Is

there something wrong with my table manners?"

"Ah...Oneechan?" Akane hesitated.

"It is good that you have such a healthy appetite, Nabiki-

chan," said Kasumi pleasantly as she came back into the room

holding a pitcher of ice-cold water, which she carefully set down

on the table, "If you and Ojisama are this hungry from your work

outs, then perhaps next time we can cook you extra portions."

"Oh, very good," Genma smiled broadly, "You are such a

nice girl, Kasumi-chan. Some day you will make some lucky

man an excellent wife."

Kasumi colored brightly as she smiled while pouring

herself a glass, "That is a very nice thing for you to say, Ojisama,

but I am in no great hurry to leave this House...oops!"

She seemed to stumble as she started to get up, and the

contents of her glass splashed a startled Nabiki, who had not

been prepared to suddenly transform into a man at the dinner

table.

"Oh, I am so clumsy!" Kasumi declared as she reached for

a napkin, "Can you ever forgive me, Nabiki-chan? Let me help to

dry you off..."

"Ah, no problem, Sis, you don't have to..." Nabiki

sputtered, completely off her guard, but Kasumi gently persisted

in her endeavor, and Nabiki could think of no polite way to

dissuade her, so she instead endured a few moments of her older

sister's attention.

But there was something about this situation that

was...very disturbing. Kasumi seemed to linger a bit too long

where she dabbed her napkin, and her hand was trembling

slightly, causing Nabiki to blink as she thought to herself: What

the Hell...?

Ranma was also watching her in a way that was

disturbing, only without any warning on his part the sound of his

chopsticks snapping in two reverberated into the sudden silence

all around them.

Akane herself was sitting with very round eyes, her

expression almost comical as she watched one of her sisters fawn

over the other. Fortunately Kasumi only kept this up for a few

moments before getting up and retreating back into the Kitchen.

"I am going to have to have a private chat with that girl,"

Nodoka sighed as everyone sat around looking stunned for

another minute.

"Ah," Genma managed to come out of his daze, turning to

Nabiki with his best fatherly tone and asked, "So, Nabiki-chan, I

noticed you and Ranma were sparring after school."

All of Nabiki's warning sensors came on full alert. She

glared back at Genma warily and wondered what the old Panda

was up to this time.

"Ranma," Genma tried again, having elicited no response

from his longtime pupil, "What is your assessment of Nabiki-

chan's abilities?"

"Ah," Ranma was caught in the grip of conflicting

emotions, but obedience to his elders won out over his normal

rebellious instincts and he replied, "Nabiki-chan..." he faltered as

he spoke the words, then forced himself to continue, "She is very

good, Father. I am very impressed. She is so much better than

Akane..."

"NANI?" Akane suddenly snapped at him, "Just what do

you mean by that?"

"I just mean she's twice as good as you is all," Ranma

innocently protested, "Maybe even better than that..."

"BAKA!" she snarled and upended her rice-bowl on the

top of his head, then slammed her palms down on the table with

enough force to make it splinter, "I'm not taking any more of that

from you-!"

"AKANE!" Tendo Soun's sudden tone caught everyone by

surprise, never having heard the man speak with such authority

before. So unexpected was this that Akane at once subsided and

looked up to her father as though she had just been thoroughly

scolded.

"Akane-chan," Genma spoke more evenly, "Tell me the

truth: what are your feelings concerning my son, Ranma?"

"N-nani?" Akane blinked, then swallowed as she saw the

hard look her father was giving her, so she replied very softly, "I

don't love him, if that's what you mean..."

"I thought as much," Genma replied, then he fixed his son

with his stare again and said, "Ranma...what are your feelings

towards Akane?"

"I-I..." Ranma hesitated, then replied, "I feel the same

way. I mean...I don't love Akane-san, and I certainly don't want

to marry her..."

"It is all right, my boy," Genma said solemnly, "Tendo-

kun and I have been discussing your engagement and we have

come to a decision: if you and Akane do not wish to be iinazuke

to one another, we will call off your engagement."

Akane and Ranma both visibly sighed, then looked

surprised as the implications slowly started to sink in. Not

engaged? Certainly they had wanted this for a very long while,

but their engagement had gone on for as long as they both could

remember. It was like having one of the linchpins of their

existence suddenly taken away from them, and neither one knew

exactly how or what to feel about that at the moment.

Nabiki, on the other hand, had just gone to DEFCON

Three as the implications suddenly took shape in her mind. She

knew instantly what their parents were going to say next and

started to form the words of protest she knew she would have

immediately used to talk her way out of this mess under any

different set of circumstances.

But...she faltered, hesitating for a crucial minute, her

mind suddenly drifting over other thoughts that intruded into her

consciousness, memories of her first meeting with Ranma, their

several fights, and the way he had smiled at her while chasing

her around the garden. She enjoyed seeing him smile like that...it

made her feel...special in some indefinable way, so her focus was

not entirely centered on the present as she allowed a crucial few

seconds to escape her, and by that time her fate had been sealed.

She gaped in astonishment, unable to believe that she could be so

utterly careless!

With her uncanny ability to instantly recall sights and

impressions she had not actually been noticing at the time, she

recalled in crisp detail her father saying to them all,

"However...Saotome-kun and I have made an inviolable pact to

unite our families so that the Anything Goes School can stand

with one raised fist against the challenges of the future."

"Tendo-kun and myself will not live forever," Genma

agreed with equal solemnity, "When we retire this Dojo must

continue with the best and strongest of our heirs to ensure its

survival. It is therefore logical that the two best fighters of your

generation should unite our Houses to keep our traditions strong

that you may pass them along to your children and

grandchildren."

"Therefore," Soun said with all the finality of a man

pronouncing a death sentence, "We have decided that Ranma-

kun will marry my second daughter, Nabiki."

"What?" Ranma gasped as Nabiki returned to the present

with a gnawing sensation of futility. Without a word the two of

them turned and stared at one another.

"But...but.." Ranma started to protest, "Nabiki's a guy

now!"

"That's only temporary," Genma replied, upending the

teapot over a shocked Nabiki, who was too slow in her reaction

time to dodge the hot liquid.

"Gaaaah!" she screamed, leaping to her feet and kicking

the old man out into the garden. She stood for a moment shaking

with anger and dismay, regretting bitterly her poor aim as the old

man had entirely missed the Koi pond.

"Ranma-kun," Soun was looking towards Ranma with the

same solemn tone of before, "Your father wishes this, as do I, but

we would not wish you to be offended that we have made this

decision for you. It is for the best, you must realize...but if you

would truly prefer to remain engaged to my Akane..."

"I..." Ranma swallowed, not wanting to offend the man

who had been like a father to him for more than a decade, but this

was too much! He got to his feet and said, "I can't believe you

two! Don't I have any say in the matter?"

Nabiki turned around, looking at Ranma in shock and

confusion.

"I'm-I'm not marrying that...Hentai freak!" Ranma

pointed to Nabiki.

"Hentai?" she softly whispered.

"Ranma!" Nodoka scolded, "Do not call Nabiki-chan a

Hentai. She is now your iinazuke!"

"I'm not marrying her, or Akane, or anybody else for that

matter!" Ranma was all but shouting, "I want to make my own

decisions, live my own life, and you can't just tell me who I'm

going to marry..."

"It is your duty to obey your father," Nodoka said with

even firmness.

"But Mom," Ranma sounded as though he were pleading

against the steel in her tone, "She turns into a guy...what do you

think I am? Weird or something?"

"BAKA!" Akane was suddenly on her feet, livid with

anger, "You can't talk that way about my sister!"

She took a swing at him, but Ranma easily avoided her.

Akane was about to take another swing when someone caught

her by her wrist, causing her to turn around with a shocked

expression.

"It's all right, Akane-chan," Nabiki forced herself to

smile, wondering why her throat felt so tight all of a sudden, "I

agree with Ranma. If he doesn't want to get married to me, no

one should force him."

"Daughter," Soun said reprovingly, but Nabiki gave him a

look that chilled him to his marrow.

"You're so big about tradition and responsibility, Otosan,"

Nabiki said as evenly as she could manage, "But what about your

responsibility to me? Didn't you even think once about asking

me if I agreed with you or not? I'm your daughter, but you don't

own me!"

"Nabiki-chan," Nodoka said softly, "There are some

things you can't escape about tradition."

"Don't talk to me about tradition, Auntie," Nabiki looked

harder at the woman than she really meant to, "What about your

agreement with Uncle to take me away from my family for ten

years so that Ranma and Akane could grow up together? See

how that turned out? I hope you both are happy."

She let Akane's wrist go, sensing that the threat there was

ended, along with Akane's burst of sisterly temper, "Akane-

chan...please don't hate me or think I've been trying to take

Ranma away from you or anything rude like that. You have to

know that I would never do anything to hurt you."

"Oneechan," Akane looked up at her with a tearful

expression.

"Ranma-kun," Nabiki forced herself to look at him,

finding it difficult to look him in the eyes as she said, "You're off

the hook. You don't have to marry me if you don't want to. I

wouldn't want to force you to marry a Hentai freak like me, if

that's what you're afraid of."

"N-n-nani?" Ranma asked in a very tiny voice, his

expression totally blank as though he were just now noticing her

existence.

"I-I think I've caused enough trouble for one day," Nabiki

said, turning away, "Now, if you'll excuse me, I'd like to be alone

for a bit..."

She forced herself to walk away slowly when in fact all

she wanted to do was to run until she dropped from exhaustion.

She would not do that, not betray herself, and not give them any idea

about the fractured state of her emotions. Nabiki did not like

feeling this way, losing self-control and the discipline that she

had built up over a lifetime. How could Ranma, in a single day,

do this to her? She had to get away, to sort things out, to rebuild

the walls of her self-control, to understand just why it hurt so

much when he called her a Hentai...

Ranma stood staring after her, unable to get a grip on

himself until he felt Soun Tendo's eyes on him, and heard

Kasumi's gentle voice murmur, "What are you waiting for,

Ranma? Go after her. You know that you have to."

Ranma turned to look at Kasumi saw something he had

never seen before in the eyes of the girl who was so much like his

older sister. Somehow Kasumi always seemed to understand a

lot more than most people credited, and at this moment he

realized that she was only speaking for his conscience.

"Hai, Kasumi-chan," he said with a quick smile to her,

then vaulted over the table, catching up to Nabiki in three long

strides and startling her utterly in the process.

"A-Ano," he said simply, not looking at her, his head

bowed in tacit apology as he and Nabiki continued on into the

garden, neither one of them saying anything for a full minute.

This was not good, Nabiki knew, but somehow his

apology-one word at that-had released some of the tightness she

was feeling. She forced herself to come to a halt and turned to

face him, which compelled Ranma to do likewise. They stared at

each other in silence for a very long while, then Nabiki heaved a

deep sigh and said, "You don't have to apologize. I understand

perfectly well what you must be feeling.'

"Do you?" he asked, and suddenly Nabiki was not so

certain. There was an element here that she had never previously

encountered, and it was making her feel totally off-balance.

"S-sure," she replied, then silently cursed her own voice

for betraying her in that manner, "After all, I've got this stupid

curse that makes me...different from other girls..."

"My father did that," Ranma said, "So in a way, I guess

I'm also responsible..."

"What?" she blurted, "How the heck do you figure that?

You can't be held to account for everything your father has ever

done, Ranma...and believe me, you don't want to know just how

much that is! If you knew him as well as I do..."

"I know he may have put you to a lot of trouble," Ranma

looked down, "But I think I'm envious as hell. It might have

been worth it...just to be with him, like you've been."

Nabiki utterly did not know where to go from there. This

entire situation was confusing her in ways with which she had no

intellectual ability to grapple. Ranma could be so insensitive

one minute, so sweet the next, it was driving her to distraction!

She forced herself to calm her mind, ignoring the way her heart

was racing, and the quickening of her pulse making her feel

unlike any Martial Arts duel in which she had ever taken part.

She looked at him squarely and saw the honesty and integrity in

his eyes. That was when the alarm bells really began to sound in

her, for these were two qualities with which she had the least

experience, so she simply did not know what to say. How could

she deal with this boy when she could not even get a handle on

her own emotions?

"Look," Ranma tried again, unable to read her silence,

"I'm sorry I called you a freak...and a Hentai. It was thoughtless

and cruel of me. I know it's not your fault you can change. I

just...have this problem saying stuff that I don't mean when I get

angry..."

"I think you meant it," Nabiki said as evenly as she could,

"The fact that I change really must upset you."

"Ah...yeah," Ranma replied, "Only...it's not so bad as all

that."

"What do you mean?" she blinked.

"It's just..." Ranma faltered, then he leaned closer to her

and whispered, "Don't tell anybody I ever said this, especially not

Akane? Do you promise?"

At any other time Nabiki might have negotiated for terms

in her favor, but now she very much wanted to know what he was

going to say, so she reluctantly said, "I promise."

"It's...just..." he faltered again, then in barely audible

words said, "...You're kind of cute when you're a guy...at least as

guys go."

Nabiki staggered a half-second and looked at him in

surprise. Ranma thought he knew what she was about to say and

hastily protested, "I'm...I'm not like that! I'm not that way!

Really! I like girls! I mean, I like them a

lot...like...you...you...you..." he swallowed, then forced himself to

say the next words with greater effort than she could imagine, "I

think you're really kind of pretty..."

Nabiki was not entirely certain if it was the world that

was spinning all around her, or if she were suddenly coming

down with something. She had never really been sick a day in

her life, so she decided that maybe she was suffering from an

allergy, either that or maybe the food was bad, but whatever the

cause she was having trouble maintaining her balance.

"Easy, are you okay?" Ranma asked as he reflexively

caught her.

"I'm fine!" Nabiki instantly replied, her head clearing with

a suddenness that made her brief dizzy spell seem like an

ephemeral dream, "I'm just fine...thank you."

"Okay," he said, but for some reason he did not release

his hold on her, as though he was reluctant to break contact.

"R-Ranma?" Nabiki asked, then hesitated.

"H-Hai?' he replied, now his voice was shaking.

"I...I just want to say..." Nabiki tried to summon up the

words, unable to believe that she could be so tongue tied at this

one instant. What's the matter with me? She frantically asked

herself. Words have never been a problem in the past! Just take

a deep breath and get it out, girl, and then get some control over

this crazy situation.

"I just wanted to...to..." Nabiki took another deep breath.

This was not working. She had never felt so out of control as she

felt at that moment. This was worse than when she got cursed, or

when she stumbled into that stupid Amazon village and...

She did not want to think any more about it. She closed

her eyes and forced out the words, "I...just want you to know that

I...want to be your friend. I hope you'll like me, even if

we're...engaged...is that all right?"

It had not been what she had wanted to say, but it was

much easier to speak this way, and he seemed to relax and accept

that.

"Sure," Ranma smiled back at her with as much relief as

sincerity, "I'll be your friend...even if you are my...iinazuke."

"Deal," Nabiki took his hand and shook it, as she would

with any business prospect.

"Wonderful news!" Genma cried as he suddenly popped

up beside them, laying a paternal hand on either of their

shoulders, "I'll tell Tendo-kun at once..."

Without a word, and in silent agreement, both Ranma and

Nabiki side-kicked Genma all the way into the Koi pond...

Continued.

Comments? Criticism? Death Threats? Reach me at:

shadowmane

Looking forward to the next new chapter!

If you wish to check out my other works, Please check out my

Fanfiction webpage at: . or

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All related chapters of this series can be found there along with my

other works.


	3. Chapter 3

Nabiki 1/2

Chapter 3, Part 1.

By

Jim Robert Bader

(Based on the works of:

Rumiko Takahashi

Publishers/Distributors

Wade Tritschler

Richard Lawson

James Jones

John Walter Biles

Many others!)

(Standard Disclaimer: I take responsibility for the following

work,

but I am not trying to usurp anyone's copyrights, so please don't

sue me)

Nabiki sighed as she enjoyed her morning bath, thinking

of how easily she could get used to such luxuries after surviving

many years of hardship. Morning practice had been especially

grueling, and she supposed that was partly due to Genma's

displeasure at having to spend much of the night as a Panda.

Nodoka had insisted on it as punishment for trying to rush things

so swiftly, but she had also been adamant in keeping her animal-

husband out of her bed, insisting that she did not need him for a

blanket.

She sniffed with an especially wicked relish as she

savored the look Ranma had given her during their sparing

match. She was openly flirting and teasing him the whole time,

no longer being inhibited by Akane's presence, and it left the poor

boy in such a state of constant confusion that he'd been easy prey

for even her simplest maneuvers. She had never imagined that it

could be so much fun teasing her iinazuke...

The word sobered her up as she thought it over. Damn,

almost managed to forget about that. What to do, what to do?

Things were not shaping out quite like what she imagined they

would, what with her father and Genma cornering her into this

arranged marriage. Nabiki had no intention of getting married

this soon in her life. She had a career she wanted to build a life

to live! She wanted to have fun, not get herself tied down with

one man to whom she'd be expected to be faithful, let alone

dutiful, like Nodoka!

How do you begin your career at financial world

domination when people keep undermining the root terms of your

existence? She wanted to hurt Genma...very hard! He knew of

her ambitions, and yet he still found a way to tie her down with

these stupid obligations!

And yet...and yet...the more she thought about it...the

more it occurred to her that there were some advantages that

came with being the designated heir to the Tendo dojo. As yet

she had not looked over the books to determine the financial

picture for the House, but she was rather certain of her ability to

get things going, and one could start with much less than a dojo

from which to work upward.

And then there was Ranma...and that was where all her

calculating skills fell apart. One look from Ranma and she just

seemed to lose all control over her business instincts.

This was not a good thing. Nabiki prided herself on

never losing her self-control, at always maintaining her

composure in the most ridiculous situations (well, that Amazon

village had-to date-been one of her biggest challenges...). She

could not afford to become as unhinged as she had been the night

before, she could not allow herself to lose control like that again.

The problem was...where Ranma was concerned...logical

persuasion went right out the window!

The boy had a positive knack for saying the wrong thing

one moment, then saying the absolute right thing the next. It

made her feel like she was on an emotional seesaw, teetering

back and froth from one extreme to the other and it was driving

her crazy! She could not afford to let herself get pushed around

by his inconsistent behavior.

Still...she paused to consider. He did have a nice smile.

And he was cute. And brave. And stubborn, and prideful...

She sighed, sitting upright in the tub. No sense

compiling a list of her future husband's considerable assets. She

knew just by looking at him that he was a catch to be prized, and

many girls in Furinkan High would have jumped to be in her

place. Only their fear of Akane's wrath kept most of them away

and...

She stopped herself. Did she just think of Ranma as her

future husband?

The door to the bathroom started to open, startling her out

of her reverie as she belatedly remembered that she had not

locked the door, a bad habit she had picked up from one too

many times when she'd had to make a hasty exit. Ranma paused

as he looked in, not seeing Nabiki ducking behind the rim,

making as little splashing noise as she could manage.

"Hello?" he asked hesitantly, his eyes deliberately closed,

"Is anybody in here?"

Nabiki remained as silent as she could, hoping that

Ranma wouldn't notice her clothing neatly folded in one corner.

Apparently he was satisfied because he stepped into the

bathroom and shut the door, then began taking his own clothes

off.

Nabiki's eyes got very wide by a fraction. This was

something she had not counted upon, but she could hardly bring

herself to look away. Only fair, she considered in self-

justification, seeing as how he has walked in on her the first

night. He owed her a little payback...

Ranma wasted no time discarding his martial arts Gi,

stripping down to his underwear, then removing that in typically

haphazard fashion. From where she crouched in concealment,

Nabiki's eyes got very wide, following the hard lines of his

muscular body, feeling a curious sensation passing through her

own body as she struggled not to make a noise of appreciation.

And then he turned around, and before she could get a good

enough look she had to duck down under the water.

He washed himself off, as was the custom in Japan, then

prepared to get into the tub, still unaware that it was already

occupied at the moment.

Holding her breath was not a problem for Nabiki, in point

of fact it had been a key component in her training. The problem

was that Ranma was just then stepping into the tub, still not

aware of her nearness, but there was really no doubt that this was

about to change in another minute. She had to think of

something quickly.

And then she heard his voice, muffled by the water,

groaning, "Stupid girl...didn't have to hit me so hard! Sure is

cute...but why does she tease me like that...?"

Without meaning to Nabiki blew air out of her nostrils,

giving herself away as Ranma opened his eyes and looked

towards her with astonishment. Nabiki could see this because

she lifted her head up and smiled at him as sweetly as she could

manage.

"Um," she hesitated, "You're probably not going to

believe this..."

"AAAHHHH!" Ranma cried as he jumped right out of the

water as if he were being boiled alive. His foot slipped on the

floor and he went falling backwards, hitting his head when he

landed.

"Ranma?" Nabiki asked hesitantly, then in greater alarm

she cried out, "Ranma!" and she got out of the tub as fast as she

could scramble. She went to him at once, checking for a pulse,

fear turning her blood to ice as she dreaded the worst and

wondered what the hell she was going to do if she discovered that

she had accidentally killed him?

But he was alive, still warm, with a very strong pulse,

and the bump on his head turned out not to be as bad as she had

imagined. He was not very far out and soon began to regain

consciousness, at which point Nabiki's concerns for him had been

partially assuaged. In a calmer voice she murmured, "Lay still

and take it easy, Ranma. You might have a concussion, so try to

regain some focus."

"Huh?" he murmured weakly, looking up at her face with

a smile that proved he was only half-awake. "You're so pretty..."

"Hah?" Nabiki asked, almost dropping him as she was so

startled.

Then the boy's eyes drifted down and he caught sight of

the rest of her. His eyes widened with total alertness as he stared

at her chest, then moaned a bit before fainting.

"What the hell?" Nabiki asked, looking down at herself,

then at Ranma, "What's your problem? Never looked at a woman

before?"

Apparently he had not, but since he did not seem to be in

a coma she decided to leave him this way while she got dressed

for school. Just as an afterthought she threw a towel over him so

that he would not catch cold that way, and she even folded

another towel and turned it into a pillow.

"Kawaii," she smiled before leaving the bathroom and it

was fortunate for her that Ranma did not hear her or he might

have been more animated than she was counting on. In any event

she decided to see what Kasumi was planning to pack for their

lunch this morning...

"I said I was sorry," Nabiki commented on the way to

school, "What more do you want?"

"Ow!" Ranma winced as Akane felt the lump on his head,

"You could have said something! I wouldn't have gone in there if

I'd known you were still bathing!"

"Ranma has a point, Oneechan," Akane noted, "You

should have given him some warning, or at least locked the

bathroom door. It's like you wanted him to find you naked..."

"Well, what's wrong with a little communal bathing?"

Nabiki asked so matter-of-factly that she failed to see the

surprised looks she was receiving from her two companions,

"And it's not like he's never seen me naked."

Akane looked accusingly at Ranma, who winced from her

glare and grumbled something about shameless behavior.

"No really," Nabiki said more audibly, "I didn't mean to

shock you, but how was I to know you two led such a sheltered

existence? Maybe I've just been on the road so long I take certain

things for granted..."

"Nani?" Ranma blurted, then swallowed before saying,

"Are you saying...? Have you...? I mean...you and Otosan...?"

"Hmm?" Nabiki asked, then quickly realized from his

behavior that the question was related to his father. It took

another second to make the connection, "Oh, you mean...?" she

almost laughed at his confusion, then said, "No, I haven't shared

a bath with your father. He wouldn't allow it. He's like you in a

lot of ways, he thinks some things just aren't proper between men

and women."

"I can't believe how casual you're being about all of this,"

Akane said, "If Ranma ever walked in on me like that, even by

mistake, I'd be very angry."

"Maybe that's your problem, Sis," Nabiki replied, "You

let the wrong things get to you. There's nothing wrong with

having a boy be interested in what you look like. It's only a

problem if he can't behave or control himself, and I know how to

deal with that problem. Besides, I'm not worried about

something like that with Ranma."

"You're not?" Ranma asked her.

"Of course not," Nabiki smiled, "You're a very nice guy,

and besides, you're my...um...fiancee..."

"Uh, right," Ranma hesitated.

"Mind you," Nabiki smiled even more coyly, "If you ever

wanted to take liberties with me..."

"Ah..." Ranma suddenly looked very nervous, but Akane

was too curious not to ask, "What?"

Nabiki pretended to be unconcerned, "I'd tell you to wait

until we're married, of course. What kind of girl do you think I

am anyway?"

Ranma was fortunately spared saying the first thing that

came into his mind by their arrival at Furinkan High School,

where a familiar gathering was already beginning to take place.

Akane saw this and sighed, "All right, time to get it over with.

Nabiki, stay out of my way and let me handle these guys."

Nabiki just stared at the assembly of heavily armed Jocks,

"They do this every day? Don't they get tired of getting beat up

by Akane?"

"You'd think," Ranma sighed, "But somehow they just

keep on coming."

"Not exactly the smartest thing to do," Nabiki

commented, then batted her eyes in surprise as the onrushing

attackers avoided Akane and came rushing up towards them,

"Ah...Ranma?"

"What the Hell?" Ranma gasped, forgetting about his

language.

Akane turned around in dismay, astonished at being

ignored for the first time in almost the entire semester. With

disbelieving eyes she saw her love-struck athletic assailant's part

before her like the proverbial Red Sea and go after Nabiki and

Ranma. She was too shocked by this to even think about going

to their aid and just watched as Nabiki and Ranma both sprang

into action, taking defensive maneuvers to side-step the rush

before counter-attacking.

"How swift like the wind she moves," a familiar voice

commented from close nearby, "Such grace, such control, such

beauty in motion. Verily can I believe that yon sylvan fawn is

your own most formidable sister."

"Don't tell me you put them up to this, Kuno," Akane

growled, "Haven't you got anything better to do than mess with

me and my family?"

"Do I detect a note of envy in your melodious voice, sweet

Akane?" Kuno asked her, "You need hardly fear, for I have not

lost interest in you, though I confess to be intrigued by this new

element that is your charming sister.'

"Aren't we lucky?" Akane said with the driest of humor.

"Nay, it is I whom am fortunate," Kuno replied, failing-

like always-to get the none-too-subtle message, "Finding two

such sweet roses from the same fertile bush is greater favor than

the heavens could be asked to bestow upon unworthy humanity.

That I, Tatewaki Kuno should be so blessed is a sure sign that

the Fates smile upon my destiny..."

"Nabiki's not going to be very happy with you for sicking

those guys on her," Akane cut into his usual spiel.

"She will know that I am but merely testing her to

discover her true potential..." Kuno began, when Akane decided

to shut him up with a well-placed kick to his glass jaw.

Meanwhile the attackers were all laid out sprawling with

Ranma and Nabiki standing over the last to go down. Being that

they fought together like a team meant that the fight was that

much shorter, and when it was done neither one of them looked

very happy.

"Kuno!" Ranma growled out the name in disgust, only to

see his friend collapse as Akane pivoted on one heel and stormed

up the steps into the building. Ranma just shook his head,

feeling deprived of his chance at retribution, muttering to himself,

"Bad enough he's got them after you now, but he could have told

them to leave me alone..."

"I think he did," Nabiki looked at him, "You didn't have

to jump into the middle to cover my back, I'm pretty sure they

would have ignored you."

"I..." Ranma faltered, "I didn't really think about that. I

just...didn't want to see you hurt or nothing..."

Nabiki slowly smiled, "That's so sweet, Ranma. But I've

been handling myself like this for a long time. You don't have to

feel obligated to fight my battles, just because

we're...um...iinazuke."

"I guess maybe I did sort of overreact," Ranma sniffed,

"But I don't like guys attacking girls. I hated it when it was just

Akane, but now you...well, it's just not right!"

"There ought to be more like you, Ranma-kun," Nabiki

said as she turned away, slowing her pace from her usual long

stride to allow him to walk beside her.

"Ah, Nabiki-chan," Ranma said softly, "I don't want you

to take this the wrong way, but when we get inside...you think

maybe you can, like, not mention that you and me are..."

"Got you covered there, Ranma-kun," Nabiki smiled, "We

keep this to ourselves for now. Wouldn't want people getting any

wrong ideas about us, right?"

"Uh, right," Ranma said reluctantly.

"I'm glad that we're in agreement then," Nabiki nodded as

they parted company at the top of the stairs leading to their

respective homerooms, "See you around lunchtime?"

"Yeah, sure," Ranma agreed, feeling an odd reluctance as

he glanced over his shoulder, watching Nabiki as she walked

down the corridor, being greeted by friendly looks and nods from

her fellow class mates.

He forced himself to turn to acknowledge his own

buddies, Hiroshi and Daisuke, who had been calling to him

several seconds before he answered. They fell in stride together

as Hiroshi at once pelted him with questions, most of which

concerned Nabiki, while Daisuke asked the question that had

been bugging Ranma the most, "What's with Kuno? Did he tell

those guys to attack you?"

"I don't know," Ranma replied, "But I'm going to find

out."

"Word has it that Kuno's got the hots for Nabiki," Hiroshi

naturally mentioned, "But he's not giving up on Akane either.

Can you believe that guy? I don't know how the two of you can

be best buddies.'

"Well, Kuno's always been a little funny in the head,"

Ranma said dismissively.

"That's an understatement," Daisuke replied, "Hey, what's

with you and Nabiki anyway? I thought you always walked

Akane to school in the morning."

"I was walking with both of them," Ranma said irritably,

"Didn't you notice?"

"What I can't figure out is how guys like you get all the

luck," Hiroshi said wonderingly, "Living in the same house with

two great babes..."

"Three if you count Kasumi," Daisuke reminded.

"Oh man," Hiroshi winced, "She's pretty, but that'd be

like including my mother..."

"Wound you guys knock that off?" Ranma suddenly

stopped and glared at them, and something in the gleam of his

eyes made both boys back away. They knew Ranma well

enough, knew what he could do, and-more to the point-knew

how quick his temper was if somebody said or did anything that

touched on sensitive subjects.

They were extremely fortunate that his mother had

counseled Ranma on starting fights with other students or they

might have found out the hard way about his displeasure.

Backing down when they did meant that they could avoid a great

deal of pain and suffering, which was only a pale reflection of

what Ranma felt like dishing out towards Kuno.

Without a word he turned and entered his classroom, his

mood quite foul as the day was turning out to be something

which he would much rather have avoided...

When Nabiki reached her homeroom she noticed a lot of

curious faces turned her way, not to mention a considerable

amount of muted gossip. Fingers were pointed at her, which was

never a good sign in her book. She wondered what had happened

or what it was that she was being blamed for, then looked inside

the room and immediately realized the answer.

In point of fact her nose should have been a giveaway. A

blind pig would have trouble not smelling the scent of several

hundred roses all decked about the desk where she had been

sitting the previous morning.

Nabiki stood stock still and stared at what her mind

automatically calculated to be about a million yen worth of

flowers, then before she could frame a question about who would

spend that much over her she found herself looking automatically

at the desk formerly occupied by Kuno.

Kuno himself, naturally, was still outside, so she lacked

the opportunity to address herself towards him and his peculiar

obsession. Instead she walked up to the desk and stared at

tasteful arrangement, thinking of how often she had always

dreamed about catching the interest of a guy this well endowed

with monetary resources.

The problem was...she felt oddly reluctant about returning

his affections. Not that she would have difficulty faking it, of

course, but...for once in her life she was not that interested in

meeting another man. Her life was complicated enough, and all

her instincts warned her that Kuno was trouble.

"You are so lucky, Nabiki-san!" said Kyoto, one of her

other classmates whom she had met just the previous morning, "I

wish I could get Kuno-chan to notice me like this! Aren't these

roses absolutely gorgeous?"

"Hai," Nabiki said clinically, trying to think of something

else to say when a rose tapped her on her shoulder, and she spun

around in surprise, coming face-to-face with Kuno.

"Fair blossom, though she weep in repose at fortune's

favor, be not diminished by the sparkle of her eyes..."

"Excuse me, Kuno-Sempai?" Nabiki interrupted his usual

monologue, "It's very nice that you feel this way and all, but

Sensei is signaling for us to sit, and I'd rather not spend the rest

of the day standing out in the hallway, thank you."

"Ah, please forgive my abruptness," Kuno said by way of

apology, "Our time was so rudely cut short by the arrival of your

cousin that I wanted to offer you these in token respect that we

never got the chance to properly say good bye to one another.'

"Cousin?" Nabiki started, her mind momentarily

sidetracked before memory kicked in, "Oh, you mean Kaneda?"

"Kaneda," Kuno growled the word, "While I can admire a

man who looks after the welfare of his closest female kin, I

cannot abide such rudeness that would spoil the otherwise perfect

moment we two were sharing..."

"Actually, he's a very nice man and I'd appreciate it if

you'd treat him with respect in the future," Nabiki again

interrupted, "But I really do think we'd better heed the wishes of

Sensei," and she promptly sat down before he had the chance to

continue.

Actually she was considering what to do with the Roses

as morning class began. Technically they were her property,

assuming the school administration did not order them to be

taken away, or something. Their resale value was considerable,

and she was certain she could work out a reasonable market price

for other students to pay, breaking them up into small enough

sets to insure that she had some spending money for the

afternoon. She was thinking about improving her wardrobe, and

good clothes meant good money.

Too bad she could not wear most of them around school,

let alone her fellow students. The incident with the sprinklers

had demonstrated the risk of wearing anything too feminine for

her male half to wind up in, so for the foreseeable time she would

have to stick to her Chinese-style outfits, at least until she could

check out something else for casual wear that would look good

for either genders. Owning any kind of property beyond what she

could carry was a luxury in which she intended to fully indulge

now that she had a roof over her head and intended on staying. It

would be a nice change to have more than one thing she could

wear, and maybe some jewelry would also be nice.

Too bad she would have to do without dresses, at least for

a while. Unless she found a cure for her curse very soon she was

going to have to specialize in Unisex tailoring, either that or

come up with a story that explained that "Cousin Kaneda" was

"kind of funny."

She only half-paid attention to the teacher giving a

standard drill about school standards and behavior. She was

studying her fellow students more ardently, intent on learning all

that she could so that she would know the Marks from the

Predators. Time to start exploring the potential of this target-rich

environment of bright and cheerful potential. She had already

made a few tentative contacts and was investing in some

information resources and would soon have a feel for just how

this school was actually run by the students.

Of course her wandering eye registered something very

curious happening around Kuno Tatewaki. A student was

leaning close to him and murmuring something in his ear. She

could not hear what was being said, but she did see Kuno's

sudden reaction to the news as the student was grabbed quite

violently and held up to closer inspection by a very outraged

Kuno.

"What?" Kuno demanded, "Is this true? How dare he!"

"Kuno-san," the Teacher automatically remarked without

even glancing in his direction, "Out into the hallway."

"He cannot be allowed to get away with this betrayal!"

Kuno looked sharply at Nabiki, then said, "Fear not, fair damsel,

I will rescue you from this devil's bargain with foul Saotome!"

"Excuse me?" Nabiki asked, but hardly needed a

clarification, as there was only one thing that could have brought

about such a sudden change in attitude. She silently cursed,

wondering how anyone could have found out about the

engagement, then corrected herself as she realized one universal

truth she had encountered in all of her travels:

No information traveled as fast or as far as a rumor, and it

would hardly take much speculation to draw the obvious

conclusion from the way she and Ranma had been behaving that

very morning!

In either event, Kuno was leaving the room in greater

haste than might have been appropriate had he merely been

complying with the wishes of their teacher. Sudden fear gripped

Nabiki's heart as she realized the serious trouble this meant for

Ranma. She did not as yet know what Kuno was fully capable

of, but her instincts had warned her that he was not to be taken

lightly. She and Akane had only overcome him because the boy

had such a tremendous ego that he had failed to be on guard

against them.

The same most likely would not hold true for Ranma.

"Sensei!" she suddenly got up out of her chair, "May I be

excused for a minute?"

"Tendo-san?" the teacher asked, "This is only your second

day. You're not going to cause me any trouble, are you?"

"No, Sensei," Nabiki said more sweetly than she felt, "It's

just...I have to use the facilities..." she put on an act of looking

uncomfortable, as if squirming in her chair.

"Oh," he acknowledged, "Well, in the future be sure you

take care of that before you get here."

"Hai, Sensei," Nabiki bowed, then made an effort to walk

casually towards the door when her greatest desire was to break

out into a dead run. Ranma had to be warned before Kuno could

attack him!

As she passed she heard the whispered comments of the

other students, as though every one of them already knew her

personal secrets:

"You see that? It must be true, then!

"About her and Ranma? Who could believe it!"

"Imagine dumping Akane for her..."

"Oh, I don't know...take a good look at her, man! What a

babe!"

"You pig!"

"She must be a pretty good fighter to take on Kuno like

she did..."

"Yeah, no wonder he wants to date her!"

"What a shame she's got to be tied down with that

damned Saotome..."

Nabiki grit her teeth as she exited the room, muttering

under her breath, "You owe me for this, Ranma..."

Continued.

Comments, Criticisms, Hate Mail: shadowmane

Nabiki 1/2

Chapter 3, Part 2.

By

Jim Robert Bader

(Inspired by the works of Rumiko Takahashi)

(Wade Tritschler

Richard Lawson

James Jones

John Walter Biles

Many Others)

(All rights reserved to the Publishers/Producers;

I claim only responsibility for the following story,

So please don't sue me)

"SAOTOME RANMA!" a voice rang out through the

corridors of Furinkan High School.

Ranma looked up from his desk, recognizing the voice

but unable to comprehend what could be bothering Kuno. He

exchanged looks with Akane, who gave him a questioning reply

in wordless facial expression.

The door to his Homeroom burst open as Kuno-with

wooden sword in hand-advanced in full Kendo gear (minus any

safety equipment, of course, but Kuno wasn't feeling very safe to

be around at the moment). He ignored the Teacher's faint

demand that he desist and explain his unacceptable behavior, his

eyes blazing with fury as he focused on Ranma with

unmistakable loathing.

"Saotome Ranma!" Kuno repeated again, "You base

betrayer!"

"Oh," Ranma looked at him in puzzlement, "Ohiyo,

Kuno-Sempai. What's up?"

"As if you didn't know, you...Romeo!" Kuno barked as he

started to advance, students tumbling out of their desks in their

haste to escape his fury.

"What did I do now?" Ranma asked, not acting the least

bit worried at the murder in Kuno's eyes. He'd seen Kuno angry

before, although never to this extent and wondered what crazy

idea had set his friend off this time.

"Nabiki!" Kuno spat the word, "How could you toy with

my affections that way? You knew how I felt, yet you dare to

court the fair Akane's older sister?"

"Oh," Ranma said slowly, looking at Kuno and ignoring

the sword that was only a meter away from his face, "That."

"Did you hear that?" one of the other students murmured

in surprise.

"Kuno's jealous of Ranma because he's seeing another

woman?"

"I don't blame him! Have you seen that Nabiki?"

"Yeah, but what about Akane?"

"Didn't you hear? The two of them are on the outs!

They're splitsville, finished!"

"What? Where did you hear that?"

"The word is all around the campus! Their parents

decided to switch iinazuke!"

"I don't get it, though...is Kuno jealous of Ranma...or

Nabiki?"

"With him, who knows?"

"I didn't think they were the type."

"Yeah, what a shame that is..."

Very slowly Ranma and Kuno both cottoned on to some

of what was being said about them, and for a moment the

building tension between them was forgotten as they hastily

turned to the others and said, "No, you've got the wrong idea!"

"I'm not like that!"

"Kuno Tatewaki loves no man as he loves a woman!"

"Unless you include yourself in that statement."

"Saotome!" Kuno turned back to his original objective.

"Hey, do you mind?" Akane looked at both of them, "This

is no place for this kind of trouble! You guys have a problem,

take it outside and let the rest of us study!"

"Saotome-san, Kuno-san," the Teacher finally made

herself heard, "Out into the hallway!"

"Hai, Sensei," Ranma sighed as he stood up, turning to

look at Kuno, "Better do what she says, Tatewaki, old buddy..."

"You are no buddy of mine, Ranma-kun, betrayer!" Kuno

snapped, but in more reasonable tones added, "However you do

have a point. The kind of honorable duel that we must use to

settle this matter can best be done outdoors without the

restrictions of these quarters."

"Right," Ranma said, "The Playing field in five minutes?"

"Treasure those minutes well, Saotome," Kuno said as he

pivoted on one heal, "They will be your last!"

"Just great," Ranma snorted, then stopped himself as he

felt a hand grip his wrist. He turned and looked at Akane.

"Don't you two ever grow up?" she growled, "You're

always fighting over something, and now it's Nabiki!"

"Tendo-san!" the Teacher barked, clearly beyond the

limits of her patience.

"Just great," Akane hissed as she shot to her feet and

slammed her textbook closed, "Now look what you made me do!"

"Just don't interfere or nothing," Ranma told her shortly

as he headed for the space where the door had been a moment

before, "It's just between us guys, and it's not like this is the first

time I've had to go up against Kuno..."

Nabiki suddenly appeared around the hallway, saw them

both and called out, "Ranma!"

"Oh, hi," Ranma faltered in mid-step, allowing her to

catch up before seeing the worry in her face, which prompted him

to ask, "What's up?"

"I came to warn you," Nabiki said without preamble,

"Kuno..."

"We know," Akane snorted, "I just hope you're happy

about this, Oneechan."

Nabiki blinked and looked at her, "Nani?"

"Don't worry about it, Nabiki-chan," Ranma said, "Kuno

gets these weird ideas into his head and it takes a while before he

calms down enough for things to return to normal. A lot of stuff

he says he really doesn't mean..."

"I wouldn't be too sure of that this time, Ranma," Akane

warned, "I don't think I've ever seen Kuno this angry."

"Hah, I can take him!" Ranma said dismissively, "We

spar all the time. I know his moves as well as he knows mine..."

"Right," Nabiki said, "So in other words he knows how to

fight you."

"What do you mean?" Ranma asked her as they finally

reached the bottom of the stairway.

"A little something your father always warned me about,"

Nabiki said evenly, "You fight with your heart as well as your

head and your body, so don't underestimate a well-motivated

fighter."

"Hah, Kuno's just a lot of hot air," Ranma said

dismissively, "Oh he's a good fighter, but not in my class. Don't

worry over nothing, he just needs to work things out, and I could

use a good sparring match to clear out some of my own

cobwebs."

"Uhuh," Nabiki said, exchanging looks with Akane, who

frowned before shaking her head negatively, or perhaps in

exasperation.

The field in question was a standard Olympic-style track

and field where Kuno was already waiting with a group of

students that had gathered about to watch the match as though

this was the most interesting thing on the campus. Nabiki

decided that it probably was and at once sensed an excellent

opportunity to make a little cash on the side, but she saw several

people already circulating about with money in one hand and

note-pads in the other. Obviously it would take a little work to

get a cut of their action, and no doubt require knocking a few

heads together should anyone lodge protest.

Meanwhile she had the fight in hand to be concerned

about, of which she apparently was one of the stakes, a concept

that-while hardly novel-made her feel that a personal stake took

precedence over her usual goal of quick profit.

As Ranma left them to approach the waiting Kuno,

Akane and Nabiki held back to study the two combatants, then

Nabiki murmured to her sister, "Tell me the truth, just how good

is Tatewaki?"

"A lot better than Ranma claims he is," Akane replied,

"He originally specialized in Kendo, and when we first knew him

he was exclusively into his Samurai bit, but Ranma got it into his

head to teach the fool some Kempo, the better to round him out,

or so Ranma called it. Now Kuno's as good bare-handed as he is

with that bokken, and he's even mastered some pretty advanced

levels of Nampo."

"Nampo?" Nabiki raised an eyebrow, "You mean he

knows Ki techniques?"

"I'm pretty sure of it," Akane said, "How else can you

explain some of what he does with a bokken?"

"I wouldn't know," Nabiki said, "I've never seen him

actually fight. I thought he was pretty easy to take out..."

"Kuno drops his guard every now and then," Akane said,

"But I've always felt that he's a lot better than he lets on. I don't

even know how I manage to defeat him when he challenges me

every morning."

"Oh," Nabiki nodded, "Well...don't take this the wrong

way, but did you ever think that maybe he lets you?"

"You saying I'm not good enough, Oneechan?" Akane

bristled.

"I thought that was what you were telling me right now,"

Nabiki answered.

"Excuse me," said a pretty brown-haired student who

turned out to be one of the resident bet-takers, "Would either of

you care to take a pool on who you think is going to win this

time? The odds are three to one in favor of Ranma."

"Only three to one?" Nabiki asked with interest.

"Well," the girl smiled, "Everyone is hoping that Ranma

kicks his pompous ass, but Kuno looks pretty angry this time,

so..."

"Put me down a thousand yen on Kuno," Nabiki smiled.

Akane shot a startled look at her, "Nani? On Kuno?"

"It's just a hunch I have," Nabiki answered.

"But...but he's your iinazuke!"

"I know," Nabiki replied, "But this is business, not

personal."

"You mean you really are Ranma-kun's new iinazuke?"

the girl asked with raised eyebrows, quickly jotting something

down on her note-pad, "Very interesting! Do you know the

betting odds were six to one against that rumor being accurate?"

"Six to one, huh?" in spite of herself Nabiki smiled. Yes,

this place definitely had potential, "Mind telling us who started

that rumor? It was private news the last thing I heard."

"Well," the girl replied, "There's this guy who hangs

around the place named Gosunkugi..."

Just then the two prospective combatants stopped staring

at each other and got serious about fighting.

Ranma had been studying Kuno's expression, trying to

find a trace of doubt or hesitation. He could not believe how far

Kuno was allowing this thing to get to him. This went way

beyond his usual capacity for obsession! He tried appealing to

him again, "You don't really think I set this up to spite you,

Tatewaki?"

"You will refer to me as Sempai," Kuno said

authoritatively, "And of course I think that! You think me fool

enough to believe that you would not go to such lengths to

humiliate me, Saotome? You've wormed your way into my

House, chased my sister, and gained my trust, only to throw it all

away when I finally meet someone of quality worthy of my

affections! Why, I have even sought to take Tendo Akane off

your hands, not that I could ever understand your strange desire

to be deprived of such a beautiful iinazuke!"

"What?" said both Akane and Nabiki together, having

each clearly heard the last part of that statement.

"Hey!" Ranma suddenly realized the unfavorable light he

was being cast in, and a glance to the side showed him just

exactly what Akane thought about the notion, although he had

much greater difficulty interpreting Nabiki.

"Ranma!" Akane growled balling her hands into tiny

hammer-shaped weapons.

"Oboy," Ranma sighed, "Now see what you've done!

What the Hell are you thinking blurting a thing like that all over

the place!"

"I care not a whit for your insolence!" Kuno declared as

he raised his weapon, "Defend yourself, Saotome!"

Nabiki's eyes got wide, "Uh oh."

"Uh oh what?" Akane growled, still livid with anger.

Kuno's slice had the speed and potency of a Hurricane,

and while Ranma managed to dodge the attack, the force of the

blow kicked up a wind that caught him unprepared and threw

him back ten meters distance. Kuno followed up with a charge,

but Ranma was quick to recover and vaulted over this new

attack, going instantly on the offensive as he lashed out at Kuno

with a savage kick that would have flattened the other man had it

successfully connected.

"I recognize his style," Nabiki explained, "His technique

is nearly flawless. Ranma is in serious trouble."

Ranma darted away, but the two quick strikes Kuno

aimed at him came very close to connecting, and it seemed to

finally dawn on Ranma that his erstwhile friend was fighting in

earnest.

"Wow," Akane gasped, momentarily forgetting about her

anger, "I see what you mean! Kuno never went after me like

that..."

"It's like I said," Nabiki noted, "Some guys let you win.

The trick is knowing when to let them."

Akane was about to ask Nabiki what she meant by that

when she gasped, seeing Ranma stagger back, his shirt ripped in

the front as though an actual Katana had sliced it. Kuno came on

like a rush and pressed his attack, forcing Ranma to dart and

dodge away with frantic counter-thrusts using both arms and legs

to keep the sword from further connecting.

"Damn," Nabiki growled, "Wish I'd known he was this

good."

"Ranma should never have accepted this challenge,"

Akane grumbled.

"I could have gotten better odds," Nabiki murmured

faintly, then saw the look Akane gave her, "What?"

"I can't believe you'd bet against your own iinazuke!"

Akane said sharply, "Don't you care at all about Ranma?"

"I thought you were angry with him," Nabiki pointed out.

"I am!" Akane assured her, "But I'd never bet against

Ranma! I can't believe you would!"

"Ranma got himself into this mess," Nabiki said, trying to

sound more nonchalant than she felt, "And I'm pretty sure he'd

resent it if I interfered now to help him out."

"Don't you care that he might get hurt?" Akane frowned.

"Of course I do," Nabiki answered, trying not to show as

much anxiety as she was feeling, "But I trust my judgement when

it comes to matches like this..."

She suddenly flinched, hearing a telltale rumble in the

heavens. She looked up in dismay, seeing clouds forming in

what had been a clear blue sky mere moments before, and

instinct warned her that there would soon follow precipitation.

"Well, you'd better care about what happens," Akane

turned back to study the match, "After all, it's you they're fighting

over. If Ranma loses, you can bet Kuno will claim it gives him

the right to date you."

"If Kuno wins...?" Nabiki slowly repeated, inwardly

cursing herself for failing to take this fact into consideration. She

looked up and winced as she saw Ranma fall back, nursing his

side as though he had just taken some bruises.

"I have you now, Saotome!" Kuno snarled as he laid in a

renewed attack, his bokken becoming a blur while Ranma

backed away, arms moving just as quickly to block these thrusts

without sufficient room for a counter.

Kuno cried out again and struck with redoubled effort.

The first tentative drops of rain started to fall as he finally

connected with a solid blow that staggered Ranma, who

stumbled back and lost his balance.

"Victory is mine!" Kuno declared, just before Nabiki

launched a kick that knocked him sprawling.

"Ranma!" Nabiki cried as she hastened to his side,

kneeling down without noticing that her voice was deeper than

normal, too much concerned with the welfare of her...now his

iinazuke.

"I'm...I'm all right," Ranma assured him, shaking off

Nabiki's offer of assistance while holding his side with one hand,

"Just give me a moment to get my wind back..."

"How dare you!" Kuno growled as he slowly rose to his

feet, turning from Ranma to Nabiki, thrusting his bokken

accusingly in his direction, "Interfering in a private duel for the

hand of your cousin! Tendo Kaneda! I will permit you to live

only if you leave here this instant!"

"Stuff it!" Nabiki said, rising to his feet and slowly

turning a hard look Kuno's way, assuming a martial stance as he

added, "I won't let you hurt him!"

"Who is that?" somebody asked.

"Kuno called him Kaneda...and did he say he was

Nabiki's cousin?"

"What a hunk! I wonder if he has a girlfriend?"

"Phew! He's not that special!"

"But he's going up against Kuno! Poor guy!"

"What a waste of a gorgeous male specimen..."

"Looks a little like Nabiki, I guess they really are

related..."

"Hey, where is Tendo Nabiki?"

Akane stared in disbelief, then looked around at the

people in the stands and wondered how any of them could have

missed Nabiki's transformation. Then at once she understood:

everyone had been watching Ranma get the daylights beaten out

of him, so no one had been paying much attention their way. For

all anyone else knew, Kaneda had virtually appeared from out of

nowhere!

"For the last time!" Kuno snarled, and now the rain was

starting to fall in genuine earnest, "Leave or be crippled!"

"Like I said the first time," Nabiki replied, "Stuff it."

Kuno charged like a raging typhoon, but Nabiki held his

ground almost to the last possible instant. Then he moved so

swiftly that he all but became a blur, and Kuno staggered back

from a hundred blows that rained down upon him, battering his

defenses aside and forcing him to halt in mid-step. Kuno froze

in position and remained unmoving. Nabiki turned away from

him and walked calmly up to Ranma.

"C'mon, Ranma," he said, "I'll walk you to the Nurse's

office."

Ranma looked up at him, then over at Kuno, who

remained exactly where he had been standing when Nabiki

turned his back on him. Kuno did not move, did not blink,

hardly seemed even to breathe, just stood there as motionless as a

statue. In dull wonder he allowed Nabiki to help him to his feet,

never taking his eyes off the wax figure that was Kuno.

Or the fact that the Kanji for "Baka" was now imprinted

on his forehead.

Ranma was able to remain on his feet, and Nabiki

allowed him to walk on his own for the sake of his pride, but

hovered near to Ranma as if to catch him should he stumble.

Ranma glanced at the man who walked casually beside him, then

very softly whispered, "Thank you."

"Hey, what are friends for?" Nabiki flashed him a smile,

"I've got an investment in you, Saotome, and I can't let you be put

out of commission for my sake. That was a pretty brave thing

you did back there, but I hope you know that it was also terribly

stupid."

"Maybe," Ranma said, feeling his bruised ribs, "But I

never back away from a challenge."

"Next time don't be so careless," Nabiki's smile was

strange seeing it come from a male face, but Ranma thought it

was a nice smile anyway, "You took it for granted that Kuno

would be fighting you the way he does in practice. If your father

were here he'd be all over you for that."

"You won't tell him, will you, Nabiki?" Ranma visibly

cringed, obviously very much worried about looking foolish in

front of his father.

"Not unless you bring it up," Nabiki replied, "But he's

bound to hear about this. Trust me on that..."

"Excuse me," the brown haired girl from before stopped

them both as she smiled at Nabiki in a very different way from

what she had used the first time, "My name is Ryonami, and I

was wondering if you could tell me where I could find Nabiki-

san? I wanted to talk with her about her winnings.'

"Winnings?" Ranma asked in surprise, looking at Nabiki.

"I'm her Cousin, Kaneda," Nabiki replied, "Why don't you

give them to me and I'll see that she gets the money."

"Money?" Ranma felt the tickle of suspicion gnawing at

the fringes of his consciousness.

"Sure," the girl replied, obviously very pleased just to be

allowed to make hand-contact as she passed along three thousand

yen, "Three to one odds, as agreed. I'd sure like to know how she

knew that Ranma here would lose..."

"You what?" Ranma turned an accusing look on

Nabiki.

"Hey, a girl's got to make a living," Nabiki smiled

weakly, then grabbed Ranma by the arm and hurried him along

as the girl waved after him with a happy expression. Akane

looked in disgust at her then hurried after Ranma and her

transformed sister.

The girl named Ryonami continued to wave as she sighed

in delirious joy, only to sober a second later as the realization hit

her, "Oh no! I forgot to give him my phone number...!"

"What the Hell were you thinking about?" Ranma

demanded once they were safely home and Nabiki had changed

back into her true form, "You bet against me? How could you do

that!"

"I knew you were going to lose," Nabiki tried to keep her

voice level, but inwardly she felt very bad about the whole

situation. This was not the sort of impression she meant to create

for her family, let alone her angry iinazuke.

"Oh, and that means it's all right?" Ranma challenged,

"How could you do such a thing? Do you know what that makes

me feel like?"

"I'm sorry," Nabiki whispered, looking down.

"What was that?" Ranma glared.

"I mean it," Nabiki said, looking up at him again, "I'm

sorry. It was a mistake. I did it out of force of habit."

There was something deeply disturbing about the way

Nabiki was looking at him, but Ranma was still angry as he

asked, "What kind of habit is that? Betting against people you

care about..."

"It was something I've done in the past," Nabiki replied,

"Only I'm usually the one I'm betting on, or against. Or Uncle

Saotome. We often made wagers to raise capital whenever we

ran short of money, which was pretty often with the kind of

appetites we have. I didn't mean to slight you when I took that

bet, I was just doing what I've always done in the past: weigh the

odds and pick the likeliest winner. Most of the time that was me,

but a few times I know I'm going to be outclassed, so I bet

against myself, figuring I'll still win by losing."

"Ever throw a fight that way?" Akane asked her.

"Hey, I don't lose many fights," Nabiki responded, "In fact

I haven't lost a fight in nearly two years. Besides, some of the

places I've had to fight in aren't exactly charitable to the loser. A

few places, you could lose your life. Other places...well, you can

lose a lot more than your freedom."

"I..." Ranma faltered, losing some of his anger as he

considered the implications of what she was saying. She had

only hinted at the sort of life she and Genma had been living for

ten years. Could it really have been as hard as she was

suggesting? He suddenly wasn't very sure if he wanted to know

the answer.

"Ranma," Nabiki leaned forward, looking up again with

as much sincerity as he had ever seen in her expression, "I'm

sorry if I hurt your feelings. That was never my intention. I

would never do anything deliberately to hurt you, you have to

believe that. It was bad enough for me to have to stand there and

watch you get hurt. I'm not used to being on the sidelines...I'm

used to fighting my own battles."

Ranma stood where he was, slowly digesting that, when

Akane suddenly spoke up and said, "If we have that out of the

way, I've got something else I want to bring up. Just what did

Kuno mean when he said he was trying to help you get out of our

engagement?"

"Ah..." suddenly Ranma felt the other shoe drop and

turned a wary look towards Akane, "I...well, you know Kuno, he

says stuff. You can't take what he says all that seriously..."

"He sounded pretty serious this time," Akane took a step

forward and glared, "Ranma...did you ask him to try and take me

away from you?"

"Ah, no, that isn't it..." Ranma saw the look in her glare

and hastily lifted his arms to deflect her anger, "Akane, no!

You've got the wrong idea! I didn't have to urge him to chase

after you..."

"BAKA!" Akane snarled, and punched him in the

stomach while his hands were raised too high to block her.

Ranma gasped as he doubled over, sucking wind. He

managed to recover a minute later, by which time Akane was no

where to be seen. Nabiki remained sitting where she was

looking up at him, her expression once more unreadable. After a

quiet interval she at last said, "So, Ranma...what's the real story?"

"I meant what I told her," Ranma said, growling, "Stupid

Tomboy. I never did anything to encourage Kuno to start chasing

her...at least not in the beginning..."

"But after you knew he was interested?" Nabiki asked.

"Ah, yeah," Ranma was sheepish, "After I found out how

determined he was, I thought. Well, hey, why not? He's my best

friend, and he could probably make Akane happier than I

could..."

"That's one bet I wouldn't lay odds on," Nabiki snorted,

"She really likes you, you know, even if she spends a lot of time

denying it."

Ranma eyed her with a questioning look, "You really

think so?"

"Why not?" Nabiki replied, "I like you, and I know I'd be

hurt if I thought you were trying to get rid of me by using Kuno."

"Ah..." Ranma sighed, looking down.

Nabiki also sighed and got back to her feet, standing

directly before him, "It doesn't matter. I know how I feel about

you, and I guess maybe you do feel something about me if you're

willing to get hurt for my benefit. I hope you know you almost

lost me to Kuno with that stunt, by the way."

"I...huh?" he blurted.

"Not that I'd ever agree to something that stupid, of

course," Nabiki continued, "But if Kuno won he'd feel like he

was entitled to come after me, like he does Akane...maybe

more so since in his eyes you would have forfeit your right to be

my iinazuke. Somehow I think he'd even manage to convince the

rest of the school that his claim was more valid. That's partly

why I stepped in to put a stop to the whole farce. The other

reason is because I saw you were hurt, and no matter what you

think about me, I will always fight to keep you safe, Saotome."

Ranma looked at her, uncertain of what to say, and for

once not saying anything to spoil the moment.

Nabiki drew a deep breath and sighed, "I'll make you a

promise, and I don't do this very often, so pay very close

attention, Ranma-kun: I promise I'll never make a bet against you

ever again. I'll never take someone else's side against you, and if

we ever get challenged like that again, we'll face the challenge

together, just like friends are supposed to do. Heck, you could

even say I'll do it because you are my iinazuke."

"Um..." Ranma felt very strange as he looked into her

clear brown eyes, "Do you mean that, Nabiki?"

"Never doubt it," she smiled, then added, "Of course you

understand that this means that I'm going to have to see to it you

never come out this badly against another opponent."

"Nani?" Ranma blinked in confusion.

"We're going to keep up on your training," she said, "Only

I'm going to personally instruct you on how to beat Kuno

senseless the next time you two go up against each other. Then

we're going to try and break Kuno-Sempai of his peculiar

obsession over me so that he'll leave us both alone. I do hope you

realize that in doing this I'm giving up a very lucrative angle I

was hoping to exploit with him."

"Uh...what angle?" Ranma wondered.

"Also," Nabiki's tone darkened, "We're going to have to

find out about the rat that gave away our little secret. What was

that name I heard again? Gosunkugi?"

"Oh, him?" Ranma asked, then suddenly he got angry,

"HIM? What has that weasel been up to? If he's been spying

on Akane again trying to take her picture..."

"Hmm," Nabiki mused, "Sounds like a fellow who needs

a little counseling. We'll look into that later."

"Right," Ranma said, then hesitated once more before

saying, "Nabiki-chan...you say you did a lot of things during your

time with Otosan that you're not proud of? I...look, I know it's

none of my business, but..."

"My life is your business as of right now, Ranma," Nabiki

informed him, "You have a right to know...certain things...when

the time is right for me to tell you."

"I'm not sure if I want all the details," Ranma said, "I

just...want to know one thing. I mean, I don't want to insult you

or anything, but...well...the way you were acting...about the

business in the bathroom...like it was no big deal..."

Nabiki looked puzzled for half a second, then

comprehension dawned and she said, "Oh, you want to know if

I'm...experienced...is that it?"

"Uh, yeah," Ranma said, "Experienced...uh...whatever."

Her smile was very different from the cocky and cynical

smiles she so often adopted, so strange for her that Ranma almost

could not recognize it, "You want to know if I'm a virgin, right?

You've got some silly male idea that I'd be used goods if

somebody had me before you?"

"Ah..." Ranma blinked, then protested, "I didn't mean

that...!"

"It's all right," Nabiki assured him, "I'm not a bit

surprised that you'd want to know. You are entitled to the truth

on that one, Ranma-chan, but...you have to promise me you won't

tell anyone else, right?"

"Promise?" Ranma asked.

"I insist," Nabiki sounded serious as she looked at him

without smiling, "I could get the wrong sort of reputation if word

of this gets out, to say nothing of what my Dad would say."

Ranma felt a sinking sensation as he replied, "I won't tell

anybody, I promise."

Somehow Nabiki could sense that Ranma's word was

indeed his bond, or maybe worth a lot more than any kind of

Bond she was familiar with. It made her feel somewhat

awkward again, so she hesitated before leaning close to him and

whispering in his ear, "You don't need to worry, Saotome. I've

never been with a guy...at least not that way."

Ranma started, then looked at her, wondering if he could

believe it, then seeing from the expression in her eyes that she

was being entirely serious, and even maybe putting herself out on

a limb by exposing more of her inner feelings than she would at

any other time.

After a very long pause he whispered, "I believe you."

Nabiki's smile was like warm sunlight penetrating

through storm clouds as she softly murmured, "Thank you,

Ranma. Thank you for believing."

"I...um...think I'd better go get changed...ah...for dinner,

that is," Ranma said, hesitating as if reluctant to leave her, then

suddenly he moved away and headed for the household.

Nabiki sighed, following him with her eyes, then very

slowly her shoulders sagged. Ranma was turning out to be a lot

more work than she had even imagined. Of course something in

her told her that he was worth the attention, but her rational side

knew intuitively that this was an entirely different challenge from

anything with which she had ever had to deal. Ranma could be

so infuriating one minute, and then the sweetest guy she had ever

met the next. There was no dissembly about him, only honesty

and pride, a very honorable and likeable sort of person.

Almost the total opposite of what she usually felt like.

She sighed again, then smiled without seeming to enjoy

it. She turned to the Kami-shine at one end of the dojo, kneeling

before it to clap her hands in prayer, silently thanking the

guardian spirits of the place that Ranma had only been concerned

with knowing if another man had shared her.

She had been telling him the literal truth, of course. She

had never been intimate with another man...or guy, as she had

termed it.

She just never said anything about having done it with

another person...

Continued.

Comments? Criticism? Hate Mail? Solicitations:

shadowmane

Next chapter we see the introduction of some old and new faces!

Sayonara!

If you wish to check out my other works, Please check out my

Fanfiction webpage at: . or

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All related chapters of this series can be found there along with my

other works.


	4. Chapter 4

Nabiki 1/2

Chapter 4, Part 1.

By

Jim Robert Bader

Inspired by the works of

Rumiko Takahashi

All rights belong to her/

The distributors and publishers

Of the Ranma 1/2 Series

Further based upon the Altered Destinies Series

Created by Wade Tritschler and Others.

I take responsibility only for the characters

And situations I have invented for this story.

I am not a published writer, I have no money,

So please don't sue me.

Kasumi answered the polite knock on the door and found

a redheaded girl standing on the veranda, smiling up at her with

a rather bright and cheerful expression.

The girl had her long hair bound up in a pigtail that

extended all the way down her back to about waist level. She

was wearing a pair of jogging shorts and had a thin T-shirt on

and was sporting a backpack. She had a pair of padded Karate-

style gloves and foot protectors on over a pair of leg-warmers, but

was otherwise barefoot, giving her the appearance of a tomboy,

even though she was actually quite an attractive woman of

mixed Asian and Occidental ancestry. Her bright green eyes

seemed to take Kasumi in with a speculative study that for some

odd reason made Kasumi blush a little, feeling oddly

complimented. In style and behavior she reminded one quite a

bit of Nabiki.

When she spoke it was in perfect Japanese, showing

greater manners than one might expect from such a non-

traditional looking lady, "Pardon me for bothering you, lady, but I

was wondering if you could tell me if this is the Tendo Training

Hall of Nerima?"

Kasumi wondered how the girl had failed to read the

placard on the wall outside their walkway. She further wondered

if this might be one of Nabiki's fellow students. She certainly did

look the same age and build, and in spite of her Occidental looks

she was clearly no foreigner, so Kasumi decided there was no

harm in giving her a truthful answer.

"Hai, this is the Tendo Dojo. I am Tendo Kasumi, would

you care to come inside?"

"Thank you," the girl bowed to Kasumi, still smiling, "I

would enjoy your hospitality, but I have something urgent that I

must first settle. Is one named Tendo Nabiki in residence here?"

"Oh, you mean my sister," Kasumi smiled, "You must be

one of her fellow classmates."

"More like an old friend from another school we both

attended together," the girl replied, bowing once more as she

added, "I'm Arigami Keiko. Would you be so kind as to ask

Nabiki to step outside so that we can...get reacquainted?"

"Nabiki isn't home right now," Kasumi replied, "She and

my other sister went with Ranma to the Kuno Mansion. They

may not be back for some time."

"Who's Ranma?" Keiko asked with a slightly puzzled

expression.

"Ranma is Nabiki's iinazuke," Kasumi replied, "He lives

here with his father and mother..."

"Iinazuke?" Keiko raised both eyebrows, then murmured

to herself, "So Nabiki-chan goes both way, eh? Very

interesting..."

"Are you sure you wouldn't like to come inside and wait

for them to get back, Keiko-san?" Kasumi asked her, "I can make

tea and serve you some ricecakes..."

"Your offer is most generous and would please me

greatly," Keiko bowed to her again, "I would like nothing better

than to share the company of a beautiful lady, such as yourself,

but I'd first like to find Nabiki-chan. I was so looking forward to

getting reacquainted. Could you please tell me how to find this

Kuno mansion?"

"Certainly," Kasumi replied, and gave the girl a set of

simple directions.

"You are most kind to a humble stranger, such as

myself," the girl smiled as she bowed for the forth time since

making her introductions, "Nabiki-chan is indeed fortunate to

have such an intelligent, beautiful and charming sibling as

yourself. I hope I may stop by later and take you up on your

considerate offer."

She turned to leave and Kasumi watched her with a

curious expression. There was something vaguely odd about that

girl, but she could not put her finger on it. She shrugged and

closed the door, deciding it really could not be anything

important.

Outside the walls of the Tendo estate a stray cat stopped

and looked at the redheaded human walking across its path. The

animal backed away, hissing, then turned around and ran with its

tail between its legs, almost as if it were afraid of being eaten by

the Canary...

"Here we are, Ranma," Nabiki said as she studied the

huge gates to an estate that looked half again the size of Nerima,

"Sure you're ready for this?"

"I told you before, Nabiki," Ranma said levelly, "I've got

to work this out with Kuno or I'm never gonna feel good about it.

He thinks I stole you deliberately, and I just can't stand having

him think that about me."

"Good luck," Akane snorted, "You've as much of a chance

of talking sense to that thick-witted block head as you would to

these walls. He's in his own little world, and he twists everything

to suit his needs. You're better off without him."

"I don't think so," Ranma sighed, "We've known each

other for six years, and that's a chunk of my life I just can't walk

away from. I have to get this settled once and for all before I can

make that kind of decision. I've never run from anything in my

life, and I'm not about to."

"Good sentiments, Ranma-kun," Nabiki smiled, "But

sometime fate doesn't give you much of a choice. Running away

may not be brave and noble, but sometimes it's the smartest thing

to do."

"Guess I'm not that smart, then," Ranma snorted.

"Hah!" Akane seconded, "I could have told you that!"

"So," Nabiki asked after a few more seconds elapsed in

which nobody did anything, "Are we going in there or not?"

"Just be patient, Nabiki-chan," Ranma said, "It takes a

minute for him to..."

"Master Ranma! Mistress Akane!" said a little man

wearing the clothing of a Ninja, who dropped out from

concealment among the vines covering the walls of the estate,

"You were not expected! It is...very good to see you..."

"Tell Kuno we've come to talk, Sasuke," Ranma said,

then hesitated before saying, "Is Kodachi...?"

"The Mistress is in residence," Sasuke bowed even lower

as he said this, and seemed to shudder slightly, "She will see you

when and if it is pleasing."

"Good," Ranma said, squaring his shoulders as if bracing

himself for more than simple combat. Nabiki looked at him

curiously, then decided she very much wanted the chance to meet

this Kodachi person that could so affect her iinazuke.

The compound gates swung open almost silently as

Sasuke withdrew, disappearing into the vines from whence he

had appeared. Akane and Ranma started forward, Nabiki falling

into step between them. They got only ten paces, however, before

Nabiki's well-honed Combat senses warned her of an impending

attack.

"Tendo Nabiki-PREPARE TO DIE!"

Nabiki reflexively brought her hands up and caught the

tip of the shinai that had been descending upon her, stopping in

mid-motion the black haired girl in the leotard who clutched the

other end, bobbing slightly as her feet failed to touch the ground.

Nabiki heaved the bamboo practice sword upwards and threw the

girl over her head, like cracking a bullwhip. The other girl

merely tumbled in mid-air and landed gracefully, pirouetting in

place as she turned a seductive look their way, clutching a black

rose between her teeth and somehow doing it while smiling.

She took the rose from her lips and tossed it at Nabiki,

who easily caught it despite the speed with which it had been

thrown. Something in the girls mannerism very much reminded

her of Kuno Tatewaki, leaving no doubt in her mind that this girl

was his notorious sister.

"You are indeed formidable," she smiled, "I take it you

are the new girl to whom my idiot brother has taken a fancy?"

"Kodachi," Akane growled in exasperation, "Is that any

way to greet people for the first time? This is my older sister,

Tendo Nabiki."

"Tendo Nabiki," Kodachi studied her the way a cat might

study its prospective prey, and something about that made Nabiki

cringe a little, though she knew it was just an impression, "You

are a very pretty young thing, for a Peasant. I understand that

you possess some skill as a fighter?"

"I know a few things," Nabiki replied, "They call you

Black Rose Kodachi, am I right?"

"The very same," Kodachi's smile deepened, then she

bowed in an Occidental manner rather than traditional Japanese,

one hand extended for added flourish, "Captain of Saint Hebereke

School for Young Girls Rhythmic Gymnastics Martial Arts team,

at your service."

No doubt about it, Nabiki decided, this girl and the other

Kuno were definitely related!

"Tendo Nabiki," she bowed more traditionally, rather than

copy Kodachi's Western-style manners, then when she

straightened up she said, "Rhythmic Gymnastics Martial Arts?"

"My specialty," Kodachi grinned, producing a long pink

ribbon on the end of a stick, which she proceeded to twirl about

her like a coiling serpent, somehow producing a flurry of black

rose petals as she spun it near hypnotically. She leaped into the

air and gave the most peculiar laugh Nabiki had ever heard,

"HOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOH!" then alighted in the

tree she snagged with the end of her Ribbon, having swung up as

though doing an impersonation of a female Tarzan.

"Kodachi," Ranma sighed as he watched her scamper up

the branches and vault to another tree, which made Nabiki look

at him somewhat irritably. Was this the type of girl Ranma was

interested in? If so it did not say very much that was good about

him...

"This way, Master Ranma, Mistresses Tendo," Sasuke

said as he appeared once again, "Master Kuno will see you out in

back where he is practicing his technique. He seems very eager

to see all three of you at once."

"Not a good sign," Akane grumbled to herself, "And I

really wanted to talk with Kodachi..."

They found Kuno standing solemnly as he regarded a pair

of practice dummies set up amid a very expensive looking

garden. Kuno did not acknowledge them, so intent as he was

upon his prospective targets, one of which had a black wig and

was dressed in a school uniform, the other one having a brown

wig with a pony tail and wearing a red Chinese-style set of

clothing.

Nabiki reflexively studied Kuno's posture, his body

position, the set and erect way that he stood with wooden sword

raised, like a Samurai about to charge a mortal enemy in combat.

She could sense the power, self-control and intense focus of his

will as he summoned his Ki energy in preparation of his attack.

He seemed in perfect control of every aspect of his being, at least

so far as could be determined on the surface. His style was

flawless, lacking even a trace of hesitation or weakness, so

relaxed and ready that hardly a hair seemed out of place. He

almost seemed to merge with his environment, becoming one

with nature in the instant before he launched into action.

Thap-thap! Like a blurring wind he struck, two swift

strikes perfectly times, landing well beyond his targets and

remaining motionless, his blade held at the ready as he crouched

low, not moving. Very slowly he stood up again, not even

bothering to turn around until both dummies began to collapse,

each teetering over, sliced through at diagonal angles.

Kuno registered not a trace of emotion as he surveyed his

own handiwork, but then he spotted his audience and at once his

face beamed broadly in triumph.

"Ah, Saotome! The fair sisters Tendo! So good of you to

stop by to witness my little performance."

"Look Kuno," Ranma began, having practiced his speech

for the better part of the week that he and Nabiki had been in

practice for this occasion.

Kuno raised one hand and said, "Know, Saotome, that I

have decided to overlook your little breach of etiquette and will

forgive you for your transgressions against me. A noble warrior

must have the heart of a lion and the mercy of an eagle."

"Huh?" Ranma said, taken entirely back by that

statement, "You do?"

"Something has been gnawing at my conscience for the

better part of a week while you seem to have been avoiding me,

which is most unlike you," Kuno replied, "You are many things,

Saotome Ranma, but I could never believe you to be a base

coward. You would have surely faced me again, no matter the

consequences of a rematch, unless some other force was

influencing your decisions. Therefore I have determined that the

true party of deception in all of this was that base pretender

claiming to defend yon Tendo Nabiki's tender virtue, the foul

enchanter who calls himself Tendo Kaneda!"

"Kaneda?" Ranma blinked, unable to quite get his mind

around this turn around in the behavior of his friend.

"I had my faithful Sasuke do a background search for

knowledge of the members of the Tendo Household," Kuno

elaborated, "There is indeed one named Tendo Kaneda registered

in the city of Kyoto, but as near as can be determined he yet lives

there to this day, and his photograph does not match that of the

fellow who has been imposing himself in our affairs. I at once

suspected foul deception, and have discovered through

contemplation over this issue that the one named Kaneda is some

kind of base magician."

"Magician?" Nabiki asked, exchanging puzzled looks

with Akane.

"How else to explain his mysterious ability to come and

disappear like the wind?" Kuno replied, "He always thrusts

himself unexpectedly to challenge me, and the ease with which I

have been disarmed implies that no natural art was employed to

this end. Only a foul Enchanter of the blackest order could

overcome the great Tatewaki Kuno with so little effort! That he

only seems to appear when one of you is involved in some

manner suggests that he has an interest in you three, which leads

me to suspect that his enchantment is great and has ensnared you

all in his evil power."

"That's the lamest excuse for a..." Akane started to

protest, but Nabiki motioned her silence. She was studying Kuno

more carefully, trying to decide if the man were as crazy as he

sounded, or was there some form of twisted genius to his self-

delusion.

Ranma was just staring without commentary as Kuno

rambled on, "Oh, I know how hard it must be in this modern day

and age of science to credit the workings of such unnatural things

as Sorcery and Magic. Who could believe in the power of Spells

and Curses in this age of technological wonders? Yet I assure

you that there are indeed things within the Heavens and Earth

that are beyond mortal comprehension. Do not take lightly my

warning, I firmly do believe that this Kaneda is like some demon

from the darkest pit of the Netherworld come to claim such

innocent souls as may be tempted by his influence."

"What?" Nabiki sniffed, "You mean like Urotsukidoji?

Hey, Ranma-kun, do you think Kaneda would sport tentacles and

molest innocent young virgins?"

"Hah?" Ranma blinked, and Nabiki was unable to tell if

he was shy or just did not get the reference.

"Fear not, my friends," Kuno said as he approached them,

laying a comradely hand upon the shoulder of the still confused

Ranma, "Your fate is not yet sealed, not while I yet draw breath.

Know, friend Ranma, beauteous Akane, virtuous Nabiki, that you

still have a champion in Kuno Tatewaki. I will persevere until I

have unmasked this coward and brought him low, and then I will

force the fiend to free you of your ensnarement. Until then I will

not contest the arrangement of your parents. You may remain

iinazuke, if only to protect Nabiki-chan from any base

accusations that may be spuriously laid against her for having

acknowledged such an Oni for her Cousin. It will also server to

discourage other misguided youths from attempting to court her

until I can step forward to assert my claim. Therefore, until this

matter is resolved, I have decided to call off the morning

courtship ritual since Kaneda seems willing to use even that to

further his deceptions."

"Wha...why you arrogant, conceited, pompous-

MMPPHH!" Akane was about elaborate when Nabiki clamped a

hand over her mouth, smiling pleasantly as she said, "Kuno-baby,

you are one in ten million."

"This I most sadly know," Kuno smiled as he turned

away, holding up a rose that he must have been hiding under his

jacket, then he sniffed it, "'Tis a burden I must labor under, being

kind and virtuous, but that is the lot of a true born hero. In truth I

have missed the company of Saotome Ranma, who can be quite

amusing in odd ways, in spite of his lowly origins..."

"I..." Ranma was torn between feeling gratitude for Kuno

and wanting to bash his head in, but Nabiki's hand on his

shoulder restrained him from saying anything. In a way he was

glad Kuno was willing to call off their feud, but at the same time

he felt dissatisfaction at letting the matter drop the way it had.

He still owed Kuno a pounding for humiliating him in front of the

entire schoolyard.

"Well then," Nabiki said smoothly, "If we're all friends

here, maybe you wouldn't mind showing me around the place,

Tatewaki-kun. It looks pretty impressive, and I'd bet we'd get

lost without a tour guide."

"Indeed, the dimensions of the Kuno estate are boundless

and vast," Kuno replied as he turned to her and threw the rose her

way, only to frown slightly when it was intercepted by Ranma.

"You're not kidding," Akane sniffed, still looking sourly

at Kuno, "I've gotten lost here a couple of time myself, and that

was with Kodachi!"

"My twisted sister has her strange concept of

amusement," Kuno noted, "Playing games with you like that is

her way of delaying the time you two must spend together. I

know, however, that she does deeply value your friendship. You

are the only girl she knows who is not afraid of her little...

eccentricities."

"You mean the potions and the plants and that Crocodile

she calls Mister Turtle?" Akane sniffed, "Yeah, well, we all have

some quirks."

"It means a great deal to her that you spend such time

coaching her away from the dark corners that eat at her heart and

soul," Kuno replied, "Perhaps she will be able to use her arts to

assist you in overcoming the field who would use base means to

win your affections."

"Yeah, whatever," Akane growled, looking as if she, too,

were debating whether or not to pound him.

Just then the sound of something being pounded

reverberated across the gardens, and Kuno himself looked up in

annoyance before saying, "Sasuke?"

"Yes, Master Kuno?" the man said as he appeared from

concealment.

"Go see what is making that infernal racket," Kuno

commanded as the pounding grew louder.

"At once, Master Kuno," the little man replied, when the

task became greatly simplified as the wall behind him suddenly

exploded outward. One fragment struck Sasuke in the back of

the head and knocked him out cold. Other fragments and dust

flew in all directions before clearing enough to reveal a large hole

that had been created in the brickwork.

A figure appeared in that gap, that of a lovely redheaded

woman with leg raised in kickboxing fashion. She retracted that

shapely leg and assumed an easy stance before stepping into full

view through the entrance she had just made. Her friendly smile

belied her appearance as she scanned everyone in the garden

before turning and saying, "Hello, Nabiki-chan. Long time no

see."

"Keiko-san?" Nabiki whispered, then swallowed, making

both Ranma and Akane look at her in surprise, "What are you

doing here?"

"I'm hurt," the girl named Keiko replied, "Don't you

remember? It's exactly one year to the day. I issued a challenge,

now I'm here to reclaim my title."

"Title?" Akane asked, looking at the stranger.

"Whoever you are," Kuno said as he raised his sword in a

threatening manner, "You have invaded my sanctum, destroyed

property and have injured a faithful manservant. I must ask you

to leave now or face the wrath of Kuno Tatewaki, the Blue

Thunder of Furinkan High School!"

"Charmed," the redhead smiled, bowing to him before

assuming a formal crouch, "Arigami Keiko, at your service,

Kickboxing Champion of the Muy Tai, Junior Division, three

seasons running, and I'm here for my rematch against the woman

who stole it from me."

"Muy Tai?" Ranma turned a questioning look to Nabiki,

"You studied Kickboxing?"

"Only for a season," Nabiki replied with a nervous shrug,

"It was during my Hong Kong phase, and I needed to raise some

capital in a hurry."

"Hope it was worth it," Keiko replied, bobbing up and

down with her arms raised as she hopped from one foot to the

other, circling as Kuno prepared to charge her, "Because it's time

for a little payback!"

"You are fair to look upon, and your Japanese is

excellent," Kuno remarked evenly without a trace of emotion,

"Perhaps if the fates are kind I will spare your life that I might

date with you on some other occasion."

"Thanks, but you're not my type," Keiko smiled, then as

Kuno came on in a rush she stopped moving around and held her

ground. Her leg shot out with the speed of a striking cobra and

met the bokken mid-way. Hard rosewood snapped like kindling

as Kuno staggered beyond her, clutching only a stump of his

weapon.

Kuno slowly turned around to look at her, then collapsed,

his face bearing the clear mark of one of Keiko's footprints. She

smiled as she turned away and said, "He'll be all right, just have

one nasty little old headache. Now, where were we before Lord

Running Mouth tried interrupting?"

"She's good," Akane said tonelessly.

"You don't know the half of it," Nabiki remarked, actually

sounding nervous.

"Hey you!" Ranma declared, "I know he can be a real jerk

sometimes, but that's my best friend you just pounded!"

"Maybe you should reconsider your choice in friends,"

Keiko smiled as she casually strode up to them and looked

Ranma over, "So...you're the guy Nabiki's got engaged to. Not

bad, I suppose, if you're into dating younger men."

"Hey!" Ranma started to protest when the telltale hiss of

a ribbon sliced the air and Keiko suddenly dodged to the right,

snatching one end as it tried to strike her.

"You!" Kodachi cried as she charged from the house at a

full gait, wielding a spiked club in both hands, "You hurt my

brother! DIE!"

"Protective sort, aren't you?" Keiko smiled as she allowed

Kodachi to get close to her, then knocked the weapon out of her

hand and spun Kodachi around, catching her by both wrists from

behind and twisting both arms with enough force to drive

Kodachi to her knees as Keiko stood directly behind her.

"Not too bad," Keiko noted, "You've got classy looks, but

something tells me you're even more trouble than your poetry-

spouting brother."

"Unhand me you-Peasant!" Kodachi protested.

"All right, if that's what you want, fine by me," Keiko

smiled, and then the palm of one hand struck Kodachi at the base

of the neck and she collapsed into dreamland, the same as her

brother.

"Kodachi!" Ranma cried, "Hey you-!"

"Want to try your luck with me, sport?" Keiko asked with

a cocky tilt of her head, "You look like you'd be fun for a tumble,

though that's probably more Nabiki's thing than with me."

"I-I..." Ranma hesitated, fists clenched, body shaking, but

slowly he subsided, "I don't hit women..."

"Baka," Akane softly whispered.

"Too bad," Keiko smiled, "I'm not exactly fragile."

"Keiko-san," Nabiki said more firmly than before, "If

you're fight is with me, don't take it out on poor Ranma-kun."

"Then you promise not to run away this time?" Keiko

asked.

"I didn't run away from you last time," Nabiki responded.

"No," Keiko said with an odd tone in her voice and an

even more curious expression, "But you have been avoiding me.

I followed you into Mainland China, but you and the old man

skipped out on my last challenge."

"I wasn't avoiding you!" Nabiki protested, "I had...several

other people on my tail. What, do you think you've got an

exclusive claim against me or something?"

"Maybe not," Keiko said as she assumed a fighting

crouch, "But that's about to change."

Nabiki sighed, "Ranma, Akane, don't get in our way.

This is between Arigami-san and me, some of the unfinished

business I thought I'd left behind in China."

"I'll say it is," Keiko sniffed, "Bet you haven't even told

your boyfriend over there about what really went on in China.

Even I don't have the full entire story."

"And that's just how it's going to remain," Nabiki said as

she circled around and put some distance between herself,

Ranma and Akane, "But I can't believe you followed me all this

way just to issue another challenge."

"Hey, you think it was easy for a girl to win a Muy Tai title

in that place?" Keiko asked, slowly bouncing on her feet like

before, "I've trained most of my life to be this good, and you took

it all away in an instant. Worse than that, you stole something

else that belongs to me, something that means more to me than

all the pain, suffering and humiliation I've had to endure trying to

get it back!"

"What?" Nabiki blinked, maintaining her defensive

posture as she slowly circled around Keiko, searching for an

opening, "Look, if it's about the money..."

"What money?" Keiko scoffed, "You think I'm as

obsessed as you with material possessions? No, you dummy, I'm

talking about my HEART!"

"NANI?" both Ranma and Akane said together.

Nabiki winced, then sighed, "This is just terrific..."

Continued.

Comments/Criticism/Hate Mail, Lewd Suggestions?:

shadowmane

Next time I set the grounds for the reintroduction of Ryoga!

Nabiki 1/2

Chapter 4, Part 2.

By

Jim Robert Bader

(Inspired by the works of

Rumiko Takahashi; all rights

Belong to her/ her publishers

And the distributors of

The Ranma 1/2 Series)

(Also inspired by the Altered Destinies Series

Created by Wade Tritschler and Others;

Some Characters were created by me, but most belong

In the shared universe we have created,

So please don't sue me)

"Nani?" Ranma repeated again, looking from Nabiki to

this new challenger who called herself Arigami Keiko.

"Just great," Nabiki shook her head sadly, "Why don't you

get your own PA system and blab it all over Nerima?"

"I take it lover-boy over there didn't know you were a

switch hitter?" Keiko asked as she continued to circle around,

trying to find some opening in Nabiki's defenses, which proved

as challenging as finding the proverbial needle in a haystack.

"I'd rather you'd let me tell him about that on my own,

thank you very much," Nabiki replied as she moved in counter

rotation to the kickboxer, keeping Keiko marginally off balance.

Unlike with Kuno, however, she was not about to underestimate

her opponent, knowing full well how dangerous Keiko could be

should she make contact.

In spite of having a flashy and flamboyant mannerism,

Keiko was a serious challenger, not a talented buffoon like Kuno.

Their fight had been an epic struggle, but they had wound up

friends in the end. It had never dawned on her that Keiko would

follow her all this way, but considering how close they had so

briefly been, she supposed it was inevitable. The point now was

not to lose her control at Keiko's obvious taunting, or let her

emotions take control of her, even though her mind could not

stray far from the fact that Ranma was looking at her in a

different light and obviously had questions.

Keiko made a feint, but Nabiki refused to take the bait

and waited a half-second before launching a counter-attack.

Keiko staggered back, obviously not anticipating that maneuver,

and Nabiki pressed her advantage, going instantly on the

offensive. Keiko recovered, but only after deflecting a number of

rapid kicks and punches that drove her back away from the

House, not to mention Ranma and Akane, who continued

watching this exchange with open amazement, barely able to

follow some of the maneuvers and exchanges.

Of course Keiko had a few surprises in store for her

opponent, having obviously come prepared to meet a serious

challenge. She raised one knee and stomped her right foot down

hard, then followed with her left foot, grounding herself in a firm

stance and brought her hands out to both sides, assuming a

posture Nabiki had never seen her use before, but one that

radiated power. Keiko clapped her hands together once, then

projected both fists outward, and only then prepared for a new

offensive.

When her attack came it was virtually without warning.

Keiko seemed to just explode outward with an energy and vitality

that almost caught Nabiki napping. A single kick penetrated her

guard and sent Nabiki flying fifteen meters backwards, but before

she could land Keiko was on her again with a second powerful

strike. The combination was devastating, and had Nabiki been in

less good condition she might not have been able to roll with the

second attack and had the agility to recover and spring to the

side, avoiding Keiko's reach long enough to regain her strength

and bearings.

"What is that?" Akane asked as she and Ranma followed

the battling pair, trying to keep up with these exchanges.

"I don't know," Ranma said, "Muy Tai's not my specialty,

but I remember reading somewhere that it involves a lot of kicks

and blows, and that fighters often train in bone-breaking

maneuvers."

Nabiki was very much aware by this point that she was

outclassed in terms of raw physical power. Keiko had clearly

improved a lot in the space of a year, and she even had some

suspicions concerning just where Keiko had picked up some of

her training.

The most important thing of all, however, was that she

recognized the nature of Keiko's new fighting style, which gave

her an idea how to formulate for an effective counter. Therefore when

Keiko attacked again she was ready to bend with the attack,

absorbing and flowing around it, coming around behind Keiko as

though the latter were a vaulting pole, and once Nabiki's feet

touched ground she used the advantage of her position to lift

Keiko off the ground and hurl her to one side, turning the tables

with her own momentum.

"Megami-sama," Akane breathed, "Even you couldn't

duplicate that feat, Ranma."

Ranma's mouth fell open. As much as he might want to

deny it, the complexity of the feat he had just witnessed

surpassed his own skill level, which was a very hard thing for his

ego. As humiliating as it was, however, Akane's unintentional

slight made him flinch inside and square his shoulders with

determination.

Nabiki's upset of Keiko's strategy appeared to shake the

Kickboxer's confidence somewhat, because while she did regain

her footing and renewed her attack, it was not with the same

unmistakable confidence of before, a fact that worked to Nabiki's

advantage as she drew Keiko along through the garden, trading

punches and kicks while each grabbed up objects in their path

and used them against one another.

It started with the branch of a tree that Nabiki ducked

behind, Keiko shattering it loose before Nabiki could use it to

vault into the higher branches. Keiko grabbed up the branch and

started swinging it like a club-leaves and all, forcing Nabiki to

dart back not so much from fear of the blow as possible

entanglement. She was quick to vault over the next swing,

however, and kicked Keiko back with great force, only to have

her leg grabbed and twisted so that the two of them went

tumbling together.

Nabiki landed beside a rake, and without thinking twice

about it she snatched this up and converted it into a weighted

staff to hold Keiko off long enough to back up towards the edge

of the garden. Keiko broke the rake with a single kick, but

Nabiki employed the two pieces as she sidestepped the next rush

and used them to propel Keiko forward. Keiko rolled back to her

feet, but now Nabiki had her right where she wanted her and

planted a solid sidekick that picked Keiko up and threw her over

a row of hedges. There was a loud splash as Keiko disappeared

on the other side, which meant only one thing, to Nabiki's

chagrin and some small satisfaction.

"The swimming pool!" Akane cried, "You've got her now,

Oneechan! She can't get away too quickly!"

"I just hope the water cools her off," Ranma noted as he

and Akane started to take the long way around, while Nabiki just

vaulted over the hedge, ready to continue the fight should Keiko

not be satisfied in the matter.

To Nabiki's considerable surprise, once she landed on the

other side, she did not find Keiko waiting for her, though the

Olympic-sized pool was vibrating with clear evidence that a body

had just fallen into the water. She cautiously approached the

edge, wondering if Keiko were submerged, but instead what she

saw surprised her greatly as a pair of boxer shorts and tank top

were drifting down to the bottom. Keiko's padded gloves and

footpads were floating on the surface, there simply was no

evidence of the woman herself. This greatly puzzled Nabiki, who

doubted that Keiko would deliberately run around nude, no

matter what other libertine values she possessed in such

abundance.

And then the realization hit her: Keiko had been to China.

Oh no...then that could mean only one thing...

A sudden squawk from behind caught her off guard, and

she turned just in time to see a dark shape swooping towards her,

catching Nabiki totally unawares and causing her to fall into the

pool, turning male the instant she made contact.

She sputtered as she broke water, floundering helplessly

only a short distance from where she had landed. She looked

around for her assailant, half fearing another attack, but instead

came face-to-beak with a very ugly looking bird face. It stared

down at her in what could almost be termed as puzzlement, but

took no further hostile action as the two of them remained

relatively motionless, until Akane and Ranma's arrival.

"Nani?" Akane asked as she came to a halt, staring at the

ugly looking bird, which Nabiki now belatedly recognized as a

Vulture, "Is that one of Kodachi's pets?"

"I wouldn't know," Ranma replied, "She never lets me

into her Greenhouse."

"Ah," Nabiki said cautiously as she edged towards the

nearby stepladder and pulled herself out of the pool, "I think I

know where this bird came from..."

"Where is Keiko?" Akane asked, "Did she take off so

soon?"

"Yeah," Ranma said, "I thought she wanted to beat you

up or something."

"Well," Nabiki hesitated. She was far from the most

tradition-bound student of the Martial Arts, but she had been

taught the code of Budo by Genma, which held that a warrior

should always respect her opponents and not give away their

weaknesses unless compelled to by circumstance. She decided

that this was not the place to get suddenly scrupulous, however,

so she just pointed to the Vulture, half expecting Keiko to take a

bite out of her finger.

Ranma and Akane slowly looked at the Vulture, who

looked back at them with an expression that could probably only

have been read by another Vulture. Then Ranma pointed at the

bird himself and said, "That...?"

"She said she followed me into China," Nabiki looked

down at the bird with some exasperation, "I guess you meant to

tell me that you also happened by Jusenkyo?"

The Vulture lowered its head and seemed almost to

imitate the human equivalent of a sheepish expression.

"Oboy," Ranma replied, then hesitated before asking, "So

what are we going to do about this?"

"What else can we do?" Nabiki sighed, "Take her home

and heat up some water..."

"Thanks a lot, Kasumi-san," Keiko smiled as she toweled

herself off, having once again donned her shorts and tank-top,

which Ranma had fished out of the pool with a long net, "Glad to

see that there's no hard feelings, Nabiki-chan. That was a very

good fight. You've improved a lot, but for a few moments there I

almost thought I had you."

"Glad you're satisfied," Nabiki replied, "But if I were you

I'd take my time before I'd show my face again around the Kuno

mansion."

"Oh, those two were no problem," Keiko said

dismissively, "They wouldn't last two minutes in the Muy Tai ring

we fought in. They looked too dependent on their silly weapons."

"Don't judge them too lightly," Nabiki warned, "Ranma

made that mistake once, and he's still smarting about it."

"I would have gotten even with Kuno if he hadn't gone

soft on me," Ranma snorted from where he sat, looking sullen

and less communicative than his usually cheerful, easy going

manner.

Keiko favored him with a wry look and said, "Wouldn't

mind seeing what you're like in action, Kid. Bet you've got some

moves Nabiki's never seen before."

"Keiko-san!" Nabiki snapped, then visibly colored.

Ranma looked puzzled, as if he did not get the reference,

but Akane smiled as she looked at him sidelong and said,

"You're such a Guy, Ranma..."

Keiko did not look the least bit ashamed of her behavior.

She just kept grinning at Nabiki, then casually said, "Oh, by the

way, I ran into an old friend of yours from another High School.

You remember Hibiki Ryoga? He was looking for you, like

always."

"Ryoga-kun?" Nabiki blinked her eyes, "Looking for me?

Why?"

"I expect he'll want to tell you himself," Keiko smiled

knowingly, "But I think it's safe to say that you made quite an

impression on him., not that it takes much to get on his good or

bad side."

"Well," Nabiki considered the point for a second, then

smiled, "I guess it really doesn't matter. I'll find out when I see

him. What I'd like to know is how you managed to find me. I

wasn't exactly leaving road markers."

"I just figured you'd come home to your roots sooner or

later," Keiko said, "You told me once that you had a family in

Nerima, and that they owned a dojo. Now I may have been

kicked a few too many times in the head, but my brains aren't

that scrambled."

"So," Ranma tried to sound almost disinterested as he

asked, "How long have you two known each other anyway?

Where did the two of you meet?"

"At another High School in the Kyoto province," Keiko

replied, "We attended the same classes for a semester, then her

Uncle pulled her out of school suddenly one day and I didn't see

her again until we ran into each other in Hong Kong. Matter of

fact, that was a pretty surprising coincidence, us both winding up

contending in the same Muy Tai arena."

"That was four years ago," Nabiki said, "I didn't know

about you going to China until we met in the arena. I still don't

understand why you ran away from home before High School."

"Like I told you then, a long story," Keiko said

dismissively, "The point is that I've finally managed to catch up

with you. I nearly did in Jusenkyo, where I'd heard you and your

Uncle were headed, but some crazy boy chasing a Panda knocked

me into that cursed spring when I got there. Know anybody who

might match that description?"

Nabiki, who was back in her real form, looked somewhat

nervous as she said, "I've no idea. Must have been a couple of

crazy locals."

"No doubt," Keiko smiled right at her, "I suppose I should

be upset with you or something, but I never could stay mad at

you, even when you stole my title. Actually it's not really all that

bad...I mean, my form isn't as bad as some of those Pools I've

heard legends about. For one thing I get to fly, and I can still

fight as a Vulture, just not quite the same way. The only problem

for me is having to find hot water with wings instead of hands,

and explaining what a naked girl is doing there when I find it.

Oh yeah, and having to constantly hunt down my belongings."

"Sounds like you've adapted," Ranma said, trying not to

sound impressed by the girl's perpetually cheerful attitude.

"Never saw any point in moping about stuff I can't do

anything about," Keiko shrugged, "Those villagers I visited first

told me that there was no known way to cure yourself of a

Jusenkyo curse, except maybe appeal to something they called

the Ancestor Stone, which was being guarded by an elder..."

"You've been to Joketsuzoku?" Nabiki asked in surprise,

then added, "Um...while you were there...you didn't start any

fights with the locals?"

"What do you take me for, some kind of idiot?" Keiko

sniffed, "I've heard the legends about that place, and I sure as hell

don't want any blood feuds with one of those Amazon maniacs..."

"Amazons?" Ranma repeated.

"Excuse me," Akane spoke up, "You're a very good

fighter, but where did you learn to fight in Chinese Muy Tai

style?"

"I've studied Kickboxing since I was a little girl," Keiko

replied, "My Dad taught me the basics before he went home to

the states. He and Mom never married, so, well...turns out I had

to use it a lot to defend myself growing up. Some kids my own

age thought I was some kind of national embarrassment or

something."

"So, how did the two of you get to be such good friends?"

Ranma asked, "Was it sparring?"

Nabiki winced slightly, hoping Keiko would not

elaborate, being already sensitive to the way Ranma had been

looking at her since Keiko's arrival.

Unfortunately the gods of Luck and Fortune were not

smiling on her that day, for this was Keiko she was sitting much

too close to, and in typical gregarious form the girl leaned over

and put an arm about her shoulder, grinning that knowing grin of

hers and saying, "Didn't she ever tell you? Nabiki-chan, you're

much too shy! She came to my rescue one time and fought of

some off my attackers. I could have taken them all, of course, but

she didn't know that at the time. That's when I asked her to join

the Kickboxing team of our school. We were competing for the

championships, and her Uncle thought it was a good idea to

broaden her training."

"So you studied Kickboxing too, Oneechan?" Akane

asked her.

"A little," Nabiki replied, "I've picked stuff up here or

there, anywhere I thought I could find something useful to use

against your Dad...I mean...to impress Uncle Saotome."

"Funny thing you running off like that after a new kid

came to our classroom," Keiko mused, "For a brief while there

we were paired up with a couple of guys, Ryoga was one...I think

the other guy was named Ukyo or something..."

"Ukyo?" Nabiki frowned, wondering why that name

struck a bell. She never forgot an acquaintance or a client, but if

they had not known each other very long, then why was the name

so familiar...?

"Yeah," Keiko smiled, "I hung around with him and

Ryoga-kun for a while, then I had to transfer to another school

and...stuff happened. I can't tell you the details, except that I

wound up a few weeks later in China."

"You ran away?" Akane asked her.

"Ah, not exactly..." Keiko hesitated.

"So you saw each other a year ago in that arena," Ranma

prodded, "What happened?"

"Nabiki won, of course," Keiko grinned, "It was ten-to-

one odds in my favor, so I guess she was better motivated. We

made up after our fight and spent the next few days in each

other's company. I helped show her the sights, then you left, and

I followed."

"Why?" Akane asked.

"Didn't have much reason to stick around," Keiko

shrugged, "I'd kind of worn out my welcome, so it seemed like a

good time to visit the rest of the mainland."

"I'm glad to see you finally got away from that pig,"

Nabiki said, "But I still don't see why you decided to look me up

like this. A private fight isn't going to restore your title."

"Maybe the title isn't what really matters to me," Keiko

said seriously, "You were the first girl-and the only fighter in my

weight class-who'd been able to knock me out of the ring, so I

knew you could give me the sort of challenge I need. Not too

many people I can compete with on level grounds these days. In

fact I'm kind of hoping you'll let me hang around and study with

you. This is a dojo, right? I'd like the chance to study with you

and your Uncle."

"You don't mean you plan to move in?" Nabiki asked,

more than slightly appalled at the notion.

"I wouldn't want to impose on you," Keiko assured her, "I

can sleep mostly anywhere, and I'm used to being outdoors.

Besides, if it gets too cold, I can always turn back into a Vulture.

You won't believe how insulated those feathers can be..."

"Why, we wouldn't have it that way," said Nodoka as she

came into the room carrying a tray that had tea, crackers and

cookies, "You can stay here for the night. My husband, Genma,

is going to be sleeping out in the dojo anyway..."

"What did he do now, Okasan?" Ranma asked her.

"Never you mind, dear," Nodoka said pleasantly, though

one would have been stretched to know if her smile was genuine

or not, "It's the least we can do for an old friend of Nabiki's."

"Ah," Nabiki started to sweat, looking at Keiko as if the

girl were going to fawn over her at any minute.

"Thank you very much, but the dojo would suit me

perfectly, Nodoka-sama," Keiko bowed to her, once more the

picture of feminine propriety, in spite of her scanty dress, "I'm

hoping to find more permanent lodgings, but if I can stay with

you for a while it would make life every so pleasant."

"It is our pleasure," Nodoka returned the bow, "Such a

nice girl like you must have had a very rough life to come

through so much and still retain such excellent manners."

"My mother taught me well," Keiko replied, "You remind

me a lot of her, lady. She could be so kind and thoughtful to

strangers."

All but unnoticed in her corner, Nabiki was sweating

bullets...

"Ranma!" Genma called out, finding his son perched in

the branches of one of the trees in the garden, "What are you

doing up there, boy? It's almost time for dinner!"

"I'll be down in another minute, Otosan," Ranma replied,

still staring up at the sky as if searching the clouds for some

reason or pattern.

"Ranma?" Genma looked at his son with a questioning

expression, "Something bothering you, son? If you want to talk

about it with your old man..."

"Not really," Ranma started to say, then checked himself

and said, "Otosan?"

"Yes son?"

"You know Nabiki, right?"

Genma sighed. That was a very loaded question!

"A little, boy," he replied evasively, "As well as anyone

could know her."

"Can you tell me why she acts so nervous around that

crazy girl, Arigami?"

Genma studied his son as he considered his answer, then

replied, "Keiko is a very unusual girl. I knew that when she and

Nabiki were friends, both very little and quite talented for their

age. She and Nabiki were...close for a time, but their parting was

sudden. Perhaps Keiko represents too many memories that your

iinazuke finds difficult to deal with."

"Iinazuke," Ranma repeated, sounding troubled, "I can't

understand her. One minute she's so nice and pretty, and then

she goes and talks about business as if it were another kind of

Martial Art. I still can't get over the fact that she made that bet

against me over a week ago, and now I find out she bet on herself

in that tourney..."

"It...wasn't exactly a tournament, Ranma," Genma

corrected, "Different rules applied. In point of fact, the game she

got involved in was nominally illegal."

"Illegal?" Ranma looked down at his father, "Why?"

"Kickboxing is a very much beloved sport in that part of

Asia, Ranma," Genma explained, "But the more traditional kind

is a bit less...restricted than the legal kinds that are approved by

the government. The kind of match those two fought in is a free-

form style that involves a lot of hard maneuvers that have been

known to cause permanent injuries, even death for the

contestants."

"You mean like Mortal Combat?" Ranma was visibly

appalled, "Why would Nabiki and Keiko fight a duel to the

death? I thought they liked each other!"

"It wasn't to the death, Ranma," Genma corrected, "It just

meant that sometimes...accidents have been known to happen.

The fight lasts until one or the other opponent is too bloody to

continue, or gets knocked out of the ring, or collapses. In their

case Nabiki won by a knock out."

"She knocked Keiko out?" Ranma asked.

"More like knocked her completely out of the ring,"

Genma replied, "It's one of the only times I think I've ever seen

Nabiki look worried about the fate of someone she had beaten.

The two made up very quickly after that and we collected our

winnings. Then...well, let's just say someone took exception to

us walking away with that kind of money and we...had to make a

point about it."

"How did you guys ever get mixed up in something as

dangerous as that?" Ranma wanted to know.

Genma lowered his head and replied, "I wish I could

explain it to you, son, but life on the road is not always as soft as

a futon. Sometimes you do things you can't be proud of after, but

staying alive is the foremost lesson of the Anything Goes school.

At least we've never caused harm to anyone who did not in some

way deserve it."

"I'm not sure if I want to know what all that means,"

Ranma said, then changed the subject, "Could you at least tell me

something about that Muy Tai system? It looked for a while as if

Nabiki was in trouble."

"She told me something about the fight," Genma nodded,

"According to Nabiki-chan, Keiko-san employed a special

technique called the Stone Foot Method. It works on the

principle of Earth, drawing Ki from the very elements to reinforce

one's stability and power. Apparently she has had a very good

teacher, one who has helped her to master this difficult technique.

Once Nabiki realized this, however, she switched to using the

Water technique, which is the natural counter of Stone. Stone

may last through time, but Water erodes it. Remember that

should you ever meet such an opponent."

"I guess...maybe Nabiki is pretty good," Ranma paused

before continuing, "Too good. I don't know if I'll ever be as good

as she is..."

Genma looked sharply up at his son, then kicked the base

of the tree, causing it to shake so hard that Ranma lost his

balance and tumbled out, barely managing to roll to his feet as he

landed, "What? What did you do that for?"

"Listen, boy!" Genma leaned over to Ranma with a very

angry expression, "Nabiki-chan is good, never mistake that! She

is quick and intelligent and learns everything that she can from

an opponent. She adapts quickly to challenges and can fight with

complete control over her emotions...but do not mistake me when

I saw that you can be every bit as good as she is! No son of mine

will ever admit that he is inferior to a woman, do you understand

me?"

"H-hai, father!" Ranma gasped, backed up to the tree,

visibly shaken by his father's stern demeanor.

Genma relaxed and sighed, "I know she can be a handful,

boy, but you can't let yourself become jealous of your own

iinazuke. Any time you start to doubt yourself you just remember

that you are a man, and as a man you have unlimited potential.

Your life is what you make of it in training, son, so you don't

have to let things get to you. You can always work them out by

improving your form and trying even harder. Nabiki will help

you if you let her...do not refuse her offer! It will make things

easier if you get used to training with her as your primary

sparring partner. In fact, now that she is here, Keiko-san might

also be of use in helping to train Akane."

"You don't really mean to let her stay, Otosan?" Ranma

asked, unsure of why the thought made him so uneasy.

"Where else is she going to go for now?" Genma asked

reasonably, "Besides, Nodoka likes her, and anything I can do to

make her happy can only improve life for the both of us. Besides,

it's not like it was forever."

"I guess you're right," Ranma replied, looking back

towards the House and finding his thoughts once more returning

to Nabiki, "I suppose I should go talk to her now."

Genma smiled, not needing to ask to whom Ranma was

referring, "It probably wouldn't hurt, but just in case...knock

first."

Ranma looked at the ground as he sighed once again, "I

just wish I understood her better."

"She's a woman, Ranma," Genma replied, "You're not

supposed to understand her..."

Continued.

Comments/Criticism/Japanese Cultural Corrections/Subpoenas?:

shadowmane

Nabiki 1/2

Chapter 4, Part 3.

By

Jim Robert Bader

(Based on the popular series by

Rumiko Takahashi)

Inspired by the writings of:

Wade Tritschler

Richard Lawson

James Jones

John Walter Biles

And many others

Standard Disclaimer:

Some Characters and situations were created by Me,

But the rest is NOT my creation

So please don't sue me!

Nabiki sighed as she looked over the pile of bills,

receipts, monthly estimates and a table of estimated earned

income that lay piled up on the desk before her. Things were

worse than she could even have imagined. The family was

earning a lot less than it generally spent, there was the monthly

cost for all the bricks and timber that got used up every month in

the course of regular practice, and the dojo was in double-

mortgage with next months payment only a few days off, and

plenty of threats of immanent closure.

Not that Auntie Nodoka had not tried to manage things in

a reasonable fashion, but the cost of daily expenses far

outweighed the estimated earning power of what Nodoka brought

in from that job she had taken with a local Hospital. If Soun

Tendo were still running the dojo it would have made sense to

keep things running as they had, but it appeared that her father

had lost all interest in teaching after the death of her mother.

What was the point in having a dojo if you were not going to take

in any students?

She stifled that thought, realizing how close she was

coming to blaming her father for the family's financial mess. No

one else was doing very much to help out, she noted with a bit of

resentment, even Kasumi confined her activities to the

Household. Ranma and Akane just went to school and hung

about with their friends, only occasionally getting a summer job

now and again when school time permitted, not that the stupid

rules concerning Students working on their off-time helped very

much. Between the food costs and the amount of building

materials they destroyed those two were working the Tendo

Household into the poor house!

She sighed, reminding herself that these two were just

kids and could hardly be blamed for a situation that was clearly

the fault of their elders. No one in the family seemed to have

much financial sense, except for Kasumi and Nodoka, and

between them it was a miracle that the dojo was even here for

Nabiki to find again, but this situation clearly demanded

someone take a firm hand at controlling the financial rudder. For

someone of Nabiki's considerable talents, it ought to be-at worst-

-a moderate challenge.

Maybe to start with she should offer a loan to her father to

cover the cost of the mortgage, her rates being considerably more

generous than the local bankers. No, wait! That might mean

having to reveal her true net worth, and she was not exactly

prepared to explain to Soun and Nodoka just how a seventeen

year old girl had managed to come across such a large sum of

money, let alone a Swiss Account that was set aside in her name

with some false credentials that gave her age as a year or two

older. No, better if she just paid the mortgage quietly and not tell

anyone about her sources. She'd just concoct some reasonable

balance figures to convince Aunt Nodoka that she'd found some

extra cash after balancing some figures, then quietly set about

getting the whole thing taken care of once she'd convinced her

Aunt and Father to let her handle the family finances.

The more she thought about it, the more certain she was

that they would have to reopen the dojo. It ought not to be too

much of a problem finding students in Nerima, what with the

reputation she and Ranma were gaining...

Ranma. She'd actually managed to go five minutes

without thinking about him, which was a considerable record.

She sighed and put her stylus pen down, then rubbed the sides of

her temples, thinking how much easier it was to balance financial

accounts than trying to keep any kind of account on their on-

again/off-again relationship. Since meeting him her personal life

had been one long emotional roller coaster.

It had not always been this way for her. There was a time

when the craziness that seemed to surround her life had not

gotten to her this way. The problem was that Ranma and she

were two very different people, whereas Ranma and Akane were

virtually the same, excluding gender. She was worldly and

pragmatic, he was idealistic and naive, even a bit provincial in an

annoyingly masculine way. He saw the world in terms of basic

right and wrong, while she had seen too much out of her young

life to define anything in such simplistic terms. She looked for

the bottom line, he looked to the example he could set for others.

He was a hero by definition, while she was a survivor.

And yet...he could be so insufferably charming in his

naive, idealistic little ways, and when he looked at her as though

considering her good points...she felt something there that had

been missing in her life. He was cute, even funny, and a damned

good martial artist. He didn't take his schoolwork quite as

seriously as he ought to and never thought beyond the point of

graduation. The only career goals he had were to excel at sports

and Martial Arts. If he thought at all about what he might be

doing in another few years it was probably to imagine himself as

one of those Martial Arts Movie Stars he idolized so much. He

needed someone with both feet planted firmly on the ground to

steer him towards his destiny, and Nabiki flattered herself to

think that she might be the one with the right set of talents.

Heck, she ought to be just right for any guy she set her

sights on, but in the first week of her arrival she had abandoned

her best prospect by turning down a chance to court Kuno

Tatewaki, who might have more than his share of faults but was

certainly the richest guy she was likely to find in Nerima. She

had deliberately turned her back on her goal to seduce a rich

millionaire for his money in favor of her father's ruinously

insidious notions about family honor and an arranged marriage to

a prospective money pit. She knew that she ought to seek

psychiatric counseling, yet somehow she could not bring herself

to regret her decision to actively pursue Ranma.

Well...pursue was a bit of an exaggeration. More like the

two of them would hang around together, occasionally talking to

each other like best friends, going over the few interests that they

actually had in common. Martial Arts was an obvious topic, but

lately Ranma had gotten somewhat resentful of the fact that

Nabiki knew more about fighting than he did. Genma had taken

charge of their training and now spent more time and hurled

more abuse Ranma's way, which Nabiki was sincerely pleased

about since it gave her more time for personal matters such as

reviewing the family fortune. Ranma was improving with a

speed that was incredible, but he was a long way from being in

her class. Nabiki could not stand having him feeling sorry about

himself on her account, but anything she did at this point would

most probably prick the stupid pride of his young male ego.

Things had only gotten worse with the introduction of

Arigami Keiko, Nabiki's sometime friend and oftime rival.

Keiko had wasted no time at all trying to strike up their

relationship, as if the intervening year were but a pause in her

own relentless pursuit of a relationship that blew hot and cold

with the seasons. Having her around complicated things mightily

as she represented a part of Nabiki's past that she did not want to

have to explain to her father. Worse was explaining it to Ranma,

who had some pretty typical male attitudes regarding the proper

roles of men and women in a sexual encounter.

Of course that was assuming Ranma could think about

sex without passing out. He seemed to do a lot of that any time

he accidentally caught a glimpse of Nabiki in some

compromising situation...

She smiled. Yes, Ranma could definitely be charming in

his naive little way. She just hoped he would not be too badly

freaked out if Keiko finally did spill the beans about what really

happened between them the night following their Muy Tai battle.

It was a very fond memory for her, and she would hate to spoil it

by allowing it to become a wedge between herself and Ranma.

Okay, change of subject. Now Nabiki turned her focus to

the problem of her two siblings.

Akane was even worse than Ranma in taking matters the

wrong way. She kept assuring Nabiki that she was not resentful

so often that it was plain that she did indeed resent her, even

while she seemed to cheer her sister on whenever Nabiki had to

demonstrate her superior talents. Kuno had been as good as his

word about calling off the morning onslaught, and Akane assured

her that she was grateful for that, but somehow she also seemed a

bit deflated that she was no longer the focus of every schoolboy

on the campus.

Unless you counted that camera-hungry worm,

Gosunkugi.

Kasumi, on the other hand...well, that was a problem for

which Nabiki lacked even a suitable definition.

It had taken her a few days to figure out why Kasumi kept

splashing her with water every time the opportunity arose, often

much to the embarrassment of an ambushed Nabiki. Every time

Kasumi would apologize she'd have a different kind of face from

her usual overly cheerful one, and her breathing would quicken

as she looked Nabiki over, not meeting her eyes but staring at

HIS body. It had been a rather awkward realization that Kasumi

could actually feel that sort of attraction to her own sister's cursed

form, but it did demonstrate once and for all that-appearance

aside-Kasumi was actually quite human.

The other problem in that regard was Doctor Ono Tofu,

whom Nabiki had finally deduced was the fellow who was most

interested in Kasumi, and yet who was so incredibly tongue-tied

in her presence that it was no wonder her sister was oblivious to

his interest.

Yes, indeed, a very tangled snarl of a domestic situation.

Even with all of her skills Nabiki rather doubted that she could

get this mess straightened up before graduating High School.

At the moment she was thinking this, she suddenly felt a

pair of arms go around her, and then the weight of a female body

draping itself over her was followed by a pair of soft lips pressed

against the side of her neck.

"What are you doing?" Keiko asked her in a sultry purr

that caused her warm breath to caress the hollow point of

Nabiki's shoulder.

"Uh..." Nabiki gasped, unprepared for the sudden shift in

her attention. "Nothing, but family business! Ah-um...aren't you

supposed to be helping Akane-chan with her lessons?"

"Not much point," Keiko said, "I'm way farther behind in

that stuff than she is. You know that the guys who kidnapped me

weren't exactly interested in me maintaining my grade point

average."

Nabiki knew that well. In point of fact, she had helped

Keiko escape from her captors when the two of them broke out

together from the Muy Tai arena. They had left a lot of bruised

and battered men behind, some of whom had considerable

influence with the local Chinese government. Amnesty

International might have been interested in the story that

proceeded this, but not the authorities currently in power back in

Hong Kong. Besides the Triads, there were a lot of less

influential Warlords who had set a price on both their pretty

heads, not to mention Genma's.

As hard as her own life had often been, Nabiki could not

conceive what it must have been like for Keiko, living in actual

slavery for three years, fighting her way to the top like some

Roman gladiator from one of those Western-style historical

movies. Men had paid a lot to see Keiko fighting for her life

against both men and other girls, slowly rising to the top in her

class and receiving more favorable (all right, make that less

unfavorable) conditions for her imprisonment. A gilded cage,

though, was still a cage, and Keiko had endured a lot worse than

simple mistreatment. In spite of appearances she was actually

quite frigid around men, and for very understandable reasons.

Of course she was openly interested in female

companionship, as she had amply demonstrated by giving her

savior a generous helping of her considerable affections...

Nabiki blushed, coming back to the present. As much as

she might have liked Keiko's companionship at other times, now

it was a very awkward topic that she did not want to bring up

where her father or anyone else would witness.

"Cut it out, Keiko-san," Nabiki finally sighed, shaking

her shoulders in an attempt to dislodge the kickboxer from her

efforts at securing a firm body-lock, "I can't be with you this

way...and if somebody sees us..."

"Your boyfriend will get to know the other side of you

that you've been hiding," Keiko teased, "How do you know he

won't find us intriguing? Most men would pay a lot of money to

see two hot babes like us doing it together..."

"Not here they won't!" Nabiki said firmly, and with more

of an edge of panic than she liked in her voice, "Keiko, please...I

like you, but we can't do this in my own House! I've just started

to build a life here, and you'll blow it for me..."

"Oh, pooh!" Keiko huffed as she released her, "You used

to be a lot more fun to hang around with. What happened to you,

Nabiki? Where's that cocky mercenary I fell in love with?"

"In love?" Nabiki gasped. This was worse than she had

imagined!

"Don't tell me you didn't guess?" now Keiko seemed

genuinely hurt, "I didn't just follow you because I wanted a

sparring partner. You were the most intriguing thing to ever

enter my life, and I knew I had to have you..."

"B-but..." Nabiki sputtered.

"I don't mind sharing you with another," Keiko said, "Just

as long as he doesn't resent me, or expect me to be his back-up

girlfriend. I'm only interested in you, though I have to admit your

iinazuke's got his charming points. If I went for guys, I'd

probably consider him an option."

"Ah, Keiko-chan," Nabiki said, then winced a bit as she

realized the slip she had just made, and that it might convey the

wrong sort of impression to Keiko, "Ranma's not the type of boy

who might consider sharing his iinazuke with anybody. He's

kind of old fashioned in an annoying sort of way..."

"So I noticed," Keiko smiled, "And he doesn't much like

me. When I'm human, that is. He seems to like me better in my

cursed form."

"Well...he's a guy, and guys do like pets," Nabiki began,

then winced once again when she considered what that sounded

like, "I'm pretty sure he doesn't actually dislike you, but he's

feeling bad because our little fight intimidated him somewhat.

He can't bring himself to fight girls, but he wants to test himself

against you."

"He seems willing enough to fight with you," Keiko

pointed out, "Or is that only because you do it in your guy form?

Guess the illusion helps, right?"

"Hai," Nabiki replied, realizing that there was a trace of

bitterness in her voice, and she sighed, feeling abjectly defeated.

"You like him a lot, I can see that," Keiko noted, "Funny

thing, he doesn't seem at all your type."

"I know," Nabiki admitted, "But I can't help myself

around him. I...I...I think I like him..."

It was Keiko's turn to sigh. In spite of her perpetual

cheerfulness, even she could have times when she seemed on the

verge of depression, "So I guess I'll just have to wait my turn and

see which way the wind blows. Hope you don't mind that I kind

of hope you come back to your senses and realize that with me

you can have all kinds of fun that you'll never have as a dreary

housewife."

"Who said anything about me turning into a housewife?"

Nabiki challenged.

"You think your iinazuke's going to settle for having you

earn a living, let alone practice beating him up every morning?"

Keiko asked with that lopsided smile of hers, "Now who's being

naive?"

"Ranma wouldn't do that to me," Nabiki said, "For one

thing, I wouldn't let him get away with it."

"You may not have a choice," Keiko replied, "This may

be the 20th-going-on-21st Century, but in a lot of ways things

haven't changed much from the bad old days of universal male

domination. Trust me on this, I found that out the hard way."

Nabiki swallowed, realizing that Keiko had merely voiced

one of her own doubts about the whole idea of marriage. Men in

Japanese society were largely brought up to expect a wife to be

docile and obedient, compliant with their every wish, little better

than domestic labor...like Kasumi! And that was only counting

the times when they weren't thinking with the part of their

anatomy that usually did all of the thinking...

But still Ranma did not seem to be in any way that sort of

typical male imperialist. Oh, he might consider himself innately

better than a woman, but that was largely for the sake of his ego.

Genma had that same attitude, but Nabiki had never had much

trouble twisting him around her little finger. Ranma was very

different from his father, however...he had integrity and courage.

He did not force himself on other people, and he was sincere in

seeking to console people who needed his protection. She could

not imagine him forcing others to do his bidding, simply did not

seem to have the kind of mean streak that took such pleasure

inflicting pain on those weaker than himself, and certainly not to

make himself feel better.

"I don't think that's going to be our problem," Nabiki said,

then hesitated before saying, "I want Ranma to feel good about

himself. I never wanted to trap him into an arranged marriage

with somebody he didn't like and couldn't respect, the way he

used to be trapped in his relationship with Akane..."

"No problem there," Keiko sighed, "The guy's definitely

interested in you. I've sounded him out and there's no question in

my mind that he really does like you."

"I...what?" Nabiki blinked, "Are you sure?"

"Positive," Keiko replied, then lifted her voice, "Or else why is

he eavesdropping on us right now when he thinks I can't see him

hiding around that corner?"

"Ulp!" came Ranma's tiny gasp, followed closely by the

sound of hasty footsteps retreating from the back porch towards

the dojo.

"Oh," Nabiki said, then in sudden panic she wondered

just how much Ranma had overheard of their conversation.

Keiko stretched out her long, heavily muscled legs and

rotated her feet, showing off their limberness as if seeking

Nabiki's reaction, then she smiled as she stood up and said,

"Well, that's enough freeloading for now. Think I'll go check out

what Akane-chan's doing with her homework. Hope she doesn't

ask too many questions about the way I'm reading stuff over her

shoulder.'

"If she does, what will you tell her?" Nabiki wondered.

"That I was kidnapped by pirates and sold into slavery at

the age of puberty," Keiko replied with a smirk, "What, did you

think I was going to make something up?"

"Just don't give her too many details," Nabiki warned,

"She doesn't know about...that. She's still at the age when she

thinks there's something unnatural about it. You know what

she's always saying about boys her own age."

"I know," Keiko cocked her head and considered the

point, "You think maybe she might actually be a...?"

"Don't try it," Nabiki said very evenly, making certain that

Keiko understood her feelings on the subject.

"Fair enough," Keiko shrugged, "Don't much fancy

robbing the cradle anyway, that's more your bag than with me.

Just remember to tell the truancy officers that I'm a lot older than

I look...I certainly feel it."

"I'll remember," Nabiki sighed, privately wondering if a

public education might not be wasted on someone like Keiko,

who was even more of a "live for the moment" sort than Ranma.

Keiko paused before making her grand exit, glancing over

her shoulder as she smiled, "Just for the record, I'm still after you,

but I won't push myself on you. If you ever feel like you need a

friend to talk to, though..."

"Right," Nabiki softly murmured, "I'll remember..."

"Ranma-kun?" said Soun as he found Ranma was back in

the dojo, kicking and punching at a wooden post, flexing his

arms against the pegs as though battling an imaginary opponent,

"Kasumi-chan said that you might be out here. It's almost time

for dinner."

"Thank you, Ojisama," Ranma replied as he continued to

batter his imaginary opponents, not even pausing for drawing

breath though he had been doing this for the last fifteen minutes.

"Ranma?" Soun asked the boy who was as much like a

son to him as if he were the offspring of his late wife, instead of

his friend Nodoka, "Are you feeling all right, son?"

"Never better."

Soun heaved a sigh. He knew Ranma well enough to

know when the boy was troubled. Soun realized that he had not

been much of a substitute father, but he had earned Ranma's

respect on occasion, so he decided it was long since time to play

the part of the concerned Uncle.

"So how are you and Nabiki-chan getting along?"

Ranma's swing was so far off balance that he actually

staggered and completely missed his target.

"Ah, just fine, Sir!" Ranma lamely stammered as he

recovered his bearings, but relented on further abuse of the

hardware, "Couldn't be better..."

"Ranma-kun," Soun said simply, "I know my daughter is

a handful, and she certainly makes quite an impression

everywhere she goes, but I know Nabiki is the right woman for

you. I can see it in her smile when she thinks you do not see her

stealing a glimpse in your direction."

"Ah..." Ranma's brain seemed to go into a fuse lock,

"Really?"

"Hai," Soun stared off into the distance, his mind drifting

over memories before he spoke again, "Do you know that my

marriage was also arranged? My wife and I never had any choice

about the matter. Our parents were most insistent..."

"You...?" Ranma looked at the man in surprise,

"Ojisama..."

"If I have seemed overly harsh in the past because I have

insisted that you marry one of my daughters, it is not because I

have no regard for your welfare," Soun replied, "And yet...I can

remember what it was like to be a young man with prospects, to

feel trapped and confined as though my wishes were of no great

importance. Our family has a very long and noble tradition

behind it...even...granted that we have our share of...demons in

the closet."

For some reason Soun shuddered slightly, then clapped

his hands together and made a gesture of prayer before

continuing his speech.

"In truth it took time for me to understand exactly what it

was I felt for my late wife," Soun continued, "Kimiko was such a

strange and fascinating creature, as delicate as a bird, yet with

such a strength as I had never before seen. I never felt worthy to

be around her, and I never truly confessed all of my feelings..."

He paused, clearly on the verge of one of his crying jags,

into which state he could slip at a moment's notice, but for once

he seemed to be fighting the urge, keeping his voice as steady

and level as could be expected, "I never told her that I loved her."

Ranma just stared, overcome with the sense that Soun

had made a confession that had eaten away at his soul for many

years. Clearly the effort cost Soun very deeply, yet he seemed to

think it was important enough to tell Ranma now, and out of

respect for the man who had helped to raise him and had given

him a roof over his head, Ranma kept his silence, waiting until

Soun could speak again without interrupting.

"One day all that you love can be taken away from you by

fate...Karma has little regard for what we would wish of our

existence. I lost my chance to tell Kimiko how much I

appreciated her for coming into my life. I hope and pray that you

will not make the same mistake with Nabiki. She deserves to

know how you feel, and I know you will never be happy unless

you are as certain about her feelings."

"Ojisama," Ranma whispered.

With great effort Soun forced himself to smile, then said,

"After all, the alternative could be to live like Genma and

Nodoka. Your parents love each other very much, when they are

not each driving the other to distraction."

"H-hai," Ranma found himself smiling in total agreement.

"Ranma," Soun was sober once again, "I know you must

wonder why it was that I allowed my daughter to be raised by

your father in your stead."

Ranma had indeed wondered, even though he knew the

standard explanation.

"There is something I have never revealed to you," Soun's

tone was solemn, "My wife's death affected all of us in very

different ways. I...lost a vital part of myself, my will to carry on.

I might have gone completely to pieces if not for your mother

coming to live with us to take care of you and the children.

Kasumi, on the other hand, was closest to her mother and felt her

death in ways that she has never been able to express. She

assumed the duties of a faithful daughter and has cared for me,

you and Akane in ways that I could not. I have always been

grateful to her for her sacrifice, but some day she will find a life

for herself, and I wish her all the happiness to which she is

entitled.

"Akane, on the other hand, took her mother's death very

badly. You wonder why she is often so angry and bitter? Why

did she press herself so hard to study Martial Arts? Why is she

resentful of men, such as you and me? And why was it so hard

for the two of you to be raised in the same house? Because, deep

down, she harbors some guilt and suspicion that her mother's

death was as much her fault as the Cancer."

"What?" Ranma blinked, "But...that's crazy!"

"It may not seem logical to us, Ranma," Soun replied,

"But to a six year old it made perfect sense. Losing her mother

made her feel vulnerable in ways you cannot imagine. She felt

that she had to learn how to defend herself, to be strong and

capable, to know how to take care of those she loves so that she

never has to lose them again. Her anger is based on guilt and

feelings of inadequacy, and I have come to see this in the way she

has started harboring such resentments to her sister as she once

reserved in your case."

"That doesn't make any sense at all," Ranma murmured,

"Nabiki loves her sister, she'd never try to hurt her..."

"The same way that she makes you feel less like a man?"

Soun said pointedly, causing Ranma to stop and stare at the

realization.

"I..." Ranma fumbled.

"There is no shame in meeting someone who is better

than you at the thing you most love doing," Soun informed him,

"Budo teaches us to respect the fact that all beings possess

qualities that make them exceptional and unique. Better to learn

from someone who has so much to teach you than to hold it

against them for being unusually gifted."

"H-hai," Ranma said, slowly coming to the realization of

what Soun was trying to tell him.

"Kokoru," Soun said simply, speaking the word for

harmonizing with nature, "Learn from your mistakes, my son.

Never repeat them. Now, something you have wished to know

concerning Nabiki and why I chose to let your father teach her:

the plain truth is that I feared doing an injustice to my middle

daughter. I was broken inside, unable to reach out and offer the

support I knew Nabiki needed from me. She was always so

bright and quick-witted, highly intelligent for her age, able to

grasp matters well beyond her tender years, but she was always

able to connect with her mother. Somehow Kimiko could make

Nabiki-chan smile like no other, and when she smiled...the entire

room filled with sunlight. And then her mother died and Nabiki

ceased smiling.

"She shut down emotionally, closing off her grief and

blocking her emotional center so that she could function on

intellect alone, not permitting herself to feel vulnerable. I

watched her draw into herself and feared that she might grow

into a remote and distant person with few friends and very few

prospects. She had already spent a year with your father and had

gotten accustomed to living in the Saotome House, but she had

counted on regular visits to her real home as if her mother were

the sun of her existence. With that tie gone I knew that she

would never be the same, so I told Genma that I wanted her to

learn to be happy again. I trusted my old friend to see that she

learned to balance herself both emotionally and intellectually. I

hoped maybe that having an understanding uncle could make an

acceptable substitute to an emotionally distraught and overly

protective father. Perhaps I was mistaken."

Soun sighed, then added, "Or perhaps not. Nabiki is not

quite what I had imagined she would be, but she is a daughter I

can feel proud of, and in her I have great hopes that the Anything

Goes School will be in capable hands, provided she marries a

husband who can appreciate her true worth and not try to contain

her. I have come to believe very firmly that you are that man who

can make her smile, Ranma. I trust you to know what is best,

and when the time is right I am certain you will make both your

parents and me very proud for the way that I have raised you."

"H-hai," Ranma said, then bowed his head and very

faintly said, "Domo Arigato, Ojisama."

Soun laid a hand on his shoulder and smiled at him with

almost fatherly affection, "Well, now, then that's enough time

away from your iinazuke. Go see Nabiki and talk about the

things that are bothering you so much. She may not always give

you a straight answer to a question, but she cares about your

opinions regarding her. I am sure there are many things she

would like to tell both of us but is afraid of how we may react to

such revelations. Try not to be too upset by new surprises. A

careless word can do more hurt than all the weapons we have

trained with in this dojo."

"Hai, Ojisama," Ranma said, taking a deep breath, "I

guess maybe I do owe Nabiki-chan that..."

"Excuse me...?" a voice asked from just outside the dojo,

"I'm...kind of lost, and I was wondering if either one of you could

offer me some directions on how to find the Tendo Dojo?"

"What?" Ranma gasped as he and Soun turned to see a

stranger standing just outside the sliding door, a boy about

Ranma's age and general build who wore a yellow shirt with

black pants held up by a belt, and leather boots that had been tied

to his feet by ropes. Oh yes, and he also had a yellow-and-black

tiger-stripped bandanna around his head, and a backpack slung

behind that cradled a bamboo umbrella.

"Excuse me?" asked Soun, "How did you get into my

garden?"

"I wish I could explain it," the boy sighed, "I was looking

for the front door and somehow I wound up back here. Could

you tell me where I am, sir?"

"This is the Tendo Dojo," Ranma replied, "Now who the

heck are you?"

The boy suddenly broke into a broad smile of relief, "At

last! I've finally got here! After all these months of

searching...can you tell me where I can find one Tendo Nabiki?"

"My daughter?" Soun blinked, "Are you a friend of hers?"

"A friend?" the boy suddenly blushed crimson and had a

goofy kind of smile, "I-I guess you could say that...we met a few

years ago, and I've been wanting to see her since I heard that she

came back to Japan..."

"Who," Ranma all but barked the word, "Are you?"

"My name is Hibiki Ryoga," the boy said, "And who

might you be? Nabiki's brother?"

Before Ranma could say anything he heard Nabiki's voice

say, "Ryoga-kun? Is that you?"

"Nabiki..." Ryoga's voice had a kind of lost-boy charm

that made him seem like a man on the verge of fainting from

happiness, then he reached behind himself and brought forth a

small bouquet of wild flowers, "I...I...wanted to give these to

you..."

"Ryoga-kun?" Nabiki said in surprise, not reaching out to

the flowers but staring at the boy in a way that conveyed as much

surprise as confusion.

That was the point where Ranma suddenly saw the color

red. Something exploded out from him, and without stopping to

think at all he launched an all-out attack upon Ryoga...

Continued.

Comments/Criticisms/Movie Rights: shadowmane

Finally got Ryoga in the picture. At the rate I'm going I'll

be lucky if I can even get around to Ukyo! Shampoo will be

enough to fill the rest of this projected story. At any rate, things

are shaping up as I finished this last chapter on a sudden burst of

creative inspiration. It's nearly 5 AM, now, so I'd better retire for

the night. Hope my creative juices are up to doing chapter ten

because things are starting to get wild after spending most of this

chapter angsting over the personal strife and emotional issues

that are affecting the central characters of this series. Hope you

don't mind my interpretation of same, and sorry if I have taken

any liberties with established Canon regarding Takahashi's

original vision. I came up with the name "Kimiko" because I do

not know if the real name was ever given for Soun Tendo's late

wife. I was inspired, in part, by other fan writers who had their

individual takes on what underlies the personal psyche of the

three Tendo daughters, who all seem affected in some way by the

absence of one parent and dysfunctional status of the other.

Note that being around Soun and Nodoka largely shapes

Ranma's personality here. (No, those two haven't been carrying

on a relationship, though it would be surprising if they hadn't

gotten used to being around each other in a domestic partnership,

however platonic) He's not quite the same arrogant jerk we may

be used to, but just because he finds it easier to apologize doesn't

mean he's all that different from other young men his age who

have trouble figuring out how to behave around women. The

Gods know that most of us are beset by that problem...even those

of us who never got around to dating in High School.

Next chapter will see some action as the Fit hits the Shan

when Ranma and Ryoga rumble! (Hey, not every fight can be

waged by Nabiki, no matter how much elsewise she may have

usurped Ranma's place in this chronology. Don't expect her to

play passive observer, though, no matter how sensitive she has

become to Ranma's feelings)

Sayonara.

If you wish to check out my other works, Please check out my

Fanfiction webpage at: . or

it's mirror site at: ~

All related chapters of this series can be found there along with my

other works.


	5. Chapter 5

Nabiki 1/2

Chapter 5, Part 1.

By

Jim Robert Bader

Inspired by the works of

Rumiko Takahashi

& Associates

(All rights reserved for

Publishers and Distributors)

Based on the ideas of

Wade Tritschler

And many others

(Standard Disclaimer:

This is a work of Fanfiction

With no intent at Copyright Violation

So please refrain from suing the author)

"Knock, knock."

Akane glanced up from her bed and said, "Come on in."

"I'd love to," Keiko grinned as she stepped into the room,

"But your sister might have some objections."

Akane looked puzzled for a half a second, then she

suddenly looked nervous.

"Hey, it's just a joke, you don't have to look at me that

way!" Keiko laughed a bit uneasily, "All right, so maybe I am a

bit...unconventional in my values, but I'd never force myself on

anyone, so unless I really do make you feel uncomfortable and

you'd like me to leave...?"

"I..." Akane tried to decide how best to deal with this

situation. On the one hand Keiko really DID make her feel

uncomfortable. Very uncomfortable! On the other hand...she

could not help being just a tiny bit...curious. Maybe more than a

little, though she would have belted anyone who suggested such

a thing, had anyone been rude enough to do so.

"How far have you come on your history?" Keiko asked

her, glancing at the page Akane was on and noting that she had

hardly made any progress since Keiko had left her bedroom,

"Still locked in the fourteenth century, I see, a pretty turbulent

period, if I remember right. Lots of killing and messiness with

lots of people following the Samurai code and generally being

very rude to one another."

"What is it between you and my big sister?" Akane asked

non-sequentially, that obviously being the thing that was

foremost in her thoughts.

Keiko smiled that annoying smile of hers and inclined her

head, "That's what's got you, has it? Surprised to find out your

Oneechan had a life before she came back to her nest egg? You

don't have to be shy around me about it...I've never had much use

for people who can't speak their own mind. Too damned many

people always avoiding saying what they really mean to say..."

"How can you come back here and do what you're doing

to her?" Akane asked, "Don't you care that you're causing

problems between her and Ranma?"

"Oho," Keiko nodded sagely, "I see that you care. Wasn't

he supposed to be your iinazuke before Nabiki showed up and

took him away from you?"

"She didn't take him from me!" Akane snapped, "I gave

her my blessings! I never wanted to marry that jerk in the first

place! It was just some dumb idea his father and my father had

about uniting our two families, and now Nabiki's stuck with him,

and good riddance!"

"My, you do sound jealous," Keiko raised both crimson

eyebrows, then grinned all the more, "You could always fight to

win him back, you know. You don't have to accept things as they

are..."

"Hah, you'd just like that, wouldn't you!" Akane sat up in

her bed, her dark eyes blazing, "Get Ranma away from Nabiki so

you'd have a clean playing field, well I..."

She caught herself. What was she talking about? Did

she seriously believe for one second that this girl and her sister...?

Keiko's smile was all the confirmation of her suspicion

that she needed, but the redheaded girl just continued to

insinuate, "Well, why not? Can't blame a girl for trying. After

all, I love your sister very much and wouldn't mind having her all

to herself, if Ranma-kun weren't in the picture."

Akane's mouth fell open. How could this girl be so

brazen about it? Akane would have died of embarrassment if

anyone had even suggested that she had an interest in another

woman. She just wasn't like that! Yet this girl was not just

admitting to being a Hentai, she was bragging about it!

"I've shocked you," Keiko said, no longer smiling, "I'm

sorry about that. I promised Nabiki-chan that I wouldn't expose

you to too much of my boorish behavior. I was raised to be better

than that, but four years of living by my wits doesn't exactly

allow a girl to cultivate proper ladylike behavior. I guess I can't

blame you for being offended. I'll leave if you want me to..."

"Ah..." Akane's anger deflated. There was just something

about Keiko's self-depreciating manner that made it very hard to

stay angry, "Just...how did you get to be this way? I mean, I don't

want to pry or anything..."

"You are a good little girl," Keiko smiled, and somehow

made it sound less condescending than Akane would have

believed possible, "I guess no one's ever felt like exposing you to

the dark and seamy side of life, and I'm envious as hell about it. I

never had much choice, unfortunately. Not my fault that I turned

out to be the girl no one feels like bringing home to mother."

She secured the door to Akane's room, then walked up to

stand in front of the mirror, removing her shirt, which made

Akane tense suddenly as if expecting something she might

otherwise not have expected. Then her tension melted into a one-

word exclamation, "Nani...?"

Keiko's back had pink stripes, largely faded scars and

other marks that implied harsh treatment. The long-healed welts

and angry looking stripes extended all the way to the rim of her

shorts, and probably a good deal farther down, had Keiko

exposed herself completely.

"Pirates," Keiko explained, "And later on slavers. I've

endured a lot of things I hope and pray you can't even imagine,

Akane-chan, and never have to again. I'm a proven survivor, but

survival of the body doesn't necessarily mean you get away intact.

I carry much deeper scars inside me than you can ever know, but

I'm not telling you this to gain your pity or anything like that. I

just want you to know...I've paid my dues, so I feel I'm entitled a

few favors."

She slipped her T-shirt back on, then turned around and

smiled, "Hey, life hasn't always been a bed of roses, but there's no

sense crying about it. I've learned to look at the bright side of

things, to take what pleasure I can out of life and not complain

about the bad things that happen."

"H-How?" Akane's voice shook. Never in her life had she

ever seen someone act so brave, having made such an admission.

Keiko paused, then glanced towards the window before

responding, "A few years ago, before I turned fourteen, my

mother and I were sailing with some friends on their yacht off the

coast of Okinawa. There was a storm coming, so we headed for

the nearest port and unfortunately got too close to the mainland,

and before we knew it we were boarded by Pirates."

"Pirates?" Akane repeated, almost disbelieving.

"Don't think there are any around in this day and age?"

Keiko smirked without humor, "Neither did I, but I found out the

hard way that outlaw bands still survive who pray on unwary

travelers and boat people. I don't know what happened to

everybody...especially not mother. Maybe she was luckier than

me..." her smile faded briefly, and there was sadness in her eyes

before she continued, "Good thing those guys thought I was

worth more to them alive than just for their amusement, because

they turned me over to their Chief, a lady Pirate named Lao

Kung, who took a fancy to me and decided to keep me."

"Keep you?" Akane asked faintly.

"As a pet," Keiko's smile was difficult to interpret, "For

her own personal amusement."

"Nani?" Akane faintly whispered.

"Turns out Lao Kung was a renegade Amazon, kicked out

of her tribe for some kind of scandalous behavior," Keiko noted,

"She was a rogue and a thief, a calculated killer and a lot of nasty

things I won't bother telling you about, but in a way I kind of

liked her, and when she found out that I was a Kickboxer she

took an interest in me for other reasons than just her amusement.

She taught me a lot of things, not the least was how to speak

Chinese, and something about the Amazon code, though she

wasn't much on traditions. We...got along pretty well for two

years...sort of a Master/Pet situation, but in the end she wound up

selling me to a rival for a favor."

"She sold you?" Akane could not believe that Keiko's tone

had no bitterness about describing such a tacit betrayal.

"Wasn't like she had a lot of choice in the matter," Keiko

shrugged, "I can't really blame her, though the pig she sold me to

was not the kind of guy I'd have wished on an enemy. Good

thing I'd already proven myself several times in the Muy Tai arena

or I'd probably have been in for a lot worse than I got. His name

was Chu Wan Phat, and if I ever see him again I'll be sure to

redecorate his insides."

Akane did not know what to say to that. She had been

angry many times, at Ranma, at Kuno, at the numerous idiots

who thought attacking her every morning was some kind of

courtship routine, but she had never in her life been mad enough

at anyone to consider actual murder. That Keiko could discuss it

with such casual bitterness implied a lot of things that she did not

even want to consider.

"Well, anyway," Keiko smiled, "Nabiki-chan helped me

get away from all that, and I'm grateful and everything, but that's

not the reason I want so much to be with her now. The fact is

that she means a lot to me, more than just an old friend I

happened to run into in very unusual circumstances. I won't lie

to you about it, I was hoping for a warmer greeting and I did not

anticipate this iinazuke business."

"Ah, you...did she...?" Akane stumbled.

This time Keiko's smile was neither cynical nor bitter,

"Have you ever been in love, Akane-chan? I mean really, truly in

love? The kind of love that just hits you between the eyes like

spinning back kick and knocks you senseless? Right after Nabiki

and Genma busted me out of that place, we took shelter in a little

used hut in one of the seedier quarters of town. Genma stood

watch, too scared to sleep and eager to get started on his journey.

Nabiki and I were left alone, and we just came together like a

couple of kids on their first date, laughing and hugging and

everything that two people might do who were just happy to still

be alive and able to do it. I took advantage of the opening and

seduced her, using techniques Madam Lao had taught me during

our time together, and the result for me was pure magic. I

actually saw Nabiki smile without once contemplating monetary

figures, and then she wept with happiness...I guess read too

much into that. The next morning I woke late and she was gone,

along with Genma. They left a note, and I spent the rest of the

day crying."

Akane breathed a very fervent, "Kami..." unable to fully

assimilate what Keiko had just revealed to her. There was so

much about this strange girl that went beyond her experience,

even more so than with Nabiki. What a contradiction in terms:

Polite and differential one minute, so brazen and outgoing the

next. She could not imagine anyone living such a life and still

managing somehow to remain so cheerful!

"Well, anyway," Keiko said tightly, "I got myself together

the next day, decided I'd better do something about my problems

and took the cash they'd left for me and used it to buy my way out

of Hong Kong. It wasn't easy following their trail, but I'd heard

Genma mention Jusenkyo, so that was good enough to use for a

reference. I almost caught up to them many months later when

they sort of surprised me and knocked me into that spring. Good

thing Madam Lao had told me something about the curse and

how to reverse it, but finding hot water without winding up as

someone's dinner proved a little more difficult than I would have

imagined. At least I was able to pick up their trail again, only a

few days old, and followed the path that led to the Amazon

village of Joketsuzoku."

"You keep saying Amazon," Akane asked, "I can't believe

a society of women warriors could exist outside of mythology!'

"Oh, they're real enough," Keiko replied, "The original

Amazons were a nomadic people who lived on the plains of

central Asia...Sythians, I believe they were called. Supposedly

they were descended from some people who lived along the

Black Sea near Europe and had a city called Themiscrya,

somewhere north of modern day Istanbul. Allegedly they were

forced into exile and fled east to escape barbarian invaders. The

branch I know about settled near the Cursed Springs because of

its remoteness and relative lack of strategic value to the overlords

of China. Some even say the Springs themselves were a vital

part of their defenses in the days before the first Emperor of

China, something about the ability for warriors to take on animal

shapes before going into battle, I suppose. Anyway, the

Amazons largely still survive because they worked out a deal

with the Communist government to remain nominally

independent, which is not the typical pattern in China. The

Amazon village is something of a little-known tourist attraction,

like Jusenkyo itself, and while they're not exactly crazy about

outsiders, they are very polite to people who don't make the

mistake of getting on their bad side."

"Are they just a society of women?" Akane asked, then

wondered how such a society could survive beyond a single

generation.

"Oh no," Keiko assured her, "They have men in their

society, too, and pretty well treated from what I was able to

notice. Just about everybody in the village practices one kind of

Martial art or other, even the very old, who have to be pretty good

just to survive into retirement. Women are the dominant sex,

make no mistake about it, but the men aren't exactly an inferior

species. In point of fact, they welcome new blood whenever they

can find it. Probably something about avoiding recessive traits

from inbreeding, or some such stuff like that."

"Oh," Akane said, finding herself actually curious about

this place she was describing. It sounded like a woman could

earn a place of respect there, and maybe guys would not always

be hitting on her all of the time.

"Anyway," Keiko continued, "I picked up the trail right

away. Seems like everyone in the village was pretty agitated over

something that had happened a few days before I showed up, and

it involved a boy with a Panda. Seemed the boy had challenged

their local champion to a fight, which was definitely not a very

good idea if you know anything about Joketsuzoku. The boy

won, of course, which meant that the girl he defeated became his

wife..."

"Nani?" Akane blurted.

"That's the custom over there," Keiko explained, "When

an Outsider Male defeats an Amazon in battle she is required to

marry him...probably because of what I said about needing fresh

blood to keep them from too much inbreeding.'

"NANI?" Akane said with greater emphasis.

"Actually it does kind of make sense from their way of

thinking," Keiko smiled, "Amazons value strength and fighting

ability over nearly all other virtues, so your place in their social

hierarchy is determined by your worth as a fighter. Only

somebody who is very good could hope to beat an Amazon, so

the boy who beat their Champion had to be an exceptional

fighter, somebody they'd every much rather have on their side

than the other way around."

"Oh," Akane said, then the alarm bells started sounding,

"The boy...?"

"Wasn't hard for me to figure out," Keiko nodded, "I was

just getting used to turning into a Vulture, and I'd been chasing a

boy and a Panda who I knew had to be Nabiki and Genma. The

boy apparently defeated their champion pretty easily, and that

could only mean one person I knew who was that good in a Tai

fight. When I heard the rest of the story I knew right away that it

was Nabiki, and she had just gotten herself into a whole lot of

trouble."

"Kami-sama," Akane whispered, realizing at once how

that was a ridiculous understatement.

"It's worse than you think," Keiko informed her, "The

other part of that tribal Law holds that when an outsider female

defeats an Amazon, that Amazon loses face until she can hunt the

outsider down and kill her, and only then does she deserve

recognition among her peers. Most villagers weren't exactly sure

what had happened between Nabiki and their Champion, but it

seems they spent one night together, and then the boy

disappeared without a trace, along with the Panda. I guess

somebody told Nabiki she's was either going to have to stay in

male form for the rest of her life or have a very ticked off Amazon

out to get her."

"Oboy," Akane murmured, or words to that effect, "Poor

Nabiki..."

"It gets worse," Keiko informed her, "Their Champion

was staying pretty much out of sight the first two days, but then

one of the Elders of the Village, who just happened to be her

Great Grandmother, showed up and seems to have gone ballistic.

That Champion was her best student, and to be disgraced this

way was an insult to all the Amazons of Joketsuzoku. I don't

know what all she said to the girl, but the next day she was

decked out in full warrior apparel, armed to the teeth with

traditional weapons that she'd studied and mastered. She took off

after Nabiki and the gods only know where she is today.

Probably out chasing over half of China for a boy with a Panda,

and I don't envy anyone who gets in her way. Amazons aren't too

subtle about dishing out their retribution."

"I guess it's a good thing she's still in China, then," Akane

said, then saw a shadowy look about Keiko's eyes and said,

"What?"

"Um," Keiko looked somewhat sheepish, "That's...the part

I didn't want to have to bring up. Normally the Amazons are

quite congenial company around outsiders, but they were feeling

pretty ticked off and confused about the whole situation I just

described. I showed up at the wrong place at the wrong time and

wound up being challenged by one of the local girls. Now this

was very bad for me because it either meant I was going to wind

up getting beat up by the girl, or I was going to have to kill her.

Turns out I didn't really have much of a choice about it either way

because this girl had been personally trained by the senior Elder

of the village, and she was the Champion's cousin and felt like

her family pride had been stepped on by an outsider. I was the

target of her rage, and as good as I am, she turned out to be a

whole lot better."

"She beat you up?" Akane asked in surprise.

"More like she kicked my ass but solid," Keiko winced,

"Glad I never fought anybody like her in a Tai fight. Turns out

she was the local village Enforcer, the left-hand hit-girl for the

Elder I mentioned. She never competed with the others, and

most of the villagers just stayed the hell out of her way. The only

one she ever fought regularly against was the Champion I

mentioned, so I guess in a way her singling me out was kind of

like an honor. An honor I would very much gladly have done

without, thank you."

"But she let you live?" Akane marveled.

"Guess she wasn't that badly ticked off, or she might have

chopped me into sukiyaki with those axes she was wielding.

Turns out she does have one rather significant weakness, and if

I'd known about it at the time I might have stood a chance, but as

it was I got off lightly, because she might have crippled me had it

not been for the Elder.

"That lady was...strange. Ancient. The most formidable

fighter in the entire village, and she claimed to be something like

three hundred years old. Somehow I can believe it. She called

the girl off of me, then asked me my name and had me taken to

her hut for an interrogation. The girl remained at her side the

whole time, so I didn't feel like putting up much resistance and

answered her questions as truthfully as I could manage. She was

surprised that I could speak Chinese with a local accent and I

explained to her about my time with Madam Lao. She forbade

me to speak her name again, but understood my situation and

explained that she had recognized a part of my fighting style

because Lao had been one of her foremost pupils, before her great

granddaughter was old enough to walk. I found out that Loa had

a different name in the village, but no one would talk about her,

so I didn't feel like pushing my luck. After I got cleaned up and

rested the Elder said that she thought I had potential and offered

to train me in advanced Amazon techniques. I stayed for a month

and learned a lot in that time, but in the end I wanted to find

Nabiki, to explain what had happened, and the Elder actually

sympathized and gave me her blessing.

"She did warn me about one thing, though: she wanted

me to stay out of the way of her Great Granddaughter, and I was

not to press my suit until the matter was settled between her and

Nabiki. I've been looking for the right opportunity to bring it up,

but Nabiki's been avoiding me for some silly reason..." she

smiled, "Guess she really is hung up on this Ranma. I just hope

Xian Pu never finds out or there'll be a world of trouble."

"Shampoo?" Akane blinked.

"I guess that's another way of saying her name," Keiko

smiled, "It means Mountain Girl in Chinese, but I suppose in

Japanese it does sound more like 'Coral' or 'Herbal Potion.'"

"I never realized that you and Oneechan had such difficult

adventures," Akane whispered at the last, finding it much easier

to look at Keiko without feeling discomfort.

"It wasn't all bad," Keiko shrugged, "But I wouldn't

recommend it. Anyway, even though I like girls and would

rather date Nabiki than her boy friend, I'm not exactly as extreme

about it as the Amazons. I'd never want to force Nabiki into

something that she didn't want, like an arranged marriage. If I

thought she was in any way uncomfortable about the whole

iinazuke affair between her and Ranma, I'd do everything in my

power to break it up, and to hell with the consequences."

"Where were you when I was Ranma's betrothed?" Akane

snorted.

"That's something I've been wanting to ask you," Keiko

inclined her head, "If you don't mind me asking, that is. Nabiki

says you don't much like boys your own age, but you do have a

thing about...older men...?"

Akane suddenly felt very irritable, "I wish she hadn't told

you about that..."

"Don't worry," Keiko smiled, "I wasn't teasing. I was just

wondering if you ever thought about being with a girl that way?

I'm not offering myself, mind you, but the way you flinched when

I told you about my feelings..."

"Ah...sorry," Akane blurted, "Gomen nasai. I just don't

feel that way around girls...I mean, I don't think I could ever be

like that..."

"So sure of that are we?" Keiko chuckled, "Before I met

Madam Lao I might have felt the same way, but the idea of any

man touching me now..." she shuddered, "...Maybe they're not all

like that, and I'm pretty sure this Ranma's a nice guy, but guys in

general...well...if you're not interested in them, maybe you should

consider other options. You're a very pretty girl, after all, and I've

no doubt you'll grow into a raging beauty, a real heart-stopper."

"Thank you, but...I'll pass," Akane replied, but somehow

found herself smiling. Keiko was interesting to listen to, even if

her behavior was both shocking and explicit. To deflect the

redhead's charming insinuation she forced herself to say, with

some reluctance, "Maybe I just need to meet the right

guy...somebody who doesn't act like a jerk all the time, somebody

nice who will treat me with respect and won't try to force

themselves on me and make me have to beat them up all the time

and..."

"Akane-chan!" Kasumi said as she suddenly knocked on

their door, "Please come outside quickly! Ranma is fighting with

another boy in the garden, and Nabiki is with them."

"Who's Ranma fighting, Oneechan?" Akane called back.

"I have no idea," Kasumi replied, "But I think Nabiki-

chan called him Ryoga..."

"Ryoga?" Keiko reacted, "Oboy! This is not good!

Ranma could be in trouble!"

"Is Ryoga dangerous?" Akane looked at her in alarm.

"Only if he likes you," Keiko replied without elaborating,

already out the door with Akane close behind as they ran for the

stairs and vaulted them in one great leap.

Outside they found Genma, Nodoka and Soun all

gathered on the porch looking out to a scene of mass destruction

and unbelievable property damage. There was a big hole in one

wall, and lots of evidence of a pretty intense fight, but no sign at

all of either Ranma or Nabiki.

"What happened?" Akane instantly demanded, receiving

only blank looks from the assembled adults.

"No time!" Keiko cried out, already sprinting for the

newly created exit. She could not believe that neither one of them

had heard the sounds of the fight until now, but it might have

happened very quickly, and with Ryoga involved most of the

damage was undoubtedly caused in a very mindless and

methodical fashion.

Akane only spared one look towards the fleet-footed

redhead, then found her sandals and hurried to follow...

Continued.

Comments/Criticisms/Essays: shadowmane

Okay, so maybe I didn't jump right into the action like I'd

planned. Somehow one long rambling review of the mutual

histories of Keiko and Nabiki took up this chapter. Yes, I did

mention Shampoo, and yes I will be introducing her rather sooner

than I'd expected, but not until a few other matters get settled. I

have no plans, as yet, to bring in a certain other Amazon lady

who figures prominently in the MUOF stories, but I am planning

to introduce Perfume the Enforcer, who is slightly different from

the Perfume of that series, owing to the fact that she and

Shampoo have grown up together as "friendly" rivals. Still not

sure about Ukyo as yet, but I would very much like to get her

involved in the mayhem of misunderstanding that is certain to

follow. As for Mousse...well, maybe. We'll see.

Ciao!

Nabiki 1/2

Chapter 5, Part 2.

By

Jim Robert Bader

Based on the Works of

Rumiko Takahashi

All rights reserved to the publishers and distributors

Of the Ranma 1/2 Series

(Inspired by the Altered Destinies Series

And the works of

Wade Tritschler

Richard Lawson

James Jones

John Walter Biles

And far too many others to include here)

Nabiki remembered Ryoga from when they had both met

at Crossroads Junior High School. He had been a year younger

than herself, and he was not in any of her classes, but the two of

them had become fast friends after winding up in a scrape with

some local bullies. Scraping up the streets with them was more

like it, them and a much younger Arigami Keiko. As it turned

out they had very little in common, other than a love for Martial

Arts, but somehow she had liked hanging around with the

habitually misdirected but generally good-natured Ryoga. He

had more than his share of faults, but he was honorable and loyal

to his friends, and while he got in fights for the slightest reason

he was easy to talk down from overt aggression.

Nabiki did not mind having someone around who was

slower witted than herself. In point of fact that was generally in

his favor as Nabiki did not like to have her decisions second-

guessed. If she told him to do something he would at least make

the effort (provided she worded her instructions carefully, and left

out any attempt at navigation). In truth there were times when it

had been handy to have him around, even if he was basically too

honest to go along with some of her schemes, particularly the

ones that involved making a lot of money off of her fellow

students.

Still, as good as their friendship had been at the time,

Nabiki had never imagined he harbored any other feelings for her

besides good, old-fashioned brotherly affection. She had seen

him at other times growing up, whenever they just happened to

cross paths for one reason for another (funny thing that, his

seeming ability to wander in and out of her life that way, but she

had just chalked it up as one more amusing foible, not more

exceptional than the rest of the crazy things that seemed to

happen all around her).

But now to find out that he was actually thinking of her

THAT way? Not good! Especially not with Ranma looking on,

a clear-cut-case of one suitor too many.

Of course as unprepared as she was to find Ryoga

holding out a handful of flowers that looked as though they had

been gathered from a field at random (and were probably chock-

full of allergens), she was even less prepared for the sound of

Ranma going Ballistic!

He slammed into Ryoga like a charging rhino, fists and

feet in motion, and was only slightly surprised when Ryoga

turned into his charge and casually threw him over his shoulder

one-handed.

"What's your problem" Ryoga asked as Ranma alighted

on both feet and turned to face him.

"You!" Ranma snarled without further elaboration.

"Ranma-kun!" Soun called out, but Ranma was now past

the point of reason and attacked Ryoga again, trading punches

and kicks in a quick flurry of violent behavior so unlike the

usually mild mannered and good-natured boy that he usually

was. Soun had never seen Ranma look so angry...but neither had

anyone else for that matter.

As it turned out neither Soun nor Nabiki needed to be

concerned for the welfare of their new guest as Ryoga fought

back with a skill and fury to match that being displayed by the

enraged Ranma. He reached behind himself and drew his

umbrella, using it as a weapon to fend off Ranma's attacks while

retaliating with his own powerful thrusts. The two of them

darted back and forth across one end of the garden to the other

before Ryoga backed Ranma up to one of the walls, then stabbed

his umbrella forward as Ranma made a powerful leap and

somersaulted over his head, landing deftly behind him.

A good thing, too, because when the umbrella struck the

wall the brickwork exploded outward.

"Kami-sama," Nabiki breathed, then tried to take a step

forward, only to find Genma's hand restraining her. She fought

the urge to throw him off of her when she heard Genma murmur

in her ear, "Iye, Nabiki-chan."

"Iye?" she asked in surprise, looking at him in

amazement.

"Nabiki-chan," Genma replied, "This is something

Ranma must do for himself. If you care at all about him, let him

fight his own battles."

"But he could be seriously hurt!" Nabiki argued, "He

doesn't know Ryoga like I do..."

"Perhaps so," Genma said, "But Ranma has issues that

must be resolved, and the best way for my son to do this is by

going all out against an opponent who can match him in battle.

Win or lose, he must prove to himself that he is a man or he will

always feel inferior in your eyes. You must allow him to do this,

Nabiki-chan, or lose him forever."

"That is the stupidest, most macho thing I've eve heard

you say, old man!" Nabiki snapped at Genma, but inwardly she

knew that he was right, and Genma did not flinch from the

accusation. He just looked at her for a moment, then turned back

to continue watching the performance of Ranma.

Ranma was beginning to realize that he was overmatched

in terms of raw physical power. He had a faint thought that this

might have been how Nabiki felt going up against Keiko. Ryoga

was clearly much stronger than him, and he was not tiring in

spite of going all out. On the plus side where Ranma was

concerned Ryoga was not as fast or as agile and tended to fight

with less strategy, using direct force in stead of more complex

maneuvers.

"Saotome," Soun murmured as he came to stand

alongside his friend, "This Ryoga uses a very basic technique. I

believe it is the Fire Mountain system."

"Indeed, Tendo-kun," Genma replied in the same level

voice, "That is the specialty of the One Righteous Fist School. I

was not aware that anyone still lived who had mastered such a

system."

"Clearly one does live," Soun noted, "A fertile branch of

the Anything Goes style has returned to us at last. We must

welcome this boy into our house and learn where he studied the

long lost art of our ancestors."

"I don't believe you two!" Nabiki glared at them, then her

head snapped back to attention and she cried out, "Ranma!"

Ranma was vaulting away as Ryoga switched from his

primary weapon to pulling off bandanas from the primary one he

wore about his head and hurtling them towards Ranma. Ranma

beat them away with his fists, but where one managed to connect

it sliced through the fabric of Ranma's dark School Uniform and

grazed his arm, causing bright blood to stain his jacket. Ranma

darted away, now clearly alarmed about his opponent, and

without further adieu he leaped for the opening in the wall, taking

cover from the onslaughts of a seemingly endless supply of

bandanas.

"Coward!" Ryoga challenged, "Stand and fight!"

"I'm not running away!" Ranma called out, "Come and

get me!"

"You asked for it!" Ryoga said as she charged at the

opening, only to stagger back as Ranma kicked him the moment

he was in reach. Ryoga staggered back, but with a savage snarl

he lunged forward and forced Ranma to retreat out onto the

streets outside of their dojo.

"Ranma!" Nabiki shouted as she hurried to follow after

them, ignoring the rubble beneath her bare feet as she hastened to

catch up to the dueling pair as they retreated down the block,

continuing to trade blows and kicks with fists and Umbrella.

"Oh dear," Nodoka remarked as she studied the mess left

behind, "How will we ever be able to pay to get that fixed?"

"I don't know," Soun answered, then considered a

moment before adding, "It is a little drafty..."

Akane and Keiko appeared just then, coming out onto the

porch and staring at dismay at the mayhem left behind in the

garden.

"Where did they go?" Akane asked.

Genma just nodded, "I think that should be sufficient

answer to that question, Akane-chan."

"Guess we'd better get out there and stop this before it

gets too far," Keiko sighed, bowing to the adults In passing, then

hurrying out through the gap in the wall, followed closely by

Akane.

Ranma put some distance between himself and Ryoga in

order to take stock of his opponent and try and think of a counter

to deal with the other boy's clear advantages in raw physical

power. Unfortunately Ryoga was now fighting mad and not

about to let him have the time to think, so he hurtled his umbrella

like a Frisbee, cutting through trees and obstacles like a sharp

knife through sushi. It narrowly missed Ranma by inches before

reaching the limits of its spin, arcing back like a boomerang until

it ran out of momentum. It fell short of Ryoga by several dozen

meters and automatically closed itself up as he fell to its side with

a clank. Ryoga was about to reclaim it when Ranma attacked

him again, vaulting with a handspring to plant both feet against

Ryoga's chin. The two of them recovered and started brawling.

"Clank?" Nabiki asked as she stared down at the

Umbrella, then curiosity drew her to examine it closely. Clearly

it was no ordinary bamboo umbrella, and once she attempted to

pick it up she found out how heavy the thing was. Small wonder,

it was lined with metal!

Metal? But Ryoga handled it one-handed! Just how

strong was he anyway? She'd always known that he was strong

for a boy his age, but this...?

"Ranma!" she cried, "Don't let him get too close! If he

connects with one of those punches..."

"What?" Ranma asked, getting distracted for an all-too-

crucial second in which he took his eyes off his opponent.

"WHAM!" One of Ryoga's punches solidly connected,

knocking Ranma ass-over-teakettle.

"Oops," Nabiki winced, feeling very foolish and very,

very worried.

Somehow Ranma managed to contrive to roll with the

punch and still landed semi-awkwardly on someone's front lawn,

just as the sprinkler system passed their way and caught Nabiki

by surprise while she attempted to go to Ranma's rescue. She

sputtered when the water hit her, and then felt the familiar

change as his body thickened out to fill the dimensions of his

clothing.

Ryoga was advancing to finish his opponent off when he

caught sight of the transformation, then he stared at Nabiki in

confusion and said, "Nani?"

"Surprised?" Nabiki asked him, not meaning to sound so

harsh as he bent down over Ranma, "I hope you're happy now!

This is some way to have a reunion!"

"Uh...who are you?" Ryoga asked, sounding nervous.

Nabiki looked sharply at Ryoga, "Can't you guess?"

"Not really," Ryoga replied, "You look a little like

Nabiki-chan, and you're wearing the same outfit, so I guess you

must be related..."

Nabiki paused to consider this. Perhaps Kuno didn't have

a monopoly on such linear thinking...

A high-pitched cry heralded the sudden appearance of

Keiko, just before she struck Ryoga full on the chest and knocked

the boy sprawling. Keiko assumed a defensive crouch as Ryoga

shook off the blow and regained his footing. He stopped to gape

at her in surprise, then gasped, "Keiko-san? Is that you?"

"Ohiyo, Ryoga-kun," Keiko replied, "Long time no see.

Hope you're not planning on continuing this little dance,

otherwise I'm going to insist on a change in partners."

"I don't want to fight you," Ryoga insisted, "I don't have

any quarrel with either of you. I just want to know why that man

attacked me..."

"Please forgive him," said Akane, "He can be such an

idiot sometimes, but I'd still rather you didn't try to hurt him any

worse than he deserves..."

Ryoga turned to find a beautiful girl looking at him with

soulful dark eyes as he stopped to stare at her in surprise, then

very hesitantly replied, "I...I guess. I mean...I didn't come here to

fight...I wouldn't... I mean...I'm not like...who are you?"

"Tendo Akane," she smiled, "Nabiki-chan's sister. And

you?"

"Hibiki Ryoga," he replied, then blinked before he added,

"Nabiki's sister?"

"Hai," Akane replied, turning back towards Nabiki, "How

is Ranma-kun, Oneechan?"

Ranma groaned as he felt his jaw to see if it was still in

one piece. Nabiki smiled at that and said, "He'll live. Good thing

you've got a thick skull, Ranma-chan. Must run in the family."

"I'll be all right," Ranma said, "Just as long as you wait

for me to get my wind back...then you've had it...OOFF!"

"He says he's sorry he lost his temper and he didn't mean

to cause everyone so much trouble," Nabiki said pleasantly while

maintaining two fingers pressing down on Ranma's Solar Plexus,

"Please forgive a misunderstanding. He thought you were

making a pass at his iinazuke."

"Iinazuke?" Ryoga faintly replied.

"Ranma and Nabiki-chan are engaged," Akane explained,

"Our parents idea. I used to be Ranma's iinazuke."

"An arranged marriage," Keiko snorted, "In these

enlightened times no less."

"I am Kaneda, Nabiki's cousin," Nabiki explained,

bowing to Ryoga, "Please let there be peace between you and my

cousin's iinazuke. He thought he was looking out for her best

interest and he mistook the nature of your intentions."

"Ah...I see," Ryoga replied, "Kaneda? Well, I suppose I

could understand how it must look, not that I like being attacked

when I only meant to give Nabiki-chan some flowers..."

"It was a very considerate thing to do," Nabiki replied,

"And I'm sure you only had honorable intentions. Please return

to the House, I'm sure Nabiki will appreciate it. We'll be along

soon enough. Akane-chan, show him the way and try to explain

what happened to Oya...um, Uncle Soun?"

"Nani?" Akane sounded surprised, "But our House is over

there..."

"Never mind," Keiko smiled at her as she took both

Akane and Ryoga by the arms and guided them back down the

block, "I'll explain everything later..."

Nabiki waited until Keiko had gotten Ryoga well past

earshot, then she took her foot off Ranma's chest and glared

down at him as he started to sit upright.

"What did you do that for?" Ranma gasped, slowly

getting his wind back.

"You..." Nabiki growled, then took advantage of his

larger size and strength to haul Ranma off his feet and throw him

hard against the nearest tree, holding him there as she glared at

him from close proximity. Ranma just stared at him in surprise,

too shocked to put up any sort of defense, not that he was much

worse than shaken up at the rude treatment.

"You," Nabiki started again, "Just scared me out of six

years growth! What kind of Macho display were you trying to

get away with there, Saotome? Attacking an old friend because

he shows me a little courtesy? Come on! That's nothing like

you!"

"What are you getting so mad at me for?" he asked in

genuine confusion.

"Funny," Nabiki sniffed, "I was going to ask you the same

question."

Nabiki let Ranma go, stepping back a half step to allow

him time to think it over. Very slowly Ranma seemed to grasp

the significance of her statement, and then he looked at him and

said, "Uh...I guess maybe I kind of overreacted...?"

"You guess?" Nabiki snorted, "Try harder, Saotome."

Ranma looked down, then up at the male Nabiki, then

sighed, "I just didn't like it that some guy I'd never even met

before would hit on you that way. I guess it kind of made me a

little crazy..."

"I don't know, Ranma," Nabiki shook his head in dismay,

"If you're going to react like this every time some guy tries to talk

to me, then maybe we ought to rethink this whole iinazuke

business."

"Hey, It wasn't our idea in the first place," he truthfully

pointed out.

"Maybe so," Nabiki replied, "Do you want to tell our folks

that the engagement is over?"

"They wouldn't accept it, even if it were true," Ranma

said with a trace of bitterness, then looked up at her as he

realized how that must have sounded, "I mean...it's not really

over...is it?"

Nabiki leaned forward, for a moment ignoring the fact

that they were both male as he looked Ranma in the eyes and

said, "You tell me. I'm not going to force you, but I won't have

you starting up fights and disturbing the neighbors. I thought we

agreed that we'd do this stuff as a team?"

"Ah..." Ranma hesitated, "You're...not gonna kiss me or

anything like that? "Cause we're both guys, and guys don't do

that sort of thing..."

"You haven't been to some of the places I've been to,

Saotome," Nabiki smiled, "But watch your step or I won't be held

responsible for my actions."

"Ah..." Ranma thought about what he was next going to

say, then decided anything he did say at that point might have

unfavorable consequences. It wasn't that he really minded having

Nabiki this close to him, but doing it with a guy was still too

weird a concept, especially as he'd never really kissed the real

Nabiki.

At last he/she relented and gave Ranma that coy look that

he now recognized as Nabiki at her best: the cunning negotiator.

He stuck out his hand for Ranma to examine and said, "I'll make

a deal with you, Ranma-kun: you learn to control your temper

and we forget this ever happened."

"Ah, okay," Ranma said, then accepted the handshake.

"Partners?" Nabiki smiled.

"Partners," he agreed, then cried out with a sharp,

"WHOOOAAH" as he/she threw him onto his back, then

casually stepped over him, heading back to the dojo.

"Well, don't sit on your rump all day, my barbarian

iinazuke," Nabiki called out over his shoulder, "I'll see you back

at the dojo."

"Uh...right," Ranma replied, then hesitated for a minute

before murmuring to himself, "Maybe if I just lay here and let the

leaves cover me over..."

"You wish!" Nabiki called back at him without pausing

in his stride.

Ranma just shook his head as he slowly sat up again,

"I'm never gonna figure out that woman..."

Ranma felt awkward stepping through the hole in the

wall, then looked around at the rest of the mess created by his

altercation with Ryoga. Guilt warred with pride as he considered

the extent of the damage as he remembered that this was as much

his home as it belonged to Nabiki. Not exactly the best way to

treat one's own residence, and he had a pretty good idea who

Tendo-sama and his father were going to assign the task of clean

it all up.

Nabiki was sitting on the edge of the dojo, now clearly

herself once again, looking slightly damp, female and very

thoughtful. Ranma halted when he came up in front of her,

looking down without knowing what to say. She glanced up at

him without smiling, then looked out at the Koi pond more

hesitant than he had seen her behave since the day of her arrival.

When was that? Two weeks ago? Maybe not even that!

Two of the most turbulent weeks of his life, yet somehow he

found he did not regret the change of pace. He'd always thought

his life could use a little excitement.

Ranma glanced towards the House and saw the rest of the

family gathered about the dinner table with Ryoga sitting next to

Akane. Keiko appeared to be telling him a story, and Ryoga was

listening raptly, somehow continuing to glance back to Akane

while appearing to all the world as a young man who seemed out

of sorts and apologetic.

It would be his turn soon enough, and Ranma did not

relish having to explain his conduct or the flash of temper that

had caused him to act so crazy. In a very real sense it terrified

him to know how easily he had lost all control and turned into a

raging Oni, heedless of the destruction he created. Well, actually

Ryoga had done most of the destroying, but Ranma was still

responsible for provoking him in the first place.

He looked down at Nabiki again and caught her staring at

him, meeting her glance for but an instant. She looked away

hastily, but the impression created by the mutual exchanges in

their eyes lingered a moment beyond the sensation it created. For

the very first time since he had first encountered Nabiki he

thought-just for an instant-that he could grasp the emotions she

was feeling before she slammed her defenses back into place.

She was scared, confused, uncertain and apprehensive, an apt

description of his own feelings and anxieties, his immanent fear

of rejection.

It would have been easier if one or both of them said

something. With Akane he had learned to trade insults every

time she did something that made him feel good. Insults had a

different effect on Nabiki, she didn't get angry or retort with some

standard phrase or casual insult. She took things personally,

even while pretending not to. She was fragile and vulnerable in

ways he understood only too well, and with that knowledge came

the realization that they were not really so different as he had

always suspected.

What to do to make it up to her? If he said anything he

risked making things worse. He could never trust himself to say

the right thing...he always wound up hurting himself and Akane.

How then to keep from ruining his budding friendship with

Nabiki? They were supposed to be engaged to one another, but

in all basic respects they were still little more than strangers.

Well, she was afraid of rejection, of that much he was

certain. How them to make her understand that he did not want

to hurt her or make her feel alienated? Telling her that would not

be enough this time, she'd just suspect that he was saying it to

make her feel better, not because he actually meant it.

Well...there was one way that came to mind, and with

that thought he stopped thinking about it and just acted on

instinct. He reached down and pulled her to her feet, stood

looking at her for a brief few seconds until he was certain that

they had full eye contact, then leaned in and kissed her.

Nabiki was taken completely by surprise by the gesture,

and her first impulse would have been to slam him through a

wall, but something stopped her in time. Ranma had used very

little force, and she could have easily resisted. She had been

rather uneasy with his silence, so having him act in this way was

more of a relief than alarming. It was only when he actually

kissed her that she felt her knees turn to water and something

melted inside, causing her to respond to that kiss as her arms

went around him.

Ranma had not known what to expect, had feared

rejection or even abuse, but when Nabiki started to return his kiss

he felt an awkwardness he had never known before, which

passed immediately when he felt her arms slip around him. For a

blissful instant all the tensions simply flowed out of his body and

the many cuts and bruises he had received during his fight utterly

ceased to matter. It felt good holding Nabiki in his arms, feeling

her lips meeting his, and it was with considerable surprise that

the two of them parted for a moment just to stare at each other in

mutual wonder.

And then-inevitably-the splash of water hit them both,

and Keiko's cheerful greeting intruded on their personal universe,

"All right, you two, break it up! We've got family business to

discuss here and your parents want the both of you inside, this

minute."

"Who appointed you the bearer of bad news?" the now-

male Nabiki sputtered, half fearing Ranma would draw away in

disgust at finding a guy in his arms, but Ranma just converted

their hug into a more brotherly embrace and gave Keiko the evil

eye.

"You know," he growled, "I've always wondered if

Buzzards taste just like Chicken..."

"Sticks and stones, Saotome," Keiko remarked, "Either

put up or shut up."

"You're lucky I don't hit women," he snorted.

"Yeah, right," she said in mild disbelief.

"Maybe hitting her isn't such a good idea," Nabiki's tone

became suggestive, "What about turning her over your knee for a

spanking?"

"Now that's an idea," Ranma noted.

"You kidding?" Keiko sniffed, "I'd probably enjoy it."

Ranma settled for just glaring at her, momentarily

stumped, but Nabiki said, "Let's postpone the foreplay and talk

business. Keiko-san, I'm flattered that you like me and all, but

Ranma is my iinazuke, and I'd rather you left it to me to pound

him to his senses. Ranma-kun, I still owe you an explanation for

the things I still haven't got around to sharing with you, but

Keiko's old news, so let's try to get along and let bygones be

bygones."

"Oh, I'm hurt," Keiko murmured, thought she did seem

less than thrilled by that statement.

An idea came to Ranma just then and he smiled, then

reached out with a hand and said, "Nabiki-chan wants us to get

along, I'm willing to make the effort. How about you?"

Keiko gave him that cocky grin of hers and took his hand

in a firm grasp, "Sure, I've no problems with that..."

Of course she tried to throw him, but he'd anticipated this

and used an Aikido move to counter, throwing her head over

heals to land with a splash in the Koi pond. The angry squawk of

a slightly soggy Vulture was like music in his ears as he flashed

her a grin and said, "Sucker."

"Not too shabby, Saotome," Nabiki said in approval,

"You're learning..."

Continued.

Comments/Criticism/Paper Cuts with Lemon Juice?:

shadowmane

Okay, so Ranma's finally summoned up the nerve to kiss

Nabiki. Does this mean an end to the War between the sexes?

How naive! Next time things start to intensify a little as Akane

meets Kodachi half way, and Nabiki finds out just how

complicated her life can be while balancing romance with

business...

Nabiki 1/2

Chapter 5, Part 3.

By

Jim Robert Bader

Inspired by the works of Rumiko Takahashi.

All rights belong to her, the Producers/Distributors

Of the Ranma Series.

There is no intentional Copyright Violation Here,

I'm not charging for this, so please don't sue me!

(Some characters belong to me, but the rest are used here

With the indulgence of Wade Tritschler

And the other Contributors to the Altered Destinies Series

As well as the fictional works of

Richard Lawson

James Jones

John W. Biles

And countless others.)

"I hate my life," sighed Akane as she staggered into her

room, feeling tired and distraught from the day's activities. Her

life was becoming so complicated and confusing, and nothing

was simple anymore. Though she wanted to do the right thing,

the conflict between competing loyalties was intensely

frustrating.

Bed looked so inviting now, yet it was on her bed that she

had received the bad news that very afternoon.

Nabiki had knocked before entering that time, distracting

Akane from her homework, but school was instantly pushed

aside when she saw the three girls who followed Nabiki into the

room. They were a sorry sight indeed, girls her own age whom

she knew as members of the Furinkan Gymnastics team. It had

taken only a fraction of a second before Akane made the

connection, then she groaned inwardly, knowing what was about

to happen.

Nabiki explained that she was wandering home from the

market with some goods she had bought for Kasumi when she

heard the sounds of an altercation. There she found Kodachi

fighting with these three girls, whipping them badly with her

ribbon. Nabiki had persuaded her to leave, but not before

Kodachi had hurled a veiled challenge her way, promising

retribution against the elder Tendo sister for spoiling her "fun" by

this interference.

Akane sighed again. Kodachi was always pulling stunts

like this, ambushing competitors from rival High Schools,

leaving them in no condition to go up against her in Rhythmic

Gymnastics Martial Arts competition. It was annoying, really,

because Kodachi was very good and did not need to cheat in

order to win her battles. She just hated to lose, so she liked to rig

the odds more in her favor.

And now they wanted her to take over! Akane! Akane

who could barely keep her balance on the uneven parallel bars,

whose concept of style was overpowering her opponents and

pummeling them into submission. Kodachi had style and grace,

pure poetry in motion. Akane had always envied her for having

such coordination. Ranma was forever teasing Akane for being

clumsy and uncoordinated, while he'd fawn in endless praise of

Kodachi. Worse still, Kodachi was her best friend, the one she

most liked to hang out with, in spite of their belonging to rival

schools, and now she was expected to go up against her in all out

combat...and in Kodachi's own field of expertise, no less!

If only she could have turned this distasteful task over to

Nabiki. As much as Akane resented her older sister for usurping

much else in her life, this was one onerous duty she would have

gladly forfeit to her Oneechan rather than face it herself.

Unfortunately Nabiki was her Sempai and a Senior, thus not

eligible to serve as her alternate.

So Akane had tried her hand at using the tools of

rhythmic gymnastics while Nabiki and Ranma had stood to the

sidelines making casual observations. Neither one of them was

all that familiar with the craft, but that did not keep Ranma from

offering rude comments about Akane's first stumbling efforts. In

frustration she had tried to treat the ribbons and pins as she

would any other sort of Martial Arts weapon and wound up

tangling herself up thoroughly in her efforts.

And then the new boy came into the dojo, Ryoga,

accompanied by Keiko, and they stood watching as Akane grew

angrier and more frustrated. Finally Ryoga called attention to

himself and asked Akane if she would permit him to demonstrate

the use of the ribbon. Akane had watched in curiosity as Ryoga

twirled the thing magically in his hands, then snapped it out like

a whip, forcing Ranma to jump out of the way and dance as

Ryoga kept flicking the thing at him.

Akane could not help smiling at that, wishing it was her

hand that was punishing Ranma for his typical rudeness. Then

the realization hit her: Ryoga-kun was offering to train her! She

had accepted without hesitation and spent the next two hours

listening to his patient coaching on the basics.

Now she was tired and worn out, having just taken a late

night bath to soothe out the aches of her tired muscles. Training

for a new system was always hard, requiring the mastery of new

routines, new types of body motion, and she had thrown herself

into this with the intent of making Ranma eat his smug words

and rude comments.

All she wanted to do now as catch some sleep so that she

would be ready for morning. She flopped down on her bed and

lay back, feeling relief at not having to move as she opened her

eyes and looked up at the ceiling.

And saw Kodachi hanging over her, pressed between the

beams of the roof with a black rose between her lips.

"DIE, TENDO AKANE!" Kodachi cried, letting the rose

drop from her lips as she fell atop Akane like a hammer falling

down from the ceiling...

"You really shouldn't treat my sister that way, Ranma-

kun," Nabiki was chiding as they sat side-by-side on the roof

staring up at the stars, "She was trying very hard, and all you

could do was sit there and criticize her."

"I know," Ranma replied, "I guess it's mostly force of

habit. Akane and me, we'd always tease each other during

training, sort of like a pattern you get into and don't know quite

how to break. I suppose I should go apologize to her, and she

was getting pretty good there by the end."

"Thanks to Ryoga," Nabiki smiled, a bit thoughtful, "He's

a better teacher than I would have imagined, but I wonder where

he ever learned Rhythmic Gymnastics?"

"I asked him that a little while ago," Ranma looked

puzzled, "He said he watched an Olympic team go through a full

routine once and thought it looked pretty easy."

"That's it?" Nabiki blinked, "He picked it up just by

watching?"

"What's so surprising about that?" Ranma wondered, "I

do it all the time. You might have noticed I've even learned a few

of your techniques by seeing you fight."

"I've been wondering about that," Nabiki looked at him

speculatively, "Ranma-kun...have you ever thought about

this...talent you have for learning by observation?"

"I guess it is pretty unusual," Ranma frowned

thoughtfully, "But Ryoga seems to have the same ability, so it

can't be that uncommon."

"I wouldn't be too sure," Nabiki said quietly, "I've been

noticing that there are a lot of things about the two of you that

seem pretty much the same. In fact, if I didn't know any better,

I'd swear the two of you were brothers."

"Nani?" Ranma looked at her, "No way! I don't have

anything in common with that jerk!"

"Other than the fact that you kind of look the same, act

the same, have similar tempers and solve all your problems with

your fists?" Nabiki idly noted, "All right, granted he does have

more than his share of faults, but I wouldn't be too quick to point

them out if I were you. Ryoga may be a bit slow-witted and

thick, is as strong as an Ox and has fangs that would scare an

Orthodontist, but he's fair minded and basically honest, and he

has a lot of pride in spite of feeling as though the whole world is

out to get him. Add to that the fact that he seems to be a natural

Eidetic and the similarities between you two are uncanny."

"You left something out," Ranma said in mild annoyance,

"I can at least find my way home. He gets lost just looking for

the bathroom."

"Okay, so he has some peculiarities," Nabiki conceded, "I

still can't see why you two don't get along better. I mean, even

granted the way you started out, he'd make a pretty good ally, and

just the kind of sparring partner that you need, seeing as you

don't like going all out against women. I also kind of think he's

got a thing for Akane."

"Oh?" Ranma said neutrally, "What makes you think

that?"

"The way he gets tongue-tied every time he tries to talk to

her about something other than training," Nabiki smirked.

"I've noticed he acts that way around you," Ranma looked

at her meaningfully, "About the only girl he doesn't get messed

up talking to is Keiko, and I'm pretty sure they're not going to be

an item."

"You left out Kasumi," Nabiki noted.

"I don't think anyone could ever think rude thoughts about

Oneechan," Ranma replied, then sighed, "I sure wish I could

figure out why she's been acting so weird around you."

"That makes two of us," Nabiki said with mild

exasperation. It had almost become a standard joke around the

house, the way Kasumi and water always added up to Nabiki

turning into Kaneda. It was as if her older sister liked seeing

Nabiki turn into a guy, and that was just too weird to

contemplate. Kasumi never did anything besides look and

occasionally offer to help dry her down, but it was downright

annoying, and sooner or later they were going to have to have a

long talk about this.

Nabiki sighed and said, "Try to get along with Ryoga

while he looks for a permanent place to stay, Ranma-kun, and

please think before you say anything mean to Akane? That's all

I'm asking."

"I'll try," Ranma promised.

"Good," she said, reaching over to pat him on the knee,

almost like a friendly gesture, but her hand lingered there for a

second before withdrawing. She stood up and said, "I think

Akane-chan's had time enough to get done with her bath. Now

it's my turn. See you in the morning?"

"Sure thing, Nabiki-chan," Ranma replied, watching her

withdraw before heaving a sigh of quiet depression.

Since their exchanging kisses several days before they

had not taken any further actions or spoken about the matter as if

by mutual consent and evasion. It was a touchy area for them

both, he knew, and things were happening much too quickly for

either of them to be comfortable about the matter. Still...at times

such as these he wished he knew what to do to take things

another step forward. He wanted Nabiki to spend more time with

him, to just sit like this and be friends, not feel compelled to do

anything funny or weird. They were iinazuke, but each of them

needed more time to grow comfortable about being around one

another, and there was still too much neither of them understood.

After all they were very different people.

Nabiki had spent much of the last few days just walking

about the campus talking to people and generally socializing.

Ranma had followed her at a discrete distance, watching and

observing her in operation. He was curious about what she was

doing hanging around with some of the less savory people in

Nerima, brushing shoulders with the dark underbelly that existed

in every High School. Nabiki had seemed very interested in

learning everything that she could about the habits and social

patterns of the Furinkan student body. He had yet to decide if

this were a good or bad thing and he felt uneasy about her

intentions. She had hinted at having a shady past, and it worried

him that his iinazuke might be getting involved with the wrong

sorts of people.

He heaved another sigh. The way he was obsessing about

her, you'd think he was in lo...um... interested in her for more

than friendly reasons...

"Ranma, my boy," Genma's voice startled him, the more

so as he could not quite believe that someone as heavy set as his

father could walk on the roof without making considerable noise,

"You need to stop dragging your tongue on the floor and start

acting like a man. I wish more than ever that I had raised you to

know that a man has to take charge of a relationship. You won't

get very far if you just sit around waiting for things to happen."

"I know, Father," Ranma swallowed, "I'm just...waiting

for the right time is all. I don't want her to get any weird ideas

about me..."

"Ranma," Genma growled, then paused to adjust his

glasses before speaking again, "I know I haven't been there for

you when you needed me, boy, but I'm here now, and what I'm

about to say comes from a father's heart. You must treat your

engagement as you would any other type of battle. Show courage

and be brave, don't wither in fear of your opponent. Show her

dignity and respect before you engage her in the subtle nuances of

Martial Arts Foreplay."

"Foreplay?" Ranma blinked, "I just want to make Nabiki

like me, Dad, not pummel her into submission."

"You wouldn't get far if you tried," Genma sniffed, "Trust

me on this. But what I mean is that you should look at this

situation as if you were mastering a different kind of technique,

one where the stakes are not physical conquest so much as

emotional engagement. Get used to thinking with your heart, not

your head or your stomach..."

"You're a fine one to talk," Ranma smiled, then winced,

half expecting to be cuffed for the rude suggestion.

Instead what he heard was a soft chuckle, "Maybe, but if

I've learned anything from Nodoka, it's that a man who waits for

a woman to make the first move has already forfeited the battle.

Nabiki wants to be courted, she wants to know how you feel

about her, and she needs a demonstration of your concern for her

welfare. Above all else, she wants you to show her that you care

about her feelings. Give her just enough of a clue that you are

interested and she will concede the field to you and follow you

with utter devotion. Therefore I make the suggestion that you do

what other men do when they want to enter this stage of a

relationship: Ask her to go out with you on a date."

"A date?" Ranma had not intended his voice to pitch up

an octave, "Nani?"

"Is there something wrong with that, my boy?" Genma

wondered, enjoying Ranma's startled reaction.

"I...ah, no...uh...it's just..." Ranma swallowed, "I,

um...haven't got any money, so..."

"I have already talked to Tendo-kun," Genma replied, "He

is agreeable to making a loan so that you can treat Nabiki out in

reasonable style and comfort."

"Uh...how much?" Ranma swallowed.

"Five thousand yen should be adequate," Genma said,

"Nabiki doesn't expect you to play the part of high roller, and she

would not respect you pretending to be something you are not.

She has known men of money and influence who have courted

her, expecting to win her favors, but always she has been the one

who came away the victor. She never gives anything without

expecting something in return. That is why a considerate act

with nothing asked of her but her companionship will have such

a powerful affect on her. The one thing Nabiki-chan cannot resist

is an act of true kindness."

"Uh...you really think so?" Ranma blinked, then said, "I

don't know...I mean...if she's used to guys who have money to

burn, I don't see how she could have a good time on five

thousand yen..."

"She will feel like royalty simply because you are the one

who asked her," Genma replied, "Just be yourself with no

pretensions, don't even try to do anything to impress her. Let

things happen naturally, and then you will learn the nature of her

true feelings."

"I'll...think about it, Otosan," Ranma sighed, "Thank

you."

"Not at all, boy," Genma replied, "Think of it as the duty

of any father to look out for his only son's future happiness. You

can always count on your father to be there when you truly need

him."

Unseen by either man a figure crouched in shadow

narrowed her eyes and studied them, not able to completely make

out the barbarian words but thinking darkly to herself that

matters were not as she would like. She silently withdrew,

having much to think about and wishing to do it in seclusion...

Keiko stopped by Akane's room, wanting to ask her

something personal but being rather unsure about how exactly to

phrase her question. She, too, had noticed how Ryoga seemed to

be developing an interest in Akane, and seeing how he was an

old school chum, Keiko was naturally curious whether Akane felt

the same way or maybe if Ryoga-kun might be setting himself up

for real trouble. After all, Akane was always making loud

proclamation of the fact that she did not like boys her own age...

And then, just as she was about to knock, she heard the

shouted words, "DIE, TENDO AKANE!"

Keiko wasted no time opening the door and staring at the

sight of Akane grappling with the black haired Kodachi, the

latter appearing to have lain in ambush for the youngest Tendo

daughter. Had she been looking closer she would have seen that

the smiles both girls were wearing was anything but antagonistic.

What she saw was a younger girl being attacked by someone

about whom they had been hearing nothing but bad news all day,

so her reaction was instinctive and immediate.

She cried out, "Get away from her!" and instantly kicked

Kodachi right out the window!

Akane gasped, looking up in astonishment as Kodachi

went crashing head-first through the glass pane, then she stared

in dismay at Keiko, who was asking, "Are you all right, Akane-

chan? Did she hurt you?"

"You...BAKA!" Akane was up out of her bed and to the

window in a flash, staring out into the night as she cried out,

"Kodachi...!"

Meanwhile, directly downstairs, Kasumi was busy

cleaning the kitchen for the night when she saw Nabiki passing

her by heading for the downstairs bathroom. Mischievous

impulse took over and a glass of water appeared in one hand as

she spun about and hurled it at Nabiki, who naturally sputtered in

surprise and turned male. Kasumi was, of course, at once

contrite, sincerely embarrassed about the strange impulse that

caused her to continually do this thing, but unable to help

admiring the manly curves of her transformed sibling.

"Kasumi!" Nabiki spun about to protest when she heard

the sound of glass exploding upstairs. She turned to see an object

falling towards the ground, and without knowing who that person

was she took off at a run, arriving just in time to see Kodachi

land with a splash in the Koi pond.

Wasting no time, and for once not having to worry about

getting wet, she jumped into the pond, disturbing the carp that

had been trying to enjoy a good nocturnal swim, and fished

Kodachi out of the water. Kodachi was only semi-conscious and

had a number of cuts and bruises, but otherwise no worse for

wear...except for the fact that she appeared to have swallowed

some water.

Well, no problem then. Nabiki knew her first aid well

enough to handle a small matter such as this. He turned Kodachi

over and applied gentle pressure to help her cough up the water,

then bent down and used mouth-to-mouth technique to insure

Kodachi's lungs would be reasonably well inflated (a wry joke

passed through her mind, but she chalked it up to the masculine

influence of her-or rather HIS-body, thinking of how curvy

Kodachi was for a girl her age). Kodachi finally managed to

sputter and cough and revive on her own, opening her eyes to see

the man bending over her, and for a moment her expression

became one of intense focus.

"Are you all right, Kuno-san?" she asked, thinking the

girl would need some bandages and disinfectant.

Kodachi just looked up at him...or rather at HIM-the

most gorgeous male specimen she had ever personally met in her

short life. The man was handsome, masculine with a solid,

compact body and the sort of quasi-Hermaphrodite looks that one

usually only read about in romance Manga (not that she would

ever have confessed to reading such low-bred trash-but she did

like to look at the pictures). She had never personally met him

before, but she knew from a description that this could only be

Akane's marvelous cousin, Kaneda, the one who had humiliated

her idiot brother.

"Ka-ne-da-Sama?" Kodachi tentatively asked, testing the

words on her lips and finding them as sweet as any nectar.

"Oh my!"

Nabiki looked up to find Kasumi standing on the porch

looking at them both and repressed a sense of mild irritation with

her sister, instead calling out, "Get the first aid kit, Kasumi-chan.

I think Akane's friend got scratched falling out of a window."

As Nabiki said this she knew it was very unlikely that

Kuno Kodachi's sudden swim with the fishes had been an

accidental arrangement. Someone had definitely helped her

become airborne, and Nabiki felt mild irritation, intending to talk

with Akane or whoever it was about the cost of replacement

glass. Didn't anyone ever hear that some windows could be

opened before you put people through them?

But as she was thinking this she was not prepared to feel

a pair of feminine arms go around her...or rather HIS male body

as Kodachi leaned close and repeated the words, "Kaneda-

Sama...to think that this poor schoolgirl's lonely days of

emptiness and longing should be ended by one so virtuous and

comely! I have grown so wearied being surrounded all day by

only girls my own age...and now a handsome man has come to

save me from my wasted life..."

"Excuse me?" Nabiki gasped in tones rather shrill for his

male form, trying without success to pry Kodachi off of him as he

instead dragged her to her feet, unintentionally giving the

appearance of two people dancing on the ground near to the Koi

pond.

"Oh my love!" Kodachi sighed, "My heart is racing! My

pulse feels like the beating of a hummingbird! Take me into your

embrace and sweep me off to your castle..."

"Get off of me!" Nabiki said with more force, still unable

to gain the leverage she needed to escape Kodachi's bear hug.

"Hey, what's going on here?" Ranma asked as he and

Genma arrived to find Kodachi clinging like a refrigerator

magnet to a very stunned and hapless Nabiki.

"Ranma?" Nabiki swallowed, thinking of several

expletives she might have used at the moment, only she was far

too embarrassed to say any of them aloud.

"Oh my," said Genma, unintentionally imitating Kasumi.

"Get her off of me!" Nabiki pleaded.

"Kaneda, I am so hurt that you do not take me away from

all of these dreary surroundings," Kodachi cooed as she looked

up at Nabiki with sparkling devotion, then produced a rose from

seemingly out of no where, "For you, my only love..."

"Kodachi..." Ranma whispered.

"Ranma-it's not what it looks like-!" Nabiki started to

protest when the rose suddenly shot some kind of pollen in his

face, and with the reflex gag he inhaled the potent potion,

instantly feeling it shoot through his limbs like lightning,

stiffening same and making her every limb become as stiff as a

board. He collapsed into Kodachi's arms, no longer able to resist

as she took advantage of Nabiki's helplessness to thoroughly

glom hold of him, hugging her body in a way that would have

gained any man's interest if he had the slightest interest in

women.

What made the whole situation far too embarrassing to

describe was the fact that Nabiki was feeling very male at the

moment, in spite of a sudden fervent desire to be as far away as

she could get from Kodachi! No doubt it was one of the side

effects of the drug she was using...

"Nabiki...how could you?" Ranma whispered.

What? Nabiki's mind seized up in dismay. He couldn't

be that blind to her actual state...could he? She wanted to call out

to him to explain her helplessness, but even her mouth would not

respond to directions. She was ready to die from the humiliation

of it all when she heard Nodoka's firm voice say, "Kodachi, get

inside and go see Akane."

In spite of her brazen manners of the previous few

moments, Kodachi suddenly cringed like a little girl and said,

"Yes, Auntie," and she reluctantly surrendered her death-grip on

Nabiki. She slid past him, doing a little saunter as she skipped

up to the porch, then bowed her head meekly as she slipped past

a scowling Nodoka. Before she disappeared inside she blew a

kiss back his way, but all Nabiki could do was stare with her

eyes, the only part of him that seemed capable of functioning like

normal. The rest of him stood stiff as a statue, badly in danger of

losing his balance and wishing he could just jump into the Koi

pond and lose himself among the fishes.

Ranma was looking at him with hurt, expressive eyes and

looked ready to turn away but for the restraining hand Genma

had placed upon his shoulder. Very softly Genma growled as he

leaned over, "Ranma...remain here. Nabiki-chan needs you to

stay with her. Don't fly off the handle, boy, go over there and tell

her about your feelings."

"A very good idea," Nodoka said, then sighed as she

looked to Nabiki, "Please try and forgive Kodachi's little

eccentricities. She can be such a difficult young girl at times

such as these. She isn't all bad, she's just had a difficult

upbringing...I blame her guardians for being less than fully

attentive. I'll try and straighten her out later, in the meantime I

think you need a bath. Come along, Genma."

"Yes dear," Genma replied, falling dutifully into step like

an obedient Panda.

Ranma just stood where he was looking at Nabiki with an

effort to resist crying, but at last his voice shook, "Nabiki...how

could you?"

Nabiki tried with every ounce of his strength to convey

the strength of his feelings, wishing very much that there were

such a thing as Telepathy, for he wanted to shout, "Ranma-I'm

NOT LIKE THAT!"

"Well?" Ranma asked after another long moment, "What

have you got to say for yourself this time? Gonna tell me what an

idiot I am for thinking you had feelings?"

Nabiki blinked. What was he going on about? Did he

honestly believe she had set this whole thing up to make him feel

jealous?

"Nabiki?" for the first time Ranma seemed to take notice

of the other man's rigid stance and took a few steps closer to

investigate, then stared with widened eyes, "Hey...are you all

right?"

Nabiki felt miserable and stiff. He wanted to lash out at

Ranma for making him feel this way, or to plead with Ranma for

some understanding, but instead he felt tears run down his

cheeks. Damn him anyway! Who did he think he was, treating

her like she was the sort of person who could flirt with a nutcase

like that Kodachi?

Ranma hesitantly poked Nabiki in the chest, and when

the other man did not react he started to smile in relief and said,

"Oh...you can't move can you? Oh, that's great! I mean-that's

bad! I mean...you weren't really...it was just one of Kodachi's...I

mean...oh gosh...I'm so sorry!"

Nabiki blinked again. "Now what?"

"I should have realized...I just wasn't thinking...oh! Hi,

Oneechan. Thank you so very much," he turned to Kasumi and

accepted the teakettle she handed him without a word. He turned

and tipped it over Nabiki's head, reverting her to normal.

"G-g-gaahhh," Nabiki weakly managed to gasp out,

finding partial restoration, as the change appeared to speed up

her recovery from the paralysis potion.

Ranma handed the kettle back to Kasumi then threw his

arms around Nabiki to hug her, "I'm so sorry! Can you forgive

me?"

"Ah...think so..." Nabiki managed somehow to say. Her

arms still hung like lead at her sides, but at least now she did not

feel so awkwardly male, and Ranma was holding her, which

felt...great!

"I can be such an idiot sometimes," Ranma shook his

head, "I know what Kodachi's like. I should have known she'd

do something like this meeting a cute guy like you were. It's not

the first time this has happened, you know, she's very flirtatious."

"Ru-really?" Nabiki said as dryly as she could manage.

Ranma sighed again, "I guess you must wonder why I

ever got so hung up over her. I guess I just fell under the spell

she weaves over people. She can actually be quite charming

when she wants to be, those times when she doesn't come off like

a female version of her brother. Anyway, the effects of the

Paralysis gas should wear off in a few more hours..."

"Hours?" Nabiki gasped. How was she going to cope

spending the night like this? She'd be as stiff as a board in the

morning...no pun intended.

"Right," Ranma said, "Well, I guess I could carry you

inside so you can get dressed in some dry clothing. Ah-I mean-

Kasumi or Mom can help dress you. I, uh...just wanted to take a

moment to...well...you see, Dad...um, well...my father...he kinda

thought I should...ask you something...and I guess this is as good

a time as any other."

Nabiki still could do nothing but stand there and look at

him. Fortunately that was exactly what she wanted to do as she

patiently waited for him to continue.

"Ahm..." he looked away, taking a deep breath before

saying, "Dad...kinda thinks it'd be a good idea if we went out on

a...ahm...a...that is..."

"A date?" Nabiki murmured, then blinked with

understanding.

"Ah-yeah...something like that..." he shuffled his feet,

then said, "You don't have to say yes or nothing...if you don't

want to..."

"Yes."

"Huh?"

"I'd love to go," Nabiki replied.

"You would?"

"Hai."

"Oh...that's great..." his sigh was heartfelt, as though a

weight had been lifted, "Ah...what time?"

"Whenever."

"And...where?"

"Your choice."

Ranma looked at Nabiki and smiled. Obviously being

unable to say more than a few words at a time had one great

advantage. She was in a very poor position to bargain. Any

other time and he was sure she could have convinced him to pick

the swankest and most expensive restaurant in Nerima. He did

want to treat her to a special, good time, but on the limited

budget he would have imposed on him he'd have to settle for a

nice place that she could relax in, and preferably not Fast Food.

"Okay," Ranma smiled, "How about tomorrow?"

"It's a date," she smiled, her facial muscles twitching a

little so that it came out as a parody of her infamous smirk. He

decided he could accept that, for once having full advantage over

the arch-negotiator.

Ranma bent down and easily lifted Nabiki into his arms.

Her body did not quite slump as it normally would, but it bent

enough that he could hold her without too much trouble. She

turned out to be a lot lighter than he would have imagined, and

he said as much aloud, hoping it did not come across as an effort

to brag about his strength, but for some reason she seemed to

appreciate his comment and snuggled up more closely to his

chest, or as much so as she could manage...

Kodachi was not very pleased to see Keiko standing

beside Akane's bed, even granted the look on the Kickboxer's

face was contrite and sincerely apologetic. She ignored the

redhead's murmur of contrition and instead turned back to Akane,

giving the window an amused glance before saying, "Sorry about

the draft. Somebody seemed to think I needed a bath."

"'Dachi," Akane said, "This is Arigami Keiko. Keiko,

this is Kuno Kodachi. I know you two met, but you didn't exactly

hit it off very well then either."

"Arigami Keiko," Kodachi finally acknowledged the

redhead's existence and eyed her as though she were a specimen

in an Etymology class, "I understand that you have lived abroad

for some years, so I suppose I can excuse your lack of proper

manners."

"On the contrary, Kuno-san," Keiko bowed, "My manners

are usually quite good. It was simple haste that caused my

rudeness. I thought someone was attacking my friend and

reacted without properly comprehending the situation."

"I will forgive it this time," Kodachi said, "But you still

owe me for the repair cost of our wall, not to mention the lumps

that you gave to my brother. He can be an idiot sometimes, but

he means well in his own strange manner.

"I suppose that it is a family trait," Keiko said in a

pleasant voice, "In the future I'll try and do better by your

estimation. I am sorry about the wall, it just happened to be in

my way at the moment."

"Hmph," Kodachi sniffed, then dismissed Keiko from her

mind as she turned to smile at Akane, "I see you haven't

improved on your choice of companions. How do you ever wind

up sharing space with these low-life gutter trash?"

"I'd be careful what I say around Keiko, 'Dachi," Akane

smiled, "She's pretty good at Muy Tai and she even gave Nabiki a

few rough moments."

"Muy Tai is a sport of those barbarian Chinese," Nabiki

snorted, "It is not a proper art at all, just common brawling. Now

my own specialty of Rhythmic Gymnastics..."

"I hear you're pretty good," Keiko inclined her head, not

evidently taking offense at Kodachi's brazen insult, "Maybe we

can go at each other some time and you can show me a few

pointers."

There was a dangerous gleam in Kodachi's eyes as she

said, "Perhaps...if you can managed to achieve some fleeting

grace, I will consider it a challenge."

"Fine," Keiko smiled, "I'd better go see now Nabiki's

doing. I thought I heard her outside a while ago talking to

Ranma."

She turned to leave and Kodachi glanced at her over her

shoulder, then murmured under her breath, "Your sister has a

strange taste in friends, Akane-chan."

"Well, Keiko is unusual," Akane conceded, "But she's

really not a bad sort of person."

"Nabiki-san also seems to have an equally poor taste in

men," Kodachi added as she looked back at Akane, "Imagine

going for that fool, Ranma, who never treated you as you

deserved. For that matter, I don't know why you aren't happier to

be free of him. You never wanted that clod as your iinazuke."

"I guess maybe I never really tried to think of him that

way," Akane noted, then gave Kodachi a hard look and said,

"What was the big idea of trying to ambush me? You weren't

really going to put me out of commission like you did with all the

others?"

"Akane-chan," Kodachi's smile was very different from

the brazen smirk she usually turned upon others, "You know I'd

never do anything to hurt you, of all people. You are like the

sister that I always wished I'd had! I was simply having fun with

you is all...you should have seen your face-priceless!"

She chuckled in a modified version of her usual deranged

laugh, but this one only made Akane smile back, "Well, don't let

it happen again. You know I'm upset enough as it is about this

whole stupid business of me having to compete with you."

"Is that envy I hear, or self-pity?" Kodachi asked, then

added, "I caught your little performance in the dojo. You

were...not quite Olympic material."

"Thanks," Akane growled, "I just love hearing that..."

"I'm not putting you down, Akane," Kodachi said as she

sat down on the bed beside Akane, "You have potential, I've

always said it. Ranma-the idiot-always faults you for trying,

but there is nothing wrong with trying to improve yourself. I've

offered to teach you my style in the past, but you've refused me."

"I guess maybe I just never thought I'd need to know

Rhythmic Gymnastics," Akane said with a sheepish expression.

"We all make mistakes, dear," Kodachi smiled, patting

Akane on the knee with a sisterly affection, "The point is that-

the way you are now-you'd never be able to put up much of a

challenge for me, and that worries me greatly. I don't mind

winning easily, but I was hoping this year to find at least one

worthy challenge."

"So you could cripple her?" Akane asked, "I just don't

know why you'd ever feel like you had to cheat that way. You're

good!"

"You may think so," Kodachi suddenly had a shadow

about her eyes before she added, "But others did not always think

as you do. Well, that's in the past, and perhaps it is time I accept

my good points and appoint myself as your personal home

instructor."

"Is that ethical?" Akane looked puzzled, "After all, we're

supposed to be rivals, not that I'd turn down a few good

pointers."

"You'll need more than a few if we're going to get you

ready for next week," Kodachi said, then smiled as she added, "I

noticed you already have a personal trainer. Is he your new boy

friend?"

"Dachi!" Akane reacted in shock, feeling her cheeks color

brightly, "He's just a friend, a guy who came to live with us a few

days ago. He doesn't have a place of his own just yet, but he's a

very nice man, and he's been kind enough to help me with the

basics, which is more than I can say about Ranma."

"For a moment there I was wondering if he were Ranma's

long lost brother," Kodachi mused, "Well, I'm sure he must be

nice if he's willing to be of help to you. But you really do need

someone with more experience if you wish to give me a real

challenge. Good thing you're a fast learner. We can get started

in the morning, but first...could you tell me a little something

about your Cousin Kaneda?"

"Kaneda?" Akane blinked, then belatedly recalled the

false name Nabiki had adopted, "Oh...uh...you met him?"

"Silly girl," Kodachi smiled, "Did you think that you

could hide such a magnificent male specimen from me? I would

almost suspect you of keeping him for yourself, were it not that

you protest so often that you despise young men and have eyes

only for one who is so much older."

"Ah..." Akane wondered just what she should say to all of

that. On the one hand it was bizarre to think that Kodachi was

falling in love yet again...only this time for Nabiki! On the other

hand telling Kodachi about Nabiki's shameful secret was not

exactly a sisterly thing to do, no matter how much irritation she

felt about...

Akane smiled, a delightfully wicked gleam in her eyes as

she considered the possibilities of this situation. Kodachi was

forever saying that she was the Queen of Practical jokes and

deceptions...maybe it was time for the Queen to get dethroned! It

would make Nabiki's life only a little more complicated and

interesting than it already was, but was otherwise a harmless

little prank to play on Kodachi.

Besides, a tiny little payback for all the inconvenience

Nabiki had caused her was just the thing Akane needed to cheer

herself up, so she smiled at her friend and said, "Oh, Cousin

Kaneda...don't tell me you're interested in him, 'Dachi?"

"As the sun and the moon share the same sky," Kodachi

said radiantly, "So too have the paths of our lives cross together

in a moment of pure magic. I would capture that magic and

distill the moment to turn it into something blessed and eternal."

Akane raised her eyebrows. This was more than the

usual Kodachi crush she was used to. A tiny voice started to

sound a note of alarm in the back of her mind, but having

committed herself to playing out her little joke, she just smiled

and said, "Well, I'll talk to him the next I see...him, and I'll

mention that you think so highly of his...manly attributes."

"Oh, but I would die of shame should he think me some

brazen hussy throwing myself into his path when all I wish is the

sweetness of his smile, the grace of his company and the pleasure

of his kind devotion," Kodachi oozed in a way that warned Akane

that this her friend had fallen much harder than her usual crushes.

In fact she had never seen Kodachi sound so much like her

brother than at this moment. It made her wonder if this were the

type of prank she could be comfortable with, but to tell Kodachi

the truth now might truly strain their friendship, and that was

something she did not want to have to contemplate.

She did not care that Kodachi was rich, beautiful and

influential, she just wanted to know that her friend and confidant

would still be around when she needed her, and that was likely to

be very often the way things kept on happening at their house.

She sighed and decided to play along until she could figure out

how to defuse this whole situation. In the meantime she said,

"Now...what can you tell me about this sport that won't have me

winding up flat on my face?"

"For one thing, play up your strengths, Akane-chan,"

Kodachi smiled, "You are a very attractive young lady, and with

my coaching you can be as charming for the crowds as

I...perhaps even make me look good by reflection."

"I'd like that a lot," Akane assured her, thinking with a

guilty start that Kodachi was indeed more of a sister to her than

Nabiki, and it was nice to have a sister who was not also her

rival, however guilty it made her feel to think so.

At least Kodachi never charged her interest for a loan,

having more money to give away than the national bank. At least

you knew where you stood with Kodachi, which was usually

somewhere between the Poor and the Nuthouse...

Continued.

Comments/Criticisms/Paper Shredders: shadowmane

Seems I developed a case of Run-of-the-mouth this

chapter, taking twice as long to say the things I meant to say as I

fumbled around looking for the right adjectives. This puppy

needs an edit job, and a couple places just demand a re-write, but

it sure is fun visiting with these zany people!

If you wish to check out my other works, Please check out my

Fanfiction webpage at: . or

it's mirror site at: ~

All related chapters of this series can be found there along with my

other works.


	6. Chapter 6

Nabiki 1/2

Chapter 6, Part 1.

By

Jim Robert Bader

Inspired by the works of

Rumiko Takahashi

All Rights belong to her,

The publishers & distributors

Of the Ranma 1/2 Series

(This amateur Fanfiction is based on

The Altered Destinies Series

Of

Wade Tritschler

And Many Others)

Two women sat alone atop the roof of a house in the Nerima

district, facing out towards the Tendo Dojo, which was visible in

the distance. The two women-young teenaged girls actually-

were dressed in similar Chinese-style silken outfits-colorfully

embroidered Mao suits at that-and their long hair was done up

similarly into a pair of ball-like knob-like Odangos, from which

it hung down on both sides of their faces-held in place in the

front by matching sets of (thingies). One girl had hair of chestnut

brown color, while the other had an even less conventional

coloration. The two had sat side-by-side for a very long while

before the Lavender haired girl finally acknowledged the

presence of the other.

"What do you want, Cousin?" she asked in their native

Chinese.

It was an informal term, actually. They were not really literal

cousins, except by adoption of one into a cadet branch of the

family of the other. Cousin was also a lot simpler than, say,

calling her "The Granddaughter of the Aunt of my third cousin's

Nephew on my Mother's side, and I'm not too sure about my

father," and it served the point of conveying a sense of familiarity.

Besides, coming from a small village such as they had, everyone

knew everyone else, and they could all trace their roots back to

common ancestors dozens, even hundreds of generations back.

Besides this, in all senses but by blood, they were closer to being

sisters anyway, even friends after a fashion.

This time, however, the business between them was anything but

friendly.

"You know why I am here, Cousin," the brown-haired girl

said simply, "Great Grandmother wishes to know what progress

you have in your quest, if any."

"Tell her I will resolve this matter when I am good and ready,"

the first girl declared firmly, then sighed as she anticipated the

immediate answer.

"You know what she will say to this," the other girl pointed

out, "Time is not on your side, and already there is talk about

you in the village."

"Talk never won battles," the first girl declared with a haughty

disdain that she did not actually feel at the moment, "This is not

a matter to rush into. Things are more complicated than I ever

imagined."

The other girl looked at her with a note of confusion,

"Complications? What could be simpler than the choice that is

facing you? Either marry him or kill her. That is the law. Do

that and you can return to our village."

"I thought that way, too, when I first arrived," the first girl

declared, "I wanted to hate her for what she did to me. I was

ready to go down there and burst through the walls, lay down my

ultimatum then fight her if she refused to accept my terms. That

is why I followed that Keiko person to this village. I have been

studying them ever since."

"Since when have you ever been so scrupulous about a hunt?"

the other girl snorted in disbelief, "I thought you were the direct

one, not me."

"Some other time, perhaps," the first girl sighed, "This time I

decided to wait and see what would happen. I saw the barbarian,

Keiko, attack my Airen and thought about revealing myself then.

I almost did, but Nabiki defeated her with ease, so it proved

unnecessary."

"So?"

"She accepted her defeat," Shampoo almost said with scorn,

then added, "And Nabiki accepted her into her House, even

after she proved herself weak. At first I was disgusted..."

"I don't blame you."

"Then I became jealous," the first girl continued, "But then I

found out Nabiki was not interested in Keiko at all. She has a

boyfriend...a man she is betrothed to..."

"Disgraceful!" the other girl declared, "She should be

punished!"

"It gets worse," the first girl's tone became bitter, "The boy

she is promised to is weaker than her, yet fights well for a male.

He got angry when another man approached her improperly..."

"She lets him fight her battles?"

"No," came the toneless reply, "Only this time she did, and

then she punished him afterwards for risking himself against the

other fighter. It was the correct thing to do, were he truly her

husband."

"No question of that."

"And then..." there was a long hesitation before the next words

were tonelessly whispered, "He kissed her after apologizing."

"He what?" the second girl's tone was disbelieving, even more

so when she heard the first girl's next words:

"I didn't like it."

The second girl studied her in evident confusion, "So what's the

problem? Go down to her and punish her for bringing such

disgrace on both you and our family?"

"You don't understand at all, Cousin," the first girl said sadly,

"I don't want to hurt her."

"But you let her do this to you?" the second girl all but

shouted, "Have you no pride? You are an Amazon! It is your

duty to make this Changeling girl suffer!"

"Cousin," the first girl said, "I want to settle this on my own

terms. I am thinking about how I am going to confront her, to

make her understand the situation into which we are both locked.

I will act when I am certain of my own intentions in this matter.

I want you to promise me that you will not interfere. You must

give me a little more time, and I promise I will do what is right

for our people."

"You know that I cannot promise you that," the second girl

said simply, "Great Grandmother will decide how much time

you can be allowed before our rivals in the village decide to

exploit your hesitation. They already call you weak for not

immediately dispatching this outsider."

"Then tell Grandmother...tell her I will make her proud of

me...once I know how to make everything right again," the first

girl sighed, "Tell her she will not be disappointed."

Pur-Fum looked towards Xian-Pu thoughtfully, trying to decide if

her longtime sparring partner had gotten soft during her time

abroad, or perhaps was growing up from the spirited young girl

who had been Champion in their village. Xian-Pu was brash,

strong willed and determined the best fighter of their generation

to whom only Pur-Fum herself was a possible equal. They had

trained together under the same teacher, knew each other's moves

intimately and trusted each other with secrets that they would

never share with another. Given all of that it was hard to

reconcile the haughty, cheerful girl she knew with this sad and

thoughtful looking specimen who sat beside her thinking instead

of reacting. Whoever this Nabiki girl was, she had definitely had

an influence, and not one for the better, in Pur-Fum's estimation.

I should hunt this Nabiki down and punish her myself for doing

this to my Cousin, she thought with a certain bitter humor. Xian-

Pu might resent the intrusion, but in the end she would probably

thank her. Kho-Lon as well, though it was always difficult to tell

with Great Grandmother.

Aloud what she said was, "I will tell her, but she is an Elder. If

she decides that you are hesitating to avoid having to make a

decision, I will have no choice but to do whatever she tells me."

Xian-Pu well knew this. In their village old age was not just a

sign of respect, it meant you had survived that long, which meant

you were a lot more powerful than the young does who fought

every year to advance on the ladder of hierarchy. Old age meant

you were that much harder to kill, and no one was older-or

harder to kill-than Kho-Lon the elder, who had very few peers

and absolutely no equals in the village of Joketsuzoku. Whatever

Kho-Lon would decide carried the weight of the entire Amazon

society. Small wonder that Pur-Fum the Enforcer had absolutely

no intentions whatsoever of going against her wishes, even to

help her only friend and off-times sparring partner.

"I know, Cousin," Xian-Pu softly replied, "And I thank

you."

"So tell me honestly, Cousin," Pur-Fum asked in a more

confidential manner, "Just how soon are you going to wait

before taking action?"

"I was thinking of tonight," Xian-Pu replied, "Please abide

me for that long before making your report to Great

Grandmother."

"All right, Cousin," Pur-Fum nodded, hoping that she would

soon have good news to report, because she quailed at the

thought of bringing bad news to this particular Elder...

"This is nuts!" said Nabiki as she scanned herself in the mirror,

"No way am I going out there looking like this! Especially not

with Ranma..."

"Why not, Nabiki-chan?" asked Kasumi, "You look very good in

a dress, and I know Ranma-kun will be delighted to see you in

something so feminine that displays your...best qualities to full

view."

"It's also a guaranteed trip to disaster city the first time I get

splashed with water," Nabiki griped miserably, "No way would

Kaneda get caught dead wearing a thing like this! And I can just

imagine how humiliated Ranma-kun would be if he was seen

walking with a drag queen."

"At least you'll have the Queen part right," said Akane brightly,

earning a very unpleasant look from her older sister.

"You're just being paranoid, dear," Nodoka assured her, "Ranma

will take one look at you and be very glad to have you for his

iinazuke."

"Yeah, whatever," murmured Akane.

"Ranma," Nabiki sighed as she looked at the stranger staring

back at her from out of the mirror. On the surface that person did

look like Nabiki, but a Nabiki who had never been cursed, never

went on a ten year training Mission to master the Anything Goes

School of martial arts, and who stayed at home to do nice, normal

things that girls her own age took for granted. She sighed and

softly repeated, "I'm just asking for trouble wearing a thing like

this in public..."

"Stop fretting," Nodoka urged her, "I know my son will feel like a

very lucky man among men to be escorting a beautiful young

woman such as yourself. Your father will be so proud that his

little girl has grown into such a mature reflection of your

mother..."

"Daddy will probably break down in sobs the minute he sees me,

you mean," Nabiki corrected, "Then he'll probably get all fatherly

and protective and threaten to cut off Ranma's allowance if we're

so much as one minute late back from this fiasco in the making."

"Care to make a wager on that?" Akane asked, trying her best to

imitate Nabiki's normally smug mannerisms.

"Father knows that Ranma-kun will be a perfect gentleman the

whole evening," Kasumi assured her, "Please stop trying to talk

yourself out of enjoying this night, Nabiki-chan. Go down and

meet your iinazuke."

"All right, don't push!" Nabiki growled, giving Kasumi a wary

glance as if expecting her wayward eldest sister of hiding a glass

of water behind her back. That would be a great way to begin

this evening! She was already a bundle of nerves, and the last

thing she could endure was to see disappointment in the eyes of

her Ranma.

Her Ranma.

She rather liked the sound of that, as if he were an investment or

a stock option, or some valuable commodity that accrued in

worth with the passage of time. She had only known him a few

weeks, yet somehow the rascal had charmed his way into the

center of her existence. Now a day could not pass without her

wondering where he was, worrying about what he was doing,

and maybe sneaking a peak over her shoulder in hopes of

catching him spying on her without realizing that she knew it.

If only she could be sure that he felt the same way about her.

This was so frustrating, trying to figure him out! One minute he

was swaggering and overconfident, so full of himself that she just

wanted to slap him silly...and then he could turn around and do

something that made her feel like crying for joy. This was

nothing like what she had bargained on coming back to the

family she had not seen in so long, yet here she was accepting

things that once were utterly unthinkable. She was seventeen

years old, full of the promise of life, eager to conquer the world,

and already engaged to be married.

She swallowed again. Thinking like that was the reason she felt

so tied up in knots whenever she was alone with Ranma!

Meanwhile downstairs an equally nervous Ranma was tugging

on his collar, fidgeting in his rented suit and wondering what Oni

had possessed him to go along with his father's crazy idea. He

had never been on a date before, let alone with someone as

Mercurial as Nabiki. Who knew what he was letting himself in

for? Anything could happen, and with his luck it probably would

wait until he actually started to relax and enjoy it!

"Would you stop pacing, son?" Genma asked for the forth time in

the evening, "Your iinazuke will be down at any minute. You

look just fine, stop fussing like a woman!"

"Yeah, Ranma," said Keiko, who was looking very amused about

the whole deal, even though Ranma was certain that she was

jealous as hell about Nabiki's decision to go out with him this

evening, "People go out on dates all the time. Just show Nabiki a

good time and get back home before we start to worry."

"Who's worried?" Ranma asked with a note of challenge,

although a challenge was the last thing he wanted to start up at

the moment. Keiko would probably take him up on it, and his

rented suit had cost a small fortune!

"Ahem," a voice coughed politely at the top of the stairs, and

everybody whirled around to gaze up at the vision that was

Nabiki.

She was wearing a low-cut red dress that highlighted her brown

hair to nice effect, and she had a pearl necklace that had once

belonged to her mother. The dress was Western style rather than

the Kimono that Nodoka had first suggested, Nabiki insisting

that she was not that traditional a girl (and besides which, the

bloody things took forever to put on and get out of!) and it went

down all the way to just about a foot above the floor yet allowed

full freedom of movement and had a slit along the side that

allowed Nabiki to show a little leg for added effect. The gown

had once belonged to Kasumi, but it fit Nabiki now rather nicely

(all except around the chest, and thankfully the low cleavage

allowed her to breathe easily. She was barefoot at the moment

but held a pair of sandals in her hands that would complete the

effect when she put them on outside. She wore a white corsage

above one breast and a matching carnation was in her hair,

giving her an added element of the exotic to her otherwise natural

and understated beauty.

Ranma looked up at her, his mouth hanging open. Standing in

his rented tux he looked so handsome that Nabiki felt a similar

reaction. She blushed when he finally smiled up at her, then

descended the stairs, extending one arm as he responded by

offering his own for linkage.

"You look...great," Ranma managed to say, and for once did not

spoil the effect in speaking plainly.

"Thanks, Ranma-kun," Nabiki gave him a dazzling smile, "And

you look real...manly."

"Right this way," Genma said as he opened the door for them,

while Keiko just stood to one side looking at Nabiki as if she

were looking at a stranger. She had to shake her head in order to

clear it, then stared again as if her eyes were magnetically drawn

to a lodestone.

Just behind her Ryoga was giving Nabiki a similar examination,

but his eyes drifted back up the stairs and saw Akane in her plain

yellow dress, and to him it was as if he were gazing up at a

princess.

Outside Ranma and Nabiki headed for the gate, unaware that

other eyes were locked on them as a figure crouched in a tree

across the street tensed briefly, conflicting emotions warring in

her as she considered a preemptive strike, then decided to wait

and follow them a little.

Unnoticed by anyone a long black limousine was just then

pulling down the street, coming to a gradual stop in front of the

Tendo estate as the driver obeyed his instructions to the letter.

The chauffeur got out and moved at once to the passenger's side

door, opening it before standing to attention. A large, portly man

wearing a fine business suit stepped out and studied the sign in

front of the dojo, nodded to himself in satisfaction as he combed

fingers through his well-trimmed black beard and smiled a little.

Time to settle a long unresolved matter of personal business...

Kasumi had retired to the kitchen to prepare a fresh pot of hot tea.

Nodoka was busy knitting a shawl while her husband and Soun

started playing Shogi, which was to say that they were both

cheating. Akane was upstairs with Kodachi chatting away about

schoolgirl matters, having concluded their practice in Rhythmic

Gymnastics for the day. Ryoga and Keiko sat on the porch

catching up on old times and discussing recent occurrences

before drifting on to discuss what had happened to them both

since their parting in Middle School many years past. Everyone

except these latter two were in very good spirits about the date

Nabiki and Ranma were on, but even they were looking forward

to a quiet, uneventful evening.

"Well, Saotome-kun," Soun remarked, "Our children are finally

on their way to uniting our Houses, just as we have always

prayed."

"Hai, Tendo-kun," Genma replied, "And soon we can both retire

and enjoy the good life, secure in the future of the Anything Goes

school. With our two best students bound in holy matrimony

there is nothing we cannot face, no adversity that can hope to

stand against us."

"I must say, I've had my doubts about you, husband," Nodoka

smiled, "But you came through as good as your word. Nabiki is

a very fine girl and she'll make an excellent wife for our son."

"That should show that you never should have doubted me,

Nodoka-chan" Genma beamed broadly, "That little promise you

made me signed turned out to be unnecessary, Hai?"

"What promise was this, Saotome-kun?" Tendo asked as he

carefully counted the pieces on the Shogi board. He could have

sworn there were a few more there only two turns ago...

"Oh, it's nothing, Tendo-kun," Genma said dismissively, "It's just

that when I left on that training mission Nodoka was worried that

I might not be able to serve as a good influence on Nabiki. She

thought the girl should be raised at home in a sheltered existence,

but I knew the only way to forge greatness was to give her the

experience of the world, to go out and find the great masters who

live in seclusion, shunning the limelight of lesser Martial

Artists..."

"That is very wise, Saotome-kun," Tendo nodded, "I, too, would

have thought that a hard way for a daughter of mine to be raised,

yet somehow it has made Nabiki stronger than she might have..."

That was when the knock came to their door. It caused everyone

to turn a glance towards the front entrance, it having been too

since their departure for Ranma and Nabiki to have wandered

back.

"I'll get it!" called Akane, who had come down from her room to

get some snacks for herself and Kodachi. She answered the door

and found a heavy-set, well-dressed stranger standing there

bowing politely as he set eyes on her and said, "Ohiyo. This is

the Tendo residence, is it not? I was wondering if a man named

Saotome Genma could be found here?"

"Hai," Akane said politely, "May I say who is calling?"

"An old business acquaintance," the man replied, as he bowed

again and presented a card, "Kuonji Akira at your service."

"Tendo Akane," Akane replied, impressed with the man's

manners as she turned around, studying the card with a glance

and called out, "Ojisama? You have a guest!"

"Oh?" Genma looked up, "Well, tell him to come inside, if that's

all right with you, Tendo-kun?"

"Hai, Saotome-kun," Tendo acknowledged as he once again

counted the pieces, finding even fewer there than before, "Any

friend of yours is welcome in our house."

"I can't imagine who it might be," Genma frowned, "I don't know

anyone that I would have invited, but I suppose it could not hurt

to find out this fellow's business."

"Father and Uncle say to come in," Akane said to the man,

stepping aside to clear the way as this fellow was very wide

around the waist and looked rather well fed, which befit his

prosperous image.

Once the man saw Genma he broke into a broad grin and said,

"Saotome! Long time no see! It's me, your old friend Kuonji

Akira!"

Genma's reaction was anything but welcoming as his eyes got

very wide in clear recognition of this fellow. His shocked

expression caused Nodoka to look at her husband, already

hearing alarm bells ringing like a house on fire.

"K-Kuonji-san!" Genma gasped, "Imagine meeting you here? It

has been so long...what...nine years?"

"Almost ten," the broad man said pleasantly, "I was hoping to

find you in good spirits. Is your son about? I think it's long since

time we got down to discussing that item of business we left

unfinished."

"Business?" Soun looked puzzled, looking from this man to his

friend in deepening confusion.

"Ah...Ranma is not here," Genma replied, "He's...out with a

friend. You remember little Nabiki-chan? She's all grown up

into a beautiful young lady."

"Ah, I well remember Nabiki-chan," Mister Kuonji said brightly,

"A very bright, capable girl and a good friend to my darling

Ukyo-chan. In point of fact it is on behalf of my daughter that I

have come here..."

"That's very interesting, Kuonji-san," Genma replied, getting to

his feet with great alacrity, "But I just remembered another

pressing bit of business that I must immediately take care of..."

He did not get two paces before Nodoka's hand closed on his

collar and held him motionless, in spite of the fact that his feet

were running as fast as a man of his years could manage.

"My daughter and your daughter became friends?" Soun asked

with matter-of-fact curiosity, "Odd that no one has mentioned you

until now."

"I'm not a bit surprised, actually," Mister Kuonji replied, "They

were both so little at the time, barely a year apart in ages, but they

played together so often that they almost became inseparable in

the two months that they were together. I think they met again a

few years later during Middle School, but I was not able to find

Genma-kun at the time to discuss the business we had not

entirely concluded."

"Business?" Nodoka asked, still restraining Genma from his

attempted flight.

Keiko and Ryoga had gotten up to corner Genma, their own

suspicions beginning to form at the mention of their old

childhood friend. Ryoga eyed Genma curiously and said, "Just

what is bothering you, old man? Is there something you forgot to

tell us about Ucchan?"

"Yes," Keiko frowned, "It's always bothered me that you pulled

Nabiki out of our school shortly after Ukyo enrolled with us. It

was almost as if you were trying to avoid him or..." Keiko

paused, blinked her eyes then looked up at Kuonji Akira and

asked, "Did you say Ukyo was your daughter?"

"Hai," Mister Kuonji replied sadly, "But I am not surprised at

your confusion. Ukyo has long made a habit of concealing her

sex. She started pretending that she was a boy shortly after your

departure, Saotome-kun, even to the point of enrolling in an all

boy's school about a year ago. She has run away from home on

occasion, but I received word the other day that she was here in

Nerima seeking you out. I had hoped that I would be able to find

her by coming here, but obviously I was premature. I would ask

that you forgive my intrusion and please inform her that her

father is looking for her should she turn up anytime in the future."

"Oh, right, of course," Soun seemed to relax just as suddenly as

he had gone into a panic, "You're concerned about your child,

and rightly so! It's not a safe world for a young girl to be on her

own without adult supervision..."

"Oh, I have few fears of her coming to any harm," Mister Kuonji

smiled, "I trained her well in the Martial Arts, and Ukyo has

always been a highly motivated student. In point of fact I would

have been unable to restrain her had I chosen to do so. She is

very headstrong and determined, if not always obedient to the

wishes of her parents."

"Children are often rebellious and not always willing to respect

the wishes of their parents." Soun agreed, "I can't blame you for

being concerned. I have had similar experiences of my own of

late..."

"Dad!" Akane glowered.

"What exactly was it that Ucchan was rebelling against, Kuonji-

sama?" Keiko asked curiously, taking note that Genma was

sweating again while Nodoka redoubled her firm grip on his

collar.

"Hai," said Kasumi as she came into the room holding the tea

tray, "It must have been very important if she would be willing to

leave home so early."

Kuonji sighed, "I fear it is my fault, good lady, in trying to push

her into an arranged marriage that was not of her making. She

has never met the boy I pledged her to and is resentful that I did

not allow her to choose her iinazuke."

"Really?" Nodoka eyed Genma suspiciously, "Why does that

sound so familiar?"

Genma swallowed and clapped his hands in prayer, hoping

against hope that no one would think to ask the next question, but

when it came he nearly fainted.

"And who was this fellow that she was promised to?" Soun

asked.

"Why, Genma-kun's son, of course," Kuonji said bright,

"Saotome Ranma..."

Continued.

Comments/Criticism/Flames/Bazookas: shadowmane

All right, the game is afoot, now can Ranma and Nabiki have a

quiet date in peace with all the forces moving against them in the

background? Who will strike first? The Bonbori of Vengeance

or the Spatula of Justice? Tune in next time to find out if the

Tendo clan will soon be serving up roast Panda!

Nabiki 1/2

Chapter 6, Part 2.

By

Jim Robert Bader

Inspired by the works of

Rumiko Takahashi

All rights belong to the Publishers/Distributors

Of the Ranma 1/2 Series

(Based on the Altered Destinies Series by

Wade Tritschler

And many others)

(Some Characters and Situations created by me

The rest belongs to the above named parties.

This is a work of amateur Fanfiction

So please don't bother to sue me)

"So, where are we going first?" Nabiki asked her date as the two

of them strode casually down the lamplit streets of Nerima.

"I dunno," Ranma smiled, "Anyplace you like. I just want you to

have a good time with me is all."

"That shouldn't be too hard," Nabiki smiled at him, "Provided it

is possible for the two of us to be alone without someone coming

along to spoil things."

"What, you mean like crazy Kickboxers out to reclaim a title they

claim you stole?"

"Or flamboyant Millionairesses taking exception to a pair of

Peasants out to enjoy a night on the town?"

"Or long lost boyfriends out to strike up an old flame?"

"Or poetry-spouting Samurai-wannabes out to kill or date us?"

"Or our Parents trying to push us too fast into something we'd

rather work out together?"

"Hmmm," Nabiki paused, "Give me a minute. I'll try and think

of something that could top that."

"How about if we see a movie?"

"Not a bad idea," Nabiki smiled, "Only what kind?"

"Something you'd like, I hope."

"Well," she mused, "Do you know what kind of movie that is?"

"Hey, I'm not a mindreader!" he protested.

"I know that," she grinned, "But a fiancee should know his

budding bride's personal tastes, and so far as I know you've never

asked me about what kind of movie I most enjoy. If I had to

guess with you I'd bet it was a Sports movie."

"Maybe," Ranma said, "But I prefer action films that have a lot of

intensity. I prefer films about Samurai, or the Warrior tradition."

"Not surprising," Nabiki mused, "So what about a Martial Arts

film?"

"Depends on who's making it," Ranma said, "Most films with

Martial Arts are badly choreographed. If it looks fake, chances

are I'm not going to enjoy it. I like Jackie Chan, though, he

makes it look real, and he takes risks doing his fight scenes."

"An actor who does his own stunts has a fool for a Fight

Coordinator," Nabiki pointed out, "I can admire his daring, and

he does have good technique, but risking his neck that way isn't

smart, it's foolhardy. I can understand how he's inured himself to

pain after training in Peking Opera..."

"I saw 'Farewell My Concubine,'" Ranma pointed out, "Hard to

believe they went through all that suffering just to learn how to

act out ancient stage plays. It almost makes our form of training

seem laid back!"

"Well, the Chinese are very passionate about their cultural

history," Nabiki noted, "You can take my word on that, but I

agree that it was a lot of bother over very little, and when interest

died off those guys had to find other kinds of employment. I take

it as a good lesson in never specializing in just one type of career

field."

"Well, I still don't know what else I'd be interested in doing

besides helping run the dojo," Ranma said, "That was a great

idea you had getting your Dad to reopen the Hall to taking in new

students."

"We can't live on air, Saotome," Nabiki pointed out, "We've got

to get a stable income going down or we'll lose the dojo when the

banks foreclose."

"I'm sure glad you're taking care of that stuff," Ranma replied,

"Uncle's always saying that I just don't have good business sense,

in fact I think that's one of the reasons they wanted us

to...um...marry."

"Uh, yeah," Nabiki felt the same momentary pause at the mention

of their engagement, so she promptly changed the subject back to

that of movies, "I used to watch a lot of Hong Kong films before I

attended a set and found out how they get made. I actually got an

autograph from Fei Long, if you can believe it..."

"Fei Long?" Ranma was suddenly envious, "He's one of the

biggest stars in the industry! I've seen all of his movies! Do you

still have it?"

"I'm afraid not," Nabiki said reluctantly, "I sold it to raise some

short-term capital that I needed in a hurry. If I'd known I was

going to meet someone like you, though, I might have been

tempted to keep it."

"What's he really like?" Ranma asked, "His fights seem so real! I

can't even tell which parts are done with clever camera angles

and stunt work?"

"Oh, he's as real as they come in that business," Nabiki replied,

"He's actually a pretty nice guy, even gave me a few pointers.

He's one of the few major stars who thumbs his nose at the Triads

that control most of the business."

"That must take a lot of guts," Ranma marveled, "I'd sure like to

shake the hand of a guy that brave."

"Actually, you two might just hit it off," Nabiki smiled, "You've

both got a lot in common, and he's not that much older than us.

So...what about a foreign film?"

"I'm not big on subtitles," Ranma admitted.

"Hey, it can help with your language skills," Nabiki grinned,

"Only a barbarian specializes in only one language."

"Maybe so," Ranma conceded, eyeing her thoughtfully before

saying, "I suppose you like those weepy soap-opera dramas with

a lot of angst, about people who sit around complaining about

how messed up their lives can be."

"Naw," Nabiki said, "Some of those are pretty depressing, and a

lot more are simply pretentious. I like a movie that has a lot of

heart and a good story, one that hasn't been done to death, like

the Umpteenth remake of a Gojiro movie."

Ranma had a sudden idea and smiled, "What about that new film

by Kurusawa? He always makes great movies that've got

everything you just said, and this one's had some pretty good

reviews."

"That's a great idea," Nabiki brightened, "Or we could always go

for the old standby."

"And what's that?" Ranma wondered.

She smiled, "Anime. I've been wanting to get caught up on a

particular series that I haven't watched since I was little."

"You like Anime?" Ranma was surprised, "I didn't think you'd

have much time, what with all the traveling you did with Father."

"We weren't always on the road or traveling, Ranma," Nabiki

said, "I insisted on attending some school, and your father agreed

it would be a good idea for me to keep up on the rest of my

studies. That's how I first met Keiko and Ryoga."

"Right," Ranma sniffed, "Them. I guess that was pretty

educational."

"Why Saotome-kun," Nabiki purred, "You have a positive gift for

understatement."

"Well, Tendo-san Nabiki," Ranma returned her smile, "May I

also say that you certainly are full of surprises?"

"It's one of my charms."

"I'll say it is," Ranma returned her grin, then they held that

moment looking fondly at each other before they both shied

away, feeling that mutual awkwardness that always seemed to

crop up whenever they were like this. Ranma quickly remarked,

"I think we might have time to eat something before we see the

show."

"Good idea," Nabiki replied, "Theaters always charge such

outrageous food prices..."

Meanwhile overhead a shadowy figure continued to stalk the

pair, keeping them always within sight while avoiding any

mistakes that might give her presence away. Vaulting from

rooftop to rooftop she had an excellent vantage point from which

to observe the pair holding hands and leaning towards each other

in a MUCH TOO friendly manner that left no doubt of the nature

of their nocturnal endeavor. She was trying to decide what to

make of that when something else became apparent.

She was not the only one following Nabiki and Ranma.

A curious figure was moving nonchalantly in the same direction,

doing nothing to draw attention to itself but otherwise staying a

constant distance behind the amorous duo as though observing

them on personal business. This was too great a coincidence to

be merely coincidental, but the strange boy in the black school

uniform with the odd cooking implement slung across his back

was clearly not making any hostile overtures as yet. She debated

confronting this stranger, then decided not to waste time over him

as she would risk losing her real quarry, and that was something

that could not be permitted...

"YOU WHAT?"

Genma quailed at the shocked and angry glares that were being

fixed upon him by nearly everyone present, save only Kasumi,

who was merely looking confused and deeply worried. What had

just been revealed to his Wife and best friend (not to mention

both of the other Tendo sisters and their curious friends) was that

he had made a bargain with Kuonji Akira that was utterly

incomprehensible and would very likely result in him very soon

becoming a dead man.

Nodoka's reaction was the worst by far, "You sold our son for

food?"

"You violated our sacred pact by Engaging Ranma to another

woman?" Soun shouted.

"It wasn't like that!" Genma protested, "I mean, at least...it didn't

seem so cut and dry at the time. It was a difficult choice, one of

the hardest I have ever made, but it was either that or risk

starvation for me and little Nabiki..."

Kuonji-san did not appear particularly ruffled by the news that

Saotome Ranma had another, second engagement. He just

smiled affably and said, "Please, there is no need for everyone to

become so excited. My daughter will marry your son, as we

agreed. By your own admission the engagement to Tendo-san's

middle daughter is only a couple of weeks recent, while the

general arrangement you made between your Houses does not

stipulate any terms that would likely invalidate our arrangement."

"How do you figure that, sir?" Nodoka asked him but a bit more

stiffly than was her usual wont.

"Saotome-san accepted the agreed-upon dowry when he took my

Yatai," Kuonji noted, "Therefore he committed himself and his

son to our arrangement. What terms did you offer him to accept

engagement to your middle child, Tendo-san?"

"Ah," Soun blanched, "The honor and tradition of the Anything

Goes School...and my family dojo."

"Then we have staked equal terms," Kuonji smiled, "The Yatai

was my livelihood, the Dojo is yours, therefore we both have

given our children matching stakes for the future. However,

since Saotome-san and I worked this out nearly ten years to the

day, while the arrangement you made with Akane-san was ended

by your own mutual decision..."

"That's the most ridiculous thing I ever heard!" Akane all but

exploded, "Ranma and Nabiki are in love with each other! You

can't force them apart because Ojisama made a stupid agreement

on an empty stomach...!"

She suddenly realized what she was admitting to. She had just

openly conceded that Ranma and Nabiki were in love. The last

traces of hope between her and Ranma were thus fully

extinguished. Akane quailed a bit at this knowledge, but refused

to show her doubt, deciding it was finally for the better.

"I would agree in principal," Kodachi mused at her side, "I may

not have any particular interest in Ranma-san or your sister, but

they do seem a reasonably good match. The problem is, in terms

of pure legality, I would have to concede that Kuonji-san's

argument is nonetheless valid."

"Ah, I can see that you have a very alert mind for business, Kuno-

chan," Kuonji smiled, "You would not doubt get along very well

with my daughter. She has the family instinct for management

and profit, one reason why I intend to give her a place of business

that she can start out with on her own. My agents have already

signed the papers on a very promising site that I will give to my

daughter on her sixteenth birthday, which is coming up by next

week. If she can turn a profit there in less than a year, I will give

her greater responsibilities and a chain of stores to supervise as a

regional representative for Kuonji Enterprises."

"I thought I recognized your name from last week's issue of

Business Times," Kodachi said brightly, "Your company is one of

the fastest rising food chains in Japan, earning as much as one-

point-five billion yen by last quarter."

"So you see," Kuonji beamed as he turned to the other astonished

onlookers, "What I am offering your son is a stake in Ukyo's

inheritance, and she stands to become a very wealthy lady before

she even graduates from Business College. She has an excellent

grade point average and has even better instincts than her old

man. She is also a superb cook, having mastered our family's

secret arts of Anything Goes Martial Arts Okonomiyaki

Cooking..."

"Anything Goes Martial Arts Okonomiyaki Cooking?" Soun's

eyebrows shot up and for a moment he forgot all about his anger,

"Why, the secrets of those techniques have been lost for

generations! I had no idea that anyone still practiced these arts..."

"Father," Kasumi gently reminded, "We were discussing Nabiki-

chan's engagement."

"Oh, quite right," Soun replied, then glared at Genma once more,

"Saotome...!"

"Uh, look, Kuonji-san," Genma swallowed, "If this is just about

the Yatai..."

"Oh, that," Kuonji said dismissively, "Forget it, you actually did

me a favor. Taking it off my hands gave me a good excuse to

settle down and start a local business in the Hokaido area, which

became the first in a chain of Okonomiyaki shops I've since

opened. I'd been on the road since Ukyo's mother passed on to

her ancestors, and I had been living too much with my grief,

which is one reason I thought about having you take her off my

hands to raise as your own child. I didn't want the reminder of

everything I had lost. You forced me to see that Ukyo was the

most important thing in my world, seeing how you trained

Tendo-kun's child to be formidable enough to give little Ukyo-

chan a run for her yen. I have since devoted myself to training

her, and she has had excellent motivation. The one problem I

have is getting her to obey me in this simple request that she

marry your boy."

"Ukyo didn't want to marry anyone?" Ryoga asked, still finding it

difficult to even think of his childhood friend as anything but a

boy he liked to hang around with.

"Exactly, hai," Kuonji sighed, feeling deflated, "In part I believe

that is what fueled her anger and determination to be the best at

Martial Arts Cooking: to seek your Ranma out and force him to

renounce their engagement, as if such a thing would invalidate

the wishes of their parents!"

"Wait a second," Akane said, "Did you just say she wants to fight

Ranma to make him give her up? Not that is crazy!"

"Actually I can understand her feelings," Keiko mused, "If

someone were trying to force me to marry some boy I'd never met

I'd get pretty mad myself. It does seem a little extreme wanting

to fight him and all, but I suppose she thinks it's the honorable

way to end an engagement."

"Hah!" Akane snorted, "I only wish it had been that simple!"

"You are saying that Ukyo is not agreeable to this engagement,"

Nodoka frowned, "Why then would you want to force it on her?"

"Because I don't exactly plan on living forever," Kuonji's tone

finally began to express fatigue, irritation and a faint note of

resignation, "And it is long since time for Ukyo to grow up and

stop denying that she is a woman. I indulged her whim of

pretending to be a boy for many years, but it is becoming

increasingly difficult to abide by her insolence, and I want her to

marry so that she can pass on our fortune and family traditions to

a new generation. Perhaps if she meets your son she will

reconsider her priorities and learn that it really is not so bad

accepting the arrangements I have gone to such lengths to secure

on her behalf. If she will agree to marry I can die a happy man,

and our ancestors will be at peace. So you see, while I am

sympathetic to your position in this matter, I must nonetheless

insist on my right to declare Ukyo as Ranma-san's legitimate

iinazuke."

"But what if your Ukyo attacks him?" Akane asked, "Ranma

could be get hurt, or worse!"

"I've no doubt that the boy's been well trained to hold his own in

a fight," Kuonji smiled, "After all, he is your son, right Saotome-

kun?"

"Ah...hai," Genma said faintly, wondering if he should start

looking for a shovel to dig his own grave, or would that be too

anticlimactic? From the way Nodoka was eyeing him just then it

was as if he could already feel the press of the tanto against his

stomach.

He just hoped for the boy's sake that Ranma would keep one eye

out for his backside, or that Nabiki would maintain her survival

instincts that had kept the two of them alive for so long. He had

a sudden prickly feeling that they both were going to need it...

Dinner came first as both Ranma and Nabiki discovered how

hungry they were, and after a brief discussion of their options

they settled on a local Chinese restaurant that-while relatively

expensive-had a good reputation for service.

Ranma had winced when he heard Nabiki order up just about

everything on the menu in fluent Chinese, then she smiled at him

and suggested something more modest for him, assuring Ranma

that she would contribute some of her own petty cash to cover the

difference, and throw in a modest tip for the waiters.

Ranma did not look happy at the thought that he would not be the

sole provider, but he had to admit that the five thousand Yen he

carried was not enough to treat Nabiki in the sort of style she

deserved. In spite of her insistence that she could "rough it," he

wanted her to feel special for this evening. She was looking so

nice and feminine that he felt as though she was out of his class.

It was bad enough that she was smarter than him and a better

fighter, but if he couldn't be manly enough to make her feel good

he'd die of embarrassment for certain. So he watched her

carefully for any clues that might tell him if he were doing all

right by her estimation.

Apparently he was because she would smile at him from time to

time and make him feel...very special...and do something with

her eyes that caused his heart to flutter. It was almost with relief

that dinner arrived, but then he half feared that Nabiki would pig

out like usual.

Much to his surprise she restrained herself, probably because she

did not have to worry about Genma trying to steal her plate. She

ate at a moderate rate, finishing off the rice and fish portions

before pausing to slurp down her

Wonton soup. She speared the chicken strips with her chop

sticks and dipped them generously in sweet and sour sauce, then

went to work on her fried noodles, somehow managing to still get

it all down before Ranma had finished his dinner salad.

Ranma simply could not understand how she managed to put it

all away. If Akane had eaten even a tenth as much she would be

moaning and groaning for weeks about the weight she would put

on, but with Nabiki it was like food evaporated in her system.

Considering the intensity with which she worked out it would not

be surprising that she burned calories like a race car engine, but

he still could not understand where she put it all down. Nabiki

was lean and muscular with curves in all the right places, but

when he had lifted her into his arms she seemed to barely weigh

as much as he would have imagined.

He paused on that thought, smiling inwardly at the remembrance

of holding her the previous night. It felt good having her in his

arms, even having her be totally dependent on him for once. He

usually felt so intimidated being around her that the idea that she

could ever be helpless was shocking, yet it made him feel good in

an odd way, as though she had trusted him in a vulnerable

moment...

He almost swallowed his tea down the wrong pipe, caught

himself being distracted and coughed into his napkin before

gasping, "I'm sorry, what...?"

"I was just going to say you have a piece of seaweed on your

mouth, Ranma-kun," she grinned, "Honestly, it's like you've

never seen a girl eat before. Are you criticizing my table

manners?"

"Ah-oh! I'd never do that!" Ranma hastily assured, though he

had to admit that she was eating with more self-control than

usual, even acting a lot like a proper lady. His mother would

definitely have approved, but at the moment the last thing Ranma

wanted to think about was his mother!

Nabiki sipped her tea but somehow contrived to spill some of it

on herself. Acting as though she were surprised at her own

carelessness, she reached for her napkin and began to dab her

chin and neck, working methodically down to the low cut of her

neckline, murmuring, "Oh, how clumsy of me! Kasumi-chan

would never forgive me if I ruined her dress..."

"Hah?" Ranma asked, unable to help the way his eyes followed

her motions, focusing against his will to the well-tanned cleft in

between her full bosoms. He swallowed, reaching for his tea

again but instead grabbing the sweet and sour sauce, and

promptly gagged on his mistake.

Nabiki smiled in spite of her wanting not to give the game away.

It was fun flirting with Ranma, seeing how he would react to the

littlest things she did to remind him of her charms. The boy

definitely was interested, now if only he wasn't such a Mother's

boy when it came to some issues, like sex. She would have to

work hard to break him of this habit of having nosebleeds every

time he saw her naked. That last thing she wanted was a fiancee

who fainted on their Wedding night...

She caught herself thinking ahead once again. Darn! How

quickly she had given up her resolve to live as an independent

woman of means until she was in her mid-twenties and could

consider marriage to a wealthy bachelor. It was looking more

and more like she would be marrying a lot sooner than she had

planned, because the way things were going she very much

doubted she could wait that long before sealing herself to Ranma.

She wanted him very much, and waiting for the Honeymoon itself

would be agony enough, provided she would not be able to

convince him to take a "trial run" with her virtues...

It suddenly occurred to her that Ranma was not focusing on her,

which was a very bad thing in her book. She followed the shift in

his stare and found him looking at the back of a young man with

long brown hair done up in a ponytail sitting at another table.

There was a strange metal object slung across this fellow's back,

perched in just such a way as not to be too awkward while sitting

in his chair. There was something about this object that tickled

her memory, and then she raised her eyebrows and gasped.

Could it be...?

"Why is that guy wearing a giant spatula?" Ranma asked

rhetorically, not expecting an answer.

"It's called a Baker's Peel," Nabiki corrected, "Chefs use them to

slide things in and out of a hot oven, usually bread or

okonomiyaki. That one looks familiar to me...kind of like

something an old school chum of mine used to carry around at

Crossroads Junior High School."

"The same place where you met Keiko and Ryoga?" Ranma

asked.

"Yeah," Nabiki mused, "Can't be too sure without seeing his face,

but that could be Kuonji Ukyo. Ryoga-kun said he'd run into him

a few months back during his travels..."

"The way Ryoga gets lost, I wouldn't be surprised if he'd met

everyone in Japan at one time or another," Ranma snorted,

"Maybe we should invite him over here. I'd like to meet this old

friend of yours."

Nabiki smiled, "Don't tell me you're going to get all jealous on

me again, Ranma-kun? And here I was hoping you'd learned

from your last mistake."

"I wasn't going to challenge him or nothing," Ranma chuckled, "I

just wondered if he could tell me what you were like in the old

days."

"Oh, my iinazuke is out to discover my childhood secrets,"

Nabiki smiled in a winsome manner, "I heartily approve.

Nothing beats having a little intelligence to prepare you for when

life puts you through certain changes..."

"Nihao," a voice suddenly intruded on their consciousness, and

the two of them looked up to see a pretty waitress in an unusual

Chinese-style outfit. The girl had lavender colored hair and was

presently standing over their table, smiling down at them with an

expression that looked oddly less than friendly, "Wo ai ni, Airen."

Nabiki's expression was one of shocked disbelief. If this strange

girl had appeared suddenly from an avalanche of stone and metal

her appearance could have provoked no more astonished reaction,

"Sh-Shampoo? What are you doing here? How did you...?"

The girl suddenly had something in her hand, and before either

one of them could react she brought it down with a crash against

their table, smashing it to the floor. Ranma reacted on instinct to

shove himself backwards in his chair, tumbling over it as he fell

backwards, just in time to narrowly avoid the rush of something

spherical that missed his head by centimeters.

Nabiki did the same, and both came up in a rolling crouch as she

faced the purple haired girl wielding what looked like a pair of

metal clubs shaped like decorated spheres on the end of wooden

handles. The girl did not precisely ignore Ranma as she turned

to face Nabiki with a look that was neither friendly nor hostile.

A maitre'D appeared to demand an account of her behavior, but

without turning around the girl clobbered him with one of her

clubs, never taking her eyes off Nabiki as she said something in

Mandarin that caused Nabiki to flinch. Again Ranma heard her

use that peculiar word "Airen," which from the tone she used

conveyed something of great personal importance.

"Shampoo," Nabiki said as she frantically backed away, saying

something else in Chinese that Ranma could not understand, but

from the tone of it he knew that Nabiki was trying to convince the

girl of something very important.

The girl just responded in very angry tones and advanced on her.

Ranma started to protest but found himself dodging one of those

metal spheres again. This girl moved fast, and from the way she

handled those clubs he knew that she was an expert in their

usage. He darted around her and came up on Nabiki's left side,

never taking his eyes away from this wild girl with the unusual

hair color.

"Let me guess," Ranma said, "Another friend from your past?"

"Not exactly," Nabiki sounded evasive, "We met in China..."

"You no tell him?" the Chinese girl suddenly said, switching to

imperfect Japanese and pointing with one of her clubs.

"It's not exactly that easy to explain," Nabiki said evasively,

"Shampoo..."

"No talk!" the girl said in her high-pitched pigeon singsong,

"Fight! You know Amazon code. Shampoo here to settle issue!"

"Shampoo?" Ranma said, risking a glance to his side, "The

Amazons? You mean those crazy chicks Keiko was telling us

about?"

"Oh no," Nabiki murmured faintly, "Don't tell me you followed

her here?"

"No big challenge," Shampoo said without pleasure or humor,

then raised her weapons as she assumed a one-legged stance,

"We fight!"

"Hold it right there, Sugar!" a voice suddenly broke in from just

behind the Chinese girl, "You got issues with the girl, be my

guest, but the guy's my problem and I'll thank you to leave him to

me."

The Chinese girl very slowly turned on one leg to glance over her

shoulder, still managing to somehow keep Ranma and Nabiki on

the edge of her peripheral vision as she took in the figure of the

boy she had spotted earlier, now holding his spatula in both

hands in a defensive stance that seemed formidable to her well-

hones senses.

"Who you?" she asked, inwardly tensing.

"The name's Kuonji Ukyo," the stranger replied, "Tendo Nabiki

used to be a friend of mine, but I'm not here on her behalf. My

business is with Saotome Ranma, and it's personal."

"Me?" Ranma gasped, "But I don't even know you!"

"Really?" the stranger smiled, "Now, Ranma-kun, is that any way

to talk to your iinazuke...?"

Continued.

Comments/Criticism/Weather Forecasts?: shadowmane

Damn, this is getting to be fun! Just wait until the action really

starts as it's Bonbori vs. Spatula with our star-crossed lovers

hanging in the balance!

Nabiki 1/2

Chapter 6, Part 3.

By

Jim Robert Bader

Inspired by the works of

Rumiko Takahashi

(Based on the Altered Destinies Series

Created by

Wade Tritschler

And Others)

All rights belong to the Publishers and Distributors of

The Ranma 1/2 Series

(No compromise of Copyright Intended

This is a work of Amateur Fanfiction;

Only some characters and situations were

Created by me, so please don't sue me)

"Nani?" both Ranma and Nabiki responded in chorus, looking at

Kuonji Ukyo as if the young man had taken leave of his senses.

"Iinazuke?" Ranma said slowly, "But...you're a guy!"

"You think so?" Ukyo sniffed, "What do you think, Nab-chan?

No word for an old friend? You used to have a lot to say when

we were playmates together."

"Ah...Ucchan..." Nabiki hesitated. There was something

bothering her about Ukyo's appearance, some nagging detail that

had heretofore escaped her attention.

"Shampoo not know what word mean," Shampoo said irritably,

"Only want know why Airen spend time with boy. Nabiki forget

she make commitment Shampoo? And why you kissing?"

"Kissing?" Ukyo asked.

"How could you know about..." Ranma gasped turning to Nabiki,

"Commitment?"

"Ah...long story, Ranma-kun," Nabiki replied, "Shampoo, this is

all a very big misunderstanding..."

"Shampoo know," Shampoo squared her guard again, "And you

make it!"

"Hold on, Sugar," Ukyo urged, "Let me see if I can get this

straight. You're seeing this chick, Ranma? What's she to you?"

"My iinazuke," Ranma answered.

"There word again," Shampoo said crossly.

"But you're promised to me!" Ukyo replied, "A stupid promise, I

know, but...didn't your father ever tell you?"

"What?" Ranma blinked, "Promised to you? Why would dad

promise me to another guy? I'm not like that!"

"Ah...Ranma-chan," Nabiki said as everything fell into place,

recalling something Akane had said to her on her first day back,

"Take another look at Ucchan...and see what I see?"

"What do you mean?" Ranma asked, "What about him?"

"Him?" Ukyo repeated.

"She has no Adams Apple, Ranma," Nabiki almost let herself

express her exasperation, but in truth she could hardly call

Ranma thick witted, having missed this clue for most of her time

around Kuonji Ukyo.

There was a noticeably long pause before Ranma stammered, "H-

her? You mean...you're a girl?"

"Have been all of my life, stupid," Ukyo snorted, "My father

betrothed me to an idiot..."

"Her, him, what problem?" Shampoo asked impatiently, "No

matter Shampoo, he still no business have with Airen. No like

you kiss her!"

"Jealous girlfriend, huh?" Ukyo sniffed, "Hey, Nabiki, I didn't

know you and Keiko had that much in common."

"You mean Keiko...?" Nabiki blinked.

"Ran into her a couple weeks ago," Ukyo said, "She told me you

had a family living in Nerima, that's how I managed to find you.

Just arrived the other day and was thinking about looking you up

when I saw you with this guy, so I stuck around until I heard you

call him Ranma."

"Wonderful," Nabiki growled, "I'm going to have a long talk with

that girl. I might as well be passing out maps to strangers

showing the way to my address..."

Shampoo set her other foot down on the floor and looked from

them to Ukyo in back in disgust, her Bonbori hanging at her

sides as an exasperated look crossed over her lovely features,

"What this? We come to fight or talk? You want boy, take boy.

Shampoo only want punish Airen for no be faithful to Shampoo."

"Be my guest, Sugar," Ukyo raised her Bakers Peal and advanced

towards Ranma, "I've got a score to settle with boy-chick here.

I've been waiting for this for most of my life!"

"Ah," Ranma cautiously backed away, as did Nabiki, "Look, I

don't know what this is about. Did my father do something to

you to make you angry?"

"Only wrecked my whole life!" Ukyo snarled, "Defend yourself,

Saotome Ranma!"

The Bakers Peel struck out like an axe, but Ranma melted back

into a roll and came up, pulling his coat off and unfastening his

tie in two quick motions. He tossed them to an astonished waiter

and said, "Here, get me a check! I'm gonna be kind of busy..."

Most people who had been dining in the restaurant had long

since fled. This waiter was one who had remained behind to

watch the altercation, but the sudden realization of impending

danger overrode curiosity as he saw the Bakers Peel slice through

a table that Ranma had jumped over, splitting it like kindling.

"Come back here and take your punishment, Saotome!" she cried

as she followed Ranma, attacking in earnest.

"Be careful!" Ranma called out before he disappeared into the

kitchen, "It's a Rental!"

"Ranma..." Nabiki started to gasp when Shampoo thrust one of

her Bonbori nearly in her face and said, "You have other worry,

Airen! Explain now why Shampoo no pound you for betrayal!"

"Uh, that's a very good question, really," Nabiki asked as she

cautiously met the gaze of the other woman, "Why haven't you?

Not that I understand what you mean by betrayal. I thought we

had an agreement..."

"You agreement?" Shampoo snorted, finding her limited grasp of

Japanese failing her, so she switched back to her native language,

"You call that an agreement? I let you go after you showed me

what I fool I had been for caring about you!"

"Ah, look, Sham-chan," Nabiki tried not to sound as nervous

as she felt, "I wasn't really acting like myself that day

and...AWP!"

She broke off negotiations rather suddenly as Shampoo launched

her first attack, swinging her Bonbori with great efficiency as

Nabiki dodged in haste, feeling slightly encumbered by the dress

that she was wearing.

"Maybe I should rephrase that?" Nabiki asked in a weak

attempt at humor while she dodged around Shampoo's next

attack before coming up under her guard in an attempt to disarm

her. Shampoo altered her strategy a bit to counter this attempt,

but Nabiki spun low and forced the Amazon to vault away rather

than have her legs knocked from under her. She landed upon a

table, using the advantage of height to study Nabiki's position.

"You good fighter," she said in her stumbling Japanese, "But we

no fight on log this time! Shampoo much better have room to

fight!"

"Just tell me why you're so angry, Shampoo?" Nabiki tried once

again to get through to the girl, "I never meant to hurt you!"

"No?" she snorted in disbelief, "Did good job, have much laugh

at Shampoo! She let you go, but Great Grandmother say it wrong

to ignore tradition! Give Shampoo ultimatum, either kill outsider

who best her or decide to marry!"

"What?" Nabiki gasped, "What kind of choice is that? I know

those are the rules as you explained them-!"

She did not have time to complete that statement before Shampoo

was on her again, and in desperation she reached down and

yanked the tablecloth out from underneath her. Shampoo fell

back but recovered at once, launching herself upon Nabiki, only

to find her Bonbori stopped by a pair of metal plates Nabiki had

snatched up from the table.

"Shampoo, please!" Nabiki begged as she deflected Shampoo's

next attack using the plates, "You don't really want to kill me, do

you?"

"No want kill," Shampoo said as she furiously batted the plates

out of Nabiki's hand then pressed her offensive, forcing Nabiki to

vault backwards into a handspring, "But law say either kill or

marry! Nabiki half man, so maybe she special case! Shampoo

marry Nabiki as a man, so you Airen!"

"Just terrific," Nabiki murmured, thinking that to herself maybe

she might just go ahead and let Shampoo kill her.

Meanwhile Ranma was having a difficult battle of his own

against Ukyo, who seemed to consider an all-out fight in the

middle of a Chinese Kitchen the ideal choice for a combat arena.

"I'm sorry I called you a guy!" Ranma protested, "But you're

dressed like one! What was I supposed to think?"

"Baka!" she snorted as she thrust with the straight edge of her

spatula, causing Ranma to duck around behind the oven, "I

wasn't expecting you to penetrate my disguise! I've worked for

years fooling block headed boys like you into taking me as one of

you, and if I didn't want to reveal myself now you'd still think I

was a guy! Now come back here and fight me!"

"I keep telling you I don't hit women!"

"Fine," Ukyo snorted, "I don't have that problem!"

"At least tell me why you're really so mad," Ranma asked as he

darted around to the side, only to find himself trapped as Ukyo

cornered him near the dishwasher area, "It wasn't my idea to

force you into some stupid engagement!"

"It doesn't matter," Ukyo growled, "I'm going to prove to my

father that I don't need a wimp like you in my life! I'm perfectly

capable of beating any guy who thinks he's special!"

"Wimp?" Ranma snorted, then reached for the spray-nozzle over

the sink and turned it on Ukyo, who gasped and jumped back as

she was sprayed by hot water.

"You idiot!" she cried, "What did you go and do that for?"

"Just checking out a theory," Ranma said as he slipped under her

guard while she rubbed her eyes with a free hand to clear her

vision, "Guess you really are a girl underneath all that, aren't

you?"

"What do you think?" Ukyo snarled as she took a swing at him,

only to find that Ranma had somehow perched himself atop her

spatula, forcing her to shift her weight in order to support him.

"Yeah, now that you mention it, I guess I should have noticed,"

Ranma mused with a thoughtful expression, "You are a lot more

feminine than I thought. Guess I really do owe you an apology

for not seeing it before."

"Seeing what?" Ukyo glared at him as she tried to dislodge him

from her primary weapon.

"Well, it's just...you're kind of pretty."

Ukyo froze. Time passed for seven heartbeats before Ukyo

managed to get her mouth working again, then she said, "Y-you

think I'd believe that?"

"Why not?" Ranma wondered, ignoring as she dumped him off

her baker's peel and tried to take a swing at him, only to have it

blocked by an outstretched palm-strike, "It's only the truth, you

know."

"The truth?" Ukyo blinked, meaning to sound hostile, but then

her tone softened a bit and she asked, "Do you really mean it?"

"Why would I lie about a thing like that?" he asked her.

Anger and suspicion flared in her eyes and she snarled, "Because

you'd do anything to save your worthless hide!" and she hauled

back to take another swipe at him, which Ranma easily ducked,

her bakers peel slicing neatly right through the pillar behind

where he had been standing.

"Don't be ridiculous," Ranma said as he straightened up again,

"You think I'd say something like that because I'm afraid of you?

Get real!"

"Baka!" she snarled, reaching into her vest and pulling out a

small bag, which she hurled at him, only to again miss as it

exploded into a cloud of billowing flower.

"I'm just saying you'd have to try a lot harder than that if you

expect to hit me with any of these moves," Ranma said, "I mean,

you're good, but..."

Ukyo threw something else from inside her shirt, and Ranma

moved instinctively to catch and deflect three sharp objects that

turned out to be miniature spatulas, which imbedded themselves

in the walls and floor rather than flesh, as they were meant to.

"Hey, quit that!" Ranma said, "Are you trying to hurt someone?"

"What do you think, Stupid?" she asked as she dipped the handle

of her baker's peel into a nearby pot and used it to extract a wad

of pasta, which she flipped his way as he dodged the intended

ensnarement.

"Well, that's just fine!" Ranma said, "You get angry at me

because of some crazy notion of your Dad and...Watch out!"

Ukyo had not noticed that some of the kitchen staff were

cowering near the store room, but one of the Chinese cooks saw

an opening and threw the hatchet he had been clenching

defensively in one hand at Ukyo, and before she could see the

meat cleaver it was nearly upon her.

Only Ranma was there before it could strike and caught it by the

handle while Ukyo just blinked, unable to comprehend the speed

with which he had moved. When she saw the hatchet she nearly

fainted.

"Do you guys mind?" Ranma snapped at the astonished Chinese

chef before chucking the hatchet at a nearby chopping board,

"We're having a private talk, and there's no reason for anybody to

get hurt, you got that?"

"W-why did you just save me?" Ukyo asked, dropping her guard

in her surprise at how near she had come to having that hatchet in

her face.

"Like I told you, I just want to talk," Ranma said, "There's no

reason for us to be enemies just because you've got a problem

with both of our fathers. Now why don't you tell me all about

what happened between you, Nabiki and my father that's got you

so upset with me, and what's with this iinazuke business? I've

already got an iinazuke."

"You mean Nab-chan?" Ukyo murmured in confusion.

"Right," Ranma said, "And right before you and the crazy

Chinese chick showed up we were having a our first date."

"A date?" Ukyo said, "Oh, yeah...I was wondering about that."

"Come on," Ranma urged, "Let's see what her and that Shampoo

are up to..."

"Shampoo, I mean really!" Nabiki pleaded, "This whole thing is

ridiculous! I can't marry you..."

"We already marry," Shampoo replied as she readied for her next

attack, "You forget ceremony?"

"Oh yeah, that," Nabiki said faintly, then her eyes went wide,

"That was a Wedding Ceremony?"

Shampoo came at her in a rush with both Bonbori crashing

down, but since Nabiki was not where she struck it was the

unfortunate wall that paid the price of Amazon displeasure.

"I'm going to kill Genma when I see him next," Nabiki growled,

"This is all his fault! If he hadn't eaten the stupid prize

banquet..."

"You cry over spilled Ramen!" Shampoo snorted as she turned

around from having given the Restaurant a new side exit, "Too

late for excuses! You fight Shampoo or take punishment for

betrayal."

"This is getting us no where," Nabiki said, then altered her tactics

and instead ducked into Shampoo's guard, disarming the Purple

haired girl with carefully placed blows to both of her wrists.

Shampoo stepped back rubbing her wrists, then she charged

again, this time with fists flying at Nabiki, who blocked them in

turn, and the spinning back kick Shampoo attempted to deliver.

"You good!" Shampoo said as she stepped back to examine her

opponent, "But Shampoo still make Nabiki pay for tricking

Shampoo like you did."

"I told you I wasn't deliberately trying to fool anyone, Shampoo,"

Nabiki tried explaining once again, "I was still getting used to

my cursed form..."

"Some curse," Shampoo snorted as she reached up behind her

head and pulled out a pair of twin Butterfly swords from

concealment, assuming an attack posture as she again threatened

Nabiki, "You good enough fool Shampoo where matters!"

"Uh...yeah, that," Nabiki was very glad that Ranma was not on

hand to hear that admission, "Well, I...wasn't entirely in control

of my reactions...remember I had something pretty strong to

drink..."

"It not effect you so bad you not perform like husband," Shampoo

began a complex maneuver with her twin swords and lashed out

Nabiki, who backflipped out of the way onto another table.

"Okay," Nabiki said, "So I was really drunk! It's not like you

made it easy to keep away..."

"Not supposed to refuse husband, Stupid foreigner!" Shampoo

said as she used one of the swords to flip a glass of water at

Nabiki, "Change to man now and accept you responsibility!"

"Awp!" Nabiki exclaimed as she dodged the splash of water that

attempted to claim her. Shampoo sent another glass her way, but

this too she dodged, and the pitcher that followed.

"You very stubborn girl," Shampoo sniffed, "You no want be

Shampoo's husband?"

"No, I mean, that's not what..." Nabiki tried explaining.

"Hah!" Shampoo kicked another container of water that she had

spied on the floor, but even this Nabiki successfully avoided,

"Shampoo no think you know what you mean, or you say so!"

"I don't want to be a man, Shampoo," Nabiki said, "That's not

who I really am. I don't want to live a lie, and I really don't think

you could be happy if you forced me into marriage."

"What happiness have do with?" Shampoo asked as she

advanced with her twin swords, "Shampoo no happy. Shampoo

best in village, much pride in being Champion, no have friends

save for Cousin, just Great Grandmother, and she teach Shampoo

much, but no teach to be happy. Then Nabiki-chan come to

village. She arrogant girl, challenge Shampoo, beat her, and

because he man she marry. Nabiki promise be friend to

Shampoo, do much that make Shampoo very happy. Shampoo

think, 'So this what happiness is,' and Shampoo like it. Shampoo

like strong, handsome, clever airen, but next morning she change!

Is no man at all, is woman!"

"Ah...I can see how that might appear bad," Nabiki conceded as

she continued to circle, keeping Shampoo at a distance.

"Shampoo tell you law, you run away. Shampoo no follow until

Great Grandmother come back to village," Shampoo's tone

became hollow, "Great Grandmother very angry that Shampoo no

avenge herself on girl who deceive her. Tell Shampoo to leave

and not come back without head of sneaky girl! Shampoo no

come back to village without head or husband," she paused for

meaning before adding, "Not have be in that order."

"ulp," Nabiki swallowed, "Would you mind if I talked to my

lawyer first?"

"Nothing to discuss," Shampoo said adamantly, "Shampoo no

want kill Nabiki, but if you no accept that we married, then must

treat you as outsider girl! Either fight Shampoo now or

surrender!"

She kicked a piece of an ice sculpture into the air, and her swords

became a blur as they chopped the piece to bits in such a way that

it melted and became a jet spray of icy water. Even this,

however, Nabiki managed to avoid by snatching up a tray and

using it as a shield, then she grabbed the end of a table cloth and

flipped it at Shampoo, snapping it as she would a whip to knock

one of the two swords out of the Amazon's hand. Shampoo

hurled the other sword and it impaled the tray Nabiki used to

block again. Nabiki tossed it aside as she and Shampoo squared

off for another phase of their battle.

"This is nuts!" Nabiki said, "You don't want to kill me, and I sure

don't want to fight you!"

"Then take Shampoo life," Shampoo replied, "Only way

Shampoo regain honor..." her tone fell, as did her guard as she

stood sadly in the middle of the scene of their battle, "Shampoo

no want live if she be alone again. Shampoo only want

happiness, no have that if she kill Nabiki."

"..." Nabiki replied, for once in her life unable to come up with a

clever rejoinder.

The two of them stood facing each other for a time, Shampoo

staring angrily at the ground, Nabiki just standing where she was

in her ruined dress, her shoes long ago discarded as an

impediment to effective combat. That was when Ranma and

Ukyo finally appeared, surveying the damage with appreciative

whistles before they each approached Nabiki.

"What happened here?" Ranma asked.

"You okay, Nab-chan?" Ukyo asked her.

"Oh, I'm just swell," Nabiki growled in disgust, then sighed

again, "Sorry, didn't mean to snap. You two settle your

problem?"

"We called it a draw," Ranma replied, "We were just doing more

damage to the place than to each other."

"I guess you could describe our fight that way," Nabiki sighed

again, but doubted her own words, seeing the misery on the face

of the other woman, "Shampoo..."

"Go away!" Shampoo snapped, and everyone could see that she

was plainly crying.

"What's her problem?" Ranma asked.

"It's a long story, Ranma-kun," Nabiki said, "You may have

heard Keiko's version, but she didn't know all the details."

"She said you met some chick in a village of Chinese Amazons,"

Ranma looked at the other girl and said, "You're Shampoo,

right?"

"Go away stupid boy," Shampoo snapped without real feeling.

"And I thought I had an attitude problem," Ukyo said, "Is she that

worked up because she lost the fight?"

"Not this one," Nabiki said, "It was another fight, back when we

met. Shampoo's just decided that she doesn't really want to press

the issue."

"Is this like that fight you had with Keiko?" Ranma asked, "Did

she want a rematch?"

"Not exactly," Nabiki said, "Someone else put her up to this

because I unintentionally dishonored her in front of her people. I

was...supposed to honor an agreement I didn't even know I'd

made. It involved your father, but for once the old Panda wasn't

entirely to blame. I guess this is something I've got to face up to

on my own terms."

"Sounds to me like a lot happened for you in China, Nab-chan,"

Ukyo noted, "You two going to be friends?"

"No be friends," Shampoo lifted her eyes, which were wet with

moisture, "Nabiki Airen. Shampoo no raise hand against you."

"What does that mean: Airen?" Ranma wondered.

"Husband," Nabiki replied, wincing at their predictable reaction.

"NAMI?"

"Like I said," Nabiki sighed yet again, "A long story."

"I think you people are all nuts," Ukyo snorted, "If she thinks

she's married to you, then why did she attack you?"

"Well, some of the details are kind of fuzzy for me," Nabiki

replied, "And it was a strange business, even by my weird

standards. The fact is that Shampoo's my wife by the laws of the

Amazons..." Nabiki paused, a thought suddenly taking hold of

her as she stared at Shampoo and said, "And that means you have

to obey me, right? Be a dutiful wife and comply with your

husband's wishes?"

Shampoo looked at her in puzzlement, "No Amazon do what man

tell her. Husband must stay with Amazon, but Amazon not

slave, neither is Airen."

"But I'm not a man, Shampoo," Nabiki pointed out, "I just turn

into one every now and then..."

"Say what?" Ukyo reacted.

"Like I said, long story," Nabiki paused before resuming, "And

didn't I hear somewhere that when two Amazons form a

partnership, the one who is the stronger fighter makes all the

decisions?"

"Stronger Amazon have rights as dominant..." Shampoo stopped

in mid sentence and looked at Nabiki, "You mean...you accept?"

"I don't seem to have much choice at the moment," Nabiki

replied, "If you're in as much trouble as you say, then I just can't

leave you here in disgrace. I owe you something for putting you

through all this trouble."

"But...you say you no want be Airen..." Shampoo began, almost

hopeful.

"Yeah, well, I say a lot of stuff when I don't think things out,"

Nabiki replied, "But I know that I don't want to see you hurt.

We've got to work something out that'll make everyone happy,

but we're sure not going to do it standing around in this mess.

Why don't we all go back to the dojo and talk it out, maybe come

to some kind of arrangement."

"Good idea," Ranma sniffed, "I half expected the cops to show up

any minute."

"In places like this, Ran-chan?" Ukyo asked, "They're probably

more worried about the health inspectors and immigration."

"Ran-chan?" Nabiki eyed her sidelong, seeing Ranma flinch a

little. She turned her mind back to the problem at hand and said,

"How about it, Shampoo? Want to come with us so we can work

this out like civilized people?"

It was a very long while before Shampoo spoke again, and when

she did it was barely a whisper, "Okay. We talk. You Airen."

The last part was spoken with as much finality as resignation.

Ranma eyed the girl, then Nabiki, then saw a figure crouched in

hiding behind the front counter and went up to the man, holding

out his hand.

"My jacket, please? Me and the ladies are leaving."

"You don't suppose we should wait for him to make out a

check?" Ukyo asked facetiously, but Nabiki just smiled a weary

smile and said, "Why bother?"

She reached down under the slit in her dress and pulled out a

wad of Yen that made Ranma and Ukyo stare at her in

amazement. Nabiki peeled off several hundred thousand in bills,

then handed it to the astonished waiter and said, "Keep the

change, and tell your boss we're sorry for bringing disharmony to

your business."

"Nabiki..." Ranma looked at her in even greater confusion.

"It's all right, Ran-chan," Nabiki smiled, using the same

nickname Ukyo had given, I've got plenty where that came from.

Keep your money, you can use it to buy something nice for

yourself."

"Ah...how about the next time we eat out?" Ranma glanced

around, "Only someplace quieter, okay?"

"Next time?" Nabiki asked a bit faintly, then smiled, "Sure, Ran-

chan...no problem..."

Continued.

Comments/Criticism/Aspirin: shadowmane

Whoa! I've got a headache coming! Better take a break before

getting on with the next chapter! Confessions and Professions of

desire soon to follow as Nabiki and Ranma both contend with

having one Fiancee too many in the picture...(sound familiar?)

If you wish to check out my other works, Please check out my

Fanfiction webpage at: . or

it's mirror site at: ~

All related chapters of this series can be found there along with my

other works.


	7. Chapter 7

Nabiki 1/2

Chapter 7, Part 1.

By

Jim Robert Bader

Inspired by the works of

Rumiko Takahashi;

All rights reserved for Publishers & Distributors

Of The Ranma 1/2 Series

Based on the Altered Destinies Series by

Wade Tritschler and Others

(This is a work of Fanfiction, Some characters

and concepts are mine, the rest are not, so

don't bother suing me, even if I could use the money)

It was a somber quarter that began its weary trek back towards

the dojo, and to pass the time Nabiki was explaining to Ranma

and Ukyo about the adventure that she and Genma had had on

the way back from Jusenkyo.

"I guess it seemed kind of funny at the time...as in funny weird,"

Nabiki noted, "But when we got to this village there was a

ceremony going on where the contestants were women fighting

each other with weapons on this log supported by ropes, and our

guide said this was an annual thing with the Chinese Amazons

where they determined who were their best and brightest

fighters."

A subdued Shampoo trudged along faithfully at Nabiki's left side,

filling in details whenever necessary. Ranma was to Nabiki's

right, and Ukyo was to the right of him as they gradually left the

Furinkan business district towards the suburbs of Nerima where

they lived, a little more than two kilometers distance.

"What funny about contest?" she asked in her peculiar singsong

pigeon Japanese, "Amazons battle to show how good they are, is

good motivation to train, to learn new and special techniques.

Shampoo train real hard with her cousin for many weeks prior to

contest, and training pay off. Shampoo easily dispatch all her

opponents. Look forward to prize banquet, much celebrations."

"Why do you do that?" Ranma asked.

"Do what?" Shampoo looked at him curiously.

"Always refer to yourself in the third person," Ranma pointed out,

"Don't you know what the words for I, Me and Mine are?"

Shampoo shrugged, "Shampoo know, just not used to funny way

Japanese talk. Shampoo think name is easier than silly...what

word again?"

"Pronouns," Nabiki informed her, "I believe you actually mean

tenses, past, present, future perfect..."

"Yes, those," Shampoo said, "Not used to silly rules Japanese

have for..." she paused again.

"Inflections?" Ukyo noted, "Yeah, foreigners usually have a hard

time understanding the nuance of proper pronunciation..."

"Whatever," Shampoo sighed, then continued, "Shampoo look

forward to being victor, giving away her prize feast to other

villagers. She much pride of village, nobody of her own age

better than Shampoo, not even Cousin. Then Shampoo see boy

with Panda eating prize..."

"Actually, Pops was doing most of the pigging down," Nabiki

corrected, "He hadn't eaten anything except bamboo since leaving

Jusenkyo. I was pretty hungry, too, and I thought I could pay for

the food since there seemed like enough of it to go around."

"That attitude you have when Shampoo demand know what you

do," Shampoo sniffed, "So arrogant, Shampoo think boy need

lesson in manners..."

"You mean you thought she was a boy?" Ukyo glanced at Nabiki,

who looked beautiful in spite of being barefoot in a ruined red

dress with what little makeup she was wearing showing the signs

of wear that came with intense fighting.

Even given all of that, Nabiki was certainly as much of a woman

as Ukyo herself, even more if you counted curves and chest-size.

Ukyo had gotten into the habit of taping her breasts down

whenever she went out in public in order to hide her sex around

others, but it was becoming increasingly hard to keep her

padding from giving away the game, even after ten years of

practicing a boy's walk.

Nabiki sighed, "Trust me on this, Ucchan, that's the part you are

never gonna believe."

"Shampoo no idiot," Shampoo resumed, "Know boy when see

one..." she paused, giving Ukyo a glance as she belatedly

remembered how even she had been taken in by this stranger's

ruse.

"Forget it, sugar," Ukyo smiled, "Go on with your story."

"Not much tell," Shampoo shrugged, "Nabiki challenge Shampoo

and Shampoo get beaten..."

"Actually there is quite a lot to tell besides that," Nabiki noted,

"Such as why I made that stupid challenge. You were pointing at

Pops with that Bonbori of yours and threatening to serve him up

as a replacement for all the food he'd eaten."

"You mean cannibalism?" Ukyo's voice registered disgust.

"No, stupid Spatula girl," Shampoo snorted, "Amazons no

barbaric, just because live in small, remote village..."

"What did you call me?" Ukyo's voice arched an octave.

"Hold it!" Ranma urged, "Let's hold off on the name calling until

we get back to the dojo. I'd think you two would have had

enough of fighting for one night."

"Anyway," Nabiki resumed, "I asked if by challenging you I

could win the right of safe passage out of that place, and you took

me up on it. I thought it was a simple challenge match with no

formal rules except one-on-one combat."

"So no one tell Nabiki-chan about Laws on outsiders?" Shampoo

asked.

"Not at the time," Nabiki winced, "I never asked. Anyway, I'd

studied your moves during the last fight and thought I had at

least a chance with you. You were good with those Bonbori, but

you'd fought all day and were clearly tired. I knew I had the

speed to get around your defenses, but just the same I pretended

to be less good than I really was to throw you off your guard. I

only showed my hand when I saw an opening..."

"It good strategy," Shampoo said approvingly, "You fast thinker.

Shampoo like clever tactic, very sneaky."

"Ah...yeah," Nabiki colored, "After I won I'd expected maybe

some grumbling from the crowd, but I wasn't prepared for the

wholesale enthusiasm I was greeted with. Your people actually

cheered me..."

Now it was Shampoo's turn to look embarrassed, "Amazons...no

always like Shampoo. Shampoo very quick to brag she best in

village, many villagers no like that. See Nabiki victory as

Shampoo comedown."

"Nobody cheered you on?" Ranma asked, "That's terrible!"

"Shampoo...Shampoo think it Shampoo's fault," Shampoo sighed,

"Shampoo always win, Victor in three consecutive Contests.

Always best of age, then best in village. Great Grandmother

train hard, Shampoo no disappoint her. Make other Amazons

feel small. Other Amazons no like Shampoo, fear her."

"Didn't you have any friends growing up?" Ranma asked her.

"No friends," Shampoo paused before adding, "Only cousin.

Great Grandmother think have friends, no fight as hard. Had

friend once...but...Great Grandmother send away..."

"That's...that's terrible," Ukyo frowned, "Why did she do that?"

"Lo Xion no good fighter," Shampoo looked away, "Weakest in

village, no compete, very clumsy. Shampoo feel sorry, try help,

become Lo Xion's defender..."

"You were only looking out for somebody who needed a friend,"

Ranma said, "Why would your Great Grandmother object?"

"She think Lo Xion bad...what word?" Shampoo hesitated.

"Influence?" Nabiki was looking at her in dismay. No friends

growing up? Even she could not imagine that!"

"Influence," Shampoo tested the word as if filing it away for later

study.

"Wait a second here," Ukyo frowned, "Shampoo, Lotion? What

kind of names do they use in your village?"

"Why names seem funny?" Shampoo asked her back, "Know

what U-kiyo mean in Chinese...?"

"Look, we're getting no where this way," Nabiki intervened,

"Why don't we just get to the part that I thought was my victory

celebration? You were pretty friendly towards me at the time, as

I remember."

"No victory celebration," Shampoo shook her head, "Wedding

ceremony."

"Wedding ceremony?" Ranma's eyebrows shot upward.

"I..." Nabiki gasped, then tried again, "I thought your people were

a...little too friendly at the time...but I just thought they were just

being good losers..."

"Didn't my father say anything at the time?" Ranma sounded as

appalled as he looked. He had a mental image of Nabiki as a

man standing at the altar of a Shinto Wedding ceremony, such as

one he'd attended for a distant cousin.

"What him say?" Shampoo shrugged, "No change what

happened. Shampoo only see guide talk to panda. Panda look

very surprised, but Amazons take him somewhere to be fed. No

know at time he man who be to Jusenkyo."

"So that's why he came to bail me out the next morning," Nabiki

frowned, "He was more agitated than usual when he told me to

get dressed and follow."

"The next morning?" Ranma looked at her in confusion.

"Ah," Nabiki had a sudden look not unlike a deer caught in the

headlights, "Well, what I can remember is that there was some

partying and somebody slipped me a drink that must have

contained alcohol, or something even more potent..."

"Special Potion give to husband," Shampoo said, "Make feel very

brave with Amazon bride when we alone that night..."

"Hold it!" Ranma halted in mid-stride and rounded on Nabiki,

"You slept with her...as a guy?"

Nabiki cringed at the tone of his voice, looking as if she wanted

to crawl off somewhere and hide, "I...ah...Shampoo?"

Shampoo switched to her own language and said, "Don't tell me

you've forgotten about that? I was afraid you might have had too

much of Great Grandmother's beverage and pass out, but it was

all I could do to keep you satisfied until morning."

Nabiki closed her eyes. She could very well remember the night

that followed...in excruciating details. Very little of the Wedding

Ceremony itself was clear, her mind being hazy from the moment

she had accepted the drink. Being a temperate drinker, and one

who never liked losing control to strong spirits, she had only

taken a moderate swallow of the strange tasting brew they

offered. Apparently that was enough. She was damned by her

own suddenly uninhibited libido.

In other circumstance she would have been impressed. Whatever

was in that concoction, it sure could make somebody a fortune!

Nabiki had lost what little restraint she had and was

overwhelmed by the sensations that came with having a male

body. Shampoo had been incredibly attractive to her, even more

than with Keiko a few months before this. It was only her second

time, but it had been very special, no doubt because Shampoo

had a larger share of the Love Potion to bolster her nerves, and

with both of them it had been awkward in the beginning, but they

had gotten very good with continued practice.

"I'm sorry," she lowered her face, "This is not something I wanted

to share with you, Ranma. I didn't know how you'd react..."

"I still don't get it," Ukyo said, "How could she still think you

were a guy when you undressed?"

"It no hard," Shampoo sniffed, giving Nabiki a sidelong glance.

Nabiki winced at the Amazon's choice of words. As she recalled

the matter, IT was VERY HARD, which was a part of her

problem. She was just as amused and fascinated by the

discovery of what men took so much for granted that she had

allowed Shampoo...

She forced herself to look at Ranma, unsure what he was

thinking about her, but unable to stand not knowing. His

expression was...strange...not his usual look of curiosity, concern

or even anger. It was as if he were trying to discover something

in Nabiki's own face, not having yet made his mind up, and

clearly just as dumbfounded as she. Did he think she had

deliberately fooled him into believing her a woman of virtue?

Very softly she said, "I told you I'd never slept with a man,

Ranma. In that I was honest."

She half expected to get slapped, but Ranma was not that sort of

guy. He was clearly hurt, but he fought his own emotions not to

give into his pride or react as if she had deliberately betrayed

him.

With great effort he asked, "What happened the next morning?"

"Ah...like I said," Nabiki swallowed, "Your father appeared by

our hut and tried to wake me without waking up Shampoo. He

told me to get changed, which I thought meant that I should heat

up some water. I did and was about to use it when Shampoo

greeted me..." Nabiki swallowed, unable to continue.

Unfortunately for her, Shampoo did, "Shampoo very surprised

when you get hit with hot water..."

That was a considerable understatement! Nabiki had been so

surprised at being caressed from behind that she had splashed

herself while Shampoo was cuddling her. As Nabiki felt her

body change shape and outline she felt Shampoo stiffen in

surprise, then feel something that had not been there a moment

before. She had turned Nabiki around and stared at her,

expression frozen in dismay and confusion.

Nabiki had managed to stumble out one word that explained

everything: Jusenkyo.

What she had expected Shampoo to do next was difficult to say:

Scream, faint or fall down. Instead what happened was that

Shampoo began to cry, and cry she did, refusing Nabiki's clumsy

attempted at reassurance, and then she slapped Nabiki...hard!

Nabiki had staggered back, too stunned and confused to know

what she had done to deserve that. Before she could ask, Genma

appeared with a fresh set of clothing that he hastily handed

Nabiki, speaking very fast as he stumbled to explain about the

Amazon law about outsider women, and what it meant to defeat

one.

Nabiki hastily dressed herself and got out of there as fast as she

and Genma could manage with the weight of their backpacks.

Shampoo never rose from where she crouched by the fire, never

said a word, just looked at Nabiki with a hurt, tearful expression,

as if Nabiki had done something terrible to her that had left her

devastated...

Nabiki had, she now knew. No wonder Shampoo had attacked

her with such fury! She could not even guess how she might

have reacted under similar such circumstances. If some girl with

whom she had opened her heart (not to mention everything else)

had lead her on like that, only to betray her confidence the next

morning...

There were tears in her eyes as she turned around to Shampoo

and very softly said, "I'm sorry."

"Shampoo no want pity from Airen," Shampoo's tone held

bitterness, but the sadness was greater.

"What a weird story," Ukyo murmured softly, "Are you trying to

tell us that you married this girl and don't even remember it?"

"Ah," Nabiki forced herself to say, "I didn't know it was a

marriage. I was too new to Amazon customs, and I...I..."

"You thought she was like Keiko?" Ranma asked her.

Nabiki winced, understanding how that would make her seem in

his eyes. She found herself on the defensive as she cried, "Well,

it's not like I had that much experience! It was only the second

time for me, and I was a guy at the time...and...and...and that

damned potion...!"

It was a feeble excuse, and she well knew it. If Ranma decided

to hate her from that moment on she could hardly have blamed

him.

Instead he just sighed, "Well, you always told me you used to get

into some weird situations...but this..."

Nabiki felt the emotion drain out of her. The casual way he said

that...didn't he care? Wasn't he hurt at all that she had never

shared something like this with him, had never trusted him to

know her secrets? But then again, when had she ever shared

anything this intimate with anyone? Even Keiko did not know,

although it was very likely that the Kickboxer suspected...

Ranma shook his head, then turned to Ukyo, "This sure has been

some date. You were just telling me something almost as

shocking as this: that my father traded me for food...!"

"Actually," Ukyo replied, "It was a deal he worked out with my

father, involving his Yatai. It was supposed to be my dowry, and

by accepting it your father was going to take me off my father's

hands and raise me with Nabiki."

Ranma looked to Nabiki and asked, "Did you know about this?"

"No!" Nabiki said with greater force than she had meant to, then

fought to control her panic and said, "All I remember that first

year with Genma was that we were always going hungry. Your

father had about as much business sense as a Cheese peddler in a

fish market, so when we weren't busy training together we'd be

begging on street corners and dodging the police. One day we

caught a whiff of something very good that made both of our

mouths water, and that's how we discovered the Yatai. Your

father had one of his brilliant flashes and sent me to steal food,

telling me it was a part of my training."

"You agreed with that?" Ranma asked.

Nabiki flinched from the expression on his face and replied in a

tiny voice, "I was hungry."

Ukyo sniffed, "If you'd just asked my father would have given

you as much as you could eat, and then some. All I know is you

came out of no where and stole the Okonomiyaki I'd been cooking

for my dinner. I tried to fight you off, but you were older and

bigger, not to mention faster."

"I'm sorry," Nabiki said in abject humility, "It was inexcusable of

me. I didn't think beyond my own hunger..."

"You did it again the next day," Ukyo continued, "And again.

Each time you'd show up I'd try to fight you off, but you kept

dodging around me, laughing. It made me pretty angry, but for

some reason my father just seemed amused by the whole

business. Guess he thought it was a game we were playing,

because he hunted you both down and invited you out into the

open, then sat your Uncle down and started to talk business."

"What kind of business?" Ranma asked.

"How should I know?" Ukyo asked, "I just know Nab-chan and

me became good friends, in spite of our quarrel. You stayed with

us for about a month while our fathers talked a lot and sparred

together, trading secrets back and forth, I imagine. One day the

adults started talking about the son Genma said he'd left behind

when he took Nabiki as his student. Father explained how he

was teaching me to cook and fight in the family tradition, then

mentioned how he wished I was a boy, and how I was growing

up to look a lot like my mother. That's when I suppose he made

the offer to have me get married off to you, Ranma."

"I never knew," Ranma whispered, "Dad never told me..."

"Funny," Ukyo sniffed, "My father's done nothing but tell me

about it ever since, and he was pretty angry when you and your

Uncle left me behind, Nab-chan, taking the Yatai with you.

Father said I probably did not seem like much of a prize to

Genma because I didn't know how to act like a lady. He didn't

exactly make it easy for me to find out," she sniffed in bitterness,

"He always treated me like I was his son, but that insult made me

feel small and insignificant. That's when I decided I wasn't ever

going to grow up to be a woman! I'd be the boy he wanted me to

be, and I was never going to marry!"

"Why you no want be woman?" Shampoo wondered, "Women is

best, better than man. You be good Amazon if you raised in

Joketsuzoku."

"Maybe I'd have been better off if I was," Ukyo sighed, "The last

ten years have been pure hell! I've trained myself to be the best

Okonomiyaki chef in all of Japan and to beat the daylights out of

the guy who I blamed for all of my problems: Saotome Ranma."

"Hey, don't blame me," Ranma said, "If Dad made this agreement

then he's the one who wronged you! Take it out on him..."

"Don't worry," Ukyo growled, "I intend to."

"Ranma..." Nabiki hesitated, not certain if he wanted to hear this

from her lips, "Your Father...isn't the most honorable man I've

ever known, but he's always tried to do what he thinks is right.

He probably made up some lame excuse to justify taking the

Yatai while leaving Ukyo behind. I can't defend what he did, but

I've known him long enough to believe that he's not intentionally

a cruel man..."

"Maybe," Ranma said, "But he's hurt both of you, and I'm not

sure if I'll ever be able to forgive that."

"Nani?" Nabiki looked at him strangely.

"Look," he turned to her with a sigh, "I'm not happy about finding

all of this out when all I wanted was a nice evening alone with

you, but I guess I can't really say it's your fault. You were just a

kid when Dad cheated Ukyo and her father. You were trying to

spare him from his own gluttony when you challenged Shampoo

for a fight, and what happened after that...well, I guess that's his

fault too. I...give me some time to get over this business about

you being married to another woman. That can't be legal or

anything, not if you didn't know what you were doing..."

"Ignorance no excuse," Shampoo said, "Law is law. Shampoo no

have choice. Shampoo no kill Nabiki. Nabiki Airen. No go

home without Airen, no go home at all if forced to kill Airen."

Nabiki just gave out a sigh that left her as drained of emotion as

she might be of physical energy after working out for several

hours, "I'm sorry, Shampoo, but that's not the way it is here. I

won't send you away if you promise to give me time to try and

figure this all out. I'm going to try and do what's best for you, but

you have to understand...I'm...I...Ranma and me..."

"You and Ranma what?" Ukyo asked, "In case you've forgotten,

Sugar, he's MY iinazuke."

It was Ranma's turn to blink and look at her, "I thought you

didn't want to get married?"

"Maybe a girl can change her mind," Ukyo sniffed, "You're not

all that bad looking, and if you can accept what she's just told

you on faith, it means you're either a very nice guy or probably

very stupid. Either way, I've decided I'd like the chance to get to

know you better."

Nabiki thought it was impossible for her to feel anything more at

this point, but now she learned how mistaken that had been. The

casual tone Ukyo had used rekindled the spark in her soul, and

suddenly she felt incredibly angry. Jealousy was better than any

tonic!

"Ah..." Ranma hesitated, "I'm flattered, but a good looking

woman like you could have lots of other guys if you wanted.

Why would you want to tie yourself down with me?"

"Maybe she like stupid boy," Shampoo sniffed, seeming amused,

"She say you nice or dumb, either way she think you good catch."

"Hey!" Ranma protested, but Shampoo just laughed at his

reaction, as did Ukyo. Nabiki found herself smiling for the first

time since leaving the restaurant.

"Ranma..." she began when a car drove by and struck a puddle,

splashing her and the others with water, "Hey! Jackass!"

"People in Japan very rude," Shampoo sputtered, looking at her

silk dress with evident disgust.

Ranma looked at Nabiki and just sighed. What were the

chances?

Ukyo was looking at Nabiki, too, only her expression was

shocked amazement, "You...Nab-chan?"

Nabiki belatedly realized that her voice had deepened an octave,

not to mention she was now a few centimeters taller and could

look Ranma in the eye, "Ah...remember what I said about the

Cursed Springs of Jusenkyo...?"

"Cold water turn Airen into Man," Shampoo said matter-of-

factly, "Airen turn back to woman with Hot Water. Tried forcing

change in restaurant, but Nabiki stay woman. Very confusing."

"Ah, well..." Nabiki had to admit she found it pretty incredible

that she had successfully dodged all of Shampoo's efforts like she

had, but then she remembered that she was getting pretty good at

dodging Kasumi's similar attempts at ambush, so she supposed it

had been something like training.

"A magic spring that can turn you into a man?" Ukyo whistled,

"Wish somebody had told me about that when I was growing up!

It would have made life a lot less cumbersome..."

"Why would you want to do that?" Ranma asked, "Don't you

know how this curse has made life hard for Nabiki? She used to

be afraid that I was going to reject her because of this guy thing,

but I've adjusted...mostly."

"You have?" Ukyo looked at him as if wondering about his

sexual preference.

"I'm not that way," he insisted, as though anticipating her

thoughts, "I just mean I can be her friend when she is a guy, but

it's the woman I'm after. Besides, I keep wondering what life

would be like for me if I had a curse like that. I mean...what if I

turned into a girl every time I got hit with water?"

"Shampoo think Spatula girl right," Shampoo quietly marveled,

"You either very noble or very stupid."

"Probably a lot of both," Ranma snorted, then said, "Let's get you

home for a hot bath, Nab-chan. We need to talk, and I'd prefer

we did it man to woman."

"Ranma..." in spite of the fact that she was now a man, Nabiki

wanted to hold him and cry. She did the latter rather than

embarrass him in front of the others, but she smiled nonetheless

when he took her hand and squeezed it. It was as much contact

as he would allow while she was this way, but it felt as though

the weight of the world had suddenly been lifted off her

shoulders.

They continued the rest of the way in relative silence, four people

recently strangers now coming to grips with the revelations they

each were having to process. No one felt like adding much in the

way of thought until the time when they reached the Tendo dojo,

then Ranma took the lead and said, "Better let me explain

everything, Nabiki. Your Dad's going to have kittens when he

sees you like this."

In spite of her/his joy at Ranma's tacit acceptance, Nabiki felt a

shudder along his spine at the word "kittens." Something else

she owed Genma! Well, hopefully Ranma would never have to

learn about that particular part of her training mission...

Kasumi met Ranma at the door and said, "Oh, Ranma-kun!

Thank heaven you're back! There's been terrible news, and your

father..."

She stopped talking, distracted by the quite disconcerting sight of

a male Nabiki in drag. Nabiki flinched from his sister's curious

expression and said, "Sorry about the dress, Oneechan. What

about Genma?"

"My father?" Ranma could not keep the note of fear out of his

voice, "Has something happened to him, Oneechan?"

"Worse than that," Kasumi looked close to tears, "Aunt

Nodoka...she...she's ordered him to commit Supuku...!"

Continued.

Comments/Criticisms/Flames/Icebreakers:

shadowmane

Things are getting a bit tense around here, now for dramatic

confrontations that can only be called MORAL COMBAT-

Nabiki versus Nodoka. Be here.

Nabiki 1/2

Chapter 7, Part 2.

By

Jim Robert Bader

Inspired by the works of

Rumiko Takahashi;

All rights belong to her,

The Publishers and Distributors

Of the Ranma 1/2 Series

Based on the Works of

Wade Tritschler and Others.

(Some characters and Situations belong to me

The rest is shared Fanfiction, so Don't sue me.)

"He's what?" Nabiki found herself shouting.

"It's was terrible!" Kasumi blurted, for once ignoring her usual

eye-feast at Nabiki's masculine condition, "A Mister Kuonji

Akira stopped by and told us all about how Ranma-kun was

betrothed to marry his daughter, and father was so angry..."

"But..." Ranma was having difficulty speaking, "S-Supuku?

What...?"

"It appears that your father made an agreement with Aunt

Nodoka that gave her the right to order him to commit suicide if

he failed in any way his duty as a parent," Kasumi explained,

"She made him sign a contract to that end before she allowed him

to leave with you on his first training mission. The second time

he left with Nabiki she made him promise that he would teach

her to be a proper lady and not make it hard for her to find

marriageable prospects.'

"Why that...abysmal idiot!" Nabiki swore, "Oneechan, the

thermos!"

"Hai," Kasumi replied, reaching down by the door and picking up

a thermos bottle, which she handed to Nabiki the minute her

younger sister stepped onto the veranda.

Nabiki opened the thermos and poured the contents onto her

head, wincing slightly as the hot water changed her back to her

real sex, then she handed the bottle back and said, "Where's

Genma? He didn't...?"

"He's...in the dojo," Kasumi looked down, "He asked us to leave

him alone...that was some time ago..."

"Otosan..." Ranma's knees turned to water and he sagged against

the doorframe.

"Wait for me," Nabiki looked at Ranma with a fierce expression

in her face, "Ranma-kun, I swear to you that I will not allow

anything to happen to your father. Trust me on this, I know him

better than anyone. He'll listen to me, and so will your mother."

The latter part she was less certain of, but at the moment she did

not care. She was angrier than she could ever remember being,

and determined to make a point of it as she headed for the dojo,

ignoring the entreating cries of Akane and her father.

Saotome Genma was a lot of things in her eyes: a wretched

coward, a thief, a disreputable cheat and a lot of other words she

hoped Ranma never learned about, but beneath it all was a good

man who cared about his honor. He might protest that staying

alive was more important than honor, but at heart he did have

pride and was committed to the Budo he always preached, if not

imperfectly practiced.

Still she had half expected that he would not be there when she

arrived. It would have been just like Genma to run for the high

hills rather than face the consequences of his actions, but no

doubt Genma had been warned against this. As much as he

feared death, it was plain that his fear of Nodoka was far greater.

He sat with legs crossed, looking unusually composed on a white

silk cloth with a naked tanto set before him in the gleam of a

single lit candle. He barely acknowledged her entrance with a

very faint nod, looking neither afraid nor bothered, which meant

he was mentally prepared. That was very much unlike the man

she knew and sometimes loathed, but she had expected nothing

else from him. After all, he had Samurai ancestors.

"Uncle," she said formally, "What do you think you're doing?"

"Don't interfere, girl," Genma replied without emotion in his tone,

"This is something I have to do. Granted I prayed to the gods

that I could avoid it, but a man can only run so far from his own

fate."

"And this is what it all comes down to, huh?" Nabiki said, "You

take your life to atone for your many sins."

"Consider it a final lesson for you," Genma replied, "It's not too

late to repent your own. I know you're a very good girl at heart

and will make an excellent wife for Ranma, but not if you behave

the same way as in Singapore and Malaysia, to say nothing of

Hong Kong..."

"Or Joketsuzoku?" she asked, seeing his faint surprise, "I ran into

Shampoo. She says the two of us are already married."

"Ah..." he started to react like the Genma she knew, then sighed,

"I've wronged you girl. I should have told you the rest of what I

learned from the tour guide. I should have prevented you from

signing that contract, but I was too much of a coward..."

"Contract?" Nabiki blinked, "What contract...?" then a vague

memory tempted her subconscious mind, and she recalled

something involving a thumb-print while she stood beside a

smiling Shampoo and listened to an elder ramble on about

something she was too drunk to properly interpret.

"Oh no..." she said faintly. She really had married Shampoo,

even though she was ignorant of her own actions! Shampoo had

said that ignorance of the law was no excuse, and Nabiki could

only silently agree. This was terrible! She was married to

another woman!

"You see," Genma looked down, "You would have been better off

if you'd never known me. I've failed you as a mentor, let me

atone for that, and for a lot of other things I'm not too proud of..."

"And what about Ranma?" Nabiki forced herself to blurt out,

ignoring the pain in her heart at the sudden twist her life had

taken, "Your son still loves you..."

"And I love him," Genma replied, "More than if I had been with

him every day of his life. I failed to be the father he needed, and

yet he still has grown into a man among men, a man I am very

proud of."

"And this is the kind of example you want to set for your son?"

she hissed.

"I have to show my boy that a man takes responsibility for his

mistakes," Genma replied, "It's a lesson I didn't learn soon

enough, and I regret that. What kind of an example would I be

setting for my boy if I...became a coward in the end? I couldn't

live with that shame, so I'm doing what I have to."

"You want him to be like you?" Nabiki asked, "He's ashamed of

what you've done to him, to me, but he still wants you, needs

you! He worships the ground you walk on, Old Man. How dare

you leave him without his father?"

"He's better off with his mother," Genma replied, "She's a better

influence than I could ever be. I was too stubborn and proud to

see that before, but now...I can die happy knowing the boy will

grow up to be a better man than his father."

"I've no doubt of that either," Nabiki sniffed, then more casually

asked, "You don't have a second, I've noticed..."

"Nodoka offered to be my second," Genma replied, "But I've

burdened her enough without letting her have that on her

conscience. I've been making my peace with the Kami that

protect our school, now it is time I lived up to the Anything Goes

tradition against which I've committed so many offenses. I

would have done it by now, except...I was having a little trouble

composing my death poem..."

In spite of herself Nabiki half-smiled. Genma was a terrible poet,

and the badly scrawled kanji on the rice paper set to one side of

him was testament to many attempts and failures. How ironic

that a little thing like that could have delayed him long enough

for her arrival.

He reached down for the Tanto, picked it up in both hands and

pressed the tip against his abdomen, which was much firmer than

one might have expected, given how heavyset he looked to a

casual observer. He raised his eyes and a look almost of peace

came over his face, and very softly he said, "I do this to atone for

the shame I have brought to my family..."

Nabiki waited to just the right moment then struck, kicking the

blade out of his hand before he could even sense her movement.

Genma's hands pressed into his stomach, and then a look of

surprise came over his features, one instant before Nabiki's

second kick knocked him sprawling.

"BAKA!" she hissed, "You don't get off that easy!"

Genma was too stunned to move and just lay there staring at the

ceiling as if unable to comprehend that he was still alive. He

remained that way until Nabiki walked over to the tanto and

placed her bare foot over the blade, making a sharp motion that

snapped it cleanly underfoot. Then Genma sat up, stared at her,

and his voice shook, "What have you DONE?"

"That is what I think of your idea of honor," she spat, "You think

dying will make up for all the pain you've caused me, let alone

what Ranma is feeling? IDIOT! If you die like this, Ranma will

also die inside, and you damned well know it!"

"But..." Genma's anger drained away at the force of her

accusation. He fell back on one elbow, just staring, mouth

moving without words, giving the impression of a carp on its side

attempting to breathe outside of the water.

"Listen to me, Saotome Genma," Nabiki said with all the force

and conviction that she could muster, "No one knows what you

are capable of like I do, and nobody has greater cause to want

you dead either! I've sometimes entertained the thought of

pounding your stupid head in with a rock while you were

sleeping, but I've always stopped myself because I know that

you're not really all bad. Besides that, you're still my partner!"

"I...thought you had dissolved that," Genma tonelessly responded,

still looking as if he were in another state of being, as though the

meditative mindset he had used to cancel out his fears were still

upon him, leaving him in a condition of near-Satori.

"I've changed my mind," Nabiki informed him, "I thought I could

walk away from the last ten years, but I'm coming to see that it's

not as easy as I thought. We've got too much history invested in

each other, and whatever else you've done to me, you have tried

looking out for my welfare as best you could in your feeble grasp

of the issues. It's looking more and more like I'm going to need

your continued help if I'm going to get myself out of the mess

you've gotten us both into. I've got an Amazon for a wife, I turn

into a guy, my older sister thinks I'm sexy and my other sister

alternates between hating and admiring me whenever I do

something that makes her look bad. You've been helping me out

by taking Akane-chan under your wing to make her a better

fighter, and that's one start I want you to continue. I've also got

Keiko and Kodachi to worry about, not to mention her brother,

oh...and now my iinazuke's got another woman whose claim is

every bit as valid as mine!"

"Uh...better," Genma said faintly.

"What?" Nabiki hissed.

"At the time," Genma slowly explained, "My boy was betrothed

to Akane. If that betrothal had held it would have predated the

contract with Kuonji-san, but since you only met Ranma a couple

of weeks ago..."

Nabiki paled. She knew enough about contract law to know

where Precedence lay. Like it or not, Kuonji Ukyo was now her

foremost rival!

She took a deep breath and said, "You owe me. Never forget

that! For the rest of your days you are going to slave to pay me

back for all the pain and indignity you've caused! I forbid you to

even think about taking the easy way out until I've gotten as

much satisfaction as I can out of you, and if you ever try anything

like this again I'll...I really will sell you to the Zoo, old man! I'll

tell them you're a Panda with a rare medical condition that makes

it impossible for you to bear the touch of hot water. I'll even see

to it I get you on their breeding program! Who knows? You

might even give Ranma a few brothers before they put you out to

pasture."

Genma quailed. He had absolutely no doubt that she was

serious. Nabiki never spoke like that unless she absolutely meant

it. It was a better threat than if she'd said that she would kill

him!

"But..." he gasped, "Nodoka..."

"Leave Aunt Nodoka to me," Nabiki said with precision in her

voice, "She's not your problem any more. I'll settle this with her,

then I'll tell you how you're going to start making amends for all

the lives you've ruined, starting with Kuonji Ukyo, who will be

staying with us for a few days until she gets set up in a place she

says she was scouting out when all of this happened."

"Ukyo is here?" Genma replied, "Then...Ranma...?"

"He's all right," Nabiki replied, seeing relief flood over the man,

which softened her somewhat. She knelt down in front of him

and softly murmured, "He's quite a guy, your son. He seems to

always know just the right thing to say to make women change

their minds about him. If there is any reason at all why you are

still alive it's because he's more of a man than even he imagines."

"You love my boy," Genma replied, "You don't need to tell me,

but I think he deserves to know."

"hai," she murmured faintly, then straightened up again, "We'll

talk later. Just forget about this stupid business with your honor.

Killing yourself won't bring back something you lost a long time

ago. If you want to honor your house, then devote each minute of

what remains of your life to making amends for all the mistakes

of your life. I forbid you to do anything else, and until you satisfy

me that you've changed I'm going to hold you in debt to that end.

Give me your promise and I'll leave you here. Cross me and

You're going to wish I had killed you."

"I promise," Genma replied, "I haven't always kept my word,

but...on my love for my son, I'll do what you ask."

"Good," Nabiki replied as she turned away, "I would have hated

to beat you senseless. I'm going to need my strength to deal with

Aunt Nodoka."

"You...you won't hurt her?" Genma asked, suddenly very afraid

again, but for Nabiki or Nodoka would have been difficult for

even him to determine.

"I won't have to," Nabiki said, "Except where it really matters..."

Even though she had spent the majority of her life avoiding

conventional behavior, Nabiki did know enough manners to use

the traditional approach for entering the small teahouse where

she found Nodoka performing the ceremony with great

deliberation and detail.

Nabiki knew of the importance of this ceremony: how it was used

to hone the mind, spirit and body and restore essential balance,

and that the performance of same was sacrosanct. It was totally

forbidden to disturb the harmony of the moment, so Nabiki

simply shuffled in on her knees and remained sitting while

Nodoka went through all the elaborate motions, not even

acknowledging her presence.

Personally Nabiki thought this was one of the dumber traditions

of Japanese culture, a legacy of the Samurai days when feudal

lords prized civility over compassion and would use this type of

ceremony to calm the mind before they would go out and

slaughter thousands. The contradiction had always disturbed her,

like a cultural psychosis that could justify extremes of behavior

while maintaining the illusion that everything was hunky-dory.

Enemies could perform the ritual before signing a treaty they fully

intended to violate the next day, yet it was somehow worse to

cough or sneeze or make any bodily sound during the ritual than

it was to chop up old men, women and babies in the field of

battle.

In Nodoka's case she was using the ritual to shield her mind from

having to deal with the fact that she had just ordered her husband

to kill himself. So much for civilized behavior!

Still, out of respect to her Elder, she allowed Nodoka to go

through the complex set of motions until everything was

complete and the gods had been satisfied. She rang the bell

signifying the completion of the ritual, then clapped her hands in

prayer, and only then opened her eyes and looked directly at

Nabiki.

"Something I can do for you, child?" she asked, her expression as

sweet as if she were asking about the weather.

This was it, Nabiki sighed as she squared her shoulders. The one

good thing about the ritual was that-after it had been completed-

-it was permissible for one to speak their mind freely, more than

at any other time before one's elders.

"Auntie," she returned the nod, "It has come to my attention that

our family has encountered some unexpected problems that need

resolution."

"I know," Nodoka replied, "I have already taken steps to that

end."

"You are mistaken."

Nodoka raised her eyebrows at the carefully worded statement.

Nabiki had never made any secret about what she thought of the

traditional Japanese regard towards elders, but this was brazen

insolence on her part, and the way it had been worded as much as

said that Nabiki did not care what anyone thought about it.

"You think that ordering Uncle to commit Supuku justifies the

grief he caused by his unthinking conduct?" Nabiki continued,

"You forget that I know him even better than you. I think what

you did was very wrong, even forcing him to make that contract

on my behalf, and Ranma's."

"You think it's better to let him go unpunished for his crimes?"

Nodoka asked her.

"Not at all," Nabiki replied, "I intend to see that Uncle is

punished for what he has done, but I need for him to continue to

live in order to achieve this. He's no good to me dead, and the

dead can't bring back what's passed. If you send him to his

ancestors, they'll hold it against you."

"If you are bargaining for his life, then you are wasting your

time," Nodoka said with a hint of her own temper.

"What makes you think that's your decision?" Nabiki shot back,

waiting for the inevitable surprise to appear on Nodoka's face

before she continued, "I have my own investments in Uncle, and

he's bartered his soul to me. I intend to see he makes good

payment to redeem what I have suffered."

Nodoka's breath was harsh before she said, "He must have indeed

performed much villainy if this is the sort of behavior he has

taught you..."

"You don't know anything," Nabiki scoffed, "Do you think I'm

some empty-headed innocent who was lead unwillingly by the

nose into everything we've been through together? Come now,

you must know by now that I'm smarter than him, and I can take

responsibility for my own conduct. If mistakes have been made,

we've made them together. If you hold it against him, then hold

it against me as well, because Genma is my partner, and I won't

let anyone hurt him."

Nodoka rocked back at the force of that statement, "After all he

has done to you...you can still say that?"

"Uncle is my friend," Nabiki said, "And friends forgive their

friends for their mistakes. Besides, it's not like being around me

has always been a bed of roses for him. He's done a lot of good

things that almost balance out the bad stuff."

"Still," Nodoka said, "The honor of my House demands

atonement..."

"And you will have it," Nabiki said, "But not that way. No one

profits from death, Auntie. I've seen death in my time, and I

know that I hate it. As long as there's any alternative I'll fight for

what's mine, and that means family before any other kind of

business."

"Are you sure you will be able to handle the responsibility?"

Nodoka asked her.

"Like I have a choice?" Nabiki replied, "No one else around here

seems capable, and after what you did with Uncle, I'm certainly

not putting my trust in you."

Nabiki knew her tactic was risky here. Nodoka might seem the

pleasant matron to some, but there was more than steel behind

the facade. Nodoka carried that Katana of hers for more than just

its ceremonial uses. As the descendant of a long and noble line

of Samurai, she was just as formidable in her way as Kuno, and

could use that sword with far less provocation than Nabiki had

just given.

It was plain that she was tempted. Nodoka sat with her hands

folded on her lap, but they twitched dangerously, and the sword

was near enough to hand that she could draw and use it with less

than a second. Nabiki had just challenged her right to speak for

her family, and that was an awful lot for a seventeen-year-old girl

to tell the mother of her iinazuke. There were legends that told of

situations such as this which ended in bloodshed. Nodoka knew

those legends, and so did Nabiki.

The moment passed, and Nabiki sighed, "Your husband lives,

and will continue to do so at my sufferance, not yours. I would

take it as a personal favor it you leave him alone for now. You

may resume your duties as his wife if you desire, but do not cross

me on this again. He will live until he has finished atoning for

his sins, and that much is final."

"You..." Nodoka said quietly, "Presume much."

"Do I?" Nabiki was suddenly all steel again as she looked hard at

Nodoka and said, "Know this, old woman...I will marry your son.

Ranma will be my husband, and I will be his wife, and we will

unite the Houses of Saotome and Tendo. On this I give my

solemn pledge, my oath and my life. No one will stop me from

claiming what is mine. I will marry Ranma if I have to fight off

half the population of Nerima. Keep that in mind if you wish to

stay on my good side. I've lost a lot of the respect I had for you

tonight, and it will be a while before I can bring myself to forget

this whole incident ever happened."

They continued to lock stares, Nabiki giving no quarter as she

sized her opponent up with the determination she had used

against some of the most hardened warlords of China. The battle

here was as much of wills as it was of issues, and what was at

stake was nothing less than the future of their mutual families.

Both knew this, which was why the silence dragged on like it did

until Nodoka finally relented.

"If you are that determined," she said softly, "Then I will not stop

you."

Nabiki felt some of her anger and determination drain away.

How much had it cost Nodoka to give ground like this? She

hoped she would never find out, but for now all she did was say,

"Thank you, Okasan"

Another silence hung over them for a time before Nodoka spoke

again, "Ranma doesn't know what he's getting into."

Something almost like humor entered Nabiki's voice as she

replied, "I think he does, but your son is a very unusual man, a

man among men. You should be proud of the way he's behaved

tonight. I don't think I've ever met a finer gentleman."

"I'm pleased to hear you say this," Nodoka replied, smiling now

like an affable mother, "It would distress me if he learned any

bad habits from his father."

"Then we will have to make certain he only masters the good

points," Nabiki smiled, this time in genuine humor.

Nodoka sighed, "Then I trust you to take care of it. You know

about his other iinazuke?"

"We've met," Nabiki replied, "Turns out we're old friends, after a

fashion."

"That will make it very hard," Nodoka said without humor.

"I know," Nabiki whispered, "But I will do anything...anything

that is necessary...to make certain Ranma is mine, and that we

both wind up happy."

Nodoka said nothing for a time as she studied the face of the

younger woman, then smiled inwardly. She might still feel a

touch of anger at the way Nabiki had handled the matter, but

there was no doubt now that her husband and best friend had

chosen wisely. In Nabiki the family had a strong and capable

heir who would steer Ranma's fate in ways no one else could

comprehend. In a way she was glad for the troubles that had

brought out the real strength inside this slender girl and showed

what she was made of. If only her old friend, Kimiko, were here

to see the woman that had been her daughter she would have

been very proud.

Somehow she felt certain that Kimiko knew, wherever her spirit

resided, and was very pleased at the pride and steel that was

Tendo Nabiki...

Continued.

Comments/Criticism: shadowmane

Whew! This one was more intense than I'd realized it was going

to be. Time to lighten up a little! Next chapter we get a bit more

into the complex web of competing obligations that have fallen

on Ranma and Nabiki as they try to sort out the tangled mess left

by Genma, and we finally encounter Perfume the Enforcer!

If you wish to check out my other works, Please check out my

Fanfiction webpage at: . or

it's mirror site at: ~

All related chapters of this series can be found there along with my

other works.


	8. Chapter 8

Nabiki 1/2

Chapter 8, Part 1.

By

Jim Robert Bader

Inspired by the works of

Rumiko Takahashi.

(All rights reserved for the producers and Distributors

Of the Ranma 1/2 Series)

Based on the Altered Destinies Series

Of Wade Tritschler and Others.

The Consul General had just endured one of the worst weeks in

his entire life, and that was even including a turn in the People's

Liberation Army when he had stood watch on the Mongolian

frontier in some of the worst weather imaginable staring at the

Russian lines and thinking over the possibility that he might have

to some day shoot his fellow "Socialist Brothers."

Compared to this week that had been a pleasant vacation in the

scenic Hunan province, but this...this was an exceptionally

unpleasant time. He had survived purges, seen leaders come and

go, had risen through the ranks by tacking to the winds of fortune

and had even survived the early years of the Cultural Revolution.

But nothing in his vast bureaucratic or military experience had

ever prepared him for the onerous task of "Entertaining" the old

woman who now was standing upon his desk, waiting patiently

for the phone to ring and treating the entire Consulate staff as

though they were her personal retainers.

No one argued that there was important business the Embassy

needed to conduct with the Japanese government, no one dared

even to talk to her unless she chose first to address them. One

impertinent fellow had foolishly made the effort to persuade her

that tying up their phone lines was preventing them from

conducting vital affairs of state.

They were still attempting to pry him loose from the impression

he had made in the far wall of the chamber. After watching the

old woman send him there with but a light touch of her staff no

one else had even considered disturbing her meditations. Even

the female Captain of the Embassy Guard approached her in

nervous trepidation. No man was allowed to serve her the tea she

seemed to live upon, and even the Captain was visibly shaking as

she did so.

The Consul General eyed the old woman. Old woman? She was

a Mummified Gnome! Incredibly ancient and even more

dangerous than her fearsome reputation. It was said that the

Great Helmsman himself never spoke to this woman but in the

most polite and deferential terms, and only through a female

interpreter who could speak their provincial dialect. No one

spoke harshly in her presence, and the few who actually had met

her or knew of her existence fervently wished that they never had

to speak with her at all. After all, how was one to behave around

this person reputed to be the deadliest woman on the planet?

They said she was over three hundred years old, but he somehow

doubted this was accurate. Three hundred and thirty at least, and

that was allowing for considerable latitude. Women her age

never died of natural causes, most probably because the Grim

Reaper himself did not want to be in her presence.

Amazons, the Consul General thought to himself in disgust. The

last remnants of pre-Imperial China, remote and mysterious,

shunning outsiders and their ways while clinging stubbornly to

their three thousand years of traditional independence. Residing

in a remote and rather uninteresting part of the Guan Hi district,

they were one of the few areas in the vast expanse of China

permitted some degree of local autonomy. The Government had

tried to subdue and bring them to heal more than once in the past,

but countless efforts met with humiliating disaster, and the

reprisals that had been visited...

The Consul General shuddered. Yes, better to do what Chairman

Mao and those who had followed him had decided to do in their

vast and infinite wisdom: Ignore the Amazons in general and

pretend they never existed. As far as Beijing was concerned the

Amazons of Joketsuzoku were as mythical as the ancient city of

the Immortals of Kung Lung in the Himalayas-or the Seven

Lucky God Martial Artists of Nekonlon, and just as accessible to

their dictates. Time and change had no meaning in that part of

the world, and as far as the Consul General was concerned they

could all be figments of someone's rather fervent imagination.

At last the appointed hour came around, when every switchboard

ceased to process calls and a single line was left open to the

Consul General's office. Silence fell over the Embassy as

everyone waited for the call to come so that they could return to

work without arousing the Elder's wrath. The Consul General

felt sweat trickle down his forehead but was too terrified to risk

movement as he watched the digital seconds tick down upon is

desk chronometer.

At precisely 8:00:01 AM the call came through, and the Elder

picked up the phone on the first ring and very calmly said,

"Speak, Child. What have you to report?"

Seconds ticked while the Elder remained silent, seconds that had

come to measure the years of the Consul Genera's life as he

waited for the Elder to speak again, sensing that her mood had

shifted somewhat from very calm to somewhat angry. Somewhat

angry was only slightly less alarming than the warning of an

oncoming typhoon. He could remember hearing the stories of

how the Politburo had once ordered an air strike to rid themselves

of these troublesome Amazons. The bomb was dropped on

schedule, only it landed three hundred miles off target, with a

not-so-subtle warning that the next one would land in the

Chairman's back yard. The incident had never been repeated.

Bad news could only be bad. If this elder felt the need to express

displeasure in some way...

"I see, child," the Elder spoke at last, sounding tired and even a

trifle bitter, "Very well, you know what you must do."

She hung up the phone, clenching her staff in tiny, brittle-looking

hands (brittle? HAH!) as she seemed to think ponderously about

something, and then she turned to acknowledge the Consul

General's presence and spoke the words he had been dreading:

"I need another favor from you, if it is not too much more

trouble..."

Nabiki awoke to awareness that there was something very

different about this morning. It took a half-second to figure out

what it was, and then the urge to start and sit bolt upright was

overwhelming.

She controlled herself with effort, reminding herself that this was

part of the arrangement she had made with Shampoo, and that it

was too late to reconsider her decision. True the girl was taking

liberties by sneaking into Nabiki's bed at night, but if Nabiki

kicked her out now it might provoke a scene, one she did not

want to have repeated.

Shampoo looked so innocent by her side, one hand resting on

Nabiki's masculine chest (and just when had she gotten wet

during the night, she wondered, and why hadn't she awakened?),

one leg curled over Nabiki as though the Amazon were offering

herself as a bed warmer to go with her blankets. There was such

a look of peace about her that Nabiki regretted having to disturb

her at all, but with nature calling furiously she had to get to the

bathroom and relief, then take a hot bath and get ready for school

that morning.

Ordinarily she'd be looking forward to her morning ritual of

pounding the hell out of Genma, but she was did not trust herself

that far at the moment, so she had ordered him to remain in

Panda form for the remainder of the night and he was not to

change back until she gave her permission. Akane was too busy

training with Kodachi anyway to bother with learning other new

routines, so for once Nabiki decided to skip morning training.

She'd practice in the afternoon, after getting home from school,

after she and Ranma had time to talk away from all the others.

There was too much to do before class, and she needed her mind

clear and her wits sharp to carry out the promises she had made

on the previous evening.

She was just glad that Akane and Kodachi were still both fast

asleep. She did not need to have the black haired Kuno girl

asking how Kaneda had wound up in bed with the Amazon girl,

or the fight that would inevitably ensue when matters were

explained in detail. She was even more glad that Ranma could

not see her as she gently pried Shampoo off her person and laid

the Amazon out on the futon they had somehow wound up

sharing. The futon offered to Shampoo was, of course, empty.

Only one thought disturbed Nabiki at this point: where was

Ukyo? Kasumi and Nodoka had offered to put her up in their

room for the night, it having been too late for the girl to go home

with her father. She was less troubled by wondering where

Keiko was about, of course, since the Kickboxer had volunteered

to share the same room as Ranma and Ryoga...

She smiled as she remembered the way the two boys had reacted

to that news, even given Keiko's assurance that she was not

interested in either boy, could care less what they looked like in

their underwear and would just the same spend the night in her

cursed form, nominally to "Keep the Peace" between those two

with claw, beak and feather.

This place was getting much too crowded for her liking. The

Tendo Home had never been designed to accommodate so many

people under one roof. Granted Kodachi and Ukyo were only

temporary stay-overs, but if they did not soon fine a home for

Ryoga and Keiko...well, it might become a problem. For one

thing Ryoga would probably not be able to find his way back

from another residence, and for another thing it was better to

know where those two were and what they were up to.

Besides which Nabiki privately thought that Akane liked having

Ryoga around. The boy was the antithesis of everything Akane

hated in his sex and always spoke with courtesy in her presence.

It was nice to see him gradually turning away from interest in

Nabiki as Akane's charms worked their magic on the lost boy's

wayward soul. Ranma might resent him in principle, but he, too,

was coming to find Ryoga a good sparring partner, the only one

he did not mind going all out with.

Nabiki sighed as she got ready for her bath, washing herself off

prior to stepping into the hot bath so that she could restore herself

to normal. Though Ranma might train with her and certainly had

gotten used to fighting hard, he still could not bring himself to

risk injuring Nabiki, even in male form. Nabiki had to admit to

feeling the same way about him, even if she knew that he was

tough enough to withstand some punishment. Beating up on

Ranma was more Akane's way of venting her rage. Nabiki just

wanted to be near him and not have to do anything special. After

last night she was going to have to work especially hard to repair

relations with her iinazuke, even given his assurances of

understanding her position.

Nabiki only wished she could be as forgiving about Kuonji Ukyo.

All right, the girl had not been at fault for the conduct of her

father, nor for Genma making that stupid pact in the first place.

Still it was annoying as hell that the girl in drag had helped to

spoil a perfect moment between Nabiki and Ranma. Worse still,

she actually seemed to be considering the marriage issue

favorably, having seen what a nice guy Ranma could be up close,

which was poaching in Nabiki's territory. The last exchange

between them during the night had openly promised that trouble

was not long in the future.

Still if Ranma could trust her on Shampoo, could she do less with

him about Ukyo? Nabiki wished she were a generous enough

soul to say yes about that, but she cared too much about Ranma,

and to have any woman look at him that way was like being

stabbed through the heart. She was going to have to think long

and hard about what to do if Ukyo pressed the issue or insisted

on their engagement.

And Shampoo...what to do about her? Nabiki actually liked the

girl, or from what little she knew of her from their brief

discussion about nocturnal arrangements. Shampoo had been

adamant about sleeping in the same room as her "Airen," but had

seemed to accept that sleep was all that would be allowed.

Sharing the same room as Akane meant propriety would be

observed. Shampoo obviously had taken some liberties during

the night, but innocent ones for the first place, and all she had

really done was sleep with her "husband..."

Nabiki shuddered. She was never going to get used to being

referred to as that! This whole situation was crazy, but if she

were going to get through it alive without hurting anyone then

she would need to keep her wits and not provoke trouble by

insisting that Shampoo behave with more restraint. She rather

doubted the word restraint was in Shampoo's vocabulary at any

rate! As intelligent as the girl might be when spoken with in her

native language, Shampoo was too elemental and volatile to sit

still for very long without doing something expressive to convey

her considerable passion.

She wants me, Nabiki thought to herself with sad realization. It's

not just the stupid tribal laws compelling her, she actually desires

me, and not just because I turn into some guy she thinks is

handsome. It must have something to do with the stupid curse

that makes the male me irresistible to women...except maybe to

Keiko.

All right, so Shampoo had a crush based on their one night

together. The feeling could go two ways if she thought hard

about it because there was a lot about the Amazon that had

attracted her on that fateful night nearly two months ago. Nabiki

had actually considered what life would be like if she ever got

stuck as a man, and having someone devoted like Shampoo for a

companion was hardly the worst fate one could consider.

The problem was that she still wanted Ranma.

Nabiki sighed, finding no answer for her problems came to mind

while she soaked out her troubles in the hot water. It felt good to

lay there and soak, however, so she lingered for a bit longer than

was her usual custom and did not notice when the door to the

bathroom opened until she heard Ranma's nervous, "Oops! Sorry

about that..."

Nabiki chided herself for once again forgetting to lock the door, a

habit she still had yet to break but would have to work harder on.

Just the same she smiled and was about to tell Ranma that it was

all right and she did not mind the intrusion...when a feathered

form shot past him before he had time to slide the door shut, and

like a flittering comet that form dove into the tub as Ranma

sputtered out a choked, "Hey-get back here!"

The next moment Keiko surged from the water, grinning broadly

at Nabiki as she chirruped a bright, "Nihao! Wo ai ni!"

Nabiki stiffened, "Keiko...!"

"I said get out of there!" Ranma stormed into the room, wearing

only his boxer shorts and a bathrobe and looking as mad as the

proverbial wet hen, "What do you think you're doing..."

Keiko just smiled as she tossed the soap bar directly where

Ranma was about to set foot, which sent him flying on a different

trajectory as he collided with the far wall, then landed flat on his

backside.

"Oh, poor baby," Keiko cooed, "Fall down and go boom?"

"Keiko, what do you think you're...?" Nabiki started to say, then

jumped as she felt a foot slide under her beneath the water,

"KEIKO!"

Suddenly Shampoo was there, yanking hard on Keiko's pig-tail

as the girl yelped at being yanked out of the tub, dripping wet.

Shampoo's expression was livid as she said, "What you do with

Airen, stupid girl? You no interfere in Shampoo business!"

"Hey, easy, I wasn't doing anything...much!" Keiko protested.

"What's with all the noise?" asked Ukyo, who saw Ranma laying

on the floor and cried, "Ran-chan!"

"This is not good," Ranma groaned as Ukyo rushed up to him

and supported his head in her lap, heedless of the fact that she

was only wearing a borrowed bathrobe that clearly belonged to

Nodoka. He had a very nice view of her face from a lateral

horizon, and seen at this angle he was wondering how he could

ever have mistaken her for a boy.

Then he saw Nabiki standing over both of them dripping wet and

livid.

"Help," he softly whispered, expecting to be pounded into the

floor at any moment.

"What in the name of Heaven is going on in here?" a sleepy

Akane asked as she scratched her head and yawned, standing

there in pink pajamas with a pair of floppy bunny slippers on her

feet. She came wide-awake when she saw everyone who was

gathered in the bathroom, "Nani?"

"Oh, communal baths?" Kodachi asked nonchalantly, "And here I

thought you Tendos were rather uptight about such matters."

"It's not what it looks like!" protested a wide-eyed Keiko.

"No look very long like you do," promised Shampoo as she drew

her fist back.

"Could you people please keep it down?" asked Nodoka as she

happened by the altercation, "Kasumi is making your breakfast,

and you'll awake your father. Now everyone take their turn using

the bathroom, then let's get freshened up and ready for the

morning."

"Hai, Auntie Nodoka," Akane said politely, turning to look in,

"Oneechan, it's not very proper to show Ranma what you look

like before you're married. Kuonji-san, you were offering to help

Oneechan make breakfast?"

"That I did," said Ukyo as she straightened up, giving Nabiki a

wry look that ignored the angry glare in the eyes of the middle

Tendo daughter. She left as if she had not a care in the world,

passing Shampoo and Keiko by, the latter still dangling by her

pig tail.

"Um," Ranma was looking up at Nabiki, then forced himself to

look away with great reluctance. Nabiki belatedly remembered

that she had forgotten to grab a towel in her haste. She did so

now, feeling her entire body flush crimson.

"Shampoo-chan," she asked once she had covered herself

appropriately, "Leave Keiko-san for now. You can punish her

later."

"Okay," Shampoo replied, dropping the red-haired girl back into

the water.

Nabiki sighed to herself. It was going to be that kind of a

morning...

"Um..." Ukyo murmured as she brought out plates of food for the

others, "I don't mean to pry, but did you guys know that there's a

Panda playing near the Koi pond?"

"Don't worry," Keiko assured her, "You get used to it."

"Why do I never see your cousin sharing breakfast with the rest

of you?" Kodachi asked as she daintily sipped her tea, having

finished her bowl of noodles.

"Ah," Nabiki thought fast, "Kaneda...doesn't actually live here, he

just stops by on visits."

"Who Kaneda?" Shampoo wondered as she accepted a plate full

of Okonomiyaki.

"Just some guy I like to hang around with," Ranma said matter-

of-factly, earning a warm look from Nabiki's direction.

Ryoga glanced at Akane and said, "She still doesn't know?"

"No one's told her yet," Akane smiled in double pleasure, first at

the joke on Kodachi, second because the boy had actually spoken

to her without tensing up. This was progress!

"Hey!" Ranma spoke up as he glanced at the food he had just

eaten, "This Okonomiyaki tastes great!"

"And why not?" Ukyo beamed at him proudly, "It's my family's

special recipe. We make the best Okonomiyaki in Japan...maybe

even the world!"

Nabiki frowned at her rival, her pleasant mood turning sour, like

the weather.

"Wow!" Ryoga smiled, "This tastes like nothing I've ever had in

my life! Crisp on the outside but fresh and light on the inside,

and the sauce is so good that it's got to be home made..."

"I agreed," Soun beamed proudly, "You are a magnificent chef,

Ukyo-san. You're going to make some lucky boy a wonderful

wife..."

"Dad!" Nabiki growled in betrayal.

"Now dear, be charitable with our guest," Nodoka smiled

pleasantly, taking another biteful of Okonomiyaki and chewing it

thoroughly before smiling and saying, "It's very good. I'd love to

have the recipe..."

"Sorry," Ukyo smiled, "Family secret, but I'll be opening my own

restaurant pretty soon, and you people are welcome to stop in at

any time for free samples."

The Panda was there eating another Okonomiyaki he had stolen

off of someone else's plate and was now holding up a sign that

read: "Free Samples? That's very generous!"

"Ah..." Ukyo paled, then very faintly asked, "Trick Panda?"

Nabiki glared at the Panda, who got the message and slunk

away, very subdued.

"Shampoo agree is good," Shampoo said, "Shampoo good cook,

too. You starting business, maybe Shampoo come work?"

"Well," Ukyo seemed to consider it, "I haven't actually talked to

anyone yet. Dad promised he'd have the place ready for me by

the end of the week, but why would you want to work in a

restaurant?"

"Shampoo think maybe find job to help family of Airen,"

Shampoo replied, "Shampoo know family need income, and

Shampoo no want be burden."

"Well," Ukyo smiled, "I don't see why not. Heck, a little diversity

is good for any business."

"Going into business for yourself?" Nabiki arched an eyebrow, "I

take it you know what the odds are of turning a profit?"

"Hey, I've been studying for this all of my life, Sugar," Ukyo

replied, "I've already got it worked out to the decimal point. I'll

be advertising for my grand opening shortly, and I plan to use

word of mouth to boost sales, and since my location will be

within an easy half kilometer from the school I figure on

appealing to the student body. With low overhead and affordable

prices I should clean up and pay my Dad off by the end of six

months."

In spite of herself Nabiki raised an eyebrow. This sounded

interesting, even if Ukyo was her self-proclaimed rival.

"I think it's very nice that someone your age has good business

sense," Kasumi noted as she came in with a tray of fresh juice

and clean glasses, "You and Nabiki ought to get along

together..."

"Ah," Nabiki was on her feet, grabbing for her book bag and

Ranma as she headed for the door, "Gee, look at the time! We'd

better hurry up if we're going to get to school, Ran-chan..."

"But...!" Ranma protested, "I haven't had a glass of Kasumi's

delicious ice-cold mint teat!"

"Wait up you two," Ukyo smiled as she reached for her spatula

and another book bag, "I was planning on coming with you."

"Nani?" Nabiki looked at her, "Why?"

"Because I've just enrolled in Furinkan myself, by the most

amazing coincidence," Ukyo grinned broadly, "I'm going to share

the same homeroom as Ran-chan."

"Ah oh," Ranma groaned as Ukyo took his other arm, and he half

feared discovering what it felt like to be taffy.

"You're going to our school?' Nabiki's voice was toneless.

"Guess I should be getting ready myself," Akane smiled, "I think

I'll have time enough to walk you to Hebereke, Kodachi-chan."

"I wouldn't mind the company in the least, Akane-chan," Kodachi

replied with a grin, "Maybe on the way you could tell me more

about your fascinating cousin."

"I'll tell you everything I know," Akane promised, thinking

smugly that she would probably make a lot of it up, then she

turned and said, "Too bad you aren't enrolled in school, Ryoga-

kun."

"Ah," Ryoga hesitated, "Wouldn't be much point to it. I'd never

find it in time. I was always in detention back at Crossroads..."

"What if I helped be your guide-dog, Ryoga-kun?" Keiko smiled

brightly, "That way you could enroll and be closer to Akane."

"Ah..." Ryoga responded, his expression a mix between pleasure

and blind panic.

"An excellent idea," Soun said, "Maybe it's time you enrolled

yourself. You say that you've missed a few years, but that's

nothing that couldn't be solved with a little remedial education."

"I don't need to go back to school, sir," Keiko said as politely as

she could, "And after four years I doubt anyone would be able to

find my transcripts."

"We may be able to help you out there," smiled Aunt Nodoka,

"We could claim we were your guardians. A nice girl like you

should receive all the benefits of a proper education."

"Shampoo think she go see what school like," Shampoo said as

she rose to her feet, "Shampoo also want spend time with Airen."

"Ah..." Nabiki saw the look the Amazon was giving her, noted

the secretive smile and suspected mischief.

"Then it's settled," Soun beamed in a fatherly way, "Off to school

with the lot of you. Leave the housework to we adults."

"What a nice idea," Nodoka smiled at him, "How kind of you to

offer to help out, Soun-chan."

"Ah...?" Soun started blinking.

"Why father," Kasumi said brightly, "I think it would be a

marvelous idea. It would give you something to do besides play

Shogi with Uncle."

"Good luck, old man," Nabiki sniffed, already out the door with

Ranma and Ukyo at her sides, followed closely by a dutiful

Shampoo, who walked three paces behind her.

Once they were on the street and headed for the school Ukyo

glanced at Nabiki and said, "Is there something wrong between

you and Kasumi-chan? You seem to tense up whenever she gets

near you..."

"Only when there's cold water in her hands," Nabiki sniffed, "Or

anything else cold and fluid."

"You sister very nice, but Shampoo think she also very strange

person," Shampoo observed, "Good cook, almost as good as

Shampoo cooking."

"Ah...Shampoo-chan?" Nabiki asked, "When we get to the

school...do you think you could do a little favor and not call me

Airen?"

"What Airen want Shampoo call her?" Shampoo wondered.

"Ah...Nab-chan will do," Nabiki inwardly winced, "I just don't

want anybody to know about the...ah...marriage business. They

wouldn't understand."

"Shampoo no understand Japanese customs," Shampoo admitted,

"You no ashamed of having weak girl for wife?"

"What?" Nabiki found her mind going in a tailspin trying to keep

up with this girl, "No, I mean..."

"People don't know about the curse," Ranma supplied helpfully,

"They think Nabiki and Kaneda are two separate people. If you

want to call yourself Kaneda's wife, that would be better, but

you'll break a lot of hearts."

"Sadist," Nabiki whispered, "I'm going to get you back for that,

Ran-chan."

"Kaneda is name Airen prefers when man?" Shampoo raised

eyebrows, then smiled, "Is no problem. Should have told

Shampoo in first place."

"You guys sure live some interesting lives," Ukyo sniffed, "I

think I'm going to like it here."

Nabiki growled something unintelligible under her breath,

unaware that other eyes were watching them from across the

street. Shampoo did notice a familiar shadow following them but

said nothing. She did appear troubled, however, and was glad no

one was in a position to see this.

"By the way," Ranma murmured softly to Nabiki when they

turned a corner, "I never got the chance last night to thank

you...about my father."

"Oh," Nabiki replied, "No...problem, Ranma."

He took her hand and gently squeezed it, oblivious to the stares

that earned from both of their female companions, "I'll never

forget what you did. He may have done some bad things in his

life, but...he's still my father."

"Anytime," Nabiki replied again, squeezing his hand back as she

thought of the one thing Genma had done in is life that redeemed

all of his shortcomings. If not for the old man there would never

have been a Ranma...

Continued.

Comments/Criticism/Cultural Etiquette Corrections:

shadowmane

Okay, so I didn't quite get to Perfume this time, but that's about

to change! Next chapter: The Enforcer!

Nabiki 1/2

Chapter 8, Part 2.

By

Jim Robert Bader

Inspired by the works of

Rumiko Takahashi;

All rights belong to her, the publishers

And distributors of

The Ranma 1/2 Series.

(Based on the Altered Destinies Series

By Wade Tritschler and Others;

This is a Work of Fanfiction, only

Some Characters and Situations were

Created by me, so please don't sue me)

"This way," indicated Ryonami, the girl who was Nabiki's

guide into a part of the school that was usually off limits,

"They're expecting you."

"Do tell," Nabiki replied, noticing their silent escort, "I never

would have suspected."

Five toughs, she made them out, and martial artists from the way

they moved, if not exactly of the caliber she was used to dealing

with, were shadowing the pair as they went down into the boiler

room area beneath Furinkan, where an assembly of students

could be found, fathered about one of the larger store areas,

which had been converted into something of a makeshift throne

room.

There was a place like this in nearly every High School, she

reckoned, where the lower elements of the student body gathered

around to be with other social misfits and dark elements that

constituted the soft underbelly of the population. All the

forbidden elements were here, the gangs, the bullies, the drug

pushers and pimps, the sort of boys and girls your parents would

not want you to associate with, but which grew abundantly in the

fertile soil of vice that was the inevitable result of lax parental

and teacher supervision.

Nabiki smiled to herself and nodded affably to those students

looking at her with wary suspicion. These kids thought they

were bad, lost souls on the outskirts of juvenile society, and as

such trouble to mess with. If only these sheltered brats had

known the sort of life she had lived the past ten years they would

think twice about their standards for depravity. Nabiki had

mingled among the truly sordid elements of Japanese and Asian

society and had managed to keep afloat. Compared with the

sharks she was used to swimming with, these poor pups were

guppies, they just did not know it.

From the first time she had seen operators like Ryonami

circulate about the campus she had a rough idea just what sort of

predators would be waiting at the top of the line. Sure enough

she found a young man and woman positioned like a King and

Queen in their court, the woman reclining on an old sofa

someone had evidently left down here, the boy hunched on an

antique European-style chair with a hungry look in his eyes and a

smile that implied cruelty and viciousness. Nabiki was far from

impressed. Truly dangerous sorts did not advertise their real

nature

Though she had clearly been summoned by these two in student

dress, she acted the part of the naive innocent as she looked

around, still smiling and said, "Nice place you've got here,"

which had just the right tone of insolence to convey that she had

no idea that she was in any kind of danger.

"Glad you like it," the girl replied with a cunning smirk.

Something about her reminded Nabiki of Kuno Kodachi, but not

quite so high strung and excitable. She knew at once that the girl

was the more dangerous of the pair, but the boy acted as if he

were in authority as he looked Nabiki over, not hiding a certain

interest.

"We've got a dress code at this school," he said as if discussing

fashion were an opening salvo, "Why are you in violation?"

"Maybe I don't like the size of the dress I was issued," Nabiki

replied, all too aware of how her Chinese red shirt and black

pants made her stand out among these green-clad students.

There was a snicker of amusement before their chief silenced

them with a gesture, then looked harder at Nabiki as he said,

"You Tendos have a reputation for trouble. Your sister put some

of our best athletes in the hospital..."

"That was simply to remind them that it is rude to attack Junior

students," Nabiki replied, "I hope they have learned some

manners since they've stopped bothering us in recent weeks."

"Kuno Sempai's idea," the boy sniffed, "Not ours. We had a good

betting pool going down, which you've loused up, along with that

cousin of yours, Kaneda. I wanted the chance to talk with him,

too...where is he?"

"We couldn't find him, Sempai," Ryonami said, "Just her and this

fellow she insisted on bringing with her."

Gosunkugi swallowed at being included in this discussion. It

was not his idea to come here at all, but Nabiki had insisted once

she explained the task she had in mind for him. He felt very

vulnerable in this place, a fish completely out of its element who

even the girls could stop on with impunity. For once he was glad

for his reputation of being all but invisible in a crowd, a non-

entity of which most people thought too insignificant to take

much notice.

He would never have come here if Nabiki had not strong-armed

him with velvet threats and hints of compensation. He just hoped

Nabiki knew what she was doing or they were likely both very

dead. Well, he was anyway, especially if someone thought to

search his person...

"I asked him to tag along," Nabiki smiled, "I thought I might

need a witness. Business, you know...always good to have

someone in your corner."

"Him?' the boss of these students snorted, "The little rat couldn't

witness his own execution. Just what sort of business would

require a worm like him?"

"Well," Nabiki stood easily in her most non-threatening posture,

"That all depends. Since you obviously run things here, I thought

maybe we could work something out. After all, I'm a girl who

has prospects."

"And why should we deal with you?" the girl asked idly, "You're

the one who's been sniffing around trying to encroach on our

territory."

"A good point," the boy said, "Just what are you offering us in

exchange for letting you in on our action? We don't have to deal

with you at all, you know."

"Oh, I could be very useful," Nabiki purred, "I know a few things

about Numbers, and a lot more about Gambling and business.

I've had quite an education in my time, and I'd be willing to share

what I know...for a reasonably price, say...a cut of your action?"

The boy paused before snickering, then openly laughing as he

looked at the students around him and said, "She wants a piece of

our action, can you believe it? What next, full partnership?"

They joined their bosses laugh under the universal principle that

applied to managerial situations everywhere: whatever the Boss

says is funny, laugh!

"That wouldn't be a bad idea," Nabiki said, "But...I'm afraid I'd

have to insist on a few changes."

That sobered him up. Nabiki was going well beyond the point of

insolence, she was implying criticism of the way he ran his

operation, "What changes?"

"Well, the gambling I can understand," she said, "And Extortion

is just one of the weapons you sometimes need to use to get

people's attention, but shaking students down for money is

downright petty, and threatening their families is also very crude,

if somewhat effective. It's the Drugs and Kidnapping I don't

like...it draws too much of the wrong sort of attention your way

and compromises the dignity of the student body."

"So what are you?' the girl asked, "A Sohei Scout?"

"Just an interested businesswoman," Nabiki said, "I've got

nothing against the healthy pursuit of money, but I'd like to be

able to sleep at night about the way I gain it. I'm also no prude,

so if some girls want to sell their bodies for extra spending

money, that's their problem. Of course Venereal Disease and

Unwanted Pregnancy can affect the course of a young girl's life,

not to mention ruin their chances for a favorable marriage. I also

don't approve of selling tests and cheat sheets to students if it

means helping them graduate ignorant of the subject matter.

School is for learning, and there's more than enough slackers on

this campus as it is."

"Anything else?" the boss asked, as though unable to believe

what he was hearing, and too vexed by her insolence to let his

anger override his amazement at her suicidal behavior.

Nabiki made a show as if thinking for a moment then said, "No,

that's about it. I can accept a little healthy vice among the study

body, but you guys push things way too far, and I'm afraid I'm

going to have to insist that you mend your ways and learn a better

way to earn a living. With my managerial skills I could turn a

healthy profit while ensuring that students earn their grades and

don't have to get sent to the infirmary quite so often. I don't really

blame you for all that, of course, since you're just amateurs trying

to play at being junior-league Yakuza, and in all truth if the

School Administration really gave a damn at all about properly

managing Furinkan, then I'd had no reason to express

dissatisfaction..."

"You mean you want to take over?" the girl sat upright, finally

cottoning on to Nabiki's true meaning.

"Well, you must admit that I could hardly do a worse job than the

two of you," Nabiki allowed herself to grin outright, sensing that

the trap was nearly sprung on these rats.

"And what makes you think you'll even walk out of here alive?"

the leader snorted, "Or even walk for that matter?"

"And who's going to stop me?" she asked casually, sensing the

first attack before the boy leader nodded to his subordinates and

said, "Get her!"

Gosunkugi had wanted to shrink into a ball as he heard Nabiki

continue to dig their graves ever deeper. Now he just wanted to

hold up a sign that read: "I'm not with her!" but he knew it

would hardly make any difference. What he did not count on

was for Nabiki to vanish before his eyes as two of her assailants

struck from behind at once, then he caught motion at the top of

his peripheral vision and saw Nabiki come down with a double-

back kick that smashed both attackers to the floor like roaches.

She was on the next attacker before anyone else was even aware

that she was in motion.

Gosunkugi knew that Nabiki was an excellent fighter, had

spotted her working out in the dojo as well as that fight she had

at the Kuno mansion. He had been following her from almost the

first day he had seen her take out Kuno. It was a strange fixation

he had developed, being a shy boy by nature with a crush on the

nearly-as-formidable Tendo Akane. He had yet to divine who the

man who called himself her cousin was, but he had seen the

fellow around and judged by their mutual styles that they must

have each had the same instructors. That she was better than

either Akane or Ranma was difficult enough to grasp, but she

seemed more inclined to avoid fighting wherever possible, except

for that incident in the Chinese Restaurant.

Actually he could remember few details about that fight since he

got knocked over early on, then trampled by the other patrons

who stormed by his table. He knew that there was some

involvement with a Chinese girl who had purple hair who was

now claiming to be the wife of Kaneda, but other than this he had

little idea of what that fight had been all about. All he knew from

when he awoke was that it must have been a powerful battle, for

the damage those two had wrought was extensive.

But this was not even a fight in the classical sense. The bullies

and thugs who were trying to lay a hand on Nabiki might as well

have been ballet stars facing a whole line of charging soccer

players. Nabiki moved like a devil wind clearing out the trash,

laying students out with well-timed blows that had control and

power to spare, and in a matter of seconds she finished off the

majority of brutes while driving the smaller fish away.

Then she turned her attention to five particular students who had

both skill and weapons. These five were the local Enforcers who

obeyed the Sempai's will and served as his muscle. They

encircled Nabiki, preparing to rush, but Nabiki just stood in a

low crouch, looking utterly unworried. The five prepared for a

coordinated attack when their boss called out, "Enough! She's

mine!" and advanced into the circle.

Gosunkugi had long since taken cover behind a water main,

using what arts he knew to look as small as a shadow. He could

see the female boss hovering back to watch the men fight this

impudent female. She had a slight smile of cynical amusement,

as if she were deriving great pleasure from these goings on and

cared not a whit about the many injured and unconscious forms

that littered the floor. Something about her attitude reminded

him of a spitting cobra.

The male student followed a spiral pattern as he slowly attempted

to circle around Nabiki, who turned with his movements, careful

not to let him out of her line of vision. There was a dangerous

edge to this boy that warned Gosunkugi he was hardly a

pushover. Indeed, he'd already suspected that the Boss of this

gang would be the best fighter among them. That was the way it

usually went in the male pecking order, a fact Gosunkugi bitterly

resented, being small and frail by nature. It was obvious by his

angry glare that he was mad as hell at Nabiki for making him

lose face among this underlings. That meant he could only

reestablish his position with either her death or abject

humiliation.

"You think you're tough?" he barked as he looked for an opening

in which to strike.

"Naw," Nabiki said with that cocky smile of hers, "I just think

I'm better than you."

That angered him, made him careless and he attacked too soon

before he was truly ready. Nabiki's defenses had been iron clad

until now, so he should have suspected the opening she gave him

would be false, but instead he walked right into trap and received

an elbow to the face as his hand was deflected from its target.

Nabiki trapped his arm and followed up with a series of rapid

strikes that made a slight staccato noise before she finished him

off with an inverted kick that brought her knee up to his jawbone.

As he slumped to the floor she prepared to meet the charge of his

devils when a hissing noise sliced through the air, and something

struck one of the Enforcers in the back of the head and knocked

him senseless.

A new figure appeared from seeming no where, moving as

swiftly as a breeze to throw an object at the end of a thin cord at

the other four students, hitting two of them while tripping a third,

leaving the fourth to stagger into Nabiki's reach, where she

finished him with a shuto-thrust to his solar plexus.

The new arrival was a student dressed in the conventional green

uniform of the campus, but she had long pink hair that hung

down her back in a single braid. She did not face Nabiki but

instead turned to see the dark haired female leader who was still

hovering in the back. It was to her that this newcomer said, "Up

to your old tricks, I see. You're not getting away this time, Shokti

Yusura, I'm taking you with me!"

"Saki, what an unpleasant surprise," the dark haired girl said, "I

should have guessed you were working in league with this

Chinese tramp..."

"Never met her before," the one named Saki replied, "It's just

lucky happenstance that we were both on your trail at the same

time."

"And you thought to use her as your stalking horse, clever," the

dark haired girl named Yusura smiled, "It seems you win this

match, but I am far from cornered."

She threw something down at the floor and both Saki and Nabiki

instinctively covered their faces as billowing smoke kicked up all

around them. Gosunkugi heard them coughing as the one named

Yusura called out, "Next time, Asamiya-san, you won't be so

lucky..."

"You wanna bet?" Saki said as she straightened up, then spoke

into her collar and said, "She's all yours, Koijiro-san. I flushed

the rat out of her warren. Send somebody down here to help

clean up the mess."

"You're a cop?" Nabiki asked her as the smoke began to thin,

along with the students.

The pink-haired girl held up what Gosunkugi could now make

out as some kind of yo-yo and flipped a special catch to reveal a

star set in the hub, "Special Agent Asamiya Saki, Sukeban Deka,

at your service, Tendo-san."

"Sukeban Deka?" Nabiki repeated the word that meant "Student

Vice Cop" in Japanese.

"I've been assigned to watch this scum for a month now," Saki

said as her yo-yo disappeared into her jacket, "I've been trying to

get the goods on them to expose this racket, and then you blow in

here and nearly jeopardized the whole mission."

"Going to arrest me for obstruction of justice?" Nabiki asked.

"Naw," Saki smiled, "I caught your act, heard what you said, and

thought you reminded me a little of somebody I knew when I was

your age. Turns out you were just the catalyst I needed to blow

things wide. I decided it was worth blowing my cover to sound

you out, provided that your friend over there is willing to turn

over the evidence he's been gathering for you."

Gosunkugi swallowed, while Nabiki just scowled, "How did you

know about that?"

"Wasn't hard to figure," Saki nodded to Gosunkugi, "I've been

watching this place for weeks and already knew about his

obsession with sneaking photographs of female students. He

started following you a while ago, only here he is now, which

means you wised to his game and blackmailed him into helping

you out. Why else bring a mouse into a den of Cats unless he

could get something you could use against these scoundrels?"

Nabiki flushed a bit and hoped the other girl did not notice, "Oh,

well...I didn't think I was being so obvious..."

"It was to me," Saki's grin was conspiratorial, "It's just the sort of

thing I'd have done in your place. Now, provided Gosunkugi-kun

is willing to cooperate, I might be able to convince my bosses to

ignore your involvement..."

Nabiki snapped her fingers and said, "Gosunkugi, heel!"

He moved from concealment like a dutiful puppy, head lowered

in misery, wondering what gods he could have offended to wind

up in this predicament. Without further prompting he turned

over the tape from his miniature recorder, followed by the mini-

cam he'd also carried in concealment.

"Let's get out of here," Saki said as she put away these materials

into a purse, "You two don't want to be here when my boss starts

busting heads. Matter of fact, as far as we're concerned you were

never here to begin with. Got that?"

"I don't suppose you'd want either one of us as witnesses to

testify?" Nabiki asked.

"That might be nice," Saki smiled, "But I think you love your

family too much to risk reprisals. Besides, there's enough

evidence here to give us a lead on the people Yusura was

working for, and those are the scum I'm really after."

"Be seeing you around then," Nabiki nodded with just a hint of a

question in her voice.

"Count on it," Saki eyed Gosunkugi in a particular way that made

him feel oddly nervous, "Especially you, kid. We might be able

to work things out, you and me...and I've always had a thing

about nerds. I may have a little offer you'll find interesting, if you

meet me later."

Gosunkugi just nodded, too afraid of saying anything, but

wondering what the hell this lady meant, and he doubted it was a

lady-like proposal. Sukeban Deka? That was a pretty elite

organization, and she did not look that much older than either

himself or Nabiki!

"Thanks for nothing," Nabiki said as she turned away in mild

disgust, "I could have taken all of them by myself..."

"And hog all the fun?" Saki smiled, "Busting heads is what I get

paid for. We can't have amateurs making us look bad, now can

we?"

"Amateurs," Nabiki felt slighted and was growing more agitated

over having her schemes interfered with in this way as she left

the boiler room area.

However, when she reached the stairs on the next level, being

passed by men wearing Police Uniforms as though she and

Gosunkugi were both specters, a plan began to form in her mind

to recover from this disaster. Her purpose was mainly to defang

the Cobra that stood in the way of her gaining control over

Furinkan High School, but in a very real sense that objective had

been accomplished. She might not want to risk doing anything

overt now that she knew official eyes were not as blind as she

had imagined, but with the worst scum taken down it left the way

open to a lot of legitimate activities that she might still be able to

swing. That was why she felt enormously pleased when she

found Ryonami hiding out in class, evidently having managed to

escape the dragnet.

The girl quailed when she saw Nabiki smiling at her, but she did

not run when the Tendo girl signaled for her to follow her into the

adjoining Chem Lab. The lab was currently unoccupied, which

made it a safe refuge from which to discuss a few things in

relative privacy, provided no one was listening on the PA system.

Nabiki made certain they were alone by turning on a radio the

teacher kept upon his desk, then she leaned over to Ryonami and

said, "Sorry about the way things turned out. Hope I didn't get

you in too much trouble?"

"Trouble?" the girl quailed, "I'm dead if Shokti-sama escapes..."

"Why?' Nabiki asked, "You were only following her instructions,

bringing me to see her. Forget about her, she's history. I'm now

in charge of this place, understand?"

It took Ryonami a half-second to register that, then she did a

mental shift and said, "You're the new Sempai?"

"You bet," Nabiki said, "And I need a new lieutenant. Obviously

there are going to be a few changes around here, and you already

have the connections..."

"But...but I'm nobody!" she protested.

"You're somebody's daughter," Nabiki said, "And you obviously

had sense enough to get out of there before the trouble started. I

can use someone with good survival instincts. Besides...you

don't strike me as the type to go in for the rougher stuff of your

predecessors."

"I-I'm not," the girl swallowed, "I only got into this because I like

to gamble, and I had to pay off my debts, and school supplies are

so expensive..."

"I've started with worse," Nabiki looked the girl over, then

smiled, "Don't worry, I'll be my own muscle. I'm not going to

lead you into a life of sordid crime and violence. From now on

we're running a clean campus without the drugs and violence.

Stick with me and you'll learn how to run a business, and I'll see

to it nobody bothers you about switching sides since the guys you

used to work for are going to have problems of their own real

soon."

"Y-you mean that?" Ryonami sounded faintly optimistic, almost

not daring to hope, as though she was waking up from a long

nightmare.

Nabiki smiled. Undoubtedly there were a lot of other students

who felt the same was as this girl, and if Nabiki could bring them

all together and bind them in a closer-knit organization they

could squeeze the violent gangs out of the picture. That would

free up a lot of students to get back to their studies, which would

ingratiate Nabiki with at least some of the teachers, if not the

administration.

Her budding empire being plotted out in her mind, she almost did

not hear Shampoo sneak up on her until the Amazon girl said,

"Nihao! Wo da Airen..."

"Shampoo?" Nabiki almost jumped, "What are you doing here? I

thought I told you..."

"Shampoo get tired waiting on roof for Nabiki-chan," Shampoo

replied, eyeing Ryonami with suspicion as she asked, "You flirt

with other girl?"

"Ah, no, this is just business..." Nabiki started to reply.

"Excuse me...Sempai?" Ryonami hesitantly said, "Why did this

girl just call you Airen? I thought the rumor about was that this

girl was Kaneda-Sempei's girlfriend..."

"Shampoo his wife," Shampoo said brightly, giving Nabiki a

cunning side-glance and ignoring the other girl's dismayed

reaction.

"His...wife?" Ryonami's voice faltered.

"Ah...arranged marriage," Nabiki hastily explained, "He just

found out about it the other day..."

"Oh," Ryonami blinked, "Arranged? You mean like you and

Saotome Ranma-kun? Damn! What is it about you Tendos

anyway? You always hog the good ones..."

"It's a knack," Nabiki smiled, unable to help wincing as she knew

that word of this would spread over the school like wildfire, no

doubt breaking the hearts of at least half the female student body.

She turned back to Shampoo and said, "I am glad to see you

again, but I wish you would have waited..."

"Ah..." Shampoo looked down, "Shampoo no come see Airen just

for wanting to. Have something to tell Nabiki-chan that...very

important."

Nabiki turned to Ryonami and said, "I'll look you up later. For

now, just try and relax, okay?"

"Hai, Sempai," the girl bowed before turning and leaving like a

servant dismissed. In spite of her obvious suspicion and

jealousy, Shampoo looked after the girl with a look of curious

approval.

"Good manners, know place," Shampoo turned back to Nabiki

and said, "You work out deal? You now boss of School?"

"More or less by default," Nabiki replied, "Thanks for staying

away. I know that can't have been easy."

"No need trick Shampoo," she said, "But wish Nabiki-chan had

asked Shampoo be with you downstairs. No like sitting back

when Nabiki-chan fight. Would have gone anyway but...had

visitor. We talk...that why Shampoo here."

"A visitor, Shampoo?" Nabiki asked, "Someone you know?"

Shampoo nodded and was about to say something when a voice

said, "Tell Airen nothing! Is order from Great Grandmother."

Shampoo flinched while Nabiki turned to see the one who had

just spoken so crossly and found a girl wearing the same style of

Chinese outfit as Shampoo, only with longer sleeves and her vest

was embroidered with a pair of golden axes. She had chestnut

brown hair that hung down as far behind her back as with

Shampoo, and there was a strange resemblance in their overall

appearance.

The one difference was that this girl was holding a pair of large

double axes.

Shampoo positioned herself directly in front of Nabiki and said,

"No hurt Airen!"

The girl made a harsh reply in fluent Chinese, "Not my choice,

or yours, Cousin! You've told me your side of the story, but I still

have my orders, and they come directly from Great

Grandmother."

"What's this about?" Nabiki asked, switching to Chinese, "I

thought this matter was between Shampoo and me! It doesn't

include anyone else..."

"Wrong!" the stranger pointed with an axe accusingly, "This

involve all Amazon nation! You haven't done right by my

Cousin, now you pay for her disgrace! Either agree to return with

us to Joketsuzoku or face the consequences!"

"Cousin?" Nabiki spared a glance towards Shampoo.

The Purple-haired girl just returned a weary nod and sighed,

"Husband...meet my adoptive Kinswoman, Pur-Fum the

Enforcer..."

Continued.

Comments/Complaints/Bitchiness: shadowmane

Okay, so that seen with the junior Yakuza took longer than I

thought, I still wanted to show what Nabiki is doing to earn her

reputation as a Shark among the Mackerels. Be with us next

time when we have The Challenge: Nabiki vs. The Enforcer! (A

real Cat-Fight)

Nabiki 1/2

Chapter 8, Part 3.

By

Jim Robert Bader

Inspired by the works of

Rumiko Takahashi;

All rights reserved to her,

The Producers and Distributors

Of the Ranma 1/2 Series.

Based on the Altered Destinies Series

By Wade Tritschler and Others.

(Some characters and concepts were created by me,

The rest are shared ideas, so please-no lawsuits)

"Perfume?" Nabiki gasped, wondering if all Amazon names had

something to do with cosmetics.

"You no do right by Cousin," the Amazon girl said as she stalked

into the room, still pointing with one of her two axes, "You marry

her or be punished!"

"Hey!" Nabiki protested, then shifted to Chinese and tried to

explain, "This isn't something you can rush two people into, you

know! I just found out about the Marriage the other day, and it's

not exactly legally binding in my own country..."

"You see? You argue the point instead of just accepting! And

your Chinese is terrible! Stick to your own barbaric language!"

"Cousin, this is wrong!" Shampoo protested, "I'm not being

mistreated or mislead, and my husband is only trying to do what's

right for both of us! I love her, but I won't force the issue!"

"Why are you taking her side?" Perfume asked, then switched

back to Japanese, glaring once more at Nabiki, "You no take

Shampoo as wife, you make boy your husband, but he promised

to other! Why you no accept Amazon Law as valid? You make

Cousin very happy one night, then you reject her next morning!

You no good oath breaker..."

"Hey!" Nabiki suddenly felt angry, "I've never broken a contract

in my life! My word's as good as Gold Bonds...even better!"

Privately she added to herself: Just don't read the fine print!

"Hah!" Perfume scoffed, raising her axes in a crossed position,

"Defend self, betrayer!"

"Cousin!" Shampoo tried again, "No hurt Airen!"

"Get out of Perfume's way, Shampoo-cousin!" Perfume snarled,

"No want hurt you!"

"Shampoo no allow!" Shampoo said adamantly, remaining

squarely between Perfume and Nabiki.

"Why do you defend her" Perfume demanded, "She has

sapped your will! You hesitate to do what you know must be

done and allow yourself to remain abroad in this barbaric

land..."

"Cousin," Shampoo said, "I have seen much good in this

woman! She did not intentionally betray me, as I thought! She

did not understand our ways..."

"You know as well as I do that this can have no bearing,"

Perfume replied, "You would have been the first to punish her,

but now..."

"What I do is my own choice," Shampoo said adamantly,

"You think I want to be cast aside? That I enjoy seeing her

court another? We are married, but I can only have her if she

agrees..."

"There is no room for choice," Perfume replied, "Would you

defy Great Grandmother when she says that this woman must be

punished?"

Shampoo stiffened, "Great Grandmother is here?"

"I spoke with her this morning and she says I must do this,"

Perfume replied, her voice softening slightly as she added, "I

know you want her, but the Law is the Law. She came into our

village, defeated you honorably, gave her vows, now you must

stand aside so that the betrayer can be punished!"

"Shampoo," Nabiki laid a hand on her shoulder, "It's no use, she

won't listen. Looks like your friend wants to do this the hard

way."

"But..." Shampoo hesitated.

"It's all right," Nabiki said, "I can handle myself. But I don't

want to see you hurt on my account."

Shampoo turned to look at her, "Airen love Shampoo? You no

want see hurt?"

"Ah..." Nabiki winced, "I don't want to see you hurt, but..."

"Shampoo so happy!" Shampoo clasped her hands together and

allowed herself to be gently moved to one side.

"You no see how she hesitate?" Perfume sounded disgusted, "She

no say she love, she just use for own purposes!"

"That isn't it at all!" Nabiki snapped, then winced again, realizing

how that sounded. She was becoming as bad as Ranma!

"You fight for Shampoo?" Shampoo asked in pleasure, "No get

hurt, Airen! Perfume-cousin, you no hurt Airen!"

"I'll try not to hurt her, too," Nabiki pledged as she assumed a

fighting crouch.

"You welcome try," Perfume raised her axes and said, "Perfume

ready!"

Nabiki was sizing up this girl by her stance, finding Perfume's

defenses very strong, and the way she held those axes conveyed

confidence and control of her power. Nabiki had no weapons in

hand, so she was at a clear disadvantage. She doubted that

Shampoo would be willing to loan her Bonbori to this fight, and

Nabiki wasn't very confident of her ability to handle them

anyway, so she cast about for something she could use to disarm

her Amazon attacker.

She smiled. Well, any weapon will do in a cinch. She moved to

the side and kicked a stool into the air, sending it flying at

Perfume, readying to charge in a rush when the girl would dodge

to deflect or avoid it.

Instead the brown-haired Amazon became a blur and slashed the

stool into metal fragments. She spun like a top and attacked,

causing Nabiki to vault over the nearby work table, landing on

the other side as she sought to duck below the other girl's line of

vision.

To her dismay Perfume kept right on going, continuing her spin

as those axes moved with a speed that was inhuman to chop the

heavy wood of the Chemistry Work station like a living buzz

saw. In less time than it takes to describe she had removed the

obstacle from her path and was leaping at Nabiki, who dodged

beneath another table and slid along the floor, seeking to avoid

her.

"HIYAAA!" Perfume cried out as she split the second Work

Station in half, then leaped into the air to soar over the next one

and land on the other side, just as Nabiki was emerging from

concealment.

Nabiki stared up in dismay to find Perfume standing over her

with Axes raised for a downward chop. Squawking in dismay

she rolled to the side and came up with a rush, preparing a

counter-strike, only to find those axes at the ready, which forced

her to bend backward in mid-attack as she narrowly missed being

chopped into three pieces.

Her foot went up in a kick, but Perfume blocked the attack with

her handles. Nabiki retracted her legs as fast as she could rather

than leave them extended as a perfect target for her opponent.

This was very bad! Perfume was too fast for the direct approach,

and she handled those axes as though they were extensions of her

forearms!

And that's when she began to smell the distinctive scent of

horseradishes.

On no!

"Shampoo!" she called out as she backed away from the

advancing Perfume, "There's a gas leak! Turn off the main valve

switch!"

"Gas?" Shampoo blinked, "What gas? And why air smell

funny?"

Nabiki grabbed up a stool in either hand and attempted to slam

them on Perfume, but the girl moved to intercept and chopped the

metal to pieces. Nabiki winced as she vaulted onto a

Workstation and said, "Don't make a spark or light a flame! If

that gas catches fire they'll be one hell of an explosion!"

Shampoo just looked curiously at her, "Why talk so fast?

Shampoo not able to follow Airen..."

"Mou!" Nabiki cried as she vaulted as high up over Perfume's

next swing as she could manage, nearly brushing the ceiling as

she headed for the exit. Perfume, of course, went after her as

Shampoo followed closely behind, not interfering but staying

close enough to see all the action. As an afterthought she

plucked up the remnant of one of the chairs that was in her way

and casually tossed it over her shoulder.

It sailed across the room, landing near to one of the demolished

workstations and glanced off an exposed metal pipe from which

emerged a certain hissing.

BOOOM!

The hallway shook, causing Nabiki to fall and slide to nearly the

end of the corridor while Perfume halted in mid-stride to regain

her balance. Shampoo staggered slightly then looked over her

shoulder to see smoke issuing from the room they had vacated

and very weakly said, "Oh...that what Airen mean! Why no say

so in first place?"

Nabiki scrambled back to her feet and headed for the nearest

classroom. Teachers and students all looked up in surprise to see

her passing like a shot straight for the window. The fact that they

were on the third floor hardly seemed to bother Nabiki as she

dropped to the ground with Perfume still hot on her tail, followed

dutifully by a much distressed Shampoo, who wondered why

Japanese people let such dangerous vapors into their buildings...

"So," Ranma asked as he walked Ukyo towards the Gym, both

now wearing athletic shorts, "What do you think of Furinkan so

far?"

"Interesting place," Ukyo replied, scanning the field with her

eyes, "Does everyone here practice Martial Arts?"

"Well, not quite everyone," Ranma shrugged, "But a majority of

students know a few basic moves, mostly low-level self-defense

stuff. Not very many are as good as me or Akane, and certainly

nobody here is as good as Nabiki."

"Nab-chan is in a class by herself," Ukyo agreed, then eyed

Ranma coyly, "So...what is it about her that attracts you the

most? The fact that she's a good martial artist?"

"Good doesn't cover it," Ranma sniffed, "But no, that's not the

real reason. Nabiki's...well...she's nice...and pretty, and she's

very smart with loads of talent and...she has this personality..." he

faltered, then sighed, "I'm just no good at this stuff. I just know I

want to be with her as often as possible..."

"But she's at least a year older you, Ran-chan," Ukyo reasoned,

"You don't share any of the same classes, so you can't really see

her except at break time and lunch."

"I know," Ranma sighed, sounding mildly depressed.

Ukyo frowned, then decided to change tactics, "I can see how

she'd be fun to hang out with...she was like that when we were

kids a few years ago, back when I was pretending to be a boy,

and she just took it in stride and even flirted with me and

Ryoga..."

"She flirted?" Ranma's tone conveyed worry, "Like how?"

"Oh, you know," Ukyo sniffed, "Batted her eyes, posed as if she

were in front of a camera, said stuff that had a double-

meanings...girl stuff. I went along to keep up the appearance that

I was a guy, but I was really not interested...although there was

this one student who I thought had a nice...body..." she smirked,

"Kino Makoto, even more of a tomboy than I pretended to be.

She knew I was a girl but still pretended to flirt to sort-of give the

illusion that I was real butch, dating an Amazon like that..."

"Amazon?" Ranma asked.

"Not like our friend with the purple hair," Ukyo corrected, "She

got into a lot of fights, but none of them were caused by her. She

enjoyed the Martial Arts like me, we even sparred a little. Last I

saw her she got involved with some other girls and hung out with

them doing stuff, having adventures," she sighed, "I got kind of

jealous at the end there because I wished I could have another

friend that I could trust that way. Haven't really felt that close to

anyone until lately, not even my father."

"I'm sorry if life was so hard for you, Ucchan," Ranma noted.

"Ah, it was just something I grew out of when I moved here,"

Ukyo shrugged, "This is a new chapter of my life, so maybe I

should come out of the closet and be myself as I am. It'd be a big

relief, not to mention an end to a lot of discomfort."

"Discomfort?" he asked.

"Yeah," she smirked, "Like taping down my breasts. That used

to be easier to do, but lately they've been filling out a lot

more...and it can get pretty constrictive wearing boy's clothing all

of the time..."

"Ah..." Ranma decided not to give into his infamous temptation

of saying what came first into mind. He was trying very hard not

to indulge Ukyo's budding interest in him, and giving her the

wrong sort of idea was hardly the way to make progress.

She laughed just the same at his typically male reaction, then

said, "Mind you, I've learned a lot from posing as a boy, such as

the big difference in the way guys and girls get treated on the

whole. For one thing I'd never be caught dead wearing the sort of

dresses the other girls seem to fancy..."

"Yo, Ranma!" Akane called out, just before a soccer ball came

flying their way, and without pausing to think about it Ukyo

darted under the ball and gave it a head-but, sending it back onto

the field.

"Nice shot," said Keiko as she trotted up to join them, "Sorry

about that, don't know the strength of my own kicks. I was half-

afraid it'd wind up in orbit..."

"What are you doing here?" Ranma asked as Ukyo returned to his

side, looking smug in an almost boy-like manner, "Thought you

weren't going to enroll?"

"Well, nobody's told me to get lost yet, so I thought I'd join

Akane and her friends in a little game," Keiko smiled, now

wearing a light jersey to go with borrowed athletic shorts, but no

footwear, "Seems like a lot more fun than waiting at home for

everyone else to show up."

"Still no shoes, I see," Ukyo nodded matter-of-factly.

"Why would I need shoes?" Keiko asked, then smirked, "Still

going in drag, huh? Afraid to let it all hang out?"

"I'm considering my options," Ukyo cocked her head to one side,

and for a moment Ranma thought to himself that-even dressed

like a boy-Ukyo was kind of cute...then he stifled the thought

with a guilty start. First Nabiki, now this...!

"Hey, Ranma," Akane grinned, seeing his reaction as a golden

opportunity to twist the knife, "How are you getting along with

your new girl-friend?"

"Lay off, Akane, I'm not in the..." he started to say when an

explosion rocked the landscape, and as one they all turned around

to look back towards the main building.

"What was that?" asked Akane.

"I see smoke!" Keiko pointed, "It came from that third-story

window!"

"The Chem Lab?" Ranma blinked, "Wonder if somebody mixed

the wrong batch? Hey, Akane, you haven't been leaving one of

your little recipes lying around for some other poor schnook to try

out?"

"Shut up, Ranma!" Akane snapped, "I'm not that bad a cook..."

"Oh yeah?" he retorted, "Then why does everything you make try

to get up off the plate and..."

"Uh," Ukyo glanced at the pair and said, "As much as I find this

display of sibling rivalry fascinating, do you think maybe we

ought to go see if somebody's been hurt?"

"Fire Marshal will take care of it," Ranma shrugged, "This isn't

the first time this has happened."

"Stuff like this happens all the time?" Keiko smirked, "I think I'm

going to like it around here..."

"Excuse me!" Nabiki cried as she suddenly appeared running

hell-for-leather right through their midst, kicking up a breeze in

passage.

"Oneechan?" Akane gasped, "What...?"

"Come back, you Coward!" cried a second girl with long brown

hair as she vaulted over their heads like a springing panther, then

came down at a dead run as she chased Nabiki towards the

gymnasium with axes flashing, "Face Perfume and take

punishment!"

"Perfume?" Ranma blinked when he was suddenly run down by a

charging express Amazon, who knocked them all sprawling.

"Get out of Shampoos way! Shampoo coming, Airen!"

"What the...?" Ukyo got back to her feet then growled, "Why that

purple-haired hussy..." and took off running,

"Perfume?" Keiko winced as she got back to her feet and dusted

herself off, "Oh no...this is bad news! What's Nabiki-chan done

to set her off this time?"

She then began sprinting after the others.

"Man," Ranma groaned, "What is the problem with these

Amazons?"

"I don't know, Ranma," Akane said, "But I think Nabiki Oni-

chan is in trouble, we've got to help her."

"Nabiki," Ranma suddenly remembered the brief instant before

Nabiki had passed them, the look of sheer panic in his iinazuke's

face, and the flash of twin axes, and then he was running after

them before he had even formulated the thought, followed closely

by Akane...

It had not taken long for Nabiki to come to the conclusion that

she was not going to beat this girl without finding some weapons

to counter her skill with those axes. Attempting to do so would

likely result in her dismemberment, or worse, for the Amazon

fought like a living weed-whacker without a single visible hole in

her defenses.

That this girl was Shampoo's cousin was obvious from their

matching combat styles, but this girl had an edge in speed that

made her especially deadly. Perhaps with Shampoo's Bonbori

she might have stood a better chance, but at the moment any

weapon would do to even the odds a little, preferably hand

grenades and missile launchers! This Perfume fought like a

Tiger, and she did not seem to be taking any prisoners at the

moment, nor was she amenable to friendly persuasion.

The Gym was the closest thing to an armory that she could think

of at the moment. Half the students practiced some form of

martial art, either Kendo, Kempo or Kyudo Archery, which left a

range of tools at hand from bows to pole arms to bamboo shinai

and wooden bokkens. As she raced through the door she sought

one the wall arrays and did not at first register the fact that a class

was in session.

Not, that is, until Kuno Tatewaki spied her and said, "Class

dismissed! I have just spied my muse and must go to her this

instant!"

"Mou," Nabiki grumbled as the fool blocked her way to the wall

rack of weapons, "Get out of my way, Kuno! I mean business!"

"As do I, fair Tendo Nabiki," the man smiled, "The Blue Thunder

of Furinkan High..."

"Bakusai Tenketsu!" a high pitched voice cried out, just before

one wall exploded inward as a new entrance was created.

Perfume stepped through the gap and spied Nabiki, then once

again raised her axes.

"Kuso!" Nabiki turned around in a look of dismay. How the hell

had Perfume done that? Just how powerful was this Amazon girl

anyway that a stone brick wall could be shred like paper?

"Who are you and what are you doing here?" Kuno demanded as

Nabiki took advantage of his momentary distraction to make a

dive for the opposite wall, where she spotted a row of Naginatas.

"Out of way, fool," Perfume waved an axe to emphasize her

point, "No have business with you, only Airen to Cousin!"

"If you mean ill will towards the fair Tendo Nabiki, then know

that I, Kuno Tatewaki, the Blue Thunder of..."

"You stupid man," Perfume snorted, "No have time for you.

Perfume must do mission of Hiibaachan..."

"Your Great Grandmother?" Kuno asked as he held his bokken

out in a classic samurai pose, "Why would some old woman

want to harm the fair Nabiki...?"

"No you business," Perfume replied, and went into a whirl with

both axes flashing. Before Kuno knew it he was clutching a

stump, and before this fact registered on him he was sent to

dreamland as his head was struck between flat side of both axes.

One almost would have sworn that there was a hollow ringing

sound as he collapsed to the floor like a rag doll.

By this time Nabiki had her borrowed Naginata in hand and was

holding it out defensively as she looked on in dismay and

growled, "What are you, the Tasmanian Devil?"

"You no run further!" Perfume growled, "You make Perfume

work too hard, she hurt you!"

"Excuse me, but I thought that was already your idea," Nabiki

said as the Naginata whirled in her hand, skillfully wielded like

the deadly long-edged pole that her ancestors had once used to

unseat charging horsemen.

Perfume met her first attack and reposted, then moved back and

counter-struck, only to have the blade end of the Naginata meet

her axe and deflect it. Sparks shot back and forth as the two

moved in rhythm to parry and thrust, chop and defend, back and

forth while all the other student present looked on in amazement.

Ranma and Akane caught up with Keiko and Shampoo, who

were standing before the gap created by Perfume, watching the

exchange from the comfort of a marginally safe distance. Ranma

took one look at the deadly intent of the two fighters and said,

"This is nuts! What are they fighting about anyway?"

"Can't you guess?" Keiko gave Shampoo a look of accusation.

"Shampoo no want this," Shampoo insisted, "Great Grandmother

send Enforcer Cousin to...what is word for make do what you

want?"

"Intimidate?" offered Akane.

"Yes, that," Shampoo nodded, "Intimidate Airen into returning to

Joketsuzoku."

"But that's crazy!" Ukyo snorted, "Why would Nab-chan want to

go back after they sent you to kill her?"

"Hiibaachan very tradition-minded," Shampoo replied, "No think

Shampoo make good decision. She much want matter settled

now so Shampoo can return to village. No can return to village

without Airen, unless Shampoo kill Airen, which Shampoo no

want."

"Forcing her to choose isn't going to do anyone any good!" Ukyo

snorted, then made a dash towards the Gymnasium lockers,

shouting, "I can't just sit by and do nothing!"

"What are you going to do?" Ranma called out, feeling just as

frustrated as he saw Nabiki give ground, slowing down while the

Amazon girl just kept right on coming.

"If you don't want this to happen, then why don't you go in there

and help her?" Akane demanded.

The Amazon girl just shook her head sadly, "Shampoo no can go

against will of Great Grandmother. Hiibaachan is Elder, help

raise Shampoo, along with Cousin."

"Well if you don't do something, I will!" Keiko snarled.

"You no help," Shampoo said firmly, "You make promise to

Great Grandmother when she let you go. No interfere in Amazon

business."

"But she's going to be killed!" Keiko cringed as she saw the blade

end of the Naginata fly off into the distance, leaving Nabiki with

only the wooden shaft against the onslaught of the axes, "Nabiki-

chan!"

She started forward but Shampoo's hand dug into her shoulder

and held the Kickboxer motionless, "You no stand against

Perfume. She too good, already once defeat you."

Nabiki ducked low and forced the Amazon to retreat with a low

sweep of her staff, but now she was obviously tiring, having gone

all out, while Perfume seemed to just keep right on going.

"But I have to do something!" Keiko cried, "She has a

weakness..."

"You no tell!" Shampoo's voice was firm, "Tell Perfume

weakness and Shampoo kill you!"

"Go right ahead," Keiko said with a wince as Shampoo increased

the pressure of her grip, "I'd rather die than see Nabiki-chan get

hurt. If you cared at all about your precious Airen..."

Shampoo's face was a mask of pain for one instant before she

finally spoke the word, "Water."

"Water?" Akane and Ranma gasped.

Shampoo bowed her head and said the word that made

everything clear, "Jusenkyo..."

Nabiki was losing and she knew it. Where in the name of all the

Gods did this girl get her energy from? Shampoo would have

long since tired by now, but her cousin just kept right on going!

Nabiki was fast exhausting her supply of special techniques

while the other girl was just chock full of surprises. In a matter

of a few seconds she knew the fight would be all but over.

Oh well, there was one special technique Genma had taught her

for dealing with hopeless situations such as this. Nabiki threw

her pole hard at Perfume like a Javelin then put the tactic into

effect by turning tail and running like hell for the lockers!

Perfume managed to chop the pole into toothpicks, but in doing

so she was delayed a few crucial seconds. She darted past the

cloud of sawdust that she had just created in time to see Nabiki

vanish into the lockers, then without pausing to think about it

went charging after her while those athletes near to hand

scrambled to get out of her way. They knew instinctively that

this lady meant serious business!

"The lockers!" Keiko cried, "Now's our chance!"

"Then what are we waiting for?" asked Ranma, "Akane, just in

case, do you think you can find a hose somewhere?"

"Not a problem," Akane nodded, at once heading in the direction

of the nearest tool shed.

Meanwhile Ukyo had broken into the equipment locker and

retrieved her Baker's Peel from where it had been secured. The

kid on monitor duty had asked what the heck she was up to, but

was wise enough not to object to this boyish girl who had just

snapped the lock off its hinges in her haste to get at her favorite

weapon.

Ukyo turned around just in time to see Nabiki dart into the locker

room, surprising the boys who were only partially dressed at her

unexpected presence. Ordinarily Nabiki might have taken

advantage of the situation to ogle some of the male talent on

display, but with a screaming maniac on her tail this did not

seem like a very good option. Instead she ducked behind one row

of lockers and made a shushing motion at the boys gaping at her.

Perfume trotted in, surveying the room with a momentary look of

distraction, then forced herself to ignore these men as she

growled, "Where you, Tendo Nabiki? Come face me now!"

"Ah," one of the boys timidly asked, "Did you know this place is

for guys only?"

"What about?" Perfume asked him coldly.

"Ah...just asking," the boy blanched as she flashed her axes.

"You smart boy, you leave now," Perfume winked at him, then

said, "Only here for Tendo Nabiki! Rest of you go now or

Perfume hurt you."

"Right," one of the boys said, and on cue they started to file out of

there while Ukyo took cover and waited until the field of battle

cleared of non-combatants. She could sense Nabiki trying to

maneuver away from the Chinese girl's approach and she readied

her Baker's Peel, wishing she had also had time to grab her

bandoleer of throwing spatulas for an extra-added bonus.

"You good fighter," Perfume called out as she scanned the

lockers with wary caution, "But you no defeat Perfume like

Shampoo-cousin! Stand ground and stop running!"

Nabiki took the opportunity to position herself atop one of the

lockers, laying flat and remaining as silent as could be managed.

She kept her breathing low and even, but her heart was

hammering with fear, and this girl seemed to have ears as sharp

as any feline. Perfume moved unerringly until she was just under

the lockers where Nabiki lay flat, then she whirled and imbedded

one axe just inches away from the Tendo girl's nose. Nabiki gave

an instinctive yelp and rolled off onto the other side. Perfume

circled around and trapped her there, deflecting Nabiki's

attempted counterstrike easily as she backed her into the wall and

held one axe up to her throat.

"You swear you do Perfume's bidding, she let you live," Perfume

hissed.

"Guess again, Sugar!" Ukyo cried as she sprang from

concealment.

Perfume whirled around, naturally, and had her axes into place,

but this time they met the flat end of a piece of solid metal

wielded by someone who had trained in its use since childhood.

The rest was a simple matter of kinetics.

POW!

Ukyo's spatula picked Perfume up and knocked her flying,

straight at the showers, where she disappeared amid the splash of

running water.

"Got her!" Ukyo grinned broadly, "You okay, Nab-chan?"

"H-hai," Nabiki gasped, "That's one I owe you, Ucchan."

"Anything for an old buddy," Ukyo grinned, "Just remember that

Ranma's MY iinazuke."

"Like hell," Nabiki said as sweetly as she could manage, then

paused a moment before saying, "She hasn't come out by now..."

"That is odd," Ukyo frowned, "Think maybe I got her worse than

I thought?"

"I doubt it," Nabiki sniffed, "More like she's waiting in ambush."

"You could get away and leave her to me," Ukyo pointed out, her

Bakers Peel held at the ready.

"I could," Nabiki said, "But I'm tired of running, and this is as

good a time as any to finish this up. Mind backing me up for

another minute?"

"If you don't mind sharing," Ukyo nodded and the two of them

crept cautiously towards the showers. They flattened outside the

door, then Ukyo took the initiative, going inside first, half

expecting to see axes flying her way at any second.

Nothing happened, so Nabiki crept up behind her, keeping a

defensive crouch and wondering where Perfume was hiding. The

room seemed largely intact, just a few naked guys standing about

with puzzled expressions...and then they both saw something on

the floor that made their eyes widen.

Perfume's axes were there, while her clothing was crumpled up

and matted down while a showerhead continued to spray it with

cold water. They were just starting to make some sense of this

when a low growl filled the room, and the both of them turned to

see a soggy feline glaring at them both with a sullen expression.

Feline? Nabiki's eyes went wide!

A...CAT!

"What the hell?" Ukyo frowned, "Where's the Chinese Buzz Saw

gone off to, and who let this pet get into the place? Nab-

chan...Nab-chan?!"

Nabiki had backed up all the way to the wall, staring at the

creature looking up at her as though it were a devil made flesh.

Whatever fear she had experienced until now, it paled to

insignificance as her eyes fairly bulged with the starkest horror

imaginable.

The cat looked up at her and offered a puzzled, "Mew?"

"Gah!" Nabiki screamed, and fled the showers in abject terror...

Continued.

Comments/Criticism/Anthology Lessons:

shadowmane

Next time we learn that Curiosity may kill the cat, but that's

nothing compared what it can do to a human!

If you wish to check out my other works, Please check out my

Fanfiction webpage at: . or

it's mirror site at: ~

All related chapters of this series can be found there along with my

other works.


	9. Chapter 9

Nabiki 1/2

Chapter 9, Part 1.

By

Jim Robert Bader

Inspired by the Works of

Rumiko Takahashi;

All rights reserved to her, the producers and distributors

Of the Ranma 1/2 Series.

(Based on the Altered Destinies Series by

Wade Tritschler and Others;

This is a work of Fanfiction, so please don't sue me)

"What the Hell?" Ranma gasped as he glanced over his shoulder,

"What got into Nabiki-chan? Did that Amazon really scare her

that much?"

"I don't know, Ran-chan," Ukyo replied as she stood holding a

pair of axes in one hand while in the other she gripped a towel

that was struggling against her grip, "She started to freak out

when she saw this kitty we found in the showers."

"Kitty?" Keiko blanched, glancing at Shampoo, who stepped

forward to take the struggling bundle away from Ukyo and

opened it up to reveal an irritated looking cat with pink fur and

blue eyes.

Shampoo stared for a moment then said, "Cousin?"

"Say what?" Ukyo double-took.

"Let me guess," Keiko mused, "She chased you into the showers

and got hit by cold water."

"Uh, no," Ukyo blinked, "Actually I knocked her into the showers

with my spatula," she indicated the Bakers Peel that she had

slung over her shoulder.

"You what?" Keiko and Shampoo said together.

"Huh?" Ukyo blinked, "What's the big deal? She was about to

hurt Nab-chan..."

"Oboy," Ranma groaned, "Ucchan, she's an Amazon."

"So?" Ukyo asked, still not grasping the significance of that

statement.

"You defeat Cousin," Shampoo replied, "As Nabiki defeat

Shampoo."

The cat in Shampoo's arms suddenly rotated its head and looked

at Ukyo sharply.

"Huh?" Ukyo blinked again, then said, "Wait a minute...it wasn't

a formal challenge..."

"No matter," Shampoo replied, "You ambush Cousin, maybe it

accident, but now you obligated. Amazon law say boy who

defeat girl becomes Airen, girl who defeats Amazon is mortal

enemy, must hunt and kill."

Now Ukyo blanched, finally realizing the true dimensions of her

situation, "But...but that's crazy!"

"It's their law, Ucchan," Keiko shrugged, "I told you something

about that the other day. Guess it went right in one ear and out

the other."

"Along with the stuff about Jusenkyo curses, I guess," Ranma

nodded to the feline in question.

The cat had ceased struggling in Shampoo's arms, now it looked

up at the Amazon girl with an almost plaintive expression.

Shampoo looked back at her sternly and said, "No complain to

Shampoo, cousin, this you mess. Told you no attack Airen, even

if Great Grandmother say do it."

"Ah...shouldn't we, like, change her back?" Ranma asked.

"Why bother?" Keiko snorted, "She'll just have to attack Ucchan,

then go after Nabiki again because of those stupid rules."

"No stupid rules," Shampoo said proudly, "Shampoo love Airen,

she no regret losing. Perfume must decide for self if she want

same with Ukyo-san. Still, you right...better leave this way until

Shampoo have chance talk to Great Grandmother."

The cat made a plaintive noise and looked at them all with a

pained expression.

"I don't think that'd be right," Ranma said, "Leaving her this

way...I mean...she's so helpless right now...I don't think I could

stand to do that to an enemy."

"Would you to do it to someone who just threatened Nabiki and

Ucchan?" Keiko retorted, "Take my word on it, being in a cursed

form is no picnic, but it's better than having this maniac cut loose

all over the school grounds."

The cat made a sudden frantic motion and burst free from

Shampoo's grasp, not to mention the towel. She darted back into

the lockers and headed for the showers. The quartet waited

patiently for another moment before boys started streaming out

from there, crying out that some naked girl was going crazy. One

boy paused to look over his shoulder and got rewarded by having

a soap bar bounce off his forehead.

Perfume came storming out of the lockers dripping wet and

angry. She stopped three paces away and glared at Shampoo as

if in betrayal and said, "You do that, Cousin? You no let

Perfume suffer!"

"Shampoo no want cousin unhappy," Shampoo replied, "But you

must swear no hurt Airen!"

"No can give that promise," Perfume sniffed, "Great Grandmother

very angry..."

"Great Grandmother no here," Shampoo replied, "You wait for

talk with Great Grandmother, we no have problem." Shampoo

paused as she turned to look at Ranma, who was covering his

eyes, and she said, "What problem with boy? He bad eyesight?"

"More like a case of the shies," Ukyo grinned at Ranma, then

blanched as the still-wet Amazon came to stand before her,

looking at Ukyo with a studied expression. Ukyo felt nervous as

she said, "Look...about knocking you into the showers..."

"Perfume understand," the Amazon girl said, "You defend

childhood friend from attack, is honorable reason. Perfume very

clumsy, not sense you coming before challenge." She lowered

her head and murmured the words, "Wo ai ni."

"Huh?" Ukyo blinked.

"You I love," Keiko helpfully translated.

"What? But I..." before she could utter further protest she found

the Amazon had stepped up to her and put both arms around her

waist, tiling her head so that their faces came together and she

kissed Ukyo full on the lips, stunning the Japanese girl

completely.

"Wo da Airen," Perfume purred melodiously, then stepped away,

holding her sopping wet clothes and both axes in one hand as she

smiled, "We meet again, after Perfume find Nabiki."

"Cousin!" Shampoo barked harshly, then spoke in her own

language, pausing as Perfume shot back a stream of sing-song

words in reply, then pivoted on one foot and headed for the

nearest exit.

"Huh?" Ranma asked, having lowered both hands in surprise

when he heard this exchange, then looked at Ukyo's stupefied

expression, "Nani?"

"Oboy," Keiko blinked, "This is turning into some kind

nightmare..."

"Why?" Ranma asked, "What's wrong? What did she mean that

she loves Ucchan? Doesn't she know that Ukyo's a girl?"

"She know," Shampoo murmured, "Have same choice as

Shampoo, make same choice. Great Grandmother be very

unhappy."

"Well, that's just too bad, isn't it?" Keiko sniffed, looking at

Ukyo's still stunned face and said, "Well, look on the bright side:

at least it means she's not going to try and kill you."

"Hah?" Ukyo blanched, "But..."

"You and Nabiki should compare notes," Ranma sniffed, feeling

his stomach churn as depression hit him squarely between the

shoulders. As if life wasn't complicated enough, now his other

iinazuke was also engaged to another woman. This was getting

much too weird even by his standards...

Akane had been ready with the hose by the time she heard

running feet charging towards the exit, so she turned it on and

sprayed the first person she saw, which turned out to be Nabiki!

"Oops!" she winced, "Sorry about that, Oneechan-Oneechan?"

Nabiki barely heard her as he ran off, now thoroughly male and

still gripped by terror as he fled from the Gymnasium without

acknowledging his sister's apology. Akane looked puzzled, then

turned off the hose and followed her transformed sibling, thus

failing to take note of the naked Chinese girl who exited a few

moments later.

"Oneechan?" Akane called out as she hurried to find Nabiki, who

vanished around a building as though she had found a hidden

doorway. Akane looked to the left and right, then repeated her

call of, "Oneechan?"

"Gah!" came a start from just above her head, "H-hai, Akane-

chan...up here..."

Akane slowly looked up the side of the wall and found Nabiki

clinging there by a third story ledge, "Nani? What are you...?"

"Look down and to the right of you," Nabiki called back, "Do you

see it?"

Puzzled, Akane turned her head but did not see anything unusual,

just a gray alley cat that had wandered onto the school grounds.

In growing confusion she asked, "What am I supposed to be

looking for?"

"That!" Nabiki said without turning to look, "That...thing that just

crossed your path..."

Akane blinked, "A cat?"

"Bingo," Nabiki replied, "I...kind of have this problem about the

filthy beasts..."

"Oh come on!" Akane started, "It's just a...!"

"Don't say it!" Nabiki called down, "Just...make it go away. Shoo

it or something...pretty please?"

"It's already gone," Akane said as she looked back to where the

cat had been walking, "Mind telling me what this is about?"

"Sure," Nabiki said as he dropped down lightly beside his sister,

"It's just another thing I owe Uncle Genma, one more of his novel

'bright ideas' about training called the...N-Neko-ken..."

"Cat fist?" Akane asked, then blinked as she saw Nabiki flinch

again, "What's so special about this that it's got you so worked

up?"

"It's...a special technique of the Anything Goes School," Nabiki

replied, "Supposedly an invincible attack style in which you learn

to fight like a...member of the order Felis Domestica."

"All right," Akane said, "I follow that. But why can't you even

say the word...?"

"Imagine, if you will, being wrapped in Fish sausages and

thrown into a pit of the...animals," Nabiki hesitated before

continuing, "Repeatedly. That's what the training consists of."

"Nani?" Akane blinked.

Nabiki bit his lip and nodded, "The ordeal traumatized me pretty

awful. I can't even look at one of the filthy beasts

without...getting these...acute vibes...and if I get too frightened

I...start to go into a berserker rage. I turn into a Cat, Akane-

chan...I freak out and behave like an animal until the effect wears

off. I'm almost invincible when I'm like that, but I don't have any

humanity, and I never remember what I do when it's all over.

Last time it came over me I...well, it was two days later, and I'd

heard some pretty gory details..."

"Kuso," Akane breathed, "And I thought I had problems..."

"Believe me, sister dear," Nabiki said, "I'd gladly trade with you

in a minute. Unfortunately I've just found out about the cursed

form a certain Amazon reverts to whenever she gets wet, and

since she's already trying to kill me..."

"Nihao!" a cheerful voice cried out as Nabiki was grabbed from

behind by an amorous Shampoo, who glommed his male form

and said, "Shampoo so happy you in male form, Airen! Shampoo

remember call you Kaneda! Shampoo miss holding darling

husband..."

"Shampoo, get off me!" Nabiki pleaded, "It's embarrassing and

we're in public!"

"So?" Shampoo asked as she cooed into Nabiki's ear, "You think

no want other people to know? Shampoo no ashamed to hold

Airen..."

"Ah, there you are," said Keiko as she caught up with them,

giving Nabiki a sour look that was half exasperation and half

amusement, "Think you can pry yourself loose from Miss Bundle

of Joy long enough to get changed back into yourself?"

"Why?" Nabiki asked, still adorned by the arms of Shampoo

around his neck, "Who's after me this time?"

"Only about a third of the female population of Nerima," Keiko

explained, "Word's gotten out about your Chinese Bride, and

some of the guys feel like celebrating or giving you a toast. Add

to that the fact that you're also wanted as your real self in

connection to a possible bombing of the campus..."

"I get the picture," Nabiki replied, "Time to make myself scarce

until I can think up a good alibi. What about the human

Cuisinart?"

"Got away from us," Keiko replied, "But she'll be back, and not

just for you. Ukyo's also moved to the top of her list, only it's not

blood she's after."

"Ara," Nabiki sighed, sounding a bit like Kasumi, "I should have

thought of that myself. Her rescuing me like she did was bound

to fall somewhere under the terms of the Amazon code. Guess

Perfume's been taken in by her boyish good looks?"

"Afraid not," Keiko grinned, "Looks like I'm not the only girl

lover around here, but with Amazons I'm not so sure the

distinction matters."

"Shampoo not know what big fuss is," Shampoo said cheerfully,

"Is good match for Cousin find Airen. Spatula girl not bad

fighter, maybe make Perfume very happy. At least keep busy

until Great Grandmother come here, then maybe we find way to

work everything out?"

"I hope so, Sham-chan," Nabiki sighed, then growled, "Would

you please let me go?"

"Okay," Shampoo let him go, then glommed onto his arm

instead, looking up at Nabiki with adoration in her eyes as she

purred, "Airen fight well against Perfume-cousin, much impress

Great Grandmother she find out."

"Are you kidding?" Nabiki asked, "I nearly got my head handed

to me! You're cousin is one tough lady."

Shampoo made a noise of dismissal, "No so tough, just train very

hard build up defenses. Great Grandmother teach way to

ignore...ah..." she switched to Chinese and said, "Japanese is a

very hard language! What I meant to say is that you did a lot

better than you think you did, husband. Never knew anyone but

me who could last that long against my cousin. Now you know

that she's vulnerable to cold water you'll have an edge against her

next time."

Akane turned from the pair, unable to follow Shampoo's rapid

speech, and instead asked Keiko, "Where are Ukyo and Ranma?"

"They had to go back to class," Keiko replied, "I told them I'd

find Nabiki and get her home safely. I guess Shampoo and I can

be her bodyguards on the way back to the dojo."

"Shampoo no need Muy-Tai bird girl to walk with Airen,"

Shampoo snorted.

"And what if Perfume comes back?" Keiko asked, "You really

want to face her all but yourself?"

Shampoo winced, "Have point there. Okay, we walk, but keep

hands to self!"

"No problem," Keiko assured her, "I'd rather wait until she

changes back to her real form. I'd sooner hug you than any guy

in the world."

Shampoo stuck out her tongue, and Keiko did likewise. Nabiki

just sighed in the middle of the pair of would-be suitors and said

a silent prayer to the heavens: Take me now!

Not that she was expecting any special favors at the moment...

"Ojisama," Nabiki growled, looking up a certain Panda.

Said Panda was playing Shogi with her/his father while idly

munching on a bamboo stump. He looked up to see the angry

glare in the eyes of his longtime student, then raised a sign that

read: "What did I do this time?"

"One word," she growled, "Nekoken!"

The Panda looked at her with very round eyes, then turned the

sign around so that it read, "Oh."

Nabiki's male hands grabbed Genma by his fur and murmured to

the side, "Excuse me, Father, but Uncle and I have some business

to discuss."

"But of course," Soun said, not sounding the least bit ruffled as

his friend was dragged away, half-carried by Nabiki's now

greater strength as they headed off to the first floor bathroom.

A few moments later the pair emerged from the hot water with

the now-female Nabiki still clutching Genma, only now by his

Gi-top, "You knew this day was coming, Sensei...now do you

want to know what kind of a day I've had?"

"C-Calm down, Nabiki chan," Genma sputtered, "I'm sure we

can work something out if you just calmly explain what

happened..." he paused when he saw her murderous glare and

swallowed, "...Or maybe not..."

Nabiki had often wondered why it was that-of all the Jusenkyo

curses she had so far encountered-Genma's was the only one that

allowed him to wear clothing when he transformed back from

being a Panda. She supposed his martial arts Gi somehow

translated into fur, but why did that not apply to Keiko's shirt and

trunks, or Perfume's Chinese clothing, which each remained

behind while the women themselves transformed into either Cat

or Vulture. Granted Genma's mass was doubled in Panda form

while Keiko and Perfume were reduced to a mere fraction of their

mass, but why should size make such a difference? Why didn't

Genma-Panda wind up wearing a Gi when he got splashed?

Very confusing!

"Shampoo's cousin," Nabiki pronounced very slowly,

"Transforms into a Cat. I was fighting her earlier when she got

knocked into some water, and suddenly I couldn't continue to

fight! I was paralyzed by the very sight of her, then sent into a

blind panic!"

"Oh my," Genma said, "That isn't good. Yes, I can see how that

would upset you..."

She dunked him under the water then pulled him out again and

snarled, "Upset? What makes you think I'm UPSET? Just

because I threw a challenge fight on account of this stupid phobia

you gave me? Do you have any idea what my father will do, let

along Aunt Nodoka, if I tell them about it...?"

True fear caused the man to turn as pale as the white fur of his

Panda guise, "You wouldn't...no, scratch that...you would tell

them..."

"Help me to figure out a counter for this stupid fear spell, old

man!" Nabiki growled, "You're good at special training methods,

think up one that'll let me ignore my fear of Cats long enough to

face one!"

"That may be a problem," Genma said as he adjusted his glasses,

"I researched the history of the Nekoken looking for a cure but..."

he saw her look harden and said, "...Well, I'll see what I can

come up with..."

"Fine," she let him go then stood up in her wet Chinese clothing,

"Now I have to get dressed in clean clothing before I go out there

to try and prevent Shampoo and Keiko from killing each other.

I'll check back with you later!"

She got up and slipped her Chinese clothes off, then wrapped her

body in a towel, not bothering herself with the fact that Genma

was nearby, knowing well what she would do to him if he ogled.

She went directly to the room she shared with Akane, Keiko and

Shampoo and found her two suitors locked in a staring contest

across the space of an unrolled futon. Their battle auras were up

and flowing like a wave of heat between them, but at the sound

of Nabiki's entering their immediate environment the two broke

off and looked towards her in mutual confusion...and interest.

"Ah..." Nabiki debated the wisdom of getting dressed in her spare

Chinese suit with these two characters present, then chided

herself for an uncharacteristic bout of self-consciousness,

knowing that nothing was going to happen here without her

express approval. She gave them both a reproving stare then

said, "As you were," before throwing off her towel as she went to

the closet and pulled out her sole remaining wardrobe, half

expecting to be glommed on by Shampoo at any moment. She

gave them a preemptive warning look before she slipped into her

pants and top-shirt, fastening it with wooden pegs before turning

around and giving them both her best imitation of a fashion pose

as she said, "Well, what do you think?"

"Good enough to eat," grinned Keiko, "What else do you expect

me to say?"

"Airen look good as Airen," Shampoo agreed with a tiny smile of

amusement, "No care what you wear, just as long as you Airen."

Nabiki sighed. Well, if nothing else, at least these two knew the

right things to say. Even Ranma was not so tersely elegant in his

expression.

"Shampoo," she sighed, "I know you're trying, but this business

with Perfume's got me all tied up in knots..."

"Now there's an idea," Keiko smiled, then hastily amended,

"Sorry...that was reflex."

"You have to know how I feel," Nabiki tried to think of what to

say next but could find no clever way of avoiding the blunt edge

of the subject, "Until the night you showed up I was committed to

Ranma...and I still want him...very much."

Shampoo was still smiling, but there was sadness in her eyes,

"Shampoo knows this. Shampoo...not hate boy...but Shampoo

not happy at rival. Spatula girl claim him, maybe Airen no marry

him after all."

"I hope it doesn't come to that," Nabiki sighed, "I wouldn't want

to lead you on or lie to you. I do care about you, Shampoo, and I

hope we can remain friends..."

"Uh oh," Keiko snorted, "That old 'we'll always be friends' line.

Isn't that a bit too cliche‚ here, Nabiki-chan? I may not agree

about everything with Lavender Locks here, but I do think she's

entitled to something better than that old one-liner."

Shampoo looked at her in curiosity, "Keiko-san no think

Shampoo enemy?"

"Rivals, not enemies," Keiko replied, "I don't want to marry

Nabiki-chan, I just want her to love me."

"You do?" Nabiki asked in surprise.

Keiko gave her that patented knowing smirk of hers and said,

"Marriage is overrated. Shampoo here seems to think Marriage

is the be-all and end-all of a relationship, but I'm not as naive as

all that. My father never married my mother, and she felt

dishonored because her family disowned her. What's so special

about an official document that makes people act so crazy? I

don't need a ring to tell me who I love, I just do what my heart

tells me."

"You no want marry Airen?" Shampoo frowned, "Shampoo

confused..."

"Marriage between women isn't recognized as legal in most parts

of the world," Nabiki explained, "The fact that I was a guy when

the ceremony was performed doesn't change the fact that I'm

legally a woman, and not quite of legal age yet. I'm afraid our

marriage will only be recognized in Joketsuzoku."

"So?" Shampoo asked, "No need live anywhere else. Is reason

why Cousin and Great Grandmother want both of us back in

village to share place in tribe, bring honor to family..."

"So marriage between women is legal among the Amazons, eh?"

Nabiki considered.

"It not common," Shampoo shrugged, "But it happen. Warrior

love other warrior, sometime make pledge after they fight.

Stronger Warrior have status. Weaker warrior no have status,

but status of mate is recognized, so she have status of mate. Of

course both still expected to make contribution to families..."

"Contribution?" Nabiki asked, seeking clarification.

"Children," Shampoo explained, "One or both Warrior must give

daughter to family, preferably stronger warrior. Sometimes boy.

This mean a man is needed, so sometimes other Warrior offer

their husband as substitute...what is word again?"

"Surrogate father," Keiko explained, looking to Nabiki, "Men

aren't treated too bad in Amazon society, but they don't have the

same social status. A man who bests a strong warrior like

Shampoo here gains status by simply being better than his wife.

In your case I'd say you were considered a powerful warrior, but

Shampoo here has no status in her tribe unless you're there to

bestow it with your presence. That's why their Great

Grandmother is so intent in getting you to go back with them,

otherwise Shampoo here is a virtual exile among her people."

"Shampoo no have face if return without Airen," Shampoo said

simply, "Shampoo no kill outsider girl, therefore accept as Airen.

Can no return like this. You Airen, Shampoo do what you tell

her."

"You mean...it's up to me what happens to you?" Nabiki felt her

heart sink like lead in her bosom, "That's not fair...to either one of

us!"

"Shampoo no care if no fair," Shampoo said softly, "Shampoo

only know real happiness one time in life, day she meet Airen.

Shampoo very lonely, only Cousin to talk to. She best in village,

very proud warrior. Great Grandmother say Shampoo one day be

Elder in tribe. Now Shampoo no be Elder unless she have

Airen."

"Can't exactly send her back to Mother, can you?" Keiko gave

Nabiki a sympathetic look, "And don't even bother asking about

divorce. I did, and there isn't, unless you like dying."

Nabiki's memory of the night in question was much clearer now

than it had been on the day of Shampoo's return. In retrospect

she should have realized how significant the event was to

Shampoo, because it had been memorable to Nabiki. A lifetime

of loneliness dispelled for one evening was a treasure worth

savoring, and yet here she was with the only two people in all the

world with whom she had ever shared such a pleasure and she

was sensitive to the fact that she could hurt either one or both

with a careless misstatement.

She sighed in growing despair. Circumstance and her own

ignorance of the Amazon culture had trapped her into this mess,

and now she had to figure a way out that would not bring

humiliation and shame to all parties.

Still...something Shampoo had said drew her attention and she

thought a moment before asking, "Is marriage between women

absolute? I mean...could one warrior, if she likes a man...bring

him into their relationship? Would that be honorable by your

standards?"

Shampoo looked at her curiously, then reverted to her own

language, "It is possible for one or both Warriors to have a male

consort, if they both agree to share him. It does away with the

need to borrow a man from another Warrior, and a man can have

more than one Warrior, if he is a great fighter. Are you thinking

of doing this with your Ranma?"

"Possibly," Nabiki replied in Chinese, "I'm not sure he'd be

agreeable to it, but I wanted to research every option. You don't

mind, do you?"

Shampoo shrugged, "I don't mind, but you would have to ask

Great Grandmother. You are the stronger of the two of us, so you

can make that decision for us both. Men are not too common in

our village...too many boys our age are called away by the lure of

the larger cities. At most one man could be shared by four

women, if they are each strong fighters..."

"And what about marriage to more than one woman?" Keiko

asked her.

Shampoo gave her a sour look, "If you are angling to include

yourself, it is best that you know that Amazon Laws were

designed with the intent of promoting large families with many

strong and healthy children. Two women who exclude

themselves from men is considered inappropriate unless they

have already produced offspring. If you wanted to become

another Concubine, you would have to agree to have a child by

the man in our family unit. Would you be willing to submit to a

man's caresses?"

"Ah," Keiko thought a moment, then saw Shampoo's smirk

and said, "I'd at least think about it..."

"It might be better for you to find someone else instead of hitch

yourself to my wagon," Nabiki said tiredly in Japanese, "It would

certainly be a lot smarter."

"Never said I was all that smart," Keiko smiled, giving Nabiki a

very knowing look, "Besides, I already know what I'm getting

into."

"Of course," Shampoo smiled, "Shampoo no need boy Ramen to

become mother. Airen do very well, maybe Keiko no mind that?"

Keiko blinked, "Hey...I never thought of it that way..."

"Ah..." Nabiki's mind nearly froze up at that thought, "Let's-uh-

not get too far ahead of ourselves here, okay? That's a step

further than I'd like to go into just yet..."

Shampoo and Keiko exchanged a mutual snicker as Shampoo

murmured in Chinese, "I think my husband has issues about

accepting her male form and the...possibilities it leaves open."

"That's putting it mildly," Keiko grinned wickedly, enjoying

Nabiki's uncomfortable reaction.

"All right," Nabiki decided on a quick change of topic, though

she did feel somewhat better at knowing that there was at least

one option that included Ranma, "Next problem: what to do

about Perfume-chan."

Shampoo lowered her gaze and sighed, "Like Shampoo said,

better wait to talk to Hiibaachan."

"Ah, yeah, that'll work," Keiko groused, "Don't forget I've met the

old Mummy..." she paused when she saw the cross look

Shampoo gave her and amended, "I mean...nice old lady who

looks every bit as if she is over three hundred."

"Well, until then," Nabiki sighed, "What are the chances we

could convince Perfume to lay off the contract on me?"

"Slim to none?" Keiko volunteered.

"Cousin very single minded," Shampoo noted soberly, "She do

what Great Grandmother tell her. She second best Warrior in

tribe, have reputation as best hunter."

"Good at finding a trail?" Nabiki asked.

"You know our buddy, Ryoga-kun?" Keiko explained, "The one

who can't find his way between the bathroom and the front door?

Well, from what I hear this Perfume character is the exact

opposite. She could find a trail in a blizzard..."

"Yes, Perfume very good tracker," Shampoo nodded

enthusiastically, "She want to find you, you no can avoid her."

"This just gets better and better," Nabiki groused, "So I can't

avoid her, and she can be very determined, and I've already seen

how she can fight, which means..." she smiled, "I've got an

idea...that could work. Maybe a page from Oneechan's book

might just work out..."

"Oneechan?" Keiko looked at her, "You mean Kasumi? You're

not thinking of cooking up a meal for Shampoo's cousin?"

"No way," Nabiki chuckled, "I can barely cook Ramen. I just

mean I could take advantage of Perfume's little weakness..."

"Yeah," Keiko said, "But you freaked out the last time you saw

her change into her cursed form. Why was that?"

"Yes, why do that?" Shampoo puzzled, "Cousin no can fight well

in form of..."

"Ah, I'll tell you both about it sometime," Nabiki hastily replied,

then said, "Excuse me for a bit, I have to go tend to a few

details..."

Continued.

Comments/Criticisms/Rewrites: shadowmane

Things are moving right along, so next time we have Round Two

of Nabiki Versus the Enforcer!

Nabiki 1/2

Chapter 9, Part 2.

By

Jim Robert Bader

Inspired by the works of Rumiko Takahashi;

All rights belong to her, the producers and distributors of

The Ranma 1/2 Series.

(Based on the Altered Destinies Series by

Wade Tritschler and Others;

Some characters and concepts belong to me,

The rest are shared/This is Fanfiction so don't sue me)

The Consul General was all smiles at the departure of the old

woman from his life. Providing her with limousine escort was a

much smaller price to pay than the permits, visas, requested

documents and conversion to cash of some ancient gold coins

that the not-so-charming ghoul knew the value of to the yen.

Anything was worth relieving himself of her dangerous presence,

and because he had cooperated so politely he was pleased to note

that she put in a good word about him to his superiors in Beijing.

Indeed, the whole embassy felt as though a dark cloud had lifted

from their lives, and business was returning to normal for all of

the staff. They had even managed to pry poor Wan-Hu from the

wall impression he had made, and there was some talk of brain

activity from the hospital, which was a very good sign. Things

were looking up indeed, gradually returning to some semblance

of normality.

And then the strange boy appeared, the one with long hair and

thick glasses, appeared as if by magic in his office, wearing a

white robe and dark blue pants. The Amazon boy, he

remembered thinking, the one he had been warned about by the

old woman before her departure.

Amazon men were something he generally pitied as a concept,

having heard all sorts of stories of how they were denied status

and had to live totally dependent on their women. Amazon men

fought for the right to marry and were expected to be fertile

fathers, the virtual sex toys of their too-aggressive women. He

had never met an Amazon man before, and having seen one now

he was filled with pity and apprehension.

Apprehension because the old woman had said that this boy was

an able fighter, if not very competent by her measure, and

dangerously unstable. The Consul General did not know how

dangerous that was, but judging from the emphasis the old

woman placed upon the word he was prepared to accept that the

boy was VERY dangerous and not to be taken lightly.

"Can I help you?" the Consul General asked as he pressed the

button under his desk that would summon immediate aid to deal

with this half-blind interloper.

The gleam in the boy's eyes might just have been a trick of the

lighting, but his smile radiated confidence of his position, "You

can indeed. Where did the old ghoul wish to be taken?"

The Consul General hardly needed to ask of whom the boy was

referring, but he steepled his fingers over his desk and returned a

congenial smile, "Of no place important. She mentioned that

you might be paying us a visit."

"Indeed? And did she tell you what would happen if you did

not cooperate?"

That was when the guards burst into his office with guns trained

towards the boy. It should have been a simple matter persuading

the young man to leave in peace, or else face immediate

incarceration, or perhaps death on the spot for his impudent

intrusion.

But the boy never so much as bat an eye, and suddenly his men

were scattered, their weapons struck from their hands by what

seemed like living coils of metal. Several collapsed sporting

feathered darts, others took cover as sharpened blades rained

from the boy's hands, and in minutes the guards were effectively

neutralized as a threat to his person.

A knife sprang up from the Consul General's desk directly

between his elbows. As he instinctively sat back in his chair

another blade sprang from the right side of the cushion his head

rested upon, followed near instantly by a second at his left

temple. The Consul General became very still, realizing that the

next blade might come even closer, and suddenly he was most

cooperative with the boy in answering his questions.

"Nerima," the boy murmured thoughtfully as he stroked his

chin, then bowed, "Your cooperation has been noted."

With that he vanished from the room, taking most of his play toys

with him, and though the Consul General alerted his staff and

had security shut down the building with guards doubled at the

exits no one saw anything more of the boy. It was as if he

became a phantom and flew over the walls of the Embassy

compound. A thorough search turned up nothing, and the Consul

General rather doubted that the boy would be seen again anytime

shortly.

This spoiled his excellent mood of the day. These Amazons were

indeed a great deal of trouble! He knew a complaint to his

superiors would be ignored, and so he decided to overlook the

matter. Just the same he privately wondered about the gathering

activity in one rather insignificant Tokyo province, and wondered

why the boy and the old woman were going there. It was not his

affair, certainly not anything into which he would like to inquire,

but he could not help feeling as though the shadow of something

terrible had briefly touched his soul.

He would dismiss the whole thing as a very bad dream but for the

nicks in his desk and the ruined upholstery, and the guards who

slept for several hours. On the whole the experience shook him

up rather badly, and he decided a vacation was in

order...preferably one a very long ways from the Gang Hi

province and all things concerned with Joketsuzoku...

"So you're saying the odds are put at twelve to one now against

my sister?" Nabiki was asking Ryonami as the girl read from a

list while she worked out her new katas.

"Hai, Sempai," the girl replied, "If she competes it will be near

miraculous in itself, but with Kuno Kodachi personally

instructing her it seems a sneak ambush has diminished in

likelihood, thus Furinkan's chances are improved from odds that

might best be termed as abysmal. That is not to say that there is

any hope our school might win, but at least with Akane-san's

help we will come in a respectable second."

"That seems likely," Nabiki replied, "But don't sell my sister

short just yet. I'd say her chances were nearly even."

"But you do not know Kuno Kodachi, Sempai," Ryonami said

respectfully, "It is true that she and Akane-san are close friends,

but it is said that the Black Rose will use any means at her

disposal to bring victory for Saint Hebereke. She might not go all

out against your sister, but it is very likely she will rely upon her

infinite supply of gag-tricks to insure that she remains the victor."

"I see," Nabiki replied, completing another movement, "Thank

you for your diligence, as well as your honesty, Ryonami-san. I

chose well in you if you continue to provide me with such

intelligence, not that I believe that I need to warn my sister of

Kodachi's cunning."

"Hai, Sempai," Ryonami bowed very low and held it, a sign of

great respect that showed the girl had excellent manners.

"Anything else to report?" Nabiki asked.

"Only that Gosunkugi was seen talking with that Vice Cop you

met yesterday, Sempai," Ryonami answered, "And afterwards he

appeared unusually thoughtful and avoided his normal practice of

spying on the girls' lockers."

"That is unusual," Nabiki sniffed, "Don't tell me the little Hentai

is developing a conscience?"

"That would seem most unlikely," Ryonami replied, "But it could

mean he has become an informant."

"If so he could be useful," Nabiki smiled, "Information flows

both ways, ne?"

"H-hai, Sempai," the girl replied nervously.

Nabiki laughed, "I wasn't implying you, Ryo-chan. I think you

already have a good idea of where your fortune lies. Has word

gotten around of what I intend to see happen?"

"There is nothing else but talk about the new order you have

outlined," Ryonami said, "Many whose fortunes were tied to the

old order already plot retribution, but fear to strike because of

your growing reputation. However...there is some talk about an

incident yesterday following the explosion in the Chem Lab."

"Indeed?" Nabiki asked as she completed her exercise yet again,

"And what of it?"

"Sempai," Ryonami seemed even more nervous than before, as

though having trouble broaching the next subject, "There is

talk...that you had some troubles while abroad in China..."

"I see," Nabiki turned to look at the girl and asked, "What sort of

troubles?"

"No one knows for certain," Ryonami said, "But you fought

against a Chinese girl and were even seen running away. There

is a rumor that you may have incurred the wrath of...powerful

enemies from abroad who might have commissioned...your

execution..."

"Ah, I see," Nabiki replied, "No need to worry so much Ryo-

chan. It wasn't anything quite so serious as that. It's true I knew

some people in Hong Kong, but that business was done a long

time ago. This is a personal matter that I must deal with in my

own fashion."

"Of course, Sempai," Ryonami bowed again, "Then may I ask the

nature of this kata you have been practicing for the past hour? I

don't believe I recognize the style..."

"It's something I came up with on my own," Nabiki replied, "I

call it: Rat Offers The Cheese, and it may be just the thing I need

to help resolve that certain problem you refer to."

"I do not understand, Sempai," Ryonami looked puzzled.

"Nor do you have to," Nabiki smiled at her and said, "Continue to

gather information, and let me know if there is any serious

movement afoot that I may have to deal with."

"As you wish it, Sempai," the girl bowed yet again, then turned

and left the dojo.

Nabiki waited until she was certain the girl had gone before her

smile slid away, leaving in its place a far more grim expression.

The business with Perfume had almost cost her badly needed face

among the very students she had been trying to impress. It did

not pay to look bad when you were trying to act the part of Junior

Oyabun. She would need all the capital she could gather to make

her ideas take hold in the flabby mold that was the Furinkan

student body, which meant the threat posed by Perfume had to be

dealt with post haste.

A good thing she had a plan in mind that might just achieve that

objective. If she had explained the details to Ryonami, however,

the girl might have fainted. After all, she was a delicate flower at

heart, not one of the hardened souls that Nabiki was used to

encountering in her travels. Nabiki's plan held risk, but it was

infinitely preferable to waiting for the Amazon to strike again.

This way, at least, she would know when she struck and could

see her coming.

Satisfied that she was as ready as she could make herself, she

turned to exit the dojo and found Kuno Kodachi standing by the

entrance. The self-styled Black Rose was smiling at her with the

most enigmatic of expression, then said in her melodious voice,

"Well, aren't we the little Daimyo in training. I hear you now run

Furinkan High after the most unfortunate occurrence that landed

several students in Juvenile detention."

"Karma," Nabiki replied, "Is there something I can do for you,

Kuno-san?"

"Not at the moment, I think," Kodachi smiled dazzlingly, "You

have excellent coordination and superior moves. You would

make a fine gymnast if you should ever want to try out."

"I think I have enough tasks on my agenda," Nabiki smiled, "You

needn't fear that I'll intrude in your domain, but thanks for the

compliment."

"Then perhaps it is I who would ask you for a most generous

favor," Kodachi smiled like a cunning viper while her tone

darkened considerably, "Your cousin, Kaneda...is it true what I

hear that he has become betrothed to that Chinese Harlot?"

"If you mean Shampoo, I'm afraid it's true," Nabiki said with

greater weariness than she would have preferred, "But it came as

much of a surprise to him as anyone else, I assure you."

"How did this happen?" now Kodachi's voice held no trace of

humor.

"Kaneda...was with me and Uncle Saotome when we paid a visit

to a Chinese village named Joketsuzoku..."

"The home of the Nyuchizu Amazons, yes," Kodachi nodded, "I

have heard of them and their reputation. You do not mean to say

that he foolishly challenged one of them to combat?"

"It was a mistake," Nabiki sighed, "Uncle Genma caused an

incident by acting without thinking...you probably know by now

that with him this is far from his first such incident..."

"Indeed," Kodachi sniffed, "Like son, like father."

Nabiki frowned at the overt slight of Ranma and said, "Ranma-

kun is nothing like his father."

"I know you care for him, though the Kami know alone knows

why," Kodachi averred, "Please accept that I intended no slight to

you, and do continue with your fascinating story."

"Well...Kaneda was forced to challenge the Tournament

Champion in order to bail Uncle Genma out of the mess he had

gotten us all in, and though the Amazon was a very good fighter,

she was tired from a day of trial and was easily overmatched by

Kaneda."

"And that is how that Purple Haired strumpet came to claim

him?" Kodachi's voice no longer concealed her irritation,

"Unforgivable! To entrap such wonderful a man in such a base

manner is not to be tolerated! How dare she claim the finest

flower of manhood that I, the Black Rose of Hebereke, have

deigned to claim as my own? This wretch must be forced to

renounce her claim at once..."

"Ah," Nabiki spoke quickly, "I don't think it would be a very

good idea to challenge her, unless you want the Kiss of Death

applied to you, and we've already tried reasoning this out with

her. Turns out she has no choice in the matter. The Law

obligates her to accept Kaneda as her husband. There was even a

festival in which Kaneda had something to drink that blurred his

reasoning until he woke up the next day and found himself in bed

with Shampoo..."

"Oh, the tragedy of tragedies!" Kodachi wailed, "To despoil such

pure and innocent manhood by the use of foul potions-and worse

still, it was not I who claimed him first in such a manner! Such

horrors I cannot endure. My poor Kaneda-Sama, wasting away

as the love slave to that voracious hussy..."

"Um," Nabiki winced, feeling particularly awkward as Kodachi

seemed ready to ramble on this way for at least another five

minutes, "You don't really have to do this...we're going to talk

with her Great Grandmother to see if we can work out some kind

of settlement..."

"That will avail you nothing," Kodachi replied, "I have heard that

these Amazons set great store on their barbaric customs, although

I will admit that it is a novel way to earn the affections of a man.

I thank you for this knowledge, Tendo Nabiki, and am in your

debt. I know my idiot brother has been something of a bother for

you, but you need not fear that I will encourage his interest. I

know that he can be so annoyingly persistent."

"That he can, Kuno-san," Nabiki agreed, not adding that Kodachi

certainly had her own share of amorous obsession.

"Oh," Kodachi paused on the point of making her exit, "One

other thing. Perhaps you can confirm or deny the other rumor I

have heard concerning my darling Kaneda-Sama."

"What other rumor?" Nabiki asked apprehensively.

"Someone overheard someone else who claims that he is

apprehensive about Cats," Kodachi inclined her head slightly,

"Something about learning a special technique called the

Nekoken?"

Nabiki was amazed at her ability to stifle the involuntary reaction

she felt at the mention of her phobia, and she was somehow able

to say, "That is very interesting, but if he had such a problem do

you not think that I would know it?"

"Indeed," Kodachi smiled, "Just asking. If you need to find me,

I'll be in Akane-chan's room. We will be putting the finishing

touches on her preparations for tomorrows competition when you

are done using the dojo."

"Actually I'm almost done now," Nabiki replied, "You've done a

marvelous job of training my sister."

"It has been my sincere pleasure," Kodachi's smile seemed

genuine for just a flash of an instant, then she added with a wink,

"And you can assure your friend that I would never do anything

to harm my beloved friend. I won't need unfair tricks to earn my

inevitable triumph, and besides...if Akane-chan does well it will

reflect very well upon her trainer. A girl has to keep her options

in mind just in case her talents should be recognized later."

And with a leap and her trademark laugh she launched herself

out into the garden. Nabiki just shook her head and sighed, "I'm

never going to understand that lady..."

"I would suspect your sanity if your ever were to do so."

Nabiki tensed. She recognized that voice! More to the point, the

distinctive Chinese accent was unmistakably Amazon, being

nearly identical to the inflection Shampoo used in conversation.

"What took you so long to get here?" Nabiki replied in the

same inflection.

"You think I'm so trusting that I'd jump into the noose before

inspecting around the edges?" Perfume replied as she dropped

lightly from the rafters, trademark Axes in hand and her face set

with a look of determination, "Our business was not concluded.

You have yet to acknowledge your intention to honor your pledge

to my Cousin."

Nabiki slowly turned to look at the girl and said, "I will honor it

in my own time and my own way. I don't take well to being

forced into anything, Cousin. The marriage may not be

legitimate in my eyes, but I know it's pointless to argue about

that..."

"You are right on that account," Perfume struck a pose with

axes extended, "It is not my wish to see you hurt, especially

since my Cousin is very interested in your welfare, but I have my

instructions from Great Grandmother."

"And you always obey like a good little Amazon?" Nabiki

asked, coaching her words to just this side of patronizing.

"Shut up!" Perfume reacted, "I am not a child that you can

speak this way!"

"But you are willing to commit murder," Nabiki said coldly.

"Who said anything about killing you?" Perfume asked,

"Shampoo made the choice to allow you to live, I am merely

seeing to it that you honor her by returning to Joketsuzoku."

"And how do you intend to enforce this?" Nabiki asked,

measuring the distance between them a keeping her nerves

steady.

Perfume smiled, "Great Grandmother has taught me many ways

that I can use to persuade you to come with me. You already

know that you cannot beat me in a fight, so it is pointless to resist

me..."

"And will Shampoo thank you for beating up her Airen?"

Nabiki countered, "I thought you were supposed to be her friend

as well as her kinswoman."

"Shut up!" Perfume snapped again, now obviously angry, "It

is for her own good that I'm doing this! She could never be

happy living in exile among these barbarian Japanese. She is

destined for greatness and will one day be numbered among the

Elders of our village..."

"And you'd like to see that happen?" Nabiki asked,

"Shampoo has told me a few things about you, about how the

two of you fought when you were little girls, and how she

humiliated you, but later defended you against some bullies in

your village. You took the place of one of her kinswomen who

was banished in disgrace and thus became her Cousin by

adoption. The two of you have been nearly inseparable since

childhood, but you were doubly cursed, once by nature, the

second time at Jusenkyo..."

"How dare you?" Perfume hissed like a cat, "Those are not

the affairs of outsiders..."

"But I'm not technically an outsider, am I?" Nabiki reasoned,

"I understand now why you can't compete with the other girls,

why your mutual Great Grandmother took it upon herself to train

you special so that you could cope with both of your problems.

You have worked hard to achieve your level of proficiency, but

Shampoo says that you are not happy. No one likes you very

much at home because of what you represent, and they think you

are a weak girl because of your double-curses. You must be a

very lonely person, like her. Small wonder you're willing to jump

at the opportunity to claim my friend Ukyo for your Airen..."

"SHUT UP!" Perfume snarled as she threw herself towards

Nabiki with both axes already in motion.

Nabiki merely ducked low and pulled her weapon from its place

of concealment beneath her Chinese clothing. She fired point-

blank into the Amazon's face, squirting Perfume several times

with cold water.

The next instant was the most amazing that Nabiki had ever

personally witnessed, watching the girl seemingly collapse in on

herself as her robes billowed down to the floor, trapping the

mewling cat under layers of silk and the weight of other hidden

weapons.

The axes clattered to the floor as Nabiki rushed forward and

snatched Perfume up without exposing her cat-form to view,

mentally filling her mind with nonsensical phrases as she ran to

the other end of the dojo and flipped open the lid of the special

box one-handed. She slammed it shut again after dumping her

cargo, then fixed the latch and backed away before her mind

could completely register what she had been doing.

And then the cat fought clear of the constricting silks and stared

angrily at the cage it suddenly found itself trapped within as

Nabiki continued to back away, her face set with horror as she

felt her skin crawl and could almost swear that she smelled the

horrid aroma of fish sausages all around her. She turned away at

last and took a deep breath before saying, "Well...that worked

better than I'd hoped it would. I'm so sorry, Perfume, but you

didn't exactly leave me with that many options."

The yowl from the cage caused Nabiki to jump a foot, but she

controlled her reaction as she walked away from the dojo, still

trembling inside as she found Uncle Genma suddenly athwart her

path.

"Did it work?" he asked her without preamble.

"A little," she sighed, "Filling my head kept me sane for at least

nine seconds, which is longer than I've ever been able to

maintain. Maybe if we work a little harder I can get it up to a full

minute."

"Don't push yourself too soon," he warned, "Wouldn't do any of

us good if you suddenly reverted."

"Like I need you to tell me?" Nabiki snorted, but in truth she was

glad that he had come up with the suggestion. It was one of the

reasons she still felt good about having him around: on occasion

Uncle Genma could come up with the most surprisingly intuitive

suggestions.

Genma paused before he spoke again, "You know, of course, that

if she gets free she'll be twice as angry and even more determined

to get you."

"A risk that I must take, Ojisama," Nabiki replied, feeling her

pulse-rate return to normal, "So in case you're thinking of

drowning her in that cage, I suggest you forget about it or you'll

answer to both me and Shampoo."

"Never hurts to consider all the options," he shrugged, "So what

do we do with her?"

"Feed her three times a day and give her a warm spot to sleep

on," Nabiki shrugged, "What else do you do with the filthy

creatures? It's not like I've ever had a good reason to study their

habits."

"I think I know of a good place where I can keep her," Genma

replied, "At least until her Great Grandmother shows up to claim

her."

"I'm counting on you to keep her well away from me," Nabiki

replied, then with a wry smirk added, "Tell Ukyo that she's a

present, but make sure she doesn't open the cage."

"Niece, you are wicked," Genma smiled in evident approval.

"You ought to know, Pops," she smiled back, "You trained me..."

"So," Ranma said a short time later as the two of them sat side-

by-side on their favorite spot over the dojo, "That's at least one of

our problems out of the way."

"At least until Shampoo's Great Grandmother stops by," Nabiki

sighed, "Have to admit, I'm not looking forward to meeting her.

Keiko seems to think she's the very devil incarnate."

"If she trained both of them, then she must be a pretty impressive

teacher," he remarked, then looked sidelong at the woman beside

him and asked, "How are you holding up?"

For some reason Nabiki had trouble maintaining her mask of

self-confidence as she replied, "Not too well. I feel like a bundle

of nerves. After sweating out that plan of mine, the execution

was almost too easy, almost anti-climatic."

"Waiting for the other sandal to drop?" he smirked, "I don't blame

you. After what happened on our first date, I'm starting to think

the Kami never mean to leave us alone. We've hardly had a

minute to just sit and talk like this since it happened."

"Ranma..." Nabiki's voice was tired, "I want more than anything

for us to just have a normal life together..."

"So would I," he said, "But I guess we're not that normal. You've

got a wife and I've got a second iinazuke, only she just became

the wife of the cousin to your wife. If that isn't confusing, I'd hate

to see what's in store for us."

"I shudder to think that it could get any worse," Nabiki groaned

softly, then was surprised to find his arm slip around her

shoulders. She rested her head against his arm and found that

she very much needed the physical contact. She was forever

being surprised this way by the little things Ranma could do with

just a little bit of prompting. She almost hated to bring up the

question that next came into her mind, "How is Ucchan taking to

the idea of being married?"

Ranma stifled a laugh and said, "You've got to be kidding! She's

even more stunned than I was when she turned up with that

announcement about Dad betrothing me to her ten years ago.

From what I've been able to tell, Ucchan isn't interested in girls,

let alone one that turns into a Cat..." he caught himself as he felt

her tense by his side and winced, "Sorry...I forgot..."

"Not your fault," she sighed, "Just something else I have to deal

with."

"Dad did this to you," it was not a question, and Ranma's voice

became heavy, "I don't know what to make of him. On the one

hand he's a good teacher and he makes me feel very proud

whenever I do something right, but on the other hand...I feel so

ashamed about the things he did on that training mission..."

"It's not your fault," she repeated with emphasis, "Your Dad

always did what he thought was right at the time, but sometimes

he could be a little stupid. The Nekoken was a case in point, and

Ukyo is another."

"Nobody's perfect, huh?" Ranma's hand tensed as he held Nabiki

closer to him and softly vowed, "I swear I'll find a way to make it

up to you...somehow."

"You already have," Nabiki replied, then decided the moment

was as good as any she would likely get and said, "Ranma...I...I

just want to say that I..."

"Airen!" Shampoo suddenly leaped onto the roof and said, "Come

quick, you sister-WHAT ARE YOU DOING WITH

SHAMPOO'S AIREN?"

The latter was snarled in Ranma's direction. Ranma looked

blankly up at the girl while Nabiki just sighed and separated

herself from the protection of his arm and said, "Never mind that,

Shampoo. What about my sister?"

Shampoo was glaring at Ranma, but somehow she forced the

words past clenched teeth, "Airen's sister Akane-san is hurt.

Akane ask for Airen..."

"Kuso!" Nabiki was on her feet as though rocket-propelled, "Take

me to her at once!"

"This way," Shampoo said as she turned to leap, sparing one last

angry glare at Ranma before landing on the ground in front of the

dojo, followed closely by Nabiki and Ranma.

Inside they found Akane laying on her side while Keiko, Ryoga

and Kodachi crouched over her, the latter with hands on Akane's

ankle while Ukyo stood to one side and looked worried.

"It's just a sprain, Akane-chan," Kodachi assured her friend,

"Your landing was poor this time, and you should have watched

your dismount."

"I know," Akane said between clenched teeth, "I'm sorry,

Kodachi-chan...I was just too clumsy..."

"Nonsense," Kodachi said, "Accidents could happen to anyone. I

lost count of the injuries I've taken in my time, especially

those...well, never mind. The point is that you should rest this at

once and put some ice on it to lower the swelling."

"But I need to compete tomorrow!" Akane protested, "The honor

of my school demands it..."

"Your honor cannot heal this by morning," Kodachi gently

informed her, "I am sincerely sorry, Akane-chan, but there is no

way that you will be able to compete. A pity, truly, because I

was so looking forward to matching our skills on the morrow."

"Yeah," Keiko snapped, "I'll just bet!"

"I wasn't talking to you, Peasant!" Kodachi retorted.

"You're so broken up about Akane not being able to compete

with you," Keiko said in mocking tones, "I wouldn't put it a bit

past you to have kicked that ball under her feet..."

"HOW DARE YOU?!" Kodachi snarled, genuinely angry, "You

would accuse me of dealing unfairly with my best and only

friend?"

"This from a girl who ambushed all the other competitors from

the local High Schools?" Keiko replied, "You bet I'd accuse you.

I'd even do more if I had proof that you..."

"Keiko-san," Akane said angrily, "I forbid you to say such things

about Kodachi!"

"I'm sorry, but I'm only speaking what I think," Keiko looked

hard at Kodachi and said, "You think because you're the best

around that you should win by acclimation? Well, I think you

could stand a few lessons in humility, so I'm formally

challenging you on behalf of Akane!"

"Nani?" Akane blinked, looking very surprised at Keiko.

"Keiko-san," Ryoga urged gently, "Are you certain you want to

do this? You were never formally trained in Rhythmic

Gymnastics..."

"Neither were you, but you're good enough to compete yourself,

Ryoga-kun, if you were the right gender," Keiko smiled at the

both and said, "Don't worry, I've been watching everything and

I'm pretty sure I've got the right kind of moves for this

competition. I'll be Akane-chan's alternate, and I'll beat the

leotard off of anyone who tries to stop me, especially Miss Black

Rose here."

"An intriguing challenge," Kodachi sniffed, "But I'd never lower

myself to fighting peasants..."

"Oh yeah?" Keiko stepped back and with one foot flipped a

ribbon into her hand, which she proceeded to twirl like a coiling

snake before snapping it out at Kodachi, who leaped backwards

and rolled to a safe distance.

"I see," Kodachi said as she regarded Keiko from across the

length of the dojo, "Obviously you do have some small talents.

Very well, then, I will accept your challenge and humiliate you in

tomorrows competition."

"I'll be waiting to kick your ass," Keiko replied, sticking her

tongue out and pulling down on one of her eyes to reveal the

pink.

"Hmph, Barbarian," Kodachi sniffed as she turned and vaulted

out of the dojo.

"Keiko-san..." Akane looked up at her in surprise.

"It's all right, Akane-chan," Keiko smiled back, "Friends help

friends in a pinch. Hey, Ryoga-kun, care to spar with me after

you take Akane-chan back inside?"

"Huh?" Ryoga looked like a deer transfixed in the headlight,

"You want me to...to...?"

"It's all right," Keiko smiled, "I know how strong you are, and

Akane isn't all that heavy. I'm sure you can manage," she winked

at him meaningfully.

"Hey!" Akane protested at the mention of her weight.

"But, I...ah..." Ryoga looked ready to melt through the cracks in

the wood floor.

"Well, what are you waiting for, you big Jackass," Ukyo snorted,

giving him a playful kick to encourage him into action, "Akane

needs that ice-pack."

"Ah...okay," Ryoga was very hesitant about laying a hand on

Akane, but once he lifted her into his arms. Akane's smile

encouraged him, and she seemed very eager to put her arms

around his neck as she settled into his embrace. Ryoga almost

seemed to float out the door as he took Akane back inside, his

face set in a dreamy smile as though he had always dreamed of

this moment.

"What's with him?" Ranma looked blankly after the other fellow.

"Nothing much," Nabiki grinned, "I think Ryoga-kun just got to

first base is all, and he never even bunted."

"Shampoo think silly boy have trouble finding kitchen," Shampoo

snorted, "Likely Akane-san no mind getting lost with that one."

"He's really got it bad," Ukyo nodded thoughtfully, "But if I'm not

mistaken, Akane feels the same way, she's just shy about

admitting it."

"Young love is a beautiful thing," Keiko smiled, then said, "Well,

I've got to get training. Hey, Nabiki-chan, think you can rustle up

a leotard in my size? I doubt Akane's will fit me."

"I'll see what I can rustle up," Nabiki smiled, thinking privately

to herself that she had better get on the phone and start filling

Ryonami in on the news before the Gossip Express gave her all

the details. The odds between Furinkan and Hebereke had just

gotten interesting, and it was definitely the moment to start

calling in some favors...

Continued.

Comments/Criticism/El Nino Reports?:

shadowmane

Finally I'm going to catch up with the Juvenile Gymnast! At the

slow rate I'm going I'll never make it to Cold Competition!

Nabiki 1/2

Chapter 9, Part 3.

By

Jim Robert Bader

Inspired by the works of Rumiko Takahashi;

All rights reserved to her, the publishers and distributors

Of the Ranma 1/2 Series.

(Based on the Altered Destinies Series by

Wade Tritschler and Others;

Only some characters and situations were created by me,

The rest are the shared products of Fanfiction,

So please don't sue me.

"Look, this isn't easy for me, so don't complain about the

accommodations," Ukyo said, "It wasn't my idea to leave you

here with me, so don't give me that look, young lady. I'm not

letting you out and that's final."

Perfume the Cat just looked at her with a slight tail swish but

otherwise maintained a neutral expression, which was easy in her

present condition.

"Who am I kidding?" Ukyo rolled her eyes, "Look...I know you've

got these rules and customs that you're supposed to obey, but I'm

really not too crazy about finding out you either have to kill or

marry me. I mean, I may dress like a boy, but I don't have

masculine values..."

"Meorw?" Perfume inquired, as best she was able.

"Well, okay," Ukyo said in mild exasperation, "Maybe a few

masculine values. I mean, you don't spend ten years of your life

pretending to be a boy without learning something..."

"Mreow?" Perfume rephrased her question.

"Why did I do it?" Ukyo asked, as if uncannily interpreting the

question, "Well...I guess you probably wouldn't understand.

Shampoo sure didn't, and your Cousin is pretty cagey, once you

get past the language problem. I guess in simplest terms I

felt...angry with my father for treating me like a disposable

commodity. He promised me to some boy I never met and said I

was going to be his wife some day. I guess I did it as much to

spite him as I wanted to prove that I was as good as any boy, or

the son he wanted instead of me. I guess you wouldn't

understand that, coming from someplace where women are

valued more highly than men..."

"Mreow," Perfume replied, wanting to convey in some terms that

being a woman of the Amazons was hardly a bed of cherry

blossoms.

"I've read that in most of Asia it's the other way around," Ukyo

continued, "They used to drown girl babies...or maybe they still

do, especially in China, where they've got a one-child per couple

policy due to the population problems. I hear they even have

abortions if they do ultrasound tests and find a mother is carrying

a girl baby-now that's pretty barbaric!"

Perfume's cat eyes widened sharply. This was news to her,

although she had heard the rumors of how things were done in

other provinces...

"That doesn't happen too often here in Japan," Ukyo continued, as

much to herself now as to her solitary audience, "But girls are

still expected to tow the line, and boys are expected to be tough

and macho. Believe me, I've walked on both sides of the fence,

so I know what I'm talking about. Heck, I'll even admit that I had

to do some pretty distasteful things to maintain the illusion,

hanging around with guys who'd make crude jokes and tease the

ladies...not that I ever stooped so low as to be that kind of a

bully."

Perfume inclined her head and looked inquisitively up at her, so

Ukyo smiled and continued, "All right, so maybe I got to used to

playing the boy I started to think like one at times, but at heart

I've always been one hundred percent woman, and it hurts deep

down for people to take you for granted on account of your sex. I

wanted to prove myself so bad that I made a lot of sacrifices, my

femininity for one thing, and my pride for the other, but I was

damned good at fooling the other boys into thinking I was one of

their number..."

She sighed, "But then this business with Ranma came back to the

forefront, and I find out he's a pretty nice guy, not at all like what

I'm used to, or any boy I've ever hung out with. I think I like him

because he's fun to hang around with, and we can talk just like

we were old friends or something. Is that enough to build a

relationship on? Am I fooling myself, do you think? Maybe

setting myself up to take a hard fall if he doesn't like me like I

want him to like me? Gosh...he has such a nice smile...I can see

why Nabiki-chan wants him all to herself. I'd wish her well with

him and to hell what my father thinks, but...I don't know...maybe

I just want to think about this a little. I mean...if he can accept

me as both a guy and a woman...then maybe he really is the guy

for me. Does that make any kind of sense to you?"

Perfume shook her head from side to side, an odd gesture for a

cat, but perfectly in character with her understanding of the

complex situation of this woman guarding her cage, who was

also her Airen.

Ukyo smiled and poked a finger to rub Perfume along her chin, a

gesture Perfume suffered with a contented purr, finding she much

enjoyed the brief contact. It was not often people were this nice

with her, either as a Cat or a woman, and being stroked that way

felt so...nice...

"You know, you're not so hard to be around this way," Ukyo

chuckled, "You make a pretty good listener. Of course if I let you

out and you got to some hot water I'd have to go reaching for my

Spatulas again to try and prevent you from going after my friend

Nabiki."

This thought saddened Perfume because she knew that it was

true. She was obligated to carry out her Great Grandmother's

will, but being in a cage in her cursed form gave her a chance to

better assess the true situation from the ground the way she had

been unable to do from a distance. She was discovering that, in a

certain sense, she had elements in common with each of these

people, particularly the one named Kuonji Ukyo, with whom she

had a special bond of obligation.

Ukyo laughed, "Nab-chan doesn't know what she's missing.

Imagine being scared of a little thing like you, not that I wouldn't

be scared of having the real you coming after me with those axes.

You're a tough little thing, and there's no doubt about it."

Perfume gave a cat-smile. It was good that her Airen thought

Perfume a powerful warrior. Many Amazons thought her weak

because of the curse, and because of her other curse, the one that

was her private shame that made her less than the perfect warrior

her parents had wanted.

"If there was only some way I could convince you not to hurt my

friend," Ukyo sighed, then gave a private chuckle and said, "I'll

bet you're wondering how one of my best friends from childhood

can also be my rival for the guy we're both engaged to. Life is

funny that way, and we both want what's ours, but I don't want to

hate her just because his father is such an idiot that he forgot

Ranma was engaged to me when he betrothed him to Nabiki. It's

not her fault she fell in love with the guy...how could I blame her

for that? Not that I'd surrender him just to make peace or

anything like that..."

Perfume nodded emphatically. No warrior would honorably do

that, even with their closest kin. At least not without settling the

matter through combat.

Ukyo sat back and sighed, "This is a pretty mess I've gotten

myself in. Here I was planning to humiliate the guy who'd made

my life a living nightmare, and what happens? I wimp out! Not

only is he too good a fighter for me to bash his head in, but he

just won't get angry with me for attacking him. I mean, I'm sure

he's upset and all that, but he never held a grudge and he's gone

out of his way to be nice and everything, even though I'm sure

Nab-chan is ever so jealous..."

The latter part was spoken with a guilty little-girl quality, and it

made Perfume glare rather than smile this time, realizing that

Nab-chan was not the only one with a green-eyed problem...

"Oh, there you are," said Keiko as she appeared at the door, "Hate

to spoil a tender moment between you and your lovely wife, but I

was wondering if you were going to attend my big event in the

Martial Arts Rhythmic Gymnastics competition."

"Thought you already had a second," Ukyo snorted, "And she's

not my wife, I'll thank you to remember. I'm not carrying the guy

thing that far..."

"Oh, feeling Catty are we?" Keiko chuckled, ignoring the low

growl that came from Perfume's direction, "And you make such a

lovely couple..."

"You really think you're ready for this?" Ukyo asked with a sour

expression, "You only started last night..."

"I had Ryoga's help getting the basics down," Keiko replied,

"And I've caught a couple hours rest, so I'm as ready as I need to

be to deal with that Black Rose cheater."

"A couple of hours?" Ukyo started, "Are you sure you're going to

be all right?"

"Heke, heke," Keiko waved the point, stumbling in as she came

to sit down beside both of them, a tired smile on her face, "Just

need a shot of adrenaline to fully wake myself up. I'm not as

much of a morning person as Nabiki or Ranma. Glad our daily

ordeal of one of Genma's practice sessions was called off on

account of the contest."

"I still don't see why you're doing this," Ukyo wondered, "You've

only known Akane-san for a couple of week, and Kodachi..."

"Hey, I like the kid," Keiko smiled, "She's naive and sheltered,

and she has a hair-trigger tempter and she fights like a novice,

but she's got a lot of heart. Kodachi, on the other hand...there's

something about that lady that's all twisted up inside. I think

she's had a rougher time of it even than me, but she's got wealth

and privilege to shelter her from the consequences of her actions,

and I don't like cheaters. I'm doing this because the thought of

her waltzing in there to take the prize with no competition just

stinks! I thought you'd understand that, you always took the side

of the underdog that I remember."

"Okay," Ukyo said, "Suppose I accept that, you do know you're

taking a risk of being considered a truant."

"Risk is my life," Keiko snorted, "But what about you? Jumping

in like that to play back up for Nab-chan, attacking Perfume

when she's on a mission from an Elder...now that's risky! Didn't

Shampoo's lesson clue you in to what could happen?"

"I...guess I just didn't think," Ukyo sighed, glancing down to the

caged Perfume and said, "Jumping you wasn't the smartest thing

I've ever done, and I'll admit it, but it seemed like a good idea at

the time, as opposed to you chopping up Nabiki."

"Well, there you are," Keiko sniffed, "And now you two are stuck

with each other, like it or not. I just want to know if you're going

to do right by this girl, Ucchan. You may not believe in her

rules, but she does, and she's obligated to either kill or marry you.

She's already made her choice, now what are you going to do

about it?"

"I-I...don't know," Ukyo said faintly, "I haven't the faintest idea.

This whole business is crazy! I was hoping maybe you'd have a

suggestion since you know more than I do about Amazon

culture..."

"I was trained by an outcast," Keiko said, "Her Great

Grandmother took pity on me and showed me a few pointers,

saying I had great promise as an Amazon. Believe me, it was

pretty tempting. Imagine a place where the only thing that

matters is your ability to fight, and if you can do that good, they

welcome you like a sister."

Ukyo just smiled at that, "Maybe ten years ago I'd have been

tempted. I wouldn't mind visiting the place, but I don't think I'd

want to stay there indefinitely."

"Then you'd better hope Nab-chan comes up with one of her more

brilliant strategies to get us all out of this mess," Keiko noted,

"Or you may not have any more choice about it than she does."

Ukyo looked down at Perfume again, who was staring back at

her with the unreadable expression of a cat studying a human,

"Poor thing. Trapped like a cat in a cage, and I'm starting to feel

the same way. I hope you don't take this the wrong way,

Perfume-san, but I want to marry Ranma, not you. I'm...not into

girls, not even slightly, like Nabiki..."

"You sure about that?" Keiko asked.

"Positively."

Keiko snorted, "I've heard that one before! You'll never know

until you've tried it."

Ukyo looked at her in irritation, "I'm not like you. I'm

not...judging you or anything, but to think like that about any

girl..."

"Then why pretend to be a boy?" Keiko asked with a knowing

smile, "Did you pretend you were into other guys to get other

girls from hitting on you?"

"No," Ukyo blinked, "I mean, sure I got a lot of propositions from

other girls, but..."

"Can't say I'm surprised," Keiko smiled, "You make a pretty

handsome guy, just borderline enough to be as attractive either

way. I get turned on just looking at you, and I'm pretty confident

of which way I go. Don't tell me you never dated at other High

Schools?"

"Ah..." Ukyo hesitated, "Well, uh...I did date other girls...just for

appearances sake, but I never did anything to betray myself! At

least...all except for one girl who found out but didn't betray my

secret...and this guy...well, turns out he was a real pervert and

wouldn't take no for an answer..."

"So you never kissed or went all the way?" Keiko smiled all the

more.

"Kissed...well, once," Ukyo winced, "Just for fun, and curiosity,

but not...you don't think I actually liked it?" she sounded slightly

offended.

"Amazons are more sensible than we are about this stuff," Keiko

sniffed, "They make a distinction between Fun and Marriage, and

they don't think it's weird for two girls to be attracted to each

other. Love is more than bodies, Ucchan, and sometimes you've

got to look past the flesh to know the person. It'd be pretty

limiting to only think one gender is available that way, and I

think the world would be a whole lot nicer if we thought like that

instead of trying to cram everyone into categories and boxes."

"But they expect to love the person they marry!" Ukyo protested.

"So they're not perfect," Keiko replied as she stood up, "That's

why I'm not so big on marriage as the rest of you. I want to make

love and be with the person I care about. I don't need a formal

declaration for that. Maybe you should think about it a little

before you slam the door in Perfume's face because you want to

steal Ranma from Nabiki. Personally I'd be just happy if you

took him away, but then I'd have to compete with Shampoo..."

she sighed, "I lose either way. All I want is for everyone to be

happy."

"Not much to ask, huh?" Ukyo snorted in weary disgust.

"You said it," Keiko turned a look towards Perfume and said,

"Funny, when we first met I was utterly terrified of her. Looking

at her now, all small and helpless like that, I can't help but feel a

little sorry."

"Me too," Ukyo said, "But sympathy doesn't mean I want to

marry her."

"Maybe you should get to know each other better," Keiko

winked, "You never know, it just might work out between you."

"Yeah, right," Ukyo sniffed again as Keiko took her leave, then

she looked sorrowfully at Perfume and said, "I know it's not what

you want, but I'll try and make things right for us. I'm not going

to marry you, but I don't want to see you hurt either."

"Mreow?" Perfume asked inquiringly, as if truly baffled by all the

silly talk of these humans.

Ukyo got up and said, "I'm going to stretch my legs. School's not

for another few hours, but I ought to get ready. You need

anything, just give a holler."

"Mrew," Perfume acknowledged, then sat looking thoughtfully at

the bars of her cage. It was very frustrating to be trapped in her

cursed form, but it had allowed her to spend time with the one

named Ukyo, and that almost made it worthwhile. The girl was a

fascinating mix of contradictory elements, but Perfume sensed

that she had a good heart, and she could hear the concern in the

other girl's voice reassuring her in spite of her claims to have no

interest in acknowledging their marriage.

Japanese was such a difficult language to master, but Perfume

understood more words than she could competently speak, and

following the exchange between her Airen and the Kickboxer had

been very enlightening on several points. They were obviously

very worried about the Elder and what she would do when she

found out about Perfume's latest failure, and with good reason.

That they were trying to find some way of assuaging her wrath

was obvious, that they believed Tendo Nabiki might find some

way of doing this was very surprising. Her Great Grandmother

(by adoption) was nothing if not unshakable in her convictions.

Then again, Perfume herself had underestimated Tendo Nabiki.

Perhaps she would find a way of convincing Kho-Lon to allow

them to stay in Japan rather than come home with Pur-Fum and

Xian-Pu.

Perfume gave a cat's equivalent to a sniff. Yeah, right, and Pigs

have been known to fly over the Forbidden City!

But what to do if Ukyo-chan proved as stubborn as Nabiki?

Would Great Grandmother insist that Perfume force the Japanese

Okonomiyaki Chef to come home against her will? That was

bound to be a very unpleasant business...or worse if Kho-Lon

pronounced the curse of death against Ukyo and Nabiki.

Perfume was beginning to feel depressed as she considered the

matter her own carelessness had created. If only she had not

dropped her guard that crucial second before Ukyo struck, or had

reacted a fraction of a second sooner...but no, that was pointless.

Recriminations could not alter the past. What was done was

done, now Perfume had to make the best of it, just the same as

her Cousin.

Why irony! And here she had come to this barbaric land to help

Shampoo, not to follow her into self-imposed exile...

A shadow crossed the threshold of the door, and Perfume's

sensitive ears heard soft footfalls coming her way. She

brightened up at the thought of Ukyo's return. She was coming

to enjoy her Airen's company even more than was required of a

dutiful wife, so she waited with joy...until she saw that the one

entering the room was not Ukyo but the one called Kodachi.

"Why now," the self-styled Black Rose purred in a way that made

Perfume's hackles arch, "They left you all alone, poor thing? And

who might you be?"

Perfume hissed, backing up in her cage as though trying to will

herself to freedom from this creature. From her time of

observation she had learned a little of what Kuno Kodachi was

like, and very little of it pleased her, though the one named

Akane seemed to think her a friend.

The sensations she was picking up now were anything but

friendly!"

"Fine, be that way, vile creature," Kodachi sniffed, "But you are

just the sort of ammunition I need to win a certain handsome man

to my side, so you go to sleep now," she smiled, and blew into

her palm, which caused a fine black powder to flow in her

direction.

Perfume was very intimate with the nature of powders and would

ordinarily have held her breath to prevent being overcome, but

she was surprised by the close proximity of this attack, and her

animal instincts were interfering with her reason. Her mind

automatically started to classify the symptoms as if to recognize

the specific nature of the powder as she was finding it difficult to

remain awake, and then sleep came to her and she dreamed

pleasant dreams of being held in the arms of her darling Ukyo,

who was petting her with affection, though her laugh sounded

odd...not humorous but very... funny...

"Otosan?" Ranma said as he, Akane, Nabiki and Keiko arrived at

the locker room and found a Panda waiting for them, "What are

you doing here?"

The Panda held up a sign that read, "I've found a job, son. I'm

here to help Tofu Sensei."

"You work?" Nabiki snorted, "Now I've heard everything!

What's he using you for, a giant lab rat?"

The Panda turned the sign around and it read, "Very funny, but

I'm serious. You always said that I needed to help bring in more

money."

"To counter the amount of food you eat," Nabiki snorted, not

bothering to add that the amount she needed to sustain her own

ferocious appetite was just as financially taxing, then with a

suspicious gleam she said, "Or is this just your way of being able

to buy yourself some Sake without going through me for your

allowance?"

The Panda looked innocently back at them then pointed his

muzzle towards a bouquet of black roses. He rapidly erased his

sign and wrote the words, "Those were delivered for you a few

minutes ago."

"A bouquet of black roses?" Nabiki asked skeptically, "Gee, I

wonder who could have sent that..."

Akane suddenly lurched forward, only slightly hobbled by her

ankle as snatched up the roses, then threw them in the direction

of the showers. There was a dull "WUMP" sound, followed by a

billowing smoke that Akane hastily avoided, though the Panda

sniffed the air and promptly fell over in his chair while Akane

shoved the others out of the room, closing the door behind them.

"Kodachi," Ranma sighed, "Another of her rose tricks..."

"This is her idea of a practical joke," Akane snorted, "Don't worry

about Ojisama, he'll recover. 'Dachi dabbles in potions, but she

stays away from heavy toxins."

"That sure woke me up," Keiko snorted, "You really go for that

kind of woman, Ranma-kun?"

"Well," Ranma said with an uncomfortable shrug of his

shoulders, "I used to, but lately..."

He glanced to Nabiki, who just smiled back and said, "Charmer."

"How long until the gas clears?" Keiko asked, "I need to change

into that leotard I borrowed from Kasumi."

"Give it fifteen minutes at least," Akane replied, "Maybe we

should try the boy's lockers, or even a closet..."

"I"LL KILL HER!" an enraged Ukyo snarled as she stalked

angrily down the corridor, stalking up to them with her fists

clenched.

"Ucchan?" Nabiki spun around, "What's wrong? Kill who?"

"Who do you think?" Ukyo snarled, looking at Akane, "Your

friend with the roses! She snuck into our room and stole Perfume

out of her cage!"

"What?" Ranma gasped, "Are you sure it was her?"

"I heard her damned laughter down the hall!" Ukyo growled

vengefully, "She was gone by the time I got out of the bathroom,

but she left one of her trademark roses next to the cage! Don't

ask me how she managed to convince Perfume to come with

her..."

"Drugged her," Akane said, "That's 'Dachi's usual pattern."

"Drugged her?" Ukyo paled, "Oh no, and I only had my back

turned for a minute..."

"She won't hurt her, Ucchan," Ranma assured, "She probably

thinks she just a pet, so she'll...uh oh..."

"Ucchan?" Nabiki asked archly, then blinked, "What do you

mean uh-oh?"

"What would Kodachi want with a cat?" Akane asked before

turning to look at Nabiki, "Could she have figured out your

secret?"

Nabiki remembered Kodachi's words from the night before and

paled, "Kuso...that's all I need..."

"Where would she keep Perfume?" Ukyo asked urgently.

"I thought you said you weren't interested in her," Keiko asked

with an arched eyebrow.

"Not like that!" Ukyo snapped, "But she was under my

protection! Which way to her house?"

"Kodachi would probably keep her close at hand, if she follows

her normal pattern," Ranma said, "Maybe she expects to run into

Kaneda during the match."

"Unless she's figured out that Perfume is Shampoo's cousin,"

Ukyo turned and looked around, "Where is Shampoo anyway?

She usually follows you like a shadow."

"Ah, I sent her on an errand," Nabiki said, "She ought to be

informed at once. We'll need all the help we can find if...if she

means to set a trap for my male half."

"I've got to get ready," Keiko turned to Ukyo and said, "I promise

I'll kick that smug bitch's behind for you, Ucchan, then I'll make

her tell me where she's taken Perfume-chan."

"I'll help you look for her, Ucchan," Ranma volunteered, "Akane,

you've got to help Keiko-san get ready."

"I know what a Second is, Baka," Akane sniffed, "I'd better also

keep an eye out for more of 'Dachi's pranks. She's full of

surprises, and it's pretty obvious she considers you fair game."

"I'll take whatever she throws my way," Keiko replied, anger

flaring in her eyes, "Just you wait, Kuno Kodachi! You've met

your match in Arigami Keiko!"

"Somehow," Nabiki murmured, "I don't exactly see Kodachi

quivering in her leotard."

"I wish Ryoga-kun were here," Akane frowned, "I wonder where

he could have gotten off to this time...?"

Continued.

Comments/Criticisms/Handouts: shadowmane

Some ideas flow, others drag, and some just refuse to connect,

which applies to the ending I've settled on for this Chapter. I had

more to say but just couldn't work it out, so it's better to retreat

and pick up the next time with the long-delayed (and not much

anticipated) Juvenile Gymnast match of Keiko versus Kodachi.

Hope I'm back in the mood tomorrow so I can make this puppy

as fun as I'd intended.

At least the beginning was easier to write, but I've always had

fun with two girls sitting down to talk out their problems. If all

anyone did was talk, however, this wouldn't be a Ranma story...

If you wish to check out my other works, Please check out my

Fanfiction webpage at: . or

it's mirror site at: ~

All related chapters of this series can be found there along with my

other works.


	10. Chapter 10

Nabiki 1/2

Chapter 10, Part 1.

By

Jim Robert Bader

Inspired by the works of Rumiko Takahashi;

All rights belong to her, the publishers and Distributors

Of the Ranma 1/2 Series.

(Based on the Altered Destinies Series

by Wade Tritschler and others;

The following is a work of shared Fanfiction,

Some characters and ideas are mine, the rest are borrowed from

Elsewhere, So please don't sue me)

Shampoo sat atop the roof of this building that bore the curious

name of Saint Hebereke. Hebereke was the Japanese word for

"Falling Down Drunk," or so someone had informed her the other

day when she asked about the upcoming contest. Supposedly the

place had originally been named for some European god named

Bacchus, back in the days when it had belonged to some

religious order called the Christians, but Foreign studies had

never been one of her strong points of interest.

Falling down drunk was a good description of these Japanese,

however, the way they carried on in a slightly mad and

obsessively formal manner that was both vexing and confusing.

Then again she supposed that the ways of the Amazons would

seem as incomprehensible to outsiders, so she would try not to be

as judgmental as her overly critical Great Grandmother to all

things not Amazon. If the Japanese wanted to honor a god

known for indulgence and excess, then who was she to question

their wisdom? All she knew was that this was the home of her

beloved, and as such a sacred land, one that she would try and

come to accept as her own.

Even if it drove her mad in the process.

This whole business was leaving her in a very depressed state of

mind. How much simpler life had seen in the days of her

childhood when training to be the best Warrior of the Amazons

had been everything, and her Great Grandmother was a voice of

infinite wisdom seeking to guide her future. Shampoo studied

hard to master complex techniques and maneuvers that older

children had difficulty grasping, and in time she had surpassed

them all in knowledge and ability. No warrior dared challenge

her and none came close to matching her prowess.

Only one dared raise her hand to spar with Shampoo, one who

was not so feared and respected, yet who tried just as hard to

excel. That one was her adoptive cousin, Perfume, whom Great

Grandmother had also favored with personal training.

There were singular differences between them, of course. One

being that Perfume had a special condition that made her

vulnerable to the least skilled of opponents, the other was a curse

that Shampoo herself had laid upon her. It was the memory of

this that made her so sad, even if she had been doing the bidding

of Great Grandmother at the time. Training in Jusenkyo was

risky business, but who knew that Perfume would pay the terrible

price of their relentless pursuit of perfection?

Perfume. Perhaps the only real friend she had left in the world,

not including Nabiki, who was stubbornly resisting her

acknowledgement of their wedding. Perfume who had been

weak and frail as a child, whom other girls despised for being

weak, yet who had a kind of dignity about herself that had

convinced Shampoo at an early age that the others were wrong,

that Perfume was worthy of respect, having great courage in spite

of her weakness. Great Grandmother had only reluctantly

accepted Perfume as a student, having decided that she would be

a good sparring partner for Shampoo to train with. Great

Grandmother had been very surprised when Perfume outlasted

her most optimistic expectations to become a Warrior of skill of

whom other fighters would learn to be wary.

Perfume seldom complained about the harshness of their training.

She was determined to make Great Grandmother proud, to prove

to her family that she had worth. It was more than pride that

made her endure the rigorous torture of mastering the Bakusai

Tenketsu, not to mention a dozen other dangerous techniques,

who showed greater courage than anyone Shampoo had ever seen

where it truly mattered. Shampoo had been inspired by

Perfume's tenacity to withstand the taunts and abuse of their

trainer, to work to earn her place as Kho-Lon's designated heir, to

be twice the Amazon that they both were together. Perfume had

always been there for her, and yet when the time finally came to

choose between two loyalties, Shampoo had chosen to betray her.

Well, actually Nabiki-chan had figured the Jusenkyo curse out for

herself. Locking her up in a cage had seemed needlessly cruel at

the time, but Shampoo accepted it as a temporary condition to

keep her cousin from attacking her Airen. The point was that she

had been ready to betray her, had in fact told the Ranma boy of

Perfume's vulnerability to water, and this would have probably

bolstered the eventual outcome when Ukyo had stumbled on the

truth by herself and unwittingly became Perfume's new Airen.

This complicated everything, however, because Ukyo was also

betrothed to Ranma, and by tying him down this way she

effectively removed Shampoo's only other obstacle to cementing

her relationship with Nabiki. What an irony that in trying to

force Nabiki to accept the marriage she actually made it that

much harder to resolve this mess, and now Perfume was trapped

in the exact same situation.

Well, maybe not quite so similar. Shampoo had at lease one

night of blissful passion to assure her that Nabiki cared for her

and would make a very fine husband, if she could only be

convinced to return to Joketsuzoku. Nabiki's interest in Ranma,

however, was a problem. There seemed to be a lot more than

obligation binding those two together, and-like it or not-

Shampoo was actually jealous of their closeness. Ranma was an

obstacle to her plans, and obstacles should be removed, or so

Great Grandmother had always told her. Somehow here,

however...it just did not seem right. How could she hope to win

Nabiki over by attacking this boy? More likely it would make

Nabiki very angry and much less willing to cooperate. Even

Great Grandmother would have to concede that!

Or would she? Shampoo was not so sure, and she was dreading

more than ever the inevitable arrival of her imperious Elder

Kinswoman. Kho-Lon could be so insistent on the adherence to

principle, and by strict reading of those principles both she and

Perfume were acting in violation to traditions. It was difficult to

know how the Elder would interpret matters, and without

knowing her mind it was impossible for Shampoo to make any

contingency plans for the future.

And what was Nabiki planning? She had been very curious

about the precedents set by other Amazons caught in similar

dilemmas. She had seemed to latch onto the rules concerning

multiple marriages. Was it possible that she was thinking

about...?

"Shampoo!" Nabiki's voice brought her around to find Nabiki

standing behind her on the opposite end of the roof, "There you

are, I've been looking all over for you!"

Shampoo felt her heart leap into her mouth as she got to her feet

and said, "Airen want find Shampoo?"

"We need your help," Nabiki said, "Perfume's been kidnapped. I

thought maybe you could help us find her."

"Perfume?" Shampoo felt twin emotions war in her: concern for

her cousin and disappointment that Nabiki had not been seeking

her company for other reasons. The former won out and she

cried, "Who do this to Shampoo-cousin?"

Somehow before Nabiki uttered the name Shampoo had known it

would be, "Kodachi."

"Her?" sudden anger made Shampoo go rigid with the need for

retribution. She had never much liked the sneaky, sultry

gymnast, whom she only tolerated because Nabiki's sister

insisted that she was her friend, but that issue meant nothing now

as Shampoo cried, "SHAMPOO KILL!"

"Later," Nabiki urged her tensely, "We've got to find Perfume

first. She may be somewhere inside this building. Is there any

way you know to trace her while she's in her cursed form?"

Perfume frowned, "Know way to send message to Cousin, but

would heed something back from Perfume to tell Shampoo where

find her."

For some reason Nabiki looked at her in surprise, "You mean

Telepathy?"

"What that?" Shampoo frowned, "Is called Sending. We learn do

many springs ago to keep from getting lost when separated..."

"Fine," Nabiki said, "Any way I can help out?"

Shampoo thought a moment then shook her head, "You watch,

Shampoo do rest."

"Good," Nabiki softly averred, privately hoping that they could

wind this all up soon because she wanted to see the fight. She

had business investments to attend, and this business about

Perfume was far too distracting. Quite apart from seeing to the

other Chinese girls welfare, though was her concern that Perfume

would find her way to hot water, then would come after Nabiki

again. That was not a risk she was willing to take, so she hoped

Ryonami could manage things in her absence, because there was

no telling what might happen with Kodachi...

Keiko entered the ring with grand flourish, hands raised in the air

as though she were back in the Muy Tai surrounded by

bloodthirsty fans eager to see the spilling of crimson. These

students were not quite that bad, but the analogy was close

enough as the rivalry between schools did seem almost as

intense. Though she was the surprise replacement contender for

Furinkan, they wanted to see her dethrone the reigning champion

of Saint Hebereke.

It was almost enough to make her feel homesick.

Akane, who stood at her side with her ankle wrapped up in a

heavy bandage, leaned closer and whispered, "Be careful.

Kodachi always likes to make a grand entrance, so be ready for

more of her 'little surprises.'"

As if on cue the lights in the gymnasium went out, then one by

one spotlights appeared, shining on a spot above the arena, where

everyone could now see a form in shimmering white sitting upon

a swing. As Kodachi was lowered down to the stage it became

evident that she was wearing a frilly white wedding dress-

complete with veil-and had one of her trademark black roses

clenched between her teeth. She looked like a Heavenly Kami

drifting down to earth, but a the gleam in her eyes was anything

but divine as she flashed a smile at Keiko before alighting onto

the stage and doffing her veil to reveal her leotard in one quick

and easy motion.

"I see what you mean," Keiko murmured to Akane.

"Just remember," Akane hissed, "You rely on weapons, no

physical contact permitted."

"I'll keep that in mind," Keiko replied as she eyed Kodachi

warily, then flashed her trademark smile and said, "Gee, I'm

flattered, 'Dachi, but I didn't know you were proposing."

Kodachi took the rose from her teeth and threw it at Keiko, who

snatched it easily out of the air while being careful to hold it

away from her face as Kodachi flashed her an angry look and

said, "This dress is for my beloved Kaneda-sama, whom I shall

woo and marry..."

"You have talked with him about this, right?" Keiko asked,

wondering if Nabiki were anywhere within earshot, or Shampoo

for that matter.

Kodachi gave Keiko a look of loathing and said, "Peasant! I will

not sully myself by trading insults with your like..."

"Fine by me," Keiko smiled, "Shall we get on with it?"

"But of course," Kodachi stepped forward, extending one hand,

"Shall we do as Westerners do when two combatants meet in the

spirit of challenge? A Handshake..."

"Ah, no, I'll stick to our traditions, thank you," Keiko declined the

handshake, instinct warning her to expect something worthy of

some of the less honorable Muy Tai fighters she had gone up

against. No telling what Kodachi had hidden up her non-existent

sleeve, and Keiko was determined to give the loony as few

opportunities to cheat as could be managed.

"If you insist on being a boor about it," Kodachi's smile was as

patently false as the padding under her leotard that inflated her

breast size. They bowed instead then stood ready in their corners.

The referee was about to give the command to begin the match

when Kodachi struck first, her hand blurring as something came

hurtling at Keiko, who instinctively raised one arm to deflect,

only to find her wrist contained by one end of a handcuff.

The other end was a long narrow chain that connected to a

birdcage, and in that cage was none other than Perfume!

"Perfume?" Keiko started, finding the cage was dangling above

the floor from her wrist with only a meter of chain between them.

"Mrow?" Perfume seemed dazed and confused, as though

partially drugged and quite uncertain of her surroundings.

"Kuno Kodachi has struck the first blow!" cried the announcer,

"A symbolic gesture of the nature of this Neko-fight, and isn't her

dress simply lovely?"

"Hey!" Akane cried, "Referee! You're not going to allow this, are

you?"

"This competition is waged by exchange of weapons," the

Referee replied, "There is some flexibility beyond the traditionally

permitted weapons of Rhythmic Gymnastics, so Kodachi's clever

strategy is legal."

"What?" Keiko cried, "What kind of rigged match is this, Ref?"

Kodachi's hollow laugh rang out, "Oh, how pathetic you are,

blaming your own shortsightedness upon others. You will hardly

last one minute against me as you are, but if it's any consolation,

you do look rather nice with that fashion accessory on your

wrist."

Keiko growled at Kodachi, "You're just pushing all the wrong

buttons, lady. When P-chan here wakes up, you're going to be

soooo sorry, assuming I let you live."

"P-chan?" Akane blinked, wondering at so peculiar a nickname.

"Get ready, set, GO!" the Referee cried out, and with no need for

further warning both adversaries launched offensives with

streamer ribbons lashing out while each darted and dodged as

best they could, Keiko only slightly hobbled by the cage while

Perfume gripped the floor of the cage with her claws and tried to

hold on for dear life.

It was going to be one hell of a Martial Arts demonstration...

"Where am I this time?" Ryoga asked to no one in particular,

trying to put two and two together in sorting out his badly shaken

sense of directions.

It had always been like this for as long as he could remember.

He could not recall a time when he knew how to find his way

from one place to the other without the turns and twists of

random access. Small wonder he had not seen other members of

his family in years, let alone his poor mother. He could not even

remember where his house had originally been, every time he

came close it was as if someone had moved it to Hokkaido.

But now that he really and truly had someplace that he wanted to

be, it was as if the whole city of Nerima was conspiring to throw

him off his track. It might have helped if he knew where this

Saint Hebereke School for Young Girls was at...or maybe not

knowing was a decided advantage. All he knew was that he had

set out intending to follow somebody who was headed in that

direction.

Strangely everyone he asked denied any knowledge of the place,

or even the way to the Tendo dojo. He had a promise to fulfill,

and he was sincerely trying his best, but his best was sadly

lacking at this point as he beseeched the heavens for mercy. If he

could not find Saint Hebereke, then how in the name of the Gods

was he going to find Akane?

"Ryoga?" a familiar voice asked, "Is that you, old buddy?"

"Ucchan?" Ryoga whirled around, finding his childhood friend

outside of a building that looked strangely like a school

gymnasium, only Ukyo was in full battle gear, spatulas at the

ready and a serious business look flashing in her gorgeous

sandalwood eyes.

"About time you showed up!" she sounded genuinely pleased and

vexed at one and the same time, "Akane's been looking all over

for you, you big goofball."

"Akane?" Ryoga looked around, "Then...I've come to the right

place?"

"Saint Hebereke, yeah," Ukyo replied, "I thought you were going

to tag along with us. How did you manage to get lost this time?"

"I don't know," he replied, a slow smile growing to a broad grim

as the realization hit him, "But I actually made it! I found my

way! This must mean that my heart...Akane! I'm here! Wait for

me, I'll..."

"This way, you Jackass," Ukyo steered him around and shoved

him towards the building, "I need your help to find Perfume!"

"Perfume?" Ryoga was well known for having a one-track mind,

so the sudden shift in gears was jarring.

"Yeah, that psycho Kodachi kidnapped her when my back was

turned!" Ukyo snarled, "When I get my hands on her she'll be

soooo sorry she messed with me..."

"Kodachi...?" Ryoga blinked, recalling the girl who had helped

him train Akane for the past several days, "But...she seemed so

nice..."

Ukyo said something very unladylike as she continued to drag

him into the building...

The sound of a cat-like scream shocked Nabiki as she glanced

down at Shampoo, unprepared to hear the lovely Amazon utter

such an incongruous sound, or the look in the Amazon's eyes as

her lids fluttered open, and then she jumped to her feet and cried,

"Cousin! Perfume needs Shampoo quick!"

Before Nabiki could ask for an elaboration her companion was

already in motion. Shampoo headed for the stairs leading down

from the roof and Nabiki followed close behind as they headed

down to the gymnasium floor, hearing the bout already under

way with students on both sides of the arena cheering the

combatants on. Nabiki took note of the flash of the ribbon but

was more caught by the sight of something dangling from

Keiko's left arm, hampering her movements.

She hesitated, but Shampoo did not even flinch as she reached

the side of the arena platform and rocketed onto the stage,

moving like a guided missile and quite heedless of the flashing

ribbons as she shot one hand forward and Kiia-ed.

The chain binding Perfume's cage snapped as Shampoo grabbed

it up with her other hand as she reached the opposite side of the

arena, cradling the cage in both arms as she said, "Cousin, you

forgive Shampoo? Shampoo not realize you in danger until you

send to her..."

"You!" Kodachi suddenly halted in the middle of the fight and

pointed with her streamer, "The villainous wench who dares try

to ensnare my darling Kaneda! How dare you now interfere in

the affairs of Kuno Kodachi?"

"Shut mouth, stupid Rose person!" Shampoo whirled around, her

face livid with outrage, "You no bring Airen into this or

Shampoo stomp you like ricepaper!"

"Shampoo?" Akane came up to her, "Thank the Kami you're here!

That cage was slowing Keiko down something awful, but now

she can fight fairly again. You'd better get Perfume to Ukyo

quick before she has a fit! She's been so worried ever since she

was taken."

Perfume came to full attention within her cage. Ukyo was

worried for her? This was news! It almost made the whole

stupid experience worth all the bother, although she was still

finding it hard to keep her eyes straight. Whoever concocted

Kodachi's potions ought to be cited for excessive overmixture of

the components. No competent apothecary worthy of the name

would allow for these sorts of unwholesome side effects!

"Yes," Shampoo agreed, "Shampoo take Cousin to Ukyo now.

Be back in time to watch end of fight. Keiko-san, stomp Rose

girl into canvas for Shampoo!"

"My pleasure," Keiko smiled, "All right you rotten cheater, this is

where we take the gloves off!"

"Indeed?" Kodachi said with a haughty lilt, "You overestimate

yourself, Peasant, and when I am done with you I'll get even with

your little friend and her pet kitty, and then I'll have Kaneda-

sama for my very own! Won't that be lovely?"

Nabiki had just caught up with everyone in time to hear and

cringe at that last comment. She watched Shampoo take off with

Perfume in tow and felt a sort of relief at not having to confront

her this way...and before a room full of people. She was about to

address herself to Akane when Ryonami suddenly appeared and

said, "Sempai! How good that you're here! I've got the latest bet

figures if you'd care to see my ledger?"

Nabiki sighed as she watched Keiko easily dodge a billy club

that suddenly jutted spikes, then saw the Referee look away as

though ignoring the clear weapons violation. She knew a fixed

match when she saw one, but Keiko had dealt with this kind of

thing in a ring where professionals were survivors. She suddenly

had no doubt about the outcome. Kodachi had her bag of tricks,

but Keiko had limitless determination, and it was plain from her

expression that she would be fighting in earnest.

She nodded to Ryonami and accepted the girl's proffered ledger,

scanning over the names and numbers while mentally adding up

the figures. In some ways business would come before pleasure,

she was just glad to note that her bet on Keiko was at substantial

odds that insured a quick profit. Something told her she might

soon be in need of some easy spending money.

Unknown to her Ranma saw this exchange and frowned. Kuno

Tatewaki noticed his expression and said, "What distresses you

so, friend Saotome? Your friend Keiko is doing very well to have

lasted this long against my twisted sister's vile efforts."

"It's Nabiki," Ranma sighed, "I just can't figure her out

sometimes, Kuno-Sempai."

"Ah yes," Kuno turned his head to regard the lovely middle

Tendo daughter, "She is a rare flower of womanhood, one I

would gladly seek for a date if she were not your promised

iinazuke. I envy you for the company you keep, Saotome-kun."

"So do I...mostly," Ranma murmured, wondering what Nabiki

found so interesting about one of the foremost bet takers of

Furinkan High School...

"Uh...this way?" Ryoga hesitated.

"This way, you..." Ukyo bit off her frustrated reaction and sighed,

"Sorry...just nerves. This business with Perfume has got me

rattled."

"Uh, I don't mean to pry, Ucchan," Ryoga said as he stayed close

to her side so as not to get lost while they searched around behind

the Gymnasium, heading for the boiler room, "And I know it's

not my business, but this Perfume...well..."

"You want to know if I'm interested in her?" Ukyo asked, "I'm

not...at least not that way, but I do feel obligated to her, this

whole Amazon Law business and such..."

"Oh," Ryoga seemed relieved, which caused Ukyo to eye him

sidelong.

"What?" she said in challenge, "You don't believe me? You

think I'm some kind of a...?"

"No, Ucchan," Ryoga assured her, "I'd never think anything like

that about you. It's just...well... until a few days ago I...thought

you were a boy..."

"And you think that means I'm a Hentai?" she sniffed, "Believe it

or not, Ryoga-kun, I can still feel like a girl even when I'm

dressed as a boy. I like men, even if I've avoided allowing myself

to feel anything for any guy until Ranma..." she sighed, then said

more insistently, "I didn't stop being a girl just because I stopped

dressing like one!"

"Well, I...wouldn't know about any of that," Ryoga hesitated, "It's

just..."

"Just what?" she turned on him, "Spit it out! What were you just

thinking, Ryoga?"

"You might not have much of a choice either way," Ryoga

shrugged, "I know Nabiki thinks the same way about Shampoo,

only there's got to be more to her story than she's telling us. The

way she looks at Shampoo sometimes..."

Ukyo blinked as she looked at the boy more alertly. Ryoga

seemed so dense most of the time, that he might actually be

capable of such sensitive insight had never occurred to her as she

gasped, "You think so?"

"It's...pretty obvious to any guy who cares about her," Ryoga

looked down, refusing to elaborate.

Ukyo slowly smiled, "Why Ryoga-kun...don't tell me you have

feelings for both Nabiki-chan and her sister? And here I always

thought you were such a loner..."

Ryoga was about to say something when Shampoo turned the

corner with the caged Perfume in her arms. Shampoo smiled and

said, "There Ukyo-san is! Shampoo has present for Ukyo-san,

you see?"

"Perfume?" Ukyo gasped in relief as she turned around to see the

caged creature, when all of a sudden that cage exploded outward.

Perfume was so overcome with joy to see Ukyo in her battle

dress, realizing that she was the probable reason, and her

enthusiasm caused a sudden burst in Ki energy that allowed her

to claw the bars of the cage as though they were made of sugar

instead of wire.

Before Ukyo had a chance to react she found a bundle of fur

plastered onto her face, knocking her down as though she had

been clobbered by a powder puff. Perfume curled up on her chest

and started purring contentedly while Ukyo struggled to try and

pry her off.

Shampoo stared at the ruptured cage in her hand, then softly

murmured, "Shampoo not know Cousin could do that?"

"Love knows no boundaries," Ryoga philosophized, then

remembered his own personal quest and said, "Um...which way

back into the Gymnasium?"

Shampoo just gave him a snort and pushed him in the right

direction, "That way, stupid boy!"

"MPH RRR PHAMEE!" Ukyo's muffled cry sounded more

incomprehensible than most other Japanese to Shampoo's ears, so

she just smiled and ignored the happy couple. It was far from her

place to interfere in her Cousin's happiness, and she wanted to

see Nabiki again, so she elected to take Ryoga by the hand to

make sure he actually got where he was going. She was glad that

Ukyo seemed to be gradually coming to accept Perfume as her

Airen, and it was good that she was this strongly protective.

Great Grandmother might even approve, but for now she wanted

to see Arigami Keiko hurt Kuno Kodachi very badly.

Then it would be her turn! She smiled at the chance to finally

vent some of her frustration against the Kuno family, both

members of which were becoming an annoyance, the sort

Amazons knew how to deal with...

Continued.

Comments/Criticism/UFO sightings (Gee, that one looks like

Kodachi!): shadowmane

Well, this one is slowly winding its way up to the BIG

confrontation, but with Nabiki be ready when she finally meets

Cologne? Will Keiko stomp Kodachi or be wrapped like a

mummy in her ribbon? Will Ryoga be able to find the arena, let

alone Akane? Will Ukyo manage to pry Perfume off before she

suffocates? Be here next time for our next agonizing chapter!

(Oh, the Humanity...!)

Nabiki 1/2

Chapter 10, Part 2.

By

Jim Robert Bader

Inspired by the works of Rumiko Takahashi;

All rights belong to her, the publishers and distributors

Of the Ranma 1/2 Series.

(Based on the Altered Destinies Series

by Wade Tritschler and others;

This is a work of Fanfiction, only some

Ideas and concepts were created by me,

The rest are shared, so please don't sue me)

The battle royal was fully underway with Kodachi and Keiko

exchanging blows with clubs faster than the naked eye could see.

Kodachi's face was intense with concentration as she sought to

hammer down Keiko's defenses, while Keiko more than held her

own, deflecting each attempt to nail her while returning blow for

blow, making Kodachi work as hard as anyone had ever seen her

work before in a Rhythmic Gymnastics competition.

"Such style, such grace," Tatewaki said as he watched the

performance from a front-row seat, "This Pig-tailed goddess is

phenomenal to have lasted this long in spite of my twisted sister's

tactics."

"She's something else all right," Ranma said in mild distraction

as he continued to watch Nabiki with one eye, the competition

with the other.

"You say she has been living at your place for the past several

days?" Kuno asked in growing awe as he saw Keiko finally

disarm Kodachi by knocking away all twenty of her pins.

"She's a friend of Nabiki's who needed a place to crash," Ranma

answered matter-of-factly, "I don't know her all that well except

that she got most of her advanced training while in China, and

some of the adventures she's had were pretty rough."

"I can well believe that her account must be exceptional," Kuno

marveled, "I must meet this girl, perchance to date her..."

"Nani?" Ranma suddenly turned back his way, his attention

drawn back by his friend's characteristic admission.

"Indeed," Kuno said somberly, "The more I think on it, the more

the idea grabs hold of my imagination. Think you to introduce us

sometime, friend Saotome?"

"I..." Ranma hesitated, then a smile crossed his face as he said,

"That might not be such a good idea, Kuno-Sempai. Besides, you

two have met already..."

"I cannot imagine where," Kuno frowned in puzzlement.

"You, um, kind of hit it off," Ranma had difficulty keeping a

straight face as he said this, "Keiko's...not like other girls you run

into every day..."

"Indeed not," Kuno agreed, "A rose of such quality is only found

in the most prized of bushes, the most fecund of soil and the

gentlest of breezes..."

Ranma winced as Kodachi attempted to prune the rose that was

Keiko by using her infamous razor-edged hula-hoop weapon.

Keiko dodged the hoop but it bounced wild off one of the ropes,

slicing it in passing before arcing towards the audience and

certain disaster.

He was about to leap to the rescue when Akane tossed Keiko her

ribbon and in one quick flash Keiko snagged the hoop and

deflected it away from innocent onlookers. Unfortunately this left

her open to Kodachi, who retrieved her trick club and attempted

to brain Keiko with the spiked edge from behind. Akane cried

out, as did Ranma and Nabiki, but they need not have bothered

as Keiko sidestepped the rush and used the ribbon to ensnare

Kodachi's arms.

Moving quickly to take advantage of her opponent's momentary

surprise she whipped Kodachi about and threw her end-over-

backwards. Kodachi landed with a thud on the stage but rolled

to her feet, slipping her hands free while calling to her second to

toss her the ball. The crowd was cheering wildly for Keiko at

this point, their favor clearly having turned in her direction, and

chief among those who called out encouragement was Kuno

himself, while Ranma was applauding.

"Go, my beauteous one! Though it is my sister dear you face,

know that I, the Blue Thunder of Furinkan High salute your

magnificence and your courage!"

Ranma eyed his friend and sighed. He could not let this go much

further. Kuno tended to go overboard at the best of times, but

setting him up to take a fall like this just was not manly.

"Tachi," he sighed, "There's something you've ought to know

about your 'Pig-tailed-goddess...'"

Keiko meanwhile was flashing her trademark smile as Kodachi

glared hatefully towards her, ball balanced on one finger as she

prepared to launch it. Keiko assumed an easy stance and tried to

look unimpressed, but by now she had learned not to

underestimate Kodachi, so she waited to see what the slightly

deranged Martial Arts gymnast intended to do next.

Kodachi smiled at her in a way that was most chilling, "I see that

for a peasant you are not so lacking in ability, but this is where it

ends!"

"Gee, I'm just shaking all over," Keiko grinned in reply,

"Normally I'd really enjoy going nine rounds with a cutie like

you, but something tells me you're a one-way-trip to the booby

hatch just waiting to happen."

"Strumpet!" Kodachi snarled, though just what exactly it was

about the way the girl worded her statement that set her off just

then even she was uncertain. She hurled the ball just the same,

even as a figure cried out from the stands, "NANI? IT

CANNOT BE! I WILL NOT ALLOW IT!"

Keiko jumped instinctively to one side as Kuno leaped up onto

the stage to confront her, not with his trademark bokken but with

a shocked and earnest expression.

"Say it is not so! Say he lies and you have not forsworn the

charms of men...!"

"Look-" Keiko tried to warn him as the ball struck him in the

face and bowled him over, exploding into a shower of water like

a burst balloon as it knocked Kuno back into the stands and into

the laps of several shocked (and slightly soggy students).

"...out," Keiko finished lamely.

"Brother!" Kodachi's face was a mask of shock before it changed

to one of disgust as she growled, "Brother...why must you always

get in my way?" Then she glared at Keiko and snarled,

"You...you are responsible for this!"

"Nani?" Keiko asked in dismay and confusion. On the one hand

she felt concern for the boy that had taken the blow meant for

herself, on the other hand she was equally shocked at the close

brush with cold water that she had narrowly escaped by

mischance. To come so close to being revealed before all of these

strangers in her cursed form! And then the nature of Kodachi's

accusation hit home and she gasped, first with a guilty sense that

there was truth in the charge, and then in tacit outrage!

"Hey!" she protested, "How do you figure that was my fault? You

threw the ball!"

Kodachi's reply was a quick snap of her ribbon, which Keiko

effectively parried. Kodachi then twirled the ribbon in a circle, so

fast that it actually kicked up a wind and seemed to focus black

energy in its center. Keiko watched in fascination as the vortex

drew power, and almost too late she realized that her foe was

focusing a Ki attack. She lashed out with her Ribbon to disrupt it

before it could gain sufficient strength to be deadly.

Sparks flew where their two ribbons met and hers was repulsed

by the shock wave. Keiko gave back, aware now that Kodachi's

attack was the most formidable thus far and had defenses that

were close to unbreakable. Short of creating a counter-vortex

there was no way that she could escape the blast that would most

likely send her flying out of the arena, not to mention the

gymnasium itself!

But Kodachi was vulnerable in one way. Keiko struck at the

stage itself, bouncing her ribbon below the reach of Kodachi's

spiral to snag both of her legs and pin them together. Keiko

yanked hard, forcing Kodachi to teeter off-balance, her vortex

disrupted and the wind it had created subsided. Keiko gave her

another flip and sent the Black Rose sailing up and out of the

arena.

But Kodachi was not finished just yet. Her ribbon snagged one

of the beams far above their heads, and then she pulled out a

whistle and blew on it. To Keiko's dismay the arena started

moving.

"Key!" Keiko cried, seeing the arena position itself directly under

Kodachi, who smiled and tumbled free to make an impossible

recovery. She pirouetted around and flashed a smile with teeth,

then pulled one of her trademark roses from seeming no where

and prepared to hurl it at Keiko.

"How did she do that?" Akane gasped.

"Do what?" asked Ukyo, who had just then returned with

Perfume the cat balanced upon one shoulder.

Akane glanced quickly at her then said, "Kodachi's cheating even

worse than usual! She made the stage move underneath her!"

"What, like it has wheels or something?" Ukyo asked, then

glanced up as she saw Keiko dodge Kodachi's black rose, which

moved so fast it actually grazed the Kickboxer's shoulder, "Hey!

That can't be legal!"

"First blood is mine!" Kodachi leered as she prepared to hurl

another rose.

Keiko realized that she was in trouble. Her arm-where she had

been grazed, felt numb just from the contact, though the trickle of

blood she felt was hardly significant. She guessed that the rose

might be coated in something rather potent, and letting a second

one touch her would be a very unwise maneuver.

Of course she had also been thinking about something that

bothered her about the moving arena. Unless the thing had

sprouted legs and moved on its own...

Sprouted legs?"

Keiko smiled, then raised one leg and brought it down again,

focusing her Ki into one bare foot in an adaptation of one of her

favorite maneuvers.

The stage shook as though experiencing an Earthquake, knocking

Kodachi off her feet and completely out of the arena. As the

black rose toppled, so did the stage itself with numerous groans,

gasps and feminine cries sounding out from below her. A

moment later girls in leotards from Saint Hebereke began to

stumble out from the toppled arena, some holding their heads

while others rubbed hands and staggered, groaning profusely.

Akane felt anger surge up in her, an anger clearly felt by the rest

of the Furinkan student body, most particularly the rest of the

wounded Furinkan gymnasts, "Why...those cheaters!"

Nabiki let out a sigh of relief as she heard Ryonami let out a

whoop of sheer joy, slapping Nabiki on the shoulder as she cried,

"She did it, Sempai! Your friend, Arigami-san, came through for

you, just as you had predicted!"

Nabiki tried to sound confident as she forced herself to smile and

say, "Was there any doubt?"

Ryonami sobered, realizing what a terrible faux pas she had just

committed by laying hands on her Boss, "Ah...no, of course

not...that's why I decided to follow your example and bet on

Keiko-san, just as you instructed me to do with your five

thousand yen..." she paused as realization hit her, "I won too!

And at twenty-to-one odds...!"

"Consider it your bonus money," Nabiki smiled, "You've earned

it for loyal service."

Ryonami's grin was infectious, but almost immediately she began

to think about the implications, "Oh my...there will be a lot of

angry, discontented people who bet heavily on Kuno Kodachi..."

"Not your problem," Nabiki said, "They threw away their money,

not you."

"Very true," Ryonami nodded, then blinked, "What do I do with

my earnings? I would like to buy nice things, but if my mother

were ever to find out..."

"We'll work something out," Nabiki replied, "And what she

doesn't know won't hurt you."

"Feeling mighty cocky are we, Tendo-san?" a familiar voice

inquired.

Nabiki did not turn around but she saw out of the corner of her

eye how Ryonami did and blanched. Nabiki just sighed and said,

"Ohiyo, Asamiya-san. Here to make an arrest?"

"Perhaps," replied Asamiya Saki, who had somehow contrived to

find a seat directly behind them. She glanced at Ryonami and

said, "Why don't you be a good kid and split. This is between me

and your Sempai."

Ryonami looked at Nabiki, who nodded confirmation, "Go collect

your earnings, and if anyone gives you trouble, point them out to

me."

"Hai," Ryonami replied, and bolted from her seat with as much

restraint as her fear of the law would permit.

"Was that really necessary, detective?" Nabiki asked coolly, still

not looking back at the pink-haired Sukeban Deka.

"Perhaps," Saki replied, "It wouldn't hurt that one to look over her

shoulder more often. She's too nice for a business like this.

You'll have to be on your guard that no one takes advantage of

her innocence."

"Thanks for the news flash, but I'd already figured that part out,"

Nabiki said, "What are you really here for?"

She could almost feel Saki's smile, "I thought we could have that

talk sometime later today. I'm transferring out of Furinkan on

another assignment, but I thought I'd tie up a few loose details."

"I take it I'm one of those details?" Nabiki inquired.

"That's what I want to talk about," Saki leaned over, almost

purring, "Provided we do so in less noisy environs. Do you know

of a teashop called the Jade Lotus on the Southwest corner of..."

"I know the place," Nabiki said at the level of a dull whisper.

"See you there at four sharp," Saki replied, "I recommend you not

be late. This is very important."

"I'll keep that in mind," Nabiki replied, still not giving in to the

urge to turn around, and knowing that such would be futile for

Saki had already withdrawn from the bleachers.

"Thank you, Keiko-sama, for redeeming the honor of the

Furinkan student body," the captain of their gymnastics team was

saying as she bowed repeatedly to Keiko, along with her two

companions, "We had no prayer of winning, we simply did not

wish to look bad, but you have exceeded all our expectations..."

"Hey, Akane-chan would have done the same thing if she hadn't

been injured," Keiko insisted, giving Akane an affectionate pat

on her shoulder, "She is amazingly talented, and had fortune been

more kind it would be her that you would be thanking."

Akane felt oddly pleased and embarrassed at Keiko's considerate

praise, but even as she blushed she heard Shampoo say, "You no

bad either, Red, is good technique for beating sneaky rose lady.

Great Grandmother say you good warrior, also good friend

standing up for Akane."

"A-Akane?" another hesitant voice asked her, and Akane turned

to find Ryoga standing just to the side of Shampoo with a

nervous expression, "I...we caught most of the show...you were a

pretty good coach...I..."

"Thank you, Ryoga-kun," Akane smiled, stepping around

Shampoo to place an affectionate kiss on his cheek. The boy's

eyes got very wide, and then he fainted.

"Whoah!" Ukyo remarked as she caught Ryoga before he could

hit the floor, "Get a grip on yourself, you silly! Be a man and tell

her how you feel for once!"

Perfume managed to hold her perch without extending her claws

into Ukyo's shoulder, but she made a noise that sounded very

puzzled.

"How...do you feel, Ryoga-kun?" Akane asked as she looked at

the now semi-conscious Ryoga in hope and confusion, "Then

why does he always act like this when I pay him a compliment?"

"Who know?" Shampoo shrugged, "Silly lost boy no have sense

Gods give to cabbage."

"Some guys just can't take too much happiness," Keiko remarked

when she heard a voice snarl, "YOU!"

They whirled around to find a limp Kodachi being supported by a

soggy Tatewaki. The Black Rose looked indignantly at Keiko

then cried, "This match was a farce! You are not a student of

Furinkan High! By what right do you claim to be their

champion? You should be disqualified..."

"Funny thing," said Asamiya Saki, who seemed to have sensed a

perfect time to stride up just then with a coy expression, "I was

just going to suggest the same thing about you. I caught your act

and I must say I find it...irregular. Half the tools you used were

not legal weapons, and the rest of your methods are...to put it

charitably, similarly not legal. If you want to press the point, I

could see about having you disbarred from any future

competition."

"I assure you, lady, that my sisters actions-while deplorably

unsportsmanlike-were not performed with true malicious

intention," Kuno said archly.

"Maybe so," Saki replied, "But a few of your stunts endangered

innocents. If I were either one of you I'd seek professional help,

but since I'm just passing through I'd suggest you take your

lumps and accept defeat with whatever grace you can manage."

Kuno stared at Saki for a long moment then said, "You seem

fascinating for some indefinable reason. Perhaps you might care

to speak with me again when we are not surrounded by the

maddening throng?"

"No thanks," Saki said as she turned around, "I try not to date

outside my own species."

Akane stifled a laugh, but Keiko turned to Kuno and said, "Try

not to let her get to you, Kuno-san. That was a pretty brave thing

you did, taking the fall for me. Maybe you're not as bad as

Akane-chan always says."

"Then..." Kuno looked at her hopefully, "What Saotome-san told

me about you only caring for your own fair gender is a base lie,

as I so rightly suspected?"

"Ah-nani?" Keiko turned to see Ranma standing to the side of

Kuno and his sister, looking somewhat sheepish.

Kodachi arched an eyebrow and looked sharply at Keiko, "Is this

true? Are you...?"

"Yeah, I am," Keiko said warily, "What about it?"

"Interesting," Kodachi mused, "That would explain many

questions I've had concerning your activities at the Tendo

household. What surprises me is that you would associate with

such a base Hentai, Akane-chan. Are you not concerned being in

the same room with her...?"

"No I'm not," Akane glared at her childhood friend and said, "But

I'm pretty miffed at you! What the hell were you thinking

throwing that hoop into the audience? And that spiked club you

were using...that's going way too far even for you!"

Kodachi looked both surprised and stricken at the accusation,

"Akane-chan..."

"Just go," Akane snapped, "I'll talk with you later about it."

"Akane-chan," Kodachi all but whispered, then glared angrily at

Keiko, "Have you poisoned her mind against me? Yes, that must

be it! This is far from over between us, Peasant. We will meet

again, and I will make you suffer for what you have done to my

friendship with Akane!"

"You want a rematch?" Keiko snorted, "Fine. Name the time and

place."

"That will be for me to decide," Kodachi was once again coy, and

she laughed maniacally as Kuno half-dragged her away, the two

of them staggering towards the exit.

Keiko waited a full ten seconds before she turned an angry scowl

at Ranma, who backed away and said, "Hey, what did I do?"

"You just had to blurt my little secret to your buddy, didn't you?"

Keiko growled.

"I was trying to discourage him from putting you at the top of his

Obsession list!" Ranma retorted, "Don't tell me you want him

harassing you like he does to Akane?"

"Ranma, you jerk," Akane growled, "That isn't the point. How

would you like it if people went around gossiping about you and

Kaneda?"

"Hey, it's not like that!" Ranma said, then looked in surprise to

find his words were echoed by Nabiki. The two of them

exchanged looks and then she smiled and said, "You sure about

that, Ran-chan? I'd understand if you really did like me in my

cursed form."

"Ah..." Ranma blurted.

"What has this goofball been up to while I've been busy with

other business?" Nabiki smiled when she caught sight of the

thing on Ukyo's shoulder and suddenly tensed, then backed away

with a sharp, "C-C-C-Cat!"

"Oops!" Ukyo looked sheepish, feeling Perfume dig her claws

into her shoulder without quite drying blood, "Maybe I'd better

catch up with you guys later..."

She withdrew as quickly as she could without forcing Perfume to

dig in for balance while Nabiki took deep breaths and tried to

ignore the hammering of her heart. After several moments she

found that she could breath more easily, but still the fear did not

entirely desert her.

"I can't believe you're that scared about a little thing like...uh..."

Ranma searched for a word that was synonymous with the

animal in question.

"Believe me," Nabiki said in a ragged voice, "It's not like its

something I want to have to deal with..."

"Excuse me, Sempai," Ryonami said as she politely came up

alongside Nabiki, "You wished to see the earnings?"

"Ah, yes, quite so," Nabiki found the idea of money was a good

anti-toxin and turned to accept the roll of bills her partner in

crime handed her, "I trust you've already taken your percentage?"

"Hai Sempai," she nodded her head, "And I've counted your

winnings to the last yen."

"Very good," Nabiki smiled, "And what is the total?

"Over two hundred-fifty-nine thousand, one hundred and thirty

yen, Sempai," Ryonami said, glancing nervously at the others,

"The other students were surprisingly generous when I told them

you would visit them if they did not pay up."

"Clever girl," Nabiki smiled, then noticed the shocked look

Ranma was giving her, "What? You got something against a girl

earning a little money?"

"You gambled on the contest?" Ranma gasped.

"I did," Nabiki said in a level tone before counting off a ream of

bills and passing them along to Keiko, "Here's your share.

You've more than earned it."

"Me?" Keiko looked surprised as she found herself now holding

fifty thousand yen, which was more money than she had ever

seen in her own hands in her entire lifetime.

"Think of it as prize money for defending Furinkan against Saint

Hebereke," Nabiki turned to Akane, "When I'd heard they'd bet

twelve-to-one against you I decided to teach them a lesson. I

almost had to withdraw when you got injured, but fortunately

Keiko-chan volunteered as your substitute, and I knew she could

do it. Just the same, I think you're entitled to some of this money

for helping to coach her to victory."

"I...uh, no Oneechan," Akane protested, "I couldn't accept it..."

"Sure you can," Nabiki smiled, "You can share it with Ryoga-kun

for helping out. Think of it as a way to finance your first date

together..."

"D-d-date?" Ryoga sputtered, having only recently regained

consciousness, which fled him once again, much to the disgust of

Shampoo, who muttered something in Chinese about stupid

foreign men.

Akane was looking as though she might faint herself, but when

she looked down at Ryoga she just smiled and quietly accepted

the money Nabiki passed into her hand.

Nabiki turned to Ranma and said, "I hope you don't feel too

dishonored by my conduct, Ranma-kun. I know how you feel

about gambling, but I didn't just do this to make extra money for

myself. I'm building an account to help pull the family out of

debt so that we can afford to reopen the dojo."

"Oh," he said, looked somewhat embarrassed, "I...forgive me for

jumping to conclusions..."

"How can I forgive you when there's nothing to be forgiven?"

Nabiki just smiled at him with none of her usual cynicism, then

noticed Shampoo's angry glare and smiled, "But you know, I

think we all deserve a little celebration after this big event. What

say we take a small part of our earnings and find a nice restaurant

where I can treat the lot of you?"

"Nabiki-chan mean go on date?" Shampoo asked as her anger

faded, to be replaced by a look of pure delight, "Oh, Shampoo so

happy...!"

"She meant all of us," Keiko reminded her, "And I'm the guest of

honor here..."

"You no push it," Shampoo glared, then sighed, "If Shampoo

must share Airen with Boy and Red-Hair, then Shampoo do what

Airen tell her."

"Sham-chan," Nabiki sniffed, "You're one in a million..."

"Um...Sempai?" Ryonami politely coughed.

"You can come along if you want," Nabiki told her, "I'm feeling

generous enough to treat you as if you're part of our little family

group."

"That is most generous and kind of you, Sempai," Ryonami

bowed, "But I just wanted to say...well...it is a great honor to

know you," she bowed very deeply.

Nabiki just blinked at her, then returned the bow and said, "No

need to always be so formal around me, Ryo-chan. I owe it to

you for helping me make the right connections."

"I'll continue serving you as faithfully, Sempai," the dark haired

girl said earnestly, "You won't regret the trust..."

"I'm sure I won't," Nabiki gave her a tolerant smile, but inwardly

she felt deeply touched by the girl's display of respect. She had

not counted on making a convert this soon, and she wondered if

maybe she ought to keep an eye out for her welfare as Saki had

warned her.

"Servant girl show respect for Airen," Shampoo noted with a

neutral expression, "Is good she recognize Airen's status, but

Shampoo hope girl no think she get above herself."

"Oh, I would never dare come between any of you!" Ryonami

protested, "I'm just honored that you'd even accept me into your

group. You guys have no idea of what kind of reputations you're

building. Already they're calling you the Tendo Posse."

"Tendo Posse?" Ranma blinked, "Like a gang or something?"

"Posse, eh?" Nabiki mused, a thought coming to her as she

considered the implications, "Well, I've been called worse, and I

suppose it's natural considering that we're some of the best

fighters in Nerima."

"Shampoo always best," Shampoo insisted, "Only Airen better."

Something about the way the Amazon said the latter reminded

Nabiki strangely of Asamiya Saki, the same cocky tone mixed

with a trace of bitterness and pride, hinting at a wealth of

emotions. Nabiki could not help wondering, with Saki's odd hair

color, if the two of them might be distantly related. Then she

filed the thought away and shrugged her shoulders before saying,

"Let's go, Posse. I've worked up an appetite just watching things

on the sideline."

"Shouldn't we get Ucchan and if she wants to join us?" Ryoga

wondered, having at last regained both consciousness and nerve.

"Ah...maybe later," Nabiki hesitated, "She could always catch up

with us after she...um...takes care of her Perfume problem."

"Cousin no problem," Shampoo smiled, "She purr much

happiness. Shampoo think Spatula Girl maybe coming around to

see Perfume in different light."

"You think so?" Ranma asked in a clear mix of overlapping

emotions.

"I wouldn't put money on it, Ranma-kun," Nabiki sniffed,

"But...I've been known to be wrong a time or two."

"Well gee," Keiko smiled, "I guess you're human after all, but I'm

not going to lay my bets either way. Something about that

Perfume seems awfully determined."

"Ah, yeah," Nabiki frowned, "Whatever..."

Continued.

Comments/Criticism/Dire Retribution: shadowmane

Next time we have a quiet chat with Saki, and then the

inevitable: Typhoon Cologne hits Nerima!

Nabiki 1/2

Chapter 10, Part 3.

By

Jim Robert Bader

Inspired by the works of Rumiko Takahashi;

All rights go to her, the Publishers and Distributors

Of the Ranma 1/2 Series.

(Based on the Altered Destinies Series

by Wade Tritschler and Others;

The following is a work of Fanfiction,

Some characters and situations were created by me,

The rest are shared, so please don't sue me)

"Thanks for stopping by," Saki murmured over a cup of hot Cha

that she had been savoring for the past several minutes.

"Not like I had a lot of choice in the matter," Nabiki replied as

she took a seat on the opposite side of her table, "I hope you

know what a risk I'm taking just letting myself be seen with you

now that you're big secret's out of the bag."

"That I'm an undercover Cop?" Saki smiled, "I don't blame you.

Some days I don't want to be seen associating with me either, but

there you have it. Relax, I'll make sure nobody suspects you of

being an informant or anything like that. I know how important

it is to build a certain kind of Rep in this business."

"Well, if you understand me so well," Nabiki replied, "Why have

this meeting?"

"Thought it'd be a good place to clear the air," Saki said as she

leaned back in her chair, "Maybe set your mind at rest about my

intentions. I'm not here to harass you, I'm not even hanging

around long enough to watch the fallout from your little hostile

takeover of the campus underground."

"I see," Nabiki eyed her suspiciously, "Then I take it you've

already made your arrest quota?"

"Miss Tendo," Saki eyed her with knowing smirk, "It's true I had

my doubts about you in the beginning, but I've done some

research and I think I know you well enough to say that

Furinkan's probably better off with you in charge than the more

logical replacements. Word's already gotten around that you

intend to do something about the Pimps and the Pushers, and if

you really mean what you say about making sure the students

study harder you'll even be doing a community service. That's off

the record, of course, just my personal opinion."

"And what do your superiors think?" Nabiki asked her.

"I've convinced them that you're not as big a threat as what we've

already put down," Saki replied, "They're not exactly crazy about

anyone dealing in Vice on school grounds, but to them you're

small fry. We've got bigger fish to catch, and you've helped us

find new leads on the sharks we're really after. For now they'll

look the other way, just so long as they don't hear too much noise

from your direction."

"I'll take that as a warning," Nabiki nodded.

"That's good," Saki's tone became sober as she added, "Because

you wouldn't like me very much if they decide to send me back

this way. You're good, but I've been in this business a couple of

years now, and seniority counts. Personally I hope it never comes

to that, you'd be a better ally than an enemy, and I already think I

like you."

"I have enough girlfriends as it is," Nabiki sniffed.

"It wasn't a pick up line," Saki's tone conveyed seriousness, but

she did not seem offended, "I've got to say that watching you

from the sidelines has been anything but dull, and some of the

accounts in your files make pretty interesting reading. You

remind me a lot of somebody I used to know, a girl who thought

she knew everything, had all the answers."

"Sounds very heartwarming," Nabiki replied, "Whatever

happened to her?"

"Found out the hard way that she wasn't as smart as she thought,"

Saki's expression was melancholy, "It wasn't entirely her fault,

she just underestimated the size of the world and the people who

were in it. She took a hard fall, but somebody made her a better

deal, and now she's working to pay off past debts. I thought I

owed that girl something by letting you know what kind of road

lies ahead if you stumble, just like she did."

"I see," Nabiki eyed the pink-haired woman with a wary edge

before resuming, "So what exactly was it that turned you into

such a social worker?"

Saki actually laughed, "Is that what I seem like? Funny, I used to

be a pretty rough customer, as mean and dirty as they get. The

vice principle even compared me to the daughter of the Devil.

Nobody ever thought I'd turn over a new leaf, especially me. I

was everything you only pretend to be, Tendo-san, and worse, so

don't ever make the mistake of thinking I got soft when I

switched to the opposite team. Believe me, I was just like you at

your age."

"Somehow I doubt it," Nabiki said with a touch of irony in her

voice.

"What, because I don't turn into a guy when I get splashed with

cold water?" Saki asked, then chucked again as she saw Nabiki's

shocked reaction, "Don't worry, I'm not going to splash you,

although from what I hear you're quite a hunk in your other form.

Oh, and before you ask how I found out about your little secret, it

wasn't that hard. I've seen crazier things during my time as a

Sukeban Deka."

Nabiki arched an eyebrow as she studied this girl who seemed

barely older than herself, yet whose eyes seemed shadowed as

though her years were full of tragedy and sorrow. She decided to

dispense with all pretenses and just came out and asked, "What

happened?"

Saki flinched from the directness of that query, but after a

moment she reached under the collar of her jacket and pulled out

a thin chain upon which dangled a set of bells, which tinkled

softly.

Very quietly, at first, Saki replied, "I had a good friend once,

someone who brought light into my life, and when she died...part

of me died with her. I'd do anything to have her back, but all I

can do is...honor her by making sure that scum like the ones who

killed her never get the chance to corrupt any more such innocent

lives."

There was real heat in Saki's soft-spoken words, and her look

was dark and fierce as if she could see faces before her eyes of

the long dead and well damned. She mastered herself after a

moment of tense struggle and looked hard at Nabiki before

saying, "I'd also do anything to spare you from making the same

mistake as I did, sister."

Something about her tone chilled Nabiki's spine, and after a

moment's hesitation she asked, "What do you mean by that?"

"Your friend Ryonami," Saki said, "And others like her. You

can't watch them all the time, and you can't always count on the

power of intimidation. Be mindful about the waters you swim in,

Nabiki-san, some sharks have been known to go after families,

and there's worse than physical pain of the body. Some wounds

never heal. It's better to never take them in the first place."

Nabiki said nothing for the longest time. A dozen flippant

replies came easily to mind, but somehow none of them offered

any comfort as she considered the implications of what Saki was

sharing. The girl seemed to be struggling to master her own

emotions, as though she were baring a part of her soul that she

rarely shared with anyone. To say anything that might diminish

her words would be crash and boorish, especially since it was the

voice of experience talking. Cynic that she was, Nabiki never

ignored a competent warning.

At last Saki broke the silence, almost off-handedly saying, "By

the way, did you know that the contract on your head's been

cancelled?"

Now Nabiki did not bother to hide her shock, but neither did she

ask how the Detective had known about it in the first place, "It

has?"

"Yep," Saki sniffed, "You and the old man no longer have that

reason to keep one eye over your shoulder. Damnedest thing, one

minute you're worth ten thousand American dollars dead or alive

in Hong Kong-preferably the latter-the next is that Chu Wan

Phat's discovered religion and is retiring from the rackets."

"Somehow I find that very difficult to believe," Nabiki snorted.

"You aren't the only one," Saki smiled, "I've never met the

bastard personally, but I've heard the usual stories. Rumor has it

he was visited late one night by the ghost of the Baba Yaga, and

the next thing you know he's put the word out that no one is to

touch a hair on your head, and that he's forgiven and forgotten all

about the way you made him lose face before the other Tong

Lords. I don't mind telling you that just hearing about that makes

me reconsider everything I've ever said about religion."

"Baba Yaga?" Nabiki softly repeated. The words meant "Old

Woman of Death," a reference to an obscure Indo-European devil

woman said to travel about on a house that walked on legs, and

who was reputed to eat children. The image this conjured was

puzzling indeed, for what did a Chinese Gang Lord and Slaver

have to fear from an old world myth? It was quite a puzzle,

especially considering the mental state Chu Wan Phat was in the

last time she had seen him.

"Thought you might want to know, in case you ever meet this

Baba Yaga," Saki said with a sniff as she started to get up, "Good

luck with the rest of your life. I don't envy your problems, but I

have to say I do envy you for still having options. I can't advise

you any more than I have, it's up to you to run your own affairs.

Just be careful whose toes you step on in the future."

"I'll keep that in mind," Nabiki said, this time without the least

trace of irony. In a very odd way she was starting to like this

Asamiya Saki. There was something about the girl that almost

felt as if she were an older sister, or at least someone who knew

the score as well, if not better than she did.

Saki nodded to the table, where Nabiki saw a plain card lay,

along with a phone number, "Keep that, just in case you ever

need to talk. I know what it's like out there. Not many other

people do, which is both a good thing and a great pity."

"You think I'll need a guardian angel?" Nabiki asked.

"Wouldn't hurt," Saki replied, "I've needed one now and again,

but if you like, it doesn't have to be about the business."

"I'll keep that in mind," Nabiki slowly nodded, her smile more

relaxed and thoughtful.

"Oh," Saki hesitated as if recalling something as an afterthought,

"About your friend, Gosunkugi. An interesting boy, if a little

strange about the corners. I've got a special interest in him, so I'll

probably be in the area now and again between assignments."

"I didn't think he was your type," Nabiki sniffed.

"You never know," Saki's grin was devilish, "I've learned never

to underestimate the nerds, but I was more interested in his other

undercover skills. He's the sort the people I work for like to

recruit early. Major talent like that is something to keep an eye

on."

"So I've already decided," Nabiki returned the smile with a

mischievous gleam of her own, "You can never have too much

information from the ground level."

"Be seeing you," Saki bowed before leaving.

"Hai," Nabiki returned her bow, pocketing the card before

murmuring, "Domo Arigato..."

Nabiki was sitting in her favorite place above the roof of the dojo,

staring down at the pad before her as she tried to make some

sense of the names she had written down in neatly printed Kanji.

Her own name was at the top of the list with Ranma on one side

and Shampoo on the other, and below them were the names

Ukyo, Keiko and Perfume, all six forming a hexagon that she was

staring at as though it were a religious mandala.

Perfume had been docile for most of the day as she rode atop

Ukyo's shoulder on the opposite side from the Bakers Peel

handle. As she seemed to behave herself no one had even

suggested putting her back in a cage, and even Ukyo was starting

to get used to her presence. She joked around other girls,

explaining the cat was a pet and even took to giving her the nick-

name of Per-Chan.

Once they were home, however, Perfume had wasted no time

seeking out a hot bath and changing back into herself, where she

promptly recovered her silken outfit and retrieved her axes.

When she appeared again it was in full warrior mode, but she did

not instantly leap to attack Nabiki. Instead the girl just walked

right up to her and said, "You honor Cousin, Perfume no fight.

Great Grandmother decide when she arrive."

"Okay," Nabiki had tentatively replied, tilting her head slightly as

she asked, "Bygones be bygones?"

Perfume just sniffed and turned away from her, then her face set

in a beautiful smile as she looked towards Ukyo and said,

"Airen."

That had not gone very well. Ukyo flinched from Perfume the

girl as she did not from the presence of Perfume the Cat and tried

to dissuade the girl from latching onto her arm and hugging her

with affection. At first her reaction puzzled Perfume as the girl

did not seem to understand why Ukyo was treating her

differently. After all had she not been worried about Perfume

when she was captured by Kodachi?

"That was different!" Ukyo had insisted, trying to free herself

from Perfume's embrace, "It was my fault you got captured! I

was only trying to protect you..."

"Ukyo loves Perfume!" Perfume had cried with joy,

misunderstanding entirely, so Ukyo turned in desperation to

Shampoo and tried explaining herself to the other Amazon, only

to find the purple haired girl no more understanding than her

Cousin.

"What Spatula girl try tell Shampoo?" Shampoo had asked in

honest confusion, "You no want Perfume Airen? Why you care

what happen to Perfume when stupid rose girl take her?"

Nabiki smiled and shook her head in memory of that perplexing

moment. Ukyo had looked at her with pleading eyes and Nabiki

had tried her best to explain to Shampoo that it was not the

custom in Japan to fall madly in love with someone just because

they beat you in combat.

Neither Amazon could understand what they were trying to tell

them. It was so central to the core of their nature that they would

marry the man who defeated them in battle. Perfume had

deliberately chosen to define Ukyo as a superior Warrior of

indeterminate gender, while Shampoo recalled Nabiki as she had

been in cursed form. Try as they might they could not explain

that Ukyo could like Perfume without LIKING her THAT

WAY...

Nabiki sighed, staring down once again at the hexagonal pattern.

She wanted Ranma but had to honor a commitment to Shampoo.

She could not acknowledge her marriage to the Amazon as

legitimate in legal terms, but she was obligated to see to

Shampoo's welfare. On the other hand there was her

commitment to Ranma, and her father was most insistent on the

primacy of that claim, so even if Nabiki and Ranma did not get

along any better than Ranma and Akane they still had a family

obligation to get married.

Unfortunately Ranma had been thoughtlessly engaged to Ukyo

by his idiot father, and yet Ukyo was similarly trapped into a

relationship with Perfume by the same system of obligation that

held Shampoo to Nabiki. Coupled to that was the fact that

Shampoo and Perfume seemed all too willing to pledge

themselves to female "Airen." They had been raised to believe in

the rightness of the Amazon system, which valued strength and

saw the bonding of two warriors as the highest expression of love

to which they could aspire. Both acknowledged Nabiki as the

strongest fighter, but both seemed willing to tolerate Ranma.

Ukyo might not be happy with the arrangement, but the

alternative was to hurt Perfume's feelings, and they all agreed

that this was not to be desired.

Nabiki privately wondered if she really could stand up to Perfume

in a straight fight. With those twin axes the girl seemed totally

invincible, but a glass of water was all that was needed to take

the fight out of her. Then again there was that other weakness

Perfume had that neither she nor Shampoo liked discussing,

which Keiko had hesitantly revealed only when necessary to

Nabiki's survival because of her honest fear of retribution.

And that brought her back to Keiko, who freely admitted to her

feelings for Nabiki but seemed willing to abide by a truce, most

probably because she feared what Perfume and Shampoo would

do to her if she tried to force the issue. Keiko was loyal and

daring, a good friend in need, and certainly no molester. It was

hard imagining her being afraid of anyone, but she seemed more

subdued around Perfume than at any other time, and flinched at

the mere mention of the mysterious Elder to whom the Amazons

kept referring.

What to do about Keiko? Well, the girl had no where else to go,

and she was proving a good companion for Akane, who seemed

taken with the redhead's worldly ways, and Keiko seemed to

honestly like the youngest Tendo daughter without the slightest

implication that she intended to take advantage of Akane's

innocent fascination.

Nabiki had to smile at that. Keiko surely had to be a better

influence on her sister than Kodachi...

Instinct warned her in time for her to roll to the side and come up

to her feet, just seconds before a sharp object struck the tiles atop

the dojo and exploded one to fragments. Nabiki raised her arms

and deflected the pieces of tile that flew in her direction, eyes

closed to block out the dust as she reached out with all her

senses, feeling the rush of air pressure warn her of an impending

attack, and moving to block it.

A rapid exchange ensued in which her arms met and deflected

the cunning thrusts of a wooden staff being jabbed at her very

fast repeatedly. Nabiki backed up to give herself more room for a

counter-attack, but the onslaught ceased as swiftly as it had

begun. She opened her eyes wide and stared in confusion...

And came face-to-face with a mummified visage. An old woman

perched atop a gnarled wooden staff looking at her with curious

wide eyes. The woman was a shrunken doll-sized figure in a

stylish green silk dress that was printed with spiraling patterns

yet she hovered atop the end of the staff studying Nabiki with a

smile. After a moment she faintly nodded, as if in approval.

"Not bad," she said in perfect Japanese, "You sensed my attacks

and met them with skill. Perhaps Shampoo was right to choose

you for her Airen."

Nabiki had already made the connection, "So...I take it you're

Kho-Lon the Elder?"

"You may call me Grandmother, Son-in-law," the ancient woman

cackled, enjoying Nabiki's reaction.

"Son in law?" Nabiki sniffed, "Someone ought to check your

eyesight, Granny."

The old woman inclined her head politely, "Daughter-in-law, if

you insist, though I think Shampoo prefers you in the other form.

I don't mind saying I'd like to see you as a man as well, I

understand you can be quite attractive..."

"What can I do for you, Elder?" Nabiki asked as politely as she

could manage, feeling very annoyed at the insinuative tone the

other was using, as if she were deciding Nabiki's fate even as

they were speaking.

"I think you already know what I am here for, Daughter-In-Law,"

Kho-Lon replied, "I've come all the way from Joketsuzoku to

insure that you honor the promise you made to my Great

Granddaughter. I need her back in the village, and this will not

be possible without your presence."

"I'm not going back to China," Nabiki replied, "Unless you know

of some way to cure my curse."

"Even if I did, which is not likely, I would not be inclined to do

so," Kho-Lon gravely answered, "Shampoo's status in the village

requires that she return with her husband, or else the head of the

impudent girl who took advantage of her innocence. Since

Shampoo has elected to accept you as her Airen, it therefore is

incumbent on you to accept your place with the Amazons as the

senior wife to the Champion of Joketsuzoku."

"Wait," Nabiki frowned, "Are you saying I should either help

Shampoo by becoming a man and going back to be her

paramour, or take her place as the Champion for your people?"

"My other Apprentice did not mistake your intelligence," the old

woman said approvingly, "You had demonstrated great potential

as both a fighter and a negotiator, two skills we much prize

among our people. Obviously I would rather Shampoo retain her

status in our village, but if she defers to your superior abilities,

then it is just as acceptable. Either way you are coming back

with us."

"Like hell!" Nabiki snorted.

"You would be treated well if you elect to become Shampoo's

husband," Kho-Lon continued as though not the least affected by

Nabiki's protest, "Men are not our slaves, and as a man you

would have status and honor. You could not have a voice in

Council meetings, of course, except those rights afforded to other

men of Joketsuzoku..."

"I'm not doing it!" Nabiki insisted.

"However, if you prefer remaining a woman, then you will have

full rights and a voice upon our Council," Kho-Lon continued,

"You would have to take Shampoo's place, and she would not be

permitted full rights as her status would be dependent on you, but

she can act as your advisor, and I have trained her well in the

hopes that one day she would herself become an Elder."

"Hey, are you listening to me?" Nabiki almost shouted, "I'm not

going along with this! I know those are your laws but I want to

remain here with my family..."

"Perfume tells me that there is a boy in which you are interested,"

Kho-Lon noted, "If you wish to retain his company, and Shampoo

is agreeable, then it is your right as senior partner to take a male

concubine, so long as you both share him with the intent of

providing healthy babies. That will, of course, only apply if you

retain your female form, unless he is the sort who likes his own

gender..."

"Ranma...!" Nabiki realized that she was losing her temper and

worked very hard to recover control over her voice, "Ranma

would never agree to that. He and I are pledged to one another

with the blessings of our parents..."

"I'm afraid that obligation cannot take precedent," Kho-Lon said

harshly, "Three thousand years of Chinese Amazon history are on

the line here. Either you accept the terms I have outlined for you

or you must suffer the consequences."

"Consequences?" Nabiki sniffed, "What do you intend to do, old

woman? Kill me?"

The ancient mummy just cackled a laugh, "How feeble an

imagination! No, child, I will not and cannot take your life. It is

not permitted for me to interfere to that degree. It must be

Shampoo's choice to kill or marry you, and she has already

chosen. No, I am merely here to enforce her decision."

Without warning the woman hopped off her staff, and before

Nabiki could raise her guard again she thrust it forward and

tapped her lightly on the chest. Kho-Lon backed away and once

more resumed her balancing act atop the wooden staff.

"There," she smiled, "Now you have no choice but to obey my

decrees, or else you'll never be able to hold your precious

iinazuke in your arms again."

"What?' Nabiki gasped, "What did you do, old woman?"

"You'll find out," the Amazon elder cackled in reply and vaulted

off the roof, using her staff as though it were a pogo stick as she

leaped away.

Nabiki touched herself where the staff had tapped her and looked

down in confusion. She felt a tingling there, but could not sense

anything wrong. Her breathing and heart rate appeared normal,

which would not be the case if she had been struck in a vital area.

The human body had many nerve clusters that could be explored

through Shiatsu, but none of the important ones she knew about

had been affected.

She retrieved her note pad, looking off the way the Elder had

vanished. That wizened old ghoul would be trouble, there was

no mistaking it, and from the way she had fought there was no

doubting her power. In spite of her incredible age she moved

with a speed far in excess of anything Nabiki had ever previously

encountered.

"Three hundred years?" she sniffed to herself, "Doesn't look a day

over four hundred."

That was when she decided that she was hungry and elected to go

back inside, eager to sample some of Kasumi's marvelous

cooking...

Continued.

Comments/Criticism/Malpractice Insurance:

shadowmane

Yeah, I know I cut this one off short, but I'm feeling tired and I

think a natural break has been arrived at now. Next chapter

Nabiki comes to terms with a startling revelation!

If you wish to check out my other works, Please check out my

Fanfiction webpage at: . or

it's mirror site at: ~

All related chapters of this series can be found there along with my

other works.


	11. Chapter 11

Nabiki 1/2

Chapter 11, Part 1.

By

Jim Robert Bader

Inspired by the works of Rumiko Takahashi;

All rights go to her, the Publishers 7 Distributors

Of the Ranma 1/2 Series.

(Based on the Altered Destinies Series

by Wade Tritschler and Others.

This is a work of shared Fanfiction;

Only some Characters and situations are my own creation,

So Please don't sue me)

"Hey!" Ranma cried out as noodles vanished off of his plate

before he could snatch them with his chopsticks.

"Hah, too slow, boy!" his father taunted as he held his bowl out of

reach, only to find his stolen goods had vanished before he could

greedily scoop them up, "Nani?"

"Touch‚ yourself, Pops," Nabiki snorted as Ranma found his

noodles returned as mysteriously as they had been taken, "You're

always on me to watch my flanks in training."

"Why bother?" Keiko asked with a grin, "There's enough of us

here who'd be glad to watch them for you, right Sham-chan?"

"Shampoo think Red have silly idea that we share Airen,"

Shampoo said aloofly before she smiled at Nabiki and said, "But

idea good. Shampoo like watching Airen flank, as good as rest

of her."

"Ah," Nabiki colored, then looked down at her own bowl and

said, "Hey! Pops...!"

"It's good for a family to enjoy a home cooked meal, right

Nodoka-chan?" Soun remarked happily, cheerfully ignoring the

way his middle daughter and best friend kept steeling portions

back and forth across the table.

"Indeed so, Soun-chan," Nodoka pleasantly replied, "Would you

like more curry with your fried noodles, Ukyo-san?"

"Yes please, Auntie," Ukyo replied, holding out her bowl as

Kasumi appeared with a fresh pot of Ramen, "I agree with Uncle

that it's very good for a family to enjoy each other's company,

right Ran-chan?"

"Hah?" Ranma blinked as Ukyo nudged him playfully with her

elbow, then he looked back to find his bowl empty again,

"Otosan!"

"Learn to be quick in defending what's yours, Boy," Genma

cheerfully remarked as he fended off Nabiki's chopsticks with

furious motions by his own, "Speed and timing are essential to a

martial artist..."

"Perfume agree with stuffed Panda," Perfume said as Nabiki

grinned wickedly at her Sensei while Genma looked indignant,

"Speed very good in fight, but far too slow you move. No catch

Perfume or Shampoo with such clumsy attacks."

"Oh really?" Genma's glasses gleamed as he sensed a challenge,

"I hope you're prepared to back that up, girl..."

There was a slight breeze kicked up at the table, and when it

subsided Perfume and Shampoo both had three times the portions

they had originally on their plates and in their bowls than at the

outset, while Ukyo found a double portion set before her as

though it had magically appeared there. She turned and saw

Perfume flashing a side-look her way while beaming with

adoration. Everyone else just stared, including Nabiki.

"How...how did you do that?" she managed to stammer at last.

"Perfume train hard to learn special technique of Amazons,"

Shampoo smiled broadly, "She better than Shampoo

at...Shampoo think Japanese words are: Kachu Tenshin

Amaguriken...that right, Cousin?"

"Yes, Cousin," Perfume nodded, "Kachu Tenshin Amaguriken

what Great Grandmother call in Japanese words."

"Chestnuts roasting on an open fire?" repeated Akane, "What a

strange name for a maneuver."

"Let me guess," Nabiki said, "You learn to do this by snatching

chestnuts out of an open fire, right?"

Perfume looked at her in surprise, "How you know special

training secret?"

"Lucky guess," Ranma fixed Nabiki with an amused look and the

two of them laughed as if sharing a joke together.

Shampoo frowned, as did Ukyo and Keiko while Nodoka

patiently said, "Well, now that the demonstration is over, perhaps

you might care to return what you appropriated so that the rest of

us can finish enjoying our dinner?"

"Yeah," Akane growled, "The rest of us have appetites too, you

know!"

"Um, I saved a little," Ryoga volunteered, pushing his plate

closer to her, "You can have my share, Akane-chan."

Akane looked at him and murmured, "Ryoga-kun..."

"No problem, Saotome-sama," Ukyo smiled, looking at Perfume

as she said, "That is a neat trick. Think you can teach it to me?"

"Perfume thought Airen never ask," Perfume grinned brightly

while Ukyo winced a little.

"By the way," Nabiki decided to at last bring up the topic

foremost on her agenda, "You'll never guess whom I ran into just

a little while ago: your Great Grandmother."

Shampoo and Perfume froze where they were sitting and turned

to look at her with wide-eyed expressions.

"Cologne the Elder is here?" Keiko almost swallowed her own

tongue, "And you saw her?"

"Well, she attacked me is more like it," Nabiki shrugged, "I

fended her off, and then she complimented me on my technique

and said she wants me to come home with Shampoo, which is

pretty much what we expected her to say..."

"Airen," Shampoo said slowly, "Did Great Grandmother...touch

you any way?"

"Yeah," Keiko's concern was so palpably obvious that it filled the

room with tension, "You can't trust that old woman, she's got

more knowledge of anatomy than any biology text, and she can

do stuff with a touch of her staff that I don't even want to think

of!"

"Well..." Nabiki reluctantly replied, seeing the worried looks that

even Perfume was turning in her direction. Her hand was about

to touch the area upon her breast where the staff had briefly

connected, and which had tingled for several moments afterwards

when she felt a dash of ice cold tea wash over her. She felt her

body instantly changing as she whirled around and snapped,

"KASUMI!"

"Oh, I'm so sorry!" Kasumi pleaded as she looked down from

above at Nabiki with a mixture of contrite regret and fond desire,

"I didn't mean to spill more iced tea on you, Nabiki-chan, I..."

"Never mind," Nabiki growled as she got to her feet and stormed

angrily towards the corridor, "I'll take a hot bath and change into

something that doesn't have a lot of tea stains. Just save me

some noodles until I get back."

She was getting very tired of always being ambushed by her

horny older sister and it was long since time she had a talk with

that girl to straighten her out about this annoying fetish of hers.

Nodoka had tried to dissuade Kasumi, arguing that it was

improper for a young unmarried lady to have such unnatural

designs on a close relative, but so far nothing had worked and

Nabiki had come to believe it had become a compulsive reflex.

Kasumi's lust for Kaneda went beyond mere incestuous

yearnings, it was a borderline obsession, and if Nabiki did not

put her foot down soon she was going to have to get physical,

and that was something she had no desire to do with Kasumi.

Fortunately they kept a hot bath ready at all times for just such

occasions, so Nabiki wasted no time stripping down and washing

herself off with a clean bowl in preparation for slipping into the

tub. Her...or rather his bare foot made contact with the water...

And suddenly it was like a jet of fire went up from her toes to her

leg and back down to her ankle. With a scream of dismay Nabiki

jumped back and stared in amazement at the bathwater, surprised

to find it was not bubbling and steamy.

At the sound of that scream everyone around the table froze and

stared down the corridor in dismay, while Shampoo and Perfume

exchanged anxious looks of mutual confirmation.

"You think Great Grandmother...?" Shampoo started to ask in

Chinese.

"I don't think," Perfume cut her off, "I know she did. What

else were you expecting?"

"Nabiki!" Ranma gasped as he lurched to his feet, finding Keiko

close beside him while the rest followed just a few steps behind

them. Ranma threw the bathroom door open, heedless of any

consequences, and found a naked MALE Kaneda snarling, "It's

boiling! Who filled the tub with boiling water? What are you

people trying to do, steam me?"

"What do you mean, daughter?" Soun asked in confusion.

Ranma put his hand over the tub, then slowly lowered that hand

to feel the surface, then in surprise he put his hand in all the way

and said, "It's not boiling...what are you talking about? It's barely

warm enough to not be tepid."

"You've got to be kidding me, Ran-chan!" Nabiki snapped, then

blinked and said, "It's not?"

"He's right," said Akane as she too thrust her hand into the

bathwater right up to the elbow, "It's not really all that warm at

all! You must be imagining things."

Nabiki hesitantly put his foot back to the water then jumped

back, startled, "It's too HOT! What's wrong with you people...?"

"It's not them," Keiko said grimly, turning to look at Nabiki with

a wince, "It's you, Nab-chan."

"Hah?" Ukyo asked as she could not help staring at Nabiki's male

form, especially the parts normally covered by clothing. Nabiki

saw this and finally realized his status, grabbing a towel off the

rack and fastening it around his waste like a makeshift loin-cloth.

"Oh my," said Kasumi at last, who had been staring at...him...the

whole time with her mouth hanging open.

"Keiko-san?" Ranma turned to look away from Nabiki to the

kickboxer, "What do you mean? What's wrong with Nabiki?"

"Airen touched by Great Grandmother in special spot," Shampoo

replied simply, "Called 'Cat Tongue' pressure point, very bad if

no know counter."

"Cat tongue?" Nabiki looked at her strangely.

"Hai," Perfume nodded, "Cat tongue very sensitive to heat,

Perfume well know this. Pressure point cause whole body

become sensitive to heat, no can stand even mild warm water,

feel like burning."

"Nani?" Nabiki looked at them in dismay.

"But..." Kasumi hesitated, her expression one of alarm and

confusion, "If Nichan can't tolerate even mildly warm water, then

that means..."

"Hai," said Genma as he pushed his glasses up the bridge of his

nose, "I have heard of this technique. It is permanent unless

reversed by an expert..."

"Nani?" Nabiki looked at him in dawning horror, "But...that

means..."

"You no can change back, Airen," Shampoo said, "You man

forever, unless Great Grandmother reverse it."

"Nani?" Ranma started.

"C-can't...?" Nabiki gasped, the implications settling upon his

shoulders like a lead sinker.

"Oboy," Ukyo averred, "And you can only turn back to a woman

with warm water..." she paused as the implications fully

registered with her, "...Which means you can't marry Ranma!"

Nabiki turned to stare at Ranma, then at the bath, and then

resolution firmed in her mind and he prepared to leap in, only to

be stopped by Keiko at the last possible instant.

"Let me go!" Nabiki protested.

"Iye!" Keiko cried, "Your mind is now hyper-sensitive to heat of

any kind! If you dive in now, Nab-chan, you'll register intense

heat and react involuntarily as if that water really is boiling!"

"How can you know that?" Nabiki cried fiercely as he struggled

to break free, only to stop as a new realization hit her, "You

mean...?"

"I've gone through this myself," Keiko replied, "Cologne the

Elder punished me once and used it as a warning of what could

happen if I defied her. The good news is that there is a cure, and

it works completely. The bad news is...only Cologne knows

what it is."

"A cure?" Nabiki stopped struggling, turning a wild look towards

Shampoo and Perfume, "Do you know what it is?"

Both girls opened their mouths to reply when a harsh voice cut

in, "Do not tell him."

Everyone turned to see the wizened old gnome sitting atop the

windowsill, her ever-present staff gripped firmly in both hands as

she studied them with ancient eyes. Perfume and Shampoo

audibly swallowed while the rest just gaped in dismay at a face

so incredibly old that it defied description.

"Excuse me," Soun said politely, "And you are...?"

"You may call me Cologne," the (really) old woman replied, "The

guardian of ancient Amazon knowledge, which must never be

shared with outsiders save that they agree implicitly to bind

themselves to the Amazon nation. Sharing our secret wisdom

requires a blood obligation of the highest sort, and until Tendo

Nabiki agrees to bind herself to Joketsuzoku she cannot really be

considered as one of us."

"Great Grandmother?" Shampoo finally spoke, "Shampoo..."

"Shampoo, there is no need for you to offer explanations or

apologies for making your decision," Cologne said, "Unlike your

last transgression, you are now of an age where you can decide

for yourself the nature of he or she to whom you may bind

yourself. I had decided that you have made a good choice on this

occasion, but your Airen is stubborn, prideful and willful,

qualities that-while admirable in themselves-prevents her from

accepting her duty to remain with you as a truly lawful husband."

"You..." Nabiki bit off an angry retort that came to her lips just

then, realizing that she would need intelligence to deal with this

situation, "You're trying to force me to make a decision that I

should be able to make freely. That compulsory blackmail, and I

won't submit to it, Old Woman."

"You have no choice, Child," Cologne said in matronly

superiority, "Either you submit or else face the rest of your life

learning to use a man's exterior plumbing. I think you might

even come to enjoy your new status as you will make my Great

Granddaughter an excellent husband."

"But my daughter is a woman!" Soun pleaded, on the verge of

tears, "A young woman about to enter the prime of her years!

You cannot mean to leave her as a man for the rest of her life..."

"Just watch me, Sonny," Cologne smiled in condescension, "I

gave her the choice of returning to Joketsuzoku as a woman but

she refused. I told her there would be consequences, and now

she must live them. Don't worry too much, dearie, I'm sure in no

time at all you've adapt, and before you know it you'll start

leaving the lid up on toilets."

"Never!" Nabiki snarled, "I'll never submit to the likes of you,

Baba Yaga!"

"And how do you propose to change my mind if you do not

accept the terms I offer you?" Cologne smiled down from her

lofty position and said, "You must admit that you have a very

poor bargaining position."

"I..." Nabiki paused. Bargaining position? What was Cologne

trying to offer her, and why did she have the sense that she was

missing something important in this discussion.

"This is...unacceptable!" said Nodoka at last, "Who are you to

make this kind of decision for Nabiki, let alone your Great

Granddaughter?"

"I am an Elder," Cologne replied, "Where the fate of the Amazon

nation is at stake I am unshakable in my convictions."

"But my daughter must fulfill her obligations to our family!"

Soun's voice hardened, "She is pledged to marry the son of my

best friend, Saotome!"

"Not anymore," Cologne cackled, turning at last to register the

angry glare of Ranma, "How about it, boy? You want to get

married to her when she looks like this? Is that what you're into,

a nice, strong bull-stud such as yourself?"

"N-Nani?" Ranma's anger was momentarily derailed, and he

looked at Nabiki for a long moment before it flared again like a

Roman candle, "It changes nothing, you old Ghoul! It's the

woman inside that makes Nabiki the kind of person that she is!

You can't change that just by preventing her from changing! I

still lo...uh..."

He caught himself, aware that everyone was staring at him,

including Nabiki.

"Ranma's right!" Akane suddenly took up the cause, looking up

at Cologne with as angry an expression as anyone could

remember seeing in her face, "My sister and Ranma are in love!

Who made you Kamisama that you think you can go around

deciding how other people can live? You fix what you did and

let them get on with their lives, or else!"

Cologne actually seemed to study her for a long moment before

remarking, "My...such potential in one so young, and here I was

given to understand that you were the weakest fighter in this

household."

"I...Nani?" Akane stammered.

Cologne's smile was less condescending this time as she said,

"You have a fighting spirit that I could do much with.

Unfortunately this is not about you, it is strictly between your

sister and the Amazon nation. Tendo Nabiki will accept my

authority over her destiny and do what is right for my Great

Granddaughter. When I am convinced that she is sincere, then I

will permit her to return to her true form, but until such time she

must abide by my decision. I will leave you now to contemplate

your position. Make what preparations you may to get your

affairs here in order, then we return together to China. Come

along, Perfume, our task here is completed."

Perfume hesitated, then very respectfully said, "Great

Grandmother...?"

Cologne looked at her sharply, "Why do you hesitate, Child? I

am not going to upbraid you because you failed to carry out my

orders. I have already guessed that you met with defeat, and no

doubt it probably involved exposure to water."

Perfume assumed a very humble stance and said, "It is true what

you say, Elder, I was defeated in battle, but not by Tendo

Nabiki."

Cologne's gaze sharpened while Ukyo went pale. Was she about

to suffer a similar fate to the one Nabiki was facing?

"Who?" Cologne asked simply, the weight of doom implied in

her question.

Perfume hesitated for just a fraction of an instant, looking briefly

at the quailing Ukyo before she pointed and said, "Saotome

Ranma."

Dead silence followed a moment later by a very tiny voice that

was difficult to recognize as coming from Ranma, "Nani...?"

"I see," Cologne's gaze swiveled to the astonished young man

and said, "Then it seems I must work a double settlement in this

instance. What say you, Son-in-law, to honoring your obligation

towards my other Great Granddaughter by adoption?"

"I...what...how...?" Ranma's expression was not unlike that of a

dear caught in the headlights.

"I see that you are overwhelmed by the extreme honor you have

been paid," Cologne replied, "I will not pressure you at this time

since it is obvious you will need to make a few mental

adjustments to these changes in your life. Nonetheless I will be

even more adamant with you: your fate is now tied to that of

Perfume. Accept it and be happy. You would not like the

consequences if you choose to be difficult. Amazons have a great

many secret techniques for insuring the compliance of a husband.

Shampoo, you will remain to assist your Airen. Perfume, I still

require your services, so you will accompany me for now. When

we return you may reclaim your Airen."

"Thank you, Great Grandmother," Perfume replied, avoiding the

confused looks that Ukyo and Ranma gave her as she turned and

left the bathroom. Shampoo was also staring after her Cousin,

but her expression was one of sorrow.

"W-would somebody please explain to me what just happened?"

Akane finally blurted.

"I think we've all just been put in a massive Amazon headlock,"

replied Keiko, who turned a sorrowful look towards Nabiki,

"Nab-chan..."

Nabiki slowly sank to his knees, staring at the floor with a look

of utter devastation. Ranma looked down at him, sympathy and

dismay warring on his features as he looked uncertain about what

to do or say. Nodoka just shook her head while Soun began

crying, while Shampoo looked down at Nabiki with conflicting

emotions. Ukyo was looking from Ranma to Nabiki then back to

the door again, no less bewildered than anyone else present.

"Oh my," remarked Kasumi at the last, staring down at her

transformed sister with very wide eyes and a sorrowful

expression.

"I'm doomed," whispered Nabiki in toneless dismay.

That was when Genma finally spoke up, having stood at the back

behind the others the whole time, "What is this I hear? Don't tell

me you're giving up, girl?"

Nabiki slowly looked up towards him and said, "What do you

mean?"

Genma could not hide the disgust in his voice, "After all this

time, all the hardships and adventures we've faced, all the

obstacles we've overcome, the hopeless odds that have forever

been weighted against us...now you are losing heart? I can't

believe what I am seeing here! I haven't raised you these ten

years to see you turn into a sniveling quitter!"

Nabiki slowly rose to his feet, "What did you just call me, Old

Man?"

"You heard me!" Genma snapped, "A quitter! A cheat, a

scoundrel, a coward and many other things I've been too much of

a gentleman to call you in the past! Stand up for yourself, girl,

and fight against that...Baba Yaga! What kind of a Martial Artist

lets themselves be dictated to by an old woman? You're no

student of mine! You're just some child who thinks she can do a

Man's work! I should have known a mere girl would never have

the stomach for this sort of a challenge..."

It occurred to him about that point that he had said more than

enough. It had been his intention to make her angry, to get her

fighting spirit back in action, and now he could see by the look in

her eyes that he had more than succeeded, and that it was a very

good idea to get his feet into motion.

In a wordless snarl Nabiki charged after his teacher, heedless of

the towel that fell away from his waist as the urge to pound

Genma flat overrode all other considerations. The old man had a

few meters head start, but that would soon prove to be far less

than sufficient...

They had not gone far from the dojo when Cologne became

aware that Perfume had fallen to her knees and was bowing in

the proper form of contrition to an Elder. She turned around and

asked, "What's wrong, Child? You don't still believe that I'm

angry with you for allowing yourself to be defeated?"

"Great Grandmother...I have a confession," Perfume replied in

her most abjectly humble of tones, "I did not tell you the truth

just now. I wanted to wait until we were in private rather than

explain to you in front of outsiders."

"Indeed?" Cologne asked as she balanced upon her staff, her

eyes narrowed in thoughtful regard of this young girl who had

been taken in by her family to repair the shame brought on their

House by another.

"The one who defeated me was not the boy, Ranma, but a

woman named Kuonji Ukyo, who is also pledged to Ranma in a

second engagement arranged by his father," Perfume replied,

"Kuonji Ukyo is the one with the Baker's implement strapped to

her back, and she is a very good martial artist, though for some

reason she has chosen to disguise her sex and pose as a man

before others."

"I have heard of this fetish," Cologne said neutrally,

"Continue."

"Kuonji-Ukyo caused me to change into my cursed form, and

then later I was captured by Tendo Nabiki once my secret

vulnerability was exposed. She trapped me in a cage and held

me there for most of a day, but during this time I had the

opportunity to study these people up close, and-more

importantly-I came to know this Kuonji-Ukyo as a person.

What is more, when I was taken by force from my cage by yet

another woman who used toxins to render me paralyzed, Kuonji-

Ukyo became very angry and came looking for me with the intent

to avenge this outrage. I decided then that I wanted to marry her,

to accept her as my Airen..."

"Indeed?" Cologne mused even more thoughtfully than before,

"And what is her response to this?"

"Very confusing," Perfume sighed, "On the one hand I think

she likes me... but she is also pledged to this Saotome Ranma in

competition to Shampoo's Airen. Her claim is strong, and she

seems quite taken with this fellow, who is a good fighter and

seems as decent as any man that I have ever met, though I

confess to inexperience..."

Cologne waved the point aside and said, "Irrelevant.

Continue."

"I do not understand why Kuonji-Ukyo treats me differently

from one moment to the next," Perfume resumed, "She tenses

up whenever I embrace her, yet she accepts my company without

complaint. She insists that she does not wish to have another

woman for a wife. Clearly she intends to have a man who can

give her children, which I think that she desires..."

"A technicality that could easily be remedied," Cologne

averred, "Nannichuan can work for more than one person at a

time..."

"Yes, I have thought of that, Elder," Perfume replied, "But I

do not want an unwilling husband, as Shampoo is faced with. I

want Kuonji-Ukyo to desire me, and since both she and

Shampoo's Airen fancy the same young man..."

"You thought to put them all on the spot by claiming him as

your Airen instead of her," Cologne finished for her, "You

thought in doing so you could make Tendo Nabiki's choice easier

since he would have to come to Joketsuzoku in order to be cured

and marry this Ranma. You were also hoping that in doing so

you could make this Kuonji-Ukyo feel jealous, or possibly

compel her to come along for the same reason?"

Perfume bowed her head even lower, "Those were exactly my

thoughts on the matter, Great Grandmother."

"And you came up with this plan all by yourself?" Cologne

marveled, then smiled benignly, "I am proud of you, Child. If

you were my own flesh and blood I could be no more satisfied

with your cleverness. And here I always thought Shampoo was

the cunning one between you."

"You approve, Elder?" Perfume asked with only the slightest

hesitation.

"I do indeed," Cologne replied, "More than ever I regret the

decision that put you out of legal contention for status among the

tribe. With reasoning such as this you could have one day made

a formidable Elder. As it is you have no status to jeopardize in

accepting another woman for your Airen, which is not the case

with Shampoo, who can only regain her status if Tendo Nabiki

remains a man and Shampoo's husband."

"Do you actually intend to restore her?"

"I have yet to decide that," Cologne admitted, "There is

something I like about that girl, which could also be a valuable

contribution to the welfare of Amazon society. I am not yet ready

to give up on having her take Shampoo's place as Champion of

our village. She will require much training to obtain that status

she will need, but with sufficient motivation I think she will

eventually come around to seeing things our way."

"I hope that it will be so, Great Grandmother," Perfume bowed

again, "For Shampoo's sake as well as the Amazon nation."

"It is good that you told me this voluntarily," Cologne noted,

"Lying to an Elder is a serious offense. However, since you

have confessed your reasoning, and awarded me with a powerful

weapon to use in the battle of wills that I am sure will shortly be

waged, I am prepared to overlook your indiscretion. It was

justified under the circumstances, just don't let it become a

habit."

"Yes, Great Grandmother," Perfume nodded.

"You have always been a loyal daughter to me," Cologne

replied, "Know that I will fight as hard for you as I will for

Shampoo to see that you are both honored by your respective

husbands. Now come with me, there is a place I wish to show

you, one that I've made certain arrangements to obtain the lease

upon. It will serve as an excellent base of operations from which

we will plan to secure your future happiness, to say nothing of the

happiness of your Cousin..."

Continued.

Comments/Criticism/Vile Aspersions on my Personal Life:

shadowmane

I know turning Nabiki into a man isn't quite my idea of an erotic

fantasy since I've always been attracted to her "Womanly"

attributes, so don't expect her status to remain fixed for very long.

Next time we learn where Shampoo's loyalties really lie as

Nabiki learns of the Phoenix pill and one possible solution. Be

there or be Pi Squared!

Nabiki 1/2

Chapter 11, Part 2.

By

Jim Robert Bader

Inspired by the works of Rumiko Takahashi;

All rights belong to her, the Publishers and Distributors

Of the Ranma 1/2 Series.

(Based on the Altered Destinies Series

By Wade Tritschler and Others;

The following is a work of Fanfiction:

Only some characters and situations were created by me,

The rest are shared concepts, so don't sue me)

When Nabiki was barely over seven years of age she and Kasumi

had crept up upon their father to eavesdrop on a very strange

conversation he was having with an even stranger man named

Saotome Genma. The gist of the conversation was that a boy

would soon come to live in their house, which seemed strange in

itself as their mother did not appear to be pregnant again. The

mystery soon resolved itself as it soon became apparent that the

boy in question was the only son of this strange man, a boy

named Ranma.

Nabiki thought it a very funny name: "Wild Horse," but then

again it was appropriate for the son of a man whose name meant

"Dark Horse," which was a term Nabiki understood to be a

gamblers term meaning an unknown prospect.

But their father became immediately suspicious that his "old

friend and fellow student of the Martial Arts" was actually trying

to unload his son on the Tendo Household. Nabiki silently

cheered her father for having good business sense in not taking

an offer at first value. No doubt the man was poor and struggling

to get along, and a son was proving a greater burden than he

could responsibly manage.

But then her father surprised everyone by proposing that Saotome

Genma take one of his daughters in trade. Nabiki had a very

queasy feeling in her stomach as she exchanged confused looks

with her older sister, but Kasumi only looked even more puzzled

in her expression.

One of them for the boy, Ranma?

There was a noticeable pause before Genma quietly agreed with

the proposal, which left the question of who would he take with

him down to three prospects: Akane, Kasumi and Nabiki.

Nabiki was certain her heart did not beat again until she heard

her father give her name in answer to Genma's question. Her fate

was thus sealed, and for the next ten years one question would

reverberate in her mind: Why had her father agreed to such an

imbecilic arrangement?

Not that she spurned the opportunity to get out and travel.

School was becoming less of a challenge and her mother was

always fussing with her to get out and play like "normal girls"

her age. A chance to see more of the world was just the thing a

young girl with prospects needed to broaden her education and

teach her about survival. So she would have to intensify her

Martial Arts training when she was thinking of giving it up, that

would be a small sacrifice on the whole, and her father said that

Uncle Genma was a good teacher.

If only the whole deal did not make her feel like so much leftover

baggage...

Time passed and Nabiki became used to having Uncle Genma for

a companion. He had his flaws, but he was amiable and easy to

manipulate, and in time she figured out a strategy to get him to

do things the way she wanted him to behave. Of course he kept

on insisting on her training, and as much to satisfy him and keep

him happy she took her lessons seriously, even more seriously

than her studies on business and math, and she prospered in all

three, becoming good enough to earn occasional praise for her

efforts.

And-strangely-in time she found a real passion for the art. It

was at first the convenience of being able to do things other kids

her age could not do, and to do it so well that she could take it for

granted. Later on she discovered that her love of the art was the

equal to her passion for making money. She rarely sought out a

fight, but when one came looking for her she was always able to

come out on top. In time her skills as a negotiator came to equal

her skills at fighting so she did not have to fight very often,

except when there was a profit motive to make it all the sweeter.

Yet through it all Nabiki had always kept a promise she had

made to her mother before leaving, that she would at least try to

be a good woman when she grew older, a woman her mother

could be proud of. She had fought to maintain some trace of her

femininity in spite of adopting Tomboy ways out of habit. Even

the curse had not taken that away from her. Nabiki was a

woman, and even a man's body could not take that one essential

thing away from her, the only link she still retained with her late

mother.

And now even that was being denied her. Nabiki sat staring

disconsolately into space, trying to make sense of her impossible

situation, unable to find the Wa of her center, having a man's

different balance point to focus upon, and trying above all else to

keep from crying.

"Nabiki-chan," Ranma murmured to one side, and Nabiki could

almost feel his desire to reach out and comfort her...no him! But

he was restrained from making the same overture with a man that

he would have thought more appropriate for a woman. Besides

which he seemed to also sense how brittle her mood was, and

how likely she would crumble if she had to endure his pity.

Shampoo sat to his opposite side, staring at Nabiki with very

sorrowful eyes, her expression not jubilant though she understood

better than Nabiki the reason for her Great Grandmother's

decision. She seemed on the verge of offering something, but

held back for reasons Nabiki suspected were indeed related to the

Elder's judgement. Nabiki barely allowed himself to

acknowledge her presence. Shampoo was the cause for this

mess, and because of that stupid Amazon law that bound them

both together...

No, he was being unfair. Shampoo was not to blame for this

situation. She was as much a victim as Nabiki and they would

need each other's help if they were to resolve this mess. Nabiki

swallowed her anger and simply kept on staring off beyond the

walls of the dojo. She did not even turn around to give

acknowledgement to either Keiko or Ukyo, whom she knew were

right behind her.

At last Ranma sighed, "What are we going to do, Nabiki? We

can't let that old woman get away with this..."

"I'm open to suggestions, Ranma-kun," Nabiki replied without

turning around, "It's just that, at the moment, I'm not hearing

any."

She sensed Shampoo's flinch and knew the others saw it as well,

but was surprised when she heard the anger in Ukyo's voice as

she said reprovingly, "I hope you're happy, now that you've got

what you always wanted!"

Out of the corner of her eye Nabiki saw Shampoo flare in anger,

"Shampoo no want force Nabiki-chan to be man against her will!

Great Grandmother decide. Shampoo no go against will of

Elder."

"She can't help it, Ucchan," Keiko sighed, "You haven't even

begun to see what that Kho-Lon is capable! I know she'd try if it

could help, but if she offered to cure Nabiki of the Cat Tongue

she'd risk being punished worse than you could possibly

imagine."

"Is that what's keeping you so silent?" Ranma asked with a

derisive snort, "I never would have taken you for a coward."

Nabiki felt Keiko's battle aura flare and said, "Name calling

won't get us anywhere, Ran-chan. Besides we ought to be

worried about what this Cologne has in mind for you now that

Perfume's got her thinking that you're her Airen."

"Why did she do that?" Ukyo asked after a few seconds of mutual

silence, "She had me nailed dead to rights, not that I'm all that

eager to go up against that Mummy..."

"Cousin," Shampoo paused, then started again, "Perfume think

Ukyo being very stubborn, like Nabiki, no recognize her

obligation. Perfume know Spatula girl want boy, so she claim

boy for self. Is good bartering tactic."

"Bartering tactic?" Ukyo started, then glanced at Nabiki as the

transformed man blew a laugh through his nostrils.

"Think about it, Ucchan," Nabiki said softly, "Perfume's word is

the only thing that's keeping Cologne at bay. She tells the Elder

who really defeated her and you're trapped the same way I am.

Only difference is...you're fully a woman."

"Unless she takes you to Jusenkyo and kicks you into the Spring

of Drowned Man," Keiko noted, "Then you really will be in Nab-

chan's situation."

Ukyo stiffened then said, "That isn't funny, Keiko-san."

"I don't think any one of us is laughing at the moment, Ucchan,"

Ranma remarked, looking sorrowfully at Nabiki, "One or both of

us is going to wind up with Perfume for a suitor. At least she's

cute enough..."

"Cute?" Ukyo reacted as she looked at him in green-eyed dismay.

"Uh," Ranma blinked, thinking quickly before he said, "Well,

you're cute too...and so is Nabiki..."

"Nice try, Ran-chan," Nabiki snorted without much humor,

"Better quit while you're ahead or we're going to have a Cat-

fight..."

As soon as the words were out of his mouth Nabiki winced at his

own gaff. Cats were the last thing he wanted on his mind at this

particular moment...

"Silly boy no need try explain liking Cousin," Shampoo said,

"Everyone like Perfume when she just nice girl, no Enforcer.

Perfume good warrior, even better friend, only friend Shampoo

have except for other girl we both know back in village. Perfume

very easy talk with. No like doing bad things, only do what

Great Grandmother tell her."

"You mean when she's not trying to kill you she can be as nice as

candy," Keiko sniffed, "I already knew that."

Nabiki wondered why the phrasing Keiko used caused her to

suspect something more was implied, but decided to retain her

own counsel.

"Shampoo..." Shampoo hesitated again, then said, "Shampoo also

suspect Cousin mean to make Spatula girl jealous..."

"Jealous?" Ukyo shot her a sharp look, "Because she's trying to

take Ranchan away from me?"

"No," Shampoo replied, "Because she choose boy instead of

Airen."

"N-Nani?" Ukyo stammered, "How...how could she think that I'd

ever..."

"Well, you did seem pretty upset when Kodachi held her in that

cage," Ranma replied, "She could have gotten the idea that you

were worried about her."

"But that doesn't mean I want to marry her!" Ukyo blurted out, "I

don't love Perfume, I want you, Ran-chan..."

"How you know what you think?" Shampoo asked her, "Spatula

girl very strange. Shampoo no know what you want. First hate

boy, now say love boy. Is Japanese way? Amazon way better."

"I wouldn't be so quick to say that, Sham-chan," Keiko remarked,

"Here people try to sort out their feelings and sift through all the

pretentious nonsense that most of us get raised with. Nothing's

as simple as what we want life to be like, and sometimes our

desires are the grandest illusions of all, trapping us like flies in

the spider's web of fate."

"Very poetic," Nabiki remarked, "I didn't know you and Kuno

were related."

"Well, spend a week around Kodachi and some of it rubs off,"

Keiko replied, "I'm not big on literature and philosophy, but I

have my moments, and Madam Lao was very thorough in

teaching me to be a good courtesan."

"When she wasn't teaching you to be a Muy Tai gladiator?" Nabiki

asked.

"Say what you like," Keiko sighed as she rose to her feet, "At

least I always knew where I stood with her. You want my help,

I'm in, you want to feel sorry about yourself, find another patsy.

I'm going to find somebody who doesn't mind sharing my

company without the sarcasm."

Nabiki blinked, sensing Keiko's withdrawal as well as the

bitterness in her tone. Her thoughts mirrored those of Ranma as

her iinazuke asked, "What got into her all of a sudden?"

"Red hair have pride," Shampoo said, "No warrior like ignored

by one she care about. Shampoo understand," but she refused to

elaborate.

"Do you think that's what this is all about?" Nabiki finally turned

to look at her, "Recognition of a claim? Shampoo...you know I'm

trying to do everything I can to work this out for us. I don't want

you to suffer because of some stupid law that says we're

married..."

"Shampoo think Red have good idea," Shampoo sniffed, her tone

suddenly angry as she started to get up, "Maybe Airen need feel

less sorry for self and worry more about obligations!"

"Shampoo?" Nabiki blinked, quietly thinking to herself, Not you

too?

"If Airen want talk Shampoo," Shampoo said with clear anger in

her tone as she stood her ground with fists clenched, "Then talk

like Man to Wife, or no talk at all!"

She turned around and stormed out of the dojo, and if she had her

Bonbori in hand there was no doubt in anyone's mind that she

would have created her own exit.

"Shampoo..." Nabiki whispered, unable to comprehend what

exactly had just happened.

"What got into those two?" Ukyo asked, voicing aloud similar

sentiments.

"I'll go ask her," Ranma said as he also got to his feet.

"You?" Ukyo blinked, "But Ran-chan..."

"It's all right," Ranma flashed her a quick smile before looking

towards Nabiki, "She's not out to marry me, so I think she'll find

it easier to talk, even if I'm just some guy in her weird way of

thinking."

"But..." Ukyo started to say, but Ranma was already out the door,

so she murmured, "Be careful, Ranchan."

An uncomfortable silence fell over the two remaining in the dojo,

then after a moment Ukyo sighed too and got to her feet, "Listen,

Nab-chan...I know we've had our differences of late...but I think

we'll need to work this out together, no matter what happens.

So...if you need to talk..."

"Domo," Nabiki replied, "I'll remember that, Ucchan."

Nabiki remained sitting in thoughtful repose another minute

more, then raised her head and said, "Now what it is, Ojisama?"

Genma stood by the door and sighed, looking slightly bedraggled

from their earlier fight but otherwise the same as he always was.

This time, however, his attitude was more sober than usual as he

said, "Ready to talk strategy now?"

"Hai," Nabiki nodded, "I think my ego's been sufficiently kicked

around to get my priorities back in order. What advice do you

have to share?"

Genma shook his head, "Not mine, it was Shampoo who told me

of a possible answer."

Nabiki blinked as she looked at him, "You, Ojisama?"

Genma smiled, "Cologne forbade her telling us the cure to the

Cat Tongue, but she never expressly forbade her telling a

harmless looking panda."

Nabiki looked at him, amazed that Genma could be so subtle,

"But...she knows about your curse..."

"I think she wants to help you, regardless of the objections of her

Elder," Genma replied, settling his bulk down on the edge of the

dojo and assuming a meditative posture, "She did not speak so

much at me as to the pond where a panda just happened to be

soaking. She mentioned a legendary creature known as the

Phoenix..."

"The Phoenix?" Nabiki repeated.

"A creature that lives hundreds of years only to die in fire,"

Genma replied, "And be reborn again. It is said that one blessed

with the power of a Phoenix can never be hurt by fire. Then she

mentioned that there is a magical pill that her Great Grandmother

carries on her person which contains this power, and that by

swallowing it one gains the ability to endure great heat. That

would make it the ideal solution to your problem, Nabiki-chan."

"A pill that reverses the effects of the Cat-Tongue?" Nabiki's

mind whirled at the implications, but one doubt remained, and

she voiced it, "You know that Kho-Lon must suspect that

Shampoo would be tempted to share this with us."

"Hai," he nodded, "It would seem most logical if she allowed

Shampoo to even known about its existence."

"Then what if she hides it or gets rid of it..."

"Too valuable," Genma replied, "I may not know much about

these Amazons, but they are said to value their magical potions

and trinkets. Besides, if it is the cure to your condition, then

having it makes more sense than not having it. Besides, that one

seems very confident about her abilities. Personally I would not

tangle with her in the first place."

"Is that why you made yourself scarce while she was here?"

Nabiki snorted, but her mind was suddenly latched onto the

possibility of a cure. If such a thing existed then there was no

risk that was not worth taking, even against someone as

dangerous as this Cologne the Elder...

"Hey, wait up!"

Shampoo turned an annoyed look towards Ranma and said,

"What stupid boy want? Leave Shampoo alone!"

"Normally I'd be glad to," Ranma smiled as he came to within

two arm lengths of the Purple haired Amazon girl, "But right

now we need to talk. From the way you were talking back there I

think you know something you're not sharing with the rest of us."

"You so stupid," Shampoo glared at Ranma, "No talk outsiders

like you members of tribe! Why no you understand this?"

"Because I'm a guy, I guess," Ranma inclined his head matter-of-

factly, "Everything you hate, right? Only I'm not here about

anything like that, I just want to know if you really are serious

about helping Nabiki."

Shampoo seemed to hesitate slightly, but then her temper flared

again and said, "You want help Airen? Stay out of Shampoo's

way! Nabiki Shampoo's husband..."

"Look, I'm not here to debate that," Ranma said, "Even if I do

think it's a stupid rule that binds you to somebody who first tries

beating you up..."

"Law is no stupid!" Shampoo insisted, "Is Amazon way!"

"Right," Ranma raised both hands in an attempt to ward off her

anger, "Look, I don't want to insult you or your people, even if

what you did was tantamount to entrapment..."

"What?" Shampoo looked at him in shock, "What

word...entrapment?"

"It means lure somebody into doing something on a false

promise," Ranma explained before thinking about the matter.

"You...call Shampoo fraud?" Shampoo almost screamed at him,

"You stupid boy! Shampoo give everything to Nabiki-Airen!

EVERYTHING! Shampoo give up status, accept lesser place in

tribe because Nabiki now have status as Shampoo Airen!

Shampoo gain status if take Airen back as man, or take Airen's

head! You no tell Shampoo she no make sacrifice for Airen!"

"Hey, what are you getting so angry about for?" Ranma asked,

taking a half-step back, "I wasn't meaning nothing rude, and I

didn't come here to fight you..."

"Hah!" Shampoo snapped, virtually in his face, "You insult

Shampoo and call nothing! That bigger insult! You pay for

stupid remark!"

She took a fighting stance as Ranma backed away, "Look, I'm

sorry if I upset you, but like I said, I don't want to fight, and I

certainly don't want to fight a woman..."

"You just coward!" Shampoo snorted.

Ranma tensed, "What did you just call me?"

"Coward!" Shampoo snapped, "Is word in Japanese, no? You

back down and make excuses, but Shampoo no forgive you!"

"Hey," Ranma said, "I'm not afraid of anybody, not even that old

mummy you call your Grandmother. I just don't want to fight

and wind up having to marry you or nothing..."

"You think you too good for Shampoo?" she snorted, "Now we

fight! Shampoo pound you like rice-flower and serve you in

pasta!"

She struck at him with a flying leap, but Ranma was no where

near where she expected. Having side-stepped her completely he

continued to circle around, keeping her in sight while trying to

maintain his defenses.

"Look," Ranma tried again, "I said I was sorry..."

"No talk!" Shampoo cried as she attacked again, "We fight!"

Ranma sighed as he easily sidestepped her next assault, "I'm

going to regret this..."

Keiko was in a darker mood than was her usual wont as she went

in search of Akane, a girl she was finding it increasingly easier to

talk to, as opposed to Nabiki. Though usually a cheerful sort, her

spirit had been worn down by the events of the past day, so she

was in no mood for the unexpected ambush of Kodachi, who

sprang from concealment off the roof of the building.

"DIE, ARIGAMI KEIK-OOOFF!" Kodachi's infamous battle

cry turned into a grunt of pain as Keiko's foot made contact with

her stomach. Keiko held Kodachi off the ground for several

seconds before retracting her leg again, allowing the self-styled

Black Rose of Saint Hebereke to collapse to the ground, doubling

over in pain at having the wind knocked right out of her sails.

"For crying out loud," Keiko growled in disgust, "Don't you ever

get tired of this nonsense? Haven't you got anything better to do

than to go around harassing people who are just minding their

own business?"

Kodachi was in no condition to reply, being occupied just trying

to get her lungs filled. She lay on her side like a wounded deer

while Keiko looked down at her with evident pity.

"Look," she sighed, "Can't you just admit you lost fair and square

and get over it? And by the way, you can stop acting. Nobody's

being fooled by your performance."

Kodachi ceased moaning and looked up at her, then smiled

darkly and said, "So what are you, a theater critic?"

"I just thought you felt better padded than usual," Keiko replied

with a lopsided smile, "Have you forgotten I'm used to being

around professional cheaters? No Kickboxer falls for that old 'I'm

too hurt to fight' trick in Muy Tai. I expected you to know it."

Kodachi bounded to her feet and removed the padded belt she

had worn around her waist, then said, "I can see that you'll

require special measures. Fortunately I have come well

provided."

The ribbon streamer once again appeared in her hand as she

whirled it about in concentric circles. Keiko just sighed as she

stood her ground and said, "Don't you have any new tricks

besides that?"

Suddenly the ribbon snared around Keiko's legs, and with a snap

they were drawn together. A second tug threatened to pull her off

her feet, but this time Keiko dove forward into a roll and came up

kicking Kodachi, who rolled with the punch and swiftly

recovered.

Keiko wasted no time freeing her legs, but then she saw with

dismay that Kodachi now had her razor-edged hoop in hand

(from where she could have drawn it was impossible to imagine),

and with a twist of her waist the Gymnast hurled it towards

Keiko, who swerved her body to avoid the hoop, which continued

on an arc until it struck the ground, bounced off a wall and hit a

tree branch. Keiko avoided this then counter-attacked with a

leaping cartwheel, forcing Kodachi to dart back as she pulled her

trick club from concealment.

Keiko caught the club with both hands while her foot shot out

and knocked Kodachi back again. Tossing the weapon to one

side, Keiko prepared another attack while Kodachi pulled out her

ball and prepared to throw it.

That was when they both heard Akane yell from the window

above their heads, "Hey, you two! Knock it off! Kodachi, stop

bothering Keiko!"

"Akane-chan?" Kodachi made the ball disappear as she looked

up with an eager face clear of malice or mischief, "What a delight

to see you again..."

"Save it, 'Dachi," Akane called back down, "I'm still mad at you

for what you did yesterday! People could have been hurt..."

"I know," Kodachi slowly lowered her gaze, arms falling to her

sides in resignation, "I'm sorry...I got out of hand, I wasn't

thinking. I'm very sorry, Akane-chan...I just don't...know myself

sometimes..."

Keiko remained on her guard, but Kodachi seemed to have

completely forgotten about her. Instead the mercurial girl had a

lost and frightened look about her eyes as she stared down at the

ground and softly murmured, "Forgive me."

Akane wavered for a few moments, then sighed, "Oh hell...I

never could stay mad at you for very long, 'Dachi. You and

Keiko can come up to my room, if you both promise to behave

yourselves."

"I promise!" Kodachi said at once, and it was hard for Keiko to

suspect dishonesty in her tone, for the Black Rose was acting as

though she wanted very much to see Akane. There was a hopeful

expression in her eyes, and for the first time Keiko saw that they

were reddened, as if from sleeplessness...or crying.

"I promise, too," Keiko said as she lowered her guard very

slowly, thinking silently to herself that there had to be more to

Kodachi than the madwoman she had just been fighting. It was

almost possible for her to believe that Kodachi had come here

wanting to plead her case with Akane and just went wild at the

sight of Keiko. She did not trust the girl, but she was beginning

to think that Kodachi's problems were of another kind than

simple madness.

What this meant to her or Akane was difficult to determine, but

Keiko decided it was interesting enough to warrant further study.

Akane was her friend, and Kodachi obviously meant something

more to her than a spoiled rich child with dangerous fetishes.

Perhaps Keiko was reading too much into the impression she had

formed, but if she were right then someone had to guide these

two down a difficult path that might change their lives

forever...or possible risk angering Nabiki.

For once the latter element did not discourage her. Keiko was

feeling pretty raw from watching Nabiki take her for granted yet

again. Perhaps it was time to explore other options, or at the very

least cop a few cheap thrills, whatever it might take to lift her

spirit out of the doldrums.

At the very least her curiosity would be sated, and maybe she'd

find an effective way to take Kodachi's mind off attacking her or

trying to date Kaneda. Either way it was bound to brighten up

her evening...

Continued.

Comments/Criticism/Lambaste: shadowmane

Will Nabiki find a way to obtain the Phoenix-Pill? Will Ranma

wind up with another fiancee? Will Keiko score a double-header,

and what exactly are Cologne and Shampoo hatching up? And

where the heck is Ryoga during all of this? Tune in tomorrow

(etc, etc, et al)

Nabiki 1/2

Chapter 11, Part 3.

By

Jim Robert Bader

Inspired by the works of Rumiko Takahashi;

All rights go to her, the producers and distributors

Of the Ranma 1/2 Series.

(Based on the Altered Destinies Series by

Wade Tritschler and Others.

The Following is a work of Fanfiction;

Some situations and characters were created by me,

The rest is shared, so please don't sue me)

"Uh...Dad, it's me," Ukyo said into the telephone, "Your little

Ucchan. Yeah, I'm fine. Mister Tendo's been putting me up for

the last few days and I've gotten to know my iinazuke better...oh,

yeah, he's okay. Yeah I guess maybe it wasn't such a dumb plan

of yours, but I sure wish you'd let me...no, I'm not going to fight

you over this. I just wanted to say I...huh? So soon? But I'm not

even graduated from High School yet! How do you expect me to

run a business if I haven't even gotten my diploma?"

Ukyo just growled as she listened to her father ramble on about

duty and obligation to the family, how he wasn't planning on

living forever and that she ought to be thinking about starting a

family on her own. She'd heard it all before about a zillion times,

only this time she did not hang up after declaring angrily that she

never intended to get married. What she wanted to ask him was

serious, so she waited until he finally ran out of steam before

saying, "Dad...can you answer me one question. Do ever really

wish that I was born a boy so you wouldn't be going through all

of this trouble trying to get the son you wanted through

marriage?"

That stopped him cold. After a very long pause she heard her

father say, "What makes you think I wanted that?"

"Oh, I don't know," Ukyo leaned back against the wall as the

memories ticked off like a rolodex calendar, "Maybe the way you

pretended I was a boy so we could play baseball together, the

way you always discouraged me from wearing dresses, the way

you'd talk gruffly like I wasn't a delicate little flower, and maybe

a hundred other things that come to mind that you'd do to keep

me from reminding you of mother."

There was another long pause before her father asked, "Is that

what it seemed like?"

"Pretty much, yeah," Ukyo replied, "Look, I'm not blaming you or

complaining about the way I was raised or anything like that. I

figure it's time I got on with my life and stopped whining about

Fate. I guess maybe you were just doing the best you knew how

to do, and I really wish I'd told you this a long time ago. I know

running away as often as I did wasn't the best answer to our little

family problems..."

"Ucchan," her father sighed, "I'm so sorry..."

"Forget it," Ukyo sighed, "Maybe I'm finally starting to grow up,

ne? It's just...the few days I've spent here...I've been doing a lot

of thinking, and you know something? It's really not so bad

being a woman. I mean, we've had our rough times, but

compared with me other people have had real problems.

Besides...I really liked playing baseball with you. I probably

wouldn't have done that if Momma..."

She did not continue, nor did she have to. It had taken her much

of the day to summon up the courage just to make this call, and

now that she had said it she hoped desperately that her father was

not going to withdraw into his shell, like always. Maybe the time

they had spent apart had matured him as well...whatever, she

prayed fervently that he would accept her right to make her own

decisions.

"Ucchan," she herd him sigh, which was a good sign since it

meant he had not yet hung up on her, "I...don't know what else to

say..."

"You don't have to," she smiled, and it felt good to smile again,

though at the same time she felt like crying, "But Dad...things are

a little more complicated here than you know. I've gotten to

know Saotome Ranma and...he's really not that bad a guy.

Problem is he's in love with Tendo Nabiki. I feel like such an

intruder whenever we're in the same room together."

"Your claim is more valid than hers," her father insisted, "Stand

up for your rights, and give it time. I'm sure Genma's boy will

come to like you the more time he spends in your presence."

"I think so, too," Ukyo said, "But...it's almost like we're best buds

or something. I'm not even sure if he looks on me as a woman."

"Try dressing like one and see if he continues to have this

problem," her father suggested, and Ukyo could almost hear him

smiling, though her own eyes got wider. Her father was actually

suggesting she dress like a woman? That was a new twist!

"I...I guess I could try that," she finally stammered out, "But

Dad...there's something else...another problem I never even

counted on. Well, actually, it's too complicated to tell you over

the phone, but it concerns another woman besides Nabiki..."

"Saotome's son has yet another iinazuke?" her father's tone

conveyed surprising anger, "That swine, Genma! Has he been

making other deals besides our..."

"No, no! It's not about Ranma this time," Ukyo said, taking a

deep breath to steady herself before saying, "It's me. This girl's

after me this time, and it's worse than with that creep, Tsubasa."

"Another?" her father's reaction was understandably confused,

"Sure you've straightened her out that you're not really a man..."

"She knows I'm a woman, father," Ukyo said tiredly, "That's not

the problem."

"Oh," there was another very long pause before her father said,

"Would another restraining order be required for this?"

"I don't think that will be enough this time," Ukyo said,

"Besides...she's a pretty nice girl, and I don't want to hurt her

feelings, I just...well...I'm trying to get Ranma to like me and..."

"Some men wouldn't consider two woman a problem."

"Daddy!" Ukyo was shocked, although why she could not say as

her father was wont to tease her in just such a manner.

"Okay, okay," he said soothingly, "It was just a thought. But hey,

you're not encouraging this girl in any way, are you? I know you

like playing the Man, and some women actually fancy another

woman in drag...probably thinks you're Butch or something..."

Ukyo counted to ten and reminded herself that pulling the phone

out of the wall was not a very nice thing for a houseguest to do,

even in this kind of situation, "Dad, I'm trying to be serious here,

besides, this isn't that easy to explain. Have you ever heard of the

Amazons of Joketsuzoku?"

"Can't say that I have," he replied, "Why do you ask?"

"Let's just say that fighting one of them isn't all that great an

idea," Ukyo winced, "If you win you either have to marry one or

they kill you."

Now the pause on the other end was very pronounced. At last

her father said, "I'll have my people look in on that. Must be

some strange tribal customs our Marketing Research people

haven't informed me about. They're always telling me how

important it is to bone up on other people's culture..."

"Yeah, tell me about it," Ukyo laughed without real humor, "I'd

appreciate anything they might know about getting out of a

forced marriage."

"That serious, eh?" her father murmured, "Well, I'll give it my

personal attention. Meanwhile I was hoping to get in touch with

you about the good news I've been wanting to tell you. I've

finished signing the papers."

"You have?" Ukyo's mood brightened considerably as the other

dream of her childhood suddenly seemed close to realization,

"That's wonderful!"

"You can sign your name to the deed this afternoon, if you like,"

her father continued, "I assume you already know the address.

I'll meet you there at around five sharp, and then my little girl

will have her own business."

"I can't wait!" Ukyo said, hopping up and down on the balls of

her feet in her excitement, "Thank you, father! I'll make you

proud of me, I promise!"

"It would be hard to make me prouder than I am at this moment,"

her father said, "Of course there is one other thing you should

know about."

Ukyo stopped moving, some nagging sense causing her to

suddenly feel apprehensive, "Nani?"

"A last minute detail," her father continued, "The landlord only

agreed to sell his place if I signed co-ownership with another

tenant, a Chinese entrepreneur who came well represented..."

"Chinese?" Ukyo repeated coldly, "You wouldn't happen to know

her name, would you?"

Her father's surprise was more than evident, "How did you know

the new co-tenant was a woman?"

"Never mind," Ukyo said brusquely, "Just give me her name,

please?"

"Very well," her father replied, "Although it is an odd sounding

name, rather like a commercial product..."

Ranma was impressed. This Chinese Amazon was not only a

tough fighter, but she was almost as quick and agile as Nabiki.

He had no trouble going full out against her and was actually

getting a pretty good work out. If it were not that he was also

fighting for his life he might even have enjoyed studying her

movements. As it was staying one step ahead of her deadly

assault was the best that he could manage, but he knew if he did

not go on the offensive soon he would lose the fight, for this

Shampoo was not pulling any punches.

Shampoo, for her part, was feeling both surprise and a bit

exasperated. Here she was trying her best techniques, seriously

attempting to beat this arrogant whelp into a puddle, and yet he

kept avoiding her attacks as though they were being telegraphed

by express mail. Worse still in her view the boy was not counter

attacking in earnest! He kept dodging and countering her moves

while coming up with a few surprising improvisations that would

force her to retreat before she had a chance to develop an effective

attack rhythm. Before long it dawned on her that he was not

trying to win so much as keep her from winning, and the effort

was proving tiresome, even with great Grandmother's technique

for drawing energy from the Earth to fortify her body and stave

off immanent exhaustion.

She broke off her latest attack and assumed a one-legged crouch

as they both stood along the rail of a fence, where their battle had

been taken. Shampoo studied this boy, Ranma, seeing how he

perspired from his exertions yet still seemed ready to continue.

Anyone one else would have fainted dead away by now, but this

boy kept right on coming. It was clear to note from his style that

he had been trained by the same instructor as Nabiki, yet it was

infuriating to fight a male this formidable who did not seem

serious about actually fighting with her!

Shampoo took several deep breaths as she summoned up her Chi,

then looked as calmly as she could manage at Ranma and said,

"You good fighter, but you lose if you no want fight Shampoo."

"Hey, I'd lose if I won," Ranma said, "I don't want to be forced

into marriage, like Nabiki, and I've already got one too many

girlfriends."

"Nabiki no force to marry Shampoo," Shampoo retorted, although

in truth she was not really as certain about that as she once had

been. Almost defensively she added, "She Airen!"

"Yeah, I know, and on your honeymoon she turned into a girl,"

Ranma said, "I can see how that must have looked pretty bad at

the time, but you can't really blame her for that. She didn't know

any better."

"Why you excuse?" Shampoo said hotly, "You no angry she no

tell you this before Shampoo come to Japan?"

"Of course I'm angry," Ranma said, "And hurt, but I can't really

blame Nab-chan for not wanting to tell me about a thing like that.

I keep thinking what would I have done in her place? What if I

were the one who spent ten years with my Father and got a curse

that changed me into a girl, and what if I'd been the one who

wound up in your village?"

"That easy question," Shampoo sniffed, "You girl, defeat

Shampoo, she give kiss of death and chase you," Shampoo

suddenly realized the importance of what he said as she

continued, "And Shampoo find you man...we marry..."

"Exactly," Ranma said without lowering his guard as the two

remained balanced, "Now tell me honestly if you think you could

love a guy like me just because I beat you once in combat, or

anyone else for that matter! You're not really the kind of girl who

could just give her heart to anyone, are you?"

Shampoo slowly lowered her guard while still remaining on one

foot, "No, not marry anyone...just man who beat Shampoo, Airen.

Best warrior make Shampoo proud to make husband..."

"Is fighting the only thing that's important to you?" Ranma

lowered his guard but kept his eyes open, just in case she tried to

surprise him, "Isn't there anything else you want from a guy?

Kindness, maybe a good sense of humor..."

"Shampoo have that in Nabiki," Shampoo replied, refusing to let

herself see where this was headed, "Airen best fighter...better

than...anyone but Great Grandmother..."

"Yeah, well, Nabiki's more than just a fighter, you know,"

Ranma said, "And I think it's wrong to make her spend the rest of

her life as a guy. That's just not what's in her, it's not who she

really is. I may not have known her very long, but I know that

she's a very special person..."

"Yes," Shampoo agreed tonelessly, "Very special.

Shampoo...Shampoo want Nabiki-chan to like her..."

"And how does forcing her to got back to China do that?" Ranma

asked, "I know if somebody tried to force me like that I'd be

furious! How would you feel about being forced to renounce your

home and family forever?"

"Shampoo...not know," Shampoo said slowly, "Never close to

family, no friends in village except Perfume and Lotion. Even

Shampoo mother, Kho-Hom, never much know Shampoo, beside

childhood..."

"That's terrible," Ranma said, "You weren't even close to your

own mother?"

"Only father take time see Shampoo well cared for," Shampoo

said, "And Great Grandmother."

Ranma saw how miserable the other girl was and took a hesitant

step forward on the fence, "Hey, don't feel bad. I haven't seen my

father for ten years and..."

Shampoo suddenly leaped into motion, giving him no time to

react before her kick spun him head-over-heals and landed him in

the storm drain. Ranma sputtered as she sat up and said, "What

did you do that for?"

"You very strange boy," Shampoo looked down at him

thoughtfully, "You show concern for Shampoo when you her

rival. Shampoo never seen boy who treat other girls like you

have."

"So I'm kind of clumsy at the romantic stuff," Ranma said as he

brushed his hair off his forehead, "Give me some credit for

trying."

To his surprise Shampoo leaped down and landed on the dry part

next to where he was struggling to get up. She looked at him

curiously for a moment before remarking, "Maybe boy no so

clumsy as he think. You nice person. Shampoo very sorry she

say bad things about you before. You no hate Shampoo?"

"No," he smiled as he stood up and offered her his hand, "Shake

on it?"

Shampoo just smiled knowingly and he smiled back, then

withdrew the hand. She was nobody's fool to get taken in the

way he once had suckered Keiko.

"Look," Ranma sighed, "I know we've got a problem on our

hands, but that's no reason we should be enemies. Can't we at

least be friends until this is all settled?"

"Friends?" Shampoo blinked, then seemed to consider it for a

moment, "Boy be friend to Amazon girl? Is possible?"

"Why not?" he asked her, "Unless you really do hate men, that

is..."

"No," Shampoo shook her head negatively, then smiled all the

more, "No hate men, or boy for that matter. You worthy fighter.

Maybe you come to Joketsuzoku? We need good men like you,

Saotome."

"I'm flattered," he said as he took his shirt off and started to

wring out the moisture, "But my home is in Nerima."

Shampoo's eyes got wide as she studied Ranma's chest, which

was lean and rippling with compact muscles as he continued to

squeeze the shirt until it were merely damp, then he flipped it

several times to prevent it from becoming wrinkled. Suddenly

Shampoo looked hastily away, blushing furiously and hoping that

the boy would not notice. She unconsciously compared his

manly look to what she vividly remembered of Nabiki's male

profile.

"We'd better get back to the house," Ranma said, "Nabiki's going

to need our help if she's to find a cure for this Cat Tongue

business."

"You like Nabiki in girl form, yes?" Shampoo asked him.

Ranma blinked, "Of course I do! Why would you think

otherwise?"

"You like her even if she no woman?" Shampoo persisted.

Ranma just smiled before putting his shirt back on, "I like her

even when she's a guy, but I want to marry her as a woman. The

person inside is the one I want to spend time with, I just feel a lot

better about doing the other stuff when she's in her natural shape.

Does that make sense?"

"Japanese very strange people," Shampoo murmured, "But boy

make sense to Shampoo."

"Well then," Ranma smiled, "That's at least one thing we've got

in common, right?"

"Ah," Shampoo studied him, then said, "Shampoo no mind

Nabiki...either way. She still Airen."

"Oh," he said, then shrugged, "Well, that's you're business, not

mine. I'm just telling you I'm not giving up on her no matter

what gender she's stuck as. I suppose we could have fun as a

couple of guys, doing guy things together..."

"It...no necessary be so," Shampoo slowly murmured,

"Shampoo...know way to...help Airen."

Ranma looked surprised, not that she knew but that she would

volunteer the information, "What about your Great

Grandmother?"

"Hiibaachan...no like," Shampoo swallowed, "But Shampoo no

marry her, she marry Nabiki."

Ranma nodded, "Better tell me what you know, then, on the way

back to the House..."

"I just want you to know that I still haven't forgiven you for what

you did when you came into my house and kidnapped...um...P-

chan," Akane lamely reminded herself that Kodachi was not

privy to the Joketsuzoku curses.

"I am sorry about that, Akane-chan," Kodachi said at her humble

best, kneeling before Akane's bed as though their positions were

reversed and Akane were a nobleman's daughter, "I didn't know

she was your pet or I might not have done what I did. I was just

looking for some ammunition and it seemed like such a harmless

little prank..."

Kodachi glared to the side as Keiko gave a derisive snort then

resolutely turned her eyes back towards Akane.

"P-chan isn't my pet, 'Dachi," Akane explained patiently as she

sat on her bed staring down at her best friend as if trying to

decide how best to explain the situation, "She belongs to Ukyo,

and she's very mad at you for doing that with her pet cat..."

"Yeah," Keiko chuckled, "Try playing with your own pussy."

Kodachi rounded on her and said, "Why are you even here,

you...Peasant? Must you always get underfoot in everything I

do...?"

"Well, gee, I don't know," Keiko regarded her with a facetious

tone in her voice, "Maybe if you stop picking on my friends I

might consider letting bygones be bygones..."

"Keiko-san," Akane sighed, "Kodachi...I don't want to lecture you

like some dried up harridan, but you've got to stop playing these

sick jokes or somebody is going to get hurt. I can't stand the

thought of you getting in trouble or maybe worse because you

couldn't stop yourself in time. You really want for somebody to

lock you up, maybe in the booby hatch?"

"Your concern is very touching," Kodachi said without a trace of

her usual sarcasm, "And I do know that sometimes I get a bit

carried away on impulse, but you know I'd never do anything

really nasty. I'm not some compulsive, swooning, poetry-

spouting idiot like my brother, Tachi..."

"Want to bet?" Keiko said, but again Akane fixed her with a

sobering look so she said, "Just watch yourself around Ucchan.

She hasn't forgiven you yet, and she's pretty good with the

Spatula of hers. I wouldn't want to be on the receiving end when

she's really angry.

"The Tomboy does not concern me," Kodachi said haughtily,

"But you may inform her that I will leave her silly pet alone in the

future, if it makes you happy, Akane-chan."

"That's a start," Akane replied with a slight smile, "But try to

avoid Ukyo just the same, unless you'd like to apologize to her in

person."

"Apologize to that cross dressing Hentai?" Kodachi's superior

smirk was back in place, "More like send my condolences for

being betrothed to that idiot, Ranma, who treated you so shabbily

for all of these years."

"Yeah, well...Ranma's changed," Akane squirmed a bit before

mumbling, "For the better, actually, ever since he got engaged to

my sister..."

"One Hentai attracted to another," Kodachi mused, then saw the

look Akane gave her and said, "Oh, very well...I suppose they do

make for a good match, at least I don't hear them fighting all of

the time. Are you sure it's love? I found it rather boring waiting

for him to stammer out one of his lame attempts at conversation.

Now your cousin Kaneda, on the other hand...now he doesn't

have to say anything, just stand there and look pretty and I swoon

like a schoolgirl..."

"Maybe that's because you are a schoolgirl," Keiko snorted, "A

silly, pampered virgin..."

"What did you just call me?" Kodachi's tone arched dangerously

as she swiveled her attention in Keiko's directly.

"Uh oh," Akane murmured to herself, sensing an impending

catfight.

"You heard me," Keiko smirked, "An inexperienced, over-

privileged romantic little twit who doesn't know what real love is

and probably wouldn't recognize it if the person of your dreams

hit you with a giant mallet. I think you're full of pretensions and

you think your money can buy you the things your daddy never

had the heart to, like a good spanking."

"Leave my father out of this," Kodachi's tone was murderously

deadly. She sat there fuming for several tense seconds, then

finally relaxed and put on airs, "Oh, Akane-chan, your friend is

most amusing in her coarse and boorish ways, but I do not see

how you can learn to put up with her."

"Maybe because I don't need to use narcotics to drug my dates

into submission," Keiko responded.

Akane looked at Keiko in alarm. Was the redheaded kickboxer

trying to start a fight? She sure seemed to be pushing all the

right buttons with Kodachi, if that was her intention!

"Like I said," Kodachi's tone was as brittle as ice, "Why does she

permit you to stay here?"

"Because I'm her guest," Keiko replied, "And I have no where

else to go."

"I see," Kodachi sensed a possible avenue for retaliation, "And

have you no family nor friends to take you in?"

"My mother is dead," Keiko's tone stated flatly, "Or worse than

dead. My father never married her and went back to the United

States, where he came from. The rest of my family on my

mother's side disowned me. I haven't seen any of them in years,

end of statement."

"I see," Kodachi's eyes narrowed, "Nisei. I can't say that I'm

much surprised, you being so obviously of mongrel origins. But

surely you could claim American citizenship if you wished to find

your father?"

"Why would I want to find him?" Keiko asked, "He stopped

visiting me when I was seven. He taught me about Kickboxing

and that's the most I owe him, besides my existence. Besides

that, what's waiting for me in America? I don't know anybody

there, I don't even speak their language."

"I sense bitterness in your tone," Kodachi's eyes narrowed, this

time from other than malevolent intentions, "Has life treated you

so unkindly?"

"I've had my share of hard knocks," Keiko inclined her head to

study Kodachi with a neutral expression, "So what's your point?"

"It simply seems curious that your Japanese is so formal and

precise one minute, then quite colloquial the next," Kodachi was

feeling her way at this moment, uncertain where to find the chink

in Keiko's armor, which came up the moment her past

mentioned. Strong defenses meant deep personal attachment to

some deep buried trauma that could serve in lieu of a weakness.

She shifted her tactics again as she smiled and said, "My guess is

that your mother tried to raise you to be a lady, only she was not

there for you when you learned the harsher lessons that have

shaped you."

Now it looked to Akane as if Keiko were about to attack

Kodachi, so swiftly did the mood shift before her eyes as she

watched this pair with horrified fascination, unable to raise the

objections that she would normally use to bring an end to

impending troubles. Kodachi and Keiko were evidently trying to

wound one another with words, and this was a type of sport that

had other consequences beside the physical damage to which a

physical brawl might lead.

Unfortunately it was also a battlefield in which Akane herself

was more often a casualty rather than the victor.

"Close enough," Keiko finally said, then with great effort let her

anger go as she took a deep breath and said, "If you call being

captured by South China Sea Pirates and sold into slavery for

three years a harsh lesson."

Now Kodachi could not conceal her surprise as she gasped, "You

were a...?"

"Slave?" Keiko smiled without humor, "More like part

concubine, part gladiator, part personal pet. I've got scars in

places you don't even want to hear about, Kuno-san, and some of

those are from body piercing-without anesthesia, mind you.

Don't tell me about personal pain, I've already done my time in

the office."

"Ah..." Kodachi seemed momentarily at a loss before she finally

managed a weak, "I see...I have heard...stories about

such...experiences as this..."

"Well, don't look to see mine in the latest Foreign Travels

Journal," Keiko growled, "And some parts are too sensitive and

graphic for people in our age group. I suppose you wouldn't

consider it ill treatment for a low bred Mongrel such as myself,

finding out that I actually spent time in a real Kennel eating dog

food in a cage."

Kodachi actually flinched from the heat of those words and very

quietly murmured, "I am not without compassion, or a heart, no

matter what else you think of me. I'm sorry for having broached

such a delicate subject."

Keiko took a deep breath as if to regain composure, but her smile

was not the usual cheerful one she wore that made her seem like

the happiest person alive, "Forget it. What's past is past, and it

wasn't all bad. I've got a few good memories to go with the bad

stuff, and at least I learned some important tips about personal

grooming."

The joke went flat the moment it left her mouth, and Keiko saw

that neither Kodachi nor Akane was laughing. She gave it up

with another sigh and said, "I'm sorry I snapped at you just now.

I know you haven't seen the stuff I've seen, but it was wrong to

call you a...inexperienced."

"I...think maybe that is a good thing in this instance," Kodachi

replied, "But I would thank you not to mention it to the other girls

at my school. The administration values Modesty and Chastity in

young girls before all virtues, but many of us do not. I mistook

your admission for a boast, and for that I am truly sorry."

"Who-ho," Keiko eyed Kodachi with obvious amusement this

time, "Don't tell me I was right? A sweet rose like you is still

unplucked? What, are the boys around here dumb and blind? I'd

have thought you'd have tons of suitors clamoring for your hand,

not to mention how popular you must be with the ladies."

Keiko winked as she said this, but for some reason Kodachi

actually found herself blushing. She lamely stammered, "Ah,

well...there are a few boys who...well, they're just boys. As for

my fellow students, many of them fear and resent me but I'm not

actually..."

It suddenly occurred to her what Keiko had actually been

implying. Her eyes went wide and then she really did blush, and

got angry.

"Are you suggesting that I could be in any way like you?" she

stammered in angry retort, "A-A.."

"A Lesbian?" Keiko smirked, "Or did you mean to say Hentai?"

Keiko flushed furiously and looked down, "I'm not like that...I've

never even..."

"If I had a yen for every person I've ever heard say that," Keiko

rolled her eyes, "What, not even a fantasy? Never looked at a girl

and admired her from afar, or brushed hands with someone by

'accident' and made some pretty excuse to cover up with

modesty? Never looked at an attractive female teacher and

wondered what it would be like to be with an older, more

experienced sister? Never even looked at yourself in the mirror

and fantasized about someone touching you in the places you

most want to be touched..."

"Ah..." Kodachi looked more flustered than ever and made a

show of fanning herself with one hand, "That's...really quite an

interesting list you make out..."

"I'm describing my childhood about the time I started having

fantasies about other students," Keiko replied, "Funny thing was

that the boys never caught my interest, even back then. I've since

learned that most men have to cope with a set of raging hormones

that compel them to behave like lovesick puppies throughout

most of their adult life. They don't have monthly cycles the same

way we do, it's there with them all of the time. Some never learn

to control their urges, others are afraid to even try, while some

like to believe in something pure and unsullied when they think

at all about a woman. I've met all kinds, and the purists are the

worst because they think any woman with experience is a Whore,

and thus practically worthless."

Kodachi was looking at her with very round eyes, as was Akane.

This was a more intense side to Keiko's personality than any of

them had ever seen, and yet her tone was mesmerizing, a stark

contrast from Kodachi's vampish behavior, which only pretended

to sophistication. Keiko was the real thing in its rawer,

unprocessed form, and in terms of life experience she was an

acknowledged blackbelt.

Keiko drew a deep breath and said, "Madam Lao, who in many

ways shaped what I am today, also taught me to respect myself,

no matter what degrading things I would have to do in order to

stay alive. The fact that I was able to keep my sanity at all was

largely due to her training, which was as much in the sensual arts

as the Martial and Mystical arts. I know every chapter of the

Kama Sutra by rote, and I've practiced them with both sexes. I've

done it in ways you can't even imagine the human body could

attain, and I've known the heights of pleasure so bone-shaking

and intense that words would utterly fail to describe. Yes I've

known all of that, but I've only known real love with just one

partner, and that's Tendo Nabiki. If it surprises you to know this

about me, Kuno-san, then just chalk it up to Karma."

For once in her whole life Kodachi seemed devoid of clever

witticisms. Akane was also staring at her, but she managed at

last to remark, "The way you describe your former...owner...I'd

almost think you cared about her...which I have to say sounds

incredible, considering what she put you through, Keiko-chan."

Keiko smiled at being called that and said, "Lao Kung is a

vicious pirate, smuggler, slaver, flesh peddler, rogue and

renegade, not to mention other things that it's not polite to bring

up. She could torture me for days, then cuddle me as if I was a

long-lost child in her arms and she was a kindly schoolmarm.

She played mind games with my head, forced me to confront

issues no one should even have to face alone and taught me

fighting skills that required a lot of pain to master. But

yeah...sometimes I actually miss her. I guess I must be crazy, but

even a slave can look forward to a few bright moments of hope.

Hope was all that sustained me some day, after Lao sold me to

that pig in Hong Kong..."

She sighed, then smiled her usual affable smile and said, "Well,

I've shocked you girls enough for one day. Think I'll take a hot

bath before anybody else thinks about it, then I'll get ready for

supper. If Nab-chan wants to know where I am, tell her I won't

mind the company while I'm soaking..."

She started to leave the room when Akane's voice stopped her

again, "Keiko-chan..."

Keiko turned around and looked at her, "Hai, Akane-chan?"

Akane seemed to be struggling for words, then finally said,

"What's it like...making love to another woman?"

Kodachi turned to gape at her while Keiko merely inclined her

head and lifted one crimson eyebrow, "I'm not sure if I can

describe it to your satisfaction. It's different from the way you do

it with a man, but then most of the men I've had pawing over me

varied in quality and skill level. I just know I liked being with

the women much better."

Akane made several attempts to get her next question out, then

finally blurted, "I just want to understand you better...I mean,

Oni-chan, Nabiki...the way you look at her as if you see someone

else...that the rest of us don't see..."

Keiko closed the door that she had partially opened and turned

around with a questioning look. She saw Kodachi staring at

Akane before glancing back at her, while Akane was blushing

furiously while trying not to look away or betray the mix of

emotions she was feeling.

"What I feel with a woman is magic," Keiko gently replied,

"Some men expect women to have all the knowledge and

experience of making love, yet they don't want us to actually be

experienced, just know how to please them. They often don't

know what they want themselves, but they expect us to know

implicitly. If I'm going to show you anything meaningful it's

going to have to include a demonstration."

Akane swallowed while Kodachi looked at Keiko with very

round eyes. Keiko remained where she was standing with her

back to the door, one leg thrust out in front of the other in a coy

Tomboy manner she often adopted in these situations. She saw

the emotional conflict on the faces of both young women and

waited patiently for their resolution. If they told her to get lost

she would simply turn around and leave them. It would not be

her first rejection, and she had survived so many that it hardly

even counted.

At last Akane looked down at her bed and said, "Okay. I guess I

can accept that. How about you, 'Dachi?"

"Me?" Kodachi's voice was so tiny it could have been spoken by

a girl a third her age. After only a few seconds of dramatic pause

she softly nodded, "I...suppose...why not? All right."

Keiko slowly smiled at them both and said, "I was wondering

when you two were going to say that..."

Continued.

Comments/Criticism/Holy Jihad, Batman?:

shadowmane ndti/net

It's always hard to know just how far to go in a story such as this

beyond where you violate the boundaries of good taste and have

character do things so Out-of-Character that the reader will never

accept them. I've tried to walk carefully here, given what I think

or imagine I know about the parties concerned, and I hope I

managed a reasonable balance. I've always thought some people

just needed a good lay to get their twisted psyches together, but

what effect will this have on the likes of Kodachi? Will Akane

emerge from this experience with a better understanding of

Nabiki? Will Ranma and Shampoo actually be friends this time

around? Will Ukyo go ballistic when she finds out who her new

co-tenant is?

What do you think?(Snicker)

Next time on Nabiki 1/2: Restaurant, the Smorgasbord of Love!

Be there.

If you wish to check out my other works, Please check out my

Fanfiction webpage at: . or

it's mirror site at: ~

All related chapters of this series can be found there along with my

other works.


	12. Chapter 12

Nabiki 1/2

Chapter 12, Part 1.

By

Jim Robert Bader

Inspired by the works of Rumiko Takahashi;

All rights go to her, the publishers and distributors

Of the Ranma 1/2 Series.

(Based on the Altered Destinies Series by

Wade Tritschler and Others;

Only some characters and situations were created by me,

The rest is shared Fanfiction, so please don't sue me)

"SHAMPOO!" screamed Ukyo as she came charging into the

yard with Bakers Peal in hand her eyes flashing murderous

intentions.

"What Spatula girl now want?" Shampoo asked without the least

trace of concern in her voice, while Ranma looked pale beside

her.

Ukyo came to a halt only a few steps away, breathing heavily

from other than any exertion on her part, "I've just been on the

phone with my father and he tells me the restaurant that I've been

waiting for all my life has just gained a new co-owner!

Somebody made a deal with the previous owner and insisted on

an iron-clad contract that requires me to be a co-tenant in my own

place-AND GUESS WHO THE OTHER PARTY IN THIS

DEAL TURNS OUT TO BE?"

Shampoo suddenly looked at her wide-eyed, "Great

Grandmother?"

"BINGO!" Ukyo cried as she leapt forward with her spatula

raised to attack.

Ranma suddenly thrust himself in her path, arms raised to deflect

the weapon, but Ukyo managed to stop herself in time.

"Get out of my way, Ran-chan!" Ukyo hissed, "This is between

me and that purple-haired harlot..."

"No, Ucchan," Ranma replied, "No fighting! Let's try and talk

this out..."

"Talk?" Ukyo almost screeched at him, shaking visibly in anger,

"All my life I've been waiting for the moment when my Dad

would give me his trust and allow me to manage my own

restaurant, and who has to go and spoil the moment? No way am

I taking this calmly! This can only be settled in blood..."

"And what has Shampoo got to do with this?" Ranma said

calmly, "Nothing! You can't blame her for what her Great

Grandmother is doing on behalf of Shampoo's cousin! This isn't

her fault, so find another target!"

"But...Ranchan..." Ukyo's voice still shook, but this time not from

anger.

"Why boy interfere in Shampoo challenge?" Shampoo moved

around him, looking at Ranma with a curious expression before

coming to stand before Ukyo, "Shampoo understand why Spatula

girl mad. Shampoo know what mean to have dream other spoil.

Shampoo no blame Spatula girl for anger..."

"Would you stop calling me that?" Ukyo's voice still sounded

raw, and she seemed almost on the verge of crying, "I'm Kuonji

Ukyo, not 'Spatula Girl,' I'm a human being with honest needs,

and somehow you Amazons keep getting in the way of

everything..."

"If Kuonji Ukyo feel that way, then Shampoo no argue,"

Shampoo said with firm resolution, "Take best shot, Shampoo no

avoid you."

Ukyo blinked, "W-what...?"

"If Ukyo want revenge on Amazons, then Shampoo no dodge,"

Shampoo said firmly, "Shampoo... feel Ukyo no ask for trouble.

Ukyo make mistake, but no ask for marriage. Ukyo defend

Airen, Shampoo owe that. Ukyo no want Great Grandmother

interfere in life, Shampoo very sorry. Great Grandmother do

what Elder think best, but Shampoo no like see this way. Ukyo

have pain, Shampoo know pain. If pain need show, then show.

Shampoo no stop you."

"Sh-Shampoo?" Ukyo was trembling now, then slowly she sank

to her knees, clutching her Bakers Peal for support as she broke

down and sobbed into her shoulder.

Shampoo stood looking down at her as if uncertain what was

required. Ranma knelt down and placed a hand on Ukyo's

shoulder and said, "Ucchan...what does this mean? That old

ghoul didn't take the restaurant from you?"

"Worse," Ukyo's voice stifled a sob and she grit her teeth before

she answered, "It means she's now my partner...and my own

father signed the deed. If I put my signature on the contract now,

then I'll be signing away my rights to run my own business as I

see fit! It's hopeless!"

"Great Grandmother..." Shampoo paused before continuing, "She

force you make choice, not let you set down roots that keep you

from returning to Joketsuzoku."

"Damn her," Ukyo's fists tightened on the handle of her weapon

as she spat at the ground, "Damn you all for doing this to me..."

"Ucchan..." Ranma said, wanting to say or do something to

comfort her. If there was one thing he could not bear it was

seeing a woman cry, any woman, either friend or iinazuke.

"She's gone too far this time," a masculine voice said, and Ranma

turned to see Nabiki standing there beside his father, "That old

woman has got to learn her limits."

"Airen?" Shampoo looked to Nabiki in confusion.

"Shampoo," Nabiki said, "I heard what you just told Ukyo, and I

think you're starting to understand the awful mess your Great

Grandmother has put all of us into. I want to know if you're

sincere in wanting to help, or is this just your way of dealing with

feeling guilty."

"Airen," Shampoo winced, "You no doubt Shampoo? Shampoo

no want make others unhappy..."

"You just want to be happy," Nabiki finished for her, "But there's

a price for that happiness: You have to be willing to defy your

own Great Grandmother."

"Defy Elder?" Shampoo's voice quailed, but the uncertainty in her

voice was a question, as if the thought had never really occurred

to her before now, "Shampoo no want face anger of Great

Grandmother...but...if Airen mean to defy...then Shampoo no

have choice. Shampoo is Airen's wife. Airen decide what is

right. Shampoo...Shampoo stand with Airen."

Ukyo slowly turned to look up at her, confusion and hope in her

eyes as she said, "Can...can you tell me what to do? I don't know

anything about Amazon laws, but..."

"You have choice," Shampoo said softly, "Must do right by

Perfume Cousin, but no be forced go Joketsuzoku if stand with

Airen and Shampoo. Ranma also stand by Airen. Must be

united...make...make Elder see that choice has consequences.

Elder one voice...other voices unite, can challenge Elder."

"Is this possible?" Genma asked, "Is there a special provision in

your laws that allows you to challenge the authority of an Elder?"

Shampoo nodded slowly, "Is choice of every Amazon to make

challenge. Elders define law, but no tyrants. Law is greater than

Elders. Elders interpret law to fit conditions...very strange cases

rise that need special interpretation. For every law...several

different interpretations..."

"In other words they mediate like Jurists," Nabiki said

thoughtfully, "Part Legislative body, part High Priest, part Judge.

Very interesting. The next logical question is: can we defend

ourselves without having to use violence?"

"No," Shampoo shook her head, "If we in village Shampoo Airen

could appeal to body of Elders make special ruling. Great

Grandmother greatest of Leaders, but she have rivals, no agree all

time. If most no agree, Great Grandmother back down..."

"Great," Ukyo sniffed, "Then all we'd have to do is go to

Joketsuzoku."

"No good idea for you," Shampoo warned, "Great Grandmother

very cunning, take excuse to throw you in Nannichuan, Spring of

Drowned man. Maybe throw Ranma into Nyannichuan just for

spite, turn boy into girl, maybe weaken before Elders."

"Not much on fair play, is she?" Nabiki snorted.

"Great Grandmother only respect good fighter and law,"

Shampoo answered, "She do what she think right for Amazons.

Joketsuzoku needs strong warriors. You impress Great

Grandmother with skill, she maybe like you, be charitable,"

Shampoo sighed and added with resignation, "If defy she punish.

Shampoo know she risk Great Grandmother's anger if go against

judgement. She punish Shampoo, maybe take to Jusenkyo."

"She's deliberately curse you?" Ranma gasped, "Her own Great

Grandmother?"

"Hiibaachan very proud," Shampoo replied, "No like when

challenged. Maybe punish Shampoo turn her into...thing Airen

most fear, Maonnichuan, same as Cousin."

"The spring of drowned..." Nabiki paled, "And she would do that,

the old ghoul!"

"I take it then that challenging her means mortal combat?" Ukyo

asked in resignation.

"That would sound inevitable," Genma said grimly, "Trouble is, I

don't think even you could face her at your training level, Nabiki-

chan."

"I've already gone up against her once," Nabiki nodded grimly,

"She was taking it easy with me and I barely held my own. She's

too fast and skilled and knows techniques none of us have ever

heard of, and we already know how dangerous it is to let her get

close enough to touch you."

"What if we all came at her at once?" Ukyo suggested, "Surely

we could beat her with force of numbers?"

"That wouldn't be very honorable," Ranma said with a sigh, "But

it might be our only chance.

Shampoo shook her head, "No, even that no be enough for Great

Grandmother. One or many, she still defeat us."

Nabiki noticed that Shampoo was including herself in that

estimation and decided to push forward, "Would she respect a

united front, or is it up to one individual to defeat her?"

"Great Grandmother respect force," Shampoo replied, "But force

no change mind. If defeated she accept you right to decide, she

no force issue, but...you no defeat her. Can only be strong,

impress Great Grandmother, be great warrior, earn right to fair

hearing."

"And how do I do that?" Nabiki asked, pressing ahead, "Become

a better warrior? Learn new techniques, impress her with my

knowledge?"

"That work," Shampoo nodded, "Maybe you show you progress,

she listen. Maybe show one day you good enough defeat her..."

"I made it!" a voice gasped from the vicinity of the dojo, "I'm

back at the Tendo House...at last..."

"Ryoga-kun?" Ukyo said as they all turned to see the perpetually

lost boy clinging to the doorframe, looking ready to collapse.

"Where have you been?" Ranma asked, "We've...um...Akane's

been worried sick about you since you didn't show up last night.

We thought you'd wandered off and gotten lost..."

"I did," Ryoga said, "When everybody got up to see who was

doing the shouting I somehow found myself in the closet, and

then later I tried to find the bathroom and wound up outside, then

I tried to make it back and found myself in the dojo, and then

when I tried to make my way back to the house..."

"All right," Nabiki sighed, "We get the point. How did you

finally get back here?"

"A nice old lady pointed me in the right direction," Ryoga

frowned, "She gave me something that she wanted me to give to

you, it's in my back pack," Ryoga reached behind himself and

started fishing out a brown bag of chestnuts, which he handed

over to Nabiki.

"For me?" Nabiki took the chestnuts in hand then casually turned

a look towards Shampoo and said, "You know what this is

about?"

Shampoo looked at the bag, then at Ryoga, "Great Grandmother

give this?"

Ryoga frowned, "She was your Grandmother? She mentioned

you, something about you knowing what to do, whatever that

mean..."

"It mean..." Shampoo frowned, looking worried, "She want

Shampoo train Airen...teach her special Amazon technique..."

"Kachu Tenshin Amaguriken?" Genma asked her, then smiled as

he saw Shampoo look at him and said, "That speed technique you

demonstrated to us a little while ago. You mentioned it again to

a certain Panda..."

Shampoo nodded, then squared her shoulders and said, "I teach

Airen technique. You learn speed, improve as fighter, then

maybe Great Grandmother respect you."

"This is too easy," Ranma frowned, "She's goading you into it,

Nabiki-chan."

"Obviously," Nabiki nodded, "Unfortunately I don't see a lot of

other options besides this one. Okay, Sham-chan, show me what

I need to know. How exactly is this technique mastered?"

"First we start pit-fire," Shampoo said calmly, "Then throw

chestnuts in, then pull out with bare hands..."

"Nani?" Ukyo blurted, "That's it? You pull nuts out of a fire?"

"Why you think it have name?" Shampoo looked at her blandly,

"If no get burned, then you speed good enough to face Great

Grandmother."

"Well, I'll try anything at this point," Nabiki sighed, "Ucchan,

would you mind helping Ryoga-kun find the house? He looks

ready to drop dead from hunger. Have Kasumi serve him some

noodles."

"All right, Nab-chan," Ukyo replied, taking Ryoga by the hand

and all but dragging him along.

"This technique sounds incredible," Ranma was saying, "You can

actually move fast enough to pull nuts out of a fire without

burning your hands?"

"I've heard of stranger training methods," Nabiki shrugged, "If

Shampoo thinks I can master it, then it should be a cake-walk."

"Shampoo demonstrate," she said, "After we get fire going..."

Sometime later Shampoo calmly sat back with a pile of semi-

roasted chestnuts set before her as she looked to Nabiki and said,

"You try again? You getting better."

"Ah..." Nabiki looked at his singed and bandaged fingers then

sighed, "Who am I kidding? I can't even bring myself to get near

to the fire! Ranma, maybe you'd better try again...?"

"All right," Ranma sat down at her side again as Shampoo

dumped a fresh handful of nuts into the fire, then Ranma

composed himself as best he was able, ignoring the heat as he

concentrated on the objective, exactly as Shampoo had instructed.

He suddenly moved, and his hands became a blur. Moments

later he was blowing on his fingers while a small pile of nuts

were gathered in his lap, smoldering slightly.

"Ow!" he winced, "Guess I need to work more on my

concentration..."

"You very impressive," Shampoo marveled, "You learn quick for

novice. Only do for less than hour and already almost as fast as

Shampoo. No fast as Perfume, but very promising for beginner."

"Thanks," he smiled lopsidedly, then sighed, "What good does it

to you if I learn this technique before you, Nabiki? I thought you

were the one who had to learn to move faster?"

"It's called having a Control element, Ran-chan," Nabiki

explained, "Every science experiment needs a control to duplicate

or confirm test results. In this case you've proven that Shampoo's

technique is valid and that I should have been able to master it by

now. The problem is that I can't get close enough to the fire to

even thrust my hand in, let alone avoid burning."

"Maybe you're going about the problem the wrong way," Ukyo

frowned, "Maybe fire isn't the answer."

They all turned to look at her, and she squirmed slightly before

resuming, "I just had a thought. I trained in my own speed

technique when I was growing up. It involved learning to flip

spatulas very quickly over a hot burner. Of course I sometimes

burned my hands so bad that I couldn't get near a stove for days,

so I kept in shape by practicing with ice..."

"Ice?" Nabiki asked her.

"It's kind of complicated," Ukyo shrugged, "I was always

experimenting with new ways to turn kitchen implements into

weapons. My family's Martial Arts system was developed

around cooking. We learned to improvise by changing formulas

and recipes on the fly..."

"Not a bad idea," Nabiki mused, then paused before saying,

"Maybe ice is the key. Ice cubes floating on hot water...well,

tepid water is good enough to scald me right now...but the point

is learning to move fast enough to grab the cubes without burning

my fingers, then maybe I could work my way up to actual fire..."

"Good thinking, Nabiki-chan," Genma said approvingly, "You

always could find the hidden answer to every riddle, like that

Gordian Knot you like to refer to..."

"Gordian Knot?" Ranma asked.

"And old reference to creative problem solving, Ranma," Nabiki

smiled, "The Macedonian Alexander the Great once faced a

riddle in a place called Gordium where legend had it that a

certain knot had been intricately tied by a master roper. Whoever

could solve the riddle of untying the Knot was said to be the one

who could conquer the world. Alexander solved the problem by

taking his sword and cutting the knot, a very early example of

Lateral thinking, centuries ahead of its time."

Shampoo sniffed, "Alexander in legends of Amazons. Is said he

fought Amazon in India and lost, later go back to Persia and die,

very tragic story."

"Cutting through a rope was better than trying to untie it?" Ukyo

wondered.

Ranma sniffed, "Maybe he just didn't want to go through the

bother, he took the direct route."

"Exactly," Nabiki smiled at him, "That's what I love about you,

Ranchan, Lateral thinking is in you is second nature."

"Hmm," Shampoo looked at them, more puzzled than angry, "So

maybe Airen try ice trick, then work way up to fire?"

"I'm afraid I'll have to go that route," Nabiki sighed, "Maybe you

should continue to train Ranma, though. He can use the extra

speed."

"Doesn't look so hard," Ukyo sniffed, "Bet I could master it in no

time."

"How much you bet?" Shampoo looked at her, smiling.

"Didn't know you gambled," Ukyo raised an eyebrow.

"Great Grandmother say life is greatest gamble," Shampoo

replied, "Not gamble often, but sometimes when stakes are

right."

"All right," Ukyo returned her smile, "If I learn to do this as fast

as Ranchan...um...you make my breakfast for a week, how's

that?"

"Why stop at breakfast?" Shampoo sniffed, "You no learn

technique, Ukyo make special Okonomiyaki for breakfasts and

dinner."

"Done," the two of them shook hands, for once in total

agreement.

Nabiki cast a glance back over her shoulder, then stepped outside

the dojo as Ranma returned to practicing the Amaguriken

technique. Genma accompanied her part way to the house,

murmuring softly in undertone, "They seem to be getting along

much better than a couple of days ago."

"I know," Nabiki halted halfway to the house and stared back at

the dojo, "Makes it harder to know what I'm going to do here. I

still want Ranma so bad that I can taste him, but I'm starting to

find it easier to have Shampoo around, and Ukyo...well, rival or

not, she's still one of my best friends. I don't want to hurt her."

"Growing up means making difficult choices," Genma sighed,

"Probably why I never did. I never could decide on the best way

to please everyone, so I guess I got into the habit of running away

from my problems."

"I'm surprised to hear you admit this," Nabiki marveled.

"You're surprised?" he chuckled, "It was Nodoka who pointed it

out to me the other day. She called me a child rather than a man,

can you believe it? But it's true...I couldn't bring myself to take

Ranma away from her except to offer terms that would appeal to

her pride, which is how I wound up making that suicide pact.

Then I found the job of raising Ranma by myself too

overwhelming, so I tried to leave him with your father, only Soun

was too cagey to be taken in that way. Then I wound up being

saddled with you because Soun needed some assurance...and I

guess I found it easier to be an uncle instead of a father."

His sigh was heartfelt as Nabiki looked at him sidelong. Very

quietly she said, "Perhaps it was for the best. You might not

have been a very good father, but you were a passable uncle, and

I guess I could have done worse. Who knows, if I'd stayed in my

own home after Mother died...I'd probably be a very different

person today, much sneakier and probably not a fighter."

"I'll still probably owe you for the rest of my life," Genma

snorted.

"Count on it," she turned away, "So what you're saying is that,

like it or not, I'm going to have to make a decision that will hurt

two other people I care for, three if you include Keiko."

"I'm not sure if that is what I'm saying," Genma replied, "But

pleasing everyone only happens in fables. Growing up means

making hard choices, but sometimes the answers are a lot

simpler than you imagine."

"You're not suggesting I marry them all, are you?" Nabiki

laughed, then waited to hear him confirm the joke. When he did

not she turned and looked at him, "Are you kidding?"

"Nabiki-chan," Genma replied, "Not everyone can live happily in

marriage. Somewhere there is always someone who is the perfect

match that makes your life complete. Finding them is the

problem, and in the meantime most of us make the best we can of

second best selections. Two people meet, sometimes they work

out, sometimes they do not, and often love fails to last as long as

the vows would have you believe. All I know is that I still love

Nodoka, even though I've shamed and hurt her repeatedly. I'm

surprised to find her still willing to abide by me after the many

things I've done. I almost half suspected her of taking up with

your father..." he paused, seeing her reaction and he hastily

waved the point away, "I know they are just friends. The point

is...a man can have doubts about himself and still care about the

person who means most in his life. Nodoka and I...we're not

really that good a match, but after all these years we've

gotten...used to each other. There are worse reasons for

marriage."

"Perhaps," Nabiki was very quiet as he stood where he was for a

time, then said, "I know I could be with Ranma forever and it

would only seem like a day. But with Shampoo...I know I'd be

very happy..."

"There was a time," Genma sighed, "Before the Reconstruction,

when a Samurai could have one wife and as many concubines as

he could support. Legally only one was his wife, but the wife

shared the house with the concubines and treated them like

sisters. The man could take his pleasure with all of them and still

maintain domestic harmony. Many of the best Samurai were

known for their loves. It is possible that fate is trying to tell you

something, if you can look past convention and see the clues to

the Lateral path for the Gordian Knot you're trying to solve."

Nabiki was very quiet as he digested this, then said,

"Sensei...sometimes you do amaze me."

"Sometimes I amaze myself," he replied, "It isn't an easy solution,

but it might be the best that I could recommend. Otherwise you

must resolve to disappoint some of those who care about you, to

betray the trust of one who seems to honestly love you, and force

another to betray the trust of her family. So much betrayal hardly

seems worthy of a great Martial Artist."

Nabiki was silent for a longer time before he finally said, "I'll

think about it."

"I know that you will," Genma smiled, "I believe that you can do

anything that you put your mind to. Your judgment in some

matters has always been better than my own."

"I've waited all these years to hear you say that," Nabiki smiled,

then sighed, "But who am I kidding here? Even if I master the

Amaguriken it's only one technique. This Cologne must know

thousands, and she trained Shampoo to be as good as she is!"

"That is a problem," Genma nodded, "She is quick and

determined and has experience on her side. From all reports she

appears to be one of the most formidable fighters alive...except

maybe for one other."

"One other?" Nabiki turned around to look at him, "You know

someone who's better?"

Genma blinked as if realizing he had just spoken aloud a thought

he'd meant to keep silent about, "Ah, no, that is...I didn't mean

that there was anyone..."

"Genma," Nabiki slowly growled, all too used to seeing him

fidget like this when he was avoiding a straight answer.

"No!" Genma suddenly cried, "Don't ask, don't even think it!

Some things are too terrible to even imagine! You have no

idea...!"

"Ojisama," she slowly pronounced, "Who is it?"

Genma seemed ready to faint, but before he could crack under

Nabiki's withering stare he heard his father say, "Don't tell her,

Saotome! Even on pain or torture or death, do not reveal our

terrible secret!"

"Father?" Nabiki turned an astonished look in his direction as

Tendo Soun's face mirrored the horrified look that seemed to

possess Saotome Genma.

"No!" Soun said adamantly, "No matter if the honor of our Family

is at stake, if even the Gods themselves demanded it, we could

never free...him..."

"Free?" Nabiki blinked, "Free whom?"

"Ah...did I say free?" Soun quailed, "Silly me, a slip of the

tongue! Of course I mean we must flee, as far as we can get from

all of this..."

"Otosan," Nabiki turned from him to Genma, "Ojisama...what is

it that's got you acting so silly? If you know someone who can

help me get the edge on Cologne..."

"Oh," Nodoka said as she came out onto the porch, "They must

mean their Sensei, Master Happosai."

"Gah!" both Genma and Soun cried, "You said his name! Now

he's sure to return! The evil will awaken!"

"What in the name of Amatarasu Omikami has gotten into the

pair of you?" Nabiki demanded, "And who the Hell is Master

Happosai?"

Both men cringed in terror as they looked at him with warding

motions. Nabiki sighed and looked to the one person who was

not acting like an idiot, "Can you help me out here, Aunt

Nodoka?"

"Master Happosai trained your father and uncle in the Martial

Arts," Nodoka replied, "I believe he's Genma's Grandfather, or

maybe he's your Great Grandfather too. I've only met him a few

times, a very strange fellow, not very pleasant to be around, but

certainly acknowledged as one of the greatest Martial Artists in

all of Japan."

"Formerly," Soun said, "He hasn't been seen by mortal man for

well over...ten years, Saotome?'

"At least that," Genma nodded, "We buried...I mean...we left the

Master shortly before I took you on your training Mission,

Nabiki-chan. We both trained under the Master, off and on, for

close to twenty years."

"Hai," Soun agreed, "And it was very rigorous training," he

clapped his hands and seemed to pray to the heavens, "Master,

forgive us for failing you in the end, but we had no choice if we

were to return to our families and the life you denied us..."

Nabiki shook his head trying to sort all of this out, "Maybe I

should get in touch with this Happosai if he's good enough to

have trained the both of you..."

"NO!" both men cried together, then Soun pleaded, "Daughter,

you mustn't! It's too dangerous, you have no idea of the perils..."

"Hey, isn't it my right to decide on that?" Nabiki looked from him

to Genma and growled, "I don't believe you two! My whole life

is in ruins and you're afraid to even talk about the one guy who

might have a chance at helping me beat Cologne..."

"Did you say Cologne?" a voice asked from right behind him.

Nabiki turned around and stared, but there was nobody in sight.

Then instinct caused him to look down at the stone temple next to

the Koi pond, and there was a tiny little gnome of a man looking

up at him with wizened features. He was somewhere in the

neighborhood of Cologne's age, but the look in his eyes was

young and bright with mischief.

Nabiki heard a double gasp, then he saw his father and Genma

fall down to their knees and bow in abject humility before this

new arrival, their tones pathetically pleading as they said in

chorus, "Master, you have returned to us! Forgive us, we are not

worthy!"

"I know, boys," the old man said as he lit a pipe and began to

smoke it, "But I'm here any way. Bet you never thought I'd get

out from behind that rock, eh?"

"Master," Soun said from where he groveled near Nabiki's feat,

"We had begun to hope-I mean!-we had given up hope of your

return...how did this come to happen?"

"Funny thing," the old man smiled, "A lightning bolt knocked

over a tree and it managed to disturb the prayer chains you put

around that boulder. Once it was gone I had no problem at all

breaking free, so here I am after ten long years, free and as fit as a

fiddle! Now what was that about Cologne again?"

"You're Master Happosai?" Nabiki slowly said in amazement.

"The one and only," his eyes twinkled brightly, "And who, may I

ask are you?"

"Tendo Nabiki," he replied.

"Tendo Nabiki?" Happosai sat bolt upright and looked at him,

"The hell you say! Tendo Nabiki is a sweet young thing who

should be about your age...have you no shame claiming to be

her? She ought to be a beautiful and voluptuous lady..."

"I am," Nabiki replied, "I mean...I usually am, but at the

moment..."

"You don't say?" the old man suddenly studied Nabiki with

greater scrutiny before remarking, "You're under some kind of a

spell, aren't you? One that's trapped you in this form, and

somehow Cologne's involved, am I right?"

"How did you...?" Nabiki gasped.

"I have my ways," the old man chuckled, then sobered

immediately, his face looking resolute and determined, "That old

bag has gone too far this time! Imagine doing this to a beautiful

lady! Must be jealous on account of her own waning looks.

Why, I remember when I was a younger man in training..."

"Master," Genma softly groveled, "Nabiki is my student and the

heir to the Anything Goes School. I know I did not consult you

in making this decision..."

"Quite all right," Happosai said, "I suppose it was the best you

could do, but I thought you were going to train your son to do

that. Well, never mind. I suppose I should be all wrathful and

vengeful about the trouble you two have caused me, but I

remember what it was like to be young, so I'll let bygones be

bygones...provided I receive a proper welcome in your house."

"Of course, Master," Soun replied, "My home is your home, and

thank you ever so much for your mercy..."

"Yeah, sure," Happosai said as he reached out and took Nabiki

by the hand, "Come along, son, and let's talk about your

problems. So, what do you normally look like, and how big's

your bust size?"

"Excuse me?" Nabiki blinked.

"Well, if we're going to get that old Crone to restore you to

normal it would help to motivate me by letting me know what

kind of a woman you usually are. A man can't fight properly

without his heart being set in the right place..."

"Ah, well," Nabiki hesitated, "I've got a photograph I could show

you..."

"That will do," the old man said as he lead the way into the

House while Nodoka stood to one side watching him pass, then

turned to see her husband and Soun remain prostrate upon the

ground as though afraid to move, and then she just sighed to

herself.

"I have a bad feeling about this," and something in her knew this

was an understatement...

Continued.

Comments/Criticism/Am I Crazy?/Probably:

shadowmane

Cologne has gone too far. She's brutalized and blackmailed

Nabiki into a corner, and now our hopping mad Tendo

Mercenary is fighting back with the most dangerous weapon in

the family arsenal. But is this cure worse than the affliction?

And what about that's going on upstairs? Will Ryoga

accidentally wander into Akane's room...and promptly wish he

hadn't? Who knows, I'm still guessing, but be with us next time

when we move to Defcon 3: Revenge of the Pervert! Be there.

Nabiki 1/2

Chapter 12, Part 2.

By

Jim Robert Bader

Inspired by the works of Rumiko Takahashi;

All rights go to her, the publishers and distributors

Of the Ranma 1/2 Series.

(Based on the Altered Destinies Series

by Wade Tritschler and Others;

Some characters and ideas were created by me,

The rest is shared Fanfiction, so please don't sue me)

"Nabiki-chan," Kasumi said as she saw him enter the room, and

she began to compose herself with great solemnity when

something moved from Nabiki's side and launched itself directly

at Kasumi.

"Howsabowya!" a happy dwarf cried out as he latched onto her

bosoms and began to snuggle there as he copped a feel like a

contented pervert.

Kasumi stood rigid where she was, staring ahead in blank

surprise, then slowly she looked down into the ancient face with

the little boy-eyes and just stared. The little man stared back, as

much in surprise at encountering no reaction, not even the

outrage he had expected. He looked at her and she looked back

for a long tense moment, neither of them saying a word while

time seemed to slow to a crawl with silence so absolute you could

have heard the fall of a dust mote.

Master Happosai found himself feeling very small, and for the

first time he could remember he actually felt ashamed of his

conduct. The look in this girl's wide, clear eyes were like that of

an innocent... no-not an innocent as the word was usually

defined. More like a kind of innocence that held no shame nor

grief to humanity, an innocence born of pure intentions rather

than the sheltered sort that could be despoiled by a careless

whisper.

For no reason he could define he found himself letting go,

landing at her feet with a contrite expression, looking very much

like a naughty little boy expecting to be scolded by his elders. In

contrast to this Kasumi just looked puzzled, then smiled, "Ohiyo,

Elder. I am Tendo Kasumi, are you a friend of my father's?"

Nabiki for his part had been frozen in paralyzed dismay, for the

moment unable to comprehend the behavior of the ancient

Master. The sheer idea of anyone having the effrontery to do that

with his sister was difficult to register, but when Kasumi spoke

in the same pleasant, unaffected manner that she usually had she

was galvanized to registering her outrage.

"Why you-Pervert!" Nabiki snarled, reaching down to lay one

hand upon the old gnome's shoulder.

What happened next was difficult to describe save that Nabiki

felt the old man touch his wrist with his pipe, and then suddenly

he was across the room making face-to-wall contact. He landed

awkwardly in a heap, too stunned to understand just how this had

happened.

"Oh my," he heard Kasumi murmur.

"Not too shabby," Happosai remarked as he relit his pipe, "But

you telegraphed your moves well in advance, and your attack was

sloppy, you were way too far off balance."

He took a puff as he studied the wall for another minute, then

turned as if recalling Kasumi's presence and said, "Forgive me

for not introducing myself, my dear, I am Master Happosai, your

father's Sensei, but you may call me Happy. I take it you are

Tendo Kasumi, his lovely and quite charming elder daughter?"

"Why, how clever of you to have figured that out," Kasumi said

brightly, "Father has not mentioned you in quite some time, but

I'm sure he will be glad to know his Sensei has come for a visit."

"He already knows, my dear," Happosai said pleasantly, "And

I'm sure he wouldn't mind if you did like a good little girl and

fetched your old Grandpa a nice hot cup of Cha..."

"Why you-!" Nabiki was on his feet again, unable to believe how

calmly his sister was taking this old man in stride as just another

Houseguest. He launched himself into a running leap and kicked

outward, only to find that pipe intercepting him again as he was

redirected into the nearest wall. His foot punched right through

to the other side but the rest of Nabiki's mass flopped down so

that he wound up hanging upside down by one leg, looking and

feeling enormously foolish.

"Oh my," Kasumi said again, "How did you do that?"

"A little secret I've picked up in more than a hundred years of

training," Happosai replied, coming to stand before Nabiki as he

tapped his pipe upon his chin, "I can see how much your Uncle

Genma has taught you in the last ten years, but you're sloppy and

your technique lacks finesse. I can see I'm going to have to work

to retrain you all over..."

"Oh yeah?" Nabiki arched his back and placed both palms

against the wall then levered himself so that he could pull his leg

out of the hole and flip himself back onto his feet. He prepared to

attack again when instinct and his native caution finally got the

better of his anger.

He looked down at Master Happosai, ignoring his rage,

swallowing pride and concentrating his focus on the little man,

trying to fathom how he kept deflecting Nabiki's attacks and

throwing him about as though he were a rag doll. Master

Happosai did not even come up to Kasumi's waist level, yet he

had put the fear the gods in both his father and Uncle, which was

reason enough to approach this fellow with caution.

Actually it wasn't surprising that a halfway competent fighter

could scare Genma. Her Sensei was a notorious coward who

never fought a battle unless he was confident of winning. His

father, on the other hand, was an honorable if excitable man, not

a coward precisely so much as a man who avoided unnecessary

conflict. Sometimes he was not sure what the exact distinction

was, but the one point that stuck out in Nabiki's mind was that

neither Genma nor father were the sorts to get as worked up as

they had been unless they knew that they were facing serious

danger.

Genma had trained her and he feared Master Happosai as he

feared no one, not even Nodoka. She had read his expression

often enough to know that the level of stark terror he experienced

at Happosai's arrival even exceeded that of when Chu Wan Phat

had ordered a henchman to gouge the old Panda's eyes out with a

fish hook, and Genma was not even tied up this time. That

meant that there was very good reason to be wary of Happosai.

"Old man..." Nabiki tentatively began, but Happosai merely

raised his pipe and said, "Tut-tut, I know you have questions, but

we'll get to them in another moment. Meanwhile I'd like to have

some tea and settle down for a bit. I'm not as young as I used to

be, and all this excitement is leaving me a little winded."

"But of course, Honored Sir," Kasumi bowed to him, "I'll fetch

your tea right away..." she paused before she could turn and

looked directly at Nabiki, her eyes suddenly locking on him as

though she wanted to say something, but could not quite get the

words out.

Instead her eyes roved over Nabiki and she licked her lips as if to

try and taste him at a distance. Her face was flush and her body

seemed warmer than usual as her nipple poked out from beneath

her dress and her overall attitude held none of the innocence she

had used upon Happosai.

"Uh, Sis?" Nabiki gently reminded, "The tea?"

"Oh," Kasumi started, recovering from her momentary trance as

she bowed and said, "Of course, at once, please excuse me."

She hurried out of the room just a bit too quickly to be the

normally calm and affable Kasumi everyone else was used to.

Nabiki just stared after his older sibling with dismay and

confusion, which was replaced by annoyance as he glared down

at Happosai, who was chuckling in amusement.

"So that's how it is around here, eh?" the old man's eyes twinkled

in boyish mirth, "I guess you see some of the advantages in

having a body like one of those Western Greek Gods. I'll bet

you're awfully popular with the ladies..."

"Too popular," Nabiki growled, "That's part of my problem, but

like I said, Gramps, I'm actually a woman."

"So?" he smiled, "That just means you know more ways to please

your dates, while boys your age usually have to guess and figure

it out by trial and error."

Nabiki felt sure that he would have gotten very angry once again,

but for some reason he found himself blushing furiously at the

gnome's evil insinuations, "Look, can we get back to Cologne?

She's my chief problem right now, not Kasumi."

"You sure about that?" this time Happosai was serious, as if

divining Nabiki's inner conflict, but he just sighed and said,

"You're right of course, Cologne is a problem. We met a long

time ago near the beginning of my first training mission..."

"Don't tell me you defeated her in battle?" Nabiki asked.

"What, do I look like that kind of an idiot?" he snorted, "Actually

she beat me, but I guess something about me intrigued her

enough that she let me hang around Joketsuzoku for a while to

get a look at village life and decide if I wanted to stay there. It

was a nice enough place, but I figured out before too long that it

wasn't a place where a man like me wanted to hang around. I

said my good-byes and took my leave of the Amazons and

haven't seen or heard much about them ever since. Cologne's an

exception, though...we've run into each other a time or two over

the years, and I can't say that she's improved much with age."

"So, other than being an old girl friend who used to have a thing

for you, what else can you tell me about her?" Nabiki asked.

"Only that she's the second deadliest fighter I've ever known, and

probably the only one still living," Happosai answered, "When I

first met her I never stood a chance, but she was kind enough to

show me a few techniques to help me improve my form, and the

next time I met her I was a lot better. I could probably take her

now if I wanted to, but who wants to spend the rest of their life in

virtual serfdom to that old tyrant?"

"Who indeed," Nabiki snorted, "I guess you really do see my

problem."

Happosai eyed Nabiki carefully then said, "You have a picture,

you said, of what you normally look like?"

"Right here," Nabiki walked over to a table where a recent

photograph had been taken of herself standing beside Ranma, not

too expertly held but decent enough not to cut off any essential

parts. He handed it to Happosai who studied the photo in its

frame for a long, quiet moment.

"So," he said, looking up at Nabiki again, then back at the photo,

"You really are a cutie."

For no reason Nabiki could determine he actually felt himself

blushing, then he looked up sharply as Happosai continued, "I

take it that the boy is Genma's son, Ranma?"

"My iinazuke," Nabiki replied, "We've only just met a few weeks

ago, but..."

Happosai's look sharpened, and then he smiled, "You've taken a

fancy to the boy, my-my! Genma and Soun always said they

wanted to unite their families to strengthen the Anything Goes

school, and it looks like you and Ranma are the result. Not a bad

choice at all, shows more sense than I thought those two had

between their lobes. Yes, we've definitely got to get you back

into your natural shape. The future of the Anything Goes school

hangs in the balance! Good thing this isn't one of those Jusenkyo

curses..."

"Eh?" Nabiki blinked, "Why so?"

"Those kinds of curses are permanent," Happosai replied, "It isn't

just your body that changes, the curse blends the spirit with

whatever last died in the springs. It becomes a part of their

Karma...haven't you ever heard the legends?"

"Uh...briefly, while Uncle and I were visiting the area," Nabiki

noted.

"The springs all have one source," Happosai resumed, "So you

can't use one to cancel out the other. Oh, Cologne told me it

might be possible if you found an uncontaminated spring, or

another cursed spring that had a different source, but otherwise

they don't blend, so you're stuck with whatever you wind up in.

Of course that doesn't apply in this case, though, so you'll excuse

an old man's rambling on like this. I just thought I'd bring it up

as a point of amusement."

"Hah, yeah," Nabiki said weakly, "Amusing. Um, say

Gramps...you wouldn't happen to know anything about a certain

Cat Tongue pressure point, would you?"

Happosai eyed her with a sagacious smile, "So that's your

problem, eh? Well, maybe I do know a few things that could be

of service..."

Nabiki winced at the thought of how obvious he was being.

Where had his negotiation skills vanished to that he gave away

the rice farm in front of this elder? With great effort at regaining

a studious expression he forced himself to ask, "How soon will it

take me to learn them?"

"Not so fast," the old man gave him a toothless grin and said,

"What do I get back in return?"

Nabiki rocked back on his heals in surprise and said, "I thought

you were doing this for the Honor of the school?"

His knowing smirk showed that he was far from taken in by her

little ruse, "Honor can't warm an old man's heart on cold and

lonely nights when he thinks back to his lost youth. I'll expect a

few concessions in return for training you in the basics. Do we

have an understanding?"

Nabiki felt as though she were bartering with the devil himself

and feared that her soul mind wind up forfeit. The one thing she

had learned early on was to never get involved in a blind contract.

Always know the terms of any deal in advance, and study the fine

print. Here she was being asked to go against the instincts of a

lifetime to trust a man who had just fondled his sister in broad

daylight!

Unfortunately he also had her over a barrel, and he knew it. She

was in a very poor bargaining position, and if her judgement was

right, any hesitation on her part would cause him to show

reluctance in teaching her what she really needed. Steeling

herself with clenched fists and bared teeth she said, "What do you

want me to do?"

"I'll let you know when the time is right," he smiled, offering his

hand, "Shake on it?"

Nabiki hesitated this time, but decided to risk hand-to-hand

conflict. Instead all the old man wanted was to touch her index

finger with his own, then something like electricity sparked

between them. He stood back and smiled, then said, "Now, come

along and let's enjoy some tea, and after we've meditated for a bit

I'll explain to you the problem in your attack pattern..."

Ranma had been too busy to pay much heed to what was going

on at the other end of the yard, having just made his ninth

attempt at mastering the Amaguriken. Now he was studying

Ukyo as she made her forth attempt, surprising him by snatching

out most of the chestnuts before singing her hands.

"Ah...almost got it that time!" Ukyo swore as she sucked on her

fingers.

"Almost only count with Exploding Rock trick," Shampoo smiled

in superior fashion, but inwardly she was very impressed with the

speed with which the Okonomiyaki chef was mastering this

technique. Ranma was faster, but Ukyo had a certain style and

grace to her movements that made Shampoo wonder what else

the other girl was capable of. This whole experience had been an

eye opener. Outsiders were not supposed to be this good,

especially at mastering Amazon secrets.

"This is a pretty good technique," Ranma said as he looked

questioningly at Shampoo, "How come you didn't try something

like this on me during our fight?"

Shampoo lost her smile as the question stunned her. Slowly she

started to frown as she asked herself the same question, then

aloud said to the boy, "Shampoo no think to use special attack.

No use Chi-blasts or other secret Amazon techniques either.

Shampoo fight boy on one-to-one level, too easy use attacks boy

no be able counter."

"Very sporting of you," Ukyo said, "Just the same I'm glad you

didn't actually try to hurt Ranchan."

Shampoo stared furiously at the fire. Had she not been trying?

At the time she was very angry with Ranma for his insensitive

comments, but rather than pound him as she had promised she

fought him fairly and was almost beaten. Looked at plainly now

she realized how dangerous had been her lack of tactics. If

Ranma had fought more aggressively...why...then he might have

won and become her alternate Airen!

"Shampoo...have good fight with Ranma," Shampoo softly

replied, "Ranma good fight for outsider male. Better than

Amazon men Shampoo know, including Mu Tsu..."

"Mousse?" Ranma asked with a puzzled look, "Who was he, an

old boyfriend of...?"

"NO!" Shampoo said adamantly, then caught herself and

remembered that they could hardly know about that aspect of her

past, "Mu Tsu...was friend to Shampoo and Perfume...but he very

stupid boy, he push himself, try make more than friend. No take

advice leave Shampoo and Cousin alone. We both defeat him

many time, but he still try force issue, no take hint..."

"Sounds like somebody I knew at my old School," Ukyo noted

with a wince, "But I thought you said your only friends were

Perfume and Lotion."

"Mu Tsu no friend," Shampoo sniffed, "He pest. Defeat him

when three year old, then again and again, he still try defeat

Shampoo and become husband."

"What happens if another guy beats you or Nabiki?" Ranma

asked, "Does that invalidate the marriage?"

"No simple," Shampoo shook her head, "Only way end marriage

is defeat Airen. If Shampoo defeat by other rival, then that rival

have claim. Challenge Airen, defeat Airen, then rival claim

Shampoo for wife. Shampoo become wife of superior fighter."

"So if somebody were good enough to beat both you and Nabiki

you'd have to give up your claim on her and go with him?" Ukyo

asked.

"Shampoo say no that simple," Shampoo said softly, "Only defeat

Shampoo, but must kill Airen, prevent next challenge. Only

death of Airen free Shampoo to marry again."

"Oh," Ranma winced while Ukyo looked horrified, and neither

looked willing to broach the subject again, for which Shampoo

felt enormously grateful.

Ukyo sighed, "Well, I hate to break this up, but I've got to go

inside and get ready. I'm meeting my father at the restaurant in a

little while, and that means I'm also going to have to meet my

new partner," she said the word with distaste, looking at

Shampoo but without the accusation.

"I'll come along," Ranma said, "I don't think you should see her

all by yourself at this time, Ucchan."

"Shampoo also come," Shampoo suddenly volunteered, "If Airen

permit. She no like see Great Grandmother take advantage of

Perfume Airen."

"Yeah, but she doesn't know it's me Perfume wants to marry,"

Ukyo looked at Ranma and said, "You sure you want to risk it,

Ranchan?"

"Doesn't look like I have a choice," Ranma sighed, "She'll be

after me one way or another."

"You Shampoo rival," Shampoo pointed out, "Great Grandmother

know this. She think boy obstacle, she may do bad things. Ukyo

is right, better you no go there."

"Thanks," Ranma smiled at her and said, "You know, in spite of

everything, you're really not all that bad. I hope we can be

friends when this is all over. I mean...if you don't mind having a

guy for a friend..."

"You no bad for outsider boy," Shampoo half-smiled, "No worse

than Mu Tsu. You only try do what right for Airen, Shampoo

know this."

"Right," Ukyo sighed as she got to her feet, "Hope we can finish

this another time. We still haven't settled that bet over which of

us is faster, Ranchan."

"Bet still good," Shampoo smiled, "Looking forward having good

Okonomiyaki."

"I'll certainly enjoy those delicious noodles you cook," Ukyo

smiled back at her, and the two seemed to enjoy a culinary

moment together while Ranma threw dirt upon the pit fire and

started to get up.

He turned around, intending to head for the house when he saw

his father and Soun still kneeling in the dirt and whimpering like

a pair of lost souls. He went up to them and said, "Otosan,

Ojisama? What's wrong?"

"Our worst nightmare has come true!" sobbed his father, "Run

and hide yourself, my boy, and hide the women with you!"

"What's this?" Ukyo blinked, "The world coming to an end or

something?"

"Something far more horrible!" Soun openly winced, "The Master

has returned to reap his vengeance on both our houses!"

"Master?" Ranma blinked, "What Master?"

"Our Master!" Genma looked up at his son through tear-stained

eyes, "My son, there is so much I wished to tell you, and now that

the end us upon us all..."

"Would stupid men make sense?" Shampoo sniffed, "Why

Ranma and Airen fathers act like such weaklings?"

"Yeah, what gives?" Ukyo asked, "Who's this Master you guys

are so worked up about?"

"Master Happosai," Soun replied, "The founder of our School, the

very embodiment of all we have so long dreaded..."

"Happosai?" Shampoo suddenly looked pale, which Ranma

caught as he turned a questioning look in her direction, "He

here?"

"You know about this?" he asked her curiously.

"Happosai," Shampoo whispered the name, "Is legendary demon!

Elders use name to frighten children and make brave Warrior

tremble! He very bad man, steal much treasure from Amazons,

make very bad time in village."

"Sounds like a guy I might not want to meet," remarked Ukyo.

Shampoo stared and pointed at a small figure they saw sitting

beside Nabiki before a tea stand, "No have choice...that look like

statue carved of Demon Happosai! Shampoo very frightened..."

"Him?" Ranma frowned, seeing an old, balding, terribly wrinkled

man in a brown martial arts gi who did not seem very dangerous,

at least from his perspective.

He took a step forward but Shampoo thrust a hand in his way and

hissed, "No go in there. Shampoo no want face demon."

"Come on," Ranma said, "What harm could he do us?"

"Remember Cologne?" Ukyo reminded, "Your father and Mister

Tendo were scared out of their wits. Whoever this guy is, I

wouldn't judge him by his appearance."

Ranma thought about it, then said, "Okay, so what do you girls

suggest we do?"

"Go for walk sound nice," Shampoo said, "Maybe see parts never

seen of Nerima."

"I'm with you there, Sham-chan," Ukyo nodded, "You with us,

Ranchan?"

Ranma hesitated a moment then sighed, "I guess a walk won't

hurt anyone...just as long as we get back in time to get ready to

visit your father..."

Ryoga was curled up on the mattress in the laundry room, where

Kasumi had found the boy when he tried to find Ranma's room

with his usual lack of success. Kasumi had decided to cover him

over with a blanket and allow him to sleep, not being of a mind

to attempt carrying him to somewhere else, and the poor boy

looked exhausted. She did not have the heart to wake him.

Nabiki and Master Happosai were still conversing over

something that had to do with energy patterns and sensing the

currents of force in the air, things that did seem fascinating from

the vantage point of a trained Martial artist, but which had little

to do with the things Kasumi was concerned with, so she had left

them alone in order that she might finish preparations for dinner.

So much had happened in the last few days that it was hard for

anyone to sort things out without taking a few moments of

reflection. Kasumi saw a lot happening around her but had long

since learned to let thing slide off without affecting her,

especially those things which were either too overwhelming or

beyond her understanding. She was not quite as oblivious as

many believed, being a fairly good observer of odd circumstance,

but she generally did not take an attitude to confronting problems

directly. That suited someone who believed that force was the

answer to every situation, not Kasumi. She believed every

problem contained its own solution, if you just knew where to

find them.

Nabiki believed in solving her problems with intelligence.

Kasumi respected that, just as she resolved her problems through

love and patience. Kasumi had helped unite the family during

the troubling times that followed her mother's death, and with

Nodoka-sama's kindly assistance the two had held the line and

kept the family reasonably solvent.

But Nabiki had brought a new kind of hope to their lives with her

financial acumen and ability to harness the dormant potential of

the dojo and other family assets.

It was troubling to think of the tensions that had arisen between

them, mostly Kasumi's fault for her inexplicable reaction to

seeing her sister change into the most gorgeous hunk of

masculinity that she had ever encountered. It was a silly

complex, she well knew, and one that irritated Nabiki to no end,

but Kasumi could hardly help experiencing whenever they were

in the same room together. Just to look on Nabiki, or touch her

male form brought shivers of excitement never before

experienced in her life. Even Tofu Sensei never inspired this sort

of a reaction in her, an indescribable need that was threatening to

drive her crazy.

It was not that she meant to force Nabiki to revert to her cursed

form, but just the thought of having that wonderfully male

presence close nearby gave Kasumi a shiver that would stay with

her for hours. To think that a dash of water was all it would take

to turn her tomboy sister into the very essence of masculine

virtue...

Kasumi forced her mind away from the subject of her often-

denied physical needs. She would have to discuss this with

Nabiki at some point, to bring her private fetish out into the open

where they could settle the matter like reasonably mature adults.

She could not bear to have Nabiki think ill towards her older

sister, and most of all she valued the companionship of someone

near to her own age which she had not enjoyed since graduating

from High School. It was much easier to talk to Nabiki when she

was her sister (yet even that was not proving much of a barrier of

late), but they had yet to attain the level of closeness that Kasumi

might wish for. Nabiki was intelligent enough to understand and

maybe suggest some way of resolving this problem, or at least

confirm for Kasumi's own benefit the need for therapy.

Maybe if she asked Tofu-Sensei...but no, he was very shy and

seemed to have difficulty speaking with her. Perhaps someone

with whom she had no interest or involvement...

"Kasumi-chan?" Kasumi heard aunt Nodoka call out to her,

"Have you seen Akane-chan anywhere about?"

"Hai, Obasama," Kasumi replied, "She's up in her room with

Keiko-san and Kodachi-san."

"Kodachi-san?" Nodoka arched eyebrows, "Well, it seems they've

decided to make up. I knew Akane could not stay angry at her

friend for very long, though I do wish Kodachi could learn to

behave with more moderation."

"She is spirited, Auntie," Kasumi replied, "And she does not like

to lose. Perhaps having Keiko-chan with Kodachi means that

Akane is helping to mediate their differences. Perhaps they will

wind up as good friends."

Nodoka smiled indulgently, "You're always looking for the best

in other people, Kasumi-chan. Perhaps it is possible they will be

friends, but I will be content if they simply do not kill each other

or destroy the house. The problem around here is that too many

people believe in using violence to solve all of their problems."

"Hai, Obasama," Kasumi agreed, "Would you like me to check

on them, just in case?"

"Please do," Nodoka replied, "And tell Akane that dinner will be

ready within the hour. We should be able to accommodate

Kodachi since Ukyo is taking Ranma and Shampoo with her to

see her new restaurant."

"Then she may be moving out soon?" Kasumi asked.

"I hope so," Nodoka sighed, "She is a very nice girl, but I do not

like giving her the wrong impression that I favor her claims upon

my son. Better to put some distance between them so she has

time to see that Ranma's claims on Nabiki are stronger."

Kasumi did not know how to reply to that. She basically liked

Ukyo (but then she liked everyone on principle), while the

thought of Ranma with Nabiki made her feel very...strange. She

left Nodoka and headed for the stairs, sparing only a glance

towards the magnificent profile of her sister, then she shuddered

slightly and hurried up to the second level.

As she approached Akane's room, however, she heard sounds

coming from inside, and at first she thought that they were

fighting. She sighed as she prepared to knock on the door when

the moans and groans she heard changed to other sounds that

sounded very...strange. It occurred to her at once that fighting

was not the nature of the activity inside there.

Kasumi pressed her ear up next to the door and listened. After

many incoherent sounds she finally heard a voice said, "Now

see...that wasn't so bad? Hey, 'Dachi-chan, doesn't Akane look

nice rubbed down with body oils? Now it's your turn..."

Kasumi stood upright in shock and alarm. Could it be possible?

Was that...? Did they actually...? Her mind would not complete

a single one of these sentences. Other pleasurable sounds

followed, some very soft and sweet, leading to more voluble

noises.

Akane? With Keiko? And Kodachi?

They could not...not under their father's roof! And just down the

hall from where he slept at nights, and Kasumi for that

matter...with Aunt Nodoka...

"Kasumi-chan?"

Kasumi almost jumped in fright as she turned around to find

Nabiki standing halfway up the stairs looking in her direction.

Nabiki noted the alarm on his older sister's features and asked,

"Is something wrong? You look awfully pale..."

"Oh no, I'm fine!" Kasumi said a bit more nervously than she

intended. She politely cleared her throat then said, "I was

just...checking up on Akane-chan to see who she was feeling...I

mean...how she is feeling..."

"Is Keiko up there with her?" Nabiki asked, "I may need her help

later on today, and I wanted to apologize if I hurt her feelings

earlier..."

"Oh, I, um...haven't seen Keiko-san for a while," Kasumi

temporized, telling herself that she was not actually lying to cover

up for the behavior of her youngest sister, "I will give her your

message, though."

"Good," Nabiki took a few steps up the stairs and said, "Maybe

I'd better talk to Akane myself. I haven't been much of a sister to

her for the past several days..."

"Why, that is silly," Kasumi gently reproved, "You have done

many fine things for Akane-chan...there's no reason for you to

feel inadequate..." she stopped herself as the sight of Nabiki's

approaching form was doing something very indelicate to her

insides.

"Just the same I'm sure I should tell her myself," Nabiki paused

to see the way Kasumi was looking at him and sighed, "Oni-

chan..."

"Hai?" Kasumi asked, finding her breath caught at the way he

had pronounced that.

"This...really has to stop," Nabiki sighed, looking blandly at her,

"I'm flattered and everything, but you're my sister..."

"Oh, yes," Kasumi recalled herself, "You are quite right, of

course. Please forgive me..."

Nabiki blew a bittersweet laugh and said, "Don't worry, I don't

even think it's really your fault. Gramps seems to think Jusenkyo

curses do something to our Karma. Maybe it makes me

irresistible to women, or something like that. Even Keiko seems

to react funny around me. I wish I could say that things will get

better, but...well, look. Tell Akane I'll want to talk with her later,

to straighten a few things out, and Sis? We're going to need a

long talk about you and this water fetish of yours."

"H-Hai," Kasumi agreed, but in doing so she took a few steps

closer to Nabiki.

"Uh..." Nabiki started to back away in alarm, "Look, I told

Gramps I'd meet him in the dojo. He's promised to teach me a

special technique that I can use on Cologne. We'll...talk later, all

right?"

"Hai," Kasumi said softly, a blissful smile on her face as she

watched Nabiki turn around and head back towards the dining

area. Only when he was gone did Kasumi lean against the rail

and heave a sigh. She was tingling badly all over and had to do

something to relieve herself. A quick shower might do the trick,

or a lingering bath (no, she had to help get ready for dinner). She

turned away with that thought in mind when another thing

seemed to register in her consciousness.

Nabiki had been walking down the stairs in a very odd way,

she'd noticed, and there was a strange sort of bulge around the

area between his legs...

Kasumi's eyes got round with surprise at the thought of her

causing that sort of reaction in her...brother? Her smile became

very delighted as other thoughts came to mind, and she decided a

cold shower was not what was needed in this instance. Unlike

Nabiki, warm water was far from out of the question...

Continued.

Comments/Criticism/Betting Pools/Who gets who on the sly:

shadowmane

Everything's coming up...roses...

Nabiki 1/2

Chapter 12, Part 3.

By

Jim Robert Bader

Inspired by the works of Rumiko Takahashi;

All rights go to her, the Publishers and Distributors

Of the Ranma 1/2 Series.

(Based on the Altered Destinies Series by

Wade Tritschler and Others;

Only some ideas and characters are mine,

The rest is shared Fanfiction, so please don't sue me)

"Consider what you know about the Martial Arts," Happosai

said, "Or what you think you know, then analyze what you did

and tell me how I was able to defeat you."

Nabiki thought a moment then said, "When I attacked you were

able to turn my own inertia against me...OW!"

"That's what they tell beginners who are just starting out in the

arts," Happosai said as he tapped his pipe to clean it of ashes,

then filled it with fresh tobacco, "I would expect a more advanced

student to know more than what they hand out in brochures at

dime-a-dozen martial arts classes. Think a moment, did you

attack me with sufficient energy for me to pick you up and throw

you the length of this dojo? Do you honestly think that a man of

my size and years could pick up and throw a strapping young lad

such as yourself? I should be flattered that you think so highly of

my virility, but I'm afraid your answer does not lie with

conventional physics."

"All right," Nabiki said, "So you've got more tricks up your

sleeve than the average senior citizen, like maybe a healthy case

of misdirection...OW!"

"Did that feel like an illusion?" Happosai asked as he replaced

his pipe back in his mouth and took another few puffs, "Effects

and causes, Nabiki-san, are just two parts of the same equation.

You strike me as a bright enough boy that maybe you'll

understand a lot more than either Genma or your father."

"I guess I don't have much choice but to figure this out," Nabiki

replied, "But it would sure help if you'd come clean and tell me

straight out what I'm missing."

"Doesn't work that way," Happosai replied, "You've got to see it

for yourself. I could describe the process to you in detail and it

would mean nothing without a point of reference. I'll make a

little deal with you, though...I'll give you the clues, you try and

put it all together."

"Fair enough," Nabiki replied, "What should I be looking for?"

"Energy," Happosai beamed, "It's all around you. It shapes you,

molds you, makes you a part of everything, it flows through you

to everything around you. The air you breathe, the ground you

step upon, the fluids in your body, the fire in your spirit...they're

all the same thing, just different expressions."

"All right," Nabiki said, "That's the basic concept of Ki energy.

It's fluid and It's all around us..."

"No, no, no!" Happosai shook his head, "You're still missing the

point! You think the world is made of Solids, Fluids and

Gasses...but they're really all one and the same thing! You keep

thinking there's a separation!"

"Okay, I can go with that," Nabiki said, "Atoms and molecules

are just packages of energy, the same stuff that makes photons

and electrons, just expressed in different ways, different velocities

and..." Nabiki suddenly tensed as if expecting to get rapped on

the head once again with Happosai's pipe.

The old man just smiled and said, "Atomic theory's such a naive

concept. Tell me, are they still arguing that nonsense about

Quantum Uncertainty Principle? I can remember this professor I

knew back at Osaka University..."

"Sensei, please," Nabiki urged, "We don't have all day. We're

meeting Cologne at five this afternoon..."

"That's not enough time to get you ready," Happosai snorted, "I'm

trying to teach you the essential basis for all of the more complex

arts, something that took me most of a lifetime. I doubt you're

going to learn to even crawl in the space of two hours, let alone

do katas."

"The theory should be enough for now," Nabiki said, then winced

as she felt the pipe rap against her head yet again, "Ow! Quit

that, Yoda! I get the message!"

"If you understood what I was telling you there wouldn't be a

need to keep rapping on that thick skull of yours," Happosai

chided, "Theories are for dreamers, not doers. What good is it to

merely think an idea if you don't understand what it actually

means to grasp the art on an intuitive level?"

"So what you're saying is that I can't rely on theory itself," Nabiki

said as he rubbed his bruised noggin, "I have to experience this

energy in its raw essence..."

"You're already experiencing it now, Child," Happosai said, "You

draw on it every time you focus your battle aura. It's not just all

around you-IT IS YOU! You are energy expressed in form. If

you want to change the direction and flow of that energy, you

simply change its expression. It's all a matter of will and mind.

What makes a hand strong enough to shatter wood or stone?

Kinetic force? No! It's believing that you can shatter them, that

the energy within you is stronger than so-called inanimate

matter."

"You mean mind over matter?" Nabiki asked, then flinched as

Happosai tensed his grip upon his pipe, "All right! Will and

Intelligence are what separate us from mere objects, right?"

"Most of us, perhaps," Happosai sniffed, "The key isn't belief or

understanding or some silly theory about how the Universe is

made up; it's knowing what's there that counts. You've got to see

for yourself, to let go of preconceptions and even your thought, to

learn to react on an elemental level without doubt or hesitation.

You already do that for a lot of things you take for granted

because you do them so often they become second nature. In

order to learn to do new things you have to expand your

awareness, let go of your expectations and just do the thing that

comes into your mind. Do them with your heart and soul as well

as your head. Now, having told you all of this do you feel ready

to go out there and face Cologne by yourself?"

"No," Nabiki said, "Of course not, that'd be foolish."

Happosai beamed as if she had just said the smartest thing in the

world, "It's a beginning, but if you can admit to that, then you're

already on your way to learning how to beat her!"

"What, is this like a Zen Koan or-OW! Would you stop that!?"

Nabiki winced.

"Let's try again," Happosai sighed, "Take a good look at this

dojo. What do you see?"

Nabiki stared out into her family dojo, at once noticing

everything at a glance, the space and dimensions of the dojo, the

weapon racks and family shrine, the Iroha fundamentals that

spelled out the principles of the Anything Goes school, the

sliding rice doors and wooden frames and the floor, every

physical object as neatly in place as though arranged by an

interior decorator, and beyond that the gardens...

No, that was not it at all. She was describing objects and forms,

mere reflections of light that informed her brain of their existence

through electrochemical interaction. In reality she was not seeing

them at all, merely receiving sensory information that formed an

audio-visual pattern in her mind like a reflection of the room

inside of a mirror. Mere sensualism was not a proper way to

describe the harmony of the place, nor could it tell her of the

dojos living essence. They were not quantifiable things, and as

ineffably qualifiable as they were their value to her was not the

same thing as their value to the Cosmos.

Look beyond the form, beyond the impression to the reality that

underlay them. Happosai was reminding her that it was all just

patterns of energy, some set into frames held in place by a careful

balance of opposing forces, the yin and yang of existence. They

existed independent of her awareness, and yet were far more than

she was perceiving. She looked beyond their frame, looked deep

into herself and finally began to see the complex network of

energy matrices and force lines that filled the air like waves of

heat or magnetism.

Very carefully she said, "I see...everything...the air is alive...I can

feel it...I can feel it flowing within me..."

"If you can see that much, then you can tap into that energy as an

external source for your Ki," Happosai remarked, "But the energy

already inside you is nearly as infinite. If you can learn to tap

into it, then you can harness the Dragon."

"The Dragon?" Nabiki repeated.

"The Dragon is the mightiest of all creatures," Happosai replied,

"It can soar above the world or engulf it, it encircles everything

and is so vast it consumes its own tail..."

"The Worm Oroboros?" Nabiki asked, remembering the title of

an old novel, which was itself based upon an ancient legend

concerning Serpents.

"That's one of its many names," Happosai smiled, "Energy that

flows through Yin and Yang makes up everything in existence.

We ourselves are the result of opposing virtues that balance us

out between the extremes of hot and cold, hard and soft, past and

future."

"Good and evil?" Nabiki asked.

"They've got nothing to do with that," Happosai scoffed, "Good is

the balance between extremes that lets us live in harmony with

nature. Evil upsets this balance and causes anarchy and

destruction. Everyone has their own balance of light and dark,

Nabiki-chan, and some are more balanced than others. If you

learn to sense a man's harmony you can tell a friend from an

enemy, a casual acquaintance from someone who is trying to kill

you."

"Okay," Nabiki said, "So if the energy is neither good nor evil..."

"It can serve both equally," Happosai replied, "Energy is beyond

human morality, being the essence of the Gods. Good and Bad

are the degree to which this energy affects us. For example,

someone with the intent of doing you harm upsets the balance if

we have given no provocation. You can use that imbalance to

your advantage, letting his hostile intent create an opening that

you can exploit. The same holds true with gods and demons. All

creatures have their own standards for behavior based on need or

desire. If you conquer your own desires, then your needs will be

that much easier to satisfy and your will can be an invincible

weapon."

"And how does all of that apply to you?" Nabiki asked him,

"Why did you cop a feel off my sister?"

"Oh, that," Happosai looked somewhat disconcerted, "A

weakness of mine...everyone has some hole in their armor, some

need they can't just meditate away. In my case I have this need

for attention from the ladies. I'm an old man, and not many

sweet young things would give me a second glance, but I have

the same needs as any man! Can I help it if some women find

me physically repulsive?"

Nabiki winced, seeing the old man's brief display of temper,

which he quickly covered up as if realizing that he had exposed

more of himself than he had intended. He quickly resumed the

mantle of the studious Master and concluded his lecture by

saying, "Whenever you see someone like Cologne or me perform

a feat that seems to defy all reason, keep in mind that we're just

moving energy around. It's not that difficult, all you need is a

pattern and a focus."

"I think I'm beginning to see," Nabiki said, "When I attack you

I'm setting myself up by extending my energy and will power into

a thrust, and that's what you've been turning against me."

"Exactly!" Happosai congratulated, "You are a bright lad...er,

girl...whatever. Yes, energy can be put to many uses if you learn

to tap it by making your will the source of all your power. It can

speed up and strengthen your movements, cause your limbs to

become nearly indestructible weapons that can shatter stone or

defy the so-called laws of physics. Ki is a powerful weapon in its

own right, the ultimate energy to which there are no physical

boundaries. It's shaped by the mind and emotions, it expresses

the will. Learn to harness your Ki so that you can attack an

enemy without leaving yourself exposed to counter-attack. In

time you'll understand how to go beyond the supposed limits of

time and space and do anything that your will can imagine."

"Thank you, Sensei," Nabiki bowed, "I'll study and meditate on

what you've shown me. I may not master it all at once, but as

you say it is a good beginning."

"Just so," Happosai said as he took another long puff on his pipe,

eyeing the lad sitting before him, "What do you intend to do

when you see Cologne this afternoon?"

"Try to see if she'll still listen to reason when I tell her my case,"

Nabiki replied.

"Don't grovel before her," Happosai said, "To her it's a sign of

weakness. Cologne respects strength, and if you stand up to her

she'll come around accepting that you have a right to a voice in

your own future."

"Will it change her mind about me," Nabiki asked.

"No," Happosai replied, "But at least she'll be in a better mood

when she pummels you senseless."

"What about all these fancy maneuvers I've been hearing about

and seeing demonstrated?" Nabiki resumed, "The Amaguriken,

the Bakusai Tenketsu..."

"Amazon techniques," Happosai considered, "All techniques just

serve as a focus for allowing us to frame our will with strong

imagination. The Amaguriken is fast, but it takes time to build

up your power so that the blows carry enough force to make an

impact even if you never touch your enemy. As for the Bakusai

Tenketsu, that simply works on the principle that all physical

objects have a Breaking Point that you can shatter with a touch.

The technique is twofold: on the one hand teaching you to sense

and strike that point, on the other hand it fortifies your physical

body so that you can withstand the kinetic shock that use of the

Bakusai maneuver inevitably creates. It's useless if the attacker

can't touch you and has limited effect upon the human body. The

Amaguriken can defeat the Bakusai by overwhelming the

attacker while wearing down his defenses. Most Amazon

techniques work that way, you see, by exploiting a perceived

weakness to allow a weaker opponent to defeat a strong but

umbalanced one. As long as you keep in mind that all warriors

have at least one weak spot then you can use it to defeat them."

"Or help them to defeat themselves," Nabiki murmured as he

considered this carefully, "You wouldn't happen to know what

Cologne's is, would you?"

Happosai smiled back at him and said, "Actually she has several,

but few of those would be of use to you. The strongest

antagonists always have the largest faults, and in her case the

worst fault of all is her pride, her belief that she is always in the

right and that she alone understands what is best for the Amazon

nation. It gets her into trouble with the other Elders from time to

time, but she is not as iron clad a traditionalist as she would have

most people believe. She has been known to bend the rules on

occasion, as in my case when she taught me a few of her little

secrets. Another great flaw is actually her greatest strength: she

is a woman with needs. That, too, I have shamelessly used on

her when it suited me in the past. The memory no doubt makes

her a bit peevish," the old man smiled to himself as if savoring a

memory from long ago.

"Is that it, then?" Nabiki asked, "Pride in being an Amazon, and

a woman?"

"Cologne believes that women are inherently superior creatures,"

Happosai smiled, "In some ways I would agree with her, but not

the way she intends. Women should keep home and make

babies, not wage war like men. They should leave us to handle

the brutal and unpleasant tasks in life and content themselves

with the role they were designed for by nature."

"Aren't you the modern feminist," Nabiki snorted derisively.

"Yes, it is true, I am a fragile soul pining for the lost virtues of

tradition," Happosai wiped a tear from his eyes and sighed,

"Mind you, I'm not such an idiot that I'd turn my back on an

Amazon. Female or not, those crazy women are trained to kill,

and they're pretty darn good at it."

"So I've found out the hard way," Nabiki winced, recalling her

fights with Shampoo and Perfume.

Happosai studied him critically before resuming, "Well, Genma

must see something in you when you're in your true shape that

made him believe you were worth teaching, and since you seem

better able to grasp the fundamentals than either him or your

father, I'd have to say you're probably at least the equal of any

Amazon not an Elder, and probably a lot better. That must be

why Cologne wants you enough to go to all this trouble. Usually

Amazons don't waste their time on outsiders unless it's a matter

of personal honor. Since Cologne's apprentices are not trying to

kill you it's a safe bet that they find your male self a powerful

inducement for marriage. All of that could work to your

advantage, if you're sharp enough to take advantage of this. Play

the odds and can get Cologne into the mood for peaceful

negotiations, then maybe the old bag might actually listen.

You'll still have to face her in combat before she's even take you

seriously, of course..."

"That's a given," Nabiki said, "But I still need a way to beat her,

if she's as beatable as you seem to think she is."

Happosai thought a moment, started to say something, then

thought better of it. Nabiki caught the hesitation and said,

"What? You know something? Spit it out, old man, I'm

desperate!"

"It just occurred to me," Happosai smiled, "Are you willing to

marry her Great Granddaughter?"

"Ah," Nabiki winced, "I thought I was already married, and that's

part of the problem."

"But have you acknowledged that you are, in fact, married to an

Amazon?" Happosai clarified.

Nabiki chewed her lip, then said, "Not as such, but I haven't been

able to disprove it either. The only thing I have going for me is

ignorance. I didn't know what I was getting into..."

"Doesn't matter," Happosai looked hard at Nabiki, "Would you

acknowledge this other girl for your wife? If you had no other

choice about it, and Ranma weren't part of the picture, that is?"

"I...guess I do have an obligation to Shampoo," Nabiki admitted

with some reluctance.

Happosai heaved a great sigh and tired again, "Would you accept

this girl for your wife? It's such an easy question to answer, stop

avoiding it and tell me!"

"All right," Nabiki snapped, then sobered as she searched her

heart for a few seconds, then found the answer surprisingly easy

to give, "If I didn't have Ranma or anyone else to worry about, I

would take Shampoo for my wife. She's a wonderful person, and

she's already shown her loyalty, and I can't bring myself to hurt

her. I'm not sure if that's enough for a marriage, but..."

"All right," Happosai smiled, "Next question: If you accepted

Shampoo into your life, would this automatically mean the end of

your engagement to Ranma?"

"I don't know," Nabiki replied, "It wouldn't be legal in Japan, not

unless I formally married her in my male form, and I'd have to

create a false legal identity in order to sign my name to any

papers in a way that the government might recognize. Other than

this, I'd be officially unmarried and free to marry Ranma."

"Amazons have tricky sub-clauses and convenient technical

exclusions and exceptions built on precedence that allow them to

finagle through complicated situations such as this," Happosai

smiled, "If you married Ranma in Japan and accepted Shampoo

as your wife by Chinese Law, then Joketsuzoku would only

acknowledge Ranma as your concubine and politely ignore a

formal Japanese wedding. Amazons who bind themselves

together have a right to at least one male concubine that they

must share between them, which broaches the next question: Do

you think Ranma himself would be agreeable to such an

arrangement?"

"I don't know, Grandfather," Nabiki unconsciously used the

formal title without the usual sarcasm, "I don't think he hates

Shampoo, but they view each other as Rivals. Living together

sharing me...well... that could get tricky."

"Do you think he'd at least consider it?" Happosai asked, "If so

then that could settle at least one of your problems."

"All right," Nabiki said, "Suppose I could talk both of them into

agreeing to such an arrangement. Cologne still wants to take me

like a trophy wife for Shampoo back to Joketsuzoku."

"Yes," Happosai's eyes twinkled with meaning, "But where is

Joketsuzoku?"

"The Qinghi province of China, of course," Nabiki replied.

"Oh?" Happosai grinned broadly, "Is it...?"

"What do you see, Ranchan?"

"Nothing," Ranma said as he turned the corner and looked into

the main living room, then back over his shoulder, "No sign of

the old man or Nabiki."

"Shampoo so relieved!" Shampoo sighed, "No want know if he as

bad as legends say."

"You really think a little old guy like that is some kind of a

demon?" Ukyo looked at her, puzzled at the clear dread in the

otherwise fearless Amazon princess.

"Great Grandmother say he possessed of powerful demon,"

Shampoo explained, "Demon of Perversion. Mother tell

Shampoo be good or Demon Happosai come steal her..." she

mumbled something in Chinese and blushed furiously, which

was surprising since she rarely showed any modesty before

others.

Ranma found himself frowning, not understanding the word but

clearly getting the meaning that it was something Shampoo

dreaded losing, "Well, he'd better not try anything around me or

Nabiki! Don't worry about him while I'm here, Shampoo..."

"What?" Shampoo suddenly glared at him, "You think Shampoo

weak girl because she believe legends of tribe?"

"What?" Ranma blinked, "No! Of course I don't! I just mean

that I'm not scared of any Demon, especially if they look like

harmless old guys like that, no matter what my Dad or Uncle

Tendo say about him."

"I dunno, Ranchan," Ukyo frowned, "Your Dad and Tendo-sama

looked pretty worked up over something. This guy might be

more than he looks like..."

"Besides," Shampoos said in more mollified tones, "He no bother

boy, he only bother girls, or so say legends."

"Why only girls?" Ranma frowned, "I didn't know Demons were

that selective."

"You obviously haven't watched enough Anime," Ukyo snorted.

"Boy no interest demon," Shampoo replied again, "Only girl..."

she repeated the strange word in Chinese, and when she saw

their blank looks she sighed and translated, "Things you wear

under clothes... what is word?"

"Lingerie?" Ukyo blinked, "He steals Underwear?"

"What?" Ranma looked genuinely shocked, "That...pervert!"

Shampoo looked at him oddly, "You no think women things of

value to Demons?"

"Uh, no, I mean...what guy in his right mind would worry about

that?" Ranma looked flustered, "Well, he'd better not come after

either of you or I'll show him a two-fisted exorcism!" he flexed a

fist to emphasize the point.

They both looked at him in surprise, then Shampoo said, "You

fight Demon for Shampoo? But... you no Airen..."

"It's what a man does if he wants to call himself a man," Ranma

stated firmly, "What guy would sit around and do nothing while

some old pervert in a gi goes around molesting girls?"

"Your father, for one," Ukyo pointed out.

"Ah..." Ranma faltered.

"You very strange boy," Shampoo said, then smiled, "But

Shampoo think you nice. See why Airen like you, and Ucchan

like you also."

"Ah..." Ukyo flinched, flashing a weak smile as she hastily

turned around and said, "Well, if the coast is clear, I'd better head

upstairs and change into some fresh clothes. Hope no one's using

the bath at the moment, though I'll probably need to take a

shower with what little time I have."

"Good idea," Ranma said, looking at himself in disgust, "I

probably ought to change, too, but I'll use the bath downstairs

and ask Kasumi to fetch me some fresh clothes from my room."

"Why no get for you self?" Shampoo asked, "Airen sister no you

servant."

"Oh, it's not like that or anything, Shampoo-san," Ranma smiled,

"It's just that...ever since I was little Kasumi's been taking care of

me, I just kind of take it for granted. I guess I shouldn't, but in a

lot of ways I think of her as if she were my big sister. Glad

Tendo-Sama never tried to match the two of us together. That

would have been...weird, to say the least. Weirder than me and

Akane, anyway, who's more like my little sister."

"Just take your bath and I'll bring you fresh clothes, Ranchan,"

Ukyo smiled.

"Huh?" Ranma blinked, "But..."

"I've been around boys so long I know what guys like you need,"

Ukyo chuckled, "And I won't look at you when you're bathing,

honest! I'll just drop them off while you're in the tub and leave.

You'll hardly even know I was there."

"Ah..." Ranma doubted that seriously but was uncertain how to

phrase his reluctance.

Shampoo just smirked and said, "Shampoo think Spatula girl no

be trusted around boy. Need Shampoo see she keep word? You

no worry, you no Shampoo Airen."

"Ah, thanks," Ranma said, then glanced at his watch and said,

"Hey, look at the time! We'd better move if we're going to get

ready."

"Hope Nab-chan's ready when I get down," Ukyo noted as she

headed for the stairs, making a bee-line towards the bathroom,

only to pause when she heard a strange sound coming from

Akane's room. She frowned in puzzlement then decided it was

none of her business.

Maybe the younger Tendo girl had finally lured the hapless

Ryoga up into her room and was giving the poor boy a few

lessons about women. Ukyo smiled as she found herself

relishing the thought. Poor Ryoga-kun certainly needed a few

such lessons...

The bathroom door was closed and the sign that hung over it was

turned to the "occupied" side, which Ukyo found mildly

annoying. She walked up to the door intending to knock and ask

how long the person inside was intending to use it...

And heard another strange noise, even more curious than the

first. Ukyo had been around enough to certainly identify it as a

woman's voice gently moaning in ecstasy. Now what was going

on here? She might have turned and left the person inside alone

with their privacy, but she only had half an hour to get ready

before she and the others would have to leave, and the alternative

was either going dressed as she was to see her father and

Cologne or going downstairs and intrude on Ranma's bath.

She smiled at the thought of that. If Shampoo had not just

offered to chaperone, she might have considered the idea even

more appealing. She had never done it with a boy before (or a

girl either, but she was certainly no Hentai!) but she was certainly

willing to give it a try, and left alone for even a few minutes with

a naked Ranma was something that appealed to her greatly.

Giver her half a chance and she would be doing some moaning of

her own.

Unfortunately she knew she really was not that ready, certainly

not so that she would throw herself at Ranma and possibly make

a fool of herself, not to mention bring dishonor to the Tendo

House. She had been raised to be better than that, and this was

no time to abandon her personal code just because the nicest boy

she had ever met was downstairs bathing...

Down girl, she gently chided herself, then squared her shoulders

and knocked on the door.

The moaning instantly ceased, and a few moments later a

trembling voice said, "H-Hai?"

"Kasumi-san?" Ukyo's surprise was absolute. It had been the

elder Tendo daughter making all that noise? She never would

have imagined! But then again who knew what really went on

behind the vapid smile Kasumi normally wore? There was no

question that the girl had feelings, you could see it every time she

looked at Nabiki in the form of Kaneda.

"Ah," Kasumi said with evident embarrassment, "Just a minute,

Ukyo-san."

The sound of water displaced followed rapidly by a few other less

clearly distinguishable noises, and then the door slid open as

Kasumi half-appeared wearing one towel around her body, the

other around her long brown hair. She looked somewhat

uncertainly at Ukyo and asked, "May I help you, Ukyo-san?"

"I..." Ukyo got a grip on herself and replied, "I was just

wondering how long you were going to be in there, Kasumi-san.

I need to take a quick shower..."

"Oh, quite so," Kasumi hastily said, opening the door all the way

to permit Ukyo to enter, "Oh my, was I in here that long? I had

quite lost track of the time..."

"So I gathered," in spite of herself Ukyo could not help smirking

as Kasumi closed the door again then went to retrieve her own

discarded clothing, "Thinking about somebody special?"

Kasumi froze in the act of bending down, then looked up at Ukyo

with nervousness and said, "Um, what makes you say that?"

Ukyo sniffed the air, detecting something mixed in with the

steam that was decidedly feminine, "Oh, I don't know...maybe

I'm prophetic, a gift of the Kami."

Kasumi flushed crimson over all visible parts of her body,

"Ah...well...oh my...this is very awkward..."

Ukyo looked at her more soberly and said, "Kasumi-chan...I

know you have a problem with a certain...guy we both know...but

you don't have to act like you're alone on this. You're a very nice

person, and I can't believe you're some sort of pervert just

because you have feelings like the rest of us. Don't berate

yourself for being only human."

Kasumi seemed to take that in very quietly for a moment, but

then she surprised Ukyo by saying, "Ukyo-san...you've been

disguised as a boy for many years, ne? Have you ever...wondered

what it would be like to meet someone who you knew wasn't

right for you...but you like anyway? Someone who was fun to be

with and...who caused you to feel special?"

Ukyo took a moment before answering, "Um...yeah...I have

known somebody like that. Her...name was Makoto, and we

were very good friends for a while there, before she got

transferred to another school. I met her again at Crossroads, and

she'd certainly filled out..." she looked away, "But that was just a

game we played, it wasn't serious. I'm not like that, I don't go for

other women..."

"Not even Perfume-chan?" Kasumi asked, "I've watched you

together just the other day, and she does seem to like you, and

she's a very nice girl..."

"A very nice girl who goes around with double-bladed axes,"

Ukyo snorted.

Kasumi just shrugged and said, "Well, these days a nice girl can't

be too careful. What about you and your Baker's Peal?"

Ukyo sobered, "Good point. Well, I don't know what I'm going

to do about that girl, but I sure don't intend to marry her..."

"Even if that means hurting her feelings?" Kasumi asked, "Or

possibly breaking her heart?" She looked away abruptly and

said, "Well...it's not my concern, I'm sorry to have bothered you

about it..."

"Hey, no problem," Ukyo smiled, "It's kind of nice to talk these

things out with somebody who doesn't think I'm weird or

anything like that..."

"Oh, but I would never..." Kasumi started to protest.

"I know," Ukyo said, "That's the point. You're too nice to hold

any kind of judgement about somebody like me who keeps

getting herself into really weird situations. Fact is I was offering

to talk with you if you'd like to confide in me about this problem

you have with Nabiki. She's my friend, and I'd like to be able to

help you both out."

"Thank you, Ukyo-chan," Kasumi smiled, "But I've taken enough

of your time right now, and you wanted to shower..." she paused,

licking her lips as she studied Ukyo in an odd way before looking

away and saying, "I need to get dressed. We're serving dinner in

a little while, and those of us who are staying for dinner are

expecting me to be there."

"Right," Ukyo said, wondering about that look she had just been

given. Was it possible Kasumi had been checking her out? It

certainly would not have been the first time Ukyo had drawn

another girl's interest, but Kasumi was fully aware of her

feminine status.

Did that mean that Kasumi...doubted her own sexuality? A very

disturbing notion indeed, because Kasumi was the most feminine

person Ukyo had ever yet encountered, and certainly no Hentai

(this business with Nabiki/Kaneda not withstanding). Whatever

the case, the Tendo girl got dressed in some haste and fled the

bathroom while Ukyo waited patiently before undressing herself.

She paused as she considered the bathwater, then sighed as she

pulled the plug to drain it.

Better to spend the extra hot water than to take a bath that reeked

of feminine juices! That was hardly the sort of perfume she

intended to wear when she went to meet...Perfume. Irony

notwithstanding, it would hardly be the best way to convince

these Amazons that she really was not interested in other

women...

Not even women who were as beautiful and modest as Kasumi?

Now where had that strange thought come from? Ukyo shook

her head to clear it, then ran some fresh water and prepared to

take a nice, hot shower...thinking idly to herself what a blessing

it was that she could do this without having to worry about a

Jusenkyo curse. (How did Keiko-san put with changing into a

Vulture...or Perfume stand being a cat?) The luxury of something

she had long taken for granted was telling as she soaped her body

down with lather, thinking about how she should dress for the

occasion and deciding at the last that she would not tape down

her breasts this time.

It was long since time she embraced the fact that nature had

designed her to be a woman, and far past time that she reminded

others of it too. There was more than Perfume to think about

here, there was also Ranma, who was treating her like a guy, too

much so for her liking!

Humming to herself, Ukyo decided to ask Kasumi a little matter

about wardrobe...

Continued.

Comments/Criticism/The Heartbreak of Psoriasis(Or is that the

Egyptian version: Sore Isis?):

Shadowmane

Next chapter the Plot thickens like the crust of an Okonomiyaki!

If you wish to check out my other works, Please check out my

Fanfiction webpage at: . or

it's mirror site at: ~

All related chapters of this series can be found there along with my

other works.


	13. Chapter 13

Nabiki 1/2

Chapter 13, Part 1.

By

Jim Robert Bader

Inspired by the works of Rumiko Takahashi;

All rights go to her, the publishers & distributors

Of the Ranma 1/2 series.

(Based upon the Altered Destinies Series

By Wade Tritschler and Others;

Some characters and situations were created by me,

The rest is shared Fanfiction, so please don't sue me)

"All right, everyone," Nabiki said as she moved down the streets

of Nerima at the side of her Posse, "Keep in mind that we're here

to talk first, but we know there'll be trouble, so be ready for

anything. Ukyo takes the lead because this involves her father

and restaurant..."

"Gee thanks," Ukyo said, "I'm sure I'll make a splendid target."

"I'm hoping we can resolve this matter without resorting to

bloodshed," Nabiki said, "Beating heads in is another matter, if

what Happosai tells me is true."

Shampoo shuddered at the mention of that name and said,

"Shampoo no believe Airen talk with Demon that way! Airen

have mighty magic that Demon give clues to deal with Great

Grandmother."

"Gramps isn't so bad as all that, Sham-chan," Nabiki smiled,

"And he gave me a weapon I intend to use to full advantage here.

Just the same, follow my lead and do what I say when we get in

there."

"I still wish you'd tell us what you have in mind, Nab-chan,"

Ranma said, "I hate going into fight unprepared like this..."

"Believe me, Ran-chan," Nabiki replied, "This scheme is so risky

that I doubt you'd like to hear all of the details. Besides the less

you all know the better our chances."

"Shampoo not know what mean," Shampoo said, "But Shampoo

trust Airen."

"Call me crazy, but I guess I trust you too, Nab-chan," Ukyo gave

her a sidelong smirk, "Your plans usually worked in the old days,

and if it gets that ghoul off our backs, I'll be grateful."

"I trust you, too," Ranma said, touching her arm as he added, "I

just hope you know what you're doing."

"Me too," Nabiki said as they came upon a certain address where

Nabiki nodded and asked, "Is that your restaurant?"

"Yes," Ukyo glared across the street where they found a two-story

building that had a cafe-sized diner set up on the bottom floor

with a sign that read "Kuonji's" on the side, which same made

Ukyo glower a little as she murmured to herself, "It's supposed to

read 'Ucchan's.' I told my father I wanted to name my restaurant

for myself, not the family business."

"Maybe it's an oversight," Ranma volunteered, then winced as the

others glanced at him, "Or maybe not..."

"Ucchan," Nabiki nodded to Ukyo, "I have every confidence that

my plan will work out for both of us, but just in case...I want to

thank you for trusting me. You're a good friend, and whatever

happens, I know you want what's best for all parties, just like I

do.

"Thank you, Nab-chan," Ukyo replied, then took the lead as they

filed past a stretch limousine and in through the door and into the

restaurant.

The place was already furnished with the clean smell of newness

in the air. The counters were Formica and the tables and chairs

were mostly folded with a fully stocked grill set behind the main

counter. The place looked ready for business but as yet had no

customers. The few people who sat in the restaurant were

gathered around the one unfolded table with papers set before

them. One was Kuonji Akira, and seated next to him was a

black haired man in a three-piece suit, obviously a lawyer.

Opposite him was Cologne, while Perfume was standing above

and to one side of her chair like a bodyguard, though what she

was guarding against was anyone's guess. All four were looking

at Ukyo and her party, though Cologne's eyes were narrow with

surprise and speculation.

Perfume's eyes were anything but narrow as she looked towards

Ukyo with a mixture of longing and apprehension, then she

stared at Nabiki with even greater alarm. From those hints alone

Nabiki smelled trouble.

Ukyo's father was staring at his daughter with a peculiar regard,

seeing Ukyo for once dressed in something other than her usual

boyish clothing. Granted Ukyo still wore pants, but in place of

her usual heavy cotton shirt she now wore a tan short-sleeve shirt

that she had borrowed from Kasumi and tied off about the

middle. Her bandoleer of throwing spatulas and Bakers peal

were in place, but with her hair done up in a ribbon she looked

more charmingly feminine than anyone had seen of her until this

moment. The effect was still tomboyish, but now she curved so

obviously that there was no question about her gender.

"Ucchan!" Ukyo's father finally grinned broadly, "You're right on

time, a very good trait in a business woman. I have the papers all

here, so if you just sign your name we can..."

"Excuse me, Kuonji-san," Nabiki stepped forward, "But as your

daughter's trusted advisor and friend I must object to certain

conditions that we understand have been stipulated in this

agreement of which my client was not previously aware."

Kuonji Akira looked at Nabiki in surprise, while the man in the

three-piece suit narrowed his gaze and sized Nabiki up as though

she was some annoying insect. Cologne's eyes were upon her

but her face betrayed nothing while Perfume's eyes held instant

confusion. It was plain that the girl was very worried over

something and even looked a bit relieved about the interruption to

something that was plainly not to her liking.

Ukyo just glanced at Nabiki with surprise but wisely said

nothing, catching Nabiki's warning look and Perfume's anxious

expression. Nabiki had warned her that she would take the lead

in present a counter-proposal, but the way Nabiki had phrased

things made it seem as though the Tendo girl was asserting the

authority of an agent-slash-legal advisor, such as were always

crowed about Ukyo's father.

"Excuse me," her father said as politely as he could, "I don't

believe we have met..."

"Tendo Nabiki," Nabiki bowed to him in respect, "I believe you

stopped by my house just last week while I was out on a date

with my iinazuke. I regret that there has been no opportunity

until now for us to become properly acquainted."

"So you are Tendo Nabiki," Kuonji murmured as he studied her

profile, "I almost did not recognize you, you've changed so much.

The little girl who played games with my Ucchan is all grown up

into a very charming lady."

"Indeed," Cologne said with eyes like slits, "A very charming and

talented...lady."

Nabiki repressed a smile, but she knew the old woman was taken

aback by the appearance of her feminine half. Nabiki silently

thanked Happosai for telling her about the "Grandfather Spot"

that could temporarily cancel out the Cat Tongue. She needed to

appear as herself at this all-important meeting. It would have

been far too awkward to conduct her plans as Kaneda. This way

she had Cologne at a momentary disadvantage and fully intended

to exploit the opening this created.

Kuonji frowned after sizing her up with a studied glance, "And

what business do you in fact have with my daughter? I was

given to understand that she is your rival, having a stronger claim

to the son of Saotome Genma..."

"So I was given to understand when I inquired into the nature of

your visit," Nabiki smiled, "I confess to surprise at finding that

my promised husband..." she pronounced the words with special

emphasis, "Has someone else who might claim him for her

betrothed, but the matter of Genma's promise was by verbal

contract, was it not? There was no written, formal declaration?"

"No," Kuonji replied, "But a verbal agreement between

gentlemen is still legally binding, and Saotome Genma did not

deny making the arranged marriage."

"At the time, though," Nabiki resumed, "Saotome Ranma was

betrothed to my younger sister, Tendo Akane. You were made

aware of this but still pressed Saotome Genma for his son's

betrothal to your daughter."

Suddenly the man at Kuonji's side said, "Saotome Genma

accepted the terms of the betrothal when he accepted into his

possession the Yatai cart that constituted the family business."

"My Uncle is an idiot," Nabiki said pleasantly, ignoring the harsh

look Ranma shot her way, "But I do not dispute that he accepted

the Yatai as dowry for Kuonji Ukyo's betrothal. I was present at

the time, of course, but not cognizant of the particulars of the

case, so my memory of events back then would hardly be reliable.

I would, however, point out that neither Saotome Ranma nor

Kuonji Ukyo were made privy to the details of this transaction

until well after it had been made. Being that they each were

respectively six years of age, it can hardly be found surprising."

"Age does not factor into this," Kuonji senior interjected, "Ukyo

was promised to Ranma in marriage. I put the family business

up as collateral to cement the deal, but Genma reneged on his

agreement to take Ukyo with him on his training mission."

"I see," Nabiki said, "And why was Genma supposed to do that?

He had enough trouble supporting me, as I well remember, why

force him to take on a second girl child as his student ward?"

"I..." Kuonji started to say when his lawyer hastily said, "The

reasons are not germane to this case, Miss Tendo, and I'd like

very much to know where you earned your law degree, if-that is-

-you actually have one?"

"I fear that I have yet to graduate High School," Nabiki continued

to smile, "But one hardly need be a lawyer to read a law book,

and I happen to know that child abandonment is a serious crime,

one that bears harsh penalties, and I am sure you know this also.

Granted my Uncle foolishly left Ukyo on the side of the road a

short distance from where he parted company with her father, but

she was able to make it back without incident. I will not excuse

his foolish and irresponsible behavior, but I am curious about

why Kuonji-Ukyo's father would have entrusted her to the care of

such a man in the first place. He must have known that Saotome

Genma was a poor man with few immediate prospects, who had

been near to the point of starving on previous occasions, and thus

could not be relied upon to properly care for two young girls. As

a business venture it seems, in retrospect, very foolish."

Ukyo's father looked down, "Yes, you're right...and I'm not very

proud of the way I behaved. It was wrong of me to attempt to

dump my only daughter onto another man's lap. It was selfish

and shortsighted, and I have never stopped blaming myself for

that accursed day. But still I must insist that the betrothal was

made in good faith by both parties."

His lawyer was looking as though he were about to have a fit,

horrified that his rich client had just admitted to such a thing,

quite oblivious to the position this placed them both in. Nabiki

wasted no time snapping the jaws of her trap in place as she said,

"I am sorry, but an agreement of this nature cannot be legally

binding. Ukyo and Ranma are at the age of ascension but they

are still very young, and a marriage at this time would not be a

very good prospect. Ukyo is my friend, however, and on her

behalf I would ask that there be a reasonable delay to allow them

to come to know each other better so that they may decide for

themselves whether or not to consummate this arrangement."

Both Ukyo and Ranma were looking at her in shock and alarm,

while Cologne's gaze was like ice as she tried to force contact on

Nabiki, who stoutly resisted, keeping her focus firmly on Ukyo's

father.

"What purpose would that serve?" Kuonji frowned, "Ukyo will

do as I have ordered and marry the man I chose to be her

iinazuke."

"I see," Nabiki smiled blandly towards him and said, "And how,

Kuonji-san, do you intent to enforce this? I am given to

understand that your daughter has violently protested against this

arranged marriage many times in the past and has even taken to

such drastic measures as to run away from home and dress

herself in man's clothing, declaring that she will never marry.

You can't exactly compel her obedience through the law, you

must rely upon her full cooperation. Ukyo must decide when, if

and with whom she will marry, not you. I know you are only a

concerned father trying to look out for her best interests, but even

you must concede that there are limits to which you can go in

trying to compel her obedience. If Ukyo decides to marry Ranma

that is another matter, but then it must be Ranma's decision to

marry her. He never gave consent to this betrothal, nor would he

agree that he should do so under compulsion."

"He will do it because his father agreed to the betrothal!" Kuonji

said angrily, "And he knows that if he does not then I will sue his

family to force his compliance!"

Nabiki turned and said, "Ranma-kun, do you want to be forced

into marriage under these terms? Say yes or no, regardless of

what you may personally feel towards Kuonji Ukyo."

"No," Ranma said, glancing at Ukyo, "I don't want to be forced to

marry anyone. It's my choice, not my father's or hers. Ucchan, I

respect you and I think we could be very good friends, but I still

don't know you well enough to know if I'd even want to marry

you, and I don't think you're ready to marry me either. Besides,

when we met you wanted to beat me up to force me to renounce

you."

Ukyo paled, the more so when she saw the shocked and hurt look

her father turned towards her before he gasped, "Is this true,

Ucchan? Did you attack Saotome Ranma?"

Ukyo bit her lower lip, not noticing the horrified look on the face

of her father's lawyer, and she just nodded.

"There were witnesses who will testify that there was a violent

altercation between Ukyo and Ranma," Nabiki resumed, "One

that fortunately ended without bloodshed. Ranma and Ukyo

reconciled their differences and agreed to a truce during which

they took the time to talk and come to an understanding. Ukyo is

reconsidering her position on the marriage now, but she

recognizes my claim as valid and has resolved to work things out

with me before accepting or renouncing the engagement. Ranma,

meanwhile, has been faithful to me, his iinazuke by a pledge

between our families that predates Ukyo's arrangement. The

mere fact that the designated party who fulfills the contract that

requires a Tendo daughter to marry Ranma has been changed

alters nothing in the bargain. A Tendo daughter will marry

Saotome Ranma, and that will be me. Quite apart from any

arrangement by our parents, however, is the fact that Ranma and

I have made our own commitments to one another and intend to

follow through on them. We reject any compulsion to marry in

favor of our voluntary pledge to unite our families. The best part

of it all is that I did not have to fight him to win this agreement."

Cologne gave a derisive snort but Nabiki ignored it, continuing to

focus on Ukyo's father as she all but willed him to accept her

statement. The Lawyer was quite nervous by this time, clearly

sensing how effectively she had neutralized many of the

arguments he would have made on his client's behalf. Kuonji

senior was struggling with his pride and love for his only child,

but it was hard to contend with the many arguments Nabiki had

raised. He was a fair man by nature and her logic was telling.

But he could not simply reverse ten years of certainty regarding

the fate of his child based on the reasoning of his daughter's chief

rival. He looked harder at Nabiki, now seeing playing beyond

her tender years to the tough businesswoman behind her pleasant

exterior and very quietly said, "Do you wish this for Ukyo's

benefit or your own?"

"A little of both, sir," Nabiki replied, all too aware of the varied

looks she was receiving from her three companions, "It is for both

our benefits that I would insist on a delay in resolving the

question of which of the two of us is the rightful iinazuke of

Saotome Ranma. Obviously I would prefer myself, but as I

would not purposefully injure my friend, I am willing to delay the

consummation of my own betrothal on the condition that you

cease to pressure her into forcing her side of the issue. I am one

year away from graduating High School and fully intend to enroll

in Business College. I am reopening my family's dojo, which has

sat idle too long due to a family tragedy that is not pertinent to

this discussion. Ranma has two years until he graduates, and I

will be insisting that he continue his education so that he will be

as capable as I am of running a business. Ukyo has confided in

me similar intent to furthering her own education, so it would

seem premature to even be discussing marriage at this time.

Marriage will inevitably involve raising children, and to do that

properly requires a sound financial situation. Surely you must

agree that it is in the best interest of all concerned to delay this

consummation?"

Ukyo's father seemed to be thinking this over when his lawyer

leaned over and whispered something in his ears that did not

carry far, but Nabiki had a pretty good idea of what was being

explained to Kuonji senior. The lawyer obviously sensed a legal

quagmire that could undermine the entire case for Ukyo's

legitimacy as Ranma's iinazuke. Nabiki was actually offering a

way out that saved face and did not overtly exclude the possibility

that Ukyo might marry Ranma. Given this it was hardly

surprising that Kuonji seemed more conciliatory as looked

cautiously towards Nabiki and said, "You would agree to a

mutual delay of both engagements? How then is the issue to be

decided?"

"That is obvious, sir," Nabiki replied, "Saotome Ranma will

decide which of us he will honor through marriage. The decision

will rest entirely with him and have no weight of legal

consequences either way to pressure him to favor one suitor over

the other. Ukyo and I will both remain his iinazuke until such

time as he decides, or else one or both of us withdraws for

whatever reason. This will give us an equal opportunity to get to

know one another so that his decision will be informed and

correct, unless we all discover we have irreconcilable differences,

or else find someone else whom we would favor more as a

marriage partner. If at the end of the end of said grace period

Ranma should decide on me then Ukyo will withdraw her claim

and there will be no legal reprisals against our families. The

same will hold true if Ranma should choose your daughter, in

which case I will withdraw all claims. If you like we can even

set this into writing, and this time as a valid contract."

Ukyo just stared at Nabiki as if unable to believe what she was

hearing. The same was true with Ranma, while Shampoo was

looking at her with a shocked expression. Nabiki kept her

expression neutral, willing them to remain silent for just a few

minutes more while Kuonji Akira weighted the issue in his own

heart, then turned at last to his lawyer, who nodded affirmation.

"Very well," Kuonji said at last, "My lawyer will draft the papers

this very evening and present them to your House by the time you

arrive home from classes. I must say, you do impress me with

the passion of your claim, and the way you so clearly represent

yourself speaks well for your intelligence. You must care a great

deal about the Saotome boy if you are willing to go to these

extreme measures."

"I would do anything for Ranma-kun," Nabiki replied, "Except

bring pain to a friend. Your daughter deserves as much of a

chance at happiness as me, so I will do this for the both of them

and risk the displeasure of my father, who would much rather I

simply force the issue in my favor."

"You will make someone a formidable wife," Kuonji noted, "In

fact...my own business has need of bright, intelligent people who

have as promising a future as I suspect you possess. I will look

forward to seeing you again after your graduate, and even if

Ranma here chooses you-or not-then I may have an offer of my

own that you may find willing to consider."

"I will be very mindful of this, sir," she smiled noncommittally,

bowing as she said, "And I thank you for the compliment.

Coming from such an accomplished entrepreneur as yourself it is

flattery indeed."

"Well then," Kuonji seemed to relax in better spirits, "Now that

we've got that bit of business out of the way, perhaps I should

explain to Ukyo why I was reluctantly forced to have her take on

a partner in the running of this franchise..."

"Excuse me again, Kuonji-Sama," Nabiki phrased the words in

the most respectful terms she knew, bowing more deeply than

before, "Ukyo also asked that I advise her in regards to this

prospective partner you are about to name. She is known to us as

one Kho-Lon, an Elder from a Chinese village named

Joketsuzoku, and I have had recent dealings with her of an

entirely different nature. If it is pleasing to you, may I continue to

serve my friend as she hears the rest of your proposal?"

Kuonji looked at her in more surprise than irritation, which was

good because Nabiki was risking a great deal more than she had

with the betrothal business. The engagement to Ranma was

obviously her concern, but this was a private business matter that

should only have concerned a father and daughter. For an

outsider to thrust herself into these affairs was rude, just short of

disrespectful.

But Kuonji had already seen qualities that he liked in Nabiki, so

he glanced to his lawyer before turning to Ukyo and asking, "Is

this all right with you, Ucchan?"

Ukyo was still recovering from her surprise at what she had at

first thought was Nabiki's betrayal, which she now realized was

actually generosity in disguise. She considered the matter

carefully before she forced a smile and said, "Hai. Nabiki has my

overwhelming confidence, father. I'm sure she will do nothing to

mislead me."

Nabiki had to keep her expression studied and neutral, but

inwardly she felt a warm glow of pleasure at Ukyo's words. She

stoically prayed to the Kami that she would not fail her now, for

her real opponent in this matter was the Elder herself, whose

expression would put shame to any Poker Player. Only Cologne's

eyes registered any kind of emotion, and the focus there was all

but unreadable. Nabiki could not tell if the ancient Amazon was

amused or angry.

Kuonji smiled more broadly as he said, "It's good to have such a

friend. I've often wished I could trust someone like that, but in

my position..." he sighed then said, "Very well, the matter is this:

The previous owner was going to sell the property for a

reasonable amount but had yet to sign the papers. Just yesterday,

however, she called up and demanded twice the sun of our

previous arrangement. When I asked her why she said that she

had been made a better offer by this distinguished lady over here.

Apparently the Chinese Government is interested in broadening

their investments in our country, and the Embassy itself had

contacted the prior owner on behalf of Madam Kho-Lon. They

arbitrated with me and it seems that the only way to obtain the

property was by agreeing to a mutual co-ownership arrangement.

We discussed terms and set a fair price that allowed me to

purchase our share of the building for only one third the original

price. Obviously such a deal is not to be sneezed at..."

"I take it then, Kuonji-sama, that Madam Kho-Lon agreed to

back the other two thirds of the price?" Nabiki interjected.

"She paid up front in cash," Kuonji nodded, "In recently

converted yen, no less, backed by her government. Of course I

could not refuse for diplomatic reasons as well as business..."

"Of course," Nabiki agreed, giving Kho-Lon a hard stare as she

added, "But having a two-thirds share means that hers is the

controlling interest."

"I had thought it would be so, but apparently Madam Kho-Lon is

willing to cede Managerial responsibilities to Ukyo in exchange

for a fair share of the profits," Kuonji-senior replied, unable to

keep surprise out of his voice, "Considering what the estimated

gross return on investment my people project if my daughter

manages things well, it will take her close to no time at all to

earn enough that she can eventually buy back the other two thirds

of the property, at which time I will sign all other rights over and

allow her to manage other businesses in my franchise. This

property will remain in Ukyo's hands, and those of her children,

for so long as she herself may desire. Given all of this, I naturally

thought this the best bargain I could arrange. All other potential

properties in the area have become surprisingly more difficult to

obtain through my usual real estate brokers."

Nabiki had stood where she was masking her surprise as best she

was able, having not expected to hear that Cologne had been so

generous. Now she framed a question as carefully as she could,

mindful of the shocked expression Ukyo was wearing, "Indeed?

Those are very generous terms. May I ask why Elder Kho-Lon

has agreed to this transaction?"

Cologne smiled, having at last sensed her opening, "We of

Joketsuzoku have not had much occasion to concern ourselves

with the affairs of the world outside our borders. Now that the

Chinese Government is encouraging foreign investment it would

seem an opportune time for us to study the business affairs of

other Capitalist countries. As one of the reigning Elders from my

village it has fallen to me to conduct an in-depth research of the

Japanese managerial system through investment of tribal assets

in a promising commercial venture such as this. I understand

that young Kuonji-san is a bright and talented individual in

whom her father has great pride, and her spirit seems worthy of

an Amazon, so naturally she seems like the best choice for

making an initial investment. The risk seems low and the

benefits are high, and if this proves out then we will be willing to

offer more lucrative investments in Kuonji Enterprises. I am sure

that you already know that Chinese Markets are projected to be

the largest business venture frontier leading into the next century.

A mutually beneficial agreement could earn us both a respectable

fortune."

Now it was Nabiki's turn to narrow her eyes as she studied the

Elder. She was certain that Kho-Lon was lying in at least a part

of her speech. Investing in Ukyo's future did not seem at all

consistent with her plans if she were intending to force the issue

of Perfume on either Ukyo or Ranma. It had to be a

smokescreen, but she was missing an important detail.

"Father," Ukyo finally managed to get out, "Do you know whom

this woman is and what she's capable of...?"

"A great deal more than you may imagine, Kuonji-san," Cologne

said pleasantly, "I regret that there was no time for us to become

better acquainted at our earlier meeting. My Great

Granddaughter has told me much regarding you and the young

man you wish to marry, which is what caught my interest. I had

been thinking about finding some promising talent such as

yourself, and given the positive reports I have had you would fit

the description perfectly. In fact I could come to regard you

almost as if you were my daughter."

Ukyo seemed ready to choke on her reply, nor would Nabiki

blame her, but denouncing the Elder before Kuonji-senior did not

seem like a very good prospect, so she spoke up again and said,

"You have good judgement in that regard, Elder. Ukyo is a fine

investment prospect, one whom I was considering myself for a

different sort of partnership, quite apart from our mutual

engagements to the same iinazuke."

"Your praise of her is all the confirmation that I need of the

wisdom of my selection," Cologne said, then finished her

sentence with the Chinese words meaning: "Son-in-law."

Nabiki was finding it difficult to retain her smile as she shifted to

Chinese herself and said, "What are you really up to, you old

hag? Why are you doing this to my friend?"

"Friend indeed," Cologne sounded very amused, "That is an

interesting way to describe your rival, but then you Japanese do

seem to have some interesting customs."

"Ukyo is not my enemy just because her father betrothed her to

my Ranma!" Nabiki hissed as pleasantly as she could manage.

"Your Ranma?" now Cologne's voice contained very little

humor, "And what about Shampoo?"

"I will keep my word to her, which is none of your concern,"

Nabiki said flatly, "Shampoo is my wife by the laws of

Joketsuzoku. I will honor her in as much as I can, but you know

such marriage is not legal in Japan..."

"All the more reason for the both of you to return with me to

Joketsuzoku," Cologne replied, "But we are both being rude to

our companions. Let us return to your country's barbaric

language and save this discussion for later."

Nabiki bit off an angry retort and forcibly turned it into a patently

false laugh as she said, "Oh, Elder, you have a marvelously

developed sense of humor! Is everyone from Joketsuzoku as

good with a jest as yourself?"

"Not everyone," Cologne smiled, "But some are better at jests

than others."

Kuonji-senior was looking at both of them with raised eyebrows,

but his lawyer whispered something in his ear that seemed to set

him at ease as he turned back to Ukyo and said, "I am sorry that I

did not have time to inform you of this earlier, Ucchan. I would

not blame you for being angry. I know how much you wanted

this to be a private enterprise with only yourself as a tenant..."

"Tenant?" Ukyo asked with her own surprised expression.

"My Great Granddaughter and I intend to live in residence for the

time being," Cologne replied, "There is enough room upstairs to

accommodate us in separate rooms, Miss Kuonji, so you need not

fear that we will intrude on your privacy. Indeed, outside of

interacting with us during business hours you will hardly be

aware of our presence."

Ukyo looked ready to explode, but Nabiki took her hand and

moved closer to whisper in her ear, "I advise you to sign the

contract. If I guess the situation right, Cologne is just waiting for

you to make some fuss over her involvement that will not only

kill the whole deal but create a barrier between you and your

father. She would doubtlessly exploit that to force you to concede

your other claims to Ranma. Either Perfume has told her the

truth regarding you, or it's Ranma she's really after. Either way

you'd come out the loser."

"I can't just let her get away with this!" Ukyo hissed back in an

angry whisper.

"With any luck you may not have to," Nabiki replied, "Sign the

papers and call her bluff. At the very least she'll be an annoyance

you'll have to live with, but if she agrees to leave the management

end to you, then you can hold that against her if she does try

pulling something improper. This way you look good in your

father's eyes without sacrificing control of your business, at worst

Cologne becomes your not-so-silent partner. Either way I'll try

and keep her off your back when I mount my own personal

challenge."

"You'd better be right about this," Ukyo hissed, then turned at

last and said, "What can I say, father? You've done the best you

can for me, so I guess I'd better live up to my end of the

agreement."

Kuonji beamed at her, "I am so proud of you, my child! The only

way I could be happier than now would be on your wedding day,

which I trust I will live to see. I am already confident that you

would do well with such friends as this to advise you."

Ukyo gave Nabiki a studied look, then smiled, "Yeah, I guess

you could call it luck. Well, might as well sign the papers..."

She reached for the pen laying upon the table and was about to

print her name out in Kanji when a knife suddenly protruded

from the space between her hands. Ukyo stared in horror at the

quivering thing, as did everyone else, including Cologne the

Elder.

"I am sorry," a very masculine voice said from across the room in

faintly accented Japanese, "But I cannot permit this. The old

Ghoul is conning the lot of you while coming between me and

what is rightfully mine."

"Who the hell are you?" demanded Ranma as he whirled around

to glare at a very tall man with long black hair and coke bottle-

thick glasses wearing a white Chinese outfit and radiating an

aura of menace.

"Who am I?'" light seemed to gleam melodramatically off his

glasses as he half-smiled at them all while Nabiki heard

Shampoo gasp in recognition, followed by a different sort of

noise from Perfume's direction.

"You!" Cologne uttered sharply, "How dare you interfere in

Amazon business? Leave now and I may forget this unfortunate

outburst!"

"And let you entrap this unfortunate young woman in one of your

more obvious schemes?" the man said derisively, "You may be an

Elder, but you are not my Family's Elder, and I am not obligated

to obey when you are overstepping the very laws you claim so

much to cherish."

"Excuse me," Nabiki said, "As fascinating as I find your sudden

concern for the welfare of my friend, I'm afraid I share the

surprise of the rest of my companions, so I'm forced to repeat my

iinazuke's question, Who are you?"

"My name is Mu Tsu," the man replied, "But you can call me

Mousse, as I'm sure you will," he noted with a slight wince, "As

to what I'm doing here, I'm seeking to prevent a travesty! There

is no way I will allow this Elder to force my future bride to marry

another woman!"

"What's this?" Kuonji-senior asked in confusion, "Who is

marrying whom? What's this about a bride being forced to marry

another woman?"

"I fear that you have been grossly deceived sir," Mu Tsu replied,

pointing dramatically with one hand at the woman in question,

"Pur-Fum! I will not permit you to marry anyone else but me!

Law or no law, you re the woman I intend to marry!"

"Mou," Nabiki sighed, "Why can't life ever be simple...?"

Continued.

Comments/Criticism/Apoplectic fits?: shadowmane

You think things are getting complicated now? I'm only just

getting started...

Nabiki 1/2

Chapter 13, Part 2.

By

Jim Robert Bader

Inspired by the works of Rumiko Takahashi;

All rights go to her, the publishers & distributors

Of the Ranma 1/2 Series.

(Based on the Altered Destinies Series

by Wade Tritschler and Others;

Some characters and ideas were created by me,

The rest is shared Fanfiction, so please do not sue me)

Perfume backed away at the sight of her worst nightmare come to

life. Now, of all times, just as Great Grandmother was about to

fulfill her promise to secure her future Airen, this clod from their

past would show up to spoil everything, even if she had been

wishing for just such an interruption.

She remembered a boy, slim and gangly, whom other boys

picked on constantly until one day Perfume got angry with their

behavior and came to his rescue. Perfume made the boys stop

picking on Mousse, and from that day he was at her side,

following her around like a puppy, trying to do nice things to

please her-and usually failing. After a while he became quite a

pest, but Perfume did not know how to make him leave her alone.

When she began a rivalry with another girl from a different

House Mousse just kept getting in the way between them. That

other girl was Shampoo, and because she and Perfume were

constantly fighting Mousse would take Perfume's side in matters,

even though against Shampoo he had no hope of victory. Instead

he made Perfume look weak for having a man interfere in her

battles.

Of course he also prevented other children from learning her

secret for several years longer than Perfume might have been able

to keep up her ruse. Even Shampoo did not suspect the family

shame that Perfume carried, up until the day when Mousse that

he foolishly took off his glasses and clumsily stumbled into her,

causing her a minor injury, which naturally gave the game away

before almost the entire village.

To this day Perfume did not know why Cologne had looked past

her weakness to see the potential within her, or why she agreed to

accept Perfume as a replacement for The-One-Who-Was-Not-To-

Be-Named, the exiled Cousin to Shampoo whose position she

inherited when her own family renounced her. On that day

Perfume and Shampoo became cousins and mended their rift,

ceased to be enemies and started learning to be friends. Mousse

was not prepared for this change in their relationship, of course,

and still wound up picking fights with Shampoo while trying to

claim Perfume's affections.

He was always getting in their way, coming between her and

Shampoo, often with the best of intentions yet never

comprehending why his clumsy overtures always failed to win

her over. At first he just wanted to be her friend, but then later

tried to make it more than friendship, always giving her good

cause not to like him. It was frustrating at times because in many

ways he was a very nice boy. If he would only turn his blind

affections on someone else it would have made everyone's lives

so much happier.

Instead she was most likely going to have to beat him up again,

or-failing that inducement to leave her alone-kill him.

Considering what he had just done to her adoptive Great

Grandmother it most probably would be the latter.

It was not that she regretted having Ukyo for a life companion,

but this way was somehow wrong, not the sort of method she

would have chosen for herself. She knew somehow that Mousse

had figured it all out with his usual uncanny sense for Cologne's

more perfidious schemes, and she waited for him to inevitably

give the game away, dreading inside how this would make her

appear before Ukyo.

"I don't get it," Ukyo frowned, "What do you mean the old goat is

deceiving us? Is there something in the fine print that I'm

supposed to know about?"

"I'm surprised your clever friend over there hasn't already figured

it out," Mousse smiled a somewhat superior smile, "Look beneath

the document you were so foolishly about to sign."

Nabiki almost swore aloud, so chagrined was she at never having

considered the possibility. She turned as Ukyo picked up the

contract and found a sheet of carbon underneath it. With

trembling fingers Ukyo lifted the sheet to expose another

document underneath it, only this one written in Chinese.

Cologne sought to reclaim the incriminating sheet, but to her

ample surprise Nabiki beat her to it. Nabiki held it up before

Ukyo and began to read it silently, then hissed under her breath,

"A Marriage contract?"

"Nani?" Ukyo whirled only to find Cologne was not staring at her

but rather Mousse while Perfume's face was flush with

embarrassment, staring down at the ground as though to will

herself invisible.

"I don't understand?" Kuonji senior said in honest confusion,

"What is this all about?"

Shampoo had already glanced over Nabiki's shoulder with a

horrified expression while Mousse casually remarked, "I'm afraid

there's a great deal more that's going on here, sir, than you've

been let in upon. The particulars are not important, what matters

is that I've come to claim my bride and put that old witch out to

pasture."

"Your years away from home have made you reckless, Mu Tsu,"

Cologne replied calmly, "Did I not forbid you to approach my

Great Grandchild after your last defeat? You have no claim on

her, and Perfume already has another claimant."

"It is a farce!" Mousse snarled as he continued to advance,

pointing at Ukyo, "This woman knows nothing of our culture or

ways! She never openly challenged Perfume, as I have done

repeatedly! She did not defeat her in battle, she simply ambushed

her in a sneak attack as artless as it was unsuspecting!"

"Shampoo," Nabiki said, "Just who exactly is this guy, and why

does he think Perfume belongs to him?"

"Him very stupid boy from village," Shampoo snorted, "Perfume-

cousin no like! He think him only one good enough for Cousin,

always chase her, never accept he loser."

"You be quiet," Mousse glared at Shampoo, "This has nothing to

do with you, and you know I defeated her fairly on my last

challenge!"

"Perfume no defeated by you!" Shampoo snarled, "She get hurt

and fall in river, nearly drown! You too blind to help, it

Shampoo who help Perfume to safety! You stupid, almost kill

her!"

"I'd never hurt Perfume," Mousse said sincerely, taking an

offensive stance, "You are another matter. You dare accuse me

of nearly causing her harm? Who knocked her into one of the

Cursed Springs of Jusenkyo?"

Ukyo was looking back and forth at these two as if unable to

decide how she was going to take this. On the one hand she was

overjoyed to know that Perfume had another suitor, one who

obviously wanted her companionship, but on the other

hand...there was something about this stranger that set her teeth

on edge. Maybe it was the slightly wild edge in his voice, or

maybe he just reminded her a little too much of Tsubasa.

And then there was Perfume herself, who had backed away

almost to the other end of the restaurant with a look not quite of

fear and revulsion but definitely not welcoming. How often had

she worn the same face herself when Tsubasa kept after her,

embarrassing her before other boys her age? It had gotten to be

the joke around her old High School, another reason why she had

been so eager to transfer. Whoever this Mousse character was he

was definitely not welcome.

And yet the boy had just saved her from an awful mistake. It

hardly mattered if Cologne's little prank might not be fully legal

in a Japanese court, she could still have held it up for blackmail

by threatening to expose it to her father! Ukyo would have been

in a real bind then, having to explain to the old man how she had

gotten herself entangled in these affairs in the first place. For that

reason alone this Mousse character deserved a fair hearing.

"Ucchan," Nabiki suddenly hissed, "Take your father and get him

out of here...now!"

She glanced at Nabiki, but the tone and expression her friend

wore silenced her questions and made her realize the hint of

danger in the air was escalating exponentially. The danger

radiated from Mousse, but it was as nothing compared to the aura

of danger that surrounded the now angry Cologne. It was no

longer a question of whether a fight might break out but rather

when.

So she turned and said, "Dad, get out of here-now!"

"What?" Kuonji senior asked, "But...?"

Ukyo wasted no time reaching her father's side and all but

yanked him to his feet. Her father's Lawyer assisted her in this,

of course, though mainly so that he could up as well. Though her

father at first resisted their urging him to leave he was quick to

grasp that something very bad was about to occur. A fighter

from the old school that he was it was against his instincts to

leave, but considering the state of his health he knew that this

was folly.

Nabiki watched them withdraw from immediate danger then

calmly turned to Mousse and said, "I should thank you for saving

us some trouble, and if you want to settle this with the old

woman, don't let us stop you."

"That is very wise," Mousse said, "I have no quarrel with you,

Tendo-san. In point of fact I might give my condolences for your

own troubles in regard to the spoiled brat you must unfortunately

call your Airen."

Shampoo bristled at being called a spoiled brat, but before she

could say anything Ranma spoke up, "Hey! You can't talk to

Shampoo like that!"

"Why not?" Mousse looked at Ranma as though he were a

specimen in a jar, "And why should you care? Isn't she your rival

for the hand of the woman you love...or should I use a less

gender-specific term here? In either sense, Shampoo is a

problem."

"I don't care about any of that!" Ranma defended, "I just don't like

the way you're talking about her! It's not her fault some stupid

law says she has to be married to Nabiki! It's not even Nabiki's

fault...well, not really anyway...and like you said, it's none of your

business!"

Mousse eyed Ranma with clear disdain, then turned his nose up

and said, "My issue is not with any of the three of you. This is

only between me and Perfume...and the Old woman if she makes

it an issue."

"Feeling confident today, are we?" Cologne angled her staff in a

way that looked menacing, "Think you've learned enough tricks

to take on an Elder, sonny-boy?"

"If that elder insists on making herself a disgrace, then why

should I mind?" Mousse folded his arms in his voluminous

sleeves, "The secrets I have gleaned in my years abroad would

astound and amaze you, old crone. Take your best shot if you

think it will make any difference."

Cologne frowned as she regarded Mousse, obviously sensing

something unexpected here. Mousse was too confident and

poised not to be hiding something up his sleeve unexpected. She

knew all of his old tricks, but there was always the chance that he

had discovered something for which she had not prepared.

Very quietly she said, "Perfume, withdraw from here. I will find

you later."

"No!" Mousse suddenly cried, "We settle the matter once and for

all here!"

He turned his head slightly as he saw Perfume move away

towards the exit, and in that moment Cologne sensed an opening

and launched herself into an attack. Unfortunately for her

Mousse proved less distracted than she imagined and pulled

something out from concealment, thrusting it right at her.

"Surprise!" cried Happosai as he dangled at the end of Mousse

arms.

"GAK!" Cologne cried out as she somehow halted herself in mid-

leap, her eyes becoming as wide as silver dollars as she came

face-to-face with the aged master.

"Miss me, Honeybunch?" Happosai grinned, "I can tell you're

speechless..."

"H-Happy?" Cologne blinked, and then suddenly her eyes

narrowed as she growled, "You old-PERVERT!"

She took a swing at him but hit Mousse on the forearm by

mistake. Happosai had already moved beyond her reach and was

bounding like a rubber ball, darting around Ranma and Nabiki to

latch himself firmly on the chest of an astonished Shampoo.

"Yowsa!" the old man cried happily as he fondled the surprised

Amazon, "Now this is more like it!"

"Aiyiiii!" Shampoo cried as she fought to dislodge him, "Is

Demon Happosai! Let go Shampoo! Cousin! Airen!"

"HEY, YOU OLD LECH!" Ranma and Nabiki cried together,

then looked at each other, then back at Shampoo, who had finally

managed to get Happosai to release her.

"You dare touch breasts of Amazon?" Shampoo cried in outrage,

"Only Airen have right to do that! Die-!"

She tried to kick him but instead ran into Cologne's staff, which

was thrust in her path. Cologne whirled around to face the

ancient master and said, "This one is mine, Shampoo. We have

unsettled business between us!"

"You want me?" Happosai grinned, "Come and get me, but first

get a load of this!" and he waved a lacy brassier in one hand,

earning an astonished look from Shampoo, who hugged herself

with a disconcerted expression.

"Aiya!" she cried, "Is bra given Shampoo as gift from Airen-

sister, Kasumi-san! Give back Shampoo...!"

"Shampoo?" Mousse looked at her in surprise, "Since when have

you started wearing western-style lingerie?"

"Only just start," Shampoo said uneasily, "Is more comfortable

than bra given by Great Grandmother in village..."

"My Great Grandchild has special needs, which need not concern

you in the least," Cologne said to him levelly without taking her

eyes off Happosai, "You have embarrassed my family for the last

time, lecherous one! Three hundred years and you still have not

learned your place! Prepare to make restitution for you

numberless sins..."

"Do any of those sins match your trapping a young girl in the

body of a man?" Happosai idly wondered, "Or forcing another

lovely child into marriage that she did not herself invite? Exactly

on what scale are we measuring the degree of our sins this time,

hmmm? Don't forget, I remember you when you were still as

fresh as a mountain daisy..."

"Idiot, I was never as innocent around you!" and with that she

launched into an attack as Happosai charged her in a flying leap.

The two seemed to collide and briefly exchange blows in mid-air

before Happosai landed nimbly where Cologne had been

standing a moment before and casually turned around.

Cologne did likewise, a very strange look on her face as she

stared down at her chest where the brassier he had placed upon

her now rested outside her Chinese robes. Somehow Happosai

had even managed to fasten all the hooks and snaps right!

"There, doesn't that look just perfect on you?" Happosai smiled as

he walked up to the stunned Cologne and patted her on the

shoulder, "Sorta makes you feel two hundred and fifty years

younger, eh? Well, that's enough fun for now. I think my young

apprentice can handle things from here. I only stopped by to help

this nice Chinese boy out. He seems harmless enough, and he

only wanted to profess love to his childhood sweetheart. Well,

have a nice day, young people."

With that he hummed a merry tune as he strutted out the door to

the restaurant. A few moments later Ukyo staggered in, trying to

force her way past something that had latched onto her own chest

and swearing profusely until she had freed herself, then she

leaned against the door and said, "Who let that old freak get loose

from the nuthouse?"

The whole room was silent for another tense few seconds before

Ranma said, "Wow...is that guy weird or what?"

"He's formidable," Cologne almost sighed, "And he hasn't

changed a bit from our last meeting..."

"Hey," Nabiki suddenly spoke up, "Can we call this off before

things get out of hand and we wind up damaging Ucchan's new

restaurant? Mu Tsu? You seem like an intelligent boy. Mind

filling us in on why you chose to show up like you did, as

opposed to visiting us earlier so we'd have some idea that this

was going to happen?"

"You pride yourself on being the clever one," Mousse replied, but

folded his hands into his sleeves and said, "Very well. The truth

is that I only just arrived a few hours ago, but I have been

patiently gathering information to prepare myself for this

meeting. I already knew some of the particulars from what they

told me back in the village after I came back from years abroad

hoping to finally win the hand of the one whom I wish to

marry..."

"Perfume no want you!" Shampoo insisted.

"Why doesn't Perfume herself tell me that?" Mousse stared across

the room to where Perfume was cowering in a corner.

"Are you still here, child?" Cologne said in annoyance, "I told

you to leave."

"Why are you always bullying her?" Mousse glowered, "You

want her to be the best, but you know she can never take

Shampoo's place among the young women of their age. You've

denied her status, but she is still a Warrior bound by the rules of

Joketsuzoku!"

"And by those rules she is bound to Kuonji Ukyo," Cologne said

firmly, "Either to kill or marry, that is the law!"

"That law has been amended so many times it's amazing to me

that you can even quote it with a straight face," Mousse snorted,

"Haven't the Amazons enough problems without you starting an

international incident? You have both of these girls jumping

through hoops to please you. Well, if it's the law you're so

worried about, then here!"

His hand moved suddenly like a blur, and Perfume cried out

almost simultaneously, doubling over as she clutched one hand to

her breast, a look of intense agony spoiling her perfect features.

"Hey!" Ukyo cried out without thinking, "What did you do to her,

you Jackass?"

"She is not harmed," Mousse said placidly, "I have merely

defeated her to satisfy the laws of Joketsuzoku."

Shampoo was already at Perfume's side as the girl doubled over,

weeping tears uncontrollably. Ranma and Nabiki saw this, then

as one they turned and glowered in his direction.

"What the hell did you do that for?" Ranma demanded.

Nabiki had been thinking the same thing, only her question was

silent as she looked on Mousse and saw not malice but confident

self-assertion. There was something significant here that she was

missing, and a quick glance at Shampoo told her that Perfume's

other secret weakness was directly involved in the present state of

the Amazon Enforcer.

"I see," Nabiki suddenly had it, turning to Mousse and

remarking, "Very clever. A tiny projectile, almost too small to

see, hurled at great speed at an exposed hand, probably a stone or

a marble."

Mousse smiled, "Several, actually. Perfume has quick reflexes,

having learned to deflect small objects hurled at even greater

speeds. I see that you are indeed as clever as I had guessed from

your earlier speech. Yes, I have resorted to base means in order

to win my bride, but now that she is mine even Cologne cannot

deny me."

"What?" Ukyo was suddenly confused, "But...I thought an

Amazon marriage could only be dissolved if..." she swallowed.

"Come now, Miss Kuonji," Mousse smiled at her, "Would that

make any sense at all in this modern age? At one time, yes, a

marriage could only be dissolved with the death of one partner,

but if we continued that practice today there would be all kinds of

legal complications with the government, and if we killed every

foreigner that way it would bound to have international

ramifications as well. Amazons pride themselves for being the

best fighters in the world, and united we are the equal of any

army...but if the government were to send, say, a million men to

attack us it would hardly matter if we killed all but a few

thousand. Joketsuzoku would still be destroyed. That is why the

Council of Elders have amended the rules to provide for less

extreme alternative. Cologne is one of a few holdouts who yet

cling to the older and more barbaric ways of the past, and she has

passed this thinking on to her chosen successors. Therefore I

hardly need to take your head in order to claim Perfume for my

own, only prove myself the better suitor."

"You have not won yet," Cologne said darkly, "Kuonji Ukyo is

still the rightful Airen, and Perfume has accepted her. You must

defeat Ukyo to prove yourself the better suitor."

"Again you distort our laws," Mousse snorted, "Kuonji Ukyo

does not need to fight me at all, merely surrender her claim,

which I am sure she will gladly do now."

"Huh?" Ukyo blinked, unprepared for this sudden offer.

"You do not wish to marry another woman," Mousse said evenly,

"And you have stated a preference for this man named Saotome

Ranma. I overheard Tendo Nabiki negotiate with your father for

the right to compete for his affections, a very novel if unusual

resolution to your conflict, and I must say it is certainly more

civilized than beating each other senseless. Perfume is the one

factor in this equation that you find inconvenient, so I will gladly

take her away from you. You have only to accept my offer and

Perfume will never bother you again."

Ukyo blinked, unable to believe what she was hearing, but at the

same time torn with sudden doubt at the ease with which she was

being handed a life preserver. On the one hand she found the

offer a comfort, never having wanted to be mixed up with these

Amazons in the first place. On the other hand, though...

On the other hand there was Perfume to consider. She believed

in the rules as Cologne had outlined them. Obviously the old

woman had been taking gross advantage of her two

impressionable charges by filling their heads with antiquated

rules that demanded their compliance. Even so Perfume was not

pleased upon seeing this boy, and he had just hurt her very much,

to judge from the way she was sobbing. Shampoo was

comforting her with her shoulder, ignoring the glare Cologne

gave both of them, as if the girl were in agony beyond imagining.

What could it take to make Perfume cry that way?

Whatever it was it made Ukyo grip her Spatula in both hands and

say, "Hold on, Sugar. Even if I agree to this, what makes you

think Perfume will go along with this deal? She has rights, too,

you know."

"I am more aware of that than you could possibly know," Mousse

said with sadness, "But Perfume will obey the laws and come

with me because of her belief, and once she is under my

protection she need never fear having the old crone exploit so

shamelessly. I will teach her to respect herself and embrace new

ways, and she will have a place in the tribe again. In time she

may even come to love me as I love her..."

"N-No!" Perfume cried out, and then with great effort slowly got

to her feet, refusing Shampoo's offer of assistance. Her lovely

face was stained with tears but her expression was hard with

anger. She clenched her fists in resolution and said, "You stupid,

Mousse! You say you love Perfume, know what best for her, but

you never listen! You never accept Perfume's word! Perfume

reject you time and again, but you still think you command her

love. Stupid Mousse...is not law make Perfume no want be wife!

You not bad, but you foolish and stubborn. Go home to

Joketsuzoku and find someone else to love. Perfume no want

you!"

"You can't refuse me," Mousse replied, "I've beaten you, and once

Ukyo agrees to renounce her rights you will have to accept me as

your Airen."

"Perfume never be wife to Mousse!" Perfume said, "You never be

Airen! Perfume no want you, Perfume want real Airen."

She turned a look to Ukyo that was both pleading and desperate.

She already knew that Ukyo was hesitating, but she had to

believe that the other girl somehow still cared deep down or she

was doomed to virtual servitude. Mousse would smother her

with his overprotective ways, no matter how sincere or well

meaning, and she could never force herself to look upon him the

way he would want. If only Ukyo understood and accepted...

Ukyo was hesitating, but something in that desperate look

touched a maternal chord in her soul and caused her to take a

defensive position as she said, "No deal! I've got nothing against

you, and I even owe you a favor, but I think the girl deserves a

better chance at happiness than what either one of us have to

offer."

"So you would accept being trapped into this relationship that

you clearly do not want?" Mousse asked her.

"If the alternative is turning her over to you," Ukyo grimaced as

she said, "Then I guess I really don't have any choice about it, do

I?"

"As you will," Mousse replied, taking a step forward before

raising one leg and assuming a classic Crane posture, "The law

does not require your death, no matter what Cologne may claim,

only your defeat. I will make this as painless for you as possible

since you merely believe that you are looking out for my future

wife's welfare."

"This is nuts!" Ranma started to take a step forward, only to find

Cologne's staff thrust into his path.

"No," Cologne said, "This is our way. Much as I detest admitted

this, Mousse does have a point about the present state of our

laws. Probably thinks divorce should be a painless matter for

both parties, the fool. If everyone took an attitude like that then

divorces would be commonplace!"

Nabiki arched an eyebrow but decided against saying what came

into her mind. Instead she laid a hand on Ranma's shoulder and

said, "We'd better do as she says this one time, Ranchan. It's up

to Ukyo to make her own bed, though frankly I wish she'd make

up her mind on this Perfume business."

"Spatula-girl, be careful!" Shampoo suddenly cried out at their

side, "Mousse very tricky! He use Dark Arts to win battles!"

"Dark arts?" Nabiki arched an eyebrow.

"Hidden weapons," Perfume translated as she came to stand at

their side, watching Ukyo square off against Shampoo with

round eyes and a distraught expression.

Ukyo was too intent on studying her opponent to catch the last

few words, but she read Mouse's body posture and realized that

the man was very good at concealing his intent. In spite of

holding a Crane stance he was not making overt movements to

attack. There was something about the glint of his eyes...

And then it came to her at once, just a heartbeat before his hands

thrust forward and started issuing out reams of chains in her

direction.

She ducked low under his thrust and came up in a roll with a

hand full of her own throwing spatulas, which she hurled his

way. Mousse moved like a blur to deflect her weapons and came

at her in a sweeping charge, his legs shooting out at her like pole-

arms, and had she not reacted in time with her Baker Peal to

deflect she might have suffered grievous hurt. Instead she

whirled around in a leap and threw one of her flour bombs his

way, only to have it harmlessly explode in a space he no longer

occupied.

Mousse attacked again with flailing weapons that sprouted from

his sleeves as though he carrying hardware store worth of metal

under his white jacket. Ukyo was hard pressed defending herself

as she backed away, giving ground before his onslaught.

"Ukyo," Ranma murmured as he saw the girl's defenses begin to

crumble under the weight of Mousse's relentless attacks. In

another few moments it looked as though it would all be over,

and he wanted more than anything to leap into the battle and

protect her.

Nabiki shared his sentiments but she was studying the Chinese

boy's movements as if to determine the pattern to his attack. She

saw Mousse wrap chains around the Baker's Peal, forcing Ukyo

to tug against it, which left her open to other chains that wrapped

around her neck and both legs, trapping her completely...

And then Nabiki saw what she was looking for and cried out,

"Ucchan! Think Okonomiyaki!"

Ukyo's eyes flew open, and then she released her grip on her

weapon and moved forward, creating instant slack as Mousse

was unprepared for the rush. The girl pressed in with an attack

he never would have expected, her hands becoming fists as she

flew at him with rapid punches that struck so fast his eyes could

not blink or measure their speed. Ukyo struck a hundred blows

in less than a second as Mousse backed away absorbing this

punishment, blows that-while not very hard in of themselves-

came so rapidly together that their cumulative effect was like

beating a small hammer against a stone, wearing it down by

successive rhythm.

At last Ukyo threw everything she had into a single punch and

struck Mousse hard in the solar plexus. The boy was picked up

and knocked down half way across the restaurant, landing upon a

table and shattering it while scattering the chairs that had been

stacked atop it. Mousse went down in a heap, groaning

profusely.

"The Amaguriken," Cologne whispered in awe, "She mastered it

in a single afternoon?"

"She fast learner," Shampoo said with a touch of pride,

"Shampoo teach her and boy Ranma, make bet which learn

faster."

"Incredible," Cologne spoke in hushed tones, "What a warrior she

will make for our village."

Mousse groaned audibly, but then he started to get back to his

feet and said, "This isn't over yet...I'm not yet defeated..."

"What?" Ukyo blinked, "Are you stupid or just too stubborn to

admit I won?"

"Both," said Shampoo and Perfume in chorus."

"I will never let anyone take Perfume away from me," Mousse

said as adjusted his glasses, "You surprised me with that

maneuver, but I will not underestimate you again. That attack

has exhausted you while I still remain capable of fighting.

Surrender now or I will show you no mercy."

"What happened to me not suffering?" Ukyo asked as she felt the

marks around her neck that the chains had left.

"You will not suffer," Mousse replied as he once again assumed a

Crane stance, "In fact you will barely feel this...for very long..."

He flew at her with a new attack and Ukyo brought both hands

up to block the kick she expected, only to find his knee in her gut,

knocking her back and doubling her over.

"Hey!" Ranma almost rushed to her air but again was restrained,

this time by Shampoo.

"No, wait," Shampoo urged him.

Ukyo absorbed the punishment that would have knocked the

wind out of a less experienced fighter. Her face was tight with a

snarl, but she managed to grate out, "That the best you can do?

Keiko can split logs with her knees, yours feel like love taps!"

"Then I will simply have to try harder," Mousse replied as she

prepared another Crane stance.

"Mousse very stubborn man," Shampoo said, arching her voice as

she added, "He blind as bat! No see Spatula-girl much better

fighter!"

"Huh?" Ukyo blinked, then stared at Mousse in a strange way

before smiling an odd smile as she murmured, "You don't say?"

Mousse launched himself forward, but Ukyo darted to the side

and threw a series of rapid punches which he managed to block

as he turned around, assuming another stance as she moved away

from the front entrance. Mouse continued to face the place she

had been standing at last while she knelt down and retrieved her

Baker's Peal, and when he attacked she was ready and brought

the flat of it down hard on his head, knocking him senseless.

"Ukyo win!" Shampoo cried as Perfume was less able to restrain

herself and threw herself upon Ukyo in a hug that almost

knocked both of them sprawling.

"Wow," Ranma said, "What happened to him? Why'd he

suddenly drop his guard like that?"

"Oh," Ukyo said as she recovered her balance, still wrapped in

Perfume's arms and feeling somewhat sheepish about it. She

held something up in one hand and said, "Maybe it's because I

took these when he wasn't looking."

Nabiki grinned, seeing the thick bottle-glasses in the

Okonomiyaki chef's hand before she gave Shampoo a coy look and

said, "Blind as a bat without his prescription lenses, huh?"

"Him never learn," Shampoo smiled, "He good fighter, but

eyesight big weakness."

"Didn't anybody ever teach him to fight blindfolded?" Ranma

sniffed as she looked down at the boy with a mixture of contempt

and pity.

"Apparently he missed out on that particular lesson," Cologne

noted, "Well, Miss Kuonji...I take it by this that you have decided

to accept Perfume after all?"

"Ah," Ukyo was plainly having regrets about her victory, but

somehow could not bring herself to throw cold water on

Perfume's enthusiasm, "Not exactly, but the next guy who

challenges me had better be a lot nicer about it."

"You were great, Ucchan," Ranma said with obvious admiration,

then he seemed to recall himself and gave Nabiki a sheepish look

as though expecting her to chew him out.

Nabiki just sighed and said, "Yeah, just great. You won the girl

and beat the bad guy, and now how do we explain this to your

father?"

"Ah..." Ukyo winced, then looked pleadingly at Nabiki.

Nabiki sighed as she nodded, "Never mind, I'll think of

something."

"Spatula girl make Cousin very happy," Shampoo smiled, then

seemed to rethink her statement and said, "Ah...mean Ucchan..."

"That's all right," Ukyo sniffed in amused resignation, "Call me

Spatula girl if you like," she eyed Perfume with greater

resignation and said, "I probably deserve it."

Nabiki just shook her head and mused that it was going to be an

interesting year or so competing with Ukyo over Ranma. At least

it did not promise to be dull having two Amazons in the picture.

She turned to Cologne and said, "We're going to have to discuss

a new arrangement for your deal with Ucchan."

Cologne was instantly on her guard but her tone was level, "I

suppose we must. Under the present circumstances, I suppose I

could be willing to make a few concessions..."

Continued.

Comments/Criticism/Recipes for Okonomiyaki:

shadowmane

And now for some quiet time, followed by a trip to the doctor,

then another to a local ice rink...

Nabiki 1/2

Chapter 13, Part 3.

By

Jim Robert Bader

Inspired by the works of Rumiko Takahashi;

All rights go to her, the publishers & distributors

Of the Ranma 1/2 Series.

(Based on the Altered Destinies Series

by Wade Tritschler & Others;

Some ideas and characters were created by me,

The rest is shared Fanfiction, so please don't sue me)

"Thank you for everything, Akane-chan," Kodachi said as she

kissed her lover good-night, "You were wonderful. I enjoyed

ever second..."

"You weren't so bad yourself," Akane softly chuckled before

returning another kiss, her arms around Kodachi's waist as the

other woman continued to hold her, both savoring the warmth of

their bodies and the musky smell of recent sex that clung to them

both.

"All right you two," Keiko said with a grin, "Break it up before

Aunt Nodoka sees us. Are we on for tomorrow night, your

place?"

"Hai," Kodachi smiled, "And I will remember to pick up the

items you suggested. It should make for a most...entertaining

session."

"You sure you can keep your brother out of the way?" Akane

asked with a note of caution.

"Akane-chan," Kodachi purred as she kissed her with deep

affection, "I've been handling my brother since before the day we

met. He wouldn't notice a herd of elephants storming through

our gardens if I told him to be at a certain time and place,

provided you do not mind distracting him for a while, Keiko-

chan?"

"Hey, he seems like a nice enough guy when he's not spouting

poetry and threatening to storm the gates of heaven," Keiko

agreed, "Just as long as he doesn't try anything fancy I should be

able to keep him out of your hair for a few hours. Just remember

that I expect some compensation."

"And you will have it," Kodachi chuckled in wicked promise

before turning back to Akane and sighing in blissful ardor, "It

will be hard struggling through the hours until next we meet..."

"Likewise," Akane agreed as they gave each other another hug,

then Kodachi exited the door as Akane leaned against the frame

and watched her departure with a sigh.

"Now, wasn't that a lot more fun than fighting?" Keiko asked,

"Not that fighting isn't my second favorite thing in the whole

universe, of course..."

"Oh you," Akane chuckled, "Thank you for showing us how to

deepen our friendship, Keiko-chan. I'd always wondered if there

were any way for 'Dachi and me to become closer than we

already are to one another...and now we know," she chuckled

more deeply.

"You're welcome," Keiko grinned, "Just don't tell anyone about

this. If Nab-chan finds out she'll probably accuse me of

corrupting your morals, or some such nonsense."

"Like she should talk about morals," Akane giggled like a

schoolgirl, which in fact she was, though this was one of the rare

times she acted like it.

"Actually," Keiko sobered, "I'm more worried about Nodoka-san

finding out, or maybe your father. They might kick me out of

here if they thought I was teaching 'improper' behavior to their

little Akane."

"Like I was a six year old who needed scolding," Akane closed

the door in a huff, "Don't worry, Kei-Chan, Kodachi and I'll be

discrete about this, and we won't let anyone know you coached

us. This'll be our little secret."

"Good," Keiko smiled as they went back towards the stairs and

headed for Akane's room, "You know, if you were like your

sister, she'd probably use this to blackmail me into something or

other. She never was one to give away her favors without

expecting something in return."

"I'm not my sister," Akane huffed, no longer sounding very

amused.

"So I noticed," Keiko smirked as she gave Akane a sidelong

glance, grinning more broadly as she saw the youngest Tendo girl

blush as scarlet as her namesake.

As they got to the door, however, Akane thrust her arm out in

Keiko's way and turned around with a smirk of her own as she

said, "Oh no you don't! I need to get dressed, and you need to

take a shower. As a matter of fact, we both do..."

"Fine," Keiko grinned, "Then let's do it together!"

Akane laughed before she replied, "Now that I know what you

see in a girl when she's undressed, I'm not giving anything away

myself, or I never will get ready in time for dinner. In fact I'm

surprised we weren't called out by now. Kasumi never misses a

dinner summons, you can set your watch by it."

"Good point," Keiko mused, "Maybe I should go back downstairs

and see if she's all right."

"Not smelling like that, you don't," Akane chuckled once again,

"We're not serving fish this time, as far as I know."

"Hey!" Keiko protested, "I've been told it smells more like

Salmon!"

"Three days old?" Akane grinned, making a point of holding her

nose, "Take your bath, or-better yet-a shower, then it'll be my

turn. Let's not push our luck any farther than we have, shall we?"

"All right," Keiko sighed, "You win...this time."

"Next time I'll let you scrub my back, I promise," Akane smirked

before she closed her door behind her.

"That's not all I'll scrub, you little minx," Keiko grinned in delight

as she started to turn around, only to find Kasumi standing right

behind her.

Keiko blinked, not just because she had failed utterly to hear the

approach of the older Tendo daughter but because Kasumi was

looking at her very strangely. It was not the happy smile Kasumi

normally wore, or even the blandly oblivious smile she fixed on

someone when playing the peacemaker. Kasumi was not smiling

at all, nor was she frowning exactly, but one would have been

very hard pressed to find her expression warm and friendly.

In a voice that carried no farther than a meter she murmured,

"What have you been doing with my sister?"

For some reason Keiko swallowed, feeling very much in the

spotlight. A simple denial was not likely to work here. There

was something in Kasumi's accusatory stare that said plainly

enough that the knew without doubt just what-in general terms-

Keiko had been doing with Akane.

She tried weak humor first, "Well, you know the old expression

about making love instead of war? I was just helping two close

friends cement their friendship."

Kasumi continued to stare at her as she replied, "And what about

Ryoga?"

Keiko lost her smile as she replied with a bland, "Nani?"

"The boy is infatuated with Akane," Kasumi spoke slowly, "You

can see it in everything he does, but he's too shy to approach her

with the knowledge. I thought he was your friend, yet here you

are encouraging Akane to turn her affections elsewhere."

Keiko was impressed. She had long suspected that Kasumi had

more on the ball than anyone gave credit, but the level cogency of

that statement left no doubt that she was both intelligent and

perceptive.

"I'm not trying to create a wedge or anything," Keiko said

somewhat defensively, "Why do people like you always assume a

girl has to go one way or the other? Let her live a little, explore

her options, maybe decide if she likes it both ways at once. Who

knows, maybe she and Kodachi might both take him on. I think

Ryoga's man enough to handle that sort of action."

"And who gave you the right to decide this?" Kasumi asked just

before the door to Akane's room opened and Akane herself

looked outside in puzzlement.

"Are you talking to someone Keiko-san-Kasumi?" she gasped in

surprise.

"Oh, Akane-chan," suddenly Kasumi's tone was its usual

cheerful-bland manner, "Dinner is ready, if you and Keiko-san

would care to come downstairs. Father and Auntie are worried

that you might be sick..."

"Thank you, Oni-chan," Akane smiled affectionately, "Tell them I

was just getting ready after seeing Kodachi on her way..."

"Oh, Kodachi-san was here?" Kasumi affected surprise, "Why

didn't you invite her to stay for dinner?"

"She had to head on home," Akane replied, "Besides

she...um...wasn't dressed for the occasion. I'll be down after I

take a quick shower and get dressed, okay?"

"Hai, Akane-chan," Kasumi smiled in honest affection, but once

Akane closed her door she turned a different look towards Keiko.

"You're tricky," Keiko said with raised eyebrows.

"Thank you," Kasumi replied, "Someone has to be the voice of

sanity around here. Most times it's me."

"Unless Kaneda's in the picture?" Keiko asked and was rewarded

by seeing Kasumi flinch away with a guilty start, "Guess I'm not

the only Hentai around here, ne?"

Kasumi did not instantly reply to that, but when she did she

whispered, "What would you know about it? You don't even like

men."

"Never had much reason to," Keiko said, "My father left me and

my mother when I was only seven, and after I got taken by

Pirates, well...you can pretty much imagine what sort of guys I

had to deal with."

"You've also had rude encounters with women," Kasumi pointed

out.

"True," Keiko conceded, "But after the first one I learned not to

mind it very much. I don't suppose an innocent flower like you

would be much interested in my shonan-ai adventures as a Slave

in Madam Lao's dungeon?"

Kasumi did not answer, but her silence and posture as much as

told Keiko that she was curious...if only a little.

Keiko took a deep breath and said, "Kasumi-chan...mind if I call

you that? You're a bright, well educated girl, and anyone with

half a brain can see that you're lonely..."

"I..." Kasumi reluctantly began, then did not continue.

Keiko's sigh was more heartfelt as she took Kasumi by the arm

and led her, unresisting, back to the room Kasumi shared with

Nodoka, then closed the door and said, "What do you think about

me? I mean really, honestly, without all the pretense and

niceness?"

Kasumi drew a ragged breath and said, "I think you are a

basically nice girl, you've just had some very bad breaks. I'd not

accusing you of corrupting my sister's morals..."

"Excuse me," Keiko sniffed, "I think you already did. Not that I

take offense to that sort of thing, I hear it all the time. I never

even pretended that I was a virtuous woman, Tendo-san."

Kasumi did not answer that, but her silence once again was

telling.

"Look," Keiko sighed, "You're trying to look out for your sister,

and I appreciate that, but learning how to love other women isn't

going to ruin Akane for marriage. She's still just a kid, and I

know you think she's way too young to be considering marriage,

so what harm is it in allowing her to experiment a little? It's not

like she'll catch an STD from hanging around with

Kodachi...unless that Black Rose starts flirting with half of the

other girls on her own campus."

"But..." Kasumi began, "A young woman should not fool around

before marriage..."

"There speaks the wisdom of our elders," Keiko snorted

derisively, "I beg to disagree. Virginity is overrated. Guys think

a girl who's had experience is some kind of despoiled flower, and

that's nonsense! As if they want to hold it in until they've said

their vows at the altar! Well, maybe your adoptive Brother,

Ranma, but he's an exception."

"Ranma is a very nice boy," Kasumi replied, "He would never

take advantage of a woman..."

"And Nabiki thinks he's right for her?" Keiko could not help

chuckling at the irony, "But seriously, if a boy and a girl enter

marriage without knowing what they're getting involved with it

can lead to just as many problems as anything you're afraid of.

Not everybody out there has a Sexually Transmitted disease, and

not everyone gets pregnant from one or even a dozen times

together..."

"But these things do happen," Kasumi reasoned, "I have read

many books and magazine articles..."

"And they all compare it to Russian Roulette?" Keiko snorted in

contempt, "A 2% chance is a lot more remote than one-in-six,

Kasumi-san, and besides that we're human beings with given

needs! We weren't meant to deny ourselves pleasure and live a

celibate existence like nuns in a monastery...not even you!

Thinking that way will drive you certifiably crazy!"

"There is nothing wrong with waiting," Kasumi argued.

"For how many years?" Keiko asked, "Or is what I hear true

about you and a certain doctor?"

Kasumi swallowed and did not answer, but her glance down was

all the answer Keiko needed.

"Kasumi-chan," Keiko began again, "It's none of my business,

you have every right to be angry with me for bringing it up. How

you run your life is not for me to dictate. I just hope you can

accept that the same thing works both ways. Isn't Akane to be

afforded to the right to choose her own way? I wasn't forcing this

on her or Kodachi, I just let them know that I'd help them out if

they wanted to explore that area of their friendship."

"You know that Kodachi is a very compulsive person," Kasumi

replied, "What makes you think she will keep it at the level of

harmless play? She could wind up monopolizing Akane's life..."

"In which case I intend to stick around and see that it doesn't

happen," Keiko said firmly, "I've been there, done that, and I

know where that leads. Believe me, I'm more qualified than you

to know how to deal with this, and I knew from the start that

Kodachi was going to require special handling. I think I've

gained a trust with her, though, and maybe that's a start at getting

to the bottom of her problems."

"I will hold you to this pledge," Kasumi said with dignity, "But if

things turn out the wrong way, then I will see to it that Father and

Auntie know what you have done with Akane."

"Fair enough," Keiko replied, "I've nothing better to do, and it's

starting to look like I may not be able to come away with what I

came for."

Kasumi looked at her in puzzlement, "Nabiki has told you this?"

"No," Keiko sighed, "But any fool with eyes can see that the field

is getting crowded. Nab-chan is actually considering broadening

her options, which is the most sensible thing anyone could do in

her place. I'd expect nothing less from her, and I even approve a

little, but...I'm not sure if I'm going to wind up a part of her

equation."

"Broaden her...?" Kasumi asked, and then her eyes went wide,

"Oh my!"

"Look, don't tell her I said anything, all right?" Keiko hastily

urged, "It's Nabiki's right to decide how to manage her affairs,

and I'll support whatever decision she makes. I'm not such an

idiot that I'll insist on a share of the pie, not when I'm still young

enough to pick up the pieces and move on to people who need me

more than she does."

"Nabiki values your friendship," Kasumi assured her.

"Sure," Keiko sniffed, "As a friend. I'm only the first girl she ever

actually slept with, why should I expect special consideration?"

She had not intended her tone to sound so bitter, but from the

way Kasumi was looking at her Keiko knew that she had

betrayed her inner feelings. In an attempt to lighten up she

smiled and said, "Don't worry, I'm a survivor, and so is Nabiki.

I'll get by without her...somehow. But what about you? Are you

going to go on surprising her from ambush with glasses of

water?"

Kasumi flinched again then said, "You must think I'm some kind

of...tease doing that to her, but..."

"No," Keiko smiled, "Just human. Look, you want my honest

advice? Either get up the nerve and talk to Nabiki or find

somebody else who'll be willing to help you out. Frankly I think

you two should just screw each other and get it over with, but

you're both too prissy and hung up about the incest taboo for that

to work out. Besides that Shampoo would likely kill you."

"I couldn't..." Kasumi's expression registered her realization of

the implications, "Oh my!"

"Why not?" Keiko almost said the word bitterly, "I think you'd

make a cute couple. Hell, I'd almost do Kaneda myself if I were

into that sort of thing. I'd much rather do you, if you'd let me/"

"Me?" for some reason Kasumi found herself shaking at the

concept, but not for the reasons that she would have previously

imagined.

"Sure," Keiko grinned, "A cute honeypot like you? I'll bet you're

like an exploding volcano that's ready to go off. Why if I so

much as touched you right now..."

She extended a finger over one of Kasumi's breasts and without

warning Kasumi felt her nipple stiffen. A low gasp escaped her.

"I thought as much," Keiko grinned, "Think it over. It might help

calm you down and get you to thinking rationally about this

whole mess. I'm sure you wouldn't mind consulting with a more

experienced girl who's been where you are...oh, a couple zillion

years ago, or so it feels like. If not me, then maybe we should go

have a word with your friend, the doctor..."

"Ah, that...um...is not necessary..." Kasumi replied, looking more

flustered than Keiko would have imagined.

"I need to get ready to go downstairs," Keiko smiled, "And

Akane wants to shower after me, and you need to get downstairs

if you're going to cover for us. I'm sure your dad and Aunt

Nodoka are beginning to wonder what's taking us girls so long to

get ready..."

"I...will speak to them," Kasumi looked down and murmured,

"And I'll...think about what you said."

"Good," Keiko smiled, "And maybe on the side you can help me

figure out what to do about Ryoga. The poor boy's even more shy

and tongue tied than you."

She stepped out of the room and almost immediately ran into

Akane, who leaned back as though she had been listening the

whole time. Keiko hastily closed the door before Kasumi could

see her and allowed Akane to drag her into the bathroom.

Once alone Akane looked at her hard and said, "First me and

now my sister?"

Keiko wore a bland imitation of Kasumi's normal look as she

replied, "Surely you don't think I'm some kind of female

Casanova? Would I do a thing like that behind your back,

Akane-chan?"

"Without question," Akane snorted then gave the game away

with a soft chuckle, "Actually I was going to ask you about it

anyway. You really think you can help her out?"

"I'll give it my best try," Keiko grinned, "Who knows, she might

even go for me, what do you think? Should I rack up another

Tendo on my belt-notch?"

"You're not wearing a belt," Akane pointed out.

"So you noticed," Keiko continued smiling.

Akane returned her smile and said, "What the hell, let's shower

together. Think we can do it in time not to arouse suspicions?"

"I can't promise a quickie," Keiko grinned more mischievously,

"But I promise you won't expire from boredom..."

"So you see," Nabiki smiled, "It finally occurred to me that this

whole mess is based on the idea that I would either have to chose

between Shampoo or Ranma. Obviously I can't make that

choice, especially not yet or under these conditions. I've my

promise to Ukyo's father to consider on the one hand, and my

father on the other. The fact that Shampoo seems to want to stay

with me for some reason just means that there's only one possible

solution that I can think of."

"Marry them both?" Cologne said with a cagey expression, "I

understood Polygamy was not legal in Japan..."

"But I could only legally marry Ranma," Nabiki replied, "While

my marriage to Shampoo is not legal in this country. By your

Amazon rules, however, my marriage to Shampoo is legitimate

and any other exchange of vows is technically not recognized,

except if we both agree to take Ranma on as our shared

concubine. This way the laws on both sides are satisfied since

there's no law in Japan that would prevent Shampoo from living

with us, if she will agree to this arrangement. Since we're both

willing to provide Ranchan with kids at some point in our

relationship that part of Amazon tradition should be satisfied as

well. We'll provide you with healthy heirs to preserve both

Amazon and Anything Goes traditions and Shampoo will regain

her status among her people."

"Very clever," Cologne remarked, then gave Ranma a studied

look, "What do you say about this, boy? Think you're man

enough for both Tendo Nabiki and my Great Granddaughter?"

Ranma looked at Nabiki before exchanging looks with Shampoo.

If the question had been posed to him a few days earlier he would

have rejected it out of hand. Now, given all the craziness they

had just been through, Nabiki's proposal was starting to make

crystal clear sense. Only one question remained in his mind as

he replied, "I guess I'd be willing to try, provided Shampoo

doesn't resent me too much. She a very nice girl, and I know she

wants to spend time with Nabiki."

"Ah," Shampoo began before Cologne could prompt her,

"Shampoo thinks...boy no bad...he good fighter, and he very loyal

friend. Him side with person who is wronged, try do what is

best. Shampoo think...he make good companion. Shampoo no

think she resent Ranma."

"And what of your place as tribal Champion of the Nyuchizu,

child?" Cologne asked her, "Would you be willing to concede

your position?"

Shampoo lowered her gaze before replying, "Being Champion all

Shampoo ever work for, but is lonely being best of tribe. No be

lonely if Airen at Shampoo side. Shampoo no mind she better,

she make good tribal leader."

"Hey, what about me?" Ukyo suddenly protested, ignoring the

way Perfume was leaning her head upon her shoulder.

"You are a special case, Ucchan," Nabiki smiled, "By Amazon

law one man can be shared by up to four women...isn't that right,

Elder?"

"Yes," Cologne said as she drew herself up as tall as someone her

size could manage, even balancing on her staff, "Kuonji Ukyo

has just demonstrated to me that she has the potential to make a

very good Amazon, and she is certainly an excellent fighter.

Added to that is the obvious affection my other ward has

displayed towards her, I would think it a most agreeable match,

provided Miss Kuonji herself consent to sharing Ranma."

"I..." Ukyo blinked. Share Ranma? With Nabiki and this

Shampoo person? The very idea was absurd, and yet...she

hesitated, then said, "Well... I suppose it wouldn't hurt to talk

about it...hypothetically, that is, not that I'm agreeing or anything

like that..."

"It would also mean that you're obligated to see to Perfume's

welfare, Ucchan," Nabiki said, "If we five combine into a group

arrangement then all partners are mutually obligated and can

equally share the attention of the other partners. That means you

can spend time with Ranma and still be faithful to Perfume. It

also means that we no longer have to be rivals."

"But...what about what you said to my father?" Ukyo asked.

Nabiki chuckled, "You don't expect I'm going to try explaining

all this to him, do you? I'll think up some way of convincing him

that your honor's satisfied and that you're technically married to

Ranchan. Of course, that all depends on what Ranma thinks

about this, eh, Ranchan?"

She smiled, and this time Ranma only hesitated for a fraction of a

second, looking to Ukyo as he replied, "I can't promise anything,

Ucchan. We've only met a short time ago, but...I do think that

we could be very good friends. You don't mind waiting for me to

decide if this is something I want, do you?"

Nabiki raised both eyebrows. The boy was learning! She'd half

expected to have to put up some kind of an argument in private,

yet here he was agreeing to her decisions!

Ukyo's smile was pure enchantment, "I suppose I could live with

that...for a while, anyway. But you have to know, Ranchan, I'll

still take full advantage of my share of the pie, if you'll have me."

Ranma's smile in reply was partly relief and partly nervousness,

"Just great. I'll be a dead man by age thirty."

"Optimist," Nabiki chuckled, "Okay, Elder, so what do you

think? Does this arrangement satisfy your concept of honor?"

"In so far as I have heard up to this point," Cologne remarked

aloofly, "I take it that it is still your intention to delay the actual

ceremony until you have all graduated from High School?"

"Try College," Nabiki said, "I, for one, am not sacrificing my

education, and I intend to keep up my studies once these

distractions are dealt with and we can get our lives back into

some kind of order."

"Then I am afraid that there is one problem," Cologne replied, "I

cannot dally for ever away from Joketsuzoku waiting for you

children to firmly resolve your commitment. You will have to

accompany me back to Joketsuzoku where we will perform a

proper ceremony that will confirm your commitments to one

another."

"Don't listen to her," groaned Mousse, who was starting to regain

consciousness as he rose from the counter upon which Ukyo and

Ranma had laid him, "Once she's got you in our village she'll..."

"That is enough!" Cologne snapped as she hopped to the boy and

rapped him with her staff back into dreamland.

"So, you wanted us where you'd have a better shot at controlling

us, eh?" Nabiki smiled, "I'm afraid I can't agree to that, Elder.

We remain in Japan, you go back to China. Don't worry, I

promise I'll do right by both of your Great Granddaughters."

"My students are needed at home," Cologne said gravely,

"Shampoo is their champion while Perfume is my faithful

servant. They are both the best of their generation..."

"Not your students any more," Nabiki rose from her chair to

confront the elder, "If Shampoo becomes my wife then I'll see to

it she learns the Anything Goes system, and she can teach me all

that she knows in return. We'll honor each other's traditions and

respect each other in the partnership we're forming. I'll even

forge documents to make it seem like she really is married to

Kaneda so that she can remain here legally and gain citizenship.

In all respects I'll honor her as if I really were her husband, just

as long as she abides by my similar commitment to Ranma."

"Perfume's not yours to order around either, you old crone," Ukyo

growled, "Find someone else to train as your pet monkey."

"You both are becoming quite protective of my wards, I see,"

Cologne said with a pleasant smile, "Very well, then I propose a

counter-offer, one that will satisfy me just as well. Since the

linking element here is the boy, Ranma, then he must defeat my

Champions to prove that he is worthy of being an Amazon. If he

loses he must agree to come back to Joketsuzoku in their place

and I will train him to become my new Enforcer."

"Boy Enforcer?" Perfume blinked, "Is possible?"

"He would have no more status than you possessed, my child,"

Cologne replied, then smiled wickedly as she added, "But he

need not remain entirely Male. There is an alternative none of

you have considered."

"Nani?" Ranma gasped, his voice suddenly tight with emotion.

"Ranma doesn't have to prove anything," Nabiki growled, "You

want a challenge, fight me!"

"That would serve no purpose," Cologne replied, "You are

formidable, but you are two hundred years too young to pose

much of a challenge, no matter what that old goat may have

taught you. Ranma must prove himself worthy of marrying into a

clan of Amazons. What about it, boy? Are you man enough for

such a challenge?"

"Hey," Ranma growled, "I'll take you on or anybody else for that

matter! I just don't fight women, it's not...honorable."

Cologne laughed as she said, "Then you forfeit the challenge and

must come with me to Jusenkyo! Don't worry, sonny boy, I'll

make a real woman out of you and teach you to lose that silly

notion you have about us being frail and helpless creatures..."

Ranma blanched, then said, "Even if I wanted to fight, there's no

way Perfume and Shampoo are going to agree to a thing like

this..."

"For the chance to come home and visit their families?" Cologne

smiled, "Never forget that their status back home is tied

intricately with the report that I shall make to my fellow Elders.

This clod," she poked her staff at Mousse, "Will not be able to

give testimony to the contrary. If I say otherwise, Perfume and

Shampoo will be dead in the eyes of other Amazons and never be

able to come back home to bring shame upon our tribe. If they

give an honorable account of themselves, however, then I will be

able to say that they are worthy daughters of our House and their

names will be respected. What about it, girls? Think you can

demonstrate to me that this Saotome Ranma is worth all the

attention?"

Shampoo and Perfume exchanged looks, then stared at Ranma,

and then Shampoo said, "If boy lose he no marry Airen?"

"His other betrothal to Kuonji Ukyo will similarly be ended,"

Cologne replied, "Thus ending the need for any sort of clan

marriage."

"Perfume...no want hurt Ukyo by taking boy away," Perfume said

slowly, "But if Airen still be Perfume's chosen..."

"That will not change," Cologne said, "Satisfy me that he is

worth the both of you and I will step aside and permit this

marriage to continue."

"Then...Perfume give best shot," Perfume looked towards Ukyo

and said, "Perfume try no hurt Ranma. Perfume defeat Ranma,

please Great Grandmother."

"Shampoo no like force boy to go to Jusenkyo," Shampoo said,

"But Shampoo no be defeated. Shampoo do as Great

grandmother say for last time."

"There you have it, Tendo Nabiki-san," Cologne smiled, "Step

aside and let these girls show you the meaning of what it takes to

be an Amazon, or do you concede this boy is too weak and thus

unworthy of their efforts?"

Nabiki felt a sinking sensation as things were getting out of

hand, her carefully laid plans in jeopardy, as the risk of losing

Ranma was almost too much to bear. One look at the

determination in Ranma's face, however, and her protests were

muted. How could she come out and say that she was afraid for

him without making him sound weak before the Elder?

"I've got a bad feeling about this," Nabiki sighed, half to herself,

"It's up to you, Ranchan. You want to go through with this or

back out? I'll support you either way."

Ranma took a deed breath to steady his own nerves and said,

"How can I refuse now? I'll do what I have to if it means getting

the old ghoul out of our lives. All right, who do I fight first?

Perfume or Shampoo?"

Cologne's laughter was chilling, "This is a test of your manhood,

boy! We won't settle for half-measures. I want to know how you

stand up to having two women to deal with, so you're fighting

both of them at the same time."

There was only a marginal pause before Ranma faintly

murmured, "Nani...?"

Continued.

Comments/Criticism/Complaints to the Moral Majority:

shadowmane

The fight against Cologne is not over yet! Will morality and

decency triumph in the end? (Hey, what story were you

reading?) Tune in again for the next thrilling (and semi-

explicit) chapter!

If you wish to check out my other works, Please check out my

Fanfiction webpage at: . or

it's mirror site at: ~

All related chapters of this series can be found there along with my

other works.


	14. Chapter 14

Nabiki 1/2

Chapter 14, Part 1.

By

Jim Robert Bader

Inspired by the works of Rumiko Takahashi:

All rights go to her, the publishers & distributors

Of the Ranma 1/2 Series.

(Based on the Altered Destinies Series

By Wade Tritschler and Others;

Some Characters and situations were created by me,

The rest are shared Fanfiction, so don't sue me)

"Two against one?" Nabiki blurted, "But that's not fair!"

"Those are my terms, take it or leave it," Cologne smiled at

Nabiki knowingly and said, "Unless you would prefer to accept

my other terms and come with me now back to Joketsuzoku..."

"Ranchan can't fight the two of them all by himself!" Ukyo

protested, "These girls are tough, and we ought to know it!"

"If a boy aspires to be the Cock in the Hens Nest then he must

prove he has the stamina and determination for his Amazons,"

Cologne replied sagaciously, "Unless he wishes to concede that

he needs more training. Be glad I don't test him by having him

fight all four of you at once."

"Great Grandmother is being generous," Shampoo said with

neither boastfulness nor humor, "Shampoo no want boy get hurt,

but Shampoo is Amazon. Must fight with full power. No hurt

boy too badly, but boy no hold back. Is Amazon way."

"But Ranchan's no Amazon!" Ukyo continued to insist.

"That true, Airen," Perfume replied, "But he good enough for

Amazon male, he fight, prove himself, then we one big family, or

he take Perfume's place beside Great Grandmother."

"Either way you win, huh?" Nabiki eyed her sidelong.

To her credit Perfume did not meet her stare but sighed, "No

want win this way, but Perfume fight for freedom to be with

Airen. I fight not to death, but make boy concede she better."

"If he can take you both on, then he is more than worthy to be my

Son-In-Law," Cologne replied, "How about it, boy? Will you

concede, or are you a fighter?"

Nabiki wanted to curse the old crone and tell Ranma to forget all

about it, but she knew him well enough to anticipate his prideful

answer as he just said, "I'm not afraid of you or anyone, old

woman. I don't like fighting girls, but...if I have to..."

"Hold it!" Ukyo cried, "Not inside my restaurant! I've taken

enough property damage, and the place isn't even open yet!"

"Good thinking," Nabiki murmured, then more audibly said,

"Let's take this someplace outside where there's a lot more room

and less to damage, then you can have your stupid grudge

match."

"It matters not a whit to me where the fight takes place," Cologne

replied, "But don't try to delay this too long. I've already reserved

plane ticks for a one way trip to China."

"Hope you can get a refund," Ranma sniffed, "All right, Nab-

chan, where would you suggest?"

Nabiki was about to say something about foxholes and steel

vaults when inspiration took her somewhere else. With a slight

grin she said, "I know just the place, and it's not far from here

either."

"What about him?" Ukyo indicated the still-unconscious Mousse,

who still lay upon her counter.

"You got trash pit out in back?" Perfume asked.

"More like incinerator," Shampoo smiled coldly.

"Never mind the fool," Cologne sniffed, "He is not worth the

attention. Very well, Miss Tendo, where do you suggest we go to

resolve a matter of Amazon honor?

"I'll lead the way," Nabiki smiled, faintly hoping in her heart that

Ranma would see the potential in what she was leading him

towards and exploit every advantage, because against the

Amazons his normal array of tricks would not be enough for their

double onslaught...

"A construction yard?" Ukyo gasped, "This is your idea of an

ideal battleground, Nab-chan?"

"Hey, for you it's the kitchen," Nabiki smiled, "For Musubetsu

Kakuto Ryo it's anyplace where you can take advantage of your

surroundings."

"It's perfect," Ranma smiled, "Couldn't ask for a better spot, Nab-

chan."

"Very clever, Daughter-in-law," Cologne smiled, "I should have

expected no less from you, but against my girls even this

hardware store of potential weapons you've selected will hardly

make the difference."

"Weapons?" Ranma looked at her curiously, "I thought this was

going to be a hand-to-hand fight!"

"I said they would be going all out, and that means weapons,"

Cologne replied, "Shampoo and Perfume are trained to fight with

the special weapons particular to their distinctive fighting

systems in addition to their unarmed skills. Your iinazuke has

merely provided you with a chance to balance things out a bit

more in your favor, however ineffectual to the overall outcome."

Ranma was about to ask what she meant when he heard a

mechanical clinking sound as Perfume flexed her arms and the

double-bladed axes appeared from some place of concealment.

Shampoo touched the earrings she always wore and suddenly her

Bonbori appeared, one in each hand. Both Amazon girls looked

at him, expectant and ready.

"Better go along with this, Ranchan," Nabiki murmured in his

ear, "Just remember to use whatever's at hand, and one thing you

should know about fighting Perfume..."

"No more coaching from the sidelines," Cologne snapped, "Let

your betrothed fight his own battles without the extra pointers."

"But..." Nabiki was about to say, but she caught a warning look

from Shampoo and decided to hold her peace. Ukyo looked

ready to say something but Cologne pointed with her staff and

said, "Combatants take your place. This fight begins at the count

of ten, nine, eight, seven, six..."

Ranma vaulted down into the construction pit as Shampoo and

Perfume did likewise, each party moving off to take their places

on a stretch of level ground set in between the wood and steel

girders of the place with ten paces distance between Ranma and

his two formidable opponents. As Cologne continued to count

backwards all three took ready stances and prepared for the

match. Ranma tried to relax but found himself staring at the

ground rather than at the two women, allowing his peripheral

vision to give him the warning he needed as he summoned his

will to do what he knew to be necessary.

"...gi, san, ni, ichi-hajime!" Cologne pronounced as she brought

her staff down.

Ranma tensed slightly but did not initiate the first move.

Shampoo and Perfume, on the other hand, began to circle warily,

their weapons held at ready, their postures and bearing perfectly

coordinated.

"Ranchan..." Ukyo murmured, then without taking her eyes off

the fighters growled, "How could you agree to this, Nabiki?

Aren't you worried Ranma will get hurt?"

"Are you kidding?" Nabiki said, "I'd rather it was me down there

any day, and I know what those two are capable of. He'd better

not let himself get hurt, the Baka..."

Cologne said nothing as she continued to watch as Ranma gave

neither hint of his intentions nor sign of any opening. The boy

seemed to be measuring the distance between himself and his

opponents as though he were working out a geometric puzzle. At

the last instant as both girls launched their attacks he was

instantly in motion, fluid, graceful and rippling with power. He

avoided both attacks as he dove right through the middle and

came up in a roll, then spun and kicked backwards before

launching himself into the air again and becoming a human

pinwheel.

Perfume attacked in earnest with her axes, but it was like trying

to chop smoke as Ranma melted before her eyes into a shadow,

and suddenly he was on the other side of her, contending with

Shampoo, who saw and adjusted her attack to this maneuver.

He is good, Cologne thought to herself as Ranma danced around

Shampoo's Bonbori attack, then suddenly appeared atop one of

them, surprising Shampoo completely as he vaulted into a

somersault and landed atop a pile of lumber. Perfume at once

threw her axes and they arced towards him like twin Frisbees.

Ranma saw and avoided this attack by the narrowest of margins

as he vaulted over the woodpile and disappeared on the opposite

side.

"Whoah, I didn't know she could do that!" Ukyo said as the axes

swung back towards Perfume, who plucked them out of the air as

though the things were a pair of swooping hawks returning to

their Mistress.

"That is nothing," Cologne scoffed, "My girls have been taking it

far too easy on the boy. Now that they know how fast he is it will

be a different story."

Indeed Perfume was stalking up to the woodpile with axes raised

in preparation. Shampoo stood back and watched, as her

adoptive Cousin became a blur of motion that moved straight into

the lumber and began converting the pile into so much sawdust.

"Kind of extravagant, don't you think?" Nabiki asked, "Wasting

all that energy on an essentially useless target."

"You think so?" Cologne mused as a cloud of wood chips and

dust became a miniature tornado with Perfume at its center as she

sent the fragments hurtling in all directions. She ceased rotating

at the last and stared around at her own handiwork, expecting to

see a body slumped somewhere, but Ranma was no where in

sight. For a moment she looked puzzled and turned to exchange

a look with Shampoo.

"Cousin!" Shampoo suddenly cried out as Ranma exploded from

the ground virtually at Perfume's feet. The Amazon girl was

startled but instantly jumped back and counter-attacked, only to

find Ranma moved with her attack, staying inside her reach as

his hands moved to block her strikes and kicks as fast as they

were delivered.

Cologne chuckled to herself, "I can see the boy has had good

coaching, but Perfume knows how to deal with this turn of

events."

Sure enough Perfume stopped trying to chop Ranma to pieces

and instead arched backwards and away from him. Ranma

naturally followed suit as Perfume caught her weight upon her

hands and Ranma did the same, moving his legs to catch her

knees as she tried to kick him...

And took a solid blow from behind as Shampoo attacked with

both Bonbori. Ranma was stunned, giving Perfume the chance to

recover as Ranma doubled up in pain while Shampoo readied to

deliver the finishing attack.

Instead Ranma kicked out with both feet aimed at Shampoo's

wrists, catching the Amazon by surprise as she lost her grip on

her Bonbori. Ranma wasted no time wrapping her in his legs as

he pushed himself forward and righted his balance, dumping

Shampoo on her head while avoiding Perfume's reach once again.

He let go and flipped to his feet then braced himself as Perfume

readied to charge.

With one foot Ranma kicked a metal pipe from the ground into

his hands and brought it up to his defense, catching the axes and

deflecting them while both he and Perfume did a dance across the

yard, sparks flying everywhere with each and every connection.

"Good improvisation, good use of terrain, good strategy,"

Cologne mused, "The boy may not be a genius at other things but

as a fighter he has potential."

"Ranchan," Nabiki suddenly felt gut-deep worry as she sensed

potential danger. So far Ranma had only managed to stave off

the double onslaught of the two Amazons, but he kept fighting

defensively, which she knew as his damned chivalry once more

preventing him from counter-attacking. At the rate he was using

up special techniques he was going to lose, because Perfume just

kept right on coming.

Shampoo had also fully recovered and looked mad enough to spit

nails. She retrieved her Bonbori and was ready to attack by the

time Perfume had backed Ranma into corner and had him dead to

rights. Shampoo moved to flanking position and watched for her

chance, thinking grimly to herself that her chance for revenge

was about to be dashed, because there was no way the boy could

avoid Perfume's next attack.

Much to her surprise, and Perfume's astonishment, Ranma did

not try to dodge but rather let the axe come near enough to split

his hairs down the middle, then caught Perfume by both wrists

and stopped her cold in mid-slice. Before this thought had

registered Ranma's leg was up and into position, and then it came

rocketing straight at Perfume's middle with barely enough time

for her to bring up both her knees to block him. The kick almost

got through and Perfume felt numb shock rocket through her

body, and without knowing she why she found herself suddenly

airborne as Ranma released her.

Shampoo watched in amazement as Perfume sailed over her

head, attempting to react by reflex more than intention as her

body automatically curled up into a ball and landed in the sand

some distance away. Somehow Perfume managed to retail her

grip on her axes, but Shampoo could spare no further thought for

her cousin for Ranma was attacking.

Too late Shampoo recognized the Amaguriken technique as

Ranma attacked not her but the Bonbori themselves, striking

them each two hundred times in mere seconds and causing them

to vibrate like gongs until they were too painful to hold onto.

Once her guard was down and her hands were too numb to use

she found Ranma moving to the attack in earnest. In haste she

brought her feet into play and used them to keep the boy at bay

while trying to get circulation restored to her fingers. She gave

ground as she did so and nearly stumbled over some workers

debris, but just as it seemed her defenses would be overwhelmed

she did a super leap backwards and landed atop the second story

of the uncompleted structure.

Ranma took the opportunity to regain his breath, feeling close to

exhausted by his own attack. It had been hard conserving his

strength until the two girls thought they had him on the ropes, but

now that he had effectively revealed that he could counter attack

he knew they would not be so easily tricked again. His one hope

was that he could last long enough to figure out a way to

penetrate their nearly invincible defenses because he had come

close to exhausting his inventory for surprises.

It occurred to him that Perfume should have recovered by now

and mounted a counter attack, but he could not sense her

anywhere. He did not want to risk looking away from where

Shampoo crouched among the girders above him, knowing that

the real attack would most likely come from there, but he

wondered what was taking the other Amazon so long to take

advantage of the opening he was leaving. He decided to back

cautiously away as he kept his eyes on the purple haired

Shampoo, using all his senses to reach out and feel for the other

girl's presence.

At last when he was far enough away from the building he risked

a glance to one side and there he found Perfume, still curled up in

a ball near to where she had landed. The girl's face was a mask

of serious concentration as she was attempting to regain her

footing, and Ranma noted with surprise that her knees did not

seem to be working properly, which was odd since he had not

kicked her very hard. Could he have been somehow so careless

as to have injured her worse than he had intended?

His head snapped back just in time to see the front end of a

wooden beam rocketing at him at near hurricane velocity. With a

quick twist of his body Ranma narrowly avoided having his head

rammed clean off his shoulders, then straightened up in time to

see Shampoo vaulting through the air to land in a series of flips

that carried her right at him like a rolling jackknife. He vaulted

and rolled out of her way then twisted in mid-air to exchange

kicks and punches that flowed between them at near-Amaguriken

velocities. Ranma sensed a barrier at his back and moved to the

side as Shampoo shattered the wall directly behind him then spun

and kicked at him again, striking a girder instead and doubling it

over.

Ranma hastily moved beyond her reach as Shampoo took a

defensive stance and glared at him with her lovely face set in a

snarl that would do justice to a Tiger. Ranma tensed himself as

he readied to absorb her next onslaught, but Shampoo had other

ideas in mind and was now moving her hands in a strangely

intricate pattern.

"Ranchan, get out of there!" Nabiki cried out, realizing instantly

what Shampoo was attempting.

"Nani?" Ranma asked, his eyes wide with surprise as he saw

what looked like sparks swirling in the air around the girl.

Shampoo continued moving her hands as if to gather fireflies into

her grasp, and suddenly her body was glowing around the level

of her navel. As Shampoo brought her hands back Ranma

suddenly had a sense of what was to come and threw his own

arms foreword in a blocking motion, summoning his own Ki into

fortifying his defenses.

Shampoo suddenly thrust her palms foreword and a blast like

blue fire shot from her hands at Ranma, picking him up and

throwing him a considerable distance.

"Well done, my child!" Cologne cried in approval, "I've been

trying to teach her the technique for summoning her Chi many

months now, but she never got farther than the basic level. This

attack exceeds all of her previous efforts!"

"Ranchan!" Ukyo cried, about to leap forward when she felt

Nabiki's hand on her shoulder.

"Wait," Nabiki said, "He's all right, see?"

"What?" Cologne was astonished, seeing Ranma trying to force

himself back to his feet, "He still is conscious? It's amazing that

he even lives!"

"Good thing Shampoo gave him time enough to summon his own

Ki in a counter," Nabiki smiled, "Admit it, old woman, you've

badly underestimated our iinazuke, right Ucchan?"

Ukyo blinked as she turned to look at Nabiki, the word "our"

registering in her mind as if it were an entirely new concept. She

tested it on her lips as she said, "Our...iinazuke?" then she smiled

and said, "Yeah, I guess maybe he is..."

Shampoo was even more astonished than Ranma at seeing the

boy manage to stand up, because her own legs felt too weak to

support her. With a soft groan she collapsed to her knees, feeling

drained by her own efforts. The boy just was not human if he

could withstand a thing like that! Suddenly all desire to fight

him drained out of her as she felt ready to do the unthinkable and

surrender.

But Perfume had finally overcome her pain and was now in a

position to threaten Ranma. Ranma was breathing hard, still

trying to make sense of whatever it was Shampoo had hit him

with, and the last thing he felt like doing was renewing the fight.

He tried to calm his mind and think of something he had left in

his inventory, unable to conceive of a thing that would help him

stand his ground against a fully recovered Amazon. Perfume was

stalking towards him with murder in her eyes and did not seem in

a mood to take prisoners at the moment.

He held his ground, breathing in through his nostrils as he felt a

trembling throughout his body that told him how near he was to

the point of exhaustion. Perfume was only a few meters away

and closing when Ranma thought he heard a voice in his head

crying out, "What's the matter with you, Boy? Are you quitting

because you're tired? What kind of a son are you to let yourself

be cowed by a couple of women? Stand straight, act like a man

and think with your heart!"

Ranma blinked then realized that the voice was not just in his

head. Perfume had stopped advancing and was looking past the

point of his shoulder. Ranma turned around and-sure enough-

there was his father standing right behind him.

"Otosan?" he gasped, "What are you doing here, Dad?"

"I've come to see you fight, what do you think, boy?" Genma

asked him, "So far all I've seen you do is dance around and trade

a few kicks and punches. Where's that grit and determination

I've seen you display in the past? Are you just going to let

yourself be overwhelmed by a couple of women? Stand up for

yourself! Be a man and use your head! Every fighter has a

weakness, and you're just not looking!"

"What Panda man do?" Perfume asked, waving her axe

meaningfully, "Stay out of fight and let Perfume chop boy into

sukiyaki!"

"Ranma," Genma said seriously, "Take a good look at this girl

and see her for what she is: an enemy out to destroy you! Stop

thinking of her as a girl and think of her as a target! Save all the

rest until after you've defeated her! It's her or you, and anything

else is secondary!"

"You!" Perfume said from only a few feet away, pointing over

Ranma with her axes, her tone as deadly serious as her blades,

"Leave now or I kill!"

"Remember what I said about having weaknesses," Genma

hissed into Ranma's ear, then raised his hands as he said, "I'm

going! I'm going!"

Perfume blew air out through her nostrils as she waited for the

elder Saotome to withdraw from the battlefield then she gave

Ranma a half-regard as she said, "You father very annoying man.

How you put up with?"

"He's not that bad," Ranma shrugged, "Once you get over his

little quirks."

Perfume suddenly attacked and Ranma ducked, then rolled out of

the way and grabbed a handful of sand that he projected towards

her. Perfume deflected this attack with her axes but the moment

cost her the opportunity to press on ahead in her attack while

Ranma had recovered his wind and hastily scrambled out of

reach, heading for the building under construction.

"Come back you!" Perfume cried as she hastened after him, only

to find Ranma was picking up and throwing things he scooped

up off the ground on the run. Her axes moved to deflect as much

of it as she could, but some still managed to get by her and came

close to grazing her skin. The wind that flowed past her cheek as

a speck of hardened concrete just missed her caused her to

hesitate with a shudder.

Ranma stopped running as he caught the significance of that

gasp, her hesitation. Suddenly it was all clear to him and he

looked at Perfume and she looked back, suddenly reacting to the

knowledge that he knew, that the game had been given away, and

suddenly she was very frightened and showed it.

Ranma was almost surprised that he had not realized it before.

The girl before him had a very low pain threshold! Nabiki had

explained this after the incident in Ukyo's cafe where Mousse had

taken her down with only a pebble. From the way she had just

reacted to being kicked in the knees he should have realized how

vulnerable she was, and her avoidance of the merest hint of a

scratch did much to confirm this. It all fit a pattern, and

somehow he knew that the battle was all but over.

Something Keiko had said came to mind, of how other Amazons

treated Perfume with contempt before she started training with

Cologne and gained the status of an Enforcer. The many veiled

comments concerning the difference between her and other

warriors, the fact that she was denied full status and had to abide

like a virtual servant in Cologne's shadow, and the fact that only

Shampoo would train with her, and why someone so formidable

seemed to walk around as though dreading her own shadow.

He took a stance and Perfume reluctantly assumed one of her

own, only now it was as if their roles had been reversed as she

studied him warily while he examined her posture, then casually

kicked the ground and flipped a discarded sheet of metal into his

hands, which he casually threw at Perfume, who just as casually

chopped it into so much useless metal. Ranma found other bits

of discarded junk to toss her way, more and more of it to be

hurled at Perfume, who became frantic in her efforts to avoid

them. Her axes became an almost solid wall of flashing steel as

she tried to erect a barrier between herself and her assailant.

More and more bits and tiny pieces began to penetrate her guard

as Ranma intensified his onslaught, wearing Perfume's defenses

down while he got closer and closer, at last coming into reach as

she tried to end the fight by a direct assault, at which point he

finally had her.

Ranma pounced on the girl and knocked both axes out of her

hands, but far from defeating her at that point, he had to work

quickly to intercept her hand as she tried to stab him in several

vital centers with the tips of her fingers. At last Ranma

overpowered the girl and pinned her down with his greater mass,

forcing her arms apart while using his legs to immobilize her

feet. Perfume fought to try and dislodge him but Ranma shifted

his weight to hold her helpless. In the end the girl wound up

glaring helplessly at Ranma from her prone position, but short of

spitting on or biting him she had clearly run out of options.

"Say uncle," Ranma said.

"No!" Perfume replied, then closed her eyes and seemed to relax

within his grip as if giving up all attempt at escape. Instead

Ranma became aware of a feeling along his nape hairs.

"Ranma!" Nabiki called out, sensing that Perfume was gathering

her energy for a last-ditch Ki attack, which at such close range

was bound to have terrible consequences for Ranma.

"I don't want to hurt you," Ranma said pensively, but he realized

from the way the girl was glowing that in another moment she

would do to him the same thing as Shampoo. Though physically

overmastered it was plain that her fighting spirit would not

permit her to surrender, and short of knocking her out there

seemed no way of ending the matter in a positive light.

Of course the thought of hurting her was enormously distasteful,

but what to do...?

Ranma smiled in sudden inspiration, taking advantage of

Perfume's lax state to let go of her wrists and move his hands

into a different sort of attack position. He ran them lightly over

the silken shirt the Amazon wore, using his knowledge of

pressure points to find just the right places and...

Perfume's eyes went wide, and then she started to giggle in

uncontrollable laughter. She brought her hands up to attempt to

deflect, but Ranma was all over her, lightly stimulating the right

places, and with her hyper-sensitive nerves the result

overwhelmed her mind and broke her concentration, leaving her

helpless in the face of these mind-numbing tickling sensations.

"Say uncle!" Ranma said as Perfume made a weak attempt to

fend him off, and after several long moments Perfume finally

gasped, "Ojisama!"

Ranma sat back and desisted in his assault. Perfume recovered

by the time he got back to his feet and glared up at him warily,

but no longer seemed ready to fight him.

"Is good you let go cousin," Ranma heard Shampoo say as he

turned around to see the Purple haired girl standing there holding

her Bonbori at the ready, "Shampoo no need make you let go."

Ranma felt tired as he turned to her and said, "Don't tell me you

still want to do this again?"

Shampoo shook her head then caused her Bonbori to vanish. She

exposed her empty hands and said, "Shampoo no fight no more.

Ranma prove he man worthy of Amazons. Great Grandmother!

Shampoo no fight Ranma!"

"Shampoo, are you deliberately throwing this fight for him?"

Cologne asked archly, "What say you, Perfume, my child?"

"Perfume say," Perfume hesitated, giving Ranma a less hostile

look before nodding, "She no want Boy as enemy. Ranma prove

he good enough defeat Perfume. Perfume concede to Ranma, he

good enough for Airen."

"Yes!" Ukyo cried, then blinked when she saw the other looking

her way and said, "Ah, I mean...way to go, Ranchan!"

"He did it," Nabiki sighed, letting out the breath she had been

holding.

"You never really doubted him, did you?" Genma asked as he

beamed proudly, "He is my son after all. But..." he frowned,

"This doesn't mean he has to marry both of those girls, does it?"

"Unfortunately he does," Cologne said tiredly, "Your son has

proven himself exceptional for an outsider. You've won this

time, Boy, savor the moment."

"Then I don't have to leave Japan," Ranma smiled, "And you

have to stop pestering Nabiki!"

"I did agree to abide by certain limitations," Cologne said with a

slight scowl in her expression, but I still would insist that your

family group would be better off in Joketsuzoku than here in

Japan..."

"That is where we differ, Elder," Nabiki smiled, finally able to

play the trump card Happosai had provided, "We will make our

home here in Japan and your former pupils will become members

of my house where we will honor both them and your Amazon

culture. You may insist all you like, but Joketsuzoku is not the

true home of the Amazon spirit, it is in all women who struggle

to gain in wisdom and ability. A friend of yours informed me of

that before I set about winning the right for my independence."

"You are a clever and woman, Tendo Nabiki, but you are

forgetting one thing," Cologne smiled, giving Nabiki a side-

glance, "I am the only one who knows how to permanently

reverse the Cat-Tongue. The Grandfather spot only works a

single time, and by noon tomorrow you will be vulnerable once

more to heat. The next time you get splashed with water,

Daughter-in-law, you will lose your femininity forever!"

"Not if Gramps knows more than you think, Grandma," Nabiki

growled, "You still think you can pressure me into going back to

Joketsuzoku?"

"You have proven yourself a worthy opponent," Cologne said

sagely, "But I'm not yet ready to throw the towel in this soon.

The round I concede to you, but the fight goes on, and ultimately

I intend to have my way. Enjoy your victory for what it's worth,

because when you are a man you will only have Shampoo as your

wife. Your betrothal to these others hinges on regaining your

womanhood, and only I know how you may do that."

She laughed as she hopped away on her staff, leaving Nabiki to

glower angrily in her wake and mutter, "That old woman should

have been locked up in whatever retirement home she escaped

from..."

"Airen!" Shampoo cried as she threw her arms around the startled

Nabiki, even as Perfume did likewise with an even more

disconcerted Ukyo.

"Hey, what do I get?" Ranma asked, "I did all the fighting!"

"Don't worry, Ranchan," Nabiki said as she managed to regain

her balance with Shampoo still glomming her, "I'll think of a

good consolation prize..."

"As long as we both get to give him something," Ukyo sighed in

resignation as she said, "Perfume please! At least wait until

we're back inside the restaurant..."

"Airen make Great Grandmother back down," Shampoo said

happily, "Shampoo so proud of Airen!"

"I wish it was that simple," Genma said sadly, "But all you've

won is a truce. That old woman is very determined to have her

way."

"No kidding," Ranma sniffed, "By the way, Otosan, how did you

know I was in trouble?"

"Fathers have a way of knowing when their boys need a Father's

guidance," Genma smiled, "You develop a sixth sense, a way of

always sensing danger so that you can be there when your

children most need you..."

"Happosai told you where to find us," Nabiki sniffed.

"More like he hinted what he'd do to me if I didn't, quote: 'Get my

Butt in Gear,' end quote," Genma replied, "But hey, it amounts to

the same thing in the end. All that matters, son, is that I'm proud

of the way you handled yourself. The Anything Goes school is in

good hands with you young people."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence," Nabiki said as she turned to

one side and said, "Hey, Ucchan, think you can get the grill

going in your restaurant? I don't know about the rest of you but

I'm starving!"

"Not a bad idea," Ukyo sniffed, "And maybe Shampoo wouldn't

mind cooking up some noodles to go with the Okonomiyaki?"

"Perfume know many good dish she serve to Airen," Perfume

said brightly, "What Ranma cook?"

"His own goose, if I let him," Nabiki flashed a smile Ranma's

way as she linked one arm with him and the other with Shampoo

while Ukyo took Ranma's other arm while Perfume continued

clinging to Ukyo's other side while Genma just stared at the lot of

them in open confusion. The five partners thus joined together

they walked back to the restaurant in remarkably good spirits...

Continued.

Comments/Criticisms/Corrections in Grammar:

shadowmane

Whew, don't know about you but that fight left me exhausted!

Next time let's try something a bit more relaxing like, oh...say

Ice-Skating?

Nabiki 1/2

Chapter 14, Part 2.

By

Jim Robert Bader

Inspired by the works of Rumiko Takahashi;

All rights go to her, the publishers and distributors

Of the Ranma 1/2 Series.

(Based on the Altered Destinies Series

by Wade Tritschler and Others;

Some characters and concepts were created by me,

The Rest is shared Fanfiction, so please don't sue me)

"Now this is more like it," said Ukyo as she tied on her skates,

"A day to relax with no battles to fight or problems that need

solving, and-best of all-no Cologne looking over my shoulder."

"I'm glad you're enjoying yourself," Nabiki commented on the

side, "Some of us still have to work, even on a Sunday."

"You sure that stuff can't wait until later?" Ranma looked over

his shoulder at Nabiki, "It's a nice day, and we're here to relax.

Frankly I think we could all use it after the last few weeks we've

just had."

"No problem there, Ranchan," Nabiki smiled at him as he tapped

his pen against the ledger laid out before him, "But I still need to

finish working these accounts if we're going to get the dojo up

and running by the end of the month. I also promised Ucchan I'd

double-check her books to make sure Cologne hasn't ordered

anything that's not on the menu."

"It can wait," Ukyo said as she stood up in her skates, "C'mon,

even you need to relax once in a while, Nab-I mean, Kaneda-

chan."

Nabiki winced at Ukyo's unintentional gaff. Being trapped for a

week in male form was becoming a very annoying subject for

him, as was Cologne's intransigence in refusing to provide a cure

for the Cat Tongue. A diligent search of the premises had failed

to turn up the promised Phoenix pill while Happosai had been

nearly impossible to track down. The pervert was usually out

enjoying his usual sport of steal women's underwear and

harassing young ladies.

As Kaneda Nabiki had been forced to make a great many

concessions, not least of which was explaining to Ryonami that

he would be filling in for Nabiki during her unscheduled absence.

Nabiki also had to fend off several attacks by Kuno, who

demanded to know what he had done with "the gentle Tendo

maiden." There was also the new element to deal with in the

person of Mousse, who alternately attacked either Nabiki or

Ranma demanding they release his "intended betrothed," plus the

usual harassment he had to endure whenever he got too near to

Kuno Kodachi.

Actually the problem with Kodachi had not been quite so

pronounced of late, which both relieved and puzzled Nabiki as he

would have expected the infamous Black Rose to be at her

utmost annoying now that Kaneda was a full-time condition. At

first he had chalked it up to the vigorous way that Shampoo and

Perfume had both worked at discouraging other would-be suitors

from approaching, but Nabiki had come to suspect another

possible reason, one that involved both Keiko and Akane.

She glanced at them now, seeing Kodachi and Akane trying to

encourage Ryoga and Keiko to try their first hesitant steps upon

the ice rink. Keiko was wavering as she fought to steady her

balance while Ryoga took a face-dive, which Akane tried

valiantly to prevent but instead went sprawling with him.

Kodachi's laugh could be heard all the way across the rink, but it

lacked its usual maniacal quality, and the way she was holding

hands with a nervous Keiko made it difficult to remember that

only one week ago they had been mortal enemies. In fact, if

Nabiki had not known better, she would have suspected that the

two of them had become remarkably close for no particularly

obvious reason.

She turned back to Ukyo and said, "Maybe some other time, but I

do have a lot of work to do..."

"All work and no play?" Ukyo grinned, "Hey, Ranchan, sounds

like the Boss Lady is making excuses for ignoring us."

"C'mon, Nab-chan," Ranma said without thinking to use Nabiki's

false male identity, "It's no fun out there without you."

Nabiki considered reminding him about the gaff but just sighed

and said, "I'd like to, Ranchan, but the truth is...well...I don't

know how. I haven't skated in...well, never."

"Never?" Ukyo was surprised, "You mean your Uncle never

considered it important?"

"We didn't have too many luxuries on that training mission,"

Nabiki replied, "Learning to skate was never a priority, so if I go

out there I'll just make myself look like a fool."

"You're kidding, right?" Ukyo smirked his way, "After the way

you handled Cologne I'm ready to believe you can walk on

water."

"Never learned to skate, Nab-chan?" Ranma said, "That's too

bad. Well, we'd be happy to teach you, right Ucchan?"

"Sure thing," Ukyo grinned, "I was captain of the boy's Hockey

Team at my last school, and with your quick reflexes I'm sure

you'll be a natural."

"What natural?" Shampoo asked as she and Perfume finally came

up to join them.

"Ice skating," Ranma answered.

"What this ice skating?" Perfume asked as she stared out at the

rink and all the people moving around in graceful movements,

"Japanese people do this?"

"Some of us do, P-chan," Ukyo replied, "It's almost like a

national sport. Maybe you'd like to try it since Kaneda here is

playing chicken."

Perfume brightened, "Perfume glad to take instructions from

Airen! You show Perfume how to move on skates?"

"Not a problem, Sugar," Ukyo smiled, "Follow me and I'll rent

some shoes in your size."

"What about you, Sham-chan?" Ranma asked as Shampoo sat

down beside Nabiki.

"Shampoo no think it smart to go out on frozen water," the girl

said pleasantly, "Cousin take big risk coming here, could wind

up in Cursed form."

"Only if it melted," Nabiki looked at her and said, "You sure you

don't want to learn? You and Perfume could help each other

out."

"Shampoo no think it good idea," Shampoo paled slightly, "No

feel steady on feet, maybe feel bad in tummy. No want spew

lunch all over place."

"What's wrong, Shampoo?" Nabiki looked at her sharply, "You're

not coming down with something, are you?"

"Shampoo," Shampoo hesitated, then said, "Maybe think come

down with something. Shampoo no be sick before. Having

trouble keeping breakfast..."

"Considering how much you ate this morning," Ranma said,

"That's not surprising. I thought you and Perfume were going off

to buy some ice cream..."

"Shampoo buy ice cream," Shampoo replied queasily, "Use

money Airen give, buy two double-scoop Sarsaparilla."

"Maybe it was a bad idea taking you here," Nabiki frowned as he

reflexively reached over to touch Shampoo's forehead with his

palm, "Hmm, you're not running a fever but you feel a little

clammy. Maybe I should take you home and lay you down..."

"No, Shampoo all right," she insisted, "No want be burden."

"You're not a burden to me, Sham-chan," Nabiki said at his

reassuring best, "But you shouldn't take any risks with your

health. You're not in China anymore, as I'm sure you don't need

to be reminded."

"Yeah, and besides," Ranma noted, "You've started putting on a

little weight, I've noticed..."

"Ranchan!" Nabiki whirled on him in surprise, "That's not a very

nice thing to say..."

"Uh...Oops," Ranma faltered.

Shampoo smiled. Ranma still had a tendency to sometimes say

things without thinking, but he was basically a nice enough boy

and a good companion, so she did not mind his unintentional

insult. If anyone else had said that she was getting fat she would

have pounded them to paste, but she had to admit, in this

instance, that she was feeling a little bloated and heavy...

She turned her mind away from his own discomforts by focusing

on Perfume, who was smiling happily as Ukyo tied on the laces

of those strange shoes that had metal blades attached to their

bottoms. Perfume was certainly making progress in her

relationship with her Airen but as yet neither one of them had

achieved the sort of quiet intimacy they each desired. Ukyo kept

insisting that she was only interested in men (was that why she

still tended to dress somewhat like one, or was that just habit?)

while Nabiki was avoiding any commitments either way,

maintaining the same neutrality towards both Shampoo and

Ranma. It was more than slightly frustrating, and Shampoo kept

wishing things could be like they were on the night of their

wedding. She was half-afraid that they would never share that

level of closeness again...

She sighed. Perfume had yet to even make it that far, but Ukyo

was trying to make overtures of friendship, so there was still

some hope. If only Ukyo would stop giving off so many mixed

signals...and if she did not want a female companion in that way,

then why had she been so quick to defend Perfume against

Cologne and Mousse, not to mention Kuno Kodachi?

She turned back to look towards the raven-haired beauty in

question, unable to keep from feeling an urge to pay her back for

numerous slights and annoyances incurred during the past week.

Kodachi still flirted with Nabiki in her Kaneda identity, and

while Shampoo had the luxury of declaring Nabiki as her

husband in this form she still had to cope with the fact that

Nabiki would not make a similar open declaration back and thus

left an opening for Kodachi to claim their marriage as a sham.

The hardest thing to take about that was that Shampoo half

feared that there was truth in that claim. Unless Nabiki started

taking their marriage more seriously the problems with Kodachi

would only continue.

Well, maybe not indefinitely, judging by the way Keiko seemed

to have angled matters between the Black Rose and Akane.

Nabiki might only suspect the truth in that quarter but Shampoo

had no doubt at all that they were intimate. She could see a

thousand little signs that gave the trio away, moments when these

girls seemed to be sharing a space in which no one else could

enter, a space that once belonged to Shampoo and another...

She bit that thought off angrily and tried to content herself in the

fact that Nabiki was not the only one who kept personal secrets.

Perfume, concentrate on Perfume, she silently willed to herself as

she watched her Cousin take her first tentative steps on the ice,

trembling like a leaf as she swayed in an attempt to maintain her

balance. Ukyo hovered nearby, ready to catch her if she fell, but

Perfume was making a good effort so as not to look bad before

her Airen. Shampoo doubted that she would have been able to

manage it half as well under the same circumstances. Perfume

had worked the hardest of the two of them at mastering whole

mind-body interface in order to cope with her acute problem

caused by a low pain threshold, so her sense of balance was

uncanny. If she could be having this much trouble just standing

erect, then Shampoo...

All of a sudden Shampoo felt her stomach lurch, and though she

instantly covered her mouth she felt the acid burn at the gate of

her tonsils and found she could not hold any of it in. With no

further warning she doubled over in her chair and started to

upchuck her breakfast, which came mixed with the flavor of her

undigested ice cream.

"Shampoo?" Nabiki slammed his ledger shut and moved to her

side on the instant then put her arm around the Amazon's

shoulder and said, "That's it! You're going to the doctor!"

"But..." Shampoo said unsteadily before feeling her stomach

lurch for a second vomit.

"Easy, let it all out," Nabiki gently urged her, "Let's get you to the

bathroom and see if we can't clean you up, then I'm taking you to

see Tofu-Sensei, and no back talk!"

"H-Hai," Shampoo gasped, feeling miserable and confused. She

had never been sick a day in her life, so what was wrong with her

now? First the cramps and headaches and now this? And what

about those peculiar cravings she'd been having lately? What

made her want the silly ice cream in the first place? If only Great

Grandmother were here, she always knew the answers...

Meanwhile Ranma was skating and did not take notice when

Nabiki half-carried Shampoo towards the bathroom. His eyes

were instead on Kodachi and her group, but not with the usual

moon-struck adoration he once would have worn. Instead simple

curiosity had the better of him as he, too, had noticed a distinctive

change in Kodachi and Akane's behavior.

Not usually the most observant fellow when it came to things

other than Martial Arts, he found himself now focusing on the

way Kodachi was leading Keiko around the rink, getting the

Kickboxer used to simple, basic maneuvers while poor Akane

had to contend with that blockhead, Ryoga. Kodachi was

smiling...genuinely smiling at Keiko, a girl who only a week ago

she would have cheerfully sliced to bits with her ribbon, and the

way they were holding hands it was almost like...

No, he had to be imagining things! Girls did not do stuff like that

outside of male fantasies (and he should know since lately the

question had gotten to him whenever he saw Nabiki with

Shampoo). Keiko might be like that, but Kodachi? Not bloody

likely!

Akane was the one who puzzled him the most, especially the way

she seemed to be going out of her way to be nice to Ryoga.

Okay, the boy was nice to her, but that hardly seemed sufficient

reason for her to fawn on him like that and act like the

perpetually lost boy was someone she had to be nice to. Ryoga

could be so sensitive to little things, and very quick to anger if

Ranma said or did anything that might provoke him, but around

Akane the guy was pathetic. He'd go all to pieces and start

babbling like an idiot, and Akane never got mad with him or

called him names or beat him up or any of the things she always

did with Ranma. He wasn't quite sure why this upset him, but he

did find it mildly irritating.

Well, it really was not his problem. He had enough on his plate

having to contend with the fact that the woman he loved was

trapped in a guy's body...

Uh oh, Ranma winced, the "L" word again. Why was it so hard

for him to say the word around Nabiki? He felt very strongly

about her and wanted to be the kind of guy who could just come

out and confess all those feelings, but for some reason he still

kept her at a distance. He wanted to be with her and could barely

stand the thought of living without her. She was fascinating,

complex, utterly unlike anyone else he had ever met in his young

life, and she was so full of adventures...no wonder crazy stuff

seemed to happen all the time around her! Nabiki was a walking

magnet for trouble, but being with her was like never having a

dull moment.

Ranma smiled. Trouble he could handle, it was this Cat Tongue

business that was really making him feel frustrated. Kaneda was

the kind of boy he would not mind having for a friend, but to

think that this was actually Nabiki in drag...

"Whoops, head up, Ranchan!" a voice called out in warning,

calling him back to the present.

Ranma instantly shifted his balance and adjusted the angle of his

skates so that he could avoid running into Ukyo, who was trying

to coax Perfume along in spite of the girl's abject terror of falling.

"So, how's your new apprentice coming along?" Ranma joked as

he saw Perfume briefly pinwheel her arms as she fought to come

to a standstill and managed to finally halt herself it with great

effort.

"Not too bad," Ukyo smiled as she put a reassuring hand on the

Amazon girl's shoulder, "You're a fast learner, P-chan, no

surprise there. Just take it easy and don't try so hard, get used to

the feeling of the skates and gradually it'll become second

nature."

"If Airen say," Perfume tentative smiled before going into another

frantic bout of trying to remain upright.

Ranma expertly eased around to the girl's other side and offered

his own arm so that she could have something solid to grasp.

After a tenuous hesitation Perfume recovered herself again then

sighed, "Skating very hard, but Perfume learn. If boy can do,

then Amazon do better."

"You're welcome to try," Ranma chuckled, "Akane and me used

to do this all the time. We even won an award for our school.

Somehow I don't think her new partner will be doing that

anytime soon."

He smiled in some satisfaction as Ryoga went down on his back

for the fourth time, bringing Akane down on top of him with her

knees accidentally hitting his stomach. Ranma winced in

sympathy, but it did make him feel rather pleased with himself

for some vague reason.

"It's nice to know we have something else in common, Ranchan,"

Ukyo said as she looked at him with fondness, "Skating like this

helps me to relax when I want to just let go of all my tensions

and concentrate on something that doesn't require either cooking

or fighting. Well, unless you count all the Hockey players I've

put on the sidelines and the time I've spent in the penalty box."

Perfume frowned as her attention shifted from one companion to

the other. Although they were technically linked in a group

relationship she still could not help feeling squeezed out

whenever these two started talking like this. Ukyo was ignoring

her, which was simply not to be tolerated!

Ranma winced slightly, "Well, I'm pretty good, but if you must

know, there's somebody who's a lot better than me. He's a real

jerk in most ways, goes to another school across town, and his

partner's even worse..."

All of a sudden there was a sense of danger coming down from

above and all three Martial Artists tensed, then Ranma hastily

looked up and cried, "Watch out!" as he shoved an arm at both

Ukyo and Perfume.

He slid back out of the way just as Mousse landed squarely on

the ice at the point where Ukyo had been standing. As Ukyo

recovered from her shove she saw the Chinese boy turn on her

with a look of intent mischief, and of a sudden she was worried

because her Bakers Peal was no where near in reach.

"We meet again, Kuonji Ukyo!" Mousse declared

melodramatically, "Are you ready now to concede your claim on

Perfume?"

"What does it take to get it through your head that she doesn't

want anything to do with you, you Jackass!" Ukyo snarled,

feeling exposed and vulnerable without her usual array of

weapons.

Ranma was about to do something pretty violent himself when he

heard Perfume cry out in alarm and he suddenly remembered

having shoved her a bit harder than he had meant to. He turned

his head and saw the girl frantically windmilling her arms as she

headed backwards, unable to stop herself as people scattered

hastily out of her way. Without a second thought he took off on

an intercept course, seeing that she would shortly run into the far

wall if he did not do something to stop her.

Mousse turned around and the smile he wore was almost cocky,

"Don't pretend any more that you have no interest in my future

bride, Kuonji! You've fought hard enough to keep her away from

me, but that ends now! Prepare to learn the meaning of true

terror!"

He gestured with one hand and suddenly he was holding a

bucket. He extended this up and cried, "Do you know what this

contains, Kuonji-san? I brought it here at great personal expense

on the chance that I might meet up with someone such as you. It

contains your doom! Water drawn from one of the Cursed

Springs of Jusenkyo!"

"Nani?" Ukyo suddenly darted back on her skates, instantly

realizing his intent and dreading it immensely, "You don't mean

you'd...? I mean, that's crazy! Or, at the very least, it's pretty

excessive..."

"No excuses!" Mousse said menacingly as he drew the pail back,

"Just stand still and you'll soon be a whole new-hey! Where do

you think you're going?"

"As far away from you as I can get, Moron!" she called out over

her shoulder, hoping the Amazon boy was as clueless on ice as

Perfume...

Perfume? She suddenly remembered her Chinese betrothed and

turned in time to see Ranma interpose himself between the

Amazon and the wall. Perfume ran smack into Ranma and drove

him back into the barrier, breaking her own momentum as

Ranma took the punishment on himself. Both of them collapsed

to the floor as she cried, "Ranma!"

"Worry about yourself!" Mousse declared, suddenly upon her

with the unexpectedness of a swooping crane. Ukyo had time to

see that the boy was indeed wearing some kind of footwear that

allowed him to skate. He drew back the pale and threw the

contents right at her. Ukyo managed to escape her fate by

throwing herself down flat so that the water arced right over her

and hit the next person in passing.

That person turned out to be none other than Kodachi!

Kodachi had been drawn by the sound of Mousse's first cry and

turned in time to see the long haired boy chase Ukyo as though

he were trying to get her wet. A lot of people seemed unusually

skittish around water, she noted, Keiko being one of them,

although her new friend was pleasant enough company in most

important senses. Kodachi frowned as she wondered who the

boy was and what issues he might have with a girl who normally

went around in drag and was about to ask Keiko for her opinion

when the speeding pair started heading right for her. The next

thing she knew was that the boy was throwing the water at her.

She heard Keiko gasp and reach out to try and pull her away, but

it was too late and feeble an effort to prevent the inevitable as

Kodachi winced, feeling her body start to tingle. She was about

to voice a complaint to the boy about getting her new Leotard wet

when something very strange happened.

The world actually seemed to expand while she felt herself

collapsing inwardly, and suddenly she was on all fours looking

up from the floor with a puzzled expression, twitching her

whiskers as she sought to make sense of the rapid change in her

perspective.

Keiko had been too late in realizing what Mousse was about to

do to save Kodachi from the water. She reached out and

managed barely to touch Kodachi's arm before Mousse splashed

her, but being that Kodachi took the brunt of it and Keiko already

had a Jusenkyo curse she was naturally unaffected.

Kodachi, on the other hand, got very small and sprouted hair

from all the wrong places. Keiko lost her balance and landed

hard on the ice as her hands clutched hold of an empty green

leotard, then she suddenly came nose-to-muzzle with a fuzzy

creature with beady red eyes looking in puzzlement right at her.

"K-Kodachi?" Keiko gasped realizing at once that her new friend

had become a Ferret!

"You idiot!" Ukyo cried as she suddenly fell to one side and

thrust a leg in front of Mousse, tripping the boy and sending him

face-first into the ice, "Look what you just did!"

She got back to her feet and came over to where Keiko was

holding the Ferret, heedless that she was sitting with her bottom

on the ice. Kodachi's skis and clothing lay to one side while

several people milled around asking puzzled questions about that

they thought they had just seen happen. Ukyo looked down at

the transformed Black Rose, realizing in dull dismay that this

was the fate Mousse had intended for her, which sort of made it

her fault by implication.

"'Dachi, don't worry, I'll take care of you!" Keiko was assuring

the very puzzled looking Ferret as Akane and Ryoga also arrived

to find out what was causing all the commotion.

"What happened?" Akane asked, seeing Kodachi's belongings

laying to one side, then the expression on Keiko's face and

suddenly drawing the obvious-but-horrifying conclusion,

"No...Kodachi...?"

"It's all my fault!" Ukyo declared, "She took the water that was

intended for me!"

"No, It's my fault," Keiko voice was choked, "I should have been

looking out for her instead of the other way around! If I'd just

reacted a little sooner..."

Meanwhile Perfume was recovering from the shock she had just

taken, looking around to discover a groaning Ranma behind her.

Her eyes got very wide as she came to the astonishing realization

that the boy had put himself in danger for her sake. Why would

he do a thing like that, other than to atone for shoving Perfume so

rudely in the first place...?

And then her second thought was of Ukyo. Why was she not

here looking out for Perfume? It took a few seconds for her to

remember Mousse, and then the answer became obvious: her

Airen was in trouble!

Getting back to her feet proved more problematic than she had

even dreaded but Perfume was frantic to know the fate of her

beloved. She was not aware of the man who came up beside her

and offered his hand, saying, "There now, beauteous one, no need

to distress yourself while there is one such as I who can be

counted on to rescue you from your peril."

Perfume looked up into the face of a boy only marginally more

handsome than Nabiki in male form, yet who had a kind of

dreamy-romantic quality that made her pulse quicken. Without

thinking about the whys and wheres of her situation she allowed

him to draw her to her feet, then stared as he clasped her hands

together and smiled enchantingly and said, "Such rare, delicate

beauty, such an innocent flower left adrift upon this icy floe,

bereft of companionship, such a thing must not be allowed..."

Vaguely Perfume heard Ranma half-consciously grumble,

"Mikado..." but she was too enchanted with the moment to pay

much heed to the boy who had actually saved her. Perfume was

not used to flattery of this sort and it made her feel like a giddy

teenager (which in fact she was, but usually she felt so much

older). This man had a real gift with phrase, and while Kuno

Tatewaki had been known to spout more flowery praises,

somehow this man made them seem genuinely pleasing.

"Who you?" she asked, wishing to know the name of such a

wondrous creature.

"Sansenin Mikado," he replied with a bow, "And you?"

"Perfume," she replied, feeling her cheeks flush a rosy red at the

way he looked at her, a way she had often wished someone

would look towards her, most particularly Ukyo.

Ukyo was still distressed at what had happened to Kodachi while

Ryoga was just coming to realize the significance as Akane

tersely explained with the word "Jusenkyo." Ryoga's eyes got

wide, and then his expression darkened and he growled, "He

turned Kodachi into a Ferret?"

"Shhh," Akane glanced around, "Keep it down, will you! This

isn't something she'd like to make public..."

"A Ferret?" Mousse cried as finally regained his footing, "She

turned into a Ferret? That wasn't supposed to be the name of the

spring I got the water from! I don't believe it, I got the wrong

spring!"

"MOUSSE NO BAKA!" Akane exploded as she shot towards the

boy and delivered a solid punch to his mid-second. Ryoga

stumbled after her, intent on pounding the Chinese boy senseless.

Ukyo might have gleefully joined them but at that moment she

caught a sight out of the corner of her eye that drew her attention

back towards Perfume and Ranma.

Who the heck was that guy standing next to Perfume? In sudden

interest she turned and skated towards them.

"Don't worry," Keiko continued to hug the Ferret in her arms,

"It'll all be right, 'Dachi, you'll see! I'll take you home then I'll

explain everything-boy, will I have to do a lot of explaining..."

That was when Kodachi's mind began to unfreeze as the

realization that she had somehow been turned into an animal

finally penetrated her dull amazement at being so small and

helpless. With a sudden burst of anxiety she struggled free of

Keiko's grasp, hitting the ice with all four paws and running

frantically across the surface with tiny little claws that had no

trouble finding a purchase.

She did not get far, however, before a voice cried, "Charlotte!

Charlotte! I've finally found you!

Kodachi was enormously surprised to find a pair of hands were

grasping her and squeezing her so tight that she could barely

draw a breath. She was lifted, struggling, into the arms of a

young girl with curling brown hair who held her up to admire her

and happily cried, "Charlotte find Azusa! Azusa so happy!"

Kodachi fought for breath, wondering in dismay if this kid were

another one of Shampoo's crazy kinfolk!

"Hey you!" Keiko cried as she crawled on her hands and knees in

an effort to catch up with them, "That's mine! She belongs to me,

give her back!"

"NO," the girl cried fiercely as she hugged the near-unconscious

Kodachi to her breast, "You can't have Charlotte! She belongs to

Azusa!"

"Like hell!" Keiko snarled, stumbling as she tried to regain her

footing and silently cursing herself for being allowing herself to

put on the double-accursed footwear.

Meanwhile the man holding Perfume's hand was moving his face

closer to hers in preparation for something that the Amazon was

too enchanted to recognize in advance as a kiss. Mikado was just

about there when somebody slammed into him and sent the

handsome boy skating away like a hockey puck.

Perfume blinked in surprise then found Ukyo standing there with

a blandly cheerful expression while Mikado bounced off the

nearby wall, grunting fiercely.

"Sorry to break up your fun, P-chan, but its time to go," Ukyo

smiled, "Mousse just splashed Kodachi with cursed spring

water."

Perfume blinked as she tried to register this sudden shift in her

attention, then she frowned and said, "Good. Stupid Rose girl

deserve it."

"You may not want to judge her so harshly when you see her,"

Ukyo cautioned, "She's turned into a Ferret."

"A ferret?" Perfume arched an eyebrow, "Why Mousse choose

that form...?" she sudden gasped as she made a connection,

"Mousse mean do this to you?"

"He tried to," Ukyo replied, "He missed."

Perfume was suddenly seething, "I Kill!"

"Maybe later," Ukyo said, "And I'll help, but..."

"Kuonji Ukyo," said Mikado as he regained his footing, "We

meet again."

"Sansenin Mikado," Ukyo returned a patently false smile,

"Where's your little partner?"

"Azusa is somewhere about," Mikado replied, "It's been a long

time since our last meeting."

"At least a year," Ukyo replied, "I've kept up on your career, of

course. The Golden Pair are internationally world famous."

"Phah, a trifle," the young man said boastfully, "My other goal in

life has been a far greater sport, but I am finally close to

achieving it. Your young friend there was about to give me the

satisfaction of my nine hundred and ninety ninth kiss. One more

beyond that and I'll have achieved my long-desired thousand."

"In a pigs eye," grunted Ranma, who finally managed to recover

both balance and bearings, "You never change, Mikado, still the

same heartless rake you were in Middle School..."

"You know him, Ranchan?" Ukyo asked.

"Oh sure," Ranma said as he assumed a martial crouch and

raised his hands to attack position, "We go way back, right

Mikado old buddy?"

"Indeed," Mikado replied airily, "And you're still the same

callous boor you always were, Saotome. I doubt you've even as

yet kissed one lovely lady, you being so pathetic..."

"Excuse please," Perfume slowly turned around to look at him,

"Boy say he kiss one thousand girls? Is big goal in life?"

"That's the kind of sick game he likes to play, Perfume-chan,"

Ranma informed her.

"And boy think Perfume is thousandth girl for him?" Perfume

continued with a studied expression of semi-neutrality.

"Perfume," Mikado smiled, "The very name is fragrant..."

"Perfume thanks boy for explaining," Perfume said, and then

before anyone could react she made a KIIAA! Noise and kicked

Mikado in the face with one knee. Her landing was far from

perfect but for a straight-out trajectory maneuver the execution

was flawless. Mikado hit the ice twenty meters away and

skidded all the way to the opposite wall.

"Now Perfume say we go," Perfume said with a sniff, "Thank

Ukyo-chan for protecting Perfume from big mistake. We got find

Stupid Rose Girl-Ferret now, okay?"

"Uh, sure...right this way," Ukyo said as she recovered from her

surprise, only to find Keiko was not where she had left her, "Uh

oh..."

"What was that about a Ferret?" Ranma asked as he looked

around the rink then noticed two other people were missing,

"Hey, where are Shampoo and Nabiki?"

"Saotome-san?" asked Ryonami as she came skating up holding

a folded up piece of paper, "Kaneda-sama asked me to deliver

this to you. He said it was urgent."

"Thank you, Ryonami-san," Ranma replied as he unfolded the

note and read it, then paled, "Oh my...it's from Nabiki all right.

Seems Shampoo got sick all of a sudden and had to be taken to

the doctors."

"Shampoo cousin?" Perfume blinked, "She never sick! What

happen?"

"I don't know, it just says what I read," Ranma said, "Look, I'll

catch up with you later, just as soon as I call Doctor Tofu's and

find out what this is all about. Fill me in about Kodachi being a

Ferret later, all right?"

"Sure thing, Ranchan," Ukyo replied, looking to Perfume as he

skated off and murmuring, "I hope it's not serious."

"Perfume hope so too," Perfume fervently replied then said, "Help

Perfume off ice, Airen, then we find Keiko-san and stupid Ferret

girl. No see them here."

"Right," Ukyo said as she took Perfume's arm and gave a last

withering glare in the direction of Mikado...

"Sensei?" Nabiki looked up sharply as Doctor Tofu approached

her from the back. She did not want to admit it but even clinics

such as this made her intensely nervous. There was too much

memory of a time when she was a little girl and the patient had

been her mother...

"She'll be all right," Tofu replied, "Your wife's a strong and

healthy young girl, she just needs to take it a bit easier than she's

used to, but things should all work out find and we can expect no

immediate complications."

"Complications?" Nabiki blinked in growing confusion, "What

do you mean? Do you know why she was vomiting all of a

sudden?"

Tofu looked at the young man before him, whom he was given to

understand was a long-lost relation to Tendo Kasumi, a woman

he very much cared for. Despite the fellow's obvious intelligence

and alertness it seemed this boy had missed all of the obvious

clues and was expecting a pathological diagnosis. Tofu adjusted

his glassed and gave his most reassuring smile.

"Hasn't your wife told you yet?" he asked, "I suppose it's not too

surprising, most young ladies don't start showing signs until

they're further along in their trimester..."

"Hold it!" Nabiki raised his hands to make a "Time Out" gesture

and said, "Back up a moment. Did you just say...trimester?"

Tofu sighed, "I know of no easy way of saying this if no one has

given you any advanced warning, Kaneda-san, but I am pleased

to report that your wife is about two months pregnant.

Congratulations..."

Continued.

How can this be, you ask? (Whadya want, a graphic illustration?)

How can Shampoo have been pregnant without knowing it?

(Pretty easy, actually, but Cologne's a different matter...) And

how will Nabiki cope with the idea of suddenly finding herself a

father? (Wouldn't you like to know, bub!) Stay tuned for the next

over-excitable chapter...!

Nabiki 1/2

Chapter 14, Part 3.

By

Jim Robert Bader

Inspired by the works of Rumiko Takahashi;

All rights go to her, the publishers and distributors

Of the Ranma 1/2 Series.

(Based on the Altered Destinies Series by

Wade Tritschler and Others;

Some ideas and characters belong to me,

The rest is shared Fanfiction, so please don't sue me)

"N-nani?" Nabiki asked in a tiny, quivering voice, "Y-you

mean...?"

"She's pregnant," Doctor Tofu replied, making a show of taking

off his glasses to clean them because, in his experience, that was

the sort of thing you did to assure your clients that this was a

simple, routine, everyday sort of matter that doctors in his

position had been dealing with since before there were doctors,

"Most definitely, although I could run more tests if you want

further confirmation."

"But...but...but..." Nabiki stammered, for the first time in her life

struck totally inarticulate and speechless. How could she

possibly explain to him the truth about her situation, that she was

really a woman trapped in a man's body who had only reluctantly

agreed to accept Shampoo as her wife to keep an old mummy at

bay while attempting to appease some ancient tribal law that

hardly anyone outside of Joketsuzoku had even heard about. This

was like her worst nightmare, and about to go public!

"Now, Tendo-san," Tofu continued in his annoyingly reassuring

manner, "I know this must come as something of a surprise being

a newly wed couple. Not everyone is fortunate enough to

conceive a child so early in their relationship, but despite the

bride's youth she seems fully capable of carrying a child to full

term with no complications. I would prescribe a healthy diet and

limited exercise, of course, but there is no reason your wife

cannot enjoy the next six or seven months in a normal, everyday

manner."

"Six or seven months?" Nabiki said faintly, feeling the room as it

began to swim around her.

Suddenly she found Doctor Tofu helping her to sit down on some

chairs. It was about that point that Nabiki belatedly remembered

that he was in male form, which was larger and heavier than his

natural shape.

"Take it easy and breath deep," Tofu urged her professionally,

"I'm sorry if all of this came as such a surprise. Surely you must

have guessed from the signs she says that she has been giving off

lately, irregularity in diet and sleep pattern, odd cravings, nausea,

dizziness..."

"N-no," Nabiki said, "She never even told me she was having

problems eating and sleeping..."

"Hardly surprising," another voice remarked, "Amazons are

trained to ignore such minor discomforts or show any sign of

weakness before others. In my Great Granddaughter's case she

was probably trying not to upset you or be a burden."

Nabiki was not entirely certain why, but somehow finding

Cologne at the doorway leading to Doctor Tofu's office clinic was

comforting, as though the irritation she caused gave Nabiki a

needed focus, "And just how long have you known about this,

Elder?"

"Longer than you, obviously," Cologne seemed genuinely amused

as she hobbled in on her staff as Doctor Tofu regarded her with

open curiosity. She looked gravely at the tall man and said, "I am

Shampoo's Maternal Great Grandmother and an Elder of her

tribe. What is the condition of my Great Granddaughter's child?"

"Strong enough to go home as soon as I prescribe her diet," Tofu

said.

"I can do that for her," Cologne noted matter-of-factly, "But I will

take your suggestions under advisement. Prepare a list and I will

see to it Shampoo gets plenty of rest and exercise. That is, of

course, if this meets with your approval, Son-in-law?"

"You're giving me a choice?" Nabiki asked.

"Of course," Cologne replied, "Shampoo is your wife and you

have made it abundantly clear that her welfare is your concern,

not mine. Of course the mere fact that I agreed to surrender

custody does not mean that I have stopped caring about my

beloved great granddaughter."

"Then I suppose I'll take your word under advisement," Nabiki

replied, "Now explain to me why you and Shampoo kept this

away from me until now."

"Shampoo is innocent of any deception, I assure you," Cologne

replied, "The poor child might have suspected her condition, but I

doubt very much she would as immediately recognize the

symptoms of her pregnancy as I would. She is young in a great

many ways and can hardly be blamed if she mistook her nausea

as something bad she ate."

Just then Tofu's assistant came in and said, "Here are the medical

charts you asked me to-GAAH!"

"Good day to you, Saotome-san," Cologne smiled as she turned

around to regard the astonished Genma Saotome, "I see you're not

feeling much like a Panda this afternoon, though I wonder at how

the good doctor managed to convince you to work on a Sunday."

"Pops just wants to earn some extra spending cash to buy his

wife a little present," Nabiki replied, then smiled as Genma

looked at him accusingly.

"I see you all know one another," Tofu noted as he looked from

one to the other in curious speculation before settling on Cologne,

"So you are Cologne the Elder. I've heard something about you

and the Amazons of Joketsuzoku. I've been looking forward to

meeting you in person."

"That's a first," Nabiki muttered under his breath, but Cologne

merely ignored him.

"Indeed," she said, "And I have heard a great deal about you,

Tofu-Sensei," she bowed in respect, "The honor is mutual. I

understand that you have been caring for my Son-in-law's family

for a good many years, and you are a student of traditional

methods."

"Merely a novice, Elder," Tofu bowed back, "But I'm always

eager to learn new things about how other cultures treat their

patients. I understand that you are something of a healer

yourself..."

"Among my many other skills," Cologne replied, "It is good to

meet a young man with prospects who respects the traditions of

his ancestors. Too few young people do these days."

"Yes, it is very sad," Tofu replied, "Perhaps I can make some tea

for you? Saotome..."

"Thank you but I am just visiting," Cologne said, "I should like to

see my Great Granddaughter briefly, but first...may I have some

privacy? There are things I wish to discuss with my Son-in-law,

if you would not mind leaving the two of us alone for a minute."

"Not at all," Tofu smiled, "I'll go tell your great granddaughter

that you're here. Put the charts on the desk, Saotome, and make

us some tea. I could use some about now if no one else could."

"Hot water," Genma replied as he turned around, muttering to

himself, "Probably a very good idea..."

Once Tofu and Genma had withdrawn Nabiki allowed himself to

glare at the ancient Amazon matriarch and said, "All right, you

old ghoul, just what kind of a scam are you running here?"

"I have no idea whatsoever that you mean," Cologne replied with

her most innocent (if the word could be found to describe it as

that) expression, "I truly mean what I say about wishing you and

Shampoo only the best. She really did not have a clue as to the

nature of her condition, but I'm not surprised you did not pick up

on it either. In spite of adopting a man's form you still think of

yourself as a woman."

"But we only did it that one time!" Nabiki finally blurted out,

perversely pleased that there was someone on hand with whom

she could say the words without drawing a blank reaction.

"It appears one time was more than enough," Cologne said, not

so much amused as sympathetic, "Tell me exactly what was

going through your mind at the time that you thought to take

advantage of her innocence and not face any consequences?"

"I-uh," Nabiki faltered, "Um...well...there wasn't a lot going

through my mind that I could recall at the time...I just thought I'd

had a little too much to drink, and Shampoo seemed willing

and...and..."

She could not bring herself to continue. If a man truly had

spoken those words she knew that she would have condemned

him as an idiot. In her case-or rather His-he had blandly gone

along with the experience without thought of any consequences.

The simple novelty of the experience alone was enough to make

him find the whole thing enjoyable, and only afterwards did he

think about what he had done rather than what he had been

doing.

"I see," Cologne said after a suitable pause, "So am I to

understand that during your first day as a man you immediately

reverted to type and did what any man would do in the presence

of a beautiful and willing young girl? That does put matters

more into focus. Inexperience has damned more than one young

couple to adult concerns that they never before contemplated."

"Sh-Shampoo...?" Nabiki gasped.

"She was indeed innocent of any foreknowledge of what was

likely to happen," Cologne replied, "She knew, of course, about

where babies come from and even knows quite a bit about the

anatomical process, since I did not neglect that as a part of her

education. It is the other aspects that come with early

motherhood that she is unprepared to face. I would suggest you

listen to my advise on this matter, Son-in law, since I have raised

many healthy daughters and granddaughters, not all of them my

own. My experience as a Midwife would be invaluable at this

point. Shampoo is as strong and healthy as a bull, but even a

strong woman can suffer worse than cramps, and I would not

wish that this child be lost to negligence or mischance."

Nabiki sat back in is chair with a stunned expression,

"Mischance?"

"I believe the term you would use is Miscarriage," Cologne

replied, "It happens far too often with girls Shampoo's age, and

the tragedy it brings can have enormously devastating

consequences. I would spare her such anguish, so I most humbly

ask that you allow me to treat her."

"Uh, all right," Nabiki said, "I guess I can't see anything wrong

with that, just as long as she also sees Doctor Tofu for a second

opinion."

"I would consider that most prudent," Cologne replied sagely, "I

have investigated the doctor and interviewed a number of his

patience to satisfy myself of his competence, and I have come

away with the sincere conviction that there is no finer practitioner

in the Nerima district, save for one slight character flaw

concerning your older sister."

"Oh yeah," Nabiki winced, "That."

"Know that I will do everything to insure that Shampoo has a

normal, healthy pregnancy and that you both come away from the

experience as happy, loving parents," Cologne said solemnly,

then her expression took on a slightly chilling cast as she added,

"Unless it is not your will to have this child, in which case it will

be Shampoo's decision whether or not to bear the child of your

union. I imagine you must feel slightly bewildered by it all and

could even come to wish the child away. I know many ways to

make this happen, of course, but would be extremely reluctant to

use them unless all parties judge that it is for the best."

Nabiki was horrified. In principle she had nothing against the

basic concept of abortion, but to offer it up so casually as

Cologne was doing, and to make Shampoo bear the weight of

that choice...it chilled her more than any other experience she

could ever remember, not excluding the day she had first learned

of her mother's illness. Apparently Cologne read her reaction and

nodded as if to herself then smiled.

"I am pleased to see you were not contemplating this yourself. It

speaks well for you, Son-in-law, that you do not instantly wish to

do away with your responsibilities in this matter. I well know

how Shampoo would have reacted had it been your preference."

Nabiki found himself cringing at the thought of what Cologne

had implied. It was true she did not welcome this news and

would have wished the whole thing away if she could, but to

think that she would so callously dispense with her child...

Her child? Shampoo's child! What the hell did that make

Nabiki? The Father? She definitely was not ready for this!

"Ah," Cologne said sagely, "I see you entertain some doubt that

you are indeed the instrument of Shampoo's condition. I am

surprised at you for even thinking that she would comport herself

with another when you have been at the forefront of her every

waking thought since the day you fled our village. Do you think I

would not know if she had been unfaithful to her husband?"

"Ah, no, that's not it at all!" Nabiki protested, feeling like a little

kid being scolded, yet somehow for once she knew Cologne held

the moral high ground. There was no way of refusing her

compelling logic or protesting his innocence this time. He had

acted stupidly on a moment without thought, yet that thought in

itself provided him with a last futile weapon of protest.

"I never would have done any of this if it hadn't been for that

stupid love potion..."

"Love potion?" Cologne sniffed, "Is that what you think it was?"

"Ah," Nabiki blinked, "I was told it was a beverage given to a

husband during the ceremony that was supposed to...inspire my

interest..."

"If you needed a love potion to do that then you would have been

a very sorry example of manhood," Cologne snorted

contemptfully, "No, the love potions are rare and expensive, the

ingredients hard to come by. The elixir you drank was a far more

common beverage used by men in our village to...how shall I put

this? Inspire them to new heights of performance."

"Oh," Nabiki said, "An aphrodisiac. Why didn't you just say so?"

"Then you really would have a case for claiming entrapment,"

Cologne replied, "But the effects of the elixir inversely depend on

how much you imbibe. Too much at once overwhelms the

system and leaves you too drunk to perform with any endurance.

A moderate amount helps to ease the conscious mind of any

doubt or hesitation about your ability to perform up to Amazon

standards. You were very moderate, as I understand it, and kept

a clear enough mind when you braced the standard tests and

challenges we use to screen out newly weds who are closet

weaklings. That is why the rituals are so elaborate, and by the

end of your ordeal it is believed that the couple will be united in

bliss forever."

"And of course there's no divorce in your system," Nabiki noted.

"As I said, it is believed that the bliss will last forever," Cologne

replied, "We are not actually such fools as to believe this will

naturally happen. By closing the way out a man must accept his

choice and live with it forever. He is closed to any other options

unless his wife is agreeable to a sharing with another."

"Nice to know my options weren't totally limited," Nabiki sighed,

"Why didn't you ever explain all this to me in the first place?"

"Obviously you would not have accepted the truth if I gave it all

to you in one sitting," Cologne said simply.

Something in her mannerisms made Nabiki wince and ask, "You

sure you and Happosai aren't related?"

All at once Cologne seemed to rise up in a fury with a

suddenness that made Nabiki half fear that the Elder was about

to strike him. Cologne managed to stop herself in time and

finally got control over her temper, then merely glared as she

said, "You had to go and mention that unworthy clod..."

"Sorry," Nabiki said and actually meant it, "Didn't mean to touch

a raw nerve there. Guess I'm just a little upset about this whole

mess. So you're saying I'm committed to Shampoo no matter

what choice I would have actually made? Your attempt to bully

me into submission really was just for Shampoo's welfare?"

"I love my Great Granddaughter very much," Cologne said

sincerely, her temper vanishing as quickly as it had appeared, "It

is true that my status in the tribe would be reaffirmed if she were

to return with me to Joketsuzoku-WITH her husband, of course-

but I am forced to oblige the two of you in your desire to remain

in Nerima. I still wish to compel you to comply, which is why I

have not yet made the Phoenix pill available to you."

"So you do have it on your possession," Nabiki said in

confirmation of her suspicion, "And what would you have done

about Shampoo's baby if she had taken my head instead of accept

me as her husband?"

"I would have explained the child to my fellow Elders as a gift of

the Fairy Elves," Cologne replied, "Or claimed that a God had

visited her to comfort her in her hour of bereavement."

"And would they have believed you?" Nabiki asked with raised

eyebrows.

"Of course not," Cologne snorted, "What do you think we are,

idiots or backward dullards? We're not senile just because we're

a bit old fashioned, but the claim would have been accepted at

face value and no one would inquire any farther. Shampoo

would have had her child and my House would have another heir

and everyone would be satisfied about her honor."

"Except that she would have the blood of her Airen on her

hands," Nabiki pointed out.

"If you had continued to refuse her while she was with child, then

you would hardly have been worthy of the title," Cologne said

simply, "To Shampoo you would have been a girl who wronged

her through trickery and enchantment, while the child would be

partial repayment for the trauma you caused. I think you are only

just now beginning to fully realize how this all must have seemed

to her from her end. That speaks well for you indeed, and better

than I would have imagined."

Nabiki looked down and said, "I have to admit...there was a

while there when I just hated this whole sorry mess and blamed

the both of you for messing up my life."

"But you got over that immature reaction," Cologne sighed as she

seemed to lean more heavily against her staff, "And you proved

me wrong for thinking you some callous, selfish child who was

only interested in her own welfare. I regret some of the things I

have been forced to do in pursuit of my family's honor. You

came through this trial period with flying colors, mastering every

test I have set you. Perhaps now at last you are finally ready to

face the real challenge that will prove that you are worthy of

being an Amazon yourself."

"You're offering to let me join the club?" Nabiki asked.

"Yes," Cologne replied, "But initiation, in your own vernacular,

is a bitch. Tell me truthfully, Tendo Nabiki...what would you do

to become a woman once again?"

Nabiki was surprised by the question, "You have to ask?

Anything short of selling my soul, I suppose...or my firstborn

baby," she added with a note of suspicion.

Cologne smiled as if she were about to offer that as her next

question. Instead what she said was, "Tell me truthfully, Nabiki-

san, do you think I am an evil woman?"

Nabiki actually had to think on that before replying, "No, not

truly evil, just ruthlessly dedicated. You have a lot of faults I

could name, Elder, not the least is your contempt for anyone

who's weaker than you are. You know more things than the rest

of us so you flaunt that fact to bully us around to get your way, no

matter how many times we tell you to take a hike."

"That is honest," Cologne said, "Perhaps I do value strength too

much over other virtues, but I respect integrity and devotion to

principles. Tell me plainly again, Tendo Nabiki...would you call

yourself a woman of loose morals?"

That did not take as much thought in forming his reply, "I'm

afraid I'm not much of a woman at all at the moment, but

yeah...I'm a realist at heart. I do what I think is right for me and

those I care about, and I'm not too worked up about conventional

morality. I think Ethics should be tooled to fit the situation."

"A Utilitarian philosophy," Cologne replied, "And yet you strive

to do what you believe is right even in the face of strong

opposition. You believe in defending those who are weaker than

yourself, and you have great compassion even for those who give

you reason to hate them. I am satisfied indeed that you are the

perfect choice to inherit the mantle of my family's traditions. You

are strong, fair, intelligent and ethical, and my beloved child is

very fond of you and all but lives for the day when you embrace

her without the hesitation you now experience."

"I can't imagine why," Nabiki said, "All I've ever done is hurt her

and given her good reason to hate me. I think she gets along

even better with Ranma than with me..."

"He now belongs to both of you," Cologne replied, "There is no

conflict there, but then again it hardly seems fair to the boy that

he cannot embrace you as his wife in your present condition."

Cologne's staff suddenly moved before Nabiki had time to even

think, and the tip rapped sharply against his chest, almost exactly

in the same spot as the Cat Tongue. Nabiki felt a wave of

electricity once more shoot through his body, and then he gasped

for breath and said, "What...?"

"I've neutralized the Cat Tongue," Cologne replied, "There is no

longer any reason to force you to remain a man. You have

decided to embrace your responsibilities, so I return the right of

choice. The Phoenix pill, you see, was not the only counter-

agent."

Nabiki felt himself almost disbelievingly and said, "I can be a

woman again?"

"Consider it my Wedding present," Cologne smiled, "We are not

yet done with each other, but there is no longer any reason for you

to resent me. Now, if you will excuse me, Daughter-in-law, I

will go see my Great Granddaughter."

Nabiki just stared as he watched the Elder hop away, and he was

still staring when Genma eased up beside her and murmured,

"That is a very strange old woman. She reminds me a little too

much of the Master."

"Unless you count the fondling and stealing underwear part,"

Nabiki absently noted.

"Hai," Genma replied, "That goes without saying..."

"She what?" Akane demanded, absolutely livid with outrage.

"Some maniac took Kodachi!" Keiko repeated in distress, "Right

there in front of my face while I flopped around on the ice like

some damned beached whale! I had to take my skates off just so

I could chase her out of the rink, but by the time I made it to the

exits she was long gone! Damn! It's all my fault..."

"No one's blaming you, Keiko-san," Ryoga said soothingly,

shooting a worried glance at Akane as he asked, "Are we?"

"I'm seriously thinking about it," Akane glowered, "But it's really

all the fault of that Chinese maniac who splashed her! What is it

with these Amazons? All they do is wreck the place..."

"Excuse please?" Perfume growled with deadly earnestness.

Everyone winced as they belatedly remembered the Amazon in

their presence. Ranma looked particularly anxious. His phone

call to Doctor Tofu's clinic had confirmed that Shampoo had

indeed been taken there, but other than being assured that there

was nothing seriously wrong with the Purple-haired wife of his

iinazuke he had not obtained any details, other than to learn that

Cologne was there with Nabiki to provide their support. He

wanted very much to join them, as he knew Perfume shared his

concern for Shampoo's welfare, but at the moment the crisis

surrounding Kodachi was taking precedence. He wanted this

business over and done with as quickly as it could be managed.

"But who would have taken her?" Ukyo asked after a moment of

uncomfortable silence, "Aside from Furriers, that is?"

Keiko paled while Akane winced. Ranma just looked horrified

as he said, "You don't think somebody would actually do that to

her, would they?"

"Why no?" Perfume asked, "Far as anyone know she just walking

pelt ready to skin."

"Perfume-chan," Ukyo growled, but understood her Amazon

bride's seeming indifference to Kodachi's welfare. It had not

been very long indeed since the occasion when it had been

Perfume in her cursed form who had been at the mercy of

Kodachi. Small wonder there was no love lost there.

Yet the young Amazon was not such a creature of malice that she

could remain unaffected from the angry glares turned on her by

Ranma, Keiko and Akane. With a deep sigh she said, "Perfume

know stupid Rose girl friend to Akane-san, but she think good

Joss that Rose girl know what like to sit in own cage and be

helpless. Maybe teach Rose girl good lesson."

"All right," Ranma said, "Maybe she did do you wrong, but that's

no reason to abandon her. We've got no idea what kind of a

maniac would...would..." he suddenly stopped himself and

looked straight at Akane.

Akane whirled to Keiko and said, "This kidnapper...was it a girl

about this tall with curly brown hair and big eyes, wearing a cute

little dress?"

Keiko blinked, "Well, yeah...that about describes her..."

Ranma and Akane looked at each other again and as one said,

"Azusa!"

"Her?" Ukyo said archly then answered her own question as she

struck palm with fist, "Damn, I should have recognized her MO!

This is exactly the sort of thing she'd do-Omigosh! Poor

Kodachi!"

"Excuse me?" Keiko looked from one to the other then growled,

"Who's this we're talking about? Who the hell is this Azusa?"

"Your worst nightmare if you're cute, cuddlesome and furry,"

Ukyo replied.

"She's a maniac," Akane growled, "She gets these weird ideas

every time she sees something she thinks is cute. She takes them

and gives them funny French names then locks them up in her

home and treats them like museum pets! Poor Kodachi..."

"Well, if you know who she is, then why don't we go find her and

make her give Kodachi back?" Keiko demanded.

"Not as easy as it sounds, Keiko-san," Ranma replied, "Shiratori

Azusa lives in a heavily guarded mansion surrounded by the

most advanced security systems known to modern science. It's a

death trap just trying to get into the place! I've heard stories

about people who wanted to get their possessions back..." he

shuddered, "And now she has Kodachi..."

Perfume frowned, "You no think it good idea let her keep Rose

girl Ferret?"

"How would you like to be stuck in a cage twenty four hours a

day, pampered and catered to while drugged into submission and

forced to look cute until you expire?" Akane asked, and from her

tone and the way she was looking at Perfume the question did not

sound academic.

"Perfume...gets point," Perfume said uncomfortably, "That very

bad, even for Rose girl."

"So how do we get her back?" Ukyo asked when they heard a

polite cough from just behind them, causing them all to turn

around and see the boy standing there with a casual and

differential expression.

"I could not help overhearing you say that you lost a pet to my

idiot partner," Sansenin Mikado remarked, "Perhaps I might be

able to offer my humble assistance, provided a suitable reward is

in the offing?"

"What do you want?" Ranma growled, balling his fists.

"Why, nothing much in the way of compensation," Mikado

examined his well-manicured nails, "It's just that I happen to

have free access to the Shiratori estate and can sometimes

persuade Azusa to part with her possessions. All that I ask in

return is a mere kiss from each of these lovely ladies..."

Perfume took a step towards him and grabbed the boy by his

collar, shaking him forcefully as she said, "How about Perfume

let you live?"

Ukyo laid a restraining hand on her shoulder and said, "We want

him in a cooperative mood, Per-chan. I don't think beating him

senseless gets us any closer to rescuing Kodachi."

Perfume gave Mikado an angry snort, then released him,

"Amazon no kiss boy who not Airen. Name other reward,

Perfume maybe do it."

"Fine," Akane said, "You want a kiss, Mikado? You'll get

one...after we have Kodachi!"

"Akane-chan?" Ryoga looked horrified.

"I'd sooner kiss a Crocodile," Keiko growled, "But for Kodachi's

sake I'm in."

"That should put you past your thousand kiss mark, Mikado,"

Ukyo said as she saw Ranma silently calculate the angle and

trajectory it would take to send the other boy into orbit.

"Fine," Mikado smiled, unaffected by the hostility with which he

was confronted, "They protest the loudest who wish the most for

that they wish to claim..."

"Perfume change mind," Perfume growled, "Think Skate boy and

other Kuno are related."

Ukyo blew a silent laugh through her nostrils and took Perfume

by the hand to squeeze it gently. The gesture not only surprised

the girl but also made her totally lose focus of her anger, even

though Ukyo had only meant to convey tacit agreement with the

accuracy of Perfume's statement...

Continued.

Comments/Criticism, Skating Lessons: shadowmane

Don't worry, Skate fans, the Match of the Century is still in the

offing!

Nabiki 1/2

Chapter 14, Part 4.

By

Jim Robert Bader

Inspired by the works of Rumiko Takahashi;

All rights go to her, the publishers & distributors

Of the Ranma 1/2 Series.

(Based on the Altered Destinies Series

by Wade Tritschler and Others;

Some characters and concepts were created by me,

The rest is shared Fanfiction, so please don't sue me)

"Excuse me, Tofu-Sensei?" Nabiki asked as he approached him

in his adjoining office.

"Yes, Kaneda-san?" Tofu asked as he turned around, stirring his

tea in a clockwise motion.

"I..." Nabiki hesitated before saying, "Have a confession to make.

You've been my family's examining physician for a number of

years, ne?"

"Hai," he replied, sensing the seriousness of the young man's

statement, and at once reverting to doctor mode as he smiled and

said, "If you have something you wish to tell me, you know it

will be in the strictest confidence, Kaneda-san."

"That's good," Nabiki sighed, "Because my name isn't Kaneda,

it's Nabiki."

"Hai?" he looked at the boy as if wondering if this were in his

area of expertise. A good psychiatrist might need to be

recommended.

Nabiki sighed as he stepped forward and took the kettle from the

stove, pouring it into a cup and adding some cold water to bring

it down to a more tolerable level, "It'll be a lot easier if I just

show you. Watch and learn."

He tipped the cup of hot water over his head and braced himself

for experiencing searing agony. It was almost relief when he

merely shuddered at the contact and felt a familiar change, along

with the overwhelming relief at returning to her natural shape.

Nabiki smiled up at Tofu and said, "You see? Just add hot water,

instant Nabiki."

Perhaps that psychiatrist was not such a bad idea, Tofu thought

faintly to himself, only he had in mind a different patient...

"Ah," he gasped at last, "Maybe you had better start at the

beginning..."

"Azusa," said Mikado, "I've brought some guests along this time,

and they'd like very much to see you."

"Want to see Azusa, Mikey?" asked the pretty girl in the frilly

green dress as she came bounding into the room all smiles and

giggles. Her enthusiasm halted when she caught a good look at

said guests, and she halted before staring right at Ranma and

Akane.

"Hey!" she pointed at them, "Isn't he the boy who tried taking

away Azusa's Jean Michael?"

"Jean Michael?" Keiko asked curiously.

"It's a sweater I used to own," Ranma said somewhat uneasily, "I

was wearing it at the time when we had our competition."

"Which you lost, naturally," Mikado pointed out, earning an

angry glare from Ranma's direction.

"And this girl," Azusa pointed at Akane, "She took my Jean

Simmons!"

"Jean Simmons?" Perfume repeated with a puzzled expression, as

though wondering if the competition was like the ones she knew

so well back home.

"A little black pig I used to own," Akane explained, giving Ukyo

and Perfume a sheepish look before adding, "I used to call him P-

chan too, until he ran away a couple of years ago."

"P-chan?" Ryoga frowned, "Why would you want to own a pig

for a pet?"

"It's kind of a long story," Ranma said, "I'm sure Akane'll tell you

all about it on some cold night."

"Shut up, Ranma," Akane growled, looking oddly embarrassed.

"Azusa doesn't like you," Azusa glared at the two of them then

gave her nose a snooty upturn as she folded her arms and looked

away, "I don't want you here in case you try stealing other things

Azusa prizes."

"Listen, you little twerp," Keiko suddenly growled, "It's you who

stole something that belongs to us, so get a grip! We want her

back now..."

"Easy Keiko-chan," Ukyo said, glaring at Azusa for what seemed

like very different reasons, "We just want the Ferret that you

found today. It doesn't belong to you, Shiratori-san and you had

no business taking her from the Skating rink this afternoon."

"Azusa doesn't know what effeminate boy is talking about,"

Azusa said without turning around, "Charlotte belongs to me and

no one else."

"Charlotte?" Akane and Keiko said together, while Ukyo

growled, "What did you call me?"

"Please," Mikado said soothingly before turning back to his

partner, "Give them back their pet ferret, Azusa. You know you

shouldn't take things that don't belong to you. You've been

warned repeatedly about that.'

"No!" Azusa cried as she threw a tantrum, "Azusa won't give

back what belongs to Azusa! She won't, she won't!"

"Wow," Ryoga said, "She talks about herself in the third person

just like Shampoo and Perfume..."

"She no Amazon," Perfume growled, "Amazon no get caught

dead wearing stupid frilly outfit!"

Mikado just heaved a sigh and said, "This way. I know where

she keeps her prized possessions, if you'll just follow me this

way..."

"No-no-no-no-no!" Azusa cried as she threw herself directly into

her partner's path, "You'll not help them take Azusa's nice things,

Mikey!"

"I made a promise to help them out," Mikado said gently but

firmly as he picked the girl up by the arms and set her to one

side, "Don't be so troublesome, Azusa. You know what the

doctors have told you about your little obsessions..."

"Azusa doesn't care!" Azusa wailed, "Don't take what belongs to

Azusa!"

"Wow," Ranma said, "She really does sound a lot like Shampoo

and Perfume-chan."

Perfume only glowered, but she mentally withdrew the nice

things that she had been thinking about Ranma just after having

saved her.

Mikado led the way down a spacious corridor into a large

chamber that was made out in the most garishly bright colors,

like some art-deco gallery, only this had objects on display whose

merits were as dubious as the sanity of their owner. The place

was a cross between a museum and a shrine to Kawaiiness with

a variety of objects ranging from a barbershop pole to a gumball

machine. They saw a sweater laying upon a pillar (Ranma

grimaced when he saw that), a coat hanger, a door knob, a

broom, a scarf and button that lay upon its own satin pillow.

And, of course, a cage in which lay an unmoving black Ferret.

"Kodachi!" Akane and Keiko cried together.

"Kodachi-san," Ranma sighed, earning a sour look from Ukyo's

direction.

"No-no-no-no!" Azusa threw herself at them again, "You'll not

take Azusa's Charlotte!"

"Look, you stupid twerp," Keiko rounded on her, "Either get out

of our way or prepare to get booted into orbit!"

"Please," Mikado pleaded, "No violence. Besides, you'll never

reach the cage past the invisible traps and security devices that

surround it. Fortunately, I know the combination."

He held up a remote control device, which he touched, making

the bars around the front of the cage retract as he walked up and

picked the Ferret up, then handed her to Akane, "I do hope this

will make up for our little misunderstanding the last time we

crossed blades, Tendo-san. By the way, my congratulations on

the excellent good taste you displayed in ending your engagement

to that Saotome boor you were so unhappily engaged to."

"Hey," Ranma growled, but Akane just chuckled as she cradled

the Ferret in her arms, reassured to find Kodachi was still both

warm and breathing.

"Charlotte, Charlotte!" Azusa cried, hopping up and down in

anger, "You give back Azusa's Charlotte right now!"

"Is she all right?" Keiko asked Akane, "I'll never forgive myself if

anything's happened to poor 'Dachi..."

"We've got her, now let's leave," Ukyo urged, "Before Twisto

here decides to sick her family's private army on us."

"Charlotte, Charlotte!" Azusa wailed as she looked for something

to hit Mikado with and instantly sized up Ukyo's primary weapon.

"I will be happy to give you safe conduct off the premises,"

Mikado replied, "Just so long as you lovely ladies remember to

honor your pledge when this is over."

Keiko and Akane both winced but nodded soberly their

willingness to comply. Meanwhile Ukyo felt Azusa move behind

her and cried, "Hey!"

"Charlotte, CHARLOTTE!" she cried as she brought the Baker's

Peal down over Mikado's head, knocking him off balance as he

almost lost possession of his remote control device.

Perfume had taken more than enough, the confiscation of her

Airen's weapon being the last straw in her Warrior's heart.

Moving faster than the other girl could see she punched the girl

squarely on the jaw and knocked Azusa out cold, then snatched

the hugs spatula up and reset it across Ukyo's back before Azusa

had time to hit the floor.

"We go now," Perfume said flatly, "Stupid girl dress badly no be

further trouble."

Ukyo looked at her appreciative while Mikado regained his

bearings, rubbing the lump he was starting to develop as he

groaned, "This way..." and started to stumble forward. Akane

and Keiko took small satisfaction in the thought that he might not

want to collect their promised kisses right away due to the

headache he was bound to be nursing, but they had not reckoned

on Mikado being a very determined Casanova...

"Sham-chan?" Nabiki hesitantly said as she approached the

Amazon girl, who was lying on the examination table with puffy

eyes, as though she had been crying for several minutes.

Shampoo looked at her and bit her lower lip, looking distraught

and anxious. Nabiki was herself again, clearly having benefited

from Cologne's turn of favor. For some reason this did not

greatly comfort Shampoo, as if she had been hoping against hope

to see Kaneda.

"Hey, what's with the face?" Nabiki asked her as she came up

alongside her Amazon bride, "Thought you'd be glad to know

your Great Grandmother changed her mind about me."

"Shampoo happy for Airen," Shampoo replied, only she didn't

sound happy, and Nabiki pointed this out.

"You should try smiling a little more often," Nabiki said, "My

mother once said that frowns make wrinkles. You don't really

want to wind up looking like a prune when you're Cologne's age,

do you?"

Shampoo managed a little smile as she replied, "Shampoo no

think she live that long, but is nice thought. Shampoo always

told one day she be Elder."

"So who says you won't be?" Nabiki asked, "Point 'em out and

they're history, I promise."

Shampoo smiled a little more sincerely, "Nabiki fight for

Shampoo?"

"Against any and all comers," Nabiki assured her.

Shampoo lost her smile and looked sad again, "But Nabiki no

want Shampoo as Airen. Only want as friend. You nice girl,

always think of others."

"Hey!" Nabiki had never felt so angry at being called nice before,

realizing that the resignation in Shampoo's voice meant that the

girl was expecting a tacit rejection, "Just a minute there! I'm not

always such a nice guy, you know. I can be as mean and selfish

as anyone when it comes to looking out for my own interests."

Shampoo just gave her a little smile as she replied, "Shampoo

know this."

Nabiki heaved a sigh, "Didn't Cologne tell you? I've withdrawn

my objections to the marriage. I'm not going to hold you at a

distance any more, kid. From this moment on I'm square with

this arrangement."

"You just say that because Shampoo have child," Shampoo said

sadly, "Is duty, no pleasure..."

"Hey!" now Nabiki really did have something to be angry about,

"That's not it at all! What do you think I am? Some kind of

Martyr? I'm not a poster girl for charity and modesty here!

That's my kid you're carrying, and there's no way I'm letting

either one of you get away from me now. This isn't something

I'm going to negotiate away, Shampoo. I'm staying with you, so

stop being so hard on yourself already."

"Why say this?" Shampoo asked, "You no hate Shampoo because

she no tell you she feeling bad? Shampoo no pay attention to

signs she know mean girl is having baby. Shampoo should know

this, but she no pay attention to Great Grandmother's teaching..."

"So you missed a couple periods and didn't take it serious,"

Nabiki snorted, "You think you're the only one with that

problem? I've had maybe only one period since the time I got this

curse laid on me, and your Great Grandmother thinks it may

mean that my curse won't let me have babies of my own because

it will keep interrupting my cycles."

"Oh?" Shampoo raised an eyebrow, "You no have baby?"

"Don't know yet," Nabiki sighed, "Tofu-sensei wants to run some

tests with me to figure out how this sex change deal works. It

might be that I can't ever carry a child to term myself, so it looks

like maybe the one you've got is my best option."

Shampoo lifted a purple eyebrow, "You want Shampoo have

child while you be husband?"

"Seems like a good enough deal," Nabiki finally gave into a

temptation she had been resisting for nearly two weeks and ran

one hand through Shampoo's silken hair as she smiled down at

her, "I'm not blaming you for entrapment or anything like that,

Sham-chan. I've been an idiot and I admit it, but I swear I'll

make it up to you somehow. From now on we're full partners

and I'm keeping you at my side for as long as you can stand to be

near me."

"But..." Shampoo hesitated, "What of Ranma?"

Nabiki smiled lopsidedly, "That's on, too. I'm not giving him up,

but I'll have to talk with him to see if he'll still want to be with

me after all of this. I'm sure it's going to come as a real shock

that I'm having a baby through another woman..."

"Him shocked?" Shampoo sniffed, then sobered as she added,

"Shampoo know this could happen, but think it no happen for

many years. Shampoo never be mother before, not know what to

expect. Shampoo no fear to be mother, but..."

"I understand completely," Nabiki leaned over her and said,

"Frankly I'm terrified, and not just because this is something I'm

going to have to explain to my father that's bound to give him a

heart attack, to say nothing of what I'll have to put up with when

Aunt Nodoka and my big sister find out."

"Airen father cry big tears," Shampoo sniffed, but then looked

somberly at Nabiki and said, "You argue with Ukyo father we

wait, how he cope with this you think?"

"He doesn't have to know it was me who got you pregnant,"

Nabiki replied firmly, "As far as anyone outside our immediate

circle of friends is concerned, this was done by your husband,

Kaneda."

"Shampoo think you right," Shampoo smiled softly, "Not like

having to pretend there two of you, but if no want outsiders know

truth..."

"It could get complicated," Nabiki agreed, "So, what do you think

about having a traditional Japanese style wedding with your

husband? Or we could do it Western fashion. We've already had

the Amazon ceremony..."

"Shampoo no care," Shampoo said as she reached out and took

Nabiki's free hand, squeezing it in her own, "Just so long as you

Airen. Nabiki-chan all Shampoo want in life, and baby."

"It won't be a picnic with me, you know," Nabiki cautioned, "I've

got a lot of work ahead of me once I re-open the dojo and help

Ucchan get her business started."

"Think Amazon no up to challenge?" Shampoo said in quiet

defiance, then her voice softened, "Ucchan have hands full just

dealing with Cousin."

"I'm counting on it," Nabiki chuckled, "The more time she spends

with her, the more time that leaves for me and Ranma...or you

and Ranma for that matter."

Shampoo colored as if Nabiki had read the thought in her mind.

She sobered again as she looked compellingly at Nabiki and said,

"Shampoo want baby...but if Airen say no can have, then

Shampoo...will do what Airen tell her..."

"Hey!" Nabiki snapped for the third time, "I don't want to hear

any more about that, ever! We're sticking to the plan this time,

and if that means taking time out from everything else to help you

and the kid, then just you try and stop me."

Shampoo seemed to relax into a smile at that point and said,

"Then Shampoo happy. Airen make Shampoo glad she no kill

sneaky girl who trick her into marriage."

Nabiki looked down before forcing herself to meet Shampoo's

reddish-brown eyes again, "I'm not proud of the way I handled

myself back then. I keep thinking another person might have had

more sense or restraint and then we wouldn't be in this mess at

all. Still, I can't really be sorry that it happened..."

"That good," Shampoo's smile was now anything but innocent,

"Because Shampoo insist that Airen respect other obligations to

wife. Airen no proud of wedding night, but Shampoo think

Airen have much cause be proud of way she handle Shampoo."

The open leer was an invitation to mischief, and Nabiki found

she could not this time draw away, instead leaned over and

kissed Shampoo on the mouth, this time woman-to-woman. The

kiss lingered for several minutes, then they parted, both feeling a

delight that made the air itself feel warm with light and passion.

"Better get dressed so we can clear out of here," Nabiki urged, "I

don't think Tofu-sensei will want to convert his examination

room into a brothel."

"Shampoo ready," she said as she got up off the table, letting the

covering blanket fall away before she eyed Nabiki coyly, "Airen

can watch. Is lawful for Airen to see bride before second

wedding."

"I expect a good show out of this," Nabiki smiled back, then

privately sighed to herself, thinking that she was letting herself in

for a lot of future trouble...

Kodachi splashed in the tub, gasping for breath as much as in

surprise at finding herself restored to her real shape in the

upstairs Tendo bathtub.

"Easy, 'Dachi," Keiko urged, "You're all right, just take it easy!

Breathe nice and easy the let yourself get used to the transition."

"W-what in the name of the Kami just happened?" Kodachi

demanded, examining her arms and legs to be certain there was

no fur covering her body.

"It's kind of a long story, 'Dachi-chan," Akane said sheepishly,

"Before we tell you about it, though, tell us exactly what you can

remember."

"Well," Kodachi began, "We were in the sports arena teaching

you and Ryoga to skate when that strange boy attacked Kuonji

Ukyo with a pail of water," she frowned, "Why would the boy do

that, and why did he splash me instead of Kuonji?"

"Well," Akane looked sheepishly as she exchanged looks with

Keiko, "Mousse is a very strange guy, an Amazon male who

thinks that Ukyo stole Perfume away from him...it's kind of a

complicated situation..."

"The boy's as nutty as a loon and as blind as a bat," Keiko

interrupted, "He wears those coke bottle glasses of his to correct a

severe case of astigma, so when he attacked you he thought he

was attacking Ucchan. He mindlessly missed and got you by

mistake...'

"I see," Kodachi said more calmly than they had expected, "And I

take it there was something in that bucket besides plain, ordinary

water?"

"Ah...you might say that," Akane winced.

"Kodachi-chan," Keiko looked at her soberly, "You've heard

about the Amazons of Joketsuzoku. Are you familiar at all with

a place near to their village called Jusenkyo?"

"The Cursed Springs of ancient legend?" Kodachi said with

raised eyebrows, "They're real?"

"Oh yeah," Keiko replied, "Over one hundred springs, and each

with a different story. You fall into one and take on the form of

the creature that last drowned there. Here, let me show you."

She got up and went over to the sink, filled a glass with water

and turned around. She nodded once to Kodachi then tipped the

water over her head.

Instantly her body began to collapse in on itself as her legs

shortened to become clawed and feathered, her arms spread out

to become wings, and every part of her body was covered in

black feathers except only her head, which was wrinkled and

ruddy. She stepped out from her shorts and tank top to spread

her wings to their full eight foot span then launched herself into

the tub with a splash and moments later reverted to a naked

Keiko.

"You see?" Keiko sputtered, "I fell into the Cursed Spring of the

Drowned Vulture, a very tragic story. Whenever I get hit with

cold water I turn into that ugly bird you just saw. Hot water turns

me back. It's pretty inconvenient at times, but I've basically

adjusted."

Kodachi's eyes were round and her expression was blank before

the realization hit her, "You mean...I now change into a...?"

"Small black Ferret?" Akane winced, "Yeah, that's pretty much it.

If I were you, I'd stay far away from cold showers in the future..."

"Excuse me," Kodachi said in a mildly apologetic tone, then took

a deep breath and screamed!

Keiko and Akane covered their ears as the scream went on and

on, only to stop as the door flew open and Kasumi appeared

saying, "Is everything all right-Oh my!"

"Oneechan?" Akane turned to see Kasumi's astonished

expression and just smiled, "It's all right, nothing to get alarmed

about. Kodachi was just rehearsing for a play. We're sorry if we

worried you, but everything's all right just now."

"Oh," Kasumi blinked, "Oh my...well...I suppose...if you say so,

Akane-chan," and she closed the door behind her, face still set in

the same strange expression.

"Like hell it's all right!" Kodachi snarled, "I turn into a rodent!

And worse than that, I turn into something a Furrier would love

to turn into a sable black coat!"

"We know," Keiko looked down at the tub and murmured a

heartfelt, "We're sorry."

"Sorry?" Kodachi snarled, then abruptly her tone softened, "Why

should you be sorry? What did you have to do with this

anyway?"

"I..." Keiko swallowed before resuming, "I saw Mousse coming

towards you and...I tried to get you out of the way...but I was too

clumsy...forgive me!"

"You?" Kodachi's tone softened even more as she said, "You

could barely stand upright on your skates. How could you have

possibly gotten me to safety? And what about you, Akane?"

"I didn't see the attack until you got splashed," Akane replied, "I

was on you other side when Mousse struck you instead of

Ucchan..."

"In other words, if it had not been me it would have been you,"

Kodachi said slowly, "So why should either of you feel guilty

about what happened? He wasn't even your enemy."

"We know," Keiko said, "But if I could have taken it for you..."

"You would have what?" Kodachi asked, "What happens when

someone already cursed gets hit with a different bucket of cursed

water?"

"I...don't know," Keiko said lopsidedly, "Guess I'd probably look

like something pretty funny..."

"Kodachi," Akane sad in distress, "We are sorry. This should

never have happened...'

"But it did happen," Kodachi sighed, "So we might as well admit

it. By the way, you wouldn't happen to turn into anything when

you get hit with cold water?"

"No," Akane said, "I don't have a curse, why?"

"It might be handy to have someone close at hand who can help

when I...I am like that," Kodachi shuddered, then raised a hand

when they both looked at her sharply, "I'm all right...I'll get over

this...somehow. I just never suspected anything like this about

you, Keiko-chan. Just when were you planning to confide in me

about these curses?"

"Didn't seem any point," Keiko said a bit sadly, "Unless you

know of a cure, I didn't think it was something I should burden

you with."

"Well, now it is both our burden," Kodachi said levelly, "And

somehow I must adapt to this...odd situation. I take it we are not

the only ones so cursed?"

"Not hardly," Akane said, "Uncle Genma turns into a Panda, and

you know Perfume? She turns into a small fluffy cat whenever

she gets wet..."

"Oh my," Kodachi's eyes went wide again, "You mean...?"

"The same one you tossed into a cage and used on me during our

fight," Keiko replied, "She still hasn't forgiven you for that, by the

way, and neither has Ucchan, but they both helped us get you

back from that maniac, Azusa."

"Shiratori Azusa of Kolhotz High School?" Kodachi now looked

very alarmed, "I have heard of her, of course. She is notorious for

her little...oh dear. I just...remembered something..."

She shuddered at the image of a huge face looming over her, just

before unconsciousness befell her, and then other memories of

feeling drugged and unsteady with the bars of an enormous cage

surrounding her. She closed her eyes and willed the image away,

finding it easy to replace them with other, even less pleasant

memories from her childhood.

"Are you going to be all right?" Keiko asked, moving closer to

lay her hands on both of Kodachi's shoulders.

Something in her tone made Kodachi look at her in surprise and

fascination. Keiko really did care if she was all right? So did

Akane she knew without having to look in her direction. It

was...strange, but somehow very nice. In all her life no one had

ever truly cared about her, not since her Mother...died...and

certainly not her father or brother.

Kodachi forced herself to breathe normally again, but her heart

was hammering. This whole situation had her feeling very

different from herself, but that was not an entirely bad thing.

There were times when the shadows threatened to swallow her

up into a pit of ultimate madness, but Akane had always been

there to keep that darkness at bay, and now someone else was

offering to be her protector. It made Kodachi feel very funny

inside, even stranger than when she had opened her body to these

two other women and made love for the first time with sweet,

unending passion.

"I'm all right," she said, and found herself surprised to discover

that it was the truth that she spoke. The shadows had withdrawn

entirely this time, leaving her feeling almost light and giddy,

"Like I said, I just need time to get used to all of this."

"Sure, 'Dachi," Akane leaned over the tub and looked at Kodachi

with open affection, "We want to help you, if you'll let us, but

we'll understand if you'd rather be alone..."

"Alone?" No, that was the last thing Kodachi wanted! Trying

hard not to sound as desperate as she was, she forced herself to

smile and say, "Don't be silly, Akane-chan...I'd be glad to have

both of you stay with me while I try to make sense of this

revelation. Besides...it's your house, I'm only a guest here."

"You're more than just a guest to me, 'Dachi," Akane reached out

and took Kodachi by one hand and clasped it firmly, "You can

treat this house like it's your home from now on. You never have

to feel like a stranger, and Keiko and I..."

"You both are sweet," Kodachi said, "But I wouldn't want to be a

burden to you..."

"That's silly," Keiko snorted, "How could you be any more of a

burden to the Tendos than I've been?"

"Yes, but I seem to have caused trouble for with denizens of the

house," Kodachi said, "You've just explained to me why the

Amazon girls are so coldly indifferent whenever I'm around, and

here I though it was just because I took an interest in Kaneda..."

"Ah..." Keiko and Akane exchanged nervous glances.

"Eh?" Kodachi frowned, looking from one to the other, "What is

it about Kaneda? What is this dark secret you've been avoiding

telling me all along? Speak up now, I demand it!"

"Well," Keiko said, ignoring Kodachi's suddenly imperious tone

as she tried to think up a good way of explaining the situation.

Akane was also struggling to come up with a good explanation,

but the best she could do was a very lame, "I'm sorry, Kodachi...I

know I never should have deceived you, but Kaneda..."

"Don't tell me also has a Jusenkyo curse?" Kodachi gasped,

"How horrible! What does he turn into, a mouse?"

"A mouse?" Keiko blinked, "What makes you think that?"

"His acute fear of Cats," Kodachi said, then frowned, "Now that I

think of it, your cousin and middle sister also share the same

fear...do they share similar curses?"

"Ah, you're getting warm," Keiko winced as she began,

"Kaneda..."

Akane finished for her with a very quiet, "...Is also Nabiki."

There was another long pause, then Kodachi said, "I see..." and

once again began screaming...

Continued.

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	15. Chapter 15

Nabiki 1/2

Chapter 15, Part 1.

By

Jim Robert Bader

Inspired by the works of Rumiko Takahashi;

All rights go to her, the publishers and distributors

Of the Ranma 1/2 series.

(Based on the Altered Destinies series by

Wade Tritschler and Others;

Some characters and situations were created by me,

The rest is shared Fanfiction, so please don't sue me)

"So we're here," said Ukyo as she lounged around in the Malt

shop, "Where are Nab-chan and Shampoo at?"

"Maybe they went back home," Ranma shrugged, "If they heard

about what happened at the rink..."

"I think Tofu Healer no tell everything when we ask," Perfume

remarked, "Him say Nabiki meet us here, we meet here. Maybe

find out why Shampoo cousin no feel good in ice rink."

"Ryonami's message was pretty terse," Ukyo frowned, "You sure

you don't have a clue to what might be up, Per-chan?"

Perfume shook her head negatively, "Shampoo cousin never sick

before. Maybe Japanese food no agree with her. Shampoo eat

funny before we find Kaneda husband. No sleep well for last

week, maybe something no agree with?"

"Well, I sure hope it's nothing serious," Ranma said, "She a nice

girl, and I wouldn't want to see anything bad happen to her or

nothing. Too bad that business with Mikado and Azusa kept us

so busy for the last hour."

"Yeah," Ukyo sighed, "I guess I'd feel pretty bad if anything did

happen to her. But what about poor Kodachi? I wanted to pay

her back for what she did the other week, but this..."

"Perfume think maybe Curse teach Rose girl important lesson,"

Perfume noted, "Now she know what like to be drugged in cage,

she no do to others. Is good...um...word mean we even?"

"I think you mean Symmetry, Per-chan," Ukyo smiled, "I guess it

is at that. What bothers me is that Mousse creep who's still after

me. What do I do about him, other than chop him up, pack him

in a box and ship him back to China?"

"That good suggestion," Perfume smiled, "Perfume do if Airen no

want get hands dirty."

"Unfortunately that's illegal," Ranma sighed, "Not that I wasn't

considering it myself, but there's gotta be a way to talk that guy

down from his obsession."

"You mean like you talked Kuno out of chasing Nabiki?" Ukyo

smiled as she saw him wince.

"Okay, so maybe it's not that easy," Ranma avowed when they

heard a voice call out to them.

"Hey gang, glad to see you got my message! Sorry we're late."

They all turned in astonishment to see Nabiki approaching them

with Shampoo bouncing happily at her side. What surprised

them was that it was the female Nabiki they saw, not Kaneda,

which made Ranma sit upright.

"Nab-chan!" he exclaimed with a bright expression, "You're

back!"

"Back to myself you mean?" Nabiki grinned mischievously and

said, "Did you miss me?"

"You bet!" Ranma said with enthusiasm, at once making room

for her in the booth he occupied. To his surprise Nabiki insisted

on letting Shampoo sit down first before scooting on the outside.

The purple haired Amazon snuggled in cozily between them with

an infectious grin that made the others look at her in surprise and

confusion.

"How you get cure for Cat Tongue?" Perfume asked before

voicing the unthinkable, "Great Grandmother get careless?"

"Great Grandmother give Airen cure," Shampoo said brightly,

"Airen come to new arrangement with Elder, she take away nerve

blockage keep Airen from changing."

"Whoah," Ukyo sniffed, "What did you have to do to get the old

bag to back down like that? Offer her your firstborn child or

something?"

For some reason both Shampoo and Nabiki glared at her and did

not smile at the joke. Ranma failed to catch the significance of

this and said, "How come you're so happy to see Nabiki back to

being female? I thought you wanted her to remain Kaneda."

"What about you?" Shampoo sniffed, "Boy Ranma no like

Kaneda for co-husband?"

"What?" Ranma blinked, "Huh? Uh, no, it's not that, I mean...I

like Kaneda, I mean...when Nabiki's like that it's almost like

she's my best buddy, better than Kuno. I may not go that way,

but...well...I've been thinking a lot about it, and if that were the

only obstacle to me and Nabiki... well, I'd just think about

it...maybe...for her..."

"Ranchan," Nabiki felt touched, "What a nice thing to say. A

little weird and disturbing, maybe, but nice. Fortunately it

probably won't ever come to that. I'll remain a woman for your

sake, but Kaneda's attentions are going to be focused in a

different direction for the foreseeable future."

She took Shampoo's hand and squeezed it, a gesture that

Shampoo returned with joy as everyone could now plainly see the

ring she wore on her left hand, sporting a finely cut diamond.

"Huh?" Ranma and Ukyo said together, while Perfume just stared

open-mouthed as Shampoo waved the ring where they could each

see it more plainly.

"That's what I need to talk with you all about," Nabiki said,

"Since we're in this together, what affects one or more of us

affects us all. What I'm going to say may shock and amaze you,

but it's very important that you listen and hear me out before

making any snap judgements. Can I get your solemn word that

you'll listen to me before saying or doing anything too rash,

Ranchan?"

"Uh...yeah," Ranma faintly said, feeling his stomach turn queasy,

"I promise."

"Good," Nabiki looked down, "Because when I tell you this I'm

afraid you may be more than a little upset with me, Ranchan. I

care very much about what you think of me, and I want you to

know that I would never deliberately do anything to hurt you."

"Okay," Ranma said slowly, his fear growing more intense. Was

Nabiki about to give him the brush-off? He could not believe it,

not after all they had been through for the past several weeks, and

to break off her engagement in favor of Shampoo? That old

mummy must have made an ultimatum to force Nabiki to choose,

and she obviously had chosen in favor of regaining her own

gender.

Nabiki took a deep breath then said, "We talked to Doctor Tofu

and...well...Shampoo's pregnant."

Dead silence. Even Perfume was looking at them blankly before

seeing the beatific smile on the face of her adoptive cousin.

"N-nani?" Ukyo whispered.

"I'm the father," Nabiki continued, "Or rather my other half is. It

happened on our Wedding night back in Joketsuzoku."

"Nani?" Ranma finally exhaled.

"B-but...how?" Ukyo blurted, no less in dismay than Ranma.

"You want graphic illustration?" Shampoo smirked, "Airen get

lucky."

"Combination of factors, I guess," Nabiki shrugged, "I was just

getting used to being male, and here was this pretty, willing

young girl who wanted to go to bed with me, and I'd had

something to drink and thought, 'What the hell?' and went along

with my raging hormones. I thought it was a harmless

experiment, I never took anything else into consideration, not

Shampoo's state of mind and not the possibility that I'd someday

be here having to explain my actions. It was thoughtless and

wrong of me, but I can't go back and change anything that's past.

I have to accept my responsibility for what I did and move on.

That's why I've decided that Sham-chan deserves the husband she

wants so very much, and I want her happiness more than

anything else in this matter. That's why we went out and got

officially registered as Kaneda and wife, giving her Japanese

citizenship for as far as anyone else knows. No kid of mine's

going to go through life with the stigma of being illegitimate and

unwanted."

"Hah?" Ranma said, still trying to get his mind around the

concept.

"That brings me back to you, Ranchan," Nabiki sighed, "Like it

or not, Shampoo's now a part of my life, but that doesn't mean it's

over for us. I still want you as much as I ever did, and not

because of any arranged engagement pledge between our parents.

I want you as my husband, but I'll understand if what I've just

revealed makes it impossible for you to ever see me that way

again. I know I've shocked you, but I still love you, Ranma, and

you're still my iinazuke.

"And you, Ucchan," Nabiki's tone became more studied, "I won't

insult you by suggesting you might expect to profit from these

development if Ranma decides he...doesn't want to be my

iinazuke any more," she swallowed, "It's his choice to make, but

I'm not surrendering him without a fight. For one thing I went

through hell to get Cologne and your father to agree to our

present arrangement, and I'm not going to just throw it all away

because of one tiny little factor I failed to take into consideration."

"Little?" Ranma asked, making the word itself sound like an

understatement.

Nabiki seemed to be swallowing hard before she turned and

looked at him, "Ranma, I wouldn't blame you if you yell at me or

get angry or call me names or say you never want to have

anything to do with me again. This is a lot to ask you to

overlook, especially since I need your support more than ever in

what's going to be a difficult time for all of us, not least of all

because Shampoo's going to become very noticeably pregnant

within a couple more months while we get the dojo started. Nab-

chan's going to have her restaurant to keep her occupied, and

Perfume's going to help her out with that. There are so many

things we're going to have to do to get our lives in some kind of

working order, so if you want to back out now...I won't hold it

against you."

Ranma seemed to think it over very carefully, which was

becoming more of a habit with him than even he was used to.

After a long silent pause he said, "Exactly how far are you and

Shampoo taking this marriage thing?"

"Ah," Nabiki glanced down again, then she looked up at him and

replied, "I've made a promise to... honor her in every way,

Ranma, exactly as a husband should do for his wife. I wasn't

sure about this part myself until I looked real hard at...what I had

done..." she took another deep breath and said, "...and I came to a

pretty surprising realization. I missed having that closeness with

Shampoo that we enjoyed on that night...and I guess what I'm

trying to say is...we're going to be like that again..."

"Why don't you just say you're going to sleep with her and get it

over with?" Ukyo asked her, her tone neither hostile nor friendly.

"Ah, well," Nabiki smiled crookedly, "I don't know how Ranchan

would feel about that. I mean...I want to do it with him, but he

wants to wait until after we're married, and I respect that. It

wouldn't be fair to insist he remain faithful to me while I...do

what I'm going to do, what I want to do to be a faithful husband

for Shampoo. That's why...well...I guess there's no easy way of

saying this, but if Ranma wanted to do it with you...I wouldn't

object..."

Ranma thought he was beyond surprise at this point, but he was

mistaken. Ukyo just looked at Nabiki, stunned, while Perfume

alone seemed to be considering the matter calmly and

thoughtfully, and after a moment of this silence she said, "Is good

solution. Nabiki-chan make very practical arrangement."

"Huh?" Ranma and Ukyo looked at her together.

Perfume shrugged, "Perfume decide she no mind if boy and Airen

make happy. Airen say she stand by Perfume, Perfume happy

with this. I no want Airen sleep with other boy or girl not part of

group marriage. Perfume want Ukyo-chan be happy. Is Airen's

decision. If Airen want boy, I think boy good enough for Airen."

"Shampoo no mind Ranma love Airen," Shampoo looked at

Ranma and said, "Ranma have choice, Nabiki-Airen give choice

to Ranma. Ranma decide he want stay with Airen, Shampoo be

happy. Ranma want leave Airen for Spatula girl, is his choice.

Airen no happy, Shampoo no happy either."

"See what we're up against here, Ranchan?" Nabiki sniffed, "You

just can't argue with these Amazons, and it's better to love them

than to fight them."

Ukyo sighed, "You know this whole idea of yours is nuts, Nab-

chan. Bad enough I've agreed to put off marrying Ranchan until

after I graduate, but now you're saying you're going to stay

married to Shampoo and carry out your marital duties AND take

care of a baby?"

"Yes," Nabiki sighed, "That's about the size of it. A real glutton

for punishment, that's me."

Ukyo shook her head, "If anyone but you had come up with this

crazy scheme I'd have told them to take a hike. I guess it just

shows how crazy I am or how far I've let myself get talked into

this already, but I guess I'm still in. What the hell, I'm pretty

much in the same boat anyway, I just haven't made my girlfriend

here pregnant."

"Is still possible," Perfume half smiled, "If Airen want talk to

Great Grandmother about maybe visit to Jusenkyo..."

"Not a chance," Ukyo snorted, "But I don't blame you for trying."

Nabiki smiled at her, then slowly turned and said, "So...what do

you say, Ranchan? Are we still on, or do you want to give me the

boot? Either way...I'm staying with Shampoo."

All eyes turned at last towards Ranma, who had been studying

their faces, listening to their banter and hearing all their

arguments while trying to resolve exactly what he thought about

the whole crazy situation. He was still trying to come up with a

reply when a voice suddenly cut into their private conversation.

"You!" cried Shiratori Azusa, "You took Charlotte away from

Azusa! Give back now or Azusa will get very angry!"

"What do you want, creep?" Ukyo glowered, her hostility

suddenly flaring to max level.

"Give Charlotte back or else!" the girl demanded like a six-year-

old brat.

"Excuse me?" Nabiki asked, "Am I missing something here?"

"Charlotte! Charlotte!" the girl demanded as she picked up a

chair and was about to swing it when Perfume got up and

grabbed the girl by her throat, picking her up off the floor and

holding her at arms length.

"Perfume?" Ukyo gasped, half-afraid that the Amazon would

indeed commit murder.

"Perfume suggest that stupid girl go away," Perfume said slowly

and evenly as Azusa went fish-eyed as she stared back at

Perfume in terror.

"Please," said Mikado as he appeared at once to Azusa's rescue,

"As much as I can understand your feelings, Miss, it would be a

great shame if I were forced to find another partner."

Perfume looked at him and said, "You keep girl on leash or I no

be so nice again," and she released Azusa, who collapsed

backwards under the weight of the chair she had been holding.

"That is a novel idea," Mikado sniffed, "Perhaps I should, but her

father would be most upset with me if anything happened to his

precious little angel. Still I think it is a greater shame that a

lovely girl such as you should be so distraught to the point of

contemplating murder.

He took one of Perfume's hands and when she did not pull away

he lifted it to his lips and was about to kiss it when a condiment

struck him on the side of one cheek. He glanced down in

surprise, then calmly pulled it off to examine it, and then

followed the trail back to see Ukyo glaring at him with a very

unpleasant expression.

"Kuonji," he same pleasantly, "A novel form of challenge. I take

it you have some interest in this lady?"

"She's a friend of mine," Ukyo replied, "I don't like wolves

pawing over my friends. You've made your thousandth Kiss

quota, now back off or stand downwind."

"Ucchan?" Ranma gasped, while Perfume looked at Ukyo in

amazement.

"You know I can't walk away from a challenge like that," Mikado

smiled, "If you want a fight, then I'll be happy to oblige you."

"Fine," Ukyo said, "Ranma and me'll take you on anytime,

anywhere."

"No!" Azusa said as she got back to her feet and glared angrily at

Perfume, "Not Ranma, Azusa will fight you for Charlotte!"

"Fine," Perfume growled, "We fight right now!"

"Don't be stupid," Azusa snorted, "We fight in the Arena where

everyone can see Azusa stomp you, silly! You meet Azusa this

time next week?"

"Perfume give stupid girl that much longer to live!" Perfume

came right back, "I carve you up like wood block!"

"Fine," Mikado smiled, "And if we win will you honor me with a

kiss, fair maiden?"

"Kiss?" Perfume blinked, then growled, "You no defeat Perfume

and Airen, so no get hopes up."

"Very well, then it's a date," Mikado said, "Koholtz High School

is hosting a competition in which we are the star performers.

This fits in rather nicely since we have so far been unable to find

competitors with the nerve to stand against us. I suggest you

practice long and hard with your partner, Kuonji, because the two

of you are going to need it."

He turned to leave as Azusa fell in behind him, turning at the last

minute to stick her tongue out at Perfume before exiting

altogether.

Ranma closed his mouth and said, "Oboy...something tells me

this is a very bad idea, Ucchan."

"You're telling me?" Ukyo said faintly.

"Would somebody mind clueing me in on what's going on here?"

Nabiki asked in annoyance.

"Why boy and Airen worry?" Perfume asked, "We stomp tail of

stupid girl and arrogant boy, no matter where they pick fight."

"Uh, Per-chan?" Ukyo replied, "You do realize that this

competition is going to involve skating?"

"Is special kind of fight?" Perfume asked before her eyes got very

round and she said, "Nani...?"

"She's what?" Kodachi gasped as she shook Keiko forcibly in the

bath until the redhead's teeth began to chatter.

"Calm down!" Akane urged, "It's not like it'll do anyone any got

to get angry!"

"I am calm!" Kodachi released Keiko, who splashed back in the

tub as the Black Rose turned around and looked desperately at

Akane, "This is a joke, right? A little jest of yours to make me

think your sister and Kaneda are one and the same people?"

"I'm afraid the joke was the one I let you believe," Akane said

sorrowfully, "I've very sorry, I didn't think you'd react this way. I

never meant for you to get the wrong sort of ideas, 'Dachi..."

"You think it's funny?" Kodachi demanded, "I threw myself at her

feet and acted like an idiot because I thought she was a man I

could actually be with! How dare you play with my feelings that

way..."

"Hey, where do you get off acting so high and mighty?" Keiko

asked, "It wasn't Nabiki who..."

Kodachi rounded on her and slapped her face. Keiko was so

surprised she stood there looking at Kodachi in confusion.

Kodachi seemed surprised at her own action and slowly put her

hand to her mouth, feeling tears begin to well in her eyes as her

emotional resolve started to crumble.

"'Dachi," Akane looked down, "I'm so sorry...this is my fault, I

should have let you in on the truth right away, but then you

started going on about how Kaneda was the one you'd always

dreamed about, and I just thought, like an idiot, that it'd be a

good joke to play on you..."

"You were right," Kodachi said numbly, "It was a very good joke.

I hope you are proud of yourself."

Keiko felt her face where she had been slapped, still stunned as

she saw the sorrow on Kodachi's face. For a moment she could

say nothing as Kodachi played out a series of emotional states,

recalling in her own mind the way she had acted and thought on

the subject of Kaneda,

Finally Kodachi sighed, "I'm sorry...I didn't mean to overreact

like that. It was inexcusable and I should not have yelled at you

or slapped you. I'm sorry."

Keiko lowered her hand and sighed, "Well, I wasn't exactly

thrilled about you going after Nabiki's male form that way.

Think what she's felt like for the last couple of weeks. I think

you got a bit out of hand with your courtship..."

"I know," Kodachi said softly, "Perhaps...perhaps because I have

never really found a man who seemed so perfect for me. Most

people I know avoid me, the ones I really care for...reject me. My

father...I have not seen him in four years, but we did not get

along very well. He was never there for me where it would have

mattered, and mother..."

"You don't have to say anything," Keiko sighed, "I've heard the

story."

"Kodachi," Akane wept quietly.

Kodachi turned to Akane with tears of her own and said, "I'm

sorry about yelling at you. I guess you thought it was best to let

me go on in my ignorance. I certainly would not have listened to

you before. Now that I know about the curse...I'll be much more

tactful around...Kaneda. Small wonder that Amazon girl has

treated me like dirt..." her eyes went wide with new realization,

"She's married to Kaneda? But that means..."

"Nabiki's her Airen," Akane sighed, "The Laws of Joketsuzoku

require an Amazon to marry or kill the outsider who defeats her

in battle."

"Oh my," Kodachi said, "How does this affect her relationship

with Ranma?"

"It's complicated," Keiko said, "Apparently Nab-chan worked out

a deal with Shampoo's Great Grandmother and Ukyo's father that

allows them to balance all three relationships together while the

parties involved continue their education. Ranma remains

Nabiki's iinazuke while Nabiki is Shampoo's wife, or something

funny like that. Ranma actually has two iinazuke while Ukyo

and Nabiki tries to settle which of them is the better claimant.

Meanwhile Ucchan has to contend with her own Amazon

problem..."

"The girl who turns into a Cat," Kodachi said, "Perfume is her

wife?"

"Seems like it," Keiko sniffed, "Personally I think Ucchan is

starting to warm up to the idea, against her own moral objections.

She still wants Ranma, but it seems Amazon laws to allow two

female Warriors to share a man without compromising their

significant others..."

"I see what you mean by complicated," Kodachi said, then

sighed, "I am glad you finally told me this. I should hate to think

what might have happen if I persisted in the notion that

Kaneda...well, I have no desire to get involved in any such

tangled relationship. Too many is a crowd, you know."

"Yeah, I think I do," Keiko sighed herself then said, "Well, now

that you do know the truth, I hope you'll still let Akane and me

help you out. It takes time to get used to these Cursed bodies and

you're going to need friends who understand your situation..."

"And you're volunteering?" Kodachi eyed her coyly, "Tell me

something...what limitations come with these cursed animal

forms?"

"About the usual ones of the animals themselves," Keiko replied,

"You retain your intelligence and know everything you need to

know on an instinctual level, but physically you are the animal in

all the ways that matter. In my case I get to fly and can fight

with my wings, feet and beak, but I've also got this acute appetite

for leftovers. Vultures are notorious carrion eaters, so I get this

funny urge every time I see a road kill...well, let's just say it feels

strangely natural, like you are the animal you pretend to be. You

also have to watch yourself, these transformations could happen

at any time, like we're magnets for water."

"I suppose it would make sense to carry around an Umbrella, like

your friend Ryoga," Kodachi mused, then asked, "Is he...?"

"No," Akane said very shyly, "He's just a really nice boy, and if

he's hiding anything like that from me, I've yet to find it out..."

"Ryoga's got more than enough problems as it is without having

to have a curse attached on top of everything else," Keiko said,

smiling as she added, "Not the least of which is being tongue-tied

around Akane."

"Oho, then the boy is really sweet on you?" Kodachi asked with a

smile, "And how do you feel about him."

"Like I want us to be more than just good friends," Akane said as

she blushed furiously, "He's so very nice and polite with me,

unlike most guys I know. I don't want to hurt him or anything, I

just want him to know that I like him...very much."

"So you finally do admit that there is at least one boy in the world

whom you regard with fondness," Kodachi smiled endearingly,

then looked to Keiko and said, "And you?"

"I'll stick to what I'm most familiar with," Keiko returned her

smile, "At the moment I've got my eye on a couple of brunettes,

and one's not seeing anybody else at the moment, so maybe I've

got a real shot at her...depending on how she feels about me."

"You are not so bad a sort...for a Peasant," Kodachi smiled, then

said, "You don't mind the fact that we both share the same

problem...?"

"Hey," Keiko grinned wickedly, "I like fur. How do you feel

about feathers?"

Kodachi matched her grin and sighed as she lowered herself into

the bath, "They're good for tickling...like this!"

"What? Hey!" Keiko cried as she tried to fend off the attack in the

water but just wound up giggling instead as Kodachi found her

sensitive areas.

"You two," Akane sighed, then smiled as she started to remove

her clothing, reckoning the tub was more than large enough to

accommodate three people...

Continued.

Comments/Criticism/Macrame Lessons: shadowmane

And now for some crash-course lessons in skating (emphasis on

the word Crash!)

Nabiki 1/2

Chapter 15, Part 2.

By

Jim Robert Bader

Inspired by the works of Rumiko Takahashi;

All rights go to her, the publishers and distributors

Of the Ranma 1/2 Series.

Based on the Altered Destinies Series by

Wade Tritschler and Others;

Some characters and situations were created by me,

The rest is shared Fanfiction, so please don't sue me)

Perfume tried valiantly to remain on her feet this time, but her

lack of control caused her to skate out of control, heading for the

wall much too fast in spite of her desperate flailing of arms to try

and prevent her forward momentum.

Ukyo came to her rescue once more, interposing her body in

perfume's way with hands outstretched to catch her. Perfume

made contact, but then fell backwards as her feet continued

forward, causing her to slide right under and between Ukyo's

wide-braced legs, which in turn caused Ukyo to flip around so

that she and Perfume briefly exchanged places, only to wind up

with Perfume riding Ukyo all the way towards the wall. This

allowed Ukyo to take the brunt of the impact, thus sparing

Perfume more than a rude jolt, a fact about which neither one

seemed particularly happy.

"Oh man," winced Ranma, "Why doesn't she give it up already?

I should be out there with Ucchan as her partner. All Perfume's

going to wind up doing is make them both look silly."

Shampoo looked at him with a cross expression, but inwardly she

sighed in total agreement. With great reluctance she said,

"Amazon not concede fight before at least trying. Give Cousin a

chance, she make progress."

"With only four days until the competition?" Nabiki asked, "I

think that might be pushing it, just a little."

Perfume crawled off of Ukyo to check on her condition. Ukyo

waved a hand to signify that she was all right, then slowly started

to regain her footing, in spite of Perfume's awkward attempts to

assist her. It was not long, however, before Perfume lost her

balance yet again and caused the both of them to fall down

sprawling.

"Okay," Nabiki winced and amended, "Four days is pushing it a

lot, especially against this Golden Pair you keep talking about,

Ranchan."

"Man," Ranma shook his head in dismay, "How can somebody

who seems so unstoppable most times have such a hard time just

standing up right?"

"Cousin no want risk getting hurt," Shampoo explained, "No

want look bad before Airen, so she try hard but different rules

apply on ice. Perfume no used to ground that no remain still or

go one way when try go another. No used to backward-forward

direction blades on ice make, is whole new form of movement."

"What's the story about her being so sensitive to pain?" Ranma

wanted to know, "How can a little scratch affect her like it was a

major wound? It must be pretty hard folding up like that in the

middle of a battle."

Shampoo just sighed, "Cousin no control pain like other warriors.

Even as little child she hurt easily, no keep from crying. Other

warriors make fun of her, call her weakling.

Shampoo...Shampoo used to be one of them, but then Great

Grandmother adopt Perfume into family, replace older Amazon

who do very bad thing and get banished. Great Grandmother

train Perfume hard, make her study with Shampoo, learn to be

strong Warrior, build strong defenses, no so easy to hurt as

before. If Perfume have axes no one touch her. Amazons learn

fear Perfume, she become tribal Enforcer."

"Only she can't use her axes in this battle," Nabiki sighed, "Poor

kid. According to Cologne, Perfume lacks the normal ability to

filter out pain. Her entire nervous system is hypersensitive to

stimulus, which gives her an edge as a tracker, but she can't

block out her pain receptors or ignore minor discomforts like the

rest of us can. Doctor Tofu thinks maybe her brain chemistry is a

little different from the rest of us, like maybe she doesn't produce

the same pleasure endorphins we use to counterbalance our fear

of unpleasant experiences such as this..."

"A succinct diagnosis on your part, Daughter-in-law," a familiar

voice intruded on their conversation, and without the need to turn

around all three sitting in the bleachers knew that Elder Cologne

was once more with them.

"Good day to you, Elder," Nabiki managed as pleasantly as her

mood allowed, "Is there something you need?"

"I just thought I'd come see how my other Daughter-in-law is

managing her affairs," Cologne noted simply, "It will be a few

hours until the restaurant opens and everything there is in

readiness, so I thought my services might be needed here as an

advisor."

"You mean you want to help?" Ranma asked, almost

disbelieving.

"Is the notion that I can be as good an ally as an adversary so

difficult for you to imagine?" she asked in almost rhetorical

fashion, "Don't forget I have a vested interest in seeing things

progress well for you all, in spite of our other difficulties, and I

could not help overhearing your comments from a moment ago,

Child. It seems that I have indeed been deficient in covering that

aspect of your training."

"Great Grandmother," Shampoo said sheepishly, "Shampoo no

mean criticize..."

"But you were correct in your analysis, child," Cologne said

sagely, "The mere fact that I never anticipated this sort of theater

of combat does not excuse my negligence in not preparing you for

such an eventuality as this."

"Well, no one's perfect, and it's nice of you to stop by," Nabiki

said, "Have a nice day and don't let he door hit your back when

you exit."

"You needn't worry that I intend to pull rank and interfere in your

personal lives this time, Daughter-in-law," Cologne replied, "I

am merely here to satisfy my own interest, and it seems that your

fellow iinazuke could use some assistance about now, provided

she will permit me to help."

"Uh oh," Ranma followed the direction of Cologne's gaze and

saw how Ukyo had been blindsided by another skater, who

turned out to be none other than Azusa.

"Hey!" Ukyo protested, turning around with an angry glare

towards the curly-haired skating princess.

"You're wasting your time," Azusa smiled prettily, "That one will

never be any good for a partner. See? She can't even stop her

own momentum!"

"Why you..." Ukyo stopped herself as she heard a frantic cry from

behind, which caused her to whirl about, seeing Perfume once

more moving frantically backwards.

"Help, Aiiiireeen!" Perfume cried, mere instants from going splat

against the nearest wall.

"Easy there, I've got you," said Mikado, who appeared as if from

seeming no where, "You really shouldn't be trying so hard.

Skating should come naturally from easy, graceful movements."

"Perfume got point," Perfume said, relieved not to be moving

backwards again, but finding herself swept up by Mikado's own

motion, which was forcing her to glide along with him despite

her own best efforts, "Can let go now..."

"Ah, but I am just savoring the moment of your company,"

Mikado smiled as he sniffed her hair and said, "How fragrant you

are, a delicate flower, just like your name..."

Perfume was of two minds about this boy's ideas of gallantry.

On the one hand he was very handsome and had some interesting

manners that might at some other time have convinced her that

his company was more pleasant than otherwise. On the other

hand she had been warned about his predatory nature regarding

all things female, and besides she was not interested. Still,

before she could say anything more to voice her protest she heard

an angry cry from halfway across the rink.

"HEY!" the voice was definitely angry, and with some surprise

Perfume realized that it belong to Ukyo, who was growling, "Get

your paws off her, Mister!"

"Kuonji-san," Mikado acknowledged Ukyo as she came skating

towards him with as much of a mad on as Perfume had ever seen

her wearing. With hardly any effort, however, Mikado halted

both himself and Perfume to avoid Ukyo's interception. Ukyo

was going too fast to completely miss the screen that was behind

them, but when she bounced off she managed to retain enough of

her senses to glare at Mikado, balling her fists and shaking with

anger.

"I don't know what your problem is," Mikado sniffed, "We were

just enjoying a casual moment together, so there is no need for

you to seem so jealous about it."

"J-Jealous?" Ukyo's anger drained away as her face took on a

shocked expression, then flared up again with redoubled effort,

"What the hell are you talking about? I just don't want a clown

like you putting his paws all over my friend..."

"Pardon me, but I didn't see any ownership label that gives you

proprietary rights," Mikado noted with a bland, deceptively calm

look, "I would have thought a boy your age would be over such

childish obsessions as imaging that every other boy had an

interest in your sweetheart."

"N-Nani?" Ukyo blinked, "What are you talking about? We're

just friends is all..."

"Humph," Perfume frowned, "Just friends, eh?"

"You see?" Mikado smiled as he turned back to Perfume, "There

really is no reason for you to be angry, then as I find this girl very

charming as a companion. Perhaps I shall bestow upon her

tender lips my one thousandth-and-one kiss..."

"Urk!" Ukyo gasped as Perfume stared up in dismay, being held

in such a way that she had no chance to free herself or resist this

boy's advances.

Suddenly a golden figure came hurtling at Mikado and collided

with his head using her knees. Azusa landed back on the ice and

turned an angry glare at Mikado before saying, "Do your girl

chasing some other time, Mikey. We've got to practice the

Attack of a Hundred Foes."

Mikado sighed and set Perfume back down on the ice in front of

Ukyo, "Stay here, beautiful, this will only take a moment."

"Attack of hundred foes?" Perfume gasped as Ukyo took her

firmly in hand and guided her away from Mikado and his

companion.

"You'll see in another moment, Per-chan," Ukyo replied, still

glaring over her shoulder.

Sure enough, a hundred guys dressed up in Hockey uniforms had

been filing onto the ice in complete protective gear, including

Goalie Masks and sticks. They surrounded the Golden Pair as

Ukyo and Perfume gave them wide berth while Mikado and

Azusa looked calmly on, then dramatically said, "All right,

Begin."

"What the Hell?" Nabiki asked as she leaned over from the

sidelines, just as the Hockey players swarmed in to attack the

unarmed ice skaters, but just as it seemed as though an

impending bloodbath were about to ensue, Mikado threw his

partner up to his shoulder and began to move, whirling about and

using Azusa like a Billie club to hammer their assailants.

"Interesting," murmured Cologne as she watched the pair

demolish the Hockey players, sending them two at a time

crashing against the far wall while Ukyo did her best to keep

herself and Perfume out of harms way. Ranma, meanwhile, had

finished tying on his skates and was snorting dismissively as he

murmured the word, "Showoff."

"Nine seconds," one of the Hockey players groaned as he looked

at a stop watch, "A new record for the Golden Pair."

"Is that all?" Mikado asked as he took the time to comb his hair

back into place, "We could do a lot better than that."

"Haven't changed a bit, Mikado," Ukyo growled, "Still the same

arrogant bastard who put my own team on sick leave for two

weeks and made us miss the Nationals."

"Well, if they had been better, or their Captain was any good,

they might have stood a better chance with me," Mikado said,

"Not that the outcome would have been any different."

"SANSENIN!" a new voice cried as a black shape came hurtling

towards Mikado.

"Eh?" he asked, turning around just in time to see Kodachi

arrowing straight at him, looking as mad as a hornet. With

astonishing ease he avoided her thrust, but Kodachi had no

trouble recovering as she arced about and stood glaring at him

and his partner, Azusa.

"Who are you?" he asked, inclining his head to take in this new

beauty.

Kodachi gave her trademark laugh, then assumed a haughty air,

"I am the Black Rose of Saint Hebereke, Kuno Kodachi, and you

are the fellow to whom I understand a certain rescue was

effected...at the price of two kisses."

"Indeed?" Mikado asked, "And what is it to you?"

Kodachi produced her trademark ribbon and took a one-legged

stance, "You exploited the concerns of two very dear friends to

achieve your goal of one thousand kisses, and now I understand

that you have a challenge match forthcoming in which one prize

is a certain valuable animal that does not belong to you. I have

come to ask that you change the stakes so that the Ferret is not

included in your deal."

"Charlotte?" Azusa gasped, "No, no! You can't have Charlotte!

Charlotte is Azusa's!"

Kodachi flicked her ribbon and narrowly missed hitting the girl,

instead slicing the ribbon in her hair so that it fell away, socking

Azusa out of her tirade.

"There is no 'Charlotte,' you silly girl," Kodachi said coldly, "The

Ferret is a valuable pet that belongs to no one but herself, and if

you persist in this silly claim you will find that I am most

adamant in my insistence."

"Jean Paul?" Azusa gasped as she stared at the fragments of her

ribbon that had fallen to her feet, then she looked up at Kodachi

and said, "You're a bad lady! How dare you do that to Azusa's

Jean Paul?"

Kodachi twirled her ribbon again and said, "I am warning you,

Shiratori-san, renounce your claims on the Ferret or prepare to

suffer worse humiliations."

"Kodachi?" Ukyo asked, only mildly surprised at the deadly

serious tone the Black Rose had as she prepare to torment Azusa.

"Stay back," Kodachi warned her, "I have my own issues with

you, Kuonji-san. You were supposed to be the recipient of what

came upon me by mischance. I have not yet forgiven you for that,

even though I do owe you some favor for my rescue."

"Charlotte?" Azusa said again, this time moving closer while

Kodachi was thus distracted.

"Eh?" Kodachi flinched as she found Azusa now standing too

close for her to effectively use her ribbon, "I said get back..."

"You're Charlotte, aren't you?" Azusa smiled as she moved in

even closer, "You've got my sweet Charlotte's eyes! You're

Charlotte! Charlotte!"

Mikado sighed, "Looks like she's finally gone over the edge this

time..."

"I'd say she started out that way," Ukyo grimaced as she felt a

twinge of sympathy for Kodachi's nonplussed reaction.

"Dachi!" cried Akane as she and Keiko suddenly appeared,

dragging along a very reluctant Ryoga.

"Ah, the other beauties make their graceful appearance known to

me," Mikado smiled as he turned to regard them, "I am

surrounded by wondrous and fascinating creatures, which must

ever be the lot of one so handsome as I."

"Heads up, Snot-face!" cried Ranma as he made his own

appearance known with a straight punch that knocked Mikado

sprawling.

Ranma gracefully caught his balance and pivoted around on the

ice then said, "How about it, Sansenin? Like to pick up where we

left off during our last match, just you and me right here, right

now, and no quarter given?"

"Saotome," Mikado said as he got back to his feet, only slightly

shaken by the blow he had taken, "Don't tell me you've got an

interest in these affairs as well? And what, prey tell, is your

interest in the Ferret?"

"I just don't like the way you treat these girls, Mikado," Ranma,

assuming a fighting stance, "Come on, put them up! I'm going to

mop this place up with your lady-killing butt!"

"No!" Ukyo cried suddenly, "This is my fight! I'll be the one who

puts this arrogant creep on ice!"

"But Ucchan..." Ranma began to say when suddenly he tripped

and fell face-first onto the ice.

"Stay out of it, Son-in-law," Cologne urged as she retracted her

staff, "Let Kuonji fight this one on her own terms."

"But..." Ranma started to say, but Ukyo was already launching

her offensive.

Even minus her infamous fighting spatula Ukyo was a trained

Martial Artist and could pack quite a punch in her fists, which

she was now aiming at Mikado, only this time he was ready and

could dodge her. She went right past him and struck the ice

behind, doing a face-fall in the process as she skidded by until

she collided with the wall and kept right on going.

"Pathetic," Mikado sniffed, "No grace at all in his attack, and

only a fool launches a suicide strike so early in a battle."

"His?" Ranma blinked, "You mean he thinks Ukyo is a...Ow!"

"Keep your mouth shut and watch, Sonny boy," Cologne urged

without taking her eyes off Ukyo as she fought to regain her

footing.

"I'm not through with you yet, Sansenin!" Ukyo growled, "I'm

still going to pay you back for trying to kiss Per-chan."

"So," Mikado said, "You really do care about the girl, as I

suspected."

"I...that's got nothing to do with it!" Ukyo sputtered, balling her

fists in her outrage, "I'm going to take you apart just for saying

that, you...Creep!"

"Very well," Mikado replied, "Since it's obvious you can't be

talked out of this folly, I might as well finish you off here and

now instead of later."

He raised himself on one foot and lifted one hand to one side,

then the other hand in a classic Crane stance. With a slightly

melodramatic edge he said, "Behold the Dance of Death! I trust

you appreciate the great honor I'm paying you since I hardly think

it sporting to use against one so pathetic as yourself."

"Why you!" Ukyo said as she lunged forward.

"Wow!" one of the erstwhile Hockey-play assailants cried

appreciatively, "The Dance of Death! You rarely get to see him

do it!'

"That poor guy doesn't stand a chance," another such masked

opponent said with evident pity.

As Ukyo came charging at Mikado he began to spin like a top,

and suddenly Ukyo was picked up off her feet and lifted into the

Tornado-like funnel that her opponent created.

"Ucchan!" Ranma cried as he fought to regain his footing,

wincing once again as Cologne rapped him on the head.

Ukyo was apparently being battered and bruised as she fought to

get free of the funnel, and one of the masked Hockey Players was

commenting, "No one's ever broken free of that before. The poor

guy's a goner!"

Yet Cologne seemed strangely calm as she silently counted to

herself while watching the match. Perfume was watching, too, so

overcome with anxiety that she did not mind sitting with her bare

hands and knees on the ice, her fear evident on her face as she

cried, "Great Grandmother, do something!"

"Silence," Cologne replied, "Don't make me lose my count,

child."

"Count?" Ranma gasped as he eased away from the range of her

staff, then saw Ukyo suddenly go flying and cried out, "Ucchan!"

He made a sudden dash in a vain effort to catch her, but another

form was already in motion to intercept Ukyo's trajectory. That

form landed on the ice and absorbed the fall by huddling down so

that her knees met the ice to brace against skidding.

"Ow," Ukyo winced, then looked up in surprise and said, "Nab-

chan?"

"Hi," Nabiki said, "Sorry I had to wait. Ice really isn't my

element, you know."

"Uh, so I see," Ukyo said as she slowly got to her feet, seeing that

Nabiki was not wearing skates, having launched herself from the

sidelines where Shampoo was still standing.

Mikado came to a complete stop and remained in one-legged

position. Cologne came hopping up on her staff while Azusa

went to check on her own partner while Ranma remembered the

helpless Perfume and came over to lend his assistance her way,

casting a furtive glance towards Nabiki.

"Well, Kuonji-san," Cologne remarked, "That was most

impressive, but did you need to strike the boy five hundred and

one times like that?"

"He got off lucky," Ukyo declared as she felt her numerous

bruises with tender fingers and winced, "Ow! That Jackass..."

"Ucchan," Ranma said as he came up holding Perfume by one

arm, "Are you all right?"

"Airen!" Perfume cried as she managed to overcome her own

unsteadiness and dove fore Ukyo, wrapping her arms around her

as she almost bubbled with happiness, "You fought for Perfume!

You make Amazon bride so happy..."

"Hey, cut it out, people are watching," Ukyo declared, "I just

didn't want him taking advantage of you..."

"And you made a very impressive show of defending Perfume's

honor," Cologne noted, "You are a puzzling creature, Daughter-

in-law, but your actions speak louder than your words. Still, it is

those actions which define the sort of performance you will make

during the actual challenge match. You lack finesse and skill in

your attacks. That was most unworthy of the resourceful young

girl whom I saw defend her claim against Mousse over a week

ago. Ranma is a better opponent than you are."

"That's because I trained in Martial Arts Figure Skating," Ranma

said, "Ukyo is a Hockey Player. It's a different kind of

discipline..."

"So I have seen," Cologne said, "This is most unacceptable. If

you do not improve your skills within a few days time you will

bring humiliation on both of your heads, to say nothing of the

discomfort you will cause miss Kuno when that strange Azusa

girl tries to claim her for a pet."

"So what is your point, you old Mummy?" Ukyo grimaced,

feeling several lumps upon her head along with several minor

scratches that were causing Perfume to look at her with eyes

nearly watering.

"You must practice with the boy," Cologne remarked as she

indicated Ranma, "He can show you what you need to know in

order to avoid further embarrassment. As for you,

Perfume...stand up straight and face me."

Perfume got to her feet automatically and turned around without

thinking.

"Now, was that so hard?" Cologne asked simply.

Perfume blinked, looking down at herself, then almost at once

she began to lose her balance.

"I said stand straight!" Cologne said sharply, and Perfume

immediately halted her wobble.

"Wow," Ranma gasped, "How did you do that?"

"It is as I suspected," Cologne replied, "Your self-conscious

desire not to fail is what is making it hard for you to adapt to

these new environs. We very seldom had snowfall in

Joketsuzoku, and the thought of risking our lives training on ice

was simply never taken into proper consideration. We must

redress this egregious oversight by correcting your focus and

balance. Once you regain confidence in your ability to move

upon these curious blades that you wear on your feet you will be

able to master the rest in virtually no time at all. Fortunately I

have a great deal of experience in helping you overcome your

quite natural reluctance to take injury. I offer my services to you

now, if it is quite all right with your Airen?"

"I get it now," Nabiki noted, "She's more afraid of you than she is

of falling."

"What are you up to, old ghoul?" Ukyo growled suspiciously,

"It's not like you to offer something without expecting a return."

"That is hardly fair or accurate, Daughter," Cologne said sagely,

"I want only for you to do well on your behalf and that of my

Great Granddaughter. There is no reason for you to suspect me

of ulterior motives."

"Except for your entire past history," Nabiki said, "I'm with

Ucchan on this. I don't trust you either, but I also don't see any

alternative. You obviously know the best way to help Perfume

overcome her reluctance."

"So, what do you say, Kuonji-san?" Cologne asked Ukyo,

"Would you be willing to trust me so far as to allow me to teach

Perfume what she needs know in order to stand competently

beside you? I assure you that you'll be at her side every step of

the way to see that nothing is learned that does not meet with

your approval."

Ukyo grit her teeth then said, "All right. But it's up to Perfume to

decide this time, not me."

"I want to make Airen proud," Perfume said, "Teach Perfume

what she needs to know, Great Grandmother."

"Very well," Cologne said, "Then the rest of you must withdraw

and allow these three to train together. Ranma will stay to show

what he knows about this form of Martial Art, and Miss Tendo

there may assist if she wished to demonstrate the effectiveness of

teamwork."

"Hey," said Akane as she and her group finally caught up with

them, "What's up? Will Ukyo and Perfume be ready in time for

the match?"

"They had better be," Kodachi growled, "There is no way I am

going to wind up as some prize in your personal grudge match,

Kuonji!"

"Hey, I'll do my best, all right?" Ukyo growled in reassurance,

"And don't go blaming me because of that Shiratori and her

wacky obsessions. It also wasn't my idea to go splashing you

with Jusenkyo water."

"Ucchan means well, 'Dachi-chan," Keiko said reassuringly, not

catching the look Nabiki gave the two of them in passing,

"Besides, she's already shown that Mikado up once already."

"Hey," Ranma said as he glanced over towards the Golden pair

and saw activity, "What's got those guys so excited?"

"Didn't you see?" Akane said brightly, "Ukyo hit him so many

times he passed out. Azusa started taking out a felt tip pen and

doodled on him, then everybody else pitched in, including us."

"Oh man," Ranma grinned, "I want a piece of this action..."

"Later, " Cologne insisted, "Training come first. Now I will say

it again, off the court with everyone but Ranma, Perfume and

Ukyo this minute!"

"Who made her the grand Empress?" Kodachi asked as Keiko all

but dragged her and Ryoga away.

"Akane-chan," Nabiki asked hesitantly.

"Hmm?' Akane paused to look at her, "What is it, Oneechan?"

"Ah," Nabiki glanced down at her thin-soled slippers then said,

"I was...hoping that maybe you could...um...help me get back to

Shampoo? I seem to have forgotten my skates..."

"Oh," Akane grinned mischievously, "That's right, you can't

skate, can you?"

"Well..." Nabiki hesitated, "No, not really."

Akane relished the discovery that there was at least one thing in

which she was better than her sister, but she graciously extended

her arm to Nabiki to lend her support as she replied, "Just follow

me and try to take it slowly. The ice isn't entirely smooth with all

the skating that's carved the surface, so you ought to be able to

find some traction."

"Hmm," Cologne said as she eyed Nabiki in passing, "Perhaps

you and my other Great Granddaughter..."

"Don't even go there, old woman," Nabiki growled, trying not to

give away the fact that the very idea was leaving her shaking in

her non-existent boots...

Continued.

Comments/Criticisms/Federal Warrants(Honestly, I've never

even heard of Monika Lewinski!):

Shadowmane

Nabiki 1/2

Chapter 15, Part 3.

By

Jim Robert Bader

Inspired by the works of Rumiko Takahashi;

All rights belong to her, the publishers and distributors

Of the Ranma 1/2 Series.

(Based on the Altered Destinies Series by

Wade Tritschler and Others;

Some ideas and Characters belong to me,

The rest is shared Fanfiction, so please don't sue me)

"Explain to me again how it is that Sansenin can mistake you for

a boy after all of this time," Ranma asked Ukyo sometime later in

her restaurant.

"I guess it just never occurred to him to look beyond the surface,"

Ukyo shrugged, "I played at being a boy for so long that I got

good enough to fool most people."

"But...you...I mean...look at you," Ranma said as he looked Ukyo

over, "You don't tape your breasts down anymore, and you don't

dress quite as masculine, and you're really very cute..."

"Ranchan," she smiled, "You really know how to turn my head

with that praise. Unfortunately Mikado's a thickheaded, male

chauvinist jerk who thinks all women just live to suffer his

favors. I suppose if I was like those empty-headed twits who

follow him around as his cheering section I'd probably be

swooning over his charms, but I've been around guys like him

long enough to know what he's really after. I don't mind saying

that, compared with him, you're a paragon of virtues, Saotome."

"Thanks," he smiled, "Guys like him give guys in general a bad

name."

"I guess," Ukyo lowered her gaze, "Maybe I was expecting

someone like him when we met, a guy who'd never look past that

image I wanted people to see. I'm really glad you're not like other

guys, Ranchan, in fact..."

"In fact you two do make a lovely couple," said Cologne as she

hobbled out on her staff, "But you're not having second thoughts

about my Great Granddaughter, are you Daughter-in-law?"

Ukyo sighed, "No, I'm not going back on our agreement, old

woman. Perfume deserves better than what you're forcing on us,

but until we get this mess resolved she's my responsibility, and

I'm not letting anything happen to her, or anyone for that matter."

"Are you sure, Ucchan?" Ranma asked, "You did seem pretty

protective back there at the Sports Center, and if I didn't know

any better..."

"Ranma...how can you even think that way about me?" Ukyo

sounded hurt, "How many times do I have to tell you I'm

interested in you. I'm not after girls that way...especially not like

Keiko."

Cologne's soft chuckle caused Ukyo to glare at her with a softly

murmured, "Watch it old woman..."

"You are a very strange one, Kuonji," Cologne remarked, "You

say one thing and do another. You say that you like men and you

dress like one, and when a man pays you a compliment you

flatten them, all save for young Saotome here, the sole exception.

You say you are not interested in women, but in Perfume's case

you go out on a limb and risk yourself against challenge after

challenge..."

"Look, Perfume's my friend, all right?" Ukyo growled, "I do like

her, but not the way you keep trying to insist on..."

"And what way is that?" Cologne asked, "As a husband to a wife,

or as a lover to a significant other. When will you open your eyes

and see the truth you are denying?"

"I don't need you to define the truth for me," Ukyo insisted.

"Then whose truth do you accept?" Cologne looked at her sharply

this time and said, "Tell me exactly what are your feelings for

Saotome Ranma?"

"I..." Ukyo blinked and glanced over to Ranma, "I...I want..."

"You see?" Cologne pointed out, "You cannot even bring yourself

to say the words, though you know in your heart that his very

nearness makes you feel very special and appreciated. The same

is true with Perfume, if you haven't noticed. She worships the

ground you walk upon. I have tried to make her see things

differently, but she is convinced you are the one around whom

her life must revolve."

That was news to Ukyo who looked at Cologne and said,

"What...?"

"You think I've been pushing her to like you in that way?"

Cologne said darkly, "How little you understand us. It has never

been my intent to force my child to suffer the way she must to

win your affections. The Law does not require love, only

marriage, and so long as you remain faithful to her there is no

shame in abiding under the same roof without consummation.

Once Tendo Nabiki negotiated the arrangement that allows you

the freedom to court this man as your iinazuke Perfume was free

of any other obligations. It has been her wish to have more from

you than just your friendship. You torture her with your repeated

denials, but the choice lays with her. I can only advise her to be

patient."

Ukyo was just starting to sort through all of that when Ranma

said, "Why does she want Ucchan so much? I mean...it's not that

I have trouble understanding why anyone would like Ukyo,

but...well, when Mikado held her...for a little while there, I..."

"Thought that she was swooning?" Cologne sniffed, "Just for a

moment, perhaps, a perfectly human reaction. What, did you

think she was that much like your friend Keiko that she does not

respond to the charms of men? How strange you Japanese are

that you think it has to be one way or the other."

"Well, in my case it does," Ukyo said, "I mean, a person just can't

love two people the same way..."

"Why does it have to be the same?' Cologne asked, "Or do you

mean that a person can only love one other person in all of their

life? Whoever told you that was a fool!"

"Well, isn't it true?" Ranma asked.

"You mean like you love Nabiki and she loves Shampoo and you

fear she does not love you in the same manner?" Cologne snorted

contemptuously, "And here you are courting yet another woman.

The heart does not go in just one direction or another, not even at

the same time. Believe me, I know. I have been around for over

three hundred years and have seen just about every imaginable

situation for the human heart. Do you think this is my only trip

to Japan, or that I am so culturally isolated that I do not know the

similarities and differences between our two cultures?"

"She's right boy," another voice remarked, "I'd listen to her if I

were you. This time she's making sense."

"Dad?" Ranma turned around, "What are you doing here?"

"Having a meal on my lunch break, of course," Genma replied

from the table he was sitting at a short distance away, "You think

I'd pass up the chance to try Ukyo's special discount rates? But I

was talking about love. Tell me, son, do you love your mother?"

"Of course," Ranma replied, "But..."

"But not the same way as you feel about Nabiki or Ukyo here?"

Genma continued, "Do you want to sleep with your mother,

Boy?"

"What?" the question shocked Ranma, "Of course not-!"

"But you love her just the same," Genma noted, then spoke more

authoritatively, "Foolish boy! You're confusing love with SEX,

which is what a lot of youth your age are too prone to do in these

sorry times! You love your mother, you don't want to have sex

with her. You love Nabiki. You do-I assume-want to sleep

with her and have her bear your children?"

"I..." Ranma blinked, suddenly tongue-tied.

"Then you know the difference between one kind of love and

another," Genma returned to his Okonomiyaki and said, "Perhaps

you'd be willing to give love a chance if you can see why Nabiki

can love both you and Shampoo and want to sleep with the both

of you while remaining faithful in her heart to both of her loved

ones."

Ukyo and Ranma were staring at him as Cologne resumed her

part of the discussion, "Your father is a wiser man than I gave

him credit, future Son-in-law. The heart knows many kinds of

love, but all loves are the same in basis. Love is love, it's the

nature of the relationship you want that makes the difference."

"But...still..." Ukyo tried once again, "You can't mean the fact

that I care about Perfume's welfare means I actually want to sleep

with her..."

"And if you did, is it your fear that Saotome here might think you

a Lesbian who did not want to bear his children?" Cologne asked

her.

"I...?" Ukyo faltered, feeling Ranma's hand on her shoulder.

"I'd never think that of her, even if she did sleep with Perfume,"

Ranma said, "I've already been through this once already with

Nabiki."

"..." Ukyo said in blank surprise, then felt Cologne tap her on the

breast with her staff.

"You have some serious thinking to do if you ever want to find

true happiness, Kuonji," the old woman told her, "When the time

comes and you confront the fact that is now a part of her life, I

trust you will have the wisdom to know the right answer."

"There's no rush after all," Genma said as he finished off the last

piece of his Okonomiyaki, "Only three more days until the match.

Well, I'd better get back to the Clinic before Tofu-Sensei starts to

think I want more time off. Have a nice week, you two, and I'll

see you at practice."

Ukyo and Ranma watched Genma exit the restaurant, then Ukyo

remarked, "Your father is a very strange man, Ranchan, and not

just because he turns into a Panda."

"Yeah, I know," Ranma agreed, but he found himself smiling,

feeling a touch of pride for some obscure reason...

Kodachi found Keiko working out on a treestump on the Kuno

estate, practicing kicks against the thick hardwood with her bare

leg striking it repeatedly on every side in steady, even rhythm.

Keiko was too intent to notice her approach until Kodachi was

near enough to put her arms around her and cover her eyes,

saying, "Guess..."

She did not get to say the second part before Keiko had launched

her in the air, but Keiko checked her own reactions in time to

prevent herself from slamming the Black Rose hard against the

ground. Instead she reversed her trajectory and swept Kodachi

up in her arms, holding her there while Kodachi caught her

breath in surprise at the other woman's reactions.

"Who?' she finished lamely.

"Sorry, 'Dachi," Keiko said in chagrin, "You kind of startled me

there. I'm not used to pleasant surprises."

"Ah..." Kodachi noticed that she was still being held in Keiko's

arms and said, "You could put me down again, you know."

"I know," Keiko smiled, "But why would I want to?"

Kodachi returned her smile, "Indeed, and who says I want you

to?"

On impulse she put her arms around Keiko and drew her into a

kiss, then rolled out of the Kickboxer's arms, laughing a more

cheerful version of her laugh while assuming a pose she might

use for any other type of dismount.

"Not too shabby," Keiko said as she recovered, "I'd give you a 7.9

for that. Maybe you'd like to try for a solid 10 this time?"

"Perhaps later," Kodachi said cheerfully, "But I wanted to speak

with you about another subject."

"Okay," Keiko was forewarned by the serious tone in her friend

and lover, "What's it about?"

"This Challenge Match with the Golden Pair," Kodachi said

without smiling, "It should be me going up against them rather

than that Okonomiyaki Chef. After all, I'm supposedly the prize

for the winner."

"You really think Ucchan's going to lose?" Keiko asked.

"Ucchan lacks the finesse and grace of a true skating artist,"

Kodachi replied, "And her partner is even worse. The Golden

Pair, on the other hand, have over nine hundred and ninety-eight

consecutive victories to their credit. I'm afraid even with special

training it will turn into a slaughter."

"I see you point," Keiko nodded, "But I wouldn't sell Ukyo short

just yet if I were you."

"Your faith in her is touching," Kodachi replied, "But if there is

even a chance of that Shiratori brat laying a claim on my cursed

form, then I want to represent myself and see that it never

happens. Besides that, I still owe Mikado for the price he

imposed for my rescue."

Keiko lost her smile as she said, "It's wasn't fun for me, I'll admit,

but I'd kiss a rattler if it meant getting you back safe and sound,

'Dachi. Besides, with any luck Azusa will never lay a hand on

you..."

"I am not so sure," Kodachi said, "The way she looked at me

earlier...it is as if she knew me in spite of my being human. I

don't know why, but that girl may stumble on the truth, and then

all she needs is a chance to lay in ambush, and then reclaim me.

I will not see that happen...I also will not let Mikado get away

with kissing you and Akane."

"All right," Keiko sighed, "But you need a partner if you want to

go up against them, and I can't skate worth my life. You'd be

better off with Akane."

"I have already thought of that," Kodachi said grimly, "Only two

problems, one being that Akane is much too honorable to wish to

usurp her friend Ukyo's place at the Challenge Match. The

second objection is that this is supposed to be mixed doubles,

meaning a boy and a girl, not two girls working out together."

"So?" Keiko asked, "That's not stopping Ucchan."

"She looks like a boy when she dresses in drag," Keiko replied, "I

think Mikado is too smitten with himself to pay real attention, or

he might try to kiss her instead of the Amazon."

Keiko laughed, "I'd like to see him try! She'd serve up his head

on that spatula of hers."

"I rather imagine so myself," Kodachi mused, "But the notion

does have some merit, if I could only find a way to steal a page

from Kuonji's book and make myself look masculine, then I

could skate with Akane."

"You?" Keiko blinked, "Uh, don't take this the wrong way,

'Dachi-chan, but...you're about as far away from being a guy as

anybody I know, which is a good thing in my book."

"That is why I will need your help," Kodachi said seriously, "Can

you convince Akane to at least consider our becoming the

alternates for Ukyo and Perfume should anything happen that

might prevent their arriving in time at the arena?"

"You're not planning on seeing they can't compete are you?"

Keiko asked crossly.

"Why whatever put that thought into your mind?" Kodachi asked

innocently, then said, "Besides, I already know that this will be

the first thing Akane will ask me. You can tell her that we will

just be training as alternate in case Ukyo and Perfume lose. I

will not take actions against either of those two on my honor as a

scout."

"You were never a scout," Keiko laughed.

"Of course I was," Kodachi said in a sultry voice, "I earned a

merit badge in knotting ropes."

"Oh?" Keiko lifted an eyebrow, "That's...interesting...or at least it

explains something I've been wondering about."

"Will you talk with Akane for me?" Kodachi put her arms around

Keiko's neck and smiled her most seductive and persuasive

smile, "I would be ever so grateful.."

Keiko was about to say something when the automatic sprinklers

came on, and suddenly a Vulture was standing over a very

frustrated looking Ferret.

"How odd," remarked Sasuke, the family manservant a few

moments later as he noticed a pair of soggy animals trudging

over to the Jacuzzi, "The Mistress doesn't usually allow her pets

to roam free on the estate like that..."

"My twisted sister does many odd things that defy rational

explanation, Sasuke," replied Tatewaki as he continued his pose

before the camera, "Be sure that you capture the essence of my

manly profile this time. This is for my beloved ones in eight-by-

ten glossies."

"Yes, Master Kuno," Sasuke replied before doing a double take

as a naked Kodachi suddenly appeared with an equally naked

redhead in the Jacuzzi. Without half a thought he swiveled the

camera on its tripod in their direction and snapped a picture.

"What are you doing, you clod?" Tatewaki turned in annoyance to

see what had distracted him, then his eyes went very wide as he

gasped, "The pig-tailed goddess! How did she...did you...?"

"Hai, Kuno-Sama," Sasuke bowed low, "Forgive this unworthy

servant, but I thought...perhaps..."

"You cad!" Kuno rounded on him, "How dare you invade the

privacy of my sister and that...incredible beauty..."

"Yes, Master, I am unworthy of your devotion," Sasuke cringed

for effect, though he needed no gift of prophecy to anticipate his

master's next words.

"Be sure to print that one full-sized," Tatewaki ordered before

turning back with a sigh as he watched the two women splash

each other like a pair of nymphs out of some old Greek mosaic.

He felt like composing poetry, but thought better of making his

presence more obvious than it already was.

Kodachi noticed anyway and murmured, "My idiot brother is

quite taken with you, you know."

"I know," Keiko replied, "I think he's really nice, but I guess he

doesn't believe that I'm not really his type, ne?"

"He has always been his own first love, and what he doesn't

know won't hurt us," Kodachi chuckled, "He can be quite the

idiot sometimes."

"A rich, handsome idiot," Keiko grinned, "What if I married him

just so I could spent more time with you. Would you be

jealous?"

"Of the two of you?" Kodachi's eyes gleamed speculatively,

"Perhaps, but let's not dismiss the possibility entirely. It could be

worth a laugh...that is if you would be willing?"

"Hey, remember what kind of training I have," Keiko snorted, "I

know lots of ways of pleasing a man. Just because I don't enjoy

it doesn't mean I'd get sick if your brother touched me."

"Very interesting," Kodachi mused, "I see some possibilities

there, but let's explore them another time, shall we?"

"Right," Keiko sighed, "After I go have a little talk with

Akane..."

"Yes?" Kasumi asked as she answered the knock on her door,

then found herself confronted by her sister, "Oh my...Neechan?"

"Hi Sis," Nabiki said as casually as she could manage, "All right

if I come in and have a little talk?"

"Of course," Kasumi said, swallowing nonetheless as she stepped

out of the way to permit Nabiki to enter.

It occurred to Nabiki as she glanced around the room that her

older sister shared with Nodoka that she had very rarely had

occasion to be here until now. She had been putting off having

this discussion with Kasumi for far too long, yet now that the

moment was upon them both she felt strangely reluctant, so she

instead began with an evasive, "Very nice. You and Auntie have

given the place a quaint, homey kind of atmosphere."

"Ah, yes," Kasumi said demurely, then after a momentary pause

she and Nabiki said together, "Sis, about..."

They stopped and looked at each other, then Kasumi blushed

modestly and said, "I'm sorry...you were saying?"

"No, after you," Nabiki smiled and added, "Age before beauty."

For some reason her little joke did not go over very well, for

Kasumi just looked down and sighed, "I am very sorry about the

way I have been acting, Nichan. I've been inexcusably rude, and

I want to make it up to you, if you'll let me."

"Well, I'm not here to throw a tantrum, Kasumi-chan," Nabiki

lopsidedly smiled, "But while I was trapped as a guy for a while

there, well...you kept avoiding me a lot. I think we really have to

come to some kind of an understanding about this Kaneda thing."

"Yes, of course," Kasumi replied but still would not meet her

gaze.

"It's perfectly understandable," Nabiki began, "I think the curse

must make me extra charming and attractive to women...maybe

even to some kinds of men, but I haven't explored that question

yet. The point is...you don't have to feel guilty about feeling a

certain...attraction."

"I don't?" Kasumi finally looked up at her, then blushed more

furiously than before.

"Hey," Nabiki chuckled, "I'm sure if you turned into a guy I'd be

just as turned on, maybe even more so, and I'm not too

particularly worried about the question of incest."

"You're not?" Kasumi looked surprised.

"Uh, well...maybe I am," Nabiki amended, "Look, if it bothers

you so much when you see me in my other form, then maybe you

should...oh, I don't know...try thinking of somebody else,

someone you'd like to sleep with, and try keeping that guy's face

in mind whenever you see me. You like Tofu-Sensei, right?"

"Ah, yes," Kasumi replied with a sheepish expression.

"Then think of him instead of me," Nabiki sighed, "Lusting after

me is only going to get you hurt, and I couldn't live with myself if

I knew you were suffering on my account. You deserve the best,

Kasumi, and that doesn't mean me. I hope you understand what

I'm saying."

"I...believe that I do," Kasumi noted, "There is just...one

problem."

"Which is?" Nabiki asked.

"I..." Kasumi faltered, then looked down again, then on impulse

she reached out to Nabiki and drew her into her arms, giving her

a kiss that was long, deep and passionate. Then just as suddenly

she released her.

"I-I'm sorry," Kasumi said in genuine anguish, "I didn't mean to

do that...please forgive me...oh, I'm so embarrassed..."

She turned and fled from her own room, and a few moments later

Nabiki could hear the water running from the bathroom (and

Nabiki would have laid seven-to-one odds that it was a cold

water shower). She barely flinched, blinked or gave any token

recognition of the fact because her face was set in a look of shock

and amazement.

After five solid minutes of this she reached up to touch her own

lips then slowly turned around and sighed, "Oneechan..."

The worst part of all was that it had been a pretty good kiss. If

Shampoo ever found out about it, though...

Nabiki shuddered. Some things were not worth sharing, even in

the closest kind of marriage...

The day had finally arrived for the competition. Akane, Keiko

and Kodachi stood outside of the Kolhotz High School

Gymnasium. All three had brought their skates and outfits along,

though Keiko had no intention of wearing her own unless the

unthinkable happened.

"Remember, 'Dachi," Akane warned over her shoulder, "I don't

want you taking out Perfume or Ukyo just because you want a

crack at the Golden Pair. I'm only doing this as an alternate in

case they don't win and that Azusa tries to claim you."

"Of course," Kodachi replied, "You have my word, remember?"

Akane chose diplomatically not to answer. It was fun to think

about skating with Kodachi under any kind of circumstances, but

to do it in a Martial Arts fight against professionals was another

matter. Instead what she said was, "I wish I knew where Ryoga-

kun is now. Why does he always choose moments like this to

disappear out of sight? You'd think he was the one with a curse

or something."

"That boy is not reliable," Keiko sniffed, "I told him not to leave

the house without one of us to serve as guide but he never

listens."

"Are you sure you want to be involved with him, Akane-chan?"

Kodachi asked, "I know he's very nice, but I don't think he's truly

worthy of your affections, let alone the distress he causes."

"I think he's very nice," Akane smiled, "And it's not his fault he

has a problem with directions. Well, let's go find the others. I

just hope you know what you're letting yourself into, dressing up

like a boy. I mean, really!"

"It only has to fool Mikado," Kodachi assured them, "Which

means it does not have to be a flawless disguise, just moderately

effective."

"If you say so," Keiko sniffed, "I still can't figure out how Ucchan

pulled it off for so long. If I'd only known when we were a lot

younger..." she sighed, "The fantasies I might have had..."

"I know what you mean," Akane admitted a bit shyly, "If she

really were a guy, well...I could probably find her as...uh...cute as

Ranma always says she is."

"Whatever am I going to do with the pair of you?" Kodachi

smiled as the three of them entered the building, unaware that a

pair of eyes was watching them with speculative interest...

Ukyo felt odd about using the boy's dressing room, in spite of

long familiarity with same (it had really been hard keeping her

disguise in place around puberty, when the sight of a naked boy

could sometimes elicit more than casual interest). For one thing

there was the need to change into a masculine style costume she

had picked out for the match, and for another thing she had

resolved to give up her old Tomboy ways and embrace her

femininity. Worse still, there was Mikado already using the

mirror (and if she judged right the boy had been trying out a good

deal of make-up).

"Oh, it's you," she said gruffly, hoping that close range would not

allow him to at long last see through her performance.

"Kuonji," he said unpleasantly, "To what do I owe this

disturbance?"

"Keep your shirt on, I'm only here to get dressed," Ukyo growled.

"Don't let me stop you," Mikado said with his usual rakish

charm, "Speeding you on to your untimely end will be my

privilege during the match."

Ukyo grimaced before saying. "And how are your bruises

healing? I trust the swelling eventually went down after you

regained consciousness?"

Now it was his turn to look at her darkly, but he turned away and

smiled at himself in the mirror before saying, "Oh, by the way,

how is your charming partner doing? I'm so looking forward to

giving her my special greeting."

Ukyo balled her fists and said, "You what? No way!"

"You will hear me out!" Mikado turned around and thrust a

finger at her, "Sometime during the match I will give the lovely

Perfume the kiss I promised her at our first meeting, making her

the one-thousand and first girl that I have so honored!"

"Gah!" Ukyo winced, "Don't you ever think of anything besides

kissing girls, you lecher?"

To her surprise Mikado just looked blankly back at her and

asked, "Well, what else is there to think about?" and from the

tone he used he sincerely meant it.

Ukyo just stared. The guy was starting to scare her. Did he

really think all women were just swooning to sample his charms?

If so, then he had a big surprise waiting for him. Ukyo forced

herself to relax and said, "Just try and take your best shot, I

double dare you."

"Oh, I will," Mikado smiled, "Even if I must do so over your dead

body."

Ukyo just smiled at that, thinking of what Perfume would do if

he tried and knew that if anyone would suffer premature demise

it would be Sansenin Mikado...

Meanwhile, elsewhere in the building, Perfume sneezed

unexpectedly. She covered her nose, wondering if she were

coming down with something after all. She had never been sick

before, but making deliveries for Ukyo's restaurant might have

exposed her to some Japanese virus that her Great Grandmother

had never heard of. Either that or...

She smiled, remembering Ukyo once telling her that a sneeze was

supposed to mean that somebody was talking about you. She

wasn't sure if that were true or not, but the idea that somebody

could mention her name, even in passing...

"Ucchan," she sighed into the pretty outfit she had just been

about to slip into, thinking of the Okonomiyaki chef who was her

one, true beloved, and savoring the thought of being at her side as

they went into battle on the ice. It was nice to think that maybe

Ukyo really did care for her, even if it was just a dream she could

savor. She knew Ukyo would deny it, but there was still that

hope that she might see Perfume differently when this was over.

She hoped it was so because the last thing she wanted was to be

forever trapped in a loveless relationship. It was more than

friendship she wanted here...much more. But for now any bit of

kindness or affection would do to make her days seem brighter.

Humming a cheerful tune she recalled from her childhood she

hastened to get herself ready for the match, regretting only that

she would not be allowed to bring along her axes. There were

some very creative things she might do if she met Mikado or

Azusa on ice with weapons in hand, but for now the only

weapons she had were those accursed skates that she had worked

so hard to master.

A challenge was a challenge, however, and Perfume was an

Amazon. She would not permit herself to even think of the

possibility of failure. Ukyo was depending on her, and Cologne

would be watching. To do less than her utmost to win was more

than unthinkable, and not just because she would cause Kodachi

to suffer.

If anything that would be the only bright point to the matter.

Perfume would not fail, however as she made herself as

presentable as she could, then left the dressing room in search of

her Airen...

Continued.

Comments/Criticism/Reasonable Explanations:

shadowmane

Preliminaries are finally over, now on with the Battle!

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Fanfiction webpage at: . or

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All related chapters of this series can be found there along with my

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	16. Chapter 16

Nabiki 1/2

Chapter 16, Part 1.

By

Jim Robert Bader

Inspired by the works of Rumiko Takahashi;

All rights go to her, the publishers and distributors

Of the Ranma 1/2 series.

(Based on the Altered Destinies series by

Wade Tritschler and Others;

Some characters and situations were created by me,

The rest is shared Fanfiction, so please don't sue me)

"Ow, my head," Akane groaned, trying to discover if there really

was a lump or did she just feel as though someone had dropped a

building on her from out of no where?

The throbbing cleared up rather quickly, which was a good thing

as it permitted her to discover several things almost at once, the

first being that she was wet all over.

The second thing was that she was laying on the floor somewhere

under a tarp that had been thrown over her, and that there was

another body laying beside her.

No, not a body...she felt feathers...

Feathers?

She hastened to throw the tarp off of herself and discovered that

yes, indeed, there was Keiko in vulture form laying next to her,

and with some relief she discovered her friend was still

breathing. That was a good start, but waking Keiko up in this

form was problematic...for one thing she didn't know the first

thing about vulture anatomy or what it took to wake one up

without injury.

That was when the next thought hit her: they both were wet, only

feathers retained far less moisture than either clothing or skin so

Keiko was reasonably dry, just minus her clothing.

Next realization: they were in a janitor's closet, most probably in

the same building where they had been ambushed. She, Kodachi

and Keiko had been headed for the dressing chambers when

something had come over them and the next thing Akane knew

she was taking a nap. Probably the assailant had thrown water

over them once he had them under the tarp, and out of reflexive

apprehension Akane felt herself over to make absolutely certain

that she was still human, not a guy, and definitely Akane.

Okay, next important question: where was Kodachi?

Akane looked around but there was no sign of either Ferret or girl

either under the tarp or elsewhere in the closet. It was a pretty

small space, after all, full of mops, brooms, a hose, a wheeled

bucket and lots of chemical agents considered useful for

maintaining the cleanliness of the interior of a school building. A

quick inventory of her surroundings confirmed her worst fears: no

Kodachi.

Someone had taken her, the obvious purpose of the ambush. The

question of who and why were not so easy to determine.

Okay, she thought to herself, do what Oneechan would do and

assess the situation. She got to her feet and tested the door, but it

was definitely either locked or jammed on the other side. They

were trapped by whoever was behind this, so it was safe to

assume that the guilty party wanted them out of the way, but not

dead. The next logical question was: who would have the most

to gain from all of this?

The obvious answer was Shiratori Azusa. Of course that meant

that Azusa would have to know about Jusenkyo curses, and while

the girl had been able to see a resemblance between Kodachi and

the Ferret it was doubtful that meant that she also knew the

correlation between the Ferret and cold water.

On the other hand could Azusa be clever enough to have figured

it out? Just how smart was the girl anyway? She had never

struck Akane as quite being Rocket Scientist material, but you

could never really be sure or go simply by appearances, as

Jusenkyo curses were an obvious example.

As she pondered this she heard a weak sound like a Vulture

slowly coming back to full consciousness with the same

hangover effect Akane had experienced. Keiko looked up at her

with bleary bird eyes and made a plaintive sound as if to frame a

question. To save her time Akane just sighed, "I don't know,

Kei-chan, but I think Kodachi's in trouble. We're in trouble, too,

unless we can figure out a way to get out of this closet."

Keiko made another sound, this time quite obviously distressed,

and if Akane did not know better she would have sworn it

sounded like a Vulture trying to frame the words, "Not again!"

"Yeah, I'm afraid so," Akane said, "Azusa zapped us good, but

we're not licked yet! We'll find and rescue Kodachi and make

that Kawaii nuisance sorry she ever tangled with us."

Keiko squawked as she hopped around on her clawed feet,

extending her wings as far as the tiny space would permit as

though looking around for a weapon. Akane had already thought

of the hot water tap for the hose, but she pointed out the obvious

drawback, "Yeah, but then you'll be human and naked and not

much help to Kodachi."

Keiko started to made a sound as if to convey that she did not

care, but then she thought about it and subsided. In spite of

everything Akane had to smile. Keiko did not have much in the

way of modesty, but running around in the nude chasing after a

girl with a stolen Ferret would be pushing things even by her

most libertine standards. She looked hopefully up at Akane as

though to suggest an alternative, and Akane turned to examine

the door, getting the basic idea from imagining what Keiko

would do if she were, in fact, human.

Blast it open with one of her powerhouse Kicks, no doubt, but if

she could do that...

Akane smiled. She might owe the building manager an apology,

but you don't practice breaking bricks all day with your bare

hands without learning a little something about force

manipulation. She took a deep breath, drew upon her inner Kai,

then squared off against the door and hit it with every ounce that

she could manage.

The door went flying off its hinges, naturally, and Akane

belatedly chided herself for once more acting in excess.

Well, that could wait for later. Right now she had a friend to

rescue, and with Keiko flapping her wings and taking the lead

the two of them headed for the Kolhotz gymnasium, intent on

doing worse than Akane had the door to Shiratori Azusa...

The crowd cheered wildly as the golden pair entered the huge

Olympic pool area that had been converted into a giant ice rink

for this special event. Azusa and Mikado made their grand

entrance with typical flamboyance, waving to their many fans,

the majority of whom just happened to be Kolhotz students.

Ukyo glared at the rows of young girls who represented the

Official Mikado Fan Club, many of whom no doubt had

contributed to his "Thousand Kiss Record." There were just as

many boys on the opposite side waving and cheering for Azusa,

which only confirmed in her mind that most men were tacit

idiots, and High School girls in general were hardly any better.

"Golden Pair sure are popular," Perfume marveled as she studied

the bleachers with amazement, "Is possible girls like Mikado, no

mind him pervert?"

"It takes all kinds, Per-chan," Ukyo replied as she took Perfume

by the hand, "Don't worry, they're never going to forget about us,

especially when we break their stupid winning streak today!"

"And here representing Furinkan High School," the Announcer

cried, "In the first annual Charlotte Cup are Kuonji Ukyo and his

lovely partner, Perfume!"

"Remember," Ukyo urged as she took a step out into the arena,

"Just like we rehearsed it..."

"They'll be competing for the prize possession of a rare black

Ferret named Charlotte, who is here with us today!"

Both Ukyo and Perfume reacted to this announcement by

suddenly turning their heads around by sixty degrees to see said

muzzled Ferret laying beside a golden cup to which it was bound

by a chain leading to a harness it wore around its upper body.

Unfortunately in doing this they both lost their focus and went

instantly sliding into a tumble on ice in which Ukyo once more

somehow wound up on the bottom.

"Ohhh!" Nabiki winced, "Not a good beginning! I hope those

two keep in mind that I've bet substantially on their asses."

"Your consideration is heartwarming," Genma sighed, "I've got a

very bad feeling about this tournament."

"Indeed, Saotome," Soun agreed as he munched on a rice ball,

"Young Kuonji seems definitely to have bitten off more than she

can handle."

"Those poor girls," Nodoka sighed, "Why do they have to be so

competitive? And I thought Ukyo said she was past this

obsession with posing as a boy."

"Poor Ucchan," Ranma winced, "I really do hope she knows what

she's getting into."

"No count Perfume and Spatula girl out yet," Shampoo said with

more confidence than she felt, "Match no even started."

"That's right," Kasumi said pleasantly, "You should never count

your Ferrets before they are cooped."

"That was a joke, I take it?" Cologne just sighed, "Kuonji, you

had better know what you are up to..."

Azusa was laughing and pointing her finger at Perfume, who was

sitting atop the bobsled that was Ukyo, fuming.

"You look so funny!" the Kawai skater remarked, "The match is

not even begun and already Charlotte is practically in Azusa's

grasp!"

"No count Amazon and Airen out just yet, stupid girl!" Perfume

said as she hopped off Ukyo and helped her back to her feet while

Azusa gracefully darted back to the side of her partner. Ukyo

was only partially stunned but easily revived as Perfume urged

her to remember what was at sake her with a gentle, "Stupid

Rose girl let herself get caught again. She look worse than

Perfume when she in cage. Maybe not so good she suffer like

this."

"I couldn't agree with you more, Per-chan," Ukyo said as she felt

her lumps then stood on her own and growled, "Let's get those

two arrogant show-offs."

Perfume nodded and the two of them squared off with their

opponents.

"Oh man," Ranma groaned, "They got Kodachi again? I don't

believe it!"

"That is odd," Nabiki frowned, "Could Azusa have somehow

found out about the curse?'

"Kodachi?" Nodoka looked at them politely, "You see her here?

Where...?"

"Try the award stand, Auntie," Kasumi gently pointed out with a

nod of her head as the Ferret she was looking at just then raised

its head and looked around in evident confusion.

"Nani?" Nodoka asked politely, and then more volubly,

"NANI?"

"Get ready!" Mikado called out, "Fair Perfume, prepare to receive

your promised kiss!"

"Oh no," Perfume growled as she suddenly drew Ukyo forward in

a powerful swing, "Airen make you eat promise!"

"Whoah!" Ukyo cried as she found herself treated to a burst of

Amazon brute strength, but she still had the presence of mind to

aim a kick in Mikado's direction.

Much to her surprise the boy ducked around her swing and got

inside Perfume's guard, leaving Ukyo dangling above the floor

with Mikado between her and her astonished partner.

"At last," Mikado said from two inches from Perfume's face, "My

thousand and one kiss, fair beauty..."

"Oh no you don't!" Ukyo cried as she arched her body to bring

both skates to press against Mikado's head like a vice. In doing

so, however, she failed to take into account a hurtling Azusa,

who knocked her off Mikado like a moth swatting a butterfly in

mid-air collision.

"Wow!" the announced cried, as girls all around began to scream

or swoon in outrage, "Sansenin goes in early for his Clincher

Kiss!"

"He is such an annoyance," Mikado sighed as he came within a

centimeter of his intended victim.

Perfume suddenly recovered from her surprise and growled, "So

are you!" and with that she buried one knee in his gut and fell

back in a roll that threw Mikado tumbling skyward.

Of course Mikado recovered at once and landed gracefully,

taking a moment to suavely comb his hair back into place as he

remarked, "She is shy to fear succumbing to my charms, but she

will relent in the end, as they all do."

"Or maybe you just make her sick," Azusa pleasantly chided.

"Ukyo-chan," Perfume knelt over her prone partner, "Get up,

Perfume no can win this without you!"

"I'm...up already," Ukyo groaned as she rolled back onto her

hands and knees, then forced herself to stand, looking suddenly

very angry, "I'm going to make that little tramp suffer for that!"

"Is good get angry," Perfume cheered, "But remember what Great

Grandmother say about keep focus?"

"Don't worry, I'm focused," Ukyo said as she started forward,

taking Perfume's hand and saying, "You ready to get airborne?"

"Perfume ready," her partner said calmly.

"Here we come," Mikado called out, "This time for sure!"

Ukyo suddenly hunched her shoulders as they saw Mikado lift

Azusa into a spin, coming right at them. The Okonomiyaki chef

just smiled and said, "Now, Per-chan!"

Perfume leaped onto Ukyo's back with both knees as Ukyo

suddenly straightened out and threw her partner with as much

force as she could manage. Then she ducked low and accelerated

as she got under Azusa's hurtling body and came right at Mikado

with one fist drawn back. She only managed a glancing blow

against his side, but it was enough to make Mikado lose his grip

and send Azusa tumbling sideways.

Ukyo moved to bring herself squarely under where Perfume

would complete her arc and hunched her shoulders again to

receive the Amazon's weight once more upon her body. They

were both smiling in their triumph until Perfume looked up and

said, "Airen-wall!"

"Oh no!" Ukyo saw the chain link fence looming up in their path

and knew that she would never be able to stop herself in time.

Instead she jumped and brought her skates forward, colliding

with the fence as she began to run up it, then tumble backwards

and made a one-point landing with Perfume clutching to her for

dear life. It was almost in disbelief that they realized that they

had come to a safe halt, their hearts still hammering like a pair of

staccato trip-hammers."

"What an amazing recovery!" cried the announcer, "The novice

pair from Furinkan have defied the odds by lasting more than one

minute against the Champions from Kolhotz!"

"Not bad," Cologne remarked, "But my Daughter-in-law will

need more finesse in her attacks if she wishes to triumph against

those two."

"They've already beat out the odd-makers on the point spread,"

Nabiki remarked, "No one expected them to even get this far,

including me."

"Don't tell me you bet against them?" Ranma asked in suspicion.

"Of course not," Nabiki smiled, "I just had a few contingency

plans in the works, just in case, but...well, I'm glad they won't be

needed..."

"You hurt there, Mikey?" Azusa asked as she cautiously

approached Mikado and tapped him with her fist in the place

where Ukyo had struck him, "There? And there? And..."

"Yes, it hurts, you idiot!" Mikado rounded on her, losing all

pretense at calm civility, "Stop poking me there already!"

"Why you yell at Azusa?" Azusa asked in a wounded voice,

"Only want to know if you okay."

Mikado bit off an angry retort as he straightened up and forced

himself to be calm as he looked towards Ukyo and Perfume, "It is

rare that I am brought down to my knees. You are a worthier

opponent than I had thought, Kuonji."

"Try anything like that again and you'll find out just how

formidable I am!" Ukyo declared in barely restrained anger, "You

make one more move to kiss Perfume and I'll put your sorry

Lady-killing but straight into a coffin!"

"I see," Mikado said, "Then you do care after all?"

"Yes, I care!" Ukyo cried, "No one tries that with my friend

without answering to me! You back off or I swear I'll kill you

where you stand, Sansenin!"

Perfume gasped. What was Ukyo saying? She stared at the

woman at her side, wondering if she could actually dare to

believe that her tone and conviction truly meant...

Mikado just sniffed, "Well, that puts an interesting spin on

matters. The challenge just gets better and better, making victory

all the more sweet when it comes."

"Interesting," Cologne remarked, almost to herself, "And in front

of a crowd. You are full of surprises, Kuonji."

"Ucchan?" Ranma blinked, while Nabiki and Shampoo just sat

where they were, gaping in astonishment. Ukyo seemed to have

forgotten all about where she was in her towering outrage, and

there was no question at all that her focus was entirely upon

Mikado.

"You know, of course, that my victory is inevitable," Mikado was

boasting, "No matter how strong your ties are with this woman, it

is fate that you be parted from her by us, Kuonji, for we are the

Golden Pair, the notorious breaker of couples."

"What are you ranting on about, Sansenin?" Ukyo demanded.

"You will shortly see," Mikado as Azusa suddenly leaped up onto

his arms in a display of perfect balance, "Behold the ultimate

technique that has brought an end to many relationships such as

yours! Know now why we are the Couple Cleavers of the ice,

and face the terror of the Goodbye Whirl!"

"Man, will you shut up?" Ukyo growled as she took Perfume's

hand and said. "Come on! Let's get those Baka!"

"H-Hai," Perfume agreed, shaking herself out of her surprise as

she remembered that focus was the key to victory, or so Cologne

had warned her.

They charged as Mikado and Azusa came at them, and like a

perfectly coordinated team Ukyo and Perfume leaped with blades

extended in a doubly lethal kick, but Mikado threw Azusa

straight at Ukyo, who intercepted the Okonomiyaki chef in mid-air

and deflected her landing. With some difficulty Ukyo managed

to remains standing when her skates hit the ice, while Perfume

whirled about and came to a an abrupt stop of her own, staring at

these two in both shock and anger.

"Hey, what you do?" Perfume demanded.

"You left yourself open," Azusa smiled up at a surprised Ukyo

before sliding down and grabbing her legs as she slid between

the arch Ukyo left open, causing Ukyo to start toppling forward.

"Ucchan!" Perfume cried and leaped in an attempt to intercept her

beloved.

They clasped hands even as Azusa presented her own legs to

Mikado, who smiled arrogantly before his face took on a look of

intense concentration. In a display of astonishing strength,

Mikado began to lift Azusa above his head, who in turn carried a

shocked Ukyo and Perfume with her until all four were linked

like a human chain, and then Mikado started to pirouette with

ever-increasing momentum.

"Ucchan!" both Ranma and Nabiki cried together, while

Shampoo called out to her beleaguered cousin.

"It's come to this so early in the match!" the announcer was

saying as Kodachi the Ferret just stared in dismay, "The Couple-

cleaving maneuver known as the Goodbye Whirl! No couple has

ever been able to remain together after experiencing this terror!

Looks like this match is as good as over!"

Just then Akane managed to reach the end of the rink with Keiko

perched on her shoulder, and they wasted no time in spotting

Kodachi.

"There she is!" Akane cried, "Now if only I can get around behind

the announcer-Kei-chan!"

Keiko cried out in anger and spread her wings to fly like a

swooping jet directly for the table. Kodachi was too focused

upon the match that would determine her fate to notice the

Vulture until she was upon her, and then what she felt was a pair

of claws digging into her restraining harness as a razor-sharp

beak broke the chain. With no further warning Keiko beat her

wings and took off with her much-astonished prize in tow, much

to the horrified amazement of the announcer.

"What? Someone has stolen the prize for this match? Incredible

as it must seem, a trained bird has snatched Charlotte the Ferret

and spirited her away before the match is truly over!"

"How much more can you take, Kuonji?" Mikado taunted as he

increased the momentum of his spin.

"Ohhh," Azusa started to regret this maneuver, "Azusa no feel so

good! You let go of the girl now, or you'll both be hurt bad!"

"No way!" Ukyo growled, "I'm not gonna let you win!"

"Ucchan!" Perfume pleaded, "Let go or you be hurt! Perfume no

want that!"

"I'm not letting you go!" Ukyo growled in spite of the strain in her

arms.

"Airen," Perfume said and tried to break free of Ukyo's grasp,

"Perfume no want you hurt...!"

"You idiot!" Ukyo snarled, "If I let you go you'll hit the wall, and

at that speed you'll be killed, or worse!"

"Airen..." Perfume whispered, suddenly knowing beyond hope

that Ukyo was concerned with her welfare.

"Ohhhhhh!" Azusa winced, "Azusa so dizzy..."

She suddenly let go and both Ukyo and Perfume went sailing off

together. Ukyo at once tried to flip herself into the way to absorb

the brunt of the impact, knowing full well that it would mean

little in the end. Perfume's hypersensitive nervous system would

only be able to endure just so much punishment before the

sensory overload would drive her into a coma, if not kill her

outright.

But at the last possible instant a slender ribbon lashed out and

wrapped itself around Perfume, halting her momentum. Perfume

lost her grip on Ukyo, who continued right on into the wall with

the resultant bone-jarring impact.

"Ucchan!" Perfume cried as she dangled over the ice arena.

"Too bad," she heard Mousse say grimly, "I wanted the pleasure

of crushing her myself."

"Mousse?" Perfume blinked her eyes before turning to see her

fellow Amazon standing high above in the rafters.

"What's this?" the announcer swiveled his attention back their

way, "An amazing savior has just rescued the beautiful Perfume

from certain annihilation!"

"Yeah, but what about the one he didn't rescue?" Nabiki asked

sourly.

"Ucchan," Ranma said as he got up, "I've got to go down there

and see if she's okay..."

"No problem," Nabiki said as she got up, "I'll come with you.

Stay here, Shampoo."

"Is Perfume-cousin and stupid Mousse," Shampoo also said,

"Shampoo go with you..."

"There you both are," Akane said as she caught up with her two

wayward friends, "Thought I'd find you in the showers, and look,

I've managed to find your clothes and skates."

"That's just terrific, Akane-chan," Keiko said as she combed her

hair back and started to braid it, "It's not that I don't mind a little

nudity now and then, but after the kind of day we've been

having..."

"Don't remind me," said Kodachi as she savored the feeling of the

hot shower, then felt her neck and said, "I'm going to kill that

little bitch for what she did to me, especially making me wear

this stupid collar!"

"Collar?" Akane looked more closely and saw the pink loop

around Kodachi's neck with had a heart-shame tag on it that read

"Charlotte."

"Don't ask me why, but that thing seems to have grown in size

with you," Keiko remarked, "A good thing or you might have

been strangled during transformation."

"That is odd," Kodachi felt the collar then frowned, "When I

catch her that Shiratori is a dead woman..."

"You'd better get changed," Akane said as she laid their clothes

down on one of the benches, "The match is still going out there,

and I think Ucchan's taking a beating."

"Never mind that," Kodachi said as she wrapped her hair in a

towel and hastened to slip into her leotard, literally fuming as she

growled, "It's time we put plan 'B' into effect and gave those

Golden losers a real challenge!"

"Sure you're up to it, Kodachi-chan?" Keiko replied, "Whatever

she used on us might have affected our coordination."

"Bah!" Kodachi scoffed as she took the skates in hand, "I have

more coordination in my little finger than Kuonji has in her entire

body! Come along, Akane-chan, we're going to bag a couple of

skaters."

"But I thought we were going to wait in reserve?" Akane asked in

confusion, then sighed, "Oh well...I suppose I've got a few bones

to pick with that Azusa myself, not to mention Mikado. Kissing

him wasn't exactly something I'll always want to remember."

"How do you think I feel?" Keiko sniffed, "I'll probably get

rabies!"

"I'll personally inoculate you both when this is over," Kodachi

promised as she growled in anticipation, "Mikado is also a dead

man for what he put you through. Not only have I been subject to

extreme discomforts, inconveniences and gross humiliation

beyond mortal endurance, but to touch my personal effects as he

has is to court the doom of the heavens! Beware Sansenin, your

hours are numbered!"

Keiko exchanged looks with Akane and said, "She's Tatewaki's

sister all right."

"No denying it," Akane smiled, "But you've still got to love her..."

Continued.

Comments/Criticism/Failsafes: shadowmane

Kind of ran out of steam near the end there, sorry. Next time I

hope to wind this up, then maybe take a short hiatus (yeah, dream

on, buddy...)

Nabiki 1/2

Chapter 16, Part 2.

By

Jim Robert Bader

Inspired by the works of Rumiko Takahashi;

All rights go to her, the publishers & distributors

Of the Ranma 1/2 Series.

(Based on the Altered Destinies Series by

Wade Tritschler and Others;

Some ideas and characters were created by me,

The Rest is shared Fanfiction, so please don't sue me)

"Ucchan!" Perfume's voice cut through the red haze of pain that

dulled her senses to everything but the ringing in her ears after

having absorbed the equivalent kinetic force of a thirty meter

drop on her backside, which by rights should have shattered

every bone in her body."

"It's no use," Mikado sighed, "That blow must have shattered

every bone in his body. Too bad, I was hoping he could give us

more sport. And after I went to all that trouble capturing the

Kuno woman to serve as both bait and added incentive..."

"You kidnap Stupid Rose girl?" Perfume gasped in surprise,

"Thought other stupid girl do that!"

"Oh please," Mousse snorted, "As if the Kawaii ribbon girl over

there had enough of a mind to set things up as I have. A pity it

was all for nothing..."

"Why didn't Kuonji let go when he could have? Azusa doesn't

understand that."

"Quite simple, really," a definitely masculine voice with a slight

Chinese accent replied, "Kuonji is a devoted friend who would

sooner sacrifice herself than risk bringing harm to another."

"Her?" Mikado sounded surprise, "You must be mistaken,

whoever you are. I've known Kuonji from brief clashes in the

past and he most definitely is a he..."

"Then you are the one who should have their eyes checked," the

other male voice sounded amused, "Kuonji Ukyo is a woman and

always has been."

"Let Perfume go, Mousse! Perfume wants to help her Airen!"

Perfume! Ukyo suddenly felt a jolt of serious emotion, hearing

the distress in her partner's voice. She recognized the other

voices, of course, as belonging to Mousse, Azusa and Mikado,

but it was Perfume's that helped her clear her mind and recover

sensibility, that and a sudden jolt of anger at the smug confidence

of Mikado.

"To what avail would that be?" Mousse said sadly, "She gave a

noble sacrifice of herself for your welfare. Let us honor her and

move on, anything less would be pointless."

"Shut up, Mousse!" Perfume was now quite noticeably angry,

"Ukyo is no dead! She needs Perfume be at side..."

"Hold it," Mikado urged, "Am I given to understand that Kuonji

Ukyo is really a..."

"A young and stalwart girl?" Mousse replied, "She is that, or

have you been taken in all these years by her little pretense of

masculinity? Kuonji Ukyo has hidden her womanhood behind

masculine garb for years for personal reasons that I would prefer

to respect rather than divulge, even though she has been my chief

rival for the hand of the fair Perfume..."

"Azusa thought so!" Azusa suddenly cried out, "Ukyo felt like a

woman to Azusa, much too pretty to be a boy, just not as pretty

as Azusa. But why does long-haired boy say that she's your rival,

and why would you respect her for that?"

"Kuonji Ukyo is betrothed, through no fault of her own, to the

woman that I love," Mousse replied, "In spite of this I respect her

fighting spirit, though I would gladly have crushed her to win the

hand of my beloved."

"Perfume show you how much beloved she is when she get loose

from this ribbon..."

"I see!" Mikado suddenly spoke up, "So Ukyo is a woman, and

she hid herself from me all of this time? The poor thing must be

shy indeed! This changes everything..."

"Mikado," Ukyo growled as she slowly rolled over onto one side

in order to leverage herself into a sitting position, "You just love

the sound of your own voice, you egomaniac..."

"Ucchan!" Perfume cried out while the others fell silent.

"You live," Mousse remarked in surprise, "I did not think even

you could manage that."

"Hah!" Ukyo scoffed, "As if I'd let a little thing like that stop me,"

she glared at Mikado and said, "Sansenin, get ready for round

two! I'm gonna pound you flatter than uncooked Okonomiyaki!"

She slowly got to her feet as she said this, shaking inside with the

effort but too angry to care. All she wanted was to carry out her

threat not only on Mikado but Mousse himself, in spite of his

claims of non-partiality in her direction.

"I see," Mousse remarked as he adjusted his thick glasses, "The

old woman trained you better than I had imagined. You

absorbed the energy of that throw into yourself by willing your

body to its most fluid state. However, the effort has plainly cost

you, and I doubt you have the energy to even remain standing for

more than a few seconds."

"That's long enough to take care of the three of you," Ukyo

growled as she balled her fists and willed herself to be as solid as

ice, "Let Per-chan go now or you'll be sorry."

"Once again I must admire your spirit," Mousse sighed as he

once again assumed a one-legged stance, "A pity we must be

enemies, but to win Perfume as my wife I must crush you utterly

and without mercy!"

Of a sudden Mouse was struck from behind by a hurtling form no

one else had seen coming towards them. A shrill, manic laughter

was heard as a new figure turned around on the ice and glared

haughtily at the toppled Amazon boy. Ukyo was astonished to

see that it was Kodachi wearing oddly male dress for a change,

her hair done up under a shorter wig that diminished her

feminine presence.

"Sorry to cut in," Kodachi mused as gruffly as her deep voice

would allow, deliberately coaching her speech to assume the

different quality that male Japanese used from the more feminine

version, "But you were not invited to this little party. Our star

performer has been humbled but is not down. It falls to her

alternates to take her place on the field of battle."

"Alternates?" Mikado asked, "You're substituting for Kuonji?"

"And not alone," Kodachi replied as another form skated up to

her side, "Meet my partner, Tendo Akane, also of Furinkan High

School, which we will hereby represent in this match against you

and your little partner."

"Hey!" Ukyo protested, "I'm not out of this yet!"

"I beg to differ, Kuonji," Kodachi smiled as she skated up

alongside her, then casually touched a finger against Ukyo's

body, which sent a wave of pain coursing all the way through

her, "Hydrostatic shock has caused considerable internal

dislocation. If you persist in skating now you could risk

permanent injury. Let those of us still in a condition to fight take

up your cause, and besides...I owe Mikado and his little slut even

more than you do."

Perfume had wasted no time taking advantage of Mousse's

having released his hold on the ribbon, and now she at last

managed to untangle herself to come to Ukyo's side as she said,

"Perfume think Rose girl make sense this one time, Airen. You

fight well, but Perfume no want you badly injured! Let Rose girl

fight, Perfume take you to safety."

Ukyo wanted nothing less than a chance to heal and recover, the

pain numbing parts of her that she never even knew existed,

which were now all screaming at her in chorus.

But still her pride would not let her surrender so easy. A girl

might do it as a practical matter, but Ukyo had spent enough time

around boys to realize why they often let pride demand that they

ignore simple pain in order to act Macho. It was more than

simple foolishness, she realized, it was how they proved their

courage and worth before others.

"I'm not done," she said simply, "I will not surrender."

"And I would not hear of it either," Mikado replied, "I'll gladly

fight one or all of you at once, it matters little to me. Whichever

of you wants to take their best shot, come right on ahead. Azusa

and I will be waiting."

Kodachi reached down to pick up her ribbon then twirled it

around her body in concentric circles, "I'll make you eat that

boast! You have kissed your last trollop, now prepare to meet the

revenge of one you have wronged, enemy of all women!"

Her ribbon snapped out, but Mikado easily caught it and said,

"Not exactly a traditional weapon of this sport, but I suppose they

do things differently at your High School..."

"Martine, Martine!" Azusa suddenly cried as she snatched the

ribbon out of both their hands, her face set in a most Kawai

expression, "Oh, Azusa wants her Martine! She's so lovely!"

"That girl is totally deranged," Mousse grumbled before Perfume

casually kicked him into semi-consciousness.

"How about it, Sansenin?" Akane asked, "Not afraid to go up

against the pair of us, are you?"

"Not in the least," Mikado replied, giving Ukyo a respectful nod

as he addressed himself to her, "You have my deep admiration,

Kuonji. No one has ever withstood my special technique before.

You must indeed have special feelings for this girl to risk injury

on her behalf, but I will still have my way...with the both of you,

after we dispense with this new challenge."

Ukyo paled, then felt a sudden new surge of anger, but Kodachi

was already moving off with Akane as they circled the golden

pair, while Perfume remained close by Ukyo's side. She almost

did not see the other form circling to approach them until she

heard Ranma said, "Hey, Ucchan, how's it going?"

"Ranchan?" Ukyo gasped, "What are you doing here?"

"Oh, nothing much," Ranma mused nonchalantly as he came to

stand beside Ukyo and Perfume, affecting a casual air as he

added, "Just wanted to know how you're doing...not that I don't

think you're doing just fine or nothing like that..."

In spite of herself Ukyo found herself smiling, "Thanks for

worrying, but I'm feeling a lot better. I just need a few more

moments and I'll be ready to mop up the place with that arrogant

bastard."

"Oh," Ranma said with that same casual air, "Sure, I believe

you."

"You do?" she asked suspiciously.

"Hey, I've seen you skate," Ranma smiled, "You really had

Mikado on the edge there. I don't think anybody's ever rattled his

cage as much as you have, including the last time Akane and me

went up against him."

"You really think so?" Ukyo asked, finding it a little easier to

stand upright.

"Oh yeah," he nodded, "Don't forget, I've been where you are

now. I took the fall for Akane just like you did for Perfume here,

only she's never been able to forgive me."

"How so?" Perfume blinked, "Akane no like boy standing up for

her?"

"Ah, it's always been like that with us," Ranma shrugged, "She's

real competitive, you know, and hates it when boys do special

favors that make her look weak. Well, most boys, that is...she

doesn't seem to mind it when Ryoga treats her special."

"Sure you're not jealous about that, Ranchan?" Ukyo smiled,

"You were engaged to her for ten years, she's got to feel

something more for you than hostility and resentment."

"Maybe," Ranma said, "But after all these years we're more like

brother and sister than potential life-mates. I'll stick to the

engagements I have now, thank you. Besides...it looks like

Akane has her own suitors looking out for her welfare."

He nodded towards where Akane and Kodachi were trading shots

with Mikado and Azusa. Kodachi was trying to snatch back her

stolen ribbon while Azusa fought her off, while similarly trying

to fend off Mikado's attempts at cornering Akane into a clinch,

making their back-and-forth acrobatics all that much more

entertaining to the enthusiastic crowds of onlookers.

"Wow," Ryonami was saying at Nabiki's side as they stood with

Shampoo and Keiko on the sidelines, "You weren't wrong about

betting against the odds, Sempai! Wish you'd told me about this

substitution, though, I could have gotten more side bets going."

"I just wish somebody had told me about Mousse's involvement,"

Nabiki said in a worried tone, "Ukyo looks okay, and with

Perfume and Ranma at her side she ought to be well out of

danger."

"Shampoo hope so," Shampoo said, "Spatula girl took hard hit

defending Perfume-cousin. No want Perfume have grieve for

injured Airen."

"Ukyo's a fighter, Shampoo-chan," Keiko nodded, "I think it's

pretty romantic, though, her wanting to sacrifice herself like that.

If only Ukyo would wake up and smell the Cha she might realize

what those two have going there."

"Am I too late?"

They turned around and found Ryoga stumbling forward, looking

as though he had just walked through an obstacle course that

included a generous amount of barbed wire.

"Where have you been, Ryoga-kun?" Nabiki asked, "You've been

missing for three days this time!"

"I know," he groaned, "Where haven't I been? Would you believe

I had to catch a plane back from some place called Nome,

Alaska?"

"Well now," Ryonami took out her ledger and made a few notes,

"That's another bet cinched. Odds were fifteen-to-one against

you making it, Ryoga-kun. I hope you guys appreciate that you're

making me awfully rich today."

"I'm glad to see you know what side to bet on," Nabiki smiled in

approval.

"No problem," Ryonami smiled, "I've just learned it's never safe

to bet against your Posse."

"That may not be an ironclad rule here," Keiko nodded, "Take a

look!"

While this had been going on Kodachi had persistently tried to

corner the fleet-skated Azusa, snarling, "Give that back, you little

brat!"

"Why are you so mad at little Azusa?" Azusa asked her as she

avoided Kodachi yet again, "What have I ever done to make you

so angry?"

"I'll give you a taste of what you did just as soon as you stand

still for five seconds..." Kodachi growled as she launched herself

forward, only to have Azusa slide right out from under her reach,

then pause to look up before pointing a hand and smiling.

"Charlotte! I knew you were Charlotte!"

"Eh?" Kodachi froze, staring down at the girl in dismay.

"You have Charlotte's collar!" Azusa grinned, "Azusa knew you

were Charlotte!"

Kodachi lurched back in dismay and growled, "What did you call

me...?!"

Azusa just smiled and grabbed Kodachi's ankles, then Mikado

came up behind Kodachi and grabbed his partner by her ankles,

topping the Black Rose forward.

"Hey!" Kodachi protested.

"Dachi!" Akane rushed to her aid, grabbing Kodachi's hands

without thinking.

"Again another couple falls prey to our special technique,"

Mikado mused before he suddenly gave a heave and lifted Azusa

to his shoulders, who in turn drew a squawking Kodachi, who

unwittingly pulled Akane after her as the Golden Pair once more

effected their Couple Cleaving technique.

"Akane!" Ranma cried.

"Akane-chan!" Ukyo lurched forward, ignoring the pain that

stabbed through her body.

"Oh no!" Nabiki groaned, "Not this again?"

"Hey, the Golden Pair are nothing if not consistent, Sempai,"

Ryonami said in a tone of resignation.

"Akane-chan!" Kodachi winced as she felt her arms being pulled

loose from their sockets, "Hold on!"

"Kodachi!" Akane cried, "Let go or you'll be hurt!"

"And let you get hurt instead?" Kodachi growled, "That's your

idea of an improvement?"

"Sooner or later you'll have to let her go," Mikado called up at

them, "The longer you delay, the greater will be the sense of

betrayal, but if you resist you'll both pay the consequences!"

"You...unbelievable jerk!" Kodachi groaned with the strain as her

wig flew to reveal her long black hair whipping free in the face of

Akane.

"A-chooo!" Akane sneezed, an action that broke one hand loose

from Kodachi's, causing her to flail one-armed as Kodachi tried

desperately to hold her.

Of a sudden Ranma's knee collided with Mikado's face, causing

him to lose his grip on Azusa, who flopped flee and flipped like a

sling-shot as Kodachi's body tumbled her into the distant

bleachers. The raven haired duo started to fly when a form came

moving like a shot to intercept them both and pluck them from

mid-air, much to the astonishment of all onlookers.

Ukyo came to a grinding halt as she gasped, "Kuno Tatewaki?"

"I have you both," the older Kuno sibling replied as he uncurled

from his landing with Kodachi clinging to her brother on one

side, Akane tucked snugly under his other arm as he stood

barefoot upon the ice, "Relax, my sister, fair Tendo Akane, you

are safe in the protective arms of the Blue Thunder of Furinkan

High."

"Brother?" Kodachi gasped, surprised to find who had come to

her timely rescue.

"Tatewaki-kun?" Akane said in no less astonished a reaction.

"Key, Kuno-Sempai!" Ranma cheered, "Sharp moves there, good

buddy!"

"But of course, Saotome-kun," Kuno smiled as he released his

sister and Akane before straightening up in his dark Samurai

attire, "Were you expecting something less?"

"Saotome," Mikado growled as he slowly got back to his feet,

"You've meddled in my affairs one time too many. Prepare to pay

the consequences!"

"I would beg to differ, Cad," Kuno said somberly as he reached

over his head and pulled out his trademark bokken, "You, sir, are

an affront to all men. How dare you treat women as little more

than objects for your fancy!"

"Under any other circumstances I'd ask who's talking," Nabiki

noted grimly.

"Great show, eh Tendo-kun?" Genma asked as her finished off

another rice ball, "Go get him, Boy! Make your father proud by

cleaning up the rink with that pervert!"

"Have some dignity, Genma-chan," Nodoka said with serene

composure, "Ranma is perfectly capable of laying that

womanizing jackal out without you needing to distract him..."

"Enough!" Mikado cried, seeing himself surrounded on all sides

by hostile antagonists, "I can see which way the winds are

blowing now, but you will find that Sansenin Mikado is not so

easily beaten! I can see that I am now forced to call upon my

most devastating technique. Prepare now to witness the Sansenin

super-secret maneuver, 'Bladestorm Attack,' which will bring this

farce to a final end and prove once and for all that I am invincible

upon the Ice-rink."

He brought his hands down and stood resolute as though he were

standing in the spotlight, rising up onto the foreword tips of his

skates as he lowered is hands and seemed to remain unmoving

for several long moments. Very slowly he brought his hands up

above the level of head and brought his chin up as his gaze grew

firm and his body seemed to radiate power.

"Uh oh," Nabiki averred, sensing a familiar tingle along her skin

and spine as she sensed the gathering of Ki power.

"What's he trying to do?" Ryoga asked.

"Him do dangerous technique," Shampoo said in confirmation of

Nabiki's suspicions, "Other skaters in big trouble!"

Nabiki shifted her vision the way that she had been learning to do

through Happosai's training and saw the curvature of the Dragon

Liens that surrounded Mikado. The boy was making an

elemental summoning and drawing on the power of the ice all

around him as he started to spin once again, slowly generating

more and more speed as the lines curved inward towards him and

began to branch out to incorporate the entire ice rink.

"Interesting," mused Cologne, who had come to stand beside

them, her ancient eyes very wide as she studied Mikado's tactics,

"The boy has had some training, though I would very much like

to know where he learned to master such a difficult maneuver."

The other players in the rink were only just then discovering the

danger with which they were confronted. Ranma and Ukyo had

their arms raised defensively before their faces as gale-force

winds tore at them while Perfume-who stood somewhat farther

back-was watching Mikado in a manner very much like that of

her Great Grandmother.

"What's happening?" Ukyo gasped, "I can't move!"

"He's never been this powerful before!" Ranma cried out over the

howl of the winds, "When did he learn to do this?"

"Ohhh!" Akane cried out in dismay as she felt the wind going up

between her legs and brought her hands down to keep her dress

from exposing her panties, unconsciously doing a Marylyn

Monroe impersonation.

"Akane!" Soun cried out in distress, "Show some modesty while

you're up there! Everyone is watching!"

"Oh father," Kasumi sighed in mild exasperation.

Kodachi and her brother were likewise stymied by the wind-

blast, which now had an icy feel as if flakes of condensed water

were pelting them like a thousand tiny needles. Mikado

continued to pick up the pace until he had created blizzard-like

conditions that picked his attackers up one-by-one and whirled

them in the air as though gripped by a frosty tornado.

"Ucchan!" Perfume cried out, the only one not grabbed by the

cyclone.

"Quickly, child!" Cologne had to shout to be heard over the

tempest, "You must summon up a counter vortex at once!"

It was doubtful that any other set of human ears could have

picked up her words clear enough to understand their meaning,

but Perfume had ears as sharp as those of her cursed shape, and

she was well schooled in obedience to her Great Grandmother's

voice. Besides this the notion had already been taking shape in

her mind from the first time she had witnessed Mikado using his

Dance of Death technique. She had been thinking about that

maneuver and what she knew about such attack styles, and now

that Ukyo was threatened by a more advanced attack form she

was determined to break through this Ki attack, and so she

nodded in compliance.

"Yes, Great Grandmother," Perfume replied more to herself

than anyone else, then spread her arms wide and concentrated,

using the Dragon Fang Attack to form the basis for her counter

maneuver.

Mikado's spin was now creating larger and sharper flakes that

bedeviled the victims of his attack, who each were flailing

helplessly in the wind, unable to gain orientation or purchase as

they were lifted higher and higher above the floor of the ice rink.

"I've got to do something!" Nabiki said, "Ranma and Ukyo won't

stand a chance, and Akane..."

"There is nothing you can do, Daughter-in-law," Cologne grimly

informed her, "This must be done by Perfume alone. She has the

training and the will to carry this off against the awesome power

of the Sansenin boy's attack."

Perfume was starting to spin her own dance in counter-motion to

Mikado's own vortex, increasing in her velocity as she assumed a

one-legged stance and called on the power of her inner Ki to

affect the Dragon Liens passing all around her, disrupting

Mikado's vortex as her own grew stronger by draining his efforts.

Perfume's speed was phenomenal as she became almost invisible,

her pirouette grinding ever sharper as Mikado's wind decreased

in volume.

But Cologne was not reassured by this and said, "No, that is too

much force! Ease up, child! You don't need that much effort to

win this!"

"Oh no," Nabiki said, "I think we've got trouble!"

Indeed, Perfume herself was only just becoming aware that the

vortex she had erected was creating such a forceful counterwave

that it was generating shock waves all through the arena. She

tried to ease up, but the ice under her feet was already shaking

uncontrollably with the forces that had been unleashed slipped

out from her control and beginning to take on a life of their own,

"Daughter," Cologne said, "You must go out there and stop this

before it is too late! Have Shampoo help to guide you, this is a

technique she has been trained for."

"What do you suggest I do, Elder?" Nabiki asked anxiously,

earning a studied look from Cologne, who could read her

uncertainty and desperation.

"Follow your Master's training," Cologne replied, "Whatever else

he is, Happy knows the art beyond the standards of a mere

practitioner, and you have already learned to read the way of the

Dragon."

"Right," Nabiki nodded, "Let's go, Sham-chan!"

"Hai," Shampoo agreed as the two vaulted into the ring, even as

huge cracks began forming everywhere in the ice.

"Anything we can do to help" Ryoga asked.

"Pray," Cologne replied, then turned a sharp look towards Keiko,

"Except for you...I have a special task that fits your talents...'

Meanwhile, deep under the Kolhotz sporting arena, the tremblers

being felt up above were starting to affect the pipes and

generators in the basement as the boiler room began itself to

shake ominously, promising immanent eruption.

Up above that the eruption was already well under way as

Perfume discovered when the ice around her began to crack and

splinter, and suddenly geyser upwards even as she finally

managed to regain control over her own spinning momentum.

She brought herself to an abrupt halt but it was far too late to

relax her control over the still out-of-control vortex. A jet stream

of water broke through the ice directly in front of her and made

her yelp in dismay at the sudden realization of her own

vulnerability.

"Per-chan!" Ukyo cried as she fought to get some kind of control

over her orientation.

"Hey, what's Nabiki up to?" Ranma asked as he spotted his other

iinazuke landing on a still undamaged block of ice with Shampoo

right behind her.

Nabiki was wondering much the same thing as she felt the

powerful lines of force all around her that were creating the chaos

that surrounded them all, but as Shampoo placed her hands on

Nabiki's shoulders from behind she suddenly knew exactly what

she had to do. Without a word needing to be spoke she reached

out with her mind and felt the warm spirit of the Amazon lend

her strength and much-needed guidance. Nabiki braced her legs

in a classic horse stance and brought her hands out to either side,

letting herself merge with the power as though the force of her

own Ki could regather them in her embrace.

And in response she began to feel the vortex lose some of its

fierceness, becoming less menacing than the eruption of the

geysers.

"If we can only break free of this!" Ranma grunted, "Akane-!"

Akane turned in time to see the slab of ice that was heading

straight for her from beneath and managed to roll with the

impact, getting her legs back under her in time to regain her

balance while Kodachi called her name helplessly and Kuno just

lay flat on his back against the slab that had claimed him.

"What have you done?" Mikado looked around himself in terror

as the reality of his own situation began to become more obvious

with geysers springing up all around him.

"Ohhh!" said a wobbly Azusa from far off in the bleachers,

"Azusa feel so dizzy...what happened to Mikey?"

One of the boys who had spent the past five minutes attempting

to revive their idol just pointed back at the arena, and Azusa

suddenly sat upright as a slice of reality suddenly penetrated the

dizzy fog that was her brain.

"Mikey!"

Ukyo found a solid slab of ice directly underneath herself and

managed to get her skates down on it, as did Ranma behind her.

They balanced precariously from a lofty height while all around

them the ice storm started to subside. Only then did they become

aware of the numberless scrapes and scratches they had suffered

from the razor-sharp ice crystals that no longer pelted them

mercilessly. They could see to one side that Akane was helping

Kodachi climb up on their own slippery purchase, but now the

little matter of what to do next became the unvoiced concern in

everyone's thoughts.

"Ucchan!" Keiko's voice cut through the diminishing noise of the

dying vortex, causing them to turn in time to see the Kickboxer

vaulting towards them with the Bakers Peel in one hand. Keiko's

leap was not sufficient to carry her all the way, but she threw the

giant spatula the remaining distance and Ukyo managed to catch

it, feeling suddenly more confident about herself grasping the

handle of her trademark weapon.

"KUONJI!" another voice cried in murderous fury, giving them

scant preparation for the sudden attack of an angry Mousse, who

was using his chains to keep him above the floor while he swung

at her with a sword in his free hand.

Ukyo instantly brought her spatula up to deflect him, but the

effort almost cost her precious balance and she nearly skated off

the edge, only to be pulled back at the last second by a desperate

Ranma.

Mousse sailed around for yet another attack when Ukyo reached

beneath her shirt and pulled out a hidden throwing spatula,

which she hurled with great force at the chain, snapping it before

Mousse had completed his arc.

"KUOOOONNNNJIIIII!" he screamed all the way down until

he landed with a splash in the icy water.

"Brace yourself, Ranchan!" Ukyo cried, raising her bakers Peel

above her head once again and brought it down with the force of

her Ki behind it.

The ice pillar split evenly down the middle, then fragmented into

much smaller blocks, clearing a path down the center that they

could use to brake their fall, leaping and vaulting to the nearest

solid block of ice that they could manage.

"Whew!" Ranma sighed once the block stopped bobbing under

their feet, "Well, that was sure something! Nabiki?"

"Over there," Ukyo turned around to see Nabiki calmly standing

with Shampoo behind her, the middle Tendo daughter slowly

bringing her hands together as though to cup the air, then she

clapped and made a prayer-like motion.

And finally there was silence.

They looked around at the shattered ice floes that were all that

remained of the rink. Ice cold water surrounded them but they

did not appear to be in any more immanent danger. There was, at

first, no sign of Keiko until they saw a Vulture flap its wings,

having emerged from the water with a furious beating of wings

as it sought to rise up to the pillar that held Akane and Kodachi.

Ryoga was edging along from block to block trying to reach them

in his own style, while Azusa seemed to staring at a frosty statue

that looked something like Mikado.

There was only one figure that neither of them saw, and at once

Ukyo was worried as she said, "Perfume? Perfume, where are

you?"

"She..." Ranma hesitated, looking at the water and suddenly

remembering the Amazon's curse.

"Oh no!" Ukyo was about to leap into the water when Ranma

stopped her, risking unbalancing their platform.

"Ucchan, no!" he cried, "That water's ice cold! You could freeze

to death in only a few minutes!"

"The boy is right, my child," Cologne remarked as she hopped

onto their platform, "Besides which there is no need. My Great

Granddaughter is this way, if you will but follow."

Ukyo saw the risk in trying to copy the Elder's movements but

had no choice as her distress over the possible fate of Perfume

had already turned her blood to icewater.

It took only a few tense moments for Ukyo and Ranma to arrive

near the center of the icy pool where they found a smaller pillar

than most dominating the floor there. The ice was nearly opaque,

but a small object was at least partially visible, and it was to this

that Cologne directed her concern, saying simply, "Perfume is in

there."

"Oh no," Ukyo almost whimpered, "You don't mean...?"

Cologne stabbed the pillar with her staff, shattering it to dust,

which revealed a small ice-sculptured cat that dangled in the air

for several instants before Ukyo managed to catch it upon the flat

edge of her spatula.

"Perfume!" she said in horror.

"There is no time!" Cologne said sharply, "We have only

moments to act if we are to save her life! Follow me at once, and

by all the gods you worship-WATCH YOUR STEP!"

Ukyo did not even voice her reply as she dutifully felt into step

behind Cologne, cradling the frozen cat in her arms with her

Bakers Peel once more slung across her back. Ranma started to

follow, but he heard Nabiki said, "Ranchan...over here! We still

need you!"

"But..." Ranma started to protest.

"Kuno is in trouble!" Nabiki clarified, pointing at another one of

the pillars where they could see the unconscious Tatewaki was

beginning to slide off the edge of his ice block.

"Kuso," Ranma breathed in uncharacteristic frustration and at

once hopped to the nearest ice platform, trying to position himself

to catch the endangered Kuno.

Out of one corner of his eye he saw Ryoga scaling up along the

side of the pillar that still held Akane and Kodachi. When he

finally did reach the top Akane offered him a hand, but he just

smiled up at them and said, "Do you ladies want a ride down?

You can climb onto my back, it won't be any trouble."

"Ryoga-kun," Akane smiled, "You didn't get lost this time."

"Of course not," Ryoga said, "You were in danger, Akane-chan.

I knew I had to protect you."

A vulture settled down gently on Kodachi's shoulder-careful not

to pinch with its claws-and made a noise like a squawk. The

Black rose just smiled as she stroked the bird's feathers and

replied, "I quite agree, Kei-chan, the boy does have his uses..."

Continued.

Comments/Criticism/Fine Tuning of the Quibble points:

shadowmane

It's almost all over but the shouting, so hang on for the closing

match as Nabiki and friends bring this volume to a reasonable

pause (if not the ultimate conclusion).

Nabiki 1/2

Chapter 16, Part 3.

By

Jim Robert Bader

Inspired by the works of Rumiko Takahashi;

All works belong to her, the publishers & distributors

Of the Ranma 1/2 Series.

(Based on the Altered Destinies Series by

Wade Tritschler and Others;

Some characters and situations were created by me,

The rest is Shared Fanfiction, so please don't sue me)

"This way!" Cologne said as they arrived inside the locker rooms,

ignoring the startled looks they received from the scant few

women who were presently occupying this space. She headed

unerringly towards the Jacuzzi area, Ukyo close on her heals

cradling the frozen Perfume in both hands with a fear that made

her heart feel itself like an ice block. Cologne pointed to the

Jacuzzi and said, "Get in there at once and do exactly as I tell

you."

"But..." Ukyo started to protest, but Cologne's gaze prevented her

from completing her sentence.

"Listen exactly to what I am about to say, Kuonji," Cologne said

coldly, "If you wish to have any hope at all of saving Perfume's

life you must follow my instructions precisely to the letter without

doubt or hesitation. Do you understand me?"

"Hai," Ukyo replied, feeling like a small child who had been

scolded by a parent.

"I think it best if you remove some of the clothing you are

wearing while you are inside there," Cologne said with just a

touch more sympathy in her voice, "And be prepared. When

Perfume enters the pool she will revert instantly to her true shape.

It is my hope that the magic will unfreeze her body, but the

resultant overstimulation of her nervous system will most likely

kill her if you do not stimulate the right nerve endings in the way

that I shall outline."

"All right," Ukyo said, bending down on a bench as she lay

Perfume on her lap while she unfastened her ice skates then

loosened the straps on her tunic.

"Hurry!" Cologne cried, "Every second that we waste diminishes

the chance of success! Do not bother taking it all off, just get into

that water!"

Ukyo braced herself as she jumped into the pool with her tiny

burden, then an instant later that form began to expand

dramatically and suddenly it was a naked Perfume that she held,

a Perfume who gasped and started to seize up in paroxic spasms.

"Now!" Cologne cried and started to give Ukyo a series of careful

worded instructions that Ukyo found herself following to the

letter without stopping to think about what she was actually

doing. Perfume was going into shock, but with the swift

application of Ukyo's fingers in a few key places the Amazon let

out another gasp them started to relax, and before too long she

ceased to tense up as Ukyo touched nerve clusters in a sequence

that helped the girl regain regular breathing and heart rhythm.

The more Ukyo applied the nerve-stimulation as directed, the

more it seemed as if Perfume's chances of survival were

improved, and soon there was no doubt that she would

completely recover.

Of course Perfume regained full consciousness before too long

and-finding herself in the arms of a half-dressed (and thoroughly

wet) Ukyo gave her a different sort of impression altogether.

Ukyo was going to withdraw at this point, but somehow she

found herself on the receiving end of Perfume's attention as the

Amazon girl began to apply her own ample knowledge of touch

stimulation. Ukyo's protests were muffled as her lips found

Perfume's pressing eagerly against her, and suddenly the warmth

of the Jacuzzi was as nothing compared to the kind of warmth

that permeated both of their bodies.

Cologne smiled a secret smile of pleasure as she withdrew from

the chamber, satisfied that things would continue well enough

without any further encouragement on her part. She felt relief

flood her ancient body in ways that even she had to admit implied

the weight of her years. The thought that Perfume was finally in

good hands gave her a sense of peace she had not known in many

years, but at the same time she felt slightly deflated as though the

cost of her victory had been nearly too high by a substantial

measure.

It was with only mild surprise that she found Nabiki and

Shampoo waiting for outside the gymnasium, and from the look

her other Daughter-in-law gave her there was little doubt that

Nabiki knew everything that had transpired as though she had

physically taped it.

"So," she said casually, "The crisis is passed, I take it?"

"You may assume so," Cologne attempted a serious front, but

Nabiki's smile showed that no one was being fooled at the

moment.

"I have only one question," the middle Tendo daughter stated,

"Just how much of that was really necessary to save Perfume's

life?"

"All of it," Cologne said with matter-of-fact precision, then added

almost as an after thought, "Except maybe for the last two

minutes near the end, which were not precisely needed to ease my

child past the crisis point, but did seem to make her life more

worthy of living."

"Great Grandmother is sneaky," Shampoo grinned broadly, her

tone implying much approval.

"Thank you," Cologne remarked, "I suppose I should go see if

Sansenin will be all right or not. He may be an enemy, but this

day he has done the Amazons a great service by forcing my

Daughter-in-law to confront the issues she has until now been

avoiding."

"Well, if it makes Perfume happy, I suppose I could ignore this,"

Nabiki said with equal casualness, "Just mind how far you take

your manipulative arts around my family unit. If anyone's going

to be pulling the strings around here in the future it will be yours

truly."

"I could hardly imagine a more worthy successor," Cologne

actually smiled, "You managed to improvise that containment

spell most competently. There might yet be hope for you, if you

continue to train with the same enthusiasm."

"I wouldn't have even known what to do without Sham-chan,"

Nabiki took her wife's hand and smiled, "We do make a pretty

good team ne?"

Shampoo's smile was dazzling as she sighed, "Airen finally see

this. Perfume always told you it so."

"I should try listening more often," Nabiki nodded, heaving a

sigh, "Well, I guess it's safe to say that Ucchan and Perfume won

the match. Even Sansenin will have to concede, once they thaw

him out... unless his partner decides he's so Kawai that she can

put him among the rest of her trophies."

"That girl is a strange one," Cologne heaved a sigh, "But I am

curious where these two received their more advanced training.

If I did not know better I would almost swear that they had

Amazon influence."

"Another mystery to solve," Nabiki sighed, "I'll file it with the

others..."

"Nab-chan!" they heard Ranma call out as they turned to see him

helping a limping Tatewaki Kuno while the rest of their friends

filed down the corridor in a much subdued manner.

"Ranchan," Nabiki smiled as Shampoo moved partway towards

Ranma and said, "Ranma help friends out, is good sign that boy

make good Amazon. Too bad you no girl or you be great

Amazon leader."

"That's something to look forward to," Ranma sniffed before

surrendering Tatewaki to his sister. He approached Nabiki with

a serious look in his eyes then very quietly asked, "Perfume...?"

"She'll live," Nabiki returned his smile tenfold, "And I think

Ukyo's going to have her hands full for the next hour or so at

least."

"I'm not surprised," Ranma said with a knowing smirk,

"Somehow after all of this I don't think she's going to be making

as many protests about Sham-chan's cousin. As long as she's

happy, I'm happy. I just hope she still remembers..."

"There's no way she'll forget about you, Ranma-kun," Nabiki

nodded seriously before looking at the rest of her friends and

saying, "What say we all get dressed and get out of here, maybe

go someplace to celebrate our victory. When Ucchan and

Perfume get done in there they can join us and be toasted as the

heroes of the hour."

"Sounds good to me, Oneechan," Akane smiled, still hugging

Ryoga, "But first I think Keiko..."

"Right," Nabiki sniffed as she eyed the Vulture, "That goes

without saying, right Kei-chan?"

The Vulture squawked its reply as Kodachi smiled at her and

said, "Don't worry, I'm sure we can find something for you to

wear, Darling."

"You understood what she said?" Ryoga asked with a non-

plussed expression.

"It's isn't all that hard," Kodachi replied, "I've always had a way

with animals, and besides...Kei-chan makes it seem so easy."

She brought her lips up to kiss the beak of the vulture while a

recovered Tatewaki looked in dismay at his sister then shook his

head and murmured, "Nothing should surprise me about you,

dear sister, but this...is something new even by your strange

definitions."

"Not half as strange as this," Kodachi turned and gave her brother

a kiss on his cheek, which astounded him every bit as much as

though she had slapped him, "Thank you for coming to our

rescue. Akane and I are most appreciative of your heroics."

"Just don't get too carried away about it," Ryoga growled,

causing Akane to smile at him in tacit approval.

"By the way," Nabiki said, "Did anybody see where that Mousse

character got off to?"

"Afraid not," Ranma shrugged, "After he fell into the water I sort

of had other things on my mind. Unless he's drowned he

probably ran off somewhere to nurse his wounds and plot more

trouble."

"Is great," Shampoo grimaced, "Something else for Shampoo and

Cousin look forward to."

Nabiki smiled indulgently at her Chinese bride. Though it was

unlikely that Shampoo would ever be able to master her Japanese

to the same extent as Mousse or the Elder, she had improved

somewhat from the way she had talked when she first arrived in

Nerima. She realized that there was still so much she did not

know about the Amazon, but with Ranma's tacit support and

approval she could look forward to a long in-depth study of the

subject, and somehow she felt certain that the next few years

would be anything but dull as she explored the bounds of their

tentative five-way marriage...

Meanwhile at the edge of the pool a figure crawled out from the

ice as water flowed off its back in an almost poetic fashion. It

made a strange noise that would have meant nothing to a human

ear, but had it been properly interpreted would have translated as,

"I'll get you someday for this outrage, Kuonji...!"

Derek smiled as he turned away from the monitor and said,

"Well, they seem to be making some progress on this timeline. I

think we can safely afford to turn our attentions back to the

problems in continuities 435687 and 379443, don't you?"

"Not so fast," his feminine companion remarked, "It's true that

some progress has been made on this timeline, but it has yet to

prove itself fully viable. Never forget the reason why the

Saotome boy was cursed in the first place..."

"I know, I know," Derek sighed, "You only have to view the total

cluster suck on 574632 if you want an example of what happens

when no one winds up with a Jusenkyo curse. That boy simply

does not know the first thing about competently making wishes."

"And your point is that this other one does?" Serena pleasantly

countered, "True her intelligence makes her a formidable

protagonist, but she is making far too many allies of the chief

antagonists who helped to train the boy to be the best fighter in

Japan, not just the Nerima province. As she is she could never

withstand all of the challenges that are to come..."

"Are you so certain of this?" Derek asked with a smile, but he

meant the question seriously, "What say we look ahead to

precisely how she deals with the next series of challenges brought

about by her own actions."

"If you think you can stand the disappointment," his companion

chuckled, "I'm game if you are."

"Fine," Derek declared, "But after this we tend to those other

problems pressing for our attention."

"You're the boss," Serena assured him as Derek mentally called

up a new image from the selfsame timeline and saw a new story

unfold in the province of Nerima...

Continued in the Next Series: "Nabiki 1/2: The Road Ronin"

Be there.

Comments/Criticisms/Exercises in Futility:

shadowmane

If you wish to check out my other works, Please check out my

Fanfiction webpage at: . or

it's mirror site at: ~

All related chapters of this series can be found there along with my

other works.


	17. Chapter 17

Nabiki 1/2

(Series Two)

The Road Ronin

Chapter 17, Part 1.

By

Jim Robert Bader

(Inspired by the works of Rumiko Takahashi;

All rights to her, the publishers & distributors

Of the Ranma 1/2 series.

(Based on the Altered Destinies Series by

Wade Tritschler and Others;

Some Characters and Situations were created by me,

The rest is shared Fanfiction, so please don't sue me)

"Come back here!" cried Nabiki as she chased her Master across

the yard, followed by an angry mob of crazed school girls who

themselves were after the panty thief (and not coincidentally

Nabiki in the present form she was wearing), "I'm not letting you

get away with this!"

"That's some kind of gratitude you're showing to your master,

girl!" Happosai called back over his shoulder, "Can't an man be

allowed a few indulgences at my age?"

"Not if it means you make off with half the lingerie of every girl

in Furinkan High!" Nabiki growled as he made as concerted

effort to catch up with the fleet footed Founder of the Anything

Goes school of Martial Arts, "And implicate me in the process!"

"Oh come now!" Happosai said cheerfully, "A little panty raid

never hurt anyone, and it might even brighten your reputation

with the ladies."

"I don't need to brighten my reputation any more than it already

is!" Nabiki said hotly, glancing over his shoulder before

increasing his pace, "If anything that's a key part of my problem!"

"Oh posh," Happosai scoffed, "You see every little obstacle or

challenge as a problem, girl, that's your problem in a nutshell!

Aren't you always telling your boy, Ranma, that there are no

problems, only opportunities just waiting to be exploited?"

"Exploit this, Gramps," Nabiki snarled as he kicked up a loose

tile off the roof they had just vaulted onto and caught it with one

hand then threw it towards Happosai, catching the bag of stolen

lingerie and propelling the spry little man forward.

"Whee!" the old man cried gleefully as he turned the added

momentum to his advantage and vaulted the space between that

building and another that would have been difficult to reach by a

conventional leap, "That's the idea, my boy! Help your old

master on his way! What a fine apprentice you are turning out to

be..."

Nabiki halted at the edge of the roof and just stared in dismay

before shaking his head and saying, "I don't believe that guy! He

really must be possessed by some kind of demon..."

"KANEDA-SAMA!"

"Oops," Nabiki glanced down, seeing two groups of women

converging on the building he was on, with some actually scaling

the sides to get close to the roof, which prompted Nabiki to

decide that it would be a very good idea to be somewhere else at

the moment.

The way back towards the school did not look like a safe bet, but

the Tendo dojo was only a few blocks away, and if he could just

make it there and find some hot water his...or rather her problems

would be as good as over. Nabiki turned and leaped towards the

nearest safe route then vaulted down to a lower house, cut

through one yard then vaulted onto a low fence and started

running along the edge, only two blocks away from the safety of

his family home.

Unfortunately his movements had not gone unnoticed and a new

group of eager young females came running up to join the chase,

making Nabiki wonder if this was what Major Idols had to go

through on a daily basis, and him without even so much as one

recording contract to his credit. Worse still, when he risked

looking back over his shoulder, he found that some of the girls

were running along the fence after him as though they had

practiced doing that for many days with precisely this purpose in

mind, and-worse still-they were gaining!

Nabiki silently damned the curse for giving him this male form

that some women found so irresistible. More than ever he was

convinced that the curse must have some element of magnetic

attraction that was effective on both sexes, regardless of

preference or orientation. Almost a hundred women were now

joining in a pursuit that began with only a score, and if he did not

find a quick exit from this situation it looked as if a gang rape

were not to be ruled out of the question...

Of a sudden he saw his pursuers break off the chase while others

halted in place on both the fence and either side of it. Nabiki

turned to look at the figure that stood directly in his path and at

once knew why these crazed women were suddenly acting so

timid.

Shampoo stood on one leg balanced effortlessly upon the fence

and giving them all a very cross expression. She did not have her

Bonbori at the moment, but that did not necessarily mean they

were not close to hand, and from the expression she was wearing

it was more than likely they would appear at any moment.

"Husband," she said in heavily accented Japanese, "What is

meaning of this?"

Several girls began to back away, others turned and fled,

knowing full well what an angry Shampoo could do to the lot of

them had she a mind to. Nabiki just stood his ground

contemplating retreat but knowing better than to attempt it.

Shampoo turned her scowl towards the other girls as if only just

noticing them then said, "Leave or else. No bother Airen."

The crowd began to melt away like mist until only Shampoo and

Nabiki remained, still balancing on the fence. Shampoo

continued to scowl Nabiki's way while he acted like a little boy

caught doing something naughty. At last Nabiki said,

"Uh...Sham-chan, I can explain this..."

Shampoo sighed, "No need. Shampoo know silly school girls

think they can take what does not belong to them. Shampoo

sometime have to remind them they no have business with

Airen," she patted her own abdomen meaningfully and said,

"Shampoo have only one Airen, and Airen knows this."

Nabiki smiled at his wife, "Yeah, I know it, and I'm sorry if I

annoyed you. Thanks anyway for bailing me out of this mess."

"What cause chase this time?" Shampoo inclined her head, "You

change at bad time?"

"Happosai," Nabiki replied, which was all the answer Shampoo

needed.

"Aiii! Him again!" Shampoo said in a mixture of dismay and

annoyance, "Old Demon no take personal things from young girls

again?"

"It's an obsession with him," Nabiki said, "Worse still he got me

splashed, so I started chasing him when the sea of raging

hormones took notice."

"Why Ranma or Ucchan no come to aid?" Shampoo asked, "No

sense you in trouble?"

"They're probably still in class, where I ought to be," Nabiki

sighed, "Look, let's continue this indoors. I feel awfully stupid

looking like this in broad daylight."

"You no look stupid to Shampoo," Shampoo grinned, and now

Nabiki knew she had been forgiven as her wife had that look

again that promised no short bath was in the offing.

It would do little good to persuade Shampoo that it was the

wrong time of the day to get into that sort of thing, so Nabiki

never even made the effort. She just smiled in resignation as the

newlyweds entered the dojo and sought out the main House. As

usual Kasumi somehow contrived to be there in time to greet

them with her usual cheerfulness, though her eyes held more than

sisterly warmth for the now masculine Nabiki.

"Ohiyo, Neechan," she said with no hint of the sensualism she

most probably was contemplating, "A warm bath has already

been drawn for you. I was going to use it myself, but I had a

sense that you would be coming home early when Shampoo-chan

went out to greet you."

"Thanks, Oneechan," Nabiki smiled in spite of feeling his usual

unease at the regard Kasumi was paying to his male body. It had

been increasingly an issue with them of late, though of late

Kasumi had been making an honest effort at controlling her

incestuous urges. It was more disturbing to Nabiki at how his

body sometimes reacted to Kasumi when he was made acutely

aware of her attention.

Shampoo said nothing, and Nabiki wondered if she were

suffering another bout of intense jealousy over this, but instead

Nabiki saw her looking thoughtful, which was hardly an

improvement. Seeing no help or hindrance that way, Nabiki

turned another glance towards his sister and said, "Where's

Perfume at?"

"She's helping her Great Grandmother set up the restaurant in

time for when Ukyo-san gets home from school," Kasumi

answered, "I imagine she'll be on her way to the school a few

minutes early...you know how she hates to wait for her Airen."

Nabiki smiled at that. Perfume's attachment to the Okonomiyaki

chef was becoming public knowledge in spite of many efforts to

keep the matter private, unlike his own marriage to Shampoo,

which was considered conventional by all but those who knew

the truth about Nabiki's false identity as Kaneda. Ukyo could not

legally marry Perfume in Japan, but she had accepted the Chinese

vows of Joketsuzoku that made the matter legal in the eyes of

Perfume's people. It had been a hard struggle, of course, with

much inner turmoil and handwringing, but in the end Ukyo had

given in-not to pressure or tradition but rather her own growing

affection for the perky Amazon who had once been the chief

Enforcer of Joketsuzoku.

Trying to explain their actual relationship was difficult with

outsiders, but explaining that Ukyo was honor-bound to another

woman had been especially complicated when the matter came to

explaining Perfume to Ukyo's father. Nabiki had concocted a

convincing story to satisfy the older man and allay his suspicions,

but the reality was that Ukyo-like Nabiki herself-had two strong

commitments that equally commanded her attentions.

The common link for both of them, of course, was Ranma.

"Well," Nabiki sighed, "I hope she'll be discrete this time. It's

bad enough convincing people that Ucchan isn't a pervert

because she prefers masculine dress and won't strictly conform to

the school dress code. People still think she conned Per-chan

with her guy pose. Even Kuno's started making rambling

speeches about the perversity of women who eschew the

company of men for their own sex," he winced and added, "I

wonder if that means he's finally figured out the truth about

Kaneda?"

"Stupid boy no figure out," Shampoo snorted derisively, "He still

think you cunning sorcerer who use special charm to wind heart

of Shampoo. He think maybe other girls also under spell you

cast. No think Nabiki-Airen and Kaneda-Airen one and same or

he treat you same way, no torture you with poetry and roses."

Nabiki chuckled at that, "Yeah, but think of how much I've made

off those roses so far! They make dandy corsages, which reminds

me," he reached around behind his back and handed Shampoo a

lavender colored rose, "I saved one for a Science Experiment, and

this is the result. What do you think, is it you?"

Shampoo gasped as she took the purple flower in her hands and

stared at it, then compared the shade with her own odd hair color.

She looked at Nabiki again, then fixed the rose to her lapel and

smiled as broad a smile as anyone had ever seen upon the

beautiful face of his young bride from Joketsuzoku.

"Yep, it's you all right," Nabiki nodded, "I can report to

Gosunkugi that his efforts were successful, and worth ten times

what I paid him."

"Airen," Shampoo sighed in bliss.

"I..." Kasumi politely coughed to break the trance that was

starting to fall over them, then she picked up a canteen and said,

"You can use this if you would rather skip the bath? I'll see to it

you're not disturbed."

"Guess I'll have to figure some way to excuse myself from school

for the rest of the day," Nabiki chuckled, then winced as she felt a

tell-tale tap on her shoulder and said, "What do you want now,

you old..."

"You can waste your time with the Chinese cutie later," Happosai

said in totally indifference to the murderous glare Shampoo

fetched him, "Right now you have other exercises to do, and since

you've decided to skip the less meaningful portion of your

education..."

"It's not less meaningful," Nabiki whirled around, "I have a lot of

work to do if I'm going to maintain my grate-point-average, and

if I miss many more days like this I'm going to suffer a lot worse

than not being able to graduate on time! If you can't control those

Hentai urges, old man..."

"Tut, tut, girl," Happosai said as he fetched the canteen from

Kasumi and gave it a toss so that its contents splashed Kasumi

and turned him from male to female, "You don't need a diploma

to graduate from my school, you just have to survive the training,

and I'd much rather see you do it in this form."

"Why you...!" Nabiki started to lurch forward when she found

Happosai already attached to her chest like a refrigerator magnet,

"You-DIE!" Nabiki made a fist like a hammer and aimed it for

his head, but she should have known better, and would have if

she had been thinking with less emotion.

She suddenly found herself outside the House heading for the Koi

pond. Only by twisting her body at the last second was she able

to bring one hand down to catch the stone temple in passing and

use it to deflect her angle so that she landed on the opposite bank,

still mildly damp but entirely female.

She whirled around to meet her Master as he came sailing at her

like a love-crazed missile, (no doubt helped on his way by

Shampoo) but this time she managed to twist her body so that he

missed glomming onto her a second consecutive time, but

Happosai still bounded off the wall to strike a tree before vaulting

happily at her feet and looking up at her in his bright and cheerful

manner.

"Well, that was fun for a warm-up, but you've still got a ways to

go before I'm satisfied with you, Apprentice," he announced.

"Well, don't I feel special," Nabiki sniffed in withering contempt,

silently impugning the dignity of her father for having been so

quick to sign over his parental responsibilities to his aged

mentor, so great was his fear of Happosai returning him to

training status, along with her ex-Sensei, Saotome Genma.

"Right this way," the ancient founder of the Anything Goes

School said as he walked towards the dojo, "There's something I

want to show you, girl, that can further your training."

"Like I have any choice about it?" Nabiki asked rhetorically, but

followed dutifully in spite of her reservations. Happosai was

undeniably weird, but he did know a lot more about the art than

anyone except Cologne, and his training had helped to improve

her style considerably in the month-or-so since he arrived to

make life that much more interesting for everyone in Nerima.

Training with him was bound to make her a more formidable

fighter, if his methods did not kill or drive her crazy first! Living

three hundred years was a heck of a recommendation for any

Martial Artist, let alone a man who did everything possible to

insure he had no shortage of enemies to train against. The way

her life was heading it seemed like a very good idea for Nabiki to

copy at least some part of this methodology, if only to insure that

she lived to see her graduation from Furinkan High

School...assuming the fates allowed her to last out the semester...

"Man," Ranma winced, "That was a tough Math Quiz! I sure

hope I did all right or Mom will ground me for sure!"

"Hey, I'm sure you did all right, Ranchan," Ukyo said

encouragingly, "Nab-chan and I grilled you hard enough for

something to penetrate that thick skull of yours, if only by

osmosis."

"Har-de-har!" Ranma grimaced, "And I suppose you aced it?

You're usually pretty good at this math stuff."

"Have to be if I want to stay in business," Ukyo replied, "Only

I'm not as sharp at calculus as Nabiki, and you're better than me

at Geometry, so that makes us even."

"Think so?" Ranma smiled, "Well, Geometry's got some basic

math in it, but it's pretty much second nature for me. I don't

understand logarithms, but I can figure out tangential angles and

stuff like that. I use something like it in my Martial Arts

training."

"A natural Savant," Ukyo smiled as she patted his shoulder and

leaned against him in her affection, "My iinazuke isn't a total loss

for you're education."

Ranma smiled in spite of feeling awkward at Ukyo's public

display of affection. It was not that he minded her presence-far

from it! But Ukyo still tended to dress like a guy during school

hours, preferring the Boy's uniform to that of the girl's dresses.

Most people knew that Ukyo was most definitely female (and to

emphasize the point she had stopped taping down her breasts,

which gave her a noticeable bulge around the chest area), but

from a distance she could still be mistaken for a guy, and having

another guy glom onto him like that was definitely not something

Ranma wanted for his public image. Even Nabiki in guy form

never made the mistake of putting him in the spotlight.

"Uh oh," Ranma suddenly caught a shadow looming over them

and said, "Speaking of which, here comes your other beloved

intended..."

"Huh?" Ukyo followed his glance just a fraction too slow and

was thus surprised when a pair of arms latched firmly around her

in an open hug that showed no hesitation in displaying her

assailant's affection.

"Airen!" Perfume cried happily, "Perfume so glad to see you!

You come home from school soon?"

Now it was Ukyo's turn to look mildly uncomfortable about the

image she presented to the public, though there was no doubt at

all about the gender of the Amazon girl treating her to such a

possessive embrace, "Perfume...haven't I warned you about doing

that around other people?"

"I very sorry, Airen," the girl said insincerely as she hopped

around to where Ukyo could see her more fully. A not very tall

girl with hip-length long brown silky hair, wearing a pale pink

silk outfit that accentuated her curves while revealing less skin

than regular feminine attire, she was all smiles and radiant joy

bound up in one package, the kind of girl any man would be

proud to claim for his own, and utterly devoted to Ukyo as her

beloved Wife-Husband.

"What are you doing here?" Ukyo asked, aware that she was

blushing in spite of her desire not to show it, "I thought you and

Cologne were setting things up in the restaurant."

"Great Grandmother say Perfume can go see Airen," Perfume

said brightly, "She take care of business until Airen get home to

serve public."

"All by herself?" Ukyo remarked with a raised eyebrow. Elder

Cologne was certainly more than capable of running the

restaurant on her own, but it was unusual for her to dismiss the

help around noontime.

"Ah," Perfume hesitated, "Perfume have...other reason leave

Restaurant early. Great Grandmother hire new help. He work for

room and board, no make trouble for Perfume and Airen."

"She hired somebody without consulting me?" Ukyo asked then

saw the nervous expression Perfume wore and had a sudden

suspicion, which she voiced, "Wait a minute...you don't mean...?"

Shampoo reluctantly nodded, "Mousse. He now work as

busboy..."

"MOUSSE?" both Ukyo and Ranma said together.

Perfume reluctantly nodded, "Great Grandmother work deal, he

call off challenging Airen for Perfume. Elder say he trustworthy

as long as she keep eye on him..."

"Perfume," Ukyo said slowly, "He wants to kill me and take you

away! I'm his rival, after all, and he's already made dozens of

attempts on my life..."

"Mousse very stubborn and stupid," Perfume said, "But he know

he not good enough to beat Airen. Besides, is old saying among

Amazons: keep friends close..."

"And your enemies closer," Ranma finished for her, "I guess she

figures he'll be easier to manage if she keeps him where she can

see him, and he won't be as able to plot trouble if he spends most

of the day where you can find him. Can't say I approve of the

idea, though..."

"I sure as hell don't approve!" Ukyo growled, "That half-blind

obsessive-compulsive has been making my life Hell ever since

we met..."

"Yeah, I agree with that," Ranma nodded, "Only I'm not so sure

he's been as serious about it lately. I mean, you're good, Ucchan,

but he's pretty good, too, and you can only get lucky just so

often..."

"And what's that supposed to mean?" Ukyo glared at him

suspiciously, "You think he could take me if he really went all

out?"

"It's a definite possibility," he replied, "You've got to admit that.

Maybe he's starting to come around to see the light..."

"And pigs fly," Perfume snorted.

"If you give one a good kick," Ranma said, then shrugged,

"Sorry, bad sports joke.

"So what are you saying, Ranchan?" Ukyo asked, "That I should

ignore what this guy has done and let bygones be bygones?"

"Oh yeah, that'll work," Ranma sniffed, "I just mean that these

Amazons live by a code...back me up on this, Per-chan, Mousse

has to prove himself worthy of being your Airen as well

as...um...remove the obstacle in his path."

"So now I'm an obstacle," Ukyo snorted, "Whatever became of

not wanting to hurt me?"

"Rules only allow you be defeated if you no take wife and be

Airen," Perfume said simply, "When you no take Perfume you

only be obstacle. When you...accept Perfume as wife...Mousse

no have other option."

"Great," Ukyo sniffed, "So now he has to kill me to have you. So

much for options."

Perfume looked at Ukyo seriously, "Airen...you regret? Perfume

know you no want her at beginning..."

"Hey, we've already been over that," Ukyo said, "Whatever I said

or did in the past, it's over. I may not have wanted another

relationship...Kami know I didn't need the complication,

but...like it or not, you're a part of my life now and I've learned to

live with that. So will Mousse, even if I have to bash it into his

skull repeatedly until he gets the message."

"Why does he keep after you?" Ranma asked, "That's what I don't

understand. If somebody ever told me to take a hike..."

"Like Kodachi?" Ukyo asked with a sidelong smirk.

"Ah," Ranma hesitated, "Okay, good example. Thing is I finally

did learn to get over her, and now I've got four other women in

my life, two of them I'm engaged to, and I don't need any more

distractions."

"Mousse," Perfume sighed, "He not bad by nature, was time

Perfume felt very sorry. He get picked on by other boys and

made fun of by Amazon girls our age. His eyesight very bad, no

see well close up, see better at longer distance..."

"Farsighted," Ukyo nodded, "A form of Astigma, which is why

he wears those thick glasses."

"That also might explain why he uses weapons he can throw at a

distance," Ranma noted, "Up close is a different matter, which is

why he must have studied Crane fighting, which uses distance as

an advantage."

"You make good observation," Perfume nodded with approval,

"Airen Concubine good match for Ucchan. Strong Warrior, see

style of Mousse and know how counter. Same with Nabiki-chan,

only she see pattern like Great Grandmother, know how to fight

on instinct."

"Yeah, Ranchan and Nab-chan are quite a combination," Ukyo

sniffed, then sighed, "How did I ever wind up in this five-way

engagement thing? My best friend from ten years ago is engaged

to my iinazuke and is married to another woman who just

happens to be the adopted cousin to the woman I married. If I

were selling this to a publisher they'd never buy it. I have trouble

believing it myself most of the time, but if somebody tries

pinching me, I'll brain him!"

"Don't look at me," Ranma said innocently, as he turned back to

Perfume, "You were saying?"

Perfume resumed her explanation as they reentered the school

building and began to wander through the corridors with other

students who were hurrying back from their lunch break.

"Mousse want acceptance by tribe, he try hard to be best male

Warrior in village, make Amazon girls take him seriously. Think

Perfume maybe want be friend when Shampoo cousin reject him.

He try impress us, make himself useful, but many times he get in

way. Shampoo-cousin finally make him leave alone, but he just

try harder on Perfume. Maybe he afraid to admit failure, think

win Perfume other Amazons see he great fighter."

"What, like a trophy wife?" Ranma asked, "He can't be working

himself so hard just because of that!"

"Why not?" Ukyo asked, "I slaved for ten years training myself to

prove I was good enough that I wouldn't need any man to protect

me. I suppose if I'd known you when I was six I might have

trained just as hard for the other reason."

"I don't know," Ranma said, giving Perfume a side-glance,

"Maybe I'm mistaken, but I kind of think the guy really likes

you."

"I no see why," Perfume shrugged, "Perfume no give him good

cause to like. No be as rough with him as Shampoo-cousin, but I

try discourage Mousse, tell him no want, but he no listen."

"I guess the only way I'll ever get him to leave me alone is if he

finally does give up on you, Per-chan," Ukyo sighed, "Which

means finding him somebody else he can care for."

"Good luck there," Ranma snorted, "I'm still trying to get Kuno to

stop harassing Akane. Doesn't help much that she and Keiko are

over at his house visiting Kodachi nearly every day now."

"I thought he was taking a liking to Keiko-chan," Ukyo sniffed,

"Talk about barking up the wrong tree. Well, here's our next

class, Ranchan, and for once we're not late back from lunch

break."

"Hope the teacher doesn't have a coronary," Ranma nodded.

"You might as well go back to the Restaurant, Per-chan," Ukyo

told her Amazon bride, "We won't be completely off for another

two hours."

"That okay," Perfume nodded, "Great Grandmother no need, and

Perfume no want be around Mousse without Airen. Perfume

wait until school over."

"You might consider enrolling," Ranma said, "You're pretty

smart, so you'd do better than most of the other students."

"Perfume think maybe that good idea," Perfume noted, "Talk to

Great Grandmother, she maybe see to enrolling me as foreign

exchange student."

"Great," Ukyo grinned, "With any luck we could even get the

same classes. Shampoo was going to enroll with us until she

found out about her pregnancy. Well, catch you later, and try

staying out of trouble, okay Per-chan?"

Perfume raised a hand and smiled, "Perfume promise she behave.

No hurt fly unless he bite first."

"Just leave their hands if anybody tries getting fresh," Ranma

said as he and Ukyo continued onto class, and then he smiled as

he leaned closer to her and said, "You really like her a lot, don't

you?"

"Yeah," Ukyo smiled a bit crookedly, "She's great. You jealous?"

"What do I look like?" Ranma snorted, "Some love-sick jealousy

crazed fool like Kuno? I know what you've got with her is

special, but you're still my iinazuke."

Ukyo felt a warm glow of pleasure as she said, "You're one in a

million, Ranchan."

"I'll settle for being man enough to survive the two of you,"

Ranma chuckled, "It's bad enough with me, Nabiki and

Shampoo. Talk about interesting lives..."

"Yeah," Ukyo sniffed in lopsided amusement, "Tell me about

it..."

As they entered the dojo Nabiki reflexively scanned the insides

with her greatly enhanced sensitivity, finding everything in place

as it usually was. There was no sign of anything out of place, so

she asked her ancient Mentor, "All right...what's this you want to

show me?"

"You tell me," the little gnome-like man replied, "There's

something different. Can you tell me what it is?"

Nabiki sighed, knowing it was futile showing her irritation to the

Master of her school. She might not respect him much as a

human being, but when it came to the art he was unquestionably

her superior, so she settled herself to relax and focus her mind

and perceptions. Whatever he wanted her to find was important,

so she did as he requested and began to examine the entire dojo

on more than one level of existence.

Physically she could see little that was out of place. The dojo had

a certain feel about it that denoted great age and dignity, almost

like an elderly member of the family that had taken many

punches over the years yet still somehow managed to remain in

one place, much like Happosai himself (only without the Hentai

parts). You could breathe the air and sense the weight of many

years in the timbers and floorboards, the arrangement of the

sparse furnishings and workout equipment and the shrine at one

end with the Iroha principles of the Anything Goes school spelled

out for all to see. Her family dojo certainly felt strangely

comfortable and familiar three months after her return from ten

years on the open road. It was starting to feel like a part of her,

the home she had been missing for so long, so familiar it was like

a phantom from her childhood dreams made flesh. It...

No, wait, there was something out of place here. She could feel it

somehow, some indefinable sense of something that did not fit

the pattern. Her brief scan of the room itself failed to turn up a

clue, so she opened her thoughts to perceiving the currents of

energy about the room, seeing the translucent wavy lines of force

that flowed throughout the dojo like a living pulse, and-sure

enough-she sensed the irregularity in that flow. She followed

her senses to the source of the disturbance and found it

emanating from a single point at the far end of the chamber.

Nabiki walked slowly over to that area, letting her intuition guide

her until she knelt down and moved her hand over the

floorboards, then paused over one board that felt slightly out of

place from the others. She used her fingers to lightly explore

around the edges of the board, then pressed against a certain spot

and was rewarded by a slight clicking noise, and suddenly the

board raised up by a few millimeters. With some care she was

able to pry it open to reveal a hidden cubbyhole in which she

found a scroll and several coins of indeterminate minting. She

jostled them a bit until she recognized them as foreign currency,

then turned a questioning look to the Master, who beamed at her

a wide smile of approval.

"Good," he said, "You sensed the discrepancy. What did it feel

like?"

"I don't know," Nabiki frowned, "It's hard to describe...just a

sense of something being out of place..."

"Good call," he smiled, nodding to the scroll, "And that?"

She carefully undid the ties that held it rolled up then carefully

unrolled it, sensing great age in the silk-parchment paper, and a

moment later she was staring at a chart displaying the human

body with many lines and characters inscribed delineating

various nerves and points of interest.

Nabiki read the name on the chart and said, "Anything Goes

Pressure Point Techniques?"

"One of the rarest treasures of the Anything Goes School,"

Happosai revealed, "I had it copied a couple hundred years ago

when I gained possession of the Moxibustion scroll. What you

have there are the secret pressure points that can show you how

to cripple or disable any foe with just a touch. With this in your

hands you never need fear for the Cat Tongue or any of the other

special attack centers that old bag might use against you."

"Master," Nabiki said in awe, and for once she actually meant it

in respect, "I don't know what to say..."

"Study it carefully and commit these points to memory,"

Happosai replied, "Then hide it back in the same spot. It's too

dangerous to leave lying around. Anyone who uses it might put

it to evil ends. Since you are my appointed heir it is only fair that

I leave this legacy to you and your iinazuke."

"Thank you," Nabiki said as she rolled the scroll up and retied it

before slipping it into her belt, "Guess I'd better be careful where

I put this. I'll learn the techniques then teach them to Ranma."

Happosai nodded his approval, "I thought it'd be a better idea to

teach you first since you're the only one smart enough to

appreciate the danger. Just don't do anything with these

techniques that might come back to haunt you. It's easy to take a

power such as this for granted."

"I can imagine," Nabiki shuddered, remembering the effects of

the Cat Tongue.

"The scrolls been here for most of the last century since I first

created that catch-hold," Happosai continued, "I just put the coins

in because I knew you'd sense them. You've got a real nose for

money, and by following your intuition it shows me how much

you're learning."

"Glad to know I meet with your approval," Nabiki snorted, this

time meaning it in a sarcastic light.

"I'd consider that a pretty dubious distinction myself," another

voice observed, causing Nabiki and Happosai to turn and see

someone else reclining against the frame of the dojo while

favoring them with a nonchalant expression.

"Saki?" Nabiki reacted in surprise, most particularly as she had

not heard the pink-haired Undercover Vice Cop approach the

dojo.

"Honeybunch!" Happosai cried in delight as he launched himself

at the other girl, "Come to Poppa-!"

Saki moved too quickly to intercept the ancient Master,

interposing her fist in the path his face was taking and stopping

him cold. She withdrew the hand and growled, "Back off,

Gramps, before I haul you in for violating the morals code!"

"What are you doing here?" Nabiki asked as she approached the

other woman at a more leisurely pace."

"Wish I could say this was a social visit," Saki smiled at her in

genuine affection, "This is the first time I've had a chance to see

the insides of your infamous dojo. Truth is I'm here unofficially,

but it has to do with the business."

Nabiki nodded warily. There was only one kind of business that

could interest Asamiya Saki or the people she worked for.

Saki saw her caution and said, "Don't worry, this isn't that sort of

business. Actually I came in person to deliver a warning.

Something up on the grape vine and I thought you ought to know

about it."

Nabiki perked up her ears, "I'm listening."

"Like I once told you, I've been keeping an eye on you and

watching your progress from a distance," Saki replied, "My

superiors are not as yet concerned with your dealings since you

actually seem to be doing some good with your Nabiki/Kaneda-

Sempai act, scaring away the pushers and pimps just like you

promised. Unfortunately that seems to have earned you the

wrong sort of attention from other quarters. You ever hear of a

group called the Road Warriors?"

"What, like the movie?" Nabiki asked, picturing Mel Gibson.

"Somewhat," Saki replied, "Only these guys are the genuine

article. They're a Motor gang of strong arm thugs and

professional muscle that have earned a hairy reputation for

brutality in the short time they've been in existence. We've been

tracking their movements since they were founded but so far

haven't been able to nail them on anything but misdemeanors.

They hire themselves out to gangs who can afford to pay big

bucks for their protection and have a reputation for ruthlessness

that's made them a feared name in the Underworld, but they're

not officially linked with the Tongs, Triads or Yakuza. They're

way too high profile."

"Okay," Nabiki said, "So far it's been interesting, but what does it

have to do with me?"

"Only the fact that their leader has proclaimed that he's

personally out to get you," Saki replied, "Goes by the name of the

Road Ronin, and that's all we know about him...except..."

"Except?" Nabiki prodded.

"Except that he's a student of Two-Gun Nine-Millimeter fighting-

slash-Martial Arts," Saki explained, "And someone's paying him

a lot of yen to take you down or drive you out of Nerima. The

people you've inconvenienced have decided to strike back by

hiring someone from outside of their organization, and he's

deadly enough to have a chance if you're not on your guard

against high-powered ambush."

"I see," Nabiki said quietly, "Thank you for the warning. I knew

I was stirring up trouble for myself when I started trying to clean

up Furinkan..."

"This doesn't just concern you," Saki said with a sobriety that

was chilling, "Remember what I once told you before about not

being able to protect everyone you love and care for? Well, the

Ronin's MO suggests a tendency to send a challenge message to

his intended victims by killing or injuring someone close to the

victim, such as a friend or a family member, maybe even a loved

one."

"What?" Nabiki gasped, suddenly feeling her body temperature

drop by several degrees.

Saki just nodded and said, "School won't be out for another hour,

but my best guess is that Furinkan is the perfect place from

which to strike in ambush, right as your iinazuke, sister and

friends get out from class. If I were you I'd hurry over there just

in case they need you."

"I'll leave right away," Nabiki said, then gave Saki a studied look

before saying, "You coming?"

"I'd love to," Saki shook her head, "But I think somebody ought

to remain here, just in case. This is the next most logical place to

strike, and I've been after these guys long enough to know how

they think. I'm offering your family and House my protection."

"What will this cost me?" Nabiki asked, then smiled as she said,

"Never mind. Thanks, I don't know what I've ever done for you

to deserve this."

"You've tried to make a difference," Saki nodded, "That's

payment enough. Better get going, and keep your ears peeled. If

the Warriors make their strike it's bound to be loud, hard and

aggressive. The Ronin likes a good show, and he can make as

grand an entrance as a major Rock Idol. That's the one hope you

have of seeing him in time to defeat him."

"I'll remember that," Nabiki turned and handed the scroll to

Happosai, "Better hold onto this for me, Gramps, I wouldn't want

to lose it."

"Just go do what you have to, my girl," Happosai waved the

scroll pleasantly, "I'll stay here with the cutie and..."

"Watch where you put your hands," Saki noted in a tone that

dripped acid.

"Party pooper," Happosai growled in undertone, "That's what's

wrong with kids these days, no respect for their elders..."

Continued.

Comments/Criticism/Tips on Japanese Automechanics:

shadowmane

The new cycle has begun, on to the real challenge!

Nabiki 1/2

The Road Ronin

(Series Two)

Chapter 17, Part 2.

by

Jim Robert Bader

Inspired by the Works of Rumiko Takahashi;

All rights go to her, the publishers and distributors

Of the Ranma 1/2 Series.

(Based on the Altered Destinies series by

Wade Tritschler and Others;

Some characters and situations were created by me,

The rest is shared Fanfiction, so please don't sue me)

"Per-chan," Ukyo said softly to her companion, "Would you mind

answering a very personal question?"

Perfume turned to look at Ukyo with a questioning expression,

but she merely smiled and said, "May ask me anything you like,

Airen. Perfume no mind sharing what personal with Ucchan."

Ukyo leaned forward to rest her head upon her knees as she

studied the young woman beside her with frank regard then said,

"Do you mind telling me anything about your own family? I

mean the one that you were born into, not adopted. You say they

disowned you because of your special...problem?"

Perfume looked down at the grass that they were sitting upon

under the shade of a tree, her expression very sad as she replied,

"Mother no want to...disown Perfume...but she forced to do by

Elder of her family. Perfume weak as girl, very clumsy, no be

great warrior, only great embarrassment. It long time now, no

see mother except now and then at festivals. Perfume have

younger sister now...no see but one time. Perfume...very sad

when think about."

"What's your sister's name?" Ukyo asked, feeling very sorry that

she had brought the whole thing up as the pain in her

companion's voice made it clear how sensitive was this subject.

"Mu-Ske," Perfume replied, "She eight...maybe go on nine years,

show great promise as warrior, no be embarrassment to family.

Perfume hope she be happy, make mother happy."

"I'm surprised," Ukyo remarked, "I thought China had a one-

child per couple policy."

Perfume sniffed at that, "That law what Communists try impose,

but Amazons control information we give to government, no have

to be too accurate. We small village, need to maintain numbers.

No every family have strong girl child, and it hard when young

men leave for larger cities. Joketsuzoku no grow in size for last

few generations, is big worry for Elders."

"I'm surprised the Communists haven't come down on you for

that," Ukyo remarked, then saw Perfume smile knowingly as

though sharing a private secret.

"Government fear Amazons with good reason," she said, "Long

as we keep low profile they no mind much, look other way on

small details. Think we only exceptions to rule? Why you think

population of China continue to grow if everybody only have one

child per couple? Shampoo have two younger sisters back in

village only two years younger...you no know this?"

"No," Ukyo's eyebrows rose to form a sharp angle, "I had no idea,

she never told us."

"Ranran and Linlin twins," Perfume remarked, "Big surprise to

parents, no want be obvious about good marriage. Shampoo

mother great warrior, have much respect. Father also good

fighter, but him more like Kasumi, take good care of house."

"So the men do the housework where you come from?" Ukyo

chuckled at the mental image of Ranma doing housework

wearing an apron like Kasumi.

"Parents share responsibilities," Perfume replied, "Have more

time that way to train as fighters. Shampoo parents fight all time,

make up even better. Many Amazons admire good marriage.

Shampoo want marriage like that for self...and so does Perfume."

The last part she said very softly in a wistful tone of voice as she

glanced sidelong at Ukyo, who just stared back with a troubled

expression.

"Per-chan," Ukyo said carefully, "You seem pretty confident that

I'm the one for you, but you know that there are some things I

can't do for you in a marriage."

"Perfume no mind," Perfume smiled, "Ukyo-chan good warrior,

kind heart, stand up for Perfume, I no have complaint."

"But still," Ukyo replied, "I can't give you children. I

mean...don't you want to have children some day?"

Perfume stiffened, and then she looked away, her expression tight

with emotion. She did not reply at first, which prompted Ukyo to

ask, "Maybe Ranma..."

"No," the word was spoken at the level of a whisper yet held a

note of infinite regret as the young Amazon murmured, "No even

with Ranma."

"I thought you liked Ranchan," Ukyo said with a note of concern,

"Is he...?"

"No," Perfume said more audibly, "It no him. Perfume like

Ranma very much...he good match for Ukyo-Airen, great fighter,

make good Concubine, give Ucchan strong children."

"But not you?" Ukyo asked in confusion, "Is it because he's a

guy?"

"No," Perfume sniffed in a tone more of amusement than offense,

"Perfume like boy Ranma very much because he is good man.

Perfume think him very handsome, almost as handsome as

Shampoo Airen, and maybe he make good pleasure in bed, ne?"

Ukyo lifted an eyebrow for very different reasons than before,

"You mean you wouldn't mind having a crack at him yourself?"

Perfume favored her with a sidelong expression that was pure

mischief, "Perfume no mind if Airen no mind. I never cheat on

you, no even with him or Nabiki-kun, unless you say it all right.

Is part of deal Shampoo Airen make with Great Grandmother, all

share in family group. Perfume never mind showing what she

know to Ranma if Ukyo-chan say it all right with Airen."

"Well then," Ukyo smiled, "Maybe this could work out, if Ranma

comes to like you."

"Perfume like him very well," Perfume replied, "But not want

him more than Airen. Airen should be first with Ranma,

Perfume understand that. I no make fuss you get first crack."

"I only wish it was that simple," Ukyo chuckled with a rueful

expression, "Getting to first base with Ranchan isn't as easy as it

might be with other boys. He's too damned noble and honorable

to think of fooling around before marriage, and since I've made

that stupid agreement with Nabiki it looks like neither one of us

is going to get anywhere until we can reconcile our mutual

engagements."

"One marry legal so fulfill obligations," Perfume said simply,

"Other be Mistress, still have Ranma for husband, and when he

husband to Airen he become husband to Perfume and Shampoo-

cousin. He give Airen strong babies to make Great Grandmother

much happy."

"But he could just as easily make you a proud mother, Sugar,"

Ukyo pointed out, then saw the sad expression return to her

companion's face as Perfume looked away with denial clear in

her expression. Feeling slightly confused and frustrated, Ukyo

asked, "Why not?"

"Perfume...no have children...ever," Perfume all but whispered.

"What?" Ukyo was confused, then suddenly she thought she

understood, "You mean...? Oh, Per-chan..."

"It...not like that," Perfume replied, her voice shuddering before

she took a breath and continued, "Airen know why Perfume

thought weak by other Amazons?"

Ukyo nodded, "Because you can't stand pain. Something you

were born with, so?"

"Perfume..." she took another breath then said, "I no can stand

pain...little hurts make Perfume feel like nerves on fire. Scratch

like jagged tear, bruise fell like burning. Great Grandmother

teach me to control some pain, to ignore some hurt, but no can

tune out all the way. Too much pain make Perfume feel like she

dying...maybe too much and I would die. What is most painful

thing any woman do, Ukyo-chan?"

It took a moment before Ukyo realized what the Amazon was

getting at, and then she gasped, "Have a baby?"

Perfume winced as she nodded, her lips perched as her eyes grew

moist, "Perfume follow Great Grandmother many years, see Elder

deliver babies. Amazon women feel great pain to make new

life... even best warriors scream and cry out. Perfume think they

being tortured by Gods to make babies, but always Mother is so

relieved when it all over. They have small baby who depend on

them, worth everything they suffer, so Amazon mothers say when

asked about later. They forget great pain, think only of reward.

Perfume think it blessing of Gods they no think of baby and

torment they suffer."

"But you're afraid it would be different for you, huh?" Ukyo said

softly.

"Yes," Perfume whispered, "Perfume know it different. Pain no

small thing, most probably kill me. Great Grandmother think so

too, so she tell Perfume no worry about making babies.

Responsibility for children fall on Shampoo-cousin. Is one way it

good thing Perfume no like other warriors in obligation to family,

one benefit of being Tribal Enforcer."

"Kami," Ukyo breathed, "I had no idea..."

"I know this," Perfume smiled in spite of the pain in her

expression, "Ukyo-Airen no need worry Perfume be less than

perfect wife. Perfume do everything for her Airen...but that one

thing I no can do. Airen no need worry that Perfume miss only

thing man can do, not woman. Perfume no need a man to be

happy, and I happy with Airen."

Ukyo felt incredibly humbled by that admission and whispered,

"I don't see why. I mean...why me? How can you be so sure I'm

right for you?"

Perfume's smile was as beautiful as everything else about her as

she looked Ukyo in the eyes and said, "Wo ah ni, Airen. You is

right for me. You very strong, very kind woman, no hate

Perfume for being weak girl, no even for being cursed. Perfume

feel very happy when I around you, feel like someone care,

someone there who think about Perfume in a good way. Perfume

watch Airen, even when Airen not know this. See much about

Airen that make Perfume very happy."

"But you've only known me for about a month," Ukyo pointed

out, "I've got my share of faults too, you know, and there's got to

be some thing about me you wouldn't like if you knew them."

Perfume shook her head and said, "What I know I love...what I

no know I will learn to love. That is Amazon way, and way is

good. Perfume loves her Airen, even parts that no be perfect."

Ukyo just leaned back against the trunk of the tree they were

under and said, "What am I going to do with you?" with a grin

that showed only a fraction how touched she was by the loyalty of

that statement.

"Well," Perfume smiled, taking Ukyo's rhetorical question at face

value, "If Airen want know..."

She leaned closer and whispered in the Okonomiyaki chef's ear,

which caused Ukyo's eyes to go wide as her face turned crimson

with embarrassment at the implications. She could not help

smiling in spite of being flustered.

"Ah...maybe later," she quickly averred, her mind racing as it

involuntarily tried to construct a mental image of what her

companion was suggesting.

"Hey guys," called Ranma as he hurried up to join them, "You all

done with class today, Ucchan?"

"Just waiting for you, Ranchan," Ukyo replied, trying furiously to

keep from showing how red her face was as she also tried to fill

her mind with images that would help keep her blood from

racing.

"Thanks, but you didn't have to," Ranma smiled, "I know you

need to get back to your restaurant, and I'm sure Perfume-chan

wouldn't mind keeping you company on the way."

"Oh Ranma," Ukyo sighed, "You know it's never any bother

waiting around for you, my iinazuke, and Perfume doesn't mind

either, right per-chan?"

"Hmm?" Perfume put on a bland expression of innocence, but it

was clear that being alone with Ukyo on a walk back towards the

restaurant they both shared as their residence was as near to her

ideal for a wonderful afternoon as could be realized out in public.

Just the same she smiled and said, "Perfume no mind wait for

Ranma if it make Airen happy."

"Well," Ranma smiled lopsidedly, understanding the situation

perfectly and feeling just a bit like an intruder in this setting, "If

you wouldn't mind whipping up one of your special

Okonomiyaki..."

"Of course I wouldn't mind, Ranchan," Ukyo said brightly,

offering a hand to Perfume as she started to get up, "Tell you

what, I'll treat you both to a double portion of my Kuonji specials,

just so neither one of you feels like you're being short changed.

I'll even see if Cologne wouldn't mind fetching you each a bowl

of ramen with miso stew."

"Sound very good," Perfume brightened, "Need lots of energy if I

wait tables for busy crowd of students. Perfume no like it when

boys try be fresh with me. Think Amazon like be touched by

customers like she on menu?"

"Don't worry about it, Sugar," Ukyo promised as she slung her

bakers peel across her back, "They get out of line you have my

permission to swat them, and if you don't do it, I'll flatten them

for trying."

"Hey!" another voice cried out, "Ranma! Ukyo! Wait up!"

"Akane?" Ranma turned around to see the group approaching

them, which included Kodachi, Keiko and Ryoga, at which

Ranma said, "Hey, Ryoga-kun! When did you get back from

your trip?"

"Laugh all you want, Ranma," Ryoga glowered, "It's not like I

wanted to be missing for the past week, I just got kind of side

tracked..."

"You mean lost as usual, Ryo-chan?" Ukyo smiled at her old

friend from Middle School, "Where have you been to this time?"

"Where haven't I been?" Ryoga rolled his eyes, "Last place I

remember was on a boat heading out to someplace called

McMurdo, and don't ask me why I felt like going to sea because

it wasn't my idea in the first place."

"Somebody tried to Shanghai you?" Keiko sniffed as she glanced

at the lost boy's back pack, "And where did you get all these

stickers? Where the heck is Alberta?"

"Honestly, Ryoga-kun," Kodachi chided, "I don't see how you

expect us to believe you could ever wind up in Antarctica by

mistake. This is almost as bad as that story you told the last time

about meeting that Doctor friend of yours who you claim flies

around in a Phone Booth."

"You think I'd make something like that up?" Ryoga said

disbelievingly, "You didn't have to fight with Cybermen and

Daleks! At least I got some special training in Venusian Martial

Arts from the Doctor himself..."

"Man, what are we going to do with you?" Ranma shook his head

in dismay, "I'm starting to think Nab-chan had the right idea

about putting a tracker on that bandana of yours. I don't mind

having you around for a sparring partner, but you don't show up

often enough to get in enough regular practice."

"That's enough, Ranma," Akane growled, taking Ryoga's hand

(much to the astonishment of the Lost Boy, who got a very

dreamy expression), "He's been through a lot and he doesn't need

you to be picking on him like you usually do! Honestly, you can

be such an insensitive jerk sometimes..."

"How true," Kodachi said with a light flutter in her voice that

denoted her amusement, "It's true the boy has his faults, but at

least Ryoga is of solid character and can be relied upon, unlike

some boys his age who will go nameless."

"Where are you guys headed at the moment?" Keiko asked,

deliberately turning the subject away from Ranma.

"My restaurant, of course," Ukyo smiled, "You're welcome to

come along, and I'll even sell you my famous Okonomiyaki at a

substantial discount."

"Hey, you never charge Ranma!" Akane protested.

"He's my iinazuke," Ukyo said proudly, "You think I should

charge my own Ranma-Honey for spending time with me? With

the rest of you it's different...I have to make enough of a profit to

stay in business."

"Fair enough," Kodachi replied, "But it will be my treat, and I

won't quibble about the price. You all may eat to your hearts

content as a sign of my generosity, especially you, Ryoga, in

token respect of your returning to Akane."

"Ah..." Ryoga and Akane exchanged looks, then each blushed

furiously and looked away as if trying not to notice the other.

"Man, you two are something else," Ranma said as he turned

away, "Let's get a move on so we don't make Ucchan late and

cost her business."

"You bet, Ranchan," Ukyo beamed as she took him by one arm

while letting Perfume glom hold of the other.

"What a cute threesome," Keiko mused, giving Kodachi a

meaningful look, "After lunch think we might stop by your place

go for a swim in your family's pool, 'Dachi-chan?"

"Perhaps," Kodachi eyed her back with a gleam of amusement, "I

assume you did not forget your swimsuit like last time?"

"Who says I forgot it?" Keiko grinned, giving the other woman a

meaningful expression.

The others politely ignored these two, though Ranma did fetch a

passing glance at the redheaded Arigami Keiko as she fawned

over the self-proclaimed Black Rose of Saint Hebereke. It was by

now an open secret that these two did more than just gossip

whenever they were alone, it was even something of a private

scandal, not that he minded very much (he told himself fervently)

though a good number of male students thought it a terrible

waste for two such lovely young girls to be turning their

attentions exclusively towards each other.

"Ah, there you all are!" cried another voice as everyone turned to

see Kodachi's brother, Kuno Tatewaki, approaching from the

main building in his usual Kendo attire, "Imagine finding you

together, and on such a fine day as this, to which the heavens

themselves must surely have bestowed..."

"Please brother," Kodachi winced, "You'll spoil my appetite, and

I was so looking forward to trying out a new recipe at Kuonji's

place, if you might care to trust me anywhere near your kitchen."

"I suppose I can let it slide just once," Ukyo eyed the other

woman suspiciously, "Provided you can get Cologne's permission

also. She hasn't forgiven you for the last time you tried putting

something in our food...especially Ryoga's."

She added the last part in soft undertone, which earned a puzzled

look on Ryoga's face and a cross look from Akane.

"Oh really," Kodachi said with an airy pretensiveness, "You

exaggerate so, Kuonji-san. A little powdered extract is good for

the digestive tract. You surely cannot believe that I would use

anything that was not entirely wholesome for the dear friend of

my darling Akane-chan?"

"No," Perfume answered, "But sneaky rose girl might try use

special aphrodisiac to give pig-headed boy some ideas, and

maybe a little backbone."

"Aphrodisiac?" Ranma repeated.

"Who are you calling pig-headed?" Ryoga asked reflexively, then

added the curious word, "Backbone?"

Akane blushed furiously and tried not to look in his direction.

Ranma caught the look and was about to tease her for her

obvious infatuation for the lost boy when Ukyo stopped him with

a casual, "I guess you didn't really mean any harm by it, so I'm

prepared to let it slide. Next time ask Cologne for advice, she's

the expert in such matters."

"Hmph," Kodachi seemed slightly miffed at the suggestion that

she might not know what she was about in the area of chemistry,

her specialty in terms of non-Martial arts. Nonetheless she got a

speculative gleam in her eye as she said, "The old woman is the

keeper of Amazon herbal lore, is she not? Yes, perhaps I could

learn a thing or two from her tutelage. I have certainly surpassed

the knowledge of my so-called teachers at Saint Hebereke."

"Love isn't found in a powder, 'Dachi-chan," Keiko gently

reminded.

"Maybe so," Kodachi eyed her in a conspiratorial manner, "But it

can be given a good stiff prodding in the right direction..."

"Notable sentiments, I am sure," a new voice said, "But hardly

original, Miss Kuno."

"Nani?" Ukyo whirled around to see the two new arrivals, then

her eyes narrowed, "What is HE doing here?"

"I have just as much right to be here as you, Kuonji Ukyo,"

Mousse glowered, "You've got a problem with that? Take it up

with the old woman-OW!"

"Mind your manners, Sonny boy," Cologne sniffed as she once

more came to rest upon her staff, ignoring Mousse as he nursed

another goose egg on top of his noggin, "We came because I

sensed that there would be trouble brewing for you, Daughter-in-

law. I thought that the blind fool here might make himself useful

for once. A dark omen beckons..."

"Dark omen?" Ranma frowned, "What are you talking about?"

"Hear her out, Ranma-kun," Keiko hastily said, "Elder Cologne

would hardly be here if she wasn't entirely serious, and we should

all know by now to trust her judgement."

"That's easy for you to say," Akane growled, "I still haven't

forgotten how she tried to manipulate my sister into coming back

with her to China."

"This is hardly the time or place to rehash a history lesson, Sister

to my Daughter-in-law," Cologne replied, "My warning to you

should be heeded at once. I have sensed...hold!" She cocked her

tiny head to one side and looked puzzled, then said, "Do you hear

a sound approaching?"

"Huh?" Mousse looked up, as did the others before he

pronounced, "I hear it too...what...?"

"Sounds like motor engines," Ranma frowned, turning to look

towards the parking lot area, "Lots of motor engines..."

"What the hell?" Ukyo followed his gaze then shielded her eyes

from solar glare as she said, "I think I see something..."

"Nani?" Akane gasped as the first signs of movement made

themselves known, and mere instants later pandemonium broke

out on the High School campus.

At first it appeared to be no more than a pair of punkers on

specially made motor cycles, followed by a converted dune

buggy, but then others like it followed in a caravan that seemed

to go on and on for what seemed like two complete blocks worth

of cars, motorcycles, vans, jeeps and off-road three-wheeled

vehicles, all manned by hard-looking street toughs sporting a few

metric tons of chains and leather. They fanned out as they

reached the parking lot and began screaming and whooping out

fierce cries while gunning their engines and terrorizing passing

students.

At a passing guess one might have determined as many as twenty

cars and jeeps were accompanied by twice that many two

wheeled vehicles, each sporting a wicked array of spikes and

weapons while some of the toughs brandished automatic

weapons, which same they began to fire into the air, adding

further terror and confusion to the already panicked Furinkan

student body. It was like an army of street toughs had converged

on the hapless high school, moving out to block every avenue of

exit while others herded the students in back towards the main

building. The bandits looked mean and tough, obviously out to

make an impression on anyone who might foolishly try to stand

against them, and yet there was a kind of rude military order to

their overall deployment.

"This must be the danger that I sensed," Cologne remarked all-

too-casually, "Everyone be ready. These hoodlums are here to

cause serious trouble."

"Is that a fact?" Ryoga asked as he cracked his knuckles, "Well

they'll find trouble if they try to start something..."

"Cool it, numbskull," Ranma hissed, "There's hundreds of

innocent people around here. How many of these goons do you

make, Kuno-Sempai?"

"I count at least eighty-three of the ruffians, Saotome-kun,"

Kuno murmured in a level tone, "Only a few have automatic

rifles in their hands, but we cannot assume that the others do not

carry their own brand of dangerous hardware."

"Sounds about right," Ranma nodded, "Everybody stay cool but

be ready."

"I take it this sort of thing doesn't usually happen at Furinkan?"

Kodachi asked softly.

"Not hardly, 'Dachi-chan," Akane just as softly replied.

"I wonder what they want?" Ukyo asked, seeing that many of the

students were now huddled around them while the gang

members who had automatic weapons in hand were keeping the

majority covered.

"Perfume think it no be good," Perfume replied as she stood with

her hands held out slightly down and to her side, "Airen be

ready?"

"I think we'd better let them make the first move, guys," Keiko

urged with a note of caution, "We do something stupid here and a

lot of innocent people might be hurt."

"Wise council," Cologne remarked, "But I think this matter

cannot end in any other way than by violence."

"I'm ready," Mousse flexed his arms, "If these guys start

something they're going to be sorry."

"Hey, look over there," Akane pointed, and sure enough the rest

of them saw what she was indicating. A large convertible car-

obviously of foreign manufacture-was now approaching an

empty stretch of ground in the middle of the yard at a leisurely

pace, a car that had been redone up into some kind of monstrosity

straight out of a post-Apocalyptic movie.

It was driven by one of the Mohawk-sporting leather-clad toughs,

and there were three others in the car behind him, but what drew

the most attention was the huge figure of a man standing up on

the passenger side calmly surveying the Furinkan Student body, a

man who wore both a cape and a mask that totally obscured his

shape from view save that it suggested great size and breadth of

shoulder. Some of the toughs formed up like rows of Samurai to

greet the arrival of a General or Daimyo, and some raised colorful

banners and flags in the air as though they were indeed imitating

the forms of Feudal Japan in a rude, crude fashion.

The man clearly was their designated leader, and he radiated an

aura of considerable menace. Ranma felt the hackles along his

neck and spine stiffen, while Ukyo and the other premier Martial

Artists present had their own ways of sensing the raw power that

surrounded this masked stranger as he drew nearer. The car

came to a halt a short distance of some twenty meters away but

the man's face turned unerringly towards them as though picking

their group out from the crowd. No word was spoken in the next

few moments, but the man's very regard itself seemed an open

challenge that taunted them before the first disdainful words had

been uttered.

At last the man broke the silence with a gesture by one arm that

looked as thick and gnarled as an ancient oak. He extended a

gloved hand towards one of his companions and accepted a

portable microphone, then brought it up to his face and began to

speak in a voice that hissed softly like a serpent and was

magnified to far more sinister levels.

"I have come for the one known as Tendo Nabiki," he announced

as if pronouncing a doom upon the name of the absent woman,

"Failing that, I would request the presence of her cousin, Kaneda.

Does anyone here know where these two might be located at the

moment?"

Everyone exchanged puzzled looks but no one ventured forward.

The man nodded to his minions and two of those holding

automatic weapons fired in front of the huddled crowd, striking

the dirt and kicking up grass divots. Many students started to cry

out and panic, though as yet no one had taken injury, but the act

shook the Furinkan alumni up and made them even more afraid

of these men than they had been at the onset.

"I will repeat the question again," the masked man said with a

dangerous air of impatience, "Tell me where the Tendo woman

and her cousin may be found and I will not be forced to take

ruder actions."

"Who the hell wants to know?" Ranma suddenly cried out as he

took a step forward, ignoring the way guns were suddenly leveled

in his direction.

"Ranma!" Akane gasped.

"Ranchan!" Ukyo's voice was even more frightened.

"Beware Saotome," Kuno hissed in a wary tone as he, too, looked

ready to take action.

The masked man studied Ranma's defiant stance as though

contemplating an insect, then spoke into his mike and replied,

"My name is of no importance, but you may call me the Road

Ronin, Master of the Road Warriors and current reigning Shogun

of the Dark. Who are you who dares to address me in such a

disrespectful manner?"

"The name's Saotome Ranma," Ranma said as he cracked his

knuckles, "Nabiki's my iinazuke, so tell me what you want with

her and maybe I'll take a memo."

"Insolent whelp," the huge man said disparagingly, "You need a

lesson to respect your betters. Begin the instruction."

The two gunmen covering Ranma pointed their weapons at

Ranma's knees and took careful aim before they fired. At nearly

point-blank range they should have had an easy target, but

Ranma was suddenly not where they aimed while both of the

men were on the ground, sprawled and unconscious.

"You call that a lesson?" Ranma said, "I'm not impressed, Baka."

"I see," the giant man seemed to regard Ranma with a fraction

more respect, then he said, "Perhaps you'd rather I make an

example of some of your friends instead. Begin the second

lesson."

"What?" Ranma turned to see the gunmen were now training

their weapons on the rest of the Furinkan students.

"We need a distraction," Cologne hissed to her side, "Now

Mousse!"

The long haired Chinese boy gestured with both hands and

suddenly chains sprang from his billowing sleeves to wrap

themselves around two of the gun men as a quick twist yanked

them both off balance. Kuno was next to react as he vaulted over

the heads of several students and launched an immediate attack

with his bokken, which he once more drew from somewhere

behind his collar. Not to be outdone, Ukyo jumped into the fray

with her bakers peel flying like an oversized spatula, lashing out

at the nearest targets while Perfume moved to cover her flanks

and was suddenly sporting her trademark double axes. Within

moments all hell broke loose as students ran for cover, clearing

the battlefield for the combatants as they rushed the mounted

bikers in an all-out melee as spontaneous as it was savage...

Meanwhile, not very far away indeed, Tendo Nabiki was running

flat out along the roofs of house after house as she effortlessly

vaulted great distances in her haste to reach Furinkan. It was not

very long indeed before she heard the first ominous sounds of

gunfire, which spurred her to greater action.

"Kuso!" she breathed as she redoubled her already considerable

effort, throwing more of her Ki force into her leaps in an effort to

arrive before the battle was too much underway. Saki's warning

had been a bit too tardy for her liking and she promised herself

that she would have words on that subject later. At the moment

her thoughts were on Akane and Ranma, who were the most

logical targets of any retaliatory strike. She silently cursed

herself for never having taken into proper account that gang

activity might lead to such reprisals, but now all she wished for

was to find her loved ones safe. The continuing sounds of guns

and engine fire made her imagine the worst as her heart leaped

into her mouth, her mind filling with tragic images she had never

wished to have touch those who meant so much in her life. If

anything should happen she would never forgive herself for

bringing on such dire retaliation...

She came within sight of the walls of Furinkan and now more

plainly heard the sounds of battle under full sway. There was

less gunfire than before, but the motor engines were far too loud

and savage for her liking, and the cries she heard sounded like

screams of pain, rage and mortal terror. Had she come too late to

save the ones she truly cared for? How many innocent people

were going to get caught up in the crossfire?

She vaulted over the walls with a single leap and came upon a

scene of carnage and destruction right out of her worst nightmare.

Bodies were strewn everywhere and the battle was raging on

closer to the main school building. She could see wild-maned

desperados chasing students on their bikes, cars and buggies

with every manner of weapon on display, from pikes and swords

to flailing chains and wicked sidearms.

And one figure who stood up inside a large American-made car

surveying the carnage all around him as though above it all, a

masked and cloaked individual who clearly bore the stamp of the

bandit leader. Without needing an introduction she at once

recognized the Road Ronin as though Saki had painted for her a

vivid description complete with eight-by-ten glossies.

She was about to move towards him when she heard a voice call

out, "Sempai..."

Nabiki froze before turning to look down at the figure stretched

out on the ground beside her, and with a hesitant voice she asked,

"Ryonami?"

It was indeed her aid-de-camp laying on her side with a dark

splotch covering her school uniform, about the area of her right

shoulder. Her lovely face was pained yet her eyes seemed clear

and bright as she looked up apologetically and said, "I'm sorry...I

should have been more careful..."

Nabiki was on one knee at once and examined her with hesitant

fingers, her voice suddenly tight with emotion as she gasped,

"Ryo-chan...what happened to you...?"

"They started shooting at us, Sempai," Ryonami gasped, "For no

reason! Your iinazuke and friends fought back...I think they're

still going at it...they need you..."

"Don't try to talk," Nabiki's mind refused to work with her usual

clarity as she stared at the blood, only dimly aware that the

wound had gone completely through without hitting a bone or

vital organ, "I'll get you to a doctor..."

"NO!" Ryonami spoke the word with unusual force for a girl who

normally was so timid and differential, "There's no time! I'll be

all right...but your friends need you. Think about your Posse..."

Nabiki almost cursed herself for behaving like an idiot in the

middle of an obvious crisis. Ryonami's words snapped her out of

her momentary daze and she suddenly barked at one of the other

students laying on the ground who did not appear to be injured,

"Gosunkugi! Get over here and help me out!"

The frail looking boy stared at her with owlish eyes, but he only

hesitated for a moment before getting up and crawling spider-like

over towards Ryonami. Nabiki gave him sharp, clear orders and

told him to press a wad of torn up silk over the wound to staunch

the bleeding. Gosunkugi acknowledged that he had some

knowledge of first aid and agreed to help as Nabiki got to her feet

and left him with a stern warning not to budge from the spot until

proper medical aid could be rendered.

She knew that the boy would obey her implicitly. He feared

Nabiki's wrath, and besides which he seemed to genuinely like

Ryonami. Nabiki had to trust his innate survival instincts as she

took her leave of them both, her eyes suddenly narrowed with a

rage unlike any she had ever known as she stared towards the

man in the cloak. Without being quite aware of the fact her aura

began glowing...

Meanwhile her loved ones were in the thick of the matter,

fighting back with every resource that they had, only slightly

hobbled by the presence of many less well protected fellow

students yet showing no sign at all of doubt or hesitation as they

fought against the odds with a fury that far surpassed the mad

rage of the motorized gang members.

Ryoga drove his weighted umbrella forward and struck the hood

of an oncoming vehicle, driving a deep indentation into the

engine block itself as the vehicle was driven hard down upon its

shocks with such force that the driver and passengers were

thrown suddenly forward, to land inexpertly on the ground some

ten meters distance. He turned in time to see Akane vault over an

oncoming motorcyclist and drove her foot against his helmet as

though a giant hammer had struck the biker. Ryoga saw another

biker wrap a chain around Akane's wrist as she started to touch

down beyond her felled assailant, yanking her backwards before

she could recover her balance, which set the lost boy off as he

reached for a bandana and threw it to shatter the chain, crying

out, "Akane!"

She managed to recover, her arm only slightly wrenched from her

shoulder, but she was still ready to fight and angrier than ever.

The same could not be said for the hapless biker who had

attacked her because he became the instant recipient of the lost

boy's savage wrath. When Ryoga was done dishing out divine

retribution both biker and machine were in barely recognizable

shape. Ryoga then turned to help Akane pop her arm back into

its socket.

Keiko meanwhile was demonstrating her Stone Foot technique

on one of the jeeps that attempted to run her over, stepping to one

side before striking the vehicle with a side-kick that picked it up

off two wheels and caused the driver to swerve and strike a wall

at a very sharp angle. Kodachi, meanwhile, was lashing out with

her ribbon and pins to make two more motorcyclists rue their

encounter with the Black Rose of Saint Hebereke. Her brother

fought savagely on against any foe that came within reach, but he

had taken a few shots in retaliation and seemed worse for the

wear. If not for his sister's ribbon fending off some of these

attacks he might have fared more poorly, but as it was they

managed to hold their own with no losses.

Ranma and his companions were fighting virtually back-to-back

and doing more damage on the whole now that the gang

members with guns had been whittled down to a mere handful.

One goon with a semi-automatic rifle thought he had a good shot

at Ranma's profile but suddenly found Perfume had vaulted into

his path with both axes whirling like a dervish of flashing metal.

He unloaded a full clip but she easily caught and deflected each

shot, then waited for him to attempt a reload before hurtling one

of her axes in his direction.

The man had only an instant to cry out in dismay before the

whirling blade chopped right through him without hardly

stopping. The axe banked around and returned to the hand of its

mistress as she took aim with the other and dispatched a second

gun-wielding assailant, removing a very vital piece of his

anatomy in the process and demonstrating just why it was a bad

idea to threaten an Amazon Enforcer.

One of the last men still wielding firearms thought he saw an

opening and took aim with a shot-gun, intending to strike a

classic villain pose by shooting the Amazon in her unprotected

back, but his shot was caught by the sudden appearance of the

baker's peel, which harmlessly deflected the shot-blast away as

Ukyo loomed large before his eyes and said, "No way,

Jackass...she's mine!"

A single blow from her combat spatula was enough to flip the

man head over heels and leave him sprawled a considerable

distance away, in no condition to continue fighting. Perfume

took note of this and smiled to herself before going into Steel

Storm mode to meet the challenge of another pair of attackers.

"I'll save you, Perfume!" Mousse cried out as he threw a hail

storm of bladed weapons at three nearby assailants, quite

oblivious to the fact that the girl he rescued did not much

resemble the Amazon in question (she was, however,

immediately quite grateful, and when she applied a kiss to her

rescuer Mousse passed out from total ecstasy, leaving the girl he

saved to look down with a speculative expression).

Cologne, meanwhile, alone of those assembled fought

conservatively, sparing a portion of her attention to keep an eye

on the activities of the others while reserving the majority of her

attention for the source of the true danger she perceived, the Road

Ronin himself. The man was definitely manifesting a very

disturbing presence (and disturbingly familiar, as though she

recognized his style without need for actually seeing him in

combat).

It was with a certain degree of mixed anticipation and dread that

she perceived another presence making itself known at that

precise instant. More to the point, the masked man in the cloak

sensed her as well as he turned sharply to one side in time to

catch the hurtling form that was blazing towards him like a heat-

seeking missile. The battle aura Nabiki was manifesting made

her glow in Cologne's eyes like a red-hot flame, but the Ronin

was able to intercept and deflect her charge so that she rebounded

some fifteen meters away, coming to an abrupt halt in a fighting

crouch as she briefly paused to concentrate on renewing her

attack.

With a single snarl she cried, "RONIN!" and came charging

right at him.

The man threw up both arms and revealed that his body was a

solid mass of muscle nearly seven feet in height. He caught her

dragon kick against both bracered arms and once again deflected

her attack. Nabiki landed on the hood of his vehicle and at once

squared her stance to launch an all-out Amaguriken attack, yet

somehow once again the burly man managed to repel her

onslaught before launching his own counter-attack that picked

Nabiki up and threw her back another twenty-five meters.

Nabiki rolled with the repeated punches she received and

managed to land on her feet, crouching down while testing to see

if her lip was bloody with the back of one fist. She glared at the

now-revealed Ronin, who had a studded leather bracer criss-

crossing his chest but was otherwise bare-limbed. Of course she

was also quick to note that the man was armed with a pair of

handguns slung about his hips in Cowboy fashion. There was

also the hint of a sword hilt sticking up from beneath his collar,

and a wicked belt-knife hung from his thick leather belt while his

chest bracers sported a set of shuriken that did not look

ornamental.

"So," the man said in a voice so soft and sibilant that it seemed

more like he hissed the word than actually spoke it, "You must be

the notorious Tendo Nabiki. I am impressed that you survived

my Hammer attack. Very few manage this, so you must be as

good as your reputation would have it."

"Thanks for the compliment," Nabiki replied, "Now mind telling

me why you started this little fracas?"

"You will forgive my lack of proper manners," the man bowed

graciously with one arm extended, "As you seem already to know

my name, and I of course know yours, let us dispense with the

formalities and merely resolve this with a formal challenge

between equals."

"You think you're my equal?" Nabiki said scornfully, which was

a feint as she already sensed that this fellow was bursting with

raw power.

"Hardly," the man snorted, "I am your superior, and when I have

demonstrated this I will claim your territory for my own and add

it to my growing list of possessions."

The man reached down and drew his sidearms in one fluid

motion, but Nabiki had anticipated the attack and was already in

motion taking evasive action as the man leaped from his car with

both guns trained in her direction. No question about

sportsmanship or fair play in this fight, the man was clearly and

unquestionably at a superior advantage, so the only logical thing

to do was employ the Saotome Special Defense technique and

run like hell before the man could draw a bead on anything vital.

Since a forward attack would likely prove suicidal she ran at a

diagonal direction, zigzagging as she headed towards the only

point of refuge left open to her: the School building.

"So," the Ronin said, "You show your true colors, girl. Well, so

much the better...the hunt will make the victory that much

sweeter..."

He was about to give chase when a new sound caught his

attention. From the far end of the athletic field there came an

angry charge of Furinkan students all wearing sports gear and

moving right at the remaining gang members. The Road Warrior

gang, having taken a few lumps and casualties in the space of

only a couple of minutes of furious fighting, was unprepared to

repel this new assault as students wielding Kendo or Hockey gear

tore into them with a vengeance, followed by the Volleyball and

Women's Lacrosse team, not to mention the baseball and

basketball players, the Sumo and Judo teams, the soccer and

track teams, the gymnastics team and every other conceivable

sport that was taught at the High School.

"Never thought I'd be glad to see those guys," Akane murmured

as she leaned against Ryoga's shoulder to regain her breath and

take stock of their situation. Her arm felt numb but was still

attached while Ryoga looked worse for wear, having fought

valiantly at her side to guard her backside and keep her out of

danger.

Ranma and the rest of his teammates had gained a much-needed

breather as the fight was suddenly carried out by a good chunk of

the more athletically inclined members of the student body.

Within moments the fight turned into a rout and the Road

Warrior gang was hobbling and piling into whatever vehicles

they still had that were in operating condition. The Ronin saw all

this and cursed softly under his breath, then had his number one

lieutenant signal the recall whistle as he turned about and

decided to allow Tendo Nabiki to live another day. He had a

gang-not to mention his reputation-to salvage, and it was plain

from the onset that these Furinkan students just did not

understand the rules that held that gang members were the ones

that beat up students.

He returned to his vehicle, taking note that a full third of his men

would have to be left behind on this engagement, a minor set

back but one from which he intended to profit. He now knew

which of these students were the dangerous ones to his plans and

would take appropriate action next time. He contended himself

with the knowledge that Tendo Nabiki was the one who would

come away from this encounter looking to all eyes like a manifest

coward.

Nabiki, meanwhile, had already emerged from hiding as the true

danger of the Ronin no longer posed a problem. Instead she

came to the aid of her friends while venting her frustration on the

few remaining gang members not fortunate enough to get out of

her path in time. She rejoined Ranma and company as the last of

the hoodlums piled into a damaged jeep and attempted to limp

away while Police sirens could be heard in the distant

background.

As a final gesture of her own contempt, Ukyo made a slicing

motion with her spatula and cut cleanly through a nearby

telephone pole in just such a way as to be certain it fell atop the

retreating jeep and took it out completely. The gang members

were catapulted forward as the pole crushed the jeep engine and

hurtled them into a rude tumble upon the asphalt, where they lay

groaning for several minutes until the police finally arrived and to

take them in with the rest of the defeated gangsters (those still

breathing, of course).

The Furinkan students let out a victory cry and hugged each other

in their shared relief and triumph. Victory was short lived,

however, as many students had been injured and needed to be

taken to the hospital. Nabiki herself checked up on Ryonami and

was surprised to find that Gosunkugi had done a fairly competent

job of stanching her bleeding. She was inordinately pale but still

quite conscious and in no immediate danger, though Nabiki felt

awful seeing her friend laying there so helpless. It turned out that

her injury was among the most severe, and it was fortunate to

discover that no more a few students had been casualties of the

three minute engagement. None had died, for which fact

everyone fervently thanked the Kami (unless you counted the

gang members, of whom nine were seriously injured and another

seven were even less fortunate-Amazon fighting being

somewhat more brutal and determinate).

Of the battlefield itself there was wreckage and destruction

everywhere one looked. The police had been full of questions

about what exactly had occurred, but by mutual assent the

students and Nabiki's Posse developed acute memory problems

and were unable to provide much more than the sketchiest of

details. There was, of course, some question about the weapons

that had been involved, but Ukyo's Bakers peel was not officially

listed as a weapon, while Cologne had ordered Mousse and

Perfume to follow her as the three Amazons prudently made

themselves scarce for the duration. Kuno and the rest of the

Furinkan students had a perfectly legitimate excuse for having

employed their weapons, while Ranma and the rest of the

unarmed fighting crowd had an easier case for claiming self-

defense against heavily armed opponents.

Nabiki stayed by Ryonami until she made Gosunkugi swear to

accompany the girl in the ambulance, further promising to give

her a full report once he got to the hospital. Nabiki stayed to

answer a few questions of her own, but once the Police detective

turned away to question someone else she felt a tap to her

shoulder and heard Cologne remark, "Child...I think you should

not remain here any longer. The danger I have sensed has not

entirely passed."

"What do you mean?" Nabiki turned to look at the Elder, "We

sent the bad guys packing. They won't try anything again for at

least a few more days..."

"I fear that you are gravely wrong in your assumption," Cologne

said soberly, "My intuition tells me that the danger is still very

real and very immediate. Perhaps these warriors will not strike

here again twice in the same night, but there is something about

that one that makes me feel certain he does have a contingency

plan for this kind of occasion. Perhaps he means to strike from

ambush, possibly while you and the others are on their way home

or...perhaps they will strike at your home itself while it is

unprotected."

"Unprotected?" Nabiki blinked, then sudden fear gripped her

heart, "Shampoo-and Kasumi!"

Cologne nodded gravely, "Go at once. The other likely place that

they may strike is my Daughter-in-law's restaurant, but I doubt

that they will strike there while it is closed for the duration. I will

not rest until this fear that grips my own withered heart is past.

Your friends will cover for you if the Police have any more

questions."

"Right," Nabiki said, then turned and fled as fast as she was able,

already knowing in a way beyond certainty that she was several

steps behind the enemy, and without a miracle to guide her the

danger to her family was certain to be fatal...

Continued.

Comments/Criticism/Number-of-that-License-Plate:

shadowmane .

Okay, so now the first round is over, but don't expect the halftime

show will be lagging as Saki will have her own hands full

meeting head on with the Ronin's retribution...be there.

If you wish to check out my other works, Please check out my

Fanfiction webpage at: . or

it's mirror site at: ~

All related chapters of this series can be found there along with my

other works.


	18. Chapter 18

Nabiki 1/2

Chapter 18, Part 1.

By

Jim Robert Bader

Inspired by the works of Rumiko Takahashi;

All rights belong to her, the publishers and distributors

Of the Ranma 1/2 Series.

(Based on the Altered Destinies Series by

Wade Tritschler and Others;

Some characters and situations were created by me,

The rest is shared Fanfiction, so please don't sue me)

"Can Shampoo ask Yo-yo girl a question?"

"Yo-yo girl?" Saki looked up in surprise at the purple haired girl

sitting across from her.

Shampoo just smiled, "Airen say Detective use Yo-yo like

weapon. Is ancient Chinese weapon, got turned into children's

toy by stupid Westerners. Airen say you very good with weapon,

learn use from mother?"

"Uh, yeah," Saki replied, "My mother taught me, and her mother

taught her. It's sort of a generations thing, y'know? A yo-yo is

light and easy to conceal and hardly anyone expects it to be as

useful as I do. Can't always carry a gun when I'm undercover

posing as a student..."

"Shampoo understand all that," Shampoo said as she poured their

tea, "Is not question I mean to ask. No have explain use weapon

taught by mother..."

"Okay, then excuse me for being a bit touchy," Saki shrugged,

which was as near to an apology as she felt comfortable giving,

"What did you mean to ask me, Mrs. Tendo?"

Shampoo smiled, delighted to be called that by this relative

stranger, then in a more serious tone she said, "You mother...she

have hair like you? You no dye it?"

"Oh," Saki said as she noted her long pink hair and just

shrugged, "No, it isn't dyed, but I get asked that a lot. Back when

I first got into trouble and they locked me up in the pen they

expressly forbade me from using any kind of dying formula. I

guess they just didn't believe me when I told them I never dyed

my hair. After all, it's a pretty rare color..."

"Not among Amazons," Shampoo noted, deliberately touching

her own purple locks, "Many in tribe have unusual colors. We

very proud of hair, let grow long, sign of good status. Is old

belief long hair mean have many strong children, Shampoo hope

it so," she patted her abdomen with special meaning and smiled

in a way that made her glow all over.

"Oh," Saki said, "You mean you're wondering if maybe I'm

descended from you Amazons. The truth is...I just don't know a

thing about it. Beyond my Grandmother my family's past is a

mystery. I just know that my mother made a real mistake when

she chose my father, a mistake that cost her everything and

caused me more suffering than I need in a dozen lifetimes."

"Shampoo sorry if question make you uncomfortable," Shampoo

said apologetically.

"Oh no, it's no problem," Saki smiled, "In fact it's kind of nice

having somebody else who understands that it's not so weird

being different. My old boyfriend...well, he thought it was kind

of neat, finding out that I'm naturally this way," she gave a

meaningful smile, which Shampoo returned, understanding her

implicitly. She shifted in her chair then said, "Mind if I ask a

question of my own? What exactly does it feel like...being

married to someone like Tendo Nabiki?"

Shampoo cocked her head, "Why you want know? Think

Shampoo no happy with marriage?"

"No," Saki assured her, "In fact that's just it. You look...happy. I

mean...you kind of glow whenever you mention your Airen or

hear Nabiki's name, and...well...the baby you carry...it's got to be

really weird knowing you got that from another woman."

"How weird you want?" Shampoo smiled, "As weird as Airen

who girl that turn into boy? Was as boy Shampoo meet Airen,

still think that way, even when see Airen in true form. Shampoo

loves her Airen, no see what wrong with having baby together."

"I see your point," Saki smiled, "And it's pretty obvious that

Nabiki's very much in love with you. If anything I'm a little

envious. I...never had the time for steady relationships. My last

boyfriend...well, he was very understanding but..."

"You no can have marriage if no see groom most times?"

Shampoo smiled, "Why you so interested in Shampoo

marriage...or is it Shampoo you really ask about?"

"All right, you caught me," Saki smiled, "Truth is I...kind of

identify with Nabiki on some levels. We're a lot alike in some

ways...and, well...she reminds me a lot of me when I was her

age..."

"Shampoo think you very right about that," Shampoo smirked

knowingly as she blew on her tea then sipped it, "You like big

sister to Nabiki Airen. You like girls or boys?"

"Uh, what?" Saki was caught off guard by the question, then

blinked before she said, "Well...I suppose it just depends on the

right person...never really thought about it either way."

Shampoo raised a purple eyebrow and said, "You be with girl

before? Or is it men you like?"

"Ah..." Saki felt herself squirming as though she were under the

heat lamp being given the third degree. Shampoo's pleasant,

non-accusatory smile did put her somewhat at ease, but the

memory was still a painful subject. She took a moment before

saying, "I...knew a girl once...a very good friend of mine... and

no, we never slept together, but I...think I liked her just the same.

She was very different from me, not the sort of person who would

ever hurt me or betray a trust and I...I failed her. Miserably. I've

never been able to forgive myself for that...it almost feels like I

betrayed her. I've tried to make peace with my ghosts, but..."

"You still feel haunted by thought of what might have been?"

Shampoo said carefully, "You no mind have feelings for other

girl?"

"I can't really say," Saki replied, "My feelings weren't sexual...at

least I don't think they were. Back in the pen, however...well,

you see a lot of that going on all around you. I was kept in

solitary and wasn't allowed anywhere near the other prisoners. I

was too dangerous, you see, and they wouldn't even let me wear

shoe laces, and I had to go cuffed even when I went to the

bathroom."

"What you do that so bad?" Shampoo asked in surprise.

"Killed somebody," Saki replied, "Actually I was innocent of that,

but I had done a lot of bad stuff when I was in my old High

School, and I was a pretty dangerous customer in those days, not

exactly the sort of girl you take home to your mother."

"That hard to believe," Shampoo looked her over, "You seem nice

girl. If you live in Joketsuzoku nobody think you any different

from other girls you age. Is person they say you killed very

important?"

"No," Saki said with a dark cast to her lovely features, "He was a

real scumbag, but it wasn't me who killed him, it was a friend of

mine...well, sort of like an understudy. It was self-defense, but

she couldn't prove it, so I...kind of let them blame me for it

instead..."

"You let them arrest you to keep friend out of trouble?" Shampoo

said with open surprise, "Shampoo right, you very nice person.

Good friend look out for others, very much like Airen."

"Well..." Saki said, "Not in every respect. For one thing, I don't

change into anything when I get splashed with water..."

"Shampoo tell story," Shampoo smiled as she poured more tea

then blew on her cup, "You listen?"

"Uh, sure," Saki said, "Is it a very long story?"

"Only story of Shampoo life," Shampoo looked genuinely amused

at the uneasy glance of the woman sitting across from her at the

tea table, "When Shampoo very little she learn two things in life:

One that she Amazon of strong family, great tradition, be best in

village, one day be Matriarch like Elder. Second thing she learn:

it very lonely at top, no can trust other girls Shampoo's age. She

learn early to be loner, to trust no one and to always be strongest

in village. Shampoo study hard, learn from Elder, gradually no

spend much time with mother and father, not even younger

sisters. Have no friends but be very good fighter, other girls no

like. Shampoo beat up other girls her age, make them afraid of

Shampoo, show respect for superior fighter. Shampoo learn be

proud she good, best of generation.

"But Shampoo very lonely, not know why never happy being

best. Being best everything to Shampoo, no have anything else,

not know why it matter. Shampoo taught to hate weakness,

never show weakness to other girls, learn get by without others.

This way she live until day Elder tell Shampoo she now have

cousin who train with, cousin who used to be girl Shampoo be

mean to.

"Shampoo learn she no like being mean to other girls. Perfume-

cousin adopted into family after real cousin do bad thing that

bring shame to family. Shampoo no know why Elder think she

need train with other girl. But Shampoo learn to trust Elder, do

what Elder tells her. Elder always have good reason for why she

do things. She say Perfume-cousin help make Shampoo better

warrior, Shampoo try learning hard, and one day she understand

lesson Elder teach her. Perfume-cousin no weak girl, have

problem no her fault. She train overcome problem and soon she

better than other girls her age, even better than Shampoo in some

things. She good companion to train with, and soon Shampoo

find she share other things with Perfume-cousin. We become

good friends, tell each other many secrets, learn to trust with life.

Perfume-cousin only girl she know, beside Airen, who she no can

fear turning back to. We both grow strong, then one day make

new friend with other girl in village..."

Shampoo paused, taking a deep breath before she continued,

"Shampoo tell Airen story that she no first girl Shampoo sleep

with. Other girl name Lo Xian called younger because she

named after Elder. Lo Xian have same problem Perfume have

growing up, she no good as fighter. She try hard but she no live

up to image of Elder, become girl others are mean to. Great

Grandmother...I mean Elder...she think Lo Xian have other gifts

besides be fighter, maybe train as something else. Shampoo

think other girls too mean to Lo Xian, like Shampoo be to

Perfume-cousin, so she go down to bullies and make stop being

mean to Lo Xian...not know what this lead to."

"You don't say?" Saki smiled at that, "I take it this girl...Lotion?

She was very grateful to you for saving her?"

"Yes, very grateful," Shampoo nodded with a serious expression,

"Lotion become good friend to both Shampoo and Perfume, she

much fun to be with, know many things, study herbal lore with

Great Grandmother. Very soon Perfume-cousin and Shampoo

train with Lotion. She no very good as fighter, but very good

studying art, know much by looking. Great Grandmother think

Lotion one day be good healer, study special touch

techniques...what Japanese call Shiatsu?"

"Right," Saki nodded, "So your friend wanted to be a doctor?"

"Like Tofu-Sensei," Shampoo nodded, "Great Grandmother speak

to other Elders, Lotion gain special status, renounce Warrior

rights to walk path of healer. No everyone like, but Shampoo and

Perfume protect Lotion from others. Was very lonely time for all

of us, no other friends in village, only each other talk to and train

with. Shampoo only fighter still in competition with other

Warriors in village, no make friends when you beat up other girls

all of time. Not know at first but Lotion get strong admiration for

Shampoo, begin liking Shampoo as more than just friend."

"You mean she got a crush on you?" Saki smiled lopsidedly, "It's

been known to happen."

"Yes, but big surprise when one day Lotion ask Shampoo for

alone talk," Shampoo said seriously, "I no suspect what she have

in mind until she ask me serious if we be friends. Of course

Shampoo say yes. Lotion then ask if we be good friends and

Shampoo no get what she ask until she lean over and kiss

Shampoo on mouth. Was very big surprise, even bigger surprise

that Shampoo like it."

"So, did the two of you...?" Saki hesitated, more from politeness

than actual modesty.

Shampoo smiled, "What you think? Lotion teach Shampoo new

meaning of friendship. After first time we find more excuses be

alone when not with Perfume-cousin. She no suspect at first, but

soon she follow us and discover what we do. After this she have

talk with Shampoo, very worried that we upset Elder by no

continue training."

"You mean your Great Grandmother wouldn't have approved?"

Saki wondered.

"This happen two year ago when Shampoo training hard to

become best of village," Shampoo explained, "If Lotion had been

with Perfume there be no problem, but Great Grandmother think

Shampoo be distracted. Also too young spend time make love to

other girl, even girl no Warrior. Great Grandmother insist

Shampoo work hard to gain status, then can think about having

pleasures on own time. Also, Shampoo no discover until later

that Perfume-cousin also want Lotion to be her special friend. It

cause some bad moments with us in training...think maybe we

both get jealous, very distracting."

"So what happened between you three?" Saki asked, then saw

Shampoo's expression grow momentarily pained and had a

suspicion that the rest of the story was not going to be that

pleasant.

"Great Grandmother send Lotion away so she no cause bad blood

between Shampoo and Perfume-cousin," she said simply, then

her voice tightened as she added, "Later tell us Lotion die in

accident caused by other Warriors. That night we no can sleep,

Perfume-cousin and Shampoo cry where other warriors no see.

After this we make up, promise never be angry with each other

again. Shampoo promise self that she be great warrior in

memory of Lotion, no let anyone else take place in her heart.

Shampoo feel great emptiness, no can fill space with training.

Think never be happy again, so become fierce instead when

facing other Warriors, think maybe find and punish ones who

cause Lotion's death. I very arrogant when win prize at yearly

contest, think maybe Great Grandmother right and I destined for

place as Elder. Then sneaky girl in boy-form come into

Shampoo's life and make everything shambles."

"I've heard a little about this story," Saki mused, "An outsider boy

challenged you and won over a table full of food that her uncle

Panda had just eaten. Sounds like you accepted the marriage part

pretty well after that pledge you made against never falling in

love again. You never wanted to feel pain again, the kind that's

worse than any pain of the body."

"I know now it stupid promise," Shampoo smiled, "Boy who

come to village most handsome man Shampoo ever see.

Shampoo think he cocky, maybe teach lesson and bring him

down a little. Shampoo tired after long day of fighting so she no

very careful and lose fight. Boy very skilled and clever, Shampoo

think him good fighter, maybe make good husband. He endure

test of resolve then share vows of marriage, and Shampoo feel

very good about life. Boy is kind and shows concern for

Shampoo welfare, have very nice smile, even nicer than Lotion. I

Suddenly she very sure about marriage. Maybe boy fill empty

space in heart and Shampoo put Lotion's ghost to rest, give

strong children to family and tribe..."

"And then you found out she wasn't really a guy," Saki gently

nodded, "I'll bet that was a kicker."

Shampoo closed her eyes and sighed, "Shampoo remember what

it like, feel happy one moment, then feel betrayed next. Sneaky

girl take advantage of Shampoo's trust, make Shampoo look like

fool in eyes of village. Others no know Nabiki Jusenkyo-cursed,

but think husband run away and desert her, make Shampoo look

weak. Shampoo no care what they think until Great

Grandmother come and tell Shampoo she have duty, must avenge

herself by finding husband-wife, either bring home or punish.

Shampoo make resolve to get even with sneaky girl who she

think betray her."

"But when you finally caught up with Nabiki you had changed

your mind about her?" Saki asked.

"Shampoo...very lonely...want very much what husband offer,"

Shampoo murmured with a distant expression, "That night we

together was...special. Shampoo no believe it all just fake, want

believe maybe sneaky girl care in spite of curse. Law scare her

off, maybe it no Shampoo who scare her. Shampoo hunt down

Airen and find out truth, then think maybe she no hate Nabiki

after all. Airen is kind in spite of way Shampoo attack her, still

better fighter than Shampoo. Shampoo suddenly find she no

have reason to fight, only want Airen accept her, be Airen to

Shampoo, boy or girl type."

"I see that her being a woman who turns into a guy isn't really

such a problem for you," Saki mused.

"Amazons have law say Warrior no use Nannichuan," Shampoo

replied, "Curse affect ability to have children, is danger tribe lose

many strong warriors if curse become common. Amazon who

break law can be banished from family, maybe even Joketsuzoku,

but Nabiki-chan no Amazon by birth. She no choose Curse, so

law make exception for outsider. Beyond this, no problem for

Shampoo," the Amazon patted her belly once again and smiled

meaningfully, "Is obvious advantage."

Saki had to smile at that, even as Kasumi made an appearance,

bringing in a tray laid out with rice cakes and snack foods. She

looked up at the elder Tendo daughter and saw a pleasant smile

as Kasumi knelt down close to Shampoo and offered her a

candied riceball. The whole scene was so homey and domestic

that Saki was almost lulled off her guard and nearly failed to take

notice of the angry red dot that suddenly appeared along the side

of Shampoo's forehead.

It was a testament to Saki's reflexes that she was able to move as

quickly as she did, spreading her arms wide as she sprung over

the table to tackle both women to the floor, just instants before a

sharp hiss split the air, and one instant later there was the sound

of something impacting against the wall opposite to the doorway

leading to the garden.

By that time Saki had rolled over her two charges and found

cover behind the thick wood of the doorframe. She risked a

glance outside and saw the red glow of the laser-tracking beam

that had alerted her to danger. She judged the distance to the

would-be assassin and was about to leap from cover, risking

making herself a target, when she saw Kasumi starting to sit up

and cried, "Get down, he's still out there!"

"Shampoo?" there was no mistaking the deep concern in

Kasumi's voice as she touched her fingers to the forehead of the

unmoving Amazon and came away with blood on her fingers.

The eldest Tendo daughter stared at those fingers as if unable to

comprehend what she was seeing, oblivious to the fact that she

herself was a splendid target in her moment of distraction.

Sudden fear almost paralyzed Saki in that moment, a fear of

history repeating itself, her mind filling with images that she had

relived a thousand times since that awful day so many lifetimes

past. The broken body, the overwhelming emptiness that turned

to rage and self-loathing and the realization that someone very

dear to her would never be a part of her life again because she

had failed in her duty as a friend, she had not protected poor

Junko...

Such fear, however, was an old companion that she had long ago

learned to live with, so it was almost with mechanical swiftness

that she made a certain practiced motion with her wrist that

caused her favorite weapon to slip into her palm, and then it

whipped to grasp Kasumi by her wrist so that she could be drawn

out of the line of fire. Saki noted that Kasumi had the presence of

mind to reach out to grab Shampoo so that she could also be

dragged to relative safety.

Saki wasted no time examining the fallen Amazon's forehead and

was relieved to discover that the bullet had only grazed her scalp.

The wound bled profusely, of course, but Shampoo had taken no

worse than a superficial crease to her skull and was merely dazed

but in no real mortal danger. Her next task was in making

Kasumi aware of this fact, then urging the eldest Tendo daughter

to apply a rude compress over the wound to staunch the bleeding.

Kasumi wasted no time tearing off a piece of her own blouse for

the task and went about tending to Shampoo with almost

motherly protection.

Thus satisfied that matters would be well in hand for the

moment, Saki next turned her attention to their assailant, who

had not fired another shot after the first volley. Whoever he was,

he had missed several opportunities for a follow up shot. That

implied that he might not still be there, but Saki was not ready to

risk her own life on that possibility. Less than one minute had

followed and the attack was not renewed, but seeing as she had

no firearms herself the prudent course was to stay where she was

and continue to protect the Tendo household.

Considering how Saki was renowned for being anything but

prudent, it was a mark of her self control that she was able to sit

still for as long as she had before Nabiki Tendo arrived on the

scene and took everything in with one horrified exclamation.

"SHAMPOO!" Nabiki cried as she moved to the side of Kasumi,

seeing only blood that covered part of the Amazon's face and the

floor beneath her, "Oneechan?"

"I...all right," Shampoo managed to say weakly as she tried to sit

up in spite of Kasumi's insistence. Saki finally got a good look at

the blood that had yet to be cleaned away and felt her own grow

cold in the realization of how close it had been. Another inch or

two lower...

Nabiki at once cradled Shampoo in her lap and made her own

discovery of the non-serious nature of the wound, but still her

distress was starkly evident as she stared with very round eyes

while Kasumi moved away a short distance and sat meekly

beside her. As the realization that her Amazon bride was not in

immediate danger finally penetrated she looked at Kasumi and

spoke in a husky voice, "Oneechan...call Doctor Tofu."

"Hai," Kasumi replied, seeming grateful for the excuse to do

something useful in the situation.

Saki slowly stood up, still in position behind the doorframe,

watching Tendo Nabiki link fingers with the purple haired girl in

her lap, somehow managing to keep the Amazon from attempting

to stand in spite of Shampoo's stubborn insistence that she could

manage it very well and did not wish to look weak in the eyes of

her Airen. There was no mistaking the affection that passed

between them, a look that made Saki acutely uncomfortable, as

though she were an intruder in their lives, one who had barely

any right to be present in the face of what silently passed between

both women.

It was with some relief that she noticed that others were arriving

on the scene, one of them a very old woman who leaned upon a

gnarled wooden staff while Saotome Ranma, Perfume and Kuonji

Ukyo escorted a bound and helpless figure between them. The

man was obviously a gang member to judge by his appearance

with hair done up in a Mohawk while his leather gear denoted

him as an outlaw type. His burly arms were bound by a heavy

rope and he was being led along by Ranma while Ukyo and

Perfume each held their weapons at the ready.

The thing that got her attention, however, was the weapon

Ranma carried in his other hand, a short-barreled rifle with an

oversized muzzle that was part silencer, the kind of weapon one

might use for shooting someone from a medium-ranged distance.

"Shampoo?" the old woman asked Saki as though expecting to be

answered.

"She'll live," Saki said mechanically, her eyes locked on the

would-be assassin.

"Are you all right?" Ranma asked as he looked at her, causing

Saki a moment of confusion.

"So," the old woman said, once more commanding her attention,

"You are the young policewoman who warned my Daughter-in-

law of the danger posed to her and her friends," the ancient

Amazon Elder's gaze became more studied as she added, "Am I

to take it you also saved the life of my great grandchild?"

"I..." Saki paused as the moment came to her of what she had

done from simple reflex, "I was just doing my duty, looking out

for the wife of a friend..."

"Some friend," Cologne said as she reversed her staff and pointed

with the sharpened end, "I take it you risk your life like this for

people you barely know on a regular basis?"

Saki followed the line of the old woman's gesture and touched

her face, coming away with a faint trickle of blood that she had

not been aware of. It took a moment to ascertain that it was

indeed hers, which led to the conclusion that she had been close

enough to Shampoo for the bullet to have grazed her cheek by the

barest millimeter.

"And you," Cologne suddenly shifted her attention to their

prisoner, who looked as though he had not come along quietly,

"You dared to threaten my Great Grandchild. Are you

sufficiently aware of the gravity of your actions?"

The man started to say something rather rude to Cologne's face

but suddenly found it difficult to breathe as he got a sharp rap in

his solar plexus. The glare from the others was sufficiently

murderous to make him conscious of his helpless state, but still

he tried to put on a show of bravado, no doubt secure in the belief

that they would not do more than threaten and bluster.

"So," Saki forced herself to assume the mantle of a Cop, even

though her authority felt shaky under these circumstances, "A

tough guy, huh? Bet you think there's not a lot we can do to you

that the Ronin won't do worse?"

"Go f-" the man started to say when he gasped as Cologne's

staff rapped him in a more sensitive area.

"You need a lesson in manners, Sonny," Cologne noted without

warmth or humor.

"Let's play a game of true or false," Saki said as she made a show

of cracking her knuckles, "You work for the Ronin, don't you?"

The man was not sufficiently recovered to reply, but his look was

venous, to say the least.

"I'll phrase the question differently," Saki said as she hooked two

fingers into the man's nostrils and pulled him upright, "You work

for the Ronin. Who is the Ronin working for? Who hired you

thugs to strike at the Tendos?"

"Go fuck yourself..." the man managed to gasp out as Saki drew

back her hand intending to get her point across.

The hand was intercepted, and Nabiki spoke at her side with

deceptive calm, "Let me handle this, detective. I know how to

make this clown talk."

Saki looked at her companion. Nabiki's eyes were cold and level,

containing none of their usual warmth and detached amusement.

There was no anger or discernable emotion, but Saki knew that

look so well, having worn it herself that fateful time many years

back when she had gotten her revenge upon three very wicked

sisters.

"He's all yours," Saki replied as she stepped away, ignoring

normal police procedure as she did not want to stand in the way

of someone else with that kind of a mad-on.

Nabiki turned to her prospective victim and said simply, "Untie

his hands, Ranma. He's not going anywhere, and I won't do this

with a man who can't fight back."

"You sure?" Ranma asked, then saw the look his iinazuke gave

him and quickly backed off, "Okay, but if he tries anything, he's

toast."

"He's not going anywhere," Nabiki said as Ranma hastily untied

the man's wrists, then stepped away and assumed a ready posture

while Nabiki just remained where she was, her gaze fixed and

level.

The thug took a moment to massage his wrists then smiled

defiantly as he tensed his shoulders to try and make a break. The

next instant he felt a palm-strike slap hard against his chest,

which caused his whole body to freeze up in shock, though the

pain did not come until a few seconds later.

"Let me see if I can clarify your position," Nabiki said, not

seeming to have moved from the spot as the would-be assassin

remained quivering in place, "You work for a man who calls

himself the Road Ronin, and you believe that he is dangerous,

and you fear him more than you think you need fear what will

happen to you if you do not cooperate in this matter."

It was impossible to say that he saw Nabiki move, but suddenly

the hoodlum's right side exploded into waves of searing agony

that went on and on yet somehow did not block out his ability to

hear her speaking.

"You are mistaken," Nabiki continued, hardly pausing as she

struck again with such speed that the pain just seemed to literally

burst forth from nerve endings on the left side of his body, "You

will suffer in ways your feeble mind cannot even imagine. You

will tell me what I want to know or I will give you pain

unending. You will know such pain that you will beg the gods

for release but be unable to move or speak, and pain will become

your entire universe," again that explosive pain broke out on his

right hip as Nabiki calmly continued, "You will beg your Master

to kill you, but no release will be given. For what you have done

I can show no mercy, but if you cooperate now I may let you live

without pain, provided you show me how sincerely you regret

your actions."

She made a show of drawing back her hand to deliver a fifth

blow to the left hip, but now the man's brain was screaming out

its protest, which somehow managed to find its way to his mouth

as he gibbered out a hoarse apology with a promise to tell her

everything he knew about the Ronin, and anything else on any

subject she might want to ask besides this.

Ranma and Ukyo were both staring at Nabiki with round eyes, as

much appalled at her tone as the brutality with which Nabiki

continued the interrogation. She did not have to strike the bandit

as her merest expression of displeasure proved enough to send

him into a panic attack, and in virtually no time at all he

explained to her the nature of the Road Warrior organization, its

size and numbers and source of financial backing.

It turned out they were indeed a bit more than the low-rent thugs

that the Police tended to dismiss them as. They were into

everything, drugs, prostitution, white slavery, extortion, weapons

smuggling, kidnapping and murder. The man gave a blunt

confession of a series of brutal crimes in which he had

participated with added testimony to other crimes he knew about

by association. The Warriors worked freelance for anyone who

would pay for their services and they recruited their number from

the dregs of biker gangs and urban riff-raff, anyone who liked

beating people up for fun and had no scruples about the means

they used to maintain their mobile empire of modern-day raiders.

They had been hired on this occasion to assist a local gang lord

who claimed Furinkan as a part of his territory, whose operations

on campus had been severely disrupted by Nabiki's

housecleaning, and who considered the Tendo family a general

nuisance because he did not control them. The warriors had been

told to act in strength for this occasion so that they could make an

example to any other prospective heroes who might think

themselves above paying fealty to this gang lord, who also

happened to be the uncle of the former Sempai whom Nabiki had

deposed and caused to be arrested.

"So this is about revenge," Nabiki said matter-of-factly, "And

what do you know about the Ronin himself?"

"Nothing, I swear to you, I don't know anything!" the man was

nearly in tears as he stared wide-eyed, clearly expecting to be

punished, "He formed the Warriors about a year ago...nobody

knows his real name or where he comes from, only that he's from

someplace north of Tokyo and studied some kind of kick-ass

Martial Arts system. Man, I don't even want to describe what

I've seen him do to people who cross him! It's not just

pain...he...he makes them up and explode..."

"It is as I thought," Cologne remarked, "The man is obviously an

outcast from his own clan, and I believe I know which clan that

is. This is very bad, my child. If what I believe is true then you

are not yet ready to face this man in mortal combat."

"I don't care," Nabiki's voice finally started to show her emotion,

"For what he tried to do there can be no mercy..."

"You'll hardly find any disagreement from me on that score,"

Cologne replied, "But if you must go against him, then you will

need to be prepared. I can give you such assistance as I may, but

it will require harsh training and no small amount of self-

sacrifice..."

"Fine," Nabiki interrupted, giving the man one final stare as she

added, "Tell what you just told me to the police or I'll come

looking for you. I don't care whether you fear me or the Ronin

more, you tell them what you know or I'll carry out my promise.

You're on borrowed time, make the most of it."

With that she delivered one more quick blow to the man's

forehead, and he suddenly slumped to the ground, unconscious.

Nabiki knelt down and did a double finger-strike to the opposite

sides at the base of his jaw then stood away and said, "He's all

yours, Detective. Cuff him and make sure I never set eyes on this

punk again."

"No problem," Saki said as she bent down to roll the man over

before placing a pair of handcuffs around his wrists, "Hope you

weren't too rough on him or my boss will make me regret it."

"Don't worry," Nabiki assured her, "You won't find a mark on

him, at least none that a lawyer could make use of. I know my

business."

"No fooling," Saki gave her a side-smirk, reclaiming the rifle

from Ranma, "Mind teaching me some of those moves? They

could sure come in handy in this business."

"Maybe later," Nabiki said as the anger seemed to drain out of

her once the thug was carried away by Saki and Ukyo, leaving

Ranma to look at her with a questioning expression.

Of those present only Perfume seemed unaffected by the rare

display of Nabiki's temper. If anything she gave an approving

nod Nabiki's way as though admiring her methods. Cologne

herself seemed favorably inclined towards the Middle Tendo

daughter, commenting with an almost amused tone of voice,

"Interesting Technique. If I did not know better I'd suspect you

had extensive Amazon training."

"Try Korean," Nabiki sniffed, "An old guy I met there came from

this tiny village called Sinanju and...well...that's kind of a long

story and..."

"Airen?" Nabiki turned to see that Shampoo was at her side

again, still covering her wound with a fresh cloth but looking

fairly steady, all else being considered. Doctor Tofu was

hovering nearby with Akane, Ryoga, Keiko and Kodachi in

attendance. Shampoo's eyes were remarkably clear and bright as

she regarded Nabiki with something more than simple warmth.

The look she gave her Airen was tantamount to a small inferno of

support and desire.

In the light of that gaze Nabiki felt the last dregs of her anger

drain away, to be replaced by other emotions far too complex to

describe, but which included equal amounts of shame and

longing. In an almost timid voice she said, "You almost..."

"What is almost?" Shampoo asked matter-of-factly, "You think

Shampoo no be strong enough to ignore little thing like that?

Never would have happen if Shampoo not relax her guard. You

no need apologize for being late back from battle.

Shampoo...very proud of way Airen defend her just now."

"Yes," said another voice, more surprising in that the speaker

was the last one from whom Nabiki would have thought to find

approval, "You did that very well. Father will be pleased at the

way you have defended our house. I doubt not that fellow will

have a lot of time to think about what he has done and make

proper restitution."

"Oneechan?" Nabiki asked as she looked towards Kasumi, who

was smiling back at her, once more restored to the picture of

tranquility, however briefly she had been touched by the near

tragedy of events.

"I'm also very proud of the way you handled yourself there, my

dear," said a voice whose approval was not at the top of Nabiki's

list, but nonetheless made her glance down to see Master

Happosai smiling up at her before he passed something into her

hand and said, "Here, I believe I meant for you to have this."

Nabiki took the scroll he offered her, remembering their talk from

before as she quickly unrolled it and again found the chart with

the various pressure points indicated in kanji.

"What's this?" Cologne said with interest as she glanced at the

scroll then gave Happosai as scornful glance, "The Moxibustion

Chart you stole from those temple priests?"

"Close," Happosai said, "It gives an outline of some of the most

important nerve-centers in the human body that can render an

opponent helpless, regardless of his strength or training. I

thought it might be of help if my Apprentice studied it for a while

to memorize those significant..."

"Your Apprentice?" Cologne said crossly, "And what do you

expect to teach her? How to steal lingerie from helpless women?

Tendo Nabiki is my Daughter-in-law and a worthwhile disciple

for teaching the 3000-year-old secrets of the Amazons..."

"Oh posh!" Happosai said, "You know our ancestors picked up

bits and pieces of it here and there from all over Asia then tried to

pretend that they had invented these systems in the first place."

"Blasphemy," Cologne hissed, "I would expect nothing less from

an outcast such as you..."

"Outcast?" Ranma said, "What, are you two related or

something?"

"I thought you were Japanese, Gramps," Nabiki favored the old

man crossly.

"Did I ever say I was born in this country?" Happosai smiled,

"I've been lots of different places in my time, girl. In the last

three hundred years you tend to put in a lot of mileage..."

"Mind if I say something?" Akane suddenly spoke up, "Dad,

Uncle Genma and Aunt Nodoka will be home pretty soon and the

place is a mess. Should we try to clean it up or would that mean

tampering with a crime scene?"

"Oh my!" Kasumi said, "I hadn't thought of that! Tofu-Sensei,

would you be so kind as to help me straighten up a little?"

"Ah?" suddenly Doctor Tofu lost his professional calm as he

turned towards Kasumi with a sudden inability to focus on the

here and now that had become a legend throughout Nerima.

Nabiki allowed herself one smile, then turned to both of her

Mentors and said, "We need a War Council. Help me find a way

to beat this monster who calls himself the Ronin."

"You have my vow on this, child," Cologne said gravely, "For his

vile assault against both of my Great Granddaughters he has

earned the divine retribution of Amazon justice. For this matter,

however, I may need to call upon the services of an old

acquaintance I knew from many years long ago. If he is willing

to help in this, we may yet find a way to bring down this self-

proclaimed Ronin and his outlaw band of raiders."

"A good idea," said Saki as she and Ukyo appeared with two

uniformed cops behind them, "While we're on the subject, I think

I'll call in a favor of my own and get you some help. Department

heads may frown on the idea of a civilian carrying out a personal

vendetta, but I think I can convince them to look the other way on

this if it means cracking this case wide open. Meanwhile I hope

you don't mind if these people here gather some evidence from

the crime scene."

"Just so long as I can clean up after you're done," said Kasumi

alertly.

"Indeed," Cologne favored Saki with another one of her curious

expressions, "Perhaps your aid, too, may be welcome in this

matter."

"Fine," Nabiki nodded, "You people do what you have to. In the

meantime," she gave her friends a close study then said grimly,

"We have another line of business to pursue. The Ronin was

hired by a local gangster who seems to think his toes were being

stepped on." Her expression became grim again as her voice

lowered, "If he thought they were being stepped on before, he's

about to find out what real inconvenience feels like..."

Continued.

Comments/Criticism/Flames of Eternal Perdition:

shadowmane

Yeah, I know it's been pretty grim so far, but have faith, the light

at the end of the tunnel is not the train that hit the Coyote...

Nabiki 1/2

Chapter 18, Part 2.

By

Jim Robert Bader

Inspired by the works of Rumiko Takahashi;

All rights go to her, the producers and distributors

Of the Ranma 1'2 Series.

(Based on the Altered Destinies Series by

Wade Tritschler and Others;

Some characters and situations were created by me,

The rest is shared Fanfiction, so please don't sue me)

Hanton Jiro took a puff on his Western-style cigarette as he

surveyed the alleyway with a slightly bored disdain. Guard duty

never really was the most exciting part of working for this outfit,

no where near as fun as roughing up old men for loose change

and extorting protection money from shopkeepers. Nothing very

exciting ever happened, outside of the occasional Police raid, so

the main challenge was usually trying to pretend he was not

bored senseless. Leaning against the wall with one foot raised

for balance, he almost wished something would break up the

monotony.

So you could hardly blame him when something did occur upon

his watch, causing him to fall for one of the oldest cons in the

book: a pretty girl in immodest dress come calling.

Actually she was a pretty stunning looker, not too tall but with

very long legs, which she displayed to full effect, along with

other noticeable body part in her light tank top and cut-off shorts.

She had long red hair done up in some manner of pony tail, and

features that were clearly Eurasian. Her eyes were an astonishing

blue, and when she smiled her lovely face was rendered all the

more appealing.

"Hi there, big boy," she cooed as she sauntered up to greet him,

"You doing anything at the moment?"

"Not at the moment," Jiro smiled, unable to believe his incredible

luck. Either this girl was a prostitute or a teenaged girl looking

for a bit of action. Well, action was his middle name as he

flashed his manly charms as he said, "You looking for some

excitement?"

"Sure am," she grinned, "Found it too!"

Before Jiro could so much as blink an eyelash he felt her foot

suddenly slamming up between his legs before it retracted and

shot out again at a 140-degree angle, colliding against his jaw

with the force of a sledgehammer. He was out like a light before

he could hit the pavement.

Keiko turned and signaled to the others before hauling the

gangster to the side as the rest of the Posse moved into position.

Once everybody was where they needed to be, Keiko turned to

confront the now unguarded door and drew upon her full resolve,

then launched herself forward in a dragon-stamp kick that would

have done worthy to its namesake.

Inside the building were startled gangsters hot at work converting

stolen cars into resaleable hardware. The attack came in the form

of three near simultaneous explosions that hit them from three

sides at once without hardly any warning. Besides the redhead

that came crashing through the door there was a loud explosion

of glass that heralded a body crashing down through the skyline,

while the garage door itself was shorn loose in three quick sword

slashes as Kuno Tatewaki stepped through the open gap with

Saotome Ranma following in at a casual stride. Ryoga was, by

this time, half way to the ground with his umbrella fully

extended, and when he hit the top of the car he had been aiming

for he stove in the roof as though the thing had been smashed by

a wrecking ball.

Ryoga himself looked no worse for wear as he contemplated the

astonished gangsters.

"Look, friend Saotome," Kuno smiled, "These common bandits

with their Chop shop operation are like flies caught in the amber.

Shall we do these peasants a favor and render them living to the

authorities or treat them like the gutter refuse they are?"

"Whatever turns you on, old buddy," Ranma said as he cracked

his knuckles, "Give me some room and you can have as much fun

as you want. Just leave something for the Police to identify

later."

"Very well," Kuno smiled, and now for the first time everyone

could see that the blade he unsheathed from its wooden scabbard

was not his usually preferred Bokken.

It was a Katana, very old and very sharp!

Of course the gangsters wasted no time breaking out of their brief

astonishment as they reached for whatever weapons they could

find on hand, and there were close to twenty of them at all,

hardened men of the streets who were no strangers to brutality

and violence.

They never stood a chance. The fight-such as it was-was over

in less than forty three seconds...

"Can I help you, young lady?" Madam Sue Mi asked of the

curious looking young girl in the Chinese outfit.

"Perfume want know if this place where men buy services of

young girls," Perfume asked of the Chinese woman, who was

clearly proprietor of this place called the Coral Pink Lotus.

"What did you think this is?" Sue Mi asked, surprised at such a

naive question, "Are you looking for employment?"

"No thank you," Perfume replied, "I already employed. Want

know if man named Godai-Sama is present. Perfume have

important business that no can wait."

Oho! This clarified matters somewhat, either a wife or a jealous

mistress. Either way, company policy forbade divulging such

confidential secrets, unless the price was adequate.

"I'm sorry," Sue Mi put on her best patented "Sorry Honey" smile

and pretended to be sympathetic, "I can't give out that sort of

information to just anybody..."

There was a flick of the girl's wrist and suddenly an axe was

poised just below Madam Sue Mi's chin, and the girl was no

longer smiling in an entirely friendly manner.

"Perfume think you know," she said confidently, "You tell now,

we no have further business."

"Ah, let's not get too hasty here," Sue Mi replied, trying not to

sound flustered as she reached down under her table and pressed

a concealed alarm button. A moment later her fervent prayers

were answered as the establishment bouncers rushed in to subdue

the dangerous creature before her...

Or at least they tried, which only earned them a rather

humiliating comeuppance as Perfume produced a second axe and

became a whirling dervish of blinding swift motion. A few

heartbeats later the bouncers were all on the floor wearing a few

scraps of cloth over their underwear, their weapons in even worse

condition.

"Perfume ask again," the Amazon smiled as she now held both

axes criss-crossed under Madam Sue Mi's chin, "You tell

Perfume what she want to know, she no make paperweight of

head, ne?"

Sue Mi made a swift decision that resulted in an extremely wise

choice, and then Perfume used the flat of one axe to send her to

dreamland, thus sparing her the awesome agony of what was

shortly to become of her establishment. The people inside the

building, however, learned first hand what it meant to see the full

unchecked fury of a one-girl Amazon blitzkrieg...

"Last call, all bets in, what will the lady have?" asked the dealer

at the gambling table.

"Pair of Sixes," the girl with short brown hair wearing the

Chinese clothing replied as she rolled the dice and turned up the

predicted total.

"That's impossible!" the man next to her declared, "You can't win

by the same roll three consecutive times! The odds are

inconceivable..."

"Sounds to me like you're just a sore loser," Nabiki smiled as she

pulled in her now-much-larger pile of chips, only to find a man in

a three piece suit had come up to place a hand on her wrist to

stop the motion.

"Lady," the man said, "I'm afraid we're going to have to insist

that you leave..."

"Really?" Nabiki asked before the man found himself flat on his

back with his arm being twisted out of its socket, "Nobody told

me there was a ceiling to how much you can win. Hey,

everybody! They're trying to cheat us! They won't let us win

fairly!"

To emphasize her point she reached down and scooped up a

double-handful of chips, which she proceeded to toss into the air

as she spoke the magic words, "FREE MONEY!"

As predicted the area nearest to her erupted into a chaotic state as

men and women began to scramble to pick up the chips, which

caused the bouncers some difficulty and made them easier targets

for Nabiki to pick off one-by-one. She made just enough of a

commotion to attract the right wrong kind of attention as men

started pouring out the back and sides converging on her

position.

That was when, on cue, the rear wall exploded in an Amazon-

shaped hole, and through this gap strode Shampoo with Bonbori

in hand, looking more than ready to start her own kind of

commotion.

"Nihao!" she cried cheerfully and promptly dispatched the first

two bouncers who tried to show her towards the exits. Her

instructions had been to create maximum disruption and property

damage with a minimum of casualties, and she set to work with

an enthusiasm worthy of her ancestors.

This heightening of the violence level naturally brought out men

with weapons of their own, but that was when Nabiki's other

backup came into play as Kodachi and Akane shed their

disguises and went right for these new challengers like a well

oiled machine, Akane attacking from the ground level while

Kodachi leaped onto a craps table and put her ribbon into play

disarming every man who came within her radius. Akane simply

made like these thugs were no different from the High School

bullies she had taken on every day for most of a semester with the

results being similar. In no time at all the opposition was

sprawled out on the floor in various positions, both natural and

unnatural.

Once Nabiki had judged the damage sufficient she withdrew,

along with her colleagues, but they would turn up again in other

parts of town throughout the day, hitting one operation after

another along a carefully pre-selected map, making as much

noise and trouble as possible before at last calling it a day,

satisfied that a message had been sent to the right places.

One place in particular was more significant than all of the others

combined...

"Say that again?" demanded Godai Kuondo as he bore holes into

the eyes of his subordinate with a glare that could have been

registered as a lethal weapon.

"She jumped us out of nowhere, Boss!" the man replied as if

begging for his life (which in effect he was, his boss being in a

mood somewhat blacker than the Marianis Trench), "We thought

she was one of the restaurant staff, and who notices something

like that big spatula strapped to her back until she brought it out

and started laying into our men without the slightest warning!

We tried to fight back, but it was like she wasn't human! She put

down six of our best men in less than ten seconds, and then the

rest of our boys chased her into the kitchen where she...man! I

was there and I still don't believe it!"

"You're saying this one girl took out twelve of our best men and

took my Nephew hostage all by herself?" Godai said in stark

disbelief, "What do you take me for? An idiot? Who paid you to

turn against me?"

"I didn't! I wouldn't! I swear, I'm loyal!" the underline

stammered, now having no pride left to stand and take his

punishment in dignity as his boss nodded to one of his men, who

took out a weapon and pointed it at the head of his fellow gang

member.

"Not in here, you idiot!" Godai snarled in disgust, "You'll ruin my

linoleum! Just take him and put him with the other idiot who lost

my son claiming a Chinese broad with brown hair who tore up

the Coral Pink Lotus!"

A coarse, harsh, guttural laugh caused everyone, including the

doomed gunman, to turn and look towards one corner of Godai's

office. The masked man standing there leaning against one wall

had an attitude of contempt quite apart from the underlings who

surrounded them, which irritated Godai enough that he glared at

the man and said, "What's so funny, Ronin?"

"You," the big man hissed in a voice that was more of a wheeze

than the kind of deep, guttural voice one would have expected

from a body so huge, "Can't believe a lone woman could spank

your little boys with her toy spatula. As if these hired thugs of

yours had balls enough to stand man-to-man with a real fighter."

"Hey," one of Godai's senior henchmen reacted, but Godai

promptly waved him to silence.

"I was just going to get around to you," Godai said levelly, "I

thought I was paying you to keep stuff like this from happening

to me, now I've got reports coming in from all over the city telling

me my operations are being shut down one by one. No drugs, no

prostitutes, no guns, and no numbers rackets. Bad enough my

gambling casinos and arcades got broken up, but now I also hear

one of the dives your boys hide out in was also hit hard, and what

have you got to show me for the money I've paid you?"

"Tendo Nabiki surprised me," the other man said simply, "I

underestimated the speed with which she would react to my

challenge. I also severely underestimated the resourcefulness of

her allies, who are even better than my agents said they were.

You may have suffered a few setbacks..."

"Setbacks?" Godai rocked back in his chair, "You call the amount

of yen I'm losing in a single day just a setback? The police raided

every one of my operations right after they got broken up by a

bunch of rowdy teenagers! I could have hired ten like you for the

amount I've lost, to say nothing of the lawyer fees I'm going to

have to pay out to get some of my boys out of the slammer!"

"Why don't you take your fancy-pants biker boys and split before

we demand a refund," the unwise senior henchman who had

spoken before said as he imprudently stabbed a finger towards

the Ronin.

"No, don't!" Godai cried out too late as the Ronin's fist slammed

into the Henchman's chest, knocking the man all the way across

the room, where he slammed into the wall and was imbedded

several inches.

The man's torment was not ended, however, as he started to cry

out incoherently and grabbed at his head, which was bulging in

alarming and unnatural ways in spite of his frantic attempt to

contain his own rupturing blood vessels. Another moment later

the walls were sprayed red as the man expired in a gruesome and

most agonizing death.

Godai winced as he groaned, "Man, why did you have to do that

to poor Marcon? And I just got through cleaning up the last

mess you left here..."

"He tried to touch me," the Ronin said harshly, "No one tries to

touch me and lives! I thought I made that point plain to you and

your people!"

"Yeah, but with the fiasco on the School Campus you can hardly

blame them for having a few doubts," Godai tried to sound

reasonable as the Ronin came to stand over his desk.

The other bodyguards and senior ranging gang members all

tensed, but nobody drew their weapons. One glance at the still

spurting body in the corner was enough to make them hesitate as

the big man leaned over the desk, resting his massive fists on the

polished cherry wood surface, and said in a hiss as menacing as

anything Godai had ever heard in his life, "I find your lack of

faith disturbing."

A softer chuckle broke the tension in the room and caused heads

to swivel about to take in a new arrival, who was leaning up

against the doorframe.

"Guess it's true what they say about there being no honor among

thieves," said Asamiya Saki with a rude smirk on her face while

she played with an apple that she tossed up and down in her

hand, "Sorry to spoil your fun, boys, but I'm kind of pressed for

time and I've got a message to deliver."

"Who are you?" Godai asked, relieved to have someone else to

focus his wrath upon, though the pink haired girl seemed far too

confident of herself, and she must have somehow managed to get

by his men outside in order to make this timely interruption.

"Not important," Saki straightened up and pointed, "My message

comes from the lips of Tendo Kaneda himself to the one who

calls himself the Road Ronin. He wants to meet you at dawn

tomorrow in Furinkan Park to settle this issue once and for all.

You either show up or we continue to hit your places one by one

until you won't be able to sell rice cakes on a street corner,

Godai."

"Interesting," the Ronin said as he straightened up, "So you're a

member of her Posse, is that it?"

"If you like," Saki smirked before glancing to one side and seeing

the mess there, which caused her to wince a little as she said,

"Don't you have a maid or something?"

"And what makes you think you are going to be walking out of

here?" the Ronin turned fully around, his hands extended at his

side in a deceptively non-threatening manner.

"One word," Saki replied, "Shonkar!"

With that she tossed the apple into the center of the room, where

it promptly exploded into a cloud of billowing smoke that

completely filled the office and left several men stunned who had

been closest to the blast. By the time the spoke cleared Saki was

no where to be found.

"Shonkar?" Godai coughed, "What the hell kind of a word is

that?"

"A meaningless word," the Ronin said, unaffected by the smoke,

"Kaneda, eh? I've heard the name used but I didn't see him

anywhere at the High School. He's supposedly just as formidable

as his cousin, but there is strangely no history I have been able to

research of a Martial Artist by that name."

"Who cares?" Godai wheezed almost as badly as the Ronin, "Him

and his cousin are gonna break me unless you take them out this

time!"

"Don't worry," the Ronin said as he cocked one of his pistols to

eject a cartridge from the chamber, plucking it from the air as he

continued, "I will avenge myself on this upstart who thinks that

he can challenge the Road Warriors and win. I will make an

example of Tendo Nabiki, her entire family and friends, and then

I will punish those who dared to teach them so that no one will

ever again believe that they can stand against the Ronin."

He held the bullet on the palm of one hand and stared at it for a

few brief seconds. A moment he placed the bullet between two

fingers and pointed it at Godai, where it went off and just missed

hitting the gangster's head. Godai reached up a trembling hand

and felt the blood from where the bullet had barely nicked his ear

and felt almost like fainting.

"That is for doubting me," the Ronin told him flatly, "Next time I

won't miss."

With that he turned and left the office, Godai's men clearing a

hasty path, not wanting to so much as catch the glance of the

towering mercenary...

"Shonkar?" asked Ranma curiously, "What kind of a word is

that?"

"Honestly," Nabiki snorted, "I thought you were into Science

Fiction. Don't you watch Babylon Five like the rest of the planet,

Ran-chan?"

"How about letting the rest of us in on the joke, Nab-chan," Ukyo

pondered, "What's the word supposed to mean exactly?"

"Terror and Revenge," Nabiki smiled, "What we've just put

Godai through, a one-day reign of terror that ought to shake up a

few apple carts from here to Taipei."

"I don't get it," Akane frowned, "You mean we're trying to get

their attention? I thought the idea was to discourage future

reprisals."

"Doesn't work like that, neechan," Nabiki shook her head,

"Gangs are used to threats and intimidation. You can't really

score points with them by simply making them afraid of you, you

have to make them go weak in the knee in stark raving fear of

your merest shadow. These punks think they can throw their

weight around because nobody has the determination to call their

bluff and make them work for a living."

"Why we let them live?" Perfume asked, "No want bother family,

is logical to go for leaders and leave only dead to ask questions."

"Too simple, Per-chan," Nabiki sighed, "Besides getting us in

trouble with the law, leaving a bunch of bodies strewn about

Nerima would just mean somebody else would move in to take

their place, and most probably try establishing their name by

taking revenge against us. This way we just make them lose face

and leave a lot of hurt and bruised gang members for the police to

round up and question. Once we break the back of the

organization some might even be willing to talk and turn states

evidence. It's a good thing we're not dealing with real Yakuza

here, just local thugs who pay fealty for use of the turf. The big

boys won't want to get involved once the heat is on and too many

witnesses are left standing around asking too many questions.

Toadstools like these only grow in dark places without the light

of publicity, which we're in the process of shining on them."

"Airen prove she good strategist," Shampoo said proudly, "Make

enemies think twice before challenge Amazon vengeance. Great

Grandmother no could plan better."

"Well, as much as I had to throw cold water on the party,

people," Saki noted grimly, "We still have to deal with the Ronin

himself, and that won't be easy after what I saw in that office."

"You mean the exploding head thing?" Keiko winced, "Yeah,

that definitely poses a bit of a problem..."

"Exploding heads?" Ryoga looked puzzled, "I've heard of some

strange techniques, but a single blow that does that? That's

pretty hard to credit..."

"Like the thing your pussy-cat friend here can do with the touch

of a finger?" Kodachi asked in mild amusement, "What do you

Amazons call it again...?"

"Bakusai Tenketsu," Perfume replied, "Is principle that all things

in Universe have a breaking point that can be exploded with a

touch. Training very hard, no everyone master it. For Perfume it

very hard, but she learn quickly, can do even better than

Shampoo-cousin."

"But technique no good against human body," Shampoo pointed

out, "Is too many energy patterns must disrupt to make body

explode. Bodies are composite parts, no solid like stone or

metal."

"So this guy knows a technique that isn't part of the Amazon

repertoire?" Nabiki mused, "That's not too good, unless Cologne

might know something she hasn't taught to either of you. I'll

have to go ask her, if she's anywhere around at the moment."

"I think I saw her in the dojo talking to some old guy," Akane

frowned, "I didn't know we were having guests over. I thought

Dad and Mister Tendo thought it was too dangerous to let

anybody in until this crisis is over."

"That's what I thought, too," Nabiki frowned, "But if Cologne

invited him over, it must have been important. I don't always

agree with the old woman, but she's never done anything to my

knowledge without a purpose."

"True enough," Akane looked at her older sister and said, "I've

got a question of my own...why did you tell him to meet up with

Kaneda?"

"Why yes," Kodachi suddenly arched her tone mischievously and

cooed, "What of my darling Kaneda-sama? How is he involved

in these affairs do you wonder, Nabiki-san?"

"Ah..." Nabiki winced, then said, "Well...the Ronin's never

actually met Kaneda, so I thought it might give us the edge

and...um, I really do wonder what Cologne is up to in there?" she

asked in a feeble attempt at changing the subject.

"I suppose we could go over there and ask her," Ranma pointed

out.

"When all else fails try the direct approach, eh?" Nabiki smiled,

"Why not? I've had enough subtlety for one day. Wait here and

I'll be back as soon as I get to the bottom of this mystery, people."

She headed for the dojo as Kodachi murmured to Akane and

Keiko, "Take charge sort of girl, isn't she? She presumes a lot in

giving me instructions."

"Oneechan's just that way," Akane shrugged before giving

Kodachi a cross look and murmuring softly, "And what's with

that Kaneda-dig anyway? You already know Nabiki and Kaneda

are one in the same."

"True," Kodachi grinned the more as she added in the same low

tone, "But she doesn't know that I know, and I do so much enjoy

seeing the way she squirms when I catch her off guard like that.

After the way she let me make such a fool of myself I feel I am

entitled to a little payback. Now if only I could convince my idiot

brother to give up on his obsession regarding both parts of her."

"By the way," Keiko said, "He sure helped us out this time, and

he never even tried hitting on me the whole time we were on our

little blitzkrieg."

"Are you kidding?" Kodachi chuckled, "He is beside himself with

pleasure at finally getting to act out the role of heroic samurai,

which he has fancied himself for many years. 'Tachi may be

prone to missing a few clues now and then, but he is competent

enough with a sword in his hand, and if you give him a worthy

cause to fight for he will storm the very gates of hell, as he so

often likes to boast when anyone will listen."

"Well, I don't know about you guys," Ranma turned to the others,

"But I'm still pretty wound up in spite of all the excitement. Care

to spar with me for a bit, Ryoga-kun?"

"Now that you mention it," the lost boy replied, cracking his own

knuckles, "I do feel a lot unused energy I feel like working off, if

you don't mind me pounding your head in, Ranma-kun."

"Ah...but..." Akane started to say, then sighed in disappointment,

"Never mind."

"What's with you?" Ukyo asked, sensing the downward shift in

Akane's spirits.

"Nothing," Akane growled as she turned around and headed back

towards the main house, "You guys coming? I was thinking of

baking up some cookies with Kasumi in a little bit."

There was a momentary look of panic on the faces of the other

five remaining women before Kodachi and Keiko hurried to catch

up with their friend, taking Akane by either arm as they

murmured into her ears of other pleasurable things they were

thinking of doing together.

"What did I say?" Ukyo asked in growing confusion.

"No what you say, Airen," Perfume replied, "Think Akane want

spend time with stupid bandana boy. You no see how they look

at each other?"

"Well, now that you mention it, just about every time they're

together," Ukyo smiled, "Ryoga and Akane. Well, that's better

than if she were still after my Ranchan."

"Shampoo think maybe those two no find each other without

push," Shampoo smiled, "If left to them no see how they get

together any time soon."

"You're probably right," Ukyo stroked her chin with her fingers,

"Well, I'm not in Nabiki's class when it comes to making up

plans, but maybe we might find a way to help those two out.

After all, Ryoga's my friend, and I've gotten to like Akane, for all

her many faults. I think that maybe we ought to find a way of

bolstering their courage a little..."

"What, like love potion?" Shampoo brightened, "Think maybe

Shampoo know way. Great Grandmother bring spellbook from

China, it has many useful recipes for potion, charms and herbs."

"A recipe book, eh?" Ukyo smiled speculatively, "Tell me more

about it, Sham-chan. Think she'd mind if I had a look at one of

the pages...?"

When Nabiki reached the dojo she was surprised to find not one

but two strangers occupying the center, and-more astonishing

still-both Cologne and Happosai were facing them in postures

that conveyed attitudes of great respect, more respect than either

of the two Elders was prone to showing.

The man facing them was very old to look at with frost white hair

and bushy eyebrows, heavily robed like a Buddhist monk yet

showing no evidence of a precise religious order. At a guess she

would have placed him at seventy, but there was something about

him that appeared far more ancient. Moreover, the nearer she

came to his presence the greater the sense of agelessness

weighted about his aura. There was such a dignity about his

bearing that it caused her to look at him alertly, clearly sensing

that there was far more to him than could be met by appearance.

At his side was a young man approximately Ranma's age who

had jet black hair and astonishingly blue eyes, not definably

Asian but possibly of occidental origin. The boy turned to watch

her approach and there was something about his handsome

features that made her heart begin to flutter for no reason that she

could name. His expression was neutral but not overtly hostile,

more curious than formal, and Nabiki found herself liking his

face for some reason. He reminded her of Ranma, and not just

because they bore a passing resemblance.

"Ah," said Happosai as he took note of her approach, "Nabiki-

chan, so good of you to come, we were just about to call you."

"I heard that we had company," Nabiki replied, looking towards

the older man before adopting a respectful nod on the principle

that anyone who could impress both of her teachers had to be

somebody with whom you wanted to stay on good terms,

"Konichi wa, honored sir."

"Good day to you, honored daughter of the house of Tendo," the

older man replied in a surprisingly clear voice, "I am Ryuken,

and this is my son, Kenshiro. We are here at the invitation of

Elder Cologne and Master Happosai, which whom I have had

past relations.. I trust this is not an unwelcome intrusion into the

harmony of your House?"

"Not at all," Nabiki replied, "Are you the specialists I've been

referred to?"

"We represent a very ancient school of Martial Arts known as

The North Star," the elder Ryuken replied, "And I believe we may

be of some assistance in solving the mystery surrounding the one

you know of only as the Road Ronin."

"Indeed?" Nabiki said as she sat down besides Cologne,

"Anything that you can tell me would be greatly appreciated.

He's been a source of much unpleasantness since yesterday

afternoon..."

"Ah yes," the old man nodded, "My apologies for that. It would

seem that your troubles are in part my fault. You see...I was the

one who trained him."

"Indeed?" Nabiki murmured, "Your school...the North Star is it?

I'm not familiar with that particular art..."

"It is a very august and important School, my Apprentice,"

Happosai said portentously, "The North Star and The Southern

Cross are two of the most ancient disciplines yet in existence,

descended from the same teaching, passed down over the

generations from father to son, the preservers of a legacy to which

even the Amazons of Joketsuzoku are beholden."

"This is so, Daughter-in-law," Cologne said gravely, "For once

Happy has not garbled the facts to suit his own perverse whims.

Ryuken is the reigning Fist of the North Star, and Kenshiro is his

designated heir, the Fist of the North Star that is to be. Yet

Kenshiro is also Master Ryuken's third and youngest child..."

"He is my youngest son," said Ryuken simply, "He has two older

brothers, one of whom you have had the misfortunate to have

met, who may call himself a Ronin now but once went by the

name of Jaggy, my middle son and greatest disappointment."

"You mean the Ronin..." Nabiki gasped.

"Is my son," Ryuken replied, "Or was before he turned his heart

to the dark path he now follows. Jealousy has twisted his heart

and made him a creature of hate who will stop at nothing to

achieve his goals."

"It is a great pity," Cologne said, "I remember the boy when he

was much younger. Even then I could tell that he envied his

brothers, the older for his power and the younger because young

Kenshiro had a kinder and more generous disposition. Such bad-

hearted students corrupt the art to their foul purposes and seek to

destroy those who have only wished to love them."

"Indeed, a great tragedy," Happosai nodded, "Sounds to me as if

this boy was a lost cause from the very beginning."

"I fear you are both right," Ryuken replied, "But can you blame a

father for failing to see the imperfections in his child until it was

far too late? Jaggy left home some years ago, only to return and

attempt to take by force that which was not his to have in the first

place. Kenshiro was forced to defend himself against his own

brother, for which he bears a burden on his heart for the injury he

was forced to inflict upon him, the injury that causes Jaggy to

wear a mask to this very day. That is why you must allow us to

help you bring an end to my son's criminal career before he can

bring more shame upon our school with his actions."

"Of course I would welcome your assistance most heartily, sir,"

Nabiki replied, "But what is the secret of your discipline that

allows this man to be such a danger to others?"

"My son will demonstrate," Ryuken replied, nodding to the boy at

his side, "Kenshiro, perform the dance of the Nine Ultimate

Levels."

Kenshiro rose to his feet fluidly and bowed to his father, then to

the elders, and lastly to Nabiki, pausing to meet her curious gaze

before turning way and assuming a horse stance in the space

between both parties. Nabiki watched curiously as the boy went

through a series of rapid katas while remaining where he first

stood, going through a repertoire of rapid kicks and punches that

flowed one to the next with hardly a break in the interim. Each

motion gradually escalated in complexity until he reached and

surpassed the plateau Nabiki knew to be her own skill level

before continuing on to the final motions, which were executed

flawlessly with such control and power that Nabiki was held

speechless.

Kenshiro finished his motions, then bowed and took his seat at

his father's side, not even breathing hard at his brief exertions.

Nabiki just sat there staring at him in disbelief while Cologne

and Happosai nodded gravely, the latter voicing the sentiment,

"You have done well with this boy. He will perhaps one day

even surpass the wisdom of his father."

"That is my hope," Ryuken replied, "Perhaps the hope of the

world. The Fist of the North Star has a destiny to protect the

flame of life. There must always be a North Star to guide

mankind through whatever dark times may await us in the

future."

"The ultimate technique of your school," Cologne resumed, "It

involves a process by which the human body may be subjected to

lethal levels of Chi-force?"

"Indeed," Ryuken nodded, "At low levels the power merely

involves cutting off the flow of Ki throughout the body while

saturating the victim with a concentrated burst of energy that

churns within one without the ability to circulate or equalize,

eventually seeking release through the weakest vessel of the

body. At more advanced levels the power requires only a single

blow to a certain vital spot and the charge is released at the point

of contact. The use of this technique is almost invariably lethal.

It is more dangerous by far than the Bakusai Tenketsu and is

never taught to outsiders. We cannot allow the knowledge of this

deadly technique to escape our control or else the consequences

can be devastating."

"And your son knows this secret killing method?" Nabiki asked,

giving Kenshiro a closer study and noticing the uncomfortable

way the boy shifted in place and would not this time meet her

glance.

"He does," Ryuken replied, "I am teaching him all of my

knowledge that he may advance that much more quickly in the

art. Kenshiro is at present in danger from either one of his two

brothers, but one day he will surpass them both in skill and

knowledge."

"That is quite a burden for one of such tender years," Cologne

noted matter-of-factly, "I myself am not yet ready to pass on all of

my secrets to my two Disciples, nor shall I until I am convinced

that they are fully ready."

"That is as you would have it," Ryuken said sagely before giving

his son a side-glance, "Kenshiro, why not escort Tendo Nabiki

out into her garden that you two young people might allow your

elders a few moments to catch up on old times? You each will be

summoned when the time is right."

"Yes, Father," the boy said with a very masculine voice.

He rose to his feet again and offered his hand to Nabiki, who

accepted it after only a moment of hesitation. Much to her

surprise she found him much stronger than she even would have

imagined. A part of her fairly thrilled to the incredible power she

felt implied by that brief contact, but she had the presence of

mind to keep from showing how much she was affected.

Once they stepped outside, however, Nabiki felt a different sort of

reaction, one of acute embarrassment as the two of them stared

outside and saw Ranma with Ryoga locked in an intense sparring

match that bordered on an all-out melee.

"Kuso," she murmured under her breath as she saw the energetic

exchanges going back and forth between her childhood friend

and iinazuke. She silently guessed that Ranma must have once

again said something that set off Ryoga's hair trigger temper, and

when Ryoga really got going he tended to zone out everything but

the need to pound some sense into Ranma. She wondered what

subject had triggered their continual grudge match this time and

privately laid odds that it had somehow concerned her youngest

sister.

"I'm sorry," she apologized to her guest, "Those two are going at

it again. Honestly, I don't know what gets into them

sometimes..."

"Anything Goes style, eh?" Kenshiro said thoughtfully, "That one

over there is faster and has better control, but his friend has raw

strength and endurance on his side. Not much in the way of

finesse, but I can see great potential."

Nabiki looked at Kenshiro in surprise then managed to say in a

level voice, "Um yes...that one over there is my fiancee, Saotome

Ranma, the other is an old friend of mine named Hibiki Ryoga."

"Fiancee, huh?" Kenshiro actually smiled at that, "I wonder if

they'd mind if I spar with the winner? I'd like to learn more about

this Anything Goes style."

"You would, eh?" Nabiki mused, "Well, it just so happens that

I'm presently the senior disciple of the art and designated heir to

the Anything Goes school."

"Then perhaps you would indulge me the pleasure of a brief

sparring match?" Kenshiro asked.

Again Nabiki controlled her surprise as she replied, "You don't

mind sparring with a girl?"

"Are you any good?" the boy asked.

"As a matter of fact I'm very good," Nabiki assured him.

"Then why should I mind?" Kenshiro asked, smiling in a way she

found very pleasant, as if accepting her implicitly without the

usual doubt and hesitation to which she was accustomed.

"Hey!" Ranma suddenly motioned to Ryoga for a time out, which

was reluctantly granted since Ryoga had finally worked himself

down past the edge of his anger. He followed Ranma's gaze and

at once spotted a boy their own age talking to Nabiki. He

frowned, as did Ranma, then by silent assent they both turned

and walked in their direction.

Nabiki was just in the process of squaring off to face the

newcomer when she saw Ranma approach and smiled,

"Ranchan...I'd like you to meet a guest of our house, Kenshiro...?"

she deliberately arched the last part into a question.

"Just Kenshiro," the other boy replied, "And you're Saotome

Ranma?"

"Who wants to know," Ranma gave the other boy a hard study

then said, "Are you another old friend of my iinazuke?"

The way he said that last part implied possessiveness that Nabiki

had thought Ranma had matured beyond. Then she noticed that

Ryoga was also giving Kenshiro a hard stare that implied very

little warmth and a great deal of resentment.

"No, we've only just met, so you don't need to sound so jealous,"

Kenshiro assured him.

"Who's jealous?" Ranma's tone looked ugly as though he wanted

to start something, and Nabiki had the guilty realization that her

own actions had this time given him cause to suspect mischief.

"I think you've got the wrong impression here," Kenshiro

sounded more amused than offended, "Tell you what, though,

since you've both been warming up together, why don't we three

spar for a bit, then the winner can have his turn sparring with

Nabiki."

"You mean...both of us at the same time?" Ryoga asked as he

exchanged looks with Ranma, who smiled back at him, causing

Ryoga to smile, then together they flexed their fists and smiled,

challenge obviously being accepted.

"Oboy," Nabiki murmured to herself. Something told her this

was a big mistake, but there was little that she could do besides

sit back and watch the inevitable. She silently laid odds that it

would be Kenshiro whom she would be sparring with in another

five minutes, so she set herself to doing some stretching

exercises.

She was wrong, of course. The match took less than one minute.

Ranma and Ryoga were laid out on the ground groaning from

various hurts as the one who vanquished them both set himself to

sparring with Nabiki. She spared the other two boys a brief look

of sympathy, then turned back to her match, intending to learn

what she could from her new sparring partner, suspecting that for

once she would be in for a real challenge...

And was not disappointed.

Continued.

Comments/Criticism/Name That Anime Series Olympics:

shadowmane

(Buronson and Tetsuo Hara created Kenshiro and other

characters that featured in First of the North Star. All rights

reserved to them, their publishers and distributors, etc.)

Nabiki 1/2

Chapter 18, Part 3.

By

Jim Robert Bader

Inspired by the works of Rumiko Takahashi;

All rights go to her, the publishers and distributors

Of the Ranma 1/2 Series.

(Based on the Altered Destinies Series by

Wade Tritschler and Others;

Some characters and situations were created by me,

The rest is shared Fanfiction, so please don't sue me)

"Mou," Nabiki groaned, "Me and my big mouth. If I ever have a

bright idea like that again, somebody please kick me."

Shampoo and Perfume exchanged amused looks, and then

Shampoo said sweetly, "Airen mean this, or is being rhetorical?"

"Ah," Nabiki quickly reconsidered her statement, "On second

thought, I retract the offer."

Ukyo shook her head as she looked down at Nabiki, who lay

prostrate (and topless) on her mat with Shampoo massaging her

aching shoulders, face down and half-turned into her pillow, a

picture perfect sight of a Martial Artist who had just come near to

pulling every muscle in her body.

"I don't get this," Ukyo voiced aloud, "This guy is really that

good?"

"He took Ranchan and Ryoga on in less than a minute," Nabiki

replied with a grunt as Shampoo tended to some indefinable

tension in her shoulders and spine, "I managed to hold my own

just a little bit longer than that, and I think he was going easy on

me. Make no mistake about it, Ucchan, he's good..."

"We could have told you that," Perfume sniffed, "North Star and

Southern Cross systems legendary even to Amazons. Great

Grandmother tell us both no go against either order, and if Elder

say this it mean it very good idea no go against Kenshiro."

Ukyo had to take stock of this in light of having only caught a

glance at the young boy who was working out in the back yard

even as Nabiki was recovering from her workout. Her first

impulse, upon hearing about their sparring match, was to take

her Baker Peel and smash it against the skull of anyone who

would do this to her friends and iinazuke, but in light of what she

was hearing now she had come to realize that all this would

achieve for her was the loss of her favorite weapon.

Ukyo knew that she was a good Martial Artist. She had trained

all of her life in her family's own special style of Martial Arts

Okonomiyaki cooking. There were very people her own age who

could stand up against her in a straight fight, and three of them

were present, the other two were still sleeping it off in the yard.

If they could not defeat this Kenshiro-and both Amazons thought

it suicidal to even try-then it meant that there was still a plateau

in her training that they all had yet to aspire towards.

Of a certainly it was a very disturbing thing to learn that there

was somebody who was that much better than Tendo Nabiki!

"I don't get it," she admitted, "What is it about this North Star

system that makes it so much better than Amazon or Anything

Goes training?"

Shampoo looked up from where she was presently kneading

Nabiki's kidneys and said, "North Star and Southern Cross have

special technique that no even Amazons know. It involves

learning to channel great power throughout body, toughen up

through use of special pressure-point technique training, body

become like living stone, can withstand great punishment, even

arrows no penetrate skin."

"I've heard of something like that," Nabiki murmured softly, "Iron

skin training, an ancient Chinese Taoist technique..."

"No," Perfume corrected, "This no like that. Iron Skin only make

body strong by focus of Chi in certain place. Currents of force

circulate around body, make tough only where you concentrate.

Stone skin like this, but always leave one spot vulnerable to

attack. North Star system make whole body impervious to pain

or injury. Only another with same training know how to

penetrate defenses."

"In other words it turns you into a superman, Per-chan?" Ukyo

asked her Amazon partner.

Perfume seemed to consider the question before she answered,

"Make one man many times as strong as ordinary. How strong

hard to say, but legends suggest that Fist of North Star as strong

as Mountain. Fist of Southern Cross just as tough, but ancient

legend also say that Fist of North Star and Fist of Southern Cross

must no ever fight. Is said very bad thing happen if two ever

meet in combat, end of world, or something almost as bad."

"A doomsday scenario, huh?" Nabiki considered this, "Well, I've

never put much stock in 'End of the World' phenomena...no

prophet in it. I'll just take your word that it's a bad idea to cross

either one of them in a fight and leave it at that. I only wish you

guys had told me this before I accepted his challenge."

"You no ask," Shampoo tsked, "If you real Amazon, you be

married to boy, then what would Ranma say?"

"What would you say?" Nabiki asked, then winced, as Shampoo's

hands became momentarily rough with her, which caused her to

gasp, "Ow, It was just a rhetorical question..."

"You no joke with Shampoo about that, Airen," Shampoo mildly

scolded before resuming her gentle ministrations to Nabiki's tired

body.

Perfume smiled in approval of the way her cousin had deftly

moved to put her Airen back in her place, then turned to her own

Airen and said, "Boy say it brother who be Ronin. This very bad,

mean we up against outcast from North Star clan. Shampoo-

Airen no can beat him."

"He can't be totally invincible," Ukyo reasoned, "And if he's such

a hotshot Martial Artist, why did he need all those goons to work

for him? Why did he rely on a pair of guns instead of a real

Martial Arts weapon?"

"No everybody fight honorable, Airen," Perfume replied,

"Weapon kill just as bad if axe or gun. All it take is one shot in

wrong place and fight over."

"Point taken," Nabiki growled, "That shot at you, Sham-chan,

most definitely means that this guy has no sense of honor. If he's

anything like his younger brother..."

"Fortunately he's a lot better than Jaggy," said Saki as she entered

the dojo, "Don't forget that he defeated his brother a year ago, and

he's improved a lot since then, or so his father assures me."

"Don't tell me you know all about this North Star system?"

Nabiki asked with a slightly pained expression.

"Who me?" Saki asked, "I only know a little more than what

we've got in the police records, which is less than nothing. I just

came away from talking to Master Ryuken a moment ago and he

told me his son was training you to fight the Ronin. I guess he

meant to say that he sparred with you to learn how much you

know and how much you need to know in your training."

"Is that what he was doing?" Nabiki arched a weary eyebrow,

"good. For a while there I was almost convinced that he was

trying to kill me."

"If he did that, you'd have been dead by now," Saki replied,

"Believe me, you haven't even begun to see what these people are

capable of. There are stories about Ryuken in his youth that

sound like something out of a Manga, and he's killed more men

than any ten armored divisions during the last Great War. Off

hand I'd say in terms of allies he's pretty close to what you'd want

on your side at Armageddon."

"So boy being groomed to be next Fist," Perfume nodded, "Is

good idea to avoid making angry."

"I'm not worried about making him angry," Nabiki said as she

started to force her way back up to a sitting position, reaching for

her silk top as Shampoo desisted her treatment (just shy of going

to more interesting places), "But I have to learn everything I can

about the Ronin if I'm going to survive our encounter in the

morning."

"Yeah, well, he might be able to give you some valuable pointers

in terms of Martial Arts," Saki noted, "But to really beat him

you'll need an ace in the hole. The Ronin is into cars and bikes,

so you won't just be facing him on foot. You know anything

about fighting guys who fight on two wheels, or four?"

"Ah...no," Nabiki admitted.

Saki nodded as if already knowing the answer to that question

then included the others of them in her glance, "How about the

rest of you people? Anybody here even own a drivers license?"

Ukyo saw the blank looks on the faces of the two Amazons, and

the equal chagrin in Nabiki's expression and decided to answer

for the rest of, "I don't think any of us are old enough or have ever

had occasion to practice."

"Thought as much," Saki smiled, "So I took the liberty of calling

in a few favors. Some old friends of mine should be showing up

in a little bit who will generously volunteer their time to assist

you."

"That's good news I hope," Nabiki said as she straightened up,

fixing the wooden ties to her jacket.

"Depends on how you look at it," Saki smiled, "My friends are a

couple of real characters, both uniformed Police, but for this job

I've asked them to stop by in plain clothes. Since our mutual

superiors might frown on anything even resembling an official

Police presence..."

"Cops, just wonderful," Nabiki grumbled, "Well, any port in a

storm, I suppose. You wouldn't happen to be at liberty to share

their names, would you?"

"I'll save that for when they get here," Saki replied, "But let's just

say that they ought to fit in just fine with your crowd. They're not

exactly conventional officers, but they're not lone wolves like me

either."

"I'll take your word for it," Nabiki said, "At this point I don't

suppose I've got anything to lose by meeting them in person."

"By the way," Ukyo said, "Where is one one-man demolition

crew at the moment?"

"Him still practicing outside," Perfume replied, "Want I get him?"

"Not just yet," Nabiki replied, "I'm more concerned with Ranma

and Ryoga. Are they still sleeping it off?"

"Same as before," Shampoo answered, "Last I go check."

"I don't envy them the headaches they'll have when they wake up,

though," Nabiki mused, silently thanking her Amazon wife for

helping to relieve Nabiki after her drumming at the hands of

Kenshiro. For the first time in her life she actually found herself

missing Ranma's chivalric disdain for striking a woman...not that

she had any intention of telling him that in the very near future...

"Owww!" Ranma said as he finally regained consciousness, only

to regret it. His head ached in a manner not unlike a pair of

cymbals crashing against his ears, and the rest of him felt sore all

over. He started to sit upright then found a pair of hands

restraining him. Not feminine hands, he noted with some

surprise, opening his eyes to find himself looking up at the

anxious faces of Akane and Ryoga.

"Take it easy, Ranma-kun," Ryoga said, "If your head's anything

like mine, you'd better take it slow for the next several minutes.

How many fingers am I holding up on this hand?"

"Uh...six?" Ranma hesitated.

"Close enough, Baka," Akane sniffed, trying to sound less

anxious than she was about the condition of her former iinazuke.

"What happened to the guy?" Ranma asked, finding himself laid

out on the back porch of the House.

"You mean him?" Ryoga nodded towards the garden area where

they could see young Kenshiro was still working out, practicing

his katas in steady rhythm as though the idea of a break were

foreign to his makeup.

"Man," Ranma said as he felt the sides of his temples, "That guy

is good, and I thought Nabiki was tough to spar with..."

"Perfume told me that he's in training to become something

called the Fist of the North Star," Akane remarked, "She thinks

it's a pretty tough system, one the Ronin trained in. In fact,

according to her, the Ronin is actually his older brother."

"Nani?" both Ranma and Ryoga replied in chorus.

"That's right," Akane noted grimly, "So if either of you have any

sense you'll keep far away from him. He's here to train Nabiki to

fight the Ronin, and that's it. Now if you two hard-heads are

done taking up my time, I've got stuff I need to do, so you will

excuse me."

She turned to reenter the house, leaving Ranma and Ryoga sitting

where they were, looking slowly from her retreating backside to

the boy working out in the garden. It only took a moment of

hesitation for them to decide which way to go, and shortly after

this thought crossed their collective minds they sought out

Kenshiro, careful not to approach too closely as they studied his

moves, taking notice of the way he performed a set of one-step

katas with peculiar finger motions that seemed so well practiced

that they could have been performed by a robot.

"Uh, Domo," Ranma said after watching this go on for another

full minute.

"Domo yourself," Kenshiro replied in a neutral tone of voice,

"Sorry if I was rough with you two before, but I was curious to

meet you."

"You were?" Ryoga asked.

"Sure," Kenshiro came to an abrupt halt and turned to face them

both, "When I watched you two fight earlier I thought maybe you

could provide me with a good workout. It's not often I meet

Martial Artists of your caliber, and there aren't too many who can

force me to go all out, even for a few seconds."

"Ah," Ranma and Ryoga exchanged looks, uncertain of how to

take the implied compliment since it sounded as though this other

boy was claiming to be much better.

"Mind you," Kenshiro said as he stretched out one leg, resting it

against a boulder while setting his other foot on the ground in

such an angle that he was totally extended, "It was more your

style that interested me...Musubetsu Kakuto Ryu Kempo, right?

Anything goes...a basic philosophy for utilitarian fighting."

"You know about our system?" Ranma asked him.

"Not before today," Kenshiro replied, "I've done a lot of traveling

in my time, studying various styles and schools to familiarize

myself with the way other people fight, but I've never come

across a system that's so basically elemental. North Star system

is as constant as its name implies, not a lot of flexibility there, but

your style seems highly adaptable and incorporates bits and

pieces of other systems in a way I've never before encountered.

Usually the mix is pretty unwieldy, but you somehow manage to

pull it off."

"You think so, huh?" Ranma asked, "So...you think Anything

Goes has something to offer?"

"A lot to offer, actually," Kenshiro straightened up again and

faced them with a totally open expression, "For a long time now

I've felt a basic inadequacy in my overall technique. I'm too

predictable at present...you can see my moves coming from a

long ways away, and that gives an enemy way too much time to

react and form a counter. The fact that I hit hard and move faster

than most opponents is no reason to get sloppy. Your defenses

are nearly perfect, while your friend over here has a pretty good

attack style, if a bit eccentric, and you overextend a little.

Mountain Style of the One Righteous Fist, correct?"

"Um, yeah," Ryoga answered, "How did you know?"

"I met a master of that style some time ago," Kenshiro replied,

"He was a wandering nomad, no sense of direction whatsoever,

but he seemed to know a lot about delivering a good punch..."

"Oh," Ryoga said, "That would be my Uncle on my mother's side,

Hibiki Katsuhiro. Haven't seen him since...well...since I was just

a boy, really..."

"I can see the resemblance," Kenshiro nodded, "Mostly in the

fangs, and that bandana is as good a give away as any other. I

also noticed that you're as strong as a wild boar."

"I guess it runs in the family," Ryoga put his hand behind his

head and looked slightly embarrassed, "I don't know why it is but

I never seem to be able to get where I want to go when I want to

get there..."

"I've heard of worse complexes," Kenshiro noted before turning

back to Ranma, "It's obvious you two work out a lot, in spite of

the differences in your styles, but if I didn't know better I'd almost

think you both were brothers."

"What, me and him?" Ranma looked and sounded appalled, as

did Ryoga.

"Well," Kenshiro seemed to grow sad as he added, "You look

more alike than I do with either of my two brothers."

"Do you and your father live on the road?" Ryoga asked,

picturing his own nomadic life, always lost traveling from one

place to the other.

"No, we have a small temple up north, where I grew up and spent

the majority of my formative years," Kenshiro explained, "We

only travel from time to time in order to further my training and

familiarize me with all the local landmarks."

"What was that thing you were doing just now?" Ranma asked,

carefully repeating the motions with fingers and hands that he

had seen Kenshiro display, movements copied with fluidity and

grace almost exactly as he had seen them, which caused Kenshiro

to arch an eyebrow.

"Not bad," the other boy noted, "You learned that just by

watching?"

"Yeah," Ranma said matter-of-factly, "What's it mean?"

"It's a training exercise," Kenshiro reported, "It involves learning

to channel and direct the currents of energy that flow throughout

the body. It's believed that by performing this maneuver day-by-

day will help condition the body to absorb and channel great

amounts of energy. I've been doing it for as long as I can

remember. It toughens me up and gradually hardens the body so

that you can do most anything. It's why I can take more

punishment than what either of you can dish out, and why my

blows are so powerful..."

"Really?" Ranma and Ryoga exchanged glances.

"Yes, but there's more to the maneuver than simple exercises,"

Kenshiro cautioned, "You have to visualize an exact map of the

human body with emphasis on the nerve endings and energy

currents. You have to feel the power flowing through your limbs

and gathering strength around the navel and forehead, like a

straight column of energy. You need to be careful or else you

could make a mistake and do yourself more harm than good..."

"But the result is that you become tougher and stronger?" Ranma

persisted, hearing only the parts that mattered most in his quest

to become as good at Martial Arts as Nabiki.

"That is the goal," Kenshiro cautioned, "But you must be careful

in practicing the form with the right corresponding mental image.

I learned to do it with my father watching me all the time to see

that my attention never wavered."

"Do you always practice so hard?" Ryoga asked.

"Every day of my life," Kenshiro said, "Never had much time for

anything else. Father always insists that I have to be the best to

fulfil this great destiny he's always going on about."

Ranma and Ryoga sensed the bitterness in the other boy's tone

and stared a moment before Ranma responded, "All you do is

practice? Nothing else?"

"That about sums it up," Kenshiro sighed, "Mind you, I don't

mind being this good, but it's cost me in a lot of ways I'll

probably never be able to completely comprehend, and those few

times I'm not in training I fight against some enemy who always

seems to be out to destroy me for some reason or another. There's

not much time for a social life with all my travels."

"Don't you have anyone else in your life?" Ryoga asked, finding

this story strangely familiar.

"I have one friend," Kenshiro replied, "And he's trained in the

Southern Cross system, the opposite school from North Star, so

we can't really spar since it's against the rules for North Star and

Southern Cross to fight under any circumstances. He's probably

just as good as me anyway, I could always tell that Shen has a lot

of ambition and will probably wind up as the Fist of the Southern

Cross when he gets older."

"What about your brothers?" Ranma asked, feeling strangely

moved by this other boy's story.

Kenshiro's sigh seemed to contain all the weariness of the world

as he replied, "We don't really get along much. My oldest

brother, Rao, left home five years ago, when father chose me

instead of him as his heir. Our middle brother, Jaggy...well, you

probably know by now that he's calls himself the Road Ronin."

"You mean that giant who wears a mask?" Ryoga noted.

Kenshiro's expression was profoundly sad, "The reason he wears

that mask is because I destroyed his face a year ago. It was an

accident...I used the Fist against him when he came at me, trying

to prove that he was better suited to being Father's heir. It was

stupid of him, really...he tried to use a shotgun instead of the art.

I...hit him...mostly from reflex, but I put all of my Ki-power into

the blow, just like I'd been trained to and it..." he paused, then

said, "If he takes that mask off now he'll probably die. The Fist is

like that, it does...terrible things to the human body. I can't even

imagine what kind of suffering he must be experiencing every

second of his existence, even when he's sleeping."

"You...did that to your own brother?" Ranma said in dismay.

Kenshiro looked down, "And I'd probably do it again the next

time we meet, only this time I'll have better reason. He's brought

only shame and disgrace to our family, and he's tried to do much

the same to yours. I may be the only one who has even a chance

at stopping him, but I doubt he'll stand still and let me get close

enough to finish him off. He may be an honorless bastard, but

he's too smart to risk another Fist in a close-encounter

engagement. That's why he uses the guns on his opponents."

"Using guns sure doesn't sound very honorable," Ryoga noted.

"Maybe so," Kenshiro said with renewed resolve, "But your lady

friend will be in just as much danger if she lets him get a clear

shot. Jaggy's very good, a crack-shot, and he wouldn't hesitate to

blow a pretty girl away if it meant advancing his name through

terror."

Ranma frowned at the mention of Nabiki, "Well, hopefully Nab-

chan will figure something out by tomorrow, just don't get any

fancy ideas about her or nothing."

"Don't worry," Kenshiro smiled, "I'm not after your iinazuke.

She's a fascinating woman, to be sure, but I already have a

girlfriend, and she's more than I can handle."

"What's her name?" Ryoga asked.

"Julia," Kenshiro's expression grew faintly wistful, "We've

known each other since we were both kids. After Shen she's the

closest thing to a friend that I have, and maybe someday we'll be

even closer."

He gave a harsh-sounding laugh as if a new thought came to him,

but there seemed little enough humor in the gesture, prompting

Ranma to laugh, "What's so funny?"

"I was just considering what you two must think of me,"

Kenshiro replied, "A guy who spends all of his free time training

to be the best Martial Artist in Japan, never has time for

schoolwork or friends, always traveling with his father in search

of new insights that can better my Martial Arts training. It must

all sound pretty weird to the both of you..."

"Ah...maybe," Ranma temporized.

"Not as weird as you might think," Ryoga replied with even less

subtlety in his voice and expression.

"It hardly matters in the end," Kenshiro sounded as close to

depressed as he had appeared to be all morning, "I'm still locked

into this pattern against my will and choice. You think I would

have chosen this path if I'd had any say in the matter? I'm a great

fighter, and I'm not boasting when I say that, but you two have

had all of the advantages that I've been denied, and I envy you

both for it. I'd trade it all in a heartbeat to live a normal life with

friends and a family I cared about. The art has cost me

everything, especially the love of my two brothers. I don't know

if I'll even be allowed to have any sort of relationship with Julia

when this 'Great Destiny' of mine finally happens...and it scares

me more than you could ever imagine."

Ranma and Ryoga both rocked back on their heals at this

confession, hearing the frank despair in the voice of the youth

who had defeated them both so handily not quite an hour ago.

They were about to change the subject when they heard Nabiki's

softly mocking voice calling them from the vicinity of the Dojo.

"There you are, Ranchan," she smiled as she got their attention,

"Glad to see you three getting along so well. I trust that there are

no hard feelings between you and our guest?"

"Ah, no," Ranma and Ryoga exchanged looks, then between

them they affected as blandly innocent a pair of expressions as

Nabiki had ever seen on two boys pretending that they had not a

care in the world, "No problems, why?"

"Just asking," Nabiki said as she approached with two Amazons

and an okonomiyaki chef looking after her with anxious

expressions, "Because I'm going to need Kenshiro's help if his

brother is anything like him, and keep in mind you were pulling

your punches with us, weren't you?" she directed her question

towards the other boy in question.

"I had to," Kenshiro said with no sense of pretense or immodesty

in his voice, "Going all out would have defeated the purpose. I

wanted to know how you three fight, not write your epithets."

"Believe me, it's appreciated," Nabiki smiled as she came up

beside him and smiling charmingly, taking note out of the corner

of one eye how Ranma bristled slightly, "Now, as honestly as you

can, mind telling me where you think I need improvement?"

"Well," Kenshiro inclined his head as he examined her

thoughtfully, "You're fast and you've got good control of your

power, and you didn't hold back with me, which is good since

Jaggy won't be pulling his punches and will definitely not

hesitate to use his full power. The problem is that you're a risk

taker, you push yourself right to the edge and hope that the other

guy won't be faster and trickier than you. Sticking your neck out

in a fight is well and fine if your opponent doesn't wind up

handing you back your head, but Jaggy's fast too, probably a lot

faster than you are, and I don't need to remind you about what

could happen if he gets one good shot in."

"Right," Nabiki winced slightly. Saki's description of the Fist

had been altogether too graphic, but there was no reason to

illustrate the point where Ranma was present, "So I need to keep

out of his reach, avoid giving him a target and most of all not

give him a clear shot with those nine millimeters he's packing.

Anything else?"

"Jaggy's biggest weakness is his ego," Kenshiro continued, "He

covers his face because he knows one look at him would scare a

demon. He's in a lot of agony, and it makes him quick-tempered.

He can be very rash if you goad him into taking the initiative.

The problem is that he also likes to cheat and have the advantage

in every encounter. He also has a very low opinion of women, so

he might get careless and underestimate you."

"That's good to know," Nabiki smiled, "But I have a few

surprises of my own in mind, and besides, the challenge I gave

was actually made in the name of my cousin, Kaneda."

"Kaneda?" Kenshiro said with curiosity, "Well, if he's the one

who'll be doing the initial fighting, then maybe I should be

talking to him. How good is he as a fighter?"

"About the same as me," Nabiki replied, "You see...we had the

same teacher and..."

There was a loud cry that came from the house, followed near-

instantly by the sight of Saotome Genma as the burly man came

sailing out of the out over the porch on a one-way collision course

for the Koi pond.

"Speak of the Oni," Nabiki murmured faintly as she braced

herself for the inevitable when Genma's huge bulk made a

considerable splash as he landed headfirst in the water.

"Let that be a lesson to you, Genma old boy!" Happosai called out

from the House, "Never try to beat out Cologne when it comes to

snatching up egg noodles!"

Kenshiro sputtered slightly as he looked down at his wet body

then asked, "Does this sort of thing happen very often around

here?"

"More than you think," said a deep sounding voice right beside

him, and when Kenshiro turned to look it was into the face of a

stranger...albeit a stranger who had similar features and an

identical hair style to that of Nabiki, but who clearly was not

female.

"What the...?" Kenshiro gasped.

Ranma saw an opening and gleefully took it, "You wanted to

meet Nab-chan's cousin? I give you Tendo Kaneda."

"You change...?" Kenshiro said, then double-took as he saw a

panda break the surface of the koi pond, looking very non-

plussed. It took a second before he said, "Jusenkyo?"

"How did you know?" Nabiki asked in surprise.

"My studies in the martial arts have been very extensive,"

Kenshiro said as he took a second look at "Kaneda," then for the

first time anyone could remember seeing him do so, he smiled

and said, "Cool. Spring of Drowned Man, right?"

"You're not...um...freaked out or anything?" Nabiki asked him

nervously.

"I've seen stranger things in my time," Kenshiro replied, "You're

still a girl in spite of this curse, right?"

"You'd better believe it, sugar," Ukyo said as she approached

them at a leisurely stroll, "She's all woman with just a little bit

extra, right Sham-chan?"

"Hmmph," Shampoo hmmphed as she came up alongside

Nabiki's left arm and took hold of it possessively, giving

Kenshiro a very challenging expression.

The other boy raised both eyebrows then looked Nabiki directly

in the eyes and said, "Don't tell me you challenged an Amazon to

combat and won?"

"Well," Nabiki gave a sheepish smile and just shrugged

meaningfully.

Now Kenshiro really surprised everyone by giving a hearty laugh

as he shook his head, saying, "You people certainly have some

interesting lives. I think I'm going to like visiting here in the

future. Don't tell me the other one hanging close to you is also

your Airen?" he directed his question in Ukyo's direction.

"Ah," Ukyo glanced at Perfume, who was-as usual-hovering so

close by her side that she could have easily been the

Okonomiyaki's chef's shadow, "Yeah, well...actually, we

are...very close, but I'm actually Ranma's iinazuke..."

"Your..." Kenshiro turned around with an incredulous expression

and pointed at Ranma, "Two iinazuke? And both married to

Amazons? As in a clan marriage?"

"Yeah?" Ranma's tone was challenging, "Want to make

something of it?"

"Not me," Kenshiro chuckled as he turned away, murmuring to

himself, "And I thought I had problems..."

There came a sudden sound of an engine roaring with the screech

of tires just outside the walls of the dojo. Nabiki looked up

sharply and said, "What now?"

"It could be another attack," Ukyo said, reaching for her bakers

peel out of sheer combat reflex.

"Don't worry everybody!" Saki called out as she exited the dojo,

"I'm pretty sure I know who this is, and they are expected."

"That help you were telling us about?" Nabiki asked as she

turned to follow the pink-haired policewoman, who was herself

moving towards the front gates.

"Sounds interesting," said Kenshiro, who just then noticed that

the Panda was now standing next to him holding up a sign that

read, "Don't tell us she knows Speed Racer?" Kenshiro shook his

head then simply followed the Amazons and Ukyo, who

themselves started trailing after Nabiki.

Ranma and Ryoga hesitated to confide a moment in private, then

Ranma murmured, "He is good."

"Even better than us," Ryoga agreed.

"And Nab-chan likes him," Ranma added with a bitter undertone.

"Can you blame her?" Ryoga asked, "He's pretty handsome, and a

nice guy besides that."

"And he wasn't freaked out at seeing her change either," Ranma's

expression darkened, then as though the two had choreographed

the moment they both said aloud, "I hate him!"

It took a half second to register in their minds that they had just

been agreeing about the same man, which caused them to share

astonished looks before hastily dropping the matter and heading

out to catch up with the others.

Nabiki was very surprised to find that the car awaiting them just

outside the gates was a Subaru sports vehicle, a car that was

normally not made for domestic import because of its greater size

and fuel requirements. Inside was a pair of ordinary looking (but

very attractive) young women, one of whom honked the horn as

Saki waved back in friendly greeting. One of the two women

then rolled down the window on her side and slid herself out of

the vehicle without bothering to open the door, like her

companion.

"Hey, Saki!" the one who left on the passenger side said, "We got

your message and made tracks to get here. Is it really true that

we're going after the Ronin?"

"It's true, Natsumi," Saki replied, nodding to her and the driver,

"Miyuki. I see you brought the car I requested."

"One of my specials," the one named Miyuki replied, "I've

practically rebuilt her from the chassis on up. I think it'll be up to

your requirements."

"Only if you're the one doing the driving," Saki nodded towards

the others, "These are my friends who we're going to help out.

The Ronin's been bothering them lately, but we're going to have

to handle this outside of normal police procedure."

"Uh oh," Natsumi eyed the other woman suspiciously, "You sure

you've cleared this with higher ups?"

"Nope," Saki promptly responded.

Natsumi grinned, "Just checking. So what's the deal, and why all

the civilians?"

"Well," Saki turned and for the first time took notice of the fact

that Nabiki was in male form, "Ah, this is my friend...?" she

arched the statement to imply a question.

"Tendo Kaneda," Nabiki replied, extending his hand, which

Natsumi accepted after just a slight moment of astonished

hesitation.

"Wow," she blinked her eyes, then gave her partner a wicked

look and said, "He's lots handsomer than Nakajima-san, right

Miyuki?"

"Would you give that a rest?" Miyuki snorted as though the

subject were an old sore point between them. Of course once she

got a good look at Kaneda her expression also became slightly

flustered, but she preferred a formal bow, and her speech was

entirely proper as she smiled at him and said, "Officer Miyuki at

your service."

"Charmed," Nabiki replied, wondering why this soft-spoken

woman reminded her in a way of Kasumi.

Saki wasted no time introducing the others, but hesitated when

she got to the Panda. She had introduced Shampoo as "Tendo

Shampoo," and Perfume as "Kuonji Perfume," which greatly

pleased both girls but left Ukyo feeling a little bit flustered. She

covered it up well enough, though, when Natsumi looked at her

and asked, "What's with the kitchen implement? You planning

on attending a back sale?"

Ukyo just smiled, and like a flash she whipped out her favorite

weapon and had it up against the side of Natsumi's head before

the other woman could blink. Natsumi did blink, so astonished

was she at the speed with which the Okonomiyaki chef moved,

while Officer Miyuki reacted by drawing a gun from concealment

and using the roof of her car to steady her arms in one swiftly

practiced motion.

"Hold it everybody!" Saki cried, "Time out! We're all just friends

here, right Perfume-chan?"

"Huh?" Miyuki gasped, only just then becoming aware that there

was a golden axe pressed up against her neck as the brown

haired girl in the pink silk pajamas had somehow managed to

maneuver behind her without being noticed.

"Sorry," Ukyo said as she slung her bakers peel over her back,

"Didn't mean to startle you, and it's okay, Per-chan, no harm done

or intended."

"As you say, Airen," Perfume withdrew her axes and somehow

made them disappear from view.

"Okay," Natsumi slowly took the group in with a newer and

healthier respect, "So this bunch isn't your ordinary group of High

Schoolers, right?"

"You could say that," Saki said with a smile but chose not to

elaborate.

"So, you guys are here to help, right?" Nabiki asked casually,

"I'm told I could use a driver."

"No problem," Natsumi grinned, "Miyuki there is the best in all

of Tokyo, maybe even all of Japan..."

"That's a bit of an exaggeration," Miyuki said modestly as she

sheathed her gun then added, "But I'm at least as good as anyone

the Ronin might hire."

"So what's the plan?" Natsumi asked as she slammed palm-to-

fist, "Do we go in there and bust heads or is this one of your

'Search and Destroy' raids, Saki-chan?"

"Actually a combination of both," Saki replied, "But they're the

ones who'll be doing most of the head-busting. We mean to take

down the Ronin, gang and everything, gather his bunch all up in

one place and crush them like a serpent. This won't be one of

your by-the-book busts, Miyuki-chan...in fact, there's a good

chance we could all be on suspension if our superiors catch wind

of any of this."

"Well, if it is for a good cause," Miyuki was obviously bothered

by the unauthorized nature of the raid, but she was clearly a

trooper.

On the other hand, her partner did not even have the slightest

hesitation in rolling up one sleeve to flex an arm and grin, "All

right! After all the crap that bastard has done to innocent people,

it's about time somebody took him down hard and permanent, but

don't expect me to sit on the sidelines."

"We wouldn't think of it," Nabiki smiled more sagely, "If you

think you can match our speed, go right ahead. As a matter of

fact...just how good are you with hand weapons?"

"I'm a certified marksman," Natsumi bragged, "I can shoot the

wings off a fly at a hundred meters."

"A dragonfly, maybe," Miyuki sniffed, but added, "She is good

enough if you want something hit, either stationary or moving,

but I thought this wasn't going to be a regular gun battle?"

"It's not," Nabiki replied, "But we need an ace-in-the-hole to deal

with this enemy, and I figure a cop can be trusted to use her own

judgement once I explain what needs doing. You don't mind

hearing me out, do you?"

"Mind?" Natsumi grinned as though the question were not even

about to cross her mind, a look that Nabiki had grown all-too-

accustomed to, if not entirely accepting, "Why should I mind

being around a cutie like you?"

"Because his wife will skin you alive if you try anything," Saki

murmured in helpful warning, indicating the purple-haired

Amazon currently glaring in their direction.

"Wife?" both Natsumi and Miyuki seemed to register together,

then exchanged a look and as one said, "Kuso."

Nabiki breathed a silent prayer of thanks for Saki's hasty

intervention then forced herself to smile again as she noted,

"Okay now...here's my plan, or at least as much as I've managed

to come up with at the present..."

Continued.

Comments/Criticism/Automechanics 101:

shadowmane

The battle royal is about to begin, so the forces are marshalling in

place for the finale in the next exciting chapter...just as soon as I

can figure out what the (bleep) is supposed to happen...

If you wish to check out my other works, Please check out my

Fanfiction webpage at: . or

it's mirror site at: ~

All related chapters of this series can be found there along with my

other works.


	19. Chapter 19

Nabiki 1/2

Chapter 19, Part 1.

By

Jim Robert Bader

Inspired by the works of Rumiko Takahashi;

All rights go to her, the publishers & distributors

Of the Ranma 1/2 Series.

(Based on the Altered Destinies Series by

Wade Tritschler and Others;

Some characters and situations were created by me,

The rest is shared Fanfiction, so please don't sue me)

"Remember," the Road Ronin told his subordinates as they

assembled one block away from the designated battle zone of the

park, "Tendo Kaneda and his cousin are mine! Do what you like

with the others, but leave those two for me or you will feel my

vengeance. Now go! Ride out and destroy! Sow terror among

our enemies and make the name of the Road Warriors one to fear

and respect! Kill! Kill! Kill!"

His minions roared their approval, raising weapons as they cried,

"Warriors!" in a loud and strident voice. The sound of a hundred

and twenty engines revving up together broke the silence of the

early morning in Nerima, and then the motorcycles and four

wheel vehicles moved out in three groups to the staging areas as

the fully assembled gang prepared to wage war against a mere

handful of fighters.

"So it begins," the Ronin murmured softly to himself before

yanking on the chain of a hapless schoolgirl his people had

recruited during the night for the occasion of keeping their

Master company. Beneath his mask the Ronin smiled cruelly,

then said, "You should feel honored to attend me at this moment

of my latest triumph!"

"Go to hell," the girl spat weakly, her defiance a belated attempt

at regaining some dignity after the humiliating ordeal that she

had just survived, with the promise of worse in store when the

rest of the unpleasantness was over.

"Hah!" the Ronin gloated, "I like your spirit, not that it means

anything since you will either satisfy me or die horribly. I mean

to use you to show these callow youths that I mean business!

This day I will crush the latest of many insects who have tried to

stand against me, and when this is through...you and I will

celebrate by getting to know one another better."

Ryonami cringed inside but would not give the bastard the

satisfaction of seeing her fear. Chained and helpless as she was,

weak from her injuries and barely recovered from the hospital

bed that she had been stolen out from, she silently prayed that the

gods of vengeance would show the Ronin the true meaning of his

folly. She prayed that Kaneda would rip out his entails, a thought

more savage than any she had ever felt for another human being.

She only hoped that Nabiki Tendo would be spared knowing of

her humiliation, how badly she had failed in her trust, because

she feared that far worse was to come. If she survived the next

hour she would pray to the Kami to be forgiven for whatever sins

she had made against the memory of her ancestors. That or a

chance at redemption, because if the Ronin were triumphant then

her life would be as nothing and Ryonami's shame would be

absolute.

The Ronin's vehicle started forward as the disfigured gang leader

headed for his fateful encounter...

Nabiki studied the battlefield from the hood of the Subaru,

hearing the distant sound of engines approaching before

signaling to the others.

"All right, people," she murmured, "Fan out, and remember what

I told you about the Ronin."

"Right," Ukyo replied, "We take out the rest of the gang but steer

clear away from him."

"That would be very wise," Kenshiro noted, "Remember, all he

needs is one clear shot and he can kill you where you stand.

Jaggy doesn't believe in playing fair, and he won't hesitate to kill

a woman as easily as he would a man, and as long as he has a

weapon close nearby he won't have to be near you just as long as

he has a clear shot."

"Right," Ranma murmured softly and levelly, "Then what's to

keep him from just shooting you on the spot, Nab-chan?"

"He won't do it outright," Nabiki replied, "He'll want to make a

show of it for the sake of his men. We rattled his cage earlier so

he'll want to drag this out as long as he can. I'm going to play

against his ego and draw him out into the clearing. Just

remember to do your part, Officer Natsumi."

"Hey, no problem," Natsumi smiled, "I'll have you covered all the

way."

"The real task will be Miyuki's driving," Saki noted, "Your

reworked gas hog should be the telling factor when the Ronin

makes his move. Keep in mind that this isn't your typical rumble

in the park, people. These guys are killers...'

"Thanks for the pep talk, Coach, but we've already figured out

that part," Nabiki replied, "All right, you heard the lady, move

out, and Akane...keep an eye on Ryoga-kun, would you? I don't

want him wandering off right when we need him the most."

"Hey," Ryoga complained, "It's not my fault! I can handle myself

as well as anyone, Nag-chan."

He started to storm angrily off when Keiko grabbed him by the

wrist and said, "Uh, Ryoga-kun? It's that way."

"Oh yeah," Ryoga said sheepishly, right before Akane grabbed

him by the hand and said, "Let's go!" after which he followed her

as obedient as a puppy.

"Kodachi," Nabiki turned around, "You're sure this will work...?"

"But of course!" the gymnast said pleasantly, "My sleeping

powders are guaranteed to work first time, every time against

anything that is remotely human."

"That excludes my brother," Kenshiro replied, "But it should even

the odds a little."

"Anything for my darling Kaneda-sama," Kodachi cooed before

vaulting away with her trademark laugh as Keiko followed more

leisurely.

Miyuki shivered a little and said, "I don't mean to complain..."

"Yeah," Natsumi averred, "But your friend is one weird

customer."

"You don't know the half of it," Nabiki shook her head then said,

"Ranma...I want your solemn promise that you won't do anything

foolish out there."

"Define foolish," Ranma retorted.

"Coming anywhere near the Ronin for one thing," Nabiki replied,

"I'll have enough to worry about out there without being

distracted worrying about you. There'll be plenty of people to

beat up out there, so you don't have to be choosy."

"Doesn't that work both ways?" Ranma asked, his stubborn pride

showing in his expression and bearing.

Nabiki heaved a sigh then said, "I promise I won't take any

unnecessary risks out there, Ranchan, if you can promise me the

same thing. Trust the plan, it'll carry us all through this

morning."

"If nothing goes wrong," Ranma turned away and said, "I'll

remember to do my part, but if you get into real trouble, I'm not

making any promises."

Nabiki resisted the urge to make a strangling noise and just

glanced at Ukyo and Perfume, "Try and see he stays out of the

firing line, would you? Shampoo?"

"No worry," Shampoo replied, "Boy make trouble he get Bonbori

to skull, and that is promise."

Ranma gave the Amazon a wary look, knowing full well that

Shampoo was willing and capable of carrying out her promise.

Shampoo was wearing a Ryoga-like bandana to cover the

bondage that she wore over the stitches in her scalp but she was

more than capable of waging a one-woman war against anyone

who doubted her readiness for this battle.

"How soon until Kaneda-san gets here?" Natsumi asked, "It's

almost light, and I think I see the Ronin.

"A little trick I know will bring him right here on the instant,"

Nabiki said as she hopped off the car and accepted a water-bottle

that Shampoo handed to her, pouring it over her head to activate

her transformation into Kaneda. She turned around and let the

two plainclothes policewoman see his now quite unmistakably

male features, "Just add water, instant Kaneda."

"NANI?" came the inevitable female chorus.

Saki just smiled at her and said, "Damn, I never get used to that!

You are some kind of babe in either form, Kaneda."

"Blame it on genetics," Nabiki said as he handed the bottle back

to Shampoo then climbed into the car beside the astonished

Miyuki, affecting his most disarming smile as she said, "Better

close your mouth or a moth may hibernate for the winter. I'll

explain everything after this is all over, I promise."

"Trust him on this, girls," Saki said, turning to the sound of an

automobile approaching, "Uh oh, there's our cue. Everybody

make tracks because the show's about to start."

"Uh, right," Natsumi said as she started up the engine on her

motorcycle but kept the headlight off so as not to betray her

position. With rifle slung over her back she scooted off a short

distance and took flanking position beside some bushes.

Miyuki had the presence of mind to start up the engine of her

vehicle, and then she and Nabiki began to roll forward as they too

caught sight of the Ronin's vehicle. Nabiki tensed as he

considered her list of options, along with the discussion she had

shared with Cologne and Ryuken on the previous night.

"How will you face the man who can kill with a single thrust?"

the old woman had asked in tones of uttermost sobriety.

"Obviously I can't trade punches at close range," Nabiki replied

before considering her answer, "I guess I'll just have to avoid him

and stay out of his reach."

"Indeed?" Cologne replied, and suddenly her staff shot out,

forcing Nabiki to counter with the Amaguriken while dodging

each thrust as though her body flowed around the weapon.

Cologne withdrew her staff and said, "Impressive, but you still

have a long ways to go in developing your speed. Examine

yourself closely."

Nabiki felt around with her hands, then parted her shirt a little to

expose a red mark that had appeared near her abdomen.

"One thrust is all that the Ronin will require," Cologne said

gravely, "If you cannot block every thrust, then perhaps you had

best stay out of his reach altogether."

"If I do that then how can I beat him?" Nabiki asked.

"Through skill and cunning," Cologne replied, "Your two greatest

strengths. Speed is useful and power is needed, but without

intelligence you are no more than a simple machine performing a

task for which you were designed. You will have to be

supremely innovative to survive this encounter, Daughter-in-law,

so I ask again how will you defeat the Ronin?"

Again Nabiki considered the point then said, "I stay out of his

reach and only attack when he attacks. He uses weapons, I use

weapons of my own, but I don't fight him directly."

"Excellent response," Cologne almost smiled her approval, "It is

obvious that you still need more training if you are ever to

achieve your ultimate potential as a fighter. I trust that this

matter has suitably impressed upon you the need to further your

skills?"

"More than adequately," Nabiki nodded gravely, "If anything it's

also taught me why you thought it a good idea to move back to

the village. I never realized before this that I was exposing

Shampoo and my family to such danger."

Cologne did not immediately reply, but then she looked away and

said, "Perhaps...but the world is a dangerous place. No matter

where you reside there is always the potential for danger. We

will discuss this another time, but now let us concentrate on the

weapons you will use against this Ronin..."

Nabiki had to smile at the memory. If she did not know any

better she would have sworn that Cologne had actually been

moved by her offer.

He glanced at the approaching car that they were about to meet

halfway into the middle of the park, keeping his eyes partly

shielded in order to retain at least some of his night vision. She

trusted Miyuki to know the way while he kept his senses open to

the presence of danger.

They stopped only a few meters away from one another. The

Ronin stood high in his car while Nabiki slid out on the left side

passenger side, exposing himself to view in the hopes that the

Ronin would indeed not simply shoot him down where he stood.

Nabiki assumed a casual crouch while the Ronin waited for the

right dramatic moment before vaulting off of his car.

The two stood bathed in the headlights of the opposing vehicles

and for a moment they studied one another, then the Ronin said,

"Tendo Kaneda I presume?"

"And you are the Ronin?" Nabiki feigned nonchalance, "My

Cousin seemed to think that you were...bigger," he deliberately

let the implication stand, testing the waters to see how his enemy

would react.

"And you were supposed to be some kind of heartthrob pretty

boy," the Ronin said dismissively, "All I see is a wimp who's

about to become a grease spot."

"You came alone, I trust?" Nabiki asked as she studied her

enemy carefully, marking all of the likely pressure points that she

would have to strike in order to take the man down a peg, if

Cologne and Ryuken were accurate about the weaknesses of the

Ronin.

"Not quite," the Ronin replied, and suddenly Nabiki saw that the

man was holding a chain, which he gave a tug upon, causing a

figure inside the car to suddenly sit upright and wince. The

Ronin's voice implied dark amusement as he said, "I brought a

friend along...I think you two know each other?"

Nabiki's attention swiveled to focus on the half-naked girl in the

car, and then with a gasp he said, "Ryonami?"

The girl looked to be in pain but was otherwise all right. Nabiki

saw that the bandages on her left arm were fresh and took that to

mean that the Ronin had spared her the worst of his treatment. If

the bandages had been soiled or bloody it would mean Ryonami

had been put through worse hell than Nabiki even wanted to

imagine.

"I thought a little insurance would be in order in case you thought

bringing the rest of your gang along would give you an edge," the

Ronin crowed, "She's going to watch me take you apart, and then

when I rip your head off and stick it on my hood as an ornament

the two of us are going to have some real fun."

Nabiki had to fight to keep his temper down. The Ronin wanted

to goad him, to rattle Nabiki's cage and make him behave rashly.

It took real effort to steady his voice enough to say, "So what I

hear about you is true, you really don't have enough manhood to

fight your own battles."

The Ronin did not take that well. Nabiki could see him tense up

as his eyes widened behind the leather mask and his harsh

breathing grew deeper.

"You think you are clever," the Ronin growled hoarsely, "But I

think you're nothing but a sniveling coward and a weakling who

will turn and run, exactly as did your cousin..."

"Because she had sense enough not to fight against your guns?"

Nabiki asked rhetorically, but inwardly she was galled at the

memory of having to run from the battle. This time he had no

intention of running, though the Ronin did not know that. Nabiki

allowed himself to feel contempt for the other man, who had

squandered his chance to take advantage of Nabiki's momentary

distraction. The man really was all ego, and that was about to

prove to be his undoing.

"I don't need weapons to deal with the likes of you," the Ronin

voiced his contempt, "However, if using them will shorten the

time it takes to bring you down, then so be it!"

The Ronin's hands moved to his sides as Nabiki called out, "Hey,

is it also true what they say about you being a Eunuch?"

A strangled curse showed how badly enraged the taunt had made

the other man, which also made him that much more careless.

He had his guns out of their holster when a soft hissing noise

split the night and suddenly a headlight exploded on the Ronin's

car. The man instinctively flinched to one side as Nabiki took

advantage of his reaction, plus the fact that he was now

effectively invisible while the Ronin was bathed in the headlights

of Miyuki's car. The Ronin never saw Nabiki unwind a metal-

lined belt from around his own waist and snap it forward like a

whip, striking the gun out of the Ronin's right hand while the

man staggered backwards. He blindly pointed with the other

sidearm but Nabiki was already airborne and landed on top of his

head like the proverbial gold brick.

The Ronin pitched forward, having already lurched off balance,

and in doing so he released the chain that was affixed to

Ryonami's collar. With a leap to the side and a dodge from one

of the thugs in the car she disarmed the man and snatched up the

girl in both arms, then vaulted over the other side to safety.

The Ronin looked fit to spit nails as he pushed off the ground and

pulled a remote microphone from his belt, then grated out, "All

Warriors converge on this location! The one who brings me

Tendo Kaneda's head will be rewarded handsomely, the one who

fails will lay at my feet when I find him!"

Miyuki had already started up her engine and was moving

forward as Nabiki came running up beside her, throwing open

the back door and thrusting the startled Ryonami in across the

seat. He then jumped in on the passenger side and said, "Drive!

Let's cut the odd down a bit, then we come back and finish the

Ronin!"

"Don't need to tell me twice, lady-uh-sir," Miyuki lamely

responded, shifting gears as she hit the accelerator and drove like

a madwoman while the sounds of cars and motor cycles erupted

from nearly every other point on the opposite side of the field.

Their headlights alone split the night like a false dawn and

proved that the Warriors were out in force on this occasion.

Her partner, Natsumi, had already become aware of this from her

sniper's point as she turned to see a pair of motorcyclists bearing

down on her position. She slung her rifle back over one shoulder

and hopped onto her own machine, praying to the Kami as it

started on the first try then popped a wheelie accelerating out of

the way of the oncoming bikers.

"That's our cue," Ukyo noted as she and the rest of the Tendo

Posse emerged from cover and launched an immediate counter-

attack at the unsuspecting bikers.

Ranma vaulted over a hedge and landed atop a four-wheel

vehicle, wasting no time taking out two of the men inside before

knocking the driver into his on wheel then vaulting to safety. The

car overturned as it hit another vehicle and went flipping end-

over-end, just like in the movies, while the vehicle they struck

careened out of control until it hit a pole, which pitched its

occupants out onto a children's sandbox. Meanwhile Ryoga

threw his umbrella at a pair of motorcycles to great effect,

bowling them to either side like a couple of tenpins. She charged

another vehicle and threw himself at the occupants while Akane

vaulted onto the hood and took care of the driver.

"Look out!" Ryoga cried as he left off pummeling the men, seeing

the car was headed for a tree with a low branch about to strike

the unsuspecting Akane.

Like a shot he vaulted over the convertible's windshield and

snatched Akane up before she knew what he was about. With

his free hand he grabbed the branch and used it to swing the both

of them to safety, where he landed holding Akane in both arms.

"Are you all right, Akane-chan?" he asked, ignoring the cries of

the men as they dove from their doomed vehicle a moment before

impact.

"Ah...hai," Akane replied, too distracted by the sense of near-fatal

injury, not to mention the even more distracting sensation of

having been carried in his strong male arms. For a moment they

shared a brief look, then remembered that they were not yet out of

danger.

"Later," she promised.

"Of course," he replied, then the two of them turned and started

unleashing their fury on their would-be assailants.

Ukyo's spatula was doing devastating damage every time she

connected with one of the cyclists that tried to encircle her, then a

care came bearing down at her with gunmen waving their arms,

firing wildly in her direction. Ukyo raised her bakers peal to

deflect the bullets, only to see Perfume fault into the way with

both axes at the ready.

"Per-chan!" she tried to call out in warning, but need not have

bothered.

"Bakusai Tenketsu!" Perfume cried as she thrust forward with

one of her axes, and suddenly the car in front of her exploded as

though it had just rolled over a land mine. The men inside it

were hurled about in every direction while those motorcyclists

closest to the blast suffered far worse than mere concussion as

huge pieces of rubber, plastic and metal were thrown about at

such speeds as made collision a most unhappy occasion.

"Not too shabby," Ukyo complimented as Perfume flashed a brief

smile at the compliment, then the two fought back to back with a

fury that made short work of enemy numbers.

Other men found themselves falling prey to a pair of Bonbori

being wielded by a woman who seemed part living hurricane as

Shampoo whirled about like a dervish, never staying in one place

long enough to make herself an easy target. The Warriors drew

maces, clubs, swords, axes, knives and pole arms and tried to use

them, both on foot and on wheels, to no great effect as the

Amazon was an unstoppable engine of destruction. She flowed

from one foot to the other as though gliding across the grass from

one prospective target to the next. Gang members were sent

flying every which way, many hammered into unconsciousness

while others were not so lucky.

And where the bonbori did not strike the gang members fell prey

to a pink-haired phantom flashing a special yo-yo that was made

from bullet-proof ceramics with an unbreakable string attached, a

toy-turned weapon that moved as though it were alive, striking

men down as though the thing were a blazing comet while Saki

made equal use of hands and feet to show why she was once

known as the terror of her High School.

And then there was the ribbon that struck without warning,

accompanied by a terrible laugh that froze Gangsters in their

tracks and made them feel as though they were under attack by a

raving madwoman. Kodachi leaped about from place to place

using her acrobatic skills to mete out punishment in her own

peculiar form. No one dared come close enough to counter-attack

as a redheaded demoness from hell laid out and about with fists

and feet like iron and a long ponytail that had a weighted blade

attached to one end. A mere flick of her head sent the deadly

thing snapping forward as she and Kodachi worked like a team

to trim down the ranks of the opposition.

"Man, these guys are good," Natsumi murmured under her breath

before turning her attention back to the men trailing after her.

She smiled before gunning her engine, then pulled an incredibly

tight U-turn and though herself into the path of her attackers.

They scattered on either side while she pulled another wheelie,

then Nabiki brought her bike down on the rear of the vehicle she

spotted and revved the engine once again, startling the men in the

car who had not even seen her coming.

Lastly a four wheeled vehicle turned about to see a young man

standing calmly in their path, expression dark and sullen. The

gang members stared for a minute, then one of them cried, "Well,

what are you waiting for? Run him down!"

The driver growled, "Okay," and gunned his engine, bearing

down on the young man with the intend of smashing him silly.

Much to their surprise, however, the young man simply leaned

forward and braced himself for the impact, then caught hold of

the car with both hands as his feet skidded backwards on the

grass for several meters.

"What the...?" one of the four gang members gasped as suddenly

the boy heaved the front end of the car off of the ground.

Kenshiro paused just long enough to firm his grip upon the

vehicle, and then he heaved upwards and tossed it end-over-end.

The gang members had to leap for it before the car landed upside

down like an upended turtle. He then moved around and casually

dispatched the surviving gangsters one by one without hardly

breaking stride.

And so it went while Miyuki was still busy dodging the Ronin to

have much care of what was going on all around them. Her

battle was presently being waged with three other cars and a

couple of persistent bikers all trying to cut her off as she shifted

gears and darted through every gap they created, every

opportunity they left open. Her mind was in full tactical mode

and she was using the terrain to its fullest advantage, staying one

step ahead of the Ronin and his people.

Nabiki was busy trying to fend off the frantic cries of Ryonami as

the grip tried awkwardly to glom onto him for support. Ryonami

had just come through the worst day of her life and being rescued

by her dream idol was like a fantasy come to life. The girl was

bouncy in her enthusiasm, and Nabiki had to keep his mind on

what was going on around him as the matter of their lives was in

no way a done deal.

"Ryonami-chan, stop it!" Nabiki pleaded, "At least wait until

we're out of danger!"

"Sorry, sorry!" Ryonami pleaded, honestly wanting to let go but

finding it hard to will herself to do so. A one-armed glomp was

difficult to maintain in a car that was careering over hill and dale

at top speed, but her recent escape from a fate that literally was

worse than death left her feeling the need to grab hold of

someone, and since Kaneda's wife was not presently in the

picture...

"Mou," Nabiki breathed faintly, fully understanding why

Ryonami was having trouble leaving him alone at the present,

but this matter was not at all helping his concentration. If

Shampoo could see them now he just knew that he would be in

for a major tongue-lashing. Shampoo was not like Akane in the

way she expressed her anger, but when she got mad at you there

was no mistaking the terror that she could inspire. Nabiki would

rather walk barefoot over broken glass than risk one glare out of

his Amazon wife, and the last thing he needed to do at the

moment was think about the consequences of such a forced

explanation.

Instead he concentrated on Miyuki's driving, taking note of

everything that the pretty policewoman did with such instinctive

flourish. Miyuki drove on instinct and had a real knack for

anticipating her opponents moves, almost like a Martial Arts

master behind the wheel, and she had uncanny intuition for the

performance of her vehicle, as though it were an extension of her

own body. She was keeping the other cars at bay while darting

all over the field in a seemingly random pattern, always one step

beyond the reach of the Ronin and his minions.

It was beginning to grow light all around them, and very likely

the commotion they were causing would shortly draw the Nerima

police to the scene. If that happened everything would get really

complicated, and Nabiki did not relish explaining to the local

police her involvement in these matters. More to the point, her

friends would likely be mistaken themselves for gang members

and arrested. Saki might be able to pull rank and get them out on

bail, but the whole mess would still put her family in an

untenable legal situation.

"We're going to have to end this now," he decided aloud, "Keep

moving and don't stop for anything. I don't want Ryonami

exposed to any more danger than necessary, got that?"

"No problem," Miyuki said mechanically, "What are you

planning to do?"

"You'll see," Nabiki replied as she undid her seat belt and opened

the car door.

"Hey, what-?" Miyuki gasped as Nabiki jumped from the car

and started to roll clear of the other cars while the door shut

behind her on its own. Miyuki had no time to further

contemplate what Nabiki had just done because the Ronin's car

was trying to cut her off again, so she cut down her speed and

shifted to third, then deliberately skidded slightly to one side

before accelerating and breaking free of the attempted

entrapment.

Nabiki finally managed to stop rolling and jumped back to his

feet, just in time to see one of the four-wheel vehicles bearing

down on him with no time to avoid it. Nabiki just smiled and did

not bother avoiding it, he merely jumped onto the hood of the car

and started to run, vaulting over the astonished heads of the gang

members in the pursuing vehicle who had not expected a human

being to react that quickly.

The Ronin was quick to spot the fleet-footed form even amidst

the confusion of the makeshift battle front and tried to get his

subordinates to turn their car around when suddenly a Motorcycle

came screeching from out of no where and startled the driver,

who instinctively swerved to avoid the perceived obstacle. This

sudden change in vector velocity caught his boss by surprise as

the Ronin felt himself pitched forward while the car turned out

from under him and, pitching him out over the side while the car

careened out of control and struck two bikers before plowing into

a ditch, sending the rest of the passengers tumbling out onto the

ground with disastrous consequences.

Meanwhile the rest of the gang was beginning to convene on a

small gathering of heroes while Ukyo and Ranma held the high

ground with Perfume, Shampoo and Ryoga gathered to support

them. All the Warriors with sidearms had been taken out so far,

but even though the rest had less conventional weapons they still

stood in greater numbers while the defending group was pressed

and appeared to be near to the point of exhaustion.

Naturally that brought out the hyena in the predators that

surrounded them, yet Ukyo appeared unusually calm as she

waited for just the right moment before turning her bakers peal to

just the right angle to catch the budding rays of sunlight and

reflect them to where Kodachi, Akane and Keiko had retreated.

With a nod to the others she cried, "Now!" and quickly slipped a

scarf over her lower face then stood ready.

On cue the three members of their group who had taken

concealment in the bushes unleashed a salvo of thrown bags,

which they chucked at the enemy bikers and thugs with carefully

aimed lobbies. The bags exploded on contact, unleashing a fine

mist wherever they hit that was one of Kodachi's special brews.

At once men gasped as limbs seized up and muscles tightened

while drivers slumped at the wheels to their vehicles, and at once

the milling throng of motorized carriages became readymade

death traps, the entire mass devolving into anarchy and

confusion.

"Let's get out of here!" Ranma cried as all five defenders vaulted

from their defensive position, dodging and darting about in an

effort to escape the demolition derby that erupted all around

them.

"Whoah!" cried Natsumi as she paused alongside Saki to witness

the carnage taking place at the other end of the field, "Looks like

your friend's plan is working like advertised. I can hardly believe

it but we appear to be winning."

"We're not out of danger just yet," Saki cautioned, "It won't be

over until we've dealt with the-watch out!"

Natsumi gave a yelp as suddenly a huge form rushed at her and

seized hold of her motorcycle, heaving both it and her high over

his head before casting them aside as though the hundred of

kilograms they massed together was as nothing. Natsumi landed

badly but still managed to roll clear of her overturned vehicle,

leaving Saki to turn and face a very angry Ronin, who glared at

her with hate-filled eyes both cruel and bloodshot.

"This isn't over yet!" he declared as he lunged at her, but Saki

was already in motion vaulting backwards to land in a

handspring that she used to carry her away from his deadly grasp.

"Ronin!" Nabiki's male voice checked the giant man's intent to

pursue his quarry.

The Ronin turned and sneered, "So, the coward has decided to

stop running, has he? You think you're clever because you

outsmarted my men?"

"Naw," Nabiki smiled humorlessly, "That wasn't very hard.

Outsmarting you wasn't that much more of a challenge."

"We'll see how confident you are when you lay broken at my feet

begging for mercy," the Ronin declared as his hands suddenly

flashed at Nabiki, only to have the other man snatch the daggers

out of the air and effortlessly deflect them.

"Is that the best you've got?" Nabiki continued to taunt, "If so,

then this fight is as good as over."

"Laugh all you want," the Ronin snarled, and suddenly he had

both automatics in his hands as he sneered, "Let's see you dodge

nine millimeters!"

Nabiki stood her ground until the last second, then moved with a

speed that the other man had barely anticipated, dodging to the

side in a feint before leaping high and landing in a roll while the

Ronin's fists spat fire in her direction. One bullet whizzed past

her ear by too narrow a motion, but Nabiki remained in motion

the whole time, letting him waste his fire while the trust threat

moved closer, and suddenly the Ronin's vision was blocked by a

shape that all but appeared in the space beside him.

"Remember me?" Kenshiro asked as his hands suddenly flashed,

and both pistols fell to the ground in neatly chopped up pieces.

His fists lunged for the Ronin but were blocked at the last

second. The Ronin stood back and glared at the younger man

before he grated, "So...it's you, dear brother. I should have

suspected!"

"You always were the slow one, Jaggy," Kenshiro replied as he

assumed an attack posture before launching his assault on the

larger man, who met and deflected his attacks with a speed that

was utterly inhuman.

"Not quite, my brother, as you will discover," the Ronin retorted,

"I've improved considerably in the time since our last meeting."

"Not enough!" Kenshiro declared as he lunged forward with a

palm-strike that seemed to pick the other man back and send him

backwards.

"That trick...served you once before," the Ronin grated as he

landed on his feet no more than five meters away, "Did you think

I had not figured on a counter? Admit defeat and I may spare

your life when I am through humiliating you."

"You always did love the sound of your own voice," Kenshiro

unleashed an onslaught of kicks and punches that forced the

larger man to give ground, right up until the Ronin snatched his

gunbelt from his waist and used it to snag one of Kenshiro's arms

as he lunged forward in one of his attacks.

"And you were always too confident!" the Ronin declared as he

jumped back and drew his brother off-balance, then took full

advantage of his greater mass to throw Kenshiro like a cracking

whip around and about before releasing him in a hammer-throw.

Kenshiro went flying as the Ronin turned to his three astonished

onlookers and said, "It will take time for him to get back from

where I've sent him, by which time you three will all be dead,

beginning with you, Tendo Kaneda."

Nabiki closed her mouth, recovering from the shock of seeing her

ace-in-the-hole sent airborne. Instead he took a fighting stance

and pretended to a confidence he did not actually feel, saying,

"Now who's the one who's being overconfident?"

The Ronin's response was cut off by the sudden advent of a yo-yo

encircling his neck as Saki yanked on the string and attempted to

cut off his windpipe. Rather than waste time in fruitless struggle,

the Ronin reached out to grasp the string in one hand, then pulled

hard before Saki was fully braced to counter the effort and with a

single back-hand sent her flying. He wasted no time detaching

the string of the Yo-yo before tossing it aside in contempt.

"Hold it!" Natsumi cried as the sound of a pistol cocking broke

the silence, her own automatic held in both hands as she aimed

carefully and declared, "You're under arrest for numerous counts

of Rape, Murder, Racketeering and Extortion!"

"So," the Ronin declared without much concern, "You are a

policewoman in disguise. I thought as much, you and that other

girl doing the driving."

"Get your hands where I can see them, Mister!" Natsumi declared

coldly, "Make one more move and I won't hesitate to kill you!"

"You may believe that you will try," the Ronin sneered, "Go

ahead if you think I'm easy."

Nabiki sensed the other man tense up and was about to cry

warning when Natsumi's gun discharged, hitting the Ronin

square in the chest with force enough to knock the man

backwards. To everyone's surprise and horror the man just

squared his shoulders and straightened up. Natsumi was so

startled that she hesitated to fire again for a critical half-second,

by which time the Ronin had laid her out at his feet and

confiscated his weapon, which he then pointed at Nabiki.

"You people continue to underestimate me," the man hissed

malevolently, "You think I am weak, that you can take me like

some ordinary man? I was trained to be the Fist of the North

Star, and in spite of what my idiot brother may claim, it is he who

is the weakling, not me! And now, if we are done with the

distractions..."

Nabiki saw him tense as his finger pulled on the trigger, and she

instinctively twisted her body to the side while bending

backwards and flowed out of the way as the bullet hissed by her

head by centimeters. The gun spat again, but this time well clear

of the mark even as Nabiki twisted again to avoid it, then took

note of the gleaming mini-spatula that protruded from the Ronin's

armband.

With a single cry Ukyo threw herself at the Ronin, bakers peal

lashing out like a giant battle-axe as she sought to cleave the

man's skull. The Ronin raised his burly forearm and took the

impact there, deflecting her assault. Perfume darted in and took a

defensive position at her Airen's side while Ranma, Ryoga and

Shampoo covered the man's opposite flank, each remaining out of

reach while staying near enough to support one another.

"All of you at once?" the Ronin sneered, "Not very

sportsmanlike."

"You're a fine one to talk," Nabiki said as he straightened up,

finding Kodachi, Keiko and Akane were now supporting her

flanks, "I don't suppose you'd care to surrender now?"

"Why should I surrender?" the Ronin asked, assuming a fighting

stance with both arms lowered as his legs bowed a little. The

man's eyes rolled back up into his head as he made a sound of

deep exhalation, and suddenly the air around him tensed and

Nabiki felt her nape hairs stand on end, sensing the build up of

the other man's Chi-force.

"Everybody get back!" she cried out as she heeded her own

advice and got clear of the Ronin's expanding aura. She could

sense the swell of power as the man tapped into some unnatural

source of anti-life energy to cause the very molecules of air that

surrounded him to supercharge like plasma.

With a sudden motion of both arms he caused the glowing field

of energy around him to erupt, catching everyone but Nabiki off-

guard while scattering them like chaff in the wind. Nabiki's

senses screamed to her of wrongness as the sense of palpable evil

swept over them all, then faded into nothing.

The Ronin remained where he stood in the center of a radiating

blast field, then calmly looked around and surveyed his

handiwork before once more turning his attention towards

Nabiki.

"Is this really the best that you can do?" he sneered, "If so, then

our fight is truly over."

"Oboy," Nabiki murmured as he got back to his feet once again,

suddenly feeling very unsure of himself in the face of the Ronin's

seemingly inexhaustible bag of tricks. His forces lay scattered,

stunned or hurt was difficult to determine. The Ronin, by

contrast, hardly seemed even winded by his exertions.

Nabiki started to move into another defensive crouch when the

Ronin attacked again, barely telegraphing his warning moves as

he forced him to retreat beyond the reach of the giant. The Ronin

paused to regard him once more, then declared in deadly earnest,

"I see that you still intend to be difficult. Very well, then I will

end this now before you can bore me."

Nabiki had a sense of the man summoning his power once again

and knew this time that the Ronin's attack would be in deadly

earnest. Nabiki looked wildly around for a weapon to use and

caught sight of one of the gunman, who was starting to regain

consciousness. In one wild, desperate play Nabiki vaulted over

the man and hefted him by his collar, taking advantage of the

greater strength his male form possessed to thrust the semi-alert

gang member forward like a human shield as the Ronin

unleashed his attack with a solid punch that struck the other man

directly in his solar plexus.

At once the gunman lurched violently in Nabiki's grasp,

shuddering like a leaf with convulsions that were so violent he

broke loose and started to stagger around like the proverbial

chicken. Nabiki stood back with very round eyes as she gazed in

horror at the man, whose head began to swell as though the blood

were fountaining into his brain. Another moment later the

inevitable happened as fragile skin began to rupture, spraying

blood, brains and gore everywhere as the man screamed in

horrible agony and died where he was standing.

Nabiki felt his stomach churn as the contents of his last meal

threatened to join the rest of the mess littering the parkway. The

Ronin looked down at his own handiwork then glared at Nabiki

before grating out, "Now look what you've made me do! Just for

that I'll do the same to all of your companions!"

Nabiki saw the man's hands begin to glow as he once more

summoned his power and began to lunge forward when the

Ronin abruptly staggered off balance. He turned halfway around

while grating an angry curse at the new source of his pain, which

came represented in the form of several daggers now protruding

from his backside.

Beyond him, standing there calmly with both hands tucked into

his sleeves was Mousse, who glared at the Ronin and said

simply, "You hurt my Perfume. For that you will suffer."

"What is it with you insufferable insects?" the Ronin asked as he

considered this new threat, "Can none of you understand that I

am invincible? You may wound me, but you cannot kill me with

these petty toys and devices.

Nabiki could not believe that the man was still on his feet with so

much metal protruding from his backside. Perhaps he had

withstood the bullet because of the heavy leather vest he was

wearing, but to ignore these other wounds suggested that the man

was not even barely human!

That was when a voice suddenly called into her mind, "Strike

now, Tendo Nabiki! The Mask is his weakness! Remove it and

you will win the battle!"

As though him eyes moved of their own volition Nabiki found

himself staring at the strap to one side of the Ronin's headdress

and saw that it had come loose during the fighting. Without

pausing to consider a plan he charged the Ronin, who naturally

sensed this new attack and turned to thrust a fist in Nabiki's

direction. Nabiki merely vaulted over the arm and used it to help

him spring forward as he went sailing completely over the head

of the other man, hands moving swiftly to remove the straps and

yank the mask away before landing close to where Mousse was

standing.

The Ronin slowly turned, revealing a face to the newborn day

that not even a mother could love. Both Nabiki and Mousse

gasped in unison at the horrible ruin of a face that was presented

to full view. The Ronin's lips were permanently curled back to

reveal yellowed teeth and a horrible expression lined with bloody

veins and throbbing temples. The head was wrapped in leather

strips that criss-crossed around the scarred, disfigured creature

that stood staring in disbelief at his unveiling.

Then, very slowly at first, the Ronin lifted both hands to his head

and fell to his knees as his eyes shut tight and he let out a scream

that would have struck terror in the heart of a demon. The leather

strips were beginning to buckle as veins protruded into unnatural

shapes. His massive body began to shake like a leaf before the

leather strips began to part and snap as the head expanded to

twice its normal dimensions.

With a last desperate cry the Ronin voiced his mortal protest

before his head exploded, exactly as had been the case for his

now-dead minion. By that time Nabiki and all others capable of

staring had long since looked away in disgust, and now Nabiki

was certain he would lose it once he opened his eyes again. It

was almost in surprise that he felt Mousse lay a hand to his

shoulder as if to lend support in their moment of shared horror.

At last the gurgling noises became still, and without having to

glance in his direction they both knew that the Ronin was quite

dead. Nabiki almost did not hear his own name being called to

him as he felt his own temples throb with the beginning of a

sympathetic headache.

But finally he sensed the concern in the other man's voice as she

realized that it was Kenshiro asking, "Are you all right, Tendo-

san? Did my brother harm you in any way?"

"N-No..." Nabiki managed to blur out before sensing Mousse

withdraw his hand, and he stared at the Chinese youth, who

returned a look of mutual sadness. After a long, tense moment he

asked, "Why?"

Mousse shrugged, "I have no quarrel with you, or anyone else

save Kuonji Ukyo, Miss Tendo. My fight with her can wait until

another day, however, as the true danger has at long last past.

Feel no remorse at the one's passage, he only lived cause

suffering for others. It is fitting that he is his own final victim."

"I couldn't have said it better myself," Kenshiro nodded, "But it

wasn't your hand that killed him in the end. I was the one who

inflicted a mortal injury on my own brother. Jaggy's been dead

for the past year...it's only now that his own body finally

discovered the truth and caught up with his spirit."

"How did he manage to survive this long?" Nabiki wondered.

"Jaggy knew enough about pressure-points to slow the effect of

the Fist until he could wrap his head in something that would

contain the inevitable rupture," Kenshiro replied, "The mask was

the key. How did you figure it out in time to prevent more

killing?"

"I-I don't know," Nabiki started to say when he felt hot water

suddenly pour over his head and spun around to find Cologne

standing there with Happosai, Ryuken and Genma. She looked

directly at Kenshiro's father and said, "You! It was your voice I

was hearing!"

"Of course," Ryuken replied, "I thought you only needed the

suggestion to work your way through the crisis. Once you knew

what had to be done I was confident that you would bring an end

to my son's rampages."

"It doesn't bother you that I've effectively killed your son?" Nabiki

wondered, reflecting on the irony that it was the middle son of

Ryuken whom she had been facing.

"My son chose his own path," Ryuken said simply, "He ceased to

be my son when he set out on the path of evil. The Fist was

never meant to be used in the hands of one who believed the

power served him rather than him serving the power. In abusing

his teachings Jaggy ended his own life. I am only grateful to you

that the shame on our House has finally been put to rest."

"Now if only my other brother could be reasoned with," Kenshiro

said sadly, "Rao was never as twisted as Jaggy. Perhaps one day

he'll come to accept his own destiny."

"Perhaps in time," Ryuken replied, "No one can escape their

destiny. It is folly to try, and the result is ever tragic."

"Whatever," Nabiki sighed, daring to glance at the battlefield

before taking satisfaction in seeing her friends and sister were

recovering consciousness. That was when she took note that

Miyuki had pulled up along side them, and the rear door had

popped open before the car was fully at a standstill.

The next moment Nabiki staggered as a warm and enthusiastic

body collided with her in a tight embrace, crying, "Kaneda-sama!

Thank the Heavens you are all right...!"

"R-Ryonami?" Nabiki gasped, her mind suddenly jolted off track

by the suddenness of this encounter.

"Oh, I was so worried!" Ryonami was almost bubbling in her

relief, "First they kidnapped me then tortured me and threatened

to do all sorts of wicked things, and then you saved me and I got

sick on the back seat..."

"I know," Miyuki said as she got out of her car with a wince,

seeking out her semi-conscious partner, "I'll send you the

cleaning bill later...UGH! What happened here? Somebody

decide to play 'Scanners?'"

"A short and not-pretty story, I'm afraid," Saki groaned as she felt

her own head as though surprised to find it still attached to her

shoulder, "Let's just say the bad guy went all to pieces."

"Yuck!" Natsumi exclaimed as she stared at the bits of blood and

gore that had sprayed over her body, "I don't think I even want to

know the answer to this one!"

"Um..." Nabiki started to say as Ryonami's hands started to

explore her with questioning intensity, "Would you mind...not

doing that, Ryo-chan?"

"S-Sempai?" Ryonami gasped as she suddenly let go of Nabiki

and stared at her with a sheepish expression.

"What going on here?" Shampoo growled, now fully recovered.

"Uh oh," Nabiki faintly whispered.

"However you answer that one, you're in trouble, Nab-chan,"

Ukyo winced in sympathy as she felt her own head, then sensed

Perfume's sensitive fingers exploring her temples.

"Is it all over?" Ranma asked, his expression remarkably

composed in spite of a certain queasiness about the gills when he

glanced at the Ronin, "Did we win?"

"You don't win battles such as this, my boy," Genma sagely

advised him, "You just survive them. Be grateful none of our

people were badly hurt in this engagement."

"Oh tut, Genma my boy," Happosai said dismissively, "Where's

your sense of accomplishment? You all did yourselves proudly!

There's no need to feel modest."

"Indeed," Cologne remarked, "To defeat even a fallen Master of

the North Star technique is a feat worth preserving in our

legends. You have surpassed yourself this time, Daughter-in-

law. In fact you all have earned praise for the effectiveness of the

teamwork you have displayed. Were you all Amazons of

Joketsuzoku I could not be more proud to have you for students."

"Really?" Keiko looked up as Ryoga helped Akane and Kodachi

to stand.

"But of course," Cologne replied, then her tone shifted abruptly,

"Of course that doesn't mean that I've suddenly gone blind and

senile to miss the numerous mistakes you also made. You each

have a long ways to go before you can rightfully call yourselves

Martial Artists. Some of you are slow and lazy, others lack

finesse and imagination in their fighting style, while a few..."

"All right," Nabiki chuckled, "We get the point, Elder! We'll

table this discussion until we can all meet back home..." she

suddenly took notice of the sound of approaching sirens,

"...which may be a while in coming unless we clear out of here

right away."

"No need," Saki replied, "I'll work everything out with the locals.

The rest of you can leave, except for you two," she nodded to

Natsumi and Miyuki, "I'll need at least one of you to back me up

when we say we made this arrest as concerned citizens instead of

three cops operating outside of normal channels."

"Good point," Natsumi noted, "Last thing we need is to have our

Captain put us back on suspension."

"It would make the fifth time this year," Miyuki sighed, "I for one

cannot afford another three weeks without pay. You promised us

anonymity this time."

"And I keep my promises," Saki reassured her, "But just the same

we go with the story that you're with Internal Security and we'll

call this a Terrorist operation."

A rumbling noise caused Nabiki and several others to glance

skyward in alarm. Ryoga alone was casual as he noted, "That's

odd...the weather man said we've be having clear skies this

morning. Where did this overcast come from?"

"Who knows," Keiko winced, "But we'd better find cover quick!"

"I second motion!" Perfume declared, and Kodachi backed her,

for once, the two of them being in total agreement. The first few

drops of rain were starting to fall, and those with cause to dread

the inevitable could feel the change about to take them.

"S-S-Sempai?" Ryonami gasped again as she suddenly noticed

that it was Kaneda who stood next to her, not to mention a panda

bear, vulture, ferret and fluffy kitten, not to mention several piles

of discarded clothing.

"Just wonderful," Nabiki groaned as Ryonami's eyes rolled up in

her head, then the semi-nude brown haired girl fainted.

Something brushed against her leg and he stiffened before

determining that it was the ferret.

"All right, people," Ukyo sighed as she bent down to pick up a

pair of discarded axes, while Nabiki hefted Ryonami into his

arms, "Grab your stuff and let's clear out of here."

"I wonder how we'll file this out on our report," murmured

Miyuki faintly as she and her partner watched Nabiki and the

others silently withdrew from the aftermath of the battle, skirting

the dozens of overturned cars and motorcycles-not to mention

the hundreds of unconscious bodies.

"How about right beside our admittance forms for the

Sanitarium?" Natsumi whispered back, "I, for one, saw nothing

just happen, and if anybody asks, we'll just claim a circus was

passing through town and decided to stop by for a little

community service action."

"Right," Miyuki nodded, "But I still want somebody to pay my

cleaning bill," she noted forlornly as she gazed back towards her

car, then adopted her most innocent expression as uniformed

police arrived to take in the scene of carnage...

Continued.

Comments/Criticism/Mad Max Automechanics 101:

shadowmane

Whew! Finishing a chapter like this feels like I really was

waging a war. I promise next time to wind up this particular

adventure so that I can get on to doing something a bit more

light-hearted.

Nabiki 1/2

Chapter 19, Part 2

By

Jim Robert Bader

Inspired by the works of Rumiko Takahashi;

All rights belong to her, the publishers and distributors

Of the Ranma 1/2 Series.

(Based on the Altered Destinies Series by

Wade Tritschler and Others;

Some characters and situations were created by me,

The rest if shared Fanfiction, so don't sue me)

"Well then," Soun remarked to the young people sitting across

from himself at the table, "Has the matter been concluded to

everyone's satisfaction?"

"More or less, father," Nabiki answered sincerely, "The police

seem satisfied that the whole matter was gang-related and had

terrorist overtones. Detective Asamiya's contacts managed to

keep them off our tail long enough to finish off the gang and get

our people out of there. Master Ryuken and his son took their

leave of us a short time after that and we decided to split up and

rejoin here to see if there was any fallout from the conclusion of

this business."

"It seems that you have done well," Nodoka said approvingly,

turning to smile at her son before adding, "A fine demonstration

of family unity, proving that the Anything Goes school is in

capable hands with you five all standing up for one another."

"Thank you, Auntie Nodoka," Ukyo bowed before turning a smile

towards Ranma, who tried to act nonchalant but was all too

aware of the different sets of female eyes turned towards him

with admiration and affection.

"And you, Kodachi," Nodoka resumed, giving the rest of the

group an approving nod, "You've shown remarkable devotion to

your friends in this matter. I'm inclined to believe that you are

finally growing up and becoming a responsible woman, not to

mention putting your talents to a worthy cause this way."

"Thank you, Auntie," Kodachi smiled in genuine gratitude, "In

truth it was a successful field test of some powdered pollen

extracts that I have been working on for some time. I'm only glad

that my apothecary skills could be of such use. Oh...and by the

way, Nabiki-chan," Kodachi rose up on her knees and passed

along a scroll that was taken by Shampoo and placed into

Nabiki's hand, "My brother meant this for Kaneda-sama. I trust

that you will see that it gets to him in good order."

"What is it?" Nabiki asked.

"A challenge letter, of course," Kodachi beamed sweetly, "Now

that the affair with the Ronin is past, he wants to renew his

ongoing duel with your dashing male cousin. Please tell Kaneda-

sama that he has my permission to kick his pompous posterior all

the way from here to Okinawa."

To emphasize her point Kodachi mimicked a kiss that was only

slightly in Nabiki's direction.

"Uh, sure," Nabiki winced, "I'll tell him you said that."

"Good," Kodachi smiled before turning to Keiko and murmuring

softly, "Did you remember to bring everything this time?"

"The mayonnaise and candle wax?" Keiko grinned, "You think

I'd forget?"

"You were saying?" Genma murmured into his wife's ear.

"I withdraw my previous statement," Nodoka sighed, thinking

quietly to herself that some things never changed about Kodachi.

"Well," Kodachi clapped her hands with a smile, "Now that

we've settled all of that, I must return to my estate and reassure

my brother that he need not yet compose bad Haiku in my

memory. Would you like to come along, Keiko-chan, Akane-

chan?"

"Um," Akane glanced to the side and said, "How about you,

Ryoga-kun? Would you like to come with us?"

"Huh?" Ryoga had that look again like a deer caught in the

headlights, but he managed to stammer out, "S-sure! I mean, if

that's all right with Kodachi-san...I mean..."

Kodachi's infamous laugh punctuated the air before she replied,

"Why should I mind having along a boy whom my Akane-chan

considers with such favor? By all means come with us, but

please do not wander lost on the premises this time. I should

hate ever-so-much to have to rescue you again from my poor,

sweet little Man Eating plants."

"Oh uh, yeah," Ryoga winced, murmuring to himself, "Why do I

get the feeling that I'm going to regret this?"

"Come along, Ryoga-kun," Akane urged as she took Ryoga by

the arm and all but dragged him out of the dojo.

Cologne waited until Kodachi, Keiko, Akane and Ryoga had

gone a sufficient distance before murmuring aloud, "Young

Akane is a clever and resourceful woman, Daughter-in-law, and

quite taken with the lost one, I've noticed."

"She's what?" Soun reacted in shock, but everyone ignored him.

"Yeah, well, Ryoga has more than his share of faults," Nabiki

shrugged, "But if he makes my sister happy, then I say 'Go for

it.'"

"Daughter!" Soun said in redoubled-shock.

"I think Ryoga and Akane make a very nice couple," Kasumi said

cheerfully, "He's always nice to her and he makes her smile,

almost as much as Keiko and Kodachi when the three of them are

staying over together."

"Yeah, right," Nabiki said with careful neutrality, doing her level

best not to give away just what she thought about those three and

their "activities" together. She rather suspected that Kasumi

knew more than she was letting on herself, but as with Nabiki

they would not reveal a private secret that very likely would put

their father into a coma.

"Well now," Happosai said pleasantly, "Now that the Ronin and

his thugs are taken care of I rather imagine things will get back to

normal around here."

"Hardly," Nabiki snorted, "We still have a few loose threads to tie

up before we can really rest easy, but that's something I'll handle

in my own way. What's important is that we're all still here with

body-parts still attached, and tomorrow's a school day, so we'd

better all sleep in and get well rested because we'll need our

strength for what Cologne and I have planned for the afternoon."

"Which is?" Ranma asked, fearing that he already knew the

answer.

"We're going to review the current level of your training, Son-in-

law," Cologne replied, "You each have considerable room for

improvement, and we're going to individually review the current

level of your skills. That fight revealed some noteworthy flaws

that I'm going to have to see get hammered out of each of you,

especially you, Great Granddaughters. That fight was just a bit

too close and personal for my liking, and Shampoo...you took the

most risks of anyone out there. Have I not told you to take things

conservatively for the time being? You are with child, my dear,

and it is not just yourself that you must consider."

"I...very sorry, Great Grandmother," Shampoo said sheepishly,

"No want to look like weak girl in fight. Airen family counting

on Shampoo to pull own weight..."

"It's a fine thing to want to share in the risk with your loved

ones," Cologne remarked, "Except when it clouds your

judgement. You cannot afford to get sloppy out there, nor can

you risk your health one day after being wounded by treachery.

Your body is going through serious changes that will put great

stress on your personal reserves, and you cannot afford to divide

attention in such life-and-death matters."

Nabiki stared in disbelief as Shampoo took the criticism in good

grace, thinking privately to herself that had she voiced similar

sentiments it would have provoked a stubborn reaction from her

Amazon wife that would take hours to negotiate. Shampoo hated

to be considered weak on anything and always tried to look

strong before others. Getting her to relax and take it easy was as

difficult at times as getting a pig to sprout wings and fly. She

would have to make a study of Cologne's technique in the interest

of future negotiation.

Suddenly her attention swiveled back as she found Cologne's

staff thrust almost under her nose as the Elder silently chided her

for woolgathering before saying aloud, "And you certainly could

profit from the same advice. You were magnificent going up

against the Ronin, but when you defeated him you let yourself

feel sympathy for a dying man who would have gladly done the

same to you. Must I remind you that the best time to make peace

with the dead is after they are quite firmly with their ancestors?"

Nabiki was spared having to reply to the accusation when

Kasumi spoke up and said, "By the way, I've just been with your

friend, Ryonami. She's doing very well and resting just fine, but

she would like for you to pay her a visit sometime this morning,

Neechan."

"All right," Nabiki nodded, "I owe her at least that much for

getting her involved in all of this."

"You are not to blame, Nabiki-chan," Genma assured her before

seeing the dangerous gleam she turned towards him.

"Aren't I, Ojisama? I was the one who vowed to clean up the

crime problem at Furinkan. I thought allowing the students a

little vice was better than letting them get sucked into real

problem areas like drugs and violence. I should have let the

police deal with those problems and stuck to my own

loansharking operations. I stepped on too many toes, which is

what provoked the real gangs into hiring out the Ronin in the first

place."

"I think you've taken steps to insure that will not be repeated

anytime soon," Cologne remarked, "And it is far from a shameful

thing to take an interest in the welfare of your fellow students."

"Maybe so," Nabiki sighed, "But it's not just me I should be

considering. Not everybody in Nerima is a Martial Artist, and

some people need protection. I can't be everywhere, and even

being the best is no guarantee against a lone assassin."

Without turning her head to see it, Nabiki felt Shampoo tense and

look away. Everyone else did look towards the purple haired

Amazon, who still bore the mark of her near-encounter.

Then Ranma spoke up and said, "That bunk. You know we all

made our own decisions when we got involved in this, Nab-chan,

and I for one think we've done some real good here."

"Ranma is correct, Nabiki-chan," Soun affirmed, "You cannot

assume responsibility for everything that goes on in the world..."

"Not the world, Daddy," Nabiki replied, "Just Nerima."

There was a moment of pause before Cologne hopped up onto the

table and approached Nabiki, coming to stand in front of her with

a critical lookover before saying, "Hmm...those shoulders hardly

look broad enough. I think you're letting your ambition carry you

away with delusions of grandeur, Daughter-in-law. You should

be content with simply carrying your family on your back, and

not all at once unless you wish to experience serious spinal

problems."

"I think she's trying to tell you to go easy on yourself, Nab-chan,"

Ukyo remarked, "We're big enough to look out for ourselves,

including Kasumi."

"Maybe so," Nabiki sighed as she slowly got back to her feet, "If

it's all the same, I think I'll go check on Ryonami. See you guys

later at practice."

As she turned to go Perfume exchanged looks with Shampoo

then silently nodded. Shampoo touched Ranma on the shoulder

and the two of them began to get to their feet when Cologne

hopped by them and said, "Wait up a minute you two. Let me

have a word with your Airen."

Ranma was about to make protest when he stopped himself and

exchanged another look with Shampoo before asking, "Did she

say OUR Airen...?"

"Tendo-san," Cologne called out as she caught up with Nabiki

mid-way to the dojo.

"What is it, Elder?" Nabiki asked tiredly, "If you're going to give

me another pep talk..."

"Actually I wanted to satisfy myself on a point," Cologne replied,

"This was the first time that you have actually killed an enemy,

isn't it?"

Nabiki did not meet the Amazon's stare, but after a moment she

softly replied, "The first time I've killed anyone. I've always

prided myself for being able to avoid killing, but it's not because

of the Ronin that I feel so lousy."

"I am pleased to see your priorities are not totally awry," the

Elder remarked before asking, "Who then?"

"I don't know his name," Nabiki replied, "He was just some guy I

grabbed up at random, one of the Ronin's men. I used him like a

shield and...well...he died a pretty horrible death. I sure wouldn't

want to die that way, but I...used him, put him deliberately in the

line of fire, knowing he would probably buy it. That's what I

used to do with people before I came here...use them then throw

them away..."

"You are a strange one, Child," Cologne remarked, "Do you think

for one moment that the man you permitted to die in your place

would have spared one thought at all for you and all you hold

dear? Do you think he would have hesitated to do worse?"

"We'll never know the answer to that," Nabiki said, "And how

am I any better than the Ronin...?"

"Excuse me?" Cologne said dryly, "Did I hear you right? Are you

asking that I compare you to a man who, in clinical terms, could

best be described as a raving Psycho?"

"More like a Sociopath," Nabiki corrected, "Well...I'm not

actually saying that I'd go around planning on how I was going to

kill, rape and pillage the way he did..."

"Good," Cologne nodded, "So now you know the answer to your

own question. You have some self-restraint and you know your

limits. The Ronin practiced neither and his ambitions were large.

Make no mistake about it, he was the one who did the killing

there. You merely practiced the tenant of your School to stay

alive, for which there is hardly any reason feel remorse."

"But isn't there, like, a question of Moral equivalency?" Nabiki

asked, "If I start excusing myself and justifying all my actions

that way won't I just be setting myself up to eventually be like the

Ronin?"

"Ask yourself if you care about the welfare of other people,"

Cologne calmly answered, "So long as you can ask the question

you have not yet arrived at the same place as the Ronin. He

stopped caring about anyone a long time ago, or so his father

informed me, once he began his dark path to oblivion and

indulged in a cycle of hatred and self-loathing. We all are

responsible for our own actions, Child, and when someone makes

a wrongful decision he must be prepared to face the

consequences. In attacking you that man you sacrificed put

himself in the line of danger. You were merely the medium for

his own choice of self-destruction."

"I still feel like I should do something to make penance," Nabiki

replied.

"Fair enough," Cologne said, "Continue to look out for the

welfare of those who are in need of your strength and that will be

compensation enough. The Universe at large requires no other

answer."

Nabiki drew a deep breath and sighed, then looked sidelong at

the Cologne and said, "I should know better than to argue with

you, Old Woman. You've got far too much practice at this sort of

thing."

"Of course," Cologne drew herself up to as tall a standing as she

could manage, "That is why I am an Elder."

"Still," Nabiki looked away, "I can help wondering...if I'd given

in to you when you wanted to take me back with Shampoo to

your village...would she have been safer there? Would our baby

have a better chance at being born? Maybe I should have tried

listening to you much sooner..."

"Ah..." it was Cologne's turn to stammer and look nervously

away, "Perhaps...not. Even I have been known to be rash on

occasion, and as far as taking you back to our village..."

Nabiki at once felt suspicion and frowned, "What? Is there some

clause to your rules that you haven't felt like sharing with me,

Elder?"

"Just the part that has to do with Amazons who bear the

Jusenkyo curse of Nannichuan," said Perfume in Mandarin as

she and Shampoo appeared, along with Ukyo and Ranma.

"Tell her the full truth, Great Grandmother," Shampoo also

said in her native language.

Cologne sighed then she also reverted to Chinese and said, "It is

considered disgraceful for an Amazon to surrender her

womanhood to a curse, and you are Amazon by adoption. If I

had taken you back to the village there...would have been a

scandal."

"A scandal?" Nabiki said in mild alarm, "What kind of

scandal?"

"Nothing seriously life-threatening," Cologne replied, "Most

likely you would have been judged a technical male, in which

case your status would revert back to Shampoo and she could

resume her place as senior warrior of her generation."

"It's worse for full-fledged Amazons," Perfume added, "They

face the possibility of Exile."

"Technically male?" Nabiki replied, "And Shampoo would

become the senior partner?"

"Yes, but you would not be allowed to leave Joketsuzoku,"

Cologne politely coughed, "As you would have the status of a

male you would fall under the rules that apply to a Warrior's

husband. Shampoo would be able to dictate the course of your

life, within limits."

"Within limits," Nabiki repeated the words coldly, "And you

were going to tell me this...when?"

"At the appropriate time," Cologne had the good graces to

look embarrassed, "Of course this was before I got to know you

better. At the time I was simply looking out for Shampoo's

welfare..."

"Of course," Nabiki replied, "How silly of me, I thought

maybe it was your own standing in the village you were worried

about, and your family's, of course."

"Scoff if you want," Cologne said gravely, "But it has always

been my intention that Shampoo would one day succeed me as

my heir and become the senior Elder of the Nyuchizu. I have

raised her to be the finest warrior of her generation and it was not

in anyone's interest that her destiny be derailed by a trick of

circumstance that bonded her to the fate of another woman, or so

I believed until I came here to Nerima. Now I think, perhaps,

that you would serve the Amazons even better as my heir, with

Shampoo's support and guidance. At the present time it might

not be wise to expose the full truth to my peers, so I think it

would be wisest to remain here in Nerima."

"Until I can find a cure for my curse?" Nabiki asked.

"A cure is unlikely," Cologne replied, "But if you prove

yourself adept enough in learning the Amazon techniques I

would share, then you can go before the Council of Elders and

make your case to be respected as a full equal. Shampoo would

then retain her status and you would be permitted to come and go

as you will."

"In spite of my being cursed, eh?" Nabiki said more calmly

than before, "Thank you for sharing this with me now, Elder,

but how exactly do these rules apply to my friend, Ukyo?"

"She is a woman and would be accorded full status," Cologne

replied, "Perfume has no official standing outside of her role as

Tribal Enforcer, so there is no question of dominance to be

settled, and besides this it is plain that Perfume would not mind

playing second to Kuonji-san. I regret if I may have deceived you

both in any way, but I believed that it was necessary..."

"Then try remembering in the future that we like to have a say

in deciding our own fates," Nabiki informed her, then shifted

back to Japanese, "Very interesting indeed. I trust you will make

proper restitution?"

"So long as you continue to manage your affairs competently, I

will have no issues," Cologne replied serenely.

"Well, if that's all done," Ukyo looked at them sourly, "Mind

translating that to those of us who don't speak Mandarin like a

second language?"

"Perfume will explain it all to you, Daughter-in-law," Cologne

remarked, "You may rely upon her diligence and judgement to

tell you everything which you have need of knowing."

"I very happy to help Airen," Perfume assured her before

murmuring in Chinese, "May the spirits of Past Elders judged

you as they see fit, Great Grandmother."

From the tone she used it was obviously not meant to be

complimentary, but Cologne ignored the insult.

"Well, if that's over with," Nabiki turned away and resumed her

pace, "I still have business with my friend, Ryonami."

Ranma started forward when he felt the restraining hand on his

sleeve and found Cologne looking up at him intently.

"Have you a moment, Son-in-law?"

"What for?" Ranma replied warily.

"I just thought we should have a little talk is all," Cologne looked

meaningfully at the others, "If that is permissible?"

"Fine," Nabiki called out absently over her shoulder, "Whatever."

Ukyo looked at Ranma with less certainty, but Perfume touched

her wrist and gave a reassuring nod, while Shampoo remained a

docile three steps behind Nabiki. Ranma found himself alone

with the ancient Amazon, who for once did not appear to be such

a menacing figure.

"You love them both, do you not?" Cologne asked simply.

Ranma hesitated to reply, but Cologne did not appear to require a

response as she continued, "But you feel somehow unworthy of

their love. You are troubled by the knowledge that Nabiki is so

much better than you at the Warrior arts."

"Not as much as she used to be," Ranma said indifferently, "I've

gotten a lot better..."

"And so has she," Cologne resumed, "As you improve, so does

she improve, and while you may narrow the margin of the gap it

still remains a certainty that your iinazuke will always be in some

ways your superior. Do you ever wish that it might not be so?"

Ranma hesitated again, this time unable to say aloud that he did

at times wish Nabiki was not quite so good at the thing he most

loved. It galled him to think that there was anyone better in the

Art than himself, nor was he entirely happy at the prospect of

always being her inferior as a Martial Artist. He remembered

vividly the ambition of his youth to be the best there was at

fighting and how unlikely it seemed now when he had someone

like Nabiki with which to compare. It was intensely frustrating.

"I don't mind the fact that she's good," Ranma said aloud

insistently, "But I do wish I was better..."

"Then why don't you train to be better?" Cologne replied, "You

have the potential and the motivation, what you lack is proper

training."

"And I suppose you're making me an offer?" Ranma asked

suspiciously.

"Why not?" Cologne replied, "I've trained the best, or so I have

always believed until I met you and Tendo Nabiki. Neither one

of you could stand up in a straight fight against Perfume if she

fought all-out with no restraint, even in spite of her limitations.

Imagine what I could do with you if you were willing to trust

your fate into my hands."

"That's just it," Ranma said, "I don't trust you. I may not have

understood what you and Nabiki just said, but I know from the

sound of it that she wasn't very happy."

"We have our little differences," Cologne replied, "But I respect

Tendo Nabiki, and I have given her my assurances that I will do

nothing to undermine her position here in Nerima."

"Then why are you making the offer?" Ranma asked, still not

ready to trust the old woman.

Cologne smiled knowingly, "It is because of my respect for the

both of you that I am willing to train you. I sense the deep

resentment you feel towards her abilities and can foresee the

trouble it will cause in your relationship. You would rather be

her equal than her subordinate in the fighting arts, and I can give

you the knowledge that will insure that you both fight at a more

competitive advantage. Besides this there is the consideration of

what dangers may lay in store for you all if you do not improve

yourselves to at least the Ronin's level, which is by no means the

furthest that you can achieve. The choice is yours to make, Son-

in-law, I cannot make it for you, but would you at least consider

my offer? I can teach you special techniques that have been a

secret among the Amazons for over a hundred generations."

Ranma glanced at the dojo and thought seriously about it. On the

one hand was his knowledge that Cologne was dangerous and

had her own personal agenda, which defined what she thought

was best for her people as a virtue. He knew the old woman

could be trusted at her given word, only it was more Nabiki's area

of specialty to negotiate with her to a competitive advantage.

On the other hand she knew combat styles and special techniques

the likes of which he could hardly even imagine. He had seen

both Perfume and Shampoo demonstrate their skills and knew by

implication the advantages Amazon teaching had to offer. It was

a tempting package given all of that, but still Ranma hesitated.

He wanted to be much better, to at least be as good as Nabiki

herself, but at what price would he be forced to pay further down

the line? As Nabiki often pointed out, you rarely got anything in

life without paying something of equal or greater value.

Cologne seemed to read his hesitation and smiled, "Dealing with

me is not quite the same as dealing with the Devil, Son-in-law. I

will not impose special demands in exchange for this training. I

want you to excel, if for no other reason than that you are the

male component in this family web that links Shampoo and

Nabiki to Perfume and Kuonji. Take your time in making your

mind up, I will be waiting. I am three hundred years old and can

wait a little longer to teach a male heir to the ways of the

Nyuchizan Amazons of Joketsuzoku."

"All right," Ranma said, "Then I'll do it."

Cologne looked at him alertly, "You have decided this soon?"

He nodded slowly, "I'm not as smart as you or Nabiki, but I can

figure out that you've already covered all of the arguments I could

make pro and con. If you want to get your way you probably

will, one way or another. This way at least I have the chance to

say no if I don't like what you're teaching."

Cologne smiled in evident approval, "My Daughter-in-law has

chosen her mate well. What say we test your willingness against

my good faith by beginning with a simple maneuver. You have

seen Perfume demonstrate the Bakusai Tenketsu?" Ranma

nodded, and then so did she, "I happen to know of another form

even more powerful, and if you submit to training with me I think

you can master it in a reasonable amount of time. If you are

satisfied with this we can move on to another technique, and so

on."

"I'll have to talk with Nab-chan about it," Ranma replied, "She'll

probably tell me I'm an idiot to trust you, but..."

"That is as you would have it," Cologne replied with a serene

expression, "Unless it chaffs you to have to go to her for

permission."

Ranma frowned at that, "Who says I need permission? I can

make my own decisions, even if you think I am just a guy..."

Cologne did her best to hide the real smile she was wearing

inwardly. Yes the boy did have his considerable merits, but with

his ego and pride he was easily manipulated, exactly as she had

intended from the moment she had decided to make an offer she

knew he never had any intention of refusing...

"Ryo-chan?" Nabiki asked hesitantly, "Are you awake?"

"I'm awake," Ryonami said from the tatami mat she lay upon in

the dim light of the dojo.

Nabiki approached her friend cautiously, uncertain of what kind

of reception she could expect. Ryonami had been silent since

their leaving the park and only paid furtive glances at Nabiki

until they had safely arrived back at the dojo. Since then she had

been tended to by Kasumi and Shampoo while Nabiki briefed her

father and the others on everything that had transpired.

She was concerned that Ryonami might be traumatized by her

experiences and the many shocks that she had endured since the

problem with the Ronin had begun. Nabiki counted on her

friendship and thought Ryonami had many promising talents that

were worth cultivating, but without her trust their business

relationship would suffer, which would likely lead to other

problems as Ryonami was her main contact point for dealing

with the other students at Furinkan.

Which no doubt was why the Ronin had targeted her in the first

place.

"Konichiwa," she said with a bow of the head before sitting down

beside Ryonami and looking her friend over, "Shampoo says

you'll do fine in a few days, and your mother is coming over to

see for herself."

"That's nice," Ryonami replied, studying Nabiki back as though

just seeing her for the first time, "I'm sorry to be such a bother..."

"Nonsense," Nabiki replied, "It's my fault this happened..."

"I don't think so," Ryonami replied, "Sempai...would you mind if

I do something?"

"Do?" Nabiki frowned, "What do you...?"

Ryonami reached over for a glass of water that had been set

beside her bed next to a food tray, and with a quick motion she

splashed Nabiki's face, which triggered her transformation.

"What...?" Nabiki sputtered.

"I wanted to see for myself," Ryonami studied his male features

once more, "It's all true...what they told me about your curse.

Kaneda isn't the real you...is he?"

"No," Nabiki replied cautiously, "He's not. My girl-form is the

real me, this is just what happens when I get wet."

"Hard to believe," Ryonami said slowly, "But I don't see why I

never made the connection. You two were never around at the

same time, and everybody around here treats you the same way

whether you're Kaneda or Nabiki."

"Everyone here knows the truth about my curse," Nabiki replied,

"And now so do you."

"Curse?" Ryonami repeated the word as though she found it

amusing, "You call this a curse? Sempai...you're gorgeous!

Every girl in school wants to date you, and nobody dares because

you've got a...wife who puts holes in brick walls for amusement."

"Well..." Nabiki winced, "Curse is relative and subjective where

I'm concerned. Being popular with the ladies isn't exactly

something I try to cultivate, not just because of Shampoo. It

mainly has to do with my self-perception as a woman..."

"I guess that is a problem for you, then," Ryonami conceded, "But

it's a pretty good scam, you've got to admit."

Nabiki had to smile at that. It was not for nothing that Ryonami

was her understudy. The girl tended to think very much the same

way Nabiki had before she came to Nerima.

"I guess it is," she admitted, "Never thought of it that way,

mainly because I guess I've just been trying to cope with having a

dual nature."

"I can't say that I understand," Ryonami said, "But I'm glad you

finally let me know the truth. I hate feeling like such a rube...in

fact I feel like I let you down back there. I...I gave away some of

your secrets. I couldn't help myself...they used torture...and I'm

very weak..."

"Easy, it's all right," Nabiki assured her before the words could

become a tumble, "I can't blame you for giving in...in fact I'd

rather you did than suffer worse than you had. The Ronin was

evil, you can't be blamed for what he made you do..."

"That's just an excuse...like what my father always gave my

mother," Ryonami hesitated, "In a way I'm glad I didn't know all

your secrets, so I couldn't betray them. Who knows what he

would have done if he knew that you were really female?"

"It wasn't because of that that I kept the truth away from you,"

Nabiki assured her, "You're not weak, you just don't know how

to fight back against scum like that. You're only human, and

that's nothing to be ashamed of."

"But being human means it hurts more when they cross you,"

Ryonami said sadly.

"It kept you alive," Nabiki pointed out, "So long as the Ronin

didn't see you as a real threat he thought he could use you for a

pawn..."

"Use me against you," Ryonami said bitterly, "I wish I were as

strong as you, Boss, but I'm weak, and I hate it."

"Then we'll have to work on that, won't we?" Nabiki asked, "I

can't have people pushing my number one girl Friday around like

that. We're going to have to work on toughening you up. It's a

central tenant of the Anything Goes school to do whatever it

takes to stay alive and beat the odds, and if you're the sort of

gambler I think you are, then I think you'd make a very fine

student in our school."

"You mean that?" Ryonami asked after a moment of wonder,

"You'll train me?"

"This is a school, right?" Nabiki said, "And you've always done

well in school. I think you'll do just fine in this school...provided

you do everything exactly the way I tell you."

"I will," Ryonami said with enthusiasm, "I promise, you won't be

disappointed, and I'll never betray you again, Sempai..."

"What the heck," Nabiki shrugged, "Call me Nabiki, at least

when we're between hours."

"All right, Nabiki," Ryonami paused before smiling as she added,

"Sama."

Nabiki rolled his eyes and sighed, "That will do for now, I guess.

You're going to be all right if I leave now?"

"I'll be fine," Ryonami said with affection in her eyes, " You're

the nicest person I've ever known, the only one who's ever treated

me fairly. I just hope you'll understand what I mean when I say

that I love you, Boss."

"Uh..." Nabiki faltered.

"Not quite that way," Ryonami chuckled, "So you can tell your

wife over there that she doesn't have to skin me. By the

way...how does that work with you having both her and Ranma?"

"Sometimes even I have trouble figuring it out," Nabiki smiled

lopsidedly, "I'll let you know when I figure it out."

"You have all the luck in relationships," Ryonami sighed, "I just

hope I meet somebody else like you someday."

"A sweetheart like you?" Nabiki smiled affectionately as he got

up, "By the time I get through with you you'll be beating them off

every morning like Akane."

"Now that's something to look forward to," Ryonami said in

unmistakable irony.

Nabiki withdrew and sought the others, who had remained a

discrete distance the whole time of these exchanges. Ukyo gave

Nabiki a nod then murmured, "Is she going to be all right there?"

"Oh yeah," Nabiki replied as Shampoo handed him a fresh

teakettle to change back with, "She's a tough one, a real survivor,

and I wish to Hell I'd never gotten her mixed up in all of this in

the first place..."

"She no agree," Shampoo replied, "Kasumi and Shampoo talk to

her, find out how she feel, think maybe she like Airen too much

for Shampoo...for my liking, but she no make trouble, so

Shampoo no have to kill her."

"That's a relief," Nabiki sniffed, privately thankful that there

would be no lingering resentment between both women,

"Because I still need her and she is my friend. I'd like to think

there was at least one person out there besides you guys who

wasn't out to kill me..."

"Do I count?" asked a familiar voice as Saki came up top join

them, "Sorry it took a while for me to get away. You know how

Cops are about territory, and then I had to brief my superiors to

let them know what really happened. It's all I could do to keep

them from banging on your doors with a truckload of questions

that I'm sure you'd rather not answer. How's the kid?"

"Resting," Nabiki said, "I'd like to thank you again for your help,

Asamiya. If you keep this up I'm going to have to change my

opinion about the Police..."

"I try and bend the curve in favor of humanity," Saki shrugged

before giving Shampoo a cautious look, "How's the head?"

"Still in one piece," Shampoo replied, "I have you to thank for

this."

"I just wish I'd reacted a little sooner," Saki replied, "I should

have suspected he'd send a sniper. I let my guard down and you

almost paid the price, and Kasumi..."

"She no blame you for that," Shampoo assured, "You being silly.

Only human after all, even if you do have Amazon blood."

"Uh...that's not entirely certain," Saki cautiously replied.

"It is by me," Cologne said, drawing attention back her way as

she approached beside Ranma, "Shampoo tells me your

grandmother may have been one of our people, and I believe I

may even know which one, which may prove interesting to you,

Asamiya Saki."

"Well," Saki said reluctantly, "Truth is I've never been much on

family..."

"You never have family much be proud of," Shampoo replied,

touching her arm as she added, "Before now."

"That's right," Nabiki said, "You saved Shampoo's life, maybe

even saved my sister's life as well. That puts me in your debt,

Saki-chan, and all of the Tendo House as well. There is giri

between us, and if you ever need a place to stay, or just a friend,

or any kind of favor, you only have to ask it, it will be granted."

"The honor of the Amazons also mandates that you be regarded

with favor," Cologne added, "I am certain that one day you will

find that favor will be much to your advantage."

"Thank you," Saki looked as though she were about to cry, "I

don't think you know what that means to me. It's...nice to have

somebody who care..."

"We all care," Ranma said as he approached her, "Kasumi's like

my big sister, and Shampoo...well ... she's important to me as

well. What Nab-chan says is true for all of us..."

"You're just saying that because she isn't out to date you,

Ranchan," Ukyo teased.

"Oh, I don't know," Saki inclined her head, "You're a pretty nice

boy, maybe a bit young for my tastes..."

"Don't even try it," Nabiki chuckled.

"Yeah," Ranma winced, "No offense, but I've already got enough

girlfriends."

"Too much man for your own good," Ukyo grinned before

Perfume leaned close to her and whispered something in her ear

that caused her to blush as she gasped, "Right now?"

"Is good time for it," Perfume assured her, "No need for other

things, and I think it good time for celebrating."

"Ahem," Ukyo felt along her collar, "I'll catch up with you guys

later. Per-chan and me...well...I kind of promised to take her

somewhere today..."

"You have a good time," Nabiki nodded, "Just spare the rest of us

hearing about the details."

"No problem there," Ukyo said as she and Perfume turned

around, arm-in-arm and Perfume leaned forward and murmured

something else in her ear that caused the Okonomiyaki chef to

wince as she said, "Are you kidding? I don't think that's even

possible...at least not with a Spatula anyway..."

"Poor Ucchan," Ranma sniffed, though by his tone Nabiki

doubted that he felt the least bit sorry for his other iinazuke.

Nabiki had to smile herself as she thought of the strange semi-

rivalry she shared with Ukyo over Ranma. All of her

relationships were strange and unique, but somehow very

fulfilling. Life might have a way of throwing her curves, but

each new experience seemed to make the ties they shared grow

that much stronger...and she would not have it any different...

Epilogue and Prologue:

The Vice-Principal of Furinkan High looked at the headlines in

the paper and shook his head in dismay. What was the world

coming to for violence of this scale to descend upon a quiet

suburban town like Nerima? The Park was a shambles with

automobiles and motorcycles scattered everywhere, along with

over a hundred gang members arrested on a variety of charges

that ranged from Drug possession to violence and murder.

The youth of today was out of control with fights occurring

between students on an almost daily basis. No one dared to

stand in the way of the roving gangs that patrolled the corridor as

evidenced by the recent school bust that had led to several

indictments among the school administration. The scandals that

had resulted from the discovery of the Test Cheating circle had

led to further upsets that had rocked Furinkan High school to its

bedrock foundations. The local School Board was crying for

blood, and after the disaster that had occurred two days ago with

the Terrorist-like attack by that selfsame Biker gang was the final

straw in their demands that something be done about these

matters.

It was long since time that order was restored and the students be

made to tow the official line. It was simply intolerable that any

one student should impose her own form of order, however well

motivated. It was the duty of the Teachers and Faculty Staff to

see that law was respected and school policy adhered to.

Anything less would be an admission of failure.

Thank the Kami that the new Principal was returning in a few

days to bring with him his own brand of discipline and order.

Principal Kuno was said to be a tough-minded individual with

very unorthodox methods. He had been Principal of Furinkan

before the Vice-Principal had even been hired on but had been

mysteriously absent the last few years during one of his

sabbaticals. Hawaii was it? His return to a position of authority

was seen by many as a restoration of the old order that once had

prevailed...

The Vice-Principal frowned as he re-read the name on the official

notice sent down by the district.

Principle Kuno?

The name was easily recognizable to anyone who had seen it on

as many discipline reports as he had, but surely it was just a

coincidence and they could not possibly be related? The Kuno

family had power and influence to spare, but surely the name was

common enough in Japan that it was no more than coincidence

here?

Oh well, at least when he came there would be some much-

needed house cleaning in the air, such as when that new Teacher

he had been hearing about arrived...Hinako-san? Yes, a fine

Professor of Academia with an excellent record for discipline and

nearly perfect attendance. That sounded very much like the sort

of individual Furinkan needed, a Teacher who could hold her

own with the student body.

If only he could reconcile the photograph that came with her

record with the description of someone who would make a

favorable impression with the staff. If he did not know better he

would have sworn that somebody was having fun at his expense

at the office of records, because the little girl he saw could just as

well have been his own kawaii little daughter...

Some weeks later:

The Harrier Jump Jet had no official markings but was cleared by

the brass as it came to a rest at the US Air Base at Okinawa. The

burly man who climbed out of the cockpit appeared to be almost

too big to be a pilot, but when he tossed his helmet to a member

of the flight crew one could see that his haircut was within

regulations, if unusually brush-like.

A man in an Air Force Uniform without insignia or identifying

markings of any kind was waiting to hand him a leather-bound

folder, which the tall man glanced through with professional

detachment. He nodded without a word as the two of them

headed for a waiting limousine, and only once they were inside

did he speak aloud to his companion.

"How long have our people know about this?" he asked.

"Several days," the uniformed officer replied, "We've confirmed

the information through independent sources. You'll find

everything in that brief is on the level."

"That's what I was afraid of," the big man said gruffly, "Has

Interpol been notified?"

"Yes, but this does not appear to fall within their jurisdiction,"

the other man's tone was almost apologetic, "We can't pursue

things officially, and without backing by higher ups I'm afraid

even your group can have limited effectiveness..."

"That remains to be seen," the big man said, "If I can't go through

channels I'll find another way, even if I have to go outside our

regular circle."

"I can understand your feelings on this matter, Colonel," the other

man replied, "After all you do have a personal stake in these

developments..."

"That's not relevant, Major," the big man growled, "And I'd

prefer it if you keep my personal life out of this. I'll find a team

of volunteers that's willing to go in there if I have to personally

recruit them. There is one thing I need to know first..."

"Ah yes," the other man nodded as he handed over a second brief,

"I thought you'd bring that up, so I took the liberty of putting this

together, also through unofficial channels. It's all there, sir,

everything we've been able to dig up on her history for the past

decade."

"Incredible," the big man said as he held up a photograph that

had clearly been taken through a long-range camera lens, "She's

grown so much...I'd hardly recognize her...even if she does look a

little like her mother."

"She's only just resurfaced in Japan within the past two months,

sir," the other man nodded, "But I think you'll find what we have

there makes for some interesting reading."

"I'll be sure to study it once I get to my hotel," the big man said as

he committed the face in the photograph to memory and absently

murmured, "Daddy's coming home to find you, little Blossom.

I'd say better late than never, but I don't think you'd agree, and I

wouldn't blame you."

He caressed the picture with one finger, tracing the outlines of a

seventeen year old girl with long red hair done up in a Chinese-

style pig-tail...

Continued.

Comments/Criticism/Essays in Katakana: shadowmane

Another break in the action before I start another Nabiki 1/2

saga. I promise the next series will be much more lighthearted

than this one, and no exploding heads either-Sayonara!

If you wish to check out my other works, Please check out my

Fanfiction webpage at: . or

it's mirror site at: ~

All related chapters of this series can be found there along with my

other works.


	20. Chapter 20

Nabiki 1/2

Chapter 20, Part 1.

By

Jim Robert Bader

(Inspired by the works of Rumiko Takahashi & Others,

This is a work of Fanfiction, so please don't sue me)

Kasumi answered the knock on their door and looked out into

what, on first impression, appeared to be a solid wall of muscles.

It took a moment for her to correct the angle of her vision, and

then she gazed up, and up until she finally found the face of a

very large man with broad, square features, blond hair short-

cropped in a flattop buzz cut. The man had on a pair of dark sun

glassed and was wearing a short-sleeved vest that gave her an

ample view of broad shoulders and rock-hard biceps. The man's

arms looked as though they would have intimidated your average

gorilla, but in proportion to his basic size they somehow seemed

natural. The man radiated power, and even at rest he seemed to

contain effortless grace and an abundance of robust stamina, the

sort of man you might dream about if you were anyone but

Kasumi.

If she had to guess his age she would have put him somewhere

in his thirties, but that could just be his physical condition

making him seem younger than he was. Despite his robust

constitution she would have more conservatively placed him in

his early forties, noting just a touch of gray about the temples.

"Excuse me," he said, his voice very deep and manly, "I was

wondering if you might help me, miss...?"

"Ah," Kasumi caught herself blushing and merely smiled before

replying, "Tendo Kasumi. And you are?"

"Colonel William Guile," the man replied, flipping open his

wallet to show a United Nations ID card. He removed his

glasses and said, "I'm very sorry to intrude on you like this, Miss

Tendo, but I was hoping that you might help me locate someone

whom I understand has been living at your address?"

"Hai?" Kasumi asked, noting that the man was obviously an

American but spoke excellent Japanese and seemed to know

something of proper manners. She also noted that he did not

wear a wedding ring on his left hand, as was the American

custom, so there was a very good chance that he was single.

The man thumbed through his wallet again and came up with a

photograph that looked very old and slightly faded with signs that

it had been handled quite often and was fraying about the edges.

He held it out to her as she reluctantly glanced down to see the

face of a young girl, perhaps no more than seven or eight years of

age. Red hair, blue eyes and a face full of mischief. Without

meaning to Kasumi gaped at the face and managed to stammer

out, "Nani?"

"Have you seen her?" the man sounded very excited at noticing

her reactions, "Please, it's been close to ten years but I have to

know if you have seen a young woman named Arigami Keiko

anywhere about Nerima? Is she the one you have living under

your roof?"

"Ah," Kasumi tried to think of something proper to say but found

herself at a loss.

He sighed, taking back the photo, "I'm sorry if I have come at an

inconvenient time. If you like I could come back later..."

"Oh, no...that won't be necessary," Kasumi said as she stepped

back from the door, "Would you like to come inside and have a

seat? My Aunt Nodoka is here...would you mind if I go fetch

her, Guile-san?"

"By all means," Guile replied, feeling a surge of excitement

building up in him, though he knew that it was dangerous to get

his hopes up yet again. One too many false leads had led to

tragedy-not to mention some awkward situations that he would

rather not remember.

"I will be right back," Kasumi assured him as she left the man in

the main room and sought Nodoka in the kitchen...

"Okay," Nabiki sputtered as hot water cascaded off of her body,

"We know that works. What temperature was it this time?"

Doctor Tofu Ono examined the thermometer then made a

notation on his pad as he replied, "Twenty-point-three Celsius,

approximately eighty seven-point-four degrees Fahrenheit.

Below that the change is much slower than the instant change

you want when you're in a hurry. It takes about three seconds for

the transformation to occur at this low a level."

"All right," Nabiki replied as she picked up the marker pen and

made a notation on the wall chart they had erected, which

showed a steady Bell-curve effect from all the previous notations,

"Rate of speed versus degree of change with the lowest setting

occurring around about eighteen-point-one degree Celsius, or just

over eighty one degrees Fahrenheit. At that temperature it rakes

almost as much as half of a minute to change, so we've pretty

much established that there is a remarkable consistency with

which Jusenkyo curses are temperature affected."

"You don't sound very surprised by all of this," Doctor Tofu

noted.

"I was expecting something like this when we started conducting

these tests, Sensei," Nabiki replied, "In spite of appearances to

the contrary, it seems Magic does work along rules and set

principles very similar to the ones applied to normal Physics. I

guess that just confirms the odd adage about Technology

resembling magic to the uninitiated. Magic is just a form of

science that goes well beyond conventional understanding, which

means that it is possible to comprehend its functions..."

"With the hope of some day mastering it and binding it to your

will?" Tofu concluded for her, "Sounds to me like the operating

definition for a Magician."

Nabiki had to smile at that as she said, "Well, I've been studying

Ki Force Mastery with Gramps and Elder Cologne, and ever

since our run in with the Ronin a few weeks back I've taken a

serious interest in learning all that I can about the operational

principles. It just occurred to me that maybe I might be able to

somehow turn this curse to my advantage in a way I haven't yet

been able to. Up until now I've been totally subject to the

whimsy of fate, which seems to be intent on getting me wet at

every possible opportunity. I thought it would help to know for a

fact if there might be some ground rules about the Magic that

could work to my advantage."

"That is reasonable," Tofu nodded, "And whatever you discover

could ultimately benefit the others who have a Jusenkyo curse."

"I sure hope so," Nabiki smiled, "At the very least it would be a

good thing if we could teach Perfume not to turn into a...ah...furry

beast whenever I'm around. I know Ukyo would appreciate that,

not to mention Keiko and Kodachi."

"And of course my assistant," Tofu noted suggestively, "Your

Uncle Genma."

"Yeah, well...whatever," Nabiki said in a more absent voice,

setting aside the towel she had just employed for drying herself

off.

Tofu looked at the young woman with the forward bangs and

Chinese pony tail that bound her auburn hair down the middle of

her back and smiled, "You certainly do have a very interesting

life, Nabiki-san."

"Tell me about it," Nabiki snorted in reply, "I turn into a guy

when I get wet, I'm married to a purple haired Amazon who's

having my kid, the guy I'm engaged to is engaged to my best

friend who also happens to be married to another Amazon who is

cousin to my wife, and on top of all that her wife also changes

into my worst nightmare, and that's just the domestic picture! I

won't even go into the details of what school has been like lately."

"Oh yes," Tofu adjusted his glasses, "I'd heard Principle Kuno

had recently been reassigned to Furinkan. He's been away for a

couple of years visiting Hawaii. I imagine Kodachi must be

pleased to have her father back..."

"You think so?" Nabiki looked at him in surprise before

explaining, "Tofu-Sensei, Kodachi and Tatewaki Kuno have not

seen their father in years, and from what I've been able to glean

they haven't missed his company either. Kodachi complains that

old man Kuno is a certified nut case, which ought to give you

some idea of how extreme that is. I think the man is a complete

loon and I'm not at all surprised that she prefers to hang around

our house and avoid him."

"I guess mental instability must run in that family," Tofu

speculated with a sigh, "Of course I blame it mostly on their

father. I...would hate to comment on what I know concerning the

mental state of their mother. I was not the family physician who

treated her prior to her...suicide...but I heard some details about

the case. I'm afraid...the Kuno children did not have the best sort

of upbringing."

"I've never been able to get Kodachi to open up about that,"

Nabiki said thoughtfully, "Akane knows a lot more, but I think

even she's in the dark about just how bad Kodachi and Tatewaki

had it growing up. There's been some hint of child abuse..."

"Yes," Tofu coughed and looked away, "Kodachi's mother taught

her gymnastics, but when she was eleven...well...I've heard the

rumors. The official records are sealed at the request of the

family, but I do know that I saw bruises on her arms once when I

filled in for a colleague and briefly treated patients from her

school. I can only imagine what sort of ordeal she endured before

her mother decided to end it..."

"So now she's a virtual orphan on both sides of her family,"

Nabiki noted, "I do feel sorry for her, which is probably why I

haven't made more of a fuss about her relationship with Akane."

"Your sister does seem to have been a stabilizing influence on

her, though," Tofu pointed out, then saw the wry smirk on

Nabiki's face as she fixed him with her most sardonic expression.

"Not that kind of relationship. I happen to know beyond question

that Kuno Kodachi has been...intimate with my sister."

"You mean they share more than dress sizes?" Tofu smiled at the

thought, then his expression became pronounced as he slowly

comprehended what Nabiki was really implying, "Nani?"

"I've no proof of it, of course," Nabiki shrugged, "And it really is

Akane's business what she does with her friends. It's not like I'm

in a position to go pointing any fingers..."

"Nab-chan!" Ranma called out as he rushed into the office

without knocking, "There you are, I..."

"Yo, Ranma-kun," Nabiki turned around, her expression

brightening immediately as she caught sight of her iinazuke,

"Where's the fire?"

"Fire?" Ranma blinked, slowly looking down to find that Nabiki

was wearing a very tiny bathing suit that looked like three tiny

patches of cloth held together with dental floss and he most

notably swallowed.

"Sure," she continued to smile, enjoying the way he was studying

her near-nude body, "The way you came rushing in just now I

figured the house must be on fire or something. Usually you're

more polite than this."

"Ah..." Ranma swallowed, his eyes very round as he forced

himself to look into her eyes before saying, "Actually I wanted

you to come with me to Ucchan's restaurant. She and

Shampoo..."

Nabiki groaned, "Not another Food Fight? Excuse me, Tofu-

Sensei. It's business as usual for my home-life."

"Not at all," Doctor Tofu replied, "We'll continue these tests

another time."

"Swell," Nabiki said as she pulled on her golden silk Chinese-

style pajamas and headed for the doorway, pausing to slip her

feet into her sandals, then grabbed Ranma by the arm as the two

headed off to deal with their latest outbreak of domestic

problems...

Nodoka was not entirely thrilled at the news that they had

company and said so.

"Kasumi-chan, haven't I spoken with you before about inviting

strangers into our house while your father and my husband are

away? Remember what happened the last time?"

"I know, Obasama," Kasumi replied in tones less cheerful than

was her usual wont, "But this man has a photograph, and he

knows Arigami Keiko."

That got Nodoka's attention, and in good order both women

confronted the huge foreigner whom they found kneeling on their

floor in an attitude of proper respect. He looked up at Nodoka

and nodded politely to her as he got to his feet and made a proper

bow. He then once more showed his credentials before saying,

"Forgive my intrusion, it was not my intent to disturb the

harmony of your house."

"Well," Nodoka said as she quickly recovered from her pleasant

surprise at finding this man had some manners, "My Niece

informs me that you have some business with Keiko..."

"I'm afraid so, Tendo-san," the man replied with a note of sadness

in his voice.

"Saotome," she corrected, "Would it be rude of me to ask the

nature of your business?"

"It is personal, Saotome-san," the man replied with a frank look

that told of his reluctance, "But for what it is worth I am not here

to cause trouble. If anything I am here to make amends for a

great wrong that I did to Keiko-chan and her mother a great many

years ago."

"You were a friend of Keiko's family?" Nodoka asked in surprise.

"No," he said with infinite sadness, "Not a friend...at least not a

true one, not the way it really mattered. I only just found out

what happened to her and her mother, which is the reason why

I've sought her out now after so many years. It is very important

that I speak with Keiko-chan as soon as she can be told where to

find me..."

"Ohiyo!" called a cheerful Akane as she appeared at the rear

patio, along with her friends Kodachi, Ryoga, and-of course-

Arigami Keiko. The quartet at once took note of the strange man,

and Akane said, "Don't tell me we have company again? Who is

it this time, and what's his complaint?"

"Complaint?" the blond haired giant replied with uplifted bushy

eyebrows, right before he locked eyes with the astonishing

redhead who had moved out from around behind Akane.

"Daddy?" she managed to gasp out in tones of astonished

disbelief.

"Daddy?" everyone else managed to chorus as the burly giant

slowly rose to his feet and stared down at Keiko with eyes that

drank her in like a tall mug of beer.

"Keiko-chan?" he finally managed to speak with a gentleness that

was surprising in a man so huge and rugged looking,

"You've...grown...you look almost like your mother..."

All at once Keiko was smiling and priming her long red hair in a

way that looked foolishly feminine in one so tomboyish, "You

think so, Daddy? Ah...wait a minute...I'm mad at you for

abandoning Momma and me..."

"I know," he winced, "It's too late to say that I'm sorry. If I'd only

known how long I'd be gone I would have asked your mother to

marry me."

Keiko was smiling, either from joy or something else, as she took

two steps forward then threw a solid punch at the man's mid-

section, which he did not block and fully absorbed, rocking back

a little on his heels with a mild grunt.

"Better," he managed to cough before speaking normally again, "I

see you've also been keeping up on your lessons..."

"Come here, Daddy!" Keiko cried as she threw her arms around

the man and hugged him tightly, "I've missed you so much..."

"How interesting," Kodachi finally spoke, "So you are the

mysterious father we have heard so much about, the Air Force

officer from America who fathered our good friend here."

"Guilty as charged," Guile replied as he reached out and picked

Keiko up by her shoulders, lifting her a foot off the ground as he

held her at arms length and said, "What have you been telling

them about me, little one?"

"Nothing but the truth, Daddy," Keiko replied with an honest

smirk.

"Uh oh," the man winced, "I'm in trouble..."

"This is all very interesting," Nodoka remarked, "And I'm happy

for you, Keiko-chan, being reunited with your father and all...but

did you not just say that you were here on personal business?'

"Now that she's here, I don't suppose it matters if we have an

audience," Guile said as he set his daughter back on her feet and

once more looked down at her grimly, "Keiko-chan...I know I

haven't been much of a father these last ten years, and I know

what happened to you after I went back to the States..."

"You don't have to say it, Daddy," Keiko's expression was

pained, although she still managed to say it smiling, "It's all in

the past, and I've learned to turn a new chapter..."

He shook his head negatively, "I'm afraid it isn't that simple.

Look...I don't know how else to tell you this, and there's no gentle

way to say it but..." he faltered.

"What?" Keiko saw the tenseness around his eyes as the man

before her fought to control his emotions, "Look, what happened

to mother really wasn't your fault..."

"That's just it," Guile said grimly, "It was my fault, it was all my

fault, the abandonment, your family rejecting the both of you, and

then that cruise you took that...well, actually, some of that wasn't

really my fault at all, but it's not because of

that...unpleasantness...that I came looking for you now."

"What is it then, Daddy?" Keiko was growing worried by the

man's hesitation. If she did not know better she would have

thought that her father was related to Ranma.

Colonel William Guile took a very deep breath then spoke the

words that he knew would shatter his daughter's peace, quite

possibly forever, "It's your mother...she's alive. I just learned

about it a few days ago while on an assignment. I had to drop

everything and come here once I got the word you were staying

with the Tendos."

"Momma?" Keiko gasped, "Alive? But...where is she?"

"Lao Kung," Guile answered, and that was when the trouble

really started...

"What the...?" Nabiki paused at the entrance to Ucchan's

restaurant, seeing Perfume lounging against the counter with a

slightly pained expression while Mousse was running here and

about trying to fill out orders at a speed that left him slightly

ragged.

"Perfume," Ranma turned to the Amazon, "Are they still at it?"

Perfume nodded towards the kitchen, then at once launched

herself from the counter as four bowls of ramen came sailing out

through the menu slot, which she caught effortlessly and

delivered to the customers while receiving their applause, making

it seem almost like it was all rehearsed for their enjoyment.

Nabiki sighed, "Come on, Ranchan, let's see what those two

Baka are up to."

As expected the kitchen was in pandemonium with two figures

darting about the place furiously snatching up food at seeming

random while pitching it across the room to be fended by the

other. Ukyo was presently scooping up noodles from a boiling

hot pot and tossing them at Shampoo, who swatted them onto the

grill where she furiously played with them before flipping them

off with a spatula for Ukyo to catch upon a hot plate. Ukyo

applied the garnishes and seasonings then threw the results out

the slot for Perfume to intercept and deliver. She then slung her

bakers peel around and used the spatula to flip a loaf of unbaked

pan bread at Shampoo, who caught it with one hand while using

a foot to flip open the door to the oven and slide it inside with one

easy motion.

She also removed a roasted duck with her bare hands and tossed

it-pan and all-at Ukyo, who used her peel to knock it from said

tray so that she could scoop it out of the air with a silver tray and

set it down for preparation and garnishing, in seconds rendering

it fit to serve before royalty. She set this on the edge of the ledge

of the menu slot before turning back to intercept Shampoo's next

food offensive.

Nabiki shook her head sadly and watched in silence as these two

continued their culinary match with back-and-forth precision that

would astound the chefs at a Benny Hana's. She was about to

say something when Cologne appeared, hopping on her staff to

intercept Nabiki while the battle raged with on oblivious to

circumstances.

"Don't interfere, Daughter-in-law," the Amazon Elder urged,

"This is training. My Great Granddaughter and other Daughter-

in-law are practicing the arts of Kitchen Kung Fu, once practiced

by the Monks of Shaolin in ancient times when food was

plentiful and the favors of the Emperor were courted."

"And of course those pesky Monks stole the basic principles from

the Amazons?" Nabiki asked with droll sarcasm.

"Of course," Cologne replied matter-of-factly, "Everyone tries to

copy or steal from us. The method this was based upon is called

Two Wan Noodles, but I have modified it somewhat to

accommodate such Japanese delicacies as Okonomiyaki."

Nabiki idly noted five said Japanese pizzas currently sailing out

of the kitchen like a formation of miniature UFOs and said, "It's

not that I object to the training, but I thought we had agreed that

Shampoo was going to take it easy from now on. After all she is

into her second trimester..."

"Tut, tut," Cologne said dismissively, "You think I would let her

do anything that was too stressful? Never forget that I have

borne children as well in my time and know precisely where the

line must be drawn. But you can't exactly expect her to sit out the

entire nine months like some pampered Japanese Housewife, not

after I have seen to it that she has spent the better part of her life

training to be the best of the best. Shampoo has her pride and

dignity to think of, and a certain amount of exercise is actually

good for the development of her baby."

"I don't know about that," Ranma said as he watched Shampoo

toss the now-baked bread at Ukyo, who was ready with a pair of

spatulas in hand to slice it up before it landed neatly on a plate,

"Seems to me that she could tire herself out a lot faster at this

rate."

"Oh?" Cologne eyed him drolly, "And tell me, Son-in-law, just

how many babies have you had or delivered? I've been doing this

for three hundred years, never forget..."

"How could we forget it?" Nabiki snorted, "You never let us."

Just then Shampoo took notice of their audience and turned away

from her opponent to grin, "Airen! You back from seeing

Doctor-friend?"

"Hey, Nab-chan," Ukyo smiled broadly, "Come to watch us spar

together?"

"More like ask what you two are doing," Nabiki sniffed as she

looked around at the kitchen. It figured that the place would

actually look neater after such a melee where neither girl would

permit the other the satisfaction of leaving a mess in their wake,

"This is your idea of training?"

"Sure is for my School of Anything Goes Martial Arts Cooking,"

Ukyo replied, then saw the scowl Cologne gave her and said,

"Hey, I can take a break now and then, you know..."

"Of course," Cologne said with a touch of frost in her tone,

"When I say you can. It is bad form to allow yourselves to be

distracted when there are visitors present. You must work harder

and build up your speed so that you can prepare your meals in

half the time that you presently manage."

"Slave driver," Ukyo muttered under her breath, then adopted a

sickly sweet smile as she gave Cologne a heartfelt, "Please...?"

Nabiki saw Ukyo mimic a hand-wringing gesture and could not

help chuckling, in spite of the sour look this earned her from

Cologne's direction. She just nodded her had and said, "Better

give her what she wants this time, Elder, or we're all going to get

cavities from this performance."

Cologne just sniffed as she eyed first one daughter-in-law, then

the other, "I suspect you are right on that score. Very well, a ten

minute break, but no more than this will I permit."

No sooner had she said this then Perfume burst through the menu

slot and came vaulting into Ukyo's arms with a joyful, "Haiya!

Airen take break to be with Perfume-bride? I good way to make

time fly while Ukyo-chan gets wind back."

"Hey, easy, let me breathe first!" Ukyo cried as she fended off

Perfume's affections, albeit with less urgency than she might

have employed had she truly been in any distress.

"Shampoo think Cousin have right idea," Shampoo smiled with a

leer as she came up alongside Nabiki with a sultry purr, then

surprised everyone by turning and grabbing Ranma to plant a big

kiss on his mouth that left the poor boy's mind reeling.

"Hey!" Ukyo protested, turning away from her own Amazon

assailant, much to Perfume's obvious annoyance.

"Spatula girl no worry," Shampoo grinned as she removed her

lips from the stupefied Ranma, "I give boy kiss to make him

know what he missing. Airen no mind is Shampoo give boy her

affections," she coyly eyed Nabiki over one shoulder and

positioned herself between Ranma and her Airen, "If Airen want,

she and boy Ranma can share Shampoo at same time, maybe

both do her as men, Shampoo much like that."

"Hah?" both Ranma and Nabiki said together, each trying to

comprehend the physical significance of what the Amazon was

suggesting.

"Or maybe Spatula girl like try Airen?" Shampoo further

insinuated with a leer, "Shampoo like watch that, maybe

Perfume-cousin no mind sharing too? Is good way pass time,

and can be considered part of training."

Now everyone-including Perfume-was beat red at the playful

suggestiveness of Shampoo's sensuous tones while Nabiki-

having the most vivid imagination of all those present-tried

furiously not to picture what the outcome would be of such an all

out five-way orgy. She was rather mindful of the half-glance

Ukyo paid her at the suggestion that she do it with Nabiki's male

form and knew from the guilty start Ukyo turned towards

Perfume that she was not the only one envisioning such a picture.

"Sham-chan," Nabiki found her voice a bit more hoarse than she

would have liked, "That's a very...interesting suggestion, but I

hardly think Cologne intends to give us that much time off.

What say we postpone your idea for later?"

"Yeah," Ukyo agreed before murmuring in soft undertone, "Like

when Hell freezes over..."

Perfume looked at her and had a sudden mischievous impulse

that prompted her to lean even closer to Ukyo and murmur,

"Perfume think Airen protest too much. I think you make nice

bed-mate for Shampoo-cousin."

"What?" Ukyo blurted out without thinking, "Are you kidding? I

haven't even done it with Ran...ah..." she eyed Ranma with a

nervous expression.

"Don't mind me," Ranma said as he pretended an indifference he

could not possibly be feeling, "I thought we all agreed to wait

until after graduation before we consummated anything. Besides,

you've got Perfume and Nab-chan's got Shampoo and, well..." he

shrugged in an exaggerated manner.

"Don't tell me you've never thought about sleeping with one of us,

Ranchan," Nabiki playfully needled, almost immediately

rewarded with a guilty start as his face reddened once again.

"What kind of a guy do you think I am?" he helplessly protested,

"I'm not trying to rush anybody, and I think it's great you've both

got somebody who can keep you busy until we all get married."

"Boy think he wait that long?" Shampoo grinned wickedly, "You

think we not know you spy on us in dojo?"

"Hey!" Ranma immediately went on the defensive, "I'm just

seeing to it nobody tries intruding on you guys or nothing. You

never know when the little freak or that Gosunkugi guy might

show up to take pictures!"

"Ah hah," Ukyo said skeptically, "And that's why I've also caught

you hanging around the restaurant after hours?"

Nabiki watched as Ranma tried to squirm out of this latest

attempt to corner him on the engagement issue when a voice

called out from the dining room area, "Tendo Nabiki! I know

you're here, delinquent! Come out and face me!"

"Mou," Nabiki winced as she glanced back towards the

restaurant, "That's all I need, another encounter with Miss

Hinako-Sensei."

"You want to duck out the back door while we cover for you,

Nab-chan?" Ukyo asked in concern.

"No," Nabiki heaved a heartfelt sigh as she turned around, "I may

as well face the music now instead of waiting until class

tomorrow."

As she came out of the kitchen into the main dining area,

however, her resolve nearly crumbled when she caught sight of

Hinako Ninomiya's expression. The young-seeming girl was

gazing at Nabiki crossly as if implying every manner of vice and

evil that could conceivably be imagined. It had been like that

since the first day their paths had crossed, when Nabiki had

learned first-hand what Hinako-Sensei was capable of doing.

The battle lines had been drawn instantly between the Homeroom

teacher and the student who allegedly ran Furinkan high school

with a velvet glove. Though there had been no immediate victor

in their subsequent encounters it was clear that Hinako regarded

Nabiki as a challenge to be brought into line with school policy,

no matter who had to suffer as a consequence.

For Nabiki's part she nodded affably to the diminutive teacher,

knowing full well that Hinako could draw a coin and change

herself at any moment. Effecting an ease that she did not really

feel she smiled at the juvenile teacher and said, "Greetings,

Sensei. How can I be of service?"

"You were supposed to meet with me in counseling today,

Tendo-san," Miss Hinako declared without smiling, "You never

showed up."

"That was today?" Nabiki affected a look of surprise, "Oh, I'm

very sorry, I got distracted by other concerns of a personal nature.

Should we reschedule it for next week?"

"This would make it the third such time you asked to reschedule,"

Hinako said without smiling, and Nabiki saw that she was

clutching her trademark coin in her tiny little hand, a sure sign

that she was mere instants from calling up her infamous Ki-

draining battle aura attack.

"Well, it hasn't been my intention to avoid you, Sensei," Nabiki

replied in her most insinuative tone of congenial contrition, "I

know it's very important for Teachers and their students to

communicate, even though-technically speaking-I'm not a part

of your Homeroom."

"That does not figure into this," Hinako said with more dignity

than her childlike bearing would normally convey, "You are still

a student of Furinkan and I am a teacher called upon by the

faculty to keep truants and delinquents in line..."

"But you're not seriously suggesting that I'm a delinquent and a

truant?" Nabiki asked innocently.

"You have been absent from class an unprecedented number of

times," Hinako replied, "And there is talk that you engage in

gambling and extortion from other students. I would call that

very delinquent."

"Rumors are not the same thing as fact, Sensei," Nabiki said

reasonably, "As for my absences, I have had a perfectly good

reason for each and every time that I've been forced to miss

class."

"You may have perfected the art of the alibi, but that does not

convince me that you have had justification for so many

absences," Hinako said with a sour look, "As for the rumors,

some come from very reliable sources, both faculty and several of

our most prominent students."

"I see," Nabiki replied, thinking privately that she would need to

call a senior staff meeting in the very near future, "Well in that

case perhaps you can tell me what it is I'm supposed to have done

that would label me a delinquent?"

"Try a betting pool over which teacher would come to school with

a hangover after the Fall Harvest party that was held just last

week," Hinako said with narrowed eyes and a tight expression.

"Ah," Nabiki responded with a sheepish expression.

"And the pictures you had commissioned showing the Assistant

Vice Principal wearing a tutu astride a donkey that you used for

blackmail purposes," Hinako continued, "To convince him to

squash the last investigation."

"Blackmail is such a harsh term..." Nabiki winced slightly.

"And the love notes that got published in the school newspaper,"

Hinako was glaring, "Between two members of the faculty who

have since had to apologize for lewd and lascivious

behavior...and then there is that disgusting gnome you claim for

your Founder..."

"Hey!" Nabiki protested, "He's your Sensei too, in case you've

forgotten..."

"Perhaps at one time," Hinako said, "But I don't remember much

beyond that time, and at any rate it can have no bearing on the

present."

"I couldn't agree with you more," Nabiki said with a sage and

benevolent smile, "Why don't we discuss this over a nice dish of

ice cream?"

"Ice cream?" Hinako brightened, momentarily distracted by the

appeal to her juvenile instincts before her more adult sensibilities

kicked in and she glowered, "Bribery will not buy your way out

of this one, Tendo-san. You are going to have to face up to your

actions and make an account for your conduct to the school board

or there will be consequences."

The coin in her hand seemed to catch the light in such a way that

telegraphed her meaning, and suddenly those patrons in Ucchan's

Cafe‚ reacted by getting up out of their seats and clearing a space

around the impending combatants.

Nabiki silently cursed her situation as she sought for an outing.

Although she had no doubt of her ability to lunge swiftly and

disarm Hinako before the teacher could invoke her spell of attack,

she knew that-short of taking Hinako down and risking

immediate expulsion-she could not prevent Hinako from

drawing a second coin to attack with. Nabiki knew the means by

which Hinako's aura-drawing ability could be countered, but

using it had its own form of risk involvement, not least of which

because she had to lay a precise hold over Hinako's nerve centers,

one of which was directly over the left breast.

Not that Nabiki would have any trouble laying such a grip before

Hinako could bat an eyelash, but with the sort of reputation she

already had around campus such a gesture was likely to

be...misconstrued. Another student might not have such a

problem, but Nabiki's interest in both sexes was well noted

around Nerima and could lead to certain misassumption

regarding her handling of the young-seeming teacher. Hardly the

sort of thing she needed to add to the list of charges laid against

her.

But Nabiki was never one to let a situation such as this go

completely beyond her control, and rather than assume a

defensive or offensive stance she instead adopted a casual air and

replied, "Whatever you think is best, Sensei, for the good of

Furinkan, but it hardly seems fair for you to charge me with such

crimes in an informal setting. Think of the reputation you'll be

giving our fair campus."

That stopped Hinako in mid-gesture. Rather than enact her Good

Girl Five-Yen Attack, or Happo-Ken-Satsu she glanced around

and took notice of the way people were staring at them from all

corners. Time seemed to hesitate itself as she slowly drew the

necessary conclusion, which Nabiki had known she would

conclude, that doing this in public would hardly bolster the image

of their High School.

"Very well," Hinako desisted, saving face by making it sound

more like a compromise than a retreat, "But if you avoid one

more meeting then I will hunt you down at the Tendo dojo and

there will be an accounting this time, young lady. Be sure the

Old Pervert knows this as well or I will hold you both responsible

for any more raids on the lingerie of our students."

With that she turned about and left the restaurant, leaving a

somewhat shaken Nabiki, who nonetheless maintained an air of

non-concern as she watched the teacher exit.

Without needing to turn around she felt Ukyo and Ranma ease up

beside her, Shampoo and Perfume hovering just beyond so as not

to crowd these others. In humbled tones Ukyo murmured in her

ear, "Wow...she sure was serious this time. You think maybe

she's starting to lose patience with your little innocence act? I

don't know about you, but I'm trembling just from the sidelines."

"I know," Nabiki replied tightly, "I'm going to have to work

something out with her and soon, either that or get Master

Happosai to take responsibility for his wayward student."

"Fat chance there," Ranma snorted, "Remember how he tried to

get you to do that for him?"

"Yes," Nabiki replied, thinking of the incident in question where

she had used the Counter-attack on Hinako after a lengthy battle

which left many students drained of energy for the following

hour, "And I've no intention of repeating that disaster. All well

and good to know how to cancel out Hinako-sensei's powers for

twenty-four hours, but going through that every single day for the

month it would require to make it permanent is well out of the

question. The problem is...I can't help but respect her position."

"She does mean well," Ukyo agreed, "The problem is that she

doesn't want to compromise, and you're a darn sight better than

the thugs who used to rule Furinkan, or so everybody tells me."

"If only I knew enough about her to work out a bargaining

position," Nabiki turned away, allowing some of her nervousness

to show as she drank in Shampoo's silent support with a glance,

then noticed the way that Cologne was regarding her from the

sidelines, "You wouldn't happen to have any suggestions for me,

Elder?"

"I might be able to suggest something that could help," Cologne

nodded sagely, "But I must say that, in all honestly, I was

enjoying your little performance. It wasn't so much that she

could see right through you that held her at bay, it was the way in

which you managed to turn the situation around that made her

back down in the end. Perhaps you should consider this the next

time that you do join her in counseling."

"Counseling or therapy," Nabiki sniffed when she heard a

familiar voice call out, "SEMPAI!"

She turned to see her junior assistant, Ryonami, make her

appearance at Ukyo's restaurant still wearing her school uniform,

which was odd since the brown haired girl normally changed into

something more fashionable as soon as she got home from

classes. Nabiki turned with a smile and said, "What is it, Ryo-

chan?"

Ryonami came to a halt, slightly out of breath as though she had

been running hard, "I've been looking all over for you! I was at

your place when I heard that Hinako-Sensei was on the warpath

and vowing to hunt you down..."

"Old news," Nabiki nodded, "You just missed her by one

minute."

"Oh," Ryonami responded with a slightly crestfallen look, but she

at once rallied to say, "That's not all...you've got a guest visiting

your house and guess what? He claims to be the father of your

friend, Keiko!"

"Keiko's father?" now Nabiki reacted to the news with

astonishment, "After all this time he shows up? What does he

want?"

"I didn't get too many details," Ryonami replied, "But I overheard

him saying something about having information on the

whereabouts of Keiko's mother."

"That is serious," Nabiki nodded, "I think I'd better have a look at

this guy. It could be a scam, and I won't have anybody taking

advantage of Keiko-chan's feelings like that."

"That's just it," Ryonami's tone and expression became oddly

dreamy, "He's got a build like you wouldn't believe, and muscles

the size of watermelons. He's an American but he speaks perfect

Japanese, and he claims to be with one of their Special Force

branches, a Pilot or something..."

"Tell me more on the way," Nabiki looked over her shoulder at

her companions, "Ranchan, Sham-chan, care to back me up on

this...provided Elder Cologne can do without your services for a

bit?" she gave the old woman a meaningful look.

Cologne waved the point away, "Go do what you have to. I will

tend things here, just in case my Daughter in law wishes to

accompany you as well," she gave Ukyo a meaningful glance.

"Keiko's my friend too," Ukyo replied, squaring her shoulders,

"And I'd like to get to the bottom of this. Per-chan?"

"I go where you go," Perfume declared solemnly, "Besides, I

want to see if Red's father is type of man who abandon mate with

no honor. Never could understand how Red great fighter if

mother no lose fight to man who is father."

"I don't think that sort of combat was required in that situation,"

Nabiki said dryly as she headed for the door, following

Ryonami's urging, "But I'd like to know more about this guy

myself. Seems to me he dishonored Keiko's mother and then

abandoned her for ten years. He might have had a good reason,

but..."

She let the sentence go unfinished. She hardly need express her

feelings on this matter in any event because her five companions

all shared a similar gamut of emotions. Their tight-knit band

would rally around a friend in need regardless of the

circumstances...or the consequences of such actions...

Arriving at the Tendo dojo a short time later, Nabiki and her

group proceeded into the common room, whereupon they found

the man claiming to be Keiko's father. Nodoka, Kasumi, Keiko

herself along with Akane, Ryoga and Kodachi were sitting

opposite from him sharing tea with some snacks. They looked up

at the party's arrival with curious interest as the blond-haired man

swept their group with a neutral expression.

Nabiki halted in her tracks as she took quick measure of a fellow

who looked like a brick wall sitting down, and when he stood to

bow in proper greeting had a closer resemblance to a blond, flat-

topped Yeti. At private estimate she place his weight at just over

a hundred kilos easy with arms as thick around as one of her

thighs, yet somehow looking compact and lean in spite of his

dimensions. The sense of his powerful aura permeated the room,

yet there was no sense of immediate threat to him, just an honest

curiosity and wariness that sized her up as though to catalogue

her quality as a fighter.

Nabiki recovered from her initial surprise by assuming a formal

tone of her own as she returned the man's bow before declaring,

"So you are the honored William Guile that we have heard so

much about. What a pleasure it is to finally make your

acquaintance."

"The honor is mine," the man said in perfect Japanese, "I only

regret that I did not make this journey sooner, but other business

detained me. Keiko has been filling me in on a few of the details.

She says that you are her very good friend who got her out of a

very tight situation in Hong Kong."

"Actually it was a mutually beneficial arrangement," Nabiki said

as she sat down across from the fellow after having introduced

Ranma as her iinazuke and made a general reference to Shampoo

as the wife of her cousin, Kaneda. She similarly introduced Ukyo

and Perfume without making reference to them as anything more

than friends, then adopted a less formal tone as she studied the

other man and said, "Forgive my bluntness, but I am curious to

know where you have been for the past decade?"

"Nabiki-chan," Nodoka chided, surprised at her future daughter-

in-law's manners.

"It's all right, and I can't say that I blame you," Guile replied as

he nodded to Nabiki before turning to his daughter, "The details

are classified, suffice to say I've been pretty busy doing private

work for my government. I was briefly with the UN during a

peacekeeping mission that went sour, and after that I've pretty

much been from one end of the globe to the other. Haven't

bothered to keep track of things here because I frankly didn't

want anybody involved who might get caught up in one of my

private vendettas. I've made quite a few enemies in my time and

the last thing I needed was to provide them with a likely target."

"I suppose I can accept that," Nabiki replied with a shrug,

ignoring the warning look Keiko passed her way at the implied

skepticism, "So why are you here now?"

Keiko answered first, "Daddy says that he knows where my

Mother is, Nab-chan," Keiko replied, her face and expression

showing her amazement as she added, "My mother is alive...after

all this time I can hardly believe it..."

"Let's not get our hopes up too soon, Keiko-chan," Guile

cautioned before giving Nabiki a respectful nod, then he added, "I

don't blame you for having your doubts, Miss Tendo. Keiko tells

me that you're a shrewd one, so I'll trust you to understand that

the information I've recently obtained comes from highly

classified sources. Arigami Akiko has turned up alive and

well...the problem is that she's rumored to be in the custody of

one Madam Lao Kung, a notorious White slaver and pirate."

"Lao Kung?" Nabiki arched both eyebrows and glanced at Keiko,

who nodded confirmation.

"My former Mistress," Keiko said without preamble, "The same

woman who owned me for almost three years now has possession

of my mother."

Keiko's tone was guarded and neutral, but from the shadow in

her eyes it was plain that she was deeply worried about the

implications. Nabiki nodded in understanding then turned back

to Guile and said, "What do you propose to do about it?"

The man's craggy face was set with a look of determination, "Get

her back of course, one way or another."

"A splendid idea, " Kodachi suddenly spoke up, "When do we get

started?"

"We?" Guile turned a look towards the lovely gymnast as if to

voice the question of why she considered it her business.

"Kodachi?" Nodoka asked, giving the girl a very curious

appraisal.

"She means all of us, Auntie," Akane said with equal

determination, "Keiko's our friend, we can't just let her go off

without offering our assistance."

"I'm afraid that's impossible," Guile shook his head, "This

mission isn't for amateurs. From what I hear this Madam Lao is

a dangerous customer, the type I'm used to dealing with..."

"That very unlikely," said Shampoo, speaking up for the first time

since leaving the restaurant, "If Lao is who we think she is, is

Amazon warrior you be facing. She very dangerous, know much

that make her formidable fighter."

Guile gave the faint hint of a smile as he said, "I'm pretty

dangerous too, if somebody gets on my bad side. Don't worry

about me, I've faced much worse in my time."

"No likely," Perfume said as she folded her arms over her chest,

"Lao is great warrior, best of her generation. Great Grandmother

train her well, she learn much since leaving Amazon village.

You no face Amazon before if think you her equal."

"Her real name is Lao Kane," Nabiki said simply, "I've had to

worm the details from Elder Cologne, and all I know is just the

general stuff, but coupled with what Kei-chan has said about her

from first-hand experience, I'd say going solo against her is not a

good option. Besides which she has lots of pirates working for

her, and most of these are accomplished martial artists."

"I know something about the martial arts myself, Miss Tendo,"

Guile assured her, "I'm not here seeking recruits and the issue is

not open to discussion. I have my own team of specialists, but

unfortunately this isn't an official investigation, so I'm going to

have to go in with just a few close friends. Make no mistake, we

will find Akiko and liberate her. I just wanted to assure Keiko-

chan that everything that can possibly be done to free her mother

will be done by my teammates and me. You kids have done

enough just looking after her in my absence..."

"That may be so, Colonel-san," Kodachi once more noted, "But

we are more than simple children when it comes to practicing the

art. Do not underestimate us according to our tender years, we

are quite formidable and can manage well enough to carry our

weight in a crisis."

"I'm not doubting that," Guile said as he slowly rose to his feet,

"In fact you remind me an awful lot of some kids I knew who

used to be your ages. They turned out to be all right, but I'm not

about to relive that part of my personal history all over. You've

got your lives ahead of you and time enough to learn to play the

heroes. Me, I'm just a tired old war-dog, but I've still got some

kick in my moves and I'm not afraid to go toe-to-toe with the best

that's out there..."

"Then maybe you'd like to show us what you know," said Ryoga

quite unexpectedly as he also rose to his feet with a look of

challenge, "If you think you're so good, then why don't you prove

it with a little sparring match in the dojo?"

"Kid," Guile snorted, "I'm sure you're a real hotshot around here,

but I fight in the big leagues and I'm not about to beat on

somebody who's less than half my age..."

"I thought you'd say that," Ryoga nodded, and all of a sudden he

drew back and came at Guile with such speed that even Nabiki

had trouble following his movement.

The big man had obviously been prepared to meet an attack, but

the force and speed Ryoga displayed took him by surprise and

before he knew it he was sailing out through the door into the

garden.

"Ryoga!" Keiko spun on him in shock.

"Oh my," Kasumi exclaimed in mild dismay.

"Don't worry, Kei-chan," Ryoga assured her as he sprang into the

garden, "I'll go easy with him, after I make my point by sparring."

Guile had recovered from both his surprise and landing and was

already getting back to his feet as Ryoga came hurtling towards

him. Guile rubbed his chin and smiled, this time bracing for the

impact with arms raised defensively, so Ryoga just bounced off

him without doing more than to stagger him a little.

Guile assumed a fighting posture and smiled, "Kid, you just

made one hell of a mistake, but I'm the one who'll take it easy on

you."

"I don't think so," Ryoga replied as he squared off against the

other man, his posture flawless as his expression seemed totally

relaxed and focused without a trace of emotion. He waited only a

moment before coming at Colonel Guile with a series of kicks

and punches that the bigger man easily blocked, then Ryoga

ducked down under Guile's counterattack and seized the opening

to take an uppercut that actually picked Guile off his heels and

knocked him back five meters.

"What's Ryoga trying to do?" Ukyo asked as she studied the

movements of the two fighters.

"I believe I know," Nabiki said quietly as she also watched from

the sidelines, aware that Ranma was tensing beside her.

"Not bad," Guile said as he recovered yet again, this time actually

sounding impressed, "You've got good moves for your age, but

you're no Street Fighter."

"That's what you think," Ryoga responded as he waited for the

big man to make the next move, then flowed around Guile's

attack and effortlessly threw the big man off balance.

Guile landed on his back but caught himself immediately and

flipped to his feet before launching an all-out assault that actually

connected this time, sending Ryoga sailing back across the koi

pond to the opposite bank. Guile vaulted the pond and came

upon Ryoga before the younger man had time to recover, but

when he tried to press the advantage he found Ryoga once more

bent with the flow of his punch and came around behind him,

almost managing to nail Guile from behind.

It was incredible how fast the larger man could move, and the

flow of his muscles made him seem like a bronzed statue come to

life as he and Ryoga traded the next few punches, then Guile

connected with a solid backhand that staggered the lost boy back

several paces. Guile followed this up with an amazing leap that

turned into a Razor Kick, flipping all the way over as he sent

Ryoga flying towards the far wall of the garden. Ryoga made

quite an impact where he hit, but he was only mildly staggered

and was able to look up in time to see Guile charge for the

clincher.

"Oh my," Kasumi murmured as she was studying Guile's body in

a way that caused both of her sisters to eye her strangely.

That was when Ryoga at last smiled as though sensing triumph,

then without warning stabbed a finger at the ground directly

ahead of the America, shouting, "Bakusai Tenketsu!"

At once the ground beneath Colonel Guile erupted as though he

had stepped upon a land mine. The big man was hurled back

almost half the length of the garden before landing in a heap,

somewhat stunned and bruised by the unexpected force of the

maneuver.

"What the...?" Nabiki gasped.

"Hey!" Ukyo shared her surprise, "Where'd Ryoga learn

to...Perfume?"

"It was no me," Perfume waved her hands in protest, "Ask Great

Grandmother...she train both boys in Amazon secrets!"

"Yeah," Ranma chuckled softly, "I was wondering when the

blockhead would get around to using that maneuver. He's been

practicing it for the past two weeks, against me mostly."

"You?" Nabiki looked at Ranma in surprise, "What else has she

been teaching you?"

Ranma was spared an answer as Guile slowly got back to his

feet, Keiko having rushed to his side to check on his condition.

She gave an angry glare in Ryoga's direction but was surprised

when she heard her father chuckle in obvious amusement.

"Kid," Guile said as he looked down at Ryoga, "You're all right.

That was a pretty sneaky maneuver, and I never even saw it

coming."

"Now do you see what we mean?" Ryoga asked, "It took me most

of a month to learn to do that, and Madam Lao had her entire life

to master Amazon techniques even more powerful than this one."

"I won't say doesn't give me pause to consider that," Guile replied

with a confident look that proved he was not so badly shaken,

"But I think it fair that you should know that I'm not without my

own brand of surprises."

So saying he turned away from the others and took a Martial

stance, then with a sudden sharp move with both hands he cried

out, "SONIC BOOM!" and instantly let loose with a blast that

struck the far wall where Ryoga had fractured it, shattering it

completely.

Guile turned around and said, "You don't live as long as I have

without picking up a few tricks in my travels."

"Not bad," Keiko sounded impressed, then smiled as she looked

up at Guile and said, "Care to see some of the tricks I've learned

in the last few years, Daddy?"

"Maybe," he smiled down at her with obvious amusement, "You

showed a lot of promise when I last set eyes on you, kid. Maybe

now that I'm warmed up it might be a good time to see a little

demonstration. Nothing too rough, though..." he nodded to the

gaping hole in the wall, "I can pay for the damages, but I'd rather

not abuse the hospitality here any more than we have."

"Why don't you test the rest of us while you're at it?" Nabiki

suddenly volunteered with a smile, "Ryoga's skills are

formidable, but so are mine and Ranma's, while Perfume and

Shampoo know a lot about Amazon fighting skills, and Ukyo is

also full of many talents."

"Thanks," Ukyo snorted, "I think."

"Nabiki-chan?" Nodoka finally said with a questioning look.

"It's all right, Auntie," Nabiki replied, "We'll take it easy on our

guest. After all, we don't want property rates to decline any more

than they have in Nerima."

"Awfully confident of yourselves," Guile said as he took the

group in with a more cautious appraisal, "Well, I may be

impressed...a little...but that doesn't change my basic decision

that this is a case for the experts. Still it wouldn't hurt to see

what you guys are made of...provided you do it one at a time. I'm

getting on in years, and an all-out brawl is bound to be painful

for somebody."

"Fine," Nabiki replied, "As long as you can agree not to dismiss

us out of hand until you have seen what we are made of. At the

very least it ought to give you some idea of what you could be

going up against when you face Lao Kane in person."

"Fair enough," Guile said before reaching out to ruffle Keiko's

hair affectionately with one of his huge hands, "But first I think

I'm entitled to a little quality time with my daughter. Okay,

kid...let's see what you remember."

"Sure thing, Daddy," Keiko smiled before assuming a fighting

stance with a tell-tale smirk that those who knew her well had

learned to take as fair warning.

"Why do I get the feeling he's going to regret this?" Ranma

whispered in Nabiki's ear.

"Maybe you're getting prophetic, Ranchan," Nabiki smiled

without glancing back, folding her arms confidently as she

prepared to watch father and daughter go at it in earnest...

Continued.

Comments/Criticism/Colgate Commercial Insertions:

shadowmane

The new quest has begun!

Nabiki 1/2

A Very Scary Thought

(An Altered Destiny)

Chapter 20, Part 2.

By

Jim Robert Bader

(Inspired by the works of Rumiko Takahashi,

But any resemblance beyond that is purely coincidence)

If there was one thing that Hinako Ninomiya could not stand it

was a disorderly and smart-alecky student. In her world there

was only one kind of student, the quiet and obedient kind. Any

other kind was a disruptive influence to be purged from the

school environment. In her years as a teacher she had faced

many kinds of challenging problem makers, but none quite so

challenging and problematic as this Tendo Nabiki who seemed to

lead the students of Furinkan like a minor Oyabun working from

within the shadows.

Well, actually her activities seemed to be pretty much out in the

open, which made her that much of an example that was sorely in

need of being made with her fellow students. She and that gang

of Premier Martial Artists that everyone referred to as the Tendo

Posse, each one a troublemaker of a different sort in sore need of

correction.

The problem for Hinako-Sensei was that Tendo Nabiki was

cunning and shrewd in her approach to organizing the Vice

problem on the High School campus. She had recruited a tight-

knit band of like-minded followers who organized the betting

pools and collected graft from their fellow students, and woe

betide anyone-student or faculty member-who did anything they

did not approve of, for Nabiki had very creative ways of bringing

down the arrogant and mighty. Everyone either feared or

respected her because she was reputedly the best martial artist in

Nerima, and quite recently she had impressed this fact with the

student body by taking down a large organized gang of thugs

who had tried moving in on her territory.

Hinako did not have many of the details but she knew from the

reports that some students had been badly injured in the crossfire

between the Posse and Gang, and several gang members had

even been killed, while the Posse itself escaped with only minor

injuries. The Police had refused to prosecute Nabiki and her

people, even for the alleged weapons use violations, and no one

in the school administration had similarly been inclined to take

action, which struck Hinako as a shocking example of the

negligence that had prevailed on the campus before she had been

hired by the Assistant Principal to restore some semblance of

order to the Furinkan environment.

Hinako felt that she was more than up to the challenge, except for

the problem that she had gone head-to-toe with Nabiki that one

time and came off the worse for the encounter. It had been a

surprise to learn that they both shared the same teacher...or rather

that the old man who had taught Hinako the use of her Happo

Coin method was none other than the founder of the Anything

Goes school to which both she and the Tendo family belonged.

The master had turned out to be nothing more than a scheming

pervert who stole women's lingerie for a hobby, and the one time

she had confronted him on that and used his Happo method

against him, Master Happosai had then turned around and taught

Nabiki the counter technique that could neutralize it. Nabiki had

faced her down and managed to apply the touch-pressure

technique, and in so doing had left Hinako relatively powerless

for the span of a single day, an experience that she was not eager

to have repeated.

Of course to make the technique permanent it would need to have

been applied every day for an entire month, a fact that had

dismayed Nabiki and elated Hinako since it meant that they

could have a needed rematch, which she had every confidence of

winning. Unfortunately Nabiki had shown great reluctance to

again engage her, so a kind of uneasy stalemate had presided

ever since with neither party altogether eager to press the matter.

Still Hinako was looking for an opportunity to use her Good Girl

Method on the arrogant Tendo witch, provided she could do it

under justifiable circumstances where there would be no question

of the propriety of her actions. In the meanwhile she was

considering what to do about the members of the Posse itself,

each of whom had given her great cause for concern in a different

respect. If she could whittle down Nabiki's inner circle of

troublemakers she might have an easier time bringing the Tendo

girl into line. They were guilty of everything from fighting on

campus to carrying weapons on school grounds, which was not

only a bad precedent but simply not to be tolerated.

She was pondering how exactly to effect this point when she

stopped off on the way home from Kuonji Ukyo's restaurant to

buy some sweet snacks to munch upon so she could do her

thinking on something other than an empty stomach.

She would have purchased an Okonomiyaki from Kuonji's place

itself except that she had a cool disdain for the way that Ukyo

flaunted School regulations dealing with students who earned an

outside income. Kuonji may have obtained permission from the

previous School Administration but that did not make it right,

even if she was able to balance work with a full time schedule of

classes.

She had a similar policy towards Nabiki's use of her illicitly

gained funds to keep her own family financially solvent as well

as operate the dojo that she and her father ran during her off-

school hours. This class was being used to recruit more martial

artists to her cause, which made it a clear and present threat to

public order...

"Stop thief!"

"Eh?" Hinako looked up from her private reveries to see a fast-

moving figure approach in her direction. An angry merchant

who screamed something about having been robbed of his fish

sausages was chasing the figure, which Hinako's trained eye

picked out to be a young-seeming girl moving incredibly fast and

coming right at her.

Rather than move out of the way she raised her hand with a five-

yen piece and started to pronounce her chant that would activate

her Happo Five-Yen Satsu attack, but before it could be

completed the girl suddenly appeared fully in her vision with a

most surprised look on her face. This was quickly replaced by a

too-intimate look, which itself was followed by an explosion of

stars as Hinako found herself a moment later stretched out flat on

her back with a very concerned look on the face of that same girl

looking down at her from a close inspection.

"Oh, I'm so sorry!" the girl hastily apologized, "I didn't mean to

run into you..."

"Get off me you...delinquent!" Hinako said to her with as much

dignity as she could manage from her horizontal position.

"Kurumi-chan," another more mature voice called out, causing

the girl to flinch as she said, "Hai, Oneechan. I'm so sorry...she

just popped up in front of me with no warning..."

"That may be so," said another girl who appeared in Hinako's

vision, much taller but not too much older looking than the first,

"But it is rude and improper behavior just the same. I've told you

repeatedly that your escapades were going to lead us both into

trouble," she sighed in exasperation.

The one named Kurumi hastily sat up and looked at Hinako very

contritely before assuming a more formal bow as she said, "I am

very sorry that I did not see you in time. It was inexcusable of

me, but I beg your forgiveness."

"Well," Hinako found it very hard to stay mad at this other girl

for very long, even if she did appear to be no more than a few

years older than Hinako's own deceptively young appearance, "I

am not injured, but you should take greater care where you are

going. Someone else is bound to be hurt if you rush like that

through crowded places."

"We are both very sorry," the taller girl said as she knelt down

and bowed her head to Hinako, "My sister means well, but she

has of late acquired a very bad habit that I am trying to break her

of. It was never our intent to inconvenience you, young girl..."

"Sensei," Hinako corrected as she got back to her feet and dusted

herself off.

"Eh?" this other girl looked at her in mild confusion.

"Hinako-Sensei," she repeated, "I am a teacher at Furinkan High

School. Do not be fooled by my appearance, I am much older

than you both and will expect you to remember this."

"I...see," the older girl said dubiously, then politely added, "I am

Natsume, and this is my younger sister, Kurumi. We

are...pilgrims on a mission to train ourselves to be first rate

Martial Artists."

"Indeed?" Hinako asked, "To what school do you belong?"

"Anything Goes school, Hinako-Sensei," Kurumi brightly

responded, then with a more subdued tone added, "We are also

seeking the whereabouts of our father, who we have not seen in

many years..."

"Kurumi," Natsume chided, "It is not proper to speak of such

things with total strangers..."

"Maybe so," Hinako squared her hips and held her arms akimbo

as she replied, "But I am a Teacher of this district, sworn to

uphold the interest of young people, such as yourselves, be they

students or mere pilgrims. If you are trying to locate your father

then perhaps I cam help you. What is his name?"

"Tendo Soun," Natsume replied with a hopeful expression, then

saw recognition in Hinako's eyes and gasped, "Do you know

him?"

"I know of him," Hinako said as she recovered her bearings,

"Tendo Soun, eh? I might have guessed this would involve that

clan of his..."

"Excuse please?" Kurumi looked at her in confusion, "Have you

some problem with our father that we should know about?"

"Not him specifically," Hinako replied, "But I have been meaning

to have a chat with him regarding another one of his daughters.

Perhaps it is at last time that I did so."

"Daughters?" both girls chorused, sharing an exchange of looks

before Natsume asked, "We have sisters we have never yet met?"

"More than one, or so I am told," Hinako nodded sagely, "Come

with me the both of you. It is time I paid a visit to the Tendo

estate, and I am certain your father will be more than anxious to

make your acquaintance..."

If there was one thing that Nabiki dreaded more than a

confrontation with Hinako-Sensei it was going to see Principal

Kuno in that dilapidated shack that he laughingly called his

office.

As she considered the palm-tree lined facade located behind the

school building itself she had a moment of dread during which

she reviewed the several previous visits she had made to this so-

called office. She had, of course, read up about Principle Kuno

when he was no more than an accomplished Industrialist and

multi-millionaire, the head of a successful Pharmaceuticals outfit

that specialized in the use of Herbal medicines and natural plant

extracts, which complimented the lesser business outlets in a

chain of Floral shops that presently were being held in trust in

Kodachi's name. To see the man now one could never believe

that he had ever been even remotely that normal.

Of course the casual stranger did not know the Kuno history half

so well as she did. Kuno Senior had spent most of his adult

career in the blind pursuit of wealth and had ignored the growing

tragedy that was taking place on the domestic sphere almost

literally beneath his notice. He had been neglecting his

emotionally distraught wife, which had driven her to an

emotional breakdown that she in turn took out upon her son and

daughter. Both Kuno children were left emotionally shattered

from years of humiliation and abuse to which their mother's

eventual suicide had all but been a relief, and since that time they

had been raised in the care of trusted servants without proper

parental supervision. Kuno Senior had been even more

emotionally devastated by the realization of his guilt and

eventually left his company in the hand of its shareholders while

he inexplicably took up a position as Principal of Furinkan in

some twisted notion of finding restitution for his lack of parental

skills. Two years later he disappeared on a sabbatical and left a

jubilant administration behind, who had chaffed in despair at his

period of misrule.

Four years later and his children could barely recognize the man,

who apparently had spent his time on a deserted island almost

literally going "Native." He now had an obsession with

Hawaiian and Polynesian culture in general and insisted on

having his office made out in the very image of the hut he had

lived in while slowly going bananas.

Nabiki stared at the bamboo ladder leading up to the hut on stilts

and took several deep breaths in order to steady her nerves before

making the ascent. She had no doubt that the Principal himself

was in his office as he almost never left it-even to go home to his

family, and he was currently playing the ukulele. With a sense

not unlike the character from the novel by Lewis Carroll, she

began her climb until she reached the outer ledge, then she

knocked three times on the door and said, "Principal Kuno? I'd

like to speak with you if you have a moment."

"Come in!" she heard him cheerfully reply, and with a last effort

at maintaining her resolve Nabiki forced a smile onto her face

and entered the office, at once feeling as though she had stepped

out of Japan itself into some fantasy notion of a South Seas

paradise. The whole office had been done up with that thought in

mind, being composed of bamboo and palm trees in such a

makeshift fashion that one could easily believe that Kuno himself

had been his own interior decorator and designer.

The Principal himself was reclined in a hammock playing his

instrument and wearing a pair of sunshades indoors. He had on a

Hawaiian shirt with Bermuda shorts and a pair of thong sandals

on his feet, which was the only thing he ever seemed to wear

these days, regardless of the weather or fashion. Nabiki was

gratified to note that he was also wearing a straw-hat top his

head, thus sparing her the disconcerting sight of the miniature

palm tree he normally had growing there. He had a perpetually

cheerful expression on his face as he continued to play without

sparing a glance towards Nabiki as though utterly unconcerned

with any purpose she might have for seeking him out.

"What's on your mind, Tendo-san?" he asked in a tone that

seemed to confirm his general lack of real interest.

"Sir," Nabiki tried to sound as deferential as she could manage, "I

need to obtain permission to go on a field trip with my friends. It

will require our absence for at least a good part of the week..."

"Whoah!" now she had his interest as could be told by the way he

stopped playing and sat upright in his hammock, "That's a pretty

serious request, Bubba. You gotta reason for skipping so many

classes? I already got Hinako-Sensei on my case because of the

time you have missed."

"I have a good reason, Sensei," Nabiki replied, having thought

one up on the way to the school, "Like I said it's a field trip, sort-

of like a fact finding mission that only needs your approval to

become official..."

"Fact-finding, huh?" he resumed his smile, "Not a bad idea. I

went on one myself and I sure picked up a lotta good stuff during

my vacation."

"Ah," Nabiki was starting to wonder if it was really such a good

idea to go through with this, but having already committed

herself she had no choice but to plow on ahead, "I'd like to

outline the details of what we're hoping to accomplish, sir. You

see it's occurred to me that there are not enough palm trees in

Japan."

That really got his interest, "Palm trees, huh? Yeah, I kinda

noticed there aren't enough of them myself. Glad to see

somebody else appreciates the value of good vegetation in our

surroundings. Too much of this pink stuff that falls all over the

place after summer..."

"Cherry Blossoms?" Nabiki managed to keep a straight face,

even though she knew full well that the man before her had once

tried to abolish them from school grounds until voted down by

the school board. She had no intention of dragging that up again

and quickly decided to change the subject, "I just thought you

might like some evidence that you can present before the board in

your campaign to beautify our campus."

"Not a bad idea," he grinned, speaking in the oddly slang-filled

tones he usually adopted, "Of course coming from you I gotta

wonder what's up. Folks here seem to think you run the place

and now you're taking a hike? There's gotta be something else

involved..."

"What do you mean?" she asked innocently, "Can't I be interested

in the welfare of my own school? Surely you don't think that

there's a profit motive behind my seeking to beautify this place?"

"Hmm, probably not," he shrugged, "But cha gotta admit you get

away with a lotta stuff that ain't too fit for a role model like

yerself, Kahuna, like the way you flaunt the school dress code..."

"Oh, that," Nabiki had to stifle the urge to wince at his comment.

Her style of dress was mandated by the circumstances of her

curse, as was her frequent absences from class. Her tendency to

turn into a guy at odd moments and without hardly any prior

warning forced her to usually adopt clothing that fit in either of

her two genders. Similarly she could not even wear regular shoes

because of the way her feet expanded, so soft sandals were the

norm on those occasions when she did not prefer to go barefoot.

He continued on as though she had not spoken, however, and

touched on the next sensitive subject, "Also that pony tail you

wear down your back...I still think it should go," and to

emphasize his point he pulled out a pair of his pocket scissors

and made several snipping sounds to get her reaction.

He got it in spades this time as she could not keep herself from

wincing on the subject. She had always made a point to maintain

a neat grooming with her hair trimmed short up front but allowed

to grow long in the back and held in place by a Dragons Whisker

chord that had been a gift during her travels. As odd as it might

seem to be vain about something like that, Nabiki prized the

distinctive quality it loaned to her overall appearance. Besides

that a side effect of the whisker was that its removal would cause

her hair to suddenly grow long and out of control. Wearing it

meant her hair remained an even length, which was how she

liked it. No matter what other compromises she would make

with this Principal, the subject of her hair was an inviolate issue.

"Sir," she attempted to be reasonable again, "Surely you don't

mean to suggest that a humble student such as myself could

affect school policy that greatly? Have I ever done anything that

was strictly against the best interests of Furinkan and its

students?"

"Not in so many words, no," he shrugged, still holding up the

scissors, "Still it would be nice if somebody was on my side

about this. You got clout, that's no laugh, so maybe you find

what I need to convince the board of my wisdom and I could give

this trip of yours my authorization."

Nabiki had to keep her smile of relief under wraps as she bowed,

"Thank you, Sir, you won't regret this..."

"Oh one condition."

Nabiki halted in mid-motion, slowly looking up again with

suspicion in her eyes as she asked, "What condition is that?"

"A field trip needs a Teacher's supervision to be official-like," he

grinned, "I want you to take Hinako-Sensei with you for a week

justa keep things honest."

"Nani?" Nabiki felt her expression screw up into a reflection of

his dismay. That was exactly the last thing she wanted, short of a

haircut. Having Hinako around would complicate things beyond

all description, and there was very little likelihood that Guile

would agree to it. Besides that she had been looking forward to a

week without Hinako's continual harassment. She opened her

mouth to utter an immediate protest and heard the snipping

sound of his scissors, which shut her up abruptly.

"Glad we see eye-to-eye on this," the Principal smiled, "How

soon do you leave?"

"Ah...tomorrow?" Nabiki asked, realizing that it was the

Principal who was seeking an escape from the harassment of

Hinako-Sensei. Crazy or not the man was far from completely

stupid.

"Tomorrow sounds good," the Principal said as he lay back on his

hammock and started playing his ukulele again, "Have a nice trip

and bring me back a pineapple."

"Sure thing, Sir," Nabiki bowed as she took her leave, thinking

privately to herself that the only sort of pineapple she would like

to give this Principal was the kind that had a pin in it. It galled

her to think that she could be so effectively out-maneuvered by a

certifiable fruit-basket, but she saw no way to argue herself out of

the pit. She only hoped Hinako herself would refuse to go along

with the matter because the idea of bonding with her would likely

put her in the nut house before the week was over...

The Kuno Mansion was a product of the post-occupation when

Barons of the old Military system had become literal Barons of

Capitol and had adapted to a life that resembled the Aristocracy

of Europe. The place was vast and worth the ransom of several

Kings yet seemed quite humble in its charms as that it was not

entirely built like a fortress, let alone the Feudal Castles that once

had housed the Kuno family in its days of earlier glory.

Presently the House had a new architectural addition that had

been ordered constructed by the Mistress of the Manor. At that

precise moment this new feature was being used by a small four-

legged furry creature that an observer would have identified as a

black ferret, a creature that entered through six-inch wide holes

cut through the walls along a wooden ledge that ran close to the

roof above the notice of anyone not looking up to see it. The

Ferret moved down a ramp and eventually came to an interior

chamber adjoining one of the bathrooms and from there

descended by means of a specially made ladder until it could

reach one of the sinks, which too had been so constructed that

even a ferret would have no trouble working the handles.

Once it had turned on the hot water tap it jumped into the sink

and waited for the water to reach the right temperature, at which

point its dimensions immediately expanded outward. A moment

later a very nude Kuno Kodachi stepped onto the padded throw

rub upon the floor, turning off the water as she flipped her long

back hair over her back, reaching into a drawer to pull out a

barrette. She smiled as she glanced at the reflection of herself

seen in the mirror and deliberately posed her body as though to

flaunt herself at her own reflection.

A tapping on the skylight window overhead made her look up to

see the creature posed there looking down at her expectedly.

Kodachi reached up to pull the handle on the chain connecting to

this skylight that opened it along a spring mechanism, and then

in flew a ruddy vulture, which wasted no time in alighting next to

her, making a squawking noise as though voicing an opinion.

Kodachi smiled as she patted the head of the winged creature,

heedless of any thought that it might try to peck at her as she

said, "Just be patient, darling. I'll test your bath for you in

another minute."

Kodachi knelt down beside the bathwater, checking to see that it

was indeed kept warm, as per her instructions to Sasuke.

Satisfied that it would do she made a kissing noise to the vulture,

which spread its wings and jumped into the bath with no further

preamble, and a moment later a naked Arigami Keiko appeared

to throw her own long-braided red hair down over her back and

smile at Kodachi, patting the water with a meaningful

expression.

"I'd love to," Kodachi cooed from the furo as she more properly

washed herself off with a sponge before dousing herself with a

warm bucket in preparation for joining her friend in the

bathwater. Once they were immersed together Keiko wasted no

time taking Kodachi into her embrace and kissing her

passionately. Kodachi returned the affectionate gesture-and the

kiss-but parted briefly to say to her friend and sometime lover,

"Your father is quite an extraordinary fellow, but I noticed that

you did not introduce me as anything other than your very good

friend. You wouldn't happen to be embarrassed about our

relationship, are you?"

"Who, me?" Keiko responded in surprise, "Nobody's ever accused

me of modesty before, but...well ...I hope you don't mind if I wait

to tell him that? We haven't seen each other in over ten years,

and I'd... like to hear his full opinion on that subject before I tell

him that his little girl is a skirt chaser."

"So now I'm just a skirt, is that it?" Kodachi mock-pouted, but

she was watching Keiko carefully as she added, "You are

embarrassed about me, aren't you?"

"What?" Keiko blinked, "No, that isn't it! Honestly, why would

anybody be ashamed to admit to having a great looking girl like

you for her steady? I just want to give him time to get to know

me better. You know Americans and how uptight they get over

sex..."

"True," Kodachi murmured, forming a cute pout, "Not directly, of

course, but I have read articles on the subject. I understand that

the sight of a bare breast is totally banned over nearly all

commercial channels of their television programs, excluding only

Satellite and Cable. I just meant that I hope that you aren't

implying that I personally am someone you would feel awkward

about introducing to your father and mother?"

Keiko considered her answer before replying, sensing that there

was more than just her usual coquettish wit involved in

Kodachi's tone, and after a few seconds of thought she believed

she had come upon the answer.

"Are you thinking maybe of joining my family?" she said,

wording it as a tease while studying Kodachi carefully to

measure her reactions, "Like maybe you'd like to call my Daddy

your father?"

"Considering the alternative," Kodachi said without humor, "That

is hardly an unwelcome suggestion."

Keiko winced a bit before she sighed, "As opposed to the guy

who claims to be your father? Yeah...I can see how that might

not be such a bad idea..."

"Far from it," and now Kodachi's tone implied extreme distaste,

"That...man is not the father I once knew. I don't know what he

is, but he is not my father. I would rather my father had died at

sea then come home to us as such a...stark raving ninny. Even

Tatewaki finds his behavior extraordinarily obtuse, which ought

to say something about the level of insanity that we are dealing

with here."

Keiko nodded, "I wish there was some way of denying it, "Dachi-

chan, but like it or not he's still your father. I think you guys are

stuck with each other, and believe me when I say that I don't envy

you that. First day he saw me at school he tried to cut off my

braid."

"He tried to shave me to a boy's length," Kodachi shook her long

black hair meaningfully then sighed a heartfelt sound of grief,

"My own father..."

"Maybe they should have left him on that deserted desert Isle

where they found him," Keiko said, then saw the expression on

Kodachi's face and said, "What is it?"

Kodachi tried to stifle the grief she was feeling but could not, "It's

just...we were never really close...he was always working, even

when he wasn't at the office. He spared very little time for me,

but in a way I always did look up to him and hoped one day that I

could be someone he could be proud of. He let our mother do

what she would with us and...and...I'd rather not talk about it."

Keiko wordlessly embraced Kodachi as the other girl shivered for

a moment then finally succumbed to burying her face in the other

girl's shoulder. Kodachi fought her own tears, but the sense of

warmth that came with close contact made it impossible to

maintain her normal barriers against the outside world. Keiko

held her closely and allowed her trembling to subside at last

before finally saying, "For what it's worth my life hasn't been a

picnic either. My mother was born to good surroundings, though

probably not as good as this. She gave it all up when she got

involved with my father, and her parents cut her off completely.

At least you still have a home...such as it is."

"I would rather be a penniless vagabond like you than have

dwelled in such empty luxury as this," Kodachi whispered, and it

was a side of Kodachi no one-not even Akane-had ever seen

before, a Kodachi who felt very much alone in the world and

needed the reassurance that came with knowing that someone

cared about her for herself and not her looks or wealth. This was

not the aristocratic Kodachi who sometimes bullied people she

felt superior to, or even the one that had once called Keiko a

peasant.

After a moment of sharing their closeness without the need for

doing anything but hug Keiko finally murmured into Kodachi's

ear, "Wanna trade?" which caused them both to chuckle softly.

"You are the world to me," Kodachi said as she pushed away,

looking Keiko in the eyes before adding, "You and my Akane-

chan, who I know I must one day give up to the embrace of her

Ryoga. I hope you do not think me silly for wondering if what

we have might not be of other than a transitory nature?"

"Could be," Keiko smiled, "Time will tell. After all you might

still meet some cute guy you'll want to go out with, and I'm sure

some day you'll want to have children..."

"That might not be such a good idea," Kodachi said with great

delicacy, averting her eyes for a moment before looking up again

and saying, "There is a Madness in my family that seems

hereditary. I have it, my mother had it, my father and brother

most unquestioningly have it...and I dread the responsibility of

passing it along to yet another generation. Although I fight

against my demons there are times when I feel as if they are

winning. I used to be so afraid...afraid of even looking at myself

for fear that I would see a stranger in my own reflection. Since

you and Akane have shown me another way to live...I have found

it easier to resist the call of my inner demons..."

Keiko reached up to caress Kodachi's cheek and leaned closer as

she held her gaze and said, "I know you'll always win that battle,

you've got more strength than you're giving yourself credit here,

'Dachi-chan. I know what loneliness is, believe me, but you don't

have to be alone...not while I'm here, and never around Akane."

"I know," Kodachi murmured, tears in her eyes though she was

smiling in happiness. A moment later her smile became

somewhat more predatory, "But I just hope you never have cause

to regret getting close to me, because I am the sort of woman who

takes as much as she gives...and sometimes more than she is

given. Right now I have no doubt at all what I want from you,

my dear friend..."

"I know," Keiko said as she leaned in to kiss Kodachi, "And I

give it gladly. Anything you want from me, just ask."

"Good," Kodachi reached around and grasped Keiko by the base

of her braid, tilting her head back as she leaned forward to smile

at her with their noses almost touching, "Because I want you to

tell your father all about us at the first opportunity. I won't hide

what we have from him or anyone else who matters, do you

agree?"

"Ah..." Keiko considered the point well, along with the Minx-like

stare in Kodachi's eyes and felt rather much as if her throat were

being bared to the ferret, "I guess I could try to tell him..."

"Not good enough," Kodachi said firmly, "I want you to tell him

without hesitation. Choose the moment that you like but do not

wait too long or I will tell him for you."

"Eep," Keiko yelped, feeling the tightening of Kodachi's grip,

along with the possessive hunger Kodachi's other hand displayed

by caressing her right bosom, "All right...I'll tell him!"

"Good," Kodachi smiled as she brought her lips up to kiss

Keiko's cheek, then slowly nuzzled lower while her hands began

roving over the redhead's body, both above and below the level of

the water...

"Yes?" said Kasumi as she looked down to see three new guests

on their doorstep, "How may I help you?"

"This is the Tendo Training Hall, correct?" Hinako asked as she

stared up at the nice-looking girl in the flowery dress.

"Yes of course," Kasumi replied, wondering why the young girl

had answered her instead of the two older ones who hovered

nervously behind her, "I'm Tendo Kasumi, can I be of any

service?"

"Is one Tendo Soun in residence?" Hinako asked, "I am Hinako

Ninomiya, a teacher at Furinkan High school."

"Oh," Kasumi looked down at the girl dubiously. A teacher? But

she looked so much younger even than Akane! Still it was not

polite to point this out, so instead she directed herself to the

question by replying, "Oh yes, I remember hearing about you.

You Teach my sister and brother-in law's home class. Tendo

Soun is my father..."

"Oneechan!" the second youngest girl present declared happily

before the oldest said, "Kurumi., behave yourself. Is this any way

to make a first impression on our family now that we have at long

last been reunited?"

Kasumi has grown accustomed to dealing with strange and

unusual circumstances of late, but this one was a new chapter

that caused her to blink then reply, "Excuse me? There must be

some misunderstanding here..."

"You are Tendo Kasumi, the daughter of Tendo Soun who is the

head of this household and lord of this estate?" Hinako asked

directly as if to restate her earlier question, "There is no mistake,

these two claim to be your sisters, Tendo Natsume and Kurumi.

May we speak to your father briefly?"

Kasumi blinked her eyes several times as she took all of this in,

and for several reasons, one of which being that no one in her

memory had ever referred to her father as the "Lord of the estate."

The part about these two young girls being her sisters was

another thing entirely. One looked to be about Akane's age, the

other a little older, perhaps Nabiki's age or thereabout. Both

were looking at her with earnest and hopeful expressions as if

seeking confirmation of deep and fond expectations. The last

question, of course, was the easiest to answer, so she stepped

back from the door and replied, "This way, please, and I'll

introduce you to father."

Hinako was the first to enter as though expecting this as her

natural privilege, the other two girls following more modestly in

her wake as Kasumi tried hard not to stare at them, wondering

what in the name of her mother's spirit could be going on at the

moment.

Hinako-Sensei was wondering very much the same thing as she

allowed Kasumi to show her the way into the house that she had

been hearing so much about since beginning her tenure at

Furinkan. By rights it should have felt more like walking into the

Lion's den-not that Hinako had much to fear from lions, of

course-but instead it felt almost like...a home. There was a very

nice feeling to the place, a very old feeling, as though it had been

around a long time, like a distinguished gentleman who gained

only dignity and wisdom with the passing of the seasons. It was

a very nice feeling, one that reminded her much of her own home,

which she had not visited in so very long, and Kasumi reminded

her in some odd way of her own foster mother. It was hardly the

feeling she had come to expect, knowing this home had ushered

in so many troublemakers who made life very difficult for an

honest teacher.

It was also reputedly the home of the Master, the old man who

had visited her in that hospital so very long ago and taught her

the Happo Five Yen Sutra. The memory of this made her scowl a

little as she firmed up her resolve to confront this Tendo Soun

and give him a piece of her mind about his shortcomings as a

parent.

All this passed through her mind in the space of a few seconds

before they arrived at the main living quarters, which were

currently occupied by a very tall man with long black hair and a

mustache who was sitting across a Shogi board studying the

pieces while a panda bear was lounging on the other side sipping

his tea...

A PANDA BEAR?

Hinako had to do a double-take as she found that it was indeed a

full grown giant panda sitting upright and scowling at the board

in front of him, and when the mustached man looked up the bear

moved a paw and quickly rearranged the pieces. Hinako was

about to grab for her coin when she heard the mustached man

say, "Ah, Kasumi-chan, who are these young people?"

"Some more guests who have come to see you, father," Kasumi

replied, hesitating to introduce the two older girls, so instead she

turned to Hinako and said, "This one claims to be a teacher at

Furinkan High School, a Miss Hinako Ninomiya..."

"Ah," the man brightened, "You teach in my Akane's home room,

am I right? Akane said you looked rather young but are an

excellent disciplinarian."

"I..." Hinako was taken aback by the friendly manner and praise

of the man, but more by the fact that the Panda held up a sign

that bore the words, "Isn't she a bit young to be a teacher?" She

caught herself thinking that Tendo Soun had a very nice smile,

then furiously wondered whatever could have made her think

such an inappropriate thing? She was groping to find the words

to make a proper introduction when the two girls accompanying

her stepped forward to confront the man with eager expressions.

"You are Tendo Soun?" the older girl asked hopefully.

"I am," Soun replied with a puzzled expression, "And you are?"

"Poppa-san!" Kurumi cried as she rushed forward and embraced

the astonished Soun, even as Natsume dropped her own severe

demeanor and knelt down at Soun's other side to likewise

embrace him, crying, "Father! We have found you at last!"

Soun froze up as if he had become an instant statue, staring

straight ahead as he was enthusiastically hugged from both sides

while the Panda reversed his sigh to reveal the words, "What's

this all about?"

"Excuse me?" another voice politely asked as a distinguished

looking woman in what appeared to be her late thirties entered,

further startling Hinako, "I thought I heard more voices. Kasumi,

did you let more guests in despite what I told you?"

"Hai, Auntie," Kasumi replied, "But I had good reason this time.

This young lady says that she is one of Akane's teachers from

school, while these other two girls..." her voice trailed off as she

looked at them and her father in confusion.

Natsume turned towards this older woman and smiled broadly, "I

am Natsume and my sister is Kurumi, and we are the daughters

of Tendo Soun, at long last reunited with our father..."

CRASH! The tea tray held by this older woman slipped from her

hands unnoticed as she looked on in dismay and repeated the

words, "Your...father?"

"N-no!" Soun finally broke out of his paralysis, "There must be a

mistake! I don't remember fathering any more children, and

certainly not illegitimate ones at that..."

The Panda held up his sign again, which now read, "Are you

sure? The do seem to know you."

"Quite positive, Saotome-kun!" Soun protested, "You think I

would not remember a thing like that? Nodoka, Kasumi-

chan...you do believe me?"

Hinako blinked her eyes they started at the Panda that had been

referred to by the name Saotome. So this was Ranma's father,

eh? Raised by wild animals...that did explain a lot about that

boy...

"There is no mistake," Natsume said happily as she pulled out an

object that she had kept close to her bosom, "You see here? This

photograph is all the proof we need that we are Tendos. See that?

That's us when we were both only six and seven years of age."

Kasumi and Hinako moved around to get a better look at the

photograph, which did indeed show two young girls in one side

of the picture while someone else's back was to the photograph

wearing a faded Gi that bore the letters spelling out the Anything

Goes School logo.

"Oh my," Kasumi was the first to remark as she turned to the

pale-faced woman named Nodoka, "It does seem as if someone

from our school is in that photo, but you can't really tell who it is

without seeing their face."

"Of course, you're right!" Soun brightened up like a drowning

man who had just found a life preserver, "How very clever of you,

Kasumi! Now do you believe your father is innocent of fathering

two other girls without anyone else's knowledge?"

"Turn the photo around," Natsume said calmly, and when Soun

did so he revealed handwritten lettering that declared that the two

girls in the photograph would inherit the Anything Goes School

when they came of age and became great martial artists.

It also bore a signature spelling out the name Tendo Soun.

Natsume nodded and said, "Now do you believe us?"

Soun just stared at the photograph as he stared at the lettering on

back, gripping it hard until his knuckles whitened. His

expression was ashen while Kasumi said, "Oh my...that could be

your handwriting, father. You never were very good at

calligraphy."

"But...!" Soun started to declare when suddenly a tea tray got

smashed down upon his head, bending it at a very sharp angle.

Everyone turned to see a furious Nodoka pivot on one heel as she

stalked angrily back towards the kitchen.

There was silence for a moment and then the Panda once more

held up his sign, which said in hastily scrawled letters, "Nailed

you good that time."

"Nodoka-san?" Soun asked wonderingly as he turned his head to

look at the empty doorway, unconscious of the fact that the bent

tea tray now resembled a rice hat.

"Are you all right, Pappa-san?" Kurumi asked him anxiously,

seeing the tray rise as a lump started forming.

"Oh sure," Soun said faintly, "I've never felt better," and then he

passed out...

Nabiki arrived home a short time later, having regathered her

flock after having informed Cologne of their present situation.

Ukyo had closed her restaurant early with the Elder's express

urging and now they were intending to convene a war conference

on the Madam Lao issue. Cologne's withered face bore a serious

look of intense concern as she lead the way skirting around the

House moving towards the dojo, but before they arrived Nabiki

saw the two strange girls sitting on the back porch with her father

and halted in mid-step and blink in confusion.

"One moment, Elder," Nabiki urged, and at once headed off to

find her father, whose expression was unusually distressed and

pale. She could see evidence of tears having been quite recently

shed and wondered what had set him off this time. She was

about to ask him directly when she was unexpectedly headed off

by Kasumi.

"Neechan," she said, turning towards the two girls, "These are

Natsume and Kurumi. They will be staying with us for a while

until we can determine if their story is genuine or not. They

claim to be our long-lost sisters come to claim their share of

father's inheritance."

"Nani?" Nabiki blinked, giving Kasumi a startled look before

turning back to regard the earnest expressions of the two

newcomers, "You've got to be kidding."

"I am afraid not, Oneechan," the older of the two girls said

politely, "We are the daughters of Tendo Soun. I know this may

be hard to accept but we have been searching for so long, and

now at last we are restored to the family we have sought for all of

our lives. Please accept that it is not our intent to cause you any

distress, but this man is indeed our father."

"Daddy?" Nabiki blinked, seeking confirmation of this disturbing

revelation.

"I swear to you, Nabiki-chan, that I have no idea what they are

talking about!" her father protested, "I don't remember fathering

children with anyone but your own blessed mother, and I'm pretty

certain I would remember their mother if I had. I am not that

virile!"

Nabiki studied the two girls kneeling at her father's side. The

older one had a severe yet proper quality around her, not striking

her as the dishonorable type who might concoct such a far-

fetched story, though it was plain from the look in her eyes that

she was desperately eager to find confirmation of her deeply

cherished beliefs. She had-of all things-a rub-beater slung

across her back as though it were a staff or sword, and something

about her erect bearing suggested that she was in excellent

physical condition, quite probably a Martial Artist.

The younger one was a very Kawaii looking girl with a large red

ribbon tied in her auburn colored hair, roughly Akane's age or

younger. She seemed the more honest of the pair and had a

different kind of anxious quality about herself, as if fearing

rejection or that the entire dojo might disappear into a dream at

any moment. There was also a highly animated feature about the

way she was sitting as though she had a lot of energy that she

barely contained through inaction. She also had the sort of robust

aura that suggested a seasoned martial artist. She was about to

interrogate them directly when a voice called out to her,

shattering the entire focus of her concentration.

"Tendo Nabiki!"

"Mou," Nabiki faintly whispered as she turned and said,

"Hinako-Sensei? What brings you to my humble house?"

"I have been having a very serious discussion with your Aunt

Nodoka," Hinako replied, indicating the older woman standing

just behind her at the doorway to the kitchen, "Concerning your

activities of late. I warned you that I would bring this up with

your family if you persisted in your delinquent ways. Perhaps

now you will show proper respect for your teachers..."

"Yahoo!" cried a voice coming to Nabiki's immanent rescue,

making Nabiki at once silently take back a good third of all the

nasty things that she had ever said about Happosai. The old man

came bounding past the patio with his usual sack of ill-gotten

goods declaring happily, "What a haul, what a haul...!"

That was all the distraction Hinako needed. This time she did

not hesitate to draw her coin and begin chanting her spell,

forming a pentagon in the air as the Happo Five Yen Satsu took

effect, immediately draining off the energy of Happosai's lustful

glee with the result that Hinako started to grow by two feet and

fill out in all sorts of interesting places.

"Gaaah!" Happosai cried as a crumpled shadow of the man hit

the ground, looking even more wrinkled than was usual in his

case. The now-adult Hinako smiled and casually tossed her long

brown hair over her shoulder then said in contentment, "Perhaps

one of these days you will finally learn from your errors. A man

of your years should not be taking advantage of helpless young

girls to fulfill his lustful fantasies."

"An interesting technique," said Cologne in appraisal looking

down almost with a smile at the fallen Happosai, "I take it this is

one of your pupils who did not turn out quite the way you

imagined?"

"To my eternal shame I bear that burden," Hinako said in her

now-husky voice, then smiled at the various astonished faces

turned in her direction, "He will recover soon enough. My Good

Girl technique drains battle auras, not life force. A side effect of

this power that the old man taught me how to use is that I spend

most of my time looking like an innocent young girl, but in

reality I am fully adult I assure you."

Natsume and Kurumi said nothing, just stared in blank

astonishment. Nodoka was staring too, although her expression

was more difficult to read. What caught Nabiki's eye, however,

was the look on her father's face as he stared up at the vision of

incredible beauty that was presently before him in a tight-fitting

yellow dress. Nabiki could hardly blame her father for having a

very male reaction to the sight of such a fascinating wet dream,

but there was something about his gaze that worried her too.

And then she caught a look in Nodoka's face out of the corner of

one eye and wondered in growing amazement if she were sensing

the beginnings of a new form of domestic trouble on her

horizons. Nodoka's glare at Hinako had gone from guarded to

angry.

"Hinako-Sensei," Nabiki thought fast, "I have been to the school

and had a personal interview with Principal Kuno that briefly had

your name in it. He has authorized a field trip that is to begin

early tomorrow, and he would like you to supervise...a fact-

finding mission of sorts..."

"Wait a minute," Hinako glared at her in suspicions, "This has

Palm trees in it somewhere, am I right?"

"Well," Nabiki shrugged innocently, "It has been a concern of his

that there are not enough Palm Trees in Furinkan, and I may have

mentioned that we could maybe find some on the way..."

"What. Are. You. Up to this time?" Hinako slowly and

carefully pronounced each word, not bothering at all to hide her

hostility and suspicion.

"Nothing dishonest, I assure you, Sensei," Nabiki raised both

hands as it to show by their emptiness the sincere quality of her

statement, "I'm merely trying to help a friend who is looking for

her mother. Surely you don't see anything sinister in that? And

maybe, while we're on our way, you and I might be able to...well,

you know...bond a little, as in Teacher to student?" she added the

last part with a hopeful note, hoping that Hinako would take the

bait at face value.

"I will have to consult with the Principal myself to see if you are

being on the level with me this time," Hinako said with a clear

hint that she did not relish going to face the Principal, "But if I

learn that this is another one of your schemes..."

"Word of honor," Nabiki raised one hand, "It's not. I'm just

doing what's right for a friend, which I'm honored bound to do as

the heir to the Anything Goes tradition..."

"You are the heir?" asked Natsume with interest, "How very

interesting. I assume that you are the best martial artist of this

Household?"

"I do well enough," Nabiki said modestly, frowning slightly as

she added, "Is that a challenge?"

"Perhaps," Natsume smiled, "When you get back from your trip

you may care to spar with me so that we can see which of us is

better?"

"Oneechan?" Kurumi looked at her sister in confusion.

"Sure thing," Nabiki narrowed her eyes, "If you think you're good

enough to be a Tendo, I don't see why not. I'll look you up when

I get back."

"And I will be counting the moments until you return...Sister,"

Natsume emphasized the word, clearly relishing the idea of a

confrontation.

Their alleged father clearly did not as he started to weep again

while Hinako looked down at him with evident concern, and

Nodoka's normally pleasant expression darkened even more until

she almost resembled Akane. Nabiki noticed the absence of

Genma from all of this and suspected that there was as much

significance in this as everything else she was so casually

observing.

She turned away to follow Cologne towards the dojo, but she

paused to glance back over her shoulder at the house them softly

murmured in undertone, "There's life to you yet, Daddy...I just

hope you're ready to lie in the bed you're making..."

Continued.

Comments/Criticism/Easy Companionship with Comely

Teachers: shadowmane

Next time: the Yacht trip to Hell!

Nabiki 1/2:

A Very Scary Thought

(An Altered Destiny)

Chapter 20, Part 3.

By

Jim Robert Bader

(Inspired by the works of Rumiko Takahashi & Others)

Although Cologne was regarded with some fear and suspicion by

the members of Nabiki's inner circle, her word was respected

when it came to the Martial Arts and the Lore of the Amazons,

which all of those present had found of use on occasion. So it

was that when she told them that she had something of great

importance to share it was natural that all eyes attended her as

Nabiki and her loved ones sat down in a rough semi-circle,

leaving space for their missing companions as Akane and her

own band of intimates were presently absent.

Cologne looked grave even by her own measured standards as

she nodded to the five young people watching her attentively. At

last when she was certain that she had the full measure of their

attention she said, "What I am about to tell you must not be

repeated outside the walls of this dojo. It is of utmost importance

that you understand the sensitive nature of what I am about to

impart. Shampoo and Perfume know some particulars of these

affairs but neither one is privy to the complete, entire story. We

Amazons have many secrets that we guard zealously from

outsiders, but as you three are almost Amazons by adoption it is

only fair that you know the truth about the one whom we will be

facing shortly."

"Madam Lao?" Nabiki asked, "We already know she was a

member of your tribe, and that she did something that got her

kicked out of Joketsuzoku and caused you to adopt Perfume into

your family in her place."

"This much you have learned from Arigami Keiko," Cologne

nodded soberly, "What you may not know is that the woman who

now calls herself Lao Kung is in fact my once-beloved

Granddaughter and is Shampoo's own blood cousin. She was my

student long before any of you were even a twinkling in your

parents eyes, and when the Council of Elders voted for her

banishment it was as if a piece of my own heart was torn from

my breast. It is difficult for me to speak of these things, but if I

do not it is my fear that you will fail to appreciate the dangerous

nature of the woman whom you would be facing."

"What did she do that was so awful?" Ranma asked, "It must

have been really bad if you can't even speak about it."

"Very true, Son-in-law," Cologne leaned heavily against her staff

with her eyes closed for a long moment, only to open them again

with a hard look that seemed to dare those present to accuse her

of allowing her grief to get the better of her judgement, "But

before I explain what it was I must tell you more about the

history of the Nyanichiczu. Our three thousand year history

contains many chapters that are dark and unpleasant, and some

would be difficult to comprehend in terms of modern experience

or morality. You must accept that in ancient times things were

done a bit differently than what is the practice today. Not that

our traditions are subject to change with the times, of course, but

we have learned to be practical, while our ancestors were

ruthlessly pragmatic."

"Enough with the dramatic build up already," Ukyo mildly

retorted, "We understand that the old days had a lot of cruelty and

violence in it. Just look at the history of Japan," she shrugged,

"So things could get pretty brutal way back then, what else is

new?"

"Well spoken, Daughter-in-law," Cologne nodded sagely, "Then

understand that when we first took residence in the mountains

that are now our homeland we were a people uprooted from the

old ways forced by circumstance to adapt to a new climate. We

had been nomadic for a thousand years prior to our coming to

China and now we had to learn the ways of farming and land

cultivation. The horse had been our home on legs until this time,

and while we were even then a Matriarchy there was not as much

separation between the sexes. Though women were the warriors

and the hunter-gatherers our men were considered just as

valuable in their contributions to the domestic life. The songs

and poems that survive from those days tell of the gentleness

between husband and wife as men did all the domestic chores

and raised our children while our women fought to defend the

hearth against all enemies that dared make challenge to our

territorial claims."

"Interesting," Nabiki mused, "I'd sure like to know exactly how

this Matriarchy got started. Shampoo's told me mostly children's

myths and legends, but you seem to know quite a bit of the

practical side of things. I never knew you were such a scholar."

"I've made my inquiries in my youth," Cologne shrugged,

"Nothing major, but when I was young myself I went through a

period of skepticism that drove me to determine the roots of our

society. In any event, this idyllic life slowly changed over time

when conditions worsened and there was a famine that swept the

land, when the rains did not fall for many seasons, then fell

without relent for several more beyond that. A pestilence broke

out shortly after this dramatic turn in the weather and it ravaged

all lands but those under Amazon control. We stood firm against

both famine and plague to emerge the stronger with a more

centralized leadership centered on the Matriarch and the Council

of Elders that passed a number of increasingly authoritarian

provisions.

"The division of labor between the male and the female was

tightened and made more restrictive, and soon the men of our

tribes began to chaff at this steady erosion of their personal

freedoms. Some agitated and spoke openly against the council,

and when persuasion did not turn their anger aside the Elders

resorted to violence to enforce their decisions. This quieted

things only for a time, but then came a new generation of young

people who found matters too restrictive for their liking. A leader

rose from among the ranks of these young men who challenged

the Matriarch and defeated her, thus becoming her husband.

"He tried to implement reforms against the will of the Elders, but

they fought back with greater skill and numbers and drove these

rebels into exile, the Matriarch with them. Not content to let

things stand this way the man, whose name was Musk, staged a

daring raid in which he and his men attacked a neighboring

village that was allied to the Amazons and took away a number

of young women that he made into brides for his men. Thus

began the Musk dynasty, hated rivals to the Amazons, but that

was only the beginning. What followed these beginnings would

lead to war and hatred that has lasted down unto the present.

"You see, Lord Musk was an ambitious and visionary individual

who pictured himself as an eventual Emperor ruling over the

throne of all of China. He knew that he would need more than

ordinary soldiers to effect his plans, so after creating his

mountain fortress with the warriors under his control he began a

new program that involved the use of the Cursed Springs

themselves, already notorious in his day and avoided by the

Amazons for all but the most intensive training. His agents stole

water from the springs of Drowned Man and Woman and

brought it back to his castle, where it was used to turn a selected

menagerie of animals into human versions of themselves, lacking

the minds of adults and thus very easy to train as concubines for

his growing harem.

"The offspring of the union of his concubines and soldiers

became a new generation of warriors with strong animal

instincts, the perfect army with which to lead into victory after he

taught them to despise the Amazon way and made all women in

his Kingdom the virtual slaves of their husbands.

"But the Amazons of his day were far from idle while this

happened. The new Matriarch was from the younger generation

but had not followed the upstarts into rebellion and exile. When

she gained power she used her influence among the younger

warriors to force the Elders to at long last recognize the

complaints of their people. She instituted a number of reforms

that greatly improved conditions for all their people and

abolished some of the more draconian laws, gave men more

personal liberty and insisted that women share more of the

domestic labors of the household. She ruled wisely and grew

popular as the Amazons flourished, but she grew more alarmed

when informed of the growing power of the Musk Dynasty. She

insisted on training her own warriors to a level of physical ability

not previously attained, then armed our men and had them

similarly instructed so that virtually the entire Amazon nation

was ready to defend itself when the Musk dynasty at last struck

without warning or mercy.

"In the end the Amazons held firm against the Musk, but the

truce that followed had a bitter flavor for both sides in the conflict

and many of their best warriors had died on either side. It would

prove to be the first of many battles that would be fought down

through the years and it resulted in enmity that survives into our

own times. To this very day the Musk and the Amazons loathe

each other but have learned to abide each other's continued

existence. We keep things mostly quiet these days to pacify the

Communist government, but we have not forgotten our hate, only

learned to bury it deeply.

"In nearly all respects Lao Kane was just one more victim of this

ages old struggle," Cologne sighed, "And in spite of all that I had

done for her before or since I cannot help but feel that I failed her

in some way. If she had been better prepared, or less naive..."

"Excuse me," Ukyo spoke up, "Lao Kane? That's Madam Lao's

real name?"

"Lanocane?" Ranma repeated with a puzzled expression.

"You did not hear me say that," Cologne half-smiled, "It is

forbidden for an Amazon to speak that name aloud by decree of

the council, and therefore for an elder to have spoken it would be

an unthinkable transgression."

"Right," Nabiki smiled meaningfully, "So we never heard it.

Please continue about the one whose name you didn't just say..."

"My Granddaughter," Cologne sighed, "One of a pair of first-

class warriors, much like Shampoo and Perfume in their day.

She and Shampoo's mother used to train regularly, which was

appropriate for two sisters of the same social standing. Kho-

Hom...your dear mother, child," she glanced meaningfully at

Shampoo, "Grieved no less for the loss of her beloved younger

sister than I did for the loss of a Granddaughter. You see...Kho-

Hom, who was two years her sister's senior, had married young

to a man of the village who had caught her eye when she was

about your age. Lao, unfortunately, was very proud and refused

to lower herself to any man, believing no one in the village was

worthy of her affections. Even then she was restless and wanted

to see more of the world, so I suppose it was inevitable that she

would turn to an outsider when at last she found a man worthy of

her standards.

"It was tragedy indeed that the man she fell in love with came

from the Musk dynasty, a warrior who was as powerful as the

Tigers that had been his female ancestors. They met in a private

challenge match that ended when this warrior, who went by the

interesting name of Julep, defeated my granddaughter. Lao found

herself all too willing to declare this man her husband and went

gladly to the land of the Musk, where she appears to have been

treated rather well for a time. Women of the Musk Dynasty are

usually kept hidden away from the eyes of other men, but rather

than throw her into his Harem her husband treated her like a

prize. Julep doted upon her lavishly and gave her all manner of

finery that for a time made Lao feel like a captive princess.

"But alas it was not to remain so forever. The tides of politics

and ambition caused Julep to weigh the advantages of having an

Amazon of her caliber in his thrall against the advantages that

could be gained in using her as a pawn in his personal ambitions.

He was advisor to then-Prince Garnet-father of the current Prince

Herb-and he had great plans to help his Prince achieve the ages-

old dream of conquering China. The political climate in China

had shifted with a younger generation clamoring for reform while

the entrenched old guard was clinging tenaciously to a withering

political system. It was felt that a push in the right direction

would shift the Mandate of Heaven from the Communists so

someone who could pose as a symbol of fresh leadership and

progress. I cannot say what all of his plans were, only that he

came to view the Amazons as a key stepping stone to their

advance into the limelight.

"I believe what he was after were the secret lore safeguarded by

the Elders of our tribe, which perhaps he meant to add to the

already considerable knowledge that the Musk had accumulated

over the centuries. Uniting our people under the leadership of his

Prince might even have been the eventual goal of this plot, all

that we know for sure is that he sent a secret message to the

Elders oh behalf of Garnet in which he laid out terms for nominal

peace that were actually a cover for his real plan of extracting

certain concessions.

"He also dropped broad hints alluding to Lao being advanced in

her pregnancy with the suggestion that dire things might happen

to her if he was not granted his way.

"In desperation the Council commissioned an expedition that I

voluntarily headed to seek to know of Lao's status, and when I

confronted Lord Julep he was all smiles and pleasantry. Prince

Garnet and he spoke to our concerns at the time that all of China

might be facing troubled times in the wake of the brutal

crackdown being experienced in some of the major cities and

neighboring Tibet. They outlined a bold scheme to consolidate

both Amazon and Musk forces into a mutual defensive pact,

citing our shared history and historical cultural ties. It seemed all

very well and good on the surface, but beneath I could see their

ruthlessness and cunning. They had no interest in sharing power

and actually sought to end our rivalry by absorbing the

Nyanichiczu into their orbit.

"I tried to prevail on Lao that she should leave with us before

anything bad could happen to her or the child that she was about

to deliver, but she foolishly did not believe my warnings. She

believed that her husband sincerely cared for her when I could

see that Julep was tiring of his wife and the novelty of their

marriage. She was too independent minded for his tastes, too

quick to voice her opinions and not content to live entirely as a

submissive. I made one last warning and she got very angry and

denounced me. I had to leave without her, wishing with all my

strength that I could have dragged her out of there before the

inevitable happened.

"When the time at last came and Prince Garnet did not gain all

that he wanted he tried to have Lao poisoned after she had given

birth. When she proved too strong for the evil medicine they took

her child away from Lao's very arms and had her cast into their

personal play-chamber...a sort of Medieval dungeon used for

interrogating prisoners. There Julep bared the hidden side of his

true nature and subjected his wife to unspeakable horrors that I

will not burden your young minds by repeating, save that my

granddaughter endured an ordeal made far worse by betrayal,

denial and bereavement..."

"Her own husband?" Ranma gasped in disbelief, "How could

he?"

Cologne just sighed, "Would that I knew the answer to that, Son-

in-law. The Musk no longer use cursed animals to maintain their

ranks. Perhaps the old habit of treating their women like animals

still prevails against all reason. Suffice it to say, Lao endured an

almost daily ordeal that must have sapped her resources to their

limit, but Lao was still an Amazon, and when she at long last

saw what sort of a monster she had married her mind must have

snapped because she eventually got loose and killed him, then

escaped from the palace before the Prince and his minions could

be alerted.

"She returned to the Amazons, but now we were faced with the

most unwelcome of problems. Lao had rejected our help when it

might have made a difference, believed sincerely in a man who

was the avowed enemy of our people and-worse by far-she had

committed violence against her husband, a transgression against

all of our traditions. She was guilty of the unthinkable, of killing

the father to her only child, and-more to the point-she now

wanted us to help her liberate the child she had left behind, a son,

from the Musk. By every right she could have demanded these

things under better circumstances...but as fortunate would have

it, this happened in the days following the Tianamen Massacre.

With the crackdown then full underway a war between us and the

Musk would have brought repression down upon all of our necks.

For the good of the Nyanichiczu we were reluctantly forced to

refuse her entreaties.

Nabiki looked hard at Cologne as she chose that moment to

interrupt, "In other words you rejected her and threw her to the

wolves because she was politically inconvenient."

"Alas," Cologne looked down in despair, "It was at that point that

the shame Lao bore was in fact our shame. Prince Garnet was

swift in demanding her return for punishment for what he termed

the murder of a trusted kinsman and member of the royal family.

Even then the power that Garnet commanded was almost the

equal to that of an Elder, so his threats carried some weight.

There was no physical evidence to corroborate Lao's story of

abuse and torture...her late husband had been too cunning in

applying his brand of inhuman abuse so that there was hardly a

mark on her besides a single brand that-it was claimed-had

been the mark of princely affection between consensual adults.

Given all of that the Council was forced-with the greatest

reluctance-to reject Lao's claims and declare her an outcast. To

satisfy the power-mad lust of a depraved would-be Emperor we

cast her aside and told everyone that she was dead to her own

family and house. We ordered her banished as a sort of mercy..."

Cologne spoke the word with unmistakable bitterness, "Then told

Prince Garnet that there was no longer an Amazon that bore her

name. The name itself was forbidden by Council Edict, and thus

we satisfied his need for vengeance and Prince Herb agreed

to...overlook her transgression."

"That's inhuman!" Ukyo declared, "You mean to say that all this

time...?"

"I never know," Perfume said in soft-voiced dismay, "Great

Grandmother...you never tell me the one whose place I took was

not a bad person."

"How could you do that to your own Granddaughter?" Ranma

was all but shouting, his fury so great that he actually seemed to

be manifesting a battle aura.

"Ranma, Ucchan," Nabiki urged more calmly, seeing the intense

struggle that the Elder was having with her own admission, "I

can't say that I'm any less upset than either of you, but I don't

think Elder Cologne is telling us this so she can boast about an

example of Amazon justice."

"You are so right, Child," Cologne softly murmured, "It would

have been better had we killed her outright. Betrayal by a loved

one is as cruel a fate as any I could wish on my worst enemy.

First the betrayal of the man who claimed to love her, then the

greater betrayal by those she most trusted. I cannot forgive what

we did out of necessity, nor do I expect to be forgiven by any of

you. That alone belongs to Lao, and I do not expect it from her

either. I am only telling you this because it is at long last time

that the truth be spoken somewhere. Were there anyone I trusted

less than you, Daughter-in-law, I would never have shared this,

even if you need to know the sort of person you will shortly be

confronting."

"Great Grandmother," everyone turned to see the look in

Shampoo's eyes as her tone was unusually level, "You do great

wrong by Cousin. Shampoo not care you have reason good or no,

you owe much explanation for why you let Perfume believe she

take place of bad person."

"Would it have done any good if I had told either of you this

before?" Cologne said tiredly, "But now you know the truth, that

we Elders are hardly perfect. If it means anything in

compensation, I did make a promise to Lao before she left that I

would show greater care with the both of you. That is also why I

was determined to see that your marriages would turn out far

better than hers did. I have devoted the last several months of my

long life to insuring that you have the sort of opportunities and

lives that I have always believed that you deserve. I may be old

but I do learn from my past errors and misjudgments. I only

wish..." she sighed, "Well, it does no good to dwell upon the

matter, and besides this I was not the only one who had strong

regrets. Another cherished pupil of mine left shortly after the

decision and vowed to find her own way among people who did

not cast aside a woman in such dire need. I later made inquiries

and discovered that there had been an assault against the Musk

subsequent to these occurrences and that Lao's son mysteriously

disappeared. I assume she had help in effecting his liberation

and made no further inquiries until the day Arigami Keiko

wound up-figuratively-upon our doorstep."

"So now you know that Lao's gone into the Piracy profession,"

Nabiki said simply, "So how does an Amazon become a

professional Slaver?"

"I wish that I knew the answer to that, Daughter-in-law,"

Cologne replied, "But perhaps it is just as well that I do not.

What I can say is that Lao is probably more dangerous than

anyone you have faced until now, even more dangerous than the

Ronin."

"How's that again?" Nabiki arched her eyebrows, recalling

vividly her fight with the renegade student of the North Star

system.

"There is a kind of training," Cologne said carefully, "That

involves learning to use your Chi to manipulate the force-lines of

your environment. When applied to one of the traditional Seven

Elements of Chinese Mysticism it can be a devastating power,

and Lao had almost perfected the school of what you might call

Tsunami Water Manipulation. Simply put she can draw upon

and channel the force of the universal medium, the element that

breaks down mountains and flows without containment. Lao

was just beginning to tap into her potential with this power, and

there is no doubt in my mind that it played a key role in her

electing to use the High Seas for her base of operations."

"So you think she's gotten a lot better since you've last seen her?"

Nabiki asked.

"In nearly ten years time?" Cologne arched an eyebrow, "I should

very much be surprised if she had not. To be certain she has had

excellent motivation to master her art, having the fuel of rage and

betrayal at those whom she once trusted. I cannot say as yet how

good she might actually be, but as I am coming along with you

on this trip it is may hope that she has not yet gotten good enough

to challenge an Elder."

"That may be a hell of a risk to take," Ranma said, "She can't

exactly look forwards to another meeting after what you pulled."

"Hiibachan," Shampoo said with more gravity than she had ever

used towards the Elder until now, "Ranma is right, you just anger

her with presence. Shampoo and Perfume will go talk to former

Cousin and tell her it not right what done by Elders. We tell her

you sorry, maybe she listen."

"I'm afraid not, Child," Cologne said sadly, yet with firmness,

"Because you are the one who will not be coming along on this

journey. It is up to your Airen and Perfume to represent the

Amazons, and their other respective Airen, and before you show

your temper around me, young lady, remember that you are

halfway through your pregnancy and cannot be risked on such a

dangerous mission."

Shampoo had opened her mouth, of course, but closed it just the

same as she mulled that over then glared resentfully at Cologne

before turning away with a snooty, "Hmph!"

Nabiki let out a sigh that she could hardly conceal. She had not

looked forward to trying to explain to Shampoo her own concerns

in this regard. Her wife was already chaffing under the

limitations imposed by her pregnancy, but there was no way in

Hell that Nabiki had any intention of putting either Amazon or

child in the line of danger.

Then an idea hit her and she smiled, saying, "Shampoo, you

know I would like nothing better than to have you around to

watch my back, but I have another request of you. Two young

girls have just shown up on our doorstep claiming to be my long-

lost sisters. I want you to keep an eye on them, to watch what

they do while they're around my father and sister. I don't trust

them just yet, especially with that ridiculous claim they're making

about my father having an affair behind my mother's back."

"It is possible that they are his children, you know," Cologne said

cautiously, "They seem to be sincere in that belief. I don't wish to

insult you, child, but remember that he is a former student of

Happy."

"Maybe so," Nabiki growled, "But until I see more evidence I'm

not trusting them around my dojo."

Shampoo considered this, her expression becoming thoughtful.

Ranma himself was studying Nabiki coyly, hearing the way she

had just declared the dojo as if it were her own personal

possession.

At last Shampoo seemed to come to a decision and said, "I do

this for you, Airen, and see that family is protected. If so-called

sisters mean harm, then Shampoo will protect her family. If they

no mean harm, then Shampoo will tell you that when you come

back from mission."

"Thank you," Nabiki said sincerely, although from the way she

spoke she could have just as well have been addressing herself to

the Kami. Almost as an afterthought she smiled and added the

word, "Airen," which made Shampoo brighten like the sun

coming out from a cloudbank.

"Perfume make promise to you, Cousin," Perfume said as she

nodded to Shampoo, "I take good care of your Airen, watch her

back and my Airen. No one harm either Airen while Perfume

stand ready, and that go as well for Ranma."

"Thanks," Ranma smiled, "But I can watch my own back. Just

keep Nab-chan and Ucchan safe and we'll call it even."

"Okay," Perfume said, smiling as she gave Ukyo a look that

would have melted butter.

"Ahem," Ukyo replied with only a slight hint of discomfiture, "I

guess we've squared that away, now all we need is for the rest of

our group to show up so we can brief them."

"That won't be easy," Ranma said, "They're not going to like this

story any more than we did."

"What story?" asked Akane as she appeared at the door to the

dojo with Ryoga stumbling along beside her, "What all did we

miss? And who are those two girls I just saw trying to feed

boiled eels to our father and Uncle Saotome?"

"A long story," Nabiki rolled her eyes, "Pull up a chair while we

wait for Keiko and Kodachi to get back from the mansion. I've

got a pretty good idea that they're going to need to hear this..."

Daybreak found a small group of figures gathered around one of

the piers in Tokyo harbor, readying a small yacht for the purpose

of an ocean voyage. Two burly men at work stowing equipment

and gear looked up at the approach of a pair of comely young

women and one of them smiled before straightening up and

asking, "Can we help you ladies?"

"Could be," Keiko smiled as she adjusted her sunshades and gave

this fellow a quick lookover. He was black and quite obviously

an American and well over six feet tall, built solidly of muscle in

a sleeveless shirt that looked two sizes too small for his girth. As

impressive as he was, he was all but dwarfed by the second man,

who in spite of appearances was not fat, just incredibly bulky

with the muscles of a Sumo Wrestler. Keiko finished sizing them

up and then asked, "Do either of you boys know where we can

find a man named Guile?"

The name had an instant effect on both men. The black man lost

his attempt at charm and paled. The Sumo wrestler also

straightened up and replied, "You're here to see the Colonel?

Ow...hey!" he turned resentfully to the other man, who had just

punched him one the kidney.

"Ixnay on the Olonelcay," the black man said in Pig Latin

English, "We're supposed to be doing this undercover,

comprende?"

"That is quite all right," said Kodachi in perfect English,

"The Colonel is expecting us. After all, Keiko here is his

daughter."

Both men did a double-take and blanched as they said,

"DAUGHTER?"

"That's right," said Guile himself as he appeared from the

upper deck of the yacht, reverting back to Japanese as he added,

"Sorry about Honda and Bison, they mean well but sometimes

they tend to stick their oversized feet in their mouths.

Everything's ready, just as soon as your friends get here."

"So, this is her, huh?" asked a very handsome looking man with

strawberry blond hair who came up alongside Guile, also

speaking flawless Japanese, "Can't say as I see a resemblance,

Guile. You sure she's your daughter?"

"Positive," Guile snorted, giving the man beside him a mocking

glare before turning back and saying, "Ignore the Playboy, he

thinks he's God's gift to somebody. Keiko-chan, this is Ken, he

owns the yacht we'll be taking. Ken, this is Keiko and her friend,

Miss Kuno Kodachi..."

"Kodachi will do," Kodachi smiled with a fluttering of her eyes,

"So you are the famous Ken Masters of Masters Industries. Your

father is the Third Richest man in the world by current estimate."

"Actually I think he's either second or third," Ken replied

nonchalantly, "Ever since the Sultan of Brunei got mixed up in

that scandal. I don't really keep track of stuff like that, but Dad

does pretty well on his own. I've got my own businesses to run

and that's enough for me to deal with."

"Says the five time winner of the International Black Belt

Awards," Kodachi mused, "Retired with no defeats to begin an

interesting career as a film star. Such modesty hardly becomes a

celebrity of your stature, but what on earth are you doing involved

in an operation like this?"

"Well," Ken shrugged as he climbed down the stepladder leading

to the main deck of the boat and came over to offer his hand to

both ladies, "Truth to tell I sometimes moonlight by going on

wild adventures just to prove I'm not all media hype, like that

Johnny Cage guy. I've been known to fight the forces of evil

myself from time to time, it's sort of like a hobby."

"Interesting hobby," Keiko smiled as she and Kodachi at last

climbed on deck then swayed a little with the ocean currents.

She was about to say something really complimentary to see if

she could get a rise out of Kodachi when a pair of eyes caught her

attention.

Or, more specifically, a pair of glowing red eyes looking at her

from the concealment of the lower deck. For a moment the look

transfixed her as deep-seated memories held Keiko rigid.

Kodachi noticed this and was about to ask her what was up when

the figure Keiko was staring at finally came out into the light,

moving with a wary caution as though trying to avoid frightening

both girls into a panic.

"Uh...hi," he said in a voice that was as guttural and beastlike as

his appearance. He had yellow-green skin and spiky red hair that

went all the way down his back like the crest of a deranged

Mohawk Indian and he had the basic proportions of a fairly well

endowed gorilla. Other than that he seemed to be making an

unsuccessful attempt to not seem frightening with his oversized

fangs and Ogre-like appearance.

"Don't mind Blanka," Ken Masters assured them, "He's harmless.

Mostly. Blanka, stop acting like you're on your first date and

come over here and shake paws with the Colonel's daughter."

"Sorry if I gave you a fright," the creature rasped, looking down

at his clawed feet before extending an equally clawed hand that

looked big enough to squeeze a coconut like a sponge. Keiko

took the hand with some reluctance and shook it while Kodachi

settled for a modest bow, never taking her eyes off the wild-

seeming creature.

"Charlie's here to help like the rest of my people," Guile

explained as he came down to join them, "He's actually quite

gentle as long as no one makes him angry, right Buddy?"

"Just don't make any cracks about feeding the monkey," Blanka

growled softly, "I always hate that."

"Right," Keiko and Kodachi said in perfect chorus, both girls

deciding on the spot to avoid the subject of the primate family

altogether.

"So you mates figure on coming along with us professionals,

huh?" asked a womanly voice before a beautiful blond wearing a

striped bikini and a blue barrette hat also emerged the interior

cabin. She turned her look towards Guile and said, "Got those

satellite reports you asked for, Colonel, along with the rest of the

data. Blanka's downloaded a whole file of weather reports along

with the personal testimonials of literally hundreds of witnesses.

I hope it's enough to give you the lead you're after."

"We'll know soon enough Lieutenant," Guile said before nodding

to his daughter, "That's Cammy White, another member of our

team. She does the intelligence work around here while Charlie

handles the electronics."

"Sort of a gift," Blanka grumbled, looking away as though

embarrassed.

"So this is everybody on your side, Dad?" Keiko asked aloud,

wondering if it was going to be crowded on the yacht when

Nabiki and the rest of their team showed up later.

"Just about," Guile said with a curious reluctance, "Only one

more player and..."

"You can stop waiting, I'm here."

Everyone turned around to see a brown haired Eurasian girl

approach, which prompted Cammy to glare and hiss, "What's she

doing here?"

"Easy," Blanka cautioned, "No Cat-fights on this voyage."

"Chun-Li?" the two men on the docks said in chorus before

looking at each other and adding, "Uh-oh..."

"What's wrong, boys?" Chun-Li asked, "Aren't you glad to see

me?" And then she saw Cammy White and glared, "What is

SHE doing here?"

"Oboy," Ken murmured, "I'm starting to see why my buddy Ryu's

sitting this one out..."

"At ease...both of you," Guile growled in a tone of authority,

"Chun-Li's coming along at her own request. She's informally

representing Interpol, which wants Madam Lao on a number of

International charges including Smuggling, Kidnapping and

Piracy. Unless you both give me your word to behave yourselves

on this mission I'll leave the both of you right here, do I make

myself plain?"

"Perfectly, Colonel," Cammy's tone was icy.

"All right," Chun-Li glowered, "But if she makes trouble this

time..."

"Think maybe it's too late to sit this one out?" Bison asked his

companion.

"I'm thinking about it," Honda replied, "Maybe it's not too late to

get a refund..."

"Konichiwa!" hailed a voice that caused them to look up in time

to see a group of six teenagers approach, along with one doll-like

figure resembling a piece of fruit left to dry out in the sun for a

decade, "I hope we're in time to get good seats on this trip. I

always hated traveling coach."

"Hey, Nab-chan," Keiko called out as she waved a hand, "Glad to

see you guys could finally make it! What took you so long?"

"Ever try to find your way here with public transportation?"

Nabiki smiled back, "I almost felt like Ryoga back there, and

that's with the cab ride at the end."

"Why does everybody always pick on me about my problem?"

Ryoga growled sullenly, "It's not like I asked to inherit the family

curse you know."

"Akane-chan," Kodachi purred, "I see you managed to keep from

losing your shadow this time."

"Practice," Akane said as squeezed Ryoga's hand meaningfully,

which caused the lost boy to look up and almost trip over his own

ankles.

"So this is the ship we're taking, huh?" Ranma said as he looked

the boat over, "Kind of small, isn't it?"

"You aren't kidding, Ranma," Ukyo agreed as she eyed the forty

footer, "Is it too late to charter out a full sized yacht? It looks like

it's going to be standing room only this trip."

"Hey, don't judge a boat by its surface," Ken replied, "You guys

are the ones coming along on this? It's not exactly a field trip you

know."

"You're a fine one to talk, Punk," Guile snorted, "I seem to recall

that you weren't much older than them when we first met in that

bar."

"How exactly did they manage to talk you into this one, Guile?"

Blanka stage-whispered, earning a glare from the blond-haired

giant.

"Let's just say they whittled me down for negotiation and leave it

at that," Guile grunted, not willing to admit that he meant the

term literally in this case as he absently felt his lumps from the

previous day.

"Excuse me," Chun-Li said to Ukyo as she stared at the younger

girl's backside, "Is that a spatula you're carrying?"

"Baker's Peel," Ukyo corrected, "What's your point?"

"Pig tailed girl no mind Airen," Perfume spoke up, "No convince

her yet to master Hidden Weapons technique. Think maybe she

like carrying weapon in open as status symbol."

"Permission to come aboard, Colonel?" Nabiki asked as she

adjusted her own shades to give the man an appreciative smile

that would have sent Shampoo ballistic had she been present.

"No problem," Guile said, "Come on board and makes yourselves

comfortable..."

"Wait," Ranma looked around and frowned, "Aren't we forgetting

somebody?"

"No," Nabiki said with a meaningful grin, "We're not. I made

sure to give Hinako-Sensei the wrong directions so that she

wouldn't be able to find this pier on time. With luck we'll be way

out into the harbor before she..."

"I guess luck must not be with you today, Tendo-san," a male

voice said from the deck as even Blanka seemed to jump in

surprise, finding a tall Chinese boy in a white long-sleeved robe

standing next to a short, angry-looking girl in a yellow dress.

"H-Hinako-Sensei?" Nabiki gasped as though seeing a specter.

"So," the young-seeming girl glared, "You were going to abandon

your teacher. I might have expected that from a delinquent such

as you."

"How did you...?" Guile started to say when the Chinese boy

smiled and said, "A little bird told me that there was mischief on

the breeze, or did you honestly expect to take my Perfume onto a

dangerous mission such as this without my knowledge?"

"Mousse?" Ukyo groaned, "Just what I needed...perfect."

"It seems that I have underestimated you this time, boy," Cologne

said with a narrowing of her eyes while Perfume made a point of

taking refuge behind Ukyo's flank, "I trust you will remember to

behave yourself on this voyage."

"I will respect the truce-such as it is-that exists between myself

and Kuonji," Mousse replied, "You need not fear that I am here

to cause trouble. I am only here to see that Perfume does not get

into more trouble than she can handle when you face the

Renegade. I, too, have heard the legends of her mastery of the

Elemental Combat styles, and you will need my talents in order

to defeat her."

"Perhaps," Cologne said before turning away, "We will see."

"Maybe this isn't such a good idea," said Bison, "Yo, Colonel,

think maybe having this many people on board might be

overdoing it a-OOF!"

Both he and Honda grunted out their surprise as they each

clutched hold of their midsections. Cologne hopped away on her

staff saying, "Well, what are you waiting for, boys? Climb on

aboard or we'll miss the tide."

"Uh, sure thing, Granny," Ken replied dubiously, "Cammy?"

"I'll start her up," Cammy replied, heading for the bridge area,

"But I'm inclined to agree with Muscles over there. Seventeen

people on a boat this size is pushing it a little."

"You want to tell them to get off?" Chun-Li asked, earning a

glare from the blond as Cammy murmured, "Don't give me ideas

just yet."

Bison straightened out, still holding his gut before murmuring to

Honda, "On the other hand maybe they'll fit in after all."

"You ask me they're overqualified for this gig," Honda agreed

sourly, looking towards Cologne before wistfully adding, "She

almost reminds me of my Grandmother, only Granny would have

hit me a wee bit lower..."

Continued.

Comments/Criticism/Musk Dynasty Official Records:

shadowmane

Lunacy on the High Seas as our intrepid band goes beyond the

South Sea Triangle...be there!

If you wish to check out my other works, Please check out my

Fanfiction webpage at: . or

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All related chapters of this series can be found there along with my

other works.


	21. Chapter 21

Nabiki 1/2

A Very Scary Thought

(An Altered Destiny)

Chapter 21, Part 1.

By

Jim Robert Bader

(Inspired by the works of Rumiko Takahashi and others)

The sea breeze wafted through the hair of Perfume as she stood at

the bow of the forty-foot yacht watching the shoreline recede with

a curious apprehension. She was adjusting rapidly to the

unsettling wave motion under her feet, learning to sway in

counter-motion so as to not have her center of balance be so

adversely affected. She had never been to sea on a vessel such as

this before and was finding the sense of being surrounded by so

much ocean unnerving. It was not simply the fact of her curse

that made her wonder at the wisdom of this journey, it was the

fear of being completely out of her element with minimal control

over the circumstances of her existence.

The ocean was such a violent medium. She had always assumed

that the sea was a mysterious frontier renown through song and

legend as something tranquil and infinite, but here she was

discovering how vast and restless it could be, so powerful and

unforgiving with mysterious depths that were beyond her

understanding. The harsh brine in the air was affecting her

senses and there were so many sounds to focus upon as though

her entire environment were one great crashing cacophony of

vibrations.

Yet still she remained calm, practicing inwardly the techniques

she had learned from Cologne through long and steady practice.

There was a rhythm behind the seeming chaos of the ocean,

and by attuning herself to this inner rhythm she was able to learn

to move in counter-tempo. By gently bending with the flow she

managed to maintain her inner balance rather than hurl her lunch

over the side, as she had at first been so strongly tempted.

Oddly enough she found it easier to filter out the vast majority of

the sensory input her acute senses were bombarded with so that

she could focus on the conversation going on behind her. Ukyo

was conferring with Nabiki on the presence of the Hinako

woman, both lounging around in revealing bikinis, acting as if

unaware that Perfume heard every word that they were speaking.

She was also stealing coy glances over her shoulder whenever

she thought that they were not observing, enjoying the leg show

while comparing the figures of the two women to whom her

destiny was bound by love and honor.

She envied her Airen and co-fiancee their freedom to expose their

bodies to the harsh sunlight. Being pale even for an Amazon with a

tendency to burn easily, she had to cover herself up with her normal

Chinese-style clothing, even though the warmth of daylight made her

already feel somewhat hot and cloying. Better that than suffer the

absolute agony of a sunburn, however, so she let the focus of her

mind center on their words, ignoring the other discussions being

held around on the boat by differing sets of parties.

She was not surprised when their conversation touched on her but

kept her face composed and emotionless so as not to betray her

attention and maybe discourage them from revealing things of a

personal nature.

"You two seem to be getting along just fine these days," Nabiki

noted with a tone that was almost wistful, "Hard to believe after

the way you used to protest your lack of interest."

Perfume was not looking at them when Nabiki said this but she

could almost feel Ukyo's blush and smiled a little in reflection.

Perfume allowed herself a small smile as she recalled the

awkward period during which she had courted Ukyo and tried to

gain her interest. The most Ukyo had been willing to share in the

beginning was her friendship, and that was _almost_ enough for

a time, but nothing to be treasured beside what she and Ukyo

now shared.

Of course her Airen was modest about the matter, which was

only to be expected. Ukyo did not have her expressive nature and

was always modest in showing her feelings, quite a lot like a

man when Perfume thought about the matter.

"Yeah, well, you know how it is...or was," Ukyo finally sighed in

a way that was both embarrassed and hopeful, "I had no idea

what I was getting involved with at the beginning, but now, with

the benefit of hindsight..."

"I see," Nabiki replied in that characteristically gentle-yet-smug

way of hers that was equal parts sympathetic and knowing,

"That's much the way I'd describe things between Shampoo and

me, only at the time that we met I thought I had a pretty good

idea of what I was getting into..."

"Yeah, but you had it easy," Ukyo snorted, "You were a guy

when it happened, while I was afraid of loosing my womanhood

if I got involved with another woman. The funny thing is that

now I feel more like a woman than I ever felt when I was

pretending to be a guy, telling myself that I didn't need a man to

make me feel fulfilled. When I'm with Perfume...well...I feel very

much like a woman...if you get my meaning."

"Oh, I get you," Nabiki chuckled softly, "Loud and clear. Don't

forget, I know what it's like to be on both sides of the pillow..."

"How can we ever forget?" Ukyo at once retorted, "You never let

us."

"Well...I still haven't done it with Ranma," Nabiki's tone was

filled with annoyance and regret on that point, "Or any other guy

for that matter, so that's something else we have in common."

"Don't remind me," Ukyo sighed, "Before I met him I always

thought all guys had one thing on their minds, which was more

than they could handle."

"He's too nice for the two of us," Nabiki leaned back and

stretched herself out, showing off her long, lean and entirely well-

curved body, "Cornering him is going to be a real challenge. As

much as I hate to say it, we're probably going to have to wait

until the honeymoon to nail him."

"Depending on whichever one of us goes first," Ukyo pointed out

with just a hint of her competitive spirit, "And don't you dare

suggest we do it as a threesome."

"Aw," Nabiki feigned disappointment, "You sure you wouldn't

like it better that way? We'd give Ranma every other guy's

fantasy, and if you'd prefer to do it with guys we could both gang

up on you for a sandwich, I'd even bet you'd like that."

"Pervert," Ukyo replied with a chuckle, "You're as bad as

Shampoo, you know that?"

"Oh, and Perfume there doesn't come up with some pretty

scandalous suggestions?" Nabiki challenged, "I've heard you two

make quite a bit of noise together, and that's not just the

complaint of all the neighbors..."

Perfume could well imagine from her silence how Ukyo was

blushing furiously and she smiled with a certain smug relish

before her Airen continued, "Well...yeah we kind of...experiment

a little after hours, nothing too serious, just a couple of naughty

girls doing things that would shock even you if I let you get away

with installing hidden cameras."

"Just think of the video rights," Nabiki pretended to lean towards

her in a predatory whisper, "I happen to have it on good authority

that Amazons are very...limber. You could make a considerable

fortune with the Ecchi crowd."

"And I suppose you've suggested this to Shampoo?"

"What, do I look crazy or suicidal?" Nabiki retorted, "She may be

uninhibited but my wife does have her pride and standards. Not

that I couldn't make a bundle doing it with some other girl in my

male form...only she'd probably geld me." This latter part was

spoken with a nervous whisper that implied that the idea was

only slightly facetious.

"So," Ukyo said at last after another long pause, staring at her

bare feet as she also stretched out with a sigh before turning up

and gazing out at the ocean, "Here we are...two women, both

trapped up in situations we'd never have believed possible if they

were happening to someone else, trying to make the best of a bad

deal, and actually doing pretty good all things considered. I

mean, life isn't always a bed of roses, but it could be a lot worse.

I've got Perfume and you've got Shampoo and we're not even

fighting about Ranma. You ever think maybe things are a little

too perfect?"

"Tendo Nabiki!"

Both Ukyo and Nabiki sat upright while Perfume tensed a little.

She heard the footsteps coming up the ladder and sensed the

presence of Hinako-Sensei approach them.

"I withdraw that last questions," Ukyo softly murmured.

"Tendo Nabiki," Hinako came to stand a short distance away

from the three girls and adopted a tone that made Perfume almost

believe that she could hear as scowling, "I have just spoken with

your younger sister and she has informed me that your cousin,

Kaneda, has been living with a foreign girl who is not yet of age,

and I am given to understand that she is carrying his child?"

"She's his wife, Sensei," Nabiki replied in such a way that

Perfume could imagine what she was thinking about the loose-

lipped nature of her sister, "They met when we were in China. It

was sort of hastily arranged by the tribal customs of her people,

but they've since made it official."

"Scandalous," Hinako said in clear disapproval, "The behavior of

you Tendos are quite shocking in the extreme. I suppose this is

partly why I have rarely seen Kaneda attending regular classes?"

"He's...not enrolled at Furinkan, Sensei," Nabiki explained, "He

attends a different school...mostly involving home tutoring..."

"Then he has no business being on Furinkan school grounds,"

Hinako stated flatly, "Yet I have seen him harassing young girls

and engaging in all manner of scandalous behavior with that

Grandfather of yours. That is hardly proper behavior for a

husband with a pregnant wife. I have a good mind to speak with

him about this matter the next time I see him."

"Oh, believe me," Nabiki said with clear reluctance, "He only

goes to Furinkan when it's absolutely necessary, and he wouldn't

show up at all if he had any choice in the matter. He's not a

Pervert, and if anything he's tried to put a stop to Gramps and his

antics."

"I'll believe that when I see more evidence," Hinako said, "Until

then you're both on report as far as I'm concerned. And you,

Kuonji-san, I have told you repeatedly about carrying that

weapon around with you everywhere you go. It is not ladylike to

adopt such mannish, aggressive behavior..."

"Yes Sensei," Ukyo responded, knowing well enough that it was

pointless to argue with Hinako.

"And your friend here," Hinako at last turned her attention

Perfume's way, "I have seen this young lady on school grounds

several times of late, but I do not believe that she is a student of

Furinkan..."

"Oh, she's going to enroll and take courses," Ukyo hastily

explained, "She my w-my good friend from China," she hastily

amended, earning an unseen smile from Perfume's direction, "Her

name is Perfume and she's the adoptive cousin of Kaneda-sama's

wife, who you saw back at the Tendo House."

"Perfume, eh?" Hinako asked, "I don't suppose she has a last

name?"

"Ah," Ukyo hesitated, then said, "Not really."

"Perfume's people are the Nyanichiczu of China," Nabiki hastily

supplied, "She comes from a small village named Joketsuzoku..."

"The home of the Chinese Amazons?" Hinako gasped, surprising

Nabiki as she suddenly became more like the child that she

resembled, "Are you really an Amazon, lady?"

"Yes, little one," Perfume answered, finally turning around and

giving the diminutive teacher a friendly expression, "I am village

Enforcer, and the Elder Cologne is my adoptive great

grandmother."

Ukyo's jaw nearly hit the deck as she stared at Perfume in

surprise, hearing her Chinese bride speak almost perfect Japanese

for the first time since she had met her.

"You're very pretty," Hinako said brightly, "I'll bet you have a lot

of boyfriends."

"Not really," Perfume lost most of her smile as she thought about

Mousse, "No."

"Well," Hinako paused for a moment before smiling again and

saying, "I guess I'll be seeing a lot more of you when you enroll at

Furinkan. You might even have me for a homeroom teacher like

Kuonji here."

Perfume's smile returned, giving Ukyo a wicked look before

replying, "I'd like that."

"Then you should know that you can always come to me if you

ever have any problems that you'd like to talk about with

somebody," Hinako turned around and said, "Well, that's what I

came to say, so right now I think I'll go and see if they have any

snacks to eat, I'm feeling hungry."

Ukyo waited until Hinako was gone before turning to Perfume

and saying, "How...?"

"I practice," Perfume replied, "Perfume listen good to Airen

speak. It hard to use proper words, but I not stupid. I get better

the more I rehearse in private."

"Never knew you spent that much time away from Ukyo," Nabiki

observed dryly, earning a withering look from both women.

"Ohiyo!" said Akane brightly as she and Kodachi came out on

deck to join them, both dressed in bikini attire, Akane's being the

more conservative in nature while Kodachi's...was practically

nonexistent, "Mind if we come sun ourselves with the rest of you

guys?"

"Be our guests," Nabiki replied, "It's a free deck," she paused

before adding, "You told Hinako-Sensei about Kaneda?"

Akane winced before she sat down with Kodachi on the opposite

half of the deck, "It...sort of slipped out while she was

interrogating me. I didn't mean to tell her about your relationship

with Shampoo..."

"Well, I for one think it perfectly scandalous," Kodachi grinned,

giving Nabiki a coy look, "Your cousin shacking up with a

foreigner, whatever is the world coming to these days? I certainly

do hope he will continue to do right by the poor girl."

"He will," Nabiki stated flatly, "Shampoo is a part of his life and

he will honor her no matter what happens. She couldn't be in

better hands, I assure you."

"I have no doubt that you do mean what is best for the girl,"

Kodachi mused, "But it must be awfully lonely for her, being

away from her people, surrounded by foreigners who don't even

speak her language. Perhaps she would be happiest if she moved

back to her village with her husband, not that I should much like

to see your darling Kaneda-sama vanish off to distant parts,

especially since it would mean that he would then experience the

same daunting limitations."

"Ah..." Nabiki seemed to be thinking that one over while Ukyo

decided to come to her rescue.

"I wouldn't worry about it," Ukyo said, "Shampoo seems happy

enough to me, and Kaneda's a terrific guy who'd never do

anything to make her feel unwanted or unwelcome. I know it's a

pretty big adjustment living in Japan, but outside of her

immediate family I don't think Shampoo really misses her

village. It's not the same living somewhere without someone

who honestly loves and cares for you, like Nab-chan."

Nabiki gave Ukyo a surprised and curious look, oddly warmed

that her childhood friend had come to her defense with such

welcome praises. Then she looked up past Ukyo and saw

Perfume smiling at the both of them before hastily glancing

away, and from that glance she derived more than one implied

meaning.

Perfume continued smiling to herself as she reflected on what

Ukyo had just said. It was true that living in Japan had been a

difficult adjustment at first, but over time she had come to see

that the people around her genuinely cared for one another and

never tried to maliciously poke fun at another person's weakness.

So very different from the village life she used to lead where she

had always felt like an outsider, and no one seemed to much like

her because of her weaknesses and what she represented. Given

all of that there was not much she really could miss besides the

beauty of the countryside, and Japan had its own beautiful sites

for modest compensation.

Besides which was the simple fact that Ukyo had stated for the

both of them: without someone with whom you shared their level

of intimacy a life in heaven would be as meaningless as the abyss

that had once been her existence.

"So," Kodachi turned her attention towards Ukyo, "You find life

is treating you well, Kuonji-san? I understand that your

restaurant business is a great success with your fellow students."

"Oh yeah," Ukyo smiled, "Hinako-Sensei may frown on me

having a business to run, but my okonomiyaki is a hit with

everybody. Perfume helps me out a lot, and so does the old

woman."

"And Mousse," Nabiki gently reminded.

"Yeah," Ukyo scowled, "Him too. Somewhat."

"I heard that, Kuonji," Mousse appeared as if on cue, "And I

resent the implication that I will do something to you on this

voyage in defiance of the truce that currently stands between us."

"Do you deny thinking about it?" Ukyo asked him.

"Of course not," he said serenely, "I just resent it."

"Well, then, you can see my problem," Ukyo stated flatly, "It's not

like I can trust you, even if you do work in my restaurant and I-

unfortunately-get to see you almost every day. The fact remains

that you still see me as an obstacle, and-how do you Amazons

love to put it?"

Perfume answered without humor, "Obstacles are for removing."

"It is true that you stand between me and the woman that I love,"

Mousse replied, "But I hold no malice towards you, even if you

do think little of me on account of what I am compelled to do by

the laws of our people. At first you were but a hapless victim of

circumstances, but of late you have taken to heart that which I

cherish, so it is inevitable that there must come a reckoning

between us. I do not relish having to take your life, but for

Perfume to be mine you must be made to relinquish your claims

on her now and forever."

"Not a chance," Ukyo glared at him, wishing she had her Bakers

Peel on hand to smack him one. Not that there was any chance

that he would try something with Nabiki and the others close

nearby, but Mousse's tone had an edge of desperation on it, and

he was an Amazon with hidden weapons skills and the speed to

strike faster than an eyeblink. He was giving off no sign of a

battle aura as yet, but that could change with hardly a split-

second of warning.

But he would not strike, she reminded herself, not with Perfume

standing in such a way that her hands were flexing in preparation

for calling forth her axes. Fast as he was, Mousse knew that

Perfume was much faster and would not hesitate to strike in the

defense of her Airen. It was enough of a deterrent to insure that

he would keep his distance and not start any trouble.

Of course trouble started anyway, not from either her or Mousse.

Rather it was Kodachi who turned on him and leveled an

accusing stare that made the sight-blind Mousse react a little.

"You may have agreed to abide by a truce, but that does not hold

with me," the Black Rose hissed from less than a meter's

distance, "We have unfinished business between us, you and I,

on the little matter of some cursed water you stupidly tossed. If

you had any idea of the pain and embarrassment you have caused

me..."

"If?" Mousse turned to her with surprising heat in his expression,

"If I know what you are going through, Miss Kuno? I think that I

very much do understand, in ways that you could begin to-

URK!"

This latter part was spoken just before he collapsed onto the deck

like the proverbial limp rag. Cologne hobbled over on her staff

and ignored his body as she turned to the others and said, "It

should be a while before he will trouble you again. My apologies

for not keeping better track of the blind fool, he slipped from my

side while I was otherwise engaged in conversation."

Nabiki looked down at the slumped Mousse and asked, "Why did

you allow him to come with us in the first place, Grandmother?

Promise or no, you knew he would cause trouble."

"True," Cologne replied, "But as difficult as he is to manage, he

can also be quite useful in a way. His skills as a fighter-while

not the equal to Shampoo or Perfume-are quite considerable

nonetheless, and where we are going we could use as many

assets as can be afforded. He is...cannon fodder, if you will...a

mere target for our enemies to direct their fire towards while

those of your who require less range in your attacks can slip in

closer while he distracts them."

"Them being?" Akane asked her.

"Lao's minions, of course," Cologne replied, "Perhaps even Lao

herself, though I doubt very much that Mousse would pose her

any sort of challenge."

"So we need him after all," Kodachi said in mild disgust, clearly

tempted to suggest heaving the Chinese boy over the railing, if

only to drag for fishbait.

"For now," Cologne agreed, and implied in her tone was the

suggestion that now would not necessarily mean later.

"By the way," Nabiki said, deliberately changing the subject,

"Where's Keiko gone off to? I half expected that she'd remain

with you two."

"She's down below talking with her father," Akane replied, "We

thought we'd give the two of them some privacy. The others are

either busy or conferring over some charts and pictures about our

probable direction. Where's Ryoga?"

"Up at the front of the boat with Ranchan," Ukyo replied, "The

boys are enjoying the view of the waves breaking over the bow..."

"Either that or they're spewing up their lunch where they think we

can't watch them," Nabiki said slyly, "I don't think either one of

them have ever been at sea before...or at least Ranma hasn't. I

never have been able to figure out how Ryoga gets to some of the

places he's been to."

"Neither can he," Ukyo smiled, "If you ask me it's like he had a

curse of his own, and it doesn't involve water."

"I don't see why you guys are always being so mean to Ryoga-

kun," Akane said crossly, "It's not like it's his fault he gets lost

sometimes, it's just something he has to deal with."

"Why Akane-chan," Kodachi smiled, "Why be so defensive about

it? We all like Ryoga very well, but one might think with you it

was something more serious."

"I don't know what you're talking about," Akane looked away

with a nervous expression, "He's just a nice guy I happen to like.

Why does everybody always make something more out of it than

they have to?"

Perfume had to smile to herself at Akane's evasive denials. If

only she had hearing like mine, the Amazon thought, she would

be able to eavesdrop on a very interesting conversation...

"Man...when are you finally going to tell her?" Ranma was just

then saying in exasperation, "At this rate you two are never going

to get together!'

"Don't push me!" Ryoga snapped before turning to look at the

waves that were causing their boat to bob up and down in such

an alarming manner. In all truth he hardly noticed this, sunk so

low into depression that he barely even felt when Ranma

punched his arm somewhat harder than was called for.

"What is the problem?" Ranma asked, "You both like each other,

right? So why don't you just try telling her instead of getting so

tongue-tied every time she tries to get a conversation going?"

"Oh, and like you have it easy talking to Nabiki?" Ryoga growled

irritably.

"Huh?" Ranma blinked, "Hey, I talk to her all the time, and

Ucchan too..."

"Have you ever told either one of them that you love them?"

Ryoga asked, hardly noticing the confused and panicked look

that crossed his friend's features as Ranma considered this,

"That's how it is for me whenever I try talking to Akane. She's

so...beautiful...and her eyes...that smile she turns on me...it's

just...I can't take the thought of her maybe telling me she doesn't

like me that way. You know, like some people say they just want

to be your friend when you'd like it to be something more with

them?"

"I...I don't...I can't say I know what that's like," Ranma admitted.

"Of course not," Ryoga said bitterly, "You just let yourself be

walked all over by Kodachi, so maybe you're afraid of something

like that happening with Nab-chan, only I don't think it ever will.

She's crazy about you...and so is Ucchan. You've got it lucky that

they both don't need to be told how you feel, but if Akane doesn't

feel about me the way I do about her...I'd have nothing to live

for."

Ranma blinked again, then said, "Hey man, don't talk like that!

You gotta know she likes you...a lot more than she ever liked me.

You're just scared of admitting it, that's all. I'll bet she feels the

same way about you, and she's just as scared about you telling

her to take a hike."

"I'd never do that!" Ryoga protested, "I could never stand to see

her hurt, and I'd never do anything to hurt her. I'd die before I let

her come to any harm...I just don't know if I can stand hearing

her tell me that she doesn't feel this way about me. Even if she

rejects me, though, I'll always love her and I'd do anything to

protect her or make her happy."

Ranma looked sidelong at the lost boy, hearing the despair and

dread in his tone and wondering how anyone could be so

depressed when they had so much else going for them. He had

only known Ryoga a few months but he'd found the boy to be

courageous and a competent Martial Artist. The two of them

trained together regularly, and for the past month they had done

so under Cologne's close supervision, learning new tricks and

new fighting techniques to add to their own distinctive styles.

They knew each other fairly well by this point, even had made a

few overtures towards a tentative friendship, but as yet they had

not fully gotten over the initial rivalry they felt. Training against

Ryoga sometimes got pretty rough with both boys going all out to

beat the tar out of one another on a regular basis.

That competitive spirit, however, did not apply to their respective

private lives. In that regard Ranma felt very much as Ryoga did

and was trying to find courage to face his own relationship

troubles by encouraging Ryoga to overcome his nervousness

around Akane. It was as if he hoped to draw strength in himself

by using Ryoga to test out an approach, which he had to admit

was not a very nice thing to do if there were to be any real

friendship between them in the future.

"I think I know Akane pretty well," Ranma said at last, "We've

spent the last ten years growing up around each other, and she's

almost like my sister. We don't always get along, but I know for

a fact that she smiles differently for you than she does around

other people."

"She does?" Ryoga asked with a hopeful note that was

extinguished a moment later as he stared out at the horizon and

said, "But what if it's just pity she feels, not real affection? I don't

know what to do when I'm around her...I...I want to hold her in

my arms and..."

"Hey," a voice intruded on their consciousness, "What are you

kids doing up here? You could fall over the edge and wind up in

the propellers before anybody knows what happened!"

"We're okay," Ranma glanced over his shoulder, seeing the huge

black boxer standing on the forward deck with legs spread wide

to maintain his balance, "We know how to keep our balance, so

there's really no danger."

"Kid," the big man snorted, "You got a lot to learn if you think

there ain't never any danger. You sit up front like this and you're

just asking for Ol' Father Neptune to come up along and smack

you down one."

Ranma studied the other man a minute then smiled and said,

"You're Tyrone Bison, aren't you? You were the heavyweight

champion in America for four straight years, undefeated."

"Hey, that's right," Ryoga said in surprise, "I thought you looked

familiar. You fought with Hideo Yogashi in that Tokyo match

some six or seven years back..."

"You kids got a good memory," Bison nodded grimly before

staring out to see, "But it was more like eight years back, feels

more like twenty. I was Heavyweight Champion of the world,

once, had a good shot at beating Ali's record. All gone now,

thanks to that scumbag Vega..."

"Who's Vega?" Ranma asked and got a cautiously surprised look

from Bison, as if the big man had not been fully aware that he

had said the name aloud.

"Just forget about him, kid," Bison replied, "You're better off not

knowing."

"Ah," Ryoga looked uneasy about something as if trying to find

the right way of phrasing his next question, "Uh...what happened

in your last fight...?"

"You mean about the ear thing?" Bison's expression darkened,

but instead of getting angry he just smiled, "Another long story.

Let's just say I wasn't myself when it happened.."

"What did happen then?" Ranma asked, "You had a perfect

record before your last fight. What made you do something like

that and throw your whole career away?"

"You really want to know?" Bison asked, "Do you really want to

know what happened to me? What turned my whole life into a

sewer and put me through a living hell for three full years of my

life? I'll tell you what happened to me, kid...Vega happened."

"Who is this Vega you keep talking about?" Ryoga asked, "Is he

your enemy?"

"Oh yeah!" Bison laughed a hard, bitter laugh, "He's my enemy

all right, he's everybody's number-one all time favorite kick-em-

while-they're-down kind of bad guy, and if he's still around I'll

want another shot at him, a permanent shot at the title. Of course

I'm going to have to get in line for it since everybody on this boat

who's a team player's got something against Vega. Take Chun-

Li for example, Vega murdered her father."

Both boys just started, then stared at the brown-haired Chinese

girl presently steering the yacht at the control station. From

where they were they could not make out much more than a

general impression, but they could see the firm set of her lovely

features, the hard fix of her gaze and the tell tale signs of a

determined personality. Each tried to imagine themselves and

what they would be like if they had lost a parent to violence.

"Eight years," Bison said, sounding more than faintly amazed at

the time lapse, "Eight years ago I was on the top of the world, I

had everything you could want, and I wanted it all, baby. For a

kid who grew up in the Projects it was like running the Marathon

and winning the Lottery several times over. The Tokyo match

was supposed to be a publicity stunt to generate interest. I was

looking for some new challenges, there weren't any challenges

left in the boxing world. The guys I'd fought in my last ten

matches were bums. My manager said if I wanted to meet a real

fighter I should head to the Orient, so Tokyo was really supposed

to be just my first stopover.

"Then Vega's goons approached my me with an offer that I didn't

want any part of. I'd lost my best friend and kid brother to drugs,

and these scum wanted me to help them peddle their dope.

When I told them no they said I should throw the fight instead to

keep their backers happy. I threw them out personally, and my

manager with them, only I tossed him out a window. Too bad

there was a pool underneath to break his fall, I would have liked

to see him bounce a little. Would have served him right for

selling me out like that to those Shadaloo jokers.

"Next day I'm in my room and getting prepped and ready when

this...guy shows up from out of no where. I don't remember the

details too good, but he was one scary dude with a gaze like ice

and a manner that'd scare Frankenstein speechless. I think we

fought and I lost, but it don't matter which way. He did

something to my head, messed me up pretty bad, made some

kind of hypnotic suggestion or something then let me go again. I

didn't even remember he even paid me that visit until many years

later, I just know I went into that fight with some kind of buzzing

in my head, and then when things started to get rough against

Hideo Yogashi I...well...I suddenly had this unbelievable urge to

get down and dirty and forget all the rules of boxing. I bit him

like we was in a Street Fight, and that's how I got myself banned

from the wonderful world of professional Boxing. Next thing I

know that scary dude is back again and makes me another offer,

and I wind up serving Shadaloo the next few years without

question."

"They brainwashed you?" Ranma gasped.

"Didn't take too much work," called the heavyset man gruffly

chuckled with no real humor, "Guile and Chun-Li always say

there ain't much in my head that needs washing. Cammy's

another matter...they did the same number with her bleach blond

pate, only they used her as their own personal Assassin.

Shadaloo's like that...they recruit Street Fighters and use us like

pawns, make us into good little soldiers in their war against

civilization as we know it."

"And now you're fighting them?" Ryoga asked.

"Oh yeah," Bison slapped his meaty fist against the palm of one

hand, "Every way I can. I may be just a big dumb brick from the

Projects, but I never took nothing from nobody that I never

earned before that Vega creep did a number on me. Some days I

can't even look at myself in a mirror without thinking on what I

was..." he looked away with a pained expression, "Anyway it's

probably moot. We took care of Vega last time we met...stopped

him cold, and maybe I hope forever. Shadaloo's another

matter...that work goes on even without the monster." He paused

another moment, then he snorted again, ""Course what have I got

to complain about? Compared to Blanka I've got it easy. He

used to be human until Vega used him like a guinea pig trying to

make the perfect soldier."

"Telling tales out of school, mate?" asked Cammy White as she

appeared on the deck looking like a gorgeous swimsuit model

with her long legs and equally long blond tresses. In spite of

themselves both Ranma and Ryoga had to do a double take and

were glad none of the other girls were present to take notice of

their reaction.

"Just talking about what your hairdresser told me last time I

asked," Bison returned a look of feigned innocence and said,

"What do you want, White?"

"The Colonel wants you to recheck the gear," Cammy replied,

"Says we may be going into action a lot sooner than we thought.

He and Blanka have been going over the latest satellite photos

and they think we may have a lead on our elusive pirate."

"So soon?" Bison looked skeptical, "That doesn't sound very

likely."

"Know what you mean," Cammy shrugged, "I don't believe it

either, but the latest reports do have these pirates operating close

enough to this side of Japan that it's worth being prepared. Once

we're out in International Waters we'll start to do a full-spectrum

sweep. Lao's supposedly got some kind of Stealth technology

that makes her ship almost invisible to radar. We'll know soon

enough when we get closer to our objective target zone."

"I don't like this," Bison turned around and maneuvered past the

blond beauty, "Call me a Pugilist from the old school, but when

somebody's got an ace like that up their sleeve they don't just

hang out with a 'Come and Get Me' sign painted across their port

bow. This has got to mean trouble."

"Tell me about it," Cammy swept her glance towards Ryoga and

Ranma, "You kids shouldn't sit like that while this ships in

motion, you could both wind up as shark bait."

"Thanks," Ranma said as he started to stand up, "We were just

about to leave anyway..."

"Hey, wait!" Ryoga reached out suddenly and grabbed him then

pointed, "What's that up ahead?"

"Huh?" Ranma asked, shading his gaze with a hand as she tried

to follow the other boy's gesture, "I don't see any...wait a

minute...what's that cloud doing out there?"

"Cloud?" Cammy also shaded her eyes but did not seem to follow

their gesture, so she called out over her shoulder, "Hey Chun!

Toss me a pair of binoculars, will you?"

"Why don't you get them yourself," Chun-Li muttered in a voice

low enough not to be caught by anyone but Perfume's sharp

hearing, but just the same she reached over and took up a pair

while steering with one hand. Rather than give them to Cammy,

however, she raised them to her own eyes and stared at a point

where the boys were still pointing.

"Typical," Cammy growled, then shaded her eyes again as she

tried to focus upon whatever it was that the boys had spotted.

Meanwhile Nabiki had left her companions to join Guile, Keiko,

Ken Masters and the ogre-like Blanka who were presently

gathered around a glass table surface staring at some liquid

crystal image displays that looked incredibly modern and

certainly implied a link to technological resources not available to

an ordinary group of mercenaries. Guile was looking very

intensely at one image as she approached and she caught him

saying, "That's definitely a ship of some sort, but I can't make out

what kind. I see three masts, which should mean it's probably a

schooner, but..."

"Hull shape looks more like a Chinese Junk on the pull back,"

Ken replied, "The distortion's pretty heavy...whatever they're

using to camouflage their hull must put out a pretty strong signal.

I wonder why we can't get anything on the infrared though

besides a bunch of gray-green shapes."

"Hi there," Nabiki smiled as she eased up alongside then, "I take

these photo-images have something to do with Madam Lao and

her pirates?"

"You could say that," Guile replied, "We've been tracking an

anomaly on the high seas for the past several days. It's located

roughly in the area that we're headed for, but it wasn't this close

to shore the previous day. If I didn't know any better I'd swear

that it was headed in this general direction."

"That is strange, Dad," Keiko remarked, "I know Lao pretty well

and I can tell you she's full of surprises. Fact is I've never really

told anybody about everything that happened...I don't think

anyone else would believe most of it, except Elder Cologne."

"Then maybe we ought to ask the old lady what she knows about

this," Ken suggested.

"Just as long as you ask nicely," Cologne replied as she appeared

quite suddenly between Ken and Nabiki, balancing on her staff

so that she could see the table displays clearly, "Very interesting

technology, far superior to anything I have ever seen. It seems

you have managed to obtain an image of an Elemental

Inversion."

"A what?" said Guile, looking sharply at the old woman.

"Elemental Inversion," Cologne repeated as if explaining to a

small child, "I thought you knew something about Chi

manipulation. There are a planes of existence where the elements

of nature are gathered into separate concentrations along perfectly

balanced correspondence frequencies. Fire, Air, Water, Metal,

Wood, Stone and Aether. Lao's correspondence is with the plane

of Water, that was the element that she is trained in and her skills

at manipulation have apparently grown to be quite formidable.

What you are seeing here is an entire field surrounding this ship

that has been incorporated around elemental force lines of the

universal fluid."

"I see what you're saying," said Blanka in his gravely voice, "An

Elemental Inversion is a kind of Chi-force manipulation that

warps the field around an area along magnetic force lines...like

that uncontrolled experiment the US Navy did in the '40s. Only

how can they control the feedback that builds up along the

subspace inversion lines?"

"You're thinking of a static field generator," Cologne replied,

"But a stable field can be erected if you use the technique of

multiple folding and draw upon the Elemental plane itself to

empower the inversion, so one field cancels out the other and

creates a static flux that is relatively stable."

"But what maintains it in a stable balance?" Blanka asked, "The

resistance factor must be enormous..."

"It can be done," Cologne stated firmly, "But it does require a

device to regulate the flow of unbalanced forces so as to maintain

a perfect equilibrium..."

"I'm sure you two must find this a fascinating discussion," Guile

said, "But would you mind filling the rest of us in on what you've

discovered?"

"Forgive me," Cologne replied, "I had meant to say that Madam

Lao, my former apprentice, knows enough about what you might

term as magic to understand how to erect the type of barrier that

you see here in these special images. I suspect that she has

obtained the possession of several rather powerful artifacts in

order to mask her activities from normal outside detection. I am

rather impressed that you were able to find her at all...what I

don't understand is why the progression of these sightings on

your map indicate that she is moving towards us in a very

specific direction."

"You think maybe she knows that we're looking for her, Elder?"

Keiko asked.

"How could she?" Ken wondered, "This mission is classified.

Even we didn't know we'd be heading out this soon until..." he

froze in realization.

"Until the reports that so-conveniently got handed told us where

to look to find our lady pirate," Guile finished for him with a dark

expression, "Those ships were attacked but left surprisingly intact

with most of their crews alive to report on their whereabouts.

The profile for Lao is that she eliminates resistance and severs all

lines of communication while leaving most of her victims still

breathing."

"She just takes the women," Keiko finished for him, "Or more

precisely she takes the ones who have the most market value. I

know how she works, Father...I was her...confidant for close to

three full years."

"Do you think she would be laying a trap like this expecting

someone to come after her, Kei-chan?" Nabiki asked.

"It's certainly possible, but why?" Keiko wondered, "Lao never

does anything without a reason...at least a reason that makes

sense to her."

"An enigma," Cologne replied, staring at the map with a curious

focus, "She is coming this way as if she expects us to arrive and

obligingly fall into some sort of an ambush."

"An ambush?" Guile frowned, "Are you certain?"

"It is almost certainly what I would do if I knew an enemy were

seeking my capture," Cologne remarked thoughtfully, "But how

would she know to suspect us...?"

"Colonel!" Honda called out from the front of the cabin, "We got

something on sonar...it's pretty faint, but it's definitely an echo."

"Engine noise?" Guile asked.

"No outside engines, just our own, which I've calibrated into the

Sonar," the huge oriental replied without looking up from his

console, "This thing's making wave noises that are pretty

huge...it's big whatever it is, and it's getting closer. Nothing on

the radar but..."

"Guile! You'd better get up here!" called Chun-Li from above,

"We've got trouble!"

"What now?" Guile grumbled as he headed out of the cabin,

followed by the others, excluding only Honda who murmured, "I

got a bad feeling about this..."

Guile climbed the ladder up to the control deck where Chun-Li

was holding the binoculars out for him while maintaining control

over the wheel with her other hand. Guile took the binoculars but

before he lifted them to his eyes he could already see what looked

like a low-lying cloud passing a few miles off the horizon. He

brought the binoculars up to his eyes then slowly said, "Uh oh..."

"Uh oh is right," Chun-Li replied, "I think we won't have to

worry about finding her...she's managed to somehow find us."

"What is that?" Nabiki asked as she beat everyone else in joining

them on the top deck, "An island or a cruise ship?"

"That's not an island," Chun-Li replied, "I thought at first it was

an atoll, but its been moving towards us at a steady speed and

course."

"It's too big to be a normal ship," Guile said as he lowered his

binoculars and stared at the obscure mass that was hidden

beneath the rolling cloudbank, "It's at least a hundred meters

long, it's got to displace over half a metric kiloton at least, but it's

moving at a good twenty knots and at the rate we're headed

they'll be on us in just under five minutes."

"Right about the time we cross into international waters," Chun-

Li noted in suspicion.

"Yet it's moving without engine noises," Nabiki murmured

thoughtfully, "But something's powering it and generating that

stealth cloud. Colonel, I recommend we take evasive action, or

whatever it is you do in nautical terms, and keep our distance

until we know more about what we're dealing with."

"A good idea," Guile agreed, "Chun-Li, turn us around and take

us back into Japanese territorial waters."

"I was just about to recommend it myself," Chun-Li replied,

already turning the wheel while pulling back on the throttle. The

yacht made a full turn at high speed and began to point back

towards the distant shoreline when of a sudden, without warning,

the engine sputtered and died, prompting Chun-Li to gasp, "What

the hell?"

"Bison!" Guile called out as Chun-Li tried and failed to get the

motor started again, "Where the hell are you?"

"You rang?" Bison poked his head up from the compartment

where he had been checking air tank pressure.

"Take a look at our engines and see if you can figure out why

they won't start," Guile replied.

"Why am I always stuck playing the mechanic?" Bison griped as

he moved to a panel and opened it, then pushed a few buttons

that called up a display image on yet another liquid crystal

monitor. An image of the engine appeared as the Boxer ran a

quick diagnostic, then his expression became animated, "Colonel!

You're not gonna believe this!"

"Try me," Guile replied.

"The engine checks out just fine...except for the slight fact that it's

clogged with some kind of interference."

"What kind of interference?" Guile wondered.

"Getting the info on that right now...oh boy! Would you believe

the valves are clogged with sea weed?"

"Sea weed?" Guile blinked, "Are you sure of that?"

"I'm going for a visual confirm," Bison said as he motioned the

girls presently standing on the rear deck to clear away to the

sides, then reached down and opened a floor hatch that had been

barely noticeable upon the deck, exposing the engine to view.

This time he was far from the only one to react to the

incomprehensible sight that greeted him before he tersely said,

"Yeah, I'm sure all right. That's definitely seaweed."

"Nani?" Akane stared at a large-scale engine that had somehow

gotten wrapped in the brown cords of the tough-fibred sea plant

that had somehow wrapped itself entirely around the device as

though it had miraculously grown there in the space of a few

minutes.

"Seaweed doesn't grow naturally like this," Kodachi said at her

side, "I should know, I've done enough tests on experimental

horticulture using saltwater plants in my Marine Biology class."

"We've got to get that stuff off of it or we're dead in the water,"

said Cammy as she came around to see what was causing all the

upset.

"Nice idea, White," Bison said, "You got any suggestions?"

Ukyo straightened up and said, "Think you can handle that, Per-

chan?"

"Is good possibility," Perfume replied as she flexed both arms

and suddenly held up her two broad axes.

"What the...?" Cammy blinked, "Where did those come from?"

"Never mind," said Mousse, now fully recovered, "I can do this,

Perfume. It needs a fine touch or you might damage the

engines."

"Say you," Perfume scoffed, "I no hit machine like some half-

blind fool I know."

"Why is everyone behaving like this?" Hinako herself asked as

she appeared from her cabin, then blinked, "What happened to

the engine?"

"UH, guys?" Ranma called out, "I think you'd better see this!"

"What now-KUSO!" Nabiki swore, as did everyone else save

Hinako-Sensei (who looked at them all crossly).

"Oboy," said Ryoga as the wave of fog swept over their stricken

vessel, at once concealing everything beneath a thick hazy mist

that cut visibility down to less than thirty meters.

"Well, this is a fine mess we're in," complained Cammy, "Haven't

seen fog this bad since I last went to London..."

"Would you shut up?" Chun-Li snapped.

"Make me!" Cammy growled.

"Both of you be quiet!" Guile ordered, waving his hands as he

turned to say, "You hear that?"

"Oh my," said Cologne, angling her head as though to cock an

ear at the sudden silence, "I think we has best grab hold of some

floatation devices..."

"Why?" asked Ryoga.

"Because we are all about to take an unscheduled swim,"

Cologne said ominously, inclining her head towards the

starboard side of the vessel.

They all turned to see the cause for the growing sound of wave

motion, as well as the strange stringed instrument sounds that

were approaching from the given direction. They all looked up as

one and saw the looming mass slicing through the water on a

collision course. A moment later it crashed into the yacht and

split its fiberglass hull asunder. Amidst the groans and screams

that followed there was the impression of something falling

towards them, and then the cold, hard impact of salt water

closing around them all in one terrible minute of agony and

confusion...

Continued.

Comments/Criticism/ACLU funded lawsuits:

shadowmane

Next: Madam Lao, Renegade Amazon, Pirate and Slaver...be

there!

Nabiki 1/2:

A Very Scary Thought

(An Altered Destiny)

Chapter 21, Part 2.

By

Jim Robert Bader

(Inspired by the works of Rumiko Takahashi & Others)

Akane was barely conscious of having fallen overboard as the

suddenness of events left her with half-formed impressions of

something big crashing against their hull. Almost instantly she

found herself diving headfirst into the water with a jarring force

that frightened her as she belatedly remembered why she had

always avoided contact with the water. She had no memory

beyond the point when her lungs began to fill with the cold, briny

liquid, but she had a vague impression of someone swimming up

to her, then of soft lips pressed against her mouth, and of the

definite sensation that this was the moment when she had ceased

to be drowning.

Now she found herself upright but experiencing a slight chill for

some reason that escaped her. A moment more and she finally

became aware of three very important things:

1.-She was alive, if naked, and obviously in no immanent danger

of drowning.

2.-She was dangling by her wrists above the floor with her toes

barely touching the deck, and

3,-Someone else was with her.

Make that more than one person, she mentally amended,

discovering that another naked form was dangling at her side,

and by focusing on her peripheral vision she was able, at length,

to determine that this person was Kodachi. Her friend was as

nude as herself at the moment, and certainly as helpless, but she

seemed also to be slightly out of it as though having trouble

regaining full consciousness. Akane wondered if Kodachi had

been drugged or was merely in a semi-awake state, not yet fully

aware of her surroundings. With Kodachi you never really knew

for certain about such things, she only knew that they were alive

and together...

And that there was someone else in the chamber with them.

"Good, you're both awake at last. Now we can get started."

"Huh?" Akane turned her head but found that she could not look

behind herself to see whomever it was that had spoken.

"Begin by giving me your name."

"Who the hell are you?" Akane asked, only to gasp in surprise as

something cracked against her rump, startling her as much at the

suddenness of it all as because it was painful.

"I will ask the questions here," the voice replied, "Who are you.

It is a simple enough question."

Akane grit her teeth and growled, "Tendo Akane."

"Now, that wasn't so hard, was it?" the voice faintly purred, "You

two are among the last of those to finally wake up, and I've

finished interrogating the others, so it's not as if I don't already

know the answers to at least some of the things I will ask you."

"Then why ask me at all?" Akane said, then gasped again as she

felt another crack against her bottom.

"I said," the voice repeated insistently, "I will be the one to ask

the questions. It is not your place to ask them. I will ask and you

will answer, that is the way of things inside this chamber, and if

you have any doubts on that, take it up with our complaint

department. Now then, perhaps I will ask the same thing of your

companion."

Kodachi seemed to come to life just then, lifting her head as she

tried to look over her shoulder and remarked, "I take it then that

we are not supposed to speak unless spoken to?"

Akane heard as much as saw the lash this time, only it was not

her bottom that was swatted, nor her voice that yelped in pain,

but Kodachi's.

"You are correct," the voice said, sounding surprisingly pleased

instead of angry, "You seem to have a better grasp of the

situation here, Miss Kuno. Perhaps you might care to explain to

your friend the significance of your mutual position."

"May I be permitted to ask if you are our captor, the dreaded

pirate Madam Lao?" Kodachi asked in as humble a tone as her

pride would allow.

A double crack this time, only it sounded against both of their

bottoms with near simultaneous precision. After their mutual

yelp died down to a faint whimper the voice calmly replied,

"Some have called me that...and far worse, I assure you."

"Then..." Kodachi said with great care, "We are not just your

prisoners...you mean us to be your slaves?"

"Slave is such a harsh-sounding word in these modern times," the

voice cooed pleasantly, "I prefer to think of you as valuable

commodities for exchange and trade at fair market value. You

each have qualities that I find most appealing, even if at least one

of you looks as though she could stand to lose a few more pounds

and maybe take up swimming lessons."

"Hey!" Akane protested before she could think to stop herself, but

this time the whip snaked around her body to flick against one of

her nipples, causing her to gasp again at the unexpected stinging

sensation.

"Just kidding," the voice assured her pleasantly, "I really do think

you have a nice figure, and you are very cute as well, while your

friend is undoubtedly a rare beauty, a dark haired queen amid the

roses."

"That is my other name, Madam...I mean..." Kodachi hastily

amended, only to receive a flick against her own exposed nipples,

which made her gasp and tense her whole body in dismay.

"Yes, I know," Lao replied matter-of-factly, "Black Rose Kodachi

they call you, a rather appropriate name all things else being

considered."

"What...do you want with us?" Akane braced herself for another

whipping, but the lash failed to come this time, so she started to

relax a little, only to find it snake around and find her between

the inner thighs. Her yelp of pain this time was mixed with a

wash of other, more indescribable sensations.

"I should think that this was obvious," Lao said in faint

disappointment, "Two lovely girls hanging naked at the mercy of

the terrible lady pirate. Whatever is to become of you, your fate

hanging in the balance?"

"By...what name shall we call you, your munificence?" Kodachi

asked with a note of genuine fear in her voice, but instead of a

whipping, this time a hand reached out to curl itself about her

long, dark tresses until it grabbed her by the hank and tipped her

head back and around so that she found herself looking into the

face of a predatory beast with yellow eyes...

No, that had to be a trick of the light. It was a human face she

saw, one both attractive and yet chilling to look upon with a mad

gleam of delighted hunger in her expression. There was neither

pity nor remorse in that face, yet there was a hint of desire and

compassion as she smiled down at Kodachi then purred, "My

lady will do for the present, but in time you will learn to call

me...Mistress..."

Consciousness returned slowly to Nabiki, though her last

memories were of the waves washing over her form, of the

change that instantly came over her as she fought for survival,

fear filling her lungs with the dread for the collective welfare of

herself and her people...

She was aware that she was not currently having any difficulty

breathing, nor did she feel even moderately damp. She was

aware that her hands were currently behind her back and seemed

to be held there by some manner of restraint. Her bare feet,

however, encountered something coldly metallic, and as she

opened her eyes she discovered the bars of the cage in which she

was presently hanging.

Or rather she was hanging in a cage alongside several others,

each dangling from the ceiling by a single chain and each

occupied by a separate member of her party. So far as she could

see only the men were currently present, which led to a rather

uncomfortable conclusion that a quick glance at herself helped

clarify immensely.

Or rather a glance at HIM-self as the contours of his body were

quite unmistakably male at the moment.

"Nab-chan, are you all right?"

Nabiki turned his head to find that the source of this imploring

comment was Ranma. The low hiss of Ranma's voice implied

deep concern, but Nabiki was forced to reluctantly say back, "The

name's Kaneda, and I'll let you know as soon as I figure that one

out."

"Huh?" said Colonel Guile, who was hanging in another cage,

"Where did you come from, and why are you wearing that thing?"

Nabiki glanced at himself again and realized that he was still had

on the same bikini he had been wearing when their yacht was

capsized. The slender strings attached to three triangles were

ridiculously inadequate cover for his now expanded dimensions,

especially in regards to his nether regions. It was a good thing he

was partially curled up at the moment or Ranma might have

gotten a better look at something that might have given the poor

boy a bad case of envy. As it was Ranma seemed to take the hint

and smiled weakly in acknowledgement.

"Right...Kaneda," Ranma repeated, "Sorry I confused you with

your cousin, the light's not too good here, right Ryoga?"

"Whatever," said Ryoga listlessly, sunk into a deeper depression

than was his usual wont.

"You two know each other?" said a voice belonging to Bison,

"How'd you get on board our yacht?"

"Uh, you didn't see me coming on board?" Nabiki asked with a

rather weak smile, feeling enormously embarrassed at being

surrounded by cute guys in a state of exposure that did not

involve flirting, not even with Ranma, "Um...by the way, Ranma-

kun...where is my charming cousin?"

"Search me," Ranma said with a grim look in his eyes, "Ukyo

and the others disappeared the same time we hit the water.

When we woke up there were only guys here. I think they took

them off someplace. Keiko seemed to think this Lao character

was interested in the ladies."

"Oh, she's like that, huh?" said Ken Masters, "That explains

Chun-Li and Cammy's absence, kind of a shame too. Always

seems to happen with the cute ones these days..."

"Like you should be interested," said Honda, "Aren't you engaged

to marry that girl you're always telling us about? Eliza

something...?"

"Eliza?" Ken replied, "Well...sure...but that doesn't mean I can't

look without touching. I don't think she'd hold it against me, just

as long as I wasn't really cheating..."

"Yeah, sure," Ranma scoffed, "And they call me dense around

women."

"Good thing for you that she's a Doctor," said Bison in some

humor.

"Why?" Ken asked.

"Because you're gonna need one with that kind of attitude," Bison

grinned, "Trust me on that."

"You too, huh?" Ranma sniffed, then looked down at Ryoga, who

still hung listlessly in his cage, and growled, "Come on, man,

snap out of it! I'm sure she's all right! If we survived then there's

a good chance they found her too."

"What's wrong with him?" Nabiki asked, "Is it Akane?"

"Yeah," Ranma nodded, "I kind of yelled at him while we were in

the water that Akane can't swim. That was before they threw the

net on us, which prevented us from going to her rescue."

"She can't swim?" Nabiki blinked, "That's news to me. Why

didn't she ever tell me about that in the first place?"

"Oh, you know Akane," Ranma sniffed, "She never could admit

to any sort of weakness-hey!" he suddenly cried out as Ryoga

gripped the bars to his own cage and shook them violently,

causing him to swing closer towards Ranma.

"Don't talk like that about Akane!" Ryoga growled, "Just because

you didn't want her is no reason for you to always tease and

humiliate her like you do..."

"Hey, I like Akane well enough," Ranma assured him, "We grew

up together, remember? She's like my sister, we just sorta say

stuff to each other once in a while, no harm in that."

"I'll show you harm!" Ryoga declared as he tried to reach past his

own bars as his cage swung closer to Ranma's.

Bison turned from the growing altercation and said, "What about

Blanka, Guile? You think maybe he made it too?"

"I'd count on it," Guile replied, "He's built for survival and could

probably handle himself even better than the rest of us put

together. They must be holding him in a separate facility..."

"My, aren't you the bright one."

Everyone turned to see the figure standing somewhat farther

down a ramp that Nabiki had failed to notice before now leading

past the hanging cages. It was almost as if a spotlight had fallen

upon a half-shadowy figure posed dramatically as if entering

from a stage, a figure that was noticeably feminine in outline,

matching the equally feminine voice that was lightly accented

with a distinctive Chinese flavor. Nabiki tried to position himself

to get a better view of this figure but could only half make out the

general details of someone very tall with overly broad shoulders...

No, those were shoulder pads of some sort, and the figure was

wearing a long-sleeved outfit that was slightly Chinese in basic

cut, only styled more like some manner of tunic reminiscent of a

seventeenth century sailor's outfit, complete with a tri-cornered

hat set upon a head that had long, oddly colored hair that hung

down to below waist level. There was a leather whip coiled on

one hip with chains trailing out from behind her back into the

shadows. There was confidence in her bearing as she remained a

cool distance, then gradually approached, her step easily cat-lithe

with the hint of a swagger.

"Lao?" Guile straightened up in his gage, "Madam Lao I

presume?"

"Guilty as charged," said the figure as she came close enough

now to see her features more properly, and now Nabiki thought

she saw a face reminiscent of Shampoo, only somewhat older

with harder, more mature features. The hair color was a pale

blue of some sort, or at least gave that kind of an impression

(though if she did not know any better she would have thought

the shade a bit greenish). Her expression was predatory, eyeing

them all with a sly sort of cat-like expression as she gave

everyone a cursory study, then returned Guile's hard looks with a

glance that betrayed her amusement.

"And you," she resumed saying, "Are Colonel William Guile,

formerly of the American Air Force, presently the father of my

very own dear, sweet Arigami Keiko?"

She tugged on one of the chains and a figure staggered out from

the shadows, turning out to be none other than Keiko herself,

dressed (if that was the appropriate word to employ here) in close

to nothing but jewelry and ornamentation, with a collar around

her neck and her feet making a faint clinking sound from a pair of

golden manacles she wore about her ankles.

"Uh...hi Dad," she weakly attempted a smile as if literally trying

to put the best face she could on her near-nude condition.

"What have you done with her?" Guile hissed in deadly anger,

gripping the bars to his cage with such force that his knuckles

turned pale, yet they failed to budge at all under the effort.

"Why, I've merely rescued you all from certain death," Lao

smiled, "Is that any way to address your rescuer or show

appreciation, Colonel? I'm hurt, truly. As if I would do anything

to harm my dear, sweet pet now that she has at long last returned

to her true and rightful owner."

"What about the rest of our team?" Ken asked, unable to help

admiring the amount of flesh on display, (though a hard look

from Guile made him force his eyes away) "Ah...you did...rescue

all of them, didn't you?"

"As if I would allow such abundant talent to go to waste," Lao

grinned in a way that hinted at much delight, and Nabiki almost

swore that she could see yen signs reflected in the other woman's

eyes, "Of course I rescued them, and gave them all a nice, hot

bath to refresh and restore them to their proper health. All but

one, it seems...and in that regard I have been most neglectful."

She was looking right at Nabiki when she said this, which hardly

put Nabiki mind at ease as she could not help but study Keiko's

condition and draw from this a hint of what was to be expected

for their female companions (and co-wives).

Ranma tried to come to her rescue by saying, "What do you want

with us, Lady? And just what kind of a place is this anyway?

Are we still on that ship of yours or something?"

"What I want should be obvious, pretty boy," Lao replied, "As for

where you are presently...well, that might be rather complicated

to explain. Let's just say you are on my ship and leave it at that.

But I am forgetting my manners! Please allow me to introduce

myself properly." She removed her hat and made a sweeping

bow, "I am Lao Kung, Queen of the South Sea China Pirates and

Mistress of this vessel, the 'Piece of Junk...'"

"Huh?" Honda blinked, "What did you call it?"

"'The Piece of Junk,'" Lao replied as she set her hat back atop her

head, "It's sort of an in-joke around here. This vessel, as you may

have already guessed, was originally Chinese in nature, and very

unique in the modern age with quite a long and glorious history

behind it, most of which I won't bore you with at the present time

since I'm sure you have much more immediate concerns on your

mind, such as what am I going to do with the lot of you now that

you are my guests of necessity..."

"Akane," Ryoga staggered over to the bars of his cage and

gripped them tight, "Is Akane with you? Did she survive? Is she

all right? Please tell me..."

"Ah," Lao inclined her head with a pleasant look, "You must be

Hibiki Ryoga, I presume. You need not fear, your Akane is well

and speaks most highly of you, as though you were some kind of

protector or something. I can't say that I know for sure what it is

she sees in you, but it must mean something, so I suppose I really

should be keeping an eye on you, and this other fellow who

seems to think himself man enough to marry four women."

"Nani?" Ranma said in surprise as he was favored by some very

curious glances from Ken, Honda and Bison.

"You seem to know a lot about us," Nabiki noted, "You also

knew that we were coming to find you?"

"Obviously yes," Lao finally turned back to size up Nabiki with a

very strange look that was more than slightly predatory, "But how

is the question you would really like to ask, isn't it? Forgive my

staring at you...Tendo Kaneda is it? I can't help noticing what a

fashion statement that is that you are wearing. I must that say

that I approve in general principle, for there is nothing wrong in a

man showing off as much as possible for the admiration of the

ladies, but I think you'd rather be more comfortable if I did this..."

Lao's hand went to her belt and came up with a flask that she

held up with one hand while unstopping it with the other. With a

quick flick of her wrist she sent the contents splashing over

Nabiki, which caused Nabiki to gasp as he felt the hot water

make contact with his skin and trigger the change so that in a few

instants afterwards she was revealed as herself before the

astonished stares of all the others.

"What the...?" Bison swore something colorful in his own

language.

"I don't believe it," Ken gasped, equally amazed.

"What the hell is going on here?" Guile sounded incredulous.

"Ah...there is a perfectly reasonable explanation for this, guys,"

said Ranma with obvious reluctance.

"Indeed there is," Lao purred throatily, "I had a sense that you

might be another curse victim after discovering the menagerie

that we hauled on board, including my darling Keiko. I take it

you didn't feel like letting these boys in on the little joke Jusenkyo

has played on you, Tendo Nabiki? I can't say as I blame

you...this is not the sort of thing you bring up in general

conversation."

"You obviously haven't been to Nerima," Nabiki sighed, feeling

exposed in more than one sense of the word in her thong bikini.

"I can't say that I've had that pleasure," Lao replied, "But I'm sure

it is a lovely place to visit, if Keiko finds it homey enough to

dwell there. Well, now that we've settled the matter of your

gender it's obvious that you don't belong in this sector. I have

strict policies concerning such things young lady, and this sector

of the prison most definitely is not coed. I'm afraid I'll have to

insist on removing you from your cage and replacing you with

this sorry fellow."

She tugged on yet another chain, and this time it was Mousse

who came staggering into view, wearing little more than boxers

as his hands were cuffed behind his back while the chain was

attached to yet another collar. He was staring ahead with a

slightly glazed look in his unfocused eyes as though he were in

some manner of drugged stupor.

"Male Amazon," Lao shook her head sadly, "And one I never

thought would amount to much of anything. Apparently I was

correct on that according to the testimony of the others."

"He tries," Keiko shrugged, "A little too hard at times, my lady."

"They are like that in the village," Lao sighed, then smiled at

Nabiki again, "While you, on the other hand, are of great interest

to me, Tendo Nabiki. One seldom encounters a Nyannichuan

victim with as many ready defenders as you seem to have..."

"You leave Nab-chan alone, you hear me?" Ranma growled as he

shook the bars to his cage.

"See what I mean?" Lao just smiled more broadly, "Case in point:

Loverboy over there is ready to hurl himself at me if he could. I

can certainly see what you find so interesting about him. Perhaps

I may make a private study of his...qualities at my leisure, do you

think?"

Nabiki narrowed her eyes but forced herself to remain calm,

"You obviously have us at a disadvantage, Lao Kane."

Lao's smile lost some of its humor as her eyes darkened, "So,

Elder Cologne was that forthcoming about my past exploits, I

see. Again most intriguing. She is usually among the most

tight-lipped of the Council members, as I should well know.

That speaks highly of the degree of trust that she must place in

you, which only furthers my interest. But enough pleasantries,"

she snapped her fingers.

The cage Nabiki was being held in began to sway slightly before

a figure seemed to just flow from out of the shadows. As Nabiki

and the others gaped in amazement a translucent, shapeless

figure hung down from the ceiling, coiling around to land upon

the ramp nearest to the cage. Almost instantly the figure flowed

and resolved itself into a mass that grew upward until it assumed

more human contours, and then solidified into the shape of an

attractive female with large breasts and a voluptuous figure.

Another moment after this and the figure became completely

solid with a kind of makeshift clothing that looked to be

composed of three strategically placed sea-shells bound together

by strings of pearl with other shells that formed shoulder pads

and implied a kind of quasi-armor. A long translucent sword

hung from this woman's side and there was something oddly

fish-like about her features...and if you looked real hard you

could almost see right through her.

The figure produced a golden key, which same it inserted into the

lock of her cage, opening it before standing back with a hard,

expecting glare in her overlarge eyes. Nabiki sized her up and

decided on the spot that it would not be a good idea to challenge

this one just yet, so she instead took the hint and swung her body

so that her feet could dangle out from the cage. A moment later

she stood clear on her own weight, hands still bound behind her

back but otherwise quite healthy.

At Lao's direction Mousse aimlessly moved forward and soon

took Nabiki's place in the hanging cage, his expression as vacant

as though he were a sleepwalker.

"Now then," Lao smiled, "I trust you will be civilized and come

along like a good girl, otherwise my servant here will be forced to

get rather nasty...and you would definitely not like her when she

is angry. Her kind have the strength of water itself, which is far

greater than human, and she is resistant to injury, being entirely

composed of the element of her nature."

"I can take the hint," Nabiki replied, "Lead on, you have the

advantage."

"I can see why the others say you are intelligent," Lao smiled in

approval, giving Nabiki a thorough lookover, "And they did not

mistake your beauty. I see that we are going to get along

splendidly... after you've had time to acclimate."

"Somehow I doubt it," Nabiki noted in a level tone of voice,

recognizing that Lao was indeed a dangerous woman, and one

not to be underestimated.

"We will see," Lao replied as she turned and tugged on Keiko's

leash to encourage the redheaded Kickboxer's compliance, "Come

along, my dears, there are a few things that I would like to show

you..."

The trip through the interior of the ship was like the proverbial

tour through the belly of the beast as a sense of great age, coupled

with the general unearthliness of the place, made Nabiki shudder

a bit for no discernable reason. Keiko, who was trudging along

at her side, gave Nabiki coy looks of a contrite nature but she did

not seem inclined to say anything within earshot of her nominal

Mistress.

Nabiki took stock of a series of room that seemed to go on

endlessly in both directions. Each door was featureless save for a

dull brass handle, and she would have taken them for crew

quarters save that there were some pretty unusual sounds

emanating from behind each wooden partition. Again she felt

like shuddering, though for what exact reason she could have

found it difficult to mention.

At last, after an unbelievably long time, they came to the end of

the corridor and passed through a set of double-doors that opened

at Lao's approach, revealing a brightly lit chamber beyond this,

which same caused Nabiki to start in disbelief. This room was

decorated like something out of the Arabian Nights, only with a

strong Chinese flavor with hanging silk tapestries, golden

fixtures and a general atmosphere that was light, pleasurable and

unearthly.

"Nani?" Nabiki involuntarily gasped, estimating that the size of

this room was like the cargo hold on board a supertanker.

"Do not judge by appearances," Lao cautioned with a smile,

continuing on into the room while Keiko and Nabiki followed a

respectable distance, their silent warden keeping pace behind

them, "And welcome to my humble abode. Do make yourselves

comfortable and feel free to sample the rations."

Nabiki was staring at groups of women lounging about or

reclining in various positions on cushioned furnishings from

pillows to divans. Most of these were either naked or very close

to the same thing, the majority sporting decorative ornaments

much like what Keiko was wearing, while others had a style of

clothing that seemed fashioned in much the same manner as the

warrior elemental behind them. Some glanced to take in the new

arrivals, others hardly looked up from whatever it was they were

doing at the moment. More than a few were posed in intimate

embraces with hardly anyone seeming to notice such shockingly

brazen behavior, and everyone in such a tight clench was entirely

and unmistakably female.

The Elder Cologne was also there, standing out amid this group

like the proverbial sore thumb, studying the activities of these

others with an inscrutable expression. She was standing inside

what looked to be some manner of large birdcage without her

trademark staff at hand. She looked up to see whom it was

accompanying Lao as her eyes narrowed slightly. Nabiki met

that stoical expression and nodded by a fraction, then turned her

attention back towards her hostess.

"Do sit down," Lao indicated a set of pillows within easy reach of

the birdcage, if not for Nabiki's hands still being cuffed behind

her back. Nabiki studied her captor in the now much-improved

lighting, seeing for the first time that her hair was indeed a pale

powder blue, bordering on outright sea green. Her eyes were pale

pink and feral thought there seemed to hang an ever-present

smile about her lips. The analogy that came to mind was that of

a dangerous predator, and that cat-like reference made Nabiki

shudder as she tried to ignore the terrifying implications.

Lao sat down on a divan and posed with one leg raised as she

reclined, still smiling. She removed her hat to reveal an Amazon-

style pair of Odangos atop her head, then nodded towards the

cage and said, "Again I must apologize, Elder, for your present

accommodations. I would much prefer to play the hostess in a

manner far more suitable to one of your rank, but...you can

understand my approaching you with a degree of caution."

"Hmm," Cologne said neutrally, glancing at the bars surrounding

her before adding, "Orachalcum. I would be much interested in

learning how you came by such a rare substance."

"The previous owner used it to house a Jinn," Lao explained, then

favored Nabiki with a wry look and added, "I suppose your

young apprentice here would care to know something about such

matters. Tell me, Tendo Nabiki, do you know what Orachalcum

is?"

"I do," Nabiki replied cautiously, "Supposedly it was a metal

forged as an alloy of Gold and Copper by some forgotten ancient

alchemical process. It was reported in Plato's Critias, his trestes

that sparked the search for the legendary lost kingdom of

Atlantis."

"Very good," Lao smiled and nodded in approval, "You got a

passing grade. And what else do you know about this wondrous

alloy which presently confines one of the greatest Elders who

have ever ruled the Amazon people?"

"Just rumors and speculation," Nabiki shrugged, "It's supposedly

near indestructible and can resist even the most powerful of

magics..."

"It grounds Magic like a magnet," Lao corrected, "Absorbs and

cancels even powerful enchantments. Allegedly it can even be

used to contain the powers of a God. Hephaestus himself is

reputed to have used this cage to house a Harpy many millennia

ago. It may almost be enough to contain one so powerful as the

Elder Cologne, at least until we have arrived at a suitable and

mutually beneficial arrangement."

"I suppose I should be flattered?" Cologne replied with extreme

skepticism.

"Forgive me, Elder," Lao replied, "But no one has a better idea of

what you may be capable should you decide to cause me some

slight inconvenience. I may well have grown in power from

when I last saw you, but I am hardly stupid enough to let you

roam loose for old time's sake. By the way, don't bother trying

the breaking-point technique. By now I am sure that you are

already aware that Orachalcum grounds Chi-force lines as easily

as it does other forms of spiritual power."

"Indeed," Cologne replied levelly, "You were never stupid

enough to trap me like this without taking such precautions. I

trained you well never to underestimate your potential opposition.

A pity you did not learn this well when you joined yourself to the

Musk."

"Ancient history," Lao studied her fingernails with an idle tilt to

her head, "I didn't listen when it would have mattered, now we

will never know what might have been if I had. Life seldom

gives us second chances to make up for the mistakes that have

the greatest impact upon our lives. That was something else you

taught me, and I remember everything..." she paused and

repeated the word as she looked towards Cologne again,

"Everything. That's why I am so glad to have this chance for a

one-on-one interview after so many years apart. I won't ask what

you think of the person that I have become, but do you at least

concede that I have done better than you anticipated?"

"Indeed," Cologne replied, "I would never have envisioned that

you would come so far...or go to such lengths to abandon our

traditions..."

"I have never abandoned what truly matters, Elder," Lao said a

bit stiffly, "I may not be following the Amazon ways that you

know and approve of, but in essence what I do serves the same

essential purpose."

"And what purpose is that?" Cologne wondered.

"Liberation," Lao had a grin like a Cheshire cat, "After a fashion.

Liberation from outmoded customs, morality and beliefs that

inhibit us and deny us the right to explore our basic womanhood.

Amazons seek liberation through strength, I seek it by creating an

atmosphere of pleasure. I believe the Outsiders have a quaint

term for this: 'Make love, not war,' am I right Tendo Nabiki?"

"I have...no problems with the basic concept," Nabiki replied,

"And as fascinating as I find this little reunion you two are

having, I hope you don't mind that I do have a few basic

questions that I'd like to have answered."

"Ask away," Lao gestured grandly, "I am at your service...in a

manner of speaking."

"All right," Nabiki glanced down at herself then looked around at

the Seraglio they were in, "This ship..."

"Magnificent, isn't it?" Lao had that cat-like grin once more, "Oh,

it wasn't always like this, in fact you should have seen it before I

renovated the place. The previous owners had such atrocious

living standards, no style at all. Of course the saying also goes

that this home is also my prison."

"Your prison?" Nabiki marveled.

"A gilded cage is still a cage," Lao smiled, "I am bound to this

place in spirit and body. I can leave it for a short duration but

always it calls me back and binds me to its rotting timbers.

There is a lot of my own life-force incorporated in its basic fabric.

The Floating Piece of Junk has had many masters in its time, and

none have died a quiet death from natural causes. I, of course,

hope to be the first, but in all likelihood I will be trapped here

until the next would-be owner takes it from my dying carcass."

Nabiki saw Keiko wince a little but gave no outward indication.

Instead she remained focused on Lao as she said, "You make it

sound like some kind of a curse."

"Worse than a Curse," Lao replied, "A binding pact, oath-bound

and sealed by blood. The history of this vessel is a strange and

forbidding one, bound to the legends of ancient China with its

archaic history and long traditions of inscrutable culture. You'll

have to take my word on faith that what I tell you is the absolute

truth or nothing will make sense to a rational sort, such as I

perceive you to be. Do you think that you can manage a leap of

faith long enough to hear me out?"

"I could try," Nabiki conceded, not wanting to admit that her

curiosity was definitely piqued.

"Good," Lao noted, then began, "You are aware, of course, that

there is a legend stating how a Chinese explorer of great

ingenuity and imagination once convinced an Emperor of the

T'ang dynasty to fund an expedition to the east with the intent of

discovering the mysterious lost empire of Lemuria using a

specially constructed ship incorporating the best building

techniques that were known to his generation?'

"Of course," Nabiki replied, "Twelve hundred years ago, more or

less, but all he managed to find was Long Beach."

"Indeed," Lao smiled, "The remains of his ship were discovered

decades ago, proving that the Chinese were first to discover the

New World..."

"Unless you count the Phoenicians," Nabiki noted.

"That goes without saying," Lao waved the point away

dismissively, "What matters is that the fledgling expedition

failed, so no future expeditions were tried, leaving it to that

Italian pirate to get all the credit for being the first to go both

ways. Anyway, what is not generally known is that the basic

plans for the ship were preserved in the Imperial archive, along

with a description of how it was rigged and outfitted. A few

centuries later it was a Eunuch in the employ of the Mongol

Emperor Kublai Khan who found and revived these plans,

reasoning that China would need a stronger Navy to establish

commercial domination over the known world of that age. The

Emperor agreed and gave his blessing to the construction of the

largest Chinese vessel of its era, the one we are presently riding

in this very moment."

"You're saying this thing is over six hundred years old?" Nabiki

wondered.

"More or less, at a guess," Lao replied, "Now, that courtier was

named Han Bolo and he was a Taoist mystic and alchemist from

a very old school. He reasoned that this vessel could be made

more sea worthy if it incorporated a few handy spells and a bit of

archaic magic, perhaps a few dozen enchantments and the

blessings of a God or Two, coupled with your basic pact with

dark malevolent forces and...well, to put it bluntly, he went a bit

overboard. Actually I think he was a few sheets short of a full

mast myself, but the upshot of it is that this vessel was crafted

with enough Sorcery involved to open a chain of Alchemy shops

from here to the end of the next millennium. In simplest terms,

this ship is saturated with elemental power and can constitute is

own localized plane of pseudo-reality. It is not altogether of this

world, and that is why it is both a blessing and a curse to be its

owner."

"What happened to his plans for trade?" Nabiki wondered.

"The project suffered budget cutbacks in the wake of the failed

invasion of the Japan islands," Lao shrugged, "The Khan was a

bit miffed over that Tsunami thing, so Han Bolo's project got

shelved after the ship was close to completion. Han did not take

the news very well and saw to funding its completion from his

own embezzled finances. When the Emperor's Tax Collectors

came knocking on his door he took to the High Seas with an

unsavory crew of cutthroats he had recruited from the port of

Shanghai. He became known as the Eunuch Pirate and enjoyed a

moderately successful career. He also proved to be the first of

many victims of his own ambitious dreams, and this ship has

ever since passed hands from one Captain to the next. I happen

to be its one hundred and eighth Captain, and I got that way by

losing a card game to the previous owners."

"Losing a card game?" Nabiki arched eyebrows.

"If you know this place as I do you would know that winning is

losing," Lao replied, "If I had known it at the time I would not

have palmed those Aces."

"So, this thing's ancient and magic," Nabiki replied, "How come

it hasn't been discovered before? It's not exactly inconspicuous."

"As I said, it is not entirely of the world you and I came from,"

Lao responded, "It is mostly invisible to the detection means

employed in this century. You can see it visually through a field

of distortion, but unless you are looking for it you are not likely to

see it. It is a ghost ship, rather a lot like the legends of the Flying

Dutchman."

"I suppose I can go with that," Nabiki said reluctantly, "Next

question...how did you know we were coming?"

"Elementary," Lao smiled, "I used magic."

"Magic," Nabiki replied with a neutral expression.

"I have gotten quite good in managing the Sorceries that are at

my disposal as Mistress of this vessel," Lao stood up and gently

tugged on Keiko's leash, urging the redhead to stand with her

before giving Nabiki a nod that compelled her to do likewise.

Nabiki gave one quick look or reassurance to Cologne then

followed as Lao led the way to the rear of the chamber where

stood a curious tripod with a brass metal lid cupping over a dish

like an egg standing on its small end.

Lao grasped the handle at the top of this covering and removed it

to reveal an object that looked much like a looking glass set in a

frame at a horizontal angle.

"Behold," Lao said with dramatic flourish, "The project of

Chinese Alchemy, which someone long before me called the

Lens of Magellan."

"The Lens of Magellan?" Nabiki asked as she stared at the nearly

flawless lens, which was four inches in diameter and a quarter-

inch thick and had an almost prismatic quality.

"It didn't belong to him," Lao reassured, "It's just called that for

some obscure reason. It's really quite a remarkable device, let's

you see through time and space. All you have to do is think of a

person or event you wish to focus upon and it gives you an

image. Of course it only works for me, the owner, and is attuned

to my thoughtwaves."

"Of course," Nabiki replied, "How does it work?"

"I'm not really sure myself," Lao admitted as she tilted another

object hanging on a small swing-arm, positioning this two-inch

wide mirror so that it caught the light reflected by another mirror

that was positioned where sunlight shown brightly, and then the

light was cast through the lens and caused an image to be

projected, one that resolved a moment later into the face and form

of a beautiful teenager...

"Shampoo?" Nabiki gasped in amazement.

"My cousin looks well," Lao replied, "Pregnancy becomes her. I

can see why you are so proud of this aspect of your marriage."

Nabiki swallowed, unable to help feeling a desire to call out

Shampoo's name, as if expecting her wife to hear her. Instead

she managed to say, "You've been using this to keep track of

her?"

"I have watched my cousin grow up to be a beautiful woman for

some years," Lao replied, "She is one of the few things that I

actually missed about Joketsuzoku. The old village was home for

most of the years of my younger life, but now it seems too small

and provincial. I now have a greater appreciation of the size of

the world and the diversity of people who live there. Imagine my

surprise when, one day, I see a handsome man come into the

picture and defeat my cousin. I have had many long and amusing

moments since that time to reflect on the curious course my

cousin's life has taken. I am pleased to see that you have honored

her in all ways, although until this moment I have not been

totally able to reconcile you with the man I so often saw in these

pictures."

Shampoo's image faded as Lao covered the lens up again, "The

problem with this lens is that you need to have a clear mental

image of the person or party you would like to see reflected in its

projections. It is also limited in that the present is much easier to

see than the past, while the future is...difficult due to the

crosscurrents of probability lines. Always in motion is the future,

and many things you see may or may not ever come to pass."

"So you saw Keiko in this lens and knew that we were coming?"

Nabiki fathomed.

"I knew that my former ward had made contact with you about

the same time that Shampoo arrived in Japan," Lao replied, "It

was too much of a coincidence, and if I didn't know any better I'd

almost suspect divine involvement. The ship itself may be

helping me in its own curious way. It knows that I have missed

having Keiko at my side, and that I have always regretted the

circumstances that forced me to turn her over to that motherless

bastard, Chu Wan Phat."

"And what does Keiko have to say about it?" Nabiki turned a

meaningful look at her old friend, "Kei-chan?"

"I...wasn't exactly thrilled about it myself at the time," Keiko said

reluctantly, "It was even worse than I expected it would be. I

don't entirely blame you, my lady, but I know you were only

doing what you thought was best for your own welfare."

"If you call throwing my favorite pet to those wolves what was

best for my welfare, then you must not think very much of me

indeed," Lao sounded genuinely saddened as she said, this, "Not

that I can blame you. But I am here to make it up to you at last,

my darling. I knew that I had to find a way to lure you back into

my clutches, so I set in motion a plan that I thought for certain

would attract your notice."

"My mother?" Keiko's tone was suddenly very animated, "The

reports said you had her..."

"Those reports..." Lao hesitated, "Were a forgery on my part. I

am sorry to tell you this, my dear, but I do not presently have

custody of your mother."

Keiko looked deflated, "Then...she really is...?"

"Oh now, she is quite well," Lao replied, "In fact I do happen to

know where she is at this precise moment. That was why I

wanted to see you again, to reunite you both in an atmosphere

that will allow you to have every tender, intimate Mother-

daughter moment you have ever dreamed of experiencing. All

we have to do is...liberate her from a certain party."

"From whom?" Nabiki asked, already forming dangerous

suspicions.

"From the one you no doubt already suspect," Lao replied, "He

had briefly retired from his criminal enterprises to seek to make

amends for his many sins as a religious man in a Buddhist

Temple. What brought him back out of retirement was the

discovery of a way by which he hopes to achieve the vengeance

he so desperately craves."

"Vengeance...on me?" Keiko's tone was chilled.

"On the both of you," Lao replied, "In fact he went to a great deal

of trouble to inform me that he had possession of your mother,

knowing that I would have the means of contacting the both of

you to deliver you safe and sound in Hong Kong. We will arrive

in a few days to make the exchanges, Arigami Akiko for the both

of you, of course."

"Wonderful," Nabiki said sourly realizing with grim fatalism that

they were about to have an encounter with one of the devils from

her darkest nightmare, and Chu Wan Phat was most likely very

eager to see them, which was hardly surprising given what she

and Keiko had done to the man at their last parting...

Continued.

Comments/Criticism/Ming Vases: shadowmane

Nabiki and friends are on the cruise ship from Hell (or some

nether region where they lower community standards). How will

they cope with the accommodations, and will their sanity hold up

under Lao's idea of First Class Luxury Accommodations? Be

there!

Nabiki 1/2;

A Very Scary Thought

(An Altered Destiny)

Chapter 21, Part 3.

By

Jim Robert Bader

(Inspired by the works of Rumiko Takahashi & Others)

WARNING: The following Chapter is of an Adult Nature &

May be considered Hentai in Most States;

You Have Been Warned!

"Tendo Akane! Pigtailed One! It is I, your devoted Kuno

Tatewaki come to rescue you from the vile clutches of that Tendo

Kaneda...AWP!"

Kuno halted in mid stride upon the path to the back porch of the

home of his two beloveds. As usual for him he had raced

through the front gates with the ardor of his devotion fresh in his

mind, heedless of the normal social rules of conduct that was

supposed to apply to guests not normally of his stature.

This time, however, the path of his true love was blocked

unexpectedly by what looked-on the very close inspection he

was being offered-to be a large-sized rub beater, the kind

normally employed to knock the dust off large throw rugs and

tapestries. This one was being held up like a polearm warding

his path, and by slowly following its line he discovered a slender

hand that gripped it, connected to an equally slender arm that-

wonder of wonders-had an even more comely young woman

attached to it.

Said woman was presently eyeing him with a cross expression as

she demanded in a level tone, "Who are you and what is your

business with the Tendos?"

Kuno took a half-step back, not because he was afraid of the

authoritative challenge in this woman's voice (he would most

adamantly have insisted) but out of surprise and respect for

someone who could have moved so swiftly to block his path that

he-the Blue Thunder of Furinkan High-could not have seen her

coming.

"One side, woman," Kuno instructed her as though it were his

lordly right, "My business with the Tendos is of a personal

nature, and for that matter, what cause have you to ask in such an

impertinent manner?"

"My name is Tendo Natsume," she replied, "This home belongs

to my family. Do you have permission to be here?"

"I, permission?" Kuno straightened out, "I am Kuno Tatewaki,

the Blue Thunder of Furinkan High! I do not need permission to

come upon these premises as this is the home of my good friend

Saotome Ranma and my two beloveds, Tendo Akane and

Arigami Keiko!"

"You're their boyfriend?" Natsume eyed him skeptically. From

appearances this fellow had trouble written all over him, and

while his claim was certainly plausible he did not seem the type

for someone as independently minded as Akane was reputed to

be. She chose to err on the side of caution as she replied, "They

are not here at the present. They went on a field trip with one of

the teachers from their school. If you wish, then I will inform

them of your visit upon their arrival."

"Not here?" something shifted in the slow gears of Kuno's mind

as he took greater stock of the slender woman before him, then he

murmured, "Tendo Natsume. I do not recognize the name. Are

you, by chance, Akane-chan's cousin?"

"No," Natsume replied, "Her sister. It's somewhat of a long

story."

"Sister?" Kuno did some mental arithmetic, adding up all the

known Tendos in his mind then carrying the five and subtracting

the zero. It took a very long moment, and the effect nearly

overheated his brain, but at last he concluded, "I was informed

that Akane had but two sisters, Kasumi and Nabiki. You are one

more than I thought were in existence."

"My, aren't you the clever one," Natsume sounded amused, but to

Kuno's ear he heard a tone of mocking challenge.

"Is that a challenge I hear?" Kuno smiled as he stepped back and

drew his bokken, "Very well, I accept! Prepare to defend

yourself and prove to me that you are worthy of the name Tendo."

Something glinted in the other woman's eyes and she smiled,

"Very well, I accept."

She took a step back and held her rug-beater at an angle as

though it were a Naginata. In spite of himself Kuno found that

he was intrigued and voiced his curiosity aloud, "You would face

Kuno Tatewaki with a common implement of household labor?"

Natsume smiled, "We make the most of what we have on hand.

Whenever you're ready, Blowhard."

"That's Blue Thunder!" Kuno cried as he raised his bokken,

prepared to teach a lesson to this impertinent woman for mocking

him with such brazen manner.

Meanwhile Kurumi looked up from where she had been

practicing her punches and kicks against a cloth-wrapped post.

She had seen Natsume move off to confront somebody in a

Kendo-styled outfit, but now her sister seemed to be challenging

the fellow to a duel and they were squaring off in the yard

together. Kurumi turned her full attention their way and watched

the boy facing her sister, noticing his movements and posture, the

expert way he held his weapon. There was something about this

that she did not like and she wondered if her sister had any idea

of how skilled this guy was, and why she was even bothering to

fight with him in the first place.

Meanwhile the fathers looked up from their Shogi board to see

the brewing altercation. Genma adjusted his glasses and sighed

aloud, "Looks like the inevitable has finally happened, Tendo-

kun."

"Hai, Saotome-kun," Soun sounded so depressed that he actually

failed to see Genma's hand steal towards the board until almost

the last instant. He sighed as his own hand intercepted Genma's,

blocking the attempted illegal maneuver.

"Oh dear," said Nodoka as she came in holding a tea tray, "Is that

boy picking yet another fight with a woman he has only just met?

I really must have a talk with Tatewaki on his methods of

dating."

"What wrong with method?" Shampoo asked as she looked up

from her knitting, "Boy who test self against girl only do what is

natural. Too bad he only Kuno, Natsume make into chopped

pork."

"Oh my," Kasumi looked up from where she had been perched on

a chair adjusting some pictures that she had been dusting around,

"I do hope they won't make too much of a mess this time. Poor

Kuno-san does tend to forget himself when he is up against a real

challenge."

"Think we should put a stop to this, Tendo?" Genma wondered

idly.

"No," Soun said as he watched his alleged daughter square off

against the local bully with a mixture of sadness, weariness and a

bit of admiration. He was finding the whole matter of the two

girls who claimed him for their father to be deeply troubling, not

least for the fact that it cast him in a bad light and slighted the

memory of his beloved late wife. He was certain that he had

never cheated on Kimiko, not even when severely tempted (and

he had to admit that there had been a lot of temptations in those

days). There was no way that he could conceive of these two as

being his daughters, but...he had to admit that they were very fine

girls, the sort any father could be proud of. Not his, just very

admirable daughters of somebody, and until he could prove this

to everyone's satisfaction he would have to put them up as he

would any pair of orphans in need of a stable home environment.

He just wished Nodoka would stop eyeing him with daggers

everytime she looked from the girls to him as though leveling the

silent accusation of cheating on her best friend from childhood. It

was making him very nervous, and even Kasumi seemed to be

regarding him differently these last two days...

Natsume, meanwhile, was finding this Kuno to be more

formidable than she had at first estimated. Not in her class as a

fighter, of course, but he did know a fair amount of Kendo, and

he used his sword as though it were a perfect extension of his

arms. She decided to play with him a bit rather than to finish

him off swiftly, drawing him out into the yard where they both

had greater freedom to maneuver and noticing that his pattern of

attack shifted with his change of surroundings. It was obvious

that someone had taught him a little of the Anything Goes style,

quite understandable if he were a friend of the boy named

Ranma.

"You are quite formidable," Kuno said during a brief pause in

their sparring, "If you lose perhaps I shall grant you the honor of

dating me."

Natsume found herself reacting with irritation to this comment.

Date with him? Who did this fool think he was? Or perhaps it

was just a clever ploy to get her upset so that she might drop her

guard and give him an opening. Well, he would see that she

knew how to keep her cool under that sort of a challenge.

"An intriguing offer," she smiled, "But why would you wish to

date the likes of me when you already have my sister Akane and

her friend to date you?"

"Alas," Kuno sighed, "Their shyness is so great that they cannot

confess their love for me, so they must needs deny it with a

passion, woe betide that pride should interfere in such a noble

endeavor as romance."

Natsume looked at him as if the boy were trying to pull her leg

with that line. What sort of romantic interludes did her

newfound sister have with this fellow, who seemed to think he

had stepped out of a Kurusawa movie? She circled around

holding her weapon at a defecting angle as he moved his bokken

in steady counterpoint, then he came rushing at her with a

sudden, swift movement.

Natsume was, of course, no longer where Kuno had struck, but

the force of his blow was translated into a wave that traveled far

beyond the reach of his wooden blade to cause a mild shockwave

that split the water of the koi pond and went all the way to the

recently repaired wall, shattered an entire section of the

brickwork. Natsume turned to look at him and his handiwork in

shock, then faintly recognized the Ki attack as a modified version

of Nampo.

Kuno struck again, giving her little time to recover and forcing

Natsume to fight back in earnest as she kept away from his

sword, now more fully aware that his attacks could be deadly.

Until now she had been holding back in this fight, but it was

looking as if she would have to resort to her own Ki attack in

order to end it quickly before someone was either hurt or there

was worse property damage to her new family's estate.

She was just summoning up her power when a fast-moving blur

came between the two of them, then a fist rocketed up and

knocked Tatewaki head over heals into near-orbit.

"Kurumi?" Natsume gasped.

"Hai," Kurumi turned an innocent smile and adopted a Kawaii

pose as the sound of Kuno hitting the koi pond resounded some

ten paces behind her.

Natsume looked from her sister to the semi-conscious form

bobbing in the water then said, "Kurumi-chan...you really

shouldn't have interfered. This was my fight and I was never in

any real danger."

"I know that," Kurumi said brightly, "But he really wasn't giving

you that much of a workout."

"But...still..." Natsume hesitated, looking over Kurumi's head as

she saw Kuno climb out of the pond as though his brain were too

slow to realize that he ought to be unconscious. He raised his

sword high and said, "I'm not...beaten...yet..."

Kurumi's bare foot against his jaw argued differently, and this

time Kuno was not so fortunate as to land on something as soft as

the koi pond. The short brown-haired girl spun around as if there

Was nothing unusual in what she had just done and said, "Yes

you are. Come on, Oneechan, let's go make Poppa some lunch,

I'll bet he's really hungry."

Natsume was shocked at how casual her sister was being over

the beating she had just given to the boy named Kuno. She was

about to upbraid her sister for being rude when she heard

Shampoo say from close nearby, "No worry about Kuno, his head

harder than stone. You come in now, he be all right."

Natsume turned to see the cool look in the red-brown eyes of the

purple-haired girl, who was wearing one of Kasumi's dresses,

and thought she caught a look in Shampoo's features that was

sternly disapproving. Not wanting to alienate herself against a

member of her new family, Natsume nonetheless sighed and said,

"You don't like him very much, do you?"

"Him nothing but trouble," Shampoo's expression clouded, "Try

always court Airen and Airen's sister, pick fights with Husband,

never learn when he told they no want to date him. Also remind

Shampoo of other boy who always pick on Cousin. I no like boys

who no take hint, I pound him if he try that with Shampoo

Airen."

Natsume was not exactly certain what this strange Chinese girl

was talking about. Shampoo had been very friendly and outgoing

the first day of their arrival, but she seemed wary about Natsume

and Kurumi for some reason. Natsume was uncertain exactly

who this girl was and what her relationship to the Tendo family

was, outside of the fact that she was an Amazon and claimed to

be married to the mysterious Tendo Kaneda they had heard much

about their first day but had yet to actually encounter. The fact

that Kaneda's wife was over four months pregnant seemed the

only subject they had been able to obtain on the matter. Neither

Natsume nor Kurumi had been able to ask questions about him

from their father without provoking him to wail something about

gaining a son and losing a daughter. It was quite puzzling on the

whole and Natsume wondered if they would ever gain enough

trust to be allowed to know all of the family secrets that seemed

to presently be kept from their knowing.

She gave a last glance towards the unconscious Kuno then turned

and followed Kurumi and Shampoo back into their House. She

would have to talk with him again when the boy regained

consciousness. Perhaps there were things that she could learn

from the fool, and it was not as if he was that bad to look at. If

only he came across as being just a little less obnoxious she

might even venture to say that he was the most intriguing thing

she had seen since coming to Nerima...

"Sorry if I have inconvenienced you," Madam Lao was saying as

she handled her chopsticks and took her time deciding what to

sample, "I know that we have some serious business to discuss

and all of that, but I find it so much more relaxing to deal with

people such as you this way. Besides, one of the problems you

usually have with prisoners is that they actually expect this sort of

thing, as if they would be offended if you were not being

tortured."

"I'd take a pass if it's just the same," Nabiki replied from her

hapless horizontal position, "Can't we just say that you did and

leave it at that?"

Lao's chuckle was brazen, "Now what would be the fun in that?

You're not actually suffering very much in the moment, so you

can hardly complain about rude treatment. I haven't even

bothered to gag you so that we can have this discussion both

ways. Isn't this preferable to what conditions might be like if I

decided to get nasty?"

"Let me think on that one," Nabiki bent her head to look down

the length of her body to where leafy greens and cottage cheese

had been spread over her naked torso with ground up raw fish

spread about with garnishes, turning her into a living salad bar

from which Lao was picking her food with the chopsticks.

Sometimes those chopsticks would find something other than a

delicacy, and sometimes they pinched and prodded very sensitive

areas. In spite of her attempts to ignore the treatment she could

feel her breasts swell a bit as Lao played with and pinched her

labia and nipples.

"I do so love Sushi in the Raw," Lao cooed as she ignored

Nabiki's futile attempts to struggle against the chains that held

her in pace, spread-eagle on the table in what passed for Lao's

private office, "It's one of your country's nicest contributions to

civilization, don't you agree?"

"Gee," Nabiki's tone dripped sarcasm, "I don't know, do you

think so? I thought only dirty old men went in for this stuff..."

"I am neither dirty, old, nor a man," Lao reminded, "But let's not

quibble over these things, shall we? I want you to know that I

have only the highest respect for you, and while it may seem as if

the purpose of having you this way is meant to compromise your

integrity, let me assure you that this is simply my way of helping

you to become more relaxed and at ease in my presence."

"That's a funny way of describing matters," Nabiki replied,

glancing down at herself in a meaningful way, "And here I

thought you were just lording it over the fact that you presently

have me at a disadvantage."

Lao smiled without denying the point, and instead moved her

chopsticks to pluck a bit of Sushi, which she proceeded to rub

across Nabiki's sensitive nerve endings, eliciting an involuntary

reaction that in turn triggered an unrepressed shudder.

"My, how tense you are," Lao remarked, as she continued to

stroke her unresisting victim, "And here I was of the impression

that you were fairly uninhibited. Of course I forget that you are

not an Amazon by birth...you have those silly Japanese morals

and social conventions that you like to pretend are not part and

parcel to your nature."

Nabiki grit her teeth and tried to focus her mind on something

other than what was happening to her body, "What do you want,

Lao? My capitulation?"

"Heavenly Ancestors, no," Lao chuckled as she elicited the

physical response she was after, in spite of Nabiki's silent

protests, "That would be too easy, and I like a challenge as much

as the next Hentai," she paused to bring the now-moistened Sushi

up to her lips and made a production out of sampling the aroma,

then swallowed it for show, "Ah...how deliciously flavorful. I

can certainly see what my cousin Shampoo finds so addictive

about you. You are indeed a quite tasty morsel..."

"Thanks for the compliment," Nabiki growled, "I think."

"Now, don't be that way," Lao chuckled, "I could be conducting

this interview under far less pleasurable conditions, but I want

you to appreciate the troubles that I have gone to on your behalf.

I am doing this because of the respect and admiration that I have

come to have over your accomplishments..."

"Respect?" Nabiki fairly spat the word, "This is your idea of

respect? Sexual exploitation isn't respect, Lao, it's a kind of

mental and physical degradation..."

"Yes, yes, I know," Lao waved the point away, "I know all the

current Pop Psychological terms currently in vogue. I may not

have spent as much time in the Outside world as you, but I do a

lot of reading, and I am quite well educated, in spite of my early

upbringing as a warrior. There is quite a lot of free time on long

sea voyages for doing little else but study the things that the

outside world has to offer, and I have had many long discussions

with other 'guests' that have come before you, so believe me when

I say that I have heard it all before, and then some. I hope you do

not intend on boring me with a rehash of arguments that I have

heard ad nauseum until I could recite them in my sleep. It would

be so refreshing if someone had an original idea that they could

use to imply that there is something morally wrong with how I

conduct my affairs. You can't imagine what it's like being at the

top of my profession yet always having to justify yourself for

turning a dishonest profit while helping others to achieve their

liberation."

"Liberation?" Nabiki asked dubiously.

"From their old tired ideals and preconceptions," Lao explained,

"You mean to imply that what I do is in violation to the rules of

civilized behavior and the Egalitarian ideal that every man and

woman is a free and sovereign individual with inalienable rights

that must be Universally respected. As someone of Chinese

descent I can assure you that this concept is far from the norm for

human existence."

"And that makes it all right to enslave people and use them for

your own amusement?" Nabiki asked her tormentor.

"In a sense," Lao replied, "What I do may not be sanctified by

your ideals but it is justified by the circumstances of my current

existence. Piracy is not as easy a trade as it once was in the days

of the Filibusters and those who flew the Jolly Roger. Even the

great Madam Ching, in whose likeness I have fashioned myself,

never had to operate under the limitations imposed by organized

navies and the advanced naval powers that rule the seas in these

days. You just can't pick and choose your targets at random, or

do anything that might attract an undue amount of attention to

my activities so that my enemies can unite against me. It is

necessary to operate under a lowered profile so that the

authorities might pretend that they can ignore me."

"And kidnapping is low profile?" Nabiki snorted.

"Perhaps not low profile," Lao smiled, "But people disappear

every day who are never missed or looked for in these waters,

people like Keiko-chan and her mother...or like you, for that

matter. They vanish literally without a trace and are soon

forgotten. The Lost files of police records contain tens of

thousands of names every year, some of whom wind up in my

hands while the rest are simply a statistic. Some may guess what

becomes of their loved ones, but without proof or something to

trace they have no means for waging a methodical investigation.

It also helps that the suspicions and rivalries between the various

sovereign nations of this region of the world work to defeat their

ever pooling their resources and coordinating a search to find and

put an end to piracy throughout this entire region. Most pirates

are small-time bandits loosely affiliated with one another, others-

-such as the Sang Brotherhood-have a long history of covering

their tracks so that Politics and the general incompetence of

corrupt bureaucrats allows an operation such as mine to elude

even the most persistent of investigators."

"You think you're above the law because of that?" Nabiki asked.

"Not above," Lao corrected, "Outside of the conventions under

which civilized people prefer to live. I am perhaps the most

liberated of souls because I acknowledge the existence of social

inhibitions. I recognize how we are all victims to our own

upbringing. We are products of the cultures that have molded

our attitudes and philosophies into an obedient slave-mode in

which we never ask the right questions or challenge the authority

of self-proclaimed experts and authority figures who tell us how

to behave, what to believe and just how far we may be permitted

to function."

"So we're just victims of society, huh?" Nabiki lobbed back.

"In one sense," Lao said matter-of-factly, "We also make choices

that can have a profound effect on both ourselves and others. It is

fear of censure by our peers within a social group that can act just

as firmly as any rule of law to regulate our conduct and make us

slaves to our upbringing. Not all of us take responsibility for our

own lives, Tendo-san. It's quite easy to sit back and let others

decide how you are to live and operate, which is the passive-

aggressive mindset adopted by most civilized people.

Theologians and Politicians make use of this mindset all of the

time. So long as we are afraid of doing something that can bring

us censure or condemnation we are compelled to behave in

conformity to whatever standards are upheld to be normality.

The majority sets the criteria for membership, and woe betide the

unlucky individual who does not fit in. In that sense society as a

whole can be far more cruel than anything that I practice."

"That's the price of civilization," Nabiki countered, "Some

freedoms must be sacrificed in the name of mutual co-

existence..."

"Which is the justification of any and all Tyrannies," Lao

responded, "The balance between the polar extremes of control

and freedom requires more than just vigilance, Tendo-san, they

require the occasional upstart like me in order to rationalize their

continued existence. Why else pass laws that forbid social

practices for which there is no clearly definable or compelling

need to regulate? Take the Marriage issue for a prime

example...the romantic ideal of two people bonding together in a

blissful state of eternal matrimony has been used to sanctify such

horrible practices as the Hindu custom of Sati. Or what of our

own Amazon traditions that hold that we should want to marry a

strong fighter, which simply translates as the first man who can

beat us up without compunction?"

"You...have a point there," Nabiki conceded with extreme

reluctance.

"To put a finer point on the matter," Lao continued, "You have

chosen to enter into a state of five-way marriage with one boy and

three other women to whom you feel a deep mutual attraction.

By law you could only marry the boy, yet what is the harm in

recognizing by law what you five would willingly abide to join

yourselves into? I challenge anyone to justify a law forbidding

two women to marry, such a law as you have willingly violated

by using your Male aspect as a pretext for marrying my cousin."

"I won't argue that there aren't some pretty irrational laws on the

books," Nabiki replied, "And not all marriages are a picnic, but I

don't see how you can use that argument to justify what you're

doing."

"Please," Lao smiled as she lifted her wine-glass then tipped it

over to spill wine upon one of Nabiki's nipples, which she then

bent down and began to suckle. Nabiki grimaced in disgust but

found it impossible to repress an involuntary shudder. She was

trying not to give Lao any hint that she was responding favorably

to this treatment, but she had no doubt Lao knew and took full

advantage of her bodily responses. She was obviously rattling

Nabiki's cage to keep her too distracted to think clearly, and

unfortunately the tactic seemed to be working.

"Delicious," Lao almost purred as she looked up from the nipple

she had licked clean with an unmistakable look of predatory

hunger, "You see? You may try to deny it, but you are not

finding your status all that horrible, are you? I am no casual

rapist forcing myself on the unwilling, I am a professional at the

pleasure trade. I deal in the exchange of goods like any other

form of business. It is simply that the business that I deal in

happens to be considered socially taboo that marks me as any

different from the type of business woman you allegedly aspire to

become."

"There is a difference," Nabiki tried to keep her voice level, "I

don't force people to compromise their integrity or personal

values..."

"Oh yes you do," Lao smiled as one hand snaked down to caress

one of Nabiki's inner thighs, "When you took over the

underworld of your campus you forced every student to tow your

line in one sense or another. Granted you were engaging in a

kind of reform, but how many students did you force into drug

rehabilitation programs? How many parents did you contact to

refer to counseling and/or the police in order to help families cope

with their domestic crises, helping troubled students to

concentrate better on their schoolwork? How many people have

you strong-armed or blackmailed into doing your bidding? I

believe it is a crime to gamble on a school campus, but that is one

of your chief forms of outside income which you use to keep your

family afloat while running a dojo in your spare time, which also

is a compromise of school policy. You are quite the budding

criminal, Tendo-san, even if there is nobility in your actions."

Nabiki grit her teeth and tried to think on her balance sheets on

this months latest budget but found her ability to focus there

severely compromised by an abnormal sense of guilt that Lao's

words were provoking. She turned instead to the latest Tokyo

Stock Exchange figures and tried to estimate the current value of

her stock, all the while her body was tensing as she struggled

with her manacles and wrist-cuffs.

"I, too, am a businesswoman of a sort," Lao continued as if

ignoring Nabiki's silent entreaties that she desist in what she was

doing, "I deal in a commodity that is highly valued by the

wealthy and powerful, but these days I am extremely selective in

choosing my clients. It used to be enough that I recruit fresh new

talent to feed the appetites of men and women of power, but

experience has taught me that there is more than merely turning a

profit to getting ahead in my peculiar profession."

"Is that what you call selling Keiko to that bastard?" Nabiki

snapped and was rewarded with a guilty flinch that caused Lao to

pause for a moment before resuming her exploratory finger

exercises.

"That...was regrettable," Lao sounded sincerely troubled, "I don't

allow myself to feel much guilt these days, and it is hardly an

asset to have a conscience about my actions in such

matters...but...giving Keiko to Chu Wan Phat was perhaps the

one most regrettable thing that I have ever done in my life,

excluding only my failure to heed my Great Grandmother's

warnings about the Musk. Believe me when I say that I have not

had a moment's peace in well over a year since giving her up to

that bastard. That is why I intend to rectify my mistake and make

Phat regret crossing me on that day. I also owe him for what he

did to my beloved Keiko-chan, and I will not suffer that he visit

the same treatment on Keiko's mother. On that you have my

solemn promise."

"I wish I could say that meant much to me at the moment,"

Nabiki said, then gasped as Lao resumed her finger-probing

onslaught, bringing her body to a level of excitement that made

conversation that much harder to focus upon without betraying

her arousal.

"It is always a mistake to place too much trust in a man," Lao

sounded as though she were speaking to herself as much as

Nabiki at this point, "Men have only one thing on their minds

when it comes to us, I'm afraid. It's not even really their fault,

they just react that way out of biological imperative. We are

designed to perpetuate the species through consensual activity,

and the Gods have indeed had their jest at our expense in making

the imperatives of men and women so similar, yet so different..."

"Such as?" Nabiki gasped, hoping to distract Madam Lao while

she sought for a new level of focus.

"Such as, of course, our need to mate," Lao continued sadly, "To

find companionship and even love with someone who is special,

someone to whom we can open up and relate on a level that we

never find with casual strangers. It is hard letting go of our

defenses, of trusting someone to whom we can bare our souls and

be the person we hide from the harshness of the outside world. It

is very hard to find that level of intimacy and trust, even harder to

bear the risk when trust such as this is betrayed. I know the

crushing sensation that comes when discovering the lie when you

learn that the man you thought loved you was never being

honest..."

"Prince Julep of the Musk?" Nabiki asked as though exploring for

an opening in Lao's mental defenses.

"Not quite a Prince," Lao replied, "But he called himself that

often enough. He was not of the Royal Dragon Line, but he had

been promoted by Prince Garnet to a position like that of a

Minister of State. He was of the Tiger Branch of the Musk, but

far more intelligent than was usual for that line. He had a hunger

for life unlike any I have ever known, and I was completely swept

up in his vision of a united China. I...loved him very much, only

I was not quite the compliant wife he wanted me to be. He tried

to teach me to be humble and I...failed to live up to his

expectations."

"So you killed him," Nabiki said simply, sensing a slackening off

in Lao's Hentai efforts.

Lao's smile was almost rueful, "I wasn't entirely myself at the

time, so I suppose I did act rather excessively under duress. I do

believe that he cared for me in his own twisted way, but not the

way I cared for him, and the discovery of that made me feel,

perhaps, that I had loved in error. I wonder now if, under

different circumstances, I might not have handled things better.

At the very least I would not have made my son an orphan."

"You did what you thought you had to," Nabiki found herself

surprisingly sympathetic at this point, a sentiment that did not

last as Lao resumed her intimate probing.

"I did what he compelled me to do when he gave me my curse,"

Lao spat the word with peculiar venom, then smiled again and

said, "In a way he is the cause of his own destruction, every bit as

much as me, but that's the Musk for you. Too arrogant and

prideful to realize their limits. I understand that young Prince

Herb is even more that way than his late, unlamented father."

Nabiki did not reply at this point as she was having trouble

focusing at all as Lao expertly brought her to the edge and held

her there, prolonging her state without allowing her to climax.

She was waging an inner debate about whether to feel betrayal or

self-loathing, then realized that such emotions were in themselves

an admission of weakness and fought them off tenaciously. She

would not give Lao the satisfaction of hearing her grovel, no

matter if she now better appreciated the fact that the woman

exciting her was certifiably crazy.

"Ah yes," Lao seemed to recover herself as new thoughts caused

her tone to harden, "And of course there is the betrayal of my own

people, who turned me away in my moment of greatest need.

Even the one I trusted and believed in turned her back on me in

the end, and not just because of what I had done in ending the life

of my own husband. It was politics that undid me. My people

turned me away because they feared going to war against the

Musk in order to help me regain custody of my son. Only a

handful of my people aided me in that endeavor, sharing my exile

out of a mutual insight that the Amazon way had failed to serve

our interests. Two of them still abide with me and are officers on

this vessel. They are my right and left hands, trusted-to a point-

with the operation of this enterprise, and I shall be happy to

introduce you to the both of them when time is permitting. But I

forget one very important detail...you have yet to ask me about

the welfare of your female companions."

Nabiki could not help shooting a worried look at Lao as the

Pirate said this. Her imagination could form ready images all too

well of what sort of conditions her sister and friends were

currently experiencing, judging by what she had seen of the

treatment of Keiko.

Lao clapped her hands and said, "Bring forth the new Pledges."

Nabiki detected movement out of her peripheral vision and turned

her head to see the door to the Captain's cabin slide open. Two of

the semi-translucent women entered first, followed by a pair that

Nabiki almost did not recognize at first glance but quickly

discovered to be none other than Ukyo and Perfume, each moving

in a somewhat mechanical manner.

At the behest of the pale women Ukyo and Perfume were directed

to come to a halt no more than one meter away from Nabiki's

table. They were both completely naked save for some

ornamented jewelry that adorned both women in a way that left

them still exposed to view in every way important. They had

golden manacles around their ankles connected by chains that

clinked lightly when they moved, restricting their stride to half

that of normal. Other chains were connected to the golden

bracelets that they were wearing, and each had the trademark

collars that seemed to be the only universal requirement for the

slaves on board the vessel. Both were staring straight ahead in a

way so relaxed that it was clear to Nabiki that both were

effectively operating like sleepwalkers.

"Ah," Lao said, as she looked these two over, "The okonomiyaki

chef extraordinaire, Kuonji Ukyo, and her true lady love, the very

Amazon who assumed my place in both tribe and family, adopted

cousin of my cousin. Yes indeed, quite a pair, and presently

mine to command in whatever manner I see fit."

"What have you done to them?" Nabiki could not keep from

hissing.

"Nothing bad, I assure you," Lao said soothingly, "I have simply

used an Amazon technique that I have modified with practice

called the Xi Fang Xiao. You might have heard Cologne refer to

it at some time during your training. It is a kind of Shiatsu

touch-exercise employing a specially made herbal shampoo that

can be used to manipulate memory or...as in this case...shut down

certain rational faculties to create a state of mind in which one is

highly sensitive to suggestion. You might say that these two are

presently operating on automatic pilot."

Nabiki stared in dismay, seeing the unfocused gaze of both

women as they stared listlessly at nothing. No trace of the

animated intelligence was there that she had come to know and

respect from her best friend and fellow iinazuke to Ranma, and

the courageous Amazon who devoutly loved her.

"You need not fear," Lao assured her, "I do not intend to leave

them permanently in this state, I just thought they would be much

easier to control this way. I have followed the progress of my

adoptive cousin and know full well of what she is capable, and

with her inability to tolerate pain I can hardly apply my normal

coercive methods to insure her cooperation. As for the chef, I

respect anyone who can capture an Amazon's heart so

completely. If anything, I intend to do them both a great favor

with your cooperation."

"What do you have in mind?" Nabiki's tone was wary.

Lao just laughed before saying, "All in good time. It wouldn't do

for me to tell you everything in advance, it would just spoil the

surprise, but let's us say-for the sake of argument-that you may

even approve of what I have in mind. You might even say that it

is on account of your unique gifts that such a thing is even

possible. I will leave you to dwell upon that while I tend to other

pressing business."

She stood up from her chair then pointed to Nabiki and gave both

Ukyo and Perfume a compelling look, "I want her cleaned off and

ready by the time that I return. Leave her manacles in place and

use only your tongues to do this task. You," she pointed to

Perfume, "Take that end," she pointed to Nabiki's legs, "Work

your way up to her middle. You," now she pointed to Ukyo,

"Approach from the other end and meet your lady love half-way.

Remember...use only your tongues, not your hands, except to

steady her and your balance. I will return within the hour, make

certain that she is ready."

Both Perfume and Ukyo complied with these instructions,

showing no doubt or hesitation as they positioned themselves at

opposite ends of Nabiki's prone body. Nabiki was looking at

them both with alarm as Lao strode casually to the door and said,

"It may interest you to know that you are a very popular item of

discussion with these two. When I applied the Xi Fang Xiao to

activate their truth centers they could not stop singing your

praises. You have made quite an impression with both women,

so try to think of this as their way of acting out a sincerely held

impulse."

"It-It's not real," Nabiki shuddered as she saw Perfume bend

down and begin to kiss and lick her bare feet while Ukyo leaned

forward until her breasts covered Nabiki's entire field of vision,

"This isn't really their choice..."

"Oh yes it is," Lao leered at the attempted denials, "You may be

familiar with the old saying that you cannot make someone who

is Hypnotized do something against their nature? There is no real

need to compel them to act this way, they both want to do you

and will do so now that I have removed the doubt and self-

restraint that has inhibited them until now. I have given them the

permission to do the thing that mentally they were steadfastly

denying. Kuonji-san there has a great deal of admiration for you

as both a woman and a potential lover, while Perfume has even

less restraint in expressing her desire for a closer union. Enjoy

this for what it is, and try not to judge yourself too harshly. After

all, this is fate, and what could be more natural than to give and

receive pleasure with those who sincerely love you? Take your

time and do not rush things. I will be back for you after I pay my

respects to your sister."

Nabiki could not answer at this point, could barely even hear the

words as her focus dissolved under a wave of unending pleasure

that defied both comprehension and reason. Perfume was giving

her feet and ankles a bath and slowly bringing her attentions

upward while Ukyo had one hand on either of Nabiki's breasts

and was kneading her like the dough of an okonomiyaki. Her

loins were brushing against velvet lips, and at last Nabiki

surrendered, unable to help but curse her weakness as she prayed

that her friends would one day be able to forgive her...

Continued.

Comments/Criticism/Sexual Harassment Hotline:

shadowmane

My apologies if this one sounds overboard, but I did not know

how else to describe what happens between Lao and Nabiki

without trespassing on community standards. I trust you will be

here for the next impending chapter...

If you wish to check out my other works, Please check out my

Fanfiction webpage at: . or

it's mirror site at: ~

All related chapters of this series can be found there along with my

other works.


	22. Chapter 22

Nabiki 1/2

A Very Scary Thought

(An Altered Destiny)

Chapter 22, Part 1.

By

Jim Robert Bader

(Based on the works of Rumiko Takahashi & Others)

Warning: Contains Material of an Adult Nature;

You Have Been Forewarned!

"Tell me, Shampoo-san," Natsume said with some caution, "Just

who is this Kuno person currently sleeping it off in our back

yard?"

"Him very stupid boy," Shampoo snorted her contempt, "Him

rich, stuck-up snob, think he man because he good with wooden

stick. His sister even worse, Stupid Rose Girl," she started

chopping and dicing the carrots in front of her with greater vigor,

her knife flashing as it sliced the vegetable into tiny little pieces.

"You don't like him very much, eh?" Kurumi asked from where

she was stirring the Miso soup, avoiding looking at her older

sister as she added, "He sounds like real trouble."

Natsume gave Kurumi an annoyed glance before saying, "Still it

might have helped if you had let me settle the fight for myself. I

would have taken him down more gently, then perhaps gotten to

hear his side of the matter."

"Hmph," Kurumi sniffed in evident irritation.

This was very bad indeed from Natsume's perspective. She was

the one who normally had to restrain Kurumi's impulsive

behavior, especially when it concerned food. It was definitely not

like her sister to be this defensive over whom Natsume chose to

associate. Rather than press the matter, however, Natsume chose

to take a different tact by changing the subject.

"Tell me about this husband of yours, Shampoo-san," Natsume

asked, "What is he like, this cousin Kaneda-sama?"

That brought about a noticeable change for the better in

Shampoo's disposition. She at once brightened up as though her

face were the sun coming out from behind a cloudbank. Her

smile warmed the room as she said, "He very great fighter, very

strong, very handsome. Come to Shampoo's village and defeat

her easy. No one ever defeat Shampoo before, yet he very nice

man...very gentle, show great kindness to Shampoo, no think her

weak girl for losing."

"All the women of your tribe are great fighters?" Natsume asked.

"Yes," Shampoo said, "Amazons great fighters. Three thousand

years we train to be best, and Great Grandmother is best of

Elders, help raise Shampoo since she very small. Shampoo

become best warrior in village until Airen come and best her in

contest..." she paused to give the two girls helping her prepare a

meal a sly look, "Husband also very sneaky, use strategy to

outthink Shampoo, take advantage of fact Shampoo fight all day

in contest and so very tired when make challenge.

Shampoo...very foolish to make challenge when no rest. Could

have made better opponent if I had rested, still no change

outcome."

"I don't know about this law of yours," Kurumi said carefully, "I

mean...fighting to prove you're the best is one thing...but doing it

to get a husband seems...well...kind of going a little far, don't you

think?"

"There more to it than just fighting," Shampoo winked at them

meaningfully, "Also series of tests that challenge victor to see if

he good man, not just good fighter. Airen pass every test, then

we have big celebration and wedding feast and husband take

bride to bed..." she glanced down at her belly with an even more

meaningful leer, "Husband pass other test as well, make

Shampoo happiest girl in all village..."

Her tone drifted away as though a memory clouded those happy

reflections. She went back to dicing up vegetables and would not

continue for a long, drawn out moment.

"How do you like living in Japan?" Kurumi lamely asked her to

break the sudden chill she felt all around them.

Shampoo finally sighed, "Is nice to be in homeland of Airen...just

not the same as Joketsuzoku. Shampoo no used to living with so

many people, but it becoming easier with time. Language still

give problems, but Shampoo...I get better with practice."

"You sound all right to me," Kurumi said in what sounded lame

even to her ears, though she meant it sincerely, finding

Shampoo's odd manner of speech very easy to adapt to the more

she was around her.

"Thank you," Shampoo smiled, "Is not easy living far from place

Shampoo call home. Come to Japan to be with Airen, make

home with new family, very hard adjust to new life, but Airen

make Shampoo feel...very special...almost worth effort."

"Perhaps we can spar together sometime and you can show us

your Amazon techniques," Natsume said, "After you have your

baby."

"Why so long?" Shampoo turned to glare, "You think Shampoo

get weak because she have Airen's baby? Shampoo still best

fighter of Amazons, take you both on with only one Bonbori..."

"Ah, that's all right, Shampoo-san," Kurumi said hastily, sensing

another of a series of dramatic mood-swings, "We believe you.

This Kaneda-san must be very proud of you, it's just that...well,

when will we get to meet him?"

"Very soon, I hope," Shampoo turned away to hide the worried

look in her reddish-brown eyes, "Shampoo know Kaneda-sama

do everything she can to be with bride..."

"She?" Natsume repeated in confusion.

"He," Shampoo hastily corrected, "I mean he. Very hard

language Japanese, Shampoo still need to work on tenses.

Sometimes get confused with gender pronouns..."

"Okay," Kurumi murmured faintly, sensing that there was

something their new in-law was not telling them, but knowing

better than to press the issue.

Natsume also noticed the nervousness in Shampoo's hasty self-

correction but could see no reason for it. She sighed to herself

and said, "Would you excuse me, please? I will be back shortly.

There is something I must tend to."

"Oneechan?" Kurumi asked in puzzlement.

"It's all right, Kurumi," Natsume smiled, "I won't be long. Please

continue to help Shampoo-san prepare Otosan's dinner."

Kurumi looked faintly disturbed at her sister's manner but could

think of no good excuse to follow her, so she returned to her work

with the Miso as Natsume headed towards the laundry room,

then did a quick detour and headed for the garden.

A moment later Kuno Tatewaki sputtered back to life as a pail of

cold water was dumped onto his head. He looked up in bleary-

eyed confusion to see Natsume smiling down at him in an overly

friendly manner.

"Kuno-san," Natsume said pleasantly, "What do you know about

my cousin Kaneda-san?"

"Kaneda-san?" Kuno bristled at the name and launched into his

standard diatribe about the much-accursed Tendo wizard that

would take fifteen minutes to relate (and Natsume at least an

hour to accurately re-interpret), after which time she would be left

with even more questions than ever...

Keiko was deeply troubled as she waited for her Mistress to come

fetch her. This reunion with her former owner was not going

entirely in a manner that she would have liked, not least for the

fact that all of her closest friends were currently in deep distress

as was-not coincidentally-her father.

She had a fairly good idea of what was going on around her. She

knew Madam Lao and her ways, knew her policy regarding

outsider women who wound up on board her vessel, and knew

that Lao would set about methodically breaking down their

resistance so that they might better fit in with the women who

constituted the crew on board the Piece Of Junk. Some would be

conditioned to be slaves, a few might be recruited as potential

crewmates, while anyone resisting this program would be treated

to a very harsh ordeal that would either turn them into passive-

submissives or would break them all together, most likely the

latter.

The men would not have much to worry about, at first, as Lao

had her own agenda concerning the male of the species, and

some men might even enjoy it. At first. Keiko did not like to

think of the implications of that for her father and his teammates.

Lao was methodical and diabolical in ways that few besides

Keiko could appreciate, and the means at her disposal left little

doubt of her ability to carry out her schemes. This all had the

appearance of one of Lao's masterful strategies at work, and it did

not seem likely that she would have gone to all this trouble

without a specific plan in mind to deal with the men in their

group in such a way that it would turn a healthy profit...

"Ah, there you are, little one," she heard Lao coo as she turned to

greet her Mistress with an automatically submissive posture.

"I await to serve you, my lady," she said by rote phrase, having

uttered those words so many times before now that they came to

her as second nature, along with her deferential pose, standing in

the corridor with her leash dangling from a hook, barely giving

her enough slack to bend down or sit had she so wanted.

"Indeed," Lao said approvingly, "I am glad that you still

remember your training. I half-feared that you would need to be

reconditioned after so long a time off your leash. Many others in

your position would revert to their wild, uncivilized state."

"You taught me to respect the terms of my conditions," Keiko

replied, "While I was on my own I lived by my wits and relied on

nobody but myself. I know that with you I need not want for

anything. The circumstances change but I remain essentially the

same person."

"So I can see," Lao cooed as she stroked a finger along Keiko's

jawline, tracing the familiar contours of the redhead's delicate

features, "You are to be commended for your resourcefulness, but

I thought by now you would at least have tried to find yourself a

new owner."

Keiko allowed herself a slight smile at that, "I nearly had when

all of this started. She is someone very special to me whom

I...was bringing around to my way of thinking..."

"That Kodachi woman," Lao mused, "An interesting choice, you

being one year her senior. Still...there is something very raw and

unfinished about that woman. I have not yet managed to put my

finger upon it, but I believe that she does need more of an

education before she can become your Mistress."

"My lady," Keiko said delicately, "Kodachi has...problems...of

that I am aware. I wanted more time to study her, to learn how

best I could help her. To bring her in now..."

"Yes, I am aware of the risks," Lao assured her, "Perhaps we

should go check on her now to see if I may have acted a bit

prematurely in her case. She certainly shows great potential from

what I have seen of her so far..."

"Ah...my lady," Keiko hesitated again, "About my friends...and

my father..."

"Oh yes," Lao nodded, "I know you are concerned for their

welfare. A very interesting lot they are, and very talented,

especially that Nabiki woman of whom you are so fond. She is

the one who liberated you in my absence, no? For that I do owe

her a favor...after I have softened her up into a more receptive

mental state."

"That may not be...very easy," Keiko paused, wondered how to

best phrase her concerns that Lao would go too far this time. She

was certain that Nabiki would resist conditioning and was

reasonably positive about the others as well. She did not want

her friends broken into the harness the way Lao normally treated

people in her captivity, she liked them just the way they were, but

to say so aloud would have been an unacceptable show of

defiance and would have gained her nothing. Best to play along

and regain the trust Lao once had in her judgement, then see

what could be done to help free them.

"Perhaps not easy," Lao smiled, "But I like a challenge, and I

suspect she may prove very much worth the effort. I suspect that

even she does not know how much of a submissive she has

within her, but the rest is pure fighter. Perhaps I may even one

day give her to you as a pet. I rather think that you would like

that."

"Ah," Keiko blushed, knowing that Lao could read her like a

book and knew her well from their previous time together. The

fact that she had changed in over a year was not something she

wished to advertise just yet, so she permitted herself a forbidden

fantasy of having Nabiki at her mercy, a scene of domination and

submission very unlikely to occur, but still highly arousing. She

hoped her reaction would be enough to convince Lao that it was

something that she sincerely hoped for.

"You are still worried about your father," Lao surmised after a

silent pause in which the air seemed to fairly hum with the

poignancy of the moment, "You think that I might contemplate

some mischief regarding him and his friends. Well...I must say

that in regards to his friends I am strongly tempted, and your

father is a very manly sort who has more than his share of

attractive qualities..."

"My lady!" Keiko came very close to expressing her shock and

disapproval, but the smile Lao gave her showed that this was

hardly an unexpected reaction.

"You need not fear, my pet," Lao assured her, "I will honor your

father...and your mother when we have at last regained custody,

and I won't do anything...too extreme in regards to either parent.

For the time being it will be necessary to keep your father under

restraint, and his friends along with him, if only so that they do

not wind up hurting themselves in foolishly going up against

me."

"They may...try an escape, my lady," Keiko said cautiously, half-

dreading the answer.

"Would it assure you if I give my word that no harm will come to

your father at my hands?" Lao asked, "I want very much to see

him and his friends upon their way at the end of this expedition.

They are agents working for a highly classified inter-

governmental service that I would rather not have coming down

upon my head even if their chances of catching me are a bit less

than sterling."

"You mean to let them go?" Keiko asked wonderingly.

"Wouldn't be much point in reuniting your parents if I didn't

mean to get them together," Lao replied, "I suspect Akiko will

need special handling, judging by the treatment that you received

at the hands of that bastard. I will do as much as is needful to

repair her psyche, but then the decision will belong to her, not

me. As for your father, I believe it will be enough to erase his

memories of me so that he and his people will never remember

ever having been on board this vessel...and as for

you...well...that's still open to negotiations. I rather like having

you back under my care, where you have always belonged. I may

not even wish to risk you again in the arena...though I suspect

your skills as a Kickboxer have sufficiently improved that you

could once again regain your title."

"I have been...practicing what you taught me, my lady," Keiko

replied, "My skill is greater than what you may remember."

"Good," Lao purred, taking the leash in hand and tugging on the

chain to encourage Keiko to follow her down the corridor, "Then

let us see how much progress your two friends are making. I am

more than a little bit curious to see if what I suspect is true of this

Akane and Kodachi."

Keiko obediently followed her Mistress, finding it easy to hobble

her steps to the length that her ankle chains permitted. With her

hands still cuffed behind her back she entered an adjoining

chamber two steps behind Lao and found the very thing she both

expected and half-dreaded. Akane and Kodachi were hanging by

their wrists side-by-side with their ankles held apart by spreader

bars, but presently they were undergoing a special kind of

conditioning that was unique to Lao's parlors.

Namely there were water elementals flowing over and around

their bodies, more of the Undine spirits who loyally served

whoever was the master of this vessel and who comprised

roughly two thirds of the normal crew compliment. Currently

those Elementals were in their semi-liquid state, flowing eel-like

over the naked skin of both young women, yet somehow not

activating the Jusenkyo curse for Kodachi as they probed and

stimulated their flesh with a tactile facility far beyond anything

that was remotely human.

Keiko could not help but feel a sympathetic stirring in her loins

as she watched her friends writhe and suffer the indescribable

pleasuring and torments that only an Undine was capable of

bestowing. With their ability to mold their bodies into any shape

that they could imagine it was childsplay to form prehensile

digits with flexibility and suppleness beyond anything that might

be achieved by a human phallus. By controlling the surface

contact made between themselves and their skin they could

stroke and fondle human flesh in ways that simply could not be

put into words or description. The experience was unearthly and

capable of inducing mind-shattering heights of arousal and

pleasure, and with three Undine working together a piece on

either girl they had the instant coordination of their mutual

assaults to drive both women to heights of unimaginable

pleasure.

Lao smiled as she watched for a time, unable to help but finger

herself as she watched the quivering display of elemental flesh

stroking human. Before too long she reached out and began to

play with Keiko's own bared bosoms, removing the nipple caps

to pinch and fondle her sensitive tips until they began to swell

with her own heightened arousal. Keiko made no effort to resist

this, simply watched the show as members probed Akane and

Kodachi from all three openings, aware of how far along they

were by the throbbing pulse and glow that shimmered over the

surface of the Undines. Their victims were sending back waves

of pleasure the more they were stimulated inside, driving the

Undines onward to expanding the degree of their ravishment.

Keiko knew that those tubes probing the girls' mouths were in

actuality processing air into lungs so that they did not drown

while covered in water. She did wonder how the Jusenkyo curse

was held at bay, though, as she would have thought the mere

contact of the elemental was enough to trigger the transformation

from Kodachi to black ferret.

Lao's breathing intensified as the elementals glowed a bright

pink, as if forming battle auras. At last, however, the Pirate

Queen regained control over herself and said, "That is enough,

my servants! Ease back then withdraw and allow these two to

recover their bearings."

Almost instantly the Undines began to flow away from the two

girls as the glow finally left them. The Undines resumed a

human appearance, then all six bowed down to Lao on one knee

with faces humbled, though they seemed to still hum a bit with

the aura of mutual savor.

"Report," Lao said, "Selke?"

"My lady," said the leader of the six, her voice having that

slightly quavering effect Elementals had when attempting human

speech, "We have done as you asked in preparing these two for

the next stage of reprogramming. They have both been rendered

more susceptible to your influence, as requested."

"Tell me what you know concerning these initiates," Lao

instructed her lieutenant.

"It is as you have suspected, my lady," the leader replied, "The

small one proved to be very responsive to the suggestions we

implanted in her mind. She has a strong preference for her own

sex, but she is not exclusively that way, like your favorite pet over

there," she did not look up as she indicated Keiko.

"So," Lao mused, "I was right...Tendo Akane is strongly same-

sex oriented. Small wonder she has little interest in most

members of the opposite sex. I could make a very fine lady out of

this one..."

"Perhaps so," the leader replied, "But we have also discovered

that she is strongly motivated by a sense of her own

independence. She has grievances deep down that have never

been addressed, a strong sense of self-protection and latent

paranoia that borders on extreme overreaction. She may prove

difficult to fully condition as her self-identity is that of a person

who does not need others to provide her with her own strength."

"She is insecure and in need of affection," Lao replied, "That is

something I can work with. And what of the other one?'

"My lady..." the Undine hesitated, "She..."

Before the elemental could fully voice her thoughts Kodachi

herself seemed to revive, only she did not look at anyone or

anything, just closed her eyes and shuddered for a moment before

throwing her head back and crying out, "I'm sorry! I'll be good!

Please don't hurt me, Mother!"

The elementals flinched while Lao raised both eyebrows. Keiko

was shaken out of her momentary arousal by the disturbing

sensations brought about by the sound of pain and desperation in

Kodachi's voice. The girl was sobbing in almost hysterical terms

while thrashing against her bonds, crying out with a small keen

as though wracked by pain from all corners.

"What is happening?" Lao demanded, surprised at a reaction to

sensory overstimulation unlike any she had previously witnessed.

"My lady," the lieutenant replied, "This is what we wished to

inform you about. Our probes uncovered strong mental blocks

buried deep within this one's inner psyche. We penetrated the

wards by insinuation of our probes and discovered the inner

demons this one has kept so well hidden. She is currently

suffering memory flashes and has not yet managed to repair the

walls of her ruptured Psyche. We were about to construct new

wards when you disturbed our efforts."

"Mother-No!" Kodachi cried out as her body wracked in pain,

and now a visible welt was appearing upon her skin that had not

been there before, the ones Lao had left earlier having long since

been healed by the elementals.

"Sacred ancestors," Lao breathed in her surprise, "She is suffering

sympathetic reaction to her memories, you dolts! I thought you

knew better than to provoke this type of reaction!"

"We know, lady," the Undines groveled, "Please forgive us and

allow us to return to our work..."

"One side!" Lao gestured with a hand and the six elementals

dissolved into puddles that immediately flowed through the

cracks in the floorboards, "I will summon you back when I have

dealt with the mess you have left me. I simply cannot permit this

one to damage herself psychosomatically with these stigmata."

She snapped her fingers and the chains binding Kodachi popped

open, causing her to begin to fall like a limp dishrag, but Lao was

quick in crossing the space between them and caught the Black

Rose up into her arms then held her aloft as Kodachi continued to

keen like a small child, unconsciously throwing her arms around

Lao's neck as though the gesture had actually been meant to ward

off an attack. Lao turned and carried Kodachi to one end of the

room where a table was set, then laid the Japanese girl out and

took steps to position her body into a relaxed state, using

pressure-points to render Kodachi insensate.

"Is she all right?" Keiko asked, so frightened by the behavior of

her friend that she momentarily forgot to phrase her tone in a

deferential manner. Fortunately for her Lao was too distracted to

notice at that moment.

"I don't know," Lao replied, "I have never experienced a case this

extreme. This child is being torn apart from within by her own

memories. I am going to have to join with her and discover for

myself the true cause of her afflictions."

"Is there anything that I can do?" Keiko asked as she came to

stand up beside the table.

"Yes," Lao replied, giving the girl a quick study, "It is a good

thing I used the gold chains and not cold iron. That will make

things easier. I want you to stand and monitor us both...you have

enough training to do that, I trust?" Keiko nodded so Lao smiled

back at her grimly, "Then wish me luck, as this will be a tricky

matter of some delicacy, I suspect. You care a lot for this girl."

The last part was not phrased as a question but an observation,

and Keiko swallowed a bit as she nodded in the affirmative. Lao

gave her a look that as much as said what she already expected

then turned back to Kodachi and placed her fingertips along the

young girl's temples.

"Steel yourself and control your reactions," Lao said as she began

taking deep breaths, "I will need your presence for an anchor if

this gets complicated."

So saying she closed her eyes and relaxed, her body assuming an

automatic state with the ease of long practice. Lao's spirit flowed

and merged with that of Kodachi and at once found herself

plunged into a psychic maelstrom the like of which only Keiko

perceived as a swirl about both of their bodies.

Lao floated through this storm as if gliding, resisting the pull of

the currents until she found what she was after and followed the

dark thread that was spiraling out from the center of Kodachi's

being. At once Lao was assaulted by the torturous sensations of

raw pain and guilt, which she ignored as best she could, treating

these impulses as the illusions that they were, seeking not the

pain but the cause of the real torment, which flooded over her

while Keiko felt the echo in her own mind, recording images as

though through a camera remote.

With a suddenness that was beyond description Lao felt herself

merging completely with Kodachi's Id and experiencing a time

when the girl was no more than eleven years of age. She was

standing before a body laying upon the floor in a pool of crimson,

a lady who looked very much like Kodachi as an older adult, only

laying quite still while Kodachi stood there, mouth agape, staring

fixedly at the knife in the woman's throat.

A knife put there by the woman's own hand, a knife used in ritual

seppuku by a woman driven over the edge of sanity and

desperation.

Memories flooded through her of other times when the woman

had been a living, breathing presence, some memories were

happy, others-far too many-were saturated with scenes of

mental, emotional and physical violence so ugly and depraved

that to merely witness them was to recoil in horror. The girl

recalled horrible experiences of gross physical torture, of being

locked away and starved in a closet until she promised to behave,

of being whipped like an animal and beaten for minor infractions.

The mood swings of the elder Kuno woman had been so extreme

that there seemed only a pendulum's space away from one

incident or example of parental cruelty separated from the next,

increasing in tempo the longer this went on until the girl's

memories seemed like one long, endless torture.

Other images of the girl's father came to mind, a remote and

distant man who sometimes smiled at her but never stayed long

enough to make much of an impression. He would miss dates

and appointments, break promises and fail to show up for

birthdays and special occasions, heap faint praise on those few

times he even happened to notice her at all and sometimes-very

rare but cherished memories-he would do something truly

parental to endear himself in her heart, then walk away and leave

her once more to the mercy of her mother, whom he neglected

even worse in his endless pursuit of financial empire.

The girl looked down at her mother's corpse as it started to cool,

then reached out and dipped her fingers in the blood, staring at it

fixedly without fully understanding the significance of what she

was seeing. Then her brother showed up and found them this

way...and she remembered the look of abject horror on his face.

He stared at her without seeming recognition, then said

something that made little sense to her but triggered a most

unexpected reaction.

At first it was something tiny, small, almost unheard of, then it

grew in strength as she slowly realized that the pain and torture

were over, that her torments were done and would never be

repeated. The servants would come and clean up the mess, and

then the strange person lying on the floor would no longer be a

memory and even the blood would be wiped away until no trace

remained of what had happened.

And as this became fully clear in her mind she opened her mouth

and began to laugh...a laugh that would make her brother back

away and gaze at her in horror.

But the blood still remained in her mind and on her hands, the

blood of that stranger whose identity she could no longer

remember. The mere color of red now upset her worse than she

could ever remember, a red so deep that it could stain the world.

Better to never see red again than to experience such disturbing

emotions. Black was a far better color, the deep nightshade of

the roses in her garden, to which her father had often compared

her. Those roses had special properties that she had learned

about by accident and would later refine through chemical

extraction. These roses could be used to distill a powerful

narcotic that could numb the flesh and ease the pain. Put into a

tea it would render memory hazy, which could be used to help

her sleep at night.

It would take time and several years before she would learn the

right dosage, but her Black Rose garden was an endless supply of

raw material from which to harvest the powders that became her

stock and trade when she began to near adulthood. She would

share her discoveries with Tatewaki, helping her brother to ease

away his own demons so that they both could go on and never

have to fear again for the strange woman that had died upon their

floor. Anytime she felt the memories return she knew what to do

to keep the memories at bay, and she would laugh at her own

cleverness.

She did wonder why Tatewaki still preferred the color red,

however, but perhaps he saw things differently. Red still meant

other things beside pain and death with him, but Kodachi knew

that every red rose had thorns, unlike the smooth stems of her

black ones...

Keiko gasped as the link was severed and Lao returned them both

from edge of the insanity that they had each witnessed. She was

shaken to her core by what she had seen in first-hand memory, of

the pain Kodachi had carried inside her all these years, of the

demons that drove her to be an exceptional gymnast.

Her mother had tried to mold her psyche, to make her an object of

her own ambitions, to live vicariously through Kodachi to make

up for her own failed ambitions in the Gymnastics world.

Kodachi had tried every way she could to please her mother, but

the elder Kuno had suffered a progressive mental disorder that

was enflamed by the neglect she suffered from a career-obsessed

father. Her mother had tired to love her children, but the pain she

had endured was so great that she wound up hurting what she

loved, and then finally when matters had become intolerable she

had taken her own life both to end her suffering and to bring an

end to the suffering she was inflicting on her children.

But still the ghost of the pain remained within Kodachi, the

memory of every terrible thing she had ever experienced, every

unkind word or thoughtless comment, the sense of never being

good enough to please her mother or to win the attentions of her

father, all of which Kodachi had tried to bury and suppress, both

with drugs and her compulsive behavior. In her heart she knew

that what her mother had done to her was wrong, but now it was

guilt that kept the memories buried, a guilt so deep that even she

had never suspected its existence.

It all made perfect sense now! That was the reason for Kuno

Tatewaki's psychotic belief in himself as an invincible samurai

warrior. His mother had sought an honorable death to protect her

children, now he had to be the strong one in their family to

protect himself and Kodachi against the demons of his own

nightmares. Elder Kuno also had been driven over the edge of

insanity by guilt and the realization of how his negligence had

driven his wife over that selfsame edge. He went on a self-

destructive binge of denial and dissociation that culminated in his

extended sabbatical when he had been shipwrecked on a deserted

island. When found and rescued his convalescence in Hawaii

had helped him shape a new personality matrix that currently

took the form of a deranged Principal at a certain High School...

Keiko heard a gasp and sensed that Madam Lao was regaining

full consciousness over her own body. Lao took several deep

breaths as she regained her focus, then removed her fingers from

the temples of Kodachi and said, "I've done what I could to repair

the damage, but her defenses have crumbled and cannot be easily

rebuilt in the same manner. I am afraid she is going to be

plagued by memories when she fully recovers, and when that

happens she will be torn apart inside by the twin demons of pain

and guilt unless someone is here to give her the strength she

desperately desires."

Keiko looked down, seeing Kodachi was already stirring. She

had just witnessed the Hell that her friend had kept hidden so

long from others. Of a certainty Kodachi would be overwhelmed

by her memories, only this time she might not be able to retreat

into the comforting bosom of psychosis.

Lao looked hard at Keiko and said, "How much do you care for

this woman?"

Keiko blinked, completely unprepared for that question, but when

she met Lao's steady gaze her words were surprisingly steady, "I

love her."

"Then it seems you are elected," Lao half-smiled before coming

around behind Keiko, and a moment later she removed the

handcuffs, "Do whatever it takes to calm her down. Tell her

whatever is in your heart and make her believe it. It is important

that she knows that someone is here to care for her, to assure her

of her own worth as a person. We both know what it is like to

need another in a moment of human weakness. I will trust you

with the mental safety of your friend. When I return we will all

three have a long discussion about this."

"Yes, my lady," Keiko replied even as Kodachi began to flutter

her eyes, then looked up at Keiko. Keiko reached down and lost

herself in the ebony depths of the other woman, and then Kodachi

reached out to her and Keiko drew her into her arms, the two of

them hugging as Kodachi began at first to spasm then wail again

like a lost child. Her keening broke Keiko's heart and caused

even Lao to feel the stirrings of her maternal instincts.

Lao turned away with great effort and left the two of them there,

went over to find Tendo Akane was staring at all three of them

with a wide-eyed expression. Lao paused to consider her, smiled

at last then turned and left the chamber. As an afterthought she

posted two Undines as guards over the chamber with the

instruction that none were to disturb this trio until further notice.

It was not often that a Pirate had the chance to play therapist, but

Lao was pleased by the results nonetheless. She forced herself to

think practical once more then remembered Tendo Nabiki and

smiled. There was more unfinished business to tend to, but she

was reasonably certain that the Kodachi matter was in good

hands for the moment.

Keiko might not fully realize what she had done but Lao knew

imprinting when it happened. The Black Rose had just given

herself into the hands of Lao's apprentice, and a more competent

kind of therapy could not be imagined. With two such vibrant

souls amerced in the grief and joy of living it would only be

moments before Keiko's solicitude turned to something more

erotic. Lao could imagine the scene in detail from that point

onward and was assured that Kodachi would shortly be past her

crisis forever.

Where to go from there was the only real question, but Lao had

time to work on that. With a little retraining, and Keiko at her

side, Kodachi could become quite formidable in the arts of

pleasure, and Lao could always find room on her ship for another

talented and aspiring dominatrix.

If only the men were as easy to mold to her desires, she mused as

she headed back towards her office and Nabiki. Men were more

trouble than they were worth at most times, but when it came to

the thing that they were best at it was hard to find a reasonably

good substitute.

As fortune would have it, in this instance, there was one on board

this vessel who knew the perspective of both genders. It was

time to exploit that particular asset, and Lao knew just the way to

employ that asset to very good usage...

Continued.

Comments/Criticism/Professional Therapy:

shadowmane

Next time up: The Boys are Back in Town!

Nabiki 1/2:

A Very Scary Thought

Chapter 22, Part 2.

By

Jim Robert Bader

(Based on the works of Rumiko Takahashi & Others)

WARNING:

HENTAI MATERIAL CONTAINED,

MAY UPSET SOME HYPERSENSITIVE READERS;

FOR REASONABLY MATURE AUDIENCES ONLY,

YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!

"Ken," Guile murmured to one side, "Think you can do your stuff

and break loose for your cage?"

"I could try," Ken replied, glancing down, "Only this room's a

little too confining for my Happo Sho Ryu Ken, and the rest of

your could hurt in the blast. Then there's the little matter about

the landing..."

He let his voice trail off, and Guile grunted his

acknowledgement. Their cages appeared to be hanging over

some inky black water, and he could have sworn he saw

something swimming down there with the barest hint of a

tentacle or two. He was pretty certain it was not a tank filled

with goldfish.

"Good point," he said, "I was thinking the same thing for my Ki

attack. What about you two?"

"No good either, Colonel," Bison responded, "I've been trying for

the last couple of hours but I can't seem to bend these suckers.

Whatever this metal is it's a lot tougher than iron."

"Same here," Honda replied, "I've been using all my strength but

I can't even get these bars to bend a little."

"Guys," Ranma smiled, "I think I know how we can get out of

these cages," he turned to the cage nearest to him and said,

"Right Ryoga?"

"Huh?" Ryoga said despondently, "What do you mean?"

"You know," Ranma said, "That thing you've been practicing

with me for the past several weeks, the special attacks Cologne's

been teaching us, remember?"

"Oh," Ryoga said, "Well, if you mean the Breaking Point, I've

already tried it. Something about the cage prevents me from

getting a focus. I can't find the breaking point anywhere, and I

have been trying."

Ranma narrowed his eyes, "You're telling me you can't use your

Ki? I thought you were just moping about Akane."

Ryoga looked up and said, "I am worried about Akane, Ranma,

and everyone else too, if you must know that. What about you?

Aren't you worried at all about Nabiki?"

"Of course I am," Ranma said a bit defensively, "Who knows

what that...Pirate lady will try and do to her? But if it comes

down to a bet, I'll put my money on Nabiki."

"Man, what is it with you and the sex-change artist?" Bison

asked, "One minute he's a guy, the next thing you know he's a

she. That'd weird me out if somebody I knew went through that

all the time."

"Like Chun-Li or Cammy?" Honda winced, "No kidding!"

"It's not like that!" Ranma declared angrily, then amended, "At

least...it's not like it's deliberate with her or anything. She's got

this weird Chinese curse I told you about that she picked up in a

place called Jusenkyo..."

"The Cursed Springs of legend?" Ken asked, "I read about them

once. At the time I thought it'd make a great plot for a movie."

"How does this curse work exactly?" Guile asked him..

"Cold water activates the curse," Ranma explained, "Hot water

returns a person to normal. Nabiki's a girl, my iinazuke as a

matter of fact, but she turns into this guy and...yeah, I guess it

does sound crazy, but you gotta believe I'm not making it up..."

"Kid," Bison said, "Ain't nobody could make something like that

up unless they'd seen it happen. I saw it with my own eyes and I

still don't believe it."

"Well, there's lots of other curses besides the one that turns

Nabiki into a guy," Ranma continued, "I know one girl who turns

into a cat, another girl who turns into a ferret, and my father turns

into a giant Panda. There's, uh...even somebody I know who

turns into a vulture."

"You've got some strange relations, kid," Guile frowned,

"Anyway these things can get broken?"

"We don't know," Ranma sighed, "Far as we know there's no

cure for these curses. Cologne the Amazon Elder says she's

never heard of anyone breaking a curse, and her people have

lived right beside Jusenkyo for thousands of years."

Guile's expression darkened, and Bison noticed this, which

prompted him to ask, "What's up, Guile? Somebody nip your

poodle?"

"It's just something I thought I saw happen when we went

overboard," Guile said, "Before we all blacked out. I was trying

to reach for Keiko when I thought I saw..." his voice trailed off as

he turned and looked at Ranma, "A vulture, huh?"

"Uh, yeah," Ranma winced inwardly, realizing that Keiko was

going to kill him for this, "It was kind of an accident,

Nabiki...bumped into her right after getting her curse. She's

pretty much adjusted to everything, but she tries to stay away

from cold showers as much as possible..."

"Oh smooth," Ryoga snorted, "And they call me thick."

"Look," Ranma said, "I'm sure she was going to get around to

telling you sooner or later, and it's something I think you ought to

know, but I didn't mean to spill the beans or anything..."

"Kid," Guile waved it away, "I think I get the point. I'm not

happy to hear about this from second hand sources, but I don't

suppose I can blame Keiko for not bringing it up. I just hope she

doesn't have any more surprises like that to spring on me, I'm not

sure I can take it."

"Ah..." Ranma exchanged silent looks with Ryoga then said,

"Ah...nothing too important. I'm sure Kei-chan will be glad to

tell you anything she thinks you ought to know..."

"Kei-chan?" Ken asked with arched eyebrows, not missing the

angry glare that appeared on Guile's face, "Want to run that by us

again, Mister 'I'm engaged to four women?'"

"Huh?" Ranma blinked, "What do you mean? I'm not interested

in Keiko, and I know I'm not her type..."

"Give it up, Saotome," groaned a somber voice in the cage where

Mousse was currently trussed up, "You're just digging yourself in

even deeper."

"Well, back among the living I see," Bison remarked, "Guess

whatever they gave you must've worn off already, huh?"

"Not completely," Mousse grumbled as he forced himself up to

his knees, holding the bars to keep himself upright, "It's just the

noise of all of you shouting that's giving me a headache."

"I thought you were under some kind of mental Amazon

brainwashing for a moment there," Ranma sniffed, "Never

thought I'd ever say this, but it's nice to have the old you back."

"Likewise," Mousse replied, "The effects of the Xi Fang Xiao are

pretty potent. Good thing I've had previous conditioning to

strengthen my resistance, and besides that I'm just lucky Lao is

an Amazon. Exiled or not, she tends to take men like us for

granted."

"Well, now that you're awake, got any ideas on how to get out of

these cages?" Ranma asked.

"I might," Mousse replied, reaching up to rub the back of his

neck, only to come away holding up a key that seemed to have

appeared from no where.

"What the...?" Guile sat upright in his cage, "Where did you get

that?"

"Off one of our jailers," Mousse replied, "Like I said, they tend to

take Male Amazons for granted."

"He means how did you manage to hide a thing like that in your

hair?" Ken asked in amazement, "I thought your hands were

fastened behind your back."

"Oh please," Mousse snorted, "I am the Master of Hidden

Weapons. What kind of Magician would I be if I couldn't slip

out of a few chains and hide a thing like this on my person? They

may have taken my clothes away with most of my weapons, but

I'm not completely helpless."

"Yeah, but will that key fit the lock, that's what I want to know,"

Bison pointed out.

"One way to find out," Mousse replied as he reached around and

inserted the key in the lock on his cage, did some twisting and

jiggling around with it, then made an audible click and pushed

the door open with a smirk of satisfaction.

"Neat trick," Honda grunted, "You said that you're some kind of a

Magician?"

"I've done some work on the stage," Mousse replied as he swung

his legs around and sought the wooden walkway leading past

their point, balancing on his bare feet before turning to the others,

"This should also work on your cages, but once I let you out I

want your assurance that you won't try to interfere with me when

I go to rescue perfume, Saotome."

"Hey," Ranma said, "What kind of a deal is that? You think I'm

going to stand aside and let you attack Ucchan?"

"I'm not interested in attacking her this time," Mousse replied,

"We'll have enough trouble dealing with Lao at our full strength.

I'm just saying that Perfume is mine and no one had better get in

the way between me and my future bride. I won't go after Kuonji

directly, but if she stands in my way all bets will be off. Is that

understood?"

"Man, you are obsessed," Ranma complained, "Don't you get it

yet? Perfume doesn't want anything to do with you! She's told

you that often enough..."

"But no one can protect her the way I can," Mousse replied, "No

one could care for her or love her the way I do. I've loved her

since the time that we were little children growing up together,

and I'll always love her. I can't allow anyone to take her from

me, not even Kuonji, whom I respect even though I must destroy

her."

"Man," Bison blinked, "Did he say obsessed? This guy's a total

wacko!"

"A wacko am I?" Mousse turned a blind stare in the general

direction of the Boxer's voice, "Well, it just so happens that I'm

the one who's holding all the cards here, or should I say the key?

And another thing-Gulph! Sputter!"

There was hardly any warning as the form came pouring down

upon the unprepared Mousse, and suddenly his form began to

collapse inwardly, shrinking in size until all that was left of him

was a figure barely two feet tall and covered with fur. The

incoherent noises he made sounded angry and nettlesome but was

from a part of the human family tree that was only just learning

to walk bipedal.

"Oboy," Ken started in disbelief.

"Oh my," Bison breathed, "Did you suckers see that?"

"Saw it, yes," Honda replied, "Believe it? No way!"

"So it's true," Guile's eyes narrowed, "There really are such things

as Jusenkyo curses."

"Mousse?" Ranma exclaimed in disbelief, staring at the primate

with a disbelieving expression, "You also have a Jusenkyo

curse?"

"Makes sense," Ryoga sniffed, "I wondered where he disappeared

to that time on the ice rink. I was a little busy saving Akane, but

I could have sworn he fell into the water and vanished."

Mousse made a very unhappy noise as he glared at them all as if

to dare them to say that someone had just made a monkey out of

him. The next instant he jumped to the side as the watery figure

that had triggered his curse resolidified into the form of yet another

translucent woman, their jailer from before.

"I suggest you get back in your cage before I am forced to take

action," the Undine said in a practical, no-nonsense manner.

Mousse took one look at the woman and wasted no time in

turning to vault towards the nearest of the cages, which turned

out to be Ranma's. He scampered on the outside, keeping just

out of reach of the Elemental as he fit the key into the lock and

turned it abruptly. The next moment he was dodging a streamer

of water as the Elemental converted to her liquid form and

launched herself his way. Mousse was swinging around to land

on the next nearest cage, and in a moment he had the door swung

open, releasing Ryoga.

"All right!" Ranma cried as he and Ryoga jumped out of their

cages and landed together on the walkway, "Now let's...party?"

His exultant tone trailed off as a number of liquid forms solidified

before his very eyes, three more of the elemental women squaring

off to confront him as Ryoga also discovered the same thing from

the opposite direction.

"Hi there, cute stud," the lead of the trio Ranma faced, as her

opposite number on Ryoga's side said, "Going somewhere?"

"Uh oh," Ranma murmured, "Somehow I don't think this is

gonna be easy..."

"I don't care!" Ryoga cried, "Nothing's stopping me from finding

Akane!"

He lumbered forward to attack, only to find the first of the female

forms he encountered did not move out of the way. Ryoga was

too angry to stop himself, though ordinarily he would not have

struck at any woman out of anger. This time, however, he did not

need to fear for the security of the target. The woman's body

dissolved on contact and absorbed his forward punch, solidifying

around his arm as she smiled down at him with teeth that looked

remarkably shark-like on close inspection.

"Don't you know it's not nice to hit a lady?" she asked before she

and her companions all dissolved and flowed around to engulf

Ryoga in a globe of aqueous gel. Ryoga fought to win free but to

no avail, his strength utterly useless as he floated about without

support to lend balance to his efforts.

Ranma's own hesitation to attack for once came to his aid as he

caught Ryoga's situation out of the corner of his eye, then

regarded the trio more warily, understanding at last that normal

means would not serve in this instance.

"Hang on, kid," Guile called out as Mousse got through

unlocking his cage, "We'll be with you in another minute."

"No hurry," Ranma stood back and assumed a defensive crouch,

"I've got this thing covered."

"What's the matter, cute stuff?" the lead elemental asked as she

and her companions took a step forward, "Don't you want to play

with us like your friend? We can show you a real good time..."

"Guile," Ken suddenly straightened out in his cage, almost

ignoring when Mousse unlocked the door for him to escape, "I

think I know what he's up to."

"Mind filling me in later?" Guile asked as he vaulted onto the

ramp behind the elementals that were giving Ryoga so much

trouble, "Hang on, kid, I'll get you out of there."

"Colonel" Honda warned a bit too late as more female forms took

shape behind their leader. Before Guile completed the motion of

turning around he found himself overwhelmed by sheer weight of

aqueous numbers.

Mousse completed the motions of unlocking the last two cages,

then hastily scampered up the nearest chain before vaulting onto

the ramp closer to the exit. He spared a quick glance over his

shoulder and smiled a monkey smile, seeing all the elementals

focusing on the human presence in the chambers while ignoring

him, exactly as anticipated. Let the others serve as distraction

while he made his own escape. In his cursed form he was even

more agile than when human and had the ability to fit inside

really small spaces, exactly the sort of assets you would want if

you needed to go somewhere unnoticed...

Not that Ryoga would have cared at the moment, close as he was

to the point of drowning. The Undines that overwhelmed him

physically were only toying with their prey, however, not really

meaning to cause him an early death. They had not had a male

presence to play with in this manner for quite some time, and the

novelty caused them to become a bit careless. That was why they

circulated just enough oxygen into his system to keep him awake,

and did not notice for several long moments that Ryoga had

grown suddenly very quiet, his struggles ceasing as he drew upon

deep reserves of inner anguish.

Ryoga, being a manic-depressive at the best of times, had been

holding it in for the last several hours, all the loneliness and

despair that made up a large part of his misbegotten nature. The

pathologically misdirected boy now allowed those feelings to

surge up from the depths of his soul, allowing every scrap of

agony and dread to mix with his intense fear for the welfare of

Tendo Akane, the one girl in his existence who had ever been

truly kind to him and treated him like a person rather than an

object of pity.

The Undines had not anticipated this and so were at a loss to

account for why they suddenly felt quite weak as though Ryoga

were absorbing their strength. They did not seriously start to

worry, however, until he started to glow, and by that time it was

too late to withdraw as Ryoga turned the force of his anguish into

his hands and exploded with the power known as Shi Shi

Hokoudan!

Almost simultaneous to this, and facing in the opposite direction,

Ranma's hands started to glow as he smiled at the now-nervous

elementals, and all at once the energy came flowing outward as

Ranma cried out the words, "Moko Takabisha!"

The force of his attack caused the very air itself to detonate. The

elementals were blown into fine mist and dissipated, even as

Ryoga's attack caused the elementals surrounding Guile to

fragment and scatter, leaving them all victorious upon the

walkway.

"She-oot!" Bison exclaimed into the thundering silence that

followed this double-offensive, "Hey Ken, I thought you and Ryu

had the patent on this kind of attack."

"Don't look at me," Ken shrugged, "It's not the same as my

Haddo attack, and it felt more like these guys were using

opposite charges."

"Lucky guess," Ranma said with just a hint of minor exhaustion,

resting his hands on his knees as she steadied himself against the

inevitable drain the maneuver usually left in him, "We trained

together in the use of opposite techniques. Ryoga's Ki attack

comes from his rage and depression, mine works on confidence,

the results are pretty awesome."

"You won't hear any complaint out of me," Guile said as he

looked down at Ryoga, who was on his hands and knees

coughing up the last traces of water in his lungs, "Think you two

can manage to walk? There may be more of those things where

they came from."

"Indeed so," said a voice from the far end of the ramp as Cologne

hobbled into view on her walking stick, "I'm glad to see all that

training wasn't wasted on you two after all, but next time you

might have a better care for your surroundings. It this chamber

was not magically sealed the twin blasts you unleashed would

have been sufficient to rupture a normal vessel."

"What took you so long?" Ranma smiled weakly, then

straightened up, "We have to find Nabiki and the others."

"Indeed we do, Son-in-law," Cologne replied, "The matter is

graver even than you suspect. My former student has become

more unbalanced than I even dared believe. I apologize that it

took some time to engineer my freedom, but my skills as a

locksmith are almost as rusty as the lock she used was difficult to

tumble. I know you both need rest, but time is of the essence

here, and there is no telling what insanity Lao intends for your

loved ones."

"Akane," Ryoga gasped, forcing himself back to his feet with

great effort, "Nothing's going to stop me from finding

her...nothing!"

"No argument there," Ranma said as his confidence returned,

along with his fighting spirit, cracking his knuckles as he added,

"Let's show this Lao character what men are made of."

"That's the spirit," Honda said cheerfully, slapping a meaty hand

against Ranma's back that nearly floored the younger boy, "But

you'd better let us take the lead this time. We're still fresh for the

fight, and we've got a reputation to look out for."

"You got that right," Bison smacked fist-to-palm and grinned,

"Time for Round Two. I just hope Chun and Cammy aren't

having too much fun and left us some of the action."

"We'll know as soon as we link up," Guile said authoritatively,

"Ken, you take point, keep an eye out for sudden leaks. Honda,

Bison, you hold the rear, the rest of you follow me."

Ranma raised one eyebrow before turning a questioning look

Cologne's way to see if she would contest this. What he saw

instead shook him more than the notion that she would allow a

man to lead the way, for though the Amazon Elder tried to

conceal it there was a look of intense worry in her expression. He

suddenly felt less than certain about the whole matter, and

without meaning to his thoughts became frantic with the fear that

he had been holding down for the welfare of Nabiki and the

others. Without another word or complaint he fell in line with

Guile and Ryoga, Cologne following after them while all around

it felt as if hidden eyes were watching them from every corner.

Which was an accurate enough description of affairs, had anyone

care to know this...

"Now, that wasn't so bad an experience, was it?"

"Oh sure," Nabiki snorted as she trudged along in her chains,

"Now I know what a salad bar feels like. I don't suppose my

friends will remember this when they wake up?"

"Only if I want them to," Lao replied with s smirk that Nabiki

could not see from her position behind the pirate, "If I'm feeling

generous. Why, would you mind it?"

Nabiki only glared silently at the ex-Amazon's swaggering

backside. In truth she felt exhausted, both inside and out, having

been put through a kind of ordeal that was neither as pleasurable

nor entirely unpleasant as she would have admitted to anyone's

face. Any other time she would have simply gone with the ride

and taken her licks without question, but the thought of doing it

under someone else's compulsion was anathema to her nature.

Besides, she knew very well what Ukyo and Perfume would

think if they were to awaken to the memory of their behavior of

only a few moments past, and that spoiled any enjoyment she

might have taken in being the object of their mutual passion. The

two were acting like a pair of robots now, but they had been

pretty animated when fulfilling Lao's explicit instructions, and

Nabiki felt like she needed a hot bath to wash off the slaver and

saliva that seemed to coat every inch of her person.

"Here we are at last," Lao smiled as she indicated yet another

chamber in the seemingly endless corridors of the vessel. She led

the way, like always, Nabiki following unsteadily with Perfume

and Ukyo only a few paces at her opposing flanks.

Nabiki allowed her eyes to rove about in search of all details. At

first it just seemed oddly like another room, but then she noticed

the pillar-like stand that was set in the exact center of the

chamber, upon which was another brass egg-shaped covering

that had an ominous presence. Lao approached this with a note

of caution in her tread, but her voice held the hint of a smile as

she carefully caressed the covering, then turned a glance towards

Nabiki.

"As you know," she said, "Jusenkyo curses are very stubborn,

permanent things for which no reliable cure has ever as yet been

discovered. The reason for this is that the curse is more than just

a magic spell that causes a bodily transformation. The curse, in

fact, is tied to your very Akashik pattern and becomes a part of

your Karma. The instant you fall into a spring or feel the caress

of its waters your body undergoes a literal transformation. The

imprinted image of whatever has died there becomes the shape of

your alternate body. When you get splashed you don't really

change at all, you exchange your form with that of the new

template."

"What, like a student exchange program?" Nabiki snorted.

"Facetiousness ill becomes you, Tendo-san," Lao smiled as she

indicated to her two robotic slaves that they were to urge Nabiki

to take a position on the opposite side of the pillar, "Have you

ever wondered just exactly how it is that these Curses perform

their miraculous functions? After all, you seem to possess a very

rational mind with well-ordered thought processes. Does it seem

rational that a full-grown woman can change genders while

increasing your mass by one third? For that matter, how does

'Cousin' Perfume here manage to shrink to the size of an animal

that I understand you have a certain aversion for, yet still retain

her human-level intelligence? The conservation of matter and

energy would seem to be violated here, along with the rules of

Entropy and Quantum dynamics."

"All right," Nabiki said, "Since you seem to have all the answers,

why don't you tell me how it happens?"

"You understand, of course, the term 'Virtual Reality,' do you

not?" Lao smiled, "The kind that I refer to has nothing to do with

computers, it has to do with the state of Virtual matter that

surrounds us everywhere and comprises over 90% of the particles

in actual existence. Dark Matter is, I believe, one of the terms

currently in vogue. What is meant here is that the particles that

can be recorded in the Physical Universe are only those that have

the right vibrational resonance to match Quantum frequencies

with the reality we relate to. Change the Quantum vibration of a

particle and it no longer resonates with our reality and seemingly

fades from existence. It is not gone or destroyed, it merely passes

to a parallel level of being. There are an infinite number of such

parallel worlds separated by one heartbeat of this Cosmic

vibration, and between Universes there is an empty space where

all the lost or unrealized potential energy of our Universe is

stored. This Quantum interface fluctuation is the Realm of Dark

Matter, only a tiny bit of which we can directly relate to, the stuff

that comes closest to achieving harmonic vibration."

"So?" Nabiki asked, struggling to follow the concept as it did

match closely with what she had been taught concerning

Vibrational reality, albeit her training had been in using the

Akashik or spiritual energy of Manna and Prana employed in Ki-

Force manipulation.

"So," Lao purred dramatically, "Our cursed forms take root out of

this Virtual State of existence, and when we transform the shift in

our mass is caused by an exchange of these forms through the

filter of the Spring's template, thus a man can become a panda,

and vice versa. It might also account for why some curses allow

you to retain your clothing when you transform while others do

not. In this case size and volume really does matter."

"I'll buy that," Nabiki replied, "So what about it?"

"The curses, as I have stated, are bonded to us permanently," Lao

resumed as she caressed the brass covering, "But it is possible to

temporarily exchange templates with the help of a certain device I

have here in my possession, a powerful artifact that can switch

your cursed form with that of another Jusenkyo victim thus

allowing them to briefly gain your curse for a few hours duration,

and vice versa."

"And you want to take my curse and exchange it with your own?"

Nabiki asked with a certain dread anticipation, wondering just

what exact shape it was that Lao intended to inflict on her,

however long it lasted.

"Not me," Lao smiled, "I like my cursed form very well, thank

you, although I will admit to a certain fascination with your

ability to experience the perspective of the male of the species.

The one I was thinking of is none other than my adoptive cousin."

Nabiki paled, shooting a glance at the silent Perfume, who was

continuing to stare straight ahead without flinching. Nabiki

looked back at Lao in alarm and said, "Why?"

"Because," Lao replied, "I know what it is like to be a parent, and

to have your child taken away by circumstance. Those few days

without my son were some of the longest in my entire life, and I

would not wish a childless condition upon anyone who desired

fervently to be a parent. I know that Perfume, with her aversion

to pain, can never dare to have a child of her own in the normal

sense of the matter, but she is willing to allow Ukyo to bear

children by that boy you are all so fond of. I've nothing against

surrogate parenting, but I think these two deserve a chance at

expressing the joys of their union under conditions very much

like what you are enjoying with my true cousin."

"But...you can't possibly make this kind of a decision for them

without obtaining their consent!" Nabiki protested, "They're

human beings, not mice in a lab that you can breed for your own

amusement..."

"Why not?" Lao said as she lifted the lid covering the object upon

the pillar, "I have the means and the will, and besides this I

already know what is in their hearts. Ukyo herself expressed

regret that Perfume would never have a child of her own to care

for. I think she is willing enough to do this, and it's not as if I

will need to exert that much pressure to obtain their cooperation."

Nabiki was only half-listening as the object exposed to her view

caught and held her attention. It looked something like a Faberge

egg with a marble-shaped crystal the size of a hen's egg held

tightly within its center, growing with a cerulean light that bathed

the room with its unearthly radiance. Lao turned to Perfume and

ordered her to take her place opposite Nabiki while she circled

around and commanded Ukyo to exit the chamber for a few

moments. Nabiki and Perfume remained staring at the glowing

object as the images in their minds took hold in plain view. A

ghostly aura surrounded Nabiki, taking the form of Kaneda,

while similarly the appearance of a ghostly cat appeared from

within Perfume and hovered in space for a long, drawn-out

moment.

Lao watched from a comfortable distance as the exchange of

templates proceeded in stages, but before it was halfway

completed she looked sharply off to the side as though sensing a

trembling in the air of a very different sort. Her gaze became

momentarily unfocused while Ukyo stood numbly at her side

watching the exchange take place without a noticeable change of

expression.

"Bugger," Lao murmured, "I knew that I should have had her

watched more closely..."

"My lady," said one of the Undines, flowing from a gap in the

floor to take the form of a kneeling woman, "Many pardons, but I

have grave news..."

"Yes, yes, I know," Lao waved the point away, "The prisoners

have escaped. You know what needs to be done, so follow your

instructions on this matter..."

"Matters are being tended to even as we speak," the Undine

replied, "But I was sent here on a different purpose. Lotus and

Blossom have requested your presence at the helm at your earliest

convenience."

"Hmm?" Lao looked down at the elemental in puzzlement, "Is

this matter all that urgent, Selke? They cannot handle it in my

absence?"

"Regretfully no, my lady," the Undine replied, "Shall I tell them

to expect your presence shortly?"

"Tell them I will be there," Lao said, then amended as an

afterthought, "And if I am not satisfied as to the importance of

this summons I shall be very cross with them. Make certain that

they understand that."

"It shall be as you command, my lady," and at once the elemental

shifted to her fluid state and seeped back through the floorboards.

"Double bugger," Lao grumbled, "Those two need help just tying

each other up. Well, the process is nearly completed, there

should be time enough to move to phase two. Shall we greet

your newly improved beloved, Kuonji-san? I think you will like

the present I am about to give you."

The exchanged images faded away as the crystal itself now

hummed with diminished radiance. Lao returned and covered the

object, then snapped her fingers to bring Nabiki out of her daze.

Nabiki blinked her eyes and gasped, "Wha-what...?"

"A slight change of plans has forced me to move up my

timetable," Lao replied as she turned to Perfume and said, "This

way, my foster-cousin, your bride awaits you."

Nabiki was given little choice in following as Lao exited the

chamber, bringing all three of them along to another room just a

few paces further down, which she opened before smiling at her

two hypnotized subjects, indicating that they should enter. Just

before they stepped past the threshold, however, Lao reached

down and ran her hands over their backsides, then brought her

right hand over Ukyo's pelvis and concentrated for a moment. A

satisfied smirk seemed to confirm her expectations as she urged

the okonomiyaki chef to continue into what Nabiki saw was an

already prepared bedchamber, complete with a large well-padded

futon.

As Perfume entered after Ukyo, however, Lao raised her left hand

and caused a spray of water to gush upon her as though conjured

up from nothing. Perfume began to change instantly, and within

the blink of an eye she grew taller and heavily muscled, filling

out in places that caused Nabiki to gasp in astonishment, never

having witnessed this particular change take place in another.

Perfume as a man was an entirely different-seeming person.

Standing close to six feet or more and perhaps just under two

hundred pounds even, he was solidly built with muscles as thick

as tree-trunks. His long brown hair looked odd for his new

gender but he otherwise had many of the same distinguishing

features as Perfume, even in some slight way resembling the

male version of Nabiki. Only his eyes remained unchanging,

eyes that seemed to be dilating slightly as Nabiki looked him up

and down, unable to help feeling an involuntary reaction of pure

lust. For the first time ever she knew what it felt like for Kasumi!

"My," Lao smirked as she looked the now-male Amazon up and

down, "What big equipment you've got there, bright boy. I'm

actually envious of Kuonji and the pleasure you are about to give

her."

"Wha-what is...happening?" Perfume slowly seemed to be

coming out from her-no his-daze, looking around in confusion

before turning towards them with a puzzled expression, "Who

you...?"

"Oh my," Lao smiled, "You seem to be throwing off the effects of

the Xi Fang Xiao, Cousin. This confirms yet another theory I

have long had about one of the side effects of Jusenkyo curses

speeding up the healing process. Instant transformation seems to

be accompanied by a partial restoration of health, no doubt

caused by the filtering effect caused by the exchange in bodies

through the template."

"You...?" Perfume threw off the last bits of his daze as

recognition took him, "You are Nameless one whose place

Perfume take in family..."

"Yes," Lao smiled, "And I really should resent you for that, but

somehow I just can't manage to be angry of someone with as

many problems as you have faced in your young life. Never fear,

everything will turn out for the best, I assure you. No doubt you

will begin experiencing the delayed effects of that last bit of

nerve-manipulation I just applied to you and your Airen."

"What you do to...Airen?" Perfume turned to see Ukyo standing

beside the bed with a blank expression and in two paces he

crossed to her side and gripped Ukyo by her forearms and saying,

"Airen...Ucchan...is you all...right...?"

It only belatedly occurred to him that there was something very

different in his angle of perspective. Ukyo seemed somehow

shorter than usual rather than a shade taller than Perfume. The

now male Amazon was actually staring down at his wife, and

with a very slow dawning comprehension he looked down at

himself and cried out in dismay some colorful Chinese words that

Nabiki mentally chose not to interpret.

"I do so love when a plan comes together," Lao smiled, "Well,

cousin, have fun exploring your new toy. I'll leave you two

lovebirds to become better acquainted. In another few moments

you won't have a care in the world, so don't bother trying to

escape as this room is both reinforced and quite thoroughly

sound-proofed. Come along, Tendo-san," and with that Lao shut

the door and urged Nabiki to follow as she headed for a stairway.

Perfume stood rooted to the spot, staring down at something that

absolutely should not be between his legs. He noticed the

absence of a pair of substantial bumps upon his chest, but the

new Pectorals he was sporting were large enough to almost make

up for that loss. He simply could not believe the size and

thickness of his thighs and forearms.

The size of his other limb-which was just now flexing itself out-

was another matter altogether!

In cold horror Perfume knew at once what Lao had done to

her...or rather him...though the exact mechanics of the deed were

beyond her limited understanding. He also had a pretty good

idea on the what and why behind Lao's actions, and the fact that

Ukyo was standing naked before him in a blank-eyed and quite

obviously receptive state left no doubt in the world what was

expected to occur in another few moments.

The horror came from contemplating a thing that-under different

circumstances-Perfume would count a miracle devoutly to be

wished for. He had been given an option he never would have

dreamed of possessing until now, a chance to do the impossible,

to share the joys of his cousin in away that would leave no doubt

in the world of his devotion to his Airen...

And he simply could not do it! Not this way, not to Ukyo, not

without her knowledge and consent, and certainly not while

standing there staring at nothing in a state that only the Xi Fang

Xiao could induce. It was violation of the grossest order, little

better than rape and certainly not the act of love that Perfume

would have gladly expressed here. Though his pulse was racing

and his body throbbed with need he could not give into the deed

without making a mockery of the very thing she would want to

accomplish.

"Ukyo..." Perfume shook his wife by her shoulders, attempting to

elicit a response, then belatedly cursed himself for a fool in not

realizing the means by which Ukyo's mind could become

unclouded.

He circled around behind her, all too conscious of the beautiful

naked body that waited to service his needs, which were growing

more insistent. Ukyo remained unmoving as Perfume brought

his hands up to feel around the back of her head, seeking the vital

nerves that his heightened senses could read like Braille,

remembering her lessons in applying the techniques of memory

manipulation, recalling in detail her instruction in the art of Xi

Fang Xiao.

For barely a moment he hesitated, but his resolve grew firm as

his handsome face set in a look of determination. With a barely

audible prayer to the spirits of his ancestors, Perfume plunged

ahead and began to apply the counter-remedy that would unlock

the real Ukyo from her prison deep within to which Lao had

dispatched her true Airen.

And if awakening her meant forgoing the fulfillment of their

pleasures...well, Perfume would make that sacrifice...depending

on what Ukyo felt when she had recovered...

Akane was half-numb with fatigue and her shoulders felt as

though they were being torn loose from their arm-sockets, but she

was aware that someone was speaking to her, and that they were

standing to one side leaning close enough for her to feel the

warmth of their body. She also felt herself being shaken slightly,

but she not feel the cuffs coming off of her wrists until gravity

was suddenly restored and she found herself tumbling forward

like a stringless puppet.

"Easy, Akane-chan, I've got you!" Keiko urged as she held Akane

close to her body and gently eased her to the floor. She knelt

with Akane in her lap, using her hands to smooth out her long,

silken black hair and ease her bangs from her forehead, all the

while saying soothing words as if to nurture Akane to a state of

easy comfort.

"Is she going to be all right?" asked another voice that Akane

automatically identified as Kodachi.

"I think so," Keiko replied, "She didn't have as bad a reaction as

you, so I think she's just numb from her ordeal. It'll pass soon

enough once she gets the circulation restored to her wrists.

Believe me, I know what this feel like. I've been through the full

treatment."

"Then that is one experience for which I do not envy you,"

Kodachi cooed, moving closer to Akane's position as though to

add her own extra comfort.

Akane forced her eyes to open before staring up at Kodachi, who

was looking back with concern and deep affection. Akane had to

crane her neck to stare up at the equally concerned Keiko before

at last managing to say aloud, "Wha-What happened? Wh-where

are we?"

"We," Kodachi said mildly, "Are in one of the conditioning

chambers that Madam Lao employs for the purpose of

brainwashing us into being her loyal little sex-toys. Keiko-chan

was just in the process of freeing us both right now. The only

question is...how soon can you recover your strength?"

Akane had to think on that a moment before replying, "I'm sure

I'll be up to speed in another minute. Why do you ask?"

"Oh, no reason," Keiko said mildly, "Other than the fact that

we're trapped on the high sees on board a ship belonging to a

renegade Amazon who wants to turn the both of you into the

latest pets in her floating menagerie...is this starting to make

sense to you both? If not, I could try outlining the rest of what is

in store for you if we don't try to get out of here while we're still

sentient."

In spite of how tired she felt Akane was able to work up enough

annoyance to glare, "You could have just said we're in trouble

and left it at that...and what about the two of you? I seem to

recall something about the two of you making out while I was

hanging here like a piece of meet hung out to dry."

"Sorry," Keiko said sheepishly, "That was reflex. I needed to

shake 'Dachi-chan here out of her funk, and I was acting pretty

much on automatic. Chalk it up to reflexes..."

"Some reflexes," Kodachi sniffed mildly, "But I'm glad just the

same. I don't know what I'd have done if you hadn't...well, I'm

just incredibly grateful."

Akane looked at her longtime friend and said, "Are you going to

be all right? And what were those...things doing to us anyway? I

feel like I've cum about a hundred times and my body's aching all

over, like I want to do it again another dozen or so..."

"That's a side effect of the conditioning treatment," Keiko hastily

explained, "The Undines like to play with their victims, drawing

a bit of vitality out of the physical act of lovemaking. The idea is

to get you both used to feeling pleasurable so that when you're

not being stroked you still anticipate these sensations. Lao likes

to make her victims into raging sex-addicts willing to do

anything to please her, makes it that much easier to get your

cooperation for the really intense stuff that comes later."

"Indeed?" Kodachi sounded curious, "You're going to have to tell

us about the rest of what we're missing. At the moment,

however, I am starting to feel something like my old self...only

I'm not quite so sure if that's accurate. There is something...very

different about the way that I am feeling. I feel...more alive than

I can ever remember having felt. The shadows I am so used to

are gone..."

"Gone?" Akane asked, earning a wondrous look from Kodachi.

"Gone," Kodachi repeated, and then smiled a genuine smile that

made her face brighten, "The voices I am so used to hearing...the

tightness in my chest...the...the shadows that have so long haunt

me...all gone. I feel...giddy...as though I have been reborn into a

new life. I'm not sure I can describe the way I feel in words, I

just know that a weight has been lifted from my shoulders. The

pain...is gone...or at least it's quieted. I don't know how or why,

but somehow I feel as if it has all been made new..."

Her voice trailed off as she turned to stare at Keiko in wonder.

Keiko felt something strange as she endured Kodachi's silent

stare, so at last she asked, "What is it?"

"Your hair," Kodachi said slowly, "It's red."

"Yeah...so?" Keiko asked with caution.

Kodachi smiled even more poignantly than before, "I never

realized it before...how beautiful the color...so beautiful...you are

beautiful, Keiko-chan."

Keiko blinked then stared back as if trying to confirm in her own

mind that what she saw was for real, her eyes locking onto

Kodachi's as the two stared at one another in a silence that

seemed to drag on forever. They might have gone on staring like

that if Akane had not cleared her throat right then and there,

deciding to return their talk to more pertinent matters.

"Okay," she said, "Now that we've established that you two really

like each other, why don't we turn the agenda over to suggestions

on how we're going to get out of here in one piece. That Madam

Lao may come back at any moment."

"Good point," Kodachi replied, then added, "You are not jealous,

are you, Akane-chan? I still feel the same way I have always felt

about you..."

"Jealous?" Akane reacted in surprise, then thought about it before

replying, "No, not really jealous...just surprised. I knew you guys

liked each other a lot, but I didn't know you planned on going

steady."

"Sounds to me as if somebody needs reassurance of our feelings,"

Keiko smiled, turning a conspiratorial glance towards Kodachi.

"Indeed," Kodachi leered, "We must show our beloved friend

here that we still intend to indulge ourselves with her at leisure,

but for now I think the escape option is a more appropriate idea.

You do have a plan for that, do you not, Kei-chan?"

"I ought to," Keiko replied, "This ship was my home for a couple

of years, and Lao trusted me with a lot of her secrets. I'm grateful

to her and everything, but I can't condone what she's doing to

your guys. It isn't right, especially the stuff she plans to do to

Nabiki."

"Oneechan," Akane whispered, "We've got to find her and

Ryoga...I mean the others..."

Keiko shared another amused look with Kodachi as they each

caught the gaff and telltale self-correction, then as one they said,

"Riiiight... Ryoga and the others."

"You two," Akane sniffed, then growled, "Help get out of these

ankle-cuffs, will you? They're not exactly the kind of fashion

accessory I feel like growing attached to at the minute...and what

are we going to do if those water-ladies come back?"

"That's a very good question," Keiko sighed, "Undines are Water

Elementals, which makes them especially dangerous to Kodachi-

chan and me. They can revert us both to our cursed state without

half trying, but you might be able to handle them if we could only

get our hands on some cold iron..."

"Cold what?" Akane blinked.

"Cold iron," Keiko replied, "It's another way of saying

magnetized iron pyrite that's been shaped without fire into a raw

form of the metal. Cold Iron is lethal to elementals and spirits of

all kind... something to do with its magnetic properties I guess.

Certain kinds of steel can do the trick as well if you stroke it with

a magnet to get all the force lines moving in the same direction.

These chains won't do the trick, of course, since made of non-

ferrous titanium and can't carry a charge without a power outlet."

"Perhaps we can improvise something," Kodachi mused, "If I

remember my folklore correctly there are other substances that

one can employ against elementals, such as Prayer chains and

rocksalt..."

"Not much of that on hand," Akane sniffed, "And the last I

checked none of us are practicing Shinto Priestesses. Whatever

we're going to use it has to be made from the materials we've got

on hand."

"Maybe so," Keiko said thoughtfully, "To tell the honest truth, I'd

really rather not hurt the Undines if it can be helped. They're just

servants of Lao's will, and some are pretty nice as people. This

ship is their home, and most have lived on it for centuries.

They're not actually trying to hurt us, they just like playing with

flesh-and-blood mortals..."

"Then perhaps that might work to our advantage," Kodachi

looked around, then smiled, "I think I have a pretty good idea

what might work here," and she began to outline her scheme, for

once cooking up a typically Kodachi-like plan without once

resorting to her trademark laugh, for which both of her friends

were both disturbed and highly grateful...

Continued.

Comments/Criticism/Contemptuous Commentary:

shadowmane

Things continue to heat up as the heroes go against the fiendish

schemes of Lao and her amorous henchmen...er...henchwomen...be there!

Nabiki 1/2,

A Very Scary Thought

(An Altered Destiny)

by

Jim Robert Bader

Chapter 22, Part 3.

(Based on the Works of Rumiko Takahashi & Others)

WARNING: ADULT MATERIAL, DO NOT READ

IF YOU ARE EASILY OFFENDED,

YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!

"What is it that is so urgent that you felt it necessary to disturb

my pleasures, Blossom?"

A very tall Amazon with dark blue hair almost jumped at the

stern, commanding tone of her Mistress and turned to greet

Madam Lao with an obsequious, "Forgive me, my lady, but we

have company, it seems. We believe it to be a Chinese military

vessel, possibly destroyer class and steaming our way at flank

speed. We thought that sounded more than a little urgent."

"A destroyer you say?" Lao frowned as she surveyed the

bridge of her ship, "You are certain it is Chinese and not

Russian?"

"The marking make her out to be from the Mainland," another

Amazon with cherry pink hair reported as she scanned the seas

with an antique-style spyglass, leaning against the rail for

support against the sway of their ship in the ocean.

Nabiki-who stood a couple of paces behind Lao, still naked and

in chains-surveyed the ship for the first time from the nominal

outside. It did indeed look very much like an incredibly large

Chinese-Style Junk from many centuries past, only it did not

appear to be as large as what she would have expected, judging

by some of the corridors she had traversed since awakening

inside the vessel. The bridge itself was actually an enclosed

wooden cabin with a large steering wheel at the front instead of

an even more ancient rudder that she would have expected. The

roof over their heads blocked off full view of the sun so that the

time of the day was difficult to estimate, and there was a weird

curtain of distortion like a haze that perpetually surrounded the

vessel. The sky did not look right, and she felt an eerie hint of a

general unearthliness that defied rational understanding.

Lao's eyes were narrowed as she seemed to be contemplating

something that could not be seen by Nabiki, and then she

murmured softly, "They're out there all right, but why? Why

here? By rights we should be invisible to their radar, while their

sonar wouldn't be able to identify us either, yet they seem to be

coming this way as thought they knew of our location."

"Shall we take evasive action, my lady?" Blossom asked.

"Indeed," Lao's eyes narrowed, "Do so at once. Let's see how

they react."

Blossom turned to one of the blue-skinned Undines and relayed

her instructions while two others at the wheel began turning their

direction until the very large Junk was moving at a sharp angle

away from their previous heading. Lao was silent for a long

moment while Lotus scanned the shifting horizon, then at last she

smiled and said, "That confirms it. They've continuing on along

their original heading. They either don't see us or they're too

distracted by something else to pay us any attention."

"You think it was only a coincidence the, my lady?" Lotus

asked her.

"I don't believe in coincidence," Lao folded her arms over her

breasts and frowned, "Somebody sent them out here expecting

to intercept us. That much is obvious, and so is the probable

identity of their sudden source of information."

"You mean Phat, don't you?" Nabiki spoke out in Japanese,

surprising the two other Amazons as though she had been

invisible to their notice before this moment.

"Sounds like his speed," Lao nodded sagely, "I'd heard he was

retiring a few months ago, but it seems the religious life just

didn't suit him. No surprise in that, but if he's found out that I'm

coming to pay him a visit it means we can expect more such

interference. Hong Kong is presently under Mainland Chinese

authority, and while the ports are mostly open for business as

usual, they have made a show of trying to crack down on

independent activities such as those that I engage in."

"You ever think it might be the nature of your business that the

authorities don't approve of?" Nabiki countered.

"Oh please," Lao sniffed, "Who do you think have been some of

my most ardent clients? In the past I've supplied many of the rich

and powerful in these and other ports with the sorts of

entertainment for which they pay quite handsomely. Your own

Japan has long been home to many of my best clients. Everyone

deep down wants what I have to offer them. It's only for the sake

of appearances that they claim otherwise, and not from any silly

misplaced concept like virtue."

"So you think everyone at heart is a criminal?" Nabiki asked.

"Don't you?" Lao responded, "You're a practical sort, Tendo

Nabiki, you believe that everyone has their price and that people

do what they believe they must out of enlightened self interest..."

"I used to believe that was iron clad," Nabiki replied, "But I can

also see now that everyone also has their limits, that there is such

a thing as too much greed and corruption. There have to be some

rules to any game, Lao, and you can only go so far when breaking

them..."

"As much as I find this discussion fascinating," Lao replied,

raising a finger, "I'm afraid we must postpone it for now as we

are having a bit of a crisis here. Blossom, Lotus, what is the

status on that destroyer?"

"It has not moved off as we had hoped, lady," Blossom replied,

"The Stealth field is holding, but they may have other means of

detecting us, and at this range..."

"Yes, I see," Lao sighed, "I had really hoped that we could avoid

getting into a shooting war with the Mainland authorities, but it

would seem that the danger they pose to us is such that we may

have to err on the side of expediency and caution. Ready the

torpedo tubes and prepare to sink her."

"Torpedo tubes?" Nabiki reacted.

"Not everything on this vessel is as primitive as you may have

been led to believe, Tendo-san," Lao replied, "And I have

amassed a considerable fortune in the course of my trade. I

thought it prudent to have a few modern conveniences added in

during one of our more recent outfittings. In these days of post-

Cold downsizing, weapons systems are cheap and easy to obtain.

I could also swamp their vessel with a Chi-attack or have it

boarded by Undines, but a conventional torpedo is much less

easily traced and won't draw as much attention my way..."

"Except that every major power in the region is going to start

accusing one another of attacking a Chinese military vessel,"

Nabiki countered, "Do you really want to trigger an escalation of

world tensions?"

"If necessary, yes," Lao replied, "But I would prefer to avoid

bloodshed if a reasonable alternative can be suggested. Need I

remind you that the weapons on that ship have sufficient range

and firepower to reduce even a magical vessel like the POJ to

kindling? I have the lives of everyone on board to think about,

not incidentally including you and your friends."

"I get your point," Nabiki replied, glancing to the side with a

thoughtful expression, "They haven't fired yet, which means

they're not certain that we're out here. Maybe they're having

trouble calibrating their instruments or they don't really know

what they're looking at, or what to expect. Perhaps you can use

that to your advantage."

Lao smiled, "That's what I like about you, Tendo-san...you are

always looking at the possibilities, seeking alternatives to

resorting to violence or using the direct approach. You believe

that intellect should prevail over the body, and in this matter I

happen to be in total agreement. Lotus, have the weather vane

recalibrated, point it in their direction and tell Nimue to have her

people ready to coordinate the attack when I call up the Kraken."

"Kraken?" Nabiki asked, "What do you plan to do?"

"Nothing too drastic, I assure you," Lao smiled, "I'm going to

blind them to all outside contact and leave them blind for half a

day while we make our escape. They are about to experience the

worst fog bank that they have ever encountered. It is infinitely

preferable to what I could do should I choose to get nasty."

"And that is?" Nabiki asked, not entirely certain she wanted to

know the answer.

Lao's chuckle was mirthless, "You are aware, of course, that this

ocean flows over one of the most geologically active fault lines in

the world. There are pockets of subterranean gas located

everywhere, and sometimes they release large quantities of

methane over a localized area, which can be very hazardous to

shipping. Ocean water that is permeated with gas becomes too

light to support a normally buoyant craft, and the methane has

been known sometimes to spontaneously detonate so that a ship-

even that size-could utterly disappear as if swallowed by the sea

leaving very little trace of its passing. Believe me, if I have to, I

am prepared to send that ship to the bottom before risking myself

and my crew, so let us hope that their captain is reasonable and

slows to wait out the fog, otherwise there will be some real

fireworks in this ocean."

Nabiki felt a chill pass down her spine that had nothing to do

with her state of undress. Somehow she found herself believing

that Lao meant every word she had just spoken, that the resources

at her disposal were sufficient to allow her to carry out her threat

and that the lives of hundreds of Mainland Chinese sailors

depended on the success of Lao's tactic. She watched in growing

nervousness as the one named Lotus fiddled with some device

that looked like a brass astrolabe that had a goose-egg sized

diamond-shaped crystal in its center.

"Coordinates are aligned as you ordered, my lady," the pink-

haired Amazon reported a moment later.

"Nimue indicates that her squadron is in position, my lady," the

blue-haired Blossom also related, indicating what looked like a

reflection of the light somewhere off to their starboard.

"Excellent," Lao said, then closed her eyes and took a deep

breath, concentrating...on what Nabiki could hardly guess, but

she sensed the waves of force emanating out from the tall sea-

foam haired ex-Amazon and knew implicitly that she was

making contact with...something that was invisible to others.

Time hung in the air for several long moments, then Lotus raised

her spyglass again and said, "It has already begun, my lady. The

fog is beginning to form and will soon engulf the entire enemy

vessel."

Lao did not open her eyes as spoke in a toneless voice, "Set a new

course to take us around to our original destination. I'll recall the

Kraken, and Nimue's squadron, as soon as we are fully past

them."

"Aye, my lady," Blossom nodded to the two Undines manning

the wheel and they began to turn to the newly given coordinates.

In fact, everything on the bridge appeared to be proceeding with

clockwork precision and nobody was bothering to take notice of

Nabiki as she smiled to herself, sensing the opening she had

needed.

As quietly as it could be managed, Nabiki bent her knees and

tucked herself into a ball, rolling backwards while bringing her

hands down below the level of her hips, swinging them around as

she curled her legs and brought her handcuffs under her feet and

all the way forward. Her chains rattled slightly, but by this time

she was already putting to use her training with Cologne, sensing

out the weakest points in the chains, and with her hands now in

front of her it was easy to get the leverage she needed to jerk her

hands sharply, snap-forcing the cuffs open. She next turned to

the manacles around her feet, which she found were not lock in

place but merely held by a latch, which same was easily opened.

In all the maneuver used up the better part of nine complete

seconds.

By this time the sense of disturbance at her side caused Lao to

open her eyes in surprise, then turned in time to see Nabiki

straightening up again, making a dash for the nearest exit.

"Stop her, you fools! She must not escape!" the Pirate sternly

ordered.

Two Undines standing on guard duty sprang to cut off Nabiki

line of escape, but Nabiki anticipated this and leaped into the air,

spreading her legs wide as she aimed for a double-kick that

would have slapped two ordinary assailants to the floor like a

pair of gnats. These were not ordinary opponents, however, and

her bare feet slapped only water as those heads seemed to

dissolve while she continued forward, splashing herself with the

constituent fluids of their bodies.

At once something happened, her body twisted and collapsed in

mid-air, and before she knew it Nabiki was falling to the floor

with her arms and legs spread wide to blunt her impact. She

managed to land without incident and looked up from where she

crouched with a slightly bewildered expression. The water that

now covered her body seemed to cling to her like a sopping wet

blanket while her perspective appeared to have shrunk to

something like a few inches as the two Elementals reformed

themselves then peered down at her, now the size of giants. By

reflex Nabiki twitched her face and found that she was now

sporting a set of whiskers, which seemed no less odd than the

fact that everything seemed so much bigger to her now.

She saw Madam Lao approach from a cyclopean height and

heard her voice the words, "Well now, young lady, I trust you

appreciate just how foolish this was?"

"Meow?" Nabiki tried to ask, then froze as the realization very

suddenly hit her.

She had been splashed with water.

She did not revert to her male body.

Lao said that she had switched the outer template of her curse

with Perfume.

Therefore...

"MEOW!?" Nabiki cried, her mind suddenly going numb

with shock for one whole second before her panic hit her full

force.

She was in Perfume's cursed body, the thing she feared more than

anything else in the world, including a visit from a Tax auditor.

Her mind refused to process this fact and suddenly she was

overcome with the instinctual need to run and hide, to get away

and flee, to find some small cubbyhole to hide out in until the

terror could pass her by. There was no way for her to deal with

this in any rational way, so without pausing to think she turned

and scampered out of the cabin on all four clawed feet, running at

full speed so that even the fluid Undines were unprepared for the

speed of her exit. Like a shot she was down the stairs and

heading off into the depths of the strange magic vessel.

"What the hell?" Lao mildly cursed, "Now what set her off like

that I wonder. She looked positively terrified over something."

"Shall we pursue her, my lady?" one of the two Undines asked.

"There is no need," Lao replied with a sigh, "There is no place

she can go to escape, and sooner or later she will calm down,

before or after she reverts back into her original cursed body. I

tried to warn her," she sighed again, "Kids these days...no respect

for their elders..."

"Ucchan?"

Ukyo reacted to the unfamiliar voice, though there was

something familiar in the tone, accent and expression of the

person making it. She blinked her eyes several times and tried to

focus upon the speaker, and on her third attempt she manage to

get him squarely into the center of her attention...

And found herself looking up into the face of the most gorgeous

man she had ever laid eyes upon.

He was big, broad-shouldered and very tall with muscles that

defined him powerfully as a man in the pique of physical

condition. He had rugged features and a very manly profile that

reminded her very powerfully of Ranma or Nabiki in male aspect.

His features were oriental but his hair was a long chestnut brown

done up in Amazon fashion and his eyes were soft, large and

highly expressive, a reddish-brown color that...

Reddish brown? She knew those eyes...they were the only thing

completely unchanged besides the hairstyle!

"P-Perchan?" Ukyo gasped in stunned comprehension.

He nodded sadly, "It me, Airen, I Perfume...no ask me how I got

this way. I think it have something do with Lao Kung and

Nabiki."

"Nabiki," Ukyo softly repeated, grasping hold of the only sensible

explanation, "They changed you?"

Perfume nodded, "Hai, Airen. I no understand how...maybe

somehow use curse to make Perfume male, like Instant

Nannichuan potion, but we locked in room together, and think

maybe know why. Lao said something about enjoy..."

She let her words dangle unfulfilled, allowing Ukyo to slowly

work things out to their most logical conclusion, and then she

said, "You mean this Lao character wants you to...?"

Perfume nodded and Ukyo swallowed.

"But..." Ukyo started to say when her eyes inevitably drifted

down to stare at something else that was changed about Perfume.

Her face was expressionless in shock for a full half minute, then

she managed to gasp, "Nani?"

Perfume could not help but wince and feel his cheeks burn with

hot shame. Normally he was quite uninhibited about such

matters as sex, but her recent transformation, coupled with the

many unfamiliar sensations he was presently having to cope

with, and the way Ukyo was looking at his body was only

making matters worse, causing that new member of his to react

in a very surprising way that added to the awkwardness of the

situation. He could not blame Ukyo for staring, her member was

swelling out to a size and stiffness that was difficult to deny. For

the first time ever she understood why Ranma and Ryoga were

always so shy around women, and if matters progressed much

farther he would not be at all surprised to discover that he was

giving himself nosebleeds.

Ukyo managed to regain control over herself with great effort and

said, "Lao wants us to mate like this? But why?"

"Perfume not know," he shrugged, "But...maybe Lao think she

breeding us like horses..."

"Farm animals," Ukyo growled, her eyes narrowing to slits, "Like

a couple of pigs in heat..."

Perfume had to suppress a shudder and look away in hot shame

at the analogy. He knew Ukyo well enough to know that she

would resent being used in such a fashion.

Ukyo looked up at the transformed Perfume and softened a little,

"Hey, it's al right, I'm not blaming you or anything like that. This

doesn't exactly look like your style for one thing..."

"Airen is kind to know this," Perfume forced himself to turn back

and found his gaze unwittingly traveling down to the view his

height afforded him of Ukyo's ample cleavage (if the word could

be applied to a naked woman's breasts). Perfume swallowed and

hoped Ukyo did not notice the pause before he continued,

"Perfume never force herself on Airen, especially like this. Lao

maybe think she doing me favor, but is not...is not right choice.

Ukyo deserve better."

Ukyo laid a reassuring hand on Perfume's arm, only to pause as

that contact made her recognize the fact that the Amazon not only

looked different but also felt different...more solid, "Ah...is this

condition permanent or temporary...?"

"Not know that either," Perfume replied, "If it like Instant

Nannichuan, then it only work one time, then afterward useless.

This form not one I normally have when wet, so maybe somehow

I got curse switched with Nabiki..."

"Oh Gods," Ukyo breathed, "Let's hope not. You know what

she's most afraid of..."

Perfume knew all too well, although why Nabiki feared cats was

a thing she always found difficult to comprehend. The training

for the Nekoken sounded rigorous, but no more so than her own

training in the Bakusai Tenketsu when Cologne had suspended

her by a rope in front of a huge bolder with only one finger

extended. Perfume had spent the better part of a week learning

not to smash into the rock at even the gentle taps Cologne

permitted before sheer survival instinct caused her to focus on the

breaking point and master it completely.

"She maybe okay if she no get wet," Perfume suggested, but it

sounded weak even in his hearing.

"We gotta find some way out of here so we can get back with her

and the others," Ukyo said soberly, but even as she did so she did

not remove her hand from Perfume's person. If anything her

touch slid down to continue establishing the rock-hard nature of

Perfume's...

"Airen," Perfume said as gently as she could manage, "Is you all

right? You look a little funny."

"I look funny?" Ukyo repeated, staring directly at Perfume's chest

where pectorals had replaced soft breast tissue in all save basic

volume.

"Oh," Perfume mentally kicked himself. He should have

suspected this from the start. Her Great-Grandmother had often

stressed the point that Lao had been as good, if not better, than

she and Shampoo were at their age, and with more than ten years

of practice to perfect her arts who knew how far she might have

perfected the Xi Fang Xiao technique when it came to nerve and

personality alteration? Even Perfume, at her current level of

training, knew how to stimulate the pleasure-centers in the body

in such a way that they would experience an increasing desire to

have sex in a steadily more demanding tempo.

Her only problem was that she was still working to perfect the

counter. The basic pressure-point technique she knew in

principle could cause a certain part of the brain to feel

hyperstimulated for a limited time, not unlike causing the

tingling along the nerves that would create a feed-back loop that

could only be broken by giving the victim a release for their

frustrated desires. Once satiation was achieved the resonance

would be broken and the person would gradually return to normal

with no ill effects save for an acute case of embarrassment at

their incredibly lustful behavior...or so she had heard from her

true Biological mother on those few times when she and Perfume

had spoken civil to one another, on the day-in fact-when

Perfume had needed Mother-daughter counseling (at Cologne's

insistence) on the day when she had first been acknowledged a

woman.

Her mother had said it in a moment or rare intimacy, implying

that she had used the technique on Perfume's father, a point on

which she refused to elaborate in spite of much blushing, as

though their sessions had been unusually intense and involved a

lot more activity than had been employed when sparring together.

Perfume suspected her mother knew the full technique, including

the counter, but whether she had ever made use of the latter was a

subject she rather doubted.

If there were time to go to her and learn the counter-pressure

point for breaking the Lust-center attack without having to

actually have sex with the victim, or maybe find Shampoo, who

knew a lot more about the Xi Fang Xiao than Perfume, having

been specially trained by Cologne herself (and Perfume stoutly

resisted the sudden mental image that came to mind when she

wondered where the Elder ever had found occasion to use this

particular side to the method). As it was Perfume would have to

improvise, and she did not dare risk a blind experiment on Ukyo,

not even to save her from the inevitable side effects of an

unfulfilled libido.

The rational part of her mind concluded that Perfume would have

to give Ukyo what her body desired in order to break the Lust-

Center attack. Her emotional side at once rejoiced at the idea as

it would give her an excuse to do the thing she had always

wanted to do with Ukyo in the first place. There was, however, a

third part of her mind that did not want to be ruled by need, want

or desire, especially if it was at Ukyo's expense and would

constitute a betrayal of her Airen's weakness.

Damn you, Lao! Perfume silently raged. You set us up like this

for your perverted idea of amusement without once thinking

about our feelings. You think you can play with people like this

without thought for the consequences?

Aloud what she said was "Is new body...Perfume no used to

having male cursed form. Is very different being man instead of

cat."

"No kidding," Ukyo continued to run a hand over Perfume's

naked pectorals as she added, "Some curse..."

"Ucchan," Perfume said urgently, urging her beloved to raise her

eyes so that they could lock gazes and open a much deeper

dialogue together, "You know why Lao put us together like this?"

"Uh-huh," Ukyo imperceptibly nodded, "She wants you to put

your thing in my...only I don't think it'd be an easy fit..." she

seemed to fight the urge to glance down once again at Perfume

new organ.

"Lao want to make us have sex this way," Perfume said urgently,

"Male to female instead of normal way we do, female-to-female.

You want do what she tell you? Perform for Lao Kung like

trained animal? You much better than that, no toy for someone

else amusement."

"Right," a flickering of understanding showed that Ukyo was

starting to think again and her expression clouded slightly,

"Wants to breed us like a couple of wild horses..." she caught

herself and gave a slight chuckle as she belatedly realized that

she had just used words that made a play on Ranma's name. She

mimicked the word by adding the term "stud" to the end, then

looked up at Perfume again and laughed, "She wants you to stud

me, are you a stud now, Per-chan?"

"Ukyo," Perfume growled, "I being serious here. You know Lao

is Mistress of many Amazon arts, one of them is nerve touch-

manipulation. I think she use it on us, make us forget ourselves

for time, maybe perform for her in questionable manner. You

feel like you need bath?"

Ukyo frowned again, "Yeah...now that you mention it, like

somebody tried to use me for a Popsicle or something."

"We forget what we did, so must have been powerful

manipulation," Perfume replied slowly, letting Ukyo absorb her

next words more carefully, "Maybe it good thing to no remember

what occur, but this situation very different because we conscious

now. I do what can to break you out of trance, only not all way it

seem."

"Right," Ukyo asked, "Only what haven't you been able to undo?"

Perfume drew a deep breath then explained to Ukyo about the

Lust Center Attack technique. Ukyo listened with slightly

widened eyes then said, "And the counter?"

Perfume smiled weakly, "I not know, but mother very specific

that connection break if you achieve right stimulation."

"If we cum you mean," Ukyo concluded, then eyed Perfume with

suspicion, "And why are you telling me this? You could have

just had your way with me and I wouldn't have been any wiser."

Perfume looked long and hard at her Airen then replied, "I no

want force you this way. You tell Perfume that you no want to be

made to do anything you no choose for yourself. What kind of

weak girl I be to use Airen like this without consent? Perfume

respect Ukyo too much to do that."

At the mention of the words "weak" and "girl" Ukyo could not

help looking down at Perfume's body with a highly dubious

expression. Here before her was the very pinnacle of Manhood to

which lesser mortals could only aspire in knowing futility. To

call Perfume weak in this form would have been to call Ranma a

womanizer. Perfume looked as if she could break Ukyo in half

without trying.

"Okay," Ukyo said, "I can see where this is heading. What

happens if I don't receive the treatment?"

Perfume mentally winced at the tone Ukyo used. Did she think

he was making this up to justify getting her rocks off with the

woman that she desired more than any other? Aloud what she

said was, "Feelings you now have only get worse with time.

Nerves blocked to allow release unless you have sex in time. If

no find release...you begin spasm out of control until you exhaust

self or find self-release. It not pretty way to die, which is why

technique is no used more often."

"So, that's it, huh?" Ukyo tried to make her words seem light but

was failing badly, "I have sex with you if I want to live. What

could be more easy?"

Perfume sighed as he looked down, "It no have to be this way.

We could wait until see if maybe cursed form change, then we

could have sex in own bodies. That show Lao we no just toys for

her amusement."

"And how long will that take?" Ukyo asked her.

Perfume almost bit his lip but thought better of it, "Not

know...maybe hours, maybe whole day, however long it take for

Perfume to change back."

"That's assuming you can change back at all," Ukyo noted, then

moved on to her next point, "What if I...got myself off without

help? Would that break the spell?"

Perfume shook his head sadly, "You can try but it just exhaust

you. Need other party to stimulate right centers of body and

brain. You achieve release more easy if have partner, no can do

without second party."

"Right," Ukyo said, "So the only alternative is to do you now and

accept the consequences?"

"No have to be like this," Perfume reminded, "If wait we be sure

we do it because want to, not because someone else want it."

"But we may not have enough time," Ukyo reasoned, giving

Perfume a more thorough study, "You're right, though, I don't

want to do this just to make somebody other than you happy.

What do you think about doing me in your present body?"

"I...?" Perfume's eyebrows shot slightly upward.

"You must have thought about it before you laid things out for

my understanding," Ukyo replied, trying to keep her voice level

in spite of a certain trembling she was now all-too-aware of, "A

beautiful male body, a willing woman to share it with you, the

two of us making out like...wife to husband," she swallowed.

Perfume looked away with an expression of intense discomfort.

She had indeed thought about it and was excited by the prospect

in spite of her moral and ethical reservations. At one time in her

life she would have just plunged on ahead without a single doubt

or hesitation, but now...

"You like me better as man," she said slowly, "You once tell

Perfume you no like girl body for sex, that you want strong man

for husband, not weak girl..."

"Oh for the love of the Kami," Ukyo muttered under her breath,

"Yeah, I said that then...I said a lot of things I've learned to

regret, Per-chan, and yeah, I'd be lying to you if I didn't think you

look incredibly sexy like this..." she paused before going on, "But

it's not just the gender that I like about you. I know what the real

you is like, and I've got no complaints with you at all. You're not

weak in my eyes...if anything you've proven to me many times

that you're not the weak one. You sure don't look weak to me

right now..." she allowed herself a slight chuckle at the irony of

that statement.

Perfume looked at her with a questioning expression, "But...when

Perfume is back to right body, you no feel the same way about me

again?"

"I don't know," Ukyo said honestly, "Truth is I've...always kind of

wondered what you'd look like as a guy, but that isn't so

important to me now. You've taught me that it only matters what

you're like on the inside, not the outside packaging. It's the real

you that matters, Per-chan..." she paused then allowed herself a

lurid grin before adding, "Not that I've got any problems with the

packaging in either of your two forms, and besides...maybe this is

the only chance we'll ever have to really find out. Doesn't have to

be two people rutting like sheep you know...we could do this the

slow way using all those tricks you've shown me to help bring

you off besides me...partner."

Perfume very hesitantly reached out with a large male hand, then

steadied both of Ukyo's shoulders and said, "You no mind we do

this? You no have to do this to convince Perfume you care..."

"Maybe so," Ukyo reached out and drew Perfume closer to her

body, relishing the feel of his manly contours and the heat of his

body as she finally brought her breasts up against his chest and

made full body-contact, "But maybe I'm the one who needs

convincing that I really am just like any other normal girl.

Besides, whom else can I experiment with if not you? At least

I'm doing it with my husband."

Perfume arched her eyebrows again and said, "But...what of

Ranma?"

Ukyo seemed prepared for that question as well, "I'm still waiting

for Ranma...but I may well be old and gray before I get him to

open up like this and besides...well, don't I need to practice being

a good wife? For the Honeymoon, that is..."

Perfume finally allowed herself to smile, feeling his third member

come to full life as his belly pressed against Ukyo's body. Ukyo

noticed it and deliberately parted her legs so that Perfume's organ

to slide between the gap between her thighs without actual

coitus. She smiled at this and brought her thighs together,

watching as Perfume's expression became alarmed. One tug and

it would mean instant castration.

Instead Ukyo sought and found the right leverage for throwing

Perfume back onto the bed, and since the Amazon had not yet

become adjusted to the new change in his center of gravity he

could not effectively counter as Ukyo landed atop him and

straddled Perfume's body. The two of them locked eyes...then the

urgent cry of nature took over as she brought her mouth down to

lock lips with her Airen...and what followed afterwards was

magical beyond description...

The one thing that Mousse was grateful for in his new body was

that his small size gave him an easy ability to fit through really

tight corners. The other thing he was grateful for was that even a

magical vessel such as this had to have a working ventilation

system to pump fresh air to the lower holds and chambers. By

means of such a system he was finding it easy to traverse the

ships interior without setting off alarm bells.

It also afforded him a very interesting view from above of the

activities that were going on in many of these chambers. Lao's

minions were certainly a more diverse lot than just the elemental

creatures that did her bidding and seemed omnipresent

throughout the vessel, and all of them seemed to go in for many

kinds of kinky indulgence during their spare time, often with

some of the ship's true cargo: the comely young ladies being

trained in the arts of sexual indulgence.

Few men were in evidence anywhere, it was almost exclusively

Lesbian sex that he found both crewmates and slaves immersed

in with reckless abandon. The more civilized parts of him were

fairly disgusted at this hedonistic indulgence in forbidden arts

where no true man was needed-or even desired in some points-

but another more human part was luridly fascinated by the

chance to see what most men could only dream about and deny

actually wanting. The term "Every Man's Fantasy" most certainly

applied to the crew of the POJ, and if he had to judge by reading

body-language and appearances, the vast majority of the slaves

did not much seem to mind being the centers of attention.

Mousse privately wondered if Lao knew the means for turning a

fully Heterosexual woman into a Muff-diving carpet muncher, or

did she just dispose of the women who did not agree to go along

with these transactions? Quite possibly the latter, he grimly

concluded, unless one were to subscribe to the ancient theory that

all human beings were secretly bisexual. Lao was certainly

ruthless enough to have her way with everyone who did not fit

her particular designs for a proper "Piece of Entertainment." He

had already discovered one chamber in a lower hold that

supported the grim notion that Lao was more than just blood

thirsty, and it was thoughts of that which kept him searching

with determination for the chamber where his beloved Perfume

was presently being held.

So it was that he went from room to room searching for any sign

of Perfume or Kuonji Ukyo, knowing that finding one would

invariably lead to the discovery of the other. He dismissed most

of the chambers he passed at a glance, grateful that his glasses

had somehow shrunk to scale with the rest of him, and was about

to pass yet another vent by when he caught a name being shouted

by a voice he knew all too well...

Kuonji!

"Oh, yes...yes...go on Per-chan, keep going..."

Kuonji! Mouse scampered along with a mixture of elation and

dejection at the thought that his greatest mortal enemy was once

again making love to the object of his desire. He crept on up to

the vent, careful not to betray his presence to Perfume's

hypersensitive perceptions, and looked in past the wooden slots

into the adjoining chamber.

What he saw froze him utterly to the spot. That was indeed

Kuonji-Ukyo spread out upon silken bed-sheets making

impassioned noises and entreaties to her present lover, but unless

he missed his guess entirely the other figure presently plunging

his thick manhood into the Okonomiyaki chef's moistened cleft

was definitely a man...a very large and well-built man by the look

of him. The man was showing great vigor in maintaining a

rhythm that most men would have considered impossible, and the

control of his thrusts implied this man was a Martial Artist of

some skill and power. His hip-movements suggested nothing

less than a Master-level of coordination and timing.

Even more surprising to discover was the fact that the man in

question was neither Tendo Nabiki nor Saotome Ranma!

Mousse was stunned, and then he felt himself become elated at

the realization that a man was doing unto Ukyo the thing that

was only permitted to an Amazon's husband or consort. In effect

Ukyo was cheating on Perfume, which meant that she had

disgraced herself and Perfume in the eyes of their people. He

could now challenge and kill Kuonji without worrying about the

legal ramifications. Since Kuonji was clearly the offending party

here, even Perfume would be forced to concede that the chef had

disgraced her, and it was very likely she would punish Ukyo

herself for such a faithless action.

And then Mousse got a better look at the guy in question and his

blood turned to icewater.

NO! he mentally cried, It isn't fair! That can't be his Perfume

sex-changed into a man like some victim of Nannichuan!

Perfume already had a curse, which excluded getting another

unless the guy in question was sporting ears, fur and a tail, which

was obviously not the case here. He had to be mistaken, some

other guy who just looked a lot like Perfume with her hair color

and distinctive profile...

Before he fully registered this thought something else occurred to

him, and he glanced past his shoulder at hearing a sound that

could have come from the throat of a fear-maddened banshee.

What the...? his mind said again...just instants before he

perceived something coming directly at him from the far end of

the ventilation shaft. The light was not too good, but he would

have sworn that something small, white and furry was streaking

right at him and...

POW!

Mousse saw stars and felt as though he had just gone one-on-one

with a power mower. The furry streak continued on past him

without stopping, as if barely even aware that it had run him

down without a seconds hesitation. All he knew for certain was

that his tiny body hurt something awful, and it seemed like a

good time to be taking a nap as he got a good view of the roof of

the shaft before his eyes closed again and he lost outward

sentience.

Down below him Perfume paused in the midst of his thrusts and

looked up in mild confusion before gasping, "What that?"

"Who the hell cares?" Ukyo demanded coarsely, "Don't stop now,

we're just getting to the really good part!"

Perfume smiled down at his wife and said, "You very demanding

girl. How many time you need? I sure we already out of

danger..."

"Just because Lao's touch isn't in effect doesn't mean I'm

completely out of the woods yet, Per-chan," Ukyo leered up at

him, "And we can't afford to take any chances, ne?"

Perfume returned the leer and went right back to her furious,

near-amaguriken pumping...

Continued.

Comments/Criticism/Jusenkyo Transvestite Hotline:

shadowmane

Hentai I might be, but I refuse to leave my audience unsatisfied.

Next time out the heroes begin liberating their comrades-in-arms

while Ranma finds that he has to do some housetraining of

Nabiki...be there.

-1BBD527E4719-

If you wish to check out my other works, Please check out my

Fanfiction webpage at: . or

it's mirror site at: ~

All related chapters of this series can be found there along with my

other works.


	23. Chapter 23

Nabiki 1/2

A Very Scary Thought

(An Altered Destiny)

by

Jim Robert Bader

Chapter 23, Part 1.

(Based on the Works of Rumiko Takahashi & Others)

Run! Flee! Hide! These were the thoughts foremost in Nabiki's

consciousness as she scampered full-tilt as fast as her four little

legs would carry her through the corridors and passageways of

the vessel. She had no thought or coherent sense of where she

was headed, only that she had to get there, to escape the terrible

thing that was waiting for her if she stopped and examined her

situation.

In the periphery of what passed for her consciousness of the

moment she could hear the horrible noise of small, furry creatures

gathered together, mewling about as she was lowered into the

dark pit where terrible things waited to happen. She could

almost detect the smell of fish sausages as she fought down the

memory of the helplessness, the terrible loneliness as her

guardian betrayed her to the blackness where a hundred hungry

faces all stood ready to greet her with a sound that would have

caused her even now to break out in a cold sweat if the body she

was currently possessed of were capable of human perspiration.

She had no memories of what happened next during that terrible

nightmare, only that they were on her and she was screaming in

terror. The horror went on and on and did not seem to stop until

she woke up sometime later no longer in the pit and surrounded

by a good deal of wreckage that left the impression that a tornado

had blown through that sector of town. She only knew that she

was in someone's lap, being stroked and comforted by a kindly

old lady. Genma showed up a short time later to reclaim her, but

the nine-year-old Tendo Nabiki would not understand until much

later what had been done to her by her nominal uncle, and when

she was fully cognizant she resolved that she would never forgive

him.

Nor was it an isolated incident. Genma had promised to make

matters right, but his idea of correcting his error was to try the

same trick over and over in the hopes that Nabiki would

overcome her resulting phobia, but this tactic only made it that

much stronger. Of all the terrible ideas he had ever had during

his ten years in training her that one incident would scar her live

inalterably and leave Nabiki with the deep determination never to

be alone and helpless like that ever again. She would be master

of her own destiny and no one's experimental pawn. She would

punish Genma in every way that she could ever conceive but

would never feel it was enough satisfaction to compensate for the

agony he had caused her. The fear remained, and with it the

terrible potential inside her to lose it all in the heat of one

moment.

Nabiki hated losing control over her life for any reason, but the

fact remained that a single meow or cry in the night could cause

her to suffer a stark, cold panic that all her powers of reason

could not overcome, nor her will, which in all other matters was

like iron. If backed into a corner with no place to flee she risked

the danger of suffering a terrible relapse into that state she most

dreaded. It was not just the fear of what she might do that

haunted her night and day...it was the loss of self-control that she

feared, and if she could not find some way to flee her condition

she was certain to lose herself into the fury that was the Neko.

But how could one ever hope to escape when the thing you most

fear is yourself?

It was more than just the change in her body that was threatening

her with impending madness...it was that her newly expanded

senses and instincts gave her a complete perspective from the

point of view of an enemy she could never hope to conquer. That

was why she ran, going from one end of the massive ship to the

other, avoiding attempts at ensnarement by the people she

encountered, both human and elemental.

She was blindly running from chamber to chamber, from

compartment to hold and back again, never stopping as she

always turned to find the thing she most feared was still with

her...the furry shape of her own body as seen from her greatly

altered peripheral vision. There were also strange smells and

sounds that greeted her at every turn as she sought to go lower in

the hopes of finding someplace remote and dark from which to

take shelter, hopefully too exhausted to think and perhaps to last

out the length of time it would take for her cursed form to leave

her. Better far to be human and naked than be the thing she was

at present, and that granted the warmth afforded her by the fur

upon her body.

It was with this single thought in mind that she took a wrong turn

at last and found herself dropping out of a shaft, losing grip of the

floor as she tumbled out over empty air then landed a moment

later on something hard and bony...

No, she realized belatedly as she crunched through a layer of

stony objects that felt dry and hollow, not just hard and bony...but

hardened bones! She was in a pit of some sort, and as she

managed to crawl out from midst of a skeleton she came to the

conclusion that the bones were a collection of some sort. Given

her small size she would have to adjust her perspective to rate

them at normal size, and with this in mind she quickly realized

that the bones were human.

Human bones. Lots of them, and picked clean of their meat she

determined on closer inspection.

It was an odd thing to jolt her out of her Neko phase with this

kind of mystery presented to her in such a way, but Nabiki's

sanity clung to the observation like a cat literally clinging to a life

preserver. It was just the distraction she had needed, and it was

alarming enough to draw her out of her aluraphobic stage as she

sniffed at the bones, morbidly drawn to them by her curiosity,

ignoring the old adage that might well have applied to her

situation. Some bones had a very old smell to them, others were

far more recent, but all of them had been methodically and

carefully stripped clean of everything edible leaving only the

cartilage and solid pieces. It was all very disturbing, and a

memory surfaced that seemed to clarify everything in a moment

of sheer, terrifying inspiration.

A foreign made movie was the source of the vivid imagery of her

flashback, an American made horror classic created by the same

director who would later do a Spielberg movie about ghosts.

Tobe Hooper was his name and the film he had created on a

modest budget was one of the most terrifying she had ever

witnessed, a true masterpiece to depravity called the Texas

Chainsaw Massacre.

Nabiki had little truck with the horror genre for the most part.

She had experienced real encounters with the supernatural and

was hardly impressed with the fake kind manufactured with latex

and computer graphics. Most Horror movies were just horrible

excuses to toss your cookies at the waste and extravagance of

Hollywood special effects artists who seemed to have little sense

of the occult and were even more clueless about human nature,

judging by the inanimate objects disguised as Teenagers always

getting hacked up in gruesome ways, all except for the token

virgin. Nabiki had surprised and offended more than a few

friends by busting up laughing in hysterics at the sheer inane

implausibility of the monsters and the situations where victims

did everything imaginable to insure that they were goners.

But that one scene from the Massacre had frightened her more

than anything except the Neko, the scene where the sole

surviving heroine stumbled into a room that was filled with

bones and spent the next five minutes in horrified contemplation

of their significance. The sheer terror of that scene was now

replayed before her eyes, and suddenly it gave a newly clarified

meaning to that predatory leer she had seen in Madam Lao's eyes,

the hungry look of the beast lurking behind the mask of civility

and pleasant dementia.

And something else she discovered as she peered closely at the

bones with her night-sensitive vision...there were marks on these

bones that hinted at what had consumed the soft bits. Bones

were cracked as though to get at their marrow and there was very

little stench left to betray a messy killer. There was only one

branch of Zoology that had land-based predators this cunning

and efficient, and if the size of the tooth marks were any

indication, then Lao was even more dangerous than Nabiki had

suspected.

Or rather her cursed form, which had to be a lot bigger than she

was!

And then a new thought startled Nabiki out of her introspection.

Lao was at large and probably quite hungry. She had been

teasing with Nabiki before, as if playing with her food were a

regular sport for this self-indulgent lady pirate. Denied her sport

in one area, she had lots of other playthings to choose from, and

if she picked any of her friends at a random sample...

Nabiki looked back up the way she had fallen. The walls were

made of wood and looked as if they could be climbed, so she was

not trapped in this pit and could leave to find the others. Without

hesitation she vaulted to the far corner, then using the instincts

that came with her body she rushed forward and took a flying

leap, bounding half way up the wall with enough momentum left

over to permit her to sink her claws into rough wood and grip

firmly. Struggling with all the power of her tiny body Nabiki

began to climb, her thoughts now focused upon one

thing...finding and rescuing her Ranma...!

Ranma was presently nursing his strength back for the next

attack, grateful that there were others surrounded him who had

their own Ki attacks to use to keep the elementals at bay. Their

assailants were growing wary, giving ground more and

permitting them passage with less issue. Their group had a

moment of respite with which to conduct resume their searches,

and with Cologne gladly leading the way they resumed the door-

to-door inspection in search of the missing members of their

party.

"Man, this place is something else," Ken averred, "I've shot off

three Hado-Kens in succession but I only feel a little tired, not

exhausted like I normally would be."

"I hear what you're saying, Ken," Guile agreed, "It's like

something in the air is making us a lot stronger than usual, only

whatever we shoot off just gets reabsorbed without doing the ship

any real damage."

"You are experiencing the strong concentration of Manna that is

permeating this vessel," Cologne replied as she placed her hand

over yet another door, then shook her head in dismissal, moving

on to the next one on the opposite side of the corridor, "This ship

is not within the normal confines of time and space as you would

understand it and could almost be accounted a pocket realm in its

own right. You have seen how huge it appears from within, yet

surely you must know that if viewed from the outside it would

not seem quite so expansive."

"Yeah, now that you mention it, lady," Bison remarked, "I've

been wondering...why is that?"

"Hey, you know how these things are," Honda rumbled jokingly,

"Building always look bigger on the inside than the outside.

They warp physics, you get it?"

"Precisely," Cologne observed, causing Honda to loose his grin as

she continued, "Normal buildings collect their dimensions

inwardly to a very minor yet noticeable aspect, yet some

structures gain a life of their own and draw their power from their

ability to focus their force-lines inwardly, becoming themselves

like enormous focal points of energy. This is in some ways the

same as the principle behind the Teserect. In fact a very good

friend I once knew used to travel around in a mobile device

shaped like a Police Call Box and..."

"That's really very interesting, lady," Guile hastily interjected

before the impending science lecture was fully underway, "But

we really do need to find the missing members of our team, and I

want to know what that...lady has done with my daughter."

"I am endeavoring to solve that mystery even as we speak..."

Cologne replied, then stood away from the door with a mild

expression of surprise, "As a matter of fact, I believe we have

just, as you say, hit the jackpot. Behind this door is one of your

missing team members. Ryoga?"

The lost boy stepped forward and cried, "Bakusai Tenketsu!" as

she shattered the wood with a single touch of one finger.

"Handy trick that," Bison remarked, "I really gotta learn that from

one someday, kid."

"Sure," Ranma snorted, "You just need a head like a rock."

"Keep it up, Ranma," Ryoga glared, "I know something else

worth breaking..."

"Enough with it you two," Guile snapped as he took a step

forward, "Honestly you sound like Chun-Li and Cammy...gak!"

"Huh?" Ken tried to look past Guile's broad shoulder and just

made out the naked form tied down on the bed, which prompted

him to gasp, "Nani?"

"What is it?" Honda asked, "Let me see!"

"Yeah," Bison agreed, "What's the big mystery, Guile? Move

your butt and let the rest of us...in?"

His tone fell away as Guile obligingly moved to one side. The

green-skinned form held down with heavy chains looked up in

yellow-eyed panic and cried out, "IT'S NOT WHAT YOU

THINK!"

"Oboy," Ken murmured, staring not only at the naked Ogre-like

Blanka but the semi-nude girls flanking him with very annoyed

expressions, not to mention some hot candle wax and a great deal

of leather, very little of it covering their bodies.

"Oh man," Bison groaned, "I think I'm gonna go blind!"

"What the hell have they been doing to you, Blanka ol' buddy?"

Honda asked, not averting his gaze like his dark skinned

companion.

"I think we'd better get him out of that," Ranma suggested, also

trying not to look directly at anything that was not strictly PC,

"He can't be too comfy."

"Do you people mind?" one of the three girls complained in

annoyance, "We were just having a little fun with your friend

here."

"Yeah," a second girl added, "Couldn't you, like, go away for a

few more minutes and let us finish up here?"

"Yeah," the third girl chimed in a Kawaii voice, "He's so cute!

And he's so adorable when we..."

"We get the picture," Guile said matter of factly, stepping around

these protesting girls as he sought to find some way of liberating

his team mate, "I don't know how you get yourself into these

situations, Charlie, but this is another one you owe me."

"Just get me out of here, please?" Blanka pleaded, "I mean, no

offense to you ladies, but..."

One of the girls just sighed, "The cute ones always get away."

"Yeah," the Kawaii girl said, "It's just not fair."

"They don't build men like him all that often," the third said with

a sardonic expression.

"Never mind all that," Cologne said in a testy voice as she

stabbed out with her staff and shattered the chains binding

Blanka's ankles to the bed. A second blow to shatter the other

chains encasing his wrists and soon Blanka was able to sit

upright, giving the Amazon Elder a toothy mile of gratitude.

"Thanks Grandmother. Don't know what I'd do without

somebody sensible around here."

Cologne gave him a pleasant smile that would have frightened a

vampire, "You're not so bad yourself, sonny-boy. Looks like

you're a popular one with the ladies."

"Uh, yeah, well," Blanka hastily covered his privates.

"Man, would you put something on already?" Bison asked, "Now

that we've found your sorry ass, where's Chun and Cammy at?"

"Next room," Blanka replied, "That Lao lady was doing

something with those two in there. Haven't exactly been able to

get up and investigate, but...uh...you might want to knock first

before entering."

"One side," Honda smiled as he moved over to the adjoining

side-door, "My turn to knock."

He thrust both meaty hands out and the door splintered as if

struck by a battering ram. Ken smiled as he looked at the former

Sumo wrestler and said, "Not bad...pretty subtle."

"Mom always said I knew how to make an entrance," Honda

grinned as he stepped through the ruins of the door-frame, froze

in mid-step, then backed away and leaned against the wall with a

very pale expression, "Oboy!"

"What's the matter?" Bison asked, "There's not another naked guy

in there?"

"No," Honda said, "Much worse."

"We don't have time for these antics," Guile snarled as he stepped

past Honda and entered the room, only to freeze in his tracks and

exclaim a harsh, "WHAT THE...HELL?"

Ken eased past the team leader then did a double take of his own

as he gasped, "Chun-Li? Oh my..."

"What's got you cats rattled?" Bison took advantage of his size to

glance over Guile's broad shoulder, and then he, too, went rigid,

"I...don't believe it..."

"How interesting," Cologne remarked as she hopped in and past

their legs to get a better view from a lower level, "I take it, then,

that this is not the usual behavior for these two?"

"No," Ken slowly replied, "You definitely could say that..."

"Oh man," Bison groaned, "I wish I had a camera..."

Ranma and Ryoga exchanged puzzled looks, then for once

overcame their own mutual aversion to exposing themselves to

matters involving the fair sex. The situation was beginning to

desensitize them a little, so they risked a peek from around the

wall of muscle in their way and saw the two women called Chun-

Li Zahn and Cammy White in a situation that-at the most polite

of terms-could best be described as compromising.

To be less delicate about it, one of them was on her back while

the other was on top and each had their mouths pressed firmly

about the genitalia of the other in what was classically known as

a '69 position. The sound of wet, slippery tongue-action and

ensuing groans filled the silence of the chamber. A third semi-

clad leather-sporting woman was standing over them with a

velvet flail in hand and a look of annoyance turned towards the

intruders that silently voiced her own brand of disapproval.

"You know, of course," Honda called out from where he was still

reclining against the wall, "If they catch us looking at them like

this, they're gonna kill us."

"Don't be such a wet blanket, old buddy," Bison grinned in

amusement, "They probably don't even know that we're here.

Man, this is just so perfect...for once those two aren't chewing

each other out and exchanging name-calling and violence. Wish

it was usually this easy, right Guile? Guile?"

Very softly they heard the big blond man growl, "I'm going to kill

that Madam Lao. First Keiko, and now this!"

Ranma decided he had more than enough of playing the voyeur

and started to ease away when he heard a sound that caused him

to turn completely around, and before he knew what was

happening a furry shape came hurtling into his arms, crying out a

sound of feline delight.

"Hah!?" Ranma startled before reflexively gathering the bundle

up into his grasp, grateful that the cat had not used her claws to

gain better purchase, "Perfume? What are you doing here? Wh-

where's Ucchan?"

"She must want us to go with her," Ryoga reasoned, "She came

looking for us to tell us where the others are..."

"Mreow!" the cat made a sound as if protesting against this.

"You don't know where they are?" Ranma asked before taking a

moment to wonder at how he had known that this was what the

cat was saying, "Perfume...you're a natural tracker, you can..."

"Mreow!"

"Huh?" Ranma blinked again, "What do you mean you're

not...Perfume?"

He was looking at her more closely this time, and there was

something about the Cat's eyes that looked...different. Granted

he did not spend as much time around the Amazon as Ukyo, but

he had a pretty good idea of what color her eyes were in either of

her two forms. These eyes looked more like a normal tawny

brown, almost exactly like...

"Nabiki?" Ranma gasped, again wondering at how it was

possible for him to know this as the cat immediately nodded her

confirmation.

"Eh?" Cologne took serious notice of the cat in question, "Miss

Tendo? If that is you...then how could Lao have...unless..."

"What?" Ranma asked as he held Nabiki up in his arms and

stared at his transformed iinazuke, "How could she do something

like this to Nab-chan?"

"She does look a lot like Perfume," Ryoga frowned, "It's almost

like they exchanged curses..."

"Yes," Cologne said quickly, "That is exactly like it. In fact, if

Lao has the ability to warp Jusenkyo curses, then she has means

at her disposal even greater than I dared imagine. This is very

bad news indeed, and one that we must rectify at once."

"Okay," Ranma said, "Like how?"

"First," Cologne remarked, "We must find some hot water to

change her back to her human form."

"Excuse me," Blanka said as he came up to them, having just

created a loin cloth for himself out of torn bedsheets. He held up

a pitcher of water and said, "If it's hot water you need, I think I

can do that."

He placed one huge hand under the pitcher and brought the other

over the top then concentrated. A moment later his body began

to glow as sparks of electricity seemed to flow from one hand to

the other, and then he dampened the charge and extended the

now hot pitcher.

"Hope I got the temperature just right," he said apologetically, "I

normally do this to heat coffee."

"Man, that's some Ki trick," Ranma remarked as he set Nabiki

down on the floor then tested the water on the palm of one hand

before satisfied to use it.

A moment later a slightly soggy but very human Nabiki

straightened up and threw her arms around his neck, crying out,

"Ranchan!"

"Urk!" Ranma staggered back, a little too aware of Nabiki's

presently unclothed state as she pressed her body against the thin

separation afforded by his clothing.

"Well," Ryoga growled, "It's nice that we've got you back, Nab-

chan, but there is your sister?"

Nabiki was called back from her flood of relief to once again be

reunited with the man she loved and turned a worried look to

Ryoga, then Cologne, "Akane? You haven't found her yet?"

"Not so far," Cologne replied, "Nor have we as yet found Perfume

and Kuonji. We have only just stumbled upon the missing

members of Colonel Guile's team, two of whom I suspect have

been treated to a form of Xi Fang Xiao to make them behave in a

way rather atypical for those two."

"Huh?" Nabiki looked past the gap separating the huge men and

saw two naked forms still entwined in each other's bodies. She

turned a slow glare towards Ranma and growled, "Ranchan...?"

"We weren't spying on them or nothing!" Ranma hastily

protested, sensing the rise in Nabiki's battle aura, "We were just

trying to figure a way of breaking them out of their trance..."

"I'll just bet you wanted to help them," Nabiki glowered, but her

battle aura began to fade as a very different look crossed her face

and she turned to snatch another glance at the writhing pair, "On

the other hand, if that's the kind of show you'd like to watch,

Shampoo and I'll be happy to put on a demonstration for you

when we get home..."

"Urk!" Ranma blanched, sensing a trap from the cunning look

Nabiki gave him.

"We don't have time for this!" Ryoga shouted, his body trembling

with rage, "Akane needs our help!"

"Not as much as you think, but I do appreciate the sentiment,

Ryoga-kun."

Ryoga's eyes got very wide and he ceased trembling as he

murmured, "Akane?"

The others turned to watch the approaching trio with Akane

leading the way, garbed in a very strange ensemble formed

almost entirely of leather bits, ornaments and chains that hardly

constituted a decent standard for clothing but served the task of

concealing those parts that might be covered by a very tiny bikini.

The whole effect was so Arabian Knights Harem-like that it gave

her the appearance of a royal Princess, and that was not even

taking into consideration the contrast to the way Kodachi and

Keiko were decked out. The redhead had jewels in her hair, over

her breasts and around her waist while Kodachi had even more

outlandish-yet-stylish bits to flaunt her charms as much as

conceal them.

To a normal human libido the effect was like a mental hammer

whacking one over the head, and even Ranma gasped in disbelief

as he said, "Akane?"

"Kei-chan?" Nabiki gasped in equal astonishment, then the two

of them exchanged hasty looks before Ranma and Nabiki forced

themselves to look elsewhere.

"Keiko?" Guile moved past the door, then took two steps forward

as the redhead rushed up to embrace him in a fierce hug that

actually rocked his massive frame and threatened to topple him

backwards.

"Father!" she cried in equal delight.

"God, I was so worried about you," Guild groaned as he held onto

her tight in a very rare display of fatherly emotion.

"That makes two of us," Keiko said before forcing herself slightly

back within the protective circle of his embrace, "I know what

Lao's capable of if she gets crossed, and you guys have been

making a lot of noise on this end of the ship. We came as soon

as we could find something to wear and slip past the sentries

guarding our room...um...sorry that there wasn't a lot more we

cold wear besides this..."

"I'll speak with you about modesty later," Guile replied, "I'm just

glad you're still alive and weren't...uh...never mind."

"Ah...Dad?" Keiko hesitated, sensing Kodachi's silent approach,

"There's something I've been meaning to tell you...this doesn't

seem like a very good time, but..."

"It can wait until later," said Cologne as she came hopping back

into the chamber, followed by a shaken Cammy White and Chun-

Li, "For now we must quickly gather up the rest of our forces and

make a stand against Lao before she has the chance to call in her

big guns. It is good to see you again, Daughter-in-law, and with

you here we are considerably strengthened. We need but find

Kuonji and Perfume to be at full strength, and then we will

confront Lao once again, only this time as a force that will not be

denied by lowly minions."

"I'm all game to take her down a peg," Nabiki agreed as she

partially surrendered her hold upon Ranma, heedless of her

unclothed state as she immediately took charge of the situation,

"I've seen a side to this Lao Kung that I never hoped I'd ever see

this side of the grave. She must be stopped and stopped hard,

and we're the ones to do it. No more skulking around and doing

this by pieces, we go head on and brace the Tiger in her lair. Are

you with me?"

"Hai!" cried the other members of her posse, except for Ryoga

who was still staring at Akane and-miracle of all miracles-his

nose was not bleeding.

"Sure is a take-charge kind of lady," Bison nodded, giving Nabiki

a firm lookover, "I think I'm in love."

"Just don't let her boyfriend hear you say that," Ken remarked,

"He's got a pretty wicked Ki attack, and you're still just mastering

the basics."

Cammy looked shaken as she exchanged an uncertain look with

Chun-Li. The two of them averted their stares, then Cammy

hesitantly asked, "Were we...just now...?"

"Don't," Chun-Li replied with a note of desperation in her tone, "I

don't want to think about it. You?"

"Course not," Cammy hastily replied, giving the other girl a

sidelong glance before adding, "Bet you're hoping Guile caught a

good look at you..."

"I do not!" Chun-Li protested, then turned crimson as she looked

anywhere but at the naked blond beside her, "Besides, who'd

want to look at a cold-blooded killer like you, Assassin?"

"Ball-buster."

"Harlot."

"Bitch."

"All right," Guile growled, "Nice to see you two are back to

normal, now get something on or I'll take the both of you across

my knee."

"Ooh, I think I'd enjoy that," Cammy leered.

"You would," Chun-Li snorted.

"I think I liked them better tied up," Bison murmured to Honda,

right before the two girls rounded on him and almost punched his

lights out.

"Yep, back to normal all right," Ken replied sardonically, then

made a warding gesture with his hands as he said, "Sorry ladies,

I'm spoken for, remember?"

"How could we forget?" Chun-Li smirked knowingly, "Watch

yourself or I'll tell 'Liza."

"Something about this almost seems familiar," Kodachi mused

sardonically before turning to Nabiki with a surprisingly clear-

eyed expression, "Sorry we didn't bring anything for you to wear,

but it seems Madam Lao prefers her women in a state of

underdressed. There is a storeroom not far from here where you

can find enough scraps to at least spare your iinazuke from a

serious nosebleed. I suggest we act quickly, however, as Madam

Lao will no doubt be rallying her forces to our recapture."

"Right," Nabiki nodded, "But I think modesty's the least of my

problems at the moment. All right Posse, move out. Ranma and

Ryoga, take the point, Akane and Kodachi in the center, Keiko,

you're with me. The rest of you...do what comes natural. I expect

no less of you, Elder."

Cologne hid a smile as she sagely nodded, "As you say,

Daughter."

"Colonel?" Honda asked as he and Blanka gave Guile a

questioning look.

"Do as the lady says," Guile nodded, "She has a plan, I'm willing

to play her way."

"Thanks, Dad," Keiko smiled, "You won't be sorry you put your

faith in Nab-chan."

"Nab-chan?" Guile frowned, giving his daughter a very puzzled

expression.

"Oops," Keiko softly amended as Kodachi fetched her a look of

pure mischief.

"We'll take point," Ranma nodded, giving Nabiki a hard look that

had nothing to do with avoiding looking at her bosoms, "Any

other words of wisdom, Nab-chan?"

"Just one," Nabiki gave Kodachi and Keiko a meaningful look,

"Whatever you do, don't get wet. We need everybody to stay in

the shape they are until we get through this crisis."

"What do you have to worry about?" Kodachi grinned, "Your

other self has ample...advantages."

Nabiki took only half a second to process this, seeing the

knowing smirk in the Black Rose's expression, and then she said,

"Trust me on this...this is one time I'd rather not take any

chances..."

"You ready now, Airen?" Perfume asked Ukyo as the two

finished using whatever was on hand to fashion makeshift

apparel.

Ukyo smiled at the man who was her husband by Amazon oath

and said, "Ready enough if you are. I have to say, you sure can

move fast when you have to."

Perfume smiled back, "I improvise. Modified training is good,

help Airen past crisis, now we go take care of other matters."

"Sure thing," Ukyo smirked, "If you think you've still got the

strength for a fight."

"Hah!" Perfume grinned, "Take you on any day. This body no

like other one...much stronger because of size, but Perfume still

Amazon, still know how to draw strength to replace what is used.

I teach you that some when we train together."

"It's a date," Ukyo said, then reached out a hand to touch the arm

of her husband, "What I said before...about it not mattering

whether you're a man or a woman?"

"Yes?" Perfume raised an inquisitive eyebrow.

"I lied," Ukyo smiled back, "I like you either way, but this body

definitely has some advantages. We may never get a chance to

do it this way again, so I just wanted you to know...this one time

was enough to convince me that I really do...love you the way you

are, Per-chan," she smiled shyly, "I'm just glad we had the chance

to do it this way this one time. After this I'm going to have

memories that I'm always going to cherish."

Perfume cupped Ukyo's chin and bent her head up so that their

faces were almost touching, "Who say this only time? Maybe

next time it you who be man to Perfume-woman. Is good that

you admit this, wife..." he smiled, and then they kissed, then

Perfume parted again as he added, "But you no give up on

Perfume when she be weak girl again?"

"Weak?" Ukyo chuckled, amused at the absurdity of it all as she

hugged him close to her and said, "You're one of the strongest

people I've ever known, Per-chan. I could never think of you as

weak...in either of your forms."

"Except when cat," Perfume reminded.

"Right," Ukyo said, "Then you only give me claw and teeth

marks. Well, now that we're ready to get out of here, I hope

you've figured out a way to get past those wards."

"Perfume have plan," Perfume smiled as he released his wife and

turned to regard the door with a thoughtful expression, "Door is

protected by spell so no can find breaking point weak-spot, so I

think maybe we no use door, we make own exit."

He walked over to the nearest wall and studied it, then smiled

and touched his earrings, then extended his hands as a pair of

axes manifested in either fist.

Ukyo reacted with a gasp, "How did...? Where did those...? I

thought you dropped them in the water..."

"Lose axes Perfume normally use," Perfume replied as he held up

the double-bladed weapons in preparation, "These magical kind I

call up when needed. Special charm in earrings store blades in

pocket space for when most useful. Other axes probably on

bottom of ocean, but these do trick...Steel Storm Amaguriken!"

Perfume became a blur of action as he attacked the wall with a

speed and strength that was utterly superhuman. Chips of wood

went flying everywhere as Ukyo stood back with her hands raised

defensively, and while she could see a corona of energy begin to

form where the axes were flying it was plain that the defensive

barriers were failing to hold, and in a matter of seconds Perfume

cut through to the other side, then stepped in through the gap,

pausing to glance over his shoulder before saying, "Is all clear on

this side, Ucchan. Think maybe we in store room and not other

bed chamber."

"Storage chamber?" Ukyo asked as she stepped in through the

newly created doorway and looked around, "Wonder what kind of

goods this Madam Lao keeps in supply here?"

Perfume passed one axe into the other hand and used his free arm

to pick an object off a shelf which turned out to be a specially

made phallus with lots of bumps and ridges. To this the Amazon

raised both eyebrows with a look of speculation.

"Ugh," Ukyo winced as she spotted other objects of bondage

apparel laid out in neat rows and display kits, "Forget I asked.

This looks like it was supplied by the Marquis de Sade novelty

shop and...what the heck are these things for?" she held up a

chain connected to a pair of nipple-clips with a dubious

expression.

Perfume smiled and was about to say something about that when

his senses caught up with an object resting in one corner that did

not go with the rest of the devices and implements of sexual

torture that dominated the room. Taking two strides to reach it he

touched the metal haft of the object and felt a slight tingle pass

through his body.

Perfume gasped as he felt the transformation hit him without

warning, causing his body to collapse in on itself until a moment

later he was restored into SHE status and felt her makeshift

clothing suddenly hanging loose around her body.

"Uh oh," Ukyo winced, "Guess whatever it was finally wore off,

huh? What a pity. Still...it's nice to have the old you back, Per-

chan."

Perfume sighed, feeling more than slightly deflated, although she

had to agree that she much preferred being a woman to having

the permanent status of a man. She completed the act of picking

up the object and turning to Ukyo with a smile upon her face,

presenting same to the astonished chef as though making a love-

offering.

Ukyo reached out for and gratefully received her baker's peel,

surprised beyond words to find that it had been rescued from the

ocean. She held it up, feeling its familiar weight in her hands

and almost felt like crying. It had been a gift from her father, one

of the few he had ever bestowed in token admission of fatherly

pride and it meant more to her than all of her other possessions.

To have it restored to her now made her feel whole again, and

with an affection that might have seemed strange towards the

inanimate she clutched it to her bosom then smiled in gratitude to

Perfume, who smiled back, sharing the moment.

"Thank you," Ukyo said with eyes that were shining with

emotion, then she rested the heavy part of the spatula on the floor

and gave Perfume a meaningful look as she added, "Now Lao

will really know what kind of a fight she's in for. Bring them all

on and I'll show them how I make an okonomiyaki."

Perfume nodded her understanding and said, "Now we go find

others, and no one stand against Perfume and her Airen."

"They'd better not try," Ukyo agreed, and together they took their

leave of the chamber...

Continued.

Comments/Criticism/Jusenkyo Animal Rights:

shadowmane

It's all coming together, and next time out it's Tendo Posse versus

Madam Lao and her forces, exclusive for you via the Pay-Per-

View Manga...

Nabiki 1/2,

A Very Scary Thought

(An Altered Destiny)

by

Jim Robert Bader

Chapter 23, Part 2.

(Based on the works of Rumiko Takahashi & Others)

"Careful where you go, boys," Nabiki cautioned, "We don't know

what other kinds of tricks Lao has in store for us, but from what

we've already seen already it's bound to be nasty."

"There's nothing stopping us now that we've come this far,"

Ranma called over his shoulder without taking his eyes away

from where they were going, "Now that we're together there ain't

nothing she can try that'll separate us, Nab-chan."

"Don't be too overconfident, boy," Cologne cautioned, "I may

have taught you to use confidence to fuel your Moko Takabisha,

just as Ryoga uses depression to fuel his Shi Shi Hokoudan, but

there is a difference between confidence and recklessness. Never

forget that it was underestimating Lao that landed all of us in her

power in the first place."

"Don't worry, Granny," Nabiki said warily, "That's one lesson I

doubt that any of us will make again now that we know what

we're up against."

"I wouldn't be too sure of that, Nab-chan," Keiko cautioned, "You

haven't seen a tenth of what I know Lao could do when I parted

company with her over a year ago, and this ship magnifies her

natural abilities in ways even I don't understand. I lived here

nearly three years and her affinity with the Piece of Junk still

seems uncanny, like it was her alter ego or something."

"Stairs up ahead," Ryoga called out, "Everybody better watch

their step."

"Just be certain that you follow your own advice, Ryoga-kun,"

Kodachi murmured, giving Akane a sly look, "You wouldn't

want to make Akane-chan worry over you. She hardly needs

more distraction."

"I can take care of myself, thank you very much, 'Dachi," Akane

replied, but from the way she colored and averted her eyes

showed that, at least to some partial extent, she was lying about

her state of nonchalance.

"Anybody besides me think this is going way too easy?" Bison

murmured as he glanced to one side.

"I hear you, buddy," Blanka growled, "Where's the opposition

you guys were telling me about? We haven't even met anybody

else for the past five minutes."

"Man, this place gives me the creeps," Ken averred as he could

not stop glancing over his shoulder, "I've always heard that walls

have ears, but if I didn't know any better I'd swear these walls

have eyes, and they're looking at us like we're prime on the

menu."

"Wish you hadn't said that, mate," Cammy glanced the other

way, "After what went down back there I feel almost like a blue

plate special served raw like Sushi. You know where I'm coming

from, Chun?"

"Unfortunately," Chun-Li replied, "I only wish I didn't."

"That's enough chatter everybody," Guile cautioned as they group

descended a broad row of steps leading down into yet another

vast chamber with many adjoining doorways, "No sense giving

ourselves the creeps, we need to stay sharp and remain frosty.

When the enemy hits us it will probably be with everything

they've got and no quarter given or taken."

"Man," Ranma said as he glanced at hanging chains and

implements of torture whose purpose he did not want to know

about, "I just wish I knew where that Mousse guy ran off to.

What he was saying earlier about Ucchan..."

"If he attempts anything upon her he will have me to deal with,"

Cologne said grimly, pausing to glance to one side, "I

sense...something beyond that portal. There is a strong presence

emanating from within there."

"Looks a lot like the door I was led through before," Nabiki

remarked, "Where Lao kept her private Harem of living sex toys."

"Somehow this seems different," Cologne paused to place a hand

over the door and frowned, "There are strong protective wards

surrounding this chamber, but not the kind that would prevent

easy entrance. I perceive no traps save for those who would force

an entry."

"Any idea what's beyond that door, Kei-chan?" Nabiki asked.

"I'm not sure," Keiko frowned, "It's been a while, and it's not like

I had free run of the place when I lived here. I pretty much went

wherever Lao took me."

"And usually by the collar," Kodachi nodded, "Still, from the

indications of what Elder Cologne has suggested I do not think it

would be prudent to force our entry."

"Maybe not," Nabiki said as she took the point and carefully laid

a hand on the door, "But knowing what we do about Lao we

ought to be ready for anything. Whatever's in here is probably

something wickedly perverse, so we'd better brace ourselves for

whatever demented tortures may be awaiting our discovery..."

Her voice trailed off after she opened the door and looked in. She

stood there for a moment staring in blank surprise, then she

gasped, "Hinako-Sensei?"

Hinako looked up from where she was sitting on a cushioned

chair reading a book to a full score of attentive children, and her

expression was mildly vexed as she said, "Tendo Nabiki...what is

the meaning of this intrusion, and why are you girls dressed in

such undignified and disgraceful apparel? Do you think this is a

Red Light Zone for wanton Hentai?"

"Ah..." Nabiki's mind faltered as she slowly looked around at a

room comfortably decorated with bright pastels and decent

lighting. There were oversized toys and play equipment of every

kind scattered here and about with posters of animals and clowns

along with the basic alphabet laid out in five different languages.

Over a score-full of children all turned to regard them with open,

inquisitive faces, none of which seemed shocked or surprised by

their sudden appearance.

Guile stepped around from behind her and asked, "Are you all

right, Hinako-san?"

"And why wouldn't I be?" Hinako asked as she closed her book

and looked at him crossly, "I have been well treated by our

hostess, who has shown me every courtesy and graciously asked

that I fill in for the normal tutor to these children, who has fallen

ill and needs rest for the duration. Where have the rest of you

people been for the past three days?"

"Three days?" Guile blinked, "But...surely it's only been one day

at the most..."

"Three days," Hinako said firmly, "And do not call me Shirley."

"It seems that you have managed to keep yourself busy during

this time, Hinako-san," Cologne remarked as she hopped around

from behind the astonished Guile, "Might I ask if any of these

children may possibly belong to this ship's liege lady?"

"If you mean little Breeze here," Hinako nodded to one of the

girls, "She has that honor..."

"I'm afraid that I am seeking a male child about the same general

age," Cologne murmured softly, taking in the powder-blue girl

child with a sweeping glance, "And I believe his name is

Powder."

"You mean me?" said another older child of indeterminate gender

who had pale pink hair trimmed neatly in the front but longer in

the back.

"What are you thinking old woman?" Ranma glared suspiciously

at Cologne, "You don't mean to..."

"I do not war with children," Cologne informed him crossly, "But

it is worth noting that Lao has not abandoned her responsibilities

as a mother. Far from it, she appears to have had a second child

during her exile. This is very interesting on the whole and could

explain at least some of Lao's behavior...or at least put it in a

better context than was the case beforehand."

"I don't want to be the one who sounds mean and callous," Bison

remarked, "But now that we've found the kids, you think Lao

might be willing to negotiate?"

"Not likely," Keiko sniffed, "If there is anything more likely to

anger my former lady, this is it. She's very protective of her

children, you see, and she'll come down on us in no time if we

even make one threatening move against these youngsters."

"No need for that," Guile said, "And I'm with the old woman

here. I won't revert to terrorism to achieve our mission

objectives, that's not my style, and besides which I don't see how

it could work to our advantage."

"Just the same," Cologne continued to regard Hinako-Sensei,

"This discovery changes the complexion of matters ever-so-

slightly. It would seem that Lao is using her trade in human

flesh to finance more domestic concerns relating to that Harem

setting that she greeted us in earlier today, Daughter-in-law."

"So?" Nabiki challenged, "That doesn't mean what she's doing is

justified..."

"I was not speaking of justification," Cologne said patiently, "But

of clarification. These children are not all her own, and unless

she is running an orphanage on the high sees it would seem fairly

safe to assume that some of these children come from a few of the

ladies we saw lounging about in pampered luxury like

princesses."

"I get it," Akane said, "This place is actually like a floating

community of some sort...but...who were the fathers?"

"A fair question," Cologne's eyes narrowed, "I've noticed that Lao

does not have any male staff members, not even as servants.

Except in that one detail I would be tempted to speculate that she

is trying to recreate the extended family atmosphere that she left

behind in Joketsuzoku."

"So she's trying to replace what she lost," Nabiki shrugged, "That

fits her profile..."

"You misunderstand me, Child," Cologne said gravely, "This is

not Joketsuzoku...it is the Musk dynasty itself that she is creating

in reverse. Do you recall what I told you about how the Musk

once procreated using animals bathed in the waters of

Nyanniichuan? Well, it may interest you to know that we

Amazons ourselves have something called Instant Nannichuan

than can be used as a one-time Jusenkyo curse to transform

women into men, must as you do on a regular basis."

"Instant Nannichuan?" Nabiki replied, "But...how...?"

"Dried mud salvaged from the bottom of the Nannichuan pool,"

Cologne said dismissively, "Use a pinch with ordinary water it

temporarily gains the power to change a woman to a man and can

even thwart a normal Jusenkyo curse. I keep a supply of the stuff

with my apothecary equipment, but that is not germane to the

matter at hand. You see...I believe that it is possible that some of

these children do not technically have a father, or at least one

permanently male parent..."

"Oh Jeez," Bison winced, "This ever gets out us men are gonna

suddenly become obsolete."

"You said it," Honda winced, "Just hope nobody ever gets any of

that Woman-changing powder around me..."

"What are you all blathering about?" Cammy looked at them

crossly, "What's this yammer about Curses and switching

genders?"

"Jusenkyo," Chun-Li murmured, "I'd heard about the legends, but

if there could actually be such a place..."

"Pray you never go there," Keiko cautioned, "It can really change

your whole life."

"Look guys," Ken pointed out, "This really doesn't look like a

good time to be standing around in one place. This room doesn't

have too many exits, besides the one we came through, and if Lao

decides to trap us in here..."

"She won't," Cologne assured them, "For the same reason we will

not remain. The risk is too great of bringing harm to these

children. Hinako-san, I trust that we can continue to rely upon

you to guard and protect these young ones from potential harm?"

"Of course," Hinako sounded surprised, "But why? Madam Lao

seems like a very nice lady, unlike some delinquents I could be

pointing fingers at if I were not a proper lady."

"Believe me, Sensei," Nabiki snorted, "You wouldn't be saying

that if she got a glimpse of you in your other form. Just take our

word on it and remain here while we do what we have to."

"How rude," Hinako glared, "I have half a mind to tell your father

about the sort of company you've been keeping on this field trip,

Tendo-san, and that...outrageous display of immodesty you are

sporting... why, think of the children!"

Nabiki was spared saying something very rude in reply to that

when Akane intervened, "Please, Hinako-Sensei, just stay here

and be careful, all right? We'll be sure to put in a good word

about you with Principal Kuno and tell him what a great job

you've done so far in looking out for everyone's interests."

Hinako seemed mollified by that, and Nabiki favored her sister

with a look of surprised contemplation. Whoever would have

thought Akane would be the one to play diplomat while Nabiki

stood around fuming in impotent rage. Even Ryoga looked

calmer than she was at the moment, and that mainly because he

seemed unable to take his eyes off of Akane.

"Let's get out of here," Nabiki growled, "Go find Ucchan and

Perfume, then we confront Lao and complain about the

accommodations on this cruise."

"What about Mousse?" Ranma asked, "We can't exactly leave

him behind, even if he is a real pain to have around."

"Yeah, well, maybe," Nabiki temporized, "If we've got time for

him. Now, this way."

Without a word of complaint their group turned about and exited

the chamber...

Lao was not entirely satisfied with their progress, but with the aid

of the Kraken the ship was moving along at a good clip and soon

had left their unwitting escort behind to comb a hundred square

miles of now-vacant ocean. She could have moved things even

quicker if she had called upon the power of the Dragon Orb itself,

but to do that she would have had to leave the bridge in the hands

of her two aids, and all other things being considered equal, she

did not think that entirely prudent.

Not that she did not have some measure of confidence in

Blossom and Lotus, her two oldest and dearest friends, the only

ones who had stayed with her out of loyalty when they first began

their exile. It was just that they each had their own...distinctive

personality quirks. Blossom was firm in a crisis but a little too

conventional in her thinking, while Lotus was the more

imaginative of the pair but sometimes given to enthusiastic bursts

of creativity that went well beyond the point of prudence.

Together they complimented each other as an effective team, but

outside of crisis situations they could be utterly hopeless,

bickering one minute, making up the next and quite oblivious to

their surroundings during both phases.

She would not actually call either woman stupid, but when it

came to leadership quality Lao preferred to make all of the major

decisions. She allowed them their private indulgences and

catered as best she could to their individual whims, but

sometimes she literally had to put her foot down and remind them

who was boss. She counted on their loyalty and would have felt

bereft without their companionship, but she did not trust them

beyond a reasonable point and so tended to watch their

movements like a hungry cat, ready to pounce whenever either

one got a bit above their station.

This was one such matter as she had to repeatedly assure them

that steps were being taken to recapture the prisoners before they

could do too much damage in their rampages.

"Are you certain of this, my lady?" Blossom asked for the third

consecutive time, fretting with understandable concern as she

voiced her complaint, "If they should somehow find their way to

the Nursery..."

"I won't let anything happen to the children," Lao said firmly,

refraining from mentioning that the intruders had indeed found

their way to the Nursery section and left without incident, which

had spared them the wrath Lao had been prepared to visit,

"Trust me on that, my dears. Whatever else happens I will not

compromise the safety of our children."

"We know that you will do whatever must be done, my lady,"

Lotus replied with a bit of high-pitched emotion that made her

sound half as young as her actual age, "But these men who

follow that Tendo women..."

"Are professional soldiers who obey their leaders with

discipline," Lao concluded for her, "Which is no less than I

expect of our own people."

"Why haven't the Undines been able to contain them so far?"

Blossom asked with a curious frown, "Some have Jusenkyo

curses..."

"While the others have Chi-Force attacks," Lao explained,

"Which is more than I anticipated. I suppose I have

dangerously underestimated Elder Cologne, her pupils and these

men who follow the father of my beloved pet, while Tendo

Nabiki is proving to have her own measure of resourceful

surprises. I believe drastic measures may be called for in order to

contain the these outsiders, and I am working on a plan even

now, one that will, unfortunately, require my direct personal

involvement to supervise the operation."

Her two aids exchanged nervous looks, then Blossom said,

"How may we be of service to you in this, my lady? We, of

course, will do everything you ask in defense of our home."

"For now I need you both to remain here," Lao replied, "This

is a logical strike point that they may try to take by force.

Besides this I need to have you monitor our progress and see to it

we don't have any more near-encounters before we reach the port

in Hong Kong."

"Then we will hold this point with our lives, if need be my

lady," Lotus avowed, "They will pay dearly if they try to

commandeer the bridge..."

"Just hold them off until I can return to finish them," Lao

replied, "I'll leave you in charge of two squadrons of our best

warriors, plus a division of Undines, which ought to deter even

their recklessness bravado."

"They had better not try anything up here," Blossom said as

she balled her fist until it began to glow slightly, "Or I'll make

them regret ever escaping their cages."

"Just don't attack the Elder if it can be helped," Lao replied,

"Neither one of you would last the length of a candlewick in a

hurricane. Spare your efforts for the men, and never mind the

usual niceties of Amazon combat. I want them alive and unhurt,

but beyond that...use your imagination."

"It will be as you ask, my lady," Lotus nodded, her eyes

shifting slightly in color as she summoned her own internal

power in anticipation of releasing it. It was not Moko Takabisha

level but it would do in close quarters against an unprepared

opponent.

"Good," Lao smiled as she turned away, moving to a brass

pole that was set at the rear center of the cabin, "Then wait for

my return, and for Kraken's sake try not to run us aground on any

reefs while you're at it. I want this ship to maintain a steady

course and attract as little notice as possible, not float us into

town like the SS Poseidon."

So saying she slid down the pole to drop several floors down to

where her private chariot was waiting, catching the faint hint of

embarrassment in Lotus's voice as she growled, "You make one

little mistake and they never let you forget about it..."

Lao ignored the inevitable follow up from Blossom and turned to

her already waiting chariot, which had been fitted out with her

four best mounts and was ready for travel.

Well, actually said mounts were four very pretty looking girls, all

naked and in leather harnesses with bridles in their mouths, each

chained in a row to a wooden pole that they would draw along

like four stout horses when so commanded. The girls were all

blondes with their hair done up in fancy pony-tails, specially

selected and trained to move as a team through the narrow track

that served as express route for moving from one end of the ship

to the other.

These comely slaves were docile at the moment but sensed the

mood of their lady as she leaped into the chariot behind them, so

when Lao flicked the long-stemmed Cat-O-Nine-Tails against

their collective rumps all four girls jumped as one and moved out

as fast as their hobbles would permit them, bare feet slapping

against the polished wood surface like four hooves clunking

together.

In spite of her haste Lao had to smile in reflection of her well-

trained team of domestic race animals...or so she liked to think of

them as it really did not serve a Slaver's mindset very well to

credit her toys with too much humanity. That was a bit like

giving too much sympathy to the people she had to train and

discipline into unquestioning obedience, and she was gratified at

how well trained these four were to whip and bridle. It was a

pity she would have to sell them shortly, but she had already

lined up a buyer and was grooming another team to eventually

take their place. She considered these Pony women to be among

her most prized of living possessions, just as she treasured every

loving slave she had ever trained and doted her affections upon

them when they performed to her expectations.

(If only her fifth mount, darling Sasha, had not caught a cold the

other day as Lao preferred to travel with a Spare in case a

member of her team fell lame or caught a splinter...)

The team made very good time, reaching two-thirds the length of

the corridor in less than a full minute, then Lao pulled back on

the reins and allowed her team to slow their pace down to a trot,

and finally stopped at her chosen destination.

Lieutenant Shelby awaited her, the dour Irish girl and former IRA

Terrorist who had been with her for almost five years and had

shown great proficiency among Lao's human Pirate crew, who

stood now with her single good eye glaring hard with

determination as Lao dismounted from her chariot and passed the

bridle along to a waiting groom so that they could be rested and

watered in case they were needed for a return trip. Otherwise

they would be put back into their stables until the next time their

services were called for.

Lao wasted no time staring at the eye-patched officer as she said,

"Report. What is the latest word concerning the Intruders?"

"My lady," Shelby replied, "The Outlanders have penetrated to

sector H, level Four, deck ten and are in the process of linking up

with their two remaining companions. Very soon they will all be

contained in the same compartment as per your instructions."

"Good," Lao smiled as she glanced at the waiting Undines and

human warriors under her command, "Then we will seal them off

when that occurs and hold the line there. Has everything been

made ready as I commanded?"

"To the letter," Shelby replied, permitting herself a dour smile as

she added, "They haven't a chance once we spring this trap, my

lady. We could flood them out if you wished them taken without

losses on our side..."

"Not necessary," Lao assured, "At least I don't think it will come

to that, although it would not hurt to prepare for that as a possible

option. At least so far we haven't taken serious casualties on our

side or I would make them dearly pay for if I assure you. Let us

spring the trap first, then we shall see what steps will be needed

to make reparation for my troubles."

"Very good, my lady," Shelby replied, then passed the word along

to her four sergeants and the pirate forces began to move out in

flanking columns down separate corridors.

Lao smiled again as she grimly counted up the forces at her

disposal. Unquestionably she had the advantage of numbers, but

against Chi-Attacks from competent Masters it was not numbers

but quality that would tell the odds. Of the more than fifty

human women now spearheading the attack she could count only

a handful as decently well trained while the two hundred Undines

supporting them had learned to be wary after the initial

encounters with the Chi-Masters had taught them to use caution.

The Elementals could not be killed or seriously injured in such a

way, but Chi-Attacks were decidedly painful and often rendered

them temporarily unable to reform themselves into a human

shape. They would need time to replenish the numbers already

forced into an unsolid mass or to heal back those injuries they

had taken so far, so Lao had elected to spare them any further

needless exposure, diverting as many as she could to protecting

the Bridge until the crisis was over.

Privately she knew that this could hardly have come at a worse

time for dividing her attention. Sailing a magical ship through

one of the most heavily patrolled sea lanes in all the world

without drawing the notice of powerful armies was a bit of an art

in these days of high-tech sensor arrays and satellite observers.

Her vessel might be a Ghost Ship to some, but the POJ had

carved a certain legend for itself in certain high places that would

not mind seeing Lao inconvenienced, and as strong as her

magical shields might be around the ship she was still technically

vulnerable to the accurate ranged weapons fire of most modern

navies. She had to wind this up fast so that she could return to

the bridge and insure that they continued on their way without

detection.

She smiled to herself as her mind filled with the images of

Nabiki's group as they approached the area of ambush. Tendo-

san and her friends would pay for disturbing her pleasant

afternoon with this thoughtless rebellion. There was no end of

means at Lao's disposal to make Nabiki regret the imprudence of

her actions, and she did not intend to relent in the instruction of

the Tendo girl about the limits of Lao's tolerance. She would not

be satisfied until Nabiki groveled on all fours and swore to do

Lao's every bidding.

To paraphrase Mel Brooks, it was Good to be the Mistress,

thought Lao to herself, and on board the POJ it was her will that

was sovereign and absolute. The ship could have only one

Mistress, and Lao had no doubt of the outcome of their

impending conflict...

Master Happosai returned home from his daily raids with his

treasures in hand, smiling contentedly at some of the prizes he

had obtained, and for once without the interference of his upstart

Apprentice...

Well, he had to admit that part was a bit of a mixed blessing.

Happosai relished the challenge Tendo Nabiki afforded him, the

rare sport of a girl so good at the art that she could give Happy a

swift run for his yen. Nabiki added a certain spice to their

frequent engagements, he only regretted that she did not show

him more of the respect that was his due. She might

acknowledge him her Master, but Nabiki did tend to think it was

a part of her training to interrupt her Master's simple pleasures.

He had tried disciplining her once to teach her proper respect, but

Cologne had to go and interfere as usual, curse her withered old

bones, he silently amended. Cologne also had the notion that

Nabiki was her prime student and the apprentice to 3000 years of

Amazon lore, which was why she had taught that dangerous

maneuver to an amateur of all things, nominally to teach

Happosai some sort of a lesson.

Of course Nabiki herself had managed to counter the effects of

the Moxibustion point. It really was careless of Happosai to have

left the chart containing all those Nerve Points in her trust, but he

chalked that up to a moment of weakness when his pride had

shown forth at the accomplishments of his student. There had

been other games they played, and at each point Nabiki improved

phenomenally to where it was becoming more difficult to out-fox

her, and at some future point it was even conceivable that she

would one day surpass both him and Cologne in knowledge.

Not that the day was in danger of happening anytime too soon, he

smirked. As fast as Nabiki was able to master new techniques,

Happosai still had more tricks up his sleeve than a hundred

wizened pervert martial artists. He would always find some way

of keeping her on her toes while stealing her bra right out from

under that pointy little chin of hers...

Happosai was broken out of his reflections by a sound coming

from the dojo. He slowed upon the roof and glanced towards the

training hall, wondering who was making those delightfully

feminine sounds as they did not match any of the girls he already

knew worked out there on a regular basis. Some new students

come to take up lessons?

True to his name, he stashed his bag of treasures and went in

search of these new students then came upon the wonderful sight

of a pair of stunningly beautiful young girls working out together

with the skill and tenacity of wild cats. Happy stared from the

partial concealment of the door by the porch and saw a short

brown-haired girl sparring against a taller girl roughly the same

age and a bit superior in height, this latter having long black hair

that she kept done up in a pony tail. The older girl had very good

moves but the smaller girl was lighter and faster. Happosai

could almost weep for joy as he watched these two bounce here

and about with their non-restrictive clothing barely concealing

their charms. Even the fact that they were not wearing bras did

not detract from his enjoyment. This was just the thing an old

man like him needed to come home to!

But there was something about these two. Happy paused to

wonder why he had a curious sense of having already known

them from some where. He was pretty sure he had never feasted

on such visions of loveliness since the day Tendo Nabiki had first

become his student. It was more than just their looks, however, it

was the way they moved, the perfect control they displayed of

their rhythm and power...

"Oh," a pleasant voice said from just behind him, "Master

Happosai, you're back, and just in time for dinner."

Happosai gave an uncharacteristically guilty start as he turned to

see Kasumi smiling at him with a warmth to which he was not

much accustomed. The eldest Tendo daughter had that guileless

expression that always made the wizened Hentai Master shrink a

little inside as though he had done something terribly naughty.

Kasumi had that kind of an affect on him, which was very odd as

he should normally have been all too willing to ogle her

magnificent profile. Kasumi certainly had all the right assets to

attract his notice, and a charm unlike the coarser forms adopted

by many girls trying to be nice girls and failing.

For some reason Happosai just could not be himself around

Kasumi. It was a little like having dirty thoughts about your

mother...

"Indeed I am," Happosai hastily covered his nervousness by

adopting a typical swagger, thrusting his tiny chest out and

puffing himself up as though it could somehow actually make

him seem taller, "I was just noticing that we have a pair of

comely guests that I've never set eyes upon until now..."

Something about that statement did not seem right, but Happosai

ignored it as Kasumi obligingly supplied him with the

information that he needed, "Oh, you mean our new guests,

Natsume and Kurumi. They claim to be father's other daughters,

which would make them my other younger sisters, I suppose,

only I'm not sure I see how as I'm quite certain mother would

have told us if she had two more daughters..."

Happosai mentally undid the loops of this explanation and

correctly interpreted Kasumi's actual meaning, "So the old boy

had a couple of kids with someone besides Kimiko, eh? Have to

say, I never thought he had it in him, not that I should be

surprised considering how popular he used to be with the ladies."

"Father had other girlfriends?" Kasumi sounded surprised at this

revelation.

"Soun caught the eye of several sweet young things in his day, at

least that I knew of," Happosai replied, "But I think he only had

eyes for your mother...or maybe he did have something going for

a while there with that Amazon cutie...I think her name was Silk,

or something like that. Come to think of it, they could be Silk's

daughters...she did break it off rather suddenly, and I know Soun

was pretty heartbroken..."

Now it was Kasumi's turn to try mentally untangling his

statement, but before she could finally unloop the last curl of

Happosai's explanation they both heard a polite voice ask,

"Oneechan, who is this honored gentleman? Is he a friend of

father's?"

"Indeed I am," Happosai turned to smile at the two girls, who

were now looking towards him with curious expressions, "I'm

Soun's Master, Happosai, Founder of the Anything Goes School

of Martial Arts, and on behalf of the school, permit me to greet

you in the way I welcome all my new pupils..."

Happosai was about to launch himself into his legendary lunge

when a sharp voice called out, "MASTER! I forbid this!"

Happosai was shocked beyond words and slowly turned to see

the hard look Soun was directing towards him, and the equally

grim expression of Genma at his side. It simply did not seem

possible for him to have heard the tone Soun used correctly. If

his senses were not failing him, Soun had just spoken

disrespectfully to his Master, and without a trace of his usual

ready capitulation.

"You forbid?" Happosai repeated.

"Master," Genma said somberly, "These are our guests, Soun-

kun's long lost daughters. It would not be proper to show them

anything less than the complete and proper respect due to this

House. At least give Natsume-san and Kurumi-chan time to fully

adjust to what is expected in our tradition."

Happosai narrowed his eyes and stared hard at the two men, but

for once they did not back down at the implied threat in his gaze.

So, he thought silently to himself, those two are starting to

develop some backbone. Well, well...

Aloud what he said was, "I believe I can decide what is proper

and best for the honor of this House," Happosai turned back to

regard the two girls with a pleasantly bland expression, "My,

what pretty things you are. Soun must be very proud to call you

both his daughters."

Out of the corner of his eye Happosai saw Soun flinch in a

significant way. Not a guilty flinch, now, but more that of a man

who wanted to deny something but lacked supporting evidence.

Happosai decided to play along and continued, "How have the

two of you been fitting in around this place? Either of you

lovelies have boy friends you'd like to tell Ol' Happy about?"

"N-No," Natsume looked away and blushed slightly. The

younger girl-Kurumi was it?-fetched her sister a sour look

before firmly stating, "No, we don't have boy friends. We've only

just been staying here for a couple of days and haven't really met

too many people."

"Hi ya!" Shampoo's pleasant voice called out, "Dinner ready if

you done with-YOU! What you do with Shampoo's new Sisters-

in-Law?"

"Ah, Shampoo-san," Happosai smiled wickedly at the purple-

haired girl and earned a hard look back from her that promised

destruction on the level of a small typhoon if he tried anything in

her direction, "I hope you thought to make enough for all of us as

I plan to dine in with the family tonight. I was just making the

acquaintance of these two charming girls. What a pleasure to

know the Tendo line has produced so many astonishing beauties.

It almost defies comprehension."

"Defile something else, Hentai," Shampoo sniffed as she pivoted

on one heal and stormed back into the main house, "Shampoo

serve dinner, not have to take insults."

"Spirited girl," Happosai smiled back at the puzzled Natsume and

Kurumi, "Amazons can be quite charming in an aggressive, no-

nonsense kind of way. Well, it is a real pleasure to meet you two

and I hope to see a lot more of your around dinner. Bye," he cried

as he bounded up onto the roof and headed for his room in the

attic.

"He's up to something," Genma murmured, to which Soun merely

nodded, both shuddering at the thought of what their Master

might be contemplating.

It would therefore have surprised them that Happosai ignored his

latest haul and went straight to the pile of personal belonging he

had stashed in the third story attic that he called his room, a pile

which did not have anything to do with underwear. A faint

memory and a hunch guided him, and after a few moments he

fished out the thing that he was looking for. He held it up to the

light and studied an old photograph for a very long, very quiet

span of moments.

Finally he brought it down with a sigh. Ten years! First Hinako

and now this. Surely the Gods were mocking him in some way,

though for what crime he could have committed he honestly had

no comprehension. What he knew was that this changed the

complexion of the whole encounter with the two sisters. He

thought he had recognized the style of their technique.

After all, he was the one who had taught it to them before his

imprisonment. They were the two orphans he had rescued and

befriended, the nearest thing he had in the world to living

offspring, although he was certainly not their real father.

And neither were they Soun's, though he had a pretty good idea

whose daughters those two were. The truth would hardly serve

them in either event, but the point was that they had an absolute

right to reside in the Tendo lodgings.

After all they really were Tendos, he just had to think of a way of

disguising the truth so that everyone would accept them better.

Happosai was hardly the most responsible martial arts master

who ever lived, but it was the very least he could do for his very

own granddaughters...

Continued.

Comments/Criticism/Genealogy Records:

shadowmane

Next stop for sure: Nabiki vs. Lao, I promise!

Nabiki 1/2,

A Very Scary Thought

(An Altered Destiny)

by

Jim Robert Bader

Chapter 23, Part 3.

(Based on the works of Rumiko Takahashi & Others)

Warning: Adult Material Enclosed,

Do not Read if Under The Age of 657 unless

Accompanied by a Parent or Guardian;

You Have Been Warned!

Cologne suddenly halted in her advance, thrusting her staff out to

block Nabiki's next step as she hissed out sharply, "Hold! Go no

farther! To advance beyond this point is to court disaster!"

Ranma and Ryoga halted their advance as though each were

growing accustomed to respecting the old woman's word when

she used that tone of unreproachable authority. Nabiki was more

independent minded and asked, "What is it? What do you sense,

Elder?"

"Can you not feel it yourself?" Cologne asked her in a low

whisper, "I have been teaching you to read force-lines, and they

should tell the tale far better than I ever could."

Nabiki reflexively reached out with her mind and felt the lines of

force all around her. It was not that difficult, the air was

saturated with raw elemental forces so strong that she had been

forcibly ignoring them lest they overwhelm her mortal senses.

Tuning out the flood of sensations to that which had the most

practical significance was what was required here, and with her

strong focus of will she honed in on the sense of danger that

Cologne had warned her about.

"Get ready!" she hissed, "It's coming!"

"What?" Guile asked with a sharp glance towards her, then he

felt it too as the entire room trembled with a sudden vibration,

and the instant after this the walls and floor erupted with the

flowing tendrils of something phosphorescent.

The chamber they were in was huge, once more defying logical

sense as it looked more like the interior of a castle than the tight

confines of an ancient sailing vessel. The tendrils seemed to

appear from every avenue, both beneath the walkway they were

upon and from quarters not sufficiently well lit to allow one to

imagine their origins. It was like being inside the belly of a great

beast with the lining of its stomach walls reaching out to absorb

them. A rumbling noise seemed to add weight to this

impression, though it could just as well have been suggested that

the creature was both external and internal, living within the

walls of the ship like a manifestation out of nightmare.

Nabiki and her comrades in arms instinctively fell back into a

mass with all defenses turned outward, and with the security of

having each other cover their flanks and rear, leaving only the

scope of their peripheral vision to focus upon what was directly

before them. With fist, foot and spiritual force they met this

assault, striking the tendrils that came at them seeking to

overwhelm and crush them.

Ranma and Ryoga used blows so fast that they could not be seen

with the naked eye, even as Keiko and Chun-Li prefer kicks and

Bison used his fists to batter away at the tendrils that sought to

ensnare their limbs and bodies. Honda used the flat of his palms,

projecting the force of his blows with such speed and power that

it seemed as if nothing could get beyond his guard. Blanka raked

with his claws while Cammy spun and used her feet and fists to

strike in a series of flutter motions that had a similar effect to the

Amaguriken. Guile and Ken's punches were more solidly

focused while Akane's smaller fists had a lot of compact force for

all their small size. Kodachi used her entire body as a weapon,

leveraging past the tendrils that tried to ensnare her and turning

their force back against them, but it was Nabiki's own unique

counter-offensive that was most worthy of attention for she drew

upon the force lines in the air and shaped them with hands and

mental focus, turning them into invisible raking fields of

elemental energy that ripped at the tendrils and forced them to

draw away as if in painful reaction.

Then Cologne spun her staff and struck directly forward into the

air instead of the tendrils, and sudden shock waves coursed

throughout the chamber, disrupting the tendrils as though they

had never been there in the first place. She rested the heel of her

staff against the floor with a heavy sound then lifted her voice

and cried, "Lao! Lao Kung, as you so style yourself, enough with

your tricks and evasions! Face us now instead of skulking

around from the safety of the shadows!"

"You're a fine one to talk, old woman," Lao replied as she

stepped into view, as did a hundred armed women, both human

and Undine, who fanned out from either side along the ramps and

partitions and both ends of the chamber, "Isn't that what you

Elders usually do? Stand back and act sage while we younger

warriors go forth to do all of your fighting?"

Of a sudden the lady Pirates presented crossbows, spears,

javelins and tridents, which same they leveled their way in row

upon row of bristling threat. Nabiki and the others glanced

nervously about, realizing their exposure to such a long-ranged

attack as even Guile looked wary while Ryoga quite deliberately

positioned his body to stand like a shield before Akane.

Cologne regarded this threat as though it were a matter of no

great significance and murmured, "Are you so lost to all concept

of honor that you would strike us down this way? I thought I

knew you better than this, Lanocane, but it seems that I was

gravely mistaken."

"You thought you knew me?" Lao slowly descended a stairway

while her people continued to keep the Posse and Guile's group

covered, "And what did I know when I placed my trust in you,

old woman? You think it was honor that you taught? You

preach only expediency and what is good by your standards, but

when I needed you most I was turned away and left to my own

devices!"

"Whatever wrong I have done to you does not justify what you do

now," Cologne said simply, "You betray yourself and everything

the Amazons have ever stood for by preying on your fellow

human being and exploiting them like cattle."

"Oh yes, you'd like to see it in those terms," Lao snorted, "The

horrible slaver who uses and discards people after they have

served my uses. Well, it's never been as simple as that. I do

what I have to do to preserve what is mine. Do you think all of

these follow me simply because of some tricks you and others

taught me? I have earned their loyalty, and they know I will fight

for them just as hard as I once thought you would have defended

me before I saw what a true opportunist you are. Do not preach

to me about what is best for the Amazons, for these are my

Amazons, a people I have trained and given purpose."

She continued to descend until she was only a few paces from

Cologne where she halted, glaring down at the motionless elder,

her gaze boring into the ancient woman's as though the rest of the

world had ceased to have meaning, "Who do you think raised

many of these to the positions they now hold? Do you know

what they were before they came into my service? Some few

were victims, yes, but others had lives of one kind or another that

were twisted, drab or unfulfilling. Some were mercenaries and

others were merely whores, others had no goals in life while

many were simply wallowing in the shallowness of a

meaningless existence. Now we are a tribe, a community that is

growing and recruiting new life from those who can adjust to the

lifestyle. These people belong to me, and I will defend them to

the death...which I suspect is what you would condemn me to if I

were so foolish as to place myself again at your mercy."

Cologne continued to regard her in silence for a few seconds after

Lao had spoken, but at last she said, "What is it you want from

me, Lao? My approval?"

"No," Lao raised her head proudly, "Nor your forgiveness. Too

much has gone between us for that. I only want you to return to

the custody of those quarters I have provided you each with. You

need not be chained or be held in any more cages, nor will I

attempt any more to persuade you all to accept the life of a

permanent resident of this vessel. You will be treated well,

indeed...much better than you could possibly imagine, and some

of you will even be treated to comforts as provided by my staff

that you won't find at a Holiday Inn. All this I offer if you

surrender now and give me your word that you will not attempt to

escape again. Regardless of what some of you may currently

believe I am not truly your enemy and did not want to start this

battle. Nor do I want to end it with your deaths, which I am sure

you can see can come at my slightest direction should you wish to

foolishly press on in your resistance."

"And we're supposed to believe in your good will, Lady?" Guile

asked scornfully.

"Why not?" Lao smiled, "You can ask your daughter and she will

confirm for you that I can be charitable when it suits my interest.

I do not wish to see any of you needlessly injured, but if you

persist in this folly I will not be responsible for the

consequences."

"It would seem you have the advantage once again," Nabiki

replied, "Why hesitate to use it? From what I've seen you already

possess the means to crush us where we stand regardless of the

threat posed by these others," she nodded towards Lao's people

with meaning.

"True," Lao slowly looked the defenders over and smiled a bit

grimly, "I can see by your resolute looks that you are all proven

fighters. It is not for such as us to crave surrender merely

because the odds are against us. Perhaps I do you an injustice

suggesting you back down without a struggle. Very well, I'll

make you another offer. Fight me directly and we'll settle this

between us. My people will not fire upon you as I give you my

solemn vow that this will be a fair and even contest. The stakes

will be simple, if I win you will surrender without complaint. If

you win then I will put you ashore as soon as we make dockside

and surrender myself to the authorities of your choosing."

"Sounds too good to be true," Cammy growled, "What's the

catch?"

"Only that you haven't a chance of defeating me in battle," Lao

smiled, "Unless you care to issue the challenge yourself, Elder."

Cologne regarded her solemnly then replied, "You know that I

will not."

"Cologne?" Nabiki looked at her in confusion.

"I cannot act unless she strikes against Amazon interests

directly," Cologne said bitterly, "Which, technically, she has not

truly done, even though she has played the Catspaw with us on

an individual basis. Such games and parlor tricks are certainly

beneath any former apprentice of mine, but when we Elders cast

her out of the tribe we renounced our sovereignty over her.

Unless she strikes at me or an acknowledged warrior of my clan I

cannot initiate combat without disgracing my family, which she

very well knows."

"Oh great," Ranma complained, "Now you tell us this?"

"What about Perfume?" Nabiki argued, "I personally witnessed

what you had her and Ukyo do at your behest..."

"And what was that?" Lao smiled, "Play naughty little games and

try to fulfill their most ardent desires? I would hardly call that

harmful conduct."

"Maybe you should ask them about that when you have the

chance," Nabiki countered, "And besides, what good is your offer

to fight one of us? We all know you have ten years experiences

in perfecting your Amazon arts..."

"You misunderstand me," Lao smiled, "I never said this had to be

one against one. I meant that you can all gang up on me at the

same time and I will still defeat you using only my own natural

talents. Surely that doesn't seem too unreasonable to you?" she

called over her shoulder, "Lieutenant Shelby, bear witness! I

order you all to stand down and allow me to fight this battle on

my own. No one interferes until the matter is concluded, and if I

should lose you will release these prisoners and see they are

safely set ashore. Do you understand me?"

"I hear you, my lady," Shelby grimly responded.

"Good," Lao smiled as she circled around the silent Cologne and

faced directly against Guile, "So why don't we start with you, big

man? You want a piece of me, I can tell, for what you know that

I have done with your daughter."

"Lady," Guile moved forward, "You make it sound so tempting."

"Father..." Keiko started to warn him but hesitated.

"I gave my word to Kei-chan that I would not see you hurt," Lao

replied as Guile raised his hands in a classic Tai-boxing manner.

He took a step forward, prepared to launch a kick, only to have

Lao's hand suddenly strike out to press against his chest, and

just as suddenly he was moving horizontally backwards with

such force that he struck the far wall hard enough to leave an

imprint.

"I never said I wouldn't rough you up a little," Lao smiled at the

others and said, "Next?"

"Lady, you are pushing it," Ken replied as he drew his hands

back and summoned the power of his Hado Sho Ryu Ken attack

as the glow began to surround him.

"Impressive," Lao smiled, "I'm waiting whenever you're ready."

Ken's aura expanded to surround his whole body as everyone else

stood back to allow him more room to summon his Ki, and then

Ken threw the force with both hands and struck at where Lao had

been standing.

Odd thing was that she was now standing to the side of where

the blast struck, still smiling as the blast vanished off into the

distance with a dull thud signifying that it had been absorbed,

like all of the others.

"My turn," Lao smiled, drawing back a fist as water congealed

around her right arm, and then she threw her punch while still too

far away to reach him and the jet stream of water leaped from her

to strike at Ken as it expanded like a geyser, knocking him off his

feet so that he swiftly joined Guile in making a wall impression.

"Ken!" Chun-Li cried, then turned to glare at Lao as she growled,

"You'll pay for that!"

"Yeah!" Cammy agreed, "No one does that to the Colonel and

gets away with it! Let's get her!"

The rest of Guile's team charged en-mass at Lao, who simply

crossed her arms over her chest then swung them around as she

shouted, "Wall of Raging Waters!" which slammed them with a

near-solid curtain of liquid, picking even the stout Honda up off

his huge feet and rolling him like a bowling ball to land in a far

corner.

"Everyone stay back!" Nabiki ordered, only to see Ranma and

Ryoga attempt to double-team Lao with predictable results as the

Pirate lady met their charge and counter-attacked. A fast and

furious exchange of blows resulted in both boys sailing

backwards from Lao as though their own energy had been

absorbed and turned back on them.

"Great...now they choose not to listen," Nabiki griped in sour

contemplation.

That taught the others a measure of caution as Akane, Kodachi

and even Keiko looked to Nabiki for their next cue. Lao smiled

at them while her nominal victims were still shaking off the

effects of her assault. Lao radiated confidence and had just

demonstrated her prowess in defeating nearly a dozen powerful

foes in less than twenty seconds.

"Like to surrender now?" Lao asked with a tigerish smile, "My

offer still holds, and you will be well treated."

Nabiki saw Cologne remaining where she was, giving a

noncommittal stare in Nabiki's direction. The Elder would not

interfere as long as Lao merely remained a passive-aggressive

opponent. It all fell onto her as she turned her full attention back

towards Lao, not willing to surrender to this Monster, or to trust

in her good will, especially with the safety of her loved ones at

stake. She had to find a way of defeating her soundly, and

preferably without getting anyone else killed in the process, but

how when Lao seemed so unstoppable in a direct hand-to-hand

encounter?

Something about that bothered Nabiki. No one was that good,

not even Cologne, and certainly not invincible, even granted that

Lao had the home court advantage. She had watched Lao fight,

seen the tight, economical movements with which she had

repelled Guile and countered Ranma and Ryoga's one-two

offensive. The tricks she had used seem to involve the

summoning of water...

Water! Suddenly Nabiki realized what was so odd about Lao's

attack. The woman was able to conjure up water on demand and

use it offensively, but how could she do that if-as Nabiki

suspected-the woman had a very good reason to not allow that

element to make contact with her own body?

"Kei-chan," Nabiki murmured, "You can stand this one out if you

want to..."

Keiko was clearly torn by conflicting loyalties, but she raised her

hands and said, "No way. I'm in this with you guys to the finish.

You understand why, my lady."

"I would not think to come between you and your friends," Lao

smiled, "Or ask you to choose me above your father and the

woman that you love, but you do understand that I will be forced

to punish you along with these others?"

"That is as it must be, my lady," Keiko stood more resolute,

"Whatever you decide, Nab-chan. I'm in all the way."

"As are we," Kodachi affirmed, "What is your call, Tendo

Nabiki? We will follow you to the very last of our energies."

"What am I going to do?" Nabiki asked aloud, pretending the

question was rhetorical when in fact she was asking herself the

very same thing, "I am going to kick your butt from here to Qing

Hi, Lao! No way are we surrendering! Take your best shot, we're

still going to beat you."

"Such bravado demands a fitting reply," Lao replied as she raised

both hands and called up a swirling mass of concentrated blue

energy, water congealing to form a liquid mass between her

hands, "In token of my respect for these others I will allow them

to sit out the rest of this fight in their cursed forms. You,

however, are about to take a one-way trip to the darkest depths of

my personal dungeon. Such is the fate of all who would dare to

defy me!"

"Scatter!" Nabiki cried, vaulting into the air as the jet-stream of

water struck the place where she had been standing as she

corkscrewed her body in mid-leap and lashed out with a savage

kick that contained the force of her Chi, and it should have

knocked Lao completely head-over-heals when it connected, but

instead the former Amazon just rolled with the kick and retained

her footing.

"Nice," Lao smiled as she straightened herself out and gave

Nabiki a savage glare that seemed almost full of praise and

admiration. She did not have long to contemplate this before

Kodachi completed a hubcap cartwheel with her own double-kick

aimed at the Amazon's midsection. Lao caught this with one

hand, grabbed the other foot that Keiko shot her way from a

flanking position with the other hand but was still left exposed

when Akane plunged in with her fists, side-stepping her

companions as she leveled her punch squarely in Lao's exposed

solar plexus and managing to connect with force enough to

shatter a brick wall.

Lao grunted slightly then smiled at Akane. Nabiki sensed her

next move and was already into executing her next leap when

Lao took one step back and drew both Kodachi and Keiko off the

floor, holding them by a leg a piece in an incredibly display of

strength before slamming them together with Akane helplessly

caught in the middle.

Lao released the two women in time to meet Nabiki's aerial

attack. Nabiki did not hold back as she shifted to Amaguriken

speed, launching a flurry of punches and kicks that drove Lao

back for several paces as the Amazon again absorbed her

punishment without visible complaint. Only when Nabiki grew

careless by one fraction did Lao counter-attack, but that one blow

back-handed her halfway across the floor. Nabiki had to roll

with the force, astonished at the power it had contained and

marveling that her head was still attached to her shoulders.

She staggered back to her feet in time to see Lao slowly

advancing, her confidence unshaken.

"Water is the Universal Solvent," Lao explained, "It is

incompressible, irresistible and unfathomable to the

understanding of mortals. It absorbs everything without

changing its substance. Strike a pool a thousand times and it will

always return to the same form. The same is true with me, Tendo

Nabiki. Strike me a thousand times and it will make no distance.

Only Elder Cologne knows my weakness, and unless she chooses

to intervene it will not have an impact on this battle."

Water, Nabiki thought to herself, Lao's powers were based upon

water, one of the Five Basic elements of Shinto Mysticism. How

could she use that insight to help her defeat Madam Lao? How

was she able to create water out of seeming nothingness and hurl

it around? Was it some kind of an illusion?

Nabiki knew something about the element of Water, and how it

applied to the Martial Arts. In looking back at Lao's fighting

style she could see the same philosophy applied to the fluidity of

her form. The difference was in degree of mastery, for Lao lived

and breathed the Water School of Martial Combat. She absorbed

everything and overcame by flowing around an opposing force.

Her motions were fluid, but there was something else about her

attack style. Lao was using a modified form of Shaolin Tiger Fist

to her attacks.

As she thought upon this her body automatically shifted into the

Dragon Style Defense, the natural counter to the Tiger school of

combat. The Tiger employed Bone Strength with hard-slashing

motions aimed at overwhelming an opponent from very close

quarters, but the Dragon discipline employed body strength with

high-flying aerial motions, which was a Saotome School

specialty, and one in which Nabiki excelled. She assumed a

wide-stance with hands forming the claws of the dragon,

preparing to "ride the air" with her next attack, a fact that was

immediately recognized by her opponent.

"Interesting," Lao smiled, "This might actually prove quite

amusing..."

As she said this Lao suddenly turned her head sharply to one side

and threw up one hand, causing a wall of water to form in the air

at her command. One second later an object impacted against

this shield at an angle and bounced off, continuing to spin with a

savage hiss as it arced through the air and turned back towards it

source. Lao ducked her head as a second double-bladed axe just

missed taking advantage of her moment of distraction, and had

she not moved instinctively as she had her head most lightly

would have been cleaved from her shoulders.

Out of the corner of her eye Nabiki saw Perfume snatch both her

axes out of the air while Nabiki took advantage of the moment to

launch her attack upon Lao, using the dragon-stamp kick as her

opening move and actually managing to catch Lao by surprise

before the Pirate had time to bend with the flow. Lao landed hard

against the floor but got to her feet again, looking momentarily

shaken.

That was all the time Ukyo needed to bring her bakers peel down

so that the flat would have smacked the Pirate like a mosquito,

only Lao sensed this attack coming and managed to bring both

her hands up in time to block with a double-palm strike. Ukyo

gave back as her own force was returned through the handle but

she nimbly caught her balance on the balls of her feet and twisted

her body to make a horizontal strike with her weapon that forced

Lao into motion. The Pirate regained her footing once again, but

now Perfume had closed the distance and had her axes at the

ready.

Lao brought her arms across her chest and suddenly a cone of

blue crystal formed around her, catching and repelling the blunt

force of both axes and spatula, then Lao dissolved her barrier and

snatched these weapons out of their hands, her motions so

blindingly fluid that they were invisible even to Nabiki's eyes.

Ukyo and Perfume staggered back a few paces but retained

enough of their fighting edge to still pose a credible threat as they

assumed a double-team attack posture on the one side, deterring

Lao from following through in an attempt to finish off these new

opponents.

"And impressive display of teamwork," Lao congratulated, "But

may I ask what I have done to earn such a determined display of

aggression?"

"You figure it out, Lao," Ukyo replied, "Per-chan and me are still

going kick your butt for what you tried to do to us."

"And what would that be?" Lao sounded genuinely disappointed,

"Didn't you like my little gift?"

"Oh sure," Ukyo gave a rueful smirk, "Locking us together like

that was a real nice gesture, and it might even have been nice if

you'd given us more of a choice instead of try to use me like a

brood mare, and Gods only know what else you did with us when

we were under the influence."

Nabiki grimaced slightly but said nothing. Lao was now trying

to maintain her defense against three determined foes at flanking

angles and it gave her an opening to exploit as she circled around

and sought to attack from Lao's exposed backside.

Before she could complete her assault, however, someone else

came charging in with a foot-first assault that Lao had no

problem dodging. Guile went right past Lao like a heat-seeking

missile, and it no doubt came as quite a surprise when Lao

snagged him by his shirt before he was completely beyond her.

Lao moved around and under him, flipping the huge man around

before tossing him at Ukyo, which caused Perfume to tackle her

beloved out of the way so that the big man could strike the wall

behind instead of them, once more slumping to the ground in

what was now becoming something of a habit.

Of course other members of his team had recovered by this time

and were now making their own presence felt as they sought to

rush her from opposing sides while Nabiki held back and studied

the Amazon's defenses.

The first to strike was Blanka, using his claws to rake the air

where Lao had been standing before rolling like a ball and

lashing out with both feet in a lightning double-kick that did

catch her this time and knocked her flying. The ogre-like

creature pressed in to the attack, only to find his feet gave out

from underneath him when a column of water shot up from the

floor and knocked him against the ceiling far above their heads.

Lao peeled herself off the wall she had struck but now had Bison

and Honda to deal with. The Sumo wrestler had both feet

planted firmly as he wrapped his arms around Lao and held her

fast. His muscles strained as though he were exerting great effort

to squeeze the air from her lungs, but Lao just smiled at his

efforts as Bison came around and raised a massive fist, only

hesitating slightly.

"Hold still," the boxer said, "This'll only hurt for a second..."

Lao continued to smile as Bison's fist went right through her face

and struck Honda in the jaw while Lao's body seemed to dissolve

into a liquid state. Honda went down as Lao stood to one side

and continued smiling.

"I'll take his word for it," Lao chuckled before raising her palms

and pushing forward, slamming Bison with a wave of water that

tumbled the big man half the length of the chamber.

Lao started to turn around when Chun-Li and Cammy

coordinated an attack, hitting Lao high and low as the Amazon

rocked back for half a step, then belatedly fought them off with a

sudden burst of ferocity that seemed to explode outward without

warning. Both women went flying as if struck repeatedly by

jackhammers while Lao remained crouched in a fighting posture,

no longer smiling as her face was suffused with a snarling fury.

At the sight of this Ken hesitated to complete the attack he had

been in the process of executing. He backed away with more

caution, not looking at his stunned and fallen team mates but

rather giving Lao a wary study as though trying to place

something about her animalistic posture. Lao's eyes were almost

glowing with a fiery yellow light for the few brief seconds that

she continued to maintain her hostile bearing.

Then, very slowly, Lao straightened out and seemed to relax very

slightly, paused to take her bearings then looked around in mild

dismay before remarking, "Oh my...did I lose it for a moment

there? My apologies, I usually don't go this all-out against

talented amateurs..."

"Amateurs?" Ken replied with a narrowed expression, "I think

I've just been insulted."

Lao smiled, "You seem like an intelligent enough, boy,

handsome. It would be a shame to ruin those good looks by

provoking me too far. Up until now I've just been playing with

you all. If I wanted to finish this all at once..." she gestured with

both hands and suddenly the walls seemed to begin closing in on

them from all around, causing Ken to jump back in alarm as he

raised his arms to block an attack that never came.

Instead what came was Madam Lao's fist against his face,

knocking Ken back a solid ten paces before he caught himself

and managed to regain his footing.

"You interest me," Lao smiled, "Few men ever do these days.

You fought against and helped defeat an old colleague of mine. I

believe you knew him by the name he took as Vega."

"Vega was a friend of yours?" Ken rubbed his face with a slight

smile, "Why am I not surprised?"

"A friend?" Lao sniffed, "Hardly that! He had no friends, or at

least none that I am aware of, and I certainly wouldn't count

myself among them, that old skinflint. He hurt one of my girls,

for which I promised vengeance. You may have taken that

option away, for which I suppose I will have to demand some

form of compensation."

"Whenever you're ready," Ken replied, taking a forward

aggressive stance.

Lao regarded him sardonically, then smiled, "Perhaps another

time," and made a simple gesture that caused a column of water

to form around the strawberry blond martial artist.

Ken started to cry out when the water froze in place, holding him

trapped like a massive ice cube.

"At best you're only a distraction," Lao smiled, "The real

challenge comes from..."

She whirled in time to dodge Ukyo's spatula and Perfume's axes

as the two double-teamed in a sneak attack that took full

advantage of her distraction. Lao moved quicker than they had

expected, however, and with a flick of one hand sent a jet of

water at Perfume, which Ukyo managed to deflect with her

spatula at the last second.

"Very good," Lao complimented, "You two do make a fine

match. However, you still think far too conventionally to win this

particular fight."

She sent a second jet towards Ukyo, who naturally brought her

bakers peel up to block, only to have the water curve around in

mid-air and execute an impossible number of turns before

striking Perfume, who could not so easily deflect the stream with

her axes. The rest was inevitable as she collapsed into her cursed

form, her axes vanishing before they could even strike the floor.

Ukyo cried out her name, only to get clobbered when a second jet

stream arced around and struck her from behind, toppling her to

her knees as though from a solid club blow.

"Hard water," Lao smiled, then turned around in alarm as she felt

and heard before seeing the sound of somebody tearing up a huge

beam from the center of the chamber.

"LAO!" cried Ryoga as he hefted the half-ton log like a club in

both hands, "You'll pay for that, and what you did to Akane!"

Lao stood her ground, just staring as Ryoga swung the beam

around and slammed it into her, only her image splashed into so

much sea form as the floor buckled slightly from the impact. Lao

appeared several meters off to one side and continued staring at

Ryoga before saying, "I don't believe you did that."

Ryoga made a cry as he heaved the beam up once again and tried

to swing it like a bat, only now Lao was not immobile as she

reacted with a speed that caught him by surprise. Lao rammed

her elbow into his face then followed up with a blow from her

knee that picked him up and caused him to drop the beam,

bringing his hands up to his now-bleeding nose. Lao finished

him off with a second elbow-blow to the back of his neck, felling

the eternally lost boy like a pine log, and when he fell Ryoga did

not get up again.

"Ryoga-kun," Akane cried out from where she was only just

starting to regain her footing.

"Ryoga!" Ranma cried as he started to rush forward, only to stop

as Nabiki cried out, "No Ranma!" in a tone that brooked no

contradiction.

"Strong boy," Lao sniffed, "Glass jaw. He'll be sleeping that one

off for a while. All right, who's next?"

"Try me," Guile growled as he took a step forward then

summoned his power and cried out, "SONIC BOOM!"

Lao did not even turn to look at him as she raised one hand and

made a catching moment, then opened her hand again as the

force rebounded in Guile's face and knocked him back against the

wall, only partially conscious.

"Father!" Keiko cried, rushing to his side as Lao tactfully ignored

her.

"Water is a great conductor of sound," Lao remarked, turning to

look at Nabiki, "Perhaps now you people might be willing to

listen to reason? I see you called your attack-dog off. You

obviously care enough about him not to risk his possibly being

damaged."

Nabiki's eyes narrowed all the more as she studied Lao in even

greater confusion. All that punishment and she does not even

appear badly winded? She can't be expending that much energy

and keep right on going. She's got to have a power source with

some limits. Perhaps if we push her just a bit farther...

"Ranma knows how important he is to me," Nabiki replied,

unaware that Ranma's eyes glanced her way for only an instant,

"But that's not why I told him to hold back. You want us to

attack you, to commit ourselves, to rush headlong into danger.

You've been studying us all the while and countering our moves

when we give you openings. That's key to the Water style you're

using...it's passive-aggressive. You can only use your force to

counter whatever force we use against you."

"Very good," Lao smiled, "But not all my forces are passive, as I

will gladly demonstrate should you choose not to attack me."

"We've just seen some tricks and illusions you summon up to

make us think you're powerful," Nabiki replied, "Not everything

you do is for real, you're just a glorified conjurer with a bag of

tricks to tease the uninitiated."

"My powers are very real," Lao replied as she formed another

swirling ball in both hands, "Real enough to take you down

without working up a sweat."

"Ranma!" Nabiki cried, "Let's double-team, use the Raging

Waters Attack, modified Rising Dragon Offensive!"

"Hai," Ranma instantly acknowledged, his mind working nearly

as fast as her own as he processed what he had just heard Nabiki

tell him indirectly. Like her he had been studying Lao's attack

trying to discover the source of her seemingly inexhaustible

power, but realizing that some of the attacks were only illusions

helped explain how she could conserve her powers and only use

half the energy she appeared to be using. She could, in fact, be

resting while an image of her absorbed some of the attacks, then

used her recovered strength to catch her foes while they were

distracted with pseudo-targets. It was an effective strategy and

would just as likely have worked on him as the others had Nabiki

not clued him to her subtle use of tactics..

Now he knew instinctively what to do as he and Nabiki moved

together, turning to place their backs against one another while

they linked arms and braced their feet wide apart. Lao saw this

and frowned but by this time had summoned up enough force to

unleash her jet-stream attack in a wide-angled burst that

exploded out like an expanding globe, only to turn inward and

collapse towards Ranma and Nabiki from every available corner.

Only the pair did not merely wait for this force to strike them

before vaulting into the air and launching a four-footed counter-

offensive.

Lao blinked in astonishment as she saw and felt the Amaguriken-

speed double-attack kick her water globe apart as the pair spun

like a top in mid-air, then perfectly coordinated a roll that brought

them around arcing towards her. Lao looked up in time to see the

double-kick aimed towards her as Ranma and Nabiki came down

like twin harpoons aimed at her mid-section.

The kick knocked Lao right through the floor as boards collapsed

upon impact, creating a huge hole where she had been standing

while Ranma and Nabiki broke contact and tumbled to safety.

Below them they heard a splash as though Lao had fallen into a

pool on the next level down.

Surprisingly enough this fact did not elate Nabiki as much as it

did Ranma. She turned with a worried look in her eyes and said,

"Uh oh..."

"Uh-oh what?" Ranma lost the smile he had been sporting.

"She fell into water," Nabiki replied, pointing at the gap.

"So?" Ranma frowned.

"She has a Jusenkyo curse, Ranma," Nabiki patiently informed

him.

"So?" he replied, still not catching onto what had her looking so

worried.

"Hey," Akane said as she looked up from where she was nursing

Ryoga while Kodachi hovered at the side of Keiko, also looking

troubled, "What's with these people? Are they statues or

something? Why are they just standing there looking down at us

while we beat up their boss?"

"Yeah," Ranma frowned, "Why don't they do nothing to help her?

You don't think they want us to win do you?"

"Not likely, Ranma-kun," Nabiki replied, noticing that Cologne

herself had taken shelter amid their silent onlookers, "More likely

they're smart and would rather keep their distance."

"Distance from what?" Kodachi asked.

A low, intense rumbling noise shook the air of a sudden as

Nabiki turned sharply around, seeing one of the stairs that led

down into the darkness of the floor beneath them, "From that."

The rumble came closer, and now something moved up those

stairs, flowing gracefully like liquid fire contained within the

package of a huge, sleek form that moved with the supple

rippling of muscle and sinew. Everyone saw and gave back as

the form came entirely into view, over ten feet long from nose to

tail and as big as a brick house. At the shoulder it stood as high

as a man's breastbone and had stripes that almost glowed with

electric coloration all the way from fanged muzzle to the tip of its

long, swishing tail. When it roared it exposed a row of fangs that

looked like wicked kitchen knives produced by the company

Ginsue.

Without meaning to Ranma backed away a half-pace, and so did

everyone else who was still consciously able...everyone but

Nabiki.

"What is that?" Ranma swore.

"Obviously it's a tiger, Baka," Akane's reply lacked feeling and

was quite toneless.

"Siberian or Bengal?" Kodachi nervously wondered.

"I never really found out," Keiko replied as she cradled her

equally surprised father, "We're in for it now...my lady is pissed!"

"Ryoga-kun!" Akane shook the boy in her lap, "Wake up! We...I

need you!"

"Huh?" Ryoga blinked, recovering with miraculous speed upon

hearing those words, "You do?"

"What good's he gonna do?" Ranma complained, "We can't fight

with that monster! We gotta grab everyone and get out of here,

Nab-chan..."

He paused when he did not hear a reply and turned to look at her,

only to gasp, "Nab-chan?"

Nabiki said nothing as the tiger continued to advance, obviously

in no hurry as though savoring the terrified looks on the faces of

the puny mortals that faced her. Only the one annoying girl stood

resolute without visible fear on her face, which puzzled Lao

greatly as one did not expect a human being to even remotely

think that they stood a chance against her cursed form. As a

human she could be fierce, but as a tiger she was unstoppable

fury.

And then Nabiki raised her eyes and something strange began to

happen. Lao halted in mid-step and looked at her in shock. The

intelligence was gone, as was the woman of nobility and

compassion. The clever eyes of Tendo Nabiki now only

contained the animal in their aspect, and this animal regarded

Lao with almost the mirror reflection of her own ruthlessness and

fury.

Very softly at first Nabiki started to meow, which in some odd

way sounded more terribly ominous than the growl of any tiger...

Continued.

Comments/Criticism/Howard Kossel Impersonations:

shadowmane

Round One completed, now get ready for Round two: The Fury

of the Neko Unleashed! Be there.

If you wish to check out my other works, Please check out my

Fanfiction webpage at: . or

it's mirror site at: ~

All related chapters of this series can be found there along with my

other works.


	24. Chapter 24

Nabiki 1/2,

A Very Scary Thought

(An Altered Destiny)

by

Jim Robert Bader

Chapter 24, Part 1.

(Based on the works of Rumiko Takahashi & Others)

Lao Kane regarded her prey with a mixture of wariness and

anticipation. She stalked forward on all four powerful limbs,

fully cognizant of the effect her sudden appearance would have

on her erstwhile opponents. In truth she rather relished the

moment when stark terror would replace confidence and certainty

of victory, as recognition of the presence of impending death

blotted out all other thoughts beyond the need for escape, to flee

like the frightened bipeds that they were, for in her cursed form

she was the most terrifying land predator known on the planet.

And this body she wore was powerful indeed, long and lean with

tightly woven muscles over a skeleton that was designed by

nature to enable her kind to haul her kill into a tree. Largest and

most powerful of all the great cats, pound for pound only the

sleek leopard was stronger, and even lions knew well enough to

give ground at their approach.

And Lao was not just any five hundred-pound Siberian Tigress,

she was a trained Martial Artist and those skills translated well

into her new body, even though her construction was decidedly

different. A normal Tiger could bring down a bull elephant with

a little planning and foresight (not to mention a high place to leap

down from), but Lao could take down a Veliciraptor with the

swipe of one paw (she knew because she had once in the past,

but that was a different story). She had worked hard to perfect

her fighting style so that her body would be an asset and not a

hindrance or limitation.

Of course this body did come with one cursed limitation, as she

suspected all Jusenkyo curses had complicating factors to make

their experience less than entirely pleasant. In her case the fierce

spirit of the tiger manifested in a certain type of hunger to which

her normal self was blessedly not burdened. The Hunger, as she

called it, was a source of dread and remorse that she had learned

to coexist with. It was difficult controlling the Hunger on the

best of occasions, but when she was angry or disturbed it was

nearly impossible to repress that aspect of her Tiger nature.

That meant that whoever was the object of her ire at the moment

was usually the one to suffer. At the moment that person was

none other than Tendo Nabiki, which was too bad for her because

Lao actually admired the girl's fighting spirit. She and her

paramour had just given Lao the best workout in ages.

I wonder how she'll taste going down, Lao thought to herself

impulsively before her more sensible parts could voice their

opinion. Probably like chicken, she thought without humor.

They usually tasted like either chicken or pork, especially the fat,

oily men who thought to get the better of her, a thought that only

added to her anger as she stalked up to her prey, watching the

fear roll across their eyes at the recognition of their peril.

All save for the one whom she was stalking. Tendo Nabiki was

not running away, not showing any signs of backing down or

hesitating. She just stood there, virtually naked like a piece of

meat on-the-hoof, tempting her by her very delectable presence.

Lao's mouth began to water, and it really was such a shame as

she really did like this girl (but she'd probably like her even more

with a little ketchup)...

Only there was some thing that spoiled the whole effect with the

stalk-and-eat-the-pretty-girl schtick. It was the unnatural calm

way that Nabiki stood her ground while even her fiancee looked

ready to bolt. The mere fact that he stayed at her side up to this

point must surely be a testament to his love and stupidity, but

what was the reason for Nabiki to remain? Even a top-notch

martial artist like her could not seriously entertain putting up a

fight against the three-inch fangs and two-inch claws that were

now at Lao's disposal.

And then she heard the sound that stopped her in her tracks,

though for what reason even Lao could not say. It started low

and grew in volume as Nabiki slowly raised her eyes, then arched

her back and fell to the floor with on all fours. Lao gaped in

Tigrish befuddlement, wondering just what kind of new ploy the

clever girl was attempting...only this did not seem particularly

clever, in fact there was a decided absence of intelligence in those

half-lidded eyes. In fact...

Nabiki meowed again, and this time the sound was so feral that it

made her seem less human than Lao was at the moment.

Nabiki had been holding herself in the whole time that she had

been fighting alongside Ranma and the others. Her brush with

the Neko had nearly put her into the state of mind that she

dreaded more than almost anything imaginable. It meant the

surrender of her very identity to something other than human, the

abandonment of everything she valued of humanity, warmth and

compassion. It betrayed her basic core principle that the intellect

should rule over the body and meant surrendering to her animal

side, to the part of her that was entirely instinctual, that knew

nothing of human reason.

But she had no choice in this for the Neko was a power to which

reason and humanity held no sway. It was pitiless and

remorseless, a thing of elemental beauty unto itself, like an old

habit or reflex triggered by her fear when cornered and unable to

escape in any other way than to become the thing she most

feared. As the last shreds of the human Nabiki fell away what

remained was all Cat and had a power unlike anything else under

the heavens.

The cat was smiling as it felt the hesitation of the Tiger, and

suddenly there was a new contender for the top of the food chain.

Nabiki gave her low-throated challenge and haunched both

shoulders and hips, waiting for the Tiger to make the first move

before striking. The entire world narrowed down to just the two

of them with nothing else to matter but the resolution of whom

was top cat in this alley.

"Nab-chan?" Ranma gasped, suddenly unable to recognize the

woman who crouched low beside him.

"Oneechan?" Akane seconded his confused appraisal.

"What's the matter with her?" Ryoga asked as he slowly got to

his feet, placing himself protectively close to Akane.

"Something's wrong," Keiko murmured as she and Kodachi were

helping her father to stand upright, "Nab-chan's acting crazy..."

"Is she?" Kodachi asked, studying Nabiki's body-language and

posture, "I wonder..."

Guile was having trouble getting his eyes to focus, though he was

appreciative of the two women whose shoulders between them

were the only things holding him upright. His legs felt rubbery

and it would likely take another few moments before he could

trust them to support his full weight. Privately he was admiring

the courage and tenacity of his daughter...a real fighter, like a

chip off the old stone. He was wondering about the other girl,

but at the moment he was trying to focus on what they were

saying about the Tendo girl, the clever one who had officer

material written all over her.

What he heard next made little sense as it sounded like

something a very large cat would make, and not the sound

produced by a Tiger either. It did not sound like something

produced by a human voice, but was coming from close nearby,

and unless he missed his guess the one making this sound was

very, very angry.

"Nab-chan," Ranma tried again, "Are you all right?"

Nabiki did not turn to the sound, but the familiarity of Ranma's

voice registered in her animal consciousness and triggered a new

element that added further fuel to the fires within her. The Tiger

was a threat to the two-legged forms that surrounded her, forms

that her instincts registered as friendly sources of comfort and

pleasure. The one speaking, however, was special to her, her

chosen mate and thus not for anyone else to claim but herself. A

single thought ran through her that did not form as a word or

even an intelligible meaning but nonetheless was felt on a

subliminal level of basic understanding.

MINE!

Lao overcame her hesitation and made the first tentative moves,

cautiously exploring the defenses of the now thoroughly

possessed Neko-Nabiki. Nabiki had been waiting for that

opening to strike, and with a snarl that contained all the pent up

frustration and rage of the last several hours she lashed out with a

ferocity that even a Tiger was not prepared to encounter.

In a word she exploded into Lao's face, her speed surpassing

Amaguriken with her strength backed by the wellspring of her

Chi taking Lao totally surprised as the two of them met with Lao

recoiling on impact.

To everyone around them it was as though a whirlwind had been

unleashed in their midst with the exchange of blows taking place

at such great speed that both woman and tiger became as blurs to

the naked eye, and suddenly both parties rocketed towards the

ceiling as Nabiki pressed her offensive and drove Lao closer

towards the heavens.

The onlooking Pirate crew gasped for the first time in seeing their

leader balked and repelled by an outsider girl a mere fraction of

Lao's cursed size. Cologne, on the other hand, saw everything

with clearer eyes and greater understanding and knew what truly

was at stake here, and it worried her greatly.

Until now her former Pupil had displayed an impressive

command of her talents, showing what progress had been made

since leaving the Amazons for exile. There was a danger of

matters escalating uncontrollably, for which she shared a more

than fair degree of guilt. She had trained both fighters, but not

well enough to avoid an inevitable tragedy if she did not take

steps here and now to bring an end to the conflict.

But she was bound by Amazon law and custom not to interfere

directly in their conflict. She needed other means to stop the

fighting, and as she pondered this a sudden flash of inspiration

occurred to her. She spun around and hobbled away on her staff,

the Pirates watching her take her leave of their midst but doing

nothing to stop her. She had to move fast to find the one that

could help her before matters passed the point of no return while

everyone else was presently distracted.

"What gives?" Honda asked as he looked up from where he was

attempting to revive Chun-Li and Cammy, just as the fight

touched the ceiling and it exploded upward.

"Oh man!" Bison flinched, "Who opened the sun-roof?"

"That's some kind of Ki attack," Ken observed as he shaded his

eyes against the sudden glare of the overhead light, "Those two

are still going at it and they're not even on the ground."

"Guile," Blanka urged as he came up alongside his old friend and

team leader, "Now's our chance to take advantage of all the

confusion. We need you with us..."

"I hear you," Guile shook off the last of his daze, then stood on

his own power and said, "Let's take the side-route over there, it's

less well guarded than the others ones. Gather everyone and

make a break for the next level."

"We need hot water," Ukyo said as she held Perfume in her arms

while Ryoga helpfully held her spatula in one hand, "Perfume

can't fight like this and we need her..."

"Sorry, kid," Guile replied, "It'll have to wait until we can find a

source. Keiko...if you and your lady-friend here get wet...?"

"We'll be rendered useless for the fight like Per-chan, father,"

Keiko acknowledged, "And I don't think we'll have any better

luck than her at finding hot water in this place."

"It seems these Pirates have a greater use for the other kind,"

Kodachi agreed, "I believe that these pirates are under orders not

to harm us during the fight. Do you think that might also apply

to our escape from these chambers?"

"Maybe," Guile gave Keiko a hard look, "You know this ship,

where's the best place for making a stand against these people?"

Keiko nodded and said, "Follow me, father, I know someplace

where they won't dare to attack us."

Ranma turned to regard the hole recently made in the ceiling,

then grimly arrived at his own decision. As the rest of the team

followed Guile and Keiko's lead he murmured his own faint

apologies and took off after Nabiki...

Mousse had regained consciousness sometime during these

events and had managed to crawl his way through the air duct

system until he found his way into the Mess hall, and

subsequently wound up in hot water.

Actually it had been his intent to find hot water, but he had not

counted on the Chef being as alert as she proved to be, which

was how he found himself tied up and dangling by a rope over a

boiling pot of hot water, to which the Chef was now adding the

vegetables and seasons.

"There you go," she happily remarked in badly accented

Chinese while dicing up carrots, onions, potatoes and bamboo

shoots with an impressive display of knife-work, "One special

Monkey Stew, beef bullion, very rare delicacy. You ought to be

much honored."

Mousse could hardly agree with that comment, but at the moment

he was just having trouble believing what he was hearing. This

girl sounded as bad in Mandarin as Shampoo sounded in

Japanese! Her accent sounded more like French, however, with a

distinctively Celtic tonal pronunciation of the "S" sound as

something more like a "Zee." Mousse was very good at picking

up languages, and French was one of the major International

Tongues, right after English, so he would have wagered fairly

that he was a better master of her native tongue than she was of

his. So far his impression was that only English and Japanese

were universally spoken on this vessel, while Lao's elite staff

used Chinese as either their primary or adoptive language.

He also could hardly ignore the fact that this cheerful French

blond woman was casually discussing how she would dissect

him prior to his being boiled into her soup. He supposed he

should be grateful that "Monkey Brains" were not the side dish of

choice. French chefs were notoriously arrogant in thinking that

they were the masters of the culinary arts and were always

finding new and original ways to serve up exotic, rare (and quite

possibly toxic) substances that would nauseate the average

gourmand. Mousse had no intentions of winding up as her latest

experimental dish.

But how to get out of this mess and into the water while he was

still intact enough to make some kind of a difference? The knots

this blond ditz had tied were so diabolically ingenious that you

would think she tied people up for a living! Try as he might he

could not find wiggle-room sufficient enough to free even so

much as one finger.

His prehensile tail was another matter entirely. Apparently the

blond did not consider it significant enough to tie up like the rest

of him, but other than swish it from side to side he could find no

way to use it to gain his freedom. He was suspended too high

over the pot to reach the water and possibly trigger his Jusenkyo

curse in reverse, and without a positive demonstration of his true

identity it seemed very likely that the blond was bound and

determined to transform him into an Anthroposaphagic

extravaganza.

Mousse tried once again to get her attention, hoping to maybe

play upon her feminine instincts that surely would not permit her

to carve up a cute little monkey like he was at the moment. He

made exaggerated facial gestures, an art that seemed natural to

the body he was wearing, and tried to mimic the nearest thing to

human sound that his vocal chords could handle.

"What zis?" she asked as she finally took notice of his efforts,

"You try make Juliana laugh, little Monkey? Oh, you is so

cute...a pity you must soon wind up as dinner, but zhat is life,

Non?"

Mousse tried again to convey through his antic protests that he

understood the threat she had just made. All this earned him was

a raised eyebrow as she considered the point, then said, "You

try say something? How odd. Juliana almost think you know

what she is saying. You try talk French to Juliana?"

Mousse felt more like strangling the bubble-headed bimbo on

general principles, and not just because it might favorably

improve the gene pool. He became more animated in his

vocalizing his opposition to his current situation, and this time he

thought he saw her nod perceptively as if finally catching on to

the basic plot.

"Oho," she mused with a smile, coming closer to where

Mousse was dangling, "You try tell Juliana you not just some

ordinary monkey who wandered into her kitchen? Maybe you

special Monkey, like one of those people who are cursed by the

waters of Jusenkyo to take on an animal form when splashed

with cold water?"

Mousse tried to vigorously shake his head in the affirmative, but

the blond just smiled and said, "I make joke! Who ever heard

of Spring of Drowned Monkey? You just very clever animal, but

Juliana no have time for play now. So sad, but time to make

preparations for rest of dinner. Hope you know good prayer to

Monkey ancestors."

She held up one of her knives to Mousse's vulnerable throat as he

froze in petrified terror. The gods were certainly not smiling on

him now, and what a stupid way to get killed! The only bright

thing he could think of in this situation was that at least this chef

was not British...

The sound of the rear wall to the Mess kitchen exploding inward

brought a halt to the impending tragedy. Juliana yelped as she

was propelled forward by the force of the blast, losing her grip on

her knives as she tumbled over into her own cook-pot. Her

knives-by some incredible miracle-struck the rope supporting

Mousse above the pot and tumbled him in atop her while Juliana

yelped in protest. A moment later the water-cooled slightly as

the heat was absorbed into a body experiencing a sudden

transformation, thus sparing both of them from a serious

scalding. After a few moments of intense struggle Juliana

managed to project her head above the water, only to find that the

pot she now occupied had a second occupant, who was making

things a bit too crowded!

"Ah," Mousse managed to get his hands free as the ropes had

not been tied with the intent of confining a human, "I can explain

everything, I..."

Mousse was not wearing his glasses at the moment, and his

vision was not so good in human form as when he was a

Monkey, so all he could see of the blond was a fuzzy blob with

yellow hair pressed far too close to him for either of their liking.

Mousse had tried instinctively to push her back but found both

hands had squarely focused on something highly padded that

gave a little to his contact. The feeling was so unexpected that

Mouse instinctively cupped his hands and tried to explore their

shape so that he could form a mental impression of just what they

might be, only it did not take a mastery of Braille before his mind

could form a coherent picture.

"Uh oh..." he faintly murmured.

"Vous-!" Juliana responded violently, "PERVERT!" and

the next thing Mousse felt was himself flying out of the pot and

against the far wall by the force of a slap that would do credit to a

martial artist. His last thought before losing consciousness again

was that he thought Lao's women were better trained than this,

and what happened to all that submissiveness training where

girls like this wee supposed to welcome that kind of intimate

contact?

Needless to say, the true parties responsible for his liberation

hardly gave any notice at all to these transactions as Nabiki was

tearing at Lao with a ferocity that went beyond the word

superhuman. It was all Lao could do to fend off the attack as she

struggled to keep her distance from well-manicured hands that

were tearing into her as though Nabiki were sporting claws of

Adamantium. She simply could not comprehend where the girl

was drawing her strength as she moved to attack again and again

without quarter or mercy as she drove Lao further and further

back to the far side of the kitchen, then beyond it...

"What was that?" cried Lotus as she looked up from her

spyglass.

"It sounded like a body crashing through one of the walls,"

Blossom frowned, "But isn't that sort-of impossible? After all,

this ship's hull is reinforced by magic."

The floor under their feet shook suddenly, causing both former

Amazons to exchange worried looks as if expecting it to collapse

at any moment.

"Um," Lotus hesitantly suggested, "You don't suppose our

lady has maybe-possibly bit off more than she can chew this

time?"

Blossom gave her friend an appalling look of dismay, "How can

you even suggest such a thing? Do you have any idea what she

would do to the both of us if she heard you display less than total

confidence in our Lady? Remember the last time?"

Lotus most certainly did, and out of reflex she brought both

hands around to cover her bottom as if fearing an impending

spanking session. Or-worse by far-being tickled by goose

feathers!

"Um," Lotus adopted a demure 'baby-girl' pose she sometimes

used for situations such as this and asked her partner timidly,

"You don't mean to tell her...will you? I...could make it up to

you if you let it slip this one time..."

"Hmm," Blossom smiled as she contemplated her lusciously

curved partner, looking Lotus up and down and mentally

picturing her stripped naked and spread out on a table with

whipping cream and strawberries... "Perhaps I could be

persuaded...provided if you make the offer interesting enough..."

Lotus smiled back at her fellow Amazon, remembering the good

times and bad that they had shared (among other things) and

picturing her now in something leathery that would set off

Blossom's blue hair to full advantage. She could almost feel

herself dangling by her wrists as Blossom played "Grand

Inquisitor" again and pretended to be a disappointed Elder

criticizing her naughty "little warrior" for a less than satisfying

performance...

In fact, so far were these two off-time lovers into enjoying their

mutual fantasy worlds that they almost missed the sounds of

actual mayhem that were passing right by outside the Bridge.

Each turned their heads hearing a snarl that they knew could only

be made by a Tiger get drowned out by an even more savage

noise that did not fit in with any member of the family of Cat to

which either girl had previously been privy. In fact, if they did

not know such a thing to be ridiculously implausible, they would

almost think that the other creature was beating the tar out of

their lady.

"Uh..." Lotus hesitated to say what she knew had to be in both

of their minds, that their lady could stand to have some help if

she really had met her match in this battle. The problem was that

stating this aloud would involve making an actual statement of

implied doubt towards their lady, an offense for which flogging

was considered too lenient.

"I didn't hear anything," Blossom hastily responded, cutting

off that potential line of trouble, "If our lady requests us she will

make her will known."

Lotus felt relief flooding through her, even as she felt a warring

conflict with her loyalty for their mutual childhood friend, for

whose sake they had wandered through fire and torture repeatedly

(and twice nightly on luaus), "Of course...if she needs us she

will make her intentions plain."

"We live to serve our lady," Blossom stated as though this

were the absolute truth and not merely a condition of their Terms

of Service, "Our lady is powerful and can overcome legions."

"She has never known the hand of defeat," Lotus agreed as she

stated the rote phrase, then the two of them exchanged silent

looks for another fifteen seconds.

"To hell with this!" Blossom snarled, "Our lady left us in

charge, I'm calling out the Marines!"

"But our lady left us to guard this post," Lotus pointed out.

"We'll still be guarding it," Blossom tried to sound reassuring,

knowing that they'd soon be dangling in separate hanging cages

if it turned out that she was wrong, "We'll just be guarding it

from someplace else. Are you with me?"

"We hang together," Lotus replied fatalistically, and privately

hoped she was not being too optimistic...

The Nekoken is the Ultimate Technique of the Saotome branch of

the Musubetsu Kakuto Ryu. Its name was feared in legend as the

irresistible Fist of Fury throughout the whole of Asia and its

practice has been banned for generations since mastering the

technique has been known to induce acute trauma in the victim-

ah-Master.

Only someone as thoughtless and irresponsible as Saotome

Genma had been at the time would have subjected a young girl to

the terror of the Neko's secret. It involved wrapping the student

in links of fish sausage before tossing them into a pit of hungry

felines, not once but several times until the effect was well

rooted. Nabiki had been only nine years old she had been

lowered into the first pit of hungry starving cats, and said cats

had been VERY hungry. What happened after that was a blank

space in her mind, but all Nabiki knew for certain was waking up

with scratches all over her body and a very tired feeling like

exhaustion.

Oh, that and the considerable amount of property damage that

was independently tabulated in the millions of yen. Only by

skipping town and finding a doctor on their way out had she and

Genma avoided having to account for her strange actions. Nabiki

was not able to form a coherent picture of what all she was

alleged to have done in her Neko phase, but it was shortly after

this incident that she set about to thoroughly and methodically

punish her "uncle" Genma.

The Neko involved learning to think and fight like a cat, but in

reality it was a berserker state not unlike demonic possession.

The cat parts literally overwhelmed the human, augmenting her

strength and resilience to a fantastic degree, turning the whole of

the bodies into a living engine of wanton destruction. The fear-

induced trauma was the natural result of a human Psyche trying

to cope with overwhelming physical danger, for in trying to

escape from the Pit of Cats Nabiki had actually reverted to being

one of the Cats and fighting them off as any feline would outside

of mating season.

Presently she was regarding Lao as a threatening Female out to

poach on her territory. If Lao had yielded to her at the beginning

or even now shown signs of backing down it would have

changed the outcome of the fight as Nabiki's natural instinct was

to be the dominant feline in her designated territory. She could

accept another female who acceded to her will, but so long as Lao

posed a credible challenge the fight would go on with Nabiki's

will drawing on unconscious levels of Chi not normally

accessible to the human mind. Unconsciously she was

manifesting an "Iron Skin" wall of force around her body,

protecting her human flesh from normal damage, while the

manifestation of her will was like a set of invisible claws

extending six inches beyond the reach of her hands, able to sheer

through molecular bonds like sharp knives through paper. She

did not have to touch Lao to rake her with these claws as the

Tiger was bleeding from a score of such minor wounds, having

prudently managed to so far keep its distance.

But Lao was not backing down, had never run from a fight in her

life and was not about to concede victory to this scrawny excuse

for a teenager, even if she sensed how lethal Nabiki's attacks

were at the moment. She fought defensively, unable to find an

opening in the other girl's defenses, even in spite of the fact that

her claws could have sliced a buffalo to ribbons with one swipe.

The other girl seemed impervious to fear and was not tiring in the

least, qualities that Lao would have even more admired had it

been someone else besides her on the receiving end of the Tendo

claws of vengeance.

They were fighting upon the upper deck of her ship now, Nabiki

always attacking, Lao giving ground, always with the greatest of

reluctance. Being in the open should have worked to Lao's

advantage as she was pretty agile, in spite of her considerable

size and mass, but Nabiki was fast and agile, too, and she had

animal ferocity on her side, the real thing, as opposed to Lao,

who still thought like a human.

Lao tried to use her powers against Nabiki, summoning a water-

attack while still in her cursed form, but all that did was change

Nabiki's sex so that the Neko-charged man she became stopped

thinking like a female and reacted like a male Tomcat seeking to

dominate by beating a mere female into submission.

At last Nabiki pounced on Lao's back and grappled her to the

floor with a strength that would have done credit to Tarzan. Lao

found herself in the ridiculous position of being pressed face-

down onto her own deck while Nabiki took a position from

behind, still possessed by Neko instincts that demanded a special

kind of concession from a female cat that had dared to challenge

his position. Lao's eyes got very wide as she mentally pictured

how she must look in this situation as a human male firmly

pressed her down with one hand while spreading her legs too

wide for proper support with the other. She had a pretty vivid

idea of what was next on the itinerary and actually froze in the

spot in disbelief that Tendo Nabiki would even attempt such a

thing, let alone try to execute it.

There was absolutely no leverage to use her greater strength and

mass to get out of this confounding situation...nor did she find

herself entirely willing at this point since her own belated

instincts were starting to kick in. Lao was befuddled and amazed

to find a part of her complying with the unconscious demand

Nabiki was placing upon her body, as though a strong part of her

wanted him to execute the deed. Incredulous at his audacity, Lao

waited for Nabiki to make the inevitable penetration...

There is no telling whether it might have come in the next several

instants, or not, save that suddenly someone else intervened to

save Lao at the last possible second. Neither of them had noticed

until then that figure that had boldly approached their spot with a

fearless look of determination that had turned to puzzlement, and

then to outrage.

"Good Girl Special Attack: Happo-Five-Yen Satsu-Malice, Evil,

Illness, Pain, Magic!"

A sudden light flared, startling Lao while only slightly distracting

Nabiki before the draining began to strike both of them, Lao

more directly as she was closer to Hinako-Sensei. Nabiki

released Lao and backed away from the perceived sense of

danger, putting distance between himself and Hinako's Five-yen

attack, allowing the Tiger to take the brunt of the absorption

magic.

Nabiki heard a sound and turned in surprise just before he felt

himself being doused with hot water, turning her female once

again as she looked up to find that the source of her conversion

was none other than Ranma.

"Nabiki, snap out of it!" Ranma cried as he set down the

borrowed pot he had been holding, "Whatever this thing is that's

got a hold on you, you've got to fight it! This isn't accomplishing

anything..."

"Be careful, Son-in-law," Cologne cautioned, "She won't

recognize you while she is in this state..."

"She'll recognize me," Ranma insisted as he reached out to draw

Nabiki away from the struggle that was currently being waged

between Hinako-Sensei and Lao the Tiger.

Energy tendrils were leaching out from Lao to Hinako as the little

girl started to grow while the Tiger crouched and felt her strength

leaving her body. Nabiki instinctively flinched and did not resist

the urging of the nice-smelling boy speaking to her with great

familiarity and urgency. Lao, on the other hand, was mesmerized

by the sight that confronted her as Hinako continued to grow and

fill out in her yellow dress until she was suddenly a full sized

adult with a voluptuously perfect figure.

"You lied to me!" Hinako said, "You told me that you were a

simple merchant seeking to conduct her business in legitimate

enterprises, but Cologne-san tells me that you are a very wicked

person who deals in human cargo, and that makes you the

ultimate delinquent!"

Lao gripped the deck with her claws and said nothing, just

seemed to hold on while the energy flowed from her into Hinako.

This lasted several long moments, but then Hinako's expression

went from one of sternness to surprise, then dawning panic.

"It's not stopping!" she cried out, "I'm draining her Battle Aura,

but there's more to it than I've ever felt before!"

"Then stop now, child!" Cologne cried out, "Break the contact!"

"I-I cannot!" Hinako cried wildly, "There's so much more than

I've ever felt before...so much energy...!"

Lao opened her eyes to that, then smiled and suddenly leaped

forward, catching Hinako by surprise as Cologne called out a

warning...too late. Hinako went down as the tiger pinned to the

deck, using its greater mass to hold her underneath it.

And then as Ranma and Cologne held their breath in tense

anticipation the Tiger...licked Hinako's face, then smiled...or at

least gave that basic general impression.

"Nani?" Ranma gasped in amazement, then his surprise

redoubled as he became aware that Nabiki was purring beside

him, rubbing her body against his as she nuzzled his cheek with

her face and made a happy sound of, "Meow..."

"Huh?" Ranma turned to look at her, and in doing so unwitting

brought his mouth up to within range of her own as she pushed

forward with her face and pressed her lips against his, opened her

mouth as she stuck out her tongue and...licked him.

"Meow!" she enthused, then began to purr once more as she

continued rubbing him with her whole naked body.

Naked? Ranma suddenly became very aware that Nabiki had

lost whatever semblance of clothing she had appropriated on the

move. This fact, coupled with her bumping him with her naked

flesh, contributed to his sudden backward tilt as his knees lost all

their strength and he fell back onto his rump, landing with a solid

THUMP as Nabiki came down with him, then took advantage of

his lap to curl up into a ball and begin purring in earnest.

"Well," Cologne mused, "At least that is one potential crisis that

seems to have been successfully averted. Now about your

situation, Hinako-Sensei..."

Hinako sputtered as the tiger continued to lick her face and the

exposed areas of her body, "Get her off of me!"

"As you wish," Cologne replied, producing a teakettle from

seeming nowhere, which she then helpfully tilted over the tiger,

transforming her back into Lao in one easy motion.

"Hello, my pretty," Lao smiled, looking down at Hinako with an

expression that still looked remarkably like the Tiger's, "Fancy

finding you inside that child's body."

"Do you mind?" Hinako asked with as much dignity as she could

manage.

"Not at all," Lao said as she sat up, and to everyone's surprise she

was once more wearing the same clothes she had worn before

transforming.

Hinako sat upright and backed away from her, fixing Lao with a

dangerous look that promised much mischief if the Pirate Queen

made any more attempts towards her.

"Well, Elder," Lao slowly rose to her feet, turning to regard

Cologne sardonically, "It seems you were not able to abstain from

involvement in my fight after all. Does this mean that you intend

to challenge me for mastery of this vessel?"

Cologne narrowed her gaze, "I see no reason to intervene at all as

it is plain that my Daughter-in-law is the victor in this

encounter..."

"This round, true," Lao replied, turning to regard Nabiki with wry

amusement, and taking special note of the stunned expression on

the face of Ranma, "I must confess that I never expected to have

to face the Nekoken. That was a formidable technique, if a bit

excessive. I cab also reasonably say that I've never had anyone

successfully attempt something like that with me. A pity you

interrupted us when you did as I would have been most curious to

see if she would have carried out her attempted violation."

"You actually sound disappointed," Hinako said in mild surprise

as she rose back to her feet, now almost as tall as Lao herself

(and certainly stacked in such an interesting way that Lao

immediately fixed her with a speculative expression).

"Novelty is something I have come to value greatly, Hinako-san,"

Lao casually replied, "Losing a fight is one thing, being sexually

ravished by your opponent is another, not that Nabiki-san truly

intended it that way, I am certain, but as she is not presently in a

state of mind to answer the question, let us turn instead to you

and this...remarkable talent you have of disguising your real age.

Assuming, of course, that the form you now wear is the real you,

granted your standing as a teacher."

"Ah," Hinako was used to people staring at her body, but the way

this lady was looking her over made her frown in a guarded

manner. She was beginning to suspect that there was little

difference between Lao as a woman or a tiger.

"Happosai taught you the coin trick you use to steal Battle Auras

from your enemies," Cologne replied to Hinako's silence,

discussing the matter as though it were no more than a unique

form of kata, "Originally you used it to bolster a weak

constitution, but over time your body has evolved to require the

Ki-force of Battle Auras in an almost vampire-like sense of the

word. It has slowed your metabolic age down to a mere fraction

of your chronological development, so that the only times that

you can manifest in a body that reflects your true age is when you

have freshly absorbed a new Battle Aura."

"I see," Lao surmised, "So in a way your power is also like a

curse, and this no doubt contributed to your choice of a teaching

profession, placing you nearer to discipline situations where

Battle Auras are common."

"It is true that my power allows me to maintain discipline among

even the most unruly of students," Hinako said warily, "But it

does them no permanent harm, and they don't seem to mind so

much once they get a chance to look at me in this manner..."

"Quite understandable," Lao nodded her agreement before

looking up in time to see Blossom and Lotus approach with a

score of lady pirates.

"My lady, are you well?" Blossom inquired.

"Well enough," Lao replied, "But why have you two left your post

unguarded? There are still hostiles on board this vessel."

"We have the room sealed off with wards, my lady," Lotus

replied, "But we were worried when we saw you fight..."

"You caught that, eh?" Lao sighed ruefully, "Not my finest hour,

though I most certainly enjoyed the roe, isn't that right Tendo-

Nabiki? Tendo-san?"

Nabiki did not answer as she seemed curled up fast asleep on

Ranma's lap, still purring as Ranma seemed to have gotten past

his surprise and now was stoking her hair as though to gently

soothe it.

"Hmm, still out of it, I see," Lao smiled, "Well, I can wait to

renew our discussion. Now, where are the others at the moment,

I wonder?" she paused and seemed to glance down at the deck

for a brief moment of silence, then looked up again sharply, "Oh

no! They wouldn't go there? The little fool...!"

"What is it?" Cologne asked, raising an eyebrow at the sudden

note of alarm in the tone of her former pupil.

"Keiko's led her father and the others to the chamber of the

Dragon Orb!" Lao turned and started to run, "The one part of this

vessel that I would have thought she had sense enough to stay

clear of! Come, Grandmother...we must get there before it is too

late!"

"A dragon orb?" Cologne's own tone became frightened, "Then

we must not waste any time, child! If they should awaken the

eye..."

"My lady," Blossom pointed with her cutlass at Ranma and

Nabiki, "What do you wish done with these two?"

"Leave them alone," Lao called out over her shoulder, "They

deserve some time together, and she really does look cute curled

up like that. Return to the bridge and wait for my further

instructions!"

"I take it this orb is a dangerous thing to awaken?" Hinako asked

as she quickened her own pace to follow them, doing as best she

could in high heels.

"Let's hope we don't find out," Lao replied, "Because if we do

things are going to get awfully unpleasant around here. I said

this ship was hundreds of years old and alive, do you have any

idea what's its like when the thing starts having nightmares?"

Ranma watched them leave, feeling oddly detached by the

unreality of the entire situation. His iinazuke was a cat, and she

had just kissed him with her tongue, and now he was stroking

her hair as if it were the most natural thing in the world, and

everybody else was running around talking like it was the end of

the world or something...

"Mmmmeeeo-rrrRannnmaaaa," Nabiki sighed contentedly in

her sleep, the word suddenly comprehensible again though she

was too tired to regain full consciousness.

Ranma looked down at the woman he loved, and suddenly felt

very right about the whole matter. Nabiki needed him and he

was helping her regain her humanity. He prayed she would be all

right very soon (though he wondered what they were going to do

this time about her lack of clothing). Somehow he found it easy

to ignore her gorgeous nudity, when it once would have given

him nosebleeds. Nabiki was beautiful to him, and she was

everything he desired in a woman. He would let her rest a little

more before attempting to awake her. She was looking so

peaceful, and it was hard not to share in that contentment,

knowing that whatever came in their future he would gladly face

it at her side.

His iinazuke.

His Nabiki...

Continued.

Comments/Criticism/Care and Feeding of a Nekokitten:

shadowmane

Think it's all over? Round Three has not even gotten started! Be

there for the conclusion as Nabiki and Lao settle it all Mano-E-

Mano...

Nabiki 1/2,

A Very Scary Thought

(An Altered Destiny)

by

Jim Robert Bader

Chapter 24, Part 2.

(Based On the Works of Rumiko Takahashi & Others)

Warning: Adult situations described,

This is your last official warning!

"This way, Father," Keiko urged as she led the way towards a

certain area near the rear of the ship.

"Where is this we're headed?" Guile asked as he and the others

trotted alongside his semi-clad daughter.

Keiko thrust out her arm suddenly, forcing Guile to an abrupt halt

at the unexpected strength in that supple limb as it collided with

his mid-section. Then Keiko took two steps forward and spun

about to deliver a heel-kick that went right through two Undine

warriors that had suddenly sprung up in their path, moving so

fast that she did not even get wet as she splashed them. The

elementals collapsed into puddles that were absorbed into the

floorboards, then Keiko motioned forward again and said,

"Towards the main engine room, or I guess that's what you could

call it. It's the chamber of the Dragon Orb, the source of most of

the magic you guys see at work all around you."

"Dragon orb?" Ken marveled, "And how the heck do you do that

thing with the kick to these Water Women?"

"A special technique I know," Keiko replied, "I used to train with

these guys, sparring to learn to be a better Kickboxer. You've got

to know how to hit them just right to temporarily disperse

them..."

"Not to mention avoid being transformed into a Vulture,"

Kodachi noted, evidently impressed.

"Temporarily?" Akane asked, focusing on that part of her friend's

statement.

"Yeah," Keiko replied, "It's complicated, but basically these

Undines are my friends and the permanent crew of the POJ.

Everybody else is just a transient but the Floating Piece of Junk is

their home in more than just one sense. They're kind of like a

part of its makeup, and as long as it survives they're pretty much

immortal."

"Can they be killed?" Chun-Li asked practically.

"Oh yeah," Keiko replied, "Problem is I don't want to see them

permanently hurt. Like I said, I've got friends here from way

back..."

"I'm sure that there will not be any need for something so drastic

as killing," Kodachi pointed out, "As long as you seem to know

other ways to incapacitate these servants. I confess that I, too,

would not wish to see such supple beings harmed in any

permanent sense."

"You don't?" Akane looked at her friend, recalling vividly what it

was like to have the aqueous creatures flowing over and around

her body, probing and stimulating in ways that made her blush

just to think about it.

Kodachi favored Akane with a knowing smile, "Don't you?

Granted they do Lao's bidding in a way that is

quite...overwhelming...but neither one of us was harmed, and if

anything I owe them for allowing me to finally put to rest the

source of my long time troubles. Besides, I did not sense any

malevolent intent on their part, did you?"

"No, but..." Akane was still searching for the right words when

Keiko abruptly leaped forward again and executed an aerial

double-kick that reduced two more Undines to puddles, still

managing in the process to remain quite human.

"This way," Keiko indicated the door that the Undines had been

guarding, a door that had no handle and no obvious locking

mechanism, but which Keiko easily bypassed by placing her

hand over a hidden panel to the right of the door.

A moment later the sound of a clicking noise could be hear, just

before the panel slid to one side revealing a second door that had

not been as visible as the first one.

"Tricky," Bison remarked, "And what happens if you try getting

in through that door?"

"Trust me," Keiko flashed the huge black boxer with a slight

grin, "You don't want to know. The traps on this vessel aren't

lethal, but...well...they can get pretty embarrassing..."

They followed her into a darkened chamber that was unlike the

others they had passed in that there did not seem to be any

phosphorescent glow emanating from hidden sources near the

ceiling. This chamber was so dark that it stood in stark contrast

to the rest of the vessel, though by straining their eyes to better

focus a few members of the party made out the pedestal located

in the very nexus of the chamber.

"What's this?" asked Blanka, the least effected by the darkness of

any member of Guile's party.

"Like I said," Keiko walked up to the brass-covered podium on

top of the pedestal and turned to the others, "This is the source of

most of the magic you see on this vessel. Under that covering is

the Dragon Orb that Lao uses as a power source. The Undines

won't dare attack us here since it also gives them life, so we

should be safe until Nab-chan or Lao can come negotiate for our

release and safe conduct."

"Safe conduct?" Cammy mused, "You mean we're going to hold

this whole ship hostage until they agree to meet our demands?"

"Why don't we just blow the damned thing up?" Ryoga asked as

he started forward, "That would leave Lao helpless..."

Keiko's arm shot out to block his forward movement, "NO!

Blowing things up in here is NOT an option. I didn't bring you

guys this far to see you smash things up like a bunch of

Luddites."

"Lao has to be stopped, Keiko-chan," Guile replied, "You have to

know that..."

"Why do I have to know that, father?" Keiko looked up at him

with a hard expression, "Because I was her personal slave for

three years? Because Lao is a Pirate Slaver too dangerous to be

allowed to live? You don't have to spell it out for me, I know all

your objections and I still say we do things my way."

"Why are you defending her?" Chun-Li asked, "Don't you know

what that...that..."

"Trollop?" Cammy suggested.

"Yes!" Chun-Li spat, "Don't you know what she's put us all

through? She tortured...she...Cammy and me..." she started to

flush crimson all over her body.

"What you went through," Keiko said coldly, "Was nothing. I

went through all that and worse on my first few days here. That's

just the way Lao reconditions people to make them more

receptive to her programming. I won't defend her behavior to

you, but if anyone here has a reason to resent her for all of that it's

me, and I don't really hold it against her."

"You don't?" Honda asked in surprise.

"Lao isn't evil," Keiko replied, "I know you may find that hard to

believe, but I know her better than any of you and I can say that

without reservation or hesitation. Yes she's a ruthless Amazon

who has been trained to be the best of her tribe, and yes she's

capable of things the rest of you wouldn't be able to live with if

you were in her position, but no, she is not totally evil. She's

utilitarian, a pragmatist, someone who sees the ends as justifying

the means and will go to any lengths to defend the things she

values. Her methods are an effective tool for insuring that her

will is supreme on this vessel, but she does have a sense of

personal integrity and she does respect her limits."

"That's kind of hard to believe," said Ukyo, who was still

cradling Perfume in her arms as the cat swished her tail in

agitated agreement.

"There's more than just Lao to think of here, you know," Keiko

continued, "A couple hundred Undines and the rest of the human

crew will die if this ship sinks while we're this far from the shore.

I know they're technically Pirates, but they're not the cold-

blooded murderers you read about plying their trade along the

Asian coastline without magical ships that defy conventional

physics. Not only that, but there are the other passengers to think

about, as well as the children..."

"I tend to agree with you," Kodachi nodded, "If we count the

number of lives that would be lost should this ship go down all at

once we might be talking about as many as a thousand people,

given the broad hints we've heard regarding the number of slaves

Lao possesses in the majority of those chambers we passed by on

the way here. Need I add that we are also at risk here?"

"So this is the Love Boat from Hell," Chun-Li frowned as she

regarded the brass covering, "Why would damaging that lead to

the destruction of this ship?"

"Because whatever's under that covering's big," Blanka replied in

his grating voice, "I can feel the energy surrounding us...it's

incredibly intense! I think we've just found the magical

equivalent to a Nuclear reactor."

"I don't feel anything," Cammy shrugged.

"You need a nervous system like I've got," Blanka tersely

explained, "See that pillar? It's got some kind of cable

connection leaching the power down under the floor, where it's

probably stored and converted by some weird Alchemical process

that keeps this ship running. I mean it has to make sense, all the

magic we've seen, the compression of dimensions...no way is this

thing as big on the outside as the size of all the corridors and

chambers we've seen."

"So what if we don't smash it up?" Guile asked, "Can we turn it

off?"

"Oh sure," Keiko said grimly, "Only then the magical fields will

collapse and we'll suddenly know what it's like to get compressed

between two differing fields of expansion and contraction. Can

you say Thermonuclear Megatonage boys and girls? Compared

to this that's only a firecracker."

"Dimensional implosion," Blanka said with a look of dismay,

"We'd all get very tiny for a fraction of a millisecond, and then

the inevitable submolecular reaction would to the rest."

"If it's that dangerous, then what are we doing here?" Ken

wondered.

"I know my former Mistress well enough that she won't do

anything that could accidentally risk damaging the Orb," Keiko

replied, "We don't have to threaten to blow the place up, our

simple presence is enough to make it a potential nightmare. Lao

knows me well enough to know I won't do anything rash but I

won't back down without guarantees either. Safe passage off this

ship in exchange for all of our lives. I don't think she'll find it

that hard to agree to terms...assuming she wins her fight against

Nab-chan."

"And what if Oneechan wins anyway?" Akane asked.

"Then we've nothing to worry about," Keiko replied, "This will

just keep her minions off our back until its settled."

"You mean to say that you think Lao will keep her word?" Chun-

Li asked her.

"Within reason she can be trusted," Keiko replied, "She's not a

totally honorless person, not that I'd trust her beyond her given

word, of course, but she usually does what she has to out of her

own personal code of ethics. She's an opportunist and a

pragmatist, and she never does anything that's against her own

best interests. Fighting with us is just a waste of her time if she

can't get any profit out of the venture."

"I still don't trust her," Ryoga growled, "And she hurt Akane.

She has to pay for that."

"One thing at a time, Ryoga-kun," Keiko urged him patiently,

"First we get off this ship, then we can deal with my former

Mistress. On land Lao's much easier to beat because she won't

have the limitless reserves of the POJ to back her, lacking direct

contact. If we continue to fight her on board we're just going to

wind up getting trashed again. She's almost unbeatable on this

ship, and she holds all of the Aces."

"I could almost get to admire the lady," Bison nodded grimly,

then when he saw the looks the others gave him he added, "Well

hey, compared to Vega she's nothing more than a fancy Pimp,

right? It's not like she invented the Slave trade, and I think I've

got a little perspective on that if you know where I'm coming

from."

"And it doesn't hurt that she's mostly dealing in Asians and

White Women, right?" Honda asked.

"Uh...well, I didn't say that..." Bison hesitated, seeing the looks

Chun-Li and Cammy shot in his direction.

"So what do we do?" Ukyo asked, "Wait it out until we hear from

Nab-chan?"

"Sounds like a plan to me," Guile grumbled as he looked at his

daughter with a mixture of vexation and admiration, "You really

don't hate her for the things she's done to you?"

Keiko had to give her father a patented Arigami smile, "I don't

hate her for what she's done...she didn't hijack the yacht Momma

and me were on, and she didn't command the pirates who did the

really awful stuff to us both. She did liberate me from my

captors, and she avenged herself on those men for past dealings

that went beyond her usual competitive interests. I owe her for

helping me through a really bad crisis, and for taking the time to

teach me a lot of things about myself that I'd never have found

out without her guidance. She helped me to become a better

person, as well as a better fighter, and while she took quite a few

liberties with me, I can't say the whole thing was entirely

unpleasant..."

Bison leaned over to Honda and murmured in English, "You

buying this, man?"

"Sounds to me more like Stockholm syndrome," Honda

replied, "Same stuff they used on you guys to make you loyal to

Vega."

"It's not Stockholm syndrome, you morons!" Keiko glared at

them, clearly having caught their stage whisper act in spite of

talking in another language, "I'm not identifying with the Captor,

or whatever the hell it is you guys think happens when somebody

brainwashes you. I know perfectly well why I still feel I owe

something to Lao in spite of everything else she's done to you

guys."

"It's still wrong," Ryoga said insistently, "Just because she made

you like it doesn't mean she had any right to do it to you in the

first place."

"Are we talking ethics here, Ryoga-kun?" Keiko asked him, "I'm

talking survival. You do a lot of things to stay alive that maybe

you're not proud of it afterwards, but I accept what I did when I

lived here on a full time basis, and if I can live with myself then

maybe the rest of you should try reserving your judgement until

we're in a better position to make instant snap judgements."

"Calm yourself, Kei-chan," Kodachi urged soothingly, "Ryoga-

kun merely states what the rest of you genuinely feel regarding

Madam Lao and her criminal enterprise. We're on your side just

the same, and I for one agree that it is more important to escape

from here than to seek some form of vengeance over what we

have experienced and witnessed. I find that I myself am less than

inclined to pursue the matter any farther than is needful."

"'Dachi-chan?" Akane blinked as she looked at her friend, unable

to grasp how reasonable and sane the Black Rose was sounding

at the moment.

"I am all right," Kodachi smiled, "In fact, better than all right,

and I may even owe this fact to our Hostess for allowing me to

come to terms with some deep-rooted emotional problems that I

was facing. In fact, I may even owe her a great favor..."

"Well, that's just fine for you," Ukyo snorted, "Truth is I don't

even want to know what that Lao character did to me and

Perfume here. But can we really be sure she'll let us go without a

fight?"

"We'll just have to wait and see, Ucchan," Keiko replied, "Right

now that's our best option."

"You wait," Ryoga took a step forward, "I want to see what she'd

been hiding here under that brass cover."

"No!" Keiko cried and shot a foot out that clipped Ryoga in the

back of one knee, causing him to stumble forward with his hands

outstretched. Unfortunately Ryoga had been concentrating on

his Breaking Point technique, so when he toppled forward his

main index finger was pointed at the brass covering and he

shattered it like a glass casing.

All at once light flooded the room as the source of an enormous

power was exposed to full view. Everyone in the chamber froze

in astonishment as rays of energy reached out to probe them all,

and then the object-which was shaped like a marble the size of a

bowling ball, began to snake out with more focused beams that

struck everyone in the forehead-including Perfume-and induced

instant paralysis while the world dissolved into an incoherent

array of image and impression...

Outside, just down the corridor, Lao and Cologne halted in mid-

rush to see light pouring out from the open doorway and then Lao

groaned, "Oh no...we're too late!"

"They have exposed the Orb to light," Cologne agreed, "I can feel

its hunger from this far away. Such incredible power..."

"It's not too late," Lao said resolutely, squaring her shoulders as

she resumed forward momentum, "We still have time to avert a

tragedy. You'd better remain here, Great-Grandmother, I have

some natural resistance to the orb since I'm attuned to its great

power."

"You cannot do this task alone, my child," Cologne said as she,

too, started forward, "You will need my help to recontain that

level of Matrix."

"I appreciate the offer," Lao smiled, "But the danger is too great.

The orb will be probing their minds and begin reading their

thoughts, and there's no telling what kind of thirst it will have for

the memories of an Elder."

"It is a risk I am willing to take," Cologne replied, "And do not

presume you know what resources I have at my disposal.

Besides, I abandoned you to your fate once before, I refuse to

make it a habit."

Lao did not know what to say to this, so she just pushed forward,

encountering slight resistance as she sought to penetrate into the

now blindingly white chamber. Had she been able to see her

great grandmother's face, however, she would have been shocked

to discover that Cologne was actually smiling...

"Nab-chan?"

"Hmmm?" Nabiki wondered as she slowly started to sit upright,

discovering that she and Ranma were under an open sky on the

deck of a sailing ship that had the distinctive lateen bamboo-

laced sails of a Chinese Junk, albeit a larger Junk than she had

ever known was in existence.

"Are you feeling all right now?" Ranma was holding her and

looking very concerned into her eyes. Nabiki found it a very nice

way to wake up, comforted by the strength of his manly embrace,

only there was something that felt a bit...odd about the matter.

It took less than two seconds to puzzle it out. She was naked

under an open sky with Ranma, and he did not appear to be

experiencing any nosebleeds. She blinked her eyes and looked at

him again, then said, "How did we...?"

"Uh, kind of a long story," Ranma said sheepishly, "What's the

last thing you remember?"

"Well," Nabiki frowned, "We were fighting against Lao, you and

me, and we had just knocked her for a loop, only I heard a splash

and...Oh gods! Don't tell me I...?"

"Freaked out?" Ranma supplied to her, "More like you kind of

went berserk and fought Lao all the way out here using the

Nekoken. I, uh...can see now why Dad thought it was a pretty

good system. I guess he just never thought about the

consequences..."

He let the point dangle as Nabiki ruefully sighed, "This always

happens when I get backed into a corner by the furry beasts, I

turn into a Cat myself, Ranma. It's not a pretty picture, is it?"

"No," he repeated, "Um...how much can you remember?'

Nabiki shook her head with a sad look, "I can't remember

anything when I'm in that state. It's like I become an entirely

different person, a real Jeckle and Hyde. I act purely on instinct

with no reason involved, and when it's over all I know is how

exhausted I feel, and that I've torn up a lot of things. Sometimes

I've even hurt people. The only way I can calm down is if I find

somebody I'm comfortable with that I can just crawl up and..."

she started to blush furiously, aware of how much she was

admitting.

Ranma smiled a little at that, but then he was serious again, "You

had Lao on the ropes for a while there, then Hinako-Sensei broke

things up and we changed you both back, then Lao said

something about an orb and went running off with Cologne in a

real hurry. I stayed with you to see if you were all right. I ah,

kind of thought you might need me..."

Nabiki found herself smiling as she contemplated that admission,

"Why Ranma-kun, that was such a sweet thing for you to do. I

guess maybe all I needed was a little rest and..." she paused then

frowned, "Er...just what all did I do while I was in my Neko

phase? I didn't...do anything too drastic, did I?"

"Ah, that depends," Ranma said evasively.

"Depends on what?" she asked him.

"On what you mean by drastic," he lamely replied with a

sheepish expression.

"That bad, huh?" Nabiki said faintly, looking down to make

certain that Ranma's clothing had not been torn or undone as her

first thoughts were what she would have done to him during the

Neko.

"Ah, well, actually," Ranma said, "It's Lao you'll probably have

to discuss this with. She seemed to be in pretty good spirits

when she left here..."

"You mean...what?" Nabiki blinked, "Lao and me...? But...!"

"Ah, things didn't go too far," Ranma tried again to reassure her,

unwittingly making things worse in his attempted reassurance.

"Saotome-san, Tendo-san," Hinako came running up to them,

still in her adult form and breathing heavily, "We need you, come

quickly!"

"Hinako-sensei?" Ranma looked up in surprise.

Nabiki tensed slightly, half expecting a lecture on her immodesty,

but to her surprise Hinako did not even glare in her direction as

she said, "The Captain and Elder Cologne are attempting to do

something to save the others. It seems that they went somewhere

on the ship where they were not supposed to go and now they're

in some sort of danger."

"I guess that means they need our help," Nabiki sighed and

removed herself from Ranma with great reluctance, careful to

place her hands strategically over her private areas lest Hinako

think her too brazen, "Unless I miss my guess it's probably got

something to do with the magic field surrounding this ship."

"What makes you say that?" Ranma asked.

Nabiki nodded to the sky and said, "That for one thing."

They both saw what she meant, how the misty area that was all

around the ship like a perpetual fog was flickering with sparks

and electrical flashes that briefly colored the sky pink or yellow.

It looked like the random discharge one normally saw in a Tesla

sphere and-far more ominously-the phenomenon was growing

worse by the second.

"Oh that," Ranma replied faintly, then belatedly remembered

something as he glanced towards Nabiki, then he quickly

removed his shirt and handed it over to her, "I think you'll need

this more than I will."

Nabiki blinked in surprise before accepting his offer, oddly

touched by his thoughtfulness, even though the shirt barely came

down to the level of her crotch. She put it on just the same then

said, "Let's go find Lao and the others...um, something I can do

for you, Hinako-sensei?'

Hinako was looking at Nabiki in a very curious say, "You

changed into a man and back again...just as the captain changed

into a Tiger."

"Ah...yeah," Nabiki said, uncertain what Hinako meant by her

continuing stare, "It's kind of this curse I got while traveling

through China..."

"Jusenkyo?" Hinako inclined her head with a very curious

expression.

Nabiki had to smile at that, "You've heard the legends too, huh?

Just wish my Uncle Genma had heard of them before we went

there..."

"And your other self," Hinako continued in that same curious

state, "He is Kaneda?"

Here it comes, Nabiki winced inwardly, but forced herself to

remain calm as she nodded, "Yeah...I'm also Kaneda. Why, is

this important?"

"I think it is," Hinako smiled, "I've never had a sister before, let

alone someone else who shares a curse. We will have to talk

about this more at the proper time, but for now your friends need

you. This way, I will take you to them."

It took several seconds for Ranma and Nabiki to reply, both

standing there with mouths hanging open, then Nabiki shook her

head and sighed, "I am never going to understand that lady..."

"Honey, I'm home," said Captain William Guile as he stepped

across the threshold of the small apartment that he shared with

Akiko Arigami, careful to remove his footwear before entering

the room proper.

"I am here!" Akiko called out in heavily accented English,

"How was your day, Guile-sama? Was it fulfilling?"

"Oh yeah," he replied in his native speech, "Loads of fun.

Those Army Ranger types can be real wusses when it comes to a

little training exercise. I swear each new group they send me to

train is younger and greener than the last bunch of farmboys."

"Are you still looking to transfer?" Akiko's tone was light, and

though Guile could not see her he could almost feel the tension in

her voice, "I know you miss doing active service..."

"I'm a soldier, Aki-chan," Guile said with a slightly weary

edge to his tone, "I go where they send me. You know that as

well as I do."

"I know," she replied, "But still..."

All of a sudden Guile saw a streak of red hurtling towards him

and barely had time to get his guard up before a laughing child

no more than seven years of age all but tackled him off his feet,

laughing as her father heaved her up into his arms so that he

could meet her at eye level.

"Not bad, you little squirt," he said in fairly good Japanese, "You

almost nailed your old man that time. Keep it up and you'll be a

real fighter."

"I'll be the best, just like you, Daddy," grinned the cherubic imp

with a face full of freckles, "You'll see, one day when I get

older..."

"Just be sure you're strong enough to take care of your mother if

I'm not around to do it for you," Guile nuzzled the little girl with

his forehead, ruffling her coppery hair with parental affection

before setting her down and assuming a pose of mock sternness,

"All right, Pumpkin-head, show me what you got."

"You asked for it, Daddy," the girl smirked as she hauled off and

launched a roundhouse kick aimed at his mid-section. He

blocked this, of course, but rather than retract the leg she curled it

and made a second strike closer to his chest, then pulled that at

the last second and made a third kick at his groin region.

Guile barely managed to block the last one in time, but he

pretended that it had connected as he doubled over and put on a

mock pantomime with his face making goofy expressions that

brought a squeal of laughter from the little imp who had tried to

groin-kick her father.

"Oh!" he deliberately pitched his voice high, then pretended a dry

rasp, "Do that to some guy and he'll be walking funny for a

week..." he dropped the act and scooped her up again with a

growl of mock irritation, "Think that's funny? Think that's

funny? You know what happens to little girls who beat up on

their fathers?"

Keiko squealed as Guile tickled her under her arms and held her

aloft. They were both enjoying this exchange so much that they

almost missed the sight of Akiko passing them by on the way to

the front door.

"Don't play so rough, you two," she said in her native tongue,

"Kei-chan, mind your father. Don't let her stay up too late

watching Gatchaman reruns."

"Hey!" Guile protested as he saw that Akiko was wearing one of

her best dresses and had her purse in her hand, "I just got back,

where are you going?"

"I'm very sorry, Guile-chan," she said as she stood on tip-toes to

kiss him in passing, "I've got an interview in another hour and I

simply must attend this one if I'm to find that new job I'm after."

"But..." Guile tried to frame his protest, but she just flashed him

her winning smile and said, "Don't worry, I've already made

dinner for you and Keiko-chan. I'll be back in a few hours, you

don't need to wait up for me or anything like that."

Guile reached out and gently took her by the wrist as he said,

"Don't go. I've got something I wanted to talk to you

about...something important, more important than any job

interview."

She gave him a sad look but continued smiling, "It you're

thinking about proposing to me again, we've already been over

this. I don't need to make things legal, I wouldn't want to tie you

down, and besides, you're already here often enough that most

people think we are married."

"But..." he protested once again.

She raised her hands in a warding gesture, "If it's about my

family again, I'm also set and determined about that. If they can't

accept that I love a Gaijin giant like you, then they cannot truly

accept me. Sooner or later my Uncle must recognize this fact,

and until he does I will not dishonor myself by marrying without

his approval. I owe my late mother for the promise I made to

respect the family, even if it does not respect me or my daughter."

Guile made a helpless gesture with both hands, "Look, it's all my

fault they kicked you out, Akiko. If I go over there and

straighten this out..."

"That would be a very American thing to do," she replied, "But

not effective in this case. You do not fully understand our

traditions if you think my Uncle can be bullied into admitting to

the obvious. In a great many respects Japan today is governed by

the traditions of older times. I knew what I was getting into

when I chose to become involved with you, so it's not like you

went out to cause trouble."

"But if you came home with me to the states..." Guile tried an

angle once again that had failed to work every other time he had

raised it, "I make enough on my salary..."

"Then I would be the foreigner struggling to get by in a strange

culture that I barely understood," Akiko pleasantly countered, "It

is not a question of pride, honor or even money that keeps us

here, Guile-chan. I want Keiko-chan to grow up in Japan, in the

land of her ancestors, not be some half-breed child of yet another

GI parent struggling to find acceptance among occidentals..."

"It's not all like that," Guile protested, "And what about the way

other kids treat her here? You think prejudice is any worse in the

States than here in Okinawa?"

"But you are teaching her to defend herself, which is good

because children can be very cruel at times," Akiko turned

around and headed for the door again, "We'll talk more about it

later, Guile-sama, after I get back from my meeting..."

Before she could slip on her shoes and open the door, however,

there came a knocking from outside, which caused Akiko to

freeze with a tense expression.

"Let me see who it is," Guile said as he eased around her to peer

through the peep-hole, then slide the door back to reveal a

uniformed officer standing on their porch at full attention.

"Captain Guile?" the man said as he made his salute, which

Guile returned automatically.

"Yes?" Guile replied in neutral tones.

The man handed over a folder then returned to attention, "I was

instructed to give this to you, sir. It's classified, Eyes only.

You're being recalled to the states."

"What?" Guile responded, unaware of the stricken look that

suddenly crossed Akiko's fair features, "But why?"

"The details are in that report, sir," the officer said, "I've only

been instructed to come find you and escort you to the air field

where they have a plane already waiting. You'll get a full

briefing once you're back in Washington..."

"Washington?" Akiko gasped as though hearing the

fulfillment of a nightmare.

Guile opened the envelope and took a quick scan of an official-

looking document that came with several six-by-eight

photographs that he studied in more detail before looking up and

saying, "Can I have a moment, Lieutenant? I need to talk with

my lady."

"Don't take too long, sir," the man saluted once more before

turning crisply about and heading back down the walkway.

Guile watched him go before turning to the woman at his side

and saying, "Aki-chan..."

"Your country has need of you," she was smiling in a way that

made his heart ache in his breast, "That is a great honor. Of

course you must answer."

"Marry me," he whispered.

"I...again, I cannot," Akiko had actually hesitated this time, but

she was still wearing that forced smile while her eyes seemed

tighter than usual, "We always knew a day like this would come.

It is Karma, we must accept it."

"This assignment comes with a promotion," Guile held up the

envelope, "That means more money. I can send it to you. You

and Kei-chan won't ever have to go without..."

"You can barely afford to feed yourself at Japanese prices," she

made a rude attempt at a joke, eyes watering with unshed tears as

she said, "You must go. That is the way of it. And if you can

return, I do not doubt that you will try."

"I..." Guile turned to see Keiko looking up at him with wide blue

eyes and a petulant expression, "Kei-chan..."

"Don't go, daddy," she whispered.

Guile knelt down and looked her hard in the eyes, "I want

nothing more to stay, Pumpkin, but...your father has a duty to his

country. You're part American, you'll understand yourself

someday. In the mean time, while I'm gone, I want you to do

something for me, something very important."

"Like what?" Keiko asked.

Guile poked her in the stomach with a finger and said, "Train real

hard, make your old man proud, and take care of your mother.

I'm expecting you to be a big girl around this place while I'm

gone, and I'll be back as soon as I'm able. Can you do that for

me, kid?"

"Of course," she bowed her head, then in English said, "I will

make you very proud of me, daddy."

"I already am, sprite," he ruffled her hair once again and

smiled, "Do something else, next time you see me. I want you

to haul off and belt me as hard as you can, just to show me how

much stronger you've gotten. Can you do that?"

"No problem," Keiko smacked her tiny fist into the palm of her

other hand and made a boxing salute, "I'll be as strong as you

are some day, Daddy, you'll see."

"I'm counting on it," Guile straightened up, turned to Akiko,

then forgot all about what he was going to say as she threw her

arms around him and they kissed. It was the kind of kiss that

went on for several minutes, by which time he had to leave,

vowing to himself that he would return once his mission was

over...

The mission was not over yet. This grim thought recurred in

Guile's mind as he flew on yet another transport plane getting

ready to parachute over dense jungle terrain with a hand-picked

team of operatives during a night operation that would not even

have the advantage of moonlight. The tension was mounting as

Guile stared over and over again at a fading photograph that was

worn and brown around the edges. He put the photograph away

in a pocket-flap of his flack jacket then turned his mind to the

mission at hand.

Another drug interdiction run, only this time the Opium fields

were in Communist held territory, what used to be the country of

Laos, still run by Hmong tribesmen who had learned their drug

trade back when the CIA had been training them in anti-Viet

Cong activity back when Guile was still a wet-nosed kid from the

Pokinos. Now it was up to men like him to clean up yet another

mess left by the Choirboys at Langley.

Just another drop in what some laughingly called a Suicide

mission, only this was different from what was usually termed

Black Ops. This was a Shadaloo operation, the secret

organization allied with world terrorism out to subvert the free

world with poison that brought only misery wherever it touched.

Some maniac was lacing the stuff with a lethal strain of an

AIDS-like virus that took a full two years to mature and

threatened to wipe out entire populations through their addicts.

Unlike normal HIV, this virus did not need cofactors to mature

and could be spread through contact involving infected saliva.

No doubt the loudmouthed Conservatives back home would

screech about Homosexuals and Damnation once again, but if

Guile put his money on the cause of this plague it would neither

be the fault of God or the devil.

Or rather it would be the work of one devil...a two-legged snake

who went by the name of General Vega.

"Major," Tech Sergeant Carlos Blanka called out, "Any

reason why this Lab is in such a remote area? I thought they had

government protection."

"Communists can be bribed to look the other way, the same as

most politicians," Guile replied, "But even a corrupt official

would have a hard time explaining the kind of lab equipment

that's said to be out there. Somebody's got a major operation

going, and I'll bet my last dollar that Vega's personally

overseeing this outfit."

"You think we'll nail the big man himself this time?" Carlos

asked him.

"Could be our lucky day, Charlie," Guile leveled his rifle and

checked the ammo-clip again before leveling it in a meaningful

fashion, "Listen up, team! I want you all to stay frosty! We hit

this one by the numbers and we don't stop hitting until nobody

can hit back. Are you with me?"

A dozen black-suited figures acknowledged his rallying cry as

the warning light flashed green, meaning that they were over the

drop zone. Guile was the first to rise, Carlos Blanka was second,

and the other men in the unit all lined up as the back end of the

modified C-130 Hercules opened up to allow them to exit.

A real pity that only a few would ever make it home again, Guile

among those "lucky" few, and those left behind were quite lucky

to be dead...all save for Blanka, who had the misfortune of being

taken alive by none other than Vega...

Guile started as the memories continued to replay in his mind, as

though someone or something were draining his thoughts and

sifting through the details to bring him up to the present. He

tried to focus on what or who could be doing this to him, but

instead he became aware that there were other thoughts beside

his now in the mixture.

A glance to his side and he recognized Keiko's memories as the

young girl grew into a larger version of herself as she and her

mother were next seen sunning themselves on the deck of a

thirty-foot yacht. Keiko had just turned thirteen and was looking

to be a real heartbreaker as she got older, already wearing her red

hair in the braided pig-tail manner she had started adopting at the

age of seven. To see her wearing a two-piece bathing suit that

she could barely fit into brought a wistful smile to Guile's face,

along with a jolt of dismay as he slowly put together the

implications.

Guile saw a man coming out of the hold with a bottle of

champagne and two glasses and found himself tensing slightly.

The man looked like an average Japanese business executive in

his mid-to-late thirties, not overly handsome but certainly

possessing reasonably good features with a well-trimmed

mustache neatly covering the space above his upper lip. The man

radiated money, and one look at him was enough to make Guile

squeeze his fists until his knuckles whitened.

The man came to sit besides Akiko, and this made Guile glare all

the more lethally as he looked ready to punt the guy into orbit.

Akiko skillfully fended off his advances, but the man seemed to

be the persistent type who did not take no for an answer.

Of a sudden their boat seemed to jolt and run aground. The man

looked up, then started insulting the driver, who in turn protested

having done anything that would cause an accident.

That was when Keiko realized that there were frogmen

attempting to board their yacht and she tried to cry out a warning.

Four men managed to scramble on board while the Executive

tried finding a pistol hidden among his folded clothing. Long

before he could find it a speargun silenced him and then the men

in the frogman suits were on the two women, grabbing and

overcoming Akiko while Keiko tried to defend against them.

She tried, as much as a thirteen year old girl could try and

managed to knock one of the men overboard and shatter a second

man's mask before the other two were able to subdue her and

beat her senseless. She would wake up hearing the screams of

her mother in her ears and found herself tied up in the hold of the

yacht with the engine running. It would be some hours before

they came to get her and would drag her back onto the deck,

where the men would present her to an odd figure who-she

would later find out-bore the mark of the Sang brotherhood, a

cold-eyed man who would look her over like the proverbial piece

of meat, and all the while Keiko was silently asking herself,

"Where is Mother?"

She would exchange hands at least two more times before being

offered to Madam Lao like a prized token of affection, and in

between that time she would endure the worst days of her life,

made all the more terrible because of the uncertainty of what had

happened to her mother. And then Lao came and made all the

bad memories fade away, slowly helped to nurture her past the

crisis, then gradually started to rebuild her shattered psyche until

Keiko could accept everything that had happened. Lao all but

adopted her as a daughter, taking her under her wing, teaching

her the basics, patiently cultivating her charms until Keiko was

ready to be treated like a Sex Slave. Her memories reflected one

indelible fact: Lao had never brutalized her, had only gone as far

as necessary to condition her to be an obedient pet but had hardly

needed to work that hard in order to earn the devotion Keiko gave

her.

In fact Keiko's conditioning had been so thorough that when the

opportunity to escape was presented to her several times she

refused to undertake it. In fact, she had come to accept her fate

as natural while Lao trained her to become a gladiator in the Pit

Fighting tournaments conducted underground, honing her already

considerable skills into full fledged fighting arts that won her

victory after victory against older and tougher opponents. And

there was pride in winning, in being the victor, a pride that came

with a sense that she was fulfilling her promise to her father to be

the best that she could be in the arena. The only sour note in the

whole affair was the belief that she had failed her mother, a belief

that refused to go away even after she had worked past the phase

where she had come to believe that Lao was like a second

mother, also like a big sister, close intimate friend, and-yes of

course-an older and wiser lover...

And then the day when they both had been betrayed, after

winning her latest victory against a local favorite in Hong Kong

when a local Gang Lord named Chu Wan Phat had cornered Lao

and Keiko into a devil's bargain in which Phat demanded Keiko

as a trade over some sort of debt which he believed Lao owed

him. It was a terribly tense time with guns being leveled on all

sides and Keiko half fearing her Mistress would make a fight out

of the matter. The odds were hopeless and the trade was made,

but the bitter sense of betrayal was felt on both sides as Keiko

entered the service of the brutal gang lord.

Her fate at his hands was anything but pleasurable as Phat had

no compunctions about bruising his pet prize, sparing her only

when sending her out into matches and punishing her severely if

she failed to deliver a comfortable point spread. He began

making a lot of money with her, more money than he claimed

Lao had owed him, but if anything his treatment of her became

more intensely personal, as if the very idea of someone so young,

strong and powerful was a threat to his masculinity, as though by

diminishing her he could inflate his own manhood.

But one day she was paired off against an opponent in her exact

size and weight class. In fact, by the strangest of coincidences, it

turned out to be someone whom she personally knew from a

school they had both attended years earlier, before everything in

the prior three years had even begun. Tendo Nabiki was her

challenger, and a tougher opponent she had never before faced.

Nabiki won easily, the first upset victory that Keiko had ever

known. Worse by far than the losing was the knowledge of what

would happen afterwards when Phat got his hands on her for the

huge financial loss he had just taken.

But as matters turned out she need not have worried, for Nabiki

came to her aid once the facts were made plain to her, and

together they trashed Phat's henchmen and left the gangster in

such a sorry state that it was not very surprising that he posted a

very large reward on both of their heads shortly thereafter. With

Genma as their chaperone they soon found refuge at the far edge

of the town in an area that even the Communist authorities would

not trouble to go into and there spent a night alone in the dark

during which Keiko showed her appreciation by seducing the

inexperienced Nabiki with the techniques Lao had taught her,

treating her old schoolmate to an unending stream of orgiastic

experience...

"WHAT?" Guile reacted in the present.

"Oops," Keiko came back to the present with a sudden jolt, "That

part I didn't want to have to share with you, Daddy...Daddy...?"

She blinked and looked around, finding everyone else in the room

was still frozen as rays of what seemed like coherent light

continued to shoot out from the Dragon Orb to probe the

memories of their friends and colleagues. Her father exchanged

curious looks then read the varied expressions on everyone else's

faces, seeing the full gamut of human emotion played out as they

relived past events from their lives, the same as she and her

father.

Only one figure was not frozen in motionless apprehension,

Madam Lao herself, who was struggling to push her way forward

through great resistance, face set and determined with a look of

intense concentration.

"My lady," Keiko called out in the eerie silence of the chamber,

"I'm so sorry I..."

"We will discuss it later," Lao grimaced as she continued to press

forward, "You and your father must stand by to assist your

friends as this could become quite traumatic."

She had almost reached the podium when Guile asked, "About

what you did for my Keiko..."

"Please, Colonel," Lao said tightly, "This is not as easy as it

looks. The orb is hungry to feed off your experiences. The only

way to prevail is to not give into its temptations."

She finally reached the podium, her body blocking the radiance

leaching out from the orb to several of their people, who were just

then staggering and beginning to come out of their trances. Lao

touched a hidden stud and caused a secondary bronze covering to

slide over the dish, cutting off the rest of the light so that

everyone else in the room began to recover their senses.

"Ohhh," Lao turned and sank back into a sitting posture in front

of the pedestal, "That took a lot more out of me than I had

thought. The Orb was restless this time and fought more

tenaciously than usual. I don't suppose that any of you might be

willing to own up to smashing the cover?"

All eyes turned towards Ryoga, who looked back at them

somewhat defensively in the dimming light, "Hey, it was an

accident! Kei-chan tripped me..."

"You need to watch your footwork better, Sonny boy," Cologne

said as she hobbled in on her staff until she was a few feet away

from Lao where she looked down with no small amount of

compassion, "You handled that well, child. I am glad to see that

you haven't entirely forsaken your lessons when you became this

person you now posture yourself as. Still, you are young to be

controlling such forces. The danger is vast that they will wind up

controlling you in the end."

"Tell me something I don't already know, Great Grandmother,"

Lao laughed without humor before forcing herself back onto her

feet. She then regarded everyone in the room with a level stare, "I

trust you are sufficiently chastened by this experience that next

time I tell you not to go somewhere you will listen?"

"But..." Akane's voice quavered, "You never told us not to come

here in the first place."

"A minor detail," Lao waved the point away before nodding to

Keiko, "And it goes double for you, young lady. I thought you

knew better than to openly defy my warnings, now see what you

almost did because of your recklessness?"

"I'm sorry," Keiko said sheepishly as she scuffed one bare foot

upon the floor in a little-girl posture, "Forgive me, lady?"

Lao smiled, "When have I ever failed to forgive you for anything?

Now, what was that you were saying to me a moment ago,

Colonel Guile-san?"

Guile just shook his head slowly, "I don't know what to make of

you, lady. There's so much about you that I just can't stand to

look at, but what you did for my little girl..."

Lao raised her hand and said, "Don't embarrass yourself in front

of these others, William Guile. You don't owe me anything, just

as I don't owe you an explanation. Obviously exploring your

mutual past has helped you overcome the ten years separation

you and Kei-chan have suffered through no fault of your own,

which is a very good thing, but now we have other matters to

settle, is that not correct, Elder?"

"Indeed," Cologne replied, leaning on her staff, "The time for

games has come and gone. You've had your fun but now is the

time to come clean and talk serious for once about your real

intentions."

"You're right, as usual, Grandmother," Lao smiled, "All this

playing around is wasting valuable time that could be spent in

resolving matters more directly."

A flash of light suddenly filled the air, and when it was past they

all found themselves hanging from individual cages. Lao stood

at the center of a stage looking at them all while bathed in the

limelight. As everyone started to react to their new surroundings-

-which seemed to be some manner of huge auditorium-with

unseen walls that hovered seemingly at a great distance-Lao

raised one hand and a microphone appeared between her fingers.

She smiled at them all and said, "Don't be alarmed, the cages are

just there to make certain you don't cause me further mischief. I

need to explain a few details, and I find it is best if some restraint

is imposed on you hotheaded types. When I'm done you will be

released, then we can go about discussing my new proposal like

good boys and girls are supposed to be able to do outside of a

playground."

Guile found himself in a cage alongside Keiko and Kodachi,

while Akane was with Ryoga and Ukyo still held perfume.

Cammy and Chun-Li were disgusted to find themselves sharing

one cage, while Bison and Honda were no less surprised at

finding themselves crowded into the same cramped space.

Blanka and Cologne were similarly sharing the same quarters

while Ken was hanging solo, much to his surprise and

disappointment.

"Now then," Lao resumed, "As you have just discovered, the

Dragon Orb is the central power source of this ship, but it also

has an intelligence behind it and it is starved for ideas and

imagination. Han Bolo-the original creator I may have

mentioned-designed this container as a prison to entrap that

intelligence and hold it in abeyance so that it would suffer

sensory depravation and willingly serve the interests of the Ships

Master...which is presently yours truly, of course. Released from

its container the jewel immediately sought you all out and probed

your memories seeking to find a resonance it could link up with.

Had I not intervened it might have ensnared you into a permanent

link wherein you would serve its will rather than the other way

around. It is fortunate that there were so many of you at the time

as this defused its energy, leaving it without time enough to forge

such a central focus. But now that I have re-established control

things have more-or-less returned to what passes for normalcy

here. The orb serves my will, and what I envision it will create,

whether of real or illusory substance."

"Illusion?" Cammy gasped, "You mean none of this is real?"

"Define reality," Lao smiled, "If you experience an illusion as

real, does it not have the same effect? For example, my dear

cousin over there...I think she would much rather enjoy herself in

her natural shape."

Lao made a hand gesture, and water splashed against Ukyo and

her cat, and almost instantly a naked Perfume was glomming

onto her as the two surprised women fought for balance.

"There now," Lao smiled, "That was real enough, wouldn't you

say?"

"LAO!" a voice rang out.

"Ah," Lao turned to the source of the new cry, seeing what

appeared to be a doorway thrust open as a female form stood

framed from the outer light, "The last of our wayward players

have finally shown themselves on the scene. By all means come

in and let us step up our mutual agenda."

"I'm tired of your games," Nabiki said as she stalked forward

down a rap that appeared from amid the gloom, leading her to

where Lao was standing, "Tired of your illusions, your riddles

and your stupid quirks. Most of all I'm tired of you! This ends

now, just between the two of us, exactly as we agreed to before..."

"Before you attempted to ravish me, you mean?" Lao smiled

sweetly.

Nabiki paused in mid-stride, her expression blank, and then her

eyes narrowed as she murmured under her breath, "I'm going to

kill Genma when I get home..."

"Just be glad I'm not very traditional-minded," Lao resumed,

"Otherwise I'd either be forced to give you the Kiss of Death or

we'd have to get married, and I think you already have enough

fiancees. Speaking of which, is that your beau I see standing

with Miss Hinako-Sensei? By all means come in and join the

party."

Ranma and Hinako had followed Nabiki into the room, only to

find themselves sharing yet another hanging cage suspended over

an infinite darkness. With helpless expressions they clung to the

bars and looked towards Nabiki.

"What are you attempting to accomplish here, Lao?" Nabiki

asked with narrowed eyes as she came within ten paces of the

Pirate Queen before halting, "You think trapping Ranchan like

that is going to weaken my determination?"

"Not at all," Lao replied as she banished the microphone to

whencever it had been summoned, "I just thought we would

make the stakes more interesting while keeping the others out of

the way. After all, this is just between the two of us this time.

No holds barred, all spoils going to the victor."

"Whatever," Nabiki assumed a fighting crouch, "I'm taking you

down no matter what kind of fancy tricks you still have in your

arsenal. After what you've put us all through I'm having my

vengeance!"

"No!" Keiko called out, "You don't have to-mmph!"

Suddenly she was sporting a gag over her mouth, which same

Kodachi tried to help remove but found too elusive upon which to

get a proper grip.

"I'm sorry, my dear," Lao replied, "No comments from the peanut

gallery. She we rumble together Tendo-san?"

"Let's dance," Nabiki replied, and at long last their fight got

down to serious business...

Continued.

Comments/Criticism/Bitter Reflections: shadowmane

Round Three begins next chapter: Be there!

Nabiki 1/2,

A Very Scary Thought

(An Altered Destiny)

by

Jim Robert Bader

Chapter 24, Part 3.

(Based on the works of Rumiko Takahashi & Others)

"Now what the heck is going on?" demanded a frustrated

Blossom.

"How should I know?" replied Lotus, "Do I look like an

Elder?"

The sky was no longer shooting electric sparks, but there was a

fog rolling in around them much more ominously than the shroud

that they normally used to disguise their ships movements.

Having successfully evaded the Chinese Navy and patrol boats,

they were looking to pull into port within a number of hours, only

to find their compass direction askew as though the energy fields

surrounding their ship were being baffled for some reason. It

was getting harder to compensate, and there was even some

danger that they could run aground on a reef without their normal

means of underwater detection.

"Someone must be tampering with the Dragon Orb," Blossom

decided, "We had better trim sail and reduce our speed until our

lady has had time to sort out affairs and restore us to our normal

condition."

"A good idea," Lotus picked up a conch shell and brought it to

her lips, "I'll tell the rowers to slack off a bit. They could use a

break after that race against the Chinese ships..."

"A break?" Blossom frowned, "They're dead! They've been

rowing for centuries! I really don't think they'd even notice if they

stopped rowing altogether. It's not as if the damned pay much

attention to the degree of their torment."

"How can you be sure of that?" Lotus asked her, "Have you

ever spent time with the Galley Slaves? I have, and for a bunch

of Zombies they seem pretty coherent to me. I think they deserve

a break after helping us outrun our pursuers."

Blossom refrained from arguing with her friend, although in truth

her comment disturbed the ex-Amazon more than she would have

liked to have admitted. She knew the history of their vessel well

enough, knew what Han Bolo had done to ensnare a permanent

crew of galley serfs using former Chinese convicts and was pretty

well aware that many a former Captain and crewperson had long

since replaced those original rowers. She had always hoped it

was a mindless state their souls were trapped in, if souls they

had, as she did not like to contemplate what it might be like if

she or Lotus should ever wind up chained among their number.

It was not quite eternal damnation, but close enough to the real

thing that she had to hope that there was an easy escape provision

as it was pretty clear that that was where they would all wind up

if they fell prey to the ship's curse at some unlucky venture.

People who died on board the POJ were trapped up in the magic

of the Dragon Orb and forced into one of three possible

destinations: either they were judged light of heart and soul and

were released to the Hereafter or whatever heaven they were

destined for, or they were found to be earthly carnal beings and

restored to life as Undine Warriors to serve the will of the Ships

Master. The third possibility was saved only for those whose

hearts were dark and weighted with earthly torments. They

joined the prisoners of the Galley and served for as long as the

ship had a use for their energies. Theoretically they would earn

their freedom when they were purged of their grief, remorse or

whatever weighted down their conscience, after which it was

assumed that they would move on to their natural destination,

upstairs or downstairs. It seemed just as likely that there were

only a fixed number of spaces for the Galley to hold at one time,

so if a new rower were added another would vanish to make

room for the new addition.

Whatever the case might be, these rowers were tireless and very

powerful, able to row at speeds that human rowers could not

sustain for indefinite periods, and Blossom could only marvel at

their energy and wonder what a terrible fate it was to be trapped

in such a state. She could not honestly imagine hating anyone

enough to wish him or her trapped there, not even the Musk. It

simply seemed too horrible to contemplate, yet another of the

ships odd quirks that it was best not to speculate into for fear of

weighting down her conscience.

Their pace did noticeably slacken after Lotus got through

blowing on the magic conch. Blossom knew it had something to

do with the tone and pitch of the thing, the number of times you

blew counting as the speed of the rowing beat, or something like

that. It was Lotus's task to maintain such matters and Blossom

was more than content to leave it to her able friend's competent

handling. Her own list of duties was enough that she need not be

too concerned with how Lotus did her job, only that she did it

properly and kept their ship on course to their chosen destination.

"Does it seem to you as if things have maybe gotten too quiet of

a sudden?" Lotus asked after the silence of several tense

moments had elapsed.

Blossom thought about it before she replied, "Now that you

mention it, it does seem...rather odd. You don't suppose our lady

has finished recapturing our guests already?"

"If she had she would have informed us," Lotus ominously

replied, "And I don't mind telling you, that's what has me very

worried..."

"So," Lao smiled as she took a step in Nabiki's direction, "It's

come down to this, has it? Third time is the charm, they say.

You've managed to do well the first two rounds of this fight, now

we come-as they also say-to the clincher."

"Whatever turns you on, Lao," Nabiki replied as she held her

position, her posture relaxed and her guard up and at the ready.

"I must say," Lao remarked as she gracefully stalked her way past

the interval between them, "I am favorably impressed with you,

Tendo-san. No one has ever given me quite the workout that you

have, and with such persistence. I believe you may almost be as

good as I was when I was your age. You have genuine

potential."

"Am I supposed to feel flattered?" Nabiki replied, "You'll have to

try harder."

Lao's smile was as tigerish as when she was in her cursed form,

"So, you think to challenge the Big Bad Pirate Lady in the center

of my power. You forget that my will is absolute here. The Orb

responds to my thoughts alone, and reality here is mine to play

with as it suits me."

Nabiki was aware of something snaking out at her from below

and reacted just barely in time to avoid being accosted by a pair

of ankle-chains that attempted to snap around her legs before she

could get airborne. They continued snapping at her like a pair of

spitting cobras as she backed away, trying to keep her attention

focused upon Lao, who was continuing to advance during this

distraction.

"I must say, you are being stubborn," Lao remarked, "We barely

have had time to get to know each other and you're already trying

to avoid me. It's not like I want to hurt you...much," she grinned

at the last part, "If anything I want to be your friend, if you'd only

let me..."

"No thanks," Nabiki replied, "I have enough friends already."

She yanked her arms back just as another pair of chains

attempted to ensnare her wrists, then dodged as tendrils shaped

like ropes tried to wrap their way around her from behind.

Nabiki regained her defensive posture and kept Lao squarely in

her focus, though now her senses were extended in all directions,

knowing that the real attack would be subtle, less overt. Lao was

trying to goad her into becoming careless, so Nabiki had to turn

that strategy around and make sure it was Lao who became too

cocky.

"Oh," Lao said in a mildly mocking voice, "Now you are hurting

my feelings, and after all the trouble I've gone to being nice on

account that you're all friends of my dear Kei-chan. You really

do me a great disservice if you think that I'm some kind of a

monster just because I like to indulge in games of this nature."

"No," Nabiki replied, "I just know that you're some kind of a

monster."

"Oh really?" Lao inclined her head as she studied Nabiki, who

was easing away from her the more Nabiki started to advance,

"And what, prey tell, have I ever done to you that would warrant

that comment? Just what is it about me that you find so awful?

That I'm a Pirate and a Slaver, that I have a curse that turns me

into your second-worst nightmare?"

"Try the fact that you're a murdering beast without a shred of

remorse or compassion," Nabiki replied as coolly as though she

were discussing the weather.

"Murderer?" that actually seemed to stop Lao in her tracks for

half a second and she stared at Nabiki in genuine confusion

before saying, "Oh...wait a second. You found the Bone Pit,

didn't you?"

"I saw the remains of your former victims, yes," Nabiki continued

to back away, keeping Lao at an even distance.

Lao shook her head so that her Cyan blue hair moved in wavy

lines, "Sorry to disillusion you, but most of those were not mine.

There have been a lot of people who have died on this ship in the

past six hundred years, Tendo-san. I'm only the current tenant

and I've only killed a very few people, and most of those were in

my cursed state as a man-eating Tigress."

"Nice try," Nabiki replied, "I saw the tooth marks on some of the

carcasses."

"One would be my immediate predecessor," Lao replied, "The

former Captain of this vessel. As I informed you before, I won

the POJ in a card game, but I failed to mention that he was a

pretty sore loser. Not at losing Mastery of the Ship, of course,

since that was what he truly wanted. He was angry because the

curse still held him to the ship, so in a rage he attacked me, and I

was forced to do what I could in self defense. After which-as is

too often the case-my cursed form's tigerish instincts took over

and I consumed his edible parts. I quite assure you I was sick for

three days afterwards as he was not really all that tasty, and

despite what you think I am not a cannibal by nature."

"I don't really believe you," Nabiki replied, "But that hardly

matters anyway since you have murdered people, including your

late husband."

This time Lao's temper flared, "He had it coming! It was not

something I wanted to do or even intended on doing, but the fool

cursed me with water that was tainted with the bloodlust of the

animal that had drowned in that spring, so when he sought to

take advantage of me he made a fatal error. I am not happy or

even proud of what I did, but it was necessary for me to earn my

freedom. I don't like killing, Tendo-san, and for the same reason

you don't like it either: it is an admission of weakness. You

believe, as I do, that there are always alternatives to killing, and

failure to find them means conceding to the beast within us."

"Assuming I were to believe what you say," Nabiki continued to

move in counter-flow to Lao's steady advance, "The basic fact is

that you are a glorified opportunist taking advantage of those too

weak to defend themselves, using means against which they have

no adequate defense. Keiko is a case in point, an innocent girl

brutalized by circumstances that you took under your wing in

order to make her into your personal pet human."

"And why should I feel bad about that?" Lao asked her, "Is being

a Slaver worse than being some corporate tycoon or politician

from the world that you come from? They exploit people every

day and use them in a more dehumanizing and brutal sense than

anything that I practice. I merely liberate the inner woman, who

has been brutalized and put down by denial of her essential

humanity. I free them of the constraints society imposes upon

their sexual identity. I don't make them into slaves, Tendo-san, I

simply find the slave that is already within them and give them

permission to be slaves in mind and body."

"Cheap rationalization," Nabiki replied, backing away while

maintaining her defenses.

"It is a fact you cannot dispute," Lao said emphatically, "Look at

you! You are hardly all that free as you are. All your life you

have been a slave in one sense or the other. Your own father

traded you to another House so that he could gain a son in your

place. You traveled as the ward to another man for ten long years

learning to be what he molded you into. It is true that you

modified the terms of your indenturement, but the fact remains

that, when you came back, you were then given in pledge of

marriage to the son of your erstwhile teacher and were expected

to maintain the traditions of your Anything Goes School by

bearing his children like a damned Brood Mare!"

Up above, hanging in his cage, Ranma winced at hearing this

description of himself and his father. It was hard to deny that

what Lao said made a kind of sense, but he knew that there was a

lot more to the story than was being stated. He and Nabiki

genuinely cared for one another and did not need some stupid

promise over family honor to agree to the engagement. He hoped

that Nabiki realized this too as it was certainly a comment meant

to goad her into a careless misstep.

In which case it did not seem to be working as Nabiki

maintained an icy calm while continuing to back away from Lao,

speaking with an unusual evenness as she replied, "Ranchan

knows how I feel about him, and I was never that much in thrall

to his father. It's true my father traded me for a son, but I know

in his clumsy way he still cares about me. You twist the facts to

make it sound as though I never had any choice in the matter, and

I assure you I am quite culpable for much that has happened."

"Really?" Lao mused, "Does this mean you wanted to be able to

turn into a guy?"

For the first time there was the slightest hesitation in Nabiki's

tone before she answered, "Well, that was more a case of my

being careless and letting Genma talk me into something. I

should have known better."

"So you see?" Lao smiled as she pressed her advantage, "You're

not really all that free. In fact, both your fathers prove my point,

whether you want to see it or not. Mistaken or no, they believe

that they have a natural right to control your destiny. Not

because they are older or wiser or even smarter, and not because

they are better martial artists, but simply because they are MEN

and believe that the thing between their legs give them a natural

authority over you and all other women."

"You mean like the Musk?" Nabiki challenged.

"YES!" Lao all but shouted, "Exactly the same! Only the Musk

do not put on any pretensions about their belief that all women

must ultimately serve their aims. They confine their women to

perpetual servitude far worse than anything that I practice! They

treated me with more tolerance because I was proud and they

wanted me to give a son to one of the Musk Houses. I was fool

enough to believe the lies of a man who lied too easily, and in

doing so I even defied the wisdom of a much-beloved Elder!"

Lao seemed to be increasingly angry, as could be told from the

number of traps and snares that sprang up in Nabiki's path, all of

which were avoided with ease as Lao's aim had not been all that

well centered. Lao hardly seemed to notice the futility of her

attacks as she continued to stalk forward, now almost glowing a

faint blue in the dim light while Nabiki retreated, not even

manifesting a battle aura.

"Oh, how men lie when they want us to serve them!" she all but

ranted, "And what fools we are to believe them for the merest

token of their favors! I can still remember when he laughed at

me while I hung helpless and vulnerable by chains, listening to

him torment me with a list of indignities he claimed to have

suffered on my account! As if what he were doing to me wasn't a

thousand times worse than if he were scourging me with hot

knives, telling me what a fool I was to ever believe in him, and

all because I wanted a strong man for a husband!"

She stormed forward as Nabiki hastily retreated back, continuing

to rant as she came to within striking range, saying, "Men want

us to be their pillow, to comfort and support them when they feel

lonely, to warm their beds and bear their children, but when it

comes to respecting us they are deaf to our pleas, numb to our

entreaties! They hear only what is in their interest and consign to

irrelevance those matters they discard as only of interest to a

woman..."

"They have their shortcomings," Nabiki said as she dodged a

powerful attack Lao launched at her, "And their pride, but they

don't deliberately mean to ignore us..."

"Speaking from experience?" Lao asked as she launched a kick

that missed by a hairswidth, as did the follow-up kick that came

even closer, "You know what it's like to be a man, so of course

you could take their side if it pleased you. Damned fence-

sitter...why don't you stick to one side and be consistent?"

"Then I'd be no better than you," Nabiki replied as she moved her

head just a fraction beyond the next kick that might have sent her

into dreamland, "Choosing one side while ignoring the other.

Men have their biological agenda, and so do we..."

"Oh yes," Lao laughed bitterly as she swung three rapid punches

in succession that nearly blurred into one, though somehow

Nabiki managed to avoid even this, "They have to plant their seed

in us to fulfill their purpose, while we seek to find a strong

provider to care and nurture us during pregnancy. Men are not

tied down by sex as we are, not that you'll ever have to worry

about pregnancy with your curse, that is."

"I'm not giving up on that just yet," Nabiki replied, when all of a

sudden she sensed a new attack and backflipped away, only to

find that it was not aimed at her but at Lao instead.

The Pirate Queen reacted just in time to evade the double-row of

knives that struck the floor to either side of her, and then the

chains that attempted to wrap themselves around her as though

someone were turning Lao's own tricks against her. Instead it

was a white-clad form that appeared, swinging from one cage to

the next as he continue hurtling weapons at the Slaver.

"Lao!" Mousse shouted his outrage, "You will pay for what you

have done with my Perfume!"

"Mousse, you idiot!" Nabiki cried out in frustration. This was the

last thing she needed, and right when she was moving Lao closer

to the center of the spiral...

Lao caught one of the chains and jerked sharply, then back-fisted

Mousse when he went sailing towards her, grabbing him by his

shirt as she held him at arms length and smiled.

"Back off, Monkey boy," she leered, "Go play with yourself in the

corner, I'm busy."

She hurled Mousse to one side like so much yesterday's laundry,

then turned back and said, "Now, where were we? Oh yes, I was

winning..."

"Mousse may not be much of a man," Nabiki said coldly, "But

even he deserved better than that from the likes of you!"

"Sticks and stones," Lao smiled, "I must congratulate you. You

really had me going there. I almost lost control over myself, but

now I realize that you are trying to trick me. Very clever."

"You think you know what I'm about?" Nabiki felt a faint wisp of

hope begin to crumble and regretted what she had just said about

Mousse deserving better.

"I should have guessed it at once," Lao nodded towards the area

they had just covered, then glanced up to show a swirl of energies

above them, "The two boys each mastered at least one Amazon

technique, it figures that Cologne would teach you one as well,

you being her favorite star pupil. This has all the earmarks of the

Dragons Ascension Punch, one of the most powerful techniques

of the Amazons and perfect to employ against a superior

opponent. You are trying to turn my own advantage against me,

but it won't work now that I am onto you. I refuse to be provoked

any further, and without my cooperation the Ascension Wave is

useless."

"Think so, huh?" Nabiki heaved a deep sigh, then her resolve

grew firm, "Very well, I didn't want to have to do this, I really

didn't want to have to resort to these drastic means, but you've

forced me into it, so...prepared yourself for my ultimate strategy."

"Talking me to death?" Lao folded her arms over her chest and

looked smug, "Or is this that thing you do while running?"

"No," Nabiki undid her shirt and made a great production in

removing it, then cast it aside to stand fully nude before Madam

Lao, striking a Martial pose that showed her body off to full

advantage.

"What is this?" Lao frowned in obvious confusion.

"My special attack," Nabiki smiled smugly, "Don't you like it?"

"Flashing me with your body isn't an attack, Tendo-san," Lao

said uncertainly, "Although I have to admit that it is novel..."

"You haven't seen the whole thing yet," Nabiki raised her head

and half-lidded her eyes then began to move sensuously, very

slowly to one side, making undulating motions with her arms

while thrusting her chest out and backing away in a suggestive

manner.

"What...?" Lao pondered as she found herself leaning forward

without having so intended.

"What's the matter?" Nabiki flashed a winning smile as she coyly

lifted one shoulder, "Don't you like me this way? Or would you

rather I was in guy form?"

Lao took a step forward, hesitated, then took another, "I really

don't see what this will accomplish..."

"What is Nab-chan doing?" Ranma hissed from his cage.

"Playing at being an exhibitionist, I think," Hinako replied,

similarly puzzled as she stared down from beside him.

"Hush you two," Cologne hissed from one side, "Don't distract

her! She must use every ounce of her concentration to get these

motions just right."

"What?" Blanka looked down at the ancient woman beside him,

"You mean this really is an attack kata? I thought it looked a bit

like Capoera..."

"Very similar to the dancing/fighting arts of your people,"

Cologne replied, "But very different in basic intention."

"Looks to me like a stripper act," Bison noted, "'Course I've never

seen an Exotic Dancer with her kind of moves...she could sure

wow them in Vegas."

"P-perfume..." said a painful voice from directly beneath Ukyo

and Perfume's cage, startling both women from their entranced

gaze at Nabiki.

"Mousse?" Ukyo asked, "What are you doing down there?"

"I've come to save Perfume," Mousse said with greater

determination, climbing up the chain that they now saw was

attached by a grapple to the bars of their cage.

"Like I need rescue from you," Perfume faintly snorted.

"I have the key," Mousse croaked as he held it up, "I took it off

Lao before she threw me..."

"Really?" Ukyo fell to her knees and tried to look at him past the

bars of the cage, "Would you be so kind as to toss it up to us,

pretty please?"

"Don't bother with the act, Daughter-in-law," Cologne replied,

"These bars are a mere illusion given form by Lao's will. As

such they are only as solid as you believe them to be. You can

free yourselves at any time simply by believing that you are

strong enough to break them."

"Then what are we waiting for?" Guile asked, seizing the bars to

his own cage as he grunted, "We can get free if we just

concentrate..."

Keiko and Kodachi exchanged looks, then together they

combined their efforts to help Guile in pulling the bars apart with

arm and leg power.

"Hear that, fool?" Bison turned to Honda, "These things ain't real,

so why don't you and me team up to break 'em?"

"Sounds like a plan to me," Honda agreed as they each took a bar

in their hands while bracing themselves against one another.

Cammy eyed Chun-Li then hesitantly said, "Well...if we can

work together this one time..."

"I'm all for a truce if you are," Chun-Li noted, grabbing two bars

with her hands while Cammy gripped one of the bars with both

hands and braced her feet against one another.

Ryoga turned to Akane and said, "I'm going to try

something...hold onto me, Akane."

"Of course," Akane agreed as she put her arms around his neck to

steady herself, then Ryoga looked at the bars and concentrated,

slowly moving his finger forward.

Honda was about to try his own luck when Cologne tapped his

arm and said, "Not just yet...wait until the battle further

progresses, then we can escape. Right now we are in the safest

place that we can be when the moment is upon us."

"What moment?" Honda asked, turning to see that Lao was

continuing to stalk Nabiki, who managed incredibly to keep just

out of reach of the lady pirate.

Lao was finding it increasingly difficult to resist the invisible pull

that was drawing her ever closer to Nabiki. It was not as if she

had never seen a pretty girl dance naked for her before, or even

that Nabiki's style was superior to the hundreds of dancer she had

personally trained for resale to special clients, or even as if her

movements were all that lewd or suggestive. It was more like a

magnetism from inside Nabiki that were reaching out to her,

drawing Lao in with the subtle hint of some magical

enchantment. It was powerfully vexing, but the more Lao gazed

at the young Japanese girl the stronger she felt the urge to reach

out and possess her.

"What are you doing to me?" Lao gasped after she had stalked

Nabiki half way around the chamber.

"You have your curse," Nabiki replied, batting her eyelashes, "I

have mine. A cute girl like me learns a lot of tricks if she wants

to stay one step ahead of the big, nasty slavers and men who

drool over women."

"You're comparing me to them?" Lao asked incredulously, all the

more incredulous as she found the term aptly described her

fascination.

"Not favorably, I assure you," Nabiki jiggled her body in such a

way that Lao's eyes were naturally distracted, "A hormone-crazed

obsessive is only obeying the lure of his biology, like you say.

Men are designed to carry sperm and deliver it so that he can

replicate himself into the next generation. Women are the ones

who select which mean will father their babies. It's always been

that way, regardless of society and the rules imposed to make us

soft and compliant. Women choose to become mothers-or even

fathers in my case-because we seek the fulfillment of our own

biological imperative. We want strong, healthy babies, so

naturally we seek out strong men who can father them and

protect us."

Lao could not resist her urge any longer, she had to reach out and

grasp Nabiki as the fever in her loins demanded satisfaction. At

the same time her rational mind spoke through her, "We don't

need a man for everything..."

"Certainly not," Nabiki replied, "But biology tricks us into

believing otherwise, or else we would all live like you,

surrounded by the company of our own sex, with whom we have

so much in common. We romanticize our urges, but ultimately

we want to be nurtured, just as men want us to nurture them

back. The trick of biology is that it is meant to insure

procreation, not to make us happy."

"I agreed," Lao reached out again but Nabiki once more evaded

her. In growing frustration Lao began to attack her in earnest,

"Stand still!"

"I'm not that easy," Nabiki taunted sweetly, "You want to

dominate me, you had better prove yourself worthy. C'mon Lao,

let's see if you're really up to a genuine challenge. You want to

have me as your latest conquest? You have to prove to me that

you're woman enough to take me!"

"I'll do just that," Lao replied as she continued to stalk forward,

hardly aware that Nabiki was ever-so-slightly tightening the

circle.

Nabiki continued to taunt the lady pirate while avoiding Lao's

attempts to grab her. It was almost too easy, playing the mouse

to this cat, encouraging Lao's predatory instincts to come to the

full while using little tricks and turns of her body to keep her

interest level heightened. She was calling upon the inward

manifestation of her curse, the masculine perspective it gave her,

to play up on those aspects she knew instinctively appealed to

both men and women. There was an aspect to her curse that she

had long suspected but could never prove, that it contained a

powerful charm that affected women when she was in her male

form as Kaneda. By utilizing Kaneda while remaining in female

shape she was doubling the effect of her charm, and playing upon

Lao's obvious fondness for her own sex to create a compelling

fantasy lure from which the Pirate Queen could not easily turn

aside.

Had Lao truly been paying attention she would have noticed that

Nabiki was deliberately suppressing her battle aura, using the

energy to fuel the compulsion in her non-cursed form while

retaining an icy calm that was deliberate and preternatural.

Nabiki was pure Ice Queen on the surface, inside she was a

raging fire of boiling passion waiting to explode. All she had to

do was continue to shrink the spiral she was walking as Lao

created all the effect that was needed for the moment.

Lao seemed to be on fire...the plan was definitely working!

"Run all you can, little rabbit!" Lao cried as she suddenly lurched

forward with a burst of speed that was unexpected, and this time

Nabiki was not fast enough to avoid her as one hand gripped her

by the shoulder with the other drew back for a Leopard's Paw

strike that would send her into next new years, "You will pay the

price for teasing your Mistress!"

No chance to avoid it, Nabiki instinctively brought her own free

hand forward, twisting it as she moved while allowing an icy

calm to travel up through her body. At nearly the last instant she

saw the recognition in Lao's eyes and knew who had whom by

the tail of the tiger.

The punch went home with the force of a hurricane as Nabiki

cried out, "HIRYU SHOTEN HA!" unleashing a force that was

aimed straight at heaven.

The resulting blast was awesome, more intense than the last time

that she had used this technique on her Master Happosai at

Cologne's instigation. It literally blew Lao up and through the

ceiling, tearing the illusion surrounding them to shreds, and-not

incidentally-dispersing the cages containing her people.

"WHOAH!" Guile cried as he found himself cast like a leaf in the

wind, along with his daughter and Kodachi.

"Sonufa-!" Bison started to howl before he and Honda were

blown like straws in a hurricane.

"Hang on, Akane!" Ryoga gasped as he threw his arms around

her and was hugged back with equal fierceness. Unseen by

anyone, Cammy and Chun-Li did the same thing from sheer

instinct.

"Something's wrong!" Ranma cried, instinctively arcing his body

to ride with the currents as he and the others were picked up in

the maelstrom, "It wasn't this bad the last time..."

"Last time your iinazuke did not have this much power to contend

with," Cologne managed to call back as she used her staff to help

guide her body, unwittingly resembling a wicked witch on her

broomstick as she did so, "She made Lao hot with lust for her

body and unwittingly thus drew energy from the ship itself,

whose reserves are near limitless."

"I don't like this!" Blanka called out as he rolled himself into a

ball and tried to ride out the storm all around them.

Hinako managed to draw a coin and used it to absorb some of the

energy swirling around her, thus lessening her drift as she tried to

ride with the currents the same as Ranma.

"What are we going to do?" Hinako asked, "There is enough force

here to tear the ship apart!"

"I fear you are right," Cologne replied, "In fact it is already too

late...the Junk is tearing itself apart like some badly constructed

paper mache model."

Sure enough they could hear the groans and creaks of ages-old

wood being strained beyond its tolerance. They could even hear

the sounds of screams as voices cried out in dismay at the

ensuing havoc.

"The children!" Hinako cried, and without thinking dove into the

winds and seemed to vanish.

"Hinako-san!" Blanka called out and arced his body, managing

somehow to drift in the same direction before he, too, vanished

from sight.

"Charlie!" Guile cried out, twisting his body as he also cried,

"Keiko! Where are you!"

"Father!" Keiko called out, just before everyone found a shiny

blue surface come rushing up at them with great force as one-by-

one they fell out of the cyclone and landed in the ocean.

It took many long agonizing moments before Ranma broke the

surface, looking around at a scene of total devastation.

Everywhere he looked there was debris strewn across the ocean

with more bits dropping down out of the sky like meteors from

the heavens.

"Nabiki!" he cried out, looking around wildly for any possible

survivors.

He found them right enough, heads bobbing up from the water as

more and more people broke the surface until the ocean was not

only strewn with the wreckage of the ship but virtually the entire

human crew as well. With very little effort he began to locate

familiar faces.

"Akane?" Ranma saw her face as she was still clinging to Ryoga,

who was padding with one hand towards a wooden beam.

Ranma swam to catch up with them, then helped Ryoga heave

Akane up onto the thick buoyant object.

They began to search for other survivors and found them on a

larger section of the ship that still remained afloat. Ukyo was

holding Perfume-the-cat with one hand while the Monkey that

was Mousse clung nearby, looking thoroughly wet and miserable

without his glasses. As they watched a Vulture broke the surface

of the water clutching a Ferret in her claws, and these, too,

sought out the sanctuary of the floating section. The menagerie

nearly accounted for, they next turned to the obvious question.

"Where's Nabiki?" Ryoga asked Ranma.

Ranma's expression was stricken as the unthinkable occurred to

him, but almost at once he rejected the idea and said resolutely,

"She made it-she's got to! She was in the eye of the storm when

the whole thing happened so there's no way anything could have

happened to her..."

"Unless she decided to enter the cyclone to try and reach us," said

Ukyo, ever the practical one in their group.

There was a moment of tense silence before Akane called out,

"Oneechan! Where are you!"

"Right here," a male voice sputtered as a head broke the water,

then Nabiki/Kaneda appeared, moving resolutely to the makeshift

life-raft now occupied by Ukyo and the other curse-victims.

Nabiki ignored Ranma relieved entreaties and heaved himself up

onto the raft, then reached down and pulled the soggy tiger that

was Lao Kane from the waters and dragged her onto the raft,

taking a moment to regather his breath before standing up and

hauling the transformed Amazon into a position from whence to

administer a head-lock.

"All right you...Pervert!" Nabiki cried as he seemed ready to snap

the motionless tiger in his brawny arms, "This is where it's time

for a little payback!"

To everyone's considerable surprise the Tiger began to change

spontaneously until she collapsed back to human form, then Lao

smiled slightly as she slipped easily out of Nabiki's startled

grasp, evidently quite tired from her ordeal but at least semi-

lucid.

"Well played, Tendo-san," she replied, "I must concede the

match. You played your hand very well this time and I

acknowledge you the victor."

"Don't give me that," Nabiki reached out to grip Lao by her shirt,

shaking her slightly, "This isn't some game we're playing here!

Give me one good reason why I shouldn't finish you off here and

now! Just one good reason!"

"I'm trying," Lao said tiredly, "But...at the moment I can't seem to

think of any good reasons. Go ahead, if you think you have it in

you."

Everyone watched tensely as Nabiki shook with anger, drawing

back a fist and looking ready to kill as he said, "You tortured me

and my friends, you have raped and murdered and forced me to

do things I cannot forgive! If I strike now it will be in full

justice..."

"It would also be the wrong thing to do," said Cologne very softly

from where she stood perched upon her staff, "In your heart you

know this."

Nabiki remained where he was, fist still poised to deliver a

smashing blow that Lao probably could not evade even has she

wanted to. Nabiki drew one tense breath then said, "I'm still

waiting to hear a reason."

"If you kill me," Lao replied softly, "You follow in my footsteps.

You inherit my curse and all that goes with it."

"Hah!" Nabiki scoffed, "Look around you! I've beaten you, Lao,

and I've broken your curse! Your ship of horrors is wasted and

your crew is scattered. You have no power to resist me now, and

I could break you in half without even trying!"

"If you believe that, then go right ahead," Lao quietly replied, "I

won't even try and stop you. You'll even be doing me a favor."

Nabiki held himself rigid for another long minute then slowly

lowered his arm and said, "You're not worth getting my hands

dirty. You'll pay for your crimes in a court of law, and with any

luck they'll probably hang you."

Lao sat back as Nabiki released her and calmly folded her arms

over her chest before smiled, "You're being awfully harsh at the

moment, aren't you, Tendo-san? If you really find me that

repulsive, why is your flag at half-mast?"

"Huh?" Nabiki looked down out of reflex and Lao took the

opportunity to rise to her feet and step back beyond the

transformed girl's reach, once more looking cocky.

Of course in doing so she came up against a brick wall...or so it

felt like. She turned her head up and saw an unsmiling Guile

looking back down at her before she murmured, "Uh oh..."

Guile laid one ham-fist on either side of her head from behind

and said, "Any last words before I snap your neck, lady?"

"Akiko," Lao replied, "I'm you only hope of finding her. You

need me alive."

"True," Guile replied, lowering his hands to seize her by the

wrists and twist them so that the Pirate was driven to her knees,

"Then I suppose I'll have to make you cooperative, won't I?"

"Big man," Lao grunted, "Fine role model for your daughter over

there, aren't you?"

"Daughter?" Guile turned his head to look and saw the Vulture

that had perched close beside him on an upthrust section of

wood, looking at him with an almost plaintive expression, "K-

Kei-chan?"

The vulture screened, then hopped over to land on Guile's

shoulder, positioning itself so that it could look at him once more

with that almost human expression. Guile released Lao's wrists

without another word of explanation.

Lao got back to her feet more slowly as she massaged her aching

wrists, then sighed, "Well, this was certainly fun, but a bit more

than I bargained on. I wasn't counting on the Dragon's Blast

having that much of an effect. You used the power of the ship

against itself...a very effective strategy, Tendo-san."

"Have you had enough yet?" Cologne said testily, "I for one have.

You did everything possible to provoke this situation,

Granddaughter. What were you trying to do here, get yourself

killed so that your curse could pass itself along to Tendo

Nabiki?"

"That was one possible scenario," Lao replied, "And I'll admit it

was a bit of a gamble, but I suppose you'll just have to chalk it up

to me being betrayed by my baser instincts. I'm not always sure

why I do the things I do, Great Grandmother, I only know it helps

me pass the time and break the monotony of my existence. Ten

years at sea will do that to you, and my predecessor had twenty

before he went mad and provoked me to kill him."

"Colonel!" a voice hailed out from a passing raft that had

Cammy, Chun-Li, Bison and Honda clinging to it. Cammy

called out again, "Have you seen where Blanka and Ken got off

to?"

"Charlie?" Guile shook his head reluctantly, trying not to upset

the vulture on his shoulder, "Last I saw he went after the Hinako

woman. As for Ken, well..."

"Oh my god," Bison suddenly cried, "They killed Kenny!"

"The bastards," Honda growled.

"I heard that!" a familiar voice called out as yet another large

section of the boat drifted by, this one loaded full of beautiful

women with Ken lounging in the middle of the action and a

much-confused pair of Amazons peering out from what had at

one time been the command deck.

"Bloody figures," Cammy grumbled.

"Some guys have all the luck," Bison agreed.

"Of course you realize that this has some blackmail potential,"

Chun-Li murmured in conspiratorial tones, earning a group of

smiles from her immediate companions.

"My lady?" Blossom came out and looked at the ruins all around

them, "What happened to the ship?"

"Never mind," Lao said, "A temporary inconvenience. Have the

survivors gathered up and ready. We're going to be hitting the

coastline shortly and I want everyone to be ready."

"What?" Nabiki said as he stood with his hands covering his

privates, "Are you serious? As things stand we'll be lucky to drift

with the currents!"

"On the contrary," Lao replied, "Now that the crisis is past the

situation is well in hand. Even as we speak my elemental

soldiers are rescuing those who were trapped below deck, and in

good time you will find that we have not lost anyone in the

disaster, not even your Hinako-Sensei and the good Senor

Blanka."

"You mean to say you still have one ace left to play?" Ukyo asked

suspiciously.

"Not just an ace," Lao replied, "A full house, as I will

demonstrate thusly."

Even as she nodded her head they became aware that something

was happening underneath them. A white mass rose up and

lifted their flotsam rafts as though they were at the end of the

movie Abyss. To everyone's incredulous expression (save Lao

and her people) they found themselves hoist aboard the

translucent form of a massive creature the size of a supertanker.

"He is called The Kraken," Lao explained for their benefit, "At

the simplest explanation he is what you might call a Super-sized

Elemental being and the guardian of the Dragon Orb. He also

serves my bidding as the Master of the Orb. He will get us to

shore in record time and find the missing members of our party."

"But what about your people who aren't here?" Ranma asked,

"There has to be more than this...?"

"My dear boy," Lao smiled indulgently, "You're still thinking as

if the Piece of Junk were a conventional ship on the water when,

in fact, it is a magical construction. The rules inside do not

necessarily apply to any standards with which you are familiar.

Just because the parts you see have been damaged does not mean

the ship itself is entirely totaled. Many compartments are not

only watertight but dimensionally sealed to protect them against

flooding. My Undines servants will take care of the ones who

were not so protected in the ordeal. As for the Nursery and my

children...I would know if they were harmed. As it is I am quite

assured that we have all survived, regardless of whether this fact

makes logical sense to you. The Orb has a way of making the

odds work in my favor."

"Impressive," Cologne remarked, "And you have achieved this

level of mastery in less than ten years time?"

Lao turned to regard her former teacher, "You didn't raise me to

be incompetent, Elder. I am a very good student of magic.

However, the fact remains that I was fairly beaten by a worthy

foe, so I will make a new proposal with you, Tendo Nabiki, in

exchange for my freedom and the lives of all my people."

Nabiki glanced around before he answered, aware that all eyes

were turned in his direction, "What have you got in mind?"

"A simple alliance," Lao smiled tigerishly, "Only this time let it

be between full equals..."

Continued.

Comments/Criticisms/Baywatch Nerima: shadowmane

Next chapter: Chu Wan Phat go Splat. Be there.

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other works.


	25. Chapter 25

Nabiki 1/2,

A Very Scary Thought

(An Altered Destiny)

by

Jim Robert Bader

Chapter 25, Part 1.

(Based on the works of Rumiko Takahashi & Others)

Chu Wan Phat, as his name would imply, was a very obese

fellow, not stocky or heavyset but very rotund and overweight to

a degree that even fat people would find excessive. He easily

weighted in at over three hundred and fifty and stood (whenever

he could manage to remain upright) just over five and a half feet

tall, dressed immaculately in an expensive white tailored suit

with matching black tie, his hair and mustache neatly groomed to

give one the impression of a bowling ball made up to look like

Charlie Chan.

Chalk it up to his early success in the criminal enterprises he now

oversaw like a proverbial Kingpin. In his youth Phat had been a

more muscular figure, hard-edged and brutal with an intelligence

that made his occasional bursts of violent temper that much more

dangerous and unpredictable. He had a reputation for

ruthlessness that was legend even among the seedier quarters of

Hong Kong and everyone knew that it was very unwise to cross

him in a business matter.

He presently was sitting down to a sumptuous dinner, surrounded

by his minions in his personal mansion on the outskirts of town

on an island fortress just off the coast of the mainland. At the

moment he had only one real guest seated across from him at the

table, a certain lady he had recently come into possession of, and

whom he was attempting to entertain, very much like Sydney

Greenstreet-his American Idol-would entertain Lauren Becal in

the Maltese Falcon..

"So, my dear," he said in amusement as he twirled fried

noodles around his chopsticks, "Soon you will be reacquainted

with your daughter. Does this not excite you?"

The Japanese lady who sat meekly at the other end of the table

barely lifted her eyes as she maintained a perfectly contrite

position, pausing long enough to determine if she would be

permitted to speak before replying in mildly accented Chinese,

"If, as you say, my Lord, then it will be as you wish it."

Phat studied the woman who had been in his possession for over

a week and marveled at the contrast between this Arigami Akiko

and the girl-child whom-only a little over a year ago-had been

his personal property. The mother knew how to be deferential in

her responses, to betray no emotion in tone or expression, a

perfectly porcelain China Doll to all appearances, so very unlike

the wild-eyed, fiery redhead he well remembered. He was

actually disappointed.

"Madam Lao is sure to be here within the hour, if she keeps to

her regular appointments," he remarked, not adding that he was

slightly vexed that his agents had seen no trace of her ship since

the incident with the Chinese Navy, "She will bring the goods

as promised and then you can all be together as a family, won't

that be nice?"

He could tell that there was some thought going on beneath the

woman's cool interior, but it was vexing how unreadable she

could be. Her previous owner had been very thorough in

conditioning her to her role as personal slave. Four years of

learning obedience had certainly left their mark on the seemingly

fragile Lady Akiko. She had learned to become the perfect

concubine-wife for a man who liked soft, compliant women. He

could almost admire such fine handiwork, except...

Except that he liked his women to have a bit more fire in their

expressions, to show some life and more spirit, just a trace of

resistance to the automatic compliance to his will that was

expected from a woman in her position. The absence of that trace

was faintly dissatisfying and made him wonder if indeed his

people had located the right woman. He certainly hoped that he

was not going to all this trouble just to bait a trap that did not

have the right incentive to make the package that much sweeter.

He took a sip from his wonton stew, then frowned as he said,

"You are not eating enough. Dig in, you are much too thin as it

is."

"If you pleases you, my lord," she replied automatically, then

picked up her chopsticks and picked listlessly at her food, not

actually taking a bite out of anything as her mood seemed

altogether pensive.

Akiko knew that this man sitting across from the large table, who

owned her, was expecting her to show some enthusiasm, but in

truth she did not know what it was she actually felt as she had

long since buried her feelings deep behind layers of time and

bitter memory. Eons ago she would have been elated at the

thought of seeing her child once again, but to meet Keiko now,

and under these conditions...

She thought about the man who had been her owner, who had

bought her from those pirates after she was half starved and half

dead, who had taken pity on her and worked to cultivate the

creature she had become, and who had abandoned her as she had

always known he would when pressured by her new Owner, a

man who truly lack the qualifications of a man if ever she had

known one.

She had been a truly pitiable creature who by rights should have

died at the hands of her tormentors, and in a very real sense had

done so. What was left in her place was the salvaged remains of

a woman who once felt confident of her destiny, who had no

doubt of her own ability and integrity. Her family may have

disowned her for having a child with a Gaijin out of wedlock but

she had never entertained regrets for any of her past decisions.

Even accepting that yachting trip with a business friend had

seemed a perfectly natural choice, and who could have known

that the consequences would be so devastating? Surely not

Akiko, who had always thought the stories of Pirates on the High

seas a part of the history books, not a going concern in the

modern age of high tech navies.

The rape had been brutal, but more brutal was not knowing if the

fate of her child was any worse than her own, for Akiko truly

expected to die in those first few terrifying minutes. Her memory

of those times was a blur now, thankfully dulled by time and

distance, only her fears for her daughter had held stronger than

her concerns for her own welfare. When it became plain that

they were not going to kill her outright she had held out some

hope for a rescue, a hope that in time grew fleeting as she grew to

accept her new life, buoyed only by a sense that somehow her

daughter was still alive. Surely she would have known if she

were not, for they were that close as mother and daughter. For

the sake of her daughter Akiko had been determined to stay alive

and so had endured her long ordeal when death would have been

infinitely preferable.

But death was never an option given to her, for the man who

liberated her from the Pirates had been another cut of rogue far

removed from their crude lot. He had been a man in the truest

sense, no common rapist, but a man who knew what he wanted

and pursued it with relentless purpose.

Akiko had found herself treated very differently from what she

had expected of her captivity. The man had been patient, had

shown great art and refinement, bringing her slowly out of her

shell until she was willing to respond to his attentions. It had not

been an overnight thing, nor had she ever entertained the illusion

of romance between herself and this other man, but she was

grateful just the same that he had given her purpose and helped

her through a terrible loneliness, teaching her how to endure one

day at a time, even to find some form of pleasure in her existence,

abandoning all pretence at independence.

And then he had given her over to this man, in so many ways his

opposite, not really a man at all in her estimation, though she

would do the things required of her without complaint. Her

training was thorough and she would endure even his touch for

one single fleeting glance of her lost Keiko-chan.

Her only real concern was what Keiko would think of her for

living such an existence. How could she possibly explain to her

long lost child her inner torment and the compromise she had

made in order to continue living? Better far to die than let Keiko

know how far her mother had fallen from the lady of her

memories. This was why she could not feel either joy or elation

at the thought of their possible reunion.

He wants something of us both, Akiko knew in a small

compartment of her mind that was kept private from all others.

This man is dangerous, a rapacious animal with no remorse nor

conscience. He is after my Keiko and expects me to play some

part in his grand scheme. I will wait and see what he has

planned, and if he seeks to harm my child...

That part of herself, a part that had never given in nor had broken

over four years of methodical survival gripped the chopsticks in

her hand and considered their usage in a way that had also been a

part of her training. Her nominal owner had many rolls of fat

protecting his vital areas, but the fat around his neck was thin

protection for the carotid artery, and the pieces of bamboo in her

hands could-if properly applied-do considerable damage before

the man was at all the wiser.

Her thoughts were disturbed by the approach of one of this man's

underlings, who leaned over to whisper in the ear of his boss,

who nodded with a grunt then wheezed, "Show them in at once.

It seems Lao has been as timely as I dared hope, my dear.

Prepare yourself for a tender reunion."

Akiko turned her head to see three women enter the chamber, two

of them near-naked and clad in the gold chains of Pleasure Slaves

as they followed the lead of the tallest of these women, who wore

a kind of dominatrix attire with an odd tri-cornered hat set atop

pale blue-green hair that hung about her waistline.

Akiko found her breath catch in her throat as she took in these

newcomers with sudden interest. The girl with the short brown

hair was a complete stranger, but the other one with the long red

pigtail was her long lost Keiko beyond question. She must have

made some manner of noise for the eyes of the two slaves turned

to her, as did the blue haired lady. The lady's pink eyes narrowed

before she turned and smiled at Chu Wan Phat, then in faintly

accented Mandarin she said, "Nihao, Phat. As I promised I am

here with the goods. This is, I take it, the lady you promised me

in return for these pets?"

"Indeed she is," Phat replied, his eyes on the two prizes in

question as he introduced Akiko, "And a finer slave of quality

you could hardly dare to ask for. One of our local Tai Pans took a

personal interest in her training and she has proven quite adept to

his needs. I acquired her through careful and studious

negotiations once I learned of her identity and relationship to one

of the pair you have brought now with you."

"Well trained, you say?" Lao replied, looking Akiko up and

down again, "I should think so if she has endured four years in

the company of a Tai Pan. May I see proof of the goods before

we finalize the transaction?"

"But of course," Phat replied, turning his head slightly as his

eyes sought out Akiko, "My dear, would you please display

your wares to your new purchaser? She means to buy you from

me, and I wish to demonstrate the quality of the merchandise in

question."

Akiko had inwardly dreaded this moment, but her body obeyed

the command before the thought was even half-formed as she

stood up and moved slowly away from the table, then undid the

sash around her waist and slipped out of her kimono, allowing it

to fall about her ankles as she faced towards the blue haired lady,

aware of the looks she was receiving from her child and the

brown haired girl beside her.

"Magnificent," Lao smiled as she stepped forward, drawing

the two other girls behind her as she slowly approached the

naked Akiko with a speculative look that somehow made Akiko's

breath grow short and a slight shiver pass through her body,

"She is certainly excellent merchandise. I must say you do

make a tempting offer in this package, my dear Phat. And so

responsive to command, a sure sign of excellent conditioning."

Phat made a motion with one hand and one of his goons stepped

forward, strategically placing himself close to Akiko in such a

way that Lao was forced to acknowledge his presence. The man

then extended his hand and after a moment of pause Lao smiled

and handed him the end of the two leashes. The man then

stepped back, drawing the two girls with him and allowing Lao

to resume a closer inspection.

In spite of everything that felt wrong about the situation Akiko

could not stop trembling inside as the blue haired woman slowly

circled her, pink eyes giving away a keen interest that made

Akiko respond inwardly with the sense of long practice. Her new

owner was certainly quite beautiful in an exotic way that she

found most appealing, but still a part of her mind was drawn to

the plight of her Keiko, who was staring at her with a round-eyed

expression.

"She will do indeed," Lao pivoted around, giving Phat a

patented smile that betrayed none of her actual feelings in the

matter, "And I am most satisfied that there is not a mark upon

her. I must confess I did have my fears that you would neglect to

give her to me in a pristine condition."

Now it was Phat's turn to smile, and his expression conveyed no

warmth in spite of its evident humor, "I know what appeals to

your tastes, dear lady. I had a very good sense of it when I

relieved you of your other property, this charming Catfighter who

earned her keep in my gaming hall. I was most disappointed

when she and this other charming Catfighter took their leave of

me under such unfavorable conditions."

"I had heard something about that," Lao admitted, "You had

these two face off in your arena. As always you bet heavily on

dear Keiko and yet you were quite upset when Tendo Nabiki was

the victor. You sought to punish them and deprive Nabiki-san of

her winnings, only they upset your plans somewhat and left you

with egg-foo-yong on your face. You put a price on both of their

heads after that, only I was given to understand that you later had

a change of heart and retired to a monastic life. What made you

suddenly change your opinion?"

"The chance for revenge," Phat replied, snapping his fingers,

"Against you and these two hellions, now that you have

obligingly delivered yourselves into my keeping."

As he said this his men produced an impressive array of

weapons, which same they directed towards Lao, who did not

have to feign her surprise as she looked around at the pistols and

semi-automatic weapons pointing in her direction.

"What is the meaning of this?" Lao asked as she glared in his

direction, "I thought we had a business arrangement, Phat. Is

this how you treat all of your partners?"

"Partners?" Phat uttered the word with contempt, "I see no

need for further dealings with you, Madam, especially since the

Chinese government is paying such a handsome fee to rid this

part of the world of the notorious Queen of the Pirates who has

troubled these waters for close to a decade. There is a new order

in this part of the world, in case you have not yet gotten with the

program. Your time is past, your dealings are an embarrassment

that must be eradicated so that honest merchants like me can go

about the business as usual without radical elements such as you

to complicate the picture."

"Nice speech," Lao smiled, "Who wrote it for you?"

"We'll see who has the last laugh this time, Madam," Phat

nodded to his men, then forced himself out of his chair with great

effort, using his walking cane to give his stubby legs an extra

degree of balance, "It so happens I have arranged for some live

entertainment, which you have thoughtful provided. This way,

Madam, I have something else I should like to show you."

Lao laid one hand on Akiko's shoulder and said, "You will at

least allow the lady to go free, will you not? That was a key term

of our agreement."

The gunmen tensed their trigger fingers as Phat just swept her

with an amused stare, "You are in no position to dictate terms,

lady, but keep her with you if it amuses you. More incentive for

the games that I have planned, if you will follow me this way."

Lao swept a covert stare at Keiko and Nabiki, nodding by a

fraction as she knelt down and replaced Akiko's kimono about

her body, handing her the sash and tying it while Phat looked on

impatiently, barely tolerating the insolence of this gesture. When

Akiko was "decent" once more Phat angrily moved forward,

waddling in such a way that the analogy to a Walrus was

impossible not to make. Lao strode after the man, urging Akiko

to remain close by her side while the man holding the leashes for

Keiko and Nabiki followed at a more discrete distance, little

aware of the angry glowers in the eyes of two very unhappy

teenagers...

"Damn!" Guile looked up from his microphone and growled,

"How did I let that woman talk me into this? All right, people,

we do this the hard way, the way we should have done it in the

first place..."

"Not to disagree with you, Colonel honey," Cammy said from

close at his side, "But couldn't we hold off a bit to see what kind

of diabolical fate he has planned for Lao before we go storming

in there?"

Chun-Li gave Cammy a sour look but reluctantly conceded, "As

much as I'm tempted to agree with you, we can't take any chances

with the safety of the others. Let's do this like we planned and

kick some Tong butt."

"And after that we can double-team Lao?" Cammy said

hopefully, "I'm in for it, mates."

"All Units wait for my signal," Guile sighed, "Ken, you take the

lead assault. Get charged up and let loose when I say go, over."

"Roger that," Ken replied as he nodded to his two companions,

then moved from the concealment of the bushes to assume a

fighting crouch, opening his mind to the power of Hado as he

visualized the energy flowing in through the Chakra centers of

his body.

Guile turned to the blue haired woman beside him and nodded,

"Tell your people to move out. We're going in hard and I want

this by the numbers."

"We understand," Blossom nodded, turning to Lotus and

making a hand gesture that her friend could have no trouble

interpreting as fifteen trained Marines fanned out to begin their

assault up the rear wall pass leading to the island stronghold.

"Here we are," Phat paused, indicating a five-meter wide

circular platform that was suspended from a crane over an

Olympic-sized fish tank in which could be seen dark objects

swimming about, "Kindly step out onto the arena and we may

move this along to the next phase of the program."

"You must be joking," Lao snorted, "What makes you think I

would agree to do that? You obviously don't have my best

interests at stake, so if you're going to kill me I really don't see

that it would matter if I were in your cage or not."

"But I think it does matter a great deal," Phat smiled, "There

are rumors concerning you, Madam, that say you have a curse

and because of it you avoid direct contact with water. I am

willing to bet your curse makes you especially vulnerable to the

sort of game I have planned here for you. As you can see this

tank is full of an even more viscous array of predators than you

are used to dealing with..."

"Yes, I can see," Lao mused coolly as she stared into the

waters, "Makos, Lemon Sharks and the occasional Great

White...hardly a very original ploy. I suppose you stole this one

from Blowfeld."

"Another one of my role models," Phat smiled, "Perhaps not

original but very effective. Now step onto the platform or your

lady friend goes first. I believe she will make a tasty appetizer

for the main course, and after her I will dispatch your two pets as

the entree. A pity should it come to that, however, I was so

looking forward to renewing our acquaintance, especially with

you, my dear Miss Tendo," he smiled benevolently at Nabiki, "I

have very much been looking forward to this moment."

"You're just loving it, aren't you?" Lao said coolly, "Playing

the villain like some movie melodrama."

"And why not?" Phat smiled, "I know you well enough,

Madam. In spite of your cultivated reputation for ruthlessness,

you fancy yourself the swashbuckling hero. I admit that part of

the charm of this whole affair will be in seeing you meet an end

that is heroically noble. Even you must admit that it is a fine end

to a legendary career, going up against great odds in a battle

against a larger and deadlier predator than yourself."

"Hmph," Lao said before she turned and stepped out onto the

platform, which swayed a little under her weight. She balanced

there as she considered the sharks in the water then turned back

to Lao and said, "Now what? You lower me in and watch your

fish fight over my carcass?"

"That would be too easy," Phat snapped his fingers again and

a figure appeared from around the side of the building, a very tall,

bald figure with broad shoulders and a surly expression, "I

would like you to meet my nephew, a rising star on the Mu Tai

circuit, No Lo Phat, your opponent of the hour."

"Charmed," Lao said as she looked the big bruiser up and

down, reckoning him to be at least two hundred fifty pounds of

solid muscle, which put him squarely in Colonel Guile's weight

class, "I take it he isn't afraid of Sharks?"

"Why should he be?" Phat asked, "He's their personal trainer.

Nephew, say hello to the lady."

The burly man smiled, showing off teeth that were unusually

pointed, then slammed his fists together, revealing them to be

wrapped in heavy tape soaked in tar and rolled in broken glass.

His feet were similarly treated, giving the effect that he was

studded with diamonds.

"I take it this is your idea of a fair fight?" Lao asked as she

moved around to the opposite edge as the big man stepped out

onto the platform, causing it to sway more than she had.

"My nephew asked for the privilege of taking you on for

himself," Phat replied, "You are a legendary fighter in your

own right, so defeating you will help to build his career. I trust

you appreciate the value of a good reputation."

"Of course," Lao replied as she assumed a fighting crouch, "I

usually have my own to think about, so I hope you don't expect

me to make this terribly easy."

"I would not think of it," Phat smiled, when a loud noise

rocked the air, causing him to react in dismay with a started,

"Sacred Ancestors...what was that?"

"That," Lao smiled as she nodded towards Keiko and Nabiki,

"Is a little insurance of my own I've kept in reserve just for the

occasion. I hope you don't mind party crashers."

As she said this other sounds broke the tranquility of the early

morning, even as Keiko and Nabiki threw off their chains and

tackled the gunmen nearest to them, taking them out with brutal

efficiency even before Phat had time to register the obvious fact

that he had been deceived in a rather significant fashion...

Being a hired thug in the employ of a major Crime Lord is not

exactly a thankless job, being one where a fellow of reasonably

average intelligence and a penchant for violence can earn a

respectable living with lots of attractive perks and only a

moderate risk factor that came with doing violent work for

violent people.

Of course there is that risk factor to worry about when your

employer is suddenly targeted for a major comedown by highly

skilled individuals with above-average resources. A case in point

were the three guards who stood on duty by the front entryway to

Phat's Island estate, who barely had time to register the fact that

there was some strange glow off in the bushes before their whole

world exploded all around them to the shattering cry of a

fearsome avenger:

"HAPPO SHO RYU KEN!"

The Ki blast was so devastating that those not caught within its

path were scattered like wheat chaff, and it was several moments

before any nearby guards were able to orient on their defense, by

which time a pair of towering figures plowed in to finish the task

at closer range and with more personal impact.

"Eat knuckles, sucka!" Bison cheerfully hailed as he

dispatched two men with as many punches while Honda made

like the proverbial truck and charged his opponents, knocking

them aside like a runaway rhino. The flat of his hands was

enough to pick men up and plant them through the other side of a

wall as the pair crashed through what remained of the front

entrance and barreled on through like a two-man demolition

squad creating maximum carnage in their wake. So fast did they

move that not a single gunman had time to draw a bead before

they were pounded into a coma.

"Those two sure know how to have a good time," Ken mused

aloud as he recovered from unleashing his Ki-blast. He spoke

into his mike and said, "This section's secured, Guile. How are

things in your corner?"

"Let you know in another minute," Guile hissed back as he

nodded to his companions, then together they swung through the

French windows through which they spied more of the gunmen,

catching these fellows off guard as the three of them made very

short work of yet more of the Chinese Tong soldiers. Cammy

corkscrewed her body as Chun-Li made lightning kicks and

punches while Guile unleashed his own unique Ki assault,

between themselves accounting for a half a dozen fighters.

Another group of gunmen paused in the act of rushing to check

out the commotion from the front and tried instead to direct their

weapons towards this new assault, only to find themselves the

subject of another ambush as a wall exploded from close nearby

and Ryoga appeared to dole out his own brand of one-man

vengeance. The lost boy had somehow found a place where he

could be of assistance and vented days of pent-up rage and

frustration on the luckless fellows who just happened to be in his

way, all the time shouting, "Akane, where are you?!"

Akane was, of course, keeping close company with her good

friend Kodachi, who was herself treating the men who came at

them to a flashing display of her ribbon technique, disarming and

disabling them with ruthless efficiency while a team of lady

Pirates more prudently used crossbows and other weapons to take

out more distant targets and potential snipers. Meanwhile other

gunmen were fleeing in terror at the maniac pair flashing twin

axes and an oversized spatula, making short work of any

resistance from their corner.

Ranma was first to reach the side of Nabiki and Keiko, having

spared no energy to carve a trail through any resistance he

encountered. He had been on the move from the moment he had

overheard the reference to a shark tank, which left open the

potential of Lao reverting to a state that was likely to have an

adverse affect on his iinazuke. He saw two men with guns taking

aim at the unarmed women and did not hesitate to pound the

thugs flat as he vaulted over them and landed in the space

between Nabiki and an astonished Gang Lord.

"Who are you?" Phat instantly demanded, not realizing that

the angry looking boy before him did not understand Chinese, not

that it ultimately mattered as Ranma had a reasonable grasp of

the meaning of the question.

"Trouble," Ranma replied as his hands became a blur, and

suddenly Phat felt himself struck by more than a hundred blows,

which knocked the huge man backwards and made him lose his

grip on the remote-control device that he had been clutching in

one hand.

Not, however, before the Tong lord had reflexively depressed a

button that caused the crane holding the platform to begin

unrolling into the water. Lao and her opponent were too busy

trading blows to notice at first, but it did not take No Lo Phat

very long to become aware that the water was beginning to pass

over his ankles.

"What's the matter, big boy?" Lao smiled, "Afraid of getting

wet?" and No Lo Phat could not quite believe what he was

seeing because it actually seemed as though she were walking on

the surface of the water. He saw her aim a kick his way and tried

to raise his own leg to block, only to find the resistance of the

water slowed him somewhat so that he could not quite move it in

time. She, however, moved as though she were greased lighting

and her kick, when it connected, hurt a LOT worse than he would

have imagined. He went staggering back into the pool just as

one of his "pets" sensed the movement and before he had time to

scream he had a truly awful encounter with a dentist's worst

nightmare.

His uncle was only mildly stunned as he landed, his fat

cushioning his body against the worst of Ranma's attack, so he

was able to catch the scream and turned in horror to see his

nephew in the jaws of a Great while Madam Lao-to his horrified

amazement-seemed to be uplifted by a jet of foam as she rode

the wave to the side of the pool and alighted to the side dry as a

bone, not even flecked by the roiling moisture.

"Your nephew needs more practice," Lao informed the gaping

Tong Lord, turning to the tank as though considering the point,

"Should I leave him like that, do you think? Those sharks do

look hungry... but then again, that is what you would do, isn't

it?"

She gestured with both hands, and suddenly the water rose up

again in a second column that roiled as though at her command.

A moment later No Lo Phat was deposited on the pavement

looking like something that had been chewed up and spat out

with the marks of the shark's teeth clearly evident on his torso.

"He needs medical attention," Lao noted as she folded her

arms in satisfaction, then took notice of the puzzled looks she

was receiving from the others and said, "Don't act so surprised. I

didn't do it for him, I just didn't want these poor fish to suffer

acute indigestion."

That was when Blossom and Lotus burst into the clearing,

brandishing their weapons: a Chinese spear and a three-sectioned

staff, frozen in defensive poses as they took in the scene slowly,

then relaxed as they found that the battle was over.

"My lady?" Blossom gasped, seeing the bleeding Mu Tai

boxer virtually at her feet and saying, "What happened to

him?"

"Never mind that," Lao folded her arms over her chest and

said, "Lotus, bind his wounds. Blossom, report on our status."

"We have secured the compound, my lady," Blossom replied

as Lotus put away her tri-staff and knelt down to try and staunch

the bleeding of the boxer, "All resistance has been met and dealt

with, and we have suffered no casualties. They were not very

good fighters, it seems, and we had them badly outnumbered."

"Not really," Guile said as he appeared with the rest of his

team falling in behind him, "We just had the element of surprise

on our side. Your people are good, Lao, but against automatic

weapons..."

"Let's just be content that we are the victors, Colonel," Lao

regarded Phat with a level expression, "Now the only question

is what are we to do with him? It's not like we can turn him into

the local authorities since he has money and influence enough to

buy his freedom."

"Leave that up to me," Cologne said as she hopped into view

on her staff, coming to stand only a short distance from the now

quite-pale Tong Lord as she said levelly, "We two have

unfinished business to discuss over a little matter I spoke with

you about the last time we met, is that not right, my dear

fellow."

"So it was you who got him to call off the bounty on me and

Keiko," Nabiki said as she came up to stand beside Ranma,

"The rumors I heard said that you were the Baba Yaga."

"Baba Yaga," Cologne snorted, "That amateur? So much for

the accuracy of rumor..."

"You?" Phat was trembling now, staring at Cologne as though

the rest of the world had ceased to have meaning. He forced

himself to roll with great effort into a kneeling posture, but a

single thrust from Cologne's staff paralyzed him from the neck

down. He sat there trembling with large open eyes, mouth

working like a fish as he saw the level gaze of the Amazon elder.

"I told you that Tendo Nabiki and Arigami Keiko were off

limits to you," Cologne said coldly, "It seems your pride got

the better of your judgement, as the greed that made you what

you are today prompted you to forget my warning of what would

happen should you disobey me. We Amazons know many forms

of pain that can be inflicted with a single touch. Should I leave

you like this for the remainder of your worthless life? Should I

give you to these pets you are so fond of? Should I take you with

us to be tried in an international court of law where your past

misdeeds will come back to haunt you...or perhaps use what

influence I have with the Chinese authorities in Beijing to have

them revoke your privileges here so that your own enemies will

be able to strike without the protection you now enjoy?"

Cologne turned a glance to one side and said, "What would you

recommend I do, Daughter-in-law? He is your enemy, and it was

against you that he first transgressed?"

Nabiki smiled at that, "You list some interesting choices, Elder,

but I believe Colonel Guile here will be happy to see justice

rendered in the international courts. Since we're already on an

island we only need to borrow one of his boats to take him out

into international waters..."

"What do you think, father?" Keiko asked as she turned to look at

Guile, reverting back to Japanese, "Do we let the courts decide

his fate or turn him over to the authorities here?"

"Hard to say," Guile stroked his chin, turning to look once again

at Akiko, "Why don't we ask the lady for her opinion? I'd say she

has an even better stake than any of us."

During all this time Akiko had been silent, watching what

transpired around her with the hypnotized fascination of someone

witnessing a live stage performance being conducted by a troop

of trained performers. It all had such an unreal quality about it

that she had only been able to stare from one group of strangers

to the other. Only Keiko had seemed incredibly real to her, and

when her daughter had thrown off her chains it was like watching

a part of herself come back to life after a long, silent dormancy.

Now the man who once had been so much more than a friend to

her was asking her opinion and she had to take stock of her

actual feelings on the matter. It was not an easy thing to do, not

after years of training herself to hide all feelings in a deep, dark

corner of her heart where others could not see them.

"I..." Akiko found the act of answering a question about the state

of her feelings more difficult than she would have imagined.

Once it had been so easy to say what she thought and felt

aloud...surely the habit would come back to her now that the

threat of reprisal had at last been lifted?

Phat made a soft noise, like a kind of grunt, then to everyone's

surprise he began to move, his hand slipping into his coat as

Cologne turned a fraction too slow, having only just caught the

movement. Under normal conditions she would have struck like

a cobra, but the very fact that the ganglord could move at all

surprised her so greatly that it took a bit longer than usual to

accept what she was seeing, and even longer to attempt a counter.

Fortunately Nabiki did catch the motion and cried, "Look out!"

Before anyone else had time to move she vaulted from Ranma's

side and knocked the small pistol out of the gang lord's hand

before he could finish aiming or pulling the trigger. Keiko was

just a fraction of a second behind, having thrown herself in front

of her mother as Nabiki's second kick spun the huge man around

so that Phat rotated like a giant top spinning around in a half

circle before collapsing at the feet of Keiko and her mother.

"Incredible," Cologne remarked, "He should not be able to move

at all, let alone draw a weapon."

"Perhaps your age is showing, Great Grandmother," Lao

remarked, "Though more likely I think the layers of fat

surrounding his body must have deflected your nerve-thrust. The

effect was evidently only temporary."

Keiko looked down at Phat and did not smile as she said, "I

made a promise that if I ever met you again I'd rearrange your

insides, Mister. I'm tempted to do that now, but first I want to

know why you were trying to shoot my mother."

"A very good question," Lao agreed as she, too, gave Phat a

most unfriendly look, "Even for you such a move is petty."

"I wonder," Nabiki frowned, "You said you got her from a

Tai Pan? What would one of the financial Overlords who run the

markets of Hong Kong be doing with my friend's mother as his

personal slave?"

Phat's fear appeared to melt at this point as the man took on a

look of cunning, realizing that he was not in peril of immediate

death, "I don't need to answer to you, Catfighter, but if you must

know this one had special training, which makes her very

valuable to him. He left very specific instructions on what to do

should I no longer have need of her services. I suggest you take

it up with him if you wish to know of his reasons."

"No," said Guile as he moved forward and seized hold of the

crime lord's silk robe, hauling the huge man up as though he

were much lighter than could be imagined so that Phat dangled

almost at eye level, "You're going to tell me, or I'm going to do

something I may not regret later on, not that you'll be in any

condition to worry about it."

There was no doubting his seriousness as the expression on

Guile's face made plain the pent up storm of angry emotions that

he had been holding down for several days, now ready to

explode. Phat reckoned his chances, saw the looks on the faces

of the other people and saw that not a single one of them was

prepared to lift a finger to prevent the big man from having his

vengeance. Everyone was waiting to see what he would do, and

that was when Phat finally made a decision. His life might not

be worth much at the moment, but cooperation held out the

possibility of extended life, so he opened his mouth to speak...and

suddenly felt his own blood in his mouth.

To say that Phat was surprised would have been a huge

understatement. Guile was no less stunned than anyone else

present was when the words his prisoner had been about to utter

came out in a cough, followed by a gurgle. It was only a few

seconds later when Phat felt the sharp pain in his back and began

to reason that this might have something to do with his current

condition, but by this time he was feeling incredibly heavy, and

he began to sink to the ground like a proverbial sack of potatoes

as Guile belatedly released him.

Everyone turned with stunned expressions to see Akiko step back

from the body where she had just rammed one of the chopsticks

that she had been hiding up her sleeve into the dying man's back.

Akiko's expression was strangely focused as a light that had not

been there before shown in her expression as she looked coldly

down at her nominal "owner."

"That was for my daughter," Akiko said coldly before the

focus slid from her eyes and she suddenly looked very surprised

at her hands as if unable to comprehend her own actions.

"Oh lordy," Bison murmured to Honda in English,

"Something tells me there's more to the little lady than we read

in the program."

"No fooling," the Sumo wrestler replied, wearing just as

surprised an expression.

Cologne came over to inspect the body, then looked up at Akiko

and said, "An expert thrust, very precise and at just the right

angle. A pity, he did not suffer."

"Mother?" Keiko whispered as she came to stand before the dark

haired woman who had given her life, and now took away the life

of a man while no one had even seen it coming.

Akiko looked from her hands to Keiko, looked at Guile, then at

her hands again, then her eyes rolled up and she finally fainted...

Continued.

Comments/Criticism/Fraternal Brotherhood of Ranmaniacs:

shadowmane

The mystery revealed and some insights into Zen and the Art of

being a Kuno.

Nabiki 1/2,

A Very Scary Thought

(An Altered Destiny)

by

Jim Robert Bader

Chapter 25, Part 2.

(Based on the Works of Rumiko Takahashi & Others)

"Tendo Natsume!"

Kurumi looked up from her leaf-raking in disbelief and

exclaimed, "Him again? Doesn't he ever give it up?"

"Kuno very stubborn and stupid," Shampoo conceded in equal

annoyance, "But even for him this very stubborn and stupid. Him

no learn he wasting time making challenge."

"Never mind you two," Natsume said as she passed them heading

for the door, "I will answer his challenge. Three straight defeats

should make him see reason."

Kurumi and Shampoo exchanged dubious looks, but Kasumi

looked up from her laundry and remarked, "Tatewaki wishes to

challenge you again, Neechan? Oh my, he's never been this

persistent with Akane."

"And why am I so favored?" Natsume wondered as she took a

defensive pose with her rug beater in one hand, which same she

had moments before been employing for once as its designer had

intended.

"Tendo Natsume!" Kuno advanced into the yard with a strange

look in his eyes that seemed in equal parts to mix fever with

passion, "I come at last to defeat you and prove decisively that I,

Kuno Tatewaki, am worthy of your attention! Prepare to meet the

wrath of the Blue Thunder as he visits Heaven's vengeance on

you, most worthy of all women."

Natsume sighed, "If I am so worthy of your interest, why is it

necessary that you defeat me?"

"Because a warrior with your spirit cannot lower herself to date

with lesser men," Kuno raised his bokken in salute then assumed

an offensive crouch, "Only the best of all mortal men can hope to

aspire to be worthy of a goddess of your stature, and I am that

worthy mortal, my Diana! Have at thee!"

The fight went pretty much the same as the previous two days

with Kuno lunging towards Natsume with overconfidence

radiating in his gesture. This time, however, he totally

overcommitted himself and left too great an opening for it to have

been natural. As Natsume side-stepped his thrust and brought

her rug-beater into play she wondered if it were some manner of

feint to lure her off guard and was very surprised to find him

crumple to his knees at the merest touch of her weapon to the

back of his head.

Natsume stared down at the boy who had fallen too easily for her

liking, wondering where all of his artistry of the previous two

days had vanished. She was so intent in studying his prone form

that she almost missed the appearance of the gnome-like Master

Happosai, who also seemed surprised at the speed of his

dispatch.

"That's it?" the little Master sounded both disappointed and

disturbed, "The boy goes down from that little love-tap of yours?

Is that all that's left of his will and determination?"

"I do not understand, Master," Natsume admitted her confusion,

"I did not hit him that hard."

"Hmm," Happosai stroked his chin while looking down,

"Something's not right here. They boy may not be the best fighter

in the world but he's had better training than this. A real

mystery..."

"What mystery?" Shampoo said with a snort of indifference as

she and Kurumi came up to join them, "Kuno always braggart,

think him better than everybody. Him bound to hit limits one

day."

"Small loss," Kurumi agreed, "You should let me handle him,

Oneechan. I'd be happy to send this fool packing the next time

he shows his face here."

"Aren't you two even remotely curious about why this fellow's

skill seems to have deserted him so suddenly?" Natsume voiced

her own mild irritation as she knelt down over the boy to feel his

brow, amazed to find a temperature there, "He's burning up!"

"Oh my," Kasumi said as she also joined them, "You don't

suppose the poor boy is sick, do you? Should I go call Doctor

Tofu?"

Shampoo blinked her eyes then hastily said, "Ah, better let me,

Kasumi-chan. You still have laundry to do, and that more

important than Kuno."

"Hmm," Happosai said again with a thoughtful expression,

reaching down to lift one of Kuno's eyelids so that he could study

the eye itself from close inspection, "Sick you say? Looks more

to me as if he's suffering withdrawal symptoms. Notice how his

eye's dilated?"

"Eh?" Natsume looked closer then saw that Kuno's exposed iris

was wider than normal, "You're right! He does have that glazed

look about him that suggests drug addiction. How sad...he must

be one of those who use artificial means to bolster his school

performance."

Shampoo was about to dismiss the point when a sudden thought

occurred to her and she noted, "Drugs you say? Shampoo never

hear him like that. Sound more like stupid Rose girl..."

"You mean Kodachi?" Kasumi asked with a puzzled expression,

"Oh my! And Akane is so close to her, the same way Ranma is

close to Tatewaki. I've never heard that either one of them was

under some special form of medication."

"It might not be voluntary," Happosai sniffed, "I doubt it's

prescribed, although you never call tell these days with most

doctors. Maybe we should let that Tofu fellow make his own

diagnosis...but I have a sneaking suspicion we may have found

out why this boy gave such a poor showing today."

"Oh?" Natsume looked at the ancient Master with keen interest,

"What makes you think that, Master?"

"Think about it," Happosai's eyes twinkled with amusement, "His

sister's been out of town for the better part of a week and he

started acting peculiar on the first day when he issued his

challenge. I don't claim to know the fellow as well as either

Ranma or Akane but I've never heard of him coming around here

like this so eager for a beating. I think he started having

withdrawal symptoms about that time, and it's been getting

steadily worse the past three days. From the look of exhaustion

on his face I doubt he's had much sleep and very little food. The

body tends to get like that when denied what it's really after."

"So he's an addict, huh?" Kurumi sniffed, "Figures. I knew when

I first saw him that the guy was nothing but trouble."

"How horrible!" Natsume exclaimed, "Are you saying that he

may have been taking drugs supplied by his own sister? What if

it was some kind of poison?"

"In that case he would have gotten better once it got cut off,"

Happosai said, "Not worse, unless it's been the antidote she's

been feeding him. Either way I think it's a good idea if we call

on the services of the good Doctor Tofu."

"I make call," Shampoo said as she hastily turned away, all the

while thinking on what she had seen in the eyes of Natsume. Her

prospective sister-in-law was showing obvious concern for

Tatewaki Kuno, which did not bode well in her eyes with a

desirable implication. Kurumi's own troubled expression

mirrored her own in regards to how Natsume seemed to be

allowing herself to develop sympathy for the Kendo artist. She

would have to report on this to Nabiki when she returned, fully

aware of how her Airen would react to the prospect of having

Kuno for an in-law.

She wished her husband/wife a speedy return from her

adventures, hoping everything was well, then silently chiding

herself for lacking the faith to believe that Nabiki would triumph

over whatever challenge she was presently confronting. She had

to believe this, it was the only thing that kept her sane as she

tried to hold it all together for the sake of her new family, three

members of whom were already beginning to feel to her like

sisters.

Shaking off her moody state she returned to the house and began

to dial the number to Tofu-Sensei's office...

Lao stood with her hands held to the sides of Akiko's temples,

eyes closed as her fingers probed the demure Japanese woman

with great delicacy, then at last she pulled away and sighed,

turning to look at the anxious faces all around her.

"You were right, Great-Grandmother, she has had special

training," Lao informed Cologne's tired expression, "I had

thought I had seen all kinds of mental conditioning, but this one

is special, and if I didn't know any better I would say it showed

Amazon training."

"You are very close," Cologne replied, "A variation on the Xi

Fang Xiao, known only to one order that was founded by a

renegade Amazon from before your time. I knew her from long

ago, a very competent Master of the art and quite ruthless, even

by our standards."

"She must be real hell if that's true," Nabiki snorted, earning a

sour look from the Elder, "So what exactly did they do with

Arigami-san?"

"Nothing much," Lao shrugged, "Basic Pleasure Slavery routine,

with an alternate personality cued by special conditions where

she reverts to being an assassin. Nothing major-league of course,

just quick jabs and killing strokes delivered at close range..."

"The perfect sleeper," Chun-Li said aloud, "In a manner of

speaking."

"Did you just make a joke?" Cammy lifted her eyebrows, earning

a sour look from the other woman, "Wonders never cease."

"You mean to say she's been trained to kill on command?"

Ranma asked with a puzzled look.

"Oh yes," Lao said grimly, "Once she lulls her prey into a false

sense of security she strikes with absolutely no warning

whatsoever. A very professional job, I could admire such

handiwork if it wasn't so appalling."

Guile knelt down as he looked up at Akiko, then said, "How are

you doing, kid?"

Akiko found it difficult at first, but with some effort she actually

managed to smile back at him, "I have done better...Guile-san.

You are looking most well I am happy to see, and Keiko-chan..."

"I'm here, Mom," Keiko knelt down in front of her mother, who

was sitting on a sofa inside the House, where everyone had

gathered after having finished tying up the last of Phat's

henchmen, "I'm so glad that you're alive and everything. There's

so much I want to tell you...so many things have happened..."

"I suspect we each have stories we would like to share," Akiko

said with a faint smile of hope before looking at her hands again

with a sigh, "But first...I have to come to terms with what I seem

to have become. I know this must be surprising to some of you,

but I...am finding it somewhat difficult to reconcile memories

with recent experience. I know that my Master...my...the man I

have lived with for the past four years of my life...trained me to

be very good at...certain skills, but...it never really sank in until

now just what I have been doing at his request on...more than one

occasion."

"You mean...?" Akane hesitated to complete her question, but

Nabiki shook her head grimly then said, "How much do you

remember?"

Akiko took her time in answering, then softly murmured, "Too

much...there is blood on my hands...and not simply from this

man..." she inclined her head towards the pool area, where Phat's

body still rested, alongside his bandaged and unconscious

nephew.

"But why do this to you?" Ryoga asked in confusion, "Why teach

you to kill? I thought they wanted you...uh...for other stuff

besides that..."

"Isn't it obvious, Ryoga-kun?" replied Kodachi in a very sad

voice, "No one suspects a woman like her of harboring lethal

intentions. That makes her the perfect weapon, one who can be

used and discarded if she becomes inconvenient."

"Inconvenient?" Keiko turned an angry look towards Kodachi,

then slowly got up and came to stand in front of her lover and

friend, "My mother isn't inconvenient!"

"I know," Kodachi replied, "To you she is important, a human

being with rights and needs, but to people such as the ones who

trained her to kill..." she shook her head sadly, "She is a weapon,

to be used and discarded as needed."

Keiko stared at Kodachi as if wanting to deny what she was

saying, but then she turned to see the sad look in her mother's

eyes, pivoted with a glare at Lao and growled, "Who did this to

her?"

"At a guess I would say it was the 108 Dragons," Lao replied

with a sage look, "I know their leader, he is an honorable man,

but many in the organization are not as scrupulous in their

methods. Her former owner is a case in point, quite obviously a

ruthless professional who saw it as in his interest to raise Akiko-

san from pretty courtesan to trained assassin. Judging from the

way she killed just now I think she has been programmed with

certain key commands, no doubt triggered by certain words,

situations or phrases. In this case she killed Phat before he had a

chance to reveal the identity of the Tai Pan who trained her. No

doubt she has other imperatives placed in her subconscious to

activate her killing mode when the opportunity presents itself and

it would be in the best interest of her Master."

"When Phat was going to kill her he said something about being

given instructions from the guy for doing her when she no longer

was of use to him," said Ken with a queasy expression, "Oh man,

Chun-Li... does that ever take me back a few years."

"Don't remind me," Chun-Li said with a haunted look as she

stared at the ground, while Bison and Cammy also seemed to be

momentarily lost in the spaces.

"No doubt you have several self-preservation imperatives also

incorporated in your make-up," Lao resumed, looking directly at

Akiko, "No doubt you interpreted one of them as extending to

protecting the life of your daughter. When Phat threatened you

both I saw the look in your face...I should have realized at that

moment that you were determined to kill him."

"Can it be undone?" Guile asked with a worried expression.

"It is reversible," Lao replied, "But it would take time and great

patience from someone who knows what they are doing. The 108

Dragons are very thorough in covering their tracks...and I would

not put it past them to incorporate a self-destruct program if

someone attempts to deprogram her in an improper way. It might

be something as simple as to turn off her self-protect imperatives

with a secondary suggestion on how to place herself in a life-

threatening situation. It could be something more complex such

as a command to commit suicide, or even to cause her heart to

stop beating. I have heard of cases such as hers where even more

extreme measures were applied to terminating the life of an agent

who has outlived her services. I...do not think you would care to

hear some of the more lurid details..."

"I think the next obvious question is who can do it," Ukyo noted

softly, giving Lao a hard look of suspicion.

Lao turned to Cologne and said simply, "I, of course, have the

training, but this is a delicate case and could no doubt be best

attended to by you, Elder."

Cologne looked troubled as she stared at the anxious Akiko

before replying, "I know what would need to be done, but it is a

complex operation involving the re-routing of various impulses

and subconscious thought processes, and it has been many years

since I handled a case this complex. Shampoo would be a better

candidate as I can coach her through the areas where her

inexperience might limit her effectiveness, but I would be

reluctant to risk her..."

"Risk her?" Nabiki asked with a note of concern, "How?"

"In all likelihood," the Elder answered, "She is also programmed

to attack the one attempting to undo her programming. The risk

is that Shampoo may drop her guard in order to reach her deepest

levels where the imperatives are the most intense..."

"All this talk of programming," Ranma said uncomfortably, "It's

like you're treating her like some kind of a computer...'

"That's what the human brain is, kid," Bison shrugged, "A pretty

complex piece of hardware, and like any system it's just a matter

of loading in the wrong kind of software..."

"In your case it didn't take much of a virus," Cammy sniffed.

"Look who's talking," Chun-Li growled, "MI-6 assassin..."

"Hey!" Cammy rounded on her, fists bawled in anger, "You

trying to start something, Zahn?"

"More like finish unfinished business," Chun-Li glared at her,

"Or are you forgetting how Vega once sent you after my father?"

"How can I forget it!" Cammy threw up her arms in exasperation,

"You never let me forget it! Nobody lets me forget how I used to

work for hire as a freelancer! You bloody hell well know that I

never had any choice in the matter, anymore than Mister Golden

Gloves here..."

"Yeah," Bison snorted, "And let's not leave out the part where

you tried to snuff me once..."

"So I wasn't perfect," Cammy shrugged, "I could always use

more practice..."

"THAT IS ENOUGH!" Guile roared as he got back to his feet

and glared at his most intimidating, "You two have been acting

like a couple of angry teenagers ever since we started out on this

trip and I, for one, am sick and tired of playing your nursemaid!

Either you both get over it or I'm taking you both over my knee,

and I really mean that!"

"You know you're really cute when you're infuriated, Boss man?"

Cammy said with an innocent expression, earning a very dirty

look from Chun-Li's direction.

In spite of everything Akiko found herself smiling, and when

Kodachi noticed this she asked, "May I ask what you find so

amusing, Arigami-san?"

"Those two," Akiko replied, "How long have they been in love

with you, Guile-san?"

"Huh?" Guile looked totally startled by the question, while both

Cammy and Chun-Li sobered with matching looks of round-eyed

astonishment.

"What makes you say a thing like that?" Akane asked Akiko.

"The same way I know that you and the boy share feelings for

each other," Akiko smiled at Akane and Ryoga knowingly, "Or

that you have very strong feelings for my daughter," she said to

Kodachi.

"What?" Guile blinked twice in even greater confusion, while

Keiko and Kodachi both colored a bright crimson.

"I see you have other skills besides sticking people you don't like

in sensitive places," Nabiki noted to Akiko with a sardonic

smirk.

"It is not very hard when you have been trained to see things with

clear eyes and an open heart," Akiko sat more upright as the

sensation of freedom slowly permeated her consciousness, "And

how long have you been engaged to this boy who seems so

reluctant to leave your side, Tendo-san? I won't even go into

what I know about those two," she gave Ukyo and Perfume a

knowing look that made both girls suddenly appear nervous.

"Well," Lao said aloud, "As fascinating as all of this is, I believe

that it is time that we take our leave of this establishment. It will

not be too long before someone on the mainland becomes aware

that there has been a lot of activity on this island."

"Just don't forget about our agreement," Nabiki pointedly

reminded her.

"But of course," Lao replied with a winning smile, "Your missing

people will be returned to you as promised, both Hinako-Sensei

and the charming Mister Blanka..."

"Don't forget about Mousse," Akane noted.

"Ah," Perfume hesitated, "Must we?"

"Yeah," Ukyo gave Lao a professional look, "How much would

you take to keep him in that cage for a little while longer?"

"That depends," Lao smiled, "I am not an unreasonable person, I

could give you a good bargain..."

"As much as I'm tempted to go along with that deal," Nabiki

sighed, "It really wouldn't be a nice thing to do...even to Mousse.

As much as I hate to say it, we'd better bring him back to

Nerima."

"As you will," Lao replied, turning to leave, "Lotus, Blossom,

have our people convene on the docks. We are leaving

immediately and I want everyone ready to travel."

"Lao-sama," Keiko suddenly spoke up, her tone at once as

deferential as when she had been chained and garbed in the

manner of a Harem slave.

"Yes?" Lao gave her a curious look, almost of expectation.

"Madam," Keiko seemed to select the word carefully before she

continued, "Oh behalf of my mother, I ask that you take her with

you and help restore her to what she was..."

"What?" Ranma gasped.

"Are you serious?" Guile looked horrified.

"Are you nuts?" Ryoga said more directly.

"Kei-chan," Nabiki said more evenly, "What do you think you're

doing?"

"I'm doing what I believe is right for my mother," Keiko turned to

Akiko and said, "You need help, Mom, and Lao's the best there

is at this stuff. I can't do it, Elder Cologne is reluctant to try and

neither of her two great-granddaughters has sufficient training.

You said it yourself, my lady, you're the one who knows how to

undo what those Dragons did to my mother. I know you can help

her..."

"And I am willing to try," Lao replied, "I owe you at least that

much, Kei-chan, but...realistically speaking...I don't think your

idea is very popular with the others."

"I don't care," Keiko stated flatly, "This doesn't concern them, this

is between you, me and my mother."

"I know you want what's best for her," Nabiki told Keiko, "But I

don't think you're being very objective about it..."

"Oh yeah?" Keiko rounded on Nabiki, "A lot you know! You've

only seen Lao Kung the way you want to see her, the last two

days she's been nothing but the enemy to you, and you've done

everything you can to vilify and take her down for what you think

she is, but I've known her a lot longer than I've known any of you

guys and I say she can be trusted. What's the worst that can

happen? Mom's already been trained to be both a slave and an

assassin."

"But Keiko-chan," Akane reasoned, "She's a criminal..."

"Oh, and that's some kind of a newsflash?" Keiko scoffed, "Guess

what? I already figured that out! And besides, she's also my

friend. She took care of me when there was nobody else who

could do so, she gave me back my reason to live and taught me to

be strong in ways you can't even suspect. If she's done it for

selfish reasons, then I'm grateful anyway, because without her I

can pretty confidently say I wouldn't even be standing here today,

so think about that when you're judging her by your standards!"

"This isn't open to negotiations," Guile moved around until he

was standing before his daughter, looking down at her with a

hard look that was also mixed with a good deal of concern and

admiration, "I know you've got loyalty to the people who you

think have looked out for you, and I don't pretend that I've done

anything in the last ten years that entitles me to the same kind of

respect, but you have to know in your heart that this lady is a

cold-hearted killing machine who treats people like objects she

can buy and sell like..."

"May I be permitted to speak here?" Akiko asked, silencing

everyone by the very calm and matter-of-fact way that she

phrased the question. She stood up from the sofa, then turned

around and faced Madam Lao directly, "It seems that I am not the

only one here who needs to learn that I am no longer without a

voice in the running of my own life. I have heard the arguments

on both sides, now I will ask you on my own behalf if you will

help me to overcome this thing that I seem to have become..."

"What?" Ken reacted.

"Y-you can't be serious!" Chun-Li stammered.

"This is nuts," Bison shook his head as if to clear it.

"Hear me out," Akiko stated calmly, turning a look towards Guile

that was both intensely personal and in some ways almost

pleading, "For four long years I have lived through what I can

only call a walking nightmare. I have done things that I cannot

bear to repeat, and the shame is too great for me to live with. If I

return home as I am I will only bring shame upon myself, as I

would my family if they still acknowledged my existence, but I

would also pose a clear and evident threat to myself and those

around me. I would not need a command imperative to wish to

end my life, but I find that I am not willing to embrace suicide

either since I have many years to catch up upon and would prefer

to do so with my daughter and...if he accepts...my cherished

husband."

Guile blinked, almost staggering as those last words hit him.

"There is also the danger," Akiko resumed, "That

my...imperatives might become active beyond my ability to

control. I could hurt someone without meaning to, and that is a

risk I am not willing to take, another reason to end this matter as

swiftly as it can be concluded. Please...if you care for me, then

allow me to do this. I know what is at stake here better than

anyone else in this room. I would not wish to come home as I

am, so unless certain steps are taken to correct what has been

done to me, then I dare not leave here at all."

"We can get you the best doctors to help out," Guile pleaded,

taking Akiko by her arms in his huge hands with a tenderness

that made both Cammy and Chun-Li swallow, "We were able to

deprogram Bison and Cammy..."

"I doubt very much that their condition was the same as mine,"

Akiko replied, "I am very much aware of what a ticking time

bomb I have become and I would prefer to have the fuse

extinguished. When this is done I can come home...and then we

can renew our relationship and get to know one another once

again. I may have changed too much to regain your interest, and

perhaps you have changed as well...although I very much doubt

this," she added with an affectionate smile, "Besides...there are

other parties who have an interest, and if I wish to remain

competitive I had best regain my complete composure."

Ranma was looking at Nabiki, who was scowling fiercely, "Nab-

chan...?"

"I'm thinking about it," Nabiki grit her teeth and glared, "I don't

want to say this, but if Elder Cologne can't undo this..."

"Not can't," Cologne replied, "But the matter requires a younger

woman in better physical shape than myself, willing to risk the

consequences should the process of unlocking Arigami-san's

mind involve touching as many deeper levels as I suspect it

would. My great-granddaughter has the training and the skill,

and obviously the stamina it will take to accomplish this. Since

Arigami-san and her daughter are both willing, it seems to my

old heart to be the most acceptable arrangement."

"Acceptable?" Akane blurted, but before she could say more

Nabiki turned a harsh look towards Lao and said, "What

guarantees would we have that you won't take her someplace else

and sell her?"

"And who would I know that I dislike enough to do that?" Lao

replied with a lifted eyebrow, "She is a weapon trained to kill, a

pretty package concealing an explosive compound. This is no

small task I am being asked to undertake her, and neither is it a

particular pleasure considering the risks I would be taking."

"Fine," Keiko said, "Then take me with you. I'll do anything you

ask if it means helping my mother."

"Now wait a minute..." Guile started up again.

"No," said Honda, startling everybody as he pushed his way to

the center, leaving Bison standing where he was with a stunned

expression, "Now just hold on here a minute, Colonel, all of you

guys. Take a moment and consider this, okay? You heard what

the lady was saying a moment ago? It's either this or she might

wind up committing Hari-Kiri. It's what any Japanese lady with

an ounce of integrity might do in her situation. You really want

to risk that, Guile? I sure as hell wouldn't."

"You feeling all right, buddy?" Ken asked the Sumo.

"As a matter of fact no," Honda glared at him, "I had a younger

sister once...some guy she was dating wouldn't take no for an

answer, beat her up pretty badly, and I think maybe even did a lot

worse. When she got out of the hospital she tried to kill herself.

I hunted that guy down and made him apologize for dishonoring

her...right before I put him in the hospital. You ask me, this

lady's been through Hell and I don't even want to think about

what she's feeling at the moment. I say we let the Pirate lady

have a try at straightening her out. She's got nothing else to lose

except her honor."

"Well spoken," Lao nodded, "And just to prove to those of you

who still have believe that I am entirely lacking in honor I give

my word to Elder Cologne that I will not take advantage of

Akiko-san or try to switch her loyalties to me or in any way abuse

my trust. I will simply do what is necessary to help her ease her

conscience and remove the stigma that is presently upon her, and

I will return her to you within four months time a whole and fully

restored woman much like what you remember, Colonel Guile. If

I break my word or violate this pledge then you may punish me in

whatever way you see fit, Great Grandmother. I will do what is

right by Arigami Akiko and her daughter, whose loyalty and

affection I greatly prize beyond all other treasures, or you may

decide my fate as your conscience dictates. If the lady is willing

to trust herself to me then I will not betray that trust on the name

of my Ancestors, may they judge and punish me if I oathbreak."

"An acceptable vow," Cologne nodded, "One I will hold you to.

Daughter-in-law?"

Nabiki tried one more time, "What if Perfume and Shampoo were

to work together...?"

"Ah," Perfume spoke up again, "I not know as much as Cousin,

and I already learn limits to skill in Xi Fang Xiao technique. I no

wish to risk error again with Red's mother."

For no reason that anyone else present could tell, Ukyo studied

the ceiling and had the most peculiar expression...

Guile was clenching his fists with a hard look on his face, but

Akiko's hand touched his wrist as she smiled, forcing him to

relax a little.

"It is only for a little while," she reminded before adding, "And

besides which, I know two other ladies who will not be

displeased to have that time with you so that they may be able to

make you a better counter-offer."

Cammy and Chun-Li were quick to find other places to look than

at anyone else in that moment.

"Mistress Lao?" Kodachi suddenly spoke up, "Would you be

adverse to taking on another apprentice?"

"What?" Akane gasped in disbelief.

"Kodachi?" Ranma looked at her in dismay.

"I want to be where Kei-chan is," Kodachi smiled at them

reassuringly before turning a look towards Keiko, then to Lao

herself, "At the side of the woman that I love and with the

Madam who has cured me of my illness. I owe you a debt of

honor, Lao-sama, and a Kuno always pays her debts."

"Nobly spoken," Lao nodded, "There is much that I can teach

you, and not just in the pleasurable arts. You have an able, alert

mind, and Kei-chan is already very fond of your company. I

would not wish you two to be parted, any more than I would see

harm done to one who has already been wronged by people she

once trusted."

"Is this true?" Guile turned an astonished look towards Keiko.

"Yeah," Keiko said tightly, but smiled at him, then at Kodachi,

"I'm afraid it is. Call it my lack of normal standards, but I'm nuts

about Kodachi."

"Now wait a minute," Nabiki stared to say when Kodachi raised

her hand and smiled at her, then calmly walked over to Ranma.

"I wish that there were some means by which I could apologize

for the terrible way that I have treated you in the past, Saotome-

san," Kodachi said with a sincere expression, then totally

surprised him as she leaned forward and kissed him on the

mouth, softly murmuring in his ear, "So you know what could

have been."

She turned to Nabiki and this time Kodachi grinned, "And just so

your iinazuke is not too jealous, this is for what might have been

with Kaneda-sama," and with that she threw her arms around the

astonished Nabiki and passionately kissed her. When she finally

let go Nabiki had a very stunned expression. Kodachi turned

back to Keiko and linked arms with her, then turned to Lao and

said, "I am ready to go whenever you wish it, my lady."

"Then let us waste no more time on this infernal island," Lao

turned to look at Guile, "I will not betray my word to you, Guile-

san, and if it is any consolation to you, when I have finished I

may also have the name of the fellow who has held Akiko in

thrall for the past four years. I trust you will want to return some

day to Hong Kong and pay your respects to the Tai Pan?"

Guile's expression went from sour to sullen as his eyes gleamed

with a certain light, "You can bet on that, lady. Just watch out

the next time we cross paths."

"In truth I am looking forward to it," Lao smiled in a sultry purr,

then turned around and said, "This way, people. The sooner we

are on our way the sooner you people can relax and stop looking

for places in my back to stick the daggers."

"Isn't there a little problem, though?" Bison asked as they filed

out of the battle-damaged mansion and followed a path leading

towards the nearby pier, "Without your ship you're pretty much

grounded, lady."

"You think so?" Lao sounded strangely confident as they

followed the path and came at last to a manmade harbor, "Try

looking over in that direction."

"Huh?" Honda asked, then halted abruptly, causing several

people to collide into each other behind his back, which he barely

noticed. He shaded his brow with his hands and said, "What's

that?"

"What the...?" Guile shared his astonishment, as did everyone

else but Lao and her people, for they could see the fog rising out

from the bay, filling up the area just before the image of a

massive ship appeared...the Floating Piece of Junk, intact and

looking no worse for its travels.

"My ships is magical," Lao explained without breaking stride,

acknowledging her people, who were gathered about the pier

filing into a set of longboats, "Or should I say Accursed? So long

as the Dragon's Orb is still connected to its center it can never be

truly destroyed and will repair itself in good order, just like any

other truly immortal being."

"But the crew..." Ken started to say.

"Watertight compartments," Lao said simply, "And the Undines

do the rest. This is hardly the first time we have been struck

amidships and sunk with all hands, and my crew is well-trained

in emergency drills. Besides, the interior is in another dimension

separate from the compartment where we battled. You will even

find that the deck has been cleansed of any lingering smell,

outside of the stench of rotting timbers. Now, I believe that I

promised to return your missing colleagues..."

"Ahoy land!" cried a familiar childish voice as they saw several

figures crowded about the upper deck looking over the side in

their direction. There was a group of children gathered around

Hinako, while the other figure close nearby was swamped by

beautiful ladies clinging to his huge body and playing with his

fiery red hair as though he were the most adorable thing that they

had seen in a lifetime.

"Somebody shoot me," Bison groaned.

"Man," Ken stared in amazement, "Now I know how I want to

celebrate my bachelor party...OW! Chun-Li, what did you do

that for?"

"Eliza's getting such a report out of this one, Mister..." Chun-Li

glowered.

"Charlie?" Guile said in disbelief, "What are you doing out

there?"

"Well, you know," Blanka shrugged as he grinned back

somewhat dreamily, "I seem to be real popular here,

Guile...maybe they just don't see enough guys, or you can chalk it

up to my Animal Magnetism."

"He dies for that," Cammy rumbled in a very low voice.

"Just get over here and we can get things started," Lao replied as

she cupped her hands and called out, "Lower the side!" then she

added more levelly "You can use this ship, now that my people

are finished repairing it."

"Huh?" Guile blinked his eyes as something large came sailing

around from the side of the POJ, which turned out to be none

other than the forty foot yacht they had begun their mission using.

"After all," Lao smiled at him, "How else are you going to

convince your superiors that you were on a dangerous secret

mission that involved an unscheduled trip here? If you return

with all of your expensive equipment intact they will be much

less favorably inclined to investigate your handling of these

matters."

"Let's get this over with," Nabiki growled, feeling a bitter

aftertaste from the devil's bargain they had made, "I think we're

all ready to head home for Nerima."

Lao favored a side-glance towards Nabiki while Hinako and

Honda were let down into the yacht, which was then sailed into

the harbor, then the Pirate queen at last said, "One thing you

ought to know before I leave, Tendo-san. The bone-pit you

discovered is more than just a repository for the remains of

previous captains and guests, it tends to reflect the darker aspects

of the nature of anyone who finds themselves trapped within it.

You emerged from that pit believing I was the most evil human

being who has ever lived, which I hope that I have demonstrated

that I am not in your estimate. Consider that what the pit

reflected inside you was something dark and more negative to

which you adversely reacted. Think well enough on that before

you are ready to consign me to the flames of perdition."

Nabiki said nothing, though Ranma said aloud what others were

thinking, "Are we really going to let her get away with this?

After everything she's done?"

"I'm with Saotome," Chun-Li glared, "I've got a list of Interpol

charges with your name on it, Lao Kung. No way is this thing

finished between us."

"I wouldn't want it any other way," Lao replied with a knowing

smirk, "You and Miss White have certainly piqued my interest

during this encounter. I look forward to a re-match where we can

settle the issue to our mutual liking. I just hope you both are

prepared to lose more than your liberty should I be the victor. Its

good incentive for your training."

"Ulp," Cammy leaned closer to Chun-Li and said, "Maybe we

ought to think about this some more, Zahn..."

"You do that," Lao smiled, fetching Nabiki a last look before she

added, "I expect your training to be no less intense when I return

in four months to deliver the goods, as I have promised. Should

you lose to me I guarantee you will receive a complete and

thorough education, and you might even have it in you to

graduate from slave to slave owner."

"No thank you," Nabiki said coldly, "As I would not be a slave,

so I would not be a slave owner. I'll leave that to someone who

thinks other people live at her sufferance."

"As you wish," Lao turned away and stepped out onto the pier,

heading for a waiting longboat that some of her followers had

rowed in their direction, "If you ever change your mind, I'll be

waiting."

Akiko turned to follow the blue haired Pirate lady, as did

Kodachi and Keiko. Akane turned to her friend and said, "You

don't have to do this..."

"Yes I do," Keiko paused, reaching out to grasp her friend's hand

and squeeze it with affection, then leaned forward and kissed her

on the cheek before turning to Ryoga and saying, "You take care

of each other. I expect you not to get too lost when I see you both

next."

She paused and gave Nabiki a last wry look, "Oh by the way,

Nab-chan...when I get back I'm going to take another shot at

getting my title back, so I expect you to be ready."

Nabiki raised both eyebrows at this but said nothing.

"This stinks," Ukyo growled, as she watched her old friend walk

off with the others, "Isn't there any way we can change their

minds?"

"Don't bother, Daughter-in-law," Cologne replied, "They have

made their choices, it is not our place to contradict them."

"But Kei-chan may not be acting under her own volition," Ryoga

countered, "That witch can control minds, there's no telling what

she did to Kei-chan the last time she was with her..."

"Does she seem to you like someone who cannot make her own

decisions?" Cologne eyed him sardonically, "If so you do her a

discredit. That is a very brave, very noble young lady, and I

believe someday she will make a formidable Amazon, should

that be the path her fate takes her."

"You may be impressed," Guile said softly, "But she's my

daughter, and I should be the one looking out for her interests. I

don't trust Madam Lao, and I sure as Hell don't like letting her

walk away without paying for her many crimes..."

"You think she isn't already?" Cologne eyed him sardonically,

"Think again. My great granddaughter is suffering every day of

her life for her sins in ways the rest of you cannot imagine. Do

you think it is all fun and games on her ship? It is a very sad fate

never having a home but the open sea, never able to return to the

land of your birth. She is creating a village atmosphere to

compensate for her loss, but how does one compensate for the

loss of pride in knowing you are an eternal exile?"

"That's too philosophical for me," Nabiki sighed, "I guess we can

always plan for the future and how we can take her down next

time. Now that we know what she's good at, the best place to

beat her will be in Nerima."

"Where, I trust, we are headed at the moment," Hinako-Sensei

said very primly with a large Kawai smile on her face, "After we

make a little stopover on the way."

"Stopover?" Nabiki blinked, "What do you mean?"

"To fetch some palm trees as you promised Principal Kuno,"

Hinako grinned, "Don't you remember the reason you gave for

this little 'fact-finding' enterprise of yours, Tendo-san?"

"D'oh!" Nabiki winced as she slapped herself on the forehead,

"How could I forget? That maniac will try to shave me bald if he

doesn't get his damned Tropical plantlife!"

"In a Temperate Zone like Japan?" Blanka asked with a puzzled

expression.

"You have to know our Principal to figure it out," Ranma assured

before turning to Nabiki and asking, "Is there anything I can do

to help?"

"I'll make a little deal with you, Ranma-kun," Nabiki smiled,

"Next time your father gets it into his head to go on one of his

training missions, why don't you go with him and I'll stay home

for a change? That should make my life just about perfect."

"So where do we go to pick up some palm trees in this neck of

the woods?" Bison asked.

"No problem," Ken smiled, "I'll have them flown in with just a

phone call. Where do you want them delivered?"

"Furinkan High School," Hinako replied, "Just on the outskirts of

Tokyo in the Nerima province."

"Place is easy enough to find," Ukyo snorted.

"Yes," Perfume agreed, "Look for school with stupid boy holding

a bokken and spouting bad poetry."

"Sounds like my own alma matter," Bison shrugged, "Except for

the Bokken. Bet the place gets trashed a lot."

"I'm going to regret this," Honda groaned, "But why?"

"Because you can't fix what ain't Bokken of course," Bison

smiled matter-of-factly.

Massive groans from the rest of Guile's crew were accompanied

by blank looks for everyone else but Nabiki.

"Sir," Cammy looked at Guile pleadingly, "Can I just pretend he's

evil again so I can bang him up a little?"

"Don't tempt me," Guile rounded off and headed for the yacht,

"Let's get out of here before I really have to hurt something..."

"Say," mused Akane as she glanced around in mild confusion,

"Aren't we missing somebody? I thought you guys were going to

bring Mousse along with you."

"Mousse?" Honda said with a puzzled look.

"He means the Monkey," Bison clued him in.

"I resemble that," Blanka growled, then shrugged, "I dunno...I

guess we kind of forgot all about him. Think we should go find

Madam Lao and remind her?"

"Maybe another time," Nabiki said as she shared a look with

Ukyo, "Depends on how much Lao will pay us to take him back,

which reminds me, Grandmother...why don't tell Gramps about

Lao and her treasure trove of women's unmentionables the next

time she pays us a visit?"

The old woman's eyes twinkled with mischief as she replied,

"That is what I have always liked about you, Daughter-in-

law...sometimes you think just like an Elder..."

"Blasted Fogbank," said Captain D'Amore as he peered through

his spy glass, "How the devil did it get so thick in the middle of

the bloody afternoon?"

"Uh, sir," said the Spaniard at his side, "Try looking at it without

the telescope. It's not really all around us, it's just traveling like a

cloud over the surface of the water.'

"You don't say?" D'Amore pulled the glass away from his eyes as

he saw that, indeed, it was only a small area of cloud that was

rolling over the water, "My, that looks awfully familiar

somehow..."

"It ought to be, Cap'n," said a huge black man at his other side,

"That's the effect we always see when Madam Lao's in the

neighborhood."

"Lao?" D'Amore frowned, "That card cheat and her low-rent

brothel? What the devil are they doing in the Caribbean?"

"Uh, sir," said another man at the steering wheel, "We're not in

the Caribbean. In fact, if I make my readings just right, and

judging by the buildings on the coastline, I'd say it's more likely

we're just off the coast of Hong Kong again."

"What the devil?" D'Amore frowned, "All right, who let Aki near

the helm last night?"

"Sir," another man called out, "I make out another ship...a yacht

this time, heading on a different course than the cloud bank.

Should we hail them?"

"Let me see," D'Amore said as he turned his spyglass towards

this other ship, seeing it loaded down with a very odd assortment

of crew, mostly teenagers and burly men by the look of it, then he

lowered his glass and said, "Probably not, they look dangerous,

and you can never be too safe around strangers these days."

"Where to then, Cap'n?" inquired the steersman.

D'Amore thought before he answered. It had been a while since

Pangea and his encounters with an odd group he had met there,

but things had been fairly quiet of late, so out of whimsy he

replied, "Second Star to the right, straight ahead until morning..."

"Huh?" the steersman looked at him oddly.

"How the devil should I know?" D'Amore snapped at him, "You

have the wheel, you make a decision. If anyone wants me to do

something Captainy I'll be down in my cabin getting drunk,

because I feel such a headache coming on. We are never going to

deliver this damned shipment of Palm Trees at this rate."

"Cheer up, Cap'n," the burly Brunt said encouragingly, "Things

are bound to look up sooner or later."

"Oh yes," D'Amore said sarcastically as he headed for the exit,

"Maybe we'll get lucky and hit an iceberg or something. Let me

know if anything like that ever happens. It should be worth

composing a song or something..."

Continued.

Comments/Criticism/ACLU Litigation: shadowmane

Next time the crew returns to Nerima for a resolution to more

domestic problems...

If you wish to check out my other works, Please check out my

Fanfiction webpage at: . or

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All related chapters of this series can be found there along with my

other works.


	26. Chapter 26

Nabiki 1/2,

A Very Scary Thought

(An Altered Destiny)

by

Jim Robert Bader

Chapter 26, Part 1.

(Based upon the works of Rumiko Takahashi & Others)

The return trip was largely uneventful, unless you account for the

fact that Cologne felt the need to give her critique of everyone's

performances from what she had observed of their battles with

Lao, including Guile's group, who took the criticism with a

certain amount of confusion. Nabiki and her friends, being more

accustomed to the Elder's ways, just smiled when Cologne

detailed the significant areas where they needed the most

improvement, then collectively groaned as Cologne informed

them that she planned to further intensify their training. For

Guile and his people, however...

Well, when the trip back to Tokyo harbor was finally concluded,

let's just say everyone was glad to see dry land offering some

hope of escape or shelter. Guile supplied the transportation, and

everyone piled into the American made Humvee he had waiting

for them, already fueled and ready.

Of course the weather did not remain fair for long, and by the

time they were on their way back to Nerima there was a pretty

heavy rain coming down, which caused some mild dismay as a

now-male Nabiki took to avoiding Ukyo or-to be more precise-

the thing that rested on the Okonomiyaki chef's shoulder.

"Man," Bison said as he looked Nabiki over for the umpteenth

time since his transformation, "Doesn't that ever, like, weird you

out doing that?"

"All the time," Nabiki replied fatalistically, "But I've learned to

make adjustments."

"Don't know how long it'll take for me to get used to that when I

have Keiko back," Guile said with a grim expression, giving

Perfume-the-cat another side-look, then murmuring, "Guess I'd

better build a really large bird cage..."

"Don't forget the ferret's roost, Colonel-san," Akane gently

reminded.

Guile heaved a sigh, "Funny thing is I don't really mind that part

too much. As long as Kei-chan's happy, I'll be content with

whoever it is she chooses for a roommate. At least I won't have

to worry about her needing a pack of condoms."

"Could be worse," Ken philosophized, "She could have been

hanging out with a rock star or been a real groupie."

"Yeah, she might even have been hanging out with somebody

like you," Honda helpfully added.

"Exactly," Ken said, then blinked, "Hey!"

"You guys sure know how to cheer me up," Guile muttered in

tones of heavy sarcasm.

"You think that Lao character will really keep her word, Guile?"

Blanka asked his friend.

"She will keep her word," Cologne assured them, "She knows

what would happen should she renege on our agreement."

"Perhaps I should have remained behind to keep an eye on

things," Hinako mused, "I could have extended my part of the trip

and taken advantage of some unused vacation time..."

"And let Lao get ahold of you in your adult state," Nabiki pointed

out, "Besides, it would have looked bad on me if you didn't show

up at Furinkan with the rest of us."

"Like not finding any palm trees isn't already going to make

Principal Kuno irate?" Ranma noted.

"Oh, they'll be there all right," Ken assured them, "I made the

necessary arrangements, two dozen palm trees, specially grown

to handle Japan's temperate climate..."

"Won't that be expensive?" Ryoga asked.

"I'll just write it off as a charitable donation," Ken smiled, "My

father's accountants are the best, and it'll be good advertisement

for our Biogenics division. Just tell my people where you want to

plant them."

"Anywhere but the current location of our cherry trees," Ukyo

said in mild insistence, "That was where Principal Kuno wanted

to put them in the first place."

"Say," Ranma looked up, "Any idea what I should tell Kuno

about where his sister is going to be for the next few of months?

I don't want him to worry."

"Have to think up something he'll accept," Nabiki pondered,

"Shouldn't be too complicated the way his mind works."

"Oh yeah," Akane snorted, "He'll probably blame you...or should

I say Kaneda?"

Chun-Li and Cammy had been silent for the past hour, but now

Cammy finally spoke up, "This changing into a guy thing...is it

just for show or does the plumbing work?"

"It works," Nabiki assured her, "Let me put it to you this way...I

have a wife and she's four-and-a-half months pregnant."

"You what?" Chun-Li was aghast.

"Like I told you guys," Nabiki shrugged again, "It's complicated."

"Mreow?" the cat on Ukyo's shoulder said in the tones of a

question, causing Nabiki to shudder while Ukyo replied, "I don't

know, Per-chan, and we probably won't for quite a while, but it if

happens we'll deal with it one step at a time."

"You understand what she's saying?" Bison looked at the

Okonomiyaki chef and her "pet" oddly.

"I get the gist...most of the time," Ukyo stroked Perfume's fur and

elicited a soft rumbling purr of contentment, "It's mostly in her

tone and inflection..."

"We're almost there," Nabiki announced as they came within

sight of Nerima, "Thanks for the lift, Guile-san, and sorry things

didn't turn out better."

"At least they didn't turn out worse," Guile said as he guided the

Humvee well within the local speed limits, "You and your friends

handled yourselves very well back there, almost like

professionals. I'd say it was a pleasure working with you, except

for everything else that happened."

"I'm sure we'll see Kei-chan again, Colonel-san," Akane

reassured, "Your daughter is a born survivor. She's taught me a

lot about what it means to find the bright side in any situation.

We'll see her again, and Kodachi, I can feel it."

Nabiki eyed his sister with a droll expression, thinking privately

to herself that she also hoped to see Keiko once again, if only to

finally have that talk with her regarding her relationship with his

sister.

"Now that we're almost home," Ranma murmured to Nabiki,

"Have you any idea what we're going to tell Shampoo about our

little adventures?"

"Surely you don't suggest we tell her everything?" Nabiki eyed

him coyly.

"Are you kidding," he smiled back, "I happen to be fond of my

front teeth, thank you very much."

Cammy had a very disquieting look as she shook her head then

gestured expressively and said, "Let me see if I get this straight.

You two are engaged to each other, but you're also engaged to the

cook with the mean spatula here, and she's married to the cat,

while your lady is married to another lady named Shampoo?

Have I got that right?"

"More or less," Nabiki replied with a straight face.

"It's not as weird as it sounds..." Ranma began to say, then he

thought a moment before resuming, "Well, maybe it is, but given

the alternatives, I think I prefer it this way, and it was Nabiki's

proposal to try and sort out the mess that was kind of caused by

my father..."

"Your father arranged this?" Chun-Li said more dubiously.

"More or less," Nabiki replied, "Ojisan had a real knack for

stumbling into things while dragging the rest of us with him. I

spent ten years training in the Saotome School of Anything Goes

Martial Arts and I think I've got Genma Saotome figured out as

well as anyone who knows him. He's a lot better at causing

problems than he is in fixing his own messes. I'm more of the

problem solver..."

"So your solution to whatever mess he got you both into was a

five-way marriage?" Cammy asked with a surprisingly bland

expression.

"Made more sense at the time than the other choices," Ukyo

shrugged, continuing to pet her cat, who rubbed her head against

Ukyo's hair in happy contentment, "And in Genma's defense part

of the problem was actually caused by my father. Perfume's

another story, but one I don't regret getting involved with the

other stuff."

Bison shook his head, "Give it up, White. You'll go blind trying

to figure this lot out."

"Ryu'll never believe me when I tell him about this trip," Ken

shook his head, "I don't think I believe it either. And Eliza...well,

I don't think I'll even try and convince her that any of this

happened."

"Good," Guile grunted, "The fewer people who know about it the

less often I'll have to deny it."

"What kind of report do you intend to file with headquarters,

Guile?" Blanka asked him.

"I don't know, Charlie," Guile grunted, "I'll make something up."

"Glad to hear that," Chun-Li smiled ruefully, "If my superiors at

Interpol learn that I let Lao walk on this one I can kiss my career

goodbye for the next millennium."

"Ditto with me," Cammy agreed, "My old chums at MI-6 still

won't let me forget about my Assassination for hire gig. An

incident like this could sink what's left of my reputation."

"Hey," Honda said, "Why's everybody so down about us

surviving this one? We were up against the odds like usual, and

we didn't really lose..."

"Didn't win either," Bison sniffed, "But I'm with you there, and

there's always the rematch."

The at last pulled up in front of the Tendo Dojo, and since it had

long since stopped raining everyone filed out to stretch their legs

and say their good-byes. Nabiki and Akane offered to let Guile's

group come in for some refreshments, but Guile declined, saying

they would be getting a hotel space further into Nerima. There

was an easy atmosphere between these two groups, with only

Hinako looking truly sad-eyed at being home once again.

Cologne, on the other hand, wasted no time in entering through

the gate, saying that she would inform the others of their arrival

and make tidy explanations to their parents to relieve any

lingering sense of worry at their being absent without

communication.

Nabiki gave a last farewell look at Guile and his people before a

figure came hurtling out the gate, bounding in his direction.

Nabiki barely had time to turn completely around before he was

all but smothered by a purple-haired dynamo that wrapped him in

a tight bear hug as he was greeted with an enthusiastic, "Airen!

You come back to Shampoo! Wo ai ni..."

"Whoa," Ken blinked, seeing that the girl embracing the girl-

turned-guy was indeed noticeably pregnant, "That's her wife? I

mean...his wife? Ah..."

"Forget it," Ryoga chuckled, for once in a good mood at seeing

the place that was almost like home to him once again, "You get

used to things being a little strange around here, believe me."

"I'll bet," Cammy said as she and Chun-Li were both staring

wide-eyed at the lavender-haired girl's attempt at suffocating

Nabiki.

"Ease up, Sham-chan," Ranma urged after a full minute of

Nabiki trying to get her wind back, "We've got company, in case

you didn't notice.'

"Company?" Shampoo eased up on her bear hug, noticing the

others, "Why you bring so many guests to dinner without telling

Shampoo in time to make larger dinner?"

"We're not staying, Lady," Guile assured her, "We just came by

to drop your friends off. Perhaps another time we can make it a

longer visit."

"Sure," Akane said brightly, "Just give us a call and stop on by.

You're always welcome."

"And if you ever want a taste of the best Okonomiyaki in Japan

just try my restaurant," Ukyo said as she stroked Perfume's chin,

the cat still being perched upon her shoulders.

"Oh," Shampoo seemed to belatedly recall her cousin, "Bath is

ready if you need use, Cousin, just make sure other sisters no

make use before you."

"Other sisters?" Nabiki suddenly was jolted back by a memory

she had not allowed herself to think about before this, "You

mean..."

"Natsume and Kurumi," Shampoo nodded, "You tell me keep eye

on them, and I have. You want hear report now or later after

bath?"

"Perhaps later," Nabiki smiled, "After we check in with our folks.

Those two didn't give you any trouble?"

Shampoo shook her head and said, "No, they very nice girls, try

help a lot in house, give fathers back rubs and treat like royalty. I

very amazed they show father so much attention, think maybe

they do even more if they have mother present."

"Oh really?" Nabiki did not smile as he chewed on this report,

"Then I'll have to talk with them myself and establish some

ground rules. Showering Daddy with attention may be good for a

father's ego, but we haven't exactly established beyond doubt that

they are, indeed, his daughters."

"That's for sure," Akane's expression darkened, "The very idea of

somebody accusing our father of having cheated on our mother..."

"I think that's our cue to leave," Guile said, motioning to the

others, "Miss Tendo, it has been an experience. I'll be back this

way in another few months. Let me know if you hear anything

from Keiko."

"Ah, do we have to leave?" Bison asked, "This is just starting to

get interesting..."

"Get out of here, Golden Gloves," Ken sniffed, "I think we're

intruding as it is, and this has already given me plenty of things

to think about."

"Me too," said Cammy and Chun-Li, who looked equally startled

at once more finding themselves in total agreement.

"Goodbye, Blanka-san," said Hinako, who seemed on the verge

of tears at taking her leave of the green-hued Ogre.

"Take care of yourself, Sensei," Blanka ruffled the girl's head

with a clawed hand, then winced slightly as Hinako threw her

arms around him and hugged tightly.

"Y'know," Honda said as he and Bison climbed into the Humvee,

"This is a pretty nice neighborhood, so peaceful and quiet..."

"Caught us on a slow day," Nabiki called out as he waved his

good-byes, one arm still around his purple haired wife.

Cammy and Chun-Li hesitated a moment before getting into the

Humvee, paused to give a last glance at the loving couple, then

exchanged a furtive look between each other and silently resolved

not to voice aloud what each of them was thinking.

Once the Humvee was on its way, however, Shampoo turned to

her husband and said, "What he mean about hearing from Red,

and where Stupid Rose Girl?"

"Long story," Nabiki replied, "I'll explain later."

"Oh," Shampoo said almost in afterthought, "Kuno stop by

looking for you and sister, got into fight with other sisters."

"Oh?" Ranma arched an eyebrow, "Who won?"

"Who you think?" Shampoo sniffed, "Him sleep it off in koi

pond, only Natsume-sister go talk with him after he revive. Him

stop by to challenge her again next day, then day after that, it very

confusing."

"Confusing?" Nabiki arched an eyebrow.

"Natsume beat him easily first two times," Shampoo replied, "But

third fight he lose very badly. We call Tofu-Sensei to come

examine him, now he in hospital under observation. Natsume go

visit him, talk every day. Shampoo think...I think maybe she like

him."

"Whoah!" Akane reacted, "You mean Kuno's actually met a girl

who's giving him attention?"

Ranma looked more alarmed, "Tachi's in the hospital? What's

wrong with him?"

"Evil Master Happosai think him hooked on drugs," Shampoo

replied, "Tofu-Sensei also think this, so they say he need special

treatment. Say he stay for observation, no release until they

finish running tests to find out what he taking.

"Drugs?" Hinako repeated with a curious expression.

"On drugs?" Ryoga blinked, "I always knew he was odd, but I

never thought Kuno was the type..."

"Nobody ever does," Nabiki replied, "It could be steroid use.

They've been known to induce psychotic behavior."

"Not 'Tachi," Ranma insisted, "He hates drug users almost as

much as me. Remember how he helped us out when we took on

the Ronin?"

"Ah..." Akane looked uncomfortable, "I...think I know what's

been going on. I think Kodachi's been feeding him drugs based

on extracts from her Black Rose gardens. She once explained to

me that she thought they had special healing properties, and she

as much as admitted it the other day before she went with Keiko

and that Lao person."

"Then Tatewaki may actually be the victim here," Nabiki said

thoughtfully, "And with her gone he's going to be missing his

supplier."

"Will wonders never cease?" Ukyo sniffed, "So all along the guy

wasn't just stupid, he was unlucky. Some sister that Kodachi...no

offense, Akane-chan?"

"None taken," Akane replied with a deep sigh, "I guess maybe I

need to take back a lot of the nasty things I've said about him

over the past year. I guess maybe he wasn't entirely to blame for

his actions."

"Obviously," Ukyo smiled, "I guess we all kind of misjudged

him. Well, no sense in fretting about it, the Doctors will

probably do everything they can, and the Kami knows he's rich

enough to afford the best treatment. Now, if you guys will excuse

us, you'll know where to find me and Perfume. She isn't the only

one who really needs a good hot bath, after all."

"Mreow," the cat upon her shoulders murmured.

"Only if you're a really good girl," Ukyo promised with a soft

chuckle as she disappeared into the House.

Ranma sighed, "I guess I'd better stop by the hospital later on and

see how 'Tachi's doing."

"In a while, Ranma-kun," Nabiki agreed, "I'll go with you. Right

now, however, I'm more interested in seeing those two who claim

to be my sisters."

"They inside dojo right now," Shampoo revealed, "I leave them to

finish class when I hear you pull up in front of house, Airen."

"Class?" Nabiki was surprised at this, then belatedly

remembered, "I thought we'd cancelled the week's Martial Arts

courses?"

"I run in you place, Airen," Shampoo puffed out her chest

proudly, "I no so useless with baby on way, can handle a few

students, like Ryonami-chan. Natsumi and Kurumi help out..."

"I'm sure you meant that well, Sham-chan," Nabiki said with

great delicacy, "But I'd rather I had more time to get to know

those two before I let them near my students, especially

Ryonami."

"Still it might not be a bad idea to watch them in action," Ranma

remarked, "You can learn a lot from people by seeing how they

spar."

Akane smiled then took Ryoga by the arm as she said, "That's a

good idea. Let's go have a look at these two so-called Tendo

sisters, Ryoga-kun, then maybe we can have a word in private

with my father."

"Oh?" Ryoga blinked, "What about?"

"Never mind," Akane replied with a mischievous lilt to her voice,

"I'll let you know when we get in there."

"Why do I have a very bad feeling about this?" Ranma asked he

watched Akane lead the lost boy like an innocent lamb to the

slaughter murmuring to the pair beside him with a conspiratorial

smile that as much as accused Akane of harboring ulterior

motives.

"Looks like I'm going to have to start thinking of Ryoga-kun as a

potential brother-in-law," Nabiki smirked, then gave Shampoo a

side-glance before adding, "Shall we go introduce those girls to

their cousin Kaneda?"

"They very curious to meet Shampoo husband," Shampoo smiled

with a knowing expression, "Maybe we make them jealous of

Shampoo for having manly Airen?"

"That's all I need," Nabiki sniffed, "Another pair of converts.

Well, lead the way, but just in case, Ranchan, better get some hot

water ready."

"No problem," Ranma said, by now quite accustomed to the

phenomenon of Nabiki's attractiveness to other women.

Hinako followed along almost unnoticed in these affairs, a very

thoughtful expression on her childlike face as she watched the

way the now male Nabiki cuddled the pregnant Shampoo with

obvious and even blatant affection. She turned a glance towards

the main house with a different kind of speculative look, then

turned her eyes resolutely forwards as they made their way for the

dojo itself, where the sounds of practice were clearly audible from

across the small stone garden...

Ryonami was pushing herself as hard as she knew how and still

those two studying her moves did not look satisfied at her

unimpressive performance. Ryonami squared her shoulders and

tried again to get the kata just right, remembering all of Nabiki's

careful coaching as though her calming presence were right

beside her.

Kick, punch, spin, block, grapple, disable, the turn that preceded

a throw and then a stride at three-quarters angle, accompanied by

a double-arm block at her imaginary opponents. This time

Ryonami felt certain that she had performed the maneuver

correctly, but the dour eyed Natsumi just looked at her with that

hard expression of hers and said, "Again," as if twelve times were

not enough to leave a girl exhausted.

Fortunately-and to her intense relief-she heard a familiar male

voice say, "That's enough. Ryo-chan, take ten and walk yourself

down, then work on your stretching exercises."

To say that Ryonami felt a thrill at turning to see Nabiki's male

aspect stride into the dojo would to have been to woefully

understate the extent of her elation. She felt like jumping for joy

and doing cartwheels in spite of her having barely been able to

stand upright a moment before this. Her smile was pure delight

as she drank in his manly sight, and even the warning look

Shampoo cast her was not enough to dampen her spirits. Nabiki

had returned from her adventures after what had to be the longest

week in Ryonami's young life and nothing-not even common

sense-could keep her from basking in the presence of her Sempai

and idol.

Nabiki fixed her with a brief glance of undisguised concern

before turning a much harder stare at the two sisters standing off

to one side together. The other students of Ryonami's class all

looked up with mixed expressions of concern and delight at the

return of the mighty Tendo Kaneda, but Ryonami alone seemed

to truly grasp in that next instant the tension that had begun to fill

the room the moment Natsume returned Nabiki's hard stare with

a matching look of challenge.

"The rest of you," Nabiki resumed speaking, "Class is suspended

for the day. I'll expect to see you all by next week at regular class

hours. Practice your techniques and we'll see how much you

remember."

Natsume waited until just after the other students got up to leave

before saying, "Are you criticizing our teaching methods?"

"Not at all," Nabiki said politely, and this time the other students

caught on to what was in the wind and made even greater haste

to vacate the dojo, "Since I don't know anything about the extent

of your skills I merely thought I'd take the time to familiarize

myself. After all I am given to understand that you claim to be a

Tendo, and I am the designated heir to the Anything Goes

school."

"Uh," Ranma leaned closer to Nabiki, "I think you mean cousin

Nabiki."

"I see," Natsume's eyes all but sparkled with contemplation,

"Then you are our cousin, Tendo Kaneda, the man we heard so

much about from your charming wife, Shampoo-san?"

"I am Kaneda," Nabiki answered, "Cousin Nabiki will be along

shortly, but I thought I'd take the opportunity to meet you both in

person."

"Well met indeed," Natsume bowed to Nabiki, "If you are indeed

the designated heir, then my sister and I have an interest in

meeting you since father promised us the opportunity to claim

that title should we prove to be the strongest heirs to the Tendo

dojo."

"My father said that?" Nabiki blinked in surprise before suffering

an elbow-jab in the arm from Ranma, "I mean...uncle Soun?

He's like a father to me ever since I was taken into this house

after the death of my parents..."

"How sad for you," Natsume said in what sounded like a sincere

expression of condolences, "I am certain that father is very proud

of you and would regard you like a son, but we are his daughters

and so are closer in line to claim the inheritance of this dojo."

"Oh really?" Nabiki narrowed his eyes as he studied the girl

before him, "You don't mind if I talk to Uncle Soun and find out

is opinions on that?"

"Not at all," Natsume replied, "I'm certain that father will be

more than pleased to tell you himself."

Akane rolled her eyes at that then stepped around her

sister/brother and sought out the younger of the two girls, whose

own expression conveyed less certainty than Natsume, "I'm

Tendo Akane, Nabiki's younger sister, and we didn't really have

enough time to make proper introductions last week."

"Ohiyo," Kurumi said with a friendly smile as she bowed in

reply, "It is an honor to meet you, Akane-san. Would you mind if

I call you sister?"

Akane blinked, "Uh, no...I don't mind, I just hope you don't

expect me to call you that. I mean, at least until we get this thing

settled..."

"What is there to settle?" Natsume asked, "You doubt our

legitimacy?"

Akane narrowed her eyes and said, "I might. I don't exactly

believe that my father has ever been capable of having an affair

behind my mother's back, and I don't like anyone implying that

either."

"We wouldn't think of saying anything like that about father,"

Kurumi hastily assured her.

"Oh?" Nabiki sniffed, "Then how do you propose that you two

came to be if he is your father? Our mother sure didn't birth you."

Ranma winced, realizing that his iinazuke was allowing her

temper to affect her judgement, which meant that she was really

ticked off with Natsume for some entirely personal reason. He

hastily said, "I think this whole matter could be better settled if

we just talk things out for once. We've only just gotten home,

Kaneda-san, and I'm pretty sure Shampoo wants to spend some

time with you alone. I'll go find Nabiki and we can discuss this

between us like reasonable people."

In spite of his irritation with Natsume over the other girl's strange

attitude Nabiki turned a surprised look towards Ranma. What he

was proposing not only made sense but was the perfect way to

save face in this rapidly deteriorating situation. He allowed

himself to smile inwardly as he thought to himself: Not bad,

Ranma-kun, you're learning.

Aloud what he said was, "Right. If you two will excuse me, I

need to speak with my wife alone for a bit. I'll catch up with you

shortly."

"Anytime, Kaneda-san," Natsume said with a slight smile of

calculation, while at her side Kurumi eyed her dubiously, then

exchanged worried looks with Akane.

Nabiki left with Shampoo while Ranma hastily followed, leaving

Akane and Ryoga with the two sisters in an awkward silence that

hung about in the wake of so much undiminished tension.

Seeking to find some way of being useful, Ryoga spoke up and

said, "Uh...so...you two have met Kuno?"

Akane glanced his way in mild reproof, while Natsume's

expression changed to one of deep concern, while Kurumi now

eyed her with a pained expression. With clear reluctance evident

in her tone, Natsume replied, "Kuno-san is gravely ill. The

doctors believe he is suffering the long term effects of an

addiction to some narcotic he was taking. They do not believe he

was willingly ingesting the toxin but was being steadily fed it in

small doses by his sister. Master Happosai spoke with the Kuno

manservant, Sasuke, and he has confessed to knowledge

concerning the sister's behavior, and based on residual toxins he

supplied from Kuno Kodachi's personal lab they have managed to

synthesize an antidote, but it may take some time before the

effects of withdrawal are entirely dealt with."

"Is Kodachi in any trouble?" Akane asked with obvious concern.

"The authorities wish to question her concerning her activities,"

Natsume replied, "But so far they have not officially charged her

with anything. You wouldn't happen to know where they might

be found by any chance?"

"Ah...not at the moment," Akane said evasively while Ryoga

winced, sharing her concern for the missing Kodachi, who was

most probably still at large somewhere on board a ship in the

South China seas. He privately did not blame Akane for being

less than honest about that...

Hinako, meanwhile, had been listening to everything from

outside the dojo and frowned ever-so-slightly. Matters were not

turning out quite as she would have expected, and this new

revelation gave her much to think about. She slowly turned away

and traced her steps back towards the house, giving Nabiki and

her two beloveds another speculative look before entering via the

patio, where she found Soun and the others being briefed by

Cologne, who was embellishing matters only slightly.

Meanwhile, out of earshot of these affairs, Nabiki was growling

aloud to his two companions, "You don't have to say it, I kind of

lost it back there. I don't know what it is about that girl, but she

is definitely getting on my bad side."

"Natsume very competitive," Shampoo explained simply, "She

think she good enough be heir to Tendo dojo. Promise she speak

about come on back of picture sisters carry, only I no think it

really signed by you father."

"Oh?" Nabiki raised both eyebrows, "You believe my father's

innocent?"

"No," Shampoo explained, "Him very devoted to memory of you

mother, but that not reason I doubt story. I look at handwriting

on back of photo...it close to you father's scrawl, but no enough to

match. Somebody else sign photograph in you father's name, and

I think I know who did this."

"You do?" Ranma gave his iinazuke's wife a surprised look,

"Then who?"

"Who else?" Shampoo snorted, "Evil Master Happosai. Him bad

enough use Soun's name. He show great interest in sisters, I

think he know something about them."

"Really?" Nabiki turned and gave his wife a hard look, "You

don't think he might actually be their real father, do you?"

Shampoo snorted derisively, "Him? I no think he capable of

fathering children, or anything that normal. Him great pervert,

but he treat sisters with great respect, never once try glomp

them."

"What?" Nabiki halted in his tracks and turned completely

around to confront her, "Are you serious? The greatest pervert in

all Japan is leaving those two untouched?"

"That what seem like," Shampoo replied, "It strange, yes?"

"I'll say," Ranma agreed, turning to look at Nabiki.

"There's more to those two than meets the eye," Nabiki said with

a speculative expression, stroking his chin before glancing back

towards the dojo, "I'd better change back and have it out with

those two. At the very least it should get Happosai's attention."

"Huh?" Ranma and Shampoo exchanged worried looks, "You

mean you want to challenge them?"

"Why not?" Nabiki replied with a confident smirk, "They want to

be the best heirs to my family's dojo? Let them put their yen

where their mouths are. After all, like you said, sparring is a

great way to get to know people. I'll go pay my respects to father

then go show those two who's really fit to inherit my dojo."

Again Ranma and Shampoo exchanged worried looks, but

Nabiki had already started forward, preventing them from saying

anything to discourage her. Not that either one held out much

hope of being able to do this, of course, knowing how stubborn

Nabiki could be when she had made a decision...

Continued.

Comments/Criticism/Metric Weight of Godzilla:

shadowmane

One more part should round out this chapter as Nabiki and

Akane go head-to-head against Natsume and Kurumi...be there.

Nabiki 1/2,

A Very Scary Thought

(And Altered Destiny)

by

Jim Robert Bader

Chapter 26, Part 2.

(Based on the Works of Rumiko Takahashi & Others)

"This is a mistake," Ranma commented from where he leaned

against the wall of the dojo.

"What do you mean, Ranchan?" Nabiki asked as she completed

her stretching exercises, as did Akane by her side.

"I mean we haven't been back home for an hour yet and already

you're challenging those two to a match," Ranma said with a

slight edge to his voice, "We're all tired after the trip back

home..."

"Hah! I'm not even warmed up yet," Akane snorted, eyeing the

pair at the opposite end of the dojo with a determined expression,

"We'll take care of those two imposters right enough. You and

Ryoga just sit back and watch us do our stuff."

"Are you sure this is a good idea, Akane?" Ryoga asked with

even more obvious distress in his features, "Shampoo seems to

think those two are pretty good. You ought to study their

technique first before starting anything..."

"Is that you arguing caution, Ryoga-kun?" Nabiki eyed him with

a playful smirk, "It's sweet that you two boys are so worried

about our performance, but I assure you there won't be any

problems. Akane and I are going in there to settle a simple

question about who is the better martial artist, after which we can

get to the bottom of whatever sort of connection there is between

these girls and Master Happosai."

"You is being stubborn, Airen," Shampoo said crossly, "It make

sense you rest. Remember what happen Shampoo when she no

rest between matches?"

"This is a different situation, Sham-chan," Nabiki assured her,

"Besides, it's not as if Amazon rules apply with these two. We're

just going to see what they know, not to pound each other

senseless."

"Unless it comes to that," Akane punched her palm with one fist,

"That Natsume could sure stand to be taken down a peg. I don't

know about Kurumi, though, she seems like a very nice person."

"Looks can deceive," Ukyo noted from where she stood beside

Ranma and Ryoga, "Believe me, I know. Still you're probably

right about Kurumi. I've got the impression she's just doing this

to humor her sister."

"Yes," Perfume said from beside Ukyo, "She look like no want to

be here, like doing this to please sister. Maybe she no have

motivation to fight, not go all out."

"We'll see," Nabiki smiled confidently, getting ready to take her

position as she saw that the two sisters were similarly ready.

Less confident about the entire situation was Soun, who all but

bit his nails as tears threatened to spill while he bewailed the

entire matter.

"Why is this happening?" he cried, "My poor babies! Why must

they fight with one another? Where is the sense in this contest?"

"It's fate, Tendo-kun," Genma said grimly at his side, "The

destiny of a martial artist is to fight. There can be no avoiding

the matter when a question of honor is at stake."

"Yes, but whose honor?" Nodoka said more crossly as she gave

Soun and her husband a more studied expression, "We've yet to

even determine how those two girls ever got the impression in the

first place that you are their father."

"Yes," Hinako agreed just as seriously, "That photograph is not

conclusive proof of your guilt, Tendo-san, but the fact remains

that someone had to have fathered those two orphans, and

whoever taught them their arts did claim to be a master of the

Anything Goes school."

"Oh my," said Kasumi as she studied both teams of combatants,

"They look so determined. I do hope no one gets injured trying to

prove themselves."

"If you want to lay odds, I'll give you two to one against that,"

said Ryonami more practically, "Sempai looks very determined,

and that Natsume character seems to feel that she has something

to prove here."

Cologne looked gravely at both pairs of combatants, then raised

her staff and said, "Is everyone clear about the rules in this

match? First side to concede acknowledges the other the more

worthy of inheriting the Anything Goes tradition."

"That will be us, Grandmother," Nabiki said with confidence in

her bearing.

"We will see about this," replied Natsume, equally confident in

her stance and posture, "Whenever you two are ready, sisters."

Cologne brought her staff down and said, "Hajime!"

Nabiki and Natsume at once assumed near identical stances and

studied each other in wary appraisal. Akane, on the other hand,

charged forward aiming a punch in Kurumi's direction.

Like a shot the brown haired girl leaped back and unslung the

ribbon in her hair, whipping it out to snare Akane's outstretched

arm before she could regain her balance. With a quick motion of

her hand Kurumi sent Akane sprawling, which slightly distracted

Nabiki as she had not expected her sister to be taken down in

such a casual manner.

Natsume saw her opening and lunged in with an attack that came

at Nabiki with such speed, control and power that Nabiki was

almost taken unawares. She managed to twist her body out of the

way and side-stepped the lunge then whipped her foot out in a

kick that should have connected with the other girl, only Natsume

seemed to anticipate the maneuver and vaulted over the kick to

land lightly two meters beyond Nabiki's reach. She then unslung

her rugbeater in one easy motion and pivoted on the balls of her

bare feet, making three quick strikes in the air that did not appear

to come anywhere near to connecting, but Nabiki still staggered

back as though assaulted by the air flow.

"Whoah," Ranma said, looking and sounding impressed.

"No fair!" Ryoga cried out, "They're using weapons! Akane and

Nabiki are unarmed!"

"Anything goes style means precisely that," Natsume replied,

"Anything is legal. However, should you wish to use weapons of

your own, sisters, Kurumi and I will permit you time to select

them."

Nabiki was examining some marks that had appeared as if by

magic on her forearms, but her expression hardened as she balled

her hands into fists and assumed a new fighting crouch, "No

thanks, that won't be necessary. What about you, Akane-chan?

Akane-chan?"

Akane was nursing the arm that had made contact with the

ribbon, her expression pained, but she grit her teeth and said,

"That ribbon may burn a little, but I don't need a weapon to beat

you!"

With that she lunged to her feet again, careful not to commit

herself too soon while Kurumi-who had tied the ribbon back into

her hair during this brief lull-moved to meet Akane half-way

bare-handed. Fists and feet began to fly like a blur, but it was

clear from the outset that Akane was overmatched and wounded

up sailing backwards from one of the other girl's side-kicks.

Unfortunately the direction she was headed in was presently

occupied by some exercise equipment.

"Akane!" Soun cried out in horror, but he need not have bothered

to panic.

Like a shot Kurumi had her ribbon in her hand once more and it

whipped out to snare Akane by her waist, stopping her

momentum at the last possible second.

Meanwhile Nabiki and Natsume were trading furious blows of

their own, only Nabiki was clearly on the defensive as the

rugbeater in the other girl's hand was proving too formidable to

by-pass. More to the point, Natsume's weapon was kicking up

an icy wind that connected even with a clear miss, forcing Nabiki

to be even more evasive in her maneuvers while finding no

openings to exploit for a counter-offensive.

When Nabiki heard Soun call out Akane's name, however, it

caused her to glance her way with a reflexive start, which gave

Natsume the opening she needed. Nabiki barely had time to

recover as the beater came within a hairs breadth of her face, but

that attack proved to be a feint and left her middle area exposed

so that Natsume had only to reverse her momentum and bring her

arms up in a slice and suddenly Nabiki was picked up off her

heals and sent flying.

"Nabiki!" cried Soun, Ranma and Kasumi together.

"Airen!" cried Shampoo almost simultaneously while Ukyo and

Perfume tensed, checking their natural impulse to go to the aid of

their companion.

Nabiki landed heavily, but reflexes honed over ten long years

came into play as she rolled back to her feet, only slightly

winded. Akane was just then staggering back to her feet, looking

no less badly shaken. Seeing the advantage near to hand,

Natsume turned to her sister and cried, "Kurumi, let's finish this

now."

"Hai," Kurumi agreed, whipping out her ribbon once again to

create a spiral effect worthy of Kodachi. Natsume began to make

sweeping motions with her beater, and then a focused wind of Ki

energy erupted, passing through the ribbon-vortex effect, which

intensified it immensely. The resulting beam came straight at the

unprepared Nabiki and Akane, who barely had time to brace

themselves before the impact flung them back to the far end of

the dojo.

"Akane!" Ryoga cried, already in motion as Ranma beat him by a

fraction to the side of Nabiki, who was slumped across the floor

where she and her sister had fallen.

Shampoo had to move more slowly and carefully around to join

them while Natsume put up her rug beater and Kurumi tied her

ribbon back into place.

"I used low power on my attack," Natsume assured them, "They

should recover consciousness soon enough and be in no real

danger. What matters is that we have proven ourselves the

superior..."

"That...was your mistake," Nabiki groaned, shaking off Ranma's

attempts to help her, "Should have made sure you finished me

off...now...I'm really going to pound you..."

"Nab-chan?" Ranma asked in surprise, seeing the look of

determination on his iinazuke's face as she made the effort to sit

upright.

"Akane," Ryoga urged tightly, "Don't try to move, you might be

hurt..."

"The sentiments are appreciated," Akane assured him in a voice

that was no more steady than she appeared to be at the moment,

"But it takes more than that to finish me."

"Can you both continue?" Cologne asked as she perched upon her

staff, "I noticed that you took the brunt of the force for the both of

you, Daughter, and even using Chi-deflection a blast such as that

can be disabling, not to mention draining. There would be no

dishonor in conceding this match."

"Yes there is, Grandmother," Nabiki said as she fought her way

into a standing position, "The honor of this dojo is at stake...and

there's no way I'm conceding."

"Oneechan?" Akane looked at her sister, recalling belatedly how

Nabiki had thrown herself in the way of the blast headed at

Akane in the last possible second.

"But you can barely remain on your feet," Ranma said as he got

up beside her, "Let me and Ryoga handle things for a while..."

"You?" Nabiki almost scoffed, but her tone softened immediately

when she saw his expression, "That's very sweet of you,

Ranchan, but I can't let you fight this battle for me. Besides...are

you two really prepared to go all out against them?"

Ranma had to reluctantly concede the point with his expression,

knowing his reluctance to fight against women was an obvious

hindrance, but he squared his shoulders and said, "We fought

against Lao and she was a lot tougher. Besides, we don't want

you to get hurt, right Ryoga?"

"Please," Ryoga turned to Akane, "Let me fight for you, I know I

can beat her."

Akane had to favor him with her own fond expression, laying a

hand to the boy's shoulder as she said, "I know you can, Ryo-

chan, and there's nobody I'd like better to represent me, but I have

to do this. My honor as a Tendo depends on my fighting my own

battles."

"Besides," Nabiki said more calmly, "Remember what's at stake

here? I'm the heir to this dojo, and our engagement rests on the

promise of our fathers to unite our families. I won't back down

and lose you..."

"You won't lose me," Ranma said, "I don't care if you're the heir

or not, I just want you..."

"Look on the bright side, Ranchan," Nabiki flashed a glance to

the side where the others were gathered and stage-whispered, "If

I bow out of the engagement, then Ukyo wins you by default,"

she raised her voice even though the others could plainly hear her

last comment and added, "You want to win that way, Ucchan?

Ranchan would be all yours, and I'd still have Shampoo."

"What kind of crazy talk is that?" Ukyo straightened out, only to

see the wicked gleam in Nabiki's eyes and she understood at once

the nature of the joke Nabiki was using to psyche herself up.

"I won't lose, Ranchan," Nabiki said with greater firmness, facing

Natsume, who remained at the other end of the dojo with a look

of studied patience, "Even thought I know you'd never desert me,

there is no way I'm letting that cow win this battle."

"Stubborn," Shampoo shook her head slowly, "You always so

stubborn," but she was smiling as she said this.

"Whatever you decide," Natsume said in mild exasperation,

"Whoever wants to fight us, Kurumi and I stand ready to face

you."

Cologne nodded sagely, "So be it. Seconds out of the combat

area. This round will be fought until it is honorably concluded.

Should you fall again, daughter, it will be an automatic

concession."

"I understand," Nabiki turned and said, "Ready, Akane?"

"Hai, Oneechan," Akane nodded firmly, assuming a fighting

crouch as she stared resolutely at Kurumi and said, "I won't fail

us again."

"Just wait for my signal," Nabiki said, "I've got a few surprise

moves left to deal with those sisters."

Cologne raised her staff once again as Ranma, Ryoga and

Shampoo moved back to the side where they had started.

Ryonami, who had watched these exchanges anxiously from the

side of an unusually tense Kasumi, suddenly cupped her face and

called out, "Kick them in the ass, Sempai! We're all rooting for

you!"

Nabiki smiled before allowing her body to relax as she

confronted Natsume, having a better grasp now of the other girl's

potential. Akane did not charge to attack this time as she faced

off with Kurumi, searching the wary eyes of the other girl, who

had acted on impulse to save her, and finding no real malice

there. It made it easier to focus, having gained a new respect for

her opponent.

Inwardly Nabiki was recalling the wind that had all but defeated

her and came to the realization that Natsume's attack generated

intense waves of cold, while Akane's idle comment from before

suggested that Kurumi's ribbon attack generated heat in

abundance. The combination of their attacks had been very much

like the Ascending Dragon Punch, generating a clash of

temperatures to intensify its power. That gave her an immediate

idea on how to counter such a formidable assault and she smiled

inwardly while continuing to circle her opponent.

Akane was the first to break the impasse, moving to attack with a

modified form of the Amaguriken punch, only to find to her

dismay that Kurumi had no problems in evading her punches.

The girl moved like lightning and flowed with each attack while

searching for an opening to exploit in Akane's defenses. It did

not take her long, and as Akane gasped in dismay she felt her

wrist get seized as Kurumi fell backwards and planted a foot in

Akane's abdomen, throwing her completely over on the strength

of her own lunge. Once Akane hit the floor Kurumi wrapped

powerful legs about her and held her in a headlock. Akane could

find no purchase to break the hold as Kurumi tightened it

slightly, threatening to cut off her air supply and induce

unconsciousness within seconds.

Nabiki was finding no easier time using her speed to counter

Natsume's formidable skill with the rugbeater. This girl was

vastly superior to Kuno's Kendo skills and did not so heavily rely

upon her weapon that she seemed totally dependent on it. Instead

it was more like an extension of her own arms and played a

significant part in her defensive guard. Every time Nabiki

thought she had found an opening the weapon was there to

intercept her. All Nabiki could do was press her attack to give

the other girl no chance to employ her other skills, fighting to

keep her on the defensive while she tried to come up with a better

strategy to penetrate her guard.

"No good," Ukyo heard Perfume murmur, "She just tire herself

out that way. No have training in Ki absorption like Perfume.

She keep this up, she lose to other girl."

"You don't want her to lose either, huh?" Ukyo smiled at her

companion.

"No more than you," Perfume replied, "We family, right? You

and boy, Nabiki and Cousin?"

"A family," Ukyo nodded, then cupped her hands and cried out,

"Stop dancing around and kick her ass already! You want her to

win by default?"

Ukyo's words were felt on the periphery of Nabiki's awareness,

but their meaning penetrated to the core and gave her a boost of

confidence that was better than adrenaline. She suddenly knew

with crystal clarity what she was doing wrong in this match and

shifted her attacks from linear to elemental.

Akane, meanwhile, was fighting to remain conscious as Kurumi

gently applied more pressure. There was no way of using

leverage in her position, but Akane had never relied on leverage

to win most of her battles. Brute force was more her solution to

situations such as this, and strength was something she had in

great abundance. She used her hands to grip Kurumi's thighs to

take some of the pressure off her neck then began to arch her

body, using her legs to thrust back as Kurumi was not prepared

to counter this maneuver. Akane managed to roll them both over,

and then while Kurumi was recovering she got her head free from

the vice and managed to regain her footing in time to meet the

other girl as she rose to her feet to renew her assault, only this

time with the added edge of her full fighting fury.

Natsume was surprised when the opening she thought she saw

appear suddenly closed on her as Nabiki wrapped both hands

around the wooden handle of the rug-beater and snatched it out of

her grasp. With both hands clutching empty air she was left

exposed to a double punch as Nabiki reversed the direction of her

fists, tossing the weapon aside to deal a solid blow that caught

Natsume in her solar plexus and staggered her backwards.

"You've had your fun," Nabiki said simply as she advanced on

her winded opponent, who was a bit slow to raise her arms in her

own defense as Nabiki lashed out with a kick that solidly

connected. Natsume rolled with the kick but it plainly staggered

her back several paces while Nabiki continued to press her

attack. Nabiki came on relentlessly, forcing Natsume to retreat to

regain her wind back.

Meanwhile the standoff between Akane and Kurumi was leading

to a momentary pause in which both girls backed off to recover

their breath while taking stock of their opponent. A wary but

healthy respect had long since replaced any actual antagonism

between them and all that was left was two martial artists

seeking a fair resolution to the question of which one of them was

the better fighter.

However Kurumi had been mindful to keep one eye out for her

older sister during the match and so became aware during this

pause that Natsume was in serious trouble. Risking a glance to

the side, she backed away from Akane and undid her ribbon as

she vaulted into the air, twirling it once again as Akane braced

herself to counter yet another attack.

To her surprise the ribbon snaked out towards Nabiki. Akane

barely had time to call out a warning before the pink ribbon

snared one of Nabiki's arms and pulled her off balance. Natsume

took advantage of this momentary distraction to leap past Nabiki

as she rolled across the floor to where her weapon had been

discarded and regaining it along with her footing.

"Hey!" Ukyo cried out in protest.

"No fair!" Ryoga also voiced in outrage.

"What happened to fighting one-on-one?" Ranma wanted to

know.

"Kurumi and I are of one mind and body," Natsume called out,

seeming to have recovered her breath along with her weapon,

striking a pose that was an open challenge, "We fight together as

a team to prove that we are the heirs to the Anything Goes

school!"

"What a coincidence," Nabiki said as she at last managed to free

herself from the ribbon, "I was going to say the same thing about

us, right Akane-chan?"

"Hai, Oneechan," Akane said as the two squared off once more

against the other two sisters. Akane favored Nabiki with a faint

gleam of sisterly pride, unaware that the same was being returned

her way in the thoughts of her older sibling.

"When I give the word do exactly as I say," Nabiki murmured at

the level of a whisper, then the two of them braced themselves for

the next encounter.

Natsume called to Kurumi and launched a new assault, the

younger girl bending down and exposing her back as her older

sister, who vaulted onto it with a leap and launched herself

airborne. Once in the air she once again made sweeping arc with

her rugbeater, kicking up a fierce wind that blew like an arctic

chill, forcing Akane and Nabiki to brace themselves against a

blast of cold that threatened to freeze them to their very morrow.

But Nabiki had a counter for this and brought her hands together,

concentrating on the invisible lines of force that she could feel in

the space all around them, tapping into those forces as she drew

her Ki into her hands and created a glow of life energy, which

she held in those hands for several seconds before releasing. It

shot up like a ball of energy to strike at Natsume, who warded

the attack with her weapon while her wind attack was instantly

disrupted.

Natsume alighted down on the floor next to her sister and studied

her opponent with renewed respect before saying, "Impressive, no

one has ever done that to my attacks before. You are a credit to

this school, even if Kurumi and I are the better fighters."

"We'll see about that," Nabiki flexed her arms and assumed a

defensive crouch, "Take your best shot and we'll send you two

imposters packing!"

"Very well," Natsume bowed her head in respect, "Since you

have requested it, I will honor your challenge. Kurumi!"

Again the smaller girl whipped out her ribbon and formed a

spiral in the air. Natsume once more went into a pirouette while

sweeping the air in preparation for releasing her Ki attack once

again.

"Now Akane," Nabiki called to her side, "Charge directly into the

spiral!"

"But..." Akane blinked, already feeling the competing waves of

heat and cold, only to realize in the next second what her sister

was up to, and she nodded resolutely, "Hai."

She launched herself into an assault even as Natsume completed

her motions and cried out, "Wave of the Dragon Fang Attack!"

Almost a fraction of a second behind this Akane heard Nabiki

cry, "Dragon Ascension Wave modified, Horizontal Thrust!"

Almost immediately an icy white fire exploded before Akane,

threatening to pulverize her into the next century. Just before it

struck, however, she felt another wave crest erupt behind her,

picking her up off her feet and carrying her forward as it met the

wave ahead of her and cancelled it out. Akane was airborne and

still in motion as the two waves of equal force fought each other

to a standstill, leaving her hurtling towards the two astonished

sisters, who were quite unprepared for such a physical assault in

the middle of their Ki-wave.

Arcing her body just right she lashed out with a double kick and

cried out her kiia, catching both Kurumi and Natsume with the

force of her kick intensified by the blast wave. Both sisters went

sprawling while Akane tumbled clear and managed to land on

her feet, turning about in time to strike the far wall with her back,

absorbing what was left of her momentum.

The conflicting winds of hot and cold that briefly warred for

dominance before at last expending their energies in a draw had

buffeted everyone in the room. They watched expectantly as

silence replaced this howling torment. Nabiki collapsed to her

knees, feeling drained by her exertions as she drew in deep

breaths of air, then very faintly murmured, "It's over...we won."

"Indeed," Cologne's voice answered at her side, "And well

fought. You continue to surprise me with the progress that you

are making, Daughter-in-law. That was a very clever strategy

turning their own attack against them in that manner. Your sister

also performed most adequately, and I dare say your opponents

also acquitted themselves with honor."

"That was incredible," Ranma said more succinctly as he and

Shampoo joined them, while Ryoga rushed to the side of Akane.

"Thanks, Ranma-kun," Nabiki smiled his way, feeling the

warmth of his praise-and his presence-like fine tonic to bolster

her spirits after the drain of defeating the sisters.

"Airen still best fighter in Nerima," Shampoo declared proudly,

kneeling beside Nabiki as she added softly, "But no scare

Shampoo like that. You no have to prove you good all time."

"I know," Nabiki endured her wife's scolding with a fond

expression that helped reassure Shampoo that she would recover,

"But this one time was special. There's only thing that bothers

me about all this, though," she said as she got slowly back to her

feet while both her beloveds hovered close by, ready to offer their

assistance. She waited until she felt confident on her feet before

turning a look towards the fallen Natsume before saying, "Those

two have definitely been trained in the Anything Goes system.

Their moves were much too perfect, their Kempo is Master Level.

Whoever taught them their basics must have insured that they

would turn out this way, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't my father."

"Do you believe me then, Nabiki-chan?" Soun asked as he and

the others got up from their sidelines to join them.

"I've always believed in you, Daddy," Nabiki favored her father

with a filial smile before turning a harder look towards Genma,

"In fact if I had to look anywhere for the guilty party you would

never have been my first choice anyway."

"Huh?" Genma blinked, seeing the hostile looks that were now

being turned his way, "Why is everybody looking at me like that?

What am I supposed to have done this time?"

Meanwhile Akane had recovered enough of her strength to assure

Ryoga that she was all right, then at once she moved to the side

of Kurumi to check and see if the girl was all right while Kasumi

and Ryonami did the same with Natsume. Both girls were only

mildly stunned and showed clear evidence of a swift recovery.

The fact that both girls had been beaten, however, soon proved

more difficult to recover from as Natsume sat up first and softly

murmured, "We lost."

"Not necessarily," Akane said reassuringly, relieved at seeing that

the other girl would be all right, "You and your sister fought well,

you're a credit to this school, even if I don't think you are Tendos.

Kurumi also saved me earlier from possible injury, and I owe you

for that. I would be proud if you were my sister, but..."

That was when they first began to take notice of the fact that it

was raining in the dojo...or, to be more precise, raining

underwear as panties and bras began to trickle in through a hole

that the Dragon waves had punched in the ceiling.

"Oh my," Kasumi said as she gently caught a drifting piece of

frilly white silk, "I believe this is one of mine...but how did it get

here?"

"Gee," Ryonami murmured dryly, "I wonder?"

"Huh?" Natsume's recovery to full awareness was greatly speeded

by the recognition that some of her things were also among the

items drifting down from the gap in the roof. Her attention really

became focused, however, when she caught sight of a tiny gi that

looked somehow familiar...

"What is the meaning of this?" Master Happosai cried out as he,

too, dropped through the ceiling, taking in the entire scene with a

very puzzled expression, "Have I been missing something?"

"Indeed you have," Cologne said dryly, "For most of your

misspent life, if I judge matters rightly. I take it the challenge

match has interrupted you in drying out your private collection?"

"Challenge match?" the little man suddenly looked stunned and

ignored Cologne's question, "Who was challenging who here?"

"Me and Akane," Nabiki replied with a narrowed look of

suspicion, "Against Natsume and Kurumi to determine which of

us are the better heirs to the Anything Goes school."

"You challenged them without consulting me?" Happosai

sounded more dismayed than angry at the implied slight, "How

dare you? I never would have allowed this!"

"Oh?" Nabiki asked with a droll smile, "Why is that, master?"

she put a special emphasis on the question.

"Because..." Happosai began to say, then caught himself before

looking more evasive, "Just because is all, I don't need to explain

to you my reasons!"

"Master," Soun said as he picked up the gi from the floor and

held it up with the logo exposed reading "Anything Goes School"

in plain kanji, "Would you mind explaining this? It's in your

size, I notice."

"Yes," Genma agreed, relieved that the spotlight had been turned

away from him before matters with Nodoka could get ugly, "Isn't

it the gi you wore during your early years as a wandering student

of the art? You used to wear it while telling us about your many

travels while Tendo-kun and I were studying with you. It also

looks like the gi someone wore in a certain picture..."

"I think I get it," Ranma growled as he looked at the old man,

"You're the one who rescued these girls from the bear then told

them you were Soun Tendo and promised they would inherit the

Anything Goes school!"

"You took advantage of two young girls in their innocence like

that?" Ryoga was equally outraged, "How dare you, old man!

You should be ashamed of practicing that kind of deception!"

"What insults!" Happosai declared hotly, "So what if I used

Soun's name and pretended to be their father? These girls needed

someone around to show them how to take care of themselves

while you two useless students were busy playing husbands with

your own families! Have pity for a pair of orphans..."

"You deceived us?" Natsume sat up in outrage, "You made

Kurumi and me believe a lie? All of these years that we have

been seeking for our father and all along it was for nothing?!"

"No!" Happosai protested at once, "It wasn't like that at all! You

weren't just a pair a helpless young girls in that orphanage I

found you in, you...uh..." he looked away with a deeply troubled

expression.

"I see," Cologne frowned, "There appears to be more to this story

than meets with appearances. Your meeting with them was not

an accident, I take it?"

"No," Happosai eyed the Amazon Elder warily, "The truth is that

I was watching them grow up, had been for many years, ever

since their mother died..." he sighed before adding, "I couldn't

raise them by myself, and their real father vanished before they

were old enough to talk. It's...complicated..."

"You knew our mother?" Kurumi said as she leaned forward,

dropping to her knees with her hands on her thighs and her

expression full of pleading and longing, "Tell us, honored

sir...who was she?"

Happosai looked into the girl's large brown eyes and was utterly

helpless against their power. A determined lecher that he was,

even he could not resist the entreaties of so Kawaii looking a

young girl as he turned to her and said, "I knew your

mother...very well. She was the closest thing to a child that I

have ever actually had. I was her godfather and a friend to her

parents and I took great care of her until she was old enough to

look after herself. Then I got involved with these two," he

nodded towards Soun and Genma, "And that took most of my

time, so I lost track for her for a while, only to catch up with her

when she was on her death bed. Her last request to me was that I

look after you, and in my own way I have tried to live up to that

promise."

"Who was she, sir?" Natsume joined Kurumi on her knees with a

look of pleading, "And why did you make us believe that you

were Soun Tendo and our father?"

"Yes, Master," Soun said soberly, "Why did you give them my

name instead of your own?"

"On the off chance they might find their way here," Happosai

favored his student with a studied expression as he cupped his

hands behind his back and added, "Where they have every right

to be. After all, their mother was Mariko Tendo, Soun my boy...

your younger sister."

Stunned silence filled the room to which a pin dropping would

have been like a shotgun.

"M-M-Mariko...?" Soun was literally staggered by the news, "I-I

don't believe you, Master! There must be some mistake, I was

never informed that she had children!"

"After her husband deserted her Mariko fell on bad times,"

Happosai said gravely, "She didn't want anyone to know what

had happened to her, and she swore me to silence. In spite of

what some of you may think about me, I do have some personal

integrity, you know. I wouldn't even be telling you this now if it

hadn't been for this pointless challenge match you girls foolishly

got into."

"We have an aunt named Mariko?" Kasumi asked with no little

surprise.

"Had, Oneechan," Nabiki said more gravely, "As in past tense,

and why haven't we heard about it either?"

"I-I don't really know," Soun said, still trying to cope with these

revelations, "She ran away with a man she claimed to love when

you were all so little..."

"I remember that," Genma nodded sagely, "It was a big scandal

with our families at the time, so no one much wanted to talk

about it. I'd almost forgotten the whole thing myself until...this

happened."

"Then..." Akane turned to look in wonder at Kurumi, "You're

really my cousin and not my sister?"

"But..." Ranma hesitated before resuming, "Who was their father

then?"

"Yeah," Ryoga said more darkly, "What kind of man would dare

to abandon two helpless young girls like these and leave them

orphans for all of these years?"

"It doesn't matter now," Happosai said curtly, "All that matters is

that these two are indeed Tendos and have a legitimate right to

reside within this dojo. In addition to this they are the daughters

of my own beloved Goddaughter, and as such I expect them to be

respected while they reside here..."

"No," Natsume said, drawing everyone's attention towards her as

she looked sadly at the ground, "We don't have a right to be here.

We were looking for our father, now it seems our search was

fruitless. Kurumi and I have trained all of our lives to be worthy

of a legacy that we thought ourselves entitled to, only we have

failed to live up to our potential. This match proves that we are

not the best and so must train again until we can bring only honor

to this house and not the shame of two abandoned orphans..."

"You're being a little hard on yourselves, don't you think?" Ukyo

asked her, "That fight was pretty spectacular, and believe me,

we're in a position to know talent. I'd say that any school would

be honored to have the both of you, even if you do fight dirty."

"Yes," Soun said, moving forward until he stood over the

miserable looking girls, "Please stay. You are all that I have left

of my youngest sister, who has been lost to me all of these years.

I want the chance to get to know the both of you much

better...and as your Uncle I demand it."

"We...wouldn't want to be any burden," Natsume's voice

trembled with emotions as she fought hard against crying,

looking up into the soft brown eyes of the man she had thought

was her father.

"Are you kidding me?" Akane had to smile at last, looking from

Kurumi to her sister, "The way the two of you were looking after

Dad and Uncle Saotome? All right, so I was a little resentful of

all the attention you guys were paying them, but it's obvious even

to me that you got way lots more domestic talent than I'll ever

have."

"They have been helping a lot around the house," Nodoka noted,

arching her voice slightly as she added, "But giving my husband

and Soun backrubs in the bathroom is going a bit too far in my

opinion. You girls obviously need to be shown more modesty,

which can only be done in a proper home environment."

"Yes," Hinako spoke brightly, "And what is more, you two

should be attending regular school, which can hardly be the case

if all you two have ever done is travel. When was the last time

either one of you saw the insides of a classroom?"

"Ah..." Kurumi exchanged looks with her sister, who reluctantly

nodded and said, "She is right. I have done what I can to educate

us both, but our lives have been spent in endless training and we

have not had enough time to master other subjects."

"Then it's settled," Kasumi said brightly, "You can stay here and

attend class at Furinkan along with Akane, Nabiki, Ryoga and

Ranma."

"Yes," Cologne added with a studious expression, "And while we

are on the subject of training, the pair of you have impressed me

as worthy of some special training that I can give you...'

"You, old woman?" Happosai glared her way.

"And who else is fit to teach them Amazon techniques to make

them worthy of this school and its traditions?" Cologne replied

with equal challenge, "A sex-crazed, lecherous dolt like yourself?

I think not..."

"Are you forgetting something, Great-Grandmother?" Shampoo

asked with a meaningful lilt in her voice.

"Yeah," Ryonami picked up on the hint at once and said, "Isn't

the decision to let them stay supposed to belong with the true heir

of the Anything Goes school?"

All eyes turned to Nabiki, who had been silently watching these

exchanges. She smiled sardonically at being recognized by her

wife and friend, but now she turned a serious look towards the

anxious sisters and replied, "Why not? It's a pleasure to have you

on board...Cousins."

A large sigh seemed to echo through the chamber, then Natsume

found that she could barely hold back her tears as she replied,

"Arigato...Cousin. But still...it is not proper that we put a further

strain on the family finances. Kurumi and I eat more than our

share..."

"No problem there," Ukyo replied, "You guys can come to work

for me in my restaurant. I could use the help now that Mousse is

away on an extended cruise vacation."

Perfume could not help snickering at that, then assumed a sober

pose and eyed the two girls with an appraisal, making her own

mental notes of their potential with an eye to furthering their

training.

"Thank you everybody!" Kurumi suddenly burst out, unable to

contain her enthusiasm as she rushed to embrace Soun with a

hug as she added, "Ojisama!"

Soun returned the hug, having no problem with shedding his

tears as Nodoka looked on fondly and Genma found himself

looking elsewhere.

"I guess that means we're going to be family," Ranma turned to

Natsume, "On behalf of everybody, welcome to our House."

"Thank you, Saotome-kun," Natsume replied, "Kurumi and I will

try and be worthy of that honor."

"And this also means you can continue to be close to Tatewaki

Kuno," Kasumi noted with a sparkle in her eyes, "Ranma is his

best friend and often visits the Kuno mansion."

"Indeed," Natsume looked to Ranma with renewed interest,

unaware of the angry glare that Kurumi turned in their direction.

Nabiki continued to study everything with a curious detachment,

finding her feelings were mixed at the sudden increase in the size

of their family, even though she did not regret welcoming the

sisters. She did, however, take notice of the fact that Master

Happosai was trying to sneak away while everyone else was

distracted and came to an abrupt conclusion of her own,

murmuring her apologies to Shampoo before slipping out the

other exit.

Happosai was therefore quite surprised at finding Nabiki had

reached the roof of the dojo ahead of him and paused with a wary

look before saying, "What do you want now, student?"

"Master," Nabiki said as respectfully as she could manage, "You

didn't tell us the whole story back there, did you?"

Rather than angrily denounce the implied accusation the old man

looked away before speaking, "I have a very good reason not to

share everything I know. Now, if you will excuse me..."

"The father of these sisters," Nabiki continued, "What is his

relationship to Uncle Genma?"

Happosai tensed again, then carefully said, "Why, is it

important?"

"It is to me," Nabiki sighed, "I never have liked unsolved

mysteries. It's always been a weakness with me that any time I

see a challenge I just have to try and solve it. Doesn't matter if

it's a Rubix cube or a crossword puzzle, give me any problem or

riddle and I just have to puzzle it out until it makes sense or I can

resolve it into some kind of order. It's a weakness I know,

curiosity killing the...whatever, I know, but there you have it."

"I see," the old man eyed her warily, "And what do you make of

this particular puzzle?"

"From little hints and clues I can imply a lot," Nabiki said

earnestly, "Like the fact that Ojisama never mentioned any of this

to me before, and he's usually such a gossip. In ten long years of

being together he never once mentioned that my father had a

sister named Mariko. The only relative he ever told me about on

my father side of the family was a cousin of his named Achika,

who married a man named Nobuyuki..."

"Well, what's so special about that?" Happosai asked, "Your

uncle isn't totally insensitive to something like a family scandal,

you know."

"Aunt Nodoka didn't seem surprised about it either," Nabiki

continued, "And given the dagger-looks she's been shooting at

my father all afternoon I'd rather think she would have had more

of a reaction if she didn't already know about it. But that brings

me to another point...my father and Uncle Genma were

contemporaries going way back, and they used to hang out

together the same way I do with my friends..."

"They used to be real scalawags," Happosai said fondly, "That

old gang of theirs, with that charming Amazon who used to..."

"Amazon?" Nabiki blinked, "They used to hang out with an

Amazon?"

"Ah?" Happosai sounded both surprised and embarrassed by his

own gaff, "Did I say Amazon? I meant they once took a trip up

the Amazon back when they used to go on adventures..."

"It's interesting," Nabiki stroked her chin, "Back when the tour

guide was leading us to a village called Joketsuzoku I noticed

Uncle Genma-in Panda form at the time-seemed to react to the

name as if it meant something. This was before he learned 'sign'-

language, of course, so he couldn't really tell me what he was so

excited about, but if he'd known an Amazon before...it all makes

sense now. You wouldn't happen to know what her name was,

by the way?"

"It's...been a long time, and I'm an old man," Happosai said

evasively, "I tend to be forgetful..."

Nabiki snapped her fingers, "Silk."

"Eh?" Happosai was even more startled than before, "How could

you possibly know..."

"I didn't until now," Nabiki grinned, "It's just a name I once

heard Genma use, almost like an epitaph. I take it they didn't get

along very well?'

"No," Genma replied, "You definitely could say that."

Nabiki stiffened, "How long have you been listening, old man?"

"Not long," Genma replied, "And I didn't have to hear much to

get the gist of the conversation. I know you quite well, Niece,

and it wasn't hard to figure out where you were going when I saw

you slip away. Ranma will be looking for you before too long,

and Shampoo too, so I guess I'd better make this quick because

you two will be here until next year if the Master continues being

so evasive."

Happosai glared at his former student and said, "I was looking

out for your interests too, you know."

"I know," Genma replied with a sigh, "I'm not here to fight about

that. It's just that Nabiki-chan deserves to know something

before her engagement to my son can go ahead as planned. I

respect her too much to keep the truth hidden for very much

longer..."

"That you have a brother, Ojisan?" Nabiki asked.

Genma only showed marginal surprise before nodding in

confirmation, "I never mentioned him to you for a reason, the

same reason I won't tell Ranma this unless you decide to tell him.

The day your father and I decided to engage our children together

was the day my son was born, the happiest day of my life, or so I

thought at the time. I was so proud that Soun and I got

thoroughly drunk and made that pledge to unite our families in

order to repair the family honor."

"Repair?" Nabiki raised both eyebrows.

Genma nodded, "My brother disgraced us all, although in his

defense he did have what he thought were legitimate reasons. He

and Mariko were very much in love, but our families objected,

and the Master...had his own reasons not to permit it," he turned

and gave Happosai a studied look, "Will you tell her or must I

say it?"

Happosai folded his arms over his diminutive chest but closed his

eyes as he sighed, "I know what everyone thinks about me, that

I'm just some dried up old prune who couldn't attract a woman if

my life depended on it. Believe it or not I once cared a great deal

about Cologne, and in her day she was every bit the beauty

Shampoo now is...maybe even more beautiful, but that's just my

opinion. I loved her but she didn't love me back the same way. It

frustrated me to no end, so I took to satisfying myself any way I

could find, which is why I began collecting pretty things from the

ladies as tokens in lieu of their actual affections."

"In other words you couldn't find anyone in Joketsuzoku who

wanted you," Nabiki said softly, "You were small and not very

handsome, and at the time they were all too good for you to beat

them in combat."

Happosai surprised her by not denying this statement, "Cologne

was the best of her generation, and she's the only one I really

wanted. When we first knew each other she was as kind-hearted

and considerate as Kasumi, but after a while my continual

attempts at being friendly wore her down and she started reacting

violently, about the way that fellow Mousse is turning that cute

chef into an angry and bitter woman with his hitting on her

Pussy..."

"Master!" Genma chided.

"Hey, I'm trying to find the right word for Nabiki sake here,"

Happosai insisted, "Anyway, my failure to win Cologne's heart

made me resolve to travel the world and learn to become the best

martial artist the world has ever seen. I meant to return one day

and win her honorably...I just got kind of sidetracked after a

while. The world turned out to be an awfully big place with lots

of cuties in it..."

"Get to the point," Nabiki urged, "Ojisama's right about the

others missing me if I stay here much longer."

"I was just getting to the point," Happosai said testily, "The point

being that I never thought I'd find any woman that I could care

about as much as I did Cologne. Three hundred years is a lot of

time to look, however, and look I did, and what I found was a

woman every bit as beautiful and spirited as the old bag in her

heyday. Her name was Chandra...and she was your great

Grandmother."

"My..." even though she had been mentally prepared for this the

revelation left Nabiki staggered. If the old man had sired a child

with a woman...if he was capable of such a thing...then that

would imply...

"I think we'd better call it quits about this point," Genma replied,

"We've given you enough to think about already, isn't that

right...Grandfather?"

Happosai snorted, "I told you never to call me that, as if I'd be

proud to acknowledge a lazy, useless lout like you as my kin."

Genma stood up and gave Nabiki a sympathetic look, "First

cousins can marry under some circumstances, but it's usually not

approved of. Second cousins, on the other hand...well, nobody

thinks too much about it either way, especially in these times.

Saotome Hikaru disgraced himself and was disowned by our

parents long before even Kasumi was born, but it was Soun and

my belief that having one of you marry my son would heal the rift

between our families, which is why we have been so insistent

that a Tendo marry a Saotome. Now tell me, Niece, is this the

sort of thing you wish to have burden Ranma?"

"I don't really know," Nabiki said, "There aren't a lot of secrets

between me and Ranchan...and I'm pretty determined that we're

going to be a lot closer in the future. Maybe I'd better see how he

feels about it before I tell him."

"Could always be worse," Happosai said with a twinkle in his

eyes, "Shampoo could have been my great-granddaughter too.

You wouldn't think that was incest, would you?"

"I guess not," Nabiki turned to one side as she heard her name

being called, "Guess that's my cue to go join the clan in

welcoming the prodigal daughters into our fold. Just one other

nagging question that's been bothering me for quite a while.

Ryoga-kun..."

"Ah," Genma exchanged looks with Happosai, then said, "Let's

just deal with one revelation at a time, shall we?"

"No problem there," Nabiki smiled as she turned away, "But I'd

love to see the expression on their faces if it ever turns out that

Ranma and Ryoga are related. See you both at dinner, I hear it's

going to be quite a feast these girls are preparing."

"Are you going to tell them the truth about Kaneda?" Happosai

asked before she could leap out of earshot.

"I think they deserve to know the truth if they'll be staying around

here," Nabiki called back, wondering privately just how she was

going to explain it to her newfound cousins...

"Well," Derek smiled as he looked up from the monitor, "Does

that satisfy your curiosity? It seems this girl really does make a

different on her timeline."

"Obviously so," Serena replied, "She does seem to be coping

rather well with all the pressure she's under."

"The resolution with the Tiger lady shows that she's going

places," Derek nodded thoughtfully, "She might very well be the

one we're after. Time will tell, of course," he sighed, "Meanwhile

there is that problem in the other sectors..."

"What are you going to do about that?" Serena asked him, "Those

troublemakers have certainly stirred up a hornets nest, and the

consequences to those timelines..."

"Yes, I know," Derek stroked his chin and smiled, "How would

Nabiki-kun handle things, I wonder? Perhaps some day I may

take the chance and ask her..."

To be continued...like always!

Comments/Criticism/Can this really happen?:

shadowmane

What do you think of my explanation for the various relationships

of the characters? Would Takahashi approve? Do you think that

Ranma and Nabiki are related? Or Ryoga for that matter?

Next time we resume this story Nabiki makes a new friend and

gets involved in a world of new troubles...be there!

If you wish to check out my other works, Please check out my

Fanfiction webpage at: . or

it's mirror site at: ~

All related chapters of this series can be found there along with my

other works.


	27. Chapter 27

Nabiki 1/2

A Very Scary Thought

(An Altered Destiny)

Chapter 27, Part 1.

by

Jim Robert Bader

(Based on the works of Rumiko Takahashi & Others)

"Oh my."

Derek looked up from his review of the latest report concerning

Reality # 347296-C and said, "I beg your pardon?"

"Better check #593439 and see for yourself," Serena said with a

slightly absent expression, "Believe it or not things are starting

up over there again, only worse than last time."

Derek arched an eyebrow at this and said, "That Lao character is

due to be back in their neighborhood, isn't she? That would

certainly stir up some..."

"Not that trouble," Serena chided, "Like I said, you'd better have

a look at this for yourself."

Intrigued by his companion's enigmatic comment, Derek called

up the reality in question, then studied it in silence for several

moments before murmuring aloud, "Oh my...I do see what you

mean..."

Nabiki was aware of the shadow that fell over her and without

moving her head slowly tracked her gaze upward. As it turned

out her view encountered a rather interesting pair of legs showing

from beneath a knee-length skirt that did not bear the Furinkan

colors. She continued tracking her gaze by tilting her head back

a little until she at last came to a full view of the woman herself,

one glance at which was enough to tell her this lady was trouble.

Trouble also spelled with a business price tag.

Nabiki turned her face fully to regard a rather tall and slender girl

who seemed about her age, or slightly younger. Fine features

with high cheekbones prominent in an angular face that looked

faintly aristocratic. Long silvery hair...tinged slightly blue around

the edges hanging down almost to the hem length of her skirt,

and a pair of rather intelligent blue eyes regarding her with a

faintly amused expression.

"Something I can do for you?" she asked of this apparent

stranger.

"Perhaps," the woman replied in highly cultivated tones that went

with the general impression of someone who had excellent

breeding, "They tell me you're the one to come to if you have

anything you want on this campus. I was wondering if I might

interest you in a little business proposition."

Nabiki set her texts to one side and gave the woman a more

thorough study, "You're a student at Furinkan?"

"Recently transferred," she replied with a faintly amused glance

down at herself, "As you can tell I haven't even had time yet to

get a proper outfit tailored to your school colors. I tried to speak

with someone in authority about that but then some maniac with

a pineapple tree growing out of his head tried to give me a

haircut..."

"That would be our Principal," Nabiki noted with a hint of

sympathy in her smirk.

The other girl raised a snowy eyebrow before remarking, "Your

principal? An interesting place you have here..."

"Tell me about it."

The girl nodded towards Nabiki's Chinese-style outfit, "I notice

that you don't appear to be wearing a typical uniform either."

"I'm a special case," Nabiki smiled as she rose fluidly to her feet

and found that this girl was just as tall as herself, maybe even an

inch taller, "Tendo Nabiki, Senior Class, B Group. And

yourself?"

"Call me Beatrice," the girl's lip twitched slightly as though the

name had some slight discomfort for her, and Nabiki concluded

from that hint that it was a pseudonym, but the girl's next words

disabused her of that notion, "It's the name given to me by my

late mother, but everyone I know just calls me Beiko."

"Beiko?" Nabiki repeated.

"Yes," the girl's smile had a sardonic look that Nabiki had worn

so often herself that it almost made her feel an instant of kinship,

"Actually a play on my first two initials, Beatrice Kane. My last

name is Daitokuji..."

Nabiki gasped in recognition, "You're the daughter of Hitome

Daitokuji? Head of Daitokuji enterprises?"

"The same," Beatrice said casually with an airy smile, "But at the

present I'm trying to put that part of my past behind me."

"Oh?" Nabiki blinked, "Why so?"

"It's a long and complicated story," Beatrice sighed, "I don't get

along very well with my father these days, not since he tried to

cheat me out of the royalties for some patents on some of my

inventions. I'm sure that you're really not too interested in the

details..."

"All right," Nabiki recovered herself from the realization that the

girl before her must have had a net worth to rival that of Japan's

National Budget, then said, "I just recognized your school

uniform... Graviton High, right?"

"The same," Beatrice replied, "Is that a problem?"

"Not for me," Nabiki said with a faint smile of whimsy as she

added, "Could have been worse...it might have been Tomobiki."

"Or Quagmire?" Beatrice replied, and both girls shared a

knowing grin at the horrible prospects that would have entailed

from their mutual perspective.

"All right," Nabiki smiled in genuine earnest, warming up to the

other girl, "So what can I do for you, Daitokuji-san?"

"Ah," Beatrice raised a long, elegant and well-manicured finger

and smiled, "Before I tell you can I have your solemn word that

you won't be upset with me or anything? I'd really hate to begin

my first day getting on anyone's bad side. I did enough of that at

my last campus."

"Why would I be upset?" Nabiki asked with some suspicion.

"Because this matter is really not of my intention," Beatrice

replied with an apologetic expression, "You see...it really is all

the fault of my father, another reason we're not much on speaking

terms these days."

"Sounds familiar," Nabiki murmured with ever-growing

suspicion, "What did he do?"

"Engaged me without my consent to a boy I have never even

met," Beatrice said with a cross expression, "I believe I have

heard mention that this boy already has two other iinazuke, and

that you happen to be one of them."

"R-Ranma?" Nabiki paled, then suddenly felt the anger swell

from deep inside her, "Genma..."

"I'm not too privy on the details," Beatrice inclined her head to

one side and gave a more than sympathetic look towards Nabiki,

"And I rather thought the boy in question might not have had

much of a clue about this arrangement. I understand that there is

precedence..."

"You could put it that way," Nabiki crossed her arms over her

chest and said, "Ranma has more than enough on his plate, thank

you. I take it you don't want to press your claim?"

"Certainly not," Beatrice sniffed, "You and that other girl are

more than welcome to the fellow, although I am told he is rather

good looking. I'm afraid these days I'm just not interested in

pursuing any kind of relationship...I got into enough trouble over

that last semester to last me a lifetime. Unfortunately my father

seems set and determined to put it into his will that I either

comply with his choice or get cut off from my inheritance. I

thought perhaps we might arrange for some suitable way to

conclude this matter without anyone being hurt, then we can

convince my father to let the matter drop altogether."

"Fine by me," Nabiki replied, "You'll excuse me if I stop by my

home first so I can kill my uncle?"

"Take your time," Beatrice said with a knowing smirk, "There

was a time I would have done much the same thing to my father,

before I started seeing my analyst. These days I try to handle my

affairs calmly and rationally rather than resorting to my old

methods..."

She stopped talking so abruptly that Nabiki wondered why, then

noticed the other girl's change of expression, and that her eyes

were focused elsewhere. Out of habit Nabiki traced the angle of

her stare and saw the figure of a redheaded girl wearing Furinkan

colors walking away in the company of her younger sister,

Akane.

"Aiko."

Nabiki whirled to catch the haunted look in the eyes of her new

acquaintance and found that Beatrice was staring at the redhead

with a complex mixture of raw emotions that was surprising on

the formerly calm and well-composed young lady. She saw

Beatrice take a step forward, then hesitated, seemed to debate a

point, then took a deep breath and called out, "Aiko!"

The call got an immediate reaction from the redhead, who

stopped in mid-stride to look back at Beatrice with a clear

recognition in her expression. For five long seconds nothing else

in the world seemed to move for these two, then at last the

redhead jerked her head away and stared resolutely forward,

increasing her pace slightly to catch up with her erstwhile

companions, one of whom turned out to be Akane!

"Aiko..." Beatrice whispered with a faint hint of pain in her

features. It took a second for the girl to master herself before she

sighed and said, "Never mind...it's not important."

"You two know each other?" Nabiki asked rhetorically.

"You could say that," Beatrice drew another deep breath, "Old

news, I'm afraid. Nothing you need to be concerned about. Now,

about your fiancee.."

"Ranma has class right now," Nabiki replied, "He'll be free next

period, and then we can resolve this matter."

"Don't you have class next period?" Beatrice asked curiously.

"Special study time," Nabiki replied, "I'm on my own, officially

working on a class project."

"Oh?" Beatrice raised a pale eyebrow to that, "May I ask the

nature of your project?"

"Special Economic Theory as applied to International Trade

Relations," Nabiki replied, "It's going to be my Term Paper

thesis."

"You are an Economics major?" Beatrice surmised, "Then

perhaps we may share several of the same classes. Business

Management is one of my current interests, though not my real

specialty, I'm afraid."

"Are you also a senior?" Nabiki asked her with increasing

interest.

"No," Beatrice replied, "But I'm something of a prodigy and I'm

often enrolled in classes a few grades ahead of my actual age. No

doubt I could impress you with a recital of my degrees and

accomplishments, but it really isn't all that important. I've

missed so many classes of late that I'm actually behind my peers

at Graviton..."

"Oh?" Nabiki asked, "Why is that?"

The new girl heaved a long sigh and said, "Let's just say I took a

long trip abroad that proved to be longer than I'd originally

intended and leave it at that. I'm back now and I have so much

lost time to make up for..." almost against her will her eyes

traveled in the direction of where the redhead had vanished.

"Well then," Nabiki replied with a slight smile, "Perhaps we can

meet up again later and sort things out about Ranma. I'll look

forward to seeing you in class."

"Likewise I'm certain," Beatrice replied, then turned to leave as

she said a pleasant, "It's been a very fortuitous meeting."

Nabiki waited until the silver haired girl was out of sight before

she said, "Ryo-chan?"

Her attach‚, aide-de-camp and all-around girl Friday popped up

from where she had been eavesdropping from concealment and

said, "Yes, Sempai?"

"Find out anything you can about her...and that other girl,"

Nabiki instructed, "I have a sneaking hunch that they are going to

be interesting to have around."

"Yes, Sempai," the brown haired Ryonami agreed with that tacit

understatement, "I'll make some inquiries at Graviton. Shall I

have Gosunkugi-kun do a Net search?"

Nabiki noted the way her friend spoke the name of their resident

Techno-mouse and wizard-in-training as she smiled, "Do

whatever you have to but I want to know everything you can find

on this Beatrice Daitokuji and Aiko Managi, and I want that

information as soon as it can be produced, understood?"

"Hai," Ryonami acknowledged, "It will be as you ask, Sempai."

Nabiki nodded to herself as she studied the space where Beatrice

had been standing, her expression thoughtful, murmuring aloud,

"I don't quite know why but I have this feeling that our troubles

will be starting up again, and it that's so then I want to be ready

to meet it head on. It would be a nice change of pace to be

prepared for once."

"Almost unheard of, Sempai," Ryonami agreed with an echoing

sense that new storm clouds were brewing on their horizons...

There is a conceptual frame where reality and fantasy collide at

the crossroads between worlds and dimensions, and in such a

place there is a terminal point at the gateway of heaven...or rather

at one form of Heaven among many. Its reality was quite beyond

the comprehension of mortal perceptions, but to the naked eye it

resembles a fairly ordinary Airport terminal. A bit brighter and

better lit than any terminal on Earth, of course, but organized just

like any other place where human traffic is regulated to a

manageable flow.

It was at the checkpoint desk in one such terminal that a certain

Goddess Second Class was presently stationed to inspect and

stamp the passports of traveling Gods, Angels and other Spiritual

beings coming and going to and from the Japanese equivalent of

Heaven. She was bored to tears by the work, of course, and it

was a far sight less important than her regular duties, but

Community Service is the same the Multiverse over.

"I hate my life," Urd murmured sullenly as she leaned her head

against her hands, waiting for the next Celestial Shipload of new

arrivals to come through, privately adding that her Kami-sama

father had a lousy sense of humor sticking her with a job like this

to work off her three month sentence.

She straightened up and put on a patently false smile of cheer as

she greeted the first of the celestial beings to approach her

transfer point, a very tall fellow wearing distinctively Celtic

clothing and standing next to an attractive Valkyrie from Asgard

as though the two were on a romantic cruise and thought to tour

the orient like a couple of lovesick teenagers, even though they

were probably a good couple thousand years old a piece.

"Welcome to Nippon Heaven, your divinities," Urd said with a

cheerfulness that she did not actually feel, "May I see your

passports?"

"Sure thing, cute stuff," the Celtic god replied, then frowned a

little as he said, "Urd? Is that you? I don't believe it!"

"Urd?" the Valkyrie turned an astonished look her way, "What

are you doing here like this?"

"Froslinde?" Urd blinked back, "I might ask you the same thing!

And Lugh the Long-handed," she nodded to the tall man with a

genuine smile this time, "Don't tell me you two are an item? It's

been...what? Five centuries at least since I've seen either one of

you crazy kids?"

"At least," the man said cheerfully, "But what about you? I

thought your job was to run the Cosmic Computers here! Don't

tell us you've been demoted again?"

"Well," said nervously, "You know how it is, we were loading up

the new Yggdrasil 98 software and...well...a few bugs got into

the system and...I sort of got blamed when the whole thing

crashed big time..."

"Tough break," Lugh nodded, "We had something like that

happen to us in the Blessed Lands when Dad fired up his new

hard drive. I won't bother you with the details but we had

Gremlin problems for six weeks. That's why most of us decided

to take a little vacation until the whole thing gets cleaned up, and

Fross here was due some time off from Valhalla..."

"Hey!" a fellow looking rather like an ancient Spartan warrior

complained from several paces back in the line, "Move it along

you guys! This is supposed to be a line, not a fresco! Socialize

on your own eon."

Urd made a very cross scowl at that, then cupped her hands

behind her back and wiggled her fingers, causing a ray of divine

energy to shoot out into a tiny temporal anomaly, reappearing

several seconds in the past to give the fellow a very sudden

hotfoot. He yelped and jumped out of line, which gave Urd the

perfect excuse to say, "Stay in line or go to the rear, sir."

She waved a hand and a pair of attendant Angels appeared

wearing security uniforms as they accosted the fellow and hauled

him back to the rear of the line while Urd assumed the innocence

of a halo over her head.

"Same old Urd," Froslinde chuckled, "Just like in the gold old

times when you were such a party animal. I can remember when

you and Thor..."

"I think we'd better get going," Lugh said more considerately as

he noted the hostile glares of the divinities in the line behind

them, though none dared voice a complaint after the last example,

"Maybe we'll get a chance to look you up while we're in this

frame, Urd. The old haunts haven't been the same without you."

"Sure," Urd smiled lopsidedly as she took their passports and

stamped them with gold stars, then watched the two go off

holding hands as her expression became more wistful, "Anytime

you feel like it, big fellow..."

She turned to meet the next guy in line and almost fell over in

surprise. This fellow was trying very hard to avoid drawing her

attention to himself, but it was rather hard to miss his girth and

the bulging muscles of his frame, which were clearly visible with

the sleeveless shirt that he was wearing.

"Hercules?" she gasped in recognition.

"Ah," the man looked suddenly quite nervous, "You must be

mistaken, Ma'am, I'm just passing through these parts..."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," Urd waved the point away, "And you're

really Kevin Sorbo in disguise. Give me a break, Herk, it hasn't

been that long since I last blew by Olympus. How's it going, and

what the heck are you doing in my frame?"

The burly giant sighed, "Well, if you must know I'm doing a

favor for my old man..."

"Zeus sent you?" Urd said in surprise, "What, did my Dad forget

to return something like last time?"

"Ah...not exactly," he replied, "Kind of more like something that

got lost a long, long time ago but seems to have cropped back up

again, and I've got to return it to where it belongs."

"Is it Animal, Vegetable or Giant?" Urd inquired, giving the

Theban-born Greek a fond lookover, "Powers but it's been such a

long time since those good old days. You still hanging out with

that Amazon?"

"Hippolyta?" Hercules blanched, "No way! That crazy chick and

I've been splitsville for centuries..."

"That's not what I've heard," Urd snickered, "Rumor has it you

two were pretty hot and heavy for a while there. In fact there's

even talk that you had a kid by her, a real chip of the old Marble

pectorals," she added with a grin as she caught the guilty start in

the broad-shouldered man's expression.

"What about it?" he said somewhat defensively, "Like I said, it's

been centuries, and I'm a married man these days, in case you

haven't heard about that."

"Yeah, what about that?" Urd asked, leaning forward with a

sultry, sexy smile, "How are you and Hebe getting along? Does

she still hammer you whenever she thinks you're eyeing some

other woman?"

"Naw, Hebe and I are just friends these days," Hercules replied,

"I'm back with my first wife, Dianira..."

"Oho?" Urd smiled, "That's even better! She could sure whip up

some of the best baklava I ever tasted. Of course she seemed to

resent me whenever I was around for some strange reason..."

"Only the way you used to glom onto me every chance you got,"

Hercules grumbled.

"Hey!" somebody in the line behind the big man-god finally got

up enough courage to protest, "Sometime this millennium, all

right?"

Urd gave the fellow a cross look, but this time when she waved

her arms she caused time to freeze for everybody but herself and

Hercules before turning her head to call out over her shoulder,

"Somebody take over for me here, will you? My shift's almost

done, and I'm entitled to a break with an old buddy!"

A heavenly figure materialized in the space beside her and said,

"Actually you still have another hour on this shift, but I'll take

over for you. I don't mind, really."

"Thanks, Aki-chan," Urd smiled, "You're a real lifesaver. I'll

owe you for this later."

She vaulted over her desk as the other woman took her place,

causing Hercules to take a step back in dismay as he said, "Just

what do you think you're doing?"

"Relax, Muscles," Urd said brightly, "I'm now your officially

designated tour guide."

"Tour guide?" Hercules said incredulously, "Now wait a

minute...!"

"You need somebody to watch after that cute butt of yours while

you're in this province," Urd poked him in the chest as she

continued to grin, "Face it, Herk, you've got a reputation for

causing major property damage both in and out of the Mortal

world, so you need to have somebody on hand who can bail you

out of any trouble you get into."

"You?" Hercules's tone betrayed his incredulity at the concept,

but Urd ignored the implied slight and continued.

"When was the last time you visited Japan, huh?" she reasoned,

"You know enough about the language and culture to stay out of

trouble?"

"Well..." Hercules began, "Language is never a problem for us

Gods, you know..."

"I don't mean if you can figure out the subtitles," Urd snorted,

"Japanese comes with a number of contextual rules that don't

figure into a regular Tongues spell. You want to wind up with a

repeat of what happened that time you visited China?"

Hercules blanched and with great reluctance admitted,

"Well...not really..."

"Fine," Urd grinned as she glommed onto his arm and all but

dragged him from the terminal towards the transport station,

"Then it's settled. Trust me, Herk, I won't steer you wrong, and

I've spent a lot more time among Mortals this time out so I'm

more than qualified to be your cultural guide as well as nuance

translator. Just stick with me and I'll show you a time that you'll

be remembering for all eternity."

"That's what I'm afraid of," Hercules said weakly, then to himself

softly whispered, "Dianira's going to kill me when she hears

about this..."

For the past several weeks Akane Tendo had been moping about

feeling sorry for herself while counting the days until she could

be reunited with her absent friends, Keiko and Kodachi. The

time was nearing when they were due to make their return to

Nerima and the closer that time came to being the present the

more anxious Akane was about the whole matter.

Ever since saying their good-byes as they departed with the

infamous Pirate Queen known as Madam Lao some months back

Akane's life had suddenly become quite empty and lacking

purpose. It wasn't just that she missed having her two best

friends around, with all that their company entailed, it was the

sense that a large part of her life was on hold, and until she saw

them safely again and could say the things she'd been storing up

for the past three months her life just would not be whole. She

needed to know that they were all right and still the same two

people that she remembered...as if anyone could remain the same

around that perverted Tiger woman...

Akane sighed as she stared down at her desk without really

seeing it at all, telling herself that she was missing her friends a

lot more than just the things they used to do together, and then

her body reacted in a certain way and Akane knew that she was

lying. The truth was that she very much missed that extra

physical component of their relationship that she had

surpassingly become so used to experiencing when either Keiko,

Kodachi or a combination of the two and she were alone together.

Ryoga did what he could to cheer her up, but her iinazuke was

notoriously reluctant to make any sort of moves with her and

while his chivalry was part of the reason she liked and respected

him so much, the truth was that she was growing more and more

frustrated, especially with his tendency to wander off, sometimes

for days without warning!

She needed that intimacy that she used to know around her two

missing companions, that caress in a certain way that told her

beyond words that there was someone else in the whole who

cared for her, and who would let her care back, and compared to

that intimacy her Platonic relationship with Ryoga was anything

but satisfying...

That had been the state of her thoughts when her homeroom

teacher had announced that there would be a new student in their

class, a transfer from another Highschool in one of the other

provinces near to Tokyo, from Graviton High of all places. The

mention of that school had barely registered with Akane as she

looked up from her sullen doldrums and caught her first glimpse

of the new student.

What she saw was a full head of blazing red hair, and at once she

thought of Keiko Arigami. This caused her to sit up more alertly

as she studied this stranger with new interest, seeing at once

major differences between her and the pig-tailed kickboxer. This

girl had large brown eyes instead of the blue that were Kei-

chan's. They were also looking at everyone in the class with a

mixture of nervousness and longing.

Akane stared openly at the girl then belatedly heard the teacher

call her by the curious name of Aiko Managi. The girl was

obviously not of oriental parentage, having extremely western

features, yet her thoroughly Japanese name implied that she had

been born a native. On the whole she was a curious combination

of paradoxical qualities, and for some reason that appealed to

Akane.

Of course what she did not expect was when their teacher, Miss

Hinako, called her name and said, "Tendo Akane, would you be

Managi-san's special friend for today and show her around

Furinkan until she knows how to find her own way? It would be

greatly appreciated."

To say that Akane was surprised would have been a mild

understatement, but one very seldom said no to Miss Hinako.

Akane glanced to the side to receive encouraging nods from

Ukyo and Ranma, then turned back to see the new girl looking

shyly at her with brown eyes and a slightly pensive expression.

And that was how she got to know the strange foreign-looking

girl named Aiko Managi. To her surprise she found the girl very

outgoing and friendly, if a bit on the Tomboy side even by

Akane's admittedly biased standards. The former Graviton

student had explained that her transfer had been arranged at the

behest of her parents after some troubles she had gone through at

her old school. She was eager to make friends and the two of

them had hit it off from the start, so Akane found the task of

showing her around Furinkan was much more enjoyable than she

would have imagined.

Ranma and Ukyo had tagged along for part of the way but soon

wandered off to tend to their own concerns, leaving Aiko to

comment about those two and the way they carried on around one

another.

"What do you expect?" Akane said with a smirk, "Ukyo is

Ranma's iinazuke...well, at least one of them anyway..."

"One of them?" Aiko said with lifted eyebrows.

"Yeah, it's kind of a long story," Akane replied, "Let me

introduce you to my sister. She's free next period and I know

where she likes to hang out between classes."

So it was that she and the new redhead on campus found

themselves approaching the shady tree that Nabiki used during

study periods. To Akane's surprise they found Nabiki talking to

another strange girl that she had never seen on the school

grounds before, a surprise that was compounded when she heard

the amiable Aiko suddenly hiss, "What is SHE doing here?"

"Who?" Akane asked, taken aback by the angry emotions of the

other girl and the venomous stare Aiko fixed in her direction.

"Beiko," Aiko growled as she started to turn away, only to hear

her name called out by the other girl.

"Aiko!"

Akane looked from the silver haired girl to Aiko again, seeing

her new friend tense before turning a look back towards the one

she called Beiko. Then Aiko turned away again and started

walking fast, forcing Akane to work at keeping up with the girl,

who in addition to being taller had a lot more energy to her step

than would be normally suspected.

"What's up?" Akane asked as she caught up with the redhead,

"You know that other girl?"

"Oh yeah," Aiko snorted without turning around, "I know her all

right. Beiko and me went to Graviton together, in fact you might

even say we were rather famous about it."

"You two used to be friends?" Akane asked, suspecting a

personal history between these two that went beyond

conventional schoolgirl relationships.

To her considerable astonishment she heard her new friend say

gruffly, "No, not friends. We were never friends. I don't want to

talk about it. Can we go somewhere else now, please?"

"Uh...sure," Akane said reluctantly, glancing back at the other

girl still speaking with Nabiki and sensing a kind of sadness in

her general bearing. She looked back at the redhead and said,

"Can I see your school schedule?"

Aiko reached her hand to one of the curious black arm bracers

she was wearing and puled out a folded slip of paper, passing it

along to Akane, who unfolded and read the slip before

remarking, "Gym class? Hey, that's great! That means we share

another class together. Come on, I'll show you where our Gym

is. Oh, ah...mind you there are boys there who'll probably

whistle at you since you're the new girl. You don't mind that, do

you?"

"Why should I mind what a bunch of hormone-crazed adolescent

jerks do?" Aiko shrugged, "My last school was girls only, but we

had our share of admirers from the boys school next door to us

and I didn't mind it much back then."

"Right," Akane smiled, really beginning to like this girl on an

instinctual level, as though they were kindred spirits, "I think

you'll do just fine. There used to be one boy who bothered me a

lot in Gym class, but he's been out of school for most of this

semester...medical problem, he's been getting special treatment."

"Too bad," Aiko sniffed, "Guess I won't miss him much then. So,

how good are you in class?'

"Oh...pretty good," Akane fell into step at the other girl's side, "I

hold my own with the other girls, and I've even studied some

Martial Arts Rhythmic Gymnastics..."

"Really?" Aiko asked, "Are you good at that too?"

"I've been trained by one of the best," Akane said proudly, only

the boast brought back a sudden memory that caused her an even

more sudden pang of regret, threatening to spoil her first good

mood in many a long week so she added, "How about you?"

"I'm a pretty good Gymnast," Aiko revealed, "I was taught by my

mother, and she IS the best around at that sort of thing, Martial

Arts or competition."

"Cool," Akane grinned, "Maybe you can teach me a few good

moves. C'mon, if we hurry we'll beat the other girls to the

lockers. You can even borrow one of my spare Leotards...I think

it'll stretch enough to fit you."

"Thanks," Aiko smiled, "You're a real nice person, Akane, doing

something like this for a stranger."

"No problem at all," Akane chuckled, "We Tendos have a habit

of looking after lost strays...it's kind of like a tradition..."

"Come along, child," Cologne urged Perfume as the two of them

were shopping through the market districts of the Furinkan

business district, "Don't drag your feet because you want to see

your Airen. We have a lot of purchases to make and school will

not be over for many hours."

"I'm tried of this Great Grandmother," Perfume complained with

an edge of frustration in her voice, "Why are you making me

carry so many packages? You know we could have most of this

stuff delivered to the restaurant..."

"Of course we could," Cologne replied, "But you need to practice

building up your arm strength so that minor aches do not disable

you. Keep balancing those packages and then we will work

some more on your fortitude..."

"What's wrong with my fortitude?" Perfume asked in

exasperation, glancing with her eyes at the packages balanced on

either arm and the palms of her hands before screwing her eyes

up to the other set of packages precariously set upon her head.

The people that they passed were giving her very strange looks

that she found altogether understandable. She was beginning to

suspect the old woman was testing the limits of her obedience as

well, or had not even gotten started on the matter of Perfume's

patience.

"Nothing if you go by ordinary standards," Cologne said tersely,

"But you are an Amazon Warrior, as good as any I ever trained at

your tender age. You have a loving wife who depends on you

and will do so even more greatly in the coming months, thanks to

your little excursion during our south seas adventure."

In spite of her discomfort at having to walk with so many boxes

and bags adorning her person in such an awkward manner,

Perfume could not help smiling at the remembrance of the event

that had most singularly matured her relationship to Kuonji Ukyo

and confirmed that her Airen was bound to her beyond measure,

even if the idea sometimes left her feeling a little breathless.

"Okay," Perfume replied, "So you're saying this is all for my

good? That it's my fault you think I need this special training?"

"Have you learned nothing from me in all these years, child?"

Cologne sniffed, "To be the best you must go beyond yourself,

beyond the limits that you were born with, to become the perfect

instrument of mind and will so that you may carry the burden for

both yourself and your Airen. Since the two of you are starting a

family it is only fitting that you apply yourself now before your

energies are totally diverted into more domestic concerns..."

"Fine, I get the point, Great Grandmother," Perfume said at last to

head off the coming tirade, "I know you've always done what you

think is for the best, and I have appreciated the special attention

you have shown to me over the years since I was adopted into

your family, but you know that I'm not ever going to be a full

Warrior Champion like cousin Shampoo. Just because she's

entering her eighth month of pregnancy and is too fat to continue

train..."

"I suggest you refrain from using the word 'fat' when describing

your cousin," Cologne said dryly, "She will not always be

pregnant, and once she is back in fighting form there is little

doubt in my mind that she will be coming after you for regular

sparring matches to regain her previous edge."

"I thought Nabiki would be handling that part," Perfume said

dryly, enjoying the sour glare the older woman gave her at

turning the admonition into veiled innuendo, "All right, so I'm

training for the both of us as well, is that it? And once she's well

enough to train I'll pass onto her the special techniques you've

been teaching me lately."

"Exactly, child," Cologne subsided, then turned her head as she

saw a particular market stall and said, "Wait here. I will be back

shortly after I obtain a few medicinal ingredients."

Perfume turned her head slightly to read the sign over the market,

surprised to discover it was in Chinese Script instead of Japanese

Kanji. She had improved so much in her language skills of late

that few people these days even noticed her accent, and she was

even getting used to reading everything in this foreign language

that was sacred to her Airen, so finding the Mandarin was a bit

disconcerting. She had not been aware that this particular

Apothecary shop had been here during her previous visits to this

portion of the city...

Her hyperalert senses warned her a moment before she became

fully aware of the body that was about to collide with hers and

Perfume instinctively pivoted on one foot, turning herself

sideways just in the nick of time to avoid a collision.

"Oh!" a voice said in her ear as she pirouetted around to come

face-to-face with a dark haired girl with large, luminous purple

eyes smiling at her with an all too friendly expression at only six

inches away from her face, "So sorry, didn't mean to upset you.

Those are some very nice reflexes, by the way."

"Thank you," Perfume replied, fighting the pull of gravity on one

foot as she sought to keep from dropping a single package.

"You must be very good," the girl looked her up and down

without backing away from her too-close proximity, seeing to

enjoy Perfume's uncomfortable proximity, "Not many people

could do that. I guess the old woman's instructions have had

pretty good results, miss...?"

"Kuonji," Perfume replied, "Kuonji Perfume."

"My name is Kishijoten," the other woman replied, "But you can

call me Kishi, Miss Kuonji. I'm a very big fan of yours...in point

of fact, you might even say you've been of special interest to me."

Perfume blinked her eyes, trying to recover from the startling fact

that the woman already seemed to have known her. Something

clicked with her senses and she said, "Who are you really?"

"I've already told you," the other woman smiled, "We'll be seeing

a lot more of each other in time, I assure you. At the moment,

however, I've come to give you a special warning concerning

your friends, and-more specifically-your beloved Airen."

"Warning?" Perfume fought the urge to leap back and assume a

fighting stance as it would have meant spilling her packages in

every which direction.

"The danger doesn't come from me," the other woman assured

her, "I am merely the messenger this time. It seems that there are

forces at work here the likes of which it would take me much too

long to describe..."

"YOU!" the sudden harsh voice of Cologne shot through the air

as the old woman all but materialized at Perfume's side, staff

raised in a defensive gesture of warding, "What business have

you with my Great Granddaughter?"

"Nothing you need to be concerned about just yet, Elder of

Joketsuzoku," the other woman assured with a knowing smile, "I

was just telling Perfume-chan here that it would be a very good

idea if she gets over to Furinkan High School as fast as could be

humanly managed, if not a bit sooner. There are forces at work

that could pose a danger to her loved ones."

"A warning?" Cologne said narrowly, "Or is this a threat?"

The other woman's laughter had a musical quality before she

looked indulgently down at Cologne and said, "Don't take that

tone with me, young lady. You should know well enough that

my kind never threatens, we only act when caprice or enlightened

self-interest is at stake. The danger is only minor at the present,

but it will increase geometrically in time, and then you both will

be most regretful that you did not heed my warnings. Until we

meet again, citizens of the Middle Kingdom."

Perfume was shocked to find her senses overwhelmed by a

sudden fog that clouded her vision, and then it passed away a

second later with the woman named Kishijoten no longer to be

seen, not even at the limits of her perception. She sniffed the air

for any trace of the woman's perfume, then belatedly recalled that

the woman had smelled of lilacs and incense without the

distinctive perspiration given off by a normal human body.

"Who was that, Great Grandmother?" she gasped, looking down

at the peculiarly intense glare of the Amazon Elder, who was

staring fixedly at where the other girl had vanished.

"Trouble," Cologne replied, "But at the moment her identity is

less important than the message she has given. I think it would

be best to suspend your training for the rest of the day. Go find

the others and see that they are not in any trouble. I will have

someone else take care of our purchases."

"Yes, Great Grandmother," Perfume said with a mixture of relief

and anxiety as she shrugged her arms to let the boxes fall in a

neat pile before them, then turned and vaulted away as she

performed limbering motions with her arms to get the kinks out

of her tired muscles.

Threats were something one did not take lightly in a place such

as Nerima, and any threat to Kuonji Ukyo was a threat to

Perfume's very soul and would be dealt with accordingly by the

chief Enforcer of the Amazons. No one under heaven or upon the

earth was allowed to harm so much as a single hair on the head

of her beloved Okonomiyaki chef, and that sentiment extended as

well to the odd family unit to which they had both become

attached.

Perfume did not know who this Kishijoten was, but she could tell

that Cologne regarded her with a measure of wary respect

bordering on outright dread. It was hard to believe that anyone

could put such fear into the heart of the greatest of all the Elders

of Joketsuzoku, but this Kishi person obviously had, which

meant that she was someone to take very seriously indeed. There

was, however, one aspect of the whole strange encounter that

really and truly disturbed her.

Kishijoten had referred to Cologne as 'young lady.' And Cologne

had not troubled to deny it...

Continued.

Commentary/Criticism/Japanese Mythology Lectures:

shadowmane

Things are heating up once again, and when these powerful

forces come together you just know there's going to be trouble in

Nerima...be there!

Nabiki 1/2,

A Very Scary Thought

(An Altered Destiny)

by

Jim Robert Bader

Chapter 27, Part 2.

(Based on the Works of Rumiko Takahashi & Others)

"Aiko, wait up!"

Aiko Managi paused without turning around as she left the

locker rooms and in a very harsh voice said, "What do you want,

Beiko?"

The silver haired Beiko Daitokuji hesitated only slightly before

saying, "I just want us to talk. It's been three weeks already..."

"That's all?" Aiko slowly turned around, "Not long enough for my

money..."

"By the way," the silver haired woman said before the redhead

had completed the act, "It's Beatrice now. That's how I'm

registered at this school."

"Oh?" Aiko's eyebrows twitched by a fraction, "Using an alias

this time? No wonder I didn't catch your name on the school

registry."

"Actually," Beatrice sighed, "I'm using my mother's maiden name

these days, it's Beatrice Kane as I once told you. That is my legal

name as given on my birth records, without the Daitokuji part."

"So," Aiko's eyes narrowed by a fraction, "You and the old man

are on the outs, huh? Can't say I'm surprised after what he pulled

during our absence..."

"Please," Beatrice took a half step forward then froze when she

saw the hostile look the other woman directed towards her, "I just

want us to talk, that's all. Is that so much to ask...Alison?"

Aiko reacted with a sharp retort, "Don't call me that! You don't

have the right, not after everything you've ever tried to pull with

me, Beiko! You think I'm fooled by this nice girl pose you're

using? Well, forget it! I know what you're really like, so why

don't we just put aside all this and just do what comes naturally

for us, right?"

The redhead dropped her schoolbooks and assumed a fighting

crouch. The other girl just looked at her in faint puzzlement and

said, "What are you doing, Aiko?"

"You know," Aiko snorted, "C'mon, what are you waiting for?

Let's just get down to it for once without all the insults. Now

fight me!"

"I don't want to fight with you, Alison," Beatrice replied, "We did

enough of that last semester."

"Don't tell me you're chickening out?" the girl snarled, "And don't

call me Alison!"

Two steps forward and a massive punch that froze just inches

away from the other girl's face later the Redhead shook with

anger, her fist hovering in the air while Beatrice calmly folded

her arms and ignored the obvious threat.

"What's wrong with you!" Aiko snarled, "Fight me!"

"I have no intention of fighting with you, Alison," Beatrice

inclined her head with a slight nod, "If you want to continue that

swing go right ahead, but I'm warning you, it will be murder."

Aiko backed away with a look of disbelief and said, "You're

throwing a fight? You are throwing away a chance to fight with

me? What's the matter with you! Why don't you change into that

stupid suit of yours and come at me like you always do..."

"You mean like I used to do," the other girl said sadly, "Not

anymore. I'm not even wearing the suit, Aiko. Why should I do

that on my first full day here on a new campus? This isn't

Graviton, you know, we just can't go around trashing places like

we used to."

Aiko stepped back from her with a look of dismay, "What do you

want from me, Beiko?"

"It's Beatrice these days," Beiko replied, "And I just wanted to

talk with you. We haven't really talked at all, not since we got

back..."

"Talk?" Aiko's hostility level was back at maximum, "What's

there to talk about? You left her there! After all we went

through, you made us leave her..."

"We left her," Beatrice corrected, "You and I, and it really wasn't

our decision, it was hers. She made the choice to stay, we didn't

make it. It never really was our decision."

"We could have tried harder!" the other girl was almost in tears

as she turned away, "You're the smart one, you could have

thought of something, we didn't have to leave empty handed..."

The redhead started to walk away, and then she was running,

accelerating to a rate that the other girl could not hope to equal as

Beiko belatedly called out to her, "Aiko!" then lowered the hand

that she had raised and all but whispered, "It was her decision..."

Silence hung in the air for a long, tense moment, and then

Beatrice glanced over her shoulder, "You can come out, whoever

you are. I hope you liked eavesdropping on that particular

conversation."

"Ah," Nabiki stepped out into plain view, "Sorry about that. It

just seemed like you two were being a bit public in your

outbursts, and since I was in the vicinity..."

"And since it is your school you feel entitled to know everything

you can about a couple of unknowns like us," Beatrice sighed, "I

suppose I can't really blame you. I'd feel the same way if our

positions were reversed. The truth is...I used to run Graviton

High the same way you are reputed to run Furinkan, so it is really

not all that hard to imagine a change in our positions."

Nabiki hesitated before asking her next question, "What was that

thing about the names anyway? You called her Alison?"

"That was the name her father and mother gave to her," Beatrice

replied, "Just as my mother named me Beatrice. I used to hate

that name, and I think Aiko resents hers, so we just found it

easier to go by the nick-names we picked up when we were

children together."

"So," Nabiki replied, "You two have known each other that long,

eh?"

"Not the way you are thinking," Beatrice sighed, "The school

where we met was a special kind of institute devoted to the

testing of people with unusual abilities. The School

administration gave me the designation of B. K. for Beatrice

Kane, my first two initials, which someone got the bright idea of

turning into Beiko. Alison had the same thing done to her, only

her real last name is Kent. Managi is the name her parents took

when they moved to Japan from America. I never quite got the

full story about that, but it seems they were having a bit of

trouble with the authorities in Washington DC."

"Fascinating," Nabiki said, "So this Aiko character's a special

case, like you?"

"She has very unusual endowments," Beatrice said with a

somewhat rueful expression, "Entirely physical, whereas mine are

mental in nature. There was a third student being tested in our

group...but she's no longer with us..."

"Oh," Nabiki said, "I'm sorry to hear that."

"She isn't dead," Beatrice assured her, "She went home to her

real...parents. It's a very long story, and I'd rather not get into the

details right now if it is all the same to you."

"No problem," Nabiki replied, "So...where are you staying at the

moment?"

"I have a place in Furinkan where I am staying...pretty much by

myself," Beatrice shrugged her shoulders, "I'm afraid I'm still

new around here and haven't really had much opportunity to

socialize..."

"Well, if you wouldn't mind some company, why don't you come

around to my place?" Nabiki asked her, "I can guarantee you'll

have an excellent home cooked dinner."

Beatrice raised a snowy eyebrow, "Why would you want to go to

all that trouble over my account? You barely even know me."

"Maybe so," Nabiki said, "But you look like you could use a

friend right now, and besides...it'll be a perfect opportunity for

you to get to know my iinazuke. I'll just bet my Uncle Genma's

dying to meet you."

Beatrice saw the mischievous gleam in the eyes of the other

woman and had to smile at that, "I think I would like that. Thank

you, Tendo-san. I feel it safe to say that this is one of the nicest

things anyone has ever offered to me of late."

"Don't mention it," Nabiki replied, "I know what it's like to feel

like an outsider, and besides...I have this sneaking hunch that you

and I might even be able to do some business on the side."

"Ah," Beatrice nodded sagely, "Then by all means I will have to

come and meet your family. It would be so much nicer than

anything else I'd probably be doing otherwise..."

Her tone fell as she glanced back the way that the redhead had

taken off, then she resolutely squared her shoulders again and

said, "Well, I think I hear the bell again. Time to get onto my

next class."

"And where is that?" Nabiki asked her.

"Macroeconomics 104," Beatrice replied, which elicited a

surprised look from the other woman.

"You're in my class?" Nabiki blinked her eyes, "What a surprise."

"Perhaps it's destiny," Beatrice returned her look with a grin as

the two of them fell into step together and headed off back

towards the main school building.

"There's just one thing that bothers me," Nabiki noted as she gave

her new friend a sideling scrutiny, "When she came at you just

now...how did you know she was going to pull back at the last

second?"

The other girl's sigh contained a weariness well beyond her

tender years as she answered, "I didn't...but I know Aiko. She

may hate my guts at the moment, but not enough to cause me

serious injury. And if she had not pulled back, well..."

There was a very sad look in the other girls eyes, and Nabiki

suddenly found she has no more interest to pursue the matter...at

least until she had time to digest what she was observing. It was

beginning to look as if even her off-handed comments to

Ryonami were a woeful understatement as whatever there was

between her friend and the redhead it was bout to be the source of

much turmoil in the very near future...

In the Furinkan commercial district there was a certain store

dealing in electronic devices that was quite suddenly and

unexpectedly granted a divine visitation. One of the television

sets on display in the window facing the street came to life and

produced a rather curious image of a woman's long and shapely

feet, which same were projected out of said television, along with

a matching pair of long and shapely legs, followed in turn by the

rest of her svelte body, which was entirely well proportioned. In

mere seconds she stood out onto the street in full, regal

manifestation.

Just as the wandering pedestrians nearby were taking in the

dusky-skinned, silver-haired beauty in the rather exotic looking

dress the television flared to life again, only this time a hulking

male figure slid out into view, to right himself a moment later as

he towered over the very tall woman, looking around with a

curious expression.

"That...was interesting," said the broad shouldered man with

western features and an odd accent to his Japanese, "You travel

like this all the time?"

"It's my trademark," his silver haired companion replied, nodding

to the city at large as she added, "Furinkan financial district in

the suburb you requested, Muscles."

"So, this is the Nerima district," Hercules remarked, "Interesting

place."

"Really?" Urd asked her companion, giving the area a curt glance

before dismissing it with a snort, "Looks boringly typical to me.

Mortals have no sense of imagination when setting these

suburban areas up. I doubt this place even has a decent night

life."

"I'll take boring any day over what passes for excitement in my

life," Hercules assured her, "Well, we might as well get this over

with. Which way to Furinkan High School?"

"Hmm," Urd pondered, "That is a good question. If my little

sister were here she could probably find it with one of her

devices. I'll just cast a direction spell and..."

"Ah-that won't be necessary," Hercules hastily assured her,

"We'll just ask for directions. It can't be that hard to find, after

all, and time is of the essence."

"What are you looking for there?" Urd wondered slyly, "You sly

dog, you want to check out some of the local High Schoolers?"

"What?" Hercules reacted in surprise, "I do not! I'm not like that,

Urd..."

"Since when?" Urd snorted, "You are Greek, if I remember

rightly, and you were raised around Sparta..."

"Ah...let's not review my misspent youth right now, shall we?"

Hercules pleaded as he lowered his voice to a mere murmur,

"Besides, I haven't gone in for that in centuries."

"So," Urd considered him with soft green eyes that enjoyed the

contours of his body, "Fess up, Muscles, what are you looking for

there? It's got to be important to drag you all the way around the

world like this. What are you after?"

"Something that was lost that will be found again that is better

off not found," Hercules replied.

Urd blinked, "I beg your pardon?"

"Hey, don't look at me," Hercules shrugged, "That's just what

Cassandra said a few days ago at a party held for my half-

brother, Dionyseus. We were all hanging around sampling his

latest vintage when Cassandra just suddenly went into one of her

trances and warned us that something big was about to turn up,

and that it was going to happen right here in this part of Asia."

"So why did that bother your old man?" Urd asked, "If it's

happening here that makes it our problem."

"Normally I would have agreed with you on that," Hercules

replied, "Only Cassandra seemed to think it was important to us,

so we consulted our version of the Fates and they came back with

a single word that made my father's beard turn white for several

seconds."

"What word?" Urd wondered.

"I don't know," Hercules shrugged, "I only know that the next

thing Dad does is round on me and tell me I needed to get over

here right away. Something big's supposed to happen in a few

hours and he wants me to put a stop to it..."

"How big?" Urd asked.

"Big," Hercules shrugged, "Which is all I could get out of the old

goat. I swear sometimes he thinks I'm his personal errand boy or

something..."

"Why didn't Zeus just ask one of us to look in on it?" Urd

pondered aloud, "It's not exactly polite to send you on a mission

like this without at least some advanced warning, and the way

you were trying to avoid getting my attention..."

"Ah," Hercules seemed to sweat a little at that point, even though

Gods did not need to perspire like regular humans, "Right, secret

mission. I don't know his motives for that either, I just know he

wanted me to be discrete about it. I mean, I'm sure Raiden or

Hachiman could have handled this on their own, unless there's a

whole lot more to what Dad isn't telling me than usual here..."

"So," Urd remarked, "The upshot of it is that you've come to

Japan without a single clue as to what it is you're supposed to be

looking for, other than the fact that it's big, and for some reason

your father didn't want us to know about it. Why does this NOT

inspire me with confidence all of a sudden?"

"Beats me," Hercules snorted, "But something tells me we won't

be in the dark for very much longer. If there's one thing I know

about my father, when he doesn't want to tell you about

something, that's the time to start looking for fox holes."

"So why are you doing this again?" Urd favored him with an

amused expression.

"Because I'm a glutton for punishment," Hercules replied with

resignation, "And if I don't do it Dad's going to send some rather

embarrassing pictures of me and a certain Amazon to Dianira

and not bother to tell her about when they were taken."

"Sounds like a good reason," Urd said as she took his arm in her

own and leaned against him before he could think to protest,

"Let's find this High School, then maybe we'll know what can

make your father sweat bullets. Just keep in mind that the girls

there are all underage..."

Hercules gave a weary sigh and said, "I keep telling you, Urd, I'm

not like that! Who do you think I am already, that other old goat,

my Nephew Pan?"

"No," Urd replied reasonably, "I think you're the son of Zeus.

Need I say more?"

There was a very slight pause before her companion murmured,

"Good point. I withdraw the question..."

"Damn her!" a voice cried out in the wilderness, punctuated by

the sound of rocks exploding.

Ryoga looked up from his campfire in surprise at hearing

somebody else uttering words in such despairing tones to the

accompaniment of the sounds of violence. It sufficiently piqued

his curiosity that he got up from his half-cooked dinner and went

wandering in the general direction of the noise, which was further

punctuated by the turbulent sounds of something that was

violently tearing up the landscape.

He did not have far to go, however, before self-preservation

instinct caused him to duck low under a passing boulder.

Straightening up and tensing, he leaped into the clearing and

assumed a fighting crouch, ready to deal with whatever army or

militia was practicing war games this close to City limits.

Imagine his surprise, therefore, when he found the source of the

mayhem to be a young girl with flame red hair wearing a leotard

that looked surprisingly familiar.

She turned an angry glare at his sudden appearance and growled,

"What do you want?"

Ryoga stood where he was and glanced around, seeing shattered

rock and toppled tree radiating out from the center of a circle in

which the girl was presently standing. Ryoga was impressed,

usually he was the only one he knew who could do this sort of

damage to the local real estate.

It took him a moment to orient on her once again, fixing the girl

with a puzzled look before he straightened up once again and

said, "Um...sorry, I didn't know what was going on here."

The girl made a dismissive snort then looked down at her own

handiwork and sighed, "I guess I kind of lost it for a minute

there. I needed to blow off some steam and I took it out on the

local terrain. Sorry if I startled you, buddy."

"Uh, no problem," Ryoga said curiously, "If you don't mind my

asking what got you so upset?"

"Just some girl I know," the redhead again snorted, "I think she

must be following me around or something. I just wish I could

figure her out."

"Friend of yours?" Ryoga asked her.

"Why does everybody keep asking me that?" the redhead said

with irritation, "First Akane and now you..."

"Akane?" Ryoga felt a thrill of hope and said, "You know

Akane?"

"I just met her today," the redhead replied, "Why?"

"I'm her iinazuke, Hibiki Ryoga," Ryoga explained, then flushed

a bright crimson before resuming, "I've been trying to find her for

the better part of a week!"

The redhead blinked, "Have you tried looking her up in her home

class?"

"Ah," Ryoga hesitated before continuing, "That's just it...I,

um...have this little problem...I, uh, well...finding my way

around. I kind of forgot the way to Furinkan High School..."

"Huh?" the redhead blinked, "You're kidding, right? It's just over

that way," she pointed in the direction she had taken in vaulting

off the campus.

"I wish I was," Ryoga said with a very weak smile, "Could you,

um...kind of help me to get there?"

The redhead inclined her head as she studied him with soft

brown eyes, "As pick up lines go that one's pretty original, but

somehow I think you really mean it. Call me a sucker for a hard

luck story," she sighed, "All right, just follow me. I was

supposed to meet up with Akane in class, now I'll be late, thanks

to Beiko..."

"Beiko's your friend?" Ryoga asked.

"She's not my friend!" the redhead stated flatly, then she calmed

down again before she added, "Sorry, I just meant to say that I

wish people would stop assuming that. We used to fight all of

the time and ever since we met my life has been one endless

series of disasters. By the way, my name's Aiko, Managi Aiko. I

just enrolled in Furinkan today and was assigned to Akane's

homeroom."

"Oh," Ryoga said as he fell in stride with the redhead, "Then I

guess you also met Ranma and Ukyo. They're in the same class

as Akane."

"Seemed like an all right couple," Aiko said before frowning, "Is

it true about him having two iinazuke?"

Ryoga had to laugh at that, "It's true all right, Ucchan and

Nabchan share an engagement to Ranma, not that I'd feel up to

keeping the two of them happy. Akane's more than enough for

me...I guess you've already seen that she's pretty nice."

Aiko favored the lost boy with an amused look, "You must like

her a lot, then?"

"Of course," Ryoga replied with a slightly wistful expression, "I'd

do anything for Akane. She's the one person in the whole world

who makes my life have meaning."

"Then we'd better get you two back together," Aiko remarked

with tolerant amusement before her own expression became

slightly pained as she added, "Must be nice to be needed by

somebody."

"Huh?" Ryoga looked at his companion oddly, "Don't you have

somebody important in your life?"

"I used to," Aiko said faintly, "A million light years ago. I don't

really want to talk about it."

"Okay," Ryoga shrugged, seeing the outskirts of the campus loom

before them as he made out the Furinkan High School building in

the background. His heart began to soar with hope and he forgot

the sad look in his companion's expression.

As Aiko led the way from the clearing, however, a pair of

stealthy eyes gleamed and a slight smile appeared on the face of a

purple eyed woman...

"Ease up, Ranchan!" Ukyo called out as she paused to catch her

breath, "Let me catch my wind for a minute, will you?"

"Sure thing," Ranma slowed down to a running trot as he saw

Ukyo sit down on a log to retie her jogging shoelaces. Ranma

studied her profile with concern before coming up alongside his

iinazuke and hesitantly asking, "Are you feeling all right?"

"Just a bit short of breath this time," Ukyo smiled, "I'm not used

to all these weird discomforts and changes my body's going

through. It's like those cravings I get at the oddest times, and

waking up some mornings wanting to puke my guts out."

Ranma gave Ukyo a concerned look before he sat down beside

her and said, "I can't imagine what it's like for you, but I guess

it's normal, and Shampoo went through the same thing a few

months back..."

"And now it's my turn, is that it?" Ukyo favored him with a wry

expression, "I know it must be weird for you, Ranchan.

Everybody thinks you're the one responsible for my condition,

and I know you'd like to be..."

"Ah," Ranma colored and looked away, "Yeah, well...the way it

happened..."

"You don't hold it against Perfume, do you?"

"Of course not!" Ranma protested, "You two only did what

you...um...had to do to get out of that mess. If I blamed anybody

it'd be that Lao person."

"She set the whole thing up," Ukyo corrected, "But it was a

conscious choice on our part to do what we did, knowing the

risks and everything. I think Lao did something to my menstrual

cycle to make me especially fertile...I don't know how she worked

it with Per-chan, but it sure increased the odds of the two of us

being this successful on the first try..." her soft chuckle contained

much irony at this statement.

"Ah...yeah," Ranma folded his arms with a thoughtful look, "I've

kind of given it some thought, and you know how Lao could

control water and all? And those kids we saw in her nursery?

What if she's had...practice doing stuff like that, making girls

ovulate or something. It's supposed to be controlled by the lunar

currents, right?"

"You mean our menstrual cycles?" Ukyo said wonderingly, "You

think she's that powerful?"

"Hey, she can walk on water without getting wet or trigger her

Jusenkyo curse," Ranma shrugged, "I'm no Med student, but it

seems to me that speeding up your fertility ought to be a

cakewalk."

"If you have time to perfect the art, like she has," Ukyo said

thoughtfully, "Extending the logic of that statement, she probably

did something to increase the sperm count in Per-chan while she

was in male form. Otherwise Nab-chan thinks it would take a

full day to generate enough Sperm to get a girl like me pregnant,

just like she got Sham-chan pregnant a day after she received her

Jusenkyo curse. It all makes sense...that's brilliant thinking,

Ranchan."

"Yeah, well..." he shrugged with a slightly smile, "I have my

moments."

"You do at that," Ukyo said fondly, "So...Lao set us up all right,

but it was still up to Perfume and me to do the dirty deed..."

"After Lao did that nerve things to make you both super-horny,"

Ranma reminded.

"Why are you being so understanding, Ranma?" Ukyo asked him

seriously, "I know it's got to hurt your male pride somewhere that

both of your iinazuke have had children by someone other than

you."

Ranma took a long moment before he answered that, "Yeah...it

bothers me sometimes, but when I think about it I'm really not

that upset. Nabiki didn't plan on getting Shampoo pregnant, and

I'm glad she decided to stick by her and not abandon her duties.

With you...you're someone special to me too, Ucchan. I feel

different about you than the way I feel around Nabiki. With her

it's like we mesh because we're so different, we compliment each

other, you know what I mean? With you...it's like we've got so

much more in common, we're a lot alike where it counts, and I

feel really, really comfortable about that."

"Ranchan," Ukyo smiled, "Are you saying I'm just like a sister?"

"No!" Ranma protested, "I mean, I don't feel like that at all!

You're...oh...uh..." he saw her smile and realized that she was

being facetious, so he colored slightly before saying, "Akane's

like my sister, you're somebody I really enjoy being with...you're

like a buddy, only special."

"How special?" Ukyo asked him with eyes glittering with

emotion.

"Well..." Ranma glanced down by reflex at Ukyo's still smooth

stomach and said, "I guess special in a way that means I want the

next one you have to be mine special. Perfume can have this

one...I think that's being generous on my part."

Ukyo laughed at that and said, "Ranma...you are one in a million.

I think just about any other guy on the planet would be really

angry with me because everyone blames you for what Perfume

and me did. I never wanted to hurt your pride by having

somebody else's baby before I had yours..."

"You also never meant to get married to another woman if I

remember right," Ranma added.

"Don't change the subject," Ukyo sniffed, "I just want you to

know that I'm actually glad that I'm carrying Per-chan's baby. I

really want to have yours, but since you insist on waiting until

after we're married..." she arched her tone and gave him a look

that implied mild impatience, "And since I promised Nab-chan

that we'd share the unofficial duties as co-wives, it looks like it'll

be a while before we get the chance to have our kid."

"I know," Ranma sighed, rolling his eyes at the familiar

complaint shared by both Ukyo and Nabiki, which he had to

admit was starting to bother him more than a little as well, "But I

promised my mother I'd wait until I was married and out of High

School so I could support you all like a husband should. You

think you guys have it bad? You both have somebody to share

your beds...I sleep alone in my room-not counting Ryoga, and he

snores-while you've got an entire restaurant."

"Well," Ukyo grinned lasciviously, "If you're lonely at nights,

there's always a cure for that..."

Now it was his turn to laugh, "Yeah, like I'm ready to share a bed

with four other women at the same time! Just what kind of

stamina do you think I have?"

"Doesn't have to be all at once," Ukyo said practically, "We could

take turns on alternate nights, and Per-chan's assured me she's

willing to go without on those occasions when we do sleep

together..."

"I'm not brave enough to test that theory," he chuckled, "Finding

one of her axes next to my bed is about the last thing I want to

wake up to. I guess we'll work it all out by the time we do have

that Honeymoon we keep talking about, after we both graduate..."

"But that's so long!" Ukyo complained plaintively, "Nab-chan

will be in College next year and Shampoo will have her baby..."

"And you'll have Perfume's baby," Ranma nodded, "That should

help clear things out for me. And just for the record that's a long

time for me too, you know. You think it's easy being around

great looking women like you and keeping my distance? I'm not

made of stone, you know."

"No," Ukyo's tone became even more mischievous than before,

"But you'd better be Rock Hard in the right places when the time

comes to do your duties to me as my husband."

Ranma smiled at that then stood up and offered her his hand, "I

think we'd better finish jogging. The coach will be mad at us if

we're not back in the next five minutes."

"Normally I'd tell the old guy to wait," Ukyo said as she allowed

Ranma to lift her to her feet, not wishing to concede how much

she needed the assistance with the cramps she had been feeling,

"He's so clueless he hasn't even cottoned onto the fact that I'm a

girl, just because I registered as a guy when I started the

semester."

"Imagine that," Ranma said as he looked his iinazuke over,

privately thinking that Ukyo was hard to mistake as anything but

a beautiful young girl now that she no longer taped down her

breasts and was wearing a loose sweat-shirt that did little to

conceal her figure. He had to control his thoughts at that point,

knowing that a nosebleed would be the least of his troubles if

Ukyo caught on to the way her nearness was affecting him.

It was almost as bad as the way he was feeling around Nabiki

these days...a good feeling to be sure, but one that was making it

hard to concentrate when either girl was in his presence. He had

not been deceiving Ukyo when he spoke about having needs and

the thought that everyone believed he had bedded the

Okonomiyaki chef already. It was hard being accused of

something you wanted to do but couldn't yet do because of a

promise.

"I guess I'm feeling a lot better now," Ukyo assured him,

reluctant to surrender his hand as she enjoyed any excuse for

contact with the handsome boy beside her, "In fact I'll race you."

"Let's just take it easy for now," Ranma said, not wanting to risk

her straining herself again, even if Ukyo wouldn't admit to how

hard it was to walk at the moment. They started off at a leisurely

trot and soon were pacing along around a bend in the trail...only

to come up short when they caught sight of a scene of absolute

carnage.

"What the hell?" Ukyo voiced crudely, once more reminding

Ranma of a guy in the way she spoke without the restraint of

other women, "What happened here?"

"I dunno," Ranma looked around at the toppled trees and

shattered boulders, "Maybe Ryoga-kun had another one of his fits

or something. Looks pretty recent whatever caused this."

"Must have been Ryoga," Ukyo sniffed as she took a few steps

forward, "Got lost again and started to despair, the baka. I swear

we ought to attach a location beacon to his wrist or something."

"Might not be a bad idea," Ranma frowned, seeing a hole in the

ground that was shaped like a bowl, which implied to his battle-

sense that an object the size of a boulder had been pulled out of

the soil. He looked and found a rock matching the bowl in size,

only it was a hundred meters away to the side of a toppled tree

stump, as though someone had thrown it.

That made him frown more deeply. Even Ryoga was not that

powerful. It was as if someone of even more prodigious strength

had done all this destruction, but who in Nerima could possibly

fit that description?

Ukyo strayed off the trail a few steps as she turned around and

said, "I don't see Ryoga anywhere, but he's probably still in the

neighborhood, only a few hundred yards from his goal

and...AWP!"

"Huh?" Ranma whirled around, just in time to see Ukyo begin to

vanish into a hole that suddenly opened up to swallow her, which

cause him to react with lightning reflexes, "Ucchan!"

He was just a fraction of a second too slow in grabbing her

outstretched hand before she slipped out of reach into the pit that

opened up to receive her. He fell flat on the edge to brace himself

and looked down into the gap crying out, "UCCHAN!"

"Ow!" Ukyo's voice carried up from surprisingly close underneath

him, "That hurt!"

"Are you all right down there?" Ranma shaded his eyes to better

make her out in the darkness of the pit, finding to his relief that

she was no more than twelve feet below him.

"Aside from a sore butt, I'm just fine, Ranchan," Ukyo replied,

making the effort to get back up again, "And mad as hell at

Ryoga! When I see that baka I'm going to give him such a piece

of my mind..."

"I, uh...don't think he's the guilty party this time," Ranma called

down, "I'll explain when you're back up here. Can you see where

you are?"

"It's dark, Ranma," Ukyo replied in irritation, "I don't see any exit

or anything like that. Actually...now that you mention it this does

look a little like a cave, or maybe a volcanic pit or something.

I'm not geologist, but I...hold it!"

"What's wrong?" Ranma asked.

Ukyo was staring at something directly in front of her and her

voice was a bit odd, "I...don't really know, Ranchan. There's an

object here with me...I can't make out what it is, but it looks like

a boulder or something."

"A boulder?" Ranma strained his eyes to make out a dark grey

pillar that was somewhat oval shaped that Ukyo was staring at,

and he asked, "What is that?"

"I don't know yet," Ukyo put a hand forward to feel the things

surface, then she reacted in alarm, "It's warm!"

"Warm?" Ranma blinked, "What do you mean warm?"

"Warm and smooth..." Ukyo suddenly gasped and withdrew her

hand as something flared to life in front of her. With a start she

read flame-bright symbols on the side of the thing and said,

"Typhon?"

"Typhon?" Ranma repeated.

"That's what it..." Ukyo started to say when the flame-red

symbols vanished, "Uh...I mean...that's what it did say for a

moment there. Did you see that?"

"The bright light?" Ranma asked, "Kind of hard to miss..."

"Nihao!"

Perfume's voice startled Ranma so that he half scrambled onto

his back before checking the impulse, altering his surprise to

brief anger, "Don't do that! Can't you at least give me some

advanced warning?"

"Sorry, Ranchan," Perfume replied, "I'm looking for Ukyo...have

you seen..."

"Per-chan!" Ukyo called out, "Up here!"

"Airen?" Perfume moved closer to the edge of the pit and said,

"What are you doing down there? Are you all right?"

"I'm just fine," Ukyo sniffed, "Would you mind helping get me

out of here? There's something really weird down here in this pit

with me."

"Weird?" Perfume looked down, having an easier time of

adjusting her eyes to the contrast in light, then she blinked,

"What is that?"

"I have no idea," Ukyo touched the surface of the thing again, but

the peculiar flaring of light did not repeat itself, "It's warm and

smooth, that's all I can tell. Maybe it's a volcanic rock or

something."

"Better not touch it," Perfume said as she reached into her sleeve

and produced a rope from somewhere, flicking her wrist as an

axe appeared in one hand, which same she used to bury it in the

soil near to her foot before tying one end of the rope about the

handle, then smiling at Ranma as she said, "Could you see this

doesn't slip, Ranchan? I'm going down there."

She tossed the other end of the rope down to Ukyo, then vaulted

down into the pit at the side of her beloved Airen. Ranma sniffed

as he muttered, "Showoff."

Perfume turned to see the thing in front of Ukyo and looked up

and down with her greater than normal perceptions. The first

thing she was aware of was a peculiar stench that made her

wince slightly, followed in turn by a taste like acid in her mouth

as her eyes widened their focus to take in more than the ordinary

range of visual perceptions.

She moved closer to the object and extended a hand, intending to

brush its surface as Ukyo had before her.

She snatched her hand back even more suddenly than her

beloved, gasping at the slight tingle along her nerves as if she

had encountered an unseen energy field surrounding this object.

She adjusted her vision to take in the Chi-force it was radiating

and almost recoiled at the intensity. Backing away on instinct

she reached out her hand and drew Ukyo with her.

"What's wrong?" Ukyo asked her.

"It's bad!" Perfume replied, "The thing is magical, Ucchan. I

don't know what it is, but we have to stay far away from it, and

we'd better find Great Grandmother."

"How bad?" Ranma called down as he watched everything from

the edge.

"I don't know and I don't want to find out," Perfume said, "Ukyo,

listen carefully, we have to get out of here. A strange woman

said that I had to find you and protect you form some kind of

danger, and I guess this is what she meant."

"A strange woman?" Ukyo asked her Amazon wife, "Did she

give you a name?"

"Kishijoten" Perfume replied then saw her beloved react to the

name, "You know her?"

"Kishijoten?" Ukyo repeated, "Are you sure?"

"Yes," Perfume said, "Who is she?"

"I'll explain later," Ukyo said, "After we get out of here. Mind

helping me out?"

"Try stopping me," Perfume replied, "Ranma, help us with the

rope. I'll boost Ucchan up to you, you pull her the rest of the

way."

"Sure thing," Ranma called down, privately thinking to himself

that the Amazon was being a bit more high handed than usual,

and he was finding this slightly grating.

"I can handle myself, buys," Ukyo said as she took the rope in her

hands and tried to brace her feet against the wall of the cave, only

to feel her cramps start up again, making her wince as she said,

"On second thought..."

"Get on my shoulders," Perfume urged as she knelt down, "Get

ready up there, Ranma."

"Sure thing," Ranma said as he gripped the rope in both hands,

watching as Ukyo climbed up on the Amazon's back until her

feet were perched on Perfume's shoulders, then he watched as

Perfume stood straight up and he started tugging on the rope to

help keep Ukyo balanced.

A few seconds later he had pulled her up far enough to reach out

with one hand and clasp her own as she reached up to him, and

from there it was a simple matter of bracing himself with the

other end of the rope firmly anchored where he had planted the

axe, pulling on the part he was holding as he swung Ukyo up to

the ledge, then the two of them straightened out as Ranma called

down, "Okay, your turn!"

"Why are you shouting?" Perfume asked from directly behind

him, causing Ranma to go "URK!" as he whirled about to see her

standing there. He could not help glancing back into the now-

vacant pit while Perfume turned to Ukyo and said, "Whatever

that thing is we had better give it wide berth. It can only mean

trouble that we don't need, which is why we'd better leave this to

Great Grandmother."

"Right," Ukyo agreed, "Couldn't agree with you more. We'd

better head back to the Gym before the coach comes looking for

us, Ranchan. Somebody better warn people to stay away from

here, don't want anybody else falling in there like I did."

"Right," Ranma said as he turned to Perfume, "I guess you'd

better make yourself scarce when we get to the Gym, huh?"

To his consternation the Amazon shook her head and replied,

"No, I'm staying close to Ucchan until I'm sure that she's in no

danger. That woman with the purple eyes didn't specify what

kind of danger she's in, and until I'm sure it's past..."

"You really don't have to stay that close by me, Per-chan," Ukyo

said sweetly, "But it is a nice gesture. Now...what was that about

her having Purple eyes?"

"Oddest thing," Perfume said as she and Ukyo fell in step

together, "In fact the whole thing was odd. I had the strangest

feeling when I was in her presence..."

"Yeah," Ukyo said nervously, "If it's the same lady that I'm

thinking of then I understand you completely..."

Ranma frowned as he watched the two go off together, waiting

until he was certain that even Perfume's super-sharp hearing

couldn't pick up his words, then softly murmured to himself, "I

take back what I said about not minding you, lady..."

Unbeknownst to him, down in the pit, a tiny sound could be

heard as the surface of the boulder-like object started cracking...

Continued.

Comments/Criticism/Complete and Utter Mayhem:

shadowmane

Next time the return of Tatewaki Kuno! Be there...

Nabiki 1/2,

A Very Scary Thought

(An Altered Destiny)

by

Jim Robert Bader

(Based on the Works of Rumiko Takahashi & Others)

Chapter 27, Part 3.

Tatewaki Kuno stood resolutely still as he contemplated the

straw dummy that stood thirty meters away from him,

summoning his Ki as his entire mind and body became focused

and relaxed. He could feel the wind blowing through his hair and

against his skin where it was exposed by his Kendo outfit. He

sought and found the other focus he desired, then slowly raised

his bokken until it was in the upright position tilted forty-five

degrees away from his body.

He drew in his breath through his nostrils, paused as he felt the

energy flow through his arms and into the wooden sword that

was so much an extension of himself that there was no separation

between man and weapon, and then he released his Ki and made

a single quick motion.

His Ki lashed out from the sword to strike at the target, and for

several long moments nothing else appeared to happen. Then,

very slowly, the practice dummy began to part as though it had

been sliced at a diagonal angle. The top half fell onto the ground

with amazing slowness then was still, leaving only silence in its

wake as Kuno surveyed his own handiwork with cool

detachment, neither sorrowful nor elated.

"Most impressive," said Natsume after this silence lasted for

several long, tense moments.

Kuno released his breath then slowly turned his head by a

fraction to regard her. His attitude became more relaxed than

even before as he sighed, "I thank you for saying so, Tendo

Natsume. In all truth I am feeling much restored to myself...only

moreso than I can ever remember."

"The doctors said that you should take it easy at first," Natsume

replied as she straightened from where she had been sitting a

short distance away, rising to her feet with fluid grace that Kuno

could not help but admire, "It has not been a full day since you

were released from the Hospital, and I think it best if you not rush

things."

"True," he sighed, looking down, "But it galls me to think of how

much of my life has already been wasted. I want to thank you

again for visiting me so often. I know that I did not make a very

good impression with you on our first several meetings..."

Natsume made a dismissive wave of her hand, "You were not

yourself, Kuno-san. The fellow I first met was a man drowning

in a despair not of his own making. It was but the least that I

could do for a fellow human being to see that you were not

abandoned and alone at a time of need, when I knew you would

want a friend more than anything else..."

"It also did not hurt that you knew me less well than the majority

of the population of Nerima," Kuno continued looking away and

so missed the slight pain in his companion's expression, "I fear I

did not endear myself to many people these last few years. Only

you and Ranma ever came and visited me or ever said a kind

word when I was being purged of the chemicals in my sister...and

for that I will always be grateful."

"I'm sorry," Natsume said with unfeigned sympathy, "I tried to

convince Akane to come with us, but she seemed so lost in her

own problems..."

"I can imagine what she thinks of me," Kuno said bitterly, then

thought a moment more before amending, "No, perhaps I cannot,

and I think that is a great blessing. The way I hounded your

cousin for the past year seeking to date...or perhaps even

worse...she could only despise me."

"Actually," Natsume said with some delicacy, "I think it's more

your poisonous sister she misses...perhaps the only one in Nerima

to do so."

"Kodachi," Kuno studied his right hand, opening and closing the

well-callused palm before he let it fall to his side with a sigh,

"My twisted sister who has been strangely missing these last few

months, and whom the authorities wish to question concerning

the laboratory equipment they confiscated when they raided our

estate. I wonder where Kodachi is at the present. Akane would

not tell you?"

"Only that she and her friend Arigami Keiko accepted the

invitation of a friend to travel the orient on an extended

sabbatical," Natsume replied , "It is a very puzzling matter.

According to the Head Administrator of her private school she

submitted a request to transfer form posted to Saint Hebereke by

means of an anonymous third party..."

"Would this be the same anonymous third party that also gave the

Hospital Administration staff the antidote and formula for the

poisons that were in my body?" Kuno at last turned to study the

dark haired woman before him, who was as slim as a wand and

as beautiful as a sculpture, "Curious. It is not like Kodachi to

work through third parties, other than our faithful Sasuke.

Whoever is sheltering her from the authorities has gone to great

lengths to cover their trail and insure the minimum number of

entanglements that Kodachi would face should she somehow

return to us in the very near future."

Natsume did not reply to this, but privately she was thinking of

what she might do if she were to confront this Kuno Kodachi

after hearing the accounts of the so-called Black Rose of Saint

Hebereke. Having watched how the man before her had suffered

at the hands of his younger sister was enough to give Natsume a

very cold feeling of anger as her fists tightened in anticipation of

a reckoning.

Instead what she said was, "The police are still looking into the

matter of the Rose extracts she has been feeding you with for the

past several years..."

"Drugging me to dull the pain, more like," Kuno could not help

looking down, "In a way I think she was doing what she did out

of a misplaced sense of love..."

"LOVE?" Natsume had not meant to shout the word, but the idea

that Kuno could forgive his sister like this provoked a swelling of

outrage.

Kuno raised his eyes and stilled her anger with a single glance

then very carefully repeated the word, "Love. It was an act of

love and not of malice, Natsume. When our mother died..." for a

second his face registered intense pain, and Natsume felt herself

reach out to him in spirit, and then he forced himself to continue,

"...It left such a wealth of emptiness in us both that I most likely

would have found another way to go mad than the slow

intoxication of the stimulants she fed me without my knowledge.

I rather imagine she used the same stimulants upon herself, but at

greater doses. As you know from what the Doctors have so far

been able to determine about these alkaloids, they bolster one's

confidence and self-esteem to the point where one loses their

grasp on fundamental reality and begins to have delusions of

invincibility and godhood. Chemically induced Psychosis," he

shook his head slowly, "And all the while I thought myself an

invincible Samurai, the noble descendant of my illustrious

ancestors..."

"Kuno-san," Natsume said, then hesitated, wondering what she

could possibly say that would help the man before her cope with

the grief that was so visible upon his handsome features.

He raised his gaze again and in a ragged voice said, "You would

be better advised to have little more to do with me in the future,

Tendo Natsume. I am grateful for everything that you have done

for me these past few months but I am no good to be around.

There is Madness in my family, and I fear that I could relapse one

day and lose myself to my obsessions."

"You are not to blame for anything that has happened to you,"

Natsume replied, fighting an urge to reach out to steady this man

who, in her eyes, was so kind and decent, "And I am more than

capable of looking after myself, thank you," she added with just a

tough of pride, challenging him to contradict her.

"Indeed," he gave a slight smile as he regarded her once again

with warm, intelligent eyes that were as clear as anyone had ever

seen in him before this moment, "I knew from the moment we

met that you were quite formidable, as all Tendo women are to be

respected in their own ways. It is fortunate for me that you did

not know me when I was making an utter fool of myself chasing

after Akane and Nabiki, and the lovely Keiko, whom I called my

Pig-tailed goddess."

At this Natsume felt herself bristling ever so slightly, and she

said, "From what I understand about your 'Goddess,' she had no

interest in you beyond simple friendship, and most probably she

was using you as a pretext to get closer to your sister. She was

that sort of a person..."

"Is that resentment I hear in your dulcet voice?" Kuno asked, then

smiled as he saw her look turn to one of outrage, "I'm sorry...I

couldn't help myself in saying that. Call it force of habit, but yes

I am aware that Arigami Keiko was not interested in me that

way...the Kami knows she told me so often enough..." he sighed.

"At least she was all woman, even if she preferred my sister to

me, unlike your fair cousin, Nabiki, with whom I disgraced

myself in ways I could never live down no matter how hard I

attempt it."

"Um...yes...Nabiki," Natsume said with a wavering note of

uncertainty in her own voice. Her mind involuntarily reached

back several months as she thought to the moment when her

cousin had made a rather startling announcement...

"Natsume," Nabiki as said as the family gathered around inside

the dojo to formally welcome the sisters into the family, "Kurumi.

Now that father and I have agreed that you should be a part of

this household, there is something important that you ought to

know. Everyone else here does, and it's not fair to exclude you

from this particular family secret."

The sisters had nodded politely that they were prepared to hear

whatever deep dark secret they were about to be privileged to

share a part in. It was, however, with no little surprise that they

saw their short-haired cousin raise a glass of water and pour it

over her own head, then they gasped in alarm as they saw her

expand somewhat in size, filling out to become an entirely male

version of herself whom they recognized at once.

"I'm also Kaneda," Nabiki revealed, then as the sisters sat their

with their mouths hanging open she added, "Have either of you

ever heard of a place called Jusenkyo?"

To this the girls could only shake their heads negatively, which

caused Nabiki to sigh, "Well, that's a first...somebody who's

never heard of the damned place besides me before I went there.

Okay, put simply it's a special training grounds in the heart of

China near to the village that Shampoo one called home. The

Cursed Springs of Jusenkyo have over one hundred magical

pools, and whoever falls into them becomes cursed to take on the

form of the thing that last drowned there. Cold water triggers the

curse," he paused as Ranma handled over a teakettle, which

Nabiki upended over his own head, transforming him back into

the young woman they knew as the middle daughter to their

uncle Soun, "And hot water changes you back."

Genma turned to the girls and said, "Nabiki and I traveled there

several months ago and both became cursed, her to turn into a

boy, while I..." he took another glass of water and splashed

himself, transforming into a panda, who then held up a sign that

read, "Turn into something else."

At this the sisters were even more startled, then Kurumi broke the

silence by saying, "Are these curses permanent? Is there a cure

that can permanently break them?"

"As far as we know they are permanent," Nabiki replied, then

glanced towards where Ukyo and Perfume were sitting, nodding

grimly before averting her eyes elsewhere.

Perfume stood up with a glass of water in her own hand and said,

"Cursed Springs are ancient training ground known and feared by

my people, and with good reason," she splashed herself, and then

the plastic cup hit the ground with a thud as the Amazon's form

collapsed into a small, fluffy cat, who made a soft "Mew" to

confirm the reality of her status.

As stunned as the two sisters were, Natsume very vividly recalled

the slight wince that crossed the face of Nabiki as the one named

Ukyo wasted no time pouring hot water over her transformed

companion. Perfume returned to human form and spent the next

several minutes redressing herself while attention focused back

on Nabiki.

"You see?" Nabiki sighed in what sounded like relief, "And the

curse has affected two others in similar fashion, Arigami Keiko

and Kuno Kodachi. I turn into a boy whenever I get wet, which

I'm sure you can guess has been somewhat of a problem."

"So," Natsume narrowed her eyes to say, "In other words you are

a magical transvestite, cousin. Is the shape you now wear your

real one?"

"Of course," Nabiki replied with a sincere nod.

"Then," Natsume's eyes shifted towards the pregnant Shampoo,

"What of this woman you claim to be your wife when you are

Kaneda?"

Nabiki took a deep breath while Shampoo eyed her with

affection, then the middle Tendo daughter said, "Try and

understand that I never meant to deceive anyone about that. I

met Shampoo the day after I got this curse, trying to find some

hot water in her village. My uncle and I came upon a contest

being waged by the best fighters in Joketsuzoku, and without

knowing about their customs I sort-of wound up in a challenge

match with their best fighter, Shampoo. I won, which by their

laws meant that she either had to hunt me down and kill me or I

would be forced to marry her, depending on my real gender. An

outsider girl who defeats an Amazon in battle becomes a lifelong

enemy, to be hunted down and killed, but an outsider male is to

be welcomed in as a member of her family. Naturally I wound

up taking the latter option..."

"But did she know that you are really a girl?" Kurumi asked in

wonder.

"Not at first," Nabiki sighed, only to find her wife's hand on her

shoulder to steady her, "And I was too ignorant of their customs

to know what was happening until I was already in her house

being wished a fond good night by her tribal Elders. It was my

first full day of being a guy, and I was still pretty new to the

surge of hormones I felt being in the company of an attractive girl

who seemed to want me for her bed-mate. I...guess you could

say that I gave into my hormones, and the next thing I know I

wake up in bed with her fully naked."

"And you enjoyed that?" Natsume had not meant to put as much

emphasis in her voice as she had, but the thought of what these

two had done together provoked that kind of a reaction.

Nabiki just looked at her, not in anger or resentment at her tone,

and took Shampoo's hand in her own then said, "What do you

think, Cousin? She's having my baby."

Natsume had trouble regaining control over her emotions, so it

was fortunate that Kurumi acted less shocked or offended as she

replied, "Can I feel it?"

Natsume blinked her eyes and looked at her, "Kurumi-chan?"

"Um," the brown haired girl replied with a contrite expression, "If

nobody minds..."

"I not mind," Shampoo informed her, "You can come touch if you

like, Cousin of my Airen."

Natsume was too stunned at this sudden change in events and

looked at the purple haired girl askance, "You mean to say that

you actually accept this...child by another woman?"

"Why no?" Shampoo replied with a hint of defiance in her tone,

"Shampoo love Nabiki. Airen is kind to Shampoo, first person

Shampoo ever really close to in long while, except for Cousin.

Shampoo no mind having Airen's baby, have strong daughter

worthy of Amazon heritage. Airen best fighter Shampoo ever

know, save only Great Grandmother. Strong husband mean

strong baby. Shampoo very lucky, have good Joss, no mind that

Airen is really woman named Nabiki."

Kurumi started to get up, then hesitated as she glanced at her

sister, who was too stunned by all of this to say otherwise, which

Kurumi took for assent as she hurried across the room until she

could kneel beside Shampoo and place a hand over the Amazon's

rounded belly. Natsume watched all this with dismay, then

started in alarm as she felt a hand fall upon her shoulder and

looked up to see the warm brown eyes of Soun Tendo looking

down at her.

It was only that and nothing else that prevented her from voicing

a very loud and utterly rude protest at the discovery of her

cousin's...perversion.

Ever since that time she had avoided Nabiki as much as possible

and sought not to look in Shampoo's direction, wishing more

than anything not to offend her new family as she tried to make

sense of it all, unable to fully wrap her mind around the concept

of a woman fathering a child on another woman. It did not help

that matters proved even more complicated than she had believed

as she got the full details regarding how complicated Nabiki's life

really was on account of the curse that caused her to switch

genders.

And, of course, the stupidity of their uncle, Saotome Genma.

Imagine engaging his son to both the Okonomiyaki chef and a

daughter of the House of Tendo. Saotome Ranma seemed to her

to be a very nice boy, one who was loyal to his friends and cared

a great deal for what had happened to Kuno Tatewaki. The two

had become friends while talking in the hospital waiting to visit

their mutual friend and Ranma had tried to explain his feelings

for the two women who equally shared the distinction of being

his iinazuke. It was all very puzzling in the end, but she came

away from these discussions convinced that Ranma was not to

blame for such entanglement. The boy really was too good-

natured for his own welfare...

Now Natsume's mind returned to the present and she considered

how best to answer Tatewaki's statement regarding his confusion

towards the two forms of Nabiki. He had wanted the female half

but hated the male half in equal measure...a very tangled web

indeed. Even given that he had been suffering a drug-induced

Psychosis she had to admit that it was...unusual behavior.

"I am certain that...cousin Nabiki is well over the matter,"

Natsume at last remarked, "She has more than enough on her

mind as things are for her and I'm sure she bears you no ill will

for your past actions."

"Would that I could be as sure of this as you say, gentle

Natsume," Kuno said as he looked down at her, "I can only

wonder what life has been like for her. In truth, I don't know

why I never understood how unwanted my attentions were with

the problems she has been facing. I only wish that there were

some way that I could make it up to your family, some manner by

which I could redeem my tattered honor."

Natsume finally found the courage to reach out with one hand

and touch his arm, feeling a thrill almost like electricity at the

longed-for contact, "Just knowing that you are well is all that we

can ask, Kuno-san. The longer you can stay sane and sober, the

better it is for everyone."

He looked at her hand, then at her, and time seemed to stop

entirely as Natsume drank in the boy's eyes, wondering if he

could see the way she was trembling inside at his very nearness.

He stirred up feelings she had never known in all her young years

and made her wonder how anyone could have ever refused his

attention in the past. He was kind, rich and handsome, and

without the snobbishness brought on by his alienation...

A soft noise disturbed them both, and with regret Natsume saw

his eyes glide past her to stare at something well beyond her

shoulders before he said in some annoyance, "What is it,

Sasuke?"

"Master Kuno," the little Ninja bowed on one knee and humbly

outstretched his hands, in which he held a scroll that was tied

with a single black ribbon, "This came for you by special

delivery. I regret intruding on your reflections..."

Kuno paid no attention to the little man's prostration as he circled

around Natsume with a soft hiss in his throat, and then he

snatched the scroll up and stared at it before saying, "Kodachi."

"Is it from the Mistress?" Sasuke asked with no little alarm

registered in both tone and his features.

Kuno held the thing carefully and sniffed it, then frowned as he

stared at it some more before finally undoing the ribbon and

unfolding the scroll. Natsume could see the neat calligraphy in

printed letters but though it too rude to read them past Kuno's

shoulder. She waited instead until the man at her side finished

scanning the thing up and down, then watched as he looked up

and stared into the distance.

"Is it news about your sister?" Natsume finally asked, unable to

bear the suspense.

"It's in her handwriting," Kuno replied, "She says that she is well

and that she is better than I remember and that she is planning to

return home very soon to Nerima. She says not to worry about

where she has been or what she has been up to but that she is

very sorry for many things that she has done in the past and she

wants me to convey to Tendo Akane her best wishes. She also

says she is coming home with Arigami Keiko and her mother and

wants to make restitution to those whom she has, in the past,

much offended."

"Excuse me, Master Kuno?" Sasuke looked puzzled, "Are you

certain the Mistress wrote that?"

"Of course I'm certain you clod-" Kuno caught himself before he

could continue to upbraid the little Ninja, then he sighed, "Of

course, you are right good Sasuke. It does sound very much

unlike my little sister. I am sorry for my harsh words, I swear to

you that they will not be repeated."

"I never minded, Master," Sasuke replied in what almost sounded

like a sincere reassurance, "But...is it possible that the Mistress

has also had a change of heart like yours? It has been almost

three months since she's had access to her treasury of Black

Roses..."

"I should have had the cursed things dug up altogether," Kuno

snorted, "Call me a sentimental fool that I didn't. Still...your idea

has merit, Sasuke. Tendo Nabiki did make mention that Kodachi

was seeking help from a specialist in attitude readjustment."

Natsume kept her thoughts private, but at the moment the kind of

attitude readjustment she was considering for the younger Kuno

sibling would have involved some serious bone breaking.

Kuno folded up the scroll and said, "In a way this is good news.

Now, at long last, we will be able to clear the air between us and

settle once and for all her culpability in making both of our lives

such a mess. This calls for a celebration...can I count on you to

join me for a tea ceremony, Natsume-chan?"

Natsume gasped at hearing him pronounce her name in such a

way and agreed easily, "But of course, Kuno-san, it would be a

great honor."

"Fine," he smiled openly, and for the first time his mood seemed

to lighten, "Then wait for me to summon you. Sasuke, do

whatever you can to keep our guest entertained while I set things

up. I will not be too long, I promise."

"Take whatever time you need," Natsume smiled as the boy

strode back towards the house, then in tones so soft even Sasuke

could barely hear her she finished her statement with the words,

"Kuno-sama..."

"Here it is," Urd remarked as she indicated the placard that

adorned the front gates of the High School, "Just like you wanted.

Now what?"

"Now we pause while I check things out," Hercules said as he

produced a curious looking device from his side that looked

strangely like a combination sundial and compass.

"What's that?" Urd could not help asking.

"One of Hephaestus's little devices," Hercules replied as he

studied the dial, adjusting it slightly, "Made specifically at Dad's

request to find the thing I'm looking for. Supposedly it's based on

some kind of an artifact dating from the time of the Titans."

"What's it doing here in Japan?" Urd wondered.

"I have no idea," Hercules replied, "Maybe Dad threw it here

during one of his spats with Hera. You know what their

domestic brawls are like. One time my step-Mom threw a bunch

of her old China dishes and some mortals mistook them for a

UFO formation..."

"I thought Hera was officially your Mom now," Urd grinned,

seeing the predictable reaction this produced in her companion.

Hercules grit his teeth as he growled, "Disney has a lot to answer

for...and no, I'm definitely NOT her son, thank Chronos. We get

along best by ignoring each other's existence these days. Ever

since I started hanging around Olympus more and more she's had

to learn to put up with me, but we don't even pretend to get into

the touchy-feely stuff. We stay far away from each other

whenever we can manage it and that's the way we like it."

"Whoops!" Urd said as she turned a distracted look at the device

in her companion's hands, "Looks like you're getting a reading

with that thing."

"Sure am," Hercules replied as he noted the flashing gemstone

that was pulsing like a heartbeat, "And from pretty close, a little

less than a kilometer, if I judge right. It's coming from that

direction," he nodded.

"Skuld would have a field day studying that thing," Urd

remarked, "Well, what are we waiting for? Let's go find

whatever's out there."

"Sure wish this thing was more adjustable," Hercules remarked,

"I'd like to have a better idea of what I'm going up against this-

oops! Sorry about that guy, didn't see you."

The fellow in question, whom Hercules had rudely jostled

coming around the corner of the walled off area, turned around

and fixed them both with a blue eyed stare that took a moment to

grow more into focus, and then the red-bearded man growled,

"YOU!"

"Huh?" Hercules said as he looked into the face of a man just as

tall and broad-shouldered as himself, dressed like a leather-clad

biker complete with winged helmet, and instantly recognized

him, "Thor? What are you doing in this neck of the woods?"

"GET READY TO DIE!" his fellow God replied as he drew back

a fist the size of a large coconut and took a swing in his direction.

"Hey!" Hercules protested as he dodged the powerful swing,

"What are you attacking me for this time?"

"Shut up you!" Thor roared as he took another powerful swing

that kicked up a breeze, which sent Urd's hair flying like a

streamer, "Just stand still and let me pound you!"

"Thor?" Urd remarked in surprise, but the redheaded giant was

too enraged to pay her any attention. Instead she turned her eyes

to the blond woman who had been standing beside the Thunder

God and said, "Sif?"

"What are you doing here?" the Goddess of the Hunt demanded

coolly.

Urd blinked, "What did I do now?"

"You want the short list?" Sif snorted, then more practically said,

"Don't tell me you and Hercules are also here looking for the

egg?"

"Egg?" Urd blinked, "What is this, Easter already?"

"You mean you don't know?" Sif lifted a pale eyebrow, then

turned her attention to the fight raging nearby as Thor drew his

hammer and hurled it at Hercules, who easily dodged this attack

as he had all of the others, "And what are those boys fighting

about this time?"

"Beats me?" Urd shrugged, "I thought maybe you had a clue. I'm

just here playing Escort."

"Picking up a little something on the side, eh?" Sif asked with a

nasty lilt to her voice that earned her a very sour look from Urd's

direction, "Ordinarily I'd way we'd be better off letting them work

it out of their system, but there isn't time for this nonsense, so

we'd better break them up right away."

Thor was at the moment raising the damage level while earning

the enmity of the city traffic division by putting a big pothole in

the middle of the road large enough to swallow a small truck. As

Hercules once again landed safely beyond the reach of his

enraged companion a light seemed to flash in the Grecian's eyes

and Hercules said, "Hey, if this is about that little gag I pulled

last month..."

"GAG?!" Thor snarled in rage, "You call what you did to me a

JOKE? I'm going to destroy your Hollywood butt for that!"

"Calm down," Hercules tried to sound reasonable, "So I didn't

read the instructions on the label, what do you expect when you

pick something up from your Uncle Loki's gift shop..."

"I might have known it!" Thor bellowed in outrage, "You're in

cahoots with Loki! Have you any idea what your little stunt has

cost me, OLD BUDDY? Because of you I have seen the other

side of Hel!"

"Hell?" Urd asked in confusion.

"One El, not two," Sif corrected, "Remember she has two sides to

her face, one young and beautiful, the other one always cloaked

in shadow? Well, guess what the other face looks like."

"Oh," Urd nodded comprehension.

"So the joke backfired," Hercules shrugged, "I didn't know it

would get you this upset."

"I'm going to make you pay for what you did to me!" Thor raised

an angry fist, only to look up at it in surprise as his trademark

hammer was not where it was supposed to be. As he was

looking up someone removed the helmet then informed him

bluntly of the Hammer's current location.

"Get the point?" Sif asked him as she flashed said Hammer with

a meaningful look towards Hercules.

Thor slowly turned around and said, "That hurt you know," then

toppled over like a puppet with the strings cut, a goose-egg sized

lump already appearing amid the thick red hairs surrounding a

partial bald spot.

"You two have two minutes head start," Sif informed them, "Get

moving, and don't let us catch you when he wakes up, you got

it?"

"No problem," Hercules hastily grabbed Urd by the arm and

urged her to follow as he retrieved his discarded locator.

"What was that all about?" Urd demanded crossly, "I thought you

two were the best of drinking buddies, but he looked like he was

really trying to kill you."

"Ah, the old Thor-head's just nursing a grudge about that little

gag present I gave him for his birthday a couple months ago.

You ever hear of a place in China called Jusenkyo?"

"Sure," Urd replied, "Who hasn't?"

"Well," Hercules began, "According to what Loki said there's a

Celestial equivalent on the Heavenly plane of the Chinese

Afterlife, and when he last went there he obtained a few samples

of the water that he said could be used even on Gods, just like the

Earthly stuff works on mortals."

"I think I'm following this," Urd said slowly, "I wish I wasn't, but

I get where you're going here. So...what kind of cursed divine

water did you give him?"

"I'll tell you later," Hercules replied, "But let's just say for now

that there's a pretty good reason why the God of Thunder's been

staying far away from storm clouds lately..."

"Well?" Ryonami asked Gosunkugi with an impatient tone to her

voice.

"Take it easy," Gosunkugi Hikaru urged for the forth time in the

hour, "This isn't easy hacking into the school central database

during class hours using the library terminal, you know. If they

catch us it means an automatic suspension."

"Sempai wants to know everything she can about these new girls

as soon as her intelligence network, meaning you and me, can

obtain it," Ryonami explained, doing her best to imply by her

tone that it would not be a good thing to keep their Boss-lady

waiting.

"I said I'm trying, Ryo-chan," the skinny boy whom most treated

like a school joke replied, hoping his companion wouldn't notice

the slight familiarity he used in his voice, "But the Graviton

Computer Database is a lot more sophisticated than anything I've

ever had to deal with before now. It makes the Government

security system look like a piggy bank in terms of Network

security protocols. I've almost got it, though. I've accessed a

special restricted file, now I'm just waiting for the download and

we'll have it."

Ryonami favored the boy with a smile that would most likely

have sent him into a fainting spell had he seen it, then she said,

"We really have to talk with Sempai about the pathetic equipment

we have to work with here. This system doesn't even have a

Cable-Modem, which would sure speed things up immensely."

"No kidding," Gosunkugi agreed, "Hey, looks like it's finished

translating the software, now to print a hard copy and...uh oh..."

"Uh oh?" Ryonami risked taking her eyes off the head librarian,

who was staring to look at them with a very cross expression.

"Take a look at this," Gosunkugi pointed at the screen, "A special

internal memo concerning the activities of the students referred to

as Aiko Managi and Beiko Daitokuji. There's also mention of

another girl involved with them named Ceiko Kotobuki..."

"Oh my," Ryonami leaned closer to the screen, "Daily reports of

routine delinquency, fighting both in and outside of school

grounds...Property Damage in the billions of yen...?"

"SHHH!" the head librarian said in clear irritation.

Gosunkugi glanced at the side printer and said, "Hard copy's

almost ready, I'm downloading the rest of this onto disk. We'd

better go find Nabiki-sama quick. Pay the librarian, won't you?"

"Why me?" she asked in surprise.

"Because I paid her last time," Gosunkugi replied, popping out a

floppy disk as he paused to add, "But I'll make it up to you

somehow, honest."

"All right," Ryonami said, finding that she was less upset about

spending money with that promise as compensation, "But I'll

hold you to it."

Gosunkugi snatched up the hardcopy laser printout then stood up

as the two of them went in search of Nabiki...

Akane looked up to find Aiko approaching with Ryoga at her

side and her somber mood suddenly brightened like a sunflower

exposed to the sun, "Ryo-chan!"

"Akane-chan," Ryoga started to rush forward when he suddenly

remembered where they were and that the athletic coach was

glaring at him. He settled for a subdued apology instead of the

heartfelt embrace he would have wanted and just said, "I'm so

sorry I got lost again...I hope you weren't too worried."

"Of course I was worried about you, you big silly," Akane could

not help smiling, wishing she did not have class right then or she

would show the perpetually lost boy just how much she missed

him, "But I'm just glad you're back. Thank you, Aiko, for finding

him.'

"Don't thank me," Aiko said uncomfortably, pointing in the

direction they had both come from, "He was just over there about

a half kilometer by that wooded area near the track. I'm sure he'd

have found his way here all by himself."

"Uh, yeah, right," Ryoga said with a nervous grin as he placed

one hand behind his head and thanked the Kami that he was not

forced to explain in more detail about his "little problem" to the

redhead.

"Thanks just the same," Akane said as she heard her name being

called and sighed, "That's my cue. Be back in a moment."

Akane walked up to a pair of uneven parallel bars, accepting the

chalk that another girl dusted on her outstretched palm as Akane

contemplated the special maneuver she had been practicing for

the past month. It was a variation on one of Kodachi's

flamboyant maneuvers and she had almost got it right the last

time, so she decided to try it again now that she had an audience

that she wanted to impress. She dusted her hands together, then

reached up and grabbed the higher of the two bars and began to

swing her legs into position.

Ryoga watched in pure enchantment as Akane proceeded to

execute a number of body flips and swings that would have

gained the attention of an Olympic scout had one been present.

Akane was doing everything just right this time, using the right

amount of force to her swings, bending her legs at just the right

angle, curling herself at the top of a key swing and planting her

bare feet just right on the upper bar before launching herself into

a backflip that ended with her catching the bar again, earning an

astonished gasp for her fellow students, who were used to seeing

Akane routinely outperform them.

Akane finished her maneuvers with a one-and-a-half somersault

turn the ended with both feet together in a perfect one-point

landing. The moment she hit the mat with the balls of her feet

she felt elation at the realization that she had really and truly done

it right this time. Her performance had been flawless, and even

Kodachi would have called it brilliant. She turned around and

was rewarded by a look of pure awe in the face of her iinazuke.

Much to her surprise, though, Aiko was just smiling and shaking

her head as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. When

Akane approached her, however, she said, "Not bad, you're pretty

good."

"That was...incredible," Ryoga breathed, reminding her that his

was the opinion that really mattered.

Akane flashed a smile at Ryoga, then turned a look of challenge

at the redhead and said, "I'd like to see you do better."

"Well," Aiko inclined her head and was about to speak when the

coach beat her to it.

"That's not a bad idea, Managi-san, why don't you go next and

show us how it's supposed to be done."

Aiko sighed with a look of resignation and said, "All right,

coach, if you say so."

Akane followed the girl wearing her borrowed leotard (which

actually was one she had borrowed from Kodachi, but that was

not important at the moment) and the two black arm bracers and

sat down as Aiko paused beneath the upper bar, then to

everyone's surprise reached out for the lower bar instead of the

high one.

Aiko swung herself under and around this lower bar, then flipped

over it and landed atop the high bar, pausing on the balls of her

feet to study the distance between herself and the roof of the gym

then hopped off the bar and caught it, then swung around and

around a few times, increasing her speed while building up her

momentum.

Akane was no less impressed than any of her less agile fellow

students when the redhead finally launched herself into the air

and soared twenty feet high, turning and twisting her body before

executing a number of somersaults, coming down again to catch

the bar with flawless grace as she swung around and performed a

number of ballet twists, tossing herself from low bar to high bar

and back again like a juggler's toy. Aiko did a number of feats

that even Kodachi would have flat out declared impossible, and

finally dismounted with a leap that once again came close to

brushing her chest against the ceiling.

Aiko fell forty feet and landed perfectly in a one-point in the exact

center of the mattress. She brought her hands back to her side

and said, "How was that, Coach?" without the least token display

of being either tired or winded.

The coach just stood there with his whistle dangling from

nervous lips as he gazed at the astonishing redhead. Aiko took

his non-response for confirmation and lightly walked back to

Akane before sitting down again, ignoring the blank looks she

got from Ryoga and the others.

It took almost a full minute for Akane to remember to close her

mouth, and only after Aiko smiled at her and said, "You could

catch flies with that," which sounded like a tease but was entirely

good natured.

"H-H-How?" Akane finally managed to ask her.

Aiko shrugged, "Like I said, my mother taught me. She had a lot

of practice herself and made sure I always knew how to land on

my feet the first time. I've also got pretty good reflexes, which I

kind of inherited from both of my parents."

One of the other girls murmured to her friend, "Looks like we've

got ourselves a new class Champion."

"But how could she do that?" the other girl asked, "It's like she

was lighter than air or something."

"You're really something," Ryoga said, not noticing the look

Akane gave him.

"Not really," Aiko said, "I usually don't compete with other girls,

that was more Beiko's thing than me, but I could probably have

won a few medals at the Olympics a few years ago if my parents

had allowed it."

"And who's Beiko?" Ryoga asked.

Aiko's pleasant expression suddenly darkened and she growled,

"Nobody, I'm not talking about her. Change the subject."

"All right," Akane said, "Why didn't your parents want to let you

compete in the Olympics?"

"It's a big secrecy thing with them," Aiko sighed, "I get pretty

tired of it sometimes. If it were up to them I'd just be a mild

mannered student and never show anybody what I can do. It can

be such a drag sometimes holding myself back."

Akane slowly smiled at that, "I don't think that'll be a problem

around here. Living in Nerima has a way of pushing you to your

limits, which reminds me, are you hungry? Did you pack a

lunch?"

"Huh?" Aiko looked at her curiously, "Why do you ask?"

"I brought my lunch from home," Akane replied, "I got up extra

early to make it and I was hoping to test it on Ryoga to see if I

did all right."

Akane failed to see the look of panic that suddenly lit up in her

iinazuke's eyes, but Aiko did not. In a neutral voice she said,

"Are you a very good chef?"

"Well..." Akane felt a tug of honesty war with pride before she

sighed, "I'm still learning how to cook...it's part of my bridal

training, after all, and I'm trying to see if I can learn to become

more domestic."

Now Ryoga's eyes had a different kind of peculiar expression,

only this time for a different reason than contemplating Akane's

attempts at cooking. Again Aiko took note of the boy's reactions,

then said, "Mind if I have a sample of your cooking?"

"Sure," Akane got up while their coach was busy turning his

attention to the other girls, trying to make them show at least a

halfway decent performance. She went to the locker room and

came back a moment later with a covered tray in hand, then sat

down and uncovered it and said, "See anything you like?"

Aiko looked down at what she took to be somebody's leftover

toxic waste spread over half-burned rice with brown vegetables

spread over the goop and covered with an overabundance of

seasoning and pepper. She stretched out a finger and took a

sample up to her lips, licked the goop and promptly wished she

had not.

"Is it good?" Akane asked with an earnest expression while

Ryoga held his breath and wondered if he should start calling the

paramedics.

"It..." Aiko suddenly choked up, unable to tell the girl exactly

what she thought of her attempt at cooking, but more to the point

that Akane's expression reminded her of another, and suddenly in

her mind the dark hair of her new friend was replaced by a mass

of golden curls and a wide-eyed look of innocence that was

hopeful and yearning.

She fought for words but failed to find them. She looked down

and suddenly her eyes were full of tears as she scrambled to her

feet and said, "Excuse me, please...I...I have to go..."

"Managi!" the coach called out, but Aiko was already headed for

the door, and not the lockers, "Wait to be dismissed! That girl is

going to be holding up buckets when she gets back here!"

Ryoga blinked, "What happened with her?"

"Is it my cooking?" Akane asked in confusion, looking down at

the mess she had worked so hard at producing, and she was

about to touch her own finger to the sauce when Ryoga came

alive and snatched the tray out of her hands, causing her to gasp,

"Ryo-chan?"

"Ah, you made this for me, right?" Ryoga gave her a weak smile

as Akane nodded, "Then allow me to tell you what I think about

your cooking, Akane-chan," and with that he sat down and

started eating with his fingers before she had time to remind him

to use the set of chop-sticks that had long since dissolved into the

pudding.

Akane blinked as she watched her iinazuke devour the substance

that nothing human could endure, but after a moment Akane's

expression softened as she noticed how Ryoga ate her cooking

with no visible ill effects...if you discounted a slight greenish

coloration.

Instead she turned her mind back to Aiko as Ryoga finished off

the last scrap of her lunch, not seeing the way the lost boy looked

ready to vomit as he forced the food down his throat, wincing

once he knew she was not looking while everyone else in the

room favored him with looks of dismay and pity, including the

coach.

Why had Aiko become so emotional of a sudden over her

cooking? Akane could not figure her out, and it was driving her

a little crazy. Like her older sister, there was nothing she disliked

more than a mystery...unless you counted rude boys who insulted

her cooking skills, like Ranma.

Where had Aiko gone in such a hurry...and why did it seem as if

she were crying? There was definitely more to the redhead than

what she had already seen, and one way or another Akane Tendo

silently vowed to get to the bottom of the other girl's secrets.

One way or another...

Continued.

Comments/Criticism/Stomach Pump anyone?:

shadowmane

Things are just starting to heat up, and next time we get to the

nitty-gritty, I promise! Be there!

If you wish to check out my other works, Please check out my

Fanfiction webpage at: . or

it's mirror site at: ~

All related chapters of this series can be found there along with my

other works.


	28. Chapter 28

Nabiki 1/2,

A Very Scary Thought

(An Altered Destiny)

by

Jim Robert Bader

Chapter 28, Part 1.

(Inspired by the Works of Rumiko Takahashi & Others)

"I'm home!" called Kurumi Tendo as she stepped in through the

front door of her Uncle's estate, removing her slippers as she

momentarily set down the bag of groceries that she was carrying

and looked around to discover who else was home at the

moment.

"In here, Kurumi-chan," came the pleasant dulcet tones of her

cousin Kasumi, "Did you get the soy sauce like I asked?"

"Hai," Kurumi said brightly as she brought her load into the

kitchen and set it down on the counter, then sniffed the air and

immediately brightened, "That smells so good! Sukiyaki?"

"We're trying a new recipe," said her Aunt Nodoka as she stirred

the vegetables in a wok while Shampoo chopped more on a

cutting board and Kasumi prepared the dishes, "Sweet and sour

pork with cilantro and curry."

Kurumi made an approving noise and said, "I'm starving, when

will it be ready?"

"You always starving," Shampoo sniffed in amusement, "There

riceballs on table to keep bottomless pit from rumbling until

dinner ready."

"Thank you!" said Kurumi brightly and all but dove for the

tempting globes of preformed rice that were a special delicacy for

the youngest member of the Tendo household when she needed to

curb her eternal hunger in a hurry. She happily munched down

three while the trio of chefs each paid her an indulgent look of

fondness. Even Nodoka did not feel inclined to chide Kurumi for

her greedy eating habits, or caution her against possibly spoiling

her dinner...mainly because no one had ever seen the littlest

Tendo girl lose her appetite for any reason.

"These are good!" Kurumi said cheerfully, "Did you make them,

Oneechan?"

"Shampoo made those, Kurumi-chan," Kasumi replied, not

minding that her youngest cousin preferred calling her 'Big Sister'

from sheer habit, "She said they were a small price to pay to keep

you out of her Ramen noodles until they are ready."

"Thank you, Cousin Shampoo-chan," Kurumi bowed to the

purple haired Amazon, "They were delicious!"

Shampoo turned very slowly on account of her widening girth

and gave Kurumi a mock-stern expression that she had copied

from long experience with her great grandmother, "You thank me

by no stealing Ramen until it ready or I tie you up with own hair

ribbon, understood?"

"Hai," Kurumi adopted a particularly Kawaii expression as she

looked back at the pregnant Amazon with such feigned innocence

that Shampoo could not help smiling.

"By the way, Kurumi-chan," Nodoka remarked, "Where is your

sister at? I wanted to see if she might be willing to help me run

some errands later in the day..."

Kurumi lost her cheerful expression and said, "Uh...she...she's

over visiting with that Kuno guy. I...didn't feel like coming

along..."

"Oh, that's right," Kasumi brightened, "Tatewaki is home from

the hospital today. I do hope he's feeling better."

"Just so he spend time with Natsume-chan and no try picking any

more fights with Airen," Shampoo said crossly.

"Now dear," Nodoka gently chided, "Tachi's had it very rough

these last few years, and who could possibly blame him for the

way he has been acting? I really blame myself for not keeping a

better watch on that sister of his. Kodachi always was such a

handful..." she sighed tiredly, "But who would have suspected

that she was secretly feeding her brother the drugs that were

making him act so unstable?"

"I'm sure her intentions weren't meant to cause him any harm,

Auntie," Kasumi said in her reassuring manner, "Kodachi may

have been high spirited but she was never truly malicious. Now

that she's off somewhere with her friend Keiko I'm sure she'll

have time to reflect upon her actions."

Kurumi was not so certain of this, having formed the distinctive

impression from their one brief meeting that the Kuno sister was,

if anything, more of a nutcase than her addict brother. It never

failed to amaze her how kind-hearted and understanding Kasumi

could be, one reason everyone seemed to like her so much,

including Kurumi.

In all truth Kurumi felt very uncomfortable about her sister's

obvious and growing attraction to the Samurai wannabe who had

been harassing Natsume for three consecutive days before his

eventual collapse. Sure the man was out of the hospital and had

appeared to be acting more sober when she saw him that

morning, but he still looked like trouble, the kind her big sister

was usually so good at avoiding. In fact it was entirely unlike

Natsume to fawn so much over any guy, like she was under a

spell or something. It made Kurumi feel distinctly nauseous

seeing the two of them looking moon-eyed at one another.

In many ways it was pleasing to find how much Shampoo agreed

with her private assessment, just one of many things Kurumi

liked about the purple-haired Amazon who was their cousin by

marriage, odd though it sounded since the one she was married to

was her real cousin, Nabiki.

"Stupid Rose girl may no be responsible for her actions, but she

still must answer questions when she come back to Nerima,"

Shampoo was stating as she finished chopping up some garlic

into very tiny pieces, "Maybe Shampoo cousin make see error of

ways. Great Grandmother think Cousin already make Kuno-

sister see error of ways. We know if Cousin keep word and

return her, along with Red and Red's mother like she promise."

"I don't know if I feel very confident about that," Nodoka

frowned, "Nabiki wouldn't get too specific on the details but she

hinted that this Lao person was a very rough customer. I'm not

sure if I approve of Kodachi associating with someone of less

than sterling character."

"Hah," Shampoo snorted, "Is Cousin I feel sorry for. She spend

enough time with Black Rose girl she be very happy to get her

back home. Maybe Kuno make sister feel sorry she behave so

sneaky, maybe let police have her answer questions. If so, then I

feel sorry for Akane, who like Rose girl for some reason."

"Ah," Kasumi seemed on the verge of saying something, when

she thought better of it and instead remarked, "Speaking of

Akane, she has been working very hard on her bride training ever

since father agreed to let her be engaged to Ryoga."

Both Shampoo and Nodoka exchanged knowing looks while

Kurumi thought that matters had been a bid different from what

Kasumi had just described when Akane confronted her father and

told Soun Tendo flat out that she wanted to be engaged to Ryoga

and no other. To say that Soun had "allowed" the match would

have been to ignore several hours of intense shouting in which

her Uncle had flat-out forbidden Cousin Akane to have anything

to do with Ryoga Hibiki, and he had listed a number of perfectly

valid reasons (or so he considered them) for any sort of

relationship with the aptly-named Lost Boy.

In the end he had caved in to Akane's relentless insistence that

she would marry Ryoga and no one else, a declaration that had-

Kurumi vividly recalled-taken Ryoga himself by surprise and

left him to sit there stunned for five full minutes just absorbing

the implications. Akane's case was-oddly enough-given

support by Genma, who declared that Ryoga was the heir to a

lost branch of the Anything Goes school and so should be given a

chance to prove himself as a worthy suitor for Akane's hand in

marriage.

Everyone else had been stunned at the Panda-man's assertion,

and it did not take Kurumi long to discover why as further

experience indicated to her what sort of character the elder

Saotome male was, in many senses a startling contrast to his son,

Ranma. That he would take a stand in support of Akane was by

itself amazing, and yet his voice had helped to decide the matter.

Soun had given in to the logic used by his old friend and fellow

student of the Musubetsu Kakuto Ryu. Some later voiced the

suspicion that Genma had ulterior motives for supporting the

union, but Akane was infinitely grateful, and Ryoga had declared

himself honored to have someone speak on his behalf in such a

forceful manner.

Kurumi privately liked Ryoga very much and thought him a good

match for Akane, who acted like a girl in love whenever the long-

toothed boy was in her presence. Considering how depressed

Akane had been of late, moping over the absence of her two

closest friends, Kurumi was glad to see anything that could cheer

up her cousin, who was in many was as close to her as a sister.

Kurumi often wished that there was some way that she could

make Akane feel better herself, having formed an instant bond at

their first meeting. The odd thing was that anytime she said this

to her dark haired cousin Akane would just look at her and smile

in a very odd way, then shake her head and mutter something

about being careful that Akane did not take her literally up on her

offer...

Kasumi looked up suddenly, distracting Kurumi from her internal

reflections as she said, "Oh my...I think I hear the mail being

delivered."

"I'll get it, Oneechan," Kurumi volunteered, wanting to do

something to be helpful to her family, now that she had a family

to help, which was a thing she had come to treasure in a

surprisingly brief time. She hurried to the mail box on their front

porch and came back a moment later with several cards and

letters in hand, mostly junk mail and bills, which were usually

handled by her absent cousin, Nabiki.

One envelope, however, stood out from the others in that it was

engraved with old lettering in Chinese characters that Kurumi

had trouble reading, in spite of the regular tutoring she and

Natsume had been receiving from the ever-helpful Hinako-sensei.

She decided, from the look of it, that it was probably for

Shampoo and so came back into the kitchen holding it out as she

said, "Can you make this out for me, Cousin? Is that your name

on the side? I don't see a return address..."

Shampoo was busy washing her hands in the sink when she

caught sight of the envelope, and then something in her manner

changed abruptly as she snatched the thing out of Kurumi's hands

with damp fingers.

"Is it important news from your village, Shampoo-chan?" Kasumi

asked the Amazon, taking notice of the purple haired girl's

unusually pale complexion.

"No," Shampoo replied as she grabbed a knife and sliced the top

of the envelope open, "It to Airen and myself. I recognize

handwriting though..." she paused as she studied the letter she

had unfolded, then said, "This is from my cousin, Lao. She say

she coming to Nerima and bringing others with her."

"Oh?" Nodoka asked, "Does she say when?"

Shampoo nodded very soberly then looked at them all before

whispering her reply, "Tomorrow..."

"Here it is," said Hercules as he indicated a forested area just off

from the school grounds adjoining city limits, "This is the place

indicated by Heph's gizmo."

"Are you sure?" asked Urd glanced at the spot indicated, "I don't

feel anything unusual..."

"Probably have to look a lot closer," Hercules remarked, taking

note of the obvious trail as he added, "Looks like this is used for

cross-country jogging, a little off-campus exercise leading to that

park area I imagine."

"So what's so great about exercise?" Urd asked with a sniff,

"Mortals go to so much trouble trying to stay in shape, it's like an

obsession..."

"Holy Mother of Creation," Hercules halted in his tracks so

suddenly that Urd almost collided with his shoulder, "Wonder

what did this?"

"Eh?" Urd asked as she glanced around his broad back to find the

scene of mass devastation that was in evidence in a very

contained area, which caused her to lift a pale eyebrow, "You're

right...it looks like you went through here or something."

Hercules ignored the comment and studied the device in his hand

again, then once more started forward, "The thing I'm looking for

is here...in fact...right at the base of this sinkhole-correction-

cave that somebody partially collapsed. I think I'm finally going

to get to the bottom of whatever it is that has Dad so worked up."

"Maybe he lost some souvenir pictures and he's afraid Hera might

find them?" Urd suggested.

"Harde-har," Hercules snorted as he put the device away then

said, "Wait here while I investigate."

He jumped down into the pit while Urd stood by the edge

frowning slightly. She glanced around herself as if to try and

shake a peculiar feeling, then to cover her sudden nervousness

she called out, "Find it yet?"

"I found something all right," Hercules replied in disquieted tones

that did not sound like positive confirmation, "Only I think we're

too late. I don't know how to say this, but I think we're in big

trouble."

"Nani?" Urd exclaimed, then floated down into the pit and raised

a hand to summon up a light that could dispel the partial

darkness, "I don't see anything so...big?"

She amended herself silently as she saw what Hercules was

looking at, which was some manner of egg-shaped object with a

very large hole punched through one side, as if something had

burst out from the inside.

"What did that?" she wondered tonelessly.

"I don't know," Hercules said very soberly, "And that's what has

me worried. Bring that light closer over here...I think I see some

writing."

Urd approached the egg-shaped object, and the moment her

glowing hands came closer to the writing it flared to life as if

reflecting her magic.

"Typhon?" Hercules gasped, "Oboy! So that's what had the old

Boy white as a sheet! Figures he wouldn't tell me about a thing

like this and let me find out the hard way."

"Typhon?" Urd frowned, "Who's Typhon?"

"Not who," Hercules replied, "What, and unless I miss my

guess..." he slowly turned around and pointed, "The thing that

hatched here went in that direction."

Urd followed his gaze and saw what he meant as she took in the

freshly made exit through which a very large object had burrowed

out of the side of the pit at a very steep angle. With increasing

nervousness she said, "You think so, huh?"

"Call it a hunch," Hercules snorted, "Come on, let's try and catch

up with it before it upsets the neighbors..."

"Mind if I ask you something?"

Beatrice favored her companion with a smile, "You just did."

"I mean seriously," Nabiki said, "What is it between you and the

redhead anyway? I'd like to know about the sort of company my

sister is keeping these days, and please don't avoid the question.

I think I'm entitled to an answer."

"Perhaps you are," Beatrice leaned forward on the bench they

were sharing at the moment and stared at nothing for several long

moments, "I just don't know how to answer you. It's not an easy

subject, and...the answer will probably surprise you."

"Try me," Nabiki said dryly, "You've got no idea what passes for

normality in my life."

"Very well," Beatrice sighed, looking down for several more long

seconds, then she looked up and began with a question of her

own, "Tell me something, Tendo-san...have you ever hated

anybody?"

Nabiki arched an eyebrow and this time it was her turn to

hesitate before responding, "I've...known a few people I haven't

liked very much..."

"That is not the same thing as hating them," Beatrice shook her

head slowly, then stared off again as she resumed, "I mean have

you ever hated one person with an all-consuming passion that

obsesses your very being and becomes the driving force of your

existence? I mean have you ever really, truly hated anyone with a

force so intense...that it is almost like love?"

The last part she asked looking directly at Nabiki, who sat back

in surprise and said, "I'm not sure I understand..."

"Then that makes two of us," Beatrice stared off into space again

and leaned back on the bench with her hands to support her, "It

seems a lifetime ago that it first happened...the two of us became

rivals and started a feud that Alison soon forgot all about but

which I remembered vividly when we met again over a decade

later. It happened about seven months ago near the beginning of

the last semester, she came back into my life all over again, and

something terrible happened..."

"What?" Nabiki asked, intrigued now beyond measure.

Beiko smiled a bittersweet smile and said, "I fell in love. Her

name was Celeste, but everyone called her Ceiko. She got that

name in the same institute where we first met at the age of five, if

you can believe it. I think it must have been some manner of joke

among the researchers, giving us nick-names of Aiko, Beiko and

Ceiko, but I suppose even Nerds must find their jollies

somewhere."

"I see," Nabiki replied, "And this girl you fell in love with?"

For a moment Beatrice's lovely face lit up with an inner joy at a

memory that made her look more alive than at any time since

their meeting, "She was laughter and life to me...the first time I

saw her my heart reached out and started fluttering like a bird. I

went mad with the desire to be her friend and to have her with

me...some people who knew me back then will tell you it was not

a very long descent into madness..." she smiled at the irony of her

own statement, then she sighed again and said, "The only

problem for me was that Ceiko already had a friend, and her

name was Aiko."

"You mean she and this Alison...?" Nabiki started to say, but

Beatrice cut her off with a snort of amusement.

"No, I'm afraid their relationship wasn't quite that intimate," she

assured, "Aiko regarded Ceiko like a sister and sometimes acted

as her guardian protector. I was terribly jealous just the same,

and I'm afraid I lashed out at Alison in a misguided attempt to

force the two of them apart so that I could have Celeste all to

myself. You must understand that I was not in full possession of

my faculties and had little idea just what sort of a mess I was

creating. In effect I was totally clueless."

"I have some idea what that's like," Nabiki mused aloud, thinking

privately how little her new companion behaved like her

memories of Kuno.

"Aiko remembers those times a little too well, I'm afraid,"

Beatrice sighed again, "The way I attacked her almost every day,

trying to crush her to get at Ceiko, coming up with one mad

elaborate scheme right after the other and generally making

myself into a royal nuisance. For four straight months up to the

very end of the semester we were fighting almost daily, doing

more damage to our school campus than to ourselves in the

process, all to no avail..." her voice fell almost to a whisper as she

concluded, "In the end neither one of us wound up with Ceiko.

She went home with her mother and that should have been the

end to the entire matter. With no one to fight over, Aiko and I

were suddenly without a reason for all our fighting."

"Then you and Aiko are martial artists?" Nabiki asked.

"In a manner of speaking," Beatrice replied sadly, "I've had some

training in Combat Ballet, while Alison is a practitioner of

Amazonian Martial Arts..."

"Amazon?" this time Nabiki arched both eyebrows.

"I'm afraid so," Beatrice replied, "A four thousand year old school

of female combat distantly related to Grecian Pankratia, handed

down directly from mother to daughter over several generations.

Added to that is another school known as Klughor, which is

practiced by her father..."

"Wait a minute," Beatrice frowned, "Four thousand years? I

thought the Nyuchizu School had only been in existence for

three thousand."

"You are thinking of the Chinese branch of the Amazons,"

Beatrice smiled, "Alison's people were Sythians, the same people

who once dominated the Slavic lands of Romania and Turkey

before the Huns invaded their lands after the Romans conquered

the province."

"You mean the original Amazons of Greek legend," Nabiki

replied.

"As opposed to the Libyan branch, which came even earlier,"

Beatrice replied, "At any rate, to return to your original question,

once Celeste disappeared a very strange thing happened to Aiko

and me...we stopped fighting...just like that. Suddenly the great

cause of our rivalry was removed and we were left without a clue

of where to go from there. It was very disconcerting...one

moment I'm hating her with every fiber of my being...the next

thing I know I have no desire to continue. It took me a while to

figure out why, and the ultimate answer turned out to be with

Ceiko."

"You mean the jealousy was the source?" Nabiki asked.

"Not just jealousy," Beatrice corrected, "Something about Celeste

that was affecting both Alison and me and intensifying our

feelings of rivalry beyond where we would have been merely

resenting each other without her presence. The missing clue

turned out to be the institution we all three attended. You may

recall that I said that I was there to be studied for my unusual

intellect, while Alison was there to be studied for her...physique.

Celeste, on the other hand, had abilities of her own far more

subtle and less direct, which even she did not realize that she

had, the ability to influence people on a subharmonic level..."

"You mean she was a natural charmer?" Nabiki remarked with a

sardonic smile.

"More than you are thinking," Beatrice replied with her own

sardonic smile, "It turns out that Celeste's ancestors deliberately

engineered into her line the ability to broadcast her influence on a

subconscious and emotional level. This is a latent psionic talent

that she possesses that affects people in a very positive way,

making them feel good whenever she's happy, and bad whenever

she is unhappy or under distress. She also secretes pheromones

that make people amenable to anything she suggests...you simply

cannot say no to the girl if she wants something. Added to that

her personality is a bit flighty but good natured and she has that

indefinable quality known as Charisma."

"And you're saying this was all deliberately engineered?" Nabiki

asked, "By who?'

"Ah!" Beatrice smiled, "Now that is the hundred million yen

question. I'll pose it to you as a question of my own: to what

purpose could such ability as her's be directed?"

"Persuasion," Nabiki frowned as she considered the point,

"Equals Obedience. Charisma equals leadership..." she started,

"Are you suggesting that someone deliberately engineered the

girl's DNA to turn her into an Idol?"

"Ceiko could not carry a tune if you gave her a fishing rod,"

Beatrice replied with an amused smirk, "You are thinking of

popular entertainment. Try something a little more direct

involving Charisma."

"Leadership," Nabiki said, then started, "Are you saying she's

a...?"

"Princess," Beatrice finished for her, "A more than symbolic

figurehead representing a hereditary dynasty to whom her ability

is natural. Ceiko actually comes from a very long line of royalty

entrusted with holding a vast and powerful empire together by

their ability to be liked by ordinary people. Of course the poor

dear was orphaned at an early age and so never knew this until

she was found by her mother and her people..."

"An Empire?" Nabiki blinked, "Now hold on there...this sounds

pretty far fetched. There aren't that many Empire left on Earth,

unless you count our own and..."

"This Empire is not of an Earthly nature," Beatrice studied

Nabiki's expression, "Does this surprise you?"

"Ah...yeah, a little," Nabiki replied, tempted to believe that her

new friend was pulling her leg but for the disconcerting way in

which Beatrice appeared to be entirely serious and sober in her

mannerisms, "So...she's an alien?"

"Uh-huh," Beatrice confirmed, "She crash landed on Earth when

she was just a baby and was adopted by a rich family on Earth,

but in reality she is the fourth child of the fifth Queen of the

Lepton Dynasty of Alpha Cigni. Her people were really quite

frantic about getting her back, even went to war with Earth and

everything."

"Ah-huh," Nabiki replied, "Right."

For some reason Beatrice just smiled all the more intensely at her

companion's skepticism, "You mean you don't remember? I can't

say that I'm very surprised. That sort of thing doesn't stay long in

the average person's memory once the crisis is over."

"I'm pretty sure I'd remember something like that," Nabiki

wondered why Beatrice's attitude was disturbing her so greatly,

"Are you saying this kind of thing happens all the time?"

"That's right," Beatrice continued to smile with an enigmatic

expression, "In the last fifty years, since we first attracted the

notice of Alien governments with our atomic testing, the Earth

has fended off, by my estimate, as many as fifteen attempted

invasions, all of which were later covered up while the damage

was repaired so that people could get on with their lives no worse

nor the wiser."

"A cover-up?" Nabiki finally thought matters had gone far

enough, "You don't seriously expect me to believe..."

"Tell me something," Beatrice gave Nabiki a superior look that

she found mildly annoying, "Does the name of a race called the

Oni strike a bell with you?"

"Ah..." Nabiki hesitated, "Oni...you don't mean demons, do you?"

"I mean the Oni," Beatrice replied, "As in Princess Lum,

currently enrolled at Tomobiki High School on a resident alien

visa."

"Ah..." now Nabiki was sweating, certain that the name did

strike a very clear bell in her memories, but for the life of her she

could not place where she had heard that name being mentioned.

"Oh come on," Beatrice smiled all the more, "You've got to

remember something. It was broadcast all over Japan, in fact the

whole world heard the ultimatum that was answered by

Morobishi Ataru..."

"Ataru?" that name struck a bell at last and Nabiki replied, "Wait

a second...I do remember hearing something about an Ataru

Morobishi taking part in some contest that had some pretty high

stakes and..."

She paused while Beatrice continued smiling. After another full

minute Nabiki relented and said, "So...why don't I remember?"

"The same reason almost everyone else on the planet has

forgotten," Beatrice replied, "Except the people closest to the

situation itself, who are reminded daily. The MIB blanked our

your memories."

"The...MIB?" Nabiki repeated, but before she could ask any

further her next question was cut off by a voice hailing her, the

voice of her beloved Ranma.

"Nab-chan!" he cried, causing her to look up with delight at his

approach, which was only added to by the sight of Perfume and a

slightly winded Ukyo.

"Ranchan," Nabiki greeted, "What are you two doing out of

class?"

"Ranchan?" Beatrice asked with an inquisitive expression.

"Ukyo and me found something we think you ought to see,"

Ranma replied, "It's in this cave that we discovered while jogging

on the old track and field park area. It's about two meters tall and

really weird looking..."

"Slow down," Nabiki urged, "What object...and did you say a

cave?"

"Actually I pretty much found it on my own the hard way," Ukyo

replied, rubbing her bottom meaningfully, much to the

amusement of Perfume, then she looked at Beatrice and said,

"Who's your friend?"

"Beatrice Kane," the silver haired Beatrice replied as she stood up

to greet them, "And this is an honor and a pleasure. So you're

Saotome Ranma, eh?"

"Ah, yeah," Ranma replied cautiously, glancing at Nabiki as he

added, "What did I do now?"

"Nothing yet," Nabiki smiled, "Beatrice is a transfer student from

Graviton High School..."

"Graviton?" Ukyo replied, "Is that an all-girl's school for snobby

elite types? The place that recruits a lot of technical wizards and

egg-heads who are into the latest electronic hardware?"

"If you mean does it serve as a pool of raw talent for industries

such as Daitokuji, you are correct," Beatrice smiled, "And as one

of those snobby elite types you refer to I should like to take the

opportunity to say that we have our own opinions regarding

Furinkan based on casual observations made from a great

distance."

"Ucchan," Nabiki said chidingly, then to Beatrice she remarked,

"Kuonji Ukyo owns her own restaurant in Nerima. She's a top-

notch Okonomiyaki chef, probably the best in all Japan, if not the

world, as she likes to remind us."

"And why shouldn't I be the best?" Ukyo flashed a smile,

developing an instant liking for the silver haired Beatrice.

"And you are?" Beatrice asked Perfume at last with a friendly

expression, "No wait...let me guess...you're an Amazon from

Joketsuzoku, correct?"

"How did you know?" Perfume asked in surprise, favoring a

questioning look at Nabiki.

"Your hairstyle is distinctive," Beatrice explained, "And I heard

mention of the Nyuchizu earlier, so it made sense to suppose

that Nabiki here has had exposure to your people."

"That's one way of putting it," Perfume smiled, "My name is Pur-

Fum, but everyone pronounces it Perfume, and yes I am from

Joketsuzoku."

"Don't tell me you're also engaged to Saotome Ranma?" Beatrice

asked with a knowing look and a smile, seeing how the boy in

the trio reacted to this, receiving glances from his two female

companions.

"No," Perfume replied, "I'm definitely not his Airen."

"Then we are well met indeed," Beatrice turned back to Nabiki,

"Your iinazuke is quite a handsome sort, is he not? I can see why

you would prefer to keep a tight hold on him."

"Ranma is a prize," Nabiki smiled, then added with some

reluctance, "But he's not just my iinazuke...he's also Ukyo's as

well."

"Indeed?" Beatrice remarked, turning to favor the boy and girl

with a questioning expression, "I take it, then, that Saotome

Genma is at fault for this as well?"

"You could say that," Nabiki nodded.

"Uh, yeah," Ranma said in some embarrassment, "Dad engaged

me to Ucchan without telling me about it, but we've kind of

worked out a deal that makes everybody happy...sort of."

"How unusual," Beatrice turned back to Ukyo, then looked at

Nabiki, "And there is so little resentment between you. But aren't

you at all concerned that your boyfriend couldn't wait until one of

you made it to the altar?"

"Huh?" both Nabiki, Ranma and Ukyo said together this time

while Perfume merely blinked.

"Please," Beatrice said with an indulgent smile, "I'm a fairly good

observer, and I can tell your lady friend here is in the early phase

of pregnancy...somewhere between her first and second trimester

if I judge right."

"How could you possibly know that?" asked Ranma.

"Besides a keen sense of smell and an ability to read small

signs?" Beatrice smirked, "Let's just say I have my ways and

leave it at that."

"Good deductions," Perfume nodded, not bothering to add that

she was impressed at finding someone else who could smell the

chemical changes taking place in her beloved Ucchan.

"So," Nabiki turned back to Ranma, "This thing you

discovered...can you describe it?"

Ranma thought hard about it, "I can't really say from what I saw

of it, but Ukyo mentioned something about Typhon..."

"Typhon?" Beatrice reacted, looking at Ukyo.

"Weirdest thing," Ukyo replied to the implied question, "I tried to

touch the thing and I felt something like electricity surrounding

it, then these weird letters flared to life for a few seconds and I

got the word Typhon, even though they weren't in Japanese

kanji."

"Indeed?" Beatrice mused, "That is unusual. Typhon is a Greek

word. Have you studied foreign languages?"

"No," Ukyo replied, "I don't know what kind of lettering it was.

It wasn't English, Chinese or anything else I'd recognize. Looked

more like some kind of geometrical symbols."

Nabiki turned from her friend to see the look in Beatrice's eyes,

"This makes sense to you?"

"Not really," Beatrice said, "I'm just remembering the legends

concerning the ancient Greek Gods. You are familiar with them

yourself?"

"Of course," Nabiki replied, "Typhon was one of the Titans if I

remember right..."

"Not just any titan," Beatrice corrected, "The son of Ghea herself,

ushered forth by the Earth Mother at the end of the age of the

Titans when Zeus first took power among the Gods of Olympus.

In the beginning there was Chaos, and Chaos gave birth to

Uranus, first of all Titans, and Uranus took Ghea for his wife and

they gave birth to Chronos, who would in turn father Zeus and

his five siblings..."

"What has this got to do with the thing Ukyo found?" Ranma

asked.

"Bear with me," Beatrice urged, "Uranus, according to the

legends, was a tyrannical being who regarded his own children

as Monsters, so he locked them up in the underworld caverns

known as Tartarus, which angered Ghea, their mother. She went

to her children and asked if one of them would lead a rebellion

against Uranus, and Chronos volunteered, plotting with his

mother to pay retribution to his father. He hid in their

bedchambers until his father appeared to Ghea with the intent of

taking her once again. Chronos them stepped forward with a

scythe in hand and cut off his father's genitals..."

"Ugh!" Ukyo winced, "He did that to his own father?"

"It was symbology," Beatrice explained, "Chronos is the Titan of

time, represented by the planet Saturn, which in ancient

mysticism stands between Us and Eternity, which is why the

planet is represented by the Scythe in Alchemical symbolism.

Anyway, to continue with the story, Chronos freed his fellow

prisoners from Tartarus and imprisoned Uranus in their stead

then became the King of the Titans, ruling from Mount Aetna

with his sister-wife, Rhea, at his side..."

"He married his sister?" Ranma said with a squeamish

expression.

"They did things somewhat differently back then," Beatrice

amended, then resumed, "Chronos ushered in a golden age, but

he was always fearful that one day a child of his own would rebel

against him as he had against his father, so when his firstborn

son was presented to him by Rhea he took the child and

swallowed it whole..."

"He ate his own son?" now it was Perfume's turn to sound

uneasy.

"And the nextborn child as well," Beatrice replied, "And so on

until the sixth child was born, by which time Rhea had had

enough and substituted a stone for the baby. She took the infant

Zeus to a cave and left him to be tended by a goatherd maid, who

fed him milk from her own breast and kept him safe from the

prying eyes of his father. Zeus grew to manhood and was

approached by his mother with a plot to free his brothers and

sisters. They fed Chronos a brew that made him vomit up the

other five children, who all sprang to full maturity as the Gods

and Goddesses who would dominate the Silver Age that

followed. Zeus then gathered his sibling and summoned up those

monsters Chronos had not freed from Tartarus and led them in a

war against the Titans, using thunderbolts fashioned for him by

three Cyclopes to subdue the elder gods and bring in victory for

his people.

"Zeus then imprisoned the Titans that had opposed his forces

while rewarding those Titans who had joined in him the

rebellion. This angered Ghea, who was none too happy at seeing

her children once more banished into the darkness of a realm that

Zeus would give to his oldest brother, Hades, as his dominion.

Ghea then plotted to punish Zeus and all the new gods by

bringing forth the ultimate Titan, one who would destroy the

Gods and all that they had achieved, the monster known as

Typhon, who was more terrible than any other before him."

"I copy all of that," Nabiki said, "If I recall the rest of the legend

right Zeus managed to subdue this titan in the end with the help

of his allies."

"Indeed," Beatrice remarked, "But those same legends hold that

Typhon will rise again to threaten the new order. If the monster

were ever to be reborn it would mean great peril to both the gods

and mortals, or so say the legends."

"So what does that have to do with the thing we found?" Ranma

asked.

"I'm not at all certain," Beatrice replied, "I only know that Typhon

represents the forces of nature striking out at patriarchal man for

his hubris. Zeus subdued the world in order that humanity might

prosper, locking up the creatures that threatened early

civilization, a task later taken up by his son, Hercules..."

"Hercules?" Perfume frowned, "That is a name known to the

Amazons. He was a base betrayer who kidnapped one of our

most sacred possessions..."

"The girdle of Ghea," Beatrice replied, "Said to grant its wearer

invincibility in battle."

"This is all quite fascinating," Nabiki stood up, "But maybe you

should take us to see this object you found, Ucchan. It could be

of archeological interest if it is of foreign origin."

"Right," Ukyo said, "I think we've got a little time until our next

class..."

"Airen," Perfume frowned, "Before we go...who is Kishijoten?'

Both Beatrice and Nabiki turned to look at her with surprised

expressions and said in chorus, "Kishijoten?"

"She's one of the Gods of Japan," Ranma answered, "The

Goddess of luck who grants favors to people she likes."

"Per-chan met a lady she says claimed to be Kishijoten," Ukyo

explained to the questioning looks of the others, "Only her

description sounds a lot like a lady I once met when I was very

young, especially the part about her having purple eyes, not that

I'm saying she was Kishijoten, of course..."

"I wouldn't rule out the possibility," Beatrice remarked, "Stranger

things have happened."

Nabiki turned to her new friend and favored her with a studied

expression, "So now you're saying you believe in the Gods as

well as Aliens?"

"I am saying that there are more things in heaven and earth than

are dreamt of in your philosophy, my dear Tendo-san," Beatrice

replied with a soft smile, "Aiko and I have seen things you could

scarcely imagine, far stranger sights than beings whom we may

as well call Gods for lack of a better understanding."

"Aiko?" Ranma looked at her, "You mean that redhead who

started class today in our homeroom?"

"You have met Aiko?" Beatrice asked with an odd expression,

hesitating before continuing, "Did...did she mention me to you at

all?"

"I'm afraid not," Ukyo replied, "Of course she spent more time

with Akane than either of us. Is she a friend of yours?"

Beatrice's expression became slightly pained, "You could say

we...know each other. It's rather a long and complicated story

and I...I feel rather tired at the moment. Would you please

excuse me, I will be back in a moment."

Beatrice turned and started walking away towards the main

building. Nabiki watched her go, as did the others, then heard

Ranma ask, "Who is she, Nabchan? I get the strangest feeling

around her, like I should know her or something..."

"Oh?" Nabiki favored him with a lifted eyebrow, "Does the name

Daitokuji ring any bells?"

"Daitokuji," Ranma repeated the word, then shook his head,

"Afraid not. Should it?"

"That depends on how you look at it," Nabiki said with a droll

expression, "After all she is your iinazuke."

"She-WHAT?" Ranma reacted, then shut his eyes as he

groaned, "Otosan..."

Ukyo's growl had a harsher sound as she said, "Don't tell us the

old Panda went and got Ranchan betrothed again to yet another

girl? I thought Kaori was supposed to be the end of it!"

"Apparently Ojisama has not yet sufficiently made restitution for

his past sins," Nabiki said with a look that promised nothing

healthy for Saotome Genma, then she looked at her iinazuke and

said, "Don't worry, Ranchan, she says she doesn't have any

interest in you or the engagement and I believe her. We're going

to try and work it out and..."

"GROWL!"

"Did you say something, Per-chan?" Ukyo turned to glance at her

Amazon wife and froze.

"It wasn't me," Perfume replied when she also turned and looked

over her shoulder, suffering a similar reaction.

"Tell me that isn't what I think it is?" asked Ranma nervously.

"You mean you see it too?" Nabiki asked in equal nervousness, "I

hope it only means that someone is doing a remake of the lost

world or I am leaving..."

"GROWL!" a creature standing nine feet tall on two legs roared

again as it continued to advance towards them on three-toed feet,

looking very much like a denizen of a lost world. Students of

Furinkan-no strangers to weird or unusual sights, were

scattering in terror at the advance of the creature.

"I think that very wise," Perfume said to the others.

"You mean run?" Ranma asked.

"Good idea," Ukyo agreed, and then all four of them picked up

their heels and started running flat out towards the main school

building...

Continued.

Comments/Criticism/Godzilla Box Office Receipts:

shadowmane

You think things are heating up now? Just wait until they really

get started next chapter! Be there!

Nabiki 1/2,

A Very Scary Thought

(An Altered Destiny)

by

Jim Robert Bader

Chapter 28, Part 2.

(Inspired by the Works of Rumiko Takahashi & Others)

She almost did not make it to the bathroom before the tears

started to flow like a river. She staggered up to the sink area and

began running water to cover up the sobs that escaped her. Only

when she was convinced that she was alone did she allow her

grief to finally well up to the surface, and then there was no

stopping the wellspring. The pain was so great that she was

almost blind to her surroundings.

Damn, swore Beatrice to herself, you would think after all this

time I would finally be able to put it all behind me! When will

this nightmare end? Were my sins so great that the Gods must

punish me this way, forever tricking me to lower my guard, then

springing the memories upon me when my defenses are at their

lowest?

She pounded a delicate hand on the counter top and let the sobs

escape her, fighting back the image that filled her mind with a

face and form that had haunted her every single day since her

return from her mission of failure. How could the fates toy with

her with such a cruel jest? It was almost more than she could

endure...

And then the ragged voice intruded on her privacy, very angrily

demanding, "Are you following me around? What do I have to

do to escape you?"

"Aiko?" Beatrice straightened, staring at her own face in the

mirror, then slowly turning rounded eyes to one side to see the

angry redhead shaking with emotion, having emerged from a

bathroom stall with her own eyes red from heavy crying.

"What?" she heard the other girl ask defensively, "You were

expecting somebody else? C'mon, admit it, you're spying on me!

That's the only way you could keep winding up in the same

places!"

Rather than deny this charge Beatrice dabbed her eyes with wet

fingers then turned herself fully around to confront the fury she

saw written plain in the other girl's expression. She fought the

urge to back away and instead sought to control her voice,

steadying her nerves as she said, "And what if I am? Are you

going to swear out a restraining order against me?"

"If that's what it takes to make you leave me alone," Aiko took

three long strides and halted again, "Well? Go on, say something

clever and nasty! You always do when we're together like this..."

"I...can't think of anything like that...at the moment," Beatrice

amended.

"Oh no?" Aiko took two more steps closer, literally shaking with

fury, "Don't have an audience this time to lull into a false sense of

security? Or are you still on this 'Nice Girl' act you're adopting?

Come on, say something!"

"It's...very good to see you again, Alison," Beatrice said with faint

bravado.

"Don't call me that!" Aiko roared as she lurched forward with a

speed and power that only Beatrice knew to be as devastating as

it was. She closed her eyes and prepared for the worst when she

felt the shock wave just to the left behind her. She opened her

eyes again and saw Aiko's arm alongside her head and knew

without looking that the girl's fist had just made a sizeable hole

in the wall right behind her.

With more calmness than she would have believed under the

situation Beatrice said, "I'm very sorry you feel that way, Alison,

but there's no sense in taking it out on the poor, defenseless tiles

and plaster, or on me for that matter."

Aiko freed her hand with great ease and stood back a half-step,

now looking more puzzled than angry, "What's with you? Why

won't you fight? You never passed up the chance to fight with

me before."

"Things have changed for us," Beatrice said sadly, "I thought you

were intelligent enough to realize that..."

"Oh, so now I'm stupid, huh?"

"I didn't say that," Beatrice hastened to reassure her, "But you

must realize that it can never be the same between us now as it

was before we went out on that mission to find and rescue Ceiko.

You have to know that I no longer feel the same way about you."

Aiko took a half step back, "W-what do you mean?"

"I mean that I can never hate you that way anymore," Beatrice

informed her, "After what you went through to save my life...after

everything we did to stay alive...can you really find it in your

heart to think of me as the same cold, insensitive bitch who

threatened you at the start of every class for almost a full

semester? Do I really look to you like the same person?"

"No...you..." Aiko swallowed, then looked down, "I-I don't know

you any more...not that I ever could figure you out..."

"Aiko," Beatrice replied, then amended herself, "Alison...I know

it must be strange for you to hear me say this, but can't we at

least try and bury the hatchet? I don't expect you to forgive

everything I tried to do to you in the past, but please...please try

and understand that I'm not that way anymore. I've changed, and

I'd like to think it was for the better."

"Beiko..." Aiko seemed at a loss for words before she turned

away, "You're asking me to forgive some of it, aren't you? Like I

could forgive you turning my every waking day into such a

nightmare..."

"The same way I forgive you for seeming to come between me

and the object of my affections," Beatrice replied, "Please...I don't

want us to be enemies any more, not in this new life, when we

have a chance to build our lives together..."

"Together?" Aiko said archly.

"Well," Beatrice sighed, "Given everything we went through on

that mission, isn't it at least possible that we might emerge from

this as friends rather than as friendly enemies? We did make a

pretty good team, and we even once managed to save all of

creation..."

"That..." Aiko looked away, "That was a long time ago, and

about a zillion light years from Earth..."

"It was only last month," Beatrice replied, "And since we

managed to find our way home I've been doing a lot of thinking,

and I've come to realize what a terrible mistake it was to ever

make you out to be my enemy. It was all my fault and I admit

that, but I was insane with jealousy at the time and blaming you

for all manner of things that really weren't your doing..."

"About time you said that," Aiko continued to avoid meeting

Beatrice's stare until she managed to regain the edge of her

previous anger, and then she flashed brown eyes at Beiko and

said, "That still doesn't change the fact that you let Ceiko walk

away after we freed her from that evil old Hag. How could you

make that choice for both of us? I thought you at least cared

about her..."

"I do care," Beatrice all but whispered, "More than even you

know, and you love her almost as much as I do, but in your heart

you know it was never our decision. Celeste went home to her

people to fulfill the duties she had inherited as the Lepton

Princess of Alpha Cigni. Forcing her to come back with us

wasn't the answer, and I'm sure you knew that as well as I did or

why stand there watching her depart? I think we both knew then

that it was the right decision, however much it cost us."

Aiko continued to stare at her, then flinched from the earnest

intensity of Beatrice's gaze. Her expression was haunted as she

stared off into the distance, then she took one ragged breath and

said, "I don't know about anything anymore, Beiko. You expect

me to believe you've changed...and you are acting really weird,

I'll give you that..."

"Can you blame me?" Beatrice asked, "I died on that mission,

Aiko. A thing like that changes you in ways you can't

comprehend. Maruten may have revived me but you don't forget

what it feels like having your heart literally blasted out of your

chest, not to mention the several minutes I hovered in limbo

before the two of you worked out a deal to make him regenerate

the damage."

Aiko's expression was more than slightly pained as she favored

Beatrice with a wary expression, "I really hate it when you bring

that up. It weirds me out having to remember seeing you laying

in the sand all dead and..." she took another deep breath to steady

her nerves, then the hardness was back in her tone once again,

"You always have to manipulate my feelings, don't you? You get

a real sick pleasure out of making me squirm, like that time

you...we..."

Her voice choked up and she could not continue.

"Oh," Beatrice said mildly, "So now you are blaming me for that

as well is it? Well it may interest you to know that there were

two of us trapped all alone in that damaged shuttle for two weeks

until we were rescued, Aiko. What did you expect was going to

happen while I spend nearly every waking hour trying to find

ways to keep the both of us alive, and you were steadily driving

me crazy trying to find ways of relieving your boredom? Neither

one of us is to blame giving in like that to the call of nature. Did

you think you were the only one who was afraid of dying out

there, all alone and unfulfilled without anyone to know or even

care what happened back here on Earth? You at least have

parents who would miss you!"

"Beiko," Aiko was surprised by the sudden intensity in the other

girl's voice. Beiko Daitokuji was always a creature of wild,

volatile temper and unpredictable mood swings. This calmer,

more rational and reasonable Beiko was like a complete stranger

next to her and this was the first time she could really see traces

of the old Beiko in the silver haired girl's mannerisms and

expression.

Beatrice fought to control her temper, silently cursing the loss of

discipline that she had worked so hard at maintaining, "I'm sorry,

Alison...I shouldn't have shouted at you...that was...reflex. I'm

just trying to say that you don't have to be afraid of me or what I

might do anymore. If the very sight of me offends you so much

then I'll do what I can to stay out of your way, but I was kind of

hoping that maybe we could start over with a clean slate and let

the past go. Obviously I was mistaken."

Beatrice started to turn away when Aiko's hand shot out to block

her path. She turned a questioning look at the redhead and saw

confusion in her expression as if not quite realizing herself the

true cause for her own behavior.

Aiko lowered her arm and said, "How do I know that this is the

real you talking, Beiko? What if the old you turns up tomorrow

in that combat suit of yours seeking to challenge me before class

like you used to?"

"And what would be the point?" Beatrice studied her companion

for a moment more before resuming, "You ask me what I want

from you? Besides your forgiveness, I want to know if I have a

chance at repairing the breach that's grown between us. We're

two very different people, Alison, but we do compliment each

other in ways that surprise even me. I...think we make a good

team...maybe even a good partnership, your combat skills and

strength, my intelligence..."

"Like opposite attract, huh?" Aiko said with an entirely neutral

tone.

"And why not?" Beatrice turned towards her fully, "There are

fewer surprises that way, and less to disappoint. We already

have a pretty good notion of each other's bad habits from sharing

the same space on that mission. It's pretty much as I explained it

to you when I proposed that we go into space to find Ceiko...the

two of us can accomplish a lot more working side by side than

we can separately, and if anything the mission proved this. It

may be the one good thing that came out of the whole spacefaring

adventure."

"And how are we supposed to trust one another?" Aiko asked, "If

memory serves right you were trying pretty hard to kill me a

while back."

"I had lots of opportunities to do the deed in the last few months,"

Beatrice replied, "The thought did occur to me on more than one

occasion, and every time I said, 'not yet, I still need her.' As time

went on I found it less and less hard to persuade myself that

keeping you around was a good idea, and not just because you

make a formidable ally."

"Beiko..." Aiko said with a look of wonder.

"What are you afraid of?" Beatrice asked, sensing the hesitation

in the other girl, "Am I that terrible to be around? Do I frighten

you so much because I used to waste so much time and energy

plotting your untimely destruction?"

"I'm not afraid of you!" Aiko protested.

"Then why don't you trust me now?" Beatrice took a step closer to

the other girl, and saw Aiko react like a startled deer, which

caused her to hesitate, "I'm not wearing my Akagiyama suit, I'm

just an ordinary girl with average physical abilities and above-

average training. You could break me in half and never even feel

it..."

"Beiko," Aiko stepped away from her as if to put more distance

between them.

"I'm not a threat to you any more, Aiko," Beatrice replied, taking

a full step to close the distance, "You don't have to run from me.

Tell me to leave and I'll give you all the space you need and try to

steer clear of you in the future."

"That's kind of hard to do," Aiko said as she backed away

another half-step, "This ain't that big a school, and we'll probably

bump into each other a lot between classes..."

"You mean you might run into me by accident?" Beatrice smiled,

"Would that be so awful? I'd only bounce."

"Ah..." now Aiko backed away even more, then said, "Oh sure,

and then you'll probably go chase after some cute guy who comes

onto you, like that Gail creep..."

"Or like Kei?" Beatrice noted with a sigh, "Before him I didn't

even know I could be attracted to the opposite sex. That's another

thing I want to apologize about, the way I went crazy trying to

take him from you, and all the time he was really interested in

Ceiko..."

"Who hated his guts," Aiko finished with a lame smile, "Only it

was Miss Ayumi we both wound up hurting..."

"So now where does that leave us?" Beatrice replied, continuing

forward to keep the distance even between herself and the

redhead, "Do you remember what happened a month ago when

you were fighting against Gail and I was holding that blaster?"

"Yeah," Aiko replied, "You shot him..."

"It was either him or you," Beatrice said, "Not him or the

Universe, or even him or Ceiko...it was purely an act of gut level

reflex, one I regretted at the time, but if I had to do it over again I

would still choose to save your life. You mean a lot more to me

than you realize, Alison..."

"Beiko..."

"Beatrice."

"Ah..." Aiko winced as she felt the wall come up against her back

and it was only then that she realized that she had no where else

to retreat, not with Beatrice standing so close in her way between

the wall and the exit. It was just as the other girl said, she had

nothing to fear from Beatrice, could have forced her to move

aside without even the slightest effort, but somehow she could

not make a move to refuse the other girl's further advances.

There was no telling how far things might have gone at that point

when, all of a sudden, the building shook all around them.

"What the...?" Aiko gasped, fighting to remain upright.

"That wasn't an Earthquake," Beatrice said as she glanced to one

side, hearing a bellowed roar down the corridors before the floor

shook once again, causing both girls to immediately lose their

balance.

"What the hell?" Aiko gasped as she landed on her back then saw

Beatrice falling towards her and instinctively reached out with

her hands to stop her. Beatrice winced, then looked down at her,

then down at those hands and made a serious note about the

ironic place those hands had chosen to catch her.

"Ah..." Aiko murmured nervously, "This...isn't what it looks

like..."

Another roar, and this time they could clearly hear what sounded

like heavy footsteps barreling down the corridor. With obvious

reluctance Beatrice said, "Hold that thought until later. I think

we are facing a much more immediate crisis."

"What the hell was that?" Aiko asked with relief as Beatrice got

up off of her then stood erectly.

"At a guess something very large and bipedal," Beatrice replied

with the typical nonchalance she used when being analytical,

"Also, if I do not miss my guess, very, very hungry."

"I guess we'd better go see what it is-ah..." Aiko caught herself

as she got back to her feet and amended, "I mean...we as in you

and me separately, not as in you and me together..."

"Fine," Beatrice sniffed, "Have it your way," but she hid a slight

smile of amusement, promising herself that the unresolved matter

between them was far from concluded and that-one way or

another-she would make Alison Kent Managi see matters her

way before the day was entirely done with...

"What is that thing?" Ukyo cried as she risked a glance over her

shoulder.

"Whatever it is it's gaining," Perfume answered, "Run faster!"

"We can't outrun it in the open," Ranma said, "It's way too fast!"

"Point taken, Ranchan," Nabiki replied, "Might I suggest we

duck into the building and hope it takes the hint?"

"You won't get any argument out of-OW!" Ukyo cried as she fell

down unexpectedly, catching her momentum like the trained

martial artist that she was before curling into a ball and reaching

for the leg that had unexpectedly encountered a pot-hole.

"Ucchan!" all three of her companions cried out as they halted

their momentum as one, then looked up to see the creature

advancing to within a good twenty paces.

Abruptly it slowed down as it neared Ukyo, making a very odd

noise as it wuffed the air, resembling a massive bloodhound

rudely shaped like a Tyrannosaurus.

Nabiki knelt down at her friend while Ranma and Perfume

hovered expectantly at her sides, and it did not take long to make

a diagnosis as Ukyo herself cried in pain, "My ankle...I think it's

broken!"

"Twisted," Nabiki corrected, feeling the swelling with the tips of

her fingers, "I don't think you'll be doing any running for a while

now."

Perfume cursed volubly in Chinese and interposed herself

between Ukyo and the reptilian beast, flexing her hands as her

axes magically appeared in each palm. She crossed them as she

assumed a wary posture then called over her shoulder, "Ranma,

take Ukyo and go. I'll try and hold it off!"

Ranma looked ready to protest, but Nabiki gathered Ukyo up in

her arms and said, "You'd better carry her, Ranchan...you're

stronger than me in this form, and we need to make some tracks

here."

"Perfume-!" Ukyo protested.

"Don't argue with me, Airen!" Perfume called tensely over one

shoulder, "Ranma's the best choice and you know it, just like I'm

the only one who can hold that thing off for more than a few

seconds!"

"Don't take any unnecessary risks with your life, Per-chan,"

Nabiki said, "Just do what you have to and clear out once we're

inside the building. You don't want to make your baby into an

orphan."

"She needs to be born first before she can do anything," Perfume

said tensely, "Just go...I'll try not to do anything Suicidal. It's you

Japanese who get Kamikaze-like, not us Amazons, remember?"

"Just take care," Nabiki said as Ranma took Ukyo off her hands,

then she sprinted for the building, calling over her shoulder a

heartfelt, "Hurry Ranchan!"

Ranma turned to go, knowing that above all else he had to protect

Ukyo from harm, and that she was in no condition to fight

without her trademark bakers peel anyway, but still the thought

of letting Perfume play the heroine here was starting to annoy

him. It was his place to protect women, not hide behind a brave

woman making a valiant last stand. A man should be the one to

risked his life, and that brought home what he was finding so

annoying about Perfume's behavior lately. She was behaving like

a guy, even though it had been three months since that incident

on board Lao's vessel.

In spite of her bravado Perfume knew that she was facing a threat

more dangerous than any opponent she had ever stood toe-to-toe

with. That three-meter tall lizard looked hungry, and it moved

awfully fast for its size, and it had some pretty wicked claws, not

to mention a set of teeth that would have made a shark blanch.

At this range it looked like a Sherman Tank with teeth and

against its hide, claws and feet her axes might do only minimal

damage.

She had been in Japan long enough to at once recognize the

resemblance between this creature and a certain other creature

that was a strong part of the cultural tradition, but somehow this

looked a lot more intimidating than any guy in a rubber suit

facing off with the ludicrous rubber monster of the week and if

the thing chose to rush her flat out there was a good chance it

would stomp her flatter than one of Ukyo's okonomiyaki.

To her surprise the thing did not attack her but instead seemed to

sniff the air like a bloodhound. Perfume belatedly called upon

her woodsman sense to try to recall if there were a variety of

reptile that had a good sense of smell and was in the process of

attempting to classify which branch of family tree of Sauroids it

might belong to when the creature turned away abruptly, circling

around her as though following a different calling that took it

towards the main building, only not in the direction she would

have expected.

Perfume was trying to sort this out while racking her brain for the

sort of kata that worked best with giant lizards when she

suddenly became aware of the fact that the thing was swishing its

tail...a very long and powerful tail with one end as thick as a

club, and it was all she could do to dodge the thing before it

could slam her into a world of pain unending. By the time she

straightened up she saw that the thing was attempting to scale up

the side of the building, poking its nose at an open second floor

window.

As perfume stared in wide-eyed disbelief the thing tore the

window apart to create a large enough hole to climb through.

Moving with great speed for its huge size the thing entered the

building in this manner while the voices of panicking students

could be heard, along with the scramble of disks being shoved

out of the way as the thing hauled its huge bulk into the gap it

had created.

"Ucchan!" Perfume suddenly cried as she realized that her Airen

was still in danger, as was almost every other student and

teacher. Ranma and Nabiki would have little warning before the

thing wound up ahead of where they would logically be heading,

which meant that she had to haul ass if she was to get there in

time.

As she sprinted for the front entrance she failed to take note of a

pair of figures strolling up along the exact same trail that had

been used by the creature. These two halted several meters away

from Furinkan then the hulking male said, "Just great...now we're

got civilians to worry about."

"Shouldn't you, like, be doing something about that, Muscles?"

Urd asked her companion.

"Hey, who are you talking to here?" Hercules said in mild

irritation, "I'm the original Monster slayer, remember? This is

what I do for a living, so I'll just hop in there and take the thing

out before anybody gets hurt and-ohshit!"

This last part was said as he took note of a large shadow forming

close to where he was standing, and the next minute Hercules

was dodging to one side as a red-bearded meteor plunged into the

ground hammer-first and created a huge pot hole.

"Hercules!" Thor bellowed as he reared up out of his own

handiwork, eyes flashing like twin thunderbolts as he raised his

hammer and prepared to commence swinging.

"Oh, hi, Thor," Hercules said as he easily dodged a swing that

would have reduced an M-1A Abrams battle tank into so much

scrap metal, "Look, this is kind of a bad time for this, so don't

you think we should postpone the rough stuff until after we're

finished dealing with the monster..."

"Monster?" Thor snorted, continuing to attack, "You don't think

I'm stupid enough to fall for that old trick? Now hold still and let

me belt you!"

"Boys!" Urd cupped her hands and tried to make herself heard

over the melee, but in the end she just had to sigh a heartfelt,

"Men..."

"I take it you two were not successful in finding the thing before

something terrible happened?" Sif asked as she appeared at Urd's

side.

"What do you think?" Urd asked as she indicated the building,

which was currently the source of many violent noises that

included the terrified screams of both young men and women,

with not a few of the older set punctuated for good measure.

"We don't have time for this," Sif growled, "I guess it's up to us to

try and find the monster."

"Isn't it always?" Urd replied as the two of them turned and

headed for the nearest building entrance, "If it wasn't for that one

thing men do better than us..."

"Tell me about it," Sif agreed with angry resignation...

"Kuso!" Nabiki hissed as she ground to a very sharp halt, then

waved at her two companions and immediately reversed

directions, "That way! The thing's cut us off in the hallway!"

The "Monster" had only briefly paused on its way through a very

panicked classroom, terrifying both a teacher and his students

who had endured an eventful year full of surprises with their

dignity intact. The creature sniffed the air until it seemed to pick

up on a particular scent, when it moved towards a desk formerly

occupied by one particular student in an earlier class.

It turned and followed the trail of that scent out the door, having

to duck its massive head low and use its powerful forearms to

brace itself as it lumbered out the door recently vacated by the

students, considerably widening it in the process.

It ignored the screaming mewing insects that scrambled to get

out of its path and headed down the corridor, careful to angle its

head so as not to bump it while following a trail that seemed to

be all over the place. The students it encountered quite sensibly

made as much room as they could to allow the creature safe

passage, all the while making those annoying sounds that

impacted upon its senses.

"Why's it chasing after us?" Ranma asked, "It's not going after

anybody else..."

"Good question, Ranchan," Nabiki said as they vaulted the stairs

as though they were flying, "What say we table that until we get

ourselves more breathing space."

"It's got to be me!" Ukyo declared.

"What?" Ranma blinked as he followed Nabiki's lead, "What are

you talking about?"

"I touched the object," Ukyo explained, "I must have set off some

kind of magical alarm, and that thing's its guardian demon."

"I don't think so, Ucchan," Nabiki said as they raced down the

first-floor main corridor, students looking at the trio as if to

wonder where the fire was that was causing such a panic, only to

shortly discover the answer as it rounded the corner just behind

them, "Would that object, by any chance, be shaped like an egg?"

"Uh," Ukyo blinked, "I-It could be...I didn't think about it until

now..."

"So that thing back there could be what just emerged from the

egg," Nabiki said as they reached the end of the corridor as she

burst the double-doors out of her way, almost knocking them off

their hinges, winding up in the school cafeteria, which was

almost totally deserted at the moment.

Actually it was normally deserted even during lunchtime. Most

students knew better than to eat there and brought their own

lunches from home. One had only to sniff the air to get a pretty

good idea of why even the school administration stayed clear of

the place, which was what prompted Ranma's next question.

"What are we doing here, Nab-chan, and why do you think that

thing hatched from an egg?"

"Second question first," Nabiki replied as she headed towards the

kitchen, "Note that the head is out of proportion to the body, and

its moving somewhat unsteadily or else it would have caught up

to us by now. As to the first question," she vaulted over the

cafeteria bar line, surprising the cook, who was not used to

company that did not come rushing in for an inspection, let alone

a girl and a guy carrying another girl, followed by a giant reptile,

"This is Friday, right? And they always serve fish on a Friday."

"Oh," Ranma said, then blinked, "Fish?"

His question was drowned out by the scream of the cook ducking

for cover as the creature plowed into the snack line, tearing it

apart in the process. Meanwhile Nabiki found what she was

looking for and promptly tore open the freezer, reaching in and

grabbing up a box of frozen fish cakes. She emerged from the

freezer and hefted it in both hands as the reptile came lumbering

towards them, knocking the heavy kitchen equipment out of the

way while Ranma backed away holding Ukyo protectively in his

arms.

To his horror he saw Nabiki chuck the box at the charging

dinosaur-like creature, planting it squarely in its open jaws as it

reflectively clamped down on the blocky cardboard. Ranma tried

to order her away, the first time he had even thought of telling

Nabiki what to do, only to stop in mid yell as he saw the creature

rear back and begin to chew the box in its jaws. To compound

his horrified amazement the creature began making far more

pleasant noises as it continued chewing on the box.

Nabiki set her hands on her hips and smiled in self-satisfaction

then murmured very softly over her shoulder, "Ucchan...you think

you can put some weight on that ankle of yours?"

"I think so...why?" Ukyo asked in dull amazement.

"Because I'm going to need your help to feed this thing," Nabiki

nodded, "Junior here looks like he has quite an appetite, and that

box won't satisfy him...it's barely a mouthful."

"How did you know...?" Ranma started to ask.

"I played a hunch," Nabiki noted, "Good thing this school is too

cheap to maintain a decent kitchen, that refrigerator barely keeps

anything cold enough to freeze. I knew the delivery was

yesterday so the fish cakes are fresh and almost warm enough to

have the flavor of the ocean. Help me with this next box, by the

way," she said as she re-entered the freezer, "Ucchan, you open

the boxes and pour their contents out for Junior here. I think he'll

be happier if he gets fed direct by his mommy."

"Mommy?" Ukyo blanched as she saw the creature finish off the

half-frozen box, then look at her with a plaintive expression,

"You've got to be kidding..."

"Set her down, Ranchan, and I'm not kidding, Ucchan," Nabiki

replied as she emerged with a fresh box, which she placed on the

cutting-board table, then nodded to Ukyo to get busy unpacking,

"Let's get this baby fed before it decides it wants something else

besides fish on its menu."

"How did you know it wanted fish?" Ranma asked as he set

Ukyo back down on her feet and followed Nabiki's example.

"I saw it in a movie," Nabiki replied as she fetched another box

while Ukyo went to work unpacking the second, hastily tossing

them onto the floor to the instant delight of the creature, which

dove into the pile like an overgrown puppy.

"Ucchan!" Perfume cried as she finally caught up with them,

virtually out of breath as she had been too frightened to

concentrate on her usual practice of sustaining her Chi-levels.

When she saw what was going on, however, she lowered her

axes and muttered something in Chines to the effect of "What the

heck?"

"Just in time to help," Nabiki called out, "Grab a box and help

Ucchan feed the baby."

"Baby?" Perfume blanched, "You mean...that...?"

"So it's a baby," Ranma said as he passed by Nabiki with another

box of fish-cakes in his arms, "What I want to know is...where is

its parents?"

"One problem at a time, Ranchan," Nabiki urged, "I'm more

worried about what happens when we run out of fishcakes.

There's only six more boxes in there, and Junior looks like he's

got an appetite like Kurumi's."

"Here you go, baby," Ukyo called out as she passed the next load

of fishcakes onto the floor, this time having taken a moment to

unwrap them from their cardboard, "Not so fast! Chew a bit

slower, you'll give yourself indigestion."

Both Perfume and Ranma gave Ukyo studied glances, unable to

help noticing how the tone of their mutual beloved had taken on a

distinctly maternal edge. The creature was too happy to care,

gobbling fishcakes as fast as they could be produced as though it

did not mind chewing them into an icy mush.

No one took any notice of the pair of tall, foreign-looking women

who appeared at the ruins of the doors and took the scene in with

a glance, then Urd said, "That's what all this fuss is about? It's

big but it seems harmless."

"Looks are deceiving," Sif replied, "Looks like these mortals have

it pacified for the moment. Pretty resourceful use of available

materials..."

"Yeah, but how long will they be able to keep it happy?" Urd

sniffed, "And what do you do with an eight hundred pound lizard

when it's finished eating? Burp it?"

"I think we'd better go get the boys," Sif nodded sagely, "This is

more up their alley, but don't look at me if somebody suggests

giving it a diaper."

"I'm with you there," Urd smiled, "What say we cool those two

hotheads off? I'm sure we can find some way to make them see

reason."

"If they know what's good for them," Sif agreed, and both

goddesses shared a rare look of conspiratorial agreement,

thinking of the options at their disposal for insuring "the boys"

quickly learned to mind their manners...

Continued.

Comments/Criticism/Fishcake Hotline: shadowmane

Big problems get bigger in the next chapter...be there!

Nabiki 1/2,

A Very Scary Thought

(An Altered Destiny)

by

Jim Robert Bader

Chapter 28, Part 3.

(Inspired by the Works of Rumiko Takahashi & Others)

"Captain, motion on the sonar!"

Captain Corban Dallas looked up from his place at the Conn

station to take notice of the lieutenant commander who had

hailed him, "What is it, Jonesy? Another pod of whales?'

"No sir," the sonar man replied, "And it's definitely not a sub...it's

an object moving very fast our way."

"What kind of sound is it making?" Captain Dallas asked as he

moved to stand over the sonarman.

"See for yourself, sir," Lieutenant Jones replied as he activated

the main speakers, removing his headphones in the process.

Captain Dallas and every other man on the bridge of the Seawolf

Class US Attack Submarine paused to listen to the curious noises

that sounded like a large aquatic creature. Dallas frowned as he

considered the tones, then asked, "You're sure that isn't whale

song we're hearing?"

"No sir," Jones replied, "No whale big enough to make a sound

like that can move at the speed this thing is moving. At the read

its headed I make it on a near intercept course to our position. It

will pass us by in ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five four, three,

two...now!"

As he spoke the noises increased in pitch and volume until they

were almost deafening, then the submarine itself shook violently

as though a massive pressure wave were rocking it from stem to

stern, followed by a different pitch in the noises made as the

object passing them by, caused by the Doppler shift effect of its

near-interception.

"Holy mother of god...what the hell was that?" Dallas swore as he

fought to regain his balance.

"I don't know but it's big, sir," Jones replied, "As big as us and

doing forty knots at least. It came within a hundred meters of a

direct collision, but I think that's due more the fact that we just

happened to be in the area when it came to check us out."

"What makes you say that?" Dallas wondered.

"Because I make it as heading on a direct linear course," Jones

replied, "I'm feeding the data over to tactical now, let's see what

they come up with."

Without turning around Dallas called out to his First Officer,

who was standing by the navigator over the tactical relief chart

where he could see them plotting a course by the numbers, "So

where is it heading gentlemen? I need some answers!"

"We're plotting it up now, sir," Commander Maguel Rodrigues

replied, then looked up sharply and said, "Japan, sir...it's on a

direct heading."

"What part of Japan?" Dallas asked with a sinking sensation that

came from already knowing the answer but wishing he could be

proven wrong for once.

"Tokyo," the Navigations officer replied, "It'll be there in less

than five hours at this rate of speed."

"Bring us up to Periscope depth and get me a Satellite feed to

Washington!" Dallas snapped, "Tell them it's Priority Channel,

Code Green, G-Alert!" Under his breath he softly added, "Six

months to retirement and this has to happen. They're not going to

like this at the Pentagon...it's been close to twenty years, Damn! I

should have known where I'd heard that sound before..."

"Sir?" Jones looked up, "You know what that thing is?"

"I hope to god I don't," Dallas answered, "Because if I'm right

there's going to be hell to pay when this thing hits the beaches..."

Meanwhile high overhead at over forty thousand feet altitude a

specially designed private Lear Jet was winging its way towards

Okinawa at close to the speed of sound while the single

passenger on board was reading a confidential memo.

The light flashed at his desk console, causing him to look up as

he adjusted a pair of bifocal glasses, then touched a button and

said, "Yes, Janice?"

"Sir," the lady pilot of his private jet replied, "There's a call for

you on your private line. I believe Mister Richardson himself is

trying to contact you."

"Put him through," the man said as he leaned back in a massive

patent-leather chair, steepling his fingers as he reverted to a

gruff-voiced reply, "Magnus, you old Frog-kisser, what can do for

you this time?"

"Legion," replied a distinguished looking gentleman of

indeterminable age who appeared on the liquid crystal monitor

display of the desk, "I'm sorry to disturb you without prior

notification of my intent..."

"Why break from pattern?" the big man sitting in the chair

replied as he inclined his head, "Get to the point, Magnus. I'm a

busy man this century, and time is money in case you haven't

noticed."

"Indeed," the other man replied without sounding the least ruffled

by the big man's gruff manners, "In fact it is because you are in

the area that I thought you were the one to notify concerning a

little...crisis that seems to have come to my attention."

"What is it this time?" the big man snorted, "Another outbreak of

Aliens? You know that crowd living at that Shrine got the green

light from Ariel..."

"I'm afraid it's nothing so simple," Magnus paused as though for

dramatic effect, although the man in the Lear Jet knew for a fact

that his longtime friend simply spoke that way when giving the

bad news to any of his allies or free agents, "It's the Morpheus

Project..."

"What?" the big man sat up in his chair and gripped the desk

with massive hands that looked as though they could splinter the

wood without much effort, which was far from an exaggeration,

"You mean Monster Island? What have those clowns done this

time?"

"I'm afraid they've been compromised," Magnus explained, "One

of the subjects began acting strangely earlier in the day, then they

report that it just got up and walked out of the containment area,

doing several billion dollars worth of damage to the equipment in

passing."

"Was anyone hurt?" the big man asked reflexively before chiding

himself over the stupidity of the question, "Scratch that...how

many people and how badly?"

"Actually the reports indicate that there were few casualties on

this occasion," Magnus explained, "In a manner of speaking we

seem to have been lucky."

"Except that one of their Indians has just wandered off the

reservation," the big man snorted, "Which one...or should I ask?"

"Think of our worst-case scenario," Magnus replied, "That should

produce your answer."

"HIM?" the big man exclaimed, then swore to himself using

adjectives that were even older than himself and the man whose

image he was addressing, "What the hell is wrong with those

people down there anyway? How in the name of Prometheus did

they drop the ball like that? We had redundant security

measures! Layer upon layer of countermeasures, a defense

perimeter that's held up for decades..."

"All of which appears to have been wasted in his case," Magnus

replied, "He seems to have walked right through laser and

electrical defenses as though he did not even feel them.

Observers reported that he seemed to be acting in a rather single-

minded way as though driven by inner forces the likes of which

we cannot hope to comprehend."

"Yeah, well...what else is new?" the big man said in disgust, "I

never much liked the creep anyway...he cost a bundle just to feed,

and talk about your nightmares giving him shots and nursing him

through head colds..."

"Reports have come in marking him as on a direct path towards

Tokyo or one of the outlying areas," Magnus replied, "We think

he may be visiting his old nesting grounds, as he did the last

three times..."

The big man covered his eyes, "That's all we need! The press

will have a field day over this..."

"That is something else I wanted to warn you about," Magnus

said with clear reluctance, "MIB appears to have expressed its

own interest in the matter."

"What?" the big man almost lurched up from his seat, even

though doing so would have brought his head in contact with the

roof of the cabin, "What's their interest? They don't think this

does have something to do with Aliens? Terrestrial Monsters

aren't exactly in their jurisdiction."

"They believe that their interests may be compromised if this

becomes a full scale crisis situation," Magnus replied, "Can I

count on you to oversee operations at your end?"

"Like I've got a choice?" the big man snorted, "MIB, that's just

great! Those Neutralizers of theirs always give me headaches.

I'll take the case, Magnus, just make sure I've got sole exclusive

jurisdiction over this crisis."

"I'm certain I can rely upon your judgement," Magnus replied, "I

am allocating all resources and manpower you might request..."

"Have them on standby, ready to move when I give the go-

ahead," the big man said, "I'm going in for a low-level recon by

myself, so make sure everybody gets clear the hell out of my way.

I'll let your people know when I need the back up."

"I am counting on your discretion," Magnus replied, then broke

the connection.

"I'm gonna have to remember to buy you something really nasty

for your five hundredth birthday, chum," the big man snorted,

then spoke into his intercom again, "Janice, change of flight plan.

Take us into the nearest free airport space you can find in the

Tokyo area and get us clearance for an unscheduled landing.

We've got a little unfinished business down there that needs

taking care of."

"Shall I have a limousine ready for you when we arrive, Mister

Steinberg?"

"No thanks," the man smiled, "This case needs a special touch.

Once we land I want you and Sayuri to unpack the Monster..."

"Are you sure you don't want to go to the Nurse's office, Ryo-

chan?" Akane asked with concern, "If you're not feeling very

good..."

"I'll be all right," Ryoga lied, trying to hold the contents of his

stomach in place in spite of the very loud protest currently being

made by his intestines, "Honestly, I just ate a little too fast..."

"You don't have to lie for me, Ryoga-kun," Akane sighed, "I

guess I'm not a very good cook..."

"Don't say that!" Ryoga protested, taking the hands of the girl

sitting next to him with an ease that would normally make him

giddy, "You tried so hard to make me that lunch and I won't hear

anyone make fun of you or say that you're wasting your efforts! I

know it's just a matter of time before you're as good a cook as

your sister, Kasumi. Don't give up on yourself, please, I...I

couldn't stand it..."

"Ryo-chan," Akane looked up into his brown eyes, feeling herself

drown in their luminous depths as she wanted to cry and laugh at

one in the same time. Instead she glanced to one side and said a

very annoyed, "What the heck is that?"

"Huh?" it took Ryoga a few seconds to shift mental gears, and

then he heard the screams and yells coming from just outside the

gym as they turned to see people running past the door to the

gymnasium, which was not that unusual an occurrence at

Furinkan, but considering the time of day it was running a little

early.

"What do you suppose is happening now?" Akane asked as she

got up on impulse, "Oneechan is probably involved somehow.

She's usually either in the middle of these fights or off to the side

taking bets from the stragglers. C'mon, Ryo-chan, let's go find

out what's up."

"But..." Ryoga reached out for her, dismayed that yet another

intimate moment had escaped his grasp, then he sighed in futility

and said, "Wait up for me, I'm coming..."

"This is nuts!" cried Hercules as he and Thor went toe-to-toe in

the schoolyard, "We're too evenly matched, we're only doing

more damage to the real estate than we are to each other!"

"Then stand still so I can make like a Kingmaker!" Thor snarled,

rearing back to hurl his hammer once again, "I'm gonna crown

you!"

"I've had enough of this, nonsense," Hercules grumbled, "You're

pushing it, old buddy, now it's time to reap the payback."

One of the advantages in being a full God, Hercules had early

come to realize when at last he had joined the Pantheon on

Mount Olympus, was that the range of your senses was greatly

magnified beyond that of any mortal being, so it was mere

childsplay for him to sense the water pipes buried several feel

under the ground virtually at his feet. He thrust one hand into the

soil as though it offered no more resistance than loose talcum

powder and snatched up one of these pipes, pulling it up to

ground level so that the spray that would normally feed the

automatic sprinkler system was instead directed in the face of the

enraged God of Thunder.

The results were near instantaneous, and a moment later Hercules

tied off the pipe and smiled with hands on his hips as he looked

down to his waist level, "Now are you satisfied?"

"Baaaah!" retorted the angry creature before him.

"Hercules!" a familiar voice called out, "There you-hey! Where'd

Thor get off to?"

"Oh my," another voice said as the Goddess Sif stopped in her

tracks to stare at the Billy goat that was just then reacting to the

sight of her as might a deer caught in the headlights,

"Algonquin? Is that you, my poor baby?"

"Algonquin?" Urd repeated slowly as she watched the blond

Asgardian approach the tremulous horned and four-footed

creature before turning a questioning look in Hercules's direction.

The Olympian made a motion to stifle her next question, turning

to look as Sif lifted the goat into her arms and hugged it to her

chest as she cooed over the wide-eyed beast, who looked stunned

to be nestled within her generous cleavage as she made soft

noises of an intimate and heartfelt nature.

"You mean...?" Urd started to say.

"Yeah," Hercules replied, "That's him all right, the old Goat."

"And she doesn't suspect?"

"Evidently," Hercules replied, "Of course Thor made me swear

not to tell her. She thinks he's just a supernatural creature like

the goats that pull his chariot. I think the idiot just is too macho

and embarrassed to own up that he has a little problem with

getting wet and turning into the pet she keeps near her bed when

she's sleeping."

"But isn't she his wife?" Urd asked in mounting confusion.

"You obviously don't know much about their relationship, or who

really wears the pants in that family," Hercules snorted, "The

macho jerk. Well, enough of this mucking around, I'm on a tight

schedule, so back to Monster chasing..."

"Oh, that's what we came to tell you," Urd replied, "Some mortals

lured it into one area of the building and are keeping it at bay.

We thought we'd find you both so you can go corral it."

"Some mortals, huh?" Hercules smiled, "Well, people can be

pretty resourceful when you give them half a chance. Good thing

for them it's only just been born or it'd be a lot harder to deal

with. I just hope nobody is fool enough to try feeding the

sucker."

"Ah..." Urd blinked, "Why? Is that bad?"

"You haven't been dealing with Monsters as long as I have,

babe," Hercules sniffed, "The last thing you want to do with a

newly hatched creature like that is give it a good meal. I sure

hope it isn't the people-munching kind, though...those kind of get

nasty."

"Ah, yeah," Urd blanched, "I kind of see your point. Why don't I

just show you where it is and we'll leave the happy couple here

for the present."

"Oh dear," Sif seemed to suddenly take notice of the hammer

laying almost at her feet as she picked it up with one hand,

"What's this doing lying around here? It's not like Thor to drop it

and forget all about it. I wonder what happened to him,

Algonquin?"

"Baaah!" the goat in question answered.

"Ah," Urd hesitated for a third time, "Is that, like, a permanent

condition? Is he going to be cursed like that for all eternity?"

"Naw," Hercules said dismissively, "Only lasts a century, that's

practically nothing. C'mon, let's go find this monster before it

really gets hungry..."

"Oh my," said Beatrice as they made their way down the corridor

to the cafeteria, "I guess whatever did this wound up in here."

"Gee, you think?" Aiko snorted, "Brain the size of a planet and

you come up with this kind of brilliant deduction?"

"There's no need to be sarcastic, Alison," Beatrice replied, "I just

offering an observation."

"Aiko," Aiko said, "Why do you keep calling me Alison? You

know I stopped using that name when we were still kids..."

"If you didn't want to be reminded of it you should never have

told it to me when we were-oh my!"

Aiko blinked as she saw what had captured her companion's full

attention. She had to blink her eyes twice to be sure she was not

imagining things, then she said, "What the heck is that?"

"At a guess, I would say it was distantly related to the Iguanidae

family," Beatrice replied, "Although an upright variety of the..."

"Upright?" Aiko said dubiously, "Not at the moment!"

"Shhh!" called Ukyo, who was presently stroking the upper ridge

scales atop the head of the massive creature, which presently was

sprawled out beating its tail contentedly on the floor like a giant

puppy, making a soft wuffing sound of contentment.

Beatrice approached Nabiki, who was standing off to the side

amid a pile of chewed up and discarded boxes with the words

"Fishcake Patties" on their sides. She looked around at the signs

of general havoc then murmured, "I take it we missed most of the

action?"

"Not by much," Nabiki replied, indicating the giant reptile,

"Junior here just gorged his fill and collapsed the minute we ran

out of food to feed him..."

"Fishcakes?" Aiko asked with an uplifted eyebrow, "You fed him

frozen fish patties?"

"It's all we had," Nabiki shrugged, "But it seems to have made

him happy."

"Happy," said Ranma with a bland expression, "Um...excuse me

for asking, but doesn't he look a bit bigger than he was before?"

"You're right," Perfume agreed at his side, "He's now six meters

from nose to tail...a good two meters longer than when he was

chasing you before."

"You mean he's growing?" Ukyo asked with a mildly surprised

look of her own before she shifted her hands to massage a

different part of the creatures scaly head, "You poor baby...you

ate so much, and now it's affection your metabolism."

Aiko gave the Okonomiyaki chef a dubious look then asked,

"What's with her?"

"It seems Junior here has developed a certain attachment for

Ucchan," Nabiki smiled, "I always thought her personality was

magnetic but this is a new wrinkle."

"Ah," Beatrice said in comprehension, "You mean imprinting?

This creature has identified your friend, Kuonji-san, as its

mother?"

"Well, sort of a mother," Ukyo called out quietly as if afraid to

disturb her "baby." "He may seem like a frightening monster at

first glance, but he's really a big softy once you treat him the right

way. He just wanted something to eat after having just been

born, and can you blame him? He's got a stomach the size of a

cow."

"That some stomach," Perfume said dubiously, privately thinking

to herself that the creature could make a meal of her Ukyo and

not even dent the appetite that had polished off a dozen boxes of

fish cakes.

"What exactly is this thing, and what is it doing here?" Aiko

wondered.

"That is the obvious question," Beatrice replied as she took a few

steps forward, "I would hazard to guess that this is what emerged

from the object you both found in a cavern, the thing that bore the

glowing signet letters that you read as 'Typhon?'"

"You mean this thing is the monster from those old legends you

were telling us about?" Ranma asked.

"Ranchan," Ukyo gently chided, "He isn't a monster! Just look at

him, he's as gentle as a baby."

"Some baby," Perfume noted in the same tone as before, "How

big will he get when he's full grown?"

"Another very interesting question," Beatrice remarked as she

slowly walked around the slumbering creature, "Hmm...from its

basic size and dimensions I could theorize quite a bit. I see gills,

which implies that this creature is an amphibian, and granted that

it must weigh close to fifteen hundred pounds it must have an

internal source of heat production, meaning that it is not a true

reptile in that sense. I would dearly love to make a more

thorough study of the creature, but biology is not really my forte,

and it would require a full specialist to make the proper diagnosis

of its condition. However, given what little I do know about such

animal physiology, I am prepared to make one specific

observation..."

"What's going on here?" Akane asked as she and Ryoga arrived,

as did one other.

"Look out, Ucchan!" Ryoga cried, thrusting himself in front of

Akane, "It's a monster! I'll protect you!"

"What goin' on here?" said Principal Kuno as he took in the mess

that surrounded the gathering of students about the creature,

"Why you kids not in class, and what is that?"

"Ah, sir?" Nabiki started to say, "This really isn't the time for

lengthy explanations, suffice to say that we have the situation

under control..."

"Sempai!" Ryonami appeared with a nervous Gosunkugi at her

back, only to come up short at the sight of Principal Kuno.

"No runnin' in the halls either," Kuno frowned, "Somebody better

start explaining' something pretty quick or you all goin' to

detention, and what is that thing anyway?"

"Oh, you mean our new school mascot?" Nabiki said with an

innocent expression.

"Mascot?" Ranma repeated with a queasy look.

"What the heck is that thing?" Akane demanded, "And why is

Ukyo treating it like a pet?"

"Beats me," Aiko said as she walked up to the thing to study it

from closer inspection, "You said something about Typhon?

Wasn't he one of the last of the Great Titans or something?"

"Not just any Titan, Aiko," Beatrice replied, "The titan sent by the

Earth Mother herself to punish man and gods for their many

offences against her and her children, but this is not quite the

original Typhon we are dealing with here, rather this is related to

that Typhon, possibly even a descendant, though I..."

Before she could finish her exposition the creature suddenly

stirred to life, turning its massive head towards Aiko, and then

snuffing the air as if in suspicion. All at once it gave out a

frightful cry and started to rear back, thrusting its head through

the roof as it rose to its full height of seventeen feet.

"Watch out!" Ranma cried, though his voice was drowned out in

the sudden shower of plaster, wood and metal caused when the

creature began tearing its way out of the cafeteria, heedless in its

flight of anything and everything in its path, though it did seem to

take the time to circle around Ukyo, who stood where she was

staring at it with dismay, right before Perfume tackled her out of

the way of a falling metal girder.

Everyone not frozen in place by the suddenness of these

occurrences either dove for cover or grabbed someone else near to

them and tried to escape the collapse of that portion of the

building. Meanwhile the creature continued on its way until it

burst out the side of the building and began to lumber off school

grounds, creating a big hole in the gates as it found its way to the

Furinkan financial district.

Hercules and Urd arrived just a few seconds too late to prevent

this disaster, though they were in time to hear Principal Kuno

remark, "School mascot, huh? What was so wrong with the old

one?"

"Sempai!" Ryonami tried to rush forward to find her beleaguered

hero but was grabbed by Gosunkugi, who said, "It's too

dangerous in there! You'll get hurt, Ryo-chan! Wait until

everything is settled!"

"Bloody hell," Hercules groaned in dismay, "This is all the fault

of that hammerheaded moron! Now I'm really gonna hear about

it back home!"

"Shouldn't we, like, do something?" Urd remarked with a

dubious expression.

"Keep your shirt on," Hercules replied as he took a step forward,

"I was just on my way..."

The rubble before them suddenly shifted, then an entire section of

debris rose up as if magically as a redheaded girl held half of the

fallen roof over her head, exposing everyone else who had

managed to take shelter beneath her.

"Aiko?" Beatrice looked up from where she stood huddled with

Nabiki and Ranma.

"Harmless, huh?" Aiko snorted, "Face it, Beiko, you'd never get

anywhere without me to watch after your back."

The redhead effortlessly tossed the debris to one side, then moved

over to where the steel beam was propped and bent down to lift

that over her head, exposing two other figures from under a pile

of plaster and wood, one of whom was stirring and seemed

relatively unhurt, but not the other.

"Per-chan?" Ukyo blinked as she sat up, then in greater panic,

"Per-chan!"

"Is she all right?" Ranma asked as she and Nabiki came over to

their side.

"I don't know," Ukyo frantically searched Perfume, who lay

huddled into a ball, "Per-chan, speak to me! Are you hurt?

Please tell me!"

"She doesn't seem too badly hurt," Nabiki began to say, then

stopped herself with a faint look of dismay, "Except for that..."

They all saw the wooden splinter that had been driven into one of

the Amazon's thighs, which had rendered the hypersensitive girl

into a state of such numbing pain that she had gone into a fetal

pose to try and grapple with the shock to her system. Akane and

Ryoga began to pick their way forward while Gosunkugi released

his grip on Ryonami and followed her to the side of Nabiki.

Hercules, on the other hand, remained stock still where he was

and Urd saw his haunted expression before asking, "What wrong,

guy? You look like you've seen a ghost or something."

"I just about have," Hercules said numbly, staring at the redhead

in astonishment, "That can't be who she looks like..."

Nabiki turned from the near-catatonic Perfume to look

questioningly at Aiko then gave Beatrice a studied look, "Your

friend here's pretty talented."

"She has her moments," Beatrice replied, "What is the problem

with your friend? That injury looks bad but it is largely

superficial."

"Per-chan's got a problem dealing with pain," Ranma replied,

"Can't shut it out like most people."

"Indeed?" Beatrice raised an eyebrow and looked thoughtfully at

the girl, who refused to respond to Ukyo's pleading, "Perhaps I

might be of some assistance here..."

"Are you a paramedic?" Akane asked her.

"Not exactly," Beatrice said as she looked around at the floor,

then knelt down to pick up a piece of sharp glass and said, "But

like Alison I do have certain talents."

"Oh man," Aiko winced, "Don't tell me you're gonna...man, I hate

when you do this!"

"Do what?" Ukyo blinked, then gasped as she saw Beatrice draw

the shard of glass across her palm, slicing it open.

"Alison," Beatrice said as she cupped her hand, "Please remove

that splinter from the girl's thigh. It is necessary to remove the

obstruction if I am to heal her."

"What am I, your bloody slave or something?" Aiko started

forward when Ukyo spoke up, "I'll do it!"

With that the Okonomiyaki chef placed a hand on the wooden

shard and leaned forward to murmur, "Forgive me, Per-chan, I

know this is going to hurt you..."

With one quick, clean motion she pulled the shard loose, which

finally got a reaction out of Perfume, who gasped in even greater

pain and seemed almost to faint as Ukyo let go of the shard and

clutched her tightly.

"Hold her steady for a moment," Beatrice said as she knelt down

and placed her bloodied palm over the wound, smearing it over

the equally bloodied fabric and thus mixing her blood with that of

the Amazon, "Very soon she will begin to feel relief flooding her

system."

"What are you talking about?" Akane asked her, turning to see

the disquieted look on Aiko's face, "How is blood going to help

Perfume?"

"It's kind of complicated," Aiko replied, giving a glance towards

Beatrice, "Beiko's blood has got something in it that'll make your

friend all right in another minute."

"Indeed," Beatrice said as she held out her bloody palm, which

now they could see was no longer bloody as the wound had

healed over to form a pink scar, which same began to fade

another few seconds later until it was no longer visible, the blood

having disappeared as if absorbed back into the skin from

whence it had emerged.

"As you can see," the silver haired girl remarked, flexing her

hand to show that it functioned like normal, "Alison's assessment

is accurate. My blood has special properties, and has had them

since an experience that occurred a short time ago while we were

on an adventure."

"I'll bet that's quite a story," Nabiki said in dry understatement.

"Indeed," Beatrice looked down at Perfume, who had come out of

her catatonic state to blink her eyes while Ukyo clutched her

tightly in her arms, then both looked up at the silver haired girl

with astonished expressions as she asked, "Feel better?"

"What did you do?" Perfume asked numbly, looking down at her

own thigh, which was no longer in agony as she experimentally

flexed it.

"Nanotechnology," Beatrice replied, "My body is sustained by a

microminiaturized enzyme that replicates my DNA at a

fantastically accelerated rate, insuring that I can regenerate even

serious injuries so long as the damage is not too extensive. I

assigned a few thousand soldier drones to examine your wound

and make repairs according to your baseline genetic structure."

"I've heard of Nanotechnology," Nabiki said simply, "Trouble is

what you're describing is way more advanced than anything on

Earth..."

"Correct," Beatrice replied, "Anything on the Earth, but the Earth

is not where I obtained it."

"This all very interesting'," said Principal Kuno as he joined them,

"But you mind telling me why we got a sun-roof where we used

to have a kitchen? This your idea of showing school spirit?"

"Ah, not exactly," Nabiki replied, although she privately thought

that the majority of students and faculty in Furinkan would

heartily concur with the improving angle, "We just had a little

pest control problem, something that got a bit bigger than we

thought we could handle..."

"Mind if I ask where that creature was going in such a hurry?"

Ranma asked, turning to Aiko, "And why'd it react that way

around you?"

"Hey, don't look at me like it was my fault!" Aiko reacted, "I don't

know what got into that thing, it just seemed not to like me..."

"Not you, Alison," Beatrice remarked, "I believe the creature

reacted on an instinctual level to your presence because of what

you are, not who you are. I believe ancestral memory is at fault

here...you represent a source of great pain and discomfort dimly

remembered which is why it sought to get as far away from you

as it could manage."

"But why?" Akane asked as everyone looked at Aiko with

questioning expressions, "Why is it so afraid of you?"

"Not Alison," Beatrice turned to glance off to where no one else

had been looking until that moment, "But someone whom it has

cause to fear as greatly, isn't that right, sir? By the way, if you

want to avoid attention try not standing out in the open."

"Huh?" Aiko whirled around, "Who are you talking...who are

you?"

"Ah..." Hercules came out of his daze as everyone else turned to

look in his and Urd's direction.

"Uh oh," Urd remarked at a low level, "Busted. Think we should

do a fast fade?"

"I said who are you?" Aiko advanced several paces then froze,

"You...look kind of familiar..."

"He ought to be," Beatrice replied, "After all he is your

Grandfather..."

Continued.

Comments/Criticism/DC Sucks Hotline: shadowmane

Revelations and confrontations ensue while a giant reptile takes a

tour of Nerima, and what about the other one making its way

relentlessly like the Umpteenth remake of the rubber-monster

series? If you're still wondering what's up, take heart as it will all

come together in a few more eventful chapters. Be there!

If you wish to check out my other works, Please check out my

Fanfiction webpage at: . or

it's mirror site at: ~

All related chapters of this series can be found there along with my

other works.


	29. Chapter 29

Nabiki 1/2,

A Very Scary Thought

(An Altered Destiny)

by

Jim Robert Bader

Chapter 29, Part 1.

(Inspired by the Works of Rumiko Takahashi & Others)

"Grandfather?" Urd repeated, looking at her companion.

"Don't get started on me," Hercules grumbled, "This is

embarrassing enough as it is."

"Grandfather?" Aiko said, then frowned, "Wait a minute...I

know you! You're Hercules! I met you once when I was just a

kid..."

"As opposed to?" Hercules replied, giving a casual sweep with

his eyes at the various mortals staring at him and Urd with

disquieted expressions, "Look, I didn't mean to come here and

interfere with your life, even if you have grown a bit since I last

saw you, Alexandra..."

"Alison," the redhead contradicted, then blinked, "I mean Aiko!"

she glared at Beatrice and said, "Now see what you've got me

doing, Beiko?"

"Alison?" Hercules frowned, "Did your mother change your

name or something? I thought she was going to name you

Alexandra at the Christening ceremony...only now that I think

on it I was called away that day on other business..."

"Um, excuse me?" Nabiki said with a most disquieted

expression, "Am I following this right? You two are a couple

of...?"

"Gods?" Urd asked with a pleasant smile, "Or Kami...unless you

think we're a couple of traveling salesmen that is, in which case

I'm going to have to smite you."

"Smite?" Hercules frowned, looking at Urd, "Who uses a word

like 'Smite' these days?"

"My little sister, of course," Urd replied matter-of-factly.

"Look, Gramps," Aiko frowned, "You picked a heck of a time to

drop by for a family reunion..."

"Just so," Nabiki said, regaining a measure of her composure,

"We do seem to be in the middle of a crisis..."

"I know all about it," Hercules made a dismissive motion with

one hand, then corrected himself, "Or at least I do now," he

turned a resentful look skyward and growled, "Not that I'm

having much trouble figuring out why Dad dumped this

assignment on me..."

"Is that really Hercules?" Ukyo murmured, "I thought he'd

be...well...taller."

"Taller?" Ranma repeated, giving the six-and-a-half foot tall

mass of muscles before them a very disquieted study.

"Matter of perspective," Perfume replied, having fully recovered

from her own ordeal, turning to Beatrice as she said in her own

bewildered tones, "How did you do that for me anyway? I feel

fine, better than fine as a matter of fact, and my injury..."

"It was nothing," Beatrice said dismissively, "I merely assigned

some soldier nanoprobes to assess the damage and initiate

repairs according to your baseline DNA structure. It's only a

temporary healing process, unlike mine, which operate like a

hive colony around the main central processor..."

"Jeez, Beiko," Aiko winced, "Whenever you describe yourself

like that you sound like some damned ant colony. Can't you just

say that Maruten fixed you up and leave it at that?"

"Who's Maruten?" Akane asked.

"The alien who once saved my life," Beatrice replied before

turning back to the divine beings in their presence, "I suggest

working together with us would be more efficient than working

at cross purposes. Now that I know you are here the pieces are

starting to fit together, and if I'm right-as I almost always am-

then there is not a moment to waste if we are to track down that

creature and save Nerima from almost certain disaster."

"But I'm sure that Junior won't deliberately try to cause anybody

any real harm," Ukyo protested, "He's just a baby and he's a

little confused. He didn't mean to hurt anyone..."

"Baby?" Hercules replied, "Junior? We're talking about

Typhon! The biggest, meanest, nastiest Titan that ever walked

the planet, Ghea's little revenge strategy on two legs, and you

guys are treating him like he's some kind of a lost kitten?"

Nabiki shuddered slightly but managed to control her reaction as

she said, "I'm sorry to say it, Ucchan, but I have to agree with

Mister Olympia here, your baby is a clear and present danger to

the population of Nerima. He may not mean anyone any harm,

but at the rate he's growing he could soon pose a serious

problem to the local traffic situation."

"Your point is well taken," Beatrice replied, "I suggest we track

the creature down before it gets too far away from school

grounds. I assume, Lord Hercules, that you do have a strategy

to contain the creature while it is still manageable enough for us

to handle?"

"Oh sure," Hercules nodded, "Dad had my brother Heph whip

up a little device that could-AWP!"

Everyone reacted in surprise as the towering giant who called

himself Hercules got suddenly kicked airborne by a bull-headed

Goat that had butted him from the rear without warning.

"Algonquin!" a beautiful woman said as she came into the room,

"I'm so sorry, Hercules, he got away from me before I could

restrain him. I really don't know why he and you never seem to

get along-what in the name of Gladsheim?"

"Lotta visitors comin' to our school," Principal Kuno remarked

as he studied the blond woman, who in turn was looking around

at the massive scenes of devastation all around them.

Hercules managed to pry himself loose from the rubble he had

half-buried himself in to take notice of the billy goat that was

still trying to butt him. With angry scowl he grabbed the goat

by the horns and hauled him up to eye level.

"Listen, you old goat," he growled as the creature snapped at

him and tried to bite, "This ain't the time or place for horsing

around! We gotta real crisis on our hands here, so either behave

yourself or I'll..."

"Or you'll what?" Sif asked him, approaching with an angry

scowl leveled in his direction.

Urd turned to look at her then raised a finger, "Time out! Herk

and me have to go somewhere to consult about something. Be

right back in another minute."

She grabbed Hercules by the tunic and the two of them faded

from view, along with the creature he was still holding at arms-

length. Sif blinked and looked around, then stared at the sky

and said, "Come back here with Algonquin you...hussy! Ohhh,

she really gets my goat...sometimes literally!"

She also faded from view, leaving some very confused mortals

in her wake. It was Ranma who finally broke the silence with

feigned casualness as he said, "So...anybody besides me feel like

a little monster hunt?"

"That is a good point," Ryoga agreed, "What are we standing

around here for?"

"Good question," Nabiki nodded, "Perfume, I trust you will be

able to find the creature again without too much difficulty?"

Perfume studied the direct line that was visible from the hole in

both the wall and ceiling, taking further note of the hole in the

fence some meters beyond that before she remarked, "No

problem. I think even Ryoga-kun could follow a trail like that

without losing the creature."

"I hope there's time enough for me to find my spatulas," Ukyo

mused, "I'm starting to suspect I might need them..."

"A good idea," Beatrice remarked, "Why don't the rest of you

head on out. I need to do something first, and I'll catch up with

you later. Aiko?"

"Uh..." Aiko looked at the other girl nervously then said, "If it's

all the same, Beiko, I think I'll stick close to Akane and these

others. You gonna be all right?"

"Aren't I always?" Beatrice smiled, giving the redhead a very

curious smile that somehow made Aiko feel more nervous than

she had been when confronting the creature. There were

different forms of predatory behavior, after all, and she was

beginning to suspect that you didn't need teeth like a shark to be

dangerous in that sense.

"Lead the way," Nabiki informed Perfume, who nodded and

took point as the others followed suit while Principal Kuno

hesitated for a moment then decided to follow...

Hercules let go of the goat as they appeared on the virtual plane

of reality, the dimensional boundary line between one state of

material existence and another. Said goat made ready to butt its

head against him once again, but Urd said, "UH-uh, guy...no

more of that! You two butt-heads need to work things out

together and stop mixing it up like a couple of schoolkids with a

grudge, you're making us all look bad in front of the mortals."

"Fine with me," Hercules snorted, "Tell horn-head over here that

our problem is supposed to be Typhon, not each other."

"Baaah!" the goat said dismissively but did not renew its futile

attempts upon the Olympian hero.

"What's the story about these Jusenkyo curses anyway?" Urd

asked, "Can they be broken?"

"Not by me," Hercules shrugged, "But then again Magic's never

been my strong suit, that's more Hecate's line. I'm just a strong-

arm type who's a bit of an overachiever. At a guess, though, I'd

say the curse is pretty tightly woven to Thor's Akashik pattern.

Separating him from the Goat might take a bit of doing..."

"Mind if I try my hand at it?" Urd asked, "I've broken a few

curses in my time, and I don't think this one will be all that

tough seeing how Thor here doesn't like having this happen to

him."

Both Hercules and the Goat gave Urd the sort of panicked look

one gives to a potential crisis looming near on the horizon. With

more haste than he might otherwise have intended to exert, the

Man-God cautioned, "Ah...I wouldn't be too quick to make that

judgement! I once had a curse like this thrown on me..."

"On you?" both Urd and the goat gave him startled expressions.

"Uh...yeah," Hercules looked as if he regretted his own words,

but forced himself to continue, "It happened a long time ago,

and I got rid of it only after I achieved full godhood. It was on

my eleventh labor when I was after the Apples of the Hesperides

that I wandered into the lands that would one day be part of

central China, and I almost literally stumbled into one of those

blasted pools thanks to a local tour guide and this guy I was

hanging around with named Geminades. I won't go into too

many details, but it got real inconvenient for a while there. I just

know I don't have to avoid cold showers anymore, which is a

damn good thing considering what the ladies are like on

Olympus."

"Interesting," Urd mused, "Then maybe the residual traces of

that curse might still be with you, and if I could tap into the

decay factor..."

"Hey, that was over three thousand years ago!" Hercules

protested.

"The Past is my specialty, remember?" Urd smiled, "And what

are you boys so worried about anyway? Don't tell me you like

changing into a goat whenever you get wet?"

Both goat and God exchanged worried looks as if to mutually

say, "Well..."

"Come on," Urd said more indignantly, "What have you got to

lose by me trying?"

The goat seemed to seriously think that bit over, then finally

heaved a goatly sigh and lowered his bearded head in

resignation.

"Good," Urd brightened, "Now just stay like that and leave

everything to me and you boys won't regret it."

She closed her eyes, thus missing the dubious looks cast in her

direction, and then Urd raised her arms and concentrated,

waiting for the power to rise up in her before she intoned her

readymade spell:

"Cursed to change, oh wretched creature,

Be freed of thy curse in this unseemly template,

Begone ye horned visage and be restored by thy bane

Which the Man-God contained in days of yore

When he too bore a curse of similar nature!"

She could feel her power flowing through her, shaped by the

images she sought to project as she wove the software of

invocation and conceptually inserted it into the great Machine of

Creation to initiate a restart program. She felt the input as it was

processed through the Ultimate Force Computer, and then

reality shifted and she could feel a new image take the shape of

the Thor she well knew and had often dated (not necessarily

with Sif's knowledge or approval).

When at last she felt the cosmic terminal read back a successful

completion of the program she opened her eyes, feeling elated as

she cried, "I did-it...?" the last part voiced an octave higher than

normal.

The redheaded figure before her looked down at itself and

seemed to share her initial rejoicing as Thor cried out, "You did

it, Urd! I'm myself again! I'm no longer a goat, and I can feel

it!"

"Uh...yeah, buddy," Hercules said dubiously, "Whatever you

say."

"Huh?" Thor looked puzzled, and then glanced down at the

leather biker outfit that hung rather slack about the redhead's

body, which prompted a very faint, "Hah?"

"Uh...did I err?" Urd all but wilted as she studied the six foot

feminine shape with the riotous mane of curling red hair, then

looked at Hercules as if for confirmation.

"Um...did I forget to mention just what kind of Jusenkyo curse I

used to have?" Hercules asked with feigned innocence, right

before he wilted at the way the redhead glared his way with

stormclouds rumbling in the distance.

"Hercules...!" the Redhead drew back the hammer in her hand

and prepared to swing it, "YOU IDIOT!"

This time the Man-God did not even bother to dodge, reasoning

that for once he deserved it for allowing Urd have her way in

any matter that involved spellcasting...

"Saotome," murmured Soun as he studied the Shogi board

without really paying too much attention to the pieces, "Does it

ever seem to you as if our lives are too much caught in a routine

of repetitive existence?"

Without taking its eyes off the board, the Panda sitting opposite

to him held up a sign that read, "I don't know, Tendo-kun, what

makes you say that?"

Soun heaved another sigh before replying, "I don't really know,

but there are times when it seems as though we live in a pattern

that begins and ends the same way, with the two of us playing

Shogi. We eat, we sleep, we get up in the morning and we

exercise in the dojo, then we sit down and play another game as

if the rest of our lives were only a pause between moves. At

least that's what it seems like lately."

The Panda held up another sign, "To tell the truth I never really

noticed," it turned the sign around, which now read on the other

side, "More often our lives seem to resemble an endless soap

opera, like one of those programs Nodoka, Shampoo and

Kasumi watch every afternoon."

"Ah yes," Soun agreed, barely lifting his eyes long enough to

read the sign before looking down again to make certain his

companion had not cheated, "Women do that sort of thing, don't

they?"

"Some women," replied the sign held by the Panda, "Nabiki, on

the other hand, seems glued to the financial columns on the

Cable channels, while Natsume and Kurumi hardly watch

television at all."

"Indeed," Soun agreed, "My two nieces have had little exposure

to the medium, although I have noticed that Kurumi is

developing a taste for Anime. Natsume seems to spend all her

free time, though, visiting with young Master Kuno."

"Sometimes I worry about that girl," the Panda's sign now read

as he furiously scrawled a new message on the back, keeping

one eye on the board while somehow managing to write legibly

enough for Soun to read at a glance, "She acts so self-confident

at times that you can almost forget about her tender age. I

certainly hope she isn't getting too attached to the Kendo boy."

"It is her life to lead, my friend," Soun said philosophically, "I

gave up trying to make others lead the sort of lives I would want

after my daughter took up with that Amazon after agreeing to

the engagement to your son."

"Young people," the Panda's sign read, "No respect for

traditions. Still, when it comes to Nabiki I have found it best not

to judge her too harshly."

"I know, my friend," Soun replied, "And I do trust Nabiki, and

Shampoo is a lovely girl who will bring much honor to this

house when she makes me a...a..."

"Grandfather?" the Panda's sign asked suggestively, then he

turned it around to reveal, "I know how you feel...the idea

sometimes leaves me a little stunned..."

"Well," said Cologne as if to announce her presence to the Shogi

players, "I see you two are trying out for the 'Waiting For Godot'

play the school is hosting. Don't mind me, I didn't come to

interrupt your little game of cheating..."

"Shogi," Soun corrected.

"Whatever," Cologne sniffed, "I was wondering...is Happy

around by any chance?"

"The Master?" the sign held by the Panda read, "What do you

want with him?"

Cologne nodded in faint amusement, "Sometime you are going

to have to teach me how you manage that calligraphy trick, even

I have trouble sometimes seeing your paws move. In regards to

your question, however, it is none of your business. I merely

wish to consult with him regarding some very strange feelings I

have been experiencing since noon..."

"So," said the bright little man as Happosai vaulted from the

roof to the patio area at the back of the house, "You felt it too,

eh? I was wondering when you'd show up here to seek my

advice..."

"Who said anything about needing your advice?" Cologne said

testily, "The day I need your advice on anything..."

A very strange sound suddenly filled the air as Cologne's mouth

hung open, while Happosai went slightly rigid.

"That's a nasty cold you've got there," the old man said as if

attempting light humor.

"What was that?" Soun asked as the Panda's sign echoed the

question.

"Quiet, fools!" Cologne hissed, glancing at Happosai, "Do you

hear that? It's getting closer..."

A sudden loud roar could be heard, accompanied by the heavy

tread of something incredibly massive lumbering down the

street, and then all heads turned to see the towering figure of a

monster over twenty feet tall passing by the Tendo yard,

continuing on down the street several moments later as screams

could be heard all along the neighborhood.

"Oh my," said Kasumi as she, Kurumi, Nodoka and Shampoo

came rushing out onto the patio in time to see the creature

before it vanished, "I had no idea they were advertising for a

new movie."

"That some advertisement," Shampoo noted faintly.

"No fooling," Kurumi said, "I thought that looked like a

dinosaur...but I thought that they were all extinct?"

"Apparently that one isn't," Nodoka said dryly before turning to

look at the Panda, "Genma, dear, would you care to investigate

what that is?"

The Panda appeared to seriously consider the question until a

mildly exasperated Nodoka stepped forward with a teakettle she

had brought with her out of foresight. She poured it over the

panda then glared as she said in a somewhat more forceful tone,

"Let me rephrase the question...would you care to sleep alone on

the roof tonight?"

"I'm going!" Genma got to his feet, giving a sorrowful look at

the Shogi board before turning around and heading towards the

main gate.

"Wait a minute, Uncle!" Kurumi called out as she hurried up to

reach his side, "I'll go with you. I want to see if that really is

some kind of giant monster. I've heard all sorts of stories about

them but I've never actually seen this kind."

"Neither have I," Cologne said before fetching Happosai a

meaningful look, "But I, too, have heard the legends."

"Legends," Happosai snorted in contempt, "I have seen the real

thing, and I'm not in any hurry to see it again, but I might as well

come along with you. If it's loose in Nerima it might hurt one of

my beautiful ladies!"

Soun remained where he was as the quartet made their

departure, then he heaved a sigh and rose to his feet, murmuring,

"Life is just one endless soap opera. Just once I wish something

would break the routine, but...oh well..."

And with that he followed, leaving three very confused women

exchanging glances in his passage...

"It is very nice of you to offer to walk me home, Kuno-san,"

Natsume remarked to the man at he side, "But it is hardly

necessary...I know the way by now."

"Perhaps you do," Tatewaki replied, "But allow me the pleasure

of your company, if only for a few more minutes. Besides I

want to speak with your family to offer my thanks for their

support and tolerance all of these years. I am hoping to catch

your cousins when they get home so that I may offer my sincere

apologies...and to explain my poor conduct. I would rather that

there be no hard feelings or lingering resentments for anything I

did or said in the past..."

"I'm sure everyone is grateful that you are well," Natsume

assured him, hiding a slight smile that escaped her efforts at

seeming indifference, "Aunt Nodoka has expressed her regrets

that she did not offer better supervision in the past when it might

have made a difference. She feels that she ought to have noticed

that your sister was violating you with her foul potions..."

"She is hardly the only one to miss that," Kuno sniffed aloud,

"Parts of the last few years are like a blur to me. I only

remember how I sometimes could react to little things as if they

posed a challenge to my very manhood..."

He suddenly paused as a sound intruded on their private

conversation. Both Kuno and Natsume halted in mid-step as

they felt through the soles of their feet how the very sidewalk

was vibrating, even as a heavy tread made itself known, and

then the ground began to shake more violently as though they

were experiencing an earthquake.

A loud roar caused both to lift their heads in time to see the

lumbering figure of a huge creature coming up the street as it

rounded a corner in the opposite direction to that which they

were heading. The very sight of the creature caused them to

become like statues as it loomed near, and only when it was

almost upon them did Kuno act by interposing himself between

the creature and his companion.

To their great surprise the creature continued on without even

glancing in their direction, and they slowly turned about to

watch it vanish down another street as it turned yet one more

corner and became lost among the treeline.

It was a full two minutes later that Natsume asked, "What was

that?"

"Oh," Kuno murmured faintly, "Good...you saw it too. For a

moment there I thought I was suffering another relapse."

"Oneechan!" a voice hailed them, and they belatedly turned to

see Genma, Kurumi, Cologne, Happosai and Soun approach at a

good pace. It was evident from their expressions that they, too,

had seen the creature and were following it, but when Kurumi

caught sight of Kuno her expression clouded.

"Natsume-chan," Soun called out as his party caught up with

them, "Are you all right? The creature did not hurt you in any

way?"

"No...uncle," Natsume fought to correct her natural impulse to

call him father, that being the way she still regarded this soft-

spoken man she had first mistaken under that general

impression, "It seemed to ignore us completely."

"It's heading towards the coastline," Kuno frowned, "If it

follows the storm drains it could reach the ocean in another

hour."

"I think it will stop along the way long before that," Cologne

remarked, "In fact I believe it has only a little ways further to go

before it reaches its destination."

"What do you mean, Grandmother?" Kuno asked more alertly

than any of those newly arrived could ever remember.

"She means the Fish Market's over in that direction," Happosai

pointed, "Once it catches the scent of that there's going to be no

stopping the hungry boy. He must already be pretty famished or

he'd be making better time already."

"What is that thing, Grandfather?" Natsume asked the ancient

Master.

"A blast from the past that I'd hoped I'd never live to see again,"

Happosai dramatically averred, "It was before your time back

when Soun and Genma were wee lads still learning their basics.

Come on, stop dragging your heels everybody! It's getting away

from us and we have to catch it!"

"We do?" asked Genma with dread, but as was usually the case

when he was being practical everyone else just ignored him...

"So," Akane tried to sound nonchalant, "What is the scoop

between you and that other girl...Beiko was it?"

"I don't know and I don't want to talk about it," Aiko grumbled,

but almost immediately contradicted herself by saying, "She

just...confuses me so much! I mean, you've no idea what she

used to be like when we were in our old school together. She's

changed...and in a lot of ways it scares me."

"Well," Ryoga said reluctantly, "It may not be my place to say

anything, but I kind of got the impression that she likes you. I

mean, I don't know how to judge about these things..."

"Likes me?" Aiko repeated, then gave a bitter laugh, "That's

gotta be the irony of the decade, considering all the times she's

tried to kill me in the past..."

"Kill you?" Ranma looked startled, "How come?"

"It's a long story," Aiko sighed, "Basically she used to be

different, a real stuck-up rich witch who'd come after me with

robots and things she'd build for me to fight and demolish. It

used to happen every morning for four straight months, almost

the entire last semester!"

"So what happened with you two?" Nabiki asked, "I heard part

of the story from Beatrice herself..."

"Hah!" Aiko snorted, "I can just bet what she must have told

you! I can remember what she was like the time we first when

were only five years old...those piggy little eyes, dumpy white

hair and smug superior attitude really got on my nerves. She

challenged me to fight, but the day before it could happen my

parents decided to move us back to America, where I was born.

We came back to Japan a few years later and I've lived here ever

since..."

"You're an American?" Akane asked.

"Technically yeah," Aiko replied, "But I've lived here for so

long that I think of Japan as my real home. All my friends are

here...well...the few friends I have anyway..."

"And now this Beiko wants to be your friend," Ryoga noted,

"Has she really changed that much?"

"Yeah, she has," Aiko replied, "And don't know why it is, but

sometimes it really scares me."

"You mean you'd rather have her trying to kill you?" Ukyo

asked with a sly look that only Perfume caught onto.

"Well, no..." Aiko hesitated, "What I mean is...seeing her this

way, acting so reasonable like, and coming onto me with the

overtures of friendship...it's not something I'm used to."

"I've formed a pretty good impression of Beatrice Kane," Nabiki

said, adding on the side, "She seems to prefer that now instead

of the nick-name you use. She seems sincere in her desire to

make restitution for her past, and she hinted rather broadly that

the two of you have only just come back from a lengthy

adventure together..."

"She told you about that, huh?" Aiko sighed, "Three months ago

a good friend of ours went away without warning. We never

even got a chance to say our good-byes, so Beiko came to me

with a proposal that we call a truce to all our fighting and work

together to try and get her back. At the time it made sense us

pooling our resources and all...who knew how things would turn

out?" she sighed in fatalistic resignation.

"What changed her?" Akane asked, "If she used to be after you

for fights..."

"She died," Aiko said in a toneless whisper.

"Nani?" Nabiki blinked, "Care to run that by us again?"

"Seems pretty lively for a dead person," Ukyo agreed, "Right

Perfume-chan?"

"For a dead person she does not smell all that bad," Perfume

replied, then saw the look Ukyo gave her and amended,

"Besides which she helped me out with those...what did she call

them?"

"Nanotechs," Aiko shrugged, "And I don't blame you for being

confused, I barely understand the basic concept myself and I

was there when Maruten implanted the stuff into her system.

All I know is that she's got these little robot bugs crawling

around in her bloodstream repairing damage and sustaining her

in perfect health ever since it happened. So when I say she died

what I mean is she was dead for about five minutes, and then

she got better."

"Why did this Maruten guy bring her back?" Ranma asked.

"Because I asked him to," Aiko replied, once again barely a

whisper, "Look, I don't want to talk about this anymore. How

about we talk about something else for a change?"

"All right," Nabiki said, "How about you and Hercules? Is it

true what she said about him being your Grandfather?"

Aiko heaved a sigh then said, "Yeah, that's what I'm told, and

Beiko's just repeating the facts as I got it third hand from my

mother."

"Your mother is the daughter of Hercules?" Akane said,

suddenly understanding something from their earlier

conversation, "Is that why you're so...?"

"Strong?" Aiko replied, "Yeah, part of the reason anyway,

although my Dad's pretty strong too, and could probably give

Gramps a run for his toga."

"Four thousand years of Amazon tradition," Nabiki mused,

"That was something else your friend Beatrice said about the

martial arts combat system you practice."

"She's not my..." Aiko sighed again, "Yeah, four thousand years

is about right, that's the time when my Grandmother first settled

the Amazon tribes with the help of her sisters. According to the

stories I heard growing up my mom got conceived on the night

when Hercules is supposed to have raped her..."

"I DID NO SUCH THING!" a thunderous voice boomed just

before Hercules reappeared, including Urd and a redheaded

stranger wearing a hastily remodified version of the Biker

leathers that Thor had been wearing.

Hercules walked straight up to Aiko and said, "I know I haven't

been a part of your life beyond helping to bring your mother into

this world, kid, but I absolutely refuse to put up with this slander

any longer. I may not be a saint, and the Powers know I've done

some things I'm not very proud of, but there is no way this side

of Tartarus that anybody's going to accuse me of raping

Hippolyta! If anything it was the other way around," he

muttered in sour undertone with a stormy expression.

Aiko barely stood even with the big man's breastbone as she

looked up at him defiantly, "You calling my Grandmother a

liar?"

"In a word," Hercules replied, "Yes."

Aiko didn't budge a centimeter, but her lip curled into a smile as

she replied, "So did Mom, and she knew her better than anybody

else. So...Grampa...what's your side of the story? What really

did happen?"

Hercules took one deep breath but before he could reply the

redheaded lady said, "Yeah, what did happen, old buddy? I've

heard you tell this story a dozen different ways, so let's finally

hear the real version without the creative adlibbing."

Hercules growled something unintelligible about the probable

ancestry of all Norsemen but he looked down at Aiko and

seemed to lower his guard for her by a fraction, then somberly

he said, "Three thousand, two hundred and thirty-two years ago,

or 1234 BC, if you go by Christian Reckoning, I got into a real

mess that was partly caused by that Heavenly Witch, my step-

mother Hera, and wound up doing community service for ten

years for King Eurystheus of Mycenae, my cousin. One of the

so-called twelve labors he had me perform included going to the

land of the Amazons in Asia Minor to retrieve the Girdle of

Ghea from Hippolyta. On the way me and my other cousin,

King Theseus of Athens, ran into a hunting party of Amazons

led by this high-spirited wench who got into an argument with

me over who killed a deer first with what arrow..."

"She won the argument," the redhead clarified, "Only the Prince

of Thieves here wouldn't accept that his arrow was a little

slower..."

"That's Thebes, you bloody Pirate!" Hercules snapped before

resuming, "Anyway we got into a bit of a tussle over this simple

misunderstanding and she turned out to be a pretty amazing

fighter..."

"She was whipping your sorry ass," the redhead chortled, "And

then you cheated."

"Look, am I telling this or are you?" Hercules glared

dangerously at his heckler, "Besides you know perfectly well

that she was wearing the Girdle, which gave her the edge,

though I didn't know it at the time. I...uh...also have this thing

about fighting women...I hate it..."

"Because you keep losing," the redhead grinned, then raised

deflecting hands and said, "Okay, I keep quiet. You go on right

ahead, Herk ol' buddy."

Unnoticed by anyone but Urd the redhead was crossing her

fingers behind her back as Hercules continued, "Well, to make a

long and painful subject short, I managed to win in the end, but

only by clever use of strategy and tactics. I also had a bit of

luck on my side, only not the kind I thought at the time as the

girl I'd been fighting suddenly got all friendly with me and

started behaving with more civility than she'd been using up

until that moment..."

"Wait a second," Nabiki frowned, "Did this have anything to do

with one of their laws regarding what happens when a male

outsider defeats a Warrior of their tribe?"

"Oh," Hercules said soberly, "You've heard of that one too,

huh?'

"We're familiar with it," both Nabiki and Ukyo chorused, then

exchanged amused, wry glances that spoke volumes.

"Yeah," Hercules sighed, "That was the start of a whale of a lot

more troubles than I ever thought I was going to have to face.

We were warmly invited home to their capitol city of

Themiscrya and given a banquet in honor of the two great

conquering heroes, me and my cousin..."

"King Theseus also defeated an Amazon?" Perfume spoke up.

"Antiope," Hercules replied, "Only the way I hear tell she really

didn't put up that much of a fight, and unlike me her marriage

worked out pretty well, if you ignore that nasty little war that

was later fought between the Amazons and Athenians a year

later..."

"So what happened?" Aiko asked, "If you and Grandmother

were getting along and she was legally married to you..."

"What usually happened back then when things started going

right for me?" Hercules growled, "Hera happened, like always,

and Ares pitched in as well. Hippolyta's his daughter by

Aphrodite, after all, and he didn't exactly get thrilled at the idea

of having me for a son-in-law."

"So what did they do?" Ukyo wondered.

"Spread a few rumors, spoke a few choice words into the wrong

ears," Hercules growled, "They said I was going to kidnap

Hippolyta and take her back with me to Mycenae, which started

a near-riot among her sacred guard inside the palace. One of

'Lyta's own sisters came charging into the royal bedchambers

and scared me out of ten years of growth when she tried to brain

me with an ax. Of course I beat a hasty retreat out of there,

knocking both "Lyta and Orestia unconscious in the process.

Then I rescued Theseus and Antiope from the other sister,

Melianites, and we fought our way back to the dockside and got

our ship out of the harbor before the sun had fully set over the

mountains."

"And what about that story where you kidnapped the Amazons

and tried to enslave them?" Aiko asked him.

"Oh yeah," Hercules snorted, "Me, Theseus and the thirty men

we had with us were gonna defeat several thousand screaming

mad Amazons armed to the teeth with spears and arrows...like

that'll happen!" Under his breath he muttered, "DC Comics has

a lot to answer for..."

"With me it's Marvel," the redhead sympathized, "They got

some blond surfer dude with a funny accent playing my part, the

damned Boyscout, King Arthur wannabe..."

"Anyway," Hercules sighed, "We sailed home from the Black

Sea back to Greece where I gave that girdle to my Cousin, and

he gave it to that Prima Dona daughter of his and I tried to

forget about the whole crazy experience, only I found out later

that 'Lyta was pregnant and her people had voted to go to war

with Athens. Said war, of course, proved to be such a disaster

that the Amazons were almost destroyed as a nation. They

broke apart into separate tribes and went their different paths,

some going east to the Gods Know What fate, others taking a

ship and sailing west to parts unknown, while those who stayed

loyal to Hippolyta gathered around her and petitioned the Gods

for the preservation of their nation. Of course what they didn't

know was that 'Lyta had a special inside track with the Gods,

being one of them on both sides of her family tree. She asked

Aphrodite for help and that's how she and her people got spirited

away to that island they called Paradise to spend the next three

thousand years in near absolute isolation."

"So you're saying grandmother deliberately mislead her people,

vilified you and cooked up that whole story about Mom being

created out of clay to cover the fact that she was behind the

whole Exile thing?" Aiko said matter-of-factly.

"Come on," Hercules snorted, "That 'Created from Clay' bit's a

Cabbage Patch story! You're old enough to know it's not just

the stork that delivers babies. 'Lyta wanted your mother to

believe that she was born without any help from a guy as part of

her whole 'We don't need men' kick while actually covered up

the fact that she'd let me escape her clutches in violation of her

own laws. It was a face-saving gesture, nothing more, and while

I can understand her motives I won't put up with her using me as

a scapegoat."

"Don't mention the word goat," winced the Redhead.

"The Amazons weren't perfect," Hercules resumed, "They were

women trying to make the best of a bad situation, but nobody

created them out of clay, they all had fathers and mothers, just

like everybody else on this planet. Some revisionist named

Charles Moulton with a Ph.D. in Psychiatry and a weird

penchant for bondage stories decided to cook up some idealized

version of these events to portray heroic and virtuous women

standing firm against us rampaging brutish men, but that just

ain't the way it happened. Life is never that black and white, not

even in the Comics."

"Fascinating," Nabiki mused, "So if you're half-god, and

Hippolyta was a full goddess, that would make your mother

three quarters divine and you..."

"Yeah, I know," Aiko sniffed, "Beiko's not the only one who can

do the math, and I'm also half alien on my father's side...'

"You're father's an alien?" asked Ranma.

"Believe it or not, it's a lot more common than you'd think,"

Aiko replied, "According to Beiko Japan was colonized by

Aliens a couple of millennia or so back..."

"Four hundred six BC, to be exact," Urd noted with a smile, "Of

course that's only if you trace the later settlement. Japan was

really discovered around 660 by a Princess of the Jurai, but

that's another story, and I think we've talked enough about

history for one day."

"Interestin'," mused Principal Kuno, who had been silently up to

now following all of this with his usual look of detached mania,

"Only what's it got to do with the giant lizard?"

"Absolutely nothing, that's what," the redhead replied, "But it

did kill some time while we caught up with the big iguana, now

if you ask my opinion I'd say we were getting closer."

They all took note of what she indicated, seeing overturned

trucks and cars with people standing around pointing fingers at

something unseen from their perspective. As they got closer it

became apparent from the ruins of several buildings that

something big had come this way, and they could hear the sound

of something large and hungry chomping down on a greedy

banquet, which same their nostrils informed them consisted of

aquatic poultry.

"Good call," Nabiki sniffed before holding her nose, "So...what's

the game plan?"

"First we lure the sucker out into the open and then Thor and

me'll subdue him like OW..."

Ukyo removed her bakers peel from the top of his head and said,

"Excuse me? Did you just say you're going to do this without

hurting that poor baby?"

"Okay, point taken," Hercules said as he rubbed his noggin,

eyeing her with suspicion as he added, "You and Dianira

wouldn't happen to be related, would you? Anyway, as I was

about to say, once we got it in position I'll activate brother

Heph's device, which should erect a special containment field

that will suck that 'baby' into a box where he's be nice and safe

until I can deliver him someplace where he won't threaten any of

you mortals. Then..."

Just then they heard another roar from the building, and the

creature emerged into view, now over fifteen meters tall and

looking about eight times as large as when he had left Furinkan

school grounds.

"Oboy," Urd murmured, "That thing's still growing..."

"Uh, just off the record, Herk ol' buddy," the redhead stage-

whispered, "Hephaestus did create a storage device with an

infinite capacity, right?"

"Ah..." Hercules looked down at the gold plated object he held

in his hand, which to all eyes appeared to be a cigarette case,

then back up at the creature, "I think I need a bigger box..."

Continued.

Comments/Criticism/Bronze Age History Lessons:

shadowmane

Big Trouble in Nerima...be there!

Nabiki 1/2,

A Very Scary Thought

(An Altered Destiny)

by

Jim Robert Bader

Chapter 29, Part 2.

(Inspired by the Works of Rumiko Takahashi & Others)

"All right, Miyuki!" officer Natsumi of the Tokyo Metro police

enthused, "A three day weekend to your uncles place on the

Coast! We're gonna have fun, just you, me and Nakajima..."

"Cut it out, Natsumi," her partner replied, "I'm nervous enough

as it is about seeing him after he took that trip with his father to

race in the French Open. We've only talked a few times by long

distance..."

"Oh," Natsumi said with an insinuating smile, "Is it getting

serious between you two or what? When's he going to pop the

question already? You two've been dating for not quite a

year..."

"Pop the question?" Miyuki almost lost control of the wheel of

her car, which was something no one else-including Natsumi-

had ever seen her do before, but reflexes kicked in just in time

as she took the curve with no more incident than Natsumi

grabbing hold of the dashboard for dear life, "What question? I

mean, it's not like we're ready for something like that...after all

there's still time..."

"Yeesh, would you watch it?" Natsumi chided, "I swear this shy

routine of yours is getting old, Miyuki-chan! You wanna be an

old maid or something? You know that you and Nakajima are

nuts over one another!"

"I know no such thing!" Miyuki protested, then in a milder tone

of voice she amended, "I mean, he is nice...and sweet and brave

and incredibly handsome, and he can say the nicest things at

times, and there is that way he smiles at me that I could almost

think that maybe, possibly, he might be serious about

our...relationship...but it's really been quite informal. No one's

officially said that the two of us are dating..."

"Yeah, right," Natsumi rested her chin on one hand as her elbow

leaned on the window while she gazed out at the kilometers of

open coastline they were driving past on their way to their

destination. Natsumi was a city girl at heart, but she was

looking forward to getting away from regular patrol duties and

spending some time with her best friend and partner, if only she

could think of some way of getting Miyuki to lighten up a little.

The way her normally calm and composed friend could turn into

such a little schoolgirl at the mere mention of the name of

Nakajima...

"Hey!" Miyuki suddenly cried out as Natsumi's reverie was

shattered by the sound of rolling thunder passing them by. She

turned just in time to see something pass them by that she at first

glance thought was a truck, but which on closer examination

turned out to be the BIGGEST damned motorcycle she had ever

seen in her life, driven by a literal giant in biker leathers at a

speed so great that they were virtually passed standing still.

"What the Hell was that?" Natsumi demanded.

"I don't know," Miyuki said, "I think it's some odd kind of

motorcycle."

"Motorcycle?" Natsumi put all of the skepticism that she could

into her voice, "It's as big as a house, and did you get a look at

the rider?"

"I could hardly miss him," Miyuki replied, "He almost reminds

me of the Ronin."

"Or his big brother," Natsumi frowned, then she noticed that

their car was speeding up and she said, "Hey...what gives here?"

"He must be doing at least seventy kilometers per hour above

the speed limit," Miyuki replied as she reached up and placed

the temporary flashing alarm light atop their vehicle, rendering

it instantly from a civilian to police car, "In addition to that he is

driving recklessly and endangering public safety."

"Yeah," Natsumi said, "But we're not on duty...we're on

vacation, remember? Leave it to the regular highway patrol

guys."

"You know we can't do that, Natsumi-chan," Miyuki replied as

she increased velocity and began to overtake the massive biker,

"It's our duty to uphold the law even when we're not on duty.

Better call this in, we may need backup."

"There goes our vacation," Natsumi said fatalistically, reaching

for the dashboard radio and adjusting the frequency to the

proper channels while picking up the hand-mike.

Meanwhile their quarry took notice of the flashing red light and

debated his best course of action. A voice in his ear said,

"(Boss...I'm monitoring a call from some local police with your

basic description. Should I handle it through channels?)"

"(Naw,)" the big man replied, "(I'll handle this myself.

Estimated time to landfall?)"

"(Three hours twenty two minutes.)"

"(Gives me enough time to play around,)" the big man smiled to

himself, "(The driver of that car's pretty good. Imaging catching

up with me in a Subaru! I want to meet the driver who can do

that, even if he is a cop.)"

He pulled over to the curb and cut the engine, then waited for

the car following him to pull up behind him. He removed his

goggles and stood up nice and slowly so as not to alarm

anybody. The last thing he felt like doing was shrugging off

more bullets on top of the countless other slugs his body had

absorbed over the decades.

To his considerable surprise and delight the driver who emerged

from the right-hand side was a pretty Japanese girl who looked

barely old enough for college. Another equally pretty girl

stepped out from the passenger side with one hand holding a

radio mike, both studying the big man with rounded eyes as if to

anticipate anything dangerous.

"What can I do for you, officers?" he said courteously in

flawless Japanese.

The two plainclothed lady cops blinked their eyes in chorus and

exchanged startled looks, then the driver looked forward again

and said, "Um...did you happen to know what speed you were

doing, sir? This is a public road and..."

"No problem," he reached for his jacket pocket and pulled out an

ID card that he then extended out towards her. She reluctantly

stepped forward to accept his permit, barely taking one eye off

of him as she examined it for a moment, then he read a familiar

reaction.

"Doctor Franklin Nathaniel...Steinberg?" she finished the last

part as though stumbling on the foreign pronouncement.

"Yes," he replied, "But my friends just call me Frank."

He saw the other girl silently pronounce his name with a

dubious expression and had to smile in an entirely sympathetic

way. He was used to it, even took a certain pride in the reaction

most people gave to his chosen name, even if his real name was

something of a mystery even to himself.

For Miyuki and Natsumi the name sounded oddly appropriate,

considering that the man before them stood over seven and a

half feet tall with a face that resembled Boris Karlof, without the

makeup. This was no mere coincidence either as plastic surgery

had long ago given the man more acceptable features than those

he had been born with. In Frank's estimation it was only poetic

justice.

"Um," Miyuki began again, "You're height is two-point-three

meters, you weight...one hundred sixty kilos...?"

"Only when I diet," he replied facetiously, actually enjoying

their reaction as it was nice to know he had not lost his touch at

impressing new people at first meetings.

"And you're from...?" Miyuki glanced at the ID again then said,

"Brazil?"

"That's my home address," Frank replied, "But actually I'm from

a lot of different places."

"Separately or all together?" Natsumi murmured to herself,

unaware that the man had ears sharper than any wolf and he

picked her up just fine.

Miyuki found her eyes unable to keep from glancing at the

motor vehicle that the man had been riding, "Um...I'm sorry, I

can't quite identify the make and model of your...motorcycle...?"

"Not surprising," Frank nodded to it proudly, "Only two others

like it in the world and I built all three for myself. I call it The

Monster, and if you don't mind me saying so it's quite a beauty."

"The Monster," Natsumi also studied the thing with a disquieted

expression, finding the name oddly appropriate, and not just on

account of its unusual size with tires that were 42" at least!

"If...you don't mind my asking, sir..." Miyuki could not help

staring at the motorcycle with a look almost of awe worthy of a

religious moment.

"Be my guest and have a look," Frank generously offered,

remaining where he was so as not to upset these already nervous

women.

Miyuki took the invitation up and approached the motorcycle,

staring at its gleaming exterior before saying, "The engine is

awfully big for a cycle...one sixty cubic centimeters?"

"Not bad," Frank did not have to feign being impressed, "You

know your way around engines?"

"I know a little something," Miyuki replied modestly, ignoring

the derisive snort from her partner at the deliberate

understatement, "What sort of gas mileage and horsepower does

this thing have?"

"It uses a special ethanol-gasoline mixture," Frank replied, "The

intake feed on the fuel line oxygenates the fuel through a

specially designed valve chamber that's one of my personal

patents..."

"The Recombinant Oxygenator?" Miyuki straightened up with a

look of shock, "That's your creation?"

"You've heard of it, huh?" Frank nodded, now really impressed

with this girl who barely stood a head higher than his belt level,

"It's barely been on the market for less than two months..."

"It's a totally revolutionary new system," Miyuki said excitedly,

"Greater efficiency, cleaner combustion, more mileage to the

cubic liter, and backed by a Fuel Cell electrical system..."

"Ah," Natsumi decided to call her friend back to reality before

she got lost in all the technical data of two evident Motorhead

enthusiasts, "Miyuki-chan?"

"Oh, yes," Miyuki recalled herself with a start, "I'm sorry, sir,

but your motorcycle isn't approved for Highway usage, and I'm

afraid your violation of the traffic laws..."

"Call it in if you feel it necessary, Officer Miyuki," Frank urged,

his pale eyes betraying his amusement.

"Ah, yes...one moment, please," Miyuki bowed to the man then

hurried over to Natsumi and handed her the man's card.

Natsumi called it in, then they waited for hear back from

Headquarters, only to straighten up when a voice came on the

line angrily informing them that the man in question had a

security rating and was not to be interfered with.

Frank stood where he was hearing the static from the other end

as he took note of the way both girls snapped to attention,

actually saluting as though their superior were in front of them

upbraiding them for interfering in an officially approved matter.

When the chewing out was done Miyuki hastily came back and

returned the card with an apologetic, "I am so sorry, sir...if you

had only explained that you were on official business..."

"Don't worry about it," Frank said as he put his card back in his

jacket pocket then said, "You two were just doing your duty and

didn't know any better. I'll have a word with your superiors to

make sure it gets overlooked. It's been a real pleasure meeting

you, but if you don't mind I've got that official business to attend

to, so if you will excuse me."

"Of course," Miyuki bowed again, "And enjoy your visit to

Japan."

"Thanks," Frank mounted his bike and started the engine up

again as he replaced his goggles, "I always do, at least since they

opened the place up to tourists."

In his ear he heard a feminine voice chide him, "(You enjoyed

that way too much.)"

"(Well hey,)" he softly replied, "(It was fun, and those two are

real cute, especially that saucy one who diagnosed you at a

glance.)"

An entirely feminine snort of derision was the reply in his ears,

while Frank turned his attention to the digital display in his

goggles, which were counting down the time to estimated

landfall as just over three hours and closing. He accelerated

forward as he checked the reference displays to confirm the

estimated location of anticipated landfall, then cross-checked it

with the shortest land routes to arrive there with plenty of time

to take recon of the surroundings.

Behind him Natsumi shook her head and said, "That is one very

strange dude. Think we'll be seeing him again?"

"I'd count on it," replied Miyuki as she got back into the car and

started up her engine, "We're going to follow him and see what

he's up to."

"WHAT?" Natsumi reacted, "Have you flipped out on me,

partner? If he's working for the government then any

interference on our part..."

"Who said anything about interfering?" Miyuki replied

reasonably, "I just want to know where he is going in such a

hurry."

Natsumi heaved a weary sigh born of long experience around

her partner, knowing how impossible it was to talk Miyuki out

of anything once her mind was made up. Instead what she

murmured was, "There go our pensions..."

Hinako Ninomiya was doing her best to calm the students of

Furinkan High School, all the while wondering where Principal

Kuno was, and secretly glad that he was absent. The teacher

was less than pleased that the man was missing during an

important crisis that had interrupted a typical school day (which,

come to think of it, was pretty typical in itself at Furinkan) while

at the same time not missing him at all as he was often more of a

nuisance to public order than many of their students.

"This simply will not do," she said to a fellow teacher, "Bad

enough that some students have yet to be located, but for the

Principal himself to be tardy during an emergency evacuation?"

"Maybe he got caught in the rubble," her fellow teacher

suggested, almost sounding hopeful, which provoked a scowl

from Hinako, even though she could hardly fault the sentiments

behind the statement.

"We don't yet know how extensive the damage was," Hinako's

frown deepened before adding, "Does anyone here know what

caused this in the first place?"

"I'd heard it was a giant lizard rampaging through the school

building, Hinako-Sensei," one of the students at the front of the

class lines remarked, trying to pretend that he had not been

forefront among the students who had fled from the creature.

Hinako sniffed dismissively at that, "I mean the real reason, not

some silly rumor somebody started to disrupt school order..."

"I really mean it, Sensei," the boy said earnestly, "There really

was a monster...you can ask anyone else who saw it, it was huge

and scaly..."

"Hmph," Hinako said derisively, "As if I wouldn't notice a thing

like that running through my hallways. If you don't tell me at

once what kind of impractical joke you students are attempting

to pull here I am going to get cross and..."

"But there is a monster, Sempai!" the student now had an edge

to their voice to match a dawning look of panic, "Honest! I saw

it chase some students into the Cafeteria, right before it

exploded."

"I see," Hinako nodded sagely, and then her eyes went wide,

"Exploded? But...what about the Ice Cream?"

"It's probably gone," one of the female students noted, "Along

with half of the kitchen."

"Oh no!" Hinako wailed, thinking of the lovely triple-fudge

sundae she had been looking forward to when her free period

would come up in another few minutes. The thought of losing

her chance filled her with grief and a sense of looming outrage.

"It does no good to get upset about things we cannot do anything

about," a pleasant voice remarked, causing Hinako to look up

into the luminous purple eyes of an unearthly beauty, "Besides,

if something is not done very soon you people will have

something else much worse to worry about in another few

hours."

"Who are you?" Hinako frowned, "Are you a teacher?"

"Only in the most figurative sense," the woman replied with a

gentle smile, "Your friends have need of your services. Go to

them at once and I will see to it your students do not go astray in

your absence."

"Someone has need of me?" Hinako asked with raised eyebrows,

"But who...?"

"Your big sister, of course," the purple-eyed woman smiled,

"The one who shares a curse that causes her to change into

something other than what she appears on the surface."

"Tendo Nabiki?" Hinako gasped, then turned to her students and

said, "Class, obey this woman until I get back! Do not move

without her permission!"

With that she turned and started running as fast as a girl who

looked twelve years old could manage while the one whom she

had been speaking to smiled then said, "Almost too easy. I hope

Tendo san does indeed manage to come out from this one intact,

I so rarely get this sort of challenge in these times," she smiled

as she turned to her new charges, giving them all a patented

glance that read them Akashically before she began,

"Class...who here knows anything about a game called

Poker...?"

"Oboy," said Ranma, "That guy's already as big as a building.

How are we going to deal with that?"

"No problem," the redheaded Thor-chan replied as she reared

back with her hammer, "I'm an old hand at taking down giants-

OW!"

"How is that again?" Ukyo glared at the cursed redhead as she

held up her huge spatula with a look of warning, "Were you

about to hurt my baby?"

"Ucchan?" Perfume blinked in disbelief at the possessive tone of

her beloved.

"I think somebody else besides that lizard got imprinted back

there," Nabiki turned to her friend and fellow iinazuke,

"Ukyo...we have to talk..."

"I know he's big," said Ukyo defensively, "And mindlessly

destructive, but he's still a child after all! He's not responsible

for his actions..."

"Tell that to the authorities," Aiko nodded towards the block

where the fish market had been standing, where sirens could be

heard as police cars converged on the area to try and seal it off

from every angle.

"Oboy," Akane said averred, "Somehow I don't think that's

going to help much..."

"Can't we make them understand that it's not a good idea to

attack him?" Ryoga wondered.

"Good luck," Urd remarked, seeing how the police had already

drawn firearms and were pointing them at the creature,

"Somehow, though, I don't think they're gonna listen."

Indeed the creature began to extricate itself from the building,

which naturally alarmed someone enough that they discharged

their firearm from reflex, which set up a chain reaction as other

police fired up at the fifty foot tall lizard, which only served to

anger the beast as it reacted to the sting of pelting slugs

bouncing off its thickening hide.

"Baby!" Ukyo cried in alarm.

"Don't bother," Hercules said, nodding to the police, "That was a

real mistake...the thing's got a hide like Kevlar. You need

something a bit stronger to penetrate to a vital area."

Indeed the creature shrugged off these futile attacks and

lumbered out into the open to lash out at the petty creatures who

were annoying it with bee stings. As it reared to counter attack,

however, it paused as it heard Ukyo's cry, which distracted it

away from it aggressive assault so that it instead moved forward,

stomping through the mass of police cars as though they were

minor obstacles to its path while the police themselves moved to

get out of its path.

"Uh oh," Nabiki averred, "Don't look now, people, but it's

coming this way."

"Should we run?" Ranma asked practically, even though the idea

of cowardice was normally quite foreign to his nature.

"No point to it," Hercules replied, "It can move faster than you

guys."

"Scatter!" Nabiki shouted as she sought to dodge away, "Don't

bunch up in groups, maybe we can confuse it!"

Everyone but Hercules, Thor and Aiko moved away in all

directions as the creature loomed over them, but of a sudden it

shifted directions and oriented once again towards Ukyo.

Perfume saw this and moved to intercept, only to find herself

knocked aside by a glancing blow of its tail as it whipped past

her with the sudden turn. Ranma managed to duck low while

Nabiki vaulted over the tail and Ukyo dodged back, only to trip

unexpectedly and land sprawling at the feet of the creature.

"Ucchan!" Ranma cried as he straightened up in time to see the

creature bend down over Ukyo, but his attempt to move forward

was restrained by Nabiki, who interposed herself in the way and

said, "Hold up a minute, Ranchan...I don't think she's in any

danger."

Indeed the creature was making plaintive noises as it bent down

over Ukyo, wuffing once again like a giant puppy. Aiko started

to move to her aid but Ukyo waved her away and said, "It's

alright! I'm not hurt. He doesn't want to hurt me, do you

Baby?"

The creature made a sound as if in reply to this, then it reached

out with a clawed foreleg and gently touched Ukyo's

outstretched arm. It lowered its massive head until it was only

inches away from her, and Ukyo got back to her feet, nursing

her ankle by hopping on one leg as she reached up to pet him,

eliciting a throaty noise of approval.

"Will you look at that?" Thor marveled.

"Kinda hard not to," Hercules said in the same tone of

amazement.

Ryoga saw the police slowly advancing and turned with both

arms raised, "Stay back! Let us handle this, please!"

"Are you all right?" Akane asked Perfume, who was sitting up

with a look of surprise on her face.

"Yes," Perfume blinked, looking at herself with astonishment, "I

am all right...but how...?"

"Let's table that question for the moment," Nabiki said evenly,

"Nobody do anything to alarm the creature. Let Ucchan handle

this...she seems to be the only one it favorably responds to."

"Hmm," Principal Kuno mused as he rubbed his chin absently

with his fingers, "Now that you mention it, he wouldn't make

too bad a Mascot after all..."

"Well, what do you know?" Urd remarked, "It really is just an

overgrown baby after all. It doesn't want to cause trouble, it just

wants love and attention."

"Kind of like you," remarked Sif.

"Exactly," Urd blinked, "Waitaminute..."

"Eep!" Thor-chan remarked and ducked behind Hercules, who

arched an eyebrow.

"Where did you come from?" Urd demanded.

"Vanaheim," Sif replied, "But I'm Asgardian by adoption. I've

been looking all over for you people since I lost track of you a

while back. What happened to Algonquin...and have you seen

Thor anywhere about?"

"Well," Hercules started to say when Thor-chan punched him in

the kidney, causing him to wince as he continued, "Not for the

last few minutes, now that you mention it, no."

"That idiot," Sif sighed in frustration, "He can get himself so lost

at times, but I guess I shouldn't worry. He can basically handle

himself in most situations, I just wish he'd think once in a while

before he jumped into things he sometimes can't handle. I swear

he can be as stubborn as one of those goats who pull his chariot

sometimes..."

"I am not!" Thor-chan protested, then clasped her hands over her

mouth with a look of near panic.

Sif was only just starting to react to this when the sound of a

helicopter flying overhead distracted them all. The creature

turned an alarmed look at the flying object slowly circling about

the area, and then he moved forward and snatched up Ukyo with

one claw, heaving her up to its chest as it reared to its full height

with a bellow and started to move forward again, stomping on a

parked car in the process.

"Ucchan!" both Ranma and Perfume cried together.

"That's it!" Aiko cried, "No more sitting on the sidelines! I don't

care what that girl says, that bad boy is going down for the

count!"

"Hey, wait a minute!" Hercules called out as Aiko leaped into

the air like a guided missile and in two broad steps interposed

herself directly in the path of the creature.

"Gotta admit," Thor-chan remarked, "She does takes after you."

"Yeah," Hercules winced, "That's the problem. Remember how

it reacted the last time?"

Indeed the creature suddenly halted as it sensed something

different about the tiny figure confronting it in such an

aggressive manner. It sniffed the air as if to form a question,

then reared back as if in recognition and turned to the side,

heading towards a narrow alleyway that it could not possibly fit

into, smashing its way as it widened the canyon.

"Hey, come back here!" Aiko cried as she charged after the

creature, which vanished abruptly in a cloud of dust that was

equal parts caused by collapsed brick and mortar. Aiko

unwittingly plunged too far ahead of where she had intended,

losing the creature and herself unexpectedly as the nearby walls

of the two buildings began to collapse towards her. She looked

up in dismay, sensing what she could not see as several tons of

building came down on her without warning.

"Aiko!" Akane cried out, "No!"

"Tartarus," Hercules snarled as he rushed forward towards the

mounting pile of debris, plowing into the rubble and digging

through the wreckage as though it were Styrofoam, only to find

in his surprise that Thor-chan was right beside him in sifting

through the rubble.

"Hey, I got nothing against the kid," Thor-chan remarked when

she saw his questioning look, "Even if she is related to you. I..."

The rubble sifted, forming a dome in front of them as the two

Gods stepped back to watch the rubble clear all by itself. A

figure appeared out from under an invisible umbrella that the

debris just seemed to magically slide off, wearing a revealing

form of leather-like armor that came complete with a space-age

helmet through which the face of Beatrice could be seen.

She looked down at a slightly disheveled Aiko, who was on her

knees with arms raised in deflection, only to look up at the smile

of her erstwhile school rival and bitter enemy-turned ally as

Beatrice said, "Consider this my way of returning the favor."

"Beiko?" Aiko slowly got back to her feet, looking more mussed

than injured as she gave the silver-haired girl a questioning

lookover, to which she finally sniffed and said, "Well...what

took you?"

"I was in the area following the trail of destruction when I

sensed you needed me," Beatrice replied, "As you can see I took

the time to dress for the occasion this time. No sense being

caught unprepared a second time, eh?"

"You had that thing tucked away inside your locker all this time,

didn't you?" Aiko frowned, "And who says I needed you? I

could handle a little thing like a building..."

"Better than I could unarmored I have no doubt whatsoever,"

Beatrice replied with a genial smile, "Just the same it is good to

see you well, Alison."

"Uh..." Aiko glanced away and colored slightly.

"What's with the outfit?" Nabiki asked as she and the others

finally caught up with the action, "I take it this isn't just your

idea of a fashion statement?"

"Hardly," Beatrice flexed her arms and displayed her physique

to interesting effect that made the males present study her more

appreciatively, much to the annoyance of their female

companion (including Thor-chan, who failed to notice the look

Sif paid in her direction), "Akagiyama Armor, one of my more

successful inventions. This bolsters my natural abilities to

nearly twice Aiko's usual level of performance. It also has a

number of handy devices built in, such as the forcefield

generator I used to deflect part of that building."

"Neat," Akane looked her over with a smile, "How does it

work?"

"Can we stick to the problem at hand?" Ranma looked around,

"Where'd that monster get off to with Ucchan?"

"Good question," Nabiki glanced down the ruined alleyway, "I

take it the creature did not just vanish into thin air. It must have

gone somewhere, perhaps on the other side of the building."

"I'll go have a look," Beatrice replied, and then she sprang into

the air and flew high over the buildings while Aiko glanced after

her with a curiously haunted expression.

"Wow!" Ryoga marveled, "Did you see that? She can fly!"

"Obviously," Perfume said, turning a look back down the

alleyway for a moment before saying, "Somehow I don't think

she's going to find it on the other side."

"My thoughts exactly," Nabiki nodded, "It's gone to ground all

right, the only question is...where?"

"Gone to ground?" Hercules blinked, "You don't mean...?"

"Sempai?" Ryonami said as she finally got the courage to step

forward, Gosunkugi hovering close nearby like an own ready to

spook at any moment.

"Oh, sorry Ryo-chan," Nabiki turned back to her aid-de-camp,

"In all the excitement I forgot that you had something you

wanted to show me."

"Here," Ryonami said as she passed the printed sheet of paper

that she had been clutching in her hands the whole time that she

had followed the antics of the others, then she dutifully waited

for Nabiki to read it, seeing her Sempai's expression tighten

slightly after another few seconds.

"What is it?" Ranma asked her.

"Nothing to worry about right now, Ranchan," Nabiki replied,

moving her eyes but not her head to glance towards Principal

Kuno with a meaningful nod that she hoped he would correctly

interpret. She carefully folded the paper up and slipped it into

her shirt, then gave Ryonami a curt nod and said, "Good work.

I'll speak with you both about it later."

"Hai, Sempai," Ryonami agreed while Gosunkugi just looked

more worried than ever, if such a thing were conceivable.

"Now there's only one problem," Nabiki sighed, "Finding the

creature is going to be a lot harder now, but I don't think

Ucchan's in any immediate danger."

"What do you mean harder?" Ranma asked, "It's over five

stories tall, Nab-chan!"

"Your iinazuke is correct," Beatrice remarked as she came

floating down to the slight hum of some manner of engine, "The

creature is no where to be seen on the other side of these

buildings and has most definitely taken refuge in the one place

where we cannot immediately pursue it. A clever strategy,

almost as if the thing has above-average animal cunning..."

"What are you talking about, Beiko?" Aiko asked her, "How

does a thing that big just disappear like that?"

"I will show you," Beatrice replied and promptly led the way

through the rubble-strewn alleyway, indicating a large collapsed

wall through which they could see the massive hole torn into the

floor, more than big enough for a fifty-foot creature to disappear

through.

"This thing burrows?" Thor-chan remarked, "Bloody hell! That

means it must have found its way into an underground sewer..."

"You are correct," Beatrice replied with a nod, "It is now

underground, having discovered the artificially created tunnels

that underlie Nerima. I dare say, judging by the speed with

which it moves, even when carrying a passenger, that it could be

almost anywhere by now. This makes tracking it down into a

priority, so who here would like to go on a little Monster hunt

down where it's dank, dark and dangerous?"

"The three 'D' Words of monster hunting," Hercules snorted,

"It's my specialty. Can't be any worse than fetching Cerebus to

the Vet for his bi-Centennial shots."

"Hey, you're not the only Monster Hunter on the block here, you

know," Thor-chan snorted.

"But how will you find it if it's gone underground?" Akane

wondered.

"Good question," Nabiki replied before she and everyone else

turned a glance towards Perfume, who reacted with a terse,

"Why is everyone looking at me like that? Of course I'll find

my Airen! As if there were any question," she glanced at the

hole with a nervous expression, "I just hope it's not too wet

down there," she shivered slightly.

"Well now," remarked a very wizened voice in some amusement

as they turned to see Cologne appear amid the rubble,

accompanied by Happosai and the rest of their curious

entourage, taking in the sights of massive devastation all around

them, "I take it you're about to try and find the creature in its

lair? I do not think that would be such a good

recommendation."

"GAH!" Hercules responded with a start before giving Cologne

a more careful look, after which he sighed, clutching at his heart

before saying, "Whew! For a moment there I thought you were

somebody else, Granny. Almost scared me out of a millennium

there..."

"Who did you think she was?" Thor-chan asked, "Mother old

age of Jotunheim?"

"Close," Hercules replied, "I'll tell you about it later..."

His tone trailed off as he suddenly set eyes on Genma, who was

leaning forward while adjusting his glasses slightly as he and the

others took in the large hole at the base of a building. In a very

faint tone Hercules murmured, "It can't be..."

"What all have we been missing, Nabiki-chan?" Soun asked of

his daughter.

Nabiki sighed, "I don't where to begin, father..."

"Hey, Kuno-kun," Ranma smiled, "You feeling all right, old

buddy?"

"Saotome," Kuno smiled, "I feel that it is safe to say that I have

never felt better."

"Hey son," Principal Kuno smiled, "How's it hangin'?"

"Father," Kuno replied in tones of neither warmth nor

indifference before turning his gaze back towards the dark

haired slender girl he had come with.

"The thing went down there?" Natsume asked as she was stared

at the hole, as did the other new arrivals, including her younger

sibling.

"Seems that way," Akane smiled, giving her cousins a friendly

nod of greeting, "You guys won't believe the kind of day we've

been having..."

"That good, huh?" Kurumi replied with a faint smile, "Guess

you'll have to fill us in on the way..."

"Not so fast," Happosai said gravely, "Following the creature

where it's gone is no light matter for you young students. At the

rate the thing is no doubt growing it will soon be too large to fit

in the sewer system, and it will have to come back to the surface

soon enough in order to eat its fill when it gets hungry again.

That's how we can trap it."

"But it has Ucchan," Ranma protested.

"The cute chef?" Happosai gave Ranma a studied look, "If it

hasn't harmed her already she's probably in no real danger. This

isn't the first time something like this has happened you know..."

"What?" Nabiki turned towards him, "You've got to be kidding,

Grandfather! You've seen this creature before?"

"Not this one," Happosai said, "But others like it. It happened

before any of you kids were born, and if we don't do something

very soon it could mean the end of Nerima, maybe even the

human race itself over the whole planet."

"Isn't that kind of Apocalyptic?" Aiko asked, "One overgrown

lizard can't be that big a problem..."

"That is where you are wrong, Aiko," Beatrice said gravely,

"The Legends say Typhon the Destroyer once came very close

to ending life upon this planet before the Gods imprisoned him

for what was supposed to be forever..."

"You got that right," Hercules nodded while still keeping wary

eyes on a clueless Genma, "It was supposed to be forever, but

somebody obviously either dropped the ball, or else..."

His tone trailed off, leaving Urd to ask, "Or else what?"

"Or else someone deliberately planted that egg where somebody

was bound to one day find it," Hercules said gravely, "I smell a

rat, and I think I know which one is behind all this."

"Well?" Thor-chan asked, "Don't keep us in the dark, old buddy.

Who are you pointing the finger at, or do you intend to play

twenty questions?"

Hercules shook his head slowly, "I'd rather not say aloud,

somebody's bound to hear it and get alerted. If it's who I think it

is she's bound to make herself known sooner or later."

"She?" Cologne regarded the Olympian with a studied look, "I

take it by this that you are implying that it is a relative of yours

who took the egg from where it belonged and brought it to

Nerima."

Hercules nodded, "You got that right, Granny. The problem

with my family isn't figuring out who would have the means and

motive, it's more like eliminating the cast of probable suspects to

narrow it down to one candidate in particular, and when Dad

finds out she's behind this somebody's in for a much-deserved

spanking."

"I wish you wouldn't talk in riddles like that," Sif remarked,

"Now what was that again about luring the creature back to the

surface? I suppose you intend to bait a trap of some sort?"

Nabiki nodded, "First we'll need to round up the right sort of

cheese...or should I say Fish? Second part will be knowing

where to set the trap, and how to ring the dinner bell to bring

Junior running."

"I suggest we concentrate on where we are going to find enough

fish to satisfy its appetite," Beatrice remarked, "Such a quantity

as we'll need could wind up costing a fortune."

"So?" Aiko asked, "Just give your Dad a call and tell him to

open up his wallet."

Beatrice shook her head slowly, "I am no longer on such good

terms with my father that I could rely on him for that, even if I

could make him understand the severity of the situation."

"Hmmm," Thor-chan mused, "A load of fish, huh? I think I

might be able to solve that little problem. Tell you what, you

guys worry on how to capture the creature and I'll go bait the

right hook..."

"Make sure you use the right bait this time, dear," Sif mused

with a studied expression.

"Hey, I always use the right..." Thor-chan blanched, turning a

guilty look in the blond Goddess's expression, "Uh..."

"I am not stupid, you know," Sif said crossly, "It's taken me a

few minutes to put everything together, but now I've finally

figure it out," she glared at Thor-chan, "Just how long have you

been back on this Earth, Thorilla?"

There was a very long pause and then everyone at once

responded, "Thorilla...?"

Continued.

Comments/Criticism/Zen and the Art of Monster Motorcycle

Maintenance: shadowmane

The stage is set, the menu has been read, now guess who is

coming to dinner? Be there!

Nabiki 1/2,

A Very Scary Thought

(An Altered Destiny)

by

Jim Robert Bader

Chapter 29, Part 3.

(Inspired by the Works of Rumiko Takahashi & Others)

4:54 PM-South China Sea, Japan.

Frank stood atop the bluff overlooking the beach and stared out

at the ocean with a pair of specially made high-tech binoculars,

scanning the coastline for the inevitable wavemark.

"Time to arrival?" he asked.

"Six minutes, thirty-two seconds," came the instant reply from

his only companion, "We have the area cordoned off and all

potential civilians have been cleared on a pretext of chemical

contamination, as you requested. All forces are on standby

awaiting your go ahead."

"Tell them to hold off until I green light the operation," Frank

replied, adding in a more sour undertone, "I don't want any

gung-ho hotshots acting prematurely. This guy set the definition

for the word Tough and nothing short of a baby nuke can scratch

his hide. The popguns these people use wouldn't do much more

than annoy the sucker, just like all the previous occasions when

we did this dance."

"Only this time you're the one in charge, Boss," his companion

said, "Magnus has given you full authority to handle this any

way you like. Right now even the Prime Minister and full Diet

couldn't stop you if they tried..."

"That's because I know what I'm doing this time," Frank replied

with a dull snort, "That sucker is on a direct course this way, and

at the rate he's moving he's definitely got a destination in mind.

Have you finished those calculations?"

"Sure have," the feminine voice replied, "If he keeps to his

present heading he'll be headed into the suburbs outside Tokyo,

and my estimate puts his probable goal to be in Nerima."

"Nerima?" Frank lowered his glasses with a puzzled look,

"What's he want there of all places?"

"Unknown," the voice informed him, "But my calculations put

him square in the middle of the place, and once he hits land he

can be there in a half an hour."

"Then we'll just have to be a little faster," Frank frowned before

sniffing, "Nerima...why am I not more surprised? I've been

avoiding that place ever since his last big appearance."

"By the way," the tone of his companion took on a decidedly

frosty edge, "Those two new admirers of yours are still watching

us from what they seem to think is a discrete distance..."

"Leave them alone," Frank instructed, "They're not doing us any

harm, and pretty soon they'll have something else to worry about

besides us. Besides, I kind of like that cute one, and it's nice to

know I'm not losing my sex appeal, even at my age."

"Whatever," the feminine voice grunted, "By the way, those

MIB guys are here."

"I can hear them driving up," Frank replied, raising his

binoculars to his eyes once again as he used the Thermoptic

imaging scan to check for slight wave formations, "Tell our

forces to mobilize around Nerima. I want complete

containment, total news blackout, the works. If necessary start

evacuating civilians from the probable area you estimate to be

ground zero." He paused another minute before he spoke again,

"Greetings, gentlemen. You've been expected."

"We figured as much," said one of a pair of men in three piece

suits wearing dark sun glasses who got out of a black sedan car

and moved to join Frank in his lonely vigil, "Long time no see,

Stein."

"Too bad it couldn't be longer," Frank replied without turning

around, "Who's the rookie?"

"Me?" said the other man in a three-piece suit, surprised at being

singled out in such an off-handed manner, "Ah...I'm nobody..."

"That's Jei," the first man said, "He replaced Toe several months

ago. Refer to me as Kei, like always..."

"Fine," Frank snorted, "Just call me Steen-berg instead of

Steinberg. Now what are you clowns doing in this neck of the

woods? I'm running this show, not the MIB. Monsters are my

specialty, this isn't an Alien encounter."

"Maybe so," replied Kei, "But we've been informed that this

Monster's activities may impact on the suburban areas where

many Relocation cases currently reside. Given the nature and

status of some of the resident Aliens living around the Tokyo

area we'd like, if at all, to avoid an interplanetary incident. The

last thing we need is for some power like the Jurai or Oni to

show up demanding what became of their citizens. Big G has

been known to get a little out of hand whenever he plays

tourist."

"Point taken," Frank replied, lowering his glasses as he studied a

particular wave-form, then raised them to his eyes again and

took a second measurement, "By the way, boys, say hello to

Shelly. She's my coordinator to the other agencies we have

deployed out in the field."

"Ah...?" the younger of the two dark-suited men looked around,

wondering to whom the giant man could be referring. All he

could see on hand was some manner of vehicle that resembled a

Motorcycle in the same way that that a Chihuahua resembles a

Rockweiler.

"Relax, Slick," Kei replied, "He's referring to the Motorcycle."

"Pleased to meet you," said the huge motorcycle, "I'd shake

hands but...well...I don't have any."

"Model Twelve Self Autonomous Mobile Support Processor,"

Kei explained for the benefit of his companion, "Like the kind

used by the Knight Foundation-Excuse me-Foundation for

Law and Justice, go figure! Only Frank's version is more

sophisticated."

"She'll do everything for you but blowjobs," Frank noted in

passing, ignoring the rude comment made in response to this

characterization, "Now that we've got that out of the way, scan

that area over there and tell me what you see."

He passed the special binoculars over to Kei, who adjusted them

to suit his own more limited vision then said, "That's him all

right, big as life and twice as nasty."

"Him?" Jei asked, "Just what exactly is this thing you guys

keep...omhigod..."

Not half a kilometer away from the shore a sudden explosion of

bubbles erupted from the ocean depths as the water level seemed

to bob and weave dramatically, and then very slowly something

began to arise from those depths that looked like the top of a

small island.

"Right on cue," Frank said, "Big G is punctual, I'll give him

that..."

Jei's mouth hung open as the island continued to rise until it was

no longer visible as an island but rather resembled a large atoll

with two luminous eyes that were the size of tractor tires.

"Ugly, isn't he?" Frank sniffed, "And I ought to know. I'm

something of an expert on Ugly."

"Oh, I don't know," remarked Kei, "Compared to some of what

we have to deal with on a daily basis he could almost be

handsome."

"He...ha...who...how?" Jei remarked.

"You've been keeping him on a steady diet on that Island?" Kei

wondered more matter-of-factly.

"Enough to make him manageable," Frank replied, "I only work

with the Morpheus Foundation as an outside consultant, but I've

made a pretty thorough study of the guy. We're old adversaries

after all with a working relationship, monster to monster."

"Any chance he might recognize you?" Kei asked.

"Hope not," Frank replied with a snort, "I'm the one who gave

him his last Rectal Examination, and if you think it's easy doing

that with somebody his size..." he shook his head and

murmured, "My old buddy Igor had it right...there are some

things that a man just was not meant to know about..."

"Ah...?" Jei stared off at the creature, which by now was

emerging from the water with an almost audible sucking noise,

its huge mass thrusting itself so forcefully that it all but created a

tidal wave on the defenseless beach before it.

Meanwhile Natsumi and Miyuki had been watching Franks

meeting with the men in black with considerable interest,

especially as Natsumi had first proposed the notion that the three

men might be conducting a drug deal, which same Miyuki was

not so quick to surmise, murmuring, "Somehow I don't think

they went to all this trouble just for that. Clearing the beaches

of outside observers...it's like they're expecting something to

happen and don't want any witnesses."

"You mean like us?" Natsumi said somewhat uneasily, though

as usual she tried to cover for her uncertainty with a nervous

chuckle before she asked the next obvious question, "Well, if it's

not something like drugs, what are they doing all this for? I

mean, in the middle of the day they just up and close down one

of the most popular beach resorts in all of..."

That was when Miyuki gave a sharp gasp and straightened up,

adjusting her own binoculars as she stared out at the ocean and

gasped, "What is that?"

Natsumi sat upright on the hood of their car and tried to follow

her friend's gaze with unaided eyes, only finding the foaming

mass out at sea when it became so noticeable that she was given

to speculate, "Maybe a submarine breaking the surface?"

"That's no submarine," Miyuki slowly lowered her binoculars,

her face as bereft of emotion as her voice, "It's moving towards

us."

"Towards us?" Natsumi shaded her eyes with her hands and

started, seeing a dome-like crest appear as though an island were

rising from off shore, thrusting itself up higher and higher until

she stared without comprehending, her expression as stunned

with disbelief as Miyuki's.

"Gentlemen," Frank said as he turned and walked back to his

motorcycle, putting away the binoculars before reaching for his

goggles, "I do believe it's time we move on from here to our

next critical locale."

"Good idea," Kei turned and walked back to the car, "You

coming, Slick?"

"Ah...ah, yeah..." Jei very followed his partner's example.

"See you in Nerima, Stein," Kei nodded to Frank before getting

into the car and starting up the engines.

"Not if I see you coming first," Frank growled sourly as he

started up his own engine then said, "Let's rock and roll, Shelly-

chan. Big G is on the move and he's not doing any sightseeing."

"Boss," the Motorcycle Autocomputer spoke into his ear mikes,

"I've just computed new data from our agents in the field.

Looks like Big G isn't the only one on the move...there are

reports from Nerima that say they have their own resident

Lizard problems."

"What?" Frank growled, "You sure about this?"

"The reports say that a few hours ago a giant lizard appeared at

Furinkan High School, newly hatched from an egg no less that

had some Greek symbols on the side that they think might have

spelled the name 'Typhon.'"

"WHAT?" Frank's reaction this time was more violent.

"Don't shout at me!" Shelly protested, "I've already contacted

Doctor Bashiro and he confirms that one of the eggs held in

storage was recently found to be missing, but he can offer no

explanation as to how or why it vanished without anyone

becoming the wiser..."

"What's the matter with those people?" Frank all but swore,

"Can't they keep anything locked up...?"

"Uh...Boss?" Shelly replied, and Frank broke off on his angry

tirade as he sensed without turning around that SOMETHING

BIG was looming just behind him.

"Uh oh," Frank replied, giving into impulse and looking over

one massive shoulder to see the huge head that was trying to

orient on him with a particular intensity that was quite

disconcerting. Since the bluff the big man was currently

perched upon brought him closer to eye level with the creature

this was not as difficult a job, in spite of the fact that-compared

with "Big G," Frank was barely an eyespeck.

Without another word he gunned the engine and took off,

popping a wheelie. A massive roar could be heard throughout

the county as recognition finally set in and the so-called King of

the Monsters identified one of his least favorite subjects and

prepared to make known his particular displeasure. The fact that

his quarry went from Zero to Sixty in four-point-two seconds

alone prevented the huge reptile from the immediate fulfillment

of this singular objective.

Meanwhile two women perched atop the hood of their car

watched as the big man on the motorcycle hastily put some

distance between himself and the thing that simply defied

rational analysis. As the huge creature began to move its way

around the cliff bluff that thwarted its forward movement,

seeking an easier path towards dry land, this just happened to

bring it closer to where they were parked, which prompted

Natsumi to say, "Miyuki-chan?"

"Hai?"

"LET'S GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE!" Natsumi screamed

as they both rolled off the car and Miyuki started her engine,

managing to get them going in such time that she managed to

back out of the way from where a claw the size of a very large

house came stomping down as the creature sought to climb its

way up the side of the low hill.

Miyuki performed a near miracle of driving and got away just in

time while the creature ignored them completely and sought the

more annoying specter of the man on the motorcycle.

Unnoticed by almost everyone its scaly spines began to glow as

though manifesting a battle aura, and then the race was on to see

who would make it first to Nerima...

Sometime Earlier in the day: 2:14 PM-Nerima.

"Thorilla?"

"Don't get started on me," Thor-chan growled, "It's not my fault

Sif misidentified me with that Harpy."

"Who is Thorilla?" Urd asked as the three of them moved

through the city sewer system following the trail left by the

device Hercules still carried.

"Long story," Thor-chan growled, "The short version is that she

was this crazy chick from an alternate dimension where

everything was topsy turvy...you know what these alternate

dimensions can be like. In some versions that blond guy from

the comics is me and he speaks in Iambic Pentameter like a

refugee from Shakespeare, and in other versions somebody else

found my hammer in a cave and became Thor while I was stuck

incognito trapped in the body of a mortal."

"And in the version this Thorilla came from?" Hercules asked.

"A complete reverse of the natural order," Thor-chan huffed, "A

world where women were the dominant sex and guys like us

were pussy-whipped and struggling for recognition..."

"What?" Urd blinked, "How's that again? Are you pulling our

legs?"

"Don't I wish," Thor-chan said gruffly, "I have trouble believing

in it myself, and I briefly crossed worlds with Thorilla and got

the story first hand! In their world women take it for granted

that they're the superior sex because somewhere way down the

line in prehistoric times the culture that emerged in Europe was

organized around the concept of the Great Sky Mother and not

the Sky Father like in our version of things. In that world the

Vikings are like the Amazons and the Amazons were like the

Vikings."

Hercules took a moment in which he tried to picture the concept

then shook his head with a shudder muttering, "Zeus in

Drag...and Hippolyta a guy? No way can I see that...!"

"Anything you say," Thor-chan paused before maliciously

adding, "Heraklina."

Hercules winced while Urd gave him a wry look then mused

aloud, "I think I'd like to see that for myself. Next time they let

me near the Hall of Records I'm definitely going to cross-

reference the Paratime Universal Archive."

"Just be sure to give my regards to your counterpart," Thor-chan

sniffed, "You two have a lot more in common than you could

ever imagine."

"So..." Hercules said as Urd slowly reflected on that with a

puzzled look, "In the world where this...other you comes from

she's the heroic type, which means that Sif is a guy...?"

"I don't blame you for doubting me," Thor-chan grumbled

sullenly, "When I got back I got the story first hand how that

crazy maniac behaved while I was in her world. Sif was pretty

tight-lipped on the details, but I kind of got the impression that

something happened between those two that made her eye me

like it was my fault months after it happened."

"So...why Thorilla?" Hercules asked, "You could have come up

with a better alibi than that, even a better name, like Thorda?"

"You don't know Sif like I do," Thor-chan sighed, "When she

gets an idea in her pretty head it's usually better to just play

along and not put up too much resistance. It also saves me on a

ton of Aspirin the way she keeps borrowing my hammer to nail

me. I swear sometimes I should just give her the damned thing

and make it official..."

"Hold up," Hercules urged, raising a hand to stop their forward

advance as he stared at the device he carried, "I think we're close

to the Big T-Rex. Just a couple turns further ahead and we

should spot him."

"And what do we do when we find him?" Urd asked.

"One thing at a time," Hercules said, "Those mortals seem to

have some kind of a plan in the works, and the brainy one in the

Chinese outfit seemed to think we could lure it out into the open

to trap him, once we get enough fish to serve as the right

temptation."

"Leave that part to me," Thor-chan replied, "I've already put out

a request to an old buddy of mine, and don't bother asking how I

convinced him I was the genuine Thor."

"That just leaves one problem," Urd replied, "That device you

have for containing the creature once we get it out into the

open...?"

"Heph was pretty specific about the limitations of his

containment device," Hercules replied, "And I generally take his

word when it comes to technical stuff. That thing was already

too big to fit inside the dimensions he allocated. I was supposed

to capture it when Typhon was still in the egg, but somebody got

in the way and delayed me from arriving in time," he glared in

Thor-chan's direction.

"Oh, so now it's my fault, huh?" Thor-chan snorted, "So what do

you plan to do about it now, big boy? Call on one of your

relatives for back-up?"

"You got a better suggestion?" Hercules replied, "Like maybe

one of yours?"

"Well why not?" Thor-chan sniffed, "At least I get along with

my family, unlike that Incestuous bunch of Narcissistic

Hillbillies you laughingly call your immediate relations..."

"Hey!" Hercules rounded on the transgender Thundergod, "I'm

the last one to defend the honor of my family, and most of my

relatives would give Oprah Winfrey nightmares! We put the

Funk into the word dysfunctional, but even I have to admit that

that one or two of them can be pretty handy to have as allies on

special occasions..."

"Boys!" Urd interposed herself in what was developing into yet

another angry confrontation, "There's a much easier solution to

all of this. I'll just take that device to my sister Skuld and let her

work on expanding the containment field and that should resolve

the size problem. I may not always see eye-to-eye with my little

sister but I respect her genius, especially if I can convince her to

work together with her friend, Megumi."

"Well..." Hercules thought about it then exchanged looks with

Thor-chan, who shrugged and said, "Whatever...just so long as

we catch the big Iguana and return him to wherever it is these

Mortals keep their pets."

"Fine," Urd smiled as they started forwards again, "Now if that's

finally settled I'll just have a look at how big the creature's

grown so I can tell Skuld what sort of adjustments to make

and..."

She stopped in her tracks as she rounded a corner, her fellow

Gods crowding up behind her as they all stared at the sleeping

form in front of them with rounded eyes and for a moment only

silence filled the chamber...besides a loud rumbling snore from

the creature that is.

"Oboy," Hercules finally said aloud, "It's gotten bigger."

"Yeah," Thor-chan said in almost mute agreement,

"That's...pretty big all right...would you say maybe a hundred

fifteen feet from nose to tail?"

"Sounds about right," Hercules agreed, "I mean I've seen bigger,

of course, but at the rate its growing I don't think it'll stop

anytime soon."

"It ain't natural," Thor-chan agreed, "Gotta be some kind of

magic growth acceleration, but to fill that gullet takes a lot of

fish. I just hope my buddy Aegir can come through in time..."

"Skuld is not going to like this," Urd murmured faintly, then by

mutual consent the three deities took their leave of the spacious

storm drain reclamation chamber which was all but filled to

capacity by the giant creature...and one semi-conscious mortal.

Ukyo did not remember when she had lost consciousness, only

that a piece of debris had creased the back of her head at some

point when the creature was digging its way into a building. She

reflexively reached up to feel the resulting lump then took stock

of her present whereabouts, noticing the smell immediately

before she took notice of the warm leathery thing on which she

was reclining.

The creature was fast asleep in a chamber that was normally a

part of the water reclamation system in Nerima, and at present it

all but filled the alcove to capacity. Ukyo hoped that it would

not rain anytime soon as the likely rush of water would most

probably back up, not to mention drown her, with the baby

covering the intakes...

She had to check herself and mentally ask the question that

everyone else had been asking all day about why she was so

insistent on treating the gigantic creature like it was a human

baby. True the creature was newly hatched and behaved around

her in a docile and affectionate manner, but to everyone else it

was a rampaging instrument of wanton destruction, and she had

to admit that there were valid reasons for this opinion.

But then she looked into the sleeping, innocent face of the

creature against whose foreleg she was snuggled so warmly and

found her objections dissolving like mist. True that face was

now several times longer than her own body, but composed and

relaxed as it was she could see the gentleness there, the face of a

creature that intended no one any harm but was simply trying to

exist in a world to which it was a total stranger. The creature

was not responsible for its actions, could not hope to understand

that what it was doing was endangering others, could only sense

the hostility that some were directing towards it for merely

obeying the call of its own nature. The thing hungered for food

and needed a lot to sustain its growth, which was phenomenal to

be certain but was also not of its own devising and could only be

treated as a facet of its overall nature.

"Poor baby," she said aloud, her voice almost totally drowned

out by the sound of its throaty breathing and the thunder of its

heart, which she could feel as well as hear beneath her skin. She

reached out to pat its muzzle with a hand and felt the smooth

scales of leathery surface respond to her caress as the creature

all but shivered with a kind of knowing pleasure that radiated

security and comfort.

What was she to do in this situation? Ukyo knew the others

were doubtlessly worried about her, that Perfume and Ranma

would virtually tear the walls of the sewers apart trying to find

her, and that Nabiki was probably devising a strategy to find and

liberate her friend. As for the others, those strange beings

calling themselves gods, they were mostly concerned with

heading off a crisis they believed was caused by the very

existence of the creature. She knew that, one way or another,

the problem would not be solved so long as her baby remained

in Nerima.

But how to make Baby leave on his own? That was the million-

yen question to which she had no immediate answer. If she

knew something about the psychology or behavior of giant

lizards she might possibly be able to convince him to head out

towards the sea where there would be enough space and all the

fish he would ever require for him to sustain a comfortable

existence. He was at least as big as a blue whale and probably

had a capacity for survival in deep places beyond the realm of

human perceptions or else how could such a creature have

existed for millions of years? He might be the last of his kind, a

rare and endangered animal, and as such had to be protected for

the good of the environment. If only there were some way to

make him understand that his best interests lay elsewhere...but

how to communicate this thought to him?

"I won't let anything happen to you," Ukyo promised the

creature, and it almost seemed to her as if he understood her

intentions as it began to make pleasurable sounds in its sleep,

and she felt something like pure love radiate outward from its

very being.

Ukyo considered taking advantage of its slumbering state to

escape, but then thought better of it. She was in no immediate

danger and, if anything, she sensed that the creature would

actually fight to protect her. She was no Fay Wray to King

Kong and this was not some rubber-suited Monster Movie, this

was reality, or as close to it as she could recognize. Thinking

this Ukyo stretched out on the creature's arm and contemplated

the peaceful face with its massive row of stalagmite-like teeth

within easy reach of her fingers and felt oddly safe and well

nurtured by its nearness. Absently she placed her hands over

her own belly and wondered if the life growing inside her would

feel this sweet when she became as far advanced as Shampoo

was, and she drifted off to sleep with that thought, dreaming

dreams of prehistoric days when life had been simple, only a

matter of eating and sleeping in the sun, before there were any

humans in the world or those annoying pests who styled

themselves as gods and wondered in bliss if this were Eden

before the fall. It was a very nice dream, and the fact that she

visualized herself with claws and a tail hardly disturbed this

pleasure as her spirit roamed through the primitive veldt a full

head and shoulders taller than the tallest of conifers, a Queen

among giants, which was the natural order of all things...

Perfume paused where she was, having followed a different

route from that of the Gods to finding their quarry. The lizard

had not been difficult to track so much as it had been difficult

for her to filter out the stench of the waterway that she had

followed in order to reach him. She silently thanked the strange

silver-haired girl for the donation of her Nanobots else she

would doubtlessly have been wracked by allergies caused by the

hundreds of chemicals that saturated the air, to say nothing of

the pollen-bearing moss and fungus that grew so abundantly

everywhere. It was almost with relief that she picked up the

tangy, acid-like smell of the creature, finding this otherwise

unpleasant scent far more palatable than the others that it

displaced.

Of course finding the creature itself proved to be less of a

challenge than accepting what she saw as she looked down from

the storm drain to the chamber that opened out below her. The

entrance was all but blocked by a part of the creature, and from

what she could see of it Perfume determined its size to be at

least twenty times as great as when it had vanished into the

system.

Now Perfume was faced with a dilemma, having come this far

and knowing beyond certainty that her beloved wife was in the

next chamber in the company of the creature. All she would

have to do was somehow crawl through the narrow space not

covered by its mass and she would be reunited with Ukyo,

whom she knew to be alive as she would surely sense if the

Okonomiyaki chef had been harmed in any way by the creature.

The problem was that she had doubts that Ukyo would be

persuaded to leave at once, judging from her odd behavior

earlier in the day. The creature had acted to protect her when it

spirited her off, and Ukyo was treating the dragon as though it

were a child's pet in need of protection. Just finding Ukyo

would not be the same thing as convincing her to leave the

company of her pet so that others might dispose of it. She

needed a better argument to win her wife's cooperation. Ukyo

was as stubborn as any of her countrymen, and would

doubtlessly insist on staying beside the creature to protect it

from any harm, which would obligate Perfume in turn to either

knock her out or support her wife in this strange obsession, not a

welcome prospect in either event.

Besides that there was the plan that Nabiki was hatching which

had at least the potential to separate Ukyo from the creature.

Knowing its location was the first step in that plan, and Nabiki

was counting on Perfume to report back with the news. Perfume

respected her wife's iinazuke's iinazuke enough to believe that

the plan might work given everyone's complete cooperation.

Perfume was an Amazon Warrior who knew the value of

leadership enough to follow orders. She was also a woman

devoutly in love with another woman and willing to do anything

in order to protect her, so the conflict of her loyalties and

emotions waged on for the space of several score heartbeats.

What decided her in the end was realizing the risk involved in

directly confronting the creature on her own...most particularly

the risk to Ukyo should the confrontation turn violent. Better by

far to stick to the plan and hope for the best than to rush in there

like a lovesick fool and risk everything on the hope that she all

by herself could make a difference.

This decided Perfume withdrew, making the location in her

mind as she sought out the rest of the party. Ukyo would be

saved, she silently vowed, one way or another, but for now she

had to place her trust in Nabiki...

Aiko finished planting the old pervert against the wall of the

nearest building for the third straight time in as many as a dozen

minutes then said, "Explain to me again why we need this old

fart? I'd just as soon put him into orbit...around Pluto."

"He's the only one among us who has actually seen a creature

such as this before, Aiko," Beatrice replied nonchalantly,

"Besides which he is practically harmless for all his peculiar

fixations..."

"Harmless?" Sif arched an eyebrow, "If he comes at me again

he's going to see the undersides of Niffleheim. How can you put

up with such a disgusting creature?"

"Well," Nabiki shrugged as she surveyed the area that she had

selected for baiting their trap, "Gramps can be pretty annoying at

times, but he knows a lot of useful information, so we basically

keep him around in spite of his quirks."

"Quirks?" Ranma tossed a warning glance over his shoulder as

he saw the little man recover and he edged more protectively

close to Nabiki just in case the pervert made another grab for his

iinazuke.

"Why does everyone always pick on a poor old man who merely

wants to enjoy a few of life's pleasures in his old age?" Happosai

asked, then before anyone could reply he leaped at Sif, only to

check himself and make a dart towards Beatrice, planting

himself over her armored chest and nuzzling his face in the

exposed areas of her generous cleavage.

Beatrice's eyes went wide, but Aiko moved one step ahead of

her and pounded the little man flat with a hammer-like blow of

her fist, her face set in an angry snarl of outrage.

"You keep away from her, you got that?" Aiko hissed between

clenched teeth, then blinked her eyes as she saw Happosai begin

to move, "What's it take to keep you down, you old fossil? That

should have split your skull in half!"

"He's not entirely human it would appear," Beatrice said as she

regained her composure, giving Aiko a sidelong glance of

appreciation before turning her attention back towards the man

laying at her feet, "You say he is three hundred years old and

survived being trapped in a cave without food and water for a

full decade?"

"That's what my father and Uncle say," Nabiki replied, giving

the whole exchange a tolerant glance of barely contained

amusement, "I've had my own theories about how Gramps

seems to keep coming back like the Battery Bunny and at

present I'm leaning in favor of the notion that he is possessed by

a demon of lust. Sometimes I'm not sure who is in control of

their relationship, the Demon or the Pervert."

"Some heir you are, siding with these outsiders against your own

Master," Happosai said resentfully, "One of these days I'm going

to teach you some respect, Great Great Granddaughter..."

"Yeah, right," Nabiki sniffed, "Now all we need is for the other

teams to report back and we can get this show on the road. You

sure this creature will keep right on growing until it's as big as a

skyscraper?"

"That's what happened the last time," Happosai replied, "Shame

about the mess it caused before the Army and some government

people finally brought it under control. Gave a great boost to

housing industry in Nerima..."

"Just the pertinent facts, please," Nabiki pleaded, "Now...you're

saying this happened in the days when my Father and Uncle

were just a little older than me and Ranma? Why don't they

remember more than the bare minimal details?"

"Some strange guys in suits came along and made everybody

forget," Happosai said with a puzzled expression, "It seemed

pretty strange to me that folks could forget a thing like that, but

whatever was done to their memories didn't seem to affect me in

the least..."

"That would be the MIB," Beatrice remarked, "They do that sort

of thing all the time to people's memories. They have these

devices called Neuralizers..."

"Oh yeah," Aiko snorted, "Bloody things gave me a headache

when they tried to use them on me and Beiko...didn't work on

us, though."

"It seems that I am naturally resistant," Beatrice said with a sly

look at Aiko, "And you need a mind in order to forget things."

Aiko bristled at the insult, but Beatrice continued, "The

Neuralizer acts to inhibit short or long-term memory according

to the strength of the setting. A flash of energy is carried along

the optic nerves to disrupt the neural pathways having to do with

RNA memory implantation. It can literally wipe out memories,

but not the neural passages themselves, which remain folded in

their pre-set patterns so that it is possible to reverse the process

in certain cases."

"Why would they do that?" Ranma wanted to know, "Force

people to forget things?"

"I can think of a few reasons off the top of my head," Nabiki

eyed Beatrice with a guarded expression, "And you're saying

they could do this to the entire population of Nerima?"

"Through Television," Beatrice replied, "Selected impulses

channeled along on a carrier wave frequency at certain timed

intervals combined with key subliminal messages to create a

specialized blockage of certain memory associations so that the

ordinary person will be unable to concentrate and recall certain

things when they are mentioned. This was done after the

incident with the Oni last year where Ataru Morobishi won the

hand of their Princess Lum and saved our planet from

colonization."

"Ataru..." Ranma frowned, "What was that name again?"

"Morobishi," Aiko replied with a snort, "You see? You hear the

name once and suddenly you block it out of your mind. The

same thing happened the first time Ceiko's people attacked

Earth..."

"Indeed," Beatrice sighed, "I used to wonder why we two out of

all the people in Graviton City could remember that this

occurred when everyone else eventually forgot it had ever

occurred, which was odd considering the amount of property

damage and loss of life inflicted. Of course at the time we were

both rather occupied with other matters..."

"Yeah," Aiko snorted, "Good thing my folks didn't let me watch

a lot of TV at the time, not that it would've made much

difference in my case..."

"Yes," Beatrice observed, "Kryptonian DNA coupled with your

divine birthright gives you an almost Eidetic memory, while my

Nanobytes maintain the structure of my memory passages and

insulate me against the effects of the Neuralizer, so while

everyone else succumbs to selected amnesia, we are able to

remember key incidents in detail."

"But why do they do this?" Ranma asked in mounting

frustration.

"To keep us ignorant and blind to what's really happening in the

world, Ranchan," Nabiki said sourly, "Men in power have

always dreamed of having the ability to control the thoughts of

their citizens, and the ability manipulate memory is the ideal key

to any successful tyranny..."

"Only it's not a single government doing this," Beatrice replied,

"The MIB function independently of any elected authority. It is

a worldwide organization with vast material resources and the

manpower needed to keep the peace and protect the Earth from

what they term as the Scum of the Cosmos. They function with

complete anonymity like a paramilitary police force with the

power to not only enforce their will but to eliminate all evidence

of their existence. They were founded to act as the

intermediaries between the Earth and all alien contact situations

and consider themselves the first line of defense against invasion

and subversion..."

"Sounds to me as if they put themselves in a position to act like

Gods," Nabiki noted, then to the blond she added, "No offense

intended of course."

"None taken," Sif replied, "I'd be the first to admit that my

people are a bit high-handed in that regard, not that we need to

be all that manipulative. Still it is annoying to consider that a

group of mortals feel they can act autonomously to decide the

fate of their fellow mortals..."

"The MIB do not consider themselves as gods," Beatrice assured

everyone, "And it is against their official charter to interfere in

the politics of civilian elected government. Their aim is purely

to act as a combination police force and Witness Relocation

program for alien visitors living as residents on this planet..."

"Maybe so," Aiko frowned, "But they were one of the reasons

my parents decided to move to Japan in the first place. They

were getting a lot of heat back in the states from guys like the

MIB, all because Dad's an alien who landed on the Earth

decades before the MIB was founded."

"And for a while there he had too high profile a career for their

liking," Beatrice noted, "But they let him and your mother act

freely now since they have chosen to be more circumspect in

their approach to handling crisis situations. I don't blame you at

all for being resentful of this fact, Aiko, but you must

understand that they are one of the many reasons the authorities

here allow you free reign in your activities. Until recently I

could buy my way out of legal troubles for my excesses, but you

are virtually untouchable by the legal system because of your

parents, not to mention that normal facilities had no way of

containing a being of your nature."

"So the MIB seeks to keep us dumb and happy while looking

after what it considers to be our own best interests, eh?" Nabiki

frowned, "I definitely don't like the sound of that at all..."

"Nihao!" Perfume called out as she came trotting up to join

them, followed by Akane and Ryoga.

"Did you have success in locating Ucchan?" Nabiki asked,

seeing that the Amazon was in better spirits than would surely

be the case had she grim news to report.

Perfume nodded, "Yes, I found the spot where the Dragon is,

and like you suspected it's taken refuge at a terminus point in the

sewer system. I wanted to go all the way in there and confirm

that my Airen is all right, but I'm pretty sure I'd know it if Ukyo

were badly hurt or...worse. All we need to do now is find a way

to lure the Dragon away from my Ucchan..."

"Dragon?" Ranma replied.

"A close enough analogy," Nabiki nodded, "Good work, people.

Now stand by for phase two of the plan. Once the Gods get

back from their recon..."

"Somebody mention us?" asked Thor-chan as she and Hercules

appeared from seeming no where.

"Speak of the devil," Nabiki smiled, "In a manner of speaking.

You have any trouble finding him?"

"Couldn't miss him if we tried," Hercules nodded grimly, "He's

back there all right and as big as a ten story building. We figure

he may be as much as forty meters now and still growing."

"So big?" Nabiki frowned, "I didn't think he ate that much fish!

He must have a mass conversion rate that's close to ninety

percent efficient..."

"Ninety-three-point-seven," Beatrice replied helpfully, "Only I

doubt the creatures growth is entirely proportional to the amount

of raw food being consumed. Some of that mass may be added

by a Virtual conversion process that is entirely magical in

nature..."

"Can't you just for once use plain Japanese?" Aiko sniffed in

exasperation, "Say it's magical and leave it at that. The rest of

us don't have multiple degrees in biology and other fields of

science, Beiko."

"I'm still not clear on this, though," Nabiki insisted, "Why is the

creature doubling its growth every half hour? It's already a

thousand times as big as it was when it hatched around noon

time."

"Perhaps its development is being deliberately enhanced,"

Beatrice mused, "I suspect a hidden party is involved that has

been engineering the entire matter for an as-yet unknown

purpose. It might also be a part of this creature's natural growth

cycle manifesting as a steady size increase upon a very slight

bell curve..."

"Does that mean it will eventually reach a size limit...or just

keep growing?" Nabiki wondered.

"Oh, there is definitely a limit involved," Beatrice replied, "But I

would speculate that it will be another hour and a half at least

before it comes near to achieving this, by which point it could

very well be as long as a full hundred meters."

"That makes him in the same class as Fafnir," Thor-chan

concluded.

"Atlas could probably wrestle him like an alligator," Hercules

mused, "Anybody else...forget it."

"But doesn't this violate some basic rules of Physics such as the

Inverse Square Proportion?" Nabiki wondered, "A thousand

times the size versus only a hundred times the width and density

of bones and muscle..."

"The rule you refer to would only apply if you compared the

creature's biology to our own," Beatrice noted, "But nature

always seems to find a way beyond the limitations we would

impose on it, such as with the Bumblebee. Bone, muscle and

sinew do not necessarily have to be composed in the same way

in this creature as it would be in us. Indeed, I imagine at full

size the cartilage alone will be comparable to the tensile

cohesion of Platinum and more than easily compensate for the

stresses imposed by its mass..."

"There you go again," Aiko rolled her eyes, "Can't you just let

us take your word for it and spare us the technical mumbo

jumbo?"

Rather than be annoyed at the interruption Beatrice smiled at the

redhead before continuing, "Aiko can vouch me on the fact that

we encountered creatures of about this size and greater on some

of the worlds we visited during our three month odyssey in

space. In fact for a brief while there we were even earning a

living as professional Monster Chasers capturing specimens for

a traveling Xenobiological menagerie..."

"Can the travel talk," Hercules said as he raised a hand to cut

short the lecture, "That thing isn't getting any smaller while we

stand around here. Now are we going to do this thing or what?"

"Well excuse me Mister 'I've got my own TV show and you

don't,'" Thor-chan snorted, "I'm ready to do my part in this fix.

Give me another minute and I'll whip up that bait you wanted."

Thor-chan stood away from their group and lifted her hammer,

then called out the name "Aegir!" and swung the hammer in a

rapid arc that kicked up a wind suddenly, and a moment later the

heavens opened up to create a temporal portal.

The clear sky they had been enjoying darkened abruptly and

Nabiki looked up with alarm as she felt the first rain drops begin

to pelt her on her head, even as Perfume reacted with a start of

alarm at her own awareness of the impending deluge. Ryoga

stepped forward and unslung his umbrella to hold it up over her

before her curse could be activated and Perfume flashed the lost

boy a winning smile of gratitude that caused Akane to frown a

little.

Unfortunately no such umbrella was available to Nabiki, and

with a sigh of resignation she felt herself shift genders and mass

so that she soon stood even taller than Ranma with much

broader shoulders.

The reaction of the gods was immediate, but Hercules was first

to say, "Holy Chaos!"

"Oh my," Sif blinked, taking in Nabiki's transformed dimensions

with a studied look that brought a frown from Thor-chan's

direction.

"What the hell?" Aiko looked Nabiki up and down with a very

different kind of appraisal, one that did not elicit any such

jealous glance from Beatrice as the silver haired girl gave

Nabiki her own quiet appraisal, then smiled in realization.

"Jusenkyo?" she asked.

"You know about that?" Ranma asked.

"Of course she does," Nabiki said in disgust, "Everybody knows

about Jusenkyo! Why should you be the lone exception?"

"I'm sorry," Beatrice replied with a sincerely apologetic smile, "I

didn't mean to make you feel awkward, it's just that I've only

read about the place once, I've never been there or actually met

anyone who has until today. You change into a boy when you

get splashed with cold water?"

"And I change back with hot water," Nabiki looked down at

himself with disgust, "Makes life pretty interesting, and I seem

to have a certain talent for pleasing the ladies..."

"Nannichuan," Hercules murmured, "You have any idea how

long I searched for that place when I was still mortal?"

"If she has the Guy curse..." Thor-chan murmured slowly with a

speculative interest, then caught the glance Sif turned on her and

promptly returned her attention back to the dimensional portal

through which was now raining an endless stream of fish, which

she aimed at a clear area in the center of their containment zone.

After several long moments a considerable pile of assorted

poultry was assembled, forming a fifteen-foot high mountain of

fish, some of which were still moving as if only recently netted,

and then at last Thor-chan closed the portal and cut off the

remaining supply. As the storm clouds faded away and the sun

returned to the clearing Ranma and others held up their noses

and winced, all except for Perfume, who alone seemed to regard

the smell of fish as appealing.

"Nice work," Nabiki complimented.

"You had doubts?" Thor-chan grinned proudly.

Nabiki glanced around at his companions and said, "Could I

trouble anybody here for some hot water? I'd like to be myself

when we get to the final phase of my plan..."

"Allow me," Sif held up a hand and conjured a teakettle into

existence, then passed it over to Nabiki, who poured it over his

head, changing back to normal.

"What about you?" Hercules murmured to Thor-chan, "Need a

dash of hot water?"

The redheaded Thundergod almost panicked, "Are you nuts?

With Sif present..." she suddenly smiled a nervous look of

innocence as the blond haired goddess who was her wife turned

another puzzled look in her direction.

"Thank you," Nabiki said in relief as she handed the kettle back

to Sif, who made it vanish to wherever it had been conjured,

"Now all we need is a way to catch the creature once it gets a

whiff of all the seafood."

"Urd should be back soon enough," Hercules replied, "She went

to consult with her sister about fine-tuning Heph's device to

make it work even better."

"Indeed?" Beatrice said speculatively, "I would have been more

than willing to offer my own services in that regard. I'm pretty

handy at adopting strange technologies to suit short-term

needs..."

"Yeah," Aiko sniffed, "You could probably make an atom

smasher out of a box of Kleenex."

"Ah..." Perfume stepped forward as Ryoga put his umbrella

away, "Excuse me for bringing this up...but those...things you

used to heal me a while ago..."

"My Nanobytes?" Beatrice replied, "You have a question on

your mind? I assure you there is no danger of unpleasant side

effects..."

"That's just it," Perfume said, "I feel better than fine, in

fact...you um...may have helped me to overcome a lifelong

problem..."

"I see," Beatrice smiled, "No need to thank me just yet. The

Nanobytes I donated to you have a short life, but while they are

inside you they have no doubt been analyzing the data and have

effected repair work to improve and refine your neural structure.

They did something similar to me when I first adapted to having

them inside me...Aiko will testify that I used to be rather high

strung and given to volatile mood swings..."

"Not to mention homicidal urges," Aiko muttered under her

breath.

"What she doesn't seem to have comprehended is that the

Nanites have stabilized certain key elements of my brain

chemistry so that I now produce a healthy balance of Seratonin

and other important hormones necessary to calm and rational

function. That is why you have noticed that my behavior is so

much more sane than what you are used to, my dear Aiko. The

Nanites have corrected my genetic predisposition to

Psychosis..."

"Wow," Hercules mused, "If you could bottle and sell that I'd

take a dozen doses and pass them around to some of my

relatives just to see if sanity is contagious."

"I don't know," Aiko said dubiously, "The way you talk about

those Nano thingies it almost makes me wish for the old you..."

"I don't think you really mean that, Aiko," Beatrice smiled in a

way that made the air between herself and the redhead seem to

sizzle, "In fact my being sane has allowed me to realize

something very important that I should have seen before..."

A sudden burst of thunder with the hint of Ozone and everyone

turned to see a very angry Thor-chan glaring down at a crisp-

fried Happosai with her hammer raised to finish the task.

"For the last time, you little pip-squeak, hands off the

merchandise!" Thor-chan growled in menace as Happosai just

groaned before her.

"Grandfather," Nabiki sighed, "There is a little thing called

Hubris that I think you should be mindful of in the near future if

you want to survive what is left of the day. Living dangerously

like that will not help us end this crisis."

"Now she tells me," Happosai said weakly, barely able to move

so much as a finger while his body healed itself back at a

fantastically accelerated rate that proved once and for all that he

was only nominally human.

Hercules smiled as he glanced at Thor-chan and murmured,

"Not that I approve of the little twerp, but I can't say as I entirely

blame him for copping a feel there, good buddy. You look

absolutely darling."

"Just keep it up laughing boy," Thor-chan glared back,

"Payback's a bitch, and so am I, for that matter."

"Let's just concentrate on coming out of this alive, shall we?"

Nabiki urged the others, turning to look at the pile of fish as she

added, "Everything's in place except the last key players and

ingredients. When the others return, along with your friend,

we'll be ready to ring the dinner bell and bring the curtain down

on this little melodrama."

"And what about Ukyo, Oneechan?" Akane asked, "Will she be

all right?"

"I sure hope so," Nabiki could not help noticing the worried

looks in either Ranma or Perfume as she added, "In fact I'm

counting on it since she seems to have a special rapport with the

creature."

"We'll do our part," Hercules noted with a slight smirk, "For the

Halibut."

Thor-chan and Sif both winced as everyone else turned blank

looks towards the man god, except for Beatrice, who softly

commented, "That's Fishing for a rebuttal if I ever did hear the

straight line."

Aiko gave both her and Hercules wary looks then grumbled,

"Are you sure you two aren't related?"

"Not as yet," Beatrice replied with a smile that would have done

justice to the Mona Lisa, "But one can always hope for the

future."

To that the redhead could not formulate a reply, but she

privately decided that-when it came to a predatory nature-the

creature known as Typhon had nothing on the silver haired girl

who was making her feel so vulnerable and nervous, not that she

would have admitted to that effect as she decided that the

strangeness of the day was affecting her own thinking. There

was no way in Hell she could be this shaken up by her nominal

rival unless it meant that she was secretly starting to li-

ah...notice that when she smiled she looked a lot like their

beloved Ceiko. It was a ridiculous concept, of course, but she

was starting to grow anxious for a bit of monster whupping, or

anything that might take her mind off this bizarre turn of events

that was making her behave in so peculiar a manner.

Meanwhile, unbeknownst to them all, a figure was watching

them from afar and glaring.

"So, little brother," the figure muttered under their breath,

"You're so set on interfering with my plans, are you? Well, we'll

see about that when my little friend gets here to join the fun, and

then you and your mortal friends will see that it really isn't nice

to mess with Mother Nature...or her understudy..."

Continued.

Comments/Criticism/Xenobiology and the Art of Giant Lizards:

shadowmane

It's coming to a head very shortly-honest! When Titans meet

the battle lines will be drawn with the fate of Nerima hanging in

the balance...be there!

If you wish to check out my other works, Please check out my

Fanfiction webpage at: . or

it's mirror site at: ~

All related chapters of this series can be found there along with my

other works.


	30. Chapter 30

Nabiki 1/2,

A Very Scary Thought

(An Altered Destiny)

by

Jim Robert Bader

Chapter 30, Part 1.

(Inspired by the Works of Rumiko Takahashi and Others)

"Boss!"

"I see it!" Frank shouted as he abruptly slammed on the breaks

and veered sharply to the right as a wall of plasma exploded

onto the open road ahead of him, creating an instant

conflagration similar to Napalm.

"That was close," Frank remarked tightly as he fought to retain

control over his powerful machine while seeking a way around

the edge of the flame wall, fighting hard against his second

greatest phobia while the sound of distant thunder approaching

loomed like the Apocalypse behind him.

"Too close," his companion responded, "And aren't you always

the one who says Close only Counts with Flame Throwers?"

"Yeah, but old Halitosis breath isn't trying to nail us as such,"

Frank replied, "He's trying to cut us off so he can box us in and

finish this personal-like."

"Who this 'Us' you keep referring to, Pale-Face?" Shelly

sarcastically responded, "If memory serves right it's you he

wants to stomp into the pavement. I just want to live to see my

warranty expire before I do!"

"Keep your chassis intact," Frank urged the Autocomputer,

"We're not done yet..."

Another blast of intense flame all but obliterated the hillside that

he had been about to cross, forcing Frank to veer away with a

nervous, "On second thought..."

"Boss, he's almost on us!" Shelly sounded close to electronic

panic, "If we don't get moving again we're both gonna be toast!"

"I've been dead before," Frank said as he did a U-turn and

started to accelerate again, "It's no big deal. But I'm not giving

up just yet. Get ready on my signal to hit your turbo-jets. Give

me a fifteen second controlled thrust with deployed stabilizers,

that should be just enough to do the trick."

"We're going Evil Kenivel impressions this time?" Shelly

asked but put up no further debate as she automatically

calculated the necessary motion vectors and plotted the

trajectory curve for what her "Boss" was considering, then said,

"Everything's imputed. Just waiting for your signal."

Frank did not need to look up at the huge form looming over

him as he turned the bike around yet again and hit the throttle

for an all-out acceleration, popping another wheelie that lasted

until he was almost over the foreword line of the firewall before

crying out, "NOW! Hit the Jump Jets!"

The Monster motorcycle took off like a rocket as fire belched

out the rear end while certain parts of the vehicle deployed

themselves to form a stubby set of wing-like stabilizers to catch

the flow of air and hold the motorcycle steady. They gained

altitude quickly until they were fifty meters above the raging

inferno beneath them, and then physics took over as the jet burst

cut out, causing gravity to reassert itself as Frank braced for

impact and a very rude landing.

It turned out both his and the motorcycle's calculations were

nearly flawless as they just cleared the edge of the firewall

without losing stability and risking a possible rough landing.

The huge machine bounced on powerful shock absorbers as the

big man riding it clenched his teeth and rode out the spine-

jarring impact of their landing. Once he was certain they were

not going to tip over he said aloud, "Status report...did you come

through that all right, girl?"

"Aside from shaking my mainframe to pieces and aging me a

couple million cycles with that stunt?" his companion replied

acidly, which made the big man smile as he took that for a yes,

"I'm going to run a full diagnostic and give you a list for my

repair bill..."

"Put it on my tab," Frank risked a glance over his shoulder,

seeing the huge lizard behind them screaming out in frustration

at its quarry eluding it once again, "Think that got him rattled

too. I'll bet he was pretty sure he had us that time."

"We can't keep ahead of him forever," Shelly replied, "I know

you want to hold everything in reserve, Boss, but if we deployed

some choppers to run interference..."

"No," Frank said resolutely, "I won't endanger any more lives

than is absolutely necessary. Just have our people continue to

clear the tracks from here to Nerima. Big G's going to have to

take a detour around his own mess if he wants to avoid giving

himself a hotfoot. That should buy us enough time to get set up.

What's the word on that other Big Iguana?"

"Nothing so far," Shelly replied, "But our agents report that the

same group of local teens they spotted before appear to be doing

something in an area near the local water reclamation facility

that involves stockpiling a whopping big load of fish. It looks

like they're trying to lure the new guy into the open."

"Yeah?" Frank said with a thoughtful tone of voice,

"Interesting...sounds like somebody over there's got a plan in the

works. Give me the map coordinates to the place...I want to

meet whoever's got the balls to try something like this on their

own."

"We'll be there in under ten minutes at our current rate of

speed..."

"Sorry girl, but this time we can't afford to spare the throttle,"

Frank said simply, "I'm going to open you up all the

way...consider it a performance test of your new system."

"Why is it these field tests always wind up making me feel bow-

legged?" Shelley complained before adding, "In a manner of

speaking..."

Meanwhile, only a few kilometers away but keeping a steady

pace behind the looming Monster, two very agitated police

women were staring in disbelief at the thing they were

following. Though their minds cried out that it was impossible

the facts laid out before them could be seen in the form of large

pot holes the size of construction pits and a raging inferno

directly ahead of them that burned out of control, while the

Motorcyclist being chased by the Monster was making out like a

refugee from an American TV program.

"Have you been able to get through yet?" Miyuki asked.

"I'm trying!" Natsume swore in frustration as she adjusted the

radio dial to try alternate frequencies, "But all I get is static on

every channel!"

"Then it's what I feared," Miyuki said, "A total information

blackout. Looks like we're on our own after all, Natsume-chan."

"I can't believe we're doing this," Natsume turned to her partner,

"Miyuki, why are you having us go after that thing? Have you

gone completely mental?"

"It's endangering the public," Miyuki stoutly replied, "And there

has to be a very good reason for why Gojiro has returned after

all these decades..."

"Yeah," Natsume snorted, "We've gone over into the Twilight

Zone, and what do you mean Gojiro has returned? I thought he

was just some stupid guy in a rubber suit who appeared in all

those movies..."

"Those are just fictionalized accounts," Miyuki replied, "I've

come across old files that tell the real story..."

"Files?" Natsume blinked, "What files? What are you talking

about, Miyuki-chan?"

"I'm talking about the 'Zee' files," Miyuki replied.

"Zee files?" Natsume blinked, "You mean like on that really

weird American FBI show?"

"The same basic idea," Miyuki replied, "Those files were buried

in police archives dating from before all records were

computerized. I came across them when I was assigned to input

old files into our new computer system, and they were buried

pretty deep by a detective who retired from the force almost ten

years ago, laying out things he felt were being deliberately kept

from the public..."

"Okay," Natsume said, "Stop the car, this is where I get off!

You're telling me this is all part of some big government

conspiracy...?"

"Only it's not run by the government," Miyuki replied, "It's kind

of hard to explain, but there's this organization that's responsible

for covering up a lot of really strange things that happen all the

time around Japan, not to mention the rest of the world...'

"Oh sure," Natsume huffed, "Like some secret group could keep

things like Bigfoot and Aliens a secret! Next you'll be telling

them they're behind the decline of the Yen and the tumbling of

the markets..."

"I'm dead serious, Natsume-chan," Miyuki replied, "There really

is a shadow conspiracy that somehow made everyone forget

about Gojiro's previous appearances, but the Zee files say he's

been to Japan on three previous occasions and that somehow

everyone was made to forget about his rampages, the last one

occurring in the suburb of Nerima."

"Oh yeah? And how could everybody forget a thing like that,

huh?" Natsume snorted, "You think there's some army of PR

specialists going around playing Spin Doctor or waving a magic

wand that makes us forget about really bizarre things that

happen? Uh-uh, no way! You know as well as I do that the

government can't keep anything a secret..."

"Oh so?" Miyuki smiled enigmatically, "Then why have

intelligence services? Why not just hire reporters and let them

dig up all the secret information that's being kept from the

public? And what exactly do you think is being kept from us

anyway?"

Natsume frowned, suspecting her partner of laying one of her

usual word traps, "Uh...stuff like that?" she pointed at the

retreating form of the monster.

"And they're doing a pretty nice job of it, wouldn't you say?"

Miyuki asked sweetly.

"Um..." Natsume had to think on that, unable to come up with a

good rebuttal to the very existence of the Monster shape before

them.

"That's the really interesting thing about conspiracies," Miyuki

noted almost in passing, "Everybody really does know what's

going on, but most people prefer not to believe in the unusual

and fantastic and would much prefer for someone in authority to

tell them it's all a big lie and could never really happen. That's

how they're able to get away with some much, Natsume-chan,

the people let them. You don't have to work very hard to make

people forget something they'd rather not remember in the first

place."

Natsume was silent for a full minute before she huffed and

folded her arms over her chest, glaring at the now-distant shape

of the monster as she growled, "I hate it when you're right, you

always win the argument!"

"But you never stop trying," Miyuki commented with a sidelong

expression before scanning the road ahead, which was burning

so brightly that they could almost feel it inside their vehicle,

"Now come on, help me by looking at the map in the glove

compartment. We need to find another way to Nerima, this

one's totally useless."

"Nerima," Natsume huffed as she unfolded the map and began

to leaf through it, "First the Ronin and now this...what have

those guys done to deserve so much attention?"

"I don't know," Miyuki said with a wistful expression, "But I

sure hope somebody is looking out for our friends, because

they're going to need all the help they can find when Gojiro gets

there. I don't know about you, but I feel like a prayer. A little

divine favor might be what's needed at the moment..."

"Are you done yet?" Urd asked for the thousandth time.

Skuld threw down her sonic screwdriver and snarled, "For the

last time let me finish at my own speed, Oneechan! This isn't as

easy as it looks, you know! Adjusting the dimensional capacity

for a containment device like this require careful and precise

mathematical arrangement or you could wind up exploding the

thing, and that would sure make somebody's day, not to mention

get us all in trouble with the Central office!"

"Sort of like a Teserect bomb," Megumi mused as she continue

working on her end of the assembly with more calm and

patience than her dark haired companion, "Don't let Urd get to

you, Skuld-chan. She's just worried about her new friends

getting hurt by whatever it is she wants to catch in this device.

Actually the principle behind this containment field is pretty

radical, but it shouldn't be too hard to expand the radius to a full

cubic Hectare. The only problem I see is the power source

needed to maintain it at that limit..."

"I know," Skuld fumed, "We've almost got everything else

licked besides that. Sure wish I could talk to the guy who

originally designed this thing...he looks like he's almost as much

of a genius as me. Who did you say it was again, Sis?"

"Hephaestus," Urd replied, "He's one of the Olympian Bunch

from the plane near Gladshiem, a rather interesting variation of

Heaven that I like to visit sometimes whenever Dionyseus

throws one of his Stag parties. Those can get a little wild at

times, but I'm sure they're a lot of fun or I'd remember them

better."

Keiichi Morisato just shook his head slightly and murmured, "I

don't want to know, I don't want to know, I don't want to

know..."

"This creature that has everyone so upset in the Nerima area,"

Belldandy gently noted, "If he is such a danger to the public,

perhaps we should put in a petition with father to do something

about this..."

"Won't work," Urd replied, "Dad has lots of pets who get loose

off the leash from time to time, and the last time Gojiro got

loose he created quite a mess among the mortals, but Dad just let

them take care of things, saying it wasn't that big a deal for

direct divine involvement."

"I can't believe that Kami-Sama would just abandon humanity

like that," Skuld protested, "What will the mortals think if we

don't look after our own messes?"

"Yeah, well," Urd shrugged, "This time it looks like the

Dragon's from the Western Edge of the world, so it's really more

their problem than ours, which is why we've got those foreign

gods operating in our area. I'm thinking of calling on Raiden for

some back-up here just in case things get too far out of control,

but barring a change of policy by the Central Office it looks like

we're on our own again, like always."

"Susanowo...I mean your father," Keiichi glanced nervously at

the ceiling and amended what he was about to say, "I'm sure he

has his reasons for not acting, but it would kind of help if we

had more time for you guys to..."

"I've got it!" Megumi suddenly cried out, looking excitedly at

Skuld, "We need a power source that's strong enough to make

the containment field bigger, right? What about Thor's

hammer? It's supposed to be pretty powerful, and I've heard it

has the ability to control dimensions..."

"Hey, that's a great idea," Skuld brightened, looking up at Urd

once again, "You think you can convince your friend to let us

attach this device to his hammer? If so, then I'm pretty sure we

can make this work and contain the creature until we find a

permanent place to hold him."

"Not bad," Urd smiled as she stroked her chin knowingly, "I

think I can get Red to come around to seeing the advantage, and

Thor always did like playing the heroic part. Looks like you

two have saved the day once again...proving you make a pretty

good team when you decide to work together."

"Ah..." Skuld said reluctantly, all too aware that Megumi was

smiling in her direction.

"Make everything ready then we must leave at once," Belldandy

urged her companions, "Time is of the essence if this creature is

growing at the rate you say it is, Urd-chan."

"Hai, Oneechan," Skuld replied, "We're just making a few

adjustments now then we'll put the device back together and

everything will be ready."

"Hah! Just you watch out, Giant Monster," Megumi enthused,

"We've got your number, just wait and see!"

"Just how many Giant Monsters have you gone up against, Sis?"

Keiichi asked dryly.

"Since hanging around with you guys?" Megumi grinned, "It's

been practically every other week."

Her brother thought about that one then said, "Good point. I just

hope this one doesn't have as many teeth as the last one we ran

into."

"Yeah," Skuld remarked, "Reminded me a little too much of one

of Urd's old boy friends."

"Hey!" Urd snapped, giving them all a warning glare that dared

even one of those present to so much as crack a smile, though

despite great strain from temptation all she met were studious

expressions...

"What are we doing here, Grandmother?" Kurumi asked

"Obtaining special ingredients for your Cousin," Cologne

replied, "In this case from the largest supplier that is available at

the moment, thanks to your sister's special friend helping

expedite this special order."

"Oh," Kurumi said in neutral tones, staring down at the ground

with a most unhappy expression.

"You don't approve of whom your sister chooses to keep

company," Cologne noted matter-of-factly, "Hard as this may be

to say it is her choice to make and not your own. She is your

elder, if only by a matter of ten months, not that I much blame

you for having doubts about this relationship. Young Master

Kuno has seen his share of problems during his brief life, and

helping him back from the edge of insanity is likely to be a trial

even for the most tested of Holy men. Have you made Natsume

aware of the depth of your feelings in this matter?"

"No, I..." Kurumi hesitated, not wanting to voice aloud her

peculiar reluctance.

As it turned out she did not have to. Cologne gave her an

astutely knowing look and said, "I know that it goes against the

grain for you to speak out against your sister's choices, but if

you do not make her aware of your feelings..."

"It...is not that simple, Grandmother," Kurumi said with obvious

reluctance, "You do not know Natsume as I do...she is a very

determined person, and very proud. She does not back down

from a commitment when she has made up her mind about

something. She sees that Kuno-san has special needs, and she is

willing to lend her energy to helping him past the crisis, as she

perceives it. I simply do not believe that she understands to

what extent she is becoming involved with this fellow. I fear

she will not see how much she has given until it is too late..."

"Too late for what, sister?" asked Natsume as she, Tatewaki

Kuno and his father appeared from the doorway to the offices of

the Pharmaceutical company of whose lobby they were standing

in the midst.

"Did you obtain the materials as requested?" Cologne smoothly

asked as Kurumi gulped and looked startled as though caught

out in the open.

"We did," Tatewaki replied, while his father just stood around

looking puzzled, "It will be delivered by helicopter to the area

Nabiki designated, and in the quantities her friend has specified.

I am concerned, however, as to whether these chemical agents

will do the deed that she suspects. They are not known to have

an effect upon organic anatomy..."

"Not a human anatomy, perhaps," Cologne remarked, "But what

of a reptilian system?"

"I don't know," the elder Kuno scratched his head and looked

puzzled, "Been a long time since I messed with any of this stuff.

I mostly leave it to the Board to handle these days..."

"We know," Tatewaki gave his father a decidedly unfriendly

glance before resuming, "This is more Kodachi's area of

expertise than mine. As much as I am reluctant to say this, we

could use her insight as she has extensively tested on her own

pet crocodile, Mister Green Turtle," he paused before shaking

his head, then continued, "Although Sasuke has informed me

that some of these chemicals were much preferred by Kodachi

during this period of her research."

"Well," Natsume said with a slightly cross expression, "It is

unfortunate that we do not have access to your sister at the

moment, so we will have to make do with the perceptions of

Cousin Nabiki's friend on this one. I just hope it's enough to

deal with the likes of that huge lizard."

"Your cousin is a very perceptive young woman," Tatewaki

replied, "But if this does not prove successful then we will try

something else until we are victorious. We cannot permit this

creature to run rampant in Nerima..."

"Yeah," his father remarked, scratching his chin with what

almost looked like a thoughtful expression, "Even if-now that

ya mention it-it does kinda make a pretty impressive mascot..."

Everyone pointedly ignored him, while Kurumi was studying

the way the younger Kuno was exchanging looks with her sister,

and privately thought that giant reptiles were not the only kind

of predator in this town in need of some serious de-fanging...

"Something troubles you, Saotome-kun?" Soun asked his

companion.

"I don't really know, Tendo-kun," Genma frowned, "There is

something about those new friends of Nabiki's that bothers me,

especially that big fellow who's giving me the evil eye..."

"I'm sure it's nothing," said Nodoka calmly as she, Kasumi and

Shampoo stood by the makeshift outdoor kitchen that had been

set up using materials borrowed from Ukyo's restaurant,

"Probably just another one of your friends whom you met during

your travels. I'm certain it's nothing immediate that we need

worry about, such as dangerous predatory creatures taking

residence in our fair city..."

"Tendo-Sama!" hailed a cheerful Miss Hinako as she came

hopping and skipping her way up to the side of the outdoor

reservoir where the adults had been stationed.

"Case in point," Nodoka murmured sourly at a level where only

those standing closest to her could hear the words or catch her

scowling expression.

"Tendo-Sama," Hinako smiled as she came up to them with a

puzzled expression, "What are you doing? Having an outdoor

barbecue?"

"Miss Hinako," Soun replied, "This is one of my daughter

Nabiki's ideas for dealing with the giant monster that has

invaded Nerima. We hope to tempt the monster out into the

open where it can be more easily pacified, once my Nieces

arrive with some special ingredients she's requested."

"So Nabiki is going to deal with the big monster that attacked

our school?" Hinako said with an earnest look of concern on her

young face, then she smiled, "Good! If anyone can figure out

how to deal with a rampaging monster it's my little big sister. Is

there anyway that I can do to help out?"

"Besides offering yourself as added bait?" Nodoka once again

murmured very softly, earning curious looks from Shampoo and

Kasumi.

The wind shifted slightly and Hinako's nose wrinkled before she

pinched it, "Ew! What is that awful stench? Where is it coming

from?"

"Over there," Shampoo nodded, and Hinako followed that nod

to see a virtual mountain of fish standing out in the open.

"What is all that for?" Hinako said in tones of wonder, then

made a childish cry of delight as Kasumi handed her an ice

cream cone, "For me? Oh, thank you!"

"Where you find Ice Cream?" Shampoo asked Kasumi at the

level of a stage whisper.

"I stored some in the refrigeration unit," Kasumi replied back as

Hinako happily began to lick away at the frozen dairy

confection, "In case you or someone else wanted to cool down.

It is a very warm and humid day after all."

"That's my Kasumi," Soun beamed happily, "Always thinking of

others."

"What a great wife you'll make some lucky guy some day,"

Genma beamed.

"Ah...yes," Kasumi's smile became slightly pained around the

edges, though only Shampoo seemed to notice the wistful tone

as she added, "Someday..."

Hinako-Sensei was not the only one noticing the stench the pile

of fish was making. Perfume was finding it very hard not to

wretch as the wind shifted back their way again, and even

Ranma was becoming increasingly distressed by the smell but

held his opinion to himself as he turned an anxious look towards

Nabiki.

"Oneechan," Akane could not keep from holding her own nose,

which made her voice sound funny, "How much longer are we

going to wait? That stuff is rotting!

"We need everything in place before we act," Nabiki said

simply, "Once I'm certain that the Kunos will come through with

their part of the plan, and that other lady with the white hair

comes back with the magical trap expanded out to the right

dimensions..."

"I hate to say this," Hercules said, "But you sure are dealing

with this whole situation a lot better than most mortals would."

"It's a knack," Nabiki shrugged, "After some of the things I've

lived through, a few gods and a giant monster just seem par for

the course."

"I'd hate to see what passes for a normal day in your life," Thor-

chan said with raised crimson eyebrows.

"You sure this is gonna work, Beiko?" Aiko asked more

dubiously, "If that thing's growing like you say it is..."

"It will work, Alison," Beatrice replied, "Once the creature is

exposed to view, and given that all the other elements are in

place..."

"Yowza!" Happosai suddenly spoke up, "Hubba hubba! Get a

load of those cuties..."

"We're back," Urd announced as she, her sisters, Megumi and

Keiichi appeared in the clearing beside them, "And we've made

the improvements to the device like I promised."

"There's only one problem," Skuld announced as she stepped

forward, "We need a power source and we thought we could use

Thor's hammer. Does anyone know where we could find him."

"I might have some idea," Thor-chan said in self irony, holding

up her hammer, "What do you need this for?"

Skuld had to do a quick double-take before it registered with her

that the redhead was describing herself as Thor, and that the

hammer she carried looked awfully familiar, "Thor? What

happened to you?"

"Got left out in the rain and he shrunk," Hercules replied,

ignoring the withering look he got from the redhead, "What do

you need the fancy Croquet mallet for anyway?"

"It is our hope that the hammer will supply the needed energy to

power the containment field," Belldandy explained, "At least we

hope it will be enough to contain the creature."

"Sounds reasonable," Thor-chan nodded, "I'm willing to play

along, just so it's you doing the attaching, Skuld, and not your

big sister."

"Hey!" Urd protested.

"What's your story?" Perfume asked Keiichi, sensing the boy did

not have an inner radiance to match that of his companions.

"Nothing much," Keiichi shrugged, "I'm just engaged to a

Goddess."

"Really?" Ranma smiled, "Welcome to the club."

Nabiki turned a look his way that would have been considered

statutory rape in some places and just smiled before saying, "Do

what you have to in order to get the device ready. Now, just one

more thing we need in place," she pulled out a cellular phone

and dialed up a number, placed it to her ear and waited, then

said, "Hello, Elder? How do things look on your end? You are?

Good! I see that things are proceeding normally for once. Make

haste in getting here, we're about to put phase two of my plan

into motion."

She folded up the phone and put it away, then nodded, "All

right, Ryoga-kun, you know what you have to do."

"Got it, Nab-chan," Ryoga replied and walked several paces off

to stand at a point a good thirty meters away, then stared at the

ground for a moment before stabbing a finger as he cried out,

"BAKUSEI TENKETSU!"

At once the ground about his feet shattered while he leaped back

out of the opening gap as a hole opened up where he had been

standing a good five meters in diameter. Ryoga backed away to

join Akane as they all stared at the opening in silence for several

more moments until they began to hear a telltale rumble...

Ukyo heard the sound of a nearby explosion, followed by the

aftermath of rubble settling, which awoke her scaly bedmate out

of a deep sleep and caused the giant lizard to shift its massive

head in the direction of this sound. Nothing happened for

several moments longer, but then her companion made a curious

noise and began to sniff the air in a rather significant manner.

"What is it, Baby?" Ukyo asked, "Is something wrong? What do

you-EW! What is that smell?"

The Lizard made a very distinctive sound as if expressing

interest and began to uncurl itself, forcing Ukyo to hop off its

leg and put as much distance as she could from the creature in

the cramped confines of the almost totally filled chamber. It

took a moment for her to fully realize that the thing was now

three hundred or more feet long from nose to tail, which implied

phenomenal growth and must surely have meant that the poor

dear was now ravenously hungry. That explained why it

suddenly lumbered forward, heading for the gap with such

heedless determination that it paid no attention when it tore

through the narrow tunnel and created an even wider opening

through which to fit its humungous dimensions.

Outside everyone not divine in nature staggered back from the

unexpected rumble in the ground as the creature thrust its head

out of the pit and began to climb out into the open, considerably

widening the hole in its passage. Even the Gods looked stunned

at the tremendous size of the great beast as it swiveled its house-

sized head about and oriented on its sense of smell, at once

zooming in on the mountain of fish it had been detecting.

"Looks like Junior took the bait," Hercules murmured, "Hope

your friend got clear of all that mess."

"Ucchan!" both Ranma and Perfume cried together, sprinting

out towards the collapsing debris.

"Go with them, Aiko," Beatrice urged, "They need someone

who can clear the way to find their friend."

"Right," Aiko nodded, and bound after the two others, who were

frantically trying to clear away the debris. Once she joined them

the number of rocks hurled clear of the hole increased

exponentially, and before long an effective opening had been

created.

"Sure hope Ucchan's all right," Ryoga murmured, turning to

Nabiki, "We will be able to capture it this time, right, Nab-

chan...Nab-chan?"

"It's...big," Nabiki said in a very hollow tone, "Really, really

big..."

"No fooling," said Urd, "You guys have got it covered with the

new modifications, right?"

"Ah..." Skuld replied, to which Megumi added, "Ditto."

"So it got big," Thor-chan remarked, still holding out her

hammer, "Hurry up and get done with the attachment, will ya?

My arm's getting tired."

"Well now," said Sif as she appeared beside the others, "Who let

Fafnir out of Muspelheim? That creature is definitely over a

thousand times as big as when it hatched..."

"Forty-three thousand, four hundred and ninety-seven times as

big," Beatrice corrected, not sounding in the least bit ruffled at

the accuracy of her mental calculations, "Just a bit over a

hundred meters, as I had predicted."

"You act like you've seen this kind of thing before," Keiichi

noted.

"Not specifically," Beatrice replied, "But I've seen things of

comparable size and dimension in my travels."

"Okay," Akane said dubiously, "So...now that we've exposed it,

what do we do now?"

"Well," Nabiki started to recover from her daze, "Once the trap

is ready, and Kuno gets here with those chemicals Bei

requested..."

"Which may help sedate the creature," Beatrice remarked, "And

your device may entrap it, but what then do you intend to do

with so large and potentially fecund a beast, granted that it is

also potentially dangerous, but not actively malevolent..."

"We'll cross that bridge when we get to it," Hercules replied,

"There's lots of places where we stick Titans to keep them out of

the hair of you mortals, and some of the ones we've got locked

up in Hades' realm would make this puppy look like a tad-

pole..."

"No you don't!" stormed an angry Ukyo as she came striding up

with Ranma and Perfume hastening to keep up with her, while

Aiko took a more leisurely route as if intentionally keeping her

distance from the Okonomiyaki chef, "How dare you even think

about sticking my poor baby in some Gods-forsaken Hell hole!

Can't you see that he only wants to live in peace like anyone

else?"

"Your baby?" Nabiki repeated, "Ucchan...we have to talk..."

"I can see perfectly well that he's not evil, Miss Kuonji,"

Hercules replied, "But that doesn't take away from the fact that

he doesn't fit in with the world as it is. It's just like in the old

days when the planet was overrun with his kind and there was

no room for people like you and your friends. Look at him...he's

too big for a petting zoo and he eats more fish than you can

afford to truck in, what with the way the oceans have been

overharvested these days by gill nets..."

"Japan's one of the worst offenders in that respect," Thor-chan

noted.

"So is Norway," Urd shot back, "So who's pointing the finger

here?"

"All done," Skuld pronounced as she and Megumi stepped back

from Thor-chan's hammer.

"Just what are you trying to achieve?" Sif puzzled.

"Just a little containment job, Ho-uh...lady," Thor-chan

amended, extending her hammer, which now had the device

attached to one end, "I'll just activate the time and space warping

effects of this baby and..."

"No!" Ukyo cried, stomping her foot in anger, "I won't let you!"

As she said this the creature left off its glutinous consumption of

fish and turned an angry look in their direction. Nabiki saw this

and said, "Er...Ucchan?"

"I won't have you manhandling him because you feel you've got

to act all macho!" Ukyo declared adamantly, "Find some other

way to beat your chest, you big bully! Go hunt real monsters,

like maybe the one you'll see in the mirror!"

The creature made an angry sound and began to turn around

very quickly. It was amazing how fast it moved in spite of its

incredible size, and even more amazing how it seemed to pick

up on and amplify Ukyo's anger.

"Fascinating," Beatrice remarked, "The link between you and

the creature must be partly telepathic, partly sympathetic,

definitely empathic. It's responding to your thought waves."

"Uh...Beiko?" Aiko said nervously, "I think it's coming this

way."

"Good," Thor-chan said, "Makes it that much harder to miss..."

"NO!" Ukyo cried, throwing herself at Thor-chan with such

force as might stagger an ordinary woman had her kick struck a

mere mortal instead of a transformed Goddess. As it was Thor-

chan barely felt Ukyo's foot as the Okonomiyaki cook bounced

off the leather clad redhead, causing her to land a bit more

awkwardly than her usually graceful self.

Unfortunately the creature saw all this and interpreted it as an

attack on the woman it identified as its surrogate mother, which

prompted it to give an angry cry as it charged right at them.

"Oboy," Hercules said, "This does not look good..."

"Ranchan-Per-chan! Get Ukyo out of here now!" Nabiki

commanded, which same shows just how much the three of

them thought alike as both Amazon and iinazuke were already

moving to grab Ukyo by one arm and help her to her feet as they

drew the chef out of the path of oncoming destruction. Nabiki

was just a half-second behind them while Beiko took to the air

while Aiko leaped for safety. Three goddesses grabbed the two

mortals nearest to them and did a fast fade out while Hercules

and Sif braced themselves and stood their ground together.

Happosai was no where to be found at that moment, of course,

but no one paid him the least attention as it hardly seemed to

matter.

Ryoga interposed himself in front of Akane as the two of them

backed away, but they all were surprised to note that the

creature was ignoring them altogether, its path of relentless fury

aimed at one figure alone and no other.

Thor-chan kept her hammer steady all of this time and now

smiled as she said, "Just hold that pose, Dragon, and we'll see

who's the tough guy here."

The power started to flow from around the hammer to reach out

and form a circular containment field that appeared like an

energy net that exploded out in a single direction to surround the

creature. At the last possible second, however, the creature

stopped its forward lurch and moved in a way that was

altogether surprising, falling down towards one hip and twisting

with a lurch to one side before righting itself again and springing

up into the air so that it vaulted completely over the net and

landed on both hind feet behind Thor-chan. The force of the

landing was like a 5.3 Earthquake, kicking up ground

everywhere and knocking the transformed Thundergod to his

knees from the sheer surprise factor.

"Did you see that?" Ranma gasped.

"That's impossible!" Perfume all but swore, "That maneuver..."

"It was just like one of your techniques, Ucchan," Nabiki

commented to a very surprised Ukyo, "The exact same thing you

would have done to avoid a net being hurled at you."

"But how?" Aiko gasped, "It was just born this afternoon, and it

must weigh a couple zillion tons!"

"Seventeen thousand, three hundred-fifty-two-point eight tons to

be exact," Beatrice replied, "And in answer to your question, I

think the link they share is two-way here. The creature is

drawing on your instincts of self-preservation, Kuonji-san

and..."

As she said this the creature was lashing out at an off-balance

Thor-chan, who tried to evade the lunge and biting snap of the

creature, only to back up a little too far as the creature prepared

to swing about as though to stomp with a foot in her direction.

It's massive tail whipped out and back to strike the nearest large

rock outcropping and shatter it like a cardboard dollhouse. As

the creature started to orient on Thor-chan once again that same

tail came whipping back towards Ryoga and Akane, moving at

such a speed that there was no time for them both to get out of

the way. Without hesitating to think on what he was doing

Ryoga pushed Akane flat against the ground just instants before

the tail swatted him like the proverbial insect.

"Ryoga-kun!" Akane cried as the lost boy went flying like the

proverbial softball.

As ungentle as his situation was, however, it was as nothing

compared to Thor-chan, who barely had time to turn around

before seeing a massive foot loom over her, which prompted the

words, "Oh Niffleheim...!" to escape her lips before she

disappeared beneath 17,352.8 metric tons of angry lizard...

"Boss!" a voice hissed in Frank's ear.

"I see it!" Frank hit the breaks and did a half-turn to absorb his

forward momentum, then accelerated again at a different angle,

"Oh man...how did he get ahead of us this fast?"

"I don't think it did," Shelly replied, "That doesn't look like the

Big G, in fact..."

"You mean that other creature?" Frank said disbelievingly, then

before his question could be answered he caught motion out of

the corner of his eye and turned in time to see a human shape go

flying overhead at least thirty meters, which prompted Frank to

exclaim, "Bloody hell...that guy looks kind of familiar...!"

Without stopping to finish analyzing the situation the big man

on the giant motorcycle turned yet again in a semi-circular

maneuver that would have daunted the best stunt motorcyclists,

treating his machine as though it were an extension of his own

body. Several hair-turns later and he got himself directly under

the projected end trajectory of the boy's arc, just in time to get

underneath Ryoga before he could hit the ground with more

jarring results than landing virtually in the lap of the big man

provided.

Ryoga-amazingly enough-was only partly stunned by all this

as he looked up in amazement to find the craggy face of the big

man looking down at him with a familiar smirk. In near total

amazement the lost one gasped, "Frank?"

"Hiya Hibiki," Frank remarked as he brought them around yet

again and headed for where he saw a group of people gathered

together, "Long time no see. Looks like you've been busy."

"What are you doing in Japan?" Ryoga asked as he saw that they

were coming to a gradual stop beside Nabiki and the others.

"Oh, I get around myself now and then," the big man said as he

halted his bike, then let Ryoga down on his own two feet before

killing the engine and dismounting, doing a quick study as he

registered the astonished faces of the others, then took note that

one figure was hurtling right at them...or-more specifically-at

Ryoga.

"You're all right!" Akane cried with desperate relief, throwing

her arms around Ryoga and staggering the boy back up against

the side of the motorcycle, "Oh, Ryoga-kun, I was so

worried...!"

"You have been busy," Frank noted with idle sarcasm that was

equal parts appreciation before turning to the others and saying,

"Who's in charge here, assuming you guys have a designated

leader?"

"Who wants to know?" challenged Ranma, looking up at the

seven-foot-eight-inch giant with more bravado than he actually

felt as he interposed himself before Nabiki.

"Relax kid," Frank sniffed, "I'm not here to start any trouble, I'm

here to help...I take it you're the real leader of this shindig?"

"How did you guess?" Nabiki asked as the big man's pale eyes

were directed towards her.

"Just playing a hunch," Frank nodded, "You look like the type,

while your boyfriend here is more muscle than brains, not a bad

combination if you like that sort. Besides, I knew it couldn't be

that lot," he nodded to Hercules and the other divinities, "Their

kind doesn't lead so much as let us humble mortals think they're

in charge of the whole situation."

"Ha-ha," Hercules said drolly, "If it isn't the walking Corpse

with an attitude. What brings you this way, Stein, or whatever it

is you're calling yourself this century."

"Stein?" Ukyo asked with a puzzled expression.

"Name's Frank," the big man replied, "Short for Franklin, but

my full name is Doctor Franklin Nathaniel Steinberg. I'm a

Biogeneticist..."

"Frank N. Stein?" Aiko slowly pronounced with lifted eyebrows.

"I've heard of you!" Beatrice said brightly, "I've read your

publication on Neurological Realignment and the Reversal of

Cellular decay! Most insightful! You are one of the foremost

authorities in Exobiology..."

"I am THE leading expert in that field," Frank said without

sounding the least bit boastful, looking up to see that the huge

lizard was now going peacefully about its business munching a

diminishing pile of fish, "Seems your friend here's lost his mad-

on. Anybody care to fill me in on what's been happening here?"

"Ah," Nabiki glanced at the lizard before turning back to the

huge man before them, "I hardly know where to begin..."

"Excuse me," Sif frowned, "But what happened to Thorilla?

Did anyone see her emerge from that giant foot print?"

"Nope," Hercules said, "And if it were anyone else I'd say she

was just a grease spot by now..."

"I'll...grease...you...you damned boy-lover," Thor-chan groaned

as she staggered up from the pit that Ukyo had been dug from

before.

Frank whistled appreciatively and said, "Who's the Tomato?"

"Hah-ha," Thor-chan growled, "Keep it up, Homunculus...you

can be disassembled you know..."

"Uh...Boss?" Shelly called out, not even bothering to use the

ear-mike for anonymity, "Better can the Socializing...guess who

else is coming to dinner?"

"Oh, that's just great," Frank turned in time to see another huge

shape lumbering around a pass in some nearby hills before

directing its attention in their direction, "Loverboy's persistent,

I'll give him that. Looks like our problems just got

compounded, people."

"What the...?" Ryoga gasped.

"Two of them?" Ranma stated in flat-out disbelief.

"Him?" Hercules snorted, "This really isn't my day..."

"Nani?" Akane quietly whispered.

"I was afraid of this," Happosai shook his head sadly.

Nabiki stared at the shape of a four hundred-foot tall lizard

storming angrily towards them and just sighed, "I don't know

why I'm surprised...at least he's a native..."

Continued.

Comments/Criticism/Ultimate Fight Dinosaur Division:

shadowmane

The battle lines are drawn...in one corner is the reigning

Champion of Asia, in the other is the new kid on the block, and

what will happen when Titans Clash over Nerima? Be there to

find out!

Nabiki 1/2,

A Very Scary Thought

(An Altered Destiny)

by

Jim Robert Bader

Chapter 30, Part 2.

(Inspired by the Works of Rumiko Takahashi & Others)

"I still don't get it," said Agent Jei to his partner, "If this guy

calling himself Frank Stein is who he says he is..."

"Makes him over one hundred and ninety years old," replied

Agent Kei as the two of them stood perched atop a low hill that

offered them an excellent vantage point for overseeing the

reservoir area in total, "Don't have to buy him a birthday cake,

he hates being reminded of his age, thinks it looks bad for his

virility or something."

"Anyway," Jei resumed dubiously, "He can't be the same guy...I

mean, didn't he die or something at the end of the novel?"

"Don't believe everything you read, slick," Kei cautioned his

partner, "He'll be the first one to come down on you to explain

how he feels that he's been grossly slandered in the media, and

there's plenty of justification for his claims. Fact is he lost

control over his own identity to the public sector years ago, so

he's never had much control over how Hollywood chooses to

portray him. He's mainly just tried to ignore the numerous

factual errors contained in the accounts about his life and take it

all in stride with as much graveyard humor as he can muster.

He figures amassing a considerable fortune off the patents on his

inventions is revenge enough. Meanwhile he's living the good

life behaving like a wild man on one side and a well educated

scholarly gentleman on the other."

"What about this group he's involved with?" Jei asked.

"Delphi?" Kei sniffed, "MIB doesn't have much involvement

with them. They're an elite group of industrialists and

Paranormal types loosely allied on the principle of advancing

the general welfare of humanity through information exchange

and the promotion of Renaissance ideals. Mostly their concerns

are with this world, not Aliens per-se, except for a few unusual

cases where we share a mutual interest. We mostly stay out of

each others way as much as possible and let them fight it out

with their Cabalistic rivals at MAZE..."

"MAZE?" Jei looked increasingly puzzled.

"Machiavellian Adherent Zooist Enclave," Kei explained, "Just

a loose designation for another elite conspiracy, on this one

dedicated to the control and domination of Humanity through

the media and government. Basically they're the power behind

the throne for a great many of the world's surviving Tyrannies

and subversive organizations. They don't really call themselves

MAZE or carry ID cards or even have stationary with that name

on the logo, but the various outlets that comprise that group are

united in the belief that human beings are basically incapable of

governing their own lives and need the authority of a governing

body of enlightened despots to insure people behave themselves.

They just basically make themselves a nuisance, but we don't

actively stand in each other's way unless we have a conflict of

interests."

"All these secret conspiracies," Jei shook his head, "It's a lot for

a simple street cop like me to take in stride..."

"You and everybody else on the planet can sleep tight and not

worry about these things," Kei replied matter of factly,

"Conspiracies are as old as the human race, and probably a lot

older than our current sub-species since there's talk among some

circles than humanity itself is descended from some extinct alien

civilization calling itself the Solnoids..."

"Oh man!" Jei winced, "I thought you were pulling my leg when

you said most Japanese are descended from aliens!"

"Not everybody," Kei shrugged, "But you may already know

that the Japanese Language is unique among the various

languages of Asia. There is no other quite like it, not even

Korean, and they come the closest at having 20% of the same

language in common. The reason is because Japan was briefly

colonized in the year 406 BC by the Juraians, which is why our

Emperor here claims Juraian blood through his own sacred

ancestor, the first Emperor Jimmu..."

"Oh, now the Emperor's an alien?" Jei replied, "This just gets

better and better! How come the whole planet isn't speaking

Japanese, then?"

"The colony didn't last," Kei replied, "Earth's too far out of line

with normal Juraian shipping lanes, way too far down the

Galactic arm for most of the civilized races in point of fact.

Japan was left to get by on its own, but the imprint of Juraian

culture is felt down to our own time, which makes us unique

from other members of the human race, including our American

counterparts."

"And what about my people?" Jei asked, "My ancestors were

Ainu..."

"The original inhabitants of Japan before the Jurai settled here,"

Kei casually noted, "The majority population of Japan has

mixed Mainland and Juraian ancestry, about eighty generations

removed. The Ainu have mostly been assimilated into the basic

culture but old prejudices remain in spite of the current state of

enlightenment in the world. Doesn't make any difference as far

as our mission goes, however, you're still MIB, which means

you belong with the true defenders of humanity, and nothing is

more important than looking out for the welfare of this planet."

"So what are we doing here chasing giant lizards?" Jei sheltered

his eyes as he saw the big one eating through a pile of fish that

could have fed a small third world country.

"Like I told Frank," Kei replied, "We've got clients to protect,

both here and other surrounding provinces. Can't have these bad

boys tearing up the landscape and possibly compromising a

number of relocation cases."

"How many alien cases are we talking about here?" Jei

wondered.

"A lot," Kei replied without being too specific, "Uh oh...don't

look now but it looks like the Big G has spotted the new kid on

the block. Should get interesting from this point onward..."

"You have got to be kidding me," Hercules commented as he

looked from one gigantic beast to the other.

"Now that's big," Thor-chan remarked, staring up at the looming

hulk that dominated the nearby low mountains.

"Two of them?" Aiko winced, "One was bad enough, but this..."

"I wonder," Beatrice mused thoughtfully, "Doctor Steinberg,

correct me if I'm wrong but this other fellow has come a long

way as if drawn by a certain calling?"

"You might say that," Frank replied, "About seven hours ago he

broke out of a special containment facility and has been heading

this way on an unbroken line, and now I think I'm starting to see

the reason."

"As do I," Beatrice mused, "This other one only hatched around

six or more hours ago...it's almost as if he sensed this before it

actually happened."

"You mean that bruiser came all this way just to challenge my

baby?" Ukyo said with an angry glare towards the aptly

described King of all Monsters.

"Ucchan?" Ranma looked worried at his iinazuke's tone, as did

Perfume beside him.

"Lizards are about as territorial as creatures get," Frank

remarked, "But in this case I don't think it's quite..."

"Boss," the motorcycle spoke up, "Got an incoming message on

you from a secured channel. You want to take it?"

"Go ahead," Frank put one hand to his ear and paused a moment

before saying, "Interesting...somebody's trying to fly a fleet of

five helicopters through the containment zone..."

"Those are with us," Nabiki promptly spoke up, "If they have

the Kuno Family Company logo they are flying in some needed

supplies..."

Frank swiveled his focus towards her again, "Interesting. I don't

suppose you might care to share with me what's in those

'choppers?"

"Just some elements that I requested, Sir," Beatrice explained,

then ran off a list of chemical agents that caused the big man to

arch an eyebrow.

"I get it now," Frank smiled, "That's pretty clever. Mixed in just

the right way those will brew up a mighty potent sleeping pill,

keyed specifically to a reptilian anatomy. I'll authorize it. Clear

them through, Darlin'! Those Choppers get priority

authorization."

"Are you in charge of something, Frank?" Ryoga asked in

surprise.

"Sure am," Frank replied, "Monster containment is my specialty.

By the way, who's the little lady clinging to your arm?"

"Oh," Ryoga began to blush, "This is my iinazuke, Tendo

Akane. Akane-chan, this is my friend, Frank. He kind of

helped me out a while ago during one of my travels..."

"During my last trip to the Old Country," Frank remarked as he

gave Akane a very thorough study, "Iinazuke, huh? Not bad,

kid, you do have standards."

"Charmed," Akane said, glancing back towards the approaching

four hundred foot monster and said, "But maybe introductions

should wait until after we get out of his way?"

"Good point," Nabiki had already drawn her own conclusions

and said, "I think we'd better move this to one side, people. In

case nobody else has noticed this, we're right in the way

between both interested parties."

"Good point," Frank said, moving back to remount his

motorcycle, "I suggest a lateral course of retreat, preferably one

where we all stay downwind of that critter. Once he picks up

the other one's scent the safest place to be will be as far away as

we can take this."

"Over there," Nabiki waved towards where the makeshift

kitchen manned by the rest of their family was waiting, "You,

too, Ucchan. You're not getting into the middle of this one if I

have anything to say about it."

"But he wants to hurt my baby!" Ukyo protested.

"Ucchan..." Nabiki started to drawl, then just looked to Ranma

and Perfume, who nodded and took a firm grip of their beloved's

arms, guiding her away even as they became aware that the

newly arrived Big G was halting in mid step and sniffing the air

significantly.

The huge Tyrannosaur-like monster was snuffling like a

bloodhound before he gave a cry that shattered windows for

kilometers in all directions. It was answered at once as "Baby"

turned around to confront him, head extended in a way that

conveyed a curious form of challenge, which was answered in

kind by the larger reptile stomping both legs and making

thrashing motions with his arms as though to make himself look

even more impressive.

"It's like a Sumo challenge," Ranma observed, looking from one

monster to the other before saying, "That guy must outweigh

'Baby' by at least several thousand metric tons!"

"Try eight thousand, two hundred and thirty-seven," Beatrice

replied matter-of-factly, giving him a smirk as she added, "A

remarkably accurate estimation. You must be a lot smarter than

appearances would suggest."

Both Aiko and Nabiki frowned slightly at that comment while

Ranma appeared uncomfortable in trying to interpret the silver-

haired girl's statement. Unfortunately they both became aware

that the thunder of the approaching lizard was coming a lot

closer towards them than anyone had expected.

"Alison," Beatrice suddenly turned around, "We need for you to

delay him long enough for the rest of us to get clear. Remove

your bracers now."

"What?" Aiko halted in her tracks and looked stunned towards

Beatrice, "Are you nuts? If I do that..."

"Just do it, and trust me!" Beatrice replied, "I know you can do

it, Alison...no one has more confidence in you than I have,

so...please remove your bracers."

"All right," Aiko growled, reaching to her left arm bracer and

beginning to twist it in a way that produced an odd clicking

sound, "Just...stop calling me Alison already..."

"What's she going to do?" Ranma asked, "Give that thing a Judo

throw?"

"Close enough," Beatrice replied with an oddly wistful

expression, hurrying to keep up with the others.

The huge dinosaur-like creature was almost upon them as Aiko

turned to face the beast, strangely not as worried as someone

would think an average looking girl should be when confronted

by a monster the size of a large skyscraper. Out of the corner of

her eye, however, she caught sight of two others and said, "What

are you guys doing...?"

"You think I'm gonna let you face that all by yourself?"

Hercules replied.

"Yeah," Thor-chan snorted, "This is usually our Gig. You want

us to lose our license or something?"

"I appreciate the thought, Gramps, really, but I don't need any

help..." Aiko suddenly stopped talking as a looming shadow

appeared over her head. Her brown eyes got round as she

looked up to see the massive foot coming down towards her, not

aimed at her specifically but more the result of a careless step as

the creature seemed totally focused towards the other

humungous lizard. Aiko raised her arms just in time as the foot

came crashing down where she was standing and smashed an

area the size of a large house. Hercules and Thor-chan looked

stunned, then turned very nervous looks towards the other foot,

which even then was coming down in their direction.

"Aiko!" Akane cried as she tossed a look back over her

shoulder.

Frank, who had been pacing them so far, suddenly halted his

bike and whirled around, "Did you say...A-Ko?"

"Yeah," Ryoga looked at the huge man on the massive bike, "Do

you know her?"

Frank raised his goggles and said, "I sure might if she's who I

think she is. Hooboy! Big G is in real trouble..."

"Huh?" Ranma asked skeptically when everyone turned to see

the most amazing sight that followed in the next instant.

The second food had been only meters away from the two gods,

who were preparing to deflect it with their combined strengths,

only the monster made a very odd sound and started to shift its

balance when it abruptly shook and swayed on one leg. To

everyone's collective amazement the foot making contact with

the ground began to lift two full meters as a very angry Aiko

appeared, supporting the entire weight of the creature on both

hands as she snarled in anger.

"That really pisses me off!" she cried, "Don't take me for

granted, you big bully!"

And with that she hurled the creature up into the air, causing

him to soar half his own height as he tumbled onto one side and

landed with a solid crunch that caused the area to shake like a

massive earth tremor.

"Yep," Frank murmured drolly, "That's definitely her all right."

"You recognize Alison?" Beatrice asked as she turned an

amused look at her erstwhile companion, whose school uniform

was slightly disheveled.

"Sure do," Frank replied, "Alison Kent Managi, Project AKO-

10947...which means you're Beatrice Kane Daitokuji, Project

BKO-20906, am I right?"

"You must have been with the institute, then," Beatrice observed

drolly as the others finished clearing out of the reservoir area

and gathered about where the makeshift kitchen was assembled.

"I was a consultant reviewing your cases," Frank replied, "There

were a number of other special subjects being tested to

determine the nature of their Paranormal abilities, including a

very odd young girl with Alien DNA that the two of you got into

some sort of fight over..."

"Celeste Kotobuki," Beatrice nodded, "Project CKO-032851,

although we liked to refer to her as Ceiko."

"Excuse me for not being as caught up with nostalgia as the two

of you," Nabiki said, nodding back to Aiko, "But how exactly

was she able to do that?"

Frank started forward again as he called out over his shoulder,

"Long story! Wait until we're completely clear of the danger

zone."

"The simple answer is in the bracers," Beatrice informed her

puzzled friend, "They have a special function, which is why I

told Alison to remove them."

"What, does that amplify her power or something?" Nabiki said

in confusion.

"Not exactly," Beatrice replied, "The bracers do not amplify

anything, they diminish her power levels and contain them to

manageable levels. Without their dampening effects Alison's

already formidable strength is vastly superior to her ability to

control it. As wave of her hand could literally change the course

of mighty rivers, which is why I hope she slips them back on

before she gets here."

Aiko was indeed on her way to join them while the massive

creature she had toppled was only just then recovering from the

combination of surprise and shock at being so woman-handled.

It had not even seen the tiny insect that had done this to the

mighty King of the Monsters, but even as he got back to his feet

another cry drew his attention and he oriented back towards his

original objective.

Both Thor-chan and Hercules were standing there with their

mouths hanging open as Aiko strode past them without glancing

either way, just commenting in passing, "You guys'll attract flies

that way, you know. This way, Old-timers."

The two powerhouse gods exchanged looks at that "Old-Timers"

comment and then Thor-chan remarked, "She's one of yours, no

doubt about it."

"Yeah," Hercules replied, "She's a real chip off the old Marble

block...so why does that worry me so much...?"

Frank took a position atop the rise with the others and was about

to kill the engine to his cycle when he caught sight of one of the

party gathered around the makeshift kitchen and did a double

take. He stared in disbelief for several long seconds, then softly

murmured under his voice, "Shelly...see that guy over there? Do

an ID check on him, will you?"

"Not a problem, Boss," his autocomputer replied, "What's the

scoop, who is he?"

"That's what I want to know," Frank growled menacingly, "Can't

be the same guy I'm thinking about or he'd be older than me, and

that's flat-out crazy."

"Will Baby be all right?" asked Kasumi to the anxious Ukyo,

"That other fellow seems so...aggressive."

"That's Gojiro," Soun said in a voice that trembled with scarcely

contained disbelief, "I thought we'd seen the last of him twenty

years ago, Saotome."

"So did I, Tendo," Genma remarked with a slightly distracted

expression, "But why is that big fellow over there giving me

such an unfriendly glare? I'm sure our paths have never

crossed..."

"You just have that effect on some people, dear," Nodoka

remarked pleasantly, "Not everyone reacts well to someone on

their first meeting..."

"Very true," Hinako agreed, watching the spectacle of the two

Lizards offering challenge across the declared field of

impending combat, munching on some candy that Shampoo had

thoughtfully provided, "Those two look like they're going to

have it out, but why are they making so much noise?"

"What was that?" Perfume asked, covering her own ears to cut

down the decibel level.

"Sound very funny," Shampoo frowned, "No like sound make

when two animals very angry at one another."

"Probably trying to settle something out between themselves in

advance, Sham-chan," Nabiki said as she and the rest of their

group were finally able to join them, "A lot of posturing and

preening going on out there, like the two of them are

communicating on a level not understood by anyone else..."

"Yes," Beatrice replied, "I was rather thinking much the same

thing myself. In fact it sounds almost as if they are ready to get

down to business."

"Is it a good idea to let those two fight?" Aiko asked as she and

the two gods following her strode up together, "They could

flatten half of Nerima if this gets really nasty."

"I don't think it will go that far, Alison," Beatrice remarked as

she studied the two prospective combatants, who were even then

circling as if seeking to probe the defenses of one another, "By

the way, that was a very good show you put on out there. I

knew you had it in you."

"Yeah, well," Aiko flexed her arms and studied her black

bracers, "Taking these off was a risk...I mean, remember what

happened that one time in the restaurant?"

"How could I forget?" Beatrice with a fond smile, "Captain

Napolita never quite forgave us for all that destruction."

"You mean Captain Sloshed a lot?" Aiko had to grin at the

memory, "Yeah, we were kind of out of control there. Never

thought I'd look back on that whole mess with nostalgia."

"Yes," Beatrice said with a sad little smile, "We have had some

good times together."

Aiko started to think about that then lost her smile and became

suddenly quite thoughtful.

"Wow," a voice distracted Nabiki from her sidelong study of the

pair, and suddenly it was her own turn to smile, "Ryo-chan...I

see you and Gosunkugi finally made it?"

"Wasn't easy," Gosunkugi looked even more nervous and pale

than usual, "There's a lot of security people moving towards this

area, tanks and armored cars and everything, like somebody's

mobilizing for war..."

"Just about," Frank said as he joined them, holding a pair of

odd-looking binoculars, "It's your home defense force moving in

to contain the area, like I instructed."

"You mean you're going to attack them?" Akane asked.

"Well I..." Frank suddenly winced as Ukyo's trademark baker's

peel suddenly dented against his head and he turned around to

glare at her, "That hurt you know."

"You're not going to attack my baby, are you?" Ukyo demanded

as she reared back for another strike.

"Ucchan," Nabiki urged, "We really have to talk about this..."

"Ease up, kid," Frank waved a massive hand to ward off the

impending attack, "Nobody's attacking these guys, wouldn't be

much point to it. Conventional armaments are useless against

Gojiro, and that probably holds true for the other one as well."

"Why is that?" Ryonami asked as she took the huge giant in

stride with a long, pronounced examination.

"Aside from questions of mass and density of the bugger's big

hide," Frank explained, "Gojiro generates a Bioelectric field that

reinforces his structural integrity like a personal forcefield. The

guy's a walking Cold Fusion generator with a built in plasma

storage unit, sort of a living Tokomak with an output in the

Gigajoules. Even spent Uranium shells won't make a dent in his

hide, and as for shaped-charge warheads you might as well be

throwing spitballs. Believe me your home defense force isn't

throwing anything their way so long as I'm calling the shots

here. The reason they're being deployed at all is to keep

civilians away from here to minimize the potential casualties

and property damage."

"Can such a thing have evolved naturally?" Nabiki wondered,

"I'd heard rumors that he was a mutant..."

"No," Frank replied as he raised his binoculars to his eyes, "Just

one of the biggest damned dragons on the planet. All the

Atomic tests ever did was wake him up from a good slumber at

the bottom of the Pacific, not to mention ruin his food supply,

which was why he first appeared on land to voice his complaint

at city hall, like anyone else might do in his place."

"A dragon?" Ranma replied, "You mean he isn't a dinosaur at

all?"

"Has about as much in common with one as you do to an

Orangutan," Frank explained, "He actually represents an almost

extinct breed of wingless dragon of which maybe as few as a

dozen others were known to survive...right up until this new

bruiser you've got here."

"So that explains what the original Typhon was doing back in

the old days," Hercules murmured, "Ghea didn't so much birth

him as summon him up from wherever he originally came

from."

"Ghea, huh?" Frank mused, "So what did the Titan's equivalent

of PMS have against you people here in Nerima? Any ideas?"

"I've got my suspicions," Hercules glared at the two creatures,

who were still having their face-off, "If I'm right, then one of my

sibs is the guilty party for planting the egg here...only I thought

all of Typhon's last brood had been exterminated in the old

days."

"No such luck," Frank replied, "A research team unearthed one

egg and took it to a special facility I sometimes consult with.

They reported it stolen several hours ago. One of your relatives,

huh? Can't say I'm too surprised."

"Me neither," Thor-chan sniffed, "You guys make the Frost

Giants look like a bunch of Mormons."

"Look whose talking, Pirate-lover," Hercules sniffed, "Just

because we Olympians are a little loose in our standards doesn't

mean you should blame all of us for every evil in existence.

Like with the Pandora's box thing, most of those old legends

exaggerated our moral lapses. Guys like Homer had a lot to

answer for..."

"Biographers," Frank sniffed, "Don't get me started..."

"What's taking them so long?" Ryoga wondered, "Shouldn't they

have started fighting by now?"

"Looks like they're getting serious to me," Ranma noted, and

indeed this time the two Goliath creatures were finally closing

the distance between them with a display of teeth that seemed

truly impressive.

Gojiro made the first move, lunging forward as though he really

were mounting a Sumo-style attack, but the other lizard nimbly

dodged away to one side and swung around to use its tail like a

club, knocking the larger monster forward and slightly off

balance. Gojiro recovered and reoriented towards his

antagonist, who gave a massive cry as though to taunt him, then

met his next lunge with a leap that brought both hind legs into

play.

"Wow," Ryonami murmured faintly, "I wish somebody told me

this was going to happen."

"Why?" Gosunkugi asked in faint dismay.

"Are you kidding" Ryonami asked, "The ticket sales would have

been phenomenal, and if we'd brought students of the

Photography and Video clubs along to take pictures we'd have

raked in a fortune on cable rights alone!"

In spite of her concern at the escalation of mayhem visible only

a kilometer away, Nabiki felt a swelling of pride as she glanced

rather fondly at Ryonami.

Gojiro did not seem to take very kindly to being bashed around

by the newcomer, but rather than lunge forward he reared to his

full height as his spiny back fins started to glow. His mouth

shot open and a jet of plasma erupted from his jaws to strike an

area just to one side of the creature, then he shot a second jet at

the other side, hemming the other creature in by this maneuver.

"Kami!" Ranma gasped, "Did you guys see that?"

"He really is a dragon," Nabiki said in realization, then started in

even greater surprise when the other creature retaliated in kind,

firing a jet of plasma that forced Gojiro back and created a wall

of flame to separate them.

"Baby shoots fire?" Ukyo said in astonishment, then grinned as

she cried, "KICK HIS BUTT, BABY! Show the old guy he's

not so hot any more! There's a new Monster on the block and..."

"Ucchan," Perfume said in concern, "Are you feeling all right?"

"Man," Aiko said, "This fight is making me hungry! Sure wish

I'd brought some snack foods...oh, thank you!" she reacted in

pleased surprise when Kasumi handed her a candied rice ball.

"Uh oh," Thor-chan remarked, "I think the big guy's getting

serious..."

Indeed Gojiro appeared to have run out of patience with the

agile newcomer and surprised everyone by lunging forward,

diving through the wall of fire to tackle the other creature, which

seemed surprised at this maneuver. The two went down in a

heap and began rolling over the dirt and asphalt, crushing

everything in their wake as they sought to get into the right

position to assert primacy in the encounter.

"Hiyaa," Shampoo said as she came up alongside Nabiki, "No

look now, Spatula Girl, it look like you baby about to get own

ass kicked."

"I don't think so, honey," Nabiki said faintly as she stared in

disbelief.

"What the heck is he doing?" Aiko blinked her eyes as everyone

else joined her in blank astonishment.

Indeed Gojiro had come up on top of the other creature and was

proceeding to force his opponent to lay face-first in the dirt

while he held its legs spread wide and...

"Oh my," Frank remarked, "I was afraid it'd be something like

this..."

"What's he doing to my baby?" Ukyo asked in round-eyed

dismay.

"Kicking her ass?" Perfume supplied rather hesitantly.

"Uh," Hercules blinked, "I don't know how to tell you this, kid,

but the big guy isn't 'kicking' your baby's ass...he's doing

something down there, but it's not kicking..."

"Trust you to pick up on that," Thor-chan murmured faintly.

"He's...?" Ranma faltered at saying the words aloud as almost

everyone else drew the same conclusion about what they were

seeing.

"He's gay?" Ryoga hazarded a guess, which earned him some

funny looks from those around him.

"Oh no," Beatrice smiled, "Did I forget to mention that when I

was examining the creature earlier I determined that it's sex was

female?"

"Oh yeah," Aiko snorted, "And you only NOW felt like sharing

this bit of news with us, Beiko?"

"Well, there were other subjects on my mind," Beatrice replied,

"But I suppose, in retrospect, it might have profited you all to

know that Baby is a female of her species."

"No wonder," Frank sniffed, "I kind thought the old guy was

acting a bit peevish lately. Imagine if you went thousands of

years without a good lay. No wonder he walked off the

island...he must have had a sense that a good looking chick like

that was about to arrive on the scene."

Ukyo finally recovered from her own surprise, and now her tone

had an entirely different note of outrage, "Hey! He can't be

doing that with her! She underaged!"

"Ucchan," Nabiki covered her eyes, "We really, really have to

have that talk..."

"Somehow I don't think he's too worried about checking her ID,"

Thor-chan remarked, "Or anything else not concerned with her

plumbing..." she suddenly winced as her own hammer rapped

against her head, then she turned a nervous look towards Sif and

said, "Oh, uh...hi Hon. What did I do this time?"

"I thought as much," Sif growled, "That generally smug attitude,

those condescending remarks, that unbelievable arrogance and

chauvinistic pride of yours...I should have recognized them

anywhere!"

"Uh...Sif," Thor-chan backed away, "Hon...I can explain

everything if you'll just let me..."

"What's her problem?" Frank glanced from his intimate study of

the two Lizards and their mating antics to take note of the blond

Goddess who was menacing on the redhead.

"That's Thor," Hercules nodded to the panicking redhead.

"Sorry to hear that," Frank sniffed, "I feel pretty Thor myself at

the...Waitaminute! Thor? That's you, big guy?"

"In the flesh," Thor said nervously, "Sort-of."

Frank's eyes narrowed as he growled, "Wait...this story...it's got

the word Jusenkyo in it someplace, right?"

"How did you guess?" Hercules grunted.

"Never mind," Frank grit his teeth and went back to studying the

two writhing creatures, "So that miserable place is still in

existence, huh? I knew I should have blown it up myself a

hundred years ago, but the historical preservation society would

have nailed my sallow hide. Next thing you know an old

woman riding a stick will show up and start rapping my head

like a Chinese gong..."

"You mean Great Grandmother?" Shampoo asked brightly, then

threw her arms around Nabiki and said, "You so clever you

figure out how to make giant beasts happy, Airen. From sound

of things they be at it for next few hours."

"Which reminds me, Sempai," Ryonami noted as she moved

closer to Nabiki and handed her several sheets of computer

paper, "About that information you had us research, Gosunkugi

and I found out some more data to add to that last report. If you

have a moment to read this..."

"I think I can manage it," Nabiki said as she slipped an arm

loose from the Amazon's glomp and took the paper one-handed

in order to read it, then did a double take and said, "Nani?"

"What is it, Oneechan?" Akane asked her.

"I would say, at a guess, that it is a confidential memo

concerning the activities of Alison and me during our time

together at Graviton," Beatrice surprised with folded arms, "I

was expecting you would have someone look it up for you, but

you needn't have bothered. I would have been happy to tell you

all about it...eventually."

"Yeah," Aiko snorted, "Tell her all about the mess you made by

always attacking me every morning on the way to school!"

"You exaggerate, Alison, it was hardly every day, and as for the

mess 'we' made," Beatrice arched her tone as she corrected, " I

seem to recall that you did your own fair share of property

damage, even if I will freely confess to being the primary

aggressor."

"You got us in a lot of trouble back then," Aiko clenched her

fists at the memories, "My parents hardly would let me out of

the house for weeks because of your stupid feud! If your father

hadn't been so rich that he could buy you out of trouble..."

"My father is the last thing I want to be reminded of at the

moment," Beatrice said coolly, "And I will thank you to

remember that in the future."

"Yeah, like you remember that I don't want to be called Alison,"

Aiko snorted, "You know, Beiko...for somebody who's so

awfully smart you can be so dumb at times..."

"Are you going to be blaming me for the past forever, Alison?"

Beatrice narrowed her eyes, "I've told you I've changed, can't

you let bygones be bygones?"

"Don't call me Alison!" Aiko stormed up to within spitting

distance of the other girl, "And for another thing...!"

Beatrice suddenly smiled, removed her helmet visor and

grabbed the redhead into her arms to plant an unexpected kiss on

her lips, then held her out part way and murmured in a sensual

voice, "My place or yours?"

"Ah...hah...?" Aiko blinked, looking so stunned that she could

have been knocked over by the proverbial feather.

Nabiki hid a smirk as she murmured, "I was wondering when

they were finally going to do that."

"Cut it out, you two," Akane grinned, "What do you think you

are, a couple of lizards?"

"Hmm," Beatrice mused without taking her eyes off her

dumbstruck companion, "They do seem to have the right idea,

don't they? Making love is a lot more fun than making

war...don't you agree?"

"Gah...ah..." Aiko suddenly went crimson and glanced away

with a confused expression.

"Sure are noisy," Ranma rubbed his ears with his fingers,

pretending to ignore the girl-on-girl exchange taking place

before him in favor of the other wild encounter, "Are you sure

they're enjoying that?"

"Oh yeah," Hercules snickered as he ignored the plight of his

granddaughter and watched the two lizards doing something that

would have given the editors of National Geographic

nightmares, "You can see how the big guy's in Elysium by now.

Sounds to me as if he's having the best sex of his life."

"One thing worries me, though," Nabiki said, "At the rate Baby

was growing...any chance she might be fertile?"

"Fertile?" Ukyo blinked.

"I would bet honest money on that," Beatrice smiled as she

turned a look Ukyo's way, "After all, the very fact that you are

pregnant is one of the many things that made the creature react

to you in such a positive manner. You are giving off special

pheromones to which her sensitive nostrils are acutely attuned,

and while such things would rarely affect a lizard brain, the

sympathetic resonance of the bond you forged with the creature

means that it has sought to create its own special state of

fecundity in hopes of such an event as this."

"Besides which," Hercules added, "I don't exactly think they

make condoms in his size," he nodded towards Gojiro.

Just then the sound of helicopters finally grew loud enough to

drown out the noises produced by the two creatures and

everyone turned to see the Kuno Company logo on five identical

craft, which were circling to find an open area for a landing.

"Ah, right on time," Frank smiled, turning to study the kitchen

equipment before adding, "With this set up we ought to be able

to brew up a large enough batch of sedative to trank both of

those beasties once they've had their fun and are through

copulating."

"That's why I told my folks to bring the equipment here," Nabiki

looked towards Ukyo with an apology, "Sorry there wasn't

enough time to consult with you, Ucchan, but I thought you'd

understand."

"I guess I do," Ukyo sighed, "But are you sure putting them to

sleep is the answer?"

"Just until we can ship them back to Monster Island," Frank

replied, "Besides, it shouldn't be too hard in Big G's case. He's

like a lot of guys...he goes for broke, shoots his wad, then pretty

soon he's exhausted and he'll just collapse and rolls over."

"Hiyaa," Shampoo nodded, "I know what that like."

Nabiki blinked, "Huh? Hey-!" then she saw the teasing look in

her wife's eyes and knew that she was being none-too-gently

ribbed.

Beatrice stared for a moment, then said, "She called you Airen a

moment ago...Chinese for Beloved."

"So?" Nabiki tried to sound nonchalant.

Beatrice smiled, "Don't tell me you went to the village of

Joketsuzoku in your cursed form and defeated this lovely lady

here. I have heard what happens when an outsider male defeats

an Amazon warrior."

"So have I," Aiko chuckled, having somewhat recovered from

her surprise of a moment back, "That's how my Dad wound up

marrying my Mom, although to hear her tell it she was the one

who had to get him motivated into doing it."

Beatrice was staring at Shampoo as she continued, "I can't help

but noticing...is the child your own?"

"Uh, yeah," Nabiki tried to sound more nonchalant than she was

feeling at the moment while Shampoo just looked at her smugly.

Beatrice slowly turned around with a smile and looked at Aiko,

"So...when an outsider female defeats an Amazon it does not

necessarily mean that the Amazon has to kill her. The Amazon

has the option of choosing to marry the woman who defeats

her...and you are part Amazon by birthright..."

"Yeah?" Aiko said nervously, "What are you getting a-uh-

Beiko? Why are you looking at me like that?"

Beatrice continued to smile, only more with speculation.

Aiko backed away, "You're crazy! You don't think...that's

nuts!"

"Aiko," Beatrice purred the name, "I'm ready to have that fight

with you now that you were asking for earlier in the day..."

"Yikes!" Aiko turned around and started running for it while

Beatrice took to the air and flew after her, calling out, "Stand

still and let me beat you, Alison! Don't you want to play with

me for old time's sake?"

As everyone else just stared at the fleeing pair Nabiki at long

last chuckled, "Y'know...somehow I think those two just might

fit in around here after all."

"You think?" Ranma said as she shared in her amusement,

shaking his head as he added, "That lady doesn't know what

she's getting herself into."

"It what get into her she worried about," Shampoo snickered

then said, "You ready to help us make potion for lovestruck

monsters, Ucchan?"

"Why not," Ukyo shrugged, giving the larger male lizard a sour

look as she added, "Beats using a gardening hose, but when this

is done I'm going to want to have words with that guy about

doing the right thing for my baby."

Perfume and Ranma exchanged looks, then silently turned their

appeals towards the heavens...

Continued.

Comments/Criticism/Lizards In Love Hotline:

shadowmane

Things wind down and move on to more domestic issues, but it

you think its about to get quiet in Nerima you'd better stay in

your seat for the aftermath that's coming...

If you wish to check out my other works, Please check out my

Fanfiction webpage at: . or

it's mirror site at: ~

All related chapters of this series can be found there along with my

other works.


	31. Chapter 31

Nabiki 1/2,

A Very Scary Thought

(An Altered Destiny)

by

Jim Robert Bader

Chapter 31, Part 1.

(Inspired by the Works of Rumiko Takahashi & Others)

"Finally, we made it!" Natsumi heaved a sigh of relief, "Nerima

at last, now all we've got to do is discover which way that giant

bugger went and see what we can do about it."

"How very odd," Miyuki frowned as she studied the road ahead

of them, "You can see the devastation of the creature's passage,

clearly indicating the direction it took, but there's no sign of the

creature itself. For that matter, where is the Home National

Defense Force? You would expect them to be present at a time

such as this. After all the security of our nation is at stake..."

"You mean like in the movies?" Natsumi asked, "Haven't you

noticed that it never does any good to send the army against

Gojiro or his buddies?"

"This isn't a movie, Natsumi-chan," Miyuki replied, "And I can't

believe that conventional armaments could be completely

useless against even a creature such as him. Haven't you every

heard of the inverse square rule that holds that for every

expansion of size in one direction there is a proportional

expansion in the other two dimensions?"

"Yeah, so?" Natsumi asked, sensing another immanent science

lecture and bracing herself accordingly not to nod off in mid-

topic.

"So if Gojiro is eighty times the height of a man, he must also be

five hundred and twelve thousand times the general mass, but

with only six thousand four hundred times the cross area of bone

density, meaning that he has eighty times the stress factor on his

general musculature, and that's not even taking into account the

overall area of his body surface. If he were built proportional to

a dinosaur he would be incapable of supporting his own internal

organs..."

"Didn't seem to be having any trouble from where I was sitting,"

Natsumi said drolly, "And what if he's got a thicker hide than a

normal dinosaur? I've heard he can shrug off even lasers..."

"That's not very likely, unless there were some other factor at

work in his internal dynamic," Miyuki sounded thoughtful,

which always made Natsumi nervous, "I wonder...is it possible

for a body that size to generate an internal heat source similar to

the theoretical models regarding Cold Fusion? If he could

somehow manifest a bio-electrical field that reinforced his

overall integrity like a magnet, strengthening everything while

protecting his body like a living force-field..."

"Miyuki," Natsumi said as she started to sit upright.

"I may be onto something here," Miyuki said with a growing

excitement that was plain in her lovely features, "A bio-

electrical field that reinforces integrity and strengthens his

overall resilience..."

"Miyuki-chan," Natsumi said more urgently.

"Just imagine the potential discoveries in not just biology but

physics should such a thing be possible..." Miyuki continued as

if too caught up with her idea to even notice that her partner had

spoken.

"Miyuki!" Natsumi all but shouted to get her attention then

pointed.

"What?" Miyuki came out of her daze as she followed her

partner's gesture, then almost panicked as she hit the breaks and

veered sharply to the right, just managing to pull their car up

short of the huge pit that yawned directly in their path.

She had been so intent on following the monster's huge foot

prints that she had failed to notice the signs that warned that

they were near to the city water reclamation center, and there in

the huge semi-dry basin was the very monster that they had been

pursuing.

Or rather they encountered the monsters, as in plural.

"What the...?" Natsumi sat upright in her seat as Miyuki killed

the engine and gaped in no less astonishment than her partner,

"Two of them?"

"Apparently," Miyuki noted after an understandable pause of

several long moments, "He's not the last of his kind after all. He

must have come to Nerima to mate..."

"Mate with what?" Natsumi wondered, "That one looks more

like the creature from that really awful American remake, the

one that attacked New York City."

"Well, what do you know," Miyuki noted faintly, "Life really

does imitate art...and what are those Helicopters doing up

there?"

"Huh?" Natsumi was jarred out of her fixation with the very rare

sight of two creatures the size of very tall buildings mating in

broad daylight and instead focused on the five helicopters

moving off to one side in perfect formation.

"Those aren't government Helicopters," Miyuki noted before

starting up the engine once again, "Let's follow them and see

where they land. I've got a feeling we're about to finally get

some answers..."

At first when they had circled the area looking for a place to

land the occupants of the lead of a fleet of five helicopters-all

bearing the Kuno Family Company Logo/Pharmaceuticals

Division-were amazed to discover what looked from the air to

be a pair of prehistoric creatures of unbelievable size making out

like a pair of rabbits, but since that was all that they seemed to

be doing it was obvious that the most prudent approach was not

to disturb them. Instead they set down a good distance away

near to where they found a group of people gathered about what

appeared to be an outdoor kitchen.

Tatewaki Kuno was first to dismount from the lead helicopter,

reaching out his hand to offer it to Natsume Tendo, who was all

too willing to take it, even though she did not actually need the

assistance. Next to exit was Elder Cologne, followed in good

order by Tatewaki's father, who turned to stare at the two rutting

beasts and sniffed, "Some Mascot, settin' an example like

that...although-come to think of it-that is more real t'life than

our old mascot, an' pretty typical for our students..."

"What on Earth do you suppose has been going on here, Kuno-

san?" Natsume asked Tatewaki.

"I'm afraid to even hazard a guess," Kuno replied, turning to

take note of the ones approaching them, "Perhaps we will get

some answers, provided we are not too late, Tendo Nabiki?"

"Not at all," Nabiki said, "In fact you're just in time. Have you

brought everything we requested?"

"It's all here, and in the quantities you asked for," Kuno nodded

to the helicopters, then scanned the people massed around the

small makeshift camp and said, "I trust no one was seriously

injured in bringing these two creatures together?"

"Fortunately no," Nabiki said, turning to glance at where the two

lizards were still in full rut mode, "Good thing, too...from the

sound of things they wouldn't be too discriminating of anyone

getting in their way at the moment.

"Indeed," Cologne remarked, "You have managed well, my

child, to minimize your losses in this way. I dare say..." her tone

trailed off as she took note of one individual among the crowd

who literally stood head and shoulders above the rest, "Who is

that over there?"

"Oh, Frank?" Nabiki turned a half-amused glance towards the

giant biker, who was studying the activities of the creatures with

his odd binoculars, "He calls himself Doctor Steinberg, if you

can believe it..."

"Does he now?" Cologne mused, "Not very original, but it fits

him nicely..."

Nabiki turned a curious look towards the wizened elder, not

certain if she had heard the tone just right or if Cologne actually

seemed to recognize the big man without having needed to ask.

Of course, being only human, Nabiki could not have noticed the

trio of Heavenly visions currently contemplating the same stolid

looking individual with speculative interest reflected in the eyes

of the eldest.

"Isn't he handsome?" Urd asked her two sisters.

"Handsome?" Skuld replied dubiously, "You're telling us that

you know this guy, Sis?"

"Know him and dated him," Urd smirked, "And I can testify

from first hand experience that he's well...put together.

Everything about him's made to proportion..." she smirked,

"And I do mean everything! There's more than one reason they

call him the Monster."

"He does seem like a very nice man," Belldandy noticed in her

quiet little way, "But I sense great sadness about him, and

loneliness as well. It's like a part of him lives eternally in the

past..."

"My area of specialty," Urd smirked, but then sobered as she

added, "Yeah, Frank's like that in a lot of ways, but you can take

it from me that his heart is in the right place...well, sort of

located there anyway..."

"How long do you think those two will be at it?" Ranma asked

curiously as he turned away from watching Ukyo and the others

with kitchen talents prepare the brew to the recipe they had been

given.

"Hard to say, kid," Frank replied as he lowered his special

glasses, "An average lizard only does it for a few moments, long

enough to fertilize the eggs of the female and get onto other

business. With these guys, though, it could take a bit longer,

maybe ten or twenty minutes tops. Seems to be a

correspondence between higher intelligence and the ability to

enjoy a good lay, and that boy's been waiting a long time to get

his rocks off. According to the legends the original Typhon was

taken out by Zeus a couple thousand years ago..."

"Four thousand to be less than fully exact," Hercules corrected,

"Well before my time anyway, though I'd always thought Dad

was just exaggerating about the size of the bloody sucker.

Guess those guys have a pretty long lifespan...can't imagine

what could naturally kill them. Kind of like you in a lot of

ways. That part of your interest?"

"Partly," Frank admitted, "I've made a pretty thorough study of

Big G's anatomy and biological processes, or at least as far as I

can go without having to dissect him. There's still a lot we don't

know about what makes big suckers like him tick...but then that

could probably be just as true about me, so who's pointing the

finger, huh?"

"Now there's a line I wouldn't touch with a ten foot Runestaff,"

remarked the red-bearded Thor, who showed up just then in his

restored male aspect.

"So," Hercules remarked, "Finally decided to switch back to

yourself now that Sif knows your little secret?"

"Only part of it," Thor rubbed the side of his head and winced a

little as though encountering a spot that was very tender, "She

still doesn't know about her precious Algonquin. I'm not

looking forward to how she'll take it when I spring that bit of

information on her."

"Too bad," Frank remarked, "Your other half is quite the

looker."

"Har, har," Thor growled, "Like you're any fit judge of that,

Gargoyle..."

"Golem," Frank corrected, "Golem, I don't do that stone bit in

the daytime. Besides, some of my best friends are Gargoyles, so

don't make any cracks about my looks because I happen to know

I still have my touch with the ladies..."

"You certainly have at that."

"Huh?" the big man looked down, caught sight of a familiar

object and almost jumped until he gazed further down at the

figure holding the wooden staff and frowned before asking,

"Who the hell are you, Granny?"

"A very good question," Cologne replied, giving the giant a

benevolent smile that would have probably frightened even a

giant monster, "Care to make a guess, Sonny?"

Frank hesitated only a few moments before he said, "Cologne?

Is that you, baby? What...happened?"

"It's been over a hundred and eighty years at least," Cologne

replied, "What do you think happened? I got older. I was over a

hundred and eleven when we first met, if I recall rightly."

"Oh," Frank said faintly, "It's been...that long, huh? Guess I lost

track of the time...I've been kind of busy..."

"So I've gathered," Cologne said with a sardonic smile, "I

understand you're now calling yourself Doctor Steinberg, am I

right?"

"Well," Frank said awkwardly, "I have several degrees after all,

some of 'em even before my resurrection, and I think my father'd

be proud that I carried on the family tradition..."

"That you have," Cologne glanced over and the two lizards

before adding, "If anything I'd say you've exceeded yourself in

that department."

"Yeah, well," Frank shrugged, "I can't exactly take credit for

him, but I've written some dandy reports in all the major

scientific journals if you can understand the technical jargon.

Uh...look, about Lotion..."

"She still thinks of you from time to time," Cologne noted the

way the big man winced a little before adding, "Of course she's

a Great Grandmother now with a great granddaughter who is

almost her spitting image who bears the same name...if not quite

the same nature. She also sits in the Council and makes a point

of opposing me on certain key matters."

"Uh, yeah..." Frank turned away and his expression looked tight

for a moment before he added, "Sorry about that."

"Not your fault how matters turned out," Cologne replied, "I'm

just glad we did settle affairs reasonably in the end. Besides,

what's wrong with the three of us not having died by now?

Considering the sort of lives we led I think that's pretty

remarkable."

"Yeah, I guess," Frank made a point of changing the subject,

"Say, have you noticed how that guy over there looks a lot like a

certain somebody I used to hang around with?"

"I was wondering when you were going to bring that up,"

Cologne said sardonically, "His name is also Genma Saotome."

Frank scowled, "Too much of a coincidence. You think maybe

it's somehow him alive after all this time?"

"Doubtful," Cologne remarked, "Genma Saotome is many

things, but he is certainly not as immortal as you. It is a rather

remarkable resemblance, however and not just in the name or

that he changes into a Panda."

"Panda?" Frank turned around and glared in Genma's direction,

"That settles it, he's the guy who led me into that cursed training

ground and messed my life up for almost a century..."

"Funny," Hercules sniffed, "He looks and sounds an awful lot

like Gemenidies, who also had the exact same curse, only the

guy I'm thinking of was older, and he was also a Satyr."

"What are you getting at?" Thor frowned, "Can't you tell if he

has the right Akashik signature?"

"Oh, his signature's a close enough match all right," Hercules

growled, "But the Temporal count's all wrong, which makes me

think maybe that the Genma I knew wasn't really from the past

at all but maybe this guy in the future."

"The future?" Frank arched his eyebrows, "You mean like a

Timetraveler?"

"Why not?" Hercules asked, "Stranger things have happened,

and if this guy's future self is the one who went back and messed

up our lives..."

"Then what if somebody messed him up before that could

happen?" Thor wondered, and all three men smiled in a way that

did not promise anything healthy for Saotome Genma..."

"They look happy for some reason," Kasumi noted as she looked

up from her share of the cooking

Genma also could not help noticing the stares turned in his

direction, or the smiles that sent odd shivers down his back. He

would have either fled or assumed Panda form but for Nodoka's

presence and the lingering sense that he had done something to

get on their bad side, which would require a lengthy explanation

to her, and this time he did not have a clue as to what he could

have done wrong to provoke them. He hoped it wasn't another

case of him arranging a fight or engaging them to Nabiki or

anything like that because if it was one of those incidents from

his misunderstood past then he was shortly to learn what it felt

like to be a fur rug, and he'd had quite enough of being blamed

for things that were beyond even his understanding...

"Hmm?" Nabiki looked up from where she had been

contemplating the two dragons and saw the approaching car

with two very familiar passengers, then she heard the bike

announce, "Well, well, don't look now, Boss, but your two

admirers have finally come calling."

"About time," Frank replied, deciding to put aside his questions

regarding the fate of Saotome Genma, "Pull up a seat, ladies,

we've got a dandy vantage point to watch all the action."

"Tendo-san?" Miyuki asked as she and Natsumi exited their

vehicle, once it was fully parked, "Don't tell us you're involved

in all of this too?"

"Well," Nabiki smiled lopsidedly, "At the time it didn't seem

like I had much of a choice..."

"YOWSA!" cried the delighted form of Happosai as he launched

himself at an unprepared Natsumi and proceeded to glomp onto

her chest with the predictable result that the off-duty

policewoman went ballistic.

"Get off of me you-Pervert!" she cried as she tried her best to

dislodge him.

Frank blinked his pale eyes then said, "Happy? Is that you, old

buddy?"

"Frank?" Happosai looked up from where he had been rubbing

his face between two mounds, ignoring Miyuki's attempts to

assist her partner, "What are you doing here in Nerima-OW!"

"Mind your manners," Cologne said as she bopped the ancient

master on the head with her staff, "I'm so sorry, ladies, but it

seems this old codger can't go five minutes without reverting to

type." In a lower voice she hissed, "Behave yourself, your

grandchildren are watching!"

"Oh...yeah," Happosai said as he let go of Natsumi and hopped

out of the reach of the savage kick she cast in his general

direction. Instead he turned his attentions to the big man and

said, "So you're here to see the fireworks. Can't say I'm too

surprised about that, you always did keep an eye out for the big

ones, as I well recall."

"Not big," Frank said, "Just nice sized. So, what have you been

up to lately, or do I want to know the answer to that?" he fetched

an apologetic look towards Natsumi and Miyuki.

"Tell me again how you know each other?" Akane murmured to

Ryoga.

"It's...kind of hard to explain," Ryoga rubbed the back of his

head with a free hand, "You know how I'm always winding up

in these really strange places without any idea how I got there?

Well, there was this village in Eastern Europe where I had this

really strange encounter with a lychanthrope and a female

vampire, and before I know it the village people are coming

after me like I was the one who changed into some kind of a

monster..."

"I just happened to be in the neighborhood at the time," Frank

remarked, "Looking up some old friends...or rather reminding

myself where the bodies were buried, when I saw the kid here

was having some problems with the locals. That's the trouble

with the Old Country, way too traditional in their thinking. Kid

shows up with a set of fangs and right away they just assume

he's one of Vlad's people..."

"Oh come on, that is so lame!" Ranma protested, "You expect us

to believe you not only traveled thousands of mile without

knowing that you did it and wound up running into a Werewolf

and a Vampire?"

"Shut up, Ranma!" Ryoga growled, "Nobody asked for your

opinion, let alone me, and besides it's not like I would make a

thing like that up!"

"I believe you, Ryoga-kun," Akane said with shining eyes, but

then she added more reluctantly, "Still...you have to admit that

he does have a point. After all, it's not exactly something that

happens every day, even to you."

"Let's see," Nabiki began ticking off on her fingers, "We've got

a pair of monsters over there who each deserve their own area

codes, a group of people calling themselves gods, and the big

fellow over here who claims some kind of a relationship to that

other guy in the 19th century novel..."

"Only I didn't kill no kid," Frank growled, "Shelly got that part

wrong, like a lot of other details, even after I explained my story

while hiding out in Byron's mansion. She thought it would add

more punch, but I was framed, I tell you! She should never have

let that Percy guy handle the edit chores."

"Ah, if you say so," Nabiki turned away with a dubious

expression, "So...what's that about Ryoga's story being hard to

credit, Ranma-kun? Sounds to me like a typical Hibiki

adventure."

"You've got that right, sugar," Ukyo said cheerfully from where

she and the others were putting the finishing touches on several

heaping platters full of Okonomiyaki, "Ryoga can no more stay

out of trouble when he travels than Nab-chan here can avoid

getting wet."

"Don't I know it," Nabiki frowned with her most droll

expression.

"Seriously though," Frank glanced down at Ryoga, "If you're

having problems finding your way in the world, maybe you

should let me examine you at one of my clinics. I'm used to

diagnosing unusual phenomenon...you might even say it's in my

blood. At the very least I might be able to help you get a better

handle on this uncontrolled talent."

"Be careful of that offer," the familiar voice of Beatrice

remarked as she and Aiko reappeared walking up the side of the

gully at a leisurely pace together, "We mad scientist types have

a tendency to meddle, like those researchers we knew at the

institute that gave us our nick-names."

"Welcome back," Nabiki said, "I take it your little game of tag

ended satisfactorily?"

Aiko was about to say something when Beatrice beat her to the

punch, "Afraid not, but it was fun to go at it again for old time's

sake. I'd call this one something of a draw, but there's always

next time..."

"Next time?" Aiko said in alarm, "Don't tell me you're planning

to go after me like that every day, just like you used to?"

"Why, Alison," Beatrice smiled coyly, "Don't you like the idea

of being chased, especially since you know I'm going to catch

you in the end, and then you and I can go steady like any regular

couple."

"Urk," Aiko replied with a half step backward, but one would

have been hard pressed to say if she as upset at the notion as she

pretended.

"All done with this batch!" Ukyo called out, "How many more

Fish Okonomiyakis do you think we'll need?"

"Better keep at it until you use up your ingredients," Frank

replied, "I'll refund you for the materials later since you're doing

your government a community service."

A loud noise shook the air, then Ranma winced, "Man, how long

are those two going to be at it? It's been close to twenty

minutes!"

"They do sound as if they'll be at it a while more," Frank replied

as he adjusted his binoculars then in a darker tone he growled,

"Showoff."

"No, wait," Beatrice raised a hand and listened, "The pitch is

different, I think he's making his withdrawal."

"Withdrawal?" Aiko winced, "Sounds more like she's in pain!"

"That's just the effect of him pulling out of her, Alison,"

Beatrice replied, "Some animals have ridges on their male

members that hold them into place so that fertilization can occur

at the maximum depth of penetration. There is a slight tearing

sensation as the spines or ridges on the tip are pulled out, but

after this the female often experiences an intense form of relief

quite similar to an orgasm..."

"Can't you just say he's got a rough technique and leave it at

that?" Aiko pleaded, "And since when did you become such an

expert? I thought you said you'd never been with a guy before.

It's that Gail creep, isn't it? I thought you two were alone a bit

too much on that trip..."

"I've told you, Aiko," Beatrice replied, "Our relationship was

strictly platonic...mostly."

"Mostly?" Aiko bristled.

Unnoticed by most of those around them, Ukyo suddenly

staggered and had to be caught by an anxious Perfume, who had

been first to recognize that her wife was having hot flashes.

The others did not notice because-at that very moment-Gojiro

pulled completely out of Baby, and for the first time gave

everyone a good view of the thing that had given her such

pleasure and torment.

"Kami-sama," Natsumi gasped, "He's huge!"

"Huge is an understatement," Miyuki agreed, unable to look

away while the other Natsume put a hand over the eyes of her

sister, Kurumi.

"No wonder she was in pain," Ryoga gasped, while Ranma and

Kuno only winced, feeling slightly intimidated.

"Oh my," Kasumi said, "Isn't he a bit...small?"

After a brief second of pause everyone looked at her in

astonishment. The eldest Tendo sister took notice of their

expressions and said, "For his size, I mean. He's not quite in

proportion."

"You know, now that I think on it, you're right," said Beatrice

with a look of speculation that earned a dubious look from Aiko.

"Well," Frank said, turning from the glasses to examine his wrist

chronometer, "In another ten seconds, nine, eight, seven, six..."

Right on cue Gojiro gave a final cry of triumph, then slumped

forward and hit the dirt with the force of a major earth tremor.

"Timber," Frank mused in the ensuing silence, "Right on cue.

Well, I don't think he'll be stirring for a while after that. Better

feed him those drugs to keep him and his lady friend passive,

they've got a long trip ahead of them, and I've already got the

choppers fueled and ready to fly. Let's not wait for the Asian

financial crisis to deepen, people, let's get moving."

"Sounds like my cue," Aiko rolled her eyes, then examined the

huge stacks of okonomiyaki that had been cooked and readied

by the expert team of chefs, already laid out on wooden palates.

She hefted one up as though it were as light as a feather then

balanced it over her head and said, "I'll be back in a minute with

the next one..."

"Don't sweat it, kid," Hercules said, "That's what me and Erik

the red here are good for. You take one, we'll take the other

two, and feed those two lovebirds off to dreamland."

Perfume turned from watching the display of physical might to

noticing the odd expression Ukyo was wearing and said, "You

okay, Ucchan? You look like you're having hot flashes."

"I think I am," Ukyo fanned herself with a hand, "Is it me or has

it gotten awfully warm all of a sudden?"

"Actually it's cooling off a bit," Perfume noted, then saw the

strange look her beloved chef was giving her and said, "Oh...you

mean that kind of warm all of a sudden?"

"Uh-huh," Ukyo sidled up next to the Amazon and said, "Say,

Per-chan...now that the crisis is winding down and all, how

would you feel about maybe going off somewhere and..." she

leaned forward and murmured into Perfume's ear, earning a non-

plussed look of surprise from her companion.

"Now?" Perfume's voice arched an octave as though even she

was surprised at the suggestion.

"No better time for it," Ukyo purred sensuously, showing a more

brazen lust in her smile than was usually the case for someone

normally reserved to the point of shyness.

Ranma watched this exchange with a very sour look of his own,

but before he could comment on it he heard the big man murmur

to himself, "Now that things are quieting down, there's just one

question I've got about that egg the baby hatched from."

"Egg?" Nabiki arched an eyebrow, "You have some notion how

such a thing got to Nerima?"

"Herk seems to know something," Frank replied as he stroked

his chin with a thoughtful expression, "I'll wait until he gets

back before seeking confirmation. Whoever broke into the

containment facility where the egg was being stored had little

trouble bypassing all the security protocols, most of which I

designed myself. In fact, if I didn't know any better, I'd say the

thief wasn't human."

"What sort of egg are you talking about, Sir?" Ryonami spoke

up at last, "We've heard a rumor that the creature was hatched,

and there's been some mention of the name Typhon..."

"Typhon meaning the Greek Titan sent by Mother Earth to

punish the Gods," said Gosunkugi, "Would you care to explain

that, Sir?"

"Not sure if I can," Frank remarked, "What I know is that a team

of researchers many years ago found the egg in a cave on an

island in the Mediterranean and it was taken in for study by a

certain group with which I'm currently affiliated. We thought it

might be magical in nature, but nobody suspected it was

dormant waiting to hatch out. I think somebody with a lot of

personal power must have done something to speed up the

growth process, which is why your baby hatched and matured in

such a short interval. It's almost as if they intended the creature

to run wild and cause all kinds of mischief."

"Only the creature imprinted itself on a human woman before

this could happen," Beatrice remarked, "In effect her link with

the creature proved to be a stabilizing influence and no doubt

averted a major crisis."

"Which just leaves us with the question of who would want to

have the creature run loose in Nerima," Nabiki remarked,

"Especially since its hatching seems to have drawn the interest

of the King of all Monsters."

"Okay," Natsumi said, "I can tell when we've walked in during

intermission. Mind backing up and explaining that whole thing

to Miyuki and me? We're a little handicapped since we tend to

think and act more like regular people."

"I think I am getting the gist of it," Miyuki surmised, "So if I

understand this right, what we are looking for is someone who

has the ability to perform miracles, who would not mind causing

mass destruction, collateral property damage and quite possibly

a widespread loss of life and who knows about Monster Island,

which-by the way-Natsumi here seems to think is nothing

more than the product of Tojo studios and not an actual facility."

"Well hey!" Natsumi winced, "You got to admit it's kind of

implausible, the government keeping those things hidden away

on some unknown island..."

"You know," Ryoga mused, "What you're describing almost

sounds like a God..."

"Or goddess," said Urd as she finally joined the conversation,

looking up before adding, "You can come out now, Kishi. The

game is up, you can stop messing around with the mortals."

"Why, whatever to you mean, dearie?" an old woman asked as

she appeared alongside the grill, bent and hunched over with

grey hair, but once she straightened out her hair turned jet black,

formed into a pony tail and lengthened until it was dangling well

below her waist as she grew tall, slender and generously well

proportioned. A moment later a statuesque beauty with purple

eyes greeted them with a friendly, "Hello, Cousins. How is life

for you among the mortals?"

"Cousin Kishi?" Skuld exclaimed in surprise, "What are you

doing here of all places?"

"I'm doing field research, of course," the raven-haired beauty

smiled, "Unlike some Goddesses I could name I'm not tied to a

desk job and I'm free to consort with the common herd at my

leisure."

"So what are you doing here, Cousin?" asked Belldandy with a

puzzled expression.

"Hey," Nabiki blinked, "A minute ago...you looked a lot like

that old woman who keeps splashing me every time I happen by

a certain block..."

"Merely a coincidence," the stranger smiled in a way that hinted

of mischief.

"Kishijoten," Frank sighed, "What does the Goddess of Luck

have to do with Gojiro's girlfriend turning up all of a sudden...or

is that self-explanatory?"

"What?" the goddess asked with mock-wounded pride, "Do you

honestly think that I have anything to do with the events of this

day? I may be prone to the odd practical joke now and then, but

even I have some sense of limit to just how far I can arrange

events to suit my amusement. If you are looking for the true

guilty party you need look no further than over there. I've been

keeping an eye on her ever since she came over to Nippon to

sow her idea of mischief. In fact she is watching and listening

in now, and in another moment she will be trying to make a

hasty exit."

"Who is she talking about?" Kurumi asked her sister, "And is

she really an actual goddess?"

"I have no idea," Natsume replied, "This entire day has been a

very strange one, has it not, Kuno-san?"

"Indeed it has, fair one," Tatewaki replied, glancing to one side,

"But unless I miss my guess, the malefactor is about to be hoist

on her own petard by one too many careless assumption."

And from a place of concealment not very far away a silver

haired beauty frowned and said, "What are they talking about?

That Kishi must think I'm deaf if she thinks I'll fall for that..."

A large, firm hand was laid upon her shoulder and a voice

replied in her ear, "You were saying, big sister?"

"Ulp," the silver haired beauty replied, "I don't suppose I could

talk you into stepping aside, little Bro?"

"No."

"That's what I figured," she said, laying slender hands on the big

man's wrist and taking a step to one side as she brought that arm

around and flipped Hercules over onto his back. To her

surprise, however, he reversed her grip on his wrist and flipped

her over, too, so that she landed on top of him as his arms went

firmly around her.

"Did you forget after all this time?" Hercules asked his older

sister, "Hippolyta taught me that maneuver, and she learned it

from her father..."

Kishijoten smiled and said, "Now all we need is one more player

and the cast will be complete."

She turned to one side as a flash of lightning shot down from the

heavens and suddenly took the form of a tall man with silver

hair whose eyes flashed with electricity before he was fully

manifested, looking like a Priest or Pilgrim on a holy mission.

"I got your fax and came at once, little sister," the man remarked

as he took everything in with a glance, "I see I'm not the first to

arrive either. Is this a general staff meeting, a fact-finding

mission or is something up that requires so many of us in one

place, and surrounded by mortals no less."

"That's semi-mortal to you," Frank huffed, then sighed, "It really

is like old times all over again. Now I remember why I've

stayed away from this place for the last twenty years, too many

memories keep cropping up to haunt me."

"You're one memory I could always do without, Legion," the

silver haired man remarked, "It has been many tournaments

since our paths last crossed. I trust you still keep in shape?"

"Like I've got a choice?" Frank sniffed.

"Why is he calling you Legion?" Akane asked the big man.

"Old joke," Frank sniffed, "They call me Legion, for we are

many, that sort of thing. Now why did you need the local God

of Thunder, Kish? Haven't we got enough problems as it is

without dragging in this Tournament fixer?"

"That's what I'd like to know," asked Thor as he and Sif rejoined

them.

"Thor?" Raiden blinked, "And you brought lady Sif with you?

Oh my..."

"Break out the hearts and flowers, the gang's all here," said

Hercules as he strode up with the beautiful silver-haired girl

slung over his shoulder, kicking and fighting in spite of having

her wrists bound together, "I've got someone who owes

everybody a big apology, and three guesses who's behind this

business with the Titans."

"Let me go, you big bully!" the goddess in question protested,

"This is blatant Sexual Harassment!"

"Yeah, yeah, runs in the family and all that," Hercules huffed as

he set her down then presented her to the others, "Raiden, old

buddy, you remember Artemis, my half-sister on Dad's side of

the pillow?"

"Well, well," Raiden remarked, "Long time no see, Huntress."

"Artemis?" Sif bridled, "You're here? You're behind this?"

"So what if I am?" the silver haired goddess replied with an

angry glare at her half brother, "It's only right that an Olympian

brings back a creature from the edge of extinction that my own

father nearly wiped out of existence. You mortals have been

keeping that egg for study for far too long. It's a living,

breathing, sentient creature and it has a right to live, just like

anything else in creation!"

"She sounds like an environmental extremist," Nabiki remarked.

"Indeed," said Beatrice concurred, "It has been said that the

Goddess Artemis was a strong proponent of conservation and a

sworn enemy of those who wrongly exploit the resources of

nature."

"You have to forgive Arty," Hercules shrugged, "She fell in with

a bad crowd during the '60s and ever since she's been even

harder to live with than in the old days."

"I don't need you to patronize me you male chauvinist status

symbol!" Artemis snorted, "It's all the fault of you Japanese

deities anyway, letting your mortals slip out of the harness,

allowing them to run wild exploiting of the natural resources of

other countries. And you two...you're as bad as they are!" she

glared at Thor and Sif, "Letting your mortal pets use fishing

trawlers with gill nets to deplete Poseidon's oceans of entire

schools of fish, even permitting the barbaric practice of Whaling

to continue to thrive, or are they still claiming their harvests are

purely for research?" she snorted in derision, "It's because of

divinities like you that mortals are depleting the world's

resources faster than they can be replenished!"

"So," Frank remarked, "In other words your solution to the

problem was to engineer the release of two of the greatest of all

Titans so that they could breed to create more of their kind, who

would go on a rampage destroying these fishing fleets in order

to preserve enough seafood for their own limitless appetites. Of

course if a few thousand mortals got stomped flat along the way

that would just be a messy little inconvenience?"

"Can't make an Omelet without breaking a few eggs, right Sis?"

Hercules snorted, "When Dad hears about this you are SOOOO

grounded...!"

"Am I to understand that she recklessly endangered public safety

for the sake of a political cause?" Miyuki asked.

"They ought to throw the book at you and lose the key, lady!"

Natsumi seconded, "We'd arrest you ourselves, but..."

"But we are kind of on our vacation when we got side-tracked,"

Miyuki finished for her, "It was curiosity that drew us here. We

honestly had no idea what we were getting involved with."

"Be that as it may," Raiden stepped forward until he was only a

short distance away from the defiant Moon Goddess, "I do have

the authority to place you under arrest for violation of Divine

Code 106, section C, paragraph ten, the reckless and willful

endangering of the public. I may not fault you for your cause,

but your methods leave a lot to be considered, lady."

"Do your worst," Artemis snorted, "I've been threatened by

experts and I know the routine. You think there is a Continuum

that can hold me, you have a lot to learn, Thunderhead. I'll

appeal any charges you make before the divine court and..."

"Unfortunately," Hercules sighed, "Much as I'd like to turn her

over to your custody, old buddy, I'd be in a lot of deep quiche if

Dad ever found out I left a sister to rot in somebody else's

prison. Arty may be obnoxious at times, but she is my sister, so

if anybody's going to haul her into court it'll be yours truly."

"Guys," Urd suddenly spoke up, glancing around before she

stage-whispered, "Not in front of the mortals..."

"Hey, what's up?" asked Aiko as she rejoined the group, then

took notice of the Moon Goddess and said, "Who's that? She

looks kind of familiar...almost a little bit like you, Beiko."

"Oh please," Beatrice snorted, "Even I was never that crazy."

"As fascinating as this custody battle is turning out to be,"

Kishijoten remarked, "The fact remains that matters have been

resolved satisfactorily in regards to the Titan situation. Now

there is only one looming crisis that threatens to burst out of

control at any second, so I redirect your attention to our mortal

audience, who had the odd fortune to wind up getting involved

in these matters."

"What are you talking about?" Ranma asked, "We helped save

the day here, so don't we get a little bit of the credit?"

"I think the crisis they are referring to involves whether or not

we get to remember these events at the end of the day,

Ranchan," Nabiki replied, eyeing the assembled divinities before

adding, "After all, there are some things that we're not meant to

know, am I right?"

"Hey," Frank growled, "That's usually my line."

"Memory problems are one thing," Kishijoten smiled, "But the

crisis I was referring to is of a more personal nature in your

case, Tendo-san, if you care to take notice of a certain party over

to your right."

"What?" Nabiki blinked, but before she could turn around she

heard Kasumi call out, "Shampoo! Are you all right?"

"Shampoo just...tired...work too hard in kitchen," said the purple

haired Amazon as she leaned against a table that was covered in

flower and the remains of many an Okonomiyaki ingredient.

"Don't lie to us, child," Cologne hopped over to her, "I've seen

you trying to hide the pain in your expression. How long have

you been experiencing these contractions?"

"N-nani?" Nabiki blinked.

"Contractions?" Akane gasped.

"Oh my," Kasumi moved to Shampoo's side and gently resisted

the Amazon's attempts to refuse her assistance, "You had better

sit down. Somebody please call for Doctor Tofu..."

"I am a doctor," Frank remarked as he was already half way to

the makeshift kitchen and soon stood over Shampoo as she lay

with her back upon the table, feeling her pulse and probing her

with surprisingly gentle hands.

"I should have seen this coming myself," Happosai remarked as

he stood beside Cologne, "The lovely Shampoo never was one

to share her private pain with others..."

"Yes, but I know her best and I should have foreseen this,"

Cologne said grimly, "After all, there is precedence behind these

events."

"What's wrong with Shampoo?" Ranma asked as he hovered

nearby, wanting to come closer but for Nodoka and Kasumi

warded him others.

"What do you think, kid?" Frank said with gruff bedside manner

as he finished his examination and stood back, "She's going into

labor..."

"W-what?" Nabiki gasped, pushing past the others to come up

alongside Shampoo as Frank stepped back to permit her.

"Nothing to get excited about," Frank said in his best reassuring

tones, "Cologne can vouch that I've seen a lot of pregnant ladies

in my time, and all the signs are there that she's about to have a

perfectly normal delivery, provided we can get her to the

hospital delivery room in time. Some girls always wait until the

last minute to make the announcement," the latter part he sighed

as if in bitter reflection.

"She's going to have her baby?" Ryoga blinked, "You

mean...now?"

"That would seem very likely," said Beatrice nodded sagely.

"But I thought...well, you know," Ranma hesitated, "It's been

seven and a half months...isn't she due in another six weeks or

so...?"

"Seven and a half," Frank frowned, "I would guessed a little

further along than that. Shelly, back me up on this, what do

your sensors tell you?"

"The scans I just made confirm that the child is in a late third

trimester phase, Boss," the motorcycle replied, "Give or take a

week, no more than that."

"But that doesn't make any sense," Ryonami gasped, "Sempai

and Shampoo conceived their child while they were still back in

China."

"Sempai?" Frank lifted an eyebrow, turning back to give Nabiki

an odd look, "Oboy...you mean Jusenkyo was involved in this?

No wonder the kid's more developed...strong magic fields tend

to speed up certain biological processes, like healing and cell

growth. If anything that kid's going to come out a late term."

"But...this is incredible!" Soun cried, "My daughter is going to

have a baby through another woman...the first of an entirely new

generation of Tendos..."

"That's wonderful news, Tendo-san," Hinako said brightly,

"You're going to be a grandfather!"

"A gra-!" Soun's happy expression froze on his face as he

became as white as a marble statue, comprehension dawning on

him with all the alacrity of a glacier.

"I see," Genma adjusted his glasses, "So, in other words,

Shampoo is about to give my niece her first child, and its bound

to be delivered at any moment."

There was a very slight pause of stunned silence, and then

Natsumi cried, "What is everybody just standing around for?

We've got to get Tendo-san's wife to the Hospital this minute!"

That broke the impasse, and an instant later there was a

scramble as nearly everyone made a dash for the nearest

transportation...

Continued.

Comments/Criticism/Amazon Lamaze Classes:

shadowmane

The race is on as everyone rushes to get Shampoo to a delivery

room, and meanwhile on the other side of town two other groups

prepare to make their dramatic return to Nerima...be there!

Nabiki 1/2:

A Very Scary Thought!

By

Jim Robert Bader

(Based on the works of Rumiko Takahashi and Others)

Chapter 31, Part 2

It had been a hot, humid day in Nerima for much of the late

afternoon and until this point the sky had been clear with

relatively few clouds, when out of the blue it began to rain,

surprising everyone who was without an umbrella.

In actuality such a sudden change in the weather was far from

exceptional. Japan was in a Temperate zone known for its

seasonal weather, and with one hundred and twenty inches of

rain every year it was far from surprising to find a sudden

downpour break out with relatively little warning.

What was surprising was the small group of figures poised

outside the Tendo household, led by a very pretty woman in

conservative business dress who stood at the front gate for

several minutes ringing the chime that passed for the next best

thing to a doorbell. After a moment she frowned and said,

"How odd. It appears that no one is home. Do you think we

may have come at a bad time, my lady-ah, I mean, Captain?"

She addressed the question to the largest and most surprising of

her companions, the one she had ridden in from the coastline

like an odd play on the poem by Tennyson. Said companion

growled something that would have made no sense to a normal

human, but the lady just smiled and said, "I suppose you are

right, Captain. Coming here a day early may have been a wise

tactical maneuver, but it left us with no assurance that anyone

would be home when we got here."

A squawk from the back of the first companion announced the

intent of a second to launch itself into the air despite the heavy

downpour. Powerful wings propelled it over the wall, and then

a few moments later the gates swung open to admit the oddly

mismatched party.

"But...won't it be rude to intrude upon the Tendos like this,

Captain?" the woman asked, only to be answered by a low

growl, to which she assented, "Quite right. You wish to find a

bath for the others to change in. I suppose we could always

excuse ourselves later..."

The third companion, who also sat on the back of the first, made

a curious noise of inquiry as the Vulture swooped down and

alighted upon the Tiger. A black ferret swiveled its head around

to orient on an area of the gardens that was partly obscured by

the rain, but this was enough for the woman to turn and look in

that same direction, spying several figures standing under a low

awning watching them with great interest.

"Oh," the woman said, visibly surprised, "You startled

me...Guile-san?"

"Hello, Akiko-chan," said Colonel William Guile as he stepped

out into the rain, drinking in the sight of her as he took a few

steps forward, then halted, "It's been a while."

Akiko was looking at him with the same peculiar interest, and

for a moment it was as if the world ceased to exist between these

two, until the Vulture on the back of the Tiger spread its wings

and swooped towards the man, who thrust out a burly arm and

allowed it to settle down upon its wrists. The bird was oddly

careful not to squeeze too tight with its talons as it moved its

head closer to the Colonel and lightly pecked his cheek with its

beak.

"Keiko-chan," the man smiled, "It's been too long for the both of

you. And how have you been getting by?" he added the last

with a curiously hard look towards the Tiger.

The big cat seemed to regard him with tawny eyes, and then a

peculiar transformation took place as the tiger seemed to shrink

in on itself and straighten out, assuming a human form as

Chinese-style clothing materialized about her body, and a

moment later there stood the notorious Madam Lao Khan in its

place, smiling at Guile with a look worthy of the Tiger.

"Nihao, Guile-san," Lao remarked in a throaty purr that was

arched and calculating, "How long have you and your people

been waiting to greet me?"

"Not long," Guile replied, noting with some detachment the way

the rainwater was bending around the area where Lao was

standing, miraculously failing to touch her pale sea-green hair as

the renegade Amazon remained bone dry in spite of everyone

else's bedraggled condition.

The Pirate Queen and Slaver cocked her head to one side then

glanced with a deepening predatory smile, "Is that Inspector

Chun-Lee Zahn I spy standing next to her rival, Lieutenant

Cammy White? A pleasure to see you both again. How many

other did you bring with you?"

"Just these two," Guile replied, "I decided against making this

official, but they insisted on coming along. I think they want to

have words with you regarding a certain incident they both hold

you responsible for."

"Indeed?" Lao asked innocently, "And how have you two been

getting along these days? Still contending for your Colonel's

affections, even though you know his heart has been given to

another?"

"My lady," Akiko began, then corrected herself, "Captain,

please. Guile-san, I hope you don't intend to cause any trouble

with the Captain. We are here under peaceful terms, as I believe

I informed you in advance with my letter..."

"Yes," Guile nodded, "And the date you gave was tomorrow, if

I'm not mistaken."

"I wanted time to prepare myself," Akiko fingered her wet hair

and smiled, "Obviously these aren't the best of

conditions...would it be possible for us to go inside and dry off?

I'm sure the Tendos won't mind if we got out of the rain,

although I do wish that someone was here. It is so rude to

intrude without seeking their permission."

"We can apologize later," Lao said with a sniff, "Deflecting rain

like this requires too much of my energy and concentration. I

would rather retain my human form to speak, and I can't change

Kei-chan or Kodachi back under these conditions. It would be

rather pointless."

"So why don't you crawl back under the rock you came out

from?" Cammy sniped with a noticeable cockney accent to her

Japanese.

"Later you two," Guile urged, heading off a second comment

from Chun-Li, "The door isn't locked, I already checked that.

The Tendos must have left in a hurry, otherwise they..."

"Excuse me," a voice intruded on their conversation, "Can I help

you people?"

Everyone turned to see a brown haired man wearing glasses and

holding an umbrella. The man wore an olive-colored gi and

sandals on his feet and was carrying a bag in one arm, which he

clutched to his body to keep it from getting wet.

"Our apologies," Akiko quickly recovered her wits, "We were

looking for the Tendos..."

"Oh," the man replied, "Well, they're not in right now. In fact I

just got a call from Saotome Nodoka asking me to stop by the

house and pick up a few things. There's been a family

emergency, so you'll have to come back later."

"An emergency?" Guile replied, "Mister...?"

"It's Doctor," the man smiled, "Ono Tofu, Sensei," he smiled,

"And you people are?"

"Colonel William Guile," said the burly blond haired man as he

pulled out an identity card and showed it to Tofu, "This is

Inspector Chun-Li of Interpol, and Lieutenant Cammy White,

my attaché. I'm here to find my daughter and my lady-friend

here..."

"Oh!" Tofu brightened with a smile, "Yes, I've heard of you.

You're a friend of Nabiki's...and is that Keiko on your shoulder?

I should have recognized you immediately..."

The vulture squawked as though returning his salutations as

Tofu bowed to the Vulture and the Vulture dipped her head

back, which earned an approving smile from Akiko.

"I'm sure that this is all quite fascinating," Lao broke in, "But

you said that there was a family emergency? What kind of

emergency?"

Tofu adjusted his glasses then smiled, "You look like an

Amazon. Are you a friend of Shampoo Tendo?"

Lao blinked at the name, then smiled, "She is my blood cousin

on my mother's side. How is Shampoo doing, Tofu-Sensei?"

"She's the one having an emergency," Tofu replied, "They're

rushing her to the hospital even as we speak. She's gone into

labor and they say she's about to deliver her baby."

The vulture squawked, as did the Ferret on Lao's shoulder, while

Lao herself expressed surprise with a very astonished, "Baby?

But...I thought she was not due for another month or so..."

"So did everyone else," Tofu shrugged, "Apparently something

in the magic used to impregnate her speeded up the process. I

thought she did look pretty advanced for her third trimester.

Why don't I show you to the hospital, I only need to go into the

house for a moment..."

"We'll come with you," Akiko said primly, "My daughter needs

hot water to change back..."

"No need to explain it to me," Tofu smiled, "I'm their family

physician, after all. I'm used to Jusenkyo curses, and I know

Keiko-san's state quite well. This other one must be Kodachi

Kuno, if I'm not mistaken? I understand you have some people

rather eager to talk with you, young lady, your brother among

them."

If it were possible for a Ferret to look sheepish, this one

managed it quite convincingly with as humble and subdued an

expression as could be permitted to her species.

"I hope there won't be any trouble getting to the Hospital in this

weather," Chun-Li remarked.

"They were only a few kilometers away on the edge of town the

last I heard," Tofu replied as he walked up to the door of the

Tendo residence, "I don't see why there would be any problems.

I'm sure they've already arrived and Shampoo is being given the

finest care that anyone could ask for..."

"Can't this thing go any faster?" Nabiki snarled with some

urgency, huddled up in the back of the Subaru with Shampoo

and Ranma.

"I'm doing the best that I possibly can," said Miyuki patiently, "I

don't understand how this rain could have cropped up so

suddenly. I can barely make out the road ahead of us..."

"Yeah, no fooling!" Natsumi exclaimed, glancing over her

shoulder farther back, "I thought one of you guys controlled this

stuff, so what's happened?"

"I have no idea," Raiden replied calmly, turning to his fellow

deities, "The minute I step away from the office my staff seems

to go into immediate party mode. When I get back up there

some heads are going to be rolling, let me tell you..."

"This wouldn't happen to be your doing, would it, Cousin?" Urd

asked Kishijoten.

"Not precisely as such," Kishijoten smiled enigmatically, "Think

of it more as Probability Overdrive. I'm sure Skuld-chan can

explain the particulars, that is more her department."

"I am certain that everything is happening in a completely

understandable way," Belldandy said with her usual calm

demeanor.

"Yes, of course," Kasumi agreed with equal elan, turning to the

others and saying, "More tea? We have plenty of snacks for

everyone in case anyone gets hungry."

Shampoo's cries caused a wince from Perfume, who was all too

aware of Ukyo clinging to her arm while feeling a sympathetic

reaction to her cousin. She noticed the hostile glares being cast

her way by a sullen Ranma, and wondered what it was that she

had done to upset the boy, who was trying so hard to reassure

both Nabiki and her cousin. She was also trying to make sense

of the confusion to her senses caused by her immediate

surroundings as she studied the profiles of everyone sharing the

back space of the Subaru. She was far from an Ultra-rationalist,

but the contradiction of what she saw and felt to what she knew

objectively was proving difficult to reconcile. She held her

peace and decided to let someone else ask the obvious question.

"Excuse me," Akane looked around, "But does anyone know

how it is that we're sharing the back end of a Subaru? I didn't

know they built them to have this much space in the rear."

"Say," Ryoga frowned, "Now that you mention it, that is a little

strange..."

"Strange?" Alison exclaimed, giving the space around them a

wary glance, "A cargo plane doesn't have this much space!

Don't tell me one of you guys are screwing around with the

probability physics?"

"Don't let it get to you, kid," Hercules replied, "Most mortals

have only a limited grasp of such things as Time and Relative

Dimensions in Space conversion...right Sis?"

There was a muffled sound of indignant outrage from the back

of the vehicle where the silver haired Artemis was trussed up

like a special delivery package in binding chords that looked

like thin gold chains but were in actuality unbreakable

Orachalcum. She glared at her younger half-brother as if to

promise dire consequences if he did not immediately release her,

which were naturally ignored by the man-god.

"Really?" Beatrice smiled, "Sounds like a fascinating concept,

not unlike the means by which I store my Akagiyami missiles in

my wrist gauntlets."

"Oh brother," Alison rolled her eyes, "I always wondered why

you seemed to have an unlimited supply of the bloody things..."

"Oh," Ryoga brightened, "You mean it's like with the Doctor's

Tardis!"

"You mean Tofu-Sensei has one of these?" Genma asked.

"No," Ryoga replied, "I mean the other doctor...Doctor

Doctor...my friend, whom I used to travel around with in

something he called a T.A.R.D.I.S. during one of my

adventures..."

"Not that story again," said Ranma with a roll to his eyes,

turning back to the purple haired girl in front of him as he said

in more urgency, "Just remember what Tofu-Sensei said in those

classes, Shampoo-chan. Breathe in and out regularly, taking

deep breathes and..."

"Shampoo trying!" the Amazon let out with a grunt, "Stupid

boy want help Shampoo, try soaking head in Nyanniichuan

water-AIEEEEE!"

This latter exclamation was joined in kind by Ranma since

Shampoo had reflexively reached out with a hand and nearly

crushed his to a pulp as her latest spasm of pain hit her.

"Oh, my little girl!" Soun wailed, "My daughter is about to

become a father! I mean, I'm going to be a grandfather...I...what

in the name of the Kami am I saying?"

"Please take it easy, Soun-sama," Hinako urged, "It won't do any

good to be upset, and your daughter-in-law is doing quite well

from appearances."

"Verily, I am half tempted to join the elder Tendo-san in

bewailing the strange majesty of the fates," said Kuno, "What a

wondrous thing it is to behold that Tendo Nabiki will soon gain

child from the labors of another woman. If I did not know the

path to madness lay in such conceptions, I would think her other

self was indeed a great sorcerer to have somehow managed to

achieve this."

"Watch that crack about the fates, Boy," Thor urged the Kendo

master in what sounded like gruff warning, "In this case you've

got their attention, and I've learned the hard way that it's a bad

idea to tempt them."

"I heard that," Urd snorted, "What have we ever done to you

lately, and why were you in such a hurry to get out of the rain?

You could have just banished it with your hammer."

"I dunno," Thor said, "When we were all dog-piling into this

Clown Car I had the oddest feeling, as if something were going

on upstairs that wasn't friendly to us Weather divinities. I tried

banishing the rain a while ago but nothing happened. You doing

this, Raiden ol' buddy?"

"Not me," Raiden sniffed, "I just assumed my father was having

one of his usual tantrums."

"He and auntie do have some pretty spectacular fallings out,"

Kishijoten agreed, "But in this case I think you will find more

than the usual events at work creating this complication,

brother."

"And I don't suppose you'd feel like elaborating on what you

know, Cousin?" Urd asked pointedly.

"What would be the point?" the dark haired goddess replied

enigmatically, "It won't change anything, and what I know is of

little use to you in either event, suffice to say that this weather

will not be dispelled until it has achieved its full purpose."

"So," Kurumi said after a pause lasting all of thirty seconds

following that enigmatic statement, "You're saying this car is

bigger on the inside than the outside? I still don't see how that

works..."

"Apparently it is like those circus cars we once saw at that

carnival, Kurumi-chan," replied Natsume, "Remember the one

that had the clowns in it?"

"Do I?" Kurumi brightened, "I never could figure out how they

could fit so many clowns into such a tiny...oh...I get it now."

"Right," said Nabiki as she inspected Ranma's hand to insure

that the bones had not actually been broken there, "But in this

case we're the clowns, only I'm not laughing. Can't this thing go

any faster?"

"You want to get outside and push?" Miyuki called back as

pleasantly as she could, "Believe me, I'm doing everything I can

to...uh oh!"

"Breaks!" cried Natsumi frantically, and indeed the sound of

screeching tires could be heard, though with a curiously lack of

inertia felt within the interior of the vehicle. A few seconds later

the car appeared to come to a complete stop, though this too

could only be ascertained by looking out a window as

everything in the back felt completely motionless.

"What is it?" Nabiki snapped, "Why did you stop?"

"The road is out," Miyuki called back, "It's been completely

washed away by the monsoon."

"What?" nearly everyone said simultaneously until Thor and

Hercules shouted them down to silence, then the latter said,

"Washed out? In only a couple of minutes?"

"Hey, it happens," Thor shrugged, "Flash floods aren't that

uncommon in this part of the world..."

"This is Japan," Sif countered, "Hilly country, if I remember

rightly from the travel brochure, and they're supposed to have a

pretty good flood control system. Is it normal to have flash

floods flare up this suddenly?"

"Oh sure," Urd replied, "Happens all the time...though, now that

you mention it, it is kind of sudden for this time of the year..."

Shampoo gave another sharp cry and Nabiki reached to steady

her, only to have herself gripped hard by the Amazon, who

shook her as she cried, "You do this to Shampoo! You make

Shampoo suffer so you have way with boy Ranma! Shampoo

never forgive this! Feel like passing boulder from-

AIIIYYYEEE!"

"Calm down, child," Cologne urged as she interposed her frail

arms before the stricken girl, "You're not dying, you're perfectly

fine, enjoying a normal delivery with everything proceeded as it

should, nothing to worry about at all except a little delay that

can't be helped on account of the weather."

"S-Shampoo?" Nabiki gasped, almost in shock from the brief

accusation hurled her way by her wife.

"Oh, don't let it get to you, my dear," said Happosai

reassuringly, "This happens to every woman in labor sooner or

later, it's also perfectly normal, just like Cologne said. Nothing

to worry about, she didn't really mean it."

"And what would you know about delivering babies?" Cologne

shot him a suspicious glance.

"I'll have you know that I've probably delivered as many babies

into this world as you have, you old woman," Happosai said as

he folded tiny arms over his chest.

"Now there's a frightening thought," murmured Genma, to

which Soun readily nodded.

"Unlikely," Cologne replied, "I've been a Mid-wife for almost as

long as I've been an Elder, and I practiced early in my youth

while you were out chasing women's undergarments, old fool."

"Hah!" Happosai shot back, "You may know a few things about

the healing arts, but you're not the village Healer, or even a Lore

Master for that matter. I, on the other hand, remember one very

difficult pregnancy that I helped to assist, and the parents were

so grateful they let me name the baby and become it's Godson.

Pantyhose was the name I gave him, and by now he's probably a

fine, strapping young man..."

"Pantyhose?" Ranma sniffed, "What kind of a name is that?"

"The kind that gets you into a lot of fights, I'll bet," murmured

Ryoga.

"Would you guys just shut up?" Ukyo suddenly flared, "This is

supposed to be about Shampoo, but all you do is jabber on about

all sorts of unimportant stuff. How about some consideration

for what she's going through?"

"You're quite right, dear," said Nodoka, "We all should be a

little more considerate. The poor girl is having her first baby,

and I can remember what a strain it was for me having Ranma.

Kimiko went through this process on three separate occasions,

and I was there for at least two of her babies. I know she'd be

proud for the way you are handling yourself in this crisis, my

dear Nabiki-chan."

"But..." Nabiki looked frantic, "What if the rains don't let up?

What if we can't get to the hospital in time? What if...?"

"What if you shut up and hold Shampoo hand?" Shampoo cried

out, gripping the nearest of Nabiki's hands and holding onto it

tightly with both of his own hands. A second later she gave

another sharp scream while Nabiki's face screwed up in pain that

she did not give voice to.

All at once the door on Miyuki's side flew open and a dripping

wet Frank stood there looking in like something dragged in from

the cold by a very big puppy. He swept the room with a glance

then said, "I've checked all along the bank of the river but there's

no easy way across. The rain's too hard to permit a chopper to

land, so we're going to have to do this the hard way."

"The hard way?" asked Natsumi with some hesitation in her

voice.

Frank turned and looked directly at Hercules and Thor, "You

guys come out here and give me a hand. Shelly's determined the

spot where the water is at its lowest level, which may be safe

enough to cross if we carry this sucker between us."

"Carry my car?" Miyuki sounded like she was ready to throw a

fit.

"Hey, we'll be as gentle as a lamb with it, kid," said Hercules as

he got up and ducked his head out the passenger door, followed

closely by Thor, who stopped himself at the last second.

"Oh, what are you waiting for?" snorted Sif, who gave him a

solid push to clear the way before stepping out of the car herself.

Everyone could plainly see that Thor was smaller in the rain and

the armor she wore was now much looser about her body. Sif

ignored this and merely grabbed her by the ear and growled, "Us

girls can throw our weight around as well as you boys, so let's

get this over with before we're soaked to the bone, all right?"

The side door closed, but now it seemed as if the dimensions of

the back end were somehow smaller in spite of the absence of

the three divinities. Skuld began typing commands on a

portable computer that she produced from seeming no where

and appeared to be making a few adjustments to some equations.

Once more there was a curious absence of movement, but the

world outside the windows seemed to move around them as if

they were rising up before moving forward. They appeared to

float on air as several minutes passed, and then it seemed as if

they were being lowered to the ground. A moment later the

side-door opened again to admit a soggy wet Hercules, a

drenched Sif and a muddy Thor-chan, who looked as miserable

as she was untidy.

"Oh my," said Kasumi while everyone else noticed that the

room seemed to expand once again while Skuld made more

adjustments to her computer.

"I need a hot bath and a sauna," grumbled Thor-chan in disgust.

"I'm sure they'll let you use the facilities at the Hospital,"

Hinako replied in sympathy while Miyuki got her car restarted,

"At least now we can make it on time before Shampoo-san

delivers her baby."

"Let's hope so," said Perfume as she eyed her cousin, "We're

running out of hands for her to squeeze."

"When Shampoo get back on feet she give you something to

squeeze, Cousin-AIYEE!" Shampoo cried, reaching out to grab

something, only this time Nabiki snatched Genma by the wrist

and thrust his hand forward.

Even Nodoka winced in sympathy at the yell Genma gave out

when Shampoo squeezed him.

"Ouch!" Aiko also winced in sympathy, "I hope they don't

expect me to be their next victim."

"Why not?" Beatrice asked, "You're one of the only ones here

who could probably survive it."

"You're doing fine, child," Cologne assured her great

granddaughter, "Just continue as you are and very shortly we

will find you a nice bed in which to have your daughter."

"Daughter?" Nabiki asked hopefully, "Are you sure?"

"As sure as I am that she will be born strong and healthy,"

Cologne replied, "It is her destiny to carry on the proud line of

our family, and I have been watching Shampoo carefully to

insure that there be no needless complications."

"Complications?" now Nabiki looked more nervous than ever.

"I think you're the one who needs to relax, my dear," Happosai

patted her on the knee, "Worrying about your cutie wife won't

help her any, though it is a sweet gesture. Just sit there and let

me apply some shiatsu pressure techniques to...AWP!"

"I hardly think that the places you would touch would do much

to settle her down," Cologne noted as she withdrew her staff

from the old man's head, "Although it would certainly take her

mind away from the current situation. Go bother one of the

other girls if you're feeling so randy, ancestors know there are

enough of them to keep even you happy."

"Everything will be all right, Sempai," Ryonami tried to sound

reassuring, "Everyone is doing everything they can, and women

have babies all the time...though I kind of think it might have

been a lot better if you could have waited, not that I'm criticism

you, of course..."

"Give it a rest," Akane sighed, "You'll be all right, Oneechan,

we'll be at the hospital in only another few minutes...right?"

She arched her voice forward, and Miyuki replied, "Well...I

certainly hope so...if only this rain would let up."

"Sheesh!" Natsumi complained, "Can you believe this stuff?

You can't even see the road with the headlights on high-beam!"

"AIYEEEE!" Shampoo cried out once again, only this time it

was Akane who grabbed her hand and squeezed, only wincing

slightly as Shampoo squeezed back. Nabiki almost jumped at

the sound of distress in the Amazon's voice, and even after the

spasm subsided she kept on looking at Shampoo as if her

legendary nerves were on the verge of totally fraying.

"That could be me in another few months," Ukyo remarked, to

which Perfume just reached out to hold her by the shoulders.

Again Ranma shot a glance their way, but turned his attention

back towards Shampoo, then spared a sympathetic look towards

Akane.

"Ryoga-kun?" Akane asked in a voice that was strangely tight.

"Yes, Akane-chan?" he asked.

"Help me get my fingers loose!" she winced, "And the next

squeeze won't be on you..."

"They're not here yet?" Doctor Tofu asked at the hospital

receptionist's desk, adjusting his glasses as he remarked, "That's

odd, they should have been here by now, in spite of the weather.

It's not that far from the edge of town to here..."

"In this weather, luv?" Cammy asked, glancing back to see the

heavy rain pelting the windows, "Be lucky if the roads aren't all

washed out. It's thicker out there than London Pea Soup."

"This is unusual weather, even for Japan," Akiko remarked,

"The storm began so suddenly and gained rapidly in strength.

Have you any idea why that is, Captain?"

"Hmm?" asked Lao, who was standing by the window gazing

out into the grey mass that was falling like the floods of Noah,

"No, not really...but I am picking up a disturbance in the natural

weather patterns. If I didn't know any better, I'd swear a master

of the Storm Style was plying her trade...but I doubt she would

have any cause for mustering a torrential mass of this size and

potency."

"But you do think it's man made?" Guile asked her with an

intense look at the window, "It's possible...I've been up against

guys who were strong enough to do something like this. Any

idea where it's centered?"

"Yes," Lao replied, pointing in a certain direction, "That way.

That is where I sense the pattern is strongest."

"That's only a kilometer away from here," Keiko said, "You

think maybe our friends might be in some kind of trouble, my

lady?"

"It would make a kind of sense after all," murmured Kodachi,

"One way or another, things do seem to have a way of centering

around our dear Tendo Nabiki."

"Then I'm going out there and find out," Keiko started to say

when Lao's hand restrained her.

"And do what?" the foam-green Pirate asked before noticing the

warning glare Guile gave her and relinquishing her hold on the

redhead, "The storm is too powerful for you to fly through, and

you can't exactly walk that distance in safety. I'm the only one

who is fit to travel through weather this strong, and if what I

suspect is true, then I am the only one who is equipped to face

the thing that is causing this."

"Then I'm coming with you," said Guile.

"You don't trust me?" Lao smiled, "Nor do I blame you. I don't

exactly trust myself in my cursed form, which is one reason why

it would be best if I go alone since I can travel much faster as a

Tiger than you could as a man. Stay here and look after your

family, they need you more than I do. I will return in good

order, with my cousin in tow, on my honor as a Pirate and a

former Amazon."

"That's supposed to reassure us?" Chun-Li asked.

"Look on the bright side," Lao replied, "I'm also the most

expendable one here. That weather is literally not fit for man or

beast, and at present I am neither. Never fear, I am a born

survivor," she stepped out through the double doors, calling

back over her shoulder, "It will take more than a little squall to

sink this Tiger."

She stepped fully out into the rain and almost immediately her

shape melted and reformed, growing large as her clothing

disappeared, replaced by orange-and-black striped fur. Falling

down to all fours, Lao sprang out into the storm and almost

instantly vanished amid the sheet-like downpour.

"She'll be all right," Keiko assured the others, "I know my lady

and...what?" she saw the look her father gave her.

"My lady?" Guile inquired.

"Sounds to me like someone needs a deprogrammer," Cammy

remarked.

"We've already undergone what therapy we need in that regard,"

Akiko replied, "My daughter is merely being polite to one who

has shown us both great kindness...after a fashion."

"Kindness?" Chun-Li asked with clear skepticism, "We're

talking about a brutal lady pirate who delights in making girls

like us into slaves! You think Cammy and I can forget what she

had us doing when we were under her power?"

"I only wish," Cammy rolled her eyes, coloring slightly as if

with the memory of what had happened.

"It really is not quite so bad as you seem to imagine," Kodachi

said airily, "Or perhaps I should say, don't knock it until you're

really tried it."

"Too bad your folks aren't here to hear you say that, young

lady," Guile said harshly, then winced as Keiko punched him in

the gut, causing him to glance down at her and say, "What?"

Akiko smiled before turning back to regard the storm with

evident worry, "I wonder what the Captain was alluding to when

she left us? What force could be so powerful as to bend the very

elements to their whim like this?"

"You really want to know?" Cammy asked, "I just hope she

hasn't bit off more than she can handle."

"You do?" Chun-Li asked with widened eyes.

"Sure," Cammy replied with a shrug, "Anybody busts her hide it

ought to be us. After all, we've got a score to settle, and no way

does she get off that easy."

"Us?" Chun-Li asked with lifted eyebrows, not catching the

smirk Kodachi and Keiko turned in their direction...

Continued.

Comments/Criticism/Conclusion to the Present Cycle:

shadowmane

Sorry this one took so long to get out, hopefully next time I can

tie it all together and give Shampoo a reason to smile, while

Nabiki faints from exhaustion...be there!

Nabiki 1/2,

A Very Scary Thought

(An Altered Destiny)

by

Jim Robert Bader

(Based on the Works of Rumiko Takahashi & Others)

Chapter 31, Part 3.

Frank thought that he had seen almost every type of weather in

his nearly two centuries of life, but there was something in this

storm that was different even by his unusual standards and

definitions. He could feel it in his bones even as he sought to

maintain his traction on the road. His powerful all-terrain

motorcycle was built to hold the road under even more extreme

conditions, but he was fighting for control all the way with

every turn and bend as he sought to blaze a trail for the Subaru

behind him. He could only imagine what the driver of that mini

car was going through keeping control over her wheel, and she

was only human. Even at the slow pace he was setting it had to

be murder just keeping her car even.

"Shelly," Frank said above the noise of the rain all around them,

"You still have a satellite link with Weather Sat Central?"

"Barely," he heard her voice through his ear-mike, "I've got a

Microbeam relay, but I can't make much sense of the data. The

projected weather patterns only add up to light showers, not the

kind of monsoon that's just kicked up out of no where!"

"Something definitely not natural about this storm," Frank noted

as he stared through his Teflon-coated goggles, following the

electronically enhanced data being fed to him by his vehicles

sensors while he tried to find the safest path amid the huge

puddles that were cropping up with greater frequency and

obscuring the road completely in certain places, "And believe

me, I'm an expert when it comes to unnatural phenomena."

"You realize that the focal point of the storm is centered around

us," Shelly replied, "And I'm not even going to give you an

estimation of the odds against that being a coincidence."

"Good," Frank replied, "Because I already figured that part out-

HOLY!"

He pulled up to a halt then raised an arm to signal the car behind

him to stop. Because of the low visibility it took a couple of

seconds for Miyuki to see the signal, so she stopped only a few

meters behind him then tried to look through the windshield to

see what he could see through the obscuring gray mass before

them.

"Oboy," Frank remarked as he stared out across a lake that was

blocking the way for over a hundred meters before him, "Check

me on this, Shelly...what's the depth of the water here?"

"Three-point-five-seven meters, Boss," the motorcycle replied,

"It's cut right through the road, a total washout, water moving at

a speed of over nineteen-point-two knots."

"Too fast and too deep," Frank replied, "We got another route

we can take to the hospital?"

"Not without going halfway around Nerima to get through that

flash-flood," was the reply, "It came out of no where, I never

even detected it until now. Satellite feed suggests it's a recent

event, created by a diversion of mountain run-off..."

"And how far are we from the hospital?" Frank asked.

"One-point-one-nine kilometers," Shelly replied, "You could see

it from here if you had laser vision like me."

"Way too much of a coincidence," Frank murmured, "That

makes it official, somebody is blocking the road deliberately and

doesn't want us to get there."

"If you expect me to call you paranoid you've got another

calculation, Boss," Shelly confirmed, "And I was just about to

inform you that there's an unusual blind spot on my sensors over

to your right about ninety-three-point-six meters..."

"I ever tell you that you've got a thing with numbers?" Frank

replied, dismounting from The Monster, "Hold tight and keep

the motor running, in a manner of speaking. Let me know if that

water level lowers by a fraction. I'm gonna go have a word with

an unexpected visitor and see if he knows something about

what's really going on here."

"Better tell your girlfriend what to expect," Shelly noted

sarcastically, "I'll bet she'll be worried, to say nothing of her

passengers."

"Already on it," Frank said as he leaned over to the side of

Miyuki's car and tapped on her window. She rolled it down by a

fraction and he raised his voice to be heard, "I'm gonna have a

look over that way, see if I can find a way to get us across. You

hang tight and don't budge till I get back, got it?"

"Hai," Miyuki replied, "How long can we expect you?"

"Not long," Frank said, "If that's who I think it is, this may only

take a moment."

"Who?" Natsumi asked, but Frank was already moving around

the car while Miyuki rolled her window back up to keep from

getting any wetter by the spray. Her partner huffed back in her

seat and said, "That guy give me the creeps..."

"I think he's a very nice man," Miyuki replied, "You really

shouldn't judge by appearances, Natsumi-chan."

"What's the problem?" they heard a frantic voice calling up,

"Aren't we at the Hospital yet? For Kami's sake, it was only a

few kilometers when we stated!"

"We are doing everything we can, Tendo-san," Miyuki assured

her, "We're just waiting for Doctor Steinberg to confirm that the

road ahead is safe for travel."

"Well, tell him to hurry up already!" Ranma called out, only to

be drowned out by a sudden scream of pain from both Shampoo

and Ryoga, "We're running out of hands here!"

"Some vacation this is turning out to be," Natsumi huffed.

"But it does bring back memories, eh, Natsumi-chan?" Miyuki

smiled, "Remember that one time during the monsoon that

struck Tokyo a few years back?"

"The one where we had to get that cat to the veterinarian's to

deliver her kittens?" Natsumi smirked, "You think I missed the

connection?"

"You're the ones who will be having kittens in another moment

if you don't get my Cousin to the Hospital on time!" Perfume

called forward, only to be reassured by Ukyo that the driver

knew what she was doing.

"Speaking of memories," Soun remarked, "This does seem

somewhat familiar, Tendo-san? Remember that time when

Nodoka-chan was in labor?"

Genma, who was holding up a bandaged hand as Ranma looked

at him questioningly, then he said, "How could I forget? It was

on a night like this, and if anything you squeezed me even

harder 'Doca-chan."

"I wasn't that bad, was I?" Nodoka raised her eyebrows, then

saw both men nod in confirmation, "Oh my..."

Hinako made her way closer to Shampoo, then laid a reassuring

hand on Nabiki's arm and said, "Be brave, Tendo-san. Your

wife is a very strong young girl who will manage to make you

proud. You are holding up very well, Shampoo-san, just keep

doing what you are doing and everything will work out all

right."

"Thank you," Shampoo gasped, her face profuse with sweat as

Kasumi dabbed it with a moist cloth that was tiger-striped, "I try

be brave, but pain...is very great..."

"Only to be expected, child," Cologne assured her, "I remember

when your mother was in labor, such a fuss she made, you'd

think women like her weren't having babies all of the time..."

"No disrespect to you, Elder," Nabiki said abruptly, "I'm sure

this is old hat for you, but it's our first time, so do you think you

might know of some practical way to speed up our getting to the

hospital? I'd rather our...daughter wasn't born in the back end of

a Subaru, even if this one is a bit...roomier than normal..."

"Whoah," Aiko murmured, "Somebody get her a sedative

quick."

"The mother is doing just fine, Alison," Beiko assured, "It would

not serve any purpose to dull her pain as it is necessary for her

to..."

"Not the mother," Aiko said, "I mean the father-

mother...er...something like that. She sounds like she's having a

nervous breakdown."

"There really is not much that we can do at present, my

daughter," Cologne spoke evenly and reassuringly to Nabiki,

pausing to frown in apparent thought, "Although I do admit that

circumstances surrounding the event are rather most unusual. I

wonder if perhaps there is not more going on than is obvious on

the surface..." and as she spoke those words the ancient Amazon

turned a suspicious glance towards the three Goddesses sitting

far back at the edge of the enclosure, taking full notice of their

inscrutable expressions...

Frank fought his way through the bullet-like rain, shrugging off

weather that would have bent an ordinary man double. He kept

his mind focused on his objective so as not to be sidetracked and

gradually came before a lone man standing amid a sudden

refuge from the tempest. Frank straightened out to regard him,

then nodded in grim satisfaction and said, "I thought so."

"Long time no see, Golem," said an elderly figure wearing what

looked like a three-piece suit, leaning on a simple cane while

regarding him with eyes as black as infinite night, "Or do you

prefer your current alias? I rather like your handle, Legion...it

rather much suits you."

"Spare me the social talk, Susanowo," Frank replied before his

lips twitched into a sardonic smile, "Or would you rather I call

you Kami-Sama?"

"Names are of little importance," the man replied matter-of-

factly, "I am strictly here as an observer of events as they are

unfolding. My son and Niece have chosen to become more

directly involved on their own initiative, and my three daughters

are observing these events from a much closer vantage..."

"Yeah, I've kind of noticed that we are a little God-heavy at the

moment," Frank replied, "I kind of wondered if it had anything

to do with this unusual weather?"

"Not my doing, I assure you," Susanowo replied, "Though we

divine Kami like to pretend that we are mysterious and aloof

manifestations of the Universal power there are some forces that

are even beyond our ken. It has to do with the unusual nature of

this birthing...an event most extraordinary by even the standards

of an Immortal."

"Do tell?" Frank frowned, "What's so special about this kid? I

mean, other than the fact that a Jusenkyo curse is involved

here..."

"That is one of many factors, to be certain," the Lord of the

Heavens replied, "A child of two mothers, born under unusual

circumstances to an Amazon of Juraian birthright, and I could

always go into detail about the various Astrological

prognostications currently being analyzed by the Yggdrasil

2000, which brought all of this to my attention."

"Could be a computer error," Frank noted, "Those things must

happen a lot with you having Urd as a systems analyst."

"My daughter has...been temporarily reassigned," Susanowo

said without elaboration, "We only recently got the system back

online when it made the tabulation that was forwarded to my

office. That was what made me decide to investigate matters

more directly, after all it isn't every day that one get to witness

the birth of a new Nexus."

"A Nexus?" Frank reacted, "Are you sure?" then he slapped

himself with a massive hand and said, "Right...who am I talking

to here? So...the Tendo kid's gonna be a Nexus...who would

have figured?"

"No one, apparently," Susanowo replied, "This was not

foreseen. The odds against this happening are...well, quite

astronomical, really. Nor is she the only one...you may be

interested to know that a current Nexus is already present in that

van you are escorting."

"The Tendo girl?" Frank arched bushy eyebrows, "I kind of

thought she was somebody special..."

"Not her," Susanowo smiled, "Although I agree that she is

exceptional, the Nexus in question is her very own beloved

Saotome Ranma."

"That kid?" Frank was even more surprised, "What's so special

about him?"

"Other than the fact that the boy is a virtual magnet for

Probability Manipulation of a very high degree?" the lord of the

heavens replied, "Let us not overlook the fact that he has four

women circling his orbit, each of them exceptional in their own

right, and that whenever he is around these others unusual and

extraordinary things appear to happen. On this Timeline he may

appear to be no more than an average boy of his age, but do not

be deceived by appearances. On other parallel timelines he is a

remarkably heroic figure, the star of many epic adventures. The

probability lines for a thousand different worlds seem to flow

around him like a hub in this tiny corner of the cosmos."

"I get the picture," Frank replied, "So this storm...?"

"The compounded energies of the Universe preparing to receive

a new Nexus clashing with a current Nexus, creating an effect

rather like what you get when you have two waves of similar

frequency interfering with one another through Oscillation..."

"Right, I grok the concept," Frank replied, "So...if we separate

those two the storm will let up?"

"Not necessary," Susanowo replied, "I've been analyzing the

storm and believe that I can moderate it for a short time, long

enough for you to get to where you are going. Once the child is

born the storm will abate completely. The Universe will begin

to repair the rift caused by having several Nexuses this close to

one another and everyone will be happy...at least until the next

crisis happens."

"No living happily ever after for those two, huh?" Frank smiled.

"Being something of a Nexus yourself, I'm sure you appreciate

the fact that your kind can never live an entirely simple and

stable existence," the lord of heaven replied as he pulled out

what looked like a cellular phone and said, "It simply isn't done.

It's me, initiate Temporary Abatement Program."

High overhead the clouds began to roil and curdle, then slowly

the rain began to lessen until it was no more than a light drizzle.

"Nice special effects," Frank nodded in satisfaction, "But it kind

of lacks the punch of the old days."

"You mean when we had our people say something like, 'Behold

His Mighty Hand!'" Susanowo replied, making a gesture with

his cane towards the flooded out road, and suddenly the waters

rose to form a kind of glistening ramp that looked like muddy

glass instead of steel and concrete. The Kami-Sama smiled and

said, "I do sometimes like to dip my hand into such matters, just

to be certain that our mortal clients don't forget entirely all about

us in this modern era of technological wonders."

"Right," Frank turned around and said, "How long will it last?"

"A few minutes, if you hurry," the lord of heaven called out as

Frank began to break into a trot that brought him alongside the

Subaru in a few seconds. Susanowo shook his head with a sigh,

"That boy worries me sometimes. As if his days as a Nexus

were anything near to being retired..."

Lao had not encountered any problems finding the lost party,

being certain that the car parked behind the huge motorcycle had

to be the transportation Nabiki Tendo would have used for this

foul weather tempest.

Of course the little problem of the road being washed out was

certainly hard to miss as Lao stood by the bank of the recently

eroded section. The gap was only perhaps as far as twenty or so

meters, but her senses informed her that the rift was deep and

the water moving too swiftly even for her to safely cross. Nor

could she simply use her command over her favorite element to

fix the problem. Away from her ship her powers were greatly

lessened and there was a definite limit to how much water she

could manipulate in such a fashion.

That was when she felt the energy moving through the air and

found her whiskers were flickering with static. The storm began

to lessen until it no longer beat against her furry hide like the

pelting of gravel. A power very much like her own was in

motion causing the water to slow in its movement, rapidly

forming itself into a shape like a temporary causeway. Lao gave

back with a Tigerish oath and swore something no human ear

could translate, recognizing the source as divine in origin and

wanting to do as little as possible to attract the interest of such a

being. After all, they might review her most recent Akashik

records to determine her karma...

And then she saw the huge lumbering form rushing up along

side the Subaru to pause and speak a few words to the driver.

Lao's eyes widened by more than a fraction as she recognized

that fellow, having had a prior encounter that neither one was

likely to forget, and which-for her sake-was better off

forgotten. He moved to the huge motorcycle, which somehow

seemed normal sized for his frame, then he and the Subaru

started forward towards the hard-water bridge before them.

Lao stood her ground, torn between a need to take cover and an

anxiousness concerning the safety of such a crossing. Whoever

was maintaining that bridge certainly had a lot of power at his

disposal, but she was an expert at water manipulation and could

sense an instability in the field. Water was a temperamental

substance, and it could alter its mood on a whim, so controlling

it was really a lot harder than subtly influencing its flow in a

given direction.

Her senses now told her that the bridge was being affected by

something inside the Subaru, some kind of instability factor that

was breaking up the patterns of the water. The car was only

partway forward when the water began to lose its solid form and

the tires began slipping.

Lao knew what she had to do to save the day here, so she leaned

her paws forward and projected her influence into the bridge,

altering the pattern rather than attempt to add her meager might

to the much greater form that had been keeping it together. A

single spell shaped in her mind as she framed the mental images

needed to make the bridge even more solid than before. All it

required as a variation of the same field she used to heat water in

order to change out from her cursed form, using her power

instead to subtract energy and re-divert it elsewhere.

The result was almost instantaneous, spiraling out from where

she made physical contact. The bridge hardened to solid ice in a

matter of seconds, becoming steel-hard as she willed it to

firmness before relaxing her efforts.

She slumped forward onto the bank once this was accomplished,

feeling exhausted without the self-replenishing resources of her

ship but satisfied that her work had been successful and the car

would be able to negotiate the remaining distance.

As tired as she was, however, she was altogether very much

aware when a huge form came to a stop alongside her, then a

hand reached down and grabbed her by the scruff of her neck

and half-lifted her up to eye-level. Lao suddenly found a face

confronting her that-though pleasant enough in a craggy sense-

yet had lines and scars to hint of what it might once of been like

before the modern wonders of plastic surgery had repaired a

mistake that was in no part a work of nature.

"Hiya, Pussy cat," Frank smiled in a way that did not convey

humor, "I thought you looked familiar when I first spotted you,

but that last stunt proved it. You and me have some talking to

do...for old times sakes, right?"

"Meow?" Lao replied, which might well have been translated to

mean, "Help!" in Tigerish...

"Do you see her yet?" Kodachi asked her companion as they

stood near the rain sharing an umbrella.

"Not yet," Keiko replied, "The storm's lightening up a bit,

maybe she had something to do with that."

"Maybe so," said Guile as he scanned the streets down which the

Pirate Queen had vanished, "Or maybe not...wait a second!

Cammy, what do you make that?"

"I track movement, sir," said Cammy as she gazed through a

pair of folding binoculars, "Two vehicles, one a two

wheeler...can't rightly call it a Motorcycle, looks as big as a

horse."

"Never mind the bike," Chun-Li said as she shaded her own eyes

and tried to make out the distant objects moving towards them,

"Check out the rider! And I think that other one's a...Subaru?"

"Copy that," Cammy replied, "Especially the part about the

rider, he looks like a real giant. Next to him that other one looks

like a toy car...only...I think he's holding something across his

lap...it looks like a tiger!"

"What" Keiko reacted, as did Kodachi, who both impulsively

rushed forward yelling, "Captain!"

"Wait!" Akiko tried in vain to call them off, only to sigh as their

forms melted into their cursed alter egos, "Teenagers..."

The umbrella struck the ground, as did two sets of clothing, but

within moments a vulture struggled free of her attire, as did a

black ferret, and then with a beating of wings she picked up the

ferret with her claws and fought hard to become airborne.

"That little idiot," Guile said sourly, "She is soooo grounded..."

"And I suppose you never did anything so impulsive out of

loyalty to a friend?" Akiko asked him in amusement.

"That's not it," Guile complained, "It's her definition of

friendship I'm questioning here..."

"As much as I hate to say it, sir," Cammy remarked, "She's not

exactly in the same league as Vega."

"You sure about that?" Chun-Li asked with lifted eyebrows,

"Seems to me at the time we weren't in any shape to make

comparisons."

The motorcycle and Subaru pulled up in front of the emergency

entrance, but now the big man was flailing with one arm to keep

his face from being clawed by an angry Keiko while

simultaneously trying to dislodge the ferret that had taken roost

on his broad shoulders.

"Hey, knock it off, blast it!" he cried, "Mind your own business,

I'm not that dead yet...!"

"Keiko-chan!" Akiko called harshly, "Kodachi-san! Behave

yourselves! This is no way for you to serve your Captain!"

The vulture and ferret immediately desisted while the Tigress

took advantage of his momentary distraction to slip off the

motorcycle. She started to slink away when Akiko glared at her

and said, "And where do you think you are going?"

"Nowhere in particular," answered Cologne, who was balancing

on her staff, looking down with an especially sharp expression at

a now quite sheepish Tigress, "Nihao, Great

Granddaughter...come to see how your cousin is faring? Surely

you do not plan to leave when she is about to give birth to a

strong and healthy daughter?"

The Tigress perked up her ears, then turned her head with

widened eyes as the side of the Subaru opened and people began

piling out in a virtual stampeded, headed by a now-male Nabiki,

who had Shampoo in her arms as she raced for the doorway to

the Emergency wing of the Hospital. Following her came the

entire Tendo and Saotome clan, plus Ukyo, Perfume, Miss

Hinako, Aiko and Beiko, Ryonami, Gosunkugi and Tatewaki

Kuno.

The latter stopped in time to see a vulture and a ferret giving

him a cheerful greeting, which same brought a rise to his

eyebrows as he called out, "Sister? Is that you?"

This caused Natsume to pause at his side and look in disbelief at

the animals he was addressing. Her expression was supremely

puzzled, while Kurumi gave her older sister a look before

turning an even more puzzled one at the ferret and vulture.

Last to exit the vehicle were Miyuki and the other Natsumi,

followed in turn by several Gods, who hung back as a group

with one of them carrying his struggling silver-haired sibling

across his incredibly broad shoulders.

"Well, finally!" huffed Thor, "Remind me to have a word with

you sometime about the way you manage the weather in your

burg."

"Don't look at me," replied Raiden, "I'm the one who's going to

have a long chat with my staff when I get back home. If I didn't

know any better I'd swear my father was behind this..."

"Larger forces than you know are at work, dear cousin," said

Kishijoten, "It would be best to reserve judgement until all of

the facts are at your disposal."

"Yeah, whatever," Urd stretched out, "I'm just glad to get out of

there. Bending the dimensions of space and time like that can

feel pretty confining..."

"What are you complaining about?" asked Skuld, "I'm the one

who had to do all the precise calculations."

"Guys, can we keep it down?" Keiichi asked, "We're in a

hospital zone and there are lots of patience who'd really

appreciate it if you two didn't get into one of your usual

arguments."

"Everything will be fine, Keiichi-chan," Belldandy assured him,

"I have very good feelings about this pregnancy, and the life that

will soon enter this world will have the best that is in both of her

parents."

"Unfortunately you three will not be attending that birth," said

Kishijoten, "You've done your part helping to bring the happy

couple to their destination, while shielding them against forces

that might object to this union, but the time has come for you to

return home and tend to other matters."

"What are you talking about, Cousin?" Urd replied, "You think I

want to miss this birth? You've got to be..."

A buzzing noise interrupted her, and Skuld reached into her

pouch to pull out a cellular phone, which she flipped open as she

spoke into it, "Moshi-Moshi...hai?" Her expression took on a

very pale cast and she said, "Hai...it's for you, Oneechan."

"Oh?" Belldandy asked, taking the phone and saying, "Hai?

Oh...Otosan! Yes? Yes, of course, father. We'll leave right

away."

"That was him?" Urd asked with lifted eyebrows and a

somewhat shocked expression.

"Our lord father has asked us to return to the temple," Belldandy

said, "He didn't say why, only that it involved Keiichi-chan's

sister."

"Megumi?" Keiichi blinked, "But you sent her back home! What

could she possibly have gotten into in this short a time?"

"Kami-sama didn't say," Belldandy replied with an apologetic

expression, "But he seemed to think it was urgent that we leave

at once. Skuld-chan?"

"Right," the younger goddess replied, giving a nod to Kishijoten,

"With Megumi it could be anything. Let us know how things

turn out, won't you, Cousin?"

"You can count on it," Kishijoten replied, watching as Skuld

pulled out her pocket calculator and punched in a few command

codes, causing a light to form around the three goddesses and

mortal consort as a semi-circle formed beneath their feet, and a

moment later they vanished completely.

"Hello, Ojisama?" the goddess smiled as she spoke into the cell

phone, "They're on their way, just like you wanted. That's three

down and several more to go, and then our programmers can

rest easy."

She folded the phone and made it vanish before sighing, "The

things one has to do to repair a rift in the Timespace..."

As the Goddess of Chance turned to enter the building a figure

perched far overhead watched these events with intense

emotion, then softly murmured aloud the portentous words,

"Oook, oook..."

Chief Nurse Nagano glared across the receptionist desk, taking

in the Panda, Vulture, Ferret, Cat and Tiger before declaring to

the rest of the crowd pestering her with questions, "This is a

hospital, not a menagerie! None of you is going one step

beyond this point! Now sit down and be quiet! I have a hospital

to run, and I won't have you lot upsetting the patients!"

Everyone assembled in the lobby on the other side of that desk

took a collective step back from the implacable tone in the

Nurse's declaration. Soun was first to recover as he said,

"But...I'm the girl's father, well...sort of..."

"I don't care if you are the Emperor himself!" Nagano leaned

forward with a glare that made Soun blanch and recoil, "The

doctor will only allow a few of the immediate family beyond

this point, and judging by the number of you present, I'm

amending that to only the father!"

"Don't worry, father," Kasumi said reassuringly, "Everything

will be just fine. The doctors here do this sort of thing every

day, there is really nothing to be accomplished by upsetting

yourself."

"She's right, Dad," Akane touched her father's arm, "Just try and

relax and everything will be fine. Let's go sit down and we'll

drink some tea, that should help everybody out."

"Are you making the tea?" Ranma asked.

"What?' Akane blinked, "Of course not!"

"Then I'll have some," Ranma declared, only to wince when

Ryoga slapped him in the shoulder, "What?"

"Take that back about Akane!" Ryoga growled, "I won't have

you making fun of her..."

"It's all right, Ryoga," Akane sniffed, "I'm used to his juvenile

behavior. He's not worth you getting upset about it."

"Come on, Tendo-kun," read the sign in Genma-Panda's paw as

he nudged Soun on the arm with the other, then turned the sign

around as it further read, "I'm sure everything will turn out all

right in the end. Let's go see if they've got a Shogi board around

in their waiting room. If we ask the nurses nicely we might

even be able to swing some sweets out of their cafeteria."

"You two and your Shogi games," Nodoka sighed with an

indulgent expression.

"Where's Nabiki at?" Ukyo asked.

"They let her in with my cousin," Perfume answered, "I don't

think she was ready to let go of Shampoo until they had her on

one of their wheeled tables and reassured her that she'd be

immediately admitted."

"I sure wouldn't want to get in her way," Aiko sniffed, "That girl

had serious panic attack written all over her."

"As if you would behave any different were you in her place?"

Beatrice asked with some amusement.

"Huh?" Aiko blinked, "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Really, Alison," Beatrice sniffed, turning away as if mildly

offended, "If you can't figure it out for yourself then there's no

reason why I should do it for you."

"Eh...what?" Aiko looked even more confused, turning to follow

after her silver haired companion, who was already moving

towards the lobby, grousing, "I hate it when you do that..."

"Poor Sempai," Ryonami sighed as she and Gosunkugi followed

the others, "She really cares a lot about her wife. I just hope

nothing goes wrong with Shampoo's delivery."

"I'm sure she'll be all right," Gosunkugi replied, "I've got a sense

about these things. Hey, anybody know where the old woman

got off to?"

"You think anybody here is going to stop her from being at the

birthing?" Ryonami asked, shrugging as she added, "I sure

wouldn't want to try it..."

"Just remember," said Kuno to the ferret resting upon his

shoulders, "You're the one who has to explain this to our father."

The vulture on Guile's broad shoulders made a screech as if in

defense of the Ferret while Lao-in human form once again-

trudged along behind them with Akiko, Chun-Li and Cammy.

Ukyo meanwhile spoke to the cat resting across her shoulders,

"C'mon, Per-chan, let's go find you some hot water..."

"A good idea," Thor-chan murmured, "I second the...Ow! Hey,

what did I do this time?"

"A little young for you, aren't they?" Sif fixed her with a level

stare, making the redheaded storm goddess wince a little.

Meanwhile a figure detached itself from the group and moved

towards a certain part of the corridor where hospital supplies

and uniforms were stationed.

A moment later that towering figure stepped out of the ward

room in a white coat that barely fit his dimensions, attaching a

medical badge to his lapel while holding an appropriated clip-

board, smiling to himself as he started to head towards the

maternity ward, only to find his path blocked by head Nurse

Nagano.

"Where do you think you're going?" she demanded, "I said that

visitors weren't allowed beyond this point and I meant it."

"But I'm a doctor," Frank replied, "I'm consulting with the

patient's physician..."

"I don't care if you're consulting with the Pope and Kami-

Sama!" Nagano retorted, "Unless you show me you belong on

this hospital's roster, you're staying put with the rest of your

group..."

"Chief Nurse Nagano, you are wanted at the information desk,"

the PA system called out, "Chief Nurse Nagano to the

information desk..."

"Damn," Nagano replied, giving Frank a warning glare before

muttering something about having to run the whole

establishment by herself.

"Nice work," Frank commented at a level barely above a

whisper.

"Thanks," Shelly replied into his ear, "I knew tapping into the

hospital datanet would come in handy."

Frank gave a glance at the retreating Nurse then shook his head

and started forward, "We could have used her in the old country.

My old buddy Igor sure would have liked her."

"Maybe you could take it up with one of your Poker Pals

sometime," Shelly remarked, "I'd like to see how Felicia or

Donovan would handle somebody like her."

"Me too," Frank said as he moved unerringly to the Maternity

Ward, then checked the room numbers against the pad he had

'borrowed,' "Only make a note not to invite Demetri at our next

meeting, that bloodsucker's a rotten card cheat. Say, how about

some help with the directions?"

"Oh, asking for directions now," Shelly said sarcastically, "And

you call yourself a guy..."

"Save the sarcasm for later," Frank sniffed, "I could always

change your programs..."

"You've come to the right place," Shelly mildly informed him,

"Shampoo Tendo is registered in Delivery Room B, just to your

right."

"The Marvels of modern technology," Frank mused as he

covered his mouth with a smock before entering, taking notice

of the room's occupants, who collectively looked back, some

with surprise in their expression, one with interest and another

with annoyance.

"Excuse me, this is a private..." Doctor Tofu began to say when

Cologne tapped him with his staff.

"It's all right, Sensei," she smiled, giving Frank a shrewd glance,

"I've been wondering when you were going to show up. Come

for a ringside seat, or do you mean to assist in the delivery?"

"Whatever," Frank replied, "It's your call, but I wouldn't miss

this for the world...that's if it's all right with you, Tendo-san."

"Oh sure," Nabiki-kun smiled, "But while you're here, Doctor,

would you mind taking my wife's pulse? I hope it's not too

irregular..."

"My pleasure to be of assistance," Frank replied, stepping

forward in spite of the non-plussed glances from the other

doctor and nurse who were in attendance.

Nabiki smiled, having timed the moment perfectly. She knew

Shampoo was due for another spasm, and it was almost a pity

that Doctor Steinberg made an all-too-easy target of

convenience...

Continued.

Comments/Criticism/Chiropractors in Residence:

shadowmane

Shampoo and Nabiki Tendo cordially invite you to attend the

birth of their child while everyone else sorts things out between

each other, and a few resolutions are achieved...would you

kindly be there?

If you wish to check out my other works, Please check out my

Fanfiction webpage at: . or

it's mirror site at: ~

All related chapters of this series can be found there along with my

other works.


	32. Chapter 32

Dnabiki32

Nabiki 1/2,

A Very Scary Thought

(An Altered Destiny)

by

Jim Robert Bader

(Inspired by the Works of Rumiko Takahashi & Others)

"Where the Hell is he?" asked Agent Kei.

"Where is who?" asked Agent Jei, glancing to his more

experienced partner.

"Stein," Kei replied as he surveyed the resumed work of the

helicopter people, currently in the process of binding two large

steel cargo nets full of slumbering Monsters, "He should be

supervising this operation, not running off on some fool

personal mission like a Goddamned Lancelot. A fine example

of leadership the way he's managing this crisis."

"You don't think taking a pregnant woman to the hospital is

more important than monitoring the clean up of this mess?" Jei

replied, then thought about what he had said a little before

adding, "Yeah, I can see how that might look on paper..."

"Stein doesn't keep a paper trail," Kei replied sharply, "He's too

slick, been in this game too long-longer than me by a good

stretch-to leave any trace of his activities and whereabouts to

let people even know that he was here when it mattered. That

freak storm may have obliterated his trail, but I'm positive he's at

the hospital in Furinkan, and I'll bet yen to ricecakes he's

wormed his way into the delivery room, now the only question

is: why? What's so special about this baby?"

"I don't know," Jei shrugged, "I still haven't recovered from that

kid you suckered me into delivering..."

"Experience, Slick," Kei replied, "Never pass up on the chance

to get more experience under your belt. A rookie like you

should know by now that the greatest danger in our business is

not being prepared for the unexpected," he removed a pen-like

object from his jacket and spoke into it, "Talk to me, what have

you got?"

Jei watched his partner with a puzzled look for the next several

moments as Kei appeared to be listening to his pen, then his

mentor nodded and said, "I see, well, keep an eye out for him

and the others. We'll be there in another few minutes."

He clicked the pen and put it back into his pocket then said,

"Let's go, Slick. He's been spotted right where I knew he'd be.

You owe me a cup of ramen."

"What?" Jei blinked as he belatedly followed his partner's

example, sliding into the seat of their car, which was itself

anything but ordinary, "I don't owe you anything! I never bet

with you in the first place!"

"Technicalities, Slick," Jei replied as he revved up the engine to

their vehicle, "Fasten your seat belt, we're going there express-

style."

"Wha-ohshit!" Jei exclaimed before grabbing hold of the nearest

brace on his side of the vehicle as it accelerated rapidly to

somewhere just below the sound barrier, eating up kilometers of

road that were no longer impeded by the effects of the

stormclouds...

"How are you feeling, Ranma?" Kasumi asked as she handed the

boy a steaming hot cup of tea.

"Huh?" Ranma blinked, looking up at his nominative older sister

(or prospective sister-in-law), "Er...I'm fine, Kasumi. Why do

you ask?"

"You seem very pensive for some reason," Kasumi replied,

"Would you mind if I sit with you?"

Ranma glanced at the space to his right then indicated the seat

next to him in the waiting room area and said, "Go right ahead.

Suit yourself, Oneechan."

"Arigato," Kasumi said as she neatly composed her dress before

sitting down alongside her adoptive younger brother, "To tell

you the truth, I could use some company myself about now, and

I can't imagine what this must be like for you, Ranma. I imagine

it must be terribly confusing."

"Uh...yeah," Ranma replied, eyeing the tall girl at his side, "You

think Nabiki will be all right?"

"That depends," Kasumi remarked, "But it's Shampoo who

worries me. It's too soon for her to be having this baby, even if

there was magic involved to speed things up. Poor Nabiki must

be terribly anguished about now, I would think. Not that I

expect anything bad will happen to Shampoo, of course."

"Or her baby?" Ranma asked nervously.

"That, too, must depend on circumstances," Kasumi sighed, "I

hope everything will be all right. Shampoo wants this baby so

much, and I can tell it means a lot to Nabiki..." she heaved a

deeper sigh, "But then again, it is in other hands than our own.

All we can do is wait and see what may or may not happen."

Ranma was surprised beyond words to hear Kasumi speaking

with such melancholy in her tone. As long as he had known her

she had always been the model of cheerfulness and upbeat good

humor, the one who would come to comfort him when his

mother was away and he was in need of a shoulder to cry upon.

(Not that he ever used her shoulder that way since becoming a

young man, he would assure anyone who cared to listen) To see

her look sad this way was more than he could bear to put up

with.

Ranma would have been the first to admit that he was not all

that good with words, but he felt that he had to say something,

so with great reluctance he said, "You...um...like Nabiki a lot,

don't you?"

Kasumi blushed and looked down without immediately

answering, but when she looked up there was an odd emotion in

her gaze as she stared out at the empty air before her and said,

"You must think that I'm being silly, having such a difficult time

behaving myself when I'm in Nabiki-kun's presence. I know

that it isn't right to have these feelings about my own sister, but

Nabiki was gone from our lives for so long, and now that she is

back and I've had the chance to get to know her once again...I

find myself reacting to her as I might if she were a handsome

stranger. I don't really understand why, but whenever she is

around...I feel so happy."

Ranma was not certain what to make of this curious confession,

having expected something other than complete honesty from

the usually oblivious Kasumi. Ranma glanced down and,

having nothing else better to do or say, said the first thing that

came across his mind, "I guess Nabiki's pretty cute in guy form,

not that I'm any judge of that sort of thing. I guess I can't blame

you for that, just something in the magic of Jusenkyo makes her

irresistible to girls."

"Maybe you're right," Kasumi said, "I only know that I feel so

complete whenever she's around. I can't really explain the way I

feel when I see her in her male form. I don't really think of it as

a curse, even if it does make Nabiki's life rather complicated. I

guess you and I are pretty much in the same position."

"Huh?" Ranma asked, "What do you mean by that, Oneechan?"

"Well," Kasumi replied, "You love Nabiki in her real form, but

when she's a man you don't really stop loving her, do you?"

"Ah..." Ranma felt himself grow uncomfortable as he tried to

put into words his own thoughts on that subject. He was not

someone who felt comfortable discussing his private thoughts

and feelings, but if there was anyone in the world whom he

trusted more than either Ukyo or Nabiki to respect his personal

feelings, then it was Kasumi. He glanced away and in a nervous

voice said, "Well...I'm not really into her guy form, but I

understand how hard it is for Nabiki having to change around

like that. At least...I think I can guess what she feels like going

from one body to another. I mean...I dunno...but maybe it's just

that I really can't stop thinking of her as Nabiki."

"She is the same person inside," Kasumi mused, "And very

Bishonen, whatever her gender. She has so many good

qualities, and it's not really like it's her fault that she has this

curse that changes her against her will. I see Nabiki struggling

sometimes to maintain her own identity and I want so much to

comfort her, but I'm not sure that it would be proper."

"Hey, you're her sister," Ranma protested, "What's so improper

if you give her a shoulder to cry on?"

"But she won't come to me for that, Ranma," Kasumi replied,

"She's like you, very proud and quite stubborn. She doesn't like

showing people how weak she can be sometimes, and she's

always trying to be strong for others..."

"Like you, Oneechan?" Ranma asked.

Kasumi faintly smiled, "I'm not strong. I try to help out in any

way I can, but I'm just an ordinary girl trying to take care of my

family in any little way that I can manage. I'm not a warrior like

you or Shampoo, and it really is your mother who keeps house

for us all. In a way sometimes I feel quite useless."

"Useless?" Ranma looked at her sharply, "You, Oneechan?"

Kasumi sadly nodded, "In fact I've been thinking about going

back to school to continue my education. I could get a

scholarship and go on to a medical university. Doctor Tofu said

that he would speak on my behalf with some people he knows at

a local University, and Nabiki's offered to pay for my tuition the

first semester. It really would be nice to feel needed by

somebody, and what with you and Akane growing up and

finding good people whom you care enough about to marry...I

guess I'd like to find myself somebody too. Somebody, that is,

who isn't already engaged to somebody else."

Ranma found himself smiling in spite of his own worries, "I

think you'd make a great Doctor, Kasumi. You have very good

hands, and you've got a great bedside manner. I think Doctor

Tofu might even be willing to help you out in a lot of ways if

you ask him."

"You think so?" Kasumi asked, "I really wouldn't want to be a

bother to him..."

"I wouldn't worry," Ranma smiled, "I'm sure Tofu-Sensei will

only be too happy to help you."

"I do hope you're right," Kasumi smiled, looking off down the

hallway towards the delivery room where they knew Doctor

Tofu was helping Shampoo and Nabiki. There was another long

pause before she spoke again, "What I meant to say before about

this being strange..."

"Hai?" Ranma asked, puzzled at the older girl's hesitation.

"Forgive me for prying," Kasumi turned back towards him and

fixed him with oddly sympathetic eyes, "But what is it like for

you knowing that Shampoo is going to have Nabiki's baby?"

Ranma blinked at the very directness of the question, and

suddenly he felt like he was on the spot with a critical issues

directly dealing with his personal feelings. It was not something

that he felt comfortable dealing with, and had it been anyone

else but Kasumi he would have refused to give an answer.

Somehow the gentle inquisitiveness of his adoptive sister's stare

prevented him from withdrawing into his private shell once

again, so knowing of no other way to address the question he

just blurted out the first thing to come into his mind, like always,

"I think it's really unfair. I mean...I'm the one who should be in

there with her. Nabiki...I...Shampoo..."

"Yes, I quite agree," Kasumi said as she looked away, "It is all

so very confusing. You're her iinazuke, but she's also married to

Shampoo, and they're having a child together. There's not much

about this situation that seems very normal."

Ranma gave a short, bitter laugh and said, "You've got that right,

Oneechan."

"But it is quite normal after all," Kasumi continued, surprising

Ranma as he looked up to see her smile, which belied the

sadness in her eyes, "Having babies is as natural as watching the

sun come up every morning. What's unusual about it is that the

child has two mothers, but other than that it's perfectly

ordinary."

"It is?" Ranma asked with mild confusion.

"People have babies every day, Ranma," Kasumi smiled at him,

"It seems extraordinary to us, but to the people in this hospital it

just seems like an average day. So what if the circumstances of

her conception are unusual? Isn't the fact that we're about to

experience the joy of a new life entering this world more

important than how she came to be conceived?"

"Oneechan?" Ranma studied his "big sister" with a very puzzled

expression.

"I'm happy for Shampoo and Nabiki," Kasumi continued,

"Really, I am...and I want them to know how happy I'll be to

help care of and raise this child, because it will be a part of all of

us together, a new generation of our family, which makes her a

promise of the future."

"Her?" Ranma asked, "You think it will be a girl then?"

"Oh," Kasumi looked startled, "Did I imply that? Well...I

suppose it could be a boy, but it just seems natural to think of

her as a girl baby. I don't know why...possibly because she has

two mothers."

"I guess," Ranma said, then after a momentary pause he added,

"Maybe I'm a little...I dunno...maybe I'm kinda jealous that it's

Shampoo who's giving Nabiki this baby. I don't know why it

should affect me, she's really a nice girl and everything, and I

can see how happy she makes Nabiki."

"I understand," Kasumi smiled, "It's perfectly natural for you to

feel this way, Ranma, but you know Nabiki cares for you too,

and it's not as if she can't love both of you in different ways.

You must have faith in her, just as I do. Everything will work

out all right, you'll see."

"I hope so, Kasumi-chan," Ranma looked down and balled his

fists as he thought about Nabiki, who was with Shampoo in the

delivery room and had been for the better part of an hour. He

silently prayed that everything would work out all right, because

he had so many questions yet to be answered, about himself and

about his feelings for all the women who had become a part of

his life, and in whose lives he had become intertwined in ways

beyond his understanding...

"What do you suppose those two are talking about?" asked

Cammy as she glanced across the length of the waiting room at

the young boy and girl whom she saw conversing together."

"Probably sharing a private, personal moment, and we should

respect them," replied Chun-Li at her side, "You shouldn't be so

nosy over something that really isn't any of our business."

"Oh yeah?" Cammy glared out the corner of her eye at the

Chinese girl beside her, "And what makes you think it's none of

our business, huh? We fought alongside that kid only a few

months back, and we know he cares a lot about that sex-

changing Amazon who's in there with another woman who's

having her baby."

"Exactly my point," Chun-Li observed, "He's a valiant young

man going through something that most kids his age shouldn't

have to deal with."

"Oh yeah, Miss Prissy?" Cammy glared at her longtime rival,

"And what makes you such an expert about lost youth? You're

not the only one here with a hard-luck story!"

"At least I had a childhood, once long ago," Chun-Li replied

calmly, though her eyes grew slitted as she returned the look her

companion gave her, "I didn't grow up a street rat without any

manners."

"Why you-!" Cammy started to say, when a gruff voice

intruded on their pending altercation with crisp military

precision.

"Enough, you two," Guile grated harshly, "This is a hospital

where they're supposed to treat the sick and the injured. I won't

have you turning it into a battleground for another one of your

altercations."

"She started it!" came the immediate and inevitable chorus.

"Well, well," mused Madam Lao where she stood at ease to one

side within sight of Guile's peripheral vision, "I see that not

much has changed since you three left my company a while

back. And here I would have thought you two would have

learned to kiss and make up by now instead of carrying on with

this adolescent rivalry of yours."

"You shut up!" Cammy growled, "The last thing we need is to

have you provide the snide observations."

"Yes," Chun-Li agreed, "That's usually Cammy's assignment."

"Argh!" Cammy growled as she turned back towards her

companion, "Why can't you just for once back me up instead of

cutting me down? Would it kill you to make nice for once?"

"An interesting question," Chun-Li noted, "But just because we

fight on the same side in the same team doesn't necessarily make

us partners."

"Ah yes," Lao mused, "Correct me if I'm wrong but she did try

to kill your father once, correct? And you're still holding a

grudge over that after all of these years, even though it was

really Vega who ultimately killed him."

Now it was Chun-Li's turn to glare at the tall woman with pale

sea green hair as the Chinese girl said with deceptive calm,

"And what would you know about it?"

"Why, everything of course," Lao smiled, "While you were my

guests I made certain to probe your memories to determine what

demons drive the two of you to be such exceptional fighters.

You were, of course, the daughter of an Interpol agent who was

also a master of Wu-Shu martial arts, a practitioner of a certain

style known as the Zhan School, of which you and one Fei Long

were both the star pupils. Then Shadowlaw recruited Miss

White here to do a simple assassination job, programming her

subliminally, as Vega has done to so many of his agents. She

put your father in the hospital, but he made a full recovery and

afterwards turned to his crusade against Shadowlaw with a

vengeance. It was while on one particular raid against a village

that was caught in the middle of a drug operation, at which you

happened to be present, that you witnessed your father's

execution at the hands of Vega himself. It gave you a renewed

purpose in life and set you on the path of vengeance that you

now follow."

"Not vengeance," Chun-Li said softly, "Only justice. I won't

rest until I'm certain that he is dead and in hell to pay for his

crimes against humanity. Nothing darker or more base will

deter the purpose of my quest to see him permanently put out of

business."

"Easier said than done, my dear," Lao replied with faint

amusement, "And you'll have to get in line for that because I

want him to suffer too, only I make no bones about my motives.

He cost the lives of some people whom I cared about and hurt

my business, for which I cannot forgive him. Ah, but let me not

leave out our dear Miss White, here, yet another victim of

Shadowlaw and it's foul demonic master."

"Eh?" Cammy's eyes widened with alarm.

"You're an orphan because of Shadowlaw," Lao replied, "Raised

in a convent, you once thought about becoming a Nun, only the

demons in your heart would not allow you the peace of a clerical

calling. You chose instead to make your way on the streets,

perfecting your martial arts style, first in the civilian world and

later on by joining the British SAS. You rose to the rank of

Lieutenant but ultimately found gainful employment in your

country's intelligence services, first as a field agent and later an

assassin."

Cammy was on her feet with fists raised, "You sucked that out

of my head, you damned leech! You used your fancy Chinese

tricks to worm that out of me, didn't you?"

"But of course," Lao replied without the least bit of concern in

her expression, "There are no secrets on my vessel, and I have

every right to know the quality of my guests when they come to

me, as you did."

Cammy started to take a step forward when Guile barked out,

"That's enough! Stand down, Lieutenant, that's an order!"

"No way!" Cammy growled, "She deserves to pay for her sins,

and I'm just itching for a little payback!"

A movement to Cammy's right caused her to turn her attention

and catch the sight of Chun-Li rising up from her seat to take a

position beside her.

"If we're going to do it, then we do it together," she said with

absolute calm, "Only we're not doing it here. Take it outside

where we can do less damage to our surroundings."

"I would love to accommodate you, my dears," Lao smiled

without moving from where she stood leaning against the wall

next to Guile, "Only the weather outside would tend to give me

an unfair advantage, not to mention make it very hard for me to

concentrate my energies on remaining in my human form. If I

should revert to my cursed form, then I fear you both would be

at a distinct disadvantage."

"We're not afraid of you, Pussy-Cat!" Cammy growled, her fists

still raised though she was clearly hesitating to make the first

move.

"Excuse me," said one of the two Japanese women who had

been sitting across from them the whole time, "But do you think

you people could keep it down a bit? We don't want that head

nurse to come along and make trouble."

"Yeah," agreed her partner, "You guys may think you're tough,

but she's scary!"

Guile heaved a sigh to that, "I wish it was that simple, but you

don't know these three like I do."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Cammy growled, "And just

who the hell are you two to be interrupting a private

conversation?"

The first of the two women smiled and pulled out a leather case

to reveal her badge as a Tokyo policewoman. As her

companion did the same the first woman said, "I'm Kobayakowa

Miyuki, and this is my partner, Sujimoto Natsumi. We're off-

duty patrolwomen..."

"Yeah, and we were supposed to be enjoying our vacation,"

Natsumi said with a hopeless sigh of exasperated longing.

"Yes," Miyuki replied, "But since we are friends of the happy

couple, it's only right that we be here to give them our support

and best wishes on a safe and successful delivery of their baby."

"My, my," Lao mused with speculative interest, "What a lovely

thing you are, and such excellent manners. You and your

partner do make for an interesting contrast."

"Don't even think about it," Guile rumbled in warning.

"Uh," Natsumi frowned, "Don't take this the wrong way,

lady...but who exactly are you guys? Are you some kind of

special secret agents or something?"

"Colonel William Guile," replied the big blonde man with the

bottlebrush haircut, taking his own ID card out from his jacket,

"Special agent, United Nations. My companions are Inspector

Chun-Li Zhan of Interpol, and my special attaché, Lieutenant

Cammy White..."

"Special attaché," Chun-Li snorted, "I can think of a more

appropriate title."

"Hey!" Cammy growled.

"And this," Guile pointedly ignored the exchange of barbed

looks between his two female companions, nodding instead to

the other tall woman leaning near to his side, "Is the notorious

Madam Lao Khan, otherwise known as Lanocane the Pirate."

"Oh please," Lao sniffed, "Pirate has such loaded connotations.

I prefer to call myself an entrepreneur of free trade and low

import tariff..."

"Pirate?" Natsumi said with widened eyes, turning a worried

glance at Miyuki, "Do you know anything about this?"

"I think I do," Miyuki stroked her chin with a thoughtful

expression, "There are many reports of someone going by the

name of Lao Khan who terrorizes innocent victims on the high

seas, only there isn't any photograph or adequate description of

what she looks like, only that she is wanted for a number of

crimes ranging from White Slavery to Murder."

"Murder?" Lao arched pale eyebrows, "That's a little extreme,

don't you think? I very rarely have to kill anyone in the course

of my activities, and certainly no one from your country...at

least that can be proven in a court of law."

"Are you denying that you are a Pirate and a Smuggler who

deals in the illegal trade of human flesh?" Chun-Li asked archly.

"I neither confirm nor deny it in the presence of these two

gallant officers," Lao replied serenely, "And without evidence of

any crimes committed in Japan you haven't the probable cause

to arrest me in their presence, not that I'm inclined to allow

myself to be taken in, of course."

"Slaver!" Cammy glowered at her.

"So I like a little kinky sex on the side," Lao inclined her head,

"Are you soliciting my services or just advertising?"

"Thief!" Chun-Li snapped.

"I prefer to be called a Capitalist, thank you."

"Rapist!" Cammy snarled.

"Did I leave you with that impression?" Lao affected wounded

tones, "I may employ methods that are somewhat more

unorthodox in terms of seduction, but you should know that I

never truly force anyone to submit to my affections."

"Liar!" Chun-Li and Cammy cried together.

"SHHHH!" the Head Nurse appeared with an angry look that

caused everyone to turn pale in her presence, "Keep it down out

here or I'll have security toss the lot of you out of here! If you

don't mind your voices and hold the noise level down..."

"We get the message, Ma'am," Guile said politely, standing to

his full height before bowing deeply at the waist and adding, "I

apologize for the rudeness of my companions and give you my

assurances that it will not be repeated. Will it, ladies?"

"Ah," both Cammy and Chun-Li visibly wilted in his presence.

"I wasn't the one raising my voice," Lao replied as she held her

hands out to imply her innocence, "But I will agree to abide by a

truce and do no further to provoke an altercation."

"This whole thing just gets weirder and weirder," Natsumi

muttered to herself, only to look up as a sopping wet figure

came rushing up to join their party, slightly out of breath and

looking more than a little bedraggled.

"Sorry I'm late," the new arrival gasped, "I rushed over here as

soon as I got the news. Has Shampoo delivered yet? Is Nabiki

with her? Tell me all ready!"

"No running in the corridors," the Head Nurse growled, "And

dry yourself off! The last thing we need around here is another

patient with pneumonia."

"Yeesh," the newcomer blinked, "Who are you, the Hall

Monitor?"

"Oh, never mind her, Saki," smiled Miyuki, "I'm so glad you got

my message. Did you have a difficult time finding your way

here?"

"Yeah, I only had to wade through a monsoon that wasn't even

supposed to be today," replied the girl with long pink hair

wearing a student uniform from one of the local High Schools,

"If it wasn't for some friends of mine from Tomobiki I'd never

even have made it. So what's the word? Has she had the kid

yet?"

"Not yet," Natsumi smiled, "But it hasn't been an hour yet, so

you might as well pull up a chair and have a seat with the rest of

the weirdoes."

"Weirdoes?" Saki seemed to take notice of the others at that

moment then gasped and went into a battle crouch, producing a

yo-yo in one hand, "Madam Lao! What are you doing here?"

"Hello, Asamiya Saki," Lao said with a leering smile, "It has

been a long time, hasn't it?"

"Uh...who's this?" Cammy asked of the two off-duty cops.

"Oh, Saki's just a friend of ours from the Vice division," Miyuki

replied with a pleasant smile.

"It figures she'd know more about this lady than either one of

us," Natsumi sighed, "We don't get too many Pirate cases in the

Traffic division, though in all truth we have seen more than our

share of the nutcases."

"Nutcases?" Saki snorted, "Do you guys have any idea who this

lady is or what she's capable of, or the things that she's done in

the past?"

"Actually yes," Chun-Li replied.

"We've got a fair notion," Cammy seconded.

"Then how can you be sitting around with her like this as if she's

some kind of Social worker?" Saki asked, "The number of

crimes that she's involved in alone would sink that rat-infested

Chinese barge of hers!"

"Now Detective Saki," Lao said reasonably, "Surely that's an

exaggeration on your part. You know that there is no proof of

my involvement in any extra-legal activities, other than the

personal testimony of those present, which cannot be

corroborated without hard evidence on your part, and would

otherwise have taken place in international waters, which hardly

qualifies as being in your jurisdiction. I will forgive that your

memories of your visit to my ship are somewhat cloudy and

uncertain, but surely you don't have cause to seek me out for

personal redress, not here in this place of healing?"

"You sure have a way of making a lasting impression on people,

lady," Guile grunted to the side, "At ease, Detective. We've got

an informal truce going here, and it won't do anyone any good if

try and pick a fight with the big, bad tiger lady."

"And just who the hell are you?" Saki asked, turning to Miyuki

and Natsumi, "I come here expecting to see the Tendos and

instead I find a bunch of foreigners who look like they belong in

a circus!"

Cammy cracked a smirk and said, "Y'know something? I like

her! She reminds me of me."

"You would," Chun-Li remarked, "Except that she has much

better manners."

Guile presented his credentials once again and made terse

introductions then said, "We're friends of the family, so-to-

speak. You want the Tendos, they're gathered over that way,

closer to the reception desk."

"Friends of the Tendos?" Saki frowned, standing more at ease as

she cast another glare in Lao's direction, "Then what are you

here for?"

"Why shouldn't I be here?" Lao asked, "Shampoo is my cousin,

and in spite of what you think of me personally, you should

know that family is very important to an Amazon, my dear. Or

at least you should know, given that you have some Amazon

blood in your own veins."

Saki glared at her but the yo-yo disappeared from her hand and

she stood at a somewhat more relaxed posture. After another

moment of silence she sniffed and said, "Well, there's no

accounting for bad relations, if I'm anyone to know that. Just

watch your back around me, lady, and keep those hands of yours

to yourself."

"And why don't you dry off before you catch a chill?" Lao

smiled, waving a hand in Saki's direction as moisture suddenly

flew off the Detective's body, leaving her school uniform and

pink hair as dry as if wind-blown, "And perhaps, if you but give

me half a chance, I may be able one day to improve your

opinion about me."

"I doubt that," Saki replied but pointedly turned away from Lao

and stormed off in the direction of the Tendos.

"Weird," Natsumi remarked as she studied the retreating

backside of the Sukeban Deka.

"Oh, I don't know," Miyuki smiled, "I was just thinking to

myself that you can meet the most interesting people just

hanging around in this precinct. Our vacation may have been

rained on but the afternoon certainly hasn't lacked for

entertainment."

"Oh sure," snorted Natsumi, "With Gods and Monsters roaming

about the place, what's there to be bored about? I just wish

somebody was handing out program guides, it's awfully hard to

keep track of who's who. I almost feel like an Otaka in an

Anime convention."

"Otaka?" Guile smiled grimly, "Yeah, right...like anybody could

dream up something like this. Just wish I could shake the

feeling that I'm just a supporting character in this comedy-

drama..."

"What the heck is that all about?" asked Aiko from where she

and Beatrice were sitting together, having observed the near-

altercation that had taken place between the members of Guile's

party.

"I would imagine it's like a class reunion over there," Beatrice

remarked, "I believe I heard someone refer to the Tiger lady as a

Pirate."

"Huh," Aiko sulked, "We've run into no shortage of them in our

time. At least if she's the terrestrial sort she's more-or-less

relatively harmless."

"Unlike the two of us, of course," Beatrice smiled serenely, "But

that hardly goes without saying."

"Beiko," Aiko glanced sidelong at the silver-haired girl who had

long been her antagonist but only recently taken on a different

significance altogether, "What do you think it taking so long in

there? Shouldn't we have heard something about her having the

kid by now? Why all this endless waiting?"

"Now, now," Beatrice replied, "Some things are not meant to be

rushed, Alison. All in good time. I'm sure they're doing

everything that they can to make Shampoo as comfortable as

can be managed."

"It's so weird," Aiko remarked, "Her having a kid like that by

another woman. This shapechanging stuff with all the switching

of genders...how do you suppose that Nabiki copes with it?"

"I don't really know," Beatrice reflected, "It certainly isn't a very

conventional situation, but I suppose she has managed to adjust

to the inconvenience. At the very least I find the whole

experience quite fascinating. Do you have any idea how many

new fields of biotechnology might be opened up by research

into this matter?"

"I'm not sure I want to know," Aiko replied, "In fact, can we

even be sure that the kid is going to be human?"

"And why wouldn't she be?" Beatrice wondered, "There's

certainly nothing wrong with combining the genetic material of

two perfectly healthy female subjects to create a viable

offspring. We both observed an even more unusual birthing

process during our brief stay on Alpha Signi."

"Yeah, but how do you raise a kid like that?" Aiko asked, "And

what is she going to call Nabiki? Her father?"

"Well, she is part male, at least some of the time," Beatrice

observed, "But I was also referring to the nature of this curse

itself and what it might teach us about the fine line that separates

our technical knowledge from viable magic. It would be

interesting to determine the mechanism by which the change

itself is affected. Perhaps a trip to Jusenkyo for some samples of

their spring water would be in order..."

"Sure you want to risk it?" Aiko asked, "You might fall in and

get one of those animal curses."

"Or perhaps the male one?" Beatrice noted with obvious

amusement, "I wonder what you would look like as a guy? I'd

imagine that you'd be very buff and actually quite handsome."

"Urk?" Aiko reacted, not at all liking the speculative look that

she was receiving from her companion.

"No," Beatrice inclined her head, "On second thought, I like you

just the way you are, not that it wouldn't be fascinating to

explore the implications of what you might do with a man's

body. For example...it might even be possible for the two of us

to wind up as parents."

"What?" Aiko almost jumped out of her seat but for the nervous

glance she turned towards the Head Nurse, who was glaring

right at them, "Are you crazy? That's the most...!"

"Incredible thing you ever heard?" Beatrice turned fully towards

Aiko with an expression that was unusually softened and full of

frank emotion, "Surely I've made it plain enough to you by now

that I want us to be together. I know it's not something you want

to hear at the present, Aiko, but I am very attracted to you, and

I've no intention of repeating the mistakes that I've made in the

past. Perhaps a relationship is something we both need to help

bring our lives back into focus. I've felt so empty since we

returned from space with our mission such a failure, and all I've

been able to think about these last few months is you and what

you might be doing."

"Beiko..." Aiko was caught between conflicting emotions,

wanting to escape from the look the other woman was giving her

and yet simultaneously possessed of a need to hold her and give

comfort.

"I don't expect you to answer right away," Beatrice continued,

"In fact I'd be surprised if you'd be willing to jump into an affair

so swiftly after everything that we have gone through together.

We're both still recovering from Celeste and the sense of

rejection that came when she chose to remain with her mother's

people and be their Princess."

"Ah..." Aiko looked away unsteadily and found herself

conjuring up the image of a cheerful blonde girl who could be

both annoying and vexing at times but who had been her closest

friend and childhood companion. She could not form a coherent

reply to her companion's statement so she just sat where she was

until she heard Beatrice continue.

"Ceiko," Beatrice whispered the word with a curious mix of

regret and intense longing, "I never really understood my

attraction for her, but in a way I guess it does make sense that I

would be drawn to a member of the royal family for the Lepton

Empire. After all, they were bred to be the charismatic focus of

their entire civilization, the glue that would hold it together."

"What do you mean?" Aiko turned to regard her silver-haired

companion.

"Well, think of it," Beatrice smiled, "An entire civilization in

which there are no men, and all reproduction is conducted

through artificial means of gestation and incubation? It's very

hard to build the sort of family ties that cement together the

civilizations of our world without the strong bonds of family and

group heritage. Though Queen Aleph is biologically Ceiko's

mother, she and her daughter never really had a physical

relationship as such, nor did they probably ever meet. In fact

that spaceship that originally crashed down in the site of

Graviton city was carrying the incubatory container that had

Celeste in it, which is how she came to arrive on earth and be

adopted into the Kotobuki family, by the chairman of the

corporation no less."

"Yeah, so?" Aiko wondered.

"Haven't you thought it odd that nearly everyone who meets

Ceiko almost automatically falls in love with her?" Beatrice

asked, "Including Kei, the guy we both got into that awful fight

over?"

"I remember you flashing yourself like a shameless hussy trying

to get his attention," Aiko glowered.

Rather than be offended, Beatrice seemed even more amused by

her friend's reaction, "As I recall it, you were trying just as hard

to win him yourself, but neither one of us had even a prayer of

attracting his notice whenever Ceiko was in the room. Now isn't

that perfectly odd, considering how Celeste herself couldn't

stand his attentions?"

"Now that you mention it," Aiko said with a frown, "Yeah, that

was pretty odd. Why was it he was interested in her instead of

us?"

Beatrice closed her eyes and gave a very small sigh, "Because

he was affected by the same thing that affected the two of us. It

took me a while to figure it out, but now that I know more about

Lepton biotechnology, it would only make sense that they would

engineer their royal family to have very powerful charisma. I'd

theorize a combination of pheromones and sub-harmonic

modulation in her voice, which is why she could be so shrill and

inept in her behavior and yet still gain favorable attention. It

might even be that there is a Psionic field she emits that

increases the power of her charisma. It would make sense if

their royalty had these abilities in order to win the complete

allegiance of their people."

"You think so?" Aiko asked, glancing down, "Well, it sure can't

be because of their brains, because her mother has even less of

them than Ceiko. Hey, wait a minute! If Ceiko has these

abilities, then why aren't I affected?"

"Who's saying that you aren't?" Beatrice replied, "But in your

case you may have built up a resistance from constantly being in

her presence. Even so you were her defender, and I resented

you for that from the day we first met at that special research

clinic."

"The way I remember it, you used to tease Ceiko and put frogs

and snakes down her blouse," Aiko snorted.

"Which, I suppose, was my way of showing affection," Beatrice

quirked a smile, "I wasn't a very good girl myself even back

then. In fact, it's only recently that I've come to question my

whole life and what I have been doing with my talents, which is

why I'm so interested in making a new beginning. I want to turn

the page on what I was before we began our abortive mission,

before I died and had these nanobots placed inside me to restore

me to life and health. In effect the old me died out there, and

there's a new me here and now in the present who wants the

chance to start over...and yet I'm still vain enough to hope that

maybe you'd be willing to help me, Alison."

"Huh?" Aiko murmured softly, turning back to share a look with

the other girl as her large brown eyes were drunk in by the

cobalt blue eyes of her companion, right before a shadow fell

over the both of them, causing them to look up with matching

startled exclamations.

"There you are, Aiko," said a very tall and powerfully build man

in a three-piece suit whose dark hair and blue eyes gave him an

imposing appearance that was only slightly diminished by a pair

of horn rim glasses.

"Dad?" Aiko exclaimed as she stood up, "Mom? What are you

doing here?"

"We came to find you, young lady," said a woman almost as tall

as the man-nearly six feet even-whose black hair and blue eyes

gave her the appearance of timeless youth not even diminished

by the wire-rim glasses that she was sporting, "We've heard that

you've been keeping busy on your first day at a new school."

"Oh, you-um-heard about that?" Aiko winced.

"Ah yes," the man remarked, "I was only notified about it

myself at the last minute, but by then it was all over except for

the cleanup. I trust you had something to do with that?"

"Ah," Aiko visibly wilted, "Dad...about that, I can explain

everything...!"

"Allow me, Aiko," Beatrice stood up and took her place beside

her redheaded companion, bowing to the two adults before

saying with perfect manners, "Allow me to introduce myself to

you, honored parents of my friend. I am Daitokuji Beatrice, a

fellow classmate at Alison's old school and current one. I was

there beside your daughter helping her to protect the public from

a monster invasion. You would be very proud of your little girl,

as am I, because without her efforts there is no telling how

things might have ended."

"Hah?" Aiko blinked her eyes, unable to believe that Beatrice

was giving her so much credit for her part in the whole

engagement.

"Daitokuji," the tall man adjusted his glasses and studied the

other girl, "Your father is the head of Daitokuji Enterprises?"

"Alas, to my shame," Beatrice inclined her head in a humble

nod, "I believe that my father is an old adversary of yours, as

was my grandfather before him. I ask that you not judge me by

the same standards as I have quite recently parted ways with my

father over a personal issue, which must remain between the two

of us. I hope that I may be given the chance that you both come

to look upon me as a very different sort from either of my

progenitors."

"I'm sure we can set aside past issues and ignore issues best left

in the past," the dark haired woman replied as she glanced at her

husband, "Right, Clark dear?"

"Ah," the man had to smile at the look his wife gave him, "If

you say so, Diana. Still...it is an interesting pedigree you have

there, young lady."

"I like to think that I contain the best aspects of my father and

mother's inheritance," Beatrice glanced down, "Of course you

may already know of me by a certain reputation, much of it true,

that was entirely my fault and is something else I would like to

move beyond."

"Yes," the man said, "I've heard your name mentioned

frequently when Aiko was going to Graviton High. You two

made quite a lot of noise last semester."

"All in the past," Beatrice said quite firmly, "You have my word

on that. In fact, I now consider Aiko to be my closest friend and

someone with whom I have already shared many a harrowing

adventure."

"Oh yes," Diana said as she looked hard at a wilting Aiko,

"Those weeks during school break when your father and I

couldn't find you. We never did get a full account of what you

were doing with yourself while your father and I were called

away to other business."

"Aiko was helping me with a vital research project," Beatrice

said politely, "In fact it was during that time that we grew very

close together. In fact, I would not wish to put her on the spot

here, but as there are few secrets between Aiko and myself..."

"Hah?" Aiko did not think she liked the drift of this

conversation.

"...And you can trust me that I would never do anything to bring

harm or disgrace to either Aiko or her family," Beatrice

continued, "For I know how special she is, coming from such a

noble line of warriors and heroes."

"Oh...do you now?" asked Diana, and for a long moment there

was silence between them.

"I...see," her father said slowly, "Is this true, Aiko-chan? Have

you really been that busy?"

"Ah..." Aiko cringed inwardly, feeling very much on the spot

but unable to frame a coherent reply that might help her dig

herself out of what was becoming a very compromising

situation.

"I see," her father repeated again, glancing down before sighing,

"Well, I can't say that I completely understand, but since it is

your life, and you are growing into a fine young woman in your

own right, I suppose it's not my place to tell you who your

friends are or what you both might be doing together. I just

want you to know that whatever choice you make, your mother

and I support you."

"N-Nani?" Aiko blinked her eyes in her surprise, "Dad...!"

"What your father is trying to say is that we do understand,"

Diana smiled, taking her husband by the arm and inclining her

head against his broad shoulders, "After all, it's the Nineties and

very soon to be a whole new Millennium, my fourth, as a matter

of course. And you are of Amazon birth, which entitles you to

assert your rights of independence...something I never really got

from my mother. Besides, it's no great secret these days that we

of Paradise Island found other ways to amuse ourselves without

men in our existence...not that I've anything to complain about

life with your father."

"Hah-what?" Aiko blinked, her mind now awhirl with too much

sensory input.

"I thank you both for doing me this great honor," Beatrice

bowed to them, "And I promise you that I will do everything in

my power to see to your daughter's happiness."

"What?" Aiko was now thoroughly alarmed, "Now wait a

minute, Beiko..."

"Ho, what's this?" a robust voice intruded on their conversation,

"I go off to get you kids something to snack upon and you called

in a family reunion?"

Everyone turned to see the broad-shouldered man clutching a

tray in his brawny hands upon which was resting three huge

bowls of ice cream with whipping and cherry toppings.

"Grandpa?" Aiko blinked.

"Lord Herakles," Beatrice acknowledged.

"Father?" asked Diana, even more surprised than the others,

"What are you doing here in this place?"

"Hey now," Hercules replied, "Can't a man spend some quality

time with his favorite granddaughter? I should be asking what

you and Clark here are doing back in town. I thought you had

one of those JLA meetings to attend or something."

"It was called off at the last minute," Clark turned around with a

casual smile at the hulking man-god, "In fact we were informed

only a short time ago that Aiko here had been involved in an

incident and we were trying to get more details."

"Oh hey," Hercules grinned, "I can tell you all about that! The

little squirt's been like a chip off the old marble block. In fact if

you have the time I'll bring you up to date about how she helped

us reel in a couple of genuine monsters."

"We'd be only two delighted," Diana replied, and her husband

gave his own tacit nod of agreement.

Aiko looked around like a trapped animal, then put a hand up to

her head and said, "Why me?" in tones of finality which implied

that she was doomed by the fates to suffer a very strange sort of

family reunion. When Beatrice laid a hand on her shoulder it

was both reassuring and alarming for what it conveyed in terms

of both support and commitment. The events of her life were

spiraling out of control and she had no clue whatsoever how to

assert herself back over the situation. She did not want to reveal

the full truth of what she had been doing to her parents for fear

of being grounded for life but was equally uncertain if she could

live up to the sort of account that she was likely to receive from

her legendary forebear.

She wondered if anyone else within a thousand leagues was

going through these sorts of relationship problems, but somehow

doubted it. After all, these kinds of crazy things only happened

to your average run-of-the-mills progeny of Superheroic unions,

such as her self, not ordinary people whose lives were blessed

by more mundane and routine real-life problems...

"Oh yes!" sighed Kodachi with great enthusiasm, "This is

definitely so much better than merely taking a warm shower

together, eh Kei-chan?"

"No argument from me," Keiko smiled as she lounged besides

Kodachi in the hot-tub whirlpool that was normally used by

physical therapy patients, "Of course it would be better if we

were back at your place enjoying the good life."

"You two sure look happier than I remember," Akane mused as

she rested her chin on both arms and inclined herself against the

outside of the whirlpool, "What have you been doing with

yourselves all of this time?"

"Oh, this and that, my dear Akane-chan," Kodachi leered,

"Between lessons with Captain Lao and...exploring certain deep

facets of our mutual relationship, Kei-chan and I have been

managing to keep ourselves busy. In point of fact, why don't

you step in here and allow us to bring you up to date with the

particulars and specifics?"

Akane's smile showed a great enthusiasm to accept that naughty

suggestion at face value, but instead she turned a coy look to the

side and said, "Wish I could, but this is hardly the time or place.

Ryoga's keeping an eye out for any of the Hospital staff who

might happen by, but I don't want to think of what might happen

if they caught us."

"Oh nonsense," Kodachi said with an airy wave of her hand,

"You must be soaked to the bone as it is in that wet clothing.

Come inside and let us thaw you out."

"Yeah," Keiko grinned sweetly, "In fact I know lots of great

techniques that can set you on fire if you're willing to risk a little

naughty indulgence."

"You two sure sounds like you've been having a great time,"

Ukyo remarked, turning to Perfume, who was also soaking on

the other end of the whirlpool, "And I thought you were the

daring one."

"I'll be happy to demonstrate if you have any doubt of that,"

Perfume smiled at her wife, "But keep in mind that these two

have had the benefit of an Amazon education. My people know

secret techniques of pleasure that we only share with those we

feel closest to, not that I don't share their sentiments about

having you stand around looking like a drowned rat."

"No thanks," Ukyo smiled, "I'm not that daring, and

besides...aren't you worried about your mother being just outside

the door, Keiko? She might come in here at any moment."

"So what if she does?" Keiko inclined her head with a smile,

"You think it'd be the first time that she saw me and 'Dachi

naked? C'mon, you two prudes, live a little! Take the plunge

and get it over with. You know you want to."

"Ah..." Akane said, exchanging a look with Ukyo as if both girls

were daring one another to get naked in the presence of their

respective loved ones. There was more than the issue of shyness

involved here, for Akane did not want to intruder into the ardor

that her two best friends so obviously felt for one another, while

Ukyo had not as yet overcome her own deep-rooted reservations

about disrobing in front of other women (besides Perfume, of

course).

There was a gentle rapping on the door, then a distinctively male

voice said, "I'm coming in, are all of you decent?"

"No!" Keiko called out, "But you can come in if you like,

'Tachi-chan."

"Oh you," Kodachi rolled her eyes then said, "It's all right to

come in, dear Brother. In fact, I'm rather hoping that we could

have a chance to talk together."

Tatewaki stepped into the room with Lady Akiko standing

beside him and another girl whom Kodachi had only briefly

glimpsed while still in cursed form. Ryoga remained outside

and seemed rather determined not to look in as he stood at his

post in the hallway, blushing like a radish.

Tatewaki came up to within three paces of the whirlpool then

squared his shoulders and looked straight into the eyes of his

younger sister. With great resolve he said, "Little Sister...what I

have to say should be said in private for our ears alone, but as it

does involve these others I might as well say it before them. I

am happy to see you restored to us again, but I am not happy

with you for other important reasons."

"Yes," Kodachi said soberly, "I'd be very surprised if you were

glad to see me, all things else being considered. I can't imagine

what it's been like for you these past few months, recovering

from an addiction that was entirely my doing."

"That is part of it, yes," Tatewaki said, "I have had to climb over

great obstacles in order to regain both my sanity and state of

mind, thanks in no small part to the good graces of this brave

young woman beside me. I could think of better circumstances

under which to introduce you two, but this is my good friend,

Tendo Natsume."

"Natsume," Kodachi mused, "Akane-chan's cousin. How do you

do, I am Kuno Kodachi..."

"Please," Natsume said hastily, "Don't get up on my account.

I've heard so much about you, I figured that it was time for the

two of us to meet. I must say, you don't look to be quite so

insane as I've heard in the rumors."

"Rumors that were unfortunately true," Kodachi replied, "But I

have changed for the better, so please don't judge me for what I

was. Give me the chance to redeem myself in your eyes, as I

must surely work to earn the respect and good graces of my

brother, Tachi."

"I'm hoping that I will have that opportunity," Natsume replied,

"But it will be hard to forget what your brother has been going

through for the past several weeks. I was there with him and

saw first-hand the effects of withdrawal from those poisons you

fed him."

"Poisons," Kodachi said sadly, "And here I was deluded enough

to think that I was doing you a favor, brother, using my

Pharmacology skills to help the both of us deal with a family

crisis."

"That may have been your intentions, sister," Tatewaki replied,

"But we both know that good intentions do not necessarily result

in a favorable outcome."

"Indeed," Kodachi replied, and then a sly look came into her

eyes as she said, "You like her, don't you brother? In truth

you've always had a weakness for the daughters of the house of

Tendo. How remarkable to find one who actually seems to

return your affections."

"Huh?" Keiko blinked, taking a hard look at the newcomer.

"Ah..." both Tatewaki and Natsume seemed to hesitate for a

moment, then each exchanged furtive glances at the other.

"Not that I can fault you in either instance," Kodachi resumed,

favoring Akane with an affectionate look, "In fact I quite

understand the fascination that one can feel in the presence of a

Tendo. I'd be a fine one to complain, and I'm quite ecstatic to

find Tachi looking so happy, or to find a woman who is actually

pleased to be in his company for a change. We really must have

a chance to get to know one another better."

Natsume looked uncertain about that, while Keiko frowned and

slipped a hand under the water to pinch Kodachi, earning a

slight yelp and a puzzled look from her quarter.

Ukyo leaned close to Perfume's ear and said, "What do you

suppose all of that means?"

"I'm not sure I want to know," the Amazon replied at the same

level of a stage-whisper.

"You young people are so full of energy and vitality," Lady

Akiko mused, "In truth it is good to be back in the outer world

and among such vibrant surroundings. I have missed the life

that I once knew and I am so looking forward to picking up

where I left off with Guile-san."

"Dad sure seemed happy to see you again, Mom," Keiko

grinned, "Of course you may have some competition with those

two Agents who work with him. I never figured my dad could

be such a real stud!"

"Indeed," Akiko mused, "I will have to get to know them both,

won't I, and sound them out to see what feelings they each may

have towards my Guile-san. If so, then I think I may be able to

work out an interesting arrangement."

"Suddenly I'm starting to worry about the big guy," Ukyo

mused, "And I thought we were the ones with the

unconventional lifestyle."

"That just shows how much you know, Airen," Perfume said

sweetly...

"Well, Godai-san," remarked Soun to Principal Kuno, "You

must be happy to finally have your daughter back with you

again all safe and sound."

"Am I?" Principal Kuno replied with a faintly troubled

expression, "I guess so, maybe."

"Maybe?" Nodoka asked, "I should think you'd be relieved

knowing that she is well after everything your family has been

through. I know if Ranma had been gone for three months with

hardly a word about where he was then I would be terribly

worried about him. The same would be true of either Kasumi or

Akane..."

"Or Nabiki," Genma added for her, "The girl can handle herself

well enough, but in spite of her skills and good instincts, she is

still pretty young, and from what we've heard about this Madam

Lao..."

"Oh, don't get me wrong," Godai said, "I'm glad to have my

little Wahini back, it's just that there are going to be a lot of

questions now, and the Police want to ask most of them about

that stuff she gave to my Tatewaki. I've already called my

lawyers, but there's no telling how things could go, so in a way

I've kinda been hoping she'd continue traveling abroad until

things cooled down a little."

"Surely that won't be such a problem for you," Soun noted,

"You've always managed to avoid dealing with the

consequences of your children's misbehavior."

"Tendo-san," Miss Hinako chided, "That's very mean of you to

bring that up. Can't you see that the Principal has a lot on his

mind and doesn't need to have it rubbed in that both of his

children are former delinquents?"

"Eh?" Godai looked at the diminutive teacher from beneath his

dark sunglasses. He heaved a sigh at last and said, "Well, I

know Tachi and Dachi have always been a little high spirited,

but I never really thought of them as delinquents."

"There's another way of describing them?" Genma asked,

"Although to be fair your boy has been making real progress in

recovering from his addiction."

"Natsumi has been a big help with that, don't you think?"

Nodoka smiled, "In fact, I think your niece has become very

fond of the boy, and she's been with him almost every day of

late."

"Really?" Soun asked as if surprised that no one had ever

brought this to his attention, "Do you really think so?"

"Well hey," Godai smiled, "She's a nice girl, only why haven't I

ever seen her around on school grounds? She and her sister

haven't been playing hooky, have they?"

"Oh no, sir," Hinako brightened, "The truth is they don't even

have transcripts and haven't been attending school for many

years. I've been tutoring them both, however, and hope to admit

them into regular classes with the fall semester."

"Any excuse to come around our place," Nodoka muttered under

her breath, so softly that only Genma could hear her.

"Oh," Godai said, "Good, well then, I suppose I could give them

the traditional greeting for new students at Furinkan, a

traditional haircut..."

"Ah...I don't think that would be too appropriate," Soun said as

charitably as he was able, "She is a girl, you know, and girls are

justly proud about the length of their hair. It wouldn't do to

shave my niece as bald as a billiard."

"You mean like Saotome-san?" Hinako asked.

"Hey!" Genma protested.

"Naw, I don't mean that short," Godai assured, "Just a nice clean

trim around the edges..."

A brief, heated discussion opened up on the subject of

mandatory haircuts for teenagers, prompting Cologne to sadly

shake her head as she watched this exchange from where she

stood beside Happosai.

"The more things change..." she sighed.

"Hey, they never really change all that much," Happosai noted

as he took a puff on his pipe, "You and me've been around

enough to know that, old woman."

"Maybe so," Cologne remarked, "And some of us change even

less often than others. Aren't you going to put that thing out?

It's not polite to smoke in the middle of a hospital."

"Ah, put a sock on it already," Happosai snorted, "A man my

age is entitled to a few of life's pleasures, and besides, who's

going to make me..."

As if in answer to his question a hand snatched the pipe away,

and when Happosai started to protest the Head Nurse Nagano

growled at him, "No smoking, have you got that, little man?"

"Eep!" Happosai's eyes got very wide as if the woman

intimidated like no one else whom he had recently recovered,

"Yes Ma'am. I'll behave!"

"I rest my case," Cologne sighed as she eyed the ancient pervert

slyly...

"Gee," Ryonami said where she sat near at hand beside

Gosunkugi, "They've been in there so long. I hope Sempai and

Shampoo are all right."

"Well, it's too soon to tell either way," Gosunkugi assured her,

"Some women deliver their babies in a matter of minutes, and

some can take as long as a day and a half, like I did."

"Your mother was in delivery for over a day and a half?"

Ryonami sounded appalled.

"Oh, but I'm sure it won't take that long with Shampoo,"

Gosunkugi hastily assured, "She's an Amazon, right? And

they're supposed to be pretty tough."

"I guess so," Ryonami said, "I sure hope it's true. She and

Sempai are so happy together, they deserve the happiness that

having a child together can bring them."

"Yeah, but..." Gosunkugi hesitated, "What about her relationship

with Ranma?"

"Huh?" Ryonami asked, "What about Ranma?"

"It's just...I can't figure him out, that's all," Gosunkugi said,

"Why is he being so understanding about all of this? He's got to

be having some mixed feelings. After all, he's got this five-way

engagement to marry four girls, and two of them are pregnant by

somebody other than him. That's got to be a tough thing for a

guy with his kind of ego to deal with."

"Now why would you say that?" Ryonami asked crossly, "I

think it's very sweet that he's been so nice about everything. It's

really that Ukyo's fault for letting herself be seduced when her

wife switched curses with Sempai and...well, I guess that didn't

sound quite the way I meant it to sound, but..."

"I think we should both quit while we're ahead," Gosunkugi

smiled, then added, "I'm in Sempai's corner, you know that. I

just can't figure that Ranma out. He's really got it made, and all

the other guys at our school envy him for having some of the

best looking women on campus following him. I guess in a way

I envy him. People don't look at him like he's a scarecrow..."

"Scarecrow?" Ryonami looked at the boy whom she had worked

alongside for many months in the service of Nabiki.

"Sure," Gosunkugi sulked, "Guys look at me and they don't even

see a shadow. I'm not worth the trouble for bullies to even beat

up in the morning. I'd have to pay them to even give me the

time and attention."

"That's not true!" Ryonami said, "You're very noticeable,

Gosunkugi-san. Uh...I mean, you're smart, and you can be

pretty brave when you want. I'm the one who nobody ever pays

any attention to..."

"Huh?' Gosunkugi looked at the brown haired girl, "What are

you talking about?"

"Well...look at me," Ryonami said, "I'm just a plain, ordinary

girl, nothing special about me, not like anybody would ever pay

me any notice..."

"You've got to be kidding," Gosunkugi replied, "You're a pretty

girl, and I'm sure lots of people notice you..."

"Not really," Ryonami shrugged, "Next to Sempai, Shampoo or

even that Tomboy, Ukyo, I might as well be a limp dishrag."

She paused a moment then looked at him and said, "You really

think I'm pretty?"

"Ah..." Gosunkugi glanced away, and for once his face actually

had some color, "Y-yeah, I think you're pretty all right. What,

has nobody ever said that to you before?"

"Not lately," Ryonami smiled, "But it was a nice thing for you to

say. Thank you."

"Ah...don't mention it," Gosunkugi wilted, "Um...I sure hope it

doesn't take too much longer."

"Me too," Ryonami said, still smiling at the shy boy beside her,

who might indeed look like something you would hang out in a

corn field somewhere, but he did have some redeeming points,

and he was a good enough companion in a way. At the very

least he had managed to cheer her up, which was certainly

another good point in his favor...

Kurumi glanced in past the door where her sister was talking

with the Kuno woman and the others then glanced back towards

Ryoga and said, "They're still at it. So far nobody's been

shouting at anybody and no one's gotten into a fight. It's just

plain boring, as usual."

Ryoga heaved a sigh, "I hope they won't be too long. I keep

thinking somebody is going to discover us at any minute and

we're all going to get in a lot of trouble."

"Hey, Ryoga-kun?" Kurumi asked, "Why are you standing

around out here? Wouldn't you rather be inside there with

Akane?"

"With...Akane?" Ryoga's voice squeaked a little.

"Hey she's not naked or anything," Kurumi assured him.

"N-Naked?" Ryoga's tone rose another octave.

"Oh brother," Kurumi sighed, "You've really got to work on this

problem of shyness you have, or you're never going to get

anywhere with cousin Akane."

Ryoga's chin rested against his chest as he studied his feet and

said, "I know...but what am I supposed to do? I want to tell her

how I feel being around her, but the words just don't come out

the way I mean them."

"Why don't you try writing her a poem?" Kurumi suggested.

"A poem?" Ryoga reacted.

"Sure," Kurumi smiled, "I've seen you write letters to her, only

you always tear them up and throw them away before you're

finished. You ought to try giving them to her instead, I think

you write very well, and some girls are real suckers for a poem."

"You really think so?" Ryoga asked.

"Oh yeah," Kurumi said, then her expression fell into a much

more somber look as she said, "My sister sure seems to like the

way that Tatewaki guy talks all the time, and I guess that's sort-

of like poetry. I think you write a whole lot better than he talks

anyway, so you really ought to try it."

"But I'd..." Ryoga looked away, "I'd feel so nervous giving

something like that to her. I don't know what I'd do if she didn't

like it..."

"Hey," Kurumi said, "It's all right. If it's from you then she'll

like it. Cousin Akane really likes you, you know, so why don't

you give it a...chance?"

Kurumi paused, glancing over her shoulder. A faint sound

caught her attention, and after a few moments of cocking her

ears she started to think it was coming from someplace very

close at hand.

Ryoga, of course, hardly noticed that she was no longer paying

him attention, instead balling his fists as he said, "Yes, you're

right! I should be a man about this and show her exactly how I

feel. I'll write her something special that's sure to let her know

the way I..."

"Shhh!" Kurumi urged, waving a hand in his direction.

"Huh?" Ryoga asked, glancing over his shoulder in her

direction.

"I heard something," she informed him, then she glanced

straight up, "It's coming from the ventilation system!''

"Something's in the ventilation system?" Ryoga asked, "Are you

sure?"

"Positive!" Kurumi hesitated a moment then pointed, "It's up in

there! Can't you hear the claws scratching?"

"Then let's see what it is," Ryoga followed the line of her gaze,

then made a fist and leaped up to punch in the nearest overhead

ventilation duct. While still in mid-air his hand snagged hold of

something warm and furry, and with a grunt of satisfaction he

yanked it hard out of the air vent.

To his considerable surprise and dismay he found himself

clutching a lower primate in his hand. There was a mutual look

of confusion as Ryoga returned to the ground holding the

creature at arm's length, then in a halting voice he gasped, "A-a

monkey?"

Suddenly the creature made a face and bared savage fangs that

caused Ryoga to gasp, one second before the creature bit him!

"Ahhhh!" Ryoga cried as he let go of the creature, "Stupid

monkey! It bit me!"

"A monkey?" Kurumi stared at the creature as it started to

scamper away, only she managed to snap out of her daze in time

to promptly snatched the ribbon out of her hair and with one

quick motion snapped it out like a whip to ensnare the primate.

The creature, though smaller than herself, proved surprisingly

adept at using its mass to turn the tables on Kurumi, grasping the

ribbon in both hands as it twisted its body and used its long arms

to yank her off-balance, trying to free itself in the process. As

fast as it was, though, Kurumi proved much faster and recovered

from her surprise at the intelligence of that maneuver, reversing

her momentum as she caught her weight on both feet and

yanked hard, pulling the ape off of its feet and hurling it with all

the force that she could muster towards the double doors leading

to the Physical Therapy room. It crashed through and continued

on in, arcing with inevitable direction towards the whirlpool hot

tub, much to the collective starts of amazement from everyone

else who was presently in that chamber.

It landed with a splash, startling Kodachi, Keiko and Perfume,

then only a few seconds later a head emerged from the water,

followed by the rest of his body as Mousse coughed and

sputtered, then looked around, took one glance at the brown

haired woman to one side and cried, "Perfume? Perfume! I've

found you!"

Somehow he managed to throw his arms around the right girl,

but Perfume's paralysis proved to be only momentary and she

promptly caught with on the chin with an uppercut that picked

him up and hurled him out of the water. Meanwhile Keiko and

Kodachi overcame their own dumbstruck reactions to let out a

mutual screech of dismay as they covered their upper bodies.

"GAK!" Akane covered her face and turned away, "Put

something on, you Baka!"

"Perfume?" asked a naked Mousse with wounded pride as he lay

where he landed on the floor of the room, "I came all this way

looking for you, why don't you want to see me?"

"Huh?" Kurumi stood to one side of the man with widened eyes,

then promptly she covered them and looked away with a cry of,

"Where did he come from? Get some clothes on! EE-yew!"

A wooden bokken was thrust under Mousse's chin before he had

time to form any sort of reaction, and in a level tone of voice

Tatewaki said, "Speak, churl! Why have you invaded the

privacy of my sister's bath? Speak now or I will deal swiftly

with you for your insolent presumption."

"Perfume?" Mousse said plaintively, ignoring the threat of the

wooden sword as he tried to seek out the object of his affections.

"Who is this clown?" Natsume asked, "And what is he doing

here without any clothes on?"

"The name's Mousse, Sugar," Ukyo growled as she came to

stand beside them with her bakers peel unslung and at the ready,

"And he's a pain in the butt who won't leave Perfume alone, only

I thought Captain Lao was keeping him under wraps."

"Mousse, did you say?" Tatewaki's frown deepened, "Wait...isn't

he the one who cursed Kodachi to wear the body of a ferret?"

"You got that right, Sugar," Ukyo nodded, "After he tried to

curse me and missed. He's got pretty bad eyesight, and he also

has a curse that turns him into a Monkey."

"A Monkey?" Kurumi blinked, glanced at Mousse again, then

hastily looked away again as she had forgotten that the Chinese

boy was naked.

"You swine," Tatewaki glared as his hands tightened on his

weapon, "What gives you the right to impose yourself on

someone who obviously doesn't return your affections? And to

afflict my sister with a curse is unforgivable! If it were not that

you remind me too much of the wretch that I was I would strike

you down where you are!"

In response to that Mousse's hand batted the sword away, and

then he rose fluidly to his full height and said, "I'm not afraid of

you, Kuno, and it was an accident that your sister got in the way

of my revenge. I didn't purposefully curse her, but I'm damned

if I'm going to stand here and let a bag of hot air like you get in

my way..."

"What did you say?" Tatewaki's knuckles tightened, "Truly your

arrogance goes beyond all bounds if you think that I'm going to

allow that insult to go unchallenged!"

"Do your worst," Mousse said as he rose to stand on one leg,

arms raised in the classic White Crane posture, "Even without

any weapons I'm still better armed than a witless fool like you

could ever be..."

There was a loud "Thunk!" and then the tall boy's eyes rolled up

and he collapsed like a nerveless puppet. Ryoga stood behind

where he had been with one fist raised as he sighed, "And they

call me clueless."

"Ryoga-kun?" Akane asked, chancing to look in his direction

while forcing herself not to look at the fallen Mousse.

Kurumi risked uncovering one eye with her hands while

Natsume glanced down and said, "This is the man who cursed

your sister?"

"Please," Tatewaki said, "Calling him a Man is a grave insult to

the lot of us, but you surprise me, Ryoga, striking an opponent

from behind in such a manner."

"Well, normally I wouldn't," Ryoga shrugged, "But with him, it

seemed like the right thing to do...urk!"

Ryoga hastily turned around, his expression reddening, which

drew curious glances from all around until they realized that

Kodachi has just gotten out of the tub and was putting a towel

around herself with Keiko only a few steps behind her.

"How odd seeing him like that," Tatewaki heard his sister

remark as she padded up beside him, "In truth I should resent

this one, but in a way he seems so pathetic, and blinded by a

one-sided love that has driven him to the edge of insanity.

We've all been there at one time or another, so in a way to

condemn him is to condemn ourselves for past transgressions."

"You really think so, Dachi-chan?" Keiko asked.

Kodachi held up a hand that was clutching a glass of water and

said, "Not really," and with that she poured it upon the

unconscious Chinese boy, triggering his transformation back to

ape form.

Kurumi's eyes widened once again, only this time in amazement.

Her sister merely sighed and said, "Incredible. As many times

as I've seen it happen with Perfume and Nabiki, I still have

trouble believing in such curses."

"Try living with one," Perfume said, already dressing herself in

her Chinese garb before she slipped an arm around Ukyo's hip

and said, "Still, one can learn to adjust to the limitations."

"Pussycat," Ukyo teased the other girl, receiving a throaty purr

in response that had a sensual context.

"Oh my," mused Lady Akiko, "I wonder how he got loose from

his cage? Mistress Lao will be so displeased by such a breach in

her security."

"We ought to return him back to the Ship," Keiko sniffed, "Only

that wouldn't exactly be fair to the other girls, would it?"

Akane glanced at her friends then at the monkey on the floor

and said, "You kept him in a cage for the last three months?"

"It seemed the easiest way to control him," Kodachi replied,

"Anytime he was turned back into a man he would try to escape

and go on and on about how he wanted to rescue Perfume from

Kuonji's 'foul clutches.' He really was such a bother, and if he'd

only been willing to behave he could have had some fun during

our stay with the Captain. He had every man's fantasy at his

beck and call and all he could do was rant away about his sweet

Per-chan."

Perfume sighed, "Mousse is so persistent...I wish he'd just stop

trying and let me be! Why did he have to fixate on me all those

years ago? There are so many other more 'deserving' warriors

he could have turned to with my blessings."

"Really?" Kurumi asked, "He must be so lonely..."

"It's largely his own doing," Kodachi sighed, "Some men just

have a knack for driving away those who would be only too glad

to end his loneliness and isolation. In a very real sense he is his

own worst enemy here, which is why he is to be pitied, but

never taken lightly."

"Yeah, well...just so he keeps away from me and stops bothering

Per-chan," Ukyo growled in low warning.

"So, what are we going to do with him anyway?" Akane asked.

"A fair question," Kodachi mused, "In this form he has greater

than normal strength and is entirely too flexible for my liking."

Keiko smiled, "Leave that to me. I know how to keep him from

disrupting things for a few hours."

"You mean...?" Kodachi smiled as she eyed her companion

sidelong.

"Hey," Keiko replied, "I didn't spend three years on a ship

without learning a few things about tying knots."

"That's my little girl, all grown up," Akiko gave a wistful sigh,

"Your father should be so proud of the young woman that you're

becoming."

Kurumi exchanged looks with Natsume, then turned her gaze to

the slumbering primate upon the floor and felt a twinge of

sympathy for the boy named Mousse, who did not seem to have

a friend in all the world, least of all the object of his affections.

It was a situation with which she could identify from the long

time that she and her sister had spent in a hapless quest to find

their father, which began to inspire in her a certain interest...

"Ow..." Frank murmured as he massaged his huge hand, giving

Nabiki-kun a sidelong glare, "Dirty trick, Tendo-san. I'm going

to remember that one."

"Better you than me," Nabiki replied philosophically without

smiling, then more anxiously as she leaned over the woman at

whose side she stood and said, "Push, Sham-chan, Push! You're

almost there! Just hang on for another minute!"

"I IS PUSHING!" Shampoo screeched before arching her back

again with another heartfelt scream that all but shook the rafters.

Her hands clenched down on the steel bar that she had been

handed as a substitute for the hand of yet another unsuspecting

victim, a bar connected to a steel chain that was normally used

for patients who had trouble standing up the normal way. The

rod was noticeably bending under her efforts while the delivery

bed creaked with strain, two fact that Frank-who stood near to

her shoulders-could not help noticing with a raised eyebrow.

"I get your point," he mused in a low rumble, "Good thing I heal

real fast, only I don't think that bar will last another minute."

"Doctor Steinberg," the Chief doctor said in some annoyance,

"Either you can help or you can leave the delivery room. Either

way the mother seems to be doing just fine, now if she could

only dilate her hips by another two inches..."

Shampoo said something that sounded very colorful in her

native language, to which the nurse dabbing the perspiration off

the patient's brow asked, "What did she say?"

"You don't want to know!" both Frank and Nabiki-kun said in

chorus, the latter flushing crimson while the former began to

shade an appropriate green color.

"Breathe in, Sham-chan!" Nabiki urged, gripping Shampoo by

the shoulder as she silently repeated to herself that everything

would be just fine, people had babies every day, there was no

reason for her to worry, even if this baby was a couple months

premature, or that she had two mothers and was conceived by

means of a curse and so

couldbehorriblydeformedorworseorhavethreeheadsor...

All at once the steel bar began to bend dangerously, snapping

Nabiki-kun back to the present situation. Shampoo arched her

back then flopped back down onto the bed like a limp rag,

caused Nabiki's heart to lurch up in her own breast as she held

her breath for a very long, tense moment.

"It will be all right, Shampoo!" she hastily said as his hands

gently tried to reassure his wife wife, "I know you can do it!

You're doing great, honey, just hang in there for a little bit

longer..."

"Ah, wait a minute," Doctor Tofu proclaimed from where he

stood behind the chief medic, "I can see the baby's head

appearing...yes, it's starting to come out. Just another moment,

Miss Tendo, and it will all soon be over."

"SHAMPOO WANT OVER NOW!" the Amazon loudly

proclaimed, glaring at Nabiki-kun with raw hatred, "I never

letting you touch me again after this! You is cause of Shampoo

suffering-AAAAIIIIEEEE!"

Nabiki-kun paled, but the Nurse at his side calmly said, "Just

relax and take deep breathes, Tendo-san. Your wife doesn't

really mean what she says. This is all perfectly natural, just ride

it out and you'll both be feeling so much better in the end."

"He takes any more deep breathes and he's going to

hyperventilate," Frank murmured to himself, just as the steel bar

finally buckled under the strain of the Amazon's latest

contraction. Without missing a beat he reached out and caught

the bar with both of his huge hands to steady it and keep the

mother from pitching herself forward, quite possibly doing

serious injury to the Chief Medic. Nabiki saw bulging muscles

strain from beneath the sleeves of his borrowed hospital smock

and marveled at the monstrous strength of the huge man, that he

actually managed to hold the bar still in spite of Shampoo's

latest efforts.

The moment passed once again and Nabiki-kun found his own

breath coming raggedly with emotion. He gazed down

anxiously at Shampoo's lovely features, now reddened and puffy

with the strain of her ordeal, and tears were running down his

wife's eyes, adding further torment to the agony he was feeling

at the moment.

But surprisingly he heard Shampoo's voice call out to him with a

gentle, "Airen?"

Nabiki-kun's hand squeezed his wife's shoulders gently as he

asked in a tense voice, "Yes, Shampoo?"

"You...you really want to have Shampoo baby?"

"Of course I do!" Nabiki-kun said in reply, "Why would you

think otherwise? I love you?"

Shampoo's expression seemed to melt into radiant joy as she

looked up at her sex-changed "husband," only before she could

say another word her contractions started up again. She tugged

hard upon the bar, but for all her efforts Frank managed to hold

it in place, his arms bulging so much that they began to split the

thin fabric of his sleeves while Shampoo's legs began to bend

the metal stirrups that they were braced against, much to the

alarm of both doctors and nurses.

Then one heartbeat later the entire focus of Nabiki's world

shifted as the Chief Medic said, "It's coming! I have it! Just

hold on for another moment and push harder! Harder!"

Shampoo gave a final scream and threw her head back, giving

Frank the chance to pin the bar up at the end of the bed frame.

Then a few eternities later Nabiki heard the doctor proclaim,

"Congratulations, Tendo-san. You've done it! It's a perfectly

normal baby girl!"

"A-A-A...?" Nabiki-kun began to stutter, straining to look past

the stirrups to the tiny, messy bundle covered in fluids and

connected by a long rope-like cord to the mother. He watched

as if in a daze as the baby was cleaned off, then the doctor held

it up as if prepared to strike it's bottom.

A wooden staff blocked his attempts and an even more gnarled

voice said dryly, "I will take it from here, Doctor. You've done

an adequate task and performed it admirably, but from now on

this child is the concern of the Amazons, my rightful heir

apparent."

"Hey!" Nabiki-kun started to say, only Tofu stepped into her

path and said, "One moment, I think I know what she's about to

do."

In spite of her diminutive frame Cologne held up the child in

one hand, surrendering her staff, which somehow managed to

remain standing on one end while she concentrated. Her hand

began to glow a little, and then she brought it slowly up against

the brow of the tiny reddish infant and lightly ran it over the

motionless body from head to groin, barely touching flesh in

passing. The child gave off a soft mewling noise and began to

breathe air, cooing slightly as its tiny hands began to curl and its

feet started kicking.

"Boy, that takes me back almost a couple centuries," Nabiki-kun

heard Frank murmur over his head, right before a meaty hand

slapped her on the shoulder-just shy of dislocating it-in a

comradely manner, "Congratulations, kid, you're now a Poppa."

"Poppa?" Nabiki-kun breathed the word as if it were in some

foreign language with which he was not familiar.

Cologne handed the baby up to Doctor Tofu, then retrieved her

staff and somehow contrived to perch upon it so that she could

study the child at normal height level. Without prodding, Tofu

turned to see the expectant, half-lidded eyes of Shampoo, who

held out her arms as it to implore him to give the baby to her,

which of course he proceeded to do as Nabiki managed to step

out of the way in time, still too stunned by these proceedings to

frame any sort of rational reaction.

Shampoo at once slipped off the top of her hospital gown and

exposed one luscious breast, bringing the baby up to her nipple.

The child did not respond at first, but eventually it roused itself

enough to take the proffered teat into its mouth, obtaining its

first sustenance from an outside source. Nabiki continued to

look on in silent wonder until she heard Cologne say,

"Congratulations, Son-in-Law, you now have a strong Amazon

daughter."

"A daughter?" Nabiki-kun gasped, "You mean I'm a...a...?"

"Whoah!" Frank said as he caught the sex-changed girl to steady

her with one hand, "Don't lock your knees up like that, it cuts off

circulation! We can't have the new father cracking his head

open on the floor, now can we?"

"Cute little tyke, how I envy her at this moment!" another voice

said, drawing Nabiki-kun momentarily away from the fainting

spell he had been planning on enjoying, and-sure enough-there

was Happosai perched atop one shoulder of the bed frame

looking down at both mother and daughter without his usual

lecherous intentions.

"Excuse me," the Chief Doctor said, "But who are all these

people?"

"Members of the family," Tofu said to his fellow doctor and the

equally surprised Nurse, "Let's just leave them alone to enjoy

the moment."

"But this is highly irregular!" the Doctor protested, "The child

needs to be put on a respirator and given twenty-four hour

surveillance..."

"Pish-posh," Cologne snorted, "The child could be in no safer

hands than with us. After all, I have personally delivered

hundreds of babies and never once lost a patient. I dare you to

match that standard."

"Better listen to her, Doc," Frank advised, "Back in China she's

recognized as the medical authority of her tribe, and those who

don't listen to her usually wind up as patients."

"I'm sure we can afford to extend to them some latitude," Doctor

Tofu said as he continued to urge the Doctor and Nurse out of

the delivery room, turning a glance over his shoulder as he said,

"Congratulations, Tendo-san. I'll be sure to inform the others

that everything went fine and the baby is perfectly normal."

"Normal," Nabiki-kun murmured faintly, staring at the tiny

infant, whom he could swear had thin strands of light lavender

hair, though that could have been a trick of the lighting. In a

softer voice he added, half to himself in disbelief, "We have a

baby...and I'm the father?"

"Fine time to be having second thoughts about that," Happosai

mildly scolded, "Who else do you think did it? This isn't a

multi-choice question."

"Indeed," Cologne gave her apprentice a not-unsympathetic

smile and said, "Perhaps it would be more constructive on your

part if you two got down to naming your daughter. After all, she

may be a Tendo, but she is an Amazon warrior and heir to a long

and noble lineage that stretches back into the shadowy dawn of

our people."

"Name?" Nabiki blinked, "Uh...I don't think Shampoo and I ever

got around to picking one. Any ideas there, Sham-chan?"

"Airen decide what is best," Shampoo said softly, looking up

with mild fatigue but much radiant happiness, "She both

Japanese and Amazon. Shampoo think of many names, but only

one can be fit for our daughter."

"Ah..." Nabiki hesitated, "You're not still mad at me for putting

you through this, are you?"

"What you talking about, Airen?" Shampoo smiled reassuringly,

her voice radiating more of her old confidence and bravado, "No

be silly. Shampoo just say what come in mind before, no truly

mean it. In fact, Shampoo feel much pride to have daughter by

Airen. Is strong Amazon child, make Shampoo and Airen much

happy."

"I guess she is kind of like you," Nabiki smiled as she saw the

baby begin to take on a more normal coloration, "A real chip off

the old block...in fact, I think she's got your hair color."

"Not too surprising," Frank noted, "Amazons always did go in

for exotics."

"Indeed," Happosai said with pompous self-importance,

"Looking on the tribe at an assembly is like gazing across a field

of wild, fresh flowers in full bloom. In fact, this little flower

here will no doubt be the spitting image of both her mother and

grandmother. Lavender always was a favorite in your family

line, old woman."

"Hmph," Cologne frowned, "I'll have you know that my husband

was part-Juraian. His hair color is a sign of distinction in my

family for the past four generations."

"Skip the genealogy lesson, you two," Frank urged, "You'll spoil

the moment for the kids. Frankly, I kind of hope the kid does

take over her mother. I always was kind of fond of the color

lilac..."

"Lilac?" Nabiki repeated, "Yeah...that sounds about right! How

about it, Sham-chan? Think we should call the little nipper

Lylac?"

"Is good name," Shampoo agreed, looking down, "You hear,

little one? We is calling you Lylac Tendo. You grow up to be

strong warrior, just like your Poppa."

"Poppa," Nabiki winced, "I'm never going to get used to being

called that..."

"Could be worse," Frank shrugged, "I've been called a lot less

pleasant things myself, and you might have named the baby

after another hair-care product."

"Airen get used to being called Poppa," Shampoo said proudly,

"In fact, Shampoo no can wait to give Lylac her first sister!"

"S-Sister?" Nabiki blinked.

"Shampoo want big family like Airen have," Shampoo remarked

with a broad grin, "Now that she know having babies this easy

can't wait to have next one! Right Airen?"

The only reply she received was a massive group facefault...

Continued.

Comments/Criticisms/Amazon Secret Delivery Techniques:

shadowmane

The baby has arrived and it's time to break out the smelling salts,

because if you think this story is over and finished you've got

another think coming. Next up we see the aftermath and the

wind up to this current Nabiki cycle. What does the future hold

for Nabiki and her extended family, and what about Ranma?

These and other issues will be explored in greater depth next

time...so be there!

X

If you wish to check out my other works, Please check out my

Fanfiction webpage at: . or

it's mirror site at: ~

All related chapters of this series can be found there along with my

other works.


	33. Chapter 33

Dnabiki87

Nabiki 1/2

A Very Scary Thought!

(An Altered Destiny)

by

Jim Robert Bader

(Based on the Works of Rumiko Takahashi & Others)

Part Eighty-Seven.

(Part one of Chapter 33)

"I'm warning you, Pirate," Saki growled, "Don't push me..."

"Oh, perish forbid, pushing and pulling, how kinky," Lao remarked as she adopted

a flippant air, sitting back in her seat with a slightly bored expression, "You

make it sound like I was propositioning you, officer, and I assured you, as

attractive as you are, I'm not that hard up for a date."

"That's it!" Saki was on her feet with yo-yo in hand turning to face the pale

blue-green haired pirate with an angry, "I've taken as much out of you as I can-

-!"

"SIT DOWN, OFFICER SAKI!" Guile all but roared in his best Drill Sergeant tone

of voice, ignoring the evil glare he received from the Head Nurse from her

station, "I've said it once, I will say it again, NOT within a hospital zone!

You two want to play rough, take it outside, otherwise play nice or I'll beat

your heads together until you both see double!"

"Ooooh, how assertively masculine," Lao remarked, "Small wonder Akiko-chan was

so eager to get back with you again. You can be quite an imposing fellow when

you wish to, Colonel."

"That goes double for you," Guile glared in the Pirate Queen's direction,

"Needling Asamiya like that isn't keeping within the letter of your parole, and

you know it, Lanocane! I suggest you keep your comments to yourself until this

whole thing is over. For the meantime zip it!"

"I wasn't provoking anything," Lao eyed the man with a neutral expression, "It's

Asamiya who seems to have difficulty abiding by our truce...and truce it is,

Colonel-san, because I most definitely am not your prisoner. I am here solely

to observe the birth of my cousin's first child and nothing more! I've already

fulfilled the terms of my previous agreement with you by delivering your future

wife and daughter, so be mindful not to presume too much with me, for as water

is my element, you may have noted that there is no shortage outside for me to

call upon if need be."

"I am certain that Guile-chan meant no disrespect to you, my lady," Akiko urged

in a pleasant tone of voice, "And though he may not say as much, I know that he

is grateful to you for our delivery, just as I am for your curing me of that

terrible affliction laid upon me by my former master."

"What was that?" Miyuki asked as she set down the magazine she had been

pretending to read, "What affliction was that?"

"The man who owned me for three years was a member of the infamous 108 Dragons,"

Akiko explained, "He...imposed a set of mental compulsions within me turning me

into a passive assassin, though I did not know it myself until a trigger command

would cause me to strike seemingly at random. I am happy to relate that the

compulsion is no more, thanks to the good Captain's efforts."

"Yes, well," Lao seemed somewhat embarrassed by the praise, "The true credit

goes to Freeman, the current head of the Dragons, who helped provide the cure

after making some...inquiries about the fellow who had used you so atrociously.

I owe him a favor now, but it was worth it to see you delivered from those

killer commandments. His superiors, by the way, have dealt with the fellow who

once owned you. I believe they may still be fishing bits and pieces from him

from the bellies of the fishes in the Hong Kong port that he once considered his

home territory."

"Ugh," Cammy winced, "Like we needed to have that mentioned in a public place?"

"Interpol has an extensive file on the 108 Dragons," Chun-Li duly noted,

"They're a ruthless, elusive bunch and harder to nail down than a wet tack.

There are wanted posters of Crying Freeman all over the walls of headquarters

but we've never been able to get close enough to convict him of so much as a

moving violation."

"Damn," Natsumi exclaimed, "What kind of a world do you guys normally operate in

anyway? We never get these kinds of bizarre cases in our neck of the woods."

"Count our blessings," Miyuki murmured to her partner before pausing to glance

at the nearest window, and then she said, "It's stopped."

"What's stopped?" Natsumi asked her.

"The rain," Miyuki pointed at the window, "Can't you see? Clear skies out

there! That means the storm has finally broken!"

"About bloody time," Cammy remarked, "Only..."

"IT'S A GIRL!" a voice cried happily from a short distance away, "I'm an Aunt,

this is great!"

"EH?" heads snapped around in unison to look in the direction of the speaker,

who turned out to be none other than Tendo Akane, who was ignoring the vicious

glare the head Nurse gave her while all but jumping for joy at the news that

Doctor Tofu had just shared with the immediate family of the "father," which

cause an instant realization to pass through all those who were present.

"A girl?" Chun-Li and Cammy said in unison.

"A girl?" Saki exchanged looks with her fellow policewomen.

"My cousin had a daughter?" Lao smiled, "How interesting..."

"A girl," Guile mused, "It figures...ow! What did I do?"

"You were just being a man," Akiko chided him before patting the spot her elbow

struck in an affectionate manner.

The news came to Ranma with a jolt as he stared up at Doctor Tofu almost as if

he were the father of the child, though he had not expected to have such an

astonished reaction. He glanced at Kasumi, who was composed and serene as

always, but noted an odd reflection in her eyes before she softly murmured, "I

have a niece now...I'm an aunt..."

Soun took longer to recover from his surprise, and he had to be prodded several

times by Hinako before he could even begin to have a reaction, and when it

finally did sink in and he murmured, "I'm a grandfather?"

Genma slapped a beefy hand on his friend's shoulder and said, "Congratulations,

Tendo...the first born of a new generation! I'm sure Nabiki's child will be a

proud addition to our school, and she can always have a son next time when she

marries my boy."

"Y-Yes," Soun said after a long, tense moment in which he tried to work up

enough coherent thought to move beyond the shock of knowing his daughter had

just had a child by another woman, "Yes, of course...the next time will be

Ranma's..."

They did not see the frown that creased Ranma's brow, but Nodoka did and tried

to reassure her son by saying, "You know Nabiki will want to have your child,

Ranma..."

"Yeah, but how?" Ranma asked, "With her curse she can't have kids unless we

somehow find a way to cure her..."

Akane swatted him on the shoulder and growled, "You baka! Is that all you can

think about at a time like this? You want to rain on Nabiki's parade by

dragging up the fact that this might be the only way she can have kids for the

moment? I'm sure she's just as worried about that as you, so how can you be so

selfish?"

Ranma massaged his shoulder as he glared down at his "little sister," but

inwardly he knew that she was right and he was being selfish. It was not the

right time to bring it up, so he growled, "All right, so maybe we'll find a cure

soon enough. I wasn't saying nothing against Nabiki or Shampoo, and I'm glad

the kid's finally delivered, so maybe we can relax and get some relief for a

change..."

"Silly boy," Keiko chided him, "You don't know much at all about having babies,

let alone taking care of them. I guarantee that you'll find out soon enough

when they start to have four-o'clock feedings."

"Huh?" Ranma reacted to this with blank incomprehension, but then he felt Soun's

hand on his shoulder and looked up at his adoptive "Uncle" (and prospective

father-in-law), who was trying to give him some token reassurance.

"Ranma, my boy," the tall man said in an almost filial manner, "I know you'll do

your best and make a fine husband for my Nabiki. I want you to know how proud I

am that you've stood beside your iinazuke the full time that she's been having

her child through another woman..."

Soun faltered as the realization of what he was saying hit home with full

impact, and all at once the tears started flowing as he put his arms around

Genma and sobbed, "Saotome...my little girl is all grown up and having a baby!"

"There now, Tendo-kun," Genma said awkwardly, patting his friend on the back

while wearing his best, "Not in front of the Children" mask in place.

"Ranma," Kasumi spoke up, turning to her adoptive younger "brother" and saying,

"Even if Nabiki can't immediately have your child, there is always another way

that you can be close to her, and remember that your agreement to marry both her

and Shampoo gives you certain rights as an adopted male Amazon. I know Shampoo

would be proud to have your son or daughter, the same as with Ukyo, and maybe

even Perfume."

Ranma blinked, not having actually registered the logic of his peculiar

situation in quite such a manner, but now that it had been broached (by Kasumi

of all people!) he had to take a moment to seriously reflect on this and came

away with the startling realization that he was, in fact being asked to

"perform" in just such a manner!

He thought a moment about Shampoo and knew with absolute certainty that Kasumi

was right, that the Amazon would be willing to have his child if he should ask

her. Shampoo herself had mentioned this once in a private conversation between

them, and there was enough of a basic liking between them that he could see

himself becoming intimate with the purple haired girl. Shampoo was indeed quite

attractive and rather uninhibited, and while she did have a violent streak that

could surface on occasion she otherwise manifested a very sweet personality that

in some ways reminded him a lot of Kasumi.

But then he thought of Ukyo, his other iinazuke, with whom he had come to feel a

certain closeness of late, for all her Tomboyishness and rough-hewn charms.

Ukyo was like a buddy who would do things with him that another guy might

appreciate and she made it easy for him to lower his guard and be at ease, even

moreso than he was around Nabiki!

Which naturally brought up the question of Perfume...and there was the point

where his pleasant mood began to dissipate. There was something about the wily

Enforcer that had been bothering him all day, and while he was no closer to

figuring out what it was, he was pretty sure it revolved around their mutual

interest in Ukyo Kuonji!

"Something troubles you, friend Saotome?" Tatewaki Kuno asked, seeing the

conflicting emotion playing across the face of his dearest friend and long time

stalwart ally.

"Ah...it's nothing, Kuno," Ranma shrugged, "It's just..."

"Here come the happy couple now," Kodachi announced, and everyone turned to see

the big man who called himself Frank was wheeling a chair in which Shampoo sat

holding a curled up bundle while Nabiki-kun hovered at her side looking both

stunned and anxious while somehow managing a pretty jaunty swagger.

"Oneechan!" Akane happily cried as she ran up to embrace her older sister-

turned-"brother", "You guys did it! You made a baby!"

"I guess we did at that," Nabiki remarked with a faintly chagrined tone in her

voice, "Of course Shampoo did most of the work..."

"Hmph," Shampoo hmphed prettily, "So glad you noticed, Airen."

All at once they were swarmed as all concerned parties gathered around the happy

couple with attention riveted on the baby in Shampoo's arms. Aiko somehow

contrived to be the first in line to say, "Is that the little tyke? Can we see

her?"

"Gosh," Saki mused as Shampoo proudly uncovered the face of the sleepy infant,

"She looks so tiny...is that because she's a preemie?"

"Actually I deduce that she is of fairly average development for a female child

near to full term," Beatrice noted, "Four point three kilograms, and with good

coloration."

"And since when have you become such an expert?" Aiko wondered with a faintly

nervous expression.

"She's so pretty," Lao Kung mused, "Bravo to the both of you, Cousin."

"A new Tendo is born," remarked Tendo Natsume, silently marveling at how the

family that had so recently taken in both her and Karumi was expanding in size

by yet another member.

"Cute little nipper," said Herakles, "Kinda takes me back a few millennia..."

"Is that...?" Clark asked from the sideline, only his wife finished for him,

"The child of two mothers, born without a regular father. It's like something

out of a prophecy."

"Either that or an epic saga," noted Thor, who suddenly appeared without

warning.

"Where did you go off to?" Herakles wondered, "You and Sif disappeared right

after we left the ambulance."

"Had to report back home and tell the Old Man what had happened," the burly

Thundergod replied, "Took me this long to slip away from the old ball and chain,

once Rayden got the weather systems back online upstairs. The temporal storms

started to clear up right as soon as the kid had her baby."

"Yeah, funny how that worked out, huh?" Herakles ran his huge fingers through

his brown beard and looked speculatively at the new mother and her daughter.

"So Nabiki," Nodoka noted pleasantly, "Have you two decided what to name your

little girl?"

"We have," Nabiki-kun smiled down at Shampoo, who beamed a broad smile and

replied, "We name Lylac, because she pretty as flower blooming."

"Tendo...Lylac," Soun repeated slowly, then nodded softly.

"It's a good enough name for an Amazon, I guess," Genma remarked.

"And what would you know about what is good for an Amazon?" Cologne remarked,

but in a chiding manner.

Nabiki felt a touch on her arm and turned to see Kasumi smiling her in an

endearing manner. "Well done, Nabiki-chan," she murmured softly, and then

before Nabiki had time to react, Kasumi leaned forward and kissed her sex-

changed sister on the check, albeit not too lightly.

"Oh my," Kodachi murmured, seeing the blush of crimson paint the face of the

masculine Nabiki.

"Way to go, Sham-chan," Ukyo said in a teasing tone of voice.

"I'll bet you want to sleep for a week after that one, Cousin," Perfume noted as

she leaned in close to admire the new baby.

"Just you wait," Shampoo replied ominously, "You turn soon enough when Spatula

Girl get heavy."

"Ah..." Ukyo exchanged anxious looks with the brown haired Enforcer, and

suddenly it was Perfume's turn to look very, very nervous.

Ranma glared at the other prospective parents but said nothing, but the frown on

his features darkened a moment before he felt Kasumi's hand touch his arm,

reminding him not to spoil the moment for his iinazuke. Instead he made his way

up close to Shampoo and said, "Looks like you guys had your day cut out for you.

Bet it won't be too long before your kid starts bouncing around the place

demanding to take some lessons."

"Is you baby too, Ranma," Shampoo smiled up at him, then surprised Ranma by

holding up the baby for him to take. For a moment Ranma stood around as if not

knowing what he was supposed to do until another nudge from Kasumi prompted him

to take the baby into his arms, surprised how light the infant felt as he held

her close to his chest, gazing down into a face that was as innocent and without

guile as any face ever seen in creation. An incredibly warm feeling started to

arise in him from no source that he could easily identify, but it was an

altogether good feeling, a feeling of absolute rightness.

He looked up to see the smiling face of Nabiki-kun, and without a word he handed

the baby over to his sex-changed iinazuke. Nabiki held the baby for a few

moments before passing her along to Kasumi, who rocked the baby in gentle arms

as though holding a child were the most natural thing in the world to her. A

smile of pure contentment suffused her lovely face as she turned to regard her

father, then offered the child to him at last as if to receive the blessing and

acknowledgement of the Tendo patriarch.

"Lylac," he said so gently that he might have been uttering a soft prayer to the

Kami, "You're right, Saotome...it is a good name for a daughter of the House of

Tendo. You do your father proud, Nabiki...both of you...Shampoo...my daughter."

The tears that welled up in his eyes were matched by the tears Shampoo began to

cry at having finally received the long-sought acknowledgement from him that she

was a member of his household. It was an emotional moment for all concerned

parties, so naturally the intrusion that happened next was anything but welcome

or pleasant as a voice noted sardonically, "Well, well, did we come along at a

Polaroid moment? And me without a camera."

"YOU?" Frank looked up and was instantly alarmed, "What are you clowns doing

here?"

"I might ask you the same thing, Stein," Agent Kei remarked as he and Jei stood

side-by-side in their three-piece black suits that always seemed permanently

pressed and seamless, "We came to find out what was keeping you so long while

your people are busy tucking away a couple of sleeping beauties, and here we

find you pulling a Doctor Kildaire number in a local hospital. If I didn't know

that George Clooney already had the role tied up I'd suspect that you were

trying out for his part on that American medical drama."

"You dropped everything," Agent Jei began, "Including a couple of gigaton

monsters just so's you could take a baby to be delivered in the hospital?"

"Yeah," Nabiki frowned, "You got a problem with that, Mister...?"

"Their names are Agents Kei and Jei," Beatrice suddenly spoke up, "They are with

a special non-governmental agency that is charged with supervising paranormal

and extraplanetary activity, as well as keeping said activity out of the eye of

the general public. They are MIB, the Men In Black, which I sought to tell you

about earlier..."

"What are you people doing here?" asked the man named Clark.

"This doesn't have anything to do with otherworldly phenomenon," Diana added in

support of her husband.

"No it doesn't," Kei remarked as he and Jei began to put on their dark sun

glasses, "But there are a few loose ends that we're charged with handling, and

since you people were all involved in the business of corralling the Monsters,

my colleague and I would like to thank you for all gathering yourselves in one

place. Since I didn't bring the camera the flash will have to do, so say

Cheese...!"

"One moment, please," said a man in surgical gear, who was a dead-ringer for the

Chief Surgeon who had helped to deliver Shampoo's baby, walking up to the two

agents and removing the pen-like device from Agent Kei's hand before holding it

up as if to examine it, "Ah, I thought so! A rather crude version of a Mnemonic

eraser. They use this in the Getty-Umballa system as something of a party

trick. See?"

He held the pen out in front of himself so that his shoulders blocked its light

from all others save the Men in Black and flashed it in their faces. Since both

men had somehow lost their glasses they were caught by the glare and

immobilized, giving the man in the surgical outfit the opportunity to say,

"Now...you will not remember these, my friends, and you will forget all about

their involvement in your recent Monster sightings. All loose ends have been

satisfactorily resolved and you can report back to headquarters that the

situation has been resolved to everyone's satisfaction. Now, have a good day,

old chaps, and do remember to drive safely."

So saying he placed the pen in the shirt pocket of Agent Kei then made a

dismissing motion with one hand, causing both agents to pivot around and wander

off in the general direction of the nearest exit.

"So much for them," the man in the surgical outfit turned around and smiled, "I

never liked dealing with those chaps. They always take such a patronizing

attitude when dealing with normal people..."

"DOCTOR!" Ryoga cried out in delight, "I thought it sounded like you! But

what are you doing here?"

"Hello, Ryoga," the man referred to as a Doctor replied, "It's been a while.

Have you been staying out of trouble?"

"Well..." Ryoga said sheepishly, scratching the back of his head with one hand.

"Ryoga-kun has spoken a lot about you, Sir," Akane eyed the boy beside her

fondly, "He says you took him on a number of adventures..."

"Quite so," the man with the long, curly hair nodded before removing his smock

and revealing a long coat underneath it, complete with a multi-colored scarf and

a hat that he produced from seeming nowhere, "A talented and resourceful lad, if

a bit quick in temper. Do I take it that this is the girl you spoke about so

often, old boy? Did you know he writes some excellent poetry that he composed

for you in between adventures."

"Ah, well..." Ryoga said uncomfortably as Akane looked at him with a questioning

expression.

"The boy does have a fairly good question, though," Cologne noted, "What are you

doing here at this particular time and location, Doctor?"

"Merely doing my part to see to it that the Timeline flows smoothly," the Doctor

noted smoothly, "And the last thing anyone here needs is to have those people

snooping about complicating your lives. You should be careful to safeguard them

from prying, hostile eyes in the future, old boy...it's something you have a lot

of practice at, eh what?"

"Uh...sure thing, Doc," Frank acknowledged with a dubious expression.

"The Doctor...here?" asked Clark.

"There must be something very unusual about the birth of this child," Diana

mused in quiet speculation.

"No fooling." Herakles sniffed, "I could have told you that."

"Ah well, I must be going," the Doctor winked at Shampoo before giving a

sardonic smile in Nabiki-kun's direction, and a final nod in Ranma's direction,

"Take care of yourselves and do try to stay out of trouble...if it's at all

possible," and with that he turned and headed for a Police Call Box that was

somehow inexplicable standing in a open space within the lobby. A few moments

later a peculiar whining noise was emitted by the booth, and then it slowly

began to fade from view until all that was left of it was a memory of its

passage.

There was a long pause and silence before Ranma turned and glared at Ryoga,

"Okay, so maybe you didn't make all of it up, but there's no way I'm buying that

stuff about Daleks..."

Akane turned to Ryoga and asked, "Poetry?"

"Um...well..." Ryoga felt along the edges of his collar as though he were

suddenly feeling quite warm for some reason, "I...meant to show some of it to

you...it's just..."

"Okay," Nabiki-kun murmured softly, "What just happened?"

"Believe me, kid," Frank replied, "You don't want to know."

"Another screwy day in this district," Thor remarked, "That's why I don't visit

Rayden more often."

"I...think it would be a good idea for us to return home," Nodoka remarked, "Is

it all right to take the baby home with us, or do the Doctors..." she paused to

correct herself, "I mean the OTHER doctors want to keep her and the mother

overnight for observation?"

"I will be taking charge of my great and great-great granddaughters," Cologne

revealed, "I will not be requiring the services of any outsiders, though Tofu-

Sensei is welcome to assist, should he feel obligated. Perfume, you will assist

your cousin and attend to her needs while she regains her strength."

"Of course, Elder," Perfume replied, smiling at Shampoo before adding, "After

all, while she is a weak and helpless girl it is only right that a warrior stand

watch over her and protect her and her Airen."

"Just remember what I say about you and Spatula girl," Shampoo murmured sweetly.

"If Cologne says it's all right," Frank shrugged, "Then it's no skin off my

hide. Just take care of the kid. One of these days she's gonna grow into

somebody special."

"Thank you, Doctor," Kasumi smiled pleasantly at the towering figure of a man,

"For everything you have done for my family and sister."

"Nothing more than was needed," Frank remarked before turning a sour glance to

one side, "And just where do you think you're going, Kitty Kat?"

"Ah..." Madam Lao hesitated in the act of slipping away, "I, ah...need to report

back to my ship...Blossom and Lotus never know what to do without me giving them

explicit directions and..."

"Stick around a bit more," Frank smiled in a way that was not healthy, "I

insist...for old time's sake. We got some catching up to do...Kitty."

"Kitty?" Guile turned a look at Lao that was openly puzzled, for there was

evident fear in the Pirate Queen's expression.

"You got something on her that we don't know about?" Cammy asked him.

"This I have got to see," mused Saki as she relished the rare sight of Lao

openly sweating.

"You could say that me and the Cat have a bit of history between us," Frank's

smile was almost malevolent, "Some unfinished business from the time when we

last parted company, Airen."

Cologne whirled about to stare in disbelief at her former great granddaughter,

and in an astonished tone of voice asked, "AIREN?"

Lao closed her eyes and heaved a huge sigh before groaning, "It's a long story,

Great Grandmother. You don't want to hear the details, believe me!"

"Who says?" Happosai asked, only to wince as Nodoka took him by the ear and drew

him along after the rest of their party as they began to head out of the

hospital exit.

"What a day this has been," murmured Natsumi to Miyuki, "I just hope there's

time enough to enjoy the rest of our vacation."

"I'm sure Nakajima will be waiting for us regardless of how long we've been

detained," Miyuki replied, "He won't expect us to be early on account of the

weather."

"But I'm sure he'll be worried sick over you," Natsumi noted sweetly, "Kenny

boy's got a real thing for you, and you know it."

"Would you lay off about that?" Miyuki groaned as she and her partner headed for

where they had parked mere hours beforehand.

"Say," murmured the other Natsume, "I wonder where Kurumi got herself off to?

It's not like her to be missing all the fun..."

"I'm sure wherever she is that your sister shares her love for you and her

family," Tatewaki replied, "And she will join us a nonce. Now, if you wish a

lift to your place, my father can send for a company helicopter..."

"Thank you, no," Natsume declined with a smile, "I'd much rather you walked me

home, Kuno-san. I just hope Kurumi knows well enough to keep herself out of

trouble..."

Mousse groaned ever-so-softly, wondering why he felt a peculiar ringing in his

ears, only to discover that he was hanging upside down, trussed up with ropes

and in his cursed body.

"Hello?" a voice politely inquired, "Are you awake? Can you understand me?"

Mousse tried to orient upon the speaker, his vision blurry even in his cursed

shape, but by the sound and smell of her he place her as the same girl he had

tussled with before...the cute one who had attacked with a hair ribbon.

"Don't bother answering," she said, "My name is Tendo Karumi, and I'm told

you're an Amazon guy named Mousse, and if you're wondering what you're doing all

tied up...well...I'm sorry about that, but the others insisted you were

dangerous when they left you that way."

Recent memories came back to Mousse, of his latest rejection by Perfume and the

way the others had ganged up on him, preventing him from spending time with his

true beloved as he wanted to convince her of his lifelong and faithful devotion

to her, in spite of the insidious temptations of the rogue Pirate, who had tried

to distract him with tempting baubles into betraying his true beloved. A

certain angry resurgence of his defiant rage made him briefly struggle against

his bonds, only to discover that they were expertly applied to counter the added

strength and suppleness of his cursed form. It would take time to work himself

free, but Mousse was a patient man and knew many ways to escape from just such a

situation.

"Look," Kurumi noted, "I don't plan to wait around here while you try and work

things out, but I thought you should know that the others were talking about

you, and it's obvious that you don't have a lot of friends among my family and

their friends, let alone your own people, and I'm really sorry to hear that

because it sounds like your problem is that you fell in love with somebody who

doesn't love you back. I'm sure that must be very painful, but a lot of it

sounds like your own fault because you chase her so often."

Mousse tried to orient on the blob that was the girl speaking towards him. What

was her name again? Kuru-something? Kurumi? And did he hear right or did she

also call herself a TENDO?

"Girls might like to be pursued, but we don't like to feel too crowded by guys,

even cute guys, do you know what I'm saying?" Kurumi persisted, "You come on too

strong and nobody's going to like you. You have to ease up a little, give her a

chance to sort things out, maybe think things over, and then maybe she'll decide

whether or not she actually likes you. Throwing yourself at her while she's

taking a bath? Uh-uh! That definitely not the way to get attention."

Mousse frowned as he considered this. Who was this girl and why did she presume

to think that she could be giving him instructions about women? He knew the

rules of engagement between Amazon male and female as well as anybody! He had

made it the purpose of his whole life to win over the girl of his dreams by

properly defeating her in battle, after which they would be happy. What more

was there to be said about it?

"And that's another thing," she continued as if anticipating his thoughts, "This

business about a girl marrying a guy who beats her up in a fight...who came up

with that nonsense? Doesn't make any sense at all to me...I mean, marry a guy

who tries to hurt you? What sort of way is that to decide who's good enough to

marry? I mean...isn't marriage based on a whole lot more than just who can beat

up who in a fight? I know you Amazons prize strength and all that, and I

respect Shampoo enough that I don't want to offend your ways or anything, but it

just seems to me that there ought to be a better way to decide who you should

marry."

Mousse continued to say nothing, mainly because he would not make himself

understood if he tried, but he glared at the indistinct shape that he took to be

her as if daring her to continue berating his culture and people.

"And what has this big chase of yours gotten you anyway?" she persisted, "Not

much that I can see, other than the fact that Perfume seems to hate your guts

only slightly more than the others. That's why I'm telling you that you're

going about this all wrong, and it's no good chasing after her anyway since

she's pretty solidly taken with Ukyo. I mean...they're gonna have a child

together, so what chance have you got to get between them? And if you do attack

Ukyo and somehow manage to hurt her, then all you're going to do is make Perfume

really, really hate you, maybe enough even to hurt you back serious. The way I

hear it she's always gone easy with you, but I don't want to be the one to face

her when she's got a real mad-on!"

Mousse had a mental image of Perfume in one of her cold rages, the kind where

she could become an almost unstoppable engine of carnage and destruction, and

silently had to allow that it was not a thing he would relish seeing directed

towards him. There was indeed some risk that killing Ukyo might bring down her

wrath, but he knew it would be all for the better, and surely in time Perfume

would come to accept that he was only thinking of her needs by removing Kuonji

from future consideration...

Somehow this logic always seemed a bit more convincing when he wasn't dangling

upside down, feeling the blood rush to his head as he struggled to free himself

of his dratted bindings!

"Well, that's all I've gotta say for now," the girl replied as she turned to

leave, "I just wanted you to hear me out and let you know that there's somebody

who doesn't automatically hate your guts and all that. I want you to know that

I can understand what it's like being misunderstood and even hated for stuff

that's not really your fault, though I know you're trying to do whatever it is

you think's in your own best interest. If you ever want to just talk about it,

you could come look me up sometime. I'm a good listener and I'm even easy to

talk to. Bye for now, and I'm really sorry about the guys calling those Zoo

people to come get you."

Mousse watched the shapeless mass that was the girl named Kurumi Tendo move off,

thinking to himself what an odd girl she must be to spend time talking to a

prisoner as if she were offering him friendship. He could tell from the sound

of her footsteps that she had a light tread and moved easily like a trained

martial artist, but other than that she seemed like a very ordinary-albeit

unusually nice-Japanese girl, a puzzling enigma as it was most unusual for girls

her age to spend any time talking to him as a person...especially in his cursed

form.

But then it took a half a second beyond realizing this for Mousse to register

the last part of the girl's statement, at which his mind cried out, [Zoo

People?]

As if in reply to his mental scream he heard voices out in the corridor say,

"Right this way, we're told a dangerous primate has been running loose and

attacking people at this hospital. If you'll just take him off our house we'd

be ever-so-grateful."

The voice was unfamiliar but it sent a wave of panic through Mousse that caused

him to redouble his efforts at freeing himself. He didn't like the way a pair

of dark shapes took form before his eyes just then, looming over him one second

before someone closed him up into a bag, and then he was cut loose as one of the

two male figures said, "Well now...was this a Reese's Monkey we just caught or

an orangutan?"

"Orangutans are orange," the other one said, "This is more a brownish color. At

any rate, he seems like a pretty fine specimen, even if his eyes don't seem to

dilate properly. All well, we'll let the Vet take a look at him, then we can

decide what cage to stick him in with the others or put him into the greeting

program with the rest of the primates."

[Breeding program?] Mousse mentally protested, and then he started to kick and

thrash in earnest...

Once they were back inside their vehicle, agents Kei and Jei removed their

special contact lenses, then Jei turned to his senior partner and asked, "How

come you let them think we'd been zapped?"

"Because, Slick," Agent Kei replied, "I was expecting one of those guys to make

a move, only I'd have bet on the Kryptonian. Frank was expecting us to make

such a move, so I thought we'd play in character and let him think we'd been

neutralized as a potential nuisance."

"So you let them think we'd forgotten all about them," Agent Jei duly noted,

"For what?"

"Patience, Slick," Agent Kei replied as he started up their engine, "There was

an unusual high concentration of paranormal activity in the area and I wanted to

confirm that it all revolved around a central source. Now that we know this new

baby is special we can monitor it's progress and find out why that is. Could be

we're looking at a potential source of real Paradigm phenomena in the not-so-

distant future..."

"A para-what?" Jei wondered, "You mean there's something unusual about that

baby?"

"Just a hunch, Slick," Kei replied as she started shifting gears, causing their

car to become vertically airborne, "You spend as much time in the business as

me, you develop a knack for spotting potential trouble before it happens. I'm

just saying the whole situation demands further monitoring, which we can do

safely from headquarters. Besides, it could be years before we have definite

proof to confirm my suspicion."

"Just our luck if we don't get any overtime for this," Agent Jei remarked, one

second before he gripped the sides of the car and hung on for dear life as his

senior partner opened up the engine and let things rip, making record time in

whizzing the both of them back to headquarters...

Continued.

Comments/Criticism/Return of a Legend: shadowmane

Yes people, IT'S BAAACK! The long awaited series that started it all for me has

returned, and because I've gotten so much mail upon this subject you can count

on the next chapter being devoted entirely to exploring Ranma's involvement with

his five-way partnership to four horny women. It's Perfume versus Ranma as the

two go head-to-head over the ever-popular Ms. Kuonji, and that's just the start

of the fun that I've been planning to get back to for most of a year now...so

would you all please kindly join with me next time, when things get going in

earnest...so be there!

Jim Robert Bader August, 22, 1999

X

If you wish to check out my other works, Please check out my

Fanfiction webpage at: . or it's

mirror site at: .

All related chapters of this series can be found there along with my

other works.


	34. Chapter 34

Dnabiki88

Nabiki 1/2

A Very Scary Thought

By

Jim Robert Bader

(Based on the works of Rumiko Takahashi & Others)

Part Eighty-Eight.

"No, no, no, Daughter-in-law!" Cologne sternly chided, "That is not how you do

the technique at all! You must concentrate your entire being into the moment,

summon all that you are and become one with the flow of your power!"

"I'm trying, Old Woman," Nabiki complained as she got to her feet again, "But

it's a lot harder than you're making it sound! This Shadowskill stuff takes a

lot of energy to master, and you keep telling me the slightest wavering of

concentration..."

"Will tear you apart from within," Cologne said gravely, "But that is only if

you do not concentrate! Allowing your mind to wander as it has been doing the

past half-hour is dangerous even with ordinary techniques, let alone a secret

that was entrusted to the Amazons in the time of the Great Ghengis. With this

skill mastered you will be all but invincible...but only if you concentrate!

Your pride, your willingness to fight and triumph...those are what are most

essential here, but only if you can maintain your level of focus!"

"Maybe I'm not as into learning this right now as I'd be some other time,"

Nabiki stretched a little to work out the kinks in her body before resuming her

fighting crouch, "We only just got Shampoo back from the hospital a couple of

weeks ago, and she really needs me around, what with the kid taking so much of

her time and energy..."

"Oh, I am so sorry," Cologne said in a mocking tone of voice, "Should we relax

then, now that yet another crisis has been mastered? Perhaps we should tell my

former great-granddaughter and others like her, that the great Tendo Nabiki is

not to be bothered while she is celebrating becoming a new father. Yes, I'm

sure potential rivals such as Mousse and Madam Lao won't mind taking a rain

check and coming back some other time when you are in the mood to fight them..."

"...!" Nabiki said as she glowered darkly and thought this over, then she

hunkered down her shoulders and said, "All right...so maybe I could use one more

technique in my arsenal, and you say this one is pretty powerful..."

"It is among the most dangerous and powerful that have ever been created,"

Cologne replied, "Only a handful of people, to the best of my knowledge, have

ever attempted to master it in the modern era, and you met one of them yesterday

when he helped deliver your baby."

"You mean Frank?" Nabiki said dubiously, "Big guy, looks something like Boris

Karloff in a dark alley...?"

"The very same," Cologne replied, "And in spite of his large size and ponderous

mass, he can move like the wind and strike with the fury of ten tigers. That is

why my great granddaughter-who-was had an understandable nervousness just being

in his presence. No doubt he impressed on her once before his superiority as a

fighter...""

"He called her his Airen," Nabiki shook her head, "There's a match I wouldn't

wanna put bets on! Still, the guy must be heavier even than his heavy rep if he

could put a look of terror like that on that smug Pirate's face."

"Consider it good fortune that he is to be regarded as an ally and not an

adversary," Cologne mused, "For he is ten times the fighter that you are at your

present level of mastery, to say nothing of being the possessor of an elemental

Storm style whose ultimate technique is the Dance of the Chained Lightning."

"He's got an elemental style too?" Nabiki remarked in some surprise, "Like Lao

and her Tsunami Attack?"

"Of course," Cologne replied, "After all, there are at least seven Elemental

schools of martial arts known to the Amazon War Masters since time itself began,

and you have only encountered the Water school. In time you will master an

Elemental form yourself, but only if you learn to concentrate and practice,

practice, practice!"

"Yes Master," Nabiki mocked, arching her tones to sound like a rude parody of a

guy named Igor, but nonetheless she set herself into the pose that Cologne had

directed and began to once again concentrate her power, breathing in and out as

she felt the flow of energy build within her and tried to imagine herself as an

invincible pillar of Chi-Force. Her muscles tensed and her body grew taunt with

the effort at containing the forces within her, which caused the very air to hum

and vibrate as her battle aura flared to a bright cherry crimson. When she was

finally ready she held her hands out and began the ritual invocation.

"I...am invincible!" she declared, balling her fists as she felt her power rise

to match the tone of her emotions, "I am Tendo Nabiki of the Anything Goes

School of Martial Arts! No one can match my Skills, for I cannot be equaled,

and I will never be defeated! Who dares stand before me now, feel my wrath!

KIAOH!"

With that Nabiki launched herself into the air and performed a razor-kick back-

flip, slicing the air with the force of her Chi, lashing out at the dead and

rotting tree before her, striking the limbs and trunk with an effect not unlike

that of razor-sharp scythe. As she dropped back down to the ground the tree

began to fall apart as though a pair of massive sword blades had hewed it to

bits.

Nabiki stood her ground gradually easing back in her power, then she raised her

gaze, saw her handiwork and said, "Wow! That sure was something!"

"It may not be as all-out devastating as the Mako Takabishi," Cologne pointed

out, "But with more precise concentration of your power it will overwhelm the

defenses of even a tough opponent and do to them what you have just done to a

dead tree. It is a killing technique, to be certain, so save it for when you

are desperate enough to want to use it. It can be used as a finishing move when

you want an opponent to stay down, or even if you simply want to make a dramatic

exit. This is but one of the uses of the technique overall, and with further

refinement..."

"Airen!" Shampoo suddenly called out from where she and the others were sitting

on the sidelines observing the latest training session between Cologne and her

chief pupil, "Kasumi make too-too delicious lunch for you! If Great Grandmother

finish teaching you technique, then you come eat with Shampoo and Lylac, yes?"

""Coming, Hon," Nabiki turned to Cologne and said, "Mind if we finish this a bit

later? I'm being called away to my domestic obligations, and I'm sure you

wouldn't want Sham-chan feeling ignored by me, would you?"

"Certainly not," Cologne said in amusement, "I was young once myself, if you can

believe it."

"Sure," Nabiki smirked, "In the Stone Age. Well, back to the old ball-and-chain

routine. We'll pick this up as soon as I get through digesting Kasumi's

cooking."

As Cologne watched her young apprentice head back towards their camp she hid a

faint smile of knowing superiority and murmured, "Ah, daughter-in-law...if you

only knew the true story..."

"Man," Ranma muttered from where he stood leaning against one of the trees that

lined the forested clearing, having watched the display with the rest of their

inner circle of intimate family members, "That old woman's sure a tough nut when

it comes to training. That new technique Nabiki's learning's gonna give her an

edge, no doubt about it."

"Seems the harder we train, we're never quite as good as she is," Ryoga noted,

"Because she trains a lot harder. Hope that's not too tough on you, Ranma,

being engaged to somebody who's that good..."

"Don't remind me," Ranma's eyes narrowed, though he knew that Ryoga was only

teasing him about the engagement. In truth Ranma was very proud of Nabiki, and

very pleased that she was such a good fighter...except...

"Don't take it so hard, Ranchan," Ukyo smiled at him in a sidelong manner,

"You're still pretty good, the second best fighter all around, and you know Nab-

chan respects you."

"Second best," Ranma huffed, but he said no more than this, not wanting to give

offense to his other iinazuke.

"Hey, there's no shame in that," Ryoga could not help twisting the knife, "I'm

sure Nabiki doesn't mind you being right behind her."

"Shut up," Ranma growled in faint undertone, scowling all the more fiercely.

"You're such a wuss, Saotome," Akane huffed, "If you can't take the fact that a

girl can be a stronger fighter than you, then why don't you do something about

it? Train harder, anything but stand around and feel sorry for yourself."

"What would you know about it?" Ranma muttered aloud, though silently he had to

admit that Akane had a point. He was being a jerk, and he knew it, but still...

"Hey, Ranchan tries hard," Ukyo immediately defended him, "He has a lot of

catching up to do, but his Dad's training him to make up for all those years

they've been apart. Nabiki's been the heir to the Saotome school for the last

ten years, but with the way you're picking up new techniques from the Old Man

and Per-chan's great grandmother..."

Somehow, Ranma silently acknowledged, it did not help his pride as much as it

should to hear his other iinazuke speak with such pride in his abilities. Ukyo

meant well, but Ranma could not help the feeling that there was something a bit

too defensive in her tone for him to believe that she seriously meant it.

Perhaps it was because she wanted to sooth his wounded self-identity, having

been usurped in his former role as the best fighter in Nerima, but the way she

said it almost made it seem-however unintentionally-to be condescending.

Akane-irritating as she could be at times-at least had the dignity to voice her

opinions of him outright, and for all her sometimes abrasiveness towards him,

there was something almost refreshing about the honesty of her opinions.

"True enough," Kodachi mused as she agreed with Ukyo's judgement, "You have

always been a quick study for any martial art that you directly observe, Ranma-

kun, and sufficiently motivated, you can excel at a rate that even I admit is

most surprising."

Again Ranma felt an slight muscle twitch at the well-intentioned comment,

especially coming from a girl upon whom he had once felt a powerful attraction.

Kodachi had never truly shown him the time of day when he had been engaged to

Akane-to whom Ranma felt more like a slightly older brother than a potential

suitor-and since he had become engaged to Nabiki...well...Kodachi had certainly

turned her affections in some interesting directions!

"What do you make of this Shadowskills technique that Nabiki's learning?" Ryoga

asked, breaking Ranma's depressing line of self-introspection, "Is it really a

style that's specially designed for women?"

"Well, according to the Old Woman, that's how it started out," Ukyo answered,

"She said female slaves were forced to fight like gladiators in an arena back

during the ancient Khmer Kingdom of what we now call modern-day Cambodia.

Something about them fighting with their hands chained together, which is why

it's supposed to use a lot of footwork to make up for that limitation."

"That's only the Shadowskill," Ranma spoke up, "It's supposed to have two parts,

the front and the back system. The front's like regular Thai Boxing, lots of

hand and foot moves, but the Shadowskill's almost entirely footwork with a lot

of emphasis on Chi techniques and strengthening the body."

"You remember all that?" Ryoga asked.

"Hey, it's like 'Dachi says," Ranma nodded, "I pick things up pretty fast, and I

was listening when the old woman gave her explanation."

"How remarkable your powers of retention are, Ranma-kun," Kodachi mused.

"Yeah," Akane agreed, "Now if only your academic skills gave some sign you were

paying attention during classes..."

Ranma glared at his one-time iinazuke, resisting the impulse to stick his tongue

out in her direction. Instead he turned his attention towards the campsite,

where Nabiki was currently sitting down on a spread-out tablecloth with Shampoo

and their newly born baby, while Kasumi offered them the lunch that she had

packed away, while his mother beamed proudly as though the baby were her son's

child rather than the product of two women.

Something bothered him about the scene...bothered him a lot more than he could

say. It was not that he resented either Shampoo or the baby, but seeing how

Nabiki fawned on the purple haired Amazon and her child made him

feel...excluded. Like he was a mere observer watching from outside some window,

unable to cross a boundary line that separated him from the happiness that they

were sharing together...

Just then he heard someone hailing their group, and collectively they all turned

to see Perfume and Keiko approaching with fresh firewood for their camp. The

redheaded Kickboxer and the brown haired Enforcer each balanced a load of

freshly chopped lumber-Perfume on one of her axes while Keiko managed it with

one finger-Keiko cheerful as always as she was warmly greeted by Akane and

Kodachi, while Perfume's softer glow of happiness was returned in fair measure

by a gratified Ukyo. Ranma scowled as he took notice of this, all too freshly

reminded of the OTHER sore point that had recently been souring his moods of

late.

The reason being the noticeable swell of Ukyo's abdomen, the result of a brief

brush with Nabiki's Jusenkyo curse that had turned Perfume temporarily male

during their struggles with Madam Lao, which again left Ranma feeling more than

somewhat excluded.

It bothered him a lot that he was having these feelings, because Ranma had been

taught that it was unmanly to allow feelings of inadequacy to color his

judgement. His mother had always insisted that a "manly man" could rise up to

meet any sort of occasion, and his father had been coaching him of late to

develop a more positive attitude regarding the fact that he was a guy about to

be we to four very different (but equally intriguing) ladies.

The problem for him was that he did not feel quite so manly having at least two

of his potential wives be impregnated by the other two fiancées. First Shampoo

by Nabiki, then Ukyo by Perfume, leaving him to wonder if he would have anything

to do on the Honeymoon besides have sex with the one woman whom (by the curse of

the fates) he could not impregnate (two of them if you considered how Perfume

felt about sex with a guy, and her fear of what pregnancy would do to her with

her hyper-acute system).

Welllll...he mentally paused as he thought again of that latter point, then

wondered if Perfume would truly resist any advances on his part. Recently she

had gained a partial resistance to pain, thanks to that brush with Beatrice's

Nanobots, which had done something to repair a defect that nature had bequeathed

her. The immunity had proven to be only temporary, but Perfume no longer

flinched up as bad when she was scratched or incapacitated. She was still

tactilely more sensitive than anyone else Ranma knew and could bruise easily if

struck, but now she was stronger and more confident in herself, and she was

improving as a fighter from where she had been merely phenomenal before to

outright devastating.

How did Perfume regard him as a man? Did she, in fact, see Ranma as a rival for

Ukyo's affections? If so, then she was definitely winning the battle on that

front, having grown so close to Ukyo of late that the two of them were virtually

inseparable, and not just because they were having a baby together.

Ranma frowned even more deeply, his mood only worsening the longer he thought

about it. As focused as he was on his current "problem," however, someone else

was focusing on him, her attention drawn his way as her two companions pointed

something out that served to confirm her own analysis of the situation.

"He's really taking it hard, eh?" Keiko asked.

"You could say that," Akane murmured as she grumbled softly, "The baka."

"We fear his pride has taken a beating with the safe delivery of Shampoo's

baby," Kodachi sadly agreed, "And pride, it seems, is a Saotome quality that

runs both deep and shallow."

"I've known Ranma most of my life," Akane softly nodded, "And this just isn't

like him. He's becoming upset because he thinks he's being shut out of his own

marriage. I wish I could talk some sense into the idiot, but he never listens

to me."

"I think you badly underrate yourself there, Akane-chan," Kodachi noted, "Ranma-

kun does indeed hold your opinions in a higher regard than he lets on, but he

would be loathe to admit it, and stubbornness is another family trait that he

seems to possess in great abundance."

"Guy shouldn't take it so bad," Keiko mused, "Most other guys would kill to be

in a spot like that. Maybe I should go talk some sense into him. He seems to

take it better from me, but then-heck-I'm practically like one of the guys

from his perspective."

"Better not try it," Akane urged, "He'd just see any attempt at sympathy as an

admission that he can't handle his own problems."

"Who said anything about sympathy?" Keiko asked innocently, "I just meant to go

over there and beat some sense into the baka."

"Crude but direct," Kodachi mused as she fondly regarded the redhead, "But I

believe that this is one battle that Ranma-kun must resolve for himself...at

least if he is to be any kind of proper mate for Nabiki-san. If he does not

overcome his jealousy it will grow to consume him, and that would be most

tragic."

Unbeknownst to the trio their every word was overhead by another set of ears

that were close nearby. Perfume gave little indication that she was listening

raptly to their conversation, but after a due interval of several long minute

she finally turned and looked directly at Ranma, catching the focus of his

attention as his blue eyes swiveled to orient in her direction. Her blue eyes

found his and for a moment no words were needed to convey each other's silent

perspective.

Then, making an almost imperceptible nod with her head, Perfume indicated a

direction off into the woods and away from the copse of trees in which they were

presently standing. Ranma acknowledged the nod with one of his own, and then

the two fell both motionless and silent in the presence of their mutual love

interest.

None of these others caught the silent exchange, nor did they perceive the

tension level rising between Saotome heir and Enforcer. Nor did anyone else

(save for a sharp eyed old man, who was in the vicinity and could not help

noticing the foul mood that had come over his son lately) there present have a

clue what was in the winds, concerned as they were with their daily routine,

which in the case of the formidable heir to the Tendo Ryu, meant assuming the

domestic responsibilities of both a husband and a co-wife, a most peculiar role

to which Nabiki was finding herself growing more and more accustomed.

What made this possible was the affable way in which Shampoo very easily fit the

role of a wife, and Nabiki had to admit that there was no one else in her

experience who could have taken in stride so many strange events that had

brought the two of them together in a marriage that-as unconventional as it

seemed at times-was remarkably fulfilling in so many ways that truly mattered.

Shampoo took things in stride and adjusted herself to any changes that life

forced upon them, and rarely did she complain about her lot. In anything she

seemed enormously happy, and the role of a mother suited her quite well.

Or better, at least, than Nabiki thought that she might do in the Amazon's

situation.

"You see, Airen?" Shampoo smiled as she held their daughter up, "Lylac is very

good daughter, already she open eyes and try look at Lylac father. Be strong,

healthy and intelligent girl when she get big and strong, like Airen."

Nabiki stared at the tiny, cherubic, lavender-haired infant whose diapers

Shampoo had just finished changing, a half-naked babe whose tiny limbs moved in

an uncoordinated attempt at exploring the world with her hands and feet. The

child made cooing noises and did indeed appear to be working its ruby eyes in an

attempt to focus upon Nabiki, working its limbs as though attempting to crawl

through air to reach her biological "father." She was cute in a way that went

well beyond the definitions of "Kawaii," and the thought that Nabiki might have

played a part in bringing such a tiny bundle into the world was an astonishing

realization, one that she still had trouble believing even after being

confronted with the truth on a nearly daily basis.

Reaching out with a finger to touch the palm of her innocent daughter, Nabiki

could not keep a foolish smile from crossing her features, lacking its usual

sardonic overtones as she felt a warmth inside her that she knew-deep down-

could never be banished.

"Cute little nipper," she said aloud as Lylac attempted to close her tiny

fingers around the forefinger of her (sometime-male) parent, "Got a real

inquisitive look to her too. Just imagine the whole world you've got ahead to

explore, kid...and it looks to me like you've got a good start in with Sham-chan

and me as your parents."

"You take Lylac, Airen?" Shampoo asked, and before Nabiki had time enough to

frame a reply she found herself holding their baby girl in both hands, mindful

to use the method that she had been taught was proper for supporting a baby.

Little Lylac reached out and placed both palms on Nabiki's chest as the Tendo

heir held the incredibly small infant close to her. Nabiki looked down into a

tiny face that seemed almost to recognize her, and then those hands attempted to

climb up her chest, managing to close one hand around one of Nabiki's side

forelocks.

"Hey...let go!" Nabiki tried to move her head to get the baby to let go of her

hair, but little Lylac held on, fascinated by its new possession.

Shampoo's gentle laughter caused Nabiki to turn a look her way, and then the

Amazon said, "Airen...no be cross with Lylac. Is very strong, curious child,

just like Shampoo tell you."

"I see," Nabiki also smiled, looking down at the cooing baby and suddenly quite

loath to force her to release her grip on her "father's" hair, "I can see you're

going to be a real handful, kid...well, that's okay, so is your mother, and...I

guess maybe I was kinda like that too when I was your age..."

"Is very true," Shampoo said sagely, "But now is time for baby to have lunch,"

and so Shampoo reached over to gently pried the tiny girl's hand off of the

hairs that she was gripping, then took the child back into her arms and casually

peeled open one side of her dress to bare a breast to full view, bringing

Lylac's face down to where she could suckle on the nipple.

Nabiki was by now well accustomed to the fact that her wife had few taboos about

nudity, and she well understood the necessity of Shampoo not wearing a bra, but

she could not help admiring the way that their little girl began suckling down

with thirsty abandon, and a slight stab of envy passed through Nabiki there and

then. After all, Shampoo's already full breasts had increased substantially in

size since giving birth, and a desire to clasp her lips around one of these

mouth-watering globes was hard to resist, though Nabiki did her best not to

openly salivate at the prospect.

Apparently her inward struggle was all too obvious to Shampoo, who gave her back

a very different kind of smile and said, "Airen...you wait you turn...Shampoo

have plenty milk she share when Lylac have fill. Shampoo very grateful that

Airen help her relieve excess, but is time and place for everything, yes?"

"Whatever you say, Honey," Nabiki chuckled, then noticed the coy way that Nodoka

was looking their way, and the surreptitious glance of an otherwise stoical

Cologne.

"Fatherhood suits you well, Daughter-in-law," the old woman managed to say with

a straight face.

"Yeah, well..." Nabiki shrugged, "I do my best to manage, but credit all goes to

Sham-chan."

"There is a very old proverb that says, 'It takes two to tango,'" Nodoka smiled

sagely, "Perhaps one day you'll be able to give my son a child of your own, if

we can ever find a way to overcome the problems with your curse."

Nabiki felt a slight twinge of guilt at that and said, "Well...no offense,

Auntie...but if that day ever happens, well...I'll do my best and all that, but

somehow...I just don't think I'd make as good a mother as Sham-chan. She's a

natural at this stuff...it's all I can do to fake it."

"Don't sell yourself so short, Daughter-in-law," Cologne advised, "There is a

way in which everything can come about in its own appropriate time and place.

Enjoy the benefits of a happy and fruitful marriage, such quiet moments as these

are a thing to be treasured."

"As you say, Great-Granny," Nabiki acknowledged, then sighed, "I just wish it

were possible that I could give Ranchan something in this marriage. I know he's

expecting me to be a good wife and all that, but I'm hanged if I know how to

work that side of the paternal equation..."

"You is that, Airen," Shampoo teased, "Well hung indeed."

Even Nodoka had trouble keeping a straight face at that as Nabiki winced at the

pun and said, "Ow...I really set myself up for that one, huh?"

"You are learning," Cologne replied with a serenely look of sublime composure,

and Nabiki had to stare real hard at the old woman just to confirm for herself

that the Elder wasn't smirking.

All at once a splash of cold water down her nape caused Nabiki to gasp and

transform into her masculine aspect, and then the obligatory apology from

Kasumi, "Oh...I'm sorry, Imoutochan...I've been so careless lately..."

"Yeah...I've noticed," Nabiki-kun said with as much dignity as he could manage,

heaving a sigh as he added, "I've got to invest in some water proof clothing..."

"Kasumi nailed you again, huh?" Ranma asked as he approached the happy campers.

"Oh," in spite of his now-male status, Nabiki could not help but smile warmly as

he looked up to see his iinazuke, "There you are, Ranchan...I was hoping maybe

we could spar a bit after lunch. I'll need to burn off a few calories, and by

that time I should be changed back to normal."

"Sure," Ranma said with a surprisingly low amount of enthusiasm in his voice,

"That'd be swell. I guess I could use a workout too...but...ah...well, I'm

gonna go off on the trail a bit, so save my lunch until I get back, and don't

let Pop eat it, okay?"

"Uh...sure," Nabiki-kun blinked, surprised at the preoccupied tone in Ranma's

voice, which prompted him to ask, "Is everything all right, Ranma? You look a

little...distracted..."

"Sorry," Ranma said, "Had a lot on my mind lately."

"Oh?" Nabiki-kun cocked an eyebrow, "Anything you want to share?"

To her surprise Ranma just turned away and did not meet her gaze, instead

saying, "Not really...look, I'll be back before too long. You don't need to

worry about me or nothing."

"Ah...sure," Nabiki-kun said once again, uncertain of what to make out of the

other boy's odd behavior. It was so unlike Ranma to be unwilling to share his

private thoughts with Nabiki, and it made him even more concerned that there was

some issue that really and truly was upsetting the boy lately. Nabiki had

become so used to having Ranma play the role of close confidant that the idea

that his iinazuke might try to withhold anything was positively alarming. It

made Nabiki want to follow after him, to confront Ranma directly out of sight of

the others, to learn what it was that Ranma was unwilling to say in front of his

own mother. The impulse almost made him rise to his feet, but to his surprise

he found Kasumi laying a hand to his shoulder to restrain him.

"It would be better to leave Ranma-kun alone for now, Nabiki," his older sister

cautioned, "He's going through a phase right now, and he would resent anyone

intruding on his personal privacy...even you, Imoutochan."

"Huh?" Nabiki turned a questioning look in the older girl's direction, seeing a

surprising wisdom in Kasumi's eyes as she shook her head sadly, clearly knowing

something that was not obvious to Nabiki.

"I've known Ranma since he was a small boy," Kasumi said, "I understand him and

the pride he carries. You need to learn to trust him and let him have some

personal space to himself now and again, there are some problems he has to work

out for himself, and no one else can do that for him."

"Problems?" Nabiki-kun asked, "What are you getting at, Oneechan?"

"Ranma is your Kareshi," Kasumi replied, "Your boyfriend and future husband,

promised to you in a marriage that grows closer with the end of the school

semester. He understands you like few other people really do, and he's been

very understanding of all the curious experience that you've been going through

of late. I think you should grant him the same courtesy, at least until he is

ready to share his thoughts with you."

"But..." Nabiki started to protest, when all at once Kasumi glanced down at her

own hand, then hastily let go of Nabiki and backed away with a most chagrined

expression.

"Oh my...I...that is...I'd better go get the rest of lunch," Kasumi colored as

she moved away, leaving Nabiki-kun to blink his eyes and wonder what was coming

over her older sister.

"Airen," Shampoo murmured, "You sister very nice, but very strange girl."

"You're telling me?" Nabiki-kun replied, sighing to herself as she added, "I

really need to have that talk with Oneechan..."

"She means well," Nodoka remarked on the sideline, "I think."

"Be patient with her," Cologne advised, "Ranma is not the only one who is going

through an emotional phase for which he has little in the way of a referential

basis. Concern yourself instead with the matter at hand...the experience that-

for you-is unique among women. Being both a wife and a father will take much

practice and patience, two elements in which you presently are sorely lacking."

"I know," Nabiki-kun winced, "I'm doing my best, don't have a cow about it."

"Eh?" Cologne arched a pale eyebrow, then dismissed the colorful colloquialism.

"I'm a little surprised that you are letting Lylac move around this early,

before she even has enough strength to crawl like a regular baby," Nodoka noted,

"When I had Ranma I was always very careful about handling him, and I kept him

safe and snug in a blanket..."

"Trapped up in one you mean," Cologne replied, "Many mothers try and restrict

the mobility of their children when nature intended them to move around in order

to improve their confidence and strength of body. By letting the child set her

own pace of development, she will grow stronger and be more poised than if she

were held like a prisoner in a crib. So long as an adult remains close at hand

to monitor her so that she does not get into any mischief, my great-great

granddaughter will learn and adapt quicker and more readily to the changes that

she will be going through as she progressively gets older and gains more control

over her motor skills. In time, I dare say, she will even exceed you in terms

of physical prowess, Son-in-law."

"Really?" Nabiki-kun blinked.

"Oh yes," Nodoka smiled grandly, "Elder Cologne is right...it is better to

encourage a child to be more in tune with their own body...just think of what

this will mean when she gets to be your age and finds someone who will interest

her the way you've grown fond of dear Shampoo-san."

Nabiki-kun turned a horrified look on her future mother-in-law and almost

squeaked, "Don't scare me like that!"

"Airen," Shampoo said crossly as she indicated the suckling babe, "Not so

loud...you upset Lylac feeding."

"Uh...sorry..." Nabiki-kun winced, thinking privately to herself of all the

lessons she would have to school Lylac in order to prepare her for her teenaged

years, including Nabiki herself investing in a shot-gun...

Ranma searched around at the wooded alcove near the base of the waterfall, then

turned and said, "I know you're around here, so you might as well come out of

hiding."

"Who said I was hiding," Perfume remarked as she appeared from seeming nowhere,

"Just because you can't see me as well as I could see you doesn't mean that I

was hiding."

"Yeah, whatever," Ranma turned to confront the brown haired Enforcer, "You

wanted to talk with me, let's talk."

"Fair enough," Perfume replied, "I want to know what's been eating you up of

late, Saotome. The last two weeks you've been acting like you've eaten nothing

but sour berries. Now is it just me that you're worried about or are you acting

like a jerk because you think you need the practice?"

"Who said I was worried about you?" Ranma asked.

"Oh please," Perfume replied, "I may be a girl from the country, but I didn't

fall off the turnip truck just the other day. You've been in a snit ever since

we had that incident with Baby, and right after Shampoo delivered hers, you went

into permanent scowl-mode and haven't been any fun to hang around with ever

since."

"Yeah, well maybe I've had my reasons," Ranma replied, "Not that you'd care

about what I think. You've made it abundantly plain that you don't need a guy

in your life, not as long as you have Ucchan."

"Who said I didn't need a guy?" Perfume scowled, "You think, just because I like

women, I think all men are pigs? That is soo typical...a real stereotype of

Amazons. I thought you of all people knew better."

"Well...maybe I don't," Ranma shot back, "I'm only a guy, remember?"

"It's about me getting Ukyo pregnant, isn't it?" Perfume replied, "It's started

eating on your male ego that I did something you were supposed to do, all

because I got my curse temporarily swapped with Nabiki's. I knew that

understanding act of yours was too good to be true..."

"I told you before," Ranma growled, "I don't blame you guys for any of that

stuff that happened. It was that Lao character who was making all that stuff

happen. What I can't stand is the way you rub my nose in it every chance you

get!"

"When have I ever rubbed your nose in anything?" Perfume reacted in surprise.

"Just now," Ranma pointed out, "When you reminded me that you did something I

was supposed to."

Perfume rolled her eyes, "Give me a break! It wasn't like I meant to be the one

to get Ukyo with child..."

"Maybe not," Ranma said, "But you sure don't act like you're sorry it happened."

"And what am I supposed to say to that?" Perfume replied, "That I'm sorry that

I'm the father? I'm not! I'd be less than honest with you if I didn't admit

that."

"And that's another thing," Ranma scowled, "When you first showed up here-what?

Five or six months back? You could barely even speak Japanese, and now you're

talking like a native..."

"Oh, and you think I wanted to sound like a hick all my life?" Perfume

countered, "Shampoo can get away with that...she sounds cute talking that way,

but I was tired of stumbling over my pronouns and tenses and looking like a fool

in front of my Airen, so I asked Great Grandmother to help me learn to speak

regular Japanese, and she's been tutoring me ever since...and besides, I've

listened to the way students in your classes talk and I've picking things up on

the sidelines..."

"Is that all?" Ranma asked, "I can't believe you'd learn it so simple."

"Well...I did have help," Perfume admitted, "A magic jewel Great Grandmother

loaned me acted as a translation spell that helped me to unlock some of the more

complicated rules of Japanese grammar. It's not an easy language to learn, you

guys don't exactly make it simple, but once I learn a lesson I memorize it and

practice it in private. It's accelerated learning, true, but you're not the

only one who's gifted with an eidetic memory, Saotome."

"And what did you learn Japanese for?" Ranma asked suspiciously, "To sweet talk

Ucchan?"

"Among other things," Perfume smiled, "But why act so bothered about it? You

could just as easily borrow the jewel from me and learn to practice Mandarin, so

you could hold a decent conversation with my cousin. After all, you're going to

marry her in a couple of months, and it wouldn't kill you to tell her you care

in our native language."

"Maybe," Ranma said, "But I don't know why she'd even bother with me when she

already has Nabiki."

"Now the other sandal hits the floor," Perfume scowled, "It's not just me

getting Ucchan pregnant that has you acting so jealous all of a sudden...it's

Shampoo's baby, isn't it?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," Ranma scowled.

"Pu-lease," Perfume sniffed, "It's as plain as the nose on your face, Saotome.

You're jealous because Nabiki and Shampoo had a baby, and Ukyo's having my baby,

and you're feeling left out in the cold and all sorry for yourself because

you've been double-cuckolded before you've even walked the aisle with either one

of them. Your male ego is telling you that you should be the father, not us,

and it's only worse because you know that I can't stand to let a man touch me,

and Nabiki can't carry a baby to full term, and you'd like to screw the both of

us silly..."

"I do not!" Ranma insisted.

"Nabiki then," Perfume self-corrected, "And Ukyo, and Shampoo. It chews you up

that the four of us are indulging in really hot sex together while you're

'Saving yourself' and insist on remaining a virgin. You could have all the sex

you want if you'd just give in and be honest with your emotions, but no! Not

you! You're too good for us, and it's beneath your dignity to share yourself

with either Ukyo or Nabiki!"

"I'm not too good for anybody," Ranma insisted before looking down, "Maybe not

good enough is what you mean to say..."

"That's what you say," Perfume replied, "I didn't say it. I certainly don't

think it either."

"Could've fooled me," Ranma glared.

"And what am I supposed to say to that?" Perfume asked, "That I think you're a

wuss because you cop out around Nabiki and Ucchan? Actually, I think you're a

pretty sweet guy, and I know you care a lot about Ukyo, and for the most part

you've been a pretty upstanding friend, right up to the time when you started

acting like you thought I was the very devil come a-calling, and quite frankly

I'm fed up with it. Stop making me the target of your insecurities and just

come out and admit it that you're getting cold feet and you're intimidated by

the thought of marrying four women."

"Four?" Ranma arched an eyebrow.

"I'm a part of this thing too, you know?" Perfume insisted, "By the laws of my

people, I'm married to Ukyo, just like Nabiki is married to Shampoo, and because

my Cousin and I lost a challenge match to you, we're obligated to respect your

engagement to our mutual Airen. It was Nabiki who came up with this proposal,

and it's entirely legal by the laws of my people, not yours. So-like it or

not-we're both linked together in this thing beyond our power to deny

it...unless you want to opt out altogether and leave us both to enjoy our

respective marriages without you in the equation."

Ranma narrowed his eyes and said, "Me leave? You think I'm gonna go back on my

word or something?"

"Oh, grow up!" Perfume snorted, "You're hiding behind that Japanese Bushido code

of yours, which is a pretty neat way of concealing the fact that you're starting

to have second thoughts about getting married to any of us. You're feeling

trapped and you're wondering how you let yourself get talked into any of this.

You're seventeen and you haven't even sowed your oats yet...among Amazons we'd

think you were afraid of commitment or something. Mousse-fool that he is-at

least tries to get my attention by challenging me to a fight, which is our idea

of foreplay, in case you haven't figured it out yet. Up until now I would have

thought you were more of a man than he is."

"You comparing me to that creep?" Ranma's nostrils flared, "Ain't no way Monkey-

boy would even compare to me in a straight fight."

"But he doesn't fight straight, or even fairly," Perfume replied, "The Hidden

Weapons Ryu uses subtlety and misdirection, two qualities in which you-I have

to say-are sorely lacking. You have to think quick on your feet in order to

dodge his attacks, and what if he challenges me again and tries to compel me or

Ukyo to marry him, which is still technically possible in a same-sex Amazon

marriage, a loophole for which our ancestors made allowances for the sake of

having children. Who then is going to defend us if you're too much of a wimp to

even try it?"

"Who are you calling a wimp?" Ranma growled, "Ain't no way I'd let that creep

come anywhere near Ucchan, especially in her condition."

"And what of me?" Perfume asked, "I'm trained to be the best fighter among the

Amazons, but I still have vulnerabilities that Mousse could take advantage of if

he wants an easy victory. My nervous system has been partially rebuilt, but I

still have a pain threshold that's considerably lower than yours, so if you have

no interest in me or anything that happens..."

"You calling me a chicken?" Ranma demanded, "I wouldn't even let him have a

crack at you. It ain't like I think you're weak or nothing, but like you say,

you got more vulnerabilities than I do."

"Care to try me on that," Perfume smiled, "I won't even use my axes to beat you,

Saotome."

Ranma's eyes narrowed once again, "Just what are you getting at? You

challenging me?"

"Call it what you like," Perfume smiled, and from seeming nowhere produced a

pair of aluminum Tonfas, "I've been working out with these as a less lethal

alternative to my axes. Never hurts to have a backup arsenal, as Mousse is fond

of pointing out. We'll call it a challenge match if you like...me against you

to decide which of us remains Ukyo's primary Airen. If you lose then you'll set

us both free and we'll find some other guy who could give Mousse more of a

challenge."

"Free?" Ranma cocked and eyebrow.

"You're only bound to her by a promise you made to your parents," Perfume

replied, "I'm giving you an honorable way of backing out if you're so hell-bent

and determined to go your own way. It's preferable to me allowing Ukyo and our

daughter to be raised by some weakling who only married us because he lacks the

guts to admit he was forced into it against his say-so."

"No way," Ranma said, "Ain't no way I'm fighting you over that."

"Who said you had a choice?" Perfume replied, and immediately began spinning her

tonfas as she fell back into a defensive position.

Ranma instinctively moved to assume a counter pose, automatically taking measure

of her extended reach and factoring in what he knew about her speed and power.

He privately hated to admit it, but Perfume was one fighter whose prowess was

far greater than anyone else he knew besides Nabiki, and underestimating her was

a quick way to learn about pain in all sorts of interesting places.

"You might need to use a weapon to defend yourself," Perfume smiled confidently,

"Bare handed as you are, you're less of a challenge."

Ranma privately conceded that she had a point, but he was loath to admit it,

especially since she was challenging the entire philosophy behind the school of

"Anything Goes" barehanded fighting. Months of practice with his father had

left him confident that he could deal with almost anything and would only need a

weapon as a last resort in some impossible situation.

This did-however-seem to come awfully close to fitting that definition...

Without warning she attacked, and had Ranma been napping by even a second he

would have been caught flat-footed. As it was he moved instinctively before he

had even framed the thought, ingrained reflexes sending muscles into coordinated

action as he dodged her lightning attacks and moved to avoid her follow up while

finding it next to impossible to counter or step inside of her defenses. A

vaulting leap carried him backwards out or range of her initial thrusts, closer

to the waterfall, where he knew she would not be willing to follow.

As he landed with perfect poise upon a rock near the edge of the lake he paused

to reflect on one corollary in their duel: Perfume knew a lot about him, having

studied his combat style every bit as much as he had observed hers in and out of

practice. So it was with horror that he looked down to find Perfume waiting for

him with one Tonfa outstretched to hook him by his ankle. A half-second to

reflect upon his danger, and then he found himself flipping backwards again-this

time involuntarily-and he landed right in the lake with his backside breaking

the surface of the water.

"Cool off, Saotome!" Perfume grinned, "No need for you to be such a hothead!"

"Why you-!" Ranma snarled as he surfaced in the two-foot-deep water, getting

his legs back under himself once again, then pausing to gather his energy for a

massive leap that carried him right out of the lake and hurtling back towards

the shoreline.

Perfume's smile melted off her face as realization of her peril sent her

instantly into her own evasive maneuvers. The water he carried with him was

every bit as dangerous to her as any retaliation that he might be planning, and

so she put herself well clear of it, which gave Ranma the chance he needed to

regain the advantage. Without pausing to dry himself off he leap to the attack,

taking advantage of the fact that his father's school was the Aerial branch of

"Anything Goes" combat. As his trousers yet contained a sufficient amount of

water to trigger a Jusenkyo curse if he connected, Perfume had no choice but to

evade him once again as he darted around her and maneuvered himself to place her

directly between him and the waterfall, cutting off her line of retreat into the

woods, where she would most DEFINITELY have had the advantage.

"Hah!" Ranma snorted, "Don't look so tough now, huh Kitty?"

Perfume surprised him with a smile and said, "Don't ever make questionable

assumptions like that when dealing with an Amazon, Saotome. HURRICANE ATTACK,

SPECIAL MANEUVER!"

All at once she whirled about with her Tonfas, her whole body spinning like a

top as she lashed out at him with blur of hurtling metal. Ranma was forced to

give ground as he tried to dive under her attack, only to see her leap skyward-

as though stealing a page from the Saotome Ryu-pausing like a bird with legs

tucked in close to her body. With a gracefulness that left him in awe he saw

her reach the nearest of the overhanging tree branches and land like a perching

vulture, then smile down at him as she taunted, "Try and catch me now, Saotome!

And don't even think of turning chicken, or I'll hunt you down and hurt you!"

"Why you..." Ranma said once again, but she seemed to flow into the forest

before he even had time to think of a better verbal counter.

This was not good, not by a longshot! Perfume was a Sentinel, in addition to

being a tribal Enforcer. Her senses and perceptions were superhumanly acute and

in an area providing that much cover she could melt into the background and wait

to strike without warning. No way would he have any advantages fighting on her

turf, and it would be folly for him to attempt it. The wise thing to do would

be to avoid the wooded areas altogether, or anyplace that might afford her

decent cover from which to launch an ambush. He could make his way back to camp

and pretend nothing had happened.

Instead he followed her into the forest, stubborn pride and a desire not to let

her question his manhood motivating him to ignore his own better judgement.

Besides, he wanted to wipe that smirk off her face, and something about this

whole brawl was starting to get him worked up like no other sparring match he'd

enjoyed in quite a while now.

He moved cautiously once he was past the first of the trees, taking stock of how

close the brush was and the amount of space that existed between bowels and

branches. There was just enough room for a fight with few margins of error in

between these spaces, so he knew that she could only come at him in a limited

number of ways. He was keen to allow his other perceptions to "prime" him so

that he would not be caught totally unawares by any sudden motion. He moved

carefully with each step touching ground, fully aware that no attempt by him to

conceal his footsteps would be effective with her acute senses of smell and

hearing.

[Oh man,] he thought to himself, [I gotta be nuts for doing this! She's got a

hundred different ways to come at me, and I'll only have maybe a second to

react, if that!]

Even as he thought this he began to move around a tree that was no more than six

inches wide. There was reasonably good visibility on all sides, and he was

certain that wherever she was hiding could not be too near to his position...so

certain, in fact, that when the handle of the Tonfa hooked his Adam's apple and

slammed him back into the tree he did not even see it coming, only heard the

Amazon's soft feminine chuckle.

"What's the matter, Saotome?" she asked, "Never heard of hiding in plain sight?

You have to be looking right at me to see me, and you let your guard down, which

in a real fight could prove fatal."

Ranma tried to free himself but found the strength with which she held him fast

was daunting. With the tree in the way between them he could not get at her

directly, and trying to maneuver at that point would have choked him as a single

move on her part could crush his windpipe.

"Admit it," Perfume said, "I'm a much better match for Ukyo than you could ever

be. You barely even know her after all of these months, while I can tell you

exactly where she likes to be kissed, where she's fond of being held, and how to

pleasure her in way you cannot even imagine."

Ranma grit his teeth and turned his head sideways, hoping to lessen the pressure

against his Adam's apple without exposing any major nerves that she might use

against him.

"It takes a woman to understand the needs of another woman," Perfume continued,

"And Ucchan fits so well into my arms. Did you know that she's ticklish? I

found that very surprising, especially on the feet if you tease them just

right..."

"Go to hell!" Ranma snarled.

"Oh, did I touch a nerve there?" Perfume chuckled, "Now maybe you know how I've

been feeling all this time watching you flirt with my wife, and Ukyo smiling at

you whenever you're near her. She used to be furious with her father for

engaging her to a boy she didn't even know, but sometimes she confides in me and

tells me that you're just the right match for her. I get so jealous sometimes

that it's practically like you're in bed with the two of us, only I know you

wouldn't even have the guts to try and take on two women by your lonesome."

"Bitch!" Ranma snarled, using an invective he had NEVER BEFORE used on any

woman.

"Yes I am," Perfume replied, "What are you going to do about it? Call in Nabiki

for support? Hey, in her guy form she's pretty hot. Of course as a woman she's

exceptional, so maybe you'd like to double team us?"

Ranma decided that there was only one way to break the uneven deadlock, much

though he hated to do it, as it would upset the local ecology. Since Perfume

was out of his reach, he could only attack the tree itself, which he proceeded

to do with his elbows. Three rapid-fire powerful blows were all it took to

splinter the bark and shatter the base itself while he summoned his inner Chi

and heaved against it, breaking through entirely.

Perfume was forced to let him go and back away as the tree virtually exploded

between them, sending sharp splinters in all direction. She whirled her Tonfas

as fast as she could to deflect the wooden shrapnel, but the cloud of bark was

just the obstruction Ranma needed to get in past her guard and deliver an upward

palm-thrust that picked her up and sent her flying backwards.

Perfume reflexively tensed up her muscles as she struck another tree with her

back, wincing as the messages of pain went out to all areas-lessened from what

she would once have suffered, but still far greater in intensity than would have

been felt by a normal person. She was incapacitated by her pain for just enough

time that Ranma could again close the distance, pressing himself up against her

with one arm over her Windpipe, the other immobilizing both arms as he held her

wrists together, preventing her from employing her Tonfas.

"Now-you gonna take back that stuff you said about me?" he snarled, for the

moment letting anger rule him as he used his superior male strength to hold her

in place.

Perfume tried to spit at him but found she could not get the aim, only glared at

him with her eyes and said, "Big man...forcing yourself on a woman."

"Shut up!" Ranma snarled, "You ain't just some woman! Or are you gonna try and

pretend that you're all innocent and dovey eyed? Well, I ain't falling for it!

You concede now or else..."

"Or else what?" she responded.

Ranma found himself at a loss about this point, not knowing where he should go

from there, and not even daring to let her go as the merest opening would be

enough for her to clobber him in one second. His leg pressed across hers was

keeping her from giving him a knee to the groin, but there was no telling how

many ways she could free herself from this position, and with her level of

training she was far too dangerous to be underestimated.

But as angry as he was he could not bring himself to even want to seriously hurt

her. She was only fighting for what she believed was Ukyo's best interests-as

much as her own-and besides...she was much too cute for him to want to see her

suffer...

Cute?

Where the heck had that thought come from?

"So..." she said as seconds dragged on into a full minute, "What are you going

to do now, Saotome? Let me go and we'll start this up again..."

"No way," Ranma replied, "You surrender, I've got the advantage."

"Seems to me I had the advantage over you a minute ago," she responded, "I could

have finished you then if I chose to."

"Yeah?" he asked, "So what?"

"So you either finish me now or admit I was right about you," Perfume replied,

"You're too much of a wimp to be my Airen's husband."

"Shut up!" Ranma snarled, unwilling to concede that she had a good point about

their relative positions. Unfortunately as he held her braced against the tree

he was a little too close to her to avoid noticing things he usually ignored,

such as the fact that she smelled pretty nice...almost like cinnamon mixed with

Rosemarie, or that-this close up-she was an extremely attractive young girl

with padding in all the right places...

Huh?

Ranma suddenly let her go and backed away with a dismayed look across his

features. Perfume found her sudden release almost too much of a good thing to

trust, so she did not immediately attack him but merely moved her head to unkink

her neck, then stood relaxed with Tonfas at the ready.

"So, you want to go at it again, eh?" she asked, "Well, I'm ready for you this

time."

"No way," Ranma would not even look at her, unwilling to meet her sapphire eyes

with his own deeply troubled expression, "I ain't fighting any more. Ain't no

point to it...no way."

"So," she frowned, "Are you ready to concede to me and release Ucchan from her

marital obligations?"

Ranma shook his head negatively, "No...I gave my word, I won't give her up."

"But you know that I am honor-bound to her as well," Perfume pointed out, "And

if you marry her, then I come with the package."

"Uh...yeah...so?" Ranma hoped his voice was not shaking as much as it sounded

like to his hearing.

"But don't you resent me for upbraiding you?" Perfume asked, inclining her head

as she studied his profile, "I called you a coward and challenged your manhood."

"Yeah, so what?" Ranma asked, "Proved you wrong, didn't I?"

"That remains to be seen," Perfume said slyly, "You know, when Ukyo has my baby,

the way will be clear for you to have one of your own with her. Officially-as

far as anyone else knows-our baby is your baby already. I can't exactly

acknowledge her in a legal sense, so my daughter needs a father, just like

Ucchan needs a husband if she's to escape the shame you Japanese attach to

unmarried women who have a baby. You've proved yourself a strong fighter once

again, but are you man enough to give my daughter a good role model of what it

means to be manly? Or...is she going to have to look up to Nabiki for that?"

"What's your point?" Ranma asked her.

"Just this, Saotome," Perfume said, "We both care about Ucchan, and we both want

what's best for her, and there's the potential in you to be the sort of man that

I wouldn't mind sharing her with, if you get your head out of your ass and stop

acting like such a hurt little brat. You know I never meant to steal husbanding

duties from you, but facts are inescapable, and now I'm going to have a baby

through Ucchan. Either deal with that or opt out of the marriage, it's your

choice either way...but I won't object if you stay. In fact...I might even be

persuaded to like you."

"Huh?" Ranma blinked his eyes, then reacted in surprise as he felt her lips

against his cheek as she leaned in close and kissed him.

"Think about it and get back to me," she smiled as she started to turn away,

"Ucchan deserves to know the truth about your feelings...and so does Nabiki.

Work this thing out for yourself and let us know when you're ready. Oh...and

you can come out now, Old Man. There's no sense in you hiding now that the

fighting is over."

"Huh?" Ranma said once again, when he saw the impossible happen as his father

stepped out from the concealment of a tree that could not have been more than

three inches wide, if that!

"I wasn't hiding for that reason, Girl," Genma said rather stiffly, "I just

thought you young people needed time to work things out for yourselves."

"Sure, whatever you say," Perfume replied as she started forward once again,

"Now if you'll excuse me, I've got to get back to camp. Ucchan's bound to be

wondering where I got off. See you later, Saotome."

And with that she sauntered through the trees with exaggerated motions of her

hip that left Ranma feeling even more confused than ever. He was so mesmerized

by the sight of her body movements that he almost did not react until the pack

landed before his feet, causing him to turn his attention back to the balding

man who was his father.

"What's that for?" he asked.

"Pick it up, Son," Genma said, "You and I are going to go on a training

mission."

"I thought we were doing that already."

"Don't get smart with me, Boy," Genma snapped, "This isn't a real training

mission, this is more like a family picnic with everyone gathered together to do

lunch together. A real training mission is out on the open road, getting a

taste of life and learning about things that you can't learn sitting around at

home or in a dojo. It was the way in which I trained Nabiki to be a top-notch

fighter, but I'll be damned if my own flesh and blood is going to take second

place to any girl, even her! You're going with me to train alone, and none of

the women are coming with us."

"But won't Nabiki object?" Ranma asked, "What will Mom say?"

"I've already spoken with your mother and she agrees," Genma replied, "We'll

only be gone for a week or two, long enough for you to get your head out of the

clouds and figure out what you want to do with the rest of your life. Besides,

it's about time you spent more time with your old man. As much progress as

you've made of late, there's still a lot more I have yet to teach you about the

Anything Goes Ryu."

"Just the two of us?" Ranma raised an eyebrow.

"Not quite," Genma said, "Ryoga will come with us to provide you with a training

partner."

"Ryoga?" Ranma blinked.

"He's the only boy I know who's even close to you as a fighter," Genma replied,

"And the two of you train well together. You both have similar styles, and

you're more competitive against him than you are with me, and you both don't

pull your punches. You'll both train and you'll become stronger fighters, and

maybe then you'll know what it is that you want to do with the rest of your

lives."

"I thought we already had that covered," Ranma said gruffly.

"I told you not to get smart with me," Genma's nostrils flared, "I know full

well that you've been having doubts about the impending marriage. I know

exactly how you're feeling...because I was there when I was your age. My

marriage to Nodoka was arranged, but don't think I wasn't tempted to look

elsewhere."

"Huh?" Ranma blinked again, "You mean...you and...somebody else beside Mom?"

"Is that so surprising?" Genma asked, "I used to be quite the fellow when I was

younger, before..." he felt the bandana covering his head and sighed, "Never

mind...ancient history. The point is...you need a good kick to the rear to get

the cobwebs out of your head, Boy. You've been with your mother too long, it's

time your old man showed you what it means to be a man, maybe even a fit husband

for Nabiki."

Ranma reached down and picked up the pack, "But...don't I gotta tell Nabiki or

something?"

"We'll tell her on the way," Genma said, "I left Ryoga back at camp...no sense

in having that Boy wandering around loose. He's just too much like his

mother..." he sighed, "Never mind...are you coming or not? Haven't got all

day...Son."

Very slowly Ranma nodded and slipped the pack around his shoulders, then said,

"Okay...Pop."

And so began a training mission that was destined to bring great changes in the

life of a boy named Saotome Ranma...

Part Eighty-Nine.

"Hey, Old Woman," Nabiki asked while she stretched herself out to loosen her

muscles after waiting an appropriate length of time to digest her lunch, "Mind

if I ask why you're pushing me to learn this stuff so aggressively? I mean, I

know why you'd want me to learn it, so I can defend our family and all that, but

considering how much I have to be dividing my time through pleasing you and

spending quality time with Sham-chan..."

"It is a reasonable enough question," the "old woman" in question replied,

"Consider it my way of appraising you as a potential heir, seeing as you have,

by marriage, usurped the place that should rightfully have gone to my great

granddaughter."

"Your heir?" Nabiki asked quizzically, "You thinking of making me the next

tribal Matriarch or something?"

"If you should live so long, and I decide one day to retire," Cologne answered,

"Mind you, I am taking time away from my duties in the tribe to attend to the

needs of my now-expanded family living in Japan. The Council of my fellow

Elders is currently presiding without me being underfoot, and no doubt some whom

I know much prefer this current situation. From time to time I will be called

away to resume my obligations to our people living in China, and in my absence

you will have to represent me and our people since you have chosen to remain in

Japan rather than move back with Shampoo to China. Mind you, I respect your

decision and will honor it...for the time being, but there may come a time when

there is a greater need for you to assert a more active role on behalf of your

adopted people, in which case I want you ready and able to uphold your

status...and that of Shampoo of course. Consider it a courtesy you owe your

wife for marrying her under such circumstances as might be jeopardized should a

rival claimant dare challenge your status."

"I see," Nabiki half-smiled, "Well, I'm flattered and all that, and you know

I'll always defend Sham-chan no matter who tries to challenge her, or me, and-

short of permanently relocating to China, I'll be happy to do whatever I can to

maintain your status. After all, we're family, right? But-no disrespect

intended-I just don't see myself as the matriarchal type."

"Neither did I, when I was your age," Cologne replied, "But you can never be too

successful in predicting the course of the future. That's why it pays to be

prepared for any eventuality, no matter how unlikely it may seem to us at the

present."

"Okay, I can go along with that," Nabiki said, "But still, some of these new

techniques you've been showing me, like this Shadowskills stuff..."

"Seems a bit extreme and excessive?" Cologne finished for her, "Tell me

truthfully, Daughter-in-law...would you rather know about an extremely dangerous

and deadly art or remain ignorant and risk the chance that you might one day

encounter someone who is its master?'

"Well, that's a no-brainer," Nabiki sniffed, "You can never have too much

knowledge of the art, even if you never have to put some of it to practical use.

Better fore-armed than disarmed..."

"And then what ultimately is the purpose of training if you never intend to use

it?" Cologne spoke a bit sharply, "You must train in a system regularly to keep

your skills up, and so as not to become too complacent or reliant on the humbler

arts that you will often employ against foes of a lesser caliber or status.

Even if you never actually must use the Shadowskills to win a battle, just

knowing the art will make you ten times the fighter that you are and strengthen

your more mundane skills to a point where few will challenge you and fewer still

will dare to attempt it on a second occasion. You don't actually have to kill

an enemy to know that he or she is defeated, but you must always make them know

that they were defeated by you in such terms that they will never dare to risk

angering you again. Only then can your family remain secure against potential

hazards. Never let your enemies know the full extent of your skills, and always

keep them guessing."

"Okay," Nabiki nodded, tossing her head to flip her warrior's braid around one

shoulder, "I think I got that part. It's like having a baby nuke in reserve,

just in case a handweapon won't serve as a deterrent. Of course I can't help

feeling like some kind of a top-gun or notorious fighter that everybody will be

setting their sights to challenge, just because I've got a Champion's status.

There isn't exactly a shortage of fighters in this world who think they have a

shot at stealing my title."

"Very true," Cologne replied, "And only some of them will be Amazons, but a

proud warrior is best served by affecting the art of appearing humble. Humility

is not exactly a prime asset of yours, but if you were to appear humble and

unassuming before those who come to face the great and powerful Tendo Nabiki,

they might be persuaded into thinking you are just some harmless slip of a girl,

and that is bound to make them careless."

"Heh, see what you're getting at there," Nabiki smirked, "Well, lots of people

have underestimated me in the past, don't see any reason not to keep them

guessing. Better they be the ones to make that mistake than me, but still...you

really think a Killing Art is going to make all that much of a difference for me

as a fighter?"

"Ask yourself that question," Cologne pointed out, "You felt bad when you caused

the death of the Road Ronin, even though you knew that he was a merciless and

pitiless killer who had sought the life of your wife and child and would have

done the same to the rest of your loved ones. Odds are that you must be

prepared in case another challenger faces you who does not scruple to use death

and psychology as prime weapons. Not everyone in the world has a strong sense

of honor, nor can you always count on them fighting you fairly without seeking a

dishonorable advantage."

"It's kind of depressing hearing you put it in those terms, Grandmother," Nabiki

sighed, "Life should be about more than just fighting and killing. Having a

baby through Sham-chan's reminded me of that, and that's why I want to be more

of the sort of a person that little Lylac can look up to when she gets older."

"You are learning, Child," Cologne nodded sagely, "Becoming a parent is the most

important duty that either of us could know in our lives, but we must never let

ourselves become blinded nor complacent in our enjoyment of a domestic life.

You must learn to balance within yourselves the Yin and the Yang of a home life

with the martial duties of a Warrior and a provider. Ask yourself this

question...what is the primary reason that you study to be a martial artist?"

"Well...to defend myself, for one thing," Nabiki said, "And to protect the

people I care about, like my friends and family..."

"And what more than this do you have as a motive for study?" Cologne inquired.

"Huh?" Nabiki blinked, "Well...what else is there? Nothing I can think of

that's more important."

"Are you so certain of this?" the old woman asked shrewdly, "Consider the

Shadowskills in their entirety, and the women who had no choice about learning

its mastery. Ages ago the Khmer Kings of Kampuchea resolved to make a pleasing

sport for themselves and their courtiers by trying something that was considered

novel in that time...employing female slaves as gladiator-like boxers. The idea

came to them when an Amazon fell into their possession, and seeing her warrior

spirit-how she dominated the arena and would allow no man to humble or break

her spirit-inspired a young Emperor, bored with the normal affairs of his

dynasty, to employ this Amazon as a trainer and have her teach female slaves how

to fight. Thus began the Karuda system of the Shadowskills from such humble

beginnings. The women had no choice about learning how to fight...and because

they were slaves, they were expected to fight with their hands cuffed in chains,

thus limiting their movements."

"Not very sporting of those Cambodian types," Nabiki sniffed, "Limiting a boxer

to using their feet more than their hands is pretty limiting..."

"Oh, they did train in normal Thai boxing," Cologne duly noted, "But in the

arena they had to rely more on their feet to gain the advantage. In time they

became very effective fighters, and then one day they rose up in revolt against

their masters, having just as effectively learned to move beyond their physical

limitations. These days their former Kingdom lays in ruins, but the

Shadowskills lives on, as do those who boldly practice it, an all but forbidden

art that few can master, let alone challenge."

"Huh, serves them right in my book," Nabiki said, "So...how do I rate so far in

your opinion?"

"Well," Cologne smiled shrewdly, "You're no Seville, but you're coming along

nicely..."

"That's nice to hear."

"Ranchan?" Nabiki turned around at the sound of her iinazuke's voice, delighted

that he had returned from wherever he had gotten off to as she found herself

enjoying his company more and more of late, whenever other duties were not so

pressing.

Her immediate smile dampened, however, when she got a look at his expression.

There was something seriously wrong about the way he was regarding her, some

hint of deepm emotional conflict that was roiling beneath the surface, and

immediately she began to feel apprehensive.

"Son-in-law," Cologne spoke before Nabiki, "You seem troubled by something. Is

there anything the matter?"

"Ah...well...nothing's wrong," Ranma said evasively, and in what clearly sounded

like an insincere denial, "I just wanted a minute with Nabiki...is that all

right?"

"By all means," Cologne hopped onto her staff and began to move away, "Take your

time, she is your fiancée."

"Yeah," Ranma said, glancing down before meeting the gaze of his (primary)

iinazuke, "Ah...Nabiki..."

"Yes, Ranma-kun?" Nabiki asked cautiously, deeply troubled by what she was

reading in his expression.

"Um...look," Ranma said, "I'm gonna take off for a while with Pop...he wants me

to train with him for a bit, so...you gonna be all right with that?"

"Train?" Nabiki blinked her eyes as she caught sight of Genma standing a little

ways off to the side, "I thought that was what we were doing..."

"Yeah...well...Pop thinks I could use some improvement," Ranma shrugged,

"Ryoga's coming with us so I got somebody to train against..."

"Well hey," Nabiki said, "You need somebody to train against, you've already got

me."

"I know," Ranma said, but then hesitated, "It's Pop's idea, but I think he

thinks I need some time to train alone..."

"Alone?" Nabiki's pleasant mood evaporated, "OYAGI! What are you up to now?"

"I'm not up to anything, Girl!" Genma called back, "I'm just taking my son to

receive some special training with his old man. You have a problem with that?"

"I do if you're going to go dragging my boyfriend around on one of your stupid

schemes," Nabiki growled, "What did I tell you would happen the last time you

pulled something like this?"

"This has nothing to do with any of that, Nabiki," Genma folded his arms over

his barrel-like chest, "My son's training is my business more than yours, at

least until after you both get married, and in my opinion he's lacking behind

where he ought to be. He has the potential to be a lot better, and I'm going to

see to it he trains a lot harder than he's been doing with you women all around

him trying to monopolize his attention."

"WHAT?" Nabiki rounded on her former trainer, "What the hell are you talking

about? We're not in the way of Ranma or his training..."

"That's what you say," Genma said firmly, "But I've been watching you and Kuonji

leaning on him for support, and neither one of you is spending enough time

looking after the Boy's needs. All I see and hear are people cutting my son

down and making him feel small and useless all of the time, and there's a limit

to what any man should have to take before his confidence in his own skills

begins to falter."

"W-What?" Nabiki reacted as if slapped, "We're not leaning on Ranma! Ranchan,

what the hell is your stupid old man talking about...?"

"He's not a stupid old man," Ranma said with surprising defensiveness, "He's my

father, and I...I think he's gotta point..."

"You...what?" Nabiki turned an incredulous look in his direction.

"Look, it's got nothing to do with you, okay?" Ranma said, "I just need some

time to work out by myself. It's been...kinda crazy here lately...I just need

some space..."

"Space?" Nabiki repeated the word as if she were unfamiliar with the concept,

"But...I don't get it! What's wrong, Ranma? Why do you want to leave me...?"

"I don't wanna leave," Ranma said, "But I gotta get away for a few days...think

things over...I mean...I'm not really leaving you or anything, I just need time

to myself..."

"With Ryoga...and your father," Nabiki said sourly, "But not with me?"

"I told you," Ranma said, "It's got nothing to do with you. I'm not running

away...it's not like I'm gonna be gone for ten years or anything like that, it's

just for a couple of weeks. I'll be back before you know it."

"Before I know it?" Nabiki said, "What makes you think I can go that long

without you?"

"Oh come on," Ranma said, "You don't need me around here that much."

"Yes I do!" Nabiki insisted, "I need you!"

"No you don't," Ranma said without meeting her imploring gaze, "You don't need

me...you've got Shampoo and her kid. They're the ones who need you right now.

I'm just in the way around here..."

"NO YOU'RE NOT!" Nabiki surprised herself with the force of her own statement,

"Ranma, where did you ever get the idea that you're not needed? I need you

now...more than ever, in fact! You're too important to me to just go running

off with your crazy old man right now when I'm doing all I can to hold

everything together..."

"You'll do all right," Ranma said, "You always manage to keep it together. I

know you can handle even these four-o'clock feedings that the kid's been putting

us through, and with Mom, Kasumi and the others helping out, you won't exactly

be doing all the work by yourself. Besides, Shampoo's got everything else

covered. I'm just in the way right now, and I gotta get out for a while so I

can catch my breath, know what I'm saying?"

"No, I don't understand what you're saying," Nabiki said angrily, turning around

as she growled, "Oyagi, what the hell have you been putting in his head...?"

"It wasn't me," Genma replied, "Stop blaming everyone else for the way things

have been going lately. You've been too wrapped up in your own problems to pay

much attention to anything else lately, girl. Consider this a favor to you,

giving the both of you more time to get your heads together before you go

through the trouble of getting officially married."

"What the hell are you talking about?" Nabiki demanded, turning an astonished

look towards Ranma, "What problems?"

"You see?' Ranma said, "That's just it. You don't know, Nabiki...you think

you're on top of everything, but you're not. Hey, it's not really your

fault...you're doing great, all things considered. I can't think of anybody

else who could do as much to keep things going the way you have but...well...I

just don't feel like I'm a part of the picture any more. It's like you're

shutting me out, like I'm not really as important to you as Shampoo or the baby.

I mean...I don't got nothing against you putting them first and all

that...but...it's like we're not a partnership any more. It's like you expect

me to just nod my head and go along with anything you come up with. It's

like...like I've become your sidekick or something..."

"Sidekick?" Nabiki turned to fully look at the younger man, "Ranma...I'm

not...you can't mean...you really think I don't care about you anymore?"

"I'm not saying that," Ranma said, "Well...actually, what am I to you now

anyway? I don't feel like an equal, I feel like some kind of damned attachment,

like I'm becoming 'Mister Nabiki...'" he paused then said, "No...that didn't

come out right..."

"But Ranma...you're important to me," Nabiki insisted, reaching out to grip him

by the arms as she stared up into his face, becoming aware of the fact that (in

her female form) he actually stood a few inches above her (and when did that

happen, she asked with dull amazement, having failed to take notice of a recent

growth-spurt on his part), "I care about you...I need you. I-I never thought

the time I spent with Sham-chan was coming out of the time we could be spending

together..."

"I know," he said, "I...I don't want you to change anything. It's not like you

asked for it or meant for any of this to happen, but...well...I don't feel

important anymore. It's not just you...it's Ukyo too...the same thing's

happening with her. She spends all her time with Perfume and I'm lucky if I get

anything left to myself. You got any idea what that feels like? Do you?"

Nabiki stepped away, shocked at the note of hurt in his voice, as if it had

never even occurred to her before now that her fiancée might be feeling so

excluded.

"Look," he took her hands in his own and held them together, "It ain't really

about you...it's my problem, I'm the one whose gotta get it together. I

mean...what good am I if I can't stop having these feelings? It's been gnawing

at me for weeks, and...and I don't wanna hurt you or anything, but I gotta get

away and think about everything. I'll be back just as soon as I've got it

figured out. I just need a few days, and it ain't like I'm running away to

China or nothing like that..."

Nabiki just stared at him, a well of emotions surging up in her as she tried to

make sense of what the young man before her was saying. In a hesitant voice she

asked, "It...it's isn't because of the baby...is it? I mean...I know I...I

can't give you one myself...at least not right away..."

"It ain't about the kid," Ranma said, then paused as he thought a moment, then

added, "Well...okay...maybe that's got something to do with it...but it ain't

your fault and I'm not blaming you about any of that. That ain't what I wanna

marry you for...you know that, don't you?"

"Do I?" Nabiki asked in a very small voice, "I...I know I'm not much of a

woman...heck, I'm not even a woman half the time..."

"Are you kidding?" Ranma forced himself to give her a little smile, "You're more

of a woman than I know what to do with...most of the time anyhow. I don't think

any less of you on account of that, Nabiki...you're somebody who's very special

to me. I...I don't want you thinking I'm rejecting you or anything like that."

"But you think I'm shutting you out of my life," Nabiki's voice trembled and she

fought against the tears that were forming in her eyes, "So you're shutting me

out of your world..."

"Don't be so melodramatic, Girl," Genma snorted, "You heard my son, he's still

committed to honoring his promise to marry you. But be honest about it, and be

fair...do you really want the Boy to be going into this without any confidence

in himself or how he stands in your estimation? Do you want him to marry you

feeling resentful and neglected just because of a pledge your father made with

me before you were both a gleam in the eyes of your mothers? Do you want him

feeling less than a full partner, especially since your skills are currently so

much greater than his?"

"No," Nabiki found that single word hard to force out from her lips, "I don't

want Ranma doubting himself...or me...but how can I prove to you that you still

matter to me, Ranchan?"

"By waiting for me until I get back," Ranma replied, "If you can do that for me,

then I'll know I'm still important in your eyes, Nabiki. I'll be back again

before you even know I've been gone, and that's a promise."

"Then you've already broken your promise," Nabiki's voice shook as a surprising

note of bitterness crept into her tones, "Because I'll miss you if you gone for

five minutes! I don't want you to go...but...but if you think you have to..."

Ranma did something that surprised him almost as much as it did Nabiki, his hand

moving as though it had a mind of its own to cup her chin and turn it up towards

him, then-acting on another impulse that would have astonished anyone who truly

knew them-he tipped his own face closer to hers and kissed her on the lips,

hesitantly at first, but then with greater sincerity the longer that it lasted.

A half a minute later their lips parted, and then Ranma moved away, looking at

his iinazuke with very wide eyes, as if stunned speechless at his own behavior.

"I'll be back," he said after a full minute of silence hung between them, "I

promise."

"That's enough, Boy," Genma struggled to keep his face impassive, though his

eyes crinkled with the hint of a smile, "Save the rest for when you're on your

honeymoon. Nabiki...you stay and train with the old woman. You've been

learning a lot from her, and I want you to get strong...stronger than you are

now, stronger than you've ever been in your life, because when Ranma comes back,

he's going to show you just how much he's improved as a fighter."

"Huh?" Ranma blinked, "I am?"

Genma did not answer directly, rather he turned and called out, "You hear that,

Old Woman? I'm making it a formal challenge! Your apprentice against my

son..."

"Interesting," Cologne said as she seemed to appear from out of nowhere, "You

would pit these young people against each other?'

"Isn't that the Amazon way?" Genma asked, "The flaw that's always been in this

whole five way engagement is that it all revolves around my son. Ranma defeated

Perfume, Ukyo and Shampoo, which makes his engagement to them legal by your

interpretation of things...but he's never actually defeated Nabiki. She remains

the strongest fighter of her generation, which is only natural since that's the

way I trained her."

"And so you want him to defeat her," Cologne remarked with a deceptively calm

expression, "Which, by Amazon law, would make their marriage both official and

legal."

"My boy will become strong...much stronger than he is now," Genma avowed, "And

when I think he's ready, he will come back and prove to Nabiki that he is fully

her equal. He won't just do well against you, girl...he will defeat you."

"Defeat me?" in spite of Nabiki's concern for Ranma's ego, her own pride caused

her to frown as she responded, "Not likely."

"Oh?" Genma seemed genuinely approved, "Do you want to make a little wager on

that? Ranma will best you in an honest fight and he will become your husband,

and you will learn to treat him like an equal and not leave him feeling like a

fifth wheel in his own marriage. Do you hear that, boy? Two weeks from now the

two of you will fight, and you will prove that you are my son by showing the

Girl that you are the superior fighter."

"IN TWO WEEKS?" Ranma's voice arched sharply.

"You really think your son can improve that fast in such a short span of time?"

Cologne mused, "Now that I would honestly like to see happen, if it is even

possible. My Daughter-in-law is easily the strongest warrior of her

generation...IF she can manage to maintain her concentration during her

lessons."

"I know, I know," Nabiki winced, turning back to Ranma, "Are you really serious

about this, Ranchan? You really want to train to defeat me?"

"Ah...do I got a choice?" Ranma asked a bit weakly.

"No!" both Genma and Cologne said together.

"Then...guess I gotta train hard, huh?" Ranma shuffled his feet and said, "That

okay with you, Nabiki?"

"You really want to know my opinion?" Nabiki arched an eyebrow, but then she

sighed and said, "Sure...you do what you have to, Ranma."

The two of them exchanged looks, no other words being adequate to describe their

emotions as they silently took stock of the state of their relationship. Things

had been said that could not be taken back, and a challenge had been issued and

explicitly accepted, leaving no way out of the pledge of battle that now stood

between them like a lead weight tied to both of their necks. Ranma felt a

tightness in his throat as he committed to memory the features of his iinazuke,

even as Nabiki memorized every detail of the young man who was to be her

husband, and silently they promised that there would be an accounting the next

time they set eyes upon one another...

"Well, you're back at last, Sugar," Ukyo said as she saw Perfume approach their

campfire, "Where the heck did you get off to? I've been calling your name..."

"I know," Perfume said, then surprised everyone by pausing at the edge of the

camp, not taking her usual place besides Ukyo, as had become her normal pattern.

"What's up?" Keiko asked as she noticed the pensive expression of the Enforcer,

"You look like somebody stole one of your axes or something."

"I...I think I may have just fucked something up royal," Perfume murmured as she

looked away, "I meant to help out, but...well...things didn't turn out like I

planned..."

"Huh?" Ukyo responded, "What do you mean, Per-chan?"

"Ah...well..." Perfume hesitated.

"I think I perceive something here," Kodachi murmured, "Let me go out on a limb

and suggest that this has something to do with Saotome Ranma...am I correct?"

"Ranma?" Akane reacted, "What has that baka done now?"

"He hasn't done anything," Perfume spoke up, "And I really wish, for once, that

you wouldn't jump all over him like you do, Tendo. After all, the guy is

practically your brother..."

"Huh?" Akane blinked, surprised at this response, "What are you jumping all over

me for? I just asked a simple question."

"Per-chan," Ukyo turned from where she was seated on a log to study the

expression of her Amazon wife, "What did you do...what did you say to Ranchan?"

Perfume moved over to a nearby tree and leaned her back against it, folding her

arms over her chest and visibly sulking.

"That bad, huh?" Keiko asked with mild apprehension.

"I wanted to talk some sense into him," Perfume said, "He's been taciturn and

non-communicative ever since we got back from the hospital, and I wanted to have

it out with him...only...I may have said too much and hurt his pride, which

wasn't what I intended."

"So you hurt the baka's pride," Akane shrugged, "That isn't too hard, take it

from me. I've known him since we were both six, he'll get over it.'

"I don't think so," murmured Kasumi, "At least...not the way you mean that,

Imoutochan."

"Huh?" Akane looked at her older sister.

"I'm afraid I must agree with your Oneechan's assessment, Akane-chan," Kodachi

observed, "Ranma's recent behavior suggests that he is suffering a delayed

reaction to the events of recent history. His pride has suffered much, and with

it his self-esteem as a martial artist."

"I get it," Keiko remarked, "It's not just jealousy about losing out on the

chance at being the first one to father a child in his own marriage..."

"HUH?" Ukyo reacted to this part of the statement with lifted eyebrows.

"...But his self-esteem as a fighter has suffered as well," the redhead

continued as if not interrupted, "And that could have a way uncool effect on the

state of his four-way engagement."

"Wait a second here!" Ukyo demanded, "What do you mean he's jealous? Since when

did that happen?"

"Since a few weeks ago," Perfume replied, "When he started having doubts about

himself, and when he started getting jealous about me getting you pregnant."

"WHAT?" Ukyo lurched to her feet, somewhat ungainly as she was feeling slightly

off her center, "What did you say to him anyway? Why is Ranchan jealous of that

now after telling me he understood things?"

"He understood for about as long as no one rubbed his nose in it," Perfume

looked away, "I accused him of being a hypocrite after he accused me of that.

I...kinda said more than I meant to, and...I guess I got just a little bit catty

with him..."

"Hmmm...no surprise there," Keiko mused, "I'd probably have said a lot worse in

your situation."

"Yes," Kodachi agreed, "But coming from someone with whom Ranma expects to

enjoin a relationship, such barbed words can only have had a reinforced negative

impact."

"I don't care if his feelings are hurt enough," Akane growled, "Ranma had no

business getting upset with you just because of something you had no control

over."

"No control?" Perfume replied, "It was my lack of control that got Ucchan

pregnant in the first place...but why are you always so hard with him? I can at

least understand where Ranma is coming from, but why must you always pick a

fight with him and call him names? You should try being more sympathetic,

Tendo. I know I should have been...but I let myself get angry."

"I don't understand," Ukyo shook her head in dismay, "Ranma got into a fight

with you over me?"

"Over you...and over Nabiki," Perfume replied, "Don't forget, she's been

spending a lot of time with Shampoo, even before she had her baby."

"And he's jealous of that?" Akane snorted, then wondered at the looks she was

suddenly receiving, "What? What did I say...?"

"Akane-chan," Kodachi murmured softly, "Perhaps you should refrain from further

commentary until you have taken sufficient time to think about your comments."

"I feel sorry for Ranma," Kasumi sighed, "And Nabiki too...Imoutochan has been

so absorbed into the task of being a good mother that she has tended to neglect

him, and he finally has started to question his worth and ability to contribute

to the marriage. I...meant to tell Nabiki that...but...I got a bit

distracted..."

"No kidding," Keiko dryly remarked.

"We have noticed," Kodachi said with an equally subtle hint of amusement.

"Ranma thinks Nabiki and I are ignoring him because we have babies?" Ukyo

blinked her eyes, "I need to find him and go talk to him...that...Jackass..."

"You'd better hurry," Perfume said, "His father plans on taking him out for a

two week training mission with Ryoga. I...sort of overheard them talking..."

"WHAT?" Ukyo reacted as if she had been slapped, "He's doing what? That old

fool! What could he be thinking?"

"That Ranma needs time to himself to get his head on straight," Perfume

answered.

"That is logical," Kodachi remarked, "If Saotome is feeling an acute inferiority

complex, the only cure for it would be to reinforce his self-image through

intensive training...take his mind away from any perception of inadequacy..."

"Inadequacy," Ukyo fumed, "I'll show him something to feel inadequate about!

How dare he even think about leaving me abandoning AGAIN when I need him around

to help me out! Just because he didn't put this baby in my body is no reason

for him to think he can escape parental duties!"

"That's good," Kasumi said, "You should tell him that yourself."

"Huh?" Ukyo whirled around with a much-surprised expression.

"Ranma needs to hear directly from you that he is still important in your life,"

Kodachi assured, "His problem derives from the fact that both you and Nabiki

have tended to take his support for granted."

"For granted?" Ukyo reacted, "I never took Ranchan for granted! I've always

stood by him and I've taken his side on almost everything..."

"By telling him that he's almost as good as Nabiki?" Perfume asked softly, "That

he's the second best fighter of our generation?"

"Exactly," Ukyo replied, then blinked her eyes and said, "Oh."

"I don't see what the problem is," Akane said, "So he's the second best around.

Used to be he was the best, and he tended to rub peoples' noses in it, including

me. Serves him right to get set back in his place, and I don't see why you of

all people are defending him, Kodachi."

"Maybe because I feel guilty for my own part in undermining his self-image,"

Kodachi sighed, "I was too proud...and not very understanding of when he started

to take an interest in me. We were childhood friends and he thought me

attractive enough to develop a crush at an early age, only back then I was...not

entirely myself, and I tended to snub him...why? To this day I still ask myself

that very question."

"Maybe he wasn't really your type," Keiko pointed out.

"My dear Kei-chan," Kodachi smiled, "My type back then would have been just

about anyone who seemed in the least bit interesting and mysterious. Ranma was

a known commodity, and so he held little interest. Had he been indifferent or

just a little bit enigmatic or unknown, he would have caught my attention in a

very favorable manner. Perhaps if I had gone out with him on dates and gave him

a chance to impress on me his qualities as a boyfriend, I might now be engaged

in a relationship...not that I have any complaints about the way things turned

out between us."

"Hmph," Keiko sniffed, "Well...I suppose...if you're into that type..."

"I might well have been, if I had given myself that chance," Kodachi sighed,

"Perhaps if my brother were here he might find a way to cheer Ranma up. They

understand each other quite well after so many years of close friendship..."

"I...I need to find Ranma," Ukyo turned and said, "You'll help me find him,

won't you, Per-chan?"

"Sure I'll help you," Perfume said, "But...I don't think I should be there when

you talk to him. I may have burned my bridges with Saotome with some of the

harsh things I said..."

"Never mind that," Ukyo took her Amazon wife by the arm and drew her along, even

as Akane spoke up, "Hey...wait a minute! Did I hear right that Ryoga is going

on a training mission with Ranma...?"

"Well," Ryoga asked as Ranma and Genma appeared at where he had been standing

near the clearing, "How did Nabiki take it?"

"Ah...well..." Ranma looked down, "You know Nabiki...she wanted to make sure I

looked after myself, and well...she kinda acted like I'd never been on a

training trip before."

"Well," Ryoga shrugged, "You haven't."

"Sure I did," Ranma said, "Lots of times with Pop. Just...ah...haven't done it

lately..."

"You'll get used to it, Boy," Genma replied, "We won't be completely roughing

it, like we did back then when you were little. I've learned a few things about

living off the land from my time with Nabiki. We won't be gone too long, just

enough for you two boys to train the way you should have been trained if I

hadn't left you with your mother."

"My mother trained me how to fight," Ryoga pointed out, "I may not have seen her

for a while now, but I've been keeping up on my training."

"Yeah, but why is that, huh?" Ranma turned to his companion, "You've been living

with us at the Tendo's for a while now, but you could have gone back home at any

time, all you needed to do was ask for directions."

"Maybe," Ryoga remarked, "I was going to ask Akane to come with me back to meet

my mother, but...well...I kind of forgot..."

"Maybe we should try finding the place," Genma mused, "I remember the place you

were living at when Nabiki and I were living in that area, and it's not too far

removed from here. Well, there's time enough for that. We might as well get on

our way before somebody tries to talk their way into joining us...like that girl

over there," he nodded off to the side as his eyes turned in a sidelong

direction.

"Huh?" Ranma turned in time to see an angry Ukyo stalking towards him (he also

noticed Perfume hovering back at the edge, clearly not wanting to renew their

previous altercation), at which point he gasped "Ucchan?"

"Don't tell me you were thinking of leaving without talking to me, you Jackass!"

Ukyo almost snarled as she approached him, "And where is it you think you are

going, Ranchan?"

"Ahhh...well, Ucchan..." Ranma stuttered.

"Don't you 'Ahhh, well, Ucchan' me!" Ukyo thundered, coming to stand right in

his face with a very agitated expression, "And what's this about you going off

with your deadbeat old man while leaving me alone with my baby?"

"You won't be alone, Girl..." Genma started to say, only to have Ukyo shift her

wrath in his direction.

"YOU KEEP OUT OF THIS!" the brown haired girl snapped, "You are the VERY LAST

person whom I want to hear from on this subject! Just because you could abandon

your wife and son for ten long years doesn't mean you get to talk to me, the

GIRL you abandoned when I was still a young and innocent child, you got that?"

"Urk!" Genma reacted with predictable trepidation, "Sure...whatever you say..."

"Ucchan..." Ranma started to say.

Ryoga winced and privately sympathized with his friend's dilemma but kept well

out of the way, only too grateful that he was not himself the recipient of the

glare that the Okonomiyaki chef was giving her fiancée.

"Well?" she rounded back on him, "I'm waiting to hear a good explanation for why

you have to go running off and leaving me here at a time when I really need you.

And don't go telling me that just because you had a talk with Nabiki that counts

as squaring things with me, you got that?"

"Ah...yeah, I got it," Ranma backed away a half-step, waving his hands in a

deflecting-disarming manner, "But really...it's not like that at all..."

"It's not?" Ukyo asked skeptically.

"I wasn't going to leave you alone forever," Ranma insisted, "I'm just going on

a two week training trip with my father. I was going to tell you about it,

honest!"

"You were?" Ukyo frowned, "Why do I have trouble believing this, and what

exactly was it that passed between you and Perfume anyway? She made it sound as

if you two were fighting or something..."

"Fighting?" Ranma gasped, "Whatever made you think that? Who said anything

about fighting?"

"Ranchan," Ukyo growled, "What exactly did you two do anyway? She seemed

awfully upset about something..."

"Uh...nothing," Ranma said evasively, "We just...talked...and then she kissed

me."

"Urk!" Perfume reacted, not having anticipated that particular element being

brought to the attention of their mutual love interest.

"What?" Ukyo turned a puzzled look Perfume's way, "You kissed him, Per-chan?"

"Ah...well..." the Enforcer hesitantly reacted.

"Ah, there you are, Ranma," a pleasant voice called out, diverting everyone's

attention to the august person of Nodoka, "I wanted to see you off on your

training mission and to give you and Ryoga these boxed lunches that Kasumi and I

went to the trouble of packing."

"Oh...ah..." Ranma said as the Saotome matron handed him one of the wrapped

boxed lunches, then handed another over to Ranma, so he awkwardly said, "Thanks,

Mom..."

"Thank you, Saotome-san," Ryoga bowed to her, "I appreciate your going to all

the trouble."

"Ah, Ukyo," Nodoka beamed brightly, "You and Perfume have come to see my son

off. You really must be proud of your iinazuke, he's going to challenge Nabiki

for a formal Amazon-style marriage."

"He what?" both of the above named girls chorused together, but for different

specific reasons.

"Husband," Nodoka turned to address herself to Genma, "I know you wish to train

our son in the arts that you used to make Nabiki a strong fighter, but I would

like to make one small request, that-contrary to the philosophy that you follow

under your master-Ranma should be allowed to carry with him a single weapon.

I've trained him in its use and I would be most pleased if he used it as a part

of his training."

With that she reached into her sash and pulled out a wooden bokken.

"Aw Mom..." Ranma winced slightly.

"Nodoka," Genma said, "I know you mean well, and I understand your wanting to

train the boy in your own Kendo Ryu, but still..."

"Please?" she asked, giving him a particularly sweet expression.

"Urk," Genma wavered, then caved in, "Well...I suppose he could take it with

him, but still...I would insist on deciding the course of his training."

"Of course, Dear," Nodoka replied, "Don't be too long on your training mission.

I don't think I would be able to restrain Nabiki and the others if they begin to

wonder too much on when you will be returning."

"Yes dear," Genma replied, clearly wanting to remain in his wife's good graces.

"Keep this with you at all times, my son," Nodoka said as she handed Ranma his

bokken, "You never know when it might save your life."

Ranma accepted the wooden sword reluctantly, but like his father he refused to

voice any outward complaint for fear of landing on the wrong side of his mother.

"Now Ukyo," Nodoka turned around and took the younger girl by her arm, "I think

it would be best if we let the men go about their mission. You and Perfume can

get re-acquainted with your fiancée when he returns in another two weeks, until

then we can plan for their homecoming, after Ranma defeats Nabiki and wins her

hand by Amazon law, won't that be nice?"

"Nice?" Ukyo seemed to be considering that question, but proved in the end to be

no more willing than Ranma to contradict her future mother-in-law.

"Take care of yourselves," Nodoka said as she turned her smile back towards

their masculine counterparts, "And try to stay out of trouble...as much as you

are able."

"We'll try, wife," Genma nodded simply.

"As much as we're able," Ryoga nodded gruffly.

"We'll be back soon," Ranma agreed, "And Mom...thanks for everything. Look

after Ucchan and Nabiki for me, will you?"

"Of course," Nodoka warmly smiled on her son, "They're all my family now, and

I'll look after them like they were my own daughters."

"Thanks," Ranma said, retrieving his back-pack and waving at Ukyo before

departing with his father and Ryoga, "We'll talk when I get back, Ucchan...and

don't worry, I will be back, you'll see."

"Ah...okay, Ranchan," Ukyo relented, wondering why she had a sudden sense of

premonition, as though something was not quite right about the whole situation,

but not having a clearer understanding of why she should feel that way she kept

her silence and watched her fiancée depart on his training mission.

"Whew," Ryoga heaved a sigh of relief once they were fully out of sight, "I

thought for a minute there that we wouldn't get away..."

"Yeah, me too," Ranma agreed, "Good thing Mom intervened when she did..."

"That's the good thing about your mother, Boy," Genma said, "When she wants to

be, she can be very...diverting."

"Huh?" Ranma said, then thought about it and said, "Pop...is that any way to

talk about Mom?"

"Some day you'll understand, Boy," Genma replied, hiding a smile as he refrained

from further comment on that PARTICULAR area of interest, deciding to save that

talk for another, very different training mission...

Continued.

Comments/Criticisms/Widespread Circulation: shadowmane

Now that the boys have made their "hasty escape," their adventures begin anew as

Genma begins to enlighten his son about the nature of fighting, while Ryoga

learns a few things about his own past, but...what's this? Someone else they

encounter a mysterious warrior whose identity (to put it mildly) proves quite

surprising. Tune in next time for, "The Boy from Yokohama," or "A Tale of Two

Saotome Ranma's"...be there!

X

If you wish to check out my other works, Please check out my Fanfiction

webpage at: .

All related chapters of this series can be found there along with my

other works.


	35. Chapter 35

Dnabiki90

Nabiki 1/2,

"A Very Scary Thought!"

by

Jim Robert Bader

(Inspired by the works of Rumiko Takahashi & others)

Part Ninety.

"Again!" snapped assistant Instructor Tendo Natsume as she conducted the

afternoon class in the regimen of advanced katas, "Step into your punches, don't

hold back on your power! Stay focused and balanced and do not overcommit. Now,

from the top, BEGIN!"

The class of fifteen advanced students all moved forward as one body, punching

as their right feet slapped the floor together, making a sound that was a

combination "stomp" with the punctuated snap of their martial arts gis as their

fists thrust out at shoulder level. All fists were perfectly formed in the

classic "holding a roll of quarters" style that had the first two knuckles aimed

at the imaginary impact points directly before them, no one daring to hold their

hands or arms improperly, nor to have their extended legs incorrectly bent, nor

their rear legs bending as they were held rigid in a standard triangular

pattern. As one the class turned, rotating on their extended legs as they moved

their bodies around in a 270 degree turn with their rear fists slashing down in

a blocking motion, then they moved forward again and punched as one at yet

another series of imaginary targets, their martial arts gis snapping in the air

with almost perfect synchronization.

Tendo Kurume sat on the sidelines with the less advanced students watching her

older sister conducting the demonstration of basic forms with her students

performing like a precision drill team. She unconsciously shifted the focus of

her attention away from Natsume and their students to mark how the junior class

was observing the show being put on by their more advanced counterparts. It was

for their benefit (as much as for their guests) that this display was being

conducted, and considering how hard and awkward some members of the less

advanced class could be with their katas, she rather hoped the example being set

today would impress on them the benefits of more intensive study.

Of course a stray thought brought her attention around to the handsome young man

sitting beside their adopted father, Tendo Soun, which caused Kurume to scowl

all the more intensely, her natural distrust and dislike of her sister's

boyfriend making it difficult for her to enjoy the normal routine of their

classes. Kuno Tatewaki was observing both the class and Natsume with an equal

measure of approval, both for the near-perfection of their students and for the

woman who was their assistant Sensei. It was clear that he was deeply impressed

with how well their senior class was progressing, even if Kurume suspected that

his regard of her older sister was not of an entirely professional nature.

She forced herself to look away, shifting her attention to the three men wearing

formal Gis who were sitting in attendance as dispassionate observers. They were

from a professional ratings board who could give their official stamp of

approval to the Tendo dojo so that these students might be recognized in

official competitions, such as in the Tournament being held in the summer.

Tatewaki had brought them here so that they could sanction the members of the

Tendo Ryu in the qualifying matches that were being held a few weeks hence, and

if their students put on a good enough show, then some could gain recognition

for their skills and maybe even win some trophies (and perhaps even some prize

money) for the dojo. The honor and prestige of their school was on trial here,

and Kurume knew that their adopted father was relying on them to bring honor to

the dojo.

By rights, of course, the one putting on this display should have been their

cousin (now step-sister) Nabiki, but the official heir to their Ryu was away on

a family outing-slash-training mission. Nabiki had told Natsume and Kurume that

they could have the honor of representing their school, that she trusted them

and knew that they could be relied upon, fine words of praise that had left

Natsume glowing in her pride for days, though Kurume privately felt as though

they had been fobbed off onto an assignment in which Nabiki herself wanted

little involvement. Their sister had rather emphatically made clear that she

did not want to concern herself with the minutiae of details involved with a

directly hands-on running of the dojo, having other concerns that divided her

attention (not least of which was a newly born baby), and so she was willing to

delegate those assignments onto someone who relished the chance to prove herself

as a trainer. Natsume was an all-too-willing junior partner in this endeavor,

Kurume only a little less so, the dojo giving them both a place of stability in

their home life in which to train and earn a comfortably honest living.

In point of fact, Kurume thought it was-overall-a very good arrangement, far

preferable to their years as wandering mendicants, getting odd jobs where they

could and never being able to settle in one place for longer than a fortnight.

They ate regular meals, bathed often and wore clean clothing for a change, and

they got to cook in the kitchen (which-next to the dojo-was Kurume's favorite

part of the house, the room she shared with Akane notwithstanding). They had a

"father" whom they now loved and adored as though he truly were their father

(and not just their Uncle) and a family to take care of...so what if the Tendo

house itself sometimes felt a little crowded?

Besides, Kurume thought sourly, from the way her sister spent more and more time

around the Kuno estate, it was more than likely that she would be moving there

permanently before too much longer...

She forced her attention back to the class itself, which was now performing

their third consecutive kata with the same speed and coordination that they had

demonstrated during their first. Having moved from simple maneuvers to more

complex ones would put their students through more and more increasingly

regimented paces, which was intended to impress on the Masters how well

conditioned they were in the regulation of their collective internal power. At

the end of the third kata, Natsume called a halt to this phase of their

demonstration and allowed these students to stand at ease and regain their

breaths, thus showing off the other aspect of their conditioning in the

resilient way these students stood about as though prepared at any minute to

leap back into formal attention.

Kurumi caught the gleam of pride in the eyes of their father as he nodded almost

imperceptibly, clearly pleased at the way Natsume was conducting herself as an

assistant instructor. The Martial Arts Masters seemed no less approving in the

way they exchanged looks and nodded their own heads with approval. Tatewaki did

not even bother to hide the way he glowed with approval, his eyes shining with

unalloyed adoration directed towards the woman who had come to mean to much to

him in the brief time that they had been together.

Kurume did not entirely approve of the handsome rich boy's infatuation with her

sister. This Kuno was, after all, a recovering drug addict, a rich snob and the

son of the crazed principal of their local High School. Though presently "clean

and sober," (due in no small part to an intensive detoxification program) there

was no absolute guarantee that he would not relapse, even if his sister stayed

true to her pledge to never again feed him any of those Black Rose extracts that

had been causing him to act so crazy (and looking at the long term effects of

what they had effected on the elder Kuno was far from encouraging in that

regard). The fact that Natsume seemed no less fascinated with him in no way

reassured Kurume that this "change for the better" was a permanent condition.

Of course thoughts of this "reformed bad-boy" caused her to have another stray

thought, one far less likely relegated to an easily defined status. There was

that OTHER "bad boy" who kept coming around to annoy her other sisters, who had

managed to draw her interest of late, sometimes even causing her to be

distracted away from paying much attention to the questionable affairs of her

sister. She was not even sure what it was about this other boy that had drawn

her attention, Kurume only knew that "messing" with this other party had become

her new hobby, almost like an obsession.

She brought her mind back around to the demonstration as Natsume began them up

again, this time jumping to the more advanced katas that were distinctive to the

Anything Goes school. Fifteen well-coordinated bodies flowed from one motion to

the other, three rows of five students (both male and female) leaping off the

floor as one to assume the "Flying Eagle" aerial stance was peculiar to the

Saotome branch of their school, and as fifteen bodies of varying sizes, mass and

distribution touched down there was a most impressive "THUMP"-ing noise that

impressed the visiting instructors no less than the attack itself, which they

collectively recognized to be a devastating offensive.

Among those advanced students was a young girl named Tenou Ryonami, a close

friend and understudy to Nabiki, who was doing her level best not to perspire as

she matched her movements to those of her fellow classmates. Privately Ryonami

thought Natsume was once again playing the role of the "slave driver" to the

hilt, but then again, the adopted sister to her much-beloved Nabiki had always

possessed a streak of the martinet in her instructions. Demanding a high level

of performance from those whom she instructed in the martial arts left Natsume

with little tolerance or patience with any student whom she regarded as a

"slacker." The girl was unquestionably good, almost (but not quite) the equal

to Nabiki, but Natsume still had a long way to come before Ryonami would give

her high marks as a fair and equitable trainer.

Tatewaki felt like composing poetry as he watched the woman he adored conduct

herself with the regal bearing of one born to noble ancestry, rather than the

scion of mere "peasants." At one time he would have labeled her his "Mahogany

tressed Siren" or "Goddess of Bountiful Desires," apt words to describe his

feelings towards a girl who had shown him great kindness in his hour of need,

and who actually seemed to favor him with approval far more infinite than that

ever extended towards him by her adopted younger sister, Akane.

Natsume was magnificence personified, a woman of infinite poise and ladylike

bearing, composed and dignified as the heir to a long and illustrious line of

Samurai ancestors, and surely a credit to any clan that would claim her. Her

beauty was like a gaping wound in his chest that ached for remediation, and he

adored every square centimeter of her magnificently sculpted body, wishing to

make a more "thorough and detailed" observation should he ever be graced with

the extraordinary good fortune of claiming her for his "woman."

And the fact that she was the first young girl his own age that he knew who did

not turn off to him or run away at the first sign of his affection certainly did

not hurt either as Natsume was the one woman he calmly knew would never abuse

nor reject him. There was a trust that had built up between them, one where

they respected each other as though they were true equals, and social status be

damned as Kuno felt more as if he were the one unworthy of her attention.

Soun casually noted the way the young man at his side was gazing at Natsume in a

manner that spoke volumes and brought a faint smile to Soun's lips. Young Kuno

had done much in recent memory to redeem himself in Soun's eyes for past

missteps and rude behavior. Tatewaki was trying to make a good go at sobriety

and was turning into the sort of young man that any proud father might consider

worthy of one of his daughters (the fact that Natsume was actually the daughter

of Mariko, Soun's long-lost younger sister, was only a "trifling" detail as

Natsume had come to mean as much to Soun as any one of his true beloved

daughters). Given time, if the relationship continued to progress, it might

even be possible that Tatewaki would work up the courage to ask Soun for the

formal hand of Natsume, at which point Soun would be happy to give his blessings

and to welcome the young Lord Kuno into his family as a son, thus further

insuring the success of the Tendo legacy.

Of more immediate concern, however, Soun was equally pleased to note that the

three instructors sitting on his other side appeared to have made a favorable

decision in regard to their dojo and the effectiveness in their training of

their students. He knew these men to be reputable Masters of distinction in

their respective schools of Kempo, Shotokan Karate and Aikido, schools all

equally represented in the "Anything Goes" Ryu. It was good to have recognition

of their humble dojo after so many years when their school had suffered under

the disreputable reputation of being a "dishonorable" system, a reputation in no

small part being owed to...the Master!

"Wonderful performance, Tendo-san," said Itabashi Himura in a low murmur at his

side, "And such a lovely instructor you have in your daughter. You are indeed a

lucky man."

"Thank you," Soun swelled up with pride, as though Natsume truly was his

daughter.

"And your younger girl is quite the quick and agile sort indeed," mused Rumigo

Takare, "I am a bit confused, though, why the other student instructors of your

school are not here to present their own demonstration."

"Again I apologize for that," Soun replied, "When Kuno-san brought up the

subject of your visit, it caused something of a conflict with other plans that

had already been in motion. It was an understandable confusion, and I know it

was not intentional on the part of my primary heir, Nabiki. Perhaps another

time she and our other senior students will be on hand to give a demonstration

of the more advanced arts of the Anything Goes Ryu."

"If you wish to see a sample of what this school is capable of yielding in its

students," Tatewaki spoke up, "You have only to watch Natsume-san and her sister

in motion. They are worthy heirs of the Anything Goes Ryu, and Tendo-san has

good reason to be proud of their contributions to these classes."

"We can well believe this, Kuno-san," said the bearded and stately Natsura

Ikari, "But still, it would be nice to see a demonstration given by your schools

premier students. We would gladly witness any show you care to put on as we

expect good things from your school in the upcoming tournaments."

"Then you approve of Tendo-san's Ryu being recognized and permitted into the

competitions?" Tatewaki asked.

"At present we see no reason that we would not wish to see this school

represented in the summer competitions," Takare replied, "Especially in light of

the great strides you've made in overcoming this dojo's somewhat notorious

reputation, created in no small part because of..."

"HOOOWWWZZZAAAA!" a voice called out as a chipper little man came bounding

into the dojo, a sack of unmentionables slung over his diminutive shoulder, "I'm

back, kiddies! Did you miss me?"

There were several shrieks from the female student, Ryonami among them, though

in retrospect she admitted to herself that things had been going too well all

day long, which meant that they were overdue for something bad like this to

happen.

Soun could not withhold a whimper. And they had almost gotten away with it,

too! Telling the Master that the girl's soccer team would be facing an out-of-

town competition while Nabiki was off on a training mission had seemed like such

a simple and effective plan of getting him out of the way for the entire

afternoon...

"Master Happosai?" Natsura reacted with such alarm that his eyebrows seemed to

be standing on edge.

"The founder of the school is still alive?" Itabashi all but squeaked the words.

"No one told us that he was still hanging around in your dojo!" Takare said with

equal alarm, "This is most unacceptable! It changes the whole equation!"

"Eh?" Happosai turned to see the trio of incongruous male instructors and said,

"You guys? What are you doing here? I'd have thought you fossils would have

retired a long time ago!"

"Look who's talking," Tatewaki murmured under his breath, his glare sufficient

to speak volumes of his displeasure.

"I can't believe any of you would even have the nerve to show your faces in this

dojo..." Happosai started to say, when all at once a ribbon wrapped around him

as Kurume leaped into the act, followed in short order by Natsume, wielding her

trademark rug-beater as she moved to corner the old man in the center of the

dojo.

"Grandfather Happosai-stop!" Kurume pleaded.

"You are disrupting a class session, and I find that...intolerable," Natsume

scolded as she brandished her chosen weapon.

"Let me go!" Happosai demanded, "I didn't do anything! This is some way to

treat your own Master!"

"You were our Master when we were young and innocent children," Natsume replied,

"But we are far from innocent now that we can see you for the Master of

perversion that you are, Grandfather."

"Please understand," Kurume pleaded, "We are trying to make something of this

school, and that means we have to uphold certain standards that you put in

jeopardy, Grandfather."

"And that means insisting that dojo protocols are observed, even for our

father's alleged Grand Master," Natsume said as she drew back in an exaggerated

wind-up that resulted in her making a grand slam that created a new hole in the

roof as Happosai went sailing into the skyline.

There was a slight pause before anyone reacted, and then one of the three

Masters began clapping his hands, followed by the other two, all three joining

in with encouraging approval as even the students turned approving glances

towards their normally demanding instructors, including Ryonami.

"Excellent," Takare applauded, "Excellent form and technique!"

"An outstanding performance," Itabashi agreed, "Stupendous delivery, I give it a

9.6 for swing and a perfect ten for execution!"

"About time someone did that to the old goat," Natsura enthused, "To think these

old eyes have lasted long enough to see that Hentai put in his place...and by a

woman no less!"

Soun felt that he could have fainted from relief, certain that disaster had been

about to befall him and his dojo. If not for the swift action and

resourcefulness of his nieces (er, adopted daughters) it could have gone very

badly, and with the reputation of the dojo at stake...

Tatewaki also released the tension that he had felt upon seeing the old man

intrude on the Tendo performance. It was too much like reliving those times

when his own father had rudely interrupted something personal, bringing shame

and humiliation to the (formerly) honored name of Kuno. If the old man had

managed to bring further dishonor to the TRULY honorable name of Tendo, he would

have forced Tatewaki to take action (even if his skills were admittedly no where

near sufficient to give the ancient Pervert the thrashing he so desperately

needed!).

Kurume herself was not so very thrilled about having to once again "punish" the

old man for his unreasonable excesses. Unlike Natsume, she was at least

sympathetic to her (great-great-) grandfather's peculiar obsessions, even if she

did not herself understand quite why he had such an interest in women's

lingerie. She knew the man could not really help himself, that deep down he was

addicted to filling a need left within him by his lonely isolation from the very

object of his obsession. Women shunned the diminutive old martial artist and

denied him their affections, so he had fallen into the pattern of taking what

would not be freely given. It was a sad way of life for such an otherwise

indomitable fighter, and it really tugged on Kurume's heartstrings to know that

the founder of their school was a "dirty old man" with a very bad reputation.

What made it truly sad was that she and Natsume owed so much to their

"Grandfather Happy," an obligation that Natsume might prefer to ignore, but

Kurume-in all good consciousness-could not. They owed their very martial arts

skills (to say nothing of their lives) to a certain old man who took pity on a

pair of orphans and raised them to a level beyond their wildest dreams and

fantasies. If not for "Grandfather Happosai," they probably would not even

exist, let alone have found a home life and a wonderful dojo to give their lives

much-needed focus.

Not that it excused his behavior, or made Kurume want to drop her guard when she

was around him...

That thought was interrupted in mid-formation as something else suddenly drew

the focus of her attention. A slight movement, barely discerned out of the

corner of one eye, caused her to turn her head in time to catch an incongruous

shadow hanging from the edge of the roof just outside the sliding doors. She

did not even need to ask who it might be, she knew instinctively who it was that

could scamper around like an ape, and so with a barely murmured, "Excuse me,

Oneechan," she turned and exited the dojo out the side-door, moving so fast that

that she was barely a blur even in the eyes of the assembled Masters, who-like

Natsume herself and their "father"-were left wondering at the cause of her

sudden behavior.

One man did not wonder at Kurume's sudden actions, he knew instinctively the

cause and softly cursed under his voice, realizing that he had hung about too

long and that he needed to make haste if he was to avoid a confrontation. No

sooner did he think this, however, but then he sensed the presence of a swift-

moving Kurume just seconds before he heard the slight impact of her weight on

the dojo roof tiles. He barely had time to turn around as he found her

confronting him, and as always he was amazed that any human being could be

either so fast or so agile.

Kurume was both, and thensome, a girl barely tall enough to reach his

breastbone, but when she faced him there was something almost intimidating in

her expression, neither hostile nor entirely friendly.

"Mousse-san," she said, "What are you doing here, spying on us?"

"I'm not spying on you," Mousse reacted defensively, "I'm just...just..."

"Just looking for Perfume, huh?" Kurume sniffed, "She's not here...she's off

with her wife on a training mission with the others. It's just my Oneechan and

me this time, but if you want to try us..."

"I'm not looking for any trouble, all right?" Mousse said, "I just...need to

talk to Perfume. Is that so hard to understand?"

"As a matter of fact, yes," Kurume replied, "You know she doesn't want to see

you, in fact she's told you plenty of times to leave her alone, but you never

seem to listen. Why is that anyway? You honestly think she's going to change

her mind if you keep asking or something?"

"But don't you see?" Mousse flared, "I'm the only one who can understand and

look out for her interests. Kuonji roped her into this false marriage then got

with child to further trap her! Perfume doesn't know what she's doing..."

"Oh come on!" Kurume snapped, "You're not that stupid, and even you must know

how pathetic that sounds. Is wishful thinking and denial the only things you're

good at?"

"I'll show you what else I'm good at!" Mousse declared, throwing both hands

forward as he sent a hail of chains reflexively at the slender girl, only to

stare in amazement as Kurume's hands blurred and she effortlessly tied his

chains into a series of bow-ribbons.

"Care to try that one again?" she said cheerfully as she kicked the knotted

chains off the roof, which then proceeded to drag Mousse with them over the edge

and into the Tendo garden. He landed in a heap, hands held in a classic "thumb

and pinky extended" position, arms and legs bent akimbo, a stupefied expression

plain upon his features.

"Geez," Kurume remarked as she gazed down from the rooftop, "Talk about

pathetic..."

"Indeed," her sister said from directly behind her, "And you dare to question my

preferences in boyfriends."

"Ah-Oneechan," Kurume turned about to see her older sister standing there

close at hand, a slightly smug expression on her normally aloof features, "What

do you mean? I was just..."

"Just putting that boy in his place," Natsume noted in some amusement, "I have

been watching for some time now, you know...ever since the Hospital, when you

were left in charge of a certain prisoner, and he somehow managed to elude you."

"Ah...well...we kinda left him hanging around, and in the excitement of the

baby..." Kurume started to explain.

"Don't bother," Natsume waved the point away, "It's obvious to me, as your

sister, that you have taken an interest in this poor fool, in which case you are

risking more than I ever would with Tachi-chan, who took much less effort to

bring around than I think you are bargaining on."

"Hey, it's not like that!" Kurume protested, "I just wanted to know if I could

talk this guy into leaving Ukyo alone. Perfume's a pretty nice girl, after all,

practically a relative, and this...this jerk...keeps coming around to bother her

all the time. It's disgusting..."

"No argument there," Natsume agreed, "It most certainly is a disgusting affront

to the honor and integrity of this school, but sister dearest, you'd be more

convincing in your denials if you were not blushing that interesting shade of

crimson when you say that."

"Eep!" Kurume reacted, covering her cheeks with her hands as if to belatedly

conceal such a reaction, "What are you talking about? I-I'm not..."

"Ah, my mistake," Natsume said, "Perhaps it's just the rosy bloom of the setting

son that is painting your cheeks such an interesting color. Mayhap I am reading

too much into the way things appear to stand between you and this Chinese Ape-

boy, or perhaps you are not being as honest with yourself as you seem to think

you are. But I think you underrate the strength of his obsession, or your own

ability to be persuasive in the face of his blind infatuation."

"I tell you, it's not like..." Kurume started to say when she chanced to glance

down, at which point she cried, "HEY! Where'd he go?"

"Looks like he recovered and made his escape while we were talking, Sister-

dear," Natsume said with some amusement.

"What that...the nerve of that guy!" Kurume balled a fist, "If he thinks he can

get away from me that easy, he has another think coming!"

With that declaration the fleet-footed younger girl vaulted from the dojo roof

and took off at blinding run, leaping over the wall and vanishing into the

distance.

"Guess that settles the question of how interested she is in the fool," Natsume

mused as she glanced off towards where Kurume had vanished, "On the other hand,

it is nice to see her taking an interest in a boy close to her own age for a

change. Ah...Nabiki, my sister, you don't know what fun you're missing being

away on your training mission. Hurry back soon...it can be deadly quiet without

you here to train against. You are the goal I set myself against when I seek to

achieve greatness, and some day I will improve enough to impress you, my warrior

sister. But...until then, other duties call," she smiled to herself as she went

in search of a boy named Tatewaki...

"ACHOO!" Nabiki sneezed, rubbing her nose as she muttered something about

hayfever.

"Airen?" Shampoo asked with a puzzled expression, "You no coming down with

something? You in very bad way...maybe Shampoo make you remedy? After all, no

want give cold or flu to baby."

"Ah...it's nothing like that, Honey," Nabiki apologized, "It's just...I had the

weirdest sense that somebody was talking about me. Heh, I mean...what are the

odds, right?"

Shampoo inclined her head and studied Nabiki with a curious expression, "Is

true? Then why you look like you gamble and lose all money? Is it because

Ranma go on training mission without you?"

"Ranma," Nabiki's expression darkened, "The nerve of that guy...what can he be

thinking, leave me to go off with his stupid father and Ryoga..."

The purple haired Amazon looked away as she paused before answering, "Maybe him

think he need work hard to train since father make challenge to have Ranma

defeat you like proper Amazon husband..."

"Now don't you start on that too," Nabiki pleaded.

"Is true, though," Shampoo turned back to study her wife's expression, "Ranma

has been in very bad mood because he think he not so much man as you when you

male, Airen. Shampoo think him lose pride...very bad for warrior who lose face

like that to one he promise to marry."

"And what the heck does that mean?" Nabiki asked, "I don't want to marry Ranma

because he can beat me up like some stupid male jock..."

"But Ranma no can defeat you as is," Shampoo calmly pointed out, "So you no have

anything to worry about, unlike Shampoo when she lose to handsome boy who come

to village..."

"Hey, that's got nothing to..." Nabiki started to protest, then saw the look the

Amazon gave her and realized that she had just stepped blindly into her wife's

cunning word trap. Shampoo's smile was all the confirmation Nabiki needed to

affirm her deeply held conviction that Purple haired girls were not a commodity

to be taken lightly.

After all, Shampoo was a great many things, but (appearances aside) NEVER a

bimbo!

"Shampoo think she very lucky she find strong man who can understand her,"

Shampoo mused, "No mind that Nabiki is stronger fighter, even when girl. But

Ranma no like Shampoo...he much, much too proud to be thought weak and clumsy

because he only second best when it come to fighting."

"He's not second-best to me!" Nabiki snapped, then faltered as she glanced down

and continued, "He's...just such a sensitive guy...too sensitive for his own

sake. I don't know what I could have done that would make him feel this

way...it's just not fair I tell you!"

Shampoo looked away and heaved a sigh as she stared at her sleeping baby, curled

up on her lap like innocence personified, "Shampoo think she know why Ranma feel

so neglected. Is partly Shampoo fault...take up so much of Nabiki's time that

Ranma no feel like he very important. Is same with Ukyo and Perfume-cousin..."

"Say what again?" Nabiki looked up, "What have they got to do with this?"

"Shampoo thought you already know, Airen," her purple haired bride responded,

"Ukyo growing heavy with child, already like halfway through term, even though

it no be all that long since Perfume get her pregnant. Ukyo need much help

doing things she used to take for granted, she no can accept that she is less

able to fend for self with baby. Perfume do many things to help, and so has

Ranma. Ranma very strong and supportive, but when he get anything back beside a

thank you? He work to make life better for family, like proper Amazon male..."

"But Ranma isn't an Amazon!" Nabiki protested.

"He one by adoption," Shampoo replied, "But you right...he no raised like

Amazon. He raised like Japanese boy, taught how to be man by mother who think a

man is one who likes many women. Shampoo no think Ranma train very hard to

change diapers..."

"Huh?" Nabiki blinked, "You mean...the four o'clock feedings and stuff have been

getting to him?"

"Is hard to say," Shampoo replied, "But Ranma look very tired after long day

taking turn with baby. He happy to be father...but Shampoo wonder how happy he

be that baby no is his save by marriage?"

"Then why the hell doesn't the jerk just come right out and say it?" Nabiki

fumed in frustration.

Shampoo eyed Nabiki sidelong and asked, "What you say to him if he do say this?"

"That he shouldn't make such a big deal out of...oh..." Nabiki blinked her eyes,

suddenly having a faint inkling of the point her wife was making.

"That what Shampoo mean," the Amazon said with deceptive simplicity in her tone,

"The Airen tell Ranma no worry about his feelings...make it seem that feelings

no important to Nabiki. Is wonder Ranma last this long feeling like no one

listen to him or think how he must feel being step-father to other womans'

baby.."

"You think he really does mind that we had this kid without him?" Nabiki asked.

Shampoo shook her head negatively, "Ranma no mind that Nabiki have baby with

Shampoo...Ranma mind very much that Ranma no have baby with Nabiki. Then maybe

Airen think more of him when holding Lylac in arms. Maybe Ranma have baby with

Shampoo it make him happy, but only happy if he think he special and

appreciate...is that right word? Appreciate for him efforts."

Nabiki thought about that for a moment then said, "And what about Kuonji?"

"Ranma want have baby with her, yes," Shampoo agreed, "But Cousin beat to punch,

and maybe Perfume no bother hide how proud she is to have baby with Airen."

"Geez..." Nabiki murmured, "I...I think I'm starting to get a hint here about

why Ranchan...why Ranma thinks he's being neglected..."

"Airen," Shampoo said, "You love Ranma very much, yes?"

"Urk!" Nabiki reacted, caught off guard by this very simple question.

"Is okay," Shampoo smiled as she eyed Nabiki sidelong, "No have to say you love

Ranma for Shampoo to know it. Shampoo see how he make you feel warm and cared

for inside. Is much like how Shampoo feel when she with Nabiki."

"But...what about Ranma and you?" Nabiki asked, "Do you...like him?"

"Is there something Shampoo no like?" the Amazon asked coyly, "Maybe him no

Airen, but Ranma very strong and important man. Great fighter, yes, but also

good man who care about Airen."

"If he cares so much, then why is he abandoning me to go on this stupid training

mission?" Nabiki grit her teeth in frustration.

"Maybe him Panda father have good point," Shampoo mused, "Ranma need train to

build up confidence, make Ranma know he important after all. If Ranma train and

face Nabiki with full effort, it prove to him that he is strong male fighter,

even if he lose, at least he show what he made of."

"But I don't want to have to fight Ranma on these terms," Nabiki vented, "I

don't need to prove anything to know that I lo-uh...that I care for him

lots..."

"Airen," Shampoo sighed, "Japanese way very hard...you no learn how to live with

you emotions. You think always you be in control, that show feelings make you

weak before others. Ranma exact same way, him no know how to say he love Airen,

just as Airen no say she love Ranma with no stutter."

"Ah..." Nabiki glanced away, embarrassed by what remained a major stumbling

block in her relationship with Ranma. Her memory still bright with the

inexplicable and unexpected kiss Ranma had given her, she found herself unable

to prevent a serious case of spontaneous blushing from turning her cheeks

crimson.

Shampoo sighed as she glanced down at her sleeping infant, "Let's hope you no

pick up bad habit of you father, little one. Shampoo want see you grow up

always smiling and relaxed. Girl get wrinkles she always serious and no want to

share feelings with others..."

"Hey, I'm not like that," Nabiki protested, then paused before adding, "Am I?"

"No with Shampoo," the Amazon turned a smile on her that was pure mischief,

"Shampoo take time and learn to understand you, Airen, read you like book when

you no think she can. Nabiki always try be mysterious with others, but you

relax with family and show side you hide from others."

"I guess maybe I do seem a little..." Nabiki paused as she looked up with a

frown, "Something I can do for you, Ucchan?"

"We need to talk, Sugar," Ukyo said with a scowl, not glancing at Perfume, who

hovered just behind her wife with a look of hesitation.

"What a coincidence," Nabiki narrowed her eyes, "I was just going to propose the

same thing. You've heard about Ranma?"

"Take a guess," Ukyo replied, "He took off just a little while ago, but not

before I gave him a good piece of my mind...or started to anyway when his Mom

came up and...well...I got kind of distracted."

"Yeah, I can imagine," Nabiki nodded, recalling how their prospective mother-in-

law could be when she had a mind to intercede in a domestic matter, "So...what

did Ranchan say to you anyway?"

"That he was going off to train with his old man," Ukyo replied, "Or something

like that, but I could tell he was pretty bothered about something, and I was

hoping maybe you might clue me in a little over what could upset him like that."

"Welcome to the club," Nabiki sniffed, "I've been asking myself the same thing,

like...what could either of us have done to make him think that we were taking

him for granted?"

Ukyo's shoulders slumped as she looked down, "You want the short list? I guess

maybe I've been leaning on him a little too much...but it's not exactly like

it's my fault that I feel like a pregnant hippo!"

"What coincidence," Shampoo said in obvious amusement, "Shampoo feel same way no

too long ago. Great grandmother think it take many weeks for Shampoo to work

herself back into proper fighting trim, but you get used to feeling like swollen

melon left out in sun. At least you walk now, but in time you find no can do as

often."

"Terrific," Ukyo sniffed, "More fun stuff that I've got to look to forward to.

You sure know how to cheer a girl up, Shampoo..."

"Look on bright side," the Amazon said sweetly, "Is Jusenkyo pregnancy...take

less time than normal time to have baby. Six month and baby full form, like

Lylac. You only pregnant one third that time, get much-much heavy get nearer to

have baby."

"Look, can we get back to the subject of Ranma?" Nabiki asked, "Does he really

think that we've been taking his feelings for granted?"

"Gee, let me see about that," Ukyo replied, "Could his running away from us

possibly be a sign that he feels a little crowded?"

"What, in the dojo?" Nabiki asked.

"Don't play stupid," Ukyo replied, "I know you're way too smart for that,

Nabchan. You know very well how crowded everything in the dojo is most days,

it's a wonder that people can even hear themselves thinking, what with the

classes and the baby and all the challenge letters that have had to be answered

lately. It's not much better at our restaurant, and with me feeling extremely

limited and all, and Ranchan being such a gentleman in wanting to help out..."

"Okay, I think I get the picture," Nabiki murmured softly.

"You know," Ukyo added, "There are times when I think Ranchan gets loads more

support from his friends, Ryoga and Kuno, than he gets from us, the women he's

supposed to marry. I think we both have started to take it for granted that

everything was all right with him...just because we haven't really asked about

his feelings..."

"I...never really thought of it like that," looked down at her feet and silently

curled her toes as she recalled an **unfortunate** number of incidents when she

had missed the opportunity to tell Ranma directly how much she had appreciated

his reasonableness and understanding. She had always found it hard to put into

words the complex feelings that he inspired in her and had just assumed that he

could naturally understand those feelings since they seemed to be mirrored in

himself...in retrospect a rather dangerous and ill-thought assumption.

"Seems neither of us has been doing much thinking when it comes to him of late,"

Ukyo remarked, also looking down instead of at her childhood playmate and

companion, "We just sort-of fell into the pattern of assuming that Ranma was

going to be reasonable and supportive forever. I guess we hurt the guy's pride,

though of all of us it seems Per-chan here was the only one to see it coming."

"Perfume?" Nabiki looked up, and then her eyes narrowed slightly, "What exactly

would you know about Ranchan's state of mind anyway...and why didn't you inform

either one of us about this sooner?"

"Huh?" Perfume blinked her eyes, "Hey, now wait a minute! I only just figured

it our myself a short while ago, when I...ah...talked with Saotome in

private..."

"Do go on," Nabiki murmured with a level expression, "Just what did you two talk

about?"

"Ah..." Perfume tried to look impassive, knowing full well that Nabiki was an

excellent reader of facial expressions and body language, and that her own

training as an Amazon had left her poorly equipped to either conceal or deceive

on that level.

"Hey, don't blame this on Per-chan, all right?" Ukyo at once came to the defense

of her Amazon wife, "We're the ones who should have been watching out for our

mutual iinazuke's well being. Don't try to pass that blame off onto others..."

"I wasn't going to," Nabiki remained level, "I just wanted to know what Ranma

was willing to say to Perfume that he wouldn't say to us directly."

"Actually...I sort of did most of the talking," Perfume glanced away, almost

willing herself to be elsewhere, "I...I think I'm the one he holds most to blame

for the way things have been going lately, but when I challenged him on his

resolution...well...he showed me that he still has a lot of spunk and fire, and

that's a pretty good basis for hoping we can still make a go at this wedding."

"What exactly did you tell him, Sugar?" Ukyo looked critically at her wife, "All

Ranchan seemed willing to admit to was that you kissed him."

"On the cheek, okay?" Perfume said almost defensively, "Look...it shouldn't be

any secret that-of the five of us-the bonds between the two of us are the

weakest. I don't even like guys, though I'd admit for an outsider male...he can

be pretty decent."

"Cousin," Shampoo spoke up, "You no let Ranma think you rival for Airen?"

"As a matter of fact," Perfume sighed, "That's exactly what I thought Ranma

viewed me as being, so I went in there intending to reassure him that I'm not,

and instead I...kind of got angry and challenged him to see which of us would

make the better mate for Ucchan."

"You WHAT?" Ukyo reacted.

"It didn't come out the way I meant it to, all right?" Perfume looked down, "I

just further wounded his pride and alienated him by questioning how strong his

commitment was to the marriage. I was wrong and I let myself get carried away,

okay? I know it was stupid of me, but when I thought he was blaming me for

getting you pregnant..."

"I see," Nabiki glanced down again, "Then you're not really to blame for Ranma

leaving, but...but I wish you'd come to me first instead of trying to solve this

on your own, okay? Ranma listens to me...but I guess I'm the one who should

have been listening to him, huh?"

"You could put it that way," Perfume sighed, "But you don't need to yell at me,

I feel bad enough about myself as it is. I guess the trouble is...all my life

I've been taught to despise weakness in others, and being a weak girl myself,

I've had to work hard at overcoming limitations that other people hardly even

think about. It...kind of leaves me a bit short-sighted when it comes to the

sorts of doubts that have been eating up Saotome."

"Shampoo understand," Shampoo sighed, "Great grandmother teaching no work best

when it come to letting boy be boy who less than totally perfect. Is what she

never like in Mousse, him being weak in head when chasing Perfume cousin."

"Hey, that guy can't even hold a candle next to Ranchan," Ukyo insisted.

"No argument there," Perfume said, "But the problem with Mousse is that he can't

take no for an answer and insists on having his way in spite of my wishes on the

subject. Saotome isn't like that...in fact, he's more the kind of guy who would

never put pressure on a girl or try and force her to do a thing that was against

her nature. I...respect him for this."

"Is true," Shampoo nodded softly, "Sometime Shampoo wonder what it be like if

she meet Ranma instead of Nabiki that day in village. Would she be as happy

call him Airen if he defeat her in battle? Him very strong, proud and manly,

and Shampoo also think he Hottie."

"You do?" Nabiki arched an eyebrow at hearing such an unfamiliar expression

flowing unexpectedly from her wife.

"You think Shampoo never notice he have nice butt?" Shampoo smirked at her, "No

tell Shampoo you jealous?"

"Of Ranchan?" Nabiki found the whole idea absurdly funny, but in spite of this

all she could manage was a slight smile that hardly upset her otherwise moody

state of mind, nor did it do that much for Ukyo's either.

"Well, face it, Girlfriends," Ukyo sighed, "We all lucked out with having him be

the middle hub in this whole crazy group arrangement. But...that's just the

point, don't you see? Without Ranchan being in the center, the four of us are

likely to just drift apart into same-sex married couples."

"That's certainly true," Perfume looked at one hand and flexed her fingers, "I

was pretty much resolved to living a solitary life before I met you, Airen, but

finding out you had a promised husband of your own did make me...a wee bit

jealous in the beginning. It was actually quite reassuring when he beat me and

Shampoo during our double challenge...it meant we had a strong man who could

defend our status in the tribe, and protect us from outside challenges, like the

ones Mousse keeps issuing...or any of the Elders on the council back home. I

sometimes wonder what my Grandmother would say about this if she were here...no

doubt she'd give her approval, she always was a funny one, even by the standards

of most Elders."

"Your Grandmother, Per-chan?" Ukyo asked.

"The Elder Siren," Perfume replied as she turned to study her wife, "Only she'd

probably chew me out if I called her that within her presence. I was named for

a different Elder, my great-grandmother on my father's side of the family tree,

but it's my Grandmother I most respect, probably because she's the only one of

her generation to refuse a seat on the council."

"Sounds like quite a character," Nabiki murmured.

"She is," Shampoo nodded slowly, "Siren very, very powerful Amazon Mage, even

great-grandmother no wish tangle with her. She most powerful Elder, even more

powerful than great-grandmother and senior Lore Master, Lotion the Elder."

"Yet, in spite of it all, Grandmother just likes to have fun," Perfume sighed,

"She doesn't take life as seriously as I do, she just likes to live life to the

hilt and never ties herself down with too many commitments."

"I think this is taking us well beyond the original subject," Nabiki pointed

out, "Ranma said he was coming back in a couple of weeks, so what are we going

to tell him when we see him next?"

"That we love the Baka and never want him to leave our sides ever again," Ukyo

replied with a slight smirk, "And if he doesn't get that the first time, I'll

pound it into him with my peel."

"No forget, Airen," Shampoo smiled, "He also challenge you to Marriage Battle.

Him father say he train to defeat you so that you marry him in Amazon wedding."

"Ah..." Nabiki blinked her eyes, "Him...defeat me? Ah...no offense, guys, but

that doesn't sound too likely."

"You ought to have more faith in Ranchan than that, Sugar," Ukyo smirked, "He's

got a knack, just like you, of pulling off miracles when you least expect it."

"And don't forget," Perfume quickly pointed out, "If he does defeat and marry

you, then that removes the single biggest obstacle he has to feeling like he's

genuinely a part of this marriage."

"Huh?" Nabiki blinked again, "What do you mean?"

"Airen," Shampoo said patiently, as if explaining the obvious to a very small

child, "You no forget why he say he not ready to share bed with you and Ukyo?"

It was Ukyo's turn to blink her eyes as she said, "Hey, that's right! Ranchan

said he was waiting until we were all formally married before he...Oh my!"

"Before he...oh," Nabiki formed a very round "O" with her mouth as she finally

got it.

"Just think of it as a consolation prize for the possibility of losing," Perfume

pointed out with a slight smirk, "You become his wives, then he has an

obligation to consummate the union by sharing a bed with each one of you in

turn, claiming you formally as his wives...and-potentially-the mothers of his

future offspring."

"But Cousin," Shampoo pointed out, "It also mean he have to make nicey-nice bed

games with you too since you part of marriage."

"Ah...well...I think I might...somehow manage to struggle along with that,"

Perfume hoped that the forest canopy overhead would conceal a certain bloom that

painted her cheeks with rosy tincture.

"Ah...look," Nabiki pointed out, "I'm flattered you're all so worried about the

state of my...ah...'virginity' and all that...but in case you're forgetting

something, Ranma still has to actually beat me, unless I deliberately choose to

throw the fight, and I just don't think that would be a very fair thing to do if

I want to impress Ranma."

"Airen," Shampoo said softly, "You forget something else? Ranma train with

father, who teach you to be great fighter."

"Yeah...so?" Nabiki replied.

"So what makes you think that Ranchan won't improve that much when he gets back

here?" Ukyo asked her.

"Hey, I trained for ten long years under Pops Saotome," Nabiki said, "How is two

weeks going to make that much of an improvement for Ranma? I know all the Old

Man's tricks by heart..."

"All of his tricks and tactics?" Perfume asked, "Doesn't seem very likely."

"Huh?" Nabiki turned to the brown haired Enforcer, "What do you mean by that?"

"Is simple," Shampoo replied, "Elder never teach student all she know until time

she graduate as full War Master. Great-grandmother never show Shampoo all she

know, or Perfume either."

"That's right," Ukyo said, "My Grandfather and Aunt always said that they were

saving the best tricks in their arsenal for the day when I proved to them that I

was ready to receive their knowledge."

"And just imagine what part of his arsenal Genma would save to pass on to his

own flesh and blood when Ranma proves himself ready," Perfume added, "If there's

one thing I've learned from watching that guy, it's that he never shows

everything in his hands, and he's always got a few pieces tucked away for a game

of Shogi."

"You mean...he might have a few techniques left that he never taught me?" Nabiki

seemed stunned at the idea, then suddenly she lurched to her feet, balling her

fists and she cried out, "POPS, IF I FIND OUT YOU'VE BEEN HOLDING OUT ON ME-!"

"Why no wait and see, Airen," Shampoo pointed out.

"Yeah," Ukyo said, "If you wait long enough, then you can learn the new

techniques from Ranma."

"Mind you," Perfume added, "They would have to be pretty formidable in order to

make up for the gap that separates you from Ranma, but...I'm just saying it's

possible, okay? I mean...the Old Man looked as though he thought he had

something up his sleeve that could do the trick."

"Yeah," Ukyo agreed, "He sure looked confident about that...even I'm starting to

wonder what it might be."

"We find out when Ranma return to us," Shampoo mused, "In mean time, you train

hard and be ready, eh Airen?"

"Oh yeah," Nabiki grit her teeth, "You can count on that...Sugar."

As she said those words, however, Nabiki felt a slight chill in the air and

wondered at its source, or why she felt a peculiar anxiety fill her bosom with

dread, as if something dangerous were about to befall her wayward iinazuke...

Part Ninety-One.

"Keep it up, Boys!" Genma called out, "No slacking up or giving ground here.

You're both too evenly matched for one of you to suddenly start napping."

"I'm trying, Pop," Ranma grunted back as he dodged another of Ryoga's lightning-

kicks, relying on his speed to counter the superior edge his opponent had in

strength and raw power.

"Don't waste my time and yours with simply trying, Boy," Genma scoffed, "If

you're going to do it, then do it, otherwise we might as well go home for all

you seem to care about your training."

"So who are you now, Yoda?" Ranma snapped, fighting to stay on edge as the Lost

Boy pressed hard against his defenses, forcing the Saotome heir to fall back on

more elaborate evasions.

"Funny Boy," Genma snorted as he adjusted his glasses, "You're a regular

comedian, but what do you expect to do, make Nabiki fall down and laugh so hard

that she knocks herself out? Besides, if anyone fits the bill for a short-but-

formidable instructor, I'm afraid that role must go to the Master. Perhaps

you'd like to go to him for training, he's made more out of worse material than

you're presenting."

[Yeah,] Ranma thought acidly, [He trained you, didn't he?] But aloud all he

said was, "So what's the point of all this? All Ryoga and I are doing is

training in stuff we already know..."

"Don't waste your breath talking, you need it to fight Ryoga," Genma replied,

"And there's a reason I'm having you do this. You're supposed to fight using

everything you know, every trick in your arsenal, and no repetitions of style

and technique. Pretty soon you'll both have used every single Kata or movement

that you know, and that's when the real fight takes place, when you've exhausted

your whole bag of martial arts tricks, including the recent stuff in which

you've been training."

"Yeah," Ranma said, "And what happens then? Do we go back and start it over?"

"Hardly," Genma smiled a crafty smile, "Once you've done every trick in your

book you're going to have to defeat Ryoga with something you've never tried,

something you've never had the chance to work out or train in...that's the point

when you get creative, let inspiration take you over. It's the point that

divides a common martial artist from a combat genius, and if I know anything

about the both of you, you're nothing if not resourceful."

[Easy for him to say,] Ranma thought with rising panic, discovering how near he

was to exhausting not only his arsenal but his badly needed reserves of energy.

Fighting against Ryoga was like going one-on-one against a force of nature, and

it was all that he could do to resist the urge to fall back on the tried and

true methods that had always worked for him in the past.

Besides, he had already used those and only gained a temporary advantage.

"Ah, seeing you fight like this takes me back to the old days," Genma sighed,

"When Soun and I used to spar like this regularly while the Master would sit

smoking a pipe while counting his ill-gotten gains for the day. You'd never

think he was really paying attention, but whenever one or both of us would

slack, he'd be all over us, claiming we were wasting his time and his valuable

training."

"Didn't know...you were so...nostalgic...Pop," Ranma panted as he tried one of

the last tricks he had yet to use, and waited for Ryoga to make his lunge before

executing a flying razor kick that actually caught Ryoga napping.

Kablam!

"Hard to believe, isn't it?" Genma mused, "Back then I was tired, hungry,

disheveled, hardly bathed and often downright miserable...and yet...there was an

innocence back then that I almost regret. Mind you, that doesn't mean I'd want

to go back to being your age again, Boy. I was lucky just to survive it the

first time."

"Yeah," Ranma said as he took a moment to catch his breath while Ryoga shrugged

off the effects of his kick, "Back then you had more hair, but it sounds like

you had it tougher than me, Pop."

"You don't know the half of it, Boy," Genma sighed, then narrowed his eyes as he

sensed the moment of crisis was arriving.

"RANMA!" Ryoga snarled, "Would you take our fight serious for once? How dare

you ignore me!"

Said statement was delivered as Ryoga's fist went rocketing towards Ranma's face

with no time to duck, dodge or deflect the blow as the punch was propelled by

the force of Ryoga's emotion. The blow connected solidly, and only the fact

that Ranma was already moving backward spared him from the full force of the

powerhouse punch. Still it rocked Ranma's teeth and sent him flying backward

with his back intercepting the base of a wide tree, which jarred him further to

the edge of consciousness. He managed to open his eyes in time to see a follow-

up punch heading for him at devastating speed. No question but that if it

connected he was in for a world of hurt since Ryoga was not pulling his punches,

having built up a considerable degree of heat from all the missed shots and

taunts that Ranma had used to provoke him.

There was no room to dodge, no time to avoid that fist, yet somehow it seemed as

if time began to slow down to a mere crawl as Ranma stared at the front two

knuckles that were only inches from connecting. By sheer instinct Ranma turned

his face to the side and pushed with his back against the tree, propelling

himself forward as he seemed to slide past Ryoga's arm. Ranma continued to turn

with the blow as he kicked with both feet against the tree and brought his elbow

backwards, catching Ryoga in his unprotected ribcage and driving the wind from

the boy's sails as his foe was completely unprepared for this maneuver.

Ranma did not stop with that, however, knowing full well that it would take more

than one lucky shot to take his companion out of the fight, so he used the

recoil from his elbow-thrust to spin him back around as he continued beyond

Ryoga, instinctively forming a spinning kick that caught the Lost Boy in the

back of the head and knocking him face-first into the very tree in which he had

expected to trap Ranma.

The Saotome heir fell into a fighting crouch and poised in readiness for any

continuance of the fight, but Ryoga had impacted the tree so hard that he was

actually stunned and in no condition to continue fighting. Ranma waited for a

reaction as Ryoga fell to his knees in a bird-twittering stupor, and only when

he was satisfied that the other boy would not immediately rise to the attack did

Ranma become aware of what had just happened, at which point he said,

"Whoah...did I do that?"

"Must be, someone did it," Genma said with deceptive ease, "Okay, Boys, time to

take a break from your training. Come over to the fire and have some of this

delicious cooked rice that your father has prepared for you."

"Rice?" Ranma said, "Aw...not again! Can't we have anything but just rice for a

change? We ate better than this when we were with Nabiki and the others."

"Then why don't you go back to her, Boy?" Genma asked, then held up two more

objects in his hands and said, "Of course you could also have cabbage with

mayonnaise. In the old days that would have been the height of luxury for Soun

and me when we were suffering-ah-training under the Master."

Ranma lowered his gaze and said, "I can't go back to her...at least not yet. I

need to train some more, a lot harder even than this."

"Then why don't we ask Ryoga if he wants to go back home and eat some of Akane's

cooking," Genma smiled, albeit slyly.

"Ah...no thanks..." Ryoga muttered in an incoherent parody of his normal voice,

"I think I'll just wait here until the world stops spinning..."

"Geez, I didn't hit you that hard," Ranma frowned, "Did I?"

"That depends on how you look at it, Boy," Genma answered, "You turned Ryoga's

greatest advantage-his strength-against him. A nice bit of improvisation, by

the way, and you did it entirely by instinct."

"By instinct?" Ranma asked, "Is that how you learn to be a great fighter?"

"Not quite, Boy," Genma said, "Instinct just shows you what you're capable of in

a pinch, but it's skill and strategy that wins battles. You have the heart of a

fighter, but you need to refine your skills and sharpen your wits if you want to

come anywhere near to approaching Nabiki's level."

"But what's the use?" Ranma sighed, "She knows all my moves, and a lot more that

I'm still learning, and as fast as I acquire new skills, she just keeps one step

ahead of me, especially with the extra training that she's been getting from the

Old Woman."

"You've been watching her moves, Boy," Genma said, "You can learn to do anything

she can learn if you just apply yourself. The one advantage Nabiki has over you

is the power of her brain, her ability to outthink and improvise on her feet,

which was sort-of what you were doing just now, only without the thinking."

"Yeah, no kidding," Ranma sat down on a log and heaved a sigh, "I still don't

see how I can ever catch up with her, especially in two weeks. By that time

she'll just be a whole lot better than she is already. You trained her, Pop,

you know that she's as good as they come, and a lot better than I could even

hope to be."

Genma was silent for a long minute, but then he softly murmured, "Not quite."

"Huh?" Ranma blinked, "What do you mean, Pop?"

"I mean that I taught Nabiki everything that she could learn during our times

and travels together," Genma replied, "We'd go wherever we could learn and study

from the Masters all through Asia, even as far as the Bayankalah range, where

we...well...you already know that story."

"Yeah, no kidding," Ranma frowned, "What are you gonna do, drag me to Jusenkyo

and dump me in the Spring of the Drowned Girl or something?"

"Well, that would at least teach you to have a little more respect for what

Nabiki is going through right now," Ryoga growled as he dragged himself to the

edge of their encampment.

"Hey, Ryoga...you all right?" Ranma asked, "You hit your head pretty hard that

time..."

"Like you care?" Ryoga got back on his feet and glared at his erstwhile sparring

partner, "Surely you don't think a little love tap like that could keep Hibiki

Ryoga down for very long? Don't forget, I'm a lot stronger than you, and I've

got loads more stamina..."

"I know you do, Boy," Genma replied as he stared into the fire, "You take a lot

after your mother."

"Huh?" Ryoga blinked, "What do you mean about me...ohh..." Ryoga sagged to his

knees and fell face-forward.

"So much for his stamina," Ranma said, "But, Pop, what do you know about Ryoga's

mother?"

"Later, Boy," Genma replied, uncapping the metal container that he had used to

cook rice, "Pass your bowl over and let's eat. You're going to need to get your

strength up when we begin the next phase of your training."

"The next phase?" Ranma asked as he reluctantly passed his bowl over.

"I told you that I taught Nabiki everything she could learn from me," Genma

replied, "But not quite everything that I have to teach. I was holding back the

better part of my knowledge for a time when I thought she was ready...and some

of it I wanted to pass over to you, my son, when I thought the time was right.

That time...is now. Your defeating Ryoga just now proved to me that you've

mastered the basic skills you will need in order to master...the Senken."

"The Senken?" Ranma blinked as he accepted back his rice bowl, "A thousand

fists? Is that some kind of variation on the Tenshin Amagurikan Kachu?"

"Hardly, boy," Genma replied, and the light of their campfire glinted off his

glasses in a way that was almost uncanny, "The Senken is one of the forbidden

arts of the Anything Goes system. I created it during my time with the Master,

and I sealed it up fifteen years ago when I learned how devastating it could be

in the wrong hands. I'm giving it to you now because you need the edge it will

give you in your match against Nabiki."

"Is it that good?" Ranma asked.

"Good?" something strange appeared in the eyes of his father as Genma turned to

regard his son entirely, "It isn't good, Son. The Senken is a dishonorable

system created under the influence of the Master. I sealed it away because I

knew that nothing good could come from having it available to use by others.

I've only used the knowledge myself on extremely rare occasions when I've been

forced to by circumstances. Once you understand and fully master the art, you

will see why these techniques are forbidden."

"Ah..." Ryoga forced himself back to his knees, "If it's so dishonorable and

forbidden...then why teach it at all?"

"Because knowledge can never be buried forever," Genma looked away, "I should

know...I've tried. Take your mother for example...I see a lot of her in you,

more and more the longer we train together."

"What?" Ryoga lurched to his feet, "You knew my mother?"

Genma made a slight sniff, "Now there's a loaded question. Know her? I

wonder...I knew of her when we were both a lot younger...only a couple years

older than you boys are now. I can still remember her face when we parted

company, the words I said that unintentionally hurt her feelings..."

"What?" Ryoga staggered closer to the fire, "You hurt my mother's feelings?

You...you cad!"

"Hey, cool it, Ryoga," Ranma urged, "This must have happened a long time ago,

before either of us were born..."

"Exactly," Genma replied, "But I don't blame you for being upset with me, Boy.

It all began one day when I was training with Soun under the

master...we...encountered some very unusual ladies who got involved with us in a

number of adventures. One of them...was a young girl named Atsuko..."

"Atsuko?" Ryoga blinked, "Why...that's the name of my mother..."

"Gee, how surprising," Ranma noted dryly.

"Her full name was Hibiki Atsuko," Genma replied, "We met in a forest much like

this one, and I can still remember how she breezed into my life like a force of

nature. She was beautiful, yes, and strong...much stronger than a normal woman,

but not then a trained fighter. In point of fact...she wasn't entirely human."

"What do you mean, Pop?" Ranma asked, "Not human? Then what was she?"

Genma favored Ryoga with a glance then said, "Well...simply put, boys, she was

an Oni, not that I held that against her, but in fact she was superhumanly

strong and had the power to create effective and convincing illusions. I think

she took a fancy for me...I never did understand why...but she hung out with us

and often got into fights with the other girls..."

"Other girls?" Ranma lifted an eyebrow, "What other girls?"

"Ah..." Genma waved a hand to deflect the point, "That's not important. It's

just...well, in those days I was quite the manly sort, and for reasons that

escape me, I kept finding myself with beautiful women who fought over me...and a

few fought over Soun, who was a handsome charmer before he settled down and

married the mother of Nabiki and her sisters. I can't really explain what that

was all about...but it seems to me you've picked up something from your old man

besides a talent for the martial arts..."

"Yeah, right," Ranma said, "Why do I have trouble believing this cockamamie

story?"

"Be skeptical if you like," Genma replied, "But know in the end I settled down

and married your mother, and it turns out that she was the only one for me after

all. I said my good-byes to Atsuko and we went our separate ways. I know I

hurt her feelings by rejecting her in favor of Nodoka, but it seems she made a

recovery and found a man of her own who could provide her with a strong and

healthy son, for which I am both happy and grateful. She deserved some

happiness, just like you do, Boy, with Soun's daughter."

"But...but how can you be sure that the woman you knew was really my mother?"

Ryoga stammered.

"Well, let's see," Genma held up a hand and began ticking off points, "For one

thing, though she was a powerful fighter and learned a lot about the martial

arts from me, she eventually found a master who could train her in the Righteous

Fist style, which you also practice. For another thing, thought very brave and

loyal, Atsuko was not exactly the brightest apple in the cart and was even a bit

slow on the uptake when it came to ordinary situations. Third point, Atsuko

couldn't find her way out of a closet if you pointed the direction of the door

handle. Actually, she was more than likely to break through the back end of the

closet than go out the way she came..."

"Okay," Ryoga whimpered slightly, "Those are pretty good points..."

"You mean Pop really did know your mother?" Ranma lifted an eyebrow,

"Whoah...what are the odds of that?"

"Considering that Japan is an island, and that there are only so many places a

wandering Hibiki can go without leaving the home islands?" Genma replied.

"Okay," Ranma said, "So it was a dumb question..."

"But...I can't believe you know my mother," Ryoga said, "That she actually knew

you before she met my father. But that means...if she had married you, then

Ranma and me..."

"GAAAHHH," Ranma winced, "Don't go there, you're scaring me!"

"Well, it's all pretty dry and academic anyway, as Nabiki would say," Genma

sighed, "I just wanted you to know that I had my days of misspent youth when I

was foolish and foolhardy in my ways..."

"As numerous wanted posters would attest," Ranma snorted.

"Mind your manners, Boy," Genma frowned, "That smart mouth of yours will land

you into trouble one of these days, mark me well."

"Sorry," Ranma said, "It's just...well...a surprise to hear you used to date

somebody other than Mom."

"Not so much a surprise to her," Genma stared back into the fire, "Ours was an

arranged marriage...but she knew the other girls, and they knew her. It's

ancient history now, but...well...I brought it up because I can't help thinking

how proud At-chan would be if she could see the man you are today, Ryoga. Your

father must be a very lucky man."

"Ah...thanks...I guess," Ryoga said dubiously as he stared at his own now-

emptied rice bowl.

"You know," Genma began again, "I wasn't the original heir of the Saotome Ryu.

That honor used to belong to my older brother, Honima. He was the one who used

to train with the Master, back before he fell in love with Soun's younger sister

and...well...you've already heard that story. I got roped in when Honima and

Mariko eloped, and then the Master decided I was going to be the one to carry on

the Saotome name in martial arts. It wasn't exactly the destiny I had planned

for myself, but...well...how often do we get the things we want on the first

try?"

Ranma did not reply but instead stared steadfastly into the fire, while Ryoga

did the same for very different (albeit somewhat similar) reasons. Without a

word they set their rice bowls to the side and both began to munch down on their

mayonnaise-topped cabbages.

Genma waited as she shadows grew longer all around them as the sun began setting

over the far horizon, then in a melancholy voice he continued, "Turns out I had

a great aptitude for the martial arts, and I took to it like a duck to water.

Of course, at first, Soun and I didn't really see eye to eye or get along all

that well at first, but after a while we sort of got used to each other, much

like prisoners sharing a cell together. That's what it felt like to us to train

under the Master, and after a while...we just stopped caring about everything

but the single minded pursuit of staying alive for another day. I used to be a

very different man before that training, you'd hardly even recognize me back

then. For one thing I used to have hair, and for another I was a lot...less

thick boned than I am now..."

"Hmm," Ranma said over the sound of chewing cabbage, but he did not voice any

louder comment as he was now genuinely interested in seeing if there were a

point to his father's nostalgic ramble.

"A trip on the road hardens you, makes you see things with a sharper focus,"

Genma continued, "In time the art came to mean everything to me, and all my

other dreams faded away into nothing. Soun and I were virtual slaves to Master

Happosai, but he taught us well the value of the martial arts...mainly as a

means of staying alive when people came after us seeking retaliation for the

Master's misbehavior."

"So bras and panties are the secret to all your training?" Ranma asked, having

finished washing down his food with some spring water.

"Hardly," Genma replied, "That's the Master's perversion. Mine...well...I took

to some pretty dishonorable behavior in order to get ahead. I've changed a lot

from back then, but...the old reflexes still come in handy now and then.

Observe," he held up an object in either hand, which both got startled

exclamations on the two boys sitting on either side of him, by the fire.

"HEY, that's my wallet!" Ranma exclaimed.

"That's the locket that contains Akane's picture!" Ryoga was equally outraged,

up until Genma returned said items to their owners.

"So that's your big secret?" Ranma said in irritation as he checked the contents

of his wallet, "You were a small time thief, Pops?"

"What did I tell you about dishonorable behavior?" Genma gave no evidence of

regret in his expression, "I did what I had to in order to stay alive back then,

Son, and I won't apologize for that, only that I have to tell you now in order

to clarify a few points about the Senken."

"What has stealing got to do with a martial art system?" Ryoga asked.

"Everything," Genma's shoulders slumped a little, "Back then I had reached a

plateau in my training, and the Master was encouraging me to create my own

style, the same as with Soun. He wanted us to be able to perform a martial art

that even he had never seen before, and in Soun's case it took the form of an

ability to project a mental image of himself as something frightening and

demonic. That was the closest he ever came to developing his own Ki-based

attack, and it came in handy for frightening away villagers who were a bit upset

about losing their undies."

"And what did you come up with?" Ranma asked, remembering many occasions when he

had witnessed Soun give a demonstration of this quite formidable ego-attack.

"The Senken," Genma replied, "It came to me when I was...ah...helping the Master

out on one of his raids...a simple technique using what I knew then about the

art to force my way in past an opponent's defenses. Of course the minute I came

up with such an aggressive attack style, I began to think up a way to counter

it, a different system that would serve like the Yin to the Yang. The basic

Senken comes in two parts, but since then I've learned to master a few

more...elemental variations."

"And you never taught this to Nabiki?" Ryoga asked.

"She wouldn't have understood it until quite recently," Genma replied, "Even

though she probably knows me a lot better than she does you, Son. I owe a lot

of what I am today to her good example. She was the brains in our partnership,

the one with all the scams and angles. She would often decide if something we

did was dangerous or in our best interest...a habit she fell into

after...ahem...that incident with the Nekoken..."

"In other words, after you dropped her into a pit full of starving cats wrapped

in fist sausage," Ranma glowered.

"She did kind of take that one the wrong way," Genma sighed, "I always told

myself that I was acting to protect her in her best interest, but...women-and

young girls especially-have a different way of looking at things than we men.

More often than not it would turn out that her judgement was a lot better than

my own, though a few times...well...she could get a bit stubborn and

overconfident, and then it would be up to her Uncle Genma to bail her out of

these messes. After a while I found that I could learn a great deal just from

watching how she handled herself when it came to negotiations and dealing with

other people. I'd teach her about the art, she would show me new ways of

getting what we needed, though on the subject of stealing, she could be pretty

unreasonable at times. She's always insisted on a fair deal for fair wages, and

she never likes taking advantage of someone who can't defend themself...she

hates people who take advantage of weak and helpless sorts. She prefers to scam

the con-men and con artists...I think she find it more of a challenge."

"So, you're saying she made you into a better person?" Ryoga asked.

"That's...one way of putting it..." Genma conceded.

"More like she showed you how to be a better class of thief, Pop," Ranma

countered.

"And...that's the other," Genma sighed, "I know I've lost some of your respect

with all the revelations of my past conduct, Ranma, but I am trying to make

amends for those things I did that have brought harm to others. The problem

is...the Senken is one of those things. I...have a very good reason for not

wanting to teach it to Nabiki...at least not until she's ready."

"I get it," Ranma said, "You liked having it as an edge around her. It gave you

a thrill knowing that there was one technique you knew that she didn't, right?"

Genma did not immediately answer that one, but then he looked at Ranma and said,

"The Senken is much too important to treat lightly, Boy. I'll only teach it to

you if I think you can handle it. The same goes for you, too, Ryoga. Ranma

will need a sparring partner, so you'll each learn the technique and then

practice it on one another. Ranma...you'll learn the Umi-Senken...the art of

stealth and speed. Ryoga...you're more suited to the Yama-Senken, the Earth-

based art of force and power."

"Umisenken?" Ranma asked.

"Yamasenken?" Ryoga chorused.

"You'll both learn both styles," Genma said, "And train in both halves of the

system, just as you did with the Mako Takabishi and Shi Shi Houkonan. It will

improve your overall martial arts styles and make you more than a match for just

about anything you are likely to encounter."

"So, when do we get started?" Ranma asked.

"Tomorrow will be fine," Genma replied, "Now...it's time for the three of us to

turn in and get some rest. We have a big day ahead of us, and you'll need your

strength if we're to get in some good training."

"Sounds good to me," Ryoga yawned, "I'm feeling a bit tired already."

"Well, I'm not," Ranma studied his father in the flickering light of their

campfire, "There's something you're not telling us about this system, isn't

there, Pop? You've got that look like you're holding back on telling us

something that's very important."

"That I am," Genma reluctantly nodded, "But...there is a good reason for that.

I...I'll fill you in about it after we begin training. In the meantime,

Boy...answer your father something. What do you know or remember about your

early training?"

"Huh?" Ranma blinked his eyes, then seriously thought about it, "I...don't

really know. The last ten years when I was living at the Tendos is pretty much

all that I can remember..."

"Really?" Genma asked, "Nothing about any incidents in your early childhood? Do

you remember anything all about our time together before you were six?"

"Sorry," Ranma said, "I'm drawing a blank."

"It's just as well," Genma sighed, "Some memories are...a lot less pleasant than

others. You were only two years old at the time, barely old enough to walk all

that far on your own. I used to take you out on short training missions that

hardly lasted more than a few weeks...your mother wouldn't let us out of the

house for anything longer until...until I made that deal to trade you with

Soun's daughter."

"Something happened, didn't it, Mister Saotome?" Ryoga asked, "Something

bad...that made you give up on this forbidden system."

"Bad isn't the word for it," Genma sighed, then promptly changed the subject,

"Son...I may not have said it before, but I have to say it now. I've had my

doubts about leaving you with your mother. I had hoped Soun would teach you all

you would ever need to know about the art, just as I tried to impart upon Nabiki

the benefits of my skill and wisdom. Turns out living at home has had a few

drawbacks in your training...for one thing, you don't yet know what it means to

truly live by your wits from day to day. In spite of that, you turned out very

well, and I'm proud as a father can be that my son is a man of integrity and

great courage. If anything, you're a better man than I could ever be...but...to

learn the Senken properly, you're going to have to turn your back on all that.

You have to be willing to discard normal concepts like duty and honor in order

to truly understand the meaning of the Anything Goes Ryu. You have to see the

art as something more than just a system of self-defense..."

"More than self-defense?" Ranma blinked.

"It's about survival...but more than just survival," Genma explained, "It's

victory at any price, at any cost, no matter the sacrifices you must make to

achieve supremacy in a battle. It's not even about taking into consideration

what is honorable and what is not. It's about coming to see the Art itself as

the center of all meaning, the very heart and reason of your existence."

"I don't know if I can do that," Ranma glanced down, "Honor...I mean...doesn't

it matter that you can hurt people who you don't mean to hurt? I...mean...right

and wrong, good and evil..."

"Those are just words," Genma replied, "Concepts that Civilized men and women

use to conduct themselves in a socially acceptable manner. Stealing is wrong

because it takes from those who have and often harms the victim. Theft is

unacceptable in any society because it is seen as deliberately harmful. But in

the Anything Goes school, such concepts have almost no meaning. You have to

decide for yourself if what you do is beneficial or negative. You can't let the

standards used by others blind you to the need for survival. If you slow

yourself down by stopping to think about the rightness or wrongness of what you

do, then you'll let your guard down at a critical moment..."

"That doesn't sound right, Sir," Ryoga spoke up, "Achieving victory by

dishonorable means..."

"Is still victory by whatever name you mean to give it," Genma concluded for

him, "That's the lesson the Master taught Soun and me so long ago, that it is

better to live a coward than to not live at all. I don't expect you to

understand that, and I'm not saying that you should give up on being honorable

men, but what I am saying is that you should be prepared for any eventuality and

what circumstances may force upon you. Life in this world is often a case of

difficult choices, sometimes competing rights and wrongs, and you have to let

your instinct guide you, those wonderful senses that we were all blessed with in

our animal nature."

"I'm with Ryoga on this," Ranma said, "Sacrificing everything in order to win a

fight..."

"It's better than letting those you love and care for down, Boy," Genma

retorted, "You can struggle with your conscience and spend all day moralizing

and agonizing over the rightness of what you do, but in the end you have to do

something in order to break the impasse between Conscience and Reason.

Expediency is its own justification, and those who are not ready and willing to

sacrifice their pride and even some of their self-respect in order to win a

battle will no doubt go to their graves knowing that they were in the right, but

they're dead just the same. Does winning the contest for moral perfection

justify letting those who depend on you down? You'll have to think on that and

come up with your own answers."

"Maybe I don't want to learn this Senken after all," Ranma frowned, "You're

making it sound like it was created as something evil..."

"It's not evil, son," Genma assured, "An art, by itself, has no moral relevancy

at all. It's what you do with the art that can be good or evil. A weapon makes

it easier to harm others, and the Senken is a very formidable weapon. Used in

the wrong hands...and by that I mean someone who doesn't care a whit about the

consequences...it can be a force of great evil, or a force of great good. It

all depends on how you use it."

"So, why is it you think it's so dangerous?" Ranma asked.

"It's all about the art, Boy," Genma said, "And why you fight at all. If you're

just looking to defend yourself against attack, then you've lost already."

"Now that I don't understand at all," Ryoga shook his head.

"Welcome to the club," agreed Ranma.

"Boys," Genma sighed, "There's a big difference about being negligent and being

evil. You can do evil without intending anyone harm, but deliberate evil takes

an active and willing mind, one that sees the goal as more important than the

means. The Anything Goes Ryu is exactly the opposite of this...the goal means

nothing to you...a true Martial Artist only cares about the fight. You don't

think about victory, you don't think about the end of the fight. You don't even

think about the causes or what started the altercation...all of that relates to

the past and the future. The only thing that maters to an Anything Goes master

is the PRESENT! You live in the moment, you act on your feelings, you judge by

observation if a thing is positive and beneficial, or negative and harmful. To

think a step beyond yourself in a fight means you are not concentrating on the

fight itself, and so you are not giving the fight your complete and total

concentration."

"So...it's not really about behaving dishonorably?" Ryoga asked.

"It's about going beyond concepts like honor and morality," Genma replied,

"You're not really above good or evil, but you have to learn to think only in

terms of the moment, to judge an act in an instant and prepare to adapt yourself

to changing circumstances with whatever means you feel to be necessary. To do

anything less is to surrender the advantage."

"I ain't comfortable with this," Ranma said, "You sure this is really the way to

get better than Nabiki?"

"Son," Genma asked, "Do you remember the technique known as the 'Touched Soul?'"

Both boys reacted to that, Ranma paling so much that it was obvious even by the

light of the dwindling fire, "Ah...yeah...you did that to me when I was

little..."

"I only did it part of the way with you back then, Boy," Genma replied, "The

Touched Soul was the means by which I awakened in you the dormant potential to

be a great martial artist. Ryoga...I take it from the way you're looking at me

that your mother did the same thing for you, after I taught it to her. Ranma

only got the partial initiation due to his being no more than five when it

happened. It was my hope that Soun would finish the process, but it's clear

enough that he decided not to include it in your training regimen. His

daughters have obviously never undergone the process..."

"But Nabiki has?" Ranma asked dubiously.

"She has undergone the complete process," Genma said, "And so will you before

this is over. That will help you to learn to focus your total mind and body

concentration into acting on the moment so that the Senken will come naturally

to you. When you've completed the process, then we'll begin on the real

training."

Ranma did not like the sound of that at all, but there was something in his

father's tone that brooked no opposition. His memories of being subjected to

the "Ki-Shock" process were still fresh after nearly a dozen years since it had

happened, and the thought that Nabiki could have undergone far worse was enough

to make him wince in mute horror. He knew why the technique was necessary, knew

full well what could happen if it were performed improperly, and knew that it

had the power to totally break a man's sanity, and there was no telling what it

might do to him if he was not prepared and ready.

"Time for bed, Boys," Genma resolved at last, going to his sleeping bag

beckoning like an almost forgotten lover.

"I guess," Ranma paused to look towards Ryoga, "You feel enough like resting

already?"

"Oddly enough, yes," Ryoga replied with a yawn, "I think that story wore me out

even more than the fighting. See you in the morning, Ranma."

"Sure thing," Ranma agreed, wondering why just saying the words made him wonder

if it was really such a "sure thing" that the coming morning would be such a

"good" one.

He didn't see the pair of crafty eyes regarding this trio from a distance as a

soft voice said, "Well, imagine that...Saotome Genma as a philosopher of the

martial arts. Will wonders never cease? Well...maybe if I stopped causing them

they would...but it seems as if they're going to be peacefully studying the Yama

and Umisenken, and that would never do."

"Going to go into your Deus Ex Machina routine?" a feminine voice asked from

somewhere nearby him.

"Nothing so melodramatic," the first (male) voice replied, "More like an

overlapping of probability lines. It's more fun that way."

"Whatever," the feminine voice replied, and then the dual presence withdrew,

leaving not even a disturbance in background animal noises in passing...

Ranma awoke with a start, hearing a woman's scream from somewhere in the

distance. He looked wildly around, finding daylight had crept upon them

unannounced and that they had (somehow) overslept past the normal time when his

father would wake him.

Apparently Ryoga had awaken too, for the lost boy was saying, "Did you hear

that? It sounded like it was a mile or two from here."

"I heard it," Ranma rose fluidly to his feet, pulling on his trousers and shirt

as he called out, "YO! Wake up, Pop! It's already daylight!"

"Eh?" despite his near-legendary ability to sleep through virtually anything,

Genma found himself instantly alert (if somewhat confused) from just that simple

verbal summons, "What in the name of...Boy, why didn't you awake me sooner?"

"You mean why didn't you wake me up," Ranma corrected, slipping on his shoes

before hurrying off towards the sound of screaming in the distance, "C'mon,

Ryoga! Stop lagging around, we gotta go check this!"

"I'm not lagging around," Ryoga complained as he, too, finished dressing, "I'm

right behind you."

"Uh...boys?" Genma started to say when the sound of a woman's screams made him

alert to the situation, "Oh hell..."

Two miles at top speed was only a matter of minutes to the two martial artists,

and all the while the sound of a woman screaming drew their attention to the

urgency of haste. They descended from the hills that they had camped within and

found themselves approaching the edge of Nerima proper, an area where it seemed

that a circus had made camp somewhere during the past several days (which did

seem odd as neither boy recalled seeing a single flyer or poster advertising

this fact before setting out on their training mission), and it was from this

area that the sounds of many screams were being raised.

"Over there!" Ranma pointed as they approached the scene of greatest commotion,

"What do you think's happening?"

"I don't know," Ryoga replied, "Maybe a wild animal got loose from its cage."

They came to an abrupt halt as the crowd suddenly dispersed in all directions,

giving space enough for the two boys to see the source of their recent panic, to

which Ranma said, "Good call."

Ryoga blanched and said, "No kidding..."

It was a large brown bear-almost a Kodiak by the size of it, menacing a woman

who was laying on the ground clutching a small child to her bosom. The bear was

snuffling and growling in a way that suggested it was about to pounce on these

helpless victims, and indeed it was rearing back on its hind legs while turning

its head about as though to challenge the spectators.

"No time to lose," Ranma said, "We gotta double-team this sucker. You take it

on the left, I'll go right, and stay clear of those paws, they look as big as

tennis rackets."

"I got you," Ryoga nodded as the two boys prepared to go into action.

Genma arrived about then, slightly winded, and saw what his two charges were

about to do, then adjusted his glasses and murmured, "Something about this whole

scene looks awfully familiar..."

All at once a figure detached itself from the crowd and confronted the bear

before it had time to react. With a swift thrust of both hands and a kick at

the creature's gut, this stranger doubled the creature over, at which point the

man vaulted onto its back, uncoiling a rope that he carried around his shoulder

as he looped it around the creature's neck, then pulled back as he applied

leverage to choke off the creature's attempt to snarl and bite him.

"Whoah..." Ranma averred, staring round-eyed as this tall figure heaved up and

somehow managed to lift the bear up off the ground, balancing it high on his

shoulder before slamming it down again in one fluid, decisive motion, the entire

thing taking less than three seconds before the bear was bound by the ropes

around its paws and muzzle. The tall man stepped back and nodded to the

creature in obvious satisfaction.

Unnoticed by anyone, Genma paled as he stared at the young man, who wore combat

fatigues and an olive green sleeveless military jacket, and in a trembling voice

the Saotome Elder said, "No...it can't be...!"

By this point one of the circus employees got bold enough to come and check on

the fallen woman and her child, confirming that they were all right, much to the

crowd's satisfaction. The young man seemed satisfied by this as the crowd began

to edge forward, eyeing him from all sides as if recognizing him to be an

instant hero.

"Man, did you see that?" Ryoga asked.

"Saw it, yeah," Ranma replied, "Believe it? No way!"

As they voiced this opinion, a woman dressed like a circus ringmaster came up to

the man with a delighted expression and said in a voice that was audible to

everybody, "Thank you, kind Sir, that was an incredibly brave and resourceful

gesture, saving that woman and her baby..."

"It wasn't anything special," the tall young man replied with a shrug, "You just

have to move faster than the grizzly."

"None the less, you're a hero," the lady Ringmaster replied, "Can I ask what

your name is, and whether you might be interested in a job working with animals?

I can pay you quite handsomely..."

"Thank you, but I've got something else lined up," the man replied, "But as for

my name...call me Saotome Ranma."

There was a very long pause before Ryoga said, "Saotome...?"

"Ranma?" said Ranma himself.

"Uh oh," murmured Genma, sensing that there was about to be serious trouble in

the offing...

Part Ninety-Two.

Akane stared out across the open field of tall grass and felt an urge to go

running across it like a carefree young girl from her long lost innocent youth.

Instead what she did was select a rock the size of a small grapefruit that she

found laying at her feet, and with a casual flip of her foot knocked it up into

the air where she caught it upon the top of her knee, balancing it there before

kicking it up and catching it with her other knee, repeating the gesture as she

sought to work upon her concentration and her balance.

Life was so unfair at times...why was everybody picking on her all of a sudden?

Just because she said those things about Ranma (her Baka brother-in-law-to-be

and ex-fiancée) when he was the one who had run off and abandoned her sister,

Nabiki, was no reason in her mind for everyone to suddenly be giving her the

cold shoulder.

Well, it wasn't exactly like Kodachi was giving her the brush-off, but with

Ryoga gone, and everyone else so sensitive on the subject of Saotome's sudden

urge to go on a training mission while taking her BOYFRIEND with him...well, she

just didn't see why she was supposed to passively go along with this. After

all, wasn't anyone else worried about Nabiki's feelings? Her Oneechan might not

always show it at times, but inwardly she had to be taking it a lot worse than

that brave face she was putting on in front of others was letting on...and all

because RANMA had to feel a little bit intimidated about the state of their

current engagement!

At least Nabiki WANTED to marry the Baka, which was more than Akane could ever

say for herself. All of her life Akane had suffered from being just a little

TOO popular with the people her own age (Ranma being the sole exception, and

that because he was too much like a brother for either of them to be serious

about their former engagement), while Nabiki only had Ranma and Shampoo (unless,

of course, you counted the other odd coupling of Ukyo and Perfume, who shared a

co-engagement)...

"Okay," Akane amended to herself aloud, "So maybe Oneechan is a little too

popular with both the guys and girls in both of her sexes, but it's not like

it's her fault..."

"You mean about Kasumi wanting to jump her bones when she's a guy?"

"EEP!" Akane reacted, missing her concentration by a fraction at the unexpected

interruption, which caused the rock to bounce off her knee and go flying over

her head back in the direction of the new speaker.

Akane turned around just in time to see a bare foot stretch out an impossibly

long distance, catching the stone in mid-air and holding it aloft off the tip of

the toes, then allowing the rock to slide down that long, tapering and well-

muscled limb, only to be caught mid-way against the knee of the speaker, Keiko

Arigami.

"Sorry," she said as she stood poised on one leg, "Didn't mean to startle you

like that. Didn't know this was a private monologue and thought anyone could

join in."

Akane visibly relaxed, glad to see that she was still on speaking terms with at

least SOMEONE from their camp. She flashed a smile at the pig-tailed redhead

and said, "Hey, I don't mind the company. In fact, I'd be glad for a little

conversation."

"Yeah, I'll bet," Keiko said with her usual affable charm as she studied the

dark-haired girl with her bright blue eyes open and friendly, "Sorry if things

got a little tense back there, but you kind of brought it on yourself by talking

out of turn. Sometimes, Tendo, I just think you'd be better off not trying to

find work as a diplomat, you're too blunt speaking."

"Am I really that bad?" Akane asked as she stared at the ground.

"Heads up!" Keiko called out, and with that sent the rock from her knee sailing

at Akane, who instinctively reacted by leaping up and bringing her own knee to

bear to catch it. "Nice work!" the redhead complimented, "You're definitely

improving your reflexes."

"Oh yeah?" Akane smiled, "Try this!" and with that she sent the rock hurtling

back to Keiko, who flipped up into the air and caught the rock again with her

upraised knee, landing poised and well balanced on one foot in a classic crane

stance.

"I thought maybe you might want the chance to talk things over a bit with

someone who's sympathetic to your position," Keiko remarked before knocking the

rock into the air and giving it a good kick back towards Akane, who had to move

fast in order to catch it, "Not that I totally agree with you, mind you, but as

least I can see where you're coming from."

"Really?" Akane asked as she kicked the stone back, "I mean...honestly, what did

I say that got everybody so upset back there? I was only speaking the truth..."

"Well...one interpretation of it anyway," Keiko remarked as she returned the

stone to Akane, "The thing to keep in mind is...you really can't pin all of the

blame down onto any one person or factor. Ranma's a little at fault for letting

himself get so knotted up inside without telling anybody about his feelings, but

Ukyo and Nabiki share part of the blame for not noticing the warning signs that

have been going on all around them."

"What warning signs?" Akane asked as she continued their makeshift game of

kicking the stone back and forth between them.

"Oh, I dunno," Keiko remarked as she aimed one high, forcing Akane to leap

higher to intercept it, "The short temper, the exhaustion, the irritability, the

sleepless nights of diaper changing and four-o'clock feedings, all for a kid

that isn't even his in the first place. That's bound to add up on a guy's

nerves, and since he's head over heels in love with at least one of the two

girls in question...well...is it any wonder he's started to feel just a wee bit

excluded?"

"But that's not Nabiki's fault," Akane protested as she aimed one just a little

past Keiko's left shoulder, making the redhead work for it (and giving Akane a

delightful eye-full of the comely redhead's pert anatomy as she flashed it in

passing).

"Nobody's saying that it is, heads up!" Keiko executed a perfect flip that sent

the stone rocking just a little above Akane's head, forcing the darker haired

girl to execute a back-flip in order to catch it, "Least of all Ranma. In point

of fact, he's been a pretty nice guy about the whole affair. I know if some

girl I was crazy over...say...Kodachi, for example, had got knocked up with

somebody else's kid, I'd begin to feel a little bit excluded myself. I'm just

amazed it took this long for Ranma to come out and sort-of admit it."

"Oh really?" Akane held the stone balanced on the tip of one foot, then lopped

it up in the air, aiming carefully as she spun around and kicked it on the down

turn, rather like smashing a tennis ball with a racket, "I know Ranma pretty

well...he'd rather die than admit anything like having a weakness."

"OOPS!" Keiko said as she forced herself to stretch in order to intercept the

stone, which she did, amazing Akane at the way her supple legs could stretch to

almost any angle. The stone was soon balancing on her knee again as she

regained her footing then said, "Well...having a weakness isn't all that bad.

Look at me...I'm a pretty tough girl, but splash some water on me and I go right

to the birds. Wanna see me do a good imitation of a vulture?"

With that she poised herself with her shoulders and head slumped like a

carnivorous bird of prey perching on a rock surveying a juicy carcass. Akane

could not help but chuckle at the pantomime of her friend, then Keiko righted

herself again and went back to being her usual cocky, brash self, flipping the

stone from one knee to the other.

"Seriously, you need to cut the boy some slack once in a while," Keiko

continued, "It's not like you're engaged to him anymore, so there's no reason to

be so angry and resentful."

"But how can you be taking his side like that?" Akane asked, "Do you know what

his going off like that is doing to Nabiki?"

"Do I know?" Keiko was at once entirely sober, "How about when Nabiki seemed to

up and desert me when we were hiding out in Hong Kong? How do you think I felt

then waking up from a night of pure bliss to find the space beside me empty?

She was my first real love...at least, the first one my own age, and it felt

pretty damned awful finding out that she'd gone and gotten herself married to

the first Amazon chick who took her to bed. Then I come here and find out that

some GUY had gone and gotten engaged to her...well...I think you can get the

picture. The point is, I don't hold it against Ranma, and I've pretty much

forgiven Nabiki. The Old Man? Well...that might be stretching it a bit, but

from where I stand I'd have to get at the end of a pretty long line when it

comes to paying him back for breaking Nab-chan and me up like he did. If he

hadn't interfered...well...then maybe I'd have been the one she got pregnant."

The charming smile on the redhead was simply irresistible, and Akane found

herself chagrined for having brought up such a painful reminder. She shook her

head and said, "I wish I could be more like you. I mean...with all the stuff

you've been through in your life, I just can't see how you can always be such an

optimist."

"Constant practice," Keiko winked, "You should try looking on the bright side

once-in-a-while, it might improve your whole world outlook. Catch!"

Akane was almost caught napping as the rock went hurtling directly towards her,

but she managed to get her foot out in time and stopped it flat against the ball

of her right foot, allowing her to flip it up and catch it once again as it was

now her turn to balance the stone on her ankle.

"There's really no big secret to maintaining a positive outlook," Keiko

continued, "You just have to live each day while it happens. Don't live in the

past, don't fantasize about the future, don't waste your time with idle

speculation about what may or may not be, just take everything as it comes in

stride and make the best of the hand you're dealt by Fate's card dealer. You

think I could have survived all those years as a sex slave and a gladiator if I

wasted my time away moaning and fretting about my fate? What would be the point

to that? I just bided my time and waited for the first opportunity that came my

way. I'd almost given up all hope when Nabiki came along to rescue me, and I'll

always be grateful for that and her helping to reunite me with my parents."

"Speaking of which," Akane said a bit sadly, "When are they getting back from

their honeymoon again?"

"Another week or so," Keiko replied, "Until then I'll continue living with

Kodachi. Then...we'll see what happens. I know Dad wants to take me back to

the States to get me acquainted with my American roots, but...well...Japan is my

home and all that, so you know it won't be long until I get back here. If

anything, I may just wind up dragging 'Dachi back with me on an extended

vacation. She's never been to America, and I'm sure we'll both have a grand old

time in the land of the Gaijin."

"I'll miss you if you leave," Akane said sincerely, "I've learned so much from

just being around you..."

"Well, nobody's said I have to go right away," Keiko winked, "I'm sure I won't

be that easy to be rid of. After all, this curse of mine is bound to be a

problem. 'Dachi's still trying to come to terms with her own curse, and Dad's

promised that he's going to look into finding a cure and all that,

but...well...I guess we'll just have to make the best of it until then. I think

he's still a little alarmed at what happened when he sent Chun-Li and Lieutenant

Cammy to Jusenkyo..."

"Oh yeah," Akane winced, "Too bad about that. I kind of like them."

"Just let it go to serve as a lesson," Keiko winked, "Never mess with ancient

Chinese Curses. The results can be...very tragic. I'm sure Chun and Cammy must

feel the same way, but it really is their fault for getting into a cat-fight in

the middle of their mission, give or take some troubles I understand they had

with the locals. On the other hand, who knew there was such a thing as the

Spring of the Drowned Centaur?"

"Well, at least your Dad seems to like them," Akane mused, "But I wonder how

your Mom talked him into taking them along on the Honeymoon as bodyguards...or

whatever excuse it was she used."

"Hey, what can I say?" Keiko winked, "Mom can be pretty resourceful when you

come down to it. Even Mistress Lao knows better than to underestimate her.

Dad, on the other hand...well...be easy on him, he is a Gaijin."

Akane found her mood considerably lightened as she contemplated which way to

kick the stone that was balancing on her foot, "That's something else I don't

really understand. About you and Lao. I mean...granted she's not entirely

evil, but how can you feel so little resentment from someone who treats you like

you're virtually her property or something?"

"Nothing virtual about it," Keiko replied, "I was her property...she just let me

run off the leash for a while as a favor to my mother. In actuality she sold me

to Kodachi."

"Huh?" Akane let the stone fall off her foot and landed on the other, which

caused her to go momentarily cross-eyed.

"Oh, did I forget to tell you about that?" Keiko asked as the darker haired girl

hopped up and down on one foot, "It was part of our arrangement when Mistress

Lao released me. I now officially belong to Kodachi as her bought and paid for

contract slave, signed sealed and delivered for a check in the amount of no less

than one hundred thousand US dollars. Not too shabby a bargain if I do say so

myself."

Akane was on her rump massaging her bruised foot as she looked up and said, "I

didn't know that Kodachi actually owned you. I mean...that's not really

legal...is it?"

"You think I care?" Keiko smiled, "It's a private arrangement between us,

doesn't involve the law or anything else. Lao surrendered me to Kodachi upon

her graduation from the POJ's Bondage Training Academy. Officially she's my

owner and Mistress, but...well...'Dachi prefers if we treat it more like a

private affair between near equals. Unofficially, she's free to do with me as

she wills, and I've got no objections to this arrangement. It's not something

we intend to flash around-especially with my Dad, who might have a few

objections of his own if he gets word about it..."

"Uh...right," Akane said, "Mum's the word and all that."

"Hey, I'm a big girl, and I'm almost eighteen, so in another few months I'll be

free to do as I want without needing a parent or guardian around to tell me

what's right and proper," Keiko shrugged, "Mom knows about it and that's

cool...she feels she owes Mistress Lao for helping to deprogram her from that

Assassination thing. Turns out the guy responsible for it was part of the 108

Dragons, like we figured, but his operation was not sanctioned by the leader of

the outfit, so Crying Freeman himself helped remove the last traces of

conditioning from Mom's subconscious. Now Mom's perfectly normal-well, as

normal as somebody who's lived with the Mistress can be, anyway-and Dad's

probably finding his hands full with all the tricks of the trade that she

learned from the Mistress. Same goes for Chun and Cammy," she added with a look

of sweet mischief that brought a sympathetic smile to Akane.

"Poor guy," she said insincerely.

"My sentiments exactly," Keiko nodded, flipping her long pig-tailed braid around

to rest over one shoulder, "So you can see how Dad might be a while in figuring

out the true extent of what's going on with me and 'Dachi. I'm her property,

and that's the way I like it, but I'm just as much her bodyguard and co-

instructor. I'm teaching her a lot about Kickboxing and the Sensual arts, just

like she's teaching me about life on a whole new level of domestic sensualism.

You can be a part of that world too, if you like...you and Ryoga, if you think

the poor guy can take it without fainting."

"Ryoga," Akane sighed as she looked down, "Why did he have to go off and train

with Ranma anyway? What can that old Panda-breath be thinking anyway?"

"That the two boys are about equal in fighting ability," Keiko replied, "And

they train pretty good together. They don't hold back and they don't pull their

punches, but they're the next best thing to being friends, so they trust each

other where it really matters."

"Yeah...well..." Akane struggled to find the words to express her emotions and

just gave up in frustration. To her surprise she looked up and found Keiko

standing over her with an outstretched hand, offering to give her a lift.

"Hey, trust is essential to any kind of relationship, I know," Keiko replied,

"Nab-chan's got to learn to trust Ranma, just like you need to learn to trust

Ryoga to handle himself. They're a couple of pretty terrific guys, if you want

my honest opinion..."

Akane accepted the hand as Keiko pulled her back to her feet, but the dark

haired girl could not help asking, "How can you be on their side? I

mean...Ryoga I can understand, but Ranma?"

"What, you think just because I'm a Lesbian that I think all boys are jerks?"

Keiko gave a cocky little smile and said, "Hardly. Take your boy-toy, for

example...he's as naïve as they come, and yet there's something so charmingly

innocent about the way he's always there to defend you. He needs to work a bit

on self-control with that superhuman strength of his or he's likely to break

your back with one of his bear hugs. A little training in the right areas might

get him to relax those muscles while strengthening the OTHER muscles he'll need

to make you satisfied and happy, and that's where I can come in, being a prime

student of Lao's training in the art of muscle and tension relaxation. Just

leave yourselves to my care and I'll have the boy eating out of

your...ahem...well...you know..." she added with a lascivious expression.

Akane got the reference and immediately colored, glancing down as she

unconsciously covered her hands over her hidden genitalia.

"As for Ranma...well...that's a little more complicated," Keiko seemed to

actually get thoughtful for a moment, "Don't ask me why, but for the longest

time now I've had this...really weird feeling whenever he's around...like he was

my long-lost brother, or something. I really can't explain it, other than to

say that I think he's a pretty terrific guy, and I wouldn't mind screwing him

myself, even if I wouldn't get as much pleasure from the experience as he

would."

"What?" Akane blinked her eyes and said, "You?"

"Hey, I've been screwed by a lot worse, believe me," Keiko avowed, "Another part

of my training was to help desensitize me to the sort of crawling sensations I

used to get whenever a boy touches me. I don't feel the same level of aversion

that I once felt when a man wants to have sex with me...in fact, I've learned

how to use that to my advantage. Men don't excite me or cause me to feel the

sorts of sensations I get around girls, but I can give almost any man a good

time if he tries his luck with me, even if he's Gay," she added with an ironic

leer, "Sex is too sacred a word for me to ever treat it as a trivial sensation."

"I guess I really don't understand," Akane admitted, "With the exception of Ryo-

chan and...and Tofu Sensei...boys have always seemed to me to be so...yucky..."

"Try living without them for a couple of years and you'll learn to appreciate

the difference," Keiko revealed, "For me, Sex is a way of getting to know

someone physically and emotionally on a level that's hard to achieve through any

other form of contact but fighting. Fighting's the other thing that flips my

switch almost as much as sex...it's like reveling in being alive!

It's...well...in a word, it's fun!"

"Fun?" Akane repeated with a raised eyebrow.

"That's the one lesson Nab-chan never seems to have learned for herself," Keiko

continued, "She thinks that fighting is just a means to an end, and she's very

intensive about it, and she does appreciate the art as an art...but she doesn't

really know how to let go and just lose herself in the battle. She needs to

understand that you don't always have to be in control, that control is often

just a cruel and twisted illusion. We're never entirely in control, even of

ourselves, and certainly not our destinies, which are the product of an

elaborate mesh of conflicting wills and personalities, our will versus that of

every other person with whom we come in contact. Life is a game and a battle,

it's too random and brief for us to waste our time feeling trapped and

embittered by unpleasant circumstances. Better far to treat it like a game

where there are no real winners or losers, just players doing their best to make

the best of the fates they're given. And fighting is the greatest game of all,

the point where it really is a throw of the dice and victory goes to the side

that is the truest to their own inner dynamic. Once you learn that fact, you

can never really lose, no matter what the battle."

"I guess that does make sense," Akane admitted, "You know, Kei-chan, you're a

pretty terrific person."

"Thanks," Keiko smiled back, "You're not so bad yourself...for an 'Uncute

Tomboy.'"

"Oh please," Akane rolled her eyes, "I got enough of that from Ranma, and who

are you calling a Tomboy?"

The two girls grinned, and then Keiko reached forward and tapped Akane on the

nose and said, "TAG-you're it!"

"Huh?" Akane screwed up her eyes then heard the redhead laughing as Keiko turned

and started running, "Why you-!" and then the darker haired girl was off and

chasing after her, both girls laughing as they darted and wove their way among

the tall grasses and otherwise behaving like a couple of school girls.

Kodachi, from where she sat perched upon a tall branch, having sat and listened

to this pair chatting pleasantly together, heaved a sigh and said softly, "It's

so nice to see them getting along so well together. Akane-chan really does need

someone like Kei-chan to drag her out of her doldrums."

There was a suitable pause of about thirty seconds, and then Kodachi spoke

again, "Oh, who am I fooling? That looks like so much fun!" and with that she

vaulted out of the tree and took off at a run after her two favorite

"girlfriends"...

Ranma stared in disbelief at the tall young man calling himself Saotome Ranma,

who had just performed a heroic deed and received the compliments of the lady

Ringmaster in charge of the circus where they had arrived in such great haste.

The boy was a few inches taller than himself, and certainly more ruggedly

handsome with muscles that stood out in clean definition, suggesting that he was

possibly several years older and more mature in terms of physical development.

The combat "Rambo" get-up that he was wearing implied that he might have a

military background, but there was too much else beside him that more strongly

hinted of a life on the open road. He certainly seemed hardy and virile enough

to be a survivalist, to say nothing of possessing some impressive martial arts

skills.

All that fell to an insignificant status in light of the one sure thing that

Ranma knew on the instant that he had set eyes upon this fellow: He

instinctively hated him on sight. There was too much about this older boy that

seemed...WRONG on a level for which there was no easy definition. He was too

arrogant, too cocky and overconfident in his abilities, full of a contrary pride

that seemed to wear his self-deprecation like a badge of honor, and he had

chosen the wrong name. That latter point was especially irksome as hearing the

boy calling himself Saotome Ranma made the real Ranma's skin crawl, a fact that

did not go unnoticed by Ryoga.

"Saotome Ranma?" the Lost Boy said as he looked from his companion to the

stranger and back again, "Whoah...what are the odds, eh?"

"Saotome Ranma?" the lady Ringmaster asked with a curious expression on her

face, "Would you...by any chance be related to a man named Saotome Genma?"

An immediate wariness crossed the expression of the stranger as he eyed the

handsome woman wearing the top-hat and a suggestively revealing costume, "Who

wants to know? I mean...why do you ask, lady?"

"It's just that I...knew a man who went by the name of Saotome Genma," the lady

Ringmaster hesitated, "You wouldn't happen to be his son...would you?"

"Eh?" Ranma heard his father say as if just then recognizing the Ringmaster,

"Sakura...?"

"His...son?" the young man frowned, "I'm...afraid I can't discuss that, Ma'am.

I'm just a wanderer on a pilgrimage, and I stopped by because I saw you were

having trouble..."

"Yes, and I'm very grateful that you have," the lady Ringmaster said with great

delight, turning her head to several men wearing the gear of animal trainers and

adding, "Be sure to get Bruno back into his cage before he wakes up, boys. It's

a good thing no one was seriously hurt or we might have had to put him to sleep.

As it is you've shown yourself to be a very brave young man and a genuine

hero..."

"I'm...nothing really," the boy started to turn away, "Just glad nobody was hurt

here..."

"Wait!" the lady Ringmaster called out, "Won't you stay? You look like you

could use some work, and there's plenty to do around a circus for a man with

your obvious...talents..."

"I'm flattered, really," the young man paused to give a faint smile to the

Ringmaster, "Maybe some other time I'd take you up on it, but just now..."

The Ringmaster's eyes suddenly wandered back to the bear, who was being hoisted

up into a mobile cage by several of her employees, only her attention fell to an

object that had been hidden beneath the bear, which at once caused her to say,

"Wait up a minute, young Sir. I think you dropped something."

"Eh?" the young man turned around in time to see the Ringmaster pick up the

object and pass it along to him, which proved to be a scroll of some kind, at

which point his eyes got very round and he said, "My treasure! I didn't even

know I dropped it."

The young man stretched out a hand to reclaim his "treasure," but before it

could be managed another hand reached out and snatched it away from the

Ringmaster.

"Huh, some treasure," Ranma said as he removed the string binding the scroll and

began to unroll it, "Let's see what you've got here."

"HEY!" the young man turned around, "What do you think you're doing?"

"That's what I was going to ask you," Ranma replied when he began to read the

poorly lettered kanji, at which point he made a sharp intake of breath, "Saotome

School Special Ryu...THE YAMASENKEN?"

"You give that back!" the young man cried as he pounced on where Ranma was

standing, only to be amazed as the other boy fleetingly evaded him altogether,

still reading the scroll, on which were hand drawn some crude illustrations.

"Where the hell did you get this?" Ranma demanded, then turned a look back

towards the crowd and said, "POP!"

"Oh my," the Ringmaster gasped as she saw an uneven game of tag being performed

by the two boys, one wearing a red Chinese shirt and black slacks, the other in

combat fatigues with sleeveless vest and army boots, "Who are you?"

Ranma paused in his dodging of the other boy's attacks and said, "The name is

Saotome Ranma...the REAL one!"

"The...?" the older boy halted dead in his tracks and stared, "YOU are Saotome

Ranma?"

"That's right, Jerk," Ranma said as he re-rolled the scroll back up and looped

the string back in place, "I don't know what kind of scam you're pulling here,

but it stops now. My Pop said he created this system, which means you must have

stolen this, 'cause I know it's his handwriting, just as bad as ever."

"I-I don't understand," the Ringmaster covered her mouth with a hand, "Two boys

claiming to be Saotome Ranma? What a strange coincidence."

"Coincidence my ass," Ranma turned to the crowd and said, "Well, Pop...are you

gonna explain this or what?"

"Watch your mouth, Boy," Genma growled as he shouldered his way into view, then

paused as he turned to regard the Ringmaster, at which point his tone fell to a

more respectful, "Hello, Sakura."

"Genma?" the Ringmaster gasped, then with a delighted cry she declared, "You're

still alive! My word, it's been close to five years...what have you been up to

in all this time?"

"That...would take some explaining," Genma replied, "You look as if you've been

doing well for yourself."

"I've managed to take over the business from my father," Sakura said simply,

taking notice of Ryoga, who had also approached from the sidelines, "Oh my...are

these your sons?"

"One of them anyway," Genma nodded towards Ranma before turning his attention to

the combat-clad stranger, "My son did ask a very good question though...who are

you, and where did you get your hands on the Yamasenken?"

"So," the strange boy straightened out, and an odd smile found its way across

his expression, "You're the one who gave that scroll to my father...Saotome

Genma. And that means it was meant for you, Saotome Ranma."

"Meant for me?" Ranma asked without altering his own expression, "Explain that."

"Your name is on that scroll," the taller boy replied, "Take another look."

Ranma hastily undid the scroll and unwound it, scanning down to the bottom

before saying, "'To my son, Saotome Ranma, on the day he reaches manhood.'

Oh...I get it...Pop meant to give this to me when I was old enough for training.

But how the hell did you get a hold of...?"

"That's not important, fool," the young man replied, "What is important is that

you have something I want! Give me it now and I'll let you walk away unharmed.

Oppose me...and you're going to get hurt a lot worse than that grizzly."

"Yeah, yeah," Ranma scoffed, "Talk is cheap, let's see you back it up, you

Imposter."

"Ranma!" Genma's voice was surprisingly sharp, causing all attention to focus

back his way as he turned to the stranger and said, "You're Kumon Omi's boy,

aren't you? That's how you wound up with the Yamasenken. He gave it to you."

The stranger narrowed his eyes as he regarded Genma, "More like he passed it

onto me with his dying breath after wrecking what was left of our dojo."

Genma closed his eyes and his shoulders sagged a moment as he looked down, then

after a long pause he spoke again with surprising gravity in his voice,

"I...heard about what happened. I'm very sorry for that, son...your father was

a good man. I never should have given him the scroll. It was a mistake...and

I've been living with it ever since..."

"Why?" the stranger responded, "You didn't make him wreck our dojo...the place

was falling down anyway. Dad just got carried away trying to put the scroll

into practice..."

"But you've perfected the technique," Genma raised his eyes again, alight with

an intensity that seemed very strange on his expression, "You took what I

created and fully mastered the Yamasenken."

"For all the good it does me," the stranger replied, "I need the other part of

the Ryu...the shadow side to the Yamasenken, if I'm to fulfill my father's dream

of rebuilding our dojo."

"The Kumon Dojo," Genma said softly.

"I don't get this," Ranma said, "Who are you?"

"My name...is Ryu," the boy said with an oddly humorless smile, "Kumon Ryu,

owner of that scroll you took from me-which, by the way-I want back right this

minute, along with the other scroll you have in your possession...the

Umisenken!"

"The Umisenken?" Ranma reacted, "But I don't..."

"Don't waste my time trying to lie about it!" the one calling himself Kumon Ryu

angrily declared, "Show me the Umisenken now! I need it to rebuild my father's

dojo!"

Ranma sensed the other boy's imminent attack and fell at once into a defensive

crouch, but all at once the boy named Ryu exploded with a fiery cry, "FIERCE

TIGER OPENING GATES BLOW!" which was identical to the maneuver that he had used

to stun the grizzly.

Ranma was almost caught napping by this, and had he been a tad bit slower in

dodging out of the way he would have been subjected to a triple-slam of both

boy's hands and out outstretched foot. He vaulted sideways and landed in a

defensive crouch, aware now that the other boy was not only fast and strong but

was master of a technique that involved a lot of raw physical power.

"Hmm..." Ryu said as he turned to regard Ranma with a frankly impressed

expression, "Very good...not many people could avoid my attack that way, but

you're just delaying the inevitable."

"Oh yeah?" Ranma growled back, "Prove it."

"As you wish," Ryu nodded, then suddenly cried, "MAD GOD BIG DANCE!" and his

hands became a blur, lashing out at Ranma without him actually seeming to move

from the spot.

Again Ranma was forced to dodge and evade his blows, only this time the attack

came in the form of hissing knife-like gusts of air that slashed at Ranma's

clothing as he attempted to escape them. One slash missed Ranma completely and

struck a metal fence directly behind him, snapping through the metal as though

it had been cleaved by a broad ax, another coming close to striking an innocent

bystander, but for the way it pulled up at the last minute.

"Ranma!" Ryoga cried out in dismay at seeing his friend and traveling companion

coming close to being sliced in two by nothing more than a wind current. Genma-

at his side-said nothing, but it was clear from his expression that this fight

worried him as Ranma clearly did not seem prepared to handle the encounter.

"Oh man..." Ranma stared in dismay at his forearms, which sported a number of

angry welts and bruises in those places where he had partly deflected the

attack, "What the heck was that?"

"You don't know?" Ryu scoffed, "Don't tell me your father has never bothered to

train you in the Yamasenken? I suppose next you'll also say that you don't know

what the Umisenken is either."

"That's exactly right, you jerk!" Ranma shouted back, "Pop hasn't yet trained

me!"

"Just how gullible do you take me for?" Ryu sneered, "With the level of combat

proficiency I've seen right now, it should be a snap for you to pick them up and

use them against me. Don't think you can win against me just using an ordinary

martial arts system like Kempo. GOLD CORD TIGHT BINDING SOAR!"

All at once the older boy whipped out a yellow rope from his side and wrapped it

up around Ranma's arms before the other boy had a chance at a reaction. Ranma

tried to free himself but was instead yanked into arms reach of his opponent,

and then Ryu wrapped his arms around Ranma's waist and cried, "IN THE POCKET

ROUND HUG DEATH!"

"URRNLK!" Ranma gasped as he found his breath being crushed out of his lungs

while his arms were held fast, preventing him from making any retaliatory

action.

"Ranma!" Ryoga could hold himself back no longer, seeing that his friend was in

serious danger. His well-intentioned gesture, however, did not go unnoticed by

Ryu, who let go of his helpless foe in order to turn in time to meet the charge

of the formidable Lost Boy.

"RYOGA!" Genma started to cry, sensing the dangerous trap that his other ward

was about to fall into.

"WELCOME GATE IRON FINGERS!" Ryu cried as he turned into Ryoga's charge with

one hand outstretched to penetrate the other boy's guard as though it hardly

even mattered. The point where he struck Ryoga caused the angry boy to double

up and fall to the ground as though stabbed with a sword blade.

"R-r-ryoga..." Ranma wheezed, unable to get enough wind in his breath to say

anything else as he stared at where Ryoga had fallen.

"This isn't any fun," Ryu sniffed, "You guys are pathetic! You mean neither one

of you knows the secret of the Umisenken? Then you're wasting my time here..."

"Not quite," Genma replied, "The boys may not know the Umisenken, but I do."

"You, old man?" Ryu turned to regard Genma, but before he could fully complete

the turn a wind kicked up that blew dust into his face and momentarily obscured

his line of vision.

By the time it cleared both Ranma and Ryoga were no longer where they had

fallen, the golden rope laying in the space where it had been unwound, and Ryu

could not see to where they had taken off.

"Hey, over here!" A voice called out, causing Ryu to look up to where he found

Genma (both boys slung over his shoulders) standing atop a trailer.

"Not too bad," Ryu said grudgingly, "I never even saw that coming."

"That was the idea," Genma replied, "You want the Umisenken, boy? You'll have

to work for it, but not here and not now. Meet us in the open field by the rail

yards in three days, and I promise by then you'll have the match that I know

you're after."

"Why not now?" Ryu asked, "I've defeated your son and his friend, why shouldn't

I force you to show me the Umisenken, Old Man?"

"I'm not fighting you, Boy," Genma replied, "I owe that much to your father, but

my son is the heir to the Umisenken, and he'll be the one to show it to you."

"That weakling?" Ryu scoffed, "He'll never be ready for me in only three days,

not after the bruising I just gave him."

"Care to make a wager on that?" Genma asked, holding up a scroll in his hand,

"This treasure versus the scroll that contains the Umisenken? If you lose to

Ranma then, it's yours, but if you lose, then you'll give up on pursing the

Umisenken and seal up the Yamasenken so that it will never be used again. Then

you can found your dojo on a different and more honorable system."

"More...honorable?" Ryu blinked, this time showing surprise in his expression.

"Be where I said on time, Boy," Genma said firmly, then hunched his shoulders

and said, "Or you'll never find either us or the Umisenken."

As he said this something very odd seemed to happen, and Ryu had to blink his

eyes to be certain that he was not seeing things, for Genma's outline-and that

of his two charges-began to blur, and then the three of them just seemed to

utterly vanish as though they had become invisible, leaving him to wonder just

how such a thing had been accomplished.

"Three days, huh?" Ryu started to relax, "I won't even need three minutes to

finish your boy off, Saotome. The Umisenken is as good as mine, and father will

finally be able to rest easy."

Sakura was also staring in shocked disbelief at where she had seen the

impossible happen, but when a hand tapped her on the shoulder she almost yelped

in surprise, before that beefy hand clamped down over her mouth to prevent such

an impulsive gesture.

"Sakura-chan," Genma urged, "I need your help. Is there someplace we can go

where the boys can get some privacy and rest?"

Sakura relaxed and began to nod her hand when the hand let her go, so she turned

around and found Genma standing right behind her, his son and Ryoga still

unconscious and slumped over his broad shoulders.

"Of course," she said, "We can use my trailer. But...Genma...don't they need

medical attention? I can get my personal physician to look them over..."

"Won't be necessary," Genma replied, "They'll recover before you know it, but

only if we have some privacy, away from prying eyes."

"I understand," the lady Ringmaster replied, then smiled as she added, "It's

just like the old days."

"Tell me about it," Genma sighed, "I don't mean to pry, but do you also have

some of your father's supply of sake?"

"Same old Genma," Sakura grinned, "A little heavier, less hairy, but always in

the thick of trouble. I guess some things never change, eh?"

"I guess maybe they don't," Genma replied, "But I still remain a little

hopeful..."

Continued.

Comments/Criticisms/Circus of the Anime Stars: shadowmane

The gauntlet has been thrown down (and it hurt plenty!) and a wake-up call has

been issued. Ryoga and Ranma will be licking their wounds and spoiling for a

rematch the next time out, but can Genma teach them what they need to know in

the time he's allowed them, and what will they do in the meantime to prepare for

the awesome force of Ryu's Yamasenken? Find out next time around as we learn

what Genma has in store in, "Earth and Water in the Balance," or "Sakura Lemon

Blues." Be there!

X

If you wish to check out my other works, Please check out my Fanfiction

webpage at: .

All related chapters of this series can be found there along with my

other works.


	36. Chapter 36

Dnabiki93

Nabiki 1/2

"A Very Scary Thought!"

by

Jim Robert Bader

(Inspired by the works of Rumiko Takahashi & others)

Part Ninety-Three.

"The nerve of those two little ingrates!" Happosai fumed as he struggled to

make his way back into town from where he had landed but a short while past,

"Doing something like this to their very own Master! That's the trouble with

young people these days, no appreciation of their Elders!"

Being sent flying for miles was hardly a new experience for the perverted old

man, but to think that the two little orphans he had helped out so very long ago

out of the goodness of his heart, training them in the basic lore of the

Anything Goes Ryu so that their dainty little feet would be firmly set on the

correct path to Martial Arts glory, and now that they were grown up into

beautiful young ladies they wouldn't even let him cop a feel or show his

appreciation of the way that they were blossoming out from the promising young

buds that he so well remembered.

But then again, he supposed he could hardly expect anything BUT such ingratitude

owing to the fact that they took their inspiration from Tendo Nabiki, his

greatest disappointment.

"It's all her fault!" he swore as she pressed his way past the overbrush and

forested wilderness setting, "The nerve of that renegade apprentice of mine!

Encouraging a rebellion in the ranks of my own school...and preferring that old

Witch over me...if she wasn't such a cutie, I'd show her what for!"

Bad enough that Nabiki was only half a woman much of the time (BUT OHHH-WHAT A

WOMAN THOSE TIMES SHE WAS ONE!) but to think that she could usurp the role as

head of his own school and show nothing but scathing disrespect for her true and

proper Master! Who was it who taught her how to outfox the old woman when it

came to that "Cat-Tongue" incident? Who was it who got her to think about the

five-way engagement that had managed to assuage the competing claims of Shampoo,

Ranma, Ukyo and Perfume? Who had given her the benefit of some of his most

advanced techniques and martial arts training? And who had been the victim of

one of the most egregious examples of betrayal that had resulted in Nabiki

learned the dreaded "Hiryu Shoten Ha" technique?

Er...well...maybe that wasn't such a sterling example, he silently conceded.

But it was Nabiki's fault just the same, he instantly rallied, for showing him

such gross abuse and disrespect, for which he had decided to teach her a lesson

by using the Moxibustion point to strip her of her strength for the duration.

Served her right for dissing her Master, forcing her to rely on Ranma for even

the simplest gestures (and what a delicious irony that had been, even if the boy

was way too "Pussy-whupped" for Happosai's liking), thus humiliating his wayward

pupil into what he had hoped would be virtual submission. If not for the

spiteful interference of Cologne, teaching Nabiki how to turn an opponent's

strength against them, thus bolstering her confidence so that she could

challenge and defeat Happosai (after a clever strategy of using some

delightfully posed photos in order to tempt him into radiating a battle aura),

his plan might have succeeded, teaching the girl some much-needed humility...but

nooo! Her defiance had to continue and even increase with each succeeding

victory that helped bolster the young girl's already impressive reputation...

The little man was so absorbed into his mental ranting that he almost failed to

hear signs of a commotion up ahead of the wilderness path. All at once he heard

a massive explosion that was accompanied by a searing wave of intensive Chi that

informed him as to the nature of the blast. It was about a kilometer ahead of

where he was, meaning that someone was engaged in some pretty advanced martial

arts training, and it did not take much imagination to suppose who would be

practicing this close to the fringes of Nerima.

Happosai picked up the pace and hurried to the spot where he sensed the blast

had originated, but then slowed to a crawl when he caught sight of Nabiki and

Cologne, careful not to expose himself to view or allow his own Chi to set off

any alarms that would inform the old woman of his proximity to this area of

training. Nabiki looked poised, composed and alert, dressed in her usual

Chinese style of sleeveless shirt and trousers, barefoot yet poised on the balls

of her feet as if ready for action.

Happosai's eyes narrowed as he looked on from concealment, silently evaluating

what he could make out of the technique that Nabiki was presently mastering. He

felt the rising currents of Chi once again center in the girl's psychic Chakras,

and then Nabiki launched herself forward, executing a lightning kick that

discharged the accumulated Chi in the form of a Ki-bolt that lanced through the

air and struck a boulder that stood fifteen meters away, shattering it as

effectively as if it had been struck with a Bakusai Tenketsu.

The old man silently nodded. An effective technique indeed, if far from the

most awesome that he had ever witnessed.

"That was definitely an improvement," Cologne remarked, "But you're still not

fully concentrating on the goal at hand, Daughter-in-law. Your mind keeps

drifting away from your training..."

"I'm sorry, Grandmother," Nabiki sighed, "I am doing my best, but...I just can't

seem to keep my mind off of Ranma. His wandering off like that with his old

man...and then that stupid challenge the old panda made about Ranma coming back

to try and defeat me..."

"It's an honorable enough goal, you must admit," Cologne replied, "And not just

because of Amazon traditions. The boy has been feeling a bit down and depressed

of late, and this should help him focus more on your upcoming marriage. Even if

he only does moderately well, that should put to rest his feelings of inadequacy

that have been undermining his confidence of late."

"Inadequacy?" Nabiki reacted, "When have I ever tried to make Ranma-kun feel

inadequate, huh? Tell me that!"

"Child," Cologne said patiently, "You're not thinking clearly from the

perspective of your fiancée. Ranma has been tremendously supportive of you, far

more than I'd expect of a Japanese boy who was raised by his mother. He cares

very deeply about you, but he's been fighting a sense of exclusion from you and

your relationship with my great-granddaughter, so can you honestly blame him for

feeling less of a man and unworthy of your affections?"

"He's not unworthy of me," Nabiki looked down, "But what could I have done that

would make him feel like that? I mean...I know I haven't taken as much time as

I could have, but with the baby..."

"It is not just the baby, Child," Cologne informed her, "It is the quality of

the time that you spend with your proud young buck. Ranma has come to doubt

that he is as important to you as you are to him, and that doubt has been

gnawing on his pride. He wants to believe that you still care for him despite

all your other commitments, but without evidence to reassure him that this is

fact and not wishful thinking on his part..."

"What the hell do I have to do to make Ranchan know that I still want him?"

Nabiki fumed, "I need him...more than I've ever needed him before, if anybody

really want to know! I love Shampoo and the baby, but without Ranma in my life

I...I...I just don't know what I'd do. I can't believe that I actually hurt his

feelings by ignoring him..."

"He is a man," Cologne replied, "Men feel a need to demonstrate their worth

through deeds, but they want accompanying reassurances to buck up their fragile

self-esteem. You need to learn how to cultivate the fine art of stroking his

ego by showing him in tiny little ways that you consider him important, even if

it were as common a gesture as a compliment, a smile, a pat on the shoulder (or

even the rump), anything that suggests in a non-verbal sense that you consider

him sexually and personally attractive."

"Ah...yeah, I guess I could try working on that part," Nabiki colored slightly,

"Got any special techniques that could work?"

"None more effective than the one he used upon you," the old woman said with a

straight face, "That kiss was an instinctive and impulsive gesture on his part,

but even I must stand in awe of the power that I saw contained in those lips

when they engaged yours in cross-communication."

"Ahhh..." Nabiki hastily looked away as her face now flared a full fledged

crimson blush, "Yeah...caught me off guard with that one...sneaky maneuver. I'm

gonna have to remember that one..."

"There are many other types you could try," Cologne persisted, "For

example...there is the Hug of Warmth and Tenderness, the Caress of the Soft Doe,

The Smile of a Thousand Suggestive Charms, and-if all else fails, there is that

most dreaded of techniques passed down to Amazons for generations...The Kiss of

Absolute and Complete Devotion. I used that one on my first husband, and I can

guarantee it was MOST effective in yielding a most happy and fruitful union."

"Ah..." Nabiki considered that for a moment then said, "You must've taught some

of that to Shampoo...I think she's got all those katas mastered, and then some."

"Indeed," Cologne replied, "For her they are second nature."

"I guess maybe...a few compliments might be good for telling Ranma how much I

appreciate him for being at my side through all of this," Nabiki averred, "That

other stuff...yeah...that could work too, I guess..."

"Of course," Cologne smiled slyly, "And then again, you could just simply go to

bed with him and let him know in no uncertain terms how much you value him as a

man to a woman..."

"Go to...?" Nabiki swallowed, "Hooboy...yeah...guess maybe I need to work that

part out. Sham-chan's been giving me some pointers, but to do it with a

man...as a girl..."

"Oh?" Cologne turned a crafty look on her apprentice, "Were you expecting to do

it as a man with your husband? That would certainly raise a few eyebrows..."

"NOW CUT THAT OUT!" Nabiki reacted, only to see the Matriarch grin back at her

in smug satisfaction.

Cologne sobered, "Now this does bring us back to the point that I was attempting

to make with you before...your need to relax more and develop a more casual

attitude of repose when confronting a troublesome situation. You've been much

too serious of late, too tense and too strung out to seriously enjoy life, let

alone to train in more and more complex systems. This must prompt me to ask you

once again, Daughter-in-law...why do you train at all? And please, no flip

answers such as passing the blame upon me for promoting you to intensify your

training."

"Well...I guess it all comes down to why I started training in the beginning,"

Nabiki said, "My father runs a dojo, and at the age of seven I was turned over

to Uncle Genma for training in the Saotome Ryu, and...well...over time I've kind

of grown to like it..."

"Precisely," Cologne all but pounced on the word.

Nabiki blinked, "I beg your pardon?"

"You enjoy training in the martial arts, do you not?" Cologne clarified.

"Sure," Nabiki said, "Why wouldn't I enjoy it? It builds confidence and makes

me limber, and with my skills I can take on just about anyone and win..."

"And yet you are training now to meet a direct challenge issued to you on behalf

of Ranma," Cologne said, "He is going to fight with the aim of defeating you and

making you his wife by Amazon reckoning. If he succeeds in this, then he will

become your husband in all ways but a Japanese legal sense, and that means a

simple ceremony will be enough to 'seal the deal,' as you would put it, and make

him yours entirely, to do with as a wife may do with a husband."

"Um..." Nabiki started to color once again, "I...well...what are you suggesting?

That I throw the fight so the both of us could get married?"

"Hardly that," Cologne mused, "But why would you train to resist him, unless you

would enjoy making him 'work' for his victory? If he conquers you in a

legitimate contest, then there is no one who could gainsay that he is worthy of

being your husband."

"Okay, take two," Nabiki urged, "Who says he's gonna beat me?"

"Would you truly go all out to prevent him from achieving victory?" Cologne

asked.

"Well...yeah...I mean...I think..." Nabiki hesitated, "I mean...would it really

make Ranma happy if he knows that I didn't go all out in a fight?"

"Think well of that and answer this question," Cologne replied, "Would you

invoke an even more obscure Amazon law and assert the rule of a Victor to claim

him?"

"Huh?" Nabiki said, "I can do that?"

"Do you honestly think our ancestors were so stupid as to insist that only men

stronger than us could wind up as our husbands?" Cologne countered, "It is

sometimes allowed that a victorious Amazon can claim a husband who has

distinguished himself in battle. If Ranma makes a good showing, then he can be

rightfully bestowed the honor of being your husband, so defeating him will not

actually count as a loss of his husband qualifications."

"That's a relief," Nabiki said, "And I guess that gives me some flexibility

here, eh? I don't have to lose and I don't have to throw a fight, but

still...the idea of Ranma getting good enough to defeat me in only a couple of

weeks...that's just too absurd for words! I mean, Ranchan's good, and a good

learner, but still..."

"Are you doubting that his father, the man who taught you the martial arts, will

be able to pass on to him some special technique or secret that he has been

husbanding to himself all of these years?" Cologne inquired, "Keep in mind that

he was trained by Happosai, and for all that worthless, lecherous fool squanders

his art in panty raids and assorted other sordid pastimes, even I must

acknowledge that he is a Master of the art with few peers."

"So you think the old man knows something that he didn't see fit to teach me,

huh," Nabiki growled, "That figures. That fool of a panda used to drag me

around into situations that would make Jusenkyo look like a simple obstacle

course. It wouldn't surprise me a bit to know that he was keeping secrets

behind my back...no doubt telling himself that he'd teach them to me when he

thought I was ready."

"But what if he does know something that could make up the distance?" Cologne

replied, "Would you be willing to wait and see what new surprises may be in

store for you, or will you train to become as powerful as you will need to be to

meet any such surprises?"

"What do you think, Granny?" Nabiki growled, "I won't train to beat Ranma, but

I'll train any day to beat the old man and whatever scam he's up to with my

boyfriend!"

"Then I will ask you this question again," Cologne said gravely, "Why do you

train to fight? What motivation do you have to fight beyond thinking of your

warrior's pride and any need for self defense or the protection of others, since

none of those can apply to the coming battle?"

"Huh?" Nabiki turned to look at the Amazon Elder, "What do you mean? What other

reason is there than pride, protection and defense?"

"That is the crux of the matter," Cologne replied, "Your one great deficiency as

a fighter, which-not coincidentally-is also the cause of your recent matrimonial

problems. You need to answer that one for yourself before you can truly advance

as a warrior...you need to learn within yourself the true cause for training in

the martial arts, and then-only then-will you truly be able to call yourself a

premier martial artist."

"Hmph," Nabiki sniffed, "You make it sound like a challenge...care to give me a

hint?"

"Now Daughter-in-law," Cologne smiled indulgently, "If I did that then it

wouldn't be much of a challenge, now would it?"

Happosai decided about this point to withdraw, having overheard enough to know

what he had to do, which was to find Genma and then Ranma and add his two cents

worth to their training. From the sound of things, it seemed that the legendary

five-way marriage alliance was coming apart due to the obstinacy of his mule-

headed apprentice, and it would be up to Happosai to rescue the marriage that

would unite the two branches of the Anything Goes school (and-not incidentally-

provide Happosai with a delicious way of paying back his uppity heir in an

appropriate manner). If he could get to Ranma in time to train him, then what

Happosai had just the thing he needed to spark the boy into doing his best.

And besides which, Happosai had a pretty good idea of just what sort of training

Genma had in mind for his boy. There was one trick in the arsenal of the one

who had been (formerly) his favorite disciple, back during the days when Saotome

and Tendo elders had trained together under the watchful eyes of their loving

master. Genma had sealed the art away for fifteen long years, but if Happosai

knew anything about the old panda-man, he knew that Genma would have kept his

skills in sharp focus...just in cast they were needed.

Happosai knew his pupil well. Of the two men who had once called him their

Sensei, Genma was the one who had demonstrated the greatest potential of being a

worthy heir to the Anything Goes Ryu. Soun had been a promising candidate in

the beginning, but the fool had thrown away all hopes of becoming a true Master

in favor of a domestic life with his wife and family. Soun never did learn how

to balance the two off of one another, while Genma had opted to train his son

and invest in him all hopes for the future. That wish had been side-tracked

when Soun had traded Genma's son for one of his daughters, thereby making Nabiki

the heir to both systems of the Anything Goes school. Genma was the one who

valued the art above all else (save only his fool hide, of course). Coward and

fool that he was, he was certainly worthy of becoming a full Master.

And now he had the chance to repair the mistake of leaving his son to Soun's

inadequate training. Genma knew that his boy needed something powerful to make

up for the slack that had allowed Nabiki to pull ahead of him as a martial

artist. The girl was quick, clever and apt to pick up new systems rapidly, but

she had a tendency towards overconfidence that could leave the door open to an

unexpected upset. All it took was giving the boy the right sort of edge that

could restore his confidence and self-esteem to what it had been before he had

first met the girl named Tendo Nabiki.

The Umisenken and Yamasenken might be the edge that he needed, and with a bit of

a tweak on the part of Happosai...well...it could very well be that Nabiki was

due for a much-needed comeuppance...

Sakura's "trailer" proved to be a somewhat more luxurious place than a typical

mobile home, hardly surprising since she was effectively the "Boss" of a

traveling circus that she had inherited from her father. The bedding on which

Ryoga and Ranma currently rested was ample enough for two as the boys

convalesced from their recent injuries, while Genma looked on with a

particularly fatherly interest.

"On the whole you boys were lucky," Genma remarked, "If you'd been any less well

trained or in anything less than perfect physical condition, those injuries you

sustained might have killed you. Good thing for you both that Ryu wasn't in the

mood to take your lives, though he might well have done so had he been using his

full effort."

"C-Coulda fooled me, Pop," Ranma winced, still feeling his bruised ribs, "Felt

like he was gonna crush me there...and Ryoga..."

"I'll be fine, don't worry," Ryoga said as he stared up at the ceiling, "He just

got in a lucky blow...with a few hours rest I'll be back to normal..."

"Don't be a fool, Boy," Genma snapped, "You're lucky he didn't crush your heart

with the Iron Fingers blow. Your muscles and bones would have proven small

protection had he gouged straight through your hide to your center. The truth

is you dove in like he was just some common street hoodlum and left yourself

wide open to his counter-attack...and a mistake like that with a master of the

Yamasenken could well have proven fatal to you both..."

"Gee, Pop," Ranma said, "Couldn't you have given us a little warning that he

knew the Yamasenken? The way he took apart that grizzly..."

"Son," Genma sighed, "The Yamasenken is a powerfully aggressive style that is

designed to overwhelm the defenses of an opponent, to penetrate through those

defenses and to take by force and subdue any enemy you encounter. Kumon Ryu has

obviously devoted his whole life to mastering this system, so engaging him with

ordinary tactics is not only foolhardy, it's suicidal."

"So how do we fight him, Pop?" Ranma asked, "That Umisenken you were talking

about?"

"It's the Shadow School, the quieter alternative to the Yamasenken," Genma

replied, "And I'll teach it to you once the both of you are recovered..."

"Hello!" called a pleasantly feminine voice as the lady Ringmaster named Sakura

entered her own trailer, "Are you boys decent in here? How fares our two fallen

heroes?"

Ranma turned his head (the only part of him that didn't hurt) and saw again

their beautiful lady host, whose long brown hair and near-perfect complexion

gave her a radiant allure that defied any age description. She had a friendly,

warm appeal to her that set one at ease, though Ranma was far from mollified as

he immediately wondered at the woman's relationship to his father.

"They're doing fine, Sakura-chan," Genma replied gravely, "Despite their

injuries, they'll be up and running at full bore in close to no time."

"I should hope so," Sakura mused as she came up to join the trio, "Or else that

challenge you gave to that Kumon fellow will be for nothing. Oh my...did he

actually rip a hole like that in your shirt?"

"Sort-of," Ryoga could not manage to move more than his eyes as he turned to

look at the Circus Mistress, "Sorry to be such a bother..."

"Oh, it's no trouble at all," Sakura smiled grandly, "Not for the sons of an old

friend like Genma-chan..."

"Genma-chan?" Ranma repeated.

"I'm...not his son, Ma'am," Ryoga replied, "Ranma is..."

"Oh?" Sakura inclined her head with a curious expression, "Are you so sure of

that? You boys look enough like each other that you could practically be

twins..."

"No way..." Ranma grunted.

"Him...look like me?" Ryoga countered, "No chance..."

"Oh," Sakura's shoulders slumped, "And here I thought you might be the son of my

old friend, Atsuko. I can see a close resemblance to you..."

"He's Atsuko's boy, Sakura," Genma assured her, "Ranma's Nodoka's son..."

"Oh...so you married her after all, eh?" Sakura said slyly, "I would have put

better odds on either Atsuko or Comb being the ones who finally nailed you. Ah

well...life is certainly full of surprises..."

"Huh?" Ranma blinked, "Who's Comb? And who are you, lady?"

"Kho-Hom?" Sakura replied, "She's an Amazon...or she was, way back when, I can

hardly remember. As for me, I'm Sanosuke Sakura, and I own the Cherry Blossom

Traveling Circus, where you are presently visiting. Twenty years ago, however,

this circus belonged to my father, and I was but a humble Fortune Telling girl

who doubled as both an acrobat and stage illusionist. I still put those skills

into use, thanks in part to the experiences that I lived through back when Genma

and his friend, Soun, were a part of my existence."

"You knew Mister Soun?" Ryoga asked.

"Knew him and his own coterie of feminine well-wishers," Sakura smiled, "Which

reminds me...where is little Nabiki? I haven't seen her since she was here

last...oh, some five years back."

"Nabiki is back at home with her father," Genma replied, "She's engaged to marry

my son. I was taking Ranma and his friend Ryoga on a training mission while

Nabiki trains at home and spends time with her family."

"I see," Sakura nodded, "Well then, it's so nice to meet the young man who will

make little Nabiki a fine husband. He is a handsome young rogue at that...are

you sure that you're his father? Just kidding!" she chuckled softly while

making a deferring hand gesture.

Genma frowned but said nothing, while Ranma asked, "Just what kind of

relationship did you two have together? Were you and Pop...?"

"That...would be telling," Sakura smiled, "Let's just say I was never that

serious a contender. You don't need to worry that your father did anything

untoward that his mother didn't know of. Nodoka was every bit the lady as I

remember..." she sighed, "Such fun times those were...life was very exciting."

"I'll bet," Ryoga sighed, "Did you really know my mother?"

"Oh yes," Sakura smiled, "She even, for a time, came to work for this Circus.

She was very strong and a good illusionist, a perfect act to draw in the crowds,

and so very beautiful," she sighed, "True she was a little wild around the

edges, but she was a very good friend and I genuinely liked her."

"And you also knew Nabiki?" Ranma asked.

"Oh yes," Sakura smiled, "Such a bright and quizzical child, very talented and

highly athletic. She briefly came to work for us when she and Genma were

looking for employment. She worked as an acrobat riding some of our horses,

but...I seem to recall that she was afraid to get anywhere near to the Lion

cages...very odd that..."

Ranma glared at his father, who had the good graces to look elsewhere.

"Still and all," Sakura continued, "It's good to see you again under any

circumstances, Genma-chan. Having you around...why, it's just like reliving the

old days when life was one big happy adventure!"

"You really did know Mom and Uncle Saotome back then and later on, working in

this circus?" Ryoga asked.

"Knew them and learned a lot from them," Sakura beamed as she produced a deck of

cards from seeming nowhere and flashed them from one hand to the other, the

cards almost rippling through the air in the space between her hands, "Anything

Goes Martial Arts Slight of Hand, my specialty and stock-in trade profession.

Pick a card, any card! Draw from the deck and reveal your future!"

"I'll pass," Ranma said when a card detached itself the deck and landed on his

chest face-up. Another card did the same thing with Ryoga, who picked it up and

held it where he could read it.

"The Strength Card?" Ryoga asked in wondering tones.

"Sign of inner strength and hidden talents," Sakura replied, "You are struggling

from within with a deep and powerful question that has the potential of

upsetting your entire world view. You need to let go and allow yourself to gain

focus, concentration and release of that potential. And your card, Saotome

Ranma?"

"Mine says 'The Chariot,'" Ranma frowned, "Why kind of crazy card deck is this?

Doesn't look like anything that I've ever played with..."

"It's the Tarot, Son," Sakura revealed brightly, "A special kind of deck created

by Gypsy Fortune Tellers hundreds of years ago in old Europe. It's actual

origins were inspired by Jewish Cabalism...twenty two cards form the Major

Arcana, fifty two in the Minor Arcana, which corresponds to the regular playing

cards that have been used throughout the world. Dissident Cathers created them

to hide the key points of their religion from the ravages of the Catholic

Inquisition, and they were passed down as a harmless tool of divination ever

since. The card you're holding corresponds to the inner dynamic of Reason and

Emotion that every person struggles with on a daily basis. The Charioteer is

attempting to steer his way by keeping tight rein on the creatures that are

pulling him along, represented by a pair of Sphinxes, one white, one black, one

Emotion, the other Reason. It means that you're facing an inner struggle

between your desires and your beliefs, and unless you can bring them both under

control they will run wild under you and carry you to places you've never even

dreamed existed."

"And what does all that mean?" Ranma asked.

"Hey, that's for you to figure out," Sakura winked, "I just give the

interpretations, you're the one who had to apply them."

"I've heard about and seen the Tarot cards in action," Ryoga revealed, "The

Gypsies in Eastern Europe swear by them...but I'm not sure I put much stock in

things like fortune telling and divination."

"Never be too sure of anything, Boys," the Ringmistress winked at them, "There's

more under heaven and Earth than is dreamt of in your philosophies. I know for

a fact that magic is real, and your mother was very real to me during our days

when we hung around together. Now...let's see which card best suits you these

days, Genma dear...eh?" she stared at the card that she drew from the deck, "The

Temperance card? Now that's odd...with you it's usually the Tower Struck by

Lightning..."

"I've...tried to put some of that behind me," Genma said rather sheepishly, "The

old me...the one you knew, tended to rush into things without thinking about the

consequences. I'd...like to think I'm a bit wiser than that these days..."

"Well, I certainly hope that you have changed for the better," Sakura mused as

she reshuffled the deck then made the cards vanish, "As it is, I'm amazed that

you've lived so long with the kind of mischief that you used to get into with

Master Happy."

"That makes two of us," Genma sighed, "By the way...about that sake..."

"I don't keep it in my own trailer, if that's what you were expecting," she

winked, "I know by now you've already looked, but I'll fetch it for you in a

little while. Right now I've got loads of errands to run...after all, this is a

Circus, and the show must go on. You boys get some rest and I'll have dinner

sent up to you, and you-Saotome Genma-and me will sit down and have a good

drink while we talk about the old days."

"It better just be talk, old man," Ranma growled.

"Have some respect for your father," Genma snapped, "I'd never cheat on your

mother behind her back."

"That's true," Ryoga replied, "Because you know what she would do to you with

that sword of hers if she ever found out."

"Too true," Genma's shoulders slumped in resignation, but he saw Sakura wink at

him before leaving the trailer, and for some reason that did cheer him

up...somewhat.

"The heck with resting," Ranma said as he tried to sit up, then thought better

of the effort and slumped back down onto the mattress, "What can you tell us

about the Umisenken, Pop? Why is it so forbidden?"

Genma glanced away, "Part of the story you already know...I gave the Yamasenken

scroll to Ryu's father and it led to his death. I've tried putting that fact

behind me for fifteen years, only to see his Boy looking for vengeance, and the

Umisenken."

"But why seal the knowledge up?" Ryoga asked, "Is it just because it's such a

dangerous system?"

"Partly that, but partly because...well..." Genma hesitated, then he spoke again

saying, "Remember...I was a different man back then, and under the influence of

the Master. I came up with the idea for the scrolls during a raid when...it

just came to me in a flash, like an inspiration from some god of mischief. The

Yamasenken is the raw distillation of the Art when used for unlawful purposes.

It works upon one simple principle...viewing the Human Body as if it were a

house in which you can force an entry."

"Forced entry?" Ranma repeated.

In reply, Genma pulled out the scroll and unrolled it, holding it up before the

two boys so that they could see the illustrations, "Take a look, Son...and you

too, Ryoga. Never mind the crude handwriting, you can see how I drew an

analysis between a house and a human body. Everything that is in the Yamasenken

works from that principle, and the rest is an elaboration."

Ranma was able to move his hands to where he could hold the scroll and steady it

horizontally, and then he scanned the pages of martial arts moves and gradually

came to a conclusion, "Hey...you're right! This is just like breaking into a

house and tying up the people in side there..."

Ryoga reached across his body with one hand and took the end of the scroll as

they further unrolled it, revealing more of the secrets therein contained,

"Oh...not only that, look how that Welcome Gate Iron Fingers maneuver that he

used on me can be employed to smash in a lock and rip a door off its hinges."

"Heck, the Fierce Tiger Opening Gate Blow smashes in a front gate or could tear

a wall down with sheer brute force, and that Demon Deep Sea Chasm thingie is for

taking out any guards who might be standing at a distance...and here's that In

the Pocket Round Hug Death thing he used to almost break my back and crush me to

death...it's used to remove a support pillar and literally bring down a

house..."

"And that's not all..." Ryoga continued to scan the rest of the scrolls

contents, "Kami-sama...you can do all that just thinking of a the body as

House?"

"That and more," Genma nodded, "But, as I said before, I came up with the

Umisenken as a counter to all of those maneuvers. It has both defensive and

offensive applications, whereas the Yamasenken is purely an attack system."

"Then what happened to it?" Ranma asked, "Did you lose it when you sealed it?"

"Hardly," Genma reached into his Gi once again and pulled out a second scroll,

"I left it in the safe keeping of your mother. Here it is, just as soon as you

boys are ready."

"Well, what are we waiting for?" Ryoga asked, "Please show it to us, Uncle."

"Not so fast," Genma growled, "First you will study the Yamasenken and commit it

to memory, and then-AND ONLY THEN-will I teach one of you the Umisenken.

Ranma will master it and practice it on you, Ryoga, and then you will learn it

from him, and then the both of you will take a solemn vow never to use this

knowledge for any dishonorable purposes. Only in that manner will I know for

certain that this knowledge won't be abused in the future."

"I'm ready now," Ranma said impatiently, then thought a moment before saying,

"But...I guess I still gotta rest a bit first, huh?"

"Your body will heal in good time, Son," Genma replied as he took back the

Yamasenken scroll and wound it up before depositing it back in his Gi with the

Umisenken, "For now just think about what you saw on the scroll and how the both

of you will master it. They'll be time enough for the rest later on."

"Sure thing, Pop," Ranma sighed, feeling his ribs and satisfied that they were

not as sore as they had been the last time he had checked.

"I won't be able to rest until I've pounded that Kumon Ryu's face in the dirt,"

Ryoga growled, also rubbing his own wounded side, "But...I guess I could use a

few more minutes for this to stop aching."

Genma nodded, satisfied that his two young wards would be recovering their

bearings. They were young, strong and resilient, and both had been trained (in

the early phases, at least) in the "Touched Soul" method that allowed a martial

artist to maximize their full hidden potential-which also had the side effect

of allowing them to heal quicker than an ordinary person. Silently he was proud

that two such fine young men would be studying to redeem his own mistake from

his long-ago tarnished past, a mistake embodied by the vengeful young man named

Kumon Ryu. Hopefully this would either lead to the end of the Yamasenken, or

perhaps its transformation into something more benevolent and beneficial to

society. He certainly hoped that was the case, because the thought of someone

as misguided as Ryu possessing full knowledge of both halves of the Senken was a

nightmare that Genma did not even want to have to visit.

He could not, in good conscience, permit such a thing to happen. He had used

the Senken unwisely in the past, and someone else had paid the price. Now that

he had a chance of redeeming his long-lost honor he could also once again take

pride in himself as a martial artist. No more would he simply be known as

"Genma the Destroyer," he would finally be able to give something back to the

world and the art that he loved so well, and insure that the Anything Goes

school would be remembered as an honorable system. But only if Ranma and Ryoga

proved true to his hopes and expectations.

He stared at the aptly-named "Lost-Boy," who had long reminded him of another he

knew and remembered so well. What was Atsuko up to these days, and what sort of

man had she finally married? Whoever he was, he was a very lucky fellow (not to

mention probably a lot hardier than Genma had been when having to endure one of

Atsuko's too-affectionate "Bear Hugs") and Genma even envied him for having a

son as dutiful and respectful to others as Ryoga. (Not that there was anything

wrong with Ranma, but the boy did tend to be a tad bit more rebellious...)

Genma sighed, knowing that it would still be a few hours before the boys were in

any shape begin their training, and first he intended to get them primed for the

experiences that they would have to undergo if they were to maximize their

potential. They had a lot of work to do, and only three days in which to do it,

even shorter time than he knew it would take to prepare Ranma for his upcoming

battle against Nabiki. So many things to show his son, and in such a short time

that losing even half a day was enormously irritating.

Still, the abject lesson was bound to sharpen the boys' reflexes and wits,

making them aware of just how far they had to come before they were ready for

"The Big Leagues." Certainly Genma could identify with the impatience and

impulsiveness of the two young men eager to endure any hardship in the pursuit

of their art. Genma and Soun had been much the same way when they were young

men in pursuit of a dream (while-it should be admitted-they were frequently

being pursued by an angry posse).

[Ah, Nabiki,] he thought to himself in quiet reflection, [Forgive me that I

denied you this training, but I knew that you were not ready, and I had promised

your father that I would spare you the worst of what we had to endure under our

Master. You might not have turned out so well if presented with the enormous

temptation that the Umisenken has to offer. But I know my son will be able to

handle the responsibility of what I must entrust to his safekeeping...my

greatest achievement in the art-other than you-and the source of my greatest

folly...]

Somehow, he knew, the ghost of his old friend, Kumon Omi, would be watching from

heaven to see what would come about as a consequence of the coming battle

between Ryu and Ranma, and Genma knew that the outcome was far from an assured

thing, full of variables and uncertainties that even Nabiki would concede were

pretty long odds given the amount of work that would need to be done in order to

turn Ranma into the fighter that he was meant to be by the fates. Some

sacrifices would be in order, and Ranma might well balk at some of the

implications in store for his training, but Genma was confident that, in the

end, his boy would be man enough to succeed where his father had fallen short in

his own training.

Ranma would prevail or know the consequences, and so would Genma, who had made

many promises to his wife, the boy's mother, the failure of which to fulfill was

simply not to be contemplated. The fate of the Saotome School itself would hang

in the balance, to say nothing of the impending marriage of his son to

Nabiki...and in total honesty, Genma was not certain which woman's wrath he

would fear more should anything untowards happen to his son...Nodoka's...or

Nabiki's...

Part Ninety-Four.

"I want to thank you for helping to arrange everything, Lord Kuno," Natsume

murmured to the handsome boy whom she was escorting back to his house, "Father

was so pleased at the way things turned out, and we have you to thank for

gaining our approval for the tournament this summer."

"You have little to thank me for," Tatewaki reassured his lady companion, "A few

words in the right places was all it took to bring those Masters to your dojo,

the rest was performed by you and your sister with admirable finesse. It is you

to whom your father must give thanks for the acclaim that you have earned

through your labors, especially in the way you dealt with that disgusting

perver-ah...I mean your honored grandfather..."

"You do not need to mince words with me on that subject," Natsume replied, "I

have no illusions as to the moral integrity of my great-great-grandfather, the

man who trained me and my sister in the martial arts while telling us-a pair of

naïve orphan girls-that he was our father, Tendo Soun."

"Indeed," Tatewaki remarked, "Such a cad who would abandon you to his vile

perversions is not worthy of calling himself the Master of the Anything Goes

school. I would say that, by your actions, you have gone a long way to

redeeming your art from obscurity, for which you and your sister should take

justifiable pride and for which your father will gain great honor."

"My sister," Natsume looked down, "I'm sorry for the way she acts around you

sometimes. She really isn't like that most of the time, just when...well...she's

been maybe a little...overprotective of late..."

"You don't need to apologize for her," Tatewaki replied, "I can well understand

how she would fail to trust in me, given the way I first introduced myself to

the both of you. One cannot call it a very auspicious way of creating a good

first impression."

"But...you weren't really yourself when it happened..." Natsume protested.

"On the contrary, my sweet Mahogany Angel," Tatewaki replied, "I was more

typical of myself, or-rather-the self I presented before others for the previous

nine years when I was under my twisted sister's misguided influence. The self

you see today is the new Kuno Tatewaki, forged in the likeness of a man who

could perhaps one day be worthy of your esteem and affection. I have yet a ways

to go before I redeem myself for my past sins, but for now I am grateful to have

had your patient guidance on my road to recovery and a more socially acceptable

outlook. I can hardly blame Kurumi for harboring her doubts and qualms that my

change is permanent and that I will be suffering no relapses."

"That will never happen!" Natsume said with force, "You will never go back to

that drug-induced dementia from which you pried yourself through so much

sacrifice and effort! You are too strong to allow yourself to fall back into

that life, and I would never let you..."

"And I believe you," Tatewaki replied, "With you at my side I believe that

anything is possible, and the strength you lend me would give me the power to

scale mountains."

"That is because I believe in you, Tachi-san," Natsume said warmly, "I know that

you are strong, and...I am honored to have played even the small role that I

have in your recovery."

"Small role?" Tatewaki sniffed, "You are my light at the end of a long and very

dark tunnel. I am flattered that you believe me strong, but strong is what I

see in you, and it is from observing you that I have drawn much of my

inspiration."

Natsume looked down and hoped that the light of the street lamps would obscure

the rosy blush that colored her cheeks. All too soon the pair found themselves

at the address of the Kuno mansion, at which point they knew that they would

have to part company in the name of propriety and politeness. Asking to stay

over at this late hour would imply something less than fully appropriate for an

unmarried couple, even if the desire to further explore the dimensions of their

relationship had been tugging on them of late. That was why they paused and

prolonged the moment, turning to half-regard one another, allowing the silence

that had suddenly grown between them to drag on for a long while before either

of them dared to spoil the moment by attempting to frame it in words.

But at last Tatewaki said, "I...must go now...be well, gentle Natsume."

"I know...my Lord Kuno..." Natsume responded with great reluctance.

"I..." Kuno paused once again, then reached into his hakama and withdrew a

single rose, which same he offered to Natsume, who accepted the rose without

much hesitation.

"For you, my sweet, 'til we meet again," Tatewaki averred softly before

reluctantly turning away and forcing himself to pass through the gates that

guarded his family manor, "Be well...and have a safe evening."

"I shall, my Lord," Natsume murmured softly, "Tachi-sama..."

And with that she turned away, her thoughts very far from her earlier musings on

the activities of her younger sister...

"...What I was telling you before about pathetic doesn't begin to cover the

situation you're now in," Kurumi was explaining to a bound and helpless Chinese

boy, who was currently dangling upside down, wound up in his own chains and

hanging from an overhanging rain gutter, "And what's the idea about attacking me

twice in the same day using the same tactics? You think you were gonna do

better on the second attempt after the first try failed, or something?"

"That's not it at all!" Mousse vainly protested, having an inverted view of both

the short-haired girl and the alley in which they were presently located, "I

just wanted you to stop following me around..."

"Oh, is that how you want the game played?" Kurumi asked, "You don't mind

stalking but you hate it when you're the one being stalked. Turnabout isn't

necessarily fair play with you, is it, Monkey-boy? So, why do you think you

deserve special consideration instead of Perfume and Ukyo? You think they're

the only ones who can be stalked and not you?"

"Shut up!" Mousse snapped, "You don't understand me at all. How can you know

anything about me or why I do what I must when you're not even a real Amazon?

You've no right to judge me, and you can't come between me and my love for

Perfume!"

"Can't I?" Kurumi smiled, "Just watch me!"

Mousse struggled against his own chains, then growled and said, "Just because

you think you have me at a disadvantage doesn't mean I'll just give in and

surrender to you..."

"Would you shut up about those damned Amazon Laws of yours already? Sheesh!"

Kurumi growled as she ran her fingers through her short brown hair and sighed,

"You really think that combat's all a game about dating? I'm trying to get you

to lay off and see reason! You're so blindly obsessed about having Perfume for

your wife you can't even see how you're ruining your life, and possibly ruining

hers without getting even close to achieving your ambitions."

"I'm not blind!" Mousse snapped, then paused before adding, "I just have a

little...visual problem is all...it's astigmatism...I'm far-sighted...I can't

see anything up close too well without glasses."

"But you can see things perfectly at a distance, right?" Kurumi asked, "So why

don't you try standing back and looking at yourself as other see you? Even if

you do it only for a second it's bound to change your outlook...or that's what

Oneechan always tells me..."

"About your habit of stealing food?" Mousse countered, "I've heard the

rumors...you used to be a food thief, always taking whatever you could find to

fill that bottomless pit of yours, something to do with you having such a high

metabolism. Otherwise you'd starve to death in a matter of hours...so who are

you to criticize me and claim the moral high ground?"

"Okay, you've got a point," Kurumi conceded, "But nobody's perfect. The problem

is that I may take food to live, but I don't do it to hurt others. You, on the

other hand, want to fight and kill a pregnant woman who can't really fight back,

just so you can claim her wife as your own. Talk about dishonorable..."

"I don't want to kill her!" Mousse averred, "I-I only want to make Perfume

safe..."

"Oh yeah?" Kurumi countered, "And how are you going to do that? By hurting the

one she loves, the mother of her baby? You know she can't withstand having one

of her own, so what kind of father do you think you'd make for her? Are you so

hung up on the idea of having her that you can't see how much it's hurting her

to have you constantly hang around making a mess of her life?"

"And what do you care what I do?" Mousse asked, "It's not even any of your

business..."

"What, because I'm not an Amazon?" Kurumi countered, "What has that got to do

with anything?"

"It has everything to do with it!" Mousse insisted, "You don't know what it's

been like for me, you don't know anything about what I've been through! All my

life I've been laughed at and ridiculed, called weak, stupid and half-blind!

Even when I fought and became the top male warrior of our tribe I was still

considered a laughing stock among my people!"

"Because they didn't like you or laughed at your handicaps?" Kurumi asked, "Or

did it have something to do with you chasing after a girl who always refused

you? Is this about showing them that they were wrong about you...or right all

along? Or is it just because you're a boy from an Amazon society?"

"A...little of all of that, actually..." Mousse grudgingly admitted, looking

down and away from the girl currently holding him captive, "Look...the blood's

starting to rush to my head...could you let me down from here? I promise not to

be a bother..."

"What kind of a fool do you take me for anyway?" Kurumi asked, but after a

moment of thought she elected to free him anyway, having decided that she had

made her point and could not-in good conscience-keep him prisoner any longer.

Mousse slipped from his chains as Kurumi turned her back on him, and once the

Chinese boy was on his feet again he studied her backside and said, "Why?"

"I've made my point with you," the short-haired girl replied as she tied her

trademark ribbon in her hair once again, "Now you're free to leave, or go

wherever the hell it is you go when you're not busy harassing people. If you

want to waste your life, it's no business of mine, but stay away from Ukyo and

Perfume, they're family now. I won't stand for having anybody mess with my

family, you got that?"

"I got it," Mousse said, "But what makes you think I'm going to give up that

easy?"

"You're such a jerk," Kurumi flared, "Do you only care about yourself and what

you want? Okay, maybe you have had a rough time of it growing up, that's no

excuse for you running around trying to make people miserable all of the time.

You're not winning any points with Perfume for persistence, and you sure haven't

impressed me with your learning curve to date. If something you keep trying to

do fails, why keep doing it? It won't change the outcome in the slightest, and

all you do is wind up lonely."

"And why should you care how I wind up?" Mousse asked, "Nobody else does."

"Yeah, and you might try thinking about why that is sometime," Kurumi half-

turned to regard him with a flatly angry expression, "If you never show anybody

the good side of your personality-assuming you have one-then why shouldn't they

think you're a creep and a moron? But you know something? You'll never know

whether or not people to like the real you-warts and all-if you never give them

the chance to get to see a better side of you, and I think you've got to have

one somewhere. I mean, everybody deserves a chance to make a better life at

least once, don't they?"

"I..." Mousse suddenly found that he could not phrase a proper rebuttal to her

statement, and all he was left with in the end was a slew of memories of far

less pleasant encounters when people had scorned him for a fool, often far more

aggressively than had Kurumi.

So why was it her words made him feel six inches small, like a "dirty ape" who

deserved to be locked up in a cage and fed only water and bananas? It just was

not like him to let the opinions of others have such an affect on his self-

image.

"You think on that the next time you want to come around and challenge me,"

Kurumi flared, and then like a shot from a cannon she took off at high velocity,

moving so fast that she was only a blur to the naked eye, a superhumanly swift

mongoose who could never be caught by the strongest chains that he might have

used to restrain her...not that he had any particular reason to make her stay,

unless it was to buy himself enough time to think up a stronger argument to

counter his accusations.

The seconds stretched out as Mousse remained where he was standing, then all at

once he looked up and said, "Hey! Who said I was challenging you?"

Silence alone answered his query, leaving him to speculate in private on the

meaning of the girl's very odd behavior before shrugging his shoulders and

grumbled, "Women...Amazons or Japanese, there's just no figuring them out..."

Ranma and Ryoga sat facing one another, palms extended to where they were almost

touching. Their eyes were not so much focused on each other as in the space

between those palms while Genma calmly and patiently coached them along as they

summoned up their Chi, projecting it forward into the palms of their hands until

the two fields were touching, at which point sparks actually flared between

them.

"Tone it down, boys," Genma urged, "The object of this lesson isn't to overwhelm

and overpower each other with the relative strength of your egos. This is about

matching resonances and allowing your auras to gradually synchronize together.

Now keep projecting at a lower level until you agree on a harmony, and then

we'll begin the next stage of this process."

Neither boy verbalized their assent, but they did as their Sensei instructed and

eventually the color tones of their auras grew to match one another, at which

point Genma nodded with approval and said, "Good...now...slowly intensify your

Ki until you both can harmonize at a stronger level of projection. If one of

you starts to fall out of phase with the other, slow down and allow the other

boy to catch up. Let's work this up gradually until you have achieved a new

level of parity. The stronger the level you can harmonize at, the better this

will work when we go on to the next phase, and that's where the real fun will

begin," he nodded with thinly veiled amusement.

The space between the two boys grew slowly bright, and then a ball of energy

flared up in the space between their hands, starting at first a soft rosy color

and gradually shifting upward along the scale until it was a bright blue-violet

coloration. The trailer was filled by the power of their radiance as the two

boys maintained the sphere between them, gradually strengthening it until it was

a compact mass of spiritual energies with power enough to flatten a small

building...which was, of course, a risk given the narrow containment dimensions

provided by the trailer. If the ball fell out of balance or one boy wavered

slightly in his focus and concentration it could well mean disaster, and as the

ball continued to intensify it soon contained sufficient power to destroy a

major skyscraper.

"That's good," Genma decided at this point, "Now level off and try to contain

the power at this level. Keep your focus on the Ki ball and don't slacken off.

This is where it starts to get very interesting, Boys...don't be intimidated by

what you see as the Soul Energy contained within that sphere begins to show you

a reflection of yourselves that you may find rather unexpected."

Both Ryoga and Ranma gazed into the sphere that they had created, and slowly

images began to form as they saw their own faces looking back at them, albeit

slightly distorted, like in a funhouse mirror. As they continued to gaze they

saw their faces flow and distort all the more as they morphed into very

different identities, ones that looked back with curious, even dumbfounded

expressions.

"Hey..." Ranma exclaimed aloud, "I'm a...girl?"

"I'm a pig?" Ryoga also exclaimed, then corrected himself by saying,

"No...wait...I'm a girl now..."

"And I just turned into a...a Cheetah?" Ranma blinked, "What the hell...?"

"Don't let yourselves be distracted by the images that you see," Genma

cautioned, "The reflection you see is not necessarily a mirror image of the

truth but rather a product of your own thoughts and imaginations. You must

learn to see beyond your own reflection, just as I do when I look into a mirror

and see a Panda staring back at me."

"All right, Pop," Ranma allowed, unable to help feeling slightly shaken at the

sight of his own face morphing into that of a gorgeous redhead.

"I'm not a pig," Ryoga said flatly, "I don't where a thing like that could have

come from..."

"Hey, you heard Pop," Ranma teased, "It's a reflection of the inner you..."

"Shut up, Ranma," the other boy snapped.

"Don't lose your focus!" Genma snapped, "If you fall out of harmony now..."

"Hey, what's going on in here?" an unfamiliar voice demanded, causing both boys

to turn away with a glance towards the trailer entrance.

There was no time for Genma to give a verbal warning, nor could he spare the

moment to reprimand his two charges for allowing their concentration to waver

together. He reacted instinctively to preserve not only his own hide but theirs

by uncoiling from a sitting position with his foot lashing out and a kick aimed

precisely at the ball of force hovering between the two boys. Like a shot it

took off and punched a basketball-sized hole in the ceiling of the trailer, then

kept on rocketing skyward until it was high overhead, at which point it

detonated like a giant skyrocket exploding, filling the night sky with a light

like a strobing phosphorescence.

Both Ranma and Ryoga blanched together as they stared up through the hole to the

explosion far above them, both feeling more than slightly chagrined as they

realized what might have happened had that ball gone off with them inside the

trailer. Assuming they all would have survived, it was very likely that they

would have found themselves sitting amid the smoldering ruins of a very large

crater.

"What the hell was that?" a feminine voice whispered from the trailer doorway.

"Nothing much," Genma replied matter-of-factly, "Is there something we can do

for you, Girl?"

"Girl?" the attention of the two boys swiveled back towards the trailer

entrance.

A young girl who looked roughly about their own ages was standing there dressed

up in an elaborate and showy costume consisting of a nearly transparent body-

suit lined with feathers and sequins. She was staring back at them with a pair

of very round blue eyes (their color was difficult to determine in the dim

light, but the girl was holding up an electric lamp in one hand that gave clear

definition to her fine features. For a few seconds she said nothing, then she

spoke up at last and said, "You three are the Rubes Mom's letting crash in her

trailer? Who the hell are your people?"

"Who wants to know?" asked Ranma.

"Excuse me," Ryoga spoke up, "Did you say...your mother?"

"Sure," the sequined girl replied, "My mother owns this Circus. My name is

Kaoih...Sanosuke Kaoih. And you guys?"

"Saotome Ranma," Ranma replied, "This is Hibiki Ryoga, and my Pop over there is

Saotome Genma."

"Saotome...Genma?" the girl blinked, staring past the two boys to the barely

illuminated face of the sitting Genma.

"Kaoih, eh?" Genma replied gruffly, "Been a while since I set eyes on you, girl.

Five years to be exact...and you sure have grown...you're an almost spitting

image of your mother."

"Ah...thanks," the girl replied before remembering the reason for her visit,

"What were you guys doing just now? It looked like you were starting a fire, or

making some kind of homemade fireworks..."

"We were practicing a very advanced Ki technique, if you must know, Girl," Genma

replied, "Which, by the way, you just interrupted."

"Well, excuse me for being worried," the girl named Kaoih replied, "But when you

spend your whole life growing up in a Circus, you learn to be wary of anything

that even smells like a fire. Next time put a sign on the door or something to

warn people that you don't want to be interrupted..."

"We didn't mean any harm," Ryoga said.

"Besides, it was just practice," Ranma insisted, "Not like we were expecting to

get interrupted."

"Mind your manners, boys," Genma urged, "We're sorry if we alarmed you, Kaoih-

chan, you had a perfectly good reason to be worried. I guess the sort of

technique we just used is a little too dangerous to be practiced indoors...which

reminds me...did your mother make those inquiries, like I asked?"

"You mean did she find an abandoned building nearby that's been condemned and is

about to be torn down?" Kaoih responded, "Sure did, in fact I was supposed to

give you that address, which was the reason I was coming this way in the first

place."

"You mean this isn't your home we're using?" Ryoga asked with a faintly

apologetic expression.

"Hardly," Kaoih made a face, "I'm a big enough girl now that I get to have my

own trailer...unfortunately Mom's crashing with me tonight because she said

she'd given her bedding over to you Rubes. Just don't make a mess on the

sheets, okay? Or else I'll have to burn it in the morning."

With that the girl withdrew, leaving Ranma to say, "Now that was rude...and who

was she calling a Rube?"

"She looked very pretty," Ryoga mused, "I wonder who her father is. I don't

remember Sakura-san saying that she was married."

"She told me once that the man who got her pregnant had abandoned her a very

long time ago," Genma said gravely, "And if I ever meet the cad who did that to

her..."

"How about later on that thought, eh, Pop?" Ranma asked, "How we get back to

training? I think I know how to do that Ki-summoning projection thing again,

how about you, Ryoga?"

"I'm good for another go at it," Ryoga nodded.

"Sorry, Boys," Genma urged, "I've decided that's enough training for now. It's

better if you both turn in and get some rest. We're going to have to get up

early in the morning so that we can check out the address that Sakura was kind

enough to provide."

"An abandoned building, Pop?" Ranma asked, "What's the deal with that?"

"You'll find out, Son, just as soon as we get there," Genma nodded gravely.

"That's where we'll practice the Yamasenken?" Ryoga asked, "In a condemned

building?"

"Can you think of a better place?" Genma replied, "Now, get some sleep and I'll

wake you just as soon as its sunrise."

"Whatever you say, Pop," Ranma shrugged as he went to his sleeping back and

began to unpack it, "Sleep well, Pig."

"Shut up, Ranma," Ryoga growled back, "You sound just like a woman when you say

that."

"Hey, now you take that back!" Ranma rounded on the other boy, spitting the

word, "Porky!"

Genma sighed as he sensed the impending brawl that was about to take place, then

like a shot he moved forward with both hands to stun the boys in their

respective "Sleep" spots, rendering them silent and unconscious. With a smug

look of satisfaction he lay back on his borrowed bedding and stared at the

patterns of the stars in the new "Sun-Roof."

"It's good to be the Master," he decided, and drifted off to a deep and

satisfying sleep that lasted well into the morning...

Like that the sun suddenly appeared over the horizon, and the two young men and

one older man were up and about their business, with Sakura and her daughter

playing tag-alongs as they showed the way to the place identified as a condemned

building. The exterior was not much to look upon, but the place looked gutted

and burned out as though a recent fire were to account for it's current

"condemned" status.

"There it is," Sakura revealed, indicating the seven-story abandoned structure,

"I spoke with the owner last night and they told me that the place had been the

site of a recent firefight between the police and a heavily armed gang of

criminals. I didn't get too many details, but apparently a bomb went off inside

and ruined some of the structural supports. Are you sure you want to train

here? It looks and sounds pretty risky."

"Don't worry," Genma replied, "It's perfect for our needs. You and Kaoih had

better stand clear, though, I wouldn't want you to get hurt during our

training."

"So, what's the big deal, Uncle Genma?" replied the younger girl, who was

presently wearing a short-sleeved shirt and a pair of old trousers with a

matching pair of plain worn sandals, "You guys gonna knock this place down or

something?"

"Something like that, Girl," Genma revealed, "Let's just say that I'd feel a lot

better about not having to risk any innocent bystanders. We're trained to

handle little things like condemned buildings that might fall down at any

moment...and besides...the training I mean to conduct here is highly secret,

read: 'Forbidden.'"

"Oh, we girls understand you perfectly, Genma-chan," Sakura assured with an

affable little smile, "You boys have fun and don't make too much noise, it might

disturb the neighbors."

"Fair enough," Genma said as he led the way in through the building, casually

removing the boarded-up door with little more than a palm-thrust.

Sakura and her daughter waited a few moments before each turned and smiled at

the other, then by silent assent selected a high window and vaulted up into a

place of easy access, intending to watch the fun from relative concealment.

Unknown to them all, an even more stealthy shape detached itself from hiding in

a dark alley to creep up on the condemned building, intending to also watch what

would happen within without anyone being the wiser.

Inside what had once been the interior lobby, Genma and his two young wards took

stock of their surroundings, scanning walls stripped bare of anything that was

either useful or of value, leaving behind a scene of burned-out desolation.

Gruffly satisfied that no one would mind if they added to the damage of the

place, Genma turned around and said, "Ryoga...you can start things off. Care to

give a demonstration of what you've learned of the Yamasenken?"

"Sure thing," the lost boy agreed, moving a bit away from the other two men

before squaring his stance and saying, "I believe the first maneuver was like

this..."

And with that Ryoga slashed out at empty air with a double-handed "tearing" blow

that was accompanied with a forward kick that conveyed as much speed as it did

destructive potential.

"The Fierce Tiger Opening Gates Blow," Ranma said aloud, "Good way of making an

entrance while announcing your presence like a loud Bakusai Tenketsu."

"Not quite the same thing," Genma corrected, "The Fierce Tiger projects all your

energy in a directed forced entry, ripping apart an enemy's defenses as if they

were nothing. You can see how it might be difficult to withstand such an all-

out attack as it leaves little avenue for evasion, and trying to resist it is

folly."

"So how do you counter something like that, Pop?" Ranma asked.

"We'll get to that soon enough," Genma replied, nodding to Ryoga as he said,

"Continue."

"The Demon Deep-Sea Chasm," Ryoga affirmed, moving forward again with both hands

slashing the air with such speed and force that it literally tore at the space

in front of him, causing a pair of "air-knives" to jet forward, striking a

distant wall and smashing through bricks and mortar.

"Kinda like when you hurl those bandanas of yours, huh?" Ranma mused

nonchalantly.

"Except that those knives are composed of air rather than Ki-reinforced cloth,"

Genma again corrected, "Ryoga is moving his hands so fast that they are creating

near-vacuum slashes that jet through the air at near-sonic speeds and can strike

an opponent at a considerable distance."

"Next would be the Welcome Gate Iron Fingers blow," Ryoga said as he took

another step forward and slashed upward with the fingers of his left hand coming

together to present a solid "Snake-fist" style blow. He paused to examine his

own gesture then said, "Coming up like that at a sharp angle, I can see how it

got to me right through my defenses. I hardly even saw it coming..."

"That's because the purpose to the Senken is sneaky," Genma replied, "That's why

it's called a dishonorable system."

"I thought it was because of the other thing," Ranma remarked matter-of-factly,

"The next maneuver is the In The Pockets Round Hug Death, but if Ryoga does that

to a pillar around here he's bound to bring the roof down on both of our heads."

"True enough," Genma nodded, "We'll skip that one for now and move on to the

Gold Cord Tight Binding Seize. Ryoga, you can practice that one on Ranma."

"With pleasure," the Lost Boy declared, a smile suddenly, whipping out his belt

and somehow managing to expand it to near rope-size.

"Hey, wait a minute-!" Ranma started to protest when he found himself being

ensnared in the belt-turned rope, rendered helpless in mere seconds.

"Well done, Boy," Genma nodded, "You performed that flawlessly. Ranma is

effectively helpless."

"Ha-ha," Ranma growled, trying to move his arms, which were now pinned to his

sides, "Very funny, now get me loose from this, will ya?"

"Why?" Ryoga smiled, "I kind of like you better this way, Ranma."

"Let him go, Son," Genma urged, "Now show me the rest of what you've learned

about the Yamasenken...all except the final two maneuvers."

"All right, Sir," Ryoga replied as he undid the bindings on Ranma, then went on

to perform several more attack forms that had been on the scroll that he and

Ranma had committed to memory.

Four full motions later, Genma nodded and said, "Now...Ranma, you perform

everything Ryoga just did, and do it in sequence."

"Heh, you bet," Ranma grinned, and at once executed one maneuver after the

other, right up until he whipped out a rope and snared it around a surprised

Ryoga, thus returning the favor.

"Ranma, you-!" the Lost Boy started to protest.

"Uh-ah, Buddy," Ranma replied, "Turnabout's fair play, remember?"

"Stop fooling around, Boy, and finish your demonstration," Genma growled, urging

Ranma to untie his sparring partner then continue going through the Yamasenken.

When at last Ranma had completed the tenth maneuver, the elder Saotome nodded in

satisfaction and said, "Very good...you've both got the basics mastered. The

last two maneuvers are the finishing moves, so we'll pass on them for now until

we're ready to further escalate matters."

"What's next then, Pop?" Ranma asked, looking both alert and ready.

"Now," Genma replied, "I'll show you both the Umisenken."

Both boys looked alert, Ranma and Ryoga sensing that the real demonstration was

just about to get underway, but to their mutual surprise they found Genma moving

forward to a clear space before turning around to face them, his expression

grave as he assumed a defensive posture.

"Now," Genma urged, "Both of you come at me using everything you have, including

the Yamasenken."

"Both of us, Pop?" Ranma asked.

"Are you sure that will be all right?" Ryoga added.

"Foolish Boys!" Genma snapped, "I created the Yamasenken, "You think I don't

know the counter?"

"Well...okay," Ranma said as he nodded to Ryoga, "Together it is, then."

"If this is how you want it, Sensei," Ryoga affirmed, preparing himself to

launch the Fierce Tiger attack.

To their surprise Genma just hunched his shoulders down and curled up his hands

in the classic "Snake" style, and as they looked it seemed as though the outline

around Genma started to blur and distort as the man himself seemed to fade into

the background.

And all at once he struck, his speed so blinding that neither boy even saw it

coming!

Ryoga landed face-first upon the floor while Ranma went flying backwards to slam

into a far wall hard enough to shake it.

Genma resumed his stance where he had been a moment before, then straightened up

and said, "Did you see that, Boys? That was the Umisenken."

"I-I-Incredible..." Ryoga gasped, finding it hard to get breath back into his

lungs.

"W-W-What did you just do, Pop?" Ranma gasped as he fell (more like 'peeled'

himself from the wall) forward, catching himself with his hands as the rest of

his body felt momentarily paralyzed from blows that had struck him all over his

body.

"Hit you where you weren't looking, Boy," Genma replied, "The Yamasenken is

direct and forceful, but the Umisenken is stealthy and elusive. You can't hit

what you can't see, and what you can see you can't counter, not unless you know

where to look and what to be on guard against."

"I...I have to learn that..." Ryoga faintly panted, "Just as soon as the floor

isn't moving..."

"Then teach it to me," said Ryu Kumon, who stepped out from the shadows to

confront the trio, "I want to learn that style too."

"You again?" Ranma looked up, "Where the hell did you come from?"

"He must have followed us here from the Circus, Son," Genma turned to regard Ryu

and said soberly, "It's two days yet before the challenge. Do you want to jump

the gun before my boys are ready?"

"I don't care about them, Old Man," Ryu replied, "It's the Umisenken that I'm

after. You know it, you created it, you can show it to me, just as good as you

could your son."

"It's not for you to have," Genma replied, "At least not until I think you're

ready. Your father died because he used the Yamasenken improperly, I'd hardly

trust his son with the Umisenken before I know that you would use it more

wisely."

"That's for me to decide, not you," Ryu growled, "I didn't really see what you

did just now, but I can tell it's a lot more powerful than the Yamasenken, so I

want it to complete my dojo."

"Only when I think you're ready," Genma repeated soberly, "Ranma, Ryoga? Are

you boys in fit enough shape to travel?"

"Let me think about that..." Ryoga gasped.

"I don't have to think," Ranma said as he slowly got up back on his feet, "I

just know you're in for some serious butt-kicking, Kumon..."

"You and what army?" Ryu sneered, "You may have just learned how to perform the

Yamasenken, but I've been practicing it for years and am a lot better at it.

You want to try your luck with me...HEY! Where did the old man get off to?"

"Pop?" Ranma turned to find that his father was no longer with them, only a

moment later he heard the sounds of what seemed like miniature explosions going

off all around them as walls were burst inward and a significant column was torn

up by its moorings.

"THAT STUPID OLD MAN!" Ryu roared, "He's bringing the building down on top of

our heads!"

"That's right," said Genma as he paused to pick Ryoga up off the floor, "Just

like the Yamasenken destroyed your dojo. I suggest you leave right now before

the four of us get buried."

The roof shook ominously, and a section at the rear of the building began to

collapse inward, revealing a hole in the wall that was soon filled in by the

floors above it collapsing. Ranma hardly needed to hear his father's voice

urging him to run when he and Genma began sprinting for the section of the

building that had still been left standing. Even that part was starting to show

signs of joining the rest of the ruins in their imminent destruction, and when

they found their way to the path outside partially blocked off, he did not even

have to break his stride as Ranma launched himself forward and cried, "FIERCE

TIGER OPENING GATES BLOW!"

The poor wall in front of them never had a chance as the three martial artists

burst out into the open.

"Geez, Pop!" Ranma complained as he started to turn around, "Think maybe you

could give us a little more warning the next..."

Feminine screams caught their attention, forcing Ranma and his father to look

up, while Ryoga (still slumped over Genma's shoulder) picked up his head and

said, "That sounded like...!"

"Here," Genma passed Ryoga along to Ranma and without hesitation charged back

into the building.

"Huh?" Ranma said as he steadied the other boy, incredulous that his father

would actually be charging INTO the line of danger for a change. He found

himself tensing anxiously with a desire to follow his father in as more of the

building began to collapse, only to be surprised as the wall on the third floor

burst outward, and into the open hurled both Genma and Ryu Kumon!

His father was clutching Sakura in both arms as he lightly dropped down to the

pavement, while Kumon was holding the younger girl known as Kaoih in his arms,

and both men just managed to clear the way when the last of the building fell

inward like the proverbial house of cards, vanishing into a cloud of swirling

dust kicked up by the hundreds of tons of brick, steel and mortar. The sounds

were horrendous as girders twisted like pretzels while the basement level of the

building collapsed under the weight of the crashing building, and before too

long not a bit of it was left standing in an upright position.

Sakura stirred from a near-daze to gaze past the shoulder of her rescuer, then

in a low whistle she said, "Whew...called it really close that time. You always

were one for bringing the house down, Genma-chan."

"If you ask me, that was a little excessive," Ryu said as he set an equally

dazed young girl down beside them, "If all you wanted to do was deny me the

Umisenken you could have simply said no."

"Would you have listened to me if I had, Boy?" Genma asked.

"No," Ryu admitted, "But it would have been a lot less trouble."

"W-W-What did you just do, Uncle Genma?" the girl naked Kaoih asked in

amazement, looking from the Saotome Elder to the handsome young man who had just

saved her.

"That, my dear," Sakura said grandly, "Was a little demonstration of why he's

known as Genma the Destroyer. There's not a structure made by modern man that

could withstand a Saotome when he's in the mind to bring it down."

"Genma the Destroyer?" Ryoga repeated.

"Pop...you had a nick-name as 'The Destroyer?'" Ranma marveled.

"I don't take much pride in it, Boy," Genma replied, "But yes...I've been called

that, and a lot worse."

"I can believe that," Ryu frowned, "The Umisenken...I still want it."

"Then you'll have to wait for it, Boy," Genma replied, "I'm not passing it into

anyone's hands unless they can prove to me that they know how to use it. That

there is an example of just why it's called the forbidden system."

"Hmm..." Ryu growled as he turned a sober look towards the ruins, only to become

aware of a gentle feminine hand on his shoulder which caused him to turn a look

in Kaoih's direction.

"Would it kill you to wait a couple of days?" she asked, "You've been searching

for fifteen years, right? A tough guy like you ought to practice a little

patience, and if you want something bad enough, then you ought to be willing to

work for it, right?"

"Ah..." Ryu seemed to be considering his words carefully as he stared at the

brown haired vision of loveliness before him, and then Ranma and Ryoga were

treated to an amazing sight as the other boy looked away, his cheeks flushing a

mild shade of crimson.

"Two days, Son," Genma said adamantly, "Those are my terms, take it or leave

it."

"Very well," Ryu frowned as he forcibly turned away from Kaoih, "Two days

then...but I'll be waiting at the rail yard."

"Why not stay with us until then?" Sakura called out brightly, "My offer of a

job still stands if you're interested, and I'm sure we can find something for

him to do to pass the time, eh Kaoih-chan?"

"Mother!" the brown haired girl appropriately colored.

"I'll...think about it," Ryu averred as he started to walk away, resisting the

impulse to glance over his shoulder.

"Y'know something," Ranma said, "I don't know whether to kick that guy's butt or

shake his hand."

"He saved the girl," Ryoga responded, "That has to mean something."

"He's not really such a bad sort," Sakura mused, "I've known his kind

before...very serious, dedicated to their art, hardly time enough for anything

else but training..."

"Yes, I suppose men like that are hard to approach or understand," Genma agreed,

"Unless they also share a passion for the art. Eh...?" he turned a questioning

look as he belatedly took notice of Sakura's amused expression.

"Let's return to my Circus, shall we?" Sakura mused, "We have another bright day

ahead of us, and the show must go on. Then I'll share with you a bottle of sake

if you'll tell me more about your recent travels, Genma-chan."

"Well I...did you say sake?" Genma replied, his eyes lighting up on the magic

word being tossed out so lightly.

Kaoih studied the expressions of the two adults, looking from her mother to her

"Uncle" Genma, and then in a soft-yet-sour voice she growled, "Geez...why don't

you two rent a motel or something...?"

"Huh?" Ranma asked.

"What was that?" Ryoga added.

"Oh...nothing..." the brown haired girl replied as she surreptitiously studied

the two handsome youths with her blue eyes, seeing similar eyes looking back at

her from the face of at least one of the two boys, while noticing other familiar

qualities in the expression of the other. Rather than make known her

suspicions, however, she merely said, "You boys know anything about taking care

of animals?"

"Ah..." Ranma paused, "Why do you ask?"

"Do Pandas count?" Ryoga wondered.

"Close enough," Kaoih nodded as she began to lead the way back towards their

camp, seeing the excuse of urging them to share in her morning daily chores as a

way to excuse getting to know these two better. With any luck she might

persuade them to indulge in some "harmless" conversation in which many

interesting things were likely to be revealed, including more information

concerning the curious OTHER boy who had just saved her from a collapsing

building.

After all, she silently mused to herself, how often did a girl get the chance to

spend quality time with her two (previously unknown) half-brothers...?

Part Ninety-Five.

Nabiki sat on a high cliff rise looking out at the setting sun and wondering if

her missing fiancée was also looking on the same beautiful sight from wherever

he was at the moment. It had been two days since he had left on his training

mission and already she was missing him fiercely. Two days she had spent

sitting and thinking like this, trying to make sense of the conflicting advice

and counseling that her closest friends and family members had been offering

without the need for prompting on her part. It reminded her of the old adage

that advice was free, and usually worth as much.

Had she really been neglecting Ranma and taking his support for granted? It was

hard to imagine that Ranma thought himself undervalued, but had she really been

making it plain to him what he meant to her on a personal level? Could it also

mean that she had not been paying him enough attention, nor had she been

listening to him nor been attentive to his needs? Things had been so crazy of

late, she had taken his silence for assent and his cooperation as willing

support for her attempts to make life as "normal" as she could for her extended

family, or "Posse" as some would have termed it. That she could have missed the

significance of the stresses he must have been under was an incredible oversight

on her part, one that may well have cost her the respect of the very boy around

whom she had been building all her plans for the future.

Could she really have been so blind? Had she compromised the trust that she had

so carefully built up between herself and her iinazuke? She had thought that

Ranma understood her far better than to doubt her devotion to him, even in light

of what she had going with Shampoo and their daughter...but was it in truth she

who had failed to understand him and his needs? Had she lost touch with the man

she reputedly loved? A boy who made her special inside, not like a freak but

warm and accepted?

Or was the issue that she had lost confidence in him and his abilities? Nabiki

stared down at her own hands, strong and well callused from countless days of

intensive training, hands that could split stone and smash steel like so much

tinfoil, the hands of a proven martial artist whose abilities had been battle

tested against foe after foe. Hardly the hands one would expect of a simple

schoolgirl not yet eighteen years old...but then again she was no simple

schoolgirl, and neither was Ranma an ordinary boy who just happened to have

attracted her fancy. In many ways they appeared to be almost evenly matched,

but Nabiki's abilities were far more advanced than those of Ranma, being closer

to the center of the art than his own home-grown variety of training.

In a way it was a great shame, for Ranma had been trained by Nabiki's father,

just as Nabiki had been trained by Ranma's Dad, an arrangement that had seemed

very odd at the time, yet which now seemed both logical and natural in the light

of their representing two branches of the same school that was being reunited.

The disadvantage was that Ranma lacked the hardening of travel on the open road,

which had sharpened Nabiki's instincts to a razor edge and taught her to fight

with the whole of her being. That Ranma could even approach her in skill was an

amazing accomplishment in itself, given that her father had not taught him to be

as ruthless in a fight as Nabiki herself could be, and there really was no shame

or dishonor in his being a weaker fighter since few others in their merry group

could even compete with him. Why, Shampoo and Perfume combined could hardly

touch him, and no one else in their little group could match him with skills

(with the sole exception of Ryoga, and Nabiki had her suspicions on why the two

boys were so closely matched in raw abilities, Ryoga's superhuman strength

notwithstanding), so what was there for Ranma to feel so intimidated about? It

was hardly like Nabiki thought any less of him for being a marginally weaker

fighter...

Or was it that Ranma knew that she considered his skills to be secondary to her

own? Could his male ego honestly find that objectionable? Was being considered

second to a woman that serious a blow to his self-image and manhood? Nabiki

could hardly believe that Ranma could be that shallow, but what else was there

to believe, given his statement on leaving that he believed Nabiki no longer

needed him around. Surely he could not mean the OTHER possible interpretation

to that statement, that Nabiki's need for him on emotional terms was less than

the bonds that she had forged with Shampoo and their baby...?

No...that could not be it! Ranma had to know that she needed him still,

regardless of how close she had become with Shampoo and little Lylac. How could

he have turned around so soon after the safe delivery of their child? And when

had he ever given her the least little hint that he resented the baby? He had

proven to be among the most reliable and responsible of those who had

"volunteered" to do their share of changing diapers and tending to the baby.

About the only chore he could not help out with was breast-feeding, and in that

regard Shampoo insisted that she had it covered (and boy, was that ever a

double-entendre!).

Or maybe it was not the baby...maybe it was Nabiki who had done something to

hurt his feelings? It might well be Kuonji's fault, but she rather doubted that

angle, considering how well those two seemed to get along like "best buddies."

Perfume had said something about Ranma feeling double-cuckolded, so might having

two of the four women with he was engaged getting pregnant from the other two

have something to do with him feeling extraneous in their relationship? And,

then again, getting stuck with two pregnant fiancées was pushing it a bit by

even Nabiki's admittedly liberal standards...

She sighed as she glanced down into the valley, aware of how lonely she was with

Ranma absent from the picture. She could not help remembering him as he was on

the day when they first met (not counting a brief encounter in childhood, of

course, one that she only dimly even remembered). It had been a rainy day and

she had been in male form, asking her sister for some hot water while making

awkward introductions to a family she had not seen in ten years. Because-at the

time-she looked like a boy (or was one, thanks to her curse), Ranma had taken

her for a boy at face value and had sparred against her (after she had handily

defeated Akane in a previous match), losing rather decisively but seeming to

take it as a good sport, only later learning the truth of Nabiki's "problems" in

gender-switching.

She remembered that occasion when Ranma had accidentally caught her naked in the

furo, and what amusement it had given her to "flash" herself before him, just a

"harmless" bit of posing to determine what he thought of her as a woman,

gratified that she could even produce such a reaction in a boy who knew her

"secret." Ranma had panicked and backed away as if he had just committed some

horrible crime in admiring her body, and then Akane showed up to administer the

"punishment" he had evidently believed that he deserved. It was the first real

inkling that Nabiki had about there being a genuine attraction between the both

of them, a spark of interest that shortly thereafter flared into a virtual

obsession.

From the first she had admired Ranma as a handsome, sometimes courteous, often

rude boy with very good martial arts skills, but it had surprised her to notice

that he also found her *interesting* to be around, and it made her heart soar to

think of how they had quickly come to rely upon one another shortly after their

parents switched the engagement from her sister to Nabiki. Not having been

consulted prior to the announcement, Ranma and Nabiki had no sooner begun to

adapt to the idea then they found themselves under virtual siege by a host of

rival "players." Many of these, it turned out, were after Nabiki in either of

her two aspects, first Kuno and then Ryoga, followed shortly after this by

Kodachi-a girl with whom Ranma was enamored, yet who had mistakenly fallen for

the charms of Nabiki's male form. And then came Keiko Arigami, who let out of

the bag the secret of Nabiki's hidden bisexuality and gave Ranma an inkling of

what was in store for the both of them when Shampoo arrived in Nerima.

So many interesting encounters, such as the further "surprise" that was in store

for the both of them when Ukyo Kuonji had also arrived on the same rather

colorful occasion as Shampoo, at that restaurant where Ranma and Nabiki had been

enjoying their first date together. The thought that "Ojisan" Genma had engaged

someone else to Ranma behind Nabiki's back (other than her sister, who no longer

counted as even a technical "rival") had been infuriating enough without the

added knowledge that the "arrangement" between fathers had come with a financial

pricetag that was prohibitive should the engagement of Ukyo to Ranma be refused.

Then Shampoo's Great-grandmother had arrived on the scene to further enforce the

Amazon's claims on Nabiki, and that was even before they knew about the baby!

Add to that the number of crises, challenges and adventures that they had all

endured ever since their meeting and it added up to one very exciting and

*eventful* period of courtship, and yet in all that time had she ever really

confided in Ranma how much she enjoyed his company or how excited she was by his

very presence? She had never actually said the words of endearment that lovers

were supposed to exchange with one another, and yet they had found many silent

ways of expressing their affection. Nabiki had no doubt as to the nature of her

own feelings, nor did she doubt that Ranma cared for her in a way that was more

intensely personal and with any other (except possibly Kuonji), but still...

Still it frightened her deep down to know that there was someone in this world

who could so deeply and intimately affect her in the way that Ranma did Nabiki.

Her lifelong training in the husbanding of her own emotions left her ill-

prepared to play the role of a romantic suitor. Poetry was more the style of

Tatewaki Kuno, while Shampoo's free and uninhibited way of expressing her

affections was beyond Nabiki's ability to emulate. She had always guarded the

privacy of her feelings against the intrusions of other people, and letting go

now felt like a violation of a lifetime of such training. Yet-absent a verbal

expression of her need to have Ranma at her side-how else was she to make plain

how much she wanted him to continue to be a part of her life? (And not just

because their five-way arranged engagement would likely collapse without him in

its center)

Perhaps the fault did lay with her after all...as she was, it was easy to

understand how a man might feel a deep and abiding sense of confusion. She was

a man half the time, and she had fathered a child on another girl. She had

married that selfsame girl in a state of mild inebriation, yet she had come to

accept Shampoo as her wife on all other levels. Topping that, Nabiki was a

fiercely competitive fighter who accepted nothing less than the best in herself

and those around her. Then there were her "business" dealings with her fellow

High School students, the running of the dojo, her Internet Accounts and

financial holdings to the tune of several score million yen, and the

"information brokerage" that she ran on the sly with her network of "Spies"

keeping her informed of all that went down within Nerima.

Was it really so wrong to take pride in being the best of her generation?

Nabiki was left to ask what her life would be like if she hadn't met and fallen

for Ranma. What if she had stayed at home and been a "normal" schoolgirl with

little interest in the martial arts, like Kasumi had been when her older sister

had given up on her own formal training? What if she were alone (a horrifying

word in her lexicon now) instead of surrounded by friends, followers, families

and well-wishers who relied upon her to be the "pillar of strength" for the

family? (Her father, rather obviously, being disqualified by his lack of mental

acumen and emotional stability...)

She was just starting to grapple with these and other issues when she heard a

voice shouting her way, "CAUGHT YOU NAPPING, NAB-CHAN! NOW YOUR ASS IS MINE!"

"Huh?" Nabiki reacted, then she jumped to her feet with great haste, just in

time to avoid being slashed by a burst of Chi energy that scorched the stones

upon which she had been sitting.

Keiko came vaulting out from the concealment of the woods at a dead run, leaping

high into the air as she curled and tumble about before righting herself with a

speed that was daunting. Her foot lashed out at Nabiki, who had to duck low to

avoid it, only to find the girl's other foot had come rocketing towards her chin

with force enough to knock her silly.

Nabiki turned in with the kick so that the impact was muted, and she spun about

to dissipate the rest of the inertia before falling forward into a hand-spring

as she spun her hips about and launched a kick of her own towards her assailant.

The Kickboxer was ready for this tactic and met it effectively with a block that

left Nabiki's body wide-open, but before she could seize the advantage the

Anything Goes heir brought both of her legs forward and trapped the leggy

redhead between them in a "scissors" headlock and-with a twist of her own body-

Nabiki tumbled the girl around and slammed her against the ground with gone-

jarring force...or at least that had been her intentions.

Keiko-much to Nabiki's surprise-caught herself with the palms of her hands

reaching out to halt her downward momentum, and then she spun herself loose from

Nabiki's grasp and lashed out with both legs in a "helicopter" fashion. Nabiki

had to duck back against a series of kicks that would have hurt a great deal if

they had connected...but then the ground underneath Keiko began to shatter and

cave inward as though the force of her own movements had somehow shattered the

cliffside granite.

All at once the found themselves at the top of an avalanche as the very stones

that they were standing atop began to topple them into the valley!

"KEIKO-YOU IDIOT!" Nabiki shouted over the enormous tumult.

"Hey, it's not my fault!" Keiko protested, but as they had more important things

on their minds besides assigning blame the two of them instead concentrated upon

trying to avoid being crushed in the avalanche. They each did this by vaulting

from stone to stone, using large boulders for support as they rode the rockslide

down the side of a low mountain. Mid-way into their tumble, Keiko resumed

fighting, making matters all the more difficult for Nabiki.

"Would you cut it out!" Nabiki cried as she evaded a roundhouse kick that came

close to scoring while the two girls had momentarily become airborne.

"Make me!" Keiko challenged as they managed to avoid being trapped between

boulders, bouncing off rolling stones the size of small cars while darting

around from one point to another.

"All right-you asked for this!" Nabiki started to say when a shadow fell over

her, and she turned about in time to see a huge boulder bearing down above their

heads.

Fortunately Keiko saw it too, and executed a blindingly swift razor-kick that

sliced the air and struck the boulder, splitting it in twain so that two massive

halves went rolling on past their position.

"Nice," Nabiki said, very much impressed as they vaulted to a new series of

boulders, then they came at each other again as they neared the bottom of the

rockslide.

"I do my best!" Keiko replied as she rebounded off of one half of the shattered

boulder then came sailing at Nabiki with a Dragon-Stamp kick, which same Nabiki

countered with another kick, sensing that they were about to come to a very rude

conclusion of the matter. With one eye she selected a handy clear space for

launching, she then pushed off of a major boulder to strike the base of a tree

before rebounding into the clear space. Keiko, meanwhile, did her dance above

the rubble before tumbling clear and executing a one-point landing near to

Nabiki.

"Shadowskills?" Nabiki arched an eyebrow.

"I've been watching you train," Keiko revealed, "You're good, but I'd already

learned the technique from Mistress Lao during my last stay with her...hey, if

it's got kicks to it, she taught it to me. Care to try me again? That was only

a light work-out."

Nabiki did not dare to turn her head to regard the rockslide that had come so

close to claiming them as she growled, "Try it and I'll lay you out! I'm in no

mood for this kind of nonsense!"

"Nonsense?" Keiko visibly relaxed, rolling onto the balls of her feet as she

smiled a jaunty smile towards Nabiki, "I thought you were here to train? Don't

you think I make a good sparring partner? I'm almost as good as you, and I

won't be satisfied until I'm at least your equal."

"Feeling mighty cocky about yourself, are you?" Nabiki growled softly.

"Well, that's one way of putting it, I suppose," Keiko tossed her head so that

her long red braid flipped over one shoulder, "But hey, how am I supposed to

improve if I don't take on the best of the best, meaning you, Nab-chan? You

think you're the only one who's in need of a some improvement?"

"No," Nabiki replied, "But next time you could try asking."

"Wouldn't be as much of a surprise if I did," Keiko counter-argued, "And I've

always loved tangling with you...'Sugar,'" she winked as she said this.

"You've definitely been hanging around with Kuonji," Nabiki slowly nodded.

"And that's a bad thing?" Keiko raised her eyebrows, "Don't bother answering, I

know full well that Perfume would slice me into Sushi if I tried anything with

her wife. I just thought the word suited you, considering I know how sweet and

salty you are from when I buried my face between those legs of yours a couple

years back..."

"Ah..." Nabiki felt her face go red all over as unbidden memories resurfaced.

She hardly needed the reminder that Keiko had been her first, the first girl to

claim her during their brief time together hiding out in the slums of Hong Kong,

many months before the middle Tendo daughter had discovered a lovely Amazon to

marry...

"Fact is, I was coming to talk to you when I saw you sitting there looking like

you'd lost your best friend or something," Keiko continued, "You really are

fretting over Saotome, eh? I know by that look that you're a woman in

love...and please don't go into that stammering act of yours. It's fine the

first dozen times, but you've been overplaying it a bit of late."

"I have, huh?" Nabiki replied with a sheepish expression, "But...if you wanted

to tell me that, then why did you attack me?"

"Because I thought you needed something to take your mind off your woes," the

redhead said with a grin, "And you looked like you needed to have your ass

kicked."

"Am I really that pathetic?" Nabiki asked.

"You are as far as I'm concerned," Keiko sniffed, "I know you better than

this...there's no reason for you to act like a kicked puppy, just because your

boyfriend is going through a few personal problems and needs to get his head on

straight. I can understand where he's coming from, but you...you just mope

around and act like this just came totally out of the blue, like you've been

blind-sided in traffic."

"That's pretty much how I feel," Nabiki said, "And what do you mean you

understand where he's coming from? What do you know about Ranma that I don't?"

"You want a list?" Keiko replied, "Seriously, the problem you're both having

comes down to having mixed expectations about what it means for the both of you

to get married. You think of it as a business partnership in which all of the

household labors get doled out and assigned to the respective family members,

but I can tell you that there's a lot more to a relationship than that. For one

thing you've got to let go of this idea that you need to be the head of the

household and start respecting your fiancée more. You've been taking things way

too much for granted, and yet you've also been taking them way too serious, like

with your martial arts..."

"How's that again?" Nabiki asked, "How are those two related? My fiancée and my

martial arts?"

"You shouldn't even need to ask me that," Keiko snorted, "With you it's the same

thing...you study hard and you try to come out on top. You're too competitive,

and yet you just won't let the other party join you in the dance. The saying

goes, 'It take two to Tango,' well...that also means that you have to dance WITH

your partner instead of dancing AGAINST him. You both have to learn to do this

thing together, to trust each other and RELAX a little! You're so intense it's

makes me sick just watching you...you're too wound up like a coiled spring, and

sooner or later something was bound to go 'snap' under all that tension."

"A coiled spring?" Nabiki blinked, "You're saying I've been putting too much

responsibility and pressure on Ranma?""

"Exactly," Keiko nodded, "Only at the same time you aren't giving him any

credit. You take it for granted that you're smarter and a better fighter than

he is, and that's started to grate with him, see what I'm saying?"

"You mean I've been rubbing his nose in it...without realizing I'm doing it?"

Nabiki asked.

"Give the girl a Prize for finding a Clue!" Keiko threw up her hands, "Trust

works both ways, you know...you don't trust him, why should he trust you? You

don't respect him, why shouldn't he resent it?"

"I never thought of it that way," Nabiki sighed, "You're right when you say that

things have been awfully tense of late, but I never meant to make Ranma feel

small or unimportant...""

"I'm sure he knows that," Keiko replied, "But it might not hurt if you told him

that sometime. Tell the guy just what he means to you and maybe he might start

to feel like he really matters to you, that what he feels is important. You've

learned to delegate responsibility to your subordinates at High School, isn't it

time you made more quality time for him? I know Shampoo wouldn't mind it if you

spent more time looking after Ranma's needs and not just wait for him to come

around to looking after your needs. Above all else what you need to practice is

COMMUNICATION, you got that?"

"I think so," Nabiki smiled, "When did you suddenly turn into such an expert on

my affairs?"

"Hey, somebody around here has to be keeping track of the score card," Keiko

replied, "I'm the one who's trained for it, so why shouldn't I be the one to

give your ego some deflation?"

"You are good at that," Nabiki grudgingly admitted, "So you mean I need to talk

to Ranma more like an equal?"

"That all depends," Keiko replied, "Do you think of him as an equal? Or is he

just a trophy husband?"

"A trophy husband?" Nabiki blinked, "You've gotta be kidding..."

"Nope," Keiko replied, "But that's what the guy must be starting to feel like.

You're the Great and Powerful Tendo Nabiki, and you've been acting like he was a

satellite moving around in your orbit. You've got to go back to the basics and

think about what it is that attracted you to the guy in the first place, and

then make him understand the real nature of your feelings."

"My...feelings?" Nabiki repeated, looking down, "Oboy..."

The redhead shook her head and smiled, "Same old Nab-chan. Long as I've known

you, you've always tried to remain in control and act like you're on top of the

game. You just don't know how to relax and enjoy actual human feelings and

emotions. If you ever do figure out how to be more human, call me."

"More human...?" Nabiki blinked, "HEY, I'm human enough!"

"You actually admit it?" Keiko raised her eyebrows, "Wow, this is a red-letter

day! Now maybe you might try saying it with even more feeling. The thing you

need to do is try to relax and let go of this need to be in charge of

everything. There's only so much you can do to control the way things happen in

this life, Nab-chan, and the sooner you stop trying to play Kami-sama, the

sooner you'll figure out that the job is already taken."

"I'm not that bad...am I?" Nabiki asked.

"Let's take a little test, shall we?" Keiko lifted a finger, "Try telling me,

here and now, what exactly it is you think about when you hear the name Saotome

Ranma."

"Ranma?" Nabiki thought a moment and found that many different (and sometimes

contradictory) images appeared in her mind at the mention of her iinazuke, and

she tried her best to verbalize the first words that came into her head,

"Handsome...stubborn...a nice guy...nice butt, real tight-ah-is it all right if

I change that last part?"

"Okay then," Keiko pointedly ignored that last question, "So you think of him as

great looking and a nice guy, but just a little too stubborn for his own good.

Anything else?"

"Well..." Nabiki screwed up her face a bit before adding, "He's brave,

thoughtful, kind, not a bully, maybe a little rude sometimes, and not as well

polished as when he tries to behave like his mother would want him to behave..."

"You know, something about that last part kind of amuses me," Keiko grinned,

"Most boys raised by their mothers in Japan pick up all sorts of weird ideas and

bad habits, but you had to luck out by having a mother-in-law who thinks large,

extended families are a sign of Manliness. Frankly I think she'd be happy if

your boyo was screwing all four of you on a nightly basis, and maybe a few

others on the sideline, like me."

"Like you?" Nabiki was mildly incredulous.

"Don't let the big 'L' label fool you," Keiko winked, "I've slept with a lot of

things worse than a guy, and even quite a few virgins, present company

included."

"Ah...well..." Nabiki colored once again.

"Actually, I think I'll leave the actual deflowering part to you," Keiko mused,

"I think you both have earned that much happiness, don't you? I'd consider my

role much more that of the referee cheering the two of you on in a stammering

match to see which of you breaks down first and admits that you're nuts about

the other. You really do have a sweet deal going down here, the best of all

worlds, in my opinion, and isn't it about time you up and admitted that to

yourself? So...the question you should be asking is...why would you want to

screw things up by letting a good thing get away? Seize the day with both

hands, I say, and don't ever let that boy get away! You do that and you'll

regret it for the rest of your days."

"Ah...yeah...no fooling about that," Nabiki said in a very faint tone of voice,

then she recovered herself and said, "What am I so worried about anyway? Ranma

isn't going away forever, he's promised me that he'll come back, and he's never

yet broken a promise...ah...to me that is..."

"So why should he start now?" Keiko winked, "You see? You can look on the

bright side, if you put your mind to it. Now...try doing one more thing for me,

will you?"

"And what's that?" Nabiki asked.

"Have fun," Keiko replied, "Smile, laugh, enjoy yourself, have a good time!

That applies to the martial arts as well as your personal life, y'know? It's

the one thing you've yet to master."

"Having fun?" Nabiki blinked as she said this.

"Lose yourself in the moment," Keiko explained, "Give yourself to the dance that

is combat, live the fight, enjoy it! Revel in the feeling of what it means to

be alive!"

"Fighting makes you feel alive?" Nabiki repeated.

"You got a problem with your hearing?" Keiko asked as she leaned closer,

"Repeating everything I say isn't like you, Nabiki. You're usually a livelier

debater than this, and you really don't need to ask me these kinds of questions.

You should ask yourself...why do you fight? What's in it for you? Why go to

the trouble of training so hard for a fight if you're not in it for profit or

destruction or to simply kick butt? What purpose would there be to fighting if

not for the love of the art? You certainly aren't planning to face Ranma with

the intent to either hurt or kill him, so what other reason can there be but to

prove to yourselves that the two of you are partners and equals?"

"Equals?" Nabiki blinked her eyes, "We'll be fighting each other to prove that

we're equals?"

"You're doing it again," Keiko pointed out.

"Uh...yeah...guess I am at that, huh?" Nabiki said sheepishly, "Sorry about

that..."

"Don't be sorry," Keiko replied, "I'm not the one you need to apologize to here,

Nab-chan. I'm just your friend...Ranma's your iinazuke, and if there's any

groveling to be done here, he's the one who needs to see you do it."

"Me grovel?" Nabiki smirked, "I'd sooner do the Crouch of the Wild Tiger."

"Huh?" Keiko blinked, "I'm afraid I don't know that one..."

"No reason you should," Nabiki replied, "It was one of Uncle Genma's 'Special'

moves that he taught me on the road. It's...not all that impressive, and it's

even pretty humiliating to put into practice. He recommended that I use it once

with the old man when he slapped that Moxibustion thing on me a while back, but

it turns out it wasn't needed. I...don't know if it would be all that effective

with Ranchan, but...I'll keep it in mind just in case I need to do some serious

fence-mending."

"Uh...okay," Keiko replied, "Well...think about what I said and see what you

come up with. Heck, you're smart enough to do your own thinking, I just thought

that I'd give you a nudge in the right direction."

"Thanks, it's appreciated," Nabiki nodded, "But Kei-chan? In the future...think

you could find a way of making your point that's not so hard on the landscape?"

"Oh," Keiko glanced at the now-settled landslide and said, "Well...I guess

geology never was my strong point. That's the problem when you use a technique

as powerful as the Shadowskills...it tends to wreak havoc on the neighborhood."

"Guess that means I shouldn't use this stuff indoors," Nabiki mused, "Thanks for

the ass-kicking, by the way, I needed that to cheer myself up."

"Hey, anytime you need a little ass kicked, you can always count on me," Keiko

winked, "And if Saotome were here, you can bet I'd give him what for!"

"Have ass, will be kicked," Nabiki nodded, "Duly noted."

"Now, you'd better get back to camp before your OTHER significant other starts

wondering where you got off to," Keiko smiled, "And take it from me, you don't

want an Amazon doubting your solidarity and commitment."

"Right," Nabiki nodded, "That's one match I wouldn't want to give odds about.

Sham-chan means the world to me, but Ranma..." she sighed.

"Now, you see?" Keiko grinned, "The way you said his name just now...THAT had

genuine feeling behind it. You should practice on that before Ranma comes back,

learn how to share what's inside you, and then maybe the fight will be wholly

unnecessary."

"I thought this fight was to prove that we're equals?" Nabiki reasoned.

"Don't get pedantic with me," Keiko sniffed, "You're only equals if you accept

him as a co-partner. This isn't about satisfying Amazon law or proving which

one of you is the better fighter, this is about showing how much trust and

respect you have in your relationship. Nothing else counts as much as showing

Ranma what you are and what he means to you...what it's all about that brings

the both of you together."

"I'll think about that," Nabiki nodded.

"You do that," the pig-tailed girl smiled as she turned away, "Now I'd better go

find Kodachi before she comes looking for me. Don't want her thinking I've run

off and seduced you behind her back."

"Ah...right," Nabiki replied nervously, "No need to have a jealous Kuno on my

back...been there and done that..."

"Oh, I'm not worried about her being jealous," Keiko lasciviously grinned, "But

if she thought I'd made love to you without inviting her to share in the

fun...now that would get ugly. Seeya, Sweet-tush."

With that she flipped her head forward and her long pig-tail slung out and

curled around Nabiki's back, striking her on the rump and earning a yelp from an

unprepared Nabiki.

"Caught you napping...again," Keiko cheerfully called back over her shoulder,

and Nabiki just stood there watching the jaunty redhead saunter away, swaying

her hips in an exaggerated way until at last the Tendo heir said, "Oh..."

It went without saying that Nabiki had always found Keiko a puzzling mass of

contradictory elements, both strong and gentle, tough and insightful, brash and

yet somehow very warm and personable, a good friend and a tough competitor, one

minute street-savvy, the next minute the very model of good manners and

politeness...all of that and more, and still she could constantly surprise

Nabiki at moments such as these by offering advice that actually made sense

after a fashion. They had known each other for years, off and on, and still

Keiko Arigami was something of an enigma, but Nabiki knew that the half-American

girl was a very good friend and her advice could be trusted...(like her)...up to

a point.

She just wondered why that pig-tailed redhead could sometimes remind her so much

of Saotome Ranma...

Happosai realized at once the drawback to his resolve to find Genma and his

son...namely being that just knowing the man and his haunts did not absolutely

insure that Happosai would find his wayward disciple...namely that there was a

lot of territory to cover in a day or two, and no certain direction which Genma

might have chosen to take the boys for training. The one thing that was

certain, however, was that it would have to be close to a residential area,

preferably near to a ruined building that could be destroyed without

recriminations. The Yamasenken and Umisenken would require it if the boys were

to master such a powerful and difficult technique.

So Happosai found himself wandering down the trail to the outskirts of town,

having already visited Genma's usual favorite camping spots (ones near enough to

a roadside café where they had a dumpster out of which good eats could be

pilfered), wondering where next to look for a balding man and two teenaged boys

traveling on foot like wandering mendicants. Knowing their destructive

potential and tendency to wind up getting into trouble made it seem a simple

enough proposition to one who knew what signs to look for in order to catch up

with their trail, and being that said trail was hardly two days old made it

likely that he could find them in very short order.

Especially considering that the older man had a Jusenkyo curse, which made it

very unlikely that he could avoid contact with cold water. All it would take

was one sighting of a panda in the company of two boys and Happosai would be on

this lead in less than a heartbeat. Genma might go to ground and be hard to

find for the local constabulary, but nothing would hide him from the probing

eyes of Happosai, his concerned and doting Master.

Near the edge of town, however, the diminutive martial artist caught sight of

something else that was both unusual and wholly unexpected...a circus had come

to town...and not just any circus indeed, but one that bore the distinctive name

of the Cherry Blossom Traveling Circus.

Cherry Blossom? Now THAT brought back some memories! Ah, yes...the old days

when the lads were young and spry and had all sorts of cuties dogging their

trail and making life exciting! Happosai never could understand why Soun and

Genma had settled down with only one woman apiece when they could have had a

literal harem to their credit a piece, but then those two always had been

disappointing in the selective way that they chose to receive his training.

[Wonder if that special cutie, Sakura-chan, is still giving fortunes?] the

wizened old Hentai silently mused, [Wouldn't mind a bit sampling some of her

cherry blossoms. Too bad I'm in a hurry to find that worthless old panda...]

It was not often that Happosai had an epiphany, but a stray one dawned on him

right there and then as his mind slowly did the math and came up with the

stunning equation: Panda + Circus = Genma + Sakura = HIDEOUT!

It was a stunningly clear equation, one so bright and obvious that Happosai

marveled at its simplicity. And to think that Genma could have come up with

such an effective and cunning strategy on his own, the sly dog! Perhaps

Happosai had underestimated the rogue after all, or perhaps Genma was just

reverting to type and sensed a free meal and some lodgings that he could use as

a base for training for his boys to be better martial artists. Happosai

silently complimented his favorite pupil for showing some initiative (for

once!). This would make the search much, much easier for his loving Master to

track the old boy down and find the son Genma wanted to train in the two styles

of the Senken.

And besides, if Sakura still had her girlish figure after all these years, then

Happosai could cop a good feel, thus stoning two birds with one rock...or some

such nonsense...

And then some instinct...a sixth sense known only to the truly perverted, made

him turn to look in a particular direction, and there he saw what looked like

Sakura from a time warp, young and beautiful once again, and in the company of

two boys whom the ancient Master of the Anything Goes school would have known in

a fogbank. Happosai smiled, seeing opportunity come knocking with the force of

a large wooden mallet...

"There you go, boys," Kaoih remarked as she paused at the lion cages, and the

two boys standing next to her realized that they were not the ones to whom she

was addressing.

To their amazement, the caged animals responded to her verbal entreaties with

some snuffs and animal noises that sounded like an affectionate greeting.

Clearly they recognized her as a friend and not just a source of care and

feeding. The brown haired girl clearly had a rapport with these dangerous

creatures, enough so that Ranma and Ryoga watched in awe as she patted one lion

on the head, as if not even mindful of what the big cat could do if it turned

and snapped at the hand that fed it.

Of course seeing the large creatures behaving like oversized members of the

domestic breed did not embolden them to approach any closer. They instead

watched as Kaoih talked to one big cat in its cage, and then to another, said

cages well spaced apart from one another so as to prevent the animals from

clawing at their neighbors.

"You take care of all these animals?" Ryoga asked as he noted the other cages

stationed upwind and away from the leopards, lions and tigers, mainly the

monkey, gorilla, giraffe, ostrich and elephant pens that were attracting the

interest of many patrons, especially children.

"Well, I'm one of the handlers, yes," Kaoih replied, "But since they're a part

of my act, we have to get to know one another pretty well so we can trust each

other and not have any misunderstandings. Most creatures respond favorably to a

kind word and some patient understanding. There's no point in being afraid of

them because they are dangerous...it's that element of danger that attracts the

Rubes and makes them want to see them perform with me inside a large

cage...though maybe a few just watch because they think there's a chance that

they might go wild and try to eat me."

"And you're not afraid they might?" Ranma asked.

"Wouldn't be much point," the brown haired girl replied with a shrug, "They're

strong and fast enough that they could take me out with very little trouble. My

job is to see that they never feel any inclination to chomp down on poor, tasty

little me. Besides, I know how to handle myself in the ring, and I've been

doing this since I was very little."

"You must be very brave," Ryoga turned a glance at Ranma, "Nabiki wouldn't even

come within a hundred feet of one of these cages..."

"Yeah, no kidding," Ranma said, "She deathly afraid of the things since Pop..."

he did not continue.

Kaoih sighed, "I never could get Nabiki over her Alurophobia. She'd break out

in a cold sweat just standing downwind of one of these cages. She'd circle

around an entire city block rather than have to get near them, and even a stray

alley cat could set her off like nothing I've ever seen, which is kind of funny

when you consider what an acrobat she was, utterly fearless on the trapeze and

high wire acts..."

"Nabiki performed in your circus?" Ranma's eyebrows arched in dull amazement.

Kaoih straightened up and turned to face him, saying, "You're her iinazuke,

right? Yeah, you look like you might be her type...strong, handsome, shy, not

too bright..."

"Hey!" Ranma protested.

"Just kidding," she grinned, "Don't be such a rube, Saotome-san. Actually, I

knew Nabiki five years ago, but I think I had a good enough handle on her

character to know her pretty well, and I doubt she'd give her heart to just any

old stud, which means there's got to be a lot more to you than just another

pretty face. And you are definitely Aunt Atsuko's kid," she added with an aside

to Ryoga, "There's enough of her in you that you can't be anybody else, and that

headband is a definite giveaway. Last time she was by she gave us a pretty good

description of you, but that was eight or nine months back in Hokkaido..."

"Hokkaido?" Ranma blinked, "What was she doing out there?"

"Do you have to ask?" Kaoih eyed him blandly, "She's a Hibiki."

"Ah...yeah...that sounds like Mom," Ryoga rubbed the bad of his head and gave a

nervous chuckle.

"So," Kaoih tried to sound nonchalant as she asked, "What the deal between you

and that guy in the Rambo suit? You two arch enemies or what?"

"Actually, we only met him yesterday," Ranma shrugged, "He tried to break my

back and came damned near close to killing Ryoga..."

"It was just a lucky punch," Ryoga growled, "Now that I know what to look for he

won't have it so easy..."

"I dunno," Kaoih said with a frown, "That guy seemed way too slick and casual to

be just any old brawling street fighter. I get the strong impression that-if

he'd really been serious about it-he could have killed you both without half

trying. That he let you live means he wants something...this Umisenken thing

that your Dad's supposed to teach you."

"The Umisenken," Ranma frowned, "A powerful technique, I barely even saw it

coming."

"I hardly saw it at all," Ryoga complained, "It was like your father just became

invisible or something...one minute he was there, the next he wasn't."

"You mean like he just vanished into fat air?" Kaoih turned away to hide her

expression, "Yeah...that sounds like Pops Saotome..."

"Fat air?" Ryoga repeated, "Don't you mean thin-oh..."

"Yeah, Oh," Ranma said dryly before turning his focus back towards the girl

before them, "What do you mean it's just like him? Just what do you know about

Pop that we don't?"

"Oh...nothing too much," Kaoih replied, "Just that he can't be trusted any

farther than you can throw him, and that he can steal pretty much anything that

isn't nailed down-including the nails-if he has a mind to. Nabiki kept his

larcenous habits in check, and they seemed to amuse Mom more than annoy her,

even when she caught Uncle Genma eyeing the security lock box with the weekly

proceeds. It was almost uncanny the way he could just seem to vanish and sneak

into any place that he wanted without anyone seeing him move..."

"Without anyone seeing him move?" Ranma repeated, blinking his eyes as a sudden

awareness dawned upon him, "Of course, that's it! That's the secret we've been

missing all this time! I understand it now! I've finally figured out the

secret of the Umisenken!"

"So I've gathered," a familiar voice said, "I knew that even a young punk like

you could have enough on the ball to figure it out without much effort."

All three teenagers turned around in time to see the little man perched on top

of the tiger's cage gazing at them with a very wizened expression. It took a

whole second for Ranma to gasp, "YOU? Where the heck did you come from?"

"Lots of different places, my boy," Happosai replied when his attention riveted

upon the member of the female sex who was present, "Do my eyes deceive me? It's

little Kaoih, all grown up into a beautiful young lady. Come to Poppa, Baby!"

"Urk!" Kaoih reacted as the little man launched himself at her and latched his

arms around her chest, hanging on in spite of her best efforts to dislodge him.

"HEY!" Ranma protested.

"You damned pervert!" Ryoga cried in outrage.

"Just a minute, boys," said pervert responded with nonchalant indifference to

the implied double-threat, "I'll get to you just as soon as I finish becoming

re-acquainted with little Kaoih-chan here..."

"I-you..." Kaoih began to sputter when an amazing thing happened...she calmed

down and took on a crafty look that was utterly unexpected. Instead what she

said aloud was, "Uncle Happy...long time no see...enjoying the squeeze?"

"Oh...this is heavenly!" the old man was positively weeping, "You've filled out

so nicely, just like a girl ought to do when she starts out as such a cute

little child..."

"Thanks for the compliment," Kaoih cast a glance sidelong and then cried, "HEY-

RUUUBE!"

Ranma and Ryoga were taken by surprise at the sudden fierceness of that cry,

having been torn with indecision as their desire to peel the Old Man away from

the young girl was tempered by the knowledge that no attack within their dual

arsenals would be effective on a low-level thrust, why anything powerful enough

to actually threaten Happosai was likely to prove damaging to the girl. What

they did not count on was a third party coming to the rescue before either of

them could make a move forward. Like a blur that figure tore the old man away

from Kaoih and savagely threw him to the ground, planting a dragon-stamp on top

of him as he followed through on his own momentum.

"What the...?" Ranma blurted.

"How did he...?" Ryoga began to ask.

"How did I what?" demanded Ryu Kumon, "I was in the area and I saw this creep

molesting a girl, and since neither of you two idiots looked ready to do

anything..."

"Hey, it's not that!" Ranma immediately protested.

"You don't know him like we do..." Ryoga started to say when all at once a pipe

held in a tiny hand detached itself from the blackness of the hole and tapped

Ryu along the shin, causing the older boy to go flying sideways as if struck by

a large hammer.

"Now that was rude," Happosai said as he climbed out of the small mini-crater,

still holding his pipe, "Can't a man sit down to enjoy a good feel-up without

every hoodlum in the neighborhood trying to take advantage of my kindly nature?"

"What the..." Ryu declared as he got back to his feet once again, having flown a

great distance, "I should have crushed every bone in your body with that move,

Old Man. How did you survive it?"

"Pshaw!" Happosai said dismissively, "It'd take a lot more than a young punk

like you to put me down. I don't know who you are, but if you try that

again..."

"Old Freak," Ranma said matter-of-factly, "Meet Kumon Ryu. Kumon-san, meet the

bane of our existence and all-around embarrassment to the Anything Goes school,

Happosai the Hentai."

"Now is that anyway to talk about your Master, you young ingrate?" Happosai

growled, "And after I went to all the trouble to find you, too..."

"Shut up!" Ryoga snarled, "You have a lot of nerve attacking a poor defenseless

girl just because you want to..."

"Did you say defenseless?" Kaoih got a very peculiar smile on her face, and then

with surprising flourish whipped out a silk sheet from seeming no where and

flashed it around her supple body, then gripping both ends as she held it aloft

and cried, "Taa-Daa!"

To everyone else's amazement, when she pulled the silk screen away what was

revealed in its wake was nothing less than a seven hundred pound fully grown

Bengal Tiger!

"Oh..." Happosai blinked his eyes, "Hey, that's not half bad! Did you learn

that trick from your mother?"

"What do you think," Kaoih smiled over the roar of her large striped companion,

"Sick 'im, Bashira!"

Said tiger launched itself at the old man, who ducked out of the way of its

massive swipe with paws as big as the old man's head, and to their amazement the

Tiger pivoted around and faced the old man once again with a roar that was loud

enough to peel the paint off of a large wagon.

"Nice kitty," Happosai tried to sound entreating as he slowly backed away from

the large cat, "Don't come any closer, or I'll have to use my special

technique...OWWW!" he cried as he suddenly got kicked away by an opportunistic

Ryu Kumon.

"Save it for a rainy day, Old Man," Ryu growled as he rather pointedly placed

himself in the path between the Tiger and Kaoih, "Don't worry, Miss...it won't

get to you past me. I can take this overgrown tabby down long before it can

hurt you."

"But I don-ah..." Kaoih's expression changed and suddenly she said, "Oh...how

brave you are, kind sir! This is twice in a single day that you've come to my

rescue. You must be a very great hero..."

"Huh?" Ryu's attention wavered by a fraction as he started to turn back towards

the girl, which the Tiger immediately saw and recognized as an opening in which

to launch another attack, having reacted as if offended by the larger boy's

previously dismissive comments.

Ryu saw his peril and started to react, knowing he had just lost a critical

advantage, but before the great cat was able to clear half the space between

them another figure darted forward from seeming nowhere with a second silken

cloth in hand into which the Tiger vanished, then Sakura turned around and

completed her motion with great flourish, converting the silken cloth into a

mere kerchief, and bowing to her astonished audience with a flashy grin that was

pure showman.

"Sorry to interfere," the Ringmistress told a non-plussed Ryu, "But I can't have

you damaging a valuable member of my show. Tigers like this are very rare in

the wild, you know, and it's awfully difficult to replace them."

"I don't believe it," Ryoga gasped, "Where did the Tiger go?"

"Why, to its cage, of course," Sakura noted as she turned to reveal said cage

containing a very frustrated looking tiger, "Can't have Bashira running around

unattended, it might scare off my customers for the evening."

"Kind of dangerous letting a big cat like that off the leash, don't you think?"

Ryu said as he glanced around and said, "Where did that old freak get off to?"

"Who knows," Ranma shrugged, "But hey...how did you show up all of a sudden?

Are you following us around expecting to steal the Umisenken?"

"Shut your mouth, Saotome," Ryu glared, "I've got a perfectly legitimate reason

for being here..."

"Quite so," Sakura said brightly, "Kumon-san has quite gallantly accepted my

offer of temporary employment and is now a paid staff employee of the Cherry

Blossom circus, so it is only natural that he should be looking out for the

welfare of my daughter..."

"Oh yeah," Kaoih said brightly as she glomped onto the arm of an astonished Ryu,

"My hero..."

"Uh...hah?" the combat-clad young martial artist reacted, finding the power of

speech stolen away by the large moon-eyed look the younger girl paid him.

"Call me crazy," Ryoga remarked, "But I think that guy just met his match..."

"Seriously," nodded Ranma, feeling ironic sympathy for his nominal foeman.

"Boy," Genma said as he appeared behind Ranma, "Was that the Master I just saw

standing here not twenty seconds ago?"

"Yeah, Pop," Ranma said, "It was him."

"Too bad," Genma sighed, "Now that he's found us he'll be impossible to get rid

of. And here I was hoping that I'd have more time to train you by myself..."

"Don't worry," Ranma murmured softly as he glanced towards Ryu, who was being

distracted by the distracting feminine presence latching onto his arm in the

form of Kaoih, "I think I've got it figured out now. I know how to do the

Umisenken."

"Do you now, Boy?" Genma asked, drawing him away while they were presently

unnoticed, and then out of sight of the others he pulled out the other scroll he

carried and handed it to Ranma, "Take a look and see if it's what you expected."

Ranma undid the binding and began to unroll the scroll, pausing as he read the

title written at the top in silence, then slowly nodded his head and said, "I

was right...now I know why you call it a dishonorable system."

"I warned you that I created it when I was a very different man than I am

today," Genma sighed, "But I don't blame you if you're disappointed in your

father."

"Not disappointed, Pop," Ranma said as he continued to unroll more of the

scroll, pausing to study each of the dozen different maneuvers he saw

illustrated there, "Just a little sad. I think I understand that part too,

now...living under that Pervert, it's a wonder you didn't use this to make

yourself a fortune."

"I might well have turned out like that," Genma nodded, "But...well...time

changes a man...and maybe you'll understand more when you are a father."

"I hope so," Ranma said as he rolled the scroll back up again and handed it back

to his father, "You don't mind if I take off for a little bit, do you? I wanna

practice this by myself."

"No problem," Genma said, "And take your time. It's still two more days until

you have to face Kumon."

"Two days?" Ranma sniffed, "Won't even take me that long. And Pop...thanks for

trusting me. It means a lot."

"You've earned it, Boy," Genma said, "Make me proud."

"I'm not sure what Pride has to do with it," Ranma said, "But I'll put this to a

very good use in putting that creep down but good."

"I know you will," Genma nodded, "I wouldn't trust it to you if I had any

doubts, Boy...Boy?"

Silence answered him as Genma glanced around, finding himself seemingly alone,

to which he smiled and adjusted his glasses, murmuring faintly to himself, "What

do you know...he's got it already...that's my boy..."

A faint whisper from seemingly everywhere and no where at once replied softly,

"Don't remind me..." and then there was silence...

Continued.

Comments/Criticisms/Cirque du Soleil: shadowmane

Ranma trains in earnest, and then confronts Ryu for the showdown of the Decade

(well...okay, maybe the Week, capish?) while Happosai puts in his own two yen

worth. Stay tuned for the next exciting installment: "Stealing the Show," or

"Now you Senken, Now you Don't!" Be there!

If you wish to check out my other works, Please check out my Fanfiction

webpage at: .

All related chapters of this series can be found there along with my

other works.


	37. Chapter 37

Dnabiki96

Nabiki 1/2

"A Very Scary Thought!"

by

Jim Robert Bader

(Inspired by the works of Rumiko Takahashi & Others)

Part Ninety-Six.

"Oh my," mused Sakura as she poured a drink for herself and her male companion,

"This seems so much like the old days, I'm actually feeling nostalgic."

"Does it now?" Genma asked as he held out his cup for more sake, "I can't

imagine why...we old fogies barely survived our own sordid past. That's one

thing where I don't envy the younger generation."

"Perhaps," Sakura remarked, "But isn't it interesting to see what fun the

younger people are getting into on their own? Ah, it does a mother's heart

proud to see her child finally starting to take an interest in the opposite

sex...not that there's anything wrong with same-sex relationships, of course."

"No comment," Genma replied, thinking wryly of his main charge, Nabiki.

"Oh, come on now," the Ringmistress said indulgently, "From what you've

described of Nabiki and her marital arrangements, I should think you would be

thinking about the old days as a missed opportunity. Be honest, wouldn't you

have preferred if you could have kept all of your girlfriends without having to

choose just one of them at the expense of all of the others?"

"I would be lying if I said that the thought has never occurred to me," Genma

replied with a straight face, "But having to be at the center of all that for

the past two decades is a bit more than I think my nerves could withstand. I'll

leave it to the younger people who have the stamina and grace to possibly make

it work out."

"Doesn't sound like the Genma I knew to give up without trying," Sakura

remarked, "I guess maybe time does change everything, or maybe it just makes us

more cautious."

"The latter, I think," Genma paused to consider his emptied cup and then looked

up again, "What was the question again?"

"You're not that drunk," Sakura chuckled, "You could hold your own and then some

in the old days, not like your skinny little friend, but then again I suppose

Soun did have his charming qualities..."

"I wouldn't know," Genma said gruffly, "I left stuff like that to Silk and

Yumi."

"By the way," Sakura mused, "Not to change the subject, but where has that son

of yours gotten off to...you know the one I mean. Seems like I've barely seen

him since yesterday..."

"Ranma?" Genma replied, "He's out practicing the Umisenken. He'll show up when

he's ready."

"All day long?" Sakura raised an eyebrow, "That speaks a lot for his dedication.

Reminds me a bit of my daughter...she literally throws herself into rehearsing

for a performance. You should see her full act, not just the one she put on for

you and the crowd yesterday...a bit of high wire legerdemain...such a wonderful

chip off the old block."

"I can see why you're so proud of her," Genma agreed, "Her father must have been

an extraordinary fellow, for all he up and abandoned you."

"Oh, I'd say he was quite...an unusually talented fellow, now that you mention

it," Sakura said with a sly tone to her voice, "And full of surprises. You

wouldn't believe the sorts of things he was capable of doing with the right sort

of...motivation..."

Genma's eyes narrowed in sullen resentment as he contemplated his cup once

again, even after Sakura thoughtfully refilled it, and at last he growled in a

decided lack of humor, "But in the end he still left you alone with your

child..."

"It wasn't really his fault," Sakura replied, "I never told him I was pregnant."

"Oh?" Genma said in confusion, "Why was that?"

"He was promised to another," Sakura sighed, "And I knew he didn't care for me

as much as I did him. I took what satisfaction I could in our single time

together...if anything I took advantage of him and exploited a situation that

was not of his creation."

"Then...he doesn't know that he's a father?" Genma said in amazement, "And you

never married?"

"Never saw any point to it," Sakura replied, "I had my father's circus to take

care of, and the people here are my family. Why burden a married man with the

knowledge of what happened nineteen years ago under the influence of a love

spell? I'm sure he doesn't even remember that we made love together. I could

hardly expect him to want to know about a daughter he didn't even know he sired,

especially when he has two noble sons who can easily take over his family

traditions."

"But who..." Genma stared blurry eyed for a moment then said, "Did you

say...love spell?"

"Oh yes," Sakura smiled, "Quite a few of those going around in the old days, or

so I noticed."

Genma very slowly set his cup down and said, "Nineteen years ago...before I

married Nodoka...?"

"I wonder," Sakura mused as she scanned the little tea shop in which she and

Genma had been reminiscing, "What would Nodoka do or say if she were ever to

meet little Kaoih? She had very unusual tastes in those days...I wonder if she

would be jealous...or compliment you on being so virile...?"

"Ah...Sakura-chan..." Genma started to say.

"Oh relax," she urged him tiredly, "I wasn't about to tell her. You know I'd

never do anything to make your life more complicated than you make it for

yourself...and besides, Kaoih already knows all about you."

"She does?" Genma blinked, "But..."

"A few years ago, after you and Nabiki spent that one summer with us," Sakura

replied, "She came to me curious to know who her real father was, and by then

she had already figured most of it out. I told her the rest then explained why

I never thought to burden you with the information. She understands perfectly

now, but I can't say that I'm too surprised that she wants to spend some time

getting to know her two brothers..."

"Two brothers?" Genma blinked, "But Ryoga..."

"Oh please," Sakura rolled her eyes, "I talked with Atsuko a few months ago and

got her side of the story. There never was any other man in her life but you,

no husband to father the child, just one man whom she loved well enough to give

up the life she had when she was under the influence of her mother. You may

have been trying to deceive yourself on that, Genma-chan, but you never could

fool me. I think you knew it all along, too, which is why you are willing to

teach the boy the Saotome Ryu. He's Ranma's half brother, even if neither one

of them actually know it."

"But I swear to you...I was never that intimate with Atsuko..." Genma started to

protest.

"Like you were never that intimate with me?" Sakura raised both eyebrows, "She's

an illusionist, remember? How do you know what's real and what isn't around

her? You don't really think she gave up on you that easily when you chose

Nodoka over us? And besides...she told me that she did it with you on your

wedding night at the urging of her mother. She later regretted that deception,

but by then she was on the run and living like a fugitive before she settled

down and started up a life in some suburb pretending to be a normal housewife."

"Then...she's still out there looking for the boy...?" Genma replied.

"Looking but not finding him, obviously," Sakura sighed, "It's the curse of her

kind, the Hibikis...like her father before her, she can never find her way

without wandering lost and aimless."

Genma was silent for a long moment as he stared at the table before them, yet

strangely he did not feel like reaching for the sake bottle as he knew it would

do little to resolve the situation.

"I'm sorry," Sakura said into the silence, "I thought you already had some idea

about this."

"The boy can't know," Genma said, "He wouldn't understand...he lives by an

entirely different standard, truer in some ways to the Code of Bushido than what

Soun and I learned from the Master."

"Don't you think he's entitled to know?" Sakura asked, "You are his father..."

"And I'll do everything in my power to see that he is honored like a son," Genma

replied, "He's going to marry Soun's daughter, and it wouldn't do to upset him

by letting him know the real circumstances of his birthing."

"And what about Ranma?" Sakura asked, "He and Ryoga seemed highly resistant to

the idea that they could be half-brothers, how do you think they'd feel about

having a sister?"

"You don't want to know," Genma replied, "But the odds are more than even that

they'll blame it all on me. I just wish I could talk to Atsuko again...I had a

chance a few years back, but when I learned that she was the mother of Ryoga,

Nabiki's friend from school...well...I was afraid she'd try to restart our old

relationship, so I..."

"Used the Saotome Special Defense maneuver and skipped town?" Sakura finished

for him, "Is that how you wound up in China?"

Genma looked at her in surprise, "How did you know about China?"

"Atsuko told me," Sakura replied, "She also followed you to China...in fact, she

told me a rather curious story about a trip to the Chinese heartland where she

wound up wandering aimlessly on your trail to some place that she referred to as

Jusenkyo. Would you know anything about that?"

"Too much," Genma sighed, "One of the worst mistakes of my life happened in

China...but Nabiki and I are trying to make the most of it, and so far we seem

to be managing as best we're able."

"Ah," Sakura smiled, "I sense the heavy hand of fate has been much on your

trail, but I won't pursue the matter any further. I only ask because I know

that Atsuko will have her share of questions, and with her wandering to and fro,

the odds of her encountering my Circus again are...pretty high. And believe me,

I would much rather stay on her good side than not, thank you..."

"Can't say I blame you for that," Genma faintly smiled, "At-chan was, at heart,

a good person, Oni blood or no, but that girl did have a temper..."

"That she still does," Sakura agreed, when all at once she looked up as several

of her employees came filing into the tea shop, surprising both patrons and

customers alike as many of them were in their official "work clothes."

"Boss!" said a man in a full clown suit, complete with makeup, "We got a problem

at the Circus."

"A problem?" Sakura repeated.

"We got a ghost running loose around the place," said a dwarf (er-height

challenged individual), "It's starting to freak out the Rubes and the tourists."

"We gotta shut the place down and call in an exorcist," said a burly Strong Man

dressed in a lion's skin, "We got sightings all over the place of weird stuff

going down..."

"Weird stuff?" Sakura again repeated.

"Yeah," said a lady dressed up in a pink leotard with a peacock feather

headdress upon her head, "Doors opening and closing by themselves, a faint

breeze kicking up out of no where, drawers opening and closing by

themselves...heck, the belongings of my drawer got switched around while I was

sitting there at my make-up table! I'd swear I never even saw the guy doing

it...he must have been invisible or something!"

"Invisible?" Sakura raised the other eyebrow, "You're serious?"

"Heheh," Genma softly chuckled, "Looks like he got it all right...and to think I

ever had my doubts..."

"Eh?" Sakura and the rest of the Circus people turned to look his way, "How is

that again? Your doubts about what?"

"I wouldn't worry about there being a ghost, Sakura," Genma held up his sake cup

again and refilled it, "That's just the boy practicing the Umisenken."

"Say what?" said the Circus Firebreather, "You know who's been doing this?"

"I do," Genma said brightly, "And you don't have to worry. The boy doesn't mean

any harm...he takes too much after his mother to want to inconvenience anybody,

he's just making sure to get it right with his new special maneuvers."

"Are you serious?" Sakura looked at the man sitting beside her, "Are you saying

this technique actually has the power to render someone invisible?"

"Not invisible...not the way you mean it," Genma replied, "But if the boy is

doing his job just right, then you wouldn't even know he was there if he was

standing in the same room with you. He could be hiding on the ceiling, behind a

post, right beside your table or..."

"Underneath the floorboards, Old Man?" the voice of Ranma continued for him.

"Eh...?" Sakura glanced down at the floor on which she and Genma had been

sitting, only one second later the floor collapsed underneath them, the supports

holding the wooden slats two feet above the baseline having been knocked out

from underneath them, leaving balding man and beautiful Ringmistress sitting in

a pit in the middle of the restaurant.

To everyone's complete surprise, the silence was broken as Genma began to laugh

out loud, then balling one hand into a beefy fist he cried, "THAT YOUNG PUNK!

He's finally gotten it! I never even sensed that attack! Ohhhh...he's his

father's boy, all right! And to think, in only two days he's mastered BOTH the

Yamasenken and Umisenken! He's ready now to fight with Ryu, and in even less

time than I would have allowed him!"

"I'm glad to see you're taking this so well," Sakura remarked as she stood up

and looked around at her employees, "May I take it on assumption then, that

these disruptions to tent life will come to an effective end now that your son

has concluded his rather vigorous practice sessions?"

"That all depends upon Ranma," Genma said as he climbed up out of the pit and

offered her a hand, "But I think he'll be winding things down and getting some

rest for the night, so you don't need to hire any exorcist..."

"Hey, what's going on here?" cried the restaurant manager as he came storming up

to demand an explanation, "What happened to the floor...?"

"Termites," Genma replied in an off-handed manner.

"Termites?" the owner reacted with rounded eyes.

"Oh yes," Sakura replied, "Can't be too careful these says. Good thing neither

of us were hurt or it might have damaged the reputation of your restaurant."

"My...reputation?" the owner swallowed, then promptly turned around and grumbled

something about calling the building manager and demanding he pay for an

exterminator.

Genma watched the man go before resuming his explanation, "Once Ryu is defeated

we'll be sealing up the Umisenken and Yamasenken so that they will only be used

in justifiable emergencies and not to harass otherwise honest people, like

yourselves," he included with a sweeping gesture all the Circus people currently

crowded inside the restaurant.

"I hope for your sake that's true," said the bearded lady, "A girl can't get any

real rest if her privacy's being violated by some invisible ghost boy."

"But think of the positive side of things," Sakura cupped her hands together,

"Imagine what kind of an act we could put on with a boy who can turn virtually

invisible and come and go at will! Are you sure I can't talk you and your sons

into staying a bit longer with us...say...at least for a season?"

"You'd have to ask the boy that," Genma replied, "But I somehow doubt he'd go

along...after all, he's got a challenge match to attend in another ten days, and

beyond that he and his iinazuke are planning on getting married."

"So?" Sakura replied, "They can get married in the Circus. I'm sure little

Nabiki wouldn't mind using our big top for a chapel."

"That all depends on Nabiki," Genma mused, only to hear a voice whisper in his

ear, "Don't push it, Old Man, or I'm telling Mom about this."

Sakura heard the voice but when she turned around found no trace of the one who

had spoken those words, but Genma seemed visibly shaken as he softly murmured,

"Oh yes...he's definitely learned the Umisenken...the Kami help us..."

Unseen and unnoticed at the back of the crowd, a member of that Circus troop

turned silently away, hiding his troubled expression as he thought on the

implications of what might happen should Ranma come closer to marrying Nabiki.

He knew well the dynamic of the five-way engagement, knew what a breakthrough on

either end of Saotome Ranma's iinazuke front could mean should it break down the

remaining barriers preventing the Pentagonal arrangement from coming altogether,

and it worried him greatly as he tried to decide if this was a good or a bad

thing. That Saotome had gained such a powerful and obviously formidable

fighting technique was alarming in itself, and countering this new maneuver

could well prove to be a challenge even by Amazon standards. The old woman

might know if there were a counter, but he rather seriously doubted that she had

passed on such a thing to Nabiki.

Still Mousse would continue to observe and monitor the situation. This Ryu

Kumon was a formidable character in his own right, and his style was far easier

to define by observation. If Ranma could truly overcome such a powerful

technique, then Mousse could learn much by studying their battle and-who knew?

Maybe he could put these techniques into effect himself against a certain fleet-

footed girl of the fiery ribbon...

He paused at the door and frowned, detecting a slight flaw in his previous

thinking. Obviously he had meant to use the technique against Perfume, not

Kurumi. Whatever confusion he felt over that, there could be no mistaking how a

technique of Invisibility might be used against the hyper-sharp senses of a

Sentinel, so defeating her would be relatively easy.

Of course, he thought on the sly, it wouldn't hurt if such a technique could

also be used to thwart the interference of a cute little girl who thought she

was part road-runner...did he just mentally call her cute? Where the heck had

that come from! She was an annoying little brat, condescending and full of

herself, and defeating her was just a means to an end, nothing serious beyond

that. So what if he would obtain great satisfaction from tying her up in a knot

with her own ribbon? She more than had it coming...and what was this nagging

feeling that was weighing on his shoulders as he thought that?

He needed to get away and think for a bit, and it was a long time until morning.

This problem about his frequent run-ins with the shorthaired, wiry adopted Tendo

girl were confusing him on the issues, and the girl's whole behavior was even

more confusing. He needed to have purity of thought and purpose when he made

his next attempt at freeing Perfume from Kuonji's evil influence.

He vaulted into the night, unaware of the little man watching him go, nor did he

hear Happosai's faint murmur, "That boy is going to be trouble...but if he keeps

out of the way tomorrow, so much the better..."

This night, indeed, had many issues in need of a resolution...

Not very far away, back at the Circus campsight, Kaoih was herself playing

something of a mediator by walking in the space between Ryu and a glowering

Ryoga. Keeping her tone light and friendly, she casually asked her two male

companions, "So boys...what do you think of life in the circus so far?"

"It's...different from what I would have expected," Ryu replied, "Almost like an

army camp on the move, only the purpose isn't war but entertainment."

"You were pretty good out there," Ryoga complimented, "The way you work with

those animals, it's like you understand them..."

"Or they understand me," Kaoih replied, "I have a kind of an empathy with large,

wild beasts...call it an implicit awareness that animals have instinctual drives

that underlie their behavior. They eat, sleep, drink and play very much like

people, only they're much less self-conscious about it."

"But still," Ryu reasoned, "An animal doesn't really think, it's not truly aware

of itself in any objective sense, and it's incapable of higher reason..."

"So are a lot of human beings," Kaoih shrugged, "Can you really tell me that

there's all that much of a difference? Besides, human reasoning faculties are

highly overrated, if you ask me...far too many people use their brains to think

up reasons why they shouldn't be happy. We may have a superior ability to

define and solve problems, but it seems to me we create a lot more problems than

we have to solve, so you wind up with a zero-sum difference."

"You may be right about that," Ryoga sighed, "Too much thinking can be bad for

you..."

"...And not enough thinking can get you into a whole lot more trouble," Ryu

countered, "I'm sorry you feel that way, Miss...it seems like an awfully cynical

and clinical view of humanity..."

"But accurate," Kaoih replied, "Or are you still telling yourself that you need

this Umisenken thing in order to be happy?"

"I need it to fulfill my promise to my father," Ryu said grimly, "To recreate

the Kumon school, I'd be willing to walk barefoot through fire..."

"I've walked barefoot through fire lots of times," Kaoih mused as she stared

forward, "All you need to do is keep a cool head and stay resolute and not let

the hot coals get to you. If you'd like to see it, I'll give you a live

demonstration."

"Er..." Ryu's eyes boggled slightly as he tried to visualize the pretty girl at

his side walking barefoot over hot coals. The fact that she had been "barely

dressed" during her act was enough to almost fuse his eyebrows near to his

hairline.

"You were pretty good out there," Ryoga said, "The way you move, it's almost

like you studied the martial arts..."

"I have studied the martial arts," Kaoih corrected, "I just don't use it for

purposes like beating up people. My purpose is to entertain and make people

happy, and not too many people are made happy by fighting...at least not that

I've ever noticed, though you guys probably have a very different way of looking

at it."

"There's more to the martial arts than just fighting," Ryoga insisted, "Fighting

is how we get stronger in the art by testing our abilities against even stronger

opponents...the real object isn't just to hurt people."

"But that sometimes happens when you fight, doesn't it?" Kaoih countered,

"Fighting is where you take the greatest risks with your own personal safety,

and anyone who gets in your way becomes a casualty by proxy..."

"That...sometimes has been known to happen," Ryoga admitted, "But it's

unavoidable if you wind up fighting close to other people..."

"Other people just get in the way," Ryu growled, "It's better to fight where

you're alone, where the only ones likely to get hurt are the ones doing the

fighting."

"Hmph," Kaoih sniffed, "Seems to me like a pretty selfish way of viewing a

battle...you think you're the only ones to get hurt? What about your families

and loved ones? Don't you think it hurts them if you get seriously injured in a

fight...or worse?"

"I don't have anybody who'd feel that way about me," Ryu looked away, "No family

nor friends...which is pretty much the way I like it."

"I have somebody who I care a lot about," Ryoga admitted, "And you're

right...she'd be pretty upset with me if I did get hurt. She insists that she

wants to fight beside me, and...and I know she cares a lot about me, and she's a

pretty strong fighter, so..."

"So you you'd rather fight together than apart, eh?" Kaoih smiled, "Sounds

almost romantic. What about you, Ryu-chan? Wouldn't you rather have somebody

to fight beside you?"

"Me?" Ryu reacted, "But where would I ever find...? No...no way...I can't allow

anyone to stand at my place during a battle..."

"Why not, Tough guy?" Kaoih asked, "Do you want to be alone all your life? Does

it please you playing the lone wolf, both friendless and homeless?"

"It's what I'm used to," Ryu frowned, "And I don't see what business it is of

anyone else. Besides, I have to get stronger on my own...I made a promise to my

father..."

"To recreate your family dojo?" Kaoih asked, "Can't exactly do that all on your

own. At the very least you're going to have to take in some students."

Ryu did not immediately reply, but it was plain from his expression that he

found it irksome to be verbally checked by the quick-witted performer.

"Yeah, it does sound like you'll need a lot more than just yourself if you want

to recreate your dojo," Ryoga mused, "I know that I'd never amount to anything

if I didn't have Akane at my side..."

"That's the name of your iinazuke, eh?" Kaoih remarked, "Nabiki's little sister.

What's she like?"

"Oh...she's very nice..." Ryoga got a dreamy expression that was visible even in

the gloom of the coming twilight, "She's cute, strong, very brave, and she has

this smile...you'd really have to meet her to know what she's like, but to

me...she's perfect..."

Ryu eyed the other boy with a curious expression, but when he saw Kaoih glancing

his way he looked away and muttered, "Yeah...whatever..."

Unknown and unseen by this trio, Ranma sat perched atop the big top tent and

took notice of their passage, then turned his gaze out towards the normal

skyline, unselfconsciously casting his eyes in the direction of a certain

section of Nerima.

He had learned the Umisenken, and on the morrow he would use it in his fight

against Ryu Kumon, a man who had to be stopped and shown the errors of his ways.

It was his duty as a martial artist to see to it that Kumon was made aware of

the true nature of the Senken and precisely why it was a forbidden technique.

Beyond that, however, Ranma admitted to having a wounded pride that needed

salving, and this fight would prove once and for all if he was truly worthy of

his name, or just some base pretender.

Beyond that, in a larger scope, he had another, far more intimidating fight

ahead of him, a challenge he did not really know if he could win, or whether it

was even a matter of coming out on top. To go up against Nabiki when simply

viewing her as another fighter was one thing, but to go all-out against a girl

whom he seriously wanted to one day make his wife? How could he pull that off

and still retain her respect when it was all over? After all, she was not some

Amazon who thought marrying the guy who defeated her was a mark of some weirdly

perverted honor...

Well, okay, maybe that was doing Shampoo an injustice, but the fact was that he

knew Nabiki well enough to know just how much she would resent being beaten at

her own game. She was much too competitive and obstinate to take defeat lying

down...and that was assuming that the Senken would be enough to defeat her,

which was far from an sure thing, even given his father's reassurance.

In truth Ranma did not know what to make of his father anymore. No sooner did

he start to uncover some reason to respect him, then he would learn some new

revelation about Genma's past that would lead to questions for which Ranma had

no easy answers. Even given the assurance that his father had tried to make

amends for past mistakes, some deeds-once committed-could not be taken back

or undone, rather much like what happened when Nabiki allowed herself to be

seduced by Shampoo in the Amazon village, or when Perfume made out with Ukyo and

got her pregnant. Actions like that had obvious consequences, and even if those

incidents had not led to offspring, it certainly meant that the act of giving

into their hormones had lessened them in an empirical and moral sense. His

father had twice fathered children out of wedlock, and how would his mother

react to such news? Would she be hurt or forgiving, and would telling her the

truth lead to some unpleasant retribution?

Hard to say given the temperament of his mother, but Ranma doubted that she

would take things lying down, even if her husband had not deliberately betrayed

her. A woman's pride was fickle, and while she might eventually forgive Genma,

Nodoka would most likely view his future actions with suspicion and/or contempt,

which in turn would greatly weaken the state of their marriage. Still and all,

his mother was entitled to know the truth...it was just the matter of explaining

things to her that was leaving Ranma feeling a little frustrated.

Thoughtless actions seemed to have been an early hallmark with his father. If

it was not abandoning Ranma to the house of a friend in exchange for that

friend's daughter, it was engaging Ranma to Ukyo sight unseen, or dumping Nabiki

into a pit of starving cats, or dragging her to Jusenkyo, and Kami knew how many

other thoughtless deeds had been performed in the name of some perverted notions

about honor. Nabiki herself seemed to harbor deep resentments towards Genma

over his past actions, and while his father did seem sincere in his desire to

make amends for that tattered history, the sins from that past were definitely

showing up now to haunt him in the forms of the girl named Kaoih, and the angry

young man named Ryu Kumon.

Ranma sighed as he tried to make sense of what he had overheard in that

restaurant, the revelations that seemed to as much take his father by surprise

as they flabbergasted Ranma. He was prepared to believe that a magic spell had

besotted his father's wits like some potent brand of sake, and surely Ranma had

enough experience with charms of that nature to believe that the effects were

the same as with Nabiki. What he could not quite so easily understand was the

discovery that his father had been the object of such intense pursuits by a

number of women who had clearly been the rivals of his mother. That two of them

had produced children could only be considered slightly less credible than that,

though it did explain a peculiar sense that he had been feeling all along in the

presence of Kaoih Sanosuke.

Try as he might, Ranma found it difficult to work his mind around to figuring

himself as having a blood sister, even if he regarded Akane and Kasumi in that

manner. He had believed himself the only child of his father and mother, and

that had been at the bedrock foundation of his beliefs for a good deal of time

now. Bad enough to be confronted with the knowledge that Ryoga really was his

brother, now he had a sister whom he had never previously even known existed to

contend with (in a figurative sense). That she seemed to have a few things in

common with Nabiki was incidental to the knowledge that she truly was a part of

his family, a part he dared not yet reveal until he could somehow break the news

to his mother.

Obviously Kaoih knew everything already, but Ryoga-as was typical in his case-

-was still completely clueless. How exactly would the notorious Lost Boy react

to the news that he was-in fact-a Saotome? That his early life was

partially a lie, some kind of illusion created by his Oni mother? Would he feel

any differently towards Ranma as a brother? Ranma could not answer for himself

in exactly what manner the news of their relationship would affect his views of

the Lost Boy. Ryoga was a temperamental and stubborn fool much of the time, as

thick as a brick wall and just as prone to listen, with muscles in his head that

were only slightly less thick than his arms and legs. In a fight he could be

like a virtual force of nature, a near-berserker prone to smash everything that

was in his path, and very unsubtle in his fighting techniques, to say nothing of

his general attitude. In short the boy was nothing but trouble...and yet for

all of that Ranma viewed him as a good sparring partner and a fairly reliable

companion.

Okay, so he and Ryoga were not exactly all that tight, but Ranma had to admit

that the guy had more than his share of good points. For one thing Ryoga was as

brave and honorable as he was solid in a fight, and you never had to doubt that

his heart was in the right place, even when he was misguided over some small

technical issue. Ryoga would never back down from a fight, would never

deliberately hurt or betray someone he cared for, and for all that he was a bit

of a blockhead, he could at times be as lyrical and poetic as any Kuno. On the

whole there was a lot to like about him, and he was obviously good for Akane, so

what was there about him that would disqualify him from being worthy of calling

himself a Saotome and Ranma's brother?

Nothing much that Ranma could put his finger on, unless it was that "Oni blood"

bit...

"Thought I'd find you up here, mooning like a lovesick puppy."

Ranma turned and looked to his side, seeing a familiar diminutive shape standing

upon the canvas near to his position, and then in a wary voice he asked, "What

do you want now, Old Freak?"

"Show a little more respect for your elders, Boy," Happosai sniffed, "You think

learning the Umisenken makes you too good to listen to your father's Master?"

"What?" Ranma raised an eyebrow, "You telling me you know a technique more

powerful than the Senken?"

"Of course I do," Happosai replied, "I know plenty of them...after all, your

father created this attack style in an effort to defeat me so that he could

become the new Master. In the end he used all that he had...mighty impressive

battle too, you would have been proud of his performance."

"And he still lost?" Ranma frowned the more deeply.

"Haven't you ever heard, Son?" Happosai mused as he pulled out his pipe, "It's

not whether you lose or win, it's how well you play the game, and Genma played

as well as he's ever done against me. Of course I'm so much older and more

experienced, it was natural that I'd figure out a way of rendering that

invisibility trick null and void, but don't ever let it be said that I don't

appreciate good effort."

"So what are you here for now?" Ranma asked, "I thought you'd be out stealing

panties, like you usually do this time of night..."

"Did it ever occur to you, Boy, that I might value something more than panties

and chasing after nubile young things?" the old man responded.

"Well," Ranma said reasonably, "When it comes to you...no."

"Hah, shows how much you know," the old man declared as he sat down on the tent

and started filling his pipe with tobacco. He lit a fire with a minor spark of

Chi then smoked the pipe for about half a minute before speaking again, "As it

so happens there's one thing I do value more, and that's respect..."

"You want respect, Old Man?" Ranma sniffed, "Try earning it for a change. Ain't

nobody gives it out for free."

"So, you just figured that out, did you?" Happosai countered slyly, "Let me

guess...you just found out about the cutie, and now you're sulking because you

think your Dad's been disloyal to your mother, and you're sulking about it. No

allowances for being mere human, nosiree..."

"Get lost," Ranma growled softly.

"Why don't you just admit that you're afraid of turning out to be just like your

father?" Happosai asked, "The Umisenken's powerful, there are a lot of uses you

could put it to if you gave into your desires. You understand now why your

father buried the technique for close to fifteen years, and why that Ryu lad

would do just about anything to obtain it, even getting close to your half-

sister, Kaoih."

"He doesn't know anything about her," Ranma said, "He knows it's me he has to

get through if he's going to get the scroll from Pop..."

"Then what are you going to do, my Boy?" Happosai asked, "Let him have it if he

wins?"

"He won't win," Ranma insisted, "He's not the real problem. The Umisenken will

overwhelm his Yamasenken, but...after that's done...I got another challenge I

gotta work through..."

"So I've heard," Happosai mused, "So it's true...you're after Nabiki."

"I ain't after her," Ranma growled, "I'm just...I just have to get better than

her, that's all."

"And when you challenge her, what will you do?" Happosai smiled, "Use the Senken

on her? I'm wondering if you'd even have the stomach."

Ranma did not respond, but he glared into the night with a less than pleasant

expression.

"That's what I thought," Happosai blew a smoke ring after taking a long draw on

his pipe, "There's no shame in admitting that you don't want to hurt the woman

you love, but you know when you go up against her it's going to be all or

nothing. She's not the type to lie down and play dead, not even for you. She's

got some fiercely competitive instincts, they're what's made her the kind of

fighter she is, and you...you're just not hungry enough yet to achieve a major

victory. That's the whole problem...you're just too soft. You think like a

Momma's boy, and you can't even bring yourself to hit a woman."

"I ain't out to hurt Nabiki," Ranma said, "I couldn't live with myself if she

got hurt on account of some dumb fight..."

"Who said anything about hurting her?" Happosai replied, "You just have to beat

her fair and square, right? Lots of ways to do that without putting a bruise on

your cutie's sweet hide. Take the Senken, for example...you think it's only got

two uses?"

"What's that Old Man?" Ranma asked, "You know something, spit it out..."

"Later Boy," Happosai chuckled, "After you win tomorrow we'll have that talk.

If I know your father, he's planning to show you the other uses of the Senken,

the ones he started to work on before that accident with the Kumon dojo."

"You mean...there's others way to fight than just the Umisenken and Yamasenken?"

Ranma said, trying not to sound too excited.

"As I said, we'll have that talk after tomorrow," Happosai blew another smoke

ring before adding in a matter-of-fact voice, "Too bad about your father...he

was a really promising student in the old days...kind of reminds me a lot of

you, and that's not even including the ladies that were chasing him around, kind

of like those rival suitors used to chase around Nabiki."

Ranma's eyes narrowed again and he asked, "What happened?"

"Your father hit a plateau and refused to cross it," Happosai replied, "The

Senken was his greatest accomplishment as a martial artist, and by right it

should have put him in the ranks of the great Masters of the ages. But when his

friend Kumon died...it broke something inside him, turned him away from his own

creation. Your father loved the art and had dedicated his life to becoming as

good as he could be. All he's done in the last fifteen years is improve and

refine what he'd already learned, and he hasn't added one new technique to his

arsenal. Instead he seems to have imbued all his hopes and aspirations into

Nabiki, and now into you, as if that was going to buy redemption for a mistake

that wasn't even his fault to begin with."

"But I thought the Yamasenken..." Ranma began to reason.

"A technique is neither good nor bad, boy," Happosai insisted, "It's what you do

with it that counts, the uses to which you employ it. I reached my peak a long

time ago when I decided that I didn't need to go any further than I had gone,

though when I was younger I used to snatch up new techniques like they were food

and water. I'd devour a new style just as soon as I'd become aware of it...but

after a while I just asked myself why I was sweating it so hard. I wasn't

really enjoying life all that much, I was too intense, too serious, too much

like you. Then it occurred to me one day what I was missing...that vital

ingredient without which the art can never be fully mastered."

"And what's that?" Ranma asked, taking the risk of asking the question.

"I wasn't having any fun," Happosai explained, "And without fun the art just

becomes a job, it's work and drudgery. Fun is what happens when you let go and

relax and let the art take over, it's when you fight with your whole heart,

mind, soul and body, and that's the point where you really can't lose."

"Fun?" Ranma raised both eyebrows.

"Fun," Happosai replied, "It's where you stop being a boy and start being a man,

where you let go on trying to pretend to be an adult and just worry about doing

what your heart tells you is the thing to do. It's where you become the you

that's most true to your inner nature..."

"Oh, I see," Ranma said, "In other words your inner nature is that of a lonely

old guy who can't get a date, so you try to get the attention of the ladies by

copping a feel and stealing their undies."

"Exactly," Happosai nodded, then paused, "Wait a minute..."

"I think I know what you're getting at," Ranma sighed, "But...I just don't know

if I can do that...let go, I mean...I mean...how can I have fun fighting with

Nabiki?"

"Good question," Happosai recovered from his sour expression, "Not that a callow

young pup like you seems to know what to do with a woman. Why, if I had your

looks right now, I wouldn't hesitate for a second to take that cute iinazuke of

yours and give her something else to grab her attention."

"Huh?" Ranma blinked, not immediately comprehending.

Happosai rolled his eyes and made a disparaging noise, "Do I have to spell it

out to you, Boy? You can't be that dumb, or do I need to explain what a guy

does with a girl he likes a whole lot?"

"Uh...oh...uh...ah...ooohhhboy..." Ranma exclaimed, then swallowed thickly.

"Now what in the name of Frederick's of Hokkaido is your problem, Boy?" Happosai

growled, "She's your iinazuke, right? Nothing wrong with having those kinds of

thoughts about her...in fact, I think she'd be more than a little insulted if

you didn't."

"Uh...you think?" Ranma nervously asked.

"Mind you, she's even more thick-witted than you in that department," Happosai

snorted, "Probably on account of the fact that she spends so much time as a guy

with that Shampoo cutie...she's way more experienced in bed that you are, but

when it comes to sleeping with you, she turns into a timid little school girl

whose had her first crush. She was still going on about that kiss you gave her

when I overheard her and the old woman talking about it. And here I was going

to reward you with points for showing some initiative, but nooo! You're just as

bad as your father!"

"As bad as what?" Ranma blinked.

"Your father could have had his pick of them in the old days," Happosai

explained, "Forget he lacked your looks, he had a lot of raw animal magnetism

that drew the ladies like flies to honey. I just about lost all hope in him

when he turned into such a scared little mouse around the likes of Atsuko and

that Comb cutie...and if it had been me in his place, do you think it would have

taken a magic spell to get me to sleep with a goddess like Sakura?"

"I...guess I never looked at it that way," Ranma said, "I thought..."

"You thought he was unfaithful to your mom because he fell prey to their charms,

eh?" Happosai gave a crafty little chuckle, "The amazing thing to me is that he

held out as long as he did, or he could have bedded them all and given you a

whole litter of half brothers and sisters. The day he met your mother,

though...I could tell he was smitten, even if the fool never knew it himself, so

can you blame Atsuko for taking her last desperate gamble by using her magic?

As for Sakura, that wasn't even her fault, just a wild spell that got out of

control. Things like that have been known to happen, so count yourself lucky

that you didn't need any spell to earn the respect of your ladies."

"Yeah...well..." Ranma stared off into the night, "It ain't all a bed of

roses...still..."

"Still, it could be a lot worse, believe me," the old man replied, "You're not

so different from your father as you'd like to believe, boy...hard to believe

the pair of you are kith and kin to me. Of course, that Kaoih cutie's also one

of mine, and she definitely shows promise, taking after that Kumon boy like a

wet nosed puppy, not that the whelp has a clue of his peril."

Ranma's frown returned, only now he seemed to be contemplating something other

than his own relationships, and thus he did not take note of the gleam in the

eye of the old man, whose smile was hidden in the gloom as he sensed a spark

being kindled in the breast of his wayward protégé.

"Well, I guess that's all I came to say for now," Happosai said as he got up and

knocked the burned out ashes from his pipe-which thankfully did not

immediately set the tent on fire, "Time to turn in and get a good night's sleep.

After all, you'll want to be at your best when fighting that Kumon boy. No

sense giving him even a slight advantage come the morning."

"Yeah," Ranma agreed, "I hear that. Sleep sounds pretty good. See you around,

Old Fool."

"Same to you, Young Pup," Happosai grinned broadly, sensing that the seeds of

his revenge against Nabiki had been sown in fertile soil, and with any luck at

all the boy would soon be motivated to follow his advice when confronting his

iinazuke and teaching her that she was not the top dog in the wolfpack. With

any luck he would have her crawling back to her loving Master Happy just begging

for forgiveness, and the old woman would not even know what hit her precious

chosen apprentice, thus teaching the old biddy that there was more than one way

to craft a martial arts genius. The boy had the raw talent and most of the

skills that he would need to be triumphant, and with just a little more guidance

he'd be the perfect weapon for upbraiding the upstart Tendo sister.

After all, one did not always need brute force to win a battle, and complex

emotions such as love could have their own potent chemistry to charm even a

force of nature like Nabiki, and with that thought in mind the perverted little

man went off to celebrate by stealing some unmentionables from a nearby trailer.

After all, he had said that there were some things more important than lingerie,

but as anyone who knew Happosai could well have told, he always had been a very

bad liar...

Part Ninety-Seven.

"All right," mused Sakura as they arrived at the abandoned rail yard, "We're at

the place where the battle is to take place, now if both of the principle

players show up to take their place..."

"They'll be here," Genma assured, "Ranma wouldn't miss a challenge match to save

his own life, and Ryu has been waiting for this moment nearly all of his life,

so I doubt very much if he'll be late for the battle."

"I hope you're right," said Kaoih, "Just as soon as this stupid challenge match

is over, I'll breathe a whole lot easier."

"Ranma will show up," assured Ryoga, "He may be a lot of things, but he's not a

coward."

"But neither is Ryu, if I judge that boy right," Genma averred softly, "He'll be

fighting with integrity and determination, which will make him that much more

dangerous a fighter. Ranma should have very little trouble beating him...but

still..."

"But still surprises have been known to happen," Sakura finished for him,

"Happened often enough in the old days to teach me caution. I remember you

fighting against some pretty long odds in your time, Gen-chan...and-if

anything-your son strikes me as a real chip off the old pagoda."

"Tell me about it," Genma grumbled softly, "Well...I've done all I can to train

the Boy, the rest is up to Ranma. I just hope he rested up for this one, he's

going to need all his wits about him."

"I don't think wits are all that important to Ranma," Ryoga sniffed, "He gets on

just fine without them."

"Look who's talking."

"Eh?" Kaoih and the others looked around but found no trace of the one who had

spoken. The young girl shook her head softly and groused, "I wish he'd stop

doing that...it's starting to freak me out..."

"At least we know young Squire Saotome is around...in a manner of speaking,"

Sakura said with more humor in her voice, "Now if Sir Kumon is as diligent in

making his appearance..."

"Did someone mention me?" a strong voice called out from across the field as Ryu

came striding into full view, "I've been waiting here for the past two hours.

About time you showed up...now...where is Saotome?"

"Over here," came a response several paces over to his right, and as all heads

turned in that direction, Ranma himself put in an appearance.

"So," the combat clad Ryu said aloud, "You've decided to show your face after

all."

"I could say the same thing about you," Ranma replied, "Ready to get started?"

"I was born ready," Ryu's nostrils flared, "Ready to get your face stomped?"

"You first," Ranma countered.

Kaoih just rolled her eyes and groused, "The Testosterone is really flowing this

morning..."

Genma moved forward until he stood a short distance away from the two boys in

the middle of the abandoned rail yard, then he looked from one to the other

youth before saying gravely, "You both know what is at stake here. You are to

fight using only the Yamasenken and Umisenken styles, the winner of the match

will claim both scrolls to do with as he sees fit. Do you both agree to these

terms?"

"You know I do, Pop," Ranma affirmed.

"Let's get on with it," Ryu groused, "Those scrolls are as good as mine

already."

"Oh, so certain of that, are you?" Genma cocked an eyebrow, "Well...we'll see

about that."

He backed away a certain distance, then raised his hand and brought it down

again, crying, "BEGIN!"

Immediately both young fighters fell into defensive crouches, but Ranma's was

the tell-tale mark of the Umisenken, curling his hands like a preying mantis and

slouching his shoulders slightly. Ryu hesitated a moment before saying, "What's

that stance supposed to signify? You look like stooping parrot."

"You'll find out in another minute," Ranma said as the space around him seemed

to grow hazy and fuzzy once again, and the boy slowly started to fade out from

normal vision.

"Hey," Kaoih cried, "He's going invisible...right before our very eyes!"

"How is he doing that?" Ryoga marveled.

"I wonder," Sakura narrowed her eyes slightly and seemed to take on a peculiarly

focused expression.

"You won't escape me with that trick!" Ryu cried as he surged forward with the

loud declaration, "FIERCE TIGER OPENING GATES-!"

All at once he fell face forward on the ground, his legs spread wide as he

grunted with a stunned expression. Ranma became visible again and straightened

out before saying in a surprisingly calm voice, "That was the Umisenken, the

White Snake Reliable Fist. Did you see it?"

"Wow," Kaoih exclaimed, "What just happened?"

"I think Ranma ducked under his attack and knocked his legs out from under him,"

Ryoga replied, "But I could barely even see it. He was moving so fast that I

doubt Ryu could see it either."

"More than that," Sakura remarked, "Young Saotome managed to get behind young

Kumon and struck him in the back with a series of carefully aimed blows that

should have disabled him...and yet the boy is still moving."

"Heh," Ryu grunted as he began to push against the ground, "All I saw...is that

your Umisenken isn't that strong...after all..."

"Oh yeah?" Ranma asked, "Then maybe you need another lesson..."

"You first!" Ryu cried as he got to his feet and whipped out the golden rope he

had been wearing like a belt around his waist, drying, "GOLD CORD TIGHT BINDING

SEIZE!"

"Eh?" Ranma was taken by surprise, finding the ropes suddenly wound around his

arms, pinning them to his sides within seconds.

"Don't get cocky out there, Boy!" Genma shouted, "You left yourself wide open

for that maneuver! Now he has you where he wants you!"

"HAH, exactly!" Ryu crowed, "That Umisenken is as good as mine!"

"Oh yeah?" Ranma dug in his heels and glowered, "Well, maybe you're not so smart

as you think, tough guy."

"And what's that supposed to mean?" Ryu tensed up as he sought to exert more

pressure on his opponent.

"It means if you can employ weapons for a cheap-shot like this, then so can I!"

Ranma cried as he kicked the ground and suddenly dislodged an object that had

been buried there, whipping it up into view, much to the astonishment of those

who stood in witness.

"What in the...?" Ryoga gasped.

"It's a wooden sword," Kaoih remarked, "A bokken?"

Ranma cried out as he leaped into the air and caught the sword between his feet,

then spun himself in a flip that brought the sword into play as it slashed at

the rope and somehow managed to sever it in the middle.

"He cut a rope with a wooden sword?" Sakura marveled.

"Clever, Son!" Genma crowed in approval as Ranma completed his arc by freeing

himself of the rope then landing with the sword in both of his hands in a

posture worthy of a Kendo master.

"Saotome School Anything Goes Special Maneuver," Ranma declared as he held the

sword at a horizontal angle, "Fierce Slash Badger Defense."

"Where the hell did you get that?" Ryu asked as he stared in disbelief at the

severed end of his rope.

"My Mom gave it to me," Ranma replied, "She thought I might have a use for it,

and as usual she was right. It's not, strictly speaking, a part of the

Umisenken, but I figured I could ad-lib a bit to counter your advantage with

that attack. Care to try something else? I'll match you weapon for weapon and

maneuver for maneuver."

"Try anything you like," Ryu declared as he tossed aside his rope, "But let's

see you counter this...DEMON DEEP SEA CHASM!"

His hands slashed through the air as Ryu moved forward to stamp the ground in an

angry manner, but when his deadly "vacuum blades" struck home, Ranma was no

where to be found. Instead those blades moved on to slash at an abandoned

railway transport car...with the effect that it was sliced into some rather

sizeable pieces! The car collapsed under its own weight, leaving the onlookers

(with the sole exception of Genma) to gasp in disbelief at the deadly effect of

this maneuver.

Somewhat farther off, watching everything through a pair of binoculars from the

safe vantage of a nearby tree, Mousse gaped in astonishment and said, "What a

powerful attack...how did Saotome avoid it?"

"Maybe he wasn't the real target all along," a voice surprised him from a nearby

tree branch.

"What...?" Mousse started to react when a tiny hand touched his sleep center and

rendered him momentarily unconscious.

"Sorry about that, Boy," Happosai remarked as he caught the Chinese boy before

he could tumble from the tree branch, "But this really isn't for your eyes to

see. Besides, I want to use those binoculars for myself. Now, you just be a

good little lad and take a short little nap, and it'll all be over before you

know it. Now to see how well that young punk is doing..."

Even as the old man was saying this, the fight between the two contenders was

ratcheting up to a new level.

"Wasn't that a little excessive?" Ranma asked as he appeared in a clear space

somewhat off to one side, "Using a powerful attack like that and missing me by a

wide margin?"

"Heh," Ryu snorted as he turned around, "What good would it do to me if you were

hacked to pieces? It's the scroll I'm after, and your Umisenken."

"But that's the problem, Guy," Ranma said as he hunched his shoulders once

again, "You don't really understand the Yamasenken, let along the Umisenken, and

you're not using them the way they were intended. Let me show you how it's

done..."

And with that he began to fade from view once again, becoming blurry around the

edges until he seemed to transform into nothing more than a hazy shadow.

"I get it now," Sakura mused, "What a clever strategy..."

"How's that, Mom?" Kaoih asked.

"The Yamasenken and Umisenken liken the body to a house, right?" Sakura asked as

she half-glanced towards Genma, "They both work on the principle of penetrating

the defenses of an opponent, just as getting past the front door of a house

makes it harder to repel an intrusive hoard of relatives coming to pay us a

visit. Once you're inside the house, the rest becomes easy..."

"Exactly," Genma affirmed, "Only the main difference between the two styles is

that the Yamasenken is brash and aggressive, while the Umisenken is soft, quiet

and stealthy."

"But how can Ranma keep disappearing like that?" Ryoga asked, "Does he really

become invisible...?"

"No," Sakura answered for him, "Not invisible, not like you mean anyway.

Observe...he's about to use that White Snake maneuver once again."

As she pointed her hands they saw Ryu eating dirt once again while Ranma stood

back and took stock of his opponent.

"Had enough yet?" Ranma was asking.

Ryu balled a fist and pushed against the ground, "No way...I won't lose to

you...not this time, Jerk. This time you've had it...!"

"Watch carefully now," Sakura urged, "He's about to go semi-invisible again.

See how he's mentally erasing all trace of himself around the edges?"

"Erasing all traces?" Ryoga blinked.

"You're right," Kaoih said in amazement, "I can still see him...kind

of...but...it's like my eyes just keep sliding off of him, like he isn't really

there..."

"Like a 'Somebody Else's problem field,'" Sakura nodded, "He's making himself

less noticeable and making it harder for his opponent to focus attention upon

him. That means Ranma is free to move and attack before Ryu can even register

it coming."

"That's how the Umisenken works," Genma nodded, "The quiet path is like water

that flows around most solid objects, while the earth-based Yamasenken is loud

and brash and easy to see coming."

"I get it now!" Ryoga exclaimed, "And by moving fast enough, Ranma really does

become invisible, just so long as no one is focusing on where he's standing."

"But what if he loses his focus or his attention wavers a little?" Kaoih asked.

"Then...we could have a problem," Genma grimly noted.

Ryu had fully recovered from his latest tumble, and he stood alert in the center

of the field, not focusing his eyes on anything as he tried instead to feel out

his opponent. With a confidence that seemed unshaken from before he said, "So

that's the secret of the Umisenken, huh? You hide like a coward and strike at

me when you know I can't see you? Small wonder you're afraid to face me like a

man with this invisibility act."

There was no immediate response, but Ryu felt a shifting in the space slightly

behind him and to one side, so he decided to ratchet up his verbal assault by

adding a twist of the knife based on something that he had learned the previous

night in conversation with Kaoih and Ryoga.

"Yeah, that's it, isn't it?" Ryu asked, "You're not enough of a man to be worth

my bother. I hear you've got a girl waiting for you that's more of a man that

you are. You chickened out on your engagement because you thought you couldn't

impress her...?"

"WHY YOU-!" Ranma cried as he fully manifested in an attack towards his

opponent.

"NO BOY!" Genma cried out, "DON'T FALL FOR HIS-!"

Too late, Ryu whirled around and cried, "I CAN SEE YOU!" and he plunged his

right hand forward in an upward thrust that caught the airborne Ranma in the

ribs and doubled him over while Ryu cried, "WELCOME GATE IRON FINGERS!"

"Ranma!" Ryoga cried out, sympathetically wincing as he knew what that

particular attack felt like.

Ryu wasted no time in taking advantage of the stunning blow that he had just

dealt and caught Ranma up in his arms, crushing him into his embrace as he cried

out, "IN THE POCKET ROUND HUG DEATH!"

"UNGH!" Ranma exclaimed as he found himself trapped up by the bear-hug of his

opponent.

"He's crushing him!" Kaoih cried as she covered her mouth.

"It's all over now," Sakura sighed, "No way I can see to get out of that..."

"Not quite," Genma replied, "There's one technique that can counter this

maneuver."

"Eh?" Ryoga asked, "What is it?"

"You'll see," Genma replied, "The boy's not beaten yet."

Contrary to what the others had thought they had seen, Ranma had retained enough

presence of mind to move one arm in tight to his body, so when Ryu's arms went

around his waist this arm was free enough to work out of the Hug of Death, and

with this free arm he took advantage of his close proximity to his opponent to

wrap a cloth around Ryu's head that Ranma had pulled out from beneath his own

shirt, thus blocking off his vision and cutting off his windpipe.

Ryu reacted to this instinctively by letting go of his opponent and reaching to

remove the cloth from his face, which gave Ranma the chance he needed to flip

himself over and around his foe while crying out, "BODY CARP WAVE!" which

brought him around behind his struggling antagonist, as he cried the follow up

move, "CARRY MOUNTAIN FALL TO EARTH POSTURE!"

"He's choking him!" Kaoih cried in dismay at these suddenly shifting fortunes.

"Attack and defense all in one," Ryoga marveled.

"His moves are flowing one into the other like a well-rehearsed performance,"

Sakura said with obvious approval, "But he doesn't actually mean to choke that

boy, does he?"

"Ranma won't go that far if he can help it," Genma said, "But Ryu's still in the

fight, you see?"

As they watched in amazement they saw Ryu tear through the silk cloth and free

himself from Ranma. The two boys parted company and turned about to face one

another, neither one prepared to give an inch of ground at this stage of the

battle.

"You think that was funny?" Ryu snarled, "You think you can just choke me and

get away with it, Jerk?"

"Well duh," Ranma replied, "I'm just trying to make you understand that this

whole fight is useless. You're never going to master the Umisenken with that

kind of aggressive attitude, Chump."

"We'll see about that!" Ryu balled his fists together and began to concentrate,

his battle aura flaring like a summer bonfire doused in kerosene.

"Oh no," Genma murmured faintly, then all at once he began pushing against his

nearest companions crying, "GET BACK-WAY BACK! You don't want to be anywhere

near him when he uses this maneuver!"

"What's wrong, Gen-chan?" Sakura asked as she and Kaoih complied with the burly

man's wishes.

"You'll see in another moment," Genma urged, "Ryoga...stand ready."

"What's wrong?" Ryoga asked, "Are you expecting something bad to happen?"

In response to this question, Ryu himself cried out, "DEMON GOD ASSEMBLY

BOMB!"

"Oh," Ryoga murmured faintly, recalling the maneuver from the scroll, and

suddenly feeling quite fearful for Ranma.

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING, BOY?" Genma called out to Ranma, "RUN, YOU CAN'T FIGHT

THAT!"

Ranma did take evasive action as huge knife-blades formed entirely of wind

lashed out at where he had been standing, but as fast as he was he could not

completely avoid the attack. Where the blades touched bare skin they sliced

through flesh like butter, drawing blood, much to the astonishment of Ranma. He

fell to his side as the worst of the "vacuum blades" whizzed past him to strike

a stationary locomotive and slice the thing to huge metallic ribbons. Water

gushed from a ruptured steam tank as the rest of the thing collapsed in on

itself, much to the dismay of the horrified onlookers.

"If that had been Ranma..." Ryoga faintly murmured.

"How can he slice through metal using knives made out of vacuum?" Kaoih

marveled.

"It's a mystery all right," her mother sagely nodded.

"Heh," Ryu smirked, "You're outclassed, admit it! Turn over the Umisenken now

and you won't get hurt any worse than you are."

"Fool," Ranma got back to his feet, "You're still doing it wrong. That's not

the true Yamasenken."

"Oh, and I'm supposed to take your word for that?" Ryu asked.

"All you do is break stuff," Ranma said, "You don't build anything, let alone

your dojo."

"And I suppose you're so smart that you've figured it all out?" Ryu scoffed.

"Oh yeah," Ranma replied, "The Yamasenken and Umisenken were created so that

their possessor can live. It was failing to understand that which caused your

father to accidentally destroy his own dojo."

"You dare to bring that up?" Ryu snarled.

"I dare a lot more than that, Guy," Ranma said as he stood relaxed, poised and

at ease, "I'll teach you how the two arts are to be combined and used as one.

Any time you're ready, go ahead and use your Demon God Assault Bomb and you'll

see."

"All right," Ryu declared, "You asked for it, and I won't hold back! DEMON GOD

ASSAULT BOMB!"

Once again he launched an onslaught of invisible knives at his opponent, but

rather than dodge Ranma reached into his shirt once again and pulled out a bath

towel, whipping it into the path of Ryu's attack as though such flimsy material

would be able to withstand a force that had taken apart a stationary locomotive.

To their amazement the air surrounding Ranma swirled and became like a hurricane

of motion, and when the dust finally settled there was no sign of Ranma at

all...nor the locomotive, whose pieces had just as mysteriously vanished.

"What the heck?" Kaoih looked around, "Where did he...where did it all go?"

"It's like he just pulled the ultimate circus trick and vanished from the spot,"

Sakura noted, "Only how did he do the same thing with the locomotive? The thing

must weigh a hundred tons, at least."

"Size and weight won't matter," Genma replied, "Not if he uses the technique

just right."

"You've got to be kidding," Ryoga declared, "Even I couldn't move that much

around in only a second."

"Where are you hiding now, Saotome?" Ryu demanded as he looked around, "I'm

starting to get awfully tired of these sophomoric tricks...are you over-

THERE!"

He made a rapid pass with one arm and sent a vacuum knife hurtling towards a

certain direction, and only belatedly did he realize that he had aimed towards

the four people gathered together on the sidelines...or, more specifically,

towards Kaoih herself!

"NO!" Ryu cried, much too late to avert his obvious error.

Two things happened at once...Genma threw himself in the path of the vacuum

knife and spread his arms wide as if willing to receive it, but before it could

reach him a second vacuum knife lanced out and intercepted the first air blade

at a perpendicular angle.

"YOU IDIOT!" Ranma snarled, "Can't you tell the difference between a target and

a shadow?"

"I-I didn't mean to..." Ryu sounded horrified at his own near-tragic mistake.

"Now do you see what I mean about you not knowing how to use the Senken?" Ranma

snarled, "You're a menace to others, even more to yourself! I'm going to show

you how it's supposed to be used, and I'm ending this fight here and now!"

Ryu balled his fists and said, "That was an accident...you're trying to confuse

me! You won't get me to lay down and give up my quest to recreate my family

dojo! I'm the one who'll be ending this fight with the next blow, Saotome!"

"Yeah, sure," Ranma said, "Take your best shot, I'm ready."

This time Ryu made sure his aim was true as he hurled his "vacuum knives"

attack, anticipating every possible angle at which he could expect Ranma to move

to avoid him, but to his complete surprise the pig-tailed Saotome did not move

at all, right up until the blade passed entirely through him without stopping.

"What?" Ryu stared in disbelief as Ranma vanished from the spot altogether.

"Ever hear of an after-image?" Ranma asked from directly behind him, then all at

once Ryu felt a chill all over as a breeze passed him over. He turned around to

try and find out where his foe had vanished this time, only to come to the

stunned realization that he was missing a good proportion of his wardrobe.

"Whoah!" Kaoih's eyes got very round and she unselfconsciously blew a wolf-

whistle.

"How the heck did he do that?" Sakura also gazed admiringly on Ryu's now-exposed

anatomy.

"He tore his clothes off the guy," Ryoga said in awe, "He literally tore the

shirt off his back and the pants off his..."

"We can see that, Boy," Genma softly reprimanded, "Ranma's preparing to use the

ultimate counter to the Demon God attack. I just hope he's ready to carry

through on such a difficult technique."

"The ultimate counter?" Sakura repeated, turning to stare at the frustrated Ryu,

who was looking around for his opponent in all directions.

"WHERE ARE YOU?" the denuded Ryu cried out, "You won't get away with this,

Saotome!"

"I'm up here, Moron," Ranma called down from the roof of yet another boxcar,

and when all eyes turned his way they saw that he held an enormous bundle at his

side, a patchwork of cloth that bulged like a huge nap-sack, but large enough to

carry many tons of gathered metal and nearly as tall as Ranma himself.

"What?" Ryu exclaimed in disbelief, "How...?"

"You still don't get it, do you?" Ranma asked, "I've been showing you the

Umisenken all along but still you've learned nothing."

"What are you talking about?" Ryu demanded, "All I've seen you do is run around

and avoid me!"

"Don't you get it?" Ranma smirked, "That IS the Umisenken! Now I'm going to

seal it up for you since you obviously aren't worthy to have it."

With that Ranma hefted the huge burden onto his back and leaped from the roof,

going airborne over Ryu.

"Big mistake!" Ryu cried as he proceeded to execute another new maneuver,

"ULTIMATE DEMON GOD BIG MAD DANCE!"

"SAOTOME SCHOOL ULTIMATE UMISENKEN SPECIAL TECHNIQUE-" Ranma cried out, "DEMON

DEEP SEA WRAP!"

And with that he opened up his burden and allowed it to spill forward, tumbling

out many tons of metal and wood like a rain shower pouring down upon Ryu, who-

far too late-realized his own error. Within seconds he was buried by the

avalanche that was sucked down by the vacuum created by his own Demon God Mad

Dance. Both young men vanished from sight as the air was filled with the

wrenching tumult of steel and metal raining down all around them.

For a long tense moment utter silence reigned as the last of the debris

subsided. The witnesses held their breath in mingled awe and dread, but then

Kaoih fearfully asked, "Is it over? Are they dead?"

"I think it is over," Ryoga just as uneasily replied, "But...where is Ranma?"

"Oh my," Sakura said, "I certainly hope they're both all right."

"They will be," Genma replied, "If the boy did his job right."

All at once the top part of the mound of metal burst upwards like an erupting

volcano, and then up out of the gap emerged Ranma, dragging an unconscious Ryu

by the straps of his T-shirt, one of the few articles of clothing that he

was still actually wearing.

"Ranma!" Ryoga called out in relief.

"Thank the Kami!" Sakura exhaled.

"Well, what do you know?" Genma smiled as he adjusted his glasses, "The Boy

really is a wonder."

Kaoih did not even bother making a statement, she went running across the open

field and arrived just as Ranma was laying Ryu down on the ground, kneeling down

to determine that the other boy's wounds were largely superficial.

"He'll be okay," Ranma assured her, "He just got a little smothered back there."

"Congratulations!" Sakura said as she and the others approached, "That was a

very impressive victory you just won, but it definitely proves that you're the

son of Saotome Genma."

"I knew you could do it, Son," Genma complimented, "You had me worried a time or

two there, but I'm glad to see your training amounted to something."

"Thanks, Pop," Ranma replied, "But it really ain't something I feel all that

proud about."

"Huh?" Ryoga said, "Why not?"

"That's what I'd like to know..." Ryu groaned as he started to regain

consciousness, "You won...why not crow about it...?"

"Oh yeah?" Ranma said, turning to his father, "Give him the Umisenken scroll,

Pop...let him see for himself."

Genma raised an eyebrow to that, but reluctantly pulled the scroll from within

his gi and passed it along to the recovering Ryu.

"You're...giving it to me?" Ryu asked in disbelief as Kaoih silently watched

him from a very close angle, then the half-naked boy unrolled the scroll and

opened it with trembling hands, only to stare in disbelief as he read the

opening title, "Umisenken...the Art of the SILENT SNEAKY THIEF?"

"You got it," Ranma replied, "The Senken was created in both its forms for one

reason...to break into a house and steal someone's belongings. It was created

by my Pop under the influence of a perverted old man who sees nothing wrong with

stealing women's undergarments and even considers it to be a form of martial

arts training."

"It's true," Genma replied, "The Kami help me...I created this system because I

wanted a means of defeating my master, and breaking into houses gave me the

inspiration I needed to create this highly effective yet dangerous system."

"You mean the Senken is just a way of being a more effective thief?" Kaoih

exclaimed in disgust.

"No wonder it's a forbidden technique," Ryoga exclaimed, "It truly is a

dishonorable system."

"I...I don't believe it," Ryu let the scroll slip from his hands, "What have I

been doing with my life all this time? All these years...my promise to my

father..."

"Son," Genma replied, "I'm very sorry about your father, and the part I played

in causing that accident, but if your father really had understood the means by

which the Yamasenken could have been used to rebuild his dojo...you might not

have been very proud of the results."

"No kidding," Kaoih reacted with distaste, "Robbing people to pay for a dojo?

That's more likely to get you arrested than to make you very rich."

"And the blame for this clearly rests on the shoulders of the one who was the

guiding influence with you when you created this system," Sakura observed, "The

one who usually is at fault for a great many things that have gone wrong in your

life, Gen-chan, your Master, Happosai..."

"HEY!" Happosai cried as he almost miraculously surfaced from out of seeming

nowhere, "Don't load the blame all on me! I wasn't the one who created the

Senken..."

"No," Ranma replied, "But you are the one who had a lot to do with the shape it

took under Pop."

"And problems of this sort usually start with you in one way or another, Master

Happy," Sakura noted dryly.

"The ingratitude of it all," Happosai huffed, "And here I thought you might be

interested in knowing how the Senken might be redeemed into a respectable system

that doesn't involve stealing."

"Master," Genma spoke up, "What are you saying?"

"You know very well what I mean," Happosai glared at his erstwhile disciple,

"You brought Ranma and Ryoga out here in order to train them in the Senken so

that he could encourage them to work on improving it so that it would no longer

be a dishonorable system. You're seeking redemption for a mistake of your past

by encouraging these boys to do what you lacked the guts to do for yourself, so

don't play innocent with me, you old Panda you..."

"Wait," Ryu looked up from where he was still kneeling in his misery, a note of

forlorn hope beginning to creep across his features, "What do you mean...redeem

the Senken? How?"

"That's the trick, Boy," Happosai winked, "Genma wanted to expand his own

creation, to broaden it into other areas that could apply the same basic

principles that led to the creation of the Yama and Umisenken. The idea is to

equate the human body with a house, right? Well...there's lots of other

applications for a house than simply to break in and rob it. Those are the

Earth and Water schools, but just before your father's death, Genma had started

to create a new system that worked on the elemental principles of Wood, Metal

and Fire..."

"Are you serious?" Ranma turned to look at his father, "Is he on the level here,

Pop?"

"I'm afraid so," Genma nodded, "I tried and failed to defeat the master with the

Umisenken and Yamasenken, but the Master was so impressed by my new technique

that he encouraged me to further explore and refine it. I was so excited with

the prospect that I gladly traded the Yamasenken scroll for some sake your

father had in order to celebrate my new achievement, but then came the word that

Kumon Omi had died while practicing what was on the scroll...and I kind of

forgot all about it..."

"You've been running from yourself like a whipped yellow dog ever since,"

Happosai said in plain disgust, "The fearsome Destroyer became a hounded and

self-pitying fool, afraid to use his art for fear of what you might do to

people. In a way I blame myself as your Master, I had thought I'd trained you

to overlook petty little things like that, but I guess your conscience wouldn't

let you rest as long as you feared the ghost of your friend coming back to haunt

you..."

"I'd call that a positive trait myself," Sakura remarked, "Gen-chan...why didn't

you come to me if you were having these sorts of issues? I'd have gladly given

you the counseling you needed, you silly dear, as if anyone would hold you to

blame for what happened fifteen years ago. I'll bet you never even confided in

Nodoka that you've been having these sorts of nightmares."

"Well..." Genma hesitated, seeming obviously quite reluctant to add more to what

his Master had already stated.

"Is this true what he says?" Ryu asked as he slowly rose to his feet, "Can you

teach me a new way to use the Senken that doesn't involve any dishonorable

behavior?"

"That was what I intended to teach Ranma and Ryoga, Son," Genma replied, "But if

you want to be included in the training..."

"Hey," Ryoga spoke up, "Don't we have a say in this?"

"You want to include him as a training partner, Pop?" Ranma asked.

"What's wrong with you two?" Kaoih demanded, "Don't you think he's proven that

he's as capable a fighter as either one of you? Don't you think he's just as

worthy of learning a new use for this Senken thing, or do you want to exclude

him because you don't think he's good enough, eh?"

"Weeellll..." Ranma and Ryoga said together, then exchanged dubious looks

between them.

"It's decided then," Genma nodded, "I owe it to your father, and to you, to see

to it that his legacy did not go for nothing. Your father's fondest wish was to

recreate the Kumon dojo, and you have sought to honor his memory, Boy, which

means you deserve to be included in this project. We'll begin training on the

morrow, so the three of you had better rest up and recover from today's

exertions. You'll need your strength when we begin working on perfecting the

true Senken."

"The true Senken," Ryu's voice almost trembled on the words, "My father would

want this...yes...I'll do it! I'll learn a new way of performing the Senken!"

"And see the advantages to this, Boys," Genma added to his two dumbstruck heirs

as they tried to make sense of this new development, "Ryu's bound to prove to be

a strong training partner, exactly what the two of you need to improve your own

martial arts. This works out even better than I'd dared to hope, and soon,

Ranma, you'll be more than ready to go up against Nabiki."

Ranma blinked at this and said, "You mean that?"

"No, he's just pulling your leg," Happosai snorted, "Of course he means it, you

young fool! What, did you think he meant you should go with me on panty raids?

You're not up to that yet..."

"Say," Kaoih turned towards the little old man, "That's right...you're a panty

thief, right? And it just so happens I'm missing a few items from my dresser.

Guess that lets you off the hook, Ranma...I'd been half suspecting it was you

that went and took them."

"What?" Ranma blinked, "Me? Why would I take any of your things?"

"You mean you wouldn't like to have my underwear?" Kaoih smiled coyly, "I'm

hurt. I would have thought an attractive boy with healthy instincts would at

least be curious...what do you think about that, Ryoga?"

"What?" Ryoga blinked, "N-No way! I mean...I'm not into things like that...and

besides, Akane would kill me..."

"You two..." Kaoih made a disparaging noise, then turned with a sly look to her

real target of interest, "And what about you, Ryu-chan? Are you interested at

all in seeing my undergarments?"

"Hah?" the tall young man responded with rounded eyes, doing a very good

impression of a deer caught in the headlights.

"Since you mention it, dear," Sakura mused, "I'm also missing some of my

personal belongings, and since young Saotome insists that he's not into that

sort of thing, that leaves only one viable culprit...you, Gen-chan...did you

take my undergarments?"

"ME?" Genma all but squeaked, when all at once he heard a thunder in the sky up

above, which caused him to turn his eyes heavenward as he softly murmured, "Uh-

oh..."

Rain started to fall before he had even finished making that remark, which

prompted Kaoih to say, "That's odd...the Weatherman didn't say anything about a

storm today..."

"Gee," Ranma grumbled as he exchanged looks with Ryoga, "How surprising."

"Guess your old man did something to tick off the Kami," Ryoga agreed as they

turned with unsurprised looks towards the space formerly occupied by a human-

shaped Genma.

Sakura reacted with the most surprise, finding a panda was unexpectedly standing

right beside her, and as she turned a look up towards his sheepish expression,

she saw a pair of eyes staring back that were unmistakably the same as the man

who normally wore glasses.

"Gen-chan?" she asked in a voice that arched a note higher than usual.

"What...what happened to him?" Kaoih exclaimed.

"I-I don't know," Ryu exclaimed, "One minute he was standing there...the

next...?"

"Oh, come on now," Happosai said gruffly, "Surely a little thing like a fur coat

won't prevent you from recognizing your new Sensei."

"He's under a curse," Ryoga explained.

"He went to a place called Jusenkyo," Ranma added.

"Jusenkyo?" Kaoih asked, "The same place where Aunt Atsuko...?"

"Obviously so," Sakura smiled as she recovered her bearings, "So...you do have a

Jusenkyo curse, eh Gen-chan? Well...why didn't you tell me about this sooner?

Do you know how many people would pay top yen to see a man turn into a panda? I

could have offered you a job earning good money coming to work for me..."

"Say what?" Ranma asked.

"Genma join the circus?" Ryoga slowly murmured.

"You've got to be kidding, Lady," Ryu seconded.

"Sounds like a sweet deal to me," Happosai said, "Genma, my lad, you've finally

found your niche in life..."

Genma held up his trademark sign, which read, "Why me?"

"Wonderful!" Sakura clapped her hands in delight, "If you add that sign to your

performance it would draw an even higher attendance!"

"And is this why Uncle Genma turned to a life of crime stealing the

undergarments of women?" Kaoih asked with exaggerated flourish.

"That's what we want to know!"

All heads turned to see virtually the entire Circus troop appear from along the

edge of the rail yard, over fifty people in all, both men and women, and all of

them looking less than amused about something.

"Hey," Ranma said, "Where did you guys come from?"

"Our mothers," said a man on stilts, "What about you?"

"We heard that there was a panty thief and we came here to find them," said the

Bearded lady, "We remembered what your friend said about his boy practicing the

Umisenken, and that means he's the primary culprit."

"What?" Ranma reacted, "No way! I didn't do-!"

"Then who did?" said the Circus Strongman as he bent a steel bar to relieve some

of his aggravation, "Us Circus folk don't take too kindly to guys who bother our

women..."

"Like he said," one of the female clowns exclaimed, "How am I supposed to do my

act if I don't have my support harness?"

"And what do you think we're going to use in our trapeze performance?" demanded

one of the female performers.

"Now see what you did?" Ryoga asked with a sidelong glance.

"But...hey!" Kaoih protested, "I was just kidding around..."

"Tell them," Ryu said, "No offense to your people, but they're looking

ugly...ah...some moreso than usual..."

"There's no need for everyone to be this upset!" Sakura waved her hands in a

placating manner, "I'm handling matters on this end..."

"Don't take this the wrong way, Boss," said a circus Midget, "But you ain't

exactly an uninterested observer."

"He's taking advantage of our Boss, the Ringmaster!" one clown cried out as he

stuck an oversized red thumb towards the panda who was Genma.

"I say we get them and make them show us where they hid our things!" another

lady animal trainer called out, and the rest of the troop seemed to agree in a

general consensus.

"Boys," Happosai mused aloud, "I think it's time you take a page from me and

heed the voice of experience."

"You mean run?" Ryoga asked.

"Saotome Special Maneuver," read the sign held up by the aforementioned panda.

"For once I ain't arguing, Pop," Ranma declared as he and the others started to

take off as the circus mob surged forwards.

"Hey," Ryu cried as he found himself pacing the other boys and a surprisingly

fast-moving panda, "What am I running for? I never stole anything!"

"You want to be a part of the Saotome school, you need the practice." Happosai

reassured him.

Sakura and Kaoih along were left standing in the lot as the mob just passed them

by, then in a puzzled tone of voice the younger girl said, "Mom?"

"Yes, dear?"

"What are we doing standing around for?"

"Good question," Sakura smiled at her daughter, who smiled back at her, then

without further preamble the two women took off after the trail of the men who

presently held so much of their personal interest...

Continued.

Comments/criticisms/Circulative arguments: shadowmane

Ranma and crew begin to train in a new style of martial art that they are

creating even as they practice, but what of the real star of this show? Has she

quietly shifted into the background to ready herself for the coming battle?

Find out next time in: "Taming the Cube," or "Now you Senken, Now you Don't!"

Be there?

X

If you wish to check out my other works, Please check out my Fanfiction

webpage at: .

All related chapters of this series can be found there along with my

other works.


	38. Chapter 38

Dnabiki98

Nabiki 1/2

"A Very Scary Thought!"

by

Jim Robert Bader

(Inspired by the works of Rumiko Takahashi & Others)

Part Ninety-Eight.

"Rats, it never fails!" Nabiki-kun bitterly complained as she sought shelter in

a local bathhouse, having been caught out in the rain without an umbrella.

Now male in form, he naturally sought to change back to his proper gender, but

lacking his usual bath pail and implements, he had to rent them from the front

desk, then endure several moments of flirting by the girl behind the counter,

who seemed eager to obtain his phone number even after Nabiki-kun politely told

the lady that he was already married.

Armed with a basin of fresh supplies, Nabiki-kun's next challenge was in finding

a way to change on the correct side of the bathhouse. This presented something

of a problem as he wanted to change on the lady's side of the place, but first

he had to change from male to female in order to avoid being chased out of the

place. Thus he stopped in at a boy's bathroom and filled the basin with warm

water, then splashed himself and turned female, then gathered up his belongings

and did a quick hop out of there, leaving a few men gaping in passage.

Once firmly ensconced in the hot bath, Nabiki began to relax and soak up the

warm waters. It felt good to kick back and relax for once, not feeling the

pressures and responsibilities resting on her shoulders as she gave in to the

sinfully delicious pleasure of letting go and just float for a time within the

water.

Just as she began to get into the experience, however, a familiar voice said,

"Caught in the rain again? You really should make a habit of carrying an

umbrella."

Nabiki opened up her eyes and saw her friend Beatrice standing there above the

baths, her silver-haired friend from High School standing long and lean with

only a bath towel concealing her body. She smiled as she looked up and said,

"I've considered it, but it would feel pretty awkward always holding one in my

hand, and since I don't carry a back-pack, like Ryoga..."

"I see," Beatrice smiled faintly, "So you favor style over practicality, and

thus your constant dilemma with being frequently doused with cold water. If you

don't mind my saying so, my friend, I would reluctantly conclude that you are a

glutton for punishment, your protests to the contrary notwithstanding."

"Could be you're right," Nabiki smiled as she watched Beatrice sit down on a

bench after setting her towel aside, thus revealing a body that was well-toned

and excellently curvy in all the right places, a fact she could not help but

admire with genuine appreciation (much though such thoughts brought about a

guilty twinge of remorse as she did not want to feel in the least bit disloyal

to her wife, who would be understandably jealous.

"I see you decided to cut short your training trip this time," Beatrice noted

just before she doused herself with soapy water, then added, "I thought you

would be out of town for another few days."

"Actually, it was the old woman's idea," Nabiki admitted, "She seemed to think

that I was having trouble concentrating on my studies, so she called it off

early and told me to spend a few days trying to get my head screwed back on

straight."

"Oh?" Beatrice remarked as she slipped into the hot tub with Nabiki, "Is

something disturbing you overmuch, Nabiki-san? That hardly sounds in character

as you have one of the most remarkable powers of concentration of anyone whom I

have recently observed..."

"I've...had a few things on my mind lately," Nabiki reluctantly replied, "Things

have been getting more and more complicated since Shampoo had her baby..."

"Ah yes," Beatrice nodded sagely as she leaned back and studied her friend with

a sidelong expression, "I'd rather guessed that you were having romantic

problems of one sort or another. Let me venture a wild theorem...this has

something to do with your handsome beau, Ranma."

Nabiki blinked, "How did you...?"

"Character analysis," Beatrice replied, "People do tend to form patterns of

behavior that-once I have observed and formed a tentative hypothesis regarding

same-they tend to act within those parameters regardless of what stress they

might otherwise be under. Take Shampoo, for example...affection and loyalty are

her watchwords, and she would hardly abandon you with a child only three weeks

of age. You do not seem as depressed as I know you would be if she were to

choose to suddenly leave you, so it is clear to me that she can not be the

source of the problem. As for the other members of your rather tight-knit

group, I hardly expect that you would be this worked up over Ukyo or Perfume,

which-by means of elimination-leaves Saotome Ranma as the chief principle

suspect. His welfare concerns you very much, and if he were absent from your

life it would produce the kinds of results that I have observed in your

expression."

"Ah...yeah," Nabiki said sheepishly, "That was a pretty good guess."

"I never guess," Beatrice winked back at her, "I base all my opinions on solidly

well-based analysis and research. So...Ranma is away at the present, is he?

May I further hazard to guess that you two have had some recent difficulties

that have left you feeling somewhat out of sorts and in a state of both denial

and confusion?"

"Denial?" Nabiki blinked at the word.

"Well, if is obvious to me that whatever has come between you has opened a

temporary-albeit not permanent-separation," Beatrice returned, "This can

only suggest one thing to me...that Ranma has come to harbor doubts about

himself and has gone off on a quest to find and reestablish his self-identity so

that he can come back and look at you as a near-equal. You are presently

confused at why he needs to be apart from you in order to do this, and as such

you seem to be avoiding looking hard at his probable motivation."

Nabiki had to concede that Beatrice had a very disconcerting way of probing for

the truth while seeming to act relaxed and quite unaffected. It was a technique

that Nabiki had thought that she had pioneered in her travels, but next to

Beatrice-arguably the smartest girl in their whole school-she was a

stumbling amateur making a pretense at playing Holmes to her Watson. She

lowered her gaze to the water and tried not to betray her sense of being wholly

transparent.

"Okay..." Nabiki sighed aloud, "So Ranma and me are having a few problems..."

"Really?" Beatrice affected an air of mild surprise that was not entirely

convincing, "What a shame, and you seem like such a lovely couple. Was he

beginning to fear crowded out and ignored in your relationship, or does he just

feel a need to prove himself? Men have such sensitive egos...they do need to be

stroked every so often..."

"Pardon me for saying so," Nabiki said, "But I didn't think men were of much

interest to you."

"You would be surprised at what captures my interest on occasions," Beatrice

smiled coyly, "But I apologize if I am being too intrusive. You do not need to

feel obligated to confide in me if the issue is too sensitive..."

"No...it's all right," Nabiki sighed, "Seems everybody else has been giving me

advice lately, why should you be any exception?"

"So, it's been like that for you, has it?" Beatrice cocked a pale eyebrow, "Then

I suppose you don't need me to make any recommendations since I am sure that you

have had some excellent advice from the people who care most about you."

Nabiki blew air out of her nostrils and eyed the silver haired girl wryly, "Then

why don't you answer a question for me, since you brought this up...does it seem

to you like I'm a very serious person? I mean...like I don't know how to relax

and have fun...?"

"Fun?" Beatrice repeated the word, "Ah yes...that is a word that seems most

lacking in your demeanor. For as long as I have known you, Nabiki-san...which-

-admittedly-is not very long in actual time...I have denoted in you what is

often called 'Type A' behavior, the workaholic's obsession with filling every

waking hour of every day with something productive. I used to be rather much

like that myself many months ago...I well remember how I could throw myself into

a project and absolutely lose track of empirical time, often going for days on

very little sleep and hardly noticing. Ah yes...back then I only knew the

dictionary definition of the word, 'fun,' but I was not very good at practicing

it in my life."

"That's hard to believe," Nabiki mused rightly, "You seem so relaxed and laid

back now..."

"That's because I learned a very important lesson that you have yet to achieve,"

Beatrice replied, "I've learned to trust in circumstances, to have a hope for

the future that is based on the present. I know what true love is, and I am

content in the knowledge."

"Oh yeah?" Nabiki eyed the other girl with a wary expression, "And what about

your girlfriend? I'm a little surprised I don't see Alison anywhere about..."

"She is about her own devices," Beatrice replied, "But she promised that she

would meet with me in this bathhouse. She is not always a very reliable person,

but I trust her at her word, and she really does mean well, the sweet dear..."

Nabiki had to grin at that as she regarded the girl known by the very awkward

name of Beatrice Kane Daitokuji, a half-Japanese vunderkind child whose

grandfather was a notorious supervillain back in the United States of America, a

certified (or certifiable) genius who was master of all the sciences and could

create a death ray out of a box of half-used Kleenex. Though some called her by

her semi-notorious name of Beiko (or Biko), she much preferred the more relaxed

name of Beatrice these days as reflected her more laid-back personality and

elegant style, though she professed at one time that she hated the name, back in

the days that she laughingly referred to as the period when she was "crazy."

The odd thing was that Beatrice had become her friend almost from the moment of

their first meeting, two girls of above-average intellect who had formed a

tentative friendship based on what had started out as a simple "business"

proposal. Beatrice-though a near-goddess when it came to engineering or a

science lab-had problems comprehending the elemental sciences of economics, so

she had come to confide in Nabiki for the latter's business acumen, and by turns

was in the process of sorting out her financial situation from the mess it had

been in when Beatrice rather absently left the management of such things to her

father.

"You know," Nabiki commented wryly, "Whenever I see you two together I often

wonder what draws you both together. You seem like such opposites

sometimes..."

"In many ways we are," Beatrice replied, "But I think we have good chemistry,

and it is our differences that make things so interesting between us."

"And is that why you spend almost every morning chasing her around school

grounds?" Nabiki continued.

"That's more-or-less something of a game we both play," Beatrice replied,

"Aiko...I mean...Alison and I first met when we were children, and the sort of

competitiveness we felt then is still a large part of our mutual existence.

When we met again, nearly a year ago, it was like we just felt the urge to pick

things up where we had left off, only I had grown to be somewhat strange in my

humors and actually attempted to kill her with my home-made devices. It all

seems like such folly now, an indiscretion of my youth, where I would spend the

night thinking up killer robots and death rays to hurl against her in the

morning, and always she would trash my devices, enraging me to invent more and

more complicated inventions..."

"But eventually you changed your mind about her," Nabiki mused, "Why?"

"Perhaps because...when we were cast adrift in space, we had no one else to rely

upon but each other," Beatrice sighed, "That changes your outlook, makes you

wonder what it was that got you so angry to begin with. I came to the rather

startling realization that I had been in love with Alison all along but was in

heavy denial of this fact, and thus the reason I would try so hard to be rid of

her. As I said, I wasn't such a very pleasant person to be around in those

days, before I acquired my Nanites, which stabilized my mental chemistry and

relieved a sharp imbalance in my hormones that was causing me to act so

eccentric."

"Dying and coming back to life must also have had something to do with it,"

Nabiki gently reminded.

"Quite true," Beatrice replied, "And it is because of that experience that I now

love Alison with all my heart and soul. She means the world to me, and one day

I intend to make her mine in soul and body. Alison knows this too and has

accepted her lot in life as my true intended...and-being part Amazon that she

is-she knows that I will work to earn her love by using the same dedication

that I once employed to achieve her death to instead conquer her rightfully as

my bride-to-be, which is as it was meant to be but for my formerly sad case of

denial."

"There's that word again," Nabiki mused wryly, "And of course Alison agrees with

you about the inevitability part?"

"Maybe not yet," Beatrice took on a slightly evasive smile as she added, "But

she will...and you have provided me with an excellent example of how to go about

this."

"Huh?" Nabiki double-blinked, "How's that?"

"Oh...nothing," Beatrice grinned all the more, "Forget I said anything about

it."

At that precise moment-not observed by either of the two women-a third young

girl was approaching their position with a bath towel wrapped around her body

and a basin in both hands, a tall redhead who went by the curious name of Aiko

(Eiko), which was short for "Alison Kent Managi." She, too had been caught out

in the rain in her hurry to make it to the bathhouse, but unlike with poor

Nabiki, all this meant that she was thoroughly wet and in need of a good

cleaning. She came within earshot of the pair just in time to hear a stray

snatch of conversation that caused her to halt in place and stare wide-eyed at

the hot tub.

"Still you know," a voice that she recognized as belonging to Nabiki Tendo

remarked, "I think challenging your significant other to a fight every morning

is a pretty odd way of getting her attention."

"You're a fine one to talk, considering how you met you wife," replied the voice

that was unmistakably belonging to Beiko, "But Alison knows I only do it to keep

in shape so the two of us don't wind up becoming rusty. Our fighting skills are

on a level that is difficult to match...albeit that mine are greatly enhanced by

powered armor. There are not many others who can give Aiko a good workout, and

besides...it's just for fun between us. If I actually caught and defeated her

it might spoil that fun a little, but in the end it all amounts to the same

thing as I know full well that her heart can never truly be won through a little

rough housing..."

Very silently the redhead framed the words, "A little rough housing?"

"...In truth she needs to know that I still care about her deeply," Beatrice

sighed, "So if I stopped challenging her every morning she might begin to doubt

that I still have an interest. Besides, it's all in fun...once our morning romp

is over we call a truce that lasts the rest of the day and we go about our

normal day as school kids attending classes together. I tutor her in her

studies so that she does not fall behind the others, and she accompanies me in a

number of things we do together, so I have the delight of her presence in a

purely non-combative sense that is further enhanced by the fact that we also

share a place together. We are roommates and help-mates in all the essential

ways that would be typical of a marriage, and yet I still have a long ways to go

in working to earn her trust and devotion. Some day I may prevail on her to

accept me in an official capacity, and to hell with what anyone else has to say

about it. More and more I am convinced that Alison is the only one for me, and

when she comes to share that view I know that her heart will be mine

completely."

Alison blinked her eyes and felt a very odd...something. Beatrice was always

having such an effect on her, it made Alison genuinely wonder why she spent so

much time with the girl who had once been her most hated enemy but was now her

closest friend and boon companion.

"I'm glad you're confident of this," Nabiki sighed, "I just wish I was as

certain about Ranma..."

"Do you doubt that the two of you were meant to be together?" Beatrice asked.

"No, it's...not that," Nabiki began, then faltered, "I just...wish I knew if I

meant as much to him as he means to me. Going off like that on a training

mission..."

"Men do need to get out on their own once in a while," Beatrice philosophized,

"Rather like a tomcat what needs to go about his business when you let him out

every evening..."

"Every evening?" Nabiki blink-blinked, and then she frowned and growled, "He'd

better not be playing around in anybody else's litterbox, or he'll be sorry..."

"Do you honestly believe him capable of being disloyal?" Beatrice arched a pale

eyebrow, "Because that is certainly not the impression that I've formed of

Saotome-san, not at all."

"Then what do you make of him going off like that and leaving me behind?" Nabiki

sulked.

"Difficult to say without more data upon which to formulate a basis," Beatrice

replied, "But at a guess I would hazard to say that he is attempting to rebuild

his confidence so that he feels more worthy of you. You need not fear that he

will never return to your side, for he is the type of individual who-once he

has given his heart-is as fiercely partisan as he is loyal."

Nabiki was silent for a long moment before she asked, "You really think so? You

don't think...I may have done something to drive him away from me? It's not

like I...like I don't miss him..."

"Why not simply come out and admit that you are a woman in love who wants the

man of her life to stay close to her and never leave her side ever?" Beatrice

replied, "No one would fault you for owning up to these feelings. Take me once

again for an example...I have no trouble confessing that it is Aiko to whom I

have given my heart. Alison and I were always meant to be together...she is,

quite simply, the woman around whom I will build a new and better life."

Unseen behind them, the redhead in question drew in a sharp breath and felt

something stir within her as she heard this pronouncement.

"Even if you have to drag her into it kicking and screaming?" Nabiki just then

countered.

"I should hardly think it would take that much effort to win her affections,"

Beatrice sighed, lifting one shapely bare leg out of the water and showing it

off as though it were a proud possession, "After all...examine these well-shaped

and statuesque limbs of mine, which I have spent many years shaping and honing

to such glistening perfection. Am I not a fair beauty whom men would give any

prize to possess? And yet, beside Alison, I am but a mere mortal doing homage

to a fiery-maned goddess. She is a prize worthy of possession...but I think I

should have very little trouble enticing her to good effect. Tell me truly, my

dear friend...you who have a strong appreciation for feminine beauty...do you

not think that I am as comely as your radiant wife? Are you not even a little

bit tempted just sitting here besides me to explore the wonders of my body?"

"Uh...well..." Nabiki silently cringed a little, but mainly because she was

afraid of admitting even to herself that she had been eyeing Beatrice coyly for

the better part of the last few minutes.

"HEY!" cried an outraged Alison, who all at once was looming over them both

like a towering figure of divine rage, "Beiko-what the heck are you doing?"

"Oh, hello, Alison," Beatrice smiled up without the least shame or surprise on

her lovely features, "We were wondering when you would show up. Clean yourself

off and come join us...it's been so lonely here without you."

"Don't you try to butter me up, you-!" Alison waved a finger at her nominal

partner, but in doing so she forgot to mind her balance and went tumbling into

the tub with a splash that briefly soaked both Beatrice and Nabiki.

"Oh well," the silver-haired girl smiled slyly, "Opportunity knocks..."

She took a deep breath and dove down into the water just as Alison surfaced,

sputtering like a wet hen and grousing, "Now see what you made me do? You

platinum haired hussy-uh...where'd she go?"

Nabiki started to open her mouth to form a reply when all at once Alison's eyes

went round and she glanced down into the water, then Beatrice surfaced right

behind her and slung an arm around the redhead's waist, cooing softly, "I'm

right here, my Love...did you miss me?"

"Hey!" a look of slight panic filled the redhead's eyes as she turned and said,

"Watch those hands, I-MMMMPPPHH?"

Said tirade died abruptly as the silver haired girl clasped her mouth over the

lips of her companion, and it seemed to Nabiki as if the crimson-haired dynamo

all but melted into the embrace of the amorous Beatrice, who cupped one hand

around a breast while her other hand snaked around and much lower, caressing the

space between the powerful thighs of the titian-haired Titaness. Alison groaned

only once in protest and then began to relax and go with the flow as Beatrice

set about to the delightful task of seducing her in the public hot tubs.

"Oh my," Nabiki murmured, going very round-eyed as she studied these two growing

more and more animated. She was certainly glad that Beatrice had once explained

to her the fact that she had made a thorough study of Alison's anatomy and had

mastered the techniques of caressing nerve clusters that would cause the

powerhouse demi-Kryptonian/Amazon to go limp in her arms and thus not apply

crushing force that might jeopardize the health of her lover.

As she thought this, however, it also became plain to her thinking that the

space around these two was getting a little crowded, and if she did not want to

be casually roped into their "fun," then she would have to back away slowly and

make no sudden movements. [Good thing those two look like they could ignore an

air raid siren at the moment...otherwise I'd be the one who'd have to do some

fancy explaining to Shampoo and Ranma!]

Still and all, there was something enormously attractive about the odd coupling

of Beatrice and Alison, something that very much reminded Nabiki of the

emotional bonds that existed between her and Ranma. There was the same

mismatched attraction, the same raw animalistic appeal, the sense of completion

that one of them gave to the other, and the same indefinable sense that they

were two parts that made a whole...an altogether different arrangement than what

existed between her and Shampoo, or what existed between Ranma and Ukyo. Ranma

was, to Nabiki, the raw essence of manhood distilled down into one very tempting

package. She rather imagined that Ranma himself had his own inventory of

elements that found satisfaction in Nabiki, so what was the one difference that

marked their relationship as contrasting than that between Daitokuji and Managi?

Right, the sex thing...despite enormous mutual temptation, Ranma and Nabiki had

yet to actually take each other to the mattress and explore their

"compatibility" issues in a most decisive manner. By contrast, Alison-who was

very much like a female Ranma-for all her protests to the contrary, was very

much in love with Beatrice and freely submitted to the silver-haired girl's

affections when caught up in odd moments such as this one. Nabiki had no doubt

that Ranma would be as...vigorous in a clench, but as yet had not found a very

good avenue in which to indulge this as-yet-untrammeled venue in their

relationship, and so it remained an issue between them, always simmering just

below the surface.

Nabiki wondered...could physical consummation be the element missing from their

relationship? It did seem at least possible, given that the issue that had

caused a wedge to form between them had started with the double pregnancy of

Ukyo by Perfume and Shampoo by Nabiki. Could Ranma be feeling excluded because

he was not included in the nightly bedtime antics of his four fiancées? That

did seem at least semi-plausible, but Nabiki suspected that there was a deeper

reason, an issue of fundamental trust and mutual respect that had been causing

Ranma to fall into a kind of depression.

So the problem did come back to Nabiki and the level of actual trust that she

had been extending towards Ranma, the sense that he felt like an inferior around

her because she had been treating him like a second-class iinazuke. This

neglect-however unintentional on her part-was leaving Ranma to feel slighted

in his manhood...so, yes...in a way, the issue of sex was a significant

component. Just because Ranma kept insisting that he wanted to wait until after

they were wed was no reason why Nabiki should have taken him at his word that

there was "no problem." If anything she had been flaunting her relationship

with Shampoo out in the open, and that was what had left him feeling slighted

and ignored, and not just because of the baby-issue either.

So in a way it made sense that Ranma would start to have inferiority issues, and

since sublimation was a natural outlet for that it only made sense that he would

transfer such feelings to his martial arts abilities, and hence his need to

improve himself to at least Nabiki's own standard of excellence. How ironic

that the two things that meant the most to Nabiki-her relationship to Shampoo

and her martial arts abilities-were driving a gap between her and the man she

most...um...admired.

As she was thinking these thoughts, however, she became aware that the waters in

the hot tub were starting to vibrate in a quite palpable and tell-tale manner.

Nabiki had been rather guiltily enjoying the show that her two friends were

putting on with Beatrice doing most of the stroking and fondling and Alison much

of the grunting, groaning and moaning as the silver-haired genius worked her up

to an obvious frenzy. As much as Beatrice might be able to suppress her lover's

titanic strength, however, some natural reactions of the body were nearly

impossible to tone down, and as Alison neared the point of inevitable surrender

her body was giving off potent vibes that warned anyone in the neighborhood that

a gusher was about to blow at any moment!

"Oh shit...!" Nabiki exclaimed as she belatedly climbed back out of the bath,

just seconds before the redhead gave a gasp of delight that uncorked the bottle

royal and caused her body to involuntarily spasm.

The result was quite literally explosive as the water erupted in a froth that

was almost as violent as a geyser. Alison and Beatrice momentarily vanished

from view as the former climaxed and the latter held on for dear life. It was

fortuitous that Beatrice was well experienced in this type of physical reaction,

for the silver haired girl had been careful to position her lover so that Alison

would not accidentally kick against anything solid, but the sheer raw power

contained by the redhead was enough to prove lethal had anyone been caught in

the undertow of her explosion. As it was Nabiki got drenched in the backwash as

the waters in the tub shot in all directions, and then the climax passed the

crisis point as Beatrice eased back in her administration of pleasure, while

Alison eased back in her arms and sighed contentedly, mewing softly like a baby.

"Was it good for you too...?" she faintly groaned as Beatrice eased her back in

what remained of the hot water.

"You go through that every time?" Nabiki asked her friend as Beatrice returned a

smile at her that was perfectly cat-like. (Small shudder)

"Oh yes," Beatrice replied, "But this was nothing...on dry land she sometimes

cracks the pavement. Our building manager thinks our apartment must be built on

an active fault line, and this is only what happens when I'm the one doing the

stimulating."

Nabiki shrugged her shoulders and said, "Well...she's your girlfriend, and I'm

glad somebody around here knows how to tame her."

"I do my best, of course," Beatrice said blandly, "But Alison is such a dear

that I just cannot stand by and see her wallowing in neglect. She needs someone

to help relieve her stress, and that duty-happily enough-falls upon me to

provide on a regular basis."

"Glad somebody else around here takes these things in stride," Nabiki shrugged

her still-wet body and looked forlornly at her now-soaked towels, "Well...thanks

for the show, but I need to get going. Shampoo and the others are going to be

wondering where I ran off to..."

"Nabiki-chan," Beatrice called to her as the Tendo girl started to turn away,

"Remember what I said...and try to have fun more often. Life isn't all about

business, and in all other respects you remain my inspiration."

"Ah...yeah..." Nabiki turned a puzzled look back her way, "Your inspiration in

what sense?"

"Oh..." Beatrice turned a lazy smile towards the recovering Alison, "Let's just

say...I have been inspired by your example...and Shampoo too. You'll know what

I mean...someday very soon."

"Uh...?" Alison straightened up and turned to look at her roommate-slash-

girlfriend, "Why is it when I hear you talk like that I get this funny sense

that you're up to something, Beiko?"

"Why, whatever could you mean?" Beatrice replied, adopting a patently innocent

expression.

"And now I'm worried," Alison remarked, past experience assuring her that

whatever her lover had in mind, it was something very significant.

"So am I," Nabiki said with a smile as she turned away, thinking to herself that

Beatrice was definitely up to something rather significant, but whatever it was,

it would no doubt develop over time as the silver-haired genius tended to be a

Big Thinker with many long-range plans in the works that revolved around Alison,

but if pressed on the subject, Beatrice would only smile and assure everyone

that she only had Alison's best interests at heart...which could mean a lot of

things in Nabiki's imagination.

"Have fun, en?" Nabiki remarked as she gathered up her belongings and headed for

the lockers, pausing at the door to say, "I wonder...is that the key? Is that

what I'm missing, what the old woman's been harping about all along? Could it

really be that simple?"

"YOU WHAT?" Alison cried out, causing Nabiki to turn and look back in their

direction, "BEIKO-HAVE YOU GONE CRAZY?"

"Do I take it that this was a rhetorical question?" Beatrice replied, "It is

just a proposal...but if you truly object to the whole idea..."

"Object?" Alison exclaimed, "This is crazy! You honestly think such a

harebrained scheme could work?"

"Of course," Beatrice replied, "I've run all the necessary tests and have

affirmed our compatibility, at least on a genetic level. I raise this issue now

because I am assured that what I propose is not only viable, but natural in

regards to a long-term relationship between us."

"But don't I get any say in this?" Alison asked, "Did you just come up with this

idea out of the blue?"

"Of course not," Beatrice replied, not mentioning which part of the question she

was answering with that assurance, "I've thought very long and hard about all

aspects, including the mechanical process by which a transfer can be

successfully effected. What I am proposing is sound in both a biological and

scientific sense, and we already have the clear example that such a thing is not

only possible but can result in a more fulfilling union."

"Well...yeah...maybe it worked for the Tendos, but Beiko...we're both still just

in high school..."

"No time like the present to get started then," Beatrice replied, "Come on,

Aiko...what do I have to do, get down on my knees and beg? I really think this

would be a wonderful way for the two of us to get closer together..."

"Who said I wanted that?" Alison replied, "This whole thing is just...well...too

weird for words..."

"Do you really think so?" Beatrice asked, letting go of Alison and moving away,

"You hate me, that's it, isn't it? You think I really haven't changed my ways,

that I'm still the same mentally unstable psycho-chick who used to hound you

every morning. You think I'm a burden to you, an annoyance, a perpetual

reminder of our sordid past and misspent quest for Celeste and Kei..."

"Huh?" Alison looked positively dumbstruck, "Hey, I never said that! Beiko, I'm

not..."

"That's Beatrice to you," Beatrice looked away, "And I suppose this means you

plan on moving out, now that you find me so objectionable...""

"You're making a big deal out of this...Beiko...you know I don't...I

mean...you...me...I...hooboy..."

"You don't really care about me at all, do you?" Beatrice said with a frosty

glare from over her shoulder, "You just like leading me on and toying with my

feelings..."

"I never did anything like that!" Alison protested, almost pleading as she laid

a hand on the other girl's shoulder, "Beiko...that's not...I mean...I'm not..."

"Then...you will consider my idea?" Beatrice asked without turning around.

"Eh...well...I guess..." Alison said somewhat uneasily.

"Then," Beatrice turned around and embraced Alison, bringing their faces in

close, "You'll agree that my proposal isn't so crazy?"

"Uh...huh?" Alison replied, finding herself captured by the crystal clear blue

eyes of the other girl, beyond her ability to refuse their silent compulsion.

"I want to have a baby with you, Alison," Beatrice replied, "And I don't mean

next year, I mean as soon as we are able."

Nabiki's eyebrows climbed to approach her hairline, and she wondered just why

she had failed to see this angle coming.

"Um...a baby?" Alison swallowed, "Uh...well...I guess...maybe it's not so

crazy..."

"I'm glad to hear you say that," Beatrice replied as she touched her brow

against that of Alison, "Because any child that comes from our genes will be

extraordinary. Think about it...Amazon, Kryptonian, Human and divine

genes...and the two of us embodying the best of what is in humanity, what

parents we could make for a child who comes from such a union..."

Nabiki turned away again, shaking her head in disbelief as she murmured in awe,

"She's good..."

She had almost exited the bathhouse when she heard the last few bits of this

exchange, Alison conceding to the inevitable by saying, "Well...I guess when you

put it like that, it doesn't sound quite so weird..."

"That's good," Beatrice smiled as she deliberately separated herself from Alison

and moved apart with a teasing smile, "Because I am happy to report that my

Nanites have succeeded in implanting some of my genetic material within one of

your ovum at the height of your last fertility cycle, and with the embryo now

firmly implanted within the wall of your womb, as reported to me during your

most recent climax..."

"What?" Alison reacted with a stunned expression, her brown eyes registering

faint disbelief.

"I am happy to inform you, Alison," Beatrice gave her a winsome smile as she

climbed out of the hot tub, "That you are now officially pregnant.

Congratulations...we are going to be parents."

"We-what? WHY YOU-!" Alison leaped from the tub and began chasing after

Beatrice, who had already got a good head start heading for the lockers, the two

of them whizzing past Nabiki, whose hair was kicked up by the pair in their

passage, Beatrice laughing merrily as if being caught was nothing to be dreaded.

"Oh yeah," Nabiki nodded faintly, "I've definitely got to take pointers from

that girl...her technique is utterly flawless..."

"All right then," Genma said solemnly, "You three are here to help train and

develop a new use for the Senken...and to that end, the Master has graciously

offered to help coach you to do what I failed to do...to broaden the system and

reform it into something honorable and useful."

"The old freak is helping us out?" Ranma said with disgust.

"What's it going to cost us?" Ryoga asked, "A lingerie run? Our weight in

panties?"

"We don't need that perverted old freak," Ryu snarled, "We can do this by

ourselves..."

"Foolish boys!" Genma all but exploded, "You think you're all so smart that you

can ignore the experience and insight of Happosai? Believe me...no one knows

how evil and perverted the Master is like I do, but this is necessary if you are

to achieve the best results."

"I'll take it from here, Genma old boy," Happosai said as he strode forward,

"So...you don't think you have anything to learn from an old timer like me, eh?

Well, if you're feeling so hot, why don't you try your luck against me?"

The three young martial artists exchanged troubled looks, but no one volunteered

to step forward.

"Good," Happosai nodded, "Now that we have that sorted out, Genma, take over."

"Why do I have a feeling that this is going to wind up being a mistake?" asked

Kaoih from the sidelines.

"Now dear," Sakura murmured softly, "Have some faith in your father. He may not

look like much, but as a trainer, he's exceptional."

Both women fell silent in the middle of the wilderness setting while Genma took

on a somber tone that all who knew him recognized as Genma the Sensei,

unquestioned Master of the Saotome Ryu and at the moment the man who commanded

respect by din of his full knowledge of the Senken.

"By now you boys know that the Senken was originally created by me as a means

for breaking and entering a house," he began, "And the principle for both the

Yama and Umisenken are the same in that regard, treating the body as a house for

either loud or quiet penetration. However...these are only the Earth and Water

applications. One is the Hard system, the other is the soft, but there are more

than two elemental schools of thought in the martial arts, and that is why you

boys will each train to create and perfect an entirely new system.

"You Boy," he turned to regard Ryu Kumon, "Your system is the Earth, and it's a

powerful technique that can overwhelm the normal defenses of almost any

opponent...but it remains purely an attack style with very few defensive moves,

as you learned for yourself when you went against Ranma. The Earth is presently

both your strength and your ultimate limitation, but a different elemental

school could balance you out and make you a much stronger martial artist,

therefore I propose that you study the philosophy of Wood, the natural

compliment of Earth, which is itself a purely defensive system."

"A defensive system?" Ryu asked, "How will that make me a stronger fighter?"

"The Umisenken is Water," Genma revealed, "It is both an attack and defensive

style...like water itself, which can overwhelm like a flood or absorb impact

like a pool. Water cannot be beaten into submission, it remains the same no

matter what you do with it. When you attacked Ranma it was like striking at

water, and all you did was commit yourself and leave yourself open to a counter

offensive, which is why you lost the battle."

"I lost the battle because I couldn't see his movements," Ryu replied, "That

trick with making himself less noticeable threw me off so I couldn't see his

attacks coming."

"That wasn't it, Boy," Genma sniffed, "You lost because you lacked a proper

foundation from which to mount a defense. You know the Umisenken and how it

works now, you could be better armed to anticipate his attacks and still not be

able to counter. Take for example when you used the Demon Deep Sea Chasm

against Ranma's First Rate Demon God Fall Back to Earth counter-offensive...it

created a vacuum that sucked in the very sack of debris that Ranma threw on top

of you, and as such you doubled the effectiveness of his technique, and if the

boy hadn't been there to protect you, you might have been crushed under the

weight of all that metal."

"All right, so I didn't see that one coming," Ryu frowned, "So how does the Wood

style improve on my Earth-based technique?"

"That should be obvious," Genma's glasses gleamed in amusement, "A tree grows up

from the Earth, it takes its roots in fertile soil. With a strong foundation a

House can withstand any force used against it...wind, tornadoes, earthquakes and

flooding..."

"A strong foundation?" Ryu asked with a curious expression, "A strong set of

roots? But...how can something like that be used to fend off an attack?"

"Answer that for yourself, Boy," Genma smiled, "How would you keep a burglar

from breaking into a house?"

"Well...ah..." Ryu paused, "I never really thought of it before..."

"Then think on it well," Genma replied, "Instead of viewing the body as a house

to break into, view yourself as a body that needs to protect itself against

attack. Draw from the strength of the Yamasenken to think of a way to defend

the house instead of destroy it. If your father had known that, then the Kumon

dojo would never have fallen."

"A strong defense based upon the Yamasenken?" Ryu said, "Teach this to me! I

must learn this at once!"

"No boy," Genma shook his head, "I can't teach you that...I barely even started

to learn myself when the accident happened. You're going to have to reach into

yourself to learn the technique, and I know you have it in you. You must use

the power of your imagination to concentrate upon the Senken and learn from

it...let it teach you, think of yourself as a House and know how it can be

defended."

"Think of myself as a house?" Ryu blinked, "I can do that?"

"Don't ask me, Son," Genma smiled, "You'll have to think on that for

yourself...but also think of what is at stake in a house, what needs to be

defended. When you have the answer to that, then you will know the Morisenken."

"The Morisenken?" Ryu balled his fists and said, "All right...I'll do it!"

"Good," Genma said, "And when you have mastered the technique that you yourself

will create, you will demonstrate it against Ryoga and Ranma, who will each

themselves be mastering a new system. Ryoga...you have studied both the Saotome

and the Righteous Fist techniques, but the Umisenken is not suited to you as you

would have trouble maintaining the calm and detached mindset that is needed to

erase all trace of yourself from an opponent. You're far too blunt and direct,

much like your mother, so you will create and master the Metal school of

Weapons, which compliments nicely your mastery of the stone-breaking technique

known as the Bakusai Tenketsu."

"The Metal school of weapons?" Ryoga repeated.

"The Kosenken," Genma affirmed, "A house is build with tools such as a hammer,

saw, hatchet, screwdriver and nails...think of a house being put together using

these instruments, or taken apart with a crowbar, a wrecking ball, an ax or a

buzz saw. Think of a house as having boards and panels arranged about a wooden

frame, then think of how you would build a house from pouring the foundations to

driving the last nail in the roof shingles. Concentrate on these things and

then imagine doing them without the use of tools, turning your hands and feet

into the instruments of either construction or destruction. Then practice the

same by improvising weapons."

"I'll try sir," Ryoga nodded, "Think of building up and taking down a house...I

think I can do that..."

"I thought our school frowned on using weapons, Pop," Ranma noted with a slight

frown.

"Our creed is 'Anything Goes,' Son," Genma replied, "And you used a bokken in

the middle of your fight against Ryu, so it's not as if you can talk on that

subject."

"Heh, point taken," Ranma smiled, "So, what do you have in store for me?"

"You, my boy," Genma smiled, "Will study the Fire school of the Honosenken."

"Honosenken?" Ranma repeated, "You mean...set fire to the house?"

"That would be one part of the style," Genma smiled, "Or, on the other hand, you

could study how to avoid a fire, or how best to put it out. Since you'll be

evolving and creating the style for yourself, you can be the judge of what

techniques to use. Just think of a fire rushing through a building and that

will be your key to creating this new Senken. Think well on your technique as

you evolve your moves, and even how you name them, because you'll be using them

on the other two boys by the end of the week when you go up against their

Morisenken and Kosenken."

"And to add extra incentive to this little three-way match you boys will be

having," Happosai smiled, "The winner of the contest will go on to learn an

entirely new technique that I'll be teaching...the Arashisenken..."

"Arashisenken?" Ryu asked.

"The Aerial School?" Ryoga asked, "What's that?"

"Uh-uh," the little man waved a finger, "That would be getting ahead of

yourselves. I'll only explain that technique when one of you emerges the winner

in the match to be held next week, but I will say that mastering this Ryu will

make one the absolute master of the Senken arts, so decide for yourselves which

one of you will be strong enough for that honor?"

All three boys exchanged looks, then Ryu said, "I'll do it."

"I'm in," Ryoga nodded.

"Sounds good to me," Ranma affirmed, "When do we get started?"

"We already have," Genma replied, "All three of you will study apart from one

another, and the Master and I will be checking on you from time to time to see

what progress you've made, if any. No cheating by sneaking up or studying each

other's moves...it will be purely a surprise for each of you when you meet here

next week to decide who is the true Master of the Senken."

"So there you have it, Boys," Happosai smiled, "Train well and train hard. You

can see each other at morning, lunch and evening when you meet here for your

meals and a good rest, but for the rest of the day you're to keep well apart

from one another, agreed?"

The three boys assented, and then exchanged looks before smiling a mutual smile,

the gleam of competition and budding rivalry clearly showing itself as each one

looked determined to prove himself the superior fighter.

"I hope the boys won't work themselves too hard," Kaoih remarked from where she

sat on a log on the sidelines.

"You sound as if you've already chosen a favorite," Sakura mused, "I wonder who

that might be...your brothers, or young Kumon-san."

"Mother..." her daughter immediately covered.

"It's all right with me if you want to spend time with him, encouraging him to

do his best," Sakura revealed, "Just as long as you don't miss out on your

studies and practice. Remember, we still have a show to run until the end of

the week. Too bad I can't open this up to the public, though...imagine the sale

we could have...the tickets people would pay to see three top-notch fighters

such as these go at it all out to prove which of them is the superior martial

artist."

"I just hope nobody gets hurt," Kaoih sighed softly, "I don't know how you ever

put up with this sort of thing in the old days, Mom."

"Sometimes I wonder myself," Sakura smiled, "But there's one technique that

always worked for me...I never bet against Genma. No matter what happened, I

knew he'd always come out on top in the end."

"So...who do I bet on this time around?" Kaoih wondered.

"Let your heart tell you the answer to that," Sakura revealed, "It never fails

to know, and even if you're wrong, you don't mind following the path to wherever

it will lead you."

"Thanks, Mom," Kaoih smiled, "You're one of the best. I think I'll do just

that," and with that she stood up and all but hopped, skipped and jumped her

way to the side of Ryu.

"Hey," Kaoih said cheerfully, "Going off to train by yourself?"

"It's what I have to do," Ryu replied, "I must master this new system if I am to

redeem the Senken and bring honor to the name of the Kumon dojo."

"Well, don't let me stop you," the brown haired girl said brightly, "But I hope

you don't mind if I wish you luck. I know you'll probably be spending a lot of

time meditating, exercising and working up a sweat, but I just want you to know

that I'll be waiting back at camp for you with a hot lunch, and you'd better

show up or I'll come find you and make you eat it."

"I...say what?" Ryu blinked his eyes, looking as though he had been totally

blind-sided by the offer.

Ranma and Ryoga just blinked their eyes at this offer, though only one of the

two boys seemed to have a clue to what was clearly in the offing. Genma just

looked on and silently nodded in tacit approval.

Sakura heaved a motherly sigh and said, "How did I know she would do that? But

then again, she is her mother's daughter..."

Part Ninety-Nine.

Nabiki drew in a deep breath then solemnly pronounced the word, "HAJIME!"

At once Natsume and Kurumi attacked her, coming at their adopted sister from

two angles with weapons drawn, rug-beater and red-ribbon moving in concert to

provide a double-assault that the elder Tendo girl neither avoided nor

deflected, yet somehow she managed to be elsewhere than where the attack had

been driven.

No sooner had the pair discovered this startling fact but Nabiki was on them in

a wave of furious punches and kicks that instantly drove the two girls on the

defensive, a fact that was impressed with special force upon Natsume, who had

not expected Nabiki to excel this far in one short training mission. Even the

fleet-footed Kurumi had trouble matching her speed and soon found herself wound

up in her own ribbon as Nabiki moved to cut the odds in half, then set to work

on finishing the match against Natsume.

Off to the side, Akane reacted to the speed with which Nabiki finished off the

pair with upraised eyebrows, and in an astonished tone she said, "Wow! I never

thought Oneechan had gotten that good with her training."

"Goes to show what a couple of weeks with the Old Woman can do for you," Keiko

remarked, less impressed than Akane but still rather smugly pleased at seeing

the overly-proud Natsume humbled in such short order.

"Indeed," Kodachi agreed, "And yet for all our friend has proven once again her

fearsome mettle, still it seems to me as if she is less than pleased with

herself, as though she were expecting something better."

"It's not that, Guys," Ukyo remarked, "It's Ranma. She's just seen proof

positive that she's way lots faster and stronger than she used to be, which

means she has that much more of an edge over Ranchan."

"Saotome's going to have his work cut out for him if he thinks he can go up

against that," Perfume concluded rather sadly.

"Poor Nabiki," Akane shook her head sadly, "Still all tied up in knots about her

baka boyfriend. Still...even I'm starting to wonder if Ranma can improve so

much while training with his father."

"I am certain that Ranma will try and improve as best he is able," Kodachi

assured, "Still...it would be less than candid to say that the odds do not favor

him much in that direction."

"Maybe so," Perfume conceded, "But I'm hoping his old man will come through

after all with something spectacularly different, or at least spectacular enough

to help Saotome put in a good showing."

"You're rooting for him?" Keiko asked with raised eyebrow.

"Well..." Perfume was caught by the questioning stares of the other women before

responding, "He is the lynch-pin of our five-way engagement, and if Saotome

can't pull it off..."

"I follow you, Sugar," Ukyo nodded, "His self-esteem will probably take the

plunge into the basement if Ranchan can't at least hold his own in the coming

challenge."

"Whew," Nabiki stretched herself, "Good workout, guys. I needed that, honest."

"You don't need to feign with us, Oneechan," Natsume groaned as she fought to

recover from her pounding, "Pretending to be winded for our sakes is more

condescending than respectful."

"Sorry," Nabiki smiled sheepishly, "I didn't want you guys to feel it was too

easy for me, even if you did try a conventional attack. Next time try something

a little more complicated, and don't refrain from using your special attacks in

combination. I want a real workout, and I know you can give me one if you give

it some effort."

"I think I liked it better when she was buttering us up, Oneechan," Kurumi

murmured to her sister in low stage whisper.

"Open mouth, insert foot," Natsume agreed in the same low level, "And here I

thought that was a Saotome illness..."

"Nihao!" Shampoo called cheerfully as she entered the dojo, "Is you still

working out, Airen? Come have too-too-delicious lunch that we cook up in

kitchen. You beat up rug-girl and ribbon girl later."

"I guess I have been working them pretty ragged, haven't I?" Nabiki smiled, then

clapped her hands and said, "Break time guys! We can resume this in a couple of

hours, after we've digested our..."

"FOOD?" Kurumi brightened up, then like a shot she bolted from the dojo, all

but leaving skid marks in her passage. Shampoo's long purple locks flowed at a

nearly horizontal angle as the resident speed demon whizzed on by, leaving her

sister to cock an eyebrow and heave a small sigh of exasperation.

"Sometimes I fear Kurumi is more stomach than almost anything else," the dark

haired girl remarked, "Where she finds room to store it all is a wonder..."

"She's just a growing kid," Nabiki remarked, then turned to Natsume and said,

"Daddy told me you guys put on quite a show for the tournament masters, even

managed to punt the old goat over the skyline as the highlight of your

performance."

"Pure improvisation I assure you," Natsume smiled as she slung her trademark

weapon over her back, "It seems, however, that it would pale to insignificance

when compared to the truly inspiring improvements that you have made on your

training mission. Next time you simply must bring Kurumi and I along, if only

so you won't continue to have such an unfair advantage."

"Believe me, I'd love to have you two along," Nabiki assured her adopted sister,

"You could learn a lot from studying with the Old Woman."

"I believe you," Natsume smiled, "It's good to have you back, Sister...if

anything, it has been rather quiet around here without you."

"Oh?" Nabiki arched an eyebrow, "The Old Man stopped going on panty raids?

Mousse hasn't been coming around bugging you about Perfume's whereabouts?"

"Grandfather vanished shortly after Kurumi and I chased him off," Natsume

replied, "No doubt to sulk and plot some form of vengeance. As for

Mousse...well, Kurumi seems to have that lout well in hand. I am, however, more

than a little concerned about what you have told us regarding your iinazuke,

whom you say has gone on a training mission of his own with his father."

"Ah...yeah..." Nabiki lost her smile and sighed, "I'm kind of worried about that

too. It's been five days and no word about the baka...or of Ryoga too, but Pops

promised they'd be back at the end of two weeks, so I guess we'll just have to

wait and see if Ranma-kun learns anything useful."

"I am certain that he is thinking of you even now, Neechan," Natsume reassured

her, "And if not...well...we have the best trackers around in this dojo who will

be more than willing to hunt him down and drag him back here for an accounting."

"You've got that straight," Perfume affirmed, then noticed the odd look at Ukyo

and the others were giving her and said, "What?"

"Well," Keiko clapped her hands, "Don't know about the rest of you, but if

dinner's on the table, then what are we doing waiting around here? You want

Kurumi to pack it all down before we even get there?"

"Hey, that's right," Akane blinked her eyes, "If Kurumi gets started without

us..."

"We could be eating take-out," Kodachi finished for her.

"Can't have that," Nabiki smiled as Shampoo took her firmly by the hand and all

but dragged her from the dojo, "Hey, I'm coming already! You don't have to

dislocate my arm..."

"Airen talk too much," Shampoo chided as they made their way across the garden

to the extended dining table, which was still-miraculously enough-laden down

with enough food to satisfy everyone, though Kurumi sat at one end and salivated

like a hound chomping down on the bit, restrained only by the watchful eyes of

her tolerably indulgent adopted father.

Shampoo made certain she has seated Nabiki down before composing herself at her

wife's side with chopsticks ready and already plucking at a morsel with which to

feed her. The others politely pretended not to notice this fawning display of

wifely affection, (though there were more than a few hidden smiles about the

table) which had always fairly embarrassed Nabiki before growing accustomed to

the way the Amazon took delight in spoiling her proper. Kurumi was finally

given the nod from Soun to begin, and it was all the others could do to keep

their own plates well protected as food began to evaporate off the table, and

the meal was just getting started in earnest when a voice politely chimed out a

name.

"OOOhh Sooouunn-chan...?"

Nodoka, who appeared at the doorway with a freshly laden tray of food in both

hands, froze like a statue at the sound of that voice, and then she turned a

sharp look at the figure who appeared from around the back way, tall and leggy

with a magnificent figure shown off to great effect by the yellow dress that she

was (allegedly) wearing, chestnut brown hair falling in wavy tresses down her

back in a luxuriant shower. Soun froze with his chopsticks poised mid-way to

his mouth, and then his eyes turned to regard this radiant vision of loveliness,

which caused him to involuntarily swallow.

"Ah, there you are, Soun-chan," the vision bowed politely from the waist, "My

apologies...I had no idea that it was so close to noon. I did not mean to

disturb you when you and your family have been enjoying a communal meal

together..."

"Why, hello," said Kasumi as she appeared from around the motionless Nodoka,

"Hinako-Sensei, it has been a while, hasn't it?"

"About three days, actually," Natsume murmured sidelong to Nabiki, "Which for

her is indeed a record."

"I am so sorry to be a bother," Hinako said with a smile that was more fitting

for her underaged other self, "But I was hoping to have a parent-teacher

conference concerning the end of spring break and the beginning of the new

quarter two days from now. I was hoping to find everyone would be here and

ready to get started with their newest class assignments, which I have been

coming around to homes in order to distribute..."

"Homework assignments?" Akane asked with lifted eyebrows, "You want us to do

homework before we've even begin the final quarter of the semester?"

"Is that even legal?" Ukyo murmured with a questioning expression.

"Now, now," the teacher waved a chiding finger (which was not presently

clutching a coin-much to everyone's intense relief), "There's no time like the

present to waste when you could be getting a good education..."

"Why, how thoughtful you are," Kasumi complimented, "Indeed, a good education is

the most essential ingredient in forging a successful future. How lucky my

sisters are to have a teacher who takes such a personal interest in the welfare

of her students."

"Oh yeah," Kurumi noted faintly, "That's just swell..."

"Hinako-san," Soun turned to regard the stunning teacher, "I do appreciate that

you want what is best for my daughters..."

"I want what's best in everyone's interests," Hinako replied with a dazzling

smile, "Soun-chan."

The tray fell from Nodoka's hands, but Nabiki had been anticipating this and

sprang up from the table in time to catch it and avert a culinary tragedy. The

older woman hardly paid any notice as she frowned at Hinako, and had she been

carrying her trademark katana, there was little doubt in anyone's mind that

there would soon be violence.

"By the way," Hinako frowned ever-so-slightly as she seemed to just-then take

notice of the others seated around the table, "Where is Saotome-san and his son,

Ranma? Or Ryoga-kun for that matter?"

"They're...away on an extended training mission, Sensei," Nabiki replied as she

hastily exchanged empty plates for fully laden ones around the table, "Uncle

Genma wanted me to convey his regrets..."

"How irresponsible," Hinako's frown deepened, "And Saotome a recent father too.

Young men these days just have no sense of responsibility about them..."

Nabiki had started to straighten up with the tray now full of empty plates in

hand, but that comment caused her to halt in place, while Ukyo just glanced down

with a guilty expression and stared listlessly at the table.

"Anyway," Hinako brightened up once again as she handed a small pile of work

sheets to Soun, then held up a handful of letters, "There are the assignments

for the week, you should have no trouble filling them out, though I suppose I'll

have to give a work extension to Saotome and Hibiki. Oh...and I took the

liberty of examining your mailbox...here are some letters for you, addressed to

the head of the house...Oh...and Ms. Tendo...I believe this one is addressed

directly to you from China."

"From China?" Shampoo arched her lavender eyebrows.

"You're reading our mailbox now?" Akane bristled.

"Hooboy," Keiko murmured, "Talk about your ultimate teachers..."

"Makes me almost glad that I'm attending a different High School," Kodachi

softly agreed in the same low voice.

"Is strange," Shampoo said as she examined the return address, "Is from Shampoo

village...but handwriting no like that of Shampoo Mother and Father...maybe is

from Shampoo sisters?"

"Well, don't keep us in suspense, Cousin," Perfume urged, "Open it up and find

out who it is."

As Shampoo complied with the request, Nabiki came out of the kitchen once again

and said, "Sensei...will you be staying for lunch? We have more food if you are

hungry?"

Nodoka looked at her as though the younger girl had just gone crazy.

"Oh, I couldn't," Hinako grinned sheepishly, "I mean...I...food did you say?

Well...maybe just a little..."

"Neechan?" Natsume turned a questioning look in Nabiki's direction.

"Trust me," Nabiki smiled back sweetly, thinking that whatever charge Hinako

presently carried was bound to wear out in another few moments, restoring her to

her kid-form directly in front of their father, whom she hoped would be

sufficiently deterred by the sight from any potential romantic inclinations.

Room had just been made for Hinako, and the teacher had begun to set down and

enjoy some rice and pickles, when the doorbell rang from the front, surprising

everyone.

"Now who could that be?" Kasumi asked.

"Good question," Keiko mused, "Who do you guys know that uses a doorbell?"

Perfume noticed the number of looks turned her way and towards Shampoo, but at

the moment her cousin was too busy absorbed in reading a letter composed in

excellent Chinese handwriting. To the Enforcer's considerable surprise she took

note of the fact that her adopted cousin's hands were trembling.

Kasumi, naturally enough, was the one to answer the doorbell, and then she gave

a pleasant note of surprise as she said, "Daitokuji-san, Managi-san...this is

most unexpected..."

"May we come in?" Beatrice asked of the older girl, "I was hoping that Alison

and I might have a few words with Nabiki and the others.""

"By all means," Kasumi stepped back to allow the unusual pair access, accepting

a packaged gift that Beatrice handed her with a polite bow, as was proper custom

for visitors paying their respects to a household (a practice-sadly enough,

Kasumi tacitly acknowledged-more recognized in the breach than the

observance).

"Hey," Nabiki turned around as she saw the pair enter the dining room, Alison

strangely reticent though Beatrice had a more than slightly sheepish expression,

"Didn't expect to see you two so soon..."

"We need to talk," Alison spoke first before her partner, "Alone, okay?"

"Uh...sure," Nabiki blinked her eyes then pointed towards the stairs, "We can

chat in my office. But what..."

"Fine..." Alison growled and stormed off towards the stairs, pausing to add,

"You too, Beiko."

Beatrice just sighed, giving Nabiki an apologetic look, which-in light of

recent developments between these two-Nabiki did not find the least bit

surprising.

"Mmm...excellent pickles!" Hinako chimed brightly, looking almost like a kid

again, which was what the others around the table were privately hoping for,

Soun not included, "Can I have some more?"

"Yes, by all means," Soun said graciously, turning to gather up a fresh bowl of

steaming rice and thus not catching when Hinako turned to the party next to her-

-Natsume-and pressed a coin against her forehead.

"Hey...what...?" Natsume no more than blinked when she felt the heat of her

suppressed battle aura being drained into the teacher.

"Thank you," Hinako smiled, her voice once more strengthened as Natsume slumped

a bit against the table.

"Hey, no fair!" Kurumi protested.

"Eh?" Soun asked, having missed the critical transition.

All at once Shampoo exclaimed a word in epithet and backed away from the table,

staggering to her feet as she clutched at the sheets in her hand, her pallor as

pale as the proverbial ghost while her face was transfixed with a mixture of

mingled horror and outrage.

"Cousin?" Perfume asked, "What is wrong?"

Shampoo did not immediately answer...instead she turned and fled in the

direction of the kitchen.

"What was that all about?" Ukyo asked.

"I'll find out," Perfume replied, and immediately got up to follow her cousin.

Normally Perfume preferred to avoid the kitchen when it was in service, not

least because the assault to her senses caused by the presence of so many herbs

and spices were enormously confusing to her finely honed sense of smell, but

also because the place so often radiated such a happy aura that one could almost

think that they had walked onto the stage of Anime by Disney. The place was so

full of the warming radiance cast by Kasumi, Nodoka, Shampoo (and sometimes

Natsume), who so delighted in cooking up a meal for their family and loved ones

that every pinch of ingredients carried with it their love and devotion. Just

now, however, it was occupied by a Shampoo who was half-bent over the sink and

looking quite stricken. Perfume approached her tentatively and spoke her name

with a note of inquiry, but rather than verbally reply the Amazon passed the

letter to her hands, which consisted of several sheets of neatly handwritten

calligraphy in their native Mandarin.

Perfume accepted these pages and started reading, her eyes going very wide as

she got mid-way and gasped, "N-N-NO...it-it cannot be!"

"Is her handwriting, no?" Shampoo responded in a tight voice, "See name sign on

letter? Is same as before...but how this could happen?"

"'Love and affection...yours truly forever, and in good hopes of your happy

marriage..." Perfume choked on the final words, spoken in their native

language, the mong written there in a name that neither one of them had thought

to hear again spoken of any child of their own generation. Her eyes slowly rose

to exchange a questioning look with her tear-stained cousin, and then both sets

of eyes clouded with immediate anger, which in turn gave to pure outrage.

"GREAT-GRANDMOTHER!" they each cried, and far away-tending to a certain

restaurant-a deceptively old-looking "crone" looked up from her cooking and

wondered why she was feeling a chill wind all of a sudden...

"Think of the body as a House," Ryu faintly murmured as he stood in the middle

of a clearing, "A tree grows up from the Earth and draws nourishment from the

soil...wood is controlled by water and controls the Earth, and a house is made

from a harvested tree...and therefore a House is like a tree...and I am that

tree, which must needs defending..."

He tried to picture himself as a House with the Head forming the roof, the chest

forming the front hall with the arms standing in for the front gates, the legs

being the supports, his backside being the back door and his feet being the

Underflooring. A House drew its strength from its foundations, so the Earth was

its natural roots while the head lay exposed to the elements and the torso

became the area most in need of defending.

Then he thought of the Yamasenken and how it could be used to break down

barriers by the front way, a loud and brazenly aggressive approach to invading a

sanctuary. Then he contrasted each move of the Umisenken and took notice of how

the quieter moves could be used to sneak past one's guard and overcome the

Yamasenken. Against two such strong attacks a house appeared to be such a

relatively fragile thing, far too vulnerable to attack and thus hardly worth the

effort.

And yet the challenge for him was to devise a strategy of defense that could

effectively counter both Yamasenken and Umisenken attacks. Such a thing did not

seem possible at the onset, and yet...and yet some instinct told him it was

anything but impossible. After all, Houses and Castles had been fending off

would-be attackers for millennia...not perfectly, of course, but enough so that

the average burglar might be deterred at the onset...

"YO!" a pleasant voice called out to him, "You spacing out on me again? Can't

have that, not when I've packed you hearty lunch that should please you."

"Go away," Ryu complained, "I'm not hungry."

"Now is that any way for a boy to talk to a girl who's come all this way out

here just to find you?" Kaoih pouted, "Honestly, Ryu-chan, I could almost get

the impression that you don't ever want to see me..."

"It's not that," Ryu sighed, realizing by now that resistance was futile, "It's

just that I need to concentrate by myself. It has nothing to do with you, it's

all about the training..."

"You don't need to lecture me about training," the girl said brightly, "I work

out every day just as hard as you do in order to make my act perfect for the

paying customers, so don't think you can give me any lip about it."

Ryu forced himself to turn his head and actually look at the girl whom he was

addressing, but in doing so he quite forgot what he had been about to say.

Kaoih did not seem noticeably all that different from the last time he had seen

her, and yet...and yet there was something different about her...something

noticeably different, and just what that was he could not quite put his finger

on the matter.

She was long-legged and lean with a really nice figure, a pair of substantial

breasts poling out from beneath the tied-off shirt that she was wearing, which

exposed her bare midriff to full view, giving him a good look at her washboard-

smooth belly. A pair of earthen sandals protected her shapely feet from the

rough terrain, and he even paused to wonder why she painted her toenails such an

odd pink coloration. Looking up into her face was like casting his gaze on a

porcelain beauty that could have graced a Supermodel, and yet there was

something confoundingly rugged and devil-may-care in her expression. Her curly

brown hair fell about her face like the mane of a lion and highlighted a pair of

magnificent blue eyes that seemed unusually large and magnetic, and it was to

this face that he found the strangest kind of sensations sweeping over his body.

"What's the matter?" she asked, cocking her head to one side as she took notice

of his expression, "You look like you've never seen a girl before."

"Ah..." Ryu found himself looking away with an odd flush about his cheeks.

Instead he took notice of the picnic basket that she was carrying in one hand

and asked, "Is...that for me...?"

"Actually, I was hoping it would be for the both of us," Kaoih replied matter-

of-factly, "I'm hungry too after hiking up along that trail, so why don't you

take a moment and join me while I spread out a blanket and turn this into a real

lunch date."

"Lunch...date...?" Ryu found his eyebrows arching.

There seemed no graceful way of refusing her offer, so before too long Ryu found

himself sitting down on the blanket watching Kaoih lay out the plates and food

that she had brought him, along with some bottled water and some eating

utensils, as if she had planned on sharing the meal with him to begin with.

"So," she asked casually, "How is the training coming along?"

He sighed, "Not too well...I'm having trouble thinking up this new Wood style as

something that can counter the other Senken."

"So, what appears to be the hold up?" Kaoih asked as she uncapped a plastic

container of freshly cooked chow mien, which she spread over the rice that she

had already dished out onto their plates.

"It's just that...defense really isn't my strong point," Ryu admitted.

"Heh," the girl sniffed, "I could have told you that."

Ryu frowned in annoyance and asked, "Well...what would you do that's all that

different?"

"It isn't a matter of being different," Kaoih remarked, "It's just that you

probably are having trouble thinking of a defensive style because you've never

really had a roof of your own over your head. You live like a vagabond so you

think like a hermit...but most of us who have a home tend to think of it as a

refuge, a sanctuary in which to hide. This Senken you've been practicing is

supposed to batter it down and destroy that sanctuary, while the Umisenken goes

in quietly and takes what it needs without anyone being the wiser."

"Go on," Ryu urged, finding himself curious in spite of his normal aloofness.

"Well," Kaoih resumed, "The Senken you're working on is supposed to keep

burglars and attackers from getting what they want. You either have to keep the

bad guys on the other side of the door, or-if they should get in past your

guard-you want to neutralize them as an effective threat. In a way it's kind

of like rape prevention for a girl..."

"Rape prevention?" Ryu was surprised at the analogy.

"Sure," Kaoih replied, "Men are larger and stronger than women, so they have a

natural advantage when it comes to forcing their way. It used to be believed in

ancient societies that a girl who got raped did something to encourage the

rapist...that she-in effect-had it coming..."

"That's ridiculous!" Ryu scoffed.

"No argument there," Kaoih replied, "But it's human nature to blame the victim.

Some people do make themselves easy targets by doing the wrong sorts of things

to try and discourage or repel an attack, but it's not like they asked to be

victimized. Being a victim just means that you were probably careless and left

an opening that the bad guy exploits."

"I...never looked at it that way before," Ryu admitted.

"Don't be fooled by appearances," Kaoih assured him, "A rapist or burglar is

someone who knows what he's looking for, and when he finds it he goes in and

takes what he wants from his victim. Because most such guys have a tendency

towards violence, it used to be believed that a woman's only real defense was to

submit to the attacker and do whatever he wants. It was thought that angering

an assailant would just make things worse overall...but later studies debunked

this as nonsense. You're just as likely to get hurt doing nothing as you would

be if you fought back, and plenty of Rapists get deterred if he thinks that the

woman is too much trouble to go after. The same thing applies to robbers, they

tend to go after easy marks and ignore the tough guys."

"I've always believed that the best defense is a strong offensive," Ryu soberly

noted, trying not to think of the girl before him as a potential victim.

"That works just fine unless the guy you attack knows how to defend himself,"

Kaoih replied, "Me, I know lots of ways to hurt or disable an opponent, I

wouldn't be a pushover if some sicko thought he could have his jollies with cute

little old me, but it stands to reason that a guy like you could force himself

on me with very little effort."

"Hah?" Ryu blinked, "Me?"

"Sure thing, Tough guy," Kaoih remarked with a jaunty little smile, "With your

strength and skill you could have your way with me and I'd be powerless to stop

you. That's how many women feel about men...that they're all but defenseless in

the face of relentless male appetites, which is why many women these days

believe in some form of private protection they can use in a crisis, even if

it's nothing more complicated than a whistle."

Ryu's mind froze up and threatened to shut down at the simple thought of someone

trying to take advantage of Kaoih Sanosuke. The girl was desirable enough from

a physical aspect, but there was something about her personality too that seemed

only slightly less blustery and full of bravado than she pretended, which meant

that she knew full well that she had the potential of becoming a victim.

"I guess it really does all boil down to a question of what you value

more...your safety or your life," Kaoih remarked, "In a real fight I guess you

wouldn't have the luxury of holding back or fighting with less than your full

effort. The consequences of losing can be pretty horrific, so surrender really

is not a practical option."

Ryu blinked his eyes somewhat. That was the very thing he would have said in

response to questions about losing a regular street fight.

Kaoih thought a moment then said, "I guess maybe the real question about that

you're looking for is deciding what to defend and which parts of a house you

need to protect.

"Something to protect?" Ryu looked at her in a curious manner.

"Uh huh," she replied, "Maybe it's not even just a matter of protecting the

front gate, maybe letting a burglar get inside a house would actually make it

easier to catch him since a lot of robbers and rapists think they've won at that

point and tend to lower their guard, which makes them open to a counter-

attack..."

"That's it!" Ryu straightened up, "That's what I've been looking for! That's

the answer!"

"It is?" Kaoih turned and looked at the boy oddly.

To her utter amazement he reached out to her and cupped her face with both hands

as he cried in delight, "Kaoih-chan...you're a genius!"

"Ah...I am?" she asked, his touch sending a thrill throughout her body that was

wholly unexpected.

To her great disappointment, Ryu let her got and straightened up, "I've got to

put this into practice immediately. Forgive me...I'll eat lunch in another

moment, but...this has to be worked out right now! I think I'm really onto

something...I think I may know how to create the Morisenken!"

"Uh...really?" Kaoih asked, wondering if the handsome boy were genuinely

inspired, or just losing it altogether.

"I just have to think about what is important and what needs defending," Ryu

explained, moving off a little bit and squaring his stance as he concentrated,

"Now...if I imagine myself as the one being attacked by the Yamasenken..."

He began to launch himself into a series of katas, pausing to take note of what

he was doing as if to commit it to memory, he then moved on to the next set of

motions, and before too long he was moving his body in a way that drew Kaoih's

eye like a lodestone. The young man was poetry in motion, and seeing him enact

a new system that he was creating on the spot was inspirational. She found

herself smiling before too long and having to suppress the urge to outright

applaud his performance.

At some point Ryu paused and said, "I need to write this down...I've got to

remember each movement and refine in further with practice..."

"Would this help?" Kaoih asked as she reached into her picnic basket and pulled

out a pen and a writing tablet, "I sometimes like to draw when I'm alone, but if

you need a blank sheet of paper..."

Ryu accepted the tablet and studied it for a moment, flipping open the pages and

finding herself amazed at the sight of a series of hand drawn sketches, one of

which captured his own profile, which caused him to look up at her in utter

amazement.

"You drew this?" he asked in wonder.

"No," she made a face, "It drew itself. Obviously I'm employing some talented

fairies who do sketches for me freelance."

"Ah..." Ryu colored once again.

"Hey, I'm just kidding you, guy," Kaoih said brightly, "What's the matter, can't

take a joke? Do you think it might negatively impact on your tough-guy image?"

"Er...no...it's not that," Ryu forced himself to turn to a blank page, and then

accepted her pen as he began to make notes and do rude sketches much like the

illustrations of the Yama and Umisenken.

"That's not too bad," Kaoih remarked, "You've got steady hands and a good eye

for detail. Ever thought about being an artist yourself?"

"Ah...no," Ryu replied, "The idea...never came up before..."

"Well, you certainly do seem to be in the throes of genius," Kaoih said with

genuine amusement, then she straightened up and said, "You know something?

Watching you work out like that's been causing me to work up a real sweat.

There's a really nice lake just a little ways back on the trail that's almost

perfect for skinny-dipping. If you want to join me, I'll be cooling off there

after you finish your lunch."

"That's nice," Ryu said as he finished doing another sketch, only to have the

pen fall out of his hand as he gasped, "Skinny...dipping...?"

"What's the matter?" she teased, "You never went naked before in front of a

lady? Well, suit yourself...I'll be back in another few minutes, after I've

washed away all my cares and troubles."

Ryu sat motionless as the girl got to her feet and started to turn away, and

then he set the tablet to one side and calmly covered the cap to the pen, then

thought a moment about what had been implied in that understated offer...and

swallowed abruptly.

"I've got to be out of my mind..." he said dryly, then realized that a cold

shower was the thing he most needed just hanging around with a girl like this

Kaoih Sanosuke...

"Here we go, my boy," Happosai said brightly, "A construction yard where they're

building a house, just the place you need to be while you contemplate the

Kosenken."

"A construction yard?" Ryoga dubiously asked, wondering why he had let himself

be talked into accompanying the ancient Hentai. It was not exactly as if he

thought of the old man as his own great-great grandfather...

"Do you know of a better place to learn how a house is put together?" Happosai

remarked, "Mind you, the construction of any building may seem deceptively

simple, but if you do it the wrong way the foundation may be off or the roof may

leak or the plumbing won't work right, or any of a number of things that most

folks take for granted, so building a place where people can live is important.

Besides, it's a useful skill you might find to your advantage should you go live

in a place of your own with Akane."

"With...Akane?" Ryoga got a far-off expression as he tried to imagine what

building a house for her would be like...and his imagination faltered. In truth

he was better at knocking buildings down than he was at construction...

"Hey, you there!" a man with a hard-hat called out, "The kid with the bandana!"

"Uh...me sir?" Ryoga asked.

"Are you the new day laborer I was told to expect?" the older man looked

skeptically at him, "Kinda young for construction work..."

"He's the one I told you all about," Happosai spoke up, "May not look like much,

but he's got a strong back and a good set of arms. He's still a trainee,

though, so you'll have to talk him through the basics."

"I...what?" Ryoga looked from the burly foreman to the ancient Pervert and back

again.

"Good enough," the larger man clapped him on the shoulder, "Right this way, Son,

and I'll get you a hardhat. The pay's good, so I'll just need your signature on

the tax forms that your Grandfather filled out for me just yesterday. Just do

what you're told and stay out of trouble and I won't have to fire you like the

last ten jerks who conned their way onto my payroll..."

"Tax forms?" Ryoga blinked, now thoroughly confused as he went along with the

older man's suggestions.

Genma appeared beside Happosai as they watched Ryoga be led away into the

construction yard, and then the heavy set Saotome asked, "You got Ryoga an

honest job, Master? Isn't that...kind of against your normal policy...?"

"It's a drastic move, true," Happosai sagely nodded, "You know how I've always

felt about people who try earning a so-called 'honest' living, but this job's

just the thing to teach that young buck all he needs to know about putting a

house together. If he doesn't screw things up on the first day, by the end of

the week he'll have mastered the Kosenken."

"A brilliant if disturbing move, if I do say so myself," Genma nodded, "I'd

never have thought of it myself in a million years."

"That's why you're the Apprentice and I'm the Master," Happosai sagely

concluded, when the two men looked alert at the sound of a siren going off in

the distance, "Well...what do you know...sounds like that other training idea of

mine is about to get some practice."

"A fire, Master?" Genma asked, then suspicion caused him to add, "You didn't, by

any chance, set it off for this reason?"

"No," Happosai replied, "But now that you mention it, that would have been a

pretty good idea if I had. Guess we'll just have to chalk this one up to

fortuitous circumstances, but just as long as your boy acts in character, before

too long he'll have the Honosenken mastered."

"I certainly hope so," Genma allowed, "The rest, I suppose, is all up to

Ranma..."

The Four-Alarmer brought the Eighth district volunteer Firefighter detail

storming onto the scene in a bright red fire truck manned by eight volunteers,

only four of whom were experienced professionals. The building presently on

fire was an apartment complex situated on the edge of the Furinkan Financial

district, and eyewitness reports detailed that only half of the building

occupants had managed to escape from the fire, which was believed to have been

caused by a cigarette setting fire to somebody's mattress.

A fire like this was always a threat to public health and safety, but weather

conditions were just right that it could well have spread out to engulf other

buildings if not contained immediately. At present only a few floors were on

fire, but that was enough for the police to cordon off the whole area to keep

interested parties on the outskirts. The truck full of volunteers was permitted

to cross the police lines, but at present there seemed little hope of putting

the fire out before it could gut and destroy the entire building.

The leader of the Fire unit, a scar-faced Lieutenant named Hino Ikari, was an

all-business martinet who expected his men to work like a precision drill team,

and no sooner had they dismounted from their truck than he had them fast at work

unpacking the firehoses and dismounting the ladders. Like a military performing

a routine battle maneuver, they hooked up the hoses to a pair of fire hydrants

on opposite ends of the block and soon had two streams of water pouring in at a

broken upstairs window. The lieutenant then divided his group into two teams,

one to hold the fort on the outside of the building, the other hand to follow

him inside so that they could rescue any potential victims.

"Osaka, you're with Kamadaki," he pointed at the first two men, then directed

his attention to a third and said, "You...you're the new guy, aren't you?

You're with me...stay close and follow my lead, Rookie, and maybe you won't get

hurt, do you get me?"

"Sure thing, Lieutenant," said Ranma from beneath his fireproofed yellow cape

and hard hat, "I'm with you all the way."

"Good," the Lieutenant nodded, "Then let's move it, people!"

The four men scaled up the ladder and into a fifth story window that was

relatively clear of smoke and fire. The men put on their oxygen masks and

lowered their heat visors as they followed Ikari's lead down a narrow corridor,

pausing to knock on the doors to check and see if anyone was in their rooms. As

they went Ikari called back to his men and said, "Keep in mind...the worst part

of any fire is the smoke it generates...it's mainly composed of either Carbon

dioxide or monoxide, which can kill you if you breathe in enough of the stuff,

not to mention the Kami knows how many other chemicals that get burned in

passing. A fire always goes where there is air and fuel, so be careful and

don't make any mistakes that will give the fire an excuse to come at you."

"How can fire come back at you, sir?" Osaka asked, thus sparing the others from

having to voice the question.

"You'll see," Ikari responded, "Fire isn't just a process, it's like a living

thing, and it tries to get at you if you give it the slightest excuse or

opening. When fire breaks out in a confined space it rapidly eats up all the

oxygen, and it superheats the air so that it builds up pressure to go leaping to

the next available source that you give it. Like here..." he indicated a door

that he touched lightly with one hand, then withdrew it, "Feel that? It's hot

to the touch! That means there's fire on the other side there, and what it

wants to do is get out into this hallway where there's a fresh supply of air for

it to consume. If it can't get out, it will look for the next available outlet,

and when that happens you get what is called a backdraft. That's when

superheated plasma comes racing at you like a jet stream of pure heat, and it

can fry you where you're standing if you're not too careful."

"So, what do we do if someone's trapped on the other side of that door?" Ranma

asked.

"Not too likely in this case," the Lieutenant replied, "But if there is, then we

have to work our way around the fire, give it another outlet where it can't get

to us. Remember, Fire works its way upward, but it burns down so long as

there's fuel and air to sustain it, and even when there's not the embers of a

fire remain hot enough to spring back to life at the first sign of Oxygen,

so..."

"Sir!" called out Kamadaki from the back end of their line, "I can hear screams

on the other end of this door! It doesn't feel as hot as the other one, but..."

"DON'T TOUCH IT, YOU FOOL!" Ikari snapped back, "If the fire's eaten through

even part way..."

That was all the warning the man had before the door burst outward and a massive

coil of flame shot out at where he had been standing...and had he continued to

be standing there, the fireman named Kamadaki would have been fried to a charred

crisp by a thousand degree flame that struck to the wall directly behind where

he had been kneeling.

To the amazement of all present, Ranma had moved faster than the flames to

tackle the man and bear him down to the floor a good measure behind him. Fire

raced over the walls and ceiling as the flames burst had the same effect of a

flame thrower at close quarters, but Kamadaki and Ranma were completely unhurt

(save for a few bruises on the former's person, which were infinitely preferable

to the third degree burn he would have received).

"You idiot!" Ranma called into his ear, "Next time listen when somebody tells

you not to touch things!"

Kamadaki would have said something to the effect of, "I'm sorry," but Ranma did

not remain with him but instead scrabbled low to the floor like a crab and

peered in through the burst out doorframe at the scenes of inferno within the

room so mentioned.

"Lieutenant!" Ranma called out, "I see two kids! They're huddled under a table,

but they won't last more than a few more seconds!"

"Can you get to them?" the Lieutenant asked, "Is the way clear at all?"

"I think so," Ranma said, "I'm gonna try it!"

"Wait-!" Ikari tried to call the younger man back, but Ranma was again too

fast for belief as he vaulted into the room, moving low to the ground and

vaulting over a raging fire that was blocking the way. A fallen wooden beam was

about to strike the table and the two terrified children when a fast-moving blur

of yellow came racing up at them, and then they found themselves engulfed in

something rubbery as Ranma kept on going, using his forward momentum to carry

them through the blazing mass of flame that had been a window moments before,

releasing a Chi-burst ahead of himself that sucked the flames out of his path

and left him a clear space through which to tumble.

For a moment Ranma was out and clear of the flames, which were licking so close

to his heels that the edges of his clothing were catching fire. Ranma ignored

this as he calculated the distance to the ground, then saw the life-saver that

he needed in the form of the fire ladder, which was just close enough for him to

snag with a foot as he turned his fall into a high-wire act that would have

earned a gasp of approval from both Kaoih and her mother. Meanwhile he shifted

his makeshift rubber burden into a net as he found himself suddenly inverted

upside down with only three stories between him and the asphalt. From there it

was simplicity itself to effect a tumble to the top of the firetruck, and with

out so much as bruises on his charges he let them down to the soft bedding

formed of as-yet unused fire hoses.

"Here, take them!" he called out to a pair of astonished paramedics, lowering

the young girl and her little brother into their waiting care, and only then

taking the time to beat out the flames covering his body. Then he whipped his

yellow jacket back over himself and scaled up the fireladder, selecting a route

through which it would be safe enough for him to reenter the building.

The lieutenant and the rest of their team was just then trying to sort out what

had happened of their junior colleague when Ranma came scrabbling along the

floor ahead of them, calling out, "This way, Lieutenant! I found a clear route

out of here!"

"Where the hell did you...?" Ikari began to reprimand the younger man, then

thought better of it, "Never mind...this place is turning into an inferno!

We've got to get down to the next level, so no more grandstanding stunts like

that, you got me, Rookie?"

"Sure thing," Ranma said as he reversed directions and led the way to the as-

yet-undamaged stairway, the other three men making haste to escape from the

blaze that was turning the hallway into a convection oven as the fire raced in

all directions.

Training had only just begun, and Ranma was determined to learn everything that

he could from the fire and the experienced fireman who regarded him as a mere

"Rookie." So far the behavior of the flames was unlike anything he would have

previously imagined, and it did indeed behave like a thing alive, an element of

nature taking glee in the destruction of man-made things that dared to stand

within its path. He had even seen the fire seemingly turn to look at him as

though recognizing him as a challenger to its domain. This was one challenge

Ranma intended to see through to the very end, and once he had mastered the

flames he would be well on his way to finally understanding how fire could be

related to a House, and how it could be either imitated or defeated, which would

be the clue that he would need in order to master the Honosenken.

And thus would he be one step closer to mastering the Senken itself, which

appeared to be the key to at last coming near to Nabiki's level as a fighter.

He would challenge any odds, risk anything to that end, and eventually triumph

as befit the heir to the Saotome Anything Goes Ryu. In the meantime there were

lives at stake and more innocents in need of being rescued, and he would do his

part to carry his weight on the team as he prepared for the larger battle to

come, the battle to prove himself a man, and a man worthy of being Nabiki's

iinazuke...

Continued.

Comments/Criticisms/Backdrafts and First Copies: shadowmane

The race is on to see who will become the ultimate Master of the Senken, but as

Ranma and his "associates" train hard, are there storm clouds forming back on

the home front as Shampoo and Perfume confront their great-grandmother over a

recent revelation? And what is the secret that has Alison and Beatrice coming

to Nabiki for assistance? To learn the answer to this and more, stay tuned for:

"Back drafts and Cancelled Checks," or "Fire in the Whole!" Be there!

X

If you wish to check out my other works, Please check out my Fanfiction

webpage at: .

All related chapters of this series can be found there along with my

other works.


	39. Chapter 39

Dnabiki100

Nabiki 1/2

"A Very Scary Thought!"

by

Jim Robert Bader

(Inspired by the works of Rumiko Takahashi & Others)

Part One Hundred.

"All right then," Nabiki said, "What did you two want to talk about in front of

me but not in front of the others?"

"Ah yes...where to begin?" Beatrice replied as she exchanged looks with Alison,

who glared back indifferently at her, which made the silver haired girl sigh and

lower her eyes towards her feet, "We come before you seeking the advice of a

friend who is-in some measure-privy to a recent development in our

relationship, and perhaps to have you do a service for us that we can ask of no

one other."

"Go on," Nabiki urged, already having some idea of the general subject for

discussion.

"As you no doubt overheard yesterday in the bath house," Beatrice began once

again, "Alison is pregnant...and I am-at least biologically speaking-the

instrument of her condition."

"You got your girlfriend pregnant," Nabiki said dryly, "And you want to talk to

me because I have some prior experience in that department?"

"No," Alison growled, "I think you did enough just putting the idea in Beiko's

head in the first place."

"Now Aiko," Beatrice gently chided, "That is hardly fair. The idea for this was

actually inspired by our mutual experience with the Leptons, though quite

frankly the original target of my speculation at that time was our mutual love-

interest, Celeste..."

"I thought we agreed we weren't going to mention Ceiko," Alison's eyes narrowed

even more unpleasantly than before.

"Ah...well...it is highly unavoidable," Beatrice replied, "Given that she was

the cause for us getting together in the first place..."

"Go on," Alison growled, "Tell her the rest of what you told me, Beiko."

Nabiki was not certain that she liked what she was hearing in the tone of her

oddly mismatched friends. Beatrice was sounding awkward, almost hesitant in her

speech, lacking the normal calm and confident manner that denoted the resident

genius's cool way of evaluating even the most complex of situations. Alison was

sounding much more hostile than usual, though Nabiki was unable to determine if

it was anger or genuine resentment that was causing her to scowl at her nominal

roommate and partner in misadventure. Either way, she sensed serious trouble in

the offing. She waited for Beatrice to speak again, hoping that this would not

signify an imminent break up of the star-crossed romance between her and the

redhead.

"Very well," Beatrice sighed, "To get down to the point. As you by now know,

Alison and I used to be enemies and rivals for the affections of a third girl,

and later on-very briefly-towards a young man who held our attention during

a particularly difficult time in our lives when we were completing our sophomore

year at Graviton High School, our old alma mater. During a very unpleasant

exchange between ourselves and the Japanese Self-Defense Forces in the middle of

a wedding, the Lepton fleet, commanded by their Queen Regina, arrived on the

scene and took Celeste into their custody, claiming her as their long-lost

Princess, whom they needed due to a very delicate matter concerning the royal

line of succession."

Nabiki nodded that they should continue, having already heard bits of this story

before on prior occasions.

"The loss of our mutual friend...hit both of us rather hard, I'm afraid,"

Beatrice resumed, "And it forced Aiko and myself into a tentative truce so that

we could pool our efforts in a misguided attempt at winning her back. This

involved a three-month excursion to the stars where we started out with high

hopes and borrowed Lepton spaceship technology...and wound up marooned together

on a desert-like world after many wrong turns and false leads in our travels.

For a brief time we earned a rudimentary living as a team of monster hunters,

harvesting gargantuan brutes the likes of which are unknown on the Earth with

the singular exception of the hidden government preserve known as Monster

Island. Then fate played a wicked trick on both of us as Ceiko was kidnapped by

a gang of Interplanetary Space Mercenaries in the employment of a being known to

us as Gail...and in the course of getting involved in these matters...I was

struck by Gail with a force blast that all but pulverized my heart. I

effectively died that day, and I would have stayed dead but for the intercession

of an Alien patrolman by the name of Maruten."

"That guy," Alison growled, "He conned me into agreeing to help him track down

Gail in exchange for Beiko's life, so the little guy did something that revived

her...injected her with that Nanotech-whatever that's currently swimming around

inside her, making Beiko almost as tough to kill as me."

"That's a bit of an exaggeration, Aiko," Beatrice replied, "But it's true that I

was restored to life by the miracle of a science that is light years ahead of

our own, and it is to the Nanite colony that symbiotically is linked with my

bloodstream that I owe my current existence. As such I have developed something

of a rapport with the Queen Nanite-she who is mother to the colony-and can

communicate with her, after a fashion."

"Wish I could say I know what that's like," Nabiki shrugged, "But in a way I'm

glad I can't. Sharing the same body with an alien race of robotic microbes must

be...pretty weird even by my jaded standards."

"Weird coming from a girl who turns into a guy?" Alison sniffed, "Yeah, I guess

that figures."

"It was odd for me at first, but I have...more or less adjusted," Beatrice

remarked with a mild shrug of her shoulders, "I've had them as a part of me for

several months now, and I've come to value the relationship that I have forged

with their Queen, who is the mind and heart of my symbiotes. They come in

rather handy on occasion, such as when I face possible injury or even death

through some act of violence. So long as the queen remains intact, I will be

effectively immortal, up to and including some very traumatic forms of death

with which I would much rather not be faced. For example, decapitation or

burning..."

"Get on with it," Alison said in a rather testy voice.

"Ah yes...well...to the point then," Beatrice once again sighed, "The real

reason why I impregnated my Aiko. You see...not too long ago the Queen informed

me that she was reaching a crucial part of her development cycle and needed to

reproduce in order to share her stored accumulated knowledge of human

physiology, as per her original programming. Nanites reproduce asexually, you

see, which is rather efficient but much less fun than the way we normally do it,

though I suppose it all comes down to how you..."

"Beiko," Alison rumbled dangerously.

"Ah...ahem," Beatrice said sheepishly, "Anyway, as I was saying, the Queen was

forced by her own programming to generate a new Queen, in effect a daughter who

had all of the same capacities as herself, which led to something of a major

dilemma since there cannot be two queens occupying the same body. In the normal

course of affairs these Queens would go up against one another to determine

which was the more viable Symbiote for their host...meaning myself, of

course...only my Queen did not want to compete against her own daughter, having

learned from human experience the concept of 'Motherhood,' which denotes a

protective interest in the development of one's own progeny. Instead she wanted

to have me give the new Queen a fresh host in whom she could gestate, and at

first I considered our friend Perfume, who could stand to benefit from longer-

lasting Nanites than the temporary ones that I previously injected into her

body."

"I assume you offered this to Perfume?" Nabiki asked with raised eyebrows.

"I most certainly did," Beatrice replied, "But was reluctantly refused..."

"Say what?" Nabiki blinked her eyes.

"Your friend and fellow iinazuke explained to me that she was grateful for the

service I had done for her in helping to save her life," Beatrice replied, "But

she also voiced the concern that a more permanent resolution to her hyper-

sensitivity problem might negatively impact upon her abilities as a Sentinel.

All of her life she has been susceptible to even the slightest measure of pain,

but thanks to the repairs worked on her nervous system her pain threshold has

been raised considerably...not all the way to what we would consider normal, but

enough that she can now withstand more damage than before the inclusion of those

Nanites. Perfume seems to feel that her training and experience in adapting to

a low pain threshold makes her the quality of fighter that she is, but that if

she lost her vulnerability in that area it might throw her off of her regimen

and force her to have to completely retrain to a different style of fighting..."

"Oh, for the love of the Kami..." Nabiki growled, "I should have talked some

sense into that girl! She could have at least confided in Ukyo, let alone told

me, that you were giving her this option."

"Agreed," Beatrice replied, "But as such I was-reluctantly I might add-

compelled to respect her wishes in this matter...which is where I then

considered Aiko...but the Queen informed me that her unusual physiology might

not be as compatible as my own to successfully hosting a queen. That was when I

hit upon the third most logical option..."

"Logical," Alison scoffed, "You gave Perfume the right to refuse but you didn't

think to offer the same thing to me?"

"I did consider that," Beatrice said reluctantly, "But...you might have

refused...and time was critical. The new Queen could not last more than a few

days inside my body, and so...I took preemptive action and used the excuse of

one of our lovemaking sessions to briefly cut open a finger, which I then

inserted into you, and by this means transferred the loci of my own genetic

material, which the new Queen then used to fertilize one of your ova, which was

itself already in motion in one of your fallopian tubes. The Queen merged with

the now-fertilized egg and rode with it to its eventual implantation in the wall

of your uterus a few days later, and yesterday it conveyed to me through

chemical transmission that it had succeeded in its objective of modifying the

host egg so that it will grow to be the perfect new host...our daughter in every

sense, but also that of the Queen Mother. Our child will have the best that is

in both of us and grow to be even stronger and healthier than you..."

"I don't care if you had the best of intentions for doing this, Bei!" Alison

suddenly barked out, "YOU HAD NO RIGHT MAKING THIS DECISIONS FOR ME WITHOUT EVEN

OBTAINING MY CONSENT! Do you have any idea how violated that makes me feel? I

trusted you-the Gods only know why! I knew you were drawing me in and conning

me into accepting you into my life...but THIS..."

"I know," Beatrice bowed her head, "It was wrong of me, and for that I am sorry.

I should have trusted you more with the full details in advance, but...I didn't

think you would agree without more preparation. I fully accept that I have

betrayed you, Aiko, and I know that by every right you should have reason to

condemn me..."

"Get on with what we're here for," Alison growled, slumping to the floor as she

folded her legs up in front of her and glared off into the distance.

Beatrice sighed, "Very well...the reason why we have come to you here and now

with our personal problem..."

"OUR problem?" Alison asked archly.

"Like it or not, I am responsible for everything that has happened," Beatrice

replied sadly, "I talked you into coming with me on that misguided quest to find

Celeste...I was there with you when she told us that she was staying with her

people...that it was important for her to accept her role as their Princess, and

that she felt glad to be doing something so meaningful with her life. I know

how much those words hurt you, Alison...you were even closer to her than

I...just as I know that I have made many presumptions on you during our time

together...and this present case is but the latest and most extreme

imposition..."

"You're not getting out of this one by sweet talking me, Beiko," Alison growled,

"You're damned right that you're responsible, which is why you're going to do

everything in your power to make things right, understand me?"

"I...yes..." the genius replied sadly.

"Make things right?" Nabiki asked, looking from one girl to the other, "Does

that mean you plan on terminating the pregnancy?"

"No," Alison answered for her, very clear and precise, "It means I'm keeping our

baby."

Nabiki blinked her eyes, "Excuse me? Did I hear that right?"

"You did," Alison replied, then heaved a sigh that seemed to relieve a good deal

of her pent-up anger, "I was furious with Beiko...at first...but...well...I can

understand what she was going through when she made this decision for the both

of us. It isn't fair to totally slough the blame off onto her...even if she is

a conniving, two-faced back-stabbing little weasel..."

"Ouch," Beatrice remarked with a pained expression.

"The fact remains..." Alison sighed again, "That she's right...I would have said

no before this happened...but now that I have the kid...that it's growing inside

me...it's a life, a new life...something that's a part of me and a part of

Beiko...something I never thought we could have being two girls who seem pretty

much stuck with each other, though what I ever did to deserve being partnered

with a certifiable loon like you..."

"Karma," Beatrice shrugged, "It must have been in a previous life, and it

probably was a doozy."

"Yeah, that's what I figured," Alison groused before she continued, "All of my

life, ever since I was a little girl, I've dreamed of doing normal girl-stuff,

like dating and wearing pretty dresses and flirting with the guys...but that's

the one thing I just never can seem to do right, it's anything 'normal.' I'm a

Meta-human...I've got the blood of Gods and Aliens in my genes, I can dead lift

a whole building, outrace a bullet train, leap a whole football field in a

single bound, and if I don't watch my strength around normal people...well...it

ain't pretty."

"That does seem to impose considerable limits for a normal physical

relationship," Nabiki sagely noted.

"Tell me about it," Alison sniffed, "Dad tells me that he used to have that

problem in reverse with his first wife, who passed away long before my time. He

said that he mastered the reflex of toning down his power whenever he was around

normal humans, but it took him an entire lifetime to learn that trick, and in

the heat of real passion...well...he could sort-of lose it accidentally. That's

why he built a special bed that had an artificial red-sun lamp overhead that

could tone down his superpowers...well...anyway, that's how I wound up having an

older brother named Clark Junior and a sister named Martha. Mom had pretty much

the same problem on her side, only she had this divine grant that allowed her to

lose a portion of her super-strength whenever she was bound by a man...so you

can guess she and her first husband did a great deal of bondage before they

produced my big sister, Lyta. When my folks had me, however, they didn't need

to hold anything back. They were perfect for each other, so I was born the

normal way...or as normal as you can get when your parents create a sonic boom

every time they climax..."

"Er...right," Nabiki decided that she DID NOT want to press for too many

details.

"Well...the point is," Alison continued, holding up both of her arms, "I wear

these arm-bracers because my normal strength threshold is about ten thousand

times greater than that of a normal person. With them on I have some control

over my strength, but even so it's a risk just shaking hands with some people.

And there are times when having divine blood can be such a pain, like when I get

really, really angry and sparks start to fly around me, and I start to remind

people of my great-grandpa..."

"Indeed," Beatrice mused, "The Lord of Olympus very much shines through at such

times as this," she smiled with affection that was touched with a bit of

sadness.

"So, you think if you made out with a normal guy you'd probably...uh..." Nabiki

froze in framing her next thought, having a very real understanding of the

implications that would be experienced in her male form, which prompted her to

cross her legs reflexively and go, "Eeeeeuuuuuwww..."

"Yeah...that's it in a nutshell," Alison leaned back on her hands and stretched

her legs out on the floor, "So unless I meet up with some guy who's part demi-

god, or a superhero, or whatever, it's not too likely that I'll ever wind up a

mother...at least in the normal sense."

"So...you're keeping the baby because you think...it might be your only chance?"

Nabiki concluded for her.

"You tell me," Alison replied, "I've been over this already with Beiko...she

said much the same thing about why she wanted to get me preggers. Understand,

what you did was tantamount to rape, Beiko, but that's all water over the dam

now. I've got a new life growing inside me and I might as well accept it. I'd

rather have waited a few years before going through with this...and in another

few years I might even have thought of it myself, but why cry over spilled milk?

Besides...this means YOU OWE ME, big time."

"I know," Beatrice replied, "And I will do anything that you will ask of me if

it means making it up to you, Alison. I had no right to do what I did without

asking, but I accept the responsibility that comes from being a co-parent..."

"Damned right you will," Alison turned back to Nabiki, "So...here's the problem.

Bei says it may take a while before we'll know if this damned experiment will

pan out or not...but she also tells me that I don't have to wait a full nine

months before I have the baby. Either I can have the Queen Bee-Junior in me

hold off and keep the kid dormant for a few months, or until after I graduate

the full semester...or I can have things speed up a bit so that it takes only

four months to have the kid. That means I should give birth sometime during the

summer, when class is out, which should hide some of the embarrassment, know

what I mean?"

"But still," Nabiki said, "You'll be an unmarried mother with a child born out

of wedlock...oh..." her eyes got round as she finally comprehended the matter.

"Exactly," Alison said, "So...I need you to do for me what you did for

Shampoo...only not have me be your wife, or anything like that. I need for you

to manufacture a husband."

"Manufacture?" Nabiki blinked, "I thought Beatrice was the inventor here."

"She means create a fictional husband for her who will exist solely on paper,"

Beatrice replied, "With backdated files documenting the existence of a brother

of mine who will be merely a figment of our creation."

"A brother?" Nabiki said, "But I thought you were an only child..."

"In a manner of speaking," Beatrice affirmed, "We'll call him Byron Daitokuji,

and Alison will take on his last name. I've already worked out the

specifications that will be needed...so think of him as a masculine version of

me, tall, good looking, classical Eurasian features, an excellent academic

record, a couple of years older than myself with an impeccable reputation as a

young executive working for my father...so highly trusted that he is often away

representing Daitokuji Industries in foreign nations, which conveniently

explains why he is almost never in the picture..."

"In other words a surrogate father," Nabiki said, "A fictionalized male you,

while you'll be the concerned sister-in-law with familial rights only slightly

less than that of a husband."

"You catch on quick," Beatrice smiled, "Which is something else I've always

liked about you..."

"But if you really want to pose as a husband," Nabiki said, somewhat

reluctantly, "There is...one possibility you could at least potentially

consider..."

"You mean Jusenkyo?" Beatrice mused, "Well...that IS at least one rather unusual

possibility that I..."

"DON'T EVEN GO THERE," Alison said frostily with a glare.

"Ah...quite," Beatrice smiled sheepishly, "Well, as you say, that would be at

least one possibility..."

"Ahem," Alison rumbled dangerously, "In case you've forgotten, I haven't yet

forgiven you, Bei, but since we both got into this mess because I've somehow

lost my mind and can't seem to get along without you, I suppose I'm going to

eventually just have to get over it. I still intend to collect in spades even

after our kid starts calling you Poppa..."

"You can have whatever is mine that you ask for, Alison," Beatrice replied, "And

if my actions have offended you, then I will make restitution and have the next

baby on me...then you can be the one who plays the role of the proud poppa."

"The next kid?" Alison blinked, "Hey! Who said anything about us having another

one?"

"It is an option that I failed to consider the first time around," Beatrice

replied, "After all, a child with your genes will naturally be a lot stronger

than an ordinary baby, and I have a somewhat more...delicate constitution...and

besides, my Nanites might treat an embryo as a foreign body without sufficient

preparations. However...if the child you bear should prove to be viable, the

Queen Mother will then adapt my body to make certain allowances for a second

baby. Of course no such action will be undertaken without your consent. I give

you my word that I will only go through with this if I have your approval."

Alison blinked her eyes as she thought that one over, and then she stared off

into space and said, "Oh."

"Well..." Nabiki exhaled a breath that she had not even been aware of holding to

that moment, "I guess I can do whatever is in my power to give you the

protections you'll need, if I get a hold of some of my government contacts who

could help arrange things to give you legal cover."

"Thanks," Alison sighed, "That means a lot to me. Now all I gotta do is figure

out some way of telling my parents. You don't mind me saying so, Bei, you're

gonna be in a lot more trouble when my Dad finds out what you did."

"Oh, I rather imagine that I'll be facing the music, one way or the other,"

Beatrice rolled her eyes towards the ceiling, "After all, all you did was kick

me out of bed after giving me a good spanking. I rather imagine it will be even

more stressful with your mother...you tell me that she's had some rather

unpleasant experiences in the past with learning about her own mother's record

of deceptions."

"You got that right," Alison sniffed, "Mom grew up believing a real cabbage

patch fairy tale about her being created from clay when Grandma knew damned well

that she'd had a fling with Grandpa during the Bronze age, and that's not

including all the times Grandma messed with my Mother's memories in an effort to

get her to stay with her on Paradise Island. I guess when compared to that

you've got a long ways to go as a master manipulator, Bei."

"A dubious honor that I shall endeavor to avoid earning in the future," Beatrice

assured her.

"Why make promises you can't keep?" Alison shrugged, "I know you'll do whatever

you think is necessary in the future, Bei, and...I hate to say it...but your

judgement's usually better than mine."

"So...do I take it you two crazy kids plan on staying together for now?" Nabiki

asked.

"That is up to Alison," Beatrice replied, "But you already know my answer."

"Hey, just as long as you pay your half of the rent," Alison sniffed, "Not to

mention my half, guess I've got nowhere else to go, unless I want to move back

in with my parents. Besides...you still owe me."

Beatrice sighed, "So you will no doubt continue to remind me..."

"All right then," Nabiki smiled, "Anything else I can do for you guys?"

"There is...one thing more," Beatrice turned to look at her redheaded companion.

"We were wondering..." Alison hesitated, then continued, "Would you mind very

much if we made you my kid's Godfather?"

"Er...Godmother," Nabiki corrected, then smiled, "Sure...I'd be honored...just

one thing, though..."

"Oh?" Beatrice asked, "And what is that?"

"Don't ask me to hold hands with you when you go into labor," she told a

surprised Alison.

The redhead thought a moment over that, then recalled the experience with

Shampoo on the way to the hospital, to which she responded, "Oh."

There was a gentle knocking on the door, to which Nabiki called out, "Come in."

"Airen?" Shampoo appeared at the doorframe, "Is you done with Silver-hair and

strong girl?"

"Well...more or less," Nabiki glanced at her two guests before returning

attention to her wife, "What can I do for you, Honey?"

To Nabiki's considerable surprise, both she and Perfume entered the room

together, the latter giving an apologetic nod towards Beatrice and Alison before

saying, "We need to talk...it's about our great grandmother."

"Oh?" Nabiki asked, sensing something monumentally significant was about to be

revealed by her Significant Others...

Five Days Later...

"Hey Ryoga, you got a minute?"

"Um...sure," Ryoga turned to see his boss approaching him, "What about, Sir?"

"I understand today is your last day with us," the Supervisor began, "You signed

on for a week, and the week is up today..."

"That's right," Ryoga nodded, "I want to thank you for giving me this

chance...I've learned a lot from your people, and it's been a real privilege

working here..."

"It's been a real experience for me too," the Supervisor snorted, "When you

first got here I thought you were one of the worst screw-ups I'd ever seen. You

acted like you'd never been on a building project before, and you kept messing

up in ways that almost made my hair fall out. You kept running into things,

hitting yourself with tools, wandering off to the wrong end of the buildings..."

"Uh...ah..." Ryoga rubbed the back of his head, feeling very foolish, "I guess I

did kind of start off on the wrong foot..."

"I'll say you did," the Supervisor replied, "I thought I was gonna have to fire

your ass out of here...I came damned near to doing it in the first five

minutes."

"Oh?" Ryoga said, "Um...would you mind if I ask why you didn't?"

"Because I saw something in you," the Supervisor said, "Real integrity and

determination, not to mention you actually seemed to be learning from your

mistakes as you went along, and now you're the best man on my whole construction

team. I can't believe how fast you shaped up and learned your trade, and now it

almost seems like there are ten of you doing the job together. I give you an

assignment, turn my back for a minute, and it's already completed. You haven't

even rewired the house to the plumbing since that first day when you set things

up so you'd have to use the sprinkler system to turn on the TV remote..."

"Um...about that..." Ryoga winced, "I have...a little trouble reading the

directions..."

"Doesn't matter to me if you're totally illiterate, Son," the Supervisor

insisted, "I need men who can take verbal instructions and learn from them by

heart, which is why I want to offer you an extension to stay on this team for

our next building project. Besides, I've got a son who's dyslexic, so I can

sympathize with what you're going through. Just as long as you're a team

player, then I want you on my team for the next one."

"Uh-really?" Ryoga blinked, "You mean...you're offering me a full time job?"

"Think it over and get back to me when you're ready, Son," the Supervisor said

as he handed Ryoga an envelope, "Here's your pay for the week, you've more than

earned it."

The man clapped Ryoga on the shoulder and went off to chew out some other

unsuspecting employee, leaving Ryoga to blink several times before he took

notice of Genma and Happosai, who had silently come along up beside him.

"It's disgusting, the state of young people these days," the little man groused,

"Hard work and integrity...in my day we had more respect for traditional values

like...partying and women! So, my boy, what are you going to do with your hard

earned currency?"

"I don't know," Ryoga replied, "I've never had a paycheck before...I don't even

know how to cash it..."

"Why not keep it and show it to Akane when we go back home, Son?" Genma asked,

earning an incredulous look from his perverted old master, "She'll be mighty

impressed to learn that you've become a man of means on your own right."

"Hey, whose side are you on?" Happosai demanded.

"Really?" Ryoga blinked, staring at the envelope in his hand before a foolish

smile crept over his lips, "Gosh...won't Akane be impressed? I mean...it

probably wouldn't look like any big deal to someone like Kodachi...but it's

money in my hands..."

The young man started to wander off-albeit in the wrong way from camp-

leaving Happosai to shake his head in disbelief and growl, "Now what did you put

a damned fool notion like that in his head for? We could have put that money to

good use..."

"Let him have it this time, Master," Genma urged, "My son deserves a little

happiness, and sooner or later he's going to have to learn how to be a

breadwinner when he marries his iinazuke."

"That's the trouble with your two boys," Happosai growled, "Neither he nor Ranma

have a single dishonest bone in their bodies...makes me wonder if you really are

their father."

"Miracles do happen, Master," Genma again hid his smile as he turned to guide

Ranma in the right direction, hoping that Ranma was faring as well after five

days of intensive fireman training...

"Twenty yen for your thoughts, Saotome."

"Oh...hi," Ranma acknowledged without turning around, "If you're looking for

Ryu..."

"I know where to find him," Kaoih replied with a faint smile, "I always do."

"Yeah...I figured as much," Ranma half-turned to regard the brown haired girl,

"You two have gotten pretty close lately, huh? So...just how close are you?"

"Now that's none of your business," Kaoih smiled more coyly, "And a gentleman

shouldn't ask a question like that of a lady."

"Maybe I'm not really a gentleman," Ranma countered, "Ever think of that?"

"Oh, you're a gentleman all right," Kaoih remarked with a nod of her head, "You

may act coarse and crude at times, but you've got a real gentle way about you,

when you're of a mind to show it to others."

"Then maybe I'm just asking because I'm curious," Ranma said as he turned to

stare back at the ravine before him, the scenery stretching out on pristine

wilderness beauty for as far as the eye could see, "After all, ain't that what

a...well...you know?"

"A brother asks of his sister?" Kaoih finished for him, "I kind of thought by

now you'd figured it out. Well...I hope you don't mind me saying this...little

Brother...but I'm a big enough girl to make my own mind up about such

things...and I'm older than you by a few months, so maybe I should be asking you

about how things are going between you and Nabiki."

"Touché," Ranma conceded, "All right then, so maybe I should ask what you're

doing here...Sis."

"Now can't a sister be honestly worried about what her little brother is doing

sitting by himself when I know he'd much rather be spending time with his

iinazuke?" Kaoih asked as she sat down beside him, "Is the scenery here so much

better than in Nerima?"

"Actually, it's not that," Ranma replied, "I was...just thinking about something

that happened today...and I kind of want to be alone...no offense to you,

Oneechan.""

"Well now, how that sounds secretive," Kaoih smiled, reaching into some hidden

fold of her blouse to pull out a tarot card, then moved her fingers to reveal

three others in the same hand, "Why don't we let the cards decide what thoughts

are in your mind, little Brother."

"That stuff you do you learned from your mother?" Ranma asked.

"Hey, never knock the Tarot," Kaoih smiled as she placed the cards on the ground

before them, then blinked her eyes as she said, "That's odd...I wasn't expecting

this particular combination..."

"What's up?" Ranma asked, "Any problems?"

"That all depends," Kaoih held up one of the cards, "This is the Magician

card...the second of the Major Arcana in the Tarot deck, after the Fool Card,

which is what I took you for at the beginning of this training mission."

"Gee, thanks a lot," Ranma sniffed.

"I'm serious," Kaoih persisted, "The Fool and the Magician are two sides of the

same coin. In the first case you have the ordinary man stumbling along through

life, blithely unaware of his surroundings or the potential that is within him.

A hound-representing his lower nature-is nipping at his heels and trying to

prevent him from moving forwards, while a precipice-much like this-stands right

before him. The Magician, on the other hand, has taken the time to examine the

pack that the fool carries over one shoulder, a pack that contains the elements

of the Universe, the unlocked potential within the novice or initiate. The

Magician is aware that he is a student of the higher mysteries, while the fool

remains unaware and is subject to the whims of the elements of nature."

"And what about the other two cards?" Ranma asked.

"Well...this one is the Knight of Swords," Kaoih held up the second card, "But

the one that really concerns me is...this...the Queen of Wands, symbolic of the

element of fire. According to the way I interpret these cards, the Knight is in

opposition to the Queen, implying a conflict between Air and Fire, which are

normally complimentary forces. Care to explain why that is...little Brother?"

"Oh..." Ranma said, "Well...there's kind of a funny story about that,

Sis...happened just today, as a matter of fact..."

"Go on," she urged, "I'm listening."

"Well..." Ranma began, "It all started today when the Lieutenant at the

Firehouse was training me in some pretty advanced fire rescue techniques,

when...a funny thing was about to happen..."

Lieutenant Hino collapsed at the top of the stairs, breathing heavily and giving

the younger man beside him an envious look that could have been used to break

down doors. Ranma read that expression and set down the heavy practice dummy

that had been slung across his shoulders when the two of them had raced up the

practice stairwell. He knelt down beside the Lieutenant and said, "What's

wrong, LT? Are we done already?"

"What are you made of, Saotome?" the Lieutenant demanded, "Don't you even tire

out a little doing stuff like this? Are you even human?"

"Well, that all depends on who you ask, LT," Ranma shrugged with a smile, "But

I'm just trying to learn how to work with a fire, same as everybody else here at

the station..."

"Not quite like everybody else," Ikari said as he began to get his wind back,

"You tackle each assignment like it was a challenge match, and the way you move

is too smooth and fluid...you've had advanced training, all right, but not in

fire fighting."

"Well...isn't that what I'm here for?" Ranma asked, "To get more training?"

"Not exactly," the Lieutenant replied as he sat upright, "Seems more like the

kind of training I'm teaching you is slowing you down, not making you better.

What is it you're really here to learn anyhow? And don't tell me you're a

volunteer from the fifteenth district, I already checked and they've never even

heard about you."

"Oh?" Ranma asked, "Is that a problem?"

"Frankly, yes," Ikari studied the young man's face and said, "I knew I'd seen

you somewhere before...two years back at a martial arts tournament, you took

home the trophy for Kempo, my son was one of those competing against you, which

is why I remember."

"Oh?" Ranma repeated again, "Ah...about that..."

"You're not even eighteen, Son," Ikari frowned, "Volunteer my ass. You wormed

your way onto my team using false reference, and I want to know why. You owe me

that much of an answer.''

"It was my Pop's idea," Ranma answered after a slight hesitation, "He's teaching

me a new technique that involves working with fire. I've been watching you and

the other guys to see how you handle yourselves, and I've been learning a lot,

honest."

"Maybe so," Ikari replied, "But this isn't a game, and I can't legally have you

on the team until you're at least a graduate from High School. You want to get

me in trouble bending the rules just to suit your needs?'

"No," Ranma lowered his expression, "I didn't mean to cause anybody

trouble...how long have you known?"

"Since day one," Ikari replied, "You smelled like a complete novice, even if you

performed brilliantly in that first fire. I decided to wait until I was sure,

and now I am. You handled yourself well ever since that first fire, and you've

learned to be a team member, to carry your own weight and not just try and

grandstand in front of the rest of us."

"I never intended to grandstand in front of anybody..." Ranma started to say

when the Lieutenant raised a hand to halt him.

"I understand, Son, seriously," Ikari assured the younger man, "And I'd be proud

of you if you were my own son, but I can't keep you on the team, and I doubt

seriously that you can learn any more from us than you already have. This is no

game for kids, what we do affects the lives of the people we're sworn to

protect. You've come a long way in just a few days, but from now on you'll have

to take your studies elsewhere. It's no poor reflection on you, it's department

policy, you understand me?"

"I think so," Ranma said with reluctance.

"Good," Ikari replied, "Part of being a good fireman is like being a good

soldier and learning to take orders from your unit leaders. If you don't

understand that, then you don't understand squat about firefighting..."

"Lieutenant!" a voice called from six stories down as one of the lower ranking

team members, "They got a fire down by the warehouses...a chemical fire, Code

Red!"

The alarm went off and Ikari visibly paled. Ranma saw his expression and asked,

"What's wrong, LT?"

"Chemical fire...the worst kind," Ikari answered, "Those things can be really

dicey, you can't fight them with water, and they have a nasty tendency to go off

in pretty spectacular and unpredictable ways. Still...I've gotta get out there,

mobilize the team. You're sitting this one out, and count yourself lucky."

"Sure, LT," Ranma said, "Whatever you say..."

"You lied to him about that?" Kaoih asked.

"I never lied about nothing," Ranma replied, "I just...decided to follow along.

I knew I could get there ahead of the truck, and I wanted to see if there was

anything more I had to learn about firefighting. Despite what the Lieutenant

said, I was sure I hadn't fully mastered every nuance of what I needed to create

the Honosenken..."

Ranma stood on the rooftop of a neighboring building and saw the smoke pouring

out of the warehouse, which gave him a sudden sense of what Lieutenant Hino had

been telling him before about this sort of emergency. Instinctively he knew

better than to stand downwind of the smoke, knowing it probably contained

elements that were bound to be toxic. The fire itself he could not yet truly

discern, but some sense within him cautioned that the monster was building up

strength within the structure and would soon burst out into full force and fury.

This concerned him greatly because his recent experiences in firefighting had

taught him that there was a lot more to the ART than just knowing how to use a

firehose. There was something almost palpably mystical about a fire...the way

it behaved, the unpredictable manner in which it could leap from one point to

another, or turn on you with unexpected ferocity. In truth he had been studying

fire almost as much as he had the methods used to combat it, and he felt as if

he were on the verge of an apotheosis. He almost understood what the Lieutenant

had been trying to drum into his head about the very nature of a fire moving

through a building, and as he had been committing everything to memory, so too

had he been working out the details of the Honosenken.

In truth Ranma had created as much as ninety percent of the new art and had been

practicing these new moves during his off-hours. One half of what he had forged

was an imitation of fire and the way it could move about a building, the other

half was a combination of moves used to avoid those flames and a means by which

to battle and extinguish it...both offensive and defensive maneuvers...but still

he had yet to create a finishing move as powerful as the Yamasenken's Demon Deep

Sea Chasm. Without that element he felt his system was incomplete, and thus he

had not fully mastered the Honosenken.

The most important thing that he had learned in combating fire was that human

lives mattered more than property damage, which was a good thing since staving

off a fire in an entire building was a lot more complex a demand than getting

innocent people removed from harms way. Understanding the directions in which a

fire was likely to move was a critical step in this process, for fire was

unpredictable by its very nature and could turn on you without a moments prior

notice. That was why even a conventional fire was a danger to even men of

experience like the Lieutenant, who had the scars to prove that he had survived

many an encounter on that front. Ranma had little doubt that the man had an

instinctive intimacy with flames that had helped him to survive in situations

where so many others would not have persevered, and the man's dedication to his

work was nothing less than inspirational. Ranma had never seen such a dedicated

public servant willing to risk his life on the line before, and in terms of pure

risk taking the Lieutenant was without equal.

Not so for Ranma, who knew his abilities and could act with a surety that even

few martial arts practitioners could hope to equal. In the single week-plus

that he had been on this training assignment-since leaving Nabiki's side, as a

matter of fact-he had come farther than he had even dreamed of accomplishing

at home or in the dojo. Life on the open road was certainly a demanding

experience that brought you closer to the edge of your abilities, and for the

very first time he almost felt like he truly understood what Nabiki must have

endured in ten years of wandering and training. That thought alone could

motivate him to work harder when he felt even his resources start to wane and

falter.

Nabiki...what was she doing right now? That thought kept distracting him at odd

hours as almost anything now could set his mind off to wandering back home to

the place that was reserved for his safe homecoming. He could still picture her

smile at odd moments when she chanced to lower her guard and let the mask slip

that she normally used to conceal her emotions. No doubt she would be very

angry with him for all the risks that he had been taking in his travels, and he

could imagine a scolding lecture from her that would burn his ears off if she

caught word of what he was doing at the moment...

He forced his thoughts away from that subject, knowing he had to stay focused on

the moment at hand, even as he saw the fire truck with his team pulling up

alongside the warehouse. He watched the men file out wearing extra-heavy

protective gear, looking almost like a yellow-clad Hazardous Waste Disposal team

about to make an unscheduled pick-up, and the weight of their suits greatly

diminished their movements. Ranma had no problem understanding why they were

going to such extraordinary means in order to protect themselves. He remembered

a time in Chemistry lab when he had accidentally spilled acid on his hand and

burned it so bad that he had to go to the nurse's office, and another time when

he mistakenly inhaled the gaseous by-product of one of Akane's attempts at

cooking. If even a little toxin could have such devastating results, just

imagine the effect created by gaseous flames belching out chemical smoke in all

directions!

The question in his mind was how the Lieutenant was going to coordinate the

containment of the blaze with the two other fire units that he saw joining them

outside the building. A man wearing no protective gear was helped from the

side-door of the warehouse and treated by paramedics while the Lieutenant (as

such Ranma could recognize Ikari Hino even through his protective suit)

questioned the fellow about what he no doubt knew about the fire. Obtaining

information of what the team was likely to encounter was just the sort of thing

that made Ikari the kind of unit leader that he was, and Ranma found himself

experiencing an inexplicable sense of pride in the lieutenant, as though he were

still a member of that unit. Apparently the man told Ikari something useful

because the Lieutenant started barking out orders and making hand-signs that

Ranma had no trouble reading from where he stood perched atop another building.

The unit teams then divided up into smaller groups and set about various tasks

that Ranma studied like a battle plan, gradually picking up hints on how a

firefighting unit could battle a blaze without resorting to the use of water

hoses.

Ranma already knew from his aforementioned chemistry classes that the way to

battle a chemical blaze was through better chemistry, and he also recalled a

lecture by his mother about kitchen safety in which the Saotome matriarch had

stressed the need to use baking soda to extinguish a grease fire. The principle

was no doubt the same here but on a much larger scale as trucks pulled up

containing sacks of chemicals that were passed off to the firefighters. The men

then strapped chemical extinguisher tanks onto their backs and fanned into the

building at certain key points while other men mounted their ladders and

attempted to spray chemical foam over areas that were on the edge of the flames,

hoping no doubt to head them off before they could consume more of the building.

Ranma settled in to watch, wondering automatically if there were any people

trapped inside by the fire, or had the place been successfully abandoned before

hand? He knew this fight would be a race against time as warehouses often

contained odd mixtures that did not react well to the presence of a flame. It

was likely that the Lieutenant had already checked a list of potentially

hazardous materials that could complicate or even endanger any firefighting

efforts, and one wrong calculation in knowing where to go to head off the flames

could well result in total disaster. So far their team had been lucky not to

lose a man to injury or worse (Ranma felt a modicum of pride in knowing he had

contributed greatly to this success record), but no one's luck held true

forever. It could well be that the fates would turn on them this time around,

in which case Ranma thought that he ought to be on guard, just in case he was...

For a moment he found himself knocked off his feet and momentarily airborne, and

then his back hit the tarred roofing and helped skid him to a halt as though he

had landed on sandpaper. His ears were ringing in his head as his body

reflexively moved to cushion the jolt, and then he was on his feet once again,

crouching down in a stance that was a defensive move created by the Honosenken.

His instinctive reaction had served him well in this stead, but now he was left

with the aftermath of wondering what had caused him to be knocked almost

sprawling. It had felt like a great wave had reached out to strike him without

warning, almost like...

Like an explosion!

He was back to the edge of the roof and staring in horror at a mushroom-like

burst of smoke that shot forth from a new hole created in one side of the

building (thankfully away from where the teams had made their entrance).

Apparently the fire had gotten to something very explosive, but the blast was so

intense and unexpected that it had collapsed a good portion of the warehouse and

knocked the various firefighting teams for a loop. One could only imagine in

horror what this would mean to the men who had been trapped inside of the

building...

Ranma was in motion before the thought had even fully formed in his mind,

leaping from the safety of his rooftop perch and charging at the warehouse

before the thought had even registered that the Lieutenant and their team might

be in a very bad shape. He snagged a breathing unit and protective suit on the

run with a speed that was purely Umisenken and was diving in through a new hole

that gaped in the absence of what had formerly been an office window. He sought

an area clear of flames and crouched down, allowing himself a moment to reorient

as he adjusted his senses to the blazing inferno that raged all around him.

At once he was glad that the mask he wore protected his eyes as well as face

from the fumes because his skin was tingling in those areas not covered by

yellow material, a sure sign of caustic chemistry at work. A normal man would

have been overcome in seconds by the fumes burning his eyes, nose and lungs, but

the supply of O2 he carried in his tank insured that he would have at least

twenty minutes of clean air to service him, more than enough for any rescue

maneuvers he might attempt in this inferno. Flames were licking walls and

racing everywhere without inhibition, further fueled by the occasional explosion

of a chemical drum reacting to the flames. It was nightmare scene from the

worst scenarios ever given in one of the Lieutenant's lectures, and there was no

way of determining in which direction he should turn to help the men most in

danger.

And then he saw a figure huddled beneath a burning beam that held him pinned in

the spot, and like a shot Ranma was scrabbling along the floor like a human

crab, feeling the incredible heat on his skin even through his flame suit. A

quick estimation of position was all it took for him to determine the beam's

weak spot, and then he launched a horizontal kick that knocked the beam aside

and sent it tumbling back into the worst of the flames. One second later he was

crouched over the injured body of his Lieutenant.

"LT...are you all right?" he asked, his voice only partially filtered out by the

mask that he was wearing.

He saw the Lieutenant's eyes flicker from beneath his own mask, and then a weak

grunt as the man seemed to say, "What the hell are you doing here, kid...I told

you to stay out of this..."

"Chew me out for it later," Ranma glanced around, "I'm getting you out of here,

fast!"

"No can do..." the man faintly coughed, "I think my ribs are cracked...might

have punctured a lung...moving ain't a real option..."

"Neither is staying here and frying!" Ranma shot back.

"You...got a point there," the man coughed again, "I'm...open to suggestions..."

Ranma thought fast. The Lieutenant was hurt bad and needed immediate medical

treatment, but the very act of moving him was likely to make his injuries far

worse, and there was no way that the paramedics could even get near him in this

inferno. Added to that the probability that other members of their team were

both injured and scattered all around the building, and no telling in what shape

they would be. Even if he moved faster than the flames there was no chance that

he could get to all of them and remove them from harms way, and from the way

things were going there was no telling if there might be more explosions. The

fire blocked off every possible avenue for routine escape and daunted his best

efforts to come up with a plan of rescue, therefore his tactical mind

immediately focused on his chief adversary being the fire itself, which somehow

he had to extinguish in the next few seconds.

At another time he might have marveled at the idea, but his mind was racing

faster than the adrenaline currently pumping through his system. The Fire was

the enemy, therefore he had to overcome the fire, but what could he use that was

powerful enough to extinguish so much flame in one maneuver? Obviously

something similar to the Mako Takabishi or the Demon Deep Sea Canyon was called

for...

And like that the idea gelled into his mind, a perfect plan for overcoming the

inferno. Again he would have marveled at the ingenious simplicity of it all,

but there was no time at all to think, only to act if he was to avoid being

trapped by the flames with the rest of his unit. Like flipping some sort of

internal switch, the Combat Genius within Ranma came to the foreground, and with

an inspiration that would have left Nabiki gasping he concentrated his internal

Chi, then sought out something in his immediate environment with which to tap

into...some elemental lines of force that surrounded him in the room, a force

that his mind instantly latched onto, and with that he drew this force into his

body, churning it from his feet on the ground as he stood up and summoned it up

into his chest and then up further through his spine to his head, and from there

he formed a ball between the space of his outstretched hands, creating a shield

of Chi-force that expanded to surround him.

It was like the Mako Takabishi, only this force was pushed outward to form a

globe of stillness that drove the fiery air away in all directions. A beam fell

from overhead and struck this globe, only to be repelled by it as Ranma pushed

the air away from his body, sustained by the Manna that flooded into him so that

his own oxygen needs were fueled by his mask. The bubble of force he created

shoved the flames further away until he encountered some manner of resistance

that was pushing against him.

He opened his eyes, still imagining the force-ball surrounding him, and saw the

flames congeal about the globe, licking at it like a coiling serpent head...and

then-to his utter amazement-formed a face that looked remarkably like a dragon!

Said Dragon coiled and looked down upon him with eyes full of contempt and hate,

and for a moment he felt transfixed by their power as though an ancient

intelligence was looking down upon him from a great distance. For an instant

his determination almost wavered, but then he fought down this sensation and

redoubled his effort, drawing more Chi from the ground into his body and out

through his hands into the force ball. For a few more seconds he continued to

expand it while the Dragon-shape lashed and roared against this barrier, then at

last he found himself at the limits of where he dared to stretch things, and

with a single effort he let go, collapsing the ball with a rush that created an

immediate air vacuum.

All at once the air within the warehouse was sucked back into the gulf with a

rush that created a loud popping noise, and suddenly flames died all around the

building for lack of oxygen, extinguished as effectively as if they had been

blown out like a massive candle. Like that the warehouse fire was all but

totally doused out, the sole remaining exception being a flame that yet burned

with intensity in the space directly before Saotome Ranma.

The last remaining flames coiled and congealed into the towering serpent as

Ranma began to sag, feeling his strength momentarily leave him. He saw the face

roaring at him, saw its jaws widen as if in an effort to swallow him, then saw

the creature descend in a strike, and without warning Ranma threw up his hands

and instinctively blocked the maneuver with his arms, at the last minute,

summoning his remaining Chi in a barrier intended to ward off the attacking

creature.

The maneuver seemed to take the dragon by surprise as it met the Chi-shield and

was momentarily repulsed. It persisted a moment longer as Ranma found himself

staring up into the eyes of the inhuman monster...but then something incredible

happened and the creature seemed to be diminishing, in size, losing strength

even as Ranma's own strength had seemed to be failing. All at once something

entered his body, and before he knew it he had absorbed a new type of Chi into

his body, a force that momentarily raced through his veins and set his pulse on

fire, threatening to sear his entire nervous system before he instinctively

fought back and mastered this impulse, gradually containing it through sheer

force of effort.

The silence that followed his success was as loud and deafening as the previous

explosions. The warehouse was no longer ablaze, instead it seemed like a

charred and smoldering wreck with a few lingering fumes to denote the previous

inferno.

And then a voice coughed and said, "W-What the hell...was that...?"

"I...don't really know," Ranma said, feeling strange and somehow different than

before, as though something was coiling inside him like a worm he had somehow

swallowed, "Sure felt weird, though..."

"I'll...bet..." the Lieutenant managed a very weak chuckle, then lay back on his

side, the effort clearly having taxed him.

That brought Ranma back around to the present circumstances, and as he looked

around he saw one or two yellow-covered masked heads peering up from positions

of concealment as though to wonder what kind of a miracle had just spared their

lives. The sight also called him back to the discipline of his recent Fireman

training, and Ranma called out to whomever could hear him, risking uncovering

his face from the mask so that his voice could be heard more loudly, "MAN DOWN!

CODE BLUE! GET A RESCUE TEAM HERE ON THE DOUBLE...!"

"Wow," Kaoih remarked as Ranma finished relating his adventure, "That means

you're a hero, little Bro. I'm so proud of you for doing all

that...but...exactly how was it that you defeated what sounded like a Fire

Elemental?"

"I don't really know," Ranma shrugged, "I don't think I really defeated it so

much as found a way of containing it...but I'm pretty sure it's still here

inside me...and don't ask me how I could swallow something that big!"

"From your description, it sounded like a Salamander," Kaoih divined, "One of

the ancient race of elemental spirits of Flame that sages and philosophers talk

about in their writing. You mean to say that you actually captured one inside

your body?"

"I guess," Ranma blinked, "Is that what I did? It felt...really weird..."

"So I'd imagine," Kaoih sniffed, "And what about your lieutenant? Did he make

it?"

"Oh sure," Ranma said, "Turns out he wasn't as badly hurt as he thought he

was...a few bruised ribs and a lot of other stuff, but nothing life-threatening.

He told me later that he wants to see me again in a year, after I graduate from

High School. He thinks I can be a big help to the department in other ways than

just being a Fireman...like teaching his men some of my techniques for avoiding

injury in a fire."

"That sounds wonderful," Kaoih grinned, "That's right up your alley!"

"Yeah," Ranma paused before he continued, "He...ah...also wanted to fix me up

with a niece of his who's a Shrine Maiden in the Jubaan district...but I had to

take a pass on that. I think as it is I've got more than enough girlfriends."

"Too bad, her loss," Kaoih smiled, "I'm proud of the way you handled yourself,

little Brother...so...does this mean that you've finished creating and mastering

the Honosenken?"

"Almost..." Ranma looked disquieted, "I think I still have one more technique to

master...that's why I came out here...I...I want to establish...some kind of

contact with...this thing that's inside me...I...feel it churning around right

now, trying to break out...and I don't want any distractions. I mean...it might

try to come after you if it gets loose or..."

"Say no more," Kaoih stood up, "I can see you've got everything in hand..."

"Ah...almost..." Ranma replied, and suddenly he seemed to break out in a sweat

all over.

"Huh?" Kaoih knelt down and put her hand against his forehead, "Hey! You're got

a fever! You're breaking out all over..."

"Ah...I...think maybe it's...it's..." all at once Ranma turned his face away

from her, and without warning he spat flame...vomited it, more like, as a jet of

plasma escaped from him and coiled in the air above the chasm, gradually filling

out and expanding until it reached Cyclopean proportions.

"Oh shit!" said two teenagers as they stared up at the thing, Kaoih looking no

less pale than Ranma.

"FREE-FREE AT LAST!" the creature roared with a distinctively feminine voice,

"FREE TO TAKE MY REVENGE ON YOU, LITTLE MAN...AND ALL WHO DARE TO CALL YOU

BROTHER!"

"Uh oh," Ranma swallowed, and-unseen at his side-the Tarot Card for the Queen of

Wands began to burn along the edges...

Part One-hundred-and-One.

Cologne stared morosely at the city skyline and wondered how life could have

taken such a drastically wrong turn for the worse, and with such unexpected

forcefulness, all because of a whim of fate that had caused a decision of her

past to tragically come back to haunt her. Now she was faced with the

consequences of that decision, and-quite frankly-she was not overly enamored of

her given choice of options.

A faint sound caused her to lift her ancient head as she sensed another presence

on the rooftop. Not even needing to turn around to determine who it was, she

said aloud, "So...have you come to find me, Daughter-in-law...or to taunt me for

my errors?"

"You know me better than that, Elder," Nabiki replied, "I'm taking a big chance

coming here, you know. Shampoo would be furious with me if she knew we were

having this meeting."

"True enough," Cologne sighed, "And for which I am most apologetic. It seems

that I did not reckon with how badly my great-granddaughter would react to the

revelation. I suppose you feel-as she does-that I betrayed a trust and took

advantage of her innocence for selfish reasons."

"I'm not sure if selfish is the word that I'd use," Nabiki said, "But I'd be

less than candid if I didn't tell you outright that I find the whole thing more

than a little shocking."

"Indeed," Cologne sighed, "But two years ago it was a different story...then I

managed to convince myself that I was acting in the best interest of both of my

great-granddaughters..."

"By letting them believe that the girl they both were in love with was dead?"

Nabiki asked, "Surely you weren't that foolish."

"No, but when it comes to issues such as this, we are all a bit foolish,"

Cologne answered, "But as an Elder of my tribe...I have no such excuse for my

conduct..."

"You won't hear any argument out of me," Nabiki said, "For you it was enormously

stupid. Surely you knew that they would find out the truth sooner or later?"

"I had thought...later..." Cologne sighed, "Understand, at the time I had

thought that I was making the best decision that I could under the

circumstances. An intolerable situation had emerged with both of my great-

granddaughters coming at loggerheads over a girl that each one coveted for her

own. Lotion the Younger was a bright, inquisitive child when first the three of

them met, and yet it was her very vulnerability that seemed to draw a

protective, motherly instinct in my two fearsome protégés. She was weak and

clumsy as a fighter, but she proved to have some ability as a healer, and my

granddaughter consented to teach her the arts after Perfume made us Elders aware

of a certain set of circumstances regarding the abusive nature of Balm, the

girl's mother."

"That's what Shampoo and Perfume told me," Nabiki hesitated before continuing,

"This Lotion...she was very close to Sham-chan, wasn't she?"

"They were lovers," Cologne replied, "But then...you already knew this."

"Ah...yeah..." Nabiki looked away, "Shampoo told me she was her first love...I

just wanted to know for sure how intense they were. I know Shampoo was pretty

shaken up by her death...and that was two years before I met her in your

village."

"Then you also know that Perfume also had an interest in their mutual friend,"

Cologne replied, "And that a rivalry broke out that almost resulted in violence

between friends. That was why I elected to send the girl to another village, to

remove the object of contention from their lives so that Lotion could train with

another healer. I did not anticipate that rivals of Shampoo would band together

to strike at her through a weak and almost defenseless girl, and that Lotion

would nearly pay for this with her life, but for the intercession of another,

also a rival but of a far more honorable nature."

"And you found out about this after the fact," Nabiki said, "And decided not to

inform Shampoo and Perfume about her survival."

"Indeed," Cologne sighed again, "Yet how was I to know that the child would

return to our village on the invitation of an Elder, against my own word on the

matter no less. Lotion arrived at Joketsuzoku and discovered Shampoo and

Perfume were missing, made a few polite inquiries and somehow obtained your

address, no doubt from her mentor, Shampoo's mother."

"And now she's coming to Japan to pay her respects," Nabiki said, "Assuming she

can get an exit visa from the Communists, as part of a larger fact-finding

mission being funded by the Council of Elders that you allegedly head. You ask

me, this smells of a coup d'etat in the making, which means somebody back home

must want your job a whole lot."

"I have my suspicions about that," Cologne replied with a sigh, "The price of

politics, a leader often must watch her back, and nothing of the past is ever

truly dead and buried."

"So, what are we going to do, Great-Grandmother," Nabiki asked, "You know that

Shampoo won't even let your name be whispered around our house, and Perfume...I

thought for a while there that she was going to attack you."

"They are young, they will get over their...disappointment," Cologne sighed,

"But I doubt that they will be all that forgiving towards me in the short run.

This is a dilemma, I will admit it, and unfortunately one of my own creation. I

can hardly expect you to stick your neck out for me and risk the wrath of your

wife and the mother of your daughter..."

"I can deal with Shampoo," Nabiki replied, "Not that I don't understand her

feelings, but you are my trainer, and I still have a lot more to learn from you.

Besides...you're the godmother of my child. I can't exactly cut you out of our

lives no matter what mistakes you've done. But at the same time, Elder you're

going to have to make restitution for the mess you made in the past. You may be

smart and you're pretty damned clever, even by my standards, but you've been

rubbing my nose in some of the mistakes I've made of late, now that the sandal's

on the other foot, I think I'm entitled to so good old fashioned gloating."

"Heavens," Cologne rolled her eyes, "Whatever spirits have I offended to deserve

this?"

"I'm sure they'll prepare a full list for you the next time you get online with

your spiritual broker," Nabiki said, "In the meantime, I'm thinking about taking

Shampoo out somewhere and treating her to a nice movie and some

dinner...anything to get her mind off wanting to stake you like a vampire from

some cheesy movie..."

"You two do deserve a night out," Cologne mused, "Whereas I have been

effectively banned from the restaurant for the duration...or at least until my

other Daughter-in-law can make peace on this subject with Perfume..."

"Well, you can hardly blame Ukyo for that," Nabiki pointed out, "She has to

choose between a wife and a business partner...you're lucky if Perfume doesn't

make you sell out your share of the restaurant."

"Might I make a suggestion?" Cologne noted, "Since we are off the subject of

your training, and it is a few more days before Ranma returns to issue his

official challenge...I was thinking you might care to take advantage of a

certain carnival that I discovered is in town. In point of fact, I obtained

some tickets that you can have for a performance at the Cherry Blossom

Circus..."

"The Cherry Blossom Circus?" Nabiki blinked, "Are you kidding me? Kami! It's

been years since I saw that troupe perform. I wonder if Aunt Sakura is still

running the place? It's been...whoah! Five years? I wonder if my old buddy

Kaoih has grown up any since I last saw her? Wow...does that ever bring back

memories..."

"You have been there before?" Cologne asked.

"I used to perform for them in a high wire act...that was mid-way during my

training trip with Uncle Genma," Nabiki smiled, "Aunt Sakura had the oddest

crush on the guy, but he didn't seem to have a clue about that. I guess that's

one thing he and Ranma have in common...Ranma..." she sighed, "I wish I knew

where he was so I could ask him to go with us..."

"Well, you never know," Cologne hid an smile that was most enigmatic, "You might

run into him sometime when you least expect him."

"Oh yeah," Nabiki grinned, "That's be just like Uncle Genma to want to run off

to the circus and drag Ranma with him..." she paused, "That was a joke, right?"

"Whatever you say, Child," Cologne resumed her somber vigil, "At the very least

it should-as you say-take my great-granddaughters's minds off of their

collective problems."

"Er...right," Nabiki said, "Well...gotta go now before I'm missed. I'll get

those tickets from you later."

"Be well, Daughter-in-law," Cologne replied, and once she was certain that her

chosen heir had vanished the way she had come she smiled to herself and said,

"There's more than one way to seek restitution. If I cannot earn my great-

granddaughter's forgiveness in this form, then there is another way to earn her

trust, though it means revealing my other deeply held secret."

That thought in mind, she slowly concentrated, seeking to undo a spell that she

had placed upon herself a long time ago, beyond the memory of several

generations. The dull wooden staff in her hand suddenly began to sparkle, mere

moments later planes of energy passed over her hand and up her arm until it

reached her shoulder and divided into two separate planes that traveled up and

down her body, and then she straightened out, more than doubling in height.

"Now we'll try this another way," said a younger looking vision, one whose voice

was noticeably different from the dry, arid tones of the Joketsuzoku matriarch,

"Forgive my deceptions, Daughters of my heart, but there are some things an

Elder must do, and to win back your trust I must needs resort to some admittedly

desperate measures. The Circus of lady Sakura will be but the first stage of my

plan, but the rest will be up to young Saotome. Such an irony to rely upon the

services of a man, but these are strange times we live in, as surely you already

know."

And with that little soliloquy, the woman known as Kho-Lon of the Joketsuzoku

dropped to the street below, prepared to carry out her mission...

"Uh oh..." Kaoih said as she started to edge away from the fiery creature,

"Uh...friend of yours, little Brother?'

"Not very likely," Ranma replied as she slowly rose to his feet, taking stock of

the thirty-foot high Salamander, which was presently seen in the form of a

translucent fire dragon.

"STAND YOUR GROUND AND PREPARE TO BE EVISCERATED, MORTAL!" the draconic fire

elemental roared as it reared back like a serpent intent on striking.

"Ah...Sis," Ranma asked, "Did you ever learn about the Saotome Ultimate Defense

Maneuver?"

"Does it involve running for our lives?" Kaoih asked.

"So you already know it," Ranma said, "RUN!"

The pair began to turn to leave, but no sooner had they gotten five paces when a

wall of flames sprang up to block their path. Said wall spread around them in a

circle to form a ring roughly ten paces in diameter. Kaoih shuddered and moved

as close to the center as she could while Ranma attempted to shield her on one

side, aware that the creature still looming above them presented the real

danger.

"NO ESCAPE FOR YOU TWO," the Salamander roared, "YOU WILL SUCCUMB TO MY FLAMES

AND BE DEVOURED FOR THE EFFRONTARY THAT YOU PERPETRATED AGAINST MY PERSON! I

WILL MELT YOUR FLESH AND BOIL THE FAT IN YOUR BODIES, BURST FORTH THE MARROW OF

YOUR BONES AND REDUCE YOU TO A PILE OF WITHERING ASHES..."

"No thanks!" Ranma called out, keeping himself interposed between Kaoih and the

Elemental.

"YOU CANNOT SHIELD HER!" the fiery being declared, "I WILL OVERWHELM AND CONTAIN

YOU, AND THEN CONSUME YOU IN MY EMBRACE!"

"Yeah, right," Ranma said, thinking fast as he considered a list of options,

then smiled as inspiration came to his rescue. His experience as a firefighter

told him that the Elemental needed fuel to burn and was putting out a lot of

heat. He and Kaoih were the obvious targets of its enmity, so therefore he had

to get the creature to act in a way that was consistent with its own nature.

"Play along and follow my lead, Sis," Ranma called over his shoulder, then

raised his voice again and said, "You think you're hot? You think you can scare

us? I don't believe you can carry it off!"

"What are you doing?" Kaoih hissed into his ear, "Are you trying to make her

angry?"

"Exactly," Ranma responded even as he prepared to make his maneuver.

"YOU DARE TALK BACK TO ME, THE QUEEN OF MY KIND?" the creature cried, "DIE!"

The creature struck, its huge body moving with great fluidity to strike the spot

where Ranma had been standing...but much to its annoyance, Ranma moved out of

the way and to one side, bringing Kaoih with him.

"You missed!" Ranma taunted.

In response to this the creature turned its massive head and snapped at the two

humans, but again Ranma was too fast in moving out of the way, causing the

creature to chase after him as Ranma moved to its rear, avoiding its tail in

passage.

Kaoih gasped as she found herself being handled like the proverbial sack of

potatoes as her half-brother, staying only a meter or two out of reach of a

creature whose body was composed entirely of flame, continued to keep them both

only meters away from a fiery consumption. Kaoih wondering how she could even

withstand being so near to such a being...and why was it that Ranma felt so cool

to the touch, as though he was as placid as a marble statue?

Ranma did not dare to slacken as he continued to run in spiraling rings with the

creature attempting to close the gap even as he brought the spiral closer to the

center. Obviously this dragon had never heard of the maneuver coined for one of

its own kind, and so when at last he came to the middle of the ring of fire and

turned to face the creature, it seemed quite confident that it was about to end

the chase and was caught by surprise when the elusive mortal turned and threw a

seemingly harmless punch in its direction.

The result was quite spectacular, as Kaoih instantly discovered. One moment the

huge muzzle of the creature was closing about them, the next thing she knew a

hurricane-force wind gushed up and blew in all directions, picking up the dragon

and carrying it skyward.

"HIRYU SHOTEN HA!" Ranma cried, his voice clear and audible even above the

roar of the wind that tossed the dragon about as though it were a leaf in a

cyclone.

Unseen by the pair, several figures came rushing up to the scene, Genma arriving

first with Ryu and Ryoga just a few paces behind them. The sudden appearance of

the cyclone caught all of them by surprise, yet they were far enough away from

the funnel so as not to be caught within the periphery of the gale winds.

"Oho!" cried Happosai as he came bounding into view, "Looks like Ranma's bagged

himself a live one this time!"

"What the heck is that?" Ryoga asked as he shielded his eyes and tired to make

sense of the swirling crimson shape currently trapped up by the rising vortex.

"Kaoih!" Ryu cried, showing where his priorities lay as he demanded, "What's she

doing with Saotome?"

"Easy Boy," Genma cautioned, "It's not over yet...better keep back and leave

things to Ranma."

"Oboy," Ranma said as his exultation turned to dismay with a realization, "It's

not dissipating!"

"What?" Kaoih tried to cup her ears over the intensifying roar of the wind.

"It's getting stronger-HANG ON!" he cried just as the vortex seemed to reach

down and grab them up in its embrace.

"KAOIH!" Ryu cried, again starting to move forward when he found Happosai

blocking his path.

"Are you insane, Boy?" the little man said, "That twister can tear you apart

with the force of those winds! That a Salamander powering that vortex, it could

eat you alive and burn you to a crisp. Better by far to leave this up to

Ranma...he's the only one equipped to deal with this monster!"

Dealing with said monster was currently a problem that Ranma found that he

himself had created. The vortex might have at least temporarily contained the

creature, but it now also had both him and Kaoih trapped within its embrace, and

his half-sister did not know how to combat such an entity. If anything she was

the vulnerable key to a struggle between himself and the Fire Elemental, and he

and the self-described Queen Salamander both knew it.

"HANG ON!" Ranma cried as he tried in vain to swim against the tug of the wind,

now fully cognizant of what Nabiki had gone through with the old man when she

had been trapped in another such vortex.

"TO WHAT?" Kaoih cried, which was a reasonable question under the given

circumstances, yet oddly enough she seemed to be coping with the wind with far

more grace than himself.

"FOOLS!" the Queen Salamander snarled at the top middle of the vortex, "I WILL

YET DEVOUR YOU! YOU MAY HAVE DELAYED THE INEVITABLE, BUT STILL I WILL CONSUME

YOUR WORTHLESS HIDES!"

"GET STUFFED!" Ranma cried out, changing tactics, deciding to ride the winds

instead of fighting them, taking a hint from Kaoih own graceful form to apply

his own body to the task of catching the wind and angling to bring himself ever

closer to his sister.

The situation was definitely not good, the Dragon was coping with the winds far

better than he could, and now that it had taken the measure of the vortex itself

it could apply its own heat to direct itself as it angled towards Kaoih. The

rate at which it could move was greater than what he could manage, and it looked

as though he was about to lose this race when something new entered the

equation...a form that streaked past him and caught up with the girl before the

Elemental could reach her.

"RYU?" Ranma cried as the boy grasped hold of the girl then covered her with

his body, decreasing her aerodynamic value so that the two of them began to drop

down into the center of the vortex, leaving Ranma to face the Elemental by

himself as he struggled to cope with the diminishing power of the vortex.

"Oboy," he murmured to himself, right before the dragon's head began to close

upon his position.

"SAOTOME, DEAL WITH THAT THING!" Ryu called up over the winds of the vortex.

"Easy for him to say," Ranma grumbled as he summoned up his Chi, drawing

strength from the elemental winds themselves before channeling his force outward

through his arms to create a hasty Mako Takabishi.

The blast did not have enough force to truly hurt the dragon, but the rush of

energy halted its forward progress, even as the strength of the vortex continued

to diminish, allowing Ryu to drop to the ground, catching Kaoih up in his arms

and breaking her fall in a most effective manner. Seeing that they were safe,

Ranma decided to try again the trick he had used in the burning warehouse and

converged more Chi energy into creating a force bubble that could protect him

against the flame creature.

"FOOLISH MORTAL-I WILL NOT BE TAKEN TWICE BY THE SAME TRICK!" the creature

cried, and poured on more effort to create a wave of heat to overwhelm the

bubble, frying the surrounding molecules of air and further lowering the Oxygen

level around the struggling Ranma, who barely had enough air in the globe to

sustain himself, especially as the heat threatened to sear his lungs when he

attempted breathing.

"Ranma!" Ryoga called out, torn with a desire to help and an inability to

determine in what manner he could be of any assistance.

This was not availing Ranma anything, he realized, so again he changed the

course of his tactics, making use of his knowledge of fire to work against the

Elemental. No air meant only heat and fuel were present to create two parts of

the deadly equation, but if he collapsed his shield now it would cause a rush of

air to fill the void, and he would combust immediately and be incinerated.

Therefore the only chance he had was to do the exact opposite and direct his

remaining energy forward as he punched his fist towards the creature. His very

motion caused him to shoot forward until he found himself within the very jaws

of the creature, about to be swallowed.

All at once the twin powers of his Chi and the creature's elemental might met

and collided, his Chi backed by the power of his will as another kind of

triangle came into mind...that which was forced of the Mind, Emotion and Spirit.

With all of his concentration driven forward into his thrust the colliding force

of Elemental Fire and Will caused an immediate detonation that tore the air

asunder in all directions.

An explosion rocked the hill and knocked the witnesses off their feet as a wave

of concussive energy caused heads to turn for miles in all direction. Genma was

among the first to recover, his eyes partly shielded from the heat by his

glasses as he struggled to make sense of the vision that greeted his eyes,

though as close as he was to understanding what had just happened, it was

Happosai who declared, "The boy has done it! He defeated a full fledged Fire

Elemental!"

"Yeow," Kaoih said as she and Ryu recovered, "What has he done, and how did he

do it?'

"I don't know," Ryoga said, "I can hardly even look into the light..."

"What is that thing?" Ryu said, shielding his own eyes from a blue swirling

column that filled the space formerly occupied by Ranma.

"There...there he is!" Genma declared as the light diminished to where eyes

could focus upon the center of the column, and as the flames died down even more

they saw Ranma standing in the midst of the bluish light, and then the fires

subsided, and with them the last lingering traces of the vortex.

Ranma slowly opened his eyes and took notice of his surroundings. He seemed

relatively undamaged, though his clothing did appear singed around the edges.

His eyes, however...had something radically different about them...and they

seemed to glow from within for several long seconds before they too faded back

to their normal tone and color.

It was several moments more before Genma dared to approach his son, then in a

surprisingly calm voice he asked, "How are you feeling, Boy? You all right in

there?"

"Yah..." Ranma said, wondering why he did not blow smoke with that answer,

"Yeah...I'm fine...I won...what else did you think would happen?"

"Don't get cheeky with me, Son," Genma said gruffly, then smiled, "I'm proud of

you...whatever it was you did up there. I just hope there won't be any

unpleasant side-effects...will there?"

"I...don't know just yet," Ranma flexed a hand and studied it, then smiled and

added, "Sure was a wild ride, though...wouldn't mind doing it again."

"Are you kidding me?" Kaoih stormed up to him, "What the hell did you think you

were doing? And what was it with you and that Elemental?"

"Nothing," Ranma raised his hands in what he hoped was a calming manner, "I just

worked something out with her is all. It all happened in a second, but I..."

"Worked something out?" Happosai interrupted, "My boy...do you mean to say you

made a pact with that Elemental?"

"A pact?" Ranma blinked, "Uh...I don't think so...at least...I'm not sure how to

describe it..."

"Just take a moment and sort it out, Boy," his father urged, "No rush in trying

to explain it."

"Explain what?" Ryu demanded, "What did you do, Saotome, and what the hell

became of that creature?"

"That's...kind of the part that might be hard to explain," Ranma replied as he

reached for one sleeve and began to roll it down to expose his right arm, the

one that had been driven at the creature, and once he held this up to view all

could see the marks that had been left there, engraved on his flesh like a black

scarred tattoo in curious rune-like lettering that was barely discernable as

kanji.

"W-What is that?" Kaoih asked in dread and amazement.

"It left its mark on you," Happosai whistled, "Guess you do have a pact with

that fire lady after all, my boy. Did anything happen there just now? Any time

loss? Did you have a vision?"

"Um...something like that," Ranma said as he rolled back down his sleeve,

"I'd...rather not talk about it right now if you don't mind very much..."

"I see," Genma replied grimly, "Then you are ready."

"Ready?" Ryoga asked.

"You've mastered the Honosenken," Genma nodded, "You three boys are done with

this phase of your training. Now we have that match to determine which of you

is the true Senken master."

The three young men exchanged looks together and the Ryu turned and said, "When

do we start, Old Man? I was born ready."

"We'll see about that," Happosai mused as he cackled softly to himself, looking

forward to the match as he already had a pretty fair idea of its eventual

outcome...

A short time later found them all gathered about at the open field area where

they had originally begun their training, at which point Sakura wandered into

their camp and was brought up to speed by Kaoih, who related the surprising news

that she was to be a part of the match, in point of fact be a key player.

"The rules are simple," Happosai announced to all and sundry, "Kaoih will have a

blue kerchief wrapped up in her hair and the object for you boys is to try and

take it from her. Ranma and Ryoga, you both will be the aggressors...Ryu here

will be the defensive player, and he won't be allowed to touch that kerchief

unless he defeats the two of you first. His job will be to keep you both away

from Kaoih until that happens, so you'll have to both go up against his

Morisenken, either individually or by teaming up together, your choice. Is this

acceptable to all parties?"

"I guess," Ryoga said.

"Bring it on," Ranma sniffed.

"Let's get on with it," Ryu said indifferently, nodding to Kaoih, who smiled

back at him and took a bright light blue handkerchief from somewhere between her

bosoms and bound it up in her curly brown locks, then took two steps towards the

brooding young man and gave a leap that planted one foot in the boy's cupped

hands as Ryu heaved her upward and propelled her up to treetop level.

Like the Mistress of Acrobatic lore that she was, Kaoih expertly tumbled and

somersaulted until she reached the purchase of a high-placed tree branch,

whereupon she sat down and composed herself forty feet above the ground with a

placid look that was openly inviting.

At once Ryu moved nearer to the base of this tree and assumed a relaxed posture

of readiness, his expression unreadable as he watched the other two boys with a

wary disposition. The attitude he radiated, however, was an open challenge as

if defying the other two men to try and get past him and towards Kaoih. It was

a challenge neither Ranma nor Ryoga could refuse, and yet they both seemed to

sense that there was more to Ryu's stance that could be easily defined upon the

surface.

Both boys slowly began to circle around Ryu, but the other young man somehow

contrived to again put himself in their path, forcing them to confront him once

again, so Ranma exchanged a quiet look with Ryoga, who smiled back in

understanding, and as one they both launched punches in Ryu's direction.

The double-attack was swift as it was certain, yet Ryu seemed to have

anticipated this and brought his hands into play, his right hand intercepting

Ryoga's punch on the left, his left hand catching Ranma's fist on his right, and

them Ryu stepped back and yanked with both hands, drawing the other two boys

together in a collision that bounced Ranma off of Ryoga before letting them go

and allowing them to collapse in a heap.

As he did this Ryu cried, "MORISENKEN SPECIAL MANEUVER: GATES SWING SHUT ON

ADVERSARIES RYU!"

"Ow," Ranma groaned from where he had fallen face-forward, having just been

sharply reminded of what a hard head Ryoga possessed, even as he belatedly

realized the error of their impulsive joint attack. He was on the ground and

momentarily vulnerable as Ryu prepared to go on the offensive.

"BEAM FALL DOWN TO EARTH PIN!" the older boy cried as he flipped over in the air

and came down with both legs aiming to double-scissors land on his nominal

rivals, but at the last second Ranma and Ryoga got out of the way, each one

using their own distinctive defense styles.

"CRAB FALLS TO EARTH SCRAMBLE!" Ranma cried.

"DUCK AND ROLL BEAM AVOIDANCE SAFETY MANEUVER!" Ryoga cried likewise.

Ryu flipped back to his feet and resumed a defensive stance as Ranma and Ryoga

straightened out and began their tense stand-off as they took new stock of their

opponent, realizing now the formidable nature of his essentially defensive

maneuvers.

"Well now," Sakura remarked, "It seems Master Kumon has perfected a style that

actually works to ward off an opponent."

"I thought as much," Genma nodded, "The boy's always had strong attacks but weak

defenses. It took some doing to convince him that defense can be as important

as any offensive."

Ranma sensed what Ryu was doing and immediately grasped the significance of his

stance. The boy as drawing strength from the solidity of his posture, like a

house built upon a strong foundation. It made him tense up when Ryoga moved

forward, and almost he shouted a warning before belatedly remembering that the

two of them were supposed to be nominal adversaries.

"LAYING THE FOUNDATION SPREAD GROUND ATTACK!" Ryoga cried as he fell forward and

began moving rapidly with his hands and feet to attack Ryu's legs, only the

other boy read this attack and vaulted into the air above Ryoga.

"HIGH CEILING PROTECT GUARD!" and all at once Ryu began to shoot a series of

hammer-blows that pounded the ground and forced Ryoga to move to avoid him.

Ryoga managed to get out from under the other boy by pin-wheeling from a

horizontal angle, only to right himself and cry, "SCREWDRIVER ATTACK!" with his

hand shooting out rapidly in a cork-screwing series of punches that sought to

take the other boy out as though driving home a series of rivets.

Ryu evaded him and somersaulted back to his feet, but now Ryoga was prepared to

launch a new attack, his hand becoming a blur as tiny objects shot from between

his fingers while the perpetually Lost Boy cried out, "HAMMER NAILS INTO WOOD!"

Ryu countered the onslaught as a dozen nails tried to pepper him by crying out,

"RAISED WALL DEFLECTION!" and instantly his hands became a blur that caught and

deflected every one of the objects hurled against him.

"AX HAND DIVIDES BOARDS!" Ryoga next called out, and without warning attacked

the nearest tree (and not the one upon which Kaoih sat purchased), chopping it

down and rapidly carving out a series of two-by-fours and sanded panels which he

tossed into the air to around a surprised Ryu, and then the Lost Boy became a

blur as he set about to gather up the freshly carved wood and assembled the

pieces into a makeshift box-like structure.

"RAISED FRAME CONTAINMENT!" Ryoga declared as he finished off securing all the

nails into Ryu's makeshift prison.

"Ahh-no fair!" Ryu cried as he tried to free his arms, which were effectively

pinned at his sides.

"Don't complain to me if you got outclassed," Ryoga grinned, only to lose his

smile as Ryu seemed to vanish from his containment, "Hey...what...?"

"WALLS CONTAIN MANY SHADOWS!" Ryu cried as he suddenly emerged outside of his

prison and struck at Ryoga when the lost boy was not looking. His attack was

most unexpected and thus effective, and Ryoga was stunned as he fell to the

ground, momentarily out of the fighting.

"RANMA, WHAT ARE YOU DOING, BOY?" Genma called out, "You just going to stand

there and watch? Get in there and help Ryoga!"

"Help him?" Ranma asked with an arched eyebrow, then shrugged his shoulders and

said, "Whatever."

"You think you're going to do any better than him, Saotome?" Ryu asked, barely

winded by his effort of fending off Ryoga.

"Maybe," Ranma assumed a ready crouch, "Not too shabby for an essentially

defensive fighting system...you're reversing the Yama and Umisenken to repel

attacks to a house."

"You got it," Ryu replied, "So, what have you got to offer?"

"Just this," Ranma smiled, "FIRE SURROUNDS AND ENGULFS!"

As he said this it seemed as if Ranma split into a series of different images

that fanned out on both sides to form a circle around Ryu. The taller boy was

suddenly dismayed to find himself facing off against what looked like a dozen

Ranmas, but then he belatedly realized that it had to be some kind of illusory

trick and steadied himself to meet a single attack from every corner...only to

find-to his dismay-that all Ranmas converged upon him and attacked at once

with a series of punches that seemed to come at him from all directions.

Ranma halted this attack as he sensed Ryu was staggering under the offensive,

then he shifted into a tackle that bodily picked up the older boy and threw him

across his shoulder.

"FIREMAN CARRY HURL TO EARTH!" he cried as he slung Ryu at a full-out run and

then leaped into the air in an attempt to throw him hard at the ground. Ryu

recovered from his surprise, however, and gripped Ranma by the forearms, somehow

contriving to flip around in-mid air and reverse the maneuver.

"RAINFALL REPEL OFF BUILDING!" Ryu cried as he effectively slam-dunked his

rival. To his consternation, however, Ranma just absorbed his landing and

retained full possession of his wits as he kicked up at Ryu's face to force the

boy to release him, then flipped around and regained his footing.

"FIRE LEAPS FROM POINT TO POINT!" Ranma cried as he suddenly disappeared and

reappeared at a point directly behind Ryu, at which point he kicked backwards

and cried, "BREAKDOWN BARRIERS CREATE PATH ATTACK!"

It was the very maneuver that Ranma had created in the midst of a raging inferno

some days prior to this, where all exits had been cut off and he was carrying an

injured man across his back, thus unable to straighten out in any conventional

sense and with only walls and a burning hallway all about him. The spinning

kick delivered at a wall had created a new opening by which to escape from that

fire, thus sparing his life and demonstrating to him a new means of attack in

enclosed situations. Just now it worked effectively against Ryu's unprotected

back, knocking him off his feet and stunning him with force enough to demolish

the side of a building.

As Ryu fell to the earth, however, Ryoga was just beginning to recover his wits,

and-seeing that Ranma was now the dominant player in the game-determined to

switch targets for his renewed offensive.

"That was too easy," Ranma started to say as he turned his attention towards the

tree bearing Kaoih, and thus did not initially see Ryoga rise up to his feet and

ready a leg in a raised position.

"LEVEL GROUND JACKHAMMER STAMP!" Ryoga cried as he brought his foot down hard,

hitting the soil several times with such force that it caused the ground itself

to shake and vibrate, then explode as if plied by the Bakusai Tenketsu.

Ranma fought to regain his footing as a huge rent split the ground between

himself and Ryoga, while Kaoih yelped and grabbed hold of the tree to keep from

being shaken loose from her purchase. The rent did cause a number of boulders

to shake loose from the soil, and Ryoga wasted no time seizing one up with both

hands before tossing it lightly into the air and shattering it with a single

hand punch.

"CRUSHED ROCK CONVERT TO CEMENT!" he cried as he rapidly gathered up the dust

with fast-moving hands that shaped the debris like clay being squeezed between

his fingers. All at once he surged forward and whirled around a surprised

Ranma, doing a variation of what he had done against Ryu, only now laying out

bricks that were peppered with smaller rocks and mortared together with fused

concrete. Within seconds he had effectively walled in Ranma within a very

narrow chimney-shaped container, fusing it solid with a burst of Chi that flowed

across his fingers.

"There we go," Ryoga said with a broad grin as he stepped back to survey his

handiwork, "Let's see you get out of this one, Ranma!"

"CONTAIN AND REPEL HEAT COMPRESS RISING!" came the muffled cry from within the

makeshift prison.

"Wha-?" Ryoga started to say when cracks appeared along the edges of his

handiwork, and all at once the Chimney-shaped object began to explode in all

directions.

Ranma stepped out from the remains with his aura glowing a bright pinkish-red

coloration, his eyes almost luminous with an inner light as he regarded Ryoga

soberly then cried, "DENY FUEL CUT OFF OXYGEN ATTACK!"

Ranma surged towards Ryoga, who instinctively held his ground and stood ready,

but rather than attack him directly, Ranma instead attacked the space around

Ryoga, his hands a blur even though he never so much as touched his adversary.

"What are you...?" Ryoga stared to gasp, then his hands went up to his throat as

he discovered that he could not breathe the air around him. What air he had was

sucked out from his lungs, and without warning he dropped to his knees, having

an instant understanding of what it would feel like to be temporarily exposed to

a near-vacuum.

"Sorry Pal," Ranma said in an apologetic manner, "But that scarf belongs to me

now."

He gathered up his legs and prepared to leap into the branch, but before he

could even get part way another voice cried out, "ULTIMATE RAISED WALL

DEFLECTION!" and suddenly Ryu appeared in his way ready to deal punishment out

to a much-surprised Ranma.

"Hey, what...?" Ranma gasped as he dropped back to the ground in a defensive

crouch.

"Didn't think I'd be that easy to take down, did you?" Ryu smirked, "You still

have to get by me if you want that scarf, and it belongs to me anyway. You

can't have her, Saotome."

"Huh?" Ranma blinked, "What do you mean, 'I can't have her?'"

"Just what I said," Ryu snarled, "She belongs to me! ALL WALLS CLOSE IN AND

CONTAIN INTRUSION!"

"Wha-?" Ranma gasped as he saw Ryu raise his arms and part them as if tearing a

phone book in half, when all at once it felt as if walls literally were closing

in on Ranma from all sides, crushing in on him and inducing claustrophobia while

literally putting on the squeeze as Ryu brought his hands back together and

cupped them as though trying to squeeze a coal into a diamond.

"Uh oh," Happosai remarked, "Now that's certainly a new one in my book."

"An effective technique to be certain, Master," Genma nodded, "But it's not good

enough to overcome Ranma."

Ranma instinctively knew once again what was happening...that his foe was

adapting the original Yamasenken Deep Sea Chasm into a combination of physical

and psychological attack, and had he less understanding of the process than he

actually possessed it might have proven most effective in crushing the life out

of him, but instead all it served to do was make Ranma angry.

To everyone's amazement, his battle aura flared to life and took on a rosy cast

once again, only now it surrounded him like a visible force shield that repelled

Ryu's attack like water being shed off a duck's back. Ranma straightened up as

his eyes blazed from within, then he raised his right fist-around which an even

more intense radiance appeared and cried out in a loud and decisive voice,

"ULTIMATE BUBBLE-BURST ATTACK!"

All at once the field expanded around him, then collapsed rapidly with a popping

noise that was as loud as a gunshot. Ryu was staggered backwards by the

shockwave as Ranma continued to hold up his fist and cry, "CONTAIN AND ABSORB

ULTIMATE MANEUVER-BACKDRAFT!"

All at once a wall of heat flared up around the astonished Ryu and converged

upon him, not touching him with the heat but stealing out the oxygen around his

body and forcing him to his knees, the same as with Ryoga.

"RYU!" Kaoih cried out from where she was, seeing the young man fall to his

knees, unable to get his wind back. Without a word she dropped from her seat

among the branches and was at Ryu's side in a matter of seconds, at which point

Ranma withdrew the flames that had raged around him.

"Are you all right?" Kaoih asked as Ryu began to get fresh air back into his

lungs.

"Sure...I'm fine..." he gasped, "Get back up in the tree...this fight isn't over

yet."

"I'm afraid it is," Ranma said, holding up the scarf in his hand, "Not that it

would have mattered if she had stayed in the tree because you were in no shape

to stop me from getting this, right, Ryoga?"

"Ah..." Ryoga gasped as he got unsteadily back to his feet, "Just another

minute...and I'd have had you, Ranma..."

"It's not over yet," Ryu straightened out, "I don't know what that was you hit

me with...but it's not a normal technique...you did something to me with power

you stole from that fire lady...didn't you?"

"Maybe I did," Ranma replied, "But it's still a legitimate part of the

Honosenken."

"Like hell!" Ryu growled, only to find an angry Kaoih was suddenly in his face.

"Stop it, you two!" she snapped, "No more fighting! Ranma won, there's no point

in continuing this..."

"Why are you taking his side all of a sudden?" Ryu demanded, "Are you suddenly

tired of me, is that it?"

"Huh?" Kaoih blinked her eyes, "What are you talking about?"

"Aw, he's just jealous of what he thinks you're doing hanging around with me,

Sis," Ranma snorted, "He thinks there might be something there, the Baka."

"You think I'm some kind of a fool that I'll believe..." Ryu's heated tones

faded to a dull whisper, "Sis?"

"Ah...guess the cat's out of the bag on that one," Kaoih sighed, turning a bland

look on the taller man, "Do you mean you honestly thought that I was thinking

about sleeping with my own half-brother?"

"Brother?" Ryu looked so stunned that he could have been knocked over with the

proverbial feather.

"Brother?" Ryoga turned a disbelieving look Ranma's way, then turned an

identical look towards Kaoih, "You mean...she's your...?"

"My big Sis, yep," Ranma nodded, "Came as much as of a surprise to me, but we

figured it out from the clues our folks kept dropping."

Questioning and/or accusing looks were turned on Genma and Sakura, who had the

good graces to look somewhere else at the moment.

"You mean..." Ryoga turned around to confront his nominal Sensei, "You cheated

on your own wife?"

"Not...exactly, Boy," Genma shrugged, "It happened before I was married..."

"Don't blame your father," Sakura urged, "The fault is with me for not telling

him before he married Nodoka."

"Don't you go pointing any fingers, Hibiki," Kaoih rounded on the other boy,

"You're not exactly in any shape to be pulling that 'Holier-than-thou' crap with

our Dad. If you've got any doubt of that, ask Aunt Atsuko, your mother, the

next time you see her."

"Uh...what?" Ryoga blinked, looking as if someone had just hit him with a two-

by-four, though if someone had he might barely have noticed.

"That's right, Bro," Ranma clapped him on the shoulder, "Don't look now, but

you're a Saotome."

"WAIT A MINUTE!" Ryu raised his hands as he turned to the younger trio, "Are you

telling me that you three are related? That these two fools are your...?"

"Brothers?" Kaoih replied, "I'm afraid so...what can you do? It's genetics."

"And you never told me this?" Ryu exclaimed, "I can't believe you never told

me!"

"Hey, it was a family secret," Kaoih shrugged her shoulders, "You do know what a

secret is, don't you, Mister 'Mysterious Past,' you?"

"Hey," Ryu protested, "I haven't been keeping anything from you..."

"Oh no?" Kaoih countered, "What about your military-style training? Are you

still telling me you weren't in the Self Defense Force?"

"I...I can't talk about that..." Ryu hesitated.

"You see?" Kaoih crowed triumphantly, "That all but screams that you have

Special Forces training! Or are you telling me you've spent the entire last

fifteen years living like a vagabond and training in a single martial art?"

"Hey, it's not that I don't want to tell you," Ryu protested, "It's just

that..."

"So why are you on my case for holding back the secret of who my father is?"

Kaoih countered, "You're such a hypocrite, and I thought you knew me better..."

"I thought we agreed that we weren't going to keep secrets...um..." Ryu blinked

as he started to think that one over.

"Geez, would you guys put a lid on it already?" Ranma asked, "You'd think you

two were already married."

"SHUT UP, SAOTOME," both Kaoih and Ryu snapped together.

"I-I don't get it..." Ryoga said, his expression unchanged from a moment before,

"He can't be my father...I already have a father...don't I?"

Sakura sighed, "Perhaps I should not have said anything about it. I was

violating a trust by your mother, but...Son, I'm afraid your Mom hid a big, dark

secret from you and gave you false memories about having a father. She didn't

want you to feel weird or unusual about having a single parent in the household,

but you have to admit that the strongest influence in your life had to come from

your mother, who taught you most of everything you know, right?"

"Ah...well..." Ryoga hesitated.

"Not that it probably took her all that long to explain it," Sakura added as if

in afterthought.

Ryoga blinked his eyes, "Hey!"

"I'm going to have to have a few words with your mother the next time I see

Atsuko," Genma sighed, "That's assuming, of course, that my wife doesn't kill me

first, or make me commit Seppuku."

"Mom might have to get in line," Ranma sniff, "You're first gonna have to

explain it again to me, and that's not even counting what Nabiki might do to you

if she finds out."

"Well, that can all wait until later," Happosai clapped his hands together,

"Congratulations, Ranma my boy...you've come out on top of some pretty fierce

competition. That means you've won the right to go on to the next

level...mastering the Arashisenken."

"Maybe later," Ranma shrugged his shoulders, "I still have a few loose ends to

tie up with the Honosenken. Maybe if you give me an hour I'll be ready."

"Take all the time that you want," Happosai replied with a twinkle in his eye,

"After all, you only have three days to go before your match with Nabiki."

Ranma thought it over and said, "Okay...maybe in fifteen minutes, all right?"

"Swell," Sakura answered, "In the meantime...I came here because I wanted to ask

you boys a little favor."

"A little favor?" Ryoga asked, still not quite fully adjusted to the newest

revelation.

"Oh yes," the circus Ringmistress replied, "A little while ago two of my people

got injured in an accident while practicing for tonight's performance...our

human cannonball accidentally plowed into one of our trapeze artists while

rehearsing their acts..."

"Arashi-san got hurt?" Kaoih replied with a stunned expression, "Oh...how awful!

And who was the other one?"

"Taro-san," Sakura replied, "On the whole they were lucky that they were both

traveling in the same direction and hit the net together, or their injuries

might have been more severe, but I fear they won't be in any shape to perform

any time soon, and we only have two more days before we pack up our tents and

leave town. That's four straight paying performances and nothing to fill in the

gap that the accident has created."

"And you want my boys to fill in for your injured people?" Genma asked.

"If it really isn't any trouble," she turned back to Ranma, "You have more than

enough agility to be a great high wire act...so have you ever considered

performing in a circus, Ranma-kun? I'm sure Kaoih will be more than happy to

help you and Ryu-kun learn all you need about the basics. And you, Ryoga-

kun...I'm sure you'd do wonderful as a human cannonball. There's really nothing

to it, you just sit in the barrel and let them shoot you out into a net."

"A human cannonball?" Ryoga repeated, "I can do that?"

"You kidding me?" Kaoih smiled, "I'd say you're more than qualified to play a

hurtling object, Bro."

"After you finish up here, report back to the make-up trailer and we'll get you

two suited up for the show tonight," the Ringmistress smiled, "First act begins

at six PM, so don't be late. Oh...and I haven't forgotten about you, Genma-

chan...you can help out by making use of your own special talents."

"My...talents?" Genma began to look more than slightly uneasy.

"Hey, wait a minute!" Ranma protested, "I didn't agree to..."

"Oh, go along with it, my boy," Happosai said cheerfully, "It'll be great for

training in the Arashisenken. It's an aerial act, after all, and with any luck

it may help teach you the special technique that you can use for flying."

There was a slight hesitation before Ranma said, "Flying?"

"You've got to be putting us on," Kaoih remarked, "The Arashisenken is about

flying?"

"It's the Aerial school," the little old Pervert replied, "It's mainly about

learning Chi techniques and new ways of moving the body outside the boundaries

of gravity, but one interesting side effect is teaching an apprentice how to

momentarily stay airborne for more than the time it takes to fall on his fool

head."

"Is that really possible, Master?" Genma asked.

"Sure, nothing complicated about it," Happosai replied, "It's just falling at

the ground and missing, even you could do it if you didn't pack on so much

tonnage."

"Wonderful!" Sakura clapped her hands together, "If you learn how to do that,

then you can add it to the act! It will bring the house down!"

"Maybe literally," Kaoih added.

"But why learn how to fly?" Ryoga asked, "How is that going to help Ranma

overcome Nabiki?"

"There are lots of ways it could give him the advantage," Happosai replied, "The

Saotome Ryu specializes in aerial maneuvers, this is just taking it up to the

next level. Besides...he's my Apprentice, whether he admits it or not, AND I

WON'T HAVE AN APPRENTICE WHO DOESN'T KNOW SQUAT ABOUT FLYING!

Ranma blinked, "Your apprentice?" but then he shrugged his shoulders and said,

"Well...what the heck...I can give it a shot. Shouldn't be too much more

complicated than battling with the fire dragon lady..."

Unseen but felt along his arm, Ranma felt the marks begin to move and shift

about slightly, only to subside at last into a new and even more interesting

pattern, but he did his level best to ignore it, knowing full well that there

would be an eventual accounting...

Continued.

Comments/Criticisms/Calamari Supreme: shadowmane

Next time up, Mousse gets romantic counseling from a surprising source, and

Nabiki takes her Posse to the Circus for a little night out on the town, but

guess who she spies working out as a high wire act? Tune in for our next

exciting installment: "Flying without a Net," or "The Show must Blow On!" Be

there!

X

If you wish to check out my other works, Please check out my Fanfiction

webpage at: .

All related chapters of this series can be found there along with my

other works.


	40. Chapter 40

Dnabiki102

Nabiki 1/2

"A Very Scary Thought!"

by

Jim Robert Bader

(Inspired by the works of Rumiko Takahashi & Others)

Part One-Hundred-Two.

The Bartender at the Lucky Orb Bar and Grill was calmly polishing a mug when one

of his favorite patrons entered the establishment. Itsuke was a regular kind of

guy, the type who never drank too much or caused anyone any problems, a "social

drinker" by Japanese standards, and not prone to any extravagant forms of

behavior, which was why the Bartender decided to caution him against asking the

first question that he knew Itsuke would ask in another moment.

It began when Itsuke's eyes drifted down to the other end of the bar and took in

the only other paying customer currently present. The Bartender saw the look of

surprise in his customer's eyes, waited for Itsuke to open his mouth in an

attempt to articulate his question, and promptly said, "Don't."

"What?" Itsuke looked at the Bartender, then at the other customer.

"What you were going to ask," the Bartender calmly explained, "Don't say it or

you'll regret it."

"But..."

"Like I said, drop it."

"But I don't..."

"I know, but it's in the interest of your health that you don't say it."

"Don't say what?" Itsuke frowned, "You've got a damned..."

"Paying customer," the Bartender replied, "Always pays in cash and he tips

heavy. That's all that matters to me."

"But he's a..."

"Just drop it," the Bartender warned, "He's kind of sensitive about some things,

and he doesn't like people who ask too many questions."

Itsuke frowned, "I don't see why I should have to be worried about a damned

dirty..."

"Joke?" the Bartender asked helpfully, "Because if you finished that statement,

I wouldn't want to be held accountable for the consequences."

"Consequences?" Itsuke repeated.

"Of you having your arms ripped out of their sockets," the Bartender replied,

"He's been known to do that, and beat people's heads into the floor like tent

pegs. He's a lot stronger than he looks, and he doesn't like it when folks

start calling him names or make dispiriting comments about him and his possible

ancestry."

"Oh..." Itsuke turned a nervous look at the other patron and said, "No hard

feelings, eh?"

"Ook."

"Another round?" the Bartender interpreted, and placed a bottle on the counter,

then slid it along the surface where it was casually intercepted by a brown

prehensile hand whose fingers were unusually long and tapering and definitely

not human.

The other patron at the bar calmly brought the top of the bottle up to his lips

and used his teeth to remove the cap, then poured himself a drink as though it

were bottled tea that he was hoping to sample.

Itsuke studied the creature as it took a long sip from its glass then shook his

head and said, "I've been living in this prefecture too long...it's about time

me and the misses thought about moving."

"Tell me about it," the Bartender replied, then calmly picked up another mug and

began to clean it.

Mousse had listened to the exchange with listless energy, not feeling any

serious connection to the conversation at the other end of the bar (or course if

that fool had said the dreaded word "Ape," then Mousse would have had to pound

his face in...just for the principle of the thing). In truth his mind was on

far more esoteric matters...such as committing to memory all of the things that

he had so far been able to learn from long-distance observations of Saotome. A

week of training had given Mousse fresh insight into a new way of doing combat

with an opponent in a very different manner of training than was normally used

by the Amazons of Jusenkyo. It was not so much what Ranma had learned that was

of interest to Mousse, however...it was the way in which Saotome applied his

training...and the other two boys who trained with him. It had started the

wheels to turn in Mousse's head as he thought through the implications, so

rather than try and copy the Senken maneuvers that he had observed, he was on

the threshold of evolving his very own system.

The idea had come to Mousse once he had fathomed the method by which Ranma could

make himself invisible with the Umisenken. Erasing one's own traces made you

less noticeable to an enemy and confused their senses long enough to give you

the edge for plotting an attack. The problem with this was that it still left a

thin margin for detection, and any margin that could betray an attack might

still be insubstantial when it came to dealing with a quick-witted and very

fast-reacting antagonist. What he needed was a means of masking his attacks

altogether, which was where he hit upon a thought of pure inspiration.

The secret came when Mousse had thought disparagingly about his eyesight and how

hard it was for him to focus on anything at a close range, the reason why he had

preferred the long-distance attacks of Hidden Weapons. Without his glasses,

objects at close range became a blurry mess with one thing just as

indistinguishable from another. People could see him clearly but he could not

see other people, which had always given them the advantage at close quarters.

What he had needed was a way to make himself a blur before their eyes while

sharpening his own focus so that he could find what he wanted and deal with it

in a more effective manner. That was when he considered the mindset needed for

the Umisenken and devised a way by which to apply the same principles, and that

suggested to him an entire new way of doing Blind Fighting.

The elation that he felt over having devised through practice and refinement

this very technique was short-lived, however, when he next contemplated the

nature of the attacks that he would use...only by now he was no longer thinking

of using them against Perfume but rather Kurumi, which had surprised him in a

sobering minute. Now he was trying to rediscover his focus, to remember just

why he had started to clash with the short haired little speedster. Everything

was so confusing and complicated all of a sudden, and his simple quest to

liberate Perfume from her marriage to Kuonji had turned into something else, all

because of the interference of an annoying little sprite who could see his

normal attacks coming as though they were in slow motion. Even his

extraordinary powers of denial were taxed beyond credulity when he realized that

his new combat methods were geared against her far more than they were against

his original quarry.

Just then he heard the door to the bar open once again, and by force of habit he

turned a glance past his shoulder to see who it might be who was now entering

the tavern. What he saw out of the corner of one eye got his reddish anthropoid

eyebrows to rise in amazement, for in a great many respects it was like looking

into his own reflection.

"Another one?" Itsuke asked as he, too, took stock of the new arrival.

"Just keep drinking and don't say anything," the Bartender warned, just causally

continuing to clean another mug as if this sort of thing was only to be

expected.

The red-furred figure was noticeably older than Mousse's own cursed form, with

far more gray in the fur and a sober, almost wizened expression. He seemed to

be taking stock of Mousse before he loped up to the bar on both stubby legs and

his long-armed knuckles, then he climbed into the stool beside Mousse and leaned

up against the bar, raising one overlong forefinger to the Bartender, who

plopped a drink down in front of him without further preamble.

The new arrival took a swig from his glass then casually glanced at Mousse and

said, "Ook."

"Ook," Mousse replied, just to be social.

The two silently took stock of one another, then the older stranger looked

forward, leaning his weight against the bar on both elbows and said very

somberly, "Ook oook."

That caused Mousse to raise an eyebrow and respond with a challenging, "Ook?"

The old-timer raised a finger as if to reprimand Mousse for his attitude and

replied, "Ook oook, ook oook ook."

"Ook ook?" Mousse replied, then he reflexively lowered his eyes and said an

apologetic, "Ook."

"Ook," the older fellow responded, then with a sage tone to his voice he said a

very solemn, "Oook."

That caused Mousse to frown, wondering how the old-timer could know so much

about his situation. It was rather like sitting with an elder, or-more

precisely-his own personal Elder and Mentor, the only man in his village who

ever treated Mousse as if he mattered a damn to anyone, the resident Master of

Hidden Weapons in their village, Go-Wen. There was that same patient air, that

same kindly manner and authoritative tone that did not feel like rubbing your

nose in a rotten bunch of bananas. He decided to tolerate the old-timer and

give him some measure of respect. The very fact that he seemed to have seen

right through Mousse at a glance was by itself a strong indication that the

older fellow might have something interesting to say that was worth paying

attention.

"Ook," Mousse stared forward across the bar, feigning disinterest.

"Oook, ook," the old timer said with a wry sparkle in his aged eyes and a tone

of subtle amusement.

Mousse visibly winced at that and could only say, "Ook," in response to that

observation.

"Ook," the old timer said sagely, staring off into space as he sighed with a

somber, "Oook...ook oook ook, ook-ook. Oook ook oook?"

That brought a thoughtful look to Mousse as he responded curiously, "Ook?"

"Ook," the older fellow said firmly, "Oook ook ook. Oook ook?"

"Oook," Mousse said reluctantly, "Ook ook oook..."

"Ook," the other fellow shook his head in a negative manner, "Oook ook ooook,

ook ook."

That took Mousse totally by surprise, "Oook? Ook oook?"

"Ook," the sage fellow replied, putting a curious sense of great wisdom and

depth in his tone and expression that conveyed all sorts of curious meanings.

To strengthen the point he raised and wiggled his eyebrows in a particularly

suggestive manner, then unfolded his lower lip to convey a clear indication of

what direction Mousse should take in his life. The look he then gave the

younger...um...man...held the rest of his implied meaning, and it started Mousse

to think in an entirely new level. Like an exploding epiphany bursting forth in

the clarity of new thought, it all suddenly became clear to him, as if the truth

had been standing before him all along waiting to be noticed.

"Oook," Mousse exhaled, amazed at the very simplicity of the suggestion, and to

that he turned to the old-timer and said a very reverent and grateful, "Ook."

"Ook," the other fellow said dismissively, and waved a hand as if to ask, "What

the heck are you still doing here, Boy? Get moving!"

"Ook," Mousse replied, and after plopping some money on the counter took off

with a loping stride and the rapid beat of his knuckles.

"What the heck was that all about?" Itsuke asked.

"Ah, the older guy was just giving him some advice about his love life," the

Bartender shrugged, as though it were a perfectly obvious answer to that

question.

"Ook," the ancient Orangutan at the bar said, then finished off his drink,

picked up some scrolls that he had brought with him into the tavern and headed

off to the rear of the bar, opening a door and exiting through it, said door

vanishing moments later.

Itsuke was very still for the longest time, then he calmly took a long drink

from his glass and asked the Bartender to give him another sample...

Ranma sat with legs folded in a lotus posture, quietly meditating as the fading

rays of sunlight began to disappear on the horizon, a position that he had held

for close to an hour, his mind drifting back to his encounter with the Fire

Elemental, and the rather spectacular way in which he had brought that fight to

a stunning conclusion.

He could still remember the heat of its flames circulating all around him as its

huge maw closed down upon his tiny form with only a hastily projected Chi-field

to ward off certain incineration. In that instant when he conjured forth his

most desperate gamble-the "Contain and Absorb Ultimate Maneuver, Backdraft,"

which he had just then created on the spot, he found their positions instantly

reversing themselves as he drew in some essential part of the creature and felt

it merge with his being as its flaming form was drawn back into his body. For

an instant all conscious awareness of himself momentarily had ceased, and in a

few seconds of time his consciousness itself had expanded to levels never

dreamed before, transporting him to a plane of being outside the bounds of

ordinary timespace.

On this transcendent level of infinitely higher awareness, Ranma had pictured

himself standing in the place of the Tarot Card known as the Knight of Swords

and confronted the elemental being he had just effectively devoured. In this

higher reality its true essence magnified its glory to impossible dimensions,

and yet somehow he did not feel the least bit afraid in confronting such a

being, knowing instinctively that he held the upper hand and that the creature

could not harm him so long as he remained resolute and determined.

**WHAT IS IT THAT YOU WANT FROM ME, MORTAL?** it had asked in a voice that was

more like an echo in Ranma's mind than anything vocalized like normal speech.

"I want you to lay off and stop trying to harm me and my sister!" Ranma shot

back, "It was an accident what happened the last time...you forced me into doing

it twice now..."

**BUT THIS SECOND TIME IS NO ACCIDENT,** the creature rumbled, **THAT A MORTAL

COULD WORK SUCH A POWERFUL SPELL OF CONTAINMENT THROUGH THE FORCE OF YOUR WILL

ALONE IS EXCEPTIONAL. I SENSE GREAT POTENTIAL WITHIN YOU, AND YET YOU ARE NOT A

TRAINED MAGICIAN NOR WIZARD. HOW THEN ARE YOU ABLE TO BALK MY WRATH NOT ONCE

BUT ON TWO CONSECUTIVE OCCASIONS?**

"I don't really know," Ranma admitted, "I was just guessing that I could do it.

I'm Saotome Ranma of the Anything Goes..."

**HAVE CAUTION AS YOU GIVE OUT YOUR NAME, FOR NAMES HOLD GREAT POWER, EVEN FOR

YOU, MORTAL,** the elemental warned.

"Oh yeah?" Ranma asked, "Then what's your name...or what do I call you?"

There was a sense of belated frustration, as though the Creature realized that

it had said too much and revealed a hidden weakness, and yet for some reason it

felt compelled to give an answer, **I AM CALLED LATISHA IN THE TONGUE OF YOU

MORTALS, THOUGH TO MY KIND I HAVE ANOTHER NAME. I AM THE QUEEN OF THE

SALAMANDERS WHO PRESIDE WITHIN THIS DISTRICT...I AM VERY ANCIENT AND VERY

POWERFUL, YET IN MY TIME I HAVE ENCOUNTERED ONLY A HANDFUL OF MORTALS, LIKE

YOURSELF, LORD SAOTOME...**

"Latisha, huh?" Ranma replied, "So...your Highness...maybe I should ask what I

can do for you to get you to back off a bit and stop threatening me and others."

**YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO COMMAND ME TO DESIST AGAINST YOU AND YOUR SISTER,**

Latisha replied, **I AM, MOMENTARILY, AT YOUR DISPOSAL, THOUGH SHOULD YOU ASK ME

WHAT I WANT, IT WOULD BE TO ESCAPE THE ANNOYING PRISON OF YOUR MORTAL BODY.**

"So you can come after me again when I'm not watching?" Ranma sniffed, "No

thanks."

**YOU NEED NOT FEAR FOR ANY MORE REPRAISALS,** the draconic fire elemental

replied, **I GIVE YOU MY WORD THAT I WILL NOT ATTACK YOU HENSEFORWARD. YOU HAVE

PROVEN TOO FORMIDABLE TO DO BATTLE WITH DIRECTLY, AND I WOULD SCARCELY WISH TO

RISK THE WRATH OF A YOUTH WHO CAN DO AS YOU HAVE DONE...IT WOULD HARDLY BE IN MY

BEST INTEREST."

"Heh, good point," Ranma said, "Ah...can you do something about your size? I'm

getting a crick in my neck just having to look up at you..."

**SUCH SENSATIONS ARE ILLUSORY UPON THIS PLANE,** the Salamander Queen assured

him, **BUT AS FOR ALTERING MY SIZE AND APPEARANCE...**

All at once the Fire Elemental shrank down and compressed its massive form down

to a more human size...and then that form shifted even more and gradually went

from reptilian to something distinctively more...human. Flame red hair showered

down the shoulders of a reddish-gold body, and the proportions of this womanly

shape became entirely too human as Ranma stared wide-eyed at a beautiful naked

female. He had to steady himself to avoid an instinctive and unexpected rush of

masculine reaction as he took in this womanly shape, though it would hardly have

surprised him had he sported a nose bleed, for the fiery woman was indescribable

in her sensualistic beauty.

"Is this shape more pleasing to your eyes, Mortal?" she asked, seeming to take

obvious pleasure in the way he gaped at her, tongue-tied and speechless.

"Ah...ah...oh my..." Ranma faltered.

"I will take that for a yes," the crimson haired woman smiled, "Mind you that

this is but a mere replication of what I might appear as a human...it is not my

true form, though this body does reflect my inner nature."

"Er...yeah..." Ranma blinked his eyes to recover some of his wits, "Ah...would

you mind-and please don't take this the wrong way-but could you put

something on? I got this fiancée, and if she found out I...ah...well..."

To his surprise and relief the Elemental seemed to take his request in good

humor, "You wish to be honorable and not betray your absent iinazuke? How

quaintly moral...however, since you have requested it with such good graces..."

She extended her hands to the sides and flames rose up to engulf her, only to

subside a moment more in the form of filmy, gauze-like reams of cloth that

hardly blocked out the sight of anything significant, though Ranma had to

suppose that it would do for the moment.

"Now then," the Queen assumed a haughty role again as she regarded Ranma with a

very curious expression, "What price would you name to grant me my freedom?"

"Ah...price?" Ranma blinked again.

"You may request of me some favor as a token of parole," Latish calmly

explained, "It is what Wizards do when they bargain with my kind. You are

entitled to some favor and boon as ransom for me to barter my freedom. What is

the thing you most desire, and how may I grant it to you?"

"Uh...well..." Ranma said, "I...dunno...I was studying to try and create a new

martial arts system called the Honosenken..."

"The Fire of a Thousand Fists?" the Salamander queen asked curiously, "Most

interestingly named. Can you describe for me what it is?"

"Sure," Ranma replied and began to explain the nature of the basic Senken

maneuvers for Earth and Water, then revealed that his father had chosen to let

Ranma create and name his own new system, a system based on the principle of a

fire being set to burn a mortal dwelling, all the while wondering if the

elemental could gather much of the basic concept.

To his surprise she did, and said as much by remarking, "That is indeed a most

curious human invention. We Elementals well know of the human proclivity to

fight either armed or bare handed, and it mostly amuses us to watch them burn

with an inner fire of determination, struggling to better themselves, often at

the cost of their fellow human beings. Of course there are some mortals who

choose to do battle with us...and these are struggles we Salamanders regard with

great favor and amusement, noticing how you flaunt your puny weapons and tools

against us, trying to spoil our fun and interrupt our consumption of our dinner.

That you trained with such noble warriors is to be commended."

Commended?" Ranma repeated, surprised to hear her express such tones of obvious

admiration.

"Think you that we do not appreciate heroism and noble valor?" Latisha replied,

"A valiant enemy is to be respected, even if we do seek opposite goals. To do

battle with a great and noble fighter for the human side is an honor to us both,

and in the thousand-or-so years that I have existed I have seen many noble

fighters stand or fall before my all-consuming hunger."

"You don't mind that Firefighters are trying to snuff you out?" Ranma asked.

"Silly Mortal," Latisha chided, "You cannot kill my kind simply by depriving us

of fuel...we merely return to our own native dimensions when expelled from a

fight, to rest and regather our strength until the next foolish mortal creates

for us an opening through which to travel to the next point of consumption.

Whenever you light a flame it forms a portal through which my kind may travel,

though the amount of food available is what determines for us whether the

Elemental being summoned is a strong or minor being. I myself only come out to

enjoy the richer quality fires that can sustain my hunger when I walk upon your

plane. That repository of oddly brewed chemical agents was a particularly tasty

soup that offered many curious and exotic flavors but for your bumbling

interference. That was why you found me so annoyed when you interrupted my

feasting."

"Yeah...you did seem kinda peeved about that," Ranma noted, "Well...what about

this favor stuff? You mean I get to ask something of you and then I can let you

go back to burning stuff whenever you feel like it?"

"Consuming fuel is in my nature," Latisha pointed out, "Do I fault you humans

for the sort of things that you are prone to?"

"Heh, good point," Ranma scratched the metaphorical back of his head, "Well...to

tell you the truth, I don't know what I want, other than to master the

Honosenken and go on to beat Nabiki so she'll start paying me more attention..."

"You wish to defeat the woman whom you love?" Latisha pondered that point,

"Curious. I know not if that would even be within my power to grant you...but

as for this...Honosenken that you mention, I believe I may grant you that

without effort."

To Ranma's surprise she reached out a hand and took his right arm gently to urge

him to raise it, then once he held it out towards her she placed his palm upon

her chest, and Ranma's eyes widened as he swallowed a bit, realizing where that

hand was resting: on a flat area just above two full and heaving bosoms. Then

he gasped as all at once flames reached out to engulf his arm...but despite the

instinctive urge to pull away he found that he could not move that arm, nor was

there any sensation of pain about him as the fires did not consume his flesh,

rather they localized around his forearm, and to his amazement he felt his

clothing melt away and saw lettering begin to etch itself into his skin with a

faint tingling sensation. When the fires subsided there were marks upon his

arm, rather like an ink-stained tattoo, but other than that he felt a rather

pleasant...sensation.

"Now there is a link between us," Latisha revealed as Ranma removed his hand

from her chest and began to study his forearm, "The pattern will ebb and flow at

times to reveal different things, sometimes even to answer questions and reveal

some secret foreknowledge. This is the mark of a pact between us, though to you

it might seem more like a truce and an understanding than any true token of my

surrender. We shall meet again, either as allies or as enemies, the fates alone

will decide, but when you call on me you may request a favor. Call on me as

often as you like...but I warn you...it had better be for something

consequential or I may...find other ways of seeking my amusement."

"But what does this have to do with the Honosenken?" Ranma asked.

"With this mark you will be acknowledged as a kin to the element of fire,"

Latisha revealed, "You will have some limited control and immunity bestowed upon

you, but how much depends on how long and hard you study to master your new

gift. Use this power wisely and it will serve you well...abuse the gift and it

will ultimately consume you."

"Uh...thanks, I guess," Ranma replied, "I guess that means you can go

now...you're free or...well, whatever..."

"I thank you for your generosity in naming such a trifling price," Latisha

smiled as her body once more reverted to the element of fire, "You are an

interesting mortal and I should like the chance of studying you on some other

occasion...good fortune in your pursuit of your iinazuke..."

And that was when the vision ended and he found himself drifting back to earth

in the swirling mass of congealing blue flames. The questioning looks he was

given by his friends were entirely predictable and even understandable, and he

had mumbled a few incoherent answers to questions to which he himself did not

truly know the answer.

Now that he had time to think about it, the marks in his arm did seem very much

like a pact of some sort, which meant that the answer he gave to Happosai was

not entirely accurate. Being a truthful sort by nature (white lies occasionally

told in self-defense notwithstanding), it bothered him more than a little, but

since the wizened old pervert had instructed him to sit like this and

contemplate on a sun-symbol that had been drawn in the ground before him, Ranma

found his mind circulating in some curious new directions. He wondered if he

should have accepted any sort of agreement with a being as inhuman as a Fire

Elemental (and never mind that she had felt VERY human to the touch!), and what

would be the ultimate outcome of such an agreement, or was it an entirely

benevolent arrangement? In fact, the more he thought about it...

"How's it going, my boy?"

Ranma opened his eyes and saw Happosai eyeing him with a wizened old expression,

as if exulting in a secret that he knew and Ranma did not.

"What do you want?" Ranma asked, "I've been sitting and meditating like you

asked, but I don't feel any lighter."

"Is that a fact?" Happosai chuckled, "Care to take a look down?"

"Huh?" Ranma blinked his eyes, then suddenly took notice that the little old man

was balancing on one foot on a single wooden branch, much like Cologne and her

staff, which actually made little sense as that would imply that Ranma himself

was sitting at a much higher level than the ground...

His eyes tracked down and saw that the ground was a good four or five feet lower

than he had anticipated and that he was-in effect-sitting on air, which

meant that he was levitating and...

"AWK!" Ranma gasped as he lost his concentration and went tumbling to the ground

in a heap.

Happosai sighed and hopped down from his own purchase, his tone gently chiding,

"Really, my boy, you ought to be a little harder to shock than this. What's so

shocking about a little levitation? Rag-headed swamis in India do it all the

time, and you're much more well trained than that."

"Uh...could you give a guy a little more warning next time?" Ranma asked as he

sat up, groaning slightly about a sore bottom, "You didn't exactly tell me that

was gonna happen..."

"I told you to concentrate on the Solar disk and think of yourself as growing

lighter," Happosai replied, "What exactly did you think was going to happen?

This exercise is to teach you how to draw on and channel the Chi-forces of the

sun itself...and maybe the sun is going down over the eastern Sea of Japan, but

you can still feel it warming you just by thinking about it, right?"

"Uh...right," Ranma said, "So...think I should try that again? This time I

won't get so frazzled about it. I...kind of had my mind on something else when

you showed up..."

"That fire lady again, huh?" Happosai smirked, "Well, far be it from me to stand

between you and a fantasy life. Lots of young men your age get tempted to let

their minds wander..."

"HEY!" Ranma protested, "It ain't like that! I'd never do nothing like that to

Nabiki!"

"Do tell?" Happosai scratched along the back of his neck, "Say...wasn't there

another little cutie who you're supposed to get hitched to? What was her name

again?"

"You mean Ucchan?" Ranma blinked, "Ah...well..."

"Kinda forgot about her, eh?" Happosai winked, "I imagine she'd be pretty peeved

with you if she ever found out. In fact, I can almost hear the affectionate

whiz of her throwing spatulas coming at you..."

"Okay, so I ain't perfect," Ranma growled, "What did you come here for anyway if

it ain't to criticize my love life?"

"I wanted to check on your progress, of course," Happosai mused, "You know, of

course, that the elements of Air and Fire are compatible, so shifting between

one to the other won't be as much of a challenge as moving from water to fire,

the Umisenken to the Honosenken. Of course, the Arashisenken is an entirely

different art from any of the others. It works on the principle of a house

basking in the sun, much like you've been doing...the house expands with heat,

then it contracts back down at night. The same could be said for your

body...taking in the heat of the sun and releasing it at night...but what if

it's not just heat you draw upon? Suppose it's Chi energy that you draw in all

around you to expand the level of the power within you, then release it when you

want to. In turns you'll learn to hold a measure of Chi power inside you all of

the time, which is what you've done in regular training. So you see...you

already know the basics of making like a House in that respect. What you need

to learn are some of the ways that this Chi-power can be used besides making

destructive fireballs and tossing them around like Frisbees."

"I think I get what you're saying," Ranma said, "So...how does this levitation

thing work?"

"My boy," Happosai smiled, "You know about the theory of gravity, don't you?

Einstein once say it involves falling down like in an elevator...according to

him we're all falling down all the time into a really deep well, and only the

ground under our feet supports us so that we don't go falling right through to

the center of the planet."

"That's what Mister Mitoshi says in Physics," Ranma said, "But I never could

figure that one out. I mean...how can we always be falling?"

"It has to do with the nature of time and space itself," Happosai revealed,

"It's not emptiness, like many people think...it's more like an infinite fabric

that stretches out in all directions. Solid matter is formed of this stuff when

it twists into the shape of an atom or subatomic particle...like knots in a

string, see what I'm saying?"

"Ah...sorta," Ranma answered.

"There really is no ultimate difference between a particle and empty space

besides this," Happosai continued, "And yet the more knots you tie in a string,

the more it bends the fold of space to create a distortion. A planet's just a

really big collection of particles knotted together like a giant ball of

string...it's all energy frozen in a pattern in space, but it creates such a big

fold in space that objects tend to slide towards it...like going down a kid's

slide to the bottom, and having your path blocked part-way by a solid object.

Gravity works like that, you see...objects sliding towards large concentrations

of matter, but there's a force that works in opposition to this one-way

slide...it's a power called levity, which isn't humor, by the way, just a force

that rises against the pull of solid matter. Levity is all around us, and if

you learn to tap into this force it can pick you up and carry you like a feather

on a breeze."

"And that's Levitation?" Ranma asked, "Tuning into this...levity whatever?"

"Actually there's a lot more to it than that," Happosai sighed, "It's mind over

matter...and if Nabiki were here I could explain some of the details that would

go right over your head. You do know what inertia is, right?"

"Sure," Ranma replied, "A body at rest tends to stay at rest unless you push

it."

"And pushing it encounters resistance," Happosai nodded, "An object-say, your

father-likes to sleep in during the day and you can't really budge him out of

a nice, deep nap with anything less than a loud explosion."

In spite of himself, Ranma sniffed in amusement at this analogy, "Yeah...I got

that all right..."

"Well," Happosai resumed, "An object tends to remain stable in place unless a

force works against it to push it in one or more direction. Two forces

operating at the same time create a vector, which pushes an object in a third

direction. Now...suppose the inertia of an object wasn't totally fixed...it

might take less energy to move it if you can lower this resistance."

"Say what?" Ranma said, "Lower an object's inertia? How do you do that?"

"I can't really describe it to you, Boy," Happosai said, "You gotta feel it in

yourself. You have the strength of will to do it if you can feel your way to

lowering your inertia. Maybe you should keep imagining yourself to be as light

as a feather again...that seemed to do the trick."

"Ah...yeah..." Ranma replied, remembering the momentary wonder of discovering

himself levitating above the ground, and deciding that he would have to practice

that more often."

"The Sun can be your ally in this," Happosai explained, "It's the source of all

life and power throughout the solar system. Think of yourself as being the

point in the center of a circle...that's the ancient sign of the sun...a circle

with a point within it...the solar disk, if you will. Be that point and think

of yourself as a feather, let the warmth of the sun seep into you and be like a

house that expands and rises."

"A house that expands and rises," Ranma repeated, "Right...got it..."

"Keep in mind," Happosai cautioned, "The sun is also the source of changes in

the weather...and if you think of ocean water heating up in the sun and rising

up as steam to form clouds in the sky, you could be like those clouds, held

aloft by the sun's power. Of course do too much of it and those clouds get

heavy, and the water falls back down again as rain. Sometimes you get hot and

cold drafts that mix and interfere with one another...and like the vectoring of

two forces you can get wind and all sorts of hostile weather. Then there's the

clash of two polarities that creates lightning and thunder, and hurricanes and

tornadoes...all forces that can tear away at a house and ultimately destroy

it...so the thing you have to do is to keep in mind is the peace and tranquility

of a bright and sunny day. If you have to imagine yourself as a cloud, don't

let yourself be distracted like you were just now or it could lead to disaster."

"Okay," Ranma said, "Big safety tip...think sunny, not rainy."

"There you go," Happosai congratulated, "You've taken your first big step

towards creating the Arashisenken. You can work out the details later once

you've got a firm grasp of the basics."

"I think I know what you're saying," Ranma nodded, "I'll do that."

"I'll give you one more analogy and then we can call it a night," Happosai said,

"When I talked about Inertia, there was another curious thing that Einstein used

to tell me. He said that the more you push an object forward the greater its

inertia becomes...that's because an object absorbs energy the more you push

it...and it continues forward until it dissipates that energy and comes to a

relative rest again. The more energy and inertia an object absorbs, the more

densely it is packed together on an atomic level. Comes a point where it takes

more and more energy to push an object faster and faster until you get near to

the speed of light. That's where it takes an almost infinite amount of energy

to push the object faster, which is why solid matter doesn't move faster than

light, not unless you convert it back to energy, or warp the space around it."

"And what does that all mean?" Ranma asked.

"Isn't it obvious?" Happosai smiled, "You already know how to lower your

inertia...you do it every time you move faster than the human eye can see.

You've been doing it automatically all this time and never even realized it

before...and once you learn how to do it while you're standing still...why, the

possibilities are endless! If you can reduce your inertia to the point where

you literally are as light as a feather, and can tap into the force of Levity

all around you, then you'll know how to float on the air like a breeze. Stick

that one in your pipe and smoke it...even the Old Woman doesn't know how to do

that trick."

Ranma blinked as he absorbed the implications, "You mean...I can actually do

something that Elder Cologne can't do herself?"

"Give the boy a cigar!" Happosai chuckled, "Congratulations...you're on your way

to surpassing Nabiki as a fighter. How do you feel about that?"

"I...uh...weird..." Ranma said, "I never thought I could do it...I mean...be

better than Nabiki. I was hoping I'd get as good as her...maybe...eventually,

but still..."

"Well, it will take some time before you can do that, of course," Happosai

nodded, "Three days to be exact, and then you can show up that uppity girl and

let her know what a mistake it was to underestimate you and take your martial

arts for granted."

"Uh...yeah..." Ranma thought a moment then said, "Y'know...for a guy who spends

most of his time stealing women's panties...you do know some pretty neat stuff,

Gramps..."

"Of course," Happosai replied with a puffing up of his little chest, "That's

because I'm the Master!"

"But there's something I can't figure out," Ranma frowned, "And that's why

you're helping me do this."

"Ranma...I'm hurt, Boy," Happosai pouted, "Haven't you ever heard of the Code of

the Guys?"

"The Code of the what?" Ranma blinked.

"I blame it on Genma," Happosai sighed, "Your father should be the one to tell

you this...and it seems your mother and Soun dropped the ball big time.

Okay...it's like this...the Code of the Guys is about getting laid."

"Getting laid?" Ranma repeated.

"Men are competitive by nature," Happosai began, "We view each other as

potential rivals in the greater pecking order that is life itself...only the

both of us sit pretty much at the top of the heap when it comes to being top-

notch Alpha males. Of course...I do have to concede you have the edge in the

looks department...but that's just because you're a snot-nosed punk who hasn't

seen his fair share of life yet, so just wait until you get to be my age before

you go tootin' your horn on that, right?"

"Uh...right, whatever," Ranma conceded.

"The thing is, though...when it comes to women, Guys like us tend to stick

together," Happosai smiled, "The Code of the Guys has three essential

rules...the first one being: Never mess with another man's woman, especially if

he's a friend. You can cheat on a stranger, but it's low to cheat on the woman

of your buddy."

"Uh...huh?" Ranma blinked.

"The second rule is this," Happosai continued, "Never sell out a friend for a

woman. Guys get screwed all the time, but not by other guys who trust them.

You do that and you sell out on trust, and then nobody's ever going to trust

you, especially the woman you cheat with."

"Hey, I wouldn't-!" Ranma began to protest.

"The third rule is the most important one of all," Happosai went on as if not

interrupted, "Unless it conflicts with the first two rules, always help another

guy get laid...and that's what I'm trying to do for you, if you'd be man enough

to thank me."

"Thank you?" Ranma sputtered, "For what?"

"For giving you the benefit of my wealth of experience, of course," Happosai

responded, "All guys have one goal in mind when it comes to women...and that's

getting into their pants. Oh, sure...there's the romance and the politically

correct stuff they tell you about relationships and what-not, but it's all just

fluff covering the one basic thing that you can't ignore no matter how much you

work at it."

"And that is?" Ranma asked in dubious tones.

"Reproduction, of course," Happosai snorted, "Without it the race would be

extinct...in fact, there wouldn't be a human race to start with, just a bunch of

trilling bacteria reproducing asexually. Nature made a great leap forward when

it developed Bisexual reproduction...what separates the boys from the girls, if

you'll pardon the pun. Bisexuality is the key for human survival...and I don't

mean the same-sex kind either! A guy has to stick his thing in a girl and get

her to come, or at least come himself so she gets his seed planted, and without

all of that, well...forget about the romantics! Concentrate on the nookie!"

"Nookie?" Ranma blinked, then he drew a mental image and appropriately colored,

"Oh..."

"I don't know if it's just you or something in the Saotome line," Happosai said

with disgust, "Your father was the same way when he was your age...scared to

death of getting intimate with the ladies. How he wound up the father of three

strapping youths like you, Ryoga and that Kaoih cuties I'll never

understand...or why the girls were so hot for Genma when he always ran away from

them, your mother being the notable exception. However you slice it, Boy, you

have got a ways to go before you start acting normally and behave like you've

got a pulse around women!"

"HEY!" Ranma protested, "I do too have...ah...well...whatever it is!"

"The girls chase you, remember?" Happosai snorted, "Not the other way

around...except maybe for that crush you used to have on the Kuno girl, and

that's past history."

"All right...so maybe I don't want to act like a jerk all the time," Ranma said,

"Not like you anyway, always trying to grab them and cop a feel..."

"You might try it yourself and see if it's so bad," Happosai countered, "But

before you condemn me for my hobbies and habits, keep in mind that you go the

opposite way, and that's causing the women in your life to feel lonely and

neglected. You think Kuonji and Nabiki aren't thinking about you right now? Or

do you think they like their wives more than they like you? That's it, isn't

it? You're jealous that you don't think you mean as much to them!"

"I ain't jealous!" Ranma protested, but as he met the little pervert eye-to-eye

he found that he was the one to look away, grumbling, "Well...maybe just a

little..."

"So what's really the problem?" Happosai asked, "You promised your Mom you'd

wait until after you were married, but do you really believe anyone expects to

hold you to that promise? If you did give in to the perfectly natural hormones

that must be raging in your body then we wouldn't need to be having this

conversation, and the women who love you would be satisfied and content that you

love them, that they mean as much to you as you do to them. You got it?"

Ranma was genuinely surprised to see the heat and anger in the eyes of the

diminutive master, and then something else occurred to him as he replied, "You

really think that I'm the one who's been putting a wedge between me and Nabiki?"

"You hold back your affections from her and you can ask me that?" Happosai

growled, then he sighed and the anger seemed to fade from him altogether,

"Ranma...I was once a young man with prospects, just like you...and I lost the

one I loved because I didn't tell her how much she really meant to me. I...kind

of let her down, and she got angry and shut me out of her life. Don't make the

same mistake that I did, son...life's just too short to be spent pining away for

the rest of your years with endless longing."

Ranma seriously thought about that, then he said, "I...ah...thanks."

"You're welcome," Happosai nodded, "Now, shouldn't you be getting yourself ready

for the show tonight? It's in another hour or so, and if you're late your

sister's gonna kick your sorry ass."

"Late...show?" Ranma sat upright, "OMIGOSH! I totally forgot! Kaoih's gonna be

mad at me if I...uh...mind if we do this latter?"

"What are you standing around here asking me that for?" Happosai replied, "Get

moving, you young punk! Call it a forth rule in the Code of the Guys: Never let

another guy catch flack from a woman, even if she is a relative, you got it?"

"Got it," Ranma said, "See you later!"

Ranma took off at a dead run heading towards the circus, leaving Happosai to

shake his head and remark sadly, "Kids these days...gotta kick 'em in the right

direction, not like in my day when we knew how to chase a woman..."

Unseen by the ancient Master of the Anything Goes school, a hidden figure

perched atop a tree looked on with considerable concern in her expression. It

was far worse than she had imagined...things were progressing in the training of

young Saotome far beyond her wildest estimation. Truly the old fool had been

pulling out all the stops if he could make this much progress with his charge in

as little as eleven days. As she stood perched atop a tree that was far too

slender to support her weight she considered her options and thought about the

implications for Nabiki, then started to formulate a theory that might work to

her own personal advantage. It was not that she was adverse to Ranma winning in

the upcoming struggle, but if he won by too great a margin the old fool would

never stop rubbing her nose in it. Something had to be done to equalize the

odds a little.

Cologne smiled as a plan took shape in her mind, then she vaulted away into the

growing night, determined to set this plan into motion. This could work out

even better than she had dared to hope for, and the thought of Nabiki's

expression when she learned about Ranma's special training program...she

chuckled softly, a merry and musical tune that haunted on the breeze and caused

Happosai to look up in surprise, wondering where he had heard that sylvan sound

before, and why it suddenly made him feel so worried...

Part One-Hundred-Three.

"You know, this was a great idea you had, Nab-chan," Ukyo complimented, "A night

out at the Circus is just the thing we need to raise our spirits, right?"

"Ah...right," Nabiki said, "A great idea...just the thing we need, right, Sham-

chan?"

"What you mean, Airen?" Shampoo asked innocently, "You is one who in dumps

lately. Shampoo and Lylac very happy to see Airen cheer up, is good get out

house and restaurant for evening, yes?"

"Good for somebody anyway," Perfume remarked, "Though this smelly, noisy place

has way too much going on for my liking, and the scent of all those

animals...eww! Hasn't anybody thought about changing their cages lately, or at

least cleaning up their litter boxes...?"

"Down, Kitty," Ukyo smiled, then turned a glance to the most morose looking

member of their party, "Hey, Akane, where are Keiko and Kodachi about right now?

Didn't you invite them to come along and join us?"

"Ah...well," Akane said reluctantly, "Keiko's parents just got back into town

and they wanted to spend some time together, and Kodachi wanted them to get to

know her better, so...they said they might be along a lot later..."

"I wonder how her father will take to the news that lady Kuno is virtually his

daughter-in-law," Natsume wondered, turning a glance at her lordly male

companion-who for once was not dressed in his samurai-styled Hakama, "Your

sister, if I dare to say so, has certainly made some curious choices..."

"Some for the better, I think," Tatewaki replied, "I wish her well in the

lifestyle that she has chosen to embrace, though I feign not to understand the

exigencies and particulars of that strange relationship, much of which I fault

upon that Madam Lao woman and her peculiar influence. In truth my sister has

changed much of late, and I remain undecided if it is entirely for the better,

but...given all else, and the curse that she must bear, I think Kodachi may be

allowed her eccentricities...at least for the present."

"Why can't you just say she's weird and leave it at that?" Kurumi asked, then

sighed, "The two of you are impossible! When you get locked in a conversation,

it's like listening to characters out of a gothic romance novel."

"Sister dear," Natsume smiled, "Though I love you dearly, please kindly shut up

about it."

Nabiki chuckled as they circulated among the crowd attending the circus, joining

a line that was forming to enter the big tent, her small circle of friends and

family making her feel special and her heart much lighter than the endless days

that had been spent fretting over the whereabouts of the missing Ranma and

Ryoga. In truth Akane needed this as much-if not more-than she did, having

come to rely heavily on her friends to liven her spirits with the absence of her

boyfriend. It reminded one overmuch of how fragile was her younger sister's

self-image, and how much she depended on others and their regard for her to

bolster her own spirits. Akane was a very social kind of person, not so

introspective as Nabiki herself and certainly no where near as much of a

habitual loner. For Nabiki it was unusual to find herself surrounded by loving

and well-trusted people, but for Akane it was second nature, and without Kodachi

or Keiko around to cheer her up over Ryoga...

She smiled as she felt Shampoo gently squeeze her hand, her wife who had come to

mean so many special things to Nabiki, one of whom was sleeping soundly in the

papoose-like back pack that Shampoo carried across her shoulders. Lylac was

sleeping like a little purple-haired angel as if comfortably aware that her

mother was always near at hand. The noise of the crowd did not seem to bother

her at all, and in a way looking down at her gave Nabiki a strangely warm

feeling of security and trust. It was like looking down at a miniature version

of herself who had parts of Shampoo mixed in for exotic flavor. The best of

both worlds, she thought wryly, and yet still innocent of so many of life's

subtle mysteries just waiting to be explored...

"Imoutochan," a gentle voice greeted her, and Nabiki turned around to see her

older sister approaching from the side, along with Aunt Nodoka, her father, and

a fully adult Miss Hinako. That combination made her blink in surprise as she

saw the unpleasant way her Aunt was eyeing her spectacularly well-endowed

teacher, as if daring the younger woman to try anything untowards with Soun. It

was strange how much Nodoka seemed to resent Hinako's fawning affections towards

her father, in fact, if Nabiki did not know any better...

"Nabiki-chan," Kasumi called her attention back her way, and to Nabiki's

surprise her older sister handed her a pair of cotton candy cones, one for

herself and the other for Shampoo, "I thought that you would like these, so I

bought them for you. I know how much you love sweets, Imoutochan."

"Ah...yeah, thanks Oneechan," Nabiki replied, disturbed as always by the

undercurrent of sexual tension that seemed to radiate from Kasumi of late

(though extremely grateful not to see any cup of water in the hands of her

Kaneda-infatuated sister), "You're not having one for yourself?"

"Oh, I couldn't," Kasumi flushed modestly, "I am trying to watch my figure, but

you two work so hard to keep in shape that I'm sure you won't mind a few extra

calories..."

"Not to mention a good sugar rush," Ukyo chimed sweetly over Nabiki's shoulder,

"Too bad Lylac's too young for that stuff, huh? Of course, knowing her

parentage, she's bound to pick up her Poppa's oral fetish..."

"Stuff it, Kuonji," Nabiki murmured back, albeit sweetly.

"Well, it seems like we all made it," their father said brightly before taking a

brief head count and noticing the less-than-pleased expression of Akane,

"Or...mostly, any way. Ah well...it's good to be out and enjoying ourselves,

just like you young people..."

"I certainly agree with that," Nodoka relaxed slightly into a more guarded

smile, "It seems like ages since I've even been to a circus...it does bring back

memories of the old days. Do you remember back then, Soun-kun? Back when my

husband and I were still dating, and the owner of this circus had that lovely

daughter, Sakura, for which he named it."

"Why, yes," Soun looked surprise, "I'd almost forgotten...the Cherry Blossom

Circus...I'd wondered where I'd heard that name before. It all comes back to me

now...my word! Has it been twenty years already?"

"I wonder how little Sakura is getting by these days," Nodoka mused, "Or if she

ever found a husband..."

It was Hinako's turn to look semi-annoyed, but she brightened up at once by

saying in a sultry tone of voice, "Oh my...this does seem like fun. I've always

loved the circus, it makes me feel almost like a little girl again..."

"Just wait a few minutes," Natsume growled, eyeing the teacher like the energy

vampire that she knew her to be, and determined this time not to allow her own

Ki-force to be leached into preserving her illusion of maturity.

"Hinako-Sensei," Tatewaki bowed his head respectfully, "I notice that you lack

in hand some of the sweets that this carnival offers to its patrons."

"Why...yes..." Hinako's eyes got very round as she took in the half-eaten

cotton-candy held by Shampoo and Nabiki, then she turned to Soun and said,

"Soun-chan...I would love it ever-so-much if you would get me some cotton

candy...and some popcorn, and some iced tea, and some..."

"Um...well..." the Tendo elder looked like his resolve was melting before the

luminous focus of Hinako's eyes, while Nodoka appeared on the verge of an

apoplexy.

"By all means, allow me to be so gracious as to procure those items for you,

Sensei," Tatewaki smiled, "It would be but a trifling gesture for my part since

I was about to acquire some sweets for the fair Natsume and her ravenous

sister."

"Why, what a kind gesture, Kuno-kun," Hinako beamed, "It's nice to see that at

least one male member of hour household has the proper respect for a lady. I'll

come with you...Soun-chan, will you wait here for me and save my place in line?"

"Ah...well..." Soun replied, his mind now completely befuddled under the spell

of the voluptuous teacher.

"And you, my sweet," Kuno took Natsume by the hand and kissed it, "Will you be

so kind as to reserve my place while I tend to this important errand?"

"Ah..." Natsume was torn between gratitude that her man was momentarily

distracting a pest away from her adopted father, but even more concerned about

leaving Tatewaki in the presence of Hinako, who might well eye him as a snack

for her energy absorption. Caught by indecision, she had no choice but to watch

as he walked off with Hinako in search of the concession stand. At her side she

felt Kurumi also tense up, but for slightly different reasons.

"Maybe I should go with them to keep that baka out of trouble, do you think,

Sis?"

Natsume gave her sister a grateful smile and said, "If it's not too much of a

burden, Imoutochan..."

"Right," Kurumi replied, and loped off in the direction of Tatewaki and Hinako.

Unseen by them a pair of glasses gleamed off of the moonlight, but that one

factor did catch the eye of the most alert among them, who cast her gaze about

with narrowed eyes and sniffed the breeze as if to catch a familiar scent, a

gesture that drew an immediate glance from her closest companions.

"What is it?" Ukyo asked, "Is anything wrong?"

"Ah...not quite," Perfume replied, finding no further trace of what she was

after.

"Don't give me that, Kitty," Ukyo frowned, "If you were in your cursed form, I'd

say your ears just flattened."

"It's just...I think there's someone here watching us," Perfume replied, "We

ought to be on our guard...just in case..."

"Just in case?" Nabiki's own ears pricked up, "You mean...Mousse?"

"Shampoo thought she smell hairy Ape somewhere in area," Shampoo murmured back,

"Is perfect hiding place for him, yes?"

"What does that jerk want now?" Akane growled.

"What does he always want?" Perfume sighed, "I wish for once he would just get a

clue and...huh?"

"Huh?" Ukyo repeated, "Huh what?"

"That's...strange," Perfume frowned as her eyes tracked a certain shadow, "I

think I spotted Mousse all right, but he's not heading our way...he's following

the same path as Uncle Soun and the others."

"You mean he's stalking someone else for once?" Nabiki asked, "But who?"

"Kurumi!" Natsume spoke up with alarm, "She's been thwarting him almost on a

daily basis the whole time that you were gone, maybe he has come to view her as

an obstacle that needs removing..."

"Obstacles always need removing to Amazon thinking," Shampoo gave a concerned

glance towards Natsume, "Mousse very dangerous when crossed...him maybe do

something to you sister?"

"Like what?" Akane asked, "Kurumi can run rings around the guy in her sleep!"

"But Mousse does not always fight fair, and he can be quite cunning when he has

to," Perfume replied, "Airen...wait here, I have to put a stop to this."

"Not without me you won't, Sugar," Ukyo replied in tones that did not brook

contradiction.

"I'll go with her," Nabiki said, "You stay here with Shampoo..."

"Shampoo come with you, Airen," Shampoo also insisted.

"Hey, I'm coming too!" Akane protested, "She's my sister!"

"And that goes double for me," Natsume avowed, "Father, please hold our place,

we will only be a moment in dealing with this interloper."

"Ah, well..." Soun began, only to find that he, Nodoka and Kasumi were alone.

The three of them exchanged looks then as one they gave up their place in line

and started to follow.

And from the concealment of a nearby tent, yet another pair of eyes gleamed with

thinly veiled amusement before a softly feminine voice chuckled, "Oh my...I do

so much enjoy following the antics of these young people..."

Happosai was fuming to himself a bit as he stalked towards the trailer where the

boys were getting suited up for their nightly performance. For some reason he

just did not feel in the mood to indulge in one of his nightly excursions, as if

raiding panty hose from the ladies had somehow lost its luster for the

evening...and all because this talk of nostalgia was making him feel moody.

[Ah, Cologne,] he thought to himself with a wistful sigh, [You were so pure and

innocent in those days, like an untrammeled flower growing wild in the mountains

you so loved. If only I had not been such an impetuous and foolish young man,

we could have been so good for each other...]

Of course in his fantasies he stood considerably taller and had lustrous blond

hair, a powerful physique and manly features that would have made Ranma look

like Gosunkuji. The mere fact that such handsome looks had never truly been his

to begin with hardly factored in at all to his thinking. It was Cologne who

truly mattered, Cologne who had been the most stunning and radiant beauty that

he had ever set eyes upon, even the woman he had married barely holding a candle

to her exotic glory. Cologne had been a precious child whose innocence had been

tainted when Happosai callously and cruelly abandoned her to resume his travels

as a wandering student of the martial arts.

Well...at least that was how he wanted to remember the events at the time of

their parting. It was about the same time that he had encountered the demoness

Ganglot, who had given him the means of achieving his dreams of glory (well,

that and another demon he once wrangled with, then that rude Immortal fellow

from whom he had managed to steal the precious quickening power that sustained

his life to this day, but all of that was another story). It still revolved

around the girl he had left behind, the first woman to capture his heart. He

could not forget the Cologne who was even in the light of knowing what she had

become in the bitterness of long abandonment. It was Cologne who...

Who...

"Who..." Happosai whispered aloud, "Is that?"

A womanly shape was gliding through the darkened areas between well-lit tents,

like a flitting shadow seeking its, prey like a wandering ghost or some stalking

predator. A thin ray of moonlight did, however, briefly play across her face,

and in that moment Happosai felt the ground nearly give out from underneath his

feet and swallow him, for it was a radiant vision borrowed from his most fervent

dreams...or nightmares.

"C-Cologne?" he managed to gasp, but already the shadowy form had moved on

beyond hearing.

For a moment he stood there, not daring to believe, but then the wizened old man

said, "It-it can't be...but if it is..."

He hurried up the pace, hoping to catch another glimpse of the elusive beauty.

A hunch was forming in his mind and he had to find that girl in order to confirm

it. It could all prove to be just an illusion or hallucination on his part, or

possibly even an amazing coincidence, but either way he just had to find that

girl, and (if possible) to squeeze her to be certain that she was real. It was

too much to hope that he might be granted another chance, but he could not pass

up on the hope of trying, and if it really was true...why...who was he to

overlook a gift of the Kami?

Predator stalked predator, and the race was on to ignite a long buried and

almost forgotten passion, and if he failed to find her now...why, he would have

trouble forgiving himself, but somehow Happosai knew that destiny was with

him...one way or the other...

"I wish to thank you again for your kind generosity, Lord Kuno," Hinako said

merrily as she munched happily down on her cotton candy, her arms laden full of

extra sweets, "Kurumi-san and I could never have afforded so much at the prices

they charge in such a place as this. You truly are the man of your household."

"I thank you, you are too kind," Kuno replied, holding a single cotton candy

wand uneaten in his own hand as they began to trace their way back to where they

thought the others were waiting, "I know that my father must vex you greatly,

Hinako-Sensei, and for that I do apologize. He was not always the man he is

today, but he seems to have adapted to life as the principal of a High School,

however much he tends to annoy his students."

"I really should not complain," Hinako sighed, "He is the man who hired me as a

homeroom teacher for your classroom, though nominally to keep an eye out for

such delinquents as Nabiki and your former self. Things seem to have quieted

down a bit at Furinkan, however, and I have been wondering of late if my

services are still required. I do love the job of teaching...but...lately I

have started to wonder if my destiny might not lay elsewhere..."

"You mean as a housewife?" Tatewaki asked, "Forgive my forwardness and lack of

proper manners, but may I presume to ask if you have already in mind some

fortunate soul to be your husband?"

Hinako colored brightly and replied, "My lord...you are much too forward.

But...still...it is true that I have been...considering my options..."

Kurumi rolled her eyes at the circumspect way in which Kuno had asked such a

question. His flowery speech patterns hardly impressed her as much as they did

Natsume, but she had to grudgingly admit that his charm was also effective on

someone like Hinako. Either way, she was too busy polishing off her snacks to

pay their banter much attention, satisfied by now that Hinako was not about to

leach the guy who was putting the moves on her sister. (And too bad about that,

because she really had wanted to watch that...)

All at once Kurumi's finely-honed combat reflexes came to the fore and she

turned her body to the side in time to miss being struck by a number of hurled

projectiles. Said projectiles carried on and struck a telephone pole behind

her, but then she belatedly realized that they had been aimed to miss her, and

that the one who had hurled them had been merely intending to get her attention.

It worked as Kurumi immediately stood on her guard, even as Hinako pulled out a

coin and Kuno stood himself at the ready, snarling a very low, "Who dares?"

"I do," said Mousse, who every calmly stepped out into the open from between a

pair of tents, smiling confidently in a way that seemed uncanny to his nominal

intended target.

"You?" Kuno's eyes narrowed, "What do you want you Occularly impaired simian?"

"I'm not here for you or the teacher," Mousse replied, keeping his focus

deliberately on Kurumi, "You're the only one I've come looking for. Tendo

Kurumi I challenge you to a match to determine once and for all which of us is

the better fighter."

"You mean...here?" Kurumi asked in surprise, "And now?"

"Do you know a better time for it?" he countered, "Just you and me, right here,

right now."

"Okay," Kurumi straightened out, "If that's the way you want it..."

"Oh I most certainly do," Mousse smiled, "But not the way you expect it...not

this time."

"Be careful," Tatewaki warned, "I sense something different about this

fool...his posture and bearing are not the same as with his usual attacks."

"This is disgraceful behavior," Hinako declared, "Finish him off quickly or I

will be forced to take action."

"You'd like that, I'll bet," Kurumi murmured to herself as she readied to dodge

one of Mousse's hurled attacks, at which point she would use the opening to

close the distance between them to finish him off in one blow. He always gave

her the same opening...and just for once she wished that he would try

something...

Mousse's outline blurred, and then he started to divide and multiply before her

very eyes as if he were encircling her in both directions.

[...Different?] she thought to herself with a wide-eyed expression.

Just then Nabiki and the others arrived at a dead run, just in time to see

Mousse seemingly surround the shorter girl in a ring that had Mousses fanning

out in a complete circle. Kurumi was turning her head wildly around as if

trying to discern which Mousse was real and which were the illusions, but as she

watched in amazement the Chinese boy's form blurred even more into a darkened

outline, and then shadows seemed to form all around her, engulfing her in all

directions.

"What the heck is that?" Ukyo wondered.

"Is like splitting Cat hairs," Shampoo remarked before sensing Nabiki's

involuntary shudder, at which point she hastily added, "Shampoo sorry, Airen..."

All at once the attack came at Kurumi and she found herself literally buffeted

on all sides by a hundred punches and kicks that came at her from all

directions. As fast as she could block a few, the rest proved overwhelming, and

while no single punch by itself proved telling, a thousand of them at once was

enough to make her head spin, and in next to no time she hit the ground like a

nerveless puppet.

Mousse stepped away from his own shadows and took a position not far away,

saying simply, "That was my new Shadow technique, the dance of a Thousand Dark

Punches. I deliberately kept the power down real low so that I wouldn't really

hurt you. Did you like it?"

"Gah..." Kurumi sat upright and pushed against the ground growling, "That-that

was nothing..."

"Kurumi!" Natsume started to rush forward.

"Stay where you are!" Mousse declared dramatically, "This is between me and your

sister, no one else gets involved, not until I hear her surrender."

"Surrender?" Kurumi forced herself to stand on wobbly legs, "That's a joke,

right...?"

"Kurumi-chan," Akane said in immediate concern, feeling her own urge to charge

forward in the defense of her adopted sister.

"I thought that would be your answer," Mousse replied, "In which case...have a

taste of my second new attack...Engage, Engulf and Bind!"

He threw back both arms and launched a series of chains that flew from his

sleeves, but instead of aiming for Kurumi the chains lanced out at the space

around her, leaving the short-haired girl momentarily confused at to what he was

up to, right up until Mousse made a small circling motion with both arms that

caused the chains to curl back and wind in around Kurumi's body, not actually

touching her but encircling her in a cocoon-like binding. With another flick of

his wrists he caused those chains to constrict about her, only this time Kurumi

did not wait passively to learn what he was about.

Those who had been about to cry her name saw Kurumi rocket skyward, leaping out

of the binding chains like a cannon shot and briefly going airborne in an

arching curl that she turned into a dragon-stamp kick aimed in Mousse's

direction. In spite of this audacious counter-offensive, Mousse smiled to

himself as if sensing triumph.

Kurumi's foot hit the spot where Mousse had been standing one second later, but

Mousse had vanished entirely, while his chains snaked around and coiled about

her without warning.

"HEY!" Kurumi cried, suddenly finding her arms pinned to the sides of her body.

"Now behold my ultimate maneuver!" Mousse declared from seemingly all around

her, "Blind Style Fighting Reverse Containment!"

"Wha-?" Kurumi gasped as her eyes went wide and she momentarily staggered, and

those who were sensitive to Chi forces all around her felt the shadows closing

in on her, surrounding her in a gray haze that lasted but a moment, yet which

caused the young girl to fall to her knees, gasping in real horror.

Mousse reappeared from behind her, holding the chains that he had used to trap

the girl's arms, and very calmly he asked, "Do you surrender?"

For a moment Kurumi could not speak, but she nodded her head, conceding the

fight without a second thought, at which point Mousse did something with the

chains that made them release her, and then they retracted back into his sleeves

altogether.

"Whoah," Nabiki softly murmured, her own eyes by now as wide as saucers.

"I WON!" Mousse declared, "I finally beat her!"

"What did you do to Kurumi?" Natsume demanded hotly, a makeshift staff held up

in both hands as she had been convinced earlier in the evening to leave at home

her trademark rug-beater.

"Why...nothing of course," Mousse smiled, "She's not really hurt, and you won't

find a mark anywhere about her. I won this fight fair and square, and now even

Kurumi has conceded that I am the better fighter."

"Indeed," Kuno frowned, "But by what foul art of enchantment have you worked

this?"

"It was a Chi-attack," Perfume exclaimed, "But...how? Where did he learn such a

powerful maneuver?"

"Wouldn't you like to know?" Mousse smiled, "And now that I've removed her

interference..."

"Let me guess," Ukyo growled, "You're gonna come after me next to get to

Perfume, right?"

"Not this time," Mousse replied, "I think I've shown you enough of my new system

for one night, and it would be foolish for me to try and take all of you on by

myself. I only wanted to face Kurumi and prove to her once and for all that I'm

a man worth respecting..."

"Indeed," a pleasant voice remarked, "And you defeated her most admirably. A

worthy challenge met and accepted as befits a son of the Nyanchiczu."

"Huh?" Mousse whirled around, only to find himself confronted by a dark haired

girl of indeterminate age and indescribable beauty, "W-Who are you...?"

"A friend," said this girl, who was wearing a fancy Chinese silk dress, "I was

simply admiring the way you used shadow and illusion to defeat this girl. A new

technique, if I am not mistaken, created by you for this very purpose."

"It's my own creation," Mousse replied cautiously, "But I don't quite know what

business it is of yours, Miss...?"

"Call me Bha-alm," the radiant beauty smiled a dazzling smile, "It was the name

of an honored ancestor of mine, and of a cousin who once hailed originally from

your village. I am myself an exile from the Nyanchiczu tribe, which is why I

was drawn with such interest to witnessing your spectacle. Most well played

indeed, and the young warrior there never even saw it coming."

"You claim to be the cousin of Balm from our village?" Perfume immediately

challenge, "Prove it!"

"You are Par-Fum the Enforcer, correct?" the gentle-voiced girl replied, "I have

heard stories of you, how you caused three girls to be exiled for a crime

committed against my cousin, Lo-Xion. Surely you have heard of Poultice, my

mother?"

"Poultice the Healer?" Perfume arched an eyebrow, "She lived in one of the

neighboring villages in the Valley of the Willow Weavers. They are Amazons of

an entirely different cast, complete renunciates who live without husbands.

They mate twice a year with the men of their rival village, and only to have

children. But I heard that they cast out their Healer because she violated one

of their rules..."

"She dared to love a man and to keep him with her," the young-seeming girl

before them revealed, "She declared him her husband, and he became my father."

"Is forbidden love of renunciates," Shampoo declared, "Great-grandmother say she

go to village of Weeping Woman, but no find happiness there, move on with man

and leave lands of Amazons. Go to foreign parts, but no know they go to Japan."

"They went to lots of different places," the young girl replied, "But nowhere

did they find a place to call their home. I grew up on the road as a wandering

gypsy, of sorts, and then I came here where I earn an honest living. If you

have any doubts about my story, ask your great-grandmother, she was the only

Elder of the ruling council who spoke out in my mother's favor."

"Wait a minute," Nabiki spoke up, "How can you know that Shampoo is her great-

granddaughter...and how can you even know Perfume if you grew up outside of her

village?"

"I know lots of different things," the dark-haired girl replied, "For

example...I know where this fool learned the secrets of his new fighting

techniques. Would you care to know the answer?"

"Sure," Nabiki said, "Fire away...let me have it."

"Not here," the dark haired girl replied, nodding towards the big tent, "The

answers you seek is in there...inside the Circus itself where a performance is

being readied at this very moment that will amaze and surprise you. Once you

see with your own eyes you will know what you need to know."

"Really?" Nabiki sniffed, "Sounds like fortune telling mumbo jumbo to me..."

"Oneechan," Akane spoke up, "Supposing she's right? Mousse must be a part of

this circus, right? That means somebody here must have taught him something

that helped him learn how to defeat Kurumi."

"Oh, there's something in there all right," Mousse chuckled, "And you'll

definitely get a real surprise if you go in there."

"What are you up to?" Tatewaki asked, "What foul game are you playing?"

"No games," Mousse said, sounding surprisingly sober as he looked upon the woman

who called herself Balm, "Save those played by others, who shall go nameless. I

did what I had to do in order to secure my way clear of obstacles, and now that

I have defeated Kurumi..."

"Ah yes," the dark haired woman said, "Congratulations...I'm sure the both of

you will make a wonderful couple."

"A wonderful...huh?" Kurumi blinked as she finally recovered from her battle.

"When an Amazon is defeated by an outsider girl, she must either kill or marry

that girl," Cologne replied, "But if a man should defeat her, that man becomes

her husband. He defeated you in a formal challenge match and you concede that

you lost, which means that the both of you..."

"WHAT?" Mousse reacted, then he and Kurumi chorused, "NO WAY!"

"How can this be?" Soun asked, "My daughter is not an Amazon!"

"Excuse me for contradicting you, Elder of your House," the dark haired girl

replied, "But did your middle daughter not marry an Amazon and take her for a

wife? And did not the Elder of the High Council herself declare your entire

clan as honorary Amazons, and thus by adopting this cousin as a member of your

house..."

"All right," Nabiki declared, "Now I know that you couldn't have found any of

that out without some inside information..."

"Unless she is Seer," Shampoo said warily, "They know many things, Airen, and

things only Lore Masters know. Is very rare and special talent."

"That's true," Perfume affirmed, "A Seer would know things by clairvoyant

vision, but is she such a Seer? I have this...odd sense that we have met

before..."

"As I have said," the dark haired girl replied, "I've been to many different

places. Do you wish to have answers? Enter the Big Top and you will have

them."

"And meanwhile..." Ukyo said, "What about this business about Kurumi being

engaged to Mousse? She's not really bound by those stupid Amazon rules...is

she?"

"Stupid?" Perfume gave her wife a sobering look, "As stupid as when I made you

my Airen?"

"Uh...well...that is..." Ukyo winced, "Oboy."

"No way!" Kurumi said, "I've got a say in this, right?"

"So do I!" Mousse declared, "And that isn't why I-!"

"You can make your excuses to each other," the dark haired girl said as she

started to turn around, "I have no part to play in any of this, other than

wishing you both a long an happy life with strong warriors for your children.

The rest is up to you, I fear, the Gods pity you."

"And in the meantime you can stop bothering Perfume-chan," Nabiki smiled,

"Unless you want Kurumi-chan to get upset about it."

"But that..." Perfume blinked, "That's right...first come, first serve..."

"You mean that rule about only one challenge being legitimate at a time?" Ukyo

blinked, "Oh...yeah...yeah...now I get it..."

"Shampoo do too," Shampoo smiled, "And very happy that adopted clan-sister get

strong and able husband. Maybe weak in head, but he just need strong wife to

guide him."

"What?" Natsume said, "I can't believe what I am hearing here...are you so quick

to be rid of this fool that you would dare to inflict him upon my very own

sister?"

"Well...not to be too blunt about it," Perfume replied, "But...hell yes!"

"Couldn't have put it better myself, Sugar," Ukyo said as she turned to Kurumi,

"Wish you all the luck in the world 'Cuz, but...he's all yours with my

blessings."

"Look at it this way," Nabiki smiled, "There's no real obligation here, other

than what you two decide for yourselves...that and you're Amazon equivalent of

honor, or pride, or whatever it is you hold sacred, Mousse. She's my sister, so

you'd better treat her right, but...Kurumi...if you didn't want to get involved

with him, then you should have left him to me and Ucchan. I appreciate you for

everything that you've tried to do, but...well...you got yourself into this, and

even you have to admit that, Natsume-chan."

"True...Natsume said reluctantly, "But the thought of my sister wed to

this...fool..."

"HEY!" Mousse protested.

"Fair Nabiki speaks true, Churl," Tatewaki said, "Your blind obsession is what

got you into this...you chose to utter challenge to this girl, and now do you

deny that you fought with her honorably and defeated her fairly? Still and all,

if you hurt her in any way, you will answer to me."

"Hey, what's everyone going on about?" Akane asked, "Kurumi...you didn't plan on

this, did you?"

"Huh?" Kurumi blinked, "No...I..."

"I won't allow this!" Soun declared, "No daughter of mine should be compelled

into a marriage against her choosing..."

"Excuse me, Daddy?" Nabiki arched an eyebrow.

"Soun-chan," Nodoka said gently, "Perhaps we should let Kurumi decide for

herself whether she wants to be involved with this boy..."

"It would be preferable to having Mousse continue to bother Ukyo, father,"

Kasumi added in, "And Kurumi-chan does seem to be interested, so I suppose there

wouldn't be anything wrong in allowing them to date."

"I agree with your daughters, Soun-chan," Hinako spoke up, "Young people are

always in such a rush to jump into things, but if you give them time to decide

for themselves, with the correct amount of guidance, they can often make

intelligent choices."

"Now she figures that out," Ukyo muttered in a low undertone of voice.

"Then it is decided," Tatewaki said, "Natsume-chan...she is your sister. I

would counsel her to make no haste nor jump to any premature decisions, but

as she has been pressing this man to acknowledge her pursuit..."

"Yes," Natsume said reluctantly, "I suppose it is up to Kurumi..."

"Hey, wait a minute!" Kurumi protested, "I wasn't trying to get him to..."

"Marry you?" Perfume smiled, "You are right...you are absolutely right,

Cousin...no one should be forced to marry a man like Mousse...in fact, I

wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy, let alone on an in-law, but you can make

your own mind up about that. No one is forcing you to do anything that you

don't want to do, and if you want to kick him out into the cold, go right

ahead, in fact, I double dare you."

"Perfume!" Mousse said plaintively, "How could you?"

"Very easy," Perfume sniffed, "In fact I have a lifetime of reason to feel

sorry that I ever knew you."

"Brrr...that's cold," Ukyo shivered, "Sure glad I'm not in your shoes, Guy.

Now if you could only take a hint and buy a clue here, you'd know that

Perfume's been telling you for years to take a hike..."

"I wasn't talking to you, Kuonji!" Mousse snapped.

"Yes you are!" Perfume got up right in his face, "Listen to me now, Mousse...I

am TIRED of you constantly chasing after me and harassing me! I am sick to

death of your telling me that I need your protection, of you getting in the way

of me having any normal friendships, and now you threaten the woman that I love,

the woman who is going to have my baby, and all for what? To soothe your

fragile ego? Well, I'm sorry you had such a hard life, that people in our

village treated you so badly, but give me a break! You don't control my life

and you don't own me! You think you can master a new skill and use it to change

my mind? WELL THINK AGAIN! I'd sooner renounce my Amazon heritage than accept

a life with you! SO STOP FOLLOWING ME AROUND AND TRYING TO CONTROL MY LIFE, OR

SO HELP ME, I'LL BURY YOU WTH BOTH OF MY AXES! Do you have that now? Well-DO

YOU?"

Mousse started to cringe, looking like a whipped dog facing its angry master,

and the sight of that did something to Kurumi that made her suddenly interpose

herself in the space between both him and the Amazon male looking Perfume in

the eyes as she declared hotly, "BACK OFF! You've said enough already!"

"Excuse me?" Perfume asked with raised eyebrows.

"I know he's an idiot, and I know he's given you nothing but grief," Kurumi

replied, "But he's a human being too, and you don't need to beat him into the

ground to make your point either. He's done a lot for you, even if he's been a

blind idiot for harassing you, but there's no reason why you have to stomp up

and down on his feelings."

"Fine," Perfume said, "You want him, he's yours, and thanks for the sacrifice,"

Perfume turned around and said, "Come on, Ucchan, I'm going to the Big Top."

"Kurumi-chan," Soun said to the younger girl, "If this is what you want...then

I'll give my blessings."

"Huh?" Kurumi said faintly, "Hey...wait..."

"I don't know about you," Nabiki sigh, "But I'm tired of all this. Kurumi...you

do what you like and I'll back you up on it, but if it's all the same, guys, I

wanna see what's so special that's going on inside this circus."

"Then I with you, Airen," Shampoo affirmed, and fell into step alongside Nabiki.

"Kurumi-chan," Natsume said, "It is up to you, my sister, but...you did ask for

this...even you must admit that."

"I...I..." Kurumi faltered, and then she and Mousse turned to one another and

simultaneously said, "THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT!"

"Yeah, whatever," Akane rolled her eyes, "I'm going in the tent, guys...you

coming?"

"Might as well," Nodoka mused, "Nothing here that needs to be settled, except by

these young people."

Cologne watched as the party headed off to the main big top tent at the center

of the Circus complex and smiled to herself, pleased that the steps that she had

taken to guard against Perfume's hypersenses had proven effective. She had sown

the seeds for future contacts, created a false identity (based on a real person

she had known, gone many years from the lands of the Amazons, sadly) and had

taken the name of her own mother as a means by which to approach her great-

granddaughters. Now all she had to do was nudge Nabiki in the right direction,

once the revelations inside the tent did their work in properly motivating the

girl to want to do much better. She chuckled softly to herself, anticipating

the surprise that would greet her chosen heir once Nabiki saw what Ranma had

been up to.

She started to turn away, intent on putting phase two of her plans into motion,

when something latched onto her chest and began to fondle her in an altogether

familiar manner.

"COLOGNE!" he cried, "You're back! I don't know how or why, but you're finally

back to-AAAWKPHHH!" he finished with his face buried a foot into the dirt.

Cologne huffed and puffed very hard, almost having forgotten the one teeny-tiny

little drawback to her plans...that there was at least one person living who

knew what she truly looked like! It would figure that the miserable dwarf would

have just enough wits about him to deduce the truth from the evidence that he

was provided.

Predictably, of course, he recovered almost immediately from his pounding,

springing up bright and chipper as always as he beamed up to her brightly and

said, "I KNEW IT WAS YOU! Nobody can ram it down the way you can! You really

are back...it's a miracle! Or...something like that..."

Cologne thought fast and altered her voice slightly, "Oh sir...you have made a

tragic mistake, I am not this person you have named...I am Balm, an exile from

China..."

"Yeah, and I'm the King of Mongolia myself," Happosai snorted derisively, "Come

on, Old Woman, fess up...how did you do it? How did you get yourself to look so

young again? Was it some kind of magic? Maybe you got yourself some

Nyaniichuan water...?"

"Nothing like that," Cologne decided to drop the act as it obviously was not

working, "And it's nothing a fool like you could use even if I told you the

truth about me. I don't need to tell you that I've been having some problems

recently with my great-granddaughters..."

"Yeah, I kind of wondered about that," Happosai mused, "You must have done

something to really tick them off, because I think I heard a little bird telling

me on the way here that you got thrown out of both the restaurant and the dojo.

Must've been a doozy if both Shampoo and Perfume are mad at you at the same

time. They're usually such obedient girls...I wonder if I should ask them about

it..."

"Don't you dare!" Cologne hissed, "And it's none of your business anyway!"

"The hell it's not," Happosai snorted, "You're up to something...and it's never

just small potatoes with you. You tend to think in LARGE issues, Honey-bunch.

Maybe I should go look up Nabiki and see what she has to say about the

matter..."

Cologne grit her teeth and growled, "What do you want from me to buy your

silence...or is that too obvious a question?"

"Take a wild guess," Happosai smiled, "You know me well enough that you

shouldn't have to ask."

Cologne stood very still, but at last she shrugged her shoulders and said, "As

the younger people say these days...whatever..."and with that she unbuttoned the

top part of her shirt, reached into her cleavage, and a moment later pulled out

a thing that she would have sworn that she would never give up to such a pervert

of her own free will. Happosai accepted the offering as a gift and stared with

large, round, misty eyes, eyes that formed with tears as he held the bra up to

his face and sighed with absolute and complete blissful contentment.

"Cologne...oh, Cologne, honey...if you only knew...it's been so very long..."

The Matriarch of the Joketsuzoku took a deep breath and exhaled it, rolling her

eyes to the heavens before saying, "I don't think I want to know. But

Happy...if I find out you have betrayed my secret...I will curse you with the

Hohoemi Sannen Goroshi Technique...you know the one that is?"

Happosai paled, "Uh...yeah...sure...no problem. You've got a deal, then.

Well...nice to meet you...Balm...hope you pull it off somehow. Be a shame if

they kick your ass back to China, now that you've decided to live a little."

Cologne closed her eyes and silently resolved to do penance for whatever series

of crimes had caused her to be burdened with so much negative Karma. The

deception over Lotion alone did not seem sufficient to warrant this...but then

again, one never could tell with the humor of the Gods. They could be a rather

vindictive and inventive bunch, but...then again, so could a Matriarch of the

Joketsuzoku.

Whatever the case, the next move was up to Nabiki, and-depending on how she

reacted to certain revelations regarding her fiancée-the next few hours were

bound to get very interesting, and whatever came about as a consequence, Cologne

intended to be near the thick of the action to seize the advantage just as soon

as she was able...perverted dwarves notwithstanding. It was a duty she owed to

her heir to see that she put in a better showing in the next few days, but from

all she knew about Nabiki...she somehow doubted that this was going to prove to

be that much of a problem...

Part One-Hundred-Four.

"What's the matter, Little Brother?" Kaoih asked Ranma as she found him sitting

in his dressing room with an unusually thoughtful expression on his face,

"You're not getting stage fright on me, are you? Because if you are, I know

lots of ways to cheer you up and get you out there in front of the paying

customers..."

"It's...nothing like that, Sis," Ranma replied, "It's just...well...I've never

done anything like this before...I mean...I can handle the trapeze stuff, no

problem, it ain't that much more complicated than firefighting..."

"Oh no?" Kaoih smiled, "You think so? Well, let me tell you, Little Brother,

the biggest difference in the world is doing a complicated piece of acrobatics

for yourself-where you have the luxury of being your own critic-and doing

the same piece in front of others is that the crowds can be pretty unforgiving

if you botch things up or fail to be entertaining. Don't sweat it,

though...you're a natural for this sort of thing. The people will eat your act

right up, and if you stick to the drill I've outlined and don't try to be too

flamboyant or too much of a grandstander, you'll come off all right. Just

remember that teamwork counts more than individual performance, we're all in

this together and we'll be judged as one act, so just follow my lead and go

along with the ride, because Ryu-san and I have already worked things out so

you'll come out looking like a winner."

"Gee thanks, Sis," Ranma sniffed, "You've got a real knack for loading and

unloading the pressure."

"Hmmph, Men," Kaoih sniffed, "You're always worrying about your performance

anxieties, but if you just be yourself the people will love you. Trust me on

that, I've been doing this nearly all of my life."

"Sure," Ranma said, the hesitated before asking again, "Uh...Sis? Mind if I ask

you something that's not...circus related?"

"Oh?" Kaoih turned a curious look his way, "If it's about me and Ryu again..."

"Naw," Ranma said dismissively, "You're right, that ain't any of my business.

Long as the creep doesn't try anything scummy while I'm around..." he grumbled.

"Ryu-chan is a perfect gentleman and would never do anything towards me without

my direct invitation," Kaoih replied in a way that Ranma found oddly less than

reassuring, "Now, what was it you wanted to ask?"

"Um..." Ranma felt his cheeks color as he glanced down, "It's just...what do you

think is the reason guys like us...fall in...(ahem)...love...with the people

that we do?"

Kaoih raised both eyebrows and replied, "Good question on that, little

Brother...I sure wish I knew, though if I had to say...I'd think finding a good

companion that makes you feel special was important."

"But...do you..." Ranma coughed to clear his throat, "Do you think it has

anything to do with...biology? I mean...reproduction stuff? I

mean...like...ah...like having babies?"

"Well...some of it is that, I'm sure," Kaoih began to say when she paused and

said, "Is that what's bothering you? You're worried if it's important whether

or not you can have children with someone you love? Well...not to sound anti-

social, but I wouldn't say it was the most important reason for being together."

"You don't?" Ranma looked back at her in surprise, "But what if...what if the

person you love...couldn't have children...I mean...at least in a natural

way..."

"Like you and Nabiki?" Kaoih replied, "Excuse me for saying this, little

Brother...but you're a virgin, right?"

"Hey!" Ranma protested.

"There's nothing to be ashamed about," Kaoih made a pacifying gesture, "Lots of

people remain virgins before their wedding nights...the Kami knows why, but I

think it's kind of sweet and quaintly old fashioned. The point I'm making

is...we don't always think about having babies with the people we love,

Ranma...in fact, I've known couples who remain childless all of their lives and

still have happy marriages. It's true that most people want to get married and

have babies...in fact, for women it's a primary concern in a relationship,

deciding if a man will make a good father and provider for her children. Of

course that doesn't explain guys who have meaningless flings and never expect to

see the girl the next morning, or girls who just want to have sex without any

messy complications...so I guess it is partly about biology, but mostly about

feeling good about yourself with another person."

"Ah...yeah," Ranma said, "The reason I'm asking is 'cause...somebody I know says

it's all about a guy putting his seed in a woman...or something like that. I

didn't think that sounded just right, but I was looking at it at different

angles and I...couldn't completely refute him."

"You mean the old: 'Guys just want to get their Rocks off on a Girl" routine?'"

Kaoih sniffed, "Like I haven't heard that one a zillion times already! Oh yeah,

there's some truth to it, but it's not the whole truth. There are a lot of

other reasons guys want to get close to a girl, and it's not just because of the

sex part."

"How would you know?" Ranma asked before realizing how that must have sounded,

"I mean..."

"Just because I'm not a Guy doesn't mean I haven't been around and seen all

types," Kaoih replied, "And in a lot of ways the same rules hold true with us

girls...we have our own set of agenda that we look for when we decide that we

want to have sex with a guy or not. For one thing, it doesn't all reduce down

to a set of great pecs and a really nice personality...though I'll admit those

two are definitely in the top ten qualifying points. Sometimes a girl just

wants to be held by the boy she likes, with no pressure to do anything else.

Snuggling's a real Top Ten Prizewinner when it comes to the relationship

department, and...depending on how you feel about having someone's arm around

you, it's a good first step to realizing just how much you truly like them."

"Cuddling," Ranma said as a mental image came to mind unbidden...or Shampoo and

Nabiki sitting together with their arms around each other, leaning their heads

together and smiling in a relaxed sort of way that told you volumes about how

much they meant to one another, "Ah...yeah, I can definitely see how that might

work out..."

"Don't get me wrong," Kaoih winked, "I'm not romanticizing or anything like

that, but most relationships should be handled in stages rather than just jump

into things with both feet forward...not that I have anything against a nice,

quick seduction..." she grinned, "But I do things like that spontaneously, and

not with just anyone I happen to meet. I'm a lot more selective about who I

choose to be with than you might think just looking at me, little Brother, but

I'm a big enough girl to know what I want and to go for it if I choose to."

"Yeah...okay," Ranma said, "And I guess for you Ryu would do it, right?"

"Don't go turning into an overly protective little brother on me now, little

Brother," Kaoih chided, "There's a lot more to making a successful relationship

than I can relate to you in a lecture...but in a way I'm flattered you came to

me at all with the question, seeing how our Dad seems to know slightly less than

you do on the subject..."

"Uh...yeah, about that," Ranma said, "Just what do you make of Pop anyway?

Sometimes I'm really proud to be his son, and other times I just want to

strangle him..."

"Fathers are like that, I guess," Kaoih remarked, "It's funny...I've grown up

without having one, and yet there are a lot of men in this Circus who've been

like my adopted Uncles, helping to raise me and all that, so I don't feel like

I'm missing as much as if I'd been born an orphan. You've been raised in

another man's house as his adopted son, so you probably know something about

what I'm saying...the point is...actually getting to meet my real father...it

does take some getting used to."

"No fooling," Ranma snorted.

"It's really odd, now that you mention it," Kaoih continued, "I met him five

years ago and thought he was one of the greatest guys who ever lived. He was

real nice to me in a friendly-Uncle sort of way, and I was so envious of Nabiki

for being able to travel around with him and stuff...but as I got older I

realized that he had a lot more faults than advantages...and now...well...it's

funny. He's not all that handsome and he's not too terribly bright, and he

lives like a hobo and dresses like a wandering monk, but...well...there's

something about him that I can't help myself for liking. I don't really know

what it is that Mom sees in him, but...but he's my father...and I guess that

makes up for all the rest."

"You think so?" Ranma asked.

"You tell me," Kaoih smiled at him, "He's taken you under his wing in order to

train you to be a really great martial artist. He's been coaching you to make

up for a mistake that's been haunting him in the past, and I get the feeling

that he's invested a lot of himself in both you and Ryoga. I actually think

that he'd be willing to do anything to see that you get happily married, even if

it means giving up a safe house and a nice warm bed with regularly cooked meals

to go on the road and train you in the Senken. Now, how many other fathers do

you know who'd be willing to do all that for his sons? Not too many in this day

and age of 24/7 salary-men, let me tell you..."

"I guess maybe..." Ranma hesitated, "It's because he loves the art so much that

he wants me to share that love with him. Yeah...I guess maybe that does kinda

make up for...at least some of what he's done."

"Oops!" Kaoih looked up as she heard the music coming from the Big Tent reach a

certain crescendo, "We'd better get out there, we'll be coming up soon and Mom

will want us ready to go into our act. Break a leg, Little Brother."

"Whose leg?" Ranma asked.

"It's just an express..."

"I know," he smiled as he got to his feet, "I ain't that much of a Rube, Sis.

Let's go out there and knock 'em dead."

"You'd better not," Kaoih winked back at him, "Or you could get into a lot of

trouble, there's laws against that sort of thing, you know..."

"Why you..." Ranma growled when he looked up and found Ryu waiting outside their

trailer...or rather he thought it was Ryu, though the outfit that the other man

was wearing was a whole different cry of tailoring from his normal khakis.

"Ready to go, Saotome?" the larger boy smiled in a way that was an open

challenge.

"I was born ready," Ranma growled back in a friendly-if-openly competitive

manner.

"Nice to hear," Ryu said as he very decidedly slipped an arm around Kaoih, who

hardly seemed to mind the gesture, "By the way...like the outfit."

Ranma did his best not to color, not that his complexion would have shown up too

much in the relative dim lighting, thinking that the outfit Kaoih had made him

wear was only slightly less revealing than the costume that (at least

technically) constituted her state of (relative) dress, but with considerably

manly effort on his part he only managed to growl back, "Look who's talking."

"Boys," Kaoih growled in warning tones, "Save the Testosterone for after the

act, all right?"

"Yes, Ma'am," Ranma and Ryu chorused together, and together the three of them

made their way towards the stage-entrance of the Big Top, Kaoih very careful to

stand between the two of them, holding both by the arms to steer them

forward and out of trouble, all the while grinning like a cat at the sensual

pleasure of having two strapping bo-hunks as her male escorts, even if one was

(technically) her half-brother.

A girl could do a lot worse than this when basking in the esteem of her purely

feminine glory...

"Now just remember, Sugar," Ukyo was coaching, "When they get to the lion tamer

act, be sure to put on your blindfold and wear your earplugs."

"Very funny," Nabiki growled, but after a moment said, "Well...okay, that might

work..."

"Too much noise," Perfume winced over the blaring loud volume of the overhead

speakers playing taped band noises off of a surprisingly advanced CD system,

"Maybe I'm the one who should be wearing the ear plugs..."

"Is just for show, Cousin," Shampoo cheerfully remarked as she bared a bosom to

begin breast-feeding a hungry Lylac, "Try and put up for now...is good show, but

hope noise no bother Lylac."

"Indeed," Soun remarked, only to turn his head and scowl at one patron in the

row behind their seats on the bleachers, "Is there something I can do for you,

Sir?"

"Ah..." said fellow realized that he had been staring in dismay at Shampoo's

bared bosom, but there was something about the mustachioed man's angry face that

caused him to rethink saying anything about it, so he meekly replied, "N-No

problem..."

Soun smiled as he turned back to regard the show, pleased to note that he still

had the power of intimidation working for him. Though he had not worked as hard

to perfect his martial arts as Genma, his own form of special attack could prove

useful in a pinch in warding off potential troubles.

A squeezing of his arm caused him to turn his attention back to the stunning

woman at his side, and there he found his thoughts went into the spin-cycle, for

there was something overpowering yet enormously tempting about this affectionate

Miss Hinako that was not entirely appropriate for the teacher of his

children...and yet still hard to ignore in a perfectly normal manly sense. It

had been a while since a beautiful young thing like this had paid him so much

attention...almost like Yumi in a way, though if he had to make an analogy, he

could suppose that she reminded him of Silk in the smooth and easy manner with

which she made known her affections. Not so with Kimiko, his late wife, who

wore her femininity like a smoldering ember.

Sitting beside Hinako, but glaring up a storm that made it hard for her to enjoy

the circus performances, Nodoka scowled and wished that she had brought her

trademark katana with her...just to make a point, of course. The brazen hussy

was certainly pouring it on tonight, and in such a shameful and shameless manner

that Nodoka could have sworn that the brown haired beauty was doing it

deliberately to rub her own nose in it. It was puzzling Nodoka why the

chameleon-like, Vampiric creature was still managing to remain in her adult form

without changing. Ordinarily Hinako would have to "feed" about seven or eight

times in one night in order to maintain her voluptuous beauty, and all the while

Nodoka had been counting on her to revert to her child state, at which point

"Auntie Nodoka" would assert a stronger influence.

Kasumi, sitting in the space between her father and Nabiki, was feeling a

mixture of emotions that left her simultaneously sad and giddy at one in the

same moment. On the one hand, she was delighted to be attending a circus again

after uncounted ages since the last one...and to be next to Nabiki (even though

her sister was currently female) made it an extra-special favor, and one well

worth enjoying. On the other hand...Nabiki was her sister, and had a wife

sitting right next to her with their baby in her lap, so it was not exactly

proper for Kasumi to be feeling this way towards her. If Nabiki were male it

would make matters even worse from her perspective...then Kasumi would have been

nervous as a kitten sitting next to...Kaneda, and yet twice as desiring of

holding his hand and leaning her head against his broad and manly shoulder.

On the other hand, she was aware of a certain tension to her right, where Hinako

was flirting outrageously with their father, and Auntie Nodoka was looking ready

to skin the brazenly voluptuous teacher. Kasumi was not entirely certain about

whether to approve or disapprove of Hinako's infatuation with her father...but,

on the other hand, it was nice seeing her father smile and relax like a man with

an attractive woman at his side, so if Hinako could make her father happy, then

so much the better. On the other hand, there was an uncomfortable sense that

Kasumi was having about Nodoka, her much-beloved Aunt, who was in so many ways

like a second mother. Was Nodoka seeking to protect her father...or was there

some other reason why Hinako was rubbing her the wrong way? Did Aunt Nodoka

have...improper feelings towards Kasumi's father? And, if so...what was to be

done about it? Nodoka already had a husband, and she was very fond of him (for

all his moral lapses), so...what did all of this mean? And was there anything

that Kasumi herself could do about it?

It was hard to sit back and enjoy a show with so much tension going on all

around her, yet still Kasumi tried to focus her attention on the acts that were

performing all around them, aware that Akane was looking unusually silent on her

end of their row of the bleachers, sitting next to Perfume and constantly

studying the crowd as if to look for other faces.

But then they came to an act that did draw Kasumi's attention, and with

enthusiastic cheer she said, "Oh look...that woman over there is riding two

horses at the same time! Oh, I love horses..."

"Hmm..." Nabiki shielded her eyes and stared across the court at the sight of a

slender girl dressed in a filmy costume (which same could probably have been

stored in a match box) full of bright sequins and glittering sparkles, brown

hair done up with a fancy feathery headdress, standing erect with her feet on

the backs of two horses whom she was straddling at one time with her hands on

the reins as the twin mounts raced around the ring together. She had suspicions

just viewing the girl at a distance, but as she came ever nearer she felt

confident that she knew who that audacious rider was and smiled warmly at the

recognition.

"Wow," Ukyo remarked aloud, "Now that's what I call riding!"

"She has good control over her mounts," Perfume noted, "The horses are

responding well to her touch, and she is obviously a very good rider."

"Aiyaa," Shampoo agreed, "Is good handler of animals...Shampoo could do this,

but she know it take much, much good balance."

"Big deal," Akane sniffed, "I could probably do that myself...with a little

practice."

"Maybe so," Ukyo teased, "But would you fill out a costume like that in front of

a tent full of absolute strangers?"

"Ah...well..." Akane faltered, then colored.

The girl riding the horses expertly steered them into the center of one of the

three rings then dismounted by letting go of her reins and catching at a

dangling rope that had been lowered to receive her. Two other girls in less

revealing costumes caught up the reins of the horses and escorted them from the

tent while the brown haired girl removed her feathered headdress and began to

climb up the rope with the ease of a trained monkey. There, waiting for her at

the top, were two men in thinly revealing costumes, obviously trapeze performers

about to perform their act with her as a net had already been stretched out high

enough to receive them.

"Whoah!" Ukyo shielded her own eyes as she stared up at the high-wire

performers, "Check those guys out! What a couple of Bo-hunks!"

"Hmph," Perfume sniffed, only to do a sudden double-take that caused her face to

be transfixed with complete and utter amazement.

"Airen," Shampoo murmured with unusual disquiet to her tone of voice, "Is

Shampoo imagining this? One man in tights is looking like Airen husband."

"What, you mean Ranma?" Nabiki smiled, "Hmm...I guess it does look a little like

him, but I was thinking more of the girl...that happens to be my old friend

Kaoih, now all grown up. Did I ever tell you guys how I once came to work in

this very same circus riding horses and doing back-flips..."

"No," Perfume said very audibly, "It is him...that's Ranma up there among the

wires."

"What?" both Ukyo and Nabiki reacted together, then they turned and stared in

utter amazement as a woman in a Ringmaster's outfit called out the names of the

performers, one of which was most definitely, "Saotome Ranma!"

"Oh my," Kasumi remarked, "It is Ranma. I wonder what little brother is doing

up there, do you know, Nabiki?"

Nabiki was so stunned that she hardly even reacted to the question.

"It can't be Ranma," Akane said aloud, "It must be some kind of a mistake..."

"It had BETTER BE a mistake!" Soun said archly.

"Saotome?" Hinako looked up, "Doesn't he know that this is a clear violation of

school policy? And I thought Furinkan was enough of a circus already..."

"Hmmm..." Tatewaki shielded his eyes and said, "It does look rather much like

Saotome...but how...?"

"Ranma is in a high wire act?" Natsume turned her head and demanded, "Did you

know about this?"

"Ah..." Mousse rubbed the back of his head and said, "Kind of...it was a last

minute substitution...Lady Sakura announced it to us a while back..."

"And you only now felt like telling us this?" groused an unhappy Kurumi beside

him.

"Oh Ranma!" Nodoka surprised everyone by clapping her hands together and

declaring, "My son looks so MANLY!"

"He'd better not be getting too Manly up there, if he knows what's good for

him," Ukyo growled, even as Nabiki just continued staring.

Kaoih had, by this point, begun her act by swinging out on the trapeze with

daring panache that drew appreciative gasps from the audience (and several slaps

from neighboring girlfriends to their wayward and overly attentive companions),

but now she was swinging back to join the two men waiting for her at their end

of trapeze platform. She smiled as she dismounted, with their assistance, and

gave Ranma an affectionate grin before saying aloud, "You see how easy it is,

little Brother? There's practically nothing to it."

"Why don't you remain here and let a man show you how it's done, Saotome," Ryu

taunted, taking the bar in one hand and preparing to swing out into space.

"Get stuffed why don't you," Ranma growled as Ryu ventured out to try his hand

at aerial performance, but after a moment, when he was certain that only Kaoih

could hear him, he murmured, "He's good."

"You don't know how good he can get, little Brother," Kaoih teased back in a

sultry tone that implied a lot more meaning than any mere trapeze performance.

"Hmph," Ranma sniffed at that as he waited for his turn, then as Ryu prepared

for a dismount, Ranma vaulted out over his head and seized the trapeze bar only

instants after Ryu had released it.

"What are you doing-?" Kaoih started to snap, only to growl, "Little

Brother..."

"I guess he's showing off his stuff," Ryu remarked, watching as Ranma twisted

around and brought his body fluidly back under the bar, then began to generate

momentum to make the leap out towards the second trapeze bar, much to the

favorable attention of the crowd far below them.

"He's grandstanding," Kaoih said in irritation, "I warned him not to do that..."

"Maybe so," Ryu lowered his voice and added, "But you have to admit, he's pretty

good for a total novice."

"Says a guy who just learned his act about a week ago?" Kaoih responded, but

smiled, "You don't really hate him as much as you pretend, do you?"

"Should I?" Ryu replied, "He's a pretty amazing guy...but don't you dare tell

him I said that."

"And if I do?" Kaoih asked sweetly, "Will you spank me?"

"If I have to, yes," he responded.

"Oooh, sounds kinky," Kaoih teased back, "Well...gotta go...it looks like it's

my turn again up at bat..."

She swung out over the net with an ease that as much as implied that safety

features were not necessary, leaving Ryu to admire her rather stunning backside

with an appreciative smile, then murmur softly to himself, "Knowing you, you'd

probably like it..."

Below in the bleachers, the Tendo posse was currently watching the act as Ranma

caught Kaoih by her wrists and swung her back and forth in the air in order to

generate more power. When Ryu came out on the first set of trapeze he was ready

as Ranma tossed the girl in his direction. Kaoih executed a perfect turn and a

somersault before catching the other man by the forearms as Ryu gripped her back

with firm-but-gentle devotion. This in turn was followed by a number of

increasingly more breathtaking maneuvers that continued to generate in the crowd

a sense of wonder and excitement, mainly because the three youths made it all

seem as easy as if it were second nature.

"Is very good," Shampoo remarked after several long moments, "Whoever girl is,

she almost as good as Ranma."

"But who is that other guy?" Ukyo wondered, "And how does Ranchan know these

people?"

"I have often said in the past that I had thought Saotome would one day run off

to join the circus," Tatewaki remarked, "But I had never in my wildest dreams

imagined that he would actually do it."

Nabiki just sat like a stone and stared, committing everything to memory,

especially any time that Ranma and Kaoih made any sort of physical contact, and

without being consciously aware of the fact, she crumpled up her half-eaten box

of popcorn.

As the three youths took a pause in their act and took a bow from the rafters in

acknowledgement of the Ringmistress's praising tribute, Akane sniffed aloud and

growled, "It figures that Baka would get himself into something like this on his

own! Not at all like my Ryoga, who'd have way lots more sense than that idiot,

Ranma."

"You think so?" Perfume asked, turning her attention towards the other end of

the circus arena.

"LADIES AND GENTLEMEN!" the Ringmistress paused dramatically, "A MOMENT OF

SILENCE, PLEASE, IN ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF A RECENT UNFORTUNATE ACCIDENT THAT BEFELL

TWO OF OUR PERFORMERS SOME TIME TODAY DURING PRACTICE. THOUGH THEIR INJURIES

WERE NON-FATAL, WE HAVE BEEN FORCED TO STAGE A SUBSTITUTION FOR OUR HUMAN

CANNONBALL ACT...SO...IT IS WITH GREAT PRIDE AND PLEASURE THAT I GIVE TO

YOU...OUR NEW HUMAN CANNONBALL...HIBIKI RYOGA!"

"Say-WHAT?" Akane's head whipped around so fast that she nearly gave herself a

case of whiplash, her attention riveting to a certain boy-shaped figure wearing

a colorful leotard and looking more than a little nervous under his helmet.

"Are you sure this is going to work?" said boy was asking of his nominal

partner, a lady who worked the cannon for the sake of her usual partner, whose

name was Ritsuke.

"Of course it will work," Ritsuke assured him, "There's nothing to it...you just

climb into that end and slide down to the powder chamber, then wait until I pull

the trigger, and the rest is just a simple case of physics."

"Uh...Physics?" Ryoga said dubiously, rubbing the back of his head as he said,

"That's...not exactly my best subject..."

"No fooling?" Ritsuke mused, "I never would have guessed. There you go...be a

good boy and climb up the ladder..."

"Well..." Ryoga reluctantly complied, "If you're sure that it's going to be

safe..."

"Absolutely positive," Ritsuke assured, "At least...within an acceptable margin

of error..."

"An acceptable..." Ryoga paused at the mouth of said cannon, "What?"

"Hey, my regular partner and I have done this plenty of times," Ritsuke

reassured him, "It almost never goes wrong, at least not so much that I usually

have to wind up getting a new partner."

"Oh, well...in that case," Ryoga started to climb into the cannon.

"Now just keep in mind," Ritsuke warned before he could drop out of earshot,

"The Air cannon fires a blast of compressed gas at the platform on which you'll

be standing, rocketing you out of there at close to eighteen Gs, which might

seem a little rough on your first time out. The force will momentarily compress

your spine and make it seem as if your brains are falling to your toes, which-

in your case-is probably not going to be too much of a problem, now...in you

go..."

"Hey...what?" Ryoga gasped as she girl flicked a switch that made the cannon

barrel tilt upwards, causing him to drop all the way down to the bottom.

Ritsuke then adjusted the muzzle back down to the pre-set coordinates,

calculating trajectories and angular motion along the complex formula of sine

and cosine, which she knew from experience would aim the boy right at the far

net that was waiting to receive him on the other end of the circus.

Ranma, from where he and his fellow Aerialists were pausing to watch the act,

still high in the trapeze as they had another act of their own to run through,

was silently tensing as he waited for the cannon to fire, hoping that Ryoga

would come out of it all right, though he was less concerned about the

possibilities of a safe landing. Ryoga was next to indestructible when it came

to taking a fall, so Ranma was far more concerned about the possibilities of his

missing the net and landing on some poor innocent shmuck and quite possibly

doing them damage, which would most definitely not reflect well on their school

or the dojo.

Akane all but shredded her program guide as she waited tensely, and then all at

once the cannon fired and out came Ryoga like a human guided missile, screaming

all the way before he hit the net in an upside-down position and bounced off of

it, heading for the ground and a massive face-fault.

"OOOH!" Kaoih winced, "I hope that didn't hurt too much..."

"Naw," Ryu replied, "His face broke his fall, he'll be all right."

"I'm more worried that he might have done damage to the ground," Ranma remarked,

trying not to sound as concerned as he was about the matter.

"Oops," Ritsuke remarked from where she stood beside the cannon, "Guess maybe I

used a little too much pressure..."

"RYOGA!" Akane cried as she got up out of her seat and vaulted out of the

bleachers, bounding over the heads of several people before startling everyone

and rushing into the area.

"Hey," Ryu saw the girl going to Ryoga's aid and said, "Who's that?"

Ranma saw and paled, "Oboy...I don't believe it...it's Akane!"

"Oh?" Kaoih said in surprise, "You mean that girl you said was his fiancée? But

what is she doing out here, unless..."

Ranma followed the line from where Akane had appeared back towards the bleachers

and said, "Oh Kami...it's Nabiki...!"

"Really?" Kaoih followed his gaze and said, "Hey! That does look like

her...sitting right next to that purple haired girl...the one holding

the...baby...?"

"That's the She-male you're engaged to?" Ryu asked with amazement, "What a

cutie..."

"HEY!" both Ranma and Kaoih declared together.

"Relax," Ryu smiled, "I wouldn't make a play for her anyway, though the babe

baring her bosom looks to be a real hot number..."

"You had better be joking about that," Kaoih growled menacingly enough, before a

thought occurred to her and she arched her voice to a different pitch and said,

"Although, now that you mention it, I suppose you do have a point about her

being a cutie..."

"Huh?" Ryu blinked his eyes as he tried to decide if she were being serious or

not...when all at once the felt the entire tent shake all around them, "W-What?"

"Ryoga, what are you doing here?" Akane demanded in concern as she lifted

Ryoga's face from the head-shaped impression that he had created in the ground.

"Gah...hah?" Ryoga looked up at her blurry eyed, "What wonderful birdies...I

hear her voice, like an Angel...Akane..."

"You baka," Akane growled affectionately, "Snap out of it...are you hurt or

aren't you?"

"Huh?" Ryoga blinked his eyes, then sat upright, "AKANE? But...what...?"

"I'm here with my family, stupid," Akane growled in relief that he appeared to

be all right, "But what are you doing here, Ryoga? You never told me that you'd

run off to join the circus..."

"Ah...well..." Ryoga hesitated, when all at once a panda standing on top of a

large ball came stumbling past, said panda fighting to remain on top of said

ball, holding up a sign that read, "HELP! HOW DO YOU STOP THIS CRAZY THING?"

"Uncle Saotome?" Akane gasped as the ball-balancing panda began to increase his

momentum.

"Pops?" Nabiki gasped, shaking out of her daze as she recognized said panda.

"He's heading for that tent-pole..." Ukyo said in sudden worry.

"More than that," Perfume added in growing alarm "He's going to hit!"

Sure enough, Genma-currently comprising a quarter metric ton of out-of-control

Ailurodopa melanoleuca-had been intending to serve as a distraction for the

crowd to take their mind away from the fall of Ryoga and the unexpected

appearance of Akane, but had not taken into account the fact that he had yet to

master the finer points of balancing on top of a meter-wide round surface. As

he was picking up considerable momentum by the time he struck a solid

object-in this case one of the poles currently holding up the tent. By some

miracle of the Kami he managed to avoid snapping the impediment in twain like a

colossal toothpick, but the shockwave he sent reeling up said pole was enough to

knock three youths off their purchase, and of those three it was Kaoih who

proved to be unable to recover her bearings.

She started to cry out as she found herself losing her balance and tumbling out

into open space...a space not protected by the net below them. A twenty meter

fall from such a height was bound to be near-fatal, but before she could plummet

too far a desperate Ryu leaped out and caught her by one ankle...unfortunately

forgetting to anchor himself to anything as he was not currently connected to a

tether.

In one instant Ranma took stock of the matter and saw disaster looming before

them, and without even taking a second to think of what he was doing he grabbed

the tether in hand and then launched himself out into the space separating both

him, Ryu and Kaoih. As the only thing in easy reach was Ryu's leg, he snatched

it, gripping hard on the tether rope to halt their plunge and swing them back

towards the Net, where he hoped to release them safely into its waiting embrace.

Unfortunately the material around that leg was very thin and gauze-like, and as

the trio reached the low-point of their arching swing it choose that moment to

give out, causing Ryu to slip out of his grasp with him and Kaoih still fifteen

meters shy of a very rude landing.

That was when Ranma did something so unexpected and risky it caused Nabiki to

stand upright while Ukyo gripped the edge of the bleachers and tore out a piece

of planking. He let go of the tether and fell towards Kaoih and Ryu, winding up

in the midst of this trio as he tried to concentrate and let his mind expand

upon the image of a giant circle. He opened himself to the Chi force lines all

around them and summoned up this power while trying to imagine himself becoming

twice as light as a feather.

While he was doing this, however, Ryoga was far from idle. Seeing that the trio

would fall beyond the reach of the net, he left Akane's side and sprung into

action, placing himself directly below where he thought that they would fall and

beginning to concentrate on summoning up his own power, instinctively reverting

to the Kosenken maneuver he thought could prevent a tragedy from occurring.

To the amazement of the crowd of witnesses, it seemed almost as if the three

youths were falling at a slower rate of descent than would have been expected.

Ranma was straining himself while trying to appear not to, the flow of energy

being less intense than it would be in full daylight, though he did sense that

he was having an effect of reducing their inertia so that the force of gravity

was lessened upon them. It was only a few seconds later that they nearly

reached the ground when Ryu-who had drifted to the bottom of their

arrangement-felt a pair of strong hands catch him on the back while a strong

voice cried out, "REINFORCED FRAME WITHSTANDS MANY SHOCKS!" which halted their

fall in a very abrupt manner.

Kaoih landed on top of him, with Ranma falling on top of her, which broke his

concentration as he found his face making unexpected contact with his sister's

bosoms. All at once gravity was restored and he found himself pressing down on

top of Ryu with his sister pressed in the middle of this makeshift sandwich.

Ryoga continued to hold them aloft for a few seconds more before grunting

slightly and depositing them on the ground in a not-too-gentle manner.

"OOF!" Ryu gasped, having had the wind knocked out of his sails in that landing.

"Ooohhh..." Kaoih groaned, looking up as she said, "Mind getting off me, Little

Brother? I don't mind the idea of winding up in a sandwich with a pair of hunks

like you, but..."

"Ooops, sorry about that," Ranma said sheepishly as he stood on his feet, less

affected than the others, then offered his sister a hand to get her back on her

feet, then making the same gesture at Ryu, who briefly debated the wisdom of

handing it back to him.

In the end, however, Ryu relented to be allowed to stand on his own too feet

with Kaoih's assistance, then the three of them turned to the cheering throngs

and took their bow as if this had been part of their act all along and not a

near disaster.

"Wow, what a save," Perfume remarked just before reacting with a dismayed

expression, feeling the rising heat of a battle-aura forming around Ukyo, who

was glaring at Ranma like a furnace.

"I'll kill him!" Nabiki suddenly declared in a blind fury. "I-WILL-ABSOLUTELY

KILL HIM!"

"Better get in line, Sugar," Ukyo growled, "I've got first dibs on that hussy

beside him!"

"Be my guest," Nabiki growled as she cracked her knuckles, "Saotome had BETTER

have a good explanation for this, or HE'S GONNA BE SORRY!"

"Ah," Tatewaki stood up, "Perhaps we should give Ranma the chance to relate his

side of affairs before jumping to any conclusions?"

Not waiting to hear the assents of the others, Nabiki made like Akane had done,

only she crossed the space to the arena in a single bound and started off

towards Ranma like a stalking panther.

"Ryoga," Akane said as she rejoined his side, "That was amazing! You saved

them!"

"Ah...well..." Ryoga rubbed the back of his head, even as Sakura began to

reassure the crowd that everything was under control and back to normal.

Ranma was just about to ask if Ryu was feeling all right as the larger boy

seemed a bit pale at the moment, when all at once Kaoih turned and said, "Uh

oh...Nabiki?"

"NABIKI?" Ranma whipped his head around, just in time to see the rage in her

expression, "Uh oh..."

"Sao-TOME!" she snapped, and like a shot her hand came hurtling towards him,

but Ranma saw it coming as though it were slowing down in mid-motion and moved

to avoid the hand altogether. The slap missed him wide of the mark but caught

Ryu along the side of his face and sent him sprawling.

"HEY!" Kaoih began to protest when an enraged Nabiki rounded on her. Before

anything bad could happen, however, Ranma was suddenly in the space between

them, shielding Kaoih with his own body.

"Nabiki-stop this!" he protested.

"Get out of my way!" Nabiki growled as she tried to shove him to the side, only

to find that Ranma gripped her arm and twisted it sideways, forcing her to

stagger beyond them.

"Calm down!" Ranma snapped, "What are you getting so mad about? Aren't you glad

to see me?"

"Glad to see you?" Nabiki rounded on him, "Glad to see you flaunting yourself in

the arms of another woman?"

"Huh?" Ranma blinked his eyes, "Say what?"

"She means me," Kaoih calmly but gently pushed Ranma to the side and said, "Nice

to see you too, Tendo. Don't tell me you're jealous about me spending time

around my little brother?"

"YOU'RE DAMNED RIGHT I-" Nabiki started to growl, then halted herself and

said, "Brother?"

"It's a surprise to me too," Ranma chuckled a bit nervously, "I mean...who would

have thought that the old man would have it in him...?"

"Hear I you right, friend Saotome?" asked Tatewaki as he came up to join them,

along with Natsume and some of the others, "Dare you claim that your sire

fathered another child who was given to the circus?"

"Um...not exactly," Ranma said, "It's...kinda complicated..."

"Complicated?" Nabiki repeated, still looking stunned.

"Our Dad had me before he married Ranma's father," Kaoih replied, "He was under

a love spell, or something like that...go ask Mom for the details."

"Is this true?" Natsume asked, "You are truly Saotome's half-sister?"

"Older half sister," Kaoih remarked, flashing a smile as she added, "Don't you

see the family resemblance?"

"We only found out about it-uh-hold that thought," Ranma said as he turned

around and caught the edge of a descending bakers peel, halting it in mid-

descent, "Hey Ucchan, how's it hanging?"

"I'll show you what's hanging, you two-timing Casanova!" Ukyo snarled as she

fought to free her spatula, only to find Perfume gripping her by the arms, which

got an outraged protest of, "HEY! Per-chan...!"

"It's all right," Perfume said, "I overheard everything on the way here...he's

not to blame for this...at least...I think he's not. Saotome?"

"Thanks for the assist," Ranma smiled at the Enforcer with genuine affection,

only to find himself seized by the shoulders a moment later and shaken like the

proverbial leaf by an enraged Soun, who was in full Angry Father mode and

looking to avenge a perceived family dishonor.

"RANMA! HOW DARE YOU DO A THING LIKE THIS TO MY NABIKI!"

"GAK!" Ranma exclaimed as he found hit teeth rattling in his head.

"Is this true, Ryoga?" Akane asked.

"Ah...well..." Ryoga's voice became a little squeaky as he tried to think how to

explain the past few days of dramatic revelations.

"Is what true?" asked Nodoka, who pleasantly joined the others with a somewhat

more nervous seeming Kasumi, "Ranma, what have you been up to lately?"

"Uh...Mom?" Ranma wondered himself where to begin, then turned and cried,

"OYAGI!"

Said panda was only just then beginning to recover from his collision, and held

up his sign, which read, "What happened? Did anybody get the license number of

that Elephant...?"

"Oh my," Nodoka said as she studied the young girl before her, "You look just

like...Sakura-chan?"

"Nodoka-chan," said Sakura herself, who only just then came up to join them,

"You're looking as radiant as ever."

"Oh please," Nodoka said modestly, "You haven't changed a bit since we were both

young girls. Oh my...that seems like such a long time ago..."

"Yes, doesn't it?" Sakura smiled, "May I introduce my daughter, Kaoih?

Kaoih...this is Ranma's mother, Nodoka."

"Charmed," Kaoih smiled, then turned and said, "You must be Ukyo...and you're

Perfume, right? Your boyfriend's told me all about you...oh my! And are you

Shampoo, Nabiki's significant other?"

"That right," Shampoo looked puzzled, "Why everybody upset all of sudden? Is no

like Ranma flirt with girl who is sister, yes?"

"Sister?" Hinako blinked, "Are you serious?"

"Oh my," Kaoih moved even closer to study the face of the baby in the Amazon's

arms, "Is this...yours, Nabiki? Oh my...she's so beautiful..."

"Ranma has a sister?" Kurumi asked as she and Mousse joined the others.

"Apparently so," Mousse replied, "I was just as surprised when I first heard

about it."

"Hey Tachi," Ranma acknowledged as Soun reluctantly released him, "Where's

Kodachi and Keiko?"

"Off visiting with her parents," Tatewaki replied, taking stock of their

surroundings before adding in a low voice, "You have been busy..."

"You don't know the half of it, Pal," Ranma responded, then frowned as he added,

"What's that Mousse creep doing here, if you don't mind me asking?"

"Apparently he is now engaged to the fair Kurumi," Tatewaki said, and when he

saw Ranma's astonished look he nodded and added, "Truly."

"Husband?" Nodoka approached the half-conscious panda, "What is this about you

having a child by my friend Sakura?"

One and all could hear the audible sound of a panda swallowing as Genma lifted

his sign, which read, "I'M INNOCENT, I SWEAR IT!"

"Innocent?" Nabiki scoffed, "Oyagi...!"

"Oh, don't blame him," Kaoih replied, "He may be my father, but he's not really

the problem here. The problem, as I see it, is that you have been neglecting

your fiancée, and how dare you accuse me of wanting to flirt with my own little

brother!"

"Neglecting?" Nabiki blinked, "HEY!"

"This is the man I'm after," Kaoih reached down and half-dragged a stunned Ryu

back to his feet, "A man that you went and slapped for no good reason!"

"This...guy is your...boyfriend?" Nabiki slowly put it all together,

"Oboy...ah...sorry about that..."

"S'no problem," Ryu said as he felt his bruised jawbone, then groaned, "I

think...you may have knocked a tooth loose..."

"Oh, I'm sure Nabiki will be more than willing to pay the dental costs to fix

that," Kaoih glared at her erstwhile friend and said, "Right?"

"Uh...yeah," was Nabiki's sheepish answer.

"Let me get this straight," Ukyo said to Ranma, "She's your sister and you've

gone and run off to join the circus, right?"

"Er...not quite," Ranma said, "I mean...about that last part. I'm filling in

for a guy who got injured this afternoon, but I've really been studying to

master the...ah...special techniques that my Pop's been teaching me and Ryoga."

"You've been in training all this time," Nabiki said slowly, "While hiding out

with a circus?"

"Two week engagement," Kaoih replied, "Ends the day after tomorrow. You should

have looked me up earlier, I could have gotten you guys a family pass and saved

you some money."

"We'll be pulling out and moving on to our next show in a few days," Sakura

noted, "But I think we could manage a one-day delay since I hear you two are

going to be putting on a show of your own...a challenge match, I believe you

call it?"

"Say what?" Nabiki murmured.

In reply, Sakura brought her microphone up to her mouth and said, "LADIES AND

GENTLEMEN, BOYS AND GIRLS, OUR APOLOGIES FOR THIS UNPLANNED DELAY IN OUR SHOW,

AND MY THANKS FOR YOUR KIND AND GENTLE PATIENCE! I HAVE AN IMPORTANT

ANNOUCEMENT TO MAKE...AS YOU MAY KNOW, WE CLOSE THIS CIRCUS IN TWO DAYS AT THE

END OF OUR LEASE, BUT A NEW DEVELOPMENT HAS SPRUNG UP THAT WE WILL OFFER TO YOU

NOW AT SPECIAL DISCOUNT RATES! A CHALLENGE MATCH TO RIVAL ANY MARTIAL ARTS DUEL

OF THE PAST CENTURY BETWEEN A BOY AND A GIRL WHO ARE ENGAGED TO BE MAN AND WIFE

IN A FEW MONTHS. THEY REPRESENT THE TENDO AND SAOTOME SCHOOLS OF MARTIAL ARTS,

AND THEY HAVE AGREED TO A DEMONSTRATION BATTLE IN WHICH THEIR TWO STYLES WILL BE

MATCHED TOGETHER TO DETERMINE FOR ONE AND ALL TO SEE WHICH ONE OF THEM WILL BE

THE DOMINANT MARTIAL ARTIST!"

"HEY!" Nabiki spoke up.

"Wait a minute," Ranma declared, "We didn't...!"

"ON THE ONE HAND YOU WILL HAVE SAOTOME RANMA, UNDISPUTED MASTER OF THE THOUSAND

FIST SCHOOL OF ANYTHING GOES MARTIAL ARTS...!"

"Thousand fist school?" Nabiki repeated, "What the heck is that?"

"...AND ON THE OTHER HAND YOU WILL HAVE TENDO NABIKI, HEIR APPARENT TO THE TENDO

SCHOOL OF ANYTHING GOES MARTIAL ARTS AND MISTRESS OF A THOUSAND DEADLY FORMS OF

UNARMED COMBAT, TRULY AS BEAUTIFUL AS SHE IS MERCILESS AND DEADLY..."

"Hey!" Ranma protested.

"WHICH OF THEM WILL EMERGE THE VICTOR IN THIS BATTLE OF THE SEXES?" Sakura

continued, "WILL LOVE WIN OUT OVER THEIR RIVALRY, OR IS THIS THE ULTIMATE IN

DOMESTIC CONFLICT? COME LEARN THE ANSWER FOR YOURSELVES, LADIES AND

GENTLEMEN...AND SEE WHO WILL EMERGE AS THE TRUE INHERITOR OF THE ILLUSTRIOUS AND

WORLD-FAMOUS TENDO DOJO!"

"Say what?" Soun blinked his eyes, then turned to the panda, "Saotome?"

"Don't look at me," read the sign held up by said panda, "She's only my ex-

girlfriend."

"I'm a little more than that now, Gen-chan," Sakura grinned, giving Nodoka an

affectionate nod before adding, "Call it a long-delayed wedding gift to the both

of you, but I'm declaring myself as your official manager...a temporary

position, to be sure, but one that should prove lucrative as I am planning to

share the proceeds of ticket sales to both you and Soun-chan."

"Now just wait a min-did you say ticket sales?" Nabiki's ears perked up.

"Uh oh," Ukyo exchanged looks with Perfume, "Did somebody say the magic word?"

"Of course," Sakura smiled, "I'll set everything up with a land developer I

know...I'll get his approval to reserve a vacant lot that should be sufficiently

large enough to host your fight while providing ample room for a set of

bleachers. We'll make it an outdoor affair and divide the profits 20-80..."

"Sixty-forty," Nabiki instantly snapped.

"Thirty-Seventy?" Sakura smiled as if enjoying this particular challenge.

"Thirty-five-sixty-five," Nabiki countered, and so it went on until they agreed

on a profit margin that seemed acceptable to both women.

"I don't believe it," Kurumi remarked, "Oneechan will bargain over

everything..."

"I guess so," Mousse noted dubiously.

"So we're going to have this challenge match in front of witnesses?" Akane

asked, "I thought it was going to be in private..."

"Not to worry," Nabiki declared, "We'll stage this so that the people will have

a nice show, and I'll try not to win by too large a margin...who knows, maybe

Ryonami and the others can even get a betting pool going on the side, and I'll

give Ranma a good point spread."

"I thought you said you were never going to bet against me," Ranma asked

suspiciously.

"I won't bet against you," Nabiki assured, "But I can't say the same for anyone

else who places a bet with Ryonami.""

"And who says you're gonna win?" Ranma persisted.

Nabiki gave him a casual look and said, "Feeling cocky are we? You think the

old man trained you that well in a couple of weeks, Ranma-kun?"

"Well, if you feel that way about it," Ranma held up an object, "I suppose you

won't be wanting your wallet back, right?"

"My-what?" Nabiki blinked as she saw him holding her wallet, and instinctively

slapped the hidden pocket in which it was normally carried, "Why you-!"

She lunged for the wallet but found Ranma quite easily avoided her. She rounded

on him and found him somewhere else than where she had been expecting.

"Like you said," Ranma smiled as he tossed the wallet to her, "I've been in

training, and I'm going to beat you, Nabiki. Get used to that idea, 'cause it's

gonna happen whether you like it or not."

"You're...WHAT?" Nabiki look flustered as she quickly checked to see that the

contents of her wallet were in place, only to go round-eyed as she saw Ranma

holding up a two-thousand yen bill between his fingers.

"Two more days," Ranma declared, "And then I'm going to show you what I'm made

of. I'll just keep this, if you don't mind, so I can treat my Sis and her

boyfriend to some dinner."

"You-FINE!" Nabiki snapped, "Two days, Saotome, and then I'm coming for your

ass!"

"Not if I get yours first," Ranma smiled as he turned and winked at her, then

gave an affectionate nod to Ukyo in passing.

"Did I hear that right?" Akane blinked, "It almost sounded like Ranma..."

"Has grown some balls all of a sudden," Kaoih grinned, "That's my brother!"

"Did I hear that right?" Ryu's own ears perked up, "Saotome just offered to buy

us dinner?"

"Sure sounded like it to me," Kaoih smiled at him, "And it would be rude of us

to refuse since Nabiki's so generously paying for the privilege."

"What?" Nabiki blinked again, "HEY-RANMA!"

Ranma did not acknowledge that he heard the reply, but neither was he surprised

when a little man in a clown suit said, "Congratulations, my boy, you've finally

managed to get her attention."

"Heh, that was what I was counting on," Ranma said as he continued on without

breaking stride, "Money always was the best way of getting Nab-chan's

attention."

"She's gonna be awfully mad at you the next time you guys meet up," Happosai

confided in an almost friendly manner, "No matter how much she likes you, a

woman's pride ain't nothing to sneeze at, and she'd gonna be looking to take it

out of your hide, so you'd better train hard and master the Arashisenken before

that happens."

"Tell me something I don't already know," Ranma averred grimly, wincing slightly

as he heard Nabiki cry, "SAOTOME-I'LL GET YOU FOR THIS!"

"Oh yeah," he said softly, "She's definitely motivated..."

Cologne thought much the same thing one hour later, having resumed her normal

appearance in time to greet Nabiki as the latter came storming home well ahead

of the others.

"You seem to be a bit upset, Child," the 'old woman' asked without a trace of

calculation in her voice, "Is there something that I can do to help you?"

"Yes," Nabiki whirled around, "In fact, you're just the person I was looking

for. You wanted me to tell you when I was ready to learn that new technique?

Well...now I'm ready! Show it to me, I've only got two days left before I go

and kick that iinazuke of mine in the ass!"

Cologne managed to appear unruffled, but inwardly she was smiling, thinking to

herself, (Perfect) as she readied to prepare her charge for the day of the

coming battle...

Continued.

Comments/Criticisms/Ready to Ranma: shadowmane

Yes, at long last, the battle royale is about to begin with Ranma squaring off

against Nabiki in the Fiancée Match of the decade, but who will emerge the

victor, and what will the "loser" have to say about it? Get ready to place your

bets for: "Queen of the Fighters," or "Pardon me While I Pound Your Face!" Be

there!

X

If you wish to check out my other works, Please check out my Fanfiction

webpage at: .

All related chapters of this series can be found there along with my

other works.


	41. Chapter 41

Dnabiki105

Nabiki 1/2

"A Very Scary Thought!"

by

Jim Robert Bader

(Inspired by the works of Rumiko Takahashi & Others)

Part One-Hundred-Five.

"All right," Kodachi declared rather dramatically, "Begin!"

Ryoga nodded and at once bowed to the task while the others looked on and

marveled, seeing the habitually Lost Boy become a frantic blur of motion as he

gathered up the materials assembled by Kodachi and went to work using his

Kosenken maneuver to assemble them at a speed that was inhuman. At the end of

half an hour a completed house stood before them with roof in place and the

walls already covered in stucco, leaving the onlookers to gasp in complete

dumbfounded amazement.

"Enough!" Kodachi declared, "I'm exhausted just watching you work out, Ryoga-

kun! A whole house assembled, and in only twenty-nine-point-three minutes!"

"Incredible," Tatewaki averred, "Had I not witnessed it with mine own eyes..."

"Most impressive," Natsume agreed, "Kurumi herself could not have moved more

swiftly."

"The guy's got definite talent," Keiko nodded, "If the inside looks as good as

the outside, then I guess we're gonna have to give him real credit."

"Ryoga-kun?" Akane called out, then frowned as she added, "Where could he have

gone off to?"

"Maybe he is still inside," Kodachi suggested.

"Or taking a break." Kuno mused, "After a workout such as that, one could hardly

blame him."

"Indeed," Natsume nodded, "Even his redoubtable stamina must surely be taxed by

such a Herculean exertion..."

"Or...maybe not," Keiko glanced down, "You guys feel that rumble?"

Akane glanced down and said, "You're right...it feels like..."

All at once an area of ground burst upward, and through the gap Ryoga stuck out

his head and drew deep breath before saying, "Finally! It was getting stuffy

down there..."

"Ryoga-kun?" Akane knelt down, "What were you doing?"

"Oh...ah," Ryoga rubbed the back of his head as he looked sheepishly at Akane,

"I just finished connecting the plumbing and attaching the drainage to the

sewers so everything will work just right. Took me a while to find the

electrical relays so I could get the lighting hooked up, along with the gas

mains. I had to follow code, so it took me a minute to double-check

everything...um...how did I do?"

Kodachi consulted her handheld chronometer and said, "Thirty-one-point-oh-four-

three seconds...just a little over a half an hour."

"Oh," Ryoga said as he climbed out of the hole, "Well, I guess I'll have to work

harder next time. This was just for practice, right?"

Bland looks replied to his entreaty, and then Keiko shook her head and said,

"This confirms it...you definitely are not human!"

"Um...would half-human count?" Ryoga wondered, only to have a blank look of his

own as Akane leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek, which came very near to

causing the boy to pass out, and his dirt-smudged face was beet red for the next

full minute.

"It is an incredible display all the same," Tatewaki averred, "And you say that

this...what did you call it again? The Ko-Senken?"

"The Mine of a Thousand Fists," Natsume averred soberly, "Your hands became

like tools of iron and you put together a house from the raw materials that Lady

Kuno so generously provided. And now may we take it that yon domicile is

presently fit for habitation?"

"Oh...yeah," Ryoga snapped out of his happy daze, "I built it exactly to the

standards that my boss...the man who was employing me for a week...always

insists on with his buildings. It took me five days to get everything just

right and to learn how to always compare things with the way he says they ought

to be. You can come inside and see for yourself if you have any doubts."

"I believe that we shall," Kodachi mused, "You are indeed a man of many talents,

Hibiki-san, and small wonder that the fair Akane favors you with her

affections."

"Guys," it was Akane's turn to look beet-red, only her eyes widened abruptly as

Ryoga handed her a folded up envelope, prompting her to ask, "What's this?"

"Um...well..." Ryoga said sheepishly, "It's my first paycheck. I earned it for

you, and...well...I suppose it's not much, but I thought you ought to have it,

seeing as I don't know how to cash it myself, and you know a lot more about how

to handle money than I do..."

"A paycheck?" Akane opened the envelope and pulled out a payroll slip attached

to a voucher and then her eyes doubled in size as she read the numbers printed

there and said, "They paid you this much for a week?"

"Hmm," Kodachi said as she glanced past Akane's shoulder, "Barely adequate for

the sort of services you no doubt rendered, but then I suppose the actual amount

is not what counts, it is the fact that you earned it as a labor of love for you

fiancée."

"Interesting," Tatewaki smiled, "And what plan you to do with your hard-won

largesse?"

"Uh...I don't know," Akane said, turning a look towards Ryoga that as much as

said that her respect for him had more than doubled, "Do you know what this

means? It means you can actually earn a living doing something constructive.

Oh, Ryoga...I'm so proud of you."

"Really?" Ryoga sounded as though he were walking on clouds as he returned her

smile of affection, "Uh...well...it could be the first of several...the Boss

said he wanted me to think about coming to work for him full time..."

"I know what you can do with this one, then," Keiko grinned, "Use it to buy a

wedding ring for Akane...Ko-chan and I can help you pick one out."

"W-W-Wedding ring?" both Akane and Ryoga said in chorus.

"What an excellent suggestion," Natsume nodded with approval, "A ring purchased

with love lasts forever. I assume this means that you will soon be picking out

a date on which to perform the nuptials, my sister?"

"Huh?" Akane blinked, then got an expression on her face that was almost the

mirror image of a nervous Ryoga, "Oh...yeah...on my..."

Tatewaki got an odd look in his own expression, and he turned a glance towards

the woman at his side as he thought a moment on the matter, then came to a

sobering resolution.

"This...Kosenken," he ventured aloud, "It is but one part of a larger school

collectively known as the Senken Ryu?"

"Um...yeah, more or less," Ryoga replied, "My...um...Mister Saotome...he taught

us a system that he'd developed close to fifteen years ago that was only half-

finished. We studied the Yamasenken, the earth-based Ryu, and then Ranma

mastered the Umisenken, the water-based system..."

"And you created this with a few suggestions by the old panda?" Keiko nodded to

the house they had witnessed come together as though by magic, "Wow...didn't

know that old fool had it in him..."

"He's not an old fool," Ryoga frowned, "Um...Uncle Saotome...he created the

Yamasenken and Umisenken while training under Happosai, but then he gave one of

the two scrolls to a friend, and when he tried to use it he wound up destroying

his own dojo. He...died...and...Saotome felt really bad about it, so he tried

to bury his own system..."

"To atone for an accident with remorse?" Tatewaki raised eyebrows to this, "I

had not thought him possessed of such a strong sense of integrity and honor.

Truly, if what you say is true, then I have misjudged Uncle Genma far more than

I had realized..."

"And yet he revealed this hidden art to you and Ranma so that you could train in

a powerful new system," Kodachi mused, "Only in time you evolved your own

version of the art, a system that allows you to use your hands as though they

were made of metal."

"Wow!" Akane averred, "If the Kosenken's this good, then what are the other

systems like?"

"They're...pretty effective," Ryoga scratched the back of his head and added, "I

know a little of how the Umisenken works, but it...it's not suitable for me...I

don't have the right mindset. I also know of the wood-based Morisenken that

Kumon Ryu created, and maybe a little bit of the Honosenken, which Ranma used in

a fight between the three of us...

"A Wood based and Fire-based school?" Keiko remarked, "And...how much does Ranma

know?"

"He knows all of them," Ryoga revealed, "Yamasenken, Umisenken, Honosenken and

maybe even my Kosenken and Ryu's Morisenken. Of course Happosai then offered to

reveal to him the Arashisenken, but I'm not sure if Ranma's finished creating

that one yet..."

"Wait a minute," Akane frowned, "You mean there are six different kinds of

Senken?"

"There are now," Ryoga shrugged, "We created four of them between us."

"Fascinating," Tatewaki mused, "In other words, Ranma by now must be a

fantastically gifted and talented fighter...but will all of this advanced

training truly avail him in a match against Nabiki?"

"I...don't really know," Ryoga sighed, "Guess it all depends on how much the Old

Woman's been teaching...but I know Ranma, he's going to do everything he can to

put up a good fight."

"Yeah," Keiko replied, "But can he win?"

"That remains to be seen," Kodachi soberly averred, "But I, for one, would not

lay odds against our dear Saotome Ranma..."

"I can't do it."

"What's that?" Happosai's ears perked up, "Do I hear resignation in your voice,

my Boy? You've come so far...surely you're not giving up already?"

"I ain't giving up," Ranma said, "I've been practicing on the Arashisenken, like

you asked, and I think I've got it mostly all down...but...I just realized that

I might have been wasting my time with all this training. Sure I got a powerful

new technique...maybe strong enough that I could beat Nabiki, if I go all

out...but..."

"But you don't want to go all out with her, is that it?" Happosai sighed,

"Ranma...you've got everything it takes to come out on top, but it won't matter

squat unless you can get over this damned reluctance you have to use everything

you know against your iinazuke. No matter how much you care for her, you've got

to know that she's pretty darned mad at you right now, and that means she won't

be holding as much back when it comes to her end of the matter."

"I know," Ranma said, "And she ain't exactly fragile either, but..."

"But what?" Ryu asked, breaking his silence of the past hour, "You go up against

that She-male with a half-assed attitude like that and she'll hand you your

head. I only caught the tail end of a slap by her and my teeth were rattled.

That Babe packs one hell of a wallop..."

"She ain't a She-male...or whatever the hell you want to call her," Ranma

growled in warning, "And if you wanna find out how hard she can hit, you just

talk like that in front of her and see where it gets you..."

"All right, all right," Ryu desisted, "I'm not out to pick any fights, I just

can't stand to see you moping around like a whipped puppy, and just because your

girlfriend's more of a man than you are."

"Er...about that," Kaoih asked, "Is it really true that she's Jusenkyo cursed to

turn into a man whenever she gets wet? Because it's pretty hard for me to

picture Nabiki as a guy..."

"You want to see for yourself, Sis?" Ranma sniffed, "Go ahead...but don't say I

didn't warn you. When she's Kaneda she's even taller and huskier than me, and

girls just can't seem to keep their hands off of her. She has to fight them off

with a club, and you've already seen the type of girl she actually married."

Ryu shook his head in disbelief and said, "Are you really sure about this? I

mean...you really want to get hitched to somebody like that? I mean...no

offense, but it would freak me out if..."

"If I turned into a man?" Kaoih asked, "That was what you were going to say,

right?"

"Huh?" Ryu blinked, "Ah...well..."

"You idiots!" Happosai snapped, "So what if she turns into a man part of the

time? The part of her that's all woman more than makes up for it! You know

what I'm saying, my Boy? You want her even if she has a curse and sleeps with

other women, right?"

"Ah...yeah," Ranma tried not to color, but he felt his cheeks flush more than a

little.

"Then maybe you should have her fight you as a man," Sakura suggested, "Perhaps

that would distract you from thinking of her as your fiancée."

"No good," Genma shook his head negatively, "As Kaneda, Nabiki's physical

strength more than doubles, though she loses a bit of her speed and agility, but

it's her female half that Ranma has to defeat if he's going to win her as his

bride by Amazon traditions. That's really what this is all about, Boy...you've

been feeling inferior to her since the day you first met, and the thought of

fighting her all-out intimidates you more than you'd like to admit. That's why

we need a different strategy if you are going to overcome that girl and teach

her to respect you as both a man and a fiancée."

"Oh yeah?" Ranma asked, "And how am I gonna do that if I can't...bring myself to

hit her?"

"Ranma," Happosai shook his head sadly, "Haven't you learned anything that I've

been trying to get across to you? You don't have to hurt Nabiki in order to

defeat her. There are lots of ways to overcome a woman without turning into a

brute...in fact...I have something here that just might help you."

The little man produced a scroll and passed it along to Ranma, who was sitting

in the center of an empty ring in the middle of the circus tent, while all

around them they could hear the sounds of the rest of the circus being taken

apart by Sakura's employees. Ranma unrolled the scroll and studied it, then

frowned as he said, "This looks like..."

"The Moxibustion chart?" Genma asked, coming closer to examine the chart in

question.

"Hardly," Happosai sniffed, "I found this in a teashop in China many years

ago...I was saving it for a special occasion. Scroll down a little further,

boy, and see what else that dusty old thing has to tell you."

Ranma did as instructed and found a second chart that seemed to relate to the

first. As Kaoih, Sakura and Ryu approached to get a better look for themselves,

there was a gasp from his half-sister who said, "Mom...that looks like...?"

"The Tree of Life," Sakura agreed, "Also known as the Qabalah."

"Kabala?" Ryu repeated, "What's that?"

"It's the central most pillar in Western Hermeticism," Sakura replied, "Only

this one seems tailored to Eastern Taoist philosophy. Perhaps this is a

synthesis created by someone who had contact with both Eastern and Western

traditions..."

"Fascinating," Genma said, "But what does it mean?"

"It's simple," Kaoih replied, "It's a Magical and Alchemical formula for viewing

the whole Universe as relating to a human body."

"Say WHAT?" Ranma reacted.

"That's right, Boy," Happosai smiled, "What you've got there is a priceless

formula for turning the Senken into an entire new way of looking at life, but

the reason I brought it out is because I think you can learn to use the

pressure-point system it outlines there to good advantage. All you need is a

bit of that imagination that you've been using with all your Senken training and

you can defeat just about any foe who has a human body with a central nervous

system."

"You mean...like combine Shiatsu attacks with the Senken?" Ranma thought a

moment then said, "You know, Gramps...you could be onto something..."

"I think this scroll means a lot more than just that for you, Little Brother,"

Kaoih revealed, "Just consider what you've accomplished, and in such a short

time. You started out like the Fool Card and progressed to the Magician, and

now you know four brand new combat styles based on the Elements of Earth, Air,

Fire and Water."

"Of course!" Sakura said cheerfully, "I should have seen it for myself. Kaoih-

chan, you're a genius!"

"Aw Mom..." the younger acrobat/aerialist colored.

"So let me see if I get this straight," Ryu said, "Saotome here is now a

Magician?"

"Well...the next best thing when it comes to martial arts," Kaoih smiled, "Of

course you can be pretty awesome yourself when you get going, Ryu-chan, so

there's no need for you to feel jealous..."

"Who's jealous?" the taller boy sniffed with a defiantly cross expression.

"Explain this to me," Ranma asked, "How does this 'Tree of Life' thing relate to

a human body?"

"Adam Kadmon," Sakura replied, "The Great-Souled Man, otherwise known as the

Godhead. It relates to Jewish Philosophy, about Man being created in the image

of God and the Angels. At the top of the scale there is Kether, which is the

Head, moving down to the left and right shoulders, which are Chokmah and Binah.

The Solar Plexus is known as Tiphereth, which is the Sun-center of a person's

being, and moving down the column to the genitals we have Yesod, the Moon, which

represents the unconsciousness and sexual drives that lay beneath human reason."

"And the foot area is known as Malkuth," Kaoih supplied, "Which is the Earth, or

the Kingdom beneath the Foundation. The other four Chakra, or Energy-Spheres,

correlate to the left and right halves of the body. You have the right arm,

which is Chesed, which relates to Jupiter, the sphere of Order and Control, or

organizing principle of the elements. The left arm is Geburah, which relates to

Mars and symbolizes the raw passionate energy of life as directed by a force of

will...which can mean either War or Justice, depending on its usage. Netzach,

which is Venus and relates to the right hip or kidney, is where the raw

emotional energies of nature are centralized, and Hod balances it out on the

left side, meaning Mercury, the Intellect or cooling state of rational being."

"The words actually are Hebrew and translate as: 'Crown, Wisdom, Understanding,

Mercy, Justice, Beauty, Victory, Splendor, Foundation and Kingdom," Sakura

revealed, "It's a philosophical and moral system evolved under the banner head

of what is called Masonic or Hermetic traditions. It also, coincidentally

enough, relates to the Tarot system evolved by ex-Cathers hiding out from the

Catholic Inquisition. The Fool and the Magician cards are but two of the

twenty-two paths that link the ten separate Chakra together."

"O-Kay," Ranma said, "But what does all of that mean?"

"Kether the Crown is Unity," Kaoih replied, "The Godhead made Manifest...it

actually circulates as a ball of energy that forms a few centimeters above your

head and represents your higher consciousness. The line of force that travels

down your spine is the Central Pillar of this philosophy, the Equilibrium of

forces. The left hand is the Pillar of Justice, the right hand is the Pillar of

Mercy...as the saying goes, Mercy without Justice is Weakness, but Justice

without Mercy is Severity...in other words you need both strength and tenderness

in order to be a well-rounded person."

"Chokmah is Expansion or Wisdom," Sakura resumed, "Binah-or Saturn-is

Constriction or Wisdom...the two balance each other out and make for a sage or

scholar...a man who knows his left hand from his right."

"Right," Kaoih nodded, "But Tiphereth, the Sun of Beauty of Life, is the Energy

sphere of the Pillar of Balance...it's the one that relates the most closely to

what you've been studying with the Arashisenken. You feel with your heart, or

Solar Plexus, that's the Chakra center you rely upon, the one that never fails

you."

"Exactly," Sakura nodded with approval, "Whereas far too many people think with

their loins...the Lunar Chakra of Yesod, which forms both Conception and

Reflection in the lower sub-conscious. If you learn how to balance the Sun and

the Moon, along with Saturn and Uranus, you become a more fully well developed

and balanced individual...unlike those who do all their thinking with their

loins, which is where we come to the subject of imbalance, the mark of an

intemperate individual who is not in control of their own destiny."

"That's the whole point of this Philosophy, don't you see?" Kaoih asked, "To

learn how to be in charge of your own destiny...or to be the Charioteer who

guides his path by the force of his own will. The reason this system relates

the entire cosmos to a human body is because it is an attempt to relate the mind

and the will to the greater consciousness of the Universe...to unite Man with

God and restore the inner balance."

"The Way of Return," Sakura quoted, "Where humanity is restored to a state of

bliss that was known in Eden."

"The Way of Return, huh?" Ryu said thoughtfully, "And studying this is supposed

to make you into a better person?"

"No philosophy or system can do that unless you do the hard work inside

yourself, Ryu-chan," Kaoih revealed, "It's not like some magical wand where you

just say, 'I Believe,' and it magically transforms you into a better person.

You have to believe in yourself to see how the Qabalah relates to your own

life...but it is worth a closer study."

"So in a way it's just like training in the martial arts," Genma said in an

unusually thoughtful tone of voice, "And, as the Master has stated, this Taoist

version could actually serve to bolster the strength of the Senken."

"Yes, yes, yes," Happosai said testily, "All this stuff is fascinating and all

that, but it's getting us away from the subject that you ought to be focusing

on, Boy...and by that I mean not thinking about some abstract Godly body that

spans the entire cosmos, but focus on one particular Heavenly body that ought to

be at the center of your attention, and I'm sure you know the one that I'm

referring to...or else you're worse off than even I'm thinking."

"You mean..." Ranma hesitated, "Nabiki?"

"Bingo!" Happosai replied, "Go to the head of the class! That's the only one

that you need to be thinking about between here and tomorrow."

Ranma studied the chart again and seemed to be deep in thought, but then a voice

caught his attention and made him look upright, "Can...I make a suggestion?"

"Eh?" Ranma found himself looking up into the sapphire blue eyes of Perfume, who

was standing there shyly at the other side of the circus ring, "You?"

"Me," the Amazon Enforcer nodded, "I...want to help you out, Saotome...if you'll

let me."

"You want to help?" Ryu asked in surprise, "But...are you with...?"

"I'm his fiancée too," Perfume said a bit defiantly, "And...it's kind of my

fault that all of this happened, so...I want to make it up to you, Ranma. I

think I know how I can help you defeat Nabiki."

"Oh really?" Kaoih asked as she stood up, "And we should just trust you? Aren't

you the one who's engaged to that other girl...that Kuonji Ukyo?"

"Ukyo is my wife," Perfume replied, "But Ranma is her promised husband. That

means something to an Amazon, so...I'm going to help you...if you'll let me."

"Interesting," Genma mused, "Perhaps you can help out, in fact...you may be just

the thing Ranma needs to tilt the odds in his favor."

"Huh?" Ranma asked in mild surprise.

"Yowza!" Happosai cried in delight, "I knew you were an angel in disguise, Doll-

face! Come to Poppa-!" he vaulted forward, only to run face-first into flat

side of one of her broad axes.

"He never gives up," Perfume sighed as she watched the ancient pervert slide to

the ground.

"Part of his charm, I guess," Sakura mused, "Your name is Perfume, right? What

a lovely thing you are...and almost the same age as my Kaoih..."

"Whatever," Kaoih folded her arms, "Talk, lady...how exactly do you think it is

that you can help my little brother?"

"It's simple," Perfume replied as she banished her ax, "Ranma needs to learn how

to use pressure-sensitive moves on a female body...and I just happen to be

female, in case you didn't notice."

"Ah...well..." Ryu's eyes traveled a bit too low for Kaoih's liking, and she

slapped his arm to get him to raise his eyes above breast-level and with

remarkable restraint he took the hint and adopted a sober expression.

Ranma straightened out and looked Perfume in the eyes, taking notice of the

hesitation and uncertainty in her expression, as though she were pleading for

his trust and understanding. In cautious tones of his own, however, he asked,

"Oneechan does raise a good point, Perfume-san...why do you want to help me?"

"Because you're the key to the whole marriage, Saotome," the Enforcer replied,

"And without you, Ukyo will never earn her half of the restaurant.

And...besides...no matter how mad she is at you, Nabiki loves you very much, and

her happiness is important to my cousin..."

"And?" Genma asked, "I sense you have one other reason, Girl."

"You're right," Perfume firmed up her expression, "I also want to help you as a

lesson to my great-grandmother. She's been pushing Nabiki pretty hard to train

her to fight at her utmost, and if you have even a slight chance of besting her

in a fight..."

"So," Happosai mused as he recovered his wits, "You're on the outs with the Old

Lady, huh? What did she do now? Try to pressure you to give her more

grandkids?"

"No," Perfume replied, "Worse than that. SHE LIED TO ME!" her voice shook with

the force of the unexpected outburst, "She's been lying to me for

years...scheming and manipulating, leading me on, playing with my feelings...!"

"Whoah, whoah!" Ranma urged, "Slow down! I've been away for a couple of

weeks...what's been going on while I've been in training that's got you so upset

with the old woman?"

"That's just it," Perfume grit her teeth and said, "SHE'S NOT AN OLD WOMAN!"

"Huh?" Ranma blinked, "Uh...excuse me?"

"She thinks she's so clever," Perfume almost shook with rage, then glared at

Happosai and said, "Tell him, Old Fool...tell him about the other night...and

about my so-called adopted great-grandmother!"

"So...you know about that, eh?" Happosai remarked, "Well...can't say I find that

too surprising, you being a Sentinel and all. It's true, Boy...I don't know how

or why, but somehow Cologne's gained the ability to restore her long-lost youth.

I could hardly believe it myself...but there she was, as young and beautiful as

I remember in our long-ago youth...like not a day had passed since I first met

her in China..."

"What?" Ranma said, "You've gotta be kidding. The old ghoul...a beauty?"

"I could hardly believe it myself at the time," Perfume replied, "In fact...I

didn't know what to make of it until later...mainly because she tried to hide

her scent by switching her body lotions. I don't know why it took me this long

to figure it out, but somehow she's just been pretending to be an old and

withered old prune...and yet it makes a kind of sense...after all...she's three

hundred years old, but she's more powerful than any ten warriors in their

thirties! And she had a daughter when she was well over two hundred...tell me

how that could be if she was past menopause, huh? Tell me!"

"Menowhat?" Ranma reacted with a blank expression.

"Interesting," Sakura stroked her chin, "And all this time I just thought she

maintained her youthful good looks through some form of Amazon magic. I wonder

if the same thing applies to Comb...?"

"Comb?" Perfume blinked, "You know Shampoo's mother?"

"Well...I used to know her," Sakura smiled, "Twenty years ago, and now that you

mention it, I did think that girl with the baby looked a lot like her..."

"What?" Ranma blinked, "You knew Shampoo's mother? But-OYAJI!"

"What?" Genma blinked, "NO! It's nothing like that! I'm not-at least I think

I'm not...uh...the father..."

"Where have I heard that one before?" Kaoih asked with a suspicious expression.

"The father?" Perfume blinked, then comprehension dawned on her and she replied,

"No, you can't be the father...I know Comb's husband, Hairbrush, and you are

definitely not him." Perfume turned her focus back towards Ranma and grew

serious again, "Listen, Saotome...years ago Shampoo and I befriended a girl in

our village named Lotion the Younger, and three years ago Lotion and Shampoo had

an affair...their first love, as a matter of fact. I...got jealous and started

a fight with Shampoo...because I was in love with Lotion too...and because of

this, great-grandmother...Cologne decided to separate us by sending Lotion off

to train with the Healer in another village."

"Uh...right," Ranma said, "I have heard this story before, you know..."

"You didn't hear the whole story," Perfume insisted, "We told you that she was

attacked along the way by a gang of toughs who wanted to get back at Shampoo for

beating them up in practice. I hunted those girls down myself and brought them

to justice, saw them stripped of their Warrior status with the ringleader thrown

into exile, all because we thought Lotion had fallen from a bridge into a

waterfall and met her death by drowning. Well...it turns out that we were

wrong...she's alive..."

"Alive?" Ranma blinked.

"In fact," Perfume drew a tight breath, "She's coming here from China to attend

the upcoming wedding. We got a letter from her last week that told us that

she's on her way here along with an Amazon delegation."

"An Amazon delegation?" Ranma repeated.

"Three Elders and several Warriors are coming from our village to meet with

great-grandmother on a matter of important Council, business," Perfume replied,

"And Lotion is going to be with them...the girl we thought was lost to us

forever...the girl I...loved...and still do...after a fashion..."

"After a fashion?" Kaoih arched her eyebrow, "Um...excuse me for butting in

here...but aren't you, like...already married?"

"She says that she knows all about it," Perfume replied, "Her letter is full of

bright and cheerful talk about renewing old ties, of wishing us well, of wanting

to meet the girls we married, and...our husband. Don't get me wrong, I'm

pleased to know that she's alive...though how she learned so much about us from

China...I guess maybe Shampoo's been telling her mother and father, or something

like that..."

"Wait...give me a moment here," Ranma urged, "The girl who you and Shampoo used

to have a thing for is alive...and she's coming here to wish you guys well in

your marriages?"

"Exactly," the Amazon nodded.

"But...I thought your great-grandmother..." Ranma started to say when Perfume

raised a hand and gave him a sobering look.

"Great-grandmother KNEW about it all the time," the Enforcer declared, "She KNEW

that Lotion was alive even when Shampoo and I were grieving for her! She let us

believe for TWO YEARS that the girl we both loved was gone from our lives

forever! Now do you see why I'm a little upset about that, Saotome? Well, DO

YOU?"

"I think I do," Ranma nodded, "And you're right, the old woman shouldn't have

done it."

Perfume seemed to lose the edge of her anger as she sighed, "So you know why I

have to do something to get back at her or I'm going to go crazy! I can't

challenge her, I'm not good enough to beat her in a fight, and I'm sworn to obey

the Matriarch of our tribe, so I CAN'T GO UP AGAINST HER DIRECTLY! All I can

do...is see to it that you get what you need to beat her chosen Champion and

heir...that you have what it takes to face and defeat Nabiki!"

"But...what's Nabiki got to do with all this...other than being the old woman's

student?" Ranma asked.

"Plenty," Perfume growled, "Because she knows all about what Cologne did to us,

and yet she still insists on training with the old woman! It's not that I blame

her...the Matriarch is the senior Elder of our tribe and the head of our clan,

but still..."

"But still you think she should tell this grandmother of yours to go take a

hike, is that it?" Kaoih asked.

"That would be my preferred line of choice, yes," Perfume grated, "But Nabiki's

the senior wife in our group marriage, so she outranks me and I can't tell her

what to do with herself."

"So...what's it that you're offering to do for Saotome here?" Ryu asked.

Perfume looked Ranma straight in the eyes and only acknowledged that question by

saying, "You and I may not have always seen eye-to-eye, Ranma...but you've

always been straight with me, and I respect you as a fighter. You're the one

whom I'm bound to by my laws to acknowledge as a husband, and I think you're

worthy of an Amazon marriage. The one thing you don't have, though, is

experience with women. Well...I'm a woman, and your wife, so you can practice

your arts with me, then use them against Nabiki."

"Use...?" Ranma blinked his eyes, "I-I can't do that! You're a person, not an

object..."

"I'm a warrior, damn you," Perfume was actually shaking, as if the act was as

hard for her as it clearly was for Ranma, "And I'll do anything it takes to make

you stronger as a warrior...husband."

"It may be for the best, Son," Genma noted, "I think you'd be wise to take her

up on her offer."

"What is this?" Kaoih asked, "Are you offering to be his practice dummy,

or...what?"

"I am a Sentinel," Perfume replied, "My nervous system is hypersensitive to

stimuli...I react to pain and pleasure more readily than an ordinary woman. A

soft caress to me can be as raw as sandpaper if it's not done right, so if Ranma

wants to learn how to use these pressure-points so that they'll be effective

against someone with normal conditioning, like Nabiki..."

"Pretty clever," Happosai nodded in approval, "Genma's right, for once...you may

be just the thing we need to knock some sense into the Lad. Ranma, you do

whatever she tells you and listen exactly to every thing this cuties says, and

by this time tomorrow you'll be more than ready to tackle Nabiki."

"A good strategy," Sakura nodded, "Perhaps we should leave you two to sort

things out between you."

"Yes, please," Perfume replied, "Leave me alone...with Ranma."

"Yeah?" Ryu asked, "Why is that?"

All at once Perfume's hands were filled by her double-bladed broad axes, and

then she sent them soaring to both sides where they circled for a moment before

returning to her hands like a pair of sharp-bladed Frisbees, whereupon she once

more made them vanish.

"Because I'm asking nicely," Perfume said calmly.

"Right," Ryu nodded sagely, then "OW!" as Kaoih took him by the ear and started

dragging him off towards the exit.

"HEY!" Happosai cried as he suddenly found himself gripped by his collar as

Genma turned and joined Sakura, who was also moving towards the exit, "I WANTED

TO WATCH!"

"Come along, Master," Genma urged, "We'll find you a nice bordello to raid in

the red light district."

"TRAITOR, YOU-did you say Bordello?" Happosai brightened up, "Hey...does

Furinkan have a red light district?"

"We'll never know if we don't find out, will we?" Sakura remarked, calling back

over her shoulder, "Take your time...it will be a few hours before my crew

starts taking down the big top, so I'll tell them to give you some privacy.

Ciao!"

"Ciao?" Ranma repeated, unable to take his eyes off the brown haired Enforcer

standing before him.

"She means me," Perfume replied, looking resolutely at Ranma before casually

reaching up and undoing the wooden pegs of her Cheosong and peeling her top off,

where she revealed the fact that she was not wearing a bra, let alone panties.

"Hah?" Ranma's eyes went down and up again as the Amazon slipped out of her

clothing, "But...!"

"Shhh," Perfume said as she placed two fingers over his lips, "It's all

right...you're not doing anything wrong. This is just training, remember?

Think of me as your sparring partner...only this isn't about sparring."

"It's not?" Ranma rather audibly swallowed.

"It's about learning how to be with a woman," Perfume hesitantly smiled, "I owe

this to you, Saotome...it was my fault for baiting you and setting this whole

thing in motion...all because I was a little too proud about being a father."

Ranma gulped again, finding the beautiful (and VERY well-stacked) Chinese girl

standing so near to him that he could almost feel the heat radiating from her

(VERY) lithe body. There was nothing the least bit unfeminine about the Amazon

Enforcer...in fact, she was a LITTLE TOO feminine for him to be standing so

close to while remaining upright.

"Relax," she said soothingly, "It's all about training...right?"

"It's all about training," Ranma repeated, thinking privately to himself that if

he started to believe that, then he ought to start looking up some swampland in

Hokkaido...

Nabiki gave a savage cry and with a single punch demolished a boulder. Cologne

nodded faintly with approval and said, "Very good, this time you managed to

contain your anger. You only managed to convert it into gravel."

"I'll powder it the next time," Nabiki said between grit teeth, turning once

again to Ryonami for confirmation, "And you're saying that Ryoga built a house

in thirty minutes? What the heck kind of martial art system is that?"

"Ah...I don't know, Sempai," Ryonami replied, "But I do know that your sister

was very impressed with her fiancée, and it was a pretty nice house...the

plumbing worked and everything."

"Interesting," Cologne remarked, "Knowing Ryoga as we do, I would have expected

everything to work backwards."

"Yeah, no fooling," Nabiki frowned, "So what is it, this secret technique Genma

taught Ranma called the 'Thousand Fists Ryu?' And how exactly does he expect to

use this thing to beat me?"

"You tell me," Cologne mused, "You saw how he dodged your attacks last night.

Could it be that his speed and power have increased as a direct result of his

training?"

"Yeah...I was figuring it was something like that," Nabiki frowned, "Funny thing

is...Ranma was also able to pick my pocket...he's never done anything like that,

even when I've left it out in the open."

"You leave money lying around Sempai?" Ryonami asked wide-eyed.

"Once or twice," Nabiki said, hastily adding, "It was an accident...I was in the

furo and in a hurry to change genders. The fact is...Ranma's about as honest as

any guy I know, and I won't stand for it if he's picking up bad habits like that

from his father."

"Indeed?" Cologne mused, "And what will you do if you learn that Saotome has

succumbed to his father's baleful influence?"

Nabiki turned to regard another large boulder standing a short distance away in

the practice lot behind the Nekohanten, and with a single gesture she unleashed

a blast of Chi that broke the thing apart into so much talcum powder. Ryonami

nearly jumped out of her skin, but more from the sense of Nabiki's anger than

the violence of her maneuver.

"Why...I'll just have to persuade him not to follow in Pops's footsteps. The

old panda better not get in my way or I'll have his hide, with apologies to Aunt

Nodoka."

Cologne hid another smile as she contemplated her apprentice, then in a smooth

voice said, "Perhaps now you are ready for my speed-enhancing technique, Tempest

Fugue."

"You mean Tempest Fugit, don't you?" Nabiki asked.

"I'm not referring to the Latin term for time flies," Cologne replied, "Tempest

Fugue is more of an art where you learn to control your own momentum...and-

when contrasted with learning the Shadowskills-should be comparably easy."

"Easy huh?" Nabiki smiled, "Well...I suppose I could give it a whirl and see how

it works out."

"Another technique?" Ryonami asked dubiously, "I don't know about this,

Sempai...aren't you taking things a little too far? I thought the idea was to

defeat Ranma and marry him, not pulverize him or beat him to a bloody pulp."

"Oh, I don't intend to carry things that far, Ryo-chan," Nabiki reassured, "Just

far enough to teach Ranma a lesson about fooling around on me behind my back.

I'll find a way to make it up to him...after I put this nonsense to rest once

and for all. I'll train to deal with whatever new tricks Ranma's picked up from

his father, and then...well...we'll see about what he's really been up to..."

Ryonami looked upon her beloved Sempai, the woman she most looked up to in the

world, then at the calculating old woman who had been coaching her along to this

point, and inwardly she trembled at the implications of these exchanges,

thinking to herself that this could only spell trouble for the relationship of

Saotome and Tendo, with radical implications for the future...

Part One-Hundred-Six.

"Well, looks like a pretty good turn-out," remarked Cammy White as she surveyed

the rows of bleachers that had been assembled around the open, sunken lot on the

edge of the Furinkan Financial district, "Who knew they'd be putting on this

kind of a show for a martial arts tournament."

"Considering who is going to be sparring today, that is hardly surprising,"

Chun-Li observed, "We know that Tendo Nabiki and Saotome Ranma rank near to our

level in abilities, and I think even Ryu would be impressed by the progress made

by these young people since last we fought together."

"According to my daughter," Akiko mused, "We may be in for even more of a show

than I think you two realize, darlings," she sniffed in further amusement as she

saw the way her two female companions were nervously glancing in her direction,

"They have been undertaking special training in some pretty advanced arts, and I

dare say even you might be impressed with what you see today, husband."

Guile just grunted a non-committal answer, unwilling to contradict his recently

wed bride so soon after coming home from their Honeymoon together. He kept his

sunshades over his eyes to conceal the way he was scanning the crowds and

picking up all sorts of oddly familiar faces. Apparently everyone who knew

either Ranma or Nabiki was here to see them in a match together, and whether

this was to wish them well or to cheer them in the act of beating the hell out

of one another could not be easily discerned. All he knew was that it would

have to be one heck of a show to impress this many people...

"Well," Beatrice remarked as she and Alison arrived to the makeshift stadium-

arena, "Quite a turnout I see here, and it looks as if we're both in time to

catch the festivities."

"Would've gotten here sooner," the redhead at her side replied, "If I hadn't

spent part of the morning puking my guts out. I thought you said there weren't

gonna be any side-effects?"

"Obviously there will be a small adjustment period before the Symbiote begins to

integrate itself into your physiology," Beatrice replied, "And by then I'm sure

things will settle down so that can enjoy the more pleasant aspects of your

pregnancy, Aiko-chan."

"Yeah, right," Alison said skeptically, "Lot of people here, and what's with the

guys in the clown suits and the one on stilts?"

"No doubt they are here to entertain the crowds while the combatants warm

themselves up and prepare to get underway," Beatrice theorized, "On the whole

things do seem remarkable well organized, which is what one would only expect of

a match arranged by Nabiki."

"Looks like a regular circus to me," Alison remarked, "All this for a fight

between two people who ought to be making out instead of trying to hurt one

another?"

"I know, my love," Beatrice replied, "Go figure..."

"Hey," Natsumi said to Miyuki as she brought her partner some tea and pretzels,

"Quite a show they're putting on here. You'd think this was an idol singing

match or a car-show from this much attention, huh?"

"It certainly is a rather unusually large turnout," Miyuki agreed as she

accepted the concessions, "Doesn't seem to likely that a simple martial arts

match could get this much attention."

"Yeah, well, don't forget we know these crazy kids," Natsumi blew on her coffee

as the undercover cop leaned against her partner's car where it was parked along

the curb overlooking the makeshift arena, "They're two of the best high school

age brawlers all around, so I hope you brought your binoculars, because I expect

to see a lot of good moves being exchanged. Just hope they don't get too rough

with each other...fights like this should be saved for after the wedding."

"Yes," Miyuki said, "It concerns me too that Nabiki and Ranma should be having

such difficulties that they feel compelled to settle them on this extreme a

level...Oh! Say, is that Saki over there?"

"Saki?" Natsumi blinked as she turned her eyes to see a certain pink-haired girl

in a school uniform heading for the bleachers, "Hey, you're right, it's her!

Hey Saki!"

Asamiya Saki looked around until she saw the two undercover policewomen,

whereupon she winced and decided to head over towards them, growling as she did,

"Do you mind? I'm supposed to be undercover. Hanging around with you two

clowns could break my cover."

"We just wanted to say hello to you," Miyuki smiled, "I assume you heard about

the match the same way we did?"

"You mean care of Ryonami Express?" Saki shook her head in dismay, "How does she

do that? I've changed my address since the last time I saw Nabiki, which was at

the hospital with her wife having a baby, yet somehow she managed to get a hold

of the unlisted phone number of my new apartment..."

"It's a mystery all right," Natsumi smiled, "Of course how someone with your

hair color expects to keep a low profile as a Sukeban Deka, I have no idea..."

"Kiss my ass," Saki politely retorted, "This from a girl who once carried a

motor scooter on her back up a stairwell just to chase down some punk? Besides,

you'd be amazed at how many pink-haired high school girls there are in Japan.

In fact at this one school I knew a girl who dressed kind of like a boy and

fancied herself a Prince..."

"Oh my," Miyuki remarked, reaching for her binoculars and pulling them out, then

scanning towards a remote area overlooking the empty pit yard, "I do

believe...yes! It's Doctor Steinberg! I thought I recognized him at a

glance..."

"Huh?" both Natsumi and Saki swiveled their heads to take in the sight of a

burly man clad in leathers leaning up against a colossal motorcycle, a man who-

-at first glance-seemed a lot farther away than he actually was until one

adjusted for the size differential, at which point recognition was all but

unavoidable, prompting Natsumi to almost swallow the gum she was chewing.

"That's him all right," Saki confirmed, "Not many eight-foot-tall Bikers I know

who match that profile..."

"What's he doing here?" Natsumi all but whispered.

"I don't really know," Miyuki said pleasantly, "But I rather imagine that he's

here to watch the fight, same as the rest of us."

"Maybe he's looking to pick up a few spare parts when it's over?" Saki

speculated in characteristic gallows humor...

"You know," said the voice of Shelly to her nominal rider, "Standing out like

this is bound to attract some unwanted attention. Are you sure you didn't want

to opt for the limo?"

"Who says I want to keep a low profile?" asked Frank, "You know why I'm here.

Fang-face was spotted in the area, and I'm thinking he might be sending out one

of his ghouls to spot out the local talent."

"Subtlety is hardly Dimitri's style," Shelley noted, "And you could have

assigned this to one of the others, preferably one who can blend in with a

crowd."

"Not many of us fit that description," Frank replied as he adjusted his dark sun

glasses, "Besides...I've had this...sense that something was wrong in the

area...and over the last two hundred years I've kind of gotten into the habit of

trusting my hunches."

"You think Dimitri might try to absorb the abilities of one of these

youngsters?"

"Been known to happen," Frank rumbled, "The guy lives to cause misery and

suffering, but he likes nothing better than a good scrap, and if he can find a

meal who can put up enough of a fight, then you can bet he'll show up

eventually. I've got Talbain sniffing on his trail and he's definitely picked

up Zombie spoor leading to this area. Not that I expect an attack in the

daytime, of course, but it never hurts to be too careful."

"Too careful doesn't even apply to you," Shelley mused, "And besides, what is it

that makes these two kids so special that they'd warrant the attention of the

renegade Prince of the Vampires?"

"Other than the fact that one of them is a Temporal Nexus, and the other is his

Jusenkyo-cursed girlfriend?" Frank replied, "Nothing much, other than the fact

that they both rank as Class Alpha fighters, and I'm betting that their power

ratings have gone up a bit since a month ago at the hospital..." he paused,

turning his head slightly and took notice of a figure hovering nearby in the

shadows, then mused to himself, "Well, well...looks like Dimitri ain't the only

one stalking prey. You can come out now, Kitty...I know that's you hiding in

the bushes?"

The figure emerged, stalking on all fours with a low, ominous rumble, a powerful

sleek form bristling with svelte and sinuous muscle, her tiger stripes enough to

alarm any ordinary mortal who might find themselves within reach of those dish-

sized clawed paws and those razor-sharp teeth, all the better for her to bite

with.

But then that form changed and shifted, diminishing in size and mass as the

figure reared upward and stood erectly in the form of a blue haired, oddly

dressed woman. She approached the large man cautiously and said, "I knew you'd

spot me sooner or later...Airen...so-like you-I decided not to bother with

the stealthy act. Nihao and all that..."

"Ciao to you, Kitty," Frank grunted, "So...what brings you back to these parts?

I thought I told you to stay well clear of the Tendos..."

"You've told me a lot of things over the years, Husband," Lao remarked as she

came to stand beside him, "But you can't deny me the courtesy of being concerned

with the affairs of my own family. After all, Nabiki is my cousin by

marriage..."

"Didn't think you were the overly sentimental type when it came to family,"

Frank noted, "You once told me you would never let things like that interfere

with your sense of business..."

"That was before certain...recent developments came to my attention," Lao

replied, "I'm sure that you already know that there is a lot more at stake here

than simply deciding which of these two youths will prove to be the superior

fighter."

"I've got some ideas about that," Frank admitted, "But what are you here for?"

"It may surprise you to hear this, Frank...but I do actually care about the

family that I left behind in China," Lao said, "No matter how badly they treated

me, they are still family, and Shampoo is hardly to blame for my exile. Neither

is Perfume for that matter, and I never held any particular grudge against

either her or Nabiki, even if the latter did pique my interest. The one I do,

however, hold a grudge with, is my great-grandmother, Cologne, the Elder

Matriarch of the Nyanchiczu...and just the other day, from the safe vantage of

my vessel, I chanced to learn something rather surprising about her that changes

a great deal of my opinion."

"Like...how so?" Frank wondered.

"Well," the lady pirate mused, "For one thing, she's a lot...livelier than I had

imagined...and the degree of her deceptions regarding others astounds even me,

and I had thought that I had witnessed the literal depths of human depravity in

my travels. It turns out that she's been harboring a secret for the past three

hundred years that-should it become common knowledge-would lead to a most

unpleasant mess among our people, along with the almost certain elevation of a

new Matriarch."

"In other words," Shelly chimed in, "The old Bag of Bones is in hot water."

"Don't tell me you plan on blackmailing her?" Frank frowned.

"Do I look to you like that kind of an idiot?" Lao retorted, "I would never

dream of betraying those secrets that I have learned to anyone...at least not

prematurely. If I had wanted to do that, then I would have informed the

Triumvirate of the High Council and their envoys when I escorted them here to

Japan under a flag of clan truce. No, it will be up to them to make their own

inquiries and discoveries...I am merely an exile and could not possibly have any

interest in these proceedings."

For the first time in the afternoon, Frank allowed concern to show on his craggy

features, "The Triumvirate of the High Council? You mean...?"

"Them," Lao nodded towards a certain group that was filing through the crowd,

moving towards the lower end of the bleachers, a delegation composed of nearly a

dozen figures, all women, the one leading the pact being old and gnarled like a

weathered tree stump, the grey haired figure beside her only somewhat less old

by contrast, while beside them stood a statuesque blonde-haired beauty who drew

more than her share of wolf whistles.

"Siren?" Frank said the word as more of a gasp than an exclamation, "SHE'S with

the High Council now?"

"Hardly," Lao smiled, "She would never dream of giving up her independence to

that extent...but she did accept this commission on behalf of the Amazon Council

to come here and make certain...inquiries regarding the Matriarch and her

activities. You could hardly call that surprising, after all...she and Cologne

go waaay back, almost to the very beginning."

"Hooboy," Frank rumbled in immediate concern, much of which was suddenly

directed towards Cologne, who surely had to have seen that something

extraordinary like this was forthcoming...

Indeed Cologne was just managing to stifle a low-voiced curse against her

ancestors as she turned and caught sight of the Amazon delegation. At first her

attention had gone to their obvious leader, Be Dea, her longtime rival on the

council and the one person among the Amazons who might have gladly seen their

matriarch put out to pasture. The second woman in the delegation briefly

registered on her conscious awareness as her former disciple turned Lore Master,

Lo Xion, but then her eyes became riveted by the sight of the statuesque blonde

beauty at their lead and she found herself cringing somewhat, as if caught and

exposed in her disguise by one of the very few people who knew what she actually

looked like without the power of her illusions.

"Nihao," Be Dea said by way of formal greeting, coming to stand a respectful

distance away from Cologne, who was standing by herself in the open field with

Perfume near at hand in the position of a dutiful Enforcer.

"Nihao," Cologne replied gravely, "I trust that there is sufficient reason for

why you have come all this way to visit me. I was not informed of any

emergencies, nor did I receive an official summons."

"That is because certain recent developments have come to our attention

regarding you, Matriarch," Be Dea began with all the warmth of serpent sensing

the moment to strike out, "And we believe you at least deserved the courtesy of

our hearing your side of these affairs before matters proceeded any further."

"Then you have come a long way just to ask a question," Cologne replied, "What

has concerned the Council so much that you would be roused to travel so far

beyond our borders?"

As she asked this question, however, Cologne already had some idea what was

afoot. Be Dea had learned the truth about Cologne's deception regarding the

Lotion matter, as clearly could be attested by the fact that the young blue-

haired girl in question was standing there at the side of another whom Cologne

had hoped never to see again, a tall pink-haired girl who was regarding her

flatly with a single eye exposed from beneath her long silk tresses. The rest

of the delegation were relatively unimportant...warriors all who held a

prominent standing among the various tribes of the Amazons, but the sight of

Elder Lotion's great-granddaughter and the redoubtable Ambergris was all that

Cologne needed to know in order to determine that this was not going to be a

pleasant social gathering of well-wishers.

"We think you already know our business," Be Dea said shrewdly, "As reports of

the death of a promising young Healer in our tribes has proven to be

somewhat...premature."

"And you question my reasons for keeping silent on this matter?" Cologne

replied, "Then you already know that Elder Lotion was fully cognizant and aware

of the continuing existence of her great grandchild?"

"Of course she knew," Be Dea said testily, "She's a Lore Master, but she also

made us aware of the fact that you personally instructed her to keep silent on

the matter."

Cologne sensed a certain tenseness in Perfume, who was clenching her fists at

her side in an effort to maintain a stoical disposition, but before matters

could proceed any further the cavalry-after a fashion-came up to join them,

helping to defuse the matter slightly.

"Hey," said Ukyo as she, Shampoo and the rest of their young "Posse" approached

at the speed of a friendly walk, "What's going on here? Is this a tribal

gathering or something, and can anyone join in?"

"Ucchan," Perfume released some of her tension, having nearly lost her composure

upon hearing her worst suspicions confirmed regarding Cologne and her duplicity,

but then her attention shifted again as one member of the Amazon delegation

approached her direction.

"Perfume," she said with a hesitant smile, "It...is so very good to see you

again...my friend..."

Perfume could not help swallowing, even braced as she was for the dazzling charm

of the blue haired Lotion-whose beauty had only grown more pronounced over

time-as she gave that hesitant, almost shy smile that the Enforcer could so

well remember. For a moment that golden-eyed beauty transfixed Perfume, but

then she was brought sharply back to earth by the sound of Ukyo politely

clearing her throat and saying, "Care to introduce us...Sugar?"

Perfume gulped as she fought to regain some coherence to her thinking, then she

managed to stammer out a terse, "Ah...Ukyo...Airen...this is...Lo Xion...the

Younger...not to be confused with Elder Lotion, who is standing right over

there..."

"Charmed," Ukyo said as she sized up the other girl in the same way that a wolf

might size up a stray lamb, only with far less pleasant intentions.

To her surprise, however, the blue haired girl looked down then approached Ukyo

and placed a hand over her abdomen, saying, "This is the child you carry? The

Child of Perfume? Oh...how honored you must feel! Perfume, my friend...you

have such a lovely wife, why did you never tell me?"

"Huh?" Ukyo asked, momentarily thrown off-stride by the girl's exuberant nature.

"Forgive her," said another voice as Ukyo looked up to see a one-eyed girl with

pink hair regarding her frankly, "She tends to be like that a lot. My own wife

has a certain...charm about her that most people find irresistible, present

company included."

"Your...wife?" Perfume repeated.

"By Freemarriage," the pink haired girl replied, "Not Amazon law, though if it

came down to a match between us...well...it would hardly be sporting."

"YOU?" Shampoo said the word with surprising harshness, her regard of the pink

haired girl being anything but cordial and friendly.

"Me," the latter replied, "Nihao to you, Shampoo...you seem to be doing very

well for yourself. I am...pleased."

"Shampoo?" the blue haired girl darted around the somewhat non-plussed Ukyo and

at once came to stand before the purple-haired Amazon, immediately taking in the

sight of the baby in Shampoo's arms as she cooed, "Oh, how beautiful! She looks

so much like you! Oh, Shampoo, I'm so happy for you! Where is your husband or

co-wife? I must pay them my compliments for bestowing upon you such a happy and

fruitful marriage."

Shampoo looked as pale as though she had just seen a ghost, but them her eyes

began to tear as she hesitantly said, "L-Lotion? Is...is truly you?"

"The last I checked," the blue haired girl said brightly, her smile as dazzling

as it was magic.

"This is the girl you used to be in love with, Shampoo?" asked Akane.

"Oh my," remarked Kasumi, "What lovely eyes...and you say that she's a medical

student?"

"And I take it you're the one that Perfume likes to call 'Whale Puke?'" Keiko

asked of the pink haired warrior.

"Whale Puke?" Kurumi asked, "What kind of a name is that?"

"One my enemies and rivals like to call me," the girl in question replied, "I

take it as a sign of their affection, though my full name is Ambergris...but I

prefer to shorten it to Amber."

"Can't say I find that too surprising," said Mousse, "Long time no see...Amber."

"The same to you, Cousin," Amber replied back.

"Mousse?" Be Dea suddenly spoke up, "Mou-Tsu...what business have you here in

these proceedings?"

"Now Elder," the blonde haired Siren spoke up, "Is that any way to speak to my

kinsman? Especially in the company of his recently wed wife and Amazon kindred

by marriage? Please, by all means, be more respectful."

"WIFE?" Kurumi squeaked, then she and Mousse exchanged troubled looks before

each hastily began to make disclaimers.

Be Dea halted them with a wave of her hand, then said gravely, "These matters

can wait until another time. We are here upon important business of the

council. Now...Matriarch...where may we find this outside girl whom you have

adopted and made the heir of your household?"

"I'm right over here," said yet another voice, drawing their collective

attention towards an patch of ground not previously occupied, and when all heads

turned her way she added, "Somebody looking for Tendo Nabiki?"

"Sister?" Natsume cocked an eyebrow.

"Oh my," said Kodachi in obvious approval.

"Thou has taken the words from my very breath, sweet sister," Tatewaki agreed in

equally approving summation.

"Oh my," said Kasumi, eyeing her sister with something more than approval.

"You are Tendo Nabiki?" the girl called Amber asked with a speculative

expression.

"Nobody else, unless they're violating my trademark," Nabiki flashed a smile as

she posed herself in her new martial arts raiment, a Cheosong that Shampoo

herself had stitched together for just such an occasion, "How do I look?

Fashionably late or just dressed to kill?"

"Airen," Shampoo said with great delight, then reached out to take the hand of

her blue-haired companion and said, "This is Lotion, Shampoo friend from long,

long ago, in another life."

"So..." Nabiki sized up the blue haired girl with great attention to detail,

"You are Lotion the Younger, eh? And you," she swiveled her attention towards

the pink haired girl and paused before saying, "You call yourself...Amber?"

"It's preferable to Whale Puke," Amber replied, also sizing up Nabiki with a

look of intense speculation.

"So," Nabiki suddenly found herself looking down into the face of a wizened old

woman (though admittedly far less wizened looking than Cologne herself), "You

are Tendo Nabiki...well met indeed."

"Uh...yeah, charmed and all that," Nabiki wondered why she had this odd feeling

around this particular Amazon as she made an inquiring, "Elder...?"

"Lo Xion...the Elder," she replied, "The other Lotion is my great-

granddaughter."

"Um...right," Nabiki said, then clapped her hands together and said, "All right,

everybody...let's get this show on the road! I see everybody's here...everybody

who's anybody in these parts anyway. So...where is my sparring partner? Where

is..."

"Right here."

It was Nabiki's turn to look about with surprise, seeing Ranma standing several

paces away from their assembly, also dressed in something more formal looking

than his usual outfit, the tunic consisting of an ornately embroidered dragon

emblem that glistened with gold and silver threads, making him a somewhat

dazzling sight as the suns rays reflected off of him. He also seemed to have

had his hair trimmed, styled and neatly groomed in a comely manner, making him

look twice as impressive.

Ranma stared at Nabiki, ignoring the crowds and excess family members as he

tried to take stock of certain things that did not quite jibe right with his

memories of his iinazuke. For one thing, he had expected her to look a

little...taller...the fact that he was now taller than her surprised him

considerably as he was not yet used to seeing a height difference between them.

Nabiki had always seemed somehow taller from the way she carried herself, but

now he could see that he was slowly outpacing her in that department, at least

in her female form. Kaneda, after all, had always been much taller.

Perfume, who had been expecting Ranma to put in such a dramatic appearance,

could not help admiring the steps that the boy had taken in order to impress

Nabiki. She forced herself to look away from the dazzling sight and instead

took note of the way that her fellow fiancées were reacting to this vision, and-

-quite predictably-Ukyo was the first to gasp, "R-Ranchan?"

"Aiyaa," Shampoo averred, round-eyed.

"Ran-Ranma?" Nabiki murmured.

There were also some vaguely amusing responses, such as Amber saying aloud,

"That is Shampoo's new husband?"

"Oh my," Lotion the Younger expressed in tones that were surprisingly echoed by

an equally surprised sounded Kasumi.

Even Akane sounded impressed at the sight of him and murmured aloud an

understated, "Whoah..."

"Interesting," said Lotion the Elder.

"That isn't the word I would use," said Siren mused, and accompanied her comment

with a favorable wolf-whistle.

"Shall we get things started?" said Genma, who also appeared from seeming

nowhere.

"Who are you?" Be Dea asked.

"Saotome Genma," the burly man replied, "Ranma's father...also known as the

Destroyer."

That brought murmured responses and surprised comments from those who were in

earshot, and even Cologne seemed taken aback by that statement.

"You are the Destroyer?" Be Dea asked, "The one we have even heard about in

China?"

"The same," Genma replied, sounding none too proud as he affirmed that

statement.

"Well then," said Sakura as she approached the ensemble with microphone in hand,

"Is everybody here? Are the preliminaries settled? Can we then get on with the

match? After all, you have quite a crowd gathered here to see what all the fuss

is about, and it would be a shame to disappoint the paying customers."

There was a general murmur of comment from the crowd, which brought a faint

smile to Nabiki, who saw Ryonami working these crowds, along with her assistants

and factors, guaranteeing an added level of excitement with the betting pools

that were undoubtedly in circulation. There were also the members of the

various dojo classes sitting in attendance in a reserved row of the bleachers

along with the three Martial Arts masters who had so recently given the dojo a

good rating, allowing their students to compete in the upcoming tournament that

would further establish the legitimacy of the Anything Goes dojo.

Her father was presently sitting with those Masters, who were clearly enjoying

the position of honor assigned to them while munching on a few circumspectly

gathered snacks and concessions. The lead of the three, Itabashi Himura, was

leaning over and speaking to Soun, and though Nabiki was too far away to hear

what was said, or even to read their lips, she could pretty well imagine what

was being said from the way her father was nodding in agreement...

"This looks to be a very interesting encounter, Tendo-san," Himura was saying,

"I'm glad you informed us about this match...it should be a fascinating

contest between the two strongest students of your dojo."

"I can assure you that they will do their best to fulfill your expectations,"

Soun agreed, "They both have been training hard in some pretty advanced

techniques, and I dare say you may never have witnessed a match quite like this

before..."

"I should think so," Rumigo Takare averred, "After all, the two of them are

allegedly lovers, and engaged to be wed in a promise to unite your two houses."

"Yes," Natsura Ikari agreed, "Isn't it more traditional for a husband and wife

to save their fighting for after they get married?"

"Well..." Soun tried to think how best to answer this when he saw that the

Amazon delegation was retiring from the field, along with some of the Posse,

though Tatewaki paused to spare a moment to make his apologies to Natsume, then

went over to offer his support to his friend, Ranma.

"Saotome," Tatewaki said, "Very good to see you...I must compliment you on your

tailoring. You look like a true gentleman..."

"Think so?" Ranma smiled "Didn't think I could carry it off, did you?"

"Frankly no," Tatewaki smiled, "But I won't hold it against you."

"Good to see you here anyhow, Pal," Ranma nodded, turning to regard the others

who had joined him on his end of the field, "Hey, Ryoga...gonna root for me or

Nabiki?"

"You know I don't like this whole business about you fighting her, Ranma," his

recently revealed half-brother replied, "You know you could well wind up hurting

any chance of a relationship between you by doing this?"

"Yeah," Ranma nodded, "It's a risk, but I gotta take it. Nabiki will never

respect me the same way unless I show her that I'm a whole lot better than she

thinks I am."

"And fighting's gonna do that?" Ryu asked, "You could get your ass kicked out

here and then we'll have to call you girly man for losing to a woman."

"Who are you to upbraid him, Churl?" Tatewaki growled, but Ranma raised a hand

to stay him.

"Easy pal," Ranma said, "He may be a jerk, but he's a pretty fair training

partner. I'd go easy on him for any shortcomings in the personality

department."

"Ranma," Nodoka spoke up as she stood to the side admiring her son's handsome

profile, "Do your best if you must, but don't be too hard on Nabiki. She means

well, even if she has been a bit...high-spirited of late."

"Yeah, I know, Mom," Ranma said, "It could happen that things get a little

intense out here, and Nabiki might still win, but I don't think it's too likely.

She's good...probably the best there is, but she doesn't know about the Senken,

so I got the element of surprise working on me. Besides...I got me an angle."

"Yes, we know," Kaoih sighed, "Just one thing before you go out there and face

her, Little Brother...keep in mind that you're the Magician, but she's the High

Priestess, also known as the female Pope. That's the female counterpart to the

Magician, which that means she's just a little bit ahead of you on the spiritual

pathway, so overcoming her is an important step to your own spiritual

evolution."

"Indeed?" Tatewaki remarked with lifted eyebrow, "Curious...you are a

practitioner of divination?"

"Learned it from the knee of my mother," Kaoih nodded, keeping her focus

squarely upon Ranma, "Here's the deal...you are on a path of spiritual

enlightenment climbing the Tree of Life from its roots to its upper branches,

but at any time out here you can call down the image of the Great Souled Man and

invoke the power of the Tree itself to strength and guide you. There are two

things you have to know about the road you're on, Little Brother...there is the

path of the Sword, and the path of the Serpent."

"Sword and the Serpent?" Ranma asked, "What is that?"

"The Serpent is the Chi or Spirit that coils like a snake within you," Kaoih

replied, "It represents your spiritual essence and potential. The Sword is the

Mind and Will, it is the weapon edge of that selfsame power, the DC to the AC

current, or positive and negative polarities that are flowing throughout you at

every single moment you are alive. The head of the serpent is Kether, the tail

is Malkuth, and the power flows from the head to the feet and back again. The

same with the sword...it can be thrust upward or downward, depending on the

direction of your will, though ideally the power flows both ways evenly. It's a

matter of polarity...as Above, so Below, the higher and lower nature operating

as a perfect reflection of one another. Just think of yourself as a Serpent

coiling and ready to strike...or a Dragon, if you will, and the sword is your

will, to be directed where you wish to aim it."

"Interesting," Tatewaki remarked, "Your analogy sounds strangely like my own art

of Nampo. The vital centers in the body must be energized to flow without

resistance or interference...the will flows smoothly from the harmony of the

mind and the will..."

"Coupled with the emotions," Kaoih nodded, "And that's the most important thing

to keep in mind, little Brother...the emotions! You have to want this fight,

you have to feel victory flowing through you, and you have to enjoy it. If

you're not fully committed to the battle, then you might as well quit now

because if your heart isn't in it..."

"I got you," Ranma said, "I'll keep all of that in mind, Sis. And thanks."

"Anytime," she winked at him before turning away, "Little Bother. I just hope

what you learned with that Perfume girl does the trick against Nabiki."

"Eh?" Tatewaki turned to look questioningly at Ranma.

"What a clever girl you are," Nodoka mused, "And so much like your mother..."

"Break a leg, Saotome," Ryu sniffed as he, too, turned away, "Or maybe I should

do it for you...you could use the excuse to bow out."

"Thanks," Ranma said, "I appreciate the sentiments."

"Perfume?" Ryoga looked puzzled as he turned his own glance at Ranma.

"No time to explain guys," Ranma said, "You better get going before Natsume and

Akane get on your cases, and there's no reason why all three of us need to have

Tendo girls out to kick our asses."

"Well spoken and true," Tatewaki replied, "Yet Natsume knows that I would never

desert a friend in his hour of need, or if she doesn't, then she is not the

woman whom I have come to know her to be."

"Wish I could say Akane was that understanding, but...well..." Ryoga shrugged,

"Take care of yourself out there, it could get a little intense if Nabiki's as

irritated with you as she seemed the other night."

"Yeah, tell me about it," Ranma said, then waited until his friends had left and

returned to the bleachers, then he stood and faced Nabiki, who confronted him

across the distance of all of five meters.

"Now then," Sakura announced into her microphone, which was relayed over a

hastily erected PA system, "You both know what is at stake here, and the terms

under which this fight is to be conducted. So...just to make sure everyone

knows your names and who to root for, allow me to get this show started..."

As the Ringmistress went about her well-polished showman act by announcing their

names and the schools that they represented, Ranma met Nabiki's stare as the two

remained standing in the field, ignoring the rest as circus people mingled with

Ryonami and her cohorts, exhorting the crowds and whipping up viewer enthusiasm

to a near-fever pitch.

To his surprise he saw Nabiki smile at him in that sardonic manner that was

uniquely her own, and in an almost friendly voice she said, "Hey,

Saotome...looking good."

"Thanks," he said, "Could say the same about you...but...you always look good to

me."

"Oh yeah?" Nabiki arched an eyebrow, "Then mind telling me what this is all

about?"

"You mean you don't know?" Ranma countered.

"Would I ask if I did?" Nabiki asked.

"You always told me that it sometimes helps to know the answer before you ask

the question," he gently reminded.

That got her to arch the other eyebrow, and then she said, "Are you getting

smart on me all of a sudden? That almost sounded..."

"Intelligent?" Ranma smiled, "I've been taking lessons."

"Yeah...sounds like it," Nabiki's eyes narrowed, "What has Kaoih been teaching

you anyway? Sounds almost like some of that Cabala mumbo Jumbo that her

mother's always going on about."

"Maybe you should try listening to that mumbo jumbo then," Ranma smiled, "You

might actually learn something."

Nabiki reacted in surprise at the teasing humor in his remark, but mainly

because it was exactly the sort of thing that she would usually say to him,

which-for her-was more than a little disconcerting.

"You have been taking lessons," she mused, "Better be careful or I may have to

start calling you a Wizard."

"That's more respect from you than I'm used to having," Ranma said, deciding to

get right to the heart of the matter.

"Respect?" now Nabiki was dumbfounded, "I've always respected you! When have I

ever..."

"Taken me as serious as you do Shampoo and the baby?" Ranma asked.

"Ah..." she faltered.

"Mind you, I don't blame you a bit for that, Nabiki," Ranma said, "In fact I'm

damned proud of you for the way you've been handling things, but...you didn't

think to include me in a lot of stuff that you and Shampoo do together. I

started to feel like I just wasn't as important to you as she is, and that ain't

right."

"But...I'd never..." Nabiki protested.

"I blame myself for it, of course," Ranma said, "Pop was right...and so was the

Old Man. I've been holding back, afraid to get too close to you, afraid to tell

you what I really think, so...is it any surprise I started to fade into the

background? I never told you what I was going through, so it's my fault that

you didn't see what was going on. But now...now I've gotta make it up to you by

showing you that I ain't just some kind of useless attachment. I'm gonna show

you that I really am your equal."

"My...equal?" Nabiki frowned, "Getting awfully swelled headed there. All

right...I admit I've made a lot of mistakes, and it's my fault that I

didn't...notice how things were going down between us...but I've had a lot on

my mind, and you know I'd never willingly..."

"Save that thought for now," Ranma urged, nodding to Sakura, who had just

finished her introduction and was now declaring the match officially about to

begin.

"ARE YOU TWO READY TO RUMBLE?" the Ringmistress said with a nod in their

direction.

"I'm ready," Ranma said resolutely.

"Ah...ready," Nabiki said, frowning slightly as she growled, "If you really want

to go through with this..."

"I do," Ranma replied with a smile, "Which is what you'll be saying after I

win."

"You...what?" Nabiki exclaimed, as if unable to believe the cockiness behind

that statement.

"Shake hands and retire to your corners," Sakura instructed.

"Do as she says, Boy," Genma urged, "Girl."

Ranma and Nabiki moved forward, holding eye contact all the while, then touched

fists together in the manner of two fighters before leaping back and bowing, the

assuming their fighting crouches.

"I'll go easy on you, Ranma," Nabiki said, "But that doesn't mean that this

isn't going to hurt."

"Don't worry about me," Ranma replied, hunching his shoulders and lowering his

head as if to hood his gaze as he stooped his posture, "You won't be

hurting...not in another minute."

"What-?" Nabiki started to ask what he meant by that when she saw something

incredible happen...as if the air surround Ranma started to congeal around him,

and he became harder to see through the ensuing fogbank.

All at once he vanished, and before she could ask where he had gone she found

herself toppling forward as invisible hands played about her body, tapping and

caressing areas before working on her backside. All at once she was sprawled in

the dirt, momentarily stunned as weird sensations momentarily overwhelmed her

nervous system, producing physical reactions that were surprisingly pleasurable

but entirely disconcerting.

Ryu winced sympathetically, having clear memories of a different sort of

sensation that he had experienced twice in his own duel with Saotome. The Posse

itself was stunned at the sight of their leader going down so abruptly with the

crowd itself holding its collective gasp as if wondering if the fight were over

this soon, or what they might expect to see in the offing.

Ranma reappeared beside Nabiki and said, "That was the Saotome School Umisenken

maneuver, White Snake Reliable Fist Remodified...did you like it?"

"Gah..." Nabiki said as she twitched on the ground, momentarily unable to regain

control over her own body, "Wh-What did you do to me...?"

"I hit your major pleasure centers, of course," Ranma said, "Don't worry...it'll

fade in another minute."

"Aiyaa," Shampoo softly exclaimed.

"How the heck did Ranchan learn to do that to Nabiki?" Ukyo wondered, not seeing

the way Perfume seemed to be taking an "innocent" notice of some passing cloud

formations.

"He didn't hit her...did he?" Akane asked.

"No," Cologne answered, "But it would seem that young Ranma has overcome his

reluctance in other matters relating to the female body."

"What an effective technique," mused the Amazon named Amber, "And surprisingly

difficult to counter, no?"

"Indeed," mused Lotion the Elder, "The boy does possess some interesting

talents..."

Nabiki hit the ground with her fists and pushed herself back to her feet,

growling slightly, "I sure hope you didn't expect that to put me out of the

fight, Saotome, 'cause Round Two is about to begin!"

"I know," Ranma replied, "This is an unlimited match, no holds barred and no

time out. It only ends when one of us says so, or can't continue fighting.

Points don't count, so feel free to belt me if you think I was too out of line

with that maneuver."

"You're asking for it, Ranma-kun," Nabiki said as she got back to her feet,

trying hard not to grin foolishly as the last lingering traces of pleasurable

sensation coursed through her body, "That was a pretty cheap shot...I never even

saw it coming."

"You weren't supposed to," he replied, falling into an easy crouch and saying,

"Whenever you feel ready."

Nabiki braced herself and charged, preparing to deliver a Kachu Tenshin

Amaguriken maneuver, but to her surprise Ranma stood his ground and waited for

her to begin unleashing her lightning-fast punches, only instead he brought his

arms up to block her fists, and then he moved them apart, forcing her arms to

part wide and giving him the opening he needed as he launched into a an upward

razor kick, his feet moving at speeds comparable to the Amaguriken.

"SAOTOME SCHOOL SPECIAL MANEUVER-YAMASENKEN!" Ranma cried as he completed his

rolling leap and landed on his feet, having executed a perfect flip as he added

the words, "FIERCE TIGER OPENING GATES BLOW REMODIFIED!"

"GAH!" Nabiki staggered backwards, reeling in stunned disbelief as the places

that he had kicked went on fire with renewed force and entirely pleasurable

sensations.

"Hey," Ryu frowned, "Now he's borrowing my maneuvers..."

"You mean you could do that without actually hurting a girl?" Kaoih asked in a

speculative manner.

"Ah...well..." Ryu hesitated, thrown off guard by the teasing hint of her tone

as she smiled at him in a seductive manner.

Nabiki could not believe what was happening to her as she fought once again for

self-control, but then she fell into a defensive crouch and growled, "What the

heck do you think you're doing?"

"Winning," Ranma replied, "Or would you rather I just hit you?"

"Are you trying to make a farce out of this whole thing?" Nabiki asked as she

fought off the twitches and spasms of her nervous system, "You're not taking me

serious using these cheap little..."

"Funny how that works, huh?" Ranma said, "Now you've got some idea what it feels

like."

"You..." Nabiki straightened out and broadened her stance, then proceeded to

perform a number of complicated maneuvers that got Ranma's eyebrows to rise,

recognizing these maneuvers as belonging to the Fist of the Northstar and

designed to concentrate and focus the Chakra centers of the human body.

"Oboy," he said, falling back into a renewed defensive posture.

"Those tricks won't work on me now," Nabiki growled, "I've momentarily blocked

off those nerve clusters you've been playing around with. Now you're going to

have to face me Man-to-Woman and stop screwing around with my body!"

"Sure you wanna do it like this?" Ranma asked, "I'm trying to go easy on you...I

don't want to hurt you."

"Oh, you won't hurt me, Ranma," Nabiki rumbled, "But if you don't get serious

about this fight, then you're gonna be hurting in another minute!"

"I don't think so," Ranma said confidently, "You're good, but you're not good

enough to go up against my Senken."

"We'll see about that!" Nabiki cried, leaping forward, only to find Ranma was no

longer standing where he had been a moment before. Unfazed by this she moved in

a spinning motion and almost nailed Ranma by guesswork, approximating her

spinning kick at the place where he most likely would be standing.

Ranma knew at once that he could not hold back with her, and much as it pained

him to have to get serious with Nabiki, he did not want to lose to her either,

so he reacted to her next spinning kick by grabbing her outstretched leg and

twisting to the side as she shot her other leg in his direction. Taking firm

hold of both legs in either hand, he slammed her down by applying leverage and

leaping into the air over her head, planting a hand on her back to insure that

she did another dirt-splash.

"MORISENKEN MANEUVER-TRIPPING THE TRAP AND PITFALL MANEUVER!"

"All right, that's it," Ryu growled, "I'm definitely suing..."

"WHY YOU!" Nabiki snarled as she caught her weight with both hands and twisted

her body, lashing out blindly at where she thought Ranma would be and nearly

catching him with her foot, but in the process using so much force that she

caused the very ground underneath them to churn up and explode, literally

erupting from the shockwave as Nabiki channeled her energies and employed her

Shadowskills training.

"Oh no," Cologne murmured in dread, then raised her voice and cried, "EVERYONE,

BRACE FOR THE SHOCKWAVE!"

"Huh?" came the collective gasps of those around her, only to discover what she

meant a moment later.

"Whoah!" Keiko said as the ground began to rumble under their feet, nearly

throwing some people out of their seats, "She's pissed now!"

"What is this?" Akane asked, "An earthquake?"

"Worse," Kodachi replied, "An enraged Nabiki!"

Nabiki straightened up and looked around, then growled, "Where are you hiding,

Saotome? Show yourself now or else...!"

"Try looking up."

"What?" Nabiki raised the level of her vision and saw Ranma hovering there a

short distance away, hanging upside down in a cross-legged position.

"Wasn't that a bit of an overreaction?" Ranma asked, "And what are you getting

so angry for? Don't you want to have a little fun in this match?"

"Fun?" Nabiki asked, "You call this having fun?"

"Sure," Ranma said, "Don't you?"

Nabiki hesitated then asked, "How are you doing that? Are you..."

"Levitation," Ranma said, "Swamis in India do it all the time."

"Levitation?" Nabiki repeated, "And...this is...?"

"The Arashisenken," Ranma replied, "A Saotome art that I just created yesterday.

It's pretty effective just as long as I don't let myself be distracted."

"Distracted?" Nabiki blinked her eyes, then smiled, "Oh yeah? Like this?"

She turned her body and unbuttoned her Cheosong to expose her chest in such a

way that only Ranma could see what she was showing off and not the crowds of

people. To her surprise Ranma stared at her well-curved bosoms without

developing a nosebleed, then in an almost clinical voice he said, "Not too

bad...but Perfume's are bigger."

"WHAT?" Nabiki reacted, then shot a glance towards the bleachers.

"Eeep," Perfume winced, finding herself the target of wrath in that icy gaze

from the senior fiancée in their group engagement.

"What's she staring at?" Ukyo wondered, being too far away to overhear these

exchanges.

"Hey, there's no reason to be upset," Ranma said, "You've got a nice body...but

don't forget, I've seen it before."

"WHY YOU!" Nabiki hastily buttoned up her shirt then launched a new attack with

a leap that carried her up to Ranma's level, but in doing so she played into her

fiancée's hands as Ranma flowed to the counter attack and unleashed a new

movement of the Arashisenken.

"CLOUDS ENCIRCLE IN FOG AND OVERWHELM!" he cried as he twisted his body and

wrapped his arms around Nabiki, then cried, "IN THE POCKET ROUND HUG

REMODIFIED!"

"Mixing Air with Earth school, Boy?" Genma shook his head where he stood off to

the sidelines, "Total opposites...I hope you remember the rule about reversing

polarities..."

All at once Ranma and Nabiki began spinning around like a top, and a vortex of

air formed around them, ending abruptly as the two came crashing down to earth

with Ranma deliberately shielding Nabiki with his own body.

"I guess he did," Sakura mused, "Well...sort of..."

Nabiki broke free from Ranma's embrace and got to her feet, even as Ranma rolled

to his feet and squared off to face her.

"These tricks of yours are starting to get annoying, Saotome," Nabiki said, "I

don't know what the Old Man taught you..."

"He taught me a lot of things," Ranma said, "But parts of this I created for

myself, and you know why? Because it was the only way that I knew to catch up

with you. You've been so far ahead of me ever since we first met that I was

afraid that I was going to lose you altogether."

"You..." Nabiki hesitated, "What?"

"You don't know what it's been like for me these last few months," Ranma

continued, "Being so close to you, but feeling like you're so far away. It was

starting to feel like you'd leave me forever, so I had to do something to even

up the odds a little."

"Ranma..." Nabiki said, "Have I really been making you feel that bad?"

"You mean so much to me, I just had to train hard in order to get your

attention," Ranma said, "I trained like this so you'd think of me as being just

as capable as you are, not a side-kick, not a liability, not a weaker martial

artist but instead a full equal. Do you understand why that is? Why I'd do

just about anything to get across to you how much you mean to me, even if I have

to impress you by using the full Senken."

"You don't have to impress me by fighting against me, Ranchan," Nabiki all but

pleaded.

"I wish I could believe that," Ranma said, "But even now...I don't think you

really believe that I could take you if I had to. I don't want to hurt you,

believe me I don't, but if you still doubt the effectiveness of the training

I've been undergoing the last two weeks..."

"Hey, I've been training pretty hard too," Nabiki flared, "Do you think I want

to see you hurt, Ranchan? I'm holding back a lot more than you realize..."

"So am I," Ranma said, "But maybe it's time we stop holding back...maybe if we

go all out and really push ourselves, that will prove which one of us is worthy

of being the true heir to the dojo."

"And what if I don't want to fight you?" Nabiki asked, "What then?"

"Well, you could always surrender," Ranma smiled, "After all, you're too cute to

be a real martial artist. Maybe you should try taking up modeling or acting?"

"What?" Nabiki flared, "Oooohhh, you're gonna pay for that one, Mister..."

"Any time that you're ready and feeling lucky," Ranma smiled, then folded in on

himself and hunched down, blurring his outline again as he reverted to the

Umisenken.

"That trick again?" Nabiki growled, "You'd better forget it! WINDSTORM

ATTACK!"

She spun around with her foot dragging dirt that she kicked all around herself

to create a miniature dust cloud, which same caught Ranma by surprise as his

shadow was revealed in outline against the dirt, leaving him exposed to the kick

that Nabiki aimed his way, which caught him by surprise and sent him tumbling

backwards.

"Oops," Kaoih winced, "He walked right into that one..."

Ranma recovered with surprising speed, tumbling back to his feet, where he

squared off to face Nabiki, who was racing towards him. All at once Ranma made

a rapid move with his hands and cried, "DEMON DEEP SEA CHASM!" and a wall of air

rose up to strike Nabiki while a trench-like barrier was gouged out of the soil

in a horseshoe pattern around Ranma.

Nabiki countered by firing off a Chi-attack with a kick, which Ranma dodged with

ease, the force of the blast sailing beyond him to strike at the ground many

meters away, kicking up a cloud of dirt as though a cannonball had been shot at

a sharp angle. Both Ranma and Nabiki leaped into the air at that point as

Nabiki brought her whole body around in an attack that was devastating, but

which Ranma dodged by some miraculous feat of agility that left the crowd amazed

and astounded, only to twist into a ball again as he altered his trajectory and

fell atop Nabiki, driving her into the earth as they hit the ground with Ranma

crying out, "DROP STONE ON INTRUDER!"

"Well," Ryu grudgingly conceded, "At least that one is different..."

Nabiki proved herself no slouch in the agility department as she caught her

weight with both hands, again sending a shockwave radiating out in all

directions, which same caused people to murmur at the way the ground shook. As

Ranma's feet touched down on the earth Nabiki wrapped herself around him and

applied a full-nelson to immobilize both arms and legs, her feet squeezing his

body between powerful thighs that could crush a stone to powder.

"NOW WHO'S GONNA SAY UNCLE?" Nabiki snarled into his ear, her blood up and with

it her full battle fury.

"Oh my," Miss Hinako remarked, "She's putting out quite a battle aura this time

around...I do hope Saotome can counter this maneuver."

"I do hope she takes it easy on poor Ranma," Nodoka remarked, for once finding

herself on the same side as the age-variable Hinako.

"What's the matter, Ranchan?" Nabiki said, "Run out of tricks? Do you still

find me cute now...huh? What's...what's going on? Why is it getting so warm

all of a...?"

All at once the area immediately around them flared up like a wall of fire that

encircled them both with such sudden force that Nabiki gasped and momentarily

lost her grip upon Ranma. All at once he broke free and pushed up from the

ground as the flames became a hot wind that rose and surrounded them, picking

them both up off of the ground in a swirling vortex highly reminiscent of the

Hiryu Shoten Ha.

"HONASENKEN MANEUVER, CIRACCO FLAME VORTEX!" Ranma cried, startling Nabiki as

the flames congealed around his outstretched hand, said hand and arm seemingly

engulfed in flames and yet not harmed by them, not even the hem of his sleeve

being singed in passing.

"Ranma...what...?" Nabiki started to gasp when she found that the very air

around her was too hot to breathe in, so she reflexively halted herself and

covered up her nostrils.

"Sorry," he said, "I'll tone it down a bit, don't want you getting flame

broiled. CONTAIN AND ABSORB REVERSE HEAT RYU!"

The flames vanished as quickly as they had been summoned, allowing them both to

drop to the earth. As they started to confront one another, Nabiki said,

"Ranma...what...?"

"Like I said," Ranma replied, "Training and practice. Come on...let's see how

good you really are, and how good I've gotten."

Nabiki frowned then once again assumed a fighting stance, "Don't know what this

Senken stuff is, and you seem to be pretty good at it, but all I've seen so far

are tricks and funny maneuvers."

"Guess that proves you don't know everything," Ranma smiled, "Shame on you...you

usually have things figured out by now. Don't you know what the Senken really

is or how it works?"

Nabiki's frown deepened as she thought that one over then said, "Nooo...not

really..."

"Good," Ranma smiled, and all at once his form blurred and he seemed to go

invisible once again, but Nabiki found the space around her congealing as a

swirl of stone and earth rose up to surround her, blocking out her vision in all

directions.

"Done," Ranma stood back and admired his own handiwork, "Kosenken special

maneuver, Raised Foundations Mortar and Containment...uh oh..."

There was a trembling sensation in the air all around him, and then the pillar

he had built up around Nabiki began to crack, chip and fracture before bursting

out altogether. Nabiki emerged from the resulting rubble, mad as the proverbial

wet hen and looking ready to beat Ranma into the ground like a tent peg.

"You are sooooo dead, Saotome!" she glared acidly.

"That idiot," Ryoga complained, "Doesn't he know that when you raise a

foundation you have to reinforce it to prevent sagging and cracking?" He paused

when he saw the odd looks being turned his way even by Akane and said, "What?"

"Uh...look..." Ranma hastily backed away, "Would it help if I explain a little

bit about what the Senken is and what it does...?"

"No," Nabiki replied, and promptly launched another attack, forcing Ranma on the

defensive as he sought to counter the rapid-fire punches and kicks she hurled

his way, suddenly vanishing again and reappearing several meters away, whereupon

he fell down to the ground and began scampering sideways on all fours out of her

line of vision as Nabiki turned her body to attempt to track his movements,

always careful to remain in her blindside as he used the Honosenken maneuver of

a fire moving elusively through the foundations of a building.

"So that's the way it is, huh?" Nabiki said, and all at once her outline

blurred, and suddenly she was standing directly over Ranma with one leg raised

high for a downward ax-kick aimed directly for his backside.

"You can call this one the Bug-Stomp!" Nabiki snarled as her foot descended.

All at once Ranma rolled over onto his back and cried, "SUPPORT FALL TO EARTH

POSTURE!"

"WHA-!" Nabiki cried as she found her supporting leg had been knocked out from

underneath her, causing her to reverse her downward ax-kick into a full-body

plummet, only to find a pair of hands raised up to prevent her fall...hands

aimed precisely to catch her by her frontal padding, which brought a round-eyed

"OOF!" from an astonished Nabiki.

All at once Nabiki found herself laying on top of Ranma, who appeared to be just

as surprised as she was at the placing of his hands as he eased her down over

his body.

"Um..." Ranma glanced down at what he was holding then said, "Would you believe

I...um..."

"Feeling them for consistency?" Nabiki frowned, her face only one inch from his,

"Or do they measure up when compared to Perfume-chan?"

"Um..." Ranma made an effort to move his hands and actually fondle those breasts

from beneath the silken fabric of Nabiki's shirt, "Well...they do feel

pretty...substantial..."

He had to quickly move his head to one side as her fist sank several inches into

the ground beneath where it had been resting.

"HEY!" Ranma protested, "I was paying you a compliment!"

"What Ranma doing to Airen?" Shampoo asked in confusion.

"Those hands better not be doing what I think they're going...or else," Ukyo

growled.

"Don't be jealous," Kodachi urged, "I'm sure Ranma would just as glad be doing

that to you."

"What do...you think so?" Ukyo's tone changed in mid intonation.

"Way to go Saotome," Keiko grinned, "This is way lots better than I thought it'd

be...but when did Ranma get so gutsy?"

"I wonder," Cologne murmured, giving her other great-granddaughter a look of

suspicion.

Perfume sincerely hoped that her face was not as red as it was feeling at the

moment, thinking back to the day before when she had encouraged Ranma to explore

her own breasts...and how surprisingly sensitive his hands had been in cupping

and fondling her, learning to feel their weight and texture before studying how

the nerves flowed around her nipples, and just thinking about it made them

tingle a bit beneath her shirt. It was the first time in her life that she had

ever allowed herself to feel excitement over being handled in such a way by a

member of the male sex, and her breath became shallow as she thought about

allowing him to do it again...

Ranma scrambled to his feet and backed away again, making warding motions with

is hands as he said, "Nabiki-now wait a minute...let's talk this out...there's

no reason why you should be angry..."

"Angry?" Nabiki snarled, "Why would I be angry about you handling me like some

overripe tomatoes? I just want to shake your throat!"

Ranma readied himself to dodge another attack, only this time Nabiki vanished

again and appeared almost instantly in the space directly behind him. Ranma

sensed that she was about to strike him from behind and reacted without

thinking, operating on pure adrenaline and instinct as he spun and kicked

backwards, catching Nabiki by surprise as she had not been expecting such a

maneuver.

His foot came rocketing at her too fast for her to avoid, but by turning her

head sideways at the last second she prevented it from colliding with her nose

and instead caught her under the chin and knocked her backwards, more stunned

and surprised than actually hurt by the impact.

"What-?" Ranma gasped, shocked and stunned at his own action, "Oh no-

Nabiki! I didn't mean..."

Nabiki felt her lip and found a trickle of blood flowing there, then spat some

of it out and said, "Way to go, Saotome...looks like you've finally lost your

reluctance to hit a woman."

"But I didn't mean to do it!" he protested.

"Too bad," Nabiki said, and like a shot her fist came rocketing at him, knocking

him flying as the force of the blow was so great it took a minute for the pain

to register at the point of impact. He landed on the ground and went tumbling

to a halt, his head ringing like a gong, though not so loud that he could miss

her calling out to him, "I MEANT TO DO THAT!"

"Oh yeah," Ranma said as he felt his jaw, "She's really pissed now..."

He managed to flip out of the way as he sensed her descending with a double-

stamp kick that would most likely have taken the fight out of him, and yet once

he was in the air something else very strange seemed to happen. It seemed as if

his own inertia slowed to a crawl then halted altogether, leaving him hanging in

the air in mid-motion, trapped within a fraction of a second as he saw Nabiki

turn to face him, smiling all the while, her eyes alight with concentration as

though she were somehow responsible for his current lack of momentum.

"Like this one, Ranma-kun?" she asked, her voice oddly blurred as if not quite

in sync with her lip movements, "The Old Woman taught it to me...it's called

Temporal Fugue...do you like it?"

He tried to reply but it seemed to him as though his mouth was moving much too

slow to form the words he wanted to utter. All at once movement returned to him

and he started to complete his tumble, gravity doing the rest though his

equilibrium was off, causing him to land hard on his backside.

"Here's another aspect of Temporal Fugue," Nabiki said, her voice restored to

normalcy, and all at once there were three of her surrounding Ranma, each one on

opposite sides in a ring as he sought to regain his footing, unable to discern

which Nabiki was the one who would prove to be the real assailant.

All at once the three Nabikis struck towards the center, but rather than dodge,

Ranma called upon a Honosenken move and vanished from the spot, fleeing the

scene in what appeared to be multiple directions.

"Say what?" Nabiki asked.

"He must've gone invisible again," one of the other Nabikis replied.

"Now where could he have gotten off to?" the third one mused when all three

Nabikis merged and became one again, leaving a single Nabiki to cry, "WHERE ARE

YOU, SAOTOME?"

"Right here beside you," a voice responded in her ear.

"What?" Nabiki turned around, but there was no sign of Ranma anywhere, she

turned once again and reacted with a start as she felt a breath of wind blow

against her ear, tried to lash out to her side but found only air greeted her

hand-thrust.

"You've got to calm down if you want to find me," Ranma's elusive voice

remarked, "This is the Arashisenken Air Flows Through a House maneuver...you

can't find me because I'm not really there...not where you're looking at any

rate..."

"What the heck is this Senken you keep going on about?" Nabiki demanded, "Why

can't you just face me like a man and stop moving around like a Kami-blasted

insect!"

"You want to face me?" Ranma said, "Then here I am, Nabiki...turn and face me."

Nabiki whirled around and found Ranma standing there a few meters away, his

expression as sober as the day was long. Nabiki assumed another fighting crouch

and said, "You're not going to run away from me this time, are you?"

"I'm not running away," Ranma said resolutely, "I'm never running away from you

again, Nabiki. You want me...come and get me."

"You asked for it!" Nabiki snarled, and leaped to the attack, this time throwing

all her power into a kick that forced Ranma to dodge and block, moving to one

side as he shot a number of punches her way, crying out, "ARROW REPELS THROUGH

SLOTS-!"

"NOT THIS TIME!" she cried as she executed a nearly impossible spin in the air

and came lashing out with her other foot to catch Ranma on the shoulder and

tumble him earthward.

"That girl is amazing," Be Dea admitted, "So much control of her power...and at

such a young age..."

"No wonder Shampoo fell to her so easily," Siren mused, "And yet that boy is

nothing to sneeze at either. You must be awfully proud to have him for your

second Airen, Perfume darling."

"He's...quite a fellow, its true, Grandmother," Perfume admitted.

"THAT'S your GRANDMOTHER?" Ukyo reacted in disbelief, thinking to herself that

the blonde beauty hardly seemed that much older than Kasumi!

Ranma tried to roll with his landing and sought to recover, but before he could

he found Nabiki landing on top of him, driving both knees into his stomach. As

he tried to suck wind back into his sails he found himself being hauled off up

to eye-level as Nabiki shook him like a rag doll and snarled, "I'M MAGIC,

MISTER! You try going up against me with less than your best and you'll be

eating dirt from here until doomsday! Fight me like it means something, or so

help me, I'll beat you senseless!"

(She means it), Ranma thought to himself in some surprise, (I've finally pushed

her to the edge, and now she's in full Battle Rage-lucky me!)

Aloud what he said was, "Are we...having fun yet?"

"F-Fun?" Nabiki stammered, blinked her eyes and said, "Fun?"

"Don't you get it yet?" Ranma smiled, and without warning he reached out and his

hands began to strike all around her, causing Nabiki to let him go as she

staggered partially backward, then started to shake as she cried, "WHAT DID YOU-

-?"

"Surprise," Ranma straightened out, "That nerve block you used just wore off,

which means you've lost your immunity to me working on your pleasure

centers...and that means you can't fight back against this!"

Ranma moved forward again, and all at once Nabiki staggered back as she found

herself unable to resist the urge to hysterically giggle, those hands finding

and teasing her in every sensitive place on the outside of her body, which

forced her to stagger backwards.

"S-S-STOP IT!" she cried between fits of uncontrollable laughter, "STOP DOING

THAT, SAOTOME-!"

"Truly this is a most unusual form of attack," remarked Itabashi.

"It's a new one on me, I'll admit," Takare agreed.

"So far this fight has been long on strange but a far cry from dull," Natsura

said as the three martial arts masters sat pondering the implications of this

most unusual battle of the sexes.

"Nabiki," Soun murmured to himself, "What are you doing?"

"Do you want I should go out there and try to pacify them, Soun-chan?" Hinako

offered.

It was a testimony to the degree of his concern for the two heirs of the

Anything Goes school that Soun actually considered the offer, but decided to

reserve it for a last resort of preference.

"Ranma," Nodoka murmured, "Fight well...you're so close to achieving the victory

you've been after..."

Nabiki lashed out with a hand and batted Ranma away, buying herself much-needed

relief from the profuse giggling and hysterics that she had been forced into by

Ranma's tickling onslaught.

"OOOHHH...you are SOOO going to get it, Mister!" she growled, or attempted to as

her voice was a little off and there were tears in her eyes from so much

laughter.

"Did I get my point across yet?" Ranma asked as he sprung back from her counter-

attack, "Are you having fun now? C'mon! Smile, laugh! Loosen up! This isn't

a duel to the death, you know, we ain't fighting because we hate each other."

"Then what are we fighting for anyway?" Nabiki demanded.

"We're fighting for the fun of it...can't you get it?" Ranma asked, then

surprised Nabiki by launching another attack, this time coming on with a

powerhouse blow, only to be swatted aside like a gnat for his troubles.

"Fun!" Nabiki cried, "You keep saying I should be having fun! Everybody keeps

telling me that! But battle isn't about fun! It's serious business!"

"That's only if you think it's all about winning," Ranma replied as he once

again recovered his bearings, "But it ain't! It's how you play the game, not

how you win it!"

"Win it?" Nabiki paused, "How could I possibly win anything if..."

"Yes?" he asked.

"If you...if you aren't a part of the deal?" Nabiki wavered.

"You see?" Ranma asked, "Ain't so hard admitting that you like me, now is it?

And I like you a lot...but I won't hold back no more...this time it's for real

between us Tendo."

"What?" Nabiki asked, "Are you serious?"

"As night and day," Ranma smiled, "I beat you, you and me become man and wife,

just like the Old Man says. You're Amazon by adoption, so if I'm gonna claim

you proper as my iinazuke..."

"Why you arrogant...conceited..." Nabiki faltered and found herself smiling, "Oh

so? You think you have to beat me to be my husband? Guess again, Ranma...if I

beat you, the Old Woman says I can assert my claim and declare you my Airen, so

it works both ways, get it?"

"Huh?" Ranma blinked, "Um...well...I guess that means...if either one of us

wins...we both win, how about that?"

"Yeah?" Nabiki blinked again, "Ah...yeah...I guess we do...I never thought of it

that way..."

"So you see?" Ranma grinned boyishly, "Don't matter which of us comes out on

top, either way it's still the same, I get you, you get me, and it's all a done

package."

Nabiki found herself sharing that grin, "LIKE HELL it doesn't matter who wins!

I'm the one who's going to wind up on top of this, Ranma! You can be on the

bottom!"

"Care to bet on that?" he smiled, "After all, I'm the one who's been keeping you

guessing."

"Not any more!" Nabiki cried, and leaped to the attack again, her body moving

fluidly like a well-coordinated machine, forcing Ranma to block and counter-

attack as waves of force poured out around them and the two of them fought once

again with the full concentration of their minds, spirits and beings.

"Whoah," Guile adjusted his sunglasses and stared at the ongoing fight, "Guess

this just went into extra innings."

"I don't get it," Cammy admitted, "Every time it looks like they're about to

call a halt to the fight they wind up attacking each other...are they fighting

or dating?"

"Amazon dating, I believe," Akiko mused, "They're trying to decide which of them

will be the dominant Airen."

"And what happens if it's a draw?" Chun-Li asked, "From what I can see those two

are pretty evenly matched, though maybe the edge is a bit with Nabiki."

"I wouldn't worry too much," Akiko smiled, "Love will find a way...it usually

does."

Guile lifted an eyebrow at that, but for the sake of domestic tranquility (or

what passed for it in their household) refrained from excess commentary.

"Wow," Saki blinked her eyes, "What's gotten into Nabiki? Those are some pretty

high level moves she's using..."

"I don't get it," Natsumi scratched her head, "Is she trying to beat him or kill

him? I mean...do these guys love or hate each other?"

"It does seem to be getting a bit out of hand," Miyuki admitted, "They've gone

well beyond the limitations of any ordinary martial arts duel...they seem to be

operating on some whole new level...oh my! Did you feel that? It felt like

another tremor..."

"Not good," Frank growled, "Those kids are tossing around some pretty heavy-duty

maneuvers...and now they're using Shadowskills? At this rate they could

endanger the audience. Too damned freaking many people around for my liking..."

"They paid for a show," Lao mused, "Looks to me like they're about to get it.

Those Elemental styles that Saotome was using were certainly interesting, but

now he's fighting on Nabiki's level, and I seriously doubt he can beat her with

that system."

"Could be," Frank averred, "We'll know in another minute..."

Ranma found himself once more picked up and sent hurtling a great distance as he

moved a bit too slow to avoid a razor kick, and then his instincts warned him to

roll to the side as a Chi-bolt struck the ground near to where he had landed.

He sprang back to his feet and executed a number of rolling maneuvers, all the

while keeping out of reach of Nabiki as she sought to chase him down, going all

out to nail him without holding anything back, fully aware that he was not

holding back either.

Ranma got tired of dodging and decided to counter-attack, summoning his Chi and

firing off a blast that caused her to dodge back and to the side, thus throwing

off her momentum. Ranma seized that moment to draw in more power for another

blast, only this time he called upon the power of his Honosenken, projecting a

wall of force as the power of the Moko Takabishi formed a bubble of Chi in the

air around him, creating the Ultimate Bubble Burst Attack so that Nabiki's

attempts to nail him were harmlessly absorbed and reflected.

"Eh?" Nabiki paused as she saw the air around Ranma saver and distort in a most

unexpected manner, causing her to wonder what he was up to...a curiosity that

lasted just long enough for Ranma to call up his second Ultimate Maneuver, which

he lacked the air to say or else he would have called out the name for it:

Contain and Repel Ultimate Heat Burst Honosenken Backdraft!

All at once the air around him burst out into a column of fire, creating a

swirling maelstrom that forced Nabiki to flinch away rather than risk having her

eyelashes be singed, to say nothing of the rest of her. Ranma controlled his

fire burst and caused it to rise into the air in a swirling mass of heat and

fury, then he rose up into the air to join these flames, untouched by their heat

as he used them for lift, rising high above the tarmac.

"Oh no you don't!" Nabiki snarled as she extended an arm and moved it rapidly in

a counter-clockwise manner, calming herself down so that she projected a cooling

Chi-current at the blaze, and through this directed the column away from Ranma

as she cried out, "HIRYU SHOTEN HA REMODIFIED-DRAGON BURST OF FURY!"

"Eh?" Ranma gasped as he felt a massive wave of Chi collide with his Honosenken

fire-burst, and all at once the two of them canceled out, but not before

providing a funnel through which Nabiki came hurtling towards him as though shot

out of a cannon. Her fist connected with his chin as he frantically tried to

dodge away from her, and then the two of them were plummeting earthward, trading

blocks and kicks as they descended.

Ranma touched down and started to turn to face his opponent, only to be caught

by another dragon-stamp kick that knocked him sprawling. With incredible

agility he got his hands down in time to catch the ground and turn his fall into

a handspring, recovering his bearings as the two took a moment to pause and

regard each other, both breathing hard and nearly taxed to their limits.

And in spite of it all, Nabiki found that she was grinning like an idiot. Ranma

smiled back at her as the both of them spared the moment to take stock of one

another, sucking in air and only now barely registering their numerous cuts and

bruises, to say nothing of the considerable rents put into their clothing.

(I don't believe this), Nabiki paused with dull amazement, (This is FUN! This

is incredibly fun! I'm actually enjoying this fight! I can't believe I'm

having this much fun trading blows with Ranma...and he's giving me back as good

as he's getting!)

(She's finally getting it), Ranma exulted, (I can see it in her eyes...she's as

much into this now as I am! This is no longer a fight, it's a dance...a pretty

high-powered dance at that, and my head's still ringing from that last kick she

gave me, but we're actually hitting each other pretty hard, and we're pushing

each other near to our limits!)

He decided to test her resolve by calling up the remainder of his power. He

spread his feet wide and felt the power flow up into him from the ground,

imagining his body as a House and feeling the warmth of the sun beating down,

felt it gathering up inside of him, filling his body with life-giving energy

that renewed his vitality and banished his exhaustion.

(Oho), Nabiki mused, (So that's the way it is, eh? Well...two can play at that,

Saotome!) and with that she spread her own legs wide, raised her hands into the

air and began to summon the power of her Chi, drawing on the force lines that

she felt flowing all around her.

(She's gonna try the same thing), Ranma realized, pouring it on as he felt the

elemental energies of the sun filling his being. He redoubled his efforts,

summoning the energies of the Earth and Air around him, the water and the fire

that burned within the shifting tattoos along his arm, concentrating on the

image of his body as a Pillar of Light, the pattern of the Taoist Cabala forming

in his mind as he felt the serpent coil within him, converting his Chi from a

mere snake into a full dragon.

All at once Nabiki's voice rang out, "I AM INVINCIBLE!"

Realizing what she was about to do, Ranma raised his own voice and called out,

"I AM INVINCIBLE!"

"I AM TENDO NABIKI OF THE TENDO ANYTHING GOES RYU!" she cried out in defiance.

"I AM SAOTOME RANMA OF THE SAOTOME ANYTHING GOES RYU!" he echoed.

"NO ONE CAN MATCH MY SHADOWSKILLS!"

"NO ONE CAN MATCH MY SHADOWSKILLS!"

"THOSE WHO STAND BEFORE ME..."

"THOSE WHO STAND BEFORE ME..."

And then in chorus they cried, "...WILL FALL BEFORE MY POWER, FOR MY WILL IS

INFINITE AND CAN NEVER BE DEFEATED!"

Those watching the battle marveled at the sight that was before them, for it

seemed as if two columns of light surrounded the youths, Nabiki forming a

crimson-pink aura that rapidly shifted to the violet end of the spectrum, while

Ranma's started out as blue and then also became purple, the two swirling

gatherings of Chi causing the ground around them to shift and vibrate.

"Oh hell," Frank murmured, "BRACE FOR IMPACT!"

"It's going to happen," Lao conceded.

All at once Ranma and Nabiki launched themselves into the air, going airborne in

nearly identical attacks that became classic Flying Dragon leaps that seemed to

defy the pull of the ground as their two outstretched legs connected, causing

sparks to erupt in a full scale detonation!

The resulting explosion caused the entire area to be bathed in a light that

caused many to flinch away while the explosive noise of a sonic shockwave shook

the area with incredible force, and for a moment the blast eclipsed the sun's

own radiance, driving out all other awareness.

An infinity of time seemed to pass when at last the blinding force of that kick

at long last receded into the background. People blinked and rubbed their eyes

to clear them while others rubbed their ears in a vain attempt at stopping their

ringing, and all around people sat stunned in their places as if unable to

accept what they had just witnessed, the three martial arts masters being no

less thunderstruck than any others.

Then at long last...at least hesitantly, one person began clapping their hands,

followed by another and another until the whole stadium erupted in spontaneous

cheering and applauding.

"Oh my," Kasumi asked, "Is it over?"

"I think so," Cologne mused, "But who is the victor?"

At the epicenter where the blast touched ground a large crater had been gouged

out of the earth, and within this lay two stunned and half-senseless youths who

were themselves still reeling from the forces that they had unleashed in their

battle. Ranma decided that remaining still where he lay was probably a very

good thing, but after a half a minute of inactivity, Nabiki began to rouse

herself and stir from her own resting place, managing to roll onto her hands and

knees, though standing up-at least for the moment-did not appear to be a

very good option.

"Wow..." she said as she surveyed their handiwork, "Did we do all that?"

"Guess so," Ranma replied, "Sure felt like it."

Nabiki turned a grin his way and said, "Good fight...best I've ever had. I

never knew you could push things so hard, Ranma-kun. You really surprise me."

"Thanks," Ranma said, still remaining where he was, "Don't take this the wrong

way, though...but...I think maybe we should wait to have a rematch..."

"Yeah," Nabiki sniffed, "No fooling. You have got to teach me that Senken

stuff...that last attack was sheer dynamite..."

"Thanks," Ranma said, "But if you want the truth...I was ad-libbing."

"Makes two of us," Nabiki smiled as she crawled over to his side, then smiled,

"Guess I won the match...by a whisker. No harm in trying, right?"

"Oh yeah," Ranma smiled, "Did I get your attention?"

"Loud and clear," she nodded.

"Then it was worth it," Ranma grinned, "I'll get you the next time around...with

a little more practice."

"Dream on," Nabiki snorted, then turned her head and said, "Something I can do

for you, Gramps?"

"Just admiring you kids making out together," Happosai said pleasantly, "Of

course you know that Ranma is the actual victor."

"What?" Nabiki flared, "Says who?"

"Says me," Happosai replied, "Lad could have had you a dozen ways from Sunday,

but he was holding back at the beginning because he didn't want to mess you up

too much. That gave you the chance to take stock of his Senken and work out a

counter to it."

"Is that a fact?" Nabiki snorted.

"You see?" Happosai smiled, "You can't even let go, now that you've been

defeated. You fault Ranma for having excessive pride, but you're worse than he

is. At least Ranma figured out the raw deal about what fighting is really all

about...you had to learn that from his example, and it wouldn't have happened

without a nudge in the right direction."

The little man stretched out a finger and tapped Nabiki on the shoulder. All at

once Nabiki felt a wave of agony pass through her body and she rolled over onto

her side clutching her arm as she became simultaneously aware of nearly all of

her many bruises.

"Nabiki!" Ranma sat upright, his concern for her overcoming his own worries.

"You see?" Happosai pointed out, "And that wasn't even a vital nerve cluster.

You're one large bruise all over, girl, and though you may try to hide the fact

with bravado, the truth is that you're in worse shape than he is. Ain't that

right...Old Woman?"

Cologne frowned as she stood on the edge of the crater, along with all the rest

of their party of family members and close personal well-wishers. Sakura

approached the two combatants with microphone in hand and hesitantly asked, "Is

the fight over? Should we declare it a draw or...?"

"N-No," Nabiki said between clenched teeth, "R-Ranma won it..."

"Huh?" Ranma blinked as he looked down.

"It's true," Be Dea declared, "The boy has lawfully defeated the girl and is now

her rightful husband."

"Signed, sealed and witnessed by we Elders no less," Siren grinned, "And a very

good match, too...they're bound to produce some very...interesting children."

"In a manner of speaking," Elder Lotion mused with an enigmatic expression.

"Airen...!" Shampoo called out as she came rushing into the pit, having handed

her baby to a much-surprised Kasumi, "Is you all right?"

"That's...a matter of opinion," Nabiki winced as the pain slowly subsided.

"Ranchan...how are you feeling?" Ukyo asked.

"Stiff," Ranma said, "I hurt all over, but I think I'll live..."

"Good for you, Saotome," Perfume smiled and nodded, "Guess that means we're now

official."

"I guess," Ranma said, turning back to Nabiki, "Think you can stand? I could

carry you if you..."

"I'll stand," Nabiki said as she started to sit upright, adding in low tones,

"But I'll take a rain check on that offer, like...when it's time for you to

carry me past the threshold."

"Uh...oh yeah," Ranma colored once again, "You're definitely on for that..."

"Well then," Sakura spoke up once again, "Now that that is settled, perhaps we

should be calling on the services of a good priest, then get you some much-

needed medical attention..."

"A priest?" Ranma said, "We don't need an exorcism..."

"Dummy," Akane sniffed, "She means to get the two of you married."

"Married?" Nabiki blinked, exchanging looks with Ranma before adding, "Oh..."

"At least it's somebody else this time who get to suffer," Mousse noted with a

slight hint of condescension, only to wince as Kurumi's elbow made contact with

one of his kidneys.

"Well, you are now married," said Amber with a sly expression, "At least as far

as Amazon law would have it."

"And that means you no longer have to hold back around her, Saotome," Keiko

mused, "Your promise to your mother no longer stands in the way of you two

having some good old-fashioned sex together."

"S-S-Sex?" the two newlyweds said in stunned chorus.

Perfume was silently remarking that Ranma still had a ways to go before he lost

all of his shyness around women, but at least Nabiki would be the one to first

take his virginity away from him, which was how it had always been meant to be,

followed in close order by Ukyo, Shampoo and...well...herself (she colored a bit

as she thought that). She was going to offer up her congratulations and

condolences, then make a hasty escape before her other Airen thought to question

how far she had actually gotten with their new husband, but as she began to

search for an exit, a faint whiff of something on the breeze caused her nostrils

to flare...

A smell of decay and corruption...of something both unnatural and...evil...

She turned her head and saw a figure standing with the crowd...a figure that her

sharp-eyed vision made out to be a man-like shape, only looking unnaturally pale

and unhealthy beneath his coat and sunglasses...and as she watched she saw flies

circling around him, some landing on his face, which produced no visible

reaction...

"Uh oh," Frank set down his binoculars, "A ghoul...just like I figured..."

"One of Dimitri's spies most likely," Shelley confirmed, "He must have sent him

to serve as his eyes and ears during the daylight hours. That means he saw the

whole fight, and odds are he'll be impressed with the results."

"Dimitri?" Lao raised a pale blue eyebrow, "As in Dimitri Maximoff? You think

he might come after Nabiki?"

"There's a definite chance of it," Frank replied, "In which case...I'd better

make a few preparations."

"You do that, husband," Lao nodded, "As for me, I think it's about time I return

to my ship and people. You know how disorganized they tend to get without me."

"Just mind that you don't get into too much trouble this time," Frank warned,

"Don't make me regret giving you my parole. I know you think what you're doing

is all fun and games, but..."

"You have a better suggestion?" Lao asked, "You know I'm bound by a curse to the

POJ, and without me it will become an even greater menace than I could ever be

on my own. I'm touched that you are still concerned with the state of my soul,

Airen, but you are not the master of my conscience...not even you can take that

burden from me, and I seriously doubt that you would even desire to stand in my

place."

"Just don't do too much damage," Frank said, "That's all I ask. Things are

tense enough as it is across the Sea of China, and if you start another

international incident..."

"I wasn't the one who started things" Lao insisted, "And they shouldn't have

challenged my right of passage into Taiwan."

"What about your great-grandmother and that Chinese Amazon delegation?" Shelley

asked.

"Oh, I'll be keeping an eye on things...from a reasonable distance," Lao

replied, "Things are going to get very interesting for Cologne in the next few

days, then I'll come back and give my countrywomen safe transport back onto the

mainland. In the meantime...good hunting for evil vampires."

With that her form shifted and she became a tiger once again, loping off on her

way with a four-footed gait what would eat up the kilometers in a matter of mere

minutes.

"I'll never get used to the way she does that," Frank shook his head somberly

then turned his attention back towards the field and Nabiki, who was being

helped along by Ranma, who rested a part of her weight across his shoulder.

Very softly he murmured, "There's gonna be trouble in paradise before too long,

but I'm hoping those two have found a way to iron out their differences."

"Most marriages do...if they turn out to be successful," Shelley replied.

"Oh, like you'd know all about it," Frank replied, then paused as he thought a

moment before saying, "Sorry about that...it was reflex."

"No problem for me," Shelley replied, "There's lot of advantages that come with

being artificial."

"You're telling me that?" the large man countered, but in truth his mind was on

a certain short-haired and pig-tailed girl, who remained blissfully ignorant of

the forces arraying in the background against her...not least of which was a

Vampire named Dimitri...

Continued (In "A Tale of Two Nabikis").

Comments/Criticisms/Nabiki's Angels: shadowmane

As I just said above, this story will be continued in the already written

crossover series, "A TALE OF TWO NABIKIS," but that is not the end of the AVST

series. I'll be taking a mini-break here to get back to writing ATOTW and "Jedi

Kasumi," but after I'm done with this (and a certain long-promised Hentai piece

relating to the Honeymoon adventures of Ranma/Nabiki and their "Tendo Posse")

I'll be returning to the fold with a set of brand new adventures. Until that

time, be well, and KEEP READING! I'll be there if you will, deal?

Later!

Jim R Bader

October, 25, 2000

X

If you wish to check out my other works, Please check out my Fanfiction

webpage at: .

All related chapters of this series can be found there along with my

other works.


	42. Chapter 42

preDnabiki107

Nabiki 1/2

"A Very Scary Thought!"

(Inspired by the works of Rumiko Takahashi Others,  
with a special appearance by one of my own creations and those of Joss Weadon, not to mention a certain Vampire Princess who for now will go nameless...)

Part One-Hundred-Seven.

(Set during and slightly after the time of the events recorded in the side-story titled "Honeymoon Hentai")

Kasumi was enjoying the sun beating down against her body as she sat on the edge of the resort pool in a revealing string bikini, her long legs dangling in the pool, which was warm and inviting, tempting her to take a swim, even though she was perfectly content to remain where she was sitting.

"Hey, Oneechan," a pleasantly masculine voice hailed her, causing her to look up at the sight of an incredibly handsome youth named Kaneda...her "little brother," as it were, due to a curse that had been laid upon her sister, Nabiki. He was holding a pair of drinks in his hands and smiling at her in a way that made her heart skip a beat as a pleasant smile of her own lit her face up like the sun itself. She accepted the offer of a drink, even though it was not the sort of fluid that would tempt her, being alcoholic in nature.

"Kaneda-chan," Kasumi said as the powerfully built youth sat down beside her, dangling his legs into the water without changing.

"You looked like you could use some company, Kasumi-chan," Kaneda murmured, "A pretty girl like you shouldn't be out here all by yourself. You need a man to look after you, and I know you've been sending clues to me telling me that I am that lucky guy who can give you what you need."

"Yes," Kasumi replied, "I need you, little Brother..." Kasumi's tone was breathless, "I want you...you know how much that is?"

"A lot?" Kaneda guessed as he leaned closer to her.

"Oh yes," Kasumi leaned into him as she felt him put one strong arm around her shoulders and draw her into his embrace.

"You're cold," he remarked, "Want me to warm you up a bit?"

"Oh yes," Kasumi leaned forward as their lips almost touched, "You have exactly what I need...I have always needed you, you know that."

"Yes," he replied, "What I have is yours, Oneechan...feel free to take it."

"I will," cooed Kasumi as she lowered her lips to kiss his cheek and throat, feeling his warmth as if it drew her to him like a magnet. She felt the pulsing strength of his manly vitality and brought her lips even lower, then as the moment seemed most ripe, she parted those lips and revealed her fangs...prominent canines that she proceeded to sink into his neck, tasting the warm nectar of his blood as he gasped, then relaxed into her embrace. The soothing vitality and salty taste of his fluids filled her mouth as she began to draw his juices into her being, feeling the warmth fill her bosom and set her pulse to a different kind of racing...

Kasumi gasped as she woke from her dreams almost shaking with profuse sweat upon her brow. She found herself alone in bed dressed in her nightie, alone and feeling a terror far greater than any that she had ever known, afraid of herself, and what her dream might portend in the light of recent events. The very vividness of her dream made her get up and go to her dresser mirror just to assure herself that she still had a reflection, and even then the fear did not subside. She needed a moment to get a hold of herself, and then drew a deep breath and convinced herself that everything was back to normal. She was still Tendo Kasumi, and still-at least essentially-human.

Stability and the Wa of her house once more maintained, Kasumi rose up to perform her morning chores, knowing that her Aunt Nodoka would be hard at work preparing breakfast in the kitchen.

Try as she might, Kasumi could not entirely banish the dream from her mind, nor ignore the fact that in her dream she had tasted the blood of her own sister...and liked it. Nabiki might be horrified if she found out about that particularly unsavory aspect of the dream, and what it might mean for Kasumi herself, who would never dream of doing something like that in real life, let alone to Nabiki! Such thoughts would not even be proper even without the bloodlust as such incestuous behavior would be frowned upon under almost any other set of circumstances. Kasumi certainly had enough trouble just maintaining her dignity in the light of her unwanted and unrequited lust for the male aspect of her sister.

That Nabiki was away enjoying a Honeymoon tryst with her recently wed husband (along with the rest of her marital "Posse"), Saotome Ranma, which only meant that such temptation was effectively beyond Kasumi's immediate grasp. That was both a relief and a source of vexation for Kasumi, who had never asked nor wanted to be under the spell of her intense infatuation. She wished her sister all the best, but even in doing so she found she yearned to be with Nabiki on her honeymoon, if only to enjoy the company of the one she loved and bask in the delight that always filled her young body whenever she caught sight of the charismatic Kaneda.

Her recent troubles were another story altogether...the result of a predatory creature named Dimitri, who fancied himself a "Lord of the Vampires," in fact a renegade seeking to make a name for himself by fighting and absorbing powerful fighters, and he had set his sights on Nabiki, making Kasumi a pawn of his dark ambitions. That Dimitri literally bit off more than he had expected to swallow was evidenced by the way in which Nabiki had banished him in their fight, but though the heroes had won and driven off the spawn of evil, Kasumi had been cursed with Vampirism and found herself a potential menace to her own loved ones. Thankfully a kindly priest named Donovan Bane had lifted the curse from Kasumi...or had seemed to, allowing Kasumi to return to her family and a productive life in the sunlight.

And yet some of the changes worked upon her had not been entirely removed, as was evidenced by the fact that she still had a serious "overbite problem," her canines being longer and more pronounced than those of an average Japanese Housewife. She had also contracted an allergic reaction to the smell of garlic, and her night vision had improved considerably while she often would prefer to wear a hat out in the sunlight rather than be exposed to its full brightness...and then there was her disturbing preference for the taste of raw meat that had not been fully drained of its juices...but other than that, she was perfectly normal.

Well...normal if you ignored the fact that she was now a lot stronger than she had used to be before, a fact that came in handy while doing housework, and yet which still seemed...odd to her. After all, how many other housewives could dead-lift a couch or a bed one-handed?

She paused and silently chided herself for the use of the term "housewife," reminding herself once again that she did not have either a husband or a boyfriend.

She mused upon the significance of these things while raking up leaves in the yard, marveling at how quiet everything seemed to be this morning as she savored the peaceful atmosphere, for once not troubled by the sounds of people arguing or practicing martial arts. Her sisters were all away doing things with their boyfriends, leaving her alone to contemplate the dull routine of her existence, wondering if life could be any more fulfilling, or was it at long last time for her to consider going back to school to get a proper education, perhaps to study to be a nurse or a doctor, which had once been her childhood ambition...

"Excuse me down there," a voice called out from somewhere over to her left, "Do you mind not being so loud with that thing? Some of us are trying to sleep here."

Kasumi paused in mid-stroke of her rake, unable to recognize the voice in question. Very slowly she turned around and saw a figure hanging upside down from the roof of her home in a part that was shaded from the sun...a figure draped in a long black cloak with her feet somehow clinging to the edge of the ceiling. A face framed by short red hair looked back at her questioning inquiry and a pair of ruby eyes appeared to size her up with a studied, neutral expression.

"Um..." Kasumi considered what to say, not wanting to give offense to a stranger, and resolved to ask, "Hello, can I help you?"

"That all depends," the redheaded girl replied, "Are you named Tendo Kasumi?"

"Why...yes, I am," Kasumi replied, then paused and waited as she hoped that this girl would identify herself as it did not seem polite for her to ask such a personal question.

"Then you're the one I've come to see," the girl let go of her purchase on the edge of the roof and dropped down to the ground, somehow managing to flip all the way over so that she landed gracefully on her feet, her cape settling around her shoulders as though it was a pair of bat wings. The girl straightened out and said, "Konichiwa...my name is Lenore...Lenore the Vampire."

"Oh my," Kasumi replied, realizing that this was going to turn out to be one very unusual encounter...

Faith Spencer coughed as she gasped for life, looking around with a momentary disorientation before gasping out, "Where am I?"

"She's coming out of it," a voice responded, "I think she's going to make it."

"Make it?" Faith blinked, "Where...?"

"Take it easy, Spencer," one of the Prison Guards cautioned, "You had a rough time of it, but you should be back on your feet in no time."

"Yeah, but count that as a minor miracle," the Paramedic attending her remarked, "I thought for sure we were going to lose her...she must be incredibly healthy to make it back after being out for almost a full eight minutes."

"Oh yeah," Faith put a hand to cover her eyes against the glare and felt along the sides of her temples, "I'm a great survivalist...just ask anybody..." she paused then said, "What was that about me being out for...eight full minutes?"

"Well, technically, you were dead," the Prison Guard attending her explained, "You got jumped by that girl gang, and somehow you managed to take most of them out, all except Bertha, who damn near shoved your head halfway down a urinal. You drowned...but somebody called the guard in with time enough to get the paramedics in here."

"Somebody called it in?" Faith asked with mild disorientation, "Didn't think anybody here even cared..."

"Most don't, but you've got a few friends in this place," the Guard assured her, "Good thing too, or you might not have survived this one."

"Yeah," Faith began remembering being ambushed in the showers by some of her fellow prisoners, the ones who had the strongest reason not to like her, bullies and thugs for the most part, with one in particular earning her intense disapproval, "Bertha should have done a better job...she's gonna regret that."

"I certainly hope you don't intend to take the law into your own hands, young lady," the Paramedic sounded disapproving, "Isn't this how you wound up in this place to begin with?"

"Something like that," the former Vampire Slayer frowned, looking at the guard as she added, "Don't worry...I'll testify. Bertha can fry at the state's expense, unless she makes the mistake of looking for a rematch."

"I'll talk to the warden about getting you some protection," the guard assured.

"Don't bother," Faith replied, staring down the length of her body and realizing how close she had come to answering to a much Higher Authority, "I don't need any protection, they'd need protection from me."

"Exactly my point," the guard replied, patting her on the shoulder, which was exposed to view, like the rest of Faith's body above the waist, "You try and get some rest, Ms. Spencer."

"Rest," she frowned, "I've been resting ever since I came into this hellhole...only..."

"Only?" the Paramedic noticed the slight hesitation at the end of her statement.

Faith looked worried, "Uh...no offense, guy, but...there's something you don't know about me...and if I died, even temporarily...it could be bad...really bad..."

To herself, under her breath, she silently amended, (Angel is not going to like this, and Buffy's gonna freak for certain...!)

"Bad?" the Paramedic said, "What do you mean bad?"

"Uh...you wouldn't understand," Faith said evasively, "But...I got a feeling some girl somewhere is about to find out the same way I did...the hard way..."

"Natsume-chan?" Tatewaki Kuno asked, glancing at his lady companion, who had inexplicably doubled over, "Are you all right?"

"Guh..." Natsume responded as her fiancée knelt down to examine her more closely, "I...don't know...I just...all of a sudden...I felt these cramps..."

"Cramps?" Tatewaki asked in growing concern, "Are you ill, my Love?"

In spite of the pain that she was feeling, Natsume felt a smile come to her lips upon hearing him address her with such open affection, "Yes...felt almost as if someone had kicked me in the guts for a moment there...but it seems to be easing up now..."

"Are you certain that you are all right?" Tatewaki insisted, "If not, then I can take you to Doctor Tofu..."

"I said I was all right," Natsume straightened up again, forcing a smile onto her lips, "Something just...came over me all of a sudden...but it's easing back now. I'm sure that I will be all right with...just a little bit of rest."

Tatewaki looked as if he were about to make a point of the matter, but then he thought better of it and said, "Very well...if that is what you wish, but if you have another such...cramp...then I am carrying you to the Doctor's, and I will hear no argument against this."

"Oh, very well," Natsume said in mild irritation, stoically accepting this as the price one had to pay for having an overly protective boyfriend, though rarely would she have allowed anyone to speak with such a tone of authority regarding her welfare. She was too much the individualist, and after a lifetime of having only to look out for her own welfare, and Kurumi's, it was quite an adjustment having someone fret over her for a change...but not an entirely unpleasant prospect...

Unbeknownst to her, however, two sets of gleaming eyes were studying her from the safety of a heavily shadowed alleyway, both waiting until the man and the woman moved on before one commented to the other, "So...that is the new Slayer...how interesting. This bears closer investigation, don't you agree, Larva?"

Her silent companion did not acknowledge the question in any other way but to nod his head by a slight fraction. This was enough, however, as his younger companion smiled and eased out of the shadows, following the trail of the new Slayer while her companion remained hidden away in the shadows, watching and awaiting for her summons in the unlikely event that she should encounter far more than she could handle on her own.

After all, it had been known to happen a time or two that his Princess got in over her head, in which case Larva would do whatever was necessary to rectify such an unfortunate occasion...

As surprised as Kasumi was to be entertaining the foreigner, she was still too much the proper hostess to refuse hospitality to this peculiar redhead, who had to ask for permission before she could even enter the Tendo household. She also was rather surprised when her visitor asked for tea, a perfectly normal action that belied the claims of this stranger to be of the non-living persuasion.

"Thank you," she said as Kasumi offered her some rice crackers, and then without preamble she said, "The first thing you have to understand about Vampires is that almost everything you hear about us is a myth of one kind or another. Most of what people think they know comes from Television and Hollywood, and virtually all of that is the fabrication of Breathers, who haven't the first idea of what it really means to be a Vampire."

"Excuse me...Breathers?" Kasumi politely asked.

"Slang term for ordinary humans," this Lenore person explained, "Some types of Vamps don't need to breathe air like regular folk...and that's the first thing you need to learn...we're not all one big homogenous group. Vampires come in different tribes and different bloodlines, and what's true of one isn't necessarily true of another."

"And why is that?" Kasumi wondered.

"Lots of theories about it, but actually, I think the one closest to the truth is that our different branches probably all came from a central source many thousands of years ago," Lenore explained, "And yet over the centuries these different groups became isolated, became distinctly regional, and then mutated into the various Tribes that we have today. Each type is distinctive, and the rules that apply to us depends on the nature of our bloodline."

"By bloodline you mean...oh my," Kasumi covered her mouth with surprise at the realization.

"Yeah," Lenore nodded, "Most of us perpetuate our lines by turning others, whom we sire into new Vampires. A few of us get lucky enough to have children the usual way, but with our slowed metabolisms, this is as rare for us as ovulation. You know what it's like to have a period that lasts an entire six months? The cramps make some of us pretty irritable to be around, though the guys have it pretty rough, too, since they don't get it up quite as often."

"And why is that?" Kasumi wondered.

"Nature of the beast, I guess," Lenore shrugged, "Vampires like me don't really age...everything's slowed down, like we're living in slow motion. Oh, we can move pretty fast, in the blink of an eye I can cross this room and back again without batting an eyelash. I've been a Vamp for about seventeen years, ever since a boyfriend bit me at a Rocky Horror Picture Show, and I haven't aged more than a few months in human terms...it would take as much as a century before I'd even start to look old enough to be carded."

"But how do you live?" Kasumi wondered, "The blood..."

"Oh, I only need a little bit to sustain me," Lenore replied, "A few ounces a day, a couple of pints a week. I don't really have to kill anyone to get that much blood, except maybe a few animals whenever my supply runs short. I usually get blood from donors, friends who supply me with what I need. We kind of have this big support network that sustains us so we don't have to do any killing."

"That...sounds very interesting," Kasumi replied with a faintly disquieted expression.

"It's existing," Lenore shrugged, "The alternative is...well...not existing, and after a while most of us know which one we like better. The thing is, we're not all soulless monsters preying on humanity, most of us leave ordinary lives and try to blend in with society. There's too much risk in attacking humans and drawing unwanted attention to our existence. Breathers have enough funny ideas about who and what we are without adding to the ugly picture. That's why I'm here, to make you understand that being a Vamp isn't a death sentence, neither it is a one-way trip to hell, at least for those of us who try to walk the straight and narrow. In other words...we're not all like Dimitri."

"Then...what are you...and what am I?" Kasumi wondered.

"Well, for one thing," Lenore replied, "You're not a full Vampire...I can sense that just by looking at you, without hearing Donovan's side of the story."

"Oh...you know about that?" Kasumi asked.

"Yeah," Lenora replied, "It's big news on the Darkstalkers Circuit...kind of an underground rumor mill in the circles I move through. You see...for most people there's the world of Daylight, where everything is perfectly hunky-dory, except for stuff you hear on the news about crime, war, famine, plagues and stuff like that. Then there's the Nightside, where folks like me dwell. You see...I'm not really hurt by sunlight, but it weakens me. Some Vamps are super sun-shy, others can walk by day and get a nice sun tan. You're what we call a Day Walker...the only problem you have with the sun is that it affects your night vision, but you won't burst into flames or fall apart into a pile of dust. You've got Dimitri's resistance factor working for you. He can survive by full daylight, but he loses half his strength. At night he's at full power, and as you already know, he's a lot tougher than a regular Vampire."

"Then...what is he...and how am I different from him?" Kasumi asked.

"Dimitri didn't become what he is by being changed from a human," Lenore explained, "His mother was a vampire, but his Dad...that's a different story. Fact is...we think he was some kind of a demon."

"A demon?" Kasumi felt a slight shiver go down her spine at the implications.

"Yeah," Lenore explained, "Happened about a hundred and fifty years ago...and even then the Eurotrash stood out in a crowd. He briefly hooked up with Dracula, but he's always been a lone wolf type, can't stand abiding by the truce that the Council has going with the Human world..."

"The Council?" Kasumi arched an eyebrow.

"The senior tribes of Vamps have this thing about organized structure," Lenore replied, "Kind of like a Mafia family, more of a legend than something we live with every day. The Council was created centuries ago to keep the peace between the various tribes, and to try and keep the Breathers from coming down on us. Dimitri flouts the authority of the Council...Vamps like him make trouble for the rest of us, so the Chief would like to come down on him like a proverbial ton of bricks, only he's too smart, too powerful and too hard to track down. He surfaces where he wants and makes a name for himself, then goes back into hiding before the Tribal Enforcers can track him down and put him out of commission."

"You mean like when he challenged my sister, Nabiki?" Kasumi asked.

"Dimitri lives for the fight, he lives to test himself, and he wants to become strong...stronger than any Vampire who's ever lived, even stronger than the Big Bad D-man himself. He doesn't just attack people, he absorbs some of what they are into his being...only with you he did the opposite number, imbued you with some of his essence, temporarily became your Sire even, brought you over the edge and made you his plaything. Then...you resisted him...something inside you altered the chemistry of what he gave you, and you became a Master."

"A Master?" Kasumi blinked.

"A type of Vampire who's naturally imbued with the full abilities of a Greater Ancient, including your ability to influence and control other creatures of the night," Lenore explained, "In time you would have naturally broken free from Dimitri...I don't think the bastard really knew what he had with you...but you're stronger than he suspected. I can feel it just sitting here with you...even in full daylight you're got this powerful aura that makes me feel like I want to genuflect in front of you, or something."

"Oh my," Kasumi responded, "I certainly hope you won't do that."

"Not willingly anyway," Lenore replied, "Messing with people's minds is serious heavy stuff, I wouldn't recommend it. Better to ask than demand, better to let people choose to agree with you instead of making them dance to your command like a puppet. I've been there, experimenting, dabbling with my dark side, and let me tell you...it sucks turkeys."

"I can't imagine doing anything like that," Kasumi replied, "Forcing anyone to do what I want is just...wrong."

"Exactly, " Lenore replied, "And that's why you'll never be like Dimitri. When Donovan expunged the dark elements out of your system it must have broken whatever link there was between the two of you. I can feel your soul from here...it's clean of Dimitri's taint, even if what he changed in you remains as the Daywalker."

"Oh," Kasumi replied, "But...how does this affect my ability to live with my family..."

"That depends on how understanding they are," Lenore explained, "You have special needs, but you don't have to be a problem for them, just as long as you remember to observe your limits. You may want to know if there's a cure for what you are...and I really can't answer that. Donavan performed an exorcism, and obviously that didn't do the trick, but you're not suffering from a possession, and you're definitely not evil. I've dark and I've seen evil, and you're about as far from that as they get while still remaining human."

"But..." Kasumi shifted uncomfortably, "I...don't know how to say this...but...lately...I've been having these strange...dreams...very real...frighteningly real..."

"That's pretty normal," Lenore replied, "And in a way it's also a good sign."

"It is?" Kasumi blinked.

"You can't have dreams if you don't have a soul," Lenore replied, "And as long as you can feel bad about how disturbing they may seem, it means you have the ability to care. Empathy is a problem of those with souls, not soulless beings like Dimitri."

"Oh," Kasumi replied, seeing the logic behind this statement.

"You want to make the bad dreams go away...do yourself a favor and make sure you get plenty of blood and iron in your system," Lenore replied, "Bad dreams are a way of your subconscious trying to tell you something important. Also...if you have any personal problems, unresolved emotional issues, it might be a good idea to get them out in the open. The longer you carry them inside you, the worse they're going to fester."

"Oh my," Kasumi covered her mouth again, then said, "You don't think...that I'd actually do something like that for real?"

"That all depends on what 'it' is," Lenore replied, "You don't have to confide in me if you don't want to. I'm not a father confessor, I'm just a free agent doing a favor for Frank and the organization he works with. They wanted me to check you out, and now that I have I can report back and tell them you're kosher."

"But...I'm not Jewish," Kasumi pointed out.

"It's just an expression," Lenore smiled, "What I mean to say is that you're not a menace to society or anything close to that, but you're going to have to learn to live within certain limits. For one thing...I'd stay away from garlic, at least until you know if you have the allergy or not. Some Vamps are really sensitive to the stuff, and for a few types of Vamps, garlic has an effect similar to battery acid."

"Oh my," Kasumi remarked once again, then thought a moment before saying, "Excuse me for asking, but...why are there Vampires? I mean...if we're not all creatures from hell, like that Dimitri fellow..."

"Why do we even exist?" Lenore replied, "Good question. Goes back to those theories I told you about earlier...how Vampires got created in the first place. There's a legend, which I have on pretty good authority, that goes like this. Back in ancient times, before recorded history, there was an ancient Empire that today is known as Atlantis...many thousands of years ago it was a highly advanced culture...both in science and what we call magic. These ancient sorcerer-kings ruled a vast empire that has long since disintegrated...hardly anything remains of it today except the echoes of a memory...and the reason why it fell was that these guys tampered with something that should have been left well enough alone."

"And what was this?" Kasumi wondered.

"They tried to use their powers to open a gateway into a different dimension, or a level of being radically different from our own," Lenore replied, "Don't know why they felt like doing that, they already had power beyond imagining, but I guess they just got bored and wanted to conquer new frontiers...only this time the frontier nearly conquered them. They let something loose into the world...something dark and evil, beyond their ability to control or counter...the Rakshasa."

"What are the Rakshasa?" Kasumi asked.

"Nasty suckers," Lenore shuddered, "Ever see Urotsukodoji? No...what am I saying? Of course you haven't. Well...take my word for it...they're just...bad. They're soul drinkers, but they don't just suck your soul, they like to chew on it while having some fun with their victims, then they slowly digest them over a period of days, or maybe even hours, depending on how hungry they get. These demons flooded into our world and threatened to take over everything, and no one could stop them, they were just too bloody powerful, and resistant to high level magics."

"So...how were they defeated?" Kasumi asked, "Did the Kami...?"

"Wasn't the Gods who saved humanity," Lenore replied, "It was us...or rather, it was the first of the Vampires, Atlantean mages...call them Necromancers, for lack of a better word, who figured out how to turn the Rakshasas's own power against them. What they did was create this powerful spell that turned them into Demi-human Vampires...creatures who were resistant to soul draining, who had the power of demons, and who-most of all-could kill a Rakshasa bare-  
handed, drink their blood, steal back their life essence. The spell worked by transmission of blood...one Vamp could create others by sharing their own vitality, bringing humans over to the state of Vampirism, and thus they were able to create an army almost overnight who could turn back the tide and wipe out the scourge of the Rakshasa. Of course then, once they'd achieved their victory, the problem for the surviving humans was what to do about the Vampires."

"Oh dear," Kasumi said, "I see how that could be a problem..."

"Yeah," Lenore replied, "A real Catch 22. Without the Vampires, the Rakshasa could visit Earth again and finish what they started the first time around, but if there were too many Vampires in the world...it could go very bad for normal humans. Obviously there needed to be a balance, so the surviving mages created an antidote, a human who got invested with the power needed to fight Vampires...the Slayer."

"The Slayer?" Kasumi asked, "What is that?"

"Hopefully someone you'll never have to mess with," Lenore replied, "Anyway...what I said before about there being different types of Vampires, different tribes who have different types of Vampirism...it's kind of like the old saying...all Vamps may be equal, but some are more equal than others. There's normal Vamps, like me, who are kind-of between alive and dead, but just existing on the fringes...there are outlaws like Dimitri, and then there are rare types like you, who fall on the other side of the spectrum. The type of Vampire you most have to worry about are the ones who act like soulless demons...we call them the Goya..."

"Goya?" Kasumi replied.

"Kind of an ancient word meaning, 'Wild Ones,'" Lenore explained, "They're the nearest equivalent to your Movie-style Vamps...they're actually reincarnated Vampires with the souls of long dead Soul Drinkers. They're not really human...they just take over a body, possess all the memories and some of the personality of their host bodies, and generally behave like bad tempered animals. They come closest to being like Rakshasa...ethereal creatures, not really entirely of this world, but kind of half way out of it. Kill one of them and they crumble up into dust, just like in the movies."

"But you're saying that they're not the usual kind of Vampire?" Kasumi asked.

"Hell no," Lenore replied, "Like with me...one moment I'm human getting off on Doctor Frankenfurter's creature, Rocky...the next thing I know I got this warm spot on my neck, then a funny taste in my mouth, and then I take a nap that lasts for several days...and when I wake up and I've suddenly got this craving for raw liver. Funny thing is I feel perfectly fine, only I notice that I get really sleepy by day and like to sleep in more than usual, and the sun looks real bright to me. Then I try and look myself in the mirror and...well...that's when I start to put it all together. Naturally I freaked out, went through a period of denial, the usual stuff before achieving a kind of quasi-acceptance of my condition."

"So how did you cope?" Kasumi asked, at once identifying with at least some of what this other girl was describing.

"One day at a time...or one Sunset, as the case might be," Lenore explained, "Once I got over the idea that I wasn't some lurking creature of evil, I had to experiment a bit to find out what I could do and what my limits are. It's not like you wake up with a set of instructions in your head...most real Vamps have to take lessons from the older pros, and then some of us never do grasp more than the general basics."

"You mean like training," Kasumi caught on at once.

"Yeah," Lenora nodded, "Training. The first thing you learn is how strong being undead can make you, and that you need to grab things with a lot less force than you're used to using. The older you get the more your power increases, but because we don't feel muscle fatigue, we can ignore the pain threshold that limits the activities of most humans. I can lift five times my weight with just one hand, or clean and jerk the back end of a Volvo. I also heal a lot faster than you can blink, though it still hurts a bit if I get stabbed by something that was formerly living, like wood, bone or some other thing that's basically organic. Silver hurts like hell, let me tell you, and garlic burns my eyes like tear gas. I've got really acute senses of smell and hearing, I can see in the dark and make out heat patterns. As long as my central nervous system remains intact, I won't die from conventional injuries, and effectively I'm pretty much near immortal. That's just the basic stuff, though...there's also the things you can learn to do, like move really fast, go semi-invisible, crawl up the side of walls and buildings, or even hang upside down by my ankles when I'm sleeping. Levitation's a trick that took me a while to get a hang of...some come to it easier than others, but the one trick I've never yet managed to do is transformation. I've tried, but that one's a lot tougher than they make it out to be. Of course for you I'll bet these things come second nature."

"Um...well..." Kasumi demurred, "I...think I know how the Levitation part works, but..."

"Don't worry, you'll get the hang of it sooner or later," Lenore reassured her, "I'll help anyway I can, even if this territory technically belongs to her Nibs, the Princess..."

"Princess?" Kasumi blinked.

"Yeah," Lenore replied, "That's what she calls herself, and nobody around here has the guts to challenge her. She's the Master Vampire of this region...a hereditary member of a clan that's very ancient. The rules I just cited don't apply to her...she's a whole different category of Vampire. When you meet her you'll see for yourself, but her real name is..."

"Tadaima!" a friendly voice called out as the front door opened and a female shape stepped onto the veranda, "Kasumi? Are you home?"

"Natsume?" Kasumi brightened, "How nice...Natsume, we have a guest, she says her name is..."

All at once Natsume halted in the act of entering the living room, turned an incredulous look towards Lenore and said, "What...who are you?"

"Huh?" Lenore blinked, then all at once she shot to her feet and said, "Uh oh..."

"You..." Natsume suddenly had her rug beater in hand and stood in a menacing pose, flashing the wooden implement in the redhead's direction, "What do you want here? Who are you!"

"Natsume-chan?" Kasumi was amazed at the other girl's behavior.

"Great...a Slayer," Lenore backed away towards the open side of the room, seeking escape onto the patio, only to find Natsume moved first to block her exit.

"Natsume-chan?" a tall and very handsome looking man inquired, only partially distracting Lenore, though she was mindful not to take her eyes off the dark haired girl flashing the rug beater in her direction.

"Answer me, you fiend!" Natsume demanded in cold anger, "What do you want with my sister?"

"Sister?" Lenore blinked, shooting a side-glance at Kasumi, "You've got a Slayer for a sister?"

"Oh my," Kasumi averred softly, "Natsume-chan...this is no way for you to treat a guest..."

"Guest?" Natsume bridled, holding her weapon trained on the creature before her, "This...thing which poses herself as human?"

"Hey!" Lenore exclaimed, "I'll have you know I resemble that remark!"

"Natsume," Kasumi spoke the word softly, yet more sharply than was her usual wont, "Behave yourself...this is very rude of you. Put your weapon down right now and please calm down, I'm sure we can explain things if you'd just be patient..."

To Natsume's amazement she found her arm going down of its own volition. Her temper also stabilized as her anger drained away, leaving her feeling somewhat confused and disoriented at her own behavior, "W-What...?"

"My love...are you feeling well?" Tatewaki asked with even more concern than ever.

"I...I can't move my arm," Natsume stared at her own shoulder, then at the Vampire, "What have you done to me, Creature?"

"It wasn't me," Lenore shook her head from side to side.

"Oh my...did I do that?" Kasumi asked in surprise, realizing that she must have commanded Natsume's compliance.

"Yeah," Lenore said with relief in her expression, "I warned you about that...but, under the circumstances, I won't make an issue about it. Good thing she's not a seasoned pro, though, or she'd have been able to resist your suggestion powers. Must have only just Quickened...if she'd followed her reflexes, I'd probably be a grease smear."

"Would someone please explain to me what is going on here?" Tatewaki looked from one party to another before turning his focus towards the redhead, "Miss...?"

"Lenore, Handsome," she smiled back, "Lenore Darkholme...at your service."

"Lenore-san is from America," Kasumi explained, feeling more at ease now that Natsume wasn't being actively aggressive.

"America eh?" Natsume asked with forced calm, "Then why don't you have a suntan?"

"I burn real easy," Lenore explained, "Look, it's obvious we got off on the wrong foot. I'm not here to cause any trouble, or to disturb the Wa of your house, or anything like that. In fact, if my being here is churning up your guts, like I think it is, then I'll leave for now and come back later when it's all right with you guys. Don't bother showing me the exit."

"Are you certain that you will be all right, Lenore-san?" Kasumi asked.

"Oh sure, I'll be just peachy," Lenore turned to Kasumi and said, "Thanks for the delicious tea and ricecakes. You've been an excellent hostess, and I'm grateful that you allowed me to visit your home. Keep in mind what I said and get in touch with me if you have any questions."

"Questions?" Natsume frowned, "About what?"

"I'll get back to you on that, Lady," Lenore replied, then calmly raised the hood of her cape over her face and shoulders before turning and exiting out into the gardens. She was gone before Kasumi could even think of asking her to stay.

"How peculiar," Tatewaki remarked, "There is something about the way she talks...it's almost as though she hardly takes a breath before speaking..."

"Oh..." Kasumi caught herself before she could add the "my" to that statement and instead turned her focus back to her adoptive younger sister, "Natsume-  
chan...would you care to explain your behavior just now, and why you attacked my friend the way you did?"

"I..." Natsume frowned, "I...don't really know...I just felt...a wrongness in my guts, as though something...unnatural were here...against nature...I..." she suddenly widened her eyes as she stared at Kasumi, "Sister...what...are you?"

"Natsume-chan?" Kasumi asked with lifted eyebrows.

"You...you're not dying...you're...not aging either...your Chi...it feels so...different..." Natsume continued staring before blurting out, "There is a hunger in you...it feeds on...life...but...but...it doesn't consume...it gives back..." and then she rolled up her eyes in her head and promptly fainted.

"Natsume-chan!" Tatewaki cried as he caught his fiancée before her body could hit the floor, scooping her up into his arms and supporting her weight as though she were the most delicate of creatures.

"I'll get doctor Tofu," Kasumi at once fell back on her familiar role as the "Big Sister" in the Tendo family, performing a routine as natural as breathing. (Oh my...there's that word again...) she thought to herself as she went to speed-dial a familiar number.

"I knew that I should have insisted that she seek medical aid," Tatewaki fretted as he gently caressed the face of the woman he adored more than life itself, "My love...you are so proud, so brave, so very foolish when it comes to looking out for your own welfare..."

Kasumi paused as she waited for Doctor Tofu to answer the dial tone, her thoughts momentarily straying from the helpless girl being cradled in the arms of a handsome man, wondering if she would seem as sweetly feminine in Kaneda's arms...before she turned her thoughts away to another matter, having caught a faint wiff of a peculiar scent that caused her to realize that Natsume was having her period...and rather early for this time of the month.

Even the faint hint of blood made her mouth unexpectedly water, and the realization that her quite formidable martial-artist sister would not be able to resist her summons should Kasumi ask her for a little...donation...just a sip of warm blood in her mouth, like that Ukyo whom she had tasted in the other dimension. In fact...Tatewaki looked strong and vital too...no doubt his rich fluid would course with life if she were to "sample" him, and surely a gentleman of such breeding would not deny such a courtesy to a lady...?

Kasumi was almost violently startled at the realization of the direction in which her thoughts were taking. Lenore had been right about needing to find an alternative means of satisfying her odd cravings...which put her in mind of one easy solution. A local butcher sometimes saved the drained blood of slaughtered animals for those rare recipes that called for such an ingredient, and if she asked for a fresh sample she was certain that he would not ask too many questions.

Barring that she would need to confide in Doctor Tofu to see what advice he might have to offer. Perhaps he could also explain the cryptic meaning of Natsume's statements regarding Kasumi...or at least serve as a "second opinion" to Lenore's diagnosis. She trusted that the redheaded girl had been entirely on the level...there was just something about the young Vampire which inspired confidence in her word...a genuine humanity and warmth that was very different from the false charms of that awful Dimitri. But even so, it never hurt to check one's facts, especially with someone of Tofu's vast knowledge and experience in things arcane and strange to mortal understanding.

Of course as she thought on this, Tofu himself answered the line, and after a few terse comments on her part, Kasumi was able to get him to understand her without his usual stammer. He promised to come over right away, so Kasumi thanked him and hung up the phone, and only then belatedly remembering a question she had meant to ask of the departed Vampire.

Exactly how did one "get in touch" with the Undead, and a foreigner at that? Was there some sort of embassy number that she could dial, or...did Vampires communicate by other means not yet revealed? So many questions to have to have answered, it was all so very...confusing, and yet somehow Kasumi did not doubt that answers would shortly be forthcoming.

In the meantime she picked up the phone again and placed an order with the butchers, and only then did she trust herself to attend to Natsume herself, feeling reassured that Blood was on the way, and knowing that she could stave off her hunger...at least for a little while longer...

Lenore was careful to keep her face and hands out of direct contact with the sun, more from habit than genuine fear of such contact. It was true that sunlight would not make her burst into flames, as might be the case for a Goya, but her tribal Bloodline was nonetheless "sun-sensitive," and she could get a nasty rash if she were exposed too long to direct sunlight. Since her healing factor was slowed to half in the day, along with the rest of her "natural" abilities, the last thing she wanted was to risk a second-degree sunburn, especially with a Slayer in the area, and who the Hell in the "Cosmic Jest" department upstairs had been the wag who had decided to make a Slayer out of the younger sister of a Master Vampire?

Though born of the Jewish faith, Lenore was a devout Agnostic...not an Atheist, as she would gladly have informed you, since she knew damned well that Gods were real, and Demons likewise. In her opinion "The Man Upstairs" was some kind of indifferent father figure-slash-practical joker, one who liked to pull the strings by permitting things like her to exist while simultaneously insisting on rules and regulations that made the simple act of enjoying worldly pleasures morally forbidden. Worship a clown like that? Not likely! But neither would she side with the Other Guys, the Demon Princes who delighted in the torment and suffering of mortals.

To her all Gods were Tricksters, carnival showmen at best, a few willing to perform parlor tricks to impress the masses, but ultimately not to be trusted. She generally stayed well clear of religious types, and Saints above all others. It just did not pay to mess with that sort of thing, and fanatics tended to make her skin crawl. They were just too bloody certain about things that were counter-intuitive, suckers for a good con job and any revivalist Bible Thumper who had a good spiel and could talk up a lot of nonsense. To her people were simply people, some good, some bad, mostly in the middle between polar extremes, and generally she liked people (and not just as a condiment to her diet). She'd seen too much of the world in her three-and-a-half decades of existence (half living, the other half undead) to be taken in by fairy tales and Madison Avenue sales pitches. Neither was she truly a Cynic since those types were mostly failed idealists who hid their disappointment at life behind the veneer of philosophical condescension.

No, Lenore liked people because they WERE people, and given a choice about where to side on any issue, she definitely was a "People Lover," a Humanist at heart, indifferent to the polar extremes of absolute right and wrong, and she would challenge anyone to prove to her that there was any marked difference between the devotees of one extreme side or the other.

But this Kasumi...there was something different about her. She was...nice...nice in a way that wasn't mindlessly naïve or coached in false idealism, or even a blind expectation of humanity living up to their collective good points. She was nice because that was how she wanted to be, unpretentious and unselfconscious, good hearted and kind without any need for her kindness to be reciprocated.

Something about this Daywalker almost made Lenore want to protect her, to shield her against the world, and against the likes of a foul spirit like Dimitri. Lenore was no crusader and hardly considered herself exceptionally brave or heroic, though she could hold her own in a fight if it came down to it, and would stand up for herself if challenged. Throwing her life away in a cause just did not suit her lifestyle, yet she sensed that she would gladly put herself in harm's way if it meant protecting Kasumi from whatever threatened her peace and safety.

So it was that Lenore was thinking these thoughts when a powerful hand went around her neck, and all at once she was wrestled back and slammed into a wall beside the gate to the Tendo property. Lenore gave a sharp gasp and was about to make an issue of it when she heard a very sharp command say, "Stand still or I will hurt you."

Lenore froze where she was, feeling the power of that voice and knowing the authority of the other person's tone of command could only signify one thing, to which she gasped, "Oshit...Princess?"

"Miyu will do," said a deceptively slender and youngish-seeming girl (who was easily many times Lenore's senior in the age department!) in a frilly light outfit, as unconcerned about her full exposure to the bright sunlight as any other supposedly "normal" seeming person, "What do you know about this place and the people who dwell here?"

Lenore licked her lips and knew that it was impossible for her to either refuse or lie to this Princess of the Chinese-Japanese line of Shiina-spawned Vampires, whose powers so far dwarfed her own Tribe's abilities that they might just as well have been two entirely different sub-species. Even so, Lenore managed to work up enough well power to say, "Don't hurt them...they're not to blame for what happened."

"So I have gathered, from what little I've been able to discern about Dimitri's get," Miyu replied in a silky tone of voice, "One day there will be an accounting between us for his daring to bring his battles into my Territory...but I asked you a question, Loire...what do you know about the people who dwell here?"

"The Tendo's?" if Lenore could have visibly perspired, she would have done so at that moment, "They're a family devoted to a traditional martial arts style...a variation of Kempo, called the Musubetsu Kakuto Ryu..."

"This much I already know," Miyu's grip tightened on Lenore's collar, "What else do you know about them?"

"If it's about Kasumi, the oldest of the Tendo daughters," Lenore replied, "Then you've got nothing to worry about...she doesn't carry Dimitri's taint...she's clean of his influence..."

"Are you resisting me?" Miyu asked with a slight frown, "You are protecting her. You cannot lie to one of my kind. You are truly certain that she does not bear the taint of the Dark within her?"

"She's...different," Lenore replied, "I can't really explain it...she's a Daywalker..."

"A Daywalker?" Miyu inclined her head, "How intriguing."

"She also doesn't know much about her own potential," Lenore explained, "But it's strong...very strong. I was sent here to help guide her..."

"Sent by who?" Miyu asked, "The Council?"

"No," Lenore replied, "By Frank. The Tendos are under his protection."

"Frank you say?" suddenly Miyu let Lenore go, allowing the other to gasp as though needing breath, having felt herself come so close to virtual extinction, "Well now...that is different. You are his emissary?"

"More like an old friend," Lenore felt the bruises around her collar slowly start to heal themselves so that the red marks soon faded, even as she amended, "Well...okay, for him I'm not really that old a friend, but he's done me a few favors, and so I naturally felt I owed him..."

"I see that you do not manifest the true Darkness within you," Miyu remarked, "The Dark you have is balanced with the Light. Very well then, what can you tell me about the other?"

"The other?" Lenore blinked, "Oh...uh...you mean the new Slayer?"

"Exactly," Miyu smiled in a non-committal manner.

"Adopted sister," Lenore explained, "Her name is Tendo Natsume...she has a young kid sister named Kurumi somewhere about, possibly with her new boyfriend. First class martial artist, can manifest a cold attack that will freeze you like ice. She also doesn't understand her real potential yet, but she has the mark, I'm willing to bet that. Don't know how powerful she might be...I think she only just quickened."

"I know," Miyu replied, "I was there when it happened, I felt it."

"You...knew she was about to quicken into a Slayer?" Lenore asked with rounded eyes.

"I have my ways," Miyu replied without elaboration, "So...where there is a slayer, there must also be a Watcher...but who is to become her watcher? By tradition it ought to be someone local..."

"Excuse me, Ladies," a polite gentleman addressed them, causing both Vampires to turn around in order to see a handsome man whose long brown hair was done up in a pony tail, the glasses he wore somehow belying a somewhat youthful appearance. He was dressed in a martial arts gi and had a leather bag in one hand, and as he made his way to the front gate he said, "Are you here to see the Tendos? Because I'm afraid it isn't proper for you to be standing out like this and..."

"We were just leaving," Miyu smiled pleasantly at the man, "Ah...excuse me for asking...but are you a Doctor?"

"Why, yes I am," he replied, "My name is Tofu-Sensei, and I'm the Tendo family physician."

"How interesting," Miyu purred as she watched the man move through the gates, heading towards the house in some haste, which prompted the Vampire Princess to remark, "I sense the heavy hand of the Fates in this. At the very least, it is awfully...coincidental."

"Huh?" Lenore blinked, "You don't mean that he's...?"

"He has the look of a Watcher," Miyu replied, "I've seen many of his kind come and go...and yet how odd that he should be the family physician to both a Master Vampire-turned-Daywalker and the latest incarnation of the Slayer."

"Uh...yeah...that does sound pretty coincidental," Lenore admitted.

Miyu turned back to her and said, "In the first I would rather be consulted before one of your Tribe sets foot in my territory...but I won't make an issue of it...this time."

"Well...hey," Lenore tried to sound reasonable, "I'd have given you a call, but...nobody seemed able to find your number. Ever think of carrying a cell phone?"

"Those noisy things?" Miyu sniffed, "I have better ways of being contacted. Very well, I give you my permission to operate within this zone, since you have obviously already established a trust with the new Vampire. Continue as you were, but I do expect to hear regular reports on her condition. I confess that I am curious to see what all she is capable of becoming...and this new Slayer as well, assuming they don't wind up battling each other. It would be so tedious if I should have to step in myself and deal with this if it becomes a genuine...situation..."

"I copy you, Princess," Lenore grimly nodded, "And I won't forget...just as long as no harm comes to Kasumi. Frank...wouldn't like it."

"No indeed," Miyu remarked, "On that we are both agreed. I will keep watch just in case Dimitri or one of the others tries to do anything to take advantage of these...rookies...and you can report to Frank that I will respect his claims...so long as this does not cause any trouble for this district."

"God forbid it," Lenore nodded, "Um...look, I'll be staying in the shadows a lot, but if you need to contact me..."

"Don't worry," the girl said before she leaped into the air and vanished into bright sunlight as though she were a fading mist, her voice remaining behind long enough to add, "...I will find you...when I have the need for conversation..."

"Terrific," Lenore swallowed, then muttered under her breath, "I need a drink real bad...wonder if they've got a Pub anywhere in this district..."

Some horrors, after all, were beyond even the ability of even the undead to cope without a few "stiff ones" under her belt, so without further adieu, the redheaded Vampire went off in search of a good wino who wouldn't mind making a small "donation."

It was definitely turning out to be One Of Those Days for the denizens of Nerima...

Part One-Hundred-Eight.

(Set during and slightly after the time of the events recorded in the side-story titled "Honeymoon Hentai")

"Well, Mrs. Saotome?" their host graciously asked, "I trust your meal was to your satisfaction?"

"Oh yeah," Nabiki replied as she glanced at their dark-eyed, black-haired host of indeterminate age, setting down her napkin before adding, "Your cooks are almost as good as my sister, Kasumi. Believe me, her sukiyaki dishes are something to die for."

"I'll try and keep that in mind," said the other man at the far end of the table, big, tall and formidable looking with long hair done up in a pony tail, studying the rest of the guests at the table with a casual scrutiny that many there found quite unnerving.

Their host smiled at the larger man and said, "Frank tells me that you are quite the overachiever yourself at this age, Mrs. Saotome. From accounts I've hear you all but run the high school that you attend, yet rather than perpetuate the criminal activities that you displaced you have chosen to organize things along a more constructive and enlightened model."

"I do what I can," Nabiki shrugged, glancing over at her husband before saying, "My friends help out a lot, but I'd hardly agree that I'm running everything at my school, just the student activities. We still tangle every now and then with our principal..."

"My father," Kodachi elaborated, "A very troubled man to be certain, but my brother and I do as best we can to love him..."

"Quite all right, Ms. Kuno," the refined Italian-accented gentleman sitting at the head of the table replied with a casual hand gesture, "Personal family business need not be discussed if you feel in any way uncomfortable on that subject. As you are my guests upon this vessel, it is only fair that we speak as casual as circumstances permit us, but you are under no obligation to explain anything. I merely ask out of honest curiosity and with the utmost politeness."

"No, you are quite within your rights to know the nature of my family's deepest shame," Kodachi replied, "Especially in light of the fact that I contributed to it so heavily for a time, indulging in rose extracts, even making my own brother into an addict," she sighed, "There are time I almost regret losing the comfortable blanket of madness that sheltered me from having to realize just how far I had fallen. But be assured that I am a different person now and that I seek to make amends for my numerous former transgressions."

"Kodachi-chan," Akane put a hand on the arm of her closest friend, while Keiko held the Black Rose's other hand and smiled at her in a reassuring manner. The others at the table politely pretended to ignore them, though Ranma gave the former object of his affections a wistful glance, tinged with amusement and regret, which same emotion was recognized by the immediate members of his own close family circle.

"Shampoo agree that Rose girl much easier to like now that she no longer so crazy," Shampoo spoke aloud before turning an affectionate glance towards her own wife, "Is much that happen lately that we all think better left unsaid. When we on Cousin Lanocane's boat we not behave like normal folk, and maybe is best we let it go as things that no need to be spoken."

"Sorry to disagree with you, Sugar," Ukyo spoke up, "But it happened, and some of us now carry the result of those shenanigans we all went a little wild with."

"It's still going to take us quite a while coming to terms about that," Perfume agreed, "I mean...Nabiki is pregnant, and that's not even the wildest part of what happened."

"Oh yeah," Nabiki sniffed, "Lao must be laughing up her nonexistent sleeves about now. Still...it is kind of nice to know that Ranma and me will have a little nipper of our own to give our Lilac and Fragrance a run for their pocket money."

"Not to mention our own Eileen," Beatrice spoke up from where she was taking turns cradling her child by Alison in her arms, still growing accustomed to the weight of new life that had been shared between them.

"Yeah," Alison herself glanced around the table and said, "Lemme see if I can get this straight. Nabs and Ranma-kun have a kid on the way, Ucchan isn't pregnant right now, but Shampoo is, and so are Akane and Kodachi?"

"So who's the father of those last two?" Ukyo smiled slyly, "Ryoga-kun?"

Ryoga coughed out the bread that he had just been chewing upon, taking several moments to sputter and choke before Akane thumped him on the back a few times to help clear him, after which pause their host nodded and continued.

"Further tests may be needed to establish this, but yes," the mysterious man named Magnus replied, "I do believe the four of you are expecting, though paternity can be determined at a later point. Oh, and Mrs. Saotome...good luck on maintaining your feminine state for the duration. If you should have any need for medical assistance, though, do not hesitate to call upon my services. I can recommend the finest medical staff in all of Japan and place them at your disposal with all expenses covered compliments of Richardson Industries."

"Ah...yeah?" Nabiki asked rather hesitantly, "And...what prompts you to offer us this?"

"Human generosity and a sincere interest in your welfare," the dark-eyed man replied, "Not that I blame you for your understandable skepticism and reluctance to accept my offer at face value, seeing as you know little about me other than rumors, old stories and Frank's recommendation. I assure you, though, that there would be no strings attached to my assistance. I fund many operations the world over in hopes that the seeds I plant will bear fruit in due course."

"Like...how immediate?" Nabiki asked.

"I tend to think in very long terms, Mrs. Saotome," Magnus assured her, "Time means little object for me. Generations come and go, but what matters is the here and now of our existence. Since I have the means to be of assistance to you and your loved ones nothing else would give me more pleasure, and I have learned that, in most such affairs, virtue is indeed its own reward. You would understand this if you had seen as much of life as I have."

"Do tell," Nabiki mused as she sipped from her wineglass, "And, just for the record, how much time are we talking about here? I mean...you don't look like an Amazon or a wizened up old gnome, but I take it you're older than you look?"

"Much older," the other man replied, "In point of fact, I have not aged a day since I became a Guardian of the Elements and a master of all sciences, but if you wish to know the date of my birth as a token of my good faith, then you may know that I was born in the year of our lord 1503, August the 4th of same at the third hour of morning."

This time it was Nabiki's turn to spit out the wine that she had been sipping, prompting Ranma to provide her with a few back-thumps before he turned and asked in her place, "You're what?"

"Five hundred years old?" Perfume blinked.

"'Scuse me for saying this, Sugar, but you don't exactly look it," Ukyo noted.

"You don't even look fifty," Ryoga ventured.

"What's the big deal about five hundred?" Frank asked, "I'm two centuries old myself, and I've known guys old enough to call Julius Caesar a JD. Just 'cause Magnus here don't age and can't be killed ain't nothing to get all that excited about."

"Cannot be killed?" Kodachi blinked before saying, "Um...well...we all must bear our burden..."

The dark haired man in the refined evening wear just smiled and placed a knife point-up on the table, then calmly set the palm of his right hand directly over the point and pushed down with some exertion, causing it to bend and double. He then raised his palm and snowed that it was essentially undamaged, not even bearing a dimple in the center.

"Big deal," Alison sniffed, "My dad can do that."

"Indeed he can," Magnus smiled as he picked up the bent silver knife and straightened it out again, then rubbed his fingers over the bent point until it was smooth to the touch, and without applying much force to the effort.

"Whoah," Akane said as Magnus held out the knife for their inspection, passing it along from hand-to-hand until it arrived at Nabiki, who studied it critically and held it up to the light as though inspecting the flaws of a diamond.

"Now that's different," Keiko offered after taking her turn inspecting the now-  
flawless object.

"I am a Guardian of the Elements," Magnus explained, "Through the power of Alchemy and the will of the Powers I am Immortal and cannot die. My name birth name is Magnus Castiglione, born in Venice during the time of the Renaissance and taught the thaumaturgical arts by my more famous Uncle Baltesar, the one who wrote the Book of the Courtier. Through a pact that I made with the Powers that Be I was granted my peculiar gifts of a long life and a commanding place in the war between the forces of light and darkness, but that is hardly germane to the matter at hand. My life history is but incidental to the moment, I merely state my true identity so that you may know that I am dealing in good faith. You, on the other hand, are like an open book to my people and my organization. Though you are effectively amateurs, your record of accomplishments to date have been quite impressive."

"Indeed?" Beatrice remarked, "How..."

"Oh, for kami's sakes, Beiko," Alison snapped, "Whatever you're gonna say next, don't say it's fascinating."

"No," Beatrice replied, "But I do find it...interesting."

Allison looked skyward.

"So much for laying our cards out on the table," Nabiki said as she leaned back in her chair, "So why reveal this to us? And what have you to gain by coming out this much into the open?"

"What I have said is known to those who have a need to know with whom they are dealing," Magnus replied, "No one else would believe you if you were to repeat this story to outsiders, and my enemies, of which there are quite a few, already know what they need to know about me. Therefore I risk nothing by being frank with you, save that you might yourselves find it difficult to believe my story."

"Well, I'm not saying that I don't believe it," Nabiki replied, "After all, with what we've been through, it'd be stupid to dismiss it out of hand. But you've only answered half my question..."

"And you have answered it for me," Magnus countered, "You have a mind like a steel trap, Mrs. Saotome, and a skill at deduction that is remarkable for a person of your tender years. I have seen a great many gifted people come and go in my time, far more than you could ever seriously credit, and I have learned the hard way that when talent comes along you don't neglect it. Nurturing seeds take time and patience, and I am fortunate to have both in great supply. I do not mean to imply that you need or should necessarily accept my offer of support, but I do hope that you will consider it as one option out of many for your future."

"Thanks," Nabiki nodded slowly, "I'll consider it."

"But for now you prefer to work by your own means," Magnus smiled again, a slight curling of his lips around the edges that implied that he was not a man who smiled too often, "I respect your independence, even as I admire the way that you and your loved ones have bonded together for a common purpose. Let us leave the subject of the future for now and return to matters of the present, such as your interrupted honeymoon and the reservations that await you in Sydney, where I believe we shall be arriving within the hour."

"What?" Ukyo sat upright, "Are you serious?"

"We were hundreds of miles away from Australia to the best of my estimation," Beatrice remarked, "Are you suggesting that this marvelous submarine of yours can cover such a distance in a matter of hours?"

"The Nautilus is a very unique and advanced model, Ms. Daitokuji," Magnus replied, "It employs principles of science quite a bit ahead of conventional submarine technology..."

"Got a cruise speed of around eighty knots standard," Frank remarked, "It can do twice that at full tilt, and retain stealth mode on sonar the whole way."

"But how is such a thing accomplished?" Kodachi marveled.

"A sub that moves a hundred miles an hour underwater?" Keiko averred, "Even Captain Lao never could accomplish something like that."

"Magnetic induction," Frank explained, "The hull's electrified with an ionic field that polarizes water molecules, opening a corridor directly ahead of the tub and shuffling those particles to the rear with almost zero friction. Pretty much the same principle that works on a pneumatic shuttle tube, only using a different medium than air. In effect we just slide through the ocean with suction pulling us forward and induction pushing to the rear..."

"I understand now," Beatrice said excitedly, "A system such as this would not require a conventional propeller, and so it would turn using ion flow instead of aileron planes, and no cavitation to give away its presence to passive sonar..."

"Now you've gone and done it," Alison rolled her eyes, "She's gonna be like that all night, won't get a lick of sense out of her if it's under five syllables. Might as well sleep on the couch tonight instead of listening to her chatter..."

"I'm not really that bad...am I, Aiko?" Beatrice turned to her wife with a questioning expression.

"Oh no," Alison replied as she rolled her eyes, "I didn't just marry a walking encyclopedia who can turn a box of Kleenex into a death ray in under half an hour, and I actually do understand what you're talking about at least a third of the time, and why was it I married you again and let you put this kid into my belly?"

Beatrice leaned forward and smiled, "Because you're crazy about me and can't bear the thought of living the rest of your life without the co-mother of your child at your side, and you know I'd be just as lost without you."

"Darn," Alison replied as their noses were almost touching, "I knew there had to be a reason..."

"May I construe from your description that this vessel is also powered by an energy source more advanced than conventional nuclear reactors?"

"On principle I am against using a limited resource to provide fuel for transportation," Magnus replied, "Plutonium is a messy, dirty, dangerous substance to muck around with in a fission reactor. I learned that mistake the hard way and I do my best not to repeat my errors..."

"Here it comes," Frank rolled his eyes as though listening to a spiel he had heard recited over and over.

"Ahem," Magnus glanced at his larger compatriot then said two words in lieu of the lengthy explanation he had been about to deliver a moment before, "Cold fusion."

"You mean...that's possible?" Nabiki wondered.

"Not only possible but practical," Frank replied, "A nearly infinite clean-  
burning fuel source whose main bi-product is irradiated lithium and helium, nearly inexhaustible and can run for mere pennies when compared to conventional fuel sources."

"But...how is it that such a technology isn't available to the public at large?" Ryoga asked in a surprisingly practical tone of voice.

"Because the technology is surprisingly simple to duplicate, once you understand the scientific principles involved," Magnus replied, "And an energy source that can be used peacefully to heat homes and run vehicles could also be employed to less favorable ends...far more destructive."

"Meaning you harbor this knowledge to yourself rather than disseminate it to the public at large as a means of preventing it from being abused," Beatrice clarified, "But who makes you the fit judge of what should and should not be allowed in the hands of others?"

"The benefits of hindsight and experience, Ms. Daitokuji," Magnus replied, "When Alfred Nobel found the means of refining a better explosive he could not have visualized the truly lethal purposes to which his discovery would eventually be turned. When Albert Einstein submitted his theories on Special and General Relativity, could he have visualized Hiroshima and Nagasaki as paying the penalty for his genius?"

"And of course you knew them both personally, right?" Nabiki asked blandly.

"Not as well as I would have liked," Magnus replied, "But then again, I have been a very busy man in my time and I do try to get around. I would have warned both men that there are always unintended consequences to every discovery, such as the private notes of DaVinci and the ways in which his own remarkable foresight might have turned to dire purposes had his voluminous notes upon warfare been accepted by the ruling princes of my Country. As bloody as European history was for us, it could have been truly horrific had men of my day possessed the weapons of war that are so common in the present."

"Actually, the idea is to make advanced technology available to the public at large once things quiet down enough and wars become much less common," Frank explained, "That's why Delphi was created, a secret society dedicated to the advancement of humanity with Magnus here as its nominal head, though how you can lead an outfit as anarchistic and Libertarian as this is beyond my understanding."

"Delphi?" Ranma asked with an arched eyebrow.

"Named for the legendary holy site dedicated to Apollo," Kodachi reasoned, "Where an Oracle was said to live atop a tripod situated over rift in the Earth through which a spirit called the Python was said to commune with travelers seeking knowledge."

"Quite correct, Ms. Kuno," Magnus noted, "Only my outfit is a very loose association of independent groups dedicated to the preservation and advancement of knowledge. We seek to influence the world through subtle, beneficial outlets, sometimes by opening channels for communication between those who are unable to converse through other means, sometimes by giving history itself a nudge on the path of democracy and individual liberty. But we do not seek to rule or oppress...that is the path chosen by our enemies, those who would enslave humankind and impose a strict code of regimentation upon all of human behavior."

"Nice sales pitch," Nabiki said, "But so far I don't see the bottom line to this. You want to help my family and me? Try explaining how much you really do know about us."

"If, by that, you mean to suggest that we have been keeping an eye upon you and your loved ones, then you would be correct," Magnus revealed, "Nor are we the only ones doing so. Powerful assets such as you invariably attract the attention of a great many people, and not all of them wish you well, Mrs. Saotome. In point of fact, that is the reason why Frank here has assigned someone to keep watch over your house in case Dimitri Maximoff makes another attempt upon your family, most especially your older sister."

"Kasumi?" Nabiki turned towards the larger man sitting at the table, "What do you know about her?"

"Plenty," Frank replied, nodding towards Beatrice, "For example, and your friend here can back me up on this, I happen to know that her medical condition has been wavering ever since Donovan Bane cast that exorcism spell to attempt to free her from her Vampirism. Lately she's been showing signs of relapsing, so I had one of my people stop by to initiate contact, give her some helpful advice, maybe even determine if her condition is stable or if there might be more complications."

"Complications?" Ranma sat upright, "Kasumi?"

"Don't get your drawers in a bunch, Kid," Frank gruffly sniffed, "Could be we're worrying over nothing and your adopted Big Sis could just be having her time of the month. Somebody goes through the kind of ordeal she had, it's bound to leave a few odd side-effects, in fact..."

A beeping sound startled everyone, sounding like a merry chirruping noise that caused even the craggy-faced Frank to glance upward in mild annoyance before glancing across the table at Magnus, "Thought you were gonna have that thing fixed?"

"My apologies," Magnus spoke up, "Yes, Captain?"

"Excellency," came the voice of Captain Janice Land as an image appeared in mid-  
air over the dining room table, "My apologies for interrupting your meal, but I thought that you should know that Agent Lenore has just reported in and wishes to notify Doctor Steinberg about an important development. Shall I put her through?"

"Lenore?" the burly giant sat upright in his seat.

"By all means," Magnus acknowledged, and them a moment later the blonde sub commander's lovely features were replaced by those of a redheaded stranger, a young girl with a long face and ruby colored eyes whose features were remarkably hawk-like, and when she spoke Nabiki could have sworn that she saw fangs showing from her mouth.

"Boss," this scarlet-haired youngster (for Nabiki had trouble believing that the girl could be much older than she herself was) began without preamble, "Gotta big news flash on that case you wanted me to check out. You ready for this?"

"Go ahead," Frank responded.

"Well," the girl licked unusually tinted pink lips and said nervously, "You were right to be concerned, but it's worse than you believe out here. That girl, Kasumi Tendo? Well...guess what? She's a Daywalker, and more than that, a full Master."

Frank swore under his breath before saying, "You're sure about that?"

"Oh yeah," the redhead shuddered, "I spent an hour in her presence and I could feel the power lurking inside her. She doesn't have any idea of what her new potential is, but it's off the scale, probably a hell of a lot stronger even than Dimitri."

"Kasumi?" Nabiki blanched.

"Uh..." the redhead glanced sideways and said, "Hi...whoever you are. Anyway, as I was saying, I talked with Kasumi and...well...she's a pretty nice person, and I got to liking her almost instinctively. I think it's more than the usual glamour a Master Vamp tends to cast on low-level Loire Vamp like me..."

"Vamp?" Akane said with growing disquiet.

"...And, well...it's kinda hard to describe," Lenore continued, "But I felt like I wanted to protect her, y'know, cuddle up in her arms and shield her from the world and all that. Weird. Well, anyway, like I said, we got to talking and I gave her the standard Intro to Vampirism speech 101, when all of a sudden, out of the blue, one of her sisters shows up and...Boss, you're never gonna believe this, but she's a Slayer!"

"Say what?" Frank nearly lurched out of his seat, a gesture that Nabiki came close to copying as she stared in stunned disbelief at the holographic image.

"Yeah, my thoughts exactly," Lenore replied, "A novice Vamp living in the same house with a neophyte Slayer, I mean, what are the odds? Of course, being a Daywalker, Kasumi Tendo doesn't evidence many of the negative signs of being a Vamp, but unless Donovan really screwed up this time, all his spell managed to do was sever the link between her and Dimitri. She still needs blood to exist, just not as much as I do, and she's only slightly allergic to garlic, silver and crosses."

"Indeed," Magnus joined in on this conversation, leaning on his elbows as he studied the image of the redheaded vampire, "This is most ominous. And what can you tell us about the Slayer?"

"You mean aside from the cramps and the sudden urge to want to kill me on sight?" Lenore answered, "Not much. I got the heck out of dodge right after she showed up, but I think I did catch her name...Natsuki, Natsami, something like that..."

"Natsume?" Nabiki exchanged a startled glance with Akane.

"Yeah, that's the one," Lenore snapped her fingers, "Don't think she has any idea who and what she is, though, so she must have only just now gone active, lucky me. Must mean another Slayer on some other part of the world just bit it, poor schmuck. Of course this really complicates things to hell for me since you know how these Newbie Slayers can be, all ready to kill anything supernatural on sight and all that..."

"Weird," Frank frowned, "Far as I knew there's only two Slayers currently active in the world, and both of 'em are living in sunny old California. Haven't heard about either of 'em kicking off yet...uh...I mean lately, though you never know with their kinda lifestyle..."

"Hey, well, used to be we only had one of them at a time to have to put up with," Lenore shrugged, "Takes a while to break 'em of the notion that all Vamps are inherently evil, like those Goya Vamps they usually have to deal with. This one may be new to the job, but I get nervous just thinking about being around here, so maybe you'd better assign another agent for this gig..."

"Wish I could," Frank said, "But we're stretched thin as it is, being the season of the Apocalypse and all that. You'll just have to hang tight and do your best to stay out of trouble, and I'll try and get on it myself just as soon as I can get back to the office."

"Okay Boss," Lenore replied, "But there's something else you gotta know. The Princess, remember her?"

The big man blinked, "Miyu?"

"The one and only," Lenore nodded, "Had a run in with her just outside the Tendo compound, and she's definitely gotten interested in this case, meaning she's had her eye on Kasumi probably almost as long as we have. I was...ah..." she coughed politely, "...persuaded to make a little confession to her about what she's so far only suspected, and that could spell real trouble for Kasumi, depending on whether or not the Princess thinks Nerima's big enough for two Masters."

"Oh, wonderful," Frank snorted and rolled his eyes, "This case just keeps getting better and better..."

"Wait a minute," Nabiki shot to her feet this time and rested her knuckles on the table, "Time out! Hold the fort here! What in the hell are you two going on about my sisters?"

"Your...sisters?" Lenore roved her glance to take in Nabiki and the others.

"I'm Tendo Nabiki," she said, "And who the hell are you?"

"Oh...ah...that Tendo Nabiki?" Lenore nervously responded, "Er...right. The one who took Dimitri down with a Ki attack...swell. Pleased to meet you."

"Agent Lenore is a Loire Vampire," Magnus calmly explained, "Of a different tribe and nature from the one who attacked your family a while back, Mrs. Saotome."

"Thanks for the heads up, but I already got that," Nabiki growled before frowning at Lenore, "Just what the heck do you mean by saying my sister's a Vampire? And what's a Daywalker anyway?"

"Ah..." Lenore visibly leaned back as though her holographic image was being threatened, "That's...kinda complicated, really. It means she can walk in full sunlight during the day with no ill effects, she's a lot stronger than a normal person and she even breathes...a bit...and she's got the full range of Vampiric abilities with almost none of our weaknesses, other than the standard bloodthirst. Doesn't mean she's changed in any other way, though. She's got a Soul and everything, I mean...it's only the Nosferatu and Goyas who you usually got to look out for..."

"Oneechan...is a vampire?" Ranma asked in softly spoken dismay.

"How horrible," Kodachi spoke up, "That such a genuinely nice person as Kasumi should be accursed in such a manner..."

"Well," Keiko shrugged, "Actually, not all Vamps are pure evil...in fact, most of 'em aren't evil at all. I mean, if they were, then they'd go on a rampage of bloodlust and get hounded to extinction by the mortals, which is why most of them prefer to keep a low profile..."

"How the heck do you know that?" Alison asked.

"Ah...well..." Keiko shrugged, "I've known other vampires. I mean...back when I belonged to Captain Lao, we'd sometimes have business dealings..."

"Business dealings?" Akane blinked, "You've gotta be kidding!"

"What kind of business?" Ryoga asked.

"The kind that is best reserved for another time," Beatrice spoke up, "This is very dire news indeed, and yet I regret to say, not wholly unexpected."

"Say what?" Nabiki rounded upon the silver-haired girl genius.

"I have been observing Kasumi for some time, noting a decided lack of pigmentation and definite signs of anemia," Beatrice explained, "I prescribed for her a formula that I helped devise with Tofu-Sensei to keep her condition in check, and I was planning on informing you about this when...um...circumstances prompted me to forget all about it until now. Sorry."

"Sorry?" Nabiki blandly repeated, "You mean you've been watching my older sister start to behave like a vampire and you just neglected to tell me, like you neglected to ask about implanting those nano-probes of your into my body?"

"Hey, back off!" Alison started to rise from her chair when Beatrice laid a restraining hand upon her wife's wrist.

"No, Aiko," Beatrice said sadly, "Nabiki is right to upbraid me. It was thoughtless of me to neglect to inform her at once of my suspicions. I simply did not see the need to intrude upon the happy occasion of your marriage to Ranma-kun and the others, for which I am humbly sorry, my good friend. I fear that I have failed you when I ought to have given you fair warning."

"Well," Nabiki turned away, only partially mollified by this, "Okay, but that doesn't explain why Kasumi turned back into a vampire. I thought your guy was supposed to cure her of that?"

"I thought so too," Frank shrugged, "I don't really understand it. Donovan's one of the most powerful exorcists on the planet. About the only reason I can think of for Kasumi reverting is if she drank some blood while she was under Dimitri's influence..."

"You mean," Ryoga hesitated, "She might have bitten one of us?"

"That's weird," Akane glanced around, "I don't remember getting bitten, do you, Ranma?"

"No," Ranma shrugged, glancing at the other members of their group around the table, "Anybody?"

"Sure can't remember a thing like that happening, Sugar," Ukyo shrugged.

"I would have definitely felt it if I had been the one bitten," Perfume noted.

"Aiyaa," Shampoo said, "This one no remember such a thing, do you, Airen?"

"I'd like to think I'd remember a thing like that," Nabiki shuddered a bit, "I mean, I know that Kasumi's got this weird...well...crush on my male half, but I haven't noticed any strange bite marks on my person...um...at least besides the ones some of you guys have been putting there..."

"Well, don't look at me," Alison folded her arms over her chest, "I got bit once and that was enough, and the only other Vamp in my life is Beiko."

"You say the sweetest things sometimes, Aiko-chan," Beatrice smiled fondly.

"Um...okay," Lenore spoke up once again, "So, anyhow...that's my report, and I just wanted to make sure you heard it from me directly. I'm gonna catch some shut-eye then stop by the Tendo place later, after sunset, to see how Kasumi is doing, and to find out what that Slayer Sis of hers is doing. A Slayer and a Master Vamp sharing the same quarters...what's the world coming to, I tell you?"

"Um...well...Natsume is adopted," Akane lamely offered before glancing at Nabiki, who just glanced back before giving a harder look at Lenore, who fidgeted slightly under her regard.

"If anything bad happens to either of my sisters," Nabiki said flatly, "I'm holding you responsible. You got that?"

"Um...sure...no prob," Lenore replied, "Any special requests from you, Boss man?"

"Just keep on your toes and stay alert for anything," Frank directed, "And for the love of Mike, keep away from the Slayer. Last thing I need right now is to have to get you resurrected...again."

"Oh, sure, you know me, Boss," Lenore nervously chuckled, "The original bad penny, keep turning up when you least expect it. Lenore out."

The holographic image faded, then Ranma looked up at his wife and said, "So...what's the call, Nabiki? Do we call the honeymoon short and go back there to find out what's up?"

"You're kidding, right?" Ukyo answered for him, glancing up at Nabiki, "We're going back home ASAP to get to the bottom of this, right, Nab-chan?"

"After all," Perfume said, "Family is family, and we can't let anything bad happen to either Natsume or Kasumi."

"Aiyaa, is true," Shampoo agreed, "Airen, we go back now and find out what happen to sisters."

"You guys," Nabiki smiled fondly at her co-wives and husband, "You're the best Airen any woman could have ever asked for, but there's no reason for the whole gang to go stomping off after me. I'll go on my own and get to the bottom of this whole Vampire business."

"What?" Akane reacted, "No way! We're coming along with you, Oneechan! Kasumi and Natsume are my sisters too, you know!"

"This much is true," Kodachi agreed, "We are more than friends here, we are a family, a team, and if one of us suffers, then all of us are affected."

"Besides, you could use our help if there's anything threatening our friends back home," Ryoga insisted.

"My mind's made up, guys," Nabiki turned to regard them, "You're all great fighters, but this calls more for finesse than firepower. No sense making it a full three-ring circus when we don't have to, and you've all been waiting for this vacation for some time now, and it'd be a shame to have to cancel out our plans for Sydney, at least if we don't have to."

"Oh, that's just great," Ukyo huffed, "How do you expect the rest of us to enjoy ourselves if you're out facing all the danger by yourself? And Ranma-kun won't be any fun for partying if he's worrying himself sick over you..."

"Fine," Nabiki said, "Then I'll take Ranchan with me, but the rest of you are going on a vacation, and that's final."

"Excuse me?" Alison sniffed, "Who died and made you the Boss of all Bosses?"

"No Aiko," Beatrice spoke up, "Nabiki is essentially correct that an operation of this sort is best conducted with tact than with tactical strength. I support her move to limit the scope of this affair to just herself and Saotome-kun. Provided that they can clear matters up in a reasonably short interval, they should be winging their way out to join us within-oh, say, forty-two hours, give or take traffic levels at the airports of Tokyo and New Sydney."

"Forty-two, huh?" Nabiki eyed her silver-haired friend, "How do you calculate that?"

"It might take some time to explain my reasoning," Beatrice replied, "But I feel confident that you will conclude matters within that allotted span. After all, your primary objectives are to see to the condition of your sisters and then investigate who else may be interested in their welfare. Perhaps this 'Princess Miyu' character will prove to have some of the answers you will need, and this Lenore will doubtlessly be of some assistance in that regard. At any rate, a day and a half to conclude your business should prove sufficient, and then you can wing your way back to enjoy the rest of us as we sun ourselves in the luxury of our surroundings."

Keiko glanced at Alison and said, "Is she always like this?"

"Naw," Alison replied, "Usually Beiko's a know-it-all, but for her that was positively Spartan."

"Silver-hair think she clever girl," Shampoo huffed, "But what make you think Shampoo let Airen go into danger without her?"

"Please, Honey," Nabiki laid a gentle hand on her wife's shoulder, "You have to think of our children, Lilac and Fragrance. That's why Ukyo and Perfume aren't going. I need to know that you'll be safe in case we run into that Dimitri guy again, and you know he won't hesitate to use innocents as leverage if he thinks it will give him the advantage over me. Besides, I'll fight better knowing you're all safe, and I'm trusting you to look after my sister and the others."

Shampoo scowled but folded her arms and huffed, "Airen no play fair. Very well, Shampoo do what say, but if Airen get hurt because of this, then Shampoo come get you, then she make Bad man suffer very, very bad things!"

"That may work for your wives, Nabiki," Akane frowned, "But why should I stay behind? They're my sisters too!"

"Yes, but you're pregnant, 'Niichan," Nabiki reasoned, "And Ryoga-kun has to look out for you. The same thing goes for Kodachi and Keiko, while Alison's still recovering from giving birth to her daughter..."

"Ah, but I do detect a flaw in your reasoning, my dear friend," Kodachi smiled, "Our condition is not so advanced that we need be treated with delicacy by our respective loved ones, and Keiko-chan is more than capable of looking after the both of you in our absence. I insist that you bring her along with you as you will need someone capable of watching both of your backsides."

"I'm game," Keiko said brightly, "And you know I won't let anything bad happen to either Nab-chan or Ran-chan."

"Then it is decided?" Magnus nodded, "It would take too long to reverse course and head back towards the Main Islands, but I believe that I can supply alternative transportation for you back to Japan. I trust that you will do the honors, Frank?"

"Try holding me back," the big man replied, "This operation looks like it could use my direct supervision, so I'll chaperone the kids and see they keep their noses out of trouble."

"Um...mind if I ask how we're gonna get there?" Ranma asked.

"We fly, kid," Frank replied, already getting up from his end of the table, his head nearly touching the ceiling, "Gotta problem with that?"

"Um...no..." Ranma reluctantly responded.

"Okay then," Nabiki said, nodding to Keiko, "Just watch your own back, and remember, these guys have a thirst for necking."

"So I'll play coy and let them think I'm the jail-bait," Keiko winked, "I'm game, and I've got a better idea what we're going up against than you two."

"One moment before you leave," Beatrice handed Alison their sleeping baby then stood up and said, "Be mindful that there is a spell cast upon you that has temporarily neutralized your Jusenkyo curse. Try not to strain it too badly or I doubt even my nanite symbiotes will be able to indefinitely stave off a possible miscarriage. This is your one chance at being a mother, and I would greatly be depressed if all our hard work on that end were to come to nothing..."

"All our hard work?" Nabiki arched and eyebrow, "Seems to me that I'll be doing most of the work in a few months, but...yeah, I hear where you're coming from, Beiko-chan. I'll try and remember that, even if I'm still sore about you knocking me up with Ranma's kid without asking my permission."

"Hey, been there and done that," Alison shrugged while baring a breast for her softly mewing infant, "And maybe the ends don't justify being mean, but I can't argue with the results, ain't that right, you little nipper?"

"Okay then," Frank nodded to Magnus, "Have the crew get the shuttle ready. We launch immediately and should be in Japan in about an hour."

"In which case I may have to adjust my calculations," Beatrice noted, "But good luck to you all, and good hunting."

"And stay out of trouble if you can manage it, Nabchan," Ukyo urged, "Take care of Ranchan or I'll come after the both of you with a spatula."

"Take care of Fragrance and Lylac while we're out hunting monsters," Ranma urged, raising one arm and showing the ever-flowing tattoos that signified his pact with two powerful elementals, "Don't worry about us, though...somebody tries to hurt Nabchan and I'll have Latisha fry him."

"Be mindful that certain types of Vampires can also be affected by moving water, young Sir," Magnus cautioned as the three teenagers filed out after the burly Frank, "But it is your mind which is the sharpest of all weapons when dealing with the supernatural. Remember that bit of advice and it will serve you well."

"Um...thanks, Sir," Ranma bowed before taking his leave.

Once in the corridor heading for the stairwell Nabiki turned to Frank and said, "Quite a Boss you got there. Almost felt like kissing his ring hand or something..."

"He ain't my Boss," Frank replied, "But I know what you mean. Magnus is kind of like a Godfather of the Elemental and Supernatural beings who work with our organization, but you get used to his Brando act after a while."

"And what organization do you belong to, Big Stuff?" Keiko cheerfully asked.

"Darkstalkers Incorporated, of course," the craggy giant replied, "A subsidiary of my larger organization. Delphi ain't one group, you see, it's kind of more like an alliance of interconnected and loosely related interests that jointly stand united in defending the freedom and self-determination of all terrestrial self-aware beings. That naturally includes those whom society might deem Misfits, Monsters or Beasts, anyone who just wants to live and let live without bothering anybody. I'm kind of like the president of the outfit by default since most Darkstalkers don't believe in any hierarchical structure."

"That's interesting to know," Nabiki said, "A Monster to defend the interests of other Monsters, and opposing the other kind of Monster, the ones who deserve to be called that."

"You got it," Frank nodded, arriving at a special area that had warning signs and visual symbols that one might suppose to be of an instructive nature, "Here we are at the shuttle bay. Prepare to climb aboard and strap in because the shuttle's not equipped as a luxury flight. It's designed to get you there and back with a minimum of fuss and feathers, and without raising too much unwanted attention."

"And who's going to be the pilot for our flight?" Ranma asked.

"You're looking at him," Frank replied as he pressed a hand to a grid and watched as a sealed hatch hissed open, admitting them into a chamber that was partially submerged, and resting in a cradle was an object that looked roughly like a manta ray, large enough to be a flying craft of some sort, but certain small enough that it deserved the word, "compact."

"We're going in that?" even Keiko was dubious about the size of the sleek-  
looking craft.

"Looks ain't everything, Kid," Frank replied as he walked out onto one wing of the craft then knelt down, then touched a panel and caused a hatch to hiss open, revealing the interior cabin, "Step lively and strap in because the take-off's gonna have a kick to it 'cause we'll be fired out of a launch tube by a rail gun to get the lift-speed we'll need with this much payload."

"Rail gun?" Nabiki asked dubiously, "Just how fast does this thing go anyway?"

"In atmosphere, around Mach two or three," Frank replied as he waved to the seats at the middle and rear of the snug-looking cabin, "More than that when it hits sub-orbital, but we won't be traveling that far, just a couple thousand nautical miles. We ought to be over Tokyo before you know it."

"Whoah," Ranma said as he stepped into the cabin and picked a seat in the middle, followed closely by Nabiki, "This thing almost looks like some kind of a space ship..."

"You mean a flying saucer?" Keiko quipped.

"More like a flying half-moon," Nabiki said as she studied the seat a moment before sitting down and strapping herself in with a harness, then watched as the giant Frank took the front seat, then closed the hatch and began pre-flight operations, activating the controls and firing up the engines.

"This is Legion," Frank spoke into a headset that he slipped on as he placed one beefy hand over the joy-stick, "All systems green, awaiting the go to launch. Give me the go just as soon as we surface."

"Launch?" Ranma asked, only to start as they felt the shuttle begin to rise up on elevated platforms, rising out of the water altogether as a tunnel opened up before them with running lights tracing a corridor that opened out for what looked to be a hundred meters before curving upwards.

"Uh oh," Keiko averred, "I just remembered, I'm allergic to flying!"

"Now you think of that?" Nabiki asked as she gripped the arms to her chair and leaned her neck against the headrest.

"Just remember," Frank warned, "You lose your lunch, you clean it up. There's a bag to the side if you need it."

"Thank you," Keiko replied as she hastily fetched one, then unfolded it and got it ready.

Ranma noticed just then that the lights in the tunnel were coming on like concentric rings strobing slowly until they were almost at the front of their ship, and he asked, "What're are they doing...?"

The next thing he knew Frank depressed a stud and pressed the joystick forward, and all at once their sleek black craft lurched forward, shooting down the tunnel with increasing velocity as Nabiki and the others instinctively held on for dear life as the G-forces kicked in and they shot out the end of the tube into blue sky that opened up before them, the sudden splash of sunlight dazzling their eyes as they shot like an arrow into the heavens...

Part One-Hundred-Nine.

(Set during and slightly after the time of the events recorded in the side-story titled "Honeymoon Hentai")

"Doctor Tofu-Sensei...how good of you to come on such short notice," Tatewaki Kuno said by way of greeting as he looked up from where he knelt over the prone body of Natsume.

"Well then, what seems to be the problem?" Tofu asked, deliberately avoiding looking directly at Kasumi as he was trying to get the hang of his "shyness" problem, which cropped up whenever he was around her for any great interval.

"Oh, Tofu-Sensei, it's my sister," Kasumi indicated, "She was acting so peculiarly, and then she fainted, and we had to call for you to learn what might be the problem."

"Natsume-san?" Tofu remarked as he gazed down at the mahogany haired adopted daughter of Soun Tendo, kneeling down on the side opposite to Tatewaki and reflexively putting a palm to her forehead, "How odd...I don't believe I've ever had to treat you before, young lady. Usually it's either Ranma, Akane or Nabiki who get into fights and need medical attention."

"I'm not sick, Doctor," Natsume said, "I simple felt...a passing phase...odd cramps, but they seem to be easing now. There was hardly any need to concern you."

"Well, I'm here now," Tofu said pragmatically, "So I might as well heck you over to make sure nothing serious was causing you pain just now. After all, I've never had the chance to examine either you or your sister up until now, and I think it's a splendid opportunity to get started."

Natsume tried to conceal the irritation that she felt over being the center of attention. She was the independent type, and Tofu well knew that this would make her a difficult patient to have to diagnose, but he was confident enough of his own peoples skills to be able to overcome her reluctance, provided that she knew what was best for herself and did not put up an argument to dissuade anyone from thinking anything was the matter. He knew another Tendo who had taken that particular attitude, and by the time they finally had diagnosed her problem it was far too late to do anything about it, a mistake Tofu was determined never to repeat again, especially within the Tendo family.

Fortunately it was Tatewaki's concern that carried the day as he said simply, "Natsume-chan might deny that anything is wrong with her, and far be it from me to contradict you, my love, but a moment ago you went off in a blind rage and attacked a guest, then said some very strange things about your older sister and only managed to calm down with some effort. It would be for the best if we discovered the cause of your uncharacteristic outburst before there is another relapse...does that not make sense to you?"

Natsume bit her lip and frowned as she thought that over, but at last she relented to say, "Very well...but I still maintain that I do not require an examination."

"Well, I'll try and make this as informal as I can, Miss Tendo," Tofu smiled, using the formal term of address to put things on a properly professional level, "That is, unless you have classes to teach this afternoon in the dojo?"

"It's not a school day, Doctor," Natsume Tendo informed him, "And I feel just fine now. Tachi-chan is worried over nothing."

"That may be as it will, my love," Tatewaki replied, "But better to err on the side of caution than to regret an incautious lack of prudence. You collapsed after behaving oddly towards a friend of your sister, and you've been complaining of odd cramps for the better part of an hour, so am I to be found in fault for wanting to insure your health? Then let me be at fault, because your welfare is paramount to me beyond my own life and bearing."

In spite of her annoyance at being treated like some fragile piece of porcelain, Natsume could not help but feel touched that a boy as handsome, dashing, charming and considerate as Tatewaki would full over her this way, being altogether a new experience for her since most boys tended to get out of her way when she looked at them crossly. Not so the elder scion of the house of Kuno, who was not only rich and well mannered but had the nicest tush of any boy she personally become acquainted with, and with the Doctor being a charming sort Tatewaki knew that the man would soon have his lady love at ease for her examination.

"Well then," Tofu remarked, "Let's set you down and have a look at you young lady. I don't believe I've ever had the privilege of examining you before..."

"There has never been a need," Natsume replied, "I am never sick and I rarely take injury, and I heal very quickly, which appears to be a common trait in my family..."

"Yes," Tofu could not help smiling as he remembered the number of times both Akane and Ranma had been visiting his clinic, usually after some scrape they both had gotten into from the time they both were very small children. Aloud what he said, in more professional tones, was, "So...when was the last time you've ever had a check up?"

"I...cannot recall," Natsume hesitated as she sat down upon the examination table, "I believe it was in the orphanage when Kurumi and I were very little..."

"But not since then?" Tofu blinked, surprise written plain on his kindly features.

"I am afraid...no," Natsume shook her head, "As I explained to you, there's never been a need..."

"You mean to say you've never seen a doctor until now?" Tofu allowed his astonishment to register, "Not even for a hangnail?"

"Not even for that, I am afraid," Natsume smiled a bit ironically, "Although Kurumi has been injured often enough during training, but never for very long and with her metabolism she heals back even faster than I do..."

"My love," Tatewaki remarked, "That is most passing odd. You are certain that you have never known a day of ill health?"

"Why?" Natsume looked at her boyfriend coyly, "Were you hoping to nurse me back from sickness? That is very sweet of you, Tachi-chan, but not necessary. I have always been able to look after myself, and with Kurumi depending upon me for support I have had to be strong for the both of us. It was not always easy, living by our wits, but we managed to get by until finding our home with Father. After all, not all of us have the privilege of growing up in a mansion."

"Yes...well..." Tatewaki glanced away, supremely embarrassed at how the subject of his family fortune should come up at a time like this when he was hoping to establish a more serious dialogue concerning a future he hoped that he would be sharing with his one true intended.

"Well then," Tofu said cheerfully, "This is will be a new experience for the both of us. I'm sure your father will want to know that you're in the best of health, so I'll give you a free examination, along with a full diagnostic. This will help me to determine baseline what to expect from you in the future since, with your family's history, you never know..."

"I...suppose that does make sense," Natsume paused before adding, "Does this mean that I should...disrobe for you?"

"That usually works the best when conducting an examination," Tofu reassured her, "But don't worry, I see lots of naked women every day on this job and I'm pretty much used to it. Not that every patient who comes in here is as pretty as you, of course..."

Kasumi spoke up just then to say, "Perhaps it would be best if you go upstairs to your room, Sister, and allow Doctor Tofu to examine you there."

"Very well," Natsume sighed as she got to her feet with only a token assist from Tatewaki, whom she then smiled at and said, "I would not mind if you wish to accompany to my private personal chambers, Tachi-sama, but as that might intrude upon Tofu-Sensei's diagnosis..."

"Er...yes, I will...wait right outside," Tatewaki remarked a bit tightly, "Eagerly awaiting the results of your...examination."

"Tachi-chan," Natsume said gently, "You don't have to go. I wouldn't mind if you...wanted to stay a bit longer and...watch."

Tatewaki would have sworn his heart was thundering like a drum in his chest and suddenly his mouth was quite dry, his throat almost too thick to swallow as he tried to do so nonetheless, steeling what nerve he had to say, "That...would not be proper for a gentleman...and you deserve more respect than this, Natsume-  
chan. There will be a time and a place, but...just not yet..." he managed to get out with some effort.

Once again Natsume was touched by her boyfriend's gallantry and smiled almost painfully at him before responding, "Nonetheless...the offer stands, any other time you might wish to...examine me for yourself."

"I...will be mindful of this...my love," Tatewaki responded without looking at the beautiful girl giving him the heartfelt entreaty, and he walked with a noted stiffness out of the room before pausing in the hallway, uttering a sigh before sagging against the nearest wall at hand.

Natsume could only sigh in sympathy for the young man's torment, feeling an aching need of her own to get to know him on more intimate terms. During the months of their close association they had grown very close indeed, so close now that she wondered why neither one of them had taken the next big step, and why they continued to do this little dance together where flirting took the form of off-hand remarks and double entendres, albeit never so overt as her bold statement of just now. She wanted him with a certainty that had nothing to do with his wealth or privilege, even if she had longed for such luxuries all of her young life and would welcome the chance to become Mrs. Kuno...should he ever ask her.

Instead she went up the stairs to the room that she shared with Akane and Kurumi, ushered Tofu in, shut the door and tried not to think about the implications of admitting a strange bachelor to her private residence. In point of fact the room actually belonged to Akane, which was why there was a sumptuous goose down bed dominating the center, a luxury that Natsume usually disdained but did not refuse to her sister, especially since Karumi loved the feel of it and sometimes sacked out there when Akane was absent (as was presently the case since their sister's inexplicable disappearance of a few days back). To Natsume the thing represented a level of decadence that threatened to tempt one by its very air of implied sensualism, and to Natsume's mind such an indulgence could weaken the resolve of even the most well tempered martial artist. The fact that there were beds even more opulent and luxurious than this at the Kuno mansion hardly affected her thinking on this matter in the least since her beloved Lord Kuno himself disdained their softness and preferred the hardness of a futon as the only proper bed for a warrior, thinking that matched Natsume's own views on the matter completely.

Stealing herself endure what was to follow, Natsume turned to the Doctor with an uneasy admission, "I have never...disrobed before a man before."

"There's a first time for everyone," Tofu said calmly, "But if it will make you feel any better, then I could step out of the room while change over, then you can put on a towel about your body to project your modesty. It won't interfere with the examination process."

"Thank you, but I have never been one for half-measures," Natsume replied, standing up once more and willing herself to be calm as she undid the sash around her waist, then methodically stripped herself down until she was completely naked, her well-worn traveling clothes having fallen about her ankles. She then sat back down upon the bed used by Akane and looked at the Doctor with practiced calm, almost daring him to make a point about her lack of modesty, though in truth for her this was unusually brazen behavior.

Tofu just nodded in acceptance and said, "Well, Tatewaki is a fine young man, and I can see that he'll have a very fine bride in you, young lady. But what say we make sure that he'll be getting a woman in the perfect picture of health, which you do appear to be," he studied her critically then laid gentle fingers to her shoulder and started to move around as though to examine her like a fine statue...only to pause when his eyes fell upon the single blemish that marred her almost perfect skin complexion.

Tofu's attitude underwent a drastic change as he stared at the tine dark patch of skin that he located behind a shoulderblade, smaller than coin-sized yet shaped in an unusual pattern. His eyes nearly doubled in size as his initial impression of a melanoma gave way to an entirely different realization, and so abrupt was his silence that Natsume herself sensed the change in his bearing and asked, "Is something the matter?"

"You...this mark on your back..."

"Oh that?" Natsume replied, "I've had it all my life, but only Kurumi's ever seen it. She says it looks like a tiny impression of a Phoenix..."

"Really?" Tofu said as he pursed his and gained a strangely thoughtful expression, "How...unusual. I've seen a mark like that before...in one of the books I have back at my clinic?"

"You have?" Natsume asked in surprise, "What does it signify?"

"I'd...really rather not say before I do further research," Tofu responded, trying not to sound too evasive, "Why don't we put it off until later and then I'll get back to you on this, all right?"

"Er...very well," Natsume said dubiously, then stoically set her shoulders in place to endure the rest of the doctor's examination.

At last Tofu seemed satisfied, having touched Natsume in a number of areas that-  
-while unmistakably intimate-had more than erogenous connotations and did indeed seem to be a valid part of her physical examination, then he urged her to put her clothes back on and concluded his survey by saying, "You're in excellent health, Miss Tendo, and I'm not surprised that you feel as if you won't be requiring my services in the future. However...I think it would be for the best if you stopped by my clinic later on so that I can...explain to you the significance of that mark upon your back. I think that it could go a long ways towards explaining why you had those cramps earlier. I may be able to recommend some...therapy that could help you work things out."

"Er...very well, if you think that would be for the best," Natsume said as she reached down and gathered up her clothing, then started to dress herself again with the same natural poise that she had used when undressing, concluding with a somewhat wryly voiced, "You know, this is the first time that a man has asked me to put my clothes on..."

"Oh, well, you don't need to worry about me, Miss Tendo," Tofu faintly smiled, though in truth he was feeling as if the floor was giving out from underneath him and he thought faintly to himself the words, (Oh, father...what secrets you have left me...).

"I know that, Tofu-Sensei," Natsume smiled as she followed him out into the hallway, then went in search of Tatewaki, who turned a curious look her way before saying, "My love?"

"Nothing to worry about, Tachi-sama," Natsume informed him, "Tofu-Sensei merely wants to see me later in his clinic. I told you that you were worried over nothing."

"Nothing?" Tatewaki too her by the hand and gazed into her face with an entirely sober expression, "My love, you are everything to me, and there is no small part of your life that is less than of paramount concern to me, so if you are in any way to suffer, then I would suffer thrice as deeply for your sake."

"My lord...you say the nicest things sometimes," Natsume replied as she felt the warmth of his love bathe her like the sun on a warm day. But inwardly she felt faintly troubled by some shadow of foreboding, as though the strange sensations that had come over her before was but a foretaste of things to come, and somehow her older adopted sister was at the center of it all, though in what capacity she could not decide...though somehow she suspected that Tofu had at least some of the answers, for which she would be quizzing him when she did drop by much later...

Kasumi felt uneasy as she ushered Doctor Tofu out the door, then watched him as he headed for the gate, all the while thinking over what she had absently overheard about her sister, of Tofu's curiously tense expression upon exiting Natsume's room, and the earlier conversation that she had with her unexpected houseguest, Lenore...a discussion cut short by the rather explosive behavior of Natsume.

Kasumi had not meant to eavesdrop, by rights should not have been able to overhear a private conversation between a doctor and his patient conducted in a close room at the other end of the house, and yet somehow she had been able to listen in on every word that was spoken, right up to and including catching the subtle hidden nuances of speech that normally were conveyed only in a face-to-  
face encounter. Her hearing had become much sharper even than she had realized of late, and it seemed that she had only to focus upon a given area of the house and she could pick up every syllable with ease, a fact that in no way gave her peace of mind given all that Lenore had informed her about Kasumi becoming a Vampire.

Lenore had mentioned that enhanced senses came with the package of alterations that had been rendered upon Kasumi thanks to the blood of Dimitri that now coursed within her veins. In addition to becoming physically stronger and more adept than the average housewife, Kasumi could now sense things that were invisible to normal perceptions, and spotting the tension in Tofu's bearing had given her a surprisingly clear image of what the man might be thinking upon discovering Natsume's birthmark. Of a certainly the doctor was deeply concerned at his own discovery, but what bearing it might have upon her sister was something that Natsume was unable to fully venture.

Except that she remembered with crystal clarity Lenore having referred to Natsume as a "Slayer," which-according to Lenore-meant a special kind of "chosen" woman gifted with abilities that made them hazardous to vampires. The Slayer was supposed to be the antithesis of vampirism, some sort of natural control mechanism to keep the vampire race at bay so that their numbers did not proliferate too far and wind up threatening the dominion of ordinary humans. If so, then Natsume had been chosen to be that Slayer, in which case did this mean that she and Kasumi were now enemies? Kasumi certainly hoped that this was not the case, and not simply because of the threat that was implied to her own personal safety.

In truth Kasumi cared about her cousin-turned-adopted sister, and Natsume had lived a very hard life. She deserved the comforts of a family, and Kasumi had welcomed he into their lives with open arms and much heartfelt affection. The thought of Natsume turning against her brought an almost painful twinge to Kasumi's very being, yet the threat was obviously there, albeit much muted for the moment since Natsume had reacted unfavorably towards Lenore yet seemed perfectly all right when in the presence of Kasumi.

And what to make of Tofu's odd behavior? Kasumi had known the man since she was just a little girl, she had trusted Tofu and had always relied upon his judgement in all medical affairs, even going so far as to borrow books from him to maintain her own home private study. Tofu was a man with few dark areas and not at all prone to keeping private secrets. Oh, he did tend to clown it up a lot whenever she went near him, and for the longest time he had acted very strangely around her, but of late he seemed to have matured quite nicely, and all because she had asked him to remain serious when making a diagnosis on a rash that she had developed while working with garlic in the kitchen...

Kasumi paused, blinked her eyes and then said, "Oh my..." belatedly realizing that she might have used the power of suggestion to get Tofu to calm down the way he had, even though her intent at the time had been merely to ask him to stop trying to cheer her up with his usual antics. By telling him to leave "Betty-chan" (his favorite pet skeleton) on her hook she might have instilled in him the subtle commandment that caused him to sober up and behave like a fairly normal person. If so then Kasumi was going to have to practice a lot harder not to give people such "suggestions" as there was no telling what that sort of thing might lead to, and the very last thing she now needed was to have a group of people dancing to her every tune. That sort of nonsense might become rather more of a habit than she would like and...

The doorbell rang again, disturbing Kasumi out of her private reveries as the thought of new company helped dispel the shadows in her mind and displace them with the comforting routine of maintaining a house for her family and loved ones. She opened the door and was surprised to find their friendly neighborhood butcher, Tomada-san, standing there holding a plastic container in both hands.

"Miss Tendo?" he smiled in a friendly manner, "You asked me to set aside some blood for you and I'm here to deliver."

"Oh," Kasumi brightened up, "Why...thank you. How very nice of you to come deliver it in person, Tomada-san."

"Hey, it's my pleasure," Tomada said as he passed along the plastic tub, then added as if in afterthought, "So, you going to make something special with that to serve to your family, Tendo-san?"

"Er...yes, I do have a...rather special use for this, thank you," Kasumi replied in some reluctance, not wanting to lie to the man as she could hardly explain the full depths of her reasons, "In fact, if this works out, I may request another supply from you later. How much do I owe you for this?"

"Hey, on the house," Tomada waved the point aside, "You give me enough business that I can afford to spare it. Just take care and I'll see you the next time you care to stop by for some steaks."

"Just the same, thank you," Kasumi smiled, and without knowing it that smile became as radiant as a star, "You are a very nice man, and I hope that you have a very nice day, you and your wife..."

"Me...and...my...wife," Tomada repeated somewhat mechanically, his eyes glazing over slightly for a few seconds, then he shook it off and said, "Sure thing, I've been meaning to take her out to see a movie. Heck, I might even spring and buy her dinner. It's been ages since we last painted the town red..."

"Well then, you should give her a very special night that's worth remembering," Kasumi affirmed before adding, "Perhaps some flowers would be a nice way to begin things."

"Flowers," Tomada replied, "Special night...yes..."

"Have a nice day," Kasumi said before closing the door and heading towards the kitchen, unaware that the butcher was standing slack-jawed before the door as though absorbing a new commandment, then he shook it off and turned about, smiling, almost skipping like a little boy as he headed out the gates, intending to take the rest of the day off.

Oblivious to these dealings, Kasumi went in search of a recipe for raw blood that she might mix up into a drink of some less disturbing nature, and all the while failing to catch the faintly amused smile of a young girl who sat perched upon the branch of a nearby tree, watching these proceedings with no small measure of personal interest.

"How interesting," she mused, "So that is Tendo Kasumi. And the one over there is unquestionably the Slayer. Daywalker and Slayer side-by-side...who would imagine...?"

Almost reflexively the young girl glanced at the space to her right side as if expecting someone to be there, but when she belatedly remembered the reason for the absence of her Shinma partner, at which she glared faintly, her eyes turning crimson with interested speculation.

"Larva," she murmured softly, and whether she meant the name as either an entreaty or a curse was an unvoiced question best left unanswered for the present...

"Keep an eye on things, he says," Lenore snorted, "Easy for him to say, he was built for this kind of nonsense. Me, I'm just a punk kid with an overbite problem, and to top it off there's a damned slayer in the neighborhood, oh joy..."

Her surveillance of the Tendo property had so far yielded nothing of any great significance. Sitting in the branch of a nearby tree overlooking the gardens gave her a clear view of the Tendo estate, but short of bugging the place she could not know much about what went on inside directly, other than to trace the heat patterns of the various Breathers in residence. So far activities had been light and uneventful, even with the bright beacon of Kasumi's life aura standing out against the background, causing Lenore to wince a little as she could still feel the glamour cast by the young woman's presence gnawing at her like a constant thrum that made her feel compelled to bow and offer her allegiance. Being an independent sort by nature, though, she was able to resist this pull, but just barely.

"I gotta be out of my mind for doing this," she softly complained as she pulled her collar up a bit higher as the rays of the sun were beating down at a different angle, adding to her general sense of discomfort, "His nibs had better cough up hazard pay for the sort of risks I'm taking. No sign of her Majesty, though, so at least that's something. Princess sure went light on me considering her hairy rep, and I just hope I'm not being set up for something really nasty."

She spoke thus aloud largely to calm herself down, though some of her friends might tend to refer to it as her Jewish heritage coming to the fore, that natural tendency to vetch and complain when life threw one too many curveballs. As if being a perpetually teenaged vamp were not burden enough to carry, she had to go and live up to an ethnic stereotype of a different vein, though she readily would have scoffed had anyone ever termed her a Jewish "Princess," having come from fairly common stock with entrenched poverty her only birthright.

"Yeah," she snorted aloud, "That and my Rabbi'll get me a weak brand of ginseng tea around here..."

All at once the sound of garbage cans being rattled together drew Lenore's attention away from her angst, and like a shot she turned the focus of sun-  
dulled senses towards a scruffy looking figure currently rifling around looking for something among the refuse. All at once surprise gave way to delight as she murmured aloud, "Well, I'll be staked..." and at once dropped down from her purchase among the trees, alighting on the sidewalk and drawing her cloak in all around her.

A quick trot brought her to the right alley, and then she pursed her lips and gave a sharp whistle. Immediately the figure rifling through the garbage looked up alertly and seemed ready to bolt until she snuffed the air a bit then perked up her ears and stood her ground, waiting for the vampire to close the distance.

"Chloe...I thought it was you!" Lenore greeted her closest and dearest friend, "But what are you doing around...WHOOFF!"

She should have known better because no sooner had Chloe placed Lenore then she pounced on the redhead and bore her to the ground, immediately licking her face and enthusiastically straddling her with the kind of happy puppy-dog greeting that one might expect had she been the four-footed variety of canine rather than a two-legged Lynchanthrope who currently in her mid-transitional state.

"Lenore, OH, I'm so happy to find you! I had such an awful time catching up with you, you would not believe what I've been through! Good thing I caught your scent on the outskirts of this city or I might have searched all over these strange islands...!"

"Hey, calm down, that tickles, Chloe!" Lenore could not help giggling like the schoolgirl she resembled, "Take it easy and let me up, will ya? I'm glad to see you two, but people in these parts don't greet each other this way and you're making a scene, Honey..."

"A scene?" Chloe sat upright on Lenore's middle, "You mean like in a human play?"

"Ah...something like that," Lenore smiled up at her russet-furred girlfriend and then pulled out a kerchief to wipe her face clean of saliva, "Mind getting up, Hon? No offense to you, but you're kinda heavy when you're doing Lon Chaney impressions."

"Oh?" Chloe asked alertly, but like any dutiful canine she got up off of Lenore and allowed the Vampire to sit upright again, pulling her hood back down to avoid too much sun exposure. Chloe tilted her head at an angle and studied her best friend curiously, then rose to her feet as Lenore did likewise and shifted her appearance to something more closely resembling a normal human, "This better?"

"Close enough," Lenore replied, envying the fact that the werewolf's powers could function normally in full daylight, a product of the Gypsy-girl's tribal heritage since all of her people had the same abilities, and Chloe had been born knowing how to shapeshift, a trick that Lenore still had yet to fully master.

"Now," Lenore tried once again, more calmly, "What are you doing here, Honey? Not that I'm sorry to see you, of course, but when I saw you last in LA..."

"It wasn't easy coming after you," Chloe replied, "But I got so lonely without you around, so I trailed you to the airport and snuck on board a plane, just like you did."

"But I thought you were afraid of flying?" Lenore asked with a surprised expression.

"I am," Chloe replied, "But I'm more afraid of not being around you. You're a member of my pack and the closest thing to family away from the rest of my tribe. Besides, you might need me, and from the way you talked it sounded like you were doing something dangerous..."

"Ah...well...dangerous is a pretty broad term," Lenore temporized, "But I suppose you could say..."

She paused as a faint whiff of something off assaulted her nostrils (or at least, odder than the smell of the nearby garbage), then noticed that Chloe was having a very strong, similar reaction, the Werewolf's sense of smell being considerably more acute even than that of a vampire at night, let alone by daylight hours.

"You get that, Hon?" she asked.

"Yes," Chloe replied, "Like parsimons dipped in battery acid...nasty smell," she wrinkled her nostrils and the fur on her head stood on end, then she pointed with a clawed finger and said, "It's coming from that direction."

Lenore turned to see a shadowy form flitting down the darkened portions of the alley and almost freaked. With some effort she got control over her reactions, managing to calm down enough to realize that the figure was not headed in their direction.

"Lamia," she murmured softly, "And if I'm not mistaken it's no less than Larva himself, the errand boy for the Princess."

"Princess who?" Chloe naturally had to ask.

"Ah...let's just say she runs this whole neighborhood and leave it at that," Lenore replied, "Wonder what he's doing here? And where's Miyu? He rarely slinks off anywhere without her approval."

"We follow then?" Chloe asked brightly.

"Might be a good idea," Lenore said, "But not too closely. Lamia are dangerous, and this character is as dangerous as they come, so let's stay downwind for now, shall we?"

"Makes good sense, sounds like fun," Chloe said brightly, as chipper as any hound who smelled fresh game, and just as eager to trot along at the side of her companion looking for new adventures.

Lenore resisted the impulse to pat the other girl on the head, though she was glad that she remembered to carry a dog biscuit and passed it from her pocket over to Chloe, who was all too happy to take it and begin chewing on her favorite flavor. Knowing it would keep her content for a while, Lenore took the lead and followed after the hooded and mysterious Larva, wondering what was going on behind the mask that the demon Shinma Prince perpetually wore, but sensing in her guts that she was not going to like this, especially as her instincts informed her that the man-like creature was up to mischief of a kind that might not entirely meet with the approval of his Mistress.

Sure enough, they had only gone for a little over a couple of blocks before they saw Larva pause in a shadowy corner and hover there for an indeterminately long moment. Lenore strained her senses and waited with Chloe in the concealment of some refuse until they caught sight of a pale face showing forth from the shadows, at which point the redheaded Vampire hissed, "Nosferatu."

"Really?" Chloe sniffed the air then winced, "Ew...doesn't smell as nice as you do..."

"That's 'cause he's an entirely different tribe than me," Lenore growled softly, "Almost an entirely different sub-species. Loire Vamps like me are still pretty much human for all that we don't breathe like regular mortals, but Nosferatu...they're more like animals, nasty buggers who more closely fit the stereotype of what all Vamps are supposed to be like, little better than walking corpses animated by a demonic presence."

"Smells more like something that ought to have stayed buried," Chloe wrinkled her nose in distaste.

"Couldn't agree with you more on that one, Pet," Lenore replied before sniffing, "Nine'll get you ten he's one of Dimitri's Ghouls, sent to do his bidding by day while he rests up for the night. Guess he's not done with the Tendos just yet after all, which is very, very bad. No wonder Frank wanted me to do surveillance...with Dimitri on the prowl all bets are off, and I'd almost wager my immortal soul that he's still after Kasumi. Probably can't stand the fact that she broke free of his control or something..."

"So what are we going to do?" Chloe asked.

"What else can we do?" Lenore replied, "Report in and hope the big Honcho sends some rough riders out here who can give Dimitri a rough time. We're sure not tough enough to do the job by ourselves, and playing in the big leagues is more Frank's thing than mine. Of course if we had more of the old gang together it might be a different story, but with Leona out training with her mentor and the rest scattered to the four winds...well...it's just you and me for now, Wolf-  
girl, and I say we stick to the sidelines until further notice."

"Something I don't understand," Chloe remarked, "If this Larva guy's a servant to the local Vamp, does that mean they've got an alliance going down in this territory?"

"I seriously doubt that," Lenore replied, "Princess Miyu hates Dimitri about as much as any other Darkstalker hereabouts. At best they might have a temporary truce going, but that would only last until one or both of them figured a way of double-crossing the other. Best way I can figure it is that Miyu's got her own game going and wants to lay down some ground rules...or..."

"Or maybe ghost-boy there is pulling his own scam?" Chloe hazarded to guess, following the trail of logic laid down by her undead girlfriend.

"God, I sure hope not!" Lenore shuddered, "Lamia are notoriously untrustworthy and unpredictable, but Larva's been in Miyu's service for decades. If he decides to turn on his Mistress...it would be pretty bad, believe me!"

"Then maybe local muckity-muck don't know what's going on behind her back?" Chloe reasoned.

"Could be," Lenore murmured softly, "Be worth finding out either way, and maybe this info's worth trading for something important. It all depends on what happens next, but with Miyu and Dimitri in the picture it's a sure bet something heavy's about to go down in the district of Nerima..."

Kasumi stood fidgeting in the kitchen staring at the meal she had been in the process of preparing while glancing periodically at the angle of the sun as though measuring the time it would take between now and official sunset. In her mind she replayed her conversation with Lenore over and over, trying to get a grasp over the essential fact that she was-at least technically-no longer an ordinary human woman. In simplest terms it was not that easy a concept to get used to.

In actuality she felt quite fine...better than fine, in point of fact, she felt quite extraordinary, as robust a picture of health as she could ever imagine having been, and not at all like a walking corpse warmed over. Lenore had kept on insisting that Kasumi was very different from an ordinary drinker of blood, referring to her as a "Daywalker," and repeatedly the gaijin vampire had stressed that Kasumi was very much alive, just cursed with Vampirism of a moderated form that left her in full possession of her wits rather than some murderous beast like...

Dimitri.

Merely thinking his name aloud caused a curious trembling sensation up and down her spine, like someone proverbially walking over her grave. Her memories of their encounter were somewhat blurry, and she could only dimly recall the incident when the renegade Vampire lord had leaned over her, smiling like a fiend, and then he proceeded to place one long claw-like hand up to the wrist of his other hand, and then he cut a vein and caused the blood to flow, which same he fed to her, compelling Kasumi to drink it.

She recalled acting mechanically as she obeyed the vampire's influence, acting as though she had no volition or free will as she held his massive hand between her own slender fingers and began to drink his dark vital essence, the almost blue-black bile that passed for his blood, which had tasted so bitter and sour that it could hardly have been blood at all...and yet in some strange way it had caused the magic to happen, the transformation that felt as though she were dying and being reborn a changeling. Far worse than any cramping, and yet which had lasted for little more than a mere few minutes.

Kasumi then also recalled a very different kind of sensation where the vampire lord had bent down over her, his huge frame brought to bear even as he continued to use influence against any reluctance on her part in doing his bidding.

And then another memory returned to her, as did the sharp impression of Dimitri looming over her, of the press of his hot lips against her neck, the kiss that was both sweet and painful that caused a warm languor to flow throughout her system, and then a feeling not unlike dying and being reborn...or rather...re-  
awakened, because that was what it felt like to her, having all of her senses grow sharply acute to the point where she could detect the faintest sounds and see with perfect clarity in the dead of night, even could tell whether an object was warm or cold by its heat signature, and this also allowed her to discern the warm imprint of living things when contrasted with the undead minions who also did Dimitri's bidding. For a time she even felt as though Dimitri were in her thoughts telling her what to do, and she had seen nothing wrong with complying with his instructions, even though it momentarily had put her at odds with her friends, family and loved ones. It was almost as though Dimitri Maximoff had made her into an extension of his own nature, and it was only when confronted by the changes wrought in her that Kasumi had managed to snap out from his influence and do the right thing by siding with the good guys...

And yet still it was disturbing to recall how she had been so willing to serve the likes of that Vampire, even to the point where she had bitten Ukyo on the neck and taken a sample of her blood into her mouth...no, wait a moment. That could not be right. Ukyo was never bitten...unless she was the Ukyo of that other world that Kasumi had so briefly visited. How confusing to think that there was some other world where she and not Nabiki had gone on that ten year training mission, and that a version of herself on that world had become the heir to the Anything Goes Ryu. Kasumi was most decidedly NOT a violent person, so she could hardly imagine herself as a trained martial artist...not since she gave up her studies in the art to help Auntie Nodoka after her mother got sick and passed away. For that matter she could not imagine biting a person and drinking their blood either, but obviously she had done so at least once, which was why she was still stuck with her Vampirism even after that nice Donovan fellow had sought to cure her...

"Kasumi?" a gentle voice asked, disturbing her from her confused moment of disoriented reflection.

"Yes Auntie?" Kasumi turned to regard Nodoka, who had just arrived back from shopping to find Kasumi sipping some manner of liquid that had an oddly brown coloration.

"Are you feeling all right, dear child?" Nodoka asked, "You've seemed a bit pale lately and I was wondering if you might have come down with something, which if you had you ought to see Doctor Tofu..."

"He was just here," Kasumi replied, pausing to finish off the contents of her glass, at which point she did appear to regain a bit of color around her cheeks, and her nominally brown eyes gleamed faintly crimson for the next several minutes.

"Dear?" Nodoka asked inquiringly, "Oh my, what is that you are drinking?"

"Doctor's prescription," Kasumi answered, though this was partially an untruth since the one who had given her the formula for the drink was none other than Beatrice Daitokuji, "It's for me...condition... and I do feel a lot better now, Auntie."

In truth Kasumi felt more than fine, as though she had just consumed some manner of energy drink that had restored some much-needed potency to her circulation. The animal blood was sustaining her as intended, even granted that she somehow could discern that it was the blood of a cow and decidedly not human. Mixed with vegetable and other mineral formula it actually had an almost pleasant flavor, not at all as disturbing as real blood should be since she was not the sort of person who could take pleasure in the suffering that such animals inevitably underwent when being slaughtered...

She almost dropped her glass as she belatedly realized that she had discovered yet another ability that went with her vampirism. Somehow she could feel the vitality in the blood, which had not completely faded, and through that discern a great deal about the nature of the creature to which it had once belonged. She could briefly sense what it had been liked for the animal, who had been raised on a farm and spent most of its life chewing the cud of grass with no thought at all as to where it was eventually headed...

Kasumi was startled to hear Nodoka addressing her once again, and she turned to see her beloved surrogate Aunt gazing back with a politely inquiring stare, the older woman giving her with a kindly expression that put the younger girl somewhat at ease...even though she was still deeply troubled by her reflections.

"Are you all right, Child?" Nodoka asked gently, "You seem a million miles away, and you've not even started to make dinner."

"Oh...I'm so sorry," Kasumi glanced down at the other ingredients awaiting her attention and set down her emptied glass in order to turn her attention to the task of making dinner, hoping to lose herself in the familiar art of meal preparation, "It's just that...I had a visitor today, a very nice young girl, if a bit...odd for an American..."

"So I had heard from Natsume," Nodoka nodded, "It's nice to see you making friends again after so much time away from school. Goodness me, was it only two years ago that you graduated from high school? Whatever became of those plans we had for you to go to medical school?"

"I'm sorry, Auntie," Kasumi smiled gently, "The money was very tight that year, so we decided to put things off so that I could study on my own time some of the books I've borrowed from Tofu-Sensei. I guess, what with everything else that's happened, I quite forgot about going to college..."

"You were always a good student, child," Nodoka beamed proudly, "Your mother would be so proud of you, as I am, seeing you go on to learn a profession of your own. No sense in you following in our footsteps, not unless you plan to marry in the near future."

"Auntie," Kasumi blushed, "There's still plenty of time for that, and I'm not in any great hurry to get a boyfriend."

"Oh no?" Nodoka gave the younger woman a wry appraisal, "Not even that nice Doctor Tofu?"

"Doctor Tofu?" Kasumi looked blankly at her elder, "Why would you ask about him?"

"Oh, no reason," Nodoka said with an enigmatic smile, "Other than the fact that he clearly likes you a great deal. You mean to say you've never noticed?"

"Noticed?" Kasumi blinked, then thought a moment upon the matter before saying, "Oh my..."

Nodoka studied her adopted niece for a few seconds before saying, "You don't need to keep anything from me, Kasumi-chan. I happen to know that there is someone whom you like a great deal...so much, in point of fact, that the mere mention of his name can send you into girlish blushing and make you forget that any other men exit on the planet, excluding only your father."

"Oh?" Kasumi said with a more cautious expression, "And who is that?"

"Your brother," Nodoka replied, "Kaneda."

"But I don...Kaneda-kun?" Kasumi gave a mildly confused, then quite guilty expression, blushing fiercely as she glanced down and said, "He's...not really my brother, but...oh my..."

"I understand how confusing it must be for you, Child," Nodoka said sympathetically, "And I know we've talked before about your little habit of splashing water on your sister to trigger her curse, which even you must admit happens a bit too often for you to pretend that it's all been by accident..."

"No," Kasumi looked away, "It's not by accident...but...Auntie..."

"It must be terribly confusing for you to have such feelings for your own sister when she is in her cursed form," Nodoka gently remarked, "But you need not feel so terribly bad about it, for I, too, have felt the pull of her charm and charisma when she manifests in what you young people call a Bo-hunk. I may be older than you, but I'm still quite human..." she added with a rueful expression, not wanting to add how Nabiki's cursed form measured up when contrasted with Nodoka's own husband, Genma.

"I had thought...once she and Ranma-kun were married...that these feelings might at long last go away," Kasumi confessed, "Instead I find myself thinking of Kaneda almost constantly, as if he were a different person, someone only attached to Nabiki by mischance. I know Kaneda...Nabiki, is married to Shampoo, and they have a lovely daughter together, but I find that I still desire him even though I think Shampoo is a wonderful person and I'd never try to hurt her. The same goes for Ranma-kun, who's always been like a little brother to me..."

"You have always been the responsible one among Soun's children," Nodoka remarked, "Thinking more about others than you do for yourself, and the other children have always looked up to you with the greatest respect...Akane in particular. You're like a heroine in her eyes, and while you two are as different as night is from day, you've always been there for one another, and so has Nabiki...when she's at home, that is," Nodoka gave a pleasant smile of her own, "By now I quite imagine that my manly son is working hard to satisfy her and his other wives. I hope very soon to be a grandmother in my own right, once Ukyo and Perfume have their daughter together, then maybe my son will get very, very lucky."

"I do hope that this is the case, Auntie Nodoka," Kasumi said sincerely, "Because I wish them all the best in their marriage. I...I just wish I could feel as good about the fact that Nabiki is married to them and not..." she paused as though realizing what she was about to admit to and then softly went, "Oh my..."

"As I said," Nodoka nodded sagely, "I understand you far better than you think I do, child. I cannot say that it is natural for you to have these feelings towards your own sister, and incest does not sit well with this family's reputation. Nonetheless, I am proud of you for the way you have conducted yourself throughout this whole affair, and what with the ordeal you underwent a month ago with that Dimitri creature..."

"Yes, a rather unpleasant fellow him," a new voice intruded upon their conversation, "But still you shouldn't judge all eggs by the one bad egg in the bushel."

"Eh?" Kasumi and Nodoka chorused as they turned heads to see a young girl sitting on the edge of the counter by the kitchen sink with legs crossed together, young enough to be in middle school and with dark hair braided in a curious weave, softly regarding them both with ruby eyes full of much older wisdom than was met with appearance.

"Sorry if I startled you," the newcomer remarked, "But I noticed that you both were alone and it seemed the right time to let myself in. I thought this was a good time for us to get better acquainted you and I, if you have no real objections."

"Oh my," Kasumi said as she sensed a powerful aura surrounding this girl, a bit like Lenore's but so intense that it made the redheaded vampire seem like a mere firecracker when compared to a lit stick of dynamite just waiting to go off.

"Who are you?" Nodoka naturally wondered.

In response to this the girl lifted a hand and said, "Sleep."

And just like that Nodoka shut her eyes and fell to the floor in a swoon, like a marionette whose strings had just been cut.

"Oh my!" Kasumi exclaimed again as she stared at the recumbent form at her feet, "Auntie?"

"She will be all right," the dark haired girl responded, "But what I would say to you is not for the ears of mere mortals. Better far to give your aunt some pleasant dreams rather than expose her to the nightmares of the dark side. By the way, the name is Miyu...but you can call me...Princess..."

Continued.

Comments/Criticism/Tales from Cryptography: shadowmane

Nabiki and Ranma hit the scene with Frank and Keiko along for the ride, but what awaits their arrival back in Nerima, and what is the mysterious Miyu up to, or her servant, Larva, for that matter? For more about this and the other matters tune in next time for: "Lord of the Prance," or, "Kaneda Fried Moving Day!" Be there!

X -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

If you wish to check out my other works, Please check out my Fanfiction webpage at: or it's Mirror page at ~ All related chapters of this series can be found there along with my other works.

/pre 


	43. Chapter 43

preNabiki 1/2

(A Very Scary Thought)

Written by Jim Robert Bader

Proofread by Shiva Barnwell

Based Upon the Altered Destinies Storyline

Inspired by the works of such fans as

Wade Tritshler Richard Lawson James Jones And Many Others

Standard Disclaimer: This is inspired by the work of Takahashi Rumiko and is not my original creation. All characters belong to her. This is only a fanfictional work, and is not intended to compromise the rights of the original owners, distributors and publishers of the Ranma series. I have no money to spare and would very much appreciate if no one tries to sue me.

It is said that an idea, once raised, is a very hard thing to put down, and in a great many cases this means that ideas can lead to all sorts of interesting consequences. A notion can lead to speculation, which in turn leads to curiosity, and before too long desire takes over and the inquisitive soul within man can prompt one to experiment, to explore the possibilities raised by that question all the way to their most logical implications.

Indeed, it is also true that the longer you fight against an idea that has been lodged within your subconscious, the stronger that idea can come back to haunt you at a later date, and when such an idea plays upon your own natural inclinations, well...it was not altogether surprising that two such individuals, sharing the same thought, the same basic instincts, the same subliminal impulses, might at one time feel tempted to...experiment a little in order to determine if this idea has actual merit?

Indeed, such an idea might gain potency when one or more parties finds the avenue of release to be a little too tempting, and when prompted to act by circumstances...well...who in all rights would deny them the right to expand on the boundaries of their friendship, especially given the knowledge that other parties had come to the somewhat surprising conclusion that they were already "like that" in the first place?

So it was that a young woman named Natsumi found herself flat on her back completely nude atop the hood of a Subaru while her partner went down on her and started eating her out with a tongue intent on probing her loins like there was no better time for this in all creation.

"Ohh-KAMI!" Natsumi tensed, almost jumping at the electric jolt that was being sent up her spine by the lavish tongue-work of her best friend and longtime partner, Miyuki. The way the other girl was going down on her you would never imagine that it was their first time out as lovers, and definitely the first time that Natsumi had ever been with any woman, let alone to be sacrificing her precious virginity to one, and with only one thought in her mind...to screw Miyuki back as soon as it became her turn to lavish the tongue action.

Miyuki grinned even as she worked her tongue in deep and swirled around at the sensitive depths of her partner's love canal, being mindful to nuzzle Natsumi's clit even as she rubbed her whole face against the creamy thighs of her fellow police woman. This was heaven for her, the most natural and wonderful thing that she and her partner had ever done together, and it was making her wonder just why they had waited so long to get down to this sort of business. It was a stunning revelation to them both to learn that they could indulge in such hot, turgid passions, especially since it meant adding a whole new dimension to their relationship which neither one of them as yet were able to fathom.

In all the time that she had known Natsumi, Miyuki had been aware (at least on a subliminal level) that there had been a latent attraction for both of them, being young and fairly attractive women who shared many of the same interests, even granted that in other respects they were very different people. She had been impressed by Natsumi's bravery, tenaciousness and raw enthusiasm for life even when she had been forced to give the rookie cop her first ticket, but once they were assigned to one another...well...it was like discovering a long-lost sister. So swiftly had they bonded together then they formed a partnership that was shortly thereafter to become a department legend.

Of course neither one of them had been **interested** in quite that way (as they had so often insisted when grilled upon this very subject) at the time, especially given that Miyuki already had a crush on a handsome patrolman by the name of Kenny Nakajima. The handsome, courageous and all-around stud-muffin that Kenny embodied was her ideal of a perfect mate, and so it had seemed for the longest time that they might finally "get together" and do something fairly wicked that would insure that the two of them wound up as a permanent item. Natsumi had even encouraged their budding affair, and things seemed to be fairly well on track for a time there...right up until a few months ago, when Kenny put in for a transfer to another department.

For a time Miyuki had been fairly disconsolate over losing the prospect of a boyfriend, and she had even withdrawn into herself, falling back on old habits to fill her hours and keep her days in some manner of focus. Natsumi had been the one who stuck by her fiercely during those dark hours of despair and desolation, the one who had not given up on Miyuki, who had proven to be a true friend in every sense of the word, and the one towards whom Miyuki turned when at last resolved to seek elsewhere for her affections.

It was not an automatic thing (in spite of what many people had always insisted about them) that friendship had turned to thoughts of something decidedly...un-  
departmental...rather, it was the inspiration of other friends that had finally tipped the scales towards where the partners had decided to throw caution to the wind and just "go for it." Having friends who were quite openly bisexual was certainly the catalyst that had put the idea into their heads that this sort of thing might actually work out, but when the day at long last came where they both knew for certain that they were going to make love to one another it had only come after a long and intense inner struggle on of both their behalves. Deciding to make love to your best friend was, after all, a huge leap forward from merely sharing the same adventures, and they both knew that there would be consequences regardless of how the "experiment" turned out.

The plain truth of it was, however, that neither girl was willing to wait a single second longer, and so long had the urge been repressed for the both of them that when the moment finally came it was with the force of a tidal surge. They had a day off planned together, a simple trip to the country where they might find some private lodgings and...let nature take its course...one way or the other.

But patience-while a virtue-often comes with a very high price, and so it was that they knew they could not wait one second longer. Therefore they drove to the edge of town, to the one of the many Tokyo suburbs where this sort of activity might actually go unnoticed, and there drove off the main road to find a fairly sheltered alcove in the midst of a partial wilderness. Once there they had wasted little time stripping down and going at it, and now Natsumi was the primary beneficiary of their mutual animal rutting as Miyuki cunningly plied her tongue to the task of methodically driving the other woman crazy...a task at which she was excelling to a degree neither one of them could previously have imagined.

Miyuki-being an excellent mechanic-was a methodical type who always did her research in advance of undertaking a project. She had read books and magazine articles "boning up" on the art of female cunnalingus, and she knew exactly what to expect from tonguing another girl's snatch and what steps one should take to build up pressure without rushing into things with too much haste. She knew exactly which nerve endings to stimulate, just how to go about giving Natsumi the right amount of oral treatment that would hold her on edge while prolonging the act of arousal just shy of threshold. She was building up tension within her partner very nicely, getting a nasty thrill from tormenting her lover as she held Natsumi on the brink of her first orgasm, teasing the girl to get her to open up even further and on the whole taking great delight in forcing Natsumi to "bend" the hood of Miyuki's Subaru by thrashing and moaning and writhing like a madwoman. This was turning out to be everything Miyuki ever dreamed it could be and more, and yet Miyuki was in no hurry to finish it, finding a wonderful delight in her own prowess and relishing the sounds Natsumi made as the absolute height of feminine anticipation.

Natsumi for her part could not believe how wonderful it felt to surrender herself to Miyuki, to experience the kinds of joy that she had never known with a man, to be excited and held on the edge by the other girl's delirious tongue work, even as she felt the torments of intense need denied, being kept from climaxing by the vigorous foreplay indulged in by her cunning partner.

"KAMI-don't torture me like this!" Natsumi begged, "Let me cum, Miyuki-chan...I promise...I'll do anything..."

"Anything?" she heard Miyuki chuckle during a brief pause in their lovemaking, but then Miyuki plunged in and drove her tongue even deeper into Natsumi's snatch, at which point the young woman arched her back and threw her head back as if to supplicate the heavens for her release, so great was her need to finally climax...

All at once there came an enormous rumbling sound that startled both women and brought an immediate halt to Miyuki's oral action. Natsumi-already hearing the rush of her own blood pumping through her veins and eardrums-did not, at first, know what to make of the noise, but what she was primarily aware of was that her partner had stopped tonguing her, and given the frustrating way Natsumi was hovering on the edge this was an indignity beyond all toleration.

"Miyuki!" Natsumi all but shouted, "If you stop now, so help me, I'm going to shoot you-!"

"Listen!" Miyuki whispered intensely, glancing around, "Do you hear that?"

Natsumi propped herself up on her elbows and waited for her eardrums to stop throbbing then said, "Yeah? So it's a motorcycle..."

"Not just any kind of motorcycle," Miyuki hissed back, "I recognize it...that sound is distinctive..."

All at once they heard the rumble pass to within a hundred meters of their position, going up the back road that was leading from the coastal region and headed distinctively towards Nerima, and with a turn of their heads both girls could see a huge shadow moving in the distance from between the thick bowels of the trees that were lining the road here...a shadow that was the outline of an altogether familiar virtual giant.

"What the...?" Natsumi blinked.

"Well, as I live and breathe," Miyuki mused, "What is he doing back in town, and what business is drawing him back towards Nerima?"

"Maybe he just wants to visit the Tendos," Natsumi shrugged, "You know how they tend to attract the weirdoes."

"They do indeed have that penchant," Miyuki nodded, "I wonder...could there be a renewal of the sort of business that we should investigate? I know it is our day off, but...if something irregular is going on there that concerns our friend, Nabiki..."

Natsumi scowled, then impulsively reached down and grabbed her partner by her pony tail, gripping Miyuki by her hair and shoving her rudely up against Natsumi's loins.

"Uh-uh, no way are you and me going anywhere until we finish this, Miyuki!" Natsumi insisted, "Get back to work or I really will jam something up your butt, you got me?"

"Ah...I suppose Nerima could wait for a bit," Miyuki admitted, and in all truth she was just as eager to pick things up where she left off as Natsumi, and before too long she had her partner screaming in agony as she brought her off to the MOTHER of all climaxes, which would shortly prompt some well justified retaliation on Natsumi's part, and soon the both of them would be happily "rug-  
munching" in the classic 69 position...though, for the moment, that aspect is not immediately germane to this story...

"Hang on to your teeth, Kids!" Frank bellowed out over the roar of his trademark motorcycle, "It's gonna get a bit rough around this point."

"Rougher?" Nabiki asked a bit too tightly as she held on to the edges of the sidecar with white-knuckled determination.

"Hey, no problems big stuff!" Keiko grinned as she held on firmly to Nabiki, "Take your time, I'm in no hurry to be going anywhere!"

Ranma scowled as he glanced sideways and noticed exactly where the kickboxer's hands were presently located, and how Nabiki hardly seemed to notice that she was being fondled in such an intimate way by a randy Keiko taking full advantage of the distraction. His own grip upon the belt of the huge man-monster known as "Frank" tightened appropriately as Ranma resolved to make an issue of it later...but only after they got back home and checked up on Kasumi and Natsume.

"H-How fast are we going?" Nabiki asked, clearly trying not to sound too nervous, in spite of having every reason to be screaming her head off about the breakneck pace that they were setting over terrain that was not entirely level.

"Just under a hundred-sixty KPM," Frank replied, his deep rumbling voice easy to pick up even over the roar of his Monster, "Don't worry, I'll be mindful about your condition, just hold on when we take the curves, wouldn't want to lose anybody when we're this close to your home berg."

"Oh, I'm holding on all right, never fear," Keiko assured, somehow managing to leer from beneath her helmet.

"I know," Nabiki replied, "But do you mind not holding me so tight down there? Those aren't handlebars you're fondling, Kei-chan!"

"Oh, believe me, I'm well aware of that," Keiko assured with great enthusiasm, maintaining her firm grip on Nabiki's anatomy, much to the perverse discomfort of Nabiki, who did not actually physically find the handling part to be all that unpleasant so much as...inconvenient on an emotional level.

Oh yes, Ranma averred, he was definitely going to be making an issue of it just as soon as they dismounted. As it was he kept his focus on Kasumi, his adoptive older sister (or sister-in-law, as it were) whose safety and well being was of paramount importance, after which came any territorial claims that he might wish to dispute with a certain redhead whose penchant for fondling his wife was becoming a bit too annoying for his comfort...

Meanwhile, unknown to these and other interested parties, Kasumi was being confronted by yet another curious girl, the mysterious Miyu, whose sudden appearance within the Tendo kitchen was of great concern to these proceedings, especially in lieu of the casual way in which the self-styled "Vampire Princess" had just dispatched Nodoka Saotome off to dreamland with no more than a casual word of dismissal.

Kasumi was taking in the young-seeming girl with the bright red eyes and short-  
cropped brown hair and could not help observing that this Miyu person was an extremely attractive young thing, possibly younger looking than either Akane or Kurumi, yet dressed in a white silken outfit that was a bit of a cross between a school uniform and a priestess's Meiko outfit. Her legs were bare but for red laced ribbons that were wound about her calves and feet, the same ribbons that graced her arm and hair that made her seem oddly festive in spite of her somewhat regal bearing. A princess she most certainly did appear to be, and yet there was something about her eyes...old and wise beyond their years...that gave one the impression of maturity and depth more befitting of an elder.

As Kasumi studied the girl she was studied back in kind by Miyu, who saw a very attractive housewife in a long, pale-green dress whose brown hair was draped over one shoulder in a pony-tail, a yellow ribbon in her hair the only concession towards physical adornment. In spite of an absence of jewelry, this Kasumi certainly did have something odd about her bearing...a calming radiance that was quite extraordinary, and an astonishing lack of dark elements that Miyu was used to encountering in her affairs with either supernatural beings and/or humans. Her brown eyes lacked cunning, malice or guile, and seemed politely curious without being either probing or demanding, yet there was no mistaking the power of suggestion that was held within them. Were she not immune to such things herself Miyu had no doubt that she could be swayed by the girl's merest suggestion. As it was she was drawn by curiosity herself to know the true depths of this new Daywalker in her territory and intended to properly test her just to determine if she was worth all of this bother, especially to Dimitri.

"So," Miyu mused as she sat on the counter and absently rocked her feet back and forth while studying this Kasumi, "You are the one who Dimitri turned, the Master adept who knows nothing about her legacy or our traditions."

"Ah...well," Kasumi began, "It's true that I...have this problem because of my dealings with Dimitri-san...but..."

"But you did not voluntarily become what you now are," Miyu leaned closer, "You wish that you could go back to being the way you were before you turned. I sincerely wish that it was within the scope of my abilities to grant you what you wish, but...that is not within my nature."

"I...see," Kasumi paused to consider the young-seeming girl before her then said, "Lenore-san explained as much to me...she also said that you are a...Master Vampire? Perhaps you could give me some understanding of what that means and how it will affect my future?"

"I could give you some thought on what it means to be a Master," Miyu replied, "But as for the future, that, too, is outside my ability to predict. Simply put, a Master is the elite among the various tribes of our kind. The Loire whom you met earlier is of a lower stock than my own kind, the Shinma, while the Jezril tribe that Dimitri's mother hailed from are somewhat in the middle of social hierarchy. Far lower on the rung would the Nosferatu and Goya scum, the peasants who tarnish the very name of vampire among Breathers, are the ones to avoid as they are little more than beasts. Other tribal bloodlines vary in nature and the degree of vampirism that each clan manifests...but you will learn the rules concerning them in the course of time. Of more immediate concern is the question of what you intend to do with yourself now that you have been confronted with the truth of your new nature. Does learning that you are a drinker of blood make you feel different about your present lifestyle as a member of a family group? Or will you feel compelled to separate yourself from normal humans for the sake of your mutual protection?"

"I...don't really understand you," Kasumi admitted, "Are you saying that I must give up my family? I...I don't know if I can do that."

"What I am saying," Miyu said patiently, "Is that you must consider the possible implications of being a vampire among normal humans. You are a Daywalker, yes, and your need for blood is far less than a more common breed of vampire, but still, they are humans and you...are something more than human, and there is a larger gap between the two worlds than you might possibly imagine. I ask that you think well upon this before taking any course of action or making any decisions for the long-term future."

"I...I want to understand," Kasumi replied, pursing her lips before adding, "Do you have any advice for me? Is there some way that I can...balance what I am with having a family life? Or do I have to leave them all behind...which I do not want to do because I love my family very much and would be lost without them."

"I cannot advise you," Miyu replied sadly, "I have been a vampire for several decades now, but when I was as young as I yet appear I confronted the issues you now face and I...decided badly. My situation was not analogous to yours, however, since I was born a vampire...or rather I was born with the seed of vampirism within me. My family, you see, are hereditary Shinma hybrids, and I am the latest in a very old bloodline. My mother was part vampire yet hid this truth from me for the first fourteen years of my childhood. One day, shortly after puberty, I began to suffer the pangs of early bloodlust, and I turned on the day when I met my companion, Larva, upon drinking his blood and binding him to me. Yet before even this happened I...suffered a loss, one that determined the future course of my life..."

"You lost someone close to you?" Kasumi asked, "How very sad. I still remember when I lost my mother..."

"You are lucky that she died a natural death," Miyu replied, "Because I killed my mother...or rather, I drank her to death and absorbed her vital essence."

Kasumi was horrified, "But...why in heaven's name would you do such a thing?"

Despite herself Miyu glanced away, "I did not do it consciously, but my mother...had plans for me...ones that did not involve my living a normal existence. I was born due to a pact between her clan and the Shinma realms, and I was groomed from birth to become their Princess. Their intention was to place me upon a throne of skulls to rule the human world from the shadows as both symbol and regent. I chose to make a different pattern of my life rather than become the pawn of a darker power, and so I rule the night as a guardian of both human and Shinma realms, arbitrating a tentative peace that occasionally gets broken, in which case I put down the dissenters with such force as I deem needful."

"But...your own mother?" Kasumi could not help but be shocked at such an admission.

Miyu fixed the taller girl with a harsher stare and said, "I had a human friend once...she learned of my vampirism on the day when I first tasted blood, and for that my mother killed her and drained her of blood in order to preserve my secret. I knew then that my mother was capable of anything in the name of her ambition, and that is why I chose to drain her...not consciously but rather instinctively, as an act of love and self-preservation..."

"Love?" Kasumi marveled.

"Do you think that death is a cruel fate for those who trespass against the peace between the gods and the devils who rule our world from beyond the shadows?" Miyu asked, "I assure you, there are much worse fates than simply dying. My mother was a slave to the Shinma, she would never have been freed but for my action. I gave her release and freed her soul from the grip of the demons who corrupted her. I gave my mother peace, something that she would never have known had I not done what I did. That is why I cannot compare your choices to mine since you are under no such similar compulsions."

Kasumi stood and thought this over before giving Miyu an uneasy, "Do you...believe that I might become a possible threat to my family?"

"I think that the greater danger would be from your family rather than to it," Miyu replied, "Do you believe that they are capable of understanding what you are...and of accepting your altered nature? Many humans do have odd ideas about us, after all, and they might believe that you are under an evil curse and might choose to do for you what I did for my mother. They call it, 'giving us peace,' or releasing our souls from the curse of vampirism."

"Oh my," Kasumi thought that over, "I don't believe my family would do that to me..."

"Are you so certain?" Miyu glanced over at the unconscious Nodoka, "Because that one was ready to give you the coup while you were still Dimitri's servant. Given the chance to do it again, do you truly believe that she will abstain from using that sword of hers? And be mindful, one of the ways in which we can die most certainly would be by beheading."

Without consciously willing it so, Kasumi put a hand to her throat and considered the implications. She did indeed know her Aunt Nodoka very well, and the Samurai code that her aunt privately adhered to, and her aunt was a little too good with that katana of hers to harbor illusions regarding her willingness to use it. Would Nodoka truly believe that she would be doing Kasumi a favor by...chopping off her head? The very notion brought an involuntary swallow to the eldest Tendo sister as she soberly considered the likelihood of such an event and became uneasy at the very real prospect.

Miyu hopped off of the counter then stood looking up at the taller girl, giving Kasumi a frank expression before saying, "So this is the question you must ask yourself...do you trust that you can control your bloodlust, or might you not one day become a threat to your loved ones? You do not need to be an evil, soulless beast to yield to the temptation, you simply need a moment of weakness, an instant when the bloodlust within you gains the upper hand, and then...then you could be the instrument of tragedy for your loved ones. That is the burden that you must now carry, the weight on your soul that taints us all to one extent or another. Think you well on this before you grow too close to even the ones you love, for the call to blood within you is strong, stronger than you could ever even imagine. Deny that need and it just grows stronger...appease it and it become dormant for a time, yet still is there just lurking beneath the surface."

Kasumi gazed down into the eyes of the other girl then asked, "Why do you tell me this? Are you saying that I can't know happiness? That I cannot even trust the people I love? That I'm now a danger to them, that I might...hurt someone without meaning to?"

"I am trying to prepare you for the kinds of questions you must face in the very near future," Miyu replied, "I do this as a courtesy between Masters, to warn you that abiding among humans has risks that you may not have anticipated. You are not cursed to lead a life alone and apart, but because of what you are, you face special challenges that are not known by normal humans."

"Then...how do you live?" Kasumi asked, "Do you live apart from normal people? Are you alone? Don't you...have friends who care about you?"

Miyu arched an eyebrow and evidenced surprise at having the question turned back upon her, "I...choose to live among humans, but...I am not a part of their world. I protect them from the Shinma, but I also...prey upon the people I protect, taking what little I need to sustain my own health and only rarely killing those whom I deem to be...special cases."

"But...I couldn't live like that," Kasumi replied, "I love my family, and I enjoy being around people."

"You don't have to go live on a mountaintop somewhere and mortify yourself like a priest," Miyu insisted, "You can live a normal life...you can exist among people, but you have to learn the rules in order to survive. Daywalker or full Vampire, it is necessary for you to learn to adapt to both your strengths and limitations, and to be careful who you choose to associate with as the possibility of betrayal can come even from those you most trust. Lower your guard around the wrong person at the wrong moment and it could prove to be fatal."

"I...I don't believe you," Kasumi replied, "I cannot believe that a member of my family would ever want to harm me..."

"Oh no?" Miyu asked, "What of the one named Natsume?"

"Natsume?" Kasumi asked, "Why? What about her?"

"I think you already know the answer to that question," Miyu replied, "The Loire herself sensed it, that you sister has become the Slayer."

"Slayer...oh, yes, that..." Kasumi said uneasily, "Ah...well...I don't believe that Natsume herself really knows about that yet..."

"But she will find out," Miyu replied, "They always do, and I have fought with Slayers before. They are tenacious and dangerous fighters and some are quite fanatical. It all depends on the one who trains them, and on the Slayer herself, the choices she makes with her life, and the Watcher who guides her actions..."

"The Watcher?" Kasumi asked, "Who is that?"

"The Watchers are an organization of secret teachers and mystics who observe from the shadows and act only when they deem it in the best interest of humanity," Miyu explained, "They are normal human beings, but some have family ties going back for generations, and all of them are trained in mystical lore to keep watch upon the Darkstalkers who inhabit the shadows. All the better to train the Slayer to be their point woman, their agent for our destruction."

"Our destruction?" Kasumi repeated.

"Vampires are the natural targets of the Slayer," Miyu answered, "Not all vampires, of course, but those who come within the scope of their attention must beware their holy might and the power that guides their actions. Slayers kill vampires...sometimes without discriminating between the good and the bad, and that is what you must be on your guard against should this Natsume come to regard you as an enemy."

"An enemy?" Kasumi blinked, "Me? No, I cannot imagine such a thing...Natsume and I are sisters, we share the same blood..."

"Not any more you don't," Miyu replied, "And that is why you must be on your guard should this particular Slayer get it into her head that you are no longer Tendo Kasumi, no longer the sister she knew. Some Slayers have been known to get funny notions after all, and as yet I see no reason why this particular slayer should be any exception..."

"So, Doctor..." Natsume began, "What was so urgent that prompted you to have Kuno-sama and myself visit you within your clinic?"

"Is there something that you can tell us about Natsume-chan's condition, Tofu-  
Sensei?" Kuno asked, earning a mildly reproving look from his female companion.

"Oh...it's about a lot more than that, I assure you," Tofu left her side and at once went to one of his nearby bookshelves, pulling down a musty old tome and leafing through it as though he were attempting to locate something obscure in one of the passages. After several moments he stabbed a page with one finger, then went pale as he read the faint, archaic kanji script that had been written in faded inch. He swallowed once and said, "Oh Kami-sama..."

By now Natsume's concern was growing to an outright fever pitch of alarm and curiosity, and at once she said, "Is something the matter, Tofu-sensei? It's not...serious, is it?"

"Oh...it's serious all right," Tofu nodded without looking up, but then he seemed to recall her with a glance, at which point he added, "But not fatally so...at least...I don't think so anyway..."

"What?" Natsume blinked in increasing confusion.

"Are you peaking sense, man?" Tatewaki asked, "What means so foreboding an expression?"

"Er...nothing," Tofu slammed the book shut with a forcefulness that startled his patient, "It's just...my grandfather was also a doctor, like my father after him, and my great-grandfather was a more traditional sort of healer, which is where a lot of my family's Shiatsu techniques were pioneered..."

"Yes, but what does this have to do with me?" Natsume asked.

"Only that my great-grandfather's journal contains a reference to that particular birthmark you have on you, Natsume-san. It seems...a patient of his long ago had one just like it..."

"Yes?" Natsume replied, hoping to encourage him to become more forthright.

Tofu felt torn and conflicted as he saw the worried expression of the young girl before him. All of, what? Seventeen? And not even aware of her birthright! It was so manifestly unfair that for a moment he pondered the wisdom of telling her at all. Better not to have to confront the truth all at once...and yet...she had the right to know, and there really was no sense in keeping her in the dark about what he knew concerning the fate that had befallen her, poor creature.

Tatewaki saw the obvious conflict in the face of the normally unflappable family physician and said, "Doctor?" as if suspecting a dramatic revelation in the works.

Tofu turned his focus to the young man and said, "Tatewaki-kun...could you step outside for a moment and give us some privacy, please? I'll call you back in if there is anything dire to report."

Tatewaki was surprised at the request, but a glance towards his lady-love assured him that she was agreeable to the request, much though she seemed reluctant to have him leave her immediate presence. He was gentleman enough to understand the concept of discretion, however, and nodded once before taking his leave of the private examination room. He was more than a bit curious as to what had Tofu so upset about Natsume, however, so he resolved to remain within easy earshot...just on the off chance that he might be summoned back in another few moments.

Natsume was indeed concerned about Tofu's curious behavior, and she was equally reluctant not to have her Tatewaki at her side to offer his comfort and support, but a lifetime of conditioning in resolute stoicism made her face the doctor squarely as she waited for him to begin his explanation.

Tofu took a deep breath and sighed, "I'm going to have to reveal something to you...something that I've never told anyone, not even my mother, though she knew just about everything else about my father. You see...my family carries on a good many traditions from ancient times, and one of those family secrets is that we belong to a worldwide brotherhood, a secret society, and...well..." he held up his wrist and removed his wristwatch to show a mark that was engraved onto his skin there, "We call ourselves...the Watchers."

"The Watchers?" Natsume replied, "Who or what are they?"

"People like my family, who keep a close watch on the supernatural and try to stay on top when weird things happen to ordinary people," Tofu explained, "Things like spiritual or psychic attacks, alien phenomena or attacks by monsters such as werewolves, demons and...vampires."

"Vampires?" Natsume asked with lifted eyebrows.

"Vampires," he repeated with emphasis upon the word, "Creatures of the night who live by drinking human blood...much like that Dimitri character that we fought off a few weeks back, the one who kidnapped your sister."

"The fiend who took Kasumi hostage and tried to turn her against us?" Natsume nodded grimly.

"Exactly," Tofu replied, "The Watchers were founded long ago to monitor the activities of such unusual creatures. We are trained to observe but never to interfere unless absolutely necessary.

"You mean...you are keepers of occult lore?" Natsume replied, "Like spiritualists and psychic investigators."

"Somewhat, but our activities are a bit more broad than that," Tofu explained, "Mostly our group is interested in the activities of Immortal beings who walk among us undetected, but vampires are among the worst in that category, particularly those tribes that prey on mortal flesh without regard to the sort of rules imposed on their more civilized colleagues. The only time when we are authorized to become fully active and involved in dealing with this menace, however, is when we encounter the Slayer."

"The Slayer?" Natsume repeated, wondering why that word sent a chill running up and down her spine, but more of recognition than apprehension.

"The Slayer is the one mortal being who is capable of destroying vampires when they infest humanity like a plague," Tofu continued, "She is always a young girl of approximately your own age, still a virgin...at least at first, whose blood has never been quickened. When she awakens, she gains the abilities of the Slayer, which means increased strength and speed, heightened senses and alertness, almost perfect hand to eye coordination with agility and reflexes that are quite literally superhuman. Of course, as a trained martial artist you already possess many of these abilities, but...if I'm right and you are the Slayer, then all of your capabilities will be magnified well beyond your normal threshold."

"This is absurd!" Natsume protested, "How can I be this Slayer that you speak of?"

"No one knows why the Slayer is chosen," Tofu replied, "Only that the Powers that Be decide to make her the Chosen One at the time of her conception. That mark on your back is the sign of their decision, meaning that you've been a candidate your entire life without knowing your true destiny. The fact that you've been a wanderer is the reason why you haven't been discovered by us before now since, ordinarily, another Watcher might have spotted your mark and alerted the rest of us of your existence."

"I still do not see how I can be this chosen one you speak of," Natsume frowned, "I am just a martial artist, an ordinary girl with unusual skills that I have worked my entire life to master..."

"Not ordinary, hardly," Tofu replied, "No more than Kurumi, with her adapted metabolism that gives her the speed and appetite of a hummingbird. True, that was Grand Master Happosai's doing, but perhaps she was meant to be your protector as well as your sister..."

"My protector...Kurumi?" Natsume blinked.

"She may be a year younger than you, but she's quite formidable," Tofu replied, almost apologetic as he added, "The Slayer has a destiny, and it's not a very nice one. Where you go you walk alone, but sometimes a Slayer may have protectors and even powerful allies. I wish that I was wrong about this, but with what happened recently, that encounter with Dimitri may have helped to trigger your transformation. There is one way of being certain, though..." he picked up a metal bar and handed it to her, "Can you bend this?"

Natsume would normally have risen to the challenge, but now she frowned suspiciously at the bar, clearly reluctant to touch it as she said, "What will this prove if I do?"

"Just humor me, please," Tofu gently pleaded.

Natsume reluctantly took the metal I-bar in hand and then casually bent it double, her eyebrows rising as she did so. As if to confirm her suspicions, she took the two bent bars and bent them again between her fingers. At that point her eyebrows had vanished under her bangs as she stared with round eyes and said, "It was...so very easy..."

"That's incredible," Tofu exclaimed, "Your strength must be on a par with Ryoga's. I'd imagine the rest of your abilities have increased along with your strength, but the real test is this," he turned and went to a shelf, then pulled down a small ornate wooden box and uncovered the contents, then carefully removed a smooth, opaque, round-shaped stone that he passed along to Natsume, urging her to hold it between her hands, which she did obediently, even as she wondered why her skin was tingling from the contact.

"I don't see what this..." Natsume started to say when her eyes went wide once again, for the dark stone began to glow from within, reacting to her heat by turning ruby red in the center, like an eye opening to see the one who held it. Natsume started in horrified fascination for several moments, then she cried out in sharp pain as a spark passed from her hand to the stone, and at once she dropped it on the floor, sucking on her fingers.

"That's very odd," Tofu said in surprise, bending down to pick up the stone, which was no longer glowing, "Never saw it do that before. Guess it's harmless for most people but not so much for a Slayer."

"What...is it?" she asked, curious in spite of a faint aversion towards the object.

"A magical bloodstone," Tofu replied, "Very rare. This one's been in my family for generations. It's an enchanted artifact with all sorts of interesting properties that..."

"My love, what is amiss?" demanded Tatewaki as he came bursting into the room, staring wildly at every corner as though expecting the walls themselves to sprout enemies, his ever-handy bokken at the ready.

"Tatewaki-kun?" Natsume asked in surprise at his sudden appearance.

Tatewaki automatically turned to look back at the dark haired girl he loved, seeing puzzlement there along with signs of worry, yet nothing that appeared to be threatening her. Slowly he lowered his weapon to say, "My love...I thought that I heard you scream..."

"Oh, it was nothing, Tachi-kun," Natsume assured him with a faintly nervous chuckle, unaware that in doing so she was only adding to his anxiety since she had never chuckled like that for him before, let alone cracked a smile in such a suspiciously uneasy manner.

"Ah...I see," Tatewaki said, while not really seeing at all, glancing at Doctor Tofu before putting his bokken away and saying aloud, "My apologies for rushing in like this, Tofu-Sensei..."

"Not at all, Kuno-san," Tofu waved a hand in what he hoped was a reassuring manner, "I can see why you'd be so worried on behalf of your iinazuke, but I can assure you that's nothing wrong with her...at least...nothing that you need worry about for the present."

"I see," Tatewaki lied again, turning back to Natsume to add, "My love, I..."

All of a sudden the tall nobleman froze up with his face betraying astonishment and dismay. Natsume wondered why he was suddenly looking at her as though she had grown a second head, only to notice that his gaze was roving down the length of her body, which compelled Natsume to follow the line of his gaze and take in the curious fact that she was suddenly quite naked and without a stitch of clothing...

Tatewaki gaped in shock and disbelief at finding Natsume in the altogether, almost as if her clothing had up and dissolved on her without warning. His mind went into neutral as he sought to take this in by sheer automatic assimilation, and then his eyes did a very slow up-and-down inspection of Natsume's nakedness, seeing the woman that he loved in all of her magnificent, well-packaged glory. The blood rushed to his head at once then gushed out of the ruptured vessels of his sensitive nose as he fainted dead away with nary a whimper.

"Tatewaki-kun?" Natsume blinked as she looked down at his unconscious body.

"Poor guy," Tofu shrugged, "Guess some people just can't take looking at an attractive young woman for very long, eh?"

Natsume glanced down at herself, then hastily covered her breasts and crossed her long legs, doing a full-body blush that made her appear extremely crimson.

"AWK! What happened to my clothing?!" she demanded.

"Huh?" Tofu blinked, then belatedly seemed to get the point of her question, "How very strange...I could have sworn that you were wearing clothes a second ago. I'm reasonably certain that I would have noticed seeing you undress..."

Natsume glared at the man and said, "Very funny, now tell me how you did this!"

"But I'm telling you that I don't know what you mean," Tofu insisted, "I wouldn't, even if I knew how, and I'm certainly not about to undress a patient by myself without her permission...unless she were unable to sign a release form."

"You mean you expect me to believe that my clothing just leaped off my body of their own volition?" Natsume demanded skeptically.

"Miss Tendo...what reason would I have for doing such a thing...even if I had the means," Tofu softly offered.

Natsume thought a moment about that then felt a renewal of her of her blushing and as she stood there with hands covering her breath she began to realize that the doctor could not be the guilty party, that someone else had had assaulted her while she was had been distracted by Tofu's explanations.

"Ah well," Tofu sighed as he knelt down over the fallen Tatewaki, "I'd better hit a few nerves to block the flow of blood up there or he could hemorrhage to death like that. Then we'll finish your examination so we can see for a fact what changes your body's undergone, young lady, after which...I need to make a few phone calls. To think a Slayer right should manifest here in Nerima..." he shook his head in mild confusion...

Meanwhile-unseen by either doctor or naked patient-a curious shadow flitted about the corners of the room, and a pair of sensuous lips drew back in a smile that was pure mischief, then flitted along among the shadows before emerging outside the clinic, at which point those shadows resolved into the form of a pretty young woman whose pallid complexion gave her a more than slightly unearthly appearance.

"So, that's the new Slayer, eh?" said the young girl (whose feet did not appear to be touching the ground at the moment), "Rather full bodied...and with some very nice curves. That should teach her to annoy my friends...speaking of which, I'd better find out what Lenore and Chloe are up to, the poor dears..."

Natsume, of course, was unaware of this and could only wonder about what had happened to make her clothing vanish so mysteriously like that, almost as if a ghostly hand had reached out and removed her things without her seeming to notice the slight breeze that this had caused her. Instead she tried to focus upon Tofu's words and what this surprising revelation might mean to her future, to say nothing of her relationship to Tatewaki, and-even more importantly-why it had been within Kasumi's presence that her new nature chose to manifest, and who was that strange girl who made Natsume's guts churn with so violent a reaction?

These mysteries confounded her, and yet her stubborn pride would not permit her to concede that she was out of her depth entirely. After all, if Nabiki could handle living with a curse that changed her into a man, then how could Natsume do less with the hand that fate had dealt her? As yet she did not know precisely what this Slayer business was all about, but she was determined to learn the answer in very short order, and then she would confront Kasumi and learn the truth regarding her adopted older sister.

But first there was Tatewaki to deal with, and much as the idea of nursing him in her lap was certainly quite appealing, she somehow doubted him awakening to find her naked would be the sort of thing the poor boy could handle, and surely not a sagacious move to secure him as a husband, though in all truth she would have been offended if he had not shown her a reaction...

Which then prompted an odd thought in Natsume's mind regarding Doctor Tofu. Granted the man acted with total professionalism around her, but it was mildly annoying to a woman's pride that the first man to ever see her naked was so overtly indifferent about it. Had she been Kasumi, however, then it would likely have been an entirely different matter. Kasumi could vamp Tofu without even trying on any day of the week...which did seem rather unfair as her sister was otherwise quite indifferent, possibly even entirely ignorant in regard to his affections. Would this change entirely should it be-as she suspected-that Kasumi was no longer entirely...human? And if so...then what would Natsume do about it? She loved her older sister, but if she had turned into some kind of a menace...

Well then, Natsume wold learn what this Slayer business was really all about, one way...or another...

Part One-Hundred-Eleven.

"Dimitri Maximoff, I presume?"

The demonic figure laying atop the sarcophagus barely seemed to stir for several moments, but then the lips of the otherwise motionless body began to twitch, then formed the words, "He speaks...and here all along I merely assumed that you were a mute lackey."

The masked form of Larva gave no hint of taking offense at this comment but merely responded, "I have a voice...I just seldom see fit to use it. But I am here on behalf of my Princess..."

"Begone and trouble me no further, Shinma," Dimitri retorted, "I do not trouble myself with mere underlings. If your precious Princess wishes to discuss something with me, then let her come here for herself, not delegate a mere messenger boy to do the task as if I were some unruly peasant..."

"My lady has duties that must otherwise occupy her time or she would address you herself," Larva replied, "And not, I think, in a manner much to your liking. This is the second time that you have trespassed into our territory, and my Princess would know why. What further business concerns you with the house of Tendo?"

"That is none of your concern," Dimitri spat, only to wince abruptly as though his very words pained him for some reason.

"You seem troubled, Dark Lord of Pain," Larva remarked, "Is anything the matter?"

"Damn you," Dimitri sat up and swung his legs over the cement lid of the tomb upon which he had been laying, only to lean against it as his face contorted like a mask of pain, and he brought one massive hand up to his forehead as though to massage his temples."

"I see," Larva remarked, "You are in some manner of...distress?"

Dimitri bared his fangs and snarled at the robed Shinma, but it was another voice that answered for him, "Lord Dimitri is indisposed to dealing with common rabble. State your message and leave here at once, else you will be...compelled to vacate his presence."

Larva's masked eyes moved but a fraction to take in movement from an unseen corner of the chamber, "My lady Anslat? I had no idea that you were involved here..."

"Where I go and what I do is of no concern of yours, Shinma," said a tall and willowy women with long pale green hair as she sauntered up to the side of Dimitri, "I am not subject to the whims of your lady, nor do I think it wise of you to press your luck by trying my patience. State your business then leave, that is the only warning that I will extend you."

"My apologies if I seem forward, Morgan Anslat," Larva replied, "But your presence is of great concern to my lady, as is the timing of your visit to this suburb of the Tokyo region. You know indeed of what I speak."

"Yes...we know indeed," Dimitri replied, "You are concerned lest your child-  
Princess become involved in our affairs...however indirectly. You seek to warn us off from interfering in your personal affairs...but I assure you that it is of no concern of mine what sort of delicate negotiations you are contriving to work within this district."

"My Princess would be most gratified to learn of this, Lord Dimitri," Larva replied, "These...negotiations, as you put it, are indeed quite delicate and are of significance to one who ranks above you in your tribe of Jezril, and I know for a fact that your uncle would take a dim view of..."

"Do not speak his name, Churl!" Dimitri lurched to his feet and seemed ready to strike but for another wave of pain that crumpled up his features into a mask of agony.

"My lord...?" Morgan made a half-step towards him, but he waved her off with a hand as though refusing her offer of support and comfort.

"It is nothing...a trifle," Dimitri forced himself to stand alert and wrapped his cloak about him before glaring at the Shinma, "You'll forgive me...the daylight hours are not when I am at my best. Depart now or there will be trouble between us."

"As you wish, my lord," Larva replied before stepping into the shadows and vanishing like mist into the daylight that lay just beyond the tomb's doorway.

No sooner was the Shinma prince gone but Dimitri reached out and gripped Morgan's arm to steady himself, even as another figure detached itself from hiding and said, "Boss? Y'all right?"

"Damnation...these pains grow worse and worse!" Dimitri sat down once again and clutched his head with both of his large hands, "Every hour of every minute I feel them eating away at my very being until I can no longer think straight! The nausea...the bloating...the disgusting purity of these thoughts..."

"Purity?" both Morgan and the Zombie King named Raptor chorused together.

"Yes, purity!" Dimitri snarled the word, "I cannot abide such awful virtue and inhuman waves of compassion! I can feel her presence corrupting my very soul with her love and charity...her desire to protect the ones she cares about! I will go mad if I cannot sever this damnable link and am forced to abide her light and sweetness for yet another hour! I must be rid of her now or go insane from further contamination! Only then can my Darkness nurture me away from the warm emotions that she keeps projecting into my very being!"

The Zombie King blinked his eyes then said, "That's it, Mate, ya finally gone and lost it..."

"Oh, for the love of the Demon Realms," Morgan grimaced, "Are you still obsessed over that girl you turned into a Master? What in the name of all that is dark and unholy were you thinking biting into a mere wench like that when you could have been draining my neck..."

"I did not bite her, Morgan," Dimitri replied.

"Oh, that's a likely story," the Succubus huffed, folding her arms over her substantial chest while reeking of jealousy and outrage.

"I swear to you by my mother's grave that I did not," Dimitri replied, "I gave her some of my blood to drink, but only so that I could control her and use her against her own family. I had no interest in the trollop other than to use her as a pawn for getting closer to her sister, and I fully intended to cast her aside when she was of no further use to me..."

"You'd better not just be saying that, Mister," Morgan scowled, "Because if I find out you were draining her..."

"Er...luv? Boss?" Raptor said rather meekly, "What're we gonna do about her Nibs if she gets it into herself t'try an' interfere in our business?"

"We will do nothing for now," Dimitri responded, "Shinma are powerful but carry with them their own rather unique...shall we say...limitations? If the so-  
called Princess does choose to interfere with us it will be to her ruin, and I will delight in absorbing her powers and adding them to my own dark abilities. As for these so-called negotiations being conducted under her auspices...well, I am not so easily deterred by the mere mention of my Uncle."

"That much is good," Morgan noted, "We went to a lot of hard work and trouble to set this up, and if anything were to go wrong at this point..."

"Nothing will go wrong...eh?" Dimitri glanced sharply to the side at the sound of something rattling behind one grate that served as a drain for the tomb, at which point the Vampire Lord and his colleagues all stared crossly in a single direction.

"Might be rats," Raptor suggested.

"Oh yes, big ones," Morgan mused.

"It would seem that we have spies listening on our private conversation," Dimitri's smile was more of a snarl than anything pleasant, "Well, if so, then my Ghouls will take care of them. We need not sully ourselves in dealing with anything so trifle...""

Meanwhile, down beneath the grate, Lenore the Vampire and Chloe the Werewoman huddled together with mutually sheepish expressions, the former saying, "Oh man...why did he have to go and hear us?" at the level of a dull whisper.

"Sorry," Chloe apologized, "I guess I got excited...my tail sorta brushed that can, know what I mean?"

"I wasn't blaming you, Hon," Lenore replied, "But I think we'd better crawl on out of here before fangface comes after us or sends someone else to do the job, like Raptor."

"Um...say, what do you think he meant by Ghouls?" Chloe asked as she perked her ears and sniffed the air inside the narrow tunnel through which they had been crawling.

"Trust me, you don't wanna know," Lenore started to ease away from the grate, only to freeze as her own senses alerted her to danger, "Oh crap!"

"Huh?" Chloe turned around as they both became aware that they were not alone, at which point she growled a low, subtle warning, baring fangs as her features became more bestial and she prepared to defend both herself and her best friend from the appearance of creatures of the Dark who loved not humans or those who "collaborated" with creatures of the day time...

"Here we are, kids, home sweet home, at least for you," Frank noted as he pulled his Monster motorcycle and side-car up alongside the Tendo household.

"Thanks," Ranma said as he dismounted from the rear of the bike, straightening out as he turned to the glance at the house before saying, "Sure hope we're in time to help Oneechan. There's no telling what could happen if that Dimitri creep's been sniffing around here again."

"Sure made good time flying from that submarine back to the home digs," Keiko mused as she dismounted from the side-car.

"Oh yeah," Nabiki said faintly, "And you managed to find every bump along the way from here to the coastline."

"Huh?" Ranma turned to see the rather shaky expression of his wife, "You okay, Nab-chan? Uh...you're looking a little pale..."

"Just take deep breaths and unfold your legs, kid," Frank remarked as he removed his helmet and glanced crossly at their surroundings, "Shelly, do a quick scan and tell me what you've got."

"Already done, Boss," the motorcycle replied, "I've got three life forms, one breathing, one not, one...kinda between states. Profile matches previous scans of Saotome Nodoka, Tendo Kasumi and-one surprise here-her royal nibs, Miyu."

"Say WHAAAT?" Frank reacted, "The Princess? What about Lenore? Why ain't she here?"

"Can't answer that one, Boss, but I definitely don't pick up her signature bio-  
readings," the sentient computer relay system replied, "Think maybe her nibs did something to cause that?"

"I sure hope not," Frank growled, "Lenore's a good kid, and I'd hate to have avenge her and all that. Gotta wonder what Miyu wants with Kasumi...or is that too stupid a question?"

"Gee, what would one Master Vamp want with another?" the motorcycle asked rhetorically, "Maybe they're exchanging recipes for blood pudding, but whatever it is I don't pick up her pet Shinma anywhere around, no bioform match for Larva..."

"Huh?" Frank scowled even deeper, "That's weird...he usually trots after her heels like a faithful puppy..."

"Never mind all that," Nabiki said as she shook off her general stiffness from cramped riding in the side-car, "I want to know what's going on with my big sister! If somebody's done something to Kasumi..."

"I'm with you on that, Nabiki," Ranma assured his beloved.

"Me too," Keiko cracked her knuckles in a meaningful fashion, "Kasumi's too nice a girl to let anything bad happen to her, so what say we go in there and break a few heads to get some answers?"

"Now hold on there!" Frank barked, "This is the Princess Miyu we're talking about. Don't go flying off any handles before we know the score card..."

"You take score," Nabiki said as she headed towards the gates, "I'm gonna go find my Oneechan and give this Princess character a piece of my business..."

"Don't worry, Doc, I'll back her up," Ranma called over his shoulder as he and Keiko hurried to keep pace with the middle Tendo sister.

Frank just growled, "Kids these days...they never listen."

"So, are you going to let them find out the hard way?" Shelly asked.

"Serve 'em right if I did," Frank growled as he hooked his helmet over the handlebars of his bike then headed off after the three teenagers, "...Only if I did that they'd take away my Good Guy card..."

"Eh?" Miyu broke off in mid-sentence and turned her head towards the front entrance to the household, "It would seem that we have company, and if I am not mistaken an old colleague of mine is with them. We will continue this at another time, but for now...I must be going..."

"But...wait!" Kasumi pleaded, "Don't go...I have so many questions that I want to ask you..."

"Then save them for the next time that we meet," Miyu replied as she leaped into the air and vanished, leaving behind the ethereal words, "But for now...I have other business that I must attend. I bid you a good day and evening, Tendo Kasumi..."

"But..." Kasumi tried to stretch out her senses to perceive the presence of the other girl, but instead she felt the rapid approach of three very strong life-  
forces...the pulsing warmth and strength of their Chi coursing through them like the potent rich red fluid that filled their veins, and among them Kasumi identified the familiar signature that marked her younger sister, Nabiki, along with the equally vibrant life auras of her 'little brother,' Ranma and of Keiko Arigami.

Following after them was a much heavier tread, of someone who moved with incredible light-footedness and yet bore the stamp of a massive frame quite literally rippling with energy of an entirely different sort than to what Kasumi was accustomed. The masculinity of this individual was almost overpowering, very different from Nabiki's 'Kaneda' persona, yet still quite magnetic, and she wondered at why it felt more than slightly familiar to her recently expanded senses...

Before further speculation could ensue, however, Nabiki burst into the room with an urgency that was plain in her expression, "Oneechan...are you all right?"

"Nabiki-chan?" Kasumi asked, surprised at finding her sister home at last from her honeymoon vacation...and at least two weeks ahead of schedule at that.

"Mom!" was Ranma's immediate first word as she rushed in behind Nabiki, and like a shot he was at the older woman's side, lifting her into his lap as he critically examined her then said, "Mom, are you all right? Mom...can you hear me? Dammit, who did this to you...?"

Nodoka stirred, opening her eyes and looking up at her son before murmuring the words, "Language..."

"Uh..." Ranma abruptly colored, "Sorry about that, Mom...but...you're okay?"

"I believe so," the older woman remarked as she felt along the sides of her neck then sat up under her own power, "It was very strange...this young girl just looked at me and then I went to sleep. She seemed to be some sort of...friend come to visit with Kasumi..."

"Ah..." it was Kasumi's turn to look somewhat sheepish while Keiko swept the room with a glance then seemed to relax slightly, though she was still poised on the balls of her feet as though ever ready for action.

"I don't sense anything, other than a rather interesting perfume," the redheaded kickboxer noted, "She must have just left here in a hurry..."

"Yeah, she tends to do that a lot," rumbled Frank, who only just them caught up with the party.

"Oh, Doctor Steinberg?" Kasumi suddenly realized exactly why that male presence had felt so familiar, even as she noticed immediately the difference between the Bio-signature he gave off and that of her human friends and relations, reminding her at once that the gigantic Gaijin was something other than a normal human, "What is going on here? Nabiki, Ranma-kun, I thought you were still on your Honeymoon."

"Um...we kind of cut it short on account of a family emergency," Keiko answered on behalf of her two friends, "Someone sent word that you might be in some kind of trouble, Tendo-san, and so naturally we wanted to see if you were all right."

"Trouble?" Kasumi turned to see the curious way that Nabiki was looking at her and said, "Imoutochan?"

"Ah..." Nabiki hesitated before beginning, "We were just wondering if you were feeling...well, like yourself lately, Kasumi."

"Like myself?" Kasumi asked, "Who else would I be feeling like?"

"She means...ah," Ranma paused before looking the older girl in the eyes and asking, "...Oneechan, you know what happened to you a couple weeks back?"

"Of course I do, Ranma-kun," Kasumi replied, "Do you think I could easily forget about a thing like that?"

"They mean are you a Vampire now," Keiko asked bluntly, earning harsh looks from both Nabiki and Kasumi, which she ignored as she continued, "Have you reverted?"

Kasumi looked down, her chin almost touching her breastbone as she murmured very faintly, "I...don't really know...but I think that...I may have..."

To her surprise she felt a hand on her shoulder and looked up to see Keiko smiling at her in total acceptance, "Hey, don't feel bad, it's not the end of the world, Kasumi. There's far worse fates that could have befallen you, believe me."

"Interesting," Frank said as he put down the emptied glass that he had been sniffing, which still contained some residue of the blood mixture that Kasumi had been drinking, "Rich formula, cow's blood, if I'm not mistaken. That Beiko can sure whip up a recipe from a few stray clues and all that."

"Wait a minute," Nodoka said, "Vampire? Are you saying that Kasumi...?"

"Has relapsed into Vampirism," Keiko replied, "But not to worry, she seems to have it under control. My guess is that Dimitri character is still in the area and still has some residual influence that might be affecting her indirectly."

"That doesn't sound too likely," Frank remarked, "I know Donovan, and when he puts the whammy on you it's pretty damned effective. About the only way that I can figure that you still retain the effects of what Dimitri did to you, Miss Tendo, is if you drank blood before he performed the exorcism. Well, did you?"

"Ah..." Kasumi sighed again, "I...believe that I did..."

"Oneechan?" Nabiki was shocked.

"I didn't mean to do it," Kasumi hastily added, "But...while I was in that other world...the one where my counterpart...ah...went to Jusenkyo..."

"You mean the Kasumi who was a top-notch martial...?" Ranma began when his wife gave him an affectionate elbow in the gut to stop him.

"Yes, that was the one," Kasumi nodded sadly, "How oddly parallel to our own world that seemed...and yet there on that timeline Ukyo seemed to hate me for some strange reason. It was very strange...she was much like the Ukyo we know, only she had pink hair and seemed to bear some sort of grudge with my counterpart. I tried to convince her that I was not an enemy, but I had to...restrain her..."

"Restrain her how?" Nodoka wondered.

"Um...that was the oddest thing about it, Auntie," Kasumi replied, "I looked her in the eyes and told her to stop...and she did so."

"Suggestive Hypnotism," Keiko remarked, "Definitely a Vampiric ability, though it usually takes most vamps a lot of practice to get it just right."

"And how would you know that?" Nabiki wondered.

"Hey, I've hung out with all types when living on Lao's ship," Keiko smiled, "And there was this girl who Lao picked up in a Hong Kong port who had this really sweet personality, even given that she's a drinker, and her two best friends in tow...well, we kind of got to talking..."

"Talking?" Ranma arched an eyebrow to give special emphasis to the word.

"Well, okay, we were doing that too," Keiko waved the point aside, "But the point is...she told me a lot about Vampires, especially her own tribal bloodline of Loire..."

"Oh my," Kasumi blinked her eyes, "Was her name, by any chance, Lenore?"

It was Keiko's turn to look surprised, "Why yes, how did you know that?"

"It figures," Frank rumbled, "I had to liberate Lenore and her two buds from Lao during one of visits to check up on the big-bad pirate Kitty, and once I **explained** to her that they were friends of mine she was willing to let them go in my custody, for which Lenore especially owes me a big favor."

"So that's why you assigned her to check up on Oneechan," Ranma remarked.

"But who were the other two 'friends' you mentioned?" Nabiki added.

"That would be Chloe and Kiima," Keiko answered, "Chloe's a werewolf, you see..."

"A werewolf?" Ranma repeated.

"Actually she's from a tribe of Romani-descended Gypsies who live in California," Frank explained, "They were all born as Were-folk, but they're all right as that thing goes. A bit wild around the edges, but hardly the rampaging, mindless brutes you see in Hollywood flicks..."

"Oh, you mean like Mister Werewolf, who helped us out a while back," Kasumi beamed.

"John Talbain," Frank simply nodded, more than a little taken aback by the pleasant way in which the transformed Tendo girl referred to his lycanthropic friend as "Mister Werewolf."

"So..." Nabiki drolled as she turned back to her vampyric sister, then glanced at Keiko, "Who is this other one you mentioned again...Kiima?"

"Ah, she's...different," Keiko replied somewhat sheepishly, "It's a little hard to explain, but...well...she's kind of like...dead, only not-dead, if you follow my meaning..."

Lenore kicked viciously at the reaching claws of the ghoul that were reaching for her, then she spun around and attacked the ghoul who was attempting to grab Chloe from behind as the transformed were-woman slashed and hacked in all directions, rending undead flesh with her full bestial fury.

The two friends fought back-to-back as they managed to back out of the narrower tunnel into an adjoining lower sewer where they had more room to maneuver, yet still they were being pressed hard by the gray skinned decaying creature, the lower minions of Dimitri seemingly endless and without number. Chloe could not even made full use of her abilities due to the basic repulsion she had for these foul-smelling animated corpses, the taste of which flesh would be as bad as eating poison. Though relatively slow-moving their sheer weight of numbers was taxing, and even at full strength Chloe could barely handle more than five or six at a time, leaving the rest to Lenore, who covered for her backside.

"This sucks!" Lenore declared as she reached under her collar and pulled out a sword from concealment, slashing with rapid thrusts that took three foes apart in a series of skillful fencing moves that eliminated one threat and gave her room enough to deal with another.

"How come they're so many?" Chloe asked in her own bestial voice, "Where are they coming from?"

"Dimitri's a careful strategist, he probably prepared for this in advance!" Lenore declared as she took the head off yet another walking corpse, "He infected these people with his filthy poison and turned them into these ghouls...and now he's using them like cannon fodder without the least concern for the actual people they might once have been!"

"These are people?" Chloe gasped, "Then...isn't there someway we can save them?"

"Afraid not, Honey," Lenore said with regret, "He's taken their souls and animated them with his own foul evil, now we're only doing them a favor by getting rid of their bodies! That will weaken his hold on them and allow them to possibly escape from his clutches..."

"How amusing," a disturbingly familiar voice said, "So you think to thwart me with a few feeble efforts. Truly my enemies must be desperate if you are an example of what they send to spy upon me."

"Huh?" Lenore and Chloe said together, only to suddenly find themselves confronted by weaving streams of discolored white bands that wrapped themselves around both Werewoman and Vampire and wound them up immobile.

"HEY!" Lenore cried as she struggled against her bindings.

"What is this stuff?" Chloe asked, then she tried to take a bite out the bandages holding her, only to retch as she exclaimed, "UGH-disgusting!"

"My thanks to you, my ally," Dimitri said as he, Morgan, Raptor and another figure stood together at one dry end of the sewer tunnel storm-drain system, "However, I wish to interrogate these two before you have you way with them, so do not bind them too tightly."

"Uh oh," Lenore winced, ceasing her struggles as she made out the fourth character as the Egyptian Mummy known as Anakaris.

"We're in bad trouble, huh?" Chloe asked in a rhetorical remark as her form shifted to her less bestial state.

"Very," Chloe murmured in the same stage whisper.

"So, now they're sending children to spy on us," Morgan mused.

"Eh, couple'a frails, no biggie," Raptor declared dismissively, "'Course the redhead's a bit of a cutie, so try not to hurt 'em too much, will ya Annie old buddy?"

The dour-faced Egyptian just glared at the Zombie king and said nothing.

"Speak to me, Minions," Dimitri demanded, "Who sent you and for what reason? Was it the Princess? Did she think one lackey insufficient to take a measure of my whereabouts?"

"Get stuffed!" Lenore snarled as she sought to find release from her bindings, "I don't work for any Princess."

"The one of the others, perhaps," Morgan mused, "Tell me...was it our dear old friend Stein who put you up to this? He does have such a fondness for the weak and timid."

"What did you call us?" Chloe snarled.

"We'll show you who's weak and timid, Succubus!" Lenore snapped.

"Stein is it?" Dimitri asked, "Has my old friend returned to Japan looking for me? How appropriate, considering all else that is now taking part in these provinces. I must pay him my respects when time permits...or perhaps I will send him your heads as a token of my esteem."

"Shit!" Lenore exclaimed as she braced herself for a tightening of the bandages around them, "Looks like this is it...sorry to drag you in on this one, Chloe-  
chan..."

"What d'ya mean...drag me in?" Chloe gasped, "I'd follow you...anywhere, Lenore...you know that..."

"Huh?" Lenore gasped, momentarily surprised beyond mere concerns for their mutual welfare.

"How romantic," Morgan mused, "Make their endings a quick one, Anakaris."

The Mummy merely nodded then extended a bandaged hand, preparing to tighten it...when all at once something flashed out from the shadows and struck him on the wrist, causing the Egyptian to cry out in pain as his hand fell away, even as the white light move on and arced around the room, striking one Ghoul after another and causing them to fall away as though their wires were cut, several of them falling apart all together.

Lenore and Chloe were both startled to discover their own bandaged bonds had been sliced away, but then the light took form in the space between them and Dimitri, resolving itself into the shape of a young girl with pale skin and gray hair and eyes that gleamed like rubies in the shadows.

"Kiima!" Lenora gasped.

"Kiima-friend?" Chloe marveled.

Dimitri frowned, "Who are you, and why do you interfere in my business?"

The pale grey woman regarded the renegade Vampire lord and spoke in a voice that quavered as though not entirely on the same wavelength, "Are you the one who's been troubling my friends?"

Morgan gasped, "My lord...she is not what she seems...I detect no life aura..."

"I am well aware of her displaced nature," Dimitri stated imperiously, "She is not so much supernatural as a victim of science gone mad...how appropriate for Stein to select such a one as an ally."

"Eh there," Raptor said to the stricken Anakaris, who was clutching at his now hand-less wrist, "Gonna put a bandage on that, old buddy."

The Egyptian just glared at the Zombie King and bared stained teeth with a most malevolent expression.

"Kiima...how did you find us?" Lenore asked.

"I only had to look for where the signs of trouble were greatest," the pale girl replied without taking her eyes off of Dimitri, "I knew you and Chloe would be involved, same as always."

"A fine deduction," Morgan mused, "But one that will cost you."

"Are you sure that's what your boyfriend wants?" Lenore asked, her own ruby eyes gleaming slightly as she added, "You wanted to question us, right? Not tear us into little pieces."

"I will find great satisfaction in doing both," Dimitri bared his fangs, "And do not think I am at all impressed with your little display of theatrics."

"We will leave now," the ghostly woman explained, "Do not attempt to stop us or I will destroy you."

"You think that I am intimidated by the weak threats of a mere phantom?" Dimitri sneered, "If you go at all it will be with my indulgence...yet I have not bestowed such a favor upon you."

"You do not understand me at all," the 'mere phantom' replied, "You cannot prevent me from taking my friends with me."

As she said this the strange light surrounding her grew brighter than before, and all at once Dimitri and the others were compelled to look away as the light engulfed both Chloe and Lenore, then winked back out again, leaving all three girls vanished from the sewer chamber.

"By Chaos, how did they do that?" Morgan gasped.

"Some kinda teleport spell, right Boss?" Raptor asked as he picked up the severed portion of the Egyptian's anatomy and offered it to him, "Lemme give you a hand there, Mate, you look like you could use it."

The Mummy accepted the proffered member, but only to begin beating it against the Zombie's head, much to the latter's profuse protest.

"It matters not how it was done," Dimitri said coldly, "Yet clearly she is more to be respected as an adversary than either of her two allies."

"Does this mean we should alter the plan, Dimitri?" Morgan asked of her vampiric colleague.

"We change nothing," Dimitri decided, "They know little that is of importance, and in any event it is too late to alter the plan. Things are already in motion, and very soon the results will be seen, and then...then will my revenge be at hand against the House of Tendo..."

"Huh?" Ranma replied.

"You mean that she's a ghost?" Nodoka asked.

"Well, technically anyway," Frank replied, "She's kind of in-between the states of life and death, sort of trapped in a transitional phase distortion that keeps her partially outside the normal flow of timespace, only she can manifest a body in the temporal sphere by merging herself into Akashic matter, thus giving her temporary solidity, which dissolves when she relaxes."

"How on earth did she wind up like that?" Nabiki asked.

"It was an experiment of her father's that went kind of awry..." Keiko began when Frank hastily interrupted.

"Trust me, you don't want to know the details," he said, "I know the details and I wish I didn't, and I'm not exactly a stranger to ugly. Lenore shouldn't have told me, but she did, and now I'm telling you that you don't want to know, got that?"

"Ah...kind of," Ranma scratched his head and shared a bewildered look with Nabiki.

"Look, it's like this," Frank explained patiently, "Every human being on this earth is granted a soul, which enters the body during the early first trimester. Before that time, following conception, the zygote in a mother's womb generates a kind of preliminary soul membrane called Melenta, which matures during the embryonic stage and forms into a kind of psychic placenta that sustains the cellular mass of the body and helps charge them into a resonant pattern. Often during this stage the body detect genetic anomalies, or the zygote-embryo proves non-viable...by which I mean to say it gets rejected as defective, which is why two thirds of all pregnancies tend to end in miscarriage..."

"Oh yes, I've heard something about this before in one of Tofu-Sensei's books," Kasumi noted, "In some cultures it is traditionally believed that the soul does not enter a baby until they are somewhat further along in their pregnancy, where the embryo has been accepted and goes on to mature into an actual baby."

"Right," Frank gave the elder Tendo sister a curious look before continuing, "The point is...there is a residual pattern of soul energy that exists at all times within the body, which animates the cells and keeps them functioning as a coherent unit, but the actual soul of a person is centered around a soul-core, known as a Monad, and THAT doesn't enter the body until the early third of the pregnancy is usually completed. The Monad contains three concentric shells surrounding it, which contains a personal energy pattern of Akashic memory...the personality and central make-up of the individual himself, the part of him that is reborn from body to body, from lifetime to lifetime through the process of Reincarnation..."

"I get you," Ranma said, "My big sis, Kaoih, told me something like this...only she said that a person has seven souls, each one surrounding the other...like the layers of an onion."

"Smart kid," Frank nodded grimly, "The three central layers form three more layers that form the concentric shells surrounding the Monad, and the Melenta shell is the seventh level, the one that holds the rest together. Something goes wrong, the body gets massively disrupted, the Melenta pattern fragments and five of the other six layers of the soul escape from the body. The two that are left, the Melenta pattern and the secondary Epidurial layering, get left behind while the Monad and its Five surrounding shells transmigrate towards the Astral plane of being..."

"You mean they die?" Nabiki fathomed.

"That's the technical term for it, Nab-chan," Keiko winked, "And once you go to the Astral plane your fifth layer comes under critical scrutiny and replays the contents of your entire life cycle. They call that The Judgement, where the weight of your life is measured and determined, at which point you move on towards whatever level of the Other Realm you most appropriately belong, either Hell or Heaven..."

"Yeah, and once you get there you kind of nestle in and take a spot next to all the other departed souls that currently reside there," Frank continued, "You kind of enter a cocoon phase where you go to sleep and dream a dream that can last for decades...or years, depending on how long it takes to purge your Karma of the excess charge. After a certain period of time elapses you get tugged back towards the earth to get reincarnated once again, forming a soul-chord attachment with the Melenta patterning of a whole new body, and once the embryo is developed enough you get drawn in and start the whole thing all over."

"Kinda sounds like cosmic recycling," Ranma remarked.

"In a way it is," Keiko smiled, "In theory a person is reborn into each new life in an attempt to solve the problems that were left unsolved in your last one. That's why you tend to meet many of the same people you met before in a previous life during the course of your travels, especially people who meant a great deal to you in a prior incarnation. Sometimes you feel a touch of memory when that happens, and it can spark a renewal of old affections, like falling in love at first sight, or instantly bonding with a new friend as if they were an old one..."

"And this process goes on and on until a person reaches total enlightenment and has no further need of spiritual growth through continuous reincarnations," Nodoka smiled serenely, "At which point you are finally able to move on to the next level of being, the one beyond all others, where only the gods may dwell, where death has no meaning and the future is truly endless."

"Fascinating," Nabiki said, "But what does all this have to do with my sister?"

"Just laying the ground work, Kid," Frank explained, "You see...in some forms of Vampirism the Monad and its surrounding layers get forcibly evicted from the body and are displaced by a Vampire soul known as the Goya. The victim is essentially a soul-less being since they are demonically possessed and have only the two peripheral layers of the soul remaining with them, the parts that tie the Goya to the body and gives it the residual memories and personality of the former human. Goyas are nasty buggers who lack the normal human restraints of morality and conscience, and they delight in feeding on others to create more Goyas. That's the tribe that you generally have to watch out for, the ones who come the closest to fitting the stereotypes about Vampires. Loire tribe is something else yet again...they have their souls still intact within their bodies, but the Vampirism has been inflicted on them like a kind of virus that transforms the body and renders them partially etheric. Basically a Loire is the very same person that they were before the transformation, only they are trapped in a transitory state that induces chronic anemia, which can only be relieved by a steady diet of blood, preferably in small quantities, muck like orange juice in a normal human diet."

"Oh my," Kasumi spoke up, "It didn't taste very much like orange juice..." she covered her mouth as she realized what she had just said and went, "Oh my..." with a disquieted expression.

"Ah...right," Ranma said, his uneasiness plainly written in his expression.

"Okay then," Nabiki said, "So this Lenore is a Loire vamp...and my sister...?"

"Is Jezril...with something else added entirely," Frank noted, "She's human in all the ways that matter, and she's got a soul as pure and clean of the taint of the Dark as anything I've ever run into. Jezril vamps are kind of like an elite branch of the same line that Loire hail from, only they're kind of like Super-  
Vamps with all sorts of really powerful abilities like Telekinesis and Elemental Plane Shift. They can control the elements of earth and sky, summon creatures to do their bidding, go ethereal, teleport and do the whole animal-shapeshift bit. They're bloody tough to kill and can take more damage than a normal Vamp, and they're unbelievably strong, maybe even stronger than me. They're still vulnerable to silver, garlic and wolfsbane, however, and anything formerly living can affect them, like wood or bone, but you have to take out their central nervous system before they can actually feel it. Most of them don't like sunlight either...it gives them a rash to be exposed for too long to direct contact, but they're not as vulnerable as Goya, who would literally burst into flames if you expose them to intense UV rays."

"Interesting tips," Nabiki scowled, "But I still want to know what this means about my sister."

"Oh yes," Kasumi agreed, "I don't think I very much like the sound of what you are describing, Doctor."

"Well, I don't mean to upset you, Kid," Frank said truthfully, "But I thought you ought to be prepared to know what's what...just in case we can't complete the reversal of your condition. You drank blood, though, and that activated the catalyst element in the Vampire blood that Dimitri fed you. He's Jezril, but he's also part demon, Rakshasa to be exact, the worst sort of parasitic life form since Vampirism was originally developed to combat the Rakshasa."

"Rakshasa?" Ranma asked, "What are they like?"

Frank gave him a pale-eyed stare and said, "Nasty...worse than anything you could imagine. Completely inhuman, alien, predatory shapeshifters who suck the life out of their victims and delight in raping humans. Ever see a Tentacle-  
rape Anime? That's them, only they don't just go for human females since quite a few get a kinky fetish about doing the same thing to men. What they do is wrap themselves around you and try to suck the energy out of your soul matrix, literally destroying a person right down to the Soul Core, which alone is indestructible and beyond their ability to leach."

"How do you fight monsters like that?" Nabiki asked.

"If you're human...you don't," Frank answered coldly, "Only Vamps are immune to the touch of a Rakshasa, and a normal Vampire can kill a Rakshasa. That's why we weren't overrun in the primitive days when humans hid in caves and told old stories about their fallen Kingdoms of Lemuria and Atlantis. They Rakshasa wait beyond the fringe of the world we know, hiding in the shadows, waiting and biding their time for when they can emerge again and go about with their feasting. The Vampires are a primary line of defense against their intrusion, which is why most world governments allow them to exist, even going so far as to protect their existence from common human knowledge."

"But I thought that Goyas were as destructive towards humans as they are to the Rakshasa," Nodoka pointed out.

"Right," Frank nodded, "Goyas are among the least stable of Vampire tribes and the ones that even other Vampire tend to treat like bad blood cousins. Governments the world over fund extermination programs to eliminate nests of Goyas wherever they can find them. It's like with the Nosferatu, who are also seen as poor vampire relations, though not as perniciously destructive as the Goyas. Loire and Jezril vamps are the more socially acceptable breeds, and they have a tribal pact with the human governments that allow them to exist relatively unmolested. The Vampire council ruthlessly enforces their edict to keep the peace between Vampires and Humans, and woe betide any Goya who crosses the line and expects to get away with it since the big-bad D-man is likely to have something nasty to say about it."

"D-man?" Ranma repeated.

"He means Dracula, Big Boy," Keiko explained, "One of the ruling nobles of the European Union of Vampire Nations. Of course, there's also the legendary bounty-hunter who goes by the name of D, but it's said that he's the son of the bigger D, half-human, a Vampyr, and possessed of a demon hand, whatever the heck that's supposed to mean..."

"O-kay," Nabiki said slowly, "But I'm still waiting to hear what all this has to do with Kasumi."

"Just this, Kid," Frank nodded, "She's a Daywalker...mostly human, but she's got Jezril and demonic elements now fused into her very makeup, which makes her close to being a vampire, but not quite all the way. She has the thirst for blood, but it's pretty muted by comparison with a real vamp, and the tests run on her by Doctor Tofu at my request..."

"Oh my," Kasumi said, "You mean you've been consulting with Tofu-sensei?"

"Ah, yeah," Frank nodded, "Hope you don't mistake the guy's intentions, they're honorable. He's been pretty concerned about you, and since I offered to lend him my advice on your condition..."

"Get on with it," Nabiki said impatiently, "What about those tests you mentioned?"

"Ah...well," Frank hesitated, "Normal blood tests didn't show anything unusual, but when I subjected them to my own methods they turned up a number of...really interesting characteristics. You see, even normal Vampire blood contains antibodies that try to weakly attack the Vampire elements in the bloodstream...but Kasumi here doesn't have any such antibodies at all. She's clean, which means her system has totally accepted her vampire traits and has incorporated them into her genetic matrix. That's...pretty unusual for a human, and it kind of suggests that there might have already been some unusual features in the Tendo bloodline..."

"Get to the point," Nabiki demanded, "Can you cure Kasumi?"

"Um...in a word, No," Frank answered before hastily adding, "At least...not that I can determine at the present without running further tests. I'm just saying it might not be as easy as giving her an inoculation or something of that nature. Kasumi's body has completely adjusted to her present condition, and in order to change her back into full human...well...that's gonna take a lot more hard work to reverse than anything I can come up with on the spot. Of course, it might be possible using high-level magic..."

"So, do you know any wizards who could help Oneechan?" Ranma asked.

"Um...maybe one or two...I think," Frank reluctantly answered.

"Oh my," Kasumi remarked, "Does this mean that I will have to remain like this...indefinitely?"

"Hey, don't sweat it, Kasumi-chan," Keiko gave her a wink, "We love you anyway, and no one's going to hurt you while I'm around to kick their butts. Besides...did you know Vamps can give you the most incredible kinds of hickeys...?"

"It would seem that my niece will need special attention for the present," Nodoka decided, "But since she is still the Kasumi that I have known for over ten years, I will take it upon myself to see that she is cared for."

"Just let her drink that formula she was having before and there won't be any problems," Frank said, "A few ounces of blood a day will control her thirst and allow her to retain full conscious control over all of her senses. Meanwhile I'll have my staff work on researching a cure and possibly getting in touch with a good Necromancer...if that ain't a contradiction in terms..."

"But what about Lenore?" Kasumi asked, "If she also has this vampirism as a part of her make-up..."

"Lenore's been a Vamp for over seventeen years," Frank replied, "About half her full lifetime, but...you know, it is kinda strange that she ain't here to report in. Which reminds me..." he reached up and touched the side of his neck before saying, "Shelly, you been following this? Got any updates on Lenore's pattern?"

He paused to listen in to a voice that only he seemed able to hear, then frowned and said, "Okay then, widen the search area, and get some peripheral stations online. If she's anywhere within the Tokyo area, I wanna know about it." He turned back to the others and said, "Now I'm actually worried."

"Is Lenore-san all right?" Kasumi asked in genuine concern.

"I don't know and that worries me," Frank scowled, "You guys wait here, me and Shelly are gonna go have a look."

"Uh," Ranma spoke up, "What about that other vampire lady you mentioned before...the Princess?"

"Miyu?" Frank sniffed, "Stay out of her way and she won't bother you, but she's a Shinma, and they're almost as nasty as an Old Blood Jezril. No way would I recommend pissing her off. Stay here and I'll be in touch..."

And with that the big man took his exit, leaving Nabiki to scowl before saying, "There's something he's not telling us..."

"Where would you like to start?" Keiko mused.

"I dunno, he seemed pretty much on the level to me," Ranma noted.

"I'm worried about Lenore," Kasumi fretted before turning to Nodoka and saying, "Would it be all right if I go up to my room, Auntie? I'm feeling a bit tired, but I'll be happy to do the rest of my chores later."

"You take care of yourself and do whatever you have to, Child," Nodoka patted the younger woman on the cheek then smiled as she watched Kasumi take her leave of the kitchen.

Once the elder Tendo sister was out of the room, however, Nabiki glanced sharply at Nodoka and said, "Auntie?"

"No one will harm Kasumi, especially me," the Saotome matriarch softly declared, "You heard what the good doctor said about her condition...that in spite of what has happened, she is still basically our Kasumi."

"I'm relieved to hear you say that, Saotome-san," Keiko admitted, "You seemed ready enough to give her the coup when she was still under Dimitri's spell..."

"That was different," Nodoka informed them, "At that time I feared for her immortal soul, but now that we know that she is still essentially Kasumi, it would be impossible for me to wish to see her dead. She is so much like my own daughter now that I could not bear to draw steel against her."

"Kami-I should hope not!" Ranma averred, "Kasumi doesn't deserve anything like that...not Oneechan! She the nicest person a guy could ever look up to in a sister."

"I hear you there, Ranma-kun," Nabiki softly averred, though still she seemed more than a little upset about these recent dramatic revelations, wanting desperately to have the 'old' Kasumi back, even if it meant having to endure Kasumi's continuing infatuation with her male half, Kaneda. Even having to endure being splashed by her sister with cold water from time-to-time seemed a small price to pay for having Kasumi around the way Nabiki had always known her.

This thought brought forth another, which prompted Nabiki to reflexively put her hands over her abdomen, even known as she did that she was still in the early stages of pregnancy and would not be showing signs for a few weeks hence. Madam Lao had placed a spell over Nabiki to temporarily block out her Jusenkyo curse, but how reliable could such magic be, and what would become of Nabiki's baby by Ranma if she accidentally reverted to her cursed form? Could she really trust herself around Kasumi...given what she had learned about her beloved older sister's current condition?

Franks explanation about souls and their migration to and from the body made her feel more than slightly apprehensive, especially in light of that talk about 'miscarriage.' It faintly horrified her to think of such a fate befalling her own child, the one attempt in her life that she had for nurturing a baby within her own womb without relying on another woman to be her child's surrogate mother, or even real mother, as was Shampoo for their infant daughter, Lylac.

She thought fleetingly of Shampoo and their child, both of whom were safely back on board the Nautilus, and then she thought on the oddity that she might feel safe about leaving the rest of her family in the care of a man who thought that he was Captain Nemo. But then again, she was rubbing shoulders with Frankenstein and talking casually about Dracula and Vampires, so what was to be considered normal about this whole situation? That Kasumi was herself a vampire only added to the unreality of it all, and this on top of the other events of an altogether crazy day that had seen her Posse ride to the rescue of Madam Lao and beat up a kid who was the Prince of a floating Turtle-based island.

"I really need a break from this vacation," she murmured aloud at the level of a low murmur.

"Tell me about it," Ranma said, then she saw him smile at her and some...that did make everything seem a whole lot better, if only for the next few moments...

Continued.

Comments/Criticisms/Card-Carrying Exorcisms: shadowmane

Matters continue to move towards a head as yet another player becomes involved in these affairs, and Kasumi reflects upon the changes in her existence while the fathers find out that their heirs are back in Nerima...all this and Miyu stew in, "Immoral Beloved," or, "Who Wants To Live Forever? (Any Takers?)" Be there...

X

If you wish to check out my other works, Please check out my Fanfiction webpage at: or it's Mirror page at ~ All related chapters of this series can be found there along with my other works.  
/pre 


	44. Chapter 44

preDnabiki112

Nabiki 1/2

"A Very Scary Thought!"

by Jim Robert Bader

(Inspired by the works of Rumiko Takahashi Others,  
with a special appearance by some of my own creations and those of Joss Whedon. The Character of Magnus is my own special creation and may not be borrowed or duplicated without express permission of the author.)

Part One-Hundred-Twelve.

(Set during and slightly after the time of the events recorded in the side-story titled "Honeymoon Hentai")

[No Actual Vampires were harmed in the making of this fanfic...]

"Is everyone here? Can we get this meeting started?"

"Patience, Lord Dukov," Yui of clan Shi urged the representative of Tribe Kriel, "My Aunt Miyu will be along soon enough, and we are two seat short of a full house, so I ask that you all be just a little more patient so that we can begin this conference with a full Quorum of all the concerned Houses in attendance..."

"Lady Yui," M'shulls of Clan Yonagar spoke as diplomatically as he was able, "We respect your word that the Princess has been detained by a personal matter, but still this meeting should be of such importance to her that we might be graced by her presence. If Clan Shinma does not consider the issues at stake here to warrant full attention..."

Unnoticed in the space directly behind and to the right of Yui the Shi warrior named Nagi tensed and scowled ever-so slightly at the tone of light dismissal in the ancient Shaman's voice, the barest hint that Yui might not be up to speed in the role that she was assuming as both Clan Leader of the Shi and as Miyu's delegated lieutenant. Having to arbitrate such a delicate and important meeting of many of the most powerful families and bloodlines while finding a solution for their mutual goals was certainly a lot of pressure to put on the shoulders of a young girl who-despite her apparent youth-had been fully a vampire for little more than a decade. In the eyes of the more wizened and ancient among those attending this meeting she was but a child prodigy, to be admired and even feared for the power she could command but little more than a moth before a candles flame, here one moment and gone the next...

"Please do not mention stake to me, Bushman," Sabastian of Clan Urikel complained, "I nearly had one shoved into me on my way here to this meeting. You all know that there has been an increase in anti-vampire activities of late by those who loathe and despise our very existence, and I am still waiting to hear whether any steps might be taken to deter further such aggression."

"Why deter it?" Leguire of tribe Loire asked dismissively, "We should crush these annoying pests and make an example of them before all of their fellow humans."

"You would have us war with those upon whom we must depend for our very existence?" Yasmina of Clan Obsidian pointedly countered, "Never forget the age in which we live, my brethren. Humans outnumber us many thousands to one...it is not like in the old days when we held the upper hand and could force them into submission."

Nagi unconsciously nodded her head towards the source of this practical viewpoint, the dusky skinned Arabian princess who dated back to the time before Scheherazade told her first bedtime story, and who clearly had a better grasp of the underlying issues involved here, which went far beyond the scope the petty tribal disputes and ancestral rivalries that often tore away at the cohesiveness of such inter-clan tribal conferences as this one that had been convened in the fairly 'neutral' territory of Nerima, Japan, which was jointly claimed by the Shinma and Shi clans under the mutual clan-ties of their ruling princesses. Scanning the room to study the other delegates at the table it was obvious enough which ones could be counted upon as allies...and which delegates just as clearly were entertaining their own agendas.

"True enough, Lady Yasmina," Yui agreed, "Humans are very resourceful, and they possess now the means to work towards our total destruction should we provoke them. Remember why the Blood Pact was forged in the first place, to maintain the peace between our two worlds of Day and Night, to insure our mutual survival by denying the truth of our existence from common knowledge."

"Ah yes, the great Danse Macabre," Leguire said with a smug, superior look upon his genteel (some might say almost effeminate in a Bishonen kind of way) features, "Were we supposedly must restrain our urges to allow the humans to breathe in peace without suspecting our very existence within the shadows. But enough of them know already to put the lie to this façade, and how much longer will we need to wait before they do decide to take aggressive action against us all worldwide? I say we should strike now and early before such a day slowly creeps upon us..."

"There speaks the voice of ignorance and youth," M'shulla snorted, "For one barely two centuries old you have a remarkably shortsighted vision of the way things work in the modern world, and would you really have us all behave like Goya, little more than beasts who feast on life and revel in their primitive natures?"

"At least some Goya are true to their instincts, Bushman," Leguire sneered at the elder, "Not like the rest of us, who must play nice with the humans and even fancy ourselves as their protectors. But we have yet to hear from Tribe Jezril upon this very matter. Tell us, Constantine, why you who are not even a drinker now stands in the place of the European Council and claims the backing of his majesty, the Count, as his benefactor?"

The man sitting with great dignity at one end of the room only smiled and nodded back towards the Loire Vampire before saying, "Please, I prefer the name of Fries now. I haven't gone by Constantine in a very long while now, not since a kinsman of mine made that name rather notorious. Besides which...I may not be one of you, but I know what it means to be patient, and this is hardly the time when you should be fomenting hostilities between yourselves while listening to old suspicions, old tribal prejudices, diving your resources instead of uniting behind a common purpose."

"Thank you, Julian," Yui sighed in relief before arching her tone and saying, "That is the point that I have been trying to make here: that we cannot afford petty squabbles on territory to distract us..."

"Oh, so now you are calling our struggle to maintain the integrity of my tribe's territorial boundary a mere petty squabble and a trivial matter not worthy of attention?" Dukov asked with arched eyebrows.

"No, of course I didn't mean it that way..." Yui began to insist, "But the issue of territorial border incursions works both ways, and everyone here knows that we solve our problems best when we work together rather than at cross purposes..."

Nagi silently bristled as he saw the way certain delegates were reacting to the impassioned entreaties of his Mistress. In their eyes she was calling them weak and vacillating and in need of clan Shi-Shinma's wise powers of arbitration. Considering the proud and noble lineages of a few of the delegates it was remarkably that they could abide to be together at all under one roof facing down like this, but to suggest that they had no choice at all in the matter...

"I think we understand what you meant by this, Princess Yui," Julian spoke in a more conciliatory tone, "We are all of us quite capable of managing the routine affairs of our lives-or respective unlives-buy no clan is so strong that it can afford to go it alone in the face of a mutually hostile aggressor. Better by far to talk it out and come to a reasonable understanding between ourselves than to squander our time and resources through petty bickering over large and complex issues. Better by far to take a step back and reign in the passions that might otherwise divide us than to lose sight of the larger objectives..."

"You keep saying 'we,'" Leguire remarked, "But you are not even Kin. Your kind may be immortal, yet you tend to prey upon one another with your own petty games and intrigues. Vampires should settle their own affairs without resorting to the like of your kind, Julian the Apostate..."

"Your forgiveness, Monsieur, if I take mild exception to your characterization of myself and my ilk," Julian smiled a bit sadly, "As you say, we Immortals do tend to prey upon one another with our own petty games and sword fights, yet when we take the Quickening from a rival is that not the same as drawing blood from a victim? How them are we so very different where it counts, save that we prey upon our own kind and tend not to disturb too much the affairs of ordinary mortals."

Nagi felt an immediate wave of gratitude and respect for Julian and the way in which he had managed to neatly thwart Leguire's sly attempts to bait him. Being difficult to nail down was a cardinal trait of Julian's makeup and one feature that made him both an excellent lawyer and a first rate diplomat, one trusted by cardinals and princess of the Shadow realms for his ability to deliver compromise and smooth out the differences that often divided these hot-tempered tribes of lower-echelon Nightbreed. From the way in which the Loire half-breed was fuming to himself it was obvious that he was not the sort of fellow who took being put in his place with good graces.

At the far end of the table the ancient and redoubtable Yargo of Tribe Nosferatu spoke up, "My clan respects the authority of Lord Julian and honors the esteem in which he is held by the European Council, and most especially by the Count, his current patron. Do you challenge the wisdom of his Excellency in delegating to Lord Julian the authority to represent him?"

At that Leguire grew paler than normal and said, "I...did not intend any slight towards the Count..."

"Good," Yargo smiled a pasty smile of his own that showed the wicked teeth that were so typical of his Tribe of Undead nightwalkers. Bald and unhealthy looking with deep-sunken eyes that made him seem as though he-more than any other drinker present-belonged in a coffin rather than a boardroom, he still radiated the ancient authority of his antique bloodline as he said, "It would be a pity if his Excellency should have to reprove you for discourtesy. I understand that, of the last fellow who did so, you could not have found enough of his ashes to fill a matchbox, let alone an urn. Now, do go on with your address, Princess Yui. You were saying how we need unity of purpose here in order to find common ground for settling our differences without resorting to pointless violence."

Nagi could only imagine the gratitude Yui felt towards this portly "Uncle Fester." Yargo tended to address her with the respect and affection of a kindly old uncle rather than to imply that she was but a mewling infant when compared to one of his undying lineage. Such a sensible voice of wise counsel was exactly what a meeting of this nature called for, and certainly he had defused the rather bland attempt by Leguire to undermine Yui's authority by implying that the Shi vampire was but a poor reflection of her more famous Aunt (read mother/kinswoman). It was rather unfair of the Loire to attempt to put her on the spot like that when it was hardly Yui's fault that Miyu had been delayed by "other matters."

And just where was Miyu when she was needed to maintain order over this assembly? Miyu was a force to be reckoned with and certainly not one to be casually dismissed by even those boasting of the most august bloodlines. Whether one was born a vampire or merely "turned," all had heard of Princess Miyu and what she could do when her anger was aroused, and that alone would have kept the wilder tribal leaders in their place rather than risk testing her directly to see if she truly did measure up to hear fearsome reputation.

"Fair enough, Uncle," Yui smiled and nodded to her elder before turning to look at the other faces present and saying, "There are enough of us here to form a quorum, yet there is one delegate who has yet to arrive, and until the representative of Tribe Tsiel has joined us it would make little sense to open these negotiations. After all, it was originally a dispute between her clan and that of Kriel that set off these issues of inter-border rivalry."

"My clan would prefer if peace were to prevail between ourselves and Tsiel...of course," Dukov insisted with predictable nonchalance, thus ignoring the accusation that it was minions of Kriel tribe that had originally started the violence.

"I know with what authority I speak when I say that tribe Jezril shares your desire to have this matter resolved amicably, Lord Dukov," Julian assured them, "The Count himself has conveyed to me his concerns that this not spread beyond the boundaries already involved in these unfortunate exchanges."

"Which is why the rest of those of us present are involved here as well," Yasmina pointed out, "Disputes that transcend international boundaries, even datelines, can be so tedious to have to sort out."

"I think it is the body count that worries my people the most," Leguire duly noted.

"What bodies?" Dukov asked rhetorically, not bothering to add that his Tribe tended to go to ashes when they were terminated.

"Very well then," Yui said, "We will wait until the Tsiel representative gets here, and then we will go right to the issues that started this all, which...I am given to understand was a case of...credit card fraud?"

"Meaning the Kriels pinched a crate load of bogus plastic and tried to circulate it in Mongolia as the real thing under a dummy corporation," Leguire mused, "Which, naturally enough, the Tsiel resented, especially when some of these fake cards wound up in other territories, which played hob with the human economies within our districts."

"Didn't think you were the sort to care about that sort of thing," M'shulla noted, "You always go on about how meaningless the affairs of mortals are to your sort..."

"Yeah, but not when it impacts upon the wallet, Bushman," Leguire insisted, "We prey upon humans, but being jacked in our bank accounts is an entirely different matter."

"This subject is no longer relevant," Dukov insisted, "The malefactors have been rounded up and dealt with. We consider it a dead issue. It is the Tsiel who refuse to accept our sincerest apologies upon the matter, and they who aggravated things with pointless retaliation, forcing us to respond in kind, and thus the escalation."

Almost too soft to be heard, even by Vampiric hearing, Julian mused to himself, "And they call us Lawyers parasites..."

"Very well," Yui said somewhat dubiously, "We will hear from the Tsiel upon this matter, after which we will attempt to assuage past grievences and hopefully come to some sort of permanent resolution to prevent something similar from happening in the future."

Nagi could only roll his eyes at that and silently think to himself, (Fat chance of that with this lot...)

Meanwhile in the next room outside of the conference chamber, the retainers, assistance, hangers-on and trusted aids to the vampire delegates were all lounging about and generally attempting to pass the time while their leaders were busy discussing important issues (though in a few cases their tribal disputes tended to carry over onto their retainers).

One such example of this was a staring contest presently being waged between the women companion of tribes Kriel and Yonagar, both dressed mean like street-tough ladies and obviously sharing a history that warranted the baring of fangs with occasional bursts of cat-like hissing. The others pretended not to notice these exchanges (while a few took private bets of how long it would take for a "cat-  
fight" to break out between these likely contenders).

Off to one side Himiko Se was smiling from beneath her sunshades, studying these retainers with a slightly jaded amusement. The spiritualist reflected on a time when she might have held very different views of these people and what they represented, but years of experience had somewhat broadened her perspective and had given her a deeper sense of the true purpose behind their very existence. At any rate, she was content to sit and read her magazine while waiting by the door for the arrival of her Princess, or to convey whatever message Miyu might have to share with her concerning the meeting presently being conducted by poor Yui, who was not entirely comfortable with the job of delegate Princess.

Though only feigning a disinterest in what was taking place all around her, Himiko was keen enough to detect a familiar presence as he brushed by in the shadows and remarked aloud, "You've been away long enough, what took you?"

"Forgive me," Larva replied as he made his presence known, mask and all, "Dimitri detained me a bit longer than expected."

"Have you determined what mischief he's up to this time?" Himiko asked, "And should we notify Miyu about it if he is intending to cause trouble?"

"Unnecessary," the normally silent Shinma prince responded, "Miyu already knows that Dimitri is planning something typically malevolent, but I do have something new to report...it seems that he is suffering from some manner of affliction."

"Affliction?" Himiko raised an eyebrow to this, "Of what kind and nature?"

"Unknown," Larva replied, "All that I can vouch for is that he was in a great deal of pain and was conserving his strength. Morgan and Raptor were attending him, which ought to show you just how significant this is if he's willing to delegate a portion of his authority onto their shoulders."

"How much pain?" Himiko smiled without humor, then added, "I trust it is a lot, though it could hardly be the crushing weight of a guilty conscience since we know for a fact that he has none."

"Ordinarily I would agree with you," Larva replied, "But...there is something about Dimitri's ill humor that suggests to me that his problems are more internal than external."

"It would be too much to hope that he'll stay home with a headache rather than try to infiltrate his ghouls into this meeting," Himiko was no longer smiling, "I don't like this, Larva...Morgan and Raptor...and who knows how many other members of the Dark Pack they brought with them? It definitely suggests that something big is in the works, and who knows when and if they will strike when we have this many VIPs in attendance."

"Yes, and if anything should happen it might touch off a war between the tribes," Larva said, "Which would suit Dimitri very well since he thrives upon such conflict."

"I've taken precautions to beef up security," Himiko said, "But it all goes out the window if Dimitri finds out where the conference is being held and mobilizes his people. Then Dark Ones may well converge upon us in great numbers and we'll be helpless to defend against them all."

"Especially if they bring Anakaris or Jumaji along," Larva remarked, "Which they may well do if they are already in Japan. This could get extremely ugly."

Himiko turned to regard the cloaked Shinma and asked, "You did take precautions to see that you were not followed here, didn't you?"

"I am not exactly new to this business, Himi-chan," Larva chided, "I made certain that none of his people could follow me. What does concern me is that the sun will be going down very shortly, and if that happens before the meeting can get started..."

Himiko turned away and bit her lower lip as she silently fretted for a moment, then said aloud, "I wish Mei-Ling and Tsien-Ko would get here with their representative. It would reassure me to have those two ready to back us up in case of trouble."

"I am certain that they are taking every precaution that they can to protect the representative of Tsiel clan," Larva assured the spiritualist, "They know as well as any of us do the stakes that are involved here, and what might happen if Dimitri attacks in the absence of the Princess."

"Simply knowing that something is coming isn't the same as being prepared for it," Himiko duly noted, "And with such a concentration of influential Vamps gathered together in one area, it's bound to pose too tempting a target for Dimitri not to go after...and don't even bother telling me that was a double negative because I already know it."

It was impossible to tell if Larva was smiling from behind his mask, but the enigmatic Shinma warrior remarked, "All the more reason for the both of us to be ready...though my impression of him leads me to suspect that there is more than just Dimitri involved here...and did you happen to know that there is a Slayer now residing within the city of Nerima? It's true, I was present when she quickened."

"A Slayer?" Himiko asked, "Are you serious? Here in Nerima?"

"I am not one who puts much stock in coincidence," Larva remarked, "And I can only conclude that the Powers have chosen to quicken a candidate to full Slayer status because her services may be needed in the very short future. And this on top of the manifestation of a Master Vampire, who is also a Daywalker, in the same short timespan...well, you can see how I would define our situation as somewhat more desperate than metes on the surface."

Himiko stared straight ahead and thought this over for several long seconds, then she murmured aloud, "We are sooo screwed..."

"Perhaps things are not as grim as I am making them appear," Larva said before making a typically dramatic gesture, "However, I have always been a cautious man by nature, so I will go in search of my Princess and..."

Himiko's expression abruptly changed, and without warning she reached out and caught Larva's cloak with one hand, then came away holding a tiny object that surprised the Shinma warrior to no end as he stared at the object in question then exclaimed in shock, "I...don't believe it...a tracer?"

"I think we've greatly underestimated our foes," Himiko shot to her feet then declared, "Emergency everyone! This meeting must be adjourned...because unless I'm wrong we're about to be attacked at any...!"

On cue the main door to the chamber exploded inward, and before any one of the guards and retainers could react a hail of gunfire greeted their shocked expressions, and then the slaughter began in earnest even while the defenders attempted to belatedly marshal their personal defenses...

Inside the walls of the council chamber the eruption of gunfire came as a complete surprise even to Yui and Nagi, who had been prepared for some sort of trouble from the onset.

"What is that?" Dukov demanded.

"Treachery!" Leguire snarled like one no stranger to the concept.

"It's coming from just outside this very chamber," M'shulla noted.

"I thought your defenses were supposed to be impregnable," Sabastian exclaimed in an accusatory manner.

"That's not all..." Julian was suddenly on his feet, a curious look of dismay written plain upon his features, "I...I sense a presence...another Immortal..."

"Would you just zip it and get ready to evacuate with the others?" Yasmina snapped, "We are obviously the targets here, so if we're to preserve our very lives...!"

"Too late!" Yargo warned, "I can feel something breaching the barriers and protective spells coming down...almost as if they were not even..."

There was a sudden folding of space in the center of the chamber, and then all at once a massive burst of light caused all of the delegates and their bodyguards to freeze in place, shocked and horrified to discover the rays of the sun itself come bursting out in the darkened room in full, horrific glory...

Miyu paused in the act of racing towards the building where the conference was set to take place, feeling the psychic wave of shock and horror strike her to her very marrow only instants before she heard the explosion and saw the plumb of smoke that ruptured outward from the steel and glass exterior at the side of said building. The realization that she was too late and that the attack had already begun sent Miyu into overdrive, and with a speed that would have shocked even another vampire she closed the distance to the sight of the raging battle, arriving with a suddenness that took the attackers by surprise, and many did not even know what hit them, the lucky ones who would spared meeting the wrath of an angry princess...

"Ha, these Nips are toast," one mercenary said to another, "Hardly put up much of a fight, I'm almost the chatter, you!" another mercenary barked, "And don't count anyone as dead until you see them crumble. Use double-shots on all the bodies just to be on the safe side."

"Sir, what about this one we captured?" a third reported, "He's not like the others. We've got him contained but he's still be the Shinma, we were warned about him. Don't worry, men, we're well equipped to cope with his theatrics..."

Himiko heard these words of condescension and realized three things in one and the same instant, the first being that she was wounded but not dead, the second being that their attackers were ruthless mercenaries equipped with specialized weaponry and on an obvious "kill" assignment, no doubt to eliminate all witnesses to the slaughter that they were committing.

The third thing she realized was that their attackers were not vampires, they were human.

She could smell the difference about them, detect the subtle hints in their movements, the rasping coarseness of their breath which demonstrated that they were breathers, not Vampires, in spite of their ruthlessness reminding one of Goyas. That meant someone had either hired or assigned them to terminate everyone at the conference meeting, whether vampire or retainer.

It also meant that she was as good as dead herself unless she managed to get moving in short order, but the pain that she was feeling in her side and her leg made that a very tall order. At her best it would take her time to regenerate from such damage, and time she definitely did not have since these guys were shooting corpses, especially the ones that had not already crumbled into powder.

Even as she thought this she managed to turn her head and see that Larva was hardly faring any better. In fact three men had him pinned against a wall with pole arms while a half a dozen wooden stakes projected from various parts of his anatomy, while two other men kept guns trained upon him. The masked Shinma was struggling against his wounds and the bonds that were holding him in place, but it was clear that the advantage lay with the bad guys.

"Hey, this one is still moving!" a mercenary reported, and from the angle of his voice Himiko knew that it was her to whom he was referring.

"Shit...!" she whispered tensely, realizing that it was all up and she would be really and truly dead in another few instants.

"You heard the order," the leader said, "Termina-" only to have his voice fall silent with a suddenness that was daunting.

All at once the two men holding weapons on Larva found that they were holding nothing at all as their arms ended abruptly at their wrists. They had no time to scream in horror at this discovery since their head followed next, and their corpses only seconds later, along with the polearms pinning Larva to the wall, along with the men holding the pole arms, and the others nearest to them.

The man who had been pointing a gun at Himiko lasted only instants beyond that moment, and as his headless body toppled away the remaining mercenaries all turned in horror at the unbelievable spray of blood that shot in all directions. They automatically trained weapons on a white-clad form that came to rest atop a table holding a weapon in one hand that resembled a silver-bladed Chinese-style sword, but the mere slip of a girl who held this sword at the ready appeared to be a young girl of no more than fifteen years of age, yet the snarl on her face belonged to nothing less than a demon as she coldly regarded the remaining mercenaries with a look of death portending.

"P-Princess...?" Himiko gasped.

The mercenaries opened fire, but their aim was good for nothing since they were only targeting an after-image, the real Miyu moving faster than they could pull the triggers, and within a matter of seconds the entire company of a dozen armed men were down, eleven of them dead, only one of them still breathing.

"Are you well, Himiko-chan?" she heard Miyu ask as the Spiritualist sought to make sense of the rapid change in their fortunes.

"Ah...I think so," Himiko felt her wounds then glanced around to see if anyone else (besides the mercenary that Miyu presently held pinned to the ground) was moving, "A-Anyone else?"

"None that I can detect," Miyu swept the room with a look now of pure sadness, "These men were very thorough, and it appears they were sent to destroy us. If I had not been delayed in arriving here..."

"My Princess," Larva said as he fell to his knees, still sporting the wooden stakes in his body, "Your niece, Yui-chan...Nagi..."

"Right, I am on it," Miyu replied, "Stay with Himiko-chan and protect her. I will tend to your wounds later."

With that she seemed to disappear before their eyes, not even moving so fast that she was only a blur but actually teleporting into the secured room via her own particular backdoor enchantments.

"Protect...me?" Himiko turned her head to regard the masked Shinma, "But...who will protect you...if those guys have friends?"

To that Larva could not answer, but his eyes shown through his mask and they were burning with a need for vengeance and redemption...

The blast had taken everyone by surprise, some more than others. The concentrated burst of UV rays had blinded even those who had some resistance to the effects it caused on true-blooded Vampires were rendered incapable of movement, paralyzed by the blast itself, which slammed their bodies to the far walls of the chamber.

For the likes of Dukov and Sabastian the result was instantaneous disintegration while Yonagar and Yasmina being only slightly less affected, the former exhibiting the effects of severe third-degree burns while the latter was turned into a stone-like state of crystallized hibernation. Leguire fared somewhat better though his skin was flash-fried with a total body sunburn, while Yargo was the worst affected of the lot, the UV rays polarizing his skin and causing him to boil from within before exploding in a burst of charred and blackened fragments.

Of the lot only Yui and Nagi escaped worse harm, though they were knocked immediately unconscious. Only Julian retained some conscious awareness of his own condition as he felt the lump that he had taken to the back of his head and wondered when the world would cease ringing church bells in both of his eardrums. He tried to shake it off since longtime survival instincts warned him that the matter was far from completely over, but even given his phenomenal powers of healing, it was going to take him more than a few seconds to get his bearing back...

And seconds he most definitely did not have as he felt the approach of a familiar enemy Immortal.

"Well then, what is this?" a cunningly malevolent voice remarked, "My old friend Constantine? Ah yes...I had heard that you were selling your services now to the Blood Pacts of Europe. Such a pity to find you here, I was hoping for an entirely different sort of encounter, one that would allow a more, shall we say, personal ending to your illustrious career?"

"Sergei," Julian hissed, adding the word, "Cossack" like an epithet that needed nor elaboration.

"And a good evening to you as well," the dark haired swordsman smiled as he extended a heavy scimitar as if offering a token salute, "Do you like the way my employer has redecorated the room? Of course, I prefer the color of the blood I spill to be red, like a normal human, not this black ichor that fills the veins of these drinkers..."

"Why...why are you doing this?" Julian asked as he forced his eyes to remain open, looking up to see that his longtime adversary was far from alone and that he had other men with him who seemed similarly dressed for battle, albeit they held guns while Sergei had his scimitar at the ready.

"Oh, you'd like me to explain things for you like one of your Western-style villains," the dark haired man grinned, "Sorry, it doesn't work like that, and in any event you haven't long to live, so what would be the point of telling you? It really would make no difference, other than to permit you time to heal back, which-regrettably-I will not permit you."

Julian felt the press of a sword against his neck and felt like cursing, glaring defiantly up at Sergei while wondering if this would finally be the end to his illustrious career. To be taken out this way...it was so undignified, and at the hand of such a...peasant...

All at once a man cried out, startling Sergei and the others, who turned in time to see two more mercenaries go down spurting blood in all directions. Julian was amazed to see the Princess Miyu standing there with a gleaming silver blade in hand even as the fourth mercenary fell to the floor in various pieces. Like that it was down to Miyu and the former Cossack, even as Sergei managed to block a thrust that had clearly been meant for him, riposting Miyu's thrust and forcing the younger girl to dodge back, taking evasive action.

"So," Sergei remarked as he regarded Miyu frankly, "The famous Shinma Princess arrives at last to engage us in battle. Such a pity you could not have been here sooner, you might have prevented the loss of so many friends..."

"The only pity should be reserved for you," Miyu hissed back, "And I will not allow it!"

Miyu tried again to attack the blade-wielding antagonist of this little drama, but Sergei proved remarkably quick and agile in meeting and countering her assaults, even matching her for blinding speed as she attempted to skewer him, only to find his blade blocking the way at each and every riposte, while the object of her furious wrath seemed to be taking her measure with no real strain to his abilities that she could discern in either his style or confident expression.

Julian, seeing this, managed to croak out the words, "Princess...he's a...Toshinden player..."

That brought comprehension to her eyes, and Miyu immediately disengaged and backed away to take new stock of her opponent, realizing at last why the man seemed little taxed by his exertions. Sergei, for his part, merely continued to stand there with brazen contempt written large in both body posture and facial cast, reeking disdain in every pore as though it troubled him not to be faced by a Master Vampire of the tribe of the Shinma, and one who had easily dispatched over a dozen heavily armored human men in less than the time it would have taken to describe it.

"Yes, I have been a contender in the Toshinden tournaments, as have you, my dear Constantine," Sergei remarked with the superior airs of a truly cliché villain, "But now this engagement, while charming in its ways, has started to bore me, so why don't we get back to settling our own accounts while the Princess is otherwise occupied dealing with my other allies of convenience. Meet the back-  
up team held in reserve for just such an event as your slaughter of the first strike team."

Miyu dared not shift her golden eyed stare away from the dangerous Immortal before her, but when ruby eyes began appearing from around the darker corners of the room she had no choice but to shift the focus of her attention, at which point she sneered, "Goyas? You dare send Goyas to fight me?"

"You misunderstand me, Princess Miyu," Sergie remarked, "They have been specially selected and trained in order to kill you, and they are very good at their work. Now, if you will excuse me, I must attend to other long-unfinished business."

Julian had recovered sufficiently at this point to reach for his business satchel, and in one quick move he drew two blades from concealment and fought to get to his feet with these swords at the ready, even managing to snarl out a defiant, "Come and try me...Cossack."

"You say the word as if it were a bad thing, Comrade," Sergei grinned, and then with a dramatic sweep of his scimitar he cried, "DIE!" and all at once a force-bolt of pure Ki-energy shot from the blade to engulf Julian, who stood with swords raised to block the maneuver.

Ki-force met with Ki-force and the resulting explosion ripped a whole out of what remained of the back wall to the chamber. Julian was barely conscious of striking the shattering glass plane that was directly behind him, nor did he fully realize that he was airborne until the rush of wind suddenly revived him, and only then did he realize that he was plummeting six stories out the side of the office building with a rude encounter with the pavement far below only seconds away, which was barely time to brace for the impact...

"Hey, what are you stopping for, Miyuki?" Natsumi asked.

"I thought I heard something," her partner replied as she pulled up along the side of the road then stopped the engine, opening the door and stepping out to the left onto the asphalt, "It sounded like an explosion."

Natsumi, who was following the gesture, got out on her side of the car and said, "Explosion? Is that what it was? Sounded more like a bomb going off and..."

All at once both women were thrown to the sides as something came crashing down on top of the roof of their vehicle. Miyuki was nearly run over as she had to scramble to get back out of the way of a car that had been directly behind her, while Natsumi drew her service weapon and immediately pointed it at the body that had partially caved in the Subaru's top portion.

"What the...?" she gasped, even as Miyuki-on her side of the car-duplicated her gesture.

"It's...a man," Miyuki marveled.

"You think?" Natsumi moved forward and immediately placed two fingers along the side of the blond guy neck and felt for a pulse, then shook his head, "He's a goner, poor devil. Wonder who he was?"

"I'm a little more worried about what threw him out the side of that building," Miyuki glanced up, "There's a lot of debris, and obviously there was some sort of explosion up there, which means we ought to call this in and..."

All at once the blond man came to life with a sharp gasp of air and-in the process-nearly gave both women a heart attack, so much so that Natsumi immediately aimed her gun at him as though expecting him to attack her.

"Wh...where am I...?" he glanced around until he saw Natsumi, then weakly smiled and said, "Hey...don't worry...I won't bite..."

"You're still alive?" Miyuki asked automatically, "Who are you?"

"Name's...Julian," the man said as he forced himself into a sitting position, glancing down at what he had landed upon before giving Miyuki an apologetic, "Sorry...about your car..."

"You just fell six stories after being in an explosion!" Natsumi blurted, "How can you still be talking?"

Julian began to feel himself up and said, "Guess I'm lucky this time...no major damage, just a little internal bleeding...nothing I can't handle."

Miyuki exchanged looks with Natsumi then said, "Um...this sort of thing happens often with you?"

"More than you'd believe," the man winced as he took better stock of himself and groaned, "Oh no...and this was an Armani..."

The two non-uniformed police women could not help noticing that the man's expensive clothes had been torn and rent in various key places, and as they watched him peel off what remained of his double-knit coat to reveal a torn silk shirt with a double cross-belt set of straps hidden underneath this, and hanging from his back were a pair of leather-sheathed butterfly swords whose handles dangled just around the level of his shoulder blades, up until he hitched the belt strap and elevated them to project the hilts above his shoulders.

"Um...what are you doing?" Miyuki asked, trying not to sound too nervous.

"They're not for you, so don't worry yourselves, Officers," the man said as he climbed down from the car, only to favor one leg, which did not seem ready to take is full weight at the moment. Nonetheless he mastered the pain and managed to stand upright, towering over both women, "It's just that the guy who did this is still up there...and if I know Sergei Rustov half as well as I think I do, he'll be along any minute now to finish the job he started."

"Sergei Rustov?" Natsumi asked.

"Uh, what did you just call us?" Miyuki asked.

"Forgive me, but I'm a trained observer," Julian smiled, "And those weapons you're holding are department issued firearms, the kind that only Tokyo policewomen are authorized to carry. That means you're either undercover policewomen or you're private collectors who like matching accessories in your hardware. Either way, I suggest we get moving now before Sergei shows up and really spoils your day off."

"Ah...how do you know that it's our day off?" Natsumi wondered.

"I've got a very keen sense of smell," he smiled, "And unless I miss my guess you two were enjoying a day off when you got rudely interrupted. And sorry about that, I do hate raining on people's parades."

That got another curious look between the two partners before Miyuki said, "Maybe we should radio this in before we go any further, at least to see if anyone up in that building needs medical attention..."

"Trust me, they won't," Julian said grimly, "And anyone who survives the slaughter up there won't be helped by modern medical technology..."

"Nor will you, Old Friend."

Miyuki and Natsumi gasped as they turned to see the one who had addressed the blond man, only to find the fellow was not alone, and that the others with him had eyes that were glowing red in the dwindling light of early sunset.

"What took you so long?" Julian asked with no real surprise in his voice.

"Forgive me, Comrade, but unlike you I chose not to take the express way," Sergei replied as he raised his scimitar and said, "Shall we continue where we left off?"

Miyuki and Natsumi had no trouble identifying which ones were the bad guys here and at once trained their guns upon the strange dark-haired man and his unearthly companions, Miyuki saying, "Put that down or we'll shoot!"

"Oh?" Sergei sniffed, "And I am supposed to be impressed by that?"

"We mean it, buddy!" Natsumi snarled, "Take one step closer and we'll drop you!"

"Aim for the head," Julian advised, "They'll barely feel it if you aim for any place else."

"The head?" Miyuki asked.

"Trust me," Julian replied, drawing his Butterfly knives, "On second thought, look away, this may sting a little."

With that the blond man crossed his blades, them suddenly parted them with such force that the very air itself was torn through his efforts. A flash of light and a suddenly surge of Ki energy lanced out from where he stood to strike the ground almost at the feet of Sergei, who jumped away at the last instant, only to be caught and thrown backwards by the shockwave, along with his minions.

Julian sagged a bit as the effort clearly taxed him, then he said, "Drive...get us out of here...now."

"But..." Miyuki turned to look back at her damaged car.

"How can we drive with the roof caved in like that?" Natsumi wondered.

Julian only grimaces, then summoned up what remained of his considerable energies and made a side-slash with one of his twin blades, which sheared through the metal roof as though it were made of paper, catapulting the roof to one side and instantly rendering the Subaru into a convertible.

"My...car...?" Miyuki gasped.

"I'll pay for it...just drive," Julian said as he stumbled over and leveled himself into the back seat, nearly passing out from the effort.

"But..." Miyuki tried to say again.

Natsumi blinked her own eyes as she saw shadowy forms picking themselves up off the ground, and some turning hungry glances their way as though in a virtual remake of "Night of the Living Dead," and instantly the practical side of her personality came to the fore as she snapped, "Just do it, Miyuki! Get the car started and get us out of here-NOW!"

The frightening urgency of her partner-slash-lover's voice shook the other policewoman out of her daze, and at once Miyuki vaulted into the driver's seat as Natsumi climbed in on her side, and to their great relief the engine started on the first try, which earned a profuse, "Thank the kami..." from the latter policewoman.

"I beg your pardon?" Miyuki asked as she put her foot to the accelerator and took off in a tire-screeching burst of acceleration.

"At least that's one movie cliché we've managed somehow to avoid," Natsumi answered, then when she saw the questioning look her partner gave her she just smiled weakly and said, "I'll tell you about it later...if there is a later, that is..."

Sergei had fully recovered from the shockwave by the time the car was already halfway down the block, but he was far from deterred as he snarled to his Goya minions, "After them...do not let them escape! I won't let him get away from me again, and the first one who finds them gets to claim the women for himself!"

The Goya understood the implications, and at once they scrambled to their hidden vehicles while others took off on foot to pace the topless Subaru with loping strides that were more fleet of foot than anything merely human...

Part One-Hundred-Thirteen.

(Set during and slightly after the time of the events recorded in the side-story titled "Honeymoon Hentai")

"I don't like it."

"What's not to like, Boss?"

"I mean the whole set-up," Frank replied as he headed his motorcycle down the streets leading from the suburban area to the Furinkan Financial district, "First Miss Tendo gets turned a Master Vamp, then her sister turns into a slayer, and now Dimitri's sniffing around looking to cause trouble, and on top of it all her Nibs comes out of the woodwork and has a direct face-to-face powwow with the new Vamp on the block. What's to like about all this? Too much damned coincidence, and you know what that always means."

"Weirdness magnet," Shelly summarized, "But how do you account for it when the designated Nexus of the region was out on a honeymoon with his significant others?"

"Only other way I can figure is if it ain't him but Nerima itself that's to blame for it," Frank replied, "Maybe taking the Nexus away from this point let the cork out of the bottle, and maybe the genie came out to play during his absence. Whatever the cause, it's started the ball rolling, and that makes me wonder if maybe there might be something else going on that we don't know about...something big, something messy."

"If Dimitri is involved, then you can bet it's gonna be messy, Boss," the sentient auto-computer relay system replied, "With him it always is."

"Yeah, but there's something different about this mess that doesn't strike me as being centered entirely around him," Frank scowled, "Subtle isn't his style, he likes loud and brash, and he's a real bugger about hands-on carnage. I can't put my finger on it yet, but I'm sure there's something bigger than one of his usual schemes at work here..."

"Maybe you should hunt him down and ask him yourself, Boss."

"Maybe I'll do just that," Frank nodded, "After we find Lenore...and any updates on that?"

"Matter of fact I was about to tell you...I've got a bio-lock, about one kilometer in a north-by-southeast direction, mark 1-0-6-7..."

"Got it," Frank said as he turned a corner then headed off in the nearest approximation of that direction, "Is she mobile or standing still?"

"Fixed reading, Boss," Shelly replied, "In fact, you'll be right on top of her in another five seconds."

"Five seconds, huh?" Frank adjusted the visor on his helmet, getting a grid read-out in light-amplified green shade, "So where are they? I don't see them..."

"To your left right...now," Shelly informed him.

"Huh?" Frank hit the brakes and turned his machine around so that he came to an abrupt stop facing an alley, and there in the glare of his headlamp was a trio of familiar forms all huddled together near to some trash cans as if seeking concealment together.

For a moment there was silence, but then Frank got a reading on all three bodies and said, "What the...all three of you...together?"

One of the figures rose to her feet and faced the light with a hand covering her eyes, "Boss, is that you?"

"Lenore?" Frank responded, "Is that Chloe and Kiima with you? What the hell are you doing out here?"

"Keeping a low profile," the pale figure of a young girl replied as she, too, rose to her feet alongside Chloe the Werewoman, "Good evening, Doctor Steinberg, How are you?"

"Never mind that, Kid," Frank waved the point aside, looking straight at Lenore before asking, "Tell me about Dimitri."

"It's...kind of bad, Boss-man," Lenore called out, "We had a run-in with Dimitri's goons, but Kiima got us out of there, and since then we've sort-of been in hiding waiting for you to come get us."

"You knew I was on the way?" Frank asked as he dismounted from his bike, having killed the engine and the headlight.

"Knew you'd send somebody when I failed to report in," Lenore replied, "Dimitri's got some kind of big score planned...don't know the details, but it's big, bigger than you would have expected. He had Morgan, Raptor and Anakaris with him and they were talking about something in the works. Unfortunately we got exposed before we could learn anything more specific."

"Okay," Frank said as he came to tower over the three unusual girls, "So that confirms my own instincts, and knowing Dimitri it won't stay a secret for much longer. So the Dark Pack is on the move, huh? Wonder if they brought the whole crew, and how many soldiers they can deploy in the field. Might have to call in reinforcements if this get really hairy."

"Hairy?" Chloe perked up, "Maybe cousin John could help out."

"Talbain's on the way, Kid," Frank turned to his motorcycle and said, "See if Felicia can make it, we might need her to coordinate."

"Sure that's a good idea, Boss?" Shelly called back, "Remember what happened the last time when she ran into Tendo Nabiki?"

Frank said a few choice words then grumbled, "Damned Nekoken. Okay, so who else is available that we can get on short notice?"

"Will we do?"

Frank turned to see an unusual pair of familiar faces and forms standing a short distance away, and as Lenora and her Pack turned questioning looks that way they heard the big man say, "You guys? When did you get back in to Japan?"

"We're sort-of running escort duty at the moment," one of the figures replied, "But we were running a bit late after picking up our guest at the airport."

"Yeah, and you wouldn't believe the kind of day we've had, Doc," the other female figure added, "It's been one thing right after the other..."

"Let me guess," Frank rumbled, "Somebody tried to bump off your charge," he glanced beyond their shoulders then added, "Who's the VIP in the Limo?"

"That would be our charge," the first of the two speakers answered, "And in the interest of privacy we would prefer to keep her identity..."

"That will not be necessary," a third voice joined in, then out from the side of the black limousine a figure detached themselves, rising gracefully to her feet and turning around to greet Frank with a knowing expression.

If Frank could have paled right then he would have, "Ling-Ko?"

"The very same," the figure stepped between the two sisters and smiled as she looked up at the towering Frank, "And what a pleasure it is to meet with you again, Doctor. It has been quite a few decades."

"Uh...Boss?" Lenore timidly spoke up, "Did you just say...Ling-Ko?"

"The Dragon Lady?" Chloe murmured beside her.

"The Blood Mother of Tribe Tsiel?" Kiima asked in a matter-of-fact, almost ethereal tone of voice.

"The very same," Ling-Ko replied, giving the trio a cursory inspection, "My kinfolk, Mei-Ling and Tsien-Ko, have accompanied me from the airport to a secret rondezvous where I planned to attend a meeting with my counterparts from various local tribes...a private matter involving a dispute between our clan members that has caused tensions to increase among the various Tribes..."

"I heard something about that," Frank nodded, "So, what kind of trouble are we talking about here?"

"The kind where blood feuds that last for generations get started," Ling-Ko replied, "My intention was to avert a possible war from breaking out between my tribe and that of Kriel, but...my delay in arrival has lead me to suspect that our meeting is not quite as secret as it was supposed to be anymore. In fact, I fear that we may be headed towards a crisis, as if someone wants to stir up troubles and cause the Blood Kin Feuds to begin a new after a peace that has lasted for twenty generations."

"Uh oh," Lenore turned to Frank, "Boss...I got a bad feeling about this..."

"You're not alone there," Frank replied, giving Ling-Ko a sobering look, "Ling...I don't know how to put this, but...we may have a situation..."

"Indeed?" Ling-Ko asked just as soberly, "Of what type and nature?"

"Dimitri," Frank answered.

"Him again?" one of the two sisters flanking Ling-Ko blurted out, only to pause and glance in Ling's direction.

"Apparently so, Cousin Tsien," Ling replied, turning back to Frank and adding, "If Dimitri is involved then the others must be warned. It is obvious that he intends to eliminate us, which no doubt will put the tribes involved at each others throat, his aim for this being obvious to anyone, even a breather."

"That's how I figure it," Frank growled, "Damn, if only somebody had given me a heads up on this I could have had security ready to back you guys up. Now I gotta pull agents in from field assignments just to look after your sorry asses..."

"Sorry if we must trouble you, but it was supposed to be a secret meeting," Ling-Ko replied, "And that meant keeping knowledge of it restricted to a very few on a need-to-know basis. You do know what a secret is, don't you?"

"I used to think I knew," Frank sighed, "Okay, forget recriminations, it's water over the dam now. I just hope we're not too late to do something about this before the shi*t really hits the..."

All at once the sound of screeching tires caused everyone to turn their heads at once in time to catch a speeding Subaru (without its top) being driven by two ladies with a huddled figure in the back seat, and breaking all community speed limits as though the very devil was behind them.

Following this came another set of vehicles in hot pursuit of the damaged Subaru, a black mini-van and several guys on motorcycles with two other cars trailing after them, and all of them sporting men wearing dark sun glasses and brandishing high powered weapons.

They waited until the last of these vehicles had raced past then Frank said aloud, "Shelly?"

"I got an ID on those two," his motorcycle reported back, "They're your old friends, Officers Natsumi and Miyuki of Tokyo's Finest."

"That explains why they looked familiar," Frank growled, "And the other guys?"

"Goya," Ling-Ko hissed the word with evident distaste.

"We ran into a bunch of them heading in from the airport," the one named Tsien-  
Ko reported, "They were doing their level best to knock us off...and get this, they had humans working alongside them."

"Indeed," the third Chinese figure spoke up once again, "It would seem that Dimitri has some sort of devil's pack involving a band of professional Vampire Hunters working with him for some common purpose. My guess would be that those are another branch of the same outfit."

"Brilliant deduction, Sis," Tsien-Ko snorted, "Would have taken a real genius to figure that one out."

Ling-Ko turned to the third member of her party and said, "Mei-Ling, contact our people and inform them of our recent troubles. It is time to go on the warpath all right, only the one we shall be hunting is Dimitri and anyone who sides with him."

"As you wish it, Cousin," Mei-Ling replied with a somber expression.

"Uh, Boss," Lenore spoke up, "If those two girls are friends of yours, then shouldn't we be doing something about that?"

"Good point," Frank got back on his motorcycle, "Tell you what, let me take care of it. My guess is they stumbled into something that's completely over their pretty little heads, and if it involves Dimitri's people, then my guess is that third guy was another VIP they're looking to exterminate. Ling, I trust you'll be safe with the Sisters. Keep out of sight until you hear from me, or until we know more of what Dimitri's up to. My guess is eliminating you ranks pretty much near to the top of his agenda."

"I do not like cowering in the shadows like a coward," the Blood Mother replied, "But what you advise is only wisdom. I will look after your people, you do what you must, Doctor."

"Be in touch when I know more about what's what," Frank said, then without further adieu he started off after the chase scene, trusting in Shelly's tracking sensors to give him the edge, to say nothing of the rest of her inventory, which he intended to deploy once he caught up with those renegade Goya...

The light rapping on her door disturbed Kasumi from her private reflections and without pausing to think of the matter she automatically said, "Yes?"

"Oneechan?" Nabiki asked, "Is it all right if I come in to talk with you, Sis?"

"Nabiki?" Kasumi turned away from her reflection in the mirror and seemed distraught as she contemplated the door, then sigh a sign of resignation she said, "Yes. Please enter."

"Uh...thanks," Nabiki let herself into the room, then paused to see Kasumi sitting down before the vanity table that she and their Aunt Nodoka shared, then with an uneasy stance the middle Tendo sister said, "I...wanted to see if you were really all right. I mean..."

"Yes?" Kasumi asked politely, studying Nabiki's face as though to memorize ever detail of her beautiful features.

"Um...Oneechan?" Nabiki found herself at an awkward moment where she honestly did not know where to begin her interrogation, "How do you...uh...feel? About all this, I mean. Ah...you're not really...I mean...you don't look all that different. You can't really be a...?"

Kasumi gave Nabiki a sad look then slowly opened her mouth and revealed her front incisors.

"...oh..." was all Nabiki could think to say as she studied the wicked looking fangs that her sister was presently sporting.

Kasumi closed her mouth once again then sighed, "I've tried laying back and coming to terms with this, but I cannot deny that there have been some...substantial changes rendered upon me, and now I find that I must confront a whole new me that I have never before anticipated. It does not seem like me on the surface...and yet it is. A new me, I mean...and-strange as it seems-  
I am not entirely unhappy about it."

"You're not?" Nabiki could not hide the astonishment in her voice.

"Imoutochan," Kasumi said softly, "Do I seem to you like a monster?"

"Er...well, no, not exactly..." Nabiki admitted.

"I do not feel like a monster either," Kasumi replied, "And yet I feel...stronger, better than I was. I do not tire as easily from doing chores around the house, and my senses have grown so keen that I can find the barest traces of dirt in every little corner. I can hear and see better than before, I can detect odors that were formerly unknown to me, and I can sense that you have recently been to sea...the smell of brine is strong about you...and there are other changes...far less apparent."

"Ah...yeah, about that," Nabiki winced, trying to think of a clever way of phrasing the matter, "We had a run-in with Madam Lao...remember her?"

"The lady pirate from the hospital?" Kasumi asked, "But I thought Doctor Steinberg told her to leave you alone."

"So she broke her word," Nabiki shrugged, "Nothing unusual for her. But look...this isn't about me or the others, Kasumi, it's about you and these...changes you're going through. You don't really mean to say that you...ah...like what's happened?"

"No," Kasumi replied, "But...I don't dislike them either. I know it must seem strange to you, but the more I think upon the matter, the more that I realize that I am still basically the same person that I was before. The only difference is that...I drink blood...when I need to."

Nabiki blinked at that then said, "Excuse me? You don't find that...well...a little weird, Sis?"

"As a matter of fact I do," Kasumi replied, "I never liked the taste of blood before, nor do I like the fact that some poor animal has to die in order to provide it for me. Did you know that a cow's life consists of little more than chewing grass all day? I don't think I would very much like being a cow, and I'm not too partial to raw meat for that very reason."

"Er...well..." Nabiki stammered.

"It is odd...it never occurred to me before how we treat animals much the way we treat people," Kasumi said sadly, "Sometimes we warehouse them and treat them as if their lives do not really matter...but Nabiki...all life matters, everyone counts. The poor, the weak, the elderly, the sick and the dying...all of them are human beings, and we're all connected to one another. I can feel that now the way I never could before, and it all has meaning."

"Er...you think so?" Nabiki asked, surprised to hear her sister speak with such soft conviction.

"I know so," Kasumi said sadly, "Life and death are in balance, for some to live others perish, but there is no reason to hasten the process. Life is beautiful, everyone is beautiful...and Nabiki, you are beautiful as well. Have I never told you this before? It's strange, because I've always found you beautiful, and I...am proud of you...of being my sister."

"Ah..." Nabiki found herself feeling awkward as she rolled that one over in her mind, noticing the intensity of her sister's regard for her and feeling oddly drawn towards her in spite of her mental objections to feeling such strong attraction towards a sister.

"You look very well, Nabiki," Kasumi smiled, "Married life suits you rather well, and I can tell that you and Ranma-kun have been making love to one another. His scent is strong on you, and you radiate something wonderful that comes from him...I can see it in your aura."

"In my...what?" Nabiki asked.

"There is something changed about you," Kasumi studied Nabiki very carefully before saying, "I sense life...strong life...your fluids are moving around your insides...I can sense the heat between your thighs...your abdomen is pulsing with warm life...sister, are you pregnant?"

Nabiki was flattened by the question, "How did you know?"

"I...I just do," Kasumi could not help staring at her sister's belly, "Somehow you've managed to get with child. It's his seed quickening inside of you...there is a child on the way...I'm going to be an Auntie."

"Whoah..." Nabiki exhaled, "That's...a pretty good guess..."

"Not for me it isn't," Kasumi replied, "Ranma-kun loves you very much, and I know how much you want to give him a child, but your curse has blocked you until now. Have you somehow managed to overcome it...to find a cure? No...I can see that your curse is still with you, only...blocked in some way, as though a spell has trapped Kaneda-kun..."

"Madam Lao did something...er...well...she says it's only temporary," Nabiki explained, "It should last a few months, right up until I have the kid, then it's...probably going to go away, and I'll be back to spending part of my days as Kaneda."

"A pity, but necessary, I can see that," Kasumi said sadly, "I will miss Kaneda...your male half. He has always...defined masculinity for me. I have enjoyed studying his strong...pectorals on you, Sister...not that I don't like you the way you are right now. Either way you are still Nabiki, still my sister, still the person whom I...love more than any other."

Nabiki swallowed at this, finding the mesmerizing gaze of the older girl even more compelling than before, and though she tried to look away she found that she could not, as though those brown eyes held her rooted to the spot, and as Kasumi studied her back she could see her sister licking her lips...and showing off her fangs ever-so-slightly.

But then Kasumi turned away, and Nabiki sagged from the sudden release of their magnetism, "I am sorry to speak with you that way, Nabiki. I know that it makes you feel...awkward. It is just that...I have always been fond of you, and since you returned to us from your ten year training mission...that fondness has grown to where...I almost regret that you are my sister."

"Um...excuse me?" Nabiki asked a bit weakly.

"Not that I would deny Ranma-kun your company since I know how you make each other feel very...alive when together...but...there are times when I have felt a bit...jealous of your feelings for him," Kasumi admitted, "I would that you could feel the same way towards me that I feel towards you...but then again, it is not a perfect world, and if it were...then I would wish that we two could have been strangers when we met, and that you could have looked to me to provide you companionship and affection. I would wish that I might meet someone else like you...but I know that this is ridiculous. There is no one else like you, Imoutochan...and that has been my entire problem. You are one of a kind...and I truly do love you."

Kasumi turned back to gaze at Nabiki as she said this, and from the intensity in her eyes there was no mistaking her sincerity, not the depth of her emotions as she stared longingly at her younger sister, feeling the weight of propriety that separated them dissolve like morning mist, leaving Nabiki exposed to the raw intensity of her older sister's passions. It was like being hit with a tidal surge, the warmth and desire flooding over them both, and for a moment Nabiki felt as though she understood-finally and completely-just what had motivated Kasumi's constant flirtations and frequent penchant to splash her with colld water. It was an overpowering sensation and for an instant it left Nabiki feeling completely breathless.

With effort the younger girl managed to wrench herself away from the emotional longing that was being radiated by her older sister and get a grip over her own emotions. It took several deep breaths to regain her self-control, but then when she looked up again Nabiki said with resolve, "Love you too, Sis...but...you know it can't be that way. I belong to Ranma-kun, and to Shampoo...and to Ukyo and even Perfume-chan..."

"But not to me," Kasumi said with sadness in her tone and expression, "I would be one party more than I think even your heart could accommodate, Sister..."

"Ah..." Nabiki winced a bit, "...I didn't...mean it quite like that..."

"I know what you meant," Kasumi replied, "I can sense your emotions. I know how much you care for me, how much I mean to you, and it's not the same thing or to the same degree as what I am feeling. You see? I know...it's a part of my gift, my ability to perceive things that are hidden from other people..."

"Your...gift?" Nabiki arched an eyebrow, "Is that what you're calling it now?"

"Perhaps that is how I prefer to see it, Nabiki-chan," Kasumi replied, "If I called it a curse, then how would I describe myself when I look into a mirror? I have a reflection, so I am not truly undead. I can breathe the same air as you, so I am not fully a Vampire. But I do have other gifts that go well beyond even the things that you can do with your martial arts training."

"Such as?" Nabiki asked.

"Such as this," Kasumi said from directly behind her, causing Nabiki to jump as she had not even seen Kasumi move before her sister had somehow managed to maneuver around behind her.

"Ah-how...?" Nabiki gasped.

"The same way you move," Kasumi replied, "From one motion to the next. The difference is that I seem to be able to do it in a different way...as though I step out of synch with normal time and go ethereal for a few seconds. I was watching you just now as I walked around you, seeing you stare at the place where I had been standing earlier, and you were just like a statue. I could have...done things...if I were so inclined...but I chose not to. I am not a mindless beast who is helplessly subject to her instincts, I have a soul...and I am still your Oneechan. I could never bring myself to hurt you."

"Never?" Nabiki asked, then gasped as Kasumi was suddenly standing directly in front of her, gazing down from mere centimeters that represented their relative height difference, and the warmth of her body was palpable to the younger girl, as was the softness of Kasumi's breath as her mouth hovered ever-so-near to Nabiki's own lips.

"Never," Kasumi gently assured her, even as she rubbed her nose against Nabiki's brow and brushed her lips across the parted area of her forehead, "I love you more than you can ever know, and I would die to protect you, Sister. You mean as much to me as all the rest of our family combined, and I know that you would respect me more if I demonstrated more control...and so I will refrain from giving in to my baser instincts."

"O-Oneechan...?" Nabiki gasped, only to find Kasumi had somehow moved away and was now poised beside the window.

"I love the night, but I love the morning better," Kasumi reflected as she gazed out at the gathering twilight, "I can tell that there will be a full moon tonight, and that means that things are stirring all around us...things of the night, creatures of the evening, like little insects and birds that are stirring from inactivity, and the worms of the earth that mill about our garden. The cool breath of evening is alive to me...and I know that I feel a longing to go and join it. But I remain as I am, little sister...a creature of the day who is at home in the warmth of the sunlight."

Nabiki stared at her sister's profile, then at the gathering night sky beyond, and for reasons that escaped her she felt a slight shudder move down her spine, though not so much from dread as from a certain inexplicable longing.

"Natsume is back," Kasumi suddenly announced, "And Tatewaki is with her." She turned to regard Nabiki, "You had better go to her and explain things, Nabiki. She may not understand me for what I am now, and she will need your wisdom and guidance to protect her."

"To protect her?" Nabiki repeated, "Why? Is something wrong with Natsume?"

"That I cannot say," Kasumi sighed, "She has changed in the past two hours even more than I have. She is now a Slayer...and that means that she and I stand on opposite sides of a divide that may be difficult to bridge."

"A slayer...Natsume?" Nabiki repeated.

"You will know when you see her," Kasumi replied sadly, "Please tell her that I mean no one any harm and that I still lover her for what she is...in spite of certain changes."

"Ah...okay," Nabiki said, turning around and leaving the room, as well as vacating the strange atmosphere that was filled with Kasumi's presence. Automatically she put a hand to her neck and felt along both sides to insure that she had not been bitten, then slowly she descended the stairs, thinking aloud to herself, "This is not going to be easy..."

Meanwhile Tatewaki and Natsume were just then coming up the walkway from the gates to the front door, the former saying, "My love...are you certain that you don't want to share this revelation with your family?"

"Tachi-kun," Natsume said softly, "I would not wish to burden my family with this news, and besides this I have not fully accepted the good doctor at his word. I find this story about slayers and vampires and watchers to be all rather far-fetched, and besides, I cannot accept that my destiny would lead me to such a narrow pathway as this. I have my own designs for destiny, and they do not include being a champion to fight against the forces of evil."

"But you must admit it is a noble calling," Tatewaki pointed out, "However...if my own preferences were to be given weight here, I would much prefer a different sort of role for you, one that I would hope that you would find more agreeable to your nature...that is, if I am not being too presumptuous here..."

"Oh?" Natsume asked with an arched eyebrow, "And...what role would you have me assume, my dear lord Kuno?"

Tatewaki looked at his lady companion frankly, "That of a wife and a mother...though I would not be loathe to your continuing to teach and study the martial arts."

Natsume had to pause to flutter herself, attempting to conceal the hand gesture though her cheeks were blushing profusely.

"May I construe from that remark that I would have some choice upon the matter?" Natsume asked as though phrasing it as a casual question.

"My love, your lightest word is as a commandment from the heavens to me," Tatewaki assured her, "I would no more dream of imposing my will upon you than I would change the course of the very stars in the heavens."

Natsume regarded the handsome man beside her and considered him carefully before saying, "Tatewaki-kun...you do flatter me deeply..."

"Not in the least," Tatewaki said as he took Natsume by the hand then fell to one knee and gazed up at her with an adoring expression, "In fact, I would profess to you that I have been seeking the right moment, but my courage has failed me until now...but at last...I would profess my adoration for you by offering this very slight token of my affections."

Natsume gazed at the object resting upon Tatewaki's outstretched hand, her whole world dissolving into a mere space occupied by the two of them with a heavenly light shining down from above, and only the man kneeling before her having any meaning. For a moment her courage failed her and she could do nothing but stare, seeing the hope and dread written large in the young man's expression, but then she forced her own hand to move, and with trembling fingers she reached for the box being offered...

"There you two are!" Keiko Arigami called out as she opened the front door and said, "We've been talking about...er...you? Ooopsie...did I err?"

Tatewaki and Natsume were startled out of their private space and turned mutually chastened expressions in the kickbozer's direction. Keiko read their body postures and saw the object that Tatewaki was gripping and started to back away with a profusely apologetic, "Er...sorry...go on with what you were doing, big guy, pretend I never even noticed..."

The sound of a ribbon slicing air caught them all by surprise, and then the box was knocked from Tatewaki's hand to go flying for a distance before landing at the feet of a startled Keiko.

"How dare you!" the familiar voice of Kurumi shouted out from where she stood at the front gates, accompanied by Mousse, who seemed somewhat taken aback by his girlfriend's actions, "How dare you try and take advantage of my sister you...you Hentai!"

"Um...pray excuse me?" Tatewaki asked.

"Kurumi-chan?" Natsume asked in surprise and confusion.

"I thought you might try to do something like that if I let you!" Kurumi stormed angrily up to Tatewaki, "But if you think I'm going to let you get away with this..."

All at once Keiko moved to interpose herself between Tatewaki and the angry Kurumi.

"Whoah, settle down there, sport! Take ten, count some prayer beads and other stuff like that," the Kickboxer urged, "Tachi-kun wasn't intending Natsume any mischief, were you big guy?"

"Why...no," Tatewaki insisted as he rose back to his feet, "I would never do anything untoward with Natsume. I respect her far too much for that..."

"Hah!" Kurumi snapped, then glared at Keiko, "Get out of my way, it's long since time I had it out with that...pervert!"

"Not until you calm down and act a little older than your age, squirt." Keiko calmly insisted, "It's not our business what Natsume-chan does with her boyfriend..."

"The hell it isn't!" Kurumi snapped, and threw a punch that came with such speed that even Keiko was taxed in trying to avoid it, barely maneuvering out of the way of the follow-up blow that was quickly followed in turn by a spinning roundhouse.

"Kurumi-chan!" Mousse suddenly barked out, "Stop this at once!"

All at once Kurumi's hand froze in mid-thrust, only inches away from connecting with Keiko's solar plexus. The girl hovered there for a moment before slowly growling out, "Why the hell not?"

"Because this is not the way to act in front of your sister," Mousse replied, "You know it's wrong, and do you want Natsume to hate you for it?"

"Hate...me...?" Kurumi slowly turned to see the cross expression of her older sister.

"Kurumi," Natsume said sternly, "How dare you interrupt Tachi-kun and me then take a swing at Keiko-san. I thought that I had taught you better manners than this."

Kurumi looked away from Natsume only to flare past Keiko at Tatewaki, "Then why does he have to go and provoke me by coming on to you like you were some kind of...cheap whore or something?"

"Coming onto me?" Natsume arched and eyebrow, "Kurumi-chan, are you serious? Tatewaki-kun would never do anything inappropriate with me...in fact, I think it was a very sweet gesture his offering me a present..."

"Yes," Mousse said as he held up said "present" then commented, "A very generous one if I weight this box right."

"It is not for anyone's hand but Natsume's to open..." Tatewaki began insisting.

"That's right," Natsume said as she extended her hand towards Mousse, who passed it along to her hand as the adopted Tendo sister continued, "It's my right to examine my own presents, and if you wish to stay on my good graces, little sister, you would be well advised to..."

Whatever else she next intended to say died away on an invisible carpet of their memories, for as she opened the box she saw revealed within it a ring of such rare and exquisite quality that her breath was stolen away, especially since the gleam of the sun's last dying embers played across a stone of such majesty that it surely could have graced the hand of a princess, even if it were but a mere eight millimeters in diameter and cut to a polished shine that gave it an astonishing blue casting.

Natsume stared at the thing in silent wonder, and even Kurumi was left speechless in trying to calculate the worth of such an object, Keiko whistling an appreciative tune before backing away to give the happy couple their privacy together. It was left to Mousse (who was no stranger to Amazon baubles of similar quality) to remark as he produced a magnifying lens and held it up before his glasses, "Interesting craftsmanship, at least twenty-four karats, a very rare form of diamond if I'm not too mistaken..."

Tatewaki ignored the Chinese man's commentary as he implored Natsume with his eyes, waiting until her gaze traveled from the ring towards him as he remained knelt down before her, and then with impassioned earnestness he said, "Tendo Natsume...would you do me the greatest honor that any woman has ever bestowed upon a man by accepting from me this humble gift, and with it my entreaty for your hand to claim in holy matrimony?"

The recently quickened Vampire slayer was silent for a full minute, and then she burst out in tears of joy as a smile no less bright than the sun adorned her lovely features, and Kurumi looked from her to the humbled Kuno heir before glancing away with her own disquieted expression. She felt the hand of Mousse upon her shoulder, urging her to do nothing further to ruin their moment, and the entreaty in his own dark eyes was such that she could not begrudge her sister this moment of supreme happiness...even though her own qualms about having Tatewaki for a potential brother-in-law was making Kurumi nauseous...

Unaware of this, back inside the household, Ranma met Nabiki as the latter descended the stairs and with an anxious scrutiny of his wife's features he asked, "Well? Is Oneechan all right, Nabchan?"

"All right?" Nabiki arched her eyebrow as she paused at the lower step to turn a glance back over her shoulder, "That was the weirdest experience I've ever had around Kasumi. It's like she's accepted the changes that have come over her, and it's making me feel more than a little uneasy..."

"Accepting it?" Ranma arched an eyebrow, "You mean she's coming to accept being a Vampire?"

"More than that I'm afraid," Nabiki replied, "It's like...she's changed into somebody altogether different than the Kasumi we know. There's something about her...an aura, a presence...I can't really define it, but when I was with her I...I felt drawn to her, and I don't just mean sexually either."

That earned a funny look from her husband, and Nabiki quickly wilted before saying, "I...didn't mean it like that...I mean...I'm not into incest, Ranchan, you know me better than that."

"Yeah," he shrugged, "So...did you finally have that talk with her about her...infatuation with you...I mean, with Kaneda?"

"That was the oddest part of it all...I never got the chance to," Nabiki replied, "More like she talked and I listened...she confessed that she loves me, and then she said she was proud of me, and that she knows about our baby."

"No way...you told her about that?" Ranma was surprised.

"I didn't tell her, she knew," Nabiki insisted, looking Ranma straight in the eyes, "It's like she could read my mind, like she could see right through me or something...and she's got powers now...I don't understand any of it! She's like the Kasumi we know...only she's different, more together and yet less. I mean...hell, I don't even know what I mean! Kami-sama! It's so confusing..."

Ranma leaned forward and studied his wife, glancing to one side of her and then the other, then straightening out again before saying, "Well, at least she didn't bite you. Uh...she didn't bite you, did she?"

"Hey, where do you think I'd hide a thing like that?" Nabiki asked, only to blink her eyes as her mind readily thought of a dozen possibilities, and she reflexively put her hands to her body and felt herself through her silk clothes before sighing, "Okay...that would have been a bit too much, you know? I mean...I know that she could have done it to me if she wanted to-and believe me, she wanted to-but I don't feel like I've been drained or anything, so it means she still in control of heerself...more or less."

"Hmmm," Ranma frowned, "Maybe I oughta have a few words with Oneechan. She always been able to talk to me about stuff, maybe she'll accept some advice from her little brother..."

"I don't think that would be too wise, Ranchan," Nabiki said softly, "She's no longer the adopted big sister that you know..."

"I don't care," Ranma said, "She's my Oneechan, no matter what anybody else says about it. We grew up together, she took care of me when I was little, and I ain't never gonna be afraid to be around her, Nabiki. She's done stuff for me that even Mom doesn't know about, like that time when we had a storm a few years back and...uh...well..." he colored slightly.

"What?" Nabiki eyed her husband suspiciously, "Are you telling me that you've been holding out on me, Ranma-kun? What did you and Kasumi do, huh?"

"Uh...nothing," Ranma felt himself immediately on the defensive and fought the urge to back away, "Just...well...kinda huddled together. I mean...Kasumi came into my room and gave Akane and me some sisterly advice, and...um...she hugged us. I mean...not that I was scared or nothing, but...it was good to be hugged back then, only it didn't mean nothing bad...er...sexual, okay?"

"Uh-huh," Nabiki said dubiously before a slow, sly smile crossed her sardonic features, "Obviously I've been underestimating you, Ranma-kun. Using a ploy like that to get in cozy with my sister..."

"Hey, I said never...!" Ranma sputtered.

"Relax, Doofus," Nabiki chuckled as she playfully threw a punch at his chin that turned into a soft caress long before it actually made contact, "I'm with you on this anyway...Kasumi needs our support since she's going through these changes, and if we're ever to get her back to the way we know her it's going to take all we've got to look after her..."

"Talking about Kasumi?" Keiko asked as she strolled up to join them, "Not that I blame you, but that isn't the only big news to share around here."

"What?" Nabiki turned to regard the kickboxer with a worried expression, "Something else going on around here that we ought to know about?"

"Just this," Keiko turned and smiled at Ranma, "Tell me, Saotome-kun...you and Tachi Kuno are best buddies, right?"

"Well yeah," Ranma replied, "What makes you ask?"

"Just tell me this," the pigtailed redhead smiled, "How do you feel about having him for an in-law/"

Ranma blinked his eyes while Nabiki merely remarked, "You're kidding."

"Nope," Keiko said confidently, "Tachi popped the question and Natsume said yes. In fact I'm surprised you didn't hear all the shouting outside. Kurumi looked ready to bust a gut, but Mousse talked her into backing off and giving those two her default blessings."

"Tachi's gonna marry Natsume?" Ranma grinned, "All right!"

"Better her than me," Nabiki smiled, "And about time from where I'm standing. I'd better go find my sister and give her my heartfelt congratulations for snagging a rich husband."

"Oh yeah, and that's the other thing," Keiko held up her fingers and made a circle, "Try not to fall over with too much envy when you see the size of the ice he gave her. Must've cost him his entire month's allowance, but Natsume's acting like he just gave her one of the crown jewels from the Emperor's private collection."

"Oh man," Ranma groaned, "Why'd he have to show me up like that?" He glanced meaningfully at Nabiki's own ring finger, even known as he did that his wife preferred to carry her ring in a place of concealment rather than risk damaging it while fighting.

"Ranma-kun," Nabiki gave him a sly look, "Didn't you ever hear that size isn't everything? Still, I wonder how Natsumi's going to make use of that hand if it's weighted down as much as you're implying, Kei-chan."

"Come and see for yourself," Keiko waved to the front porch, "They're still outside, and my guess is they haven't yet come up for air yet. I tell you, it's positively cliché how romantic those two get when they're doing a love scene. Could give an insulin shock to a romance novel writer."

"Heh, the way those two talk lovey-dovey stuff it's a wonder anybody else can understand 'em," Ranma snorted, only to sigh as he glanced once again at Nabiki, "Not like I'm any good at that hearts and flowers stuff myself..."

Nabiki patted him on the arm and said, "Not to worry, Saotome, you say everything that needs to be said just by your actions. C'mon, let's give Oneechan some space while we go congratulate Natsume and Tatewaki."

"Heh, more like offer our condolences," Ranma smirked as he followed his wife and the kickboxer on the way to exchanging sentiments, unaware of the confrontation they would shortly be headed towards when Natsume learned more about the condition of her oldest sister, Kasumi...

Part One-Hundred-Fourteen.

(Set during and slightly after the time of the events recorded in the side-story titled "Honeymoon Hentai")

Miyu was hard pressed into a corner and knew that she was up against long odds. The Goya confronting her were well armed and well trained, six of the most determined fighters that she had ever yet encountered and certainly geared for only one purpose: her immediate destruction. They had the tools, they had the training, and they most certainly had the will to take Miyu down while displaying a remarkable level of teamwork and camaraderie, almost unheard of traits when it came to dealing with Goya.

In spite of being stronger, faster and more powerful than any one of her foes in a head-to-head match, Miyu was the one being taxed by their combined resources, to say nothing of those curious and unusual devices that they employed to neutralize her strong points. Each Goya was wearing a suit that protected their vital areas behind plates of interlaced ceramic tiles neatly fastened to flexible body armor that left little surface area exposed, and from the way they moved it was clearly a lightweight compound of some unknown manufacture. Their body armor was also laced with some sort of electronic webbing that insulated them against her soulfire attacks and other magical means of overwhelming her opponents. They had face masks that blocked out her attempts to fix them with her gaze, and their ears were muffled against her attempts to charm them with her voice, and as for presence attacks...they were singularly ineffective. In short they were immune to her special abilities while presenting few vulnerabilities to exploit against them, and they fought with silver-edged bladed weapons designed for close-quarters fighting and fought in such a coordinated way that one always covered the flanks of the other, and one always attacked when another was forced to expose their backside for even a moment.

Were it possible for her to do so Miyu would have been panting and sweating from exhaustion just keeping one step ahead of these killers. As it was she had been relentlessly forced back into a corner and was facing a likely rush from all sides by the Goya, who sought only an instant of weakness on her part to signal the time to strike with overwhelming fury. Miyu tensed as she felt her resources begin to flag, her Bloodthirst taking over as the expenditure of energy needed to sustain her thus far were taxing her reserves, leaving her with barely enough to last out another minute of intense fighting. Hunger was making it difficult to think rationally, and the odds of getting careless and doing something rashly stupid were increasing by the second as her golden eyes took on a reddish cast and the Madness threatened to take over.

She began to snarl in a low animal-like fury. How dare these walking cadavers threaten her, the Princess of Tribe Shinma? They were nothing more than demons possessing the empty husks of the mortals whose souls they had displaced, low-  
lifes, riff-raff, common bottom feeders in the food chain of Vampirism. They were little better than animals, callous beasts who preyed upon the weak and helpless, who laughed at human suffering, who cared little about the Pact and quite often violated the Covenant as though beyond the authority of the Supreme Vampire Council. Losing to them would be a humiliation never to be endured, and death would be a mercy at their hands if only to spare her having to admit to being bested by their foul ilk.

Of course she knew that these were only soldiers, that someone else was pulling their strings, someone clever enough to combine the wonders of technology with the Craft of the Old Ways, someone who disdained to face Miyu directly in honorable combat. It galled her to think of such a one somewhere laughing at her expense, and she immediately thought of Dimitri Maximoff and snarled once again, this time feeling her rage boil over with a righteous need for vengeance.

The Goya sensed that Miyu was about to end the stalemate and readied themselves for a counter-attack maneuver that result in the removal of her head before the Princess of the Shinma got farther than three paces...but before they could complete their primary mission objective they heard a word of power being uttered from behind them, and then a wave of force lashed out, picking up every stray object in the room and turning them into a hurtling cyclone that pummeled the Goya from their rears, distracting them for a critical instant and giving Miyu the chance she so desperately needed.

Like a shot she launched herself in a lunge that saw the tip of her blade thrust itself through the eye-piece of the helmet of the nearest Goya on her right, and with flawless aim she skewered his Medulla Oblongata. She withdrew the point and slashed at the throat of the female Goya further to her right and managed to pierce through the weakest point in the kevlar-tough joint, slicing through both Artery and Jugular Vein in passing before nicking the spine and severing a vital connection.

Like that the right flank facing her collapsed to the floor, both Goya disintegrating as the ethereal energies that sustained them tore their molecular frames to their component atoms. Miyu stepped to the side and prepared to meet the remaining four Goya head-on, but before she could a cloaked shape loomed over the one furthest to the rear, and then Larva enveloped that Goya in his cloak and seemed to swallow him up into the shadowy folds, startling the other three Goya, who turned to meet this entirely new challenge.

That was when Himiko lunged forward with a wooden stake and thrust it dagger-  
like into the temple of a third Goya, managing to rip off his helmet while doing so to expose the man to the deadly thrust. The fourth Goya met his end on the tip of Nagi's blade while the fifth was grabbed from behind by a badly burned Leguire, and with a massive twist the Loire snapped the Goya's neck then dropped him as the body immediately began disintegration.

The sixth backed away with a bewildered look, only to wind up ensnared by a whip-like string of Sakura blossoms that Yui wrapped around him, tripping him up and tumbling the Goya to the floor. The others were about to surge over the now helpless Goya when Miyu snapped out, "HOLD! I want this one alive! I need to know more about the one who sent him!"

The sixth turned and glared at Miyu from behind his mask then snapped, "You will never learn a thing from me, Half-breed!" And with a sudden jolt of his head he snapped his own neck, thus triggering his fatal disintegration and soon all that was left of him was his high-tech outfit and the ashes that spilled out from the edges.

"Fanatic," Nagi snorted, "These Goya are worse than beasts. They don't even value their own undead existence..."

"Why should they?" Yui asked, "A Goya soul can always find another body to inhabit just as soon as another Goya bites yet another victim."

"You are all right, my Princess?" Larva asked.

"Yes...thanks to you all," Miyu sagged a bit, "But...your timing was almost a bit too late, I am afraid..."

"Are you all right, Miyu-chan?" Himiko asked, "We came as soon as we were able..."

"Yes, but in another moment I would have finished the job myself," Leguire boasted, staring at his reddened body with disgust, "I am soooo much in need of some Aloe lotion right now..."

"Consider yourself fortunate," another figure staggered forward with forced dignity in his bearing, his skin all charred and blackened so that he seemed more of a rotting corpse than a Nosferatu, "I would gladly trade for skin such as yours, and I come from a land where the sun shines down with relentless intensity. It is fortunate that you are well, Princess, and that you held these rogues at bay long enough for the rest of us to recover."

"M'shulla?" Miyu was appalled, "What...happened to you...to the rest of you?"

"Some kind of bomb, I think," Nagi shrugged.

"No, not just a bomb," Yui contradicted, "It was more like some kind of super UV burst that hit us all with an effect like concentrated sunlight. Those of us who were sensitive to the rays were killed instantly, while the rest of us..." she let her tone drift away as she turned to regard a statue that lay upon the floor, frozen in the position that Yasmina had been in when the bomb was detonated.

"Yasmina?" Miyu's voice shook with horrified emotion, "How...how many casualties?"

"Dukov, Sabastian and Yargo are dead," Leguire replied matter-of-factly, "The rest of us...well, as you can see, it will be some time before either the Bushman or I have fully recovered."

"Not Yargo?" Miyu felt like weeping, "Poor Yargo...he was the one I was counting on the most to keep this conference together..."

"Small chance of that now," Himiko sighed, "They hit us pretty hard and made us all look like amateurs, and it's even worse out there in the lobby. The tribes are going to go nuts when they hear about this..."

"And well they should," Leguire snorted, "This was an outrage! You were supposed to provide better security, but more than that, any chance of a treaty between our clans is as dead as Yargo's nonexistent corpse. When my leaders hear about what has happened...!"

"Surely you are not blaming us for the attack?" Larva asked the Loire noble.

"No, but I most certainly fault you for failing to insure my safety and that of the other delegates," Leguire retorted, "Julian is unaccounted for, but from what I saw they had an Immortal adversary of his on their team, which means that they were well prepared for us in advance, and as soon as we learn who among us is responsible for tipping off the enemy to our supposedly secret meeting!"

"Now wait a minute here," Nagi snapped, "Just who are you accusing here or being a traitor?"

"In case you haven't noticed, all of us were targets here," Yui pointed out, "Those guys really meant to wipe us out, and they weren't pulling any punches."

"Perhaps none of you were to blame," Leguire said with adamant intensity, "But who is to say if one of the other tribes cooperated with information even knowing that their own delegate might meet their demise...and I have noticed that the Chinese representative was no present during this attack. Perhaps Tsiel tribe plotted to wreck these negotiation and blame it on a third party. It was their dispute with the Kriel that started this..."

"Am I to take it, then, that I am under suspicion because I was delayed in attending?"

"Eh?" Miyu asked as all eyes turned towards the one who had spoken, and with a start recognition hit home with such impact that even the Loire representative was taken aback.

"Ling?" Miyu asked in some amazement.

"Your majesty?" M'shulla gasped, then attempted to bend down, only to be stopped by a word from the new arrival.

"No, old friend, do not trouble yourself," Ling-Ko urged, "I can see that the act of remaining upright is trying enough for your resources. You did your part casting that spell to distract these malefactors, but now that I am here you can relax and give your body the time it needs to heal. And as for you, young man," she turned her gaze upon Leguire, "Do you honestly believe that I would attend this conference while intending to sabotage negotiations and begin a war between Tsiel and Kriel? I should hardly think it likely."

"Your majesty," Leguire bowed, "Forgive, I did not mean to imply that you personally were to blame for starting this..."

"That is good," Ling-Ko folded her arms, "Because I went to a lot of trouble to be here, at considerable risk to my own personal safety when I could have remained at home and risked nothing. Simply by being here I have made myself a splendid target, and I doubt that I could be accused of vanity by saying an even more valuable one for whatever enemy is seeking our elimination."

"Your majesty..." Himiko raised a hand and glanced to the side, "One moment, please. I think I hear something..."

"As do I," Larva turned his head, "And it is coming right for us."

The others turned to follow the same direction as the Shinma's gaze, only to stare in dismay at the sight of an object hurtling towards them and trailing a jet of flame out of its rear. This missile was bearing down upon them with a supersonic hiss of death pointing at them with a warhead.

No sooner did this impression form upon their eyes, however, when something streaked into its path and all at once it exploded.

The shockwave rolled over them and caused some to shift their balance until the event had passed them by, and then they straightened up again, confusion written large in many expressions though the Blood Mother herself hardly batted an eyelash.

When the ringing in their ears finally died down Himiko turned to the Queen of tribe Tsiel and said, "You knew that was going to happen?"

"I suspected something like it, but no, I did not know it for a fact," Ling-Ko replied, "However, I came prepared for just such an attempted ambush."

All at once a pair of figures materialized in the space beside her, flanking her like protective guardians, one a woman with pale skinned woman in the traditional Chinese dress of a priestess, the other a blue-skinned woman in similar Taoist dress, only she had a set of bulging wings projecting from her back that ended in large claw-like projections. The two of them were instantly recognizable by all of those present, and it came as something of a redundant remark when Yui said, "Mei-Ling and Tsien-Ko?"

"Those two are your escorts?" Nagi remarked, quite visibly impressed.

"Nihao," the blue-skinned Tsien-Ko remarked, "Long time no see, Kids. Afterlife been treating you well?"

"Boy, are you guys ever a sight for sore eyes," Himiko admitted.

"Is this an appropriate time for greetings?" Larva asked, "The enemy may attempt to attack with something stronger than a missile."

"No," M'shulla spoke up, "I do not think so. They have taken their best shot and it has been thwarted...so the logical thing for them to do now would be to fall back and reassess their remaining options."

"Logic?" Leguire snarled, "You expect logic from a situation such as this?"

"No, he is right," said Miyu as she seemed to be staring out at nothing but was actually extending her senses in all directions, "A careful enemy never rushes to the attack, and the one who set this in motion was a very careful and methodical planner. The Queen's arrival must have upset some sort of timetable that he was working upon, so it would be logical to fall back and regroup. At this point it would hardly matter...they have already drawn blood and have inflicted heavy casualties upon us."

"Your reasoning is sound, Miyu," Ling-Ko remarked, "Indeed, it would make sense to draw back and wait until we expose another opening for a second strike against us. Or perhaps I should make that a third since there were strike teams aimed at eliminating my escort and me. All the other members of my entourage were killed but for the sisters, who have supported me in my decision to come here."

"We're not too happy about it though, Cousin," Tsien-Ko remarked, "Making yourself a target just to impress the Kriel that you weren't behind this?"

"It's risky and it may not work," Mei-Ling noted, "The Shadow Tsar of the Kriel might still go to war just to keep his own people happy. There will be howls for blood when word of this atrocity gets out, and all of the major tribes could wind up getting caught up in the resulting feud."

"Which is no doubt what Dimitri Maximoff was planning all along," Ling-Ko remarked, "To set us at each others throats and to create such chaos that he can ride to power over the dust of our corpses."

Leguire shot a sudden glare at the Blood Queen, "Dimitri Maximoff? That traitor? He is behind this!?"

"Apparently," M'shulla remarked, "It bears the audacity that is his style...and yet...I find it strange that he would employ humans as well as Goya. And technology? That does not suit the style of his Dark Pack."

"I concur with you there," Larva said, "I met with Dimitri before this happened and...I had the distinct impression that he was being distracted with a...personal problem."

"Personal problem?" Yui asked, "Like what?"

"He is having difficulties resulting from a recent conversion he made," Miyu revealed, "I do not understand all of the details myself, but I believe one of his other schemes is coming back to haunt him."

"Indeed?" Ling-Ko asked, "I would like to hear more of the details."

"Another time, your Majesty," Nagi said, "In the meantime...do you hear police sirens?"

"I do," Ling-Ko replied, "Mei-Ling, you and Tsien-Ko run interference. We will need a few minutes' distraction to pull our people out of here."

"Of course," Mei-Ling nodded.

"You can count on us, Cuz," Tsien-Ko seconded, and with that the sisters vanished from the room, leaving the others behind to take care of other business.

"Our people?" Leguire asked with a puzzled expression.

"We bring Yasmina with us," Ling-Ko replied, "Her kind is harder to kill than simple exposure to sunlight. It might yet be possible to revive her."

"I will see to it myself, your Majesty," M'shulla affirmed.

"No offence, Uncle," Yui remarked, "But you can barely stand upright. Nagi, what say we help the boys out?"

"Just be careful not to drop her while she is in her crystal form," Miyu said, "Larva? I know you need time to recover, but..."

"I am not so feeble that I would decline helping out," the Shinma warrior insisted.

"I knew that," Miyu smiled, then added, "Himiko-chan? I will require your assistance."

"I was wondering when you were going to ask," Himiko chided, "You look about ready to collapse yourself, Miyu-chan. No one expects you to be strong all of the time."

"I know," Miyu weakly smiled, "But one must keep up appearances...before their...Blood Mother..."

Himiko managed to catch the swaying Shinma princess before Miyu could hit the ground, at which point Ling-Ko just smiled and said, "Everyone says that around me, even if, at times, I wonder myself if I truly deserve it..."

"They're still gaining on us, Miyuki!" Natsumi called out.

"I know that!" Miyuki snapped, "I've got it floored now, but my poor little Subi-chan can't make it over a hundred-twenty, not after all that it's been through!"

"So you're blaming me for putting that dent in your hood?" Natsumi asked, which brought a brief flash of a smile to both their faces before going deadly serious once again as Miyuki tried to shake their pursuers and Natsumi trained her gun at anyone who came too close to their fender.

Close in pursuit behind them was a van filled with red-eyed creatures brandishing weapons yet looking more as if they wanted to capture the fleeing women alive, so their aim was a bit off since they were trying to hit the tires of Miyuki's damaged Subaru without causing them to crash. It was obviously good sport to these Goya vampires and they were in no hurry to end the chase, but the one who was no vampire was growing impatient and snapped at the driver, "Faster, you fool! Don't let them escape us!"

Flanking them were a number of motorcyclists equally fired up by the glory of the hunt, but the one in the rear differed remarkably from the others in that he was head and shoulders above the lot and was in command of a machine that was like a bull to a greyhound as he was a giant among men. As he pulled up alongside the two Goya vampires in the rear he flipped a stud on his handlebars and suddenly a pair of iron bars shot out from the sides of his machine and caught the wheels of the two rebel bikers, arresting their motions and sending the drivers spilling off of their machines and onto the hard asphalt.

"Two down," Frank noted, "Now what say we give the ladies some relief."

He touched another stud and mini-rockets shot from the rear of his motorcycle to unerringly strike at two more biker-vamps, sending them careening off to the sides and thus cutting down the numbers of those trailing after the herd, even as Frank gunned his engine and shot ahead to catch up with the others.

"What is it with these creeps?" Natsumi cried wildly as she changed yet another clip of ammo on her nine millimeter, "I've hit 'em at least a dozen times but they keep on coming!"

In the back seat of the Subaru the man named Julian stirred from his rest and mumbled out the words, "Aim for the heads..."

"Oh yeah?" Natsumi was about to bark something about the man trying it himself if he thought it would make a difference, but right then one of the bikers vaulted from his machine and grabbed the back end of the Subaru, rearing up in Natsumi's vision like a horrific shape with his face distorted to something inhumanly demonic.

Natsumi felt a jolt of panic as the creature clawed at her and without pausing to think she automatically aimed her weapon point-blank and fired off into its face, her first shot going right through the bridge of its nose and exiting out the back of the skull with a terrible eruption. The next instant the creature began crumbling into dust before her very eyes, first its skin peeling away and then its skull reducing itself to powder, leaving nothing but a flapping leather jacket to fall away to the road in its passage.

"Fuck me!" Natsumi exclaimed in disbelief over what had just happened.

"Later, I promise!" Miyuki called back, obviously having only caught the event in her rear-view mirror but too intent on keeping them both alive to devote more than a fraction of her attention away from the road.

Armed with new knowledge of the effectiveness of a shot against the right target, Natsumi was careful to aim her next three shots exactly at the mental "bulls-eye" that she drew with her eyes on each of her subsequent targets...and with the result that three more attackers peeled away, their bodies crumbling to dirt long before their machines skidded out of control in riderless mayhem.

"What?" Sergei exclaimed as he saw his servants being picked off one-by-one, and he snarled as he cried out, "That's it, ram those bitches! Let's put an end to this farce!"

The driver was about to comply with the command when suddenly the van itself began to lurch underneath them, the rear end ripped apart by a pair of hands that were as big as mallets as Frank presented himself to the posse within with a horrific smile that terrified even the most hardened of vampires.

"Knock-knock!" he snarled before setting to grisly work upon the Goyas.

"Hey, why are you slowing down, Miyuki?" Natsumi asked.

"I thought I saw Doctor Steinberg back there..." Miyuki started to say when she gasped in amazement, seeing the now-riderless motorcycle belonging to Frank pulling up alongside them.

"Hi there, girls, long time no see," came the disembodied voice that they knew of only as Shelley, "Look, the Boss is a bit busy back there, so why don't you follow me and I'll lead you guys to a safe house where he can catch up with us later."

"Um...thank you," Miyuki responded, not knowing what else to say to the motorcycle's entreaty.

"Okay, this is definitely beyond the point of weirdness," Natsumi said as she returned to facing forward, only to go wide eyed as she cried, "MIYUKI!"

"Whoops!" Shelley exclaimed as Miyuki frantically hit the breaks and tried to spin their vehicle around out of the way of the other car that had just moved to cut them off, and unfortunately this caused both motorbike and Subaru to veer wildly out of control and crash into one another with the result that the human-  
driven car went crashing at a vertical angle into the black sedan that had pulled up on them from out of nowhere.

Frank was busy tearing the van apart from the insides when this happened, but he was not so distracted as to miss the collision dead ahead of their vehicle, which caused him to look up and cry, "NO!"

That was when the pommel end of a scimitar hit him on the jar-hard! Frank recoiled as Sergei tried to follow up on his attack, only to find that the driver to their vehicle was missing a head, and with that realization they went plowing into the back of the sedan with force enough to spin the other vehicle in a circle.

"Mmmphuki?"

"Phaat?"

Natsumi pushed away at the airbag and gasped, "We're still alive?"

Miyuki coughed a bit as her bag deflated, "I guess so...but my car..."

"We're alive, that's more luck than we could ask at the moment," Natsumi said as she started to get up out from her seat, only to have a pair of hands grip her arm, and suddenly she was looking into the face of death itself in the form of yet another vampire.

The door on Miyuki's side was torn from the hinges as yet another Goya gripped her by the neck and hauled her from the vehicle, baring fangs in a snarl of savage hunger.

"Gah!" Frank declared as he managed to tear his way loose from the ruined van, "Sure hate to be the insurance guy who has to cash in this policy...now, where did that Bolshevik Bastard get off to?"

There was no immediate sign of Sergie, but Frank did see the situation of the two policewoman and called out, "HEY! Hands off my lady friends, you stinking Garlic eaters!"

A dozen Goya turned and snarled at him, all of them sporting weapons from chains to baseball bats sporting nails to actual katanas, and none of them looking too happy about the insult.

"Uh...maybe we could talk about this?" Frank asked, then balled his fists, "On second thought, why bother?"

Natsumi was petrified by the most horrible sense of helplessness imaginable as the horrifying thing gripping her neck prepared to sink its fangs into her jugular. She had no leverage to apply in order to break its hold, was helpless before the savage strength that it displayed, and her gun-hand was pinned to her side preventing her from using it as she stench of its hot breath against her neck made her cringe in terror. For the first time in her young life she had a very real sense of what death was and it transfixed her worse than the most horrific nightmare that she could imagine. She was only seconds away from having her throat torn out by the creature, and in that desperate instant only one ploy occurred to her that might spare her life, an instinctive reaction as her left leg was the only part of her not presently immobile.

With no thought behind the deed her knee rose up and connected with a soft spot, and all at once her assailant shuddered in automatic reaction, going cross-eyed as the pain slowly filtered its way throughout its nervous system, and for a moment its grip weakened upon Natsumi, who managed to break free long enough to kick it in the chest, landing on her back as she pointed her gun in an upward direction.

"Sayonara, Sucker!" she quipped as she sent another steel jacketed slug into the spine of yet another creature, then watched in grim satisfaction as it crumbled to dust in a matter of mere seconds.

"N-Natsumi..." Miyuki weakly gasped as she felt the life being choked out of her, but her own assailant made a critical mistake in turning its attention towards the fate of the other vampire, and with a limberness it never suspected her foot shot up in a straight trajectory kick that caught it along the side of its head and forced it to release her, one second before a second bullet nearly took its head off, and another second later the point became academic.

Natsumi started to rise to her feet, calling out to Miyuki, who was clutching her neck and coughing profusely, but before she could take another step something cold and metallic pressed itself up against her chin, and all at once she knew that there was something here besides vampires who posed a threat to their continued existence.

"Excellent aim, my dear," Sergei remarked in casual regard of her profile, "There are very few marksmen who could fire with that much precision in such close quarters and hit not one target but two...but I think it would be best for everyone if you dropped the weapon now before I give that pretty throat of yours a second mouth."

"Sergei, you swine!" Frank bellowed from where he stood alone above a pile of crumbling ashes.

"Nice to meet you too, old friend," Sergei remarked when he heard the sound of a trigger being cocked and turned his eyes to take notice of Miyuki, who was pointing her own nine millimeter in his direction.

"Let her go!" the normally mild-mannered patrolwoman snarled, "I really mean it!"

"Don't be absurd," Sergei sniffed, "I can slice her head off before you can even pull that trigger, and I will do it too if you don't put that toy away. It can't really hurt me as it did the Goya..."

"Want to bet?" Miyuki hissed, "A nine millimeter can tear through an engine block, at this range it will take your head clean off, and I'm just as good a shot as Miyuki!"

"An interesting boast," Sergei mused, "But are you truly willing to gamble with the lady's life that way? A fraction of an instant too late and you could miss me altogether."

"Natsumi is mine!" Miyuki said coldly, "If you hurt her even slightly then you are dead. Are you really willing to gamble your life away on how fast I can shoot? Just try me! And I don't think you relish being dead that much...do you?"

Sergei scowled at the woman and said, "You make an interesting point. I am not ready to die, let alone at the hands of a mere mortal. However, if you shoot then you know that I will kill her..."

"And if you do that then you know I'll do a whole lot worse than kill you," Frank snarled back, "And you know I will too! You can't die from having your arms ripped out of their sockets, but that just means I can do it and worse on you, over and over for as long as I like, and I'll take great delight in seeing you stay conscious through every second that I work you."

Sergei thought that one over for a second or two before saying, "I propose a compromise. I'll let this lady keep her throat if you put your weapons down and back away. I'll be gone before you even know it, and we can play this over again on another occasion."

"How about if I make a third proposal," said yet another voice from directly behind Sergei.

"W-Whaat...?" the dark haired Immortal began to say when he felt the bite of steel against his neck from two sides, then with a sudden twist those butterfly knives performed a scissors motions that sliced the space between second and third vertebrae clean through, and all at once the scimitar fell from nerveless fingers, allowing Natsumi to step away in time to see a headless corpse collapse onto the pavement.

Julian stood there with his twin blades in hand, staring down coldly at the man that he had just killed before looking up at Natsumi and Miyuki and saying, "Please back way...you don't want to be near me when this happens."

"But..." Natsumi gasped when she and Miyuki felt a large hand grip them by their upper arms, then Frank yanked them back out of the way and drew them to the side as something weird began to happen to the body of the fallen Cossack.

To their utter amazement the policewomen saw Sergei's body begin to shimmer with an awful kind of light that played off against the darkness. All at once electrical sparks began to discharge in all directions, followed in turn by actual lightning bolts, which bathed Julian in their terrible reach, the energy arcing from one body to the other as though drawn to the blond man like a lightning rod, the discharges intensifying by the second.

Julian cried out and convulsed as electrical systems all around him began shorting out and Miyuki's engine burst jets of lightning from the hood. The ruined van exploded as its gas engine caught fire, and the sedan itself lit up like a pinwheel. Lighting struck a nearby telephone pole and broke a window across the street, hitting several parked cars that were not involved in the immediate accident and causing several overhead street lamps to explode in a hail of sparks. Another bolt struck the two swords still gripped in Julian's hands as he jerked and spasmed before pointing his blades skyward and causing another electrical arc to be released towards the cloudless heavens.

And throughout all of this a sense of time itself on the mark, as though many years were flashing by before their eyes like an old video reel set on fast forward. Wars and battles passed them by in the flicker of an eyelash, and history itself was replayed from the battle of Waterloo to the assassination of Tsar Nicolas and all of his family, to the rise of Joseph Stalin and beyond that.

Then at last-an eternity later-the electrical displays died down and the fairie fire no longer appeared to surround the headless body. A few brief sparks died out across the asphalt as Julian slowly fell to his knees, gasping and leaning on his butterfly knives for support, his eyes giving off a residual afterglow for several more seconds.

When at last things were quiet again Frank straightened up and said, "Nice timing. I was starting to worry there that you'd be a second or two shy of making your recovery, old buddy."

Julian gasped before saying, "I...try not to disappoint an audience...old friend...but I confess...this time...I almost enjoyed that..."

Natsumi and Miyuki were silent for several seconds more before the former said, "Okay...what the hell just happened?"

Julian pushed himself back to his feet and sheathed his butterfly knives across his back, then said "Something I regret having to let you witness, Officers. I'm afraid that I will have to rely upon your discretion that you not write up a report about this."

"A report about what?" Miyuki asked in numb fascination.

"Exactly," Frank grimly nodded.

"Miyuki?" Natsumi glanced at her partner.

"I will put it to you this way, Partner," Miyuki said, "Would you like to try explaining this one to the chief?"

Natsumi went pale, "No way!"

"Good call," Frank said as he left their side and hunted down his own motorcycle, which was parked quite some distance away as though deliberately avoiding the fireworks, "Shelley, you still functioning okay?"

"You think I was going to stick around and get fried by the Quickening, Boss?" the motorcycle responded, "No way! You don't pay me enough in lube and oil jobs for that."

Natsumi forced herself to glance at the wreckage and carnage all around them then said, "We'd better come up with something in case the local cops in this burg show up to ask us questions."

"No problems there," Julian replied, "I'll explain what happened. I'm rather good at whipping up convincing stories, and it's not exactly the first time I've had to do this, either."

"Yeah, but for now I suggest we shelve this and get back to a place that ought to be fairly safe from the Goya," Frank suggested, "Which reminds me...Shelley?"

"Already ahead of you, Boss-man," the motorcycle said even as a faint humming noise drew attentions to the approach of a side-car, which same pulled up alongside the Monster and attached itself with a faint click, converting the motorcycle into a two-seater.

"You mean...ride in that?" Natsumi asked dubiously.

"Sure, you can double-up with your partner," Frank replied, "Julian, you're with me, but watch those hands."

"Not to worry, Frank," Julian smiled, "You're not my type."

"Yeah, and what type are you?" Natsumi asked, "O-Negative?"

"I'm not a vampire, Officer," Julian replied, "I'm a lawyer."

"You mean there's a difference?" Miyuki asked, then smiled, "Sorry about that. Where did you mean to take us, Doctor Steinberg?"

"Where do you think I mean, Kid?" Frank said as he straddled his bike, even as Miyuki and Natsumi scrunched into the side-car together, and Julian took a seat behind Frank, "We're gonna pay a visit to the Tendos, then we'll try and figure out what else is going on in this burb. After all, the night's still early and there's bound to be things walking around loose at this hour that could give nightmares to the vampires."

"Now isn't that a comforting thought?" Julian asked as Frank started gunning Shelley's engines, and moments later they took their leave of the crime scene, even as the howl of approaching sirens drew upon the scene with police and rescue workers at a loss to explain the nature of this particular altercation...

Continued.

Comments/Criticisms/Nightbreed Chronicles: shadowmane

It's Nabiki versus Natsume when the latter learns the truth about their mutual "big sister," while Kasumi herself begins to explore the reach of her new powers, and Ranma has it out with Keiko in, "Big Sister Blitz," or, "Sticking Your Neck Out For a Buddy!" Be there!

If you wish to check out my other works, Please check out my Fanfiction webpage at: or it's Mirror page at ~ All related chapters of this series can be found there along with my other works.

/pre 


	45. Chapter 45

preDnabiki115

Nabiki 1/2

"A Very Scary Thought!"

by Jim Robert Bader

(Inspired by the works of Rumiko Takahashi Others,  
with a special appearance by some of my own creations and those of Joss Whedon. The Character of Frank is my own interpretation of the Monster of Mary Shelley's novel and is thus a free agent, so talk with him if you want to have him costar in some other series.)

[Special thanks to Bill Guiroff and Shiva for helping the initial proofreading phase of this fanfic series, and for encouraging me to continue the sage of Nabiki 1/2.]

Part One-Hundred-Fifteen.

(Set during and slightly after the time of the events recorded in the side-story titled "Honeymoon Hentai")

[No Actual Vampires or Immortals were harmed in the making of this fanfic...]

"I take it back, Ranma-kun," Nabiki murmured faintly, "Size really does matter when it comes to counting carrots."

Ranma could only stare in blank dismay as he studied the stone mounted in the ornate gold wire ring that adorned Natsume's finger as his adoptive sister-in-  
law proudly showed it off for their inspection. Natsume was smiling in a way that would have put shame to the sun and stars and she fairly glowed with happiness while Tatewaki looked somewhat sheepish and had a silly grin of his own on his face, his lips still sporting the mark of his fiancée's lipstick.

"Way to go Tatewaki," Keiko complimented, "So when's the date, or are you planning to elope together?"

"Arigami-san," Natsume chided, "You know that I will want my father and sisters to be present when I walk down the aisle to take Tachi-sama's hand in blessed matrimony. It will be the happiest moment of my life to be accepted into the Kuno family, and when that day arrives I will want all of those whom I care for to be present to witness the moment when I fully become a woman."

"Sure you'll want company in the honeymoon bridal suite?" Nabiki asked before turning to Tatewaki, "Congratulations, Tachi-kun, I just know that you'll make my sister enormously happy."

"Please, the honor is all mine, Nabiki-san," Tatewaki said before pausing to correct himself, "I mean...Saotome-san, my sister-to-be."

"What a wonderful couple you both will make," Nodoka boasted happily, "We must inform Soun-chan the instant he gets home from visiting the bathhouse with the Master and my husband. I can't wait to begin planning out the day with you, Natsume-chan. I just know that you will bring great honor to both our families, to say nothing of uniting the houses of Tendo, Kuno and Saotome into one big happy clan of the Anything Goes tradition."

"And I look forward to planning things out with you, Auntie," Natsume replied, "I will want everything to be perfect since we are having the ceremony at the Kuno mansion..."

"What?" Nabiki asked, "You're not having it in the dojo?"

"The reception can be in the dojo, Sister dear," Natsume replied, "But it would be a bit too crowded to have all of the guests that we're planning to invite be forced to sit through a long ceremony, even with the concessions and refreshments that Tatewaki and I will be providing."

"Oh?" Nabiki asked, "And how many dinner guests are you two planning to invite?"

"Just some friends and the immediate family, "Tatewaki replied, "Perhaps three to five hundred in all."

"Three to five hundred?" Nodoka replied, "Oh my, then that means we should get to work sending out the invitations."

Ranma closed his mouth at long last and looked up at the taller boy, then casually reached over and grabbed his best friend by the neck and wrapped his arm around his shoulders...to all appearances just friendly though in actuality he gripped Tatewaki in a headlock.

"Hey, old buddy, whatcha trying to do, make me look bad?" he casually remarked while Tatewaki fought for breath and vainly tried to pry the arm loose from his neck.

"What's the matter, Ranma-kun?" Keiko playfully teased, "Jealous because you had your wedding under the big top?"

"Naw, there's nothing wrong with doing it in a tent surrounded by circus clowns and savage beasts right after Nab-chan and me got through pounding the daylights outta one another," Ranma assured them while Tatewaki appeared to be in danger of turning blue, "After all, shouldn't everybody had a wedding day to remember?"

"That reminds me," Nabiki said, "Kei-chan, mind going back into the house and fetching me my camera? I've just got to preserve this moment for posterity."

"Right Chief," Keiko grinned while mock-saluting.

"Er...Ranma-kun?" Natsume asked of her adopted brother-in-law, "Would you mind letting Tachi-sama go now? I'll need him to still be breathing when we say our wedding vows together."

"Oh, right," Ranma said as he let the other boy go, and Tatewaki fell to his knees coughing and gasping for breath, even as Ranma added the tart comment, "After all, old buddy here did help me pick out the rings for Ucchan and the others."

"Sheesh," Kurumi complained from where she hung back near the gate watching these exchanges, "Pickle me in radish sauce and call me nauseous, the way she fawns on him you'd think Oneechan was winning some kind of prize here in a husband."

"Now that's hardly fair and you know it, Kurumi-chan," Mousse gently chided, "Your sister can make her own decisions and she's clearly happy with this one."

The shorter girl turned a look up at the long-haired Chinese man then said, "And that reminds me...you never gave me any kind of ring when we got hitched..."

"Huh?" Mousse blinked, then began sweating profusely.

And so did Kurumi, who belatedly heard her own words and promptly added a hasty, "Ah-not that I put any stock in those Chinese Marriage laws of yours or anything like that. I mean...who can believe the two of us got married just because you beat me in a fight, huh? Ridiculous...!"

"Ah...right," Mousse said somewhat dubiously, though his face took on a curiously thoughtful expression.

Keiko only turned an amused glance their way before heading back into the house, musing to herself that the Speedster and the Ape-boy did make an unusually perfect couple, even if they were both too clueless to admit it. Kurumi might deny that she was married to the (formerly "big jerk") half-blind Master of the Shadow Senken, but from the way she conducted herself around him you could tell that she was really hung up on the guy, just as Mousse had slowly come around to favoring Kurumi with noticeable affection. The guy might still have an abiding Perfume-fetish, but slowly he was coming around to finally seeing reason on that subject, and since the original object of his love never returned his affections, and was presently at sea tending to Perfume's own wife, Ukyo, it seemed more and more likely that the boy would finally buy a clue and settle down with the right woman after all. It was long overdue in Keiko's rather biased opinion, and since Mousse did seem to be taking his duties as a husband seriously-his lecturing Kurumi on her conduct being a prime example-it was more than likely that he would prevail upon Kurumi in the end.

Keiko certainly hoped that this was the case, because the alternative would be heartbreak for both clueless teenaged martial artists. In the meantime she had a request from her own former first love to fulfill, and since a camera was considered a deadly weapon in the hands of Nabiki, it was only fitting for a dutiful retainer-slash-friend to see her former lover well-armed in the photo-  
book alumni wars of the somewhat distant future (she had a mental image of Nabiki showing off pictures to her grandkids one day, and that brought a smile to Keiko's lips as she headed towards the stairs and passed the nine-year-old kid holding the headless doll who was looking up at her in passing...

Huh?

Keiko halted in mid-step then turned around and saw the aforementioned child staring back at her in silent regard. She had long yellow-brown hair done up in a braid that hung down her back, much like Keiko's own, and unusually intelligent blue eyes that stared back with the wisdom and sadness of the world reflected in their depths. There was something oddly familiar about this girl, and it took Keiko all of fourteen seconds to make the belated connection.

"Oh hey," she said, "I remember you! You're...uh...that girl we met in the graveyard about a month ago...Akita was it?"

The little girl just stared back at her without the least change in her expression.

"Oh yeah, silly me," Keiko clucked as she slapped herself along the side of the head, "Anita...that was your name, right? You're the one who travels with the big guy who goes around with a humungous bad-ass sword strapped to his back...the spiritualist necromancer who purged Kasumi of...er, well...who tried to cure her of vampirism anyway. What was his name again? Donald something...?"

For the first time the little girl spoke aloud, "Donovan."

"Right," Keiko nodded, "Donovan Bane. I remember it now. Uh...is he here with you by any chance?"

Anita merely turned her head and stared into the living area, and as Keiko followed her gaze she saw that aforementioned "bad ass" sword attached to the backside of an incredibly tall and broad-shouldered man who reminded Keiko of her own father in profile, save that this guy had a very different sort of aura about him. Even when quiet he dominated a room with his very presence, and were it not that Keiko was a determined lesbian she was absolutely certain that she would have drooled just staring at his pectorals and glutinous maximus, for the man had an absolutely rock-hard physique, to say nothing of a warrior's braid that put her own to shame. In short he was someone you did not easily miss in a crowd, let alone in an empty chamber.

Without turning around the man said, "I have come to find her, the one you call Kasumi."

"Er...Kasumi? I mean...you have?" Keiko asked with raised eyebrows.

"It is necessary that you tell me where she has gone," Donavan slowly turned around to fix the redhead with his golden-eyed stare, an effect that magnified his already considerable presence, "I must know for a fact if what I suspect has come to pass. It is my duty since I am the one who sought to purge her, as you have stated, and quite obviously it was I who have failed in my sacred mission."

"Ah...Kasumi's upstairs...right?" Keiko wondered.

The big man merely shook his head from side-to-side then responded, "No...I can sense that she has gone elsewhere, which means that she is coming full into the use of her powers. Quickly, it is urgent that I know...where would Tendo Kasumi go by herself this early in the evening? I must find her before Dimitri, before the foul one can wreak upon her his terrible vengeance."

"Vengeance?" Keiko was instantly alarmed, but she added in nervous undertone, "Er...what do you plan on doing to Kasumi when you find her?"

"I do not wish to harm her," Donavan revealed, "As I said before she has a pure soul, one innocent of the Dark, and yet I would not see her tainted if it can be avoided. If she has become what I think she has become, then Dimitri will be all the more determined to find her that he might drink her blood and gain her life essence. To do otherwise would be unthinkable for him since her purity is tainting his Darkness..."

"Say what?" Keiko blinked, then turned to glance down at Anita, "You got any idea what he's saying, Kid?"

Very softly Anita replied, "The Vampire has become a victim of his own blood thirst."

"Yes," Donavan said somberly, "Dimitri wallows in Darkness, his very soul is corruption and he must be stopped before he spreads that darkness into Kasumi. He cannot abide the purity of her light, and since he is linked to her in a way that I never even suspected before when I sought to break the link between them..."

"Uh...hold on here," Keiko urged, "Back up a minute. You mean when you tried to purge Kasumi of the taint of vampiric blood that Dimitri character put in her you instead...reversed the charges and got him suck being on the receiving end of her connection?"

"More or less, that is one way of putting it," the Demon Hunter answered.

"Oboy," Keiko said faintly, "This is bad...this is very, very bad. If somebody like him got plugged into miss sweetness and sunshine 24/7, then...NAB-CHAN! COME IN HERE QUICK!"

"Say what?" Nabiki asked as she, Ranma, Natsume, Tatewaki, Nodoka, Kurumi and Mousse all came charging in through the front entrance, only to halt in their tracks when they caught sight of the towering Donovan Bane.

"You?" Ranma gasped.

"The priest from before?" Tatewaki observed.

"Oh my," Nodoka exclaimed, unable to help feeling a certain...reaction at the sight of the handsome and virile man before her.

"You!" Nabiki stalked forward, "You're the one I remember! I've got a bone to pick with you, Mister! Huh?" she glanced down in surprise, finding Anita was suddenly standing in her path blocking her from advancing on her guardian protector.

"There's no time for this, guys!" Keiko urged, "The big guy says we need to find Kasumi and quick! That Dimitri character's gonna be after her again, and this time it's on account of the insulin shock he must be getting off Kasumi!"

"Insulin shock?" Natsume repeated in confusion.

"Yeah," Keiko insisted, "The kind that must be rotting his fangs with cavities by now if I understand the deal here."

Donovan suddenly zeroed in on Natsume and said, "Slayer? I had not thought to encounter one of your sisterhood in this place..."

"You...know about this?" Tatewaki gasped, surprised that the strange man in priestly garb should be able to detect such a thing at a glance.

"You must be mistaken," Natsumi replied, "I am not this Slayer person that you think I am..."

"This is no time for you to indulge in self-denial and delusion, Slayer," Donovan replied, "Your presence confirms the worst of my suspicions. Dire things are on the move and the creatures of the night are gathering their forces to wreak havoc upon the innocent of the world. Where there is need of the Slayer matters must be very grim indeed, so much so that it now becomes plain that I must seek out Tendo Kasumi and prevent her from becoming Dimitri's next victim."

"Why?" Mousse asked, "What will happen if he does that?"

"Then...the world itself may very well be forfeit," Donovan replied, "And I mean that in no way as a rhetorical exaggeration...hold! Others approach this compound, and one among them is a powerful and much sought ally."

"You can sense that with your powers?" Ranma asked.

"No," Donovan answered, "I hear a distinctively familiar sounding motorcycle in the background, and from the way it moves it must have more than the weight of its master borne upon it...it is even using a side-car."

The others all perked up their ears and then Nabiki said, "That's Frank's Monster all right. He must have caught up with his friends. Now maybe we can finally start to get some answers."

They all headed back out the front door and up to the gates where they found Frank and his unusual entourage pulling up, including two familiar faces crowded into the side-car, which same brought more than a few raised eyebrows.

"Officers Miyuki and Natsumi?" Keiko asked, not failing to detect the way that one had been clinging to the other before the side-car came to a full rest.

"Uh...hi," the other Natsumi said shyly as she and Miyuki stretched their legs and glanced around at the exterior wall of the Tendo compound.

"Long time no see, Tendo-san," Miyuki bowed to Nabiki, "Or should that be...Saotome?"

"Ran into these two being chased by some bad guys," Frank said as he parked his vehicle then dismounted, followed by a blond haired man wearing a cross-belt from which dangled a pair of broad-but-short bladed swords, "Along with an old friend of mine. Julian, say hello to the Tendos and Saotomes. Kids, say hello to Julian Fries, Attorney at law and full-time Immortal."

"Charmed," the blond man said as he adjusted his belt harness.

"Lawyer?" Nabiki reacted, "You've been hanging out with a lawyer...while my sister is stuck as a vampire?"

"What?" Natsumi looked at Nabiki with a sharp expression.

"Jokes about similar relations notwithstanding," Julian smiled, "I'm really here representing a very old client of mine, one who is greatly concerned about the activities of our esteemed Lord Dimitri. In point of fact, somebody tried to kill me and some other colleagues just a little while ago, blew up part of a building then knocked me out of a sixth story window then tried to run me down with some hired muscle."

"Man, I hate when that happens," Ranma grumbled.

"Hold on a moment," Natsume urged, "What was that about our sister being a vampire?"

"Kasumi," Nabiki pursed her lips then said with a slightly tense expression, "It seems Donovan's attempt to cure her didn't fully take, and now she's reverted into some kind of vampire, only not one that makes you feel scary...just...kind of scary, as in pretty much disturbing."

"Kasumi has returned to the state of vampirism from which we had prayed she had been delivered?" Tatewaki asked.

"You mean you hadn't noticed that she's recently developed a blood fetish?" Keiko quipped.

"Man, that sucks," Kurumi growled, then saw the way others were turning to look at her and said, "What?"

All at once Frank's attention shot literally over their heads and he growled out the word, "Donny boy...wondered when you'd finally show up."

"I have been here for quite some time, old friend," Donovan replied, "Doing some investigating, testing the local air, seeking to know the currents and get a sense of what may actually be at stake here. Now I must report that matters are even more dire than I had previously imagined."

"Uh, hold up on the Apocalypse for a minute, will ya?" Frank turned to see a set of headlights bearing down on them, "Looks like we got more company come calling."

"uuuh...!" all at once Natsume doubled over, and Tatewaki was instantly at her side saying, "My love? What ails you?"

"Something...wrong...unnatural...not alive...but not dead either," Natsume grated out from between clenched teeth.

"Bear with the feeling, Slayer," Donovan urged, "It will pass in time the more accustomed you are to being in their presence."

"Well, is that any way to greet your old buddies, Donavan?" said a blue skinned Chinese girl who was first to exit the vehicle, followed by her pale skinned sister.

"I don't believe it," Frank groaned, "You two? But I thought that..."

"Matters are somewhat more complicated than any of us were prone to believe, Doctor," Mei-Ling remarked as others exited the side of the car with them, including the trio of Lenore, Chloe and Kiima, along with Blood Mother Ling-Ko, Princesses Miyu and Yui, their respective male companions and-lastly-a dusky skinned M'shulla and a somewhat red-faced Leguire.

"Who are those guys?" Natsumi whispered to her partner.

"Somehow I don't think that they are on the way to a costume party," Miyuki murmured back.

"Just play it cool, girls," Julian urged, "They won't bite without permission. It's beneath their station."

"Is everyone here?" Ling-Ko asked, "Good. Then is there a place where we may all sit in repose and comfort to straighten matters out with some civilized decorum."

"There is indeed, Blood Mother," Donovan replied, "But I would recommend asking permission first before you choose to make this home your new sanctuary for the evening."

"There is little time to stand on official ceremony, and we need a place that is easily defensible, which this compound would seem to afford," Ling-Ko turned and sought out Nodoka with her eyes, "You are the matriarch in charge here? I would formally request it of you that we be granted temporary sanctuary for the evening, at least until the first hour of sunlight. I promise that no harm will come to you or yours and that none of my companions will seek untoward advances upon your people."

"Um...that seems to be a reasonable request," Nodoka turned and said, "Have you any objections, Nabiki?"

"Ah...not at the moment," Nabiki glanced at Frank, "As long as the big guy vouches for them."

"You can trust Ling-Ko to be as good as her word, Kid," Frank replied, "In all the time I've known her she's never yet gone back on a promise."

"Nor do I intend to begin now," Ling-Ko turned to the male members of their group, "Carry Yasmina with us, but be gentle. We have lost enough friends for one night, and I do not intend to count her gone for good while there is a chance for her survival."

"It will be as you request it, Blood Mother," M'shulla replied as he and Leguire set to work unloading a statue from the rear of the limousine.

"Blood mother?" Ranma repeated.

"It's...kinda complicated, Kid," Frank replied, "Better if we save it for later."

"How odd," Nodoka said as she studied Miyu, "You look somehow familiar, young lady. Have we already met?"

"Ah..." Miyu wondered what it was about the curiously amused expression in the mature woman's eyes that was disturbing her the most and began to wonder if-  
perhaps-she might not have underestimated this mortal on their first encounter.

"I'm sorry," Natsume straightened out, clutching at her abdomen, "You must forgive me, but I...I cannot remain here..."

"My love," Tatewaki said, "If you wish to return to see the doctor..."

"Hmmm...a Slayer, how interesting," Ling-Ko remarked, "Yes, by all means, take her far away from here. No doubt our kind will prove to be too disturbing if she has only just been quickened. Give her a few days at least before she will be able to tolerate our presence..."

"Wait a second," Nabiki spoke up, "The Doctor? You mean Tofu-sensei?"

"Yes," Tatewaki replied, "We came away from his offices not quite an hour or so gone by..."

Nabiki turned to Nodoka and said, "Auntie...I'll leave everything to you. I've got to go, now...I think I know where we can find Kasumi."

"You know where she went?" Ranma asked, then blinked, "Hey, you don't mean...?"

"She went to visit Tofu?" Keiko marveled.

"Well, that does make a kind of sense," Mousse shrugged, "I mean...where else would you go if you weren't feeling like yourself but to a healer?"

"Then that is where we must go to find her," Tatewaki turned to Natsume, "That is...if you are feeling up to the task, my love."

"Yes, I am, beloved," Natsume said with firmness in her tone and expression, "Kasumi is my sister too, and if anything untoward has befallen her..."

"Then what are we waiting around here for?" Kurumi asked, "Let's go find Oneechan and help her!"

"Looks like my work for the night ain't done with," Frank turned to Tsien-Ko and Mei-Ling, "You guys stay here and protect the Blood Mother. And Lenore?"

"Yes boss?" the redheaded vampire perked up.

"Stay out of trouble until I get back," Frank concluded, much to the chagrin of the redhead.

"I will accompany you," Donovan said as though stating the obvious, "I must find Tendo Kasumi before Dimitri, and since you know your sister better than any other, it makes sense to accompany you, Saotome Nabiki."

"Uh...thanks, I think," Nabiki uneasily responded.

"Tendo Kasumi, you say?" Ling-Ko mused, "Now there is a name we have heard spoken about quite a bit lately. I confess that I am somewhat eager to meet this new Master Vampire in our midst in person. Do bring her by once you have found her, Doctor...alive and intact if at all possible."

"What do you mean 'if at all possible?'" Ranma snapped, "She's my Oneechan, and ain't nobody gonna hurt her, not when I'm around!"

"My, how masculine," Tsien-Ko said in mild amusement.

"He does seem very much the fierce warrior...for a mortal," Mei-Ling noted.

Nabiki frowned upon hearing that comment and reflected on the concept that there was more than one definition to the word "Vamp" that applied here.

"Ah, if it's all the same to you guys," Natsumi spoke up, "Miyuki and I have had enough excitement for one night, and I'd rather not risk our necks any more than we have already."

"I would tend to agree with that," Miyuki noted, "And besides which...you and I have some unfinished business to get back to, Natsumi-chan."

"Ah..." her partner colored a bit (not that it was too apparent in the dim light of a distant street lamp, "Yeah...and besides...some of this stuff you're into...it's kind of off the legal books, if you know what I'm saying."

"I hear you completely," Julian smiled, "I'm also sitting this one out...I try and keep a quota of no more than one decapitation in a night. Tends to make it easier for me to sleep in mornings, know what I mean?"

"Swell," Frank nodded, "Then you three wait here and I'll call you a cab in the morning. No sense wandering around with Dimitri's boys looking for fresh young necks to bite."

"But...!" Natsumi and Miyuki chorused together, turning nervous looks towards the vampires in their midst.

"You'll be safe enough around me," Julian promised, "And Ling-Ko won't allow anyone to break her blood oath, I can definitely vouch for that."

"And I can equally vouch that the word of Julian of the house of Constantine is equally to be held as valid," Ling-Ko affirmed, "You need not take it from me, however, that you are safer in our midst than you would be risking your necks facing Dimitri."

The two off-duty policewomen seemed to think that one seriously over, exchanging looks and hovering near to one another before eyeing the assorted vampires with mutually dubious expressions.

"Then it's decided, right?" Keiko asked, "We're all square about who goes and who stays? Me, I'm with Nab-chan all the way."

"Ah...right," Nabiki said, "So like Kurumi said, what are we doing waiting around here for?"

"Right beside you, Nab-chan," Ranma affirmed, and together they took off down the road at a rapid pace, Nabiki and the others racing rapidly down the darkened streets.

The martial artists vaulted to the nearest rooftops and making good time heading towards the Tofu clinic while Ling-Ko nodded and said, "So, those are the famous heroes who fought off Dimitri and his minions. A most unusual group...for an assembly of highly trained mortals."

"They do kick some pretty good butt, Cuz," Tsien-Ko remarked, "So I wouldn't count them too far out."

"Yes, but do they truly understand what they are getting into?" Mei-Ling wondered, "They are formidable, yes, but they are hardly Darkstalkers."

Frank got astride his Monster once again and grumbled, "Yeah, I know...so why do I always get to play babysitter?"

"Face it, Boss, you're just too loveable for your own good," Shelley answered.

"You're just saying that 'cause you're too cute for me to dismantle," Frank rumbled before taking off like a shot, going from zero to ninety KPM in just a bit under two and a half seconds...

Some minutes before all of this occurred:

Kasumi stood upon the roof of her family house with her bare feet firmly gripping the tiles as though they were magnetically adherent. She could hear the voices far below as clearly as if she were standing right next to the parties in question, smiling as she saw Natsume showing off her new engagement ring and thinking wistfully of how good a man Tatewaki was to bring such joy to her adopted sister.

She sighed, feeling more than a bit wistful, and yet oddly at peace with herself as she hovered above the cares and worries of the mortal world beneath her, warmed by the currents of air that wafted past her slender body as she stood in a light dress embracing the coming of nightfall. There was something soothing about the night sky as she felt the harsh rays of the sun vanish over the western horizon, elevating her to the light of the full moon rising from the east and bathing her in silvery rays of life-giving essence.

She loved the night, loved the calming blanket that put the world to bed and awoke the children of the evening, the crickets that chirruped their hellos to one another, the owls and night fowl that stirred from their comforting branches, and the sense that the earth itself was stirring in restful slumber. How strange that she never noticed it like this before, these sounds, this feeling, the sense of life teeming below the surface awareness of the common mortal realm, a time that was filled with the crawling, creeping nocturnal things that nourished the soil and restored vitality to the plants that the sun had baked with its scalding rays. In truth the nighttime was more alive even than the day since every creature that became active in the evening yearned for the restfulness of the twilight. The day had its many joys, but the night was truly alive with promise and small wonder that romance was in the air since lovers basked in the comfort of the moonlight, the lower sexual realm of the undersoul, that part that was so badly neglected by most major (meaning Sun-  
based) religions yet was just as valid a part of human nature as the higher consciousness that the sun itself represented.

Kasumi felt strangely alive as she stood there blanketed in the wind and light of early evening, revitalized in ways that she could hardly have described since she was only now paying attention to the changes that had been wrought upon her mind and body. In embracing these new changes she felt the possibilities of things unimaginable presented before her, of things formerly forbidden that were now within the realm of conception, and in thinking this she wondered what to do with her newfound freedom since she no longer felt the constraints of her family obligations weighing her down. For the first time since her mother passed away Kasumi felt truly liberated, and that brought a quiet joy to her soul, one that had to be tested to the limits of her very being.

She already knew something of what she was capable of through trial and practice. Once Nabiki had left her room she had decided to exercise her prerogatives and slipped from her bedroom by going ethereal, stepping out of synch with normal time-space and into another realm where the rules of physics were somewhat different than could be easily imagined. While ethereal only a ghostly after-image of herself was left partially materialized in the physical realm, which to ordinary eyes would be perceived as nothing more than a shadow shrouded in mist, and while in this state she could pass through physical boundaries and move her mass through the tightest crevices, to emerge outside upon the roof as solid flesh and matter.

That was but one of her new abilities, time to demonstrate the second, which she had learned on that parallel world by trial and error. So saying Kasumi stepped out over the edge of the roof and imagined her mass becoming as light as a mere feather, and by projecting her will downward she was able to rise up into the air and levitate like a bird soaring up beyond treetop level. She hovered high above her loved ones gazing down with some amusement as the thought briefly crossed her mind that she might swoop down on them and impress them with this feat, but caution tempered her enthusiasm as she knew that it would be premature to reveal this much to her family while they were still trying to come to terms with the thought that she was no longer entirely a human woman.

Yet the sense of freedom that came with flying was too great to resist, and Kasumi decided to see if she truly could soar like a bird, so she willed herself up to a higher elevator then gently soared above the city taking in the sights of Nerima after daylight. The lights looked so pretty from down below and she was mesmerized by the thrill of seeing everything from a height comparable to Mount Fuji. The realization that she could now travel to wherever she wanted was intoxicating, and as she circled the Furinkan Financial district she could see familiar landmarks as clearly as if by full daylight, soaring past the houses of childhood friends to the shops and markets that she frequently visited when running errands. Furinkan high school loomed up before her and brought with it so many memories of her days as a student there, before she had graduated and come to spend her full time doing household chores and assisting her aunt Nodoka. So many memories flooded through her mind as she circled the play-yards where she once had taken part in a great many activities from soccer to badminton, and in a moment of surprise she found that she actually missed sports, something that her younger self would have found quite surprising.

Not being a very aggressive person by nature, Kasumi had always been a bit shy about track and field exercises, even though they were mandatory. Her true loves were Biology and Home Economics, subjects that she had excelled in though her handling of Math and History were somewhat less than stellar academic achievements. She just did not have Nabiki's head for numbers, she thought with a wistful sigh, one reason why she had not gone on to college to pursue the Nurse's training that had been her original goal. She was better at grammar but only passable in her English courses...foreign languages being such a difficult subject. Perhaps it was time to study these again, to learn if she had improved academically from her private tutoring sessions with aunt Nodoka, and from the many books which she had borrowed from Doctor Tofu.

Doctor Tofu...what was he doing right now? For some odd reason Kasumi felt a mischievous urge to drop in on the dear doctor in order to learn what he might be up to this late in the day. He had always been a trusted family friend...and wise in many esoteric subjects. It only made sense to visit him now so that she would have someone to confide in since he was the one person who might have an understanding of her altered metaphysical condition.

So it was that she sought the familiar building out then levitated down to the roof with as much ease as she might setting down upon a mattress. Her bare feet touched the ceiling tiles on the edge of the overhang near the front door of the clinic, and she paused to take her bearings, extending her consciousness in all directions until she **felt** the presence of the man whom she had come seeking. She knew at once that it was Tofu-sensei as the feel of his aura was exactly what she would have anticipated. She even seemed to detect a "warm-spot" with her vision as she gazed down from her lofty purchase, and then with no more difficulty than one might pose in crossing an open lot she shifted back to ethereal state and floated down like mist past the cracks in the door of his private clinic.

There was a strange golden light that confronted her as she sifted through the front partition, almost as though a barrier had stood between her and the insides, yet she pierced this easily and wound up materializing once again inside the clinic. Her position was quite uncanny since she had become solid once again standing behind and well out of sight of the good Doctor, who was himself hunched over a book at his reading desk and seemed quite absorbed doing research on some subject. Curiosity got the better of Kasumi and she decided to "have a peek" by coming up behind him and glancing over his shoulder.

Much to her surprise the book that he was researching was about Vampirism, or-  
more specifically-about something called "The Slayer," which sounded suspiciously a lot like what Lenore had said about Natsume.

"...And lo, one time it came upon a family that a Slayer and a Vampire shared the same premises, and both came to a grave dispute regarding the sanctity of the soul, and they did battle with one another,  
and sister did slay sister in the end with much remorse for the family,  
though they reckoned their lost child was in a better place..."

"No..." Kasumi breathed, horrified at the thought of what this implied was in store for herself and her adoptive sister.

The soft exclamation brought a more startled one from Tofu, who all but jumped in his seat before he saw who it was that had been leaning over him so unexpectedly that he could feel her breath upon his neck. With a look of dismay he said, "Kasumi? Ah-what a...er...pleasant surprise. I didn't hear you enter...but...how did you get inside? I thought I locked the place up when I closed for the day..."

"I'm sorry, Doctor Tofu," Kasumi replied, "I let myself in. What is that you're reading?"

"Oh, nothing," Tofu hastily closed the book and pushed it away, "Just doing after-hours some clinical research. Um...what brings you to me? I mean...this place? Er...not that it's not...ah...nice to see you once again, but..."

"Are you all right, Doctor?" Kasumi asked, "You seem a little...nervous."

"Nervous, me?" Tofu asked off-key, "Whatever makes you say that?"

"Well," Kasumi answered truthfully, "Your pulse is racing, your blood sugar is way up, I smell adrenaline coursing through your body and your heart is beating as if you were running a race. You're also perspiring quite a bit even though the room is actually a bit cool, and you were stuttering just now when I had only asked you a simple question."

Tofu blinked, "You can tell all that just by looking?"

"Mm-hmm," Kasumi nodded, "You really don't need to be afraid of me, Tofu-sensei. I'm not here to harm you, I just wanted to pay you a little visit."

"You did?" Tofu's nervousness increased, but for entirely different reasons than before, "Ah...you came to visit me? I mean...you wanted to speak with me? Ah..."

"You're doing it again," Kasumi pointed out, then smiled, "Actually, I did want to ask you a question, and since you were reading a book about Vampirism, maybe you can help me out."

"I can?" Tofu blinked once again, "How?"

"By telling me whether or not you can still be a good person even if you are a vampire," Kasumi replied, "It seems...ah...well, this is somewhat embarrassing...but, well, it seems that you were right and that I have retained those traits of Vampirism that I gained from Dimitri Maximoff. In fact, I've been doing a bit of experimenting, and I'm learning to use these new abilities. In fact, I'm finding I rather enjoy them...take flying for example."

"Eh?" Tofu blinked, "You can fly?"

"Well...perhaps the term is levitation," Kasumi considered the point, "I believe that is the word that I heard used to describe this new ability. Here, I'll demonstrate."

And with that Kasumi willed herself to rise up off of the floor, and she hovered there for several brief seconds before reversing her position and bringing her feet in contact with the tiles that laced the clinic's ceiling. Hanging upside down she smiled at Tofu and said, "And this ability...I call it walking upon ceilings."

Tofu stared in dismay and said, "I-Incredible! But how can...?"

"I really don't understand the mechanism by which I do it," Kasumi said as she righted herself and touched down upon the floor once again, "It just seems...natural to me now, like working a muscle or performing a special kata. It almost reminds me of the days when I practiced the art, learning martial arts from my dear mother. Oh my...it has been a long while...why did I never give up the martial arts? I know I don't like fighting and hurting people, but there were so many positive things that I used to feel when I was performing an especially difficult maneuver..."

"I...see..." Tofu reached over to the nearest desk then whirled around and held an object out, "And what about-THIS?"

Kasumi blinked at the man's curious actions, then stared at the object in his hand and said, "Oh my...a crucifix? How unusual. I didn't know that you were a Catholic, Tofu-sensei."

Tofu blinked, "Ah...you don't feel anything? It's not...painful to look at?"

"Why would it be painful to look at?" Kasumi stared at the object and just smiled, "I'm not a Christian."

"Right...scratch that," Tofu said somewhat awkwardly as he put the crucifix away then started searching his desk for a different holy object, "So...how about-  
THIS!"

Kasumi blinked again, "A Torah? Well, I suppose that is more appropriate, but I'm a very devout Shintoist and I don't like seeing a holy symbol abused like a weapon."

"Ah...still not bothering you?" Tofu reached over to his desk again and produced an Ofuda strip, "Then let's try this, shall we?"

With that he slapped the strip onto Kasumi's forehead, startling her as she had not expected him to do something so...violent. But still the strip slipped away and fell onto the floor with no discernable effect, much to the dismay of Tofu, who just stared at it as he muttered, "That's odd...I'm sure I paid a priest enough to charge it with holy magic..."

"Um...pardon me for pointing this out," Kasumi said, "But wouldn't holy signs work best against someone who was...well...evil?"

"Ah...well...yeah, that would sort of make sense," Tofu scratched the back of his neck as he considered the question.

"Well then, do I look evil to you?" Kasumi smiled once again, "I know it must be difficult to accept this, Tofu-sensei, but I really haven't changed all that much as a person. I may be vampiric now, but I am still Tendo Kasumi."

"You are, eh?" Tofu studied her features, fighting a disturbing urge to giggle like a maniac, "Ah...but...how can I be sure that you...well...really are Kasumi?"

"Doctor," Kasumi chided, "I've been coming to you for the better part of nine years now. Don't you think that you should know me by now well enough to say whether I am or am not the Tendo Kasumi that you remember?"

"Ah...well, yes...but...I mean...you've changed," Tofu pointed out, "You have fangs, you drink blood, you can fly and stick to the ceiling..."

"All very good points, but those are only physical qualities," Kasumi pointed out, "There are deeper changes that I am aware of now, but they are largely in the area of my new ability to perceive things that were hidden from me when I was just plain old Kasumi. Deep down I'm still the same person, just...well...a little less intimidated by life."

"Uh...life?" Tofu squeaked the word, finding that Kasumi had somehow managed to back him up against his study table, and that was making him more than just a wee bit nervous.

"Life," Kasumi replied, "You don't know how it feels...it's like being born anew...the excitement, the freedom, the exhilaration. Oh, Tofu-sensei, I wish that I could share it with you, or at least make you more aware of what it's like to be in my position."

"But...what about your family?" Tofu gasped, "Don't you want to be normal?"

"Normal?" Kasumi considered the word, "I'm not even sure what that means anymore. It's like...for the last two years I've been living in a dream world. Ever since I left high school...my life has consisted of going from one day to the next taking care of the laundry, scrubbing the floors, doing the dishes, helping aunt Nodoka make dinner, breaking up occasional fights between Akane and Ranma..."

"Ah...okay, so life's been sort of a routine for you..." Tofu gasped, finding Kasumi was now standing even closer than before, so close that their noses were almost touching.

"Routine doesn't even cover it, Tofu-sensei," Kasumi replied, "I've been feeling...trapped, constrained...limited by choices that were not entirely mine to make. I nearly became engaged to Ranma, my own brother, and I fell heavily for my sister, Nabiki, but...what would life be like for me if I became someone's housewife? Would I spend the rest of my days as nothing more than a mirror copy of my late mother?"

"But...you loved your mother..." Tofu pointed out, finding himself transfixed by the heat that was radiating from her nearness.

"Yes, I did, and I still do," Kasumi replied, "But I'm not entirely certain that I want to live my life the same way that she did. Nabiki wouldn't do it, and I know that Akane is ill-suited by temperament or nature to be a housewife. So what makes me so different, other than the fact that I do enjoy doing house chores? It's just...that isn't all I want to do with my life...I want to do so much more...I want to go places, to meet new and interesting people."

"Ah...heh?" Tofu gasped, losing himself into the luminous brown eyes that were regarding him with such frank emotion.

"More than anything else, though...I want to be what you are...a doctor," Kasumi said, "I want to help people, to heal them, to cure their suffering, to take away their pain and ease their burden. I want to know what makes the body tick the way it does, to learn the ways in which you can cure physical illness, and I want to make people well...there is so much pain and suffering in the world. I want to make things better...if only a little bit by my own actions."

Her lips were closes enough to his chin that he could feel her soft breath, smell the perfume of her body, and the wholesome scent of womanly appeal that she radiated. It was all that he could do for Tofu not to collapse into a gibbering lunatic as he felt his hold on sanity begin to slip away from his grasp...but then Kasumi drew away a bit and he gasped for entirely different reasons, suddenly wishing she had still been within arms reach, the sense of her withdrawal a physical torment that felt as though something inside him were being yanked out of his chest.

"Forgive me," Kasumi glanced down, "I don't what came over me just now. It's...not like me to be this forward with anyone. I didn't mean to make you feel uncomfortable, Tofu-sensei. I am sorry for my behavior...I regret that I...lost a bit of my self-control there...it wasn't...proper..."

"Ah...hah?" Tofu gasped.

"I guess maybe I am taking things a little too much at a time," Kasumi remarked, "I need to learn better what my new limits are...so I don't wind up accidentally hurting the people I care about. Please don't think ill of my behavior...it was wrong of me and I do so regret it."

"Er...well...ah..." Tofu babbled like an idiot, an inner voice cudgeling him from behind to speak up and take the initiative here while the rest of him wondered how in sanity he could have wound up in this impossible situation.

"At any rate," Kasumi sighed, then smiled again, "You proved the point that I was making. If I were a bad person would I have been able to say no to my own baser instincts? Would I even know what right and wrong is? Yes, I think I am getting more of a handle on controlling these new abilities of mine, but even more I need to get control over my instincts since they appear to be tempting me into...improper behavior."

"Wait!" Tofu suddenly spoke up as he sensed that Kasumi was about to leave him, "We don't really know...I mean...I don't know...ah...that is..."

"Yes?" Kasumi asked, "You can be frank with me, Doctor, and you don't need to stutter so much."

Somehow her words emboldened him, and all at once Tofu was the one who crossed the space between them gripping Kasumi by the arms and holding her there, reveling in the sense that her flesh was still warm to the touch and felt as alive and firm as ever.

"Kasumi-chan...I...I...I..."

"Yes?" Kasumi asked, surprised at his sudden rash behavior.

"I...desire...to be with you," Tofu admitted, "I...that is...I want to...I want...?"

Kasumi looked up into the man's eyes, and suddenly it was as if she could peer directly into his mind, and what she saw there surprised her to no end, and amazed her beyond words. Was it true? Did he really feel towards her that way? Why had she never once suspected? And yet...was this what she wanted, or merely a reflection of his own desires?

For the longest time she stared into his very being and read the sort of person that he was, took his measure as both a man and a person, and knew with an incredible clarity that Tofu had felt attracted towards her for a very long time...almost since she was a mere teenager barely come into the blossom of her sex, thirteen years of age and much too young for him back then. Even now he could not overlook the age difference, the sense that he was a grown man and she had just barely become a woman...and yet what a woman! Everything he desired in the female sex and more, and all the time she frightened him, drove him to distraction, even pushed his sanity to the brink of madness with his constant bouts of nervous dementia that was caused whenever she was merely in his presence.

And Kasumi felt appalled that she could have been blind to this for so very long. All the time she had thought his clownish behavior was an amusing game he played, something he did for the sake of his patience to lighten up their spirits. His loss of self-control, his cavorting with the skeleton "Betty-  
chan," the way in which he seemed to casually maim his patients without knowing that he had done it, and all on account of the way she made him feel, a fact that both amazed and horrified her since she knew for a fact that he was the gentlest person she had ever met outside of a mirror.

And in realizing this she felt a deep sense of regret and remorse come over her, for in searching her own feelings she came to the realization that she did not reciprocate his infatuation. She cared for him as a friend and as her doctor, but...it was not quite the same thing as the love that he was seeking. He wanted something from her that she could not give to him, and it saddened her to realize that she wold break his heart with her rejection. She wanted more from life than what he wanted, and if she gave into his desire for her now it would be a mistake for both of them that would leave them both unhappy for all the rest of their remaining days. If she gave into his desire for her now it would become a regret that might even turn into eventual hatred.

And that was a pain that she simply could not allow. She wanted him for a friend too much to want to risk that friendship by leading him on to a wrongful conclusion, but how to make him understand, to give him a token of what he desired so that he would be satisfied and no longer pine for her, rejecting all other suitors. There was another woman that he cared for, one he had met at the urging of his mother, but his unrequited love for her had blinded him to any other possible feelings, and as such he was destined to die alone and unfulfilled, a thought that filled Kasumi with such deep sadness that she almost felt like giving him her body in order to flush his desire for her out of his system.

Oh dear...had she really just thought about making love to Tofu-sensei as a means of ending his hunger?

Well...there was an alternative to this, and it sprang into her mind with an intuitive sense that her new abilities provided. It was a simple enough means of giving Tofu some token of her affection without having to carry a torch for her in eternal longing. It did mean going against her own resolve never to drink the blood of another human, but she knew that it was for a very good cause, and while the hunger was not with her as yet, the instinct for sharing the essence of another living person was strong enough to compensate for any qualms that she might otherwise be feeling.

And so she allowed Tofu to draw her into his embrace, and she brought her lips up to his and gave him a kiss that was wonderful for both of them, even if he enjoyed it far more than she did. She allowed him to kiss her face and neck, to work himself up into a frenzy as the heat of his blood was up and she could sense him starting to develop an erection. In another moment he would tear her clothes off and throw her onto one of the examination beds and have his way with her like a man taking pleasure in a woman...and a strong part of Kasumi found that she actually wanted him to do this...but the sensible side of her knew that it would be a mistake that would deepen his need for her, not diminish his hunger. So instead she waited until his guard was down then positioned her lips against his cheek, painting little kisses down his neck right up to where she sensed a pulsing vein that could be savored, and-taking advantage of his heightened arousal-she bit down with her fangs and felt the rich warm rush of his blood filling her mouth with warm, delicious salty savor.

She did not bite deep, nor did she keep her fangs buried long within his neck, just long enough to take as much as she needed, then she withdrew and felt the wound close itself about her incisors. She licked his neck to clean it of the remaining blood, then relaxed and allowed a rush of juices to fill her own being as she shuddered with amazement at the effect that this created. Tofu also moaned and shuddered, and his body shook with pure unadulterated joy that lasted several long, intense moments before passing, and in that moment Kasumi felt her mind link with his and experienced his orgasm as her own, even as her own body shuddered in climax, and then the feeling melted away, leaving behind a delicious languor that left her feeling oddly satiated, if maybe a bit hungry for more than the mere mouthful of blood that she had taken.

But once the moment passed she was herself once again, and she eased Tofu down into a chair, meeting the man's curiously dream-like stare and the foolish smile that he was wearing, which made him seem oddly boyish and not all that much older than herself. It was a curious thing, and she found that she rather liked looking at him this way, but then she shook off the feeling and had a sense of deep revulsion, realizing what she had done and feeling appalled at her own actions.

"No...what have I done?" she gasped, "Tofu-sensei?"

Very softly he said, "Yes?" as though responding automatically to a question.

Kasumi stood there uncertain of her own actions, but then her resolve returned and she remembered her purpose for biting him and said, "You are a good man, you deserve a good woman. I wish that I could be what you want, to be that woman...truly I do...but...I am not her...I am not the one you are destined to marry."

"You are not...the one...I am destined...to marry?" he slowly repeated, almost forlornly.

"No, my good and very decent friend," Kasumi told him with heartfelt intensity, "You are worthy of loving...I have never known a man who was more deserving of happiness than you...but if you loved me it would destroy us both. Therefore...I ask that you seek out the one named Reiko...and consult with her about your feelings. Be truthful with her as you were never truthful with me, and don't be afraid of what she has to tell you. Promise me you will do this...and that you will try to be happy."

"I...promise...to be happy..." Tofu answered.

"Good," she sighed, "Then that is all that I can ask. Now...I had best leave here before I do any more harm to you. I am sorry...sorry that I did this...I can sense that you...enjoyed it as much as I did...and...Oh my! Is that wetness on your trousers? Oh dear, I do hope you didn't wet yourself on account of me..."

"Wet...myself...?" Tofu softly repeated.

"Never mind," Kasumi said when she felt a peculiar sensation down her own legs, and with uncomprehending eyes she reached down and felt herself beneath her skirt, noticed a trickle of moisture traveling down her legs and went, "Oh dear...what did I just do? Oh my...how improper..."

She was so embarrassed at her own conduct that she immediately went Ethereal and floated up towards the roof once again, whereupon she took to the sky like a hawk fleeing the sight of a recent kill, her mind and emotions in torment as she tried to make sense of her own actions, and the confusing emotions that threatened to overwhelm her very being.

Only seconds after she departed did Ranma, Nabiki, Natsumi and the others arrive at the clinic, and by then Kasumi had long gone from the premises, but when they were shortly to find doctor Tofu sitting stupefied in a chair with teeth marks upon his neck...that was when the bit would begin to hit the fan in earnest, and sister would indeed clash with sister, though not the way that Tofu-sensei had read about in any book on Slayer Lore or Vampires...

Part One-Hundred-Sixteen.

(Set during and slightly after the time of the events recorded in the side-story titled "Honeymoon Hentai")

"Yes, I believe it can be done, my lady," M'shulla announced after many long minutes of testing the surface of the statue that now rested in the middle of the Tendo yard, "Her spirit still resides within this crystal husk that now surrounds our friend, Yasmina. Give me but a moment to summon the spell and I believe that I can undo the crysalist process..."

"Time is a luxury we may not have, old friend," Ling-Ko replied, "Stand aside, I will use my own means to revive my good friend from her protective hibernation."

"As you wish it, my Queen," M'shulla stepped away and allowed the Blood Mother to step forward.

"Think cousin Ling can pull it off, Sis?" Tsien-Ko asked from where she and the others stood near to the back porch of the Tendo household.

"We're about to see," Mei-Ling replied, "But I know that if she cannot do it, then there is little hope of reviving the delegate of Obsidian tribe, and that could lead to a war on a scale that has not been seen in many human generations."

"Um...mind if I ask something?" Natsumi asked, "What exactly is a Blood Mother anyway?"

Leguire just chuckled softly without humor, "As if a mere human could understand such things. Be silent and watch, you are about to see the true power of a Queen in motion."

The Chinese leader of the Tsiel tribe confronted the statue with an intensity to her expression, then Ling-Ko casually drew her belt knife and cut her palm against the edge, then she ran her palm over the surface of the womanly face and intoned words in a strange, incomprehensible language, punctuating her speech with the words, "The Blood is the Life, so mote it to be. Awaken Yasmina of Obsidian, you are once more needed by your clan and those who love you."

She stepped away and for a few seconds more nothing seemed to happen, but then a strange light began to suffuse the crystalis form and suddenly cracks began to form as flakes of crystal fell away, revealing living flesh that emerged from beneath the crystal.

There were several gasps as Yasmina sloughed off the last chips of stone, then shook her long mane of coal black hair and stretched her arms to revel in her renewal of life and animation. She made a soft mewing sound then parted rosy lips to reveal her fangs, and then she turned to see Ling-Ko standing before her and without hesitation reached out to her, cupping the Chinese vampire by the chin and bringing their lips together in a kiss that was brief-yet-sensual kiss before drawing apart and glancing around at their surroundings.

"What an interesting place this is," the dusky hued Vampiress noted, "The force lines converge here, and they form a very interesting configuration."

"That is why I chose this place," Ling-Ko revealed, "It was the perfect place to stage your revival. It is good to have you back, Yas-chan, I would have sorely missed you had you not made it."

"And glad am I to be back," Yasmina turned her head to take notice of the watching civilians then asked, "And who are they?"

"The woman is the matron who safeguards this place," Ling-Ko indicated Nodoka, "The other two are off-duty police officers. I have given them my word that no harm will befall them, nor shall we allow any to occur to the property itself."

"Interesting," Yasmina turned her head to glance the other way before adding, "I sense another Loire...and a Were is with her. I do not know what to make of the other one, but she appears to be between states, almost more ghost than human."

"Indeed," Ling-Ko said, "An interesting story attends her, but one that even Frank is not sharing."

"Frank?" a beautiful smile lit up the dusky skinned Obsidian woman, "Is he here to offer us his protection?"

"He is away pursuing other duties," Ling-Ko revealed, "But the trio is his, so indulge them for his sake."

"I still don't see why we must wait here until sunrise," Leguire complained, "Standing out here in the open is madness. Our enemy could attack us at any moment, and you have declared the only food source available to be off limits."

"Curb your appetites, youth," Ling-Ko gave the Loire a sharp look, "No one challenges my word, not even the nephew of my old friend, Phillip."

"I didn't say that I was going to bite them," Leguire hastily assured the Blood Queen, "I merely point out that we have all had a hard night and I, for one, am hungry."

"Then wait until we are in a hotel where you can order up room service," Yasmina reprimanded, "A plump maid should satisfy even the likes of you. Now...what have I missed while I was in hibernation...?"

Lenore, who stood apart from all of this with her companions, Chloe and Kiima, murmured softly to the others, "They were talking about us. Can you imagine that? The Blood Mother of the Tsiel was actually looking in our direction..."

"You sound as though you consider her a celebrity," Kiima mused.

"She is," Chloe replied, "Even my tribe has heard about her, the one who brought peace to the warring tribes of central Asia. Of course Were's don't much get involved in politics as a general rule, and I see no reason to be the exception."

"Nobody's asking you to, Hon," Lenore assured her, "In fact, much as I admire the Blood Queen, I'd prefer to do it from a safe distance, like, say, a continent or two away, especially if somebody's drawing a bullseye on her back...eh? Now who's coming? A couple of mortals?"

"You are half right," Kiima said in her detached tone of voice, "Two of them are mortal...but the third? I find him difficult to read..."

Soun and Genma were both surprised upon finding a group of strange people gathered about in their back yard, and only Nodoka seemed to be at home of all the usual residents of their strange household. Nonetheless, before either man could say more than, "What's this? We have guests?" their diminutive master caught sight of the cute girls in their midst and reacted in character by charging ahead with a cheerful, "HOWZAA!"

All at once Yasmina found something had attached itself to her chest and was rubbing its face against the exposed portions of her anatomy, giving off a happy sigh of, "Oooohhh...what a heavenly bounty! A bit on the cool-to-the-touch side, but I'll bet that there's a warm heart somewhere underneath these beauties!"

"Master...no!" Soun cried out too late.

"The fur is gonna fly over that one," Genma grimly predicted.

The Obsidian Tribal representative was in shock for several seconds, but then Yasmina screamed and struck with a fist at Happosai's noggin, only to have the little man skillfully elude her as he headed towards the next available target, Ling-Ko, who was just as much taken aback at his aggressive display of untoward affections.

"Mmmm...baby! What ripe melons!"

"HEY!" Tsien-Ko surged forward, "What the hell do you think you're doing with my-URK!" she gasped as Happosai suddenly found himself nestled between her breasts and happily rubbing himself against them with gleeful abandon.

"These are even better...bit on the blue side, but what creamy texture...!"

"GAK!" Tsien-Ko cried as she tried to pry the little man off of her chest, "Get him off of me! Mei-Ling!"

"Now sister," Mei-Ling chided, "You really shouldn't have this sort of difficulty with-AWP!" she yelped as suddenly Happosai was on her rear end hugging her fanny.

"Man, what wide hips, and such a tight rear...you could crack an egg on this baby..."

"What is he doing?" Leguire cried in outrage.

"Apparently what other men only dream about but lack the courage to attempt," M'shulla noted.

"Oh man," Lenore groaned, "This is bad...waaay bad..."

"What the heck is that guy doing?" Chloe wondered.

"Playing with fire, obviously," Kiima noted, "Observe how the Queen reacts. I would suggest we take cover very shortly."

"I can't look," Natsumi winced, "Tell me when it's over."

"Let us just hope he doesn't come over here and try to feel us up," Miyuki remarked as she casually cocked her handgun.

Yui was in shock over being randomly fondled by the impossibly swift moving pervert while Miyu seethed in outrage over the casual grope that she had received in passing, but it was Nagi and Larva who bristled the most with righteous indignation. The former drew his sword while the latter raised his arms as each appeared ready to avenge the dishonor paid to their respective princesses.

"Call him off!" Julian called to the Saotomes and Tendo patriarch, "For the love of all the gods of Light and Darkness, call him off right now!"

"Frankly I would like nothing better than to do that," Nodoka said a bit tiredly, "But Master Happy has a mind of his own, and nothing short of divine intervention is going to pry him away from taking his pleasures."

"It's not divine intervention that you need to be concerned with," Julian warned them, turning a fearful glance towards Ling-Ko, "It's the Blood Mother who's going to go supernova in another...oh sh*t...too late..." he murmured faintly.

All at once Ling-Ko's eyes began to blaze and her slender body began emitting a crimson battle aura that rose up to surround her in a halo effect that drew the eye of every sighted person present. Her fangs protruded from her lips as she gave a savage snarl, and then all at once the hellfire erupted from her body, lancing out to strike the heavens themselves and cause a clear sky to go cloudy, storm clouds congealing moments later, followed rapidly by the flash of instant lightning.

Ling-Ko gestured with clawed fingers and caused the lightning to lash out at where Happosai had been standing mere instants beforehand, but the pervert was no longer standing within radius of the flash, not so Leguire and Genma, who each got hit and felled by the resulting static. Ling-Ko aimed another bolt again at the elusive pervert while everyone else dove for the nearest cover that they could find while flash after flash struck home and missed its target...until a dozen different portions of the yard bore the brunt of instant glass fusion. There were a number of holes torn in walls and fixtures and every electrical system in the house instantly shorted out, plunging the entire yard into immediate darkness.

Ling-Ko finally exhausted her rage and stood panting for several minutes until the blood rage had deserted her, and then her eyes regained their normal cast and she started to recover her senses. She blinked them and looked around, then saw the damage that she had done to the yard and said, "Oh my...I did all that? I'm so sorry...was anyone else hurt...other than the pervert?"

"We appear to all have survived your righteous wrath, my Queen," M'shulla said as he helped Yamina back to her feet then glanced around and said, "However...Leguire may take a bit of healing."

"G-G-G-Guh..no problem..." the Loire vampire gasped, sparking blue flecks of light from his mouth and nostrils as he twitched upon the ground and slowly ceased spasming altogether.

"Are you all right, Husband?" Nodoka asked, seeing Julian poised above the man, checking his pulse with the professional air of a trained doctor.

"He'll live," the blond lawyer replied, "Quite a stunning constitution he's got there...almost as good as mine, and lightning doesn't bother me all that much. Anyone else take damage?"

"Nah...we'll live...sort of..." Lenora called out from the foxhole that she and Chloe had dug together.

"Anyone else?" Miyu asked, only to stare in disbelief, "You? But...!"

"Did you miss me?" Happosai asked with a cheerful demeanor, "Mighty wicked temper you've got there, young lady. Of course, I always did like 'em when they've got spirit..."

"It cannot be!" Ling-Ko exclaimed.

"What the hell is he?" Tsien-Ko demanded.

"A dead man if he attempts anything like that again," Mei-Ling promised with a dire expression.

"Now is that any way to talk to a poor old man who only wants to enjoy his declining years with the few meager indulgences allowed him," Happosai pouted.

"Master...wasn't the bath house enough to satisfy you?" Soun asked, almost pleading.

"How dare you even ask such an insignificant question?" Happosai snapped, "It just so happens that I'm always up to greeting new ladies when they appear on the scene, and these are some of the finest full-figured females that I've had the pleasure of greeting for a while there. Of course, they are a bit cool to the touch, but you get that when you hang out with Vampires."

Genma stopped squirming and his eyes became as round as saucers, his tone matching Soun's for shock, "Vampires?"

"Be at peace, we mean you no harm," Ling-Ko glanced ruefully around at her own handiwork and added, "At least...nothing beyond what I have done through my own thoughtless actions..."

"Don't even give it a second thought," Nodoka assured her, "Master Happy has that effect on lots of people...just everyone who meets him for the first time, as a matter of fact..."

"Master...Happy?" Tsien-Ko said slowly, "Wait...wait a minute...you mean...Happosai? As in the Demon Happosai?"

"The most feared and legendary terror of dark and unnatural perversion?" Mei-  
Ling added.

"Oh," Julian straightened out, "That Happosai. I might've known..." he groaned faintly.

"You have...a creature such as this...living with you?" Ling-Ko asked in faint dismay.

"Not willingly," Nodoka replied, "In fact, you might consider him the family curse, the one whose shame we've had to bear for the past several decades..."

"Nodoka-chan!" Happosai called out in a wounded tone of voice.

"I take it you do not like him very much," M'shulla sagely observed.

"That would be an understatement," Nodoka sighed, "My husband and Soun-chan trained under the Master, but they did not like it very much. In fact, they did not like it so much that they once trapped him up in a cave with several sticks of dynamite, a large boulder and several reams of ofudo strips. It held him trapped there for ten merciful years, only to be dislodged when a storm hit and cracked the boulder."

"I see," Leguire noted faintly, "A good effort but ultimately unsuccessful..."

"Pshaw, the boys were just having some fun with me, that's all," Happosai chuckled, "I forgave them for that years ago, it's water over the damn, hardly worth mentioning around strangers."

"So," Yasmina ignored the pervert and looked directly at Nodoka, "May I take it you would not mind if someone removed him off your hands?"

"Be my guests if you can manage it," Nodoka sighed, "You'd be doing us all a favor."

"I...see..." Ling-Ko sighed, "Forgive me...I did not mean to cause you such troubles. I have broken my own word, and by my honor restitution shall be made. Name the price and I shall see it rendered you, and I will cover the full cost of renovations."

"That is very generous of you," Nodoka bowed, "But it is we who owe you a favor for provoking you to wrath in the first place."

"No, I must insist, it is I who bear a blood obligation," Ling-Ko insisted, "I promised you no harm would befall you and harm was rendered. I will hear no contradiction on this subject, and I must insist on repayment. Julian, please see to it that the Tendo family is duly compensated."

"I'll see to it, my lady," Julian replied, "I promise."

Natsumi and Miyuki timidly poked their heads out from behind the furniture where they had taken shelter, then the former asked, "Think it's safe to go out there, Mi-chan?"

"Well, you heard her majesty," Miyuki replied, "And she does seem genuinely remorseful."

"That's good," Natsumi averred, "'Cause I don't ever wanna see somebody like that get mad with me. You see the way she was hurling lightning bolts everywhere? It was freaky..."

"And that, my dear police officers, is why they call her the Blood Mother," Leguire said as he glanced in their direction, "Because rivers of blood will flow if her enemies provoke her. She is as far above the likes of ordinary vampires such as me as one of us is above you mortals. Be mindful to show her the respect that she deserves because the alternative..." he bared his fangs in a nasty smile, "...is not to be contemplated."

Both human women swallowed accordingly then felt along the sides of their necks as if reflexively checking for bite marks.

"Oh, I wouldn't worry...much," Leguire smiled as he turned away, "That isn't where the Queen prefers to take her meals. If she had a mind to snack on the pair of you she would go a bit...lower and sample your nectar before relishing your juices."

In no way, shape or form did the two female officers find that remark reassuring, but Yasmina gave Leguire a chiding look and said, "Pay him no mind, he likes rattling people's cages. In fact, that's usually where he keeps his dates, locked away like cattle in a slave pen."

"That is only where I store the fresh food before its eaten," Leguire said stiffly, "My dates always come in through the front door, and I do my best to...entertain them...before snacking."

"That's enough, Jean," Miyu chided the man before turning to the officers in question and saying, "There is no reason for you to become further embroiled in our affairs, officers. When daylight comes you can be safely on your way without fear that the Goya will be hunting you. Not so the rest of us, who must now gird for battle."

"You think Dimitri is going to try something after all, Princess?" Julian asked.

"I would count on it, especially with this unfortunate darkness brought about by the shorting of the electrical systems in this household," Miyu replied, "The one advantage we have is that we can see them coming a lot farther away than they can. Goya are a relatively weak strain of vampires with far too many vulnerabilities that Ling-Ko and I can exploit, but I would feel better if we were at full strength and ready to repel them since Dimitri could have an army of the undead prepared to march upon us, and his more dangerous allies are hardly fellow vampires."

"I fear your assessment is correct, Miyu," Ling-Ko agreed, "The enemy will seek to test our defenses, which is why we will be prepared for when they get here. M'shulla, you and Yasmina can see to preparing a spell of protection."

"It will be done, my Queen," the dusky skinned Shaman bowed in submission.

"I believe that I do know a spell or two that could prove useful here," Yasmina mused as she went with M'shulla to the far end of the yard and started laying down wards to improve their survival chances.

"In the meantime, the rest of you will join me in your dojo," Ling-Ko informed the others, "It is more defensible than the house itself and should provide us with shelter that will be needed for when I do my own part in the casting."

"We'll be happy to help out in any way that we can, right husband, Soun-chan?" Nodoka asked.

"Er...what?" Genma blinked.

"Ah...what do you have in mind?" Soun asked, wishing that someone would take pity on him and give him a clue as to what was going on here.

"Anything I can do to help, ladies?" Happosai asked.

"How about eat sh*t and die?" Yui snarled in disgruntled ill humor.

"I sure hope Frank and Donovan gets back soon with that new Master that they were talking about," Tsien-Ko noted.

"I am certain that Doctor Steinberg is doing everything that is inhumanly possible to round up this case," Mei-Ling assured her sister, "And as for Donovan, well...we both know how formidable he is."

"Oh yeah," Tsien-Ko grinned, "Formidable is the word for him all right..." but in all truth the blue skinned Chinese vampire was not thinking of the towering spiritualist in terms of his fighting potential, rather she was mentally admiring his physique and undressing him in a way that her sister might not find too appropriate...were it not that she nursed similar thoughts on her own that ran closely parallel to that direction...

"Doctor Tofu?" Nabiki asked in concern as they arrived, "Tofu-Sensei?"

"Hey, look!" Ranma pointed, "The side door's open!"

"What?" Natsumi declared, "But...I...Tachi and I...we only left him a few minutes ago..."

"True enough," Tatewaki frowned, "Yet obviously someone has been here during our absence...someone strong enough to force the locks off their hinges by the look of things," he said as he paused to examine the side entrance.

"Someone strong...like a vampire?" Keiko asked.

"You mean Kasumi?" Kurumi asked.

"Um...let's not jump to conclusions just yet," Mousse tried to reassure, only to find that he was talking to himself as the rest of their group went rushing into the clinic rather than pause to listen to his voice of caution. "Why do I even bother?"

Inside their group came to another abrupt halt, this time balked by the sight that confronted them, of the towering form of Donovan Bane, who was presently reviewing the contents of a desk while Anita sat on the nearby examination table swinging her legs back and forth with a faintly bored expression.

"How did you get here so fast?" Nabiki asked.

"When I have need for haste I have my own way of covering distance," the spiritualist replied without turning around, examining some papers with somewhat more than casual interest, "I regret that I had Anita force the lock on the side door, but he clinic was otherwise as you see it when we got here."

"And Doctor Tofu?" Natsume asked.

"As I found him," Donovan nodded without looking up from the papers he was reading.

All heads turned to follow the man's gesture...and there, sitting on a chair at the other end of the room, was Doctor Tofu staring somewhat dreamily out into space but otherwise still quite obviously breathing.

"Tofu-sensei?" Ranma asked.

"Tofu-sensei!" Natsume was at Tofu's side in a flash, kneeling down to study him as she tried to make sense of his lack of physical reaction, "Tofu-sensei...can you hear us?"

"Odd," Nabiki said as she came to join her adopted sister, "He seems to be in some kind of a trance..."

"Indeed," Donovan replied without looking up from his inspection, "A kind of trance with which I am well familiar...but he is in no immediate danger and will recover from it shortly."

"You mean he's been hypnotized?" Mousse asked.

"More like maybe he's seen Kasumi..." Kurumi started to say when Tofu stirred from his trance and murmured the word, "Kasumi..."

"Well, there you have it," Nabiki smiled, "Oneechan strikes again. One look at Kasumi and Tofu always goes to pieces."

"Oh, is that so?" Natsumi asked as she used a hand to gently turn Tofu's head to the side so that his neck could be exposed to their view, and in the dim light of the room everyone could plainly see a pair of puncture wounds spaced apart as though by a pair of wicked incisors.

"Oh," Nabiki said with a somewhat dumbfounded expression.

"Oneechan bit Tofu-sensei?" Ranma gasped.

"Does that mean...she really is a vampire?" Kurumi gulped.

"Possibly," Mousse cautioned once again, "In China not all vampires are malevolent creatures, and often they only take a small bit of blood while leaving their victims in a trance-like state from which they eventually recover..."

"Recover?" Natsumi repeated.

"Aye, and now that I think long and hard about it," Tatewaki remarked, "That famous work by the Englishman, Bram Stoker, did hint that it would take several attempts before a vampire could completely drain its victim and turn them into one of the undead."

"Makes sense," Nabiki shrugged, "The human body contains on average about four liters of blood, and I don't see how-other than magic-anything human could drink that much in one bite."

"Especially something as richly intoxicating to a vamp as human hemoglobin," Frank remarked as he ducked his head and shouldered his way into the clinic, "For them it's like drinking fine wine, about a hundred-fifty proof. Try doing that in one sitting and they'll be pouring you off the rug. That's why it takes so little blood for the average vamp to sustain him or herself, and why a single bite just won't do it...unless it's applied by a Tribe that can store excess liters and transport them somewhere for using later."

"And what kind would that be?" Keiko asked.

"Nosferatu," Frank replied, "One of the oldest and darkest of bloodlines. When they suck your blood they actually teleport it through their bodies back to their coffins or crypts and bathe it in later. That's why some crypts that get opened have bodies floating in blood in them, which was always taken to be a sure sign of vampirism in the old country. It's also why Nosferatu are so rare when compared to other tribes of Vamps...too easy to spot 'em in a crowd, and hunters had no problem tracking them back to their lairs for immediate extermination."

"You forget to add, old friend, that Nosferatu are the type of Vampire who can be most troublesome to the human populations," Donovan noted, "Their thirst is greater, they know fewer limits, and as such are more avaricious, and a single one of them can depopulate an entire area for a ten kilometer radius. They are also, thankfully, the most vulnerable when it comes to garlic and sunlight."

"And holy symbols," Frank grimly noted, "Nosferatu can't stand the sight of anything with a positive life charge, and they cast no reflection in a mirror. They also need to rest on sacred earth and can't travel as far as a day from their own coffins."

"Some tribes have none of these restrictions," Donovan noted, "But it was not a Nosferatu who did this. What is this...?" his voice took on a note of curiosity, and he moved his hand across the desk to select something that was sitting on a nearby shelf, gripping it in hand and holding it up to the light for a closer examination.

Frank saw what the other man was holding and gasped, "Is...that what I think it is?"

"A Bloodstone," Donovan said almost reverently, "Very rare and priceless, and this is a true stone capable of producing the special nutrition that can nurture a vampire. With one of these a vampire need never know the ravages of the hunger..."

"Really?" Nabiki asked, "Does that mean...it could be of use to Kasumi?"

"If she knew what it was and what to look for, which obviously she did not," Donovan answered before sweeping his gaze across the clinic, "Clearly there is more to this Doctor Tofu than I think anyone else may have imagined. With all the occult lore and special objects at hand I am tempted to conclude that he is a Watcher."

"A Watcher, huh?" Frank nodded, "Makes sense. I'll bet he's even got the mark under that wrist watch he's wearing."

"I do not believe this," Natsume slowly shook her head, "Tofu-sensei has been attacked and you just stand around here casually discussing these things when my oldest sister has become a monster?"

"Huh?" Ranma blinked.

"What do you mean a monster?" Nabiki frowned, "This is still Kasumi we're talking about here."

"I mean what I said," Natsume snapped, turning back and bowing her head to the motionless Tofu, "Forgive me, Doctor, I should have listened to you when you tried to prepare me. I...I did not want to believe in such things...that I could become something that must now prey upon my own flesh and blood...but I have no more choice in this matter than my sister. I see this clearly now, and I know what must be done."

"Say what?" Kurumi asked, "Oneechan?"

Natsume straightened up then turn around and her face was as grim as a death mask, "I must hunt down and find Kasumi, and I must put her out of her misery before she bites anyone again."

"Hey, what?" Nabiki reacted.

"My love...is that wise?" Tatewaki asked.

"You're talking about going after your own sister?" Mousse averred in dull amazement.

"I am not talking about killing my sister," Natsume said grimly, "But of slaying the thing that she has become. That is what I have become is it not, the Slayer? And is not the destiny of a Slayer to hunt down and extinguish vampires?"

Donovan nodded grimly, "That is indeed the duty of a Slayer...however..."

"Then I must go and fulfill my destiny," Natsume said as she started forward, elbowing her way past Ranma and the others.

"Hey, now wait a minute!" Nabiki spoke up as she belatedly hurried up to catch up with the grim-faced Natsume, "Just hold on a second there! You're not going to do anything to Kasumi while we...!"

"Sit around and dither while lives hang in the balance?" Natsume shot back, "Or would you rather wait until she comes for us in the dead of night, to drain our blood one by one so that we wind up like Tofu-sensei? I think not..."

Nabiki gripped Natsume by the arm and said, "You're not going out there with that kind of attitude, young lady! I'm still your elder and I...!"

"Let me go," Natsume said resolutely as she halted in mid-step.

"Not until you listen to me...!" Nabiki began to say when Natsume reacted by twisting her arm and ensnaring Nabiki in a reverse locking hold, then with great force hurled her towards the front door to the clinic, sending Nabiki flying through the wood, glass and paneling with such force that she was propelled past the gates and all the way across the street before coming to a dead stop.

"NABIKI!" Ranma surged out through the hole created by Nabiki's passing, arriving seconds alter at his wife's side, only to find Nabiki was getting up off the asphalt on her own power, cut and bruised but otherwise only mildly shaken.

"Neechan?" Natsume gasped, amazed and appalled at her own actions.

"Now that was a bad career move," Nabiki growled as she straightened up, "You think that impressed me, Nat-chan? Because it didn't! Now you just hold right there while I come back in there to clear your clocks, Sis!"

"Did you see that?" Kurumi gasped, "Oneechan threw Nabiki through a wall like it was nothing..."

"Yeah, I saw it," Keiko replied in equally appalled tones, "When'd she get so strong all of a sudden?"

Natsume recovered from her surprise as she turned to meet the angry glare that Nabiki shot at her and said, "I did not want to do that, sister...but if you press your luck, I will be forced to do it to you again."

"You and what army?" Nabiki asked, then threw a punch Natsume's way that was as fast as lightning and ought to have knocked the other girl sprawling in the carpet...

Instead Natsume seemed to see the fist moving as though through a lens where motion was slowed down to a fraction of normal speed, and with no difficulty on her part she was able to duck low beneath the punch and counter-attacked with a fist of her own that caught Nabiki completely napping and sent her hurtling back through the ruined door, albeit not as far this time as the last one.

"Yikes!" Ranma cried as he moved to intercept Nabiki's flight path, catching her up in his arms and steadying her for the several seconds it took her to recover.

"My love strikes with the power of a lioness," Tatewaki marveled.

"Yeah, and she hits hard too," Keiko winced, "Thought she was gonna take Nabi's head off with that last blow."

"Hey, we don't got time for this!" Frank started to growl when his sudden lunge forward was cut off by Donovan thrusting an arm into his path.

"Stay a minute, old friend," Donovan urged, "I think that we should permit them to fight, if only to determine what limits are of this new Slayer. Her power is much greater even than I estimated, and if she is able to control it..."

Nabiki shook off Ranma's attempt to restrain her and confronted Natsume once again, "That's twice you've gotten lucky, Sis, but I'm not playing around this time. If you want to go after Kasumi, you'll have to do it by stepping right past me."

"Stepping on you would be more like it," Natsume replied, "Clan elder or no, you are not going to keep me from my appointed duty, and if I must beat you black and blue to do the deed that we both know must be done, then so be it. Have at you, Sister!"

"Hey, guys!" Ranma called out, only to duck real fast as Nabiki went flying over and past him.

"Ouch!" Kurumi winced.

"That's gonna leave a mark in the morning," Keiko cringed.

"Should we attempt to separate my love from her sister until their passions have cooled down?" Tatewaki asked.

"Are you nuts?" Mousse shot back, "You could get killed if you try to get between them! Those two aren't playing around, they're really going to go at it!"

Indeed, Nabiki and Natsume were taking their fight out onto the street, and this time both were fighting with better control and coordination to their power, though it was rapidly turning out that Natsume had the advantage in raw strength, speed and power. Where normally it was Nabiki who dominated the sparring matches between these two, now she was the one who was clearly on the defensive, overmatched in raw physical terms, which-given their relative skill levels-was a telling point in these exchanges.

"No question about it," Frank said, "That kid's gotten a lot better than what I remember."

"Being a Slayer means that all of her natural abilities are magnified to an extraordinary level," Donovan noted, "And if she was highly skilled before, then what she has now in her arsenal will be truly devastating."

Devastating was a word that Nabiki herself would have used were she not presently engaged in a fight for her life against a Natsume who fought like ten Natsumes and who seemed to be everywhere at once, her fists and feet moving like lightning in a devastating pattern of attack that even Amagurikan speeds could barely hope to match. Only the highly trained reflexes that had made Nabiki a living legend in the Nerima area kept her from suffering a worse pounding than she had taken on the first three hits, yet try as she might to use special maneuvers and her more advanced techniques to turn the advantage back in her favor, she was frustrated by the fact that Natsume had seen each of her special techniques and knew how to counter them effectively, often neutralizing her maneuvers before they were even fully executed.

"You are tiring, my sister, while I am not even fighting at my best," Natsume bragged during one lull in these exchanges, "Surrender now and I will not be forced to injure you."

"Surrender?" Nabiki said between pants for breath, "Never heard...of the word! Don't think...I'm out now...just because...you've gotten...a little better..."

"You think that my speed and strength have improved," Natsume said confidently, "Then wait until you see this!"

With that Natsume whipped out her rug beater, her primary weapon of choice. Nabiki saw this and murmured a very faint, "Oshit-!"

With several sweeping passes and a pirouette that made it seem almost as though she were performing a ballet maneuver, Natsume leaped high into the air and cried out, "WINDS OF THE ICE DRAGON-SHO!"

And with that a freezing blast of cold whipped up into a cyclone that hit Nabiki head on as the latter raised her arms to deflect the force blast, but all this did was cause ice-cycles to form up on her arms, legs and upper body, and then a wall of ice began to form up to surround her, and within seconds she was completely encased in a block of solid ice that stood eight feet high and about as wide at the base.

"Whoah," Frank remarked.

"An effective technique," Donovan complimented.

"Nabiki!" Ranma started forward, only to halt in his tracks as he sensed an internal surge of Ki power emanating from his wife, which reassured him that she was a far cry from defeated.

"I did it!" Natsume declared, clearly not sensing a similar tell-tale Ki-surge, "I finally beat her! I've defeated Nabiki in battle!"

"Wow," Kurumi exclaimed, "Oneechan has not only gotten stronger, she's gotten more control over her Ice Dragon Wave Attack."

"Yeah, but does that mean she's got to marry her?" Keiko asked.

"What?" Natsume turned a non-plussed look in the Kickboxer's direction.

"Not necessarily," Mousse replied, "Natsume is Amazon by adoption, and therefore not subject to compulsory marriage laws since she is technically not an outsider."

"What a relief that is," Tatewaki sighed, "As much as I admire your family unit, Ranma-kun, I have no great urgent desire to become a part of it with Natsume."

"Uh...guys?" Ranma said as he started to duck away, "Take cover!"

"What...?" Natsume blinked as she sensed the cracks that suddenly appeared within the ice block that she had created.

One moment later the ice shattered from within, chunks of it being hurled in all directions as Nabiki raised her arms and started to glow with the fury of her intensified battle aura, the waves of Ki-force rolling from her slender frame as she kicked her legs free of the remaining ice then glared an angry glare towards her cousin-slash-adopted sister.

"NATSUME..." Nabiki snarled, power flowing down her arms into her fists, "TIME FOR ROUND TWO, SISTER DEAR!"

And with that she unleashed a Ki-force attack that Natsume barely was able to counter by whipping up a wind with her rug-beater, and the fight renewed itself, ratcheting up to another level.

"Hooboy," Frank winced, "This could take a while."

"Indeed," Donovan agreed, "And I sense that these two have barely even gotten started..."

Nearby to the two men the little girl named Anita just sighed, "Adults are such idiots..." but she was no less drawn to the spectacle of battle as the two Tendo sisters waged a war for the sake of their absent sister, Kasumi...

Part One-Hundred-Seventeen.

[No Actual Vampires or Immortals were harmed in the making of this fanfic...]

"And so it begins."

"How's that again, Boss?" Raptor turned towards Dimitri.

"Nothing to concern you, Clod," Dimitri sniffed, "I was merely savoring the irony of these events. A great many old debts have been cancelled in the raid on yonder office structure, and I was just musing that events are prone to take on a life of their own from this point onward."

"This is sure to stir up the old hornet's nest among the Vampire blood clans is what you mean, my lord," Morgan reflected as she, too, surveyed the carnage of the office building from the safe vantage of another building less than a quarter mile away, "Those that won't be at each others throats by morning will be looking to blame you for your part in bringing this about. That and our new ally..."

"Is of no consequence at this point," Dimitri said succinctly, "Our ally has taken casualties himself in these dealings and that, too, is much to our advantage. Some of his best operatives are now being tagged and bagged by those coroners of the metropolitan police, and it will take some leverage on his part to cover up the trail...which also means covering up for our trail since the ghouls that I loaned him have not reported in for the past hour."

"Meaning they've been dusted," said Jumanji, the Hougan Voodoo master, "Two full score of Goya vampires...wasted in a single excursion."

"It does not matter," Dimitri insisted, "They can always be replaced, and I have many more servants ready to strike when the time is ripe. What matters is the larger objective...and in this regard I do hope you all know well enough to play your part in these affairs?"

Anakaris had trouble working his mouth as he spoke, "The Dead shall be ready when you command it, Dread Lord. I will personally lead the assault and we will take the Blood Queen alive, as you have directed."

"Be mindful, she is more powerful than a normal vampire," Dimitri cautioned, "A hundred Goya would be helpless to resist her full fury, and she does not come alone...each of her remaining allies is a force to be reckoned with. I am counting on your Zuvembe army to run a distraction for us, Raptor, so that the real assault can be made before our enemies are any the wiser."

"Got it, Mate," Raptor said, "I'll bring me boyos along and have a little jam session. Them pansies won't know what hit 'em."

"Good," Dimitri said before turning to the last remaining member of their party, "It all depends upon you, Darkwulf, do not fail me at this critical time when the hour of need approaches."

The horrific beast-shape eyed the Vampire lord malevolently and said, "Don't worry. I'll know what to do when the time is upon us."

"All very well and good," Dimitri turned and said, "Morgan...you will also lead the attack from the air. Our enemies are a diverse lot, and powerful in their own right, but you should have little difficulty providing them with sufficient pause to allow Jumanji to make off with our main objective."

"Oh, no worries on that score, my dark Prince," Morgan turned a sultry look his way, "Have I ever failed to please you when it comes to making my presence felt?"

The male members of the Dark Pack all repressed a collective shudder, mostly caused by the air of smoldering sensuality that the Succubus Queen projected, which impacted on even the most moribund male member so that even a petrified "tool" (as belonged to Anakaris) went wooden from the impact.

Dimitri just scowled at the flirtatious behavior of the green haired Queen of the Demon Realm to which they both held allegiance, his own masculinity being pricked like a needle by the wanton excess that Morgan displayed, knowing full well she was doing it just to get a rise out of him, knowing full well that his dignity demanded that he not shown evidence of how much he wanted to bend her over his lap and...

All at once sharp pains shot through his skull and caused Dimitri to moan as an overwhelming sense of guilt and contrition sought to overmaster his ego. For a moment he felt deep remorse for his own deeds and was appalled at the depths of depravity which he was contemplating in the next several hours, and the waves of compassion for his victims almost caused him to weep like a soul crying for redemption. The sensation was but momentary, yet it plagued like a scar across his chest and made him realize that the source of his vexation was growing stronger, not weaker.

"My lord?" Morgan's voice betrayed alarm, and at once she abandoned the role of the strumpet to rush to Dimitri's side as though to offer her support and desire to succor him from his troubles.

"I am well, damn you," Dimitri snarled, "But that harlot is annoying me beyond all reasonable toleration! We must find her immediately before her damnable virtue drives me insane! Any sign of her at all? Have any spies reported catching a whiff of her chaste perfume contaminating the breeze? Even a sniff, the least hint that she might be contained with the others at the Tendo compound...?"

"Uh...funny you should mention it, Boss," Raptor said a bit meekly, "One O' me mates thought he caught sight O' a strange white bird winging it over to that Doctor's clinic that we've got staked out, but...well...he kinda lost it after that..."

"A white bird?" Dimitri asked sharply, "You are certain?"

"Well, certain enough," the Zombie King reported, "Only...there's something else I think you oughta look into, Boss...me boyo's caught sight O' that new Slayer in town and..."

All at once there was a loud explosion in the distance, and Dimitri turned to catch sight of a cloud of smoke rising up from the edge of the suburbs, to which he said, "What is that?"

"Er...that's what I was talking about," Raptor answered, "The Slayer's embroiled in some kinda cat-fight with another Sheila who sounds...kind of familiar from her description. They're mixing it up right now, and from what I hear tell, their rumble's escalating faster than a Muslim/Hindu cultural exchange rally."

"Indeed?" Dimitri said, "I must witness this for myself to judge how potent this new Slayer might be. We will investigate immediately."

The Dark Pack acknowledged the implied command of their leader and in their own distinctive ways each took off in the direction of the rumble, Dimitri shifting to winged bat-like form while Morgan paced him, and Raptor dissolved into a swirl of bones while Anakaris simply melted into the shadows.

Jumanji used his powers to create a gate, leaving only Darkwulf behind to sniff the breeze then comment to himself, "Something familiar in the neighborhood...almost like cousin Talbain's blown back into town. I must pay my respects to him later by ripping his throat out."

With that declaration in mind the dark-furred Were loped off into the night, vaulting from one rooftop to another, leaving in his wake an equally shadowy figure to comment from some distance further downwind:

"Figures, it's like I've always said, never send a Vamp to do a Were's job..."

John Talbain waited until the Dark Pack was far enough away before emerging from the shadows before nodding to himself and taking off in a slightly different direction, drawn by another scent entirely than the sweat and blood of battle. This scent had a newness about it that was altogether different from what he was used to, and that intrigued him to no end as it contrasted with the foulness of Dimitri and his Dark Pack and promised a hint of a brighter and far more glorious future...

Nabiki felt her pulse racing as she charged herself up for another power burst, twisting her body in mid-air as she vaulted long and far from the place where Natsume had last attacked before landing in a neat two-point tumble...only to hit an unseen patch of ice at the last instant, which sent her tumbling into a wall, which momentarily dispersed her concentration.

"You are good, my Warrior Sister," Natsume complimented, "And your control of your power is first rate, but then again, so is mine, and I'm just as good as you are at strategy and field tactics."

"Heh, point taken," Nabiki said as she got up from the ruins of the wall that she had just demolished, "But I'm still the better tactician, Nat-chan, and as strong as you've become you're still not my equal when it comes to the range and variety of your attacks."

"I may have fewer techniques in my arsenal than you," Natsume retorted, "But I control them to a degree that even you must rate unbeatable!"

With that the ponytailed Natsume unleashed yet another attack upon Nabiki, who summoned up her unspent power and prepared to meet the rush head-on with her own brand of martial arts fury.

And off to the sides watching the whole affair Ranma and the others looked on with mingled expressions of dismay and disbelief, even as the waves of Ki power went rolling past them to shake the streets themselves with the echoes of their exchanges.

"Oh man...this is not good," Ranma said, "Nabi's always had it over Natsume in terms of speed and power, but at the rate they keep going..."

"I hear you, Kid," Frank agreed, "You're wife's not half bad, but if they keep upping the power level on this fracas they could get into some mighty iffy power zones where control won't be that specific. Aside from the damage they might do to each other, the real estate looks like it's about to take a heck of a beating."

"Nevertheless the match must continue," Donovan quietly insisted, "The Slayer must learn to test and measure her power, and if your wife is the strongest in her family, then their natural rivalry should bring out what is best in both women."

"You keep saying that, Big Guy," Keiko snapped, "But what if things go too far? What if Nabiki gets taxed far enough to affect her condition? Did you ever think about that, Mister Macho hot-stuff spiritualist?"

Nabiki unleashed her Haddo-Fist attack, and the entire area directly before her was engulfed in the fury of pure elemental life energy, power enough to melt an entire tank or reduce an army into rubble. The wave alone that this attack kicked up was enough to blow over signs from a hundred yards away, and it kicked up a wind that caused everyone's hair to flow like streamers even while blinking their eyes to prevent stray debris from causing blindness.

Unfortunately Natsume had sensed this attack with time enough to vault over the wave, and while in mid-air she performed another wind attack that kicked up a wave of hoarfrost, which same pelted Nabiki from the rear and threw off her concentration.

"Her...condition?" Tatewaki reacted, "What mean you by that, Arigami-san?"

"Nabiki," Ranma murmured softly, "Is having our baby."

"What?" Kurumi reacted.

"You're serious?" Mousse asked, "But her curse..."

"TOO SLOW, NEECHAN!" Natsume declared as she whipped around behind Nabiki and took a shot with her rug-beater, connecting with a blow to the back of her head that staggered Nabiki.

"Ouch," Keiko winced, "That's gonna hurt when she tries to turn her neck..."

"We found a way of getting around her curse," Ranma explained, "Madam Lao cast a water spell that froze her temporarily in female form, but by the end of six months it could revert back to her normal condition."

"Revert?" Donovan asked, "You don't much about the way curses work, youth. You cannot turn them on and off like a switch. You can defer them, rechannel their energies, even delay them for a time, but the energy will go where it will, and that is what your Madam Lao did for your wife. Altered her curse for a time so that instead of becoming a man it takes on other forms more subtle, less transparent."

"What are you talking about?" Kurumi asked, "What alteration? What did that Lao person do to Oneechan?"

"I get it now," Keiko exclaimed, "It make perfect sense. Lao's power is over water, and like water itself she must understand ways of altering its course, diverting it like a river..."

"Yes, that does make perfect sense," Tatewaki observed, "A river must run its channels no matter where you divert it..."

"But what the hell does that mean?" Mousse asked, "The power of a Jusenkyo curse...rechannelled?"

"Redirected," Keiko explained, "In female form Nabiki fights with the speed and power of a demon, but as Kaneda she doubles her strength and mass but loses some of her speed...but in a hybrid form with the body of a woman and the strength of a man..."

Nabiki suddenly rounded on Natsume, who had believed her sister was beginning to slow, and with a savage spinning kick knocked the novice Slayer with a spinning kick that was backed with the power of her Ki, which sent Natsume sailing for a hundred meters down the block before tumbling into the trunk of a tree, which she split in half with the force of her body.

"Natsume!" Tatewaki called out.

"I knew it!" Ranma hissed, "I knew that there was something different about the way Nab-chan was fighting. She's way more powerful than when the two of us took Lao on..."

"Yeah," Keiko agreed, "That's how I figure it, Bro. Fighting against Natsume has caused Nabiki to tap into her own increased Ki power, and that means she's fighting with the strength of Kaneda in her own natural body, including her Ki attacks, which are similarly bolstered."

"The strength and power of a man...in the body of a woman," Mousse averred, "The ideal of the Amazon nation..."

"But...she's still pregnant, right?" Kurumi asked, "Won't that impact on her ability to fight?"

"Eventually, yes," Donovan replied, "But I think this fight will be ended long before that becomes a serious issue."

Natsume sprang back into action, whipping her rub-beater around to produce a horizontal cyclone, one that whipped out at Nabiki much too fast to be avoided, but Nabiki came back roaring again, summoning the power of the Hiryu Shoten Ha to reverse propel her at her opponent with such speed that even Natsume was taken aback at the speed and savagery of the attack. But Natsume swiftly recovered to drive Nabiki aside with another wind attack of her own in reverse spiral to the one she used before, thus depriving the Hiryu Shoten Ha of the energy it needed.

"Maybe you think so," Ranma said, raising an arm and forming a look of determination, "But I'm not about to risk it, not for some stupid ass fight that ought to be settled by talking it out, not beating each other senseless."

All at once he felt Frank's overlarge hand on his shoulder and looked up at the towering man-monster, who smiled back at him in a comradely fashion.

"Easy kid, I'm with you on this, but if we're going to talk them out of this, it's gonna take coordinated action on both our parts. Are you with me?"

"Hai," Ranma agreed at once.

"We'll do it together," Frank assured him, "But it's gonna take timing and teamwork 'cause we got Feminine Pride issues that need to be settled."

"Ain't that the truth?" Keiko agreed soberly, "You can smell the Estrogen in the air in this battle. Natsume's always envied Nabiki for being the better fighter..."

"You're wrong," Kurumi spoke out, "It's not envy that Oneechan feels for Nabiki, it's admiration. She doesn't hate our sister, she wants to fight with her to get strong...to be stronger one day even than Nabiki."

"Kurumi is correct!" Natsume declared as she and Nabiki took a pause in their battle to get their mutual wind back, "I am fighting to improve myself, and in spite of these strange enhancements you are still holding your own against me. I don't want to win because of some magical spell, but if fighting with you can give me better control over my new power..."

"Fine with me," Nabiki shot back, "I'm only just warming up to this match, and I wouldn't want it to end before I'd gotten a taste of my own new limits."

"Then so be it, Sister mine!" Natsume declared as she brandished her rug-beater, "You are the standard that I set when I seek to achieve excellence, and by fighting with you I will become stronger, as strong as is within my nature to become!"

"I'm beginning to agree with Arigami-san," Mousse remarked, "They're even talking like Amazons...I'm practically nostalgic."

Kurumi just glared at the man who was (technically) her husband by Amazon law but turned back to see the fight escalating as Natsume and Nabiki poured on the juice and once more were fighting in real earnest.

And not far away several dark forms took shape on an adjoining rooftop, Dimitri and his Dark Pack looking on as they witnessed the battle of the sisters which was progressing once again to an entirely new level.

"That...that is the one named Tendo Nabiki," Dimitri declared as he saw one of the combatants hurl a Ki-bolt at the other.

"You mean the Sheila who cleaned your clocks last time, Mate?" Raptor asked, only to feel the wrath of the vampire's elbow on the top of his head, driving the Zombie King into the roof with a groan of dismay, "Wh-what did I say now...?"

"That is the woman who defeated you in battle?" Morgan said in more than casual interest, "How interesting...she has unusual control over her internal power...for a mortal."

"Control...but only a little understanding of the forces that they wield," Jumanji observed, "The Slayer is too new at her role, too unfamiliar with her own potential to tap into more than a mere two percent of the gift that she has been bequeathed to her by the Powers."

"The Slayer is of marginal interest to me," Dimitri said, "Tendo Nabiki does interest me, and not just because of the slight inconvenience she caused me with an unexpected attack the last time. If I can absorb her power then mine would become even greater than ever. But still...it is her older sister whom I am primarily after..."

"No sign of her, Dread Lord," Darkwulf noted, "But look, Donovan and Stein at witnessing the battle..."

"Ah yes, my old friends," Dimitri smiled in a way that even the werewolf found intimidating, "How nice of them to drop in to bear witness to my inevitable triumph. No doubt they too seek the eldest of the Tendo siblings, but clearly they do not yet have her in their possession. Perhaps they have attached themselves to the family in the hopes that they will lead them to our quarry..."

"Dread Lord," Anakaris pointed out, "I feel a disturbance in the C'thon...the force-lines of the dragon are being drawn upon and redirected to this point..."

"Eh?" Dimitri said, "What could be causing that? Are these fighters that powerful that they can alter the very way in which the blood of the earth flows through this region?"

All at once Nabiki made another flying leap and got behind Natsume, kicking off with a spinning back-kick that caused the very ground beneath her feet to crack and shatter, large chunks of asphalt being kicked up as she drew upon her more advanced training to bolster her new attack against Natsume.

"Shadowskills, my sister?" Natsume smiled as she recovered from that kick, landing a good fifteen meters from where she had been standing, "I've been wondering when you would get around to using that..."

"Seems appropriate," Nabiki smiled, "You're asking for a real ass-kicking, Sister, and now you're gonna get it!"

"Then do your best, Neechan!" Natsume cried as the both of them came rushing together, each drawing upon their reserves of power to unleash powerful waves that threatened to tear yet more chunks of the street into so much broken asphalt.

All at once a wave of flames rose up to separate the two combatants before they had fully unleashed the full measure of their pent up energies, and with a gasp Nabiki drew back, recognizing the fire attack as having only one possible source. She turned with a start and stared at the young man controlling the flames along his upraised right arm and gasped out, "Ranma-kun?"

"Saotome-san?" Natsume was equally non-plussed to find herself contained by a wall of congealing water, the streamers of which trailed off from Ranma's other upraised arm as her brother-in-law held both Fire and Water attacks at once, encircling them both with counterpoising Dragons.

"Enough!" Ranma declared forcefully, "You guys break it up right now! This battle is pointless, and all you're doing is wrecking the neighborhood when we're supposed to be looking for Kasumi!"

"Ranma...what are you doing?" Nabiki demanded, "This is supposed to be my fight, and I won't have even you go butting in..."

"Even when the cost of the property damage threatens to go through the roof?" Ranma relaxed his flames then pointed with his arm at the collateral damage the two sisters had inflicted.

Nabiki traced his gesture and was appalled, "We...did all of that?"

Staring at the wrecked cars, broken asphalt, chewed up sidewalks and streets full of huge ruts and potholes that a truck would balk at crossing. All the way down the street they could see broken walls and shattered windows, overturned trees and toppled phone poles and the usual sort of damage one might see if Ryoga had cut loose on a rage fit. Just seeing the amount of structural havoc that had been wreaked caused dollar signs to appear behind Nabiki's eyes, and she fell to her knees just thinking how much it would cost to pay for all this carnage.

"Oh my," Natsume said, "I had no idea that we were this...out of control..."

"Well, now you know," said Ranma, "Now would you kindly stop fighting with my wife so we can talk this out like family? This is all started because you're both worried about Kasumi, and I'm worried about Oneechan just as much as the both of you, and so are Tatewaki and the others."

"Ranma speaks true, my love," Tatewaki said, "This battle may satisfy other needs that you have to test your new limits and prove which of you is the strongest, but this is not a time when we can afford to indulge such personal objectives. There is an enemy out there who deserves our attention far more than this, so please...end the violence now. I could not bare to watch further if either you or your sister were to be injured by this constant escalating."

"Tachi-sama," Natsume breathed before her continence hardened and she slung her rug-beater across her back, "Very well, the battle is postponed until another time, but my resolve remains firm. Kasumi is clearly not the sister we once knew and is a menace who must be dealt with. I do not relish the idea, it is hateful to my very nature, but for the sake of everyone who lives in Nerima, especially you, my sister..."

"Me?" Natsume asked.

"Who do you think Kasumi will be coming for next if not you?" Natsume asked, "We all know of her unnatural desire for your male half, and if that appetite has been swelled with Vampirism, then it is only a matter of time before she seeks your neck in order to sate her inhuman appetite. She is a vampire and I...I am now a Slayer of vampires, and I must do my fated duty..."

Natsume started to turn away when she found her path blocked by a wall of leather-clad muscle.

"Not so fast, young lady," Frank said, "You're in no position to go casting judgements on anybody, and while you may be hot stuff in a fight you're a complete novice as a vampire hunter, so stop and listen to what we have to say..."

"With all due respect to you, Doctor Steinberg-san," Natsume said when she suddenly lunged forward and punched the big man in the stomach, "I will not be lectured to! I...what...?"

Frank grunted a bit but was no more than mildly staggered by the blow. Moving with a speed that even put her own to shame, the big man moved and suddenly had Natsume gripped in both of his arms, held immobile and unable to get the leverage she needed to release herself as he picked her off her feet and held her at shoulder level.

"Nice try, Kid!" Frank snarled, "But you're a hundred years too young to take me on, and as tough as you are, you're up against the original Monster!"

"Oneechan!" Kurumi suddenly surged forward and hurled a kick at the big man, but Frank saw this coming as well and turned his head to the side, whipped around and did a head-butt that caught the younger girl in the stomach and staggered her in mid-flight.

"Sorry to have to do that to you, Kid," Frank said as Kurumi fell to the ground clutching at her stomach, "But you need to take it easy, and I'm not about to do anything bad to your sister."

"How nice that you have my best interests at heart," Natsume snarled, when she brought her own head back with sudden force and broke free of Frank's embrace, whipped around in a somersault flip that brought her foot around in a kick that staggered the tall man and further served to free her.

"A hundred years, Old Man?" Natsume said as she alighted on her feet once again, "Not even close to that by my reckoning!"

"Huh, not too shabby," Frank remarked as he started to straighten up, only to find himself being wrapped in heavy chains that whipped around him from seeming no where, "WHAA-AT?"

"Sir, I would ask that you not abuse my Airen," Mousse politely insisted, "I realize that you are only doing what you feel you must, but..."

"Bad career move, Kid," Frank somberly glared at the Chinese youth, and all at once he balled his fists and grit his teeth, and all at once a blue-white light began to surround his massive frame, traveling down the length of the chains to their wielder and causing Mousse to cry out and jerk like a fish on a live wire. The tension on the chains slackened off and Frank slipped them off easily while Mousse fell to his knees, smoldering a bit around the edges.

"Rule number one: never attack me with anything metal," Frank informed the stunned teenagers, "My body is supercharged with Bio-electricity, every cell in my body is infused with micro-electrostatic discharges that keeps me alive and fills me with raw elemental power. I'm a Flesh Golem, created by a weird fusion of science and magic, and I suck electricity in like it was mother's milk. My father was a mad scientist and my mother was a thundercloud and for two hundred years I've been the meanest, toughest son of a bitch that you'll ever meet this side of the grave, so keep out of my way, and I won't have to hurt either you or your wife. And you, young lady," he turned back to Natsume, "One or two lucky punches ain't a battle. I ain't about to cut loose with you at full power, but don't push me. I'm working for your benefit, but I don't like to have my good nature taken advantage of, do you copy?"

"I...think that I follow you, Sir," Natsume replied, "But I still must ask why I should withhold the merciful coup that I quite firmly believe will free my sister from an unnatural life of vampirism?"

"What your sister has become is something more than you suspect," Donovan spoke up, "Frank is right to caution you not to rush to any premature judgements. It may be that there is more at work here than you could possibly suspect...and you, old friend...have you been living in the cities for so long that your senses have been that badly dimmed, or did your know that we have an audience standing over yonder watching and listening in to our every word?"

"What?" Frank turned to glance off to the side and caught a set of shadowy forms in the distance, then hissed the word, "Dimitri!"

"Eh?" Keiko and the others whirled to follow the line of his stare, "That bastard is here already?"

Nabiki and the others all turned to see the renegade Vampire Lord and his Dark Pack standing in the dim light of the moon, Dimitri himself smiling as he saw their non-plussed expressions, to which he said, "So, you finally have deigned to acknowledge our presence, old friend. A most entertaining display, a pity you chose to break it up when it was just becoming all the more entertaining."

"Dimitri," Nabiki hissed, balling her fists as she rose to her feet and stood at the ready.

"My lord, aren't you going to introduce the rest of us to your new friends?" Morgan asked.

"Of course, where are my manners?" Dimitri smiled and waved a hand at his companions, "May I present to you the exiled Queen of the Demon Realm, Morgan Anslat, my allies and associates, Raptor-whom I believe you already know-  
Anikaris, Jumanji and Darkwulf. My colleagues...may I introduce you to the Saotome-Tendo clan, with whom we may all soon become better acquainted."

"The Dark Pack," Frank balled his fists, "This...isn't good..."

"These guys are as tough as Dimitri?" Ranma asked.

"No," Donovan replied, "He is the strongest of those present, save for Morgan. The others are not to be taken for granted, however, for each is a deadly Darkstalker and a proven killer."

"Oh yeah, this is definitely not good," Keiko said.

"Can you feel it? The darkness of their auras..." Tatewaki remarked as he drew his bokken and held it at the ready, "They are consummately...evil..."

"Evil is as evil does," Mousse remarked as he got back to his own feet, shaking off the effects of his shocking rebuttal.

"So what are we going to do if they attack us?" Kurumi asked.

"What do you think, Neechan," Natsume said as she stood at the ready, "Defend ourselves, and inevitably triumph!"

"Feeling overconfident are we, my dear Slayer?" Dimitri smiled, "It is true that you show some slight potential, but you face the greatest of the Dark Powers of the Demon realms before you now. Do you think that you can triumph even with the aid of the Humonculus and the Damphyr?"

"Well, that all depends," Nabiki snarled, "How bad do you want me to kick your butt this time, Asshole? I won't just knock you into a tomb this time, I'll bury you for what you did to my Kasumi!"

"Easy there, Nab-chan," Ranma said as he came to stand beside her, "You ain't in this alone, you know, and if anybody tries mixing it up with you then they'll have to go through me first," and as he brandished his fist he once again summoned his flames to light up the space around them.

"That boy," Morgan remarked, "He commands the elements of fire and water..."

"Yes," Dimitri agreed, "There is power within him, but he is still something of a novice."

"Novice, huh?" Ranma smiled grimly, "Just keep talking like that and you'll see what I'm really made from."

"Kid's got spunk," Raptor mused, "Not much in brains, but a lotta guts."

"Yes," Anakaris said slowly, "And we will be pleased to spill them over the ground if he speaks with such insolence to Lord Dimitri."

"Interesting," Jumanji said, "I sense something in the aura of that boy that suggests he has the potential to be a powerful wizard..."

"Pity he's not going to live long enough to get the chance," Darkwulf snarled while baring his claws.

"Yes...a great pity," Dimitri smiled, "I believe that I will personally absorb that potential and add it to my arsenal. Do not slay him too swiftly, but do not underestimate him or the others with them either."

"Don't worry," Nabiki said, "We won't."

"But it's obvious that they clearly have to come at us in a one-to-one encounter," Keiko smiled with the anticipation of a coming battle.

"Idiots," Anita softly murmured, sensing the inevitability of the coming altercation.

"Stay sharp, Kids, and be on your guard," Frank cautioned, "These aren't amateurs you're facing, and they're about a thousand times as tough as your average opponent."

"And utterly ruthless," Donovan warned them, "They are worse than killers of the body, they are soul killers as well. They will steal your life essence and leave your bodies as spent and desiccated husks."

"Are you trying to warn us or frighten us, Priest?" Natsume smiled confidently as she readied her favorite weapon.

"Oneechan," Kurumi said softly, then she took a position of resolve and said, "I'm with you all the way...just like always."

"I guess that means I'm in it for the fight," Mousse remarked, standing ready to lend his own assistance to his Airen.

"We're in the thick of it, then," Frank softly averred, standing ready, "But with any luck we may all survive this."

"Hey, anything's possible, right Big Guy?" Keiko quipped with a cocky grin.

"Possible, not probable," Donovan replied, "But if we stand together we have an edge that may well help us to triumph."

"Go on believing that, my misguided half-breed brother," Dimitri snarled as he began to summon up his own dark power, "I'll never know why our mutual father ever liked you best, you betrayer of your own dark blood!"

"NANI?" Ranma and Nabiki chorused together, but there was no time for further questions as the battle was joined the next instant later...

Continued.

Comments/Criticisms/Darkstalker Pedigrees: shadowmane

The battle is joined between the Dark Pack and the Tendo Posse, but what of Kasumi herself and the others gathered around the Tendo compound? Will Dimitri's dark plans succeed, and who is his mysterious (and as yet unrevealed) ally? Find out the answer to this and more in, "The Flames of Ranma," or, "That's Why They Call Him The Leader Of The Pack!" Be there!

X

If you wish to check out my other works, Please check out my Fanfiction webpage at: or it's Mirror page at ~ All related chapters of this series can be found there along with my other works.  
/pre 


	46. Chapter 46

preDnabiki118

Nabiki 1/2

"A Very Scary Thought!"

by Jim Robert Bader

(Inspired by the works of Rumiko Takahashi Others,  
with a special appearance by some of my own creations and those of Joss Whedon. The Character of Frank is my own interpretation of the Monster of Marry Shelley's novel and is thus a free agent, so talk with him if you want to have him costar in some other series.)

[Special thanks to Bill Guiroff and Shiva for helping the initial proofreading phase of this fanfic series, and for encouraging me to continue the sage of Nabiki 1/2.]

(With special thanks to Andrew Greaves for input and backgrounds on the Darkstalkers...)

Part One-Hundred-Eighteen.

(Set during and slightly after the time of the events recorded in the side-story titled "Honeymoon Hentai")

[No Actual Vampires or Immortals were harmed in the making of this fanfic...]

Kasumi was staring up at the moon from the top of the Furinkan High School clock tower, undisturbed by the distant sounds of the rumble of battle as she was used to ignoring such sounds, reckoning it to be just another typical martial arts battle taking place somewhere in the city, the kind that occurred with appalling regularity whenever one of her sisters or friends got into a squabble. Nothing out of the usual in her experience, and so she took it in stride, being much more concerned with matters of an entirely personal nature.

Biting Tofu and draining a part of his essence had made her aware of just how complex the man was and how deep ran his feelings towards her, so deep in fact that her mere presence could drive him to distraction. In a way she wished that she could feel the same way about a man who was so kind, compassionate and understanding, but in truth there were shadows to Tofu's otherwise cloudless mind, areas so secretive that he never let anyone get to know the real man inside. Being able to access his memories now made her aware that he had certain...connections. At first she suspected it might be the improper sort, such as ties to the Yakuza, but upon closer examination of these memories she found that the name of the group he belonged to was The Watchers, an ancient order that kept watch over paranormal events and beings such as Vampires and Immortals. They also took responsibility for the locating and training of the individual woman designated as "The Slayer," and that her sister, Natsume, was now identified as the current holder of that office...

Only it was not a very pretty picture that Tofu's memories painted of the life and career that awaited Natsume. Many of those Slayers in the past whose names had found their way into the record books had lived short and violent lives with an unhappy ending waiting at the climax. Very few of them had known real joy from their adventures, and almost none of them had lived to a very ripe old age. At best a few managed to have children, but the average career was less than two years...for the ones who survived the first few weeks of their initiation. A Slayer was little more than a personal hit-woman whom the Watchers exploited to fight their battles. The Powers that Be who empowered the Slayer were ruthless in exploiting her, and when her time was done she was just as casually discarded as a used up old rag. What became of her in the afterlife was not recorded, but Kasumi privately hoped it was a reward to compensate for all the hardships that they suffered.

For a fact Kasumi knew that it was not a fate that she would wish upon a sister, and if Natsume's life were any reflection of the Slayers who came before her then she was in for serious unhappiness, and that did not bode well for her marriage to Tatewaki Kuno. If anything Natsume would need a protector and a friend, but it was doubtful that Kasumi could be the one who would be trusted under these circumstances. After all...a vampire and a Slayer as friends? It did not seem very likely from the lore in Tofu's memories, and there would doubtlessly be trouble because of a deeply held misunderstanding which held that all vampires were intrinsically evil.

But were these beliefs in any way valid? Kasumi certainly needed to know the answer to that one, and not just because of any lingering doubts as to the truth of her own nature. Of a fact she did not feel like someone who was inherently a bad person, but when she had bitten Tofu she had felt...something hunger in her for more than just a mouthful. In fact, if she had not drunk blood earlier she may not have been able to control her appetite, but as it was she had taken more than just blood through a light draining, she had tapped into his soul and had gained a spiritual connection.

Was not such an act in itself to be considered as evil? It felt...wrong to harm a person's spirit by taking a portion of its essence, and was it not the mark of an evil creature to feed on the life and soul of a fellow sentient being? Did that not imply that she was now an evil creature born of darkness, exactly as the legends said in many of Tofu's books and chronicles on the subject of the undead? Was she little better than a soulless monster even with a soul if she fed upon the living to sustain herself? How much worse was it to consciously know that a thing was wrong and to do it than to be a mindless beast who only did what was in its nature?

As she thought on this she studied the face of the moon, relishing the comfort it provided her, the soft silvery glow that felt...good upon her skin, like the warming light of the sun on a warm and pleasant day. It energized and revitalized her like the warmth of a mother's love, and as she gazed at the shining surface far above her she thought that she could make out a face...like a woman's. It was a strangely familiar face, almost like a reflection of a memory, and as she sought to focus upon this face she heard a voice at her side say, "What are you looking at, Beautiful?"

"Oh!" Kasumi was started out of her reverie to find that she had company upon the clock tower in the form of a furry shape oddly like a dog but with the outline of a man. She belatedly placed the face and started to relax as she sensed no hostile intentions in the new arrival, so she said, "Mister Werewolf, I didn't hear you approaching."

"I'm good at stealth, Babe," the lycanthrope in question replied as he leveled himself up into a sitting position, taking a space within easy reach of Kasumi, "And the name's Talbain...John Talbain, in case you don't remember."

"Of course I remember you, Talbain-san," Kasumi smiled, "And it's very nice to see you once again. Are you here looking for my sister?"

"Naw, this time it's you I was looking to hook up with," Talbain gave a smile that would have frightened anyone else but did not bring an eyeblink from Kasumi, "And I was asking you a question...what were you looking at just now?"

"The moon," Kasumi answered.

"Ahh," Talbain nodded, "Yes, the moon is always good to look at, especially when it's full."

"It's strange," Kasumi mused, "Looking up at it I almost feel as if I once long ago had been there..."

"Interesting," Talbain remarked, "But then again, you're not the first one I've heard make that observation."

"Oh?" Kasumi asked, "What do you mean?"

"Just an old legend I once heard," Talbain glanced away, "About a Kingdom that once existed on the moon during an era of peace called the Silver Millennium. They say that many people who lived in those times have been reborn into this world, yet few even remember who they were and what they were back in those times. Maybe you're one of those who had a life there in the times before the troubles, before the Ages of Stone, Bronze and Iron that followed the collapse of the Moon Kingdom."

"Oh my," Kasumi said, "Was it very nice to live back then?"

"Nice?" Talbain replied, "Doesn't even cover the world that existed. According to the legends there were powerful Priest Kings who ruled the earth, and a Queen who lived on the moon who kept away the shadow of the Dark with her Imperial Silver Moon Crystal. There were no evil things in the world in those days, and man lived alongside beast in relative harmony and peace. There were no wars to be fought and no one held a grudge against his neighbor. The demons of the Dark were unknown in those times, banished from the world by the power of the Moon Queen and her court of Holy Warriors called Senshi."

"Oh my," Kasumi said, "That does sound rather pleasant. So...what happened?"

"What always happens when times become too good," Talbain said grimly, "People lived long and productive lives...and yet they were static without change or evolution. For thousands of years death was unknown to the people of the Moon Kingdom, but without unrest to challenge their spirits they grew weak and complacent. Without the hard lessons of adversity they withered...and a rot began to take form, a division between the Light and the Darkness, and into this gulf the Dark poured its awful minions, and they destroyed the peace of the Moon Kingdom."

"How awful," Kasumi said, "Is that why there is evil in the world? Because the Dark brought it here from beyond?"

"Evil is an imbalance between the Light and the Dark," Talbain replied, "There can never truly be an age that is wholly without Darkness. Can a day go without a night? The earth itself would be scorched and plants would never have the chance to sleep and recover from heat exposure. Life itself as we know it could never be...but the Light is meant to balance out the Darkness, and without that balance evil is the result, and so it was for the Moon Kingdom which fell because beings of consummate evil were allied with humans who had lost the focus of the light...who were themselves swallowed up by the darkness."

"Oh my," Kasumi softly averred, "That sounds a lot like what Lenore-san told me about the reason why there are vampires."

"Heh, the kid does have quite an imagination," Talbain smiled, "But the legend is true...the spell that created Vampirism was an attempt by Atlantean mages to imbue in select humans the powers of the Darkness. A similar such spell created my kind by combining human subjects with the spirits of animals...and that is how the Werefolk came to be. In the case of my ancestors they sought to combine the intelligence, cunning and nobility of the wolf with the instincts of a human...and this has not always resulted in a stable mixture. Indeed, some young Weres go mad and become rampaging beasts in their own right, as is the case of my renegade cousin, Darkwulf."

"Oh dear, you have a relative who you don't get along with?" Kasumi asked.

"He's an outlaw even to our tribe," Talbain replied, "A notorious murderer who blackens the name of werewolves everywhere, and he's sided with Dimitri and is counted as a member of his Dark Pack."

"Oh, I see," Kasumi said, "Then he must not be a very nice person. How sad."

"Not half as sad as my Aunt Mildred, his mother," Talbain replied, "He broke her heart when he turned against his own people, but this isn't about my family's dysfunctional history, it's about you, Miss Tendo, and what you've become."

"About me?" Kasumi asked, "Is that why you came to look for me?"

"Yeah," Talbain replied, "Word got around that you'd reverted, turned Daywalker and had the powers of a Master Vampire. I came to check out if the rumors were true, and now I can see that Frank and Lenore were right to be worried because you definitely have the raw potential to be a lot more than just your average grade vampire. I don't smell Darkness about you, but you've tasted human blood, and I think you even liked it."

Kasumi glanced down and said, "I wish that I could say that you were wrong, Talbain-san, but...I felt a closeness...a connection to the one whom I bit that was quite...intoxicating...like nothing I have ever felt in my life. I...I am not proud of taking advantage of Tofu-sensei's trust in me, but...I wanted him to be happy, and I...wanted to understand what moved him..."

"If you're making a confession of it, then you've come to the wrong place," Talbain informed her, "I've blood enough on my claws to last me a hundred lifetimes, but I've faced the same questions that you must be facing now every night of my existence since the day I came into the full measure of my power. Why do we live? Why do we fight? Why must we battle with the human world and other Darkstalkers? Why so is peace so elusive when by rights we share a common struggle from within..."

"Oh, I understand why people fight each other," Kasumi replied, "I just don't agree with it. You see, I come from a family of martial artists, and all of the people I know like to fight in order to improve themselves, to strengthen up their minds and bodies. I imagine it's much the same for your people...but tell me something, would you please?"

"Just name it, pretty lady," Talbain asked.

"What is a Darkstalker anyway?" Kasumi blinked, "Talbain-san?"

The werewolf looked sheepishly up at the vampire girl as he clawed his way back to his purchase, having nearly facefaulted off the side of the clock tower.

"You're kidding, right?" Talbain asked, "You really don't know what a Darkstalker is then?"

"Would I ask if I knew?" Kasumi asked with that same guileless innocence that made Talbain feel...weird just being in her presence."

"Okay, I guess maybe somebody forgot to lecture you on the basics," Talbain said, "Should have known Lenore might skip a bit on the intro. Well, the simple answer is...a Darkstalker is a Dark One who likes to fight and hunt prey for the same reason you've pretty much named...to fight to get stronger by defeating other Dark ones. In a way the term actually means a kind of Gladiator or Street Fighter class of Dark One, like your martial artist family when you go up against the martial artists of other schools and systems."

"Oh, I see," Kasumi nodded, "That does make sense, I suppose. Only...why must we fight at all? You asked the question yourself, but is it really to grow stronger at the expense of another?"

"That is one way of looking at it, I suppose," Talbain replied, "But not all Darkstalkers are interested in just fighting...there are a few, like Dimitri, who have other designs that go well beyond self-improvement, and for him it's a matter of accumulating power so that he can one day return in triumph to the Demon Realm and conquer it as his own personal dominion."

"The Demon realm?" Kasumi asked.

"Well, actually, there are many realms that call themselves the Demon worlds, but in truth there is no one world that contains all of the demons who have access to the planes of Man," Talbain elaborated, "The one that Dimitri has his eye on is the realm of Makai, ruled by Beliol, the Demon of Lust and Madness. It's also the realm that the Succubus Queen, Morgan Anslat, hails from. She's King Beliol's rebellious daughter, and she's allied herself with Dimitri. Well, actually, they started out as enemies, but after several clashes they kind of found they had a lot in common and...well...they also kind of liked each other..."

"Oh," Kasumi nodded, "In other words they're boyfriend and girlfriend, right? Only...what is a Succubus again?"

Talbain knew that it was dangerous for him to be taking facefaults in such a high position, but he could not help himself. The way the girl asked him that question made it plain that she had only the vaguest idea of what the word meant, and-given everything else that he had been picking up off of her for the past five minutes-it sort of implied that she was...less than knowledgeable on other related subjects.

"Hooboy," Talbain winced, pulling himself back to his former position while feeling like the substitute math teacher who had just been asked to teach a course on sex education.

"Oh my, did I say something wrong?" Kasumi asked.

"I don't think that's even possible for you," Talbain said frankly, "Um...look...a Succubus is a type of demon that...er...well...preys on the energy that men and woman put out when they...that is...when a guy and a girl...um...they...kind of go together..."

"Oh," Kasumi said, "You mean when they make love? Like when they produce babies?"

"Huh?" Talbain blinked, "You...know what sex is?"

"I've read about it in some of Tofu-sensei's medical books," Kasumi paused to add, "It...sounded somewhat messy...but my sisters seem to like it a lot."

"Oh," Talbain briefly wondered how to follow that up and then just sighed and said bluntly, "When people make love it produces a kind of energy that Morgan can feed upon. She can draw it out of them when they make physical contact with her too...and for her it has the same effect as blood for a vampire. In fact, she likes to seduce people and drain them...only what she leaves in her wake can either be a spent and exhausted mortal or a withered up husk...depending on how much energy she feels like taking."

"Why, how awful!" Kasumi said, "She doesn't sound like a very nice person."

"Um...well...she does have a few good points," Talbain admitted, then added under his breath, "Two of 'em up front, as a matter of fact. I've sparred with her on more than one occasion and, well...she can be quite the charmer when she has a mind to be, or a real bit-er...a...a real she-wolf," he covered up lamely, half feeling as though his own mother were about to wash his muzzle out with soap and rub his nose in his own litter.

"Oh dear," Kasumi said, "But if she can do that to people when she makes love to them...how then can she carry on an affair with this Dimitri person?"

"Well, Vamps and Succubae are pretty much immune to one another, Toots," Talbain shrugged, "Kind of like two forms of the same polarity, they both suck the vitality our of their victims, so one power pretty much cancels out the other. Dimitri can taste Morgan's blood, and she can get a real charge out of having sex with him, but neither one takes any real damage from the other. At first they were a pretty hot item, but over the decades they've kind of gone through what most couples know as a period of troubles, falling in and out of love as regularly as a change in the seasons. I guess after so many times in the sack the magic's kind of gone out of the whole affair, leaving them unsatisfied and deeply frustrated, but for some strange reason they keep coming back to each other like a form of addiction."

"So why is she helping Dimitri?" Kasumi asked.

"She wants to take back the throne that she once held in Makai," Talbain explained, "And she sees Dimitri as her best ticket to overthrowing the rule of her father. Morgan and Beliol aren't much on speaking terms these days, and if you knew anything about the guy you'd understand why. Truth is, she hates her father only a little less than Dimitri does, a lot of bad blood owing to some friends of hers who got wasted by the paranoid old bast-er...demon."

"Oh dear," Kasumi thought a moment then said, "Is that why Dimitri wanted to fight with my sister? To learn her power and fighting techniques so that he would be strong enough to conquer this world of the demons?"

"Kinda," Talbain said, "Actually, Dimitri doesn't just fight with people, he tries to absorb them...kind of like what you did when you bit the doc."

Kasumi covered her mouth with her hands, "Oh my! You mean...he'll bite Nabiki? I...I can't let him do that!"

"If he does he'll become even more powerful than he is right now," Talbain informed her, "Adding her strength to the countless others whom he's defeated over the last century or so. Of course...I'm thinking he might also be after you, Missy."

"After me?" Kasumi asked, "Why?"

"Because he turned you into his servant, only Donovan reversed the spell and turned you into a Daywalker, and you've got powerful agents in your blood that have made you as strong, if not stronger, than Dimitri. He's also getting a spill-off effect from you that's driving him a little nuts. He's a nasty guy who's lived a hard and nasty life and he doesn't like being exposed to things that are as full of sweetness and light as you seem to embody."

"Oh my...am I hurting him?" Kasumi asked, "I certainly did not mean to..."

"Believe me, what he's suffering now is nothing compared to the suffering that he's inflicted on others," Talbain assured her, "What me and my friends know is that he's cunning and ruthless and he'll step over anyone's grave to get what he wants, and if that means sucking the life out of your sister, then he won't hesitate to do so. However...Morgan's also a pretty jealous witch, and if she thinks Dimitri is after her for other reasons then she may get it into her pretty head to eliminate the threat by absorbing Nabiki's essence into herself, thus thwarting Dimitri."

Kasumi gasped and put a hand to her mouth, "No! Not my Nabiki..."

"We'll do everything we can to prevent that, Tendo-san," Talbain assured her, "But we're going to need your help and cooperation..."

"Yes, of course," Kasumi said, "I'll do whatever I can to help out, just...don't let them hurt my sister."

"That's good," Talbain smiled, "So...mind coming with me? I promised Frank I'd look you up and get you to a safe house and..."

All at once a massive explosion shook the night, causing both werewolf and daywalking vampire to turn their heads to see a column of smoke and flames rising up from a kilometer away, which prompted Talbain to say, "Sh*t! That wasn't your average Ki surge I felt just now...that was Dimitri!"

On another occasion Kasumi would have frowned at the werewolf for using such language around her, but other concerns overrode her normal sense of propriety and she cried, "No! Nabiki was over there...playing with Natsume!"

"Playing?" Talbain shot her a puzzled look, "Felt more to me like they were trying to kill each other."

"Oh, they just play rough like that sometimes," Kasumi tried to reassure him as she rose to her feet, compelling him to do likewise, "I have to go to her now...I cannot allow anything bad to happen to my sister."

"Are you nuts?" Talbain asked, "If Dimitri's mixing it up with her, then he'd consider you to be the icing on the cake, and if he gets both of you..."

"But he won't get both of us, will he, Talbain-san?" Kasumi wanly smiled at him, "Can I count on you to protect me?"

For a minute Talbain felt his knees turn to jelly, so powerful was the effect of her soft smile in making him feel like he would wag his tail and bow to her like a faithful puppy, rubbing up against her leg seeking her affection. He had to swallow twice before he could say, "S-Sure...sure thing, Kid...you know I won't let anything happen to you, I swear it."

"That is good," Kasumi paused to give him another soft look before adding, "Do you mind if I ask you a question before we go?"

"Uh...what?" Talbain asked.

"Do you think that I am still a good person...even though I'm also a vampire?" Kasumi asked.

For a moment it was all Talbain could do not to howl at the moon and want to rub himself up and down against her leg, but with great effort he said, "Yeah...oh yeah...definitely you're good...or at least...if you ain't, then there's no hope at all for the rest of us..."

"Thank you," Kasumi's smile became genuine, "I just needed to hear that."

And with that she took off, levitating off of the roof, floating away from the Furinkan clock tower and towards the scene of carnage and battle, leaving Talbain to stare at her in amazement, wondering if it were a trick of the moonlight or did it seem to him as though she were sprouting...wings...and definitely NOT the bat-winged variety either.

"Oh man, I need a cold bath," he softly moaned, then at once charged up his battle aura and took off into the night like a comet soaring to catch up with a winged night angel...

Dimitri spread wide his arms and cape and suddenly the shadows congealed around him and suddenly those shadows took on solid dimensions and rained down on them in a shower of pain that caused the Tendo Posse to scatter.

"Keep close together and watch each others' backs!" Frank called out as he and Donovan braced themselves to meet the attack that each man knew was coming.

Nabiki somersaulted and tumbled into a fighting crouch, only to look up in alarm as she sensed that danger was coming at her from above. She dodged just as Morgan landed with a thrust of her lower legs wrapped in shadows, gouging a deep hole in the ground as Nabiki recovered in time to meet this new challenge. Nor did she have long to wait as Morgan launched a spinning attack that was backed by a savagery and a power far greater than human, followed by yet another attack of congealing darkness as spikes of concentrated darkness attempted to impale Nabiki for all her fluid defensive maneuvers.

Ranma called up his flames to banish the darkness but found himself confronted by Dimitri, who managed to avoid his flame attacks and got in close enough to deliver the first devastating blow of the encounter, and had Ranma not turned with the blow to lessen its impact he would have been in for a world of pain far greater than he imagined.

As for Raptor, his made his presence immediately felt by landing in the midst of the others before shooting out bony protrusions that forced the others to dodge to avoid them. In doing so, however, Natsume, Mousse and Tatewaki fell prey to the attack by Anakaris, who spread out bandages to ensnare them in a web of his own making.

"Not good!" Frank declared, "They're going after the kids!"

"A logical strategy," Donovan observed, "They are the least experienced in combating Darkstalkers and by removing them early they weaken our own defenses."

"Not quite!" cried Darkwulf, who attacked suddenly by moving from the shadows to launch a strike at Frank that the larger man barely saw coming in time to avoid.

"It's like I said," Anita sighed from a quiet corner of the street that was left unaffected by the battle, "They're all idiots..."

"Kurumi!" Natsume cried, "Tatewaki!"

She started to take a step forward when Keiko's arm slammed into her chest, preventing her forward action.

"What are you doing, Arigami-san?" Natsume demanded.

"Saving your life," Keiko replied, "Look there!"

"Eh?" Natsume looked down only to see something that looked like an oddly colored disk right where her foot would have been, a disk roughly a decameter wide and marked with an odd pattern in its center.

"What is that?" she asked.

"Something the Mistress told me about," Keiko said slyly, "A Hex disk, specially booby-trapped to ensnare the unwary, and you were almost the booby it trapped here...isn't that right, Hougan?"

Her foot moved rapidly to flip the disk up and kick it off to the side, only to see it bounce off an invisible shield before the shadows parted to reveal the figure that had been hidden within the shadows, the Voodoo priest named Jumanji, who held up the magical weapons of his trade and regarded the redhead with a malevolent expression.

"Very clever," the Hougan remarked, "Whoever your teacher is, they cautioned you well...but not well enough to prepare yourself for this!"

And with that the Voodoo priest unleashed a deadly salvo of bee-like pellets that swarmed at the Kickboxer and Novice slayer and threatened the exposed areas of their skin with their poisoned stingers.

Nabiki was dodging Morgan's attacks as fast as the latter could send them, but once she sensed the opening she needed she reversed course and hammered her way in, taking the Succubus Queen by surprise as Nabiki used the Amaguriken fist to hurl a thousand punches Morgan's way in the space of several seconds. The speed and suddenness of her attack threw off Morgan's timing and gave Nabiki the opening that she needed for powering up a Ki-backed punch that caught the Succubus napping. Morgan flew back several meters before whipping around and landing gracefully in a crouch, then she glared back Nabiki's way while nursing a slight bruise that stung far less than the blow to her ego.

"So...you do have some talent for the fight after all, Missy," the bat-winged Succubus remarked with a distinctly Scottish brogue, "But it takes more than that to fight a Darkstalker battle," and with that she unleashed yet another shadow-attack, hurling spiked tentacles Nabiki's way, which seemed to connect only to go right through her intended target.

"What?" Morgan gasped, only to feel the side of her opponent's foot slam against the back of her head as Nabiki executed a perfect spinning axe-kick from a lateral position slightly off to the left and behind where the Succubus had placed her.

Dimitri found his own attacks blunted as Ranma called up both Fire and Water attacks to disperse his darkness and hold the self-proclaimed Master of the Night at bay. Try as he might the powerful Dimitri could neither lay a blow on his human opponent nor get close enough to even slightly wound him. Ranma kept disappearing and reappearing with unnerving regularity, and every time he counter-attacked it was with a new and different technique, some of which might well have been effective had not Dimitri blocked and deflected these blows by using his cape as a shield every time he sensed an attack coming.

"Not bad, Boy," Dimitri observed as he backed off to take the measure of this powerful human, "Elemental skills with martial arts...you've improved quite remarkably since our last battle."

"Heh, think so?" Ranma raised up his right arm again, "I've been taking lessons!"

This time he summoned up Latisha, his elemental familiar, and had her form into a dragon shape that reared high overhead and illuminated the battlefield with a terribly red glory that painted everything in the color of blood. Dimitri saw this and gaped, his own eyes registering dismay as he measured the extent of the boy's own potential.

"You have a pact with an elemental?" the Vampire Lord said, "I am actually impressed."

"Glad to hear it," Ranma said before gesturing with his hand, "Have fun!"

Instead of fleeing in terror, Dimitri resolved to hold his ground and raised his cape to deflect the onrush of the furious red dragon...

It was Jumanji's turn to be surprised as Natsume leaped forward and began whirling her rug-beater, kicking up a powerful wind that caught the swarming insects and sent them tumbling back towards their master. The Hougan barely had time to deflect his own attack sent back at him, then he summoned a string of beads that hung around his neck and cried, "Contain her!"

The beads expanded in size and flew from the Hougan's hand form an energy cage that surrounded Natsume. The novice Slayer was astonished to find her cold attacks could not penetrate this containment, but before Jumanji could press the advantage by constricting the cage upon her he belatedly had cause to wonder where her companion had went to...right up to the moment when she landed on his head with a downward spiral-kick that broke his concentration...

Raptor cast about for opponents to flay and saw that Anakaris was binding up three of the youths by his own magical wrapping, "'Ey, don't hog all of the action, Mate! Save a piece O'em for me!"

"Screw you," the Egyptian Mummy grated out from his dry, inflectionless voice, only to grunt in dismay when two of the cocooned forms he was holding at bay started shaking, and all at once sharp sheer blades appeared from the sides of one and slice the bandages open. The second formed a reddish line and split down the sides as Tatewaki's Ki-charged bokken was finally brought into play, and then the two men stood firm with weapons in hand, Tatewaki in a classic samurai pose and Mousse holding up an enormous pair of...Scissors?

"'Ey now, that ain't half bad," Raptor commented while Anakaris looked on in dismay, "Maybe these wimps'll be worth some entertainment after all..."

"Glad that you think so, Zombie," Tatewaki said coolly, "Because you have not even begun to take our measure."

"Kurumi?" Mousse turned to the third cocoon and gasped, "Kurumi-chan? Are you...?"

All at once the cocoon exploded, erupting in a wave of heat as Kurumi burst forward screaming out for breath and radiating Ki-force. Her eyes fairly blazed as she whipped out her hair ribbon, and all at once she swirled it into a blazing vortex that build up heat from friction and Ki that caused the Mummy to recoil, finding itself the zero-target of the young girl's righteous wrath...

"How's it going, Fur-face?" Frank asked as he landed a solid blow to the side of Darkwulf's head and sent the werewolf sprawling, "Long time no bash."

Darkwulf sprang to his feet once again and snarled, "You think a love-tap like that is going to affect me, Gargoyle? You have another thing coming!"

"Hey, watch the language!" Frank roared, "Some of my best friends are Gargoyles, and I won't have you insulting them by comparing them to me!"

"Interesting," Donovan said, "They are holding their own so far, but against the Dark Pack they are as yet overmatched."

"So, how long do we wait before bailing them out?" Anita asked.

"Not much longer, I suspect," Donovan replied, "This fight is barely even begun yet, but I..."

"Did you really believe that we had forgotten all about you, Damphyr?"

"Eh?" Donovan reacted

All at once the tall and powerful Priest-Exorcist was subjected to a glaring light that hammered him with its radiance, causing Donovan to experience acute pain as though his flesh were being flash-fried, and to his amazement he found the source of his displeasure came from a slender girl only a few years older than Anita, one he vaguely recognized though she was much transformed from what he once remembered.

Anita herself reacted with a gasp, betraying the first real emotion of the day (other than mild annoyance), "Asuko?"

The fiery young girl straightened up and smiled at her, "Nihao, Anita...long time no see."

"What are you doing here?" Anita asked, then she raised her voice and said, "What did you just do to Donovan?"

"Merely gave him a taste of the new me," the other girl replied as she summoned up the flames that she had used against the Damphyr priest, "But don't worry, I haven't forgotten you, and you'll be joining him shortly..."

Meanwhile Dimitri was wrestling with the fiery mouth of the elemental Dragon, bending his dark power to keeping its jaws fully parted as it sought to consume him, his heels dragging huge ruts in the asphalt of a previously undamaged stretch of roadway as he sought the leverage he would need to exert his full power.

"You are indeed quite formidable, Salamander," Dimitri remarked with more than a bit of strain showing through in his voice, "But my power is the strongest of the Demon world, and I will not be consumed by the likes of you!"

With great effort he ground his momentum to a halt, then bunched his muscles and exerted his great demonic reserves, and all at once he overthrew Latisha, whipping her around on her huge coiled body and slamming it against the dirt, which disrupted her concentration upon her semi-physical form, and all at once she reverted to primal energy and was absorbed back into the arm of her ally, Ranma Saotome.

Undaunted by the defeat of the fire queen, Ranma called upon the dragon that resided in his left arm and hurled her towards Dimitri, who looked on in sheer amazement as the Undine serpent came crashing towards him with the fury of a tidal wave. Only by taking to the air at the last second was the Vampire able to avoid being swept away by the tidal power contained within this blue-white dragon, and then he stared with renewed respect at Ranma, murmuring faintly, "He controls both fire and water spirits...there is much more to this boy than I first imagined..."

Meanwhile Anakaris had just managed to extinguish the flames that had been consuming his own bandages and was able to meet the next attack of the swift-  
moving Kurumi, but try as he might he could not ensnare the girl, who seemed to be everywhere at once, moving too fast to be detected as more than a mere blur, and when she struck her fists were like the hammer blows of some hummingbird-  
swift demoness, which seemed to be coming at him from all directions and kept him too much off balance to call upon his other abilities in some hope of defending himself against her.

But as the ancient Egyptian saying once was told, "Sometimes the simplest methods are the best," and as he could not see the young girl bedeviling him so he knew that she had to be passing very near to him in order to physically strike him, and all he required was to stick out an arm in her most likely lateral path and wait, and-sure enough-Kurumi went slamming into the obstruction at full force and managed to double herself over while the Mummy merely grunted.

"Kurumi-chan!" Mousse cried as he saw an opening and fired off a new volley, "DUCK!"

"Eh?" Anakaris declared as he turned to see every manner of sharp object hurtling towards him with no prayer of his own to avoid them, and he barely managed to get out, "SET-!" before he was struck by javelins, throwing knives, shuriken, hooked blades, halberds and sharp-bladed hatchets which buried themselves into the bandaged dry tissues of his withered flesh, staggering him and leaving the mummy to look like nothing so much as a human-shaped pin-  
cushion.

"Duck?" Kurumi winced as she straightened out once again rubbing her abdomen, "What made you call out a lame warning like that?"

"I don't know," the Chinese boy said, "Just seemed like the right thing to say at the moment."

They both turned with matching looks of dismay as Anakaris's body dissolved, only to reform itself into the shape of an enormous bandage-wrapped serpent, which same flicked out a tongue and hissed at them in a most disconcerting manner...

Not far away from them yet another battle royal was ensuing as Raptor found himself being held off by a single human, Tatewaki striking with rapid thrusts of his ever-trusty bokken, shattering bone spears and rib-cage thrusts that the Zombie King kept hurling in his direction.

"'Ey mate...what's the deal with that bloody toothpick O' yourn?" Raptor taunted, "Can't you fight man-to-man without it?"

"Certainly," Tatewaki replied, "But you are not a man, Fiend of the Pits, just a thing that stands between me and the side of my beloved."

"Oh now, is that a heroic stance you're taking? How romantic," Raptor grinned like a rictus, "I'm, almost too choked up to cry, or I would if I had tear ducts..."

"Then by all means, permit me to send you back to the ground where you shall weep and gnash your teeth for all eternity," Tatewaki boasted while calmly charging his weapon with his Ki to make certain that it retained the force of his spirit behind it, which made the wooden blade far more deadly than a real sword in shattering and splintering Raptor's attempts to reach him.

Meanwhile Natsume had hardly been idle in her peril and was drawing in her own Ki to resist the Hougan's attempt to crush her, her battle aura flaring so that she was able to repel the charge of its constriction. Jumanji staggered back as the effects of his spell rebounded back his way, but once more he recovered his bearings and raised his staff to conjure up his power...

And promptly went down from a powerful kick delivered to the back of his head as Keiko managed to get around behind him relatively unnoticed to execute a perfectly timed sneak blow.

"Y'know, they say it's wrong to kick a man when he's down," the Kickboxer remarked before delivering a second blow that earned a groan from the recumbent Hougan, "But frankly I can't think of a better time to kick him, can you?"

"Many thanks," Natsume nodded before going on to aid Tatewaki in his battles against Raptor.

Nabiki sensed a sudden surge in the power levels of her own opponent and took appropriate evasive action. The next instant she felt that power leap out from Morgan's hand as she cried out, "SOUL CRUSH!" and blasted the space where she had been standing just the instant before this.

Realizing that she could no longer indulge in taking the measure of her opponent, Nabiki called upon her Shadowskills and struck back with a surging wave of Ki-powered energy that connected against Morgan's hastily erected shields and cracked them like an eggshell, subjecting the Succubus to staggering power levels that actually drove the exiled Princess of Makai back a dozen paces, only to recover once again with a resilience that her human assailant found quite amazing.

"Now that one was a rude shot," Morgan said as she rubbed the back of her hand against her chin, "Looks like toying with you is no longer an option. Let's see how you deal with this attack!"

Again Nabiki felt a shift in power levels and braced herself to take evasive action, but instead of a directed attack what she felt come her way was a wave of absorbent energy that started sucking in her Ki and left her feeling considerably weaker than before. Nabiki braced herself and tried to resist as she felt a pull not unlike Miss Hinako's Battle-Aura draining Happo Setsu attack, but as she sought to withstand the effect something curious happened to her...and she felt as if a part of herself was being pulled loose from its moorings. To her amazement a ghostly shadow-form stretched out from her body to take shape in the air between herself and the Queen of Makai, and to her utter amazement she recognized this form as her masculine side, Kaneda.

Morgan saw the outline take form before her eyes and suddenly her power slackened as she stared at the handsome countenance in wonder. The curiously Bishonen allure of Kaneda hit her full-force like a potent wave of masculine attraction, and as she found herself distracted by the vision of indescribable male virtue she ceased to call upon her dark powers and instead looked on with the fascination of a woman suffering a mysterious enchantment.

The effect lasted just long enough for the male shadow to snap back into Nabiki, and with a start she felt her power renew itself as her cursed form somehow bolstered her female half to twice her normal level. The sudden disappearance of the male "god of lust" caused a groan of remorse to escape from Morgan, and then she blinked her eyes and stared at the woman whom she had been facing and said, "You...you have two souls overlapping in one body! You two people, one masculine, one feminine, and the former is all male! Describe this!"

"Hey, it's a curse," Nabiki said warily, disliking the idea that her "Kaneda Fan Club" was about to grow by yet another member, "I sometimes switch genders...wanna make something of it?"

"You...call what you become a curse?" Morgan let her disbelief show frankly, "How can such a thing be? Curses are meant to afflict humanity, and yet you...you ennoble it in some strange, unfathomable way. I simply must have your energy! I must taste this masculine potency mixed with female virtue for myself!"

Nabiki thought that she was prepared for anything, but all at once Morgan's shadows congealed all around her and she found herself wrapped up in tendrils of solidified darkness, held fast beyond her ability to resist though Nabiki refused to cease attempting to free herself, especially as she saw Morgan's eyes glow with lust and an unnatural hunger.

All at once Ranma sensed the danger to his wife and instantly broke off his attack against Dimitri, vanishing right before the Vampire Lord's eyes and appearing once again behind Morgan, striking so fast that the Succubus was barely aware of him before she was struck a dozen times in a number of key places...and all at once her tendrils of darkness dissolved and Morgan folded like a card house, falling to her knees and clutching at her own body.

"What?" Dimitri had thought the human rash to turn his back on him, but seeing the effect of this new attack upon his most dangerous ally caused him to break off all thoughts of renewing the battle. Instead he watched in dumbfounded amazement as Morgan rolled upon the ground and writhed in moans of unmistakable pleasure. Morgan started to frig herself quite vigorous and pulled down her top (not such an amazing feat since the real question had long been what held it up in the first place) before playing with her breasts and nipples, her other hand rubbing her clit with much enthusiasm.

"Thanks, Ranma-kun," Nabiki smiled at her husband, "That was pretty good timing."

"Hey, no problem, Nab-chan," Ranma smiled, "Now, what say we team up and beat up the real bad guy?"

"Better yet, let's switch opponents," Nabiki said as she turned to face Dimitri, "You monitor the bat-winged chick there and keep her busy while I pay my respects to fang-face."

"But...!" Ranma started to protest when he saw Morgan attempt to claw him as though seeking to drain his energy, and without another pause he became a blur once again, striking her a dozen more times in areas that reduced the Succubus to helpless pleas for release and mercy...

"Hey, watch out!" Keiko cried out as she saw Anita standing in the path of an onrushing fireball being hurled by another youngster, then the Kickboxer cringed back as a wave of heat struck the place where the younger girl was standing, only to be dissipated as a globe of invisible force rose up to protect her.

"What are you doing this, Asuko?" Anita asked, "Why are you helping Dimitri?"

"Helping him?" the other girl scoffed, "Don't make me laugh! We're in a temporary alliance, nothing more! I serve a greater power than that Eurotrash has-been. He's just a tool in a larger aim, but you don't need to trouble yourself with the details, Anita old buddy...where you're going they don't even allow visitation...!"

All at once Keiko popped up behind the older adolescent and struck with both hands aimed for the nerves on both sides of her neck, and like that the girl named Asuko rolled up her eyes in her skull and collapsed like a puppet with her strings cut. Keiko shook her hands and felt a tingling along their edges as she stared down at her nominal "victim" and said, "Jeez, what is it with kids these days? Friend of yours, Anita-chan?"

"No...not exactly," Anita replied with just a hint of sadness in her voice, "But she might have been...once. Thank you for not hurting her too much."

"Hey, beating up on kids is the stuff of bad guys, not heroes," Keiko winked, "And I can't stand to see anybody pick on somebody weaker than themselves, even if it's another kid, know what I'm saying?"

Anita just blinked, but there was a trace of recognition in her eyes as she saw the redhead move off in search of other people in need of her assistance.

"Incredible," Dimitri averred as he stared down at the uneven battle between Ranma and the succubus queen, "How is he doing that? Morgan is in such exquisite torment..."

"Hey, Ranma-kun's good at that sort of stuff," Nabiki said as she cracked her knuckles and gave a confident smile at the vampire, "Me? I'm more the leg-  
breaker type myself..."

Dimitri eyed Nabiki levelly and said, "It is true that I wish nothing less than to do battle with you once again, Woman...but my interests have changed, as has my focus. As such I will permit you and your friends to continue to live for now, but I am taking your husband with me."

"What?" Nabiki blinked, "Ranma-kun? No way! I'll...!"

All at once Dimitri shifted to a fully demonic form and unleashed a new attack that caused Nabiki to leap back and erect a psychic barrier with her Ki. The energy kicked up loose dirk, gravel and asphalt and sent it hurtling towards her like a weapon, but she was able to deflect these bits with a hasty Amaguriken maneuver, yet when the air cleared once again she could no longer see Dimitri, who had moved so fast that she had barely tracked his movement.

Ranma was just starting to look up from his own attempt at blocking the gravel when he sensed something moving from directly behind him. He started to turn with the full intent on raising his defenses, but Dimitri gave him no chance whatsoever and all at once a fist that struck like a hammer delivered a crushing blow to the back of his head. As tough and Ki-reinforced as Ranma's constitution was, the blow knocked him instantly unconscious, and as he slumped Dimitri gathered him up into his brawny arms, much to the horror of Nabiki.

"Ranma-kun!" she cried as she started to lurch forward.

Dimitri was a bit faster, however, and took to the air, spreading leathery wings as he laughed to see the girl sail past in a helpless tackle that sent her sprawling into a conveniently placed pile of trash lining a nearby alley.

"Ey-no fair double-teamin'!" Raptor complained as he found himself hemmed in by Natsume and Tatewaki, "Oh, all right then...if that's the way ye wants it!"

All at once the Zombie-King rose up from the ground and caused his body to swirl as dark energies congealed around him. Natsume felt her hackles rise and automatically went on the defensive, but Tatewaki suddenly thrust himself into the space between her and the Zombie with sword raised up as he cried, "Watch out, my love!"

That was when a wave of darkness sucked out the light in the immediate surroundings about Raptor, and suddenly Tatewaki felt as if something were being ripped out of his body, causing him to stagger forward as the blue light surrounding his bokken was sucked out like the flame of a candle.

"Tachi-sama!" Natsume cried, sensing the draining of Ki energies in the space around her iinazuke.

"No...no...I won't...let you take me...!" Tatewaki grated out as he willed himself to resist the soul draining.

"Fight all ye like, Mate," Raptor gloated, "Makes the feast all the more delicious for me! I likes souls with some fight to 'em, knows what I means? And yours smells like it's teaming with virtues...the blood of a martyr, a rare kind I likes to savor!"

"Tachi-sama!" Natsume cried as she brought her rug-beater into play, only to feel her Ki energy get sucked out before she could create a freeze ray.

"Stay back...my love..." Tatewaki snarled, "I...will not...let him take you!"

"Ho, you're the real deal all right," Raptor mused, "A soul like yours is gonna be-WHAT?"

All at once something huge bit the air and shattered Raptor's bony body into a hundred pieces, scattering them in the vortex of his own dark creation.

Tatewaki staggered and fell to one knee as Natsume went to his side, one eye tracing the path of the humongously large blade that had come to their rescue and seeing it sail back to the outstretched palm of Donovan, who was just then recovering from the injuries that he had taken.

"Looks like your side's losing, Dark Wolfie!" Frank taunted as he slammed his foe into the side of a building, then energized his fists and unleashed a blast of electrical energy that caused the werewolf to howl in agony and dismay.

The effect was only temporary, however, and Darkwulf was on his feet again with a snarl, "You can't keep that up forever, Freak! You'll run out of juice a lot sooner than I will!"

"Oh, like I'm soo scared about that," Frank snorted, "Why don't I just rip your head off and see if you can regenerate from that..."

All at once a figure fell into the space between Frank and Darkwulf, facing towards one and not the others as he growled, "Back off, Frank...this rat bastard is MINE!"

"John?" Frank paused, "About time you got here. What happened, sniff a fire hydrant?"

"Cute," Talbain replied, "But I got diverted seeking you guys out...and I wound up babysitting the assignment."

"What?" Frank exclaimed in shock, "You brought her here? But..."

"To me, my allies!" Dimitri cried out, "This battle is postponed until later...for now I have what I need from these fools! We will dispose of them later!"

"You might have to speak up a bit, guy!" Keiko called out, "I think most of them are taking a nap at the minute."

Dimitri curled a lip and smiled without humor, "You may have a point on that. As allies go...they leave something to be considered, but as they say in Romania, good help is hard to come by..."

"Wait!" a voice called out, startling everyone as heads turned to see a new player arriving on the scene, floating down on invisible lines to hover a short distance from Dimitri before saying, "I am the one you want...do not take Ranma-  
kun. Nabiki needs her husband."

"You?" Dimitri reacted in dismay, "You come to me...now... and of your own volition?"

"Kasumi!" Nabiki called out, "What are you doing here? Keep back from him!"

"I want to help, Nabiki," Kasumi said as she hovered in the air above the heads of the others, and like that all fighting stopped as heads turned to gaze up at her softly glowing presence, "I can't stand by while people are hurt because of me. All of you are trying so hard, but some of you were hurt, and all because of my problem."

"That ain't true, Miss Tendo!" Frank called up, "Dimitri's bad news and he likes to hurt people..."

"And he came here looking to fight me!" Nabiki added, "You were just a casualty, an afterthought that he used to get at me!"

"That might have been true at the beginning, Nabiki," Kasumi turned to regard Nabiki, "But it's no longer the case...is it, Mister Dimitri?"

"So...you are intelligent enough to figure that much out on your own, are you?" Dimitri mused darkly, "But you are still a fool if you think to dissuade me by appealing to me now for mercy."

"What if I offered you myself in place of my little brother?" Kasumi asked, "Will you let Ranma go if I agree to go along with you quietly?"

"What?" Nabiki reacted.

"No way!" Kurumi exclaimed.

"Oneechan?" Natsume asked in evident confusion.

"Don't do it, Miss Tendo!" Frank called out, "Dimitri doesn't make bargains, he breaks them, and his word is never to be trusted!"

"On the contrary, my word is my bond," Dimitri smiled, "It is the details of my agreements with which you take exception, old friend..."

"I'm not your friend!" Frank roared.

"On the contrary," Dimitri replied with an entirely serious expression, "All of my worthy enemies are my friends. Who else can give me battles to make the tedium of immortality seem worth the while? Only in the exchange of blood and violence can I find true companionship...but this youth has shown me something new to my experience, a better way of enlivening my hours, and that is why I will not give him up even for your delectable presence, Miss Tendo. I will come for you at another time, but for now, I will bid you a good evening."

"Dimitri!" Donovan called out, "Do you honestly believe that we will permit you to leave with an innocent youth as your captive?"

"Yeah," Talbain agreed, "And you're allies are washouts! These kids cleaned their clocks but good..."

"Merely a temporary setback, I assure you," Dimitri replied, "But don't concern yourself with such trifling matters, my poor misguided brother...soon enough you will know what my true plans are, and you will marvel at the intricacy of my schemes, especially when the blood begins to flow and my pawns make ready to raise the score. Fare you well, my dearest of friends, my enemies...and to you, Miss Tendo, we shall meet again very shortly."

And with that Dimitri called forth his dark power and was wreathed in a cocoon that surrounded both him and Ranma.

"Dhylec, come forth!" Donovan cried and once more the massive sword let his hand and sailed towards Dimitri's dark shadow, only to pass harmlessly through the vanishing black shadow with no sign at all that it had any effect upon the vampire and his passage.

"Ranma!" Nabiki cried out in dismay and horror.

"Ranma-kun?" Kasumi stared in abject disbelief.

"Damn, got away!" Talbain snarled, turning a harsh glare towards Darkwulf, "But you ain't going anywhere, Cuz-huh? Where'd he go?"

"What the hell?" Frank glanced around, "Anakaris and Jumanji are gone too...and the kid, Asuko, with 'em."

"They must have gone together," Donovan remarked, "But Morgan is still here...which is curious since you would think that Dimitri would value her above all of the others."

"There is one difference," Nabiki pointed out with a snarl, "They were all unconscious, and she's not."

"Then what say we give the lady something to cry about," Keiko said as she circled near to where the succubus was softly moaning, "If we can make her talk we can find out what that Dimitri creep is really up to."

"Wait a minute!" Mousse cautioned, "She's a succubus, right? That means her touch could be dangerous."

"More than you know, Kid," Frank warned, "So stay the hell away from her or-!"

All at once Morgan uncoiled from her fetal position and sprang to life with a speed that caught even the Kickboxer by surprise, and all at once Keiko was gripped in the hands of the powerful demoness, who smiled as she backed away to keep the others within the range of her vision, shouting out, "NOBODY MOVE! Especially you, my old comrades! This lady may be strong, but I could snap her neck before ye even bat an eyelash!"

"Keiko!" Nabiki snarled, "Let her go, or I'll-!"

"Ye'll mourn her loss?" Morgan smiled, "I'll do it, ye know...much though I'd rather do this..."

Keiko gasped and stiffened, and suddenly her eyes went round as she clearly felt something that made the others of the Tendo Posse realize that more than just her life was in imminent danger.

"Morgan!" Donovan spoke sharply, "You may be a killer, but even you know some small measure of honor! Do this and you will be no better than Dimitri!"

"Now there's a fair crop," Morgan smiled as her accent became more pronounced than before, "I be as bad as him? Ye fools! I need him to win back my kingdom from me father! Dimitri is my ally, nothing more than that, but I'd have to be a thousand times as rotten as ye know me to be before I'd stoop to the likes of him!"

"Kill that child and you make a good first step in that direction," Dimitri snarled.

Morgan regarded the werewolf with a glance, her eyes glistening faintly in the moonlight before she said, "Ye make a fair point of that, John...but, ah...this lassie be a fine one! She's so full of life, and the smell...she's a real kick, that's for sure..."

"Let me go...or you'll find out how good I can...oooohhh!" Keiko slumped as her knees turned to water.

"Ah now...what be this?" Morgan smiled, "Such a strongly sensual nature...and the memories...oho! That explains why ye drew me interest! Ye're a lover O' yer own kind...well, I've tipped a few on that side meself on more'n one occasion..."

"Is it just me or does it seem like her Japanese is becoming more slurred?" Mousse murmured softly.

"Now that you mention it...she sounds almost as if she's...drunk..." Kurumi noted.

"Let her go now," Natsume demanded, "If you walk away and leave her alone we won't have to hurt you."

"Hurt me?" Morgan sounded more drunk than before, "Tha's a laugh...as if ye could hurt me worse than I be hurtin'...very well...all done now..."

With that she released her hold upon Keiko and tossed her into the ruined street, where Keiko fell like a rag doll with her strings cut loose. The succubus staggered on her feet a bit while grinning like a maniac, much to the collectively appalled expressions of both Darkstalkers and the Posse.

"Keiko-san," Kasumi breathed softly as she lowered herself down to the ground to kneel to the side of the fallen Kickboxer.

"Ye!" Morgan spat the word, "Yer the...bitch who Dimitri wants...not me!"

Kasumi blinked, "I beg your pardon?"

"You're...dirty now...you've got his taint..." Morgan snarled, "He wants yer blood, not mine...he wants to dirty you...not me...ye...ye...harlot!"

"Excuse me?" Kasumi said, "I don't believe that we've been introduced. You're...Morgan Anslat-san?"

"So ye know me name," Morgan straightened up, "Well...mark me well, lil' Missy...afore I let ye take me place at his side...on the throne O' blood...I'll see that pretty face O' yers..."

Kasumi turned her full attention towards the succubus and said very firmly, "You're not being very coherent, and I do not believe you're accusations are warranted about me. I do not want to take your place on anything, but if you hurt my friends...I will not let you."

"Ye...not let...me?" Morgan put the full weight of her scorn and disbelief into her expression.

"Yes," Kasumi replied, "I can tell that you are sad, but that does not excuse your behavior. I think you had better leave now before my sister, Nabiki, does something we will both regret."

Morgan looked as if she were about to lunge for Kasumi, and Nabiki tensed, charging up a fist and preparing to unleash a Chi bolt when...something strange began to happen...a look of fear crossed the lovely face of the succubus from Makai and all at once Morgan backed away, her face draining of all other emotions.

"N-Nay...ye can't be...ye...yer not...but Dimitri said..." she gasped.

"Dimitri is a liar," Donovan said harshly, "You know that as well as anyone, Morgan. Don't be a fool and waste your life over him."

"Life?" Morgan gave them all a crooked smile, "What d'ye know about me life, Donny-boy? Ye gonna write a book about it? An' anyway...what I just found out about miss Perfect here be worth all the tea in China. Bye now."

All at once she drew upon shadow to surround herself, then she, too, vanished into the night as cleanly as if it folded up to receive her.

"How the hell...?" Frank said, "Donovan, did that feel like a teleport spell to you?"

"No," Donovan replied, "But...I sensed something else at work here. There is another power at work...and I think it may portend worse things than the usual schemes of Dimitri."

"No fooling about that," Kurumi remarked before turning to Nabiki, who was kneeling down over Keiko along with Natsume and Tatewaki, "How is Keiko-san?"

"Not good I fear," Tatewaki looked up, "She is dying...her breath is shallow and...her body..."

"It looks so withered, like a peach left to dry in the sun," Natsume said in horror.

"Kei-chan?" Nabiki's breath caught in her throat.

"It's as we feared," Donovan said, "Morgan's touch drains life, and she was sucking the vitality out of your friend even as we were speaking."

"Must have been quite a draw," Frank noted, "It even gave Morgan a high, like she was draining a gallon of scotch in one slurp."

"Kei-chan?" Nabiki cried again, seeing the redhead open her eyes, her breath as shadow as her face was wan and wrinkled, and then her eyes rolled up in her head and her breathing halted altogether, to which the leader of the Tendo Posse cried out, "KEEEIIII-CHAAANNN...?!"

Part One-Hundred-Nineteen.

Nodoka remained perfectly still as the Blood Mother leaned forward, and then Ling-Ko brought her lips up to the tender throat of the other woman and with great ceremony paused before parting her lips and baring her fangs, and then she brought her mouth down to "kiss" the neck of the Saotome Matron, her teeth sinking into soft warm flesh and drawing forth the rich salty, coppery tinged flavor that was the life sustaining essence that she was after.

Nodoka only made a slight, soft noise upon being so pricked, then she gasped as a warmth passed through her that was wholly indescribable. For a moment she felt linked to the other woman, then something else passed between them...and Ling-Ko withdrew her fangs, pausing to lick the wound clean of every droplet of blood, leaving only the closed marks of her "kiss" in passing, at which point she smiled and looked fondly upon the other woman.

"There," the Blood Mother pronounced, "I have laid my mark upon you. Now you and your family are officially under my protection and none shall trifle with you without incurring my wrath. Tsiel tribe welcomes you, and you are a sister to my house. May the sun and the moon shine down upon you with equal benediction, and may your family grow and prosper to bring honor to your name and ancestors."

"And on behalf of the Saotome-Family family, I thank you for your benediction," Nodoka replied with equal tones of warmth and sincerity.

Ling-Ko touched hands with the other woman and gave a look of warm affection, "You have no idea how honored I am that you have agreed to join your house to mine. I have many human friends, but I find you and yours to be of special interest to me and not just because of the curious destiny that fate has visited upon you. I rejoice in finding a new sister, and I relish the chance to meet with your niece, Kasumi, that I might welcome her as yet another blood sister."

"You will like Kasumi when you meet her," Nodoka reassured, "Everyone does. She's such an exceptionally loving and dutiful child that I often wish that she were mine, though I am just as equally content that she is a part of my family, if only by adoption."

"I confess to being more than a little curious about just what sort of person she might be," Ling-Ko remarked, "Yet from your description...and the memories we now share...I can sense that she has a good soul and a beautiful heart who will bring credit to any family who joins her to their household. So tell me, does she have any boyfriends that she's fond of?"

"Well...no," Nodoka admitted, "But there is one she...sort of likes...and another man who likes her a lot, though Kasumi does not see it..."

"Interesting," Ling-Ko leaned forward, "I look forward to hearing all about the details. So...are these men in her life both handsome young studs, or just average fellows? I certainly hope that, if it is the latter case, they are of an understanding nature since Kasumi will have special needs that will requite an enlightened husband to support and care for her. Such men are rare in my experience, but I certainly do hope that your Kasumi will wind up lucky."

"Well," Nodoka confided, "The man who has had a crush on Kasumi since she was a young woman is a doctor friend of ours who is quite a remarkable fellow. He is a gifted healer with a magic touch that can soothe the aches and strains of the body...and he is quite the handsome one too, though more than a bit shy when it comes to dealing with Kasumi."

"I like the sound of him already," Ling-Ko happily beamed, "So...why does he not take the initiative and confess his true feelings?"

"Well," Nodoka began, "The truth is...whenever Kasumi comes anywhere near to him, the doctor tends to go all to pieces...he's quite excitable around her as he is with none of his patients, and though he is a man of extraordinary even temper and wisdom, he becomes a clown and a fool over Kasumi. It really is quite remarkable, but I believe it is a token sign of the depth of his affection for my niece."

"Sounds very much like love to me," Ling-Ko smiled, "I might like to meet this doctor, he sounds like quite a catch for your niece..."

As the two new friends started chatting together like old schoolmates catching up on the days of their youth, Natsumi and Miyuki were keeping company with the spiritualist, Himiko Se, whose quiet and mature personality made her an implicitly trustworthy confidant, especially in light of the presence of so many other sorts who tended to make the off-duty policewoman more than a wee bit nervous.

"So, you're not really a vampire yourself, but you share some of their qualities?" Natsumi asked.

"Yes, something like that," Himiko replied, "Actually, I'm what they call a Familiar, someone who is bonded to a vampire and can act as a source of nourishment and companionship in times of need, but I'm still mostly human."

"Nourishment?" Miyuki asked.

"Companionship?" Natsumi blinked.

"Yes," Himiko smiled, revealing her own sharpened canines, "Sometimes a human and a vampire form a blood pact to share essence without the one having to fully cross over into becoming the other. I'm bonded this way to Miyu, and I am her familiar. She drinks my blood when other sources are not available and I produce excess amounts of hemoglobin to compensate for my losses. Normal vampires can't easily replenish their blood levels since their bodies tend to feed on the Eurythecytes and Plasma that human bodies regularly produce. The degree to which they lose blood on a daily basis varies from one tribe to the next, and some Vampire strains lose the ability to regenerate blood altogether. Goya are a prime example of the latter case and that's why they need vast amounts of blood to keep their unholy life-force going. Nosferatu is another strain that can't produce hemoglobin, which is one of many reasons why they resemble bloodless corpses. Miyu's strain, the Shinma, produce blood of a different type than is most nourishing to a human, so she needs human blood to synthesize the enzymes that she needs in order to stimulate her body into producing the actual type of blood that she needs. It only takes a little to kickstart her body's production of these enzymes, and that's why she requires much less blood than other types of vampires. It's also why Nightbreed like her can get by with passing herself off as a human and not be detected for her more...exotic qualities. At any rate, the medium of blood allows for the transfer of vitality from victim to vampire, and this is why there is the connection between Miyu and me is symbiotic rather than parasitic in nature."

"You sound quite fond of her," Miyuki noted, "Have you known each other for a very long time?"

Himiko softly chuckled at that and said, "Not so long...a little more than a decade, and when I first laid eyes on her I thought she was the very devil incarnate, but now...yes, I suppose I am rather fond of Miyu-chan. You have to understand something, though...she may look like a young girl barely fourteen or fifteen years of age, but in reality she's almost fifteen years older than I am. We met when I was a little girl and she was still new to her Vampirism...and she put her mark on me and made me forget all about it, until I was an adult and had pursued a career as a Spiritualist and professional Exorcist. That was how I came to know her again...I was investigating a case, which I thought resembled normal vampirism, but instead it turned out to be a renegade Shinma that was at fault. I was startled at Miyu's abilities, her total contrast to anything that I would have expected in a vampire of her nature, but gradually I got to know her, and to accept that she was that same devil girl who had so often haunted my nightmares. Now...I suppose I could be counted as one of the very few that she genuinely considers to be her friend. It's not easy getting close to her...but the sharing of blood tends to erase normal obstacles and has given me a deeper insight into the meaning of what it is to be her, and with it has come a certain sad acceptance of the loneliness of her burden."

"Burden?" Natsumi repeated.

Himiko nodded to where Miyu was consulting with Larva, Yui and Nagi, "She bears the weight of her entire clan upon her shoulder. Originally it was the scheme of the Shinma Masters to use her as a pawn to infiltrate the mortal realms...she was to be their sacrifice, their Judas Goat, whatever you might want to call it. Instead she upset their plans and wrecked their timetable, first by enslaving Larva, then by accidentally unleashing a group of renegade Shinma into the mortal realm. Miyu made it her duty to hunt those Shinma down and to banish them back into the shadows, and then one by one she defeated the Masters to assert her authority as their Princess. She now protects humanity from the wrath of the Shinma, and under her wise dominion they have grown to accept a certain truce that has held for most of the past decade. Mind you, more than a few Shinma would like nothing better than to overthrow her rule so that they can fulfill their long held schemes for plaguing the human realm as their masters from the shadows. Miyu knows this and must constantly be on vigil against it, and she can know little peace beyond those moments when she consorts with innocent humanity, with whom she must always play the role of a young girl innocent of the things of the Dark. She is a Princess with few loyal subjects...but Larva and I...we do what we can to help ease her burden."

Natsumi and Miyuki exchanged looks over this, then the former said, "So...she's really a good guy?"

"Yes," Himiko smiled, "I suppose she is good, though not without faults of her own, and she is trapped eternally in the body of a young girl with all the attendant needs and hormones that cause her such intense frustration. Imagine if you wanted to be like other girls and knew it was impossible? She has flirted with dozens of boyfriends, but in the end all of her attempts at relationships come to nothing, which only adds to the loneliness of her burden."

"I...see," Miyuki said dubiously, "But she still must feed on blood, and I can't quite believe that yours is enough to sustain her."

"No, but I provide what I can to help out," Himiko smiled, then she surprised the two policewomen by undoing the top buttons to her shirt and peeling it down to reveal the left side of her upper body, and there-right above the bra that she was wearing-they could see fresh bite marks that were just a few millimeters above where her left nipple would be showing were she braless. Without meaning to the two humans gulped a bit and unconsciously felt their own breasts start to tingle in sympathetic resonance, which was both exciting and disturbing since they could only just barely imagine what it felt like to be bit there.

"I don't really mind it anymore," Himiko smiled as she buttoned up her shirt once again, "Every time she drinks from me she is avoiding the need to feed somewhere else, though Miyu is always careful to select her victims and never drains them beyond their means of sustaining themselves. She rarely kills, and this is not just because the normal practice among Vampires these days is to avoid needless killings. Her bite can send one into a dreamlike state, or have other beneficial qualities, depending on how she chooses to use her connection. Often she will ease the burden of someone tormented by need or loss, but I think what she wants more than anything is to find that special friend who would not mind sharing her loneliness with her, either a boyfriend or a girlfriend who would not mind going through eternity at her side as her companion."

"In other words another vampire," Natsumi said, "Or someone who wouldn't mind becoming one for her sake."

"Exactly," Himiko nodded, "As a Familiar I gain certain...abilities of my own without having to cross over to becoming a full Shinma. I am stronger than a normal woman, faster, with all of my physical abilities magnified accordingly, and I have a connection to the spirit realm that has intensified the natural gifts that nature has bestowed upon me. I do not age like a normal woman and I heal very quickly when injured. I'm not as strong as a real vampire, nor do I have a need for blood, but I can drink it if I have to, and it will revitalize me. You might say I'm kind of a halfway Vamp, and with all of my senses enhanced to a degree that you could not imagine I find the nightlife suits me well. The one downside is that if I am either killed or reduced to a state of near-death I risk the danger of reverting into a full vampire, after which I could be considered something of a novice Shinma."

"I...see..." Miyuki slowly noted, "In other words...you share a part of Miyu-  
san's essence."

"Her blood is mixed with mine, yes," Himiko replied, "But the agency that causes full fledged vampirism is in temporary remission. It will remain dormant unless death itself causes it to become active. I suppose that makes me a kind of sleeper Vamp, a not uncommon condition as there are a great many people who walk in the day with the taint of Vampire blood who never realize it until something causes it to become active, just as it was for Miyu-chan on the day when she converted."

"How can someone be born of a vampire?" Natsumi asked while scratching her head, "Aren't they, like, the walking dead or something?"

"Goya vampires are," Himiko explained, "Their bodies are trapped in a kind of limbo state that's partly ethereal, partly solid. That's why they crumble to bits whenever you disrupt their central nervous systems...they literally get torn apart down to the molecular level by the sudden loss of equilibrium between states. Loire and other more "pure" strains are far more stable than this, and if you kill one they can still be revived by various occult means. With Jezril it's even more intense...you literally have to cut the head off and burn it to ashes, then bury it separately from the body, or else there's a real chance that their bodies could be put back together. About the only way to be certain of death with a vampire is to cremate the body and scatter the ashes over holy ground, or moving water. Some part of a vampire is thus trapped on the ethereal plane and cannot cross back over to the living world without some type of connection. That's the reason why Dracula is still with us in spite of numerous reports of his death, but when it comes to reproduction...well...some strains of Vamp do have fully active metabolisms, greatly slowed down from normalcy, but still strong enough to go through a sustained fertile cycle. They can have sex like normal humans and get pregnant, and then they bear their young in the normal human manner. A child born of the union of two vampires is called a 'Pure Blood,' while the offspring of a union of human and vampire is called a Vampyr, while those who become vampires who started out as full blood humans are merely "Turned" and are considered mere Peons. It's the Pure Bloods who sit at the top of the food chain...except, of course, for those rare individuals who are born with specific traits that turn them into Masters...or Blood Queens, as in the case of Ling-Ko."

"What is a Blood Queen anyway?" Natsumi asked, "Or Blood Mother...whatever you want to call her?"

"A Blood Mother is a stage beyond the level of a Master," Himiko said in a very sober tone of voice, "An extremely rare combination of factors produces one, and they're like Queen Bees in that normal vampires are compelled to bow down to them and respect their influence, much like Leguire over there, not that he likes chafing under anyone's heel as you may have noticed."

"I see," Miyuki said, "So you have a sort of social hierarchy that holds everything in place?"

"That's right," Himiko nodded, "About a thousand years ago the Masters of Asia and Europe got together and formed The Council of Blood, the supreme authority for all Vampires, as means of holding at bay the wrath of the human world, which might otherwise have organized to destroy us. This was about the time when the Catholic Church was starting to organize the first of many pogroms against anyone who lived outside of the authority of its clerics, and similar threats were being posed to Vampires the world over by The Council of Wizards, and by a group we know of called the Watchers...humans who keep track of occult events, and who raise their pet Slayer as a means of curbing our numbers. Before there had been rare conclaves where Vampire chiefs got together and discussed territorial disputes between the various tribes, but the Council was organized to maintain a kind of peace between the human and Nightbreed worlds. About five hundred years ago it went through an organizational shuffle, and a certain Romanian Count came to prominence as a Master among Masters. You've heard something about his legends, but you don't know the full story and he's not totally evil or the devil incarnate or the reborn Judas Iscariot, or any such nonsense as Hollywood likes to think up. His father was a mass murderer who got on the wrong side of the Eastern Orthodox church, who ironically were responsible for his conversion to Vampirism, but his son was the one who gained the power of a Pure Born Master, and he-as much as anybody else on the present council-has ruthlessly maintained the peace so that even most Goya are afraid of him and refuse to cross paths with any of his agents."

"So what makes this Dimitri character so different?" Natsumi asked.

"Dimitri...is Dracula's nephew," Himiko explained, "He was born a century and a half ago in a quiet Romanian village to the Count's younger sister, Ludmilla, but his father was a Rakshasa...about the nastiest type of shapeshifting demon around. He came to her pretending to be another vampire, but by the time he left his seed in her the truth had already come to light. This is the same guy who later attacked a woman of the east who gave birth to Donovan Bane, so in a way Bane and Dimitri are half-brothers by the same Dark father, and they hate each other with an intensity that you could not possibly imagine."

"Whoah," Natsumi exclaimed, "That big guy with the gold eyes and the impossibly huge sword is related to this Dimitri creep?"

"Yes," Himiko said sadly, "But Donovan is almost the complete opposite of Dimitri, a soul in torment who sought refuge in the priesthood of a benevolent Yogi. He studied to learn how to control his own dark power, to temper his thirst for blood and to master his inward demonic nature. He is a Dhampyr, a special breed of half-breed human, but he tends to favor his human side and shuns the darkness that is within him, and he's one of the most powerful Darkstalkers around...and one of the saddest. If it wasn't for the companionship of Anita..."

"That child with the sad eyes and the headless doll?" Miyuki clarified.

"The very same," Himiko replied, "Anita was born with a gift...a very powerful one, but when she was six years of age she witnessed the death of her entire village during a raid staged by Dimitri, who was seeking to steal a relic from a local church and didn't much care about the collateral damage he was causing. Anita watched her parents die, drained of blood before her eyes, and it affected her more deeply than you can imagine. It also brought her power to the fore, and that was what warded Dimitri off...a six year old girl with the power of a full born Telekinetic."

"She's that powerful?" Miyuki asked with raised eyebrows.

"Yes, and she's likely to get a lot stronger when she gets older," Himiko nodded, "Donovan found her and took her under his wing...or maybe it would be more accurate to say that she found him and started following him around everywhere. I'm not sure if even they know just how their relationship got started, but Donovan's been training and protecting Anita ever since, while Dimitri would like nothing better than to get his fangs into the girl so he could absorb her vast potential."

"Bastard," Natsumi softly spat.

"That he is and much, much worse, I'm afraid," Himiko nodded, "His Rakshasa side makes him more dangerous and more vicious than any regular vampire, but he's still very human in ways that would surprise you. For example...though he prides himself as a loner and spurns the companionship of mortals and other Darkstalkers, save for when he battles them, he has recently found himself deeply attracted to a mortal enemy named Morgan Anslat, a Succubus from the demon dimension of Makai..."

"A Succubus?" both Policewomen chorused.

"Yes," Himiko grimly smiled, "A different sort of vampiric being, one who feeds on the nourishment of sexual potency to sustain her immortal life. She's a powerful night creature who can suck the life right out of you with her touch, and for the longest time she and Dimitri hated each other...until something changed in their relationship...either that or they just hated so hard that it turned into something else...a hatred that is indistinguishable from love, and that began their dark alliance."

"You don't say?" Miyuki said, "So this Dimitri has a girlfriend?"

"After a fashion," Himiko conceded, "Morgan is the daughter of Beliol, the Demon King of Lust in the dimension known as Makai, where he is absolute sovereign. Some time back Morgan got involved in a palace intrigue to overthrow the rule of her immortal father, and for a time everyone believed that Beliol was dead and that Morgan was the rightful queen and ruler...but then her father mysteriously seemed to return from death and she was cast into exile, which is why she hooked up with Dimitri."

"Because she needs him to get back at her old man?" Natsumi guessed.

"That's how it started out, yes," Himiko acknowledged, "Dimitri feels that he is also the rightful ruler of Makai since his father came from that world and was a servant of Beliol. Indeed, he even lived among their court as one of their nobles for a few decades before he made himself too much of a nuisance and was kicked out about a century or so back. Dimitri's been plotting his revenge ever since, so it was natural that Morgan thought to ally with him, fully intending to dispose of him later. But then a curious thing happened...they fell in love, and for villains of their nature that's about the worst sort of fate you can imagine."

"I should think so," Miyuki remarked, "Having to care about another person whom you intend to work alongside can be...awkward under the best of circumstances..." she gave Natsumi a meaningful look, "But in the end...the advantages are not to be underrated."

"Yeah, well...for them it's been a rocky relationship from the start, and not just because the two of them don't trust and respect each other any farther than they can throw their respective castles," Himiko smiled, "Morgan is jaded with boredom after so many centuries of living...she started that palace coup mostly to relieve her boredom, and after she assumed the throne she became even more bored with the pomp and circumstances of office. Then her father slew some people whom she had actually begun to care about, and now she lives for revenge, and being distracted by love is the last thing that she could have wanted. Hell, she even once turned herself into stone in order to avoid Dimitri, but that only lasted a few months before he figured on a spell to turn her back. These days she resents him every bit as much as she wants to be with him, and I think it's driving the both of them batty. You can't even tell if they want to kiss or kill each other most days... Of course I only know most of this on hearsay, but the stories they tell on the Underground grapevine..." she shook her head and chuckled, "Tabloid news journalism ain't got nothing on the rumor-  
mill between vampires."

"Sounds to me like they deserve each other," Natsumi turned and looked directly at her partner then said, "Um...Miyuki? Mind if we have a little powwow session...just the two of us?"

"Oooh, sounds romantic," Miyuki chuckled.

Natsumi could not hold back a guilty smile over that but gave an apologetic look towards Himiko, "Excuse us...partner conference and all that."

"Oh, don't mind me," Himiko waved the point away, "I've been in love myself a time or two, and I know how high-maintenance it can be to have a girlfriend."

The two policewomen gave equally sheepish looks at this before moving off to another portion of the Tendo compound, but almost before Himiko drew another breath she heard a voice murmuring into her ear, "Telling tales behind my back are we?"

"I didn't think you'd mind," Himiko said without turning around, "You've certainly never held back on sharing your secrets with me."

"Or anything else," Miyu remarked with a soft chuckle, slipping am arm around the older-seeming woman's waist.

"Lolita," Himiko softly chided.

"That only applies to older women who seduce young girls, not the other way around," Miyu corrected.

"I meant exactly what it sounded like," Himiko turned to her Princess and slipped her arm around her waist, then Miyu stood on tip-toes so that they could bring their mouths together and they kissed quite intimately, pretending all the while that there were not a dozen different sets of eyes watching them from various points in the compound.

Soun noticed, but the only thing he said aloud was, "Let me see if I understand this again...these people are all vampires?"

The panda sitting opposite from him held up a sign that read, "Don't mind me, I'm only a panda, and I'm no good for drinking."

"Well, most of us anyway," Lenore answered him, "But you don't need to worry about us biting you. The Queen's given her reassurance that you're under her protection."

"Nobody here would have the nerve to do anything without her approval," Chloe said softly, "Even Weres know better than to tangle with a Blood Queen."

"Except for our enemies," Kiima noted, "Who have already made several attempts upon her life."

"Using humans and Goya no less," Leguire sniffed dismissively, then frowned as he studied the Shogi table, "So let me see if I understand this...you play to cheat? And the object here is to see if the other man will notice?"

"Sounds almost like a game for vampires," Yasmina noted,

"Yes, and some of us are rather better at it than others," M'shulla added with dire foreboding.

"Amen to that, right, Sis?" Tsien-Ko remarked to her twin sister.

"Perhaps it might make for good training, as it was traditionally intended?" Mei-Ling suggested.

"I don't like it, I tell you," Nagi murmured at the sidelines, just loud enough to be audible to the others, "It's been too quiet since we left the bloody conference. Can we really be sure our enemies intend to hold off until morning?"

"That is our hope," Larva replied in a slightly ethereal manner, "The wards that Himiko-chan and I have placed about this yard should serve to keep out even the minions of Dimitri."

"Let's hope you're right about that," Yui murmured, "But...I just can't shake this feeling that Nagi is right about this...we're too open and exposed out here, and who knows what else Dimitri could be planning? The night's not even that old yet, and it's still a couple of hours before midnight..."

Little did the Shi Princess suspect but that a pair of eyes were gleaming from a short distance away in a tree just outside of the walled yard surrounding the Tendo household. A pair of ruby lips twisted up in a smile and then a feminine voice said, "You got that right, little Missy. You're not out of the woods just yet, and I've got a basket full of goodies I'm just waiting to serve you..."

"And what sort of goodies did you bring for me, Cutie?"

All at once the blonde woman in the tree became aware that someone was hugging her rear, and with a startled oath she fell out of the tree, yelping as she hit the ground and reaching for her sidearms when she noticed something peculiar...

Her top was feeling just a wee bit drafty.

She glanced down at herself then gave a startled yelp as she realized that somehow she had lost her brassiere, and as she turned to look for the guilty party she found a wizened old gnome waving it in her direction with a cheerful remark of, "Lose something, hot stuff?"

The blonde let loose with a sharp invective as she reached for her guns, but before she could squeeze off a shot the little man disappeared into the night with a cheerful, "What a haul, what a haul!" to mark his passage.

Rather than betray her position by firing off a round, the blonde instead spoke into her throat mike and said, "BB to all units already in position, prepare to move out!" Then she snapped off her mike and grumbled, "Next time I see that old freak I'm filling him with enough lead to sink the Yamato."

She cocked her triggers and got ready, then climbed back up into the tree to begin once again the countdown for the final showdown between the Queen and her assailants, only this time they were prepared for the engagement, and she felt confident that her quarry would stand little chance of escaping her units once again. This time their Master's plans would not be thwarted, and with the kind of firepower they were packing the end result was all but a matter of predestination.

"Who's afraid of the big bad wolf indeed?" the blonde chuckled, even as she prepared to give the fateful attack signal...

"But Neechan," Kasumi said quietly, "I am only trying to help him."

"Keep back...whatever you are!" Natsume growled in warning, "I won't let you have my Tachi-sama."

"But I don't want him," Kasumi pointed out, "Natsume...you are being silly. I would never harm Tatewaki-kun. He is like a member of the family already, and since the two of you are now engaged to be married..."

"How could you know about that?" Natsume said with a narrowing of her eyes.

"I overheard you," Kasumi replied, "I have very good hearing, and you ware wearing his ring. Oh my...and such a large diamond he's given you..."

"Uh...Oneechan?" Kurumi said dubiously as she stared at the sharp stake that was presently gripped in her sister's hand, "Do you mind not pointing that at Kasumi? You're making me nervous...and we've got more important stuff to worry about."

"More important than giving our sister the peace of salvation that she deserves?" Natsume snapped without taking her eyes off of Kasumi.

"Ah...yeah...that," Natsume pointed to the stricken Keiko Arigami, whom Nabiki was kneeling over, sobbing profusely.

"It's not fair!" Nabiki cried, "Why did it have to be her? It should have been me that she-demon went after..."

"Life ain't fair, Kid...trust me on that," Frank tried to console her, "Your friend put up quite a row, but against Morgan..." he looked away, feeling disgusted at his own clumsy attempt at offering condolences.

"Hate myself for saying this," Talbain softly murmured, "But when they look like that the only decent thing to do is dig a hole and bury 'em..."

"Such a loss is a tragedy no matter how many times it happens," Donovan raised a hand in the manner of offering benediction, "I will pray for her soul, much though it was depleted by Morgan. She was brave up to the end, and I know that she would want you to continue living with her memory to guide you. Let us honor her sacrifice and seek to find justice upon her killer..."

Very quietly the girl named Anita said, "No."

"Eh?" Donovan looked down at his small ward, "Anita...?"

"You said never to give up hope," Anita replied, "Why are you breaking your word to me now, Donovan? She's not all gone yet...you still could help her."

"Eh?" Donovan said as he stared down at the withered husk that had been Keiko Arigami, "What do you mean? Morgan stole her energies..."

"But not all of it," Anita stepped forward, "There's still a little bit of it left, and I'm not going to let it be snuffed out, not like the last time."

Frank sensed the rise of power surrounding the younger girl and with his overlarge grip yanked Nabiki back off of Keiko's shrunken body. The Tendo-  
Saotome heir just stared in bewilderment as the nine year old continued to advance upon her friend until Anita was poised directly in front of Keiko, and then the strange streamers of blue-white energy rose up from around the child to surround the Kickboxer's body, and Keiko was bathed in the light of the child's aura, glowing from inside as though a fire had been rekindled.

Everyone gasped as the area was painted in a shimmering blue-white intensity for the next several moments, and only when that fire died down again did they dare to look at Keiko's body, which-much to their surprise-was restored to health, and she was even breathing!

The pigtailed redhead drew in a deep breathe before opening her eyes and glancing around. For a moment she seemed disoriented, but then she said, "I'm...alive? Alive again? But..."

Almost faintly Frank heard John Talbain say aloud in a semi-mechanical voice, "Y'know...I can almost remember hearing that from somewhere...only...what the hell just happened?"

"Anita?" Donovan asked.

"She's all right now," Anita replied, "Morgan didn't take all her energies, and she still had her soul...I could feel it the whole time you guys were gawking...oh..."

All at once the young girl started to sway upon her feet, and Keiko-reacting from instinct-sat up to steady her with a hand, feeling the coolness of her touch against the hot skin of the child and belatedly realizing the significance of the gesture.

She looked up at the grey-eyed child and with her own blue eyes shining with emotion she said very soberly, "Thank you."

For an instant Anita's mouth quirked slightly as though she were attempting to smile, but then she went back to the same emotionless stare that she usually manifested and pronounced a soft, "Just don't get yourself killed again."

"I'll try not to," Keiko promised, then looked around and said, "Uh...hi guys, anybody miss me?"

"Keiko-chan?" Nabiki hesitantly came forward, then all at once she sank to her knees and threw her arms around Keiko, hugging her tightly to her breast, much to the surprise (and pleasant delight) of the Kickboxer, "You're alive! Thank the Kami...!"

"The child...revived her?" Natsume asked.

"Apparently," Tatewaki said, "There is more to this child than is dreamt of from her appearance."

"That child, as you so put it, is a powerful Telekinetic with spiritual energies that even Donovan doesn't know how to fully rate," Talbain informed them.

"I see," Mousse said, "So she was able to infuse Arigami-san with new energies to replace what had been lost."

"Well, thank somebody for that," Kurumi sighed, "I thought for sure that Red was a goner."

"Oh my," Kasumi murmured, seeing the way her sister was clinging to the revitalized Keiko.

"Good work, Kid," Frank gave Anita a respectful look before turning his expression upon Keiko, "Gotta hand it to you, Arigami...I've never seen anybody make a full recovery from Morgan's attack like that. How'd you manage to hold out?"

"Oh...that?" Keiko asked with a slightly delirious expression as Nabiki wept upon her shoulder, "Er...well...when she grabbed me I could tell right away that she was a lot stronger than me, and when she started to draw on my energies...well...I figured the only way to counter that was to draw on some energies of my own...a little trick that the Mistress...I mean...Lao once taught me. It involves absorbing dragon liens through contact with the ground, um...through the soles of my feet..."

"I get it," Talbain said, "You were sucking up energy from the ground even as Morgan tried to drain you, and the more she sucked the more you drew, which explains why she got a bit tipsy at the end there..."

"Yes," Donovan agreed, "She must have been intoxicated at the rush of so much power...but such a technique takes its toll on the human body..."

"So I figured out," Keiko winced, then smiled as she held Nabiki tightly, "Kind of like resistance in a wire...sooner or later you short out from being a conduit. Good thing the kid here seems to have taken care of that little problem."

"Well I'll be the son of a used parts store," Frank murmured, "The Kitty came through for once, and all this time I just thought she used water as her resource."

"Well, the same trick works for earth as a medium," Keiko shrugged, "And since I never wear shoes or any type of footwear, it just made sense to teach me how to suck energy out of the ground to sustain me while I'm fighting. You think I go around barefoot just to toughen up my feet? Like they say, it's all about training."

"Training?" Nabiki gave back and pushed herself just far enough away to look Keiko in the eyes, "I thought I had lost you!"

Keiko blinked at that then said, "Um...well...I'm pretty much like a bad penny who always turns up...but do you really mean that? You would have missed me, Nabiki-chan?"

"Well..." Nabiki glanced down, feeling more than slightly foolish at her own emotional behavior.

"Now why couldn't you do this when we were both at liberty and you were single?" Keiko chided, "What would your husband think seeing you carry on with me, or Kodachi for that matter?"

"Ah...well..." Nabiki blushed.

Keiko just smiled at her then moved in and stole a kiss, surprising Nabiki at the intensity and passion that was expressed in such an intimate gesture, and then she felt a tongue intrude past the gate of her parted lips, and automatically her own tongue moved to engage the redhead like two sumo wrestlers contending on the field together.

"Y'know," Frank said, "When I see stuff like that it almost gives me hope for humanity."

"Yeah, but what's her husband gonna say if he finds out?" Talbain asked, hastily adding, "Not that I'm gonna be the one to tell him..."

"Oh my," Kasumi remarked as she saw the way Nabiki was reacting to Keiko's seduction.

All at once Nabiki broke off the kiss and gasped, "Ranma! He's in trouble!"

Keiko looked faintly disappointed, but the next minute she blinked then said, "Kami, you're right! I almost forgot about that...he's been taken prisoner by that Dimitri creep!"

"Then what are we waiting around here for?" Tatewaki demanded, "We must find Ranma-kun at once...and before that monster does something to harm my best friend!"

"What exactly do you expect us to do about it?" Mousse asked, "We don't even know where they got to."

"Dimitri is not so rash that he would take your husband prisoner only to slay him," Donovan informed Nabiki, "I suspect he had a different, darker reason for selecting him and ignoring you others."

"What are you saying?" Natsume asked, "What does that fiend intend to do with our brother?"

"Recall that Dimitri became interested in Saotome Ranma after seeing him dispatch Morgan with astonishing ease," Donovan replied, "I suspect he wants to know the means by which your husband overcame her..."

"Of course!" Nabiki said as she rose to her feet with a horrified expression, "The Kamasenken!"

"The thousand fists of love?" Frank blinked, then comprehension dawned on him and he became as sallow as a walking corpse, "Omigawd! That thing the kid used on you during your big love fest?"

"The Kamasenken," Tatewaki pronounced in awe, "Ranma's ultimate technique for seducing Nabiki."

"That thing he does to turn Oneechan into a pile of mush?" Kurumi asked.

"Hey!" Nabiki protested.

"This is bad," Keiko said as she rose to her feet, "This is very, very bad...if that creep gets his hand on the Kamasenken and figures out how it works..."

"Then no woman anywhere will ever be safe around him," Natsume direly predicted.

"Not that you ladies were all that safe to begin with..." Talbain started to say when he blinked and shot a startled glance towards his fellow Darkstalkers, "Holy Crud, Morgan!"

"Yes," Donovan acknowledged, "That is what I suspect that he intends to do with such a power."

"Oh my," Kasumi spoke again, "I certainly do hope that he doesn't mean to do anything improper...nani?" she asked as she saw the looks that everyone turned in her direction...

"I still don't see why you brought the punk here," Darkwulf growled, "He may know a few tricks, but he's human, which means he's useless."

"Do not be so rash as to assume too much on mere appearances," Dimitri cautioned as he studied the unconscious Ranma where the latter hung in chains fastened to opposing walls, "I saw something in this youth that was quite remarkable, and I mean to have what he knows, to add his potential to my already formidable arsenal. You will see why if you but wait in patience."

"Patience is something I have much experience with," Anakaris said, "But I do not see why you waste your time with this callow stripling."

"Be mindful," Jumanji said, "This callow stripling, as you put it, actually stood his ground in battle with Lord Dimitri."

"Yes indeed, but that is not why I sought him out instead of the others," Dimitri bared his fangs and smiled, "I must take what this fool has that I have the most need of obtaining, and that means that I will prolong his life for just a little while longer, the better that I can delve his memories and obtain his darkest secrets."

So saying this the Vampire Lord moved forward and poised his fangs over the neck of Saotome Ranma, and ever-so-carefully he bit in, drawing just enough blood to obtain a link, then withdrawing his fangs again and causing the wound to seal shut so that only reddish mark were left showing.

Ranma faintly stirred, but Dimitri waved a hand and returned him back to dreamland. Then for the next several moments the Vampire lord stared intently upon his victim, seeming to search is face with his eyes until he found what he was looking for, and then with a gasp Dimitri said, "Er? A house? Incredible! And so many varied uses...yes...yes...YES! It's all there...all your knowledge...the forbidden arts you call the Senken..."

"Senken?" Darkwulf glanced at his fellow Dark Packers, "What is that?"

They just gave back blank looks in answer.

"Yes!" Dimitri shook his fists in triumph, "Now I understand...it's so simple...how could I fail to have known it? Of course...it makes perfect sense to me now! But to think that such an art could have existed...and beneath my very nose..."

Just then a figure manifested in the room, along with an angry feminine voice that growled out, "DIMITRI-!"

Instinctively Darkwulf, Jumanji and even the dour Anakaris jumped and shied away from the approach of the wrathful Morgan, all three men giving the Succubus Queen the sort of look that men give to a woman on the warpath, and secretly glad of the fact that it was none of them to whom the exiled Makai noble was currently glaring.

"Ah, my dear Morgan," Dimitri smiled as he saw her approach him.

"Don't you, 'dear Morgan' me, you beast!" Morgan snarled as she stormed right up to confront him, "You think I'm going to just forgive you for leaving me behind to fend for myself? And for another thing, this Kasumi that you're so hot and bothered about...OOOHHHHhhhh?" she suddenly gasped as Dimitri took her hand in his own and applied two fingers to the palm, then moved them up her inner arm, causing the Succubus to stiffen and forget all about what she had been about to tell him.

"How is that, my dear?" Dimitri asked as he moved his fingers to touch Morgan in other exposed places, "You are happy to see me? I know that I am more than happy to see you just now. Do you like this? It's a new technique that I have mastered...I call it the Kamasenken."

"Th-whuuuuaaaAHHHHHHH-!" Morgan gasped again as Dimitri's other hand came into play, and suddenly her knees turned into jello and she felt herself wavering on her feet as she fell to her knees before Dimitri, unwittingly bowing her head as he ran his fingers down her backside and caused her to experience a certain...wetness in her loins.

"Ah yesss!" Dimitri gloated as he took Morgan's palm once again and ran his fingers along the nerves that he knew would cause her body to cooperate, "Now this is POWER! What matters the ability to destroy lives and crush my enemies beneath my heel? This is the power that all men have dreamed about over the ages...the power over womanhood itself! Now I am truly your master and you must do my bidding, sweet Morgan...or else..."

And as the Dark Pack looked on with mute astonishment they saw the Vampire master the Succubus thusly, sweeping Morgan up into his powerful arms as the latter cooed like a little lost child, then Dimitri gave them all a malevolent grin and said, "No harm is to befall the boy, but inform me if the plan has met with success. Otherwise...Morgan and I do not wish to be disturbed...and we will meet a horrible death upon the one who dares to spoil our fun while I explore the full dimensions of this new technique...with your cooperation, my dear sweet lady."

The trio of Darkstalkers waited until their master had taken his leave of them, then they exchanged nonplussed looks together before daring to voice their pronouncement.

"He's mad as a hatter," Darkwulf said.

"And she's high as a kite," Jumanji noted.

"Drunk upon something...but it would serve us ill if we were to disturb them for the next several minutes," Anakaris noted.

"Minutes?" Darkwulf snorted, "More like hours, and you're damned right I'm not coming anywhere near them while they're going at it. Remember what happened to the last guy who tried it?"

"Oh yeah," Jumanji looked down, "Poor Gunther..."

All three Darkwalkers nodded in sympathy, then as one made silent gestures of respect for the departed...even as the first of many screams were to be heard as Morgan's voice cried out for mercy, followed by Dimitri's laughter, the kind that would make even a Mummy shudder with thoughts of calling upon his own long-  
departed...mommy...

Continued.

Comments/Criticisms/Cult of the Kamasenken: shadowmane

Has Dimitri gone too far...or would Morgan like him to go a bit farther? And can Ranma escape the trap that he's now locked into? Can Nabiki and the remaining Posse stage his rescue, and what is going on at the Tendo property? Will Natsume stake Kasumi, and will Natsume and Miyuki ever have another private moment completely together? Be here for these and other mysteries in, "Taken by Force," or, "Attack of the Killer Bee-Movies!" Be there!

X

If you wish to check out my other works, Please check out my Fanfiction webpage at: or it's Mirror page at ~ All related chapters of this series can be found there along with my other works.  
/pre 


	47. Chapter 47

preDnabiki120

Nabiki 1/2

"A Very Scary Thought!"

by Jim Robert Bader

(Inspired by the works of Rumiko Takahashi Others,  
with a special appearance by some of my own creations and those of Joss Whedon. The Character of Frank is my own interpretation of the Monster of Marry Shelley's novel and is thus a free agent, so talk with him if you want to have him costar in some other series.)

[Special thanks to Bill Guiroff and Shiva for helping the initial proofreading phase of this fanfic series, and for encouraging me to continue the sage of Nabiki 1/2.  
And added thanks to Andrew G for further Darkstalker information...]

Part One-Hundred-Twenty.

(Set during and slightly after the time of the events recorded in the side-story titled "Honeymoon Hentai")

[No Actual Vampires or Immortals were harmed in the making of this fanfic...]

"Um...so, Miyuki...what did you want to talk about?"

"I thought you were the one who wanted to talk, Natsumi," Miyuki pointed out.

"Oh yeah," Natsumi chuckled nervously, "Okay...well, it's just...how long are we going to hang around this place again?"

"Until morning," Miyuki replied, "When the Vampires go to sleep."

"And what do we do until then?" Natsumi asked, "I mean...that's...eight or nine hours, right?"

"Ten," Miyuki corrected, giving Natsumi a wry look, "And if you want to know what I'd like to do until then..." she let her meaning shine through by the lustiness of her expression.

"You mean...now?" Natsumi blinked, "But...are you sure it would be okay? And what about all these vampires?" she lowered her volume to where it was barely a dull whisper.

"We'll be all right," Miyuki said, "Didn't you hear what the Queen said? We're under her protection."

"Yeah...but..." Natsumi glanced sidelong both ways, "Are you sure it's all right? I mean...this is someone else's property, and...well...somebody might object..."

"Oh, not at all," Nodoka said, startling both policewomen as they had not seen or heard her approaching, "We'd be more than happy to provide you with a room with all the privacy that you would need. We know full well what a great imposition this has been for the both of you, and as your hostess it is my sacred duty to see that you are both made comfy. Right this way, please, and I'll see to it that you are provided with blankets."

Natsumi and Miyuki shared a moment of mutual blank-faced surprise, then Natsumi turned to her partner and whispered, "Does it freak you out whenever she does something like that?"

"Let's not look a gift horse in the mouth, Natsumi-chan," Miyuki smiled, then she took her partner by the hand and guided her forward as the both of them followed Nodoka into the Tendo household...

"How sweet," murmured a hooded figure perched in a tree outside of the yard, "Those two look like they're gonna make out together. Too bad I got orders to flame the place in another five minutes, just as soon as I get the signal from the big bad boss man."

The hooded figure consulted her watch then murmured into her throat mike, "Units two and four get ready. Unit three, on my mark unleash your payload."

From there it was a matter of progressive tension as her watch began to reverse count towards a mini-Armageddon, and all the while the Blood Queen and her court remained unaware of their impending peril...but not so a little old man who overheard the blonde woman's gloating and resolved to do something about it...just as soon as he called in for his own reinforcements, which is why he hurried off in the night in a certain fixed direction...

"Y'know what's really weird, Frank?"

"Yeah?" the big man asked as he glanced at Talbain.

"Where are all the cops at?" the werewolf asked with a puzzled expression, "I mean...we're on the outskirts of the largest city in this part of Asia that boasts one of the finest police departments in the world, standing amid a literal war-zone that looks like Bosnia on a Monday night...and there ain't a siren or cop around for miles, unless you count those two off-duty cuties. I mean...you'd think a neighbor, homeowner or somebody would have called it in by now or something."

"Yeah, that is weird," Frank admitted before adding as an afterthought, "Welcome to Nerima."

The werewolf only shook his mane and said, "And I used to think Transylvania could get a little crazy..."

"Sister?" Kasumi was asking of Natsume.

"How can I trust you?" Natsume demanded, keeping a firm grip on the stake in her hand, "You claim to be my sister, but you're also a Kami-accursed vampire, and you bit Tofu-sensei..."

"Yes, I did," Kasumi said quietly, "But...at the time I thought that I had...a very good reason."

"Other than you felt hungry and wanted a nighttime snack?" Natsume said in dry sarcasm.

"My love, please consider your actions well," Tatewaki urged, "I know that you must do what you believe is right...but she sounds and acts so much like our Kasumi..."

"Other than the fact that she flies?" Kurumi pointed out.

"Well, she hasn't attacked anybody since she got here," Mousse reasoned, "That ought to count for something."

"I can't believe that I'm actually agreeing with the Ape-boy here, but..." Keiko shrugged, "He does raise a good point. I mean, if she's as powerful as I think she is, and she really intended us mischief, then I don't even think you could take her on, Nab-chan. Besides, I'm willing to risk it on faith that she's still the same sweet Kasumi we've all known and loved, in one sense or another."

"Yes, but you've died once already, so you're used to it," Kurumi pointed out, "The rest of us...well...dying could hurt a lot, know what I mean?"

"There will be no dying or killing here, you got me?" Nabiki said with force, "Natsume, let it go. I'll vouch for her. She's still my older sister."

"Nabiki," Kasumi sighed with a quiet, poignant expression.

"Maybe you are willing to risk our safety on that assumption, but I am not so reassured," Natsume insisted, "How can we really be certain that she does not intend us harm? Just on her say-so?"

"I understand your feelings on this, Neechan, really I do," Kasumi said with quiet poise, "But...perhaps if you need a demonstration of my good intentions. Tatewaki-kun?"

"Yes?" the handsome boy asked.

Kasumi casually walked up towards him, ignoring the way Natsume tensed, and quit an outstretched hand she took the Kuno heir by the arm and did something that caused a popping sound to resonate, and them a few quick moves with her hands and she stepped back away, leaving Kuno to flex his arm with a look of amazement.

"It...it no longer pains me!" he announced with a stunned expression, turning to gaze in wonder at Kasumi, "But...how...?"

"When I shared blood with Tofu-sensei I gained some of his knowledge about healing," Kasumi answered, "I saw from the way that you were holding your arm that you could no longer raise it...and I reasoned that you might have dislocated your shoulder...a simple enough thing to remedy as I knew how Tofu would treat this. And now for you, Doctor."

"Huh?" Frank said, "What do you mean, Miss Tendo?"

She smiled and walked up towards the hulking man-monster, then in a fluid motion she stepped around behind him and wrapped her arms around his waist, then heaved. Frank was about to ask what she was doing when he suddenly gave a startled yelp, and another popping noise resounded in the air before Kasumi released and stepped away from him, with a gentle smile in his direction, leaving Frank to blink before he rotated his hips and flexed his arms with a look of amazement.

"Hey...my back no longer hurts!" he marveled, "What...?"

"And now for you, Nabiki-chan," Kasumi turned and stretched another hand out to caress her younger sister's neck, then a quick motion later and another popping sound was heard, even as Natsume tensed and prepared to leap, only to see Nabiki gasp and shake her head from side-to-side with yet another look of open amazement.

"My neck's no longer stiff!" the Tendo-Saotome heir announced, "Incredible...you did that exactly like...doctor Tofu...?"

"Yes, isn't it amazing?" Kasumi smiled, "Even I never dreamed that the doctor knew so many interesting things about pressure points and healing, and now I know how to do it too, and I find the prospect quite exciting. I have always wanted to help others, to study hard and become a doctor, and now at last I get to practice the knowledge that took Tofu-sensei several years to master..."

"Stolen knowledge," Natsume pointed out, "Gained by unnatural means without having to work to earn it."

"Jeez, what is your problem, Natty?" Keiko asked, "Don't you get it by now? If she really were a bloodsucking fiend from the pits, then she could have used this knowledge to hurt us, not help us!"

"It is true that I did not study and sacrifice the hours it took Tofu-sensei to master these skills," Kasumi softly replied, moving up alongside Talbain and casually stretching a hand to rub his furry mane, "But I intend to put his knowledge to good use, Sister. Perhaps the ends do not justify the means, but I believe that it is what a person does with the talents that he or she has that makes a difference, just as you use your martial arts to help protect and defend others."

"Oooh...ohhh-ohhh, that's so nice!" Talbain cooed while reflexively wagging his tail and tapping one foot against the ground, "Do it a little lower..."

Kasumi smiled and did as she was asked, but then she moved away from Talbain and knelt down instead before Anita, smiling into the grey eyes of the child before saying, "And you, little one...you're so brave and considerate. I want to thank you for saving the life of Keiko-san. It takes a good heart to use the power you have for something so noble. Would you like to be my friend? My name is..."

"Kasumi," Anita replied, "I know, I'm not a little baby."

"Of course not," Kasumi replied, "You're a very nice girl, Anita-san, and it is a privilege to know you."

She straightened out again and this time oriented herself upon Natsume, coming to stand within arms length of the novice Slayer, the taking Natsume by the arm and pointing the hand that held the stake so that the wooden tip came to rest against her breastbone.

"Natsume-chan," Kasumi said softly, "I don't know how else I can convince you of my sincerity, but if you truly believe that I am dangerous, then do what you feel you must, and I will not think ill of you for the gesture. I love my family and would never bring shame or harm to any of you, and I would rather die at the hands of a sister than be thought of as a monster. I leave my fate in your hands, decide what you will, I am totally and completely at your mercy."

"Oneechan?" Kurumi gasped.

"Kasumi," Nabiki whispered, fighting to check the impulse to rush to her rescue.

"My love?" Tatewaki softly murmured.

Natsumi stood her ground and stared at the older Tendo sister, looking Kasumi in the eyes while holding the stake in a firm grasp with the tip pressing up against her skin, a single effort being all that would be needed to shove the lethal weapon into Kasumi's heart, and with no doubt in her mind that such a thrust would be lethal.

Time itself seemed to stand still as the sisters faced one another in the silence of the moment, then all at once a shadow fell over both young women and they looked up to find Donovan Bane towering over them, his golden eyes gleaming faintly in the moonlight.

"Trust is not easily earned nor given when one deals with the forces of the Dark," the huge man said somberly, "But accept my word that there is not the taint of Darkness within your sister. Though she has the mark of vampirism it is unsullied by hatred and other such negative emotions, leaving Tendo Kasumi in a pure state of grace that no hand of mortal man can tarnish."

"Can I really trust my senses?" Natsume asked, "If she is as powerful as everyone thinks she is, then she could mask her true intentions and force us to obey her..."

"You, perhaps, but not I," Donovan informed her, "I know the taint of the Dark as I know the blood that courses through me, but on my word your sister is unchanged save for her quasi-vampiric state, and if you must blame anyone for this, then blame me, for I am the one who failed to purge it from her. But know when you look on her you are looking upon a sister, and if you choose to spill her blood then it is the blood of an innocent you would claim. Can you honestly live with the knowledge of that?"

Natsume was silent for a time, but then she withdrew the stake and let her arm hang down by her side, "No. I...I don't want the blood of my sister on my hands. I haven't the right to judge you, Oneechan...please...forgive me."

"Natsume-chan," Kasumi smiled, "There is nothing to forgive. And if I ever do turn evil, I want to think that I could count on you to do what is necessary. But I know that I'm not evil, I can feel the love I have for all of you, and it tells me that I am still Kasumi."

"Oneechan," Nabiki sighed, sagging as she had not been aware of the tension she had carried.

"Well, that settles it for me," Kurumi said, "That's definitely Kasumi."

"Yes," Mousse agreed, "You can honestly say that there is no one else quite like her in the whole of Nerima."

"My love," Tatewaki said as he laid a hand to the shoulder of his iinazuke, "As always your wisdom astounds and humbles me. I pray you never have so hideous a choice to make as this ever again, for I would be as loathe as you to be denied the continued presence of shining beacon that is the smile of your sweet sister."

"Better watch the poetry, guy, or your fiancée is gonna get jealous," Keiko grinned, turning a wry look towards Nabiki, "And take it from me, one Tendo sister at a time is more than a handful."

"Well then," Talbain said, "Now that we've got that bit sorted out, maybe we should get back to figuring out where that skunk Dimitri is hiding about."

"Good thinking," Frank nodded, "We still got some ass-pounding to get worked out of our system."

"Ranma," Nabiki's face and tone turned grim once again, "Dimitri took him to gain the knowledge of the Kamasenken. I can only imagine what that monster is doing right now with my poor husband..."

"He will not kill him," Donovan revealed, "My despised half-brother will find him too much of a resource to do away with prematurely. He may bite him, draw off a portion of his blood to gain knowledge and insight, but he will keep Saotome alive so long as there are memories yet to be pillaged..."

"Couldn't he do that if he, like, say...turned Ranma-kun into a vampire?" Keiko asked, earning a sharp look of reproof from Nabiki.

"Maybe so," Frank replied, "But think about it. He did that to Kasumi and look how she turned out. You really think he'd make the same mistake twice by turning Saotome-kun into a potential rival?"

"The boy is also a Reality Nexus," Donovan added, "The fates themselves will conspire to protect him so long as he is needed by the weavers of destiny's pattern."

"Yeah, and just imagine what the kid could do if he turned out to be a Master, like Miss Tendo here," Talbain averred softly.

"A Master?" Donovan betrayed mild surprise, "Is that what you think she is?"

"Yeah," Frank replied, "Why? No...wait...don't tell me...you've gotta be kidding, Donny!"

"Old friend," Donovan replied, "In all the time that you have known me have you ever known me to jest?"

"Trick question," Talbain sniffed, only to have his own eyes widen sharply, "Aw no...don't tell me...you can't be serious!"

"I believe that we have already established that I am," Donovan replied as he turned to regard Kasumi, "And that is why Dimitri is so interested in gaining possession of Tendo Kasumi-san, for she is not a Master, as you erroneously suggested..."

"What?" Nabiki asked, "What the hell do you mean? What is Kasumi? Tell me, dammit!"

"A Blood Queen," Donovan answered, "The next highest stage above a Master."

"Excuse me?" Kasumi blinked.

"A Blood Queen?" Keiko marveled.

"What?" Kurumi asked, "What the heck is a Blood Queen?"

"Like that lady you met earlier, Kurumi-chan," Mousse informed her, "Ling-Ko the Dragon Lady, the Blood Mother of the Tsiel tribe of vampirism."

"Holy mother of Edison," Frank stared in wide-eyed wonder, "A Queen? That changes everything..."

"Yes," Donovan said sadly, "I rather thought you would make the connection."

"What?" Natsume asked, "What connection? What are all these riddles you speak concerning my sister?"

"Dimitri wants the Queen of the Tsiel, and I can guess myself at the reason," Talbain answered, "It's a full moon tonight, the perfect time to offer up a sacrifice, especially if the spell is dark enough to require a lot of energy..."

"Which the blood of a Blood Queen would provide in abundance," Frank hissed, "I should have figure it out before! I must be slowing down with old age, or maybe I need to get my batteries checked..."

"Kami...I just remembered something!" Nabiki winced, "Before he vanished that Dimitri creep said something about blood flowing and evening the score. You have any idea what he meant by that?"

"No," Frank answered, "But knowing Dimitri it can't be too good. I think we'd better get back to your place in a hurry, there's no telling what else that creep may have in mind before we get to the twilight hour of midnight."

All at once the sound of an engine filled the air, and a riderless Monster motorcycle taxied up on its own as if moving under its own volition.

"Boss?" the voice of Shelley called out, "If you're going back into the thick of thing, then you'd better get a recharge."

"Good thinking," Frank said, "Charge up the regulator, give me thirty-thousand at about three amps."

"You got it," the motorcycle said as he pulled up alongside the man-monster, then Frank reached over and removed a pair of metal objects connected to wires and nodded towards the others before saying, "Keep back, this'll be enough to send most of you through the roof..."

A moment later an electrical arc seemed to flow through the giant man, gong from one hand to the other, and he winced a bit as though in pain, but the moment was fleeting. A second later he put the electrodes away and shook his arms to free them of the tension, then smiled, "Ahhh...just like Momma Nature's cooking. Okay, Kids, saddle up and we're headed back to home base..."

"About time you said that."

"Huh?" Nabiki blinked, "Master Happy? Is that you?"

"Who did you think it was, you damned ingrate?" the little man said as he hopped down into view with a cross expression on his wizened features, "And what the hell are you doing moping around here for? Don't you know that there's an armed party of mercenaries about to strike at the house in about two more minutes?"

"WHAAATT!?" came the collective gasps of all of the members of the infamous Tendo Posse.

"I overheard their leader chatting to herself about it," Happosai continued, "A real cuties with long blonde hair...only she covered it up in a red cloak of some sort..."

"A...red...hood?" Frank exclaimed in dismay.

"BB's back in town?" Talbain said, "Whoah...talk about old times! Wonder who else she's got with her? Thought the Dark Pack looked shy of about two or three members..."

"There is not a moment more to waste," Donovan declared, "We must return to the Tendo place before time runs out and we are left to face yet another slaughter!"

"Oh my," Kasumi said, "I certainly hope that father and Aunt Nodoka will be all right."

"They won't be if we lollygag around here!" Happosai snapped, "So pick up the pace a little and..."

All at once a malevolent wind whipped up and all heads turned to see the Zombie King, Raptor, reforming where his bones had been disrupted earlier by Donovan's sword. The Zombie stretched and shook his limbs and neck to work out the remaining kinks then said, "Ah...good to be back together again! Took a bit longer to pull me self back from me scraps that time. Good thing I always was good at jigsaw puzzles, ah...where's everybody go already? Don't tell me the scrap's already over?"

"Scrap?" Talbain remarked, "Smells more like warmed over leftovers to me..."

"Eh?" if Zombies could look nervous, then Raptor certainly did at that particular moment, "What's everybody looking at me for? Don't tell me the boss has scampered off and left me holdin' the bag again...?"

"All right," Frank said, "We won't tell you."

"However, you are staying right here," Donovan revealed.

"Seems to me as if you could be the key we need to finding out where your boss took Ranma-kun," Keiko smiled in a most unfriendly manner.

"We all do but insist," Tatewaki said as he brandished his bokken.

"How many chains you think I should use, Kurumi-chan?" Mousse asked.

"Well, he is mostly rotting flesh on a pile of festering bones, so..." Kurumi shrugged, "Better use all of them than to feel sorry later I always say..."

"Eh-now wait a minute!" Raptor started to back away, only to find his only path of retreat had been cutoff by Anita, "You guys can't be serious! You expect me to rat on the boss an' tell you the location of our secret base of operations?"

"In a word...yes," Natsume glared, rub-beater held at the ready.

"And don't even think of leaving," Nabiki growled while cracking her knuckles, "Trust me, you wouldn't get three paces."

"Mommy...!" Raptor cringed, finding himself confronted by the combined power of both Darkstalkers and Tendo Posse, and after all that he had seen the latter do individually he was ready to rate his chances of escape as about equal to Donovan Bane taking up a career as a late-night talk show host.

In other word less than nothing, and given that incentive what else could he do but cringe and think of a good way of buying his own freedom by ratting on his comrades, which-given the same set of circumstances-he absolutely knew beyond doubt-that they would do to him without the slightest hesitation...

"You know," Natsumi said as soon as she and Miyuki were alone together, "Back when that Sergei creep was threatening me, you said something I've been meaning to ask you about...MMMMPPH?" she gasped as Miyuki took her into her arms and kissed her with great passion.

"Yes?" Miyuki asked her partner when at long length (eternities later) they parted lips to gaze fondly at one another.

"Gah...?" Natsumi blinked, nearly having forgotten the question.

"Natsumi-chan," Miyuki breathed as their faces hovered before each other with hardly a centimeter of width between them, "You know you mean the world to me, and when someone threatens you, I will always do what is necessary to defend you."

"Guh...uh...yeah..." Natsumi swallowed, "Ditto."

Miyuki sealed her lips with another kiss, and this time they felt the world dissolve around them and they fell to their knees in each other's arms, hands groping for a strong purchase as their tongues mashed together and they felt the heat of their blood rise up to consume them.

Just outside the room that they had been loaned for the evening...the same room that Nodoka had once shared with Kasumi before going back to sleeping with her husband, Nodoka smiled and listened to the muffled sounds of passion, then placed her hand over the door and concentrated her energies on a finite point...and a brief warmth surrounded the door as a powerful seal was cast to insure that they had privacy and would not be disturbed for the remainder of the evening.

"I do hope Kasumi does not mind that I've loaned them her bed," Nodoka murmured to herself as she headed for the stairs, having retrieved her own spare pillow just in case it might be needed. Almost as an afterthought she paused to examine herself in the hall mirror, parting the top of her kimono so that she could study the Queen's bite mark and marveled at how it seemed to have already mostly healed, leaving only a pair of tiny circles to mark the puncture wounds that had been left there.

"At my age...a hicky," she remarked, then smiled in fondness as she remembered the moment when she and Ling-Ko had been ever-so-briefly linked together. There was something decidedly sensual about allowing another woman to bite her, and were it not that she had her husband to consider...Nodoka was strongly tempted to believe that it would have gone a lot further. The Queen had left her with that sort of an impression...and to be completely honest with herself, Nodoka could hardly say if she would have refused the invitation.

As it was she ran into Julian Fries when she returned to the main living area, and Nodoka was mildly surprised to see the man casually cleaning his butterfly blades, the broad-bladed Chinese swords that he used with such deadly skill in his battle. Sensing a tenseness about the man she asked, "Is everything well, Julian-san?"

"Forgive me, dear lady," Julian replied, "I don't mean to alarm you, but a man in my position has to always be ready for anything which may or may not happen."

"You don't say?" Nodoka asked, studying the man's strangely ageless features, "They tell me you are an Immortal. It must be very hard for you to stay alive with everyone after your head for one reason or another..."

"You could put it that way, Lady Saotome," Julian mused, "All Immortals live with the shadow of death hovering just beyond our notice. It's the curse that comes with perfect health and an indefinite lifespan, but in my case I tend to be a bit paranoid even for an Immortal."

"I've heard one of the others call you Constantine," Nodoka mused, "I take it that Fries is not your original family name?"

"Hardly," Julian sighed as he paused in the act of polishing his blades, "But Constantine was the name of my great Uncle. You may have heard of him...like me he was originally Italian."

"I sense a story of unusual length and depth behind your name change," Nodoka mused.

"There is," Julian paused then sighed and said, "But there's no reason you have to know it..."

"Please," Nodoka said, "I insist."

The blond man was silent for a few moments but at last he said great solemnity, "I was born in the year 331, as rated by what I once foolishly called the Julian calendar. My name was Flavius Claudius Julianus of the House of Constantine, I was briefly Emperor of Rome from the year 361-63, but my reign was cut short during a battle with the Persians in Mesopotamia. I was stabbed in the back by a trusted ally...but I didn't die. Instead I became what I am now, a historian and fool who wanders from one life to the other, always regretting the follies of my ignorant youth, and history has named me The Apostate because of my heretical views on religious reform that I tried to undertake during my reign over the Empire."

"Julian the Apostate?" Nodoka asked politely.

"I was raised a Christian but I renounced the faith and tried to restore worship of the old gods," Julian replied as he resumed polishing his butterfly swords, "That was why I was assassinated, you see...I became a threat to the Christians, and they always dealt decisively with enemies of their faith. It's but one of many mistakes I made while Emperor in underestimating them to the extent that I did."

"I take it you did not like the direction the empire was taking since the reign of your great uncle?" Nodoka asked.

"To put it quite frankly, yes," Julian replied, "To me Christianity was, is and will always remain essentially a death cult that stole its best ideas from what they label as so-called Paganism. The Christians of my time had an absolute mania for dead things...relics, the bones of saints and martyrs, even their afterlife, as though being perpetually bored for all eternity was something to be celebrated. They stole the Jewish god and his laws and then tried to make them their own, but they couldn't even live up to the rules of Leviticus, and they were constantly murdering each other over the question of the Trinity, whether God comes in three parts or one. My father was a casualty of these political intrigues, and my cousin, Constantius, slaughtered the rest of our family in order to insure he maintained power and stayed in good standing with the church. After my supposed death the Christians tore my empire apart with over a thousand years of sectarian strife, even continuing the dispute between Arius Presbyter and Anathesius by converting the barbarians who conquered us to their heretical faith. For a thousand more years I have watched as Christian slays Christian, or Muslim, or Jew, all in the name of Jesus...so yes...I don't much care for Christianity, and perhaps that's why I actually enjoy the company of vampires and other Nightbreed. They are so much more open about their own predatory nature."

"Yes," Nodoka said, "I suppose I can see why you would feel that way. But it has been well over sixteen centuries since your time...do you still hate all Christians?"

"No," Julian answered, "I don't hate Christians, they're just people trying to make sense of a world that often appears quite senseless. They've just taken the easy path to knowledge by pretending they know everything, which is a trait shared by most adolescents. A man can be a Christian and still be a good man, but I don't respect the faith and I don't much care how politically incorrect that is. You can hate the sin and love the sinner, right? Well, the sin of Christianity is ignorance, and that's largely because they've never known what a real religion is, just the fake kind that they've been raised to believe in."

"And your ideals of what constitutes a real religion?" Nodoka asked.

"One that asks of you only that which you can deliver," Julian replied, "And yet demands a strict observance of the ethical code that makes one a citizen in good standing. Also one that doesn't blame human weakness upon the deceptions of an alleged King Devil, but asks you to take responsibility for your own conduct. Lying, cheating, stealing, murdering, committing adultery...all these things were outlawed in Rome long before there were any Christians. It's true that they are rules more recognized in the breach rather than the observance, but I believe that a man should be true to himself and not lie about what he stands for, and the priests of the Church lie by supposing themselves to be the wise followers of a god of ultimate forgiveness, then they behave quite foolishly as though they were above the rules that they preach unto others. And, of course, their god forgives them if they are penitent for their moral transgressions."

"Hypocrisy is a very human trait, however," Nodoka sagely noted, "And many of us pretend to be things that, in actuality, we are not. It takes a rare individual who can recognize the truth about themselves, and most people would prefer to remain ignorant rather than face certain truths even when they are standing right in front of them."

Julian paused in the act of sharpening his swords to look up at her shrewdly, "Indeed? And is there more to you, lady Nodoka, that men would recognize if their minds were not clouded?"

"Why, what would you expect them to see?" Nodoka asked, "I'm just a simple housewife and a mother who loves her family and would rather not see them ill."

Julian smiled a bit and said, "Good point. Very well, I know when not to pursue a secret. Indeed, I once read about a man who spoke only the truth that he knew but tailored his words to fit the comprehension level of his audience. It was a simple enough message, really, about love and tolerance of diversity and how playing god or judging others is an act of ultimate hubris. He said to others that they should love each other as they would love themselves and reserve judgement for the providence of a god of ultimate wisdom, and to not impose their beliefs upon others."

"Indeed?" Nodoka asked, "And what happened to this fellow?"

"The most terrible thing that you can do to a guy like that," Julian replied, "They forgot his words and instead took to worshipping him, and after they made him a god they started killing anyone who disagreed with them even slightly. Love and tolerance? Hah! They have practiced little enough of that over the years, and to this day they still can't see the irony and folly of their gospel, hating the Jews who were supposedly the Children of their God, and praising themselves as though they were the paragons of virtue."

"Is this Christianity or Islam that you are describing?" Nodoka asked.

"It's both, lady...it's both," Julian said sadly, then calmly resumed polishing his blades until they were gleaming enough to capture and reflect the moonlight.

"Well," Nodoka said, "I can understand your having strong views upon the matter, but then again these are just your opinions, yes?"

"And I'm not tolerant of them how can I fault them for not being tolerant of me, eh?" Julian eyed the woman shrewdly, "A point well taken. Yet still, it is hard to live as long as I have without attaining a certain sense of cynicism about the whole matter. I once believed that I could change things by working from within, by helping to guide the church to a more enlightened stance, even went so far as to allowing myself to be elected a Pope once. Didn't really matter. The curia of the Vatican sees to it that nothing ever really changes, and Protestant churches are not all that much better at learning the lessons of tolerance for diversity. It is men who make the difference in this world, not institutions or governing bodies. Men of integrity and good will, who take the initiative to enlighten themselves and to help others by their example. I will put my faith in men and not in governing institutions...it is when men act like slaves to an institution that some of the greatest evils in history have been perpetrated."

"And do you know such a man as you describe?" Nodoka asked, "One worthy of service, who has the will to accept responsibility for his own conduct and will shape the world by his actions?"

"I do, lady," Julian replied, "My current employer. He's a man far different from what you might expect if you go purely by reputation, but he is honorable and wise, and I follow him willingly. In that way I serve the ideals that I once held sacred in my youth, to serve a cause greater than myself as a servant to humanity, to keep the peace so that men and women can dream in safety."

"Well then," Nodoka smiled, "Perhaps I would like to meet this fellow you describe..."

All at once she fell silent, and her hand drifted to the hilt of her katana as she shifted her eyes to the outside, even as Julian rose from the table with his swords in hand, also studying the night air of the outside with an equally intense expression.

Outside another private conversation was well underway as Miyu and Yui were discussing things in a light, low, level banter as between blood-kin and Sire. The older vampire was saying, "You really should turn in for the night, Yui-  
chan. You have classes in the morning and I worry sometimes about your attendance records..."

"That's rich coming from someone in the same grade as me, Auntie," Yui replied, "I'll never get over how you can drift from middle school to middle school without anyone catching wise to the fact that you never graduate. You could be a professor now yourself with the amount of class time you've taken."

"Never the less, Yui-chan," Miyu chided, "You need your sleep if you want to maintain your alertness. Do I need to remind you of the last time you failed to take care of yourself and the hunger came upon you when you were showering with your fellow students?"

Yui winced, "I wish you wouldn't bring that up. It's embarrassing enough as it is..."

"Nagi, what have you been feeding this girl?" Miyu teased slightly, only to notice the way that the Shi warrior was staring off into the darkness, "Nagi-  
san?"

"They are coming," Nagi replied, then suddenly he lunged for Yui and bore her down to the ground saying, "INCOMING!"

"Eh?" Miyu whirled around into a defensive crouch, only to find Larva had spread his cloak wide to shelter her from the glare of hot phosphorescence colliding with the invisible wards surrounding the yard. Himiko crouched low and took a defensive point at the side of her Princess while the other vampires reacted with varying expressions of collective surprise that another attack was being initiated against their persons.

"Go, B-Girls!" a blonde wearing a red cloak cried from her place of concealment just beyond the walls of the compound, "Unit Three-attack!"

A figure leaped high and threw off her own enveloping cloak to reveal herself in the moonlight as a rather attractive girl whose body combined elements of both human and insect. With a wave of her hand she caused a swarm of winged dots to appear and rain down against the compound, hammering against the wards as their tiny bodies flared up upon impact with the invisible barrier preventing them from entering the yard. More and more of them appeared, hammering in wave after wave against the wards, relentlessly battering them down until the magic sustaining them sputtered out altogether from exhaustion.

"Look, Sis!" Tsien-Ko cried, "It's Bee-Queen!"

"But what is she doing here?" Mei-Ling gasped, "Is she siding with Dimitri?"

Before the question could be answered another figure went leaping into the yard, casting off her crimson cloak and standing revealed before their eyes as a sixteen year old blonde haired girl armed to the teeth with handheld weapons, both pistols and crossbows, which same she began to fire off with great abandon.

"HOWDEE-DOODOO, KIDDOES!" she cried, "LONG TIME NO SQUEAL!"

"Hood?" Mei-Ling cried as she ducked low under the reign of fire while her sister raised her wings and erected a solid shield of darkness.

"BB's here too?" the Chinese Vampire cursed under her breath, "Not good!"

Meanwhile the other vampires in the yard were faring even worse as Leguire went down sporting a wooden bolt in one shoulder while a half a dozen silver bullets felled M'shulla, whose skin began to hiss and fizz where his injuries had been taken. Yasmina managed to transform herself into mist to avoid the initial salvo, but suddenly a fine-mesh net was hurled over ethereal body, and all at once it was born down to the ground by weighted ends that somehow effected the unsolid form as the mesh prevented the mist from seeping through the finely woven netting.

"What the hell?" Lenore cried as she, Chloe and Kiima found themselves in the middle of a free-fire zone with snipers taking pot shots at all three of them, to no effect as the bullets only went harmlessly through the body of the ghost-  
girl, "We're in the middle of a freaking war-zone!"

"Good observation!" Chloe said as she dove for the dirt, "Now how about taking cover?"

Taking cover was exactly the strategy adopted by the two men playing Shogi since their martial arts skills were not equipped to deal with high-tech mercenaries firing off enough ammo to topple a third world nation. From beneath the floorboards of the house Soun said to Genma, "Who do you think they are, Saotome? More houseguests come to visit?"

"I don't know, Tendo-kun," Genma replied, "You think they want refreshments?"

"You two," Nodoka shook her head sadly as she emerged from the house, along with Julian, then both of them spread out and moved away too fast for their assailants to target.

Nagi charged forward with sword in hand only to go down as a dozen armed men began firing from various points in the yard, the bullets causing him acute pain though they proved to be only steel jacketed, not silver. Seeing him brought to his knees caused Yui to cry out, "NAGI-Urk!"

She staggered forward as a bolt protruded from the back of her chest, having just missed her heart by a matter of mere centimeters.

"Damn, pulled a bit to the left," BB Hood complained as she held up the offending crossbow, "I knew I should have had this sight adjusted..."

"YUI!" Miyu cried, then snarled as her body became a blur of forward motion. She was inhumanly fast as she headed for their attacker, only to find her path blocked out as another form took shape in the space between herself and the blonde mercenary.

"Hi there, by there!" this new assailant declared before landing a solid blow to Miyu's chin that felled the Vampire Princess as effectively as if she had been struck by a magical hammer.

"What?" Larva looked up in dismay, staggering under the weight of the considerable firepower that he had been steadily absorbing.

"Lilith?!" Tsien-Ko reacted to the sight of the slender figure who had so easily dispatched the Princess, "What the hell is this? Dimitri's second stringers?"

"My lady...cousin!" Mei-Ling called out to Ling-Ko, "Keep back and let us protect you!"

"No," the Blood Mother declared, "I will not keep back, I will not run and cower while Dimitri's dogs slay my friends and torment my allies."

Her eyes began to blaze with ruby light, and all at once the air around her shimmered and distorted and a wave of dark energy lashed out to strike those attacking mercenaries who had been pouring fire into their position. Even Tsien-Ko gave back in alarm as the Blood Wave struck those men nearest to them and caused them to scream out in utter agony as their blood boiled from within and their flesh turned to blistering hellfire.

"Whoah!" BB Hood reacted as she sensed the gruesome death that befell six of her best remaining men on her right, "Somebody's having their time of the month early. Well, I know just the cure for that. Team Five-YOU'RE UP TO BAT!"

"Huh?" Tsien-Ko raised her eyes to see a new group of heavily armed attackers drawing something dark and heavy between them, and with an ominous sense she said, "Sis...!"

"I see it," Mei-Ling declared as she stood back-to-back with her sister, "What say we combine and inform these rude people about what it means to attack a Queen and her defenders."

"Not that cousin Ling needs our help at the moment," Tsien-Ko duly noted before her sister transformed into a glowing ward, which same attached itself to the front part of the Vampire's headpiece, thus channeling her powers while helping Tsien-Ko to control her own fierce bloodlust.

"Let them taste their own blood, let them suffer for daring to attack me!" Ling-  
Ko snarled as another wave of force rose up to deflect the salvo of bullets being poured down upon her from all sides. She made a second gesture and drew a ward in the air, and all at once the wave fanned out and struck these attackers with the force of a million invisible chopsticks driven with force enough to even penetrate body armor. Her attackers went down, even as Tsien-Ko attacked the next wave of new arrivals with her claw-like wings ready to batter them into submission.

But all at once her path was blocked by Lilith, who appeared in front of her with a weapon of her own, smiling as she showed it to Tsien-Ko, which turned out to be a small framed mirror that caught the light of the moon and reflected it into the eyes of the Chinese Vampire.

All at once Tsien-Ko cried out, and suddenly she and Mei-Ling were trapped inside the mirror, hammering against it from within as Lilith held it up to examine them before smiling, "Oh yes...I believe I know just where to hang this in my den. It will make such a nice conversation piece for my guests..."

"Tsien-Ko!" Ling-Ko cried out in dismay, "Mei-Ling! You'll pay for what you do to them, Succubus!"

"I believe you have the tense wrong on that one, Sister," Lilith smiled as the dark shaped object was moved into position, "Allow me to introduce you to your new home...at least temporarily. It may not be cozy, but it ought to contain even the power of a Queen for my Master."

"What are you talking about?" Ling-Ko snarled before waving her hand once again and causing the air to shiver with yet another blood spell.

Lilith hardly batted an eyelash as the force wave passed her by with no effect, nor did it do much to the men holding up the dark shaped object as they effected to ignore it, moving automatically like robots to uncover the thing so that it was soon exposed to the moonlight.

"What?" Ling-Ko exclaimed, "But how can they...that should have killed anything human!"

"Yes, well...it might do that if they were alive," Lilith informed her, going over to the nearest of these newly arrived mercenaries and uncovering his face from the mask that he was wearing, "But as you can see they haven't been a live for quite some time now."

Ling-Ko gasped as she saw the face of a monstrosity...at one time clearly human but now kept on pseudo-life support by tubes and metal bracers that gave the decaying thing a horrific "life" that was anything but living.

"Zombies?" Ling-Ko gasped, "But...I ought to be able to control them!"

"You might at that...IF they were ordinary zombies," Lilith explained, "But these are Zuvembe, HK Units...that's 'Hunter-Killer' in high tech parlance. They're Cyborgs, technically dead yet kept alive through artificial means, and quite immune to your influence since they're largely electronic, governed by computer chips and machines of an extremely advanced nature. They obey only their pre-programmed instructions, and they're quite invulnerable to ordinary means of termination."

"Obscenity!" Ling-Ko declared, "Who is your Master who would use such...things as his minions?"

"Well now, that's for you not to know and for us to find out...or something like that," Lilith shrugged, "At any rate, we're on a strict timetable, your Majesty, so if you don't mind we'll just get what we came here for, which happens to be you."

"What?" Ling-Ko gasped, only to cry out as some invisible force suddenly seized hold of her body, and for all her tremendous power she found that she was unable to resist, and all at once she was lifted from the ground and went sailing the several meter distance between herself and the object causing her discomfort. She slammed into the thing with jarring force and though she fought to get free she found herself held fast as though glued to flypaper.

"Pretty neat, huh?" BB Hood said as she came up to join Lilith and the Queen-B, "Boss calls it a Flesh Magnet. Works by attraction to the magnetic properties of the human body, or something like that. I wasn't really paying that much attention during the lecture...the Boss can be so long-winded sometimes, it almost makes me puke."

Ling-Ko struggled fiercely but could not break free of the strange force that held her fast. She was still conscious enough to snarl, "If Dimitri thinks that I shall be humbled by the likes of this...!"

"Dimitri?" BB smiled, "You think Dimitri's the one who sent us?"

"Hardly," Lilith remarked, "We're allies of Dimitri, but we don't take his orders."

"The one whom we zzzzerve is lord Jeddah, Dragon Lady," the Queen-B informed her, "Hizzzz dark majezzzty izzz the cauzzze we zzzerve."

Ling-Ko stopped struggling and just blurted out an astonished, "What? Jeddah? But...he's dead!"

"So, when did a little thing like that ever keep him down?" BB smirked, only to turn in annoyance as she heard one of her remaining mercenaries call her attention.

"Ma'am, what are we to do with the rest of the prisoners?" the heavily armed man asked as he indicated Miyu, Nagi, Yui, Larva and the other remaining vampires, including a netted Yasmina, who had all been herded together into the center of the yard and were being held there at gun point.

"Don't really need 'em, do we?" BB smiled, "Just excess baggage. Waste 'em and have the flame thrower guys torch the corpses."

"You heard the order, men," the lieutenant relayed, "These Vamps are toast..."

Miyu snarled as she felt her arm, which was sporting another crossbow bolt. She still had fight enough to take a few of these mercenaries out, but not before they finished off the others, and so she found herself held to the spot with a brief hesitation brought on by indecision.

"Wait!" BB called out, "I just changed my mind. That girlie-girl there looks like she's still got some fight in her, so why don't I take a personal hand in this and finish her off myself," she drew her crossbow bolt back, cocked and aimed it, pointing it directly at Miyu's forehead, "Never killed a Princess before...guess there's a first for everything..."

Miyu tensed, knowing full well that the blonde had her dead to rights. At this range a bolt through her forehead would slay her in an instant, and then there would be no one left to save the others or rescue Ling-Ko and her kinswoman. Having tasted death once before she found that she did not relish it now, but better to die with dignity than to listen to this annoying human's continued boasting.

But even as the trigger was pulled a gleam of steel caught and reflected a beam of moonlight, and suddenly the shaft was sliced in two before it could fully leave the crossbow, and the next instant the blonde felt her hair being pulled back as the edge of a sword was pressed up against her jugular.

"Don't move!" Nodoka ordered the mercenaries, "Lower your weapons or you'll need a new leader."

The mercenaries hesitated a moment, and BB suddenly felt a wetness on her neck that had nothing to do with perspiration, so she barked out, "What are you waiting for, you fools? Do as she says!"

Two men exchanged looks then pointed their weapons right at her, "Sorry, Ma'am, but we've got our orders."

BB's eyes went wide as she realized that they were actually about to do it when all at once Julian appeared in the space between the two mercenaries...who were both missing their heads as the former Emperor of Rome held up his twin butterfly blades and said, "I believe that the lady just gave you people an order. Anyone else care to question it?"

The remaining mercenaries-four of them, to be precise-counted the sudden shift of the odds in their favor and all exchanged puzzled looks from behind their night vision goggles.

"Useless!" Lilith cried before launching herself forward, aiming for Nodoka, who somehow easily side-stepped her lunge, then struck with the blunt end of her pommel to the back of the succubus's head to stagger Lilith forward.

BB, however, feeling the absence of the blade against her own neck, reached up and drew an object from her web harness then dropped it and shut her eyes...just one instant before another phosphorous grenade went off and took Nodoka by surprise, causing her to release her blonde captive.

"SAY YOUR PRAYERS, GRANNY!" BB declared as she drew her guns and aimed them at the blinded Nodoka.

"NODOKA!" Genma left his place of safety with a speed that astounded even Soun, and suddenly he was there between Nodoka and the pistols, startling BB, who fired off a double-round only to totally miss her intended targets. Genma disappeared just as swiftly as he had appeared, to reappear around the bend of a tree holding Nodoka protectively against the relative safety of it broad, thick trunk.

"Are you all right, Wife?" Genma asked her.

Nodoka was no less surprised than the mercenaries at the suddenness of her husband's actions, but then she noticed a discoloration at the side of his gi and said, "Genma-chan...are you bleeding?"

"Huh?" Genma glanced down, then moved a hand and felt his side, staring up at the blood covering his fingers in horrified fascination...then all at once he fainted dead away, leaving Nodoka to gaze down at him in affectionate amusement.

"My hero."

"Where'd they go?" BB looked around, waving her pistols, "Dammit! Where'd that sword-wielding bitch get off to? And will you stop playing around over there, Lilith? We've got serious business to attend to!"

"Playing?" Lilith snarled as she exchanged blows with Julian, who was fending her off with great skill, cunning and tenacity for all that she thought that she had the rightful advantage.

"Sorry, my dear," Julian said between slashes, "You're good at this...but I'm a Toshinden warrior...I eat worse than you for breakfast!"

"Who cares about your pathetic sex life?" BB snarled, "Bee, go help the witch out, I...huh?"

The slight tapping on her shoulder brought BB around to face an annoyed looking Lenore, who said succinctly, "Excuse me for cutting in like this but..."

POW!

"Tag, and you're it!" Lenore snarled as BB went down like a stone. She turned around and gave her best feral snarl at the remaining gunmen, "Anybody else care to tango?"

The men never even got to answer as Chloe popped up in their midst, fully transformed to her Werewolf incarnation, "Oh me! I wanna play! You're it!"

And with powerful blows she laid the men out in a matter of mere seconds, never even giving them a chance to fire off a shot before they were chewed, slashed and shredded by a walking hurricane whose speed, strength and ferocity were anything but human.

The Queen-B had started to move forward to assist her stricken allies, only to find Kiima appeared in the space before her, and with a ghostly, ethereal voice she said, "My turn..." and all at once she seemingly dissolved and surrounded the remaining Darkstalker, causing Queen-B to gasp as though she were suffocating from invisible tendrils.

"Guess that's the last of them," Lenore dusted her hands then turned to regard Miyu, "What do you think? Not too shabby for a mere Loire vamp peasant, huh?"

Miyu smiled and started to reply to this, only to widen her eyes and call out, "LOOK OUT!"

"Huh?" Lenore blinked as she started to turn around, only to receive a staggering blow that came quite literally from out of no where!

"Huh?" Chloe asked as she turned to see who their new attacker was, only to cover her ears and cringe in terror as a shrieking cry split the air, driving the werewolf to her knees in an instant.

The figure turned and emitted a second cry, and all at once Kiima felt her hold over the Queen-B shatter and fragment. She did the only thing she could under these circumstances to dissolve her mist and teleport to safety, leaving the victorious feminine figure dominating the field, along with the silent Cyborg figures holding up the plate-like device upon which was trapped a struggling Ling-Ko.

Miyu was not the only one to gasp as she got a better view of their new assailant, "You? Atuo...?"

The fin-crested Mer-woman merely regarded the vampire princess with a level stare, and then the night air shimmered once again, and in stepped a fiery form whose appearance painted the entire yard in horrific, flaming colors.

"No...not you...!" Miyu gasped.

"What is the matter, little Princess?" the flaming giant said, "Aren't you glad to see me? Is this not an appropriate forum upon which to have this reunion? Surely Pyron is not so unfamiliar a guest that you would cringe at my merest approach? I am hurt that you think so ill of me that you would believe that I have come here only to destroy you."

Larva risked much by looking up and glaring at the fiery figure, "Then...what do you come here for, Dread Lord of Malice?"

"Why, to collect Ling-Ko, of course," the flaming giant replied, "The Blood Queen is of value to my allies, and I certainly had to be certain that she would be taken in an intact condition. BB Hood, though she is quite the hellraiser, tends to be a bit less than tidy over such things. And Lilith...you really ought to know better than to pursue a personal agenda in this matter. Haven't I told you time and again that we are here for the Queen and nothing else?"

"Sorry," Lilith bowed her head, "Please don't tell Lord Jeddah."

"Now wait a minute here!" Julian protested, "You don't think I'd let you..."

A fireball struck the man and sent him soaring backwards into the far wall. Pyron surveyed the fallen Immortal to be certain he was not about to rise again the said, "As a matter of fact, I do believe that. Care to make an issue of it?"

That was the moment when Nabiki and her Posse arrived, accompanied by Talbain and the others, who took the battlefield in at a glance before all attention turned towards the flaming giant at the far end of the yard.

"You?" Talbain hissed, even as Donovan and Frank came up to join him.

"Whoops, time to leave," Pyron said, "This party is getting a little too crowded, and if I remain to do battle with you gentleman I may wind up late for the party. Do accept my rain check and we'll do this again...much later..."

And with that the giant was suddenly swallowed up in a wave of darkness, even as the Cyborgs bearing Ling-Ko on the massive face dial and all of the fallen enemy Darkstalkers were similarly wreathed in darkness, and then all of them faded out together, leaving only the fallen vampires and other victims behind, along with a battered yard and a house sporting more bullet holes than a limburger sandwich.

"Holy mother of mercy..." Frank exclaimed.

"Exactly," Donovan nodded.

"My house!" Nabiki exclaimed in stunned disbelief, "Dad? Aunt Nodoka...?"

"Ah...well..." her father said as he climbed out from under the concealment of the house, "It's...not quite as bad as it looks..."

"Father?" Kasumi asked.

"Kasumi?" Soun rushed up to her side with surprising alacrity, "Are you all right? I was so worried about you!"

"Oh father," Kasumi gently chided.

"Why is he the only one who doesn't look like they've been through the wringer?" Talbain wondered aloud.

"Do you really have to ask that one, Wolfie?" Keiko mused, only to turn and see Nodoka approaching them, "Aunt Nodoka?"

"Ranma...is my son with you?" asked the Saotome Matriarch, who herself looked as if she were only standing through sheer force of will.

"Ah..." Nabiki glanced away, feeling suddenly very wretched.

"I fear that Ranma-kun has been taken by the enemy, Aunt Nodoka," Tatewaki explained for her benefit, "But fear not, he is a strong, stalwart warrior, and Bane-san assures us that he is still alive for the duration."

"Yeah, and we've got somebody here who's gonna spill the beans about Dimitri's hiding place," Frank said as he hefted a chained up zombie, "Ain't that right, Raptor, old buddy?"

"Ah...sure, Mate...whatever you want," Raptor replied, and if he were not already dead one had the impression that he wold have been sweating profusely.

"Ranma..." Nodoka murmured, then she started to sag, her knees giving out from underneath her.

"Auntie!" Nabiki was at her side, along with Kasumi, Kurumi and Natsume, all of them gathered around the woman who was as much like a mother to them as their own mothers, Nabiki vowing softly, "I'll get Ranma-kun back, Auntie...I swear it! No one's going to hurt my husband, that I promise!"

"I know, dears, but...ohhh," Nodoka said and seemingly fainted.

"Man, laying it on a little thick, ain't she?" Keiko murmured to herself.

"Eh?" Mousse said, "What do you mean by that?"

"Oh...nothing," the Kickboxer said with a patently innocent expression.

"This bodes not well," Donovan said as he surveyed the wounded and unconscious vampires spread out almost at their feet, "Dimitri...and Pyron together?"

"Yeah, what are the odds?" Frank grumbled.

"It is worse even than you imagine," Miyu said as she fought her own flagging strength and stood erectly, nursing her wounded shoulder, "Before he left Pyron's minions spoke of another name...one whom they claimed to serve and not Dimitri...Jeddah."

There was dead silence before Talbain murmured, "Holy Kibbles'n Bits..."

"I thought he was dead!" Frank exclaimed.

"Apparently an exaggeration," Donovan said somberly.

"Oh, he's dead all right," Raptor spoke up, almost boasting, "Deader than a flat on an Edsel, but come back to life again to fulfill the prophesy he made when he was still among the living."

"What, that prophesy?" Frank blinked, "You've gotta be kidding..."

"Everyone says that," Anita sighed, "But no one ever means it..."

"A prophesy?" Nabiki stood up once again and squared her shoulders, "This is all about some dumb old prophesy? Well...I'm gonna make a prophesy of my own..." she whirled about and her eyes were suddenly gleaming with an inner fire that made even Raptor fall silent, "I'm gonna find Dimitri and rip his rotten head off...and I'm gonna do even worse to anybody else who gets in my way! He thinks he's bad news? Well, I'll show him what bad news is, because nobody does this to my friends and family, to my house and my father! I'm going to rip the gates of hell apart if I have to in order to wipe that stupid smirk off his face, and then I'm gonna show him what Hell really is!"

And as she brandished a fist her battle aura grew to enormous proportions, and suddenly even Donovan seemed uncertain, for the determination in the eyes of the Saotome-Tendo heir was terrible to behold, and no one there had any doubts that she was sincere in her stated promise, at which point some even began to feel the tiniest bit of sympathy for Dimitri...if only because the fate promised in Nabiki's eyes would have lit fire under the heals of the most terrifying of night creatures, far more hideous than the lust of any mere vampire...

Part One-Hundred-Twenty-One.

"Hello? Is anybody here? Hello! Is there anyone else here besides me?"

Ranma glanced around at the grey haze of his surroundings, finding himself standing at a crossroads that seemed to lead off in two separate directions. It was dark on the horizon and with no signposts to indicate which way lead to what destination. Ranma tried looking one way, then the other, but could discern no difference between the two pathways, and so he murmured to himself aloud, "I wonder if I have to go somewhere...but which way?"

"Why not try the road not taken, Little Brother?"

Ranma whirled around and saw something that he would have sworn had not been there the previous instant, namely a small carnival tent with the flaps hanging open, and there inside the tent, sitting behind a round table, was his half-  
sister Kaoru, who was wearing some manner of fortune teller's outfit and had a tarot deck in hand, which she was shuffling like a professional card player.

"Where did you come from?" Ranma asked.

"From my mother," Kaoru responded, "I'm afraid that you're going to have to ask her for the details if you want to know anything beyond that."

Ranma glanced down at the cards that Kaoru was laying out upon the table then said, "What are you doing?"

"Telling your fortune, of course," Kaoru replied, forming the basic "Tree-of-  
Life" formation with the cards, then turning one of these over to examine the face, which turned out to be the Fool card, "Interesting...looks like you before you learned the Senkens."

"Uh...right," Ranma said as he saw Kaoru turn the next card over from the "Moon" position, and this time it revealed the Magician.

"You right after you started to masker the Senkens," Kaoru noted, then turned the card to the right in the "Venus" position and revealed the High Priestess, "And here's Nabiki, the girl you married after using the Senkens to help defeat her."

"What's behind the other card?" Ranma asked as he pointed to the one in the "Mercury" position.

"You don't really need that one, Little Brother," Kaoru replied, "That's the road taken by intellectuals and nerds...intellect without passion, the path of Ice, whereas you have chosen the road leading from the Moon to Venus, which is the way of Fire."

"So...what's next after Venus?" Ranma asked.

Kaoru reached for the card in the "Sun" position and revealed the "Heirophant" card, "Behold the Majestes, Hermes thrice-born, the path of enlightenment and wisdom."

"Come again?" Ranma asked, "How can somebody be thrice-born? Isn't once enough?"

"Not for certain types of people," Kaoru answered, "Hermes Trismajestes, or Thoth in the Egyptian cycle. This is the way of the Holy Man or Healer sits in a position of equilibrium where no opposition can be mounted and where Buddha himself protects him. This is where You are headed, Little Brother, the way of Heaven or the Way of Hell, depending on your orientation, just as the sun can be Light or Dark depending on which side of it you stand, either nourishing or parching, a source of life or a way of depriving the body of life-giving moisture...it all matters on where you stand...and where you were at the ultimate beginning..."

And, saying this, Kaoru uncovered the Heirophant (or Pope) card and revealed the Inferno that lay underneath, and all at once Ranma's world went red as flames engulfed him and swept him away from himself to a world of light, sound, fury and darkness...

Ranma floated in a crimson haze of memories watching the ages melt away as his mind wandered far and crossed the channels of the ages. He found himself looking down upon a man who looked oddly much like himself save that he was clearly no longer Japanese and had reddish-gold skin, and his eyes were so blue that they were almost silver, and he was oddly dressed in ceremonial robes of an indefinable nature.

A man was speaking to him in a language he did not recognize, yet somehow Ranma heard the words as clearly as if they were spoken in Japanese, floating in as if in mid-conversation, "...situation is critical! We have lost too many cities! The enemy swarms without number and they are killing us, draining us of life, leaving nothing but ruins in their passing! This is worse than the fall of the old kingdom, this could mean the end of everything, the extinction of the human race!"

"But what you are proposing is lunacy!" another man declared, "To cast this spell would be to sacrifice our very humanity..."

"Would you rather lose our humanity or cause the death of the race?" a fourth man questioned, "It is the way, we have taken a poll, and the will of the majority has decided."

"Better to lose our lives than to lose our souls!" a fifth individual protested.

"Our souls?" a woman spoke this time, clear and melodious and strangely familiar, her features cast like bronze in the dull light of crystal braziers that glowed like torches, "Our souls will be lost anyway if we do not undertake this gesture. The Rakshasa absorb life energies down to the base Monad, preventing a soul from attaining rebirth as a glorified human. Would you rather begin the cycle of renewal from the level of a mere insect, to spend countless life cycles in constant rebirth through progressively higher stages before we are returned to something equivalent to humanity?"

"Perhaps the Eldren will do something to move against these demons."

"The Eldren live apart from us...they are immortal and do not understand the concept of death as it afflicts we callow humans. A human may live for centuries but they have thousands of years to look forward to. Do you think that they will come down from their havens and risk their lives to do battle with demons who cannot be killed by mortal weapons?"

"It takes strong magics to fell even one Rakshasa," another man spoke up, "Magic swords and other weapons barely faze them, unless you are one of the wielders of the Holy Seven. Their thirst for blood is insatiable, and I have witnessed the sort of death that they subject their victims to. It is truly hideous, a slow consumption within their bellies as you dissolve gradually, fully awake the whole time. I would not wish such a death on another human if it can be avoided, so we must choose to act to protect humanity, even if it means that we become living death ourselves. So the council has decided."

All at once the man nearest to him turned to Ranma and said, "What do you say, Ka'ar-Nathu? Do you agree with the will of this quorum that we must debase ourselves by casting a spell that will turn us all into creatures like these demons? Or will you side with the minority who believes that we should await the decision of the Gods to strike? The Gods have been strangely silent over these matters..."

"Indeed," another man noted, "I heard one God, Crom Kriuch the Serpent, voice the opinion that humanity must redeem itself, that if we are worthy of continued like that we must prove ourselves against the likes of the Rakshasa."

All at once Ranma heard himself speak aloud, "There is no more time for us to debate, the time for action is upon us, and if we must sacrifice ourselves to save humanity, I, for one, would prefer to die fighting on my feet rather than sit passively by and let the demons destroy us."

Time seemed to pass rapidly from that point onward as Ranma and the other robed men and women moved to a different chamber and began to enact a series of ritual gestures and invocations with lots of fancy symbols in the room and many curious chants that gave him an oddly unpleasant sense of coolness. As Ranma tried to focus upon these chants and symbols a sense of growing familiarity made him feel as though he could actually recognize the nature of the powers being so channeled. In fact the more he looked upon the pattern of the floor the more and more certain he was that he understood its intrinsic nature, like a recognition of a long-faded memory, and in that moment he jolted to an awareness of what was happening that left him stunned and dumbfounded.

To his amazement he found himself comprehending the intricate weaving of geometric patterns and forms inside one another, forming a circle whose intent was to mimic the shape of a human body in the abstract. All at once he knew that it was the Tree of Life that was wound up inside of the pattern and that he was standing upon one of the cardinal points symbolizing Fire while other points were held by the rest of the dozen-strong Archmages who stood about the circle chanting and joining in with crafting a spell that was intended to invoke the dark powers of the Netherverse, the world that existed in opposition to the Earth Plane as a dark mirror image would cast a negative reflection.

The words were actually a complex alchemical spell, like the weaving of an elaborate computer program, and they activated the hidden power within the circle, calling forth a terrible light that rose up from the floor to color everything the bright red colors of a hellish nightmare.

All at once he heart the woman-Ayesha?-call out in a startled voice, "He is coming!"

"Let him come!" an Elder within the circle boldly intoned, "We stand ready!"

At once a terrible presence filled the air and Ranma felt his soul curdle like spoiled milk before a dark shadowy shape that rose to fill the air above the chamber. It was not a human shape he beheld, yet there was something strangely familiar about it, as if facing an old enemy who had come in through the backdoor and was ready to burn your house down. A voice more terrible than any he had ever heard rang out, "SO-YOU SEEK TO STEAL MY POWER FROM ME AND USE IT FOR YOURSELVES? THEN LEARN THE PRICE AND FOLLY OF YOUR PRESUMPTION!"

"We do not fear you, Rakshasa Lord!" the elder shouted defiantly, "Do your worst, you will find Humanity is not without our resources!"

"THEN LEARN YOUR PLACE AS MERE CHATTEL, FOOL!" the dark shape cried as it tried to break loose from the spell that contained it, only for its terrible cry of rage to transform into something else entirely, a scream of pain and disbelief that sounded as if heaven itself were being ripped asunder, and all at once Ranma felt a terrible pain wrack his body, doubling him over as a weight came over him, and with it a most unnatural...HUNGER!

"You see?" the Elder called out in a voice that threatened to crack under the strain that he must surely have been feeling, "You see what humanity can do when we have our backs against the walls, Monster! Mor'dekai...we fear you no longer!"

All around the circle the others were brought to their knees or doubled over as the dark shape beat itself frantically against the barriers, only to have its form be shred into its connective energy patterns, and like that the demon vanished, only to have portions of its malevolent energies be fed to each and every one of the circle of Archmages, who began to change before Ranma's very eyes even as his own body changed and shifted, and all at once the Dark was within them, and with it a sudden awareness that they were fundamentally changed, corrupted by the very nature of the evil that they had invoked.

"It is done!" the Elder declared as the light faded from the room and they all collectively straightened up and looked around at once another in confusion and uncertainty, "Now we are reborn with the power of the Rakshasa woven into our very blood by dark magics. Now we must go forth and serve our people by converting some into our minions, and thus raise up an army of the Undying to oppose the beasts who walk freely among us!"

And that was precisely what the Twelve proceeded to do, to find cowering humans in their shelters and to beseech their aid in a war against the Darkness. In doing this they discovered the limits imposed upon them by the nature of the spell, that they could not cross a home or threshold without first seeking the permission of the occupant, that crossing moving water was a problem, that the touch of anything dead that was once living could actually harm them and that the Sun needed to be shunned lest its lethal rays boil up the demonic agents of their blood and destroy them. One by one they took their victims aside and changed them, converting them to the Legion of the Blood, and with them face off against the Rakshasa, who were not prepared to encounter humans with the sort of powers that these possessed.

With greatly enhanced strength, speed and ferocity the Vampires tore into the Rakshasa and slew them in great number. Their hands became clawed weapons, sharper than steel blades and perfectly synchronized with the wavelengths of the Rakshasa so that their ethereal foes could be rent and shredded by the touch of any Vampire. With their newly gained invulnerability to non-living substances (such as most metals, exempting only Gold, Silver and Cold Iron) they could withstand great punishment and survive attacks that would slay a healthy human, and their ability to regenerate damage was phenomenal. In next to no time they had the Rakshasa on the run and were hunting them down with a terrible ferocity, and then the Rakshasa fled from the world rather than be faced with their own destruction, leaving the Vampires to rule the night, the dark saviors of a crumbling Atlantean Empire.

But once victory was achieved then humanity faced a new threat from their nominal protectors, for the Vampire thirst made these dark predators every bit as much of an evil as the Rakshasa. Only the memory of their lost humanity kept the Blood Kin from reaping a terrible wrath upon the humans whom they had protected, but the surviving members of the council found it impossible to control their own appetites, and so they met again one night to seek a cure for their affliction, much though the Elder himself had predicted that none would be forthcoming.

"Alas, it is as the Elder foretold before his death in battle," Ranma heard himself inform his Kindred, "The spell we crafted was designed to resist any and all attempts at reversing it 'lest we free Mor'dekai and unleash the wrath of his Rakshasa minions once more upon the world. Vampires must continue to exist to preserve the safety of humanity...but we cannot resist the hunger that we have inherited from the Rakshasa, and so we must find other means to curb our numbers 'lest we become the very thing which we once hated..."

And so they cast a new spell, one that invoked the Higher Powers, rather than the Lower Aspects of before, and 'Lo the power shaped itself at their behest and created a negative avatar, something as strong as Vampirism yet existing in an entirely polarized context.

And somewhere amid the ruins of the once-great cities of crumbling Atlantis a Shepherdess tending her flock felt herself suddenly wracked by the most terrifying pains that had yet to be imagined. Like a woman being reborn that night she felt her body fill with a terrible strength and enhancements, and then she discovered her own dark purpose as she sensed a danger in the night and confronted her first vampire, reacting at first in terror, then in wonder as she oughtfought and slew him with a wooden branch taken from the fire that she had been tending...

And thus was born the Slayer, first in a long line of Chosen women who lived to curb the numbers of the vampires...and as Ranma gazed upon her aspect she saw the woman transform into a card, and then recognized it as Temperance, being held up by the hand of Kaoru, who once more was standing in her tent shuffling the Tarot deck and smiling at him as if expecting him to get the joke at any minute.

"And so it began," she explained, "And so the spell remains in effect, empowered by a demon trapped between the realms of light and darkness. This was the birth of the Kindred, Little Brother, their dark beginnings...but there is much more to the story even than what you have been told. You see, Mordecai had a son by a Vampire who became a Rakshasa of terrible power, and he in turn created another offspring who bore his darkness...two offspring, one born to a Vampire, the other to a Human. Cain and Abel, they oppose each other to this day, Dimitri and Donovan, and yet even there we are but scratching the surface to a deeper story."

"Weird," Ranma said as he shook himself loose from his trance, "So this half-  
breed Rakshasa guy is the one responsible for the creation of Dimitri? That's just swell! So what does that got to do with me, Sis?"

In answer Kaoru held up another card, revealing the face of the Devil, which she then turned around while pronouncing the word, "Reflection!"

Ranma suddenly felt a dark presence move from off to his left and turned in readiness to face down a perceived attacker. To his amazement he found himself confronted by another Saotome Ranma...but this one very different in that his face was snarling, and you could see the fangs that he was so-prominently protruding from his mouth.

"N-Nani?" Ranma gasped.

"Dimitri bit you, Little Brother," Kaoru said, "You face now a reflection of his evil presence inside you, the taint of a Vampire's influence seeking to corrupt your very nature. Resist it now or perish, but know that you cannot destroy the hunger it represents by blunt force, you must extinguish it through the way of Buddha."

"And how the hell do I do that?" Ranma asked when his opponent attacked him.

The Vampire Ranma threw a punch his way and human Ranma moved to block it, surprised at the speed and savagery of the lunge as he side-stepped a blow that would have hurt a LOT if it had connected. At once Ranma counter-attacked with a spinning kick, yet his foe easily dodged the attack and launched a flying kick of its own that connected.

Ranma felt himself be tumbled for an unknown distance before righting himself and recovering his bearings. To his dismay his foe attacked with greater speed than expected, and it was all that he could do to block a hundred strikes that were launched with more than Amaguriken speed, giving ground all the while as he studied his opponent and tried to probe him for a weakness.

He had none.

To his dismay Ranma found himself outmatched by a foe who understood his moves, who knew everything that Ranma did, every counter, thrust and technique in his arsenal, including the Senkens, only he could perform them with greater speed, strength and dexterity, at least three times as great as Ranma's own best efforts.

But then he reasoned that his foe could not perform every feat in perfect reflection of the real thing, and with that he extended his right and left arms and prepared to summon his elemental Allies. With a wave of one hand he sent Latisha hurtling out in a spiral of fiery ribbons, then sent Sharil hurtling forward through the center of the resulting vortex, creating a horizontal version of the Hiryu Shoten Ha, only aiming it at the vampiric Ranma.

Not surprisingly the other version of himself attempted to mimic the same gesture, to fall upon similar energies, only to falter at the last since he was only a pale imitation of the true master. Dismay replaced feral arrogance and suddenly it was struck by the force of the Water Elemental who was allied to the true Ranma, and all at once his body dissolved into a black shape that hung like a shadow in the air, a shadow that tried to get away from the triumphant true Ranma, only that was not to be as the Saotome heir was prepared for confronting just such a creature.

Summoning up the power already unleashed, he cast the vapors of fire and water elementals into an enveloping blanket to ensnare the shadow-creature, then with a triumphant cry he said, "SENKEN SPECIAL MANUEVER-CONTAIN AND CONFINE ADVANCE!"

With that he collapsed his net back into his body, reeling the shadow in and causing it to condense into a vapor, and that vapor reentered Ranma's body, to become a part of him once again as he braced himself for the feelings he knew that were to shortly follow.

Sure enough-exactly as it had been in his dream-he felt the dark power enter him and attempt to change him over, to alter his body and convert his very nature into a dark and predatory creature, to erase the Ranma who was and replace him with the embodiment of the shadow-copy even as a terrible hunger wracked his body, a hunger for human blood and soul energy, which he yearned to drain like the beast that he was on the verge of becoming...

"No..." Ranma whispered to himself, falling his fists and fighting the cravings as his mind suddenly filled with visions of lovely female necks that he might suck for their life juices...Ukyo, Shampoo, Perfume and Nabiki...all four of his lovely wives who would surely yield up their essence to sustain him...and so many other women he might drain for food, such as Keiko and Kodachi, or even Kasumi and possibly even Akane...

"NO!" he cried out again, banishing the visions, refusing to give in even as he felt his fangs grow more pronounced by the second...

"You cannot resist by force this hunger," Kaoru's voice suddenly filled his mind, "You can only master it by following the path of Buddha."

"B-B-Buddha?" Ranma gasped, "Gimme a break! You think I'm like him...?"

No sooner had the words left him mouth then Ranma suddenly understood their true meaning. Who was Buddha originally? A god made flesh, as taught by the Hindu? No...he was a man like other men, a Prince named Siddhartha, whose love of humanity had caused him to renounce his wealth and fortune in search of an answer to human suffering, which lead him on the path towards enlightenment, which had been further refined by Zen mystics over the ages.

The essence to the lesson of the Buddha was that human suffering was caused by the desire for material pleasure, that wanting for something created an imbalance within ones nature, and that the senses deluded and distracted the mind from the True Reality, blinding the seeker with the illusion of the Maya, keeping one from attaining enlightenment and grounding the soul on the path of endless birth and rebirth.

But want and desire were emotions that enslaved mankind, that the way to master them was by ignoring their temptation. To feel an emotion did not obligate one to be enslaved to the passion, and by finding one's center it was possible to ignore the wants of the body, to find sustenance from within and fulfillment through inaction. One had only to center one's innermost being around the Navel of the Cosmos and the Universe itself would provide one with all that they needed to live the path of the true wise man. By teaching one to ignore the handicaps of the physical body true miracles could be performed and a man might truly obtain an enlightenment that would make him as "One with the Buddha."

Since Ranma had been taught to meditate from a very early age he had already obtained a form of meditative Satori where the early stages of enlightenment were found. By calling upon his center now he was able to rekindle the fire of the light that burned brightly from inside him, and then Ranma summoned the power of the Arashisenken and rose from the ground to hover in full lotus posture while feeling the sun burn from inside him, gradually dissipating the shadows and causing the hunger to fade away, much like a sound that one could ignore in passing.

Slowly, gradually the hunger subsided, and then it was gone entirely, to be replaced by a new kind of energy that filled his being the more that Ranma sat and meditated. All at once he felt his right leg grow warm as if filling from within with the touch of a new kind of power. Ranma slowly opened his eyes to see that the same flowing lettering that covered both of his arms was now flowing over his right leg in shifting letters whose meaning he could only vaguely guess at.

A swirl within the air caused Ranma to open his eyes in time to see a female form take shape before him, naked and beautiful with a terrible kind of light within her eyes. She smiled at him and her voice had the gentleness of a morning breeze as he said, "What will you of me, Master? My name is Karina."

"Karina?" Ranma replied, then softly moaned, "Oh no...don't tell me it happened...again?"

"Afraid so, my Master," the strange woman smiled, only to become more solid to his eyes, and then Ranma saw with a start that she looked exactly like his sister, Kaoru.

"Kaoru?" Ranma blinked, then self-corrected, "I mean...Karina?"

A gentle laugh that felt like a spring rain greeted his confusion, "Kaoru is but the form I choose to take for you since her image was so strong in your memories. I am a Sylphan Wind Elemental, and I am now yours to command, Master, since you passed the test and won through your trials and visions."

"Ah...you don't say?" Ranma winced slightly and added, "Nabiki is gonna kill me..."

"Oh, I would never permit that to happen, Master," Karina assured him, "I can sense that you are kind and gentle, else Latisha and Sharil would not have bound themselves to your nature. I live to serve you now, dear Master, and I would bid that you command me to help free you from your prison."

"My prison, huh?" Ranma blinked, "What prison?"

"Why, the prison of the body that your mind has yet to perceive," Karina smiled, "Do you wish me to show you?"

All at once Ranma awoke with a start, glancing around at a darkened room that he was somehow left within. He glanced around and then noticed that he was upright, and that he could not move his arms for some strange reason, and then he glanced up and saw the reason why and went, "Oh..." with dawning comprehension.

In his mind he heard Karina's voice say, "Never fear, Master. The chains are cold iron, but you have the strength within you to seek your freedom."

"You don't say?" Ranma responded, then mentally shrugged, "Well, I guess I could always try, since the guy who left me like this could come back at any moment..."

His arms felt like lead and his shoulders were aching but Ranma still have enough tenacity to make use of his legs, which he proceeded to do as he swung himself back and forth, gradually building up momentum to attempt a gymnastics feat of swinging his legs up while leveraging his body into an upward roll, gripping the chains with both hands as he brought his feet up against the roof of the tomb-like dungeon, and then pulling with all his might against the rusted iron that held him until a few links began to give way, at which point he snapped them...and then found himself obeying the pull of gravity that dropped him head-first towards the concrete floor beneath him.

He managed to roll into an upright position before actually landing, then he slumped to the ground with the belated sense of numbness overwhelming his upper body. The effect of renewed circulation sent pins and needles up his shoulders to his spine and for several moments he groaned faintly until the fire left his arms and he could twitch his hands once again, and then he leveraged himself up into a sitting position and took new stock of his present situation.

"Oh man...I feel light-headed," Ranma murmured, "Where the hell am I?"

"In a chamber deep beneath the ground, Master," Karina spoke to him again, "You have to hurry, others are approaching your way."

"Right," Ranma crawled to his feet then searched around for an exit, only to pause as he heard voices coming from one specific direction, so he cast about in the other way in hopes of avoiding a direct confrontation...at least until he knew who and what he was up against.

As he sought shelter in a convenient nearby alcove, however, he took notice of the fact that several feminine voices were among those approaching the chamber, and that one of them was saying at that particular moment, "...won't the boss be thrilled when he sees what we've done? Of course we've also gotta rouse up Dimitri from this crypt and see what the Dark Pack is up to. Ready to have another powwow with your Big Sis, Lil?"

"Ecstatic," the other feminine voice replied, "By the way...where are the Dark Pack? They were supposed to meet us in this chamber."

"Zzzztrange," a third feminine voice remarked, one that buzzed with a curious form of accent, "I can zzzenzze their nearnezzzz, but they are further on inzzzide thezzze catacombzzz."

"You don't say?" the first speaker remarked, and as Ranma peered from his hiding place he saw an attractive blonde girl wearing a crimson hood while packing enough hardware to start a minor military campaign on her lonesome, "Wonder what's up? Think they're having a conference?"

"It is worth investigating," the blue haired girl beside the blonde remarked, "I can feel my sister is somewhere close nearby...but I am getting the strangest sensations from her...as if she's in the throes of something...really intense..."

"Yeah?" the blonde asked, "Good or bad?"

"Good," the blue haired girl replied, "Very, very good...so good, in fact, that it is almost painful...sweet agony...intense stimulation..."

"Zzzoundzzz azzz though zzzhe izzz getting it on with zzzomeone," the third girl-the one with short pink hair and a pair of insect-like antennae with eyes that were like faceted green emeralds, and her body was oddly striped the more than Ranma tried examining her more closely, "But who, that izzz the quezzztion."

"What say we find out?" the blonde inquired, "We're on a timetable here, a countdown to Armageddon, and this is no time to be screwing around. The Boss expects us to deliver the goods on time, and if Dimitri isn't there to play his part he's gonna be sorry, even if I have to light a cap under his dead ass..."

Their voices started to dwindle off when the blue haired girl suddenly glanced back over her shoulder, and for a moment Ranma wondered if she were looking right at him, as if she had somehow managed to penetrate his disguise in spite of the Umisenken maneuver he was invoking, but she continued on with her companions as though nothing were amiss. Ranma was not reassured, however, and decided to leave his safe vantage to attempt to sneak out of the place using his stealthy attention-avoiding techniques to hide his movements.

He only got a few meters when all at once strong hands accosted him from behind, and then he found himself slammed up against a stone brick wall, and then he found himself confronted by the blue haired lady who was smiling at him in a nasty way that he did not like.

"Well now, look what I've got here, girls...an invisible boy...only he looks pretty solid to me now..."

"Well, well...a spy...or target practice," the blonde said as she cocked the triggers on a pair of nasty looking handguns and stuck them in Ranma's face, "What say I blow his brains out and we'll see what color his blood is."

"He doezzz not zzzmell like the undead," the Bee-girl buzzed, "He zzzmellzz...human."

"Well, if he isn't dead now, he soon will be," Lilith promised.

Deciding that the tenor of this discussion was not going in a direction to his liking, Ranma suddenly exploded forward into motion, striking at all three girls with a speed that took them by surprise as he broke free from Lilith's grasp and took the guns from BB Hood before tossing them away, and then moved beyond the reach of the Queen-Bee.

However-much to his amazement-the three girls did not fall to the floor in paroxysms of ecstasy, which left Ranma feeling fairly stunned himself as he stared disbelievingly at the trio before him.

"He's fast," Lilith remarked, "I barely even sensed that attack."

"Yeah, but what was that business all about?" Hood asked, "You trying to cop a feel on us or tickle us or something?"

"I think he wazzz ezzzpecting zzzomething more from uzzz, judging by hizzz expression," Queen Bee buzzed in some amusement.

"Nani?" Ranma looked at his hands then stared at the deadly trio, "What gives? Is it gone?"

"Is what gone?" Hood asked as she produced another firearm, "Your brains?"

She fired at point-blank range but Ranma easily moved out of the way before she completed pulling the trigger, and then he struck her again, this time using a more conventional attack that sent the blonde careening into the wall where he had been before.

"Well, that worked," Ranma said when all at once Lilith attacked, moving like a blur with a powerful swing that he just barely managed to avoid by moving sideways. Several more swings forced him on the defensive, but then he reversed momentum and got within the guard of the blue haired girl's reach. One uppercut later and he sent her careening off of the ceiling, at which point the Queen-Bee launched her own attack by sending a swarm of killer insects flowing from her outstretched palm to where Ranma stood alone and unprotected, but before she had a chance to sting him to death with her loyal servants, Ranma raised his own arm and instinctively called forth a new Senken, and all at once a wind blew up around his hand, catching the bees in its spiraling vortex and sending them careening back towards their Queen, who was taken by surprise and sent tumbling to the far end of the crypt chamber.

"Whoah!" Ranma said as he paused to stare at his own fingers, "What was that?"

"You like it?" Karina spoke into his mind once again, "I leave it to you to name it, but that's just a sample of my power, and you can command me to do greater things if you like."

"All right," Ranma smiled, "I will...only...why couldn't I use the Kamasenken right now?"

"Well, you still have the memories...but...there seems to be a blockage there that I cannot penetrate for you, Master...a darkness is shrouding your memories...and I think someone borrowed them, made a copy of the file and left a dummy file to block your access."

"Say what?" Ranma said, "You make it sound like a damned computer."

"In a way the same principles apply, Master," the elemental spoke into his mind, "But you will come to understand this in good time. For now, I will try and help remove the blockage so that you can use the Kamasenken that was stolen by the pretender."

"Somebody took my Senken maneuvers?" Ranma frowned, "But..."

"Talking to yourself?"

"Uh oh," Ranma said as he started to turn around, only to have a powerful right hook take him down as Lilith got in a good one that laid the Saotome heir out like a lightbulb.

"Is he down? Ow!" Hood rubbed the back of her head, "Damn, I wanted another shot at him!"

"Who do you zzzuppozzze he izzz?" Queen Bee asked as she, too, started to recover.

"A dead man when I get through with him!" Hook started to draw yet another of her firearms, only to have Lilith grip her by the arm, at which point the blonde snarled, "What?"

"Hold a moment," the succubus urged, "He interests me. There is something about him...I can't quite put my finger on it, yet, but I suspect he may be here for a reason..."

"He izzz a formidable fighter," Queen Bee pointed out, "Lord Dimitri may take an interest in him...if he has not done so already."

"Yeah?" Lilith said, moving Ranma's head to the side and parting his collar a bit to reveal a tell-tale bite mark, "Oh yeah...Dimitri's put the bite on him all right, but not enough to drain him dry. Must mean the old Vamp is keeping him alive for some reason, and from the way he was talking I think I know what it is."

"You mean...Fangs wanted to absorb some of his memories and abilities?" BB Hood figured out.

"That would exxxplain why he thought hizzz first attack would be more effective," Queen Bee mused, "And I zzzuzzzpect, if he were fighting at full trim, he might have been a match for all three of uzzz."

"All the more reason for us to keep him around, eh girls?" Lilith smiled in a very nasty manner.

"Oh?" Hook arched her eyebrows, then caught the meaning of the succubus's leer and said, "Oh...you mean...that?"

"What a prime zzzpezzzemin he is," Queen Bee mused, "He would make an exxxcelent drone."

"Let's tie him up and worry about it later, right girls?" Lilith smiled, "Right now we need to find Dimitri and tell him Jeddah's got the goods so we can put the plan into full motion."

"Right on that," Hood smiled as she produced a set of handcuffs and manacles, "Let's get loverboy trussed up then we'll take care of business. Pleasure can wait for later when we've time enough to fool around."

"And then," Queen-Bee chuckled malevolently, "It will be time to breed...and such fine pollen I will spread...he might even sire me a new and improved generation of my servants."

"To say nothing of providing me with sustenance after the spell has been effected," Lilith grinned, "And then my big sister will learn who is the true heir to the Anslat throne, and if there is anything left of him when we get done..."

"Right," Hood cocked a handgun, "Then fun time really will begin...with a bullet..."

Meanwhile, oblivious to this, something was happening further on into the catacombs, a very different trio was leaning up against the wall of a particular tomb chamber. Anakaris, using his bandages to create a makeshift listening device, was providing to his colleagues, Jumanji and Darkwulf, a very vivid audio play of what sounded like frantic physical activity going on with great abandon.

"Holy Damballah," Jumanji murmured after an indeterminate silence on his part, "They are still going at it?"

"They've passed their own record double over," Darkwulf remarked, "Didn't know Dimitri could get it up this long, and Morgan sounds like she's either in agony or she's died and gone to the good side of Hell."

"Probably the latter," Anakaris mused, "Seth take me, but whatever it is that Lord Dimitri took from that youth has given him the vitality of a god. Clearly he is enjoying his dominance over the succubus..."

"You think?" Darkwulf remarked, only to blink as he saw a pair of Goya vampires appearing near the entrance to the chamber, "Hey! You clowns! What do you think you're doing?"

"Following orders," one of the two lead Goya replied as they approached the door, "Lord Jeddah has commanded that we seek the Master to inform him of our successful capture of the Blood Queen..."

"The blood bitch is poached?" Darkwulf arched an eyebrow.

"With Ling-Ko in our possession," Jumanji rumbled, "The day of reckoning is indeed at hand."

"I would not enter the chamber if I were you," Anakaris cautioned the Goya.

The second Goya gave a sneering retort to that and said, "We do not take orders from you, Mummy. We answer only to the likes of Lords Dimitri and Jeddah."

"No, he means it," Darkwulf said, "You really ought to wait a while before going in there."

"If we wait too long we will miss the deadline for the casting of the spell," the first replied while producing a skeleton key and inserting it into the keyhole of the iron doorway. A few quick motions and the sound of the tumblers falling into place was clearly audible in the corridor, and then without further preamble the Goya swung the door ajar, and then the second one entered first as if eager to make his report...regardless of the circumstances.

"Lord Dimitri," he began, "We..."

All at once a massive discharge of Soul Crushing energies lanced out and took the vampire in the face, and everyone else in the room had to flinch away rather than go blind from the intensity of that blast. It punched a hole into the wall behind where the Goya had been standing, and when at last the blast was done there was little to be seen of the malefactor save a smoking pair of shin bones sticking out from badly singed footwear.

The first Goya stared in dismay at the remains of the first and then they all heard Dimitri say clearly, "Really, my dear...must you always be so hard on the staff?"

"Close the damned door or I'll be doing far worst to the lot of ye!" Morgan direly called out at their cringing allies.

"No, the mood is spoiled for now," Dimitri sighed, "What is it that you wished to report, O' soon to be an ashtray?"

"Er..." the Goya seemed a lot less arrogant and self-assured as he replied, "Dread Lord...lord Jeddah reports success. They have captured the Blood Queen and will sacrifice her at midnight!"

"At last!" Dimitri declared, "The hour is fast approaching when my dreams are fulfilled and my vengeance is at last at hand! Soon the one whom I hate more than any other will know suffering beyond his most fervent nightmares, and I shall rule as a God over all creatures of the night. Oh yes, and of course you will be there by my side, my dear, when we take back the throne of Makai."

"That's wonderful news, Dimitri dear...but can we go back to what we were doing just now and...finish things up?" Morgan asked a bit plaintively.

"Ah-ah, my dear, that would spoil the magic," Dimitri smoothly replied, "Let us tend to business first, then we can celebrate in style on the hour of my triumph."

"But Dimitri-!" Morgan pleaded.

"Patience, my sweet Morgan," Dimitri said as he appeared at the doorway hastily pulling on his pants, jacket and cape, "You want the full of my attention upon you when I bring you next to fulfillment? It will only be another hour or two at most..."

"An HOUR?" Morgan sounded dismayed.

"The time will pass before you know it," Dimitri turned and saw his three allies standing in the hallway, doing the equivalent of whistling off tune while staring at the ceiling, "You clowns have a part in this, so why are you still here? Get moving! Oh, and has anyone seen Raptor about? That walking bag of bones is so useless..."

"Uh...haven't seen him for a couple of hours, Boss," Darkwulf replied, "Maybe he went out to get drunk...you know how he likes to party."

"Well, it hardly matters at this point," Dimitri waved the point away, "Come with me now, we go to meet with our allies, and then we shall see how the so-  
called Dragon Queen likes being held captive like the helpless little girl that she is. In fact, I am very much looking forward to seeing Ling-Ko again...it has been quite some time, and I am curious to know if these new techniques work even upon a Blood Queen."

"But-my lord!" Morgan complained as she appeared at the doorway only partially dressed (which for her was not saying a whole lot), "Those techniques are for me...you promised!"

"Did I now?" Dimitri mused as he disappeared down the doorway, "Well, we shall see about that, shall we not?"

Instead of replying Morgan sank to her knees and leaned her back against the doorframe, then covered her eyes with a hand and said, "What have I done? What has he done? He's become a monster! And...and I want him to do me again...Chaos help me!"

The recent memory of her helplessness before the power of Dimitri's new skills at foreplay had made her weak and vulnerable in ways that Morgan had never experienced before with any man, and it was enough to shatter her self-confident self image as a strong and independent woman, and yet she had begged for him to pleasure her as though she were the lowliest and most baseborn slave. The artfulness with which he had mastered her body had been a soul-jarring affair, and now that she had tasted his Mastery she found that she actually wanted to be his dog, to crawl at his feet and beg for his favor, his very manhood...

"'Tis insane...what has come over me?" she moaned, when a curious thought crossed her mind, "It's the boy...he be the one I need to find! He must know the answer to my dilemma, and he will either tell me how to combat this...or I shall take it from him for myself..." she softly averred, thus setting in motion a chain of events that would bring the world to the edge of spiritual Ragnarok...not that Morgan much cared about what happened to the human world since it was her own dimension of Makai that she was supposed to be focusing on...not enslaving herself to the worst enemy that her family had ever known, and by the royal blood that churned within her she intended to see it through, to find a way of tilting the balance back towards her favor so that it would be Dimitri who groveled...while Morgan would be the one who lived out her days in relative triumph...

Continued.

Comments/Criticisms/Civil Palimony Laws for Darkstalkers: shadowmane

Frank and Nabiki plot a war council, and the Posse rides to the rescue while Dimitri and his allies prepare to unleash hell upon an innocent Nerima. Be with us next time for: "That Old Black Magic," or, "Men in Black Bite Back!" Be there!

X -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

If you wish to check out my other works, Please check out my Fanfiction webpage at: or it's Mirror page at ~ All related chapters of this series can be found there along with my other works.  
/pre 


	48. Chapter 48

preDnabiki122

Nabiki 1/2

"A Very Scary Thought!"

by Jim Robert Bader

(Inspired by the works of Rumiko Takahashi Others,  
with a special appearance by some of my own creations and those of Joss Whedon. The Character of Frank is my own interpretation of the Monster of Marry Shelley's novel and is thus a free agent, so talk with him if you want to have him costar in some other series.)

[Special thanks to Bill Guiroff and Shiva for helping the initial proofreading phase of this fanfic series, and for encouraging me to continue the saga of Nabiki 1/2.  
And added thanks to Andrew Greaves for further Darkstalker information...]

Part One-Hundred-Twenty-Two.

(Set during and slightly after the time of the events recorded in the side-story titled "Honeymoon Hentai")

[No Actual Vampires or Immortals were harmed in the making of this fanfic...]

"I can't believe you let us sleep through all of this," Natsumi complained while busying herself with her portable tool kit, gun and ammunition, "I can't believe we didn't hear a thing until you came knocking on our door to check on us..."

"I can," Miyuki remarked, "We were...a bit distracted at the time, if you will remember right, Natsumi-chan."

Natsumi's cheeks colored, "Yeah...like I can forget about a thing like that? But you know what I mean! There's no way we'd be able to miss this much gunfire going on just outside our window...so how come we missed out on the war zone?" she glanced up at a serene looking Nodoka.

"Well, surely you can't suspect that I had anything to do with that, can you, Officers Sujimoto and Kobayakowa-san?" Nodoka asked with a blandly innocent expression, "To seal you both off into a room cut off from the outside world in a different space and time cut off from the material plane without would certainly imply abilities far beyond those possessed by a mere housewife."

"Er...yes," Miyuki agreed, "So...exactly how did you perform it?"

Nodoka only smiled, "Let's just say that it is a good thing that you were not here during the battle or you might have wound up as another pair of casualties from the brutality of the sort that befell the rest of us. Though we appear to have gotten off fairly lightly, all things considered...some of us are not as fortunate about that as are others."

The two policewomen followed the line of Nodoka's stare to where a small gathering hovered about the stricken form of M'shulla, who had taken the worst of the initial battle and was presently being attended to by Donovan and Frank.

"I am sorry," the former said to the aged old Aborigine, "The bullets fragmented and spread throughout your body. They working like a poison affecting your system and preventing you from healing yourself back...and I fear that the effect may well claim your life at any moment."

"I could operate if we had the time," Frank said, "Try to get as much of that crap out of your body before it kills you. Won't even have to worry about antibiotics or anesthesia..."

"Thank you, old friend, but I fear your efforts on my behalf may be wasted," M'shulla gasped, "I am done...I know that well...I can feel death creeping over me, seeping into my bones...it is not long that I have left, but I am prepared to meet my end...which has been very long in coming."

"Hey, we can't lose you, Mush," Frank said, "Who's gonna talk sense to the clan Chiefs of the Yonogar, to say nothing of the other Tribes? Y'gotta hold it together just a little bit longer..."

"No, my friend," M'shulla said, "My day is done and I have...run my course...but do not...weep for me...for I have seen...the birth of a new Queen," he glanced at Kasumi, "...and the joy...of this will follow me...to the next world..."

"Oh my," Kasumi said softly.

"Is there anything that you wish us to do for you?" Donovan asked the dying vampire.

"Tell my tribe...it was my time," M'shulla said with ragged breaths, "I go to the Dreamtime now, to meet old friends long departed...to see my wife and hold her in my arms once again...pray for me, Priest, and ask the gods...to be gentle..."

"We'll get the scum who did this to you, Mush," Frank avowed, "I swear it."

The ancient shaman looked up at Frank with amazingly clear eyes and said, "Swear to me that you will save Ling-Ko. The Blood Mother...must be protected...or there will be a war...and...many more...will die. Swear it..."

"It's done," Frank gripped the man's hand in his own much larger fist, "You take care of yourself, you old snake charmer."

"And you...good friend..." M'shulla's eyes traveled to another set that were filled with tears, "Take care of the little...one...Yasmina...so much...like my own...dear...daughter..."

And with those words he slumped and became immobile...and before their very eyes he began to dissolve into mist, and then he faded away altogether.

"M'shulla..." Yasmina's voice shook, then she threw back her head and screamed out "M'SHULLAAAA!"

Even Leguire bowed his head as Donovan made a formal gesture for the departed, then the Exorcist said, "Steel bullets coated in wolfsbane and charged with a magnetic spin. It is a wonder he lasted this long...but I think that it was by force of will...so that he could exact that promise from us. And now a voice of reason has been silenced. His people...both Kin and Human, will miss him."

"BB Hood and her goons squad did this," Frank snarled ever so softly, "Wasn't Dimitri at all, it was somebody else pulling the strings...Jeddah."

"Yeah," Talbain spoke up, "And that's kinda hard to believe since we saw him get wasted. Guess death ain't the final say in these matters, huh?"

"No," Donovan straightened up, "Would that the natural course could be relied upon, but when dealing with the Dark there are no reliable safe courses. And if Jeddah, the Dark Messiah, is indeed among us once again, then the world itself has cause to tremble."

"So, what are we waiting around here for?" Kurumi asked, "If you guys know where the bad guys are headed, wouldn't it make sense to go after them before they get there?"

"That's assuming that our source of information is reliable," Mousse noted with a glance towards a chained and ward-bound Raptor was squatting at one end of the yard, "Can we really stake so much on the world of a zombie?"

"The villain has the charm and appeal of a viper," Kuno somberly agreed, "There is no reason to believe that he has our best interests at heart...and every reason to think he might be setting us up for a possible ambush."

"Don't matter either way," Frank said, "We can't rush into things without getting the full score, and all Raptor's told us so far is that Jeddah's working with Dimitri and Pyron, which alone oughta be alarming, to perform some kind of fancy spell that requires the blood of a Queen vampire...only what kind of dark magic would require that kinda umph has got me feeling the willies."

"I hear you, Buddy," Talbain agreed, "Only something mucho-nasty would bring those heavies together, when we all know they'd like nothing better than to tear each others' throats out."

"Ordinarily I would say let them," Leguire remarked, "But this matter has taken on a life of its own, and now I fear it goes well beyond petty tribal disputes or even a possible war between the blood clans. This time Maximoff appears ready to unleash hell itself, and he must be prevented from this by all means necessary."

"You would be upset with this?" Natsume eyed the French vampire with some suspicion.

"Believe it or not, yes," Leguire assured her, "Vampires may seem to your eyes like demons, but we are very human where it truly matters, and the last thing that any of us would wish upon the world would be the death of the human race, our primary food source. And make no mistake about it, if hell really did open up over the world it could well spend the doom of both breathers and Kin, so it is in our own best interest to protect you from the Demon worlds, and from those who might crush all life itself under their cloven hooves..."

"Even though you consider humans to be nothing more than cattle?" Natsume asked.

"Especially because of that," Leguire assured her, "And, if it is any consolation to you, some of my best friends started out as humans. Not all of us are born this way, the vast majority have been Turned over the ages."

"How nice to know that you have our best interests in mind," Tatewaki said with bitter irony in his tone and expression.

"Why not?" Keiko asked, "To him we're happy meals with legs. But you know something...I'm a bit worried about Saotome and whatever it is that Dimitri creep has in mind for him. If he's after the Senken...then what's to keep him from killing off our boy once he's gotten what he's after?"

"Yeah, that worries me too," Frank turned to glance towards the dojo, where they could all see Nabiki sitting in a posture of formal meditation, staring at a candle burning before her without moving for the past twenty minutes, "Kid's taking it hard. It was all I could do to convince her that we needed to prep ourselves before going in there with guns blazing."

"It will not make a difference if we go too soon," Donovan assured them, "Dimitri and Jeddah are on a fixed timetable and we know when they will appear to perform their dark ceremony."

"Yeah, midnight," Talbain grumbled, "If I didn't know better, I'd swear that Fangs has seen one too many bad movies, but if you think it really makes a difference what the hour is..."

"It matters not what hour it is," Yasmina voice shook with emotion, "He is dead, they are dead, they all dead! For what they did to poor M'shulla..."

"Easy Kid," Frank spoke soothingly, "We'll get 'em for old Mush, you can blood bank yourself on that."

Leguire made a soft sound and earned a wrathful look from Yasmina, who said, "You find something amusing about all of this?"

"I am merely reminded of how young you truly are," Leguire smiled, "Barely a century old and so eager to throw your young life away. Take counsel from one who has been there... hasty vengeance is for fools with a death wish. Only by careful planning can you overmaster your enemies, especially ones this cunning and ruthless."

"You sound almost as if you admire Dimitri," Nagi spoke up with a sour expression.

"Not admire, per se," Leguire replied, "But I do confess to a certain...appreciation for the intricacies of his schemes. To think that he would attack us in a secure place during a high-level and highly classified meeting at the same time that he pursues a private personal agenda with Miss Tendo...there is an audacity to Maximoff's actions that speaks of aggressive youth and daring..."

"I would not be so quick to praise him in the present company if I were you," Miyu frowned.

"There are few here who appreciate such schemes the way you do, Loire," Larva rumbled.

"It's cold," Yui said softly, "Cruel and vicious...utterly unfeeling. This thing...this thing Dimitri is contemplating...it feels so cold...so cold..."

"Yui-chan?" Nagi looked at his lady with concern in his expression.

"I sense the same thing too," Himiko spoke up, "A feeling of coldness, of malevolence...I can't put words to the sensation...but walking over our collective graves wouldn't be too far afield a description."

All at once Raptor's voice rang out, "Hah, got that right, Luv! The Boss's plannin' a lil' surprise party in a couple O' hours that'll leave you all feeling breathless..."

"Why don't you shut up?" Lenore snapped from where she and her friends were sitting on guard duty, "Thought you didn't know the full score of what your boss was planning?"

"Er...well," the Zombie King temporized, "He might've let slip one or two words about his plans when he thought I wasn't hearin'..."

"Do tell?" Frank growled as he turned to confront the helpless Raptor, "Care to share those tid-bits with the rest of us?"

"Ain't talking," Raptor smirked with his rictus features, "And whatcha gonna do if I don't squeal on me makes? You think I'm scared of you? It's Pyron and Jeddah that frighten me, and next to them you're just a lotta nothing."

"I warn you, Zombie," Donovan said, "If you do not cooperate, then I have means of banishing you to the harshest realms of pain and suffering that mortal man has never yet imagined."

"Do your worst, ya crummy side-show freaks!" Raptor sneered, "I ain't got no freaking pain receptors to bother me...I'm dead, so ya might as well saves your bluffs for someone who can feel 'em."

"How about I just remove your skull from that sack of bones you call a body?" Talbain growled, "I'll bury the rest and chew you until sunrise."

"Didn't think I was your type, John," Raptor sneered, "C'mon...you blokes is freakin' amateurs next to Dimitri! And ya ain't seen pain until you've seen him dishing it out..."

"Is that a fact?" Lenore straightened out, "Well, what would you say if I told you that I know how to get you to spill the beans...Mate?"

"I'd say you were suckin' on winos, Girlie," Raptor sneered, "But cut back on the Crack addicts, they'll rot your brains."

Lenore's smile revealed her fangs as she said, "I remember you from way, way back, Lord Raptor, back to when you were a bit hit in the Heavy Metal circuit, I was even a fan and collected all your albums."

"So you're the one who bought 'em," Raptor sniffed, "Want an autograph? Of course, you'll have to untie me first..."

"They said you could have been another Rod Zombie if you'd worked a bit on your harmonics," Lenore continued as if not interrupted, "And that your bass was a little flat and uninspiring, and you could have used a bit more work with your lyrics and vocals..."

"Everybody's a critic," Raptor snorted, "I've got plenty O' favorable reviews praising me music..."

"Yeah," Chloe spoke up, "And you're probably the one who wrote them."

"So what if I did toot me own horn?" Raptor asked indifferently, "Ain't a crime to self-promote, y'know."

"I was just thinking what a naïve little girl I was back in those days not to see you for the pathetic, talentless amateur that you were," Lenore continued as she reached into her cloak and pulled out several objects, "And if I hadn't been so screwed up back then I might have clued in sooner about what you're really like..."

"Eh?" despite himself Raptor's black eyes shifted to see the objects that were produced in Lenore's hand, and to his amazement he gasped, "Eh...those ain't what I...?"

"Uh-huh," Lenore nodded, "Cassette tapes of all three of your major albums, which I've had in my possession for years and have listened to many a time when I was down or depressed and needed a little stroll through my dark side. Remember this one," she separated one from the trio, "'Bats in the Belfry?' It contains one of your favorite hit singles, 'This Callow Shell O' Mine.'"

"Yeah, I remember tha-WHAT?" Raptor blinked as he saw Lenore break the thing in half then spread it apart, stretching out the mylar ream that it contained, "Hey, what are ya doin'? That thing's a priceless classic!"

"I'm doing what somebody should have done to the master tape," Lenore informed him as she picked up the second tape between her hands and said, "'Risen in Anguish,' the one that put your name on the top LP charts, containing the only platinum song you ever recorded, 'Evisceration Ain't Pretty.'"

"'Ey, the critics-the real ones-they loved that-NOOO!" Raptor moaned as he saw Lenore do the same thing to the tape that she had done to the other one, "What are you doin'? Them things are collectors items! They be worth a...!"

"'Rat's Ass?'" Lenore held up the third tape between her hands, "Not your best seller, but certainly one that earned a cult status by itself. My favorite lyrics included 'Ode to the Gory,' and then there was the one that actually made me cry, 'Tears of a Zombie,' which I believe you composed to remember a girl who once dumped you..."

"ALL RIGHT-STOP! HOLD ON A MINUTE! DON'T DO THAT!" Raptor cried, "I'll talk! Just...don't do nothin' all right?"

"I'm listening," Lenore said as she held the remaining tape in her hands, "Start talking."

"Sadist," Raptor grumbled, then sighed, "All right, then if ya gotta know, then here's what I heard the Boss say to Morgan...that Jeddah's plannin' on ressurectin' something awful that'll give Dimitri absolute dominion over all the vampires...and I ain't just talking about Jezril tribe neither! Didn't hear no details, but the Boss said something about getting back at the one he hates most in all the demon worlds, whatever that means. I figured he must've meant Beliol, but for some reason Morgan seemed to think he was describing somebody other than her old man, maybe my old mate, Domon, or something..."

"No," Donovan remarked, "Not the lord of Hatred...someone else must be the target of Dimitri's hatred."

"Think he might be talking about you?" Frank asked, "Since the two of you are both half-brothers..."

"No," Donovan replied, "We may share the same dark father, but our feud is a personal one, and I do not see Dimitri calling upon the services of others to resolve our dispute."

"Why not?" Kiima spoke up in her ghostly voice, "Are you not, next to him, one of the most powerful of all Darkstalkers?"

"No, Donny-boy's right," Talbain said, "If Dimitri were after him it wouldn't get this complicated, and why a blood queen, and what's this business about him gaining dominion over all the vampires?"

"Don't really know," Raptor shrugged, then he glanced sharply at Lenore and said, "Really! I means it! I don't bloody know! Just that, whoever he is, the Boss hates him so much that the words almost choke in his mouth, and his eyes looked a little funny. Don't think it was anybody I ever run into on account O' the fact that I ain't never seen the Boss like that before..."

"Oboy," Talbain winced.

"What is it?" Frank asked.

"Just a thought crossed my mind," Talbain replied, "And I hope to Selene that I'm wrong about it..."

"A being hated by Dimitri...more than any other?" Miyu murmured.

"Could help to narrow it down a little," Larva said, "Dimitri hates everyone."

"You're wrong," Leguire snorted, "Dimitri Maximoff merely loathes and despises the world and everyone in it...real hatred is something altogether different."

"And I suppose that you would know about that?" Yasmina sniffed.

"On the contrary," Leguire replied, "I hate no one. It's too much bother and hard work wasting energy despising another...it's like vengeance itself, highly overrated."

"John," Frank said, "We don't got time for twenty questions. If you've got a clue, Man, then you need to spill it..."

"That's just it," Talbain said, "The one who Dimitri hates more than anybody, including himself? Only one being fits that description...and he's the same one you hate, Donny boy, even when you claim you're above that sort of nonsense."

"Eh?" Donovan asked with frank curiosity.

"Who was it got both of you your start in life?" Talbain asked, then when he saw blank incomprehension in the other man's eyes he said, "It's your old man, the Rakshasa who impregnated both of your mothers...Mor'ghul Devilspawn!"

For the first time in the night Donovan actually registered fear in his expression, and Frank himself looked suitably non-plussed as he murmured faintly, "Holy palimony suits...the spawn of Mordecai? The Rakshasa lord who once came within an inch of opening the Hellgates?"

"The very same..." Donovan's expression turned grim (which for him was saying a lot since grim was his usual expression), "The Rakshasa who raped my mother and forced her to bear me. The creature who brought darkness to my life and whose rampages are legion. He would be involved in something this hellish...but why would my brother want to summon him? He hates our dark father ever much as I do..."

"But that's the point, don't you see?" Anita spoke up, "He wants his revenge, so he'd have to bring him to earth in order to kill him."

"Anita?" now Donovan evidenced surprise, then a new thought occurred to him, "No...not slay him...that is too simple a design to suit Dimitri..." now he turned a horrified look towards the others, "But...what if he seeks to trap our father...and to steal his powers? Can you imagine the consequences of such a thing? To gain the energies of a King of the Rakshasa..."

"What's the deal here?" Keiko asked as she saw the fearful looks that crossed the faces of Lenore, Leguire and Yasmina, "I thought you guys already had Rakshasa powers."

"Our powers resemble that of the Rakshasa," Leguire replied, "But our nature is as far removed from them as apes are from humans...and the power is attenuated by being spread out across the entire breadth of the Vampire Nation."

"And this is a God-level Rakshasa Lord," Lenore revealed, "His powers ain't nothing to sneeze at, and if Dimitri would to somehow add it to the power he's already accumulated from his previous victims..."

"He may well become a vampire God himself," Yasmina averred, "With the power to command all of us, even Blood Queens and Masters."

"So, what do we do to prevent this?" asked Kasumi.

"Excuse me, Miss Tendo?" Frank said as he turned to regard her.

"Well...I'm a vampire Queen myself now, right?" Kasumi asked, "That makes it as much my problem as yours, so it stands to reason that I should use my new abilities to help prevent Dimitri and his allies from doing great evil."

"That almost makes sense," Talbain said, "Except..."

"Oneechan?" Kurumi tried to put it delicately, "We're sure you mean well, but..."

"You are not a warrior, Sister," Natsume put it more bluntly, "If you got into a fight we would have to divert resources to protect you."

"It is true that I am not much good when it comes to a fight," Kasumi replied, "But there ought to be something that I can do to help out. I want to help get Ranma, my little brother back, and I want to make things right for everyone. This all began because of me and what I became on account of Dimitri..."

"I fail to see how any of this is your fault," Miyu turned to Kasumi, "You are an innocent dragged into affairs that should not be of any concern to you..."

"How do you think that?" Kasumi asked the Shinma Princess, "It concerns my family, and that means it is of great concern to me, and if what Dimitri-san plans is as terrible as you suggest, then does it not follow that all of humanity could be affected, and if so, then my family and loved ones would suffer. I think it very much concerns me what happens, and if there is any way in which I can play a part in helping to resolve things..."

"There...might possibly be a way in which you could do this, Lady Tendo," Donovan said slowly.

"Say what?" Frank said.

"Don, what the hell are you suggesting?" Talbain asked.

"That there is a way in which Miss Tendo could well tip the advantage in our favor," Donovan replied, "After all...she is a Queen, and though a pacifist by nature she is powerful beyond reckoning. It stands to reason that her abilities could be used to counter or even cancel out Dimitri's own dark power."

"Yeah," Lenore said, "Considering what effect she's already having on him."

"How's that?" Frank turned back to the vampiric redhead.

"Big-bad Dimitri was complaining about having headaches and other stuff," Chloe answered.

"Indeed," Kiima remarked, "He seemed unusually troubled by something that was affecting him from a distance."

"That is right," Larva spoke up, "I witnessed for myself how Maximoff was becoming agitated and uneasy during our own brief conversation. At the time I wondered if he were under a spell of some sort, but if the source of his discomfort was Tendo-san here..."

"She may be bleeding some of her own nature into him," Miyu reasoned, "And her light could be affecting his darkness."

"Yeah," Lenore agreed, "He kept complaining about the 'purity' of her light bleeding into him and driving him bonkers. Maybe Tendo-sama here could be the key to fouling him up altogether."

"Tendo-sama?" Chloe asked.

Lenore blinked, "Did I say that? Heh...sorry...she's not even of my tribe or...anything like that..."

"No," Leguire regarded Kasumi directly, "But you are right to infer that she is our social superior. I can feel the force within her...compelling me...compelling us to serve her."

"You too?" Yasmina asked as she also turned to Kasumi, "I was wondering if it were just me who felt like that...like if you asked me to do something for you, Tendo-sama, I would do it without hesitation."

"Oh my," Kasumi blinked her eyes, "Am I really that...um...influential?"

"A normal vamp has the power of suggestion and fascination," Frank revealed, "A single look can hypnotize most humans, but when a Queen gives an order to a lesser Vamp it has a similar such effect, and that might mean that you could countermand Dimitri's control over his own Goya minions."

"Goya themselves lack this ability," Miyu revealed, "Which is why they are often employed as hired muscle by Master vampires. They can be influenced by fascination but the only way they can control others is through biting them and stealing a part of a victim's essence."

"It may be that the power within you is strong enough to affect even those human agents who were working alongside the Goya," Donovan noted, "Unless, of course, they are somehow able to block your influence through artificial means..."

"Like helmets and goggles and special protective devices," Nagi noted, "And those mercenaries we fought against had all of those and more."

"Yes, and who were those hired killers anyway?" Yui asked, "Who sent them to destroy us? Was it Jeddah all along, and if so, why then did he act to destabilize our meeting?"

"To sow chaos among us, obviously enough," Nagi spoke up, "To disrupt the peace of the vampire nation...so that Dimitri could rise to power by restoring order."

"Neat trick that," Frank said, "Weaken the union of the bloodlines, set Kindred against Kindred, then ride in on a white horse with the power of a Rakshasa Lord to master the whole lot of 'em. And with no organized resistance to oppose him..."

"So, what are we going to do about it?"

"Nabiki-chan?" Kasumi turned to see her sister standing beside her.

"You heard me," Nabiki stared hard at Frank and the other Darkstalkers, "What are we gonna do to break this up? Has anybody got a plan for tearing this Dimitri guy a new asshole?"

"Um...not so much that just yet," Talbain responded with a shuffling of paws as he found it difficult to meet the intensely focused stare of the Tendo-Saotome heir, "But we're trying to work something out, Tendo-san..."

"Fine," Nabiki said, "Because I have a plan, one that I need you guys to help me finesse. Of course I do need to ask you a few questions."

"Name 'em," Frank immediately responded, turning to face Nabiki directly as he searched her face with his colorless grey eyes as if seeking to fathom what was so different about her at the moment.

"First off," Nabiki said, "How do you kill Dimitri?"

Everyone else seemed disconcerted at the way in which she said this, but Donovan responded directly, "There are many ways in which my brother can be killed, but the only certain way to be sure that he stays dead is to completely destroy his body so that he can never reconstitute himself from the ashes."

"Most vampires can be slain the same way as an Immortal," said Julian Fries as he came up and joined in their conversation, "By cutting off their heads. But Jezril vampires can be restored to life by reattaching the head to the body, then fusing them with a few drops of blood. Staking them with wood is another way that works with most of the tribes, but pull a stake out of a Jezril vamp and he'll come back to life again. They're tough suckers to kill, and I should know since I've worked with them for ages."

"Why is wood so effective against vampires?" Tatewaki spoke up, breaking his own silence.

"Because vamps are partially etheric creatures, not entirely material," Frank explained, "Their bodies are partially formed of Akashic energies, slightly out of phase with normal matter, and animated by an energy field that holds their integrity together. The more ethereal the bloodlines the more unsolid they get, and Jezril are very ethereal in nature, their actual material selves residing in a partial phase that resonates slightly different from normal matter."

"Most metals won't hurt them like it does a human," Talbain revealed, "Lead, copper and tin just pass right through them, but silver's got a special resonance that affects their energy fields and can disrupt the flow of the pattern. Same rule applies to Weres like me, only we're a lot more sensitive than vamps. Gold also has certain properties that resonates funny with our energy pattern, but it's not as effective as silver. About the only thing that approaches silver in effectiveness is Cold Iron...that is to say, iron that has a strong magnetic field, like natural forming lodestones, and which has been shaped to form without the use of normal heating."

"Without heating?" Mousse asked, "How do you extract iron from pyrite without heating it up?"

"Alchemical methods exists by which iron is extracted and shaped as needed while retaining its polarized uniqueness," Dimitri explained, "The process of heating disrupts the magnetic field...but you can regain it by charging iron and steel through the use of a magnet...or by rotating it at a very fast rate to generate a magnetic field much as you would using a steam-powered turbine."

"That's why steel jacketed shells can be effective against many types of demons," Frank added, "It disrupts their integrity field and leads them vulnerable to physical disruption. But wood's another naturally occurring substance that's even more effective since it was once living..."

"Once living?" Natsume asked with interest, "Why is that so effective?"

"Because all living things have an energy field that still resonates within them even after normal life processes have ceased," Donovan explained, "The vitality of a tree can die, but its bark retains a portion of its essence even after death, meaning that it will leave an imprint in the etheric field, and it resonates against the flesh of a vampire whether undead or living, which is why a wooden stake driven through the heart is the prescribed method for killing most types of vampires."

"It ain't 100% effective," Frank cautioned, "But in most cases once you disrupt the flow of energy in the central nervous system of a vamp he dies from one type of death or another. Goya get torn apart by the pull of dissonant energies between the physical and ethereal ranges, while Yonagar and many types like them, as you've just seen, tend to fade away entirely into ethereal matter. Loire...well, you tend to get left with the skeleton since their flesh tends to shrivel up and soft tissues like the brain turn to powder, but the integrity of their energy field remains intact on the ethereal plane, which is why you can sometimes revive them. Jezril remain intact and solid when they die, and their bodies will come together automatically unless you keep their parts separated, preferably burned to ashes and buried someplace that grounds their C'thonic nature."

"Holy ground is the preferred resting place for Jezril vampires," Donovan added, "Or running water. Water generates a magnetic field of its own that some vampires find quite troublesome..."

"Yeah, tell me about it," Lenore winced, "I hate crossing streams and canals myself...it's like forcing my body to push through an ice wall..."

"Yeah, and even carrying you can be a bitch," Chloe added.

"So, spread a Jezril's ashes over moving water and they'll never come back to haunt you," Talbain added by way of helpful elaboration, "Or bury the head and body in different places that have a spiritual charge that will ground out their inherent nature."

"Even then you have to stuff their mouths with garlic or wolfsbane, which are poisonous to many strains of vampire," Julian noted, "Goya hate Italians like me, especially with our preferred form of diet. To them garlic burns like acid, and then there's spiritually infused holy water..."

"Which must be charged by a true believing priest of good alignment," Donovan added, "Or someone who manifests a highly positive spiritual nature so that the touch of holy water will cause their flesh to burn and shrivel."

"What about the other stuff you see in movies?" Kurumi asked, "Holy signs and crosses?"

"Those only work against certain kinds of vamps, Kid," Frank answered, "And only if you charge 'em up with positive spiritual energies, or else you're a true believer and can give the symbol its protective power through your own inherent nature."

"Indeed," Donovan remarked, "By itself a symbol has no intrinsic power, but by believing in what the symbol represents one can channel positive life energies through the holy relic and thus give it the means for turning vampires."

"I thought most vampires could not bear to look upon holy symbols," Natsume said.

"Only if they were religious before they converted," Julian said, "So don't expect crucifixes and crosses to have much influence with a Jezril. Goya might be gulled into believing they have power, but they're sensitive to most things that would hardly bother the average vampire."

"So," Mousse said, reaching into his sleeve and pulling out a number of holy symbols, "If I were to show them these...it wouldn't have any effect?"

"Not against me, unless you are a true believer," Leguire noted, "A priest might be able to turn me, but I would laugh at the average believer since I, myself, am an agnostic."

"Okay then," Mousse put the holy symbols away, reaching into his sleeves again and saying, "Then what about these items?"

Yasmina blinked as she saw Mousse produce a statue of the Buddha, a much larger crucifix and a Jewish Menorah, which same he held up for their examination, then she said, "Ah...where exactly are you pulling those out from?"

"Sometimes it's better not to ask," Keiko sagely advised her.

Donovan examined the items in question and said, "I sense that this Buddha statuette does have a strong spiritual power, and the crucifix carries a charge...as though it is a symbol of much veneration. The Menorah, however..."

"I would advise you to put that one away," Leguire smiled, "Or else find yourself a nice Jewish girl."

"Hey, I am a nice Jewish girl," Lenore protested.

"Ahem," Kurumi glared at the redhead and murmured the words, "He's taken."

"Hardly practical carrying all that weight around in the middle of a fight," Talbain snorted, "Better try prayer beads and Ofuda strips, or bathe yourself in holy incense."

"Will holy incense affect vampires?" Kasumi asked.

"Are you kidding?" Nagi wrinkled his nose, "It would affect anything with a sense of smell, and some types of incense are downright nasty."

"All right then," Nabiki spoke up once again, "So beheading a vampire or disrupting their nervous system can kill them, but you need to make sure the body is destroyed before it's final. Wood and garlic work against some types of vampires but are less effective against others, while silver and steel have some effect depending on how you use them. Am I covering things so far?"

"More or less," Donovan answered.

"So magnetism or water can be used to weaken them," Nabiki continued, "While garlic is poisonous to many of the vamps we'll be going up against. I think I know how to handle them now, just as long as good left hook can clean their clocks, that is."

"Oh, fists and kicks will definitely hurt them," Frank said, "But they regenerate so fast that you might as well not even bother. Only steel and wood make the best type of weapons for a direct physical encounter, so maybe you should put aside the Anything Goes philosophy for once and use some kind of bladed weapons."

"Fiddlesticks!" another voice joined in as Happosai appeared at a bound into the middle of their conference, "The Anything Goes method will still work just fine against these Goya, especially if you back up your fists with a lot of Ki power. Just hit 'em with a spiritual blast and I guarantee that even the Jezril will feel it."

"You again?" Leguire said with evident annoyance, even as Yasmina reflexively hugged herself to protect her breasts from exploitation.

"You've got something to add, Master?" Nabiki asked.

"Just that you're totally focused on getting your husband back, and it's making you careless about one particular detail," Happosai glared at his nominal apprentice, "How exactly do you plan on facing down Dimitri?"

Nabiki just glared back at the wizened old master, balled a fist, raised it, then channeled her energies and discharged them in a Ki-blast that scorched the earth in front of Happosai, "Like that for starters."

"I see," Happosai examined the mark then looked back up at Nabiki once again, "And that's the way you plan on fighting the Kamasenken?"

For a moment Nabiki's expression did not change, but then she blinked as color drained from her face and she said, "Say what?"

"You heard me, Girl," Happosai said levelly, "What are you gonna do if it turns out that Dimitri has learned the Kamasenken?"

"Ah...well...I..." Nabiki faltered.

"I thought as much," Happosai nodded, "You're still a woman at heart, and that means you're vulnerable to your husband's favorite attack style for dealing with the fair sex. You were barely able to fend him off the first time he used it against you, and he's definitely gotten a lot better at it since then, hasn't he?"

"Ah..." Nabiki glanced away, her expression a token admission.

An awkward silence settled over them for the moment, broken only by Miyu, who asked, "What is this...Kamasenken you refer to?"

"The thousand fists of love," Tatewaki replied, "The ultimate means by which Saotome-kun can stimulate a woman's body and cause her to experience the throes of heightened arousal."

"Excuse me?" Yui blinked.

"Such a method exists?" Larva asked, only to notice the odd way that Miyu, Nagi, Himiko and Yui all turned to look at him, which prompted him to add, "What?"

"Oh my," Kasumi said with a distant, haunted expression, which same she turned upon Nabiki.

"The Kamasenken," Natsume averred, "I had not thought of that...it means that we are all vulnerable to such an attack on one level or another."

"Only women," Mousse objected, "Saotome styled the Senken to work upon a woman's physiology. It's much less effective when used against a man."

"Not necessarily, Guys," Keiko smiled as she turned back to Nabiki, "Ranma-kun may have developed the Kamasenken to overwhelm the pleasure centers of a woman, but Nab-chan here has been the primary beneficiary of this attack, and that means you oughta be a real expert at understanding how it works...and how it could be countered."

"Um...well..." Nabiki faltered.

"Is this true, Nabiki-san?" Tatewaki asked, "Have you learned how to counter the Kamasenken?"

"Even better than that, I suspect," Keiko replied, "If I know you half as well as I think I do, Nab-chan, I'll bet you've even started to work on a variation of the Senken that will work on a man's physiology, meaning Ranchan's."

Nabiki blinked her eyes, but then she colored appropriately and glanced away, leaving it to Kasumi to say, "Oh my...you can do that, Nabiki?"

"Well..." Nabiki said, "The method isn't totally...perfected...yet...but, well, you see...Ranchan's been able to affect me without me being able to...reciprocate...so..."

"So you figured on leveling the playing field in the bedroom," Frank smiled, "Clever girl. I knew there was a reason why I liked you."

Kasumi looked at the giant man-monster, then at Nabiki, then seemed to take a quiet moment to reflect upon the odd feelings that she was experiencing upon hearing those words being spoken, then she glanced down as though in deeply troubled thought as strange emotions warred within her being.

"So...you know a method for countering this new...technique that Dimitri was seeking," Leguire said as delicately as he could, "Will it also bestow upon the rest of us a fighting chance when we go up against the legions that Dimitri surely has summoned to his cause, to say nothing of the likes of Pyron and Lord Jeddah?"

"No," Nabiki turned back and stared at Donovan, "But you said there was a way in which Oneechan could help us?"

"Yes," Donovan nodded, "But...there is considerable risk involved...for both you and your sister, the Slayer."

"Me?" Natsume reacted.

"As you are now you can never hope to triumph against Dimitri," Donovan said, "Your power levels are much too weak, and as formidable as your skills may be, they are nothing when compared to his. However...there is one possible way in which you can increase your power levels relative to his while bestowing upon your sister the means by which she can make full effective use of her talents."

"Well, don't keep us in suspense, Mister Exorcist," Nabiki smiled, "What's this special technique you have in mind?"

"Uh...Nab-chan?" Keiko said nervously, "I...don't think it's a technique really that he has in mind..."

"That is correct," Donovan nodded as he gazed upon Kasumi, "Though it may be strange for me to say this, the means by which we can fulfill our aims involves a sharing of blood between you and your sisters."

For a moment there was total dead silence, then Kurumi said, "You have got to be kidding!"

"Donovan?" Frank stared at the Exorcist as if looking upon a stranger.

"Have you flipped?" Talbain asked, "You want Kasumi here to bite her own sisters?"

"No," Donovan replied, "Only Tendo Nabiki. Tendo Natsume must drink of the blood of Kasumi in order to activate her own latent potential."

"What?" Tatewaki reacted, "You would have Natsume-chan...drink from Kasumi?"

"But...wait a minute," Mousse spoke up, "Won't that turn Natsume...into a vampire?"

"Not in her case it won't," Julian said as he stared at Donovan, "I think I understand it now. Slayers are different from ordinary mortals...vampire blood affects them differently, it's more like a catalyst than an activating agent."

"Now hold on there," Frank protested, "You're not seriously suggesting...this ain't the same thing as what happened in Sunnydale, Donny!"

"It is the same in principle," Donovan replied, "Blood transfer would permit Kasumi to access Nabiki's ability to channel life force energies in both positive and defensive directions. That will give her the means of fully utilizing the powers bequeathed to her by her nature and enable her to avoid Dimitri's grasp so that he cannot add that potential to his own. She will also be able to pass on some of this resistance to Natsume, thus increasing the odds of their mutual survival."

"But...what effect will this have on Nabiki?" Kasumi asked, "If I gain from her...will she lose something in return?"

"Not if the bonds between you are as strong as I suspect them to be," Donovan replied, "If your sharing is performed with love and perfect candor, then you will lose nothing in the exchange, and in such a way you can temporarily become the Familiar to your sister."

"A...familiar?" Nabiki blinked, "But..."

"Oh, don't let the big guy unnerve you, Tendo-san," Himiko smiled, "Being a familiar isn't so bad, in fact it's allowed Miyu-chan and me to become a lot closer over the years, eh, Miyu-chan?"

"Eh?" Miyu asked, then a look of almost girlish embarrassment that colored her cheeks in an altogether appropriate manner.

"I can't believe that you of all people are recommending this, Donovan," Nagi said.

"Neither can I," Larva agreed, "I was given to believe that you have always hated vampires, Priest, yet here you are advising a Queen of a new line?"

"Correction," Donovan replied, "I hate the darkness that gave birth to the vampire race, but I am not blind to the fact that there is good and evil in everyone, everyone save for Tendo-san here, who has no dark shadows that I can discern, and that purity could be the shield we need to turn the coming battle in our favor."

"Yeah, but still..." Frank reluctantly protested.

"Hear me now," Donovan said with more force to his tone, "The power behind the Slayer is the same force that created the vampire race. Therefore the power of a Slayer is Darkness...but when tempered with light the dark casts no shadow, and in this way it may be overcome. So too will you gain some immunity to Dimitri's powers, and that will make you three a formidable force to be reckoned with. But the choice is up to you...there is no compulsion to do this on any of your parts. If you wish to decline there will be no recriminations."

All eyes turned towards Nabiki who stood there resolutely considering the options and what she had just heard, then with a determined look in her eyes she met the golden eyed stare of Donovan and saw the sadness in the man that hid behind an impassive wall of discipline and training.

"Nabiki-chan?" Kasumi asked.

"Tell me one thing before I agree to this," Nabiki said, "You hate what you are and you wouldn't wish anyone else to be like you...in your position. So...are you asking me this from your professional view as a priest and exorcist...or as a man who wants revenge upon the demon who gave you birth?"

Something very rare happened then, Dimitri's mouth quirked in what might almost have been a smile on another man's face, and both Frank and Talbain stared in disbelief as they saw this. In sober refrain the tall Dampyr gave Nabiki his most sincere regards then said, "In the end...is there really that much of a difference?"

Nabiki smiled back, "That's what I thought. Let's do this."

"Oneechan?" Natsume stared at her in amazement.

Nabiki turned a frank regard towards her cousin-slash-sister, "Do you really think we have another choice? I'm willing to make a go of it if the man says it could help us. So...what about you? Think you can share Oneechan's burden for a while, Sis?"

Natsume looked down, "If we have to, them we must...if it is our duty as her sisters..."

All at once Leguire gave a sharp intake of breath, and Yasmina stiffened. Miyu and Yui both gasped, and Lenore gave a start as she glanced off into the darkness.

"What is it?" Himiko asked, sensing the shift in the mood of her Princess and the others.

"They are here," Larva said very soberly.

"Who?" Nabiki asked, "Dimitri?"

"No," Nagi replied, "Worse than that...it's the Enforcers."

"The what?" Mousse asked.

"They're like cops," Lenore replied with a shudder, "Only worse...much, much worse."

"They enforce the will of the council..." Leguire said without a trace of his usual arrogance in place.

"Through any and all means necessary," Yasmina finished for him.

"But..." Nabiki started to say when a shadow fell over the gathering...or rather two shadows, both large and imposing as they descended from above to fill the yard with their presence.

"We are arrived," one of the two figures said, his eyes glowing redly as he and his partner swept the yard with an inscrutable expression, "Ordered by the will of the council and He who has assigned us to investigate this matter. The will of the council will be done."

"The will of the council be done," the other shadowy figure concurred, "State the nature of the emergency and why we have been called to this location."

"Called by who?" Frank asked, "I don't remember issuing any summons to the Council."

"No," a third voice said as yet another figure entered the yard, this one of regular height and build, yet swathed in a cloak of night and a broad-brimmed hat that concealed his features, allowing only his upper face to show from above a thick scarf, "They were summoned by Queen Ling-Ko, but I was in the neighborhood and decided to involve myself. On behalf of my father I bid you welcome, old friend."

"D?" Frank exclaimed, "Oboy..."

"Things have just gotten interesting," Talbain murmured softly.

"Indeed," Donovan tersely responded.

"Oh my," Kasumi said, sensing a shift in the winds as matters entered a whole new level of tension...

Part One-Hundred-Twenty-Three.

Once again Ranma found himself in a strange, dark place surrounded by a haze that made it impossible to tell one direction from the next, though he had the distinct impression that he was right back at the crossroads where he had met that ethereal version of Kaoru, his sister. As he lay there attempting to get back his bearings, oddly familiar voices filtered into his waking consciousness, familiar in the sense that he was coming to accept their occasional voices in his head, though hearing them externally was just as likely to be interpreted as a sign of encroaching madness...

"...stupid, brainless, immature...irresponsible..." were some of the words he managed to make out, along with the unmistakable sense that the person speaking these words was greatly agitated about something.

"I said I was sorry," another familiar voice said, "How was I to know that my voice would be so distracting?"

"That's no excuse and you know it!" the first speaker snapped, and all at once Ranma knew who it was as he turned his head to see a trio of feminine shapes arguing with one another, "Talking to the Master at a time like that was amateurish and irresponsible. You ought to know better than that...your mother should have taught you to have better restraint for your impulses!"

The third party chose to speak up right then, "Lay off her, Latisha, you know Karina only meant to be helpful..."

"You keep out of this!" Latisha snapped, "I've known the master longer than either of you and I know how hard he is working to better master his new abilities, but he has to learn on his own! You cannot kibitz and help him by suggesting new ways by which he can utilize our powers. He has to develop his own skills and abilities based on his remarkable combat genius. Giving him suggestions is tantamount to interfering with his growing development as both a Sorcerer and a Martial Artist."

"A Sorcerer?" the third speaker-whom Ranma now identified as Sharil-  
remarked, "I thought he was a Martial Artist, and a young Master at that. Are you telling us that you mean on shaping him to be something even more ambitious than this?"

"It's in his nature and his destiny," Latisha replied, "He has already begun his journey on the Way of Return, he has come farther much faster than any other human youth whom I have previously encountered. He will need guidance from us in time, true, but only when he is ready to heed our counsel. Until then he must progress on his own, learning to utilize our talents in the unique style that is distinctly his own, and only when he is ready to progress on the path of spiritual evolution will he be prepared to acknowledge us as his familiars and to summon our power as a Master of the Elementals. That is why we must restrain ourselves and give him a chance to develop his own powers, not to shape him in accordance with our own desires."

"But I wasn't trying to do that, honestly!" Karina protested, "I only wanted to serve our Master, to give him the benefit of my abilities..."

"In other words you jumped at the chance of attaching yourself to him, and like an Air-headed Sylph you had to go and try and coach him in the middle of a battle," Latisha snapped.

Karina cringed, "I was only trying to help...I didn't know the succubus still had some fight left in her."

"Well, anyway," Sharil sighed, "The damage is done, so what are we going to do about it? The Master needs our help once again, but until he regains consciousness and learns to summon us more effectively..."

Latisha sighed, "What else can we do...now that this twit has left a distinct imbalance within our Master's elemental nature? Honestly, I ought to tell your mother about how immature her daughter was behaving..."

Again Karina cringed, "I was only trying to help! And besides, the Master did pretty good with my help against the Bee lady. If he had a little more experience to get the hang of my Wind abilities..."

"Time we have in very short supply," Latisha noted.

"Maybe so," Sharil replied, "But all three of us know what needs to be done in order to restore balance. The Master has to gain another one of us from the C'thonic zone in order to ground his power and give us all a stable platform. He needs to find, tame and master an Earth elemental, either a Gnome or a Troll, and preferably of a high enough nature to balance the three of us out, which means that she has to be of royal extraction."

"Um..." Karina timidly said, "I...er...know how to find one."

Both Sharil and Latisha turned to regard their airy counterpart, and now had a better appreciation of the differences manifested in all three women. Sharil was blue skinned and blue haired, exactly like one of Madam Lao's ethereal servants, while Latisha was reddish-hued with a distinctive flame-like cast to her otherwise long, dark mane of hair, and Sharil was a blonde now with a willowy (but well curved) figure, but each of them strongly resembled their elemental affinity, and he could feel the power radiating out of all of them as though he were reading their battle auras without seeming effort.

"Er..." Karina was saying, seeing that she had the full, undivided attention of her fellow elementals, "Back when Dimitri...my former Master...trapped me down here to be his servant, he also captured another elemental to serve as a resting source for regenerating his power. She's trapped under the sarcophagus that he's using now as a bed, something that Anakaris guy provided for him. It allows him to restore his C'thonic energies after ever fight so he can heal back quicker, or something like that. All the Master has to do is find and rescue her then she can join us and help restore the balance."

"Just like that," Latisha sniffed, "And just how powerful is this Earth Elemental anyway?"

"I'm not sure myself," Karina replied, "All I know for sure is her name...Nagisha."

Latisha's eyebrows shot up and she swore, "N'gsha? I know this one...she would never help us."

"How can you be so certain of that?" Sharil replied.

"Because I know...or knew her mother...a very long time ago," Latisha frowned, "We were rivals, blood enemies, and N'gsha was then her loyal teenaged daughter. It had to do with a fire my people were waging against an abode of the humans...a private study belonging to some alchemist, and some ancient artifacts got damaged, priceless scrolls consumed, or something of that nature. Urg'hdnah took it rather badly and held me personally responsible for that, as if I could be blamed for my subjects doing their duty to consume the trash that mages leave lying about! We shared some words and it began a feud between our two peoples that has lasted for over two centuries, and the last I saw her, N'gsha was continuing that tradition."

"But maybe she's changed since then," Karina suggested, "She got along well enough with me, and she's an Earth elemental, my opposite! Way I hear it she's in rebellion against her mother."

"That...doesn't sound too likely," Sharil frowned, "Earth is conservative by nature...change is gradual, not swift as it would be for us. To have an attitudinal shift that abrupt..."

"Look, I don't know too many details about her story," Karina said, "But I think she had a falling out with her mother over...something, a boy maybe. It's kind of made her bitter and difficult to talk to, but ever since we both got enslaved by Dimitri...well...we didn't have much else to talk about, or to for that matter."

"So," Latisha said, "We have to somehow convince the Master to find and contact this N'gsha...and to free her from her prison? But how are we to do that while he's chained up in heavy iron?"

"The Master can break free from heavy iron," Karina said, "It's too old to maintain a strong magnetic charge, so it's not interfering with our powers. Or you could melt the chains without burning the master...or he could become as fluid as Sharil and slip free from his bonds like water..."

"You're suggesting techniques that the Master has yet to master," Sharil pointed out, "He may be woefully naïve about a great many things...the way you tricked him into absorbing you is proof enough of that..."

"But he is no great fool who can be molded to fit our liking," Latisha said, "And how are we to reach him while he is unconscious?"

"You're forgetting something," Karina suddenly smiled, "The Mind is the province of Air, and thought is within my nature. I've already established a bond with the Master's psyche, so it's not that hard to convey my thoughts to him and to create a realistic mental environment in which he can frame a coherent understanding of our thought patterns."

"You mean...?" Sharil lifted pale blue eyebrows.

"He's listening in on us right now," Karina turned and smiled at Ranma, "Isn't that right, Master?"

"Ah..." Ranma slowly sat upright, deciding it no longer suited him to "play dead" anyway, "Sorry about this, guys...didn't mean to eavesdrop, but..."

"You heard?" Latisha exclaimed in disbelief, shooting an accusing stare at the ethereal Karina.

"Yeah, I heard all right," Ranma said as he got to his feet (or seemed to anyway since he knew by now that this was some kind of weird dreamscape, like a holographic room from one of his favorite Sci-Fi American-produced imports, "So...you guys think I should take on another one of you? You know, of course, that Nabiki ain't gonna like sharing me with you as it is."

"She has no cause to feel jealous of us, Master," Karina said, "You are only doing what you need to do in order to gain the powers that you need to defeat Lord Dimitri."

"Yeah...I think I'm on to that page," Ranma said as he stared at the blonde elemental, who now only vaguely resembled his sister, Kaoru, "You were a prisoner here?"

Karina nodded, "Lord Dimitri captured me and was using me to do his bidding, but you broke his influence over the both of us, and now I loyally serve you, my far more worthy Master."

Latisha rolled her crimson eyes and seemed to beseech the very heavens, "Could you possibly behave any more like a groupie than that? You happen to be a Princess of royal elemental extraction..."

"So?" Karina shot back, "Dimitri still conquered me in spite of that, put his mark on me and turned me into his slave, the same as with Nagisha. But you can help me to liberate her, Master, and if you prove strong enough with her, as you did with me, then..."

"What do I have to do?" Ranma asked.

Sharil gave him a curious look and said, "You mean to follow through on this suggestion?"

"Sure, why not?" Ranma shrugged, "It may be kind of crowded in here, what with the three of you and all that, but I don't mind the extra company if you don't. And besides, I wouldn't leave a dog in the care of that Dimitri creep, why the hell would I want him to enslave any one of you girls?"

"We're not 'girls' as you so quaintly put it, Master," Sharil informed him, "We are Twelfth Grade elementals of royal extraction, and we are a proud race in the best of times. Gaining the allegiance of a Gnome princess may not be quite so easy as knocking on her prison and asking if she would like for you to liberate her."

"So?" Ranma said, "I had to pass a test to earn the services of the three of you, right?" he held up both arms and revealed his tattoos from beneath his rolled sleeves, "I'll do whatever it takes to free her from this place, if you guys agree to help me."

"It is noble of you to say so, Master," Karina said, "But...there are likely to be many trials and dangers that come with gaining Nagisha's allegiance."

"So?" Ranma said again, "I ain't afraid of no dumb test."

"No," Latisha smiled, "But you will be...you will be..."

"Bloody 'ell," Raptor softly murmured, seeing the dark shapes who had just entered the Tendo compound, "The Fuzz has arrived..."

Off by the house Natsumi and Miyuki were also staring in dismay and disbelief at the new arrivals, both the two dark-cloaked men and the lone cloaked one who seemed to travel all in shadow, and whose effect upon the setting was oddly chilling.

"Oh my," they heard Nodoka murmur, "So many new guests are arriving at such late hours. You would think at least one of them would call ahead for a reservation."

"Uh...Miyuki?" Natsumi asked.

"Yes, Natsumi-chan?" Miyuki replied.

"Why do those two guys remind me so much of Internal Affairs?" the first policewoman asked.

"They do seem to carry the weight of some sort of Federal Authority about them," her partner agreed, "But the third man...he carries himself like a prince..."

"Yeah, but Prince Charming he ain't," Natsumi swallowed, "It's so eerie how they just popped up like that, like they...flew in or something..."

"I wouldn't worry to much about them if I were you, girls," Nodoka smiled, only to frown and glance to the side as a pair of familiar figures entered the living room area, to which she replied very softly, "I thought I told you two to lie down and get some rest."

Both Soun and Genma reacted to the gentle reproof in the Saotome Matriarch's voice by cringing slightly, but then Soun straightened up and said, "Nodoka...you know I can't abide sitting back and doing nothing while my children are in danger, and Saotome's leg is healing back rather nicely..."

"Is that a fact?" Nodoka half turned to regard them, "Then why is my husband leaning with his arm across your shoulder, Soun-kun?"

"Er..." both men said together, only this time it was Genma's turn to show some backbone, "Wife...I'm not going to be idle while our son is in mortal danger. A little scratch like this isn't enough to keep me down, you know that."

"I see," Nodoka stared straight ahead once more and said, "Master Happy put you up to this, didn't he?"

"Urk!" the two men said in chorus, as though caught dead to rights.

Miyuki smiled as she looked from the comedy team of Soun and Genma to the stern face that the normally pleasant Nodoka was wearing and she silently appraised who was the real power to be reckoned with in this family. But then she turned back to examine what Natsumi was doing and said, "By the way, what are you doing, Natsumi-chan?"

"Carving crosses into the tips of my bullets," Natsumi replied as she carefully aligned yet another shell with her diamond mini-saw from her portable tool kit being used to carefully etch the tip of yet another bullet.

"That won't work all by itself," Miyuki chided, "Didn't you hear Donovan-san get through explaining that crosses won't work unless you believe in what they stand for...and I happen to know for a fact that you're not a Christian."

"So?" Natsumi replied, "When they hit they're gonna fragment, and the guy also said that they'll work best if you magnetize them. Just so happens I've got a bar magnet in my kit, so..."

"Oh," Miyuki smiled, "Now I see. You're charging them up so that they'll be more effective against the vampires."

"Bingo."

"So," Miyuki leaned closer to where her breath could be felt on Natsumi's earlobe, "What can I do for you to get you to do the same thing for my bullets? Will you take a check or...can I pay you back through other methods?"

"Ah-hah?" Natsumi blinked, and all at once she felt her body tingle with anticipation and she abruptly colored an appropriate shade of crimson.

"Er...Nodoka-chan," Soun spoke up, "Who are these men...and why are they here?"

"They're obviously not here to fight with us or they'd already be doing it," Genma reckoned, "But...what are they saying to each other? Nabiki seems fairly agitated about something..."

"I see," the dour-faced cloaked man known as "D" remarked, "So you were attacked and Queen Ling-Ko was taken hostage while the rest of you barely survived the encounter. And the enemy, you say, is Lord Jeddah, not just Dimitri?"

"They had Pryon helping them too," Julian informed the shadowy man, "And we think they're going to use her to craft some kind of spell that will resurrect a Rakshasa Prince known as Mor'ghul."

"Is this speculation...or fact?" one of the two dark robed figures flanking "D" asked simply.

"It's what we overheard them saying, Sir," Nagi replied, "The rest of us were pretty badly shot up...and...not everyone made it..."

"Then this has gone beyond a mere murder investigation," the other dark figure stated with a tone of authority, "As such it comes under our jurisdiction and is no longer of any concern to you. We will take charge of things from this point onward."

"The hell you will," Frank snapped, "There's more involved here than you guys realize. This lady here is gonna get her husband back from Dimitri, and I warn you, it wouldn't be too smart to try and stop her."

"This is an official matter for the Enforcers, Doctor Steinberg," the dark robed figure from before insisted, "You cannot countermand our authority, which comes directly from the Council."

"Yes, but the Council ain't here and we are," Talbain insisted, "So back off a bit and don't be so territorial about it."

"A Were has no business lecturing us about our duties," one of the robed giants pointed out, "This is a crime scene and you are obstructing our investigation."

"A crime scene?" Nabiki flared, "This is my house and family we're talking about here. Don't try and tell me it's none of my business!"

"Indeed?" the black-cloaked D remarked, "You claim clan privilege because your husband is involved?"

"Yeah, and because I'm one of the only people who can stop Dimitri cold," Nabiki replied, "I did it once before, only this time I'm gonna stomp his face into the dirt and grind it until he's dusted."

"Such vigilante action is frowned upon by the Council," one of the two Enforcers stated sternly, "The jurisdiction of the Vampire Nation knows no international boundaries, but neither will we tolerate interference by outsiders. The will of the Council must be enforced, and if we must place the lot of you into protective custody for your own sakes..."

"Try it," Natsume said with quiet resolve, "Just try it and you will find that we are not without our own resources."

"So say we all," Tatewaki said as he stood resolutely beside his lady.

"Um...what are you guys doing?" Lenore asked nervously, "Those are Enforcers you're talking to...trust me on this, you DON'T want to make them angry..."

"Anger is an emotion we are not permitted to possess while on duty," the other Enforcer related, "However, it would be unwise to provoke us into taking summary action. We are given broad latitudes in these matters and have the authority to do whatever is necessary to restore the balance of Justice. A Queen of royal blood has been taken by a known enemy of the state, and if anyone either aids or abets in this crime, or gets in the way of our investigation..."

"Just the two of you...against Dimitri and his allies?" Miyu asked, "Even for Enforcers you speak rather boldly of your prowess."

"And with good reason, Princess," one of the two figures said before reaching up and pulling back his hood to reveal a broad and craggy face that was strangely handsome and rather dusky.

The other man did likewise, revealing his square jawed, well tanned features that bore a curious set of tattoos upon his face, at which point Leguire hissed and said in a low tone of dismay, "No...it cannot be!"

"Arkadians," Yasmina breathed, "But I thought your tribe was all but extinct..."

"We are among the last of our people," the first of the two men said proudly, "But still we serve the Council proudly."

"Arkadians," Larva softly exclaimed, "Among the deadliest of Night Breed, trained in the full warrior arts and armed with arcane spells that make them many times more lethal than any Jezril."

"Oh my," Kasumi spoke up, drawing attention back her way.

"You," the first of the two Arkadians remarked, "You are the new Queen whom has been mentioned? Yes...I can feel your power radiating softly...different from other Queens whom we have known, but..."

"But still of interest to the Council," the other Enforcer remarked, "You will come with us when this is over so that we may present you to our Masters and see that you are briefed and fully integrated into your duties as full fledged Blood Mother."

"In a pigs eye," Keiko said softly as she moved to stand closer to both Kasumi and Nabiki.

"She is not going anywhere with the likes of you," Natsume vowed softly as Kurumi moved to flank her while Tatewaki and Mousse prepared to back them both..

"Oneechan belongs with us," Nabiki said proudly, "And if you want her then you're gonna have a fight on your hands."

"You would defy the will of the Council?" the first Enforcer said rather sternly, eyes blazing with crimson light from within.

"Please," Kasumi stepped forward, gently pushing her way from between the linked shoulders of her sisters and closest friends, looking directly at the two Enforcers and saying, "Don't fight over me. I have no objection to going and visiting with your Council, but first I have to find and free my little brother. I can't go anywhere until I know that he is safe, so please don't prevent us from helping him. It's very important to me, and it's my duty as a sister to give my family the love and support that they require."

For a moment the two burly Enforcers just blinked at her and stared into the softly radiant features of the novice Queen, and for a moment they felt the force of her Influence take them over and rebuff their resolve...but then discipline and training came to the fore and the lead Arkadian said, "You are...formidable, dear lady...but the will of the Council is absolute..."

"Hold on a minute there, Mathaius," the robed man known as D spoke up, "This lady interests me. I will take full responsibility onto my shoulders and explain things to my father, but I suggest you ease up a bit and hear what the lady has to say before taking summary action."

To everyone's amazement (save for the Darkstalkers and Vampires) the two burly men bowed in respect of the slighter man's authority, and the one identified as "Mathaius" said, "If you wish it so, my Prince...but we still must fulfill our duties."

"Fair enough," D noted before giving Kasumi his full, undivided attention, "Now then, Tendo-san...why do you wish us to permit you, your family and friends to go into danger facing down the Dark Pack...and with the possible fate of the world hovering in the balance?"

"Because we can defeat Dimitri and free my brother, Ranma," Kasumi replied, "And without anyone getting hurt...um, except for the bad people. We were just about to take steps that we hoped would assure us victory and..."

"Is this so?" D turned to regard Frank and Donovan.

"Yeah," the big man-monster answered forthrightly.

"It was my suggestion that they were going to put into effect," Donovan explained, then went on to elaborate, detailing his plan and the effects that he was hoping to create.

Even the brawny Enforcers registered alarm when they heard this, but D only stared from beneath the lip of his broad-brimmed hat and said, "A bold plan to be certain, but risky. You are truly willing to risk this, Donovan? I would never have imagined such a thing of you..."

"Desperate times call for desperate measures," Donovan replied, "And Miss Tendo has agreed to this, as have her two sisters. If you will permit the exchange of blood to commence, then you will see why I believe that this is the best course that could lead us to victory over Dimitri."

"This is outrageous!" Mathiaus declared, "The Council will never permit..."

D raised his hand and the giant man fell silent.

"You have intrigued me," D remarked very sagely, "Were anyone else but Donovan Bane to come to me with such a suggestion I would declare him mad...but if you truly believe that this is for the best..."

"I do," the powerful Exorcist responded.

D nodded slowly, "Then I will permit it."

The Enforcers both hissed, baring fangs, but one look from D and the two of them fell silent.

"I will assume full responsibility and explain things to my father," D informed them, and this seemed to bring a quiet resolution to the matter as he turned to regard Kasumi and said, "You may proceed as you intend, Miss Tendo."

"Who is this guy?" Kurumi whispered sidelong to Lenore, who had been hovering in the background with her own friends, hanging close to the side of Raptor.

"D?" Lenore whispered back, "He's a legend among vampire hunters...a powerful Vampyr who hates the Dark every bit as much as Donovan, only his real name is kind of a private joke. You see..."

"Silence please," Donovan urged, "Tendo-san needs to concentrate. She must have absolute control over her blood lust when she bites into her sister. Too much blood and she might weaken our strongest warrior or cause her to pass out at a critical point...not enough and the effect will be only incremental."

"Go to it, Kids," Frank nodded, "Just remember who you are...and for pity's sake, don't let the hunger consume you."

"I will remember that, Doctor," Kasumi nodded, turning to Nabiki, "Neechan?"

Nabiki swallowed a thick lump in her throat and said, "I can't believe I'm doing this...but...all right, let's get it over with."

"Just for the record," Talbain said, "I'm still officially against this."

"So noted," Julian replied without taking his eyes off of the two reluctant sisters.

Kasumi looked Nabiki in the eyes and her sister stared back shyly, a kind of natural hesitation coming over both of them as they moved closer together, until Kasumi could reach out and gently grip Nabiki by her shoulders. Feeling the warmth of personal contact thrilled the older Tendo sibling to the core of her being, but there was sadness in her eyes as she allowed her deep affection to shine forth, the realization of her need for Nabiki overshadowing the other kind of hunger that touching a warm body tended to inspire in the older sister. She saw the wonder in Nabiki's stare, felt the barriers between them start to crumble, and of a warmth that flowed between them like the flow of blood, only in two directions. A rosy hue filled both of their beings and gave Kasumi the strength that she needed to proceed with her newly perceived duty.

She brought Nabiki closer to her, feeling only a slight resistance as the younger girl still felt a twinge of reluctance over taking part in this, yet both of them knew what was to follow, and with no great effort on her part Kasumi brought Nabiki into her embrace and held her in her arms, pressing their bosoms tightly together.

"Neechan..." the older girl sighed, "Nabiki...my dear, beloved sister..."

"Oneechan..." Nabiki sighed, "I'm ready."

Kasumi felt an odd thrill of anticipation as she brought her mouth down and kissed Nabiki on the lips, then felt as though a part of her being was being exchanged in that passionate surrender. Their kiss was brief yet intense for all the pent up longing that it represented, and Kasumi even surprised herself by flicking her tongue into Nabiki's mouth, eliciting a gasp of amazement from the younger girl, at which point Kasumi parted lips with her and began to paint a line of loving kisses down the cheek and throat of the sister whom she so dearly loved, allowing herself to sense the pulse of warm fluids in carotid arteries before moving further down and selecting a spot where she might place her bite without causing Nabiki too much discomfort.

Nabiki sighed and melted into the arms of her older sister, wondering just why her body seemed to go limp and soft with a need that had been so long unrequited. Had she been longing for this without knowing it all of this time? This was her sister who was making her feel this way! This was wicked, so improper...and yet...so nice at the same time that she wondered why it had taken this long for her to agree to such intimate gestures. After all, Nabiki had made love to relative strangers in the past like Shampoo and Keiko...and before even knowing about Saotome Ranma. Why then not respond in kind to a pretty girl (who was still very much like a stranger after ten years of separation) who so willingly made herself available, and who had so obviously fallen in love with Kaneda, her masculine aspect? Social taboos and restrictions be damned, this was Kasumi, a warm and loving person, very much deserving of affection, and had she really been suffering this much because of their mutual dread of the Incest thing? It was very hard to remember at the moment just why that had seemed so important, but now that she was actually giving in to the advances of Kasumi...

Her mind a whirl with such thoughts, she hardly even noticed when Kasumi parted the upper top of her Chinese-styled vest to bare one shoulder to full view...but as the moment approached Kasumi found that she was not yet ready to bite in...so instead she continued to paint little kisses down to the hollow of that shoulder, causing Nabiki to gasp as she had not expected Kasumi to go any lower than her neckline...in fact, it almost felt as if Kasumi was baring one of her bosoms and was squeezing and fondling it with delicate fingers that touched and caressed her nipple, causing the breast to harden like ripened fruit.

"Um...maybe they should get a hotel room before doing that?" a strange voice floated in from some distant horizon, hardly more than a faint whisper and easy not to notice.

Kasumi felt her urgent need building up inside her, and so she selected a vein that felt rich enough for her to sample, and without further ado brought her lips down to encircle Nabiki's right nipple, suckling in the teat with a raw hunger that surprised both sisters every bit as much as it felt natural and instinctive...and then Kasumi brought her fangs down and bit in, eliciting a gasp from Nabiki as the warm, rich fluid filled Kasumi's mouth and gave her a sense of drinking in the raw essence of Nabiki.

For a brief moment their worlds came to a halt and time itself lost all true meaning. In that moment Kasumi relieved the memories that flowed from sister to sister as Nabiki yielded to the kiss and allowed Kasumi to know the real her, the person whom she truly was, and how she had gotten to there, the path that she had walked, both before and after undertaking her training mission with "Uncle Genma."

Her loves, her life, her passionate encounters with Keiko and Shampoo, the moment when she got to know Ranma as a person and started to think of him as her iinazuke, all of the adventures that they had shared together, her love of the martial arts, and the Honeymoon that they had shared together, interrupted only briefly by Madam Lao and her privations...

As she experienced all of this in a rush, Nabiki in turn got a sense of what life had been like for Kasumi living as a fairly normal high school girl, helping out around the household, doing chores, cooking and cleaning, socializing with occasional school friends while sharing her private thoughts with her 'Aunt Nodoka.' A regular, steady, stable routine that would have bored Nabiki to tears brought joy and fulfillment to Kasumi and filled each waking hour with love for her family and the people whom she cared for, sometimes amusing herself by visiting with Tofu-sensei, from whom she borrowed many an interesting and informative book. Without a single complicating thought to mar her life she had gone on for years since getting over the death of their mother, playing the part of the big sister, watching Ranma and Akane grow up and sometimes even having to play surrogate mother when Nodoka was too busy...

And then came the day when Kaneda had walked into her life, and nothing had ever again seemed so routine or peaceful in her life as Kasumi felt herself drawn into loving her own sister with unrequited passion. The days watching Nabiki grow closer to Ranma, even as the latter grew away from Akane, the occasional disruptions in family order brought about by a string of visitations that became permanent fixtures in their lives...first Ryoga and then Keiko, followed by Shampoo, Ukyo, Perfume and then Kodachi. Moment by moment their house became more full and active than Kasumi had ever known before, and she found herself sometimes being drawn into the action as her lust for Nabiki's male aspect caused her to arrange little 'accidents' that would trigger her transformation. Just a single glance at Kaneda's strong and manly figure was enough to send Kasumi reeling with unexplainable desires that would fill her mind for hours, and often she would cry herself to sleep at nights thinking of what it would be like to be held within his arms, to feel his strength nurturing and protecting her, giving her the comfort that she so desperately needed and could find in no other way that her inexperienced mind could consider.

Had she known what masturbation was, or even what one had to do in order to 'self-stimulate' into a climax, then she might well have done it early on and gradually worked her lust out of her system. Nodoka had broadly hinted about doing just that and had often dangle objects for Kasumi to find or 'notice' during her housework, but lack of familiarity with such strange objects as a dildo caused her to put such things away without using them in the manner which was intended. Even the title of a book that Nodoka had tried to get her to read seemed so...improper...and she blushed at the very title of, 'Self Love, a Hand-  
Book for Women,' which seemed to her mind to imply something distinctly Narcissistic, and therefore not for 'proper' young ladies (Nodoka's opinions upon that subject notwithstanding).

But now Kasumi understood implicitly what her loving Aunt had tried to tell her, and in a not-very-subtle manner. She understood what sex was as she opened up to Nabiki's memories and briefly flashed over the many moments when her sister had been intimate with one of her ladyloves and/or Ranma. She even knew what a rim-job was and comprehended at last the basic concept of the Kamasenken. She marveled at the realization of what men and women could do together to make babies...or what women could do for each other to bring themselves to mutual fulfillment. It was all there for her to access, and yet as tantalizing as the idea was, Kasumi understood that she could not delve too deep at one sitting without severely risking the health and clarity of mind of her beloved younger sister.

So Kasumi withdrew he fangs after obtaining little more than a mouth full of blood for her troubles, which same she reflexively swallowed. She licked the wounds caused by her fangs and kissed the nipple one last time before reluctantly surrendering her purchase, and then she withdrew her mouth altogether and rose to her full height, staring at Nabiki with a shining expression of love and contentment that was truly beatific.

"Nabiki," she sighed sweetly.

Nabiki opened her eyes once again, stared up at Kasumi and said an almost plaintive, "Oneechan?"

"It is done," Donovan spoke up, intruding upon their private world to ask, "How are you feeling now, Miss Tendo...and Mrs. Saotome?"

"Ah..." Nabiki felt her face blushing and was amazed that she still had blood enough to do that.

"Oh my," Kasumi said, "It was...truly indescribable. Thank you for sharing with me, Nabiki."

"Er...yeah, no problem, Sis," Nabiki reluctantly replied, feeling her head swim for reasons that had nothing to do with simple blood loss.

"Whoah," Keiko exclaimed, "Now that was a hot number..."

"I about creamed my shorts," Talbain said before adding, "If I was wearing any, that is."

"Um...Oneechan?" Kurumi nodded to Nabiki.

"Eh?" Nabiki blinked, then followed the line of stare by her youngest sister and saw the ruby bite marks over one nipple, and she hastily pulled her bra back into place and buttoned up her shirt saying, "Kasumi!"

"Why complain?" Himiko asked with a grin, "The breast is the place where I like it best myself, especially when Miyu-chan is the one doing the biting."

"Is it safe to look yet, my love?" Tatewaki asked as Natsume continued holding her hand over his eyes.

"Not quite," Natsume lowered her hand and then turned to Kasumi before saying, "Now...It's my turn."

"Not so hasty, Slayer," D spoke up suddenly, "Miss Tendo must allow her borrowed memories to settle in before she shares her blood with you...and Mrs. Saotome needs a moment to regain her bearings as that was a most intense form of sharing, the kind you just don't brush off very lightly."

"It is all right, Sir," Kasumi said with a gentle smile, "I am feeling much better now...and I feel more than ready to share with Natsume-chan...if my sister also feels ready."

"Ummm...what?" Nabiki blinked, "Oh...sure, go ahead, Oneechan..."

Natsume allowed her reluctance to show upon her features but said, "I mislike having to do this...but...if you are certain that it will help to bring us victory..."

"Anything goes isn't just a slogan I cooked up, Natsume-chan," Happosai called out from where he had been sitting on a rock smoking a pipe the full time that this had been going on, "It means using any and all means at your disposal to achieve victory, and if you don't understand that then it means I failed you as your trainer."

One of the two Enforcers said to the other, "There is something about that old man..."

"Yes," Mathaius said, "I find him equally...disturbing..."

"So...what do I need to do this time?" Kasumi asked, only to stare in wonder as D handed her his belt knife.

"Simply cut across your palm, then allow your sister to drink of your life essence."

"Cut...Kasumi's palm?" Nabiki felt a queasy sense of reluctance.

"Man," Talbain winced, "I'd feel like the lowliest cur in a kennel if I had to do that..."

"I hate to say it, Kid," Frank said, "But I don't see another way of doing this...do you?"

Kasumi only hesitated a moment before accepting the knife from D, then she brought the sharp edge across her palm and winced very slightly, then held up her now-bloodied palm and offered it to Natsume, saying simply, "Do as you must, my beloved sister."

Natsume showed an equal amount of reluctance and fascination as she took the proffered hand between her own and studied it for a moment, then with great hesitation brought her mouth down and began to slip the pooling dark fluids, tasting of their strangely bitter flavor that was mixed with salt and other spices that made her head swim...as though it were a powerful wine from which she was drinking...

All at once she stiffened, going numb with her eyes turning almost silver as she stared out into space, and for a moment she seemed to become like a statue before sighing and falling back into the ready arms of her fiancee, Tatewaki taking her into his arms and saying, "Natsume? Natsume?"

"She is well," Donovan revealed, "But she has entered a trance-like state from which she will emerge very shortly. The act has joined you three together...now only time will tell if you have gained as much from this act as I believe has been the case."

"Nothing better be wrong with Oneechan," Kurumi glared up at the huge exorcist, then on impulse she darted ahead and took Kasumi's palm between her own hands, bringing her mouth down before anyone could think to stop her.

"Don't...!" D cried out, but much too late.

"Oh my," Kasumi said as she felt Kurumi's tongue lap her palm, then draw away as the younger girl seemed to stiffen with a stunned expression, and this time it was Mousse's turn to come to her rescue before she fainted.

"Why in the hell did she just do that?" Lenore gasped.

"She must want to be with her sister in the Dreamscape," Chloe suggested.

"How very reckless of her," Kiima agreed.

"Reckless isn't the word for it," Talbain said, turning to Donovan, then D, "I thought only one person at a time was supposed to be able to undertake this trial..."

"That is so," Donovan said, "But these sisters share an unusually close bond, and the thought of one going into danger without the other was clearly against young Tendo-san's very nature."

"That stupid, brainless, irresponsible..." Frank broke off then sighed, "Well, no use crying over spilled blood...I just hope the kid's got what it takes to deal with the consequences. Won't do at all if she winds up turning Vampiric. Way I hear it she's already got a bottomless pit, and there's no telling how much blood it would take to keep her satisfied if she Turns instead of triumphs."

"Triumphs over what?" Mousse asked, "What's going to happen to my Airen?"

"We do not know the answer to that...yet," D replied, "Time itself will tell the story, but for now she has elected to become her sister's Protector, a burden I would not wish upon one so young if it were within my power to deny it."

Kasumi looked at her fallen sisters, then at her own palm and marveled to find that the wound had already closed, save for a red stripe that marked the place where she had used her borrowed knife. She reluctantly handed the bloodied thing over to D, who was careful to wrap it in a white silk kerchief before putting it away, not bothering to clean the blade in passing.

"So it is done now," one of the Enforcers said.

"Evidently," the other agreed, "For good or ill...one way or another."

"Natsume!" Soun suddenly appeared at their gathering, along with Genma and Nodoka, "Kurumi-chan? What has happened to my daughters?"

"Now he asks," Talbain sniffed.

"There is nothing to concern yourselves about, Humans," Leguire spoke up, "They have merely chosen to join themselves together and-OOF!"

"I think you've said quite enough for now, Jean," Yasmina said as she removed her elbow from the Loire vampire's stomach, "The rest is up to those brave and valiant children, and my heart goes out to them. I wish them well indeed as they struggle to overcome their trial. May they emerge from this the stronger for their union."

"Oh my," Nodoka said, seeing the way the two Enforcers were suddenly glancing her way.

"You bear the mark of a Queen!" Mathaius exclaimed in surprise.

"You are under Ling-Ko's protection," the other added, "And by extension your whole clan and family are now a part of the Tsiel tribe."

"This changes everything," Mathaius turned to his partner and said, "We must report it at once to the Masters."

"Do what you have to," D remarked, "I'm staying around here to see how this comes out. But be ready to move against Dimitri. We have until the stroke of midnight to prevent him from resurrecting his dark father."

"Have a care until then, my Prince," Mathaius turned and said, "Come, my brother."

With that the two vampire cops rose up into the night air, levitating as though on invisible wires, and vanished into the darkness.

"Thought they'd never leave," Happosai sniffed, "Cops always give me the willies..."

"Um...hey there," Raptor suddenly spoke up, "If you guys are through getting yourselves ready for the war and all that, maybe one of you might likes to unties me. I could be useful too, y'know..."

"As what?" Lenore asked, "Target practice?"

"The Zombie is as useless as he always was," yet another voice replied, "But I...I can be very helpful to the lot of you, if you're willing to agree to my terms."

"You?" Donovan evidenced surprise as he turned to regard the new arrival.

"What the hey...?" Keiko whirled about with dismay written large upon her features.

"What is SHE doing here?" Miyu hissed in a sudden deadly tone of menace.

"I don't believe this," Talbain growled, "What next is Dimitri gonna try? Spamming us by E-mail?"

"Dimitri wouldn't even know what a keyboard was if you used it to serve coffee," the speaker said as she made herself known to the gathering of Darkstalkers and Tendo Posse, "I offer you a truce, if you be willing to hear me out. If not...then I'll be forced to take matters into me own hands, and you can bet that I'll be none too gentle with the likes of your boy, Saotome Ranma."

"Ranma?" Nabiki started to move forward, only to find Keiko's palm against her chest, preventing forward movement.

"Don't make the mistake of letting her touch you, Nab-chan," Keiko urged, "The lady is not to be trusted."

"Well now, that's a fair crop," the feminine form of Morgan Anslat remarked as she stepped more fully into view, "I'd be asking how you survived our last encounter...but then again, I suspected that there was more to you than just another pretty set of tits. Getting me drunk with your life essence was tip enough that you be the one nae to be underestimated."

"What do you want here, Morgan?" Frank growled.

"Why, the same thing you want, me old friend Stein," Morgan smiled, "I be wanting to stop Dimitri from going ahead with his plot to take over the Vampire nation."

"And why should you want that?" Talbain asked, "Thought you wanted your boyfriend to help you get back your throne of power in Makai."

"That was before...before he got that blasted Kamasenken," Morgan hissed, "And now...he's gone too far! Do you realize what he's become like because of that accursed technique? You obviously do since you're the slut who married that pretty boy, Saotome."

Nabiki bristled, "If you've done anything to my husband..."

"Nay I," Morgan said, "'Twas Dimitri put the bite on him, only now my Lord has gone mad and is drunk with the power this stolen knowledge has bestowed upon him. For the past hour and a half I have been subjected to his merciless efforts, and the feel of that be enough to caution me as to what yet more power will mean in the hands of Dimitri!"

"Meaning he'll become a god...then what will he need you for?" D noted.

"Hate to say it, Morgan," Frank averred, "But that's what you get when you wind up sleeping with your own worst enemy."

"Don't remind me," the succubus winced, "With the powers that will be his to command he'll easily be able to take over both the human and demon realms, and then he'll have a world full of women to pick from besides me! What's to keep him from picking out an entire harem full of radiant beauties, like that slut Queen he so desires over there? And worse...like me, he'll have the means of turning us all into his obedient slaves with only a touch of his hand and a caress of his fingers!"

Nabiki suddenly shuddered then said, "You're right...we can't allow that to happen. The power of the Senken in the hands of that...monster!"

"Then it is time for the last gesture that I intended to use to give us the advantage," Donovan said, turning back to Kasumi, "Miss Tendo...I found this among the personal effects of Doctor Tofu...it is a very rare find indeed, but I believe that you should have it...it may be the final key that you need to effect your transformation."

"Transformation?" Nagi asked.

"What, you mean she isn't finished growing already?" Himiko asked.

Donovan produced the stone that he had taken from Tofu's clinic, a fist-sized chunk of ruby-like teardrop-shaped crystal, which he handed to Kasumi, who reluctantly took it with a puzzled expression.

"A bloodstone?" Larva gasped, "A mortal had that in his possession?"

"Holy AC/DC season concert tickets," Lenore murmured.

"Bloodstones actually exist?" Chloe asked.

"Apparently so," Kiima murmured.

"Oh my," Kasumi stared at the gem held in her hands, seeing the light of the moon reflected in its faceted depths, "I think...it's full of stars...?"

"What are ye doing?" Morgan suddenly cried out, "What are you giving her that for, you fools? Don't you know that a Bloodstone in the hands of a Queen under a full moon means...?"

All at once light exploded in the palms of Kasumi's hands, and as she and the others gasped and looked on in amazement the thing came to life and expanded, and all at once its radiance burst forth and bathed the entire Tendo yard in the pink-hued glow of an exploding star as Kasumi rose up into the air, suddenly transfixed in the light of a holy radiance that transported her beyond all time and spatial conception...

Continued.

Comments/Criticisms/Celestial Visitations: shadowmane

What is happening now to Kasumi, and why does Morgan fear it? What of Natsume and Kurumi, and of the captive Ranma? Will they survive their coming trials in order to emerge much stronger than before? And what is Dimitri really doing working alongside Jeddah and Pyron? Find out the answer to these and other questions in, "Piercing the Veil, and Other Sexual Innuendo," or, "Divinely Inspired Lunacy." Be there!

X -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

If you wish to check out my other works, Please check out my Fanfiction webpage at: or it's Mirror page at ~ All related chapters of this series can be found there along with my other works.  
/pre 


	49. Chapter 49

preDnabiki124

Nabiki 1/2

"A Very Scary Thought!"

by Jim Robert Bader

(Inspired by the works of Rumiko Takahashi Others,  
with a special appearance by some of my own creations and those of Joss Whedon. The Character of Frank is my own interpretation of the Monster of Marry Shelly's novel and is thus a free agent, so talk with him if you want to have him costar in some other series.)

[Special thanks to Bill Guiroff and Shiva for helping the initial proofreading phase of this fanfic series, and for encouraging me to continue the saga of Nabiki 1/2.  
And added thanks to Andrew Greaves for further Darkstalker information...]

Part One-Hundred-Twenty-Four.

(Set during and slightly after the time of the events recorded in the side-story titled "Honeymoon Hentai")

[No Actual Vampires or other Immortal creatures were harmed in the making of this fanfic...]

In a quiet corner on the outskirts of Tokyo city there exists a shrine that has seen occupation by an unusual cast of characters who have made it their home and refuge, and chief among them were a modest couple of college aged students attending Naoko Tech University, a man and a woman of literally two different worlds yet one heart and one purpose.

At the moment, however, one of this pair had stirred from a restful state and felt a drawing of the moon calling down to her from some unknown quarter. She now stared up at the moon from the garden square that attended the main shrine itself, and her expression made it plain that her mind was very far away from the place where her body present resided. She seemed to be searching for something important in the face upon the moon, and in this somewhat disturbed frame of mind she heard a voice calling to her, calling her "Mother" and beckoning from far away for the return of its main source from the narrow passage of their relative locations.

"Belldandy?"

At first she did not stir or seem to hear the voice softly calling to her, but then she turned slowly to regard the young man looking at her with concern in his eyes and she said, "Oh...Keiichi-san...I'm sorry, was I disturbing you just now?"

"You weren't disturbing me," the young man replied, "I just wondered what you were doing outside of your room, that's all. You looked so far away, I thought...well...maybe...you were lonely...or something..."

She smiled at him, the man she loved, the mortal with whom she resided in tranquil harmony (which was not at all easy considering the turmoil that was often stirred up by her two resident siblings). In a soft voice she said, "I'm not lonely, Keiichi-san...I am never lonely when I am with you."

"Really?" the young man seemed to feel his voice catch in his throat, but he tried to control his eagerness since he knew from experience not to get his hopes too far up, "I mean...if you want a little company, I wasn't feeling too tired myself..."

"Nothing would give me greater pleasure, Keiichi-can," Belldandy replied, "However...the loneliness you mentioned before...it does not belong to me so much as to one of my Aspects. I feel her calling to me now, I must go to her at once. Forgive me."

"Forgive you?" Keiichi Morisoto asked, "For what?"

"For leaving you just now," the goddess Belldandy replied, "But I will return shortly...after I have helped her to find the resolution that she is seeking."

"Huh?" Keiichi asked, only to see his lovely goddess rise up into the night air as the facial markings she wore started to glow brightly. A moment later and she was gone in a silvery halo that attended her parting, leaving him feeling stunned at her unexpected desertion. He called out her name, half fearing that she had left him for good this time, only to hear the annoyed voice of one of the other resident goddesses calling out to him from the temple.

"Hey, will you keep it down out there, K-boy? Some of us do have to get our beauty sleep you know..."

"Urd," Keiichi didn't know whether to be grateful or to panic, "Belldandy...she just took off all of a sudden..."

"What?" the lanky form of the dusky-skinned goddess of the Past appeared at the entrance to their home, only semi-clad (as usual) and looking slightly hungover, "Bell's gone again? What is it this time? A stray cat stuck up a tree?"

"She said something about one of her Aspects calling out to her," Keiichi related, "Do you have any idea what she meant by that?"

"An Aspect?" Urd blinked, then shrugged, "Now it makes sense. I wouldn't worry about it, Kei-san, Bell's just attending to her programming duties, nothing too much out of the usual for us goddesses."

"Huh?" Keiichi blinked, "What do you mean...?"

The tall, silver-haired goddess just smiled at him and said, "It's a side-effect of our being linked into the central computer banks of Yggdrasil. Every goddess has her own personal program file, and then there are various program backup copies that get made to preserve various aspects of our overall nature. Certain mortals are designated by the filing system as Backup copies of these Aspects, and each Aspect is a unique and special person, though none of them are aware that there's any kind of connection between themselves and us. You can think of them as independent replicas of some important element to our nature given human form and personality, and they reflect a small portion of our own divinity, so maybe one of Bell's aspects is having a personal crisis or something. It'd be just like my soft-hearted sister if she feels the need to hold her hand or something...so you see what I'm getting at, K-the-man?"

"No," Keiichi truthfully admitted.

Urd just smiled and patted him on the head, much as someone might do to a favorite pet, and said, "Don't worry about it. She'll be back before you know it, and besides, it's not like the two of you were sleeping together when she got up in the night to take care of personal business, right?"

"Ah-hah?" Keiichi blandly responded, much as he tended to do whenever thoughts of Belldandy in an "improper" light came to mind, and as he tried to imagine what sharing a room with his favorite goddess might be light he found he had to hold his nose against the possibility of a bleeding, half dreading that Skuld might show up at any minute with that hammer of hers, which she was all too willing to employ against those she deemed as "Sex Fiends" trifling with the affections of her older sister...

Yet far away (as mortals measure time) Belldandy appeared in the space where a certain young lady was holding a sacred bloodstone, and by taking a hand in her own the goddess drew her Aspect away onto another plane where the two of them could converse without disrupting the flow of the central processing system.

Kasumi felt a warmth suffuse her very being as she held the pulsating bloodstone, her being filled with the light of the silvery moon as she rose into the night sky clutching a star between the palms of her hands and sensing the expansion of her horizon and boundaries. When the angelic being came to her she had a sense of her own departed mother descending down from heaven, and as they were drawn away to a different level of being, she found herself asking in an almost plaintive, hopeful voice, "Mother?"

"You could call me that, if you like," the heavenly vision informed Kasumi even as the radiant light died down to a less intensely blinding level, "However, I would much rather call you my sister since you and I share a light and are bound by the program structures that link our very beings."

Kasumi found herself standing in the middle of what looked like a park that existed on the edge of town, and nearby were a set of benches that the beautiful young lady with the odd facial markings urged her towards. They sat down together clutching hands while Kasumi's other hand held firm to the bloodstone, and then she searched the face of the stranger, finding an odd familiarity though there were differences between them that went beyond the mere physical right down to their respective internal makeup.

"Oh my," they both said at the same time, and their voices matched so perfectly that they actually resonated harmonics. Both smiled, then Belldandy said, "It's good to finally meet you, Tendo Kasumi. I've good things reported about you, though in truth I haven't been to the office much lately to keep track on possible updates."

"Um," Kasumi sought for a polite way of putting her feelings, "You...seem familiar...but you have me at a loss. I am Tendo Kasumi...and yourself?"

"You may call me Belldandy," the radiant vision replied, "How can I help you? I felt a great need from you and I came to see if there might be some way in which I can offer you comfort."

"Why...thank you," Kasumi replied, "I'm not sure how you can be of service to me since we have only just met, Belldandy-san. At least...I think that's the case. Um...forgive me for asking this, but...have we met somewhere before? You seem..."

"Familiar?" Belldandy replied, "Don't let it trouble you. There is nothing to be afraid about, you and I are...old friends. So...forgive me for asking this...but I sense a great sadness in you. Can you tell me the reason?"

Kasumi looked down at the hand that she was holding, then at the goddess before her, then she said, "I...I suppose maybe...I am a little bit...lonely. But that's not entirely true...I have my family, whom I dearly love, and I can never be truly lonely whenever I am with them..."

"But there is another that you long for," Belldandy said with deep sincerity and conviction, "And he belongs to another, and this makes you sad. You feel envious of the joy had by another, and yet you love your rival in a different way, so there really isn't a conflict between your two loves. You just feel that the one you love doesn't belong to you...and it is making you unhappy."

"You understand?" Kasumi asked in surprise, glancing to the side before adding, "Hardly anyone really does. I have tried to tell myself that it's wrong to be feeling these emotions...but...I cannot help myself, and at times..."

"At times you feel temptation...to take steps to secure your love which you know you would regret later," Belldandy concluded for her, "Don't feel guilty...many of us feel similar such temptations, but it takes a strong will to remain totally resolute in the face of conflicting needs and desires. Our minds tell us one thing but our heart refuses to listen. Yes...I do know what you are feeling, Tendo-san, and I do not hold you to blame for feeling so conflicted. It is just one of many conditions of humanity that our honest desires are often met with frustration."

"You do understand," Kasumi almost felt like weeping, "I am glad to have met you...I almost feel as though I have found another sister."

"I feel the same way about you, Tendo-san," Belldandy replied, "So again I ask...what can I do to help you?"

"I'm...not even certain that you can," Kasumi responded, "But perhaps it is enough...just knowing that someone else understands...just as I know what I must do to take charge of the rest of my life...but...I am afraid..."

"Of change itself?" Belldandy asked, "Change is also a part of life, and it is good to grow with these changes that you are going through. You do not lack for courage, only resolution. It is easy to hold onto the things with which you are familiar, but take the first big step into a larger world that is unfamiliar...that does take real courage."

"I'm afraid of losing the things I value," Kasumi replied, "I want to remain a part of my family...but I know now that living at home has been too constricting, that I need to explore other options, to branch out and stretch my wings as it were..."

"Then do so," Belldandy urged, "And you will find the rest takes care of itself. No one is asking you to give up your family, after all, only to see yourself as being more than just another family member. I can help you with that...if you are willing to take the risk that it will offer?"

"Oh?" Kasumi asked, seeing something curious in the friendly way that Belldandy made this offer.

"I have been reading you the whole time while we have been sitting here holding hands," Belldandy indicated their still-interlacing fingers, "And I know of the other burden which you must now bear, a fate that has been chosen for you by the powers that be for the protection of your loved ones. Know that you have been chosen to wield this power for a reason...and that the fates have entrusted you with this gift so that you will be prepared for the trials of the coming months where your resolve for your family will be severely tested."

"You mean...I was made a vampire for a reason?" Kasumi gasped.

The goddess nodded in the affirmative, "Long ago a crisis gripped the world, and the Elder Gods of that era permitted a group of mortals to cast a fateful spell that has had long-ranged and unintended consequences for the entire planet Earth. The Modrecai Program, the creation spell that started the Vampire race. We goddesses are well familiar with its function and purpose, and the reason why it has been allowed to continue these past twenty-five thousand years, and why the gift has been passed along to you, and for what purpose. I cannot tell you more than this, what I have said may well be too much already, but I can tell you that you were well chosen to manage this burden. You have soul that is clean of the taint of Darkness and evil, and though you fault yourself for your temptations, you have stood up well to many tests that would have daunted most other persons...so I can assure you that you have no need to fear Heaven's judgement of your actions. You are part of a greater story, a saga that has yet to be fully told, and so you are well armed for the coming battle. But your primary weapon is not aggressive in nature...it is your innate gift for limitless compassion."

"So...was made like this so that I could help Nabiki...or is it Natsume who needs my protection?" Kasumi wondered.

"That is for you to say," Belldandy replied, "I can reveal no more. The future is too fragile, a single word or miscast gesture might alter the pattern of the weave. Just do what is true to your nature and you will get by, I promise you that."

"Thank you," Kasumi smiled, "I feel as though a great burden has been lifted from my shoulders...but...you speak of another burden? One that comes as a duty for the control of my...appetites?"

"Yes," Belldandy smiled, "But in that you have the means in your hand of curbing your thirst for human blood. The Bloodstone has the power to sustain you indefinitely so long as it is in contact with your body. You can absorb what you need from holding it close to your very person. It is formed of the tears of a god from long ago, and it carries within it the force of life that is nourishment to all vampires."

Kasumi turned to see the bloodstone in her other hand, seeing that it pulsed a soft red glow as though in tune to a heartbeat, and with a start she realized that it was her own heart beating that she felt after what had seemed like a silence of ages. She stared at the thing in wonder and said, "Oh my...with this, I feel almost...human."

"And now that you have that," Belldandy said, "There is one other thing which you need in order to complete your transformation."

"Excuse me?" Kasumi blinked as she met the silvery stare of the goddess.

Belldandy nodded with firm resolution and then turned her head to the side to bare her neck to full view. Kasumi looked at the vulnerable throat of the goddess and felt the pulsebeat of her life's blood calling out to her, and she said, "But..."

"It's all right," Belldandy reassured her, "You need a portion of my essence to complete your evolution. I am willing to share with you, so you do not need to feel as though you are taking something...improper. Go ahead...I gladly give you what I have to offer in full knowledge that you will use the power I bestow upon you wisely."

"Um..." Kasumi pursed her lips then said, "If...you think it would be all right..."

She leaned forward in much the same manner that she had used with Nabiki, but rather than do something so...improper...as to bite her sister on the breast, instead she brushed her lips against the neck of Belldandy, paused to feel where the vein was that could be sampled without severely hurting the goddess, then gently pricked her neck with the tip of her fangs as Belldandy gave a soft noise in response to this gesture, and then Kasumi felt her mouth fill once again with the rich nectar of a warm and living goddess...

And yet the potency of this particular wine was like fire in her mouth, and Kasumi had the sense as though she had just drunk liquid sunlight, feeling it melt through her and suffuse the very makeup of her body with new life and new vitality, burning away the old Kasumi and replacing her with a new and fresher model. For the brief time that Kasumi drank of Belldandy there was a sense of total kinship, and then her transformation began in earnest, and with a cry not unlike a newborn babe she felt herself emerge from the dream with her entire being in a swirl of cascading energies and primal rejuvenation...

Beyond and below her the awed expressions of both her family and the Darkstalkers greeted her return to the mortal plane of existence. Kasumi gently touched bare feet upon the ground once again and felt the folding of wings behind her back as her dress altered abruptly and strange markings briefly appeared upon her face, to fade away moments later, leaving her much the same in appearance as before...yet somehow radiating an inner light that was breathtaking.

It was Nabiki who broke the silence that followed the slow fading of the light, and she asked very softly, "Oneechan?"

"Well...I'll be scrapped," Frank murmured in dull amazement.

"Pinch me and tell me I'm dreaming," Talbain pleaded, unable to look away from the vision that was Kasumi.

"Indeed," the mysterious D remarked, "Then we're all sharing the same dream."

"Words fail me...utterly," Tatewaki admitted.

"Ditto," Keiko replied, finding herself unable to look away from the transfigured Kasumi.

"Oh my," Nodoka murmured with a faint smile of appreciation.

"K-Kasumi?" Soun asked as if unable to believe that he was gazing on his own daughter.

"Well what do you know," Genma averred softly.

"In your case I'd say that was a trick question," Happosai absently retorted, himself drawn intuitively to the celestial beauty that was Kasumi.

"If I had not witnessed it with my own eyes..." Miyu marveled.

"Morgan," Larva turned to the succubus, "What you were about to say before about the Bloodstone...and why you thought it was a bad idea to give it to a Queen under full moonlight."

Morgan absently nodded her head and said, "According to legends...if you do so, then a Queen can be transformed into a...a..."

"A goddess?" Leguire finished for her, swallowing thickly and looking as if he were about to trash his "Agnostics" union card altogether.

"Well...I'll be staked," Raptor murmured softly.

"Don't give anybody ideas around here," Lenore warned, though she, too, was visibly affected by the transformation of Kasumi, with Chloe and even Kiima seeming quite visibly affected.

Only Donovan seemed unaffected by the transformation, and he gave Kasumi a frank regard before saying, "Well, Miss-Tendo? Do you now feel ready to perform your duties?"

"Of course I'm ready," Kasumi replied, and her voice had a musical quality to it as the slight movement of her head caused the unusual set of earrings that she was wearing to reflect the light...revealing the fact that one of them was quite obviously a miniaturized Bloodstone, "Let's go find and rescue my brother, Ranma...Nabiki...Natsume-chan?"

The novice Slayer was even then stirring from her swoon into her fiancée's arms, but looking up from Kuno's side she could perceive that there was something greatly different about her sister, and to this she could only nod in agreement, sensing that the time was indeed at hand for some collective butt-kicking as their Posse dished it out to certain deserving party named Dimitri...

Ranma looked down upon himself...or rather he was staring down at his own body, which presently was wrapped up in chains, ropes and harnesses to prevent mobility of any sort, except for maybe twitching his nose and wiggling his eyebrows. To him it looked a little like serious overkill, like someone had been piling it on to considerable excess, and yet the effect was to trap his mortal form but good. It made working his way free that much more problematic, and that was even assuming that the bad guys did not have something even nastier in mind as a failsafe or backup.

"Don't worry about your physical body, Master," Karina urged, "It will remain safe until you return to it, I promise."

"What an amateur this Bulletta character must be," Latisha sniffed, "All that metal and none of it is cold iron, or even magnetic. As if anything less would stop the three of us from liberating our Master."

"Yes, but we're all agreed that freedom come second after we liberate the Earth elemental," Sharil urged, "And time is of the essence since it is never a good idea to leave your body unattended to for more than twenty minutes while Astral projecting..."

"Twenty minutes?" Ranma started, "You guys never said anything about that!"

"A technical oversight," Karina reassured him, "Your Akashik body is composed primarily of Astral energies given coherent form by your mind and imagination. It is patterned to resemble the memory of your real body right down to the cellular level, so it will behave much as your real body while on the elemental planes of being. What is left to the body is your residual and external Astral shell, the part of you that stays in the body unless it is cremated. It should be safe with all of the wards that we have placed upon it, at least so long as we get back in time before the energy and integrity fields weaken.

"The body will maintain itself with heartbeat and respiration greatly slowed down to an almost imperceptive level," Latisha noted, "But once the integrity field begins to fade your autonomic processes will gradually cease to function and the body will die of its own accord, unless one of us remains behind to sustain it. Also too, your body would be vulnerable to astral possession without the wards we have placed upon it to keep away any foul or unnatural invading spirits. You will be safe for now, but I suggest that you make haste to free N'gsha from her entrapment so that we can reunite you with your body...else all contracts with you are voided."

"Meaning you'll be dead," Sharil translated, "Which sucks a great deal, you can take my word on that."

"Er, right," Ranma said, "Well, better get a move on, ladies, we don't want to keep this Nagisha person waiting..."

"This way, Master," Karina urged, and like that they seemed to cross a limited space from one part of the catacombs to another, arriving in a somewhat larger chamber.

"Whoah," Ranma said, not yet accustomed to this means of near-instant transportation. He looked around for a moment then spotted the most prominent object in the room and said, "Is that what we're after?"

"That's it," Karina nodded, indicating the large gold-embossed sarcophagus, which was ornately carved yet clearly very ancient, "Used to belong to an Egyptian lady...I think she was a princess or a queen or something, only Anakaris rigged it to be like a storage batter and prison for C'thonic energies. Nagisha's trapped inside there, only...well...she might not want to come out to play unless you coax her. The truth is...you'll probably have to enter her world in order to convince her to take you on as her new Master..."

"What?" Karina reacted, "Are you made, Sylph? That thing is designed to be a prison!"

"No, worse," Sharil observed, "A maze...it's like a labyrinth in there, I can feel the twisting passages that wind their way towards the very center..."

"Heh, too bad my brother, Ryoga, ain't here with me," Ranma sniffed.

"The one who gets easily lost?" Latisha asked, "Why?"

"'Cause he's good at solving mazes," Ranma said as he moved closer to the sarcophagus, "He gets lost in a room with only one door, but he's uncanny when it comes to picking the right direction to go when you got so many possible choices."

"Knowing him just from your memories, that almost makes sense, Master," Sharil noted in surprisingly dry humor.

Ranma examined the sarcophagus, noting its intricately inlaid surface that followed up towards a jewel inlaid insect whose ruby eyes almost seemed to be staring back at him, and as he brushed his fingers over the surface he said, "How am I supposed to get inside this thing again...?"

All at once he felt the insect come alive beneath is fingers, and then its eye expanded to become a portal, and all at once Ranma felt himself being sucked into the thing, gaining a first hand impression of what it was like to be drawn through a straw, only to manifest again instants later in what looked to be an entirely different kind of chamber.

"Whoah," he said as his senses attempted to reorient, "What a rush..."

"Does that answer your question, Master?" he heard Karina say, and Ranma jumped in alarm to see his three elemental familiar had accompanied him into the vessel.

"Hey, I thought we agreed that you guys were gonna stay back and keep out of harms way!" Ranma sputtered in dismay.

"Foolish Master," Latisha crackled, "As if you could face this challenge all by yourself without our help?"

"He will have to when it comes to facing N'gsha," Sharil reminded, "But we intend to stand beside you and assist you where needed, Master. Feel free to call upon our powers whenever they are required."

"But be careful to mind the limits that this place imposes upon all of us," Karina cautioned, "The energy patterns here work differently from the world outside the Scarab Beetle portal, so if you try to use us against Nagisha our spells may work exactly as intended."

"Great, now you tell me this?" Ranma grumbled, glancing from side to side, "Well, too late to back out now...only we've got a lot of area to cover, and there ain't enough time to explore ever corridor and passage..."

"Let me lead the way, Master," Karina urged, starting off in a certain fixed direction.

"Oh?" Latisha said, "And I suppose that you've been here before?"

"Of course not, Silly," Karina called back, "I just have a feel for wind currents, and I can tell which passages lead to dead ends and which continue."

The Salamander Queen and Undine Princess exchanged looks, then Ranma sighed and moved on ahead, compelling them to follow him as even they did not relish being alone in a place this dark, dank and foreboding.

The journey was impossible to fathom in terms of time itself, but Ranma felt the urgency of knowing that he was on a deadline and so made haste to keep pace with Karina, and soon they were in a different set of corridors where the feeling of weight pressed the very air itself against his imaginary lungs. Karina seemed to feel it too, as did his other elemental servants with Latisha being the one to voice aloud, "We are in a C'thonic region...there can be no doubt of this. This is deep under-earth territory where dark things grow and the blood of the earth flows like molten lava."

"I feel the presence of many underground streams nearby," Sharil duly noted, "It's not like the sea, my home, but there is a kind of...hominess about it. It definitely does feel like a dwelling of some sort or other..."

"Hey, wait a second," Ranma said as he looked straight ahead at a bend in the corridor, "I feel...something...there's somebody nearby...feels almost like...a person."

"Two persons, Master," Karina corrected as they rounded the bend and came out into a much, much larger chamber, "Yet more prisoners of my former Master."

Ranma gasped as he saw a pair of figures stuck to the distant wall off to his left, a pair of women who seemed to be ensnared by roots or branches of some type of underground plant. He studied them from a distance of ten meters then said, "Hey, I know those guys! They showed up at our house...only...I don't remember their names too clearly..."

"Their names are Tsien-Ko and her twin sister, Mei-Ling," Karina informed him, "One is a Chinese Vampire, also called a Kuang-Shi or Walking Ghost, and the other is a Spiritualist linked to her as her familiar. Both are formerly of the Shao tribe but were adopted into the Tsiel vampire bloodline by their blood cousin, Ling-Ko, who is the Queen vampire of her nation."

"So what are they doing here?" Latisha wondered.

"Suffering from the looks of things," Sharil answered, "See how those roots are feeding off of their bodies, draining their energies and bleeding them to where they can barely survive their ordeal?"

"Looks bad," Ranma said, "We gotta get 'em down from there while there's still time..."

He took a step forward only to feel something yield slightly under his weight, and instinctively he jumped back and stood prepared in case there was trouble, but then he saw the dark cable moved, thumping the ground in displeasure before rising again...and as he followed its length he saw that it came attached to a much larger body, and with a slow sense of pending dread Ranma turned to see the creature rising from the floor, covered in dark coal-black scales and terminating in a triangular head with eyes that gleamed with a dark burgundy color.

"WHO DARES TO DISTURB MY LAIR?" it rumbled in a voice that sounded like shale grinding against granite, rising up to its full height and looming large before the eyes of Ranma and his elemental cohorts as the Saotome heir looked up and up and swallowed a thick lump that formed in the back of his throat.

"Oboy," he said softly, "It's a dragon..."

"Nagisha!" Karina called out, "It's me! I lead him here, he's our new...!"

The dragon struck the ground with its tail and almost bowled Ranma and his trio of elementals off their feet, then it rumbled again, "KARINA...I MIGHT HAVE KNOWN, YOU FLIGHTY-HEADED DITZ! WHAT IS THE MEANING OF BRINGING THIS MORTAL INTO MY STRONGHOLD?"

"Your prison you mean?" Karina called back after regaining her bearings, "He's my new Master!"

The dragon lowered its head and stared hard at Ranma, who had to fight to keep control over his nerves as the primal terror inspired by the sight of the creature threatened to send him running for terror. He could not help recognizing that the head of the creature was many times the overall size of his own body, and he was none to happy about the way the dragon was sizing him over, displaying fangs that looked at this range like a row of stalagmites.

"SO...YOU GOT YOURSELF A NEW MASTER?" the dragon said scornfully, "DOESN'T SEEM LIKE MUCH, BARELY EVEN A BITE FULL..."

"He's not for eating, Nagisha," Karina protested, "He's here to help! I brought him here so he cold free you!"

"FREE ME?" the dragon replied with scorn, "THIS PUNY, SCRAWNY EXCUSE FOR A MAN IS GOING TO LIBERATE ME FROM DIMITRI MAXIMOFF? AS JESTS GO THIS IS BARELY WORTH A CHUCKLE."

"Hey!" Ranma flared, "This ain't no jest! I've come to rescue you...and these other two with you, so how about showing a little appreciation?"

"YOU...HAVE COME TO LIBERATE ME?" the dragon cried, widening its mouth, "THE JEST GETS EVEN BETTER! I LIKE IT HERE, LITTLE MAN, AND IF YOU THINK TO TAKE ME, THEN LET'S JUST SEE WHAT YOU ARE MADE OF!"

The Dragon moved forward and attempted to bite Ranma in half, but he was quick to leap away and avoid the attack as the dragon dove down literally into the earth and vanished for a moment, only to resurface again as its head burst forth from the ground almost exactly where he had been standing the instant before this.

Ranma took to the air and instinctively called upon the Arashisenken to cancel out the pull of gravity so that he could hover above the ground at a reasonably safe distance. Something went awry, however, and the force he summoned got out of his control and called up a wind that slammed him into a wall, almost stunning him had he not braced himself at the last instant.

"HAH, WHAT AN AMATEUR HE IS!" the dragon scorned, "HE DEFEATS HIMSELF WITHOUT MY HAVING TO WASTE THE EFFORT..."

"Master!" Latisha cried as she, Karina and Sharil appeared to flank Ranma as he started to recover.

"LATISHA...IS THAT YOU?" the dragon scowled, "WHAT IS A QUEEN OF THE SALAMANDER RACE DOING ATTACHING HERSELF TO THE LIKES OF HIM?"

"That is my business, not yours, N'gsha!" snapped, "And if you must know, I serve this man willingly as his ally since he has proven to me to be a worthy and fair Master."

"I DON'T KNOW WHETHER TO WEEP OR CRY TO HEAR SUCH WORDS FROM YOUR LIPS," the dragon snorted, "MY MOTHER WOULD NEVER HAVE BELIEVED THAT YOU WOULD GO SOFT IN YOUR OLD AGE! WHAT HAS BECOME OF YOUR PRIDE? AND WHO IS THIS NYMPH WHO DARES TO ACCOMPANY YOU IN THIS FOLLY?"

"Leave them alone!" Ranma snapped as he straightened himself out, flexing his arms to make sure that nothing had been dislocated, "Your fight is with me, lady! You think I'm just some cheap punk come down here to get laughed at by the likes of you? No way! I'm Saotome Ranma, the Senken Master!"

His elemental companions eyed him as though wondering if he had taken leave of his senses, but the dragon reacted to his defiant tone by snarling, "WHY YOU...YOU DARE ADDRESS ME IN THAT TONE, LITTLE MAN? YOUR AMUSEMENT FACTOR CEASES TO HAVE INTEREST TO ME AS OF THIS VERY MOMENT!"

"Bring it on, lady," Ranma smiled cockily, "I'm betting you ain't got what it takes to beat me, so give it your best shot and you'll see how amusing I can be!"

"THEN DIE!" the dragon cried as it lunged ahead with jaws parted wide to engulf this defiant human.

"Master run!" Latisha urged, "Let us handle this one..."

"No way," Ranma seemed to draw into himself and snarled, "I can handle this! Just watch me!"

To their collective amazement he stood his ground and waited for the dragon to attack him, then at the last possible instant he unfolded his arms and gripped the dragon by its jaws, exerting a strength that was clearly superhuman as he dug his heels into the ground, plowing up a field as their combined lurch drove them back almost to the wall an entire fifteen meters.

Time itself seemed to hesitate as the elementals stared in disbelief at their human Master, who was holding the jaws of the dragon apart through force of will, and then Ranma smiled even as he grit his teeth, and the dragon itself gasped, "W-WHAAAT?"

With great effort Ranma snarled out, "YAMASENKEN SPECIAL MANEUVER-ROARING GATES TIGER ROAR!" and with that he leaped forward and planted a spinning razor kick that caught under the chin of the beast and sent the dragon reeling backwards as though propelled back by a catapult. He completed his leap with a one-point careful landing then grinned, seeing the dragon recover itself while looming up almost to the high vaulted ceiling.

"Surprised?" Ranma grinned, "And that was only just a basic maneuver."

"HOW?" the dragon scowled, "HOW CAN A MERE MORTAL DO SUCH A THING TO THE LIKES OF ME?"

"You expect me to just tell you up front?" Ranma sniffed, "No way! You want answers, lady, you've gotta work for them."

All at once he sensed danger and moved in time to avoid the crash of the serpent's tail, and then the dragon attacked again, seeing him exposed and vulnerable in the air, an easy target to swallow.

But no sooner had she attempted this but the image of Ranma faded out before its eyes and the dragon went crashing into the wall behind the image, for a moment stuck there like a dart as the real Ranma materialized at the opposite end of the chamber.

"That was the Umisenken maneuver, Mirror Reflection," Ranma revealed, "Care to almost see it again?"

"YOU..." the dragon pulled itself loose from the wall, "SO...YOU DO KNOW A FEW ODD TRICKS, MORTAL? VERY WELL THEN, I WILL GET MORE SERIOUS IN CONCLUDING THIS BATTLE."

"W-Whoever you are...get away from here..." a voice said weakly from near to where Ranma was standing.

"Huh?" Ranma turned to find that it was the helpless Tsien-Ko who had spoken, the blue skinned lady in the strange robes with her oversized wing-like claws looking down at him with ruby eyes that were pained and almost glassy.

"You've...gotta...get away..." she said again, "You're no match...for an elemental..."

"Huh, doesn't seem so tough to me so far," Ranma snorted, "And I ain't leaving here without you guys lady. You obviously need a hand, so count me a Prince Charming."

"You...are...wrong...brave mortal..." the other one, Mei-Ling, said even more weakly than her sister, "N'gsha...is too dangerous...for the likes of...you..."

"Why?" Ranma asked, "What's she got that's so-huh?" Ranma reacted as he felt something clawing up his legs, and as he turned to look he found in dismay that there were roots sprouting up from the ground and winding their way around is ankles.

"HAH...NOT SO COCKY NOW, ARE WE MORTAL?" the dragon sneered, "THE POWERS OF THE EARTH ARE AT MY DISPOSAL. YOU ARE NOTHING WHEN COMPARED TO ME, AND ALL YOUR CHEAP BRAVADO HAS DONE IS TO INSURE YOUR DEATH..."

"Oh yeah?" Ranma firmed his lip and took on a grim expression, "Well, two can play at that game, lady! HONOSENKEN-FLAME BURST FROM A GROUND SOURCE!"

Latisha began to glow as fire erupted from around Ranma's right hand, and all at once the ground beneath his feet forth and consumed the clawing roots with force enough to propel Ranma into the air as he effortlessly vaulted to safety.

"UMISENKEN-SPECIAL ATTACK!" Ranma cried, "FLOODS SWEEP WIDE DRAGON FIST RYU!" and he moved his left fist forward as Sharil began to glow a faint blue coloration, and suddenly a jet of water shot out from his hand to take the form of a blue dragon.

The black dragon was amazed to find itself assaulted by a fellow elemental, but even more so to discover the surge of Ki-force that empowered the creature as it collided with the dark scales of its body, and like a garden hose turned against a snake it washed the black dragon back and away to the far corner of the room, at which point the power of the attack was fully expended.

Ranma landed with a nimbleness that disguised the fact that this attack had taxed him dearly, but rather than show weakness he stood proudly forth and said, "Now whatcha gonna do about that, huh?"

"THEY ARE HELPING YOU," the dragon declared as it loomed up once again, even more angry than before, "BUT I WILL NOT BE BESTED WITHIN MY OWN STRONGHOLD, EVEN IF YOU CALL UPON THE POWER OF THESE...TRAITORS!"

With that the dragon dove into the ground again, vanishing with an ease that made its huge bulk appear to slide into the earth like a swimmer merging with the water. Ranma looked down in dismay as he heard the elementals inside h is head say, "Careful Master! She flows through the earth as though swimming..."

"I know that," Ranma said, then called out to his third elemental servant, "Karina, are you ready?"

"Huh?" she said, "Ah...sure, Master...what do you have in mind?"

"You'll see," Ranma said, only to glance sharply to the side before vaulting into the air once again as the black dragon burst forth from the ground sprouting a number of roots that it attempted to use to spear him like a pincushion.

Ranma raised both fists then called out, "ARASHISENKEN SPECIAL ATTACK-WIND SHEERS TILES OFF ROOF RYU!"

And with that he brought both hands down and charged himself with his remaining reserves of Ki, and all at once a cyclone formed in the air all around him as he directed its winds to move like invisible knives, sheering through everything that stood forth against it.

To the amazement of the dragon it felt its own scales being attack by winds that dove under the overlapping plates and ripped them asunder, pulling them loose and spinning them in the air so that they became like deadly weapons unto themselves, slicing at roots and vines and battering away at the dragon itself like a thousand fists of relentless fury. After only a few moments of this assault the dragon collapse to the ground and landed with a heavy thud, bleeding a kind of moistened ooze from scores of different slashes it had taken. It's tongue lolled out of its huge mouth and it breathed in ragged breaths with great deliberation.

Ranma drifted back down to the broken ground of the chamber near to the fallen beast then allowed his Ki levels to return to normal. At once fatigue threatened to overmaster him, but he fought to conceal this as he eyed the fallen dragon and said, "Do you yield?"

"I...I...I YIELD...SORCEROR..." the creature said with ponderous deliberation.

"Good," Ranma approached the dragon and set a hand to its broken scales, only to see the creature wince at the contact, to which he said, "Hey, easy...I ain't gonna hurt you! At least...not any more that is. Jeez...didn't expect my attack would do such a number on you. Any of you guys know a remedy for this?"

"I do," Sharil spoke into his mind, then from his left hand waves of soothing blue energy rolled out, flowing over the bleeding scales and rents in armored flesh and covering them with a balm-like fluid that eased the suffering of the stricken creature.

The dragon reacted to this with a start, raised its head and stared in disbelief at the youth whose touch was gradually repairing the wounds to its body, and then in a rumble of dismay it said, "WHA-WHAT ARE YOU DOING? YOU ARE...HEALING ME? WHY?"

"Hey, what good would you be to me if you were all banged up like this?" Ranma smiled at the creature with good humor, "Besides, I can't stand seeing anybody hurt that way...not at my hand at least, and you sure don't deserve it."

"BUT...I TRIED TO CRUSH YOU, TO DESTROY YOU..." the dragon said, "WHY WOULD YOU SPARE ME?"

"Because I'm Saotome Ranma, and it's what I do," he replied, "You were fighting for your pride, right? Because that Dimitri guy forced you to be his slave. Well, I said I was gonna free you from that, and I always keep my promises. Don't matter to me if you're an enemy or just another innocent dupe, you ain't my real enemy. My enemy is Dimitri."

"HOW...HOW CAN YOU BE SO KIND? SHOW SUCH MERCY?" the dragon asked, then all at once its body collapsed in upon itself, and within moments it took on a human shape, entirely female and brown-skinned with dark green hair and eyes as flinty as shale, "How can you say that you want to help me when I...I do the bidding of Dimitri?"

"And why's that?" Ranma asked as he turned to face the now-humanoid elemental, grateful that she had manifested some type of robes to cover her body rather than appear before him as naked, "Do you like working for the guy?"

"No," Nagisha answered, "I hate him. No man loves Dimitri Maximoff...and he cares nothing for anyone but himself. To him I am but another slave who does his bidding."

"Well then," Ranma said, "Any objections to coming with me? I think I got room enough for one more companion...might be a bit of a tight fit, but..."

"You...would have me?" Nagisha asked, "Why?"

"I dunno," Ranma shrugged, "But the other girls seemed to think I could use you...something about restoring a balance, or something like that. Actually, though, I kinda hate the idea of leaving you here...it just don't sit right, know what I mean? And besides, there's these other two to worry about."

"Them?" Nagisha glanced at the wall, and all at once the fines withdrew, releasing the two sisters, who both slumped to the ground like broken puppets, "I was told to keep them here by Dimitri, but they are harmless to me. I was draining them of their energies, but there was not enough there to be of much nourishment for my needs."

"Guh..." Tsien-Ko grunted, "Don't...look now, Sis...but...I think we've just been...insulted..."

"Go with it, Tsien-Ko," Mei-Ling urged, "Never look...a gift nag...in the mouth..."

"Thanks," Ranma said, smiling at Nagisha, "Ready to get out of here, lady?"

"But...how do you mean to carry me?" Nagisha asked, "I am trapped here by powerful spells, and I cannot leave this place without the permission of Lord Dimitri."

"Ain't a problem for me," Ranma said as he stretched out his left hand, then concentrated on his remaining energies, expanding a Ki-field around him like a bubble, surrounding both himself and the Earth elemental within its sphere before calling out the technique in an almost-airless vacuum, "YAMASENKEN SPECIAL MANEUVER-DEEP SEA CHASM REMODIFIED-ENVELOPE AND CONTAIN RYU!"

All at once he collapsed the field and Nagisha suddenly found herself being sucked into his arm, transforming into greenish-brown energy as she vanished into the palm of his hand altogether.

"Oh my..." he heard her voice say, this time within his mind, "That certainly is...different..."

"Our Master is a peculiar one," Latisha's voice responded, "But in time you will grow to know him as we do."

Ranma felt a tingle along his left leg then sighed, "Hope I don't have to do this again...I'm running outta places to store you guys. Now...how about you two girl? You feeling all right enough to travel out of here now?"

"Girls?" Tsien-Ko muttered, "You hear what he just called us, Sis?"

"Deal with it, Sister," Mei-Ling said as she forced herself into a sitting position, giving Ranma an appreciative nod, "You are a most unusual fellow, Saotome Ranma. Well met indeed."

"I'll take that for a yes," Ranma smiled, only to feel a certain tingling come over his body, "Uh oh...now what?"

"What we feared might happen, Master," Sharil spoke into his mind, "You are nearing the time limit for being away from your body, and you expended so much energy during the fight..."

"Sis," Tsien-Ko said with some alarm, "Look at him...he's starting to fade out on us!"

"I believe that I know what his problem is," Mei-Ling straightened out then offered her sister a hand, "We cannot afford to wait until our own strength returns. We must help this young man to get back to his real body."

"His real body?" Tsien-Ko blinked, "Oh, I get it now! He Astral projected!"

"Yes, but fortunately he could be the means for our own deliverance," Mei-Ling raised her hands, closed her eyes and made a ritual gesture, and all at once the world seemed to spin out of control for Ranma, only to reorient once again as he felt his body tingle all over, and then he opened his eyes, saw where he was and mentally groaned, (Oh man...I forgot all about this...!).

"Whew, what a relief that is!" Tsien-Ko smiled as she flexed both her arms and her massively clawed wings, then did a double-take as she got a full good look at Ranna's position, "What the hey...?"

"Oh my," Mei-Ling also goggled as she saw the bound up position that Ranma was in, "This is the way they left him in captivity?"

"He looks like a poster boy for bondage anonymous," Tsien-Ko remarked, then smiled as she raised one of her clawed wings and said, "Well...they say that one good turn deserves another..."

Ranma's eyes almost bulged from their sockets as he stared in dismay, but because of the rubber ball currently strapped into his mouth he could not say aloud, (NOW WAIT A MINUTE-CAN'T WE TALK ABOUT THIS?"

Tsien-Ko went to work shredding the chains, ropes and other forms of restraint, and a moment later Ranma was able to stand clear, at which point he tore the ball gag out of his mouth and said, "Thanks...!"

"Hey, don't mention...it...?" Tsien-Ko's eyes traveled up and down Ranma's length as it became apparent that he was not wearing any clothing, a fact that Ranma cottoned onto after only a moment of wondering why she was staring at his crotch like that, then all at once he colored abruptly and cast a wild look about in search of his clothing.

"Oh my," Mei-Ling said as she could not help but duplicate the expression of her sister.

"Not such a little boy after all, is he?" Tsien-Ko faintly murmured.

"URK!" Ranma hastily moved his hands to cover up his privates.

"Here, Master...allow me," a familiar voice said, handing him his shirt and pants, which Ranma gratefully took and wasted no time in pulling back on, minus his shorts which had somehow gone missing.

"Thanks," he said before turning to see that the one who had assisted him was none other than his newest convert, "Nagisha?"

"A pleasure to service you, My Lord," she smiled before fading into a greenish glow and vanishing back into his body.

Ranma stared at the place where she had been standing for a moment before Tsien-  
Ko said, "What's the deal with you, guy? Out to coral yourself an Elemental harem?"

"I hope not," Ranma averred, "I got four women in my life already, and that oughta be enough for any man."

He fetched his slippers then turned to the Chinese Vampire and her familiar Spiritualist sister then said, "Okay, so what do we do now?"

"Now we have to find Dimitri Maximoff and put a stop to his evil plans," Mei-  
Ling replied.

"Yeah, and then we gonna flatten him on his Eurotrash butt for the stuff he put us both through!" Tsien-Ko flexed an arm and raised one of her wings for emphasis, "The nerve of that guy, taking liberties with a couple of sweet virgins like us with some fancy new maneuver he picked up, and when I get my claws on the guy who came up with such a perverted system..."

"Er, right," Ranma said hastily, "Sounds like a working plan. Only...where do we go to find the guy?"

"Up above ground," Mei-Ling pointed towards the ceiling, "Over our very heads. At midnight they intend to sacrifice our cousin, the Blood Queen."

"So what are we waiting for?" Ranma asked, "The guy needs stomping, so let's stomp him!"

"After you, Hot Stuff," Tsien-Ko grinned as Ranma took the point and headed towards what he hoped would be the nearest exit, then in conspiratorial whisper she glanced at her sister and mouthed the words, "Is that butt worth dying for or what, Sis?"

"I believe that I heard someone say that he is already married, Tsien-Ko," Mei-  
Ling patiently reminded her sibling, though in truth she could not help also studying his manly profile.

"So...do you think maybe his wife is into threesomes?" Tsien-Ko asked, then the two of them cheerfully made haste to follow Ranma on his quest for payback against the fellow who had inconvenienced them so tartly, little realizing the full extent of the climactic battle towards which they were heading...

Part One-Hundred-Twenty-Five.

HENTAI WARNING!  
CONTAINS SCENES OF A RISQUE AND HIGHLY EROTIC NATURE, SUGGESTIVE OF LIME-LEVEL MATERIAL THAT MAY NOT BE DEEMED SUITABLE FOR MOST YOUNG MONSTERS UNDER THE AGE OF CONSENT. CONTAINS NUDITY AND SUGGESTIVELY KINKY SITUATIONS,  
SO IF YOU ARE BOTHERED BY THE THOUGHT OF BEAUTIFUL FEMALE VAMPIRES BEING SEXUALLY HARASSED AND TORMENTED, BE CAREFUL WHEN READING, YOU MIGHT SUFFER NASAL BLEEDING.  
YOU HAVE BEEN DULY WARNED!

[No Actual Vampires or other Immortal creatures were harmed in the making of this fanfic...]

"Damnation," Dimitri murmured softly under his breath, "How long must this go on? And where is Morgan? She was supposed to accompany us here...yet I sense not her presence."

"Ah, you know women, Boss," Darkwulf replied, "Maybe she went to powder her nose or something.

"Queen Morgan has been acting in a rather eclectic matter of late," Anakaris related, "But she knows how important this ceremony is and will do her part when the moment arrives for her to take action."

"The moment is already near at hand, fool!" Dimitri snarled, "So where is she?"

"Is there a problem, Dimitri?" the fiery Pyron turned to ask of his ally, "Or is this too inconvenient a time for you? Would you prefer it if we rescheduled things for another celestial juncture?"

"I do not appreciate the sarcasm, Pyron," Dimitri growled back, "I merely wish to know why Anslat has sequestered herself away from these proceedings. Do you not find it odd that she is not at my side, even if only to needle me with her constant japes and mockeries towards my manhood?"

"Actually, Boss," Darkwulf remarked, "You kind of put her in her place that last time, so maybe she's moping about it. You know how bitches get when they're in heat...they're either in the mood or they ain't, and sometimes it's impossible to tell which is which because they give us so many conflicting signals."

"Even in my time this was true," Anakaris related, "And Morgan is, at heart, still a woman with pride issues. Perhaps she feels...overmastered by your recent actions."

"Indeed?" Pyron said with interest, "Morgan Anslat is feeling piquish?"

"That is none of your concern, Alien," Dimitri glared at the fiery energy being, "Morgan belongs to me and she will serve my will when I rule the demon world. She just needs some...adjustments to grow accustomed to the new and improved me, a Dimitri whom she dares not mock 'lest I withhold my...benediction."

"You don't say?" Pyron sounded amused, "And have you finally found a way to get the upper hand with her? I find that difficult to credit."

"You mock me," Dimitri narrowed his eyes, "Very well, perhaps a little...demonstration is in order. Lilith!"

"What do you want?" the blue haired succubus snapped, "If you don't mind, Lord Dimwit, I'm trying to pay attention to Lord Jeddah, and so should you if this ceremony is as important to you as you keep saying it is."

"I merely request a moment of your time, Lilith my dear," Dimitri said grandly, "Would you come here so that I may show Lord Pyron something rather interesting that I have recently acquired?"

"This better be good," Lilith left the side of her fellow "B-Girls" and approached the renegade vampire lord with an angry, "I don't appreciate being called away to...OOOOOHhhhhhh!?" she reacted as Dimitri brushed his hand against her cheek then moved his fingers to the side of her neck and began to stroke nerve endings there that turned the blue haired girl's knees into rubber.

"What is this?" Pyron's flaming eyes widened in dismay as he saw Dimitri attack various places on the body of the young succubus, and by turns Lilith made groans and gasps as she fell to her knees, hugging herself as though in paroxysm of agony while her fellow B-Girls looked on in blank-faced incomprehension.

Dimitri continued his assault until Lilith started begging for him to stop, and once he did she continued to roll upon the ground, and then he smiled at Pyron and said, "Do you see now the nature of the power that I have gained? The power to make women grovel at my feet. I dare you to match that for all your terrible world-spanning might, O' King of Comets."

"Incredible," Pyron studied the way the succubus continued to moan, groan and shake with evident arousal, even going so far as to finger herself in a frantic need for self-stimulation, "And you used this power upon Anslat?"

"I did indeed," Dimitri said, "By now she is crawling with the need for my touch, and try as she might she will be unable to stay away from me. At last I have humbled her and made her a worthy queen to rule at my side upon the throne of Makai. Admit it...you are impressed."

"I am impressed that you have humbled the mighty Anslat with this strange technique that you have developed," Pyron admitted, "But how exactly does this gain for us the power we will need to defeat our enemies and crown you king?"

"I will show you that," Dimitri smiled as he started to move forward, only to find the other B-Girls were confronting him with much-annoyed expressions.

"Now just a minute here...what the hell did you do to Lilith?" BB Hood demanded.

"Zzzhe actzzz in wayzzz that are very much unlike her," the Queen Bee buzzed.

"You have some spell that is causing her to be this way," Atros scowled, "Release her now or face us, Vampire."

"Hmph," Dimitri smiled, then all at once his hands became a blur and all three women fell down and started to behave very much like Lilith, "As if the likes of you should threaten me. For that insolence you too may grovel until I relent to release you. No need to thank me for the pleasures that you are experiencing at the moment, it will last just long enough to be enjoyable, after which I wold advise you not to come within my reach again for the immediate duration."

"I see," Pyron softly mused, "This technique works primarily upon women."

"Indeed," Dimitri approached the lone figure at the center of a magical circle, strapped down naked upon a pillar and struggling for release as she glared with hateful eyes upon her captors, "And now you shall see that my power works even upon the body of a queen...is that not so, your highness?"

"Dimitri!" Ling-Ko spat as she struggled against the chains that held her spread-eagle facing upward upon the altar, "Whatever sick games you are playing, this will never avail you anything! I'll see you staked for this and your body left out for the worms, I'll-!"

Dimitri casually stretched out a hand and began tickling the bottom of one bare foot upon the Queen vampire, and all at once Ling-Ko's venomous threats were cut off in mid-sentence as something other than raw angle caused her to tense up and wiggle against her bonds, and then moan very softly at the unexpected way in which her body reacted to these delicate caresses.

Lord Jeddah, who had been in the middle of his chanting, broke off to give his vampiric ally a harsh glare before saying, "Dimitri, I don't mind you showing off so much, but would you please keep your hands off of my sacrifice and servants?"

"My apologies, but I feel that our celebrity guest is feeling...uncooperative," Dimitri said as he played his hands across the naked flesh of the helpless Blood Queen, "I thought to elicit her full and complete cooperation. After all, without her this ritual would be useless."

Jeddah frowned (but then again, he always seemed to be frowning, so one could hardly b e blamed for not having noticed until then, "Very well, but please do not disrupt the ceremony further. These are delicate invocations that I am crafting here to achieve our holy designs, so keep in mind that her...cooperation is not necessarily voluntary. This demoness must suffer for her many crimes so that God may be appeased and spare his righteous wrath that he might otherwise visit upon such godless sinners."

"Oh, but she is suffering," Dimitri leered as he gazed down at the writhing form of the Tsiel tribe Blood Mother, "Is that not right, my dear? You are indeed suffering through the torment of the damned because my touch has rendered her utterly helpless and vulnerable to my will. You feel helpless now and unable to control the responses of your body, and that gives me the power to cause you great ecstasy and agony in one and the same venture."

"Suffering?" Pyron said, "Sounds more like she is having an orgasm."

"Several of them combined," Dimitri smiled, "But I am denying her the act of total fulfillment, so the energies will continue to build and cycle within her body until she all but bursts with the need and desire for release, but though she squirms and groans for mercy, I will not allow it."

Ling-Ko did indeed squirm and groan within her restraints upon that altar, making incoherent sounds that filled the night with her cries of frustration and yearning. The sight of her nude body writhing in helpless tension, straining at her bonds with the titanic might that only a Queen among Vampires could manifest, and were her chains not forged to be near unbreakable she would surely have snapped them, or crushed the altar beneath her back as her agonies multiplied and her nervous system screamed with the fire of sexual need resonating back and forth without with no where to go but from her brain to her sexual organs and back again.

"Dimitri...is this...necessary?" Jeddah asked, feeling faintly troubled by the blasphemous implications of hedonism being used to torment the undead.

"More than necessary, Jeddah," Dimitri reassured him, "Long overdue as matter of principle. See how she is in agony, unable to climax as she cycles her energies to a higher and higher level of excitement? Imagine feeling the pleasures of the flesh multiply without being permitted to go the distance? Surely Hell itself must bear such torments for the damned to endure through their endless perdition. I am merely giving her a foretaste of what is in store for her while rendering her more...amenable to the act of sacrifice that is in store for her when we complete the ritual of summons."

"I see," Pyron remarked, "A rather unorthodox method...but quite astonishingly effective."

With great effort the Blood Queen managed to grit her fangs then growled out, "Di-mi-tri...!"

"Don't bother thanking me for the pleasure, my dear," Dimitri said as he gripped Ling-Ko's chin between his thumb and forefinger, "I must say, you do not seem so proud and haughty now as when I once petitioned you for your favor. You do remember that event...it was in Paris over fifty years ago during the rebuilding that followed the war. I spoke words of admiration for you and you threw them back in my face. Not so superior are we now while you are spread out before me with your legs parted and your treasures on full display to all who might see them. Perhaps now you have some small appreciation of the great gift that I offered you then, and why you now must suffer for your hubris to me. Queen or not, you are still only a woman, and as a woman you will bow down to me and submit your will, to beg me for the release you crave so desperately."

"N-N-NEVER!" the Blood Mother defiantly cried, only to wince as Dimitri used one of his long nails to slice her delicate skin, causing blood to flow out onto the altar, even as Ling-Ko cried out with a shocked, wide-eyed expression.

"What are you doing, Fool?" Jeddah demanded, "You will release her energy prematurely!"

"No, wait!" Pyron declared, "I sense...a surge of her energies...as if the act of clawing her somehow has brought her to an even higher pitch of arousal."

"You are quite correct on that account, my Ally," Dimitri smiled, "Pain and pleasure are closely related, and sometimes by triggering one you can raise the level of the other. It's much the same principle that DeSade employed to break the will of his victims and turn them into willing sexual slaves. I intend to work the same kind of magic here to break the will of this Queen, after which she will yield her power with a hardly a wimper. Now then...you may continue with your mummery, Lord Jeddah. I have merely worked to weaken her resistance while intensifying her energy levels. When the time is right you may give her the release that she is so desperately craving."

"Yes, you are right, I can feel her energies," Jeddah declared in amazement, "They are...intensifying? Yes...whatever it is you are doing to her, Dimitri, continue doing it and we will have all the energy we need to complete the spell of entrapment."

Ling-Ko threw back her head and cried out in helpless dismay, reckoning death to be preferable than to be suffering these agonies and wondering if any kind of release would be in the offing before she exploded from pent up frustration.

Little was she aware but at that moment the cavalry was on the move, and coming to her rescue from some surprisingly different directions.

"Tell us about this Jeddah character you keep mentioning," Nabiki urged Frank as she and Keiko rode in the side-car of the Monster, holding on as the man-brute had his engine floored and was breaking every traffic rule in the book in order to get to the appointed destination in time to make a difference.

Jeddah's a creep who thinks he's God reborn as a risen Jesus Christ," Frank explained, "Or, at least he was when I first fought against him almost a hundred years ago. He started out as a circus tent-show revivalist, had a number of psychic tricks he could perform to dupe an ignorant public...minor healing spells, clairvoyance, telepathy, stuff like that. On the truth about him is that he's an Incubus, born to a male version of the Succubus line who made it with a human woman, so he's part Incubus himself, which is where he got his original strain of power."

"But I thought Incubi were sexual demons," Keiko related, "They need sex to live the way vampires need blood, right?"

"That was true of his old man, but Jeddah's a hybrid," Frank explained, "And his mother had some pretty interesting latent abilities that she was never taught how to use, so he's got talents from both sides of his genetic make-up, and the Incubus half makes him susceptible to emotions like an empath...only in really twisted kind of way since he fell victim to a nut-case religious fanatic when he was just a small kid, a real fire-and-brimstone Bible thumper, who taught the kid to believe that there are only two powers in this world, Heaven and Hell, and guess for which side Jeddah likes to believe he's an agent?"

"So he thinks he's an agent of god?" Nabiki asked.

"Worse, he thinks he is God incarnated as a reborn Jesus," Frank corrected, "Understand, his mom died when he was little, leaving him totally at the mercy of his adopted father's indoctrination. At first the guy was convinced it was Satan who was his father, but after years of cleansing his soul and attempting to be a good little Christian the 'Miracles,' as he termed them, started to manifest. Delusional his old man might be, but crazy enough to pass up on a great deal like a kid who could work actual healings? No way! So before too long he's working the carnival route as a miracle performer and saving souls by preaching the gospel. That's where the seed first germinated on the idea that he's come back to bring about the destruction of the world through Armageddon."

"And how did he plan to do that?" Keiko wondered.

"I'm coming to that part, Kid," Frank said grimly, "Comes from the nature of his abilities, and how addictive it was for him to prove to himself that he wasn't a hellspawn, that he really was on the side of the angels...and that's where the trouble really got started."

"How do you mean?" Nabiki asked.

"I mean the constant use of his abilities required a power source that was stronger than what his body could naturally product on a regular basis," Frank explained, "All those healings and other special talents...and where do you think the energy came from?"

"From the people who attended his rallies?" Keiko answered.

"Bingo," Frank grimly nodded, "When he was a very young man Jeddah discovered that he could channel the emotional energies of others and harness it to become a force by which he could control the minds and will of others. The downside was that he had a need for an audience, like an addiction, having people look up to him and expend their energies in prayerful worship that he could absorb and expend at his leisure. Wasn't too long after that little wake-up call that he started to allow people to call him a Prophet, then an Angel sent from heaven, then God incarnate. He then learned that he could take these energies stolen off of people who worshipped god in his name and use it to bolster his own power levels to really impressive degrees, and as he got stronger his following increased to an equal proportion. He gradually built up enough of a power base that he was able to make his presence felt on local and national politics, even as he learned to work larger and more impressive miracles to keep his audience happy. It all came to a head one day when he got hold of a stolen ancient artifact that he believed was linked to the Biblical prophesies of Babylon, specifically Sodom and Gomorrah...the real ones, not the later story you read about in the Bible."

"You mean he was after the power to destroy entire cities?" Nabiki gasped.

"Not just cities," Frank explained, "The entire world was his original target, but we Darkstalkers beat him before he could carry his horrible plans to fruition. You see...it involved this tablet and a scarab that were used to create a Null Sphere of incredible power, and with it he opened up a number of portals leading to the various Hell dimensions, and if the things that lived on the other side had managed to cross over onto this world..."

"Yeah, that might not be too much fun to live through," Keiko remarked, "So, how did you guys wind up beating him last time?"

"Well, the Null Sphere attracted the attention of a number of Darkstalkers and we all kind of converged in a transitory middle way-station of a realm, a sort of parallel gateway where we duked it out under the mistaken impression that one of us was to blame for causing it. Eventually the strongest among us figured it out and went up against Jeddah, and it took a literal miracle that time for us to beat him, let me tell you! At the time we thought he'd been croaked, and after we sealed off the gates and went our separate ways we all just kind of tried to forget all about it, up until about three or four years ago, when Dimitri tried to raise the power anew in an attempt to get enough power to take on the Demon World of Makai. Naturally we beat him up a bit but he escaped to plot new mischief with his allies, whom we nicknamed the Dark Pack. Dimitri's goal has always been to conquer both the Human and Demon worlds and bend them to his well, and it looks like his latest plan somehow involves a reborn Jeddah, though how Pyron figures into this is another matter altogether.

"Something bothers me about this, Big Guy," Keiko noted, "If this Jeddah creep is such a religious fanatic, than how can he stand to be working alongside Dimitri?"

"I can answer that," a voice said from close nearby, causing Keiko and Nabiki to glance up in order to see a winged Morgan pacing their motorcycle, "Jeddah's been changed since you last faced him, Doctor...he's a different man entirely, but he still believes he has a heavenly mission to perform by ending the world as you humans know it."

"I was afraid of something like that," Frank said grimly, "Let me guess...Jeddah didn't really die when we sealed him up, he somehow survived in one of the demon realms, and now about eighty or ninety years later he's back for more, only his fanaticism's been tempered from living on one of the various demon planes."

"Your instincts and deduction are as sharp as always," Morgan acknowledged, "Jeddah has indeed been changed, but he is still a religious fanatic. He's a lot grimmer and more ruthless than before, and during the past three years he's had time to quietly build back his old power base by selecting a core group of followers and training them to be elite soldiers in the army of his god, and they are none to nice about carrying out the will of their master."

"Guess that explains the hi-tech Mercenaries who keep popping up shooting up the place," Nabiki murmured, "And why they're working alongside souped up version of Zombies and renegade vampires."

"The Goya serve Dimitri as loyal foot-soldiers because they are beast-like and enjoy killing and violence," Morgan answered, "The Zebumbre are cybernetic killing organisms created using a blending of science and magic to make them stronger and harder to kill than regular zombies. Raptor animated the corpses of the recently dead with the help of Jumanji, and the rest was merely a matter of convincing the right people who dwell on Frankenstein-like black-book government and corporate projects...no offense implied, of course."

"None taken," Frank scowled, "If there's one thing I really hate it's soulless bastards who think they've got a right to play god with the lives of ordinary people, and scientists who think it's fun to poke and prod bodies to get them to move in ways nature never intended. People like that got no business even calling themselves human, especially the ruthless gray-suited executive types who give funding to these black-ops programs..."

"The ones who think nothing of ordering the deaths of innocent thousands to create an elite breed of killers who do their bidding," Morgan acknowledged, "Yet who lack the spine to do their own killing. I would agree with you, such people are not very examples of what it means to be human."

"And what about you, Lady?" Nabiki called out, "You side with Dimitri when he cooks up a scheme like this, only now you double-cross him because you don't like the way he uses my husband's Senken?"

"I have no need to justify myself to children," Morgan remarked, "I do what I must in order to regain my right place in Makai. My father used and discarded me as his tool when it amused him, and ever since I have dreamed of nothing less than paying him back for his betrayal. At first Dimitri was a mere diversion, a useful ally who shared much the same vision, but in time I came to understand that there is a strength within him that the demon world needs, leadership that is sorely lacking..."

"You actually think that guy would make a better ruler than your dad?" Keiko wondered.

"You do not know my bather," Morgan's expression grew grim, "Lord Beliol would make your mortal tyrants such as Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot pale by contrast. He rules by terror and cunning, playing the great houses against one another, preventing any one of them from posing a serious challenge to his rule, and he delights in toying with the lives of those who amuse him. He would think nothing of slaughtering whole legions if he thought it would amass even greater power to further his dark ambitions."

"So why hasn't he tried to take over here?" Nabiki wondered.

"The doorway between Makai and this world is not easily crossed and has many snares for the unwary," Morgan answered, "To unleash a force suitably strong enough to defeat the armies of your earth wold take a great deal more energy than he might consider worth his while. And besides...my father is a very old demon, and he tends to be rather conservative in his ways. He prefers to play the game of balancing his agents against those of his rival demon lords in the various other dark dimensions."

"Sounds familiar," Frank scowled, "He and Ashteroth oughta compare notes sometime...no, scratch that! That's one dark alliance I hope gets considered."

"I've got just one question for you, Anslat-san," Keiko glanced back up at the winged succubus, "Do you actually love Dimitri, or is this just a partnership of convenience?"

Morgan reacted with a start, "How dare you ask such a thing of me! Do you wish to risk another draining?"

"Do I take that for a yes?" Keiko confidently smiled back.

Morgan fell silent and scowled straight ahead without offering an answer.

Nabiki glanced at her friend, at the succubus, then at Frank and asked, "And what about this third player...Lord Pyron?"

"He's bad news all the way," Frank replied, "An energy being who looks like a literal devil, only he came from other space in the form of a comet about two centuries ago. He brought a plague to the countryside of feudal China, which is how the Ko sisters got after his case. He's been reported killed almost as many times as Dimitri, and I wouldn't recommend facing him as his lightest touch can burn you."

"Oh, that's right," Morgan said with a nasty lilt to her voice, "You have a thing about fire, about the only medium that could possibly destroy you."

"It ain't that," Frank said grimly, "I can handle a few flames. It's just...long time ago...I kind of learned this dangerous technique from my personal trainer and...well, you know how you got a thing about cats, Kid? Well, with me...fire's a bit of a problem..."

"I see," Nabiki said, thinking that one over.

"Boss, we're almost at the cemetery!" Shelley alerted them, "I've got readings out the wazzo! There's undead creeps all over the place, and I'm picking up some low-level static that might mean radio communication."

"Got it," Frank replied before speaking into his throat-mike, "Look alive, people...showtime's about to begin!"

Almost reflexively Nabiki turned a glance to catch the sight of many forms floating in the air not too very far overhead, the rest of their Posse and the Nightbreed being prominent among them, and leading the pack was the winged, softly radiant form of her sister, Kasumi, who seemed more angelic ever time Nabiki saw her oneechan drifting across the moonlit sky with a silvery halo...

Little did she know (though if she had listened to her emotions she would have felt it through their psychic connection) but Kasumi was glancing back down her way even as this happened, feeling a certain thrill about going to the rescue of her little brother at Nabiki's side, no longer a burden or a useless appendage to a fight but an actual player in the Posse, and that gave her a tingle of excitement that canceled out any nervousness that she might otherwise be feeling.

Close nearby the rest of her family and friends were still getting used to the idea that they were floating in air without any visible means of support, held aloft by the power of Kasumi as she telekinetically transported these fighters from her home to the place of battle, and with such ease that she might as well have been handling a sack of groceries. The ease with which she sustained their airborne status gave pause to even those few who did not find this matter entirely too disturbing, but none could dispute the benevolent nature of her new abilities. They felt "right" in some indefinable way, as though the source could only be a positive one and in no way negative in nature.

Natsume, Kurumi, Tatewaki, Mousse, Nodoka, Happosai, Soun and Genma were all doing their level best to cope with being several hundred meters in the air and drifting as leisurely as sakura blossoms on a warm summer breeze. Natsumi and Miyuki were doing their best not to lose their lunch while Himiko, Nagi, Miyu and Yui seemed to be taking it all in stride, while Julian cling to the arms of Yamina and Leguire flew on his own vampiric power, and the mysterious D kept pace with Talbain by leaping from roof to roof much nearer to ground level.

"Our new Queen is tres formidable, eh?" Leguire asked of Yamina as they drifted side-by-side together.

"Her power is unimaginable in one who has so recently been converted," Yasmina agreed, "Even Ling-Ko could not manifest such a powerful curtain of force to carry this many into battle."

"It's not really so surprising if you think about it," Julian remarked, "After all, Tendo Kasumi is not merely a Queen now...she is a virtual vampire Goddess."

"A goddess?" Leguire replied, glancing at the winged Kasumi, "Aye...that does appear to describe her most recent transformation, doesn't it? But will even a goddess be of use to us when we face the combined might of Dimitri and his allies?"

"That is the question, isn't it?" Julian said as he scanned the city below them, then pointed abruptly, "Over there! Lady Tendo! I believe that I see where we need to go!"

"Oh my," Kasumi said as she followed the man's gesture, "I think I see what you mean, that bonfire burning over on the hill overlooking where mother is buried?"

"That isn't a bonfire, Lady Kasumi," Larva said from where he, too, was floating under his own auspices, "That is Lord Pyron, our enemy...and even more dangerous than Dimitri."

"That's one of the guys we've got to fight?" Kurumi said with obvious reluctance.

"He is a literal devil, is he not?" Tatewaki said grimly, "But we will send him back to hell and all those who side with him against the good people of Nerima."

"Yes, we will," Natsume avowed, gripping the naginata pole arm that she had borrowed from the dojo for this purpose.

"Just make sure you two don't get in my way when I go to rescue the cutie," Happosai called in warning to his two star pupils.

"Oh, we would not dream of it, Master," Soun assured him.

"Thought never crossed our minds," Genma seconded with equal fervor.

"Perhaps you two should have remained in hiding back under the floorboards of your house," Leguire called up to the two floating fathers, "At least your woman showed courage and ability in that fight, which is more than I could say for the both of you."

Soun frowned, taking umbrage at that comment, "There is a great deal of difference between taking evasive action and fleeing in cowardice."

"They had guns and we didn't," Genma insisted, "But this time we're better prepared, and you'll see for yourself how martial artists handle people who attack our home and loved ones."

"Heads up everyone!" Nagi called out, "We are coming in for a landing!"

"Look!" Miyu called out, "I can see Ling-Ko!"

"So do I," Himiko remarked, "Only...what are they doing to the Blood Mother? It looks as if she's suffering from some kind of torture."

"Yeah," Kurumi said, "Bad direction...the place looks like some kind of a monster movie set, complete with glowing pentagram and the complimentary sacrificial altar..."

"The fiends!" Tatewaki declared, "To chain a woman nude like that and to inflict upon her such base degradations?"

"Just try not to drool on anyone when you say that, Dear," Natsume said in arched warning.

Kasumi guided her group to a relatively clear area and was about to set everyone down when all at once the night sky erupted with fire from the ground, bullets hailing up at them from dark forms who appeared from places of concealment. At the same time another figure broke cover with an oblong object lifted to its shoulder, and all at once the tube spat fire and out from the front end shot a very large bolt that traveled across the yard towards the street and down the lane, homing in on a particular target.

"Nabiki!" Kasumi cried as she saw the shoulder-fired rocket heading unerringly towards the speeding motorcycle commanded by Frank and at such a speed that it made avoidance all but impossible.

But that was not reckoning upon the lightning-quick resourcefulness of the man-  
monster who was a legend in his own time, and Frank saw the puff of smoke long before the rocket sped towards his position and cried, "Shelley!"

"On it!" Shelley barked as mini-rockets spat out of her front end and collided with the oncoming rocket, the combined force being enough to be lethal by itself but for the sudden explosion of jet energy that propelled the bike up into the air and over the explosion, leaving Keiko and Nabiki to cling to the rails as the shockwave kicked them skyward.

Talbain and D saw this and paused in their own forward momentum, then the werewolf growled out, "It's an ambush! They got snipers everywhere!"

D's hand moved faster than the eye could perceive and snagged a crossbow bolt that had been aimed for his head. In driest tones as he snapped the thing in two he murmured, "So I have noticed..."

"Oh my," Kasumi saw the airborne trio sailing high over the railing surrounding the cemetery, then watched as the motorcycle touched down and just barely avoided collision with a cement block marker. Frank brought it in with a squealing of tires then came to a halt even as more figures popped up from concealment and started firing on them, using automatic weapons and even shot-  
guns to rain fire on his position.

"Take cover!" Frank snapped, only to find that his charges had already bailed on him and were in motion before he could track them, "Oh hell!"

"Nabiki!" Kasumi called out, even as more bullets whizzed past her and the others, but then Kasumi turned a hard look towards the shooters and all at once the bullets began to bounce off an invisible shielding that extended to cover the rest of her party.

Yasmina and Leguire-still airborne, decided to take advantage of this fact and swooped down on the nearest of these gunmen and immediately went to work silencing their rifles.

Once their own feet had touched the ground Miyu and her companions went to work, going from passive defense to offence, Larva being the quickest to take advantage of his peculiar nature, swarming over several gunmen and rendering them incapacitated, even as Miyu and Nagi followed suit with their own means, and Yui hung back to cover them while Himiko laid down cover fire with a pair of handguns that she produced from within her jacket.

"Stay here, Lady, and let us defend your honor," Julian urged Kasumi before drawing his butterfly blades and heading off into battle.

"But..." Kasumi started to say when the rest of her family and friends broke free from the protective cover of her bubble to launch their own attacks in their own distinctive fashions, to which she could only say, "Oh my..."

Natsume was first to throw herself into the fray, whirling her naginata like a helicopter blade and lashing out at gunmen left and right with Tatewaki following close upon her heels laying about with his bokken and cleaning up what she left standing.

Kurumi took off like a shot and her speed was literally blinding, leaving Mousse to cover for her with his arsenal of thrown weapons to cover her flanks, not that the enemy had any chance of nailing her since she moved like a mongoose and was little more than a blur even in the eyes of her nominal "Airen."

Natsumi and Miyuki, on the other hand, took immediate cover and fired from the partial concealment of any obstacle that was at hand, picking targets carefully and making each shot count against the bad guys.

"Cover me boys, I'm going for the Nookie!" Happosai declared as he took off in a bound, skirting the major action and heading for the altar that they could see off in the distance.

"But Master!" Genma cried, only to flinch as a bullet passed a little too near him for his comfort.

"Saotome, we can't stay here, we're too exposed to their fire," Soun declared as both men took shelter behind a mausoleum.

"I know, Tendo-kun, but what can we do about it?" Genma asked.

"I have an idea," Soun declared and straightened up, leaving himself exposed to the greatly diminished fire of the enemy.

"Father..." Kasumi started to say when she saw her father square his shoulders, summon up his Ki, then all at once Soun appeared to expand his battle aura enormously, and all at once the face of his "Demon" aspect appeared overhead, causing many of the gunmen to falter and hesitate in their fire, momentarily distracted by the "Demon."

"Tendo!" Genma cried, and all at once he vanished from his place of concealment, moving so fast that he himself was a mere blur and all at once those gunmen had something else to worry about besides a figurative demon...

Not far away Nodoka paused in the act of slicing through the kevlar armor of one opponent to smile in the direction of her husband, and then in a soft undertone she said, "I knew they had it in them, all they needed was a little spark to their pride..." and then she left the thought unfinished as she stabbed with her sword through the face mask of yet another assailant.

Meanwhile, back at the altar, Dimitri paused in the act of completing yet another act of stimulation to Ling-Ko to turn an annoyed glance in the direction of the weapons fire, and then he growled, "What now? Yet another interruption?"

"Who are these interlopers?" Pyron asked, "Is someone else coming to the party?"

"Whoever they are, my Apostles will deal with them," Jeddah declared, "Humans or Darkstalkers, nothing may be allowed to disturb the ceremony at this all-  
important critical juncture."

"I quite agree," Dimitri smiled, staring down at the helpless Ling-Ko, "Now my dear, where did we leave off...?"

"Don't you think that you've done enough with her for now?" Pyron asked.

"Hardly," Dimitri exposed his fangs, "I have only just begun to work my will upon this strumpet."

"Stop it, Dimitri," Jeddah snapped, "You're behaving like an adolescent. The spell is near completed, and soon we will not need this Jezebel to complete the final phase of the ritual."

"It will be ended when I say that it is ended," Dimitri snapped, "And I say that she has not yet experienced the full measure of my..."

"That is quite enough," Pyron scowled, "It is apparent that you are suffering from some malady that is causing you to lose your self-control. The Dimitri Maximoff I know would never allow himself to be distracted from the main purpose by his lust for a mere woman."

"Mere woman?" Dimitri's eyes blazed, but then he paused and thought about it, "Self control? Adolescent? I wonder if...can it be? Did I take more than just the knowledge of the Senkens from that boy? But...how can this be? I have never before..."

"Before what?" a wizened old voice inquired, "Before Moses wore his first pair of sandals?"

"Eh?" Pyron and Jeddah said together, discovering that there was a diminutive old man standing astride the writhing Ling-Ko and glaring at them like an angry gnome of vengeance.

"Shame on you boys," Happosai declared, "Making a pretty girl suffer like this when any true gentleman knows that she has to be allowed to know fulfillment, which is as simple as applying pressure to the following nerve zones."

Before anyone could stop him Happosai moved to touch Ling-Ko's body in a number of key areas, and all at once the Vampire Queen arched her back and cried out in a gasp that caused her whole body to tense up as a wave of energy poured out of her and shook the entire night as she screamed with long pent-up emotion. So great was the energy that she radiated that her metal bonds were snapped like brittle ice, the titanium steel shattering as Ling-Ko sat up and shook with unholy emotion.

"What have you done?" Dimitri cried, "How could you interfere like that? You will pay for your effrontery, old goat!"

"Aw, yer mother sucks turnips!" Happosai shot back, turning to the side and adding, "How you coming along there, Toots?"

Ling-Ko was on the ground rolling with wave after wave of residual lust, fingering herself furiously while glaring up a storm in Dimitri's direction.

"YOU-WILLL-PAAAAYYY!" she snarled with undisguised attention.

"Don't just stand there, fools!" Jeddah called to his own minions, "Capture her! There ceremony is not yet completed!"

"I will tend to that little detail," Pyron said, giving Happosai a contemptful snort, only to find the little man moved to block his way, heedless of the threat posed by the flaming giant, "You seek to die, little man?"

"From what?" Happosai snorted, "Your breath? Just try and get past me!"

"All right!" Dimitri snarled, "I will!" only when he lunged for Happosai the diminutive master somehow contrived to get himself directly behind the renegade vampire lord, and all at once Dimitri found himself propelled forward face-first into the altar, a feeling that seemed strangely familiar for some odd reason...

"What do we do now?" Darkwulf asked as he exchanged looks with Anakaris.

The Mummy shrugged, "What do you think we do? We help Lord Dimitri..."

"These churls are weak and useless minions!" Tatewaki declared as the last of the armed men went down before his furious onslaught, "If there master is any reflection of their poor battle prowess..."

All at once a shot rang out and the young Kuno heir stiffened. Natsume turned to see what was happening and saw her fiancé begin to topple over, at which point she forgot all about the fight and rushed to his side, seeing a spread of redness color his gi as she cried, "Tachi-sama? TACHI-SAMA!"

"Fool that he was to bring a wooden sword to a gun battle," a dark skinned man in the ceremonial dress of a Voodoo shaman declared, "And for the information of the rest of you, human minions are by no means the full extent of our resources."

"Ah...Oneechan?" Kurumi nervously called out as she saw another line of figures enter the battle, these moving with a stiffer gait yet somehow causing the hairs at the nape of her hairline to stand on end, even as Mousse moved to protectively flank her.

"HKs!" Julian declared, "They're sending in their cyborg killers!"

"Bring them on!" Nagi declared, brandishing his sword, "We'll see how tough their science is when compared to our supernatural might."

"Ah...but just in case," Yui said, "Perhaps we ought to proceed with a bit more caution," she said as she glanced at the fallen Tatewaki and judged their weaponry to be more than adequate to pose a mortal danger...

Meanwhile Frank was busy taking care of business of his own, enduring withering fire directed towards him as though he were immune to the pain caused by the bullets, which struck him in a number of places yet failed to knock him down as he advanced upon three gunmen and promptly brought his hands together like a pair of fly-swatters.

"Wow!" Keiko remarked as she got through dealing punishment to a number of men who had gotten too near to her for their own safety, "Are you bulletproof as well as strong?"

"Hardly," Frank tapped his chest, "Kevlar vest under the leather, never leave home without it."

"Swell," Keiko paused to look beyond him then said, "Um...just for the record...will kevlar work against those guys?"

"Huh?" Frank said, only to turn in time to see a number of red-eyed figures advancing upon them, "Oh...wondered when you guys would get into the action. Better take cover, Red, 'cause you ain't grounded."

"What?" Keiko asked, only to blink as she figured out his meaning, "Oh!" and she promptly dove for the protection of a nearby headstone.

"Okay, boys," Frank declared to the advancing Goya, "You want a piece of me? Get in line...but here's a little taste of why it ain't smart for you guys to tackle with the Monster!"

He balled his fists and suddenly started to crackle and glow, then blue-white sparks shot out from his battle aura to strike the nearest of the Goya, and almost at once those figures shriveled up and crumbled into dust, causing the others nearest to them to stare in dismay at their vanished comrades.

Frank did not give them the chance to regret their error as he formed a ball of lightning energy between his hands, then sent it flowing out from his body, creating a cascading field that leaped from Goya to Goya causing bodies to crumble and blow away until no enemies remained within a five meter radius of his indomitable presence.

"Well?" Frank asked of the remaining Goya who had been outside of the radius of his attack, "Any more takers want to share the electric bill? Didn't think so," he added as he saw the Goya back away and then start running.

"Wow," Keiko said as she straightened up from her place of concealment, "Is that the same attack you used to defeat the Mistress?"

"Naw," Frank replied, "Used a different sort on Lao, and much lower voltage. Can't do that too often, though, or the batteries start to wear out."

"Well, color me impressed," Keiko said before adding, "What did you think, Nab-  
chan? Nab-chan?"

Frank turned his head and said, "Oh hell..."

Pyron was blasting away at Happosai with flaming attacks that seemed to just barely miss the annoying old man who somehow seemed to anticipate his attacks before they were fully executed. Jeddah was looking quite perturbed and alarmed while Darkwulf and Anakaris hovered back and tried to avoid being casualties of the collateral damage.

Dimitri, meanwhile, picked himself back up from the ground and snarled, "That...hurt...and now I will see to it that you suffer..."

"You want another turn at the Master, you're gonna have to get in line."

"Eh?" Dimitri saw a pair of legs projecting from a tight set of trousers and followed them up to a willowy body with a nicely curving figure...and from there a disturbingly familiar face regarding him with cold, intense fury.

"Hi there," Nabiki said, "Remember me?" and all at once her fist filled the vampire lord's field of vision, and a moment later there were stars and pinwheels going off inside his head and he was moving at a horizontal angle with great speed in the reverse, and a moment later he collided with a tombstone and went plowing straight through it, not even feeling immediate pain as it took several long moments for the numbness to fade, at which point he knew that he was in for a battle...

Continued.

Comments/Criticisms/Cemetery Rumbles: shadowmane

The battle lines are drawn as it's Darkstalker versus Darkstalker and Posse against the minions of Lord Jeddah, but can the heroes take the field or will the bad guys have a few cards left up their own sleeves, and what of Ranma and his companions? Find out next time in: "Samurai Next," or, "Things To Do When You're Dead in Nerima!" Be there!

X -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

If you wish to check out my other works, Please check out my Fanfiction webpage at: or it's Mirror page at ~ All related chapters of this series can be found there along with my other works.  
/pre 


	50. Chapter 50

preDnabiki126

Nabiki 1/2

"A Very Scary Thought!"

by Jim Robert Bader

(Inspired by the works of Rumiko Takahashi Others,  
with a special appearance by some of my own creations and those of Joss Whedon. The Character of Frank is my own interpretation of the Monster of Marry Shelly's novel and is thus a free agent, so talk with him if you want to have him costar in some other series.)

[Special thanks to Bill Guiroff and Shiva for helping the initial proofreading phase of this fanfic series, and for encouraging me to continue the saga of Nabiki 1/2.  
And added thanks to Andrew Greaves for further Darkstalker information...]

Part One-Hundred-Twenty-Six.

(Set during and slightly after the time of the events recorded in the side-story titled "Honeymoon Hentai")

[No Actual Vampires or other Immortal creatures were harmed in the making of this fanfic...]

"Oh my, Kuno-chan?" Kasumi said as she drifted over to where Natsume sat huddled over her stricken fiancé, "Neechan? Is he...?"

"Yes," the word was forced between lips that refused to utter the sound as tears fell from the novice Slayer's eyes as she clung to her man feeling her world beginning to crumble all around her.

At the moment it practically was as they coming under withering fire from the Zvumbre cyborgs under the command of the Hougan Priest, Jumanji, who was urging his minions to crush the interlopers who dared to intrude upon the sacred ceremony of his allies, who even then were confronting challenges of their own in the form of enraged Tendo Posse members and Darkstalkers.

"Get up!" Nabiki was snarling, "You started all of this, now it's your turn to may, Dimitri!"

"I see," Dimitri said as he rose to his full height, "In other words it is you who are seeking blood here. But you presume too much if you think this minor interruption will prevent my rise to power, Tendo-san."

"Power?" Nabiki's eyes seemed to blaze from within with a yellow light, "You want power? Then let me give you a taste of my power!"

And with that she brought her hands together and energy coalesced between her hands, forming into a compact ball that she then proceeded to unleash upon the vampire, power that shot from her like a cannonball and would have flattened a truck, but which Dimitri caught with his own two hands, absorbing the energy even as it drove him relentlessly backwards, his heels digging up a huge rut that displaced stone altars and tombstones in his passage...

Meanwhile Frank was presently engaging the werewolf named Darkwulf in hand-to-  
hand battle, trading blows on an order of thirty times-plus the strength of a normal pair of fighters, even while Keiko was busy fending off the attacks by Anakaris, who attempted to wrap her in bandages while she avoided his attacks and came back at him like a whirling dervish.

At that moment four girls who had been formerly engaged in helpless moaning and groaning rose up, the effect of the Kamasenken upon their collective nervous systems having finally worn off, and the one named Lilith gasped, "Hey, there's a fight going on...and we're missing it?"

"No...way!" BB Hood declared as she cocked one of her shotguns and prepared to enter the fray, as did Queen-Bee and Atros...

"This is nuts!" declared Natsumi to her partner as they changed clips for the third straight time during the battle, "At this rate we'll run out of ammo long before we run out of bad guys to shoot!"

"At least our bullets are proving effective in wounding and evil killing some of the vampires," Miyuki noted, "But those HK cyborgs are another matter entirely. Too much armor, and they're already dead to begin with."

"Oh swell," Natsumi grunted as she took careful aim at yet another target, "Then how do we make them even deader...?"

At the moment Julian Fries was answering that question in a rather decisive way, his butterfly swords making short work of a Zvumbre that he had methodically chopped to pieces by targeting its joints and weaker places. The effort was, however, time consuming, and it left him exposed so that another HK killing unit was able to get in an effective shot that took him in the back and knocked him momentarily sprawling.

"Julian-san?" Nodoka asked as she paused in the middle or reducing another HK unit to so much scrap and used body parts.

"Ugh...I'm all right," the man pushed himself back up to his feet, wincing slightly, "Clean shot, missed the ribs. Takes a moment to heal as all, hardly terminal, which would be...inconvenient..."

The HK that had wounded him was moving in for a better shot, but it made the mistake of coming within sword reach, and Julian was quick to whirl around and slice through the arms holding its primary weapon. A moment later the sharp steel of his blades severed the metal-reinforced joints of its neck vertebrae and rendered it hors d'combat. Nodoka went back to work finishing off her own latest opponent, then turned in search of other prey and found herself coming face-to-face with Jumanji himself as the Hougan priest decided to take a more direct hand in the battle.

"You are skilled, Samurai," the man declared as he took a small doll-like object in his hands and held up a lock of hair with a smile, "But you failed to detect me when I removed this from you, and that will prove to be your undoing.

As he said this he attached the bit of hair to the doll, then took it between hands and began twisting it, causing Nodoka to spasm as some invisible force seemed to be applying crushing weight to her body. She fell to one knee holding her side and straining against the power of the evil Voodoo priest, who smiled and applied pressure to the doll's own neck, causing the Saotome Matriarch to stiffen...

"What is wrong here?" Pyron growled in frustration, "Why can I not strike this insignificant flee? He is nothing to me! I don't even sense a power level worthy of so much bother!"

Happosai stuck out his tongue and razzed the fiery giant, then he taunted, "What's the matter, can't even hit a harmless old man like me? You must be getting slow if you think an attack like that is gonna get my attention!"

"Annoying pest," Pyron growled, "This time I will not miss, even if I have to set fire to the entire..."

"Pryon!" Jeddah snapped, "This is wasting time that we do not have! The spell is not yet completed, but I can feel that it is still active!"

"What?" Pyron reacted, then with a start he said, "You are right...I feel it too! The energy current...they are shaping themselves in accordance to the pattern...but how?"

"Whatever Lord Dimitri did to the woman appears to have unleashed great energies equal to or superior to that force that would have been expunged upon her death," Jeddah realized, "That means that I have only to complete the last part of the spell and the gates will be open and the tribulation will at last be unleashed upon a corrupt and degenerate humanity!"

"Then what are we waiting for, Man?" Dimitri replied, "Let us take this to the next level and set the final spell in motion!"

"Oh no you don't!" Happosai declared as he suddenly realized the seriousness of what these two were contemplating, but as he prepared to launch himself at the dastardly duo he saw their outlines fold in on themselves, and then in a blink of an eye they vanished altogether.

"What?" the ancient perverted Master blinked, the belated realization came over him and he said, "Oh now...this isn't good..."

"Damnation!" Leguire was exclaiming as this happened, "What in Hell's name does it take to kill these creatures? Can they even die?"

"They are soulless animations kept in a quasi-state of unlife by artificial means," Yasmina deduced, "Therefore we must attack the artificial half that keeps their bodies in motion if we are to destroy them utterly."

"Well, why didn't you say so in the first place?" Nagi asked as he stopped seeking for vulnerable flesh to stab and instead turned his blade towards the mechanical joints and tubes that were projecting from the otherwise heavily armored creatures.

Miyu and Larva were faring much better against their prey, the Princess being too quick and powerful for the cyborgs to lock onto, and when she struck it was always in a vulnerable place, while her Shinma partner could appear and disappear at will, to overwhelm a cyborg and envelop it in his cloak of darkness. Yui followed up by making sure that the cyborgs Miyu took down remained permanently out of the battle, disconnecting loose wires and tubes and such while making prayerful gestures over their motionless bodies as though wishing the souls of the departed a safe journey to the next world.

Himiko had taken injury during the fight and had found shelter behind a tomb where she could heal back from her injury. She was therefore free to witness as Kasumi knelt down beside her sister and offered a comforting hand, though Natsume refused to be consoled for her loss.

"Neechan, do not despair," Kasumi urged, "It is not too late for Tatewaki-  
kun...I can feel his spirit still clinging to his body."

"Eh...what?" Natsume asked from beneath the tears that were obscuring her vision.

Kasumi smiled at her and touched her sister on the forehead, and at once Natsume relaxed and seemed to go a bit limp for several moments. Kasumi then turned her attention towards Tatewaki, staring at the wound in his body as though she could see right through his clothing, skin and muscles to the internal organs that had been severely damaged. The bullet had just barely missed the right ventrical but had collapsed the lung while nicking the main arterial vein. It was lodged near to his spine and might have caused him paralysis had he lived, but Kasumi saw how the metal stood out from flesh and reached into the body with her mind, extending a hand to extract the bullet and draw it out of his body, after which she sent a wave of soothing energy from her palm into the wound and caused the cells there to spontaneously regenerate, knitting themselves back together at a greatly accelerated growth rate.

Kuno's warrior soul, which had not yet given up on the fight, reacted to the strangely soothing balm that Kasumi provided by reactivating his shut-down nervous system, and then he gasped aloud, returning breath to a lung that had self-inflated, the internal leakage of blood being absorbed back into the body as though he had never been wounded, and as his heart started beating once again Natsume felt her own heart lurch in her breast, for a dead man had just come back to life in her arms, leaving her in a state of wonder and confusion.

Said confusion lasted only until the man himself breathed out the words, "Natsume...chan...?"

"Tachi-sama?" Natsume gasped, then all at once she hugged him tightly, "Tachi-  
sama! You're all right? But...how...?"

"Gently, my love!" Tatewaki urged with a slightly pained expression.

"Gently?" Natsume felt like laughing and crying at one and the same instant, "Is that all you have to say to me after this...miracle rebirth?"

"GENTLY!" Tatewaki squeaked in obvious distress.

"Oh my," Kasumi said, "I believe you are holding him a bit too tightly, Sister. I'm sure Tatewaki-kun appreciates your enthusiasm, but be mindful of the fact that he is still human and you are...well...a bit stronger than him at the moment..."

"Oh," Natsume belatedly realized how much stronger she had become at the moment and at once relaxed her grip over her future husband. The next instant, though, bullets kicked up the ground around them, causing her to snap, "What...now?"

"Oh my," Kasumi said as more bullets bounced off her hastily re-raised mental shielding as they looked up to see a looming form that bore a slight resemblance to a man but was much bigger and nastier looking than any of the other HK units, and it had a gattling gun attached to one arm, which same it was spraying indiscriminately in the direction of all the nearest combatants.

Nabiki was too busy pounding the daylights out of Dimitri to pay much heed to this, her fists charged with Ki energy and slamming into the larger man with the force and speed of a twin pair of steam-driven pistons. Dimitri fended off her attacks as he had the energy ball by calling upon his own inner darkness, but then he smiled as he saw and opening and struck back, aiming to attack Nabiki through her central nervous system, calling upon his stolen knowledge of the Kamasenken to cause the Tendo-Saotome heir to stiffen up and back away, her body wracked by familiar sensations of building, indescribable pleasure.

"You are quite formidable...for a mere human," Dimitri noted, "But such an irony that your own husband's special attack should prove your undoing...eh?"

He blinked in dismay as Nabiki-exerting a self-control that was nearly superhuman-managed to touch her own body in a number of places, and then she straightened out once again and smiled, then growled back, "My turn!" and went back on the offensive.

Dimitri was too surprised to get his defenses back up in order to meet this new onslaught, but for some strange reason none of Nabiki's blows seemed to hurt or even bother him very much. He straightened out as she backed away out of his reach and glared, "Was that supposed to mean something to...me...?"

All at once the vampire lord felt his own body begin to stiffen and tingle in places...then sudden he glanced down at his own crotch and felt something bulging down there, swelling to unbelievable proportions while rendering him paralyzed from the waist on down, the very act of movement causing the thing (that had seen so little use in recent years) to react in such a way that it made it quite difficult to remain in an upright posture. Like being hit by cramps, only worse-much, much worse-and all at once he started to look cross-eyed as the real force came down upon his nervous system, causing him to blanch in disbelief at the betrayal of his own very masculine body.

"Surprised?" Nabiki smiled back, "I've been working on developing my own Kamasenken. Congratulations, you're the first one I get to use it on, though I'd much rather it be that cocky stallion I call my husband..."

"You...WITCH!" Dimitri all but exploded, but rather than physically attack her it was a wave of dark energy that lanced out from his body to send Nabiki flying backwards. Her surprise was so great that she failed to brace herself and almost wound up being smashed against the altar, but something moved into her way to block her from disaster, and with a start Nabiki turned to look up into the face of the one whom she most wanted to see.

"Hi," Ranma said, "You having fun without me, Nab-chan?"

"Are you kidding?" Nabiki smiled as he helped her back to her feet, "Never."

"Guess you came to rescue me, huh?" Ranma nodded, "Well, consider me rescued. Now let's go stomp on fang-face together, shall we?"

"Oh yeah," Nabiki felt her spirits buoy up as she once again cracked her knuckles, "I've not even begun showing that twit what it means to mess with either a Saotome or a Tendo."

"Especially when it's both of us together," Ranma replied as they stood side-by-  
side ready to pound on the bad guy...

"Cousin Ling!" Tsien-Ko cried out as she and Mei-Ling found Ling-Ko huddled on the ground with hands moving over private areas of her body, "Are you all right? What has that bastard Dimitri done to you?"

"From the looks of things something far worse than he was doing to us," Mei-Ling noted, "Cousin...is there anything that we can do to help you?"

With great effort Ling-Ko managed to grate out, "H-Help me...to stand...please..."

"Sure thing, Coz!" Tsien-Ko said as she bent down to offer the Blood Mother her assistance, but to her surprise Ling-Ko seized hold of the blue skinned vampire and promptly bit her on the neck, causing Tsien-Ko to gasp and stiffen while Mei-Ling automatically made a warding sign and prepared to use an Ofudo strip that could control vampiric hunger.

But the drinking was brief, and when Ling-Ko pulled back from the stunned Tsien-  
Ko she had a glint of sanity in her eyes, and then she smiled as she said, "Thank you, Cousin...I need that badly..."

"Hah?" Tsien-Ko asked, reflexively putting a hand up to her neck.

Ling-Ko managed to get her feet back under herself, though she was rather unsteady, and with great effort she declared, "Dimitri is a dead man...for doing this to me, for subjecting you to his tortures...but most of all for depriving me of my dignity. He will pay for that, Cousins, this I swear you!"

Tsien-Ko glanced up at Mei-Ling, who looked back with mixed emotions, then the both of them shrugged, only to turn in surprise as someone handed the upper half of his gi to Ling-Ko.

"Madam," Soun Tendo remarked while trying not to look at her luscious body, "Forgive me that this isn't clean enough to be worthy of your donning, but it is the best that I have to offer."

Ling-Ko seemed genuinely touched as she accepted the gi, wrinkling her nose a bit at the sweaty smell of a man that it reeked of, then wrapping it around her upper body before smiling at the gallant human and saying, "I thank you...that is the most generosity that anyone has yet shown me tonight."

"So howzabout a kiss as payback for me helping you to get loose, Honeybunch?" Happosai popped up, much to Soun's considerable disconcertment.

"How about if I let you live," Ling-Ko retorted, then swept her glance over the cemetery battle field in order to assess the current situation.

Kurumi was just getting used to the idea of winning against the cyborg Zombies when a new player entered the field, firing wildly in her direction and forcing the speedster to dodge a rain of bullets that were more accurately aimed than the random shots fired by the remaining mercenaries and Zvumbre. Her attacker-  
-a heavily armed blonde nutcase-seemed to be taking a special interest in plugging the youngest of the Tendo siblings, and it all that Kurumi could do to keep one pace ahead of this golden haired Rambo clone as nine millimeters and buckshot kept scoring closer and closer to where Kurumi stood at a given moment.

"Stand still and let me plug you, you damned rodent!" BB Hood demanded as she tossed spent weapons aside and reached for the high explosives.

Not one to pass up an opportunity like that, Kurumi crossed the distance between them and landed a solid blow to the chin that knocked the blonde girl sprawling, but then she found something towards her and reflexively caught it, discovering too late that it was an active grenade with the pin pulled out. For one instant she stared death in the face...

And then Mousse arrived with a firebucket and casually plucked the grenade from his Airen's hands, then made the whole thing disappear into the folds of his sleeve while Kurumi stood there feeling her heart pounding in her mouth.

"Next time try throwing it away," the Chinese boy advised her, "As an elder of my tribe once told to me when I was just a small boy, once you pull the pin out of Mister Hand Grenade then he is no longer your friend."

Kurumi allowed annoyance to trump fear as she glared up at him, but then the sound of a double-click brought them both turning about to find BB Hood standing with a double-barreled Winchester aimed in their direction.

"Say cheese!" she smiled as she prepared to pull the trigger and "Swiss" them, but before she got the chance a hairy hand hit her from behind and knocked her to the ground out cold.

Talbain stared down at the blonde and said, "Who's afraid of the big bad wolf now, eh Red?"

Mousse was holding Kurumi, having reflexively attempted to protect her with his body, but now he managed to casually ask, "I take it you and the lady have history?"

"Kinda," Talbain shrugged, "It's...a pretty long story."

"What is she?" Kurumi asked, "The resident homicidal maniac of you Darkstalker guys?"

"Yeah," Talbain sighed, "She's got...issues...has to do with her late grandmother, who used to be wanted in about seven or eight states for robbery, arms smuggling, homicide, kidnapping, prostitution..."

"I get the picture," Kurumi said before turning in startled dismay, seeing the new Cyborg entering the field, at which point she grabbed Mousse and the both of them went diving for cover.

Talbain started when he saw who the giant mechanized terror was who was stalking onto the field and in dismay he said, "Gun-OW?!" he glanced down, seeing a big hole open up in his stomach...

Frank also turned away from battling Darkwulf to see who it was who was tearing up the field with heavy caliber weapons fire, and then his face took on a look of abject horror and he said, "Gunther? Is that...my nephew?"

For reasons of his own Darkwulf ceased brawling with Frank and instead turned a disguised look towards the hulking terminator, "Yeah...shame ain't it? Even I've gotta wince when I think what the boss did to him, all on account of a little misunderstanding..."

The lurching terror was almost as big as frank but had straw colored hair and an unusually gray complexion. Those parts of him not covered in armored plating look hard and heavy as he easily stood up to the shot squeezed off by Natsumi and Miyuki. The pair had to duck down with a sharp yelp as Gunther opened fire upon them, kicking up large chunks of plaster and marble as he scorched the field in search of new prey to eviscerate...

"Natsume-chan!" Kuno cried as his fiancée left his side in a hurry.

"Forgive me, my love," Natsume declared, "But I cannot sit idle while our friends are being cut down all around us!"

"Oh my," Kasumi said as she watched her adopted sister dart around the slow-  
moving cyborg, trying to get around behind him. Then she turned to Talbain, who was on all fours and holding onto his stomach and she called out, "Do you need help, Talbain-san?"

"Naw...I'll heal up...soon enough," Talbain winced, "Smarts a bit, though..."

"Bet it doesn't hurt as much as this!" Lilith cried as she leaped into the fray and struck Talbain a blow to the side of his head the knocked him sprawling, even as she turned and grinned at Kasumi with a haughty, "Your turn!"

"Oh my," Kasumi murmured, realizing that she was about to become yet another combatant...

"Ready to give up, Woman?" Jumanji asked of the stricken Nodoka, "Too bad if you are, because I have only just gotten started."

He twisted the doll's neck again, hard enough to be paralyzing but not hard enough to snap it, and Nodoka felt the pressure against her own neck as she struggled against the pain that this was causing her, leaning heavily upon her scabarded katana.

"I can keep this up all night if you like," Jumanji said as he stuck a needle into the doll, causing Nodoka to feel acute agony at where she felt as if she were being jammed, "Feel free to scream if you think that it will help you..."

Nodoka suddenly opened her eyes, and though it might have been a trick of the light, almost it seemed in Jumanji's eyes as if her hair turned briefly lavender, and all at once he felt his psychic link to her being broken.

"What?" he gasped as he stared in dismay at a the foot or two of steel that protruded from his abdomen. In shocked disbelief he saw Nodoka yank the bloodied thing out of his body, and then Jumanji stared down stupidly at the blood that he was suddenly gushing, feeling the strength begin to drain from his limbs as his knees began sagging and he fell to where his shinbones hit the ground while the rest of him behaved as though his body was shutting down as the creep of death rapidly overtook him.

"Don't feel too bad," Nodoka urged. "You were quite good, really, but you forgot one little detail...your powers work sympathetically, and they can be blocked out if you find a big enough distraction."

And thus she revealed that her left arm had been gashed by the edge of her own katana, helping her to concentrate by the use of the pain that had not been caused by Jumanji. He was only just beginning to comprehend this when Nodoka moved her sword again, and then his cares went to another place very far away as he fell to the ground quite lifeless.

"What you were doing to me I might have forgiven," Nodoka said coolly to her fallen adversary, "But for what you have done to the dead and their remains...that can never be forgiven."

"Whoah," Julian paused in the middle of his own fight to take note of the Houdan's major-league "shaving problem," then he said to Nodoka, "Lady, remind me to NEVER make you angry..."

Leguire and Yasmina mirrored the sentiments as-all of a sudden-several of the Zvumbres remaining ceased their forward advancement and fell silent, slumping over as though they were puppets who had just had their strings cut.

"Guess he was controlling them all along," Miyuki noted as she risked looking up from concealment.

"About time, too," Natsumi said as she popped one of her pistol magazines then counted three bullets left and swallowed, "At little too close for my comfort..."

Meanwhile Keiko was holding her own against Anakaris as the cloth wrapped Mummy grew increasingly frustrated with his inability to wrap his bandages around the agile kickboxer. A dozen times he almost managed to contain her only to see her move her body with impossible limberness and avoid entrapment all together.

"Stand still!" he declared, "You won't get away from me by doing that, little grasshopper!"

"Oh no?" Keiko mused, "Looks to me like I'm doing just fine, Mister."

"But you shall not prevail," Anakaris declared imperiously, "I have waited far too long for this day, and when Lord Dimitri ascends to glory I shall at last have the power to wreck my vengeance upon the false believers who plague the upper and lower Kingdoms that I have sworn to protect!"

"Huh?" Keiko blinked, only to react in dismay as grains of sand began to whirl about her, and as she threw up her arms to protect her eyes she felt as though the ground itself was swallowing her, then with a yelp of dismay she realized that she was sinking into the ground as if it had been converted to quicksand.

"You see?" Anakaris declared, "This may not be the native soil of my homeland, but it obeys my will and has captured you, Woman. So too will the sands of Egypt rise up to swallow the false believers of a pretender god and their Imams, leaving the sands pure and free of their blasphemous ranting!"

Keiko winced as she found herself trapped up to the level of her head in the now-compacted soil, which in turn began to squeeze against her body, crushing the breath out of her lungs and threatening to turn her into a human-shaped tube of toothpaste...

Lilith struck with a savagery that was as superhuman as her strength and demonic power, but to Kasumi it seemed almost as if the blue haired girl were slowing down to a crawl even as she studied her movements. It was almost ridiculously easy to move out of the way as her foe appeared to be moving through molasses, and then she emerged on the opposite side of the succubus, who stumbled in dismay upon failing to find her intended target.

"Please stop," Kasumi urged, "I don't like fighting, and I don't want to hurt you."

"Hurt me?" Lilith reared, "That's a laugh!" and now she executed a flying leap, summoning dark energies to surround her body as she turned herself into a living top, but once again Kasumi stepped to the side and avoided her as it seemed as though the blue haired girl was in very slow motion, striking the ground where Kasumi had been and plowing into it without coming close to harming her intended target.

"Oh my," Kasumi sighed, "I really don't like fighting..."

With a snarl Lilith came at her once again, but this time Kasumi allowed borrowed reflexes to come to the fore and she caught the other girl's arm and effortlessly twisted it, flipped the succubus over and slamming her down into the ground with force enough even to stun the demonic younger sister of Morgan.

"Please don't try that again," Kasumi urged, "I really don't want to hurt you."

Lilith snarled and came rocketing back up from the ground once again, but this time Kasumi moved her hand forward and struck the other girl with a palm to Lilith's breastbone, forcing the wind out of her lungs even as she expended energy and froze the demon girl's nervous system in place, thus rendering Lilith paralyzed so that she flopped to the ground like a fish out of water.

"I do wish you had tried being reasonable," Kasumi said sadly, "I don't enjoy seeing anyone suffer."

Unseen by the transformed eldest Tendo sister, however, Queen-Bee was gesturing with her arm and causing a swarm of her subjects to flow from her fingertips, forming a deadly cloud with which she intended to sting Kasumi to death, but before the killer bees made it halfway to their intended victim a cloaked figure thrust himself into the path, then removed a glove and held out an outstretched hand that caught the bees and sucked them in through the demonic mouth that was visible in the palm. Like that the killer swarm was gobbled, and then the mysterious D smiled at Queen Bee, who stared back with compound eyes all registering the disbelief of her expression.

"Sorry to cut in on this dance," D said, moving like a blur to bring the blade end of his hand hard against Queen-Bee's neck, felling her like a tree limb, "But I do so dislike it when people try sniping at you from behind your back. It's so very...unsporting..."

All at once the last remaining member of the B-Girls surfaced to make her presence known, unleashing a scream that caused even Kasumi to cover her ears and turn away in a pained effort to escape the deafening burst...

Meanwhile, far enough removed from these exchanges as to be able to carry on a level conversation, the mummy known as Anakaris was boasting to his latest helpless victim.

"The false god shall be replaced by the true gods as I awaken them from their millennia of slumber!" Anakaris triumphantly cried, "Let all unbelievers who dare to challenge me beware! The time that I have awaited for forty-seven centuries is finally at hand when I shall claim my rightful place as Egypt's protector...nay, it's Master!"

"So that's...why you'd doing this...for that Dimitri guy?" Keiko grunted as she struggled against containment, "So tell me...something...why's your name...sound so much like a girl's...?"

"What?" Anakaris blinked.

"I said...your name...sound's like it belongs...to a girl..." Keiko faintly panted.

"You...you dare to mock me...even as I crush the life out of your body?" Anakaris shook with rage and fury.

"Hey, y'know something?" Darkwulf turned to Frank, "She's right...it does sound kind of like a girl's name."

"Yeah, now that you mention it..." Frank rumbled in reply.

Anakaris turned to his colleague and said, "You too, Darkwulf?"

"Well, hey man..." Darkwulf shrugged as if to signify the plainness of his own statement.

Keiko felt the slight distraction in the Mummy's field of concentration and murmured the soft word, "Sucker..." and then she drew in the Ki-force of the energy currents that were holding her pinned and used them to fortify herself as she built up a massive charge of raw life energy into her body, and then all at once released it, shattering his hold altogether.

Anakaris gave a muffled grunt and turned in dismay as the redhead burst forth from her containment, prompting him to declare, "Impossible! How could you do that? You were beaten!"

"Yeah, well...I give you an A for effort," Keiko shrugged while stretching herself to restore full circulation, "But you ought to make sure that your opponent is down for the count before you brag about your fiendish plans and all that. Didn't they teach you that in villain school?"

Anakaris glared, "Clearly there is more to you than meets Ra's Eye, yet in the name of Seth and Anubas, I will not be thwarted! Prepare to meet Osiris in oblivion!" and all at once he called up another sandstorm, preparing to unleash it upon the pigtailed Kickboxer.

But Keiko Arigami merely squared her legs and smiled to herself, then summoned up her powers once again, this time channeling them into the center of her being and holding them in preparation as the winds began to kick up and the sands began swirling all around her.

"Let the sands pick clean your bones!" Anakaris cried as he unleashed his sandstorm on a motionless Arigami, but to his amazement Keiko stood her ground and seemed untouched by the malestrom, and then all at once she began to chant as bursts of Ki force began to spark and flare from all around her.

In a voice that somehow carried over the din of the sandstorm she cried, "I AM INVINCIBLE! I AM ARIGAMI KEIKO, MASTER OF MY OWN FATE! NO MAN CAN MATCH MY POWER, FOR I AM SUPREME UNTO MYSELF! LET THOSE WHO STAND BEFORE ME FEEL MY WRATH-KI STORM-UNLEASHED!"

Like that the power of the sandstorm was broken, the winds shredding apart as though the forces controlling them had been cut off at their flow. Anakaris stared in dismay as a wave of raw Ki energy lanced towards him, and then all at once he was struck by a force that felt like a raw tidal wave of pure life essence, and it disrupted the negative forces that gave mobility and pseudo-life to his ancient, withered limbs, and all at once he was blown away like a candle snuffed out by the winds of ill fortune.

So great was the surge of energy thus exchanged that it briefly broke up the fight between Dimitri and the double-team of Ranma and Nabiki. All three heads turned to witness the fate of the ancient undead pharaoh, and then all eyes shifted towards Keiko, who relaxed with a sigh and flexed her arms before grinning and saying, "Been a while since I've been able to cut loose like that! Don't feel too bad, though...it's not your goals I was faulting, but your methods stink to high heaven."

"Whoah," Ranma said, visibly impressed at the redhead's achievement.

"Anakaris?" Dimitri marveled, "I sense no trace of his energy. What have you done to him, Woman?"

"My bandaged buddy...he's gone?" Darkwulf dropped his tail and gave a faint whimper.

"Wow," Nabiki said as she studied the Kickboxer's profile, "I didn't know you were that good, Kei-chan."

"Yeah, well...you may not be a Sevile, Nab-chan, but I took my title a couple of years ago," Keiko boasted cockily, "What's the matter? Surprised to find out that there's one field in which I excel you?"

"So, you know the Shadowskills, do you?" Morgan asked as she dropped into the middle of the field, surprising Dimitri and the others with her sudden reappearance, "That explains how you survived our little tryst. I'll be mindful of that the next time I make a meal out of your sweet energies, Morsel," she leered in a way that made even Keiko feel uneasy, "But first...I have a score of me own to settle with my so-called partner," and she turned to glare meaningfully in the vampire Lord's direction.

"Morgan?" Dimitri evidenced genuine surprise, "What are you...?"

"Doing here?" Morgan glared right into the face of her erstwhile partner, "In case you happen to have missed the point, my dear Lord Dimitri, I am rather put out about you and what you just attempted to do with the Blood Queen!"

"But...I was merely torturing her, my dear," Dimitri insisted, "Making her suffer the throes of damnation, the usual sort of thing. That's no cause for you to feel jealous..."

"WHO BE JEALOUS?" Morgan snapped, "Admit it, you were never really planning to sacrifice her from the beginning, were you? You were just stringing us all along while you worked your will on her to make her more tractable by using those Senken maneuver ye stole to break her will and turn her into your adoring sex slave!"

"So what about it?" Dimitri blinked, then said, "Now...wait a minute there, Woman...!"

"You were planning to replace me with her all along, weren't you?" Morgan all but shouted, "You may have had Jeddah and Pyron fooled, but I knew all along that you were planning something big, but while you've been tarrying with these mortals, where do you think our supposed allies have gotten off to? Do you see them anywhere about doing their part in the fighting?"

"Er..." Dimitri swept the area with a glance and said, "No...you don't mean?"

"Then what are we waiting here for while they grab up all the power?" Morgan asked, "They've gone on to the Interim realm to open the gates, Man, and you stand here gawking while playing around with children?"

"Hey!" Ranma protested.

"Interim realm?" Nabiki repeated.

"Our apologies," Dimitri said as he turned and smiled in their direction, "But it seems that other business must call me away before we can complete this rather interesting battle..."

Then before their very eyes the vampire lord and succubus seemed to fold in on themselves, becoming thin one moment and then vanishing the next. Into the stunned silence Frank said, "Uh oh...this is bad...this is really, really awful..."

"What do you mean, Big Guy?" Keiko asked.

"He means that they've gone sideways through a slip in the timefield," Happosai revealed, "They're in an in-between zone slightly out of phase with us where those fiends intend to complete whatever horrible spell they've been crafting...fortunately without the cutie they meant to sacrifice."

"But it was my energies they stole to make it possible," Ling-Ko revealed as she appeared from behind the protective wall formed by her cousins, "And now they have what they need in order to perform the summoning ritual. They mean to bring a Rakshasa King over to this world where they will bind and destroy him, then utilizing his energies..."

"Dimitri will become a god," Frank remarked, only to turn in dismay as he saw the lumbering shape being dragged across the field by a furious Natsume, who had somehow managed to find enough chain to imprison the massive cyborg.

"What the hell is that?" Ranma said in dismay.

"That," Frank replied, "Is my wayward nephew, Victor Gunther Frankenstein...and fortunately out of ammunition."

"You knew that...guy...from before?" Nabiki asked as delicately as she was able.

"Uh..." Darkwulf glanced around and said, "Uh oh...don't tell me that's all that's left here of our side...?"

"Don't feel too lonely...Cousin," a voice growled from behind him, "I'm sure we could send you to join the rest of your teammates if you give us any reason for trouble."

"John?" Darkwulf nervously responded, "That you, Cuz?"

In response his fellow werewolf gripped Darkwulf by the scruff of his neck and forced him down into the dirt, driving his muzzle into the compacted earth while holding him there with one arm twisted behind the renegade's back.

"Hold still or I'll snap you in half!" Talbain growled, "You oughta feel lucky I don't do it anyway, but I promised your mother I'd look out for you, fat lotta good it's done me after all of these years!"

"Well, that's one more of the pact down for the count," Frank remarked, glancing around before adding, "What about Atros?"

"Ran out of steam after screaming herself nearly hoarse," Kurumi revealed as she and Mousse brought their own prisoner forward, the amphibious finned woman wrapped neatly so that she almost resembled a mummy in her own right though her eyes appeared more than slightly glassy.

"Of course it was D here who actually subdued her," Mousse nodded to the dark cloaked vampire hunter in question.

"The least I could so since it appeared that she was being mind-controlled the whole while," D held up a device that was slightly moist and bloody, "Took a bit of effort to remove it, after which it was childsplay to hypnotize her into submission. She'll be all right, more or less, but she'll have explaining to do when her father hears about the company that she's been keeping."

"Swell," Frank remarked, "Then it's almost over except for the top guns among the bad guys," he paused to sweep the field, "That's funny...Donovan should be here. Anybody see him hovering on the edge of this fracas?"

"Now that you mention it," Tsien-Ko remarked, "It is odd, but I don't see Don anywhere around here, or Anita for that matter."

"It's unusual for Donovan Bane to hold back from being a part of any battle between good and evil," Mei-Ling observed, "But he has been unusually subdued today, almost taciturn...and that's even by his standards."

"Wonder if he's saving it up for round two?" Talbain mused as he finished binding the wrists of his fellow werewolf, "I know Donovan well enough that if he thought Armageddon were heading our way he'd be the first one on the front lines ready to wrestle with the devil."

"I wonder..."Kasumi stepped forward and stretched out a hand, "What is this?"

"Huh?" Nabiki said, "What is what, Oneechan?"

"Hey, I see it too!" Ranma said, "Some kind of...silver light or..."

Kasumi moved her hand and all at once a curtain of night drew back to reveal a shimmering portal.

"Uh...or a curtain?" Ranma finished lamely, "Yeah...guess that's what it is..."

"It's the gateway!" Tsien-Ko said, "It must lead to the interim dimension!"

"Tendo Kasumi found it while the rest of us remained too clouded in our vision," Mei-Ling sounded astonished.

"Clearly there is much more to you than meets the eye, Tendo-san," Ling-Ko said in obvious admiration.

"So...what are we waiting for?" a bare-chested Soun asked as he and Genma came up to join the others, with Nodoka and Julian beside them, followed by the others, "If that is where the enemy has gone to..."

"And I'll bet that's where Donovan's already headed," Talbain smiled, "He's probably gone ahead to head the bad guys off at the pass."

"Head them off at the pass?" Darkwulf growled, "I hate that stupid old movie cliché..."

"Now hold on here!" Frank spoke up, "No sense in a whole crowd of us joining in on this battle. I'll take the strongest among us who are still able to fight, and the rest of you wait here for us to return. If we don't manage to stop the spell from being cast, then we'll need a backup plan to prevent a Rakshasa invasion."

"Makes sense," Nabiki turned to the others, "Ranchan, you and I will lead the way along with Frank, Keiko, Natsume, Kurumi and Talbain..."

"I am coming with you, Imoutochan," Kasumi said softly, and her very tone suggested that she had no intention of remaining safely on the sidelines.

"And so am I!" Happosai declared, "No crummy Darkstalkers are gonna mess with my family and expect to get away with it! Besides, without me you wouldn't even know what to look for."

"Makes a kind of sense," Frank shrugged before turning to glance at Yasmina and the others remaining behind, "Look after my nephew. He may be a bit dim, but he's still family."

"We understand the ties of family, Doctor," Yasmina noted.

"But it still seems unright that the fate of vampire and human should be trusted to a bunch of...children."

"Those children have proven themselves time and again as warriors of stout heart and mind," Nodoka confidently declared, "I trust my son and his wife, and I've raised many of these other girls as though they were my own. They are more than capable of dealing with whatever awaits them in the other world."

"Hey, we're coming too!" Tsien-Ko declared forthrightly, "Isn't that right, Sis?"

"No," Ling-Ko spoke before Mei-Ling could, "The both of you are staying here with me."

"What?" both twins turned to look askance at their half-naked cousin.

"You heard me," Ling-Ko replied, "I am in no condition to fight, and you will be needed here in case these heroes fail, in which case you will fight beside me...AFTER you assist me in taking care of a certain...condition."

"A certain...condition, Cousin?" Mei-Ling marveled.

"Not here," Ling-Ko pointed off towards some bushes, "Over there...I will explain my needs to you while we are in private, but not before others."

"Are you certain that will be wise, my lady?" Julian asked.

"Quite certain," Ling-Ko turned and marched stiffly away, her tone brooking no opposition as she snapped, "Cousins?"

"Er...right," Tsien-Ko exchanged confused looks with her twin, then the both of them fell in step and followed the Blood Mother as she sought some privacy away from the eyes of others.

"That was weird," Natsumi murmured.

"You think so?" Miyuki asked without glancing at her partner, "I wonder..."

"Ah...is it just me?" Yui asked, "Or was Ling acting kind of...funny all of a sudden?"

"Really?" Miyu mused, "I hardly noticed."

"I think someone has something other than fighting on their minds," Larva turned and glanced towards the altar, "Whatever Dimitri did to her, I think Ling-Ko has needs that must be fulfilled if she is ever to get her energies back in balance."

Nabiki turned a look on her husband and Ranma blinked, "What? What did I do?"

"Never mind," Nabiki sighed, "Oneechan?"

Kasumi nodded and pulled back the curtain, then the designated heroes moved forward and seemed to wink out of sight one by one, moving sideways through time into a near-parallel state where the battle lines would be drawn in a clear and decisive confrontation that might well spell the doom of humanity if they faltered in their chosen mission...

Part One-Hundred-Twenty-Seven.

(Set during and slightly after the time of the events recorded in the side-story titled "Honeymoon Hentai")

[No Actual Vampires or other Immortal creatures were harmed in the making of this fanfic...]

"Man, this sucks!" Lenore complained, "Doing guard duty on a zombie while everyone else goes rushing off into battle is the pits, I tell ya! I'm so bored I could sawdust!"

"'Ey now," Raptor said, "If nursemaigin' me is too much of a burden for ya, you could always looks the other way and let poor old Raptor escape...just for old times sake, since you used to be a fan O' mine..."

"Not a chance," Lenore retorted, "You'd just run off to join Dimitri and his goon squad and then we'd have to hunt you down ourselves, and believe me, you don't want to get me and my friends angry."

"Oh, and what's there to be afraid of?" Raptor snorted, "A little girlie vamp, a werewolf who looks young enough that she could be wearing a sailor fuku, and a ghostly homebody who ain't that much older. Some fiercesome warrior troop you make out to be."

"Don't push it," Lenore replied, "We may look young but we've seen our share of action, and we're not intimidated by an undead soul-sucker like you, old timer. Besides, we've got our own act lined up, and we've even taken it on the road a few times, us and some friends who aren't with us at the moment. We even call ourselves the Immortal Nightbreed."

Oh, that's quaint," Raptor snorted, "Not to mention original. Just another buncha slackers pretending to be the next bit girlie act to hit the market. I'd give ya a week at most afore the public looks somewhere else to the next hot number."

"Sounds to me like he's doubting us, Lenore-chan," Chloe remarked with a slight grin.

"That would be my conclusion also," Kiima agreed in her usual quiet, almost toneless manner of speech.

"All right then, girls," Lenore grinned, "Let's show mister skeptic here just how good we really are. And a one, and a two..."

"'Ey, wait a minute!" Raptor protested, straining at his bonds, "This some new kinda torture...?"

"We are Nightbreed, Creatures of the Evening,  
Come into our world of twilight And stay until the dawns first light has come;  
Fascination, gaze into our hearts desire The Star of Morning reflects upon us all..."

They went on for several stanzas singing out a lovely ballad with no musical accompaniment while Raptor sat with his jawbone hanging down, and when their song had concluded he spoke in a moment of rare candor and said, "Not too bad...you babes got a lovely set O' harmonics there. A bit light on the acoustics, an' ya could use a bit more screams an' some blood n' guts in the lyrics, but I've heart much worse. You kids could actually amount to something...provided you had the right sorta connections."

"Thanks for the offer," Lenore replied, "But the sort of connections you might want to hook us up with will probably demand a blood contract, and I'm rather fond of my soul where it is."

"Suit yourself," Raptor shrugged, "But if ya ever wanna lead for my band, y'could always look me up sometime. 'Course I'm still a bit miffed with you for destroyin' two O' me albums..."

"Those old things?" Lenore smirked, "Don't worry about it. They were worn and scratchy from me constantly replaying them, so they weren't worth very much. Besides, I'd already re-recorded them with my CD writer after downloading them off the net, so I've got pristine copies that I can listen to whenever I like."

"WHA-AT?" Raptor reacted, "Y'mean...ya pirated me own music?"

"What's the matter guy?" Chloe asked, "Haven't you ever heard of Napa?"

"Ya mean...all that time you was playin' with me, girl?" Raptor asked, "Y'made me believe you wuz casting me music aside, destroyin' me life work before me very eyes...and all along ya didn't really need 'em 'cause ya have better quality copies in backup?"

"Well, pretty much, yeah," Lenore answered.

For a moment Raptor just sat there, then all at once he began to chuckle, a soft noise at first, then louder, and then he broke out in an open guffaw of mirth and hilarity, right before his eyes started to glow and he said, "Oooh, I likes you, Girlie, yer me type after all. That was a good one, playin' wi' yer uncle Raptor to get 'im to talk like a bloomin' rat, and me fallin' for it like I did...good joke all around, an' just the sort I can appreciate. In fact, I like ya so much that I've decided not to kill ya and yer little buddies."

"What?" Lenore blinked, seeing a light fire up in the eyes of the Zombie King, and suddenly Raptor burst loose from his chains, his bones literally flying apart only to reassemble themselves a short distance away, only now he was holding his guitar in hand and strumming it like there was no tomorrow.

"Yessiree...I knows a true fan when I sees 'em 'cause a Raptor Chick like you is born inta the blood, an' once ya had a taste for Raptor ya ain't never gonna look twice at any other Metal Head or Banger!"

"But...how did you get...?" Lenore started to say when a wave of acoustical noise assaulted her sensitive hearing, doing much the same to Chloe while causing Kiima great distress in her semi-corporeal state.

"How did I slip me bonds yer asking?" Raptor grinned like a rictus, "Got you t'thank for that, Girlie-girl! Them wards that Donny boy placed over me only work on the principle of negative resistance, but when I listened to yer tune I got all sorts of sweet, positive vibes comin' offa me, just enough to weaken them Ofudo chants and give me the slip as I shrugged me chain like water off a duck's back! A nice bit O' work if I do say so meself..."

"You'll...never...get away with this...creep!" Lenore vowed over the din of the music that Raptor was pouring in their direction as she fought to maintain her balance and tried reaching for her sword, only to cover her ears once again as the zombie doubled his volume.

"I beg t'differ, Girlie-girl," Raptor said confidently as he strummed another set of notes on his guitar-ax, "Ah got the upper hand and I'm playin' it for what it's worth so's I can meet up wi' me mates an' get in on some O' Dimitri's power plays. But onna counta y'bein' fans O' mine and all that, I'll go easy on ya this time and just give ya a nightcap. 'Sides, kids yer age oughta be in bed right now anyhow."

With that Raptor changed the tempo of his guitar and kicked up a massive sonic blast that picked the trio up and sent them hurtling towards the distant wall of the Tendo compound. At the last possible instant Kiima recovered enough to spread her ethereal body out and form a cushion to pad the impact for the others, then all three slammed into the wall together and were momentarily stunned by the blow. By the time the dust had settled and the girls had started to recover there was no sign nor trace of the Zombie King anywhere about, Raptor having fled into the night with the clear intent of linking up with the rest of his Dark Pack.

"Not good," Lenore groaned as she got back to her feet and checked to see if any bones were broken that would require precious minutes to heal back up again.

"No...definitely not good," Chloe agreed, her werewolf constitution serving her in good stead on this occasion.

"It seems that we have underestimated our nominal captive and permitted his escape," Kiima observed with far less evidence of stress in her atonal voice.

"No sh*t," Lenore grunted, "The boss is definitely NOT gonna like hearing about this. He gives us a simple assignment and we blew it, now we've gotta hi-tail it over to that cemetery to warn him about our screw up."

"You think Frank is gonna be mad at us, Lenore-chan?" Chloe asked.

"Worse than that," Lenore winced, "He might cut off our expense account, and that would be...very bad in my case. I got creditors to pay off, and you know what kind of leg breakers those guys can be..."

"You really should not gamble so much with your personal fortune," Kiima observed, "If you showed a little restraint then you would not always be in these tight financial situations."

"Yeah, tell me what I don't already know," Lenore winced, "Okay, so Raptor's split but we know where he's headed, and if we make time we might be able to get there before he causes too much havoc. Of course by now there's probably already been a lot of punching and yelling, and the battle's probably been already decided one way or the other, so either his side's on top and we'll have to be the cavalry, or else..."

"Or else maybe Bone-head's the one who's headed into a bad situation?" Chloe suggested.

"I believe the term 'Bingo' fits this particular instance," Kiima replied with rare ethereal humor, "In which case our pity should go to him, because I think the odds will be very long against his interests..."

The landscape had changed for them with their passage through of the portal and the oddly mismatched group found themselves in an area consisting of rolling fields and hills that were otherwise barren of life yet somehow stood out much brighter than expected. The whole field was bathed in a silvery radiance that made it appear almost like daylight, though much less intense than the sun would be, and the source of the light was quite obviously the moon overhead, which itself seemed oversized and played out in such detail that you could actually see the hills and craters that dotted its surface.

Into this weirdly transitional setting Frank and the Tendo Posse looked around in search of any landmarks that would enable them to track their prey down. Talbain sniffed the air but reported upon finding no breeze to carry a scent upon, and simple vision did not avail them, nor was there sound conveyed over the unusual setting as everyone tried to take their bearings and make some sense of the unreality of the otherwise placid setting.

"So...this is a transitional dimension?" Nabiki asked.

"Sure is, Kid," Frank acknowledged, "It's kind of like a reflection of the world we know, only it's made up of the residual energies that go into maintaining the physical world. The only real substance here is energy, but it's made up of raw Ectoplasm, or Akashic matter, which is really malleable stuff and easy to shape if you've got a strong enough imagination."

"Some tech guys I know call it a Subspace zone," Talbain added, "And according to the theory the rules of physics work different here than what we're used to. For one thing, time's a funny concept that either stretches or contracts depending on your perspective. If you had a watch and walked around a bit while somebody else kept another watch separately, when the two of you link up again you'd find that the two watches didn't agree with one another. I don't really understand why that is, but a minute here could be as long as a day back in the real world, or days here could be only seconds back home. It's enough to drive a sane wolf crazy."

"Interesting," Ranma said, "Sorta like that weird place the girls took me too..."

"Huh?" Keiko turned a quizical look at him, and Nabiki arched an eyebrow, "What girls?"

"Ah-nothing!" Ranma said a little too hastily, then concentrated on his hands and cupped them together, then summoned up an energy ball, at which point he said, "Whoah...I see what you mean. The energy currents are...weird...but you can tap into 'em a lot easier than in the real world. Takes a little adjustment, but I think you could really cut loose and do some major-league damage here with our Ki attacks."

"That's right," Frank nodded, "Be on guard that you don't overdo things. I've been here before and I know how it can mess you up if you're not careful. Just stay close and watch out for surprises 'cause the bad guys can do a lot worse than just work fancy light tricks...they could even summon up imaginary servants and turn 'em into the real kind, and those could be solid and real enough to kill you."

"So word to the wise is...if you see an attack coming, don't stop and question if it's real or not," Talbain advised, "Some illusions have real bite here, and unless you've got a strong enough imagination to shape up weapons or allies of your own...HUH?"

"What is it?" Natsume asked, sensing the shift in tone of the werewolf.

Talbain just extended a furry claw as if the power of speech failed him, and all heads turned towards Kasumi, who seemed to be standing alone in a beam of radiant sunlight with grass sprouting out from where her feet touched ground, and vines turning into trees where she walked while small animals and birds began to appear. Wherever she moved there were fields of green and bright flowers growing out from her immediate vicinity.

"Whoah," Kurumi exclaimed, a sentiment that seemed universal for the rest of their party.

"Oh?" Kasumi turned around with a curious look as if sensing the quizzical mood of the others, "Is something wrong? Nabiki?"

"Oneechan...um...what are you doing?" Nabiki asked.

"Oh, I wanted to look around a bit before we got started," Kasumi replied, "It's such a lovely place, it's a pity we can't do any sightseeing."

"Frank," Talbain said in a hollow voice.

"I see it," Frank replied, "Believing it...that's something else."

"Apparently Kasumi's aura is creating a positive field of life energy that is reflected in everything she touches," Mousse remarked very softly.

"Wha-?" Kurumi whirled around to find the tall Chinese boy standing next to her, "What are you doing here, Mousse? I thought Oneechan..."

"Nabiki does not command my loyalties to that extent," Mousse replied, "And you are my Airen, Kurumi-chan, so it is my duty to accompany you into danger."

"Indeed," Tatewaki spoke up, startling Natsume, "And though my admiration for the wife of my best friend is truly without limit, I would be loathe to remain behind and allow the woman I love to face peril by herself. Reprimand me if you must, but I know clearly where my first duty lies...with my fiancee."

"Tachi-sama..." Natsume's tone hardened, "I almost lost you once already, do you mean to throw your life away and leave me bereft of all my senses?"

"Nay," Tatewaki said to the novice Slayer, "I would sooner cut off my own arm than to leave you in tears, my love, but know that my resolve is firm and I will always stand by your side, now and forever, 'til death do us part and-nay-  
even longer..."

"Oh brother," Kurumi murmured faintly.

"I really ought to have a talk with you boys about the concept of following the orders of your clan-chief, meaning me," Nabiki noted, "But I suppose I'll let it go for now since we don't even know what we'll be up against this time, but if anybody gets killed because they didn't listen to my advice..."

"I think they already get the point, Nab-chan," Ranma said as he reached out and struck fists with Tatewaki, "Good to have you along for the ride, Tachi-kun. This fight wouldn't be the same without you."

"My true brother-in-arms," Tatewaki said back, "We'll face this danger as warriors born. To the ruin of our enemies, we stand united in one purpose."

"Swell," Talbain sniffed as he turned to Frank, "Where'd you find these guys again?"

"Easy, Wolfie," Keiko patted the werewolf on the top of his head, turning to Nabiki and saying, "Maybe Kasumi better hang back and let us do most of the fighting. She seems pretty powerful right now, but we all know that she's really not the combatant type."

"I agree," Nabiki turned to Kasumi, "Oneechan, I know you did pretty good against that Lilith character, but..."

"But you are afraid that I might not be of much help to you against Dimitri and his allies?" Kasumi finished for her, "Perhaps I'm not a fighter like you and Ranma-kun, but I am a Tendo, and with my family being threatened I...I want to be here to help you...in any way that I possibly can do so, Nabiki."

"Ain't the same thing as being in the middle of the action," Frank warned her, "The kind of battle we're headed into doesn't have fixed borders and clearly defined boundaries between combatant and non-combatants. Dimitri's allies don't see the world as divided up that way, and if you come with us you could wind up getting mixed into things whether you want to or not, Tendo-san."

"I understand this, Doctor," Kasumi replied, "I have watched battles waged by family members for a great many years, and I know that the sort of honorable fight that Nabiki and my sisters wage is of a different nature entirely from the sort of battle that we witnessed just a few moments ago. For one thing...more people got hurt, and I even saw my beloved Aunt kill a man in the heat of battle."

"Mom killed somebody?" Ranma reacted with a start.

"Sure did," Keiko answered, "Sliced him up clean and simple."

"Nothing clean about it from what I saw," Kurumi winced, recalling how shocked she had been to see her adopted Aunt behaving like a Samurai out of legends.

"It was a justifiable killing," Natsume affirmed, "And honorably rendered. Besides...the man she killed had intended much worse towards her..."

"Yes, and you slew one of our opponents yourself, Arigami-san," Mousse nodded towards Keiko.

"That's different," Keiko replied, "I'm a trained Pit fighter. I've killed opponents in the ring before, and not all of them deserving of it either. That guy...well...I've never seen the point of showing mercy to somebody who'd stab you in the back and laugh about it later. It's like Mistress Lao always said...you let a proven killer live, by default you become responsible for everybody he kills from that time onward."

"Same thing could apply to the Cat," Frank sniffed, "But I happen to know she could be a lot worse than she is..."

"That's surprising to hear," Nabiki grumbled.

"But anyway," Frank turned back to Kasumi, "This ain't a game we're headed into, and I'm not really sure you do know the full impact of what it means having to kill or be killed in this sort of a fight, Tendo-san."

"You may be right about that, Doctor," Kasumi said, "I don't like fighting. It's why I gave up on my early martial arts training. Even hurting someone by accident seems...wrong to me. There has to be a better way...and I truly believe that a better way should be found before resorting to violence."

"Wish the world worked like that, Kid," Talbain said soberly, "But it's a nasty, brutal place out there, and the world can be a pretty cruel place towards people who think like you do. If it was different, if there really was a thing like divine Justice, then innocent people wouldn't suffer and the bad guys wouldn't be the ones calling the shots in far too many social institutions."

"But still," Tatewaki said, "One would wish that more people felt as Kasumi-chan and sought means other than violence to resolve their differences. If so, then mayhap a better place the world would become indeed."

"I dunno about the world," Ranma said, "But I like you just the way you are, Oneechan, and I'd fight to the death to preserve your way of thinking."

"But fighting shouldn't be necessary at all," Kasumi reasoned, "Is it written somewhere that all disputes have to be settled in the arena of battle? Does every challenge need to be met, and must every threat be answered by another threat of a similar order?"

"It's been that way in my experience, Oneechan," Nabiki said, "But I'm with Ranchan on this...I love the way you think and wish the world could be a place where reason trumps heated emotional bias."

"Feelings aren't something you just throw away, Tendo-san," Talbain remarked, "Donovan's tried doing it for years, but compassion is also a feeling, and without that we'd be little better than machines."

"Besides," Frank said as he faced Kasumi, "I'm trying to warn you that you could get drawn into things whether you believe in violence or not. You've got a lot of power, Kid...more than any Queen I've ever met, and Dimitri wants that power for himself, so you may have to face him down, and we can't all spare the energy to protect you if Jeddah carries out his plans to unleash a holocaust on the earth."

"I hear what you are saying to me, Doctor," Kasumi said sadly, "And I agree that I must do my part, and I understand what may me require of me, but..."

"Do you?" Frank said with a quiet intensity that drew everyone's attention, "Do you really understand what it means to be forced to take a life? I've been in this business for a long, long time, Tendo-san, and I've...done things I...find questionable...but I've always believed that it's better to act than to turn a blind eye to evil..."

"I know that, Doctor," Kasumi replied, "But you are a good man, I have always...sensed that about you."

"Good?" Frank arched both eyebrows then raised his arms, revealing the scars that marked his wrists, "These hands...you see them? They don't really belong to me. The Doc...the guy who made me...he stole them from some dead guys and stitched them onto me when I was just a lifeless body. They weren't even originally the same size...they had to be soaked for weeks in a special kind of solution and then magically size-adjusted to fit the rest of me. My whole body's a patchwork of mismatched body parts fused together through alchemy and charged with bio-electricity that keeps me animated. These hands...they've taken life before, they've soaked the earth in blood, and not all of it belonged to really bad people. I've tried to use them to build things, to repair, to restore life to the dying...but I can't ever wash the blood away, and it stays with me no matter what I do to even the score. Are you really ready to get blood on those delicate fingers of yours?"

To his surprise Kasumi reached out and cupped his hands within her own, smiling up at her and saying, "But these are also the hands of a healer, are they not, Doctor? You have used your knowledge of medicine to give comfort and to ease the suffering of those who are afflicted. You may have fought with these hands, but you are not a conscienceless killer, and if you had a choice between protecting the innocent or taking a life for selfish reasons...you know which way that you would choose, and so do I."

For a moment Frank seemed genuinely startled, but looking down into the radiant beauty before him, and then he looked down at the gentle hands that were clasping his own huge ones so softly, and he seemed visibly awed, even a bit intimidated by the soft glow of her benediction. For a moment he seemed even a little bit afraid of her, but then he seemed to relax and smiled, perhaps more moved by her kindness than his normally taciturn nature would suggest.

"Oneechan?" Nabiki asked, wondering if she were reading something into this that was not entirely...proper.

"Um..." Talbain shuffled a bit uneasily and said, "Maybe we oughta be moving on ahead. I mean...I don't think Dimitri or Jeddah have stopped their plotting to let us debate about the wisdom of fighting..."

"Wise words from you indeed, friend John."

"Eh?" Nabiki whirled about and saw the towering figure of Donovan Bane standing off to one side, accompanied (as always) by the twelve year old named Anita.

"Bane-san?" Keiko asked, "Have you been there waiting for us for very long?"

"Not long, Arigami-san," Donovan replied, turning a curious look towards Frank, who hastily removed his hands from Kasumi's grasp and turned an innocent stare off into the distance, "I came to find you once I felt the disturbance of your passage. You must accompany me now, the enemy is abroad and they are nearer to achieving their aims than you may imagine."

"How bad is it, Don?" Frank asked, reverting to a tone of all business.

"Bad," Donovan replied, "They are close to breaching the gap and summoning the Rakshasa."

"Not good," Talbain turned to the others and said, "This in-between zone is sort of like a transitional nexus for creatures that want to pass between one world and the next. If somebody opens a door to the wrong world..."

"We get the picture," Nabiki nodded, "So let's make haste, we've got a religious ceremony to break up, People."

"Yes," Kasumi replied, "By all means, let us prevent this evil from being released into our world."

"Easier said than done," Frank replied, nodding to Donovan, "If it was that simple you'd have done it by yourself, Don."

"You are correct on that, old friend," Donovan replied, "The enemy is better prepared than we had anticipated, and time is of the essence."

"Uh..." Ranma spoke up, nodding towards Anita, "Is it all right for the kid to come along? I mean, if Oneechan might be in danger of being attacked..."

"Do not worry about Anita," Donovan replied, "She will be safe, of that I am certain."

"No fooling about that," Talbain gave Ranma a sidelong glance, "Don't let her age and size fool you, Anita's got powers of her own that in many ways are stronger than the rest of us combined. Don thinks when she grows up she'll be a real firecracker, one even more powerful than him and Dimitri put together."

"That is if she grows up," Tatewaki said, "And if the enemy carries forth with their fiendish plans..."

"Then she won't be the only one who never gets to grow up," Mousse finished for him, "Every child on the planet will be in the same kind of danger."

"Then why are we standing around debating the propriety of violence?" Natsume asked, "Let us instead turn violence upon the enemy and see to it that they are the ones who most suffer."

"Can't argue with that, Sis," Nabiki said, nodding back to Donovan, "Lead the way, we're ready for action..."

"Hello, Reiko-san? It's me...Tofu Ono."

Doctor Tofu paused to hear the voice on the other end of the line respond with a much-surprised, "Tofu-sensei? But...what...?"

"I'm sorry if I'm calling you too late at night," Tofu replied, "I hope that I'm not imposing..."

"Oh no," the voice on the other end responded warily, "It's not too late...but...I'm just a little surprised. It's been...a few months since our parents arranged that meeting..."

"I know," Tofu replied, "And I'm sorry about not calling you earlier...it's just...the strangest thing, right out of the blue I felt an urge to call you. Isn't that odd?"

"Ah...yes...odd...indeed."

"But right now...well..." Tofu shrugged, "I was...well...kind of hoping that I might see you again. I hope it's not too abrupt for me to say this, but...well...I did enjoy our conversation that time we met. I've even been following your adventures on the wrestling circuit and I saw you one the Regional title..."

"You saw that?" the woman's voice became excited.

"Yes, you were very impressive," Tofu replied, "I was very proud for you, I know you worked hard to earn that."

"Tofu-sensei...you are too kind."

"No, not at all," Tofu smiled, "Anyway...I know it's kind of spur-of-the-moment, but I was wondering...would it be possible for you to make time to see me? Just to talk, nothing more than that...hello? Reiko-san, are you there?"

"I'll be right over!" she said enthusiastically, "You still have an clinic office out in the Nerima district?"

"Same place as before...hello?" Tofu blinked, "Hello? That's odd...she hung up. Oh my, I hope I didn't say thing to offend her..."

He put the receiver back down on its cradle then glanced up at the wall, reacting with a start at the time, "Oh my...is it that late already? I wonder if I've missed anything important. Odd...but I feel like I should be worried about Natsume-san for some strange reason. I do hope that she's all right...I haven't even had time yet to inform the Council..."

Tofu did some mental calculations, estimating the difference in time between Japan and England, then went to his main desk drawer and pulled out an old notebook to look up a certain number...

"Good thing the fight ended when it did," Natsumi said disgustedly as she examined her empty cartridge, "We're so out of bullets that we might as well have thrown our guns at those guys for all the good they would have done us."

"Quite true," Miyuki said, "But it was quite a battle that we were in, Natsumi-  
chan, and as it is we are most fortunate to have survived it."

"Indeed, you did quite well...for mortals," Leguire remarked as he finished checking the bodies, separating the dead from the merely incapacitated, "A pity the Queen has spoken against Turning you both over to our side...I suspect that you wold make a formidable team of Vampires..."

"I think they would prefer to remain as they are," Yasmina remarked, "Not every Breather dreams of being just like us, Jean, and these two would probably prefer to retain their options, much though it would be a shame to see such beauty fade with time, but all things must pass when it is their time."

"Ah...yeah," Natsumi said with a queasy expression.

"Thank you for the kind thought...but..." Miyuki gave a sheepish shrug.

"You'd still prefer to enjoy a sunrise or sunset together, eh?" Julian remarked, "Don't worry, the Queen's word is law in this timezone, and no law-abiding vamp is going to cross her word when her promise is given."

"So say we all," Miyu agreed.

"Even if not of us are very law abiding," Nagi tacitly reminded.

"At least no one was permanently hurt during the fighting," Soun remarked, "Though young Tatewaki did come closer to death than any of us would like."

"Yes, Tendo," Genma remarked, "Then your daughter wouldn't be marrying him and inheriting the Kuno fortune."

"Yes, but...WHAT?" Soun reacted, "Natsume...and Tatewaki...?"

"Oh, did I forget to mention that?" Nodoka said with a sheepish grin, "Sorry about that, it sort of got lost in all the excitement..."

Muffled sound in the distance caused heads to turn, then Leguire said, "What are they doing over there? It sounds...almost painful."

"I think Queen Ling-Ko is busying herself working off her edge," Yasmina noted dryly.

"Indeed," Julian remarked, "And giving her cousins quite a workout in the process. I would not recommend disturbing them while Ling is getting rid of her pent-up frustrations."

"Better them than us," Leguire noted, turning to Julian and saying, "You surprise me, Fries...and here I thought your kind could not do battle on holy ground, yet you were there in the thick of things with the rest of us."

"Well, this is defiled holy ground," Julian remarked, "Doesn't carry the same onus...and besides, that proscription is mainly for dealing with other Immortals. Only those with the quickening need fear shedding blood on holy sites such as this one."

"How is that?" Natsumi asked.

"The quickening?" Miyuki wondered.

"It is said that Immortals cannot fight one another upon holy ground," Yasmina explained, "The only rule that applies to all of their kind, which even the most debased and wicked among them is compelled to honor."

"Indeed," Leguire noted, "I've always fought that rather curious about your kind, that you slaughter one another without reservations to steal the quickening power that gives you eternal life, yet you would refrain from doing violence even with a blood enemy in a church or consecrated place. How odd that even that debased coward, Sergei, would have respected that rule."

"Not so surprising when you consider what happens to those Immortals who break the proscription," Julian explained, "To the best of my knowledge it has happened one time and one time only when two Immortals hated one another enough that they were able to overcome the instinctive compulsion that governs all of us, and when they fought the results were...quite catastrophic."

"How serious a matter was this?" Yasmina asked.

"The scene of the battleground alone should tell the story on that," Julian said, "It happened three hundred years before my reign in a place known as Pompeii..."

"Oh," Leguire remarked, his eyes reflecting an immediate recognition of the implied meaning.

"Near as I can tell," Julian said, "The quickening reacts badly to certain environments, and once released in a holy area it can literally run out of control, especially if another Immortal is present. You've seen the fireworks that happened when I killed Sergei? Well...what happened at Pompeii was a thousand times worse than that, and Nerima itself might not have survived such an encounter."

"I...think we've heard enough about killing and dying for one night already," Natsumi sighed, "We're gonna catch hell if our superiors ever find out what went on in this place..."

"Especially our involvement, and why we had to discharge our weapons and exhaust three magazines a piece."

"Yeah, that's twenty-seven bullets now, plus the two magazines we shot off earlier," Natsumi calculated, "Which comes to about forty-five nine-millimeters each, and if somebody decides to do a forensics check to see where the ballistics came from..."

"Which reminds me," Miyuki glanced around, "Where are the police in this district? I can't imagine that we could have a free fire zone with lots of explosives going off and no one bothered to report it..."

A wind kicked up suddenly, causing all heads to turn to see a form rising up from the ground, a swirling cloud of bones that reassembled themselves and took the shape of the Zombie King, Raptor.

"Hey mates!" he cried, "Are you ready to rock and roll?"

Dead silence greeted him, and for a moment Raptor wondered at the reason, then slowly he began to take in the number of bodies laying on the ground, both mercenaries and HK zombies, then he did a slow pan and took in the group that was presently all chained up and gagged, then at the heroes looking at him with non-plussed expressions.

"Blimey...I'm late for the party, is that it?" Raptor guessed, slowly taking a wary stance as he saw Nodoka reach for her sword while Leguire and Yamina were glaring in his direction. Soun and Genma seemed ready to make a point of it, with Natsumi and Miyuki giving the Zombie angry looks while Julian stood up and unsheathed his butterfly swords, clearly intending to make an issue of the matter. Miyu and her party looked up from where they had been engaged in a private conversation, all of them seeming quite annoyed as they took in Raptor's presence.

"Hokay...tough crowd," Raptor made a sniffing sound and said, "This party's so dead it's startin' to attract flies. Guess the boss took a powder to the other realm and left the lowlies behind to fend for themselves. No problem for me, though...Raptor's always been good for livening things up...in a dead kind of way."

He started strumming on his guitar, causing the heroes to reach for their ears and shy away, which was all the distraction he needed. Like that he spun about and reverted to his dervish form again, and then he went straight for the captive Darkstalkers and rounded them up into his vortex, then slipped in through the fold of time and vanished from the scene, leaving everyone else to stand around and gawk at their sudden passage.

"Where the heck did he...?" Natsumi started to say when all at once the sounds of police sirens flared, and floodlights blanketed the area, and there came the sound of a hundred rifles and handguns being cocked as black-suited figures popped up from all around them.

"FREEZE!" cried the collective voice of the heavily armored policement.

"Oh wonderful," Miyuki sighed, "Now they show up..."

"Ah..." very slowly Genma and Soun began raising their hands, while Julian dropped his swords on the spot and Nodoka put away her katana.

Miyu made a quick hand-signal to her companions and they relaxed by a fraction, even Himiko putting away her favorite holy weapons.

"Princess?" Larva asked.

"Not yet," she said tensely, "Yui-chan...be ready."

"Mass hypnosis, Auntie?" the younger vampire princess asked of her blood sire.

"That would be my call," Nagi said, "Only...how do we hypnotize all of them at once?"

"Saotome?" Soun asked.

"Let's not make an issue of it just yet, Tendo-kun," Genma answered.

"All right then," a figure holding a bullhorn spoke up, "You people drop whatever weapons you have and keep your hands where we can see them or we'll open fire."

"But were...!" Natsumi started to say when Miyuki hissed, "Don't tell them...you want this to get back to our department?"

"Eeep," the other policewoman winced.

"What to do?" Leguire glanced at Yasmina, "Their bullets will likely not harm us, but our allies..."

"Just play it cool, Jean," Yasmina said, "There may yet be a way out of this that does not involve further bloodshed...""

"Hey, look!" one of the policemen pointed, "What's that light-over there!?"

Heads turned to see the spot where Raptor and company had vanished, only now there was a different sort of radiance emanating from the timeslip...and this was not a wholesome feeling that it cast, for the feeling that came through was one of absolute...coldness...the coldness of the grave, or of something altogether...alien that was piercing through the veil.

"Uh oh," Julian murmured softly, "They're...here...!"

Part One-Hundred-Twenty-Eight.

(Set during and slightly after the time of the events recorded in the side-story titled "Honeymoon Hentai")

[No Actual Vampires or other Immortal creatures were harmed in the making of this fanfic...]

"So, this is Nerima, the place where my husband has taken such an interest of late," a lone figure remarked as she surveyed the area from the vantage of a low hill, "Doesn't look like very much, does it, Byron?"

Her sole companion answered as if by rote on that, "You of all people should know better than to judge by appearances, Eve-chan."

"True enough," the leather clad figure sniffed, "But if the dealings that are allegedly going on here are as dire as everyone predicts, then I'd at least expect something grander than another glaring example of Tokyo sprawl to signify the amount of attention that it has been receiving of late. As it is I don't even know why I'm bothering to stop by here, other than to appease Vlad's intense curiosity."

"You know that your husband never does anything without careful consideration of the issues," Byron noted, "And if he thinks this place warrants careful scrutiny, then I would tend to concur that this is a very good suggestion."

"That's it, take his side," Even sniffed, "You men are all alike, even when you're synthetic. I prefer to go with my own instincts about such matters, and in my unvarnished opinion this place hardly looks like it would be worth the trouble that Vlad's people are going to. In fact..."

All at once the woman sitting astride the motorcycle reacted with a start as she felt something vibrate in the air, a disturbance that her keen nature could not help but register, and as she turned her gaze towards a certain direction her face hardened with a fierce continence that seemed to brook no obstacle to the probing power of her gaze.

"What is it?" Byron asked, sensitive to the changing needs and longings of his rider

"I don't know," she said, "But it's bad, bad vibes all around, major league all around, and nine will get you ten that my Ex is up to the thick of it, like always, the bolt-necked baka..."

"That does tabulate with past findings," Byron drolly noted, "So...you intend to investigate?"

"What else?" the woman known as Eve replied with a slight smile upon her features, "I wasn't made to be idled on the sidelines like a proper lady, and I've always preferred to face my problems head-on instead of waiting for them to find me."

"Besides which you also enjoy a good scrap, is that it?"

"You know me well, old friend," Eve smiled as she revved her motorcycle's engine, "Besides, I'm eager to see what kind of trouble Frank has gotten himself into this time. It ought to be worth a hoot, to say nothing of triggering my in-built sense of nostalgia..."

From the time that he had been a young man, so very long ago that it almost hurt to try to remember the "good old days," Jebediah Ramori had dreamed of bringing peace to the troubled world by uniting all souls under the balm of a benevolent god who would care for the poor and afflicted. He had dreamed the dreams of a starry-eyed youth of being the one who brought an end to the injustices of mortal existence, who brought about the tribulation where the wicked were separated from the saintly and given their just rewards, the evil doers given oblivion while the good were given their reward in paradise. Since being found and adopted by his father, the Reverend Williams, and given his Christian name (as opposed to his Japanese name, his former family being long since forgotten) he had striven to be a good disciple of the Lord. His parents were long dead and all he had of them was the memory of his mother, and the story of how his family had fled from Japan when he was a small boy, escaping religious persecution. Many had died to bring him to America and the salvation of the Lord, and to honor their memory he had to be one of the elect chosen who brought peace and light to all of humanity.

To do this he had studied hard, committing the bible to memory and following the example of his mentor, learning from him the technique of preaching to the masses, converting unbelievers into the faithful and using his natural gifts to impress upon people the power of the Lord to bestow favors to those who pleased Him. Though he had encountered stiff prejudice and widespread animosity among the White people whom he encountered-who saw him as nothing more than a "Filthy Heathen Chinaman," or who questioned the real source of his abilities and whispered privately that he his abilities might have a much more serious source than from Heaven. Her had not listened to these ramblings, of course, and had disregarded the rumor that his father was NOT a human being, preferring to believe that he had been singled out for a purpose God's holy mission and had merely been granted his abilities as a means of demonstrating to the doubters that the Lord was Mighty and that His power was never to be questioned by any mere mortal.

To this end he had performed the deeds that the Reverend Williams had commanded and gave proof of his commitment to the holy cause of his adopted father by shining like a beacon to his faith. He had healed the sick, comforted the weary, unveiled secrets unknown to any other soul and had even managed a few 'carnival tricks" such a levitation and minor feats of prodigious strength. In time he had learned to move objects with the power of his thoughts and could discern when he was lied to or when he heard the truth being spoken, a talent that had many useful implications, not least of which was looking into the heart of a true believer and persuading them with his voice to follow the Lord's way. He had only to suggest something and people would do his bidding, and in time he discovered that his suggestions could be powerful and would make people believe without the need for lengthy explanations about the grace of the Holy Spirit. It truly became inspirational when the gifts that he had been endowed with grew in strength with his following until his powers were almost Biblical in proportion, and the more he preached the more his talents multiplied accordingly, as if the favor of Heaven were being laid across his shoulders like a mantle.

It did not take long for him to imagine that he was so gifted because Heaven had singled him out for a reason, and since the Bible taught that all true miracles came from the divine favor of God (without Whom no true miracles or magical feats could exist) then he had to be someone very special whom the Lord had chosen from the ranks of all other mortals. It was not a very far step from there to imagining that he might possibly be a reborn Apostle, or a Prophet, or even Jesus Christ himself reborn into the world to do battle with the Anti-  
Christ and bring about the Armageddon. The only alternative was unthinkable-  
that he might be the Anti-Christ or a messenger from Satan spreading false good works in order to mislead and dupe the gullible masses-and since he lived a clean, pure life that possibility was never to be imagined.

So what if his adopted father collected money in the forms of donations to continue with their mission, and so what if they kicked some of it back to the Carnival proprietor, keeping only a "tithe" to support their own chosen and austere lifestyle? They were holy men of God preaching the Good News to a thirsty public starved for spiritual answers in a corrupt and degenerate world that valued money and power far above the good deeds that might be done for their fellow human being. Material concerns were of small interest to men who walked in the footsteps of the Saints, and as the end of the 19th century approached with the beginning of an entirely new millennia it was becoming more and more evident that the world was going to Hell with a speed that was truly alarming. The world needed men of God to lead it through the fires of perdition...

And then came the time of the Fall, when the innocence fell from his eyes like the scales of a fish, leaving Jebediah without the guiding influence of his priestly mentor. For a long time Jebediah knew about his adopted father's frequent visitations to the Houses of Ill Repute that he made at every stop in every town and city that their carnival went through, but always he believed when his father told him that he was preaching to the unclean masses and doing the Lord's Will by attempting to lead the fallen back to the path of salvation, and always the Reverend Williams had come back early the next morning looking refreshed and spiritually buoyed, ready to do battle once more with Satan in their Revivalist congregations, preaching hellfire and damnation to those who failed to heed the signs and portents prophesized in Revelation.

Always he had told Jebediah to stay and watch over the carnival, and always his adopted son had obeyed, though he wished that he could accompany his father on these missions. He was still a young man in his early teenaged years and had little experience with city life or its people, and though his father warned him of the devious temptations that Satan put in place for the unwary, still Jebediah had his faith for armor and felt confident that he could assist his father in dulling free sinners from the grip of Hell's dominion.

But one day the good father came back to their tent from a visit to the city looking drunk as a sailor and clearly suffering the effects of some sort of narcotic, which Jebediah deduced to be that new wonder drug, Cocaine, of which his father had spoken so often about with detest loathing. At first Jebediah had thought someone had attempted to poison the Reverend Williams, or one of Satan's minions had done the deed, but soon his father disabused him of these hopeful notions by insisting that his condition was self-inflicted, that he was an adult and knew how to handle himself with these dangerous substances. In fact the excuses that he was making for himself sounded suspiciously a lot like the kinds of things that addicts would say to justify their own long-term habits, but Jebediah vehemently denied to himself that his much beloved mentor could be one of those self-serving reprobates who were always turning up to hear the word of Redemption.

In point of fact he said as much to the Reverend Williams and was treated to the most amazing display of righteous wrath from his self-proclaimed "Guiding Light" and adopted father. In the heat of the moment, his tongue loosened by the combination of booze and drugs, Williams proceeded to outline to his young ward a horrifying tale about Jebediah's supposed birth and actual pedigree, revealing the story of how a young Japanese girl had come to America with her husband, mother, uncles and aunts, only to fall prey to town prejudice in one of the outlying settlements that had supposedly been their Christian refuge away from the persecutions of the Japanese system. Williams related how he had found the girl as the lone survivor of their party, which had been raided by some malevolent force that-at first glance-the Reverend had taken to be a band of renegade natives. The girl herself, however, told a different story entirely, of how a single creature had been responsible for the slaughter of her family and her own distressed condition. She told about the "red-eyed demon" who had come to them seemingly as a friendly guest and had stayed the night sharing food and victuals, only to reveal himself in the dead of night as nothing less than a fiend from the very pits, a carnal being who had singled out the young virgin in their midst as his intended prey.

Though he was not well versed in matters of the occult, Williams was familiar with the legends of the Incubus, a form of demon who preyed upon women the way a vampire would such the blood from its victims. An Incubus sought human women to mate with, and a lone and pretty girl was easy prey to his carnal lusts, though this Incubus claimed to be an immortal being who was revered as a God in his realm, who only came to Earth on certain nights to claim a mate with whom he had hoped to bear offspring. When her parents and family objected the demon had slain them without a second thought or a shred of mercy.

On this occasion the mating proved to be successful and the girl was with child, but so great was the shame of her ordeal that she wanted nothing less than to end her life and begged the Reverend to assist her in this endeavor. It was with great fortitude and compassion that Williams had prevailed upon the girl to abide until her son was born, after which she grew pale and sickly and for all the assistance a doctor could render she did not last a month past childbirth.

Williams was therefore left with a half-breed Japanese boy of unknown parentage (at the time the Reverend had not been able to credit the thought of an actual demon impregnating a child since only God could create life, and why inflict an innocent woman with such a burden?) and so he resolved to raise the boy as his own in spite of their racial differences, a tremendous act of compassion and good faith for those troubled times when racism against Asians was a nearly universal social condition.

But as the boy grew older and started to manifest his unusual "talents" the reverend had grown fearful that he may well have aided and abetted in the birthing of the Anti-Christ. He therefore prevailed upon the lad to learn the ways of the Lord so that he might escape the temptations of his demonic pedigree. The boy proved to be a model son and an obedient child who could make any father proud...but every so often his demonic origins would show through in some tell-tale sign or unintentional manner, and Williams would feel the fear returning, even as he grew to be envious of the lad for his smooth-talking ways and healing arts, to say nothing of the boy's uncanny way of knowing things without having to be told them.

Reverend Williams could justify a little trickery in the name of Jesus, had even resorted to cheap carnival tricks and slight-of-hand gestures to beguile the sheep who became his flock in the old days, but presented with an obvious example of miraculous powers that could not be explained by reason or science...his fears drove him to drinking, and then to drugs, hoping to ease the strain of having to shepherd a "Demonspawn" onto the path of the Angels. In time Williams had grown to both love and loathe the boy, beseeching God to take this burden away from his shoulders, or to explain why a youth such as him had been so blessed with divine favor while Williams-a noble man of the cloth-  
had not been so favored and could not so much as lay hands upon the crippled, weak and afflicted.

Fear turned to resentment, resentment to hostility, and hostility to hate, though he tried always to mask these dark emotions behind a stern and uncompromising visage. Until that moment his supposed "son" had never suspected his "father's" true feelings, but provoked to rage Williams let it all spill out, and displayed a shocking vocabulary utterly unworthy of a man of God. Jebediah was taken aback, and then, very slowly, he started to get ANGRY...

Jebediah, upon hearing his mentor denounce his nominal pupil, turned the fires of his righteous wrath upon the good Reverend Williams, faulting the man for every tiny little detail that the boy had ever noticed or wondered about his father, and then going on to call the man a hypocrite and a coward whose faith was lacking and who preached falsehoods while pretending to be holy. Something dark and imposing rose up in him that black day, transforming the boy into the very "Old Testament" prophet that Williams had only pretended to be, and for once the boy's full charismatic power manifested and overwhelmed the hapless preacher. The force of the young man's personality alone was enough to break the old man's frail heart, but to be denounced by his very capable apprentice was an ego-shock from which the reverend could not hope to recover, and though Jebediah never laid so much as a hand upon his alleged father it was as if he had reached into the man's chest and crushed his cardiac organ as easily as another man might have squeezed a grape between his fingers.

Williams fell back and lay dead with a look of abject horror on his face, his eyes staring vacantly into infinity as the shocked young man attempted to revive him, to no avail as it seemed for once that his healing powers had utterly failed him. It would not be until many hours later that very morning that the other carnival folk would find the two of them in their wagon with the young man cradling his dead father in his lap and keening like a lost soul who had lost his will to live altogether.

For three days and three nights Jebediah had lain like one dead in his bed following this incident, refusing all comforts or attempts to reassure him that his father had died of a heart attack and was in no way his fault, only to rise again on the fourth day like one reborn with a new conviction and a resolve very different from that which he had been raised to believe. On that day the old Jebediah had perished, along with his youthful innocence and childhood beliefs, to be born anew and re-baptized as "Jeddah X," his own self-creation. Never again would he allow himself to be blinded by the miseries and temptations of the world, now he would seek a new unity and resolve by blending the faiths and wills of others and bending them to his vision of the "Lord's Work," which was geared towards the coming Apocalypse with the hopes of saving many by joining them in the "Great Rapture."

And accompanying him was a dark ball of energy that some saw while others could not, which followed him around like a shadow or a faithful puppy, doing his bidding and occasionally running his errands. Ever since he was a small boy he had always imagined having a make-belief friend or pet (his father had forbidden him any contact with other boys his own age, nor would he allow animals to be near him, judging them as "unclean beasts" not fit for human companionship). To fill the gap his childhood mind had created a friend whom he called his Majagin (a word his early mind had translated as the word for "Magicial"), a companion who was invisible to others with whom he could confide all his troubles. Now his companion would stand him in good earnest by being his sole ally and guiding angel, his "Voice" for advice and consent, and now Majagin would also serve to help him gather up the energies of the lost souls whom he encountered.

In fact that became his primary mission from that point onward...to seek out the souls of the lost and to join them into one circuit, to link his followers into a central hub and to draw upon their combined essence to strengthen his own power and fortify his mission. He knew in time that Satan would sense his intent and move against him, and so he had to be strong, stronger than anyone on earth, stronger than anyone whom he encountered in order to complete his mission of bringing all the lost souls of the world together.

It was this resolve that brought him into contact with the Darkstalkers, after Jeddah had gathered enough energy to create his Void Sphere, his ultimate great scheme for fulfilling his life's mission, which did indeed draw in a great many lost souls into a zone of Nullity that created a darkness in the world to which the things of Darkness were attracted. Some came drawn by curiosity, others by the need to fight, while a few came to protect the earth and put a stop to Jeddah's plans for Universal Re-unification.

At first Jeddah merely assumed that they all were the minions of Satan come to oppose his great ideals, but over the course of several battles he witnessed acts of courage and nobility that caused him to question this blanket assertion. When his plans ultimate met with defeat and he was himself cast into the Void, to arrive as a prisoner in some dark nebulous dimension, it caused Jeddah to experience the first seeds of doubt as to the authenticity of his mission, for how else could he account for the servant of an invincible god being defeated by creatures of darkness? Perhaps it was true what some of them had said, that he was a willfully blind fanatic bent on proving himself a Messiah because he wished to deny his own darkness, and if so was it not a blasphemy to presume himself guided by a mission? If so, then was it not an act of piety to prevent his plans from coming to final fruition?

The near-century that Jeddah next spent in the void having to fight for his survival had further tested his resolve and forced him to dig deep into his core beliefs and ultimate values in order to test his faith and determine if he were truly the much hoped for Messiah. A century of interacting with demons and creatures of the Darkness had hardened him and toughened him as a warrior for the Almighty, and when at last he effected his return he was much transformed as both a visionary and a prophet. He sought to quell the raging doubts that were in his heart by finding and defeating the Darkstalkers who had effected his defeat from before, and then he had attempted to recreate his Void Sphere, drawing in a new gathering of loyal followers who heeded the calling and responded to his cry of ultimate unity and annihilation.

But once again his efforts met with defeat, and this time Jeddah resolved to think long and hard as to the reasons, why God had raised him to be such a powerful force for ultimate good yet had twice permitted his enemies to overpower him in battle. This caused Jeddah to take a good, long and hard look at the world around him and at the many changes that had been wrought since his days as a simple revivalist. In many ways he found these changes to be good...a higher standard of living, a longer lifespan, more leisure time for the working men and women of the world and a great many technological wonders that had been beyond the dreams of the most imaginative fiction writers of his day. The telecommunications media alone provided a rich, abundant forum in which to spread the Word of Jesus to portions of the globe that had been dark and mysterious unknowns when Jeddah was but an infant.

But in many respects the world had also gone downhill with considerable reckless abandon as old institutions had been worn away and replaced by a spirit of hedonism and promiscuity beyond the dreams of Babylon and Canaan. Carnal devices and lusts of degradation had devalued the spirit and left the world in such a sorry state that surely Satan alone was smiling, but not the poor unfortunates and forgotten lost souls whom Jeddah had always cared for and protected. If anything this convinced him more than ever that the world was in need of a cleansing, but how to go about it this time in such a way that his enemies, the Darkstalkers, would not be able to interfere and prevent the achievement of his mission?

That was when he began to truly immerse himself into the arcane marvels of technology and the hierarchical organizations that could make small time businessmen into giants of industry. He studied the ways of the Pentagon (that artifice of Satanic militarism the world over) and how military structures were patterned and then he made contacts with those in the extra-legal world of Paramilitarism, the soldiers-of-fortune, the Mercenaries, the survivalists, the underground cults that preached a militant form of Jesus worship and who sought for a "return to traditional values," men whose conservative leanings made them ripe subjects for conversion, especially in the Army of the Lord that Jeddah was helping to put together in the name of his Lord Jesus.

Acquainting himself with technology and personnel, however, was only the first step towards the much larger goal of bringing about the Tribulation, and as Jeddah pondered his next step he found that God himself provided the answer by steering Jeddah to an ancient artifact being kept in a museum in Cairo, a tablet said to possess great magical power, which described how, during the reign of the Pharaoh named Ahknaton (the first known Egyptian Monotheist), the priests of Aten-Re (who populated his court) had attempted to perform a forbidden ritual that was said to bring about a change in the world that would make the rule of Aten-Re (their name for God) supreme and absolute the entire world over.

Though means of a few phone calls Jeddah was able to obtain possession of the tablet, then-putting to work a team of linguists and occult experts-he had it translated and explained on a cultural basis. By this means he was able to determine that the tablet contained one part of a spell that could be used to open a gateway to a dark and hideous dimension from which the foulest demons imaginable could be summoned. The second part of the spell was contained in India as one of the Sutra texts preserved for countless centuries as the property of a Maharajah, and once that was in his possession he had yet more researchers on his payroll go to work reconstructing the linguistic basis for the spell, its somatic components and the ultimate goal to which it had been crafted.

By this means he determined that the purpose for summoning the demon race (known as the Rakshasa) had been to "Cleanse the World" in the name of Aten-Re by unleashing the demons to punish the wicked and separate them from the innocent. It seemed that Pharaoh Ahknaton had been convinced that the world was too impure to receive his vision of an absolute Kingdom of purity and righteousness and so had effected to create the spell in order to cleanse Egypt, and he had come within a hairs breadth of succeeding in his aims before something went terribly wrong to disrupt the spell and bring about the fall of his dynasty.

And the name of that downfall had been the Blood Queen of the Vampires known far and wide as Ayesha...said to be one of the last surviving members of the Old Race of True Vampires, and whose blood had been shed to effect the spell, which was itself a variation of the necromantic arts of Atlantis that was said to be the cause for the vampire race coming into existence. Ahknaton had captured Ayesha and was about to offer her up as a sacrifice when her minions, the Vampire, had disrupted the ceremony and killed the Pharaoh (along with a goodly numbers of his high priests and acolytes) and ended the great experiment in monotheism that had predated even the founding of the Jewish nation (which itself was said to be the product of one of Ahknaton's surviving disciples, a fellow named Re-Moses).

The fall of Ahknaton's reign had been a mystery to scholars for a great many ages, but what had been known was the result of when the priests of the Old Gods of the two Kingdoms of the Nile returned to prominence and power, and how they had banished the followers of Aten-Re to the Semitic lands of their Cananite client states that dotted the fringes of Egypt's holdings in Arabia. What emerged from that was a renewed Monotheism under the same god by a different name, but that was of only secondary interest to Jeddah when contrasted with the knowledge that he might well succeed where Ahknaton failed in bringing about a universal cleansing.

The one obstacle to his plans was the continued survival of the Vampire Nation. Queen Ayesha had long since been gone from the scene, allegedly slain by her enemies and turned into an obsidian stone block, yet still the memory of her struggle lived on in the surviving tribes of vampires, which same might yet live to oppose the Rakshasa if not neutralized by some appropriate manner. That was when Jeddah had hit upon the idea of allying himself with the renegade Dimitri, an honorable sort (for such a hideous monster) who had his own list of grievances with the High Council and who might be persuaded to join Jeddah's cause if informed of the other purpose by which Ahknaton had sought to summon the Rakshasa.

Namely to gain the power of a God by drawing a certain Lord of the Rakshasa to earth in order to destroy him and use it to gain power over all the world's legions of vampires.

Dimitri had been easy to persuade (once his initial suspicions were allayed) and then the two of them had set about recruiting the assistance of Lord Pyron, who himself had been nursing his wounds after his defeat at the hands of the half-  
demonic spiritualist, Donovan Bane. Jeddah needed an ally to balance against Lord Dimitri in case of treachery on the latter's part (almost a given with such alliances) while Pyron needed revenge against the one who had defeated him, Dimitri's half-human brother, and so the three of them had put together a new Dark Pack and combined it with Jeddah's own holy branch of the Justifyers Inc. (a franchised paramilitary Militia branch that rented itself out as hired muscle to like-minded Evangelical groups) and together hatched the scheme to lure a conclave of Vampire chiefs to the outskirts of the Tokyo region and from there hope to gain the attention of one or more of the ruling High Council to offer up as sacrifice for the completion of the holy ritual that would claim for them the power of a lord of the Rakshasa.

The plan, while not so nearly flawless as Jeddah would have preferred it to be, had worked out quite well and now there was division and dissention among the ranks of the Vampire nation, and with the next phase of the plan already in motion, they had only to complete the invocation and make a blood atonement and the ritual would be at long last completed. Thirty-five centuries after the time of Ahknaton that long dead pharaoh would have his revenge on both the human world and the nightstalking vampires.

And Jeddah? He would have his long-delayed mission finally come to fulfillment, after which he could face his God with confidence and resolve, clearly having vindicated the righteousness of his mission (and proving once and for all that he was not the "demon-spawned Incubus" that his late father had claimed, thus setting aside his own personal demons). It was all or nothing for him this time, and if his third attempt at bringing on the cleansing of the world met with failure...then he did not want to survive in order to attempt another.

Right now he was at the place of power, drawing in the energies that had been gathered from the Blood Mother in order to complete the spell, and with a few more chants he was certain to know victory. He could taste it within his grasp, a sweeter flavor than the bitter, acrid taste of defeat that had twice been his lot. Only a little ways to go now and they would have everything in motion with nothing left to go wrong save only the interference of another well-meaning fool or dupe of Satan.

His allies were clearly restless, especially that Jezebel, that Whore of Babylon, Morgan. She was clearly fidgeting with an urgency for Jeddah to finish with his seemingly endless chanting, an unusual degree of energy for her since she was usually the one bored to ennui by the jaded passions of life. With what little portion of his attention that Jeddah could spare to the harlot queen of Makai he wondered at what cause might distress Anslat to such a degree that she looked ready to climb the walls in frustration. Surely she was not lusting for Dimitri yet again? Those two never ceased their bickering whenever they were together, and at times Jeddah was not certain if they were mortal enemies or truly lovers, and he doubted rather much that even they knew which was which with any true conviction.

"Is he done yet?" Morgan was just then whispering at the level of a tightly suppressed shout.

"Not yet, my dear," Dimitri answered, "Have a little more patience...unless you would rather I give you something pleasantly diverting..."

"Get stuffed and blow away ye cocksure leach," Morgan grumbled back, though it was plain from the tone in which she growled this that she was seriously considering Dimitri's offer and just barely managing to refuse it.

Pyron, by contrast, was a model of calmness and tranquility, a burning pyre in the shape of a man who masked whatever alien thoughts ran through his mind and who seemed quite content to wait out the full chanted invocation (which had taken Jeddah's research team the better part of a year to reconstruct with proper grammatical structure and tonal inclination). The self-described "Galactic Tyrant" seemed to have a proper sense of how delicate this spell actually was at this point and how a single mispronounced syllable could throw it all into disarray, rather much like a computer program that had to have all the ones and zeroes organized in the exactly precise frame and order.

For Jeddah the spell was a torture of obscene proportions, even though he had rehearsed his lines to an exhaustive degree over the months of working with his linguistic research team. He knew it so well that he could pronounce every particle and nuance in his sleep, and that was a very good thing since it required so much of his personal energy to keep the mental concepts in sharp focus. The spell was long because it had to cover contingencies and redundancies the likes of which these fools could not imagine, and it was very easy to believe that the spell really was some sort of computer program as it took a 128 Meg memory chip just to verify that the translation was consistent with the overall spell structure.

That being the case, however, his ordeal was nearly ended and he had only a few moments to go before his life's work would finally be ended...and then the tribulation would finally begin and let the corrupt and wicked governments of the world beware for the unrighteous sinners were soon to be swept from power, and a new millennium would truly begin as was promised by God in the holy Revelation.

"Yes," Lord Pyron spoke, breaking a long silence, "I can feel it happening...the gates are finally about to open, and already I can sense a mind of immense breadth, scope and power start to take notice of the opening of the portal."

"Finally," Dimitri breathed with a sigh, "It has come at last...the day of reckoning is at hand, and soon my demonic father will know what it means to have a prodigal son express my deepest regards for the one who sired me and gave me unholy life."

"And then you mean to take his from him, eh?" Morgan asked rather archly.

"But of course," Dimitri turned a look of genuine concern towards his succubus companion, "What troubles you, my dear? You are most unnaturally upset for what should be a time of jubilation. You have always thirsted for the fight, and now that we approach the river you act as if you would rather be...elsewhere."

"It's not that," Morgan replied, "It's just...Dimitri, you and I...we come from different worlds but we have always known a certain thrill and excitement from being in each others presence. Whether as enemies or...as something else...I have respected you as a man whose true strength lies beyond his mere ability to do battle."

"What do you mean?" Dimitri seemed genuinely surprised by that statement.

"That you show courage in a fight, but there is a kind of rude nobility about you that I find...exciting and forbidding at one and the same instant," the succubus queen answered, "You may battle to the death, but you will never press a fight if you find the prey less than a challenge to your prowess. You can be merciless and pitiless, but you respect an enemy's courage and will honor a foe who does valiantly and fails by granting him a fitting death as a warrior, sometimes almost an equal. That speaks a lot for the man you are beneath that cool and icy demeanor...a man who finds as much joy in testing his limits as I do, and who bores easily with the trivial, petty concerns of day-to-day existence."

"What are you getting at, woman?" Dimitri asked, "I always thought you lived for the fight, just as I do. I thought we were having fun, either when clashing as enemies or allies or...as something else altogether."

"Fun?" Morgan responded, "I had all but forgotten what the word meant until I met you, Man, and yet...it troubles me greatly this thing we are about to do together. It is like your acquiring that Kama-whatsis maneuver that you were using on me before."

"Yes?" Dimitri smiled confidently, "What about it?"

"Just this," Morgan looked him sincerely in the eyes and said, "If the plan succeeds and you gain the powers of a god, powers enough to crush your enemies and claim dominion over the worlds of Makai and earth...then what next for the remainder of your existence?"

"Eh?" Dimitri asked, "What...next?"

"What does my lord do when he no longer has enemies to oppose him?" Morgan asked, "When there are no more enemies worthy enough to battle against you? When every battle is a foregone conclusion and you win without effort? When there is no more challenge, no more horizons to work towards, no more territory to conquer, no more lands to be vanquished...what then? Won't life become just a wee bit too predictable when there are no more battles and every day is the same as another, ruling over two worlds as a God who is absolute and unquestioned?"

Dimitri actually blinked at this, and then he softly said, "You know...I had never really looked at it in...quite that perspective..."

"DIMITRI!"

"Confound it, what now?" Pyron snarled, displaying the first signs of impatience in the better part of the past half-hour.

Jeddah, not being at liberty to break his train of concentration, could only move his eyes to see the shapes that were forming in the space off to his right, but one glance was all it took to make him wish that he could spare the breath to curse the fates as his hated enemies had at last arrived, along with those annoying kids who had been causing such a ruckus before, including the one whom Dimitri had identified as a new Blood Mother.

Recognition of her was almost enough to make him forget about the others since it meant that all hopes for a blood sacrifice would not rest entirely upon Morgan...

"You again?" Dimitri growled as he turned to survey the Darkstalker/Tendo Posse alliance, "I take back what I was going to say about having enemies. It would be a pleasure to rid myself of your kind now and forever!"

"Feeling's mutual, Fangs," Frank growled, brandishing his fists, "Let's rumble!"

"Sounds good to me," Ranma agreed.

"Be mindful of what they warned us about that Jeddah creep," Nabiki noted with more caution in her voice.

"Oh yeah," Talbain averred, "He's easily as nasty to deal with as Dimitri."

"Oh my," Kasumi all too audibly murmured.

"You will regret coming here to face us now," Pyron said with flames intensifying around his eyes, "For in doing so you have fallen into our carefully laid trap, and since we really cannot afford to have you distract us at this critical a juncture..."

"What?" Keiko averred, then instinctively snapped, "Everybody get back-!"

All at once the ground in front of them was sliced open by a huge scimitar that acted as if with a mind of its own to create a gaping furrow directly in the path of where the heroes would have been had they advanced without said warning.

"Nani?" Natsume gasped, turning with a look of dismay to see the one who had hurtled the accursed blade so near to where they would have been standing.

"So," Donovan smiled with a wicked grin, "You didn't fall for that one...never mind, I can innovate as need be for the situation."

"Donny?" Talbain reacted with a start, "What...?"

"Donovan," Frank scowled, "What are you...?"

All at once the massive sword, Dhylec, came swooping down, altering its trajectory from vertical to horizontal pitch, and whirling at them like a giant helicopter blade at general neck level. Had any of the Posse and Darkstalkers not ducked down that very instant they would have been short a head with their souls sucked from their bodies, but as it was Nabiki and her allies straightened up in time, even Frank having avoided decapitation, and as one oriented towards the new sense of danger radiating from the man who was supposedly their ally, only grinning now in a manner that was the very opposite of saintly.

"Why is he doing this?" Kurumi gasped, "Isn't he supposed to be on our side?"

"Obviously he is an imposter," Tatewaki declared, "A true priest of good order would never behave in such a base and treacherous manner."

"Unless...that is him, but not the him that he's supposed to be," Mousse suggested.

"Huh?" Ranma said, "What are you talking about?"

"I get it," Nabiki said as she pointed, "Look over there!"

"Huh?" Frank turned to see what she was indicating then did a double-take, "I don't believe it!"

"Donny?" Talbain also saw what they were indicating, a large crystalline object that had been unnoticed until now as more than just a break in the featureless landscape. Instead it turned out to be some form of prison in which a pair of motionless shapes could be discerned, one of a very large man, the other a small girl of not more than twelve seasons.

"Uh oh," Keiko remarked as she paid more attention to that second figure, "That means trouble..."

"You have that right," said the Anita who was smiling at her from only a few feet away, aura glowing brightly as she summoned up reddish coils of energy and was preparing to unleash them.

Kasumi saw the sword returning on yet another murderous arc and said, "Um...excuse me...but we're still in danger here."

"Everybody down!" Nabiki cried, this time flattening as the sword passed around about waist level, slicing through what would have been their mid-sections had anyone been slow to react.

And yet for some odd reason the sword managed to avoid Kasumi altogether, singling her out as the one who was obviously not a target for dissection, which prompted her to say, "Oh my...is he avoiding me? That doesn't seem very...right somehow."

"How correct you are, my dear," Dimitri crowed as he appeared directly behind Kasumi and attempted to lay hold on her, yet with no apparent difficulty Kasumi avoided his lunge and turned to face him directly, seeing his slightly vexed expression and clear intent of grabbing hold of her on the next try...

"What did you do to him?" Frank snarled as he moved to avoid becoming a victim of the whirling demon blade, "If that's not Donovan Bane...!"

"Oh, but it is...that is the beauty of this," Pyron crowed, "My old nemesis has been separated from his dark half and trapped in amber like a fly while his shadowy demon side is free to prevail upon you, his accursed allies. Run though you might, his sword will find you eventually and then your agonies will be long, sweet and endlessly painful..."

"Oh yeah?" Ranma snarled, "Then try this on for size, asshole!"

Ranma extended a hand and all at once a powerful wind kicked up and created a massive vortex, which same he then hurled into the path of the demon sword, deflecting its arc so that it hit the ground with a massive "THUNK" and sank halfway into the soil. He made another gesture and all at once the ground solidified and hardened into rock, which then became a quartz-like crystal that froze about the sword up to the hilt and held it there immobile.

The false Donovan Bane went from a fiendish smile to a demonic snarl of fury, stretching out a hand and obviously straining to pull the sword free from the ground, but Ranma strained just as hard to hold it there, obviously expending energy despite the demon sword's own attempt to break free of its prison.

The false Anita blazed with unholy light and with a furious attack lashed out at Keiko Arigami, who had no chance at all to avoid the telekinetic effect and was instead slammed into the ground by a force to rival that of a titan.

"Still think I'm just a little girl now?" the false Anita smiled, "I should have left you a withered old hag, which is what you are, Big Sister...but instead I think I'll just squash you like a bug, which is what you're worth to me..."

"Sure kid," Keiko murmured faintly, going limp, "Do what you have to...that's all we can do in this world, you know...not like the world hasn't given you reasons..."

"Huh?" the false Anita blinked, "You're not fighting back? You're no fun at all! Do you think I'm just gonna go easy because you won't put up a fight, well, do you?"

Keiko did not reply, just continued to act like a limp rag doll while the false Anita applied crushing force and attempted to grind her into the earth, creating a deep rut without a response from her opponent.

"Die!" the false Anita cried, "Why won't you die? You should be screaming for your life as I crush the life out of you! You're not even fighting me! What happened to your resistance?"

"What resistance?" Keiko suddenly declared from directly behind the little girl, "You're not even real, and neither is your attack. All you're managing to do there is crush another illusion."

"What?" the little girl started to say when a hand pressed against her neck and she suddenly went limp, her eyes rolling up into her head as she lost consciousness altogether.

"Sucker," Keiko grinned at the unconscious little girl, "Think I didn't already know that nothing here is real unless you believe it to be the truth? By not believing in your attack I made myself invisible to your powers, and by projecting an illusion of myself where you believed me to be I got you to expend your powers without having to actually resist you. Pretty neat, huh Nab-chan? Nab-chan?"

She glanced around and saw why the one she addressed was not paying attention to her particular situation at the moment, for Ranma was still locked in a visible strain against the vicious looking false Donovan, and from the looks of things it was a very uneven struggle.

"Ranma-kun?" Nabiki blinked as she saw the strain on her husband's features, and at the sword that he was somehow holding fast in rock with an extended left arm gesture, "How did you do...?"

"I'll explain in a moment, Nabchan," Ranma said between grit teeth, "Somebody...take out that guy quick!"

"Already on it," Natsume said, "Kurumi...to me my sister!"

"Hai!" the fleet-footed girl declared and at once charged at Natsume, leaping onto her back as the older girl hunched down to provide a ramp for propelling the younger girl airborne. Kurumi leaped from Natsume into the air and whipped out her pink hair ribbon, whirling it into a vortex at such a speed that the air around the Ki-charged thing caught fire, even as Natsume straightened up and began whirling her rub beater in a pre-set pattern, declaring as she did so, "ANYTHING GOES SPECIAL ATTACK RYU-SPIRALING ICE-DRAGON!"

"FOOLS!" the false Donovan Bane declared as he ceased trying to will his sword free and instead made a double-hand gesture that caused a figure to appear in the air directly above him in ghostly outline. The over-image radiated Ki power, and yet when Natsume's Ice-beam struck the man bold in the chest she disrupted his concentration and banished the spell before it could be completed, and then all at once he was encased in a block of ice as thick as a small mountain, the air literally congealing about him to a hardness and consistency worthy of diamond.

"Wha-at?" Natsume herself seemed surprised at her own achievement.

"Wow, Oneechan," Kurumi marveled, "Your ice beam's really gotten a heck of a lot stronger..."

"No doubt magnified by the subspace field itself, not to mention your Slayer powers," Frank remarked before turning to scowl at Pyron, "Got any more tricks up your non-existent sleeve, buster?"

"Incredible," Pyron said, "Had I not witnessed it with my own eyes..."

"Eh?" Dimitri paused in his futile attempts at grasping hold of the ethereal Kasumi, "By fool of a brother...defeated by a mere mortal?"

"Hey, she iced him pretty good," Keiko grinned, "Don't mess with Nachan, she's a pretty cool number."

"Thank you...I think," Natsume dubiously remarked to the kickboxer.

"I would take the compliment for what it is, my love," Tatewaki turned to lord Pyron and said, "Surrender now, base villains...you are outnumbered and outmatched."

"You must be joking," Dimitri dismissed, "In another few seconds the victory will be ours and...that is odd...why did Jeddah just cease his chanting?"

"Because he needs his wind for something else at the moment, my lord," Morgan replied as she held the Lord Jeddah by his neck off the ground, extending him one-handed at full arms reach, "Forgive me but I cannot allow this farce to continue. This accursed spell that this fool is so intent on pronouncing could be the death of us all, and not just because you are trifling with a King of the Rakshasa."

"Morgan!" Dimitri was visibly shocked at the behavior of his lady partner, "How can you do this? To betray me...and when I am on the verge of achieving godhood?"

"Forgive me, but that means less to me than you might think it should, my Lord," Morgan replied, "In my eyes you are already a god, and you have always been, my Lord Dimitri. No spell cast by man or priest can alter that bedrock certainty. You are the man I choose to rule beside me over Makai, and I chose my lot with you rather than my own treacherous father. You are the sun and the moon to me, and I bask in the light of your glory, and this was true long before you borrowed the knowledge from that boy that gave you the power to delight and bewitch me, my dearest lord Dimitri."

"Morgan..." Dimitri said, words failing him for the moment.

"And that is why I cannot allow this priest to blaspheme the good name of Dimitri Maximoff by sullying you with his filthy enchantments! You are too near and dear for me to see you elevated into some charade of omnipotence! This mad priest of Apocalyptic visions will not touch one whit nor hair of my chosen lord with his foul recital of a dead pharaoh's mad attempts at godhead!"

"Uh...is it just me," Talbain ventured aloud, "Or did that not make any sense whatsoever?"

"I'm telling you, pal," Frank murmured at a low stage whisper, "Women just don't make any sense when it comes to romance and stuff..."

"Tell me about it," Keiko mused, earning a curious side-glance from Nabiki.

"Morgan," Dimitri said, "You don't really mean that? You would give up on power, on the ability to reap vengeance against your father and all his minions, to sacrifice your life's ambition to rule over Makai...just to keep me as I am, not to compromise for the sake of achieving godhood?"

"Think beyond yourself, Man!" Morgan snapped, "This be about more than any mere godhood. Think of the cost to you, to us, if this fool is allowed to complete his invocation! Do you think me blind and a fool not to see what he was planning all along? He was about to betray us, to use this spell to entrap and bind you and Lord Pyron while he offered me up to your loathsome father as an offering to seal the pact and open the way for universal slaughter!"

"What are you babbling about, Woman?" Pyron said, "Entrap us? How?"

"By exchanging energies between worlds to effect the transfer of power to Lord Dimitri," Morgan replied, "You would have been absorbed and transferred into the world of the Rakshasa, my dear lord Pyron, while Dimitri would have achieved his godhood but in a state where he would be unable to use it in any intelligent manner. You would have been a mere tool towards achieving his end, while I...I would be quite dead and of no use to anyone. So...thank you but no, my dear Lord Jeddah, I think a half-breed Incubus such as you is quite clever enough without being offered your mad wish on a silver platter."

All at once a dark whirlwind appeared in the midst of the unearthly setting, and then several figures appeared, at the center of which was Lord Raptor and the surviving Dark Pack of Darkwulf, Gunther and the B-Girls, who looked around in understandable confusion, no longer bound as before but quite out of sorts and unable to make out what changes in the script had been allowed to happen.

"Don't worry, Boss, the fun has arrived..." Raptor proclaimed, only to do a comic double-take as he saw Morgan holding a blue-faced Jeddah at arms length, "Um...did we miss somethin' here?"

"Yeah, what gives?" Darkwulf demanded, "Why's Anslat siding with the good guys? And why's everyone standing around looking like it's a morgue, not a party? I thought by now the fireworks would start to happen."

"Wolfie's not the only one who'd like to have a bone or two throne here," BB Hood said uneasily, finding herself disarmed and surrounded by people who would like nothing better than to kick her butt.

"Yes," Lilith agreed, "Is the spell on or off yet, and if so, why do we see no Rakshasa?"

"The answer here is quite simple," Dimitri replied with a rakish smile, and all at once he made a gesture with one clawed finger, and suddenly Morgan cried out and reached for her hand, reflexively releasing her death-grip on Jeddah, who backed away clutching at his windpipe and sucking in air in an attempt at recovering his bearings.

"Dimitri...what...?" Morgan gasped as she saw her blood oozing from the scratch that she had just taken.

"I am so sorry, my dear, but I cannot abide you interfering at this point," Dimitri informed her, "You were quite correct in your analysis...up to a point, but in no way was I intending to let Jeddah make a sacrifice of you. I only let the fool think he had the upper hand because I knew that he would be more...tractable and easy to manipulate if he thought he was the one who would betray me."

"And you kept knowledge of this from me?" Pyron asked.

"But of course," Dimitri answered, "We are allies, but only up to a point, and I know perfectly well that you were intending to betray me once I had obtained the dark powers of my father, at which point you meant to slay me and steal those energies for yourself, correct?"

"I see that I made a mistake in underestimating you," Pyron scowled, "However, I was prepared for such an exigency, and if you had attempted to use your demonic powers against me you would have found yourself confronted with a very nasty surprise the likes of which even a god would find disconcerting."

"I would have weathered your amusing attempt to circumvent my abilities and allowed you to expend force in your attempt at mastering me," Dimitri said, "And then I would have shown you how I deal with fools who think themselves too clever for their own good. Of course I have no doubt that Jeddah was also plotting his own contingency spells and had crafted into the general lay several backup programs that we both would have found rather nasty."

"Wait," Talbain pleaded, "I'm getting confused here. Who was going to betray who here?"

"Sounds like a mutual party," Frank scowled, "And ordinarily I'd wish the lot of you a fun time if not for the annoying detail of some rather nasty Rakshasa who'd be swarming about the place."

"A few of my father's dark minions hardly constitutes a swarm, old friend," Dimitri said dismissively, "And I could have handled that few once I had gained the full powers from mastering my father."

"Are you sure it was only going to be a few?" Nabiki asked.

"Eh?" Dimitri turned to her, "Why do you ask?"

"'Cause Nabchan senses the same thing I do, guy," Ranma spoke up, his eyes round with alarm as he stared up at the formless gray heavens, "There's a lot of really bad vibes in the air, and they pretty much are a swarm, a lot more than just a few, and more than I'm sure you'd want to handle."

"Bah!" Dimitri scowled, "My minions would deal with the few dozen or so who might seek to slip past me unnoticed..."

"Ah...boss?" Darkwulf said uneasily, "About those minions...er...I'm afraid we're all that's left, and we're fresh out of Goya minions."

"Eh?" Dimitri reacted with growing alarm, "You are certain of this? They are all dead?"

"Azzz fliezzz on a toxxxic blowfizzzh," Queen-Bee answered.

"Oh dear," Dimitri said, "Then perhaps it is just as well that Jeddah has not completed his spell, or else..."

"FOOLS!" Jeddah cried, having regained his wind and what passed for his senses, "I was nearly completed with Morgan interfered, but I have but one word to speak and the spell will be empowered, and HE is coming now...Satan and all his minions! Mor'ghul is listening to us now and hears you spew your plots and treasonous obscenities against him! He hears and he knows what you were planning, and he is not amused, nor am I, my false friends and supposed allies!"

"He sounds like he's gone totally nuts," Keiko remarked with aversion.

"Insane is giving him way too much credit," Natsume reasoned, "Even sanity would not sound so...imbalanced."

"You know what they say about crazy people," Nabiki shrugged, "At least they're committed."

"It is often truly said that a fanatic is someone who acts as he is certain God would do were he possessed of all the facts," Tatewaki reasoned.

"Careful," Frank cautioned, "He's a lot stronger than he looks, and he's got powers and abilities that rival Donovan's at full tilt, and it won't be easy to touch him 'cause he can drain your energy and use it to fortify himself."

"He's gotten fast too," Talbain added, "Years of fighting to survive on the demon worlds has make him a pretty powerful scrapper, so don't take him for granted just because he's loonier than a fruit bat."

"Oh my," Kasumi averred, looking very distressed as she took in the whole situation.

"Fools," Jeddah said once again, this time a bit sadly, "I am done with fighting, the petty squabbles we've waged have achieved nothing for any of us over the years, and so I am prepared to make an end of it, to end all suffering and doubt with me forever. If I am truly blessed with a mission by the almighty, then I will succeed this time for all your valiant attempts to stop me, but if I fail...if my whole life has been for nothing...then I do not care to see it to the end. And so I make the final testament to my faith, to my belief in my cause, in my mission by giving this ritual the sacrifice it needs in order to be completed."

With that he whipped out his curving belt knife and brandished it, earning a contemptful snort from Morgan, whose hand had fully healed by this point, allowing her to concentrate the full measure of her venom in a sneer at her nominal ally, "What d'ye plan to be doing with that, Man? Scrape the dirt from my fingernails?"

"No, wait!" Nabiki cried out, already seeing the direction in which this was headed.

"No," Jeddah replied to both her and Morgan, "You both wait. I am done with waiting forever..."

And with that he reversed the direction of the knife and with both hands plunged it into his chest, gasping out two words before his heart was pierced through the center, "Ramori Venu!"

At that the sky darkened and all at once a lighted area opened up over Jeddah's head, and a ruby eye stared down at the astonished Darkstalkers and Posse before an unearthly voice rumbled out a thunderous, "I SEE YOU!"

"Osh*t," Talbain faintly whispered, earning a faintly disapproving glance from an equally distressed Kasumi..."

Continued.

Comments/Criticisms/Moving Day Torments: shadowmane

Well, here it is, the big moving day, delayed by two from what I'd originally intended. You never know how much stuff you accumulate in a lifetime until you have to fit it into a truck and transport it across country, but I need to get out of Ridgecrest, the gateway to the Mojave Desert (which some wag nick-named the "Gateway to Hell" on account of the ungodly heat that we experience in the summer). This will be the last time that I send out from the Ridgenet area, but I do plan on forwarding all my E-mail to a new account that I hope to have established by the end of the week, if not sooner. Feel free to send comments to my old address until further notice, and when I've finally moved I'll be certain to post it on my various websites.

It will be a delay before I get around to part 129 of this series, but when I do get back into the full swing of things I intend to wrap things up in a decisive and conclusive manner (no, I'm not bringing AVST to a conclusion, just the "Vampire Kasumi" section). So next time it's the Posse and Darkstalkers united against the evil of the Rakshasa with the fate of both humanity and vampire hanging in the balance, and who should hold the key to our salvation but none other than Kasumi (boy, are we in trouble...). See you next time in: "Rage and Madness," or, "A crop of(BLEEP) Now!" Be there!

X

/pre 


	51. Chapter 51

preDnabiki129

Nabiki 1/2

"A Very Scary Thought!"

by Jim Robert Bader

(Inspired by the works of Rumiko Takahashi Others,  
with a special appearance by some of my own creations and those of Joss Whedon. The Character of Frank is my own interpretation of the Monster of Marry Shelly's novel and is thus a free agent, so talk with him if you want to have him costar in some other series.)

[Special thanks to Bill Guiroff and Shiva for helping the initial proofreading phase of this fanfic series, and for encouraging me to continue the saga of Nabiki 1/2.  
And added thanks to Andrew Greaves for further Darkstalker information...]

Part One-Hundred-Twenty-Nine.

(Set during and slightly after the time of the events recorded in the side-story titled "Honeymoon Hentai")

[No Actual Vampires or other Immortal creatures were harmed in the making of this fanfic...]

HENTAI ALERT-CONTAINS MATERIAL THAT MAY NOT BE DEEMED SUITABLE IN YOUR TIMESPACE DISTRICT, INCLUDING NUDITY AND SEXUALLY EXPLICIT REFERENCES THAT MIGHT BE CONSIDERED EXPLOITATIVE IN SOME QUARTERS, SO BE WARNED BEFORE YOU ENTER OR THE RAKSHASA MIGHT EAT YOU!

"What a revolting development this is..."

"Quiet you," D snapped, "Less lip and more chewing."

"Easy for you to say," his normally silent partner reacted, "You're not the one who has to bite through these tough vines of proto-matter! Do you have any idea what this stuff tastes like? Blech!"

"Nonetheless," D responded, "The sooner you get through this the better it will be for both our sakes. Do you think our enemies stuck us here to be merciful?"

"Thought never even crossed my mind, Boss, honest," his right hand responded before taking a few more bites out of the tough vines that were presently holding them immobile, the Vampire Hunter and his Demon Hand being stuck fast like a black-clad fly in the web of some enormous spider.

"And before you say it again," D added with some annoyance, "This was NOT the result of poor planning and the gross underestimation of our enemies, so spare me from hearing you say that because I have had it up to here with your continuous..."

"I'm through!" his hand announced with a bit more alacrity than would normally be the case, and-sure enough-the vines began to fall away from D's body, allowing him to slough off his remaining restraints and stand free once again with his dark cloak waving to some nebulous breeze kicked up by the surrounding ether.

"About time," D said with some satisfaction, "There's no telling what evil work Jeddah and Dimitri have been cooking up while we were stuck here playing little Miss Muppet..."

"That's Miss Muffet, Boss," his hand corrected, "Sheesh...sometimes I wonder if you've ever really even had a childhood. You could really stand to spend more time around some ordinary humans picking up their nuances so that you didn't always have to come across as such a hermit. Take that new girl on the block for an example...now there's a real cutie, and the best thing about her is that she's already converted, so you don't have your usual excuse for avoiding feminine..."

"Mind your own business," D snapped, "She is still very much an innocent and there is no way that I would drag such a one into my dark and dangerous business."

"Meaning you're shy and she's a bit too classy for your admittedly low standards," the hand remarked, then when it picked up on its master's harsh reaction to this it hastily said, "All right, all right, I'll admit that wasn't called for, but have a break, D-man, I'm only attached to you by the wrist, and who do you think gets all the service when you're feeling a bit too moody and need cheering up..."

D used his powers of concentration to imagine a really hard boulder, then slapped his hand against the side, palm-first, with force enough to be actually quite painful.

"OW!" his hand cried out, "What did you do that for?"

"Try listening to yourself sometime and figure it out," D said as he turned away and started searching his gray horizons, "Now where do we go to find these malefactors? Subspace is a vast, an almost infinitely large playing field, yet objects are no farther apart than your imagination, so we ought to make up for lost time and find our quarry before they can work too much mischief on the universe at large."

"Yeah," his hand replied, "But these bad guys are good at masking their presence, especially that Pyron guy. I doubt that they'd make it easy on you by giving you something to lock onto."

"True enough," D smiled, "But I can lock onto the pattern of our allies, and they have no reason to block me off, so...following their life-patterns I ought to be able to..."

All at once the black-cloaked and hatted Vampire Hunter sensed something very strong from quite close nearby, and with a softly murmured, "I wonder who that could be...?" he turned to face in a particular direction.

"Whoever it is, he's giving off strong vibes, Boss," the hand dutifully warned him, "And very close nearby by the feel of him. I'd suggest employing a great deal of caution when approaching this fellow."

"Duly noted," D replied as he reached over his back and drew an enormously curved katana-like long blade and held it at the ready, "But you know what sort of a cautious man I can be when confronting danger."

"Yeah, and that's why I'm so worried," the Hand remarked, "If you get killed-  
permanently, that is-then what do you suppose is going to happen to me?"

"You'd leave my body and go in search of a new owner," D answered.

"True, but I'd still feel pretty bad about it," the Hand grudgingly conceded, "We make a pretty fair team, and though you may not always value my commentary and rapier wit, you'd still be lost and lonely without me, admit it."

D did not deign to dignify that remark with a response and so instead began to stalk his way over to where he was sensing the incredibly strong energy signature, prepared (or so he supposed) for anything that he might encounter...and thus winding up totally unprepared for the sight that greeted him as he arrived at yet another point in the weirdly unstable frame of space and time that existed within this quasi-sub-dimension.

Rather D was momentarily taken aback, leaving it to his Hand to observe, "I don't believe this. The entire world may be coming to an end and this guy still has time enough to think about THAT?"

"Apparently," D said with understated amazement, witnessing the ancient martial arts master known as Happosai lounging around by a pool area sipping iced tea while his every care and fancy was being tended to by a gaggle of breathtakingly beautiful young women wearing lacy see-through panties.

"Ah, this is the life!" Happosai remarked in blissful contentment, "Who needs the hassle and bother of combat to interfere with a man's simple life's pleasures?"

It occurred to both D and his Hand at that moment that many of the gorgeous women fanning Happosai down or picking grapes to feed him, or otherwise prostrating themselves at his feet in various reclining and submissive positions-while yet another girl gratefully gave him a massage to his shoulders-all bore a strong resemblance to many of their female allies of the benighted evening, everyone from Ling-Ko and her cousins to Lenore, Miyu, Yui and Yasmina to the female members of the Tendo/Saotome household with detectives Miyuki and Natsumi and some women D did not even recognize all giving one the impression that these conjured up Houri were the result of the old man's powerful and perverse imagination. It left one with a peculiar sense that the old man's priorities were somewhere other than with the mission.

"Shall I rub your feet with my chest to ease your comforts, my Master?" a girl strongly resembling Tsien-Ko asked, parting the silken fabric of her top to reveal her perfect melon-shaped breasts while another girl resembling her sister, Mei-Ling, poured tea and offered it to Happosai.

"Oh yes," Happosai said to both offers, "You girls are just too good for me...a little lower, would you, Kasumi dear?"

"But of course honored Grandfather," the girl rubbing his back pleasantly answered.

"I think that I am going to be sick," the Hand remarked to its owner.

"I may just join you on that," D added as he reflected that this was coming from something that used to belong to a greater demon no less.

"Master," one of the girls looked up and remarked, "Look, we have company...and he looks very handsome."

"Not that he would compare with you for looks, Master," another girl hastily added.

"Eh?" Happosai glanced in D's direction then said, "Oh, it's you...you're Vlad's boy by that gypsy woman...what was her name again? I'm getting a bit too old, it seems, and I have trouble remembering names..."

"You no so old, Master," a girl with purple hair assured the wizened old man, "Next to great-grandmother you is strong and virile warrior..."

"Excuse me?" D asked, "You are familiar with my father?"

"Of course I am, my boy," Happosai sat upright, "Just about everyone is, not that you should believe all of the rumors about him, of course..."

"Even the ones that are true?" D asked with arched eyebrows.

"You get to be my age and rumors have a way of proving to be a mere distraction from the big picture," Happosai replied, "Course I knew you when you were little more than a mewling sprout..."

"I think that somewhat unlikely," D candidly observed.

"Pish-posh," Happosai waved the point along, "I've known Frank almost as long from the time he paid me a visit in Japan just a few years after he was created. Now, what can I do for you, Junior? Or do you prefer to play the mysterious type so you can keep the ladies guessing what your real name is, Den-"

"Pardon me, but that's no one's concern at the moment," D said a bit too hastily for it not to sound half-panicked.

"Hey, wait a minute!" his Hand spoke up, "What's this about your real name? I've been attached to you for a century and even I've never learned that..."

"Oh," Happosai glanced down at the hand in question, "Heard about how you lost that...terrible shame and all that. Well, at least you found a useful replacement. Now, as I was saying before..."

"We have no time for that!" D hastily snapped, "We are looking for Jeddah, Pyron, Dimitri and Morgan, to find them and put a stop to whatever it is that they are planning..."

"Oh, why didn't you say so in the first place?" Happosai said before pausing to stroke his chin, "Come to think of it, that's what I came here to do, but when I met up with the ladies...I sort of became distracted."

"We've noticed," the Hand snidely noted.

"That's the nature of this place, old timer," D explained, "This is a between-  
matter realm known as Limbo...or as Subspace to modern theoretical science...which shapes itself in accordance with your will and imagination..."

"Of course it does that," Happosai snapped, "Who do you think you're lecturing to here, some kind of novice?"

"Um...excuse me?" the Hand said on behalf of itself and its master, "You know about subspace and the effect it has on normal human perceptions?"

"What do you think, it's my first time here or something?" Happosai shot back.

"You mean...you know that the illusions it creates are only figments of your perception...and that these young ladies here are only projections of your own subconscious given life and a semblance of token sentience by your own desires to see them in this light?"

"Of course," Happosai replied, giving both D and his Hand a frankly sobering look before adding in a low voice, "You think any of these cuties would be responding this way around me if this weren't all a fantasy projection? Give an old man some credit, son, I wasn't born yesterday, but I'm not fool enough to look a gift horse in the mouth when it's presented to me either."

D actually blinked his eyes at this, then glanced down at his hand, who glanced back up at him in token acceptance of this statement as was given.

"Oh, but Master," the girl next to Happosai (who looked suspiciously like a scantily clad Nabiki Tendo) cooed, "You know that we adore and appreciate you for what you are, not what other people think about you."

"I know, girls, but it's time I got back to serious business," Happosai hopped off the divan and waved a dismissive hand in the direction of his harem, "Hopefully we'll meet again and all that when this is over, but for now..."

All of a sudden the wizened old codger turned an astonished glance off to the side, even as the Hand murmured to D, "Boss...?"

"I feel it too," D said as he turned his eyes in a similar direction, "It is coming from over there, just beyond that figmentary ridge..."

"So what are we waiting for?" Happosai cried as he took off in a fast hope and run, even as his harem dissolved into the subspace proto-matter from which they had been conjured, "Some fool has opened a gate that ought to be kept shut and we have to go and close it!"

D watched the little man run off then heard his Hand remark, "There goes a real pervert, even by the standards of most humans."

"Most demons too you mean," D sagely noted, "In fact I would venture to say that we were just in the presence of a most extraordinary pervert, a pervert beyond most kinds of perversion."

"In other words a real freak of nature," the Hand observed, "But he does have a good point...if someone has opened the gateway to the dimension of the Rakshasa..."

"Then there's not another moment to waste debating the subject of human perversion," D agreed as he started to move forward, "If the Rakshasa get loose and make it to the earth plane..."

"Right," the Hand affirmed, "There's perversion and then there's obscenity, and we all know which category the Rakshasa fall under."

And with that the cloaked man (and his demon hand) vaulted into air and levitated towards the source of the coming conflagration...

"Okay," Talbain said as he stared down at Jeddah's body, "I'll admit that I never saw this one coming."

"He killed himself?" Keiko asked with a mildly disquieted expression.

"Fanatics," Pyron sniffed, "What else could you expect from one of his ilk?"

"Better him than me," Morgan said with a sigh of token resignation.

"Nonetheless," Natsume said as she looked up from the fallen Jeddah to the swirling vortex of energy that hovered above him, "His death appears to have set something in motion, and I do not like the air of foreboding that rises now within my breast."

Ranma nodded in agreement and said, "I've got a bad feeling about this."

"You and me both, Ranma-kun," Nabiki murmured at her husband's side, "And if these Rakshasa characters are as nasty as everyone keeps hinting..."

"Nasty don't even cut it," Frank assured, "Rakshasa are just pure bad news, as you're gonna find out in another minute or two."

"Or less," Talbain added with evident nervousness in his lycanthropic expression.

"Oh my," Kasumi said as she stared into the gap that was forming in the air, "I have never felt anything so...so wrong in my life. It goes against the very Wa of Nature..."

"I totally agree with you, Sister," Natsume averred, "I can feel them...so evil...so cold and alien...like nothing that can be described..."

"If these truly are Rakshasa," Mousse affirmed, "And they're even a tenth as nasty as I've heard about, then we are definitely in a great deal of trouble..."

"Then bring them on," Tatewaki affirmed, holding his bokken at the ready, "They will find us more than equal to any challenge..."

"You sure about that?" Kurumi asked, "'Cause my weird vibes meter is off the charts right now..."

"And with good reason," Dimitri assured them, facing the fissure in time and space with resolute determination in his expression, "My father's realm is an unnatural void where the rules of physics do not behave the same as with what we consider normal. His kind are the dominant life form of a realm that is both dark and chilling, existing beyond the pale of earthly matter. Jeddah's ritual was intended to bridge the gap that exists between our two realms and the ring of light that surrounds our planet and protects us from such perverse and twisted creatures."

All at once a voice overhead declared, **You find us dark and unnatural, my son? But then what do you call yourself who are but a changeling half-breed of tainted stock on the side of your mother?**

"Do not speak to me about my mother," Dimitri snapped, "It was you who tainted her with your seed to produce me, your whelp of a half-breed. But I have spent long years preparing for this moment, old one, and you will find that Dimitri Maximoff is ready to meet any challenge you may have to offer!"

**Bold words coming from a weakling, Whelp,** the voice high above snapped back, **Even those useless allies that you have gathered to your cause show more spark and potential than someone who cannot even prevail against his own accursed half-brother,**

"If you think Donovan is weak then I encourage you to continue in that assumption," Dimitri dismissed, "Though we captured him and the girl through trickery and misdirection, still my hated do-gooder of a half-brother remains a danger to anyone whose cause threatens the welfare of those innocents that he so values. His strength comes only partially from the dark blood that courses in both of our veins, and once riled to anger his temper is equal to that of a hundred dragons..."

**I hear only the same tired old excuses, Dimitri,** the disembodied voice snapped back, **Show me something truly impressive and equal to your bloodline and then you may presume to face me as a worthy heir to the power of the Rakshasa!**

"You wish to test me now, is that it?" Dimitri scoffed, cupping his hands and causing a peculiar glow to surround his body, "Then come on ahead and let us settle this like father and son...!"

"Uh...Boss?" Raptor spoke up, "Y'think that's a good idea rilin'im up like that? 'Cause the vibes I be feeling say this guy's pretty strong even by yer measure."

"Yeah," BB Hood added in, "You're playing with high grade material here, Fangs, not your average level Hellstomper."

"Boss," Darkwulf all but whimpered, "I really don't think taking this guy on is such a good idea..."

"Then stay out of my way and learn for yourselves, Fools!" Dimitri shot back, "I have been waiting for this moment since the time when I could crawl on two legs and call myself even nominally human. I will not back away now when the time of my revenge is all but certain!"

"You sure about that?" Lilith asked, displaying a nervousness that was reflected in the eyes of her "big-sister," Morgan.

"Thizzz goezzz beyond what we bargained for," the Queen-Bee reflected.

"Enough talk and pointless debate," Pyron snapped, "The die has been cast, now it but awaits for you to cross over and make your challenge, Lord Mor'ghul, and then we shall see which of us is the stronger player in this particular drama."

**And you are proposing to challenge me...with him?** the Rakshasa lord sneered haughtily, and then all at once a blast of energy lanced out from the swirling vortex to strike Dimitri in the chest and send the renegade Vampire lord hurtling backwards for a fairly impressive distance.

"DIMITRI!" Morgan cried and at once took off after her vampiric partner in crime.

"Not good," Talbain said anxiously, "He just took out Fangs with one shot, which means the rest of us are toast if that Rakshasa guy nails us."

"Maybe," Frank said in more cautious tones, "Call me crazy, though...but I don't think we warrant that high on More-ghoul's attention-meter..."

"What the...?" Ranma reacted with a start.

"I feel it too," Keiko softly averred, "We've got trouble."

"Trouble?" Nabiki asked, "What kind of trouble?"

"Big trouble, Sister of mine," Natsume affirmed, nodding towards the gap as they all looked up to see a swirl of shapes moving forth from the swirling mass to materialize before them all in the form of living nightmares.

To call them ugly would have been a gross understatement, for they were long and sinuous of body with multiple limbs and tentacles protruding from a torso that was more insectoid than human. They had elongated heads and distended mouths that were full of razor-sharp teeth and they had wings protruding from their backs that permitted them to glide like the long-legged terrors of the night that they were manifesting, and their crimson eyes blazed with horrifying lust for human flesh as they extended razor-sharp clawed arms and swooped down on their open-mouthed prey with a hungry need to rend, rape and mangle that was anything but human.

"Rakshasa," Frank murmured faintly.

"Oshit," Talbain murmured, "We're in for it now..."

Nabiki, Keiko and Natsume were first to encounter these strange beasts, but as they stood ready to dodge their attackers, the Rakshasa paused before them then expanded their bodies, literally opening up from the chest outward to form an enveloping cocoon that they cast about their intended prey, ensnaring all three women before they had a chance to defend against this type of assault. Once surrounded by the translucent pink membrane other tentacles reached out to grip them by their arms, legs and torsos, then even more probing tentacles thrust out to rip through the clothing on their bodies, thus exposing them to further envelopment.

"Natsume-chan!" Tatewaki cried even as he used his bokken to slice one of these horrors in twain, even as Ranma raised a hand and projected a wall of flames that balked the assault by the Rakshasa targeting him, allowing him to spare only a moment to recognize Nabiki and Keiko's plight, even though at the moment he could do nothing to assist them.

Kurumi cried out as another one of these creatures attempted to descend her way, but before it could lay a tentacled upon her body a swarm of chains lanced out to grip the horror in their embrace and arrest its forward movement, even as Mousse strained at the bit and called forth his own energies to protect his defenseless Airen.

"You-won't-touch her!" the Chinese boy snarled, momentarily ignoring the threat posed to him by other Rakshasa, who were baring their claws with a clear intent to rend him to pieces.

"Mousse!" Kurumi saw the young man's peril and forgot all about her own paralyzing fear, whipping out her ribbon and sending the force of her Ki along its length, transforming the seemingly simple piece of silk into a deadly instrument that sliced through Rakshasa bodies as though it were a hot butter knife.

Others fared less well, BB Hood and Lilith falling immediate prey to the enveloping creatures while Queen-Bee and Atros took more evasive action. Only the cyborg Gunther failed to show any sort of a reaction as the Rakshasa descended upon him from all sides, leaving it to Frank to see the peril of his nominal "nephew" as the leather clad giant cried out, "NEPH! Snap out of it! Defend yourself!"

At the last second something came alive in the eyes of the motionless cyborg, and suddenly Gunther snapped to attention and whipped out a weapon arm, and then the Rakshasa intending to strike at him were dismayed to find their situations reversed as machine-gun bullets began ripping apart their semi-ethereal bodies.

"Natsume-chan!" Tatewaki snarled as he ripped through the ranks of his opponents, pausing only to face the horrifying creature who had entrapped his beloved before leaping high in the air and bringing his bokken down in a slash that spit the creature's skull asunder.

Ranma worked his way free from those Rakshasa who had been attempting to envelope him and spared enough energy to send a jet of water lancing out from his left hand to spray the two Rakshasa presently entrapping Nabiki and Keiko, and to his amazement those horrifying creatures screamed out in pain and dissolved before his eyes, leaving both women naked but otherwise unhurt as they fell to the ground choking and sputtering on foul-tasting fluids.

"Nabiki, are you okay?" he cried as he rushed to the side of his wife, "Talk to me...what?"

All at once he felt a tingling in the air as he knelt down to cradle a moisture slickened Nabiki and to his surprise he found Kasumi standing there with her arms raised, a globe of force projecting from her hands to surround an area that included Natsume and Tatewaki as well as the sputtering Keiko.

Even as they began to take stock of the surprising field of tranquility that was keeping the Rakshasa at a distance, one of those not within their sphere of protection got caught in mid-air by yet another of the creatures, and suddenly Queen-Bee found herself swallowed whole into the monstrous belly of the demon. As all eyes turned to see her helpless struggles against the tentacles that wrapped themselves about her body the nearby witnesses were horrified to see those tentacles enter through her mouth, vagina and rectum, and then all at once her body began to dissolve before their eyes, the flesh melting away to reveal her skeleton, then her bones dissolving, and all at once she was reduced to her constituent chemical components.

"How awful," Kasumi breathed, clearly taken aback at the sight of what had just happened.

"She...she...disintegrated?" Ranma gasped.

"More like...digested, Ranma-kun," Tatewaki said with evident distaste as he held Natsume tightly in his arms and added, "And such a fate nearly befell our own loved ones but for your timely intervention, brave Kasumi."

"But...I'm not brave," Kasumi repeated numbly, glancing down at her afflicted sisters, "I'm not...I..."

"Courage is not found in brave words but brave deeds," Tatewaki informed her, "And even as changed as you are, your actions prove to me that you are the woman you have always been, the adopted sister to my beloved, who acts from the heart in no mere show of bravado. Believe in yourself and others will believe in you...as I do from this moment onward."

Kasumi looked up towards the dashing swordsman and saw the sincerity in his eyes, then at her recovering sisters, and at the shuddering form of Keiko, and though she doubted her courage was a match to these trained warriors, she knew implicitly that she would do whatever was in her power to protect them against these fearsome Rakshasa, whose intentions were clearly a threat to all that she held dear, and especially to her fellow woman...

Meanwhile someone else was struggling and writhing against the horror that had ensnared her, her eyes wide with the realization of what had just befallen a friend, and which was about to happen to her for all her attempts at winning her freedom, though mere human flesh was only fodder to the Rakshasa and she was helpless, without any weapons to manage her own defense...

"RED-NO!" Talbain cried as he saw the plight of the blonde mercenary, then like a savage beast he began to slash and hack at the creature holding BB Hood captive, showing animalistic fury as he ripped the thing to pieces then pulled the naked blonde to relative safety. She was coughing and sputtering out dissolving fluids while she whimpered like a little girl huddled in the werewolf's arms even as he drew her away from yet more of the slavering creatures.

As he carried BB Hood into the protective sphere being maintained by Kasumi, however, the Rakshasa holding Lilith captive suddenly learned of its grave error as the Succubus managed to turn the tables from within and absorbed enough energy from the creature to shrivel it up from inside, causing its body to dissolve into a puddle of bubbling acids while she stretched lithely and displayed her magnificently nude body.

"Ah...refreshing," the blue haired girl smiled, "Now who else wants a piece of me? C'mon, don't be shy...Lilith just wants to play with you boys...er, you are boys, right? Oh well, I never was too discriminating about my bed partners..."

Those Rakshasa who had just witnessed the fate of their dissolved comrade looked back at the succubus dubiously then seemed to internally debate the wisdom of her proposal...

"My lord?" Morgan asked from where she was kneeling over Dimitri.

"Do not concern yourself with me, Woman," the vampire said testily as he managed to sit up on his own power, "Rather defend yourself, for we have company come calling."

"Indeed?" Morgan turned an angry glare to those Rakshasa nearest to her and said, "More fools they to think that they can take the rightful queen of Makai as one defenseless.

All at once tendrils of dark energy lanced forth from her body to pierce Rakshasa flesh and rend those hapless demons asunder. Dimitri rose to his feet and began snarling, baring fangs and clawed hands as he prepared to unleash his own deeply suppressed fury on the minions of his inhuman father.

No longer held in check by her fears Kurumi was everywhere active fighting back-  
to-back at the side of Mousse while the two of them managed to fend off yet more of the Rakshasa with chains and ribbons that held the horrifying creatures at a distance.

Frank had a more blunt approach to dealing with his share of the Rakshasa, using his fists to batter them like clubs when they got within his considerable arms reach. His bio-electrically-charged golem flesh was impervious to the best efforts of these demons, and when he struck with enough force there was no doubt to be had that they felt it as many openly dissolved, having lost all coherent hold over their basic dimensions.

Similarly, Pyron was having no difficulty swatting the Rakshasa who dared to challenge him away before burning their bodies into ashes, seeming almost palpably bored at the lack of any real challenge posed to his fiery body by the hideous creatures, a point of fact that he confirmed with his next comment.

"This is pathetic!" he snarled, "I would have expected better from the fearsome legends regarding your Rakshasa minions. Is this the best that you have to offer me, lord Mor'ghul?"

**Of course not,** the Rakshasa Lord replied, **This was merely a testing phase to see how formidable you and your allies might be, but while you dally here yet more of my minions are slipping past you and invading the Earth plane, seeding the way for my eventual crossover.**

"What?" Frank whirled about only to find a second vortex had opened through which dark shapes were moving, "Oh no...this is bad...way awful..."

"Frank?" Talbain asked as he crouched outside of Kasumi's protective force-  
globe, "What are we gonna do?"

"No choice about it," Frank snarled, "We need Donovan...the REAL one! He's the only one of us who can cope with an enemy force numbering in the hundreds...maybe even thousands."

**Try millions, fools,** Mor'ghul boasted, **Slay a dozen, slay a hundred, slay a thousand of my minions and thousands more will advance to replace them. As powerful as you may be you cannot hope to stand against such numbers, and sooner or later my forces will overwhelm and devour your flesh, and then all of the earth plane shall stand open and defenseless before the fury of my legions! You are doomed no matter how you attempt to defend yourselves, and soon I will claim the victory denied to my dark sire long ago...**

"Uh oh," Ranma murmured faintly to himself before looking down at the recumbent woman in his arms and saying, "Nabiki...come on, snap out of it! We need you! I need you...come on, you're stronger than this..."

Nabiki opened her eyes and looked up into his then said, "R-Ranchan ...wha...?"

"Whoo, what a rush," Keiko managed to say as she rolled over onto her side and ceased heaving up her guts, "I've swallowed a lot of crap in my time, but this..."

"Natsume-chan...please, speak to me," Tatewaki urged of the woman who lay huddled in his own arms.

"C-C-Cold..." Natsume murmured faintly, "So cold...so...alien...inhuman..."

"I hear you," Nabiki blinked then managed to sit upright, "What happened? What did those...things do to me?"

"To us you mean?" Keiko replied, "Nothing much, maybe dissolved a layer of skin at most, but not as bad as being digested altogether. I think the guy who had me was kind of sweet on redheads and wanted to chew his food a little. Can't fault those tentacles, though...almost as sweet a ride as I used to get with the Kraken."

"You would say...I'M NAKED?" Nabiki said with a start, taking in the fact that Ranma had removed his shirt and was offering it to her with an apologetic expression

"This is...highly undignified," Natsume murmured as she reluctantly accepted the top part of Tatewaki's gi and wrapped it around her moistened torso.

"Gee, no one's offering me a shir?," Keiko complained, then smiled, "Oh well...I do my best fighting without restrictions, and who needs clothing anyway, especially around those guys?" she nodded towards the rapacious monsters being held at length by Kasumi.

"Will you be all right, Sisters?" Kasumi asked.

"Oh yeah...just peachy," Nabiki tried to sit up but found she lacked the strength, so she reluctantly refused the shirt offered to her but gladly accepted Ranma's assistance in remaining upright, "So...those are Rakshasa, huh? Feel like filing a claim for sexual harassment..."

"That's Rakshasa for you, Nab-chan," Keiko smiled with her usual resilient humor, "Tentacle rape beasts par excellence, never miss an opening they can't invade when they try and impregnate you with their seed..."

"Impregnate?" now Nabiki did sit upright under her own powers, shock and horror evident in her expression.

"Yeah, but these guys were more into eating us than raping us, so I wouldn't worry too much over that," Keiko said as she got to her feet on her third attempt, "The thing that's worrying me is...what are those things doing on the earth right now if they've managed to penetrate all the way through to our world?"

"Nothing good," Ranma assured them, the tattoos on his arms flowing and rippling as he stared up towards the glowing vortex through which these monsters had been pouring out the whole time that they had been talking, "I think I know what that Mor'ghul guy's up to, and it's nasty."

"Then...we must...repair to earth to defend...our loved ones," Natsume managed to say as she sat up in the lap of her fiancé.

"My love, you best not go anywhere at the moment," Tatewaki urged, only to look up to see Kurumi and Mousse joining them as the swell of Rakshasa pressed in thickly beyond the barrier held erect by Kasumi.

"Oh my," Kasumi herself remarked as she stared at the hideous creatures seeking to ravish and devour both herself and her loved ones, and all at once she knew a previously unknown resolution that filled her being with heretofore unfelt determination. With hardly any effort she expanded the radius of her globe of protection, forcing the creatures back while sparing Talbain and Frank, who seemed surprised at no longer finding themselves in the midst of heavy action.

"This must end soon," Kasumi said simply, "Or innocent lives will be lost to these horrible creatures."

"Er...right," Frank turned to regard the young woman who seemed to radiate an inner light that repelled the creatures of pure darkness.

"We gotta close the gate somehow," Talbain said, "Seal up the portal that's letting the Rakshasa in here...only to do that we need Donovan badly."

"Agreed," Kasumi said with quiet resolution, "But how can we contact him?"

"Good question," Ranma said as he stared at his tattooed arms then said, "Anyone got a suggestion?"

"Huh?" Talbain said, "Talking to yourself, Kid?"

"In a manner of speaking," Ranma replied, then he nodded and said, "Okay, it's up to you, go get 'im, Karina."

"Hah?" the fully nude Nabiki reacted, "Karina? Who the heck is...?"

All at once Ranma's right hand glowed a bright golden coloration, and then something shot from the tips of his fingers taking the form of a fast-moving winged object that was a blur to the eye though it left an impression of something distinctly feminine in outline.

"Whoah," Keiko said before giving Ranma a side-glance, "You have been busy, Boyo."

"Ah...yeah," Ranma winced, "About that..."

"Save it for now, Kid," Frank said, turning to the others and saying, "I just hope Donny gets here in time. I don't like the way those Rakshasa are swarming on both ends of the gate. We could be talking major invasion here, and if they attack in the numbers Ghoul-face was suggesting..."

"Then they will overwhelm the earth and turn our world into a charnel house," Tatewaki averred, "Unless we somehow manage to stop them here and now before this goes any further."

"Agreed," Natsume averred softly, "Only...what? Those...things are nearly unstoppable save by extraordinary means, and when they captured me...when they captured us up into their foul gullets and subjected us to such loathsome abuse..."

"Right," Nabiki nodded, "Like being with Madam Lao's pet Kraken, only worse...much, much worse."

"Hey, the Kraken's a pussycat compared with the Rakshasa, who ain't too concerned with the welfare of their victims," Frank said in a somber voice, "I just hope that the guys we left behind can handle whatever gets through. Vampires can kill Rakshasa, but even a Master can be overwhelmed if you send enough of the murderous buggers up against them..."

Even as these sentiments were spoken a war-zone was breaking out in the formerly sleepy graveyard adjoining to the suburbs of Nerima. The vampires and their allies, plus several dozen heavily armed police officers and SWAT team members were all caught by surprise as the gateway flung open and admitted a mass of hideous, swarming shapes that swooped down over everyone before the impulse to shoot could reach those with fingers on weapon triggers.

"Rakshasa!" Leguire exclaimed in shocked disbelief.

"What's happened?" Yasmina asked, "How did they...?"

"Talk later!" Lenore cried out, even as a creature descended upon her, and all at once she launched herself right at the monster and slashed it with her hand, which automatically distended nails as sharp as claws that tore into the Rakshasa flesh and caused the creature to scream as though its very soul were being torn from its body.

The same could not be said for the various policemen and women under siege by the winged beasts, and before anyone could do more than squeeze off a single shot the wave of nightmarish horrors was upon them, and one by one the humans went down, engulfed by the enfolding flesh envelopes that the creatures used to entrap their victims.

Two policewomen in particular were the first to fall prey to these horrors, but in the case of Miyuki and Natsumi they were fortunate enough to have allies near to hand who were quick of wit and twice as homicidal. Leguire moved before the Rakshasa even knew there was a vampire in their midst and suddenly the two engulfing the off-duty policewomen were sliced cleanly open, waves of energy leaching out from the creatures into Leguire as he fed upon their deaths, growing stronger in the process as he turned to lash out at other creatures that were only just then turning to confront him. He reigned havoc in the midst of those foul demons while the two women he had just liberated coughed and sputtered at their near-encounter, a rescue that-unfortunately-was none too evident in the case of many of their police brethren, both male and female.

Entrapped in the midst of the Rakshasa stomachs those hapless victims were left to writhe and struggle with impotent efforts that were muffled by the liquid folds of the ethereal creatures. The Rakshasa drained their victims even while inducing stimulating sensations to their central nervous systems, waiting until the moment of peak ecstasy was reached before unleashing powerful stomach acids that dissolved their prey into their constituent chemical components. In this manner eighteen policemen and women perished while their comrades looked on in horrified amazement, while yet more of their number succumbed to the Rakshasa, even as the remaining officers finally gave into their warrior instinct and unleashed a deadly salvo of bullets and buckshot, all to little avail as much of their projectile weaponry passed harmlessly through the ethereal bodies of these predatory creatures.

But one human proved to be less impotent than the rest, and her sword was of finer tempered steel that could slash through anything, either living or unliving. Rakshasa after Rakshasa met its end with a high-pitched scream as Nodoka wove a deadly pattern with her family's katana and claimed every creature that came within reach of her all-too-effective sharp-edged weapon.

"Fight you too!" she snapped to the side as Soun and Genma cowered behind a pair of headstones.

"Fight?" Soun asked, "But...with what?"

"Anything, Tendo-kun," Genma responded as he saw his wife standing alone in the midst of their adversaries, then spotted the discarded Naginata left behind by Natsume and snatched it up, turning it into a helicopter-blade like glaze of steel and fury that began felling Rakshasa at a distance, soon rivaling the total racked up by his wife in fallen and dissolving demonic bodies.

"Oh hell," Soun declared when he reacted with a start, finding the hilt of a sword being handed to him, and with a look of surprise he found Leguire was the one who was making him the offer.

"I assume you know how to use one of these?" the French Vampire asked before turning and using his claws to rend the flesh of yet more Rakshasa victims.

Soun never got the chance to make a verbal response as he was soon seen fighting for his life with the rapier being wielded Chinese-style and Soun fighting furiously to reach the side of his best friend and Genma's wife, the three of them holding their ground against the deadly tide seeking to overwhelm them.

Meanwhile Julian was darting about with his twin blades, slicing through Rakshasa as if weaving a dance of death that cleared the center of all evil creatures who came anywhere near him. Chloe the Werewolf had already taken on the bestial form of her ancestors and was slashing Rakshasa with powerful blows that left dissolving bodies everywhere within her wake. As for Kiima the Ghost, the first Rakshasa who came near her learned to its ruin that her ethereal nature was altogether deadly to its kind as she seemed to expand and contain the deadly creature, then tore him apart as effectively as if he had been subjected to a quisinart, leaving nothing behind but rapidly dissolving pieces.

"Not good!" Yasmina called out as she found herself fighting back-to-back with Leguire, standing guard over the remaining humans, who had somehow managed to wind up huddled together between several overturned police cars.

"You are right," Leguire said, "There are too many of them and not enough of us to staunch the tide, and they keep coming."

"So what the hell are we supposed to do?" Lenore asked, ducking low beneath a claw slash that came close to decapitating her.

"We keep fighting until we drop, of course," Julian responded, "Unless, that is, you have a better suggestion."

Leguire was about to say something when he felt a tugging at his pant leg and glanced down to see a fierce-eyed and determined Natsumi looking up at him, then very clearly the policewoman said, "How do we kill these creatures?"

Leguire turned to regard the encircling mass of Rakshasa, who were now formed solid ranks to contain the defenders like rabid hounds that had surrounded the hunters. Licking his lips the Loire Vampire said, "Several means come to mind, but none that we can use. Rock salt and any electrolyte will cause a massive disruption to their energy matrix, but as for bullets...you have to it them precisely in the forehead, right where the pineal gland would be located in a human..."

"That's all I need to know," Natsumi replied, and then she took a revolver borrowed from a fallen comrade and place three quick shots into the foreheads of the nearest of the Rakshasa.

Those creatures cried out and dissolved before the eyes of their astonished comrades, leaving Natsumi to smile as she took careful aim at the rest and said, "Anybody else feel lucky?"

Miyuki cocked her own weapon and took careful aim then said, "Care to make a wager over which of us is the better shot here, Monsters?"

Other surviving officers got the hint and quickly pointed their weapons at the hideous faces before them, while the Rakshasa snarled, momentarily checked by this threat, though clearly intending to press the battle again at any moment.

Yasmina risked a quick glance at Leguire and said, "Are you smiling, Jean?"

"It's just that I am suddenly remembering what it is I like so much about humans," the Loire replied, "They live short and shallow lives, but some know how to live indeed."

"Really?" Miyuki asked, "And I just thought you liked us because we taste like ketchup."

"Detective, you wound me," Leguire said in mock derision, only to pause and cock his head to one side then say, "Odd...what is that sound?"

"Sounds like a motorcycle," Lenore spun around, "And it's coming fast...this way!"

Chloe looked up from where her jaws were dripping with black ichor and her bestial face took on a surprised expression. Kiima read her intentions and said, "Yes, I too recognize the motorcycle in question."

"Really?" Julian said as he turned around and got a very surprised expression, "Holy...!"

That was when the night suddenly opened up and the fireworks began in earnest. A motorcycle nearly as large as Frank's Monster came vaulting high into the night air spitting rockets of death into the massed ranks of the Rakshasa, then-  
-while still in mid-air-the rider hopped up onto the back of the seat and vaulted high into the air, executing a perfect somersault before unslinging a blade that it had kept in a back sheath, a blade that snapped out to twice its folded length and was all at once slicing through Rakshasa after Rakshasa, further thinning their ranks even before the mysterious rider touched down on top of the roof of a nearby police car, larger than life and black clad in gleaming leather.

For a moment Miyuki gasped, "Ken?" earning a sour look from her partner, but then Miyuki added, "No...not Ken...I mean...Nakajima-san...but...who?"

Very calmly the black-clad rider reached up and removed the helmet that he-or rather SHE-was wearing, and then a long mane of hair spilled down her back, black to the sides but utterly white down the center, forming a streak four inches wide like a skunk's tail. The womanly figure herself was huge and quite impressive, easily over six feet-plus and yet oddly well proportioned. She tossed her helmet to one side then smiled...the kind of smile that a dragon might wear, and then nodded towards the Rakshasa and spoke in a voice that was deep, deceptively mild and yet hinting of real mischief.

"Good evening," she said, "My name is Eve, and it's the last name you boys will ever hear. I've heard tell that Rakshasa feast on female prey because you like to rape and devour them. Well, as you can see I was made to be quite female, but if you want a piece of me then you are going to have to step forward and...try me."

Julian shuddered, "Oh no...I knew it, it's her!"

"Her who?" Natsumi asked.

"The Bride," Leguire said in tones of fear and reverence, "The Bride of our much feared Master!"

"Bride?" Miyuki blinked, "You mean...? Oh..."

"One and the same," Eve bowed with a flamboyant wave of her sword, "Made flesh of all womanhood, and of top rate manufacture if I do say so for myself. But is there no man here...or creature...who will take me up on my little offer?"

The Rakshasa ranks snarled viscously and started to advance, leaving Eve to smile and say, "Chivalry is not entirely dead it seems. You boys know how to show a girl a good evening."

"Oh my," Nodoka remarked as the Rakshasa horde dove mercilessly at the lone giant of a woman, yet somehow Eve seemed confident and proud as she stood at the ready, and then the battle was joined in a bloody no-holds-barred fury as tempered steel began to weave a deadly tale of feminine fury...

Dnabiki131

Part One-Hundred-Thirty-One.

(Set during and slightly after the time of the events recorded in the side-story titled "Honeymoon Hentai")

[No Actual Vampires or other Immortal creatures were harmed in the making of this fanfic...]

HENTAI ALERT-EXPLICIT SEXUAL SITUATIONS AND NUDITY COUPLED WITH LOTS OF NAUGHTY BITS THAT MIGHT BE UNSETTLING TO THOSE WITH A PULSERATE. IF YOU HAVE A CONDITION THAT MAKES YOU ADVERSE TO THE ENJOYMENT OF SUCH ADULT SUBJECT MATTER, THEN KINDLY RECUSE YOURSELF FROM THE REMAINDER OF THIS SERIES...  
YOU HAVE BEEN DULY WARNED!

"Whut a bloody mess this's turnin' out t'be..."

"You said it," Darkwulf declared as he, Raptor, Atros, Lilith and the half-  
cyborg Gunther stood in a defensive ring facing a horde of demons that had cut them off from the rest of their party, "Looks like we're in too deep to dig our way outta this one. Kinda ironic when you think about it since we helped open the gate that brought these Rakshasa through in the first place..."

"Yeah, only ironic don't even begin to cover it, mate," Raptor remarked as he gave up trying to estimate the odds that were presently being stacked long against them, "The boss never filled us in that we'd be up to our necks in these soul-eatin' bastards. Thought the plan was t'grab up all the energy O' their boss, not pave the way to a full scale invasion."

"I don't mind the invasion part," Darkwulf said, "But the part where these guys trample over us to breath through to our world is the one that's giving me trouble at the minute. Looks like there's a lot of stuff that the boss neglected to mention about this job, and now I'm wondering if we're gonna last long enough to collect our payment..."

"Would you guys just put a sock on it already?" Lilith snapped, "Of course Dimitri double-crossed you and left us to carry up the slack. What the hell did you expect was gonna happen? The guy lives and breathes betrayal...or he would if he could breathe, that is. The point is...we're stuck holding the bag and it turns out to be loaded down with poison..."

"Didn't exactly hear you raising a fuss when we all got conned into joining this little party, Missy," Raptor snapped in the succubus's direction.

"That's because I'm a sucker for a good fight," Lilith replied with a scowl, "And my big sister got drawn into it too, so who's calling who a naïve twit here?"

"You cubs wanted in on this as much as us," Darkwulf snapped back at Lilith, "So don't complain to us that your little bitch squad took a couple of hits..."

"Shut up, you...flea-bitten hound, you!" Lilith snarled, "Queen Bee's dead and maybe BB's dead with her. It's just Atros and me left to pick up the slack of what's left of the B-Girls..."

"Yeah, an' miss Waterworks here's about as much lively as one O' me Zombies," Raptor noted, albeit not without some sympathy in his raspy voice, "So far she's fightin' on automatic 'cause she's under one O' Jeddahs mind spells, but with the J-man gone, done in by his own hand..."

"What's to keep her from snapping out of her mind-control at any minute and going rogue on us?" Darkwulf noted, "You know she's got about as much love for us as her old man..."

"She won't turn on me," Lilith said, "I was her friend even before Jeddah mind-  
wiped her. You wanna worry about someone going rogue on us, keep your eyes trained on Gunther. Thought I saw his one good eye twitch a little sometime after he ran out of ammo. He's been fighting mechanically ever since, but sooner or later he's bound to override the programming of his implants, and then he's going to get seriously freaked and turn on us to relieve his tension."

Gunther and Atros, of course, said nothing, but their seemingly impassive faces were beginning to show mild animation, and their eyes were no longer quite as glassy.

Darkwulf spared a glance with Raptor and said, "She's got a point on that."

"Might not do t'stand too close to either one O'em if they gets their memories back," Raptor noted with a much sobered expression.

One of the Rakshasa snarled something to his colleagues, and all at once the mass surrounding them grew tenser and appeared infinitely more hostile.

"Whut's eatin' them?" Raptor asked, displaying an inordinate amount of nervousness for a zombie.

"Long as it's not them eating us, who cares?" Darkwulf responded, "Man, what are they waiting for? This standoff thing is getting old, and I'd almost prefer it if they attack us or something."

"You might get your wish," Lilith hunched her shoulders, "I'm picking up mega-  
bad emotional vibes from these suckers, and I don't like the way that they've been eyeing me and Atros."

"Yeah, well, if it's just you girls they wants to party with, I'd say let 'em," Raptor snorted, "Maybe they'll ignore me'n 'Wulf long enough that we'll escape...and besides, way I hears it, these Rakshasa boys're more keen t'leave you girls alive so's you can bear them sprouts, so you'll probably survive it..."

"Gee thanks," Lilith winced, "Like I wanna be a mom at my age..."

"Chivalry is not dead after all it seems."

"Huh?" Darkwulf blinked, "Did one of you girls just say that?"

"Wasn't me," Lilith turned to the amphibious girl beside her, "That you, Atros-  
honey?"

"No," the strangely disembodies voice said once again, then all at once hell burst forth in the midst of the Rakshasa, and before the demons had time to react they were being flung in all directions, some thrown into their nearest comrades with lethal force that ruptured both of their bodies, and like that a space was cleared to one side of the ring, causing the remaining members of the Dark Pack and B-Girls to turn in dismay at their nominal pint-sized rescuer.

"It was me," said the young adolescent girl named Anita as she stood there with her headless doll in hand, "Got any problem with that?"

"The sprout?" Raptor blinked his empty, soulless eyes in disbelief.

"Donovan's silent pet Psi-babe," Darkwulf swallowed, "The mental quisinart?"

"We are sooo dead now," Lilith openly shuddered.

"Maybe not," Anita said in the same flat, inflectionless voice that seemed almost second nature for her as she turned her back towards the B-Girls and Dark Pack, "But if you want to live I suggest you come with me now as we go find Donovan."

"Find...Donovan?" Raptor repeated, "Y'gotta be crazy!"

"I'm not fooling around," Anita said, displaying the barest hint of annoyance in her voice, "We have to go now to help Donovan...and if you want to help Dimitri and Morgan, they're also waiting for us, but you have to follow me now or we won't get there in time to help out."

"Huh?" Lilith blinked, "But...I thought you hated Dimitri..."

"I do," Anita stated flatly, "He killed my parents and he deserves to die for that, but there's something more important than revenge at stake here, and I'm not yet ready to face Dimitri by myself in order to kill him."

"Something more important than revenge?" it was Darkwulf's turn to blink in disbelief, "Like...what?"

"Survival," Anita said without turning back, "Now come with me now or you can face the rest of those demons by your lonesome. Or don't you believe in safety in numbers?"

"Eh...spud's gotta point," Raptor glanced at the surviving Rakshasa, who were snarling like no tomorrow, "Better take a chance she ain't leadin' us into a trap..."

"Like there could be something worse than this?" Lilith asked as she stepped lively and followed close behind the heels of Anita, all but dragging Atros along by one arm in the process.

"I hate it when she puts it like that," Darkwulf snarled as he, too, followed close behind Anita.

"Y'gotta better idea, I'm listenin'," Raptor murmured as he glanced nervously at the snarling Rakshasa all around them, "But right now I don't think them boyos are givin' us much choice, if ye take me meanin'..."

As they started forward so did Gunther, albeit the towering Cyborg moved grudgingly with a halting, mechanical gait, keeping pace by din of his long stride rather than any great haste on his part as he easily kept up with Anita. The lumbering cyborg made an eerie sound in the almost total silence as those few Rakshasa remaining parted before the little girl and her headless doll as if she were the very devil incarnate, though in all truth the one they served was more befitting of that role and was even then staking out his intentions on a certain Vampire Queen named Tendo Kasumi...

"What are we gonna do, Oneechan?" Kurumi cried, dodging an attack, "They've got us surrounded and outnumbered!"

"Yes, and we have already witnessed the ruthlessness that these things exhibit during our previous encounter," a bare-chested Tatewaki concurred as he fought valiantly with his bokken at the side of his half-naked ladylove, Natsume.

"Just hold on out, I'll think of something!" Nabiki declared as she and Ranma fought to hold the line against the multi-appendaged monstrosities attempting to get at them, using Ki attacks while avoiding direct physical contact.

"You guys want a piece of me?" a nude Keiko snarled as she leaped into the air and spun her legs about in a series of lightning kicks that sent Ki-bolts lancing into the bodies of those Rakshasa attempting to grab her. She alighted down as their bodies exploded, then whirled about and cried, "Who else wants some? You wanna poke my ass, you boys are gonna have to work at it!"

Donovan Bane was less voluble about his own disdain for the creatures that beset them from all sides, but his response was to summon up yet another one of his spirit guardians and unleash a powerful wave of Ki that tore into Rakshasa bodies as though their flesh were little more than smoke and mirrors.

"This is nuts!" Talbain snarled as he slashed at the Rakshasa trying to get past him to reach the huddled form of the blonde BB Hood, "They just keep coming, and they're gonna overwhelm us by sheer force of numbers!"

"I know!" Frank declared as he delivered punishing blows with his hammer-like fists, "What do you expect me to do about it? I've kinda got my hands full at the minute...!"

Mousse whipped out with chains and struck the Rakshasa that was inches away from grabbing Kurumi, then with a feral snarl he cried, "How many times do I have to say this-KEEP YOUR CLAMMY PAWS OFF OF MY AIREN!"

"Huh?" Kurumi nearly broke her concentration to glance at the Chinese boy, but she needed her full speed to keep one step ahead of the Rakshasa, which she well knew by now were interested in her purely for her "breeding potential," a thought that inspired her to whip out her ribbon with a hot-Ki blast to discourage these intentions.

"Bah!" Dimitri said dismissively as he easily dispatched three Rakshasa with a taloned hand, "Pitiable minions, you are not worthy to be my enemies! How dare you send this lowly trash to annoy me, Father?"

The Rakshasa lord did not deign to answer, but Morgan-who was busy dispatching yet more Rakshasa with her shadow-thrusts and succubus powers-could not help but note the blazing anger in her sometime partner-in-crime and felt his rage intensify at being so lightly dismissed by his inhuman lordly father.

D easily took down his share of the Rakshasa, his long sword blazing a path of deadly steel to work their destruction. Happosai, who fought near to his side, was also barely troubled by the marauding demons, his formidable martial arts skilled backed by centuries of knowledge in Ki attacks and other forms of effective counter-measures, though in truth the ancient Master never took his eye away from Kasumi, who was standing apart from the fray with a troubled and much-vexed expression, being clearly the object of Mor'ghul's dark intentions.

"Why are you doing this?" she asked of the towering monstrosity, "Why are you trying to hurt my friends and family? What are you hoping to accomplish?"

"That much is simple, my dear woman," Mor'ghul revealed, "I am eliminating an annoying distraction...all the better that I may claim the prize that I most desire, which is your sweet, delectable body."

And before Kasumi's astonished eyes the creature began to change its shape and take on a new form, reducing its mass in the process so that it did not stand out as quite so towering or imposing...though as its new form became clear there was an indefinable aura of power that made the eldest Tendo sibling blink in astonishment and confusion.

"Oh my," she said as she gazed upon the transformed Rakshasa, and in doing so did a slow inventory that took in the anatomical dimensions of his now fully human appearance...

"Red!" Talbain cried as he huddled down beside the blonde whom he had been protecting, "Pull yourself together! We need you on the front lines, girl! We're getting slaughtered out here, and slaughter is usually your business!"

"Cold...so cold...can't fight, Wolfie," Hood replied in a shuddering, little-  
girl voice, "Those...things...they got inside me...and...and they..."

"I know, kid," Talbain said with genuine sympathy in his voice, "But you can't let 'em get to you...or else those things have won already!"

"Leave me alone!" Hood protested, hugging her knees tightly as she huddled there, naked, in a fetal position, toes curling as the memories threatened to drive her past the point of madness...

Nabiki ducked low under a powerful swing by one Rakshasa who seemed eager to claim her body, but even as she readied a Ki-powered counter-attack another powerful appendage swept her literally off of her feet and threatened to leave her vulnerable for a crucial few seconds while the creature sought to overwhelm her...but before it could do so it was met by a number of protruding spikes that shot up from the ground to rupture its body before it could get near enough to claim her prostrate form.

"Hands off of my wife, Baka!" Ranma snarled, then softened his tone and said, "You all right, Nabiki?"

"Oh sure," she said as she flipped herself back to her feet, all too aware of the way her breasts obeyed the laws of gravity and inertia as she readied herself to continue the fight, "I'm naked, hopelessly outmatched by things that want to eat me, and some lobster-headed guy wants to make it with my oneechan. That and I've been molested by tentacles, but otherwise I'm just peachy."

"Just don't say I never take you anywhere to have fun," Ranma quipped, earning a look from his wife that promised a pleasant form of retribution for sometime later, right before they went back to fighting as a team against the Rakshasa invaders...

Talbain was desperate so he decided to try a different track for dealing with his long-time nemesis, "You wanna cower there like a little girl? You're got sterner stuff than that in you, and I should know it! C'mon, Red! Your granny couldn't break your spirit, and I don't see how any stupid old tentacle rape beast could compare to what she put you through!"

"But it was eating me!" Hood all but screamed, "I could feel it...absorbing me...so horrible...like being dissolved alive...like in a snake's belly!"

"Hey, you've been through that once before, remember?" Talbain mildly jested, "You survived it like the last time, so you ought to be able cope with a few tentacle-rape monsters..."

At the moment one of said "tentacle-rape monsters" was attempting to descend upon them from above, but Talbain shot an angry stare and began to glow with a furious battle aura, and that Rakshasa in particular seemed to seriously rethink the situation.

"I...can't...I can't...!" Hood shuddered.

"Hey," Talbain snarled, "Where's the psycho-chick who's been frying my ass for years with everything from M-80s to Napalm to stuff that's not even in Jane's handbooks?"

"But I had my guns the last time!" Hood wailed, clutching her hands at empty space, "I don't have anything now! And without my weapons I'm USELESS...useless...!"

"It is useless for you to attempt to resist me," Mor'ghul declared as he smiled, savoring the stunned expression on the face of the lovely young woman standing before him, "I am infinitely more powerful than you can even imagine, and while I would prefer to do this...pleasurably...I am not adverse to using force to gain what I need from you, Woman."

"Oh my," Kasumi continued to look the man-like shape before her up and down, seeing a seemingly handsome and robustly powerful figure, if lacking in certain culturally mandated accouterments, such as clothing (a condition far too common among the female half of those presently in attendance).

"You are impressed, which is only to be expected," Mor'ghul gloated, flexing his arms in a particularly masculine manner.

"Um...actually," Kasumi forced her eyes to drift down towards the demon's nether-regions.

"Eh?" Mor'ghul followed her line of thought with a questioning expression, only to belatedly catch on, at which point he made the equivalent of human blush then immediately snarled, "It's expandable...I'm not always this size!"

"Er...if you say so," Kasumi replied with a polite (if dubious) expression...

"You idiot," Talbain growled at the blonde Hood, almost with affection, "Don't you realize where you are? This is limbo...where you can create anything if you concentrate on it hard enough! Just imagine you've got guns and they'll appear in your hands, complete with ammo!"

All at once the blonde stopped rocking back and forth on the floor and looked positively stunned, "Really?"

Talbain gasped as yet another Rakshasa attempted to get past him to the blonde that he was protecting, but though it took real effort to struggle against the mass of the insidious thing, Talbain still managed to gasp out, "Sure...all you need is lots of imagination! Just believe IN it and it'll happen!"

Hood stared at her empty hands in dull wonder, then all at once swirling plasma seemed to congeal about them, taking the form of a pair of solid shapes that she grasped like a drowning woman clutching at a life preserver, then with a gasp she found herself clutching at a pair of Ingram automatic machine pistols that took on an even more solid continence the longer that she stared at them...and then she smiled in sudden realization.

"NEATO!" she cried, uncoiling from her sitting position just as one of the Rakshasa managed to break through past Talbain's position. The demon had one instant in which to contemplate the naked prey that stood tantalizingly before it, only to see the twisted smile the blonde turned in its direction, followed shortly thereafter by a pair of gun muzzles that partially obscured its vision, then fire erupted before its eyes and the world went red in an explosion of pain that was followed by oblivion as the magically created shells ripped apart its ethereal body.

"EAT THIS, YOU MOTHERLESS SCUM SUCKERS!" Hood cried as she started spraying a seemingly endless stream of nine-millimeter shells at the nearest of the Rakshasa, taking out the one that had just managed to slash Talbain with its forward claws, almost disemboweling the werewolf before it found its own body being torn and mangled by the hail of deadly fire that filled the air as Hood transformed her fear and hate into righteous retribution.

"YIKES!" Talbain himself dove for cover, his regenerative abilities already repairing the rift to his stomach while BB Hood reigned down death on yet another dozen Rakshasa.

Of course her aim was hardly all that precise, and with bullets whizzing everywhere it was all but inevitable that a stray shot came close to nailing someone other than a Rakshasa. Nabiki found herself ducking under the spray that took out the demon she had been looming over her. Similarly Dimitri and Morgan felt the hiss of hot shells whizzing dangerously close to their own persons, at which point the renegade vampire lord snarled, "What idiot gave her a hunting license?"

"Yer asking me?" Morgan replied, "I'm surprised she can tell friend from foe most days, let alone in this free-for-all..."

All at once a Rakshasa managed to slip last the guard of the exiled queen of Makai and all at once Morgan disappeared beneath its folds, the creature grabbing hold and immobilizing her before she could act to use her powers against it.

"Morgan?" Dimitri's expression registered genuine alarm as he did not feel his companion's energy manifesting to drain the life force of the creature. Sensing that this Rakshasa knew how to paralyze its captive, he moved to attack while it was vulnerable and thus could spare no more time nor energy for contemplating the wild-west shooting of his other erstwhile Darkstalker compatriot.

Frank felt a nick along his cheek and moved the back of his hand to examine the slight trickle of black blood that he felt there, then turned a non-plussed look towards Hood and said, "Who's side is she on anyhow? Those things can even hurt us!"

"I know," Talbain revealed as he surfaced at the side of the towering man-  
monster, "Deadlier than silver, but don't disturb her right now, she's have fun working off some issues. I just knew she needed a kick in that pretty butt of hers to get her back in the action."

It was Keiko's turn to duck low as she sensed the hiss of fire just seconds before the bullets went whizzing past her, then she winced, "Sheesh...how much ammo does she have in those stocks?"

"Probably as much as she needs," D observed, "Right up until she remembers that guns do need reloading. Nothing worse than breaking the illusion that is holding those pseudo-guns together."

Ranma felt something hissing in his direction and started to turn around when a bright burst of explosive fire turned the air in front of him briefly into a flaming shield, at which point he heard Latisha's voice in his ear say, **Careful, Master...bullets are deadly enough to you humans, and these are magically created.**

"Oh...thanks-NABIKI!" Ranma cried out, seeing yet another of the Rakshasa demons looming up in his wife's blind-side.

"Huh?" Nabiki gasped, dodging instinctively at the last instant as the taloned hand of the Rakshasa sliced the air down her backside, and had she been wearing any clothing at the moment she might have had it shredded to pieces as those claws came within a razors breath of leaving stripes down her buttox.

However...something else became a casualty, and for a moment Nabiki felt a slight brush of air before something did, indeed, bounced against her fanny and hit the ground next to her, causing the middle Tendo sister to turn and stare in dismay at the object that she had just lost in the excitement.

She barely even noticed as Ranma shot hot flames into the face of the Rakshasa that had come so near to connecting, but all at once Nabiki gave off a piercing shriek that briefly distracted Kasumi in her confrontation with Mor'gul, giving the Rakshasa lord the opening that he was after...

Someone else was distracted in what she was doing, but Keiko was in a better position to see what had happened and gasped aloud, "Oh Kami...!"

"Nabiki?" Ranma was at her side at once, "What is it? Are you all right? What...?"

And then he saw the severed thing that lay in her hands...the little braid that she normally wore at the nape of her neck, formed of hairs that grew down her back, the "warrior's braid" that he had always wondered about, yet which had been severed dangerously close to collar. Just an inch or two closer and...Ranma swallowed, refusing to think about that possibility befalling his Nabiki.

But then something else occurred, and all at once Nabiki's hair started...growing! Before his very eyes Ranma saw the forelocks and bangs of Nabiki's notorious "pageboy" style helmet-cut began to grow long and lengthy, stretching out around her shoulders to the floor and covering her face beneath an auburn brown canopy that threatened to obscure Nabiki entirely from view. Her hair kept on growing right up until the moment when Keiko rushed to their side and snatched the severed braid from Nabiki's fingers.

"What are you doing just standing around gaping like that?" Keiko declared as she undid the braid with great haste, extracting something from the severed mass that she quickly whipped out as she leaped behind Nabiki and started to gather her hairs up along her nape and with a few quick motions bound them up into a makeshift braid, at which point Nabiki's hair finally ceased growing.

"What...what happened?" Ranma asked as she found his wife with some effort from beneath her "Cousin It" hairstyle.

"Something I only found out about a little while ago," Keiko revealed, "The reason why Nabchan wears this braid down her back all of the time. Ever noticed before that her hair never grows and she's never needed to cut it? Well, now you know the reason."

"I...don't get it," Ranma admitted as he risked a glance over his shoulder to see that no Rakshasa attempted to take advantage of their moment of distraction.

"Back in China, over a year ago, just before you guys met," Keiko revealed, "Nabby drank something by mistake that was made from the boiled whisker of a dragon...a kind of hair-restorative soup this apothecary guy was whipping up to cure his wife's baldness problem. Turns out it makes your hair grow really, really long, but it only works while she's in female form...I think. Well...turns out the only thing that can keep her hair from growing is the whisker of another dragon, so..."

All at once three Rakshasa descended upon them, but Ranma extended a hand and jets of water shot out to blow them away, giving him the moment he needed to say, "So...whenever she takes the whisker out...her hair starts growing again?"

"That's right," Keiko nodded, "Right up until it all falls out when the follicle cells exhaust themselves, which means without the whisker in the braid..." she stopped herself from completing the sentence.

Ranma's eyes went wide with horror and he silently comprehended the reason why the redheaded kickboxer refused to spell aloud the possible outcome. The thought of his wife losing all her hair was a horrible prospect, but the thought of what she might do if this were brought to her attention was infinitely more hideous, and even a young man as prone to putting his foot in his mouth as he was knew better than to tread into that dangerous direction...

Kasumi found herself struggling against the man-shape of the Rakshasa lord, who was using his greater mass and extraordinary power to force her steadily backwards using leverage to overcome her enhanced strength as he drove her to her knees with the clear intent of obtaining her submission.

Making matters worse, once Kasumi was halfway prostrate, the demon lord's small sexual organ began to expand in size and length, stretching out to form a serpentine mass, very much like a python yet with a bulbous head far more menacing than any hissing serpent. Kasumi's eyes went wide with astonishment as she saw the thing approach her own loins, and a part of her mind reacted with dismay at the inappropriate implications.

"You see, woman?" Mor'ghul crowed, "I told you it would grow when called upon to perform its all-important function. Consider yourself blessed that you are about to be graced with my seed and will soon bear my most potent of offspring."

Despite the strain that she was clearly under, Kasumi still managed to gasp, "Is...this how...you impregnated...Donovan...and Dimitri-san's...own mothers...?"

"No," Mor'ghul replied, seemingly under no great strain now that victory was near to his grasp, "With them I used a different approach...a seduction, followed by an attack in the night, and I overwhelmed their resistance and made them bear my young before they knew of my true nature. But with you I have not the time to waste...you know too much already...so I will simply have you for my get and you will become my mistress and rule at my side as I dominate both you and your dimension!"

"I'm...very sorry," Kasumi replied, "But...I cannot allow...this to happen."

"Eh?" Mor'ghul gasped as-all at once-resistance from Kasumi's end melted away altogether. Rather she leaned backwards and drew him forward with her foot rising up to connect with the space between his legs, then while he was reacting to this sudden reversal of fortune her hand shot up to grasp him by the shaft of his "python" and her slender hand applied pressure that was far greater than possessed by a common housewife, the result of which was that Mor'ghul froze up with his handsome male fact taking on a nearly comical expression...

"I need a knife here," Keiko said.

"Huh?" Ranma said in shock, "But...It's not that serious!"

"I don't mean that, Lover-boy," Keiko snorted, "I mean something sharp to rid of most of this hair so Nabchan can see where she's going..."

"Uh...yeah, right," Ranma said, "Nabiki...you all right? Can you hear me under all...of that?"

"She's still in shock," Keiko glanced sideways and glared at the Rakshasa bearing down on them, and with a sudden motion of her hand she sent a force-bolt hurtling its way, catching the thing in its hideous face and exploding its body from the inside out all over.

"Whoah," Ranma said, "Didn't know you could do that..."

"It's easy in this realm," Keiko explained, "You just have to feel the energy flow...hey! That gives me an idea!" She took a deep breath, raised both of her hands, then moved them in a rapid blur, and all at once Nabiki's hair was shorn to its normal length, with only the braid in the back extending as usual down her nape.

"Whoah," Ranma said again.

"Thought it might work," Keiko grinned, "I just had to think of my fingers as blade and concentrate on the shape of the hair that I wanted to cut and...voila! Instant hairdo!"

Nabiki blinked her eyes then showed her first physical reaction in nearly a minute, glancing down at the piles of hair that were scattered all about her as if only just beginning to contemplate the significance of what they represented...

As this was taking place Frank was finding himself in a serious situation, being overwhelmed by enemy Rakshasa while his blows started to lose much of their force and impact, his general movements slowing down and registering a sharp decrease in energy. The tide of battle was clearly forcing him down to his knees as the demons sought to press their advantage, sensing monster blood and seeking his destruction.

Talbain saw this even while immersed in his own struggles and called out, "Frank! What's wrong...you running out of juice or something?"

"Just about," Frank grunted, his craggy face contorted with the effort it was taking him to hold the demons at bay, "Maybe got enough in me for another minute...but after that..."

Kasumi perked up her ears and turned to glance his way, and while she maintained her grip upon Mor'ghul's own sensitive anatomy and dared not release him for any reason, she could not resist the urge to help out the valiant man-monster, and so she cried, "Doctor Steinberg!"

"Huh?" in spite of the strain he was under, Frank managed to hear the gentle voiced Kasumi calling out to him and spared a glance her way as if wondering what she needed that would make her sound so desperate.

Kasumi was still new to the full range of her abilities, but she instinctively perceived that she had some limited control over the elements of nature, and that a particular form of energy was needed to restore the man-monster to full strength, and so with her free hand she raised her fingers to the sky and concentrated upon the clash of positive and negative ions that she sensed there, and by a simple twist of their arrangement caused a bolt of lightning to flash down and strike Frank with astonishing pin-point accuracy, causing him to cry out in pain and surprise as if the gesture had caught him totally off-balance.

"Oh my goodness!" Kasumi exclaimed as she saw Frank fall to his knees in the midst of the fused glass and rising ozone fumes caused by her unfortunate misuse of her powers, "Doctor Steinberg...are you all right? I didn't know it would be so..."

"Ohhh-YEAh!" Frank exclaimed as he pushed himself back to his feet and stared at his fists, which were now glowing with power, "Way to go, Beautiful! That's just what the doctor ordered...now, who here wants some?" he growled as he turned his wrath upon the astonished Rakshasa, who sensed that the tide of battle had definitely turned against them.

"Oh my," Kasumi said as she saw Frank tear into his opponents with renewed fury, "I guess maybe that was the right thing to do after all. Well then, Mor'ghul-  
san...um...Mor'ghul-san? Is something the matter?"

The transformed Rakshasa lord lay sprawled at her feet, his mane of hair standing out like an afro and his body looking bruised and singed around the edges. His tongue lolled out of his purpled face and his eyes were strangely unfocused, but somehow he managed to croak out, "Lady...whatever you want...you can have it...just...don't do that again...!"

"Oh my," Kasumi said, glancing down at the hand that was gripping the demon by his privates, and abruptly she colored, realizing the implications of her own actions...

Just then Dimitri passed by Ranma, Nabiki and Keiko, clutching a naked Morgan in his arms while pausing long enough to glare at the trio and snap in annoyance, "What are you doing, fools? Do you want to be killed, making yourselves easy targets like that?"

"Back off, Maximoff!" Ranma snarled, "Nabiki's having a bad moment, that's all. She just needs another minute to pull herself back together."

"A minute you do not have to indulge!" Dimitri snarled, "The Rakshasa are regrouping and will strike again at any second, and you mope around because of some silly emotional..."

"Mister sensitivity," Keiko glared, "How would you feel about almost losing all of your hair, buster? Of course, in your case, that might actually count as an improvement.'

Dimitri snarled, "You mean that is what has distracted you away from the battle? Which would you fear more, girl...being ravaged by Rakshasa or winding up bald for the rest of your..."

At the mention of the dreaded "B" word Ranma's face went ash-white, and Keiko took on a look of horrified panic. Nabiki, by stark contrast, woke up from her state of total daze with eyes as wide as saucers, and then with an ear-splitting cry she shot up to her feet and balled her fists as her battle aura flared to life and the delayed effect of her own emotional turmoil hit home like a force-  
five twister, sending those nearest to her scattering in all directions.

"Huh?" Frank said from beneath the pile of demons that he was wrestling against.

"Oh man...you feel that?" Talbain winced, "My fur's standing on end!"

"Uh oh," Happosai turned one look towards Nabiki then cried out, "INCOMING!"

"Huh?" BB Hood blinked, then instinctively she dropped down to her knees and ducked as she felt the heat of Tendo Ki pass over her bare skin like a backdraft.

"Eh?" D turned about and was struck sidelong by a forcewave that nearly sent him sprawling.

"What manner of attack is this?" Tatewaki cried as he tried to brace himself against the winds that buffeted against him and the others.

"Oneechan...she's in trouble!" Natsume declared.

"Well, duh!" Kurumi said as she and Mousse ducked under a conveniently placed boulder.

"Nabiki?" Kasumi turned a concerned glance towards her sister, who stood at the center of a maelstrom of intensifying Ki forces. She turned a worried look towards Mor'ghul and said, "I'm sorry, I can't spare you any more time, Sir. My sister is in trouble and needs my help."

"Sure...no problem," the Rakshasa lord said in a voice noticeably higher pitched than normal, even as his eyes never left the hand of Kasumi, who had been holding him in check while lecturing him about the proper way to behave around women...

Just then Anita and her oddly mismatched entourage at long last arrived, only to halt in their tracks as the wave of force washed over them, broken only by the mental shields of the young Psionic.

"Whut in the hell...?" Raptor gasped.

"Bloody hell," Darkwulf murmured in numb horror.

"Yup, looks like hell to me," Lilith agreed, "Only who's the crazy chick who's causing it?"

"Someone who is very, very upset about something," Anita replied with a very rare hint of emotion in her tone and expression, only one that had been rarely heard before...fear mixed with sympathy and pity, and all at once she cried, "Duck!" and promptly heeded her own recommendation.

The others were just a bit slow to respond to this, but the two who did not duck low to avoid the secondary force wave stared unblinkingly ahead as Atros and Gunther were incapable of processing the fact that they were being confronted with potential danger...

Ranma had been quick to call upon his new power over earth to create a protective ridge behind which he and several of the others were able to take shelter, among them Dimitri and a semi-conscious Morgan. As the secondary wave shook the air Dimitri heard Ranma growl in his direction, "Nice going...you just had to say that stuff about her almost going bald..."

"You did not tell me that this would be a feminine pride issue," Dimitri shot back, "As a courtesy between gentleman you might at least have warned me that she was this sensitive on the subject."

"Hey, I only kidded Nabiki about that braid of hers once," Ranma shuddered, "Just once...and that wasn't pretty..."

"Men," Keiko sniffed as she examined the semi-coherent Morgan, "How's your girlfriend? I don't see a mark on her, but those Rakshasa guys can be pretty rough..."

"I would not know myself," Dimitri replied, "But the Rakshasa who accosted her seemed to have some means of counteracting her powers. She is not drained of energies, as I would have expected, but rather seems to have received more of a jolt from its attempts to ravish her than might have been anticipated."

Keiko glanced his way then back at Morgan and said, "In other words she's suffering from indigestion, huh? Well, they say too much of a good thing can be bad for you...not that I've ever known what too much sex can be like..."

"Careful," Ranma said, "You know what she did to you the last time..."

"I'm onto her now, Ranchan," Keiko replied, "I'll definitely be careful, but I think the lady's had enough for now. Besides, I'm more worried about Nabiki."

"Indeed you should," Dimitri noted, "She is harnessing forces that ordinary human beings were never intended to master, and doing so with remarkably little effort. Indeed, it is the Rakshasa themselves to whom I almost feel pity..."

The area around Nabiki was a swirling vortex of intensive energies into which no Rakshasa dared to tread, and the few that had been slow to evacuate the immediate zone were vaporized like hot soap bubbles in the blazing ciracco of elemental life essence. Nabiki hardly seemed aware of what she was doing as she intuitively drew upon the nature of the limbo-like realm to shape it into a deadly force that obeyed her will like an angry genie uncorked from its bottle. Her eyes were blazing with the heat of her inner flame as she sought a target upon which to unleash her wrath, all but daring those Rakshasa standing apart from her to come within the sphere of her influence. That none were taking served only as a source of deep frustration and a need to unleash her fire in their direction, but even as she prepared to explode with the energies that she had gathered into herself, someone dared to enter her free-fire zone, someone heedless of the possibility of mortal danger, and who could speak with a tone and authority that could cut right through the red haze that clouded Nabiki's vision.

"That is enough, Imoutochan," Kasumi said calmly and clearly, using a tone of voice that she normally reserved for when breaking up a fight between Ranma and Akane.

Very slowly Nabiki turned around, eyes blazing with the need to find release, but the moment her gaze fell in line with Kasumi's it was as if foam had been tossed over a flame, and like that her wrath was extinguished under the calm regard of her beloved older sister. Once Nabiki let go of her anger the power that she had gathered into herself flowed away like a melted iceberg, flooding out into the surrounding terrain as the winds died down to a dull roar, then faded out altogether.

"Let it go, Nabiki," Kasumi urged with gentle regard, "You've won your point, now there is no more reason to fight. The Rakshasa have agreed to withdraw, so we can close the gate and go home without the need for any more bloodshed."

"Excuse me?" Nabiki asked, "You mean...it's over...just like that?"

"Just like that," Kasumi replied, "I've convinced Mor'ghul-san to withdraw his forces, so there need be no more killing and no more violence. We have won the day, thanks largely to your efforts and that of the others."

"Over?" Dimitri said as he straightened up, poking out from concealment, "Are you serious, Woman? How can it be over? My father and his minions would never accept anything less than total..."

"I said that it was over," Kasumi said calmly, "Lord Mor'ghul has withdrawn, and his servants will follow him back to their own dimension. I...convinced him that it was all for the best and he agreed with my assessment."

"He agreed with you?" said an astonished Morgan as she recovered from her own belated state of incoherence, "How...how did you convince him?"

"I was just about to ask the same thing," Frank said as he limped into view, partially supported by Talbain, who hardly seemed to be in all that much better a condition.

"I..." Kasumi glanced at one of her hands then seemed to mimic holding something invisible before elaborating, "...took a firm grip over matters and applied persuasive pressure. I'm not very sure where the idea came to me all of a sudden...it just seemed like the sort of thing that mother would approve of..."

"Oh," Nabiki remarked, giving her older sister a respectful (if wary) expression.

"You mean she...?" Ranma swallowed thickly, "Oboy."

"Way to go, Kasumi," Keiko murmured with a nod of tacit approval.

A voice that came from the general vicinity of the Vampire Hunter known as "D" spoke out, "Now that's what I call giving him a hand job."

"Or putting the squeeze on him," Happosai suggested.

D winced slightly and said, "I just knew you were going to say that..."

"It would appear that you chose the path of least resistance for obtaining a just end to the matter, Tendo-san," Donovan noted, "My respects to you. Very few women have ever looked my father in the eye and sent him packing, and in such a manner as he is unlikely to forget the humiliation."

"Whoah," Raptor said as he and Darkwulf reflexively crossed their legs and appeared appropriately nervous.

Morgan turned to Dimitri and said, "And that's the lass you were thinking of having for yourself?"

"A fair point," Dimitri replied, his expression suspiciously neutral.

"So what's the big deal?" BB Hood asked as she held her guns in a less-  
threatening (but nonetheless cocky) manner, "A guy drops his guard around a pretty girl, sooner or later he's gonna run into one who knows a thing or two about ball grabbing."

"Thanks Red," Talbain sniffed, "I'll try and remember that one around you."

"Hey, what's with the long muzzle, Wolfie?" BB Hood asked with a grin, "Like the lady said, we won this one, so what's to complain about?"

"How about the fact that we're both in need of a new wardrobe?" Lilith asked as she glanced down at herself, then pointedly gave Hood a rather poignant expression.

"What, you think I'm ashamed of the way I look?" Hood flashed herself with arms spread widely, "Besides, I think I'm filling out nicely. Won't be too much longer until I can walk into a bar without being carded."

"That ought to be enough to give your legal guardians some fits and nightmares," Frank tacitly noted.

"What, you think I'm going back to that dump?" Hood sniffed, "Besides, if you're so worried about giving the boys here a free peep show, just try thinking yourself into some clothing. Like Wolfie said, this is Limbo, and your imagination here can make stuff as real as you want it to be."

"Yeah, but that only lasts for as long as you're here," Darkwulf pointed out, "The minute we go back to the real world-WOOOFFF!" he grimaced as he suddenly doubled over.

"Ixnay on that business, Bucko," Raptor urged before giving a rictus smile at the ladies and saying, "Don't mind him, mates, he just needs his rabbies shots 's all..."

"Now that ye mention it," Morgan straightened out, "I could use a change of wardrobe meself, something a big more dignified for a-QUEEN!" she suddenly shrieked and gave a start as something was suddenly plastered against her chest and rubbing its face between her breasts before she could stop him.

"OOO-SWEET!" Happosai declared, "You don't have to hide these babies on our account, Sweetums! I think you look just great, and old Dimwit here agrees with me, don't you big baddie?"

"How dare you lay hands upon her you...you unnatural freak!" Dimitri snarled, snatching the old man away from Morgan's bosom as the succubus covered herself up with both hands and glared acidly in the ancient pervert's direction.

"Look who's talking!" Happosai snorted as he broke free from the vampire lord's grip and grabbed him by the wrist, giving Dimitri a sharp twist that sent the vampire sprawling on his considerable backside.

"Did you see what he just did to the boss?" Darkwulf shuddered.

"Crickey," Raptor winced, "The boss's gonna tear 'im a new one, no doubt about it..."

"Lord Dimitri?" Morgan asked as she bent down over her fallen ally.

"Bury me here while I still have some dignity left," Dimitri murmured, then winced as dirt was suddenly thrown into his face, "What-? How dare you!"

"Hey, I was just taking you up on your offer," Talbain said innocently from where he was hunkered down digging up dirt and kicking it towards Dimitri.

"Can I help?" Frank asked, no longer favoring one leg as his regenerative powers helped restore his wounded member.

"Oh, for pity's sakes!" Morgan straightened up again then raised her arms and a shadow seemed to congeal around her, forming itself into a low-cut, tight fitting costume with lots of cleavage, "There...now the rest of you ladies, if you don't mind?"

"Who made you the den mother all of a sudden?" Keiko eyed the green haired succubus with mildly appreciative suspicion.

"Is it really that easy to create clothes while you're here in Limbo?" Kurumi asked of BB Hood, the person standing closest to her.

"I guess," Hood shrugged, "'Course in Morgan's case we never could figure out what keeps her costume on in the first place..."

"Hood?" a voice cracked slightly, as if from disuse, "Lilith? Morgan...what...what's going on here?"

"Huh?" Lilith whirled around and stared in disbelief at the amphibious Atros, who blinked her own nictating eyes and stared back at her in mild confusion, "Atros? Are you all right? What...you're awake? I mean...you've got your mind back?"

"Uh...I guess," Atros glanced down at herself and said, "I feel tired...and my body feels like lead. I need to find some water...I think I'm starting to dehydrate..."

All at once a massive yawn drew eyes towards the towering cyborg that was Gunther, and then the big man stretched his limbs and flexed his arms and the artificial bits of armor and technology fell away while he groaned like a man coming out of a long nap, took one look around and said, "Ja...did I miss something? Vas ist...?"

"Gunther?" Frank took a step forward, "Are you all right, Neph?"

"Uncle Frank?" Gunther replied while flexing his massive shoulders, "Gutten Tag...is long time no see, ja? Ah...I had the strangest dream just now... what did I miss?"

"Gunther?" Talbain repeated in frank disbelief, "But...how...?"

"Somehow his cybernetics and inorganic bits must have been canceled out by that massive wave of Chi energy that was released just now," D suggested, "His body was stimulated to regenerate itself, and that meant that anything anomalous to his normal state was rejected by his system..."

"Well...yeah," Frank said dubiously, "Of course that's only a tentative theory..."

"Welcome back to the world of the living, Gunther-san," Kasumi bowed to the former cyborg, "I am Tendo Kasumi, and on behalf of my family it is very good to see you in good health."

"Ah..." the tall blonde giant said as he regarded the slender girl with a curious expression, then all at once he bowed back to her and seemed to flush a slight green tinge along his cheeks and said, "Victor Von Gernheim of Bavaria, herr frauline...but everyone else these days just calls me Gunther."

"So...what now?" Kurumi nervously asked as she glanced from the blond giant to take in her numerous companions.

"Now we go home," Donovan answered, "And bring closure to this matter."

"So...that is it?" Natsume asked, "The battle is over, time to go home, and no hard feelings towards these fellows who caused us so much grief?"

"What point is there in continuing a battle that can have no ultimate resolution?" Kasumi asked, "The Rakshasa have left and we are all quite tired from our ordeal..."

"For now, dear lady," Donovan informed them, "But my father...is not one to take defeat lightly, so I will seal the gate to insure that he complies with the truce that you have forced upon him."

"For all the good that it will do us," Dimitri snorted.

"Huh?" Ranma asked, "And what's that supposed to mean?"

"That if you had permitted me to carry through with my plans it would have ended the threat posed by my father altogether," the renegade vampire lord started to say when Keiko interrupted him in mid-tirade.

"Yeah, yeah, we know," the naked Kickboxer snorted, "If not for us meddling kids you'd have gotten away with it and gained ultimate power, yadda yadda."

"What a ridiculous thing to say," Dimitri sniffed, "I would never be caught dead...or alive...saying something as cliché as that. What I was saying is that you have chosen to make an enemy of my father, and instead of ending the threat that he poses to the earth you have wounded his pride and insulted his masculinity, so of course he will be compelled to try again on some future occasion."

"I fear that you may be right on this matter, Dimitri-san," Kasumi replied, "But the future has a way of dealing with itself, and for now all that matters is that we have come through this alive and well, and that means that there is always hope for a better tomorrow."

"No offense, Oneechan," Kurumi uneasily observed, "But are you sure we can trust these guys not to stab us in the back as soon as we turn our backs on them?"

"A fair point that," Natsume agreed, "We know for a fact that Lord Dimitri and his allies are not to be trusted."

"Got that right," Frank grumbled, "Kid has a point, your track record ain't exactly sterling , Dimitri, and that goes for even less with Raptor and Wulf."

"You may presume what you like about us, Peasant," Dimitri growled, "But if you wish to settle accounts here and now, then I will be more than willing to accommodate..."

"No," Kasumi said softly, her gentle voice carrying an edge that drew attention back her way.

"Oneechan?" Nabiki blinked, surprised once again at the assertiveness of Kasumi's tone and manner.

"I said that there should be no more fighting for now, and I expect that to be observed," Kasumi insisted, "If you must fight then let it be for a cause, not to settle old grievances that can have no true resolution."

"How presumptuous," Dimitri said, "I made you, yet do you now presume to instruct me in how I should conduct my affairs, woman?"

Kasumi turned her normally gentle eyes his way and all at once Dimitri felt the grip of their power overwhelm his lordly resolve. A brief contest of wills ended abruptly with the renegade Vampire Lord turning away to escape the compulsion that had so nearly come upon him, overmastering his will as he found Kasumi's resolve to be like silken chords, soft yet stronger than iron.

Morgan started to speak up, only to find that gaze shift her way, which caused her vocal chords to inexplicably lock up and her protests to die unvoiced as though she had been beaten into submission by merely staring into the depths of the brown-eyed Tendo woman. Next Kasumi's gaze drifted towards Raptor and Darkwulf, causing them to take a mental backstep as if to recoil from the force of her will that warned them off from causing further mischief. Then Kasumi turned a similar look towards Talbain, who gulped and flinched as though someone had struck him on the nose with a rolled up newspaper, and then she stared at D and Gunther, who each seemed to rethink beginning anything that might meet with the eldest Tendo sister's stern disapproval.

Lastly Kasumi turned to Frank and met his level stare as he seemed to be observing her with more than simple curiosity. Exposed to the true force of her personality he found himself at a loss to form words that could protest her statement. Instead he gave ground to her, silently acknowledging his compliance with her wish that there be no further acts of violence. He tried to affect a stern expression to register his disagreement with said policy, for he knew these others well enough to expect more trouble in the offing...yet under Kasumi's level stare he found that he could not maintain his resolve, giving him a too-brief taste of what it must be like to come under the wary scrutiny of a concerned mother.

Kurumi and Natsume remained unconvinced, but as Kasumi sensed their disquiet she at once smothered their unvoiced protests by giving them a look they both well knew, the look of an older sister whose disapproval could be felt in ways that had nothing at all to do with threats of physical mayhem. Nabiki and Ranma were even less easily persuaded of the rightness of this course, but one glance from their "eldest sister" and even the Tendo heir rethought the wisdom of going against Kasumi's judgement.

"Now then," Kasumi said serenely, turning to Donovan, who had been watching her the entire time with the eye of one who read the affirmation of his earlier judgement, "If we are ready to leave this place, then I suggest we do so."

"Of course," Donovan acknowledged, "You have the power yourself at your disposal, and if you trust your instinct they will show you what needs doing."

"About time," Anita spoke up, her own silent resolve marred by just the barest hints of impatience.

"I was just thinking, my dear," Happosai spoke up, giving Kasumi a shrewd regard as he continued, "Your mother would be awfully proud of you and what you've done this evening."

"Thank you, Grandfather," Kasumi smiled at the little man, "Somehow I know that you are right, and that my mothers...both of them...would be pleased with how this event has ended."

"Both of them?" Nabiki and Natsume asked in chorus with raised eyebrows as they regarded their sister with more than a trace element of disquiet.

"Curiouser and curioser," Keiko murmured to herself, smiling as she silently took note of how the older Tendo sister was radiating a presence that was highly magnetic and unselfconsciously sensualistic.

"I confess that I, too, am growing anxious to be about our way," Dimitri admitted, "This place has a stifling air and lacks the vibrancy of the world we know, and the people who dwell within it."

"Some of whom we could use for a light snack to replenish our spent resources," Morgan murmured in a voice barely soft enough to be heard up by anyone but the sharp-eared among them.

"Um...Boss," Raptor said rather nervously, "Ah...me an' Wulf here...we're...kinda sorry we got here late and..."

"We will discuss it later," Dimitri said sternly, "But I am making a mental note to myself to maim the both of you for it later."

"Urk," the Zombie King and Darkwulf swallowed in chorus.

"Of course," Nabiki noted with a dark look towards Dimitri, "If we had let you steal his power, then we'd have to deal with you instead of him."

"I will not quibble with the particulars on the matter," Dimitri shrugged, "But mark me well, this is far from an end to the affair, and one day-perhaps soon-  
-we will again be forced to contend with the dark shadow of the Rakshasa."

"That is as it may be, Dimitri-san," Kasumi replied, "But I prefer to believe that my family and friends will be more than equal to the challenge...and as I said before, it is a matter for the future.

"Besides which," Ranma said, "If he ever does try to pull anything, he'd better be ready to deal with...this!"

As he declared that he once more called forth the power of his four elemental Dragons, and like a shot they flew from his arms to fill the air and whirl about like four-colored miniature comets, only to return to him again after having painted the air with the colorful hues of their essential nature.

"You see that?" Lilith remarked in an astonished tone as she stared all around her.

"He controls the elements of earth, air, fire...and water?" Atros asked as she stared at Ranma and said, "Who is he?"

"He's already married," Anita announced, then rolled her eyes as she heard a double sigh and said in a mild huff, "Teenagers..."

"Cool your jets, Bo-hunk," BB Hood smirked, "We didn't need your little fireworks display to get the point, and we'll be happy to go along quiet...right up until we're back home in our own dimension."

"You really mean that, Red?" Talbain asked with an upraised bushy eyebrow.

"Sure do, Wolfie," BB Hood winked in his direction, "Like the lady said...no point in sticking around here to make an issue over the lack of any more fighting."

"Besides," Keiko pointed out, "There might still be Rakshasa on our side of the fence, so what are we waiting around here for while they're marauding in our dimension?"

"A very good point that," Nabiki said, "Oneechan?"

"Let's go home, Imoutochan," Kasumi replied, "We can sort the rest of it later...after everyone has time enough to catch their breaths and take stock of the important changes that we have all experienced together...some of us more than others."

"Huh?" Nabiki said as she followed her sister's gaze and saw Ranma suddenly surrounded by four very attractive looking female figures, only two of which seemed somehow familiar, yet each of which seemed VERY intimate with her husband, and on a level that caused Nabiki's short hairs to bristle.

"He's mine I tell you!"

"Says who? I knew him first!"

"Well, I called dibs back down there in the catacombs..."

"You flighty windbag, can't you see that a young man with his potential needs a real woman at his side, someone who can teach him the essence of what it means to be a true Master of the Elements?"

"You just want him because he has a great butt!" the dark-green haired, dusky skinned one of these four stunning figures snarled, "I appreciate him for his mind...he's really quite intelligent, once you look past his naïve inexperience to see the charm that lurks behind his macho self-image."

"He's a young man of vast potential who needs spiritual guidance from a proper expert!" the fiery redhead of the bunch insisted, "Potential that would be wasted over you flighty airheads...!"

"Airheads?" the blonde in their group reacted, "I like that! Coming from a hothead like you, Latisha...!"

"Please, Karina," the blue haired Sharil urged, "Let's have a little more respect for our ELDER...after all, she is so much OLDER than we are...!"

"Older?" Latisha snapped, "I'll show you who's older you flotsam-headed bimbo...!"

"Says the fire witch who's older than some mountains," the dark haired Nagisha snorted.

"Ahem," Keiko spoke up loudly enough to get even the attention of even the most irritated of the elementals, "You guys think maybe you can settle this later? And besides, you've got an audience to listen in on this rather fascinating discussion."

"Huh?" Ranma blinked, turning to find Nabiki staring at him (or-more precisely-at his new companions) and promptly said, "Everyone back in-NOW!"

At once the female figures dissolved into their constituent elemental forms and flowed back into the upraised arms of the young man named Ranma, and then into the ensuing silence was heard his heartfelt sigh or relief, only to react with a double-take as he caught Nabiki's angry glare in his direction.

"What?" he asked a bit too hastily, hinting at a secret guilt over the withering regard his young wife paid in his direction.

"Busted," Keiko mused as she pretended not to find the whole thing deeply fascinating, making a show of examining her fingernails while Ranma sweated under the accusatory look that Nabiki kept pouring on like there was no tomorrow.

"You are full of surprises yourself this night, Little Brother," Kasumi noted in a mildly amused manner.

"Now that's one curse I wouldn't bear for all the world," Frank subtly murmured to Talbain.

"He's gonna have a time of it digging his way out of this one," the werewolf sagely noted.

"And to think that I believed that I had troubles," Dimitri observed in a faintly aristocratic manner.

"An' what's that supposed to mean?" Morgan asked as she glared at her vampiric companion, thereby revealing that even the undead were capable of sweating bullets.

"I find this most strangely vexing," Tatewaki murmured to Natsume, "On the one hand I feel the urge to lend assistance to Saotome...on the other..."

"That he has made his own bed and must now lie upon it?" Natsume murmured back, then nodded, "I fully agree with you in this, beloved."

"Let's go home, my sisters...my friends," Kasumi urged, and then with a wave of her hand and great ease she summoned up a dimensional portal to whisk them away back to the world that they called home...and towards a last fateful confrontation...

Continued.

Comments/Criticisms/Time And A Half Charges For Story Length:

Shadowmane (New address yet to be determined)

The big wind-up brings the saga of the Vampire Queen Kasumi to a head, but who will come out on top in the end, and is this really the end to this gothic melodrama? Tune in next time for: "Divine Perspiration," or, "Half A Loaf Of Blood Pudding!" Be there!

X /pre 


	52. Chapter 52

preDnabiki132

Nabiki 1/2

"A Very Scary Thought!"

by Jim Robert Bader

(Inspired by the works of Rumiko Takahashi Others,  
with a special appearance by some of my own creations and those of Joss Whedon. The Character of Frank is my own interpretation of the Monster of Marry Shelly's novel and is thus a free agent, so talk with him if you want to have him costar in some other series.)

[Special thanks to Bill Guiroff and Shiva for helping the initial proofreading phase of this fanfic series, and for encouraging me to continue the saga of Nabiki 1/2.  
And added thanks to Andrew Greaves for further Darkstalker information...]

Part One-Hundred-Thirty-Two.

(Set during and slightly after the time of the events recorded in the side-story titled "Honeymoon Hentai")

[No Actual Vampires or other Immortal creatures were harmed in the making of this fanfic...]

"Well, what now?" Lenore asked of her fellow survivors, "We just beat off a potential holocaust, fended off an invading army of some of the nastiest types of demons in all creation, and we managed to keep our heads in the process...so, what do we do for an encore?"

"I know," Chloe perked up, "Let's go to Disneyland! I've always wanted to try out the Tokyo version and...what?"

"Somehow I do not believe that was what Lenore-san was intending by her comment, Chloe-san," Kiima softly explained, surveying the scene of recent battle with her usual impassive expression, and taking notice of the way that Doctor Tofu was busy tending to the surviving humans in their midst, "Lives were lost here this day...human lives, and who better than I can appreciate what that means to both the victims and their loved ones?"

"So many people died," Vampire Princess Yui shook her head sadly, "All those policemen, those innocent bystanders, everyone who was near enough to fall prey to those...Rakshasa..."

"Don't misunderstand me, Yui-chan," Nagi murmured, "But it could have been worse...much, much worse, if we had not been here to put a stop to their rampages."

"What you say is true enough, Shi warrior," Leguire agreed, nodding sagely towards the still-living pair of Natsumi and Miyuki, who were huddling together under a shared blanket, "We did indeed save many at the cost of a few dozen, but I am sure that this is small consolation for those whom they leave behind, who will miss them and wonder at what cause they gave their lives...since they can never know the truth behind the events of this evening."

"Why Jean," Yasmina remarked, "If I didn't know any better I would almost think that sounded like sympathy for the poor, pathetic humans whom you normally disparage as weak and inferior beings."

"Do you think me so lacking in poetry, woman, that I could fail to identify with the innocent lives spent here fighting the Rakshasa?" Leguire quietly retorted, "We may prey upon humans as our food, but only a being as soulless as a Rakshasa could be unmoved by such tragedy. I will honor the dead in my own way, and mourn the useless spilling of blood to feed the rapacious appetites of beings a hundred times more vicious than even the most feral of vampires."

Natsumi studied the profile of the European Loire vampire and murmured softly to her partner, "Y'know, I can't figure that guy out. I don't know whether to like him or to hate him..."

"Yes," Miyuki agreed, "He does seem to relish flouting easy definitions."

Doctor Tofu paused in the act of tending to one of his patients and glanced at the two off-duty officers before saying, "Appearances do tend to deceive, Officers...you can never judge someone by what label he uses, only by his deeds, which is what really defines a man from a monster."

The pair silently reflected on this bit of wisdom while Tofu resumed tending to his many patients, but try as they might they could not work their minds entirely around the fact that they owed their lives to a vampire who all but admitted that he viewed them as "tasty treats" to be sampled at leisure, and only the word of Queen Ling-Ko was preventing him from indulging in his fabled blood thirst...

"But how can we be certain that the attack is ended?" Miyu asked of Queen Ling-  
Ko, "For all we know they could be building up their strength and preparing another wave of invaders, this time much larger than the last two..."

"I will concede the possibility," Ling-Ko replied, "But I have no sense of impending danger, no feelings of ennui that would normally attend a Rakshasa invasion. I feel somehow as if they have been stopped at their source by our missing allies, in which case we owe as much of a favor to the humans as to our fellow Darkstalkers."

"Um...cousin?" Tsien-Ko dubiously noted, "Are you really sure those guys were able to fend off the main strength of a Rakshasa invasion?"

"It does rather defy the odds and reason," Mei-Ling softly mused, "But the proof of their success is in the absence of enemies that we seem to be enjoying at the moment, for which-I do not mind admitting to you all-I find myself enormously grateful."

"I told you that you could trust my son and his wife to do what was necessary," Nodoka said with a serene smile of confidence and contentment.

"That you did," Ling-Ko agreed, "And sorry for me ever having doubted you. He is quite the remarkable young man, your son...and very...talented with the ladies."

"Ranma is very manly," Nodoka agreed, "As he needs to be to keep all the ladies in his life content and well satisfied, both his four wives and his many other elemental aspects."

"Say what?" Tsien-Ko reacted, "You mean that kid has to keep four wives and a couple of elemental servants happy? What has he got, a ten inch dick or something?"

"Tsien-Ko," Mei-Ling sharply chided.

"I confess that I'm more than a little curious about that myself," the towering figure known simply as Eve remarked, "A boy that talented must have an angle that works in his favor. Take my first husband for example...please..."

"So many lives lost," Natsumi murmured to her partner, "I saw colleagues die a horrible death tonight...and it's going to take a while to wash the memory of that away."

"At least we managed to avenge their deaths," Miyuki said by way of consolation, "Not one of those monstrosities made it past us into the city...or at least I hope that's the case. It's going to be hard enough explaining these events to our superiors without having to convince them to put an all-points out for a shapeshifting demon that feeds on human flesh and souls. Assuming they don't institutionalize the both of us..."

"That's assuming they won't go ballistic when they hear we were involved with this in the first place," Natsumi duly noted.

"I would not worry too much over that issue if I were you, Officers," Leguire remarked in a casual side-note in their direction.

"Huh?" Natsumi turned to the vampire, "What do you mean by that?"

"Oh, nothing much," Leguire turned back to Yasmina, "But you'll see as soon as the Enforcers return. They always make certain that incidents such as these do not come to trouble our friends and allies, even ones of necessity and convenience."

"I'm not too sure I like the sound of that," Miyuki noted, "Exactly what do you mean by 'make certain?'"

"That all depends on the nature of the situation," Yasmina replied, "And what steps are needed to insure that the affair is contained and does not suggest to mortals the existence of vampires. Bitter we remain nothing more than a myth and legend as far as it concerns most humans, but the moment that the word got around that we are real..."

"I follow you," Miyuki noted grimly, "In other words they silence witnesses and remove evidence that suggests the unusual and extraordinary...but how exactly do they intend to deal with them...the survivors?" she asked as she nodded towards the huddled mass of surviving police officers.

"Oh, nothing so draconian as what you are suspecting," Leguire mused, "These days we tend to avoid unnecessary bloodshed, so alternative methods have been developed, far short of killing witnesses, that are quite effective in suppressing unfortunate knowledge in people whose lives would be much less complicated without it."

"Less complicated?" Natsumi repeated, then blinked, "Hey...you mean...you can hypnotize them to forget stuff like this ever happened?"

"Hypnotized?" Miyuki glanced at her partner.

"Sure," Natsumi explained, "Haven't you ever heard the stories about how vampires are supposed to be able to hypnotize people with a glance? It's all part of the legend..."

"Actually," Julian remarked as he glanced up from where he had been sitting and polishing his butterfly swords, "Many varieties of vampires do have that ability, though it's not common to all the tribes, and it's more like a gift for fascination than traditional hypnotism."

"I'll bite," Natsumi asked, "What's fascinating?"

"Fascination," Lequire explained, "As you described it just now...you capture a person by making eye contract and holding their attention for the few seconds that are needed to establish a psychic link. Once parity is achieved between human and vampire it becomes childsplay to telepathically suggest ideas and impressions through projection. It is far from total and absolute control, and it only works if the human is suggestible and lacks a strong resistance factor, but some breeds have the ability to overwhelm even a strong mind and will, and many Enforcers most certainly possess this trait...while those Arcadians unquestionably do, so they will be able to sooth memories and ease thoughts so that your colleagues will believe that their experience was of ordinary means...a terrorist or gang attack, whatever seems acceptable and plausible, while anything beyond that will be dismissed as mere nightmare."

"I'm not entirely sure that I like the thought of having minds tampered with like that," Miyuki noted, "But...I suppose, as you say...it is preferable to more extreme methods, such as killing."

"Hey, you're not thinking about doing that to us, are you?" Natsumi asked.

"Only if you wish it done to your own memories," Yasmina assured them, "But if you agree to keep to yourselves the things that you have seen and done tonight...if you think that you can abide with knowing our great secret...then perhaps you may remain unaffected. Or would you prefer to have your ignorance restored to you? We will understand if you would prefer not to face the memories of the nightmares and would rather go back to your previous existence..."

"What, and forget about all this?" Natsumi sniffed, "Not likely."

"But wouldn't you be happier without the memories of this evening?" Leguire asked, "To witness such horrors, to know that there are things that go bump in the night, that great powers walk the earth and beyond, that mortals are not the only ones to share this planet?"

"And what about those deaths that you witnessed?" Julian added, "The deaths of many a colleague, who experienced a horror that you were spared only by a fraction?"

"And what of the hole in our minds that would be created if you take away those memories, as horrible as they might be?" Miyuki inquired, taking Natsumi by the hand, "Or the feelings that have been deepened between Natsumi-chan and me because of those events? Yes, it may be a lot to bear, and a great responsibility keeping your secret to ourselves, and yes, if we told anyone we'd be thrown off the force and no doubt wind up in padded cells together with lots of doctors poking us and asking a lot of questions. But given all of that, it's better for us to know than to be ignorant, especially if any of those...things got by us and made their way into the city."

There was a slight pause before Yasmina turned to her colleagues and said, "She has a point..."

"Question is whether the Enforcers will accept this reasoning," Leguire noted.

"Leave the Enforcers to me," Julian urged, "They may be fiercesome killing machines in vampiric flesh, but I happen to be a lawyer, which is far more intimidating..."

"Quite a night, eh Tendo-kun?" Genma was asking from where the two fathers were sitting together on a memorial tomb.

"You can say that again, Saotome," Soun agreed, "Vampires, demons, werewolves, and somehow my little girl is caught up in the midst of it all. I wish I knew what became of my dear Kasumi...she was always such a good and obedient child, so mild-mannered and dutiful...the thought of anything bad happening to her..." he shuddered in aversion to a thought clearly too horrendous to be contemplated.

"There, there, Tendo," Genma patted his best friend on the shoulder, "You shouldn't fear the worst without knowing all the facts, and besides, she has Ranma and Nabiki to look after her, and you know what a team they make. I doubt anything under earth or heaven could get past them to hurt Kasumi."

"I pray that you are right, old friend," Soun sighed, "But the silence...the waiting...it is all so much, I..."

"They'll come through, old friend, you'll see," Genma tried to reassure him, "They've never failed at anything in the past, and my boy isn't about to fail now, you'll see, and as for Nabiki...I pity the fool or vampire who thinks he can take her for an easy mark."

"I know that you are trying, Saotome," Soun sighed, "But..."

"Did I hear someone mention us by name?"

"Nabiki?" Soun stood up and whirled about in time to see the dimensional gate closing behind the last of the new arrivals, then his eyes went towards the woman who stood at the head of this group and he cried out, "Kasumi!"

"Hello Father," Kasumi gently smiled at him, "We've returned home and the crisis is ended. The Rakshasa have withdrawn and everyone has made it back safe and soundly."

"Not everybody," the blonde BB Hood said sadly, "Queen Bee...didn't make it."

"That is too bad," Atros said, "I did rather like her."

"Of course it could have been us that those Rakshasa creeps offed," Lilith said off-handedly, "If some of us hadn't proven tougher than...HEY! What gives?"

All at once Morgan grasped her younger counterpart in a firm headlock and bore her down to her knees, holding her there by means of her superior strength, size and leverage.

"Leggo!" Lilith gasped, "You're...hurting me...!"

"Morgan?" Dimitri asked in surprise.

"She's flipped her lid or something?" Raptor said with unblinking confusion.

"You think she was all that stable to begin with?" Darkwulf added at the level of a stage whisper.

"What means this, Anslat?" D demanded as he started to reach for his own long blade.

"Back off the lot of you!" the succubus queen snapped as she held a tight rein on the struggling Lilith, "One move and I'll break her in half! This is just between me and me clone here!"

"Vas?" asked the towering blond giant known as Gunther.

"Clone?" Ranma asked, his puzzlement reflected in the expressions of many another present.

"What do you mean Clone?" Nabiki asked, "She hardly looks that much like you."

"Don't hurt her!" Atros urged abruptly.

"Yeah, let her go now or else!" BB Hood demanded, pointing her pistols at Morgan, only to see them dissolve in her hands as they reverted back to their constituent Akashic matter, along with the articles of clothing conjured up by the others, to which the blonde said, "Oops..."

"You can't maintain the illusion here in the real world, Luvs," Morgan sneered as she held on to the struggling Lilith, "And in another minute it will hardly matter...after I absorb her power back where it belongs, inside of me, after which I'll be as powerful as you, Missy," she hissed in Kasumi's direction.

"What gives?" Keiko asked, "Has she flipped?"

"Naw," Talbain said gruffly "Lilith is supposed to be a magical construct that her father, Lord Beliol, created to bleed away a portion of Morgan's powers. She gained independent life and intelligence after a number of years away from Morgan, but now she obviously wants her powers back and plans on absorbing the kid to combine both aspects of her power."

"Which supposedly would make her tough enough even to take on her own man unaided," Frank added at the level of a stage whisper.

"Gotten himmel," Gunther softly murmured.

"How horrible," Natsume averred, "How can she do something so heartless?"

"We've got to save her!" Kurumi declared, "We just can't let this happen!"

"Granted," Mousse replied, "Only...what do you suggest we do?"

"If we rush the witch she might do harm to the other," Tatewaki averred softly.

"But...if we do not act..." Gunther started to say, only to be stilled by a nod from his redoubtable "Uncle."

"I know, Neph," Frank growled, "But the kid has a point...she could snap Lil's neck in a second if we push our luck here."

"Morgan," Dimitri said, "I understand. Do what you must, but be quick about it or these fools may attempt to stop you."

"Oh, don't worry on that score, Lover," Morgan assured them as Lilith's efforts at freeing herself began to grow more feeble, "In another few moments I'll have back what was taken from me, and then...beware me wrath!"

"What was taken from you?" D asked, "Are you truly so blind and naïve, woman?"

"Eh?" Morgan glared at the cowled Vampyr, "And what mean you by that, Son of the Impaler?"

"Only that I had taken you as one far more intelligent and less gullible than you seem to be," D replied, "You are thousands of years old, yet you think this child to be your clone twin?"

"Yes, you are right, D-san," Kasumi nodded, "I sensed from the beginning that there was a kinship...but not that of a sister or a double. This Lilith is...different enough from Morgan-san that I find it hard to imagine that they are two forms of the same person."

"How very perceptive of you, Tendo-san," Donovan affirmed, "Lord Beliol is as treacherous as he is cunning and deceitful, and who better should know of his many lies than one who was raised by him and now loathes and detests her own father?"

"What are you babbling about?" Dimitri demanded, "Are you attempting to confuse the issue?"

"No, Dimitri-san," Kasumi said as she regarded Morgan sincerely, "But all here is not as it appears to be, and if what I sense is right, then you should reconsider what you are doing, Morgan-san, unless you seek to harm your own daughter."

There was a brief pause, then everyone turned to regard Kasumi with frank amazement, all save for Donovan and the impassive D, who continued to regard the Succubus queen with hard-eyed fascination.

"My...what?" Morgan allowed shock to be displayed upon her features.

"Hey, I get it now," Nabiki said with a frown, "Her old man told her that this Lilith character is just a clone created by magic, right? A way of siphoning off her powers to leave her strength diminished in order to better control her?"

"That's what we've been told all along," Frank scowled, "But the only confirmation of that..."

"Is Lord Beliol himself," Talbain stammered, "Holy mother of matricide..."

"Indeed," D agreed, "What better way of controlling the daughter than by setting her against her own child to insure her compliance with the will of Beliol in such matters? A convenient lie to hide the truth about an illicit affair and a child born out of wedlock."

"A child whose existence was a source of deep embarrassment to her own grandfather," Donovan affirmed, "As was Morgan's affair with the father, a noble warrior whose name was Cuculain, now dead many a long century, as even Morgan herself has forgotten."

"N-No..." Morgan suddenly let go of Lilith, who collapsed to the ground and remained as still as a stringless puppet.

"Lil!" BB cried as she and Atros rushed to the side of their fallen comrade.

"Is bat-girl going to be all right?" Gunther asked, looking dumbfounded and helpless.

"That's the ten thousand pound question, Gunth," Talbain replied as he regarded the blue haired girl whom BB and Atros were seeking to comfort.

"You mean...she's been trying to absorb the life energies of her own daughter?" Ranma asked, clearly appalled and disgusted at this realization.

"Makes a horrible kind of sense if you figure out the ways of demons," Talbain answered, "Morgan has an affair with a mortal, gets with child by him, which pisses off her old man to no end since their kid could wind up even more powerful than her mother with just a bit of training, so he cooks up a scheme to set mother and daughter against one another, insuring that they can never unite against him."

"Gotta hand it to Beliol," Darkwulf remarked, "When it comes to playing his enemies off each other, he's a bonafied master.

"Oy...now that's low, Mate, even by me standards," Raptor grumbled.

"How horrible," Kasumi said softly, "To make Morgan-san grow to hate her own daughter..."

"I...did not know of this," Dimitri said, "I always thought it an odd story, but Morgan truly seemed to believe it..."

"We all bought into the same lie," Frank said with disgust, "And Lilith's paid the price for it. What a waste."

"Not necessarily," Donovan informed them.

"Lilith lives," D seconded, "Her life force is weak, but she is not yet at Death's threshold."

"What...what have I done?" Morgan softly whispered, staring at the limp, nude child being clutched in the arms of BB and Atros, "My baby...I almost killed my own baby...!"

"A nice guy that Beliol," Julian remarked as he came up to join them, "Almost reminds me of my cousin Constantius, a real prize if you know anything about us Caesars."

"Indeed," Leguire agreed, "To play a child against its mother is the traditional tactic of tyrants and madmen."

"Not that we don't have examples of our own to site, eh Jean?" Yasmina noted.

"Far too many that I could think of would even fault lord Beliol as a rank amateur," Ling-Ko observed as she surveyed the conquering heroes, "You all are to be congratulated for your victory...and you, Sister...I should very much look forward to greeting you into our ranks as a promising young member of vampire royalty."

"Thank you...I think," Kasumi dubiously noted, only to turn to the side and say, "Dimitri-san?"

"Stand back!" the renegade vampire declared as he was suddenly at the side of Genma, knocking Soun sprawling in the dirt as he lifted the heavier man and declared, "And now to seal my own power!"

"Hey, what are you trying to...?" Tsien-Ko declared as she and Mei-Ling looked ready to spring into action.

"Now this getting ridiculous," Gunther said as he scratched the top of his head, "One minute Morgan go off handle and hurt bat-girl, now Dimitri play with stuffed bear?"

"It's quite simple, really," Dimitri declared as he bit down into the neck of the elder Saotome, causing Genma to stiffen in shock as his blood began to be drained into the vampire.

"POP!" Ranma cried as he started to lunge forward, only to encounter Nabiki's arm as his wife blocked his forward movement.

"Husband!" Nodoka cried as she lifted her sword and said, "Unhand him, Fiend, or else...!"

Her attempted lunge encountered mist as Dimitri vanished from the spot, only to reappear some meters distant. Genma collapsed to his knees clutching at his own neck to staunch the blood that was gushing there, though clearly not enough to pose a mortal threat to his continued existence

"And now I have what I desire!" Dimitri declared, "Total knowledge of your school of martial arts, for-as I suspected-your teacher was holding back knowledge and information that would have been to your benefit...but which now belongs to me, along with his power as the great Destroyer!"

"That's right," Nabiki smiled confidently, "You've gained Uncle's power and knowledge all right...and everything that goes with it. Ranma, would you care to do the honors?"

"Huh?" Ranma blinked, only to smile as he said, "Oh...I get it..." and with that he raised his left arm and pointed, and all at once a jet of water sprayed over both Genma and Dimitri, causing a double instant transformation.

"What in the...?" Talbain gasped.

"If figures," Frank smirked.

"Am I seeing things or what, Sis?" Tsien-Ko asked.

"If so, then I'm seeing them with you," Mei-Ling answered.

"M-My lord?" Morgan stammered.

"Bloody 'ell," Raptor remarked as he and Darkwolf gaped at their vampire lord's transformation.

"Two stuffed bears?" Gunther blinked, "Now I really confused..."

Dimitri stared down at his own body in dismay, finding himself covered in white and black fur, his basic dimensions rounded up in a roly-poly manner, then he turned to see an identical looking panda smiling at him while holding up a sign which read, "Surprise, care to suck on some Bamboo?" right before said sign hit Dimitri square between the eyebrows.

Soun rose from the ground to the sound of popping his knuckles then grinned, "Well done, Saotome...shall we both do the honors?"

As the transformed renegade went down heavily under the subsequent pounding inflicted by both Soun and a vengeful Genma, a much-amused Frank remarked, "Now that he had coming."

"Oh," Raptor winced, "Now that's gotta hurt."

"Ja," Gunther agreed, "Very."

"Uh...what say we both take five here, mate?" Darkwulf murmured to his undead companion, only to find the both of them transfixed to the spot as Kasumi turned a glance in their direction.

"Going somewhere?" she asked sweetly and gently, yet with an ominous tone of motherly disapproval.

Both Zombie and Werewolf remained rooted to the spot, both gulping as if given a death threat, which indeed would have been preferable to the unwavering regard that Kasumi paid in their direction.

Lenore turned to Ranma and asked, "Your father turns into a panda when wet?"

"Jusenkyo," Nabiki answered with a smirk, giving Genma a nod before adding, "Sometimes you actually come in handy, Old Man."

The panda held up a sign that read, "Of course, Girl, and that's why I'm still your master."

"Yeah, right," Nabiki snorted before scowling and adding, "Now what was that about you holding back techniques that you've yet to teach me?"

The panda went back to examining the sky and whistled an odd tune on lips that were not designed for musical numbers.

"I could almost feel pity for Dimitri," D remarked before adding, "Almost."

"Couldn't happen to a nicer...oh no," Lequire shuddered with a glance towards the skyline, "They are back..."

Before anyone had time enough to ask what the Loire had meant by that a pair of heavy shadows fell from the sky and landed near to Dimitri.

"We are Enforcers," the lead of the pair announced, showing off a face that some remembered from an earlier encounter, "We are here to place Dimitri Maximoff under arrest for gross violations against the authority and will of the High Council."

"Surrender him now or else tell us where he is or you will be charged with aiding and abetting a fugitive from Council justice," the second brawny Enforcer declared with an equally dour and severe expression.

"Aiding and abetting?" Nabiki blinked, "You have got to be joking."

"I do not believe that they know how to tell a joke, let alone to understand one," Yasmina cautioned, "In any event you will find few friends of Dimitri in our midst, and the one you seek is there, sprawled out before you."

It took a moment for the two stony-faced Enforcers to grasp the gist of this, then when they glanced down and saw the recumbent panda their expressions remained unflinching, yet there was the barest trace of incomprehension flickering in their eyes as the lead of the pair said, "Where, under the panda?"

"Not quite," Keiko pointed at the one panda who was still sleeping it off at the feet of Genda panda and said, "You see...he is the panda."

"You guys have been around, right?" Ranma asked, "Ever heard of a place called Jusenkyo?"

"Jusenkyo," the lead of the two vampire cops turned a puzzled look towards Genma-panda, who held up a sign saying, "Don't look at me, I'm the innocent victim here."

"Jusenkyo," the second of the two Enforcers murmured, exchanging looks with his companion, then both stared down and the transformed Dimitri and slowly put it all together, and then something very strange happened...something terrible sounding, like a low rumble rising up from the breasts of the dour faced immortals, almost like the sound of something breaking loose from a seal of ancient vintage. It started out low and started to grow in volume until the hulking brutish men threw back their hands and made the most awful noise that could be imagined this side of a hell pit.

"My god," Leguire shuddered, "They...they are laughing..."

"Sounds like they haven't had much practice at it either," Kurumi cringed.

"You got that right," Lenore informed them, "Legend has it that the last time Mathais laughed was around the fall of Constantinople."

"Mommy, I'm frightened," Talbain murmured in a very low voice, sounding only half-facetious, as though he almost meant it.

"I've heard fiends from the pit who sounded more at ease when they gibber in the night," Morgan averred with distaste evident in her tone and expression.

"Is there something amiss, Officers?" D asked, having allowed this to go on for most of a minute.

Abruptly the two Enforcers ceased their awful laughter, but still dark amusement crinkled about their eyes and lips as the lead of the pair responded, "Forgive us, my Prince...it has been long since either of us has encountered an absurdity so just and fitting..."

"...Yet is difficult to imagine a more deserving fiend to have such a fate befall him," the other Enforcer grimly chuckled.

Genma-panda lifted his sign once again, which read, "So what does that make me?"

"You don't want to know, Old Man," Nabiki cautioned, "So just drop it."

"At any rate," Nodoka smoothly spoke up, nodding towards the hapless Dimitri, "It would appear that, in cursed form, this Dimitri character has lost much of his vampiric constitution, so he should be easy to subdue in this form, in which cause I would urge you, Officers, to take the villain into custody and see that justice is rendered forthwith."

"Oh, be assured that we intend to, Lady Saotome," Mathais remarked as he reached down and drew the fallen panda up by the scruff of his neck, one-handed.

"Judgement will be passed by our Lord and Master when he arrives in due course," the other Enforcer assured them, "Until then...we intend to savor the moment when the mighty and powerful Dimitri Maximoff has been reduced to a bamboo-  
sucking marsupial...it is a fate that he will not long live down..."

"Of that you can be most certain," Mathais assured with a smile that would have put the fear of damnation into the heart of a hell fiend.

"And what about the rest of us?" Morgan asked tensely, "Do ye plan on hauling us all in for our part in Lord Dimitri's actions."

"You are clearly responsible for your part in this scheme that was cooked up between you and the rest of the Dark Pack," D answered, "But as Queen of Makai you are, at least technically, outside of our jurisdiction."

"Besides," Frank added with a nod towards the still-unconscious Lilith, "I kinda think punishment would be redundant compared with what you're gonna have to face at the hands of your own conscience, lady."

Morgan followed his nod and just stared at the one she now knew beyond question to be her daughter and felt her spirits sag at the justice of that accusation.

"The rest of you are not so well favored," Mathais informed them, "Be aware that we will be coming for you in due time, but for now this interloper will be enough to concern us. Fare you well...until later."

And with that the two brawny Enforcers lifted up into the air hauling their captive with them in passing and were soon beyond view, leaving it to Kasumi to remark, "Such a sad looking man. I wonder if he lost someone important to him a long time ago? If so, then he must miss her terribly."

"That's the curse that comes with immortality, Lady Tendo," Julian remarked, "To remember those we leave behind on the road of life and to forever live with the regret of what might have been if we were not so favored to outlive them."

"Er...remind me again why we're still hanging around here, Mate?" Raptor asked of his companion.

"Shhh..." Darkwulf hissed with a nervous glance towards Kasumi, "You want that lady to look at us again?"

The Zombie King shuddered, "No way...that'd be like tickin' off me Mum, and ya'd never wanna meet me mum, believe you me..."

"If you ask me," Natsume murmured as she scanned the dark night sky, "I, for one, am glad to see their passing."

"Aye," Tatewaki agreed, "Like the grim shadow of death they lurk ever at the twilight, waiting for the time when someone transgresses against their stern-  
visaged code of justice."

"Me, I just think they're scary," Natsumi the cop admitted, "Like Internal Affairs goons, the kinds who bust other cops for a living."

"I am with Kasumi on this one, Natsumi-chan," Miyuki remarked, "I find them sad..."

"Aw, they ain't so tough," Frank snorted, "Mathais may be a trained killer, but he's really a kind of teddy bear himself underneath all that stony, macho tough guy image."

"Like a certain someone else we know?" Talbain eyed his colleague with a certain hint of amusement.

"Hey, I ain't faking nothing," Frank growled, "I ain't scare of man or beast or..."

"Just like the Adam I've always known," someone new spoke up, "Boastful and proud of your Hollywood crafted image."

"GAK!" Frank jumped a literal five feet back and almost landed on top of Kasumi, who did not even budge when the big man wound up bumping into her, his eyes wide with dread as he stared at the six-and-a-half foot image of the woman known simply as Eve, who was smiling back at him with the kind of lazy look one might find on the face of a black widow spider.

"Ohgawd," Talbain winced, "It's her..."

"Is Eve?" Gunther brightened, "Gutten tag, Auntie...is nice again to see you."

"It's nice to see you too, Nephew," Eve said, her eyes never leaving Frank as she added, "Even under the present circumstances and company that you've been keeping."

Keiko could not resist taking advantage of Frank's disconcertment and said, "Thought you said you weren't scare of anything, big guy?"

"Hey, I ain't afraid of man or beast, but she ain't either!" Frank pointed an accusing finger at the skunk-haired, leather clad giantess, "That's my wife!"

"Wife?" Kasumi asked, sounding more than mildly startled at this revelation.

"Ex-wife," the big woman corrected, "And happily so. I see that you're up to your old affairs, Adam...and isn't she a little young by your standards?"

"Huh?" Frank suddenly became aware of the fact that he was standing right next to Kasumi, and abruptly moved a step away, though the other girl seemed only mildly confused by the gesture.

"Look who's talking," Talbain said as he grimaced with his muzzle before adding, "How's it going, Eve? Still into your fetish with wind-up boy toys?"

"Not in the least," the tall woman replied, "These days I am a happily married woman...in fact, I do believe that you have already met my husband?"

"Husband?" Frank scowled, only to stare in dismay as a shadow appeared near the edge of the gathering, at which point he grumbled, "You have got to be kidding..."

"My apologies for the delay, the flight from Transylvania was murder this time of year, and the Airline food...was not up to her usual standards."

"Hah?" Nabiki felt the nerves at the nape of her neck flare to life, even as Natsume gasped and clutched at her abdomen and many of the Darkstalkers present gave out a collective shudder.

"'Olly 'ell," Raptor murmured to Darkwulf, "The big man hisself..."

"We're in for it now, old buddy..." Darkwulf swallowed thickly.

D alone calmly turned about and said, "Hello, Father...I've been wondering when you would get here."

"Indeed," a somber gentleman of indeterminate age, very tall and full-bearded with dark hair and crimson eyes remarked as he strode onto the graveyard scene with black cape flapping about his shoulders, "I understand that there were quite a bit fireworks before my arrival, and the ending was a real show-stopper, but you know how much I detest walking into the middle of a performance. Besides which, my son, you were handling matters quite adequately and hardly needed my interference."

"But you were there just the same in case you were needed, Dear," Eve smiled, "And that's what counts in the end, yes?"

"Indeed, my love," the dark man replied before sweeping his gaze over the assembled ranks of Darkstalkers and their allies, giving a token bow towards Ling-Ko, who regarded him with a full bow of her own, even as Tsien-Ko and Mei-  
Ling fell to one knee and bowed their heads, as did Leguire, Yasmina, Lenore, Chloe and Talbain. The bearded man gave each of them in turn a sober scrutiny before his eyes fell upon one of those who did not bow to him, who merely looked his way with a curious expression.

"Ah," he said at length, "You must be the young lady of whom I have been hearing so many very interesting stories."

"I...suppose that I am," Kasumi said dubiously before bowing at the waist and saying, "I am Tendo Kasumi..."

"Yes, of course, who else could you be," the dark man then bowed graciously with one arm swept out to the side before saying, "Forgive my rudeness for not introducing myself before. I am...Drakul, called Vlad the Second, whom some have named Tepesh. You may have heard of me, but do not be alarmed, I am not the man that reputation would have you think me to be. I am, indeed, your humble servant, and one greatly honored to be in the presence of such a radiant beauty, my gentle goddess of the evening."

"Dracula?" Kurumi said very faintly, only to feel Mousse's hand gently placed upon her shoulder to lend encouragement while silently offering his protection.

"Er...what did you just call me, sir?" Kasumi asked with a mildly confused expression.

"A moment on that, sweet lady," Drakul straightened up once again then turned and regarded Nabiki, "This is your sister, the redoubtable warrior who defeated Dimitri in battle...and her equally redoubtable husband, Saotome Ranma? Yes...interesting indeed...and the newest of the ancient line of Slayers. Yes indeed, very well met this evening...and I take it that these are your close kin and parents? Yes...a clan of redoubtable warriors...a fitting brood to stand guard about the Chosen One who will one day unite the tribes of our scattered and divided people."

"My lord...please...excuse me?" Julian asked.

"Never mind, Constantine, my good and faithful ally," Drakul replied, "It is enough to know that these affairs have turned out for the best this evening. Indeed, by the accounts conveyed to me, it is plain that you all have done quite well and have rendered a great service to the Vampire Nation. On behalf of the Council and myself I give thanks for your efforts, and offer condolences for any losses that may have been suffered. But at least now-thanks in no small part to your efforts-the threat of my wayward Nephew and his cronies is at an end at last, which leaves only the question of what is to be done with the rest of you miscreants, particularly you, my dear Queen Morgan."

"What do you plan on doing with me...Impaler?" Morgan scowled.

"The most terrible thing that could be done in your case, sweet lady," Drakul replied, "Nothing. You have made your bed, now you must lie down in it, and whether it be a coffin or a tomb is not for me to determine. A King may not pass judgement over a Queen who is not of his dominion, and you must pursue your own path if you wish to regain the throne of Makai from your father, but it is the choices that you have made that will condemn you, either to an eternity of loneliness or to the path of redemption the fates alone will determine."

"Yer as hard as I remember ye to be, Vlad Tepesh," Morgan replied, "Yet your greatest cruelty has always been your justice. I will make my own way...but what do you plan to do with lord Dimitri?"

"If you wish to know the answer to that, then you will come away with me and I will show you," the bearded Lord of Vampires answered, "In the meantime...there are others here who are more fit for my judgement, beginning with you, Lord of the Zombies and former Minion to Lord Ozumo, who style yourself as Raptor."

"Uh...look, Drac?" Raptor winced, "Er...I mean...your Bloodthirstiness, I..."

Drakul merely waved a hand at the Zombie King and all at once Raptor crumbled into bones and dry dust, astonishing Darkwulf, who gulped in dismay at the dismissal of his closest colleague.

"Rap?" Darkwulf gasped out, turning towards the Vampire King and saying, "You...you killed him!"

"One cannot kill that which is already dead...it would be redundant," Drakul replied, "I merely banished his Immortal essence to another plane more suited to his nature. There he can work off the bad karma of his many sins and find the path of redemption by his own means...but you are a renegade who has betrayed his own pack, a kinslayer and oath breaker. With you I shall not be so lenient."

"What are you...?" Darkwulf started to say when all at once the ground beneath his clawed feet dissolved, and all at once tentacled arms rose up to wrap themselves around his limbs and torso, drawing him down into the pit as it swallowed him whole mere seconds later, the plaintive wine of his howl lingering on seconds beyond his physical passing.

"How horrible," Kasumi averred as those around her gaped in mute astonishment at this terrifying occurrence.

"Not really," Eve replied, "I have it on good authority that she's an old girlfriend of his who wants to get better acquainted."

"Oh...yuck," Lenora winced, "I don't even wanna know the details..."

"Me neither," Chloe agreed as Kiima silently stood in mute agreement.

"So...what about the rest of us?" BB Hood asked as she looked up from the side of Lilith.

"Of you and your so-called 'B-Girls,' I have no interest," Drakul answered, "Go your way and be damned for all I care, just so long as our paths never cross again. You are Talbain's concern from hereon, and into his custody I entrust your keeping."

"Gee, thanks," the werewolf in question grimaced.

"As for the rest of you, go in peace and long life," Drakul said before once again favoring Kasumi with a smile of recognition, "But as for you, young lady, a vision of such loveliness is worthy of the trip that I made just to bask within your radiance. I look forward to watching your career with great interest."

"Why, thank you, Tepesh-san," Kasumi replied with a pleasant smile towards the bearded Lord of Vampires, "It is very kind of you to say that, but I am only one of many who did their part to bring peace back to our humble province."

"I suspect that your contribution was much greater than you allude, Tendo-san," Drakul graciously noted, "But I will not contradict you. Rather one is humbled simply to know that it was you and your clan who have rendered a great service to both humanity and to the nation of the vampires..."

"Just as long as you do your admiring from a reasonable safe distance," Eve noted towards the bearded man with the barest hint of an edge behind her otherwise serene regard of him.

"Er, quite," Drakul noted with a hasty glance towards the woman who towered over him by half a head in stature, and just as abruptly he changed the direction of his regard and said, "Donovan Bane, you have marked her well as one with a destiny, I trust that you will watch over her development as you have your ward, nephew."

"It goes without needing to be said, Impaler," Donovan replied with neither warmth nor hostility in his impassive tone and features.

"Of course," Drakul replied without taking umbrage, only then he growled out the words, "And Stein..."

The last was pronounced with a certain distaste, even as Frank grunted back, "Yeah, Drac?"

"You also share an interest in our young Miss Tendo's welfare," Drakul said without making it sound like either approval nor disdain, "I trust that you will honor her in good time, and see that no harm comes to her, or I will hold it against you."

"Yeah, like I need you to tell me that," Frank grumbled.

"Indeed," Drakul turned and took the hand of Ling-Ko before kissing it and adding, "It warms my marrow to see you in good health, my dear. Although I lack certain of the details, I am aware that you suffered at the hands of my nephew, for which I do beseech your forgiveness as his actions have brought a great dishonor to my house and nation."

"No offense taken, nor shame to you, dear Count," Ling-Ko replied, "And it was...fortuitous that matters turned out as they did since I was able to find solace to remedy the effects of his deeds against my person."

Without meaning to Tsien-Ko and Mei-Ling glanced elsewhere, the cheeks of one becoming rosy while the blue pallor of the other flushed to an almost blueberry coloration.

"I am gratified to find you in so forgiving a mood, my Queen," Drakul said before giving a nod towards Leguire, Yasmina and Lenore, then turning to give his full attention towards Miyu and her clan mates, "Princess, I must also beg your indulgence for having this transpire while within the domain of Tribes Shi and Shinma. Understand that measures will be taken and punishment will be dealt upon my nephew to atone for his part in these shameful transactions."

"We understand and forgive you, Lord Drakul," Miyu replied, "My niece and I are gratified to see him dealt with by your hand of justice, though...to be honest, it does lack the personal satisfaction of doing the deed myself..."

"Quite," Drakul remarked before at last turning towards the dark-clad man hanging back near the shadows, "My son..."

"Yes, Father?" D asked.

"I can wait another hundred years for your answer...or a thousand, or ten thousand, however long it takes for you to decide on the matter," Drakul replied before saying, "My dear, let us depart. Our presence here can only serve to detract from the accomplishments of the true heroes of the hour."

"Whatever you say, dear," Eve replied before nodding towards D and adding, "And we'll be seeing you around, Dennis."

There was a brief pause before everyone else within earshot chorused as one, "DENNIS?"

D winced, "Mother gave me that name...personally I hate it..."

"But I think it's darling, Step-son," Eve said with an affectionate nod, "And as for you, Adam, I'll be seeing you around...sooner or later. Come along now, Anslat-san."

"And when, precisely, did ye start giving me orders?" Morgan grumbled, yet nonetheless fell in step beside the giantess and her vampire husband.

"Um...excuse me," Keiko spoke up again, addressing herself to the female Monster, "Eve-san? Mind if I ask you something?"

"You just did," Eve replied as she paused in mid-step, "But what can I do for you, Arigami-san?"

Keiko cocked an eyebrow at the mention of her family name but said, "Mind if I ask what you see in that big stiff you married? I mean, sure he's a charmer and all, but...well...given who he is..."

"He makes me laugh," Eve replied with a wink, "But don't be so put out by his legend, only half of the things you hear about him were based on the interpretations of that Irish chap and his take on the Harker journals."

"Only half?" Kurumi asked, but a moment later Eve was beyond the range of asking for a further elaboration.

"What a strange couple they make," Tatewaki remarked, "The Lord of Vampires and the bride of our dear friend, Doctor Steinberg..."

"Quite a guy all right," Ranma sniffed, "Waltzes in here and immediately takes command over everything and everybody..."

"That's royalty for you, kid," Talbain advised, "You don't have to like 'em, just know that we're better off with 'em than without 'em."

"And how do you reason that?" Natsume privately wondered aloud, and of course receiving no answer to her rhetorical statement.

Nabiki turned to Frank with a raised eyebrow and said, "Adam?"

"Don't ask," the big man grumbled, "Our dad came up with that name...personally I hate it as much as D hates being called..."

"Right," D said, "But we all know that my step-mother and you had a star-crossed love affair that was doomed from the beginning, and all because you were made with Alternating Current while she uses the Direct kind."

"Then what do I use?" Gunther asked, scratching his head once more in confusion.

"Low voltage," Talbain replied, leaving the blond giant even more puzzled than ever.

"So," Atros said as she rose to her feet and looked around, "What happens now? I know I missed a lot, being out of it and all that, but what happens to Lil, BB and me now that the other bad boys have been dealt with?"

"In your case, young lady," Frank said, "I'm calling up your father. He's been looking for you for a number of years now, and it's high tide that you two got back together so you can iron out your differences like family ought to."

"Awwww...do I have to?" Atros cringed.

"Hey, give your old man some credit, Shrimp," Talbain urged, "Rikuo may have a hard shell but he's true blue around the gills and he's so worried sick about you that he hardly ever checks in back home to see how the rest of you squids are doing."

"Lilith will have special needs that will be attended to, that I promise," Ling-  
Ko added, "Her strength will return, but it is doubtful that she will be too forgiving around her own mother once the truth of their relationship has fully sunk in."

"In which case, Cousin," Mei-Ling added, "She will be in need of a friend or two to help cheer her up and get past this troubling revelation. Then there is the issue of her misspent youth and heretofore wasted potential..."

"Sheesh," Tsien-Ko winced, "You sure that's such a good idea, Sis? I mean, if Lilith's been this much trouble operating on raw talent, imagine what she'd be like if somebody actually took her in hand and trained the little jailbait?"

"One step at a time, ladies," Talbain urged, only to see the sour and downcast expression of the blonde BB, to which he said, "What's up, Red? Why the long muzzle?"

"Ha ha, Wolfie," Hood pouted, glancing down at her own nude body, which shimmered faintly in the moonlight, "I just can't get over the fact that the big, bad D was here and he never even wanted to take a bite out of me. I mean, can't he see what a delectable morsel I am? Legend makes him out to be this real rake of a hunkster, but does he want to punish me by taking me over his knee, or give me the bite like any other good looking broad? No! I mean...is that an insult or what?"

"Maybe he's not into cradle robbing, Ja?" Gunther suggested, only to double over as Hood planted her elbow into his pelvis.

"More like Fangs is leery of putting the bite into the neck of an Immortal," Frank suggested, "After all, the Quickening that powers your kind is poison to a vampire."

"Immortal?" Nabiki asked, turning a curious look towards the blonde who had been tending to the fallen Succubus that she regarded as a close personal friend, and recalling all too vividly how her mother had drained Keiko to a near-husk, which left one to speculate on the blonde's evident resistance to this life-leaching ability, which she doubted was gender-selective in nature.

"Naw, it's more like your old lady spooked him," Talbain countered, "After all, not many gals Drac hangs out with can rip his lungs out if she ever catches him cheating. But hey, don't be so blue, Red, I'm sure he was thinking about sucking on you the whole time he was here."

"Really?" Hood asked, "You're not just saying that, are you Wolfie?"

"Pack honor," the werewolf made a cross over his heart with a clawed hand, "Heck, if it weren't for the fact that I know how tough to chew you are I'd be tempted to take a nibble. I mean, you look good enough to eat, Red, and I mean that."

The Blonde regarded Talbain curiously then slowly smiled, stretched out one finger and ran it through the furry chest of the werewolf, then said, "You'd better not be saying that just because I don't have any weapons on me at the minute, because if I thought you did..." she made a mock-motion of pulling a trigger on an invisible hand weapon then lifted a finger and blew on it with a meaningful expression.

"Careful, Fur-face," Keiko leaned closer to caution, "Any harder and your equipment'll be showing, and you don't want to throw raw meat like that out in front of us ladies."

"Er..." if Talbain could have blushed right there and then he most certainly would have.

"Just keep hard, and maybe the next time around I'll even let you be on top, Wolfie," BB Hood cooed throatily before turning back to the side of the still unconscious Lilith.

Julian leaned closer to Talbain and said, "Just between us, old fellow, I'd be mindful of my tail around that lamb chop."

"Ja," Gunther straightened out once again, "She has a mean elbow, and I don't think you ought be standing too close when she uses it."

"Neph..." Frank started to say, then growled, "Aw, forget it..."

"Um...you think maybe I'm in for a lot of trouble?" Talbain asked as he regarded the blonde Hood with a wary expression.

"Very," D answered, "She will be gunning for you in the future, there is no doubting that, but I don't believe that she means to leave your hide on her mantelpiece hanging over a raging fireplace."

"No," a disembodied voice at D's side spoke up, "But nailing your furry hide is now definitely at the top of her agenda."

"So," Kasumi began, "Are the troubles of this night really over, and-if so-  
then can we all return home and resume our lives, like always?"

"Possibly," Lenore remarked, "But things won't be entirely the same for you, Tendo-san. After all, as a novice Queen you will have to get used to your new abilities, and we still need to make peace between the various tribes by letting them know what was really behind all this excitement."

"Leave that to we surviving representatives, young one," Leguire informed her, "Our tribal leaders will accept our word since it will be backed by the King of tribe Jezebel, and even the ruling Council must heed his word on such important matters."

"Peace will be restored for now," Ling-Ko agreed, "But in the future? The vampire nation is much too scattered and disorganized...small wonder the Rakshasa judged the time ripe for a possible takeover."

"Oh?" Donovan said casually, "Then you still do not realize the full truth about lady Tendo and her ascension? My uncle knew the truth just by looking...but then again, he is older and wiser than many another clan leader, having seen more in his time than many."

"Huh?" Nabiki blinked, "What are you talking about? What do mean by Oneechan's...ascension?"

"Only that your sister is now far more than a mere Queen of the Vampires," Donovan replied, "She has tasted from the nectar of the divine cup and has gained the aspect of something far greater."

"Greater?" Tsien-Ko reacted, "What do you mean by that, Donovan?"

"What is greater than a Queen Vampire?" Mei-Ling asked in confusion, only to visibly start as she put it all together, "Oh my...you don't mean...?"

"Mean what?" asked Princess Miyu.

"Uh oh," Himiko murmured at Miyu's side, "Don't look now but I sense yet another dramatic revelation."

"You get that too, eh?" Nagi asked at the level of a side-whisper, earning a curious glance from Yui's direction.

"Of course," Larva broke his own silence to say, turning to regard Kasumi with his mask hiding his expression, "It was right before me all along, but I was too blind to see it..."

"As was I," D remarked, "But now that I see more clearly, it is obvious that Tendo Kasumi is far more than we took her for..."

"Took her for?" Soun gasped, "What do you mean?"

"That is what I would like to know, Father," Natsume seconded, "What has become of our Oneechan, and why do you speak of her as if she...she..."

"Has become a Vampire Goddess?" a small voice asked, causing heads to turn to see the normally silent Anita regarding Kasumi with a level, wary expression.

"A...vampire goddess?" Kasumi blinked, "Oh my..."

"Is goddess?" Gunther scratched his head, "Thought that obvious to begin with."

"To you?" Frank was astonished, only to see Kasumi turn towards him with a troubled and heartfelt expression, the kind that made his mind go "TILT" for several critical instants.

"Of course," Leguire said, "The prophesy...the return of the Goddess! The one will bring peace to the clans and guide our people to living in full harmony and cooperation with the humans."

"Incredible," Yasmina said in slow realization, "Then...the events of this night...all the troubles and trials that we have gone through..."

"Was but the baptism that was needed to bring about the restoration of a legend," Donovan replied, "Though she is mortal to appearances, within the fair Kasumi lies the spirit of a wise and ancient being who has slept dormant for many incarnations, awaiting the time when events would require her return to full fledged glory. Many have attempted to instigate her rebirth, and Dimitri thought himself to assume the mantle for his own self-glorification, but fate cheated them all by giving us back the one who can restore balance to the forces of light and darkness. It will be many years and trials to come before she is ready to resume her place in the cosmic order, but destiny has well prepared Kasumi to become what is needed to safeguard both human and vampire races in the future. She is a Daywalker who has the power of Heaven and Hell at her disposal, a living dispenser of justice and a healing force who can bring harmony back into the world...but only if she is allowed to grow into this position. The forces of Darkness will quite naturally oppose her, and some who dwell in the light will fear what she represents, and that is why she will need strong protectors to stand firm at her side...defenders such as her adopted sister, the new Slayer."

"Me?" Natsume reacted, "But I..."

"Need lots of training if you're going to be capable of fulfilling your part in defending Kasumi," Doctor Tofu spoke up, "And that's why you'll be training with me, Tendo-san, since I've been appointed as your designated Watcher by the Council."

"Doctor Tofu?" Natsume turned to regard the bespeckled man, "But..."

"I heard everything up to the part about Kasumi needing to be protected," Tofu replied, turning to regard the former object of his previous obsession, "And I can't think of anyone who's more deserving to be a goddess than you, Tendo-san. The future will be in good hands if you can fulfill the prophesy and be the Chosen One of legend."

"Chosen one?" Nabiki said, "We're talking about Kasumi!"

"Yes," Nodoka agreed, "And that means that you need much training and will have a lot of responsibilities to assume, young lady, but with the support of your family and friends I have every confidence that you will prove to be an excellent candidate for goddess."

"Thank you, Auntie," Kasumi replied rather hesitantly, "I think."

"But...but Kasumi..." Soun all but whimpered.

"Hey, you're not losing a daughter, Tendo-san," Genma tried to say via his ever-  
handy sign, "You're gaining a goddess...and what does it pay?"

Ranma just rolled his eyes then turned to Kasumi and said, "Oneechan...is this what you really want? I don't like the idea of anybody trying to force you into something you don't really want..."

"Thank you, Ranma-kun," Kasumi said quietly, "But...from the sound of it all, it does seem as if I am being offered a very...important job, and how can I refuse if there is a need that I can fulfill?"

"But Oneechan," Nabiki protested, "This...this isn't right...I mean...it's too sudden, this business and all! It's all happening so quickly...YAWP!"

"Hey, take it easy, Nab-chan," Keiko urged as she put her arms around the middle Tendo sister and gave her an affectionate squeeze that diverted Nabiki's attention, "Kasumi's a big girl and can make her own mind up. Besides, nobody's forcing anything here...it's not force or fate, it's what she now IS, and all that goes with it...so why try and fight it?"

"Ah..." Nabiki glanced down at the hands laying firm hold over her bosom and felt a curious excitement cancel out the weak protest that she had been about to utter.

"Keiko-san," Ranma spoke up.

"Yes, Ranma-kun?" Keiko asked without glancing in his direction.

No one saw him move but Ranma's hands were in motion, and suddenly Keiko was on the ground rolling around while clutching at herself and rubbing her nerve endings with enthusiastic fingers. Nabiki glanced down to see her friend huddled up in a shivering mass of pre-orgasmic pleasure, then she felt Ranma's arm firmly go around her waist and heard him say, "Hands off my wife...or if you wanna touch her again, first ask permission."

"D-D-Damn!" Keiko whimpered, "You're good...!"

"And don't you forget that," Ranma said as he firmly escorted Nabiki away, "C'mon guys, let's get some clothes on back home. Somebody's bound to catch a chill if we hang around this creepy place any longer."

"So...since when have you turned into such a caveman?" Nabiki asked her husband.

"Want me to carry your over my shoulder just to prove a point, Nab-chan?" he asked, sounding entirely serious as he said this.

"Er...I'll pass...for now," Nabiki added the last part at the level of a whisper, but nonetheless leaned her head against his shoulder as they took their leave of the field of battle.

The others watched the Saotome pair walking off together, then Ling-Ko turned to Nodoka and said, "Your son is indeed very talented and a credit to your family, but for the sake of all humanity, do see to it that he keeps the secret of his arts to himself in the future, or else...no woman shall ever be safe around him and his forbidden teaching."

"My son knows how to conduct himself in a Manly manner," Nodoka assured the Queen of tribe T'siel.

"I know," Ling-Ko replied, turning back to regard the youth and his wife as they vanished into the moonlight, "And that's the real problem..."

"Damn," Tsien-Ko murmured to herself.

"Yes...my thoughts exactly," Mei-Ling agreed in tacit dismay, recalling vividly what they had suffered at the hands of Dimitri and his borrowed Kamasenken techniques.

"You think we oughta ask what that was all about?" Natsumi asked of Miyuki.

"Somehow, Natsumi-chan, I do not think we would find the answer to our liking," her partner softly murmured.

"Friend Ranma is quite the man these days," Tatewaki remarked with a wistful smile turned in his best friend's direction.

"Indeed," Natsume agreed, "And whether that is a good or a bad thing is what's at issue..."

All at once Kurumi spoke up again, speaking the words that caused heads to turn and hearts to sink in dread of the unthinkable, "Hey, anybody see what happened to grandfather Happosai?"

"Eh?" Soun and Genma turned alarmed looks towards the youngest member of their mutual clan, as did Nodoka.

"Oh dear," the Saotome matriarch remarked, "Was he with you in that other realm? Then where could he be now?"

"In trouble most likely," D answered.

"Yeah," Frank sniffed, "Knowing him, the old pervert's probably chasing after some hot looking babe who he hasn't laid a hand on before, and with the way this night's been going the most likely candidate for that is..." all at once he paled and turned his head with a dismayed, "OMIGAWD!"

"What?" Talbain asked, only to blink and say, "You don't think...? Eve would kill him, and Drac would stake him on a telegraph pole and...!"

All at once a loud feminine cry was heard, followed in short order by a very loud smacking noise, and tracing this the sound of a voice crying, "AAAAIIIEEE!" as it reached escape velocity soaring high into the heavens.

"Some things never change," Donovan remarked, only to see the curious look turned his way by a silent Anita, to which he donned his most inscrutable of expressions...

Dnabiki133

Part One-Hundred-Thirty-Three.

Serenity

A knocking at the door at two in the morning might produce a rude result in most parts of the country, but in the Shido detective agency nighttime visitations were a standard trade in practice. Of course the face of the preternaturally cute redhead who answered the knock at the door was a surprise to the one doing the knocking, as was the immediate reaction as jealousy flared, along with the tell-tale flash of crimson in the eyes of the looker.

"What do you want?" the words were out of Riho's mouth before Lenore had a chance to get a word in edgewise.

"Uh...is Shido here?" Lenore asked of the kid vampire (who looked even younger than she did).

"And why do you want to see Shido?" Riho demanded, getting in the other girl's face and backing Lenore up against the opposite wall of the corridor, showing off quite a bit more fire than the Loire vampire was prepared to handle.

"Um..." Lenore considered using the "Old Friend" line, but reconsidered it immediately as experience and instinct warned her that would be a tactical mistake in regard to female relations.

"Well?" the other redhead snarled, showing off her fangs in a manner that might have been cute were it not for the obvious feral quality that lay behind ordinary feminine temper, and for an instant Lenore wondered if her jugular were in immanent danger.

But then another feminine voice called out, "Who is it, Riho-chan? Are you snarling at another one of your clients?"

Yet another voice answered the first one by saying, "Oh, you know how Riho goes off whenever she feels like it. It's probably just her period or something...um...vampires do have periods, right?"

"Uh...who's that?" Lenore asked, hoping to steer matters towards a safer, more neutral target.

Then relief came in the form of a familiar male voice asking, "Riho-chan, please don't frighten off my guests like that. You know that business has been rather slow of late, and if it's not Cain or one of his emissaries..."

"Shido-san?" Lenore tried not to let her gratitude show through as she called out towards him, "It's me, Lenore X. Remember me, ten years ago, from Venice?"

"Of course I know who you are, Lenore-chan," a tall and pale haired man replied as he appeared in the doorway, dressed in black with trench coat hanging about his shoulders like a mantle. He smiled at Lenore in a way that made the other redhead bristle, but then he added, "And Chloe...how are you doing?"

"Chloe?" Riho swerved her attention about in time to see the snarling beast-  
woman standing in the hallway glaring daggers in her direction, and-further on beyond her shoulders-a pale apparition who seemed to be hovering more than standing on the floor of the hallway.

"Down girl," Lenore spoke promptly, hoping to head off a worsening of the situation, "Easy, Chloe, nothing to get excited about here. And you...um...what did you say your name was again?"

"Yamazaki Riho," the redhead in question replied, "Assistant to Detective Shido..."

"Detective?" Lenore glanced at the long haired man, "Oh yeah...that's what you're into these days, I almost forgot..."

"Now there's an interesting line if I ever heard one," a sultry voiced older woman with long dark hair remarked, appearing in the doorway behind Shido with a sensuous manner about her that was accentuated by her leaning against the tall man in a meaningful manner.

And-just hovering over the shoulders of Shido and the mysterious dark haired siren-was an oddly colored humanoid form hovering on wings like a Fairy, but like no true fairy that Lenore had ever encountered before, leading her to suspect that this one was a breed apart from other types with which she was acquainted.

"Er..." Lenore swerved her attention to take in the stunning looker, and at once her heightened senses perceived the fact that she had recently given blood, and that there was a distinctive scent about her scarf that betrayed the fact that she was a donor, ergo a "Familiar."

"My name is Inspector Matsunaga Yayoi," the tall woman replied, anticipating the unvoiced question, "And you, I take it, are an old friend of Shido-chan come calling...with other friends of yours in tow?"

"Er...yes," Lenore admitted, then hastily added, "But I'm not an ex-girlfriend or anything like that. Shido-san and I are...old friends..."

"That's right," Chloe said as she reverted back to her normal (mostly) human appearance and stalked up to the side of Lenore, taking her arm and glaring at Riho in a forcefully assertive manner, "She's with me, get it? And if you don't, then I'll be happy to kick your vampy butt all over the premises, you got it red-eyes?"

"Whoa," the hovering fairy remarked, "Who spit in her kibbles'n bits this morning? And is she always this much of a...?"

"Guni," Shido chided.

"Ah...um...into fur?" the winged character asked by way of quick recovery.

"Chloe-chan?" Lenore blinked, surprised to see her closest friend acting so...territorial around her.

Riho actually blinked at the threat that the female werewolf had leveled, but rather than contest the point she backed away and said, "Okay...if that's the way it is between you...ladies...?"

"It is," the ghostly figure of Kiima responded, "And I can well testify to the fact. And may I ask if you and Shido-san here have a relationship of your own going on, which prompted your leaping to an erroneous yet totally understandable misassumption?"

"Ah..." it was Riho's turn to appear somewhat uncertain and taken aback, regarding the ethereal Kiima with a wary expression.

"Aw, don't let Riho get to you," the fairy figure remarked, "She's really a nice person, at least most of the time, but when it comes to smelling competition in the water..."

"Why don't you zip it you annoying...bug?" Riho snapped, this time venting her wrath upon an entirely different target.

"Riho-chan, be nice to Guni and Shido-chan's guests," Yayoi chided, "They've come here for a reason, haven't you, young people?"

"Er...yeah," Lenore swallowed, "Shido-san...I'm sorry to bother you, and I know it's an imposition, but...well...my friends and I were in the area and we...um...kind of need a place to crash...just for one night. We planned on renting a place, but at such a late hour and on such short notice..."

"And besides," Kiima added, "There is the pet deposit many places insist on imposing when they see Chloe-chan in her lupine form."

"I see," Shido replied, "Well, we don't have much room, but I suppose for one night would be all right, provided you find a better place for you and your...friends to stay the following day. I know that you have connections, and to some very important characters on the Darkstalker circuit..."

"Yeah...but who wants to live on an expense account all of the time?" Lenore responded, "I've been a street kid for most of my life...uh...well, most of the time since I turned, and Chloe's people are nomads by nature, while Kiima here doesn't really have any place that she can call home..."

"I see," Yayoi smiled, "In other words you're independent free spirits, though you sometimes act as agents for that mysterious organization you work for, the one that's supposedly headed by the Monster of Mary Shelly's journal..."

"Don't let him hear you call him that," Shido cautioned, "Frank is rather sensitive about the way he's been misportrayed in the media, and who could blame him?"

"Yeah, well, who believes anything they see in the movies these days?" Lenore shrugged, "Most horror flicks are special effects schlock fests...I mean, would it kill them to every now and again give us a decent portrayal instead of making us out to be a bunch of blood crazed parasites who can't think of anything beyond our next meal, like...like..."

"Goya?" Kiima suggested.

"Exactly," Lenore replied, then paused, "Wait a minute..."

"How exactly are you any different from the kinds of Darklings that we have to deal with every day?" Riho asked in a more practical tone of voice than she had used earlier, "I mean, a vampire, a werewolf and a...whatever?"

"Don't look at me," Guni shrugged, flapping her wings as she hovered out of reach of the pale apparition, "Can't feel if she's alive or dead...a kind of in between states kind of thing, like a ghost or...maybe even a Banshee..."

"Hey," Lenore responded, "It ain't what you are, it's what you do with what you are that counts, and whether you're a friend or foe of humanity is all in how you treat the people around you. Isn't that right, Shido-san?"

"Exactly," Shido replied, turning to Riho before adding, "She's from a different tribe than us, Riho-chan, but Loire vampires are hardly in the same class as Nightbreed. They're kind of intermediately powerful with a controllable thirst for blood, but they have a wide range of similar abilities to our class of Vampire..."

"Cain tribe, am I right?" Kiima asked, "Founded by an Immortal lord whose tribe is said to be older than the Jezreel line of Lord Drakul."

"Exactly," Shido acknowledged, "Cain was my sire and mentor, but I've broken off from him in a great many ways, not the least of which is that I seek to protect humanity while he considers human beings to be weak and inferior creatures..."

"You know, I've never really understood that line of reasoning, Shido-chan," Yayoi remarked, "Most vampires started out as human beings, except for those who were born to vampiric parents..."

"And the halfbreeds who bear some demonic taint, such as lord Dimitri," Kiima further noted, acknowledging the hovering creature beside her with a curiously ethereal expression.

"Indeed, which brings me around to a point I wanted to raise when you showed up just now, Lenore-san," Shido noted, "I've been hearing a lot of wild rumors all night about some kind of intertribal war breaking out with Goya and undead leading an attack against an conclave that was meeting in the Nerima district...and then an outbreak of Rakshasa that needed to be contained by an elite squad of Darkstalkers, and on top of that the rumor of the birth of a new Queen vampire, and that Dimitri Maximoff was somehow at the source of all these problems..."

"Dimitri Maximoff?" Guni shuddered, "Is he also going to be paying us a visit?"

"Oh, that's old news by now," Lenore replied, "Tell you all about it in the morning...um, after sunset, I mean, but right now...my friends and me are awfully tired, so if it's all the same we'd like to rest first, then tell our story."

"But what about Maximoff?" Yayoi insisted, "My own superiors will want to know if that renegade will be tearing up the district..."

"Oh, you don't need to worry about him," Chloe insisted, "Dracula and the Enforcers took him into custody, and we don't think we'll be seeing much more of him in the future."

"Dracula?" Riho blinked, "He really does exist?"

"Interesting," Shido remarked, "I wonder what Vlad will do with his nephew considering the great family embarrassment he's become to the Jezreel. What ever the Vampire King is planning, I'm willing to wager that it won't be any too pleasant..."

"Welcome back to consciousness, Nephew," Drakul said to a revived and restored Dimitri as the latter slowly came back to his full senses, "Don't bother trying to struggle, those chains you are wearing are quite capable of holding you fast as I pronounce sentence upon you, so feel free to rant and curse if you like, since anything you say now can and will be held against you."

Dimitri tested his chains and found that they were quite solid, so he bared his fangs and snarled, "Do you think these paltry things are enough to hold me, Uncle? Do your worst, you will not hear Dimitri Maximoff plead for mercy!"

"I never suspected that you would," Drakul assured him, nodding to the brawny enforcers and the stolid Eve who stood nearby as silent witnesses to the enfolding drama, along with a taciturn and moody looking Morgan, "But they might find some small satisfaction in seeing you suffer...all save lady Morgan, who appears to be quite concerned about your welfare."

"Morgan?" Dimitri snarled, "Are you a prisoner too of this...sham-trial?"

"By no means," Drakul insisted before Morgan herself could speak, "She is my guest and under my protection...in fact, her presence is a key part of my intended punishment for your many crimes against the Vampire Nation. As exiled Queen of Makai she is well acquainted with the concept of summary justice, and of being tried in absentia by a less than sympathetic court. There is such a sentence hovering over your head, I might add, dear Nephew, only I will see fit to name the nature of your undoing, so think well before riling me since the greatest sin you ever committed was in betraying my trust and the memory of your blessed mother."

"Leave my mother, your sister, out of this!" Dimitri snarled, "I am ready to pay the price for my failure, but I will not have you sully her memory..."

"It is you who sully her memory!" Drakul declared with a swift gesture of clawed hand, and all at once Dimitri felt the marrow in his veins boil over, only to subside agonizing moments later as his uncle slowly regained control over his legendary temper.

"Forgive me," Drakul began again, "I did not mean to do that. Indeed, I tend to forget that your reckless and impulsive youth often leaves you more than a bit shortsighted, Nephew. You tend to think in grandiose terms of your own glory and honor before you think of the welfare of another, so what to you is the fact that you have sought to undo centuries of communal relations between humans and vampires and very nearly brought both races to the brink of extinction?"

"I am bored already," Dimitri sneered, "Is part of my punishment to be verbally abused for being less than what you desired of me, Uncle?"

"Perhaps," Drakul conceded, "Believe it or not, Nephew, I am not truly angry with you for being the thing that you are. Anger is for lesser men, the kind who let their Feral nature assume command over their judgement. I am a bit annoyed, however, so try not to try my patience too far or it will go worse for you than you could possibly imagine."

"Worse than death, Old Man?" Dimitri sniffed, "I doubt it."

"Never be too certain of anything," Drakul replied, "It is a sign of weakness. Indeed, your Rakshasa blood has blinded you to certain truths that would have been self-evident to the lowliest child had you been but willing to listen to me all those decades ago when I said that you had potential. Chief among your mistakes is the belief that your unique nature makes you special and better than other men because it is such arrogance that has perpetually contributed to your endless string of failures in the past. You plot big, Nephew, but you never see as far ahead as your own avarice and lust for power will permit you to imagine."

"And I would not be so self-assured over that score, Uncle," Dimitri sneered, "For I can imagine things the like of which you can hardly..."

"Arrogant pup," Drakul snorted, "Did you think becoming a god would give you the satisfaction that you have always wanted? No, you only let your Rakshasa side betray your judgement and lead you towards the path of grievous error. In seeking to confront your own paternal sire, to steal his power away into you in the thoughts of becoming more powerful than I, you only left the door open for your Rakshasa half to guide you to your folly. You thought yourself strong, clever and capable when in reality you were but a tool that your father manipulated into fulfilling his own dark desires. Worse still, you contributed to the deaths of many of our kind and conspired to overthrow the council itself without realizing that we alone stand as a barrier between the human and Rakshasa worlds and that you-no matter how powerful you became-would have been helpless before the tide of a force that has ravaged many planets beyond the Earth without relent. It is for a certainty that you would either now be dead or in thrall to your father but for the timely intervention of outsiders, which further compounded the extent of your transgression."

"If you are referring to the code once again..." Dimitri started to protest, only to once more be cut off in mid-sentence.

"Exactly...the Code," Drakul insisted, "Never kill without strong reason, never risk exposure of our existence to the humans, and never involve outsiders if it can be avoided. You violated all three tenants this night, Dimitri, and that means that you must become a prime example of what it means to defy the will of the council..."

"Will of the council...it is your will, your rules that you name, dear Uncle!" Dimitri shouted, "Your pitiful sentimentality towards the humans nauseates and disgusts me. Who is the embarrassment here old man? Me...or you who side with the humans against your own kind?"

"And what kind to you side with, Dimitri?" Drakul shot back, "I was human once, as were many of our kind. My father was a noble of the Order of Drakul, and while he was a man of intemperate nature and unsurpassable cruelty, he was still a man until the day that he was slaughtered by the Turk...before my very eyes, I might add, as I cowered in hiding with my sister. I made that pact with the dark powers to gain my vengeance, but it was my father, risen from his grave, who made me what I am today, and that is why I side with humanity, Dimitri...because the memory is strong within me of what it was like when I was breathing and walked in the full light of day without flinching..."

"This nostalgia avails us nothing," Dimitri said, "Your father was a greater man than you could ever dream of being! He understood the value life as it is bled out of the humans!"

"He understood how to take life, not how to give it back, Dimitri," Drakul said sadly, "He knew strength and mercy balance each other out, yet he chose the cruel path that you are now taking, and it is the memory of all that our house has ever stood for that you have shamed by your rejection of our values. That is why I must now take steps to insure that your crimes are not continued into the future."

"What do you plan to do with me?" Dimitri asked with deceptive calm in his voice.

"That is the question, is it not?" Drakul remarked, "And in truth I have had a great deal of time on my hands to plan this very thing. After all, what does one do with the greatest traitor to the vampire nation that the tribes have known in over a millennia? Death is obviously too swift and kind a penalty to pay for your numberless transgressions, yet anything less...would be highly ineffective. Your constitution and resilience are quite phenomenal, almost on a level with my own, and simply entrapping you in a conventional snare risks the possibility that you will one day break loose and renew your rampages...so I have chosen, instead, a path that should satisfy all concerned parties and make certain that you do not trouble us again with your childish tantrums and pathetic schemes to become ruler over both the human and vampire nations."

So saying this, the Lord of the Vampire nation reached into his long sleeve and drew out a curious object, shaped like a sphere only dark around the edges, a faint glow discernable within its center, giving it the appearance of a grapefruit-sized eyeball.

Despite himself Dimitri could not help saying, "What is that?"

"Surely you must recognize it from the description found in ancient tomes and ledgers, you who have plundered the world in search of such artifacts from times beyond even our recollection," Drakul smiled, "It is the Eye of Dagon, said to be a prison for all of the darkest and most unwholesome beings who have ever troubled this sad blue planet we tread upon. Within its depths exists a dimension entirely unlike anything that you have previously experienced, Dimitri, a Hell of a different sort where evil things are confronted by their mirror opposite and are forced to relive significant events within their lives, both good and ill, until they either overcome their own inner demons or are driven mad by their encounters. It is a purge stone, very rare indeed, a Siege Perilous-if you will-where your own ego is the jailer and the only means of release is by conquering the monster that lurks within you. Once trapped within its mirrored depths the only way out is to become a better man than you have ever dreamed of becoming, so either you will remain here for all eternity or you will emerge much changed from what you are. Either way, this will be the end of the old Dimitri, and the family shame that you have become through your own actions."

Once more Dimitri struggled against his chains, but again he found them quite solid and resistant to his worst efforts. Instead he snarled and said, "Do you think that alone will be enough to hold me, Old Man? I will yet emerge triumphant, and then I will celebrate by feasting on your bleeding heart...!"

"Undoubtedly you will try," Drakul remarked, "But only one other has ever achieved such a miraculous thing, and you are looking at him now. I well know the perils that lay in store for you, Nephew, and once within its depths you will know them as well...to your eternal sorrow."

"Wait!" Morgan spoke up before she had a thought of doing so, then she hesitated as eyes turned towards her before she managed to say, "Is...this cruelty truly your idea of justice, Lord Tepesh?"

"Ah yes, the other part of my sentence," Drakul turned to regard the Succubus Queen, "You have an interest in what becomes of this wretch, do you not? In spite of the pitiable, contemptible thing he is now you still care what happens to him...to the man you wanted as an ally to regain your throne from your wicked father?"

"I..." Morgan glanced down and did not answer the accusation, could not bring herself to do so as it would mean betraying her own inner turmoil.

"Leave her out of this, Uncle," Dimitri hissed, "Your quarrel is with me, not Morgan!"

"So," Drakul mused, turning back to regard his captive, "The opposite is also true...you care what becomes of her. Indeed, the both of you do make quite the pair, so I will ask this once...do you love this woman, Dimitri?"

"Eh?" Dimitri balked, "What...what does that have to do with..."

"Everything," Drakul smiled in a way that caused even the grim-faced Enforcers to take a back step, "Don't you see? She is in love with you, fool, and you are in love with her, and despite your pretence to merely be using each other in the furtherance of your mutual schemes. The plain truth is that neither one of you can bear the thought of living without the other. You are practically made for one another, and your weak attempts to deny the obvious disgust me."

"But..." Morgan attempted to protest, only to find that she could not.

"You...you are insane," Dimitri sputtered, "I...I care for no one but myself, I..."

"And still you think to lie to me, Dimitri?" Drakul said with an almost pitying expression, "To me, who can read you as plainly as a scroll? Your heart is bare to me...as is hers. You are in love, so do not insult me by pretending otherwise. And you, Woman...on your honor as a Queen, speak the truth now or forever hang your head in shame...do you love Dimitri?"

"I..." Morgan glanced down, and unknowingly received a sympathetic glance from the silent Eve, "...Yes...I...care for Dimitri..."

"And you care what becomes of her, do you not?" Drakul asked of his prisoner as he raised the Eye of Dagon and pointed it in Morgan's direction.

"No-stop!" Dimitri cried before thinking, then grit his fangs and said, "I mean...yes!"

"Very good," Drakul lowered his hand, "Now that wasn't so hard, was it? And before these witnesses I recognize and acknowledge your ties between our two clans, and by the power invested in me by my office I hereby invoke my right as King to declare the both of you to be henceforth and hereafter known as legally married."

There was stunned silence from all around, but then Dimitri managed to stammer out, "M-M-Married? To Morgan?"

"To him?" Morgan reacted, "Ye must be joking!"

"I am not famously known to have much of a sense of humor," Drakul admitted, "And I am quite serious, as it is within my authority to declare marriages as it is to annul them. You are married if I say that you are married..."

"You cannot be serious!" Dimitri spat, "Do you think to declare us in a union to which Morgan and I have not agreed? You think that your authority is so great that you can overrule us like...?"

"You are welcome," Drakul bowed, "No need to thank me, Nephew, just consider it a courtesy that comes with my office. And you, Lady Morgan, surely you are not opposed to having a strong husband in total defiance of the will of your own father?"

"Ah...well..." Morgan reluctantly conceded.

"Besides which," Drakul continued, "If it were left to this fool to propose, then you could live another thousand years before he actually works up the courage."

"I...what?" Dimitri bristled, rattling his chains as he declared, "Uncle...for that insult alone..."

"No, do not waste further words on such filial endearments, Nephew," Drakul replied, "Just become a better husband to your wife. After all, she is a queen, and a gentleman should treat all women as royalty, or else he is no better than a common lout. Now, to carry on with the rest of your sentence..."

"This is not over-GROWLF!" Dimitri growled, only to halt himself in mid-tirade as he felt the change come over him once again and glanced down to find that he had been converted back into the form of a giant panda.

Eve lowered the bucket in her hands and smiled, "You know, I actually think this form suits him better. He may lack for supernatural powers, but they often said he was a bear of a man, and you do like fur once in a while, do you not, lady Morgan?"

The succubus Queen glared at the towering lady monster, but she seemed to reconsider making a point of the matter...at least for the moment.

"Enjoy your cursed form, Nephew," Drakul urged as he raised his outstretched hand again, "It should teach you much about humility, just as another I well know had to learn the hard ways the lessons of Jusenkyo. We will speak again should you manage to free yourself from both it and your prison, and by then I expect you to be a better man than the fool that you are at present. And now..." the lord of the vampires aimed the eye of Dagon and pronounced words of a strangely unearthly nature, and all at once the eye seemingly expanded to snake out with tentacles that latched onto the panda form of Dimitri, drawing him into the gaping maw that was its iris, at which point the renegade vanished from mortal sight all together.

"Dimitri!" Morgan started to lunge forward, only to encounter the immovable arm of Eve as the latter thrust it in the path of the succubus to block her attempted movement.

"It is done," Drakul remarked as the eye returned to normal size, then with an ease that bordered on casual disdain he tossed the eye to Morgan and said, "Here, you keep it. You are now your husband's jailer."

"I...what?" Morgan asked as she held the orb and stared at it in amazement, finding it warm to the touch and disturbingly...quasi-organic.

"Keep it safe and protect it well should you wish to see Dimitri once again," Drakul replied, "I leave it in your care, Lady Morgan, as it is his sole means of returning to this world. Let the fool struggle with its many riddles to find his way back to the earth, if he is capable of achieving such transcendence. If he succeeds then he will be a much changed man and will need the love of a good woman to guide him, but if he fails...then he will remain there forever and you would be better off forgetting all about him. Either way he is your responsibility now. I wash my hands of the matter, for he is Jezreel no longer."

With that the lord of the Vampire nation turned and strode out of the chamber, the grim-faced Enforcers falling into line behind him, as did Eve, who leaned in close to her husband and murmured, "You enjoyed that."

"Not entirely," Drakul admitted in a low murmur, "She suffers greatly for the fool, and were he worthy of her love then he would never have brought himself to such a fate. It was a grim task that needed doing...but...I would be remiss if I did not say that I found a measure of satisfaction in seeing Dimitri's face when I told him they were married."

"My lord," Mathais spoke up, "You know that my brother and I would never dream of contradicting you but...was this wisdom? It was cruel and necessary, indeed, and when word of the fool's punishment is made common knowledge..."

"I would prefer it if the details are kept confidential, old friend," Drakul said simply, "Let it be known that Dimitri has been punished with banishment to a Hell plane, but not the means by which this was effected. The other thing, yes...that can be made common knowledge."

"Yes my lord," the other Enforcer shuddered, "But...married...to Morgan? Wasn't that a bit...excessive?"

"Perhaps," Drakul shrugged, "But you will admit that the two of them deserve one another, and who better to make the rest of their immortal lives miserable than they who delight in tormenting and usurping one another? Even apart they will hear the echo of old taunts and barbs spoken rashly, and that will add to Dimitri's torment when to even recall such things will bring tears of longing to his eyes, and when Morgan weeps for him whom she once did loathe others will know that they are truly punished and will take pity on them both."

"You mean to assuage the Chiefs of the various tribes by such thinking," Eve said, quite notably impressed with her husband's reasoning, "Very clever, Darling, and a justice worthy of the Impaler."

"I do have my moments," Drakul replied as he reached out to take Eve's hand and kiss it, "But know that I do not regard marriage alone to be the worst sort of torture, Eve-chan. When one finds the perfect mate it is best to embrace your destiny rather than oppose it...and in that respect I stand a far wiser man than Dimitri."

"Flatterer," Eve smiled, not bothering to add that it was also the smart thing to say when in her immediate presence, otherwise she might have to "punish him," and in that one regard the Lord of the Vampires knew himself to be the one at a distinct disadvantage...

"So, how do you feel about your new responsibilities, my sister?"

"To be honest, I am a bit overwhelmed by it all," Kasumi admitted, "So many things to learn, so much yet to know, and yet...I find myself quite excited at the prospect of being able to help so many people who need my aid. It is nice to feel appreciated and valued once again...and I owe it all to you for sharing your essence with me, my sister-mother."

"Nonsense," Belldandy smiled benevolently, "I only gave you that which I knew would help complete your transformation. You did the rest by yourself, and I am greatly proud of you for the way things turned out, Imoutochan. Your true mother would be as proud of you were she here in my place, and now you have a greater destiny ahead of you. You are on an endless journey that will take you farther than you could possibly imagine."

"Yes, I know," Kasumi agreed, giving Belldandy a warm look before adding, "But still...there will be many hardships and trials ahead of me...I know this as well."

"There are always trials that must be taken on the road of life," Belldandy conceded, "But I think that you will agree that the rewards make the journey all the more worthwhile. There is no single destination at the end of this road...it goes further than the farthest horizon..."

"Yes, I see that," Kasumi nodded, then paused before adding, "But will my thirst return? I fear the cravings might return at some future time, at which point...I may find it difficult to control my hunger."

"You will be safe so long as you wear the Bloodstone in your earring," Belldandy assured her, "It will replenish your needs constantly, even as the seal it marks will keep your full powers at bay so that they do not overwhelm the planet. There is much to know about being a goddess, after all, and you must allow yourself the time it will take to fully assimilate your new nature..."

"Yes," Kasumi bowed, "There are so many things I have yet to discover about myself...but I do not fear my future any longer, I embrace it. I am enriched by knowing so many interesting people who remind me of what humanity means to me, and as long as I remember this I know that I will always be at heart Tendo Kasumi, both a woman, a goddess and a vampire."

"Then you are already on your journey," Belldandy softly applauded, "I look forward to speaking with you again when you are further evolved on the path that you have chosen. Be well my sister...until we meet again."

"And good fortune to you, my mother-sister," Kasumi smiled back before moving herself off of the cloud upon which they both had been perched, dropping back down towards the earth as golden wings spread out from her back to catch her in mid-fall as she guided herself back towards the province of Nerima.

"And to you, my sister-daughter," Belldandy beamed proudly before allowing herself to descend back towards a certain temple and the anxious young man who was waiting once more to greet her...

"I don't know what else to tell you, Tendo-san," Tofu remarked, "But you are in remarkably good health considering the ordeal that you and your husband went through. As for your condition...well...are you certain that you only became pregnant a couple of weeks ago? Because, if this Ultrasound is right, then you are much closer to two and a half months gone into your pregnancy, and already your body is nurturing a tiny little bundle that is well on the way to becoming a fully functioning baby."

"Actually, Doc," Nabiki replied, "I'm not all that surprised that the little rugrat is holding on firm in there," she patted her abdomen, "Considering who his father is, and what Beiko did to ensure that the kid would be a natural survivor."

"I am glad that you're taking this in as good spirits as you are, Tendo-san," Tofu smiled in his usually affable manner, "Considering everything that your wives went through during their pregnancies..."

"Don't remind me," Nabiki rolled her eyes, recalling all too vividly the strains that both Shampoo and Ukyo had been under the further along they came in their own mutual pregnancies. Just the cravings alone had been enough to drive Nabiki mad...and that was well before she had even begun to suffer such cravings within her own body.

Instead it was left to Shampoo to say, "Airen always think she the tough one in family, but now she know what Spatula girl and Shampoo go through, so she not so big with her boasting."

"Hey, I never boasted about anything like that when I was looking after you, Sham-chan," Nabiki protested, only to see her Amazon wife turn a knowing smile her way, which clearly said that this was far from the last word on that particular subject.

Knowing better than to wage a fight she could not win, Nabiki just sighed and said, "So, tell me, Doc, how's Natsume coming along with her training?"

"Rather well," Tofu replied, "In fact, even Reiko thinks she's well on her way to becoming a great fighter. I dare say she might well replace you as the top dog in the family at the rate that she's progressing..."

"Oh yeah?" Nabiki sniffed, "Well, we'll see about that. After I get done having the kid I'll be back in training full time, and then let my Slayer sister beat her chest all she wants, 'cause I'll be showing her who's the top dog of the Anything Goes Ryu."

"Do not push too hard, Airen," Shampoo cautioned, "Remember what Great-  
grandmother say when she coach Shampoo to get back girlish figure."

"Like you and the old Ghoul would ever let me forget...?" Nabiki caught herself as she saw the look Shampoo turned her way and instantly amended, "I mean...the Elder who looks even younger than us when she ain't hiding her real age behind that illusion she adopted? Oh yeah, talk about your great role models..."

"Ranma say he back later today from training," Shampoo said brightly as she tactfully again changed the subject, "And evil pervert Master promise he be in full control over elemental spirits, so maybe they no try to burn or drown Airen in jealous fit like last time?"

Nabiki winced as she recalled vividly that one particular occasion where she had dared call out the Elemental spirits in Ranma's body in a challenge match to prove which of them had top claim to her husband. In spite of Ranma's warnings Nabiki had felt confident that she could handle all four elementals at once, only to discover the hard way what a struggle it was for Ranma to control them, let alone the folly of fighting four elemental beings at the same exact time WITHOUT full knowledge of his Senken maneuvers.

All at once her attention was drawn to the muscular and broad-shouldered figure who appeared at the entry way to Tofu's examination room, and then Hurada Reiko-  
-Tofu's brand new fiancée-said, "Tofu-chan, are you done giving Tendo-san a clean bill of health? Because there are some well-wishers crowding up the waiting room eager to see how she's doing and..."

"Tell them I'm on my way out, Hurada-san," Nabiki said as she hopped off the examination table and at once accepted the garments that Shampoo offered to her in lieu of the cotton robe that she was presently wearing, "Well, back to front lines of the family group. Gotta admit it's good having everyone back in the same place settling down into our new lives as a married circle..."

"You do quite remarkably well keeping them all in line," Reiko admitted, "Married to four other people, and at your age, and clan head of your family at that...quite a lot of responsibilities for someone who's only just recently graduated from high school."

"Actually I've got another year to go before I'm fully graduated," Nabiki corrected, "Too many years on the road to make up for academically, though my senior year looks to be no less interesting than my last one. Since Ranma's going to be helping me run the dojo we ought to be financially well off for a while, but at the rate our family is expanding...well, it's a good thing that I have my other outside interests to provide a lucrative income or we'd doubtlessly be forced to make a few sacrifices and concessions."

"Just the same, you are a remarkable young lady, isn't she, Tofu-chan?" Reiko asked as she smiled at her iinazuke, receiving a warm smile in turn from Tofu-  
Sensei, who seemed quite taken with his future bride...a woman who was considerably larger and better built in all dimensions.

Indeed, Nabiki found it remarkable that Tofu could have switched overnight from his hopeless infatuation with Kasumi to trade her gentle sister for this...total Amazon (she winced a bit and was grateful that Shampoo was not telepathic), a woman who had won a Miss Kyoto World Wrestling Championship for three years running and who seemed as broad and sturdy as an oak, not svelte and trim like a proper martial artist. Reiko was certainly a very nice person and as warm hearted a human being as you could ask for (in spite of her fearsome reputation in the ring and overall appearance) but she was no Kasumi on the domestic home front. In fact, Nabiki privately thought that Tofu was better defined as the family domestic here and would doubtlessly be preparing his own meals in the future since the only one who was even less domestically inclined that way was Akane.

Not that Nabiki had much difficulty drawing parallels between Reiko and her own beloved younger sister. Both were rugged and Tomboyish sorts who were quick to anger but who also found it easy to forgive most slights against them, whether intentional or not, and both could be extremely demonstrative of their feelings, though to her credit Reiko demonstrated a degree of maturity and restraint that Akane had yet to fully master.

With Kasumi there was far more of a contrast as the oldest Tendo sister was generally restrained and modest to a fault, to say nothing of being extremely feminine in all significant aspects. Reiko might effect a feminine quality or two, but nothing like Kasumi's self-effacing manners and general air of benevolence that belied the character of what she had become during their encounters with the Darkstalker set. Kasumi was notably more self-assertive these days, yet she retained the innocent sweetness that endeared her to most people whom she encountered, Reiko included since the both of them had become fast friends from the moment that Reiko had turned up and announced herself as Tofu's new girlfriend.

To be certain there were some similarities that belied the overall contrast of images that these two presented. Both were genuinely nice people with surprising depths who sincerely cared about the people around them, and both had met with the personal approval of Tofu's mother, who rated women on the width of their hips as an indicator of their ability to deliver strong and healthy offspring.

Nabiki had somewhat narrower hips than Kasumi, but that was hardly the issue at stake here. The fact remained that they were two very different people in every other respect, Reiko being more physically in displaying her affections while Kasumi remained a fairly ethereal presence, more noticed in the background than the foreground, yet deeply appreciated for the work she did in keeping their family house in neat and polished order. Granted Kasumi was seen more at night than the day in these times, but the family had begun to adjust to these little changes, and no one complained about her tendency to sleep in much of the day since they knew that she would be around whenever she was needed.

Nabiki was not entirely happy about the changes that had come over her sister, but she had to privately concede that Kasumi seemed quite happy and at peace about it all. Being turned into a vampire had seemed like such a death sentence before, but with little evidence to show for all her changes it was easy to forget how truly powerful she had become and the things which she was now capable of doing. Just seeing Kasumi take an interest in the martial arts again was a phenomenon in itself, and the one time Nabiki had tried sparring with her...well...that was a revelation and a half.

Even knowing that she was part of the reason Kasumi had gotten so good with the skills that she had "borrowed" hardly prepared Nabiki for discovering first hand the sort of art and raw power that Kasumi had at her disposal, and what it took to keep it under control when it came to handling normal objects.

Not to mention people.

"Hey, Earth to Nabiki, you in there, Nab-chan?"

"Huh?" Nabiki was startled out of her reverie by the sound of Ukyo's voice, and at once she became aware of the fact that she had wandered out into the reception area with Shampoo guiding her way while immersed in these reflections. With a sheepish grin she returned to greeting that Ukyo had given her with a nod of her own before sweeping her gaze across the faces of her various well-  
wishers.

Perfume, as always, was standing by Ukyo's shoulder in the manner of a loyal retainer, though Nabiki supposed it was just the Enforcer's way of signifying her close connection to her wife and the mother of their infant daughter, Fragrance, whom Ukyo carried with her in a kind of papoose that she had slung over her shoulders in place of her traditional spatula. Perfume was similarly holding baby Lylac in her arms but gladly passed her over to Shampoo when the latter went to claim her, thus completing their family grouping with the sole notable exception of their mutual husband, Ranma, who was the hub to their wheel and the center of their collective existence.

The void left by his absence was acutely felt by all four women, yet they knew he would be returning soon and thus made allowances to bridge the gap through mutual support and reassurance. By this means they found a comfort that was unique to their five-way arrangement, the strength of their unity binding them in a sisterhood of love and filial affection that no mere monogamous relationship could even hope to equal.

Also present were her good friends Alison and Beatrice, her sister Akane, her sister's fiancée, Ryoga, Keiko and Kodachi, and her other sisters-Natsume and Kurumi-with their mutual respective mates, and-of course-her ever-faithful lieutenants, Ryonami and Gosunkuji. They were all looking eagerly on as though to hear the latest word of Nabiki's condition (as if anything significant might have changed for her besides a few odd cravings in her diet).

"Ah, nothing to report about, guys," Nabiki tried to reassure them, patting herself on the abdomen before adding, "The little nipper's doing fine in there, so there's no need get all excited..."

"No need she says," Akane huffed, "You all but collapsed a couple of hours ago in the middle of a class...and you call it nothing, Oneechan?"

"You have been taking it a bit hard of late, Sister," Natsume agreed, "There is no need for you to prove yourself all of the time, and we are well aware that you still remain in top form in spite of your...condition."

"Yeah, and even I had to cut back for a spell when I started to feel real pregnant," Alison snorted, "You think we don't know what you're having to put up with?"

"Aiko is right," Beatrice agreed as she cradled their own daughter in her arms and added, "No matter how much you wish to retain your edge as the premier student of the Anything Goes tradition, you are going to have to cut back and delegate more responsibility to Natsume and Kurumi-chan. Allow instead your resources to be channeled towards the nurturing of new life, as nothing should be more important to a mother than the welfare of her offspring...I well know this."

Nabiki had to silently concede that her genius friend had a valid point in this, one that Beatrice was willing to back up with deeds since she had somehow arranged to get herself pregnant this time with Alison's seed, reversing what she had done to her own girlfriend through the use of her Nanobots. Beatrice had once again circumvented the normal impediments that ordinarily prevented a woman from impregnating her girlfriend-slash-wife...which pretty much meant that they were in good company hanging out with the Saotome-Tendo clan, who had set the marker when it came to such arrangements.

In point of fact Nabiki had to remark to herself that an epidemic of pregnancy sweeping through their ranks was largely due to the events that she had sent into motion with Shampoo a whole year back. Not only were Akane and Keiko both due to bear offspring at roughly the same time that Nabiki would have her own baby but now Shampoo herself was confirmed to be with Ranma's child, further expanding the size of their clan's next generation. Of all the females currently pregnant only Ukyo, Keiko, Natsume and Kurumi were presently barren, and at the rate that things were going it was more than likely that her younger sisters would be doing their part to be fruitful and multiply with their respective love interests.

As for Keiko herself...well, Nabiki wasn't placing any bets against the inevitable happening there given the Kickboxer's predilection for messing around in other people's rhubarb. In point of fact, since Keiko and Kodachi were very much an item these days, she would have placed it as a given that one day they would conspire to find a way of having a baby together...assuming, of course, that Kodachi's current child belonged to Ryoga (as everyone more-or-less suspected) and not Keiko (which was another given since they had been on Lao's ship when the conception happened).

Again forcing down these thoughts on the future size of their maternity ward, Nabiki just smiled to her mates and said, "Hey, I'll take it easy in the future, no sweat. Gotta keep up appearances, though, unless I want to concede my edge to you, Nat-chan."

"Sempai," Ryonami scolded, her expression unusually stern for the normally demure and soft-spoken girl, who of late had been spending much of her time seeing a certain boy named Gosunkuji (who correspondingly had been demonstrating more of a backbone as a consequence of this singular romantic foray between the svelte girl and the skinny boy whom many now considered her shadow).

"You won't win any points by inducing yourself into a miscarriage, sister," Natsume said without smiling, "This may be the only child that you and Ranma will ever be able to have by normal means, so I would take steps to protect such a precious cargo, if for no other reason than that the Tendo clan will need strong heirs to safeguard the future."

"Besides," Kurumi added, "You think Ranma will be happy to hear that you worked yourself up into a fainting spell, Oneechan? Knowing him, the guy will flip the moment he..."

"I think we can all safely assume how Saotome will react to this news, Kurumi-  
chan," Mousse assured his wife, "In the meantime...we should not impose too much more pressure on Nabiki since she has the old...um...elder to ride hard on her should she overdo things."

"Oh yes indeed," Tatewaki sagely nodded, "And were I you, fair Nabiki, I would struggle hard to remain on that one's good side."

"Assuming that she has one," Perfume sniffed, demonstrating once again how hard it was for Amazons to forgive those who had long practiced deception against their trusting nature.

"Shall we be going now?" Kodachi asked brightly, being sensible enough to know that Nabiki was becoming uncomfortable by this discussion of her condition, "Ranma will indeed be coming home soon, and it would be best for all concerned parties if he found his family waiting eagerly to greet his arrival."

"Oh yes, Mistress," Keiko nodded, "By all means, can't keep the stud waiting to see how much his wife is blossoming without him."

The slight sarcasm in the redhead's voice belied a soft note of affection that Nabiki had discerned in Keiko's tone of late when referring to Ranma, a market contrast from the way she used to bait him at every opportunity. Indeed, Nabiki had to concede that Keiko's attitude towards Ranma had improved noticeably after the latter had insisted on a private...three way encounter...just the three of them after the conclusion of the Darkstalker matter, where Keiko had willingly and eagerly demonstrated how well trained she was in the arts of pleasure, and had experienced the full range of the Kamasenken as both a punishment and reward for having flirted so outrageously with Nabiki as to leave even Ranma in a state where he knew that such a thing was needful.

Of course, bright and early the next day, Kodachi and the others had showed up upon their doorstep like the cavalry riding in to the rescue, Akane and the rest of their tight-knit group having been too anxious with worry and uncertainty to remain back on the fringes as commanded by Nabiki. They had showed up looking for trouble, only to find out, belatedly, that the matter had been dealt with and only peace remained in the Tendo-Saotome household, with only the shocking news that Kasumi had been the one who saved the day being left undelivered until all of their other frantic questions had been answered.

Of course, once explanations had been tended, Kodachi had then singled out Keiko and sternly looked at the redhead before asking, "Have you behaved yourself during your absence from me, Kei-chan?"

To which Keiko had licked her lips and responded, "Mistress...I only have acted in accordance with your wishes...and I have accounted myself very well, as might be expected."

"That's what I thought," Kodachi said with a slight arch in her tone before declaring, "We will...discuss the matter in private, and then you will spare from me no juicy details of everything that has happened to you since leaving my company a mere seventy-two hours ago. Is this clear enough to you, my Pet?"

Keiko swallowed a thick lump in an audible manner and replied, "Yes, Mistress...it will be as you command."

Nabiki decided she was better off not thinking too hard over what might have happened next when the both of them were alone together in the privacy of the Kuno mansion, but she had noticed the following day that Keiko was having difficulty sitting down within the dojo and had to take the day off early from teaching her regular Mu-Tai classes.

Again she was disturbed out of these private reflections as she and her group exited the clinic and began walking the two kilometers leading back towards the dojo. She turned towards the one who had just spoken and said, "Excuse me again?"

"Man, you are spacing it today, Nab-chan," Ukyo chided as they walked side-by-  
side together, "I said that Ranchan better be ready to take up his share of the household chores if he knows what's good for him, and it's about time he did his share of changing the diapers."

"Don't I know it?" Perfume rolled her eyes, indicating the pouch she carried that was full of disposable replacements.

"Heh, blame it on the greedy little tykes that they're always so hungry to get a taste of Momma," Alison chuckled as she took back her own daughter from a reluctant Beiko and prepared to breast-feed little Eileen, only to pause and glare at Tatewaki before growling, "What are you looking at?"

"Er...nothing," Tatewaki stalwartly forced his eyes straight forward rather than stare at the breast that the redhead was baring so brazenly in public, all too aware of the look his own fiancée was giving him at the moment.

Nabiki had to chuckle at this, saying aloud the words she knew were in Natsume's mind, "Eyes front, boyo, if you want to keep them. A kid's gotta feed when she's gotta feed, and it beats hearing them howl in hunger all the way home..."

"Little Lylac never howl for food," Shampoo cooed as she cradled her own babe in her arms with protective affection, "And neither do Fragrance. Such well behaved little warriors, so much braver than their poppas."

"Hey!" both Nabiki and Perfume cried out in annoyance.

"You guys are so lucky," Kurumi sighed as she glanced sidelong at the three sleeping infants, "I wanna have a baby too when I get older..."

"Er...should we be rushing things like that, Kurumi-chan?" Mousse asked nervously, "I mean...if all you women get with child at the same time, then who'll be left to run the dojo?"

"I'm sure you men will manage well enough on your own," Nabiki confidently predicted, not bothering to add that she was definitely NOT looking forward to being sidelined for the months it took to have her own baby, "But don't be in such a rush to become a mother, Kurumi-chan. It'll be another two years or so before you're old enough to graduate from high school, and even for Akane getting pregnant at seventeen is bound to be a burden..."

"Oh, I don't mind it at all, Neechan," Akane reassured her older sister, "Kodachi-chan and I are planning on working something out with the School Administrator when we come back in the fall, and I'm going to be taking a lot of home classes so that I can keep up with the rest of our schoolmates, so we won't lose any time and can still qualify for college exams next year, by which time I'm probably going to need a lot of help from you guys balancing motherhood with schoolwork."

"Hey, anything we can do to help out, Akane-chan," Keiko reassured her, "You know we'll be there for you, though I think it's Ryoga who'll wind up doing the lion's share of supporting his wife after you deliver his baby."

"Hah?" Ryoga asked, only to color abruptly at the thought of what the redhead was implying.

At that Ryonami could not help but lean closer towards her own romantic interest and murmur, "Talk about clueless," to which Gosunkuji could not help but glance towards the volatile Ryoga with an understandably nervous expression.

Nabiki could not help grinning at the weird sight that her clan must have presented there and then while they trooped on home to her family dojo, but when they got in sight of the gates her mind abruptly banished all thoughts of what an unconventional assortment they were as her eyes fell on the young man who was waiting there to greet them.

He stood a bit taller than she could remember, which was odd since he had only been gone for about a week for special training, yet somehow Ranma appeared even more handsome and manly than when he had followed his father and Master Happosai up into the hill country. There was a calm and confident aura about him that much appealed to her, and when he smiled her way her heart skipped a beat, almost as if they were still newlyweds and not happily married for the better part of a month now. She could not help grinning like a sky schoolgirl as he returned her look and said a hesitant, "Hey," as soon as they were within earshot.

"Hey yourself, Nabchan," Ranma returned before sweeping his gaze over the rest of his eager wives, "Ucchan, Perchan, Sham-chan...how's it hanging?"

"Nihao Ranma," Perfume smiled back before turning a saucy look towards her fellow wives, and then surprising them all by leaping into his arms with a hug and a big kiss by way of additional greeting.

"Whoah!" Ranma said as soon as their lips parted company and he could stare up into the face of his blue-eyed Amazon co-wife, "What was that for?"

"I just thought I'd be the one to do it since everyone else seems to have their hands full at the moment," Perfume chuckled as she lowered herself back down and added, "But just wait until they get their arms free, then you'll see some affectionate hugging, right Ucchan?"

"Oh, you bet," Ukyo grinned back, even as Shampoo adopted a minx-like expression.

"You guys," Nabiki shook her head in merriment and felt a warm feeling come over her, extended to the rest of her family group, even as she turned back to their mutual husband and said, "So...all done with training for now, Husband?"

"Heh, well...the old freak seems to think I'm ready to get back to decent society," Ranma replied, adding with a sidelong glance at Perfume, "Not that I know that many decent folk around here..."

"Oh you," Perfume playfully punched his arm then stood back and said, "All right if I hold Fragrance while you beat him up for me, Ucchan?"

"I've got a better idea than that," Ukyo leered, "Why don't we save the rest of our greetings for when we're in private, then you can show us how much your stamina has improved...Husband."

"Uh...right," Ranma replied with a faintly nervous expression, "Stamina...gotta build it up through lots and lots of practice..."

"But Ranma," Shampoo more reluctantly said, "What about...elemental problem?"

"Oh, these guys?" Ranma took a moment to concentrate then raised both arms and projected outward, and like that a flash four different colored lights appeared, each taking the form of a woman in a different ornamental kimono, all four recognizable as his Elemental servants Latisha, Sharil, Nagisha and Karina, all four of whom bowed at the waist like proper ladies towards their respective Mistresses, who blinked back in return in surprise at their good manners.

"We kind of came to an agreement of sorts," Ranma explained, "The girls and I are on better terms now, and they promise not to get out of line like they did during that sparring match you had, Nabchan."

"Ah...good," Nabiki replied, "After all, I wouldn't want to have to fetch my big sister on you if things get out of hand again, right?"

All four elementals shuddered at the implied threat, and Karina hastily spoke up, "No need to worry on that score, Mistress Nabiki. Our Master has utmost confidence that we will...behave ourselves with proper decorum in the future."

"And does that hold for the rest of you?" Nabiki asked as she swept her eyes over the ranks of the four elementals, resting with particular intensity upon the fiery Latisha, who met her gaze and bowed with firm resolution. "Good...then I guess we can all be friends from now on. Just remember that us poor human beings may be weak and fragile creatures-and that goes especially true for our children-but we're not to be underestimated, understood?"

"Hai!" all four feminine voices said in response, and then Ranma summoned them back into himself, and once more a calm settled over the dojo, though a lingering hint of their potency remained in the air like a fine mist aroma long after they had vanished.

"How did you ever get those four to tow the line, Ranchan?" Ukyo asked in frank amazement.

"Much better behave than last time Shampoo see them," Shampoo added.

"My guess is he used the Senkens to teach them proper manners," Perfume slyly deduced, seeing the nervous regard that Ranma turned back in her direction, "Or maybe just the Kamasenken...that would do the trick, Hai?"

"Ah...let's just say I did what needed doing and leave it at that, okay?" Ranma asked, fingering his collar.

"I see," Nabiki purred softly, "Well then, we'll discuss the details later, shall we? Just for the record, though, you owe us big time for this indulgence, Ranchan, and I, for one, am planning to collect on my marker."

"Gulp...right," Ranma hastily agreed, knowing better than to show fear or hesitation in the face of the amorous glares that he was receiving from his altogether human ladies.

Just a short distance apart from all of this, Tatewaki and the others shared a collective smile at the discomfort of the Saotome heir, and in low undertone the Kuno heir remarked, "At times I do envy Ranma-kun for his stalwart character, and at times I do almost pity him for having such demands for his...performance."

"You ask me the guy has it coming for being such a stud all of the time," Keiko mused, "Lucky bastard."

"Yes, I am certain that you would delight in having a harem of your own to play with on a regular basis, my Pet," Kodachi sympathized.

"Oh, but you know that you are all the woman that I need to make my life fulfilled, Mistress," the Redhead murmured back in a sensuous, suggestive tone of voice.

"I know of no such thing," Kodachi said aloofly, adding with a smile, "But I shall try to accommodate you by keeping you well fed and cared for so that you never feel neglected, eh Akane-chan?"

Akane grinned back at her two best friends while Ryoga looked on and seemed only mildly uncomfortable, as if fearing that he was about to get roped in on another sexual adventure.

"You ask me, one partner at a time ought to be enough for anybody," Alison mused, giving Beatrice a sidelong glance before adding, "And some I know are more than a handful."

"But we still manage to get by," Beatrice said serenely, taking Alison by her free arm and leaning their bodies together while they stared at their nursing infant and shared a moment of pure maternal bliss together.

"I guess we'd better go in and see if the folks have dinner ready," Kurumi remarked for the sake of making small conversation that was not laced with double-entendres.

"Indeed," Natsume, the apprenticed Slayer, said with equally aplomb, "Aunt Nodoka and Neechan will no doubt chide us if our food gets cold while we chat here for the rest of the coming evening."

By turns the Tendo family (and guests) filed in past the front gates and into the yard, heading for the main house through the rear entrance, only to come to a complete halt as they were greeted by the sight of a singular phenomenon, one not entirely new to their experience yet still somehow unearthly as a radiant aura of peace and ultimate bliss filled the whole of the Tendo compound.

There was Kasumi sitting on a rock beside the koi pond with a white bird perched upon one outstretched finger as she sang a song whose melody was as sweet as any Nightingale, and the vision of her sitting there was like of something pure, perfect and otherworldly.

"I don't know what words I can say,  
The wind has a way to talk to me...  
Lovers sleep, a silent lullaby,  
I pray for reply...I'm ready...

"Quiet day calms me, oh serenity, someone Please tell me-oooh-what is it they say?  
Maybe I will know one day..."

In spite of herself Nabiki felt oddly moved as she listened to the melody of her sister's perfect voice, and the song that she was singing had a haunting quality that was strangely compelling, and quite apart from the curious charisma that Kasumi had acquired of late. The song had a traditional air of old Japan about it that hinted of a childhood lullaby, yet spoken in mature and vibrant tones off innocence and yearning. The song left the listeners quite spellbound, and not just because a curious light seemed to surround Kasumi, while small animals were sitting in rapt attention all around her, even the koi in the pond seeming to bend an ear to drink in her aura.

It was an amazingly transcendental moment in Nabiki's mind, though quite typical of the changes that had come over Kasumi since the conclusion of their battle with the Darkstalkers. There was a calm and confident self-possession to her older sister that had been absent in the Kasumi of old, and a sense of inner peace that stood in stark contrast to the changes that she had undergone. While everyone in the family now knew that she was a drinker of blood, Kasumi was still beloved by one and all who knew her, and the sense one had from being around her was anything but unholy.

Quite the opposite, in fact, and at moments such as these...well...one could quite easily accept the claim that Kasumi now had friends in some very lofty places...

The singer brought her song to a close then gently rose from the rock and smiled at her audience, eliciting a soft and heartfelt sigh from all around her. Whether by accident or intent Kasumi's eyes came to rest upon a deeply moved Nabiki, and for an instant the latter came to appreciate how truly beautiful Kasumi was, and not just in a physical sense, though there was that about her older sister that transcended the limits of beauty, making it seem as if Kasumi embodied the best in all that was humanity, a concept that laid bare the depth of all that she now embodied as both a woman and a goddess.

Then the goddess spoke and the scene returned to something like what passed for normality these days in the Tendo household, "Welcome home everyone. I have an important announcement, and I wish all of you to be present to hear me deliver it my family, my loved ones."

"Announcement, Oneechan?" Akane asked in a breathless voice, helping to break the spell that held everyone else speechless.

"Yes," Kasumi nodded gently, "As you know I have been studying to take my exams for medical school, and tonight I am leaving on a trip to the examination place so that I may appear there bright and early in the morning."

"Leaving?" Soun Tendo broke his own silence with a start, "Leaving tonight? But...Kasumi...!"

Genma (who was in panda form at the time) held up his ever-handy sign, which read, "This is all so...sudden..."

"Now Soun-chan," Nodoka chided, "We discussed this before and you agreed that it was time that Kasumi continued with her education, and we should all be very proud of her and what she is attempting to accomplish. To become a medical student is a very important and meaningful career choice, and it will take many years of hard dedication for her to achieve her license, so let's all encourage her and give her our support. We all love you very much, Kasumi-chan, and you know that you are in our hearts no matter what roads you travel in the future."

"Thank you, Auntie Nodoka," Kasumi said brightly, "And you don't need to worry about me leaving here for very long, Father, it will only be for a day and a half before I return. I have to leave now, however, since the testing is at eight and I have a long distance to travel before I can arrive there fully rested."

"But where is this place, Oneechan?" Ranma asked, "And...will you be leaving us for good if you get accepted?"

"Not at all, little brother," Kasumi reassured them, "I will be visiting you regularly, as often as I can get away, for my home is here and always will be. But...if I do pass my exams and get accepted, then a whole new life will be open for me, and I intend to explore it around people much closer to my own age, my peers, whom I have not been with since leaving high school and devoting myself to helping Auntie take care of things around the house. It would be very good to return to an academic life...and I had forgotten how much I missed school during the past few years, or the friends whom I used to know when I, too, was about your own ages."

"You actually miss school?" Kurumi asked, sounding more than a little stunned at the concept.

"But Oneechan," Natsume started to say, "Is it wise leaving here at this time? I mean no offense, of course, and I support your desire to be a healer, but...given what we know about the forces of evil, and how they might seek to turn you to their nature..."

"It might not be wise to leave our company just yet," Tatewaki finished for his iinazuke, "For we are more than just your friends and family, fair Kasumi...we are your sworn protectors who would defend you against any and all who might seek to gain advantage against your benevolent nature."

"I thank you for that, Tatewaki-kun," Kasumi replied, "But I don't intend to live my life a prisoner of what might be, and I've been preparing for this for quite some time now. Besides, I have another who has offered to be both my sponsor and companion, and he's picking me up right now, so..."

"That's right," a familiar gruff voice assured them, "And anybody who comes at her has gotta go through me, and I give you my word that no harm will come to Kasumi while she's in my presence."

"Frank-san?" Kodachi asked, turning to see the giant man-monster standing on the edge of the yard in his usual biker leathers.

"Hey, big guy, how's it hanging?" Keiko asked affably, acting not the least surprised by his appearance.

"Doctor Steinberg, what a pleasant...um...surprise," Beatrice remarked somewhat lamely.

"Oh yeah, sure it is," Alison sniffed under her breath.

"But for who?" Ryonami added with a sly look towards Soun Tendo.

"Hello, Steinberg-Sensei," Kasumi addressed the towering man in a voice that was warm and laced with considerable affection, "I have been waiting for you..."

"Yeah, sorry about being so late, Miss Tendo," Frank said with unusual politeness and respect in both is tone and bearing, "Traffic was murder getting out here. Ready to go and get tested?"

"But of course, Sensei," Kasumi said as she stepped from the rock and slipped her feet into a pair of waiting sandals, then sashayed up to the side of the huge man with a spring in her step that was almost girlishly eager.

"But...Kasumi...?" Soun managed to stammer out, before glaring at the sign that panda-Genma was sporting that read, "Don't forget to wear protection!"

"Saotome," Soun growled, "That isn't helpful..."

The panda hastily turned his sign around so that it now read, "I mean...riding on his motorcycle..."

"Motorcycle?" Soun blinked, his face further draining of color.

"Only part of the way, Sir," Frank assured the Tendo elder, "We'll be taking the Limo out to the Kyoto area, but I thought we'd make good time on the bike getting out of the suburbs to the airport in time to catch our flight."

"Flight?" Ryonami asked, voicing for the sake of everyone present the thought of what sort of trip Kasumi was actually in for, which hinted at a world of wealth and privilege beyond the limits of their collective imagination.

"Oneechan?" Nabiki asked, finally overcoming the paralysis that seemed to have come over her upon hearing Kasumi's announcement.

Her sister paused and looked towards her, and for an instant her eyes reverted to their blood red coloration, and a thought passed through the space between the sisters in which she could clearly hear Kasumi's voice in her mind as the older woman projected, **Please, Imoutochan, it has to be this way. Your happiness with Ranma means as much to me as I think it does to you, and I would do nothing to imperil that. I owe so much to you for what I have grown up to be, and I will always love and cherish you in my heart, both as Kaneda and as the sister I most look up to. You are and will always be in my heart, Nabiki-  
chan, but my life must mean more than just to live in another's shadow. I pray that you will understand this in time and accept what I am today, and when our paths cross again we will both be stronger and wiser for our adventures.**

And then the moment passed and Kasumi's eyes released her, and then she was past the others and exiting the gates of the compound with the hulking man-brute named Steinberg at her side, who was helping her to find a seat on the back of that humungous motorcycle that he affectionately named, "The Monster" before straddling it between his powerful thighs and starting up its engine.

Just before Frank took off, however, he paused to say, "Something on your mind, Kid?" to a somewhat reluctant Ranma.

"Yeah," the Saotome heir replied, "I mean...I know you won't do nothing bad or let anything bad happen to my big sister...but..."

"I'm sponsoring her through medical school, Kid," Frank replied, his gruff voice easily heard over the roar of his machine as he turned to regard the youth with pale eyes full of sympathy and understanding, "Some Deans I know owe me a few hundred favors. Don't worry, it's all been covered, and besides, you know I'd never do anything to risk getting on the bad side of an up and coming Wizard like you..."

"A what?" Ranma blinked.

"Just what I said," Frank replied, giving Ranma his full attention, "A Wizard's the rank that's one rung up the ladder above a regular martial artist...kind of like a guy who's on a spiritual quest towards self-completion and perfection. I've been watching you from the sidelines and I know what kind of road you're heading down. Fact is I've been down it a long time before you were even a gleam in your momma's eye, and while there's no way this side on the grave that you could ever take me in a fight, given a few more years the same'll be true in reverse, and at the risk of giving you a swelled head, I'd say you've made some pretty good choices that'll carry you through to the end. Besides which, you've got four extraordinary women who'll be at your side come hell or high water, and most guys in life are lucky to find just one woman like that, so be grateful."

"Um...yeah, I am," Ranma sheepishly responded.

"Take care, little brother," Kasumi winked at Ranma, then added on a sly note, "And look after Nabiki for me. You know how fond I am of her, and I'm expecting to hold your son by her in my arms before the end of the next semester."

Ranma blinked at that while Nabiki just blushed crimson and murmured the word, "Son?" in tones of wonder, then Frank gunned his engine and started to take off, Kasumi clinging to him with ease as though the ride did not frighten her (and indeed, Nabiki reasoned, it was difficult to imagine anything so trivial as a spill at high velocities being a threat to either passenger or rider).

She also noted that neither rider was bothering to so much as wear a helmet.

She saw Kasumi turn and wave at the familiar faces watching her depart towards an unknown future, and in her parting made everyone aware of what was leaving with her...the center of peace and stability that Kasumi manifested.

"Well, how do you like that, Sugar?" Ukyo asked at length, "Looks like things are really changing all around us..."

"Life tends to be like that, friend Ukyo," Kodachi softly agreed, "No matter how much one wishes things to remain static, change is one of the constants of the universe, and nothing remains the same forever."

"Unless we wish to hold onto the moment that is the present, Mistress," Keiko insisted, "The future is forever beyond our grasp, and only the moment we are living is meaningful to our existence."

"Well spoken, Arigami-san," Beatrice agreed, squeezing Alison's hand before adding, "The moment is what matters, and this one will never come again, so let us treasure the gift of insight that has been given to us, that Kasumi is destined for great things and may accomplish much that has yet to be written."

"Aiyaa," Shampoo nodded, seeming content to let that stand as her own concise observation.

"But...Kasumi...!" Soun persisted, looking close to tears as he imagined losing his precious child to a fate beyond his scope and vision.

"Hey, look at it this way, Daddy," Nabiki smiled as she felt a curious kind of peace and contentment settle upon her, "At least he's a doctor."

"Oh yeah," Ranma agreed, "Even made for the part. Hey, c'mon guys, let's get inside and have something to eat. Oneechan'll be back soon enough, and it's not like we're saying goodbye to her forever."

"Very true, Brother-in-law," Natsume agreed, though for her own part she could not entirely shake a certain unease that had settled upon her, as though she sensed something else extraordinary abroad in the night besides Kasumi, but what it was that could trouble her this way was beyond her inexperienced perceptions...

Epilogue:

The hunger was still upon it and though it had tried to contain its rampages it knew that it had to feed or else succumb to starvation. It had been looking for suitable prey to sate it's all-consuming hunger but had found nothing so far that could sustain it for very long, and it was growing desperate by the minute. It had to feed now or else expire and discorporate, as had been the lot for many of its cretch-mates.

The Rakshasa was, to the best of its knowledge-the sole surviving member of the horde that had attempted to breach the gates into the Earth system, the rest of its clan having perished at the hands of the indomitable She-monster known as Eve, who seemed to be everywhere with that sword of hers, slashing and hacking through ethereal bodies as though she did this sort of thing for a hobby. The only reason that it had survived the onslaught was because it alone refrained from attacking, choosing instead the better part of discretion.

It had watched the others die for nothing and felt a passing sorrow unlike anything typical for its own breed, for it was different from other Rakshasa in that it had feelings and emotions quite unlike those of its cretch-mates. They all were loyal drones doing the bidding of their dark master, mere soldiers leading the charge of the invasion, but it was different in that it had learned to question and think upon its own, to wonder why they were attempting to take over the realm of the humans when their own ravaged world was a place of barrenness and desolation. What had they to offer the Earth that was so different?

These humans might seem puny, frail and fragile creatures, but they were different enough from Rakshasa to intrigue it, and rather than bare contempt for these slow-witted and rather unimaginative creatures, it had grown to be fascinated with what it saw and was moved enough to regret the necessity of its own desperate actions. Yet when the moment had come it had not hesitated to take the course of least resistance in order to escape the fate that had awaited the others, and when the abortive invasion force failed, it felt a measure of justification for its cowardice and desertion, reckoning that it was alive while all who had followed Lord Mor'ghul were either dead or abandoned to the lonely void of Limbo.

Yet the Earth was a hostile place to its kind, the nature of this world being so radically different from what the Rakshasa viewed as normality that it invited comparisons to the human word for "Hellish." It was hard and bitter tasting, not at all the paradise that it had envisioned, but at least it was not populated with Rakshasa and it had an abundant source of life to draw upon for sustenance. All it had to do was feed and it could draw enough of the substance of this world into itself in order to stave off extinction, but to do that it had to find a victim, someone whose life essence and intelligence were rarified enough to provide the energy that Rakshasa needed for proper feasting.

It had to be the right kind of energy, too, for animal level intelligence would not suit it in the least. Only humans seemed capable of generating the sort of energies that Rakshasa liked to feed upon, but the thought of slaying a human in that manner was...disturbingly unwelcome. It lacked the vicious killer instincts of its kind, a trait that had earned it ridicule and scorn among its clan and cretch mates, and it wanted to know humanity on a level very different from that of a predator regarding a central food source. It wanted to be among the humans, for there was such a feeling about the human world that drew it forward as it floated out from the graveyard to explore the nearby city.

It did not take long, however, for it to discover that the human world was fraught with perils of a kind very similar to what existed in the world of the Rakshasa. There were many scenes of the strong ravishing the weak to be found on every world, and here was no exception as the Rakshasa encountered a group of street-toughs who were circling around a helpless female of their species. The air of menace and danger was as familiar as it brought a sense of sorrow to the ethereal demon, for many times it had been the victim of bullies and brutality of just this sort, and it made the demon feel a twinge of sympathy towards the victim as though they shared a common identity, and that was why it chose to act, to sate its hunger on the ravagers rather than merely hovering aloof like a common observer.

The gang leader had no sense of the dangers facing him as he held the knife in his hands and leered at the slut who had dared to shame him in front of the others. He had approached her in a friendly enough manner, offered to show her a good time and maybe light up her night, but the bimbo had dared to snub him...and worse, to kick him in the balls and try to run away screaming bloody murder. If not for the rest of his gang she might have even gotten away, and his eyes were still watering from the pain that she had caused him, this flirt who had hung out with one of the rival gang leaders, and who now had to be taught proper manners as she paid for her transgressions.

Akemi knew that she was in a very bad place and could not think of anything that she might do or say that might save her from the inevitable. Derrick looked real bad and was obviously jacked high on something, and the glaze in his eyes informed her that he was deadly serious about using the shiv that he had pulled out of concealment. She very much doubted that he wanted to kill her outright, though, since it would serve his sick, twisted nature far better if he merely cut her up and left her bleeding on the sidewalk. It would cause trouble with her boyfriend that would likely lead to a rumble, but Derrick hardly seemed to be thinking at all of the consequences to his actions. He just wanted to hurt something, and she just happened to be the target that he had selected.

Meeting him in that club had been a piece of bad luck to rival getting caught holding someone else's stash while the cops raided the joint, only worse since the cops would rough you up, not try to gut you like sushi. She glanced at the other members of Derrick's gang but found no help there since they all seemed pretty high and were viewing her as nothing more than an object of disdain, not even human since she belonged to an enemy gang member. In their brutal world all disputes were settled by violence, not reason, and the penalty for being caught in a rival's territory was to be made an example for others, so it was very unlikely that anyone would try and restrain Derrick even if the half-Gaijin boy really did mean to kill her.

He was taunting her in his badly accented Japanese when something very strange began to happen, a mist seemed to settle over them that caught and reflected a bit of the moonlight. At first nothing seemed to happen other than this, and Akemi wondered if the fog were rolling in, which might afford her a chance to escape unharmed if she could stall Derrick for time and maybe find an opening in the ring of street-toughs that presently surrounded her.

But then the first of the gang members began to choke and grip his neck as semi-  
invisible tendrils of mist surrounded him, and all at once he was lifted into the air writhing and struggling against a translucent body that enveloped and contained him. Before the very eyes of the other horrified gang members they watched as their fellow gang-banger started to come apart before their very eyes, dissolving in a rush of chemicals that filled a hungry void and reduced the youth to his constituent nutrients within a matter of mere seconds.

The Rakshasa had not intended to kill that swiftly, but the aching hunger that had wracked it for what seemed like an eternity had caused it to act imprudently, flooding its victim with powerful stomach acids that did their grim work in the space of a full minute, during which it feasted upon the life energies of its victim. Muscle, bone and cartilage were broken down and absorbed into itself with a greedy haste that was born of desperation. Thus granted a measure of slight satiation, the Rakshasa gained a measure of solidity and manifested in a visual frame as its true and terrifying aspect, all of eight feet tall with multiple limbs and tentacles sporting from a body that was faintly bird-like yet horrific.

The gang members all reacted to this with varying degrees of shock and amazement, and so petrifying was the fear that collectively settled upon them that they at first did not behave in a manner that would be consistent with their own survival, and so the Rakshasa was able to ensnare two more of these street-toughs within its tendrils, drawing them into its body before they could even think of putting up resistance, and thus terrifying the rest of the gang into the smarter course of turning about and running off screaming in naked terror.

Only two remained behind, unable to do otherwise for perverse and ignoble reasons, Derrick being too high on Ecstasy to behave as if the nightmarish apparition were just some figment of his imagination. Akemi, on the other hand, was just too terrified to want to make any sudden move that might attract the creature's interest, and so she looked on as the other two boys were dissolved within the creature's body, this time taking longer to expire since the Rakshasa was not in as much of a hurry to consume its meals and could savor a bit more of the life essence of its victims.

In doing so, however, the creature also became aware of the minds and memories of the humans it was consuming, gaining insight into what demons drove them to behave like bestial brutes, so much like Rakshasa. It briefly relived the joys, hurts and sorrows of humanity and found a common source for their anti-social natures: basic alienation from society and its restrictions. The Rakshasa could well identify with these emotions and felt immediate regret over its own actions, sorrowing that it had chosen the way of biology over reason and intelligence. It would rather have approached these others as a friend rather than an enemy, and in slaying them had doomed any chance of being accepted among the humans.

As it paused to consider its next course of action, however, Derrick was not so slow and reflective as to miss the point that he could be the next one on the menu. Rather than attacking the source of his fear, however, the slow-witted youth choose to renew his previous hostility by venting his wrath upon Akemi, leaping to the erroneous but typical assumption that the demon's appearance were somehow of her doing.

"YOU!" he declared, "You summoned him, Witch! You're gonna pay for that, for sicking your pet monster on us, Bitch-doll!"

Akemi was too shocked by the accusation to even raise a hand in her own defense, but even as Derrick surged forward and began to shove his knife in her breast she heard the demon cry out in a frighteningly inhuman voice, "NOOO!"

As fast as the Rakshasa was it moved too slow to stop the human from jabbing the knife blade into the helpless girl before him. Like a shot it wrapped itself around Derrick's body as a human might try to restrain a fellow human, only the Rakshasa's body was still primed to feed, and so it wound up enveloping the maddened gang leader, and in doing so began to feast on Derrick's soul, uncovering his memories, his loves and hatreds, all seen through the addled mind of an addict who was pumped too high on chemical nightmares.

Akemi saw the knife protruding from just below her breastbone and stared at it in disbelief and amazement. The blade had just missed nicking the Aorta and had gone under the heart, so the wound was not instantly fatal, as intended. It felt more like having the wind get knocked out of her and there was no immediate sense of pain, just a slow and creeping numbness. As such she missed seeing what happened to Derrick, though the sound of his parting scream registered faintly the background as Akemi found her knees turn to jelly and the pavement rushed towards her, much as if she were some puppet whose strings had just been clipped.

She did not even remember hitting the street with her forehead as she rolled over onto her side and bled both internally and externally, but gazing up at the night sky she could still make out the creature looming over her, could even make out its face after a fashion, and for some strange reason felt no terror in its regard, only a certain sense of wonder that anything so horrible could almost possess a kind of quasi-aesthetic beauty. Predators had always fascinated her, being long, lean and lanky, much like her in a way, though at times she felt more like a deer being stalked rather than the one doing the stalking...

The Rakshasa sensed that the remaining human was dying but did not know what could be done about it. In one sense a meal was fading away before it, and it would be a great shame to let it go to waste, yet at the same time it felt moved by strange emotions entirely alien to its kind, emotions that were born of humanity, that had been absorbed from the humans it had eaten (albeit that they had been very poor at comprehending such soft passions).

With no sense of what it was about, the Rakshasa reached down with gentle tendrils and drew the human woman into itself, extracting the knife from its body and ejecting it back out onto the pavement. With no great urgency or hunger now fueling its actions the ethereal demon cradled the girl within its tendrils and began to fuse with her body, merging as one to effect internal repairs that halted the approach of death and preserved what life was left to her, even as the Rakshasa opened itself up and began to experience the wealth of the female's emotions.

Of course, still affected by the Ecstasy that had been in Derrick's system, the Rakshasa had no way of knowing the consequences of its actions as it opened itself completely to the girl, a heightened sense of arousal making contact all the more acute so that the slightest brush of a tendril against bare skin was like the raw awakening of heretofore previously unknown emotions. The discovery of Akemi's life and nature was mesmerizing to the creature, such a stark contrast to the brutality and alienation of the four youths that it had devoured, and of a sudden their minds and memories began to merge and flow together so that Akemi briefly knew what it had been like to be a Rakshasa, to grow up in a world desolate and foreboding with no real friends or a home to call one's own, privileges that humans seemed to take for granted as their natural birthright.

As such something very strange began to happen, and then Akemi awoke to herself with no sure sense of time, only a vague and ill-defined awareness that something very extraordinary had just happened. She pried herself up off the street and looked around in dull amazement, feeling the sun begin to rise over the horizon...and why did the sight of the golden orb briefly send a wave of panic sweeping through her, to be replaced mere instants later with the certain realization that the sun's rays were not painful.

"Weird," Akemi remarked, wondering what the odd taste was in her mouth, and why did she feel as if she had just been gang-banged by a herd of rangy Rugby players? She was aching in many parts and felt sore in her neck and abdomen but otherwise was remarkably quite fine. Better than fine, as a matter of fact, and almost as strong as a rhino, though why she should think that just then and there was a mystery (and why did another part of her mind ask what a rhino was in the first place?).

"Guess I'd better get home or the guys'll start to get worried," Akemi said to herself when she accidentally discovered the knife that was laying on the ground near to her body. It was a strangely familiar looking object but she could not quite place it, only that the sight of the thing filled her with a sense of dread even as she reached for it and took it into her possession...

To Be Continued.

Comments/Criticisms/Rakshasa on Ecstasy Hotline: Shadowmane

THIS IS NOT THE END, GENTLE READERS, merely a pause in our story while I go back to working on my various other projects. I only wanted to take the time to thank everyone who contributed and encouraged me in the continuation of this series (and I hope I didn't offend too many of you along the way, especially the fans of the Darkstalkers series). When next we pick up this complex storyline, things will more-or-less be back to normal around the Tendo household (or will they be? Heheheheheh!), yet you know that peace and tranquility can't last for long in the lives of Nabiki and Ranma Saotome, so...be here next time for: "Angels and Devils Kissing," or, "Baby Blues!" Be there!

Jim Robert Bader (Shadowmane)  
9/7/02

X /pre 


	53. Chapter 53

Nabiki 1/2,

A Very Scary Thought

(An Altered Destiny)

by

Jim Robert Bader

(Based on the Works of Rumiko Takahashi & Others)

(Special Chapter)

Keiko Arigami

LEMON WARNING:

Mature subject matter with many sexual references, may be too extreme for

sensitive readers; YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!

"There you are, gentlemen, read them and weep," said Nabiki with a winning smile

as she laid down a perfect full house to her astonished opponents, one of whom

held a hand with three Aces, the other a Straight and the third a double

combination that included one Joker.

"How did you...?" one of the men sitting across from her said with a stunned

expression at being deftly outmaneuvered by this cocky teenage girl sitting

across from him at the table.

"That's impossible!" the man to his right angrily proclaimed, "First a Royal

Flush and now this? You must be cheating in some way!"

"Cheating?" Nabiki assumed a pose and look that protested her innocence while

her eyes held a dangerous gleam that was definitely arising to the challenge,

"Moi? You must be desperate or an amateur to imply such a thing, Monsieur Kobe.

How can I be cheating you? You three are the professionals here, I am just a

High School girl who seems to have gotten a bit lucky..."

The third man was up and out of his chair before she had finished talking, "You

expect us to believe that? You and the old man must be running some sort of

Sting to try to lure us into betting all our money while you clean us out! No

way can you be this good a card player, or this lucky without having some kind

of an angle!"

Nabiki did not look towards these angry men but rather glanced over at Genma,

who was holding all of her winnings so far, and nodded by a fraction. Genma

understood her meaning and at once withdrew to the rear of the private booth,

which attracted the notice of Kobe, who at once turned and growled, "Hey, where

do you think you're going with out Money?"

"It isn't your money anymore," Genma replied with a look over his shoulder, "If

you have any doubts on that, I suggest you take it up with my Niece."

"That's right," Nabiki replied as she slowly got up out of her chair, "Uncle

knows that I manage all the financial arrangements in our partnership. You

three lost fairly, accept the consequences and get over it."

"No way!" the man to her right said as he reached out a hand to grab her by the

forearm, "You're gonna pay us back out of your hide..."

He failed to see the dangerous gleam in Nabiki's eye one second before her right

arm suddenly broke his hold and snaked out to secure a lock on his forearm, then

she launched herself into the air and with a sweeping side kick savagely dealt

the man a blow that knocked him through the railing. While still in mid-air

Nabiki executed a perfect pivot as her leap snatched one leg back and

simultaneously launched a kick with her left foot that picked Monsieur Kobe up

off his feet and spun him completely around in a one-and-a-half roll that ended

up with him landing soundly on his bald head, while Nabiki brought both legs

together and completed her leap with a powerful front-kick that dispatched the

last of the three men into dreamland.

Nabiki alighted perfectly with her bare feet touching the table where the

remaining chips lay, then deftly knelt down and snatched up a blue chip that she

tossed towards the last man she had defeated, saying with her usual sardonic

lilt, "Here, buy yourself some new caps for those incisors. It beats eating

your food with a straw from now on."

She hopped back down to the floor then swept the remaining chips into a bag she

had brought with her, filling it almost to capacity before slinging it over her

shoulder and giving Genma a look that as much as challenged him before she said,

"Well?"

"Effective," Genma replied, "But a little too flamboyant. You didn't have to

put on such a show in taking out those three."

"I know," Nabiki replied with a hard, flat tone to her voice, "But nobody gets

away with calling me a cheater. As if it never even occurred to them that I

must just be good at reading expressions, not to mention an above-average card

player."

"That's the problem with professional gamblers," Genma said as they left the

booth, "Too much pride for their own sake...present company exempted, of

course."

"Of course," Nabiki replied as she fished out another pair of chips from her bag

and tossed them to one of the Table managers, who had come to investigate the

commotion, "Sorry about the mess."

That Manager looked at the chips, then stared inside the private booth, then

back towards the retreating back of the brown haired girl wearing the Martial

Arts Gi and back again, then he looked up towards a glass booth overlooking the

gamblers den and saw a distinctive shadow. Time seemed to freeze for a long

moment before he saw that shadow nod in a meaningful fashion. The Manager

swallowed then nodded back and snapped his fingers, pointing to the booth as his

Bouncers set about cleaning the place up in preparation to the next group who

wanted to play there.

Nabiki had not noticed this exchange as her eyes were on the more interesting

entertainments around them, and the other tables where a lot of money was

exchanging hands in a brisk and frenzied manner. She smiled her trademark

cynical smile and said, "Maybe you were right about coming to China, Old Man.

The potential profits here certainly haven't disappointed."

"I take it we make another stop by the bank on the way to the next gambling

hall?" Genma asked as if the question were merely rhetorical.

"Of course," Nabiki replied, "Wouldn't do to carry this much money around with

us everywhere, it might attract the wrong sort of attention."

"All part of training," Genma said philosophically, which earned him a sour look

from his companion.

"It's always about training with you, isn't it, Pops?" Nabiki growled sullenly,

"Nine years on the road and you still aren't satisfied. How good do I have to

be before you think I'm ready to return home to my family?"

"I promised your father that I would make you the best martial artist the world

has ever seen, Nabiki-chan," Genma said with complete seriousness in his tone,

"And you are no where near to achieving your full potential as yet. I thought

your experiences in Thailand would have taught you never to underestimate your

opponents."

"Big deal," Nabiki sniffed, "I won my last three matches, right? We had a lot

of money riding on the outcome there, so you know there was no way I was going

to let myself get bullied around by those stupid Kickboxers."

Genma refrained from saying aloud what was on his mind. In truth he had been

deathly worried over Nabiki during that last fight, which had come far too close

for his liking, and there was no way that he could ever return to Nerima if his

ward had been seriously injured or killed during that fight. Instead what he

said was, "Just so you learned something for the next time."

"Yeah, right," Nabiki snorted, "As if I'm ever going to climb into the ring

again with one of those Muy Tai fanatics. They seem to think all Japanese Girls

are either into Judo or Karate..."

"Excuse me, Miss."

Nabiki turned to glance at the man who had addressed himself to her, finding a

well-dressed fellow of medium height and build, perhaps somewhere in his mid-

thirties, impeccably clean shaven and having the defferential air of a mere

underling doing the bidding of someone much higher in rank to himself.

Aloud she merely said, "Hai?"

"I could not help but overhear that you have trained in the Muy Tai?" the man

said in flawless Japanese, "Perhaps you may be interested in a local match

hosted by some very wealthy clients. My superior has informed me that you may

fit the general requirements for a surprise entry in the tournament that is

taking place tomorrow evening within this very establishment..."

"No thank you," Nabiki smiled tightly, "I'm retired from the sport."

"There is a lot of money to be made if you win the prize," the man said simply

as though her response had been pro-forma.

Nabiki paused in the act of turning away, then shot him a hard look and said,

"How much prize money?"

"Ten million yen's worth," the man replied with a slight smile, "The local

favorite is expected to win, of course, but if you make a good showing you could

at least earn something by giving a decent point spread."

"Ten million?" Nabiki turned fully around and stared hard at the man before

passing her chip-bag over to Genma, "What time would we have to be there?"

"Six O'clock at the earliest," the man replied, "The match begins at Eight in a

basement behind the building adjacent to this one, facing the waterfront. Shall

I inform my superior that your name shall be entered on the registry?"

Nabiki smiled, "Tell him Tendo Nabiki will be there, and I'll expect to see my

prize money in legally tendered currency, no small bills or checks, and

preferably in American dollars if he has any on hand."

"Ah..." Genma suddenly found his voice, risking a sharp look from his young

business partner as he aired a nagging doubt that he had just formulated, "You

say my Niece is a surprise entry?"

"Unfortunately the challenger we had arranged has taken ill rather unexpectedly

and will not be available for her match," the man replied smoothly, "It would

have been a great shame for her to forfeit the match as most of the guests are

pre-registered, and there are a great many bets already laid down. That is why

we will offer a compensatory fee to you if you do not win, something to make it

worth your trouble..."

"Keep your second prize money," Nabiki smiled, "I intend to win it all. See you

here tomorrow, and have my prize money where I can see it or I'm not setting

foot in the arena."

She turned away, leaving Genma looking somewhat flustered, having caught the

sudden gleam in the other man's eyes once Nabiki's back was turned towards him.

The man was smiling in a way that Genma definitely did not like. Although

normally he was reckoned the more impulsive one of their business partnership,

the instincts he had developed from years of associating with Nabiki now came

into play and told him that there was more to this match than a question of

prize money.

He caught up with Nabiki as they headed for the cashier's booth, where they

would convert their chips and money waivers into a solid gold-stamped check that

could be cashed with the local Banks, and he started to say something when

Nabiki raised a hand and said, "Spare me. I already know it's a sucker play,

but what he doesn't know is who's the sucker."

"You actually intend to go through with this?" Genma felt appalled at the

prospect.

"Why not?" Nabiki flashed him that sardonic smile of hers that always seemed to

imply that she was on the top of the world and had no doubts on her ability to

stay there, "After all, like you're always telling me, it's all about training."

Genma winced faintly and subsided, knowing how impossible it was to argue with

his adopted Niece when she assumed that tone of voice. He silently prayed to

the Kami that this was not a mistake or the one time that Tendo Nabiki really

had underestimated the situation, or at the very least that they would somehow

live to regret it...

"The match is set, my lord," the well-dressed man bowed low before the other man

before him.

"Excellent," the extremely fat man in the tailored suit replied as he regarded

his subordinate coolly, "A most fortuitous discovery this Muy Tai fighter, and

just in time to prevent my losing face before the Tai Pans and their companions.

It is good Jos indeed, a sign that the Gods of luck are smiling upon me once

again." He turned and focused his stare on the figure inside the steel cage who

was presently training against a heavy bag loaded down with ball bearings and

shot-gun pellets, "You hear that, my Pet? You have another playmate to spar

against. Won't that be nice?"

The girl inside the cage, who had been steadily high-kicking the steel-lined bag

for the past two hours, stopped in the middle of one kick, then slowly retracted

her leg before pivoting in place to focus an angry glare towards her owner. The

look in her eyes was wild and predatory, the look of a caged animal whose rage

at the smell of blood was like a palpable force as she turned steel blue eyes in

her Master's direction.

"That's right, my pet," her owner assured her, "You get to fight once again. I

expect you to maintain your unbroken record of victories as I have a very large

sum of money riding on this performance. You will do your best to destroy your

new opponent?"

The redheaded predator in the shape of a human being merely brought her gloves

together and made a loud smacking noise, then turned to the bag and launched an

even more powerful kick than all of the others, destroying it as though it were

made of paper mache, spilling ball bearings everywhere in a shower of tiny iron

pellets.

"That's what I thought," her master smiled in satisfaction, "Only don't do it

too quickly...make it last at least a full round, possibly two if she is any

good. I want my guests to have their entertainment before you

eventually...finish her off. Can you do that, my pet?"

Arigami Keiko growled with an animal fury. She knew what was best for her as

she stepped away from the bag and unwound the tape from about her fists so that

she could wash herself off with a ladle that drew water from a water bucket.

"By the way," the fat man turned to his underling as though in afterthought, "I

forgot to ask if you obtained the name of this woman. It would help stimulate

interest to have her name up on the Marquee."

"Yes my lord," the underling bowed again, "I believe it is a Japanese

name...Tendo something... ahm...ah yes! Tendo Nabiki!"

Keiko paused in the act of splashing herself down with the ladle full of water,

her expression frozen in shock and belated recognition. Fortunately neither man

paid any attention as the fat man stroked his chin with stubby fingers and

frowned.

"Tendo Nabiki?" he mused, "I believe that I have heard that name somewhere

before...perhaps I should make some inquiries, just to be on the safe side. Not

that I expect her to be all that good, but you can never take chances in this

business."

"Yes, Master Phat," the other man replied, "I will make the usual rounds and see

if anyone of our people knows of her from other places."

"Good," replied the Gang Lord known as Chu Wan Phat with a sage expression,

"Expand the search if you have to and get back to me with the results. Now tend

to your assignment, I want to spend some quality time with my favorite pet

here."

"As you wish it, my lord," the subordinate replied as he bowed then withdrew by

walking backward with hands raised in submission. He then crisply pivoted and

exited the chamber, leaving his employer with his favorite pet.

Keiko was quick to reassume her pose of glowering anger while Chu Wan Phat's

eyes were upon her, careful not to betray any interest beyond that posed by the

prospects of another match. Victory had become all too common for her of late

and the opportunity to test herself with a genuine challenge was not to be taken

lightly...even if it meant facing a former friend in mortal combat.

"You are eager for the fight, aren't you my dear pet?" the obese man said with

an insinuating smile that read the glint of emotion in the redhead's sapphire

eyes as visible confirmation, "Never fear, your need for battle will be answered

very shortly. Until then contain your thirst for blood and remember to put on a

good show...you know what will happen if you should happen to displease me."

Keiko lowered her head in silent acknowledgement of the threat, then calmly

placed one bare foot upon the pile of ball bearings and beads that littered the

floor of her cage and casually flipped up a handful, tossing it up to shoulder

height before her foot lashed out like a shot and kicked the beads at the far

wall of her chamber dungeon where they rebounded, making a sound like rifle

shot. Just as casually she stood at ease, then bounced on the balls of her feet

and proceeded to shadow-bow an invisible opponent.

"Very good," her owner turned away, "I knew you would understand. Please me and

your reward will be equal to the price of my displeasure. Until then I will

leave you to make ready for your challenge."

Keiko watched the fat man exit her prison hell then sank down to the floor of

her cage, raising her legs into a full lotus posture. Instead of meditate,

however, she stared off at the far wall, silently wishing that she had kicked

the buckshot into the man's face, if she had dared to so defy him. Her mind

turned inwardly to memories that were so old and long buried that they seemed

like an entirely different lifetime, easily conjuring up the face of her former

friend and wondering if she had changed so much that they would not recognize

one another when they finally met again.

In a way she hoped that this would be so, for she had changed immensely from her

carefree days of Middle school in their native Japan. A time of reckoning was

at hand, she knew, and somehow she found herself both excited and dreading their

reunion, which for her would come in a few brief hours.

Only one of them would not survive the encounter, and a tiny part of her wished

it so for her own sake, but she knew too well that she was a survivor and would

do whatever it took to stay alive...regardless of the consequences. She only

hoped-for the sake of old friendship-that the same resolve would hold true for

Nabiki...

"So," Nabiki remarked to her companion in Japanese, reading the Cantonese

lettering that marked the building that they were about to enter, "This is where

the well-to-do come for entertainment in this city. Not many changes with the

exchange of ruling governments, and the Commissars are probably as much in

attendance as their Capitalist allies."

"That should mean a good turnout," Genma remarked without being successful in

erasing the unease he had felt for the past several hours, "It also means they

probably expect a good show. Whoever the local champion is she's bound to be a

tough customer."

"I'll try and keep that in mind, Ojisan," Nabiki said sardonically, "A Fish

market is a great place to hide the bodies, no? In this case the gambling hall

has a back alley entrance that leads down into a chamber that's officially not

there but which everyone in town knows about, including the police. Yes indeed,

that would be ominous...if we had anything to fear from bearding the lion in his

own cave."

"I think something in that analogy worries me, Niece," Genma cautioned, "You do

know that these people are connected to the Triads, and that bunch makes the

Yakuza back home look like a bunch of social activists."

"I'll be careful, I promise," Nabiki replied cutely, then started forward again,

"C'mon, I'm eager to increase my winnings, and ten million yen should just about

put me in a new tax bracket. Think of all the investment strategies I could

finance with those numbers."

"Just be sure we live long enough for you to spend it," Genma said in a last

ditch attempt at conveying his growing uneasiness in the matter to his

overconfident partner.

He knew, of course, that Nabiki's way was to never glance to the side while

keeping everything in her peripheral vision. It was one of the things he

admired about her, the extraordinary powers of observation she displayed from

beneath her pose of casual indifference. As they walked up to the side-entrance

leading to the secret gaming area, following the directions they had been given

to the letter, he knew that Nabiki was taking notice of every detail, every

nuance of their surroundings from the position of the men who were obviously

serving as guards to the more significant players they passed by once they were

admitted inside. Having descended a stairway to the basement area, and passing

through at least two check points and a double set of doors, the man they had

spoken to before appeared to give them further guidance to the area set aside as

a combination dressing room and storage space where Nabiki was directed to ready

herself for her competition.

Ordinarily Nabiki would have preferred to fight in her usual attire, but for a

Muy Tai bout she came prepared with a pair of shorts and tank top that had

served her well when she and her Sensei had traveled through Thailand on their

endless Martial Arts training mission. So it was that Nabiki donned her outfit

then took the time to wind bandages around her hands and feet in the traditional

Muy Tai manner. This was not necessarily to toughen them up since her training

had already made her limbs as strong as iron and very difficult to injure, but

for appearances sake it never paid to seem overconfident before one's opponent.

Thus armed and ready, she and Genma were led from the dressing room to the

actual arena itself where a large crowd was gathered in the cramped confines of

a reconverted basement.

They were met at the floor of the arena by the man who had spoken with them

before, and he had another man standing to the side holding a suitcase, which

drew Nabiki's attention.

"You are punctual," the man replied, "My employer admires that."

"I'd admire him a lot more if I saw the prize money in advance," Nabiki said

simply, then at a nod from the man before her the one with the suitcase stepped

forward and opened it to reveal a neat arrangement of bills in the currency

requested. Nabiki took one stack of bills and flipped them through her fingers,

ran the tip along one edge then made a show of licking it before nodding in

satisfaction."

"Good," she smiled, "Just keep them ready until I'm ready to collect them."

"As you say," the man smiled with that same cunning expression that had given

Genma the shivers before. He felt it now even more strongly and glanced at

Nabiki, whose attention was rather focused upon the stage and her waiting

opponent.

It had been something of a mild surprise for Nabiki that her opponent was

already in the ring and warming up with leg-kicks. Her back was turned to

Nabiki until the Tendo girl vaulted lightly onto the tarp, and then she

presented herself to full view in a combat stance, her expression already

showing anticipation as they locked eyes and stared at one another.

It only took Nabiki the span of one second to react with a gasp, and then she

blurted out softly, "K-Keiko? Arigami Keiko?"

"Konichiwa, Tendo-san," the redheaded Amerasian before her replied, her long

hair bound up in a braid that extended to the back of her knees, blue eyes

flashing Nabiki's way as if to study her profile and contrast it with a memory

before she added, "It has been a long time."

"A...long time?" Nabiki blinked, "It's been three years! What are you doing

here...?"

"Uh oh," Genma murmured, also recognizing the redheaded girl from Jubei Middle

School who had been a specialist in the sport of Kickboxing even then.

Something about the girl looked different to his experience eyes, more

dangerous, with a definite edge that he did not like.

His unease only increased when the smooth-talking man turned to Genma and said,

"So, you are her trainer. You must be very proud of your ward, Saotome-san."

"Uh..." Genma gave the dangerous looking man the sort of scrutiny a snake gives

a mongoose and said, "You know of me?"

"I did some checking around," the man said with an insinuating tone before

glancing to one side as his attitude changed abruptly, "You will excuse me, I'm

being summoned by my employer."

"Of course," Genma replied, not taking his attention off the man until he was

well clear of Genma's immediate presence.

That was when the announcer for the match stood forth to make proper

introductions of the fighters to the crowd, who seemed only to appreciate that

the women were very attractive and limber, though with her severe helmet-cut

hairstyle Nabiki had a slightly more boyish appearance. A few caught the

exchanges and took note of the fact that these two knew each other, which

implied a common history, but for the most part that simply meant added spice to

the show as their rivalry would have an added personal bonus.

One who was not so keenly amused was Chu Wan Phat, who stood watching from his

customary booth above the arena where he could take in everything through a

thick plate glass window. He saw his champion talking to her opponent with body

language that spoke of familiarity and he frowned somewhat in consideration

before saying, "I don't like this. It seems my pet already knows this Tendo

Nabiki..."

"That might not be so surprising, sir," his subordinate said politely, "I did

some checking as your requested, sir, and I found out that the name Tendo Nabiki

has been heard in places as far away as Singapore and Malaysia. It seems that

she and a man she travels with named Saotome Genma are a pair of wandering

martial artists specializing in an unusual form of free-style combat called The

Anything Goes School of Indiscriminate Wrestling."

"So they're mendicants on a training mission," Phat replied, "What is that to

me?"

"They are much more than mere mendicants, sir," his lackey replied, "It seems

that in ten years time those two have racked up quite a reputation in many of

the places that they have visited. The girl is some sort of talented grifter

with a penchant for gambling. She enjoys engaging in scams and swindles by

which she leverages sizeable earnings that she invests in a number of personal

accounts. I did some inquiries at the local banks and learned that the girl is

believed to have a personal net worth of several hundred thousand US dollars.

Of course, that is only a rough estimate based on preliminary data..."

"Indeed?" Phat mused, "Most interesting...and at such a tender young age. What

of her trainer?"

"Nothing special there other than the fact that he is an above level master of

the art, sir," his subordinate replied, "He is reputed to be very foolish and

something of a coward. The girl is the brains of their partnership and only

indulges her teacher when it suits her fancy..."

"Quite remarkable for a Japanese girl," Phat considered the point then said,

"And how were you able to entice her to appear for this competition?"

"I merely informed her of the prize money and showed off some petty cash to

obtain her interest," his lackey smiled before adding, "Of course I implied that

she could earn it if she wins, or obtain a lesser fee for her troubles in the

event of her defeat. I'm quite certain that she suspected nothing of the truth

behind my words. She thinks herself a clever sort and no doubt believes that

she can spot an unfair competition. I didn't bother to inform her what the real

consequences would be for losing."

"You did well," Phat said with approval, then finally smiled again, "This may

turn out to be a better match than I had hoped for. A pity the girl I was going

to pair up against my pet proved to be so...uncooperative. It was a waste of

such potential."

"Indeed, sir," his lackey replied, "The loss of a good investment, but perhaps

this new girl could prove to be sufficiently talented to make up for the

percentage."

"I do believe that you may be right about that," Phat continued smiling, a leer

that on his face had all the warmth and charm of a Mako shark that senses its

dinner...

"I don't believe this," Nabiki said as she spoke sideways to Genma, "What is

Keiko doing here this far away from either Tokyo or Hokkaido?"

"Perhaps she's on a training mission just like you," Genma suggested, though by

his tone it was plain that even he was not convinced of his own statement.

The announcer called them forward and Nabiki took her place near the center of

the arena, making a respectful salutation to her opponent while Keiko did the

same, her eyes neutral as she studied Nabiki cautiously. The other girl had a

grim cast to her lovely features that seemed to conceal a kind of pain that in

her eyes was as bright as a blade and warned Nabiki not to take her old friend

too lightly.

"Kei-chan," Nabiki said as the two assumed defensive stances, "What are you

doing here?"

"I'd ask the same thing," Keiko said flatly, "But I see you're still hanging out

with the old man. He still keeping you from going back home?"

"Yes," Nabiki said, "But I hope to return home one day..."

"Lucky you," Keiko snarled, then launched her opening assault with a speed and

savagery that took Nabiki by surprise for the span of a full half second.

Nabiki managed to dart back just beyond the reach of the first kick, but the

second came close to nailing her as she barely got the flat of her hand up in

time to block it. That brief contact stung her palm far worse than she had

expected, way more than an ordinary kick should have caused as she moved to the

side and deflected a punch that had been aimed at her solar plexus. Nabiki

flowed around the attack and struck back with an elbow-strike aimed at the other

girl's shoulder. She moved back and took a defensive stance near to the center

of the ring while Keiko whirled about with an angry glare, rubbing her shoulder

vigorously before slapping her palms together and assuming a fighting crouch

with a look of determination.

There was something wrong about this fight, Nabiki sensed it instinctively as

she looked into her opponent's eyes and saw no warm, fond remembrance of time

past and previous sparring matches of their youth. There was something wild and

menacing about Keiko's eyes, a haunted look that held pain and great fury, which

meant that Keiko was fighting with a greater edge than in any of their previous

duels. That look alone, plus their brief exchange of punches, warned Nabiki

that she was in for a genuine fight and not the easy victory that she had been

expecting.

Genma also saw the look in the redheaded girl's eyes and his worry intensified

sharply. Being a man with inborn survival instincts he quickly sized up that

this match was not some civil prize fight with honor and fairness for all sides.

This was the kind of fight he normally avoided, the one where no quarter was

given or expected, where powerful men stood back and watched as their chosen

gladiators fought and died for their amusement. It had been the very thing that

he had dreaded from the beginning, and of course the thing he had tried to warn

Nabiki against. After their problems in Thailand you would have thought she had

developed some of his instincts!

He cast a glance at the rows of cheering, enthusiastic spectators. Some were

rich and well to-do, others were common hoodlums and merchants, and a few even

had the look of policemen or public officials. Genma knew this type of crowd

was drawn only by sport that appealed to the most puerile of spectacles, the

kind where real blood was expected to flow, and in considerable abundance. None

of these really mattered, though, as his attention was next drawn to the booth

overlooking the whole chamber. That, he knew, was where the real power behind

this tournament resided, where the one who called the shots was watching and

speculating on the performance of his niece as she squared off against a friend

from her childhood.

Chu Wan Phat was indeed speculating at that very moment, seeing the Tendo girl

survive several more aggressive assaults from his slave. He could not help

noticing that Keiko was fighting more offensively than he had instructed, but

the other girl was weathering the attack while staying out of her reach and

taking her measure with only occasional punches and kicks as counter-offensives.

"Tell me more about this girl and her guardian Uncle," Phat requested of his

minion, "What exactly do we know about this fighting style of theirs, and what

sort of reputation have the acquired in their travels?"

"Sir," his minion licked his lips in anticipation of a very lengthy account of

exploits that were bound to raise his employers interest. He spared a glance or

two at the continuing Cat-Fight and found their duel almost mesmerizing, a

display of superior technique by two teenaged girls with excellent figures, just

the sort of match to raise any man's pulse if he had even the slightest

attraction for the fair sex...

Nabiki was not enjoying the match like she usually would at this point,

surprised not only at Keiko's energy and fury but the sheer savagery of her

attacks, launching devastating punches and kicks that were aimed to cripple or

even cause serious injury in a foe. This was not a friendly battle by any

stretch of the imagination, and when they broke contact to regather their wind

Nabiki took the opportunity to try and determine the cause for Keiko's

onslaught.

"Kei-chan," she gasped between short breaths that were used to recharge her

bloodstream to the right oxygen levels, "What gives? Why are you...making

things...so personal here?"

"Because it is personal!" Keiko growled back between breaths, "I don't want

you...to wind up like me...so stand still...and I'll make this quick."

"Huh?" Nabiki reacted in surprise, but Keiko did not give a verbal response this

time as she instead launched herself into another offensive.

Keiko was only a moderately tall girl, but her legs were long and extremely

supple. She had considerable reach with her kicks and she had power to match

her reach, so simply stepping to the side out of her reach did not deter her

from a second or third kick of equal or greater magnitude. Nabiki blocked those

few kicks that she could not outright avoid but felt their full impact against

her arms as though she were being swatted by a heavy iron bar, either that or a

small tree-trunk! It took no imagination to consider what one of those kicks

could do if they actually connected, so Nabiki redoubled her defenses and poured

on more speed to keep away from those kicks, trying simultaneously to avoid the

follow-up punches that slammed up against her arms with the force of twin

hammers.

Genma felt an unfamiliar stab of concern touch his heart as he watched Arigami

Keiko chase Nabiki from one end of the arena to the other. His Niece was a

strong girl and a powerful fighter, but compared to her former friend she seemed

to be at a definite disadvantage. From where he stood he could tell that those

kicks and punches were being charged with formidable power. Normal Tai Boxers

often practiced toughening themselves by punching and kicking at stone or wood

obstacles the size and toughness of palm trees. It gave them the ability to

withstand tremendous abuse while dishing out punishment severe enough to shatter

bones and rupture internal organs. Whatever Keiko had been practicing against

had given her kicks the power to put large holes in stone walls, and by his

reckoning it would only take a few such kicks to cause considerable damage to

his embattled ward. He thought about warning her of this or trying to offer

encouragement but quickly realized that she already knew this and could not

afford to be distracted.

Of more immediate concern to him was the conduct of the referee. The man was

hanging back watching things from the side without climbing into the arena. He

should have called a time-out by now or ruled the round indecisive, told the

girls to break to their corner to be watered down while they consulted with

their trainers...

And that was when it hit him: Keiko did not have anyone on her side who looked

like a trainer. There were two burly men wearing dark glasses standing near to

one corner standing in attitudes that informed Genma that they each were

carrying weapons. That was all it took for him to realize what sort of fix was

in the works, so without further adieu he eased away from his corner and began

to slowly circle about to their side, trying very hard not to draw any

attention.

Nabiki, too, had noted the absence of a time-out, which was very odd as a break

between rounds was the usual time when bets were made and the combat prolonged

to give the audience the best performance by the fighters. That the fight was

without rounds was certainly unusual, but the way the referee was hanging back

without appearing ready to call time outs or a foul was truly alarming. It was

further evidence that something was very wrong here, not least of which was the

attitude of her opponent, who had a kind of intensity to her fighting technique

that implied that no quarter was to be given or expected.

Nabiki had hoped that Keiko would tire out soon from this continuous all-out

offensive but instead she seemed to have almost limitless reserves of strength

and kept pounding at Nabiki with unrelenting fury, showing no sign of weakening

or lessening her blows after three intense minutes of combat. It was about that

point when Nabiki realized that her former friend was indeed trying to kill her

or at least pummel her so senseless that the difference would have seemed moot,

and that continuing to fight her defensively was not going to be successful.

Keiko could dish it out far more than Nabiki could absorb this punishment, so at

last-and with great reluctance-she decided to go on the offensive.

That proposition was not as simple as it sounded for Keiko presented few

openings and appeared to have good reflexes and a strong defense of her own.

Moreover Nabiki sensed that it would be folly to underestimate the speed of her

antagonist as the last thing she needed was to get tangled up in the other

girl's guard. Keiko was stronger than she looked and could no doubt inflict

real damage should she clench with Nabiki, so the way to defeat her would have

to involve turning her own strengths against her.

That decided Nabiki launched a series of attacks designed to keep Keiko off

balance while probing her for weak points. Keiko was clever enough to avoid

offering her easy targets, save those that were clearly faked to lure Nabiki

into a suicidal attack. Nabiki instead used her own kicks and punches to lock

up Keiko's guard so that their full force was harmlessly blunted, striking at

just the point when those kicks had not had time to build up sufficient power.

Keiko sensed what she was doing and threw herself boldly into an all out

lightning-punch attack that would have taken Nabiki by surprise had she not

ducked below and around it, weaving in and out in a pattern that drew Keiko

further off guard and left her open to a flying roughhouse kick that came up

around her shoulder and solidly connected with her jaw.

Keiko staggered back a couple of paces but recovered almost immediately, turning

a glare towards Nabiki that showed little more than simple annoyance. From that

Nabiki judged that the redhead could take as much punishment as she could dish

out, which voided several other attack patterns that she had been considering,

instead opting to improvise a more defensive remedy to negate Keiko's strength

and turn it against her.

So when Keiko came rushing at her with a furious energy that would have

overwhelmed Nabiki's defenses she countered by launching herself into the air,

perfectly executing a somersault over the head of the other girl, which

surprised Keiko completely and caused her to hesitate turning around by a

fraction of a second.

That was enough time for Nabiki to come at her from behind, aiming a series of

kicks and punches not at Keiko's face or chest but rather her side and hip,

hitting key nerves to block the energy flow that fueled the right side of her

body. Keiko staggered back with a pained expression as Nabiki took advantage of

her weakening guard to launch another kick, this time aiming for the solar

plexus. Keiko got her left arm up in time and blocked the kick with the flat of

her palm while she staggered back out of reach of her opponent. Nabiki wasted

no time vaulting into the air again, this time using a dragon-stamp that

connected solidly with Keiko's chin and knocked the other girl sprawling to one

far corner of the arena.

Nabiki alighted in the center of the arena, standing on-tip-toes as she regarded

her fallen antagonist, expecting the judge to rule a clean knockout. When no

bell sounded she glanced to the side and saw the referee just standing there

with his arms folded over his chest. Keiko was groaning and coming around but

the man did nothing to call a time out. Concerned and annoyed, Nabiki growled,

"What are you waiting for? Count her out already!"

The man just sniffed at her as though she were being incredibly naïve and said,

"The fight isn't over yet. Your opponent is still breathing."

"What?" Nabiki reacted in dismay, looking at him incredulously, and "What are

you talking about? I won fair and square! Call her out already!"

"This is a fight to the death," the referee replied, "No time outs, no knock

downs, only one Cat Fighter walks out of here alive."

"WHAT?" Nabiki all but shouted, "Nobody told me anything about that!"

"This cat-fight isn't over until one of you is defeated decisively," the man

said, "Either unconscious, critically hurt or dead. Two opponents, one victor,

no timeouts or holds blocked. Those are the rules. Not my problem if nobody

bothered to tell you in advance."

"It's no use, Nab-chan," Keiko groaned as she slowly fought to sit upright,

using one of the ropes for assistance as she felt along the side of her chin

without flinching, "The rules are the same as with Gladiators. That's all we

are to them, Cat-fighters here to fight and die for their amusement."

"What?" Nabiki said for a third time, giving Keiko her full, undivided

attention.

"What did you think this was?" Keiko spat, "A prize fight? This is Mortal

Combat we're talking about here! You versus me and only one of us leaving here

horizontal."

Nabiki glanced around wildly then saw that Genma was not in her original corner.

He was instead approaching two men in three piece suits who looked like well-

dressed thugs and decided not to betray him by giving away her shift in

attention. Instead she looked back at Keiko and for the first time took real

notice of the trace of old scars and wounds that was only partially concealed by

her clothing. She was immediately appalled and said, "Gods, Kei-chan...what

happened to you?"

"What do you think?" Keiko snapped as she finally got her legs underneath her,

still holding the ropes for support but recovering with a speed that was

phenomenal, "I've been through hell for the last few months. It's been three

years for you but an eternity for me, and it's far from over!"

"You don't mean you intend to fight me until one of us is dead?" Nabiki asked

when suddenly she saw the posts about their arena retract into the stage

platform. As she was starting to react to that something fell from the ceiling,

and all at once the bars of a chain-link fence closed in all around them,

cutting them off completely from the outside.

"You think I want you dead?" Keiko said as she stood away from the fence and

took a defensive position, "I'm trying to spare you from having to go through

what I've faced since I wound up here. You've got no idea what they're like,

what my Master will do to you if you survive. I've gotten used to it, but I

don't think it'd be any kindness for you, so I'll make it easy and finish this

quick and painless, if you just let me."

"No," Nabiki said as she took a defensive stance of her own, "I don't think so,

Kei-chan...and what's this about you calling him your Master?"

"I'm a slave!" Keiko spat, "What do you think I meant? I'll bet they even told

you there was a prize for winning...believe me, you don't want to win it!"

Her strength fully restored, she came at Nabiki like a whirlwind, throwing

everything into an all-out hurricane of punches and kicks that Nabiki blocked

and avoided as best she was able. A few seconds of this and Nabiki felt one of

those punches penetrate her guard and score, so she rode with the punch and

allowed it to carry her beyond the reach of the next kick, bending backward so

that the breeze Keiko's foot made only dusted her chin, then continued the

motion backwards as Keiko followed up with a side-kick that had no doubt been

anticipating Nabiki obligingly straightening up to receive it.

Instead Nabiki folded back and touched the floor with her hands as she brought

her feet up to catch that leg and trap it, then continue on so that Keiko was

pulled forward by her own momentum. Once lifted from the floor Nabiki flipped

her over and slammed her into the chain links. Keiko easily absorbed this

punishment and rebounded onto her hands to flip herself back onto her feet, but

then she sensed Nabiki coming at her again and darted to one side, raising her

arms to deflect the expected follow through.

To her surprise Nabiki instead attacked the chain link fence with a rapid series

of kicks that struck the links a hundred times in the space of a few seconds.

Keiko blinked her eyes and said, "What are you doing?"

"You'll see," Nabiki smiled, then again came at Keiko, forcing the other girl to

give ground for the first time in their encounter.

Keiko warded off the serious punches and kicks directed her way, grimly

satisfied that her former friend appeared to be taking their match seriously at

last, only to discover that she was being forced back up against the links of

their cage, so she ducked down and pivoted out of the way, again readying to

meet another assault that did not come her way as Nabiki again gave a hundred

rapid lightning kicks at the links to their cage, then stood away with a look of

satisfaction.

"What are you trying to do?" Keiko asked.

"Do you want to get out of here?" Nabiki asked her, "Or do you like slavery

enough to stay here?"

"Escape?" Keiko gasped, "But...that's impossible! Don't you think I've tried?"

"Nothing is impossible," Nabiki replied, coming at Keiko again, only to miss her

entirely and plant another series of kicks at yet another section of the chain

link fence, doing no apparent damage.

"How is that going to help us?" Keiko asked, almost in disbelief.

"Have some faith," Nabiki winked at her, "I know what I'm doing," and again she

came at Keiko, who did not even bother to step away as she watched Nabiki leap

past her and plant another series of kicks at the forth chain link wall, having

no more obvious affect than with any of the others.

"I don't get it," Keiko frowned, then brought her guard up again, "If you think

this is going to distract me, think again! I've been trained by the best!"

"So have I," Nabiki said, then came at Keiko for real this time, driving the

other girl on the defensive with a series of rapid kicks and punches that came

from close inside Keiko's guard, driving her relentlessly back into the center

of the arena.

Keiko managed to rally herself there, getting an opening that she needed to

raise one knee and thrust it at Nabiki, intending to connect with Nabiki's head,

only to find the palms of both hands intercept the knee as Nabiki absorbed the

kinetic force and used it like a springboard to vault backwards into the air,

landing perfectly on the balls of her feet with a smile in her direction.

Keiko brought her leg down and stared at her opponent, then softly said, "You've

changed."

"Have I?" Nabiki smiled, "You've improved quite a bit, Kei-chan, but it doesn't

change a thing. I'm still going to beat you."

"Oh yeah?" Keiko's temper flared, "We'll see about that!"

She closed the distance with a leap, but Nabiki was already in the air and

spinning with a kick that caught Keiko by surprise. Nabiki drove Keiko down

with a body-slam, landing on top of her and moving quickly to trap her wrists

with a pin that almost forced the other girl's arms out of their sockets. She

pressed Keiko firmly against the mat then hissed into her ear, "Say Uncle and

stop struggling, I don't really want to hurt you, I want your help."

"My help?" Keiko grunted, "To do what?"

"What do you think, stupid," Nabiki growled, "I'm not planning to stick around

here if there's no reward money, and I'm not leaving you here either."

Keiko made one tentative attempt to get free then thought better of it, "What do

you have in mind?"

"Just play along and I'll let me do the talking," Nabiki urged, "I'm getting us

both out of here...unless, that is, you like the accommodations."

Keiko desisted at once, then moved her eyes to glance as far as she could

towards her old friend, "You always were the charmer, Nab-chan. Okay, I'm

in...just get off me, will you?"

"Mind your manners," Nabiki said, then released her, standing back just in case

Keiko was attempting to play her for a sucker.

Instead Keiko got into a sitting position and remained there, bowing her head in

submission. It did not take long for the referee to say, "The fight's not over

yet! What are you doing? Fight her!"

"Why don't you come in here and make us," Nabiki said, ignoring the jeering of

the crowd, who obviously wanted to see blood spilled and were dissatisfied at

such an indeterminate conclusion.

"I have a better offer," someone else said, drawing Nabiki's attention, along

with everyone else, who turned to see an enormously fat man with a thin

mustache, flanked by two more men in suits, resting his palms on a cane as he

regarded the occupants of the cage as one might the denizens of a fish bow,

"Spare her for now, I have a far better fate planned for my pet now that she has

at last failed me. You've proven yourself the better fighter, Miss Tendo, so

you will take her place as my champion of these tourneys."

"I'm flattered," Nabiki said, "Now who the hell are you?"

"My name," the man said with obvious self-importance, "Is Chu Wan Phat, and I am

the master of this arena...your master now, as you will learn in time..."

"I don't think so," Nabiki said softly.

The fat man inclined his head and smiled as benignly as the Buddha, "You don't

really have a choice in the matter, any more than my pet. Feel free to act

defiant while you can, but in the end you will understand that I and I alone am

your master."

"And I'm supposed to be impressed?" Nabiki asked before glancing at her exposed

scars visible on her friend's backside, "What did you do to Keiko?"

"Nothing that was not within my rights as her owner," the man replied, giving

one the impression of an evil Charlie Chan in an expensive cream colored suit,

"Which reminds me, I am entertaining some guests tonight at my estate. You

will, of course, be the special guest of honor, my pet. I'm retiring you from

Cat Fighting and promoting you to entertainment, isn't that nice?"

Nabiki saw Keiko shudder but her attitude remained surprisingly submissive, "As

you wish it, Master. I will try to be...entertaining..."

"Quite so," the fat man smiled, "In perfectly honesty I have been considering

this for quite a while. I have always wanted to taste those sweet thighs of

yours, my dear, now I will indulge the privilege. Your friend here will one day

do the same when she fails me as you have..."

"Fails you?" Nabiki asked.

"Of course," the man's eyes showed just a trace of anger as he replied, "I had a

lot of money running on this fight, so I will have to make up for it somehow.

It's simple business logic, as I'm sure you of all people would appreciate, Miss

Tendo, being quite the entrepreneur yourself. Yes, a most interesting career

you have led, but now you belong to me and are a part of my assets."

As this was taking place, two men sought out Genma, who was merely standing by

himself near the two who had been watching Keiko the whole time. Genma smiled

at them affably, showed his empty hands and shrugged his shoulders as if to

tacitly wash his hands of the whole matter, including Nabiki.

Nabiki was aware of what her Uncle was really up to, though, so she gave no sign

of acknowledging him, instead giving the fat man before her a sardonic look

before remarking, "I take it the prize money was just a lure to attract my

interest, that you never had any intention of sharing it with me in the first

place?"

"That is correct," Phat replied with a genial smile, "Mere cheese to place you

where I want you."

Nabiki gave another look at Keiko, seeing the way her friend was shaking as if

with obvious fear. She turned cold brown eyes on the fat man and said,

"Interesting, but I think I've heard enough about what you have to offer. I

only got into this arena for the prize money, and if you intend to cheat me of

that, then I am leaving."

For a moment she saw genuine surprise cross the face of the enormous fat man

before he laughed in dismissal and said, "And how do you plan to do that? My

men are surrounding this cage, and you will only leave it when I say that you

may, and only after you acknowledge me as your master."

"Oh yeah?" Nabiki smiled, as she took note of the position of the men who had

circled around the cage with guns in their hand, then she casually lifted one

leg, raising it high over her head as she balanced on one foot, doing an almost

impossible jackknife split of a 170 degree angle, then suddenly snapped that

raised foot down hard in a stamp upon the exact center of the arena.

Keiko's eyes went wide as she felt the tarp roil beneath her with a shockwave

that traveled outward to all sides, shaking the part of the cage that connected

with the arena. The chain link fence itself vibrated sharply, and all at once

shattered on all four sides, the links coming apart in the center as the rest of

the frame collapse outward, the steel pipes themselves quivering with vibration.

Chu Wan Phat displayed an amazing dexterity in jumping back in his dismay, his

bulk quivering as he managed to get clear of the flying bits of fragmented

metal. His guards were much less fortunate as they got sprayed by the shrapnel

while raising their arms to deflect it. Chu looked up to find Nabiki casually

striding towards him with no obstacle to impede her and for the first time

registered panic as he cried out, "Kill her!"

The two men who had been watching the tournament from one corner reached into

their jackets to pull out a pair of automatic pistols. That was when Genma made

his presence known by stepping forward to lay a hand on each of their wrists,

locking them with a vice-grip hold before continuing forward, then moving back

to flip both men over. Genma was careful to see to it that their falls were

impeded by their skulls hitting the floor almost simultaneously, then he

dispatched the two men behind him before moving as fast as he could to head off

the nearest of the remaining guards, who were attempting to flank Nabiki.

"You thought you could double-cross me?" Nabiki told Phat as the man continued

to retreat, "Nobody gets the better of Tendo Nabiki!"

Phat's personal assistant chose that moment to step forward, reaching behind his

collar to pull out a long Chinese sword from concealment. Uttering a kiiyah, he

attempted to thrust the thing at her, but Nabiki casually spun about on her

axis, moving beyond the weapon and into the other man's guard, dealing him a

savage backhand that picked him up and knocked him ass over teakettle.

By this time Phat had pulled a gun out of his own shirt and was attempting to

take aim at Nabiki when the girl seemingly vanished from his view. It took a

full half-second to realize that she had ducked down beneath his field of

vision, which was greatly impeded by the mass of his stomach and slid closer to

him before righting herself up in his face. With next to no effort whatsoever

she locked his wrist with one hand and applied pain-pressure to force him to

release it. She caught the gun before it could hit the floor then made a

display of ejecting the cartridge, catching it with her other hand then calmly

flicking the bullets from the top with her thumb as if it were a lighter.

She tossed the two now-useless parts aside and resumed advancing on the fat man.

He yanked on his cane and pulled out a hidden blade but she knocked it out of

his hand with a kick, then turned with a pivot to plant her foot squarely in his

abdomen, picking him up and throwing him backward. Before he could hit the

floor with his rump she caught him by his lapels and held it with both hands,

forcing him to lurch up as she made eyeball-to eyeball contact and growled, "Now

it's time to hear my offer..."

Her senses picked up on the henchman with the Chinese Sword getting up to renew

his attack. As he started to move forward, however, Keiko's foot connected with

his jaw and tumbled him like a rag-doll. When he hit the floor some twelve

meters away he lay in a crumpled heap and did not move again. Out of the corner

of her eye Nabiki saw that the other guards had been similarly disposed of, some

in conditions that implied that they would not soon be rising.

"Nice save," Nabiki commented while taking notice for the first time that the

audience was fleeing towards the exits while Genma engaged several more of the

suited men, taking them out before they had a chance to draw their weapons.

"Let me have him," Keiko's voice was shaking with such anger that Nabiki turned

to see the wild expression in her face. Keiko had a murderous gleam in her

eyes, and her focus on Chu Wan Phat did not promise anything healthy.

"Not just yet," Nabiki said with some reluctance, suspecting that Keiko had

every cause imaginable to want to see to the man's personal destruction, "We

were just about to talk business."

"I owe him," Keiko's voice implied a wealth of understatement in those words,

leaving Nabiki with the firm belief that whatever punishment she intended was

amply well deserved.

"What about it, Phat-man," Nabiki said to her captive, "You think your Pet would

like to play with you for a bit? Give me one good reason not to."

"Because neither of you will leave here alive," Phat retorted in a show of

bravado that did not seem characteristic. There was a wild look in his eyes

that implied that he knew full well how vulnerable he was in his position, nor

did he seem to delude himself in thinking that the pair of girls before him were

a threat to be taken lightly.

"I don't think so," Nabiki purred, "In point of fact you're going to let us

leave intact, and do be sure to inform your minions that you have had a change

of heart and will present my prize money in the full amount...or my friend here

will have a new practice dummy. Isn't that right, Kei-chan?"

Keiko growled menacingly while Genma came up to join them saying, "This way,

I've cleared an exit."

"We were just coming along, Uncle," Nabiki replied, forcing the fat man to fall

in step between her and Keiko as she murmured, "Now, about that prize money you

owe me..."

Five minutes later his minions rallied their courage enough to conduct a search

and found their boss hanging upside down by his heals in the fish cannery,

dangling above the meat grinder that was used to turn raw fish into a fine paste

for sausage making. Phat's face was bloody and pulped as though he had taken a

real beating but otherwise he was a lot better off than he deserved, though he

personally had a different view about that.

Phat would like to have yelled at his men to let him down but having his mouth

taped over prevented that. He silently fumed and resolved to have his revenge

on Tendo Nabiki. He would set a price over her head-and that of his traitorous

slave-girl. By the end of the day all of Hong Kong would know all about what

had happened, and few would be inclined to forget the growing legend known as

Tendo Nabiki...

"You know, of course, that leaving him alive was a mistake."

Nabiki gave Keiko a sidelong glance and said, "Maybe so, but I'm not fond of

killing, not even when it's deserved. Besides, it tends to bring down the wrong

kind of attention from the authorities. I might have let you have your way,

Kei-chan, but standing back is almost the same thing as doing it myself. I have

to draw a line somewhere, so I guess we'll just have to be satisfied with the

beating you gave him."

"It wasn't enough," Keiko glanced at the window of the tiny hut that they had

taken refuge in near the edge of Hong Kong, seeing the rain fall outside with a

somewhat wistful expression, "I owe you for my life, Nab-chan, and that's the

only reason I didn't put that bastard's nose into his brain, which I really

should have as a favor to the both of us."

Nabiki gave the room a disdainful glance before remarking, "Let me hazard a

reasonable good guess and say that your former boss has connections throughout

the city and our lives won't be worth a Yuan come the morning. Won't be the

first time this has happened, " she sighed.

"Really?" Keiko turned an expressive glance her way, "You must lead a pretty

interesting life. I've spent the last three years living in a cage of one sort

of another, so...I guess you could say that I'm not as well traveled."

Nabiki looked at her friend with concern before saying what was foremost on her

mind, "Three years, Kei-chan? What happened to you? Why did you leave

Japan..."

"Hey, it wasn't my idea," Keiko said softly, "My...mother...you remember her?

She took me with her on a yachting trip with a male friend she was seeing, a

lawyer. We got jumped by pirates out of Thailand and they wound up taking me

hostage..."

"Pirates?" Nabiki reacted.

"Yeah, you know?" Keiko sniffed, "Fly the Jolly Roger and all that? They

operate in the south China seas, don't you know that? They like to prey on

small boats, catch the crew off guard, murder people and loot them of their

possessions. I...think my mother was the fortunate one, really...she didn't

survive. At least I don't remember seeing her again after waking up on that

boat with the pirates."

"Oh, Kei-chan..." Nabiki said, feeling an unusual wave of sympathy for her

friend as she tried to imagine the pain involved in those softly spoken words

and found that she could not, and was grateful for her own shortcoming.

"It's all right," Keiko said sadly, "I'm a survivor, I've learned to cope. Not

much choice with what all I've been through. You don't need to feel sorry for

me, Nab-chan, and it's about time I put the whole thing behind me."

"But...how can you?" Nabiki asked, appalled at the very concept.

"Because life is about getting by from day to day," Keiko shrugged

philosophically, "It doesn't do any good fretting about things you can't change.

I learned that the hard way."

"Kei-chan..." Nabiki murmured, feeling for her friend, only to turn her head to

one side as she heard someone approaching.

"It's just me," announced Genma, who deposited two backpacks on the floor the

minute he entered the hut looking as wet as a seal but hardly minding, "I got

our things, right where we left them. No one saw me enter or leave, they were

all too busy listening to their master shout and rant, calling them worse than

useless."

"You sure you weren't followed?" Keiko asked, "If Chu Wan Phat's men find us..."

"Oh, they tried," Genma said with a slight chuckle, "I left two of them to sleep

it off in an alley about five kilometers from here, heading in the wrong

direction. I was doubly careful making my way back to this slum sector."

"Uncle Genma is a master at stealth," Nabiki smiled, "He pioneered a system

based on breaking into a house, derived from something we learned a few years

back from a former Ninja, the Yamisenken."

"And its counter-art, the Umisenken," Genma replied before his tone took on a

sharp edge, "Which you have yet to fully master."

Nabiki rolled her eyes, "I know, Sensei, and I am working on it, believe me!

Now, if you don't mind, Kei-chan and I were getting caught up on old times..."

"I don't mind," Genma replied, squatting down as he removed the top half of his

Gi and began to wring it in one corner.

Nabiki gave him a withering glare, which he chose to ignore, so instead she

sighed and said, "The bedroom's just as fine as here. You can have the floor,

old man, I'm feeling generous."

"With what you took off that bandit you ought to be," Genma replied in

irritation.

"You'll get your share of it soon enough," Nabiki assured him, "Good thing Jabba

the Hutt is the kind of gangster who keeps some of his 'petty cash' on his

person, because that suitcase wasn't anywhere near the agreed upon hundred

thousand in US cash," she snorted and said something derisive about cheapskate

Tong Lords.

"By the way," Genma said casually as he set his gi to dry over the handle of a

broomstick that he wedged into one corner, "I heard rumor that he's fixing to

put a bounty on both of your heads, almost equal to what you took off his

person, if you can believe it."

"Some guys just can't take a hint," Nabiki said irritably before taking Keiko by

the hand and drawing her reluctant friend along as they went to the next room,

which lacked even a door to insure total privacy. They found a worn out bedding

that looked as unused and abandoned as the rest of the hut and sat down together

as Nabiki composed herself then asked, "Tell me the full story."

"Not much to tell," Keiko said somewhat evasively, "I was taken by the pirates

and...they had their fun with me. Of course that didn't last long before my

true Mistress arrived to take me away from all of that."

"Your...true Mistress?" Nabiki asked dubiously.

"Her name is Madam Lao Kung," Keiko replied, "She's...sort of like the Queen of

all Chinese Pirates, and those two were poaching in her territory, or so she

said before she had them keelhauled."

"She...what?" Nabiki blinked.

"They owed her for a past transgression," Keiko said somewhat evasively, "She

made them into an example. That's how ruthless she is with people who get on

her bad side. Me...well...she took an instant liking towards me and helped

clean me up and everything. If it wasn't for her...well, I wouldn't have

survived this long."

"Why are you defending her if she's a ruthless sea Pirate?" Nabiki wondered,

"And how did you wind up in the company of that jolly mean giant?"

"That's kind of an interesting story," Keiko replied uneasily, "I spent more

than two years with Madam Lao...almost three years, really, but a few months ago

she was forced to sell me to Phat to repay him for a lost cargo shipment. I was

kind of like a marker, only I know my Mistress was going to show up eventually

to reclaim me."

Nabiki shot her eyes and shook her head, then stared in disbelief and said, "You

honestly believe that? Kei-chan...what have they done to you? You're nobody's

personal property..."

"Not now," Keiko looked up at Nabiki, "Thanks to you. But for a while there I

was pretty happy to be Mistress Lao's property. She really wasn't that bad to

be around, and she was kind to me in a lot of ways...well, let's just say I owe

her big time."

Nabiki stared a long time at her friend before she finally said, "You're

serious?"

Keiko nodded, "Being a personal Slave isn't so bad when you have a kind and

talented Mistress, Nab-chan. Don't knock it until you're tried it. I learned a

lot of things from Lao, not least of which are those fighting techniques I used

on you in our fight. I have to say I am impressed with you...nobody's ever

beaten me before. You're the first one to break my unbroken chain of

victories."

"Wait," Nabiki said, "Victories? Kei-chan...you mean you've fought with other

girls and...?"

Keiko lost her smile and looked down, "You really want to know the answer? I've

done a lot of things I'm not proud of, Nab-chan, and that's one of them, but

like I told you back in the arena I look upon it as doing those other girls a

mercy."

"Mercy," Nabiki repeated, "And...how many other girls have you been this

'merciful' to in the past?"

Keiko thought a moment then said, "About ten girls out of eleven of my last

fights. One girl I was instructed to let live...and she wound up where I was

going tonight if you hadn't saved me."

"Ten of them," Nabiki was appalled, but she could not bring herself to harshly

judge the girl before her so she instead asked, "That other girl..."

"You...don't want to know about that," Keiko replied with a look that was

pleading, "Trust me, you don't ever want to go there."

Something in her tone convinced Nabiki that this was the truth, so instead she

said, "Okay, so how about explaining to me how you can justify taking a human

life in a pit-fight?"

"Law of survival," Keiko shrugged, "They would have done the same to me, if I'd

let them. They weren't easy fights either, Nab-chan, but none of them gave me

as good a workout as you did. Before I was sold to Phat, however, I very rarely

killed in pit-fights. He's a real monster that one, and you really should have

let me kill him."

"So you had other fights before?" Nabiki asked.

"Sure have," Keiko said proudly, "Sixty of them total, an unbroken string of

victories before tonight, but you're the first one I've met who it was worth

losing to. I'm not sorry in the least, even if I hope you give me another shot

at my title."

"You want to do that again?' Nabiki said in disbelief.

"Sure," Keiko smiled, "I like fighting...I just don't like killing all that

much. It really chews me up inside, remember the faces of the dead girls and

all, the way they plead for quick relief and an end to their suffering..." she

shuddered, "Gods...I don't ever want to go through that again! You really

should have let me kill him."

"But why a fight to the death, Kei-chan," Nabiki asked, voicing her confusion

over the entire ugly matter, "A fighter like you must represent a huge personal

investment..."

Keiko's bitter snort cut her off there, as did her next words, "Not as much as

you'd imagine."

"But Kei-chan," Nabiki tried again, "Fighters of our caliber aren't all that

common. Why make us kill each other when he could earn just as much staging

other fights and rematches?"

"Because his patrons pay the extra amount to see us bleed and die is why," Keiko

said bitterly, "It's how some people justify their existence, vicariously seeing

others suffer in the place, just like with the Romans. Don't tell me you're so

naïve that it never occurred to you that such people value other things besides

money?"

The concept was difficult for her, but Nabiki said, "You mean to say that Chu

Wan Phat loves the sight of blood...just as long as it's not his own?"

"Which is why he'll be after us with blood in his eyes, Nab-chan," Keiko noted

before saying for the third time, "You really should have let me kill him."

Nabiki slowly nodded before saying, "Maybe you're right, but I hope we don't

have another crack at him. Pops and I are leaving this burg, and if you want to

come with us you're more than welcome."

"Really?" Keiko's expression was almost like a puppy eager to please its master,

a total contrast from the girl who spoke so matter-of-factly about slaying ten

opponents in the arena, "You don't mind at all?"

"Why should I mind?" Nabiki asked her, "Kei-chan...we were friends so long ago,

and I don't see why we can't still be friends, as long as you promise to behave

yourself, and no killing!"

"I do, I will!" Keiko said enthusiastically, "Oh, Nabiki...you're so wonderful!

How can I ever repay you for giving me back my freedom?"

"I'll try and think of something," Nabiki chuckled lightly, feeling her mood

lighten somewhat now that the hectic pace of the day was draining away from her,

"It's just good to see you smile again. I've been wondering what you were up to

all this time, only I never guessed you had these kinds of adventures."

"You want to trade?" Keiko smiled, then sighed, "Gods...it's been so long since

I felt this way...seems like a million ages! You really don't appreciate what

it's like to be safe and on dry land, even if we're being hunted by every

underworld figure in Hong Kong."

"I'll take it on faith that it's a very good feeling," Nabiki leaned back on her

hands and studied Keiko carefully, "You have changed a lot...you don't even look

sixteen..."

"Neither do you," Keiko observed, then slowly got to her feet and turned around,

reaching down and pulled up her tank-top.

Nabiki could not control her gasp of amazement as she got a full view of the

other girl's back, which was lined with scars, some long healed, others more

recent. Keiko hooked her thumbs in her shorts and yanked them down as well,

exposing more welts and pink marks that covered her buttox. She turned a coy

glance over one shoulder and said, "Now you see why I think Phat is a bastard?"

"He did this to you?" Nabiki suddenly and quite sincerely regretted not killing

the man herself.

"Phat's an amateur at some things," Keiko sniffed, "Can't even flog a girl

without leaving her bloody. He gets off on seeing people bleed, you know, it's

the kind of guy he is. He gave me these some time ago, when I wouldn't

cooperate, but not so often once I started winning him money," she turned around

and exposed her undamaged chest to full view, "Fortunately he tends to prefer

buttox to breasts, so these babies are nearly perfect."

Nabiki's eyes went wide as she saw Keiko cup and fondle her own breasts in a

completely matter-of-fact way that implied a complete lack of self-consciousness

about her body. Keiko smiled down at her and said, "Well, what do you think?

Am I worth the price people pay for me? Care to make an offer?"

"Huh?" Nabiki gasped, "Excuse me?"

Keiko flashed a smile that implied that she was only half-serious, "I'm

currently without an owner, and while I like freedom well enough, I'd be willing

to consider you if you'd like to buy me. I'll even give myself a special

discount."

"Are you nuts?" Nabiki's eyes were very round as she stared at the other girl,

unable to help looking her over.

"Probably," Keiko sat down, still smiling and not even bothering to cover her

nipples or pelvis, "You can't exactly go through everything I've been through

and remain completely sane. I just wanted to see if you had any interest...no

harm done. I'm sorry if I'm such a tease, but the way you've been looking at me

I just had to test you."

"Huh?" Nabiki blinked, "Test me?"

"Of course," Keiko eyed her speculatively, "After all, nobody ever does what you

did completely from altruism. I'm not used to owing people favors that they

don't collect on. I just wanted to know if you might accept one from me that

comes without a price tag."

"Hah?" Nabiki asked, then she felt her cheeks flush crimson as she slowly got

the implications, "Ah...Kei-chan, I'm flattered and all, but..."

"But what?" Keiko smiled, "Are you telling me you've never been with another

woman, or even thought about it? How about a guy then?"

"How about a guy?" Nabiki gasped, "Uh...well..."

"You're kidding me, right?" Keiko asked, "You've never been with one of them

either?"

"No!" Nabiki reacted, then in a more moderate tone she said, "I really haven't

had the time to fool around like that, Kei-chan. I've been busy with my

training, and my business interests take a lot of time to manage..."

"It's always business with you," Keiko sniffed, "Or training. Seems like all

you ever did in school was think up ways of earning money so that you and your

fat uncle could support yourselves without him actually having to work for a

living."

"There's nothing wrong with being good at business," Nabiki replied defensively,

then glanced down and said, "Um...could you put something on? You really don't

have to sit like that with me...?"

"Why?" Keiko leaned back and puffed out her chest as if to emphasize her

bosoms, "Does it bother you? I happen to like being naked...it's perfectly

natural for me, and the time I spent with Madam Lao I never wore anything at all

except maybe a few ornaments and some gold chains..."

"Uh, what...really?" Nabiki blinked, finding the mental image hard to reconcile

with her memories of Keiko.

"That's what you wear when you're a Concubine and a personal love slave," Keiko

replied, "You live your life in accordance to the wishes and pleasures of your

Mistress. I happened to like living the way I did with Madam Lao, it was a very

comfortable existence, like being a part of an extended family with me and the

other slaves who comprise her harem..."

"Harem?" Nabiki knew her tone had climbed an octave but she could hardly help

it.

"Sure," Keiko replied, "Madam Lao likes girls. She had a really bad experience

with a guy who was her husband...you don't want to know about him. These days

she runs her ship with an all-woman crew, and you'd better believe that we

didn't live a celibate lifestyle or feel at all deprived without the company of

men," she winked an eye to convey special hidden meaning.

Nabiki just gaped at her, "Are you saying...you're a...?"

"Are you shocked?" Keiko asked hesitantly, "You didn't know I was like that?

Neither did I until I met up with Lao. Now the whole idea of doing it with a

guy..." she shuddered, "Well...I don't have too many pleasant memories of guys

from the last couple years. They all seem to want something from us that we're

not prepared to give them. With a girl it's a different story...but mind you,

I've had training on how to be pleasing to both sexes, and I'm very accomplished

as a lover. Of course it's not the same when some guy forces you into it, but

I'm sure with you it'd be very different."

Nabiki swallowed on a suddenly dry mouth and tried to think of something

intelligent to say. Her hesitation seemed to amuse Keiko who smiled at her and

said, "Oh my...have I shocked you, Nab-chan? I didn't know you could be shocked

by a little thing like knowing your friend's an ardent girl lover."

"Ah...shocked?" Nabiki tried to sound airily unaffected, "No, I'm...just a

little surprised at all...I mean, you fight girls in the arena, but you'd really

rather...?"

"Make love instead of war?" Keiko finished for her, "Let me ask you something,

Nab-chan...have you ever really thought about doing it with another girl? It's

not so bad as you might think, believe me. Heck, I'll bet you've never even

been kissed by a guy! How can you know whether or not you'd like it?"

"I, um...I just know," Nabiki said evasively, "Nothing personal, and I'm not

saying I condemn you..."

"Well, goody for you!" Keiko snorted, "Not that I need your approval as I have

absolutely no doubts about the way I feel when I'm with another woman. Granted

Madam Lao was a lot older than me, but she'd let me have fun with other girls in

the Harem, and even some of the crew, so the idea of doing it with someone my

own age is certainly appealing. In point of fact, I'll bet I could make you

smile and cry if you gave me half a chance."

"Hah?" Nabiki self-consciously backed away by a fraction.

Keiko burst out laughing, "What a Virgin you are! You don't need to look at me

like I'm going to jump you all of a sudden, Nab-chan. I don't work like that,

and I'm not a sexual predator. I never sleep with anyone who hasn't invited me

to do her and I sure am not about to force myself on you. I'm not a rapist,

even if the idea of making love to you is very tempting."

Nabiki swallowed dryly, "It is?"

"Are you kidding?" Keiko's eyes looked her up and down as if sizing up her

dinner, "Just look at you! You've got the looks of a model with million dollar

killer legs and a body that just cries out for all sorts of attention. You know

the kind of things I can do with a body like yours? Sure a lot more creative

than what that bastard was gonna do to me before you saved me! It's the least

that I could do for my rescuer, and you've been such a very good friend in spite

of the fact that I was fully prepared to kill you."

"You...were?" Nabiki was finding it increasingly hard to keep her thoughts

coherent.

"To spare you from suffering," Keiko replied, "But I'm very glad it never came

to that. It gives me the chance to thank you properly, all you need to do is

give me permission and I promise you won't regret it."

"Ah...permission?" Nabiki asked in a voice now thoroughly strained with emotion.

Keiko just smiled at her in a very odd way and said, "Let me show you, then you

can judge for yourself if it's a good thing for you or not. Just hold still,

this won't hurt, I promise."

So saying Keiko rocked forward very slowly, catching her weight on her hands as

she moved to bridge the gap between them both, her face coming to within a few

inches of Nabiki's own before the latter had time to react. Keiko hovered very

close to her, still smiling when Nabiki did not flinch away. Her lips then

brushed against Nabiki's cheek as Keiko murmured, "Leave everything to me, Nab-

chan, and you won't regret it."

"Hu-mmm?" Nabiki started to say when her mouth turned in to meet Keiko's,

surprised at the initial contact as Keiko lips closed about hers, their faces

angled so that their noses did not touch, and before Nabiki knew what was

happening she found herself responding to the kiss in kind. It was as if her

mouth sought the intimate contact within a few seconds of registering the

sensation, and then Keiko was pressing against her with gentle insistence, her

mouth hungry to devour those lips as she leaned further into Nabiki and parted

her lips with the tip of her tongue.

To Nabiki's considerable surprise she felt Keiko's tongue dart past her guard

and flicker there for a moment before withdrawing. Nabiki blinked at the

sensation then felt the tongue press in with renewed vigor, eliciting a totally

unexpected reaction in her that caused Nabiki to gasp in amazement.

Keiko broke the kiss then smiled and said, "Now, that wasn't so bad, was it?

Your first French Kiss, if I'm not mistaken."

"Ahh..." for once in her life Nabiki's legendary gift for gab failed her utterly

as she stared back at Keiko with a look of wonder.

Keiko moved in again, emboldened now that her first overtures had proven

successful. Nabiki did not draw away as the second kiss of her life took place,

and rather than critically analyze what she was doing she instead kissed Keiko

back, guided not so much by her intellect as far stronger emotions took control,

along with instincts that had been enflamed with spontaneous passion. Without a

word she found herself slipping back onto the mat while Keiko moved in to

straddle her, pinning Nabiki with her hands so that she could ease her body down

atop her, and from there her moves took the form of a military campaign, roving

the territory in search of significant landscape. Nabiki groaned with

unexpected pleasure and lay back as Keiko took charge over her body, and soon

those hands were peeling off her tank top to expose the chest area, then working

their way down below to remove her boxer shorts and underwear, gradually

stripping Nabiki naked with an efficiency that spoke of long practice.

Keiko was smooth in her approach as she set her well-callused hands to work

roving over the exposed areas of Nabiki's supple body. Her mouth planted gentle

kisses down both sides of Nabiki's face, drifting from the left to the right

cheek before drifting slowly down to the base of the jawline, slowly covering

the neck with lips and tongue before playfully nipping her with her teeth to

leave the faint indentation of a hickey. Nabiki reacted to all of this with

gasps of amazement that encouraged Keiko to continue on down to the hollow of

Nabiki's neck and clavicle, flicking her tongue against the indentation to

produce an unexpected thrill that shot down through Nabiki's spine and caused

her toes to curl as she lay back in amazement and allowed her friend to continue

her affectionate onslaught.

As Keiko's mouth was giving her bed partner pleasure at one end, one hand was

drifting down to stroke against the nerves that flowed from the solar plexus

region on down the length of Nabiki's tummy, those sensitive fingers finding and

caressing those nerves in such a way that Nabiki felt her body clench and writhe

in tremulous amazement. That hand did not desist its relentless pursuit until

it hovered just above the area of the pelvis, then it stopped to explore the

territory at more leisure, weaving between the threads of Nabiki's silky soft

fur before winding its way to the height of a certain opening. There it paused

to linger and explore with even greater precision until it found the expanded

opening and pressed up against the tiny nub that appeared from its protective

pink sheathing.

The next instant Nabiki's whole body arched as though she were being shot

through with four thousand volts of electricity, and her astonished gasp was

ample testimony to the fact that she had never even imagined that such sweet

sensations could exist as she began to feel from that moment. In absolute

wonder she felt Keiko's hand slide gently across the unfolded petals of her

loins before pressing against the sensitive and well-moistened inner lining.

The sensations this produced were literally beyond description as Nabiki emitted

a groan and felt waves of pleasure emanating from this hub of her womanhood.

When Keiko began probing beyond the gateway of her pleasure Nabiki felt the

ecstasy of that skillful digit twisting and wiggling inside her, converting her

groan into a moan as she felt her stomach muscles clenching and unclenching.

While this was going on Keiko's lips had been far from idle, working their own

particular brand of magic by painting soft kisses over Nabiki's upper chest,

slowly working their way down as her tongue glided into the valley between the

soft peaks of Nabiki's bosoms. Those lips caressed in a circular pattern the

path of ascension towards the peak of Nabiki's right nipple. Said nipple was

already growing hard with erection as Keiko neared the areola while Nabiki's

shoulders dug grooves into her bedding while she turned and stared with rounded

eyes, unable to comprehend an experience unlike any other in her sixteen years

of life. As she watched with breathless anticipation she saw Keiko's tongue

flick against her nipple as though it were an ice cream cone being sampled. An

intense wave of unexpected pleasure filled Nabiki as she watched those lips

enfold her bosom so that Keiko could begin to suckle her like a hungry kitten.

The combination of the finger probing her loins and that mouth sucking on her

breast were enough to put her near to the edge without going all the way over.

Nabiki gasped as she felt her ardor hit a wall and crash against it, frustrating

her by preventing full completion. Her groan this time was half of agony as she

hovered along the edge of she-knew-not-what, wanting desperately to go all the

way over into the abyss that awaited her, the rest of her being fearing to tread

unfamiliar territory, which Keiko's double assault was threatening to invite.

Then she felt that finger in her snatch come up against something soft-but-

yielding. She gasped as she felt her loins fill with fresh lubrication but not

the full measure of what she felt ready to explode with. Keiko desisted on

suckling her bosom at that point and looked up at Nabiki with quiet intensity,

her blue eyes seeking confirmation before she softly murmured, "Do you want me

to do this?"

"Do what?" Nabiki gasped, at the moment of no mind to refuse any request from

her lover.

"I'm poised at your hymen and ready to penetrate," Keiko explained, "Once this

is done your virginity will be lost forever. Think carefully before you let me

do this to you...you might have regrets afterwards, and I wouldn't want you

thinking I was a thief to take it without asking."

Nabiki, of course, was familiar with the medical term for what Keiko was

proposing, but she also knew that without full penetration she would never

experience the full heights of the ecstasy being promised to her. It did not

take more than a second to arrive at a decision, at which point she merely

smiled at Keiko and said, "Do it."

"All right," Keiko smiled as she eased back from Nabiki, positioning herself

between those thighs that she straddled with her finger still in place, then

with a leer she added, "You asked for it!" and she plunged it in all the way.

Nabiki felt a sharp tearing, and then her hymen was penetrated. The pain was

brief, followed almost immediately by feelings that were like the bursting of a

damn with the rush of a tidal wave bursting out of her while Keiko knelt down

and placed her mouth over the loins, timing the action so smoothly that she was

able to catch the rush of jism that flooded out as Nabiki experienced her first

full-fledged orgasm.

The were no words for what happened next as Nabiki's body thrashed and her loins

spurted juice while Keiko hungrily drank her down and did not permit one drop to

be wasted. Keiko's tongue speared deep into the other girl's love tunnel to get

at more of the salty-sweet nectar like a hungry girl drinking down the elixir of

life itself, and the very thrashing of that tongue was enough to cause Nabiki to

shudder again, her hips bucking as Keiko held them down with both hands, riding

her out as Nabiki exploded for a second time in such radiant joy that she nearly

blacked out from sensory overload. She clenched again for a third time and just

rode it out as her body climaxed like the aftershock of a major trembler, and

then her arousal began ebbing slowly, subsiding back to a more dull languor.

Nabiki opened her eyes again, feeling fulfilled in a way that said that she

would never be the same again, and for the first time in her life she felt

really and truly like a woman...

Genma had been listening as best he could from the next room, picking up every

third word spoken by his niece and her new companion. He could only follow the

gist of what was spoken above the level of a whisper, but when the conversation

turned personal, and then the strange sounds commenced, he had looked at the

other room askance and wondered what Nabiki was doing in there. It did not

sound like his idea of either combat, argument or practice.

He got up to take a look then froze on the spot, hearing noises that even a man

slow on the uptake could have no trouble identifying. His eyes got wide behind

his glasses and he thought about rushing in there to break it up. What checked

him was the realization of what Nabiki would probably do to him if he did

interfere, so instead he hesitated, torn between conflicting emotions.

It was her life, he knew perfectly well, and Nabiki was entitled to make her own

decisions and set her own rules for personal conduct. He had long ago ceased

trying to fill the role of a Parental model for her after discovering how clever

she could be at manipulation. Nabiki made her own rules and would either listen

to Genma's advice or ignore it completely. They were more like partners than

teacher and student in this way, so Genma had long ago learned how much easier

life was if he followed Nabiki's advice rather than the other way around.

So he continued to hesitate while he thought more about it. On the one hand

there was Nabiki's proven ability to glide between obstacles that littered the

road of her life, on the other there was the simple fact that she was a young

teenaged girl many kilometers away from her family experiencing her first sexual

encounter with someone from her past in a way that she was neither mentally nor

physically prepared to handle, and with another girl no less! Genma was a far

cry from a prude but he did have his own inherent sense of propriety, and this

just screamed to him of something that he should-as her legal guardian-should

do something to prevent.

If they stayed together it would mean forming a relationship of that kind that

was unlikely to be welcome by her father. Genma had not seen his old friend,

Tendo Soun, for many years, but he knew him well enough to judge that Soun would

not approve of another girl making out with his daughter.

But what to do that would not involve incurring Nabiki's bad side? It wasn't

her physical skills that he was afraid of...after all, he'd been her primary

teacher and sparring partner all these years...but Nabiki had other ways of

retaliating against Genma, and interfering this way in her personal life was

bound to be highly unpleasant and financially disruptive.

Genma listened to the sounds of passion intensify in the next room and decided

that he had to intervene, but in such a way as to minimize the repercussions.

As he was searching for an answer his eyes fell upon a travel brochure that he

and Nabiki had acquired earlier in the day when they had been considering new

places to travel, fresh areas to be weighed for their training and market

potential. He picked it up and quite by chance it opened to a page his finger

had found by mere chance. Genma turned the brochure over to that page and saw a

name that triggered a distant memory, a rumor he had heard somewhere, of a place

where the finest warriors would go to test their mettle...

Genma stared at the page as though it were the answer to all of his dreams. Of

course, this was the answer! He was not a planner or even a great strategist on

the same par with Nabiki but some plans could come to mind on pure inspiration,

and at the moment he had an idea that would exactly fulfill the needs of the

immediate situation...

"So," Keiko mused as the thrumming in Nabiki's ears subsided and her vision

cleared, "That wasn't so terrible, was it? Still think you aren't the kind of

girl who can enjoy being with another woman?"

A soft chuckle came in reply, and then Nabiki said, "I stand corrected...well,

sort of."

"I wouldn't try standing up anytime too soon if I were you," Keiko replied with

a grin that would have well fit on the cat that had just eaten the canary, "But

now at least you know why I enjoy sex with another woman...and you're the first

I've had in ages."

"You're my first period," Nabiki admitted, looking down across the length of her

body to Keiko before remarking, "That was incredible what you did to me just

now, but how..."

"How did I know to find just the right way of bringing you off?" Keiko leered

before she moved to straddle Nabiki more completely, looking down into wide

brown eyes with her own blue orbs alight with undiminished ardor, "Like I said,

I've had a good teacher, and I'm very talented. You want me to show you what

you taste like?"

"Ah?" Nabiki gasped, only to find Keiko moving in for another kiss, this time

when she parted Nabiki's unresisting lips with her tongue she found the Tendo

girl ready to meet and respond to her in kind. Their tongues meshed for a long,

intense moment, during which Nabiki sampled a curious flavor that was like honey

and milk mixed with saltwater taffy and a dash of fish sauce with lemon. When

Keiko broke the kiss at last Nabiki reflexively licked her lips, still trying to

make sense of the delightful nectar that lingered on her palate.

"Like the way you taste?" Keiko grinned, "I sure did! Every woman has her own

distinctive flavor, and you've got a flavor I could easily get addicted to. For

a virgin you really packed a mouthful of cum juice."

Nabiki swallowed reflexively and said, "You...drank it?"

"Like mother's milk," Keiko replied with a strangely intense look of poignant

emotion, "Did you like it?"

"Uh...yeah," Nabiki replied, finding it odd to think of another girl drinking

out of her loins like that. Keiko's next words surprised her completely.

"Then you can return the favor," Keiko grinned, moving to position herself

around and on top of Nabiki so that her own shaven loins were poised above the

astonished Nabiki, "After all, turnabout's only fair play..."

"N-nani?" Nabiki gasped as she suddenly found the unfolding pink petals of

Keiko's loins thrust into her face as Keiko gently lowered herself into

position.

"Don't be shy," Keiko urged, "If you need encouragement I'll just give you

another sample."

Keiko's head bent down and once again parted the silky brown hairs of Nabiki's

pelvis, finding the hood of the clitoris with such ease that Nabiki gasped once

more in amazement. Using hands and tongue Keiko parted those loins and expertly

exposed the interior lips, spearing her tongue once again into their lubricating

depths and wiggling it to encourage further excretions of tasty moisture.

Nabiki could only gasp as the weight of Keiko's body held her down, her eyes

tightly clenched as she savored the feeling of that tongue buried deep inside

her, moving around like a great work in search of nutrients. She could barely

contain herself as she opened her eyes and once again focused on the pungent

aroma of Keiko's own vulva, which smelled oddly like a mix of honeysuckle and

tuna.

Well, Nabiki half-reasoned with all the coherent powers of thought left to her

right then, it was only polite for her to return the favor as requested.

Thus resolved she bent her head back and thrust her own mouth at the soft,

fleshy petals that beckoned to her in open invitation. Her first tentative lick

was hesitant as she had to overcome her lingering doubts about the situation,

but once the tip of her tongue caressed the flavorful nectar that lubricated the

opening she was hooked on the taste and wanted a further sample. She moved her

tongue with agonizing slowness across the opening of that vulva and produced a

shudder that caused Keiko to briefly desist in her own tongue-bath, gasping,

"Ohhh...that's good! But not so slow! It's such sweet torture..."

Emboldened by those words, Nabiki pressed her tongue in deeper and found little

resistance as she penetrated the opening and began to explore the interior of

her lover. Keiko buried her groan by placing her mouth back over Nabiki's

pelvis and renewing her attack with vigor. For a first time at cunnalingus she

grasped the concept with ease and was soon copying Keiko's own moves with great

energy and vigor. She explored that vulva both on the outside and the inside

and quite by accident discovered Keiko's clitoris.

The moment her tongue flicked across the hood of the tiny nub Keiko's whole body

shuddered and quivered, and a few moments later Nabiki was surprised to find her

face being splashed with a salty-sweet substance. It covered everywhere, from

her nose to her cheeks, but once her mouth found the source of the jism she

clamped onto it and began sucking on the stream, discovering to her delight that

Keiko did indeed taste like a lemony fish sauce!

"Ohhh..." Keiko groaned after her climax became no more than a mild shudder,

"That was...incredible! You sure...this is your...first time, Nab-chan?"

"Positive," Nabiki said as she began licking the cum off her lips and everywhere

she could reach, discovering a hunger unlike any other she had known in her

young life as Keiko obligingly shuddered again and gave forth a lesser stream of

milky juice, then grew silent.

"Ohhh..." Keiko arched her back as she groaned, "That's it...clean me off down

there. Don't need to be shy...the cleanest part of the body is the vulva, a lot

cleaner than the mouth or the anus..."

"Really?" Nabiki asked as she managed to rub some of the cum off her face onto

Keiko's thighs, where she proceeded to lick it.

"Ohhh...yeah...really!" Keiko gasped, "Bodily excretions are real hard on

bacteria, long as you don't have a yeast infection. The anus is cleaner than

the human mouth, you know, you must have heard about it in Biology..."

"Yeah, a little," Nabiki replied as she continued to lick between Keiko's thighs

long after she had removed all of the cum juice. Her lover's sharp intake of

breath was amble testament to the effectiveness of her methods.

"Boy, do you learn fast!" Keiko chuckled as she rolled off of Nabiki, turning to

lean on one harm as she regarded her lover from a Yin-Yang position, "I take it,

then, you like my flavor?"

Nabiki just grinned at that and repeated Keiko's own words, "I could get

addicted to that stuff. No wonder you like it."

Keiko's chuckle had an evil hint of mischief as she said, "You ain't seen

nothing yet, Nab-chan. The night is young and we're only just getting started."

"There's more?" Nabiki gasped, then realizing how naïve that sounded as Keiko

slid from her side and positioned herself between Nabiki's legs once again, then

reached down to grasp hold of her ankles as she lifted Nabiki's legs to form a

"V" between her thighs, positioning herself so that their loins were almost

touching.

"Oh yeah," Keiko said, "Much more! That was just the appetizer to whet your

appetite, the main course will really leave you gasping! I know a thousand

techniques for bringing you off, Nab-chan, and I'm going to practice every one

of them on you tonight if it kills me."

Nabiki gulped, then watched incredulously as Keiko lifted one of her bare feet

up to her lips and flicked her tongue against Nabiki's sole. Nabiki blinked

then felt a curious sensation along her spine as Keiko licked around her ankles,

then up between her toes before sliding down the soft interior of the well-

callused bottom, which had been fortuitously cleaned earlier when they came in

out of the rain. Nabiki was surprised at how good it felt to have her foot

licked this way, though her groan was especially profuse when Keiko took the big

toe between her lips and suckled it for a full minute.

Keiko released the foot then smiled down again and said, "And now I'll show you

a new way to kiss another woman. Take my word on it, this will really knock

your socks off..."

She again pressed their loins together, pausing to softly grind her bare flesh

against Nabiki's muff, then gradually increasing the tempo until Nabiki's loins

were fully unfolded, even as Keiko's loins were spread like the petals of a

water lily. Nabiki stared down in amazement as their loins began to mesh

together, and then the pleasure hit her like a tidal wave and she arched back in

disbelief as Keiko's clitoris found Nabiki's and the two began to strike sparks

together. It really was an incredible form of kissing!

Keiko did not stop there as she bent her body down until her large breasts were

in full contact with Nabiki's own swelling bosoms, and then she ground her whole

body atop Nabiki's, pressing nipples so that they flicked against nipples while

the fire in their loins rose up into their bellies as Keiko created more fire by

the simple principle of rubbing their bodies together. Nabiki's legs

straightened out as her toes curled and she felt herself clench with another

explosive orgasm, but once they had come down from their mutual high the Tendo

girl was quick to recover, flipping Keiko off of her so that she could straddle

her friend and give the redhead the savage treatment of an animal in heat. Her

lips were everywhere covering every square centimeter of skin and still it was

not enough to express her enflamed desire. She wanted to enfold Keiko, to

cherish, nurture and milk her for all that she was worth. It was frightening

the intensity of the feelings that had been awaken within her but she was fully

possessed by her desires and would not relent until she had given back as good

as she was given.

She made a point, of course, to trace each one of Keiko's scars with kisses,

almost like a mother wanting to make the hurt all better. She could not take

away what Keiko had suffered, of course, but she felt enormous desire to offer

what comfort that she may, not was Keiko complaining at all of the treatment.

Once the redhead had recovered her steam she once again mastered Nabiki and gave

further demonstrations of the advantages of female lovemaking. They would keep

at it for the next few hours until exhaustion claimed them, then they fell

asleep in each other's arms, embracing with legs entwined, their faces pressed

together as if from a mutual need for warmth that the cold of the night would

threaten to take from them forever...

It was not until some hours later that Genma at last worked up the courage to

sneak into their room, peering cautiously with all senses extended for the

slightest sign that either slumbering girl was wakeful. He was very careful in

his approach, sorting out which the two girls was which despite their tangle of

limbs and bodies, then he quietly knelt down and found the right nerve clusters

on both bodies, ensuring that sleep would continue unabated for the next several

hours.

Of course Nabiki's exhaustion had worked to his advantage, but the other girl

had managed to stir just before Genma found her sleep center, which caused Genma

a moment to marvel at such reflexes. But when he found the light and saw the

marks on her back he realized why she had been so sensitive, and he suffered a

moment of belated regret over what he was about to do to her. She really wasn't

responsible for what had happened to her, and it was hardly fair to deprive her

of real companionship, but the welfare of his niece was at stake and so he

continued with his plan, moving swiftly to bind her while being careful not to

look at her too closely.

When he stood up again he carried one of the pair of bodies with him back into

the next room, then dressed her hastily before packing their belongings, along

with the money they had appropriated for "Traveling expenses." He slung his

ward over his shoulder then headed out into the night, having already plotted

the route for their escape so that they could leave Hong Kong for the interior

of China...

Nabiki was roused from a deep and restful sleep in the middle of the night to

find her Uncle Genma perched over her with concern written plain upon his

features. As if that were not strange enough, Nabiki discovered that they were

outdoors in the middle of a strange woodland that she did not recognize with no

hints of the city at all. She sat upright and discovered that she was wearing

her usual clothing, which implied to her that she had been dressed during the

night by Genma.

And then something else occurred to her and she looked around frantically before

gasping, "Keiko-chan?"

"I'm sorry," Genma replied, "I did everything I could...it was terrible! I've

failed you, my student!"

"What?" Nabiki half got to a semi-upright crouch, staring at the cringing man

before her, "What are you saying? What about Kei-chan?"

"Chu Wan Phat's men..." Genma all but openly sobbed, "They came in the night...I

fought them off, but there were too many! I had to grab everything on the run,

including you, while Keiko..."

"What are you talking about?" Nabiki seized the man by his collar, "What about

Kei-chan?"

"She stayed behind," Genma replied, "I couldn't rouse you in time, so I fled

carrying you over my shoulder with both of our packs. It was touch and go for a

while there, but at least the two of us are safe..."

"Safe?" the word sounded hollow on Nabiki's lips before she intensified her

grasp on her Sensei and all but shouted, "You left her BEHIND? How could

you!"

"Would you rather we all three stayed behind and perished?" Genma asked her,

"It's a noble and heroic way to go, I'll grant you..."

"Shut up!" Nabiki cried as she physically lifted the heavier man and threw him

over to land on his back a short distance away, "You left her to die!"

Genma easily absorbed the landing then straightened up and from a sitting

posture replied, "I wouldn't count her for dead just yet. Your friend is a very

strong girl with good survival instincts, the same as you. No doubt you two

will be seeing each other again, someday."

"That's not the point!" Nabiki raged, "You could have awaken me! We could have

fought them all off, no matter how many there were..."

"That's your ego talking for you, Niece," Genma replied flatly, "You're good but

you're not invincible, and you should never discount the weight of an enemy's

numbers. How many people do you think Chu Wan Phat will be able to send against

us if he can put a price on your head to equal your winnings?"

"Huh?" Nabiki gasped as the truth behind those words sank in, then as memories

of the night before passed through her mind she stared down at the ground and

felt her heart grow cold with foreboding.

Genma straightened up and his attitude grew challenging. He gestured

dramatically her way and said, "Listen to me, Nabiki-chan. Your friend is not

dead so long as you carry her memory in your heart, but meanwhile you must

struggle to stay alive for your own sake. I promised your father that I would

protect you, and that is a promise I am honor bound to keep."

"You just don't want to have to explain things to him when we get home," Nabiki

said, but her tone signaled defeat as she stared away at the ground, clenching

her fists and remembering red hair, a lovely face and the boyish mannerisms that

had made it easy to submit to the caresses of another girl...her first true

lover...

"That too," Genma sighed, regretting the lies he had just told, but knowing too

well that Nabiki would see right through him to the truth if he did not offer

her something to take her mind away from all thoughts of desertion. Instead he

plied his ace in the hole and said, "But there is good news to go with the rest.

I'm happy to report that you are improving in your training. Soon you will be

good enough for me to present you to your father. The fight in the arena

confirms what I have long suspected, and one year from now you will become the

fighter I always knew you were. We can both return home to our families in

mutual triumph."

"Really?" Nabiki asked suspiciously, "You mean that this time? A year from now?

We really are going home then?"

"Of course," Genma replied affably, "I want to see my son and wife as much as

you do your sisters and father. My boy will almost be a man when I next see

him, and that much closer to uniting our families so that I really will become

your uncle."

"That's assuming he and Akane are still interested in each other," Nabiki

replied, glancing at their supplies now that she was thinking more coherently,

though her expression was filled with sadness.

"It's all there," Genma informed her, "I made sure not to leave the money lying

around, not that we'll need to spend that much where we're going."

"Where we're...what?" Nabiki was instantly suspicious.

"We need to get away for a while," Genma replied, "Hong Kong has become too hot

for us, and I don't think that gang lord will be too forgiving about the way we

left them. I thought perhaps a trip through the country would help us escape

unwanted notice until the heat dies down, and where better to hide ourselves

than in a land of over a billion other people?"

"A billion other...you mean China?" Nabiki said, suddenly understanding why the

terrain looked so unfamiliar.

"Where do you think we are?" Genma smiled, "While you were sleeping I snuck us

past the border patrols, figuring that would be the last place that anyone would

look. After all in these days since the Communists took over who would expect

anyone of sneaking into the mainland by means other than the main roads?"

"No one in their right mind, naturally," Nabiki brushed her hair across her

forehead then sighed, "Anyplace you have in mind? We've already been to

Shanghai..."

"I was thinking of something else," Genma smiled at her, "Remote and obscure,

but a perfect place to further your training to the next level. Tell me, girl,

have you ever heard of a place called Jusenkyo?"

"No," Nabiki asked, "Why should I have?"

"There is a legend that says it is the birthplace of warriors," Genma replied,

"Where the bravest and most accomplished come to train and fight, and where an

average fighter can emerged transformed into a champion out of legend. That's

where we're headed, girl, to prove that you really are the best that this world

has to offer."

"Jusenkyo, huh?" Nabiki considered the point, "Well...why not? Is it far?"

"Does it matter?" Genma asked, "It's not the distance you cover, it's what you

do until you get there."

"True enough," Nabiki said as she knelt down to shoulder her pack, then

straighten out and say, "All right, Ojisan, lead the way, but after we're

through with this I expect you to carry through on your promise."

"I know girl," Genma replied as she shouldered his own pack, "One year from now

we'll both be home and then we can both finally relax in peace and contentment.

Your father will be very proud when he sees what a great warrior you have

become..."

"I'd be happier if I finally got the chance to spend some of the money I've been

salting away," Nabiki sniffed as she fell into stride alongside her middle-aged

instructor, "I'd like to buy a new wardrobe, something other than training gi's,

maybe some nice feminine clothes to show off my girlish figure."

Genma smiled to himself, gratified that he finally was able to put one over on

his niece. He had no idea if what he had told her about the Jusenkyo training

grounds was true or not, having made most of it up on the spot since he could

not read the Chinese script on the brochure to confirm his dim memories of what

a certain lady had once told him about this place called the Cursed Springs of

Jusenkyo...

Keiko awoke to find the space beside her was empty. More to the point she found

herself tied up with rope, preventing her from doing more than wiggle slightly.

This was hardly a first for her, but the bindings lacked the usual finesse of

her former Mistress, or even the lurid bindings of her so-called Master, and she

was hardly enjoying the experience in any event as the ropes were merely

inconvenient.

Fortunately for her she could still move her head, so she snapped it forward and

flipped her long red braid up and onto her stomach. Moving a hand as far as she

was able she managed to get the ball on the tip between her thumb and

forefinger. She pressed hard on the sides and out flipped a pair of razor-sharp

blades, which same she then used to cut herself free through slow and

painstaking effort.

When at last she had worked past her bonds she moved to examine the covers and

found a wad of bills with a note had taken the place of her Nabiki-chan. She

studied the crude handwritten note in badly misspelled Japanese, realizing that

the style could never have been forged by Nabiki's skillful hands and frowned at

the realization that it had been Genma who had tied her up and left her.

What the message said was: "Sorry to do this to you, Keiko-san, but I need my

niece to come with me on a special errand. I've left you some money so that you

can buy yourself safe passage on a boat headed towards Japan. Use it wisely and

we'll meet up with you someday in Nerima."

"Genma," Keiko crushed the note into a ball between her hands as she snarled the

word, then threw the wad with all her might against the nearest wall and

shouted, "You said you would take me with you! Was it all just lies meant to

deceive me?"

A moment of calm reflection assured her that it could not have been the case.

Nabiki would not abandon her, nor break her word like this. Somehow the old man

had convinced her to slip away in the dead of night and abandon Keiko to her

fate. This was an unforgivable breech of trust on their part, and Keiko had no

intention of allowing the pair to get away with from her Scot-free.

She had no belongings to pack, other than the money, which turned out to be a

few thousand dollars in US currency, just enough to live on if she was careful

and measured it out according to her basic needs. She would need to purchase a

few things from the market while avoiding unwanted attention. By now Phat was

turning the whole city upside down looking for them. Unfortunately for him

Keiko knew how to slip past guards and make her escape from the city. Once free

she would have to follow the fresh trail of Nabiki, which meant thinking like

Genma, a frightening proposition.

Where would she go if she were a devout coward who wanted to avoid trouble? Not

the ports, ships or airport surely, they would all be covered by Phat's agents.

She had no idea when Madam Lao would next be in port at any rate, so that left

solely discovering which way Nabiki had gone solely up to her. Knowing as much

as Keiko did about Hong Kong it did not take her too long to deduce the

direction.

The mainland! Keiko left the abandoned hut and never looked back, going the

route she felt certain that Genma would take to flee hastily out of the city and

into the pages of a destiny such as she never would have suspected. Keiko was

determined to find her true love and win her back while simultaneously getting

even with Genma, a task that she hoped would earn the approval even of the lofty

Buddha...

Continued.

Comments/Criticism/Non-Hentai (per)version: shadowmane

This story is set a year before the events of Nabiki 1/2 and is meant to explain

why Keiko was so irritated when she first showed up in Nerima, and so forgiving

later.

Next: Nabiki goes to Jusenkyo, then winds up in a certain Amazon village where

her next fateful encounter will occur. Would you please be there for the

marriage dance of Shampoo and Nabiki? You are cordially invited...

If you wish to check out my other works, Please check out my

Fanfiction webpage at: . or

it's mirror site at: ~

All related chapters of this series can be found there along with my

other works.


	54. Chapter 54

preDnabiki136

Nabiki 1/2,

A Very Scary Thought

By Jim Robert Bader

(Based on the Works of Rumiko Takahashi and Others)

Chapter Fifty-Four.

Episode One Hundred Thirty-Six.

"Monstrous Reflections."

(Inspired by the works of Rumiko Takahashi Others,  
with concepts and characters created by fellow fanfic writers Wade Tritschler, DB Sommers, Nicole Manders, Andrew Greaves, Bill Guiroff and countless others, including "Buffy"  
creator Joss Whedon; with special thanks to my good pal Shiva for his editing and handling of this series.)

(Certain other characters and concepts are of my own innovation, including my interpretation of the Monster of Mary Shelly's novel, and various other guest stars appearing in this portion of the Nabiki 1/2 series...)

(Author's Note: This takes place after the events recorded in "ATOTW 122-X.")

Doctor Franklin Nathaniel Steinberg sat in the main office of his Tokyo business holdings and studied the latest reports that he had received from his field agents in Nerima. What he saw was not encouraging to a man of his vast experience, not at all. In fact it was positively scary, and for a man such as him that was no light understatement.

It had only been five months since the incident with Dimitri Maximoff, which had caused the eldest Tendo girl to become afflicted with a unique case of Vampirism, and the indications were all there that some personal crisis was forming in the life of Tendo Kasumi. Frank had a special interest in this Japanese girl, having adopted the role of her nominal patron. He had sponsored her for medical school, helped to enroll her on a scholarship with a preparatory school that would allow her to come back up to speed after the two-years that had lapsed from the day when she had graduated from high school. He had assigned one of his best field operatives to keep close watch on her activities, and he was in frequent personal contact with the Tendo family, one reason why he tended to operate more out of his Tokyo offices these days rather than commute from his main office in Rio de Janero. In all truth he had even become quite fond of Kasumi in a surprisingly brief interval, having come to know her in ways that left him feeling uneasy, knowing as he did the curious metabolic changes that had accompanied her transition to Vampirism.

Moreover, the girl was acknowledged to be a full goddess, the first Vampire Goddess to walk the earth in some millennia and indeed a very rare example of the breed under whom the normal rules for the Nocturnally inclined did not apply in the least. True her blood-thirst was presently contained by the Bloodstone earring that she wore constantly, which sustained most of her daily requirements so that drinking human fluids was more of an option, not a requirement of her existence.

The problem was that Nerima was not exactly a tranquil place in which a novice demiurge could nurture their abilities without the risk of tempting their own dark side. There were brief instants when the nominally gentle Kasumi had manifested a draconic temper that had frightened even him, mostly in the heat of battle when the blood ran hot and normal tempers might flare with the heat of a supernova.

If her powers were to become fully active at a critical moment then there was no telling what she might become without the proper training and supervision. All she had so far was a slight case of anemia, which was being treated by her family physician, but left unattended her condition could deteriorate, and then she might pose a danger to her family, friends and everyone around her, something that no one should have to face, given the especially close bond that Kasumi felt with her still-mortal sisters.

This was, naturally enough, of great concern to Frank professionally since Vampires fell under the category of Monsters, and Monsters of all sort were of immense personal interest to "Doctor Steinberg," being himself a rather notorious example of the breed. Personal feelings aside, the recent incident with that renegade Taoist wizard had brought to the surface all of the issues that had bothered Frank deep down from the moment when Kasumi had fallen into the clutches of Dimitri. In all honesty the girl was a remarkably resilient and vibrant young creature of vast potential, and it would be a horrible pity to lose her to the dark side, especially while there was yet time to steer her course to the path of Light, as nature would have intended.

Much closer supervision of the Kasumi situation would definitely be warranted in the future, but Frank was too far involved now to objectively trust his own judgment. He was a scientist by birth and inclination, and he knew an outside perspective would be needed to balance his out in determining the best course of action in these matters. Perhaps someone familiar with the occult who had no prior involvement? That left out Donovan and many of the spiritualists with whom Frank maintained regular contact, but who else to bring on board here? This matter needed sensitivity and a deft touch to handle just right, let alone to give a qualified assessment that could confirm or deny the worst of Frank's suspicions.

The more Frank thought about Kasumi the more he questioned his ability to manage the issues in an appropriate manner. Everything about her fascinated him, her beauty, her voice, her curious mix of innocence and perception, the kindness that she embodied with even those who wronged her contrasted against the hard-  
minded practicality she displayed in making surprisingly intelligent decisions...in truth there was no part of the enigma that was Kasumi that he could ignore. The more time he spent around her the deeper he had fallen under her spell, and now...the very thought of any harm befalling her made his stomach turn in knots, while certain other dormant portions of his anatomy had stirred to life on those times when she was intimate with him, even casually so, though as yet neither one had made a move to do something less formal about it.

No, Frank definitely knew that his judgment would be subject no matter which way matters turned, and if hard choices needed to be made it would have to be by someone accustomed to managing under difficult circumstances, especially when given the complex tapestry of events surrounding Kasumi, her family for one being a source of great instability, even given the bonds of love that held them together.

And compounding the issue to a considerable degree were the immediate presence of two Reality Nexuses in close proximity together, one being a young Japanese boy known as Saotome Ranma, the other a mere infant who bore the curious name of Tendo Lylac.

A Reality Nexus was no laughing matter, being an individual designated by Fate to be a linchpin or hub for various potential alternate dimensions. The actions of a Nexus helped determine the shape of a given timeline, with different choices leading to alternately different (and potentially dramatic) outcomes, the course of which made reality itself take notice. By all accounts this Ranma had caused (either by volition or by the nature of his very presence) a very odd chain of circumstances that had resulted in his being engaged or affianced to four very different warrior women, one of them a very sprightly young girl named Tendo Nabiki, who-by no small coincidence-was the biological "father" of the other Reality Nexus, and the younger sister of the nascent Vampire Goddess, Kasumi.

Frank had been much impressed with the Jusenkyo-cursed girl on their prior encounters, finding her a quick-witted and resourceful study who combined superlative martial arts skills with an intelligence that was almost uncanny. The girl was the heir to both Saotome and Tendo traditions of "Anything Goes" Ryu and a top-notch fighting machine who'd earned a name for herself among the ranks of Asian Street Fighters. The girl had a knack for organization and had all but taken over her High School from the bottom floor up, running the affairs of her fellow students with more effective and pervasive control than even the school administration seemed to be aware of. She had even stood toe-to-toe with the likes of such threats as the Road Ronin and Madam Lao, which definitely meant that she was no one to be taken lightly. Even being heavily pregnant as a consequence of her most recent encounter with the self-styled "Tigress of the Seven Seas" had not much slowed Nabiki down, being more of a physical hindrance than an impediment to her running a fairly smooth operation in her district.

In fact, the girl was such a magnet for trouble that Frank had trouble believing that she was not, in fact, the Reality Nexus, but fate did not always work the way a scientist like him would construct it. Frank had enormous respect for the Tendo girl's charm and obvious talents and even considered her a potential recruit for his organization, especially in light of her sister's peculiar condition.

(The fact that they also might potentially become in-laws one day was a thought Frank hastily squelched, wondering what stray imp of an idea had ever given him such a peculiar notion.)

Frank snorted, thinking of the Exorcist, Donovan Bane, who had given the elder Tendo girl a clean bill of health, after having attempted a full "cure" of her condition, just prior to her current elevation. Obviously the half-Darkbreed priest was not quite as infallible as he let people to believe, although to be fair he had warned that the Tendo girl might have some "residual" trace of the Darkness that had touched her very being, and boy did that last big battle with Dimitri ever confirm that!

Frank stared down at the reports set in front of him on his desk and made a decision, then touched his console and said, "Shelly, you on line?"

"Sure thing, Boss," a pleasantly feminine voice replied, "All charged and ready. What do you want?"

"Aside from a three week vacation in the Bahamas?" Frank sniffed, "I need for you to put out the word to a certain party. Think you can locate him?"

"If you mean the Guardian, sure thing," Shelly replied, "But what do you want to talk with Magnus about? You two may share a lot of history together, but it's not as if you guys are always the best of buddies."

"What are you talking about?" Frank sniffed, "Me'n Magnus get along great, if only he'd admit I'm right once in a while..."

"You should live so long," Shelly said, then paused before saying, "Oracle says he's on a shuttle, but she's managed to hook us up on the relays. Transferring over now."

There was a slight pause, then a graven voice with a faint European accent said, "You wished to speak with me, old friend?"

"Yeah," Frank replied, hesitating before he added, "I need a little favor from you. I've got this...situation I need help with. It's kind of a delicate matter...I'm having Shelly transfer all the important details."

"I see," there was a slight pause and then the voice continued, "A Nexus and a Class VI Sanguer, and that group you uncovered while dealing with the Typhon-  
Gojiro matter. I agree with you, this situation does warrant special attention."

"Right," Frank said tentatively, "So...what I need to know is if you could assign me a special operative to do some field work, undercover stuff, fake ID and everything. Since these are High School students I figure someone in a teaching or administrative staff position who would have enough leeway to keep tabs on these people without being too obvious..."

"What about a Freelancer?" the voice pointedly suggested.

Frank blinked in his surprise, a very rare display for him as he slowly said, "Yeah...that would just about cover it. A Freelancer who can use discretion would be nice. Who do you have in mind? One of Ariel's people?"

"More like Azrael," the voice noted soberly, "It just so happens that one of his agents is currently operating in Japan and is not presently working on any authorized assignments."

"One of Azrael's assassins?" Frank did not bother to hide his alarm, "I want to study these kids, not put them on any target lists! The last thing we need is a loose cannon who might take exception to the way somebody looks at them crossly..."

"I can assure you that Legionnaire does not make gratuitous sanctions," the voice assured him, "She is more like a surgeon who strikes with precision only when and if there is sufficient justification..."

"LEGIONNAIRE?" Frank all but fell out of his chair, "Talk about loose cannons! She's a full twenty-two inch New Jersey-class salvo! I want someone there who can help these kids out if it's necessary, not start World War Three!"

"Nonetheless," the other voice said calmly, "She is the best candidate for the job should all the indications you have shared with me point in the direction of an escalating crisis. She is adaptable and reliable, and if asked to she will keep as moderately low a profile she can allow in the course of her duties. I will have all the necessary credentials drafted up for her by this afternoon. You may contact her yourself to see if she is willing to accept the assignment, or I could ask Ariel to make the proper arrangements..."

"No thanks," Frank griped, "I do my own dirty work. Where can I find Legionnaire at anyway?"

"I'm having Oracle get a fix on her current whereabouts," the other voice replied, "She will transfer the necessary data to Shelly, and then the rest is upon your broad shoulders. However...I would make a request of my own in exchange for your favor."

Frank had seen this coming. Magnus Castiglione was not always so charitable with his top-grade field operatives unless he had a larger purpose in mind, which meant the favor he was asking would be correspondingly pricey. Frank merely acknowledged this fact by saying, "Which is?"

"The Furies are en route to your current location," Magnus replied, "Please see to it that they are afforded with suitable accommodations and given all due support in cooperation with the appropriate authorities."

"The Furies," Frank nodded blankly. Somehow it figured, the way he day had been going... "Okay, I'll have Tiger work on it. Get back to you on it later. What's their ETA?"

"They have only just boarded Astarte's private Leer Jet," Magnus replied, "I expect that they will be a good ten hours before arrival at Tokyo international."

"Great," Frank sniffed, "First Gojiro and now this. Okay, let 'em know that I'll be waiting for them, assuming the big one can stand being cooped up for that long in an air craft."

"She has made some progress in overcoming her agoraphobia," Magnus assured, "But I've been assured, just in case, that they are keeping her well sedated."

"What with, an Elephant trank?" Frank scoffed, "And what's this about anyway? Why are they headed out from their haunts in San Francisco?"

"I am not at liberty to give too many details," Magnus replied, "But the word Holocaust should be sufficient to give you some idea of the nature of this emergency."

"Holocaust?" Frank sat back down in his chair with a, "Whoah!"

"Exactly," Magnus replied, "Perhaps now you see why Legionnaire is being assigned to you. I consider her good back up in case she is needed."

"I should say so," Frank averred softly, realizing that this was going to be one of THOSE days!

"I'll be in touch shortly," Magnus replied, and then the line fell silent.

Frank stared at the huge space that served him as an office and wondered which of the various Shinto gods he might have offended this week. And it had all started out looking like a routine day of business...

He sighed and rose to his full seven-and-a-half foot height, resolved to get under way in finding Legionnaire, reasoning that the sooner was the better, though in all truth he was less than happy at having to recruit the likes of one Trudy Matthew's, esquire, knowing that to do so was bound to set a whole chain of events into motion. But then again, trouble was his lot in life, so with grim fatalism he said, "Shelly, I'm taking a spin. Be a good girl and warm up the Monster."

"I'll be ready in the garage as soon as you step out of the elevator, Boss," the feminine voice hummed with unusually chipper humor, "Want me also to contact the services of a good priest?"

"Long as he does funeral services," Frank replied as he stepped into his private elevator and descended to street level, "Whatever that daffy redhead's up to, there are bound to be a lot of bodies littering up the streets of this fair city..."

The sentry turned and scanned the catwalk overlooking the factory, wondering if it was just nerves or did he really have the sense that he was being watched from concealment. He started to turn away, not seeing the vent screen slide back from place as a mane of long strawberry blonde hair showered down out of his field of vision. A fluid, lithe form in a tight-fitting outfit that consisted of maroon-red tunic and black slacks alighted with catlike grace, not making a sound as she rose to her full height of one hundred and seventy-two centimeters, then smile at his proffered backside in a cocky, insinuating fashion.

She tapped the guard on the back of his neck, opening her mind to the flood of images as she experienced the sort of man that he was, his whole life flashing before her in the space of a heartbeat as the Power spoke to her and told her this one should live a while longer.

Normal rent-a-thug, not worth bothering with. The man collapsed like a rag doll with the strings cut, instantly asleep before his brain was ware that he was unconscious.

Trudy stepped past the body and continued on in search of her next target. The second guard was just rounding a corner when she walked up to and surprised him, smiling as the Power spoke to her again, even as her hand snaked out to strike before he had time to make an eyeblink.

This one had an ugly mind and a most unpleasant life, a brutal man who enjoyed inflicting pain and suffering in others. He had begun as a young child and gravitated to acts of true maliciousness as he got older. He had killed and enjoyed killing many times, and he liked being allowed to carry a weapon to shoot people, even though the laws regarding firearms were very strict in Japan. This one was a life taker, and he would be shown no mercy.

Trudy's palm impacted with his sternum and collapsed the entire rib cage, shattering his heart and aorta while the hydrostatic shock wrecked havoc throughout the rest of his body. The man did not so much expire as suffer a massive disruption of his entire nervous system, and then he gave a single gasp as his lungs exploded, blood foaming on his lips while his brain shut down. He was very much deceased as Trudy stepped past his corpse, feeling the power flow around her, washing clean the Karmic slate as she had merely returned his own evil against him.

Trudy proceeded through the next corridor in search of her quarry. She was guided by the Power, drawn to the source of the emanations that she had followed since accepting this particular assignment. Somewhere ahead of her a girl named Miho was being held a prisoner of this tower, and Trudy had been contacted by her parents with the express wish that she return their daughter to their care safe and sound. As Trudy considered herself something of a patron of Lost Women she had gladly accepted their petition, having been informed by the Power that something very wicked was being done to the girl, something so evil that the Power faintly trembled as it whispered its outrage.

Though Trudy had been visiting Japan on personal business for a friend, she had been touched by the plight of this Idol Singer named Miho, enough so that she had agreed to look into the matter, even though she was an outsider. While listening to a tape of the girl's voice she had been possessed by a vision, and if the horror she had witnessed were true, then Trudy's services were needed, both as an avenger and as an instrument of liberation.

Subsequent to this she had interviewed the singer's family and confirmed that Miho Rijo had indeed been incommunicado with them, nominally severing all ties and living her life in the care of the record company to which she had been contracted. Further inquiries confirmed that no one had seen Miho outside of staged performances and rare publicity events, and that all of her activities were being monitored and controlled by Ajo Industries, with the CEO of that giant corporation taking a personal hand and all but adopting her as his legal ward, much over the objections of the girl's real-life mother and father.

To Trudy's instincts it had sounded suspicious enough like a legalized kidnapping, but the Power whispered to her of much darker doings, and so she had followed the trail to this building complex, discovering it to contain a hidden laboratory complex with Miho trapped within its maze like a virtual princess in an ivory tower. Being the sort of girl who liked to rescue the princess, Trudy naturally took it upon herself to rescue the damsel while paying justice to her tormentors. Every moment that she spent within this dark domain only affirmed her resolve as she could fairly sense the evil leaking into her very pores, telling her that unspeakable crimes wee being committed under the guise of corporate business. Her instincts fairly cried that vengeance had to be worked to restore the balance that presently was tilted towards the side of inhumanity.

Besides which, everything so far that she had heard about this Ajo Jinsaku guy had depicted him as bad news, and the Powers affirmed that he was a Poisoner of the kind which Trudy lived to exterminate.

So it was that she approached the next guard cautiously, extending her feelings out as the Power flowed through the tips of her fingers, allowing her to absorb the gist of his essence with a mere touch even as she closed her hand over his mouth and cut off the scream he might otherwise have uttered. Her other hand smashed palm-first against the spine of her victim even as a list of his sins was recorded in her memory, and then she let sag to the ground while releasing his karma, allowing his spirit to flow free from his body.

As she had suspected, a bully, thug and petty murderer, just the type of sadist that evil megalomaniacs liked to employ as their underlings and henchmen. This was no mere work-a-day hired muscle, these guys were elite trained combat specialists who had been personally hand-selected for their lack of moral qualms and basic enjoyment of their profession. He was also heavily armed in riot gear as though expecting a major engagement. Too bad for him his armor was not proof against the Power, and so she left his shattered frame behind and moved in stealth up to the next guard, the one who stood before a set of elevator doors that would doubtlessly ferry her to the next level of the complex.

Of course the fact that she had to walk right up to the man in full visibility was regrettable, but there were no shadows to move around, and the corridor was too well lit for stealthy evasion. Trudy was quick to spot the hidden cameras and disabled them with a few casually-tossed mini-darts, but the guard himself deserved a chance before she dealt with them. It was her habit to read people by their auras before deciding to kill them. It soothed her conscience out considerable to know that when she used the Power to lethal effect it was against those who truly deserved it.

Seeing as there was no point in being coy in the matter, Trudy simply turned the corner and waved cheerfully at the man while saying a casual, "Hi, how's tricks," in her best Japanese, which she spoke like a virtual native.

Predictably, the man just gawped at her for a few critical seconds and only belatedly began to bring his gun into play, by which point she had crossed the distance between them and was already in attack mode, aiming to disable rather than kill as her instincts informed her that this fellow was in the "non-  
terminate" category, just being a regular Joe with a gun and not a walking psycho like some of the others.

She hardly broke stride as she moved to the elevator itself, sized up the control mechanism as "card-readable" rather than palm friendly. She had already snagged such a card off of the guard himself, but there was also a key-pad that would require a certain password in order to bypass. For a normal intruder that might have been a problem, but Trudy did not hesitate to let her fingers do the walking, trusting her nearly infallible instincts to direct her hand to the right alpha-numeric combination.

There was hardly a flicker of surprise on her part when the doors hissed open to admit her, so she smiled and stepped in, trusting in the Power to further guide her through whatever obstacles yet remained to her passage.

Typical of megalomaniacs these days, this Ajo trusted more to machines than he did to people, which was unfortunate for his sake as most machines barely had the intelligence of an amoeba, a few closer to the ant in speed and efficiency, but nothing like the advanced cognitive skills of the human mind, and so were unable to discern one humanoid shape from another, other than by gauging basic body mass and other such criteria for analysis in the "friend and foe" category. Even the most mentally challenged security guard had faster comprehensive and reactive speeds than the most advanced commercially available mainframes, and so there was no way for them to know than an Assassin was on the premises, especially one quite adept at bypassing security protocols.

After all, this was the sort of thing that Trudy did for a living, and after a few years in the profession one tended to become blasé about the routine hazards one tended to encounter in this business.

As she approached her floor, however, Trudy's instincts flared to life and warned her that someone had been more alert on the ball than usual, for there were forces scrambling to engage her once the elevator doors were opened. Fortunately she had time enough to vault up through the emergency escape hatch and mount the roof of the elevator, leaping clear and catching a ladder at one side before swinging herself through a ventilator shaft, thus bypassing the efforts of the guards below to engage her.

She heard the staccato burst of gunfire as she crawled through the vents and mused to herself on how typical it was for guards to fire first without waiting to see if there were someone there worth shooting. She used the sounds to help her estimate their positions then selected a ceiling vent in which to exit from her crawlspace, coming down almost literally on top of the guards and moving swiftly to take them out of the action, the Power rising within her as she aimed her strikes precisely to either disable or kill, depending on its judgment. Six men went down almost immediately as she set to work on the next pair, and then vault beyond them to the remaining guards lagging at the back rows, and in this manner took them down with expert speed and efficiency, thus neutralizing the bulk of the defenders and further clearing the way for her intended objective.

So far so good, and not a single hitch in the basic operating plan, but Trudy knew better than to relax when things appeared to be going too well in her favor. Sloppiness was for amateurs, and bad assassins did not live long in this business. She instead attuned her hearing and made out a most peculiar sound that was rumbling in the distance, a heavy thumping sound that was proceeding in her direction, far too heavy to be a human warrior and clamping up a storm as though it were a tank walking on two legs, and rounding the corner with the speed of a prowling hill-ogre.

Trudy turned to see a massive shape bearing down on her with malevolence, huge and metallic with robotic contours that implied it was a death machine of some sort, possibly an attack droid or cybernetic organism, though in all plain fairness it bore the aspect of a demon and made her skin crawl as her senses reeled in protest.

"What the hell?" Trudy murmured to herself as she gazed at the looming apparition, only belatedly reacting at the last instant as it spat fire in her direction out of a pair of wrist-mounted canons that barked so loud that she was practically deafened.

Trudy moved with greater speed than the lumbering construct took to coordinate its attacks, but for some reason she balked at counter-attacking it as the mere presence of the thing was nauseating her and causing the Power to scream in her mind its outrage. She had to move fast to keep beyond the scope of its weapons, but she was reading something awful about the thing that had nothing to do with its combat or weapons capabilities. The very metallic skin of the creature was crawling with "Wrongness." To her dismay she perceived a concentrated wellspring of life energy at its very center, but compacted and distorted rather than vibrant like a regular life form. Two more times she dodged its lethal efforts to take her own life, but at the last she reluctantly reached into her tunic and produced a six-inch nail that she careful aimed before unleashing, aiming her dart at a spot of darkness that formed a weak chink in its armor, and using sufficient force that her weapon was driven deep between the joints of its neck plating.

All at once the metal creature staggered back and reeled as its internal systems were shorted out, and then the thing fell down like a lump and lay out on the floor sputtering and sparking, then shutting down entirely, its central processor going dormant.

Trudy cautiously approached the thing and knelt down to examine it, balancing her weight upon the balls of her feet as she tentatively stretched out a finger, only to yank it back at the last instant as revulsion overtook her. The thing was neither alive nor truly dead, but it had compacted soul mass within its innards, Akashic goo that permeated the pours of its synthetic system and empowered it with soul energy, giving it mobility and a kind of pseudo-life, but more like an undead Zombie than an authentic synthetic life form.

"Yuck," she murmured aloud, "I think I'm gonna be ill," she added as she considered the methods that would be needed to infuse a robot with semi-solid soul mass, the kind that could only be obtained by siphoning it off from a living body.

Now at last she was beginning to comprehend the nature of the evil that she was up against, and the reason why the Power had been so emphatic that she investigate this stronghold. Somebody here was using a perversion of science to charge these artificial weapons systems with life energy. She could perceive no other form of active power system to give animation to the robot, and so the unmistakable conclusion was that it ran on soul power itself, and for that kind of operation to be the most effective...

All at once she darted her attention towards yet another lumbering shape that was appearing from just around the corner, and to her mixed relief and dismay she found herself being confronted by a very large man with long white hair, a hulking brute in a tight-fitting black outfit that showed off his manly physique, but beyond a surface impression any comparison between him and a normal man would have been totally misguided.

Trudy straightened up and said, "I take it you're in charge of security here?"

"How did you do it?" he snarled before attacking, his fist moving so fast that Trudy barely had time to dodge, nor did she want to make physical contact as her senses were once again reeling, "How did you take down the HK-27? It was our most advanced model...!"

"What can I say," Trudy replied as she darted out of the way of his next lunge, finding his moves quite well skilled and incredibly powerful, which made the prospect of being on the receiving end of one of his blows a non-issue, "I'm a talented girl, I have my methods."

Obviously this fellow was not much of a conversationalist, but there was obvious intelligence in his eyes, and his skin was reeking of stolen life energies. Trudy could sense the compact Akashic energy fueling his muscles and permeating every cell within his body, making him dangerous to her in ways that went well beyond the merely physical threat that he was posing. As he lurched forward to attack once again she found her body moving far more to evade than to counterattack, dodging a roundhouse, then a kick that missed her completely but instead penetrated the plaster of the wall behind her and created a hole the size of a large melon.

Never one to let an opportunity pass her by, Trudy forced her body back into attack mode and struck the burly man in his exposed back while he fought to extricate his foot from its present lodgings. Her hand smashed hard up against a pressure point that would have shattered his spine in three key places, but before contact was made she encountered a flaring of energy, and as though his body were externally shielded her hand bounced off without rendering any damage.

"Oboy," Trudy murmured to herself as she cautiously backed away from the bruiser, allowing him the time he needed to yank his leg free from the wall, then round upon her.

"What did you expect to achieve by that?" he scoffed, and then all at once he was upon her like a tidal wave, throwing punches and kicks at great speed and with such power that even Trudy was forced to take evasive steps. She backed away after countering one roundhouse that might have taken her head off had it actually connected, then at once she doubled-over backwards and grabbed the floor with both hands, whipping her legs up to connect with a solid kick to his jaw that picked the man up off his feet and sent him tumbling backwards.

Trudy righted herself without bothering to check on his condition, having a pretty good notion that her blow had done little more than to slow him down, and that something a lot stronger would be needed in order to take him out of the fight in a more permanent manner.

She rounded a corner in the opposite direction from which the bruiser had appeared and almost immediately ran smack into a trio of guards, but these men hardly afforded her more than a few seconds of diversion. She vaulted over the head of the lead guard while her hands lanced out to slap the sides of his helmet, crushing his head like an overripe between her palms even as a list of his karmic crimes was registering on her conscious mind, informing her that this fellow deserved a quick death for the pain he had inflicted upon others. Her feet had not fully touched the ground when she did a double-split kick that sent the other two men into the opposite sides of the corridor, then she took her time sizing the one on her left up while her elbow smashed into the rib-cage of the man on her right, shattering his aorta, even as her mind filled with a stray image of this man having done something similar to a prostitute with a knife blade.

The man on the left, however, had a family who would mourn him, a wife and three kids no less, and his crimes were hardly all that severe, so she did nothing worse to him than to send him off to dreamland. The matter of his fate handily resolved, Trudy spun on the balls of her feet and headed at a dead run down the length of the corridor even as she heard the lumbering tread of the burly man's footsteps closing in behind her.

"Bitch!" he snapped her way, "I'll kill you for that! You won't escape me!"

"Yeesh, men like to talk a lot," Trudy murmured under her breath as she headed straight at the wall at the far end of the corridor, then kicked off and landed with both feet against its surface, vaulting up and backwards so that she sailed over the head of the charging thug, executing a perfect roll in mid-air and bringing her feet down hard at a point between his shoulders.

Again there was that curious flaring that protected him against the full force of contact, but her weight and momentum alone were enough to overbalance the fellow and send him crashing into the wall head-first, putting a very large dent in the plaster. Trudy alighted on the ground and gave the man a quick study to determine if he had a weakness. Normally the strongest fighters tended to show up as a series of discolored lines and patterns of force that moved like the poles of a magnet, giving them strong and weak areas that could be easily exploited.

Not this fellow, however. He was not dipolar but unipolar, his aura more like alternating current than direct, and doubtlessly this was because of the compacted soul mass that infused every pore of his body. He had no singular weak area that she could strike, and he was protected by an aura so thick that it blanketed him against counter-strikes that involved Chi energies. Her strongest attacks would only bounce off of him, and anything energy-based could be easily absorbed or blunted, unless she either found a way to drain him of soul mass or else somehow penetrate his armor.

Even as she made this quick evaluation the white-haired man-she name "Sergei" suggested itself in her mind-had managed to force himself free from the plaster. He snarled like an animal as he rounded her way, his eyes blazing with hatred as the raw impact assaulted her mind of the concentrated evil within his very being. There were too many distorted images to sort through, of far too many minds and lives that had been rudely ended, blurring the details of this man's own misspent career, though she got enough of the gist of the matter to classify him as a normal mercenary who had stumbled upon a way to fortify himself by stealing the energies of others.

It was the method by which he had obtained those energies that fairly appalled her.

"DIE!" he roared as he came at her once again, but this time Trudy was better braced to meet the attack and only stood her ground calmly with her feet braced wide and her mind opening up to the spell that she had just spent her time formulating.

She brought her hands forward and murmured a few words in a language all but forgotten in that era, and all at once waves of energy surrounded her as her aura shifted from bright gold to translucent darkness. Her mind became chill with the void of thought filling her very being as her energies met his and caused the man to abruptly halt in his tracks, his energies flowing in response to her own as she began to draw soul matter out of him, causing a milky white cloud of plasma to fill the air between them.

The bruiser staggered, suddenly encountering an inexplicable weakness overtaking him as more and more energy was absorbed into Trudy's aura, but for all that she leached from him he still had as much left to give, and he started to move forward with greater alacrity, sensing that he needed to stop her soon or else he would lose his strength altogether.

Trudy saw this in time to cancel her spell and back away, but the release of her grip upon the fellow only gave him greater energy, and this time he managed to close the gap between them with a punch that came very near to connecting. Only by twisting her body to the side did she avoid receiving the brunt of his vengeance, but his fist passed near enough to tear through clothing and partially rip through her tunic while knocking Trudy to the side like a bull to a matador, causing her to reel in pain from the kinetic energy of that glancing blow to her left shoulder.

Fortunately she was an extremely resilient woman or else he might have shattered her collar bone or done serious damage to her shoulder, but it was a hard enough strike to make her think twice about taking another as she went careening off a wall and went sprawling onto the floor, skidding for several meters before coming to a halt battered and bruised at the base of a door frame.

"Hah, not so tough now, Witch!" the large man snarled while advancing upon her.

Trudy's head was spinning a bit from her tumble, but she had the presence of mind enough to move from the spot where she lay, and without pausing to think about it she rolled onto her shoulder and kicked backwards, knocking the side-  
door from its hinges while continuing her momentum to tumble into the room and land on her feet within the adjoining chamber.

Much to her surprise she found herself inside a laboratory, one furnished with all manner of machine and aperture, including the standard equipment used in testing: Bunsen burners and test-tubes. It was a perfect place in which to devise a spur-of-the-moment plan, which was a very good thing as the bruiser stalking her had no intention of letting up at this point.

"Come here you!" he cried even as Trudy leaped onto a table and knelt down, twisting off rubber hoses and turning knobs in great haste, causing a peculiar scent of horseradish to fill the air even as she dodged a lunge in her direction.

"Anybody ever tell you it's wrong to hit a lady, handsome?" Trudy asked as she did a somersault that carried her across the room to land behind a table.

"You ain't no lady!" he declared while hammering a desk in half with one fist, thus clearing the way partially so that he could advance upon her new position.

"And you aren't a gentleman either," Trudy smiled, then raised one finger and caused it to form a small flame like the wick of a candle.

That caused the white-haired bruiser to halt in his tracks and look at her in dismay, "You wouldn't...!"

"Wrong again!" she cried while snapping her finger forward and causing the flame to leap from her hand to spark the gasses in the air and cause an immediate explosion. She had just barely enough time to duck down beneath the desk as the shockwave filled the room with superheated gasses, then plasma roiled everywhere, setting everything on fire that was flammable and melting those objects that were not. It took a few more seconds before the suppression activated, and then halogen gas flooded the room, smothering the flames and sucking up the breathable air so that nothing human could survive either that or the preceding inferno.

It was a few more seconds beyond that when Trudy came staggering out of the smoke with her head wrapped in what remained of her tunic, and once she was clear of the halogen she coughed and sputtered her relief. Removing her makeshift mask from her face and bending over to rest her palms upon her knees she managing to gasp to herself, "Well...that sure wasn't worth doing a second time. Hope it did the trick because..."

An inhuman scream was the only warning she received before the big man-charred and blistered over every inch of his skin, his white hair nearly burned clean from his scalp, and his clothing in charcoaled tatters-came bearing down upon her, then Trudy found herself being gripped by the neck and slammed hard against the corridor wall while a face no longer so handsome as before glared hatefully towards her, his steely grip threatening to completely choke off her windpipe.

Perhaps the man was attempting to croak out angry words as he strangled her, but all that came out was the hoarse croak of a man whose lungs were filling with water. Surely he had no more than a minute to live before his wounds ended his life, and it was only due to the stolen energies within his body that he had survived this long, seeking desperately to take her life as his lone dying wish, which of course Trudy acted to deny him.

There was no time for thought or hesitation in her actions. The Power spoke to her once again, and she trusted the Power to guide her, and so she summoned her own flagging energies to break his grip with a double-upward hand-block, then braced her back against the wall and kicked hard against his blackened chest, driving him backward with great force so that he went tumbling back into the room and ran up against the protruding thrust of a twisted metal rafter that had fallen from the demolished ceiling.

All at once the man gave a ragged gasp and felt the taste of copper upon his blistered tongue, and then he glanced down with milky eyes and gazed stupidly at the point that was now protruding from his breastbone. He then tried to lift his eyes to stare blindly at Trudy, but she was quicker to recover than he would have imagined, and all at once she slapped the palm of her hand against his chest, murmuring words once again in the same near-forgotten language as before, and all at once his grip upon his stolen soul energies began to leak away, flowing from him in a foam-like plasma that slowly dissolved into the air as the Akashic mass was released from his dying body.

Trudy stepped away and studied her handiwork, then lifted a palm and spoke a prayer of interdiction, petitioning the Powers that Be to grant mercy upon the departed. She stood like that with her head bowed for a time, only to lower her hand once again, and when she lifted her eyes there was not a trace of mercy within them.

The Power had spoken to her again, and she was the instrument to carry out its will against the author of this carnage.

Mere moments later the door to another wing of the lab went careening off its hinges as a very angry Trudy impatiently circumvented its defenses, and then she advanced to the very heart of the evil within the complex, pausing long enough to survey the machine that was being used even at that moment to extract the life energies of a young girl who was currently floating within a fluid-filled chamber.

The technicians operating the machines looked up in startled wonder at the smudged and bruised young lady with the smoldering mane of long red hair standing there within the entryway, wearing nothing but a pair of black hose stockings and a makeshift halter-top formed from the remnants of her tunic. She ignored these malefactors of perversity and instead registered the elderly man who was clearly supervising the operation, a man dressed in an expensive business suite who matched the profile of the billionaire known as Ajo, and then she took a step forward, reaching out with the Power to render him his judgment.

"Who are you?" the man demanded, "How did you get in here? And where is...?"

Trudy hardly seemed to move as the crossed the space between herself and the man (who was clearly a monster in expensive clothing), then all at once she had Ajo doubled up backwards over his own machine with her hand at his throat, preparing to squeeze the life out of him with as much ease as she might step upon a spider. She snarled as images began to flood her mind of the many crimes this villain had committed during the length of his career, and every one of her questions about his activity were answered, her worst suspicions confirmed, and the sheer horror of what he had done cried out to the heavens, demanding she render justice.

But Trudy paused, her muscles refusing to close upon the fragile life that she held in her hand like a thread that the Fate known as Atropos would cut at any second. The Power was whispering in her mind, telling Trudy that it was not yet time for him to die, that as deserving as he was of extermination this man yet had a place to fulfill in the grand schemes of destiny, and that to take him out of the picture now might well doom a young woman who was deserving of a better outcome.

Trudy held where she was, incredulous to think that such a creep might well be a part of fate's dominion, but she knew the Power never lied to her, and that its judgments were not to be questioned. It had found the man guilty of sins that would have doomed him a thousand times over, but the time to atone for his karmic debt was not yet at hand, and so she had to let him live, if only long enough that he might suffer from events that he had already set into motion.

It was with great difficulty that Trudy forced herself to turn away from Ajo before snapping at the technicians, declaring, "That woman in the chamber...release her! Do it now or else..." she let the point dangle unspoken, for even though she could not honestly threaten Ajo, the technicians themselves were an entirely different matter.

The men were smart enough to recognize that she was serious, and so they hastily typed in some commands, moved some dials and switches, then reset the controls to their device, and in a matter of a minute or two later they began to drain the chamber of fluids. The young woman in the bath of death was left on life support while Trudy turned back and released her grip on the neck of her nominal victim. She waited until Ajo had finished gasping and rubbing his neck before she asked a single word, "Why?"

"What are you talking about?" Ajo coughed and sputtered before straightening out once again, "Why do anything? Because I can! This is my place, my machine, and no one can tell me what to do with either of them! By what right do you come barging in here and making demands of me, young lady? And threatening my life? I'm going to have you arrested!"

"Do that and I'll expose you for the crook you are," Trudy replied, all but trembling with the need to slap this arrogant man silly, "You're stealing the life energy of people!"

"I call it Gell," Ajo snorted, "And what about it? I just take some useless trash off of the streets and put them to good use providing me with the power I need. I can use what they're not using to any consequence..."

"To do what?" Trudy asked, "To power those walking tinker-toys I tangled with?"

"You saw them?" Ajo looked startled.

"I reduced one of them to scrap, along with that body-guard you're expecting to come rescue you at any moment," Trudy replied, "And don't bother waiting for the rest of your men to show up. I gave them the night off...some of them permanently, so don't piss me off any more than I am, or you'll..."

Trudy honestly did not know why she expected the man to act rationally. Just being in his presence informed her of what a raving psychopathic loony he was, totally self-absorbed and insensitive to the needs of others, selfish beyond imagining, willing to use people to obtain his ends while imagining himself to be some sort of near-demigod, the virtual center of the universe around which all other planets should revolve. What other sort of demented half-wit would try to draw a gun on her at this point, as if that would restore to him the power of life-and-death in this matter.

She took it away from the fool before he did someone else more damage, then casually dismantled the thing before his eyes as her way of informing him of just how insulted she was that he would consider such a useless device as a deterrent to her vengeance. He stared uncomprehendingly as she tore the metal with her slender hands and reduced the gun to its constituent components, but before she had the chance to give him a more impressive display of her wrath something very curious began to happen.

Trudy felt it like an electric tension across her skin, and then she sensed the approach of someone who felt a LOT stronger and more powerful than the bruiser she had just dealt with. She turned her head and stared in disbelief as a wave of intensely focused soul energy approached them, and then her instincts screamed of the potential for danger as it felt to her as though a literal god were coming to pay them a visit.

Even as that thought formed in her mind her eyes took in a curious sight, and all at once she blinked, unable to quite imagine such a contrast.

The girl could not have been older than fourteen, at best, though possibly sixteen with stunted growth and development. She had pale skin and short-  
cropped hair and eyes that gleamed with silvery light, and every cubic centimeter of her being was crammed to the brim with soul energies, like a walking ATM machine in which vast amounts had been stored and collated.

There were two more figures beyond this girl who trailed after her, but Trudy only had eyes for the girl, who was manifesting an aura of raw, unfocused Telekinesis, literally off the scales like a ruptured containment vessel. The girl only paused when she saw the other girl floating in the containment tank, and then she spoke a single word in a toneless voice that conveyed distant emotions, "Sakura."

"Who the devil are you?" Ajo asked, one second before Trudy slapped him into dreamland.

"This one is Key," the girl replied, turning towards Trudy and asking, "Did you come to help Key find Sakura?"

"Ah...yeah, among other things," Trudy decided that the girl was not here to threaten anyone but was instead intending her own form of rescue, "Actually...I'm here to see the singer known as Miho..."

"Yes, Miho-san," the girl calling herself Key responded, turning back to the helpless girl within the tank, "Is Sakura going to be all right?"

Trudy smiled, "She is now that you're here. But tell you what, why don't we sort this out elsewhere, after I get you and your friend back to safety...along with Miho-san." She glared meaningfully at the technicians then said, "You were about to tell me where I can find her, were you not?"

To emphasize her point slapped the palm of her hand up against the sides of the machine, and all at once it began to spark and sputter with internal discharges. Having rendered the mechanism inert (at least until someone had the chance to repair it) she turned to the men and gave them the sort of smile that a rattler might give before striking, and all at once these fellows decided to up and do the right thing, even as Trudy intended to insure that they find a different profession, one that did not involve doing the bidding of megalomaniacs with severe delusions of grandeur...

"Hey guys, wait up!" Ranma called out as he hurried to catch up with his harem.

Ukyo glanced back over her shoulders and said, "Well, look who finally decided to grace us with his presence. How's it going, Ranchan? The old woman giving you a workout?"

"Ah, sorta," Ranma said as he caught up with his pregnant fiancées, pausing to ruffle the hair of both Lylac and Fragrance, giving both girls a paternal smile as he resumed the role of their adoptive father. He then turned to Nabiki and said, "Sorry I'm late, Nab-chan, but...well...things were starting to get a bit strange back there, and do you know who decided to show up at the last minute? Somebody from China who goes by the name of Siren..."

"What?" Perfume gave their husband a startled look, "Grandmother is here from China?"

"Siren," Nabiki frowned, "Think I might've seen her some while back...maybe during that fight you and me had? The one just before we got married."

"That is the one, Airen," Shampoo confirmed, "Siren is contemporary of great-  
grandmother, is Archmage of the Joketsuzoku, almost like member of high council."

"Almost?" Akane asked, registering her confusion.

"Grandmother's a bit...odd for an Elder," Perfume explained, "She insists on not looking her age, and with her powers she's the next best thing to an immortal. She's also an incredibly powerful mage, so it's usually a good idea to stay on her good side."

"I'll keep that in mind," Nabiki replied, "So...Ranchan...what brought her all this way from China?"

"Ah...well," Ranma said uneasily, "She's an old friend of the old woman's and..."

"What's so funny, Per-chan?" Ukyo abruptly interrupted, seeing the kittenish smile on the face of her Airen.

"Well...friend can have a lot of different meanings in both Japanese and Chinese," the Enforcer replied with a leer, "But the way I hear the rumors around the village, grandmother and great-grandmother used to be a LOT closer than 'just friends,' if you take my meaning."

"You mean...?" Akane hesitated.

"Those two used to be an item?" Keiko concluded for her with typical brashness.

"Is true," Shampoo confirmed, "Was talk of whole village when Siren give great-  
grandmother three-hundred anniversary present during festival five summers back. Shampoo hear lots of very interesting stories, not know if many of them true, but remind her very much of time when she was very close to Lotion..."

"Yeah, only the way I hear it they grew apart sometime after Happosai moved into the neighborhood and won great-grandmother's somewhat reluctant affections," Perfume added with a teasing elbow nudge to her closest wife, Ukyo, "You know how these things go...young romance, a brief and passionate affair, sometimes leading to a painful breakup. But I think grandmother took it hardest and she never really got over great-grandmother's rejection. They hardly ever see each other these days, but just the merest mention of the evil old pervert is enough to set grandmother into a towering rage. She mostly blames him for the breakup, and I'm willing to bet that if she spends much time around here and the old fool tries to steal something from her he's going to wind up hopping on a lily pad quicker than you can spell Happosai."

"Really?" Ranma asked, reflecting on the curious references that had been exchanged between his new Sensei and the old man who was allegedly his own great-grandfather. Suddenly the veiled hostility in Siren's words made sense, even if she had somehow managed to swallow her pride and vindictiveness in responding to his summons.

"What is it with these Amazons and their youth-preserving secrets?" Akane asked from where she walked apart from the main group at the side of her own closest companions, "First Cologne turns out not to be the wrinkled old prune that she pretends to be, then that visit from the Lore Master that's training that other version of Oneechan..."

"Yes," Beatrice mused, "And if I remember rightly this Siren manifests the appearance of great youth and infinite femininity..."

"She also indulges in a curious passion for Arabian Knights styled bedroom attire, flaunting a rather sleek and bodaceous figure," Keiko grinned, "Not that I see anything wrong with that if you can fill the pantaloons out and flaunt a bare midriff in this season."

"Down my pet," Keiko purred with a hint of reproof in her tone, "You are not permitted to drool over the presence of other women in my presence...though now that you mention it that suggests some rather appealing bedroom attire that I might indulge if you behave yourself and ask nicely."

"Yes Mistress," Keiko obediently replied like the affectionate self-styled sex slave that she freely admitted to being, much to the discomfort of a few who were present.

"Don't know why you guys get so worked up about a girl who doesn't show her age," Alison mused, "My own mom's well over three thousand and doesn't look a day over thirty."

"Indeed, my love," Beatrice patted her companion on the arm, "But not everyone is endowed with divine heritage or a demi-Kryptonian physique, or possess highly advanced regenerative technology that will preserve my looks when I am well past forty. So kindly forgive those mere mortals who tend to fret about things such a sagging breasts and cellulite...just as I am sure that if the secret of Amazon youth preservation could be bottled and sold it would make a real killing on the market."

"Now there's an idea," Nabiki smiled as she walked side-by-side with Ranma, then added slyly, "So what did this Siren character want, or was she just in town to look up her old girlfriend?"

"Ah..." Ranma glanced hastily away, aware even as he did so that he was betraying himself on more than just one level.

Nabiki confirmed his worst suspicions when he felt her fingernails dig into his arm while she spoke with deceptive calmness, "Let me rephrase that question...what did she want with you, Husband?"

"With Ranchan?" Ukyo spoke up in surprise, seeing the guilty face their mutual male love interest was presently wearing then frowning as she arched her own tone and said, "Out with it, Sugar. Are you telling us she came all the way here from China just to see you?"

"Whatever for?" Perfume asked as she turned her own attention towards the only man on earth with whom she permitted herself to be intimate on a regular basis, "Is grandmother into seducing younger men all of a sudden? Not that I could blame her for being interested in you that way...Husband."

"What Shampoo hear of Siren, it no be all that unexpected," Shampoo said archly.

"Gah...!" Ranma suddenly found himself at the center of attention with all eyes turned his way and the focused glare of four very jealous women (three of whom were very much pregnant on account of him) beating down on him, making him suddenly feel quite small, like a bug trapped beneath a magnifying lens with no means of escape and the heat proving quite unnerving.

"Uh oh," even Ryoga sensed the degree of trouble that his half-brother had inadvertently gotten himself trapped up within, "I think you had better come clean fast, Ranma, while there's still time for a confession."

"Confession?" Ranma blinked then said, "Ah...no, you guys got it all wrong! She just offered to help train me..."

"To do what?" Ukyo all but calmly demanded.

"Your face isn't the only thing that's given you away, Saotome," Perfume informed him.

"Worst poker face in the world," Nabiki reflected, "So...what's the big deal here? What does this Siren character want to show you...if that's not too obvious a question."

"You know, the more I think on it, the less I think I envy that guy," Keiko reflected, "As much fun as it might be with Nab-chan and the other girls in the sack..."

"Indeed," Kodachi mused, "The downside of group relationships is when they all team up against you...something we do not generally have to worry about with our set."

"Speak for yourself, ladies," Ryoga muttered in as soft a tone as he thought he could get away with, only to wince when Akane turned a questioning look in his direction.

All at once the space surrounding Ranma flared up with great heat and four of his five elementals manifested in the pseudo-Akashic flesh, each confronting a different wife with a glare that was only partially in warning.

"Back off, Ladies!" Karina barked, "No pressuring our Master just because you mortals have a temper."

"If the four of us are not so vexed by the presence of the Archmage then we hardly see what right you have to be jealous," Latisha scornfully declared.

"It just so happens that the Archmage has generously offered to train us all in better relations so that we do not put an undue strain upon the health and sanity of our Master."

"So give us space or you will learn what it means to feel our wrath," Nagisha rumbled, only to pause before turning to Sharil and demanding, "What do you mean the sanity of our Master?"

"Training?" Perfume yelped as she backed away from the nearness of the female earth dragon.

"Is...Elder Siren offering to teach Ranma to better keep hold of elemental servants?" Shampoo very cautiously asked while eyeing Latisha with an uneasy expression.

"Ah...well..." Ranma shrugged and pointedly indicated the elementals, "We were just working out and trying to learn how to make a better team when..."

"I think we get the drift here, Sugar," Ukyo said while keeping a wary eye upon Sharil, who was not quite so overtly hostile in returning the regard her way.

Off to the side the three young infants were looking on at the spectacle of their parents exchanging words with their adoptive father's elemental guardians with a kind of nonchalant fascination, having grown up witnessing such clashes and so far more jaded about such matters than might other girls of their tender age group.

"{Like I said before,}" Lylac murmured to her playmates, "{Our parents have weird standards.}"

"{Indisputably,}" Eileen agreed, "{But I don't know who to pity more here, your father or your mothers.}"

"{You guys are such a drag,}" Fragrance contradicted as she smiled with impish delight, "{I think it's fun to see daddy's playmates get so protective when our mommies get all cranky. Nice to see somebody stand up for Pop for a change instead of blaming him for everything, like it was somehow all his fault or something...}"

"It's just about training, right?" Nabiki was just then asking, directing her question as much towards Karina as she intended for Ranma.

"You have our word that if the Archmage steps out of line we will be the first to raise a point about it," Karina assured them.

"HAH!" all at once Sobriel manifested, creating her own space as both elementals and human women moved aside to give her wide berth, "You think you can really trust that hussy to mind her place? Believe me, I know a thing or two about Archmages, and if they want something they don't quibble about taking what they want. I served my former master for over two hundred years and never once got a break, not even a day off to myself, just setting to guard that damned vortex without even cable TV to keep me happy."

"I think they get the point, guys," Alison spoke up, "No need to bare your claws, I'm sure they can trust you to keep a watch on this Archmage person."

"Indeed," Beatrice mused, "And with such formidable bodyguards I would hazard to state that Ranma here is the most trustworthy and devoted man in all of Japan, to say nothing of the rest of Asia."

"Hah, shows how much you know about Archmages," Sobriel sniffed, then all at once she vanished into a shimmering void, as did the other four elementals.

The silence that reigned in the absence of those powerful beings was enough to make a pin drop sound like thunder. But gradually Nabiki shrugged her shoulders and said, "All right, guess we'll have to trust the hired help for now, but if I hear one word about you fantasizing about this Siren..."

"Ah..." Ranma winced with a rather pointedly uncomfortable expression.

"That might be a little unfair, Nab-chan," Perfume reasoned, "Hardly any male with as active a libido as Ranchan's could avoid having naughty thoughts about grandmother, especially if grandmother puts them there in the first place."

"Just as long as it's fantasy and not reality that gets compromised, Buster," Ukyo glared towards her man before turning about and making a point of taking Perfume's arm for support.

"Maybe we should try fix great-grandmother back up with Siren," Shampoo suggested, "Would help keep her too busy to plot any mischief with Ranma."

"Not a half bad suggestion, Shamchan," Nabiki mused, then she took Ranma firmly by the arm again and gave him a winning look before leaning her head against his shoulder and murmuring, "There's more than enough of us here already that we don't need extra competition."

Ranma sighed his relief and tried to assume a nonchalant expression, hoping that his ladies would drop the matter for a while (though he was absolutely certain to hear more about it in the bedroom). As their group resumed its trek back towards the Tendo estate, however, he caught Perfume turning her head abruptly to the side and noted the tell-tale manner in which she sniffed the air, which set alarm bells racing in his well-honed combat senses.

Ukyo could hardly miss detecting it too and said, "What's the matter, Sugar? Somebody forget to use a pooper scooper?"

"I don't know," the lovely Enforcer frowned, "I just thought I detected an odd scent on the wind when it shifted just now...and I have the strangest feeling that we're being watched by someone hostile."

"Now that's a familiar feeling," Alison mused while holding the arm of her own lady love, "Used to have it all the time when you had spies following me everywhere, Beiko."

"But that is all in the past, my love, and I've long since repented my misdeeds," Beatrice assured, "Yet if someone else is snooping about seeking to cause trouble then they will find themselves overmatched as even with our ranks halved by pregnancy we still remain a formidable presence."

"Heh, just let somebody try something like that Wizard guy," Akane snorted, "Ranma and Ryoga alone could take down a good sized army, and Aiko-chan's practically like a whole division by herself."

"Heh, got that right," Alison flexed a muscle and gave a cocky smile at her companions, "Just bring 'em on and I'll kick their asses from here to Olympus."

"And whatever's left will have Perfume-san and me to deal with," Keiko said brightly, leaning her head up against Kodachi as she murmured, "No one will get near enough to threaten my Mistress."

"I am certain that your confidence by itself is sufficient deterrent to insure our safe passage," Kodachi smiled while patting the redheaded kickboxer on the top of her head, "But I would suggest some alacrity as we would not wish to provide a potential enemy with what he might mistake for easy targets."

By common consent the group quickened its step somewhat, unaware of the shadowed figure standing atop a nearby rooftop who was tracking their every movements with the skills of a trained hunter.

"Heh...the Amazon's a sharp one...better keep an eye on her," a male voice murmured while flexing his arms and cracking his knuckles, "Nothing like a challenge to keep in shape, and if they lead me to the old fart then that's good enough for my needs. Nothing much else here that I can't handle."

That confident boast went unheard upon the wind, but it signaled the beginning of a whole new chapter of peril in the lives of the Tendo posse...

Chapter Fifty-Four.

Episode One-Hundred-Thirty-Seven

"A Child of Light and Darkness"

Children laughing while they frolicked in a park, playing games together and enjoying the innocence of youth without the cares of the adult world pressing down upon them. How little they knew about the cares that awaited them with the approach of years, and yet how much Kasumi envied their carefree and relatively untroubled existence.

It had been not all that long ago that she had been as carefree and innocent as any child...roughly half a lifetime ago, before her mother got sick and passed on to the next world, leaving a family in tatters with a gaping void that she had yearned to fill, taking up much of the responsibilities and cares of adulthood at an age when most young girls still played with dolls and fretted about doing schoolwork together. She had never really regretted the choice of doing the things her mother used to do to keep a house in order, but there were times when she felt a yearning to be just like other little girls. They often complained about all of the chores their mothers put upon them, interfering with their personal lives and trying to squelch down any thoughts of rebelliousness, as if seeking to steer their daughters away from the mistakes of their mother's own youth.

After all, was not the goal of every parent to see their children had a better future, even if they had to be dragged kicking and screaming towards the "correct" decisions?

Kasumi had often stood quietly aside and had listened to the complains of her classmates without commentary, but deep in her heart she felt like shouting to their faces about how fortunate they were to have their mothers. Kasumi would have given anything to have hers back, but instead had quietly accepted the will of the Kami and went about the complex task of being the "Big Sister" to Akane and their adopted "little brother," Ranma.

Thank the heavens for the company of Aunt Nodoka, who had arrived in the nick of time to take up enough of the slack that Kasumi could balance her schoolwork against those duties that were needed to run a household. Neither Akane nor Ranma were much help at first, but with time and persuasion they had been convinced to carry their share of the weight. Even so there were times when Kasumi found herself being turned to for advice and counsel by the younger members of their household, and Aunt Nodoka always saw to it that she was given a supervisory role to help keep those two organized so that their frequent arguments and clashes did not wind up destroying much of their family Wa. It was a full time task in itself to play mediator for those two, to constantly have to remind them that they were supposed to act like "proper" iinazuke.

Yet for all that she had a lot of free time on her hands, still Kasumi felt curiously alienated from her peers and instead spent much of her off-time reading books that she had borrowed from the kindly Tofu-Sensei. Often she indulged a passion for romance novels and books about strange lands overseas, but just as often she had her nose buried in a non-fiction text on one subject or the other, curious to know things about the world at large, and often dreaming of visiting the exotic locales she had only read about so that she could see with her own eyes what the world outside had to offer.

Sadly there had never been enough money in the family to afford much in the way of dreams, but Kasumi had kept her thoughts of one day traveling abroad to herself. Never would she have dreamed of living the kind of adventure-filled life that Nabiki had known during the same formative period of their lives. It seemed impossibly fantastic that she herself might one day travel abroad to such places as the deep interior of China.

And now that she was a grown woman and returning back to her studies for admittance into medical school she found herself literally overwhelmed with the possibilities and choices that were open to her, all thanks to her kindly patron. She now had the leisure time and the means to go anywhere that she wanted, but with one dark restriction, a fact that she kept close to heart for fear of unsettling the minds of the ones whom she most cared for.

Since her transformation and elevation into a demi-goddess of Vampires she had learned more about herself and about the sort of person she really was and no longer felt so innocent or carefree. There was a darkness upon her soul, a kind of feral shadow of herself that lurked within, seeking to break out, and a hungry need more terrifying than her forlorn and incestuous infatuation with her middle sister.

The need for blood, for the taste of the rich liquid that sustained all life, for the salty warm brine-like taste flowing down her throat with a coppery tang to add the chaser. It was a thirst she largely held at bay due to the sustaining magic of her Bloodstone earrings, yet still the memory of what it felt like to drink from another taunted and tormented her, reminding her of what she was and the threat she might ultimately pose to her loved ones.

More so, she could vividly remember the events of a week past when she had come close to losing her control over her temper. It felt as though some wild thing that had long been deep-buried within her were clawing to life and seeking release, a thing so animalistic and untamed that it literally frightened her, and the thought of what it might do if it took her completely over was simply not to be imagined.

She thought once again of her family, of her father, aunt and sisters, or Ranma and Nabiki and their wives, to say nothing of their children. Then there were their friends to consider, whose safety by itself was jeopardized by the darkness that dwelled within her. She could not bear the thought of doing them harm, nor could she stand the notion that she might herself be a danger to them. She could not allow herself to be taken over like that ever again, not even to face down a menace such as that Shang-Kwan person.

Realizing that Kurumi, her youngest adopted daughter, was with child had put the whole matter in a different focus, and Kasumi reflected on the question of what it would be like to have a child of her own to love and care for. Could she dare to risk such a thing, knowing the danger she might pose to another? Moreover, could she endure the responsibility of being guilty of passing on her Vampirism to her baby? It seemed much too cruel a fate for any mother to wish to inflict upon her son or daughter.

But then again, Kasumi reflected, that was getting a bit ahead of the matter. To have a baby she needed to have sex with a man, even a transformed man like Nabiki in her Kaneda guise, and to date Kasumi was still a virgin. She had the medical understanding of what sex was but not the practical experience, and yet that was only one part of the overall problem.

The other being the sort of man whom she would chose to be her first, and the leading candidate for that role was none other than her patron, Doctor Steinberg, a man unlike other men in a great many senses of the term, and yet a man whom she very much admired, even felt strongly attracted towards, despite the fact that he was-in a manner of speaking-born a gaigin.

But then again, Kasumi reflected, it was hardly fair to consider that a liability. True he was constructed of the body parts of other men, stitched together through a weird combination of Alchemy and Science, but still he was a man, and very much of one. Kasumi had a very strong idea of his anatomy and how all the parts functioned together, and as such she had strong thoughts about the length and size of the member that hung like a sausage between his legs, the kind of salami that was not for casual eating...

All at once Kasumi felt her cheeks flush and automatically put her palms to her face in order to feel the heat they were registering. How did she ever get onto such a highly improper subject? And after all the kindness Doctor Steinberg had shown to her, to think of using him in such a way, and without even the consideration of whether or not he might have similar thoughts returned in her direction.

Could he father children for her to nurture? The very idea itself was curiously intriguing. It was certainly a welcome idea, though of course she would have to get married to him first as to do it otherwise would be quite improper. But would Doctor Steinberg be willing to marry again? After all, Kasumi had met his first wife, and she had certainly been a very...large act to follow...

And of even more relevant point, what would their children be like? Would they combines aspects of their parents or in any way be...normal?

As this thought passed through her mind Kasumi felt her spirits sink and she gazed down at the sand in which her bare feet now rested, sitting upon a child's swing in the middle of a park and all too aware of the fact that she was too big to fit it properly. She was no longer a child and was very much a woman...

A very lonely and needful young woman, one who yearned to be touched yet who fear to get too near to the people around her, the laughing children and their parents, knowing all too well that she was...different.

It was not just that her eyes were unusually red. Even Shampoo had crimson eyes, but they did not glow in the dark when the mood was upon Kasumi, nor did her smile offer much comfort as her pronounced canines were a little too noticeable. Her complexion was oddly pale despite the fact that the sun did not bother her all that much. She had become more inclined to nocturnal dwelling, feeling more alive by night than she did in the day, but still she loved to bathe in the sunlight, even repressing naughty thoughts of taking off all her clothes so that she could bare her skin to the heavens and go "sky clad."

If she did that, however, she was bound to do more than merely shock the neighbors.

She stared down at her feet, which were long, lean and nicely tapering, and wondered for a moment why she had fallen out of the habit of wearing footwear. She used to wear sandals when outdoors but of late had found it more pleasurable to fee the ground beneath the soles of her feet, and for all that she went barefoot everywhere they did not get dirty or pick up much dust, or else she would feel bad about tracking them all over the house. Instead they were quite clean, and it felt perfectly natural for them to be exposed this way, as if she could not endure the thought of breaking contact with the soil of the earth, which was like a second mother.

She wore a plain full dress, of course, but she no longer bothered with a bra to support her breasts. Instead she used a silken wrap to protect her sensitive nipples from friction, for her breasts were unusually sensitive these days, and quite a bit larger than they used to be, for all that they seemed unusually bouncy and firm without the need for padding. Men tended to notice her more when she walked down the streets, and not just because of her Vampiric charisma. She knew for a fact that Frank-san could not help watching her whenever she was near him...

Oh dear...did she just mentally refer to him as Frank-san? How very...improper...

Kasumi sighed. What was the point of indulging in self-deceit? She would never pass for a normal woman in regular society, and would probably never again know what it was like to be an ordinary human girl. It was more than her Vampirism that defined her as...unusual. She was also part goddess, a divine being, as much of Heaven as of Earth, and there were odd facial markings that sometimes appeared during moments of stress to remind one of her heavenly contract. It was in many ways a delight to know that she was above the cares of ordinary people, free to soar amid the clouds if she so wanted, but at the same time separated from all that once defined her as Kasumi. And her she was thinking childish thoughts about marrying and having children...

She moved a hand to a pocket inside her sleeve where she kept an object hidden from view, but now she pulled it out so that she could study it in detail. It was a wooden dagger, one carved of Teak and polished until it was dark as mahogany, shaped like a hunting knife with a twenty-one centimeter long blade. Exactly the sort of thing that could prove deadly to normal vampires, but this one was carved with runes and had special properties that might prove fatal even to her. And it had been given to her as a nominal "gift" by Donovan, for use in the case that she could find no other options.

Kasumi stared at the blade for the longest time, asking herself whether she could dare to use it if her darkness grew out of all proportions. As Donvan himself had stated, suicide was betrayal of the self, yet still it made sense to keep such an object on hand just in case she could find no other means for controlling her dark side...

"I hear that there's a shortage of perfect breasts in the world. It would be a pity for you to ruin yours, dear lady."

"Oh my," Kasumi glanced up and then turned her head to one side and found a curious man standing near to where she was sitting, leaning against the metal frames of the swings and smiling at her in a way that was odd...yet oddly familiar.

"Such a weapon should be spared for an occasion when it might be used constructively, not destructively, I should think," he remarked in a casual, off-handed manner.

"Um...excuse me?" Kasumi asked, studying the man and finding that he was a very tall gaigin (though no where near as tall as Frank-san) with sandy-blonde hair and the most peculiar green eyes that gazed upon her with the benevolence of the Buddha. He had a loose yellow shirt and tight-fitting tan slacks but was otherwise not distinguishable from any ordinary fellow one might chance to meet on a casual basis. The fact that he spoke perfect Japanese without the slightest trace of an accent only added to the mystery, but Kasumi was much too polite to wish to inquire as to his origins.

"I met a man once who thought he was a prophet," the fellow went on with an ease that implied that he was used to telling stories, "But after years of preaching to others what he thought to be the truth it finally dawned upon him that he did not know what he was talking about, so he went into politics, where that sort of behavior is taken for granted."

"Ah...I see," Kasumi said in confusion, wondering what such a wistful comment had to do with his previous observation.

"I was just reflecting on how sad you looked, and what could possibly make so beautiful a lady so unhappy," the man resumed, "Surely life is not so bad or fickle that you can find nothing to smile about? In point of fact, you were smiling just a moment ago, and it made the whole world seem a bit brightly, so naturally I came to investigate."

"I am...sorry if I upset you in any way, Sir...?" she left the point hang in the air, hoping that he would take the hint and provide her a name to go with this stranger.

"My apologies," he bowed to her, "Where are my manners? Call me Anri...it is a name as good as any other."

"Anri-san," Kasumi smiled, "I am Tendo Kasumi."

"And such a name indeed," the man nodded sagely, kneeling down and balancing his weight upon the balls of his feet as he rested his elbows on his knees and said, "Now you see? Smiling wasn't so difficult. In fact, it requires fewer muscles than a frown and tends to make the world seem a more cheerful place to dwell, don't you agree?"

"Hai," Kasumi agreed, still smiling, and thinking to herself how easily this man smiled, and yet his eyes contained a kind of sadness that was poignant, eyes so deep and wise that it was difficult to believe that they belonged to a man as young as him.

"I have a theory that the world would be a better place if people just smiled more often," this Anri mused as if responding to her thoughts, "But when I tried to explain this once it tended to upset a lot of people. They were the sort who thought frowning looked more serious, and they didn't like the idea of people smiling all the time. It made them think that others were laughing at a private joke at their expense."

"How unfortunate," Kasumi studied the man, wondering what it was about him that seemed so odd, so...otherworldly. The mere fact that he had approached her without her sensing his presence should have alarmed her, but instead his nearness set her at ease, as if he were an old friend come to pay a visit, one she only dimly remembered, though she could swear that she had seen eyes such as his somewhere before, however poorly recalled at the moment.

"Indeed," Anri nodded soberly, "People tend to frown over all manner of things, yet when you ask them to explain why they generally rebuff you, either dismissing their cares or telling you that it is none of your business. I happen to be rather poor at minding my own business...a character flaw, I know, but I guess I was simply born to be a trouble maker, to poke and prod with questions that make some people uncomfortable, while others make the mistake of thinking me enlightened."

"Are you enlightened, Anri-san?" Kasumi asked as if it were the most serious of questions.

"Certainly not," he chuckled in carefree mirth, "The man who thinks he knows everything is deceiving himself, and the wisest among us is a mere child in the eyes of the cosmos. Only the One is wise in all things, the One who is everything and is the All, of which we are a part of its tapestry. Other than that the world itself is a mere bauble, a distraction.'

"The One?" Kasumi repeated.

"All, everything, that which exists, as defined by the opposite of not existing," Anri answered, then he waved the point aside with a dismissive gesture, "Never mind me. I do have a tendency to preach when I should listen. I am both a student and a teacher of life, and never what others expect me to be, for I define myself by being. Doing and reflecting on what is done is merely a pastime."

"What a curious thing to say," Kasumi mused, "Do you enjoy teasing people with verbal puzzles?"

"All of the time," Anri straightened up, "I find that the best way to teach anyone is to ask them questions so that they can provide their own answers. Never trust anyone who tells you what the truth is, it's more likely that he is merely reflecting his own beliefs and not an insight gained through living."

"But how are we to learn if all we do is ask questions?" Kasumi asked, only to blink and say, "Ah...but then again, I suppose that is the nature of study, is it not?"

"You answer your own question than want me to comment on your observation?" Anri smiled, "What a perfect waste of energy and time. If you know in your heart that what you say is true then it will provoke you to ask more questions, and by such means the truth will gradually unfold before your eyes. Don't wait around for me to grade you and give you my stamp of approval."

"But what then ultimately is truth?" Kasumi asked him.

"That which exists, as opposed to not existing," Anri replied, "Existence defines itself as being...and that which does not exist cannot be. Everything is a part of the whole, the truth is seen only in fractions of the whole. To know all the truth is to know everything, but that would require a head so large that it would incorporate the entire universe, and who needs a swelled head that big? Besides, why ask me, you are the goddess."

Despite herself Kasumi was startled, "How do you know?"

"I listen and observe," Anri replied, "I do not presume to know, I simply let the universe unfold before me through silence and reflection. But never mind about me, tell me about this fellow you were thinking about, the one who brought a warm flush to your cheeks and then made you sad thinking about him. Surely such a fellow is a cad if he can bring a beautiful lady such as you such distress?"

"Ah, well..." Kasumi glanced down, all too aware that she was blushing, "He is actually quite nice, a real gentleman around me, and it's nothing that he's done to upset me. It is just...we make a very unusual pairing. I am not quite certain how he feels, or if he feels the same way that I do, but ever since we have been spending time together..."

"I see," Anri mused wryly, "Then your torment is caused by doubt and worry...but what is it that you truly fear? That he does not love you as you so obviously care for him, or that he may indeed love you too much? If so, then perhaps your problem is one of communication. Perhaps you need to speak with him directly, clear the air between you as it were. Often communication can be the best remedy for doubt...or the worst, depending on how you approach it."

"What do you mean?" Kasumi asked in mild confusion.

"Sometimes it is not a lack of communication but what is being communicated that causes misunderstanding, doubt or worry," Anri gentle answered, "Sometimes the answer is not found in the words but rather the silence that attends them. It's a matter of listening, you see...and when it comes to affairs of the heart, well...I fear that human beings can be very poor listeners. We often hear only our own doubts and fears reflected rather than the actual words being spoken by the other person."

"I see," Kasumi said thoughtfully, only to ponder a moment before adding, "Or...maybe I don't..."

"Give it time, let the words come to you of their own accord," Anri cautioned, "Love can be the most powerful of all emotions, but fear is very near to it in strength, and like opposites that repel and attract the one is often accompanied by the other. It is often a fact that fear is as good an emotion to experience as love itself can be...it's all in the approach you see, how you choose to receive it, and what you can learn in the reception."

"Now I think you have lost me completely, Anri-san," Kasumi admitted.

The fair-haired man waved a hand as if to allow the point, "That happens a lot with me, I'm afraid. I say things that I hope will get the point across and then watch in dismay as my words are misinterpreted or used in a completely different context. I am just advising that you give it time and not rush to any judgments. Emotions are powerful tools and, if abused, can be a very potent weapon, but often they are the key to enlightenment. Just keep in mind that when you fear something you give it power over you. Fear can be a powerful tool for self-discovery if you ask why you are afraid, and of what purpose. Fear is like any other feeling, it can be ignored but never denied, but to truly banish it you must face your fears directly. When fear can no longer intimidate you into looking away then you can see the truth that exists behind the fear, and its power is diminished. The same with love...knowing how to love, or just accepting love for its own sake, can sometimes be the most difficult part of any relationship. All I ask of you is patience."

"You seem very knowledgeable about these things," Kasumi fathomed, "Have you ever been in love, Anri-san?"

"All of the time, and quite frequently I fear," the fair-haired man chuckled, "I have lived many lives under many different names and identities, but always I seek to find the completion that love alone can bring to us. I love all of humanity equally and with the spirit of kinship as all men are my brothers, and all women are our companions. I just happen to be as much of a fool in relationships as any other mortal...I just know that the risk of pain that comes with love should never deter its pursuit. It is the pain we often feel when we are hurt that reminds us that we are alive, and for that reason alone it can never be regretted."

"You are a very interesting man, Anri-san," Kasumi said as she regarded the handsome stranger.

"I have been called far worse than that, and from far less pleasant lips than your own, gentle lady," Anri said with a bow, "I thank you for listening to the words of a fool whom some foolishly call wise. I wish you well in all of your endeavors..."

"Anri-san," Kasumi hesitated, then plunged ahead, "Can you tell me if I will know such love...and earn the love that comes with being a mother?"

The man seemed mildly surprised as he regarded her, "And what makes you think I would know the answer to that, my lady?"

"I am not quite sure why," Kasumi frowned as she regarded the stranger, "But I feel as if you already know many things about me, while all that I know about you is that you seem unusually gifted and perceptive. Is it possible that you have a vision that concerns me and my future?"

"I'm afraid that you would have to speak with my daughter about that one," Anri winked, "She's the oracle in our family, I'm just the traveling busy body."

"Your daughter?" Kasumi did not know why she felt so surprised upon hearing that the man had a daughter. He did not appear to be that much older than herself, but it was impossible to determine such things on surface perceptions alone, and far too much about this man's aura was clouded to her vision, as though he were concealing his true self from her scrutiny, as though the face he wore were a mask to conceal the real man who lurked underneath the pleasant deception.

"You will meet her soon enough," Anri replied, "A charming girl, but one who has even more difficulty than I do in minding her own business."

Even as he spoke these words a curiously rainbow-winged butterfly fluttered past his head, and when the man stretched out a finger to offer it a perch it casually settled there and rested its wings, sparkling in the sunlight with a beautiful panoply of colors shimmering from its luminous body.

Kasumi was entranced with the vision, and she had the most peculiar sense that the butterfly was winking at her, but then a voice startled her and called her away from the entranced state of her unfocused awareness.

"My lady...are you all right?"

Kasumi blinked her eyes then turned to see the hooded face of Lenore gazing down at her with a much-concerned expression. The cloaked Loire Vampire was looking at her oddly, and as Kasumi turned to notice the presence of Chloe the Werewoman-in wolf form no less-she read an earnest distress that matched the fretful gaze of her companion.

"Oh my," Kasumi said, "You surprised me, Lenore-san. Is everything all right?"

"Ah...it is if all is right with you, my lady," Lenore replied, heaving a partial sigh of relief before adding, "You were staring off into space just now, and we were worried that you might have gone into a trance or something."

"Oh...ah, no," Kasumi reassured both the vampire and werewolf before using a hand to indicate the other presence, "I was just speaking to this gentleman when you came up..."

"Hah?" Chloe shifted from wolf to human form then sniffed the air and said, "I don't see anybody there, and I don't smell anyone but us here either."

"Gentleman?" Lenore straightened out and glanced around, "There's nobody but us here. How long ago was that?"

"Just now..." Kasumi paused astonished to see no trace of the man or the curious butterfly at all where he had been standing. It was as though he had vanished from the spot, or was never really there to begin with, and it caused her to murmur, "How odd...and he seemed like such a nice fellow..."

"Did he give a name?" Lenore asked, her hand sliding under her cape and resting on the hilt of her rapier as she cast a wary gaze around, at once on guard and protective of her lady.

"Yes, I believe he did," Kasumi paused a moment then said, "He said his name was Anri."

If it were possible for Lenore's face to drain any more of color it would have, and her hand fell away from her sword as she turned an astonished look towards Kasumi, "Anri? He said his name is...Anri?"

"Why yes," Kasumi was surprised at this reaction, "Why...do you know him?"

"Ah...no...met him once, but..." Lenore swallowed, then with unusually hushed tones (even for her) she said, "My lady...this is very important. Did he say anything to you? Anything at all, no matter how cryptic or enigmatic?"

"Actually, he said quite a few things, only some of which I found helpful and informative," Kasumi answered, "Why...is there something wrong about him?"

"No," Lenore all but whispered, glancing around with a strangely nervous expression, "Nothing about him is wrong...and that's...kinda the problem. He's one of the good guys...in fact, he's about the most good guy I know, including the Boss man, but he only shows up in places where there's gonna be trouble...and if he came to you then it means that there's gonna be a LOT of trouble dropping onto our heads sometime in the very near future."

"Is that so?" Kasumi said curiously, "Trouble for me...or possibly for my sisters?"

"Both I'm thinking," Lenore replied, "I think we had better go find the others. Your sister was out shopping with her wives, and since most of them are pregnant and can't fight too effective at the moment..."

"I thought Ax-girl, Kickboxer-girl and Power-girl were playing escort," Chloe reasoned out.

"Hey, those three are pretty tough, I'll grant you," Lenore informed her lover, "But compared to Anri they're like stumbling infants. He's like nobody you've ever run into before, my lady, and if he's on the scene then it makes sense that there's something out there that's just as nasty as he's not-nasty, which-  
given our track record-means all hell could be breaking loose in Nerima at any minute."

Kasumi was already on her feet as she declared, while slipping the wooden dagger back in its place of concealment, "We must find my sisters...nothing bad can be allowed to happen to either Akane...or Nabiki."

"Right, I'm on it," Chloe said, sniffing the air, "Thought I picked up their scent a while back. Just follow me and I'll lead you right to 'em."

"Lead the way, Wolfie," Lenore affectionately said as her companion shifted back into her wolf form, then Chloe sniffed the ground and started to move forward, followed in good order by an anxious Lenore and a much concerned Kasumi.

Back on the playground by the sings Anri remarked, "And so it begins. I take it you do not fully approve, Thelendra?"

The butterfly still perched upon his finger responded, "Of the girl, Father? Of what is there not to be approving? It is thy self whom concerns me, and what mother would have to say were she witness to your flirting with the nascent demine."

"Let's leave your mother out of this for now, shall we?" Anri chuckled, "Besides, I don't think you need to worry about me just yet. It is true that I find her fair in both mind, body and spirit, but I will not lose sight of the purpose for our coming here. All things will unfold as they must at the proper time and channel."

"Where hast I heard that one before?" the butterfly scoffed before taking to the breeze again and floating off towards the approaching sunset...

"Take it easy," Trudy cautioned, "Your friend's in a rough state. She's been drained of vitality, and she needs what strength she has left to just barely keep breathing."

"Can anything be done for her?" the young man named Tataki Shuuichi asked anxiously while he stared at the motionless girl named Sakura, while to the side the one calling herself Key-real name Mima Tokiko-just sat and stared with flat, emotionless features.

"Oh sure, long as she's still warm and all that," Trudy replied, looking directly at Key, "You care a lot about her, I can tell, don't you?"

"I do," were the only words that the strange passionless girl said in reply to the question.

"Well, do you want her back enough to do what's needed?" Trudy asked pointedly, "Because it's all up to you now, kid. You have the power to revive her...the only question is, do you want to tap into your strength badly enough to give her the energy that's needed."

"Key does not understand," the girl replied robotically, "But Key will do what she is able to do if it will restore Sakura to operational condition."

Trudy sighed, wondering just what sort tangled a situation she had gotten involved with this time. This "Key"-or Tokiko-or whatever she was calling herself in the third person, was obviously delusional, acting out a fantasy in which she viewed herself as nothing more than some mechanical construct created by her late father, Mima Murao, as a robot and nothing more than that. Trudy did not need the Sight to see right through such a patent fable. The girl was very much alive and organic, but had obviously been subjected to a cruel experiment by her old man that infused her body with compacted soul matter, approximately thirty-thousand times the concentration of an ordinary human being. Just where she kept all that pseudo-mass was a mystery since Key was a slender whisp of a doll-like thing. Obviously Key's physical state had been artificially retarded by the extra soul mass, her growth slowed down so that she was physically less mature than the chronological date of her birth would suggest should be the case.

Thirty-thousand souls pent up in one small body. It appalled Trudy to even attempt imagining what that would be like to experience on a daily basis, especially for a young girl with no spiritual training. She had the power at her fingertips to literally be a god among mortals, but held in check by a will that was conditioned to restraining her abilities so that only random acts of telekinesis and telepathy leaked through her barriers. For the most part she was like a walking, animated vegetable with most of her brain activity used to constrain the floodgates.

Trudy glanced towards the shadow-faced man hovering over the body of the second rescued kidnap victim, the girl whom Trudy had originally come to rescue. Utsuse Miho was still and quite catatonic, but Trudy could sense the brain activity there and knew it was more the result of drugs and electronic mind control that was keeping the once-vibrant pop singer hovering on the edge of oblivion. It was a fortunate thing for her that she was not in even worse condition, given her treatment, but it was the man attending to her that Trudy found a puzzle, for this fellow had direct knowledge of these events and was in some part responsible for what had happened, being the former research assistant to Key's late father, and her protective guardian of sorts, though he normally preferred to maintain a discrete distance.

Once again the anger bubbled up within Trudy as she thought of the man named Ajo Jinsaku and what that fiend in a three piece suit had done in the pursuit of his own blind ambition. Taking homeless people off of the street and sucking their live energies out of their bodies in order to power his artificial constructs was a textbook definition of "wrongful" behavior, and the callous indifference the man had shown about his work proved beyond doubt that he was not deserving of breathing the same air as the poor unfortunates he had stepped upon in his headstrong pursuit of blind ambition.

The Power had protected him this time around on the karmic wheel, but if he crossed paths with Trudy once again then death would be a mercy that she would deny him. Truly he was a poisonous cancer on this reality, and it was a wonder to her that he might have any constructive part yet to play within this drama. If it had been up to Trudy and not the Power than that monster would be suffering a wrath to dwarf the pain and horror that he had so callously inflicted upon others.

Turning her attention back towards Key she said, "Place your hands on your friend's chest and just relax for a moment. Physical contact will enable you to transfer energy into her directly...just think of the warmth you feel whenever she is around and let things go from there. She should be all right in another few moments if you do as I say and share with her a part of your own essence."

"Key...does not understand, the girl replied, stretching her hands forward and resting her palms upon the still chest of her friend, "But Key will do as instructed."

"Are you sure this is really going to work?" Tataki asked tensely.

"Oh, it'll work all right, trust me on that," Trudy assured while studying the operation as the intensely focused life energy within Key's body began to leach through contact with her skin into the nearly empty shell of Sakura's own form, and after a few moments the helpless girl stretched out on the futon was starting to breath more easily, her body resuming normal levels of operation.

"She'll be all right now," Trudy said, motioning of Key to remove her palms from the rising chest of her friend, "Just give her a little time and she'll be back almost to full normal."

"Key still does not understand," the girl said with just a hint of wonder giving her voice a mild inflection, "How could Key do this when Key is just a robot?"

"She's spent years living around you when you were both a lot younger, right?" Trudy replied, "Well, in that time she's been unconsciously absorbing energy from you until her body was compact with a dozen times the life energy of a normal person. She never knew or suspected this, and in fact remains ignorant of it even how, but the two of you are now emotionally and spiritually connected, which is how you were able to sense that she was in danger."

"I can fallow that...up to a point," Tataki replied, "But...are you saying that Sakura-chan is, in fact, a part of Key? Like they're sisters or something?"

"Oh, I'd say they were a great deal more closely connected than that," Trudy replied, not wanting to trample upon the young man's feelings since he quite obviously cared a great deal about this Sakura, "You can think of the ties binding them as being as much emotional as spiritual, so now that Key here has shared a bit of her excess with her friend they're going to find themselves pretty much near inseparable now. I don't think they could literally exist apart from one another for any great length of time, at least until Sakura-san begins to regenerate her own expended soul mass."

"Then Key is a part of Sakura?" the young girl asked with just a hint of curiosity peering out from beneath the barriers that were constraining her emotions, "But how is this so when Key is a robot and Sakura is human?"

"Hey, I've known weirder pairings than machines and people, believe me," Trudy replied, "But I think you'll find it a lot easier if you spend more time with Sakura talking about stuff that you may have been keeping to yourself. A little honesty is good in most relationships, though too much of a good thing can still be toxic, so for now keep it in small doses and call me in the morning."

Her humor obviously went completely over the young girl's head, but it was the young man who turned to the side and said, "And...what about Miho-sama? Will she be all right? She hasn't moved since we brought her to this apartment."

Trudy could not help but noticing the worshipful tone the boy used in referring to his music idol. Indeed, this Tataki guy was self-described as the president of the "Miho" fan club, and as such it had to be agony for him to know the wretched state into which she had fallen care of Ajo Industries and its illustrious founder, may his soul rot in eternal purgatory.

Aloud what she said was, "She'll be all right, just give her some time, rest and a couple gazillion yen worth of psychotherapy. Physically she's going through withdrawals, but mentally she's a lot tougher than you'd think, given the situation in which we found her. But I think she'll eventually pull through...isn't that right, Tomoyo-san?"

The older man attending to Miho just grunted and gave a guarded look her way, still holding onto his secrets while wondering how much of the truth Trudy knew already.

Unfortunately for him, Trudy already knew a great deal thanks to the whisperings of the Power. Tomoyo Wakagi was a loyal research assistant to his late, lamented employer, but playing Igor to Doctor Frankenstein hardly exonerated one of the crimes of their boss, and "Just Following Orders" was a pathetically pale excuse when measured against the crimes that they had both committed against Doctor Mima Murao's own daughter.

Granted that there were extenuating circumstances, but hiding the stored collection of soul mass that Key's family had kept as a trust for ages within Key's own body was an act of inhumanity to rival the schemes of Ajo himself, or the excesses of Ajo's late and unlamented henchman, Sergei. One evil used to balance another usually only increased the level of evil in the world, not decreased it to Trudy's experience and deeper understanding. It took a fine surgeon to appreciate the depth of an incision one made when removing a cancer from an otherwise healthy body, but these guys had used a meat cleaver, and the net result was a looming disaster in the making, especially if the girl calling herself Key were to lose all control at some critical juncture.

Frankly the idea of a psychic Chernobyl in the making had no appeal to Trudy, not in the least, and the sooner a safe means was found for "leaching" out the excess soul mass from the body of Mima Tokiko the better for the world in general to Trudy's way of thinking. It was a scenario ready made for the people at Delphi...

Unfortunately, even as she thought this, she heard the Power murmur in her mind that further interference of that sort would disrupt a chain of circumstances in the work that was working towards a higher end, and that this drama would have to play itself out in good time with only minimal outside intervention.

Even as she was attempting to formulate in her mind just how much "intervention" the power would deem necessary she heard the young man named Tataki ask, "By the way...we never got the chance to properly thank you for helping us out back there. We didn't even get your full name..."

"Wells," Trudy said, using her standard pseudonym for outside fieldwork, "Trudy Wells, I'm an American. I just happened to be in the area when I noticed some suspicious activities involving a kidnapping and some hostile activity in and around that Shinto Temple."

"Doctor Snake Eye's Shrine?" Tataki asked, clearly knowing far less about the matter than he wanted to, "He sure seemed to take a heavy interest in Tokiko-  
chan here, but how did you know that Ajo guy was responsible for kidnapping Sakura?"

"It's what I do," Trudy shrugged, "In see a crime and I investigate..."

"You're a Cop?" the man named Tomoyo asked, breaking his own silence.

"Inspector of Police, Los Angeles municipal division," Trudy replied, reaching into her ruined tunic and pulling out a leather wallet that she unfolded to show her authentic badge, which belonged to her regular cover identity, "I know I'm out of my jurisdiction and lacked the power to make an arrest back there, but I could hardly sit back and watch a crime being committed without trying to do something about it."

"Pretty aggressive methods for police work," Tomoyo asked, not bothering to hide his evident skepticism.

"So I know a few things about unarmed combat," Trudy shrugged, putting her badge away, "Comes with the territory, especially if you live in the kind of rough neighborhood that I grew up in..."

All at once a beeping sound drew her attention to something else that she kept concealed within a shirt pouch, and automatically her hand moved to snag it, flipping her cell-phone open while wondering how it could be ringing at all since she had turned it off just prior to entering Ajo's complex.

"Wells here, go ahead," she snapped.

"I think I like Matthews better," a gravely voice repeated on the other end, prompting Trudy to arch both eyebrows.

"Frank?" asked in surprise, "Is that you? Long time no hear from."

"Too bad it couldn't be longer," he grumbled, "You alone?"

"Ah...no, I'm just wrapping up a case, but you know, your timing couldn't be more perfect," Trudy thought quickly, "I've got a situation here and I could use a little backup. I'll give you the details later, but for now would you mind having a team get assigned to watching the block where I'm currently act."

"I've got a GPS lock on your locale and I'll assign some people, but what's the big emergency? You get in over your pretty little head again?"

"Like there's anything I can't handle on my own," Trudy scoffed, "I'll tell you all about it just as soon as you can get people here to guard the farm, also send a medical team, we've got somebody here who's pretty messed up and could use some Psy-Con Reconditioning therapy."

"Oh," there was a slight pause before the man at the other end said, "That kind of problem. Why didn't you say so in the first place? I'll send a team down, but...this favor is gonna cost you."

As if Trudy had not seen that one coming, but she sighed and said, "What's the catch? What do I owe you?"

"I'll explain it all once you meet me back at my Tokyo-based office," Frank replied, "One hour, don't be late."

"Sure thing, big fella," Trudy remarked before closing the phone up and resetting it back in her pocket.

"What was that all about?" Tataki asked as he viewed the mysterious redhead from her now-sidelong profile.

"Nothing you need to worry about, just Cop stuff," Trudy dismissed, "Calling in a few favors from an old colleague and stuff like that."

"Of course," Tomoyo commented darkly, quite obviously less than fully convinced.

Trudy favored the older man and said, "In a few minutes some people are going to be showing up who will want to ask a lot of very awkward and embarrassing questions. Do you want to be here to answer them, or would you rather have me give the explanation while you can go back to playing mysterious protector and benefactor from the sidelines?"

That obviously got a rise out of the man, but he still was taciturn as he responded, "As if you know the full story."

"I know enough already to know you'd be in a great deal of trouble if the authorities of this country were to find out what you were doing on the behalf of the good doctor," Trudy informed him, "I happen to be a very good investigator and I almost always get my man...or person. I'm willing to overlook things for now since I know that Ajo is the real bastard here, but don't push it. Remember that I took out Sergei, then think about it before you cross me."

That got the point across, so the big man stood up and said, "Then if it's all the same to you I'll be leaving. Take care of yourself, Mima-san."

The girl naked Key parted her lips as if wanting to say something, only to stare down in surprise as she heard Sakura murmuring her name, and calling to her in a soft voice, which actually seemed to return some color to the Mima girl's expression.

Trudy sensed that something very personal was about to be exchanged here and motioned to Tataki to accompany her as she stood up and moved to the far corner of the room, much closer to Miho. In a low-voiced whisper she said, "I think we'd better give them some room. Those two are going to have a lot to talk about now, and I think you'll start to notice a few changes in both of their behavior."

"How do you mean?" Tataki asked with evident confusion.

"For one thing..." Trudy paused, thinking on how best to phrase her next question, "Correct me if I'm wrong, but Sakura hasn't been to happy of late, has she? She moved out here from the country to make it in the big city, but so far none of her dreams have been realized, and she works to pay the bills in that Video store where you met her...am I right?"

The boy did not bother to disguise his astonishment, "How do you know...?"

"I have my ways," Trudy replied, "The point is...you may not have known it, but Sakura has been bearing a burden within herself that's been causing her a great deal of mental and spiritual anguish. Being so near to Tokiko-san has infused within her an excess of soul matter that her body was not designed to accommodate, and the more time she spent around Key the more it pained her to feel that energy compacting in on her, stifling her with the life-force of thousands of other people."

"Say what?" the young man said, obviously not getting it as yet.

"Tokiko's body is like a bank that's been used to launder huge sums of drug money," Trudy explained, "She's so tightly packed with soul mass that her mind and personality have shut down all but the most basic functions, and so she acts out the delirium that she's a walking automaton, a mere construct of her father's. She may seem like a rather frail and ordinary young girl but in reality she's a walking solenoid of psychic force with so much life energy crammed into her that it leaks from her very pours, and without advanced spiritual training she has no way for her to channel it creatively, so some of it has been siphoned off into Sakura, causing them both to share the same heavy burden."

"That's horrible," Tataki stated with dismay, "They must both be in such agony..."

"Now you're getting the picture of how things used to be with them," Trudy raised a finger to stifle the rest of the man's statement, "But I've just changed things in order to strengthen the bond between them so that Sakura now acts more like a safety valve, and the excess that flows into her can now be channeled creatively so that it doesn't drive the both of them crazy. Unfortunately there is one small side-effect that I need to warn you about..."

"Such as?" Tataki asked in confusion, only to turn in dismay as muffled noises in the corner brought them both around to see that Sakura was recovered enough to have reached up to Key, to put her arms around and embrace her, and that now both girls were sharing a kiss that displayed more passion on Sakura's part...but to which Key herself was gradually responding with renewed and intensified interest.

"That," Trudy concluded with no great surprise in her own expression, "As I said, the emotional bonds between them have been strengthened to a degree where they cannot literally life without the presence of the other, and that naturally means that they're going to be spending a great deal of their time getting to know each other more intimately than before. In other words..."

"They are now officially lovers."

Trudy glanced down to see the opened eyes of Miho and said, "So, you're finally awake, Utsuse-san."

"I've been drifting in and out of it since you brought me here," the singer put a hand up to her head and softly moaned, "What did Ajo-san do to me? I feel like I've been binging in a distillery, and my mouth feels like its wadded up with wet cotton..."

"You'll recover in time from the drugs and other stuff they used on you," Trudy replied, "I've got people on the way who'll help you get your act back together, and you might even be able to perform in another month..."

"Thanks, but I think I'm ready to take a vacation from work," Miho remarked as she stared at the two other young girls, who were now stretched out on the floor together with Key acting very much like a human girl in the passionate arms of another. To this the singer commented, "Well...those two certainly seem to have the right idea about it. By the way, who the hell are you people?"

"Would you believe that she's your guardian angel?" Trudy pointed to Key, then patted Tataki on the back and said, "And this is the president of your fan-club and the shining prince in white armor who came to rescue you from the tower of the villain, fair lady. Say Nihao to Tataki Shuuichi."

"I what?" Tataki blinked, only to find Miho looking directly at him.

"So...I take it you're my biggest fan, huh?" Miho mused as she sized the young man up with a glance, "Could you be a good sport then and fetch me something to drink...something stronger than iced tea?"

"Wait for the docs to arrive before you start prescribing your own medication," Trudy chuckled, "But before too long you and this young swain can paint the town together as I'm sure he'd be only too honored to take you out to dinner."

"I will?" Tataki asked, feeling his head swim.

"I think I'd like that," Miho smiled, "But what about you? Was I being delirious or did I hear someone call you...Trudy?"

"That's the name I use," Trudy winked, "Rhymes with fruity. But never you mind about me, I'm just a working girl who can't stay out of trouble."

"A working girl, eh?" Miho asked, "What are your rates? And have you ever thought about being a body-guard to an appreciative singer?"

"I'll take that up under consideration," Trudy replied, turning her head before saying, "Ah, I think I hear my people approaching now. That's my cue to be somewhere elsewhere."

She turned and went to the door to make certain that the presence that she felt approaching was friendly and not hostile while Miho turned her focus back towards Tataki and said, "Who is she really? And why do I feel like we've just had a visit from the American Lone Ranger?"

"To be honest I have no idea who she is," Tataki admitted, "She says that she's a detective, but when we got there we found that she'd taken down most of Ajo's security guards, and there was a lot of destruction everywhere, just like in the movies."

"How typically American," Miho observed while turning her eyes once again to the two young girls making out on the futon together, "They sure seem to be digging one another. I'm almost inspired to write a song just looking at them, though in another minute I think this will turn into a real porn movie."

Tataki favored Key and Sakura with a dubious expression then heaved a sigh as he considered the possibility that he had just lost himself a girlfriend. On the other hand...he still had Miho, and with that thought in wind he went to fetch her something to drink, wishing he had something strong for himself as it was looking to be a very long evening...

Chapter Fifty-Four.

Episode One-Hundred-Thirty-Eight.

"Frightening Interlude."

"Say that again?" the Lord Most High Shog Yototh said as he lurched up in his slime pit throne chamber, "You're telling us that the human did what?"

"Um," Obidextrous shuffled slightly on his clawed, webbed feet and replied, "She...um...she sort of turned the tables on us, Most Dread Sovereign. It wasn't exactly what we expected. Our agents thought her no more than a simple halfbreed girl, but no one expected her to turn out this Inhuman!"

Shog Yototh drummed his tentacles in irritation, "You're saying that nothing you could do would have the slightest effect at intimidating the girl? Three of my most foul servants, and you could not even subdue her to your will?"

"Sorry," Obidextrous shifted in his chitinous membrane and tried to look supremely apologetic, "But you see, dread lord, she's half Shikima, and the daughter of their most dread Lord no less..."

"Silence!" Shog Yototh filled his corner of Limbo with the reverberation of his wrath, sorely tempted to blast his three incompetent underlings into the primordial Ectoplasm from which they had slithered, but withheld his unholy wrath for two reasons: one losing his temper might make him seem less aloof to his underlings, and two being that they were literally the best he could find on short notice, and he had another mission that required suitable cannon fodder. Bad help, after all was very hard to come by...

"Give me one reason why I should not reduce the three of you to your constituent elements here on the spot!" Shog Yototh blustered, if only for appearance sake. Besides, it did him some good to see these three worms grovel for mercy.

"Please, Unholy one! Your Malevolence, we can still capture her for use in ransom..."

"And start a war between my realm and that of the Shikima?" Shog Yototh heaved the equivalent of a sigh, "Just who do you think would win if it came down to that? I need mortal souls to barter with the other Demon Lords. One half-breed Shikima is just asking for trouble. Besides, who wants to get involved with these sex-crazed Ninjas anyway? They are such an unnerving lot...I mean, humans who train themselves to have sex with our kind! What is the Cosmos coming to, I ask you?"

"Um...your Putrificationess?" one of the three subordinate demons hesitantly raised a feeler to ask, "I thought we were supposed to go after Mortals who have unusually high concentrations of Spiritual energy? You said that they were worth more than ordinary mortals who barely learn to tap into their latent potential..."

"I did say that," Shog Yototh replied, "But what I meant was mortals who have unusually strong concentrations of energy, not those who are trained in the use of their energy against our kind! How many times must I repeat myself: No Exorcists, Spiritualists or Priestesses are allowed on the list! Do you remember what happened to Neguriaga when he made the mistake of attacking that inebriated redhead?"

The three underlings shivered in collective memory. That occasion was one reason why there were only three of their band instead of their original six. They hardly needed to be reminded of how the other two were lost: one to a renegade Vampire Princess and her pet Lamia, the other to a sword-wielding teenager in a cute red dress. These humans were becoming harder to harvest every century and some were fighting back with the full-unfettered power of their unrestrained libidos!

Shog Yototh allowed them to quiver in terror of his wrath until he was satisfied that they were sufficiently cowed, then went on to revealing his latest horrible plan, "That is why I am sending you to a province on the outskirts of the Great City that is reasonably far enough away from the rest of your disasters. It is relatively unclaimed territory, neither Youma nor Invid have yet established it for their own. You are to seek out humans who have great latent potential but who do not as yet emanate the strong psychic mental wards that come from priestly training. Seek only those who have frustrated urges and longings and invade their dreams to learn their weaknesses and how we might exploit them. This is a mission that requites great subtlety, so restrain your appetites and do nothing to give away your presence until you are ready to make the harvest. This is fertile territory, so you should have no difficulty in finding suitable candidates, but remember to enter their dreams first and leave off ravishing their bodies until later. Now...do you think (and I use the term very loosely here) that you can handle such a simple assignment?"

"Yes, Dread Sovereign," all three demons replied as they groveled appropriately in their hopes for a dismissal.

"Begone from my sight," Shot Yototh finally growled, "Do not return until you have harvested the souls that I require."

"Yes, Dread Sovereign!" the three echoed once again before slithering away to fulfill their awful mission.

Shog Yototh was about to retire to his personal slime pit when the sound of soft laughter echoing about the cavernous chamber that was his throne room drew his attention to a certain corner. A shadow detached itself from the attendant gloom and stood revealed in the form of a lithe and supple humanoid figure with reddish skin and an altogether sultry manner. Long ink-black, lustrous hair fell about one shoulder as the Demoness preened herself, smiling in such a way as was calculated to annoy the arrogant Demon lord.

"I fail to see what you find so funny," Shog Yototh growled, "And how did you find your way in here? This is an unlisted Cavern."

"So sue me," the demoness smiled in wry amusement, examining the claws on one taloned hand before adding, "And, if you must know the truth, it was an accident. I got lost...so what else is new?"

"And you just happened to overhear me give my minions their instructions," Shog Yototh glared.

"Yeah, funny about that," the demoness replied, "My mother was right about you, y'know. You really do surround yourself with incompetent losers."

"And I suppose you could do better?" he glared with all eighteen eyeballs.

"In my sleep," the woman replied, "This happens to be right up my alley. I have a sister who been wandering around in the place you sent your three stooges and she's sent me back regular reports about what goes on there. Personally I think your boys are underestimating the competition."

"Meaning what?" the demon lord frowned, his pulsating mass turning a shade of putrid green to reflect his displeasure.

"Meaning they couldn't suck the life out of a grape," the demoness replied, "Whereas I can find these mortals a great deal of fun to amuse myself with. If you'd care to make a certain wager..."

"And what are the stakes?" the demon lord asked.

"Shog, ol' buddy," the smiled, "I was just getting to that part. You have some souls in your collection that I've been wanting to collect for my own devices, so if I win what do you say to letting me have my pick, plus any souls that I seduce to my own purposes?"

"And what do you offer me in exchange for that?" Shog Yototh wondered.

The demoness played with one of her golden horns with a thoughtful expression, "That depends on what you have in mind. Dare I ask your pleasure?"

"That's easy," the demon lord mused, "Why not the pleasure of your company under whatever special conditions I might desire for an indeterminate duration."

The demoness considered this for a moment then replied, "You're not planning anything kinky or dark I hope?"

"I'd prefer to leave that a surprise," Shog Yototh growled, amusing himself with considering his list of obscene options.

"Shog, old pal," the demoness purred, "I like the way your foul minds work. You've got yourself a bet, just be ready to tally up your collection."

The demoness withdrew to plot and plan her wicked schemes, leaving only her demented laughter in passing, which caused Shog Yototh to shudder a little before murmuring to himself, "Sometimes that lady scares the Heaven out of me..."

It was another bright, cheerful morning as Professor Alexandra Takaharis rose from her bed, having enjoyed a good night's sleep full of merry dreams and wicked schemes that did a lot of bumping together in the night. She shuffled to the privy and started up the hot water for the furo, then went to the kitchen to set the Coffee maker to brewing a fresh cup of Hangover Cure-all, when a knock at the back door attracted her attention.

This was odd because Takaharis was not used to receiving visitors in the morning, certainly not from the few humans she counted as her friends, and especially not when she discovered that the knocking was coming from the broom closet instead of the patio entrance, so she was immediately on her guard as she yanked it open and saw a form come tumbling out onto the floor of her kitchen.

Takaharis was not the type who startled easy, but one look at the figure sprawled at her feet was enough to make her consider such a reaction. Instead what she said aloud was, "Ohiyo. To what do I owe the pleasure, cousin?"

"Uh...hi," her sudden guest said in a sheepish voice as she started to push herself into an upright position, "Wonder how I got in there, I was trying for the front door this time."

"Cousin Atsuko..." Takaharis began, then sighed, instead offering her hand to the other girl to help her regain her footing, "I take it this is another social visit?"

"Not really," Atsuko Hibiki replied as she dusted herself off then took notice of the bathrobe Takaharis was wearing, "Did I catch you at a bad time, Taki?"

"Almost," Takaharis went to the refrigerator and fished out a can of cold beer, then tossed it to the other woman, who caught it without thinking, "So what are you here for, other than your usual 'can't find my way' excuse? You look kind of frazzled."

"Um...well," Atsuko said as she popped the top on the can and prepared to take a swig of one of her favorite mortal indulgences, "It's about my half-sister, Morrigar..."

Takaharis frowned, "What about cousin, Morrigar? What's she been up to lately?"

"The usual," Atsuko said as she sat down on the floor before the tea table and took a long pull on her beer can, then sighed with pleasure before adding, "Lust, skullduggery, underhanded dealings, soul transfers and general messing about in people's lives...you know, Demon stuff."

"No, I wouldn't know," Takaharis replied, "I'm a Devil, not a Demon. We Eryines tend to go in for Vengeful and vindictive phases, but we're mostly a well-  
behaved and reasonable lot, not like some of your Oni kin that I could name, or your mother for example."

"Yeah, well..." Atsuko waved a hand and looked evasive, "Thing is my big Sis lately has set her eyes on a certain province of Tokyo called Nerima..."

"You mean the district where your son is residing?" Takaharis raised an eyebrow.

"Yes, exactly," Atsuko nodded, "My son, his friends, his wife, girlfriends and the people he spars with on a regular basis. I've been watching things for a while in secret, keeping my distance, you know, for the obvious reason of not wanting to attract any attention..."

"So your mother still doesn't know where your son is," Takaharis replied, hazarding a guess, "But Morrigar does?"

"Well...not exactly," Atsuko fidgeted, "But I have been sending her post-cards, keeping up on the family business as it were. She was always nice to me when I was just a kid, so I might have let slip a few random details between the columns, enough to maybe get her interested in the place since I recently caught her hanging around in the Furinkan financial district."

"Then you're afraid she's going to spill the beans with your mother?" Takaharis wondered.

"Oh no," Atsuko replied, "I don't think she'd do that...at least I hope she doesn't! She and mom don't exactly see eye-to-eye on most things, but...well...I think she may be planning something else for herself. You know what she can be like now that she's working for the Rival Relief Offices, Wet Dreams division..."

"I think I see the problem," Takaharis mused, "So...what did you want me to do about it?"

"Well..." Atsuko waved her half-emptied beer can for emphasis, "I'd do it myself, but I don't dare come near my son as long as there's any chance of attracting Mom's attention. You know she wants my boy for one of her spells...that's the whole reason I ran away from home in the first place..."

"That and you had trouble finding your way back to her tree," Takaharis noted.

"She's doesn't know where Ryoga is or what he's doing these days," Atsuko replied with an imploring look, "But I was hoping maybe you could just drop by there and check up on him, find out what Morrigar is up to, maybe tell her to leave my son alone while she's at it..."

Takaharis had to steel herself against the imploring look in her cousin's eyes. Though kin by marriage more than blood, there was just something about the half Ogre/Oni that made her seem like a younger sister, and Takaharis found her easier to get along with than her actual blood kin, especially on her own father's side of the family tree. She sighed at last and said, "I suppose I could drop by and check it out for myself...but I'm not making any-!"

"Oh, thank you, Cousin!" Atsuko cried, reaching across the table to grasp Takaharis by the face and sensuously kiss her, "I'll make it up to you some day, I promise! Now I'd better go and let you get on with whatever you were doing. I'll check back again with you later, Bye!"

"Hah?" Takaharis replied, reeling from that kiss as the Ogress rose to her feet and began to stumble back as the alcohol she drank slightly overbalanced her. The next thing she knew Atsuko went crashing through the nearest wall, which happened to adjoin the bathroom. Takaharis winced as she heard a splashing noise then sighed. Rising to her feet she murmured, "Well...at least this time she fell into hot water..."

Meanwhile back in Nerima itself...

"So, let me get this straight, Ranchan," Nabiki was saying as they approached the Tendo dojo, "This Siren out of the blue comes up and offers to train you in better managing your elementals, and Cologne consents to go along with this because the old man convinced her it was a good idea, and you trust that it's out of the benevolence of her heart that she's making this offer?"

"Um...actually, I kind of think she's got other reasons for offering to help me," Ranma replied, "She and the old woman have a history together, and I think Happosai tipped her off to the scam that Baba's been running with her age-  
illusion trick, deceiving the other Elders..."

"That would make sense," Perfume remarked, "I think great-grandmother started hiding her youth as much to avoid grandmother as she did to keep the other elders from grumbling behind her back. If grandmother's found out the truth about great-grandmother then she'd definitely home in on her, and using the excuse to train Ranma would be in line with that ambition."

"What a nice machiavellian bunch your elders can be when they set their mind to it, Sugar," Ukyo mused, squeezing Perfume's hand gently while adding, "I'm so glad you don't take after them that way. You're much too honest to be that sneaky."

"Is character flaw, yes?" Shampoo teased, "Cousin always wear heart on sleeve...is much like Ranma that way, not like Airen who is sneaky enough for two elders."

"Hey," Nabiki turned her head towards her beloved co-wife and growled, "I'm only sneaky around people who deserve it, but I'm up-front with family, unlike some people I could mention."

"I don't know about you guys," Akane spoke up, "But doesn't it worry you that two of the most powerful elders of the Amazon tribes might be stirring things up romantically together?"

"A valid point you make, Akane-chan," Kodachi agreed, "In these parts romantic obsessions tend to result in some rather volatile pyrotechnics, and when dealing with high-level mages and the most powerful warrior of the Joketsuzoku..."

"Sounds pretty much like business as usual to me, Mistress," Keiko remarked, "In fact it has been a bit quiet for us the last few days, so I was expecting another crisis to break down our doors at any minute."

"Don't say stuff like that," Ryoga glanced towards the clouded-up sky, "Somebody up there might be listening."

"I wouldn't doubt it," Alison mused, "I've got relatives who think it's great sport looking down at the mortals and sending an odd thunder-bolt or two to stir up some excitement."

"Too true," Beatrice agreed, "The calm periods in our existence do seem to be rather few and far between our more memorable chapters."

Trudging along at the feet of their elders, little Lylac exchanged a look with her contemporaries then set back to munching on the apple that she had just been given by her mothers. Eileen and Fragrance were busy munching on some candy they'd been holding back for special occasions and none of them were paying much more attention to their surroundings than seemed required on this particular occasion.

And so it was with great surprise that the group arrived at the gates of the Tendo compound, only to be greeted by an anxious Ryonami, who waved them in with a hurried, "About time you guys got back! You've gotta hear the great news about Kurumi..."

"Kurumi-chan?" Nabiki was instantly alarmed, "What's happened to her? Is she all right?"

"Where is Kurumi-chan?" Akane asked, only a shade less alarmed than her older sister in both her tone and expression.

"Upstairs in the room you guys share," Ryonami called out over her shoulder, already heading back into the house as she added, "Sleeping on your bed. Doctor Tofu recommended she get some rest after she passed out a while back..."

"Passed out?" Ranma started, "Why? What happened?"

"Ask Moose!" Ryonami all but shouted from the doorway, "He's the one you should blame for it, no me!"

"Mousse?" Ukyo repeated.

"Aiyaa," Shampoo winced, "What he do now to own Airen?"

"That clown had better not have hurt her," Perfume scowled, "I always thought it was a little too convenient for me that he and Kurumi-chan seemed to be getting closer together."

"If he did then he's going to regret it," Ryoga warned while smacking fist to palm and scowling.

"How about I hold him down while you belt him, big guy?" Keiko offered.

"And if there's anything left save a piece for me," Alison flexed her arm, "Monkey-boy won't even know what hit him."

"Calm yourself down, my primal barbarian," Beatrice patted Alison on the head, "We don't as yet know the nature of Kurumi-san's condition, let alone what Mousse might have done to cause it, so before we all jump to hasty conclusions and commence to swinging..."

"Screw that," Ranma growled as he headed off into the house, "I've had it with that jerk. If he's gonna live here with Kurumi then he's gonna have to learn to respect her or else..."

"I'm with you on that, Bro," Ryoga agreed, only a few steps behind Ranma.

Beatrice sighed, "Or then again, why break with a tradition?"

"It does seem rather like standard operating procedure to swing first and ask questions later of the survivors," Kodachi agreed with gallows humor.

Inside the house Ranma and Ryoga found Mousse leaning against the bottom rail of the staircase and immediately moved to confront the Chinese youth, even as Mousse did not immediately register their physical presence.

"All right, you bastard," Ranma began with his usual tact and diplomacy, "What's this about you and Kurumi? Did you hurt her in any way, and if you did, you'd better have apologized for it or..."

"Or else get ready to have your ass kicked!" Ryoga concluded with great heat as he waved a fist in the other man's direction.

At first Mousse did not respond to the threat, but then he slowly turned and considered the fist, then looked at Ryoga and said, "Go ahead and do your worst...it might even make me feel better."

"Why you...!" Ryoga started to lunge forward when all at once a wooden bokken was thrust into the path between the two brothers and their nominal brother-in-  
law, a distinctive enough object that it caused both men to turn and confront the one who held it.

"Hold, do not take your wrath out upon Mu-Tsu," Tatewaki urged, "He suffers enough without having the need for you to add to his estate, nor does he deserve ill treatment at your hands, for what has transpired is the will of the gods and not the result of ill intent or planning."

"What the hell are you talking about, Tachi?" Ranma asked of his best friend.

"Yeah, why the hell shouldn't we pound his face flat?" Ryoga growled with a belligerency that-even for him-sounded vindictive.

"Because he is kin to us both by marriage and beyond, my friends," Kuno explained for their benefit, "And because the fair Kurumi is upstairs recovering from the news that she is to give new life from her union with this star-crossed fellow."

The stunned silence that followed that declaration was broken by Nabiki as she and the others trudged into the room, and then she and Akane chorused together, "Kurumi is going to have a BABY?"

"What a surprise," Beatrice mused, "Almost unheard of in this family..."

"One would never have imagined," Kodachu remarked matter-of-factly.

"Honestly...I had no idea...I never really thought...this can't be happening to me...to us!" Mousse blurted out, "She's so young...I mean...the very idea...I can't believe I'm going to be a...a...a..."

"Father?" Keiko helpfully suggested.

"Exactly," Mousse said, and then his knees started to give out and he sank to the floor, gripping his knees and staring out at nothing.

"What you say, Mousse?" Shampoo scoffed, "You no think thing like this could happen?"

"Yeah, and she's practically middle-aged by the standards we have at home," Perfume quipped, "Ucchan and I were the same age when we had our baby..."

"Yeah, about that," Ukyo grumbled, "Might've been a good idea to wait until we graduated from high school before we became the talk of the town, to say nothing of our classmates. Not that I'm sorry we did it, of course," she said as she glanced at little Fragrance, who gave her mother a curious sidelong inspection.

"A baby...wow!" Alison cooed, "And here I'd no idea you two were that far along with your relationship thing. Guess that means you really do like her."

"You think?" Mousse asked from where he sat, then he glanced up at Nabiki and said, "You don't have to say it...she's a few months shy of seventeen, the youngest girl in the house and she has trouble enough making up for all those years she and her sister lost while on the road and unable to study. I didn't mean to do this to her, honestly...it's just...so overwhelming. I can't really get my mind wrapped around the whole notion that...that we're having a child together..."

"Affairs such as this are the lot of many a man, my friend," Tatewaki assured him, "You should do the best to cope with matters and move on from here, for Kurumi-chan will need your strength and support for what is sure to follow."

"Gee, guess that means you'll be facing the same thing when you and Natsume-chan finally tie the knot, huh?" Keiko pointed out with a sweet smile that was in no way vindictive.

"Exactly," Tatewaki replied, only to get a peculiar look in his eyes before he said, "Wait one moment..."

"Where is Natsume anyway?" Nabiki asked of Mousse.

"With her sister, which is where I should be if I were any kind of proper Airen," Mousse said miserably, "I just don't know how to take this...I wasn't prepared...I didn't think things through..."

"Like that's a novel concept for you, Mousse?" Perfume asked, then sighed, "Of course the fact that you're this worked up means you really do care about what happens to Kurumi."

"And you do proper thing by her as is Amazon way," Shampoo added a bit archly.

"Of course I'll do what's right by her," Mousse growled, "I'm not completely without my wits, you know, and I have enough honor left to respect and support my Airen...if she can even bear to look at me again what with the mess I've made of both of our lives of late..."

"You son of a bitch!" Ryoga suddenly snarled, pushing past Tatewaki and grabbing hold of Mousse by his silken shirt, yanking him to his feet and dangling him at arms length with seemingly no effort, "The likes of you aren't good enough for Kurumi!"

"Huh?" Ranma and the others gave Ryoga startled looks at his unexpected surge of temper.

"How dare you put your dirty hands on one so pure and soil them with your seed, Chinaman!" Ryoga all but shouted while shaking an astonished Mousse like a dog might a small chew toy, "You're not good enough to breathe the same air as the children of Nippon, you accursed half-breed Mongrel!"

And before anyone could stop him Ryoga turned and threw Mousse bodily out through the den and the back porch, to go crashing into the yard and land in a heap just shy of the koi pond.

"Mousse!" both Shampoo and Perfume cried together.

"Ryoga-kun?" Akane gasped, no less startled as she saw the wild, savagely feral look upon the normally handsome face of her husband.

"Stay your hand, Churl!" Tatewaki brandished his bokken, "What means this unseemly outburst?"

"Yeah, Ryoga," Ranma said as he attempted to confront his half-brother directly, only to be rudely shoved to the side as Ryoga went barreling past both him and Tatewaki like a savage boar looking to gore its victim.

"Out of my way, you slobs!" he rudely shouted as he leaped out onto the back porch in pursuit of his fallen quarry, "I'm going to kill that arrogant Dog-  
eater and kick his mangy hide all the way to the Yellow River..."

The others had turned to follow the movements of their berserk comrade, only to find a curious gathering standing just above the groaning body of Mousse, with Kasumi, Lenore and Chloe all looking on with puzzled expressions as they saw the angry young man storming vengefully towards them.

"Ryoga-kun?" Kasumi asked mildly.

All at once Lenore took two steps forward and drew her rapier from beneath her cape, "Stand back, my lady...there's something very wrong about his aura."

"He smells like a Feral," Chloe shiffed, shifting back into wolf form and hunching her back while snarling in low warning.

"I said-OUT OF MY WAY!" Ryoga bellowed, and abruptly moved his hands so fast that they created vacuum-daggers out of thin air that pelted both vampire and werewolf and sliced through both fur and skin with great abandon, sending both girls reeling.

"Omigawd," Keiko declared, "He's out of control! He really is going to kill them!"

"Not if I get to him first," Alison declared, beginning to surge forward to lend her strength to the looming fray.

"Hold a moment, Aiko-chan," Beatrice urged, albeit too late to restrain her lover from her intended heroic action.

"Kasumi!" both Akane and Nabiki cried together, seeing their older sister alone now stood in the path between Ryoga and the still helpless Mousse.

"Ryoga-kun?" Kasumi asked mildly, displaying what was unusual (calm even for her) when faced with the angry berserker, "What has happened to you, my little brother?"

"Don't little-brother me, you tramp!" Ryoga snapped, his eyes blazing with crimson fire as he started to advance on her, "Defy me and you above all will suffer!"

"Oh no you don't!" Alison declared, only to receive a backward knuckle-strike to the chin that caught her off guard and sent her tumbling backwards.

"Aiko!" Beatrice cried out in dismay as the powerful blow send even the demi-  
Kryptonian sprawling.

"This is nuts!" Ranma declared while gesturing with his right hand, "Take him down, but don't hurt him, Karina!"

The gust of wind that signified the emergence of the Air elemental shot from the Tendo house into the yard and immediately swept around to contain and restrain the rampaging Ryoga. For a moment a mini-cyclone reigned within the yard, capturing the youth and lifting him off of his feet so that he had no leverage from which to use his martial arts skills. But then Ryoga reacted with surprising speed of his own and brought both of his hands together, causing a shattering boom to fill the air and a huge vacuum surge to disrupt the flow of the winds, sending Karina tumbling backwards up against a tree, where her ethereal body momentarily was disrupted.

"And now for you, Bitch!" Ryoga snarled as he rounded back upon Kasumi, only to dodge instinctively as Keiko performed a handspring kick that nearly connected with the side of his head. Instead he moved again with greater speed than expected and snagged that leg, whipping Keiko around and hurtling her into a charging Tatewaki, which in turn sent both of them sprawling.

"Unreal," Ukyo declared, "I've never seen Ryo-kun fight like that, ever."

"It like he possessed by demon," Shampoo marveled.

"My turn," Perfume declared as she started to surge forward, only to see the matter get resolved before she could move three feet as Ryoga finally did attack Kasumi, only to be met by a speed, coordination and timing that vastly exceeded his own estimations.

To all eyes it appeared as though Kasumi merely stepped to one side and moved around behind Ryoga, then reached out with a hand to lightly touch him on the neck. The results, however, were quite startling as the young man sank to his knees and landed face-first in the dirt where Kasumi had formerly been standing, and like that the fight was taken out of him. He lay there as still as a corpse for several minutes while Akane and the others hurried to his side in order to check upon his condition.

"What the heck got into him?" Akane asked in distress as she knelt down to cradle her husband in her lap, "It's like he turned into somebody other than the man I married!"

"Karina...are you all right?" Ranma asked as he reached the misty form of his elemental servant, who even then was working to pull herself back together.

"Oh fine...if you know what it feels like to get sucked through a tube and mashed through a cheese grater," she complained bitterly before resuming a human-like appearance.

In his mind Ranma heard the voice of Sobriel say, "Should have let me take him, Master...I could have dealt with his vacuum attacks."

"Make a mental not of that for later," Ranma said before turning to offer a hand to his other friend, Tatewaki, "You okay, Tachi?"

"I will live," the Kendoist groaned softly, accepting Kodachi's own offer of support as his younger sister came to offer what she could to him in the way of assistance.

"What prompted Ryoga-kun to become such a raging berserker," Kodachi asked as she turned from her brother to a limping Keiko, "And you, my Sweet...are you injured?"

"A bit battered and bruised, but otherwise I've felt worse," Keiko shrugged, "And what did happen to Ryoga-kun back there? The way he was shouting out obscenities and lashing out at everyone who got near him..."

"Look!" said a battered, bruised and bleeding Lenore as she leaned on Chloe with one arm and pointed at Ryoga with the other hand.

All eyes turned to stare in dismay as something pulled itself out from the side of Ryoga's head, emerging from his left ear and taking the form of a six-inch long, six-limbed, winged and yet vaguely humanoid figure.

"What the hell...?" Nabiki asked, sensing her words were more than slightly prophetic.

"Curses!" a tiny voice declared, "But you've not seen the last of me!" and then it took off, beating its tiny wings at hummingbird speeds and darting off like a shot...

Only to be snatched out of the air by an ethereal hand that gripped it tightly.

"Going somewhere?" asked the ethereal Kiima.

"Where did you come from?" asked a startled Alison, who had by now fully recovered with some assistance by Beatrice.

"You are kidding, right?" Kiima replied while examining the miniature creature that was struggling hard against her normally intangible grip, "All that noise you were making was more than enough to wake the dead, and I believe that this is the cause for your friend's strange behavior."

"What is that thing?" Ukyo asked, wrinkling her noise in disgust.

"My guess is a Dark Faerie, or servant elemental," Kiima remarked while examining the ugly looking creature, then she tightened her grip and there was a small popping sound, at which point she released it and let it fall into a jar that she had produced from seeming no where, stopping the top and sealing its motionless form inside a fitting prison.

"I've read about those," Perfume remarked, "They're mentioned in one of great-  
grandmother's scrolls, and I've heard grandmother remark that they're often created by evil mages to do minor tasks such as deliver wicked pranks and evil curses to unsuspecting mortals."

"Oh my," Kasumi said as she moved forward to examine the thing in the glass bottle, "Who could have sent such a thing, and why was it inside Ryoga-kun's head making him do such terrible things?"

"Who knows," Nabiki frowned, "But I think I do know of someone who can help us get to the bottom of this."

"Great-grandmother, or grandmother?" Shampoo asked of her Airen.

"I think we can avoid reliance on the Amazons for the moment," Nabiki said, giving Ranma an arched look before adding, "After all, don't want to be owing anyone favors that have to be paid back later. I was thinking more about our resident dabbler in the arts, Gosunkuji."

Ryonami all but seemed to materialize right then and there as she said, "You want me to take this to Gos-kun, Sempai? I'll be happy to volunteer."

"Thanks, Ryo-chan," Nabiki smiled as she took the jar from Kiima's ghostly hand and passed it along to her faithful assistant, "I always knew I could count on you, especially when it comes to Gosunkuji. Be sure not to open this or let yourself get too distracted on the way over to his place, and I'll expect a full report from both of you within a couple of hours at the very most."

"Right, Chief," Ryonami bowed as she took the jar in hand and headed out towards the gates of the compound.

"Think that was a good idea?" Ranma asked, "Leaving a dangerous bug like that with Ryo-chan?"

"I'm confident enough in her resourcefulness to know she'll obey me to the letter," Nabiki replied, turning back to a softly moaning Ryoga, "Besides, I didn't like the look of that thing, and no way do I want it anywhere near to Ryo-kun when he comes too. He'll have enough to live down as it is...which reminds me, how is Mousse doing?"

"Nothing broken," Perfume remarked as she examined the young man who once was the bane of her existence, "He's pretty badly shaken up, but I think he'll recover and be with us in a bit."

"Must have hit head on way into yard," Shampoo added as she performed her own cursory examination, "That why he no take any real damage."

"How are you doing, Lenore-san?" Kasumi asked as she turned to regard her vampiric companion.

"Fine, my lady," Lenore assured her avowed Mistress, "I may not heal as fast as Chloe in the daylight, but the cuts I took were...mostly superficial."

"Just remember to drink a pint of blood and get plenty of rest," Keiko quipped, "Don't want you to get any ideas about snacking on the rest of us, so just use the supply in the fridge."

"Hey, I know my place, all right all ready," Lenore complained, "Besides, I only bite enemies, or girlfriends when they ask nicely."

"Is that a request?" Chloe asked brightly, "I could do with a bit of necking."

"What hit me?" Ryoga was just then murmuring as he blinked his eyes and looked around, "When did we get here? I don't remember us arriving home...Akane-chan? What's wrong? Have you been...crying?"

"Oh...Ryoga," Akane embraced him in relief, almost smothering the young man against her chest while saying, "You're back to normal, thank the kami..."

"Thank Kasumi you mean," Ranma glanced at his adoptive big sister, "She managed to take you out without hurting anyone, which was a pretty smooth technique, Oneechan."

"Thank you, Ranma-kun," Kasumi replied, "It was one of Tofu-Sensei's, and I am glad to see it did the trick so that Ryoga-kun was not badly injured."

"Just the same," Ukyo remarked, "I think you'd better lie down for a bit, Sugar, and try to get your strength back so we can tell you exactly what did happen."

"Assuming someone could explain it all to us," Perfume noted as a side-bar.

"I have a theory," Beatrice raised a finger, only to have Alison roll her eyes and snort, "What else is new?"

"Silver-hair have theory every time there is shift in weather," Shampoo noted in agreement with the redhead.

"Down you two," Nabiki chided, "Go ahead Bei...what are you thinking?"

"I am not as knowledgeable in the esoteric arts as I am in most contemporary branches of the sciences," Beatrice began, "But I have heard accounts that say certain forms of elemental spirit can have adverse effects upon the psychology of overly sensitive or mentally receptive individuals, and sometimes cause radical alterations in their behavior, much as with demonic possession."

"Hey, don't blame it on us," Karina snapped, "Most elementals are relatively harmless, but...that thing was unnatural...it gave me the woolies just being near it."

"My point precisely," Beatrice noted, "It clearly was not a thing of nature, but it was a thought elemental in nature and behavior, the sort generated by an intensely evil mind that warped the fabric of nature in its creation, and such an entity is negatively charged, and so it tends to be attracted to a brooding mind of a similar temperament, such as one who is given to fits of despair and manic depression."

"In other words Ryoga," Tatewaki fathomed, "Such a foul entity is fiendish indeed to play upon his open mind and take advantage of a moment's weakness in which to strike by altering his mood to reflect a much darker aspect."

"You ask me it just took advantage of the fact that there's so much open space between his earlobes," Perfume sniffed, "Which means it could just as easily have affected Mousse here."

"Hey!" Akane protested.

"Um...excuse me?" Ryoga asked in evident confusion, "But...what is everyone talking about? Did I do something bad?"

"We'll explain it to you later, Ryo-kun," Nabiki urged, "But for now, people, I think we'd better take this back into the house and sort out the rest of this business later, such as where Ryo-kun might have picked up that hitchhiker in his travels."

"Good idea, Airen," Shampoo said as she got back to her feet with Perfume's assistance, "Somebody carry Mousse and set him on mat inside dojo. Meanwhile this one go use phone to contact great-grandmother."

"But..." Nabiki started to protest.

"Is best to consult elders when faced with mysterious happenings, Airen," Shampoo said pointedly, thus stifling further protest, "No wise trusting to amateur like skinny boy with bad complexion."

"Now that you mention it," Kasumi turned to Lenore and said, "Would you and your friends be kind enough to see that Ryonami-san arrives save and sound without interruption of her visit to Gosunkuji-san's place?"

"Huh?" Lenore turned to the older Tendo sister and said, "Is something the matter, my lady?"

"I don't really know," Kasumi replied, "But that strange creature invading Ryoga-kun's mind has me worried for some odd reason. I trust that you will see to it that it does not escape to cause us more problems."

Lenore straightened up from beneath her hooded cape and bowed, "I will do as you instruct me, my lady, and see that no harm befalls the friend of your family."

"Yeah," Chloe agreed, "And if that rotten bug gets loose then we'll be sure to squish it."

"Subdue it, my canine friend," Kiima corrected, "And we had best hurry to catch up with the girl as I sense the approach of sunset soon, where things of the night-other than we three-might bestir to cause our friend's friend all manner of trouble."

"I know that you will be equal to the task," Kasumi said before kneeling down and gathering Mousse up into her arms with ridiculous ease that raised more than a few eyebrows.

"Hey...I'm not that bad off," the Chinese man started to protest.

"Let me be the judge of that, Brother-in-law," Kasumi gently chided while carrying the young man towards the main house, "Kurumi-chan needs you healthy and well, and I am studying to be a doctor."

"Here friend Ryoga," Tatewaki offered his shoulder to the other young man, "Let me attend to your needs as you are not yet fully recovered."

"I can manage by myself," Ryoga insisted as he tried to push his way back to his feet, only to loose his balance as Akane moved to catch him, prompting him to say, "Ah...maybe not..."

"This way to the dojo," Tatewaki urged, "Me thinks the house itself will seem a bit crowded at the moment..."

"You do that," Shampoo agreed as she left Nabiki's side and went towards the house, "Shampoo call on great-grandmother."

"Ah...right," Nabiki reluctantly conceded while Akane followed after her own husband and headed towards the dojo,

"And while we're at it," Perfume turned to Ranma and with some reluctance said, "If you see grandmother, tell her what happened. She knows more about elementals than anybody else in the tribe, including the other Elders."

"Too bad we can't get a hold of that other old woman, that Lotion who helped us out the other day," Keiko mused, "Don't know what it is about her, but I'd feel a lot better knowing we had her on our side."

"Too many cooks spoil the brew, my Sweet," Kodachi patted her girlfriend on the arm then said, "Now, if it is all the same to the rest of you, I feel the urge to sit down and rest my weary feet. This business about carrying the added weight of our child is extremely taxing, and I could use a spot of tea to sooth my nerves, especially if it is Ginseng."

"I'll brew it for you, and anyone else who would like some," Kasumi offered, calling back towards them as she appeared upon the back porch, "How odd...aside from Natsumi and Kurumi-chan there's no one else at home. Where are Aunt Nodoka and our fathers? One would think they would have noticed all of the noise that we were just now making."

"They went to fetch some herbs from the good doctor, and to soothe Soun-san's fragile nerves as he took the news of Kurumi-chan's pregnancy a bit more excessively than is his usual wont," Tatewaki informed her as he emerged briefly from the dojo, then added, "I expect his swift return within an hour or two, give or take a stop at the local brewery establishment to purchase a fresh round of saki."

"That's daddy for you," Nabiki rolled her eyes, "A real basket case when it comes to family planning."

"Now Airen," Shampoo gently chided as she too returned to the group, having completed her own assignment, "Is no fault of you father that he got to pieces like man when gifted by gods with blessings of grandchildren, but he do what he can where it counts. Is up to womans to be sure that family runs good house in order while mens do what mens do best, which is to keep womans happy, like Ranma. You know this too when you is man, big strong Kaneda..."

"Yeah, but I haven't been in a man's shoes for five months now," Nabiki replied, "Except for that one time in the other world, and that hardly counts, so...I guess that leaves Ranchan here to be the big, strong man of the house, eh husband?"

"Ah...right," Ranma said as he adjusted his collar and noticed the amorous looks turned his way by his four wives, to say nothing of the strong feelings in response to this that he could sense from his posse of elementals.

"Is too bad Kaneda no here," Shampoo cooed as she nuzzled Nabiki on the earlobe, "Shampoo like having Nabiki around full time, but sometimes miss her husband. Too bad no can have both ways..." she purred with sensuous effect that caused even the somewhat bloated-feeling Nabiki to blush with a rush of stirring interest.

"Gotta hand it to my cousin," Perfume softly chuckled while leaning closer to Ukyo, "She sure knows how to keep Nab-chan on a short leash."

"You're not so bad in that department yourself, Sugar," Ukyo cooed back, "But you know...the funny thing is even I'm starting to miss Kaneda. I don't mind having Nab-chan as she is, but with two guys around to stir up the action..."

By now Ranma was (somewhat) accustomed to the odd mood swings of the significant women in his life, and with careful practice had learned not to say anything that might provoke an unfortunate response from them, but...even as their thoughts turned to a lustful direction, he still had a nagging sense that something was not quite right with the Wa of their household. He was still disturbed by the sudden transformation and possession of Ryoga, and what on earth had caused him to come into contact with such a foul spirit...and why did he have this nagging since that they were being watched from concealment?

He glanced around but saw nothing that would either confirm or deny his suspicions, but then something else came to his attention, his latent parental instincts that prompted him to turn back towards the house and say, "Hey, where are the kids?"

That got everyone focusing their attention back to the important basics, and with a mildly distressed voice Shampoo declared, "Aiyaa...Lylac and others no here?"

"Where the heck did those three scamps get off to this time?" Ukyo complained, "Sugar?"

"I'll find them, no worries," Perfume assured her co-wife as she hurried off into the house with loping strides that promised to convey her to their current location swiftly.

"Beiko?" Alison asked in distress.

"Nothing to fear, Aiko-chan," Beatrice assured, "I have a location lock on Eileen's current whereabouts. She is upstairs in one of the bedrooms, and as she hardly ever goes anywhere without the company of the others..."

"Trust you, Bei-chan, to lo-jack even your own daughter," Keiko mused with a wry expression.

"Now my Pet," Kodachi softly chided, "You can hardly blame Beatrice for excessive parental concerns. The way things are in this world I should think we could all use a means of locating our children when they are beyond the immediate range of our vision."

"Especially when it comes to those three," Akane averred, "It's not just their safety I worry about when they're on the loose."

"I swear, you've gotta keep your eyes on those three every damned waking minute," Nabiki grumbled, "And it seems like they're always up to something."

"Welcome to the wonderful world of being a parent, Sugar," Ukyo chuckled, "But I don't blame you guys for being a little worried. Fragrance alone is such a handful, and that Lylac's a real vixen, just like her mommas."

"Hey," Nabiki scowled.

"On contrary," Shampoo insisted, "Lylac is always on very good behavior. Is no her fault if sometimes things get funny, then she always find way of making things work out for better."

"Just the same, I think we'd better go have a look at them and what they're up to this time," Ranma frowned, "I'd feel a lot better knowing stuff like that, and besides, I wanna see if Ryoga and Mousse are all right...and maybe even Natsume."

"Natsume?" Nabiki asked with a puzzled expression.

"Just a feeling I have," Ranma said as he took her and Ukyo by the arms and led the way towards the house, "Like trouble's about to touch us again at any minute."

"I really hate it when you get these feelings, Ranma," Akane groaned as she and the others moved to follow.

"Yeah sport," Keiko agreed, "You're practically turning into a human weather vane for problems on the horizon. Just once I wish you could predict us having a long calm spot..."

"Now my Pet," Kodachi cooed while taking the redheaded kickboxer by the arm, "Trouble adds the spice to our existence that might otherwise dull the edge of our battle senses were we to grow accustomed to long peace. Whatever is forming is looming to sweep upon us, I am certain that we will manage and persevere, just as we always have done when danger threatens our little Posse..."

As the family group split up, some moving towards the dojo, others towards the main house, none of them were privy to the presence of two figures perched atop a distant tree, the one them murmuring softly aloud, "And so it begins anew."

"Honestly father," murmured the figure to his immediate right, "Must you indulge that whimsical penchant for coy melodrama at a time such as this? Thou knowest what stakes are at play here."

"All too well, my dear," Anri replied, "But for now we can but play the role of observers and narrators for this play that we are about to see acted out. Our time is not yet at hand for more immediate intervention."

"It might help somewhat if we gave more in the way of hints and clues to the demine," his daughter dutifully pointed out, "I have far too long played the idle role of mere spectator to such tragedies, and with the stakes so high for the mortals of this region..."

"All things in their proper time and place, daughter," Anri said softly, turning to glance towards the side before adding, "And see? Two more of the principle players are about to make their own timely arrival."

"Wonderful," Thelendra murmured in soft irony, "All this already crowded pageant needs is the presence of a pair of minor villains."

"All so that the greater villainy might be exposed in the third act," Anri assured her, "Now hush, let us watch what transpires when two such malefactors are allowed to proceed by their own ill-considered devices..."

Unaware that her presence was being detected by yet another party, the demoness known as Morrigar chuckled softly from where she stood perched upon a nearby rooftop and said, "So, that's my long-lost nephew. Atsuko-chan wasn't exaggerating about him, he is quite a cutie, and the way he went off just now shows that he really does have great potential. I see a lot of bad stuff in that boy just waiting to break out..."

And-unaware that there was anyone else engaged in the same business of spying from a distance as him-a young man was commenting, "Whoah...that was a pretty sharp display. Whoever that one girl is she's got some pretty slick moves. Have to watch out for that one when I make my own move on the place, but the others don't look like they'll be too much trouble. Just as soon as the old fool shows up, that's when the fun really will get started..."

And so the stage was set for the opening acts to begin, and with the players assigned their roles and darker forces set to congeal upon the field of play, the curtain rose once again on the dramatic lives of the people of house Tendo-  
Saotome, and with only a few key individuals fully aware of where the final outcome would be headed. But as to whether that future would be for good or ill, this narrator will not attest, for the rest...is heralded in silence...

Continued.

Comments/Criticisms/Shakespearean Impresarios: shadowmane

I know that some of you are waiting for the action to begin, (and more than a few will be gnashing their teeth in complaint of the addition of so many bit-  
players to the cast) but be patient gentle reader, all will be stage-managed to avoid excessive confusion (my past history of failed attempts at same notwithstanding). By all means abide as the next chapter begins the roll towards total convergence in, "The Play's the Thing," or, "Conscience of the Vampire." Be there...

X

X

/pre 


	55. Chapter 55

preDnabiki139

Nabiki 1/2

"A Very Scary Thought"

by Jim Robert Bader

(Inspired by the works of Rumiko Takahashi Others,  
with concepts and characters created by fellow fanfic writers Wade Tritchler, DB Sommers, Nicole Manders, Andrew Greaves, Bill Guiroff and countless others, including "Buffy"  
creator Joss Whedon; with special thanks to my good pal Shiva for his editing and handling of this series.)

(Certain other characters and concepts are of my own innovation, including my interpretation of the Monster of Mary Shelly's novel, and various other guest stars appearing in this portion of the Nabiki 1/2 series...)

Chapter Fifty-Five.

Episode One-Hundred-Thirty-Nine

"Underworld and Overworld"

"I'm here, Frank, just as requested, so what's the job and why the sudden urgency for this assignment?"

Frank turned to regard the brash American girl who had just been admitted to his office, seeing a moderately tall and willowy young lady (she was at least thirty to his reckoning, yet somehow appeared to be much younger to casual inspection) with long strawberry gold locks that hung loosely about a face that was elfishly beautiful with large green eyes framed by high-set cheekbones and a narrow chin that was almost pointed. She was wearing a maroon-red tunic over black hose stockings with soft-soled shoes removed and set by the door as per the Japanese custom, and there was an odd purple-fringed feather dangling from an extension at one side of her hair, giving her a somewhat more exotic cast to match her quixotic features. On the whole she seemed almost like a teenaged rebel more than a highly trained and deadly field agent, let alone the policewoman disguise she used for normal posing in the regular nine-to-five existence of the mundanes.

It was appearances such as that, however, which were always the most deceiving.

"You're late," he grunted, more to buy himself time to frame his thoughts than to offer her genuine criticism.

"Had to see to it that your boys were fully appraised on the difficulties of their current assignment," Trudy said by way of explanation rather than apology, "There's some dangerous people out to get those young girls I was helping, and I wanted your agents to know what they might be going up against."

"More strays you brought home," Frank remarked, then sighed, "Par for the course in our line of business."

"So," Trudy said as she came over to his desk and casually sat down on the edge, giving him a coy look from over one shoulder, "What's got you so rattled that you'd ask Magnus to loan me to your department? Monsters really aren't my thing, for the most part. I mostly focus my energies with the human variety of monster, or didn't you read that up in my file briefings?"

"I know that you're one of Azrael's assassins," Frank said bluntly.

"Azrael's a personal friend of mine, and I am an assassin by training," Trudy replied, "But I work for myself mostly freelance, and I do favors for Delphi because we share a common interest."

"In other words you're a cowboy?" Frank asked while leaning back in his chair and giving her his full attention.

"Not a bounty-head if that's what you're thinking," Trudy corrected, "I don't take contracts and I don't kill for pay. I'm strictly a missionary, not a mercenary, and I have other ways of earning a paycheck."

"So what exactly is it that you do do?" Frank scowled slightly.

"I hunt vermin and exterminate parasites who prey upon others," Trudy explained, "As it says in the corrected version of the original Torah, 'Thou Shalt Not Suffer a POISONER to Live,' which is not a 'Witch' as in the standard American translated text. Witches have been slandered for years because of that Church-  
inverted misinterpretation. I go after the really bad people, the ones who poison society, the social chameleons who pretend to be one thing while hiding their inward corruption."

"Sounds like you'd have a ton of work in the modern age," Frank cynically noted.

"I'm not after the small fish, the common thieves and high-level vipers who infest the corporate and private worlds of government and big business," Trudy assured him, "I am strictly after the people who do the most harm to any civilization, the ones who are pushing this world towards the edge of total Amageddon, the real bad guys, the ones who have all the power to ruin the lives of others and who use that power without thought of the long-term consequences, either to themselves or to others."

"Sounds like the rationale of a typical vigilante," Frank noted with neither humor nor warmth in his tone or expression, "I've known more than a few types who describe themselves with the same resume of self-vindication."

"No offense to your vast experience on the subject, Frank," Trudy replied, "But you've never known anyone before like me. I'm not out to bring an end to all evil, corruption and injustice, just the parts that I can affect and make better. I have no intention of subverting the free will of the vast majority of people, who are at liberty to make as many mistakes as they want with their lives. I'm only after the opportunists who prey upon the naïve trust of others, the liars and deceivers who manipulate people into acting against their own best interests, those who preach noble intentions while practicing subversion and corruption."

"As you define those terms you mean," Frank pointedly noted.

"Not me," Trudy shook her head in soft denial, "I only do as the Power tells me to act, and it's the Power that decides who lives or dies. The Power guides my steps and tells me where to go, what to do and how to best rectify a given situation."

"The Power?" Frank asked with a frown.

"It has no real name, though it's been called a lot of things in different cultures and mythologies," Trudy replied, "I suppose you might call it 'divine will,' but in reality it's not a tool in the service of any one God or demiurge. The Power is the Spirit of Life itself, the Phoenix Force of existence. Call it the Force if you will, or the Mystical Will of the Cosmos, the force of creation and harmony that seeks to unify all things. The Power is life to me, and it gives me the strength I need to carry out my mission."

"And what exactly is this mission basically?" Frank wondered.

"Simply put, to prevent Armageddon and the possible extinction of life as we know it, or the end of civilization as we define the term," Trudy answered, "My calling is to find those agents of anarchy and disorder that are attempting to push this world to the brink of self-annihilation, and to stop them before they bring about a great disaster to end all other disasters. That's why I root out the poisoners who are behind a growing cancer, and by doing so I hope to liberate all of humankind so that ordinary people can live their own lives and choose their own destinies. The alternative, to do nothing, would be to allow things to progress as they are and watch anarchy prevail with the ensuing rise of a totalitarian world order."

"You sound pretty confident of your mission," Frank scowled, "But I've known a lot of guys who talked the same kind of spiel...so what makes you so different, other than your claim to have divine guidance controlling your actions?"

"That...would take a bit of an explanation," Trudy nodded her head and stood up off the desk, glancing around the room before saying, "You've read my file, of course."

"Memorized it," Frank replied, "Especially that business a few years ago when you claim to have met another version of yourself from an alternate dimension."

"Not claim, did meet her, Frank," Trudy said with total seriousness, "That's how I gained the powers and skills that I have...by absorbing them from her. She and I briefly shared minds and cohabited souls, and by osmosis I picked up the things that she takes for granted and integrated them into myself. She's the one who made me aware of the looming crisis on this world's horizon."

"Maybe you should explain it to me from the beginning," Frank urged, "In your own words, who is this character who claims to be another version of you in the future?"

"Maegan of Mandari?" Trudy replied with the arching of a crimson-gold eyebrow, "She's...almost like a character out of fantasy rather than science fiction, but she comes from a time when the earth is divided up into different regions, all of them competing for power and resources. She's a member of a highly trained warrior elite known as the Kurustani, and their roles are kind of like the Double-Os that MI-6 uses, combination job descriptions being both Intelligence and Extra-Legal Law Enforcement..."

"Extra-Legal?" Frank repeated, allowing his tone to convey both irony and skepticism.

"Beyond the pale of what is commonly thought of as police work," Trudy explained, "They not only investigate and solve crimes but are authorized to solve problems in the field by acting as Judge, Jury and Executioner on certain select bad guys. Understand that in their age the rules of international conduct have broken down completely, and it takes extraordinary measures to curb the activities of the bad guys, stuff that would take too long to process through the bureaucratic layers of an ordinary criminal justice system. Kurustani-or "Death Angels," if you will-perform sanctioned kills with the goal of protecting society and preserving social order against the type of rotten bastards who might normally slip through the cracks of the justice system, both domestically and beyond the borders of the various nations within their Alliance."

"That sounds like a pretty horrifying and perverse description of a police state," Frank stated with blunt disapproval.

"You would think so if they used ordinary means to determine guilt or innocence," Trudy defended, "But the Power makes them all but infallible. They literally cannot act against the best interests of ordinary people and the innocent. They can only react to the "bad vibes" of social predators, because the Power limits their choices strictly to those who pose the greatest danger to the harmony of society. The Power will not let them strike against an innocent person, nor act in any way that would compromise the free will and liberty of ordinary citizens. The Power can only react to punish evil, never to promote it, and so it's quite useless to a dictator like, say, Diervak Manhanon."

"Diervak who?" Frank puzzled.

"My arch nemesis, and the whole reason why I made contact with Maegan in the first place," Trudy explained, "He's a tyrant from the same era that she comes from, a techno-genius of the Doctor Doom variety who travels through time with as much ease as you could jet to Monte Carlo. He's obsessed with promoting a genetic model of human perfection, and he's not above using whatever means are at his disposal to create his vision of the Superman. I've been clashing with him off and on for a number of years now, but there's no easy resolution of our differences since our philosophies are diametrically opposed to one another, and I can't really sanction him since he has a destiny of his own to fulfill, and I'm not the one who ultimately kills him."

"I think I've read something about this guy," Frank scowled, "He kidnaps people and uses them in his experiments, right?"

"Certain types of individuals," Trudy explained, "The best and the brightest, those human beings who display the greatest genetic potential. He's trying to craft the perfect ideal human, a genetic warrior who can survive in nearly any hostile environment, one who is impervious to conventional weapons and who could breed like a rabbit so that he-or she-will be a progenitor of a whole new generation of super-humans."

Frank had a disturbing sense of impending ennui as he studied the lithe redhead before him, then very cautiously said, "And this guy...why doesn't he grab you since you come close to fitting his definition?"

"I didn't get where I am today just because of my ancestors, Frank," Trudy explained, "A few years ago I was just an ordinary girl studying engineering in her spare time while making a living as a topless dancer and call girl. I sold my body to make a living because my folks were too poor to afford to put me through college, and my grades in high school weren't good enough to get me a scholarship, though I did as best I could, given the cards life had dealt me up to that point."

"You were a hooker?" Frank murmured without the slightest change in his expression.

"Call girl," Trudy insisted, "And I always insisted my Johns use a condom. I did love the dancing part, and most customers were pretty decent around me, only a few jerks making it unpleasant while stuffing twenties down my G-string. I could give you quite a lap dance if you were interested, one guaranteed to put stiffness in your rod no matter how long it's been since you were dating," she added with a leer and a lilt to her voice that would have done justice to a Siren.

Frank shifted uncomfortably in his leather-upholstered chair and had to cough a bit to keep his voice from betraying itself before he blurted out, "But these days you call yourself a Cop."

"Seemed like the perfect cover guise when I changed professions," Trudy explained, "Delphi purged my records and helped me create a new identity as Inspector Trudy Wells, LAPD, and I already had connections within the department, so I made the Force my home and did my best to uphold normal procedures...at least on the surface."

"But all the time you're really an assassin," Frank insisted.

"Must we go on about that?" Trudy asked, "I prefer to think of myself as a surgeon excising a cancer, and it's not like I ever killed anyone who didn't give me a good excuse, or else I'd face much worse than a policy review board. LA is the center of a growing movement that needs squelching, one that would push America and the World to the brink if left untreated. My job is to keep things in line while punishing those bad-guys who step out of line and give me an excuse for a sanction."

"I'll be blunt about it," Frank said directly, "I don't feel comfortable about assassins, and times are when even Azrael can make my scalp itch. Cute rationalizations aside, you tend to leave a trail of bodies wherever you go, and the job I've got in mind calls more for finesse than lethal actions."

"Hey, despite what you've heard about me I'm no loose canon," Trudy assured, "I'm careful about who and when I kill, and I try not to attract too much attention to my activities for...obvious reasons. But make no mistake, I am one of the good guys...in fact I'm part of the reason why we've managed to skirt several major crisis points that could have turned out nasty over the past few years, not least of them the reason I met Maegan. It was an assassination attempt against the past incarnation of a major leader of her day that prompted her to time-travel back to our era."

"If I remember the case right, you were also one of those targeted for assassination," Frank duly noted.

"Because I'm Maegan's past incarnation," Trudy revealed, "The idea was to kill my body and capture my soul so that I'd never be able to migrate into her time. She's closely tied to the would-be assassinated leader whom I just mentioned, who in our day and age is an assistant chief prosecutor of the LA region known in our time by the name of Charlene McCall."

"But because you met this Maegan you started to change, to become more like her," Frank pointed out.

"Once, when she was captured by Manhanon, she sent her soul out of her body to use me in order to effect her rescue," Trudy replied, "And after we separated I knew almost everything that she does, including what she knows about the future."

"And that's why you're aiming to prevent it ever coming about?" Frank concluded.

"Well, I've made a pretty good start towards that end, but my work is a long way from completed," Trudy shrugged, "But from time to time the Power calls on me to travel abroad, so I take short vacations from work and visit the places where I'm called to be. That's how I wound up in Japan at this time, following a series of trails, leads and investigations. That's also how I found out that that uber-jerk, Ajo, was planning for Utsuse Miho and the girl named Mima Tokiko and her buddies...which bring us back to the point of why you want me for this job. The Power never acts without a purpose, and it's telling me now that I'm needed on the case that you've called me in to perform."

"I'm still deciding if you're what I need for this job," Frank said honestly, "It calls for a lot of risks, but it's also kind of a delicate matter, not something I feel good about turning over to a loose cannon."

"Hey, I can be the soul of discretion when I need to," Trudy tried to reassure him.

"That's not what I heard when I talked to your Captain," Frank informed her, "The way he tells it, he's always glad when you go on your vacations because it's the only time he gets any peace and quiet in his district. In fact, I understand he's always trying to find ways for you to take more vacations and extended leaves of absence..."

"He said that?" Trudy frowned, "And here I thought Captain Fortunov and me were making such progress in working together..."

"So tell me a little something more about this Power of yours," Frank insisted, "Is it really that effective a martial arts system?"

"I'll put it to you this way," Trudy explained, "You've heard of Sinanju, Mohobishu-Rry and Fist of the North Star?"

"Who hasn't?" Frank rumbled.

"Amateurs," Trudy sniffed, "They've got nothing on the Kurustani art of Ote Era, the Shaloe-Ahl system of Totally Integrated Fighting."

"That good?" Frank lifted a bushy eyebrow.

"It's more than just a deadly system of fighting," Trudy explained, "It's a total integration of mind and body into a single harmonious resonance that connects you with the Soul of All Creation. With this Power you become the next best thing to an invincible fighter, but only against those who stand for Chaos, Disharmony and Decay. It gives you insight into the Akashic layers of reality and allows you to instantly know the quality of an opponent's Chi so that you can sense whether they are good or bad, harmonious or disharmonious, a focus for good or a despoiler in the service of evil."

"So you know who's good or bad," Frank mused, "So be good for goodness sakes?"

"You'd better behave like that when I'm in town," Trudy winked, "Because the kind of presents I dish out gives business to the undertakers."

"So, you really think you can tell a lot about a guy when you first meet him?" Frank wondered.

"I can tell right off the bat if he's a straight shooter or a spy working for the opposition," Trudy answered, "No matter how hard they try to mask their inner corruption, the Power always knows the cunning manipulators and the patented liars. It's especially good when using on politicians."

"Sounds handy," Frank mused, "And when you meet a guy you think deserves sanction?"

"I don't really kill them," Trudy explained, "I extend the power towards them and it's their own evil that causes them to die. I'm the instrument of their destruction, of course, and I don't pretend that I'm guiltless or don't have a couple of swimming pools of blood on my hands, but I'm always satisfied that the people I kill are life-takers and destroyers. I kill the killers who prey on the weak, helpless and undeserving...but that's not all that I am. I do other things besides killing...and like I said before, I can't harm a fly or the hair on the head of a person who doesn't deserve killing."

"That's good to know," Frank mused before reaching out and removing a file from his desk drawer, then opening the folder to pull out a certain picture, "Tell me what you make of her just by looking."

Trudy leaned forward and then gave a reflexive wolf whistle, "Not too snazzy...a real cutie. Is she somebody close to you, you sly old dog you?"

"Huh?" Frank was suddenly off-guard, "What makes you say that?"

"Because I'm really good at reading body language and other subtle giveaway signs people aren't even aware that they're telegraphing," Trudy studied the picture then said, "Not bad...I have a really clear sense about this one. Not quite a feeling of total innocence, but more like a general sweetness, the kind of girl you can easily fall in love with."

"Like you for example?" Frank noted a bit sharply.

"Hey, I make no pretensions about it, I'm attracted to girls even more than guys, and I'm quite comfortable about it," Trudy informed him, "Being Bi comes in handy, and it lets me appreciate the occasional sweet young thing who comes under my wing and needs my protection."

"And you never think of taking advantage of them, regardless of temptation?" Frank noted with a wary unease in both tone and expression.

"I'll be honest and admit that I'd be tempted with her," Trudy explained, "But I've already got a live-in girlfriend, and I'd rather not do anything behind her back that she wouldn't approve, especially screw my own clients."

"Nice to know you've got some scruples," Frank said with just a bit more ease in his posture.

"Having scruples has nothing to do with it," Trudy informed him, "But if Carla ever found out about me cheating behind her back then she'd rip off my...ah...well, never mind. Let's just say that I have to work very hard to stay within her good graces."

"Oh," Frank murmured softly, deciding he very much did not want to pursue further inquiry on that particular subject.

"Hmmm...something about this girl..." Trudy leaned forward then picked up the photo and gave a startled expression, "It's an old photograph...she's recently undergone some changes. Big changes...very big changes...in both her life and her entire being..."

Despite himself Frank was impressed, "You can sense all that?"

"Psychometry is just one of the minor talents given me by the power," Trudy turned and looked sharply at Frank, "You have to let me have this assignment. I need to get close to this girl, and fast, or she could be in a lot of danger."

Frank lurched forward in his seat, "You're sure about that?"

"As sure as anything," Trudy replied, giving the picture another hard look before carefully setting it down and backing away from the desk, as though it were toxic, "She's important to the future...I can feel the Power all but screaming at me that she needs someone to guide and protect her."

"What else does it tell you?" Frank all but demanded, "Is somebody going to do harm to Kasumi?"

"Kasumi?" Trudy repeated the name before turning to look at him, "That's her name? Yeah...Misty fits her, she's like a mountain surrounded by clouds, or an angel wearing a mask of mundane reality to obscure her brilliance..." she paused and her expression lost some of its vacancy, then she turned and smiled at Frank before declaring, "You dog."

"What?" Frank blinked in surprise.

Trudy was grinning like a Cheshire cat, "You've got a thing for her. It's practically written all over you. You and this...goddess are meant to be together. It's practically like the red thread of fate has tied you together."

"I don't know what you're talking about," Frank said evasively.

"Like heck you don't," Trudy chuckled, "All right, relax, I won't put the moves on your girlfriend, but I am going to have to do something to keep her out of trouble, and trouble is just about everything I can see on her horizon. This definitely calls for a Kurustani...in fact, it's exactly the kind of case that the Black Legion was created for in the first place."

"Black Legion?" Frank dully repeated.

"That's what they're called in their own time, Death's Legionnaires," Trudy explained, "And that's why my own code name is Legionnaire. I'm kind of like a one-girl army corps, and I do my best work when I'm up against the long odds.

"Maybe so," Frank said, "But if you're taking this assignment, then I'm going to insist on you working with a partner."

"I already have a partner back home," Trudy replied, "And I work best alone. By the way, do you have some tea on hand? I've got a bit of a parched throat and I could use a shot of ginseng."

"Over there by the bar," Frank nodded towards the far end of his office, "And I insist this time, if you're going to Nerima, then you'll have to work with a partner."

"Fine, fine, sure, whatever," Trudy poured herself a mug of hot-brewed tea from an already heated decanter, "Just so they don't get in my way or try to interfere with my work. That's the whole trouble with partners...it takes a while to break them in and get them used to my methods."

"Not this lady," Frank replied, "I understand you two have worked together before. She even claims to hail from the same time as your Maegan, and she's relatively new to Delphi. I called her up shortly before you arrived in this office."

"So, you already knew I'd take the case but were just sounding me out to assess the level of havoc you think I'd bring to this assignment?" Trudy sniffed before sipping more tea, "And here I thought it'd be one of your people, like Talbain or that cute cat-lady..."

"No," Frank picked up another folder and opened it, "Not this time. I'm trying to keep things a bit more low profile, so I wanted someone human, and this lady goes by the name of Angelique d'Anjou."

All at once Trudy spat the mouthful of hot tea that she had been drinking, then covered her mouth and coughed a bit before whirling around and staring at Frank in disbelief before saying, "Angel?"

"Yeah," Frank said in mild surprise, "Is there a problem?"

"Ah...that all depends," Trudy said somewhat reluctantly as she dabbed her chin with her sleeve to clear up the droplets of tea that she had orally ejected, "You're sure you said d'Anjou and not Dupree? Because I've worked with both ladies in the past, and of the two of them I'd rather it be the latter than the former in this instance."

"How come?" Frank gave the redhead a mildly puzzled expression, "I've read the files on both Angeliques, and-aside from a superficial resemblance that they bear with one another-the differences between them are like night and day. In fact, that Dupree character used to be on the Darkstalkers Most Notorious list, and before she supposedly reformed was responsible for a number of heavy-duty curses on that family in Collinwood."

"Yeah, but that Angelique only dabbled in dark mystical stuff, and that mostly because she was obsessed about her old boyfriend," Trudy informed him, "The Angel I know is like nobody else you're ever likely to meet because she's part demi-goddess on her mother's side of the family, the daughter of Rhiannon, the Celtic earth-mother no less, and raised to be a Paladin of the Temuvarai order."

"That's the one," Frank said, glancing at the file before him and adding, "Some kind of holy roller type, but a Pagan, not a Christian, and she used to hold the rank of a full Commander in that future timeline that she and your counterpart both claimed to hail from."

"I know she got stuck in our time while pursuing some bad guys from the future," Trudy said, "But she's more like a blast from the past...Joan of Arc and a female version of Sir Lancelot all rolled into one, and she's deadly with that holy sword she likes to carry around wherever she travels...maybe even deadlier than me, which is saying a whole lot."

"Sounds like the perfect counterpart for you," Frank wryly noted, "I've even read in her files that she's heavily into other women."

"If that isn't the biggest understatement of the millennium," Trudy rolled her eyes, "I'm Bi, Frank, but she's a full-fledged carpet munching lesbian, but hardly what you'd call a diesel-dyke or a man hater. She's as virtuous as they come in most other respects, true blue and as good as her word and she'll defend the weak and the innocent to the death against the cruel and oppressive, yada-  
yada. The only one vice she has is that she's shamelessly promiscuous and has a charisma so high that hardly any girl could think to say no to her if she so much as smiles their way and suggests a private assignation."

"Are you kidding about that?" Frank hastily flipped through his files then said, "Funny...that's not mentioned in her file briefings..."

"Believe me," Trudy assured, "Spend five minutes around her and you'll know all about it. Just about everyone who meets her-guy or girl-falls under her spell unless they're just plain rotten or have a thing against attractive women. Guys do nothing for her sexually, and she always tries to be gentle in letting them down, but if you were to take the most self-avowed Heterosexual girl and stick her in a room with Angel, then I guarantee in fifteen minutes she'll be on the floor munching rug with her in a sixty-nine position. I'm telling you, she's simply phenomenal like that, and if I could bottle and sell whatever it is she's packing..."

"You mean to say she deliberately goes around seducing other women?" Frank said a bit sharply.

"Well, not always deliberately, no...but she hardly ever says no when she's propositioned," Trudy gave Frank a sharp look, "And you've just sent her in to look out for the very girl you were accusing me of wanting to seduce. What were you thinking?"

"Christ on a Crutch," Frank got out of his chair and grabbed his leather jacket off a hook in passing, "Follow me, and Shelley, prep the Monster."

"Already prepped and waiting for you, Boss," the feminine voice emanating from his desk responded.

"And try to find d'Anjou on her private link while you're at it," Frank growled while heading for his private elevator, Trudy hastily moving to keep up with the long strides of the giant entrepreneur.

"Maybe you ought to try giving your girlfriend a call to let her know we're swinging by while you're at it," the redhead suggested as the elevator doors hissed shut behind them.

"It ain't Kasumi alone I'm worried about," Frank replied, "Nerima's more like what you'd call a 'Target-Rich Zone' when it comes to comely babes with high-  
level libidos, which is another reason I'm relieved to hear that you ain't single."

"Really?" Trudy examined the towering man-monster's craggy profile, "You were that afraid that a girl with my heavy rep might go to town on that district?"

"The thought had crossed my mind," Frank admitted, "But if what you're telling me about d'Anjou's even half true then things are gonna be heating up in the prefecture, and there's no telling what that could mean to some long-standing commitments I got going with a certain family that I've got under my personal protection..."

"Hey, Ryonami-chan, wait up," Lenore said as she and her companions hustled to reach the side of the brown-haired teenager, "Don't want to be wandering alone by yourself while holding a minor demon like that in a spirit jar. You never know who might be attracted or take an interest."

"I will be all right, Lenore-san," Ryonami smiled as she greeted the hooded vampire while giving a friendly nod towards Chloe and Kiima, "I run errands like this for Sempai all of the time, and I'm capable enough to watch my own back."

"No offense to you, Ryo-san, but my lady thinks otherwise," Lenore informed her, "You may be competent enough for a human, but you're not equipped for some of the stuff that me and my crew handle on a regular basis."

"So Kasumi-san is worried about me," Ryonami mused, "Or maybe it's her sister she worries about. She and Sempai are very close these days, and since Kasumi-  
san is your Mistress..."

"My Goddess you mean," Lenore replied, "The first Vampire Goddess to appear in countless generations. You've no idea what that means to the various tribes who comprise the Blood Nation, Ryo-san. She's the best hope that we've had in ages of bringing peace and order to the legions of the night, and that's why she has to be served and protected, because not everybody loves peace or wants a universal pact of civil order."

"I can certainly see why that makes her so important," Ryonami mused, "But it's still hard to think of Kasumi-san that way. I'm afraid that I'm like most people in that I tend to think of her as a simple house-wife, even though she's not yet married. Just the fact that she's gone back to school to study to be a doctor by itself is pretty mind blowing."

"I like Kasumi," Chloe said brightly, "She smells so nice, and she's got this way of making everything feel good whenever she's around."

"Indeed," Kiima noted, "A far cry removed from the previous vampire goddess of legend, Ayesha."

"Gah, don't even mention her when I'm around!" Lenore shuddered, "I still get the woolies every time I think about how Lestat came close to screwing us all when he revived her a few years back. Talk about figures of myth and legend who oughta stay buried..."

"You know, it's very odd," Ryonami remarked, "But with all that's happened in our lives of late I still have difficulty thinking of you as one of the Undead. Aside from your mild aversion to sunlight you always have seemed like a very ordinary and pleasant kind of person."

"Hey, I'm average as far as things go," Lenore assured, "Different tribes have different rules governing their behavior, but a Loire vamp is basically still like any human being...just a bit different in some ways but quite common place in others. Sure I age real slow-like and I heal fast when I'm injured, so I'm practically immortal. I'm about five times as strong as you, I can move in an eye-blink when it's dark, and I can cling to walls, levitate to fly and the whole transformation bit. I only need a little bit of blood every day to stay healthy, so...yeah, I'm just like everybody else, I eat, sleep, take a piss and go about my life as best I'm able."

"But that's what seems so strange," Ryonami noted, "You live in a world full of shadow but can operate in the day and interact just like normal people."

"Hey, there's lots more vampires just like me in this world," Lenore insisted, "And we're not the kind of mindless brutes you see in the movies...at least mostly. We have to live and let live in order to pass among mortals undetected, but if we did kill indiscriminately then there's lots of people out there just itching to hunt us down and exterminate us without asking too many questions. Everybody knows about our vulnerabilities, so it ain't healthy to make waves because there's always gonna be thousands of you for every one of us. No way we could survive this long if we all behaved like Goya Vamps, who are more like the guys you see in the movies."

"But Goya vampires do not photograph all that easy," Kiima pointed out, "They are semi-ethereal, among the weakest of the tribes, and generally despised by other vampires."

"That's because they're always making trouble for everybody else," Chloe complained, "Weres have faced even worse discrimination even than vampires because people think we're just a bunch of rabid dogs spreading our virus whenever we bite people. The only Weres who behave like that are the recent converts, and that because they don't have the training to deal with the transformation...it tends to drive many of them crazy."

"But don't you see?" Ryonami asked, "That is why it seems so odd that you three are so normal in your behavior. Even you, Kiima-san, who cannot pass as ordinary like your friends because of your ghostly nature."

"I exist on a level of reality that is transitional, between the flesh and the etheric," Kiima replied, "But do see your point...we are hardly what mortals would expect us to be."

"Which is why I find myself so at ease around you," Ryonami said with a cheerful disposition, "I'm not afraid that you'll bite or rip me to pieces or scare me out of my wits, and I'm hardly the bravest person that I know either. Yet still it seems odd to think of you as a Ghost, Werewolf and Vampire...for all the differences that exist between us, you don't seem all that different from many of my classmates."

"Glad you feel that way," Lenore remarked, "Because I only look like a teenager. Sometimes I feel a whole lot older than that. I've been a vamp a lot longer than you've been a human and I've seen a lot of stuff in my time, but basically it all boils down to the fact that we're just people. Beyond that everything else is only semi-important."

"Yet semi still means a great deal to certain parties," Kiima mused while glancing at the spirit-jar held by Ryonami, "And that is what I find so troubling about this rogue elemental. A minor demon sending usually implies a dark force behind it, yet the way it was causing Hibiki-san to behave implies that it had strength enough even to overrule both of his Oni and Human natures."

"Yeah, good point that," Chloe sniffed, "Lost Boy's not exactly the most stable half-breed around, but he's usually pretty well behaved around his mate. But the things he was saying to Ape-Boy back there...it sounded kinda racist."

"Yeah, now that you mention it," Lenore frowned, "I've seen behavior like that before where ordinary folk suddenly develop these strange tendencies and rant a lot about how one group is superior to another. Lots of demons prey on the darker side of human nature that way in order to generate the kind of negative soul energy that they like to feed upon...a common term for creatures like that is to call them Psychic Vampires."

"How do such creatures differ from you then, Lenore-san?" Ryonami asked.

"Hey, it's just a term, it has nothing to do with real vampirism," Lenore protested, "Some creatures like to leach soul energy out of mortals since you've got such an abundance that you're not making use of most of the time, and so the term Vampire stuck even though it doesn't involve blood but negative life energy transference. Of course such creatures have to break down the normal psychic barriers that people use to protect themselves against random possession and what not, but people who get depressed a lot are easy targets for that sort of thing, and that's why Ryoga there was a perfect target."

"No fooling that," Chloe agreed, "Lost Boy could depress an affirmation group with his mood swings."

"So how exactly does a normal girl like me deal with these kinds of creatures?" Ryonami asked, indicating the still-dormant creature trapped inside the jar that she carried.

"A positive mindset for one thing," Lenore replied, "It's like with any stressful situation, you don't make yourself an easy target. Evil spirits are drawn to negativity, and positive life energy tends to repel them. It's the same principle as works with holy symbols like crosses...the more you charge them up with positive energy the more they tend to counteract negative spiritual imbalance."

"But crosses and crucifixes do not normally work upon you, Lenore-san," Ryonami pointed out.

"That's because those symbols don't have any real power by themselves, or else I'd never be able to cross a graveyard in the dead of the night," Lenore replied, "Besides, I was born to a Jewish family and the cross doesn't mean the same thing to me that it would to a Christian. To a Christian it's symbolic of sacrifice and redemption but me it's a symbol of hate, intolerance and oppression. To be perfectly honest I don't like Monotheism on the whole and Christianity in particular because the guys who get the most into that cult often tend to be borderline wackos,"

"Isn't that being a little harsh?" Ryonami asked, "I've known a few Christians at our school and they seem mostly very nice, even a bit harmless."

"Hey, try saying that after guys with crosses hunt down your ancestors and persecute them," Chloe shot back, "Sure the normal church going folk are pretty nice, but scratch the surface and you'll find a lot of scared little puppies ready to turn and bite you for whatever reason works them up this week."

"Christians always view themselves as the light of reason in the world," Kiima noted, "But it's the very unreasonable aspects of their faith that tends to give them such a potential for danger."

"But surely you're exaggerating the case," Ryonami insisted, "Not all Christians mean to harm you..."

"No, just the ones who are afraid of hellfire and damnation and think we're all instruments of Satan and his ilk," Lenore snorted, "As if! I've known a lot of posers in the demon worlds who pretend to be Satan just to cash in on the publicity, and it can be a real chick magnet for some types, but it's really all a crock of lies cooked up by the early Church founders. Satan is a Christian myth they invented to frighten children and converts into making huge donations, he was never a part of authentic Judaism. In the Torah Satan is just one of the angels, and his name means "Adversary," but he's not the enemy of Yaweh, because that would mean that God was less than absolute, and half of all creation wasn't under his jurisdiction."

"Dualism rather than Monotheism," Kiima noted, "Rival kingdoms in eternal opposition with no shades of gray in between the extreme poles."

"Hell of a way to live or view the world," Chloe sniffed again, "And because of this my people were squeezed out almost to the point of extinction."

"You see, Ryo-san, there is real evil in the world, and there are demons and devils," Lenore quietly insisted, "But creatures of the night aren't the cause of most of the evil in the world, and normal humans are quite capable of creating a good deal of evil on their own without our input."

"I think that I can see where you're coming from here," Ryonami said, "And obviously you don't like it when people point at you and call you demons or Satanic."

"Honestly, I've never even met the guy," Lenore replied, "The whole idea of all the devils and demons of the world uniting to form a single dark empire is pretty far-fetched to begin with. Believe me, the Demon realms are anything but well organized or hierarchical. They tend to be chaotic places where the normal rules of life are tossed into a cocked hat and shaken around a bit to see what falls out. Devils, on the other hand, they are structured and hierarchical, but they don't get along too well with Demons, being rival camps divided against each other under the reign of enemy supreme leaders. If a single entity were to somehow unite them all then...watch out! Then that really would spell trouble."

"How much trouble do you mean by that?" Lenore asked with interest.

"You remember that but fuss about the Rakshasa?" Lenore shuddered, "Well, that would be a walk in the park next to the kind of hell that could be unleashed on all of the various Light dimensions. A single unifying Demon or Devil could sweep away the heavens of their established order, and nobody would be safe from their rampages, not even those of us of the Blood Nation."

"Then you might see the rather curious spectacle of humans and vampires uniting against a common enemy," Kiima noted, "And all the legions of the night would come together to oppose the true tide of darkness."

"Hope it never comes to that, guys," Chloe averred, "Good thing not all demons are bad or devils are bad guys...just some who cause a lot of trouble when they try and break through to our plane of existence."

"You mean that there are good demons and devils?" Ryonami asked, intrigued at the possibility as she added, "I suppose there must be since Ryoga-san himself is half-Oni."

"Yeah, well...you'll find in time that there's a lot of traffic on both sides of the dimensional boundaries between Earth and the planes of Light and Darkness," Lenore replied, "And not all of it's from the Dark Planes...quite a few beings of Light and Faerie sometimes manage to cross over to the world of mortals, and even a few gods and demi-gods, some of whom are the stuff of legend, like Alison's mom for example. And then there are the divine emissaries who travel the world incognito doing the bidding of their Heavenly patrons..."

All at once their conversation ground to a halt as a peculiar high-pitched whine caused Chloe to pause and cock an ear in the direction towards which they had been headed, then Lenore perked her own acute hearing and listened while Ryonami and Kiima held silent, waiting to see what it was that had caught their companions' attention.

To their mutual surprise a silvery dot appeared upon the road, turning a corner and heading their way. A glistening white motor-cycle with silvery trim, driven by a white helmeted rider wearing an aluminum jumpsuit, sped up until it caught sight of the companions and slowed to a halt, turning a wheel about in a one-  
eighty-curve that brought the rider to a halt directly before them.

And then the rider lifted the visor of her helmet and spoke to them in highly accented Japanese, "Bonjour...Konichiwa. Is that you I espy, Lenore-san? Long time no witness...but very fine to meet with you again, ma amis. Both you and your charming companions."

"Hah?" Lenore gaped in disbelief then murmured out the name, "Angel?"

"Oho?" Chloe sniffed the air then said, "Oooh...it's smell-nice Paladin girl!"

"So it is," Kiima remarked, "And brings you to Japan, Temuvarai?"

"I am here upon a mission at the request of the good doctor Steinberg, ma cheri," the silver-clad biker woman replied, "I was instructed to make contact with you, and I have done so. But tell me please, Cheri...where do I go to find the Tendo dojo?"

"Ah...you're here to meet the Tendos?" Ryonami gasped, finding herself unaccountable stricken with awe at the gentle-mannered foreigner.

"Me oui," the biker replied, "And I have further instructions to find the school campus known as Furinkan later in the day, and to establish myself here as a temporary resident. But we will talk of this again later...for now my vehicle is in need of refueling. I shall seek you out again and we will talk at length of my mission."

"Mission?" Lenore repeated as the woman closed up her visor and started up her engine once again, turning the mighty titanium-colored motorcycle about and heading off towards the Furinkan Financial district.

There was a brief pause before Chloe murmured, "Well, that was sure brief enough for a tail-sniff."

"Holy Crow!" Lenore exclaimed, "That was Angelique d'Anjou!"

"Yes," Kiima murmured, "We did tend to notice."

"Who?" Ryonami asked, only just then aware of the breath that she had been holding when gazing at the stranger.

"Never mind," Lenore abruptly took Ryonami by the arm and steered her forward in the direction where they had formerly been heading, "You'll find out soon enough if she's serious about setting up camp in this district. I can't believe that Frank would send her of all people to us...talk about lighting a match over a powder-keg!"

"One might assume that Lord Steinberg has his reasons," Kiima noted.

"Yeah?" Lenore shot back, "And what makes you assume that? Far as I know he's never seen Angel at work in the field...we have, and that's all the reason I need to start saying a few prayers and consulting the nearest Rabbi."

"Why?" Ryonami asked, "She seemed nice enough, and I can't believe that she's a bad person."

"She's not bad...in fact, that's part of the problem," Lenore said with a nervousness in her expression that even her hood did not obscure, "She's too good for words, the best life has to offer, and if we're really, really lucky she'll somehow manage to control her appetites this time or else...there's gonna be real trouble in Nerima."

"Trouble?" Chloe sounded confused, "I thought Paladin-girl liked to solve trouble for other people, not cause them."

"Unfortunately she is something like a catalyst who causes certain things to be in motion by her very presence," Kiima replied, "And we all saw ample evidence of that during the last time we worked together..."

The four of them hurried off to cover the remaining few blocks that separated them from the Gosunkuji household, but as they were in a hurry they failed to take notice of a certain young girl wearing Furinkan school colors, a young girl who was clutching a hand to her breast and breathing hard with evident fear written plain in her expression.

"I don't believe it," she murmured to herself, "A watcher? No...felt more like one of the Guardians...but what is such a one doing in this district? Can she possibly be after me? I sure hope not! Somehow I must avoid her...or else my secret may be discovered."

Unknown to her a figure perched upon a nearby tree was studying the young girl and saying aloud, "Secret? How interesting. I wonder who she is...and why do I have this odd feeling that there's more to her than just another silly mortal...?"

Plots within plots were being hatched within Nerima, and greater forces continued to congeal within the province, all centered around the Tendo estate where things were about to get explosive...but for the details of that please stay tuned for another chapter...

Chapter Fifty-Five.

Episode One-Hundred-Forty

"Stone Cold Beautiful"

Two lovers walked in tandem side-by-side down the streets of the Furinkan district, heedless of any attention that they might draw to themselves as they held hands and made no secret of their mutual affection. Despite the conventions of modern society that valued discretion over public displays of such an ostentatious nature they walked boldly abroad with the love they felt radiating out in all directions. Theirs was not a romance that could be coddled, shamed or hidden from view, for they felt no inhibition in letting the world know of their feelings for one another, and so armored with this love they defied the people whom they encountered to deny that what they felt was true or any less legitimate for the mere fact that they both were of the same gender.

Needless to say, not everyone who saw them pass was so casually accepting of their chosen lifestyle, and some were even more than a bit resentful, taking their stern disapproval out on whatever likely target they could use to scapegoat for their own repressed disdain, for they dared not so openly give voice to their hostility save in veiled words shared with one another.

"Did you see that?" said a young girl standing behind the counter of the gas-  
station mini-mart where she worked, "That was Higashi Miki with Morisuto Honsu, the two most handsome and bishonen guys in our high school!"

"Talk about a waste," said her best friend on the other side of the counter, "Who knew they were into guys? And to think I had such a crush on him in middle school..."

"That explains why they've been spending so much time after school on the basketball court," Yorubi Tomiko complained, "Obviously it's been more than hoops they've been shooting baskets with together."

"It's getting so you can't tell whose what anymore," fumed Anabi Reiko as her eyes tracked the unlikely couple with jealousy evident in her green-eyed expression, "And we know who to blame for that, don't we?"

"Tendo Nabiki," Tomiko scowled, "Ever since she came back from China it's like somebody popped the cork off a bottle with an evil, perverted genie coming loose."

"You mean like that gnome of a grandfather who's always stealing underwear from our gym class?" Reiko grimaced, "Yeah, maybe it's his fault that the Tendos and Saotomes got such warped genetics. I mean...you see how that Ranma parades around with that harem of his everywhere? Like he's bragging to the world of how much of a stud he is. And then there's Akane..."

"Yeah, no fooling," Tomiko winced, "She's gone from man-hating lesbo to outright sex-swapping nympho, her and that Kodachi creep...you know, the Principle's daughter? The one with the funny laugh?"

"Oh yeah," Reiko shuddered, "That one gives me the creeps, and you see that half-American girl who follows her around like a faithful puppy?"

"Oh yeah, talk about disgusting," Tomiko averred, "You'd never catch me acting like that, especially not with another girl."

"I hear you there," Reiko agreed, "The whole thought of even touching another girl like that just gives me such a rash. I just don't understand those girls who think it's sweet and romantic...it's perverted!"

"Yeah, don't they even have any shame about doing it in the open?" Tomiko wrinkled her nose in distaste, "Kissing and fondling and patting each other's butts, and nobody so much as dares to raise a fuss because they're too scared of Tendo Nabiki."

"More like those other girls she calls her wives you mean," Reiko winced, "Especially that Chinese girl, the one with the axes?"

"Oh yeah," Tomiko growled, "Did you know she's got really sharp hearing? She overheard a bunch of girls saying something about that tomboy she calls her Airen so you know what she did about it? Threw one of her axes at them, cut off their uniforms and forced them to run away in nothing but their underwear!"

"I heard about that," Reiko noted, "Small wonder nobody wants to cross her or the other perverts in that group they call the Tendo Posse. I tell you, there ought to be a law against them..."

"There are laws on the books, but nobody's enforcing them, and that's the whole problem!" Tomiko angrily declared, "Everybody's too afraid of what Nabiki or the others might do, and even when she's six months pregnant after having sex out of wedlock she can still get away with it. Even Hinako-sensei hasn't been able to rein her in and make her behave like a proper student."

"And look what she's doing to morale at our high school," Reiko said with some heat, "Everybody thinks it's so cool to be her, and more than a few girls have taken to the idea and are dating each other! And it's giving us a really bad reputation to our school be the entire district!"

"Yeah, now everybody thinks we're a bunch of screaming lesbian nymphos," Tomiko complained, "Try getting a date with a cute boy when you've got that kind of reputation."

"Somebody ought to do something to take that Nabiki and her crew down a peg or two," Reiko huffed, "But one thing's for certain, it's not gonna be Ranma."

"Yeah," Tomiko agreed, "Ever since he met up with Nabiki he's been worse than a puppy around her, lets her do all his thinking and everything...what a wimp."

"No fooling," Reiko agreed, "I mean, what ever happened to traditional values, like showing some modesty and dating boys instead of other women?"

"You won't catch me making a fool of myself like that over another girl," Tomiko assured, only to pause and blink before saying, "Do you hear something?"

"You mean like a high-pitched whine or...something?" Reiko replied before both girls turned their heads, hearing the approach of a machine and staring out the window of the mini-shop to witness...something very unexpected.

At first glance what they saw was a silvery motorcycle ridden by a mysterious figure in an aluminum jumpsuit, and it was pulling up alongside one of the pumps before the rider killed the engine, then lowered the kickstand and brought her machine into the park position. All motions were perfectly well timed and coordinated with a smoothness and ease that built a peculiar sense of dramatic anticipation in both of the young girls gazing raptly through the window.

The rider then paused and slowly removed the helmet, at which point a literal shower of platinum-gold locks spilled forth about slender shoulders, and then a face was revealed, one so perfectly sculpted that it literally took one's breath away to behold. Though obviously gaijin she had the luster of a kami, and when her clear blue eyes turned to gaze back at the young girls it was as if she could peer into one's soul and find the center of one's being. It was an unnerving sensation, and yet oddly pleasant at the same time, for there was an aura of magnetism surrounding her that caused one to imagine a soft golden glow about her.

With easy, casual movements she dismounted her bike then strode sensuously forward with a long stride magnified by her stature, for she stood as tall as a man yet was in all ways quite obviously female. Her approach caused the two girls inside the mini-mart to draw sharp breath and quicken their pulse, for the nearer she came to one the more affected they were by her unnatural charisma, and certainly neither girl had ever gazed upon anyone so beautiful in their lives as what they beheld at that very moment.

Then all at once she was present within the store itself, and gazing down benevolently at Tomiko behind her counter. In a voice softly melodious (and quite heavily accented) she said pleasantly, while extending a plastic card, "Ohiyo Mademoiselle. I wish to purchase some petroleum for conveyance. Do you accept this as credit, or do you prefer coin and paper money for your transactions?"

"Hah?" Tomiko asked in response, suddenly quite shy and unable to believe that this goddess was addressing her in such a casual manner.

"Ah...please excuse my friend," Reiko all but gushed with girlish delight, "I'm sure that she means to say that your credit is good with us. How much would you care to purchase, and do you require anything else? Perhaps some snacks and-or refreshments?"

"Thank you, but non," the golden-haired beauty replied, giving both young girls a pleasant study that made Reiko feel weak in the knees while Tomiko felt her cheeks burn brightly, "I am quite adequately provisioned, but thank you for your kindness. However...I am new to this region and could do with a few directions. Can either of you young ladies direct me to the Furinkan High School grounds? I would be ever so...appreciative."

Neither young girl could miss picking up on the hinted suggestion, but for once they felt no unease or resentment of the fact that an older woman was eyeing them with such plain speculative interest. The truth of the matter was that they were eyeing her back, and with no thought at all to their previously stated opposition to same-sex relationships.

"Ah..."Tomiko tried to think of something intelligent to say but her mind had mysteriously turned to mush all of a sudden for some strange reason.

"Are you enrolling there as a student?" Reiko asked a bit too hopefully, even sensing somehow that this beautiful girl before her was at least a few years older than herself and Tomiko.

"Ah, non," the blonde gently replied, "I am transferring there as the new school head nurse. Do look me up sometime if you wish to have a...personal examination."

Tomiko just gawked and then wordlessly pointed in the direction of the campus, leaving it to Reiko to enthusiastically gush out the actual directions to the gentle-mannered blonde, who smiled at both girls and gave them each a look that made them melt with adoration.

"I thank you both, mes amis, you have been most helpful," the blonde nodded to both girls then gave them a lilting glance before suavely turning about and exiting the mini-mart, hips swaying with the ease of a well trained dancer.

Both young girls followed her every move with rapt attention as Angelique d'Anjou returned to her motorcycle and set about the task of refueling its depleted tank, but neither young woman was near enough to hear a disembodied voice call out to her in French, "[Aren't they a bit young even for you, Angel?]"

"[There is a saying in my time, Adonai,]" Angelique cheerfully replied, "[Old enough to wed, old enough to bed, and by the standards of my home country they would be considered ripe fruit ready to be plucked. But never fear, I am aware of the impropriety of approaching them now that I am to become part of the faculty of their school campus.]"

"[That never stopped you before, I have noticed,]" the motorcycle cynically noted.

"[Oh hush,]" Angelique chided as she topped off the tank then reset the nozzle in its cradle at the pump, "[Am I to be faulted that God, in her infinite wisdom, endowed tender young things with an ample need to experiment and find their true identities? I merely help young girls like that along in their voyage of self-discovery, and it is not as if I take something from them that cannot be replaced.]"

"[Other than their innocence and their hearts, which you casually break?]" the voice of Adonai pointed out rather wryly."

"[Ignorance is not innocence, ma amis,]" Angelique primly insisted, "[And I always let them down gently...when I am able. But come...we must find this place where I am to seek gainful employment so that I can carry through with my mission. I sense a great need for my services in this land, and a dutiful knight always obeys the calling of her heart in the service of her profession.]"

"[And the fact that you're like to find other young peccadilloes, like those two tomatoes, doesn't hurt the issue very much, does it?]" the motorcycle auto-  
cerebral control unit replied with a hint of amused condescension.

"[But of course,]" Angelique replied with a smile as she slung a leg over the seat of her vehicle and started up the engine, "[Such things go without the need for being overstated.]"

As she drove off in the direction of the Furinkan school campus Tomiko and Reiko co-jointly heaved a sigh, then the former said, "She's so perfect..."

"Flawless skin...not a blemish or a pimple," Reiko nodded.

"I wonder what her secret is?" Tomiko mused, "I'm suddenly feeling like I need a trip to the nurses office."

"Me too," Reiko agreed, "There's a feeling in my tummy, and for some strange reason I think I'm developing a rash in my panties...they're itching something fierce..."

"Probably something you picked up from that football (soccer) player you were dating," Tomiko absently reflected.

"Hey, we never did anything more than some casual fooling around," Reiko insisted, "I've been saving myself for the real thing...and I think it just walked into my life..."

"I wonder if she's seeing somebody?" Tomiko sighed, then added, "I sure hope that she's single."

"Me too," Reiko agreed, but then both girls gained startled looks and turned to one another with mutually disturbed expressions.

"What the heck are we talking about?" Tomiko asked.

"Yeah...she's probably in college or something," Reiko agreed, "And it's not like she's our type or nothing like that."

"Yeah...right," Tomiko hastily averred, and then by mutual consent both girls decided to drop the subject, even as their minds still burned with the image of the blonde haired beauty, with a half-conscious mental note being registered in both of their minds that they were long overdue for a clinical check-up...

"Stop fussing over me, Shampoo," Mousse growled in complaint, "I said that I was all right, and you don't honestly think being sucker-punched by Hibiki is going to keep me down for very long. Besides, I've been hit in my blindside more times than I can count, especially when you were the one doing the hitting."

"Silly Mousse," Shampoo said with clinical detachment as she felt along the sides of the young man's rib-cage then stated, "You is cracked in two places. Better you no try behaving like he-man for a while, especially since you Airen is upstairs and cannot see you be so macho."

"I've taken worse," Mousse scornfully insisted, "And for the last time, Hibiki, stop apologizing! We all know you weren't the one at fault here, even if you did say some pretty nasty cracks against my foreign status."

"Honestly, Mousse, I have no idea where that came from," Ryoga said with manifest contriteness, "I just seemed to blank out for no reason, and the next thing I know I'm laying on my back in the garden with Kasumi and Akane standing above me."

"We all get the point, Ryo-chan," Akane assured him, "It wasn't you doing and saying those awful things, it was that...ah...creature that made you say them."

"Doctor Tofu," Kasumi said as she turned to their family physician (and grateful that she could actually look him in the eyes without him behaving like a silly), "Do you have any idea how Ryoga-kun came to be possessed by that dark elemental?"

"Hard to say, really, knowing how Ryoga-san tends to wander around in all sorts of interesting places," Tofu noted, "He could have picked one up without knowing it during his most recent travels, and it would burrow deep and conceal itself inside him until just the right moment when it might take advantage of a lapse in his attention. I understand that he and Ranma-san were very upset when they first got the news about Kurumi, so that might have been the trigger that gave the dark elemental the opening it needed."

"I always knew that temper of yours was going to get you into trouble some day, Bro," Ranma quipped to his half-brother.

"Shut up, Ranma," Ryoga reflexively snapped, then paused to put a hand over his face and say, "Mom was right...I really should watch my temper..."

"Speaking of your mother," Akane said brightly, "When will I finally get to meet her? We've been married over a third of a year and it seems like we never visit your house or find out what the rest of your family is up to. You know practically everything that there is to know about me but I still know very little about your background, husband."

"Ah...well..." Ryoga said sheepishly, "My family...gets around a lot..."

"Yeah, so we gathered," Ranma mused, "They probably all get lost the same way you do."

"Shut up," Ryoga snapped without real passion, "It's a family curse, all right? It's not like it's our fault that we have problems telling one direction from another, and yes, my family does share the same basic traits...one reason why I haven't seen either my mother or little sister in close to two years, just before I went on the road chasing after Nab-chan...and...well..."

"Past history, Ryo-kun," Nabiki turned to the others, "Now if we're past this little crisis then I think it's way past time that I go upstairs and see how Kurumi-chan is doing."

"If it is all the same to you, Sister," Kasumi urged, "I can do that for the both of us, but you've had quite a strenuous enough day all ready, so I must insist that you sit down and rest your feet for a while. Your child does not deserve to have the strain that you are putting upon both of your bodies."

"I'm all right," Nabiki growled resentfully, "I don't need to be coddled, I won't break..."

"Nonetheless, Sugar," Ukyo urged, "You ought to do what your big sister says in this case, because we've all been on our feet for a while and could use a little break here."

"Is so," Shampoo agreed as she stood up and left Mousse's side to take Nabiki by the arm and say, "Airen need sit with Shampoo for a while, give babies chance to rest, then we go upstairs and visit sister Kurumi."

"Why is it you two keep ganging up on me whenever I want to do something?" Nabiki growled as she glanced from one co-wife to the other.

"That's the price you pay for having a family that loves and cares about you, Nab-chan," Perfume smiled, "Why don't we all retire to the dojo for a while? It's less crowded there than it is here in the house."

"I second the motion," Ranma affirmed, "This way, girls...let's give Mousse, Ryoga and Akane some breathing space. It's way too cramped for us to all be standing around fretting."

"So when did you get to be the boss around here?" Nabiki growled while obediently complying with her co-wives, who were each holding an arm while Perfume brought up the rear and played shotgun.

"That's funny," Perfume mused with a kittenish expression that earned a glance from Ukyo, "I didn't know the position was up for grabs. Are we holding an election?"

"I know who'd get my vote if we were running things like a democracy," Ukyo grinned back, "But in all fairness, Nab-chan, even you have to admit that it'd be nice to sit down and take it easy until your dad and Uncle Saotome get home, to say nothing of Aunt Nodoka, who's probably working overtime to keep those two from going pub-crazy."

"I know," Nabiki testily complained as she was led along towards the dojo, "But I can't help wondering what Kurumi and Natsume are up to. I'm sure oneechan can mange well enough for us both, but I'd still like to be up there offering my support to our adoptive sisters..."

In the world of under-aged youth there are many moments when one is poised to wonder at the things that grown-ups took for granted...such as why the sky was blue and the grass was green, and why some near-adults felt like abusing their bodies by ballooning up and producing new babies.

"{I give up,}" little Fragrance was murmuring to her older sister and their mutual best friend, "{Is this one going to be a cousin or another sister?}"

"{Beats me,}" Lylac said back, "{I have to count on my fingers and toes every time I try and work out these relationships. I guess we'll just have to call her another playmate...if it's a girl, that is, and not a couple of boys like two of our mommas are carrying. Thank somebody that at least one mom is sensible enough to be giving us a little sister.}"

"{Definitely a cousin I should think,}" Eileen decided, "{On both sides of the family tree, though on your Tendo half I would say she was semi-adopted, possibly a second cousin by way of your late Aunt Mariko.}"

"{I still don't get it,}" Fragrance admitted, "{Why are our folks going to all this trouble giving us new peers to play with? I'd rather have a pony.}"

"{Who knows with grown-ups?}" Lylac shrugged, "{But the funny thing with Aunt Kurumi is she doesn't look too happy about being a momma...}"

The three young girls peering in through the slit of the door were listening in as Natsume spoke softly to Kurumi, who was presently laying out on Akane's bed, pensively insisting she was all right despite the evident concerns of her big sister. Natsume was gently stroking the hair of the younger girl and attempted to sound reassuring, but it was plain enough how distressed she was, and her mood was affecting Kurumi in ways that only exaggerated the problem, not that Natsume was feeling objective enough to notice.

"I'm telling you I feel perfectly fine, Natsume-chan," Kurumi insisted, "I'm not a baby..." a comment that fairly incensed the three girls listening in from concealment.

"You've always been one to me," Natsume said with great affection, "Even when we had no one else to rely upon but each other you were always first and foremost in my thoughts. That is why I insist that you not put more strain on yourself and risk passing out on us again...you had me so worried..."

"I just need a little food and I'll be all right," Kurumi stubbornly insisted, thrusting out her lower chin and sulking, "And I want to talk to Mousse-chan. He ought to be the one here...and what was all that commotion a while ago in the garden?"

"Who knows?" Natsume replied, "The way things happen around here it seems a slow day when a fight doesn't start up over something or the other. After a while you just tend to filter it out as backroom noise, only important when property is being damaged."

"Could you at least go downstairs and see if Mousse is still around?" Kurumi asked with evident concern in her expression, "He tends to sulk a lot when he's being moody, and I'm sure finding out about...my condition has upset him pretty awful."

"You may be assured that I will be having a conversation on this with your husband," Natsume said firmly, "But try to rest for now, and we'll discuss how to best adjust your training periods so as not to put too much more strain on you or the baby. When great-grandmother Cologne comes by I am sure that she will give you the same advice as I have..."

"Do we have to involve Baba on this?" Kurumi winced, "You know what a busy-body she can be, and she's got this way of making you agree to do things her way..."

"Which makes her ideal as both a personal trainer and an elder," Natsume concluded firmly, standing up off the bed and giving her sister her best reassuring smile (which was far too brittle around the edges to be legitimately reassuring) before saying, "I will check back in a bit, once I have established the proper diet for you, and I will bring food, so don't drool all over Akane's bed until I return, understood?"

"You always act like you're my mother as well as big sister," Kurumi sulked, then paused before adding, "Oneechan?"

"Yes, Kurumi-chan?" Natsume asked, halfway turned around but promptly giving her sister her undivided attention.

"Do you think...that you and Tatewaki-san...might be going through this when you get married?"

"Ah..." all at once the accumulated nervousness building up within Natsume came flowing to the surface, and she found her face was red with heat as she contemplated the actual night of passion that would follow on their honeymoon, then she tried to envision herself with a swollen belly like those possessed by two of her adopted sisters...and her mind went into immediate meltdown. It was all that she could manage to do not to babble like an idiot as she responded, "Um...well...I am sure that...Tachi-chan and I will cross that bridge when we arrive there..."

"What are you three little sneaks doing eavesdropping on your aunts?" a teasing voice inquired as Kasumi arrived at the door to the bedroom, then she gently knocked and said, "Imoutochan? Is it all right if I come in?"

"Oneechan?" Kurumi's face brightened considerably as she smiled and responded, "Sure...no problem."

Kasumi ease in through the door with a gracefulness that impressed even Natsume, and for a moment the two girls stood there contemplating one another, feelings of affection and close kinship conflicting with other emotions. Slayer and Vampire Goddess regarded each other with wary politeness, and then the moment passed and they were simply two young women who called one another sisters. The transitory few seconds when their conflicting natures had briefly arisen was passed and they dismissed the innate conflict of their positions with an ease borne from long months of constant practice. But still in the back of both their minds the thought remained that they now represented two very different spheres of influence, literally worlds apart without a bridge between them.

"Sister," Natsume said with a casual nod, "Is all well downstairs with our kin?"

"More or less," Kasumi replied, "Except for a brief altercation between Mousse and Ryoga, and I'm afraid they both got a bit roughed up, though they were feeling better when I left them."

"Mousse-chan was hurt?" Kurumi sat up in her bed with alarm, only to stifle the impulse when Natsume turned a stern look in her direction.

"He will be along to see you in a few more minutes," Kasumi said calmly, "But before he does...I wanted the chance to speak alone with you, Kurumi-chan. Natsume...would you care to give us both a little privacy here? Tatewaki is anxious to speak with you, and I'm sure he would be greatly cheered by your presence."

"Ah...yes...right, but of course," Natsume reluctantly conceded, giving Kurumi another glance before heading out the door, only pausing briefly to turn a curious look towards her three nieces, who were standing side-by-side near the door with deceptively angelic faces.

Kasumi paused to wait until Natsume was down the stairs before glancing at the children and saying, "And you three...wouldn't you like to go downstairs and fetch some bowls of ice cream that I left for you in the kitchen before they are melted?"

"Ice cream?" all three young girls chorused together, and then the race was on as tiny legs worked hard to see which one of them would be first to claim the bribe that was being offered.

Kasumi smiled fondly as she closed the door behind her beloved nieces then turned to Kurumi and allowed her expression to soften, "Kurumi-chan."

"Oneechan," Kurumi curled her legs up on the bed and sat more upright, "Thank you. I really appreciate your coming to me. I know that you have a lot on your mind right now..."

"Don't be silly," Kasumi came over and sat down on the bed in order to be closer to Kurumi, "You're my sister, and what could be more important than that? What I want to know is...what are you really feeling right now? I wanted to ask because...you seem so sad for some reason. I would have thought this news would be making you happy."

"I am in a way," Kurumi replied, "But...but I'm not really sure if I want to be a mother. I mean...look at me, Oneechan...I'm a few months younger than Akane! I'm just starting to like going back to school again, only now...I have to take it easy just because Mousse and me forgot to use a condom?"

"I know that having a baby will be a big adjustment for you, Kurumi-chan," Kasumi said in assuring tones, "But you're not doing this alone...you have us, your family, and we'll always be there to support you."

"Even...if I choose not to have the baby?" Kurumi asked, biting her lower lip and looking anxiously up at her adopted big-sister.

For a moment Kasumi was unable to conceal her surprise, then she blurted out the words, "Nani? But...why would you not want to be a mother?"

"Hey, I want to be a mother all right," Kurumi replied, "Only...not just right now, especially not when Natsume needs me. I'm her guardian protector, right? And she's training to be a Slayer. If I have to take things easy when she's just getting used to fighting against monsters..."

"Do you think Natsume is incapable of fighting her own battles?" Kasumi wondered.

"No...of course not," Kurumi replied, "It's just...we've always done things together. That's the way it's always been, the way we were meant to be, and if I can't do her part and she gets hurt because I wasn't there to watch her backside..."

"I know how much it means for you to be at Natsume's side when you face danger together," Kasumi gently noted, "But Tatewaki-san and Mousse-chan can both serve as well in keeping your sister safe from those who might threaten her. And you both have other ways of supporting yourselves, so I am sure that she will get by for a year or so before you are again needed."

"Maybe that's part of the problem," Kurumi murmured softly, glancing down at the bed rather than at Kasumi, "Maybe I don't want to take a year off. Maybe I just don't feel ready to be a mother."

Kasumi looked at the younger girl with surprise, "What do you mean, Imoutochan?"

"I mean...there are other choices you know," Kurumi reluctantly replied, "And maybe I want to explore those other options."

For a moment Kasumi had difficulty comprehending what her adoptive sister was implying, but then the true impact of those words struck home like a slap in the face, and with a shudder of aversion she said, "You mean...you do not want this baby?"

"I don't know," Kurumi replied, "It's too sudden...and I can't think straight, my head is spinning and I feel so confused and...and I really don't know what I want to do with my life anymore. I just don't feel ready...and maybe it wouldn't be fair to the baby if I brought her into the world without knowing if I even want her..."

For a moment Kasumi was in shock, literally struck with dismay to hear that her sister was actually contemplating not having her own baby. The feelings of alienation that had plagued her before came now to the fore and for a terrible moment Kasumi felt an emotion that was normally quite alien to her...that of anger, shock, revulsion and resentment.

How dare Kurumi think this way, or even imaging doing harm to her own child! If she only knew how much Kasumi envied her position, or yearned to be in her place at that very moment...

But then the moment passed and Kasumi fought down those wild impulses that briefly turned her eyes a deeper crimson. She was more than a little surprised at the heat of her own reaction, but more shocked to think that she could entertain such ugly emotions, and towards a frightened young girl who did not deserve such unfair treatment.

Instead what she said was, "Kurumi-chan...do you really fear having a baby so much as to want to...abort her?"

This time it was Kurumi's turn to look shocked, but then she thought about the word and glanced away, saying, "I don't know if that's what I want to do...or should do. I...I have to talk to Mousse...it's as much up to him as to me..."

"Why is that?" Kasumi asked, "Is the child not a part of your own body?"

"Yeah, and I have to live with the consequences either way," Kurumi replied, "But Mousse is my husband...and I understand him better than anybody ever could. All of his life he's grown up in the shadow of women. As an Amazon male he's been ordered around and told what to do and given very little choice about his life, and I know how much he resents it. Even getting married to me was as much Baba's idea as it was us getting interested in each other...so tell me, Oneechan, how can I possibly decide something for him that's going to affect the rest of our lives? He has to have a right to share in this decision...he has to choose whether or not to be a father. I can't just deny him his right just because I have doubts about what it might do to my body."

Kasumi considered the young girl at her side carefully before saying, "I think that would be the right thing for the both of you...but are you afraid that your health might be affected? Or is there another reason you feel confused and uncertain about becoming a mother?"

"What do you mean, Oneechan?" Kurumi asked in surprised wonder.

"I mean...that you, like Natsume, grew up as an orphan," Kasumi pointed out, "And you feel abandoned because your mother died when you were too young to remember her. Believe me, I do know the feeling having lost my own mother when I was very young, but for you it must have been an awful experience. Especially in light of how hard you and Natsume had to struggle just to stay alive. Is it that you fear having your daughter grow up with a similar struggle...because in your mind there is the fear that you might somehow leave her?"

"I...I don't know..." Kurumi slowly shook her head, and then the younger girl suddenly buried her face against Kasumi's breasts and hugged her tightly, sobbing aloud, "Oh, Oneechan...what am I going to do? I don't know what to do...I'm just not ready to decide...and I...I want to do the right thing...I do..."

Kasumi embraced the younger girl and held her tightly to her chest, both disturbed and oddly thrilled by the physical contact, though there was also the sense of wrenching emotional need that made her heart go out to her adoptive sister and banished away her former resentments.

She wondered at what Kurumi was genuinely feeling as she held herself close to the body of one who was acknowledged as both a goddess and a vampire. But Kurumi, of all her family, had been the one who always accepted Kasumi's change without aversion. The simple accepting nature of the girl had warmed Kasumi's heart time and again and helped to ease her sense of pending alienation from the other members of her household. Kurumi never once saw Kasumi as either a monster or an aberration but only as her beloved "big sister," and for that the older woman felt eternally grateful and loved Kurumi the more, making the girl a kind of emotional anchor to help keep Kasumi's feet on the ground in defiance of her altered nature.

And yet there was cause to fear what Kasumi was, for even as she felt her love for the emotionally wrought girl swell within her at the same time Kasumi was very much aware of the pulsing warmth and flow of rich life fluids that coursed within the veins and arteries of her younger sister. It was only the barest taste of the hunger that might well have consumed her were it not for her bloodstone earrings, but it was enough of a thirst to cause Kasumi to dread a loss of self-control, a very strong reminder of how much she differed now from an ordinary human.

But still the familiar hint of bloodlust was easily dismissed in light of her sister's genuine needs, and Kasumi would never betray a trust so deeply felt as to take advantage of Kurumi's innocence to slake her own insatiable thirst. So Kasumi only gently patted the head of the younger girl and ran her fingers through her silken locks before saying, "There. there, Kurumi-chan, it's all right. There is no need for you to be making any hasty decisions, and once you've talked with Mousse I'm sure the both of you will work something out together..."

"But...what if he doesn't want to be a father?" Kurumi sobbed, "He feels tied down enough just having me for a wife, supposing this makes him really...resent me? I couldn't stand that..."

"Perhaps you are right," Kasumi said with a sage wisdom that seemed to come from somewhere beyond her own experience, "Men can feel resentful even as they need us to support them, and Mousse has always been something of a loner. It must be very hard for him to adjust to having someone else who needs his support. But he deserves the chance to decide what his next course of action will be...and whatever decision you arrive at together, you know that I will be here for you and support you...always."

"Oneechan," Kurumi sighed while hugging the vampire goddess tightly, "You're the best, and that's why I love you. Next to Natsume you're the one I always know that I can count on to make things right."

Kasumi felt incredibly warm at the trust and adoration of the younger girl and smiled in a radiant happiness of her own, unaware that in doing so her fangs were revealed for all to see, making her smile appear less innocent than had been intended, even though what remained of her bloodlust had been banished to a very far corner by the deeper need to share intimacy with a needful sister.

But then Kasumi felt a tingling along the back of her spine and looked up rather sharply. Kurumi felt the change in her mood and said, "Oneechan?"

"I...sense something approaching," Kasumi let go of the girl and sat up off the bed, then moved with such grace that she almost appeared to be gliding across the floor and positioned herself by the window, glancing down into the gardens.

"Is it an enemy?" Kurumi asked as she sat up in bed, "Another attack on us from the outside?"

"I...do not know," Kasumi said distantly, her senses extended far beyond the normal human range, but then she visibly relaxed and smiled, "False alarm...it's only grandfather, back from one of his forays."

"Uncle Happy is back?" Kurumi smiled, "That ought to please the kids..."

Meanwhile downstairs...

"Tadaima!" the wizened old man known as Happosai called out, setting aside a massive bag filled with feminine unmentionables as he cheerfully called out, "I've got candy...and who here wants some?"

The words had an effect that was like magic as all at once three kids with messy faces came rushing out of the kitchen on tiny little legs with eager cries of delight as they milled around Happosai with extended hands and cherubic faces.

"Now, now...don't push, plenty for all, you young scamps," the old man chuckled as he doled out wax-paper and foil-wrapped presents from a smaller bag that he had carried by a throng attached to his belt.

Back at the dojo the old man's arrival hardly went unnoticed as those sitting on the porch resting their feet glanced up while those standing near to them cocked their heads as if expecting trouble.

"Well, look who's finally decided to grace us with his presence?" Alison remarked with a faint frown, "And loading up Eileen again with lots of extra sugar. That's gonna make it hard to quiet her down by the time we make it back to our apartment."

"I really must have words with the old man about the nutritional requirements of our daughter," Beatrice said with a disapproving frown.

"Nine'll get you ten he stole every piece in that bag," Nabiki said disparagingly, "I can't fault the old coot for doting on our kids, but I keep worrying that he'll pass on some of his bad habits."

"I hear that, Sugar," Ukyo scowled, "Just giving the kids toys and candy whenever they want is a cheap way of buying their affection, and I'd rather be the one who picks things out for my daughter."

"Well, to be totally fair, Airen," Perfume quipped, "If it were up to you our daughter would eat nothing but okonomiyaki."

"What's wrong with okonomiyaki?" Ukyo said in a challenging voice.

"Nothing," Perfume raised her hands defensively and smiled, "It's just that there are other foods in the world, and Fragrance should have the right to try for variety, not just one steady diet."

"I'll have you know that I grew up on okonomiyaki," Ukyo growled, "Fed it to me every day, and look how I turned out? Strong and healthy..."

"Ah...yeah," Ranma said cautiously, "But don't take this the wrong way, Ucchan, your dad...well...he was the one to raise you because you...um...didn't have a mother..."

"Don't take it the wrong way?" Ukyo bridled, "How exactly am I to take that the right way, Sugar?"

"Er..." Ranma exchanged a covert glance with Perfume, who looked back on him with sympathy, knowing just as well as him how quixotic their mutual wife's mood swings could be, and that he was just the same on his own when it came to digging his way out of that trench.

Fortunately Shampoo came to their mutual rescue by saying, "Spatula girl have okonomiyaki for brains. Is good to have variety, and no slight on you ability to cook too-too delicious food for family, since Shampoo very much like the taste of okonomiyaki...especially when spread over Airen."

The kittenish purr she used had the desired effect of redirecting Ukyo's anger and turning it into something else as the pregnant chef smiled back and shared a leer with her purple-haired co-wife, then both of them turned meaningful looks towards the rest of their happy little family circle, which brought a near-  
audible gulp from both Ranma and Perfume's direction.

"What's this all about?" Alison mused as she glanced sidelong at their friends and said, "Another food-fight in the making?"

"No," Beatrice replied, standing up with a leer of her own, "But it does make for an excellent suggestion. If you wouldn't mind overmuch, Ukyo-san, I'd love to borrow that recipe and use it for spreading across Aiko...once I'm done having our baby."

"Hah?" Alison replied, going from smug to sharing the same nervous look as worn by Ranma and the Amazon Enforcer.

"Sure thing, Sugar," Ukyo chuckled mischievously, "I'll be happy to show you how to use the ingredients to the best effect."

"Splendid," Beatrice smiled, "Now, if it is all the same to you ladies, I think it is about time that Alison and I returned home to our apartment. I'm feeling a bit tired and in need of some rest, but we will be back again on the marrow to join you in attending classes."

"Looking forward to matching wits with you on that test, Bei-chan," Nabiki smiled, "And I'm sure it will be safe enough to leave the kids with aunt Nodoka."

"Safe is a relative term when concerning that lot," Kodachi remarked as she and Keiko appeared from the side of the house, "And since you are heading more-or-  
less our way, perhaps you would not mind company since Kei-chan and I are returning home, along with Akane and Ryoga."

"Well, guess that's another day shot to heck," Ranma smirked, "Might as well take that lug home and put him to bed since he's had more than enough excitement for one day."

"Oh, shut up Ranma," Ryoga growled as he and Akane descended the step from the patio into the garden, "I'm recovered enough from that thing and...whatever the heck it was doing to me earlier. Even Mousse is starting to feel okay, so if it's all the same to you I'm going home and pretending that this whole day never happened."

"Hey, you know none of us is blaming you for what went down, Ryo-kun," Keiko assured him, "Even Mousse has forgiven you...but if I were in your shoes..."

"You never wear shoes, my pet," Kodachi cheerfully remarked.

"Hey, why should I wear shoes?" Keiko replied, sticking out one foot then executing a high-front kick by way of demonstration, "Going barefoot toughens the feet, and I think the rest of you are a bunch of wimps for using clogs and sandals and things when you should still be in training."

"You were saying before, Kei-chan?" Akane reminded.

"Oh yeah," Keiko recalled her former admonition, "I was just giving the big lug here a hint that he ought to stay out of Kurumi's reach for a while. You know how she gets when people pick fights with her husband."

"A very wise precaution," said Natsume as she and Mousse joined the others on the back porch, "I know Kurumi well and she is indeed rather protective of her husband...not that I mean to slight you of course, brother-in-law, as I respect that you prefer to fight your own battles."

"I don't need pity or condescension," Mousse replied, "Now, if you people are done making fun of me, I'm going up to have a talk with Kurumi."

"I think that would be very wise," Kasumi said as she all but materialized in the space next to the tall Chinese youth, "My sister is in need of your presence and it would be good for the both of you to speak honestly in regards to your feelings."

Mousse tried not to look too disconcerted, but the uncanny way in which the older Tendo sister could come and go at seeming will was unnerving enough for those who dealt with her on a daily basis. What he did manage to say aloud was, "Yeah...I know...and I'll do whatever is right for my Airen."

"Good," Kasumi said, and for a moment her crimson eyes held his with a light that was entirely disturbing, "Because if you did not, then I would be most cross with you, and that would not be healthy. But I respect that the decision belongs to you and what you will say when you are alone with Kurumi."

"Ah...right," Mousse slowly backed away from the vampire goddess, then turned and headed towards the stairs, only to pause half-way and ask, "Decision? What decision?"

"Never mind," Kasumi turned away and once more her mood seemed to lighten, even as her eyes were no longer glowing, "And as for you, Kuno-chan...are you certain you cannot be persuaded to stay for the rest of dinner? I think that I could whip up a fair batch of sukiyaki to go with what aunt Nodoka already had prepared."

"Oh, I've eaten quite enough, sister," Kodachi said pleasantly, "But I thank you for your generosity. I am assured that the next meal you cook will be quite the feast when Kei-chan and I stop in after classes tomorrow."

"Good," Nabiki remarked, "Then we'll all look forward to having you two around again, and we can talk some more about this business of sharing maternity space at the mansion...provided you can provide enough sound medical care to allow for when we...ohhh..." she paused a moment and put a hand over her belly.

Instantly Ranma was at her side saying, "Are you all right, Nab-chan? Did something happen?"

"Nothing much," Nabiki replied a bit ruefully, her face a bit less tan than was her usual wont, "Little nipper just kicked me is all. No question about it, he's definitely your son."

"Better take it easy, Nab-chan," Ukyo urged, "You're a lot farther along than me, and since it's your first time you ought to take some pointers from me and Sham-chan."

"Is very true, Airen," Shampoo said as she moved to the side of her co-wife and Airen, "Baby make many tiny moves that feel like doing kata, but you need save strength for when big time comes, and believe Shampoo when she say this, it much, much worse than other kinds of fighting, because no fight to win, only to ease path for baby."

"Great motivational tip there, Honey," Nabiki lopsidedly remarked but then turned to Ranma and said, "You don't need to look at me like that, Ranchan...I'm not made of glass. If anything I could still kick your cute butt if I had to."

"Why don't we put that thought off for a couple of weeks, okay?" Ranma urged with as much diplomacy as he was able while stubbornly maintaining his grip of support under her right elbow, "Sham-chan is right, though, you do need to save your strength for the baby. And since I'm not the one with a Jusenkyo curse that's currently on hold thanks to some applied bits of magic..."

"Ooohh...I'm gonna pay you back for that one, Mister," Nabiki dourly warned, but nonetheless smiled at him winsomely as if relishing the type of "repayment" she actually had in mind for her overly protective husband.

"On that note," Beatrice remarked as she retrieved Eileen from the company of Happosai and began steering the tiny redhead towards the front gates, "I think that we should be leaving you. Aiko and I have personal matters of our own to attend, but we will be back in touch on the marrow."

"You guys keep the faith, hear?" Alison waved cheerfully before scooping up their daughter into her arms, then wrapping the other arm around Beatrice's waste before murmuring, "What kind of personal business did you have in mind, Bei-chan?"

"Oh...you know," the silver-haired Beatrice remarked airily, "The personal kind. I'll spell out the details when we get back to our apartment."

"Sounds like those two are up to some mischief," Keiko chuckled as she, Kodachi, Akane and Ryoga followed the other pair towards the main gates, only to pause as Kodachi begged off at the last second, prompting the pigtailed Kickboxer to turn a concerned look her way and say, "What's wrong, Mistress? Are you well?"

"Ah..." Kodachi paused momentarily then waved a hand and said, "Akane-chan, why don't you and Ryoga-kun run along. I fear I must tend to some...personal amenities. Kei-chan...would you be so kind?"

"Oh...right, that," Keiko seemed to mentally kick herself as she took her lover by the arm and steered Kodachi back towards the main house, "Go on ahead, guys, we'll catch up in a few minutes."

"Are you sure?" Akane asked, "Wouldn't you rather if Ryo-chan and me...?"

"Just go already," Kodachi called out from the corridor as she and Keiko vanished from sight, "We will catch up, I promise."

"Sounds as if Black Rose girl expects to be in there for a while," Perfume remarked, then turned to the anxious Akane and said, "Don't worry about it, Sister-in-law, I'm sure Keiko-san is more than woman enough to take care of her mistress."

"Well...if she's sure it would be all right," Akane reluctantly conceded.

"I'm sure they'll do just fine," Ryoga comforted his wife while taking her by the arm and using her for guidance as they followed after Alison and Beatrice.

"Well, looks like this little party is breaking up for the evening," Nabiki turned to Kasumi and said, "If there's anything left of dinner, then bring it on Sis. I don't know about the rest of you but I'm starving."

"Of course, Imoutochan," Kasumi replied, and promptly vanished into the kitchen.

"Good old Nab-chan," Ukyo grinned, "Always with your priorities in the right order."

"Is good to know that Airen still have appetite," Shampoo smiled, "If no food enough, then maybe Shampoo go help big sister Kasumi and make more too-too delicious dinner."

"Sometimes I wonder about you, Nab-chan," Perfume smiled, "Next to Uncle Genma you've got the most bottomless pit of anyone I've ever known."

"Hey, spend tend years on the road with my Uncle Genma and I definitely guarantee that even you would work up quite an appetite, Per-chan," Nabiki replied, "Now, where are those other two little rug-rats here abouts? Last I saw of them they were with you, Gramps."

"I sent them along to wash up before they start stuffing their faces with the fine food that Kasumi'll be providing in another moment," the old man chuckled, "No doubt about it, they take after their mothers..."

"And what is that supposed to mean?" Ukyo asked archly.

"Nothing, right Gramps?" Ranma asked hastily, hoping to head off another family altercation of the type that so often cropped up when the old man was at the center of attention.

"All I mean is that those two girls are definitely blossoming out like a couple of weeds sprouting in a field of tall grass," Happosai said fondly, "Won't be too long at all before they become the spitting images of their mothers...and when that happens..."

"When that happens you had better be dead and in your grave, old fool," Perfume muttered under her breath while flexing her hands as if relishing her axes.

"Now, now," the old man chided, "Don't be like that. It's not like I make a habit of robbing the cradle, and they'll be much too young for me until they're old enough to be wearing bras that really matter..."

"At which point you plan to steal them, Jackass?" Ukyo grumbled.

"Well of course," the old man replied, "Better me than somebody else get to them first...and besides, it's good for training."

"You can train my butt before I'll let you put Lylac and Fragrance through the same hell as you did to the rest of us, to say nothing of our fathers," Nabiki growled with a dangerous edge to her expression.

"We'll see in good time, Student," Happosai chuckled, not in the least bit fazed by the various lethal looks being focused in his general direction...

Meanwhile, but a few meters away, Keiko paused at the door to the bathroom at which she was standing in guard position and remarked, "Are they at it again? Bet it's the old man stirring up problems, as usual."

"Only to be expected, my pet," Kodachi replied from inside the privy, "Pay them no heed, it is much better for the blood pressure."

"I guess," Keiko sniffed, then turned back and said, "Are you sure you don't need my help, Mistress? I'm well trained in tending to the needs of..."

"For the fourth time, my Pet, I will be all right," Kodachi called back through the door, "It's just a maternal thing that the women of my line have been going through for generations, and I am more than able to attend to my own bodily functions."

"If you insist, then I obey, Mistress," Keiko replied, "But still I..."

"Hey Red, got a light?"

"Huh?" Keiko whirled around, only to find a fist rocketing towards her jaw, and then her head exploded with comets, stars and pinwheels.

"Oh, excuse me, I meant lights out," said the masculine figure as he caught Keiko's body and eased her to the floor so as not to create too much more sound than was strictly needful.

"Kei-chan?" Kodachi called from inside the bathroom, "Is everything all right out there, my love?"

"Heh," the stranger said as he eased out back through the back door window through which he had illicitly entered the house, "Guess it takes all kinds of perverts around here to make the old fool feel right at home...but at least that's one less to worry about for the moment...

Unknown to him his appearance had not passed as undetected as he had imagined, for two young faces were peering around from the top of the nearby stairs, at which point one of them murmured to the other, "{Uh-oh...trouble again...}"

"{Mommy and daddy get way too many visitors who don't have any manners}" the other girl remarked, "{And this one looks like he could be real big trouble...}"

Elsewhere in the house Kasumi paused in what she was doing, looking back towards the hallway, and the concern in her expression prompted Shampoo to ask, "What is wrong, Big Sister?"

"I...I am not sure," Kasumi replied, "But I heard something just now...and I felt a chill wind. I think that I had better go and check on Kei-chan..."

Unaware that this was happening, however, the rest of the Tendo-Saotome family were deeply involved in their heated discussion with Happosai defensively asserting himself, much to the skepticism and undisguised hostility of his nominal descendents.

"A fine thing to say to your Master," the wizened old master huffed, "Didn't you turn out all right? And haven't I produced the finest school of martial artists that this side of Japan has ever known."

"So now you're taking all the credit?" Perfume bristled, "You may have coached Ranchan and Nabiki when they needed some extra pointers, but that doesn't give you the right to harass our firstborn daughters."

"Yeah," Ranma agreed, "I may owe you for the help and all that, Gramps, but there comes a limit, and that stops when it comes to our kids."

"All I'm saying is that I mean to show them a few things that will help them to get ahead as martial artists," Happosai defensively insisted, "I have the right to show my heirs the true path to glory in the arts, and where's the harm in that?"

Shampoo reappeared to call out from the back porch, "You want great-grandmother to answer that? She is on way to help with Kurumi's baby."

"I'm not afraid of the old biddy," Happosai scoffed, "You can't frighten me off like that..." and then he got a crafty look in his eyes, "Of course...since it's all an illusion anyway, and since she's really not all that different from when I knew her a few centuries back..."

"What?" Ranma asked, "You're gonna try and start something up with her again? Didn't you learn anything from the last time?"

"And besides," Perfume added, "If Grandmother is in town, then she's bound to have her own ideas where it comes to great-grandmother..."

"Hey, you leave Siren to me," Happosai chuckled, "And besides, she's here for your husband to help him out with his elemental problem."

"I'll just bet," Nabiki scowled, giving Ranma a dour look that seemed to rekindle her former unhappiness over the subject of his new trainer.

"Is all right then," Shampoo said, surprising the others with her complacent tone and expression, "If evil pervert devil think he man enough to chase great-  
grandmother and face down Archmage, then go on ahead, and Shampoo will make apologies for ancestors when you join them."

"Now that wasn't called for, Shampoo-chan..." Happosai started to say when another voice intruded upon the setting and drew their attention away from his most recent outburst.

"Still up to the same old tricks are you, Gramps?"

"Huh?" Ranma said as he whirled around and found another young man standing there confronting them from the gathering darkness of their family garden.

"Eh?" Happosai turned to regard the fellow as he stepped closer into the light and revealed himself more clearly, "Do I know you, young fellow?"

"Oh, we've met," the young man said as the light began to gleam off a shirt of silvery scale-armor that he wore over what appeared to be a silken shirt and pantaloons, "About twenty years ago, though I was too young for you to recognize these days, nothing more than a baby."

Ukyo, Shampoo, Nabiki and even Perfume gave a mild gasp as they got a better look at this new arrival within their garden, for the youth was incredibly handsome with almost Bishonen-good looks, but there was something hard and well-  
weathered about his edges, and his eyes were cold, condescending and even quite palpably hostile.

"Who the hell are you?" Ranma scowled, "And what are you doing on our property?"

"I'm not staying long," the young man replied, "In fact, I'm only here for one thing, and after I get it I'm leaving. Three guesses what that is, old man? I've come a long way following your trail and I think I'm entitled to get what I'm after."

Happosai seemed deep in though, but then he brightened up and said, "Pantyhose, is that you?"

"PANTYHOSE?" came the almost universal cry from the Tendo Posse.

The young man grimaced then said, "The name is Taro, in case you've forgotten. It's the name I got from my mother, not the one you gave me, God-father."

"God..." Ukyo began.

"Father?" Nabiki concluded for her.

"Grandfather?" Perfume asked with a cautious glance towards Happosai.

"Old man?" Ranma inquired without taking his eyes off of this dangerous-seeming stranger.

"Aiyaa," Shampoo murmured faintly, sensing that-in another moment-matters were about to get quite complicated...

Continued.

Comments/Criticisms/Johnny Cash References: shadowmane

Complications ensue as mayhem once again erupts around the Tendo compound as other forces converge upon Nerima in the next exciting chapter, "Taro and Taro Again," or, "They Call Me Sue, How Do You Do...?" Be there!

X

/pre 


	56. Chapter 56

preDnabiki141

Nabiki 1/2

"A Very Scary Thought"

by Jim Robert Bader

(Inspired by the works of Rumiko Takahashi Others,  
with concepts and characters created by fellow fanfic writers Wade Tritschler, DB Sommers, Nicole Manders, Andrew Greaves, Bill Guiroff and countless others, including "Buffy"  
creator Joss Whedon; with special thanks to my good pal Shiva for his editing and handling of this series.)

(Certain other characters and concepts are of my own innovation, including my interpretation of the Monster of Mary Shelly's novel, and various other guest stars appearing in this portion of the Nabiki 1/2 series...)

Chapter Fifty-Six.

Episode One-Hundred-Forty-One.

"Barbarians at the Gate"

"Let's see now," Takaharis remarked to herself as she studied the building that dominated the yard at the address that she had been given, "Furinkan High School...so this is where the wife of my cousin's son is attending classes. Doesn't look like much...so why was that lady I spoke to over the phone so nervous when I asked for directions?"

She considered this point while studying the unimposing exterior of the building, then extended her senses beyond the normal human periphery, perceiving waves of force and temporal anomalies quite beyond what might be expected for a regular school set on the outskirts of Tokyo proper. Granted that the walls between worlds was especially thin throughout the whole of Japan (and thus the reason why there were so many paranormal events recorded throughout the nation, and the reason why Takaharis herself had made this country her home away from her home plane of existence). It still seemed quite unusual to be picking up this much residual trace energy of multi-form patterns. It was almost as though the place were a contact point for beings from many alternate dimensions.

"Most peculiar," Takaharis murmured to herself, a habit she had acquired during the years of her more-or-less voluntary exile, "I wonder if some phenomenon is drawing all of these peculiar force lines together to this one place in reality? It might well explain my cousin's attraction to the place...even if he is a Hibiki and thus a wanderer by nature..."

She decided to conduct a closer inspection of the premises themselves, so she moved past the front gates towards the (mostly) darkened building, wondering which members of the teaching staff might still be on hand this close to sunset. A routine interrogation of on-hand personnel was a fairly reliable means of ascertaining the nature of activities in such a place, and even so lowly a person as a school janitor would be adequate to her needs.

You could learn a lot about a place from the bottom up, she mused, and so she continued to approach the main building itself, scanning for signs of life (even the semi-intelligent kind you found with most humans) and not at all intimidated by the sense of ennui that was emanating from somewhere deep within the place. She wondered what sort of history would be uncovered if she were to peer beyond the boundaries by scrying the past to unlock this school's hidden secrets. Areas such as this in Japan were always rife with juicy little tidbits of colorful events long in the past that yet had strong emanations in the present, yet another reason why she so enjoyed being a resident of the main island.

Yet for all that she was prepare to meet the unexpected in such a place, she was still quite surprised and unprepared when someone came striding out of the building with a cheerful smile and an open gesture of warm welcome.

"Greetings! How nice to see you at last. I take it you are the new substitute teacher whom we've been expecting?"

"Ah..." Takaharis was sufficiently taken off her guard that she found herself shaking hands with the man in Western fashion, accepting a companion-like pat on her forearm as the well-dressed, middle-aged man with horn-rim glasses grinned at her as though she were a kami herself come to deliver him from purgatory.

"You have no idea how desperate we are for good, reliable staff these days," the man said as he turned around and started to escort her to the building, "We've had a lot of openings of late since several faculty members have resigned for a variety of reasons..."

"Reasons?" Takaharis asked with the arching of one eyebrow.

"Oh, nothing major," the man said with hasty evasiveness, "Health reasons, early retirement, a sudden desire to visit with family or go on long sabbaticals, that sort of thing. Why, we even lost our PE coach, who said something about 'Running for Youth,' or some such nonsense, so you can see how much we have been looking forward to your arrival, Miss...?"

"Ah...Takaharis," she said automatically, then recalled herself enough to use her cover-identity, "Takaharis Rumiko...but you can call me Taki."

"Taki...splendid," the man said cheerfully, "I am Vice Principal Choy Omi, and such a pleasure it is to be the first to welcome you to Furinkan High School. You'll find that we have the finest facilities for educating young minds in the district, thanks to wealthy and generous contributions by certain alumni who have donated copiously to our various departments. Now then...which area of specialty did you say you were interested in filling?"

"Ah..." Takaharis thought face, sensing opportunity and instinctively going with the flow of events, "History and Philosophy are my major subjects, but I am a qualified teacher with credentials to teach foreign languages and the arts..."

"Splendid!" the man said with as much sincerity as though she were the fulfillment of his prayers to the heavens, "Sensei Godai will be so relieved to learn of this...we've been overstretched in several of those areas for quite some time now. If you will follow me to my office I'll set you up for a schedule, then we'll discuss the finer points of the curricula that you will be teaching..."

Takaharis's mind was still swimming at the suddenness of a job offering and was only just attempting to come to grips with the gnawing sense that the man was a little too desperate to offer her such employment. Normally she taught at college level, and she did indeed have valid teaching credentials (legitimately earned through many years of study among the mortals) but she had not been expecting to find such a perfect opportunity open up for her as an excuse for taking up residency in the district. It would be the ideal means for finding out firsthand what the arrangement was within this area that was causing her Erinyes senses to reel in such confusion, and it would get her that much closer to her cousin's son and his family in order to determine what-if any-threat might be posed to them by her errant cousin, Morrigar.

But even as she was attempting to sort all of this out in her mind her ears perked up at a noise that brought her around to stare back at the gates through which she had just entered. To her surprise she sensed a powerful aura of positively-charged charisma approaching at great speed and haste, and then moments later a silvery motorcycle and its aluminum-clad rider burst forth onto the courtyard, drawing up to a halt after spinning a ninety-degree turn-stop, and then the rider killed the engine and threw down the kickstand before pausing to lift her gleaming helmet.

The last rays of the sun caught the light reflected from a golden shower of pale yellow hair as the rider revealed herself in all her magnificent glory, and for an instant it was as though a kami herself had manifested before their vision as gentle eyes turned to regard them, and instantly locked wary gazes with Takaharis.

For a moment there was tension in the air as the two of them sized each other up in silent approbation, but then the moment passed and the strange visitor quirked a smile and nodded towards her nominal adversary. Then the veiled hostility vanished altogether, to be replaced by a look of pure benevolence that banished away the unease that had formerly gripped the Erinyes. Quite evidently the stranger had made a spot decision and evaluation that turned up positive results, and so suspicion had been banished, to be replaced a moment later by a curious look of interested speculation.

"Bon jour," she called out aloud to them, "This is Furinkan High School, is it non? I am here for an appointment."

"You are?" the Vice Principal gasped, then he managed to regain some composure as he added a polite, "Miss...?"

"Angelique d'Anjou, at your service, mon amis," she said while smoothly dismounting her motorcycle and assuming a bow from the waist that was as graceful as her timing, "I understand that you have an opening for me as a Nurse for your school infirmary...?"

"Oh...yes, quite right," the Vice Principal brightened considerably, "The agency told us you would be coming. What excellent timing, the both of you arriving as you have one right after the other..."

"Oh yes," Takaharis said dryly, "Excellent timing...almost too much of a coincidence."

"All things happen in their own place and time, Cheri," Angelique said as she came striding up to join them at the steps leading to the main building, her blue eyes regarding the disguised Devil before her as though peering through Takaharis's disguise and seeing the woman beneath her illusion, "And well met indeed. You are...most unexpected."

For some reason Takaharis found her cheeks flushing a deeper crimson hue than was her natural wont, and on her illusory cheeks the rose blush was quite obvious, but still she managed to control her inexplicable reaction enough to say, "I could say the same about you, Miss...d'Anjou? Curious...your accent betrays a southern French origin..."

"I was born there to a different time, alas," Angelique replied as she came up to stand beside the reluctant Takaharis, "But I dare say you hail from more distant lands yourself. Perhaps indeed it is no mere coincidence that we have met this way, Cheri, but rather the will of God in all her mysterious and unfathomable wisdom."

"Ah..." Takaharis gulped at the mention of divinity, but still could not help noticing the feminine emphasis, which meant that this...vision before her was something other than your typical "holy roller." This close up the scent of heaven was unmistakable, and indeed this blonde haired beauty was well named to fit her station as Takaharis knew just a little too much on the subject of Angels for her own liking. By rights she and this woman should be mortal enemies...but with a casual smile the stranger had turned it all around and left the question open on what they might well be towards one another. More to the point, her very nearness was setting Takaharis's blood to racing, and that indeed helped open some curious thoughts about the very near future...

Vice Principle Choy was only dimly aware that his presence was suddenly being ignored by the two lovely women standing next to him, but he was uncertain enough about the nature of such things since he was used to beautiful women ignoring him. So to reassert his position in these affairs he waved to the two new arrivals and said, "This way if you please. We'll get started having you registered and given your duty assignments. And hopefully this can be successfully concluded before the Principal himself gets back from attending to other business."

"Eh?" Angelique broke her magnetic gaze away from Takaharis and asked, "How is that, mon amis?"

Takaharis gasped at being released from the other woman's stare and said, "Ah...did I understand you right just now? You want this done before the Principal has a chance to see us?"

"I'll explain everything in time," the middle-aged man said evasively, "Principle Kuno Godai takes a bit of getting used to, but...well...you'll understand after your briefing. Now, if you don't mind too much it is getting dark and I'd like to get home to see my wife before my dinner gets too cold, please."

He did not bother to add that he desperately needed to take a cold shower, but that was his own private concern to indulge later. Needless to say, however, he would be giving his wife the business later in the night, and never mind any excuses she might make about having a headache as he would not be in a mood to deny his masculine urges.

Nor would she have cause to complain since this night he would be more than adequately motivated to perform well up to her own high standards...and beyond them...

"You're serious?" Frank asked in disbelief, "She's got that kind of an effect on the ladies?"

"I'm telling you, Frank, the girl is phenomenal," Trudy insisted as she rode on the back behind the big man on his gigantic motorcycle, "She can make just about anyone say yes, and they've never got any cause to complain about bedding with her in the morning either."

"But she only has an eye for the ladies, huh?" Frank considered the point then added, "Nothing new about that in my experience, but from what you're telling me it sounds as if I just threw the fox into the hen-house."

"An apt description, Big Guy," Trudy observed, "Angel's practically a living saint in all other concerns, maybe the nicest person you could ever know if you're one of the good guys...a real terror, though, if she senses you have evil intentions. In her time she's one of the legendary heroines who helped tame the Chaos Forest and bring order to a land blighted by darkness, but she's primarily a non-tech by nature. Just picturing her on one of your talking motor bikes is a stretch and a half...but I guess it wouldn't make sense to view her riding a horse in this part of Japan..."

"Wouldn't be off by that much," Frank said dryly, "You see all kinds of weird stuff in these parts. Even ran into a boy who had the worst case of short-term memory I've ever seen, and he's sort-of like a game warden to a local monster zone, so a knight in shining armor riding a horse wouldn't phase me."

"Say that after you meet Angel," Trudy cautioned him, "A Temuvarai isn't just a backwards yokel playing at Galahad, she's a trained mystic and a certified priestess with spiritual powers that would knock even Donovan's socks off, and backed by the divine blood that's her birthright on her mother's side..."

"You really mean it?" Frank asked, "She really is the daughter of Rhiannon?"

"Well, Angel doesn't like to think of herself as anything too special, but yeah, she's got divine Celtic blood, and she's pretty darn-near immortal," Trudy answered, "Must be closed to sixty years old by linear measure but doesn't look a day over twenty, and she heals fast when injured. Takes a lot to just wind her, and she's at least three times as strong as any mortal."

"So what's the story with her?" Frank asked, "How'd she wind up as a paladin? Aren't they sort-of like the Crusaders of legend?"

"Well, she was orphaned at a pretty young age when her old man-a woodsman-  
kicked the bucket," Trudy explained, "So she wound up spending the formative years of her life in a catholic-style monastery, raised by a kindly nun who inspired her to develop her talents as a scholar. Unfortunately the old nun died and was replaced by a dried up old prune who ran the place as a tyrant, and when Angel came of age she found herself being attracted to a fellow student. Not to make too long a story of it, she was discovered making out with that other girl, and the nuns tried to lock her away in her cell as punishment, but she escaped and wound up having an encounter with her real mother, who put her straight on the matter of who was good and evil. Angel then grew up for a time in an elvish wood unlearning what the Nuns had tried to teach her about sin and holy justice, and she came away from that a born-again pagan. After that she joined the Temuvarai and learned from their ways how to transform her faith into an instrument of holy justice."

"Sounds complicated," Frank remarked, "I've met more than a few religious converts in my time and they usually turn a one-eighty from their former ways and beliefs and immerse themselves in their newfound religion."

"She's a fanatical believer in the Temuvarai religion all right, but not like the holy rollers you know or may have heard about," Trudy replied, "To her Rhiannon is God personified, so she constantly refers to God as female, and she draws a lot of spiritual power by tapping into her ties with her mother."

"Terrific," Frank remarked, "And I asked her to keep tabs on Kasumi?"

"Hey, if your girlfriend's as basically nice and decent as you say, then Angel won't view her as a problem," Trudy assured him, "She doesn't automatically judge you good or bad by what you are, only by what you do, and to determine that she has a gift for reading auras. She knows how to perceive the discoloration that truly evil beings manifest and can sort them out from the general muddle of mainstream humanity, so she's a pretty good judge of character in that department."

"How does she differ from what you do with that Power thing of yours?" Frank wondered.

"Hey, we're like mirror opposites, light and darkness, that sort of thing," Trudy replied, "That's why her cadre's known as the Silver Legion while the Kurustani are the Black Legion. Opposites compliment, and we both draw upon the Power in different ways to achieve the same end, so we're not really in competition."

"Fascinating," Frank said with a snort, "But you didn't really answer my question."

"It's not like there's an easy answer that I could give you in under forty words or so, Big Guy," Trudy sighed, "I suppose the best answer I could give is that I use the Power to determine who the poisoners are so that I can eliminate them before they do damage to society. Temuvarai are more like healers who only use force to balance the ends of justice. They kill when it is necessary, but their aim is to protect and they're not quite so proactive."

"Sounds different from the crusader types I've known in my days," Frank rumbled, "Those types generally shoot first and prefer only to interrogate the survivors."

"Not with Temuvarai," Trudy explained, "It's the other way around...they question first and only shoot when they've determined the right target. Usually that means the ones who shoot first their way, so you better believe that they react fast and think on their feet. They're not dumb jocks in armor after all, they're highly intelligent, if maybe a bit too intuitive and impulsive."

"Unlike you you mean?" Frank ably countered.

"Hey, I may look impulsive but my actions are entirely governed by my affinity for the Power that moves within me," Trudy insisted, "Temuvarai operate from the inspiration of the Power that moves them, and from that they draw their real power, but they're not nearly as infallible in their interpretation of the Power and its influence upon their actions."

"Infallible?" Frank repeated, "You really think you're perfect?"

"Not perfect, not hardly," Trudy replied, "I just mean that my connection to the Power is much more refined than is the case for Angel. She's a servant of the same power as me, but filtered through the emotions of religious ecstasy so that she's prone to letting her feelings get in the way of her judgement. We Kurustani are much clearer minded and have a better sense of the outcome of our actions, so we tend to make fewer mistakes. It's just...ah...when we do screw up it tends to be a lot more spectacular, as I can personally attest from several of my less savory adventures."

"I'm not even gonna pretend to understand what that means," Frank scowled into the winds that were beating against his helmet, "I'm just worried about what it implies about the lady that I've called in to help keep an eye on Kasumi."

"Hey, Angel's as much a lover as a fighter, but she's basically a really good person," Trudy assured him, "I'd trust her with my life and I'm sure she won't seek to do any harm to your girlfriend. It's just...that I can't really vouch for her restraint when it comes to acting on her...ah...baser impulses."

She felt the muscles tense in her burly companion and sensed his mood darkening considerably and winced in accordance, knowing his fears to be well justified, if not for the safety of his nominal girlfriend as much for her (assumably) virginal status.

"She'd better learn restraint if she expects to remain on this case," Frank ominously growled, "Kasumi's been going through a lot of stuff lately and I won't have anybody taking advantage of her while she's going through these vulnerable phases."

"I'm sure Angel won't do anything too rash until we get there," Trudy hastily assured him, "And I'm positive that I can convince her to treat your girlfriend with kid gloves rather than get...ah...a little too hands-on if you take my meaning."

Frank did not immediately reply to this, but then he finally barked out, "Shelly?"

"I've got a lock on Adonai, Boss," the motorcycle replied, "He's relayed his position and informs me that your agent Hotlips has made contact with her new prospective employer...but there's been a minor complication that you may not have heard about in your briefings..."

"Complication?" Frank scowled, "What complication?"

"Unknown at the present, Boss," the feminine computer voice answered, "But this Angelique character encountered a type four paranormal of unknown character whose calling herself Rumiko Takaharis, a likely pseudonym, but we don't have a listing matching her description in my profiles."

"Takaharis?" Trudy reacted, "No way...it couldn't be her..."

"You know the lady?" Frank asked in mild surprise.

"If it's the same one I've met a while back...then the devil herself has come to Nerima," Trudy answered with an enigmatic expression, "The good news about that is she's really one of the good guys. Well...sort of..."

It took another moment for Frank to digest this, and then he gunned his engine and accelerated to half again the speed that he had previously been setting, forcing Trudy to dig in her nails as she gripped his leather jacket tightly, clinging for dear life as he took them both on a bike ride that set a new definition for horror, and one that tested even her own devil-may-care nonchalance...

"Let me see if I've got this straight," Nabiki insisted, "The old fart is your godfather, and he's the one who gave you the name of Pantyhose Taro? And you really hate that name so much that you've come all this way over from China just to make him agree to change it because the laws of your people forbid you from renaming yourself? Is that it, more or less?"

"Got it in one, lady," the young man named Taro replied, "I've lived through hell on account of my name, and it's long since time you undid what you did to me, old man, before I beat it out of you as payback."

"Hate to say it, but he does have a good point there, Gramps," Ranma remarked, "I don't think I'd like it very much if somebody named me Underwear, or something that tacky."

"Hmph," Happosai humphed, "I don't see why I should have to change it, boy. Pantyhose is a very fine name, and I don's see why you shouldn't be proud of it. That's why I gave it to you in the first place."

"Why don't I find that all so surprising?" Ukyo growled dryly.

"Aiyaa," Shampoo averred, "Even Amazons no name their children that badly."

"Are you forgetting about Ambergris, cousin?" Perfume asked, "Times are when I almost think my own mother might have named me that, and then I'd have to be the one to go through life with everybody calling me 'Whale Puke.'"

"Can't you at least give the guy a break here, Gramps?" Ranma asked, "If he don't like the name then why don't you give him your permission to allow him to change it?"

"That's not the point, son," Happosai insisted, "A name is part of what you are, and if you change it then you change your own self-definition..."

"That's the whole point, you freak of nature," Taro growled in ominous disgust, "I want to change what I am and who I am so I can become the kind of guy that people can look on with respect, not snigger behind my back and make fun of me when I'm not looking."

"You worry too much about what other people think, my boy," Happosai sniffed, "I never let what people say about me slow me down..."

"We have noticed," Perfume said sarcastically.

"It's what they say about us because of you that's really hard on the family's reputation, Jackass," Ukyo snorted.

"Look Master," Nabiki said more diplomatically, "It's obvious enough that the guy's been hurt by your actions, so won't you for once take responsibility for your actions and do the right thing for this fellow?"

"No, I won't," Happosai retorted, "And if you lot weren't riding so high and mighty on your lofty morals then you'd see why what this young fool is asking is all wrong and for the wrong reasons. Sure a name might affect how people look at you, but it takes more than a name to define character...and if all you can see is a name you refuse to accept, Boy, then you're not yet man enough to be worthy of the name I gave you..."

"Whoah," Ranma said, "Are you actually lecturing him on character?"

"Talk about the pot calling the wok black, Sugar," Ukyo said wryly.

"Laugh all you want, you young ingrates," Happosai folded his arms over his tiny chest and scowled mightily, "But I'm right and you know it, and if I do what this fool asks then it won't change what's really important about him. He'll still be the same arrogant pup who waltzed in here demanding he have his way and not asking."

There was a slight pause before Nabiki turned and stared at the strange bishonen youth before saying, "You may have a point there, Gramps...much as I hate to admit it..."

"Oh, so now you're taking his side are you?" Taro scowled back, "Might've known as much. I knew I'd be wasting my time going about this trying to be diplomatic..."

"Hey, wait a minute here," Ranma frowned back, "I agree that the old guy did you a wrong turn sticking you with that name, but Gramps is right that you just can't come barging in here on our property and insisting on having your way. Besides, we know Master Happosai a lot better than you obviously do because he never changes his mind if you try to force him."

"And why not?" Taro scoffed, "You think I'm afraid of the old fart? Or of you guys for that matter?"

"Hey, just what do you mean by that crack?" Ukyo frowned.

"Are you trying to pick a fight here?" Perfume asked, flexing her hands and seeming ready to spring into action.

"That no be very wise," Shampoo averred, "And Shampoo think unpleasant boy with handsome looks but very bad attitude should leave before he make trouble."

"And who's gonna make me, doll-face?" Taro scoffed, "Three pregnant sows and a guy so pussy-whipped and wimpy that he takes orders from a woman?"

"Hey!" Ranma balled his fists, feeling the fire of burning rage begin to smolder within him.

"What about me, Outlander?" Perfume ominously flexed her arms and made motions of reaching for her axes, "You insult my wives and husband, and no Amazon can ignore that."

"I ain't overlooking you, Melon-Tits," Taro grinned nastily, "Gonna try and hack me up with those axes you've got hidden up your sleeves?"

"I might..." Perfume began to declare when she became distracted by the sudden appearance of Kasumi, Kodachi and an obviously injured Keiko.

"Oh my...is that the one who hurt Keiko-san?" the older Tendo sister asked.

"That's him all right," Keiko groaned, being supported with an arm about her waist from her two female companions, "Sucker-punched me in the hallway...almost never even saw it coming..."

"You are the one who did bruise the cheek and jaw of my beloved?" Kodachi bristled, her violet eyes suddenly smoldering with antipathy and a dangerous regard that spoke ill for the health of the insolent Taro.

"Well, well," Taro slowly grinned, "You must be tougher than you look, Red. I was sure you'd still be sleeping it off for the duration..."

"What?" Nabiki shot a hard look towards Taro.

"You won't even bother to deny it, Jackass?" Ukyo said as she reached for the absent hilt of her giant spatula out of both reflex and habit.

"Why should I deny it?" Taro replied, "I wanted to cut down on the potential number of you guys who might get in the way between me and Happosai. I figured Red would be the weakest, and I wanted to test to see how good you guys are as fighters."

"The weakest?" Keiko bridled.

"That's it!" Ranma whirled on Taro and threw a round-house that by rights should have connected, but his target easily moved out of the way and avoided the attack, prompting Ranma to throw another one, followed instantly by another.

"Hah...too slow by half!" Taro said dismissively as he took advantage of a momentary lapse in Ranma's attacks to launch a counter-offensive that caught the pigtailed boy napping, "If that's the best you can do, then this fight is already over!"

Contrary to that boast, however, Ranma easily shrugged off the punch to his jaw that had staggered him a few steps backwards, and then the Saotome heir erected his defenses to ward off a follow-through, countering with a blindingly swift attack of his own that forced Taro to hastily back away out of reach of a spinning roundhouse.

"Whoah," Ukyo blinked her eyes in disbelief.

"So fast," Shampoo said in dismay, "Maybe even faster than Ranma..."

"Doesn't matter how fast he is," Perfume snarled as she flexed her arms and produced her axes, "He's dead either way!"

"Hey...be careful, Per-chan!" Nabiki called out, but too late to make a difference.

Taro turned smoothly as he perceived the attack that was being mounted upon his left flank and moved instinctively to block the double-ax attack before it was even halfway begun, using his metallic arm bracers to catch the wooden handles just below the edge of each double-bladed weapon, which surprised Perfume to no end as even she was unprepared for the speed with which he had moved to counter.

No sooner did she register this but then a knee made solid contact with her solar plexus, picking the well-endowed Amazon up from just below the cleft of both breasts and sending her sprawling backwards, which as circumstances would have it turned out to be the koi pond in the middle of the garden.

"Cousin!" Shampoo cried out in dismay as the brown haired Enforcer disappeared from sight completely.

"Sharil!" Ranma snapped, and at once his left arm formed a flowing stream that arced around into the water, to emerge mere moments later in the form of a beautiful-if-translucent lady supporting a half-drowned cat whose fur hung limp around her motionless body.

"Whoah," Taro remarked as he saw the transformed Amazon in her cursed form, then turned to regard Ranma, "So, you got one of those lying around the place. And here I was wondering about that little hellcat with the big ax fetish."

"Jackass!" Ukyo snarled, flexing and unclenching her fists, "If I only had my Peal I'd..."

"Save that thought, Toots," Taro said as he regarded Ranma with smug condescension, "Lemme see if I've got the situation straight here. These four fat tomatoes belong to you?"

"Toots?" Ukyo asked incredulously.

"Fat?" Nabiki bridled.

"Okay, let me rephrase that," Taro amended without seeming to in the least ways be apologetic, "You porked these sows because you're living with all of them? That ain't right."

"What's it to you?" Ranma snarled defensively, "It's none of your business."

"Hey, I ain't saying it's wrong for a guy to have his own personal harem or nothing like that," Taro replied, "But for a scrawny twerp like you it's an affront to nature! You girls should try hanging out with a real stud and see what it's like to carry the babies of a guy who's really manly. It oughta be me who the chicks dig...but instead they'd just laugh at me on account of my name, and that's an affront to nature!"

"Stupid Underwear Boy think he more manly than Ranma?" Shampoo declared hotly, flexing her hands and suddenly well armed with her bonbori, "Shampoo pound sense into stupid boy, then maybe he respect Amazon family!"

"Shampoo," Nabiki called out harshly, "Don't try it...think of the baby."

The Amazon hesitated, clearly livid with rage, but recognizing the good sense of her co-wife's statement, so she made her weapons disappear but snarled, "Shampoo do what Airen say, but still think he need good pounding!"

"That's my job, Sham-chan," Ranma assured her, "When you have our daughter and she's fully weaned I'll let you have the next one, but right now...this guy belongs to me, and I'm the one who's gonna flatten his stupid face!"

"You and what army, Wimpo?" Taro sneered, "You ain't laid a finger on me so far, and I ain't even worked up a sweat yet."

"Sweat this out then, Asshole!" Ranma declared while raising his right hand and summoning up the fiery form of Latisha, who manifested in the air over his head with a blazing fury that painted the whole garden in a red-gold illumination.

"Ranma," Nabiki snapped, "Not her, and not this close to the house. If your friend loses control for even a moment and lets go with even a spark..."

The fiery apparition that was the self-styled Queen of Salamanders turned to Nabiki and haughtily declared, "To whom do you think you are addressing, Mortal? I am no mere dabbler in the elemental arts, and I have absolute control over every aspect of my plasma."

"Nonetheless, what Nab-chan says makes a kind of sense, Sugar," Ukyo said as she cradled the wet Perfume-cat in her arms, heedless of soaking her clothing as she did so, "I think Ranchan should summon up a lady who won't wreck us out of house and home while taking down this Jackass."

"Allow me, Master," the still-present Sharil declared, and all at once reverted to her elemental form, creating a wave of hardened water that came crashing down upon the astonished Taro before he had time to move, let alone evade her.

"Hmph," Latisha sniffed, "Far too merciful for the likes of him. I would burn him to a cinder for daring to violate the sanctity of our...home...?"

The Salamander Queen's tone dropped to a mere whisper as she stared in disbelief at a completely unexpected transformation. Where before the brash youth known as Pantyhose Taro had stood huddled against the hundreds of liters of pure elemental water that comprised Sharil's fluid aspect, what rose up in his place was a towering monstrosity that stood over three meters high and half again as broad of shoulder. His body was now covered in brown fur and had muscles that bulged like huge melons while his head was particularly bull-like, and from his back projected a formidable set of bat-wings.

"What the hell?" Nabiki muttered in a voice that was completely drowned out by the bellow that utterly filled the air with its noisome reverberations.

"You mean what the hell is it?" Ukyo gulped, "You got me there, Sugar..."

"He...he's got a Jusenkyo curse?" Keiko asked

"Evidently so," remarked Kodachi.

"Oh my," Kasumi said in typically understated amazement.

"Meow?" said a half-struggling Perfume-neko as she tried to alternately gasp and spit out water.

"Aiyaa," Shampoo agreed, her single phrase summoning up their collective dismay upon the subject.

"Oh dear," Happosai said with a look of mild dismay in his expression, "I hadn't thought of that..."

"Thought of what, Master?" Nabiki snapped, sensing immediately that there would be yet another issue to take up later with her redoubtable elder.

"The water I used to christen him after I helped his mother gave birth came from Jusenkyo," Happosai revealed, "Niuhoomaoenniichuan...which loosely means, 'Drowned-Yeti-Riding-Bull-Carrying-Crane-and-Eel,' or something pretty much like that."

"Niuhoo-whatuan?" Nabiki reacted, "You've gotta be kidding!"

"And you're just telling this to us now?" Ranma asked in blank-faced dismay as he stared up and up at the towering monster.

Latisha had by now sufficiently recovered from her dismay to turn and snarl at her fellow elemental, "Sharil!"

"Well, how was I supposed to know?" the water-woman replied as she resumed her human aspect.

"Kinda slipped my mind too, know what I mean?" Happosai said with an uncharacteristically sheepish expression, "It's been a few years after all, and I haven't seen the boy since he was a baby."

The monstrous Bull-Taro snarled and brought down a fist the size of a beer keg upon that portion of the Tendo porch where Happosai was standing and summarily missed hitting the old man but managed to nonetheless bowl over those standing near to him even though he came no closer to direct contact of their persons than a full meter.

Nabiki, Shampoo, Keiko and Kodachi all went tumbling onto their sides or whatever furniture was in their way while an entire section of the patio floor collapsed, even as Happosai darted to relative safety. Only Kasumi remained unaffected, while Ukyo, Perfume-neko and Ranma looked on with total dismay at the mishap befalling their loved ones. Quite naturally they called out their names with fear their overriding emotion, but once the shock had expended their anger flared to new levels as they directed hostile gazes towards monster-Taro's broad backside.

"To hell with restraint!" Latisha snarled, summoning up her flames and unleashing a fireball directly at the impossible-to-miss target.

Quicker than words, however, Taro snapped back into action, reaching out with a hand and grasping the semi-solid body of Sharil before the elemental could think to revert to her natural state and threw her like a softball at his fiery assailant. Sharil's body reverted to steam as she hit the fireball directly and her misted form flowed all over Latisha, smothering out her flames as the two elementals collapsed into their constituent elemental bodies.

This time it was their names that formed on Ranma's lips, but by now he was quite beyond rage as he turned and launched himself at Taro like an avenging tiger, only to be savagely back-handed by a fist so huge that it was as though he were a ball being swatted by a massive brick-bat. The force was sufficient to stun even him as he went crashing backwards into the double-doors of the dojo.

"Ranchan!" Ukyo all but screamed as she whirled about, carrying Perfume-neko in her arms while rushing as best she was able to check upon their husband's condition.

Satisfied that he had overcome the more annoying of his antagonists, Taro turned his wrath back upon Happosai, but this time the little man was done with fleeing. For once in a very long time-or even as long as anyone had known the ancient pervert-his eyes were flashing with genuine rage and there was not even a trace of amusement left on his expression.

"Now you've gone and done it, Boy," the old man said in a voice as completely devoid of malice as it was chilling in its implications, "Fun and games are one thing, but you've gone well beyond too far and pushed my buttons! No one hurts my family and walks away from it...NO ONE!"

Taro seemed incapable of intelligible speech while in his transformed state yet was more than able to express his meaning as he raised his fists, intent on driving home his point upon his nominal godfather.

But before he could act a pair of chains whipped out to grasp his wrists and momentarily bind them, prompting Taro to turn his bull-like head and snuff in surprise as he found himself faced by yet another opponent.

"I don't know who you are," Mousse declared as he stood perched atop the second story roof of the house, "But it's obvious enough that you're not welcome here, Monster."

"Mousse, be careful," Kurumi urged as she stood cautiously beside him on the roof just outside her sister's window, "Whatever this thing is, he just took down Ranma."

"I know that, Airen," Mousse said tensely as he braced his feet and kept tight rein over his chains, "But Saotome made the mistake of getting too close to this thing, whereas I can strike with impunity from a distance."

Taro-monster narrowed his eyes and braced his legs as he prepared to regain the leverage he would need to free himself from the chains (and/or yank the long-  
haired Chinese boy off his balance), but before he could do so he perceived something rather a bit more disturbing. He turned his gaze back towards Happosai, whose aura was glowing rather noticeably as the little man manifested a potent battle aura.

"Prepare yourself, Boy, for the Anything Goes School Ultimate Fighting Technique...The Storm Winds of Silken Panties!" and with that Happosai's battle-  
aura seemed to increase tenfold as he extended his tiny arms forward and unleashed what could best be described as a flurry of frilly-laced silken or cotton snowflakes that battered against the brawny form of Taro and soon plastered his burly hide with a hastily formed cocoon that rapidly transformed him into a giant moth during its seasonal hibernation.

One moment later Taro was entrapped within a pasty-colored coffin, which gave Mousse the chance to loosen his chains and make them vanish back up his sleeves. Even he seemed mightily impressed by the feat of the ancient Master and said, "Wow...incredible. He pasted him in pastels."

Kurumi grinned in relief as she hugged her man and said, "But you helped hold him steady so the attack would work, Mousse-chan."

"Well done, Grandfather," Kasumi remarked as she came to stand next to the wizened martial arts master, "You have immobilized him completely."

"Of course," Happosai said as he folded his arms over his chest, "The little punk had it coming, even if I did have to use my best lingerie to do the job properly, which is more honor than he had coming."

"Just the same," Nabiki growled as she and Shampoo helped each other to gingerly skirt around the damaged portion of the floor in order to step back out into the garden, "We're going to need a more lasting solution to the problem this Jerk posed, and he's going to pay dearly for the damages to our property, to say nothing about the stress, bumps and bruises we owe him."

Ranma emerged from the dojo with Ukyo helping to support him and remarked, "Anybody get the license of that truck that just went through here? Hey...is that him? The big yo-yo?"

"Sure looks big enough to be him, Sugar," Ukyo sniffed, "Either that or the biggest silk worm I've ever met."

"Meow," Perfume-neko agreed as she stood perched atop her wife's shoulders.

"Is everyone all right?" Keiko asked, helping Kodachi to sit down upon a sofa, "I still owe that creep for the cheep-shot he gave me. Good thing I already belong to you, Mistress, or by Amazon law I'd probably have just gotten married."

"Thankfully, my pet, you are mine and belong to no one else," Kodachi cooed while patting Keiko gently upon her bruised cheek, "And I have the ownership papers to prove it. Still...I think it would be prudent not to underestimate that rude fellow. It is quite obvious that he has trained long and hard with the intent of confronting grandfather Happosai, and now that he is this near to his goal he is doubtlessly well motivated to further pursue the issue."

"He's not going anywhere at the moment," Happosai assured, "I wound him up tight enough with bindings that should hold an elephant..."

"Good thing I ain't no elephant," Taro remarked as he finished extracting himself from the-now collapsing pile of panties.

"What the...?" Ranma slid out from Ukyo's embrace to stand upon his own in a defensive position.

"How the hell did you change back?" Nabiki demanded.

"I carry my own hot-and-cold water supply for just such emergencies," Taro said while holding up an emptied flask, "The good thing about these curses is that they're reversible...and you've just used up your supply of panties, old man. Care to surrender now before I really get nasty?"

"I don't believe this," Keiko declared as she vaulted out into the garden and took up a fighting stance of her own, "You really think you've got what it takes to take all of us on by yourself, especially now that I've recovered my bearings?"

"Probably not like this, Red," Taro smiled confidently as he reached for a second flask and unstoppered it with a flick of his thumb, "But I've seen enough now to know you guys have got a weakness, and I intend to exploit it."

"Not before I rip your fool head off!" Keiko snarled, launching a flying leap aimed not at the man but rather at the gourd in his hand, but as fast as she was Taro was faster and moved his other hand in time to block the kick and deflect it.

"Obviously you guys know a thing or two about the curses," Taro sneered, "Why don't we test a little theory I have about that," he added haughtily as he tossed the contents of his flask towards Keiko.

The surprise move took the kickboxer full in the face and instantly she reverted to her Vulture form, beating her wings frantically in order to regain her bearings, but unable to move in time before Taro could wrap a hand around her neck and immobilize her to the ground, murmuring, "Like I thought...just another cursed Turkey."

"Kei-chan!" Kodachi tried to rise up out of her chair, only to stop with a look of dismay as she hastily sat back down holding her belly.

"Gonna surrender now, Old Man, or do I snap this bird's neck and have her for my supper?" Taro sneered while Keiko beat her wings helplessly against the ground, unable to gain the leverage she would need to effectively defend against her assailant.

"You disappoint me, Boy," Happosai said gravely, but even as the old man prepared to move in defense of the hapless Keiko there was one who moved even faster than he could blink, and all at once Kasumi was standing over the arrogant boy, who barely even had time to recognize his present danger.

The next moment Taro found himself being yanked off the ground by a hand that gripped the collar of his scale-mail shirt, and all at once he was dangling by one arm staring into the red-eyed face of Death, for the Kasumi he faced now was baring her fangs and showing her true Vampiric nature.

"How dare you hurt my family, friends and loved ones, you...unpleasant little man?" she snarled, "You have disrupted the Wa of my house...so tell me now why I should not punish you severely?"

"Wh-what are you, lady-gak?" Taro suddenly found a clawed hand gripping his throat as the enraged Kasumi transferred him from one hand to the other, displaying no less ease than she might use managing a small puppy.

"K-Kasumi...?" Nabiki gasped, fear and confusion in her own expression.

"Aiyaa," Shampoo said in dismay as she saw Taro make a desperate kick towards his captor, only to have Kasumi easily deflect his attack as though a child had made it.

"Oneechan?" Ranma whispered, then he turned to the two huddled forms he spotted on the ground and asked, "Latisha...Sharil? Are you guys all right?"

"We'll live," Latisha grunted, "But...we are too spent to assist you, Master."

"Damned near wiped the both of us out just now," Shari winced, "It's gonna take a few minutes for us to get our wind back..."

"I am still waiting to hear a pathetic excuse to justify letting you live," Kasumi said with complete seriousness as her fangs were bared and her expression deadly.

"Gurk..." try as he might Taro could not pry her hand loose from his windpipe, and for the first time since engaging the Saotome-Tendo posse in this fight his eyes betrayed an honest fear for his own personal safety.

"Kasumi?" Happosai asked with his own concern plain in his expression.

"Oneechan!" Kurumi called down, "What are you doing? You could kill him!"

"I think that is the general idea here," Mousse expressed while keeping a firm grip on his wife to restrain her from leaping into the garden, "And I, for one, can hardly blame her."

Those words filtered down to Kasumi, even as she heard another voice speaking in her mind, "You have the right of choice, Goddess...but what will you do here?"

Kasumi wondered at those words even as her gaze turned down from the helpless Taro to catch her partial reflection in the light bouncing off of his gleaming scale-mail armor. To her considerable dismay Kasumi saw her own face and recoiled at what she beheld there, and then without further adieu she let go of her nominal victim and took a step backwards, staring at her own clawed hands and marveling that they could belong to her, let alone reflect what she was becoming.

"Good," the voice in her mind remarked, "There is still hope for you, and for those you care about."

Taro fell to his knees clutching at his own throat and gasping for breath as his face was quite purple. In spite of the former rage and disdain he himself had felt towards the arrogant youth Ranma felt compelled to ask, "Are you gonna be all right?"

"What do you care?" Taro managed to grunt out, then forced himself to stand up again, even though he was still quite shaken.

"He's gotta point there, Sugar," Ukyo said, but nonetheless she took a step forward and extended the baker's peel that she had retrieved from inside the dojo, "Why should we care what happens to you since you barged in here and started throwing your weight around, Jackass? You ask me, you just got off light and oughta be thanking the Kami that Kasumi-chan is still partly human."

"Don't know what that means, but I'm grateful for the breather," Taro suddenly smiled and backed away towards the koi pond, "In fact, I think I'll use that ace in the hole I had in mind here to take a little powder...and old man...this ain't over. You're gonna give me what I want or else someone close to you is gonna suffer."

Even as he spoke those words he set foot within the water and began to revert back into his bestial monster-shape. Before anyone had a chance to attack the transformed Minotaur-like beast-man surged forward again, making a move towards Happosai, who braced himself for the renewed assault, only to perceive at the last instant an unexpected shift of tactics as Taro set one hoof out of pace and shifted his balance. All at once made a darting motion towards the house itself, catching everyone else off-guard as his massive hand reached out and snagged Nabiki, plucking her out of the crowd with a one-handed carry motion.

"Nabiki!" Ranma shouted as he saw Taro leap high over the house itself, and all at once he extended both arms and channeled his fury into a roaring blast aimed directly at the broad back of the retreating monster. As quick as the attack flared skyward, however, he was much too slow to nail his target as Taro ducked his head and was clear of the building even as the raging Mako Takabishi tore the night, and then the monster was gone, vanished altogether into the gathering night.

"Nabiki-come back here with my wife!" Ranma all but screamed, and then he spread his arms and re-absorbed both Latisha and Sharil into his body, then gathered his power together within him and summoned the winds of Karina to carry him aloft as he started to rise into the air in pursuit of both Nabiki and her abductor.

"Ranchan!" Ukyo called out, feeling both helpless, conflicted and frustrated to suddenly find herself being left behind as both husband and co-wife were carried beyond her reach. Perfume-neko hissed her own acute displeasure, only to gasp as a kettle of hot water was dunked over her fur, and suddenly the Enforcer was back to her fully human aspect, as was Arigami Keiko, who coughed and sputtered for breath, feeling her throat and measuring its soreness.

"Airen!" Shampoo declared in disbelief, "Why he take this one's Airen with him? And where he go that Ranma-husband must follow?"

"Obviously the boy's more cunning than I gave him credit," Happosai said with narrowed eyes, "He knew where to strike at us where we're the weakest, which at the moment just happens to be Nabiki, who's in no shape to free herself, let alone teach that arrogant whelp what it means to tangle with the Anything Goes Ryu."

"Is that all you've got to say for yourself, Jackass?" Ukyo snapped, "It's your fault he did all this, so why don't you do something about it?"

To everyone's surprise the little man just bowed his head and remarked, "I suppose I do owe it to the whelp to knock him down a peg before he does anything to hurt either my great-granddaughter or her baby..." and then he was bounding away into the night in the same general direction as had been taken by Taro and Ranma.

"Never mind about him, Airen," Perfume said as she got back to her feet and literally bristled with anger, "I am going after our wife and husband. I may not be able to fly but I can track them down fast enough to offer Ranma my assistance."

"And I'm going with you," Keiko said as she fought back to her feet, "That's twice that jerk took me down and made a fool out of me! This time I'll knock his stupid head off and make him eat that name of his for daring to mess with Nabiki!"

"I am coming too," Mousse declared, "I am sick and tired of feeling like the useless one around here, to say nothing of random fools throwing their weight around and doing damage to our family..."

"You're not useless, Mousse," Kurumi said, "And where you go I go. Besides, Nabiki is my sister, and I'm not about to let some jerk who turns into a scary monster get away with threatening her just because he wants to pick a fight with grandfather Happosai."

"No," Kasumi said, surprising everyone with the firmness of her declaration, "I know you mean well, Sister, but you're no more in condition to fight than Mousse-san. As for you, Keiko-san, and Perfume-chan, Pantsaru Taro has seen you transform and is aware of your Jusenkyo curses. Besides, Keiko-san...you have another more important duty that you must render to your mistress."

"What?" Keiko whirled about, "You mean...'Dachi?"

"I am...over here, my love," Kodachi replied from where she yet remained sitting on a low-set sofa, still clutching at her abdomen and quite visibly sweating, "And I must reluctantly forbid you from joining in the pursuit of our absent comrades."

"But 'Dachi...I mean, Mistress," Keiko started to say, only to blink then add, "Are you all right? What's wrong, Mistress?"

"Nothing much, my sweet," Kodachi said with evident difficulty as she fought to maintain her composure, "It is just that...I think that my water has broken. No doubt the excitement...has prematurely hastened my condition..."

There was a momentary pause before the color drained from Keiko's face, and then with a gasp she said, "Now?!"

"Now," Kodachi said emphatically, "Get on the phone and contact our people back at the mansion. Tell them...to hurry..." her face suddenly tightened with pain and she was unable to complete her sentence, not that anyone there had trouble understanding her meaning.

Keiko remained rooted to the spot for a solid instant before jostling herself into swift action, and then she cried, "OMIGAWD-where's the phone? I've gotta dial the emergency number! The baby-'Dachi's gonna have her baby!"

"Mousse," Kasumi said with a sobering expression, "You and Kurumi are needed here for now. Assist Kodachi-chan as best you are able. I will go and find my little brother and help him to rescue Nabiki."

"You Oneechan?" Kurumi asked with a disbelieving expression.

"I am the one best able to take Taro-san down, if it is needful," Kasumi replied, "And I can move the swiftest by levitation. Time is of the essence here or else...what is happening now to Kodachi might well befall our sister."

"I'm going too," Perfume stubbornly insisted, "I don't care if that jerk knows about my cat-curse or not, there's no way I'm being left behind, and you can't make me."

"Ah..." Ukyo said as delicately as was her wont, "Doncha think you oughta put something on first before you leave here, Sugar? Not that I've got anything against the way you're dressed myself, of course..."

"Huh?" Perfume paused to look down at her totally naked body then sheepishly said, "Oh."

"Use spare outfit and hurry swiftly, Cousin," Shampoo urged in practical-minded haste, "And be careful. Bull-headed boy is very, very dangerous, and he fast enough to penetrate you guard, so no let him get advantage, or hurt Airen."

"I'll remember to watch myself," Perfume said as she hastily made her way back into the house through the side-entrance, "Mousse, you stay and guard Ucchan until I get back."

"What?" Mousse blinked, "Are you serious?"

"I think she meant it in irony, Sugar," Ukyo remarked, "But considering how you've been on your best behavior since Kurumi-chan and you got married, I guess we really don't have much left to fight about."

"You're probably right about that," Mousse muttered half to himself in understated wonder at the strange twists and ironies of fate, "But still, considering the fact that I several times tried to kill or defeat you in order to force you and Perfume into marriage..."

"Let's not go there right now, okay?" Kurumi urged, "Besides, Kodachi is the one who needs us right now, and as much as it galls me to say it we probably wouldn't be all that much use to Ranma right now even if we were going. Oneechan is right, we're no match by ourselves to take on that...monster."

"What about Natsume and Tatewaki?" Mousse asked.

"They took off a while ago," Keiko called from over her shoulder as she fussed over her 'Mistress,' "I think they were headed back towards Tofu-sensei's clinic...but I can't be sure. The line to the house is out, and only 'Dachi's cell phone is working."

"Most likely Taro's doing," Mousse frowned in thoughtful consideration, "He does display a remarkably high level of cunning for one of our opponents. I'm not entirely convinced that even Kasumi will be enough to contain him, especially given the way he made fools out of the lot of us, attacking while half our number is off and away on other business."

"And speaking of which," Ukyo turned in time to see Kasumi's silhouette as the vampiric Tendo sister levitated into the night, "I guess she really meant it when she said that she was the one best suited to help Ranma bring back Nab-  
chan, no matter what kind of ruthless jerk they're up against."

Mousse followed her gaze the murmured, "You think it's such a good idea the way she was acting just now? For a minute there I actually thought she was going to carry through on her threat and murder the guy, and as odd as it may be for me to be the one to say that, coming from her lips that was a pretty scary declaration."

"Know what you mean there, Sport," Keiko called back over her shoulder, "But you wanna be the one to tell her not to go? Easy there, 'Dachi-chan...they said they'd be here in another few minutes."

"I will do what I can to hold out until then," Kodachi whispered back, "I know you have special feelings for her, but we must trust in Nabiki for she is quite a formidable survivor. Besides...I do not envy that brute for the pounding he most likely shall receive when Ranma catches up to him. Now...if it is all the same to you, could somebody pass me a bag in which to vomit? It would be most unbecoming...if I were to further despoil...such a lovely upholstery..."

Chapter Fifty-Six.

Episode One-Hundred-Forty-Two

"Ten Foot Terror."

Cologne had not even bothered to glance up as she felt the faint reverberation of a nearby teleportation, only paused in the gathering of her belongings to say, "If it is all the same to you, I am much too busy at the moment to be entertaining houseguests."

"Cologne-chan," Siren purred in wounded affection, "Is that any way to greet your oldest and dearest of friends? Has it been so long since we were children together that you have forgotten all that we have since shared between us? Is there nothing left of what we once were to each other than the ashes of a memory too sweet to be forgotten?"

"Unlike you, Siren, I do not waste my time dwelling upon what is past and done with," Cologne answered as she finished packing her medical satchel, "What was then was indeed a pleasant memory, but we were done with each other long before I met my first husband."

"You are so cruel to me, Ko-chan," Siren pouted, "Why must the past be ever between us? Am I the one who cannot leave buried what is old and done, or do you still cling to the bitterness instilled within you by Happosai?"

"I am not a mere child to harbor a grudge that old," Cologne said stiffly as she hobbled along past the lithe sorceress and headed towards the doorway to her restaurant, "I am well over Happosai, even if the fool still has some crude notion of rekindling the misplaced affection I once had for him. Besides, there are far too many incidents since him to be counted that were infinitely more traumatic."

"Yes," Siren cooed as she regarded the other woman's retreating backside, "And I have borne silent witness to each and every wound that you have suffered over the centuries. But will you not at least acknowledge that what we had was sweeter than not, even if you did tire of my presence just before we each turned twenty?"

Cologne heard those words even as she slipped out the door but continued to speak conversationally as she knew that the Archmage had her own means of following along at a pace that seemed less than hurried, "You were the one who had trouble letting go. What we enjoyed was a childhood fling, nothing more than this, an attempt to experiment in the nature and boundaries of our friendship. There was never any pretense of a lasting commitment, and we both knew that we owed a duty to our families to seek out men who would enable us to perpetuate our bloodlines."

"Yes, I know," Siren said as she manifested in an alleyway just before Cologne was about to pass it by unnoticed, "And we each did our duties to our families...several times over. But that was never more than a family obligation for me, while with you I felt something much, much grander, and none of my husbands has ever given me as much as you did that one sweet summer now long vanished."

"As flattering as that may be," Cologne said simply, "The past is in the past, and we both have long since moved on. Why do you persist in attempting to revive those long-dead embers?"

"Are they long dead, my sweet Ko-chan?" Siren asked as she was somehow now blocking Cologne's path with hands on hips as though daring the Matriarch to move around her, "Are you entirely certain that those embers cannot be rekindled?"

"Quite certain, thank you very much," Cologne shifted her direction and then hopped onto her staff and attempted to pogo-away, yet before she could even move Siren's hand reached out to grip the staff and halt its forward progress...and for all that the Archmage's hand seemed as slender and fragile as any ordinary woman's hand, her grip was like that of a titan and could not be budged for all Cologne's intentions.

"Why do you persist in this disguise?" Siren asked, "I know now that it is nothing more than a crude illusion created for you by the Staff, which is a branch carved from the bark of a powerful star-spanning tree named Funaho."

"Let me pass," Cologne said icily, "I have important family business to attend..."

"I will not keep you for long, Ko-chan," Siren assured as she reached out with her other hand, her palm extended, and chanted a few soft words before moving her fingers in an elaborate gesture, and all at once the air surrounding Cologne was briefly distorted, growing misty and confusing, just before a shadowy form expanded outward, and then congealed into the form of a beautiful young woman.

Despite the fact that she had been prepared for the transformation, Siren still caught her breath as she gazed upon the indigo-haired Cologne of her youth and stared in wonder of her ageless splendor. Though not exceptionally tall the timeless Matriarch carried herself with a dignity and bearing worthy of a princess, and her limbs were flawlessly well proportioned with curves to hip and chest that drew the eye and fevered the mind with sensuous thoughts of her potential. Siren allowed her eyes to rove up and down her former companion as if to commit every inch of her to memory, and then softly she murmured, "I cannot believe that it has taken me this long to see through your deception."

"So what if you do know the truth?" Cologne said with a stubborn pride that belied her feeling unmasked and quite vulnerable before the Archmage, "Do you intend to share this knowledge with the Council?"

"What, that old collection of tired, used up biddies?" Siren said dismissively, then paused before adding, "Well...possibly with Lotion, but she probably knows anyway. It's so hard to keep secrets from a Lore Master, and yet she is still embittered towards you for messing things up with her relationship with that Doctor Steinberg fellow. But you know that I have never considered myself to be a part of the Council, and if they lack the perceptions to see past your disguise then it's no business of mine enlightening them as to how much you are keeping to yourself, such as the means by which you retain your youth and beauty."

"You know how my standing among the Elders would suffer if there were even a hint as to the truth of my birthright," Cologne stated softly, eyes narrowed in suspicion.

"What, that your father was an alien prince from some distant galactic empire?" Siren sniffed, "What does that matter to an Amazon? It is the mother's side of the bloodline that truly matters with us, and do you think that I came by my blonde hair by means of peroxide? Hardly! In truth I am more of a reflection of our distant Scythian ancestors than you, my sweet Ko-chan...but to an Amazon all that matters is what is in your heart and soul," she murmured while affectionately running her fingers through several strands of dark blue hair that were spilling past Cologne's slender shoulders.

"That isn't what I mean and you know it," Cologne insisted stubbornly, "And if you insist on carrying on this way, then I will be forced to..."

"To do what?" Siren gently wondered, "Would you use force against me? We both know that would be a path of infinite folly, and besides...you may be miffed with me for exposing your secret now, but I think some small part of you is secretly thrilled to have this out in the open. It must be terribly suffocating to keep the bulk of your mass hidden away within the pocket folds of a quasi-  
dimension, allowing only the Troll to show upon the surface. Surely the chance to let it all out, to breath the free air of this world is a delight for you that you have denied for much too long...and why is it even necessary for you to go as the Troll anyway? I've heard enough to know that even your students are privy to your deeply cherished secret..."

"There is more here involved than merely maintaining an appearance," Cologne insisted, "I have duties and obligations that require that I remain as the Matriarch, even if I sometimes do indulge the occasional fancy..."

"So, you admit that it is more enjoyable to come as you are rather than to pose as something you are not?" Siren smiled a bit sardonically, "That was always your problem, Ko-chan, you always did let responsibility come before enjoyment."

"While you always do as you like without thought of the consequences," Cologne shot back by way of veiled accusation.

"Maybe in my youth I was like that," Siren replied, "But I have done a bit of growing up over the years and now know that actions always have consequences, no matter how casual or slight they might seem. But is that really what is bothering you so much, Ko-chan? That I indulge my whims and passions while you deny your own in the name of duty?"

"That and the fact that you were far too unreliable as a lover," Cologne persisted, "Any attractive vision that crossed your path could turn your head like a lodestone does a needle, and I am not so ancient that I have forgotten how you and Kan-Dal..."

"Oh that?" Siren said dismissively, "It was over between Candle and me before it had even begun. Just because you caught us that one time together in the wax-  
works..."

"One time?" Cologne bristled, "She was covering you with hot paraffin while you lay there stripped naked on a table wearing nothing but a blindfold!"

"I was letting her make a wax body-cast impression of my assets," Siren thrust her bosom forward, compelling Cologne to automatically look down at her expansive cleavage, "Don't you think that they're worth preserving for posterity? Besides, at the time, I hadn't yet mastered the art of youth preservation, so who knew that you and I would be around so long? Talk about holding a grudge for ages...the next thing you know you'll be bringing up that fling I had with Anthony..."

"Your third husband, as I recall," Cologne growled, "And that 'fling', as you put it, lasted close to thirty years..."

"Ah yes...I do miss Tony now and then," Siren said with a sincere note of regret, "Not many men of my acquaintance could hold my interest for so long, let alone prove to be so...durable. It was not merely the size of his equipment that so impressed me but the skill with which he could employ them, sometimes keeping me well entertained until the break of morning without relent..."

"Must you go into such sordid details?" Cologne snarled like an irritated wildcat.

"Oh, excuse me, I had no idea you would be so affected, Ko-chan," Siren said airily, "Are you actually jealous merely because Tony gave to me that which you could not because of the designs of nature?"

"Jealous?" Cologne snapped, "Not at all! It's no affair of mine how often you throw yourself into one affair right after the other. Play the strumpet for all I care, I have more pressing business with my family back at the Tendo compound."

So saying Cologne freed her staff from the grip of the Archmage and started to move around her...when all at once she froze, then turned her head about and stared off into the distance.

Siren similarly dropped her flirtatious manner and whirled about saying, "I feel it too. Huge amounts of Chi are being marshaled, and there's no mistaking the violence being employed between two high-level combatants."

"I must hurry," Cologne said as she reverted her appearance back to that of a withered old troll and hopped onto her staff to pogo off at a rapid pace, vaulting from street to rooftop to rooftop in order to save time, only to cast a glance sideways as she saw the lithe form of the Archmage flying at her side with as much ease as a winged falcon.

"It's coming from over there," Siren indicated with a nod of her head, "Moving away from the Tendo place...and the lead of the two combatants is quite huge and powerful...I believe that I even detect the resonance of Jusenkyo."

Cologne said nothing in response to this but redoubled her efforts to make haste as the two of them converged upon the scene of an ensuing battle...

Akane and Ryoga were only a few blocks down when they heard the distant sound of an explosion. Having walked at a slow and leisurely pace in order to allow their friends to catch up with them had given them the chance for some much-  
yearned-for private time together, and they had spent it conversing over little things, mostly inconsequential matters that married couples tended to go on about, but satisfying in the little ways in which it helped bring them that much closer together as a couple.

Of course the conversation between them died abruptly when the fireworks first happened, and both youngsters turned around with matching looks of dismay to see the shining light of distant pyrotechnics, the location of which was easy even for Ryoga to discern without hesitation or confusion.

"That came from the house," Ryoga needlessly stated.

"Somebody's attacking again," Akane said in clear distress, "Kami-san, doesn't it ever stop?"

"Apparently not for long," Ryoga replied, turning an anxious look towards his wife, "Can you make it back by yourself? I think they're going to need me."

"Sure," Akane said, "It's just a little ways further to Kodachi's place. You do what you have to, Ryo-chan, and don't worry about me. I'll manage by myself."

"You'd better," Ryoga said with sincerity in his expression, "Because I'm coming back to check on you just as soon as it's all over."

Akane smiled then added, "And while you're at it find out what's keeping Kodachi and Kei-chan. They should have been with us by now, and I'm starting to get worried."

"Me too," Ryoga said before he turned away and hurried back the way they had just come, unaware of the figure perched within a nearby tree, who watched this happen and smiled with predatory interest.

"Bad move, Nephew," she purred sensuously, "Leaving your mate alone and unguarded, which makes for the perfect opportunity for me to learn more about these humans and the sort of offspring that this one is bearing for you. I must confess to being curious as I sense so much...potential within her..."

And yet further still on another end of town...

"Aiko?" Beatrice gasped.

"I see it," Alison replied, "Better hold on, we're heading back, and I won't spare the let power."

"Understood," Beatrice remarked as Alison turned and gathered her into her arms, "But for the sake of the baby, go gently this time, A-chan."

"Hey, when am I not gentle around you?" Alison assured right before she accelerated, moving at a speed that was truly worthy of a superhuman...

Meanwhile, not all that far away, Nodoka was busy playing escort to two very much inebriated men as Soun and Genma walked arm-in-arm singing badly off key some foreign song that they only half-remembered. It hardly mattered to the two old friends that they were misremembering the words, making stuff up as they went to fill in the spaces, they were having such a jolly good time that even Nodoka could only look upon them with more indulgence than disapproval.

"The family's getting larger...larger...larger all the time..." the two men chorused, "And we're so very happy to be fathers to a dynasty that's forming..."

Not that they did much of the work needed to account for their family's recent expansion, but Nodoka was not of a mind to point this needless fact out as she was quite pleasantly bemused at all the granddaughters and grandsons that the kami had bestowed upon her of late, and how much joy she would take bouncing each and every one of them upon her knee (though she was quite adamant that her many daughters-in-law be disciplined enough to take care of such trivial chores as diapers and four-o'clock feedings). Already she had more heirs-either delivered or on the way-than the majority of her peers from high school, and for once those old biddies were to be denied the pleasure of condescending towards Nodoka for her "lack of fertility," producing only one son who surely would bear the usual two-point-five offspring.

The mere fact that she had four beautiful daughters-in-law was actually a source of great pride and pleasure to Nodoka (possibly more if she read the intentions of those elemental servants of her son right), and even granted the unconventional nature of their relationship, it was proof enough of Ranma's manliness that any mother would understandably have felt the urge to crow, even granted that she lacked her husband's abundant taste for sake. Even the fact that her nieces and nephews were proving quite prolific gave her a sense of looming joy that could not be diminished. The news that Kurumi would soon add to the family gene pool of the future was certainly worth celebrating, even if Nodoka had no real appetite to "pub-crawl" like dear Soun-chan and her husband.

Of course she did feel like celebrating in her own quiet way, which would mean a trip to the kitchen for lots of cooking and baking to whip up a feast even Kurumi-chan would be impressed with. For that she had made a number of purchases from the local markets, dipping into some of the "mad money" she had kept stored away for special occasions, which would later be delivered to the house so that a feast would be underway long before the husbands were stone cold sober. Nodoka was always the most delighted to host their full extended family at the dinner table whenever a reasonably good excuse could be found to bring the full clan together.

Of course with Kasumi back from her studies at that pre-college the chores around the house were easier than ever. Her adopted niece was truly a wonder at whatever task she set her mind to, and no doubt she would one day grow to become a magnificent doctor, having an affinity with healing that surpassed even those skills demonstrated by Shampoo or even her great-grandmother. In fact a lot of things about Kasumi impressed Nodoka these days, and not just because of her quite evident transformation several months ago when she took on the mantle of a Vampire Goddess.

Of course there were moments when Kasumi could behave in a manner that brought concern to Nodoka, such as those rare occasions when the normally gentle-  
mannered and even-tempered young girl could manifest a quite frightening display of temper. On those occasions, they were told, the Vampire blood within her manifested, and at those times Kasumi was not quite herself and could be capable of all manner of dangerous behavior.

And because the girl absorbed the knowledge and skills of the ones with whom she shared blood she could be a truly dangerous force to be reckoned with, and dangerous to cross as even Ranma was no match to compare with her potential.

Of course the girl was practically like a daughter to Nodoka, and the thought of any harm befalling her was completely unacceptable. Nodoka was only too grateful that that nice gaijin Doctor Steinberg was taking a personal interest in Kasumi's welfare, and if anyone seemed well matched for the eldest daughter of House Tendo...well...Nodoka smiled as she considered the possibilities. She was shrewd enough to notice the growing affection between Kasumi and Frank and saw the positive effect that they each had upon one another, and privately found herself approving of such a union.

Though normally the idea of marrying a foreigner might have seemed somewhat less than...proper...Nodoka was hardly in a position to disapprove for that reason, and after all, was not her own father an alien prince who merely seemed to resemble an earth man by some strange quirk in the will of the cosmos? How very much different then was Frank-san, who-though admittedly created by artificial means-had proven himself many times over to be both a warrior and a man, and as such was worthy of the affections of a loving, gentle girl like Kasumi.

If only this problem with learning to control her temper and appetites did not flare up at very odd moments, but then again, considering the quiet life that Kasumi had lived until recently, it was hardly that surprising that life was catching up with the girl, especially given the sort of family to which she belonged. Besides which, Nodoka was something of an expert on the subject of walking softly and carrying a sharp weapon.

That thought in mind Nodoka still reflected that she was more fortunate than a great many women with a family and friends to care about, and a son to make any mother proud, especially since he had earned the love of those nearest to him, most especially a wife as difficult to impress as Nabiki...

All at once Nodoka felt a rumbling vibrating down the street and through the wooden clogs of her sandals, and then the sound of an approaching weight sent her finely attuned Samurai instincts to full alarm mode, which prompted Nodoka to look up and unconsciously reach for the place where her katana normally rested, having briefly forgotten that she had left it at home for this outing.

Which was a very good thing since she most certainly would have drawn it as she beheld the terrifying sight that was bearing down on them there and then, a lumbering brute out of mythological nightmare.

Nodoka was paralyzed more by a sense of surprise and confusion than actual fear, but, as astonished as she was to see a winged bull-headed creature lumbering on two legs that was the size of a small house but she also saw that it had a struggling pregnant girl in his its arms, and the face of the woman in question was none other than Nabiki.

Even as this thought registered upon her conscious mind a second impression caused Nodoka to look past the shoulders of the giant to see another form in close pursuit after the monster, and without even needing to verify her initial impression her instincts confirmed that it was her son who was chasing by air after the creature.

"COME BACK HERE WITH MY WIFE, YOU CREEP!" Ranma declared angrily even as one arm glowed brightly and a swelling of Ki-force began to form like a ball of energy held in the hand of the enraged younger Saotome.

Nodoka hardly needed to be prompted to move as she hastily grabbed Soun and Genma by their arms and very rudely hauled them-and herself-out of harms way. One instant later the asphalt where they had been standing was blasted by a powerful wave of searing plasma as the man-beast hastily evaded the attack and gave yet another powerful leap that carried him out of harms way and farther beyond the range of Ranma's attacks.

"Son?" Nodoka called out in surprise as her boy went flying on past them.

"Sorry Mom, Uncle...didn't see you and Pop standing there! Gotta go, Nabiki's in trouble!" and then the young man was hot on the chase as the bellowing man-  
brute gripping his pregnant wife redoubled his already formidable speed as he raced towards the far end of town and towards a certain area where a certain level of business was currently in session.

"Are they headed towards the fair grounds?" Nodoka asked in surprise, only to turn again as she heard yet another commotion and saw the darting form of Happosai vaulting from car-roof to car-roof, moving at an incredible pace-even for him-as he called out an encouraging, "Go get 'im, Boy! That's the stuff! Teach him not to mess with our clan!"

"Oh my..." said a floating Kasumi as she drifted past them, glancing back and saying, "Is that you and father, Auntie? Terribly sorry...I cannot stay to explain, but Nabiki and little brother Ranma need my assistance."

"But of course," Nodoka called out to the younger girl, "Do whatever you have to, Kasumi...and try not to be out too late if it can be managed!"

"Saotome?" Soun asked rather faintly into the ensuing silence.

"Yes Tendo-kun?" Genma replied in an equally hushed voice.

"Just how much sake did we drink back in that tavern?" Soun wondered.

"Not enough obviously," Genma straightened himself out and declared, "Let's follow the boy and offer what assistance we can as it looks as if the girl's gotten herself into another jam and is in need of a rescue."

"Nabiki or the monster?" Nodoka murmured half to herself.

"Both I suspect," her husband replied, "Especially when Ranma catches up with...whatever the hell that was."

"My little girl is in trouble?" Soun righted himself and took a step towards where the monster and their heirs had vanished, only to fall flat on his face as he and Genma hit the ground together, their coordination having been far more affected than even a veteran drinker like Genma could easily shake off.

Nodoka only rolled her eyes and sighed to herself, "Looks as if a stop at the local bath house might be in order. Time to dry the two of you out so that we can witness Ranma's latest adventure...assuming we can follow their trail in another twenty or so minutes..."

Though in her heart she was quite naturally concerned for the welfare of her son and daughter-in-law, Nodoka was accustomed at this point to seeing her children roughhouse in such unusual and perilous situations. Both Ranma and Nabiki were natural survivors, and there was no doubt in Nodoka's mind that they would persevere in the end. The only real concern she had was for the baby Nabiki carried, and to that she had to trust to the kami since there was very little else that she could do until she got Soun and Genma appropriately sobered.

After that, however, she was fetching her katana, because if there was one thing that she could not abide it was anyone messing with her family and their personal safety. It was matters such as this which tended to make even the most mild-mannered housewife bristle with a need for bloodshed, and kami pity the man-brute if he dared harm a hair upon the head of either Ranma or Nabiki because it would be its head that soon would rest upon the Saotome mantle...

"Almost there," Frank announced to his slender passenger, "The Tendo estate is just around the next...corner?"

His voice fell to a hushed whisper as he drew his motorcycle up to a stop just shy of the walled compound that dominated its fair share of the suburban block, but before he had even finished killing the engine Trudy vaulted form the seat and landed in a wary crouch as she stared at the gaping hole in one wall that looked as though it had been trampled by a passing giant.

"Uh oh," she said aloud, "I've got a bad feeling about this. I think we just missed the opening act of a pretty bad tussle."

"What the hell?" Frank said aloud, dismounting from his Monster bike and removing his dark sunglasses to better examine the wall debris that had quite evidently exploded outward.

"Boss," Shelly-his personal computerized on-board AI relay announced, "I'm picking up numerous life signs inside the house, but also residual traces of some pretty high level plasma bursts. Whatever did this was recent, and pretty nasty to judge by the damage I'm perceiving on my sensors."

"No kidding," Frank moved forward through the gaps in the wall, "Better check inside to see if anyone's hurt..."

"I'm perceiving some minor injuries with my own senses," Trudy reported as she trotted along at his side, having to hurry to match his lanky stride, "But something more...I think that someone in there...what the heck? They're having a...baby?"

"What?" Frank glanced in surprise at the comely redhead beside him, "How can you know that?"

"Like I told you before, Big Guy," Trudy replied, "The Power tells me things, and right now it's all but yelling in my ear to get our butts in gear, because whoever the mother is, she needs serious medical attention."

Not bothering with formalities, Frank led the way as they swung around to the back of the house, only to pause as yet more evidence of battle greeted their eyes, though Trudy herself did not pause in her steps as she vaulted onto the patio and easily skirted the big hole in the floor in order to reach the couch about which the residents of the house were presently gathered.

"Hi there, don't mind me," she said with a casual smile, "Don't mean to barge in on you like this, but I saw there was an opening for a nurse, and since I've some training in the healing arts I thought I'd have a look at the expecting mother."

"Who the hell are you?" demanded a longhaired man in white Chinese-styled robes.

"Are you a paramedic?" asked a perky looking cute young thing whose short brown hair and pink ribbon gave her a peculiarity kawaii appearance.

"Er...sort of," Trudy scooted down to the side of a kneeling redhead and gave the looker a quick study, then purposefully turned her attention towards the brunette sprawled out upon the couch and said, "Couldn't wait to get things over with, huh? Well, just hang tight and it'll be over soon enough, and then you and the Misses can take your daughter home to celebrate this happy event...""

"Who...?" the brunette gasped, only to convulse her face with pain, at which point she growled, "Never mind! Just...do something! I am in quite a bit of discomfort here..."

"Hold on, Kodachi-chan," the pigtailed redhead urgently pleaded, "I've seen lots of women give birth on Lao's ship, and it's really easy if you just go with the flow and..."

"Lao?" Trudy favored the redhead with an upraised eyebrow, "As in Madam Lao, the infamous slaver pirate?"

"You know about her?" the short-haired Kurumi asked (a name that popped fresh into Trudy's mind when she tried to place her from among her companions).

"Ahm...sort-of, long story, not appropriate for here," Trudy hastily averred while moving her hands gently around the exposed posterior of her current patient, "Hmm...seems like you've had a bit of excitement here, and it's set you into premature labor. Didn't anyone tell you to knock off the gymnastics during the last trimester? Well, never mind...I can feel the baby kicking, and it's obvious enough that she wants out of there even more than you do..."

That was when Frank ducked his head and shouldered his way in through the ruined porch, saying in a low rumble, "How are you doing, Ms. Kuno? Sorry if we've come at a bad time, but it seems like our services will be needed."

"Doctor?" relief flooded Kodachi's expression ever-so-briefly before she gasped once again and bared her teeth while attempting to fight an internal battle against her own contractions.

"Frank?" Keiko glanced up at the man with a distraught expression, "Thank the heavens you're here! Kodachi's in pain, and I don't know what to do for her..."

"Well, I do," Trudy said tartly, "So please calm down and let me do my work. I need to concentrate, and this is going to take a lot of energy to pull through here."

"Is there something wrong?" Mousse asked (and Trudy had a moment to wonder just what sort of parent named their son after a hair care product).

"That all depends," Frank said as he gently eased his massive bulk down into a crouch besides Keiko, glancing sidelong at the other redhead, "I've delivered a lot of babies in my time, and every one's a different story. So...how's the kid holding up there, Ms. Wells?"

Trudy spared him a glance but rather than voice her opinions aloud she seemed to enter his mind and telepathically responded, [Not good...the umbilical chord's wrapped around the child's neck, and if she tries to pass through the abdominal canal she'll strangle herself. I need to turn the kid around so she can be birthed without obstruction].

As experienced as he was with the strange and unusual, Frank took it in stride that the redhead was an Esper and thought-projected back, [I had my suspicions from the signs I'm reading, but I'd need an ultra-sound to be sure of my assessment].

[Fortunately I don't need any external equipment,] Trudy replied, [And a good thing too as this is going to be a delicate operation. I'm going to touch-  
manipulate certain nerves in order to deaden them, but I can't do too many because that would negatively impact on the mother's ability to participate. I also need to turn the kid around without actually touching her, so bear with me as this is going to look a bit odd to the mundanes].

[Go for it, I'll back you up], Frank answered, then aloud he said to the others, "Sorry I didn't make introductions before. This is Trudy Wells from America, and I've called her in as a specialist to assist me."

"A specialist in what?" Mousse wondered, "She moves like a cat, and she's as silent as an Elder."

"Thanks for the compliment, good looking," Trudy replied, "But I'm kind of a Jill of all trades, know what I'm saying?"

"We don't," Kurumi responded, slightly bridled at the compliment paid to her man and frowning as she was unable to define the intentions of this gaijin stranger, but as miffed as she was she could not help noticing how the redhead's Japanese grammar was flawless, which prompted her to ask, "Are you one of his agents, and if so...then what are you?"

"That...could take a while to explain," Trudy murmured, "And at the moment I'd rather concentrate my energies on what I'm doing, so if you wish this child to be born without incident, please hold back until this is over."

"Huh?" Keiko reacted with a start, "Is there something wrong? Is Ko-chan in any danger? What about our baby?"

"Hey, take it easy Kid," Frank urged, "I think Agent Wells knows what she's doing..."

"What is going on here?" demanded the silver-haired Beatrice as she and Alison arrived upon the scene, the latter still carried within the arms of her crimson-  
haired lover.

"That's what I was going to say," noted Ryoga as he similarly showed up in their immediate wake, glancing at the backyard and saying, "And what the hell did all this?"

"Were you guys throwing a party and forgot to invite us?" Alison asked as she gently set Beatrice back down upon her feet, "And what's wrong with Kodachi? She looks like she's about to have her baby or something..."

"That's it exactly," Mousse replied, "Your girlfriend is about to become a mother."

"She...what?" Ryoga stopped in his tracks and gave Kodachi his most "dear-stuck-  
in-the-headlights" expression.

"What?" Trudy asked, only partially distracted from the complex work that she was doing with both her hands and her energies, "You mean he's the father of this child?"

"Ah..." Keiko suddenly went from distraught to oddly nervous, "It's...a little more complicated than that..."

"Do tell?" Trudy arched an eyebrow as she turned her focus squarely upon what she was doing, "I've just gotta hear the details when this is all over, especially if Lao was in the picture during conception."

"How the heck do you know that?" Alison asked with a startled expression.

"Trust me, I have my ways," Trudy responded in a somewhat distant tone of voice, but even as she worked the invisible threads of energy that turned the child within the womb to lessen the strain on both her and the mother she could perceive the unusual qualities within the infant's matrix, and that had plenty of curious implications for both the child and the people around her, whicht confirmed for her that there was a need for her services, even if this task would not be that of an assassin.

Her task this time was the giving of life, not its taking, and with that thought in mind she bent to the task of redeeming a child from the jaws of the grim reaper, knowing that in doing so she served the will of the Power and was helping to sow the seeds of a greater future...

"Such a pleasure to meet with the both of you," Vice Principal Choy said as he escorted both ladies to the front doors of the building, "I'm sure everything will work out just fine once you adjust to life within Furinkan, and I'll be certain to personally escort you on a full tour of the campus grounds. Please do show up tomorrow morning and I'll give you the standard briefing and introduce you to the rest of the faculty, and then work out a class curriculum with a list of the special students whom you will be teaching."

"Many thanks, Monsieur Choy," Angelique said with a gracious smile, "You have been most courteous and helpful, and I am certain that I will enjoy working here. My instincts tell me that this will be a most interesting assignment, and my services will be of great use to your campus."

"I am also inclined to believe that things will turn out well for my stay here," Takaharis said in agreement, still unable to keep from glancing at the blonde foreigner, feeling the oddly compelling charisma of this human almost as strongly as the potency of her life aura, and wondering just why she felt like kissing her in spite of her quite natural apprehension.

"Be seeing you both on the marrow," Choy waved to them as the descended the steps, and then the two women were alone, walking side-by-side across the darkened campus.

There was a slight pause before Angelique ended the silence between them by saying, "You need non be so apprehensive around me, Cheri. I am no enemy, nor will I bite...unless that is what you want from me," she added coyly.

Takaharis was not an easy person to put off guard by first impressions, but she was thrown quite off her guard as she turned to regard this curious demi-human then asked bluntly, "Who are you really? I can't believe that one like you is working as a high school nurse."

"Ah, you have found me out," Angelique grinned sweetly, "In total honesty I am non more what I seem than vous, nor do you not need to hide that from me that which is so obvious to my senses, that you yourself are keeping the real you hidden from full view. I understand your reasons for doing so, but with me it is a wasted effort."

"And what do you think you know about me?" Takaharis asked warily, turning to confront this stranger.

"I know that you are a long way from your home and are certainly no native to the climate," Angelique frankly replied, pausing in her stride to favor the other woman directly, "But I perceive as well that you have a good heart and quite noble intentions for being here, and so I would greet you as a friend...and anything else...well, that is yet to be negotiated."

The openly flirtatious manner of the blonde biker was such that Takaharis felt her pulse quicken as she could not help admiring both the beauty and spirit of the being that was before her, but still she had enough self-control to openly ask, "How...how can you know such things about me?"

"I have my ways, Cheri," Angelique moved in closer, intensifying the sensual effect created by her very presence, "And my intuition, which I trust with my life. I do know how to read people, and I know the ones with whom I can share a special...affinity. Do you not agree, ma Cheri, as I know that you have similar perceptions?"

Takaharis swallowed on a suddenly dry mouth but then said, "Are you so sure about that. You might not like the real me if you met her..."

"Why not let me be the judge of this?" Angelique murmured, and then all at once her arms went around Takaharis's waist and she drew her in close enough for their mouths to meet at the mid-way.

Takaharis was startled by the kiss, but far from repelled at the blonde's forward nature. If anything it was the fulfillment of her own spontaneous desires, to say nothing of a thrill that sent shivers down her spine as the aura of the stranger met and blended in with her own, creating a kind of electrostatic tension that set their skin to tingling and all other senses to a state of complete arousal. The press of gentle lips against her own, coupled with the appealing aroma of the blonde's womanly scent, combined to eradicate the last traces of reluctance in Takaharis as her own arms went around the slender waist of her new acquaintance, and suddenly gave birth to the incredible desire to rip the clothing from both of their bodies so that they could consummate their mutual ardor in an entirely forthright manner.

When their mouths parted briefly it was Takaharis who murmured in a sensuous purr, "Would you like to stay the night with me? That is...if you have no where else to crash? It's not all that far to my house."

"I thought that you would never ask," Angelique cooed in a most agreeable manner, only to pause with a mildly confused expression as she said, "Pardon Cheri...but...does it seem to you as if the earth itself is moving?"

"Not yet," Takaharis easily chuckled, only to lose her good humor as a pounding noise made itself the more apparent and broke them both away from their quiet interlude, reminding them both that there was a world beyond each other.

Passion gave way to surprise and then open wonder as both women turned to see a lumbering shape racing past the walls of the high school as something tremendously heavy was pounding rather loudly in its haste to make tracks. It had a bull-like head and a broad set of wings and moved on two legs yet appeared to be holding in its burly arms a struggling woman. It was moving at a fairly good clip and was soon past the gates of the campus bearing down towards the far end of the street as if heedless of its ultimate destination.

Astonishment held the two of them immobile for but a minute before Takaharis gasped, "That looked...something vaguely like my little brother, Edgar."

"Cest moi?" Angelique inquired without taking her eyes off the charging minotaur.

"Ah...on second thought, it couldn't be him," Takaharis said evasively, "Besides, his horns are too long, and it was just a passing resemblance."

"Ah...I see," Angelique murmured faintly, then started forward with an apologetic, "My regrets to you, Mademoiselle Takaharis, but I must needs take a rain check on your generous offer. This bears investigation, and if a helpless damsel is being threatened by that monster..."

"Hah?" Takaharis said in mild dismay, only to gasp and point into the air, "Hey...look at that! A...flying human? No...two of them? And the one trailing the other...?"

"Most incroible!" Angelique exclaimed as several human forms went flying past them, kicking up such a fierce wind that their hair was tossed about as though in a wind-tunnel, and then the blonde raced towards her abandoned motorcycle and hopped onto the seat, scooping up her helmet and donning it swiftly. And then she turned the engine over and revved it to full rotation before sliding the kickstand up and starting her vehicle forward, then gunning her vehicle and popping a wheelie as she aimed herself towards the school gates.

"I shall return when matters are settled!" Angelique called out, or seemed to since her words were partially drowned out by the motorcycle, and then she was gone in a cloud of dust, leaving Takaharis to stare at her passage in blind-eyed wonder.

And then she declared aloud, "Oh Hell...what am I doing?" before allowing her appearance to shift and distort into her true form, at which point she took to the air under her own power, batting leathery wings in pursuit of her curious quarry.

Not far away a pair who stood perched atop the walls of Furinkan allowed themselves to be revealed as the one commented to the other, "Curiouser and curiouser. What next, a large white rabbit?"

"Father?" his comely companion asked with a mildly puzzled expression.

"Never mind, I've just always wanted to say that," Anri smiled, "But I think matters are getting a bit too much out of hand here, and it is well past time that we took a more active part in these matters."

"Art thou certain that such would be for the best, Father?" his companion asked softly, "Thou dost know as well as I what matters be at stake here, and why it would be imprudent to risk too direct an exposure..."

"Risk there is in any endeavor, Thelendra," Anri assured her, "But far greater is the risk in not becoming involved. Besides, I find I'd rather much enjoy getting to know these people better, especially that promising lad and his gifted wife, to say nothing of our original concerns regarding the fair Kasumi."

"Mother would be most cross with thee if thou wert to indulge thine penchant to mix pleasure with prophesy, Father," Thelendra warned, "Much as thou didst behave during thine sixth incarnation."

"Fiddle-faddle, I've put that long behind me," Anri said with coy amusement, "And are you ever going to let me live down that trifling incident between me and a few milk maids?"

"Never," Thelendra assured him, "Though in the past it may be for thee, in mine eyes the past, future and present are ever as one. Thou dost know this of me far more than any other, save possibly for aunt Ulsa."

"You had to reincarnate as an Oracle," Anri mused, "And here your mother was hoping you'd grow up to be a lawyer, while I was holding out for a rabbi. Well, that's all well and fine now, but I think we had best be moving. Oh, and try not to kill the little man who is about to grope you."

"What art thou speaking about-GAH!" his daughter jumped in alarm as something attached itself to her ample bosoms and rubbed his white-mustached face up and down against the perfect skin that projected forth from the cleavage of her tunic.

"YOWZA!" cried Happosai in happy delight, "I've hit the mother-lode...!"

"I did attempt to warn you," Anri sighed as his daughter pried the wizened old pervert from her body and began to stomp on him with uncharacteristic violence, "Let that be a lesson to the both of us not to take the denizens of this region too lightly, for even the mighty can be brought low if they relax their guard around these mortals."

"Father, this is no time for a lecture!" Thelendra snapped as she punted the little man with such force that he went rocketing forward as though shot out of a cannon.

"Sorry," Anri said, "Couldn't resist. But the reason I wanted you to spare his life is that he has a destiny to fulfill, one that-unfortunately-does involve quite a lot of groping of women's bosoms, and believe me when I say that he just got off lightly. By rights I should be all wrathful, fatherly and vindictive over the fellow's assault of you, but at the moment we cannot spare the energy. Not with the challenge that is shortly to be posed, and to that end let us go and find our lovely goddess before she gets in much too deep and is well past the point of redemption."

"I take thine meaning to heart, Father," Thelendra assured him, murmuring under her breath, "But do not think this to be the end of the matter, and if mine path should cross that of the demon pervert yet again it will be one encounter for which he shall find no future."

"You know, at times such as these you really do remind me so much of your mother," Anri noted, adding in soft undertone, "And that is not always a very comforting sensation. But anon for now...let us fulfill our part within this play and-later-when there is time, we shall speak again upon how my actions reflect upon your mother..."

With that thought in mind the very strange pair vanished into the night once again, and the wind blew warm in their passage with the hint of a spring thaw that chases away the harshest of winters...

Continued.

Comments/Criticisms/Oracular Visions: shadowmane

Can Taro escape from the wrath of an enraged Ranma, backed only with his Jusenkyo curse, and will Kodachi be successful in having her baby? Find out the meaning of this and loads of other important questions in, "In-Laws-Out-Reason," or, "Have Minotaur Will Trample." Be there...

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	57. Chapter 57

preDnabiki143

Nabiki 1/2

"A Very Scary Thought"

by Jim Robert Bader

(Inspired by the works of Rumiko Takahashi Others,  
with concepts and characters created by fellow fanfic writers Wade Tritschler, DB Sommers, Nicole Manders, Andrew Greaves, Bill Guiroff and countless others, including "Buffy"  
creator Joss Whedon; with special thanks to my good pal Shiva for his editing and handling of this series.)

(Certain other characters and concepts are of my own innovation, including my interpretation of the Monster of Mary Shelly's novel, and various other guest stars appearing in this portion of the Nabiki 1/2 series...)

Chapter Fifty-Seven.

Episode One-Hundred-Forty-Three

"Contemplation and Reflection"

Though he had begun the match purely as an exercise in testing the strength of his potential adversaries, Taro had never dreamed of himself winding up in the present situation wherein he was chased by a flying man wielding elemental powers while he himself was holding said fellow's pregnant wife in his brawny arms while fleeing as if for his very life through the center of the Neriman district, while further to his rear his real quarry, Happosai, was giving pursuit of his own, which had been Taro's original intention.

It was not that he was retreating from the fray in cowardice, he most emphatically insisted, but when faced with a young man gifted with strange abilities of an entirely unknown quality it was only logical to take steps to gain much needed distance. And here he thought the other flying girl would be the real problem, what with the surprising speed, strength and sheer animal-like ferocity with which she had momentarily come near to choking Taro to death, to say nothing of her martial arts skills, which were nothing less than phenomenal to Taro's considerable experience. And then there was Happosai himself, who had proven to be rather a bit more formidable than expected. Obviously there was no way that Taro could take all three of them on by himself without further study of their abilities and a gradual determination of their respective weaknesses, if any.

And so he ran on powerful legs with the speed of a charging bull loping through town and either vaulting or crashing through what obstacles obstructed his path, always just a few steps ahead of getting his tail fried as the boy behind him wielded his elemental flames, attempting to nail the massive Taro in order to bring a halt to his escape. Just how exactly the young husband to the girl he had just kidnapped could maintain his flight while summoning fire was as much a mystery to Taro as his ability to summon those two curious ladies whose bodies seemed to be composed of nothing so much as flame and water. Obviously some sort of a magician, but Taro knew how to deal with that kind in his travels, and if the youth rashly attempted to close the distance or come to within arms reach he would discover first hand just how quickly Taro could move, or just how powerful he truly was while in his cursed form.

And it was tempting enough to do just that in order to shut the fool up with his needless, incessant taunting.

"Why are you in such a hurry, Pantyhose? Think you can get away from me? You ain't gonna be thinking that for very much longer!"

Unfortunately Taro's bull-head voice was unable to form more coherent sounds so that he might retort in some suitable fashion, so he was left merely to grunt and bray in anger while keeping a firm grip on the struggling woman in his arms since she was seeking to escape him ever bit as much as her husband was intent upon her rescue. No way would Taro let go of his only ace in the hole, however, and so he gripped her as tightly as he dared to do without actually hurting her since he did not wish to see her harmed at this particular time. Doing so would, after all, defeat the purpose.

Fortunately, however, Taro still possessed his wits and cunning and was intelligent enough not to rely entirely upon his brawn in order to fight his battles. He had earlier in the day marked the location of a traveling carnival that just happened to be in town at this time, and so he made towards it at double his normal speed, the city literally flying past him as he raced towards the well-lit carnival area, knowing full well that it would offer him the best means with which to escape his current situation.

For Ranma it was doubly frustrating not to be able to let loose at full strength upon his quarry, but concern for Nabiki's welfare caused him to employ far less Chi than would be needed to take down the ten-foot giant man-brute. A part of his Chi was needed to help guide Karina as she lifted and supported him in the air, his Arishasenken maneuver willing his body to be light as air yet needed to be blown along in order to keep pace with the swift-moving Taro. That which he could spare to lend to Latisha as his revived Salamander ally utilized her flame into an attack weapon was far from adequate to do more than blister Taro's furry hide were he actually to connect with one of his flame bursts. Worse still he had no idea how much longer he could keep this up since his stamina had limits, while Taro seemed-if anything-to be actually speeding up the nearer they came to the boundary of Nerima.

And then he saw the carnival in full sway dead ahead of them and got a sudden notion of just what his enemy was attempting. The unsuspecting crowd would likely be thrown into a blind panic if they saw the monster charging at them, and there was no telling what could happen as a result of this beyond the obvious fact that people would get hurt and enough confusion would be generated to allow Taro to escape undetected.

So Ranma did the only thing which he could think of doing and boosted his Chi to the max, unleashing a curtain of flame that scorched the ground directly ahead of Taro, and thus succeeded in balking the brute, who instinctively threw up an arm defensively, and thus provided a much-needed opening for Nabiki.

It had been intensely frustrating for Saotome Nabiki to be rendered helpless once again in the face of an enemy who was intent on taking advantage of her pregnant condition. Having grown up with the mindset of always fighting her own battles it was galling to her ego to have to rely upon another in order to escape becoming either a hostage or a victim, and so when an opening was presented to her she naturally took it, lashing out with a kick at the exposed chin of her captor.

Five months of steadily having to take it easy for the sake of her baby had not left Nabiki in a substantially weakened condition. Cologne had been teaching her methods for maintaining her body's strength while shifting emphasis towards enduring the ordeal that would come with giving birth to her offspring, and Nabiki's leg-muscles had not atrophied in the slightest. Her foot thus connected with Taro's chin with enough power to snap his head back and stun him, and thus she was able to wrestle free and land on her own two feet while her captor was staggered, having been unprepared for this level of difficulty in keeping a firm grip over his hostage.

Seeing his wife liberate herself from Taro's grasp momentarily elated Ranma, and he was about to move in to join her on the ground when his strength unexpectedly faltered. The level of Chi needed to maintain the firewall had drained him more severely than expected, and Ranma hit the ground far more roughly than anticipated, jarring him for several crucial seconds while Taro shook off the effects of the kick and reoriented himself upon the more immediate threat posed by Ranma.

The little twerp was proving more annoying than expected, but Taro grasped the obvious fact that it took a lot of energy for the boy to maintain control over his elemental servants. That thought was all it took for Taro to launch a kick that caught the grounded Ranma on his side and sent him flying backwards in an entirely uncontrolled manner.

"Ranma!" Nabiki gasped, and then her rage flared to the forefront and she brought her hands together, summoning her own internal power as she formed a glowing ball of intensified Ki-force.

Taro sensed this new attack and barely managed to dodge out of the way before it was unleashed in his direction, astonishing him very much to learn this pregnant girl had such resources at her disposal. He did not turn his head to follow the ball of energy as it broke against the side of a distant building, but the sound it made was loud enough to assure Taro of its effectiveness, and so he moved once again in order to prevent her from a second energy attack.

Nabiki was astonished at how fast the huge brute could move when he had a mind to, nor was she prepared for when a fist the size of a large melon took firm hold over both of her arms and bound her wrists together while yanking them skyward. She was suddenly dangling in mid air while the brute threw his other arm around her waist, and then Taro was on the move once again, this time vaulting over the firewall and pursuing his original course towards the carnival and relative safety.

Kasumi arrived upon the scene just in time to witness the end of the altercation, but as much as she yearned to go to the aid of her sister, it was her "little brother" who obviously needed the more immediate attention. Thus it was that she glided down towards him and landed at his side with the ease of a swooping bird of prey, yet all the while her concern for Ranma's welfare overrode any thoughts that might otherwise had inclined her towards thinking in that predatory direction.

"Little brother, are you hurt?" Kasumi asked as she knelt over the huddled form of the Saotome heir, who was presently gasping for breath and hugging himself in a fetal position.

"Knocked...wind...outta me..." Ranma managed to gasp, panting deeply for breath as he sought to control an involuntary shudder.

As trained as she already was in CPR and emergency assistance, Kasumi read the signs and said, "Take it easy, Ranma-kun, you need to relax a moment and allow your body the time it needs to recover."

"Can't...wait...need...to...Nabiki..." the young man insisted, obviously in much greater distress than he wanted to let on, not that his efforts much fooled Kasumi.

"Ranma-kun," she gently informed him, "You have broken several ribs and one may well have punctured a lung. Lay still and allow me to examine you so that I can fix the immediate problem. Otherwise...you will be of no use to either me or to my sister."

Ranma was as stubborn as a mule on certain issues, but for the better part of his young life he had always trusted himself around Kasumi and had come to look upon her gentle touch to sooth his hurts and injuries as was the dutiful role of a loving "big sister." Conditioning won out over pride and he relented to her insistence, surrendering to her will as she made him lay upon his back while she went to work examining his internal wounds with fingers that glided gently over the surface of his clothing.

Her examination confirmed her worst suspicions and she said in sad appraisal, "What a savage brute that Taro-person is to use this much force on you while you were helpless, little brother. A good thing it is that I have the means of speeding your recovery, but it will mean having to restrain further use of your elementals as I will need their assistance to heal you."

Kasumi felt several assents and voluntary responses coming from inside her "little brother's" battered body and knew at once that the elementals were responding to her inquiry, loaning their own considerable might to sooth and repair the internal damage so that Ranma's natural healing factor-bolstered by Kasumi's own power-could work overtime to restore him to full normalcy. It would take several more minutes, but soon Ranma would be well enough to fight again, albeit at less than his full potential.

To speed things along Kasumi gave Ranma one of her patented gazes, momentarily putting him into a trance so that his conscious mind would not interfere with the work of the elementals. One of the advantages of her gaining vampiric powers had been her ability to end disputes and to calm minds whenever she had the need to assert herself, and generally everyone minded their manners around Kasumi for reasons other than fear of her displeasure.

As intent as she was on bringing her adopted brother (and current brother-in-  
law) back to health, however, she had not immediately registered a peculiar high-pitched whine that was swiftly approaching, nor did she register the movement of a fairly large object until it was almost upon them, but when a voice paused to ask her, "Cest le vous? Pardon me, Mademoiselle, but are you in need of some assistance? Is yon fellow in mortal distress that you must attend to him with healing energies so bright that they did light the sky in this direction?"

"Eh?" Kasumi glanced up in order to better see the stranger, and then she allowed herself to gasp an understated, "Oh my..." as she felt a presence in this stranger that was curiously magnetic.

The stranger lifted the visor to her helmet and said, "Well, well...such a vision indeed! You must pardon me if I gaze upon you in awe, Cheri, for such a wonder as vous is rare to behold in any climate. I am both honored and humbled by your presence..."

"Er...quite," Kasumi did not know how to respond to such flattery, nor could she quite comprehend the strange fluttering she felt-albeit briefly-of her heart as her own crimson eyes met the blue sparkle in this gentle-mannered stranger. It was a wholly unexpected reaction, and the first time that she had felt this strongly towards another woman since becoming infatuated with both alternating forms of her cursed young sibling.

The stranger inclined her head politely and said, "I crave pardon that I must take my leave of you, Cheri, but duty calls me forward, and I did espy that villain taking refuge among yonder crowd with the damsel he has abducted, so fare you well until next we meet, for most assuredly has God intended for us to meet, and fate precludes the possibility that our acquaintance was either random or merely fleeting."

With those words she sealed up her visor once again and started up the engine to her motorcycle, and then she sped away towards the carnival, leaving Kasumi to stare in mild amazement. It was only a few seconds later that it dawned on her that this stranger-in her own peculiar way-spoke and acted quite a lot like a foreign version of Tatewaki Kuno.

"She's...going to rescue Nabiki?" Kasumi murmured aloud as she arrived at that rather astonishing conclusion.

"Who says?" Ranma gasped as he suddenly awoke out of his daze and started to sit upright in spite of Kasumi's attempt to restrain him. "Rescuing Nabiki's my job...and I'm her husband..."

"I agree with you, Ranma-kun, but you are not yet fully rested," Kasumi insisted, and this time she managed to get her point across by pushing Ranma back down and holding him to the spot with one hand firmly placed upon his chest, then finished submerging him into a much deeper level of hypnotic trance, "Give your allies a chance to do their work, I beg you. If you go after Taro-  
san at less than full strength, and without fully repairing the damage to your body..."

"Is that young fool ignoring good advice once again?" another voice out of the night surprised Kasumi, only this time she knew who it was and relaxed a bit as she made out the wizened form of Cologne, accompanied by the blonde-haired Amazon Archmage whom Kasumi remembered was named Siren.

"Elder?" Kasumi gave a sigh of relief, "Thank the kami you are here! Nabiki is in trouble and I stayed to help my little brother..."

"Whoever did such a job on him must be quite the menace indeed," Siren mused, "We felt the disturbance all the way back at the restaurant and briefly stopped in at your place, only to view the damage to both property and personnel. Oh, and by the way, one of your friends...I think her name was Kodachi...has gone into labor."

"Kodachi-san is having her baby?" Kasumi said with greater surprise, "I had no idea...it must have been all of the excitement..."

"Never mind that now, Child," Cologne firmly cut her off, "Kuno-san is in good hands and is even now being transported to her family mansion. It is Nabiki who is most in need of our attention."

"Nabiki, yes," Kasumi straightened up and turned back towards the carnival, which lay no more than a half kilometer in the distance, "I have to find my sister, to rescue her from that...monster."

And with that thought in mind she spread her arms wide and rose up into the air, moving like a starling as she arced towards the lights and merriment that even then were being obstructed by the sudden appearance of the man-brute. Some screams and hysterical cries were all the clues that she needed to hone in on his current whereabouts as she sped on, spurred by her deep concerns for the welfare of her beloved sister and her expected offspring.

Even as she did this, however, Siren was glancing at Cologne and murmuring, "Did I hear her right in calling that other boy a monster?"

"She is not one herself...at least, not as yet," Cologne responded, "Take charge of your apprentice and see that he recovers in time to offer his assistance. He will be difficult to restrain once he regains sufficient strength to stand once again, while I must see to it that my own heir is protected against the wanton mischief of that fool godson of Happosai."

"Are you afraid he might do harm to mother and child?" Siren asked.

"That is one half of my fears," Cologne informed her former girlfriend, "But the other half is what Kasumi might do to him if he does, and the implications of that are simply not to be contemplated."

And with that the Amazon Matriarch took off at so rapid a pace that she herself appeared to be flying, leaving Siren to murmur softly to herself, "Such an interesting family...I do believe that I will very much enjoy my stay here, and not just for the company either if things are usually this interesting in Nerima..."

Ritsiku Akemi arrived at her home on the other side of Nerima and heaved a great sigh of relief as she passed through the gates and made it up the walkway without incident. The way her day had been going she half expected lighting to strike her down, or the old pervert attempting to raid her laundry once again. Of a certainty her greatest fears of an encounter had dogged her steps all the way back from the market and she was still tempted to glance over her shoulder in fear of that Vampire or her werewolf consort catching her scent. That would certainly make her day a living hell and lead to a very unfortunate...encounter.

Instead she called out "Tadaima" as she entered the house and took off her shoes in her customary manner, then listened in with her accentuated hearing to mark the locations of her other family members. It was not hard to detect and place them, each one having their own distinctive scent and qualifying features, a thing that the half of Akemi that was still quite alien found as an endless source of wonder and fascination.

There was grandfather Arishi, who lived in the attic and collected Pokemon for a hobby, an old man whose almond scent had the hint of pending death from old age, yet still he seemed so alive and young of heart that he was more like a young boy trapped in a withered old body.

Then there was Akemi's mother, Ritsiku Tomoyo, who was a charming and eccentric young thing, a widower at the age of thirty-seven who had not sought out a new mate since losing her salaryman husband in an auto wreck some nine seasons ago. In spite of the cruel twist that fate had dealt to her she remained surprisingly upbeat about life and had a positive outlook that kept the family together. Her late husband's shrine portrait dominated a place of honor in the house and was routinely given incense and fresh flowers from their garden as though to celebrate his passage into the next world, even though-by all accounts-he had been both a good man and a loving, devoted father.

And then there was Arishi Omi, the brother of Ritsiku and quite a colorful character in that he was always scheming to make it rich as an entrepreneur, but lacked the basic talents, skills and a formal education that might have helped him in that endeavor. As it was he was always trying his hand at new business ventures, most of which ate more money than they produced, but always he remained optimistic that at least one of his gambits would strike it rich and give him the keys to fame and fortune. He was otherwise quite harmless...for a mere human, and an endless source for fascinating stories that both halves of Akemi found quite entertaining.

Lastly there was Isamu, Akemi's sometimes annoying little brother and constant thorn in her side, a promising young scoundrel who one day might grow up to be an effective member of society...if his love of pranks and tendency to pry into the personal affairs of others did not get him squashed before he fully turned ten summers.

On the whole a rather fascinating cretch, and one to whom Akemi now belonged in more than one sense of the word. Humans were such complex, contradictory and confusing creatures that Akemi never got tired of observing them in action, and while she did feel somewhat alienated from the majority of the human race, her family kept her ties firmly in the gene pool. Of a certainty they had very different values from what Akemi's other half was used to.

But then again, not many Japanese girls were the hybrid host of a fusion of minds, bodies and souls of human and Rakshasa. In fact, to her experience, Akemi was the only one presently in existence, and so well mingled at the core that it was difficult sometimes to remember that they were actually two very different creatures.

Akemi was the surface impression that everyone saw, just an average-if-kawaii young Japanese schoolgirl of no particular distinction or importance. But the Akemi that lurked beneath her surface was a creature from beyond the pale of human experience, a demon born to an existence that had no actual rules, not even the concept of an "up or down" point of reference. This Akemi was in exile from her home plane of existence, and since her kind did not have individual names she now referred to herself simply as "Akemi" in either of her two guises.

That being, however, was currently amusing itself by reflecting on the contrast between its home and the world of its fused host body, particularly when it felt a rubbing at her leg and chanced to glance down to see the small furry beast whom was known by the curious title of "Akuma." Black and sleek of fur, the creature was rubbing its head against the stockinged feet of its mistress, and reflexively Akemi set her grocery bags down and reached down to scoop the feline creature off of the floor and into her arms, whereupon she affectionately petted its head and held the animal close to her body, relishing the contact as though greeting her dearest friend and most intimate of companions.

It never ceased to amaze the Rakshasa within her, this human capacity to empathize with another living being and to share affection with a different life-form that was infinitely more primitive than herself. Humans were truly astonishing creatures to have such a capacity for love and intimacy, which was far, far different from what was known on its home plane of existence. A Rakshasa might have some vague sense of kinship with its own cretchmates, a more general sense of belonging to the clan and its own kindred, but beyond that there were few such powerful attachments as what one human could feel for another.

The potency of such bonds was unquestionably powerful and could motivate humans to behave in ways that might seem quite irrational if viewed from the outside, yet just as unquestionable was the realization that this quality was a key component to their greatness as a species. In learning to understand this of Akemi it had gained a fresh perspective over why human beings had successfully resisted the intrusion of the Rakshasa. It was beyond simple caring, it was their willingness and capacity for self-sacrifice for the sake of a loved one that goaded them to aspire to more than they might become if only motivated by self-interest or self-preservation, passions that were only too well understood by a Rakshasa.

To its kind the very notion of sympathy for another was as far-fetched as feeling sorrow for an enemy, or regret for the condition of a victim. They were predators by nature, born to hunt and kill those who were weaker than themselves, and filled with loathing for those who granted mercy in their kills. They prided themselves on strength and would turn even on each other if they saw the slightest display of humility or compassion, or any of the softer emotions to which humans were so given to nourish. Only the strong and ruthless prospered in their world, but not so here where compassion was abundant. True enough there were humans who were Rakshasa-like in their avariciousness and capacity for cruelty, but they were the aberrations, not the rule for humanity. And among human beings the absence of empathy and compassion was recognized as a sign not of strength but of mental illness.

In all truth the Rakshasa much preferred the human way, for it had long be regarded as weak and "inferior" among its own kind, and so it had a greater understanding of what it meant to be the "underdog," yet another reason why it felt such a closeness to Akemi. The two of them were one and yet still two very different beings cohabiting within the same fused body, and through Akemi's eyes the Rakshasa was coming to appreciate this world with an almost human sense of wonder.

In truth the two of them had grown so close of late that it was difficult to determine where one ended and defined herself as distinctly different from the other. This fact was recognized in the simple ability to hold and stroke the fur of the cat named Akuma. At first, shortly following their merger, Akuma would have hissed and avoided them as its animal senses were so acute that it recognized the presence within its mistress and the potential for danger. It was only after much coaching on Akemi's part that they finally overcame their differences, and now the Rakshasa was discovery what a delight it could derive out of holding a pet in her arms while hearing it purr contentedly, a sound that was curiously soothing to the nervous system.

The very idea of keeping a lesser carnivore inside one's living quarters would have earned looks of dismay from its cretchmates back home, yet Akemi's other half would sooner have suffered a personal injury rather than see harm befall this creature, and not just because of the pain such a loss would inflict upon Akemi. The girl's needs and wants were now of such paramount importance to the Rakshasa that any little thing that might upset her was a subject to be avoided, for it was learning from her how to care for another. The emotions that she took so much for granted were a bountiful treasury to explore, and the positive ones were what the Rakshasa most valued, such as when the girl felt happiness, and when she experienced intense longing for the presence of another it was there to offer her what support it was able.

And having a flexible body could be wonderfully handy in the right situation, a fact that the Rakshasa had only recently demonstrated for Akemi...

The young girl was just musing upon this, feeling a warmth rising up inside her as she remembered one particular recent night in question when she had been feeling both alone and alienated from the rest of her peers at school. She was a slightly built girl and had only a few friends among her classmates, and older girls tended to bully her around a lot...but since merging with the Rakshasa even those classmates had tended to avoid her. In sensing her needs the Rakshasa had responded as best it was able, and disclosed for Akemi one of the more interesting advantages that could be found in having a flexible body that was able to assume nearly any shape that could be imagined...

Naturally that was the point where her mother chose to bustle into the room and greet her daughter with a cheery, "What took you so long, Akemi? Did you get everything on my list from the market?"

"Ah...yes, Mom," Akemi replied, hoping that she did not appear too flush as her cheeks reddened at the sudden downshift of mental gears, and to cover for her confusion of lust and memory she dropped Akuma back to the floor and hastily scooped up her groceries, handing over to her mother her plastic bags filled with the contents of their impending dinner.

"Honestly, I don't know where you go sometimes, girl," her mother clucked while accepting the groceries and moving off in the direction of the kitchen, "Must be all that candy you eat...and did you know that you have a splotch of chocolate on your mouth?"

Automatically Akemi put a hand to her lips, finding the dried blood scrape against her fingertip and automatically reflecting on the fact that it must have been left there by the fight, that she had been a bit too hasty this time in fleeing the sign of her most recent encounter.

"Oh, never mind," her mother called back over her shoulder, "Go on upstairs and clean yourself off, then be sure to change into some decent clothes before joining us at the dinner table."

"Yes Mom," Akemi dutifully answered, grateful at how oblivious her mother could sometimes be when other mothers might fret about asking too many awkward and embarrassing questions.

It was such a cheerful inability to sense the presence of a demon possessing her daughter that made life bearable around the house, though everyone else knew that there was something oddly different about her these days. For one thing, Akemi did not brood about or lament her life the way she used to, not since accessing the Rakshasa's memories and discovering how much worse things had been for her new friend. It was part of why she found it so easy to accept being a part of another being with no resentment over having to share the same body. It was now fully a part of her, and it had saved her life from certain death, and its presence brightened up a life that once had appeared useless and empty, for which she was infinitely grateful.

Of course, as happy as their union could be at most times, still there was a darker side to matters, and a price that needed to be paid to sustain the Rakshasa. Though it had come to feel a great sympathy for humanity as a whole, still it was a predator by nature, and unable to totally deny the demands of its nature. It needed to periodically hunt and feed in order to remain healthy, and Akemi had to provide it with a continuous supply of the only sustenance that was required by the Rakshasa.

And for that reason they often would take long extended walks together, no longer avoiding the haunts and dark allies that once terrified the formerly timid Akemi, for that was where their prey was the easiest to locate. All one had to do was be in the right area at the right time and the prey would all but magically appear before you, and then the Rakshasa would feed, and all would be right once again in the world, with only the muggers and bullies having a different sort of opinion.

But then again, Akemi had always hated bullies, and having the means to punish their kind gave her a deep sense of personal satisfaction, the moreso in knowing that she was protecting the weak and helpless who would normally be their prey, much as she had been when first encountering the Rakshasa.

She headed for the stairs leading up to her room and almost tripped over the skateboard that she found laying in her path, which prompted her to snap a very harsh, "ISAMU!"

"What do you want, Jerk-face?" her little brother called down from his room.

"How many times have I told you not to leave that skateboard laying around?" Akemi growled back, "Do you want me to break my neck just because you can't put your toys away?"

"Sorry, I forgot all about it," Isamu replied with studied indifference.

"Oh yeah?" Akemi picked up the skateboard and smiled to herself, then applied pressure with both hands and snapped the thing in two over her knee with as much ease as it might take were the thing made out of simple Balsa wood.

"HEY!" Isamu was suddenly out of his room and staring down at Akemi with horrified outrage, "WHAT DID YOU DO TO MY-?!"

"Sorry," Akemi smiled as she held up the two pieces, "Must have been an accident. You know how these things can happen."

"MOMMMM!" Isamu all but screamed at the top of his lungs.

"If you two don't learn to play nice then I'm going to have to confiscate something you both value," their mother cheerfully responded, laying down the law, "No television privileges for either of you for at least a week."

"MOM!" both Akemi and Isamu called out together.

"Keep it up and I'll start imposing a curfew," their mother warned them in her pleasantly tyrannical manner, "Isamu, you should put your things away like your sister asked you, and Akemi-chan...please don't break things that don't belong to you. Now you're going to have to reimburse Isamu for his skateboard out of your allowance."

Akemi winced, but the Rakshasa within her was mindful of the justice of their mother's words and so she said, "All right...but only if he promises not to leave it lying around next time, or else I could really get hurt, and if I do I'm definitely taking it out on you, Isamu!"

"You're such a freak," her little brother said with disgust, "You used to be such a mouse, but lately you're turning into some kind of wildcat. Do you know what kind of noises she's been making lately in her room?"

"Isamu!" Akemi called out with just a shade of panic.

"Go to your rooms dears, and make yourselves ready for dinner," their mother called out, effectively calling a halt to any further exchanges.

Isamu stuck his tongue out at Akemi, who pulled down one eyelid and made a face in response, and then they parted ways as she continued of the stairs, that formal exchange of routine insults having put their day into its regular order.

Once alone, however, Akemi felt the Rakshasa stir as unvoiced questions filled her mind, to which she naturally responded aloud by saying, "I don't know why we act like that sometimes. I mean...I really do care about my little brother, when he's not behaving like a brat. I guess...that's just the way humans are around one another...and yeah, I know how different it was for you and your cretch. But trust me on this, eating him is definitely NOT an option."

The Rakshasa seemed satisfied with this, but still it could not help but prompt another question, to which Akemi replied, "Oh...that? Yeah...guess it is getting kinda hard to keep out of sight of that vampire. You really don't get along with them too well, huh? Okay...so maybe we need to find another way of dealing with the problem without resorting to violence. No, I don't know how, but I'm sure we'll think of something."

She paused before adding, "That other one? I don't know anything about her, and you don't either, so maybe we shouldn't jump to any conclusions here. I know that there's danger nearby, but it doesn't seem related to us, so for the moment I think we can relax and..."

And then she felt it, a chill wind in the breeze, disturbing the ethosphere and causing the Rakshasa within her to tremble, which was why Akemi paused in the act of taking off her clothes to hug herself and glance towards the window.

"What is that?" she asked, gliding across the floor so that she could cautiously peer outside in search of whatever it was that was setting off alarm bells down the spine that she now shared with the Rakshasa. At first they did not see anything, but then they perceived a flitting shadow, and by screwing up her eyes to magnify her vision sevenfold Akemi discerned the tiny little creature flitting from tree-branch to tree-branch, looking vaguely like some sort of ten-  
centimeter tall winged bug, yet giving off an aura that was inky black and full of malevolent mischief.

The Rakshasa did not recognize the creature so much for what it was as for what it apparently was, and even as they studied the thing it seemed to register them back, for it turned beady eyes their way and locked gazes with Akemi, attempting to read her even as she found herself being fortified by the Rakshasa. A moment passed during which nothing more happened, but then the creature hissed and extended its tiny wings, then flapped them at great speed and flew away like a darting ball of blue-black light.

"What...was that?" Akemi asked of herself, "You don't know? Sure didn't like the look of that thing...kind of like a Tengu, only not that nice. You think it's some sort of lesser demon? Well, if it's in our neighborhood then it's definitely worth investigating..."

"Talking to yourself again, Tofu-Face?" she heard Isamu call out from the other side of the wall that separated their bedrooms.

"Drop dead you little worm!" Akemi called back in a sisterly manner, then she paused to murmur more softly for the benefit of her other self, "Yeah...I guess when you put it like that, there's more than one pest in the neighborhood...but at least that thing out there and me aren't blood related."

At this the Rakshasa responded with almost human amusement, but still the nagging sense that the tiny creature that they had just seen outside the window might pose a danger to the community was already prompting it to consider the options. Akemi was naturally quite well aware of these concerns and was thinking along similar pathways, and one thing that was definitely common to both human and Rakshasa minds was the firm belief in territorial integrity. What posed a threat to your neighborhood was never a thing to be taken lightly.

And one thing all predators at their core knew was that it was better to be proactive than reactive. Perhaps another patrol of the neighborhood was in order, and not this time because of the Hunger. If anything was out of place within their territory it would be dealt with in an appropriate manner. But first she had to finish up preparing herself for dinner, for her mother had very strict rules about not skipping out on meals. And though she was normally a delight to be around, when aroused to parental wrath she could-in her own formidable way-be every bit as terrifying as a Rakshasa, something her other self was quick to concede and with great enthusiasm...

Kasumi glanced around but found neither sign nor little scent of either her sister or her kidnapper, but the scent was far too confused by the presence of other people. There was also a considerable degree of confusion all around as she surveyed the overturned tables, smashed booths and trampled fences left in the wake of Taro's rampage, and as she did not have Perfume's fine training as a huntress (nor had she ever shared blood with the amply endowed Amazon Enforcer) she did not know how to read the signs that would have told her which tracks to follow to find the current whereabouts of her quarry.

For Kasumi this was intensely frustrating because every moment that elapsed put both sister and child in that much greater danger. The motives for Taro kidnapping Nabiki were uncertain, and how exactly how doing so advanced his stated cause of having Happosai sanction a new name change was certainly difficult to equate. The image that was foremost in her mind was that of Kodachi going into labor, and considering how closely linked she and the other pregnant women of their extended family were at present, it was quite easy to see the same fate possibly befalling Nabiki.

Her sister was in excellent health and quite strong by ordinary standards, but Kasumi knew how much pregnancy had sapped the vital strength of her younger sister, and the last thing Nabiki needed at this time was to be subjected to this sort of stress, especially in light of the previous weeks events and the kidnapping of little Lylac by that wizard.

Something else disturbed Kasumi's thinking on this point. That alternate version of Nabiki, the one who was studying to be an Amazon Lore Master, had said something about their family having a special predilection towards the mystic arts. Their mother had apparently been the heir to some sort of legacy that had remained largely undeveloped until the present, and she had passed her qualities down to her children so that all three Tendo sisters were similarly gifted. In Akane this had manifested in her ability to channel her Chi into the martial arts, while Nabiki had excelled well past even the expectations of Cologne her mentor.

And Kasumi? Well...apparently her exposure to Vampirism had quickened something dormant within her that had given her the godlike properties that she now possessed. That and sharing blood with her divine aspect, Belldandy, had bestowed upon Kasumi the mantle of a Vampire Goddess, and the truth of her transformation could be attested in the way that other Undead creatures behaved around her. Lenore was worshipful and deferential to the point of obsequiousness, and Kasumi knew enough about the young redhead to understand that she did not normally bow the neck to anyone, not even her employers.

But what did it truly mean to be a Vampire goddess? Other than her enormous strength and superhuman speed she possessed mental abilities that she was only beginning to understand, ranging from telepathy and telekinesis to spot teleportation, and if she exerted her will even slightly she could make animals do her bidding, or people. It was frighteningly simple for her to manipulate the weather and the elements, and she could create fair skies or even thunderstorms whenever she had a mind to. Her senses were far more acute than even Perfume's hyperactive sensory capacity, and yet she was aloof to minor discomforts such as pain and temperature variations. She also had the abilities and memories that she absorbed from those whose blood she drank, and thus she had the martial arts skills of both Ranma and Nabiki at her disposal, along with their ability to channel vast amounts of life energy and to use it either to heal or as a weapon.

All of that being given as fact, she should logically have no difficulty in dealing with the likes of even the cursed form of Taro, for while he was unquestionably powerful and highly skilled in the martial arts, his strength did not exceed hers, and he was-after all-still basically human.

Apparently, though, the young man was well aware that he was overmatched and intended to avoid her at all costs, and he was cunning enough to think up ways to evade her. Kasumi, for all her vast potential, was far from omniscient or omnipotent, and thus she had to rely upon hints and clues to find her quarry, making it a battle of wits as well as brawn...and Kasumi would be among the first to concede that she was no where near as clever as Nabiki.

She needed to find a clue and fast, but as she wandered barefoot through the park late at night past terrified patrons who acted as if they had never seen a ten foot tall monster until now, she was at a loss over what to do in order to find the author of this latest chapter of Nerima's colorful history. She was just on the verge of admitting her feelings of inadequacy and frustration when something caught her attention. A feeling just on the verge of conscious awareness caused her to slowly turn around and notice a shadowy figure positioned directly behind her.

"Thou dost seek the answer to thine quest?" a polite-if-archaically worded voice addressed her softly, "Thou hast but to ask and the cards will tell thine fortune."

"Oh my," Kasumi said as she regarded the cloaked enigmatic figure standing before the tent with the fortune-telling sign positioned conveniently at the front. Of even more impressive measure was the height of the woman addressing Kasumi, for she was easily as tall as a man, perhaps just shy of Kasumi's father.

"Wouldst thou care to draw from the deck of cards to know thine fate?" the hooded figure asked, extending a conveniently handy row of specially engraved cards that she just happened to have in one hand.

"No thank you," Kasumi declined, "I have to find my little sister..."

"The cards know everything," the feminine figure assured, as she flashed the deck against the light to show their identical back covers, which were marked with a curiously familiar symbol, "Draw one and thine question shall be answered."

"Yes, but I don't really believe in Tarot cards," Kasumi assured the stranger, "That's more my little brother's half-sister's sphere of interest."

"Thou dost mean Kaoih, daughter of Sakura?" the figure asked her with a smile that was barely visible beneath the shadow of her hood.

"Why yes," Kasumi said in surprise, "However did you know that?"

"I know many things, Tendo Kasumi," the stranger answered with a pleasant lilt to her melodic voice, "Things that would amaze and astonish thee beyond thine conception."

"Oh," Kasumi replied, "Well, that's very nice, but if it is all the same to you I still need to find my little sister..."

For a moment the stranger seemed positively stumped by that response, but she recovered enough to say, "And how is thine search proceeding? Hast thou accosted the miscreant who has purloined thine sibling?"

"Well...no," Kasumi reluctantly admitted, turning a glance towards the side and saying, "He seems to have eluded me at the moment..."

"Indeed?" the stranger all but purred in a sensuous manner, "Then wouldst thou blindly pursue this matter, seeking the needle of proverbs that was lost in the stack of hay? Or wouldst thou perhaps take a hint from one who has the gift of sight and can perceive what others do not, those who live by clouded perceptions?"

"Thank you, but I really think that I must do this on my own, and I don't really know you," Kasumi said while turning away, "Good evening, and thank you for your offer of assistance..."

For but an instant the stranger's jaw practically hit the ground, but another instant later she rallied and said, "Wouldst thou risk the health of thine sister and her unborn child on a matter of pride?"

"Not for pride," Kasumi replied without turning around, "But I do not know you, and you obviously know a great deal more about my family than anyone whom I can trust on a casual meeting."

The stranger paused again before saying, "Thou didst trust in mine father when you spoke with him earlier, didst thou not?"

That halted Kasumi in mid-step, "Your father?"

"Anri," the cloaked figure replied, "He who it was who didst ask of me to speak with thee on the matter concerning thine fate, and that of thine sister."

Kasumi turned around and looked at the strange figure before her, "Why? Why are you both concerned about me and mine?"

"Thou dost wish answers?" the figure waved a hand indicating the tent behind her, "Then step within yon threshold...and much will be revealed to thee. I promise thee no harm, for what I would say is for thine better welfare. On this thou wouldst do well to trust me."

"Very well," Kasumi replied as she turned back fully to regard the stranger, "I will listen to what you have to say, but if it does not help me to find and rescue Nabiki, then I will leave."

"As is thine right," the figure noted, moving into the tent while adding enigmatically, "But I think well that thou shall learn the why and wherefore of our concerns, and be of greater aid to those whom thou dost love and care for."

"If what you say is true then I will trust you for now," Kasumi said as she followed the stranger into the depths of the carnival tent, unaware of the compassionate eyes that were regarding her with soft admiration.

"Well done, my daughter," he said as he turned away back towards the gathering night, "Now for the other half of this perilous duo...and then to prepare ourselves for the coming confrontation...

Unaware of these developments, the very object of Kasumi's hunt peered from behind a partition many dozens of meters away and heaved a sigh of relief as the eldest Tendo daughter seemed to give up the chase all of a sudden. At that Taro-now transformed back into his human shape-murmured softly to himself, "Well, that was sure convenient. Thought for sure that crazy girl was gonna dog me all night long, but looks like her and the punk weren't as persistent as I'd given them credit. No sign of the old fart or the rest of that crew, so I guess it's safe enough for me to slip away before anybody gets wiser, eh beautiful?"

To this Nabiki did not reply, being rendered unconscious by a pinched nerve, to say nothing of some borrowed rope and duck tape for when she would recover much later. In truth Taro was not particularly happy with the plan that he had hatched on the spur of a moment, and it really had not worked out quite the way he would have hoped would be the case. And now he was stuck with a pregnant hostage of all things, and what did he know about handling a lady in her condition?

Oh well, in for an inch, in for a pound, and if he wanted to get back at Happosai and force the old man to reconsider his position he was going to need some leverage, and this lady was it. Like it or not it was the best card he had to play in the deck, and regardless of the outcome he was not giving up on his lifelong quest to win a new name, and no one was going to stop him from fulfilling that ambition.

"Just you wait, old man, Taro said as he lifted his burden into his arms and prepared to use the darkness and confusion caused by his other self to enable his escape, "I'll show you what it means to cross me...just you watch and see. One good thing about these carnivals, always lots of the stuff you need on hand, and all it takes is the imagination to put it to good usage..."

Of course no plan ever went true to form when it came to the execution, and his had flaws that even he was not yet aware of, though before too long he was going to learn what it meant to tangle with clan Saotome-Tendo. But for the moment his plans went without a hitch as he escaped further detection with only the man known as Anri fully aware of his eventual destination...and the chain of events that would be set in motion once he returned to his base camp with his hostage and the burden for her welfare...

Episode One-Forty-Four

"Mirrors of the Soul."

"Well...it's definitely an elemental of some sort," Gosunkuji announced after leafing through the moldy old book that had long been gathering dust upon his bookshelf, "Only I'm not sure what kind it is...no reference here to a sort of anti-pixie, unless you go by Western mythology, in which case I'd have to call it a Bogart."

"Boggard?" Chloe asked, "You mean like that Humphrey guy who used to star in those old movies?"

"Bogart, honey," Lenore corrected, "And no relation. A Bogart is a form of dark elf from Celtic mythology, distantly related to the Sidhe of ancient legends."

"The She?" Ryonami asked with lifted eyebrows.

"Sidhe," Kiima corrected, "The Lords of the Mounds who were related to ancient race of the Tuatha De Duanann, or 'Children of Danu,' the mother goddess. A Sidhe was actually a burial mound where an ancient King gathered all his treasure, and was said to be guarded by spirits of the underworld, who were Tuatha from the lower sphere, such as Hern the Hunter and the Dagda lords Lugh, Morrigar and Manannan Mac Lir..."

"Yes, but the type of Bogart I'm talking about was an evil sprite that sowed mischief among mortals and caused all sorts of grief, even to the gods themselves," Gosunkuji asserted, "If this thing is a Bogart then it must have somehow taken over Ryoga and unleashed his darker Oni nature...but what kind of a being would have the power to do that...and is it just an isolated spirit...or a servant to a much darker power?"

"You think there could be trouble brewing in the neighborhood, Hikaru-san?" Lenore asked of the slightly built youth, who even in the dim lighting of the room bore too much of a disquieting resemblance to a Zombie for the vampire's liking.

"Could be...given our history up to date," Gosunkuji answered, "Nerima seems to act like a magnet drawing in the lines of strange and unusual beings. But this sounds a lot nastier than even what we're used to. Imagine a whole infestation of creatures just as awful as this one and you can see what sort of trouble they might spawn for the whole region."

"What kind of trouble are we talking about here?" Chloe asked.

In response to this Gosunkuji tapped the jar trapping the evil sprite with the eraser end of his pencil and saw the little thing bare wicked teeth as it extended its wings and tiny claws in a most disquieting manner.

"I get what you mean," Ryonami said with a mild shudder as she purposefully moved closer to the boy who was both friend and co-worker, "Just looking at that thing gives me the woolies..."

"It would be a lot worse if it managed to get out of that jar and attacked one of us," Lenore said with evident distaste in her own expression, "I think I know what this thing is...a Hate elemental. They're rare, but I've heard rumors of what they're like."

"A Hate elemental?" Kiima asked with her curiously detached registering faint emotion.

"Yeah," Lenore replied, "The worst kind of sprite imaginable...one that roots itself deep inside a human brain in order to influence behavior by dredging up latent thoughts of prejudice and resentment in order to intensify those negative feelings. It literally feeds off the emotion of Hate by provoking it in its victims, and if you get enough of them together in one place you can spark a riot based on ethnic hatreds and racial tensions."

"Sounds pretty nasty all right," Chloe agreed, then she paused to say, "Hey, I think I've heard about these guys in a story told by my old grandmother...something about them stirring up trouble long ago between Weres and Vampires..."

"Yeah, that's right Honey," Lenore nodded, "They provoked a blood feud between the tribes of Caine and Lucifer that lasted for centuries, long after both sides even forgot what the feud was all about. It was a genocidal feeding frenzy provoked by the Dark Sidhe that was only broken when a woman of the Caine Tribe fell in love with a lord of the Lucifer pack, and between them exposed the real source of the conflict. Nasty business all around, but the real source of the problem wasn't just the Sidhe but a Demon Lord who was keeping the feud going long after there was any cause to fight, and that demon's name is..."

All at once a beeping noise startled everyone, prompting the vampire to snatch at her pocket cell phone and flip it open to say, "Yeah Boss? What's up..."

The next instant she yanked the phone away from her sensitive ear and winced as everyone in the room could hear the booming voice shouting out, "WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU, DARKHOLME?! YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO BE HERE GUARDING THE TENDOS!"

"Ah...Boss?" Lenore asked sheepishly as she put the phone back up to her mouth, "I was carrying out an errand for Mistress Kasumi...what...?"

She paused to listen as a more level reply was barked at her, then her face drained of color and she gasped, "No way...are you kidding? Oh...right, you're not a kidder...but..."

Another pause while she listened some more, and then she meekly said, "Right, already on it," and snapped the phone shut before turning to the others and saying, "We have to go. There's big trouble back at the Tendo estate."

"What?" Ryonami asked.

"Why?" Gosunkuji continued for her, "What happened?"

"Somebody hit the place like the proverbial tsunami," Lenore said as she slipped her phone back into her pocket, "Frank says the place looks like a war-zone, or more damaged than usual when they get a rude house guest. He says her ladyship has gone on in pursuit of the one who did it because he kidnapped her middle sister, apparently to use Nabiki as a hostage against Happosai."

"Somebody's using the boss to threaten the old man?" Gosunkuji gawked in disbelief.

"Someone's kidnapped Sempai?" Ryonami echoed his disquiet, "Who on earth would be that suicidal?"

"Dunno," Lenore replied, "Some idiot calling himself Pantyhose, or some such nonsense. You know how these martial arts guys get when they think it's all about a point of honor...but this time he went so far that he actually got Kasumi mad...and that spells real trouble, the kind that could result in a literal blood-bath."

"You mean that nice-nice Kasumi might actually hurt somebody this time?" Chloe asked.

"You are right to be worried," Kiima noted, "It would be very bad news if another incident like the last time were to happen."

"Kami-sama, I sure hope not!" Gosunkuji shuddered, "The way she looked when she was going up against that wizard...scary."

"And what about Sempai?" Ryonami asked, "Is that creep going to hurt her and the baby?"

"No way to know until we find the creep and ice him," Lenore said, already headed towards the door leading away from Gosunkuji's combination laboratory and bedroom, "Just hope we can find him before he hurts Nabiki or the Mistress can find him, because either way...it just doesn't bear contemplating."

"Then I'm with you, and so is Hikaru-san," Ryonami volunteered.

"I am?" Gosunkuji asked, only to yelp slightly as the brown haired girl took him by one arm and all but dragged him out of his chair and down the hallway, followed in turn by Chloe and the ethereal Kiima.

Unnoticed behind their back the tiny creature in the jar glared malevolently their way, then smiled a smile wholly lacking in humor as it perceived a flitting shape hovering by the nearest window. It's teeth were bared in a snarl of bloodthirst and anticipation as it awaited its liberation, all the better to visit retribution on its tormentors once it rejoined the rest of brood in the service of...the MASTER...

"Well," Frank said as he folded his pocket communicator and turned back to regard Trudy, "The fat's really in the fryer now, and as soon as Lenore and her crew get back here I'm going to form them into a search party. Think you can stick around to help join our little posse?"

"Might as well," Trudy said as she watched the men holding the stretcher carry Kodachi off into the night, "Done all I can here, postponing her labor pains so that her people will have time to get her to more proper medical assistance."

"I gotta admit that I'm impressed with the way you handled that," Frank admitted, "I've been a party to more birthings than even I could count, but you managed a near miracle holding it together and keeping that kid from choking in its womb. You may even have saved its life..."

"Hey, I can give it back as well as take it," Trudy replied as she turned back to the big man, "Just because I'm a part-time assassin doesn't mean I'm all about death, and a Kurustani is a servant of life in either form. I just did as the Power directed me, the mother did the rest, and her friends...well...they certainly care a lot about the lady. Says a good deal about this Kuno girl that so many people are rooting for her, and not just the probable father."

"Probable father?" Frank asked, "You have any doubt that it's Hibiki?"

"I'm not really sure," Trudy admitted, "But the power was whispering to me the whole time while I was working to keep the baby alive and to sooth the mother's labor. Sure I think he had a part in the conception of this child...but the strangest thing was the vibes I was getting from the redhead. There's a real connection between her, the mother and the child, and if I didn't know any better I'd think the kid was a triple-fusion."

"A triple fusion?" Frank looked at the strawberry-blonde agent a bit oddly.

"Yeah, they exist in the future time that Maegan came from, but they're not supposed to exist here," Trudy informed him, "When I heard the name Madam Lao mentioned it was enough to set off my suspicions that the child was conceived with the help of powerful magic. You see...a Fusion occurs when the ovum of two or more girls combine to form a fertile embryo...literally a child without a father, or one conceived by the fusion of two X genes."

"Girl-on-girl, huh?" Frank said with a bit less reservation than might normally have been expected, "Would you surprise you to know that I've heard of other examples."

"Maybe," Trudy answered, "But the triple fusion is rare and only takes place when the ovum of two women combine with the sperm of a man...kind of like an XXY crossover. Each partner contributes something to the whole, but basically if a woman ovulates more than one egg at the same time, and it combines with the seed of another to form a dual hybrid embryo, then instead of twins you get a single child with three distinctive parents. Obviously this makes it rather hard to determine pedigree, but with Lao involved...I'd almost stake a years wages on her deliberately manipulating things to bring it all together."

"Fascinating," Frank said dryly, "Looks like I'm gonna have to take it out on Lao's plump ass the next time I see her, but who's more deserving of a spanking...even if she'd probably enjoy it."

"Well hey, she's your wife by common-law marriage, buddy," Trudy shrugged, "Who has more of a right to invoke Amazon law than you do?"

"Exactly," Frank agreed, only to pause before saying, "Hey, I don't remember briefing you on any of this. How the hell did you...?"

"Like I told you," Trudy answered, "The Power informs me of little details like that, though it generally works on a need-to-know basis..."

"Well tell it to keep the hell out of my personal business," Frank snapped, "Besides...I'm kind of seeing someone else these days, and the last thing I want to do is mess things up by including her in that Lao business. Now...what the hell do we know so far about this cursed boy, Taro?"

"Not a whole lot, other than what the family told us," Trudy replied, "And some mental images I'm picking up through Psychometry that tells me he's as big and tough as an ogre but also as cunning as a fox and as ruthless as a jackal."

"Terrific," Frank ran his burly fingers through his mane of brownish hair and allowed himself to demonstrate his frustration, "I'd feel a lot better if I knew where D'Anjou has gotten off to. Shelly says she made contact with Adonai, but all she got back was some sort of mention about her chasing after a big monster..."

"Oh no," Trudy murmured faintly, "Tell me you're only kidding about that!"

"Why?" Frank asked, "Is it bad?"

"Frank," Trudy said with the patience of a mother explaining things to her child, "We are talking about a lady who was raised in a Renaissance-like environment, who takes the whole Chivalry thing about love, honor and duty to heart, and who's made a business of taking on monsters a lot worse than any ogre. Think of an over-sexed Sir Galahad on an overdose of Estrogen wielding a sword that can cut through just about anything that the 20th century has ever produced, and throw in a real Joan of Arc complex, then you tell me if it's a good or a bad thing."

"Oh," Frank paused to consider the point then said, "Maybe I'd better call Lenore and tell her to meet us on ahead of the trail."

"Sounds like a winning idea to me," Trudy said as she turned to bow towards the ladies of the house, most particularly the pregnant girl with purple hair named Xian-Pu and her brown-haired pregnant "co-wife."

"It has been both an honor and a privilege to have met you, Tendo-san, Saotome-  
san," Trudy said formally.

"Same thing here, Sugar," Ukyo bowed back as best she was able, "I think it safe to say that we owe you a big debt for helping us out now, and we know Kodachi well enough to say that she'll feel even more giri for you saving her baby."

"Aiyaa," Shampoo agreed, "When Airen gets back she will be much-much pleased upon meeting you, Mane-of-hair-like-Sunset."

Trudy grinned and said a few words in Mandarin Chinese before saying, "I think I like that name. Mind if I keep it?"

"Just go find Nabiki, Ranma and Per-chan and we'll really show you how we celebrate our heroes," Ukyo promised.

"And that goes double for the rest of us," Kurumi said as she returned to the living room, having escorted Kodachi, Keiko and Ryoga to the ambulance and back, "Please find my sister and brother-in-law. I'd join you myself but...nobody will let me."

"Of course not, Sugar," Ukyo winked, "Can you imagine what Natsume would say if she heard we let you chase after that monster? Now, if only we could nail her whereabouts down, or Tatewaki's..."

"I think they're already at the Kuno place awaiting Kodachi's arrival," Kurumi answered, "But there's a lot of confusion owing to the matter with Nabiki, and I'm sure Natsume is fretting up a storm. You know how much she looks up to oneechan, and I'm sure she'd feel just as obligated to go after her as Ranma."

"Swell," Frank said as he glanced towards Trudy, "You coming already?"

"Try and stop me, big guy," Trudy nodded back, "I double-dare you..."

"Grandmother? What are you doing here?" Perfume asked as the trail she had followed had at last guided her to the side of her husband, "And what happened to Ranma?"

"Hello child," Siren said indulgently, nodding to indicated the still-motionless youth laying at her feet, "Nothing that you should worry about, your husband is in a healing trance, nothing more than that."

"A healing trance?" Perfume asked as she knelt down to examine Ranma more closely, "Why, was he injured?"

"You think he could take on a one-ton giant cursed victim without injury?" Siren asked with a raised eyebrow, "Your confidence in his abilities truly astonishes me, given how much he has yet to learn before he can be acknowledged a true Master of the arts of combat. But still he should be all right in another few moments, and it is a very good thing that you are here to look after him. Though...I must admit to surprise as I would have thought your duties would require you to remain at the side of your cousin and other Airen."

"You think I could stand to be at home while one of my wives is out there?" Perfume asked, "I sure hope Ranchan recovers himself swiftly. We need to strike up the trail while the enemy's scent is still fresh. Every minute it takes for him to regain himself is another minute where that Taro-beast gets to flee from our retribution."

"I fully understand your feelings on the matter, Perfume-dear," Siren noted, "But at the moment your husband needs your assistance. Once he's back to being his old cocky self, then the both of you will be ready to kick some bull-butt all the way back to China."

"I know where my duties lay, Grandmother," Perfume assured her elder, only to swear under her breath, "Dammit...what's going on in Ranchan's head? If I didn't know any better I'd swear that he was...dreaming."

"A crude assessment, but yes," Siren agreed, "I've been picking up mental activity for the past several minutes, and I believe that he is about to enter the deep REM phase which surprises even me as I did not think the trance his older sister put him under was that deep to begin with."

"Kasumi did this?" Perfume asked with alarm, "Grandmother...she has been...acting very strange lately, and there is concern among my Airen..."

"Understandable from what I've gathered of late," Siren mused, "But if it will set your mind at ease, I'll help you out by putting a Finder Spell upon your wife so that tracking her will not be such a problem."

With that the Archmage shaped a ball of light between her hands and formed it as one might a paper Origami into a bird, which then took off and flew from the sorceress towards the carnival, and beyond it.

"Thank you, Grandmother," Perfume sighed, then lifted Ranma's head and set him upon her lap so that he would have something comfortable to lean against, even going so far as to stroke his hair and murmur affectionately, "Come back to us, Husband...we need you, now more than ever."

"How curious," Siren mused as she observed this behavior, "I've never seen you demonstrate such concern for any man. And here I thought you only felt that way towards women."

"Well...he is...special, Grandmother," Perfume softly answered, "And I'm as surprised as you to be able to admit that...but the plain truth is...I need him...and wherever he has gone at the moment, I would gladly give my axes to be able to join him, no matter what he is going through for the plain truth is...that I love him..."

Ranma stirred in his dreams, looking around himself and observing only a misted horizon amid the dark of a hazy crimson sky, with no distinguishing features to the landscape that could clue him in as to his general location. Try as he might he could not discern one direction from another, and the fact that this state reminded him much of his half-brother, Ryoga, only added to his general agitation as he tried to make sense of how he had arrived there, and how he could get back on the track of finding Nabiki.

"Hello?" he called out in the hopes that someone would answer, "Is anybody there? Can anybody tell me how I got here from Nerima?"

There was no immediate response to this, so Ranma waited in expectation of an internal comment, only find his head no longer filled with the chatter of feminine voices vexing his every waking moment.

"Latisha?" he asked nervously, "Are you all right? Say something already...I know you're in here."

Nothing, not even a smoldering sense of the dragons that lay within him. The silence was almost deafening, and after months of growing accustomed to the chatter it was quite disconcerting to find no voices there eager to respond to his entreaty. Whether welcome or resented, he was used to feeling their presence, and without them he felt...strangely empty.

"Karina?" he asked with growing unease, "Nagisha, Sharil, Sobriel? Answer me, somebody...is anybody there?"

Nothing, not even a flicker of a reply. No sense of the movement of his elemental servants flowing at the level of his subconscious, or of the tingling sensation that often accustomed the movement of the changeable tattoos upon his arms, legs and...other places that made him aware of their activities when they were stirring within him, ready to assert their presence. The absence of these sensations was actually quite unnerving, and rather than being relieved at finally having solidarity within himself, he actually found himself missing their company, and feeling unexpectedly quite empty.

"Anyone?" he rather plaintively asked, now on the edge of a virtual panic as he was no longer quite so used to being alone. He had become corrupted with the company of others, not just his wives but those beings who had infused him with their essence, and with whom he now shared a very intimate relationship that went beyond words, beyond emotions and even beyond all sense of reason.

Then a voice addressed him from outside his head, and he all but jumped in surprise, for it was the voice of a child, and yet a strangely familiar one, though he was quite at a loss to understand the reason.

"Who are you talking to, Mister?" asked a small girl who had come to stand quite near to him without his having sensed her approach until that moment.

"Ah..." Ranma took a closer took at the girl, discovering her to be a child of no more than seven or eight years of age with short-cropped brown hair and brown eyes that were alert with mischief. In fact it was a very familiar face to Ranma's reckoning, though as yet he still had trouble placing where he had seen her before, especially the disconcerting way she appeared to be studying him with a preternatural alertness.

"What's the matter?" she asked, "Cat got your tongue? You look kind of funny..."

"Funny?" Ranma felt nettled by the child's statement, "Ain't nobody told you it's not nice to judge people by the way you look at them?"

"Oh sure," the child replied, "Mommy tells me that all the time, and I get a lot of it from my big sister. But you can learn a lot about somebody by paying real good attention to their appearance, and I can tell looking at you that you're feeling lost and frustrated, Mister. You should try and relax, you'll enjoy life a lot better."

"Speaking of your mom," Ranma said, "Where are your parents? Are you here all by yourself or...?"

"Oh no," the little girl said, "I'm with my uncle. Well, he's not really my uncle, but he's a real close friend of my father's, and daddy said I should treat him nice and take good care of him so he can show me stuff that'll help me when I get older."

"You're not with your parents?" Ranma asked with surprise, "You mean they left you in the care of a stranger?"

"Well, Uncle is a bit strange, but I can handle him," the child said dismissively, showing a shrewd cunning in her eyes that was disconcerting for one so young and tender looking, "He's really not all that smart, and he's easy to manipulate, but I let him think that he's the one in charge so I can learn stuff from him, like the martial arts, which he's really, really good at."

"The martial arts?" a chill ran down Ranma's spine as he started to put it all together, feeling slower in the wits than even was usual for him that he did not pick up the signs earlier. After all, who else had eyes like that, or such an elfin chin, and a sly smile of such predatory amusement that it made one reflexively feel the urge to slap a firm hand over their wallet?

"That's right," the child boasted proudly, "One day I'm gonna be a great fighter, and then I'll go home and show mommy and daddy what I've learned. I might even get to spar with both of my sisters. I'll make them so proud of me, and I'll be the best martial artist you ever saw! It's gonna take lots of hard work and a lotta years, of course, but I know I can learn real good, and when I do then there won't be anybody who can put me down or get in my way or tell me what to do, because I'll be the boss of everybody. You just wait and see if I can do it."

"Ah...I believe you," Ranma said slowly, finding it hard to accept the evidence of his eyes as he gazed down at the child, seeing his pregnant wife hidden behind her mask of deceptive innocence.

"That's good," the child said with a crooked grin that Ranma knew so well that it actually hurt to see it in reflection, "Because nobody better get in the way of Tendo Nabiki when I get big enough to show them what I can do. I'm gonna prove to Uncle that he's wrong about girls being inferior to boys, that I'm just as good as anybody, even that BOY he left back home with Akane to take my place in the family, so he and my sister can get to know each other on account of the fact that they're gonna get married."

"You think so, huh?" Ranma asked, "And what do you think about it?"

"I think the whole thing is nuts," the little girl said with a huff of childish disgust, "Akane with a boy? Yeah, right...like that's gonna happen! And what kind of boy can he be if his own father trades him off for me? I only got a glimpse of him that one time, but he didn't look too special."

"Oh no?" Ranma asked with lifted eyebrows, "You don't like him.?"

"I don't know anything about him," the little girl shrugged, "How can I judge a boy if I only got one look at him? I suppose he's all right...for a BOY. But I'm just as good as he is, and I'm gonna prove it."

"Ah...and what if he grows up to be a...pretty nice guy?" Ranma fumbled to think of a good way of stating his position, "You know...good looking, strong and a pretty fair martial artist?"

"You think so?" the little girl huffed, "I still don't think Akane's gonna like him. She's real particular about the kind of people she likes, and boys just don't catch her interest. Maybe if I get a better look at him I'll decide for myself if he's worthy of my sister...or not. But that's gonna be a long time in the future, and right now I'm having fun traveling to places I'd never get to see if I stayed at home, and I'm meeting all kinds of really nice people, like my good buddy Ukyo, whose also a pretty good martial artist."

"Ukyo?" now Ranma had a definite frame for this to place into context with what he knew of his wife's colorful childhood adventures.

"Yeah," the child said brightly, "We have all kinds of fun together, and she's real smart and knows a lotta things about business. I'm gonna be a business woman myself someday, and then I'm gonna make a lotta money and live real good with a house of my own and lots of pets, like ponies and dogs and stuff. But not cats..." she shuddered, "I...really don't like 'em..."

"Oh...yeah," Ranma said with sympathy, "Ah...so, what about a husband?"

The child screwed up her cute face in thoughtful concentration then replied, "Maybe onena them, if he's nice and don't get in my way or try to make me do stuff I don't wanna."

"And what if he is nice and lets you have your way a lot of the time?" Ranma asked, seriously interested in hearing her answer.

"Then maybe it could work out," the little girl shrugged, "But I won't know until I eventually meet him. But I'm not in that much of a hurry to have a boyfriend."

"What about a girlfriend?" Ranma asked a bit perversely.

"I already got one," the child replied as if he were slow, "Ukyo...I already told you."

"Yeah, but what if she's a really nice girl and you like her a lot..." Ranma suddenly stopped himself, belatedly remembering the age of the child before him, and he rather lamely amended, "That is...you might want to share things with her, like a house...and...other things."

The girl just gave him a peculiar look then said, "You're real funny mister."

"I...guess I am," Ranma said a bit lamely, "Never mind what I said. Just do what you want, Kid, and I'm sure everything will turn out all right."

"You bet they will," the child said with enthusiasm, making a tiny fist and throwing a punch at Ranma's gut that actually scored with more force than he would have imagined, and then she turned and went skipping away, calling over her shoulder, "See you around, Mister, and thanks for your wallet!"

"hah?" Ranma asked in a slightly breathless voice, reflexively moving a hand to where he usually kept his money and finding its absence, which was altogether disconcerting. It took a moment before he managed to straighten out once again, but then he belatedly gasped, "Hey...wait a minute...Nabiki wasn't a thief at that age...was she?"

The child paused just before rounding a bend and turned to call back at him, "Hey Mister, if you want your money back you're gonna have to chase me!"

Oh, so she was giving him a chance of winning it back, was she? That sounded more like the Nabiki he knew so well, the one who liked to take risks and challenge people to test her own abilities, so without further qualms he began to chase after her, certain that the child would tease him into coming after her so that she could prove her martial arts skills against someone much older, which to her way of thinking was worth a lot more than paper money.

But when he rounded the bend a wholly different scene awaited him than the one he had expected. A much older girl...possibly eleven or a bit older, was pounding away at a half-dead tree, striking her tiny fists with great force against the bark with a steady staccato rhythm that did not flicker by the slightest measure even when Ranma approached her, and earned a half-glance of token recognition.

It was Nabiki once again, no mistake about that, only now she had longer hair in the back tied up in a kind of prototype "warrior's braid" with only her bangs hanging forward to frame her heart-shaped face. She had a much harder look about her by now, and was obviously well weathered as she was barefoot standing on hard stones without sign of even slight discomfort.

"What's wrong?" Ranma asked after a few awkward moments.

"Nothing!" she snapped back in a flinty voice that reeked of barely controlled anger, "It's none of your business!"

That barked out response caught Ranma quite unprepared and he naturally responded, "Hey, no need to bite my head off...I was just asking a question..."

"Uncle can be so stupid sometimes!" the young girl snarled, "Imagine pulling something like that on me behind my back? I ought to pound the old fool black and blue for doing that...but he ran away before I could catch him, so I've gotta beat on this dead tree instead of his stupid face! But when I see him next he's a dead man!"

Her vehemence surprised him, for while Ranma knew his father could sometimes be thoughtless and careless in his ways, he had never actually heard of the old man intentionally doing something so evil. Other than drop Nabiki into a pit of starving cats while wrapped in fish sausage, that is. And the engagement thing, but that was old news as far as it concerned Ranma.

The way the dead tree shook each time Nabiki struck it was a powerful testament of how far she had progressed in her martial arts training. Ranma could see how controlled she was, how potent her Ki flowed through her slender limbs, and the tight focus she employed each time she struck with bare flesh against already splintered bark. A grown man would be felled by a single blow of those tiny hands, and she was aiming them precisely at the exact same spot each time, creating a small crater in the wood that roughly resembled a human face...as if carved in the very likeness of Genma.

"So...the old man gets on your nerves sometimes?" Ranma asked, not sharing the same degree of resentment as for him his father was actually a figure of great respect and authority, having been matured by his years on the road with Nabiki.

"You think?" she snapped, and then all at once she drew a fist back and plunged it forward with such power that her hand went right through the wood down to its center, splintering the thing in half so that the two parts fell to either side as if a huge axe had sundered it down the middle.

"Okay," Ranma said, "So he's a bit rough around the edges. He's still your Sensei, right?"

"What do you know about it?" she asked as she whirled around to give him a hard stare that nearly set Ranma back on his heels, having been the victim of far too many such gazes.

"Ah...nothing," Ranma awkwardly lied, "I just mean...you look like you can handle yourself pretty good, and you had to get that from somewhere?"

The child glanced down at her hands, then balled her fists and slowly flexed them. There was not even a scratch or a splinter in those tiny hands, and even knowing of the controlled power the child wielded it was still difficult to believe that they could be so dangerous, even lethal. A man less familiar with the art would have misjudged her by her youth, size and appearance, but Ranma knew well that this girl was a trained fighting machine, far more dangerous in her way than any ten opponents, and infinitely more cunning, trained to use her wits as sharply as any weapon.

"I guess," she said indifferently without giving a hint of conceding anything while glancing back up at Ranma from the level of his belly button.

"Look," Ranma said with a sigh, "I know that you're upset about...whatever, but don't take it out on me. I'm just saying the old man makes mistakes, but he basically means well..."

"He's a selfish, greedy, larcenous glutton without a lick of sense when it comes to money, and I'm sick to death of putting up with his Kuso!" the child snarled, "And I'm gonna find out what bar or dive he's buried himself in this time and pound the snot out of him! Then I'm gonna remind him whose boss and who does the thinking around here, and who keeps firm control over the money!"

With that she pivoted upon one heel and started to angrily stalk away while Ranma stood where he was with his jaw hanging open. It only took a moment for him to realize that his father had probably stolen some petty cash from Nabiki's personal stash and most probably blew it on either gambling or drink, which was certainly motivation enough to set his wife off this way. She only got this huffy and intense when dealing with the subject of base capitol, and Ranma knew first hand how harshly she could deal with an underling who crossed her on the subject of finances.

But he also knew that she was the only bearings that he had to relate to in the whole of thie weird landscape, so he naturally moved forward, following her trail (as had been his wont since the day she had come back from China). Bbut no sooner did he enter a new area then the entire vista changed altogether. His surroundings darkened and closed in all around him, and suddenly he knew that he was indoors, inside a darkened house with a faint light shining through a bamboo partition...and the sound of a woman sobbing brought him up short before the sliding doors that he knew so well as being a private area set aside adjacent to the dojo.

The sobbing reached his soul and strangely chilled him, for there was a forlorn, plaintive keening sense of loss and suffering within those sounds of misery, and without thought of asking the cause he gasped, "Nabiki?"

At once he shoved the sliding doors aside and stared at the huddled figure upon the floor, almost not recognizing his wife at first as she was thin and pale with the pain of loss and sorrow having wasted away at her spirit.

"Nabiki?" he said, at once upon his knees and at her side while trying desperately to get her attention.

"Ranma...oh Ranma..." she wept as though she had been shedding tears for a very long time now, "Ranma...it's all gone...all gone...gone...lost...oh kami..."

"Nabiki," Ranma said as he gathered his wife into his arms and was shocked at how frail she felt, how lacking in vitality and spirit. He could feel inside her that she had been broken by some tragic circumstance, and there was no trace of her pregnancy, only a sense of emptiness where there ought to have been joy and laughter.

"Ranma...husband...I'm such a failure...as a wife...as a woman..." she sobbed, "I failed you...I failed him...I failed everyone...and I'm just so tired..."

"Failed?" Ranma asked in surprise, "You've never failed at anything in your life! What are you talking about, Nab-chan? You're no failure."

"Yes I am," she said almost fiercely, "I failed to deliver you a son...I failed at the one thing that could most define me as a woman. I don't want to live anymore...I want to be with our son...I want to be with our little Chusen..."

"Chusen?" Ranma gasped, suddenly feeling as though ice had crept up his spine, as if he were grasping at nothing, for the impact of those words struck him like a knife digging into his vital innards.

"That's what I've named him...even if he never got a chance at life...and it's all my fault...because I...failed him..." Nabiki sighed, "And...because of that...I am nothing...not even a woman..."

"Hah...?" Ranma said as the form within his arms began to sag like a limp sack of bones within his faltering grasp, and then to his horror his wife became lighter than air, then wholly insubstantial, and a voice whispered in his ears faintly, "Remember...husband...remember..."

"Nabiki?" Ranma whispered, then when he found himself embracing at nothing he cried out in horrified alarm, "NABIKI...!?"

Only silence greeted him once again, but this time broken by the voice of a man who said, "Why do you clutch at shadows that are less than substance? Are there no living people more deserving of your attention?"

Despite the pain and tears that were flowing from his eyes Ranma still managed to force himself to stand and force his limbs to assume a martial arts stance, but the figure approaching him balked his grief and wrath and left him feeling-  
-if anything-even more confused than ever.

"Who are you?" he asked as he saw a fair-haired man in light tan clothing approaching him at a slow and steady walk.

"That isn't the question you should be asking," the stranger replied, "The question is...who are you, or who do you think you are, my good fellow?"

Ranma steeled himself and said, "I am Saotome Ranma of the Anything Goes Ryu..."

"Then well met indeed," the stranger said as he came to a halt only a few feet away from Ranma, "I have many such names and titles of my own, but none of them are important...for the sake of things you may call me Anri."

"Yeah?" Ranma said, "Then what the hell are you doing here? And where the hell am I?"

"You are where you are meant to be," the man replied, "Nearer to the heart of things yet farther away than your nearest guess, my good fellow."

Ranma could now see that this man was obviously a gaijin, yet he spoke surprisingly well for a blond-haired westerner with curiously green eyes, and he was tall...at least one-point-nine meters, possibly even taller. And quite well built with an athletic cast to his muscles that-coupled with his general good looks-made him strikingly quite handsome, and for some strange reason Ranma found himself feeling a mixture of envy and admiration for this stranger.

"You think that's funny?" Ranma forced himself to snarl, trying to shake off the strange aura of charisma this stranger cast about himself, recalling how torn he had been but a mere moment ago when faced with the prospect of his wife fading into nothing.

"Not at all," the man replied with a mild incline of his head, "Although I have known a few who take great amusement in the tragedy of others. But you have no need for such grief, you are a man well blessed with many good fortunes to your credit, so why bind yourself to shadows of what has not and may never be?"

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" Ranma asked in confusion.

"It means that you are an ass, my good fellow," the man said cheerfully, "And should appreciate such if you are to move forward and embrace a brighter future."

"Embrace this!" Ranma snarled, throwing a punch that was backed by all the fury he had felt pent up from his frustration...yet to his amazement his hand seemed to slow down as if he were moving through molasses, and as if viewing everything in slow motion he saw his hand crawl across the space separating both men, falling just shy of Anri's face without the other man so much as batting an eyelash.

"Not too bad," the stranger smiled, "Try it again, and this time give it more effort."

Ranma just swore under his breath and leaned into his next punch, boosting himself with Amaguriken speed so that there was no way he could miss his target this time...yet to his dismay his hand still fell short by a few millimeters just shy of the target.

"Better this time," Anri said, "But you're wasting far too much energy with your motions."

"Oh yeah!" Ranma cried and really threw himself into the next series of kicks and punches, all devastatingly swift and all just as much ineffective as the man avoided each blow without having seemed to move in the slightest. Ranma tried another series of combinations and punches, but nothing came even a bit closer to nailing the other man, and so Ranma fell back half a step and gasped for breath while trying to study his foe, attempting to determine if he were some manner of phantom.

"By all means," Anri said with a casual hand gesture of respect, "Rest up and relax, then go at it again when you are ready."

"Who the hell are you?" Ranma swore, "You can't be human!"

"Opinions vary," the other man smiled, "But perhaps it would be better to define the word human. To me a man is a man...and is not one man to be judged as no better nor worse than another?"

"I don't get you," Ranma said, "How can you be that calm? It ain't human..."

"There is that word again," Anri smiled, "Then tell me this, Master Saotome of the Anything Goes School...does human to you mean sweating and shedding tears when you are tired or hurt? In that I have done more than my share, and so by that token I am very much human."

"So why the hell can't I nail you?" Ranma asked.

"An excellent question," Anri replied, "Why the hell can't you? Is it perhaps because you try too much but are not succeeding? Or perhaps success is not measured by effort but rather by achievement...or the lack of same in your case. At any event, it works out to much the same thing."

"You're really full of it," Ranma said, "You talk all the time like that, in riddles?"

"Life is full of riddles, and I am full of life," the man replied, "The secret is to listen, not to judge, and to measure with your heart rather than to blunder ahead without truly seeing."

"So what the hell should I be looking for?" Ranma all but shouted.

"Ah...that I cannot say," the man smiled enigmatically, "For that you must listen and see. To see past the Maya of illusion you must accept a greater reality than the one that you know, and by that token you will feel your opponent's movements and know how to counter him. When you have learned how to listen...then no one can oppose you."

Despite himself Ranma felt the urge for violence die out like the wick of a candle, leaving him in a fog no worse than the one he saw in all directions, so instead he just bluntly asked, "Can you tell me how to get out of this place? I have to find my wife...there's this guy who's out to hurt her..."

"Yes, I know," Anri replied, "And yet I know no such thing. Does your foe mean harm to your wife, or is abducting her but a means to an end for him?"

"Hah?" Ranma was shocked beyond speaking, "You...know what's going on here?"

"Ah...my dear Saotome-san," Anri sighed, "If I were to tell you all that I know then we would be here for a very long while, and you would still be none the wiser. Don't look to me to provide the answers, I am but a guide-post for the weary traveler, and I point the way to enlightenment. But you must make the journey...nothing worthwhile comes without effort."

"Look...just tell me if what I saw just now is gonna happen or not?" Ranma asked in frustration, "Am I really gonna lose my kid? The son that Nabiki's carrying...our baby?"

"That all depends upon you," the man suddenly looked sharply at Ranma with piercing intensity, which frightened Ranma more deeply than if he had been punched in the stomach, "These shadows that you have witnessed are but shadows...they have no true substance but that which we give them. Things of the past are past and well beyond recall, but the shadow of things that have yet to be...ah! There is the rub of the matter...causing them to happen, or preventing them, is entirely of our choosing."

"What do you...?" Ranma asked.

"Free will, the gift of all who are mortal," the man informed him, "Folly and wisdom are the province of every human being who embraces the Way and seeks to find the Oneness within him. Act too rashly and without thought and catastrophe could be your doom...or if you learn to listen with the heart, and to perceive the hard and soft things that surround you, you could yet spare your wife a loss that would shatter her spirit and leave her greatly lessened. It is in your hands that destiny lies, and for you alone to shape the outcome of what is to happen."

"Then now do I stop Taro from hurting my wife and baby?" Ranma hotly demanded.

Anri inclined his head and asked, "Did I say unto you that he was the author of this tragedy? Think well before you jump to that pronouncement, for by the actions of your hands is the balance of this matter to be determined."

"Are you saying that this happened because of me?" Ranma blinked, "That I did something to cause it?"

"Again that depends upon the choices you make, Saotome-san," Anri assured him, "Beyond this I cannot say, for it is not within my hands to fight your own internal battles."

"Who are you?" Ranma honestly wanted to know this time, for it was slowly dawning upon him that the figure before him was far more than he seemed upon the surface.

"As I said, I have many names by which I have been known," Anri said with a smiled that was also very sad and full of compassion, "But the one who counsels you knows of me and will provide part of the answers that you seek. Already she had challenged you to learn the ways of true Magic, and by listening to the silence within you, to achieve detached, centered and focused awareness so that effort is no effort, and will is felt through choice and self-direction."

"You mean...Siren knows about you?" Ranma asked.

"Bingo," Anri grinned, then all at once he flicked a finger that was in Ranma's face and sent Ranma sailing backwards as though struck by a hammer, "Off you go, young Master Saotome!"

There was no real pain, only a sense that he was falling backwards, for by some strange mischance a deep chasm had formed behind Ranma's back, and all at once he was tumbling through the void of gray towards a distant light that flared up at the bottom. Ranma braced himself to strike the base of the gulch but he instead found himself breaking through a barrier of ice-water...

And all at once gasped for breath, finding himself being embraced by a warm and familiar presence.

"Ranma...husband?" said Perfume with an anxious expression.

"Perfume-chan?" Ranma glanced around, finding himself surrounded by darkness with only a faint glow of faerie-fire emanating from a ball of light held in one palm of the woman known only as Siren.

"Welcome back to the land of the living, Student," the Amazon Archmage said with casual interest, "You must have been channeling pretty deep as even I was unable to reach you. For a moment there I thought some imp had seized possession of your soul when I wasn't looking."

"Don't even say that, Sorceress," said an anxious Latisha as the humanoid shape of the Salamander Queen peered down, her expression concerned-yet-enigmatic, "Even we were unable to reach him...it was as though some force were blocking off parts of our Master's mind to prevent our access."

"Yes, very strange that," Karina agreed, "I didn't sense a hostile presence, or anything even remotely evil..."

"But it was powerful beyond all measure," Nagisha declared, "A force to be reckoned with...or to be feared should it be raised against us."

"Let's not jump to any wild conclusions here, girls," Sharil cautioned, "For all we know our Master was just visited by a benevolent spirit..."

"Why do you always jump to the positive conclusions?" Sobriel rounded on her fellow elemental, "Can't you even just once consider the worst possibility, that our Master was nearly stolen from us by an enemy or a god who was intent on doing mischief?"

"I'm just looking at the practical side of things," Sharil assured them, "That our Master has been returned to us, and obviously no worse for the travel."

"A fair point that," Siren conceded, "Who was it who was just speaking with you now, Ranma-san? Did he or she give you a name, or even a hint as to his or her true nature?"

"Ah...yeah," Ranma sat up with some assistance by Perfume, "He said you would know him...and he said his name was...Anri."

The silence that met this pronouncement was so profound that Ranma wondered if he were back in the other realm, but then Siren's voice dropped to a hushed whisper as she murmured, "Anri? Are you certain it was...him?"

"Yeah...pretty much so, why?" Ranma wondered, noticing that even Perfume looked pale within the light of the Archmage's glow-ball.

"Husband," Perfume said with evident awe in her voice, "The name you speak...it is a name out of legend."

"Too many legends to be counted, if it is indeed the one known as the Binder," Latisha said with almost reverence in her own deep tenor.

"Can it truly be him?" Nagisha asked, "And...if he has indeed graced our Master with his presence..."

"Could be both good and bad when you think about it," Karina murmured, "The Binder only makes personal appearances when something really awful is about to happen."

"And always to deliver enigmatic warnings that you almost never figure out before they could make a real difference," Sharil said with some frustration, "That's the problem with these Daokan Brothers, they've got all this power at their disposal but they almost never use it for anything short of total disaster."

"Who are you talking about?" Sobriel asked, evidently sharing Ranma's confusion, "Who in the name of the Abyss is this Binder?"

"The Binder of Spirits, one of the four Lords of the Hidden Way," Siren answered without looking at anyone or anything, her gaze curiously distant, "The Way-  
Finder who has lived many lives and embodies the highest principles of Life and Order. Oh yes...I know about Anri...or at least as much about him as any of the Elders of Joketsuzoku."

"So who is he?" Ranma asked, standing up this time without needing Perfume's support, though he was grateful for the arm she gave him, "He seemed to know a lot about martial arts, and he made me feel like I was a child when I took a swing at him..."

"Master...no," Latisha said with abject horror in her expression.

"You took a swing at the Boddhidharma?" even Sharil sounded appalled, which was a lot more disturbing than any of the others giving Ranma a look that made him feel equal parts foolish and crazy.

"Master," Karina said, "You have no idea how many levels more advanced in the arts the Binder is than you can even imagine! Had he been so inclined...he would have mopped up the floor with you, and without a second's worth of effort."

"Ah...come again?" Ranma blinked, "What did you just call him?"

"In one of his many incarnations the Lord Anri was known by the name of Master Tang, otherwise known to history by the title of Boddhidharma," Siren explained, "He is most famous for being the first man to cross the Himalayas on foot as he traveled from his native India to the heart of central China, where he gained the favor of the Emperor and founded the first temple of the Shaolin, having briefly paid a visit to the Amazons to consult with our Elders for their guidance."

"You've gotta be putting me on!" Ranma stammered, "Are you telling me that guy...?"

"Is the founder of a thousand different martial arts systems, Husband," Perfume explained, "Including the Six Basic Elemental systems known as Crane, Snake, Tiger, Leopard, Dragon and Preying Mantis. It's even said that he taught the original Immortals how to fight in a prior incarnation."

"The Immortals?" Ranma repeated, "You've gotta be kidding!"

"We are quite serious, Student," Siren assured him, "But for now there is little more time to waste on reflection. If Anri has appeared to you in dreams then he is attempting to warn you of something terrible that could happen in the near future..."

Ranma recalled his dream vividly and shuddered, "Oh yeah...I can definitely confirm that. And you're right...we gotta find Nabiki."

But even as he said those worse the warning he had been given rang in his mind, as did the words of the shadow-Nabiki, "Remember, husband...remember..."

As if the words were not burned into his brain, but Ranma knew instinctively that he could not pause to wonder what those words truly meant since the desire to rescue both wife and son had become overwhelming. Without further adieu he turned to Perfume and said, "Can you...?"

"Already on it, Ranchan," Perfume assured him, "Grandmother cast a finder spell earlier, and I'm reasonably sure that I can follow its trail...I at least know that much of magic."

"Your instincts are the finest in all Joketsuzoku, Child," Siren assured, "Lead the way...and show us how to find your missing Airen."

Without further adieu the Amazon Enforcer took point with Ranma and Siren following closely at her rear, and as they vanished into the night an enigmatic figure smiled and said, "And so the new path is taken...and hopefully this one will bring them to a better outcome. The rest is in your hands, my daughter, and well do I wish you in your chosen endeavor..."

"I must say that thou hast surprised me, Tendo Kasumi," the hooded figure remarked as she led the other woman into the darkened tent, allowing the flaps to seal behind them, giving no sense after this that there was even an exit.

"Surprised you?" Kasumi asked of her mysterious companion, "In what way?"

"Thy perceptiveness speaks more keenly of an intellect that I dared not think that thee of possessing," the strange woman replied, allowing her cloak to fall back and her hood to drop away so that she stood revealed for the first time in all her ample glory.

Despite herself Kasumi could not help gasping, for the vision of loveliness that greeted her eyes was almost otherworldly, and most definitely gaijin as the stranger had distinctively Occidental features. She was certainly tall, every bit as tall as a man, but just shy of Kasumi's father in full height, yet easily the match for any woman in looks and charms, most particularly in that she curved like an hourglass and was most noticeably top-heavy.

Her hair was a shimmering shower of rainbow hues that fell in every color, casting an iridescent light that banished the gloom of the interior tent while painting Kasumi in a soft enduring glow. The eyes of the stranger were changeable and shifted from one color to the next, and her skin glowed with health and perfection, as everything about her was as well crafted as if she were born one of the Kami.

"I am known by many as Thelendra the Dream Weaver," she informed the astonished Tendo vampire, "And I be one of the Unforgotten called Eluini in the ancient tongues of men. I peer beyond the boundaries of dream, form, thought and time and see many things which are hidden from the likes of ordinary men...and yet thou hast twice now astonished me by speaking words more cunning than wouldst I be inclined to imagine."

"I...I simply thought you might be..." Kasumi found it difficult to go on, for in the face of this woman the thought that she could be an enemy was simply not to be contemplated.

"Aye," the radiant woman said softly, her eyes glowing as she admired in turn the woman before her, "No enemy of thine or thyself be I, yet well thou didst nay venture to believe me when I sought to casually entice thee to this meeting. Yet well met it is indeed that we should meet, Tendo Kasumi, for thou and I must share much tonight if disaster we would void come the marrow."

"What...what do mean by...?" Kasumi asked, strangely captivated by the beauty of this Thelendra, and intrigued by what her smile implied.

"All will come to thee in time, mine dearest friend," Thelendra said while placing a finger over the lips of her new companion, "But first a warning that thou must heed...beware thine inner nature 'lest the demon swallow thee whole. Thou art nay of thineself entire, and that be a weakness that leaves thee vulnerable to the enemy, though divine thy blood would make thee proof of lesser villains."

"I'm...not sure I..." Kasumi softly murmured.

"Hush," Thelendra gently steered Kasumi with a finger to her chin, and pointed the Vampire Goddess towards a table that dominated the center of the tent, "First the cards thou must play to behold...and then...thou shalt have thine answer."

Kasumi turned to regard the table, then with some hesitation stepped forward and examined the cards that lay face down upon its surface. The cards were arranged in a curious formation the nature of which she did not truly much understand...though some memories acquired from Ranma informed her that it was called a "Tree" formation, patterned after the Qabala Tree of Life, which was itself formed in the symbolic shape of a human body.

Those memories began to flow in unbidden as Kasumi recalled words that were spoken in privacy between Ranma and his older half-sister, Kaori, "The ancient wisdom of the Taroh is in viewing the universe through the prism of a living body. Human beings are formed in the likeness of God, and by studying the body of God through the form of his children we can gain insight into the workings of all creation..."

Kasumi thought along those words even as her hand extended towards a particular card that seemed almost to compel her interest. The card was not outwardly all that distinguishable from any of the others that she could see, but once her hand touched its cool surface she felt a shiver travel up and down her spine, and then she turned it over to reveal its face and saw the image of a woman looking back towards her...a woman whose face and form was very much like those of Kasumi.

Her surroundings melted all around her, going from inky darkness to a starry ocean that spread out and extended in all directions. As Kasumi continued to gaze upon the card she found herself becoming interposed with it, and all at once she was that woman within the card, garbed in the same green dress and surrounded by woodland creatures with a forest of trees standing alone amid the symbolic bounty of nature.

"Ah...the High Priestess," Thelendra mused as she appeared standing beside the astonished Kasumi, "Nature and Emotion, representing the raw essence of life itself...a curious choice for a goddess of the undead."

"Excuse me?" Kasumi asked, by now thoroughly bewildered.

"Nature be but the second path in the Major Arcana of the Tarot," the radiant rainbow-haired Thelendra explained, "The first be the Magician, the path embarked upon by thine adopted brother. There are twenty-two such paths conjoined among the ten spheres that contain the Lesser Arcana that forms the deck in its entirety, the first path being that of the Fool, who be uninitiated and thus represents common humanity, which stumbles along unseeing and unknowing."

"Ah," Kasumi replied, "Is it...right to say that about ordinary people? The way you spoke just now...it sounded...a bit condescending."

"Mayhap so, and well thy dost upbraid me for speaking in such a manner," Thelendra smiled, "Mine father wouldst chide me for mine arrogance, reminding me that we are but human in our own way, no more nor less than human, even though we be far more advanced along the path that all tread and have a larger grasp of the cosmos and its workings."

"I...see..." Kasumi replied, finding these words resonating in the memories that she had borrowed from her 'little brother,' "But still...is there something wrong with being merely human? Until not very much long ago, I was...a very ordinary girl myself..."

Thelendra seemed all the more amused by this statement and said, "Not so ordinary from where I do espy, but thine point be well taken. Eluini be no more nor less than other humans...rather we be more of what it means to be truly human. We embrace that which all living things be at their baser core, and as we accept our memories of times past, future and present we so embrace the legacy that once was the lot of all humans."

"You do?" Kasumi asked, by now quite intrigued with this woman and the curious manner in which she worded her archaic statements, even as she sensed that her companion was intending to share with her some deeper inner wisdom. Of a certainty Thelendra's words resonated in her mind and Kasumi felt the truth behind them, her mind opening up to images of times and places long past while her ethereal companion continued to expound upon her thesis.

"Humanity is very old as time be measured," Thelendra explained, "Far older than most accept even in thine era. It began long ago when an ancient race of star-  
faring tribes didst come upon the earth, traversing the heavens by means that required no ship or vehicle of transport. Call them angels if thou woudst, but these beings discovered our distant kin and seeded upon our ancestors the legacy of their greatness, that they would give issue to the race known as the Ancients, the forebears of humanity itself, who were gifted with abilities far beyond what now is common understanding."

"I...think that I've heard this story somewhere before," Kasumi said reluctantly, "Wasn't there a war fought between two contending tribes for dominance of the earth, with one half becoming gods while the other gave issue to a race of demons?"

"Thou hast summarized it neatly," Thelendra nodded, "With great power oft comes great ambition, and once division set among the hearts of mortal men and women it set in motion a chain of events that led inexorably to the current struggle eternally being waged between the forces of Chaos and Order."

"And...you side with the powers of light?" Kasumi noted, for clearly the answer was plain before her that this radiant creature was a force of greater good. Just being in her presence was enough to ease her spirit and give a sense of sweet contentment that she had not known in recent days, as though all were right with the cosmos, having Thelendra as evidence that there was indeed a heaven.

"That is so, but not so simple as all that," Thelendra explained, "Eluini be neither entirely of light nor of shadow, for we are creatures of this sphere, the realm of mortals. We represent the greater power, yet we retain enough of our humanity that we do not belong to the realms either above nor below us. We are guardians, teachers, guides and sometimes protectors, but unlike the Gods we be content to remain in this world and to enjoy its bounty. Though rare in number, we be many, and no two entirely like one or the other."

"And your father is...a teacher and a healer?" Kasumi grasped as if it were obvious now to her eyes what had been strangely hidden during their previous meeting.

"That he be and more," Thelendra explained, "Though many lives in different incarnations, carrying on the legacy that be his birthright. But unlike with mortals, who forget their former lives with each new incarnation, mine father recalls his former existence and learns from the mistakes of times past, to accumulate ever greater wisdom so that he grows in wisdom, knowledge and power, all to the end of one day facing the greatest evil yet imagined in a climatic battle whose outcome yet is to be written."

"And you came to me...for a purpose?" Kasumi realized.

"Aye," Thelendra said softly, "A purpose that has drawn the both of us to this hour and location. Thou must understand, there is a struggle coming forth upon your world that makes its focus here within Nerima, and you are one whose lot it is to stand against a greater darkness e'en than that which thou didst nobly defeat in the form of the Rakshasa."

"An enemy greater than Mor'ghul and his people?" Kasumi gasped.

"An enemy that has been to thine islands before and left his mark in the history of thine culture," Thelendra informed her, "A terrible scourge of humankind whose aim be nothing less than bring darkness upon thine world and visit doom upon all those whom thou dost love and care for. It is to that end that thou must be prepared to withstand the tide of this terrible darkness."

"If what you say is true," Kasumi said thoughtfully, "Then of course I will do everything that is within my power to help."

"Well be it spoken that thou dost make this offer," Thelendra noted, "Yet more than thine good intention be required of thee. First thou must find and embrace the darkness that has been steadily growing within thee..."

"I beg your pardon?" Kasumi blinked.

"Thou dost fear that thine vampiric nature be growing in strength and eroding away at thine humanity," Thelendra explained, "And well is thy fear grounded, for though thou dost possess a rare and beauteous soul whose virtue has withstood the evil of Dimitri. Yet too thou be heir to a greater legacy than thou dost suspect, and by awakening the divine spark within thee thou hast become like unto an Eluini. And because thou art a goddess whose nature fills a void that has existed for too long within the framework of a larger pattern, thou lackest the wisdom, experience and training that would allow thee to discipline thine inner daemon. That is why mine father and I hath appeared to thee now...to give thee the benefit of mine many centuries of existence, and thus complete thine transformation."

"You mean...you want me to...?" Kasumi gasped, then drew away with a slight shudder, "No...you can't imagine what you are offering...what you are asking me to accept! Every time I share blood...the vampire grows in strength...and I lose more of the person I once was..."

"And good the one be, if not the other," Thelendra said, "For strength such as thee possess will be needful in the days that are to follow. But as for humanity...thou fearest not losing that while I be the token of thine transformation. Fearing darkness is only natural as we must fear ignorance itself, but perfect love casts down all such fears, and if thou dost love truly the humanity within thee, then let that love be thine guidance, and be true to thine inner nature."

"I...I'm not certain if I can trust myself that far," Kasumi shuddered as she found herself unable to look away from the other woman's earnest expression, "If you knew that the demon has done to me...how it hungers to be let loose..."

"Then loose it," Thelendra urged, "I be nay afraid, why shouldst thou be? But look yonder and tell me what thou dost see," she nodded past Kasumi's shoulder, compelling the other girl to turn and stare at the thing that had mysterious appeared directly behind her.

Kasumi looked with amazement at the reflection of her own image cast by a mirror that had not been there before, a mirror in which she saw herself as both a woman and a vampire. The vampire portion suddenly asserted itself and became less noticeably human, rising up to smile a terrible grin that revealed her fangs as she snarled in hunger and gazed back towards Kasumi with crimson eyes alight in abject bloodlust.

And then the creature lunged forward, emerging from the mirror and seizing hold of Kasumi, who found herself lacking the strength that she needed to fight back against this creature. Inexorably she felt herself being drawn into the embrace of her other self, who was totally a vampire, and before she even knew that she had lost the struggle she felt the fangs of the demon piercing her neck...and then a warmth flowed from her into the creature as her struggles weakened and her life force began to lessen...

"Do not resist...embrace the darkness," Thelendra's voice urged over the pounding of Kasumi's heart, "Conquer by love that which cannot be ruled by force or intimidation."

And suddenly Kasumi knew what needed to be done here, and she willfully relaxed and let the vampire take her over. She was being drawn into the creature, physically merging with it as it absorbed her vital essence, and then she melted into a shapeless mass that was drawn utterly into the body of the demon, and her flesh became one with its flesh, her mind and soul became totally that of the vampire.

The creature hissed as it finished devouring its nominal host, and then it turned and cast a hungry gaze upon Thelendra, who only smiled back in reply and tilted her head somewhat to the side in order to bare her throat before the demon. Such a tempting offer was not to be resisted, and at once the Vampire lunged for the radiant Eluini as razor-sharp fangs pierced vulnerable skin and the warmth of a life-giving elixir filled its mouth as it drank her deeply.

"Aye...yes...that be the way," Thelendra murmured as she moved her arms to gently embrace the other woman, "Take all that thou dost need, I have all to give that thou dost require of me, my friend. Let the joining be consummated...and the healing begun...until the hunger slowly abates and thou dost gain from me thine missing components..."

Kasumi was enraptured as she drank from the blood of the rainbow-haired Thelendra, and rich with vitality was the Eluini, whose fluids tasted like fine wine mixed with a most potent elixir...and as she shared these fluids more and more of what it meant to be Thelendra entered into her own dark matrix, sealing up gaps and fissures within her very being that Kasumi had not sensed before, and making whole that which had long been sundered...

And all at once Kasumi was no longer gorging herself upon Thelendra's blood but rather moved her lips and mouth in accordance with a different sort of hunger, the kind for which her thirst was mighty and for so long unrequited. Without needing to think about it her hands moved of their own accord and fingers skillfully glided over smooth skin and blemishless body, casually brushing aside the dress that Thelendra wore in order to remove that very slight obstacle obscuring her touch from finding sensitive nerve endings.

This time Thelendra gasped and reacted as if surprised by Kasumi's boldness, but no effort was made to resist this changing tide of vampiric passions, for rather she found herself helplessly enthralled by Kasumi's innate knowledge of her brother's Kama-Senken, the skill Ranma had perfected that gave one an all but irresistible means of pleasuring a woman and arousing her to sensuous submission. It was an art that Kasumi had never used before, yet which her hands unfailingly mastered as she set to work subduing Thelendra. Her efforts were swiftly rewarded as Thelendra began to move her own hands in similar accordance, and then both women fell into a bed of stars and began to share the warmth of the night through actions of a consensual nature that helped consummate their growing union, and from that stage forward set about to achieving the glorious heat of a raging super-nova...

Continued.

Comments/Criticisms/Vampiric Love Secrets of Sappho: shadowmane

The hunt resumes as the web steadily closes upon Taro, but is there more at stake here than the health and safety of Nabiki and her baby? And who is the ultimate enemy of whom the Nerima crowd is being cautioned? For this and other revealing details tune in for the next installment, "Pantyhose Revealed," or, "Catch a Vampire By Her Tail." Be there...

X

/pre 


	58. Chapter 58

preDnabiki145

Nabiki 1/2

"A Very Scary Thought"

by Jim Robert Bader

(Inspired by the works of Rumiko Takahashi Others,  
with concepts and characters created by fellow fanfic writers Wade Tritschler, DB Sommers, Nicole Manders, Andrew Greaves, Bill Guiroff and countless others, including "Buffy"  
creator Joss Whedon; with special thanks to my good pal Shiva for his editing and handling of this series.)

(Certain other characters and concepts are of my own innovation, including my interpretation of the Monster of Mary Shelly's novel, and various other guest stars appearing in this portion of the Nabiki 1/2 series...)

Chapter Fifty-Eight.

Episode One-Forty-Five

"Even Minotaurs Get The Blues."

Angelique paused to survey the evidence of the creature's passage, scanning the crowd and debris that gave evidence to the lumbering giant's recent rampages, which made it all the more curious how its trail abruptly vanished somewhere in mid-rampage.

"Most unusual," she mused to herself as she stared at the impression of a pair of massive hooves left in solid concrete, then noted how the trail that she had followed ended abruptly near to a concession stand where hot beverages were served, a point she filed away for further contemplation.

In her ear she heard the voice of her bike's mobile auto-personality chime in with an astute retort so typically dry and sardonic, "You think? Odd how that I am unable to maintain a lock upon the creature and its present whereabouts. It's as if it vanished from the spot no more than ten paces from your current location, Angel."

"My thoughts precisely, Adonai," Angelique murmured, "It is much as though magic were being employed to conceal the creature's physical presence. I must say it is a more resourceful and cunning brute than many with whom I have had past dealings."

"Your colorful future-past history aside, it would be best to proceed with caution. There is no telling just how dangerous a thing this chimera-like creature may be when cornered."

"The same has been said of me on odd occasion, Monsieur," Angelique said with a mildly self-deprecating lilt to her voice as she smiled and said, "But obviously enough this beast knows how to employ good tactics for evasion and misdirection. I would almost hazard to say that it displays a rare degree of intelligence unknown to most Minotaurs with whom I am familiar. It has the cunning of a man though it walks on furry goat-legs, and clearly it seeks to find sanctuary amid the hubbub of so many people. It may even have slipped away into the night with us no more the wiser...or rather that is my most tentative conclusion."

"Far be it from me to second guess your instincts," Adonai conceded, "But just how far could it go carrying a pregnant human woman while being chased by others who seem rather intent on winning her back?"

"Unknown at the present, mon amis," Angelique replied, "Which is why extra measures may be required to bring this mystery to a satisfactory resolution."

"Extra measures?" Adonai repeated, "Don't tell me you intend to rely upon those strange occult powers of yours...?"

"Please do not distract me, mon amis," Angelique said as she removed the ear-  
piece by which she communicated verbally with her artificial companion, and then she cocked her head to one side and said in a more coy and seductive voice, "And you may remove yourself from concealment, Cheri. I know that it is you who are there observing me from zee shadows. You need not rely upon such subtlety around me, for I know what you are, and there is little point in such deception."

"Ah..." Takaharis stepped out from behind a deserted booth and cleared her throat before saying, "I was just in the neighborhood and...I was wondering what you were up to..."

"You need wonder no more, ma Cheri," Angelique chuckled softly, dismounting from her motorcycle, "And if you are this curious about me then you should learn by watching zis example. I am about to perform an invocation to god almighty zhat she grant unto me zee wisdom of her limitless guidance."

"God?" Takaharis said nervously, "Ah...before you begin I think that you ought to know that...he and I don't quite get along all too well these days..."

"The 'he' to which you refer is...not relevant," Angelique said as she turned her back to the dark haired teacher, then reached into a concealed compartment of the motorcycle and casually drew out a long straight sword that was roughly over a meter in length with a blade three centimeters wide and about a quarter meter in thickness, which gleamed like polished silver in the gathering moonlight.

Takaharis instinctively took a step backwards, eyes widening in alarm, for even at a distance she could feel the eldrich power of the blade, positively charged and quite lethal to her kind. She half dreaded that the thing would be turned her way, but instead the woman named Angelique casually moved a few steps away from her motorcycle then paused, lowering the blade and touching the earth with its tip, then moving around to draw a circle that shone with phosphorescent light before Takaharis's enhanced visual perception.

Once the circle was completed the platinum-gold haired woman slowly raised her blade and pointed it towards the heavens then began to chant words in a strong voice that resonated with holy intonation:

"{ALMIGHTY GOD, MOTHER OF ALL LIFE,  
GRANT UNTO THINE DAUGHTER THE GIFT OF THINE BENEDICTION.  
HELP THIS WANDERING CHILD TO FIND THE PLACE WHERE SHE IS MOST NEEDED THAT SHE MAY GLORIFY THEE WITH JUST AND RIGHTEOUS ACTS TO BRING THINE JUSTICE TO ALL WHO SEEK IT AND TO RIGHT THOSE WRONGS THAT MOST OFFEND THEE...}"

The words were neither in Latin nor in French but rather the more obscure dialect of the ancient Celtic tongue, which this Angelique spoke fluently, much to Takaharis's amazement. The words were just shy of High Elvish in their potency and kinship with the ancient wisdom of the Druids, and they were not the sort of thing that Takaharis would have expected a holy roller type to use, seeing how they would have sounded more appropriate on the lips of a follower of Wicca. Just the same there was no denying the force that lay behind them, and the results that they obtained as the very night sky itself opened up and poured down a silver radiance to bathe Angelique within its lunar spotlight.

And then Angelique began to lower her blade and slowly turn with it until it pointed in a given direction. Angelique opened her eyes and gazed off into the distance, than lowered her sword and spoke a few words of praise and thanks to her benefactor before diminishing her light and allowing the night to fall upon them once again like a velvety curtain.

For a few moments more the Paladin stood there, breathing gently and deeply before lifting her eyes once again and smiling at Takaharis.

"God has spoken, and I must do her bidding. The malefactor has retreated into zee hills, and that is where I must go to seek him out...but you are welcome to accompany me since that appears to be your natural inclination."

"Ah...you don't...mind my company?" Takaharis asked, finding it difficult to truly be afraid of this woman, even if what she had observed so far abound her was enough to normally send her into full retreat mode.

Angelique chuckled in reply to that, "You do not need to be afraid of me, Cheri...I do not bite...unless you wish it."

"Ah..." Takaharis found herself unable to properly form a response to that. Thus human was confusing her on so many levels, but the plain truth was that she felt as drawn towards her as a moth to a candle...or possibly a blowtorch. Either way she was much too intrigued to decline the invitation.

"And since you are accompanying me," Angelique continued as though taking that single verbal reply as an assent, "You might as well gift rest to those wings of yours and catch a ride with me since we are both going in zee same direction."

"Wings?" was Takaharis's astonished reply, "you...know?"

"From the first, but it is of little matter to me what you are, Cheri, as long as I can sense the essential good within you," Angelique smiled in a dazzling, entirely kittenish manner, "And if you can bear with the knowledge of who and what I am...zen I do not see a problem."

Despite her natural caution Takaharis found herself moving forward to accept the proffered hand that Angelique extended towards her, and then all at once her illusion shimmered and distorted, causing her to stand revealed in her natural shape as her dark red bat-like wings projected outward from behind her mane of dark crimson hair, her horns rising gracefully up to form a crown over her head as her legs no longer held a human shape but were goat-like and quite hairy. Her long tail draped down from behind her legs and began to swish from side-to-  
side, revealing its spade-like tip for easy inspection, and her skin was no longer alabaster but quite red hued, and her eyes were yellow and slitted in a more serpentine manner.

In all aspects she looked very much like the traditional image mortals had of a proper devil.

"Do you still think so of me now?" Takaharis asked, her forked tongue extending past a pair of fangs that would have put the alarm in your average vampire.

To her astonishment Angelique only looked her over, then smiled and drew the Erinyes into a kiss that caused the latter's head to spin like a top, especially when a tongue flicked into her mouth, causing Takaharis no end of confusion.

"Now more than ever, ma Cheri," Angelique murmured into one of the pointy ears of the she-devil of vengeance, "But we shall talk about it at another juncture. For now we must ride...so I bid you resume your disguise so that we do not unduly alarm zee citizens of this fair city."

Takaharis reasserted her illusion, once more appearing as nothing more than an attractive Japanese women wearing a normal dress beneath her leathery jacket, yet still-as she yielded to the blonde's gentle hands as Angelique bade her to sit behind her on her motorcycle, she could not help for asking, "What kind of holy-roller knight are you anyway?"

"In zis time, one of a kind," Angelique chuckled as she replaced her ear-piece, then heard the voice of the motorcycle's auto-personality chime in a warning, "I still think this is a mistake..."

"Oh hush," Angelique murmured softly back, then glanced over her shoulder at her new companion and said, "Hold on to me tight, Cheri, for we must make haste if we are to make a timely rescue for zee damsel who is in need of our assistance."

"Our assistance?" Takaharis said, then gulped and threw both arms around the waist of the other girl as Angelique gunned her engine and popped a wheelie, speeding off at such great velocity that the exiled Erinyes was shortly to discover a new definition for pure terror...

"Where are we going?" Gosunkuji asked as he reluctantly followed in the wake of his companions.

"First stop is the Kuno mansion to check up on Kodachi and find out what we can about what happened," Lenore decided, "It's closer than the Tendo place, and once we get there we're dropping you two off so that we can hook up with Frank to find out what happened to Tendo Nabiki."

"I want to come along," Ryonami insisted, "I have to know what's happening to Sempai."

"No offence, but I doubt you could keep up with the three of us," Chloe assured the human girl beside her, "And Kiima's the fastest of the three of us, so she'll be our point until I can pick up the scent and lead the way to..."

"Uh..." Gosunkuji suddenly halted in mid-step and turned around, gazing off towards the walls of the Kuno mansion.

"What's wrong kid?" Lenore asked, catching the sudden shift in the mortal boy's attention, "We're almost at the Kuno place."

"I feel it too," Kiima paused, "Do you not? A certain chill within the air..."

"Like something wicked's over that way?" Gosunkuji pointed, "I don't know what it is...but I'm picking up really bad vibes, and I think it means more trouble."

"Trouble like the kind we saw earlier?" Chloe perked up her ears, then sniffed the air and hissed very softly, "Demon..."

"Demon?" Ryonami gasped, "Are you sure?"

"Only one way to find out for sure," Lenore said, sparing a glance towards Gosunkuji, "Not bad, Kid. I knew you dabbled in the arts, but I didn't know you had this much talent."

"Neither did I," Gosunkuji replied, "But ever since coming to work for Nabiki...and seeing all the strange stuff that we have...I...just naturally got curious, and started reading, and then before I knew it...I was...starting to feel things..."

"Get back to us on that after we investigate this," Lenore said in a predatory rumble, "If there's a demon at work here, then it definitely means real trouble in the offing..."

And not very far away, perched atop a tall tree just slightly off to the side of the road, and very near to the Kuno estate...

"Fascinating," Morrigar mused as she continued to examine her helpless victim, "Simply incredible. This child of my sister's son has such enormous untapped potential. Whoever this girl is she must have a very interesting pedigree to bestow upon the child of a half-Oni..."

Akane said nothing in response to this, still deep as she was within the trance that the demoness had placed upon her. She hovered within the protective cocoon of an illusion cast by the mysterious stranger who had accosted her a short time after Ryoga had left her presence. She did not know who the woman was, or what she was doing, or how she had placed Akane into such an effectively deep trance that she had no sense of what was happening to her while the stranger examined her body as though seeking out some inner depths or hidden treasure. She had no idea at all what the stranger was doing to her, or that she was intent on fathoming the true nature of the baby that she carried within her.

"Yes, this is definitely a child of unusual and quite possibly unique potential," Morrigar decided, "I should very much enjoy examining what he will become in the near future...and he might even be worth waiting around for a couple of decades, especially if I have a hand in helping to shape his destiny. On the other hand...why wait? I could have him now and none would be the wiser..."

With that thought in mind Morrigar shaped her hands into a pair of blade-like claws and smiled as she prepared to sink then into the girl's body. After all the child was nearly full developed, and of what need was the mother once the baby was in hand...?

But before the demoness could carry out her wicked plans of an induced "caesarian," a sharp voice called out, "HEY! What are you doing up there with our friend?"

"Eh?" Morrigar hissed as she turned around, only to look up with dismay to find another figure perched atop the same tree branch as herself with a sword blade gripped tightly in hand while balancing like a fencer with a snarl that revealed her very pronounced canines.

No sooner had she begun to place the character type and nature of the redhead confronting her then she perceived another quick form traveling along the branches directly beneath them. That figure moved much to fluidly to be a human form, and it was covered with fur, which implied that it was similarly not belonging to that of a mortal.

"What is this?" she asked without lowering her guard as she shifted from Akane to defensive mode, "A Vampire...working with a Werewolf? How quaint."

"I asked you a question, lady," the vampire in question snarled, "What are you doing with our friend?"

"Friend?" Morrigar asked in surprise, "Friend you say? And here I thought your kind regarded humans as a food group."

To her considerable astonishment the demoness hardly even saw the movement before the tip of the vampire's blade was suddenly pressed up against her throat. As fast as the undead were reputed to move, the speed of this particular undead was quite a revelation. Most obviously it was a mistake to take her for granted, especially in light of the fact that she had backup of an underworldly nature.

"I asked you a question," the vampire hissed, "And I don't like to repeat myself...understand me?"

"Well now," Morrigar hissed, "It seems that someone needs to be shown their place in the pecking order of things." And with that she summoned up the darkness within her and surrounded herself with shadows that repelled the sword blade and armored her with black plate scales, and with only a couple of quick passes she forced the Vampire back towards the edge of the branch...then beyond it.

Lenore found herself perched upon empty air, but rather than fall she levitated away from the reach of the demoness, who merely smiled back and extended her claws, projecting out chains that wrapped themselves around Lenore's neck and the wrist holding the sword-blade.

"Going somewhere, little Blood drinker?" Morrigar hissed from beneath her visor, "Time someone reminded you of your place upon the food chain...and your little doggie there with you."

Another chain extended outward, catching Chloe by her waist and yanking her forward so that Morrigar could grip her by the neck and suspend the struggling were-creature off her clawed feet and dangle her out over the open.

"Now then...what is your connection with my nephew's wife and their unborn child?" Morrigar mused, tightening her chains about Lenore and grip around Chloe's neck for emphasis, "And don't bother being quick to answer...I like to take my time with these interrogations..."

All at once the Demoness felt her entire body being battered from both within and without, and she lost her grip over both of her nominal victims, prompting Lenore to free herself of the chains while Chloe performed a nearly impossible acrobatic feat to grip another branch and break her fall from several meters above the concrete.

Kiima stood there where Morrigar had been as the demoness plummeted to the ground, and then with an unusual inflection of emotion in her voice she said, "No one does that to my friends...and it is time you learn your place in the scheme of things, demoness."

Morrigar did not land gracefully, but she was far from injured as she glared up into the tree and snarled, "Where the hell did you come from...and what are you? I'm not reading any life aura..."

"Why not come up here and find out for yourself?" Lenore snarled, brandishing her rapier, "Let's see how high and mighty you'll be with the three of us to deal with."

"No thanks, I'll decline for now," Morrigar said as she stood up, then gave a crafty glance towards the trio, "We'll renew this at a time and place of my choosing, but for now...I've learned all that I need at the moment."

And with that she clothed herself into the hooded cloak of night and vanished from even the preternatural perceptions of werewolf, ghost and vampire. Lenore was quick to look around for sign of the demoness's continuing presence, but nothing disturbed the night air, so she murmured softly, "Chloe?"

"I'm not picking up her scent...I think she really is gone," her companion affirmed.

"Likewise I sense no disturbance in the ether, other than to mark her having cloaked herself against further detection," Kiima noted, "I believe that our appearance surprised her before she could do her worst to Tendo Akane...but the mystery yet remains what was her interest in her in the first place?"

"Akane?" Lenore turned back to the motionless girl, then with a whoop she swooped in to catch her as the field levitating the girl collapsed, and with gentle ease she lowered the youngest Tendo sister down to street level and cradled her in her arms while Lenore probed deep with her vampiric senses.

Ryonami and Gosunkuji came running up to join them, the former asking anxiously, "Is Akane-san all right?"

"She's in some sort of a trance, I think," Lenore informed her companions, "But I also think I can wake her out of it. Let's get her to the Kuno place and let them know what just happened."

"But where was Ryoga during all of this?" Gosunkuji asked, "He hardly ever leaves Akane's side, unless he has to."

"Gotta good point there, Zombie-boy," Chloe sniffed, "It's not like a pack-mate to leave his bitch unattended."

"Chloe," Kiima chided, "There is that word again."

"What?" the were-woman asked, "I meant it in a good way. Honestly, I don't know why you guys think it's some sort of insult. Sometimes you can almost be as bad that way as the humans."

"Call it negative word-association, Honey," Lenore gently chided, "But anyway, that is a very good question. Where is Ryoga now when that demoness was molesting his pregnant wife? Not exactly typical behavior for him to run off and leave her exposed to all sorts of danger."

"Knowing Hibiki and his penchant for getting lost, I would not rate it as all that much surprising," Kiima noted.

"Yeah, but when it comes to Akane the guy's practically as overprotective as a nervous sheepherder with a loaded shotgun."

"Yeesh, do I ever know what those guys can be like," Chloe winced.

"The metaphor is an apt one," Kiima remarked, "But come...let us continue on our way before the demoness decides to pay us another visit."

"I sure hope not," Ryonami shuddered, "Who was that lady, and what was she doing with Sempai's sister."

"No good I'd wager," Gosunkuji noted grimly, "I had very bad feeling about that one...and you're definitely right about the chances of her paying us another visit."

"Well, not before I get some answers of my own," Lenore said as she carried Akane in her arms as though the latter were a baby, "I'm in enough trouble with the boss as it is, no way am I screwing things up by letting some Type Four have her way with the sister to my Lady."

Off some distance away, however, a pair of sharp ears overheard those words and softly snorted, "A Type Four am I? You need to consult a better rating system, little vampire. Yet curious indeed that you seem inordinately fond of these humans...and what's this talk about a lady? Could it be that minor divine that I spied earlier? I have heard the rumors about that one...but I wonder if those rumors are to be trusted?

"Well...never you mind for now, I've satisfied myself over these affairs. Time enough to explore the mystery surrounding my nephew and his extended family, but when I have the answers that I seek, then we'll have a reckoning you three and I...and just wait to see who eats the other's dust in the rematch."

That dark declaration made, Morrigar retreated into the night and allowed the silence to erase all further traces of her passage. She had time enough to watch as things proceeded at their own slightly accelerated pace, for time was a virtue given to the Immortal, and with it would come the patience to observe what was to happen.

If only she could as easily overcome the lingering sense that there was more going on than she could have been aware, as though the fates themselves were softly laughing...

"Push, my sister, push...you are almost there now...just a little farther," Tatewaki urged from the sidelines.

"Brother dearest," Kodachi grunted, "Why don't you be a dear and kindly SHUT UP...AAAAHHHHH!"

"That one almost did it, Kuno-sama," the nurse said with professional detachment as she dabbed a wet cloth over Kodachi's sweat-moistened brow, "Just a bit further and soon it will all be over."

"You sure?" Keiko asked, her face tight with pained emotions, but mostly because she was gripping Kodachi's right hand and enduring the squeeze that occurred with each new contraction.

"Positive," Doctor Tofu replied as he stood his guard at the point of exit with hands already extended for support, "Whoever this little one is, she's definitely a fighter, just like her mothers. Easy now, just ride it out and the next one should be the kicker..."

"I feel so helpless," Natsume declared in frustration as she stood at Tatewaki's side fretting impotently and wishing she could do something, "My sister is out there and yours is here, suffering through labor, and yet I can do nothing but stand here and watch. I want to be here to offer my support...but I know that my duty lays with my family...both halves..."

"Easy there, beloved," Tatewaki urged, "We will find Nabiki and soon, never fear, but it would avail us very little to go running off blindly without sense or knowledge of her current whereabouts. And besides...she would want us to be here, doing what we can to ease the passage of my niece into this world, so have faith and try to practice a bit more patience, and then we will see what we can do with the means at our disposal."

"Heads up," announced Alison as she came into the room holding a tray full of refreshments, "I've got iced tea for anyone who needs it, and some fresh towels for Kodachi-san, and Beiko is helping boil up some fresh water."

"How can you be so calm?" Kurumi asked as she accepted a glass of tea, "The rest of us are on edge, but you're as cool as a cucumber, Managi-san..."

"Hey, I went through this myself a few months ago," Alison reminded, "Believe me, the worst part is already over, now all that remains is the aftermath..."

"That is easy for you to SAAAAYYY!" Kodachi screamed, only this time it was long and sustained and became largely incoherent, while Doctor Tofu actually became quite animated with happy emotions.

"That's it...she's almost all the way out now...got her!" he cried, holding up a small object covered in filth that did not immediately resemble a baby.

Kodachi fell back in her bed and lay there panting with relief. After a brief pause Keiko grimaced and asked, "Is it finally over?"

"Yes, Arigami-san," the Nurse said with a congratulatory voice, "It's finally over."

"Good...because I think my hand is broken," Keiko declared while prying her wounded member from the now-limp grip of a half-unconscious Kodachi.

"Heads up!" someone announced as they came into the room bearing their own burden, "Got another patient here, and she's looking to be a ripe one."

"Lenore-san?" Kurumi whirled around then stared in dismay at the still form being carried by the vampire, "What happened to Akane?"

"We don't really know," Ryonami said as she and the others followed abruptly in the wake of the redheaded vampire.

"Other than the fact that she was attacked a short distance from this place," Lenore added curtly while setting Akane down upon a freshly made bed not far from Kodachi, "It was a demoness of some sort, and a powerful one from the way she fought with us, but she left after a few moments..."

"You drove her away?" Natsume asked with alarm evident in her tone and expression.

"Didn't look like it to me," Gosunkuji replied, "More like she decided to take a powder on account of Kiima-san confusing her..."

"Which happens a lot with guys who don't know about her true nature," Chloe helpfully supplied for the benefits of the others.

"I do have that effect upon certain people," the ethereal apparition known as Kiima duly noted.

"Strange...and most disturbing," Tatewaki declared, "The more so because Ryoga-  
kun left her virtually upon our gates, yet we found no sign of her when we arrived to take care of my sister."

"Ryo-kun...left Akane by herself?" Ryonami asked with a round-eyed expression of disbelief.

All at once Kodachi seemed to recover consciousness and asked, "Akane-chan...is she...here...?"

"Take it easy, Kuno-san," Doctor Tofu urged before handing the mother her freshly washed and cloth-swaddled baby, "There's someone here to meet with you, and I think she needs your attention."

"My baby?" Kodachi came to life as she reached out to accept the infant into her arms, and then her face lit up like the sun as she embraced her newborn daughter, even as Keiko leaned closer to see, holding her own breath as if afraid to awake the infant, who seemed tiny and barely developed for all that she had taken so much out of her mother.

"How kawaii," Ryonami chirped brightly, while Gosunkuji stood there looking even more like a stunned zombie than was typical of him.

"So...the cub's finally here," Chloe brightened, "And what a cutie...just like her co-dams."

"Nice to see," Lenore remarked, "But you'd better clean your forceps, Doc, because she's about to get a little brother."

"Eh?" Tofu asked as he turned to regard the vampire, then glanced down at Akane, who was murmuring soft mewing noises in her sleep.

"Akane-chan?" Natsume asked, "Is something wrong with her...?"

"Depends on your definition of wrong here," Lenore replied, "I don't know what that demoness was doing to her, but I think it's triggered an effect that's hastening Akane-san into labor."

"What?" Tatewaki reacted in shock.

"Another one?" Gosunkuji gasped, coming back out of his near-trance as he glanced in concern at Akane.

"How do you know this?" Kurumi asked in amazement.

"Hey, I may look like a kid myself, but I'm well over thirty, and I've been around more than a few pregnant ladies," the vampire explained, "And I can definitely read the signs when they start to develop. The only reason she isn't screaming and kicking up a fuss is because she's still partly in a trance, but when she comes out of it...watch out!"

"Akane-chan's going into labor?" Keiko blinked and turned away from examining Kodachi's baby, "You've gotta be kidding!"

"Nope, I can definitely smell it from here," Chloe replied, "And I've seen more than a few of my kin get delivered back with my old pack, and as my old Dam used to say, when a Bitch has gotta deliver..."

"Quite," Kiima said with unusual curtness, "No doubt this is a delayed effect of the attempt by the demoness to threaten the life of the mother. The child is attempting to defend itself in the only way that nature has allowed it, by hastening the process of its extraction from the host, its mother."

"Jeez," Alison winced, "You make it sound almost as clinical as Beiko when she gets techno."

"Ignoring the slight to my ability to empathize with another," Beatrice remarked, "The theory you mention is at least as plausible an explanation as any other I might conjecture at the moment."

"Yeah, but still...two of them in one night?" Alison turned to look askance at Beatrice.

"It does defy the odds more than a bit," Beatrice noted, "Even though they were conceived at approximately the same time as my own child...or that of Shampoo-  
san and Nabiki."

"Maybe we'd better call back to the house to find out if Sham-chan's doing all right," Keiko suggested.

"Ukyo is with her, is she not?" Kodachi asked as she made a point of slipping her bedsheets down to expose the upper portion of her body, at which point she brought her infant up to a waiting nipple and gently encouraged her baby to begin to suckle, "I am certain that she will be...all right. However...our first concern must be with Nabiki."

"Sister?" Tatewaki asked as he hastily turned away to a avert his gaze in a belated display of brotherly modesty.

"I am...quite tired from my ordeal...but I will recover," Kodachi assured the concerned looks turned in her direction, "But Nabiki-chan is quite...another affair...and she is still among the missing, is she not?"

"As far as we know, yes," Natsume answered.

"Then it is imperative...that you find her," Kodachi urged while cradling her child in her arms and assuming a surprisingly maternal disposition, "Or else her baby...will be imperiled...the same as mine was. I came very close to losing her...I would not wish such a fate...on anyone...especially not Nabiki."

"Don't try to talk, Mistress," Keiko urged, glancing sharply over one shoulder and calling out, "Sasuke!"

"Coming!" the little man hastily called out as he hurried into the room bearing an armload of towels and toiletries, only to drop them in shock as he stared at the child in Kodachi's arms and said, "Mistress?"

"Never mind, Sasuke," Kodachi gently reprimanded, ignoring the fact that she was partly naked before the eyes of a servant, "Kei-chan...you belong to me and do my bidding, do you not?"

"Always," Keiko reassured her raven-haired Mistress.

"Then on your oaths of loyalty to me, I charge you to find and deliver Nabiki safely back into the arms...of those who miss her," Kodachi said with as much sternness as she could muster.

Keiko blinked then said in astonishment, "Leave you, Mistress?"

Kodachi forced a weak smile upon her lips as she gazed fondly upon the redheaded kickboxer, "I know that you still have a certain fondness for her, but this is not the time to reminisce about old flames and past obsessions. You know your duty to me is inviolate, and you have rendered good service...attending to me in my time...of need...but now it is Nabiki who must needs be rescued. The same holds true for you, Natsume-san...I overheard your words of before...and I will not keep you here any longer out of misplaced concern for my well being."

"Kodachi-san?" Natsume asked politely, avoiding the urge to refer to the dark haired woman as a sister.

"Sister?" Tatewaki asked in surprise, this time risking looking fully upon his half-unclad sibling, only to receive from her a stern look worthy of a Lady of House Kuno.

"Brother of mine...on your love for me I urge you to go with your fiancée and find she who must now be rescued. They will need your strong arm and your sword if they are to vanquish this...blackguard who nearly caused me...to miscarry my baby..."

"Sister," Tatewaki was clearly torn by indecision, but almost instantly he took fire from the gleam in Kodachi's eyes and avowed, "I will punish him for his transgressions, I do swear it."

"Good," Kodachi smiled this time without humor, "See to it...he gets a good thrashing...and now...I am very tired...I must...attend to...other duties..." and with that she closed her eyes, her momentary efforts having taxed her beyond her means as she lay there with her suckling child making faint sounds in the ensuing silence.

"Mistress," Keiko said as she held Kodachi's arm ever-so gently, then touched a finger to the cheek of the baby, then stood very slowly and declared, "I will give that bastard back full measure for what he did to me...and to you. That's a promise on my oath to you...and I will do your bidding."

"Sounds like we've got a real hunting pack forming up here," Chloe said cheerfully, "Hey, by the way, where's Ryoga-kun? Thought he'd be here to watch his own cub's birthing."

"Yeah, I was about to ask that one myself," Lenore frowned, "Why the hell did he leave his wife unattended so that demoness could grab her?"

"Ryo-kun went on ahead with Mousse-chan and Perfume in search of Ranma, Nabiki and that Taro creep," Kurumi answered, "He wanted to be here, but Kodachi said that he was needed elsewhere, just like with the rest of us just now."

"All except you, little sister," Natsume chided.

"Hey, no fair!" Kurumi protested, "I can come with you, and I'm feeling a lot better!"

"But someone needs to remain here to look after our sister while she delivers her child," Natsume informed her, "And in case whatever creature it was that attacked her before should try again in our absence."

"Hey, don't worry yourself," Ryonami said as she took Gosunkuji by the arm and brightly added, "She'll have Gos-kun here to help protect you, and he's training himself to be a wizard.

"I will?" the boy in question said with a faintly stunned expression.

"Oh yes," Kiima said with ethereal dry humor, "He will certainly serve to keep the forces of evil at bay...or not."

"Well, what about Aiko-san here?" Kurumi pointed to the other redhead present, "She's powerful enough to take on a whole army!"

"Hey, you think I'm staying behind while the rest of you go marching off after that shapeshifting bully?" Alison snorted while smacking a fist-to-palm for emphasis, "Don't forget that I've got my own score to settle with him...and I'll be sure he doesn't cause us any more trouble."

"Quite right you are going, Aiko-chan," Beatrice said as she handed something over to her committed life-partner, "Because you are going to lead the way with this tracking device that I've kept for just such an occasion."

"Huh?" Alison said as she took the wrist-watch-like object and examined its surface, "A tracking device? You mean...for Nabiki?"

"It's calibrated to mark the location of a special nanobot that I injected in her months ago so that I would always know where she was in case of another such abduction," Beatrice informed her, "Good to within the nearest ten centimeters, with a range of over forty kilometers. That ought to be good enough to track down the culprit who is behind the eventful misadventures of this evening. I have even simplified the controls so that even you should have no difficulty working things out..."

"Only you would Lo-Jack your own friends, Beiko," Alison said, but not without a smile of appreciation as she set the watch about one of her ever-present wristbands.

"Considering recent occurrences, can you blame me?" Beatrice replied matter-of-  
factly, "And besides, I don't have that many good close friends like Nabiki, so I can hardly afford to lose even one, now can I?"

Alison nodded to that then said, "We'll be back soon enough, so tell Akane-chan not to drop her kid until we fetch Nabiki and Ryoga. She'd be disappointed as hell with us if we weren't here to congratulate her when the big event happens."

"Oh, and do take care," Beatrice urged, pausing before adding, "We will all be praying for your swift and safe return."

"Fear not, Daitokuji-san," Tatewaki declared, "With all of our might in hand victory is assured, and we will return with our shields held high...or upon them."

"Not too literally I hope," Beatrice mused as she and Kurumi remained behind with Akane, Sasuke, Kodachi, Ryonami and Gosunkuji, Doctor Tofu and the personal nursing staff of the Kunos. No sooner did the others depart, however, but then Beatrice leaned against a nearby table and placed a hand over her own abdomen.

"Huh?" Kurumi was the first one to notice, "What's wrong? Not you too, Beiko!"

"I was...avoiding mentioning this before," Beatrice replied, "But...some time ago, shortly after impregnating myself with Alison's child...I set the Nano-  
Queen at the core of her matrix to adjust the development of my embryo to match the growth rate of Nabiki's own baby. I felt...concerned and obligated as I had a hand in her impregnation...and I wanted us to deliver together...so the nearer that she comes to giving birth..."

"Say what?" Doctor Tofu looked up from where he was busy examining Akane.

"You're not serious...are you, Daitokuji-san?" Ryonami asked with a faintly appalled expression.

"Lady Daitokuji...was that wise?" Sasuke asked with concern evident in her own expression.

"Quite possibly not," Beatrice remarked as she found a chair and sat down rather heavily, "But as you can see...the fact that I am beginning to experience...the first signs of labor pains of my own...is a strong indication...that her child is likewise on the way...and may well be delivered this very evening."

"Oh my," Gosunkuji murmured, "Then why didn't you inform Managi-san?"

"Alison is such a protective dear...my sweet Aiko would have refused to leave my side...but I knew that her strength would be needed...to help save Nabiki," Beatrice answered, "I could not afford to have her be so...distracted at so crucial a moment..."

"Foolish...and noble of you," Kodachi half-murmured as her eyes partially opened.

"Possibly both," Beatrice smiled awkwardly, her face betraying slight pain as she added, "But we will know soon enough...when we discover the fate...of our beloved friend...Nabiki..."

And seeing the distress begin to slowly creep upon the face of the beautiful aristocratic genius, Kurumi murmured half to herself, "Oh...kuso...can this night bet any better? Mousse-chan...please hurry and find Nabiki!"

Not very far away the owlish eyes of Beatrice's own daughter beheld the signs of her mother's coming labor, and in a voice very soft she murmured, "{Momma's gonna have my baby sister, which means your brother's gonna get born real quick.}"

And on the other end of a two-way line that linked her directly to her compatriots back at the Tendo place, "{Already? What is it with these grown-  
ups? Can't they wait for a better time? Next thing you know momma Shampoo's gonna be next, and then what'll happen?}"

"{Unknown at the present,}" little Eileen Kent Kane Managi-Daitokuji (whom some were already referring to as "Ekko" for short) shrugged her tiny shoulders and slightly pouted, "{But whatever is up has gotta be big 'cause things are sure happening quick around here, and who knows what that means right now for your co-momma...}"

"Awake yet? 'Cause I'll know if you fake it."

Nabiki's eyelids fluttered open and she slowly started to look around to take in her new surroundings. It did not take her long to determine that her wrists were bound behind her back and that her ankles were similarly tied with heavy nylon chords, but that otherwise she was quite unarmed if propped up against the wall of a cave in the middle of what appeared to be some kind of natural setting.

"Where...?" she managed to ask, feeling more than slightly disoriented as she made out the figure sitting across from her by a fire that he was tending.

"Like I'm gonna answer that?" Taro huffed while feeding sticks of kindling to keep his campfire going, "You're safe, that's all you gotta worry about for now, so feel free to scream your head off or make whatever kind of fuss you feel like making 'cause there's no one around for miles to hear it. Just you, me and the wildlife."

Nabiki scowled as memories flooded back to her, but she remained calm while responding, "No thanks...I'm not the screaming type."

"Yeah, I figured as much," Taro grunted, giving her an appreciative look that as much as said that he thought she was made of sterner stuff, "Other frails would have screamed their bloody heads off the whole way that I carried you, but not you...no sir. You stayed as calm and in control as if you were riding a pony, even when you did that light-show thing and tried to take my head off, which is another reason why you're all tied up at the moment, sweetheart."

"So...you have me at a disadvantage," Nabiki stated matter-of-factly, "So why kidnap me? I thought your beef was with Happosai."

"You were the obvious choice to nab, sweetheart," Taro informed her, "I could tell from the way things were going back there that you were the one calling the shots, the one the others looked to, and they took to your words like they were used to following your orders. Even fem-boy snapped to your commands like a faithful puppy..."

"What did you just call him?" Nabiki blinked.

"Fem-boy?" Taro shrugged, "I dunno...just like the sound of it, and it fits considering who's obviously wearing the pants at your household. Not much for brains that guy...so what do you see in him, and how come you put up with him messing around with those other frails?"

"It takes more practice than you know in certain cases," Nabiki growled, thinking of her husband's elemental familiars, "But with Sham-chan, Ucchan and Perfume...it's not that difficult. We...compliment each other...not that I expect you to understand that."

"I guess," Taro sniffed, "Gotta say, I'm impressed as hell with the way you're dealing with things, lady. I can tell just by looking at you that you're sizing me up and trying to think up a way of escaping from here, and you just want to keep me talking until I give you a hint on any weaknesses I might allegedly have. I'll save you a lotta trouble, though, by telling you I ain't got any weaknesses to exploit, and I'm onto your game, so you can stop trying to act so smug and superior about it."

Nabiki felt her disquiet mounting as she realized that this fellow was a lot more intelligent than the lowly thug she had first taken him to be. He had cunning and craft enough to make things difficult, and it was obvious that a battle of wits between them would not be so one-sided as the sort of matches that she was used to handling with random encounters. This guy was sharp, strong and a competent fighter, and even at her best he might prove challenging to deal with, judging by the way he had handled himself against Ranma and the others.

"Heh, I can tell what you're thinking," Taro said after another moment of awkward silence, "It's almost like I can read what's in your head...and here I thought you'd make a pretty decent Poker player, but you're wondering if you can stall me until your boyfriend and those other clowns can find you."

Nabiki felt more agitated and frustrated than genuinely alarmed this time, but still she said, "You don't know them like I do...and yeah, you'd better well believe that they're gonna find me, and when they do..."

"I ain't worried about any of them," Taro said, "It's Happosai I'm after. The rest of your guys are just a distraction."

"Then I don't suppose you'll consider letting me go when it's all over?" Nabiki asked.

"I plan to," Taro assured, "Just as soon as I get what I want from the old geezer."

"Just like that?" Nabiki lifted an eyebrow.

"Just like that," Taro assured, "What have I got to be scared of about you? You're not exactly in shape to go nine rounds with me, Sweetheart, and as for your boy toy..."

"Husband," Nabiki corrected.

"My condolences," Taro shrugged and went back to tending the fire.

Nabiki's eyes narrowed as she tried to assess this dangerous stranger, "You don't have a lot of respect for women, do you?"

"My mother was a woman," Taro replied, "And I'm grateful to her for bringing me life. Understand, I know women can be pretty good fighters, even treacherous and sneaky, and you sure can't turn your back on 'em, but I don't see the point beyond that, and they're only good for a moment's diversion."

"So why kidnap me?" Nabiki asked, "You know full well that you are borrowing pure trouble."

"What, because your friends are gonna race up here and pound on me? Yeah, right..." Taro sniffed as he brushed his hands, then set to work fixing a couple of skinned rabbits onto some makeshift skewers for roasting.

"Why did you do it, Pantsaru?" Nabiki asked, and earned a bit of satisfaction in seeing the way he glared at her and bristled, "If your aim was to force Happosai to approve a name-change, then all you had to do was ask and the rest of us would have held the old fart still while you pounded the snot out of him..."

"Didn't look like that to me from where I was standing," Taro countered, "I explained what I wanted and you wound up taking the old man's side in the end, just like I figured you would, him being your Master and all."

"That was only after we found out about you ambushing Keiko in the hallway," Nabiki insisted.

"Naw, that came after," Taro waved a stick her way as if it were a classroom pointer, "You're not remembering stuff in the right order. Happens when you just wake up after a long nap. Thing is, I was watching your group most of the day to try and figure out what the situation was between you and the old freak. I'd heard he was the grand-master, founder and maybe even your great-grandpa, or something like that, so when push comes to shove it's only natural that you'd bunch up against an outsider. I just took down the odds a little to improve things in my favor...didn't count on red recovering as fast as she did. Of course, I didn't immediately catch up on the signs that she was a Jusenkyo victim, like me...only I ain't no victim."

"You mean you like turning into that...thing?" Nabiki asked.

"Hell yes, Babe," Taro replied, "What's wrong with being large as a house and more unstoppable than a rampaging elephant, not to mention my wings actually work, so I was able to carry you here once I threw the other guys off my scent, including that freakazoid you call your husband."

"He's not a freakazoid," Nabiki tensed, "He's kind and gentle and a hell of a lot more man than you!"

"Aw, now that one hurt," Taro pouted, "Being compared to that gelled stallion when I'm more than twice the stud that he could ever be? You see...that's the problem in my life...nobody ever takes me seriously on account of my name. I can't even introduce myself to a girl without having her laugh herself sick in my face, and all because that runt went and gave me such a stupid name, and by the laws of my village I can't change it without him saying its okay..."

"I'll admit the name is a pretty awkward one," Nabiki glared at the dangerous young man and said, "But if you hate it so much then why are you wearing pantyhose with that armor?"

"I dunno, just like the feel of it I guess," Taro shrugged, "But it's not like it's my trademark or nothing like that. In fact, I'd be a whole lot happier in life if I didn't have to be reminded all the time about the big joke fate played on me by having Happosai be my godfather. Hell, I should be grateful to the old freak for saving my life when he helped deliver me, but because he stuck me with this name it's like I walk around with a cloud over my head, and nothing I do will ever change that until I force him to undo things."

"And what would you rather be called?" Nabiki asked, more intent on keeping the conversation going than from any genuine interest.

"I dunno...how about Manly Taro, or Stud Taro, or something that reflects the inner me," Taro answered, "I suppose I should say that the name thing helped me a lot on account of all the fights I got into growing up. You know what kids are like, and how they love to tease and bully you when you're little? Well, I got real big, mean and nasty on account of my name, and then I left my village when I was ten and hit the road seeking to train with any halfway decent Master I could find in my travels."

"I'm surprised any of them would take you on for a student," Nabiki said, contrasting this young man's life with her own lifelong pursuit of the martial arts.

"Hey, you'd be amazed what bleeding hearts you can find out there," Taro assured her, "Guys who always think they can turn my life around, show me the error of my ways, teach me to look past my name and all sorts of sentimental crud like that. Of course they never teach you everything they know up front...they always gotta hold something back just in case their students turn on them...but I found out real early that the best way to get them to show you stuff is to push them to their limits so it's either show you what they know or receive a pounding. Once I learn everything I can I move on, and that's my idea of a graduation."

Nabiki's alarm more than doubled as she heard this, and suddenly she knew just how ruthless and hard-set in his ways her abductor was, which meant that he was an even more dangerous foe than she had previously reckoned.

Very slowly she said, "So what you're planning to do here is show everything you learned against Happosai, because you expect he's going to march up here and bargain with you for my rescue?"

"Naw, I expect I'll have to pound a few of your friends first, but sooner or later the old geek will pop up here just to find out how you're faring, and then I'll nail him," Taro answered, "Gotta remember, I've been training myself for months just for this one shot at winning my new name, and ever since I learned that you were a family of hotshot martial artists I knew I had to be extra careful in setting things up here...but in the end it's all gonna be the same. I'm gonna be the one to walk down from this mountain, and you can brag to your friends that you saw me pull it off...me, the new and improved Masculine Taro."

"You're delusional," Nabiki growled softly, "You didn't prepare yourself for when Ranma used his elementals. You were just as surprised as if you'd never seen him use them before...and that's not even taking into account what the rest of my friends can do...especially my sister."

"The tall one with the fangs?" Taro lifted an eyebrow, "What's the deal with her? I could tell she was the most dangerous one there, but the way she moved...it just ain't human."

"Never mind about her," Nabiki hastily insisted, "You're gonna have enough on your hands just dealing with my husband..."

"I'll admit the fire and water ladies were a surprise," Taro said, "But I had seen him do stuff like that before. It's the flying thing that I wasn't prepared to handle. Still, he wasn't so tough the last two times we tangoed, and if he's depending on supernatural servants to do his fighting for him then he's probably letting himself go to seed, because any decent fighter knows you can only rely on your fists in a grudge match."

"I'll be sure and inscribe that on your tombstone...or wherever they deposit your ashes," Nabiki snorted.

"Think I'm scared by a few threats?" Taro asked, "In case you hadn't noticed, Doll-face, you're in a piss-poor position to be hurling epithets."

"I'll get loose just as soon as Ranma gets here," Nabiki assured, already working halfway through the knots binding her wrists, "And then you won't be sitting so smug and self-satisfied, Mister."

"Oh, in that case, maybe I should just kill you now," Taro said, getting up off the floor of the cave and brandishing the carving knife that he had used earlier on the rabbits.

Nabiki's eyes went wide, and all at once it occurred to her-belatedly-that she might have overplayed her cards by more than a little. But Taro just smiled and sat back down, then stuck the knife back into the dirt of the floor and said, "Fooled ya."

"Hah?" Nabiki softly repeated.

"Just thought you needed a reminder of who's calling the shots here," Taro said, "I was right about you, you are the brains behind your little outfit, and without you around to call the shots the other guys are just lost, confused and bedazzled. That'll make them easy pickings when they do show up...but in the meantime try not and act so smug and superior around me. That may work with your half-man boyfriend, but I ain't buying your little act. I think deep down you're scared and trying not to show it, Princess."

Nabiki coughed a bit to clear her throat then said, "What's with all these names you keep tossing out? Are you trying to flirt with me? Because if you are, then I'm the one who's not buying."

"Just making conversation," Taro said while checking on the condition of the spitted rabbits, "By the way, which parts do you want for yourself, little Rabbit?"

(Damn, he's psyched me again), Nabiki thought furiously to herself as she had been following Taro's actions with great deliberation. Try as she might to get the upper hand this dangerous young man seemed to have her figured out and had covered all the angles. No matter how she tried to approach him he was one step ahead of her, and clearly more amused than impressed by her efforts, especially since she had not had a thing to eat in hours, and her stomach was growling rebelliously as she could smell the roasting meat of those two rabbits.

Just as ominous, though, was the sense that he was comparing her to one of those rabbits, and the clear implication was a display of his power over her, which was nearly absolute at the moment. H might not actually intend harm towards her, but in his eyes she was no more than a means to an end, and he was not about to be distracted from his goal by any efforts she might make to get past his mental armor.

Very cautiously she said, "You do know that you're burrowing yourself deeper and deeper into trouble, kidnapping a pregnant woman, threatening her life, and her family. Suppose you're not as tough as you think you are? Then you could wind up facing some serious jail time..."

"Maybe, but I doubt it," Taro assured her, "Let me tell you what's gonna happen here. Your friends will come looking for you and I'll beat them, either one-by-  
one or as a group. I ain't got scruples about using traps and other means to fight my battles, but when it comes to Happosai, you're the bait he can't resist."

"Why, because I'm his student?" Nabiki sniffed, "I hate to disillusion you on that count, but the old fart doesn't exactly reek of loyalty, even to family members..."

"Oh, he'll come for you all right," Taro assured, "Because you happen to be his star pupil, and you carry his great-great grandson, or daughter, and even if the old guy only cares about stealing lingerie, there's his manly pride as a fighter to consider. He'll come and then I'll beat him, then you can walk away from here and go anywhere you like, even tell the cops if it makes you feel better. I'll be long gone out of your hair and out of the country before that happens, so you see...no matter how you figure things, I'm bound to come out a winner."

"Are you honestly so conceited that you think you could stand up in a match against the Master?" Nabiki incredulously asked, though for reasons other than that she began to feel a tiny bit nauseous.

"Maybe not, but with you as insurance he's bound to see reason," Taro assured, "I've thought the whole thing through, and there's no angle I haven't got covered..."

All at once Nabiki felt herself go flush, and then a tightness in her abdomen caused her to gasp aloud and get suddenly nauseous at the smell of cooking rabbits.

Despite his casual nonchalance, Taro's voice held surprising sympathy as he asked, "Hey...are you all right?"

"There...might be one small factor...you didn't take into consideration..." she managed to say between clenched teeth.

"Yeah?" Taro asked, "Such as?"

"Such as the fact...that I think I'm going...into labor," Nabiki answered.

Taro arched his eyebrows at this, "You're kidding, right? Because if this is some lame attempt to get me to untie you..."

"No...ahhhh...no trick..." Nabiki grimaced, "So...unless you want to be guilty of causing the death of my baby, Mister...then you're gonna have to decide how much...a new name...is worth to you..."

Taro sat where he was for a minute more, seeing the bound girl start to take deeper breaths and perspire more profusely, and then he murmured, "Oh crap...what lousy timing."

"It's not a trick, I swear it," Nabiki urged, "Come over here...and untie me..."

"I ain't that stupid, sister," Taro said as he got up from his side of the camp and came over to examine her without undoing the ropes that bound her, "But yeah...I can read people pretty good, and somehow I don't think you're that good an actress."

Despite the pain she was in, Nabiki found herself grimacing a smile as she responded, "You might be...surprised...if you knew me any better."

"Maybe so," Taro said, "But I'll handle things, one way or another. Not like this is the first time I've seen a frail give birth either. Just lay still and let me call the shots here, and forget about attempting to overpower me, you're not in too good shape, and any efforts you make will just worsen your condition."

"What do you care?" Nabiki gasped, "I'm just your hostage."

"Yeah, but you're no good to me if you kick off or lose the baby," Taro said as he held up his knife, "Now, you gonna cooperate and be a good little girl when I untie your feet, because you don't need your wrists for this and I'm leaving them tied, and if you try kicking me in the face of the balls I just might not be much use to you in helping to deliver."

Very reluctantly Nabiki nodded, "All right...you win for now...but...if I lose this baby...I am going to kill you..."

"That's fair enough," Taro conceded, and set to work undoing the chords about her ankles...

Episode One-Hundred Forty-Six.

"Laying Siege to the Mountains of Despair."

"A copper piece for thine thoughts."

Kasumi smiled as she stared up into the starry night canopy, laying beside the woman with whom she had just exchanged such pleasant emotions and marveling at how wondering everything seemed, how perfectly in order, as though the universe were a vast network of carefully balanced opposing forces harmoniously blended together into a unified constant.

"I am not certain of their going rate," Kasumi shyly admitted, "Nabiki is the one in the family who is very good with numbers."

"Thine sister be fortunate to be the recipient of so much of thine affection," Thelendra mused as she lay snuggled up alongside a languorous Kasumi, "Much though it be unrequited. Hast thou truly saved thyself until anon? From the way in which thou didst pleasure me now, I wouldst think this far from thine only time with another woman."

Kasumi turned her head to regard the rainbow haired beauty beside her, feeling the warmth of their bodies pressed together, sharing so much more than thought as emotions literally flowed from one heart to the other. It was different from other transferences that Kasumi had shared in the past, and the thoughts and images that filled her mind just then were strangely comforting, if somewhat bewildering in their vast expense and breadth of wonder.

"You are the first," Kasumi assured her, "It is just that...I inherited these memories of how to...make a girl feel very special when I shared blood with my little brother, Ranma."

"Ah...this Kama-Senken of his then," Thelendra murmured softly, "Now well do I appreciate its potency. Quite overwhelmed was I by thine ardent touch when thou didst caress me to thine bosom and give sweet succor to mine body. Long has it been since I have lain like this in the arms of another, and much did I share with thee that have I denied myself of late, and for that do I most sincerely thank thee."

"It was my pleasure," Kasumi softly chuckled as she gazed into the changeable eyes of her new acquaintance, "Never having done this before in my actual body, I can only say that you exceeded my wildest expectations for my first time making love to another person. And yet...and yet, in all honestly, I had...intended my first time to be with another..."

"Indeed," Thelendra murmured softly, "And now you fear that you may have unwittingly betrayed him, and yet the thought was neither thine nor mine in all truth, and in all truth I cannot for one regret that which has transpired this late unto the evening."

"Neither can I," Kasumi said sincerely, admiring her recent lover in soft profile, "Though it was far from the reason for which I came to you, it was unquestionably the nicest exchange that I have ever shared with another person, including even the sharing of blood with my sister."

"Indeed," Thelendra snaked out with a supple hand and began to gently fondle the anatomy of the beautiful woman beside her, "But the sharing of my blood had special significance for thee did it not? For mine is the blood of an Eluini, and as such ever renewing and overflowing."

"Sangrael?" Kasumi murmured back, the word flowing into her mind unbidden.

"Aye, that I have been called, and many things more in mine former lives," Thelendra smiled as she stared up into the starry night sky and seemed to perceive far more than anyone merely human, "I am bound to the path of mine father, and he to mine, for we are linked by a history that walks alongside the spirit of all humanity, of which thee art still very much a part."

"Do you think I am still...that much human?" Kasumi asked very softly, her eyes following the trace of slender fingers as Thelendra painted a trail along the nervous pathways of her body, eliciting a sense of sheer delight and wonder.

"Oh aye...very much so, and now more than ever," Thelendra's laugh was as musical as her voice and tingled pleasantly on the nerves like one of her caresses, "For I have added mine essence with thee and helped to stabilize thine integrity matrix. You will find no longer does the Rakshasa spirit within thee gain ground over thee at inconvenient moments of passion. Thou hast conquered thine own inner demons and absorbed them, and now thou art complete in thine evolution."

"My evolution?" Kasumi asked, "Into what?"

"Into thine truly evolved self," Thelendra answered, giving Kasumi a look that was deep, rich and multi-textured, "Eluini be no more nor less than human...we be the very essence of what it means to be human in the fullest. For that is the way of things as they were in the beginning, when all human life was rich with vast potential..."

"Potential the ancients once harnessed to become like unto gods," Kasumi continued the thought for her, the memories gained from Thelendra giving flavor to the other woman's words, and conjuring up images that had lay buried dormant within her, "Power so great that the ancients all but destroyed themselves in a great and terrible war..."

"A war that scarred all humanity, which is why the survivors turned away and hid the power that lay within them," Thelendra sadly concluded, "Once burned thrice shy goes the saying, and the human race that is today is the diminished race that came from the ancient scars of battle, frightened to their very core of once more awakening the power that slumbers yet within us all."

"I...think that I begin to understand at last...and to see," Kasumi murmured as she started to sit up, only to gasp in dismay as she got a better look at the naked body of her beauteous companion, "Oh my...did I do all of that?"

"Eh?" Thelendra turned her gaze towards herself and at once comprehended, "Ah...the bite marks? Think nothing of them, they are but a passing inconvenience."

Sure enough as she spoke those words the deep impression of fangs that covered not only the neck but both breasts and loins of the stunningly well formed Eluini began to clear up and fade, then disappear altogether, leaving blemishless skin in their passing.

Kasumi could not help extending a hand to caress her fingers across the place where the marks had been, then turned to see if Thelendra evidenced any signs of vampirism. To her considerable relief the other woman's Ki remained untainted by the darkness of the Rakshasa, though the smile Thelendra turned on her was enough to set Kasumi's pulse to racing.

"Dost thou not see?" the rainbow haired woman purred with sensual affection, taking Kasumi's proffered hand and pressing it to her own bosom, "What thou dost know of as vampirism is the product of a flawed spell cast long ago by Atlantean mages...but Eluini are evolved beyond that state, and I be far more immersed within the mystic sciences to be much affected by such a trifle."

"Oh," Kasumi said in relief, then stared at the hand that still caressed the bosom of the other woman and added, "Oh...my..."

"Eluini are the unforgotten ones who transcend the limits of body, mind and spirit," Thelendra informed her, sitting up and gazing with deep affection into the eyes of the aroused vampire goddess, "And now...we are sisters after a fashion, though you retain thine divinity and vampirism as it be thine destiny to both rule and guide the legions of the night."

"But...why me?" Kasumi wondered, now totally enraptured within the gaze of this fascinating woman.

"Dost thou know of a candidate who be worthier than thee?" Thelendra said as her lips brushed against the cheek and lips of Kasumi, "Of a certainty I cannot...for thou art a beautiful and gentle spirit unlike many another, and only in thine hands can the vast powers bequeathed to thee be responsibly governed."

"But...why are you and your father so interested in me and my family?" Kasumi asked, only to gasp as new memories flooded into her consciousness, causing her to pull away with a startled, "You father...he is...?"

"Aye," Thelendra assured her, "That and more, across the span of ten incarnations."

"Oh my..." Kasumi's eyes grew very wide, realization dawning upon her as she finally understood just what sort of being had approached her that very morning, "But...he is..."

"No more than a man and far less than a god, as he would assure thee," Thelendra said with calm conviction, "He be Daokan...one of four beings who share between them a power that be unlike any other within mortal imagination. They be the guardian spirits who protect and guide humankind in the form of mortal men...and one of them a woman...my aunt Ulsa. Each alone represents a cardinal point that combines two of the four elements that form the world of physical matter, but combined...theirs is the power Incarnate, the spirit of the Daokan...the Lords of the Way who defend the collective soul of all that be human."

"And one of them...the lord of Air and Fire...?" Kasumi asked.

"Be mine father," Thelendra said, "And now thou dost understand how august be the majesty of what has been imparted...yet still I do sense doubt within thine heart as to how deserving thou must be of such benediction."

"Aye...I mean...yes..." Kasumi answered, "Er...forgive me for asking...but why do you always speak in such archaic speech patterns? It's a little difficult sometimes to follow what you are saying."

"Ah...that," Thelendra said with a sheepish expression, "Forgive but it be a matter of ingrained habit. In mine last rebirth I did spend mine developing years in a place known as Arcadia, and there I did speak the language of the ancients, mine early years expended in deep meditation where I did awaken the memories of mine former lives. Why...is the manner in which I do speak...confusing?"

"Somewhat," Kasumi answered, "But...I think I like hearing you this way...it sounds somehow natural, even translated into Japanese."

"Thine tongue sounds more natural to me when I do employ the high tongue of royalty, the language of courtiers in the days of Samurai and Shogun," Thelendra explained with a smile that seemed more interested in Kasumi than in further elaboration, "But enough of esoteric matters...there be far more interesting ways in which we may both be spending our time here..."

Kasumi knew all too well just what sort of "interesting ways" her companion had in mind, and in all truth she was powerfully tempted to accede to the suggestion, but a belated sense that she had forgotten something rather significant kept nagging at the edges of her mind, something of even greater importance than enjoying the best sex of her young life and...

Wait a minute...what could be more important than sex? It was the first time that she truly appreciated how wonderful it was to share physical and emotional intimacies with another living being. And here all along she had imagined doing it for the first time with either Doctor Steinberg or the male version of her sister, Nabiki..."

"Nabiki!" Kasumi cried in shock, preventing her from yielding totally to the growing arousal that was inspired by the way Thelendra's hands were stroking over her lithe body.

"Eh?" Thelendra herself appeared quite startled, and then realization dawned within her eyes as well and she said, "Aiyee...what a royal ass I am making of mineself! Please forgive, I was...distracted from mine original purpose. Believe that it was ne'er my intent to detain thee here when thy services be needed elsewhere."

"I'm very sorry," Kasumi said as she gathered up her discarded dress and got back to her feet, "I must go and find my sister. It was...irresponsible of me to forget, even for a second...not that I've minded spending time with you. You are very nice...very nice indeed, but...she is my sister..."

"Aye," Thelendra reluctantly got to her own feet, reminding Kasumi by doing so of their relative height difference, "Allow me then to make apology by speeding thee on thine way to thy destination."

With a gesture she caused the dress to dematerialize and reform about Kasumi, who found her hair was groomed and her skin tingled with vitality as though she had just bathed in perfumed salts for several hours. She even had a fresh new ribbon tied about her ponytail to give extra cuteness to her overall appearance.

"Why...thank you," Kasumi said, hiding her slight disappointment as Thelendra concealed her own perfect body within the trappings of her low-cut multi-colored dress.

"T'was nothing...a minor cantrip," Thelendra assured her, "Thou wilt discover that I have implanted memories within thee for far more complex and daring spells that thou shalt find needful. Yet another gift bestowed from what we shared within these few sweet hours of blissful pleasure."

"I'll never forget the time we've shared," Kasumi said sincerely as she turned away to where she sensed the folds of the carnival tent were parting, only to find warm hands wrapped around her as the press of Thelendra's tall body caressed her back like a mantle.

"In all truth I do not wish to let thee part from me now," Thelendra said sadly, her hands moving of their own will to cup and fondle Kasumi's breasts from beneath her silken dress, "I had not anticipated how painful this would be, nor did I foresee that we would be this close...or that I would come to feel for thee this special favor."

Kasumi did not pull away from the other woman's embrace but rather yielded to it and allowed herself to indulge another moment of warmth as she took strength from Thelendra's presence. But then at last she moved away, and Thelendra released her, then the oldest of the Tendo sisters paused by the doorway to the tent to say, "I do not wish to leave you either...but I have to. Thank you for everything, Thelendra-chan...this is a moment that I...shall always treasure..."

And then she was gone into the night as the first rays of morning started to touch the distant hills, and Thelendra turned her gaze down to stare at her bare feet with growing sadness.

"Didst thou knowest how painful this would be for me, mine Father? If so...then reputation aside, thou art a very sadist."

And then discipline reasserted itself, and with a wave of her hands she gathered the tent up into her hands and folded it into the pockets of her sleeves before banishing it altogether...

Outside the tent Kasumi's eyes got very wide, and then she murmured a very faint, "Oh my..." because the outsides were not what she had expected. Rather than finding herself on the grounds of the carnival at the edge of the Furinkan Financial district she was instead in the middle of a forest surrounded by darkened trees and uneven bushland.

It took a belated moment for Kasumi to realize that her friend had somehow transported them both into the hills beyond Nerima, but then she adjusted to this new revelation and smiled with sadness.

"Thank you, my friend...my sister," Kasumi mused, then glanced around before saying, "I can feel the threads joining me to Nabiki...I know how and where that I can find her...and I sense...oh my! My sister is in labor!"

With that she rose up into the air and levitated in the direction where she knew that she would find Nabiki. With an ease that surprised even her she began to cover the distance, swooping like a great falcon of the night over the growing light of dawn that touched the forest with golden magic...

"There he is," Perfume announced to the others, "That's his hideout, that cave set near to that ridge over there. It's about a hundred meters upwind of us, but I'm definitely picking up Nabiki's scent along with that Taro guy, and even I have to concede that he chose a pretty good place for a hideout, easily defensible from at least three angles."

"Well done, great-granddaughter," Cologne congratulated, giving the small indentation at the side of a steep hill a more critical study, "Even I am forced to concede that this boy displays unusual cunning for a warrior. The cave is situated at such an angle that he can easily see an enemy approach long before they can surmount the trail that winds its way up to that level. Indeed, I wonder if he is clever enough to lay traps and snares to further impede the unwary?"

"I wouldn't put it past him in the least, Ko-chan," Siren agreed, "From what I've observed so far, and based on the accounts of others, I would say that this fellow shows a degree of foresight that borders on the intuitive. A pity he never grew up among our people where such talents would have been identified, refined and harnessed and quite possibly turned towards more socially positive values."

"Given the record we have of turning out sterling examples of that sort, I might hold off on passing such a judgement," Cologne said dryly, "But at the very least an Amazon would have given her son a better name with fewer syllables, and so he might not be so anti-social for that reason."

"Look, can we save the debate on his upbringing for later?" Ranma asked impatiently, "If Nabiki is up there, then I'm going in there to get her."

"But Husband," Perfume cautioned, "If the way is paved with traps, then it would be more logical to let me go first. I'm trained to detect and avoid them, and I want to help Nabiki ever bit as much as you do."

"There's no time," Ranma said with increasing agitation, "Nabiki's counting on us to find and rescue her, and I know her baby is in danger. If we don't act now our son might not make it.:

"You know this because of your vision?" Siren gave Ranma a studious side-glance, "Did Anri give you some hint of the future that suggested it as a possibility?"

"Anri?" Cologne said sharply, glancing up at Siren with a question with her owlish eyes that seemed rich with unvoiced speculation.

"Yes...I do mean THAT Anri, Ko-chan," Siren said tiredly, "He manifested within a dream that Ranma had a very short while ago. I do not know the details of that vision, but apparently he had a rather long conversation with our mutual disciple in which he spoke about the future. And yes, I know better than anyone how ominous that sounds, I have been thinking of little else since we set back out on the trail to find you."

"Anri..." Cologne turned back to regard the cave, her tone as graven as her illusory age might convey, "Long has it been since he has crossed paths with the Joketsuzoku. Very ominous indeed, and yet I somehow doubt this trivial incident with Happosai's godson is significant enough to attract his attention."

"Trivial?" Ranma bristled, "We're talking about Nabiki!"

"Yes, but it's not the importance of her life and welfare on a personal level that would draw the likes of Anri...or possibly it would," Siren said as if rethinking her own statement, "He obviously wants you to succeed, but he cannot deliver her safely to you by more direct methods. That would be something on the level of using an ax to cure a hangnail, and no matter how formidable this Taro is, he would not even rate an eyeblink from the Daokan. No...if Anri is here and is watching then there is a much greater nemesis lurking somewhere on our collective horizon."

"I agree with you that there is something wicked in the wind like the spark to a wildfire, Grandmother," Perfume said impatiently, "But I side with Ranma here. This is Nabiki we are talking about, and if we wait here any longer..." she suddenly paused, breaking off in mid-sentence.

"What is it, Child?" Cologne asked as she saw the alarmed look her adopted granddaughter shot back up towards the cave, "What do you sense?"

"I...don't really know," Perfume said, "Perspiration...heavy breathing...and a very sharp cry right now...the kind of noise a woman makes...when she's going into labor."

"WHAT?" Ranma blurted out, then stood up, "That's it, I'm going up there!"

"Son-in-law, no!" Cologne urged as she saw her chief disciple breaking cover from the woods and exposing himself to full view.

"Are you mad with fear, Boy?" Siren asked, "Taro will see you approaching."

"He won't see me," Ranma asserted, halting several steps away out in the open then bracing his legs wide and crouching down and hunching his shoulders.

Almost immediately his outline began to grow hazy and indistinct, and then his form blurred and became partially transparent before he seemed to fade from view altogether. A moment more and he was gone, moving as swiftly as a shadow and with so little evidence of movement that even Perfume had difficulty determining that her husband had physically departed.

"So," Siren mused into the ensuing silence, "That's the Umisenken that I've heard so much about. I believe that I observed it before during that love-match with Nabiki."

"Indeed," Cologne mused, "A fair strategy...under ordinary circumstances. But let us hope that my son-in-law has sense enough to avoid the traps and snares that may or may not exist between here and the mountain."

"I'm sure Ranma will be careful, great-grandmother," Perfume reassured, "Part of his training is detecting and avoiding things that are present but others cannot see...and besides, his elementals will watch out for him and warn him of possible danger. It's when he gets to the mountain that I'll start to actually worry."

"Why so?" Siren asked her granddaughter.

It was Cologne who answered that question, "The Umisenken depends on a dispassionate mind that detaches itself from its immediate environs...but with the life of his unborn child at stake I doubt even Ranma's discipline in the Senkens will be enough to prevent his emotions from overruling his reason..."

Taro exited the cave with dampened cloths that needed badly to be cleaned, thinking of the struggle that had kept him up much of the night, a struggle that was still ongoing and looked to see no immediate resolution.

"Oh man...like I need this?" he growled to himself as he headed off towards the nearby stream that supplied most of his fresh water, "If I'd known what I was in for I'd have left well enough alone. Maybe this wasn't such a great idea, and unless the old fool shows up soon I'm gonna have to carry her to the nearest hospital."

As he said those words he knew that he was not being completely honest. He was feeling pressured on a different level, and seriously worried about the condition of his hostage, who turned out to be a LOT closer to term than he had previously estimated. Moreover, watching this woman fight for her life and for the life of her baby was affecting him in ways that he barely understood but could not deny on a fundamental level.

"She sure is something," he said with a tightness in his jaw that belied the way he tried to distance himself from caring about what was to happen, "Love to see her when she ain't weighted down with a baby. I heard rumors that she was quite a pistol, but I never imagined she was this tough of a fighter."

Try as he might to convince himself otherwise he could tell that things were not going well, and that even if she had access to the proper medical technology she might still be having complications. There was something about the birth that was not going right, and as he lacked the training to identify what it was he could only speculate that something was blocking the child's emergence into the world, and as a consequence of that unknown factor the mother's contractions were being prolonged unnaturally, and that if something were not done to remove the blockage then she might well rupture internally, and that would mean the end for both mother and baby.

"Hell of a way to go," Taro said as he considered that grim prospect, "Hell of a waste if you ask me...she deserves better than this. Too bad she wound up a means to an end...I'd have spared her this mess if I'd only known the trouble I was buying into..."

Even so he was having difficulty identifying that unfamiliar buzz that was prickling on his subconscious. Not being one much given to feelings of guilt and remorse for his actions, it was hard for him to reconcile his self-image as a tough guy with the nagging sense that what he was doing was wrong, and that he would be paying for it karmatically in his next lifetime, not that he believed in religious stuff or thought much about the state of his soul, or anything like that.

He had only gotten about twenty steps away from the mouth of the cave when some warning instinct brought him to a full halt, and battle-tested reflexes came into play as he listened carefully to the ground and heard a slight shuffling noise, very faint but definitely not to be mistaken.

Instantly he dropped to one knee and spun around with his arm raised in a blocking motion, intercepting the punch that had been aimed at the back of his head and continuing with the motion as he locked that arm in a grip and twisted it sharply. Sure enough his attacker was thrown head-over-heels, but almost instantly the fellow recovered and twisted his own body so that he landed on his feet instead of his head, as Taro had intended.

There was only a flash of an instant when Taro identified his opponent as the one named Saotome Ranma, and then he grimly smiled and said, "What took you so long? I was expecting you here hours ago, Punk."

"You son of a bitch!" Ranma snarled, throwing away the last bits of detachment that he had used to erect his Umisenken as his pent up rage and fury exploded into his fists as he launched an all-out assault upon his wife's abductor...

"Trust you to get the both of us lost in these woods, Ryoga..."

"Shut up," Ryoga growled resentfully as he glared at the object dangling in his head, "No one forced you to come with me...and if this stupid pendulum were working right we'd probably be there by now."

"Maybe you should let me lead the way from here," Mousse groused, "At least my sense of direction is good..."

"Better than your vision anyway," Ryoga countered, "And I'm telling you that we must be going in the right way. The pendulum is swinging more actively now, and it only does that when we're close to the place I directed it to lead us."

"Well, no reflection against that charm of yours," Mousse said, "But I'd feel a whole lot better if I knew were we are. At least we seem to still be in Japan, to judge from the flora. The way your direction sense works I'd have expected us to stumble into a desert at any minute..."

"Hah-hah-hah," Ryoga snorted, "You're a load of laughs to be around, especially when you leave Kurumi behind..."

"You're a fine one to talk about apron strings," Mousse countered, "Every five minutes or so you keep talking about Akane, and leaving Kodachi behind while she's having your baby."

"I hated doing that, but...we both know that Nabiki needs our help more than our wives and girlfriends," Ryoga said with practical determination, "Besides, I can't forgive that jerk for almost causing Kodachi to lose her baby..."

"You think I don't feel pretty hacked off about that myself?" Mousse frowned, "Even at my worst I drew the line at attacking a pregnant woman. When Ukyo was having Perfume's child it was driving me nuts, but I bided my time and waited until her baby was delivered."

"That's not the way I remember it," Ryoga growled, "But at least you're over that now, and besides, Nabiki's the one who needs our help, and I just couldn't stand pacing around feeling helpless."

"Me neither," Mousse agreed, "One good thing about chasing this Taro character down is it should help me take my mind off Kurumi-chan for a while, and what she said back there when we talked together..." his voice suddenly trailed off into silence.

"What?" Ryoga asked, "Did she say something...?"

"Just forget it," Mousse said sharply, "It's personal...and nobody else's business."

"Suit yourself," Ryoga shrugged, but he could not help noticing the intense look in his companion's face and he sensed the dour shift in mood in the Chinese boy's expression and drew from that the private conclusion that whatever Kurumi had said did not set well with Mousse's mindset.

The forests continued to thicken all around them as the hills grew steeper beyond the boundary of Nerima proper, and then something caught their attention, causing both young men to halt in their tracks with mutually distracted expressions.

"Do you hear that?" Ryoga asked.

"Sounds vaguely familiar," Mousse replied, "Like a gathering of Ki energies, punctuated by a lot of hitting and kicking."

"We must be close," Ryoga declared, quickening his pace, "You see? I told you my pendulum could help us find our way, and if we just hurry up a little we should be there in a...few...seconds?"

His voice trailed away and both young men grounded to an abrupt halt as they came upon a scene in a clearing by a narrow stream that took them both aback and left them momentarily speechless.

For there within the clearing a pair of fierce combatants were going at it in a ferocious martial-arts duel in which no holds were barred and nothing was being held back...yet they were not the pair of determined fighters that either young man was expecting. One was a stunning-if-petite blonde, the other a slightly taller Chinese girl with long brown hair done up in a pair of Odangos. At first neither one seemed all that familiar to the observing youths, but then they got a better view of them and even Mousse could not fail to recognize them from previous encounters.

Of greater significance was the fact that both women were wearing practically nothing, little more than tank-tops and almost transparent colored panties, which gave an excellent view of their lithe and stunningly well developed figures. That they were both in superb physical condition could be attested to from the way that they were busy pounding on one another with well-timed and coordinated attacks that failed to find their target only by the barest of margins, and it was plain that this was a very personal matter for them both, but it was not until its conclusion that the actual cause of the fight would reveal itself, only that at the moment they seemed each determined to come out the victor.

There was something supremely stirring about viewing the female form when it was executing a well-placed kick or perfectly timed combination, and both young man could not help themselves for staring at the way certain parts of their anatomy moved in coordination with the laws of inertia and physics. If anything both women seemed more heavily well endowed than when last they had been encountered the Nerima crowd, but oddly enough this did not appear to much impair their centers of balance as they moved the fight to a swift and ruthless conclusion, with one fighter inevitably making a mistake and leaving an opening for her antagonist, and then falling prey to a series of movements that resulted in the errant foe taking a face-dive towards the dirt, and the other moving in swiftly to pin her to the tarmac.

Then the exultant victor cried out, "(Say Uncle!)" in clearly enunciated English, applying force to the pin so that the blonde beneath her had no choice but to surrender.

"(Uncle! I give already, Damn you!)"

"(So, now do you agree that it's your turn to wash the diapers and do the dishes?)" the brown haired Chinese girl asked with a grin that was almost malevolent but for the way the blonde gave a grudging smile in token surrender.

"(All right, so it's my turn. So let me up and I'll do the bloody chores like you ask, Chun."

"(Actually, I kind of like having you this way, so I think I'll just hold you here a bit longer, Cammy-dearest,)" the Chinese girl purred sweetly, moving one hand very slightly to slide it under the other girl's panties, at which point she began to caress the anatomy down there, eliciting a gasp of protest from the woman whom she was so expertly dominating.

"(Hey, no bloody fair!)" the blonde cried out, "(At least get me in a better position, you Chinese nymphomaniac you!)"

"(Methinks you protest too much,)" the other woman chuckled, only to come to an abrupt halt in her actions as she turned a sharp glance to the side, having heard a barely audible gasp from the bushes in which Mousse and Ryoga presently were ensconced.

Cammy White noticed it too and said, "Don't look now, Luv, but I think we've got an audience."

"So it would appear," Chun-Li Zahn replied as she shifted to Japanese and narrowed her eyes in a most unwelcome manner. And then she casually let go of her companion, who slid out from under her grasp and gracefully got back to her feet with a glare turned towards said bushes.

"Better come out now or we'll come in there and hurt you," the blonde said while raising her voice and assuming a crouch that would easily propel her forward within an instant.

Seeing no recourse but to surrender without a fuss, both Mousse and Ryoga stepped from concealment with hands raised and wearing appropriately sheepish expressions. It was Ryoga who spoke first, hastily insisting in his sincerest tones, "We didn't mean to spy on you...it was an accident. We were trying to find our way through these woods and got...um...lost...and then we heard a commotion and..."

"Agents Zhan and White...what a pleasant surprise," Mousse interrupted, choosing to pursue a different tact, "We weren't expecting you in these woods so close to Nerima...um...we are still near to Nerima, right?"

"Oh, so that's what this is about," Chum-Li smiled, "We thought you boys looked familiar...but last we checked you were persona non-grata around here as well. Something about kidnapping and attempted assault against a certain Miss Kuonji..."

"Oh...that," Mousse said somewhat reluctantly, "Er...well...things have changed a bit since the last time you stopped by..."

"He's married to one of the Tendo sisters," Ryoga explained, "Kurumi...and he's more-or-less given up on hassling Perfume and Ukyo, so we...kind of have a truce with him...or something like that."

"I see," Cammy mused, glancing at her companion.

"Well...ignoring the interruption to our private, personal business," Chun-Li resumed, "We're here back in your woodland hoping to hook up with our mutual step-daughter, Keiko."

"Keiko-san?" Ryoga replied, "Then...that means that you're here with Arigami's father?"

"Someone mention my name and Keiko-chan in the same context?" a gruff-voiced man inquired as he stumbled into the clearing combing his broomstick mop of upswung hair, accompanied by a much smaller Japanese woman who nonetheless carried herself with the bearing of a princess.

"Colonel Guile?" Ryoga said as he instantly recognized the pair in question, then more respectfully added, "Lady Akiko-san...it has been quite some time..."

"Likewise, Hibiki-san," Akiko smiled radiantly, "Only it is lady Guile now. I have adopted the name of my husband...and you know, of course, my co-wives and fellow consorts?"

Ryoga noticed the slightly strained looks on the faces of Chun-Li and Cammy but noted as well that they did nothing to deny the essence of that statement. He cocked an eyebrow in surprise over that little bit of revelation, recalling from previous encounters the violent nature of the rivalry that used to preside between Inspector Zhan and Lieutenant White and marveled that they could even consent to be a part of such an unorthodox union...personal life experiences notwithstanding.

"Colonel Guile," Mousse said more neutrally as he gave his own grudging token of respect, "You're here to pay your respects to your daughter?"

"I've come to find out how Keiko-chan is doing, yes," Guile replied, "It's been close to a half a year since we were last able to pay a visit to Japan, and I wanted to see how she was doing."

"Oh...Arigami-san is doing quite well," Ryoga replied, his own voice mildly strained as he added, "And as for Kodachi..."

"We understand that she's quite well along in her pregnancy," Chun-Li remarked before favoring Cammy with a wry look and adding, "A condition we're all too well familiar with ourselves these days."

"Tell me about it," Cammy grumbled, mentioning something under her breath about "four o'clock feedings..."

"Eh?" Mousse asked with an uplifted eyebrow.

"Speaking of which," Akiko said pleasantly, "Your son is resting peacefully, but he might awake at any moment, in which case he will need the attention of his mother..."

"Right, I'm on it," Cammy grumbled, stumbling forward towards the same group of trees from which Guile and Akiko had emerged and vanished a few moments later, with Chun-Li following at a swift pace behind her.

"Now then," Akiko turned her full attention towards Mousse and Ryoga, "Tell us everything that's been happening of late with Keiko-chan and her Kodachi."

"Oh...Kodachi's gone into...labor," Ryoga winced, "I wanted to be there at the birthing...but...we have something of a crisis on our hands..."

"Saotome Nabiki has been kidnapped," Mousse announced without further preamble.

"What?" Guile reacted with a sharp narrowing of his eyes, "Kidnapped...and what was that about Kuno-san going into labor?"

"I know," Ryoga fretted, "It's my child she's having, but...she reminded me that I have a duty to help my half-brother rescue his wife, who's been taken by a new enemy called...Pantsaru Taro."

"What?" Cammy asked as she emerged with a bundle in her arms that was sleeping peacefully, heavily wrapped in an aluminum-covered cotton blanket, "You're chasing after some blighter whose been named for underwear?"

"What next?" Chun-Li asked as she appeared with her own similarly weather-  
proofed infant in arms, "A duel with some guy who uses food for a weapon?"

Both Ryoga and Mousse could not help staring in amazement at the two Interpol agents and the small forms that they were holding so close to their bosoms, but it was Mousse who ventured to ask, "You mean...you...?"

"Blame it on the Satyr here," Cammy nodded towards Guile with a mocking smile that nonetheless held great affection, "His fertile genes are at fault for getting the both of us preggers."

"We suspect Madam Lao might well have had a hand in the matter," Chun-Li said with just a hint of mild resentment, "Some delayed effect of our brief captivity where she had total access to our bodies. No doubt she fancied it as a great means of keeping us on the sidelines for a year so that we would not be able to track her activities in the south pacific."

"Understandably, we've been keeping a low profile ever since," Guile said more practically, "I can't risk having my family exposed to enemy retaliation, so we've gone to ground as a family group and took a half a year off of extended vacation time so that I could be with 'Kiko, Cammy and Chun here full time...but that's not immediately relevant. What was that you were saying just now about Saotome Nabiki getting kidnapped?"

"It happened just last night, and we have people spread out everywhere trying to find her," Mousse explained, "I had to leave the side of my own pregnant wife just to be here, but...it's a matter of pride for my adopted clan that we won't let anything happen to any one of us...especially since Nabiki herself is so close to term, and we're afraid for the health of her baby."

"Amazing," Akiko marveled, "So many pregnancies in such close proximity to one another? Truly it does indeed suggest the hand of the Mistress was involved here."

"Bloody Pirate, messing with trimesters and accelerated growth rates and everything," Cammy grumbled, glancing down at her sleeping child and adding, "And here I was half out of my wits thinking Guile Junior here was a premie."

"Same here for my little Seiko," Chun-Li agreed, cradling her baby, who just then started to awake and mew softly for her mother, "Only it turns out that she was born at 3.29 kilograms, or roughly seven pounds four ounces, which is hardly underdeveloped."

"My own baby boy is approximately the equivalent of a six month old infant," Akiko noted, glancing back towards the seemingly innocuous patch of trees and bushes, "Yet he was born but a mere two months ago, which was even sooner than for Cammy-chan and Chun-chan."

"Still not quite past the weaning stage," Chun-Li remarked as she slipped her tank-top up to bare one rather swollen breast for feeding to her suckling infant, "But you have to admit...it is more than a little suspicious."

"But..." Mousse turned a surprised glance towards Ryoga, who was himself quite stunned at the casual way in which the amply-endowed Chun-Li was behaving, "Six months did you say? It's been about that long since you were last in Nerima...so..."

"Ah..." Ryoga forced himself to glance away before his nose started gushing blood, which he hastily covered with a handkerchief that Akiko thoughtfully provided.

Having grown up in a society of women who were quite casual about their bodies, Mousse was less visibly affected and so concluded his own statement, "...And here we thought it was just the effect of our Jusenkyo curses that was causing our wives to experience accelerated pregnancy. But if this is true of all the women who spent time under Lanocane's influence..."

"Never mind that," Guile said rather impatiently, "If Tendo...I mean...Saotome Nabiki is that far along with her own pregnancy...then we haven't a moment to waste! She's got to be found and given proper medical attention, or if she goes into labor prematurely..."

"She could well lose the baby," Akiko caught the drift of that statement then turned to her co-wives and snapped, "We must break camp at once and follow these young men in their quest. Gather everything, including the cribs, and let us be on our way. Husband...you will lead, as always."

"Right," Guile said as if snapping to attention, and it was instantly apparent who was in charge of their family when it came to important decisions, "Lieutenant..."

"I know the bloody drill already," Cammy grumbled as she returned to the patch of woods, still holding her son close to her body, murmuring to her still slumbering baby, "Just hope Will Jr. here doesn't grow into such a bloody martinet. You'd think living together after a year and we'd be well past pulling rank in this little group..."

"Quit complaining," Chun-Li chided with a fond look, rocking her daughter back and forth to the accompanying sounds of gentle suckling, "You know you love it when he gets all martial."

A moment later the trees and bushes behind Guile's family collapsed into itself as the illusion of a hologram was dispelled, revealing a typical base-camp that any family enjoying time in the woods might well have established. Cammy was setting her son into a type of harness that closely resembled a Native American-  
style papoose before going to the task of disassembling the tent, which was inflatable and collapsed with the touch of a button.

"You use a mobile field camouflage system?" Mousse remarked in surprise.

"Latest technology for stealth penetration," Guile explained, "I'm surprised you recognize it. I didn't think you were that up on modern science."

Mousse bristled a bit and said, "Just because I was born and raised among a society of warrior women doesn't mean I'm a total primitive, Colonel. I do my best research studying modern weapons with an eye to how they might be adapted to my own Hidden weapons technique. Of course Elder Cologne is rather old fashioned and tends to frown at any device more sophisticated than a hammer...so I try to humor her as much as I'm able."

"Er...pardon me for asking this," Ryoga said more practically, "But why were you and Canny-san fighting just now if you're all one big happy unit?"

"Oh, that?" Chun-Li smiled, "Call it a holdover of our former rivalry. Cammy-  
chan and I may get along a lot better than in the old days, but that doesn't mean we've gotten soft about old resentments."

"Still holding a bloody grudge about me trying to off her father," Cammy grumbled as she held a third cloth-swaddled infant to an accepting Akiko, "And for the hundred thousandth time, Zahn, I was being bloody mind-controlled. You wanna blame somebody for that, blame Vega."

"Actually," Akiko mused while holding the largest of the three offspring in her arms, "I think it is a wonderful means for Cammy-chan and Chun-chan to work themselves back into full fighting trim. These days they settle all their issues, such as deciding who will do dishes or wash diapers, by dueling it out...although I sometimes think Cammy-chan deliberately loses just so Chun-chan has an excuse to 'punish' her for it."

"I do not!" Cammy protested, "This big oaf just loves to take advantage of me when I can't defend meself...not my fault she's so bloody top-heavy."

"Look who's talking," Chun-Li snorted, "And who exactly takes advantage of whom when they get the upper hand? You think I'm going to forget that spanking you gave me the other day?"

"Oh yeah?" Cammy countered, "And who tied me up and pretended it was an interrogation? Of course there's something to be said about using vibrators instead of cattle prods to force my cooperation..."

"Knock it off already you two," Guile snapped, trying very hard not to betray how hot and bothered he was by the drift of this conversation, "Now...how do we find Mrs. Saotome? Do you have any clues where her abductor might have gone or...?"

All at once a roaring explosion was heard coming from a nearby hill, startling everyone and waking all three babies at once. As one the adults all turned and looked to see a trailing light paint the morning sky in golden hues as though someone had fired off an explosive round at a mile's distance from their position.

"Um...does that count as a good indication?" Mousse rather lamely asked into the deafening silence.

"Ranma!" Ryoga cried out in realization, "That was a Mako-Takabishi...I'd recognize it anywhere!"

"Sure beats the hell out of a flare gun," Chun-Li dryly noted while attempting to pacify her daughter with a ready nipple.

"Husband," Akiko snapped.

"Right, I'm on it," Guile replied, sparing a concerned look to all three of his ladies, "Will you girls be...?"

"Just bloody go already!" Cammy snapped, hugging her son closely and dabbing his forehead with a soothing finger, "We'll catch up...just as soon as we quiet the brats down and get all of our stuff into packs."

"Just save a little for when we get there," Chun-Li urged while finally succeeding in regaining her daughter's silence, "We've practiced enough for a month, now we're ready to see if all that extra training was worth something."

"No promises there," Guile replied, turning to the young men beside him, "Hop to is, boys, this one just got personal."

"Don't need to give us orders, Colonel," Mousse replied, "We already know our duty."

"Come on!" Ryoga urged as he wound up leading the race as the three men rushed off towards the battle, "We have to help Ranma and Nabiki..."

The battle royal was in full swing with Ranma and Taro trading blows and exchanging complex maneuvers in an attempt to gain the advantage. Even high-  
level Chi attacks summoned up by Ranma were met with less than full effect as Taro could sense the energy build-ups with plenty of time to dodge the attacks.

At a casual glance they seemed physically well matched as opponents, but Taro had a definite advantage in strength, speed and skill, a measure of his time spent on the road that had hardened him as a street fighter. Ranma, who had grown up in a house with his mother and adopted family, lacked the raw experience of Nabiki and was as yet not fully her equal as a straight up combatant.

In due course his strength-though vastly superior to the average martial artist-began to flag while Taro kept on coming, and instinctive tactician that he was Ranma began to sense that he could not prevail directly, even though he was determined to use every means at his disposal to win his way back to the side of Nabiki.

"Hah, you're not half-bad for a homeboy," Taro said haughtily while fending off one of Ranma's more basic Senken attacks, "But you gonna have to do better than that if you expect to play in the big leagues."

"I got more than you can handle, Pantyhose," Ranma taunted as he broke off his strategy of attack and fell back into a defensive crouch while extending one hand and summoning up the power of Nagisha.

All at once the ground underneath Taro's feet began erupting upwards, catching him by surprise as dirt, rock and earth moved like a thing alive and formed itself around his body, then hardened into place, forming a body-harness that held the arrogant young man immobile.

"Hah, how's that for the big leagues?" Ranma snorted, "Bet you never saw that coming."

"What the hell...what did you do?" Taro demanded while struggling against his stony harness, "Coward! Can't hold your own without calling on those magic girls of yours?"

"Who's calling who a coward here?" Ranma bristled, "You're the one who kidnapped my pregnant wife!"

"I wasn't trying to hurt her," Taro insisted while fuming against his restraints, "I just wanted some leverage against the old man...and where the hell is he?"

"Forget him, I'm the one you oughta be worried about," Ranma said in Taro's face as he stalked up to within a few centimeters, "Now tell me where Nabiki is or I'll have Nagisha put the squeeze on you, asshole!"

"Big talk," Taro suddenly sneered, "Think you got the better of me? Think again Fem-boy..."

"What did you just call me?" Ranma snarled, only to see the smirk of confidence in Taro's face, and before he had time to prepare for it the other man brought his head forward and slammed his forehead hard against that of Ranma.

As hard as his own head was from the many beatings he had taken in his young life Ranma still went down as though struck by a hammer, his concentration weakening ever so much that Taro was able to find the leverage he needed, and with a mighty heave and summoning of Ki-force he broke free from his rocky harness, shattering the stone and liberating himself with a few quick movements.

"Oooh...that definitely has to have hurt," Perfume sympathized from where she stood at the cave mouth watching the battle, then she turned and said, "How is Nabiki doing, Grandmother?"

"Not well at all from what I can see," Siren said with concern in her expression as she stood watching Cologne tending to the heavily perspiring and hyperventilating Nabiki, "Ko-chan?"

"I fear you are correct," Cologne replied, "There is something wrong with her...and with her child. She is suffering great agony from her contractions, but for some reason her hips are not fully dilated."

Perfume risked a look towards Nabiki before turning her attention back towards Ranma, "You have to do something, great-grandmother...we cannot afford to lose either one of them. Nabiki is important to us all, and her baby..."

Siren's eyes sudden narrowed and she spoke with more force in her tone than was her usual wont, "Ko-chan...how long has it been since the last time Saotome Nabiki experienced the change of her Jusenkyo curse?"

"Around five months, why?" Cologne asked, sensing the drift of the Archmage's tone, "Is that significant?"

"Curse me for a fool, I should have thought of this sooner!" Siren swore, moving in closer and kneeling down before placing her hands over the writhing body of the hapless Nabiki, "As I thought...it's her curse breaking down the barriers that were erected to lock her in her true sex. Lanocane was the one who cast this spell upon her, am I right?"

"Yes," Cologne answered, "Lao Khan, as she now styles herself, used her ability to manipulate water to grant my daughter-in-law partial immunity against the full effects of Jusenkyo."

"And did anyone think to consider what the cumulative effect of that spell would be upon a victim of Jusenkyo?" Siren asked harshly, "These curses are not just spells placed upon their hosts, they are fused into the very matrix of their being, which is why shifting from one form to the next is as natural for them as breathing. In a way it is like blocking up a skin pore...impacted cells build up dirt and oil over time and lead to an infection...on in this case it is the accumulated energy of gender swapping that's been held back like a dam inside her...and now those barriers are breaking down...causing her body to dehydrate. Unless she shifts to male form and soon that energy will continue to build like heat until it literally cooks her alive and leaves her dry and desiccated!"

"But...Grandmother," Perfume protested, "If Nabiki shifts to male form now...won't she lose her baby?"

"Yes, but that will happen anyway unless we reverse what Lao has done and restore equilibrium to her body," Siren fumed, "The baby must be removed from her now so that her body can shift to her male side, balancing her Yin with Yang energies, otherwise...she will be totally incapable of delivering him in safety."

"Then how to remove the child without harming the mother?" Cologne asked.

"That's more of a problem than it might sound like," Siren curled her lip and seemed to concentrate, "Ordinarily a Caesarian section would be the logical answer...but with her body suffering such stress as it is...I do not believe that Nabiki could survive such an operation."

"We need the services of a healer," Cologne realized with a start, "I am skilled in healing, but I do not lack the necessary talents. This calls for either a gifted surgeon...or one born with the power of a full healer."

"Is there anything I can do, great-grandmother?" Perfume asked.

"Continue to pray, Child," Cologne replied, "As I wish there were time to summon your cousin from that village where she is in training, or even my own granddaughter. Comb could perform the feat with ease if there were time to bring her here from China."

"How inconvenient that she is away from our village," Siren frowned, "If I knew her precise whereabouts I could teleport her here, but it would take many minutes of concentration to perform such a delicate spell, and I doubt we have that much time left before the magic burns Nabiki alive...or irrevocably does harm to her baby."

"Wh-what did you say...about my baby?" Nabiki gasped, then convulsed into more agonized spasms.

Cologne placed a hand over her forehead and said gravely, "She is burning up with fever...we must give her water or she will lack the strength to survive the next few minutes."

"No," Siren said, "Feeding her any amount of water at this point might well trigger the Jusenkyo curse, and if it snaps back on her like a rubber band while she is carrying her baby...the result might well tear her apart from within. I sense the child's life energy, and it is strong, but it will be extinguished soon if we do not do something quickly..."

"Ranma!" Perfume suddenly declared, "Perhaps his elemental servants might be able to do something! If they can manipulate mater, heat and matter..."

"Unfortunately Ranma does not have the necessary training or skill yet to manipulate them in that manner," Siren replied, "And it would take delicate coordination to spare the mother's life, let alone to safely remove her baby...but I agree that it would be worth the try...providing he can be persuaded to break off his manly fight against Pantsaru Taro."

"Then I'll make sure he does!" Perfume declared, and without further preamble she vaulted away from the cave mouth and hurried to the place where the fight had presently carried the two combatants.

Ranma had barely recovered his wind from the last series of blows and exchanges that he and Taro had just traded, and pressed as he was to his limits he decided to fall back on his last remaining elemental ally, calling upon Sobriel, who manifested in the space between the two men then formed her body into a void-  
like vacuum.

Once again Taro was taken by surprise by the shift in tactics, but he had time enough to brace himself when a funnel of wind threatened to suck him into that void, and by digging his heels into the ground he resisted the pull of the furious suction.

"Damn...I'm getting annoyed with all these delaying tactics!" Taro roared over the wind, and then he caught sight of something out of the corner of his eye and smiled, shifting ground and moving sideways rather than back since that afforded much less resistance.

Ranma did not reply, being taxed and winded as he tried to maintain his concentration. The problem with Sobriel was that he was not yet quite so skilled in manipulating her energies, and it was difficult to cast the vortex in only one direction without getting caught up in her void himself, which would be less than advantageous. Also still the use of her powers meant that there was much less air to breathe and thus he had to fight hard so as not to suffocate or suffer a nosebleed. Sobriel was doing what she could to cooperate with his directions, but it was tiring for both of them, and he had already used up much of his reserves this far into their fight.

And so it was that he was slow to pick up on Taro's own strategy as it seemed merely as though the other man were attempting to scuttle sideways past the edge of the vortex. Ranma countered this by shifting his own posture so as to keep the funnel directed upon the other man, but then he saw Taro move with a backward slicing motion and caught sight of the tall pine tree that suddenly started to topple in his direction. Too late Ranma realized that it was too wide and big to be fully absorbed by his vortex, and he hastily backed away, losing his grip and concentration as the tree came toppling down on him, looking to score a close blow as he lacked the strength to fully avoid it.

But then a familiar whistling noise came chopping through the woods to strike the falling tree precisely, and all at once it exploded into a hail of timber fragments.

"What the...?" Taro whirled around just in time to see the rapidly hurtling form of Perfume racing towards him with the speed of a lithe panther, and before he had time to fully access his peril she was leaping into the air and pulling out a pair of titanium Tonfas, which same she raised defensively while her foot lashed out in a kick that solidly connected with his jawline.

"Perfume?" Ranma asked as he staggered back to full erection, "What...what are you...?"

"Nabiki is in trouble!" Perfume declared while landing in a crane-posture on her other foot, favoring the one that she had used for kicking, "Follow the trail back to the cave right now or she may not survive for very long, Husband!"

"But...Nabiki?" Ranma was torn by doubt, confusion and concern for his co-wife's welfare, for he well knew that the brown haired Enforcer avoided striking her opponents directly due to her enhanced pain sense, and no matter how well conditioned her body was that kick had to have hurt her every bit as much as Taro.

"Go now!" Perfume snapped, leveling her Tonfas at a rapidly recovering Taro, "I can handle this Outlander!"

"Sure about that, Booby-Prize?" Taro smirked while feeling his bloodied lip, "Should have finished me off with that kick, but you held too much back, and that's gonna cost you."

Perfume snarled and launched an attack with her Tonfas, moving to fast that she was blur even to Ranma's eyes, erecting her "Steel Storm" offensive with the blunted titanium bars in her hands instead of her axes, whose angle of deflection had carried them momentarily beyond her reach. Even Taro was forced to back away as he furiously attempted to defend against the swift-moving attack, but Perfume was much too fast for him and scored hit after hit as she found numerous weak points in his defenses.

Seeing that Perfume did indeed stand a chance against her opponent Ranma reluctantly turned away and did as his wife bade him, following the winding trail back up the hill towards the cave mouth. He arrived there moments later, only to have his heart shrivel in his breast at the high-pitched scream that rent the air one second later.

"Hurry, Son-in-law!" Cologne cried urgently, "There is not a moment to spare...you must do what Siren and I tell you to do and summon up your elementals."

"Which ones?" Ranma asked as he broke his own momentarily paralysis, spurred by the sight of his primary wife's huddled body.

"All of them," Siren informed him, "I will help you to coordinate, though it will take both of our energies to sustain Nabiki through the next hour or so...and even then...success is not assured to us."

"Nabiki," Ranma whispered, then he forgot all about his fatigue and opened his mind up to all five of his elementals.

They manifested in the space surrounding the makeshift cot, then Latisha said, "What is required of us here, Enchantress?"

"First you...absorb some of the excess heat energy that her body is radiating, Queen of Salamanders," Siren said then pointed at Karina, "You must keep the air cool and purified with lots of Oxygen and at a constant humidity level which I will specify...and you," she pointed at Sharil, "Her body is losing moisture...you must channel what you can into her without triggering her Jusenkyo curse. And you, Earth Dragon...you must first form a more comfortable bed for her to rest upon...and then you must do what you can to keep her physical form intact with a healthy balance of minerals to sustain her."

"Is that all?" Nagisha said in dry sarcasm, "You do not make light requests, do you, Sorceress?"

"I know it will be a challenge to your abilities," Siren informed them, "But the life of both mother and child is at stake. We must do everything we can to preserve the precious life within her...and to pray to the Gods that it will be enough to salvage this unfortunate situation."

"And what about me?" Sobriel asked, "What good can I do?"

"Your task will be the hardest one of all," Siren said gravely, "And in all truth I am not certain you will be able to perform it even with my coaching. We must find a way to either relieve the pressure on the baby or cause the mother's hips to dilate...but...failing that there is one sure means of removing the child without harm to either himself of his mother."

"And that is?" Ranma asked anxiously.

"We create a tunnel through the Void through which to draw the baby out of her body," Siren said simply, "And yes, I know full well what it could mean if we are even slightly out of balance in our focus, which is why it will be a last-  
ditch contingency after we have exhausted all other options."

Even Cologne looked appalled by this, "Open a doorway from the womb to the outside? Are you mad?"

"But if Sobriel can't handle things just right it could suck Nabiki's insides out and...yeesh!" Karina winced, seeing the panicked look on Ranma's face and saying, "Forget I said that, Master..."

"Nabiki?" Ranma knelt down and put his hand to his wife's forehead, only to snatch it away as though it had been burned, to which he stared in dismay and murmured, "Nabiki?"

"Come, sisters," Latisha urged, "Let us do as the Sorceress has bid us."

"So who elected you the leader of our pack?" Nagisha scowled, but nonetheless she set to work shaping the ground and lifting Nabiki up off the dirt floor beneath her blanket, forming a makeshift bed of stone with upraised stirrups to lift her ankles above her body.

Outside the battle raged as a distant distraction, causing Ranma to wonder if Perfume was holding out, but he could spare no other thought for her than this as Nabiki absorbed the bulk of his attention, and suddenly his every fear rose to the surface as he belatedly recalled the vision of a few hours ago with a growing sense of dread. But he also knew that he needed to be strong, and so he squared his shoulders for Nabiki's sake and said, "I will do everything I can for her...for them both...just...don't let Nabiki die...or her baby."

"Everything that is within our powers will be spared for her benefit, Son-in-  
law," Cologne reassured, "We must maintain faith in ourselves and our resolve to help her. The rest...is in the hands of providence."

"And let us all hope that will prove to be enough," Siren averred, then with forced calm and precision began clarifying her instructions to the elementals, who all too willingly bent to the task of rescuing the stricken child and mother...

Continued.

Comments/Criticisms/Critical Health Care Decisions: shadowmane

Can Nabiki and her child be saved, or is this beyond even the combined talents of two prime Amazon Elders and five elite elementals? Help is on the way, but first the problem of Taro must be dealt with, and meanwhile back at the Tendo House the rest of their extended clan waits in agony to learn of the resolution in, "Maternity Wars," or "The Hand that Cocks the Cradle!" Be there!

X

/pre 


	59. Chapter 59

preDnabiki147

Nabiki 1/2

"A Very Scary Thought"

by Jim Robert Bader

(Inspired by the works of Rumiko Takahashi Others,  
with concepts and characters created by fellow fanfic writers Wade Tritschler, DB Sommers, Nicole Manders, Andrew Greaves, Bill Guiroff and countless others, including "Buffy"  
creator Joss Whedon; with special thanks to my good pal Shiva for his editing and handling of this series.)

(Certain other characters and concepts are of my own innovation, including my interpretation of the Monster of Mary Shelly's novel, and various other guest stars appearing in this portion of the Nabiki 1/2 series...)

Chapter Forty-Four.

Episode One-Hundred-Forty-Seven.

"They Also Serve..."

"Shampoo is worried," Shampoo confessed to her co-wife, "Nabiki and Ranma away for too, too long, and now it is morning and there no word about Nabiki."

"I know how you feel, Sham-Honey," Ukyo replied as the two of them stood side-  
by-side upon the porch, "This waiting bites, but there's little else we can do at the moment. It's all up to Ranma and the others to dust that Taro creep and get Nabiki back here where she belongs, with us."

The held each other by one arm, two noticeably pregnant young women, one of them more advanced than the other, leaning into each other for mutual support and feeling the weight of their mutual burden. The intimacy of their embrace gave ample testament to how close they had become as a family where each was now more than a sister to the other, and both were bound by less visible ties of emotion that helped define them as a part of a greater unit.

"It's always hard to sit still and let others do the fighting," Ukyo murmured, "But we have to believe in Ranma, that he'll do what's right and bring Nabiki back to our side. And he's got Per-chan beside him...and between those two I don't rate that Taro creep as any real competition.

"Shampoo knows this," her co-wife murmured, then after a pause of another minute or so she asked, "Ukyo?"

"Yeah Sugar?" Ukyo softly responded.

"Shampoo is very happy to be with you, to have you as one of her Airen," the Amazon revealed, "Is strange, but almost like Shampoo know you from somewhere before we meet. Have much-much pleasure being around, you good cook, good for cousin, good for Airen...good for other things," she sensuously purred while nuzzling Ukyo's cheek, then softly added, "You think it meant to be always be this way? That Ukyo and Shampoo always meant to be...partners?"

"Sure feels like that from where I stand, Sugar," Ukyo mused, lightly kissing the other woman's forehead while running her fingers through that silky-soft mane of purplish hair, "And yeah...it is kinda weird, now that you mention it, but...it does feel like we mighta known each other somewhere else, maybe under very different conditions."

Shampoo turned her head to regard the other woman's profile in the light of the gathering morning, "You think maybe if Shampoo meet Ukyo in different time that we have what we share now? Or maybe we be rivals for same Airen?"

"Can't answer you there, but I'd like to think we'd be best buddies," Ukyo mused, "After all, we've got a lot in common, and we work good together, and I sure can't complain about you hogging the bedsheets, not with those pillows of yours that I like to set my head against."

Shampoo smiled at the teasing way in which Ukyo "talked dirty" about their nocturnal antics, but then she said, "Shampoo have a thought. Ukyo very much like boy in some ways...grow up pretend to be boy, but definitely no boy. So...what if Ukyo born boy and come to Shampoo village?"

"What?" Ukyo asked, "Are you asking me if I'd beat you in a fight and become your husband?"

"Is thought, yes?" Shampoo mused, then sighed, "But Shampoo very glad have Ukyo as is...and very happy with own Airen...and happy that cousin is Airen to you. Think is very good arrangement."

Ukyo hugged the other woman closer to her body and said, "Couldn't agree with you more, Sugar. On sure, we have our moments, and things ain't always calm and peaceful-like around here, but I wouldn't trade it for all the okonomiyaki in Japan. And besides...I'm just as worried about Nabiki is you. But I'm sure there's nothing to worry about, and we'll see her soon enough once Per-chan and Ranchan get through being heroic."

"Is funny," Shampoo sighed, moving one hand down to feel her abdomen, then moving that same hand to place over Ukyo's much smaller stomach, "Shampoo like that she be mother again...think Ukyo make good, good mother for Airen's baby. Is inconvenient no be able to train and fight, but is price one must pay to have family."

"Yeah," Ukyo exhaled, "Talk about mixed blessings. Mind you, I'm glad to be having Ranchan's son, and to give Lylac and Fragrance a baby brother, but...after I pop this kid, I'm thinking about taking time off from the whole pregnancy thing. I might have another in a few years, but only after I've gotten my affairs back in order, like resuming full time duties at the restaurant."

"Shampoo cannot decide if she want have another baby," Shampoo admitted, "Maybe wait too like Ucchan say, or maybe let gods decide how many babies she have. Maybe next time Nabiki get Shampoo with child...or maybe Nabiki do Ucchan. You like maybe have Nabiki's baby?"

"Ah..." Ukyo thought that one over, and then her cheeks flushed crimson, "Well...I'd be lying if I said no to the idea...and getting with child by Kenada would be a lotta fun...but you know as well as I do it could just as well be Ranchan who does us."

"Is true," Shampoo decided, "And since Perfume no can have baby without risking life, is up to both of us to be mothers of Airen offspring. Is duty to clan, and Shampoo think it no so bad doing duty."

Ukyo laughed at that and held Shampoo the more tightly, "Guess that's what I like so much about you, Shammy...you really know how to cheer me up while making it sound like a dirty invitation..."

"What so dirty about Shampoo wanting to make nice-nice with co-wife?" Shampoo leered, "Maybe should ask great-grandmother for Instant Nanniichuan...maybe Shampoo try doing it as man and having way with Ucchan. Or maybe Ucchan try being boy all way and have way with Shampoo...would Ucchan think good idea if we have baby together?"

"Huh?" Ukyo was stunned by the idea, but then she stammered, "Ah...well...that is...Sugar..."

Shampoo's laughter was musical as she gave Ukyo a kittenish grin, "Is worth it see look in Ukyo's face. You no like idea, or maybe you just need time think it over?"

"Tease," Ukyo deliberately ruffled Shampoo's hair and growled affectionately, "Had me going for a moment there...only I'd almost forgot what a shameless kidder you are..."

Shampoo became suddenly quite serious as she looked at Ukyo and asked, "Who say this one only kidding?"

"Hah?" Ukyo asked, now taken completely aback as he gazed into the crimson eyes of the beautiful young woman beside her, forgetting for a moment that the entire notion was absurd, that one of them should have a baby with the other.

But then they heard Nodoka's voice as the Saotome matriarch said, "Well, you two certainly do seem to be enjoying yourselves. So nice to see young people enjoying a sunrise together. It helps to take one's mind off the rest of the world, if only for a few moments."

"Ah..." Ukyo hastily turned around and said, "Mother-in-law? We...uh...didn't hear you coming."

"Quite all right," Nodoka said, "I just wanted to check on you both and to see how you are doing. Your daughters are both sleeping sounding in their room, while my husband and Soun-chan are sleeping it off from a bit too much celebration last night...so much so that I haven't had the heart to wake them up and tell them about Akane."

"Aiyaa?" Shampoo turned around and asked, "Akane?"

"What about Akane, Mother?" Ukyo asked.

"Only that I just got a call from the Kuno mansion," Nodoka replied, "She's going into labor. Oh...and Kuno-san gave birth to a healthy daughter. I was just making preparations to go visit there and wanted to ask the both of you if you would tell Soun-chan when he recovers."

Both younger women looked positively stunned by the news, but then Ukyo spoke first, "Akane's going to have her baby? Today?"

"Aiyaa..." Shampoo marveled, "Two in one night?"

"Actually I should amend that and make it three," Nodoka said lightly, "I understand that Daitokuji is also about to give birth to the baby she's been carrying. These young people...always in such a hurry to be mothers..."

This time the co-wives reacted with more concern, Ukyo saying, "Beiko's gonna have her own kid? But...that means..."

"Aiyaa," now Shampoo was definitely alarmed by this news, "Did silver-hair no say once that she meant have baby same time as Airen?"

"Oboy," Ukyo swallowed, "I just hope that doesn't mean what I think it does...for Nabiki..."

"Good morning, Thelendra...sleep well?" Anri asked without turning to witness the approach of his talented offspring.

Thelendra's sour mood was hardly improved as she set delicate foot upon the branch that her father stood poised upon, then glared at him and said, "Tell me this, father...didst thou know in advance what would happen between myself and Tendo Kasumi?"

"I had a sense that something might happen," Anri replied without meeting his child's resentful expression, "But I knew you would be up to handling things. I am sorry if it was more difficult for you than you had expected, but considering what a rare and beautiful spark lays within that girl, it was not all that surprising."

"For thee perhaps," Thelendra grumbled, glancing away towards the sounds of a nearby commotion, "But to find such a rare flower...and to know that she is destined for another..."

"You did what you had to do, take what comfort you can from that," Anri said gently, then added in a bit more humor, "Besides...if you want my honest opinion about it, that experience did as much for you as it did for Tendo Kasumi."

"And how so dost thou mean that?" Thelendra bristled.

"Only that you have not been much yourself of late," Anri replied, "You've been quixotic, irritable and moody these past few years, ever since you broke up with that gremlin fellow...what was his name again?"

"Gymp," Thelendra said sourly, "As thou dost well know...and I be so far over him that our brief affair dost not bear mention."

"Nevertheless," Anri said, "You bore at least two, and possibly more, daughters from your brief union," he paused before adding, "It was never my place, even as a father, to object to the direction your heart took the both of you, but even you must concede that his presence gave you some comfort."

"As well as continuous aggravation and despair for his antics," Thelendra's musical voice grated a sour note as she added, "It was best to end our partnership once our children were of age to fend for themselves, being half Eluini and half Gremlin."

"Nevertheless, Minx and Gamina would be gratified to see their mother smile again after so long suffering in self-imposed celibacy," Anri mused, "And in all truth, daughter, I have thought for quite a while that you needed a good lay to get back your natural perspective."

"So thou dost admit that thou didst set me up for this?" Thelendra bristled, "Father...how could thee do this to thine own daughter?"

"I did nothing but suggest that you could help Kasumi to regain equilibrium, and that your blood would be the catalyst to her final transformation," Anri glanced sidelong at Thelendra, "And it was worth your wrath to see you smile like that again, if only for a few minutes."

Thelendra looked uncomfortably away and said, "But she be not mine to claim for mineself. Thou knowest as well as I that she be bound for another to whom her heart already hath been given."

"So sure of that are you?" Anri seemed genuinely amused by his own question, "The future is never entirely written, Thelendra. We are constantly reshaping it by our own actions, and only you can decide for certain if this is a passing phase or the beginning of something much more...lasting."

Thelendra took a deep breath that expanded her already ample chest then growled, "There are times when almost I do wonder what it would be like to be the issue of a parent who be nay so...omniscient as thee, Father."

Anri did not reply to that, merely raised an eyebrow and regarded his child sidelong.

This time it was Thelendra who relented with a sigh, "Forgive that outburst...it was nay called for..."

"Not at all," Anri said, "You were entirely in the right, and I was overstepping myself, something I tend to do, as you well know. It's refreshing to hear you speak so openly about your feelings, you should do it more often."

"Father," Thelendra said, "'Tis my role to play the advisor to thee...and though thou art wise beyond mortal conception, still thou canst be a royal pain in mine side when thou dost play with me as thou hast done in the past with thine many disciples."

"Comes naturally to me too, I know," Anri sighed, "Thelendra...despite what some may believe, I am a far cry from being perfect, and I depend on your perspective to help balance me against my own tendency to stargaze. It helps to have someone who knows me so well and can keep my feet planted firmly upon the ground, so do not hold back from me when I need upbraiding. It is a delicate business we are in, and we both know how high the stakes are, and what could result for a misstep."

"Then speaking of the which," Thelendra turned her focus back towards the sounds of continuing battle, "Has the event of crisis come about for which thou and I didst seek to prepare our initiated?"

"Almost, but it is fast approaching," Anri said as he stared back towards the distant altercation, "Events are in the works that will soon come to fruition, and if we have done our best to prepare them then the rest is in their hands. Beyond this we dare not act hastily lest we tip our hand to the enemy prematurely."

"Then it is in Kasumi-chan's hands that we must entrust the fate of humanity," Thelendra said with a look of tender longing, "And quite capable art those hands, I well know, but...against this enemy can even she avail in preserving the balance for the Nexus and her sister?"

"That is what we are here to observe," Anri replied, "Now see? The game is afoot, and within a few more moments we will witness the resolution..."

Takaharis was barely even aware that the motorcycle had come to an abrupt halt save for the fact that they were no longer bouncing up and down over the uneven tarmac. Her grip on Angelique's waist was tenaciously firm, yet for some odd reason the blonde haired biker woman did not seem to mind the pressure, even though a normal woman might have complained of bruises. The beating of her heart was so fierce that it took a moment for Takaharis to hear the spoken words of her companion, but then the gentle voiced woman in her arms spoke soothingly and appeared to be attempting to reassure her...and for some odd reason Takaharis felt relieved, if not outright grateful.

"There, there, ma amis," Angelique spoke from beneath her helmet as the visor had been raised to allow casual speech, "We are nearly to our goal...the feeling is very strong, almost like a calling. Indeed, in another few moments I believe that it will be as good as over..."

"Are you sure about that?" Takaharis asked with just a slight hint of desperation, "Promise?"

The blonde chuckled softly then replied, "You have my word on it as a holy knight of the Temuvarai order. Just abide with me a bit further and we will see this quest through...and then we may speak on more private matters, non?" she purred the last few words with a sensuous voice that was lilting with enchantment.

"Ah...thank you," Takaharis said with great reluctance as she pried her arms loose from her death-grip around the other woman's waist, "But I think I'll walk from this point onward...and besides, you'll travel much faster without my added weight."

"You are no burden to either me or Adonai, I most assure you," Angelique said lightly, "But...ah well, if that is your preference...then do accompany me by your own means and we shall both arrive at the same point from two different angles."

With that pronouncement the golden haired woman closed her visor and headed off once again at a breakneck speed that seemed worthy of such designation. The powerful machine covered the ground with excellent shock-absorbing capabilities, yet Takaharis already well knew what a jolt each bump was like, and the series of vibrations that could travel up the spine with each ridge and contour of the landscape, and she wondered privately if the madwoman she now took to be a friend was deliberately driving so fast precisely for that reason.

"What am I doing?" she asked herself aloud as she shifted to her true form and beat leathery wings to gain altitude so that she could follow this Angelique in a more leisurely manner, "Why am I following her? It makes no kind of sense...but somehow...I want to know where she is going."

As absorbed as she was with tracing the motorcyclist with the powerfully erotic mystique hanging about her like a mantle, she was not so distracted as to miss the sounds of a distant commotion, and with a shift of her enhanced vision she made out something dead ahead of the trail that looked as if several trees were being torn up by their roots by something massive in the distance. Despite herself she had a sinking sensation that they were about to re-encounter the monster of before and that her new companion was hell bent on confronting the towering beast who could treat tall trees like so much kindling...and without a second thought or the slightest hesitation she increased the beating of her wings, attempting to race her friend to the scene of the battle in order to determine the level of threat that they each would soon be facing...

Perfume was about done in her fight against Taro, having gone all-out with every trick and technique in her arsenal in her attempts to subdue him. As her Tonfas were lighter and easier to use than her axes she could move even faster with them, and a single blow could shatter a concrete block, but this Taro was made of sterner stuff than most ordinary humans and was quick to boot, and he commanded a level of skill that was comparable to Ranma's.

The battle had been joined for only a few furious minutes but already Perfume was panting as hard as if she had been practicing katas for an hour without relent. Going all-out like that took a lot out of a body, even one as well conditioned as her own, and it only took a second to slip up and make an amateurish mistake that left her foe an opening...and as she had already discovered one such slip was enough to spell disaster.

And so it was that when she charged him with a double-high/lo attack maneuver she found her target had somehow slipped below her line of vision, and then all at once his foot slammed hard into her stomach and carried her backward with force enough to snap a normal spine in two. As she was still very acutely pain-  
sensitive, the blow was enough to send her entire nervous system on fire, and she doubled over in raw agony, unable to defend herself as Taro righted up again and seized his new advantage.

"Gotta say, you're sure one tough cookie...for a wild cat," the arrogant male said while breathing in and out as an indication of how close he was to being winded himself, "Ordinarily I wouldn't mind taking a gawk at those melons you're sporting under that pantsuit, but since you're way too dangerous to take for granted how about I just cool you off so I can look after my main business?"

Perfume had been aware that her fight with Taro had taken her far down the hill trail, which was exactly as she had intended. What she had not counted on was that there happened to be a small stream at the base of the ravine, and that they were now poised only a few meters away from the bane of her existence, but as she was in no condition to defend herself she was helpless to prevent Taro from picking her up and tossing her into the water.

One moment later a small pink-furred cat crawled out from the baggy silk clothing that no longer fit her body, and Perfume sputtered and coughed in disgust over losing yet another fight over the small technicality of Jusenkyo.

"There, that's that," Taro crowed, starting to turn around when of a sudden his combat reflexes came to full alert and he ducked his head, just instants before the swing of a bokken would have connected.

"Defend yourself, Villain!" a young man wearing a traditional hakama cried out while raising his wooden sword and taking another swing that just missed connecting with its intended target.

"Who the fuck are you?" Taro snarled as he deflected another blow, then counter-  
attacked with a lightning kick that staggered the other man but did not take him out of the battle.

No sooner had Taro completed his motion when something else obscured his line of vision, and then to his dismay he felt the impact of rattan wood connecting soundly with his face as he learned first-hand what it felt like to be a tennis ball as he was knocked backward almost to the very edge of the stream, landing in an awkward heap at the sheer unexpected impact.

"How dare you do that to my fiancée?" a slender brown haired woman demanded hotly as she spun her weapon about and then leveled it like a wand, and to Taro's disbelief it turned out to be nothing more than an ordinary household rug-beater, "Prepare to taste defeat at my hands, you cowardly abductor!"

"What the hell is this?" Taro asked as he climbed back to his feet, "Open house for the freak show?"

"Hey mister, got a light?"

"Huh?" Taro started to turn around when a foot struck him in the face with the force of a sledge hammer, knocking him ass over tea-kettle.

"Oh, sorry...forgot I don't smoke," Keiko grinned as she set down her leg and assumed a defensive crouch, "I don't catch fire either...but we're about to smoke your ass, so do us all a big favor and don't surrender. I'm much rather be doing this the hard way."

"You again?" Taro started to rise up to his feet, only to feel the cold press of steel against his neck as the tip of a blade made its presence known to his peripheral vision.

"Never mind what Arigami-san says," a breathy voice that was husky with emotion informed him, "Surrender is your best and only option. Provoke us...and I won't be held responsible for what happens."

Taro turned around very slowly and took in the redhead in the black cloak, then noticed the snarling wolf that stood by the crimson-eyed vampire's ankles, and further on a ghostly apparition hovering about in the trees, and immediately identified them as friends or allies of the Saotome-Tendo family.

And then a tough-looking redhead smacked palm to fist and smiled at him in a most unfriendly manner and said, "He doesn't look so tough. You ask me it's overkill having all of us up against this one guy. I could take him with my eyes closed."

"It is overkill having you deliver the final blow, Managi-san," Natsume assured as she extended her rub-beater, "But on behalf of the Tendo family I would claim the honor."

"I would defer to you, beloved, save that my own sense of outraged justice demands that I smite the blackguard soundly," Tatewaki declared with his sword raised in preparation for an attack.

"No way, Bro," Keiko insisted, "I've been charged by Mistress Kodachi to avenge her honor, and for her sake-and that of Nabiki-I'm going to pound this freak into hamburger!"

Despite the odds stacked against him Taro remained his arrogant self, "Normally I don't mind it when the ladies fight over me, but I'm not all that much into group scenes."

"You're gonna be laughing out of a mouth full of teeth in another minute," Alison threatened, raising a fist to give emphasis to her words.

"All this for me, huh?" Taro slowly smiled, "Well...guess you got me, Toots...NOT!"

And without further adieu he moved one foot slightly to the side, moving slowly so as not to alarm the lady with the rapier, but just far enough to sink his shoe several inches deep into the brook beside them, which was more than adequate to trigger his Jusenkyo curse, and a few seconds later he was back to full form and restored to vitality, and more than ready for action.

The redhead with the rapier was too slow to react when a fist the size of a small beer-keg connected hard with her whole body, slapping her away and causing the wolf at her side to cower in fright with a very faint whimper.

"Ah..." Keiko backed away as she and the others took in the altered dimensions of their mutual opponent, then in a very faint voice she said, "On second thought...you can handle him, right Managi-san?"

Alison blinked her eyes but then recovered her bearings and said, "No problem, I happen to come from a long line of Monster-beaters!"

Of that Taro had no doubt, but he also knew better than to stand still and be a target to someone whose threat level was as yet unknown at the time, so he took to the air and vaulted high beyond the scope of her lunge.

Alison was not prepared for her opponent to all but vanish before her eyes in that manner and staggered several steps beyond the point of intended impact, only to feel the crushing weight of a half ton of raging monster landing hard against her back, driving her into the dirt with hooves as hard as flint, which buried her face a good several inches.

Tatewaki recovered from his surprise and leaped to the attack, only to be caught by a serpentine tail that swatted him sideways. Natsume rallied to come to the aid of her man but even she was slow to anticipate a shift in tactics as Taro reached for a nearby tree and easily ripped it out of the ground, then swung it like a brickbat.

Those not scattered by the sweeping blow of the wood were forced to take evasive measures that rendered them unable to form any sort of cohesive counter-  
offensive. The field clearly belonged to Taro as he stormed over the landscape, heading back up the trail and forcing those still able to follow to turn and give chase to the monstrous brute as he led the way towards some traps that he had readied...

Kasumi heard the sounds of commotion down below and gave a brief glance towards the area where fighting was clearly taking place, but then a warning instinct guided her back up the side of the hill, and as she glided to a point where the cave became apparent she felt the certain call of Nabiki, who was in some sort of mortal danger.

Sure enough her newly expanded intuition served her well, for no sooner did she come to a graceful landing at the mouth of the cavern then she heard the commotion within signifying great agitation and concern in the parts of those assembled about a makeshift stone cot bearing her younger sister. As Kasumi approached on foot she saw Ranma and his elementals struggling mightily to keep Nabiki alive and in a state of homeostasis, but clearly they lacked the medical knowledge to more effectively stabilize the equilibrium of her body.

And clearly Nabiki was in a great deal of agony and physical distress, in spite of the best efforts at coaching on the parts of Cologne and a blonde haired Amazon whom Kasumi did not immediately recognize, but whom intuition informed her was named Siren of the Joketsuzoku. Kasumi could feel the potent auras of both Elders and knew that between them they commanded great power and potential, yet that power was not properly oriented in the manner of a true healer. They needed professional assistance, and clearly Nabiki would not survive if it did not arrive in good swift order.

Fortunately some of the memories that she had absorbed from Thelendra showed her how it was possible to bolster her sister's health, and so she gently spoke to Ranma in the Elders saying, "Can I do anything to help?" posing the question more as a suggestion than a statement of her intentions.

"Oneechan?" Ranma spared a glance over his shoulder and showed immediate relief, "Thank the Kami you're here! It's Nabiki...we think her Jusenkyo curse is working against her, and I'm trying to win her back, but...it's...not all that easy...so many complicated things to remember..."

"I understand, little brother," Kasumi said as she gently eased herself into their ranks, then stood there staring down at her hapless little sister before saying, "I think that I can help. That is, if you don't mind my presence?"

"Goddess?" Latisha asked with upraised eyebrow.

"Of course we wouldn't mind," Karina assured, glancing at her fellow elementals, "Would we, Sisters?"

"If it is all right with the Master, then I have no objections," Nagisha rumbled.

"Hey, sure, its no problem with me," Sharil waved her hands, "I'm doing what I can to keep her liquid levels in balance, but I can't risk getting her wet or the curse will flare to life, so...you can kinda see our problem."

"There is something different about you," Sobriel said as she stared at Kasumi with a neutral expression, "The darkness is gone...you seem somehow...much calmer than before..."

"A change for the better I take it?" Siren mused as she regarded Kasumi with a sidelong appraisal.

"Indeed," Cologne eyed Kasumi shrewdly, "I should think that I would like to explore this in more thorough detail, though the timing is hardly that generous."

"Ah...well...that is...I think that I can help Nabiki here," Kasumi evasively replied, turning to Ranma with a imploring look, "That is...if it is all right with you, little brother?"

"Hey, do whatever you can, Kasumi," Ranma waved his hands, "It can't be any worse than what I've been doing...no offense to you, girls."

"Hmph," Latisha sniffed, but nonetheless conceded the point, as did the other elementals, who either nodded their heads or glanced away with sullen expressions.

"We have managed to stabilize her for now through our combined efforts," Siren revealed, "She was in much worse shape only a few moments ago, but even as things stand it's going to be quite the struggle saving both her and the baby."

Kasumi reached down and placed the palm of one hand over Nabiki's brow, then she felt the flow of sensory impressions that imparted a full and complete understanding of her sister's physical condition. The memories borrowed from Thelendra told her what to do and she began to channel fresh life energy from within her own body and gently melded their spirits so that a part of her divine spark could be used to rekindle Nabiki's flagging embers.

"I can feel it," she said aloud, "The curse is fighting to win back control over her body. I can sense the presence of Kaneda...he is yearning to spring forth and reassert himself. He has been contained for too long, and now he needs to flex and stretch his muscles..."

"Can't you tell him to wait another day or two?" Ranma asked in his frustration, "At least until after Nabiki has the baby?"

"It is not that simple, Ranma-kun," Kasumi informed him while maintaining contact with Nabiki, "It has only been a week past since he was awakened from his slumber to deal with an ethereal menace, and whatever that other Nabiki did to spark his presence is having a delayed effect now. I am afraid the power of the curse is greater than even Madam Lao evidently expected...it has come to take on a life of its own, and unless it is requited, and soon...the struggle may take it's toll both on her...and the baby."

"Is there any way to draw off the curse...or to possibly even cure it?" Siren asked while studying Kasumi, "I have long speculated at both their cause and true nature, but from the way you're describing it, it definitely does sound like a thing that is living..."

"The curse...as we define it...is more than anyone suspects," Kasumi said with suddenly abstracted vision, "It is an extension of a greater power than manifests under Jusenkyo...a power that is very much alive and which refuses to be diminished, which is why removing it would be difficult, even for as short a span as a few minutes."

"But you can do that, can't you, Kasumi-san?" Cologne asked in a voice that sounded confident of the answer, "You have the power and the means to draw him out of the body and give him temporary substance outside of the flesh of his host...can't you?"

Kasumi was rather startled at the idea, but when she thought on it she said, "Yes...yes that may be possible...if I can create a temporary doppelganger for Nabiki, and use him to draw out the template that is Kaneda..."

"Then what are you waiting for?" Ranma asked, "If it'll remove the obstruction..."

"Patience, Student," Siren coaxed gently, "Your feelings do you credit but it will not serve you well to lose composure at this point. Remember the aura of calm detachment that I sought to teach you earlier in the day...you must learn to abide by strong emotions without allowing them to rule you. Feelings are good, but you must never allow yourself to be a slave to even your most passionate feelings."

"This ain't no time for a lecture!" Ranma snapped, only to quiet down as he caught the warning glance from Kasumi, which was as good as a reprimand and caused him to step back from force of habit.

"Give me a moment to prepare," Kasumi said as she turned back towards Nabiki, taking a deep breath before adding, "This is going to be difficult...but...for the sake of Nabiki, I shall do it..."

The fight was not going well outside, and despite the combined strength and skill of the Tendo Posse they were finding themselves largely overmatched by the cunning Taro, who led a merry chase through the woods, deliberately springing traps that caught several of them by surprise and caused the others to tread their way with more caution.

"Would somebody get me down from here all ready?" Alison complained as she dangled by one leg after having been snared by a loop from a tree branch.

"I am...having difficulties of my own at the moment...thank you," Natsume responded, pressed up against a tree with her back while holding another tree at arms length, effectively pinned by its mass and the wooden spikes studding its sides, which might well skewer her if she relaxed by even a fraction.

"Confound you, Varlet!" Tatewaki fumed impotently from the pitfall that he had been snared within, waving his bokken as he hurled taunts and threats of retribution.

"This does not look good," murmured Lenore as she and Chloe floated side-by-side in a mud pit that felt very much like quicksand and was proving difficult to navigate, especially as their efforts to free themselves only made them sink that much quicker into the foul-smelling mess.

"Yuck...I think he uses this stuff for a latrine...gross!" the young werewolf complained while wrinkling her button nose.

Only Kiima and Keiko remained at liberty and in a condition to fight, but both were finding it difficult to overmaster a Taro who stood ten feet at the shoulder and had the power of several raging bulls at his disposal.

"Oh great," the kickboxer grimaced, "How the hell are we supposed to beat this guy? My best shots just bounce off his hide, and it feels like he's got solid rocks for muscles."

"Are you certain that there is no technique in your arsenal that might prove effective?" Kiima asked, "I am finding it difficult to employ my own powers against him as he seems fairly insulated against me while in his present condition."

"Well...there's always the Shadowskills techniques that Mistress Lao taught me," Keiko grimly replied, "But if I cut loose on him with that...I'll probably kill him."

"And that is a problem for you?" Kiima asked.

"Well...not usually," Keiko replied while keeping her guard up and warily studying her opponent, "I've killed a lot of opponents in the ring...but that was because I had no choice about it, and ever since starting my new life here in Nerima...I've tended to avoid killing."

"Is he under a similar compunction?" Kiima reasoned, "Besides, take it from me, death is not the worst thing that can happen."

"Good point," Keiko said grimly, squaring her shoulders, "Very well...better prepare yourself, big guy, because you're about to have a one-on-one conversation with your ancestors..."

Unfortunately for her the Minotaur-like Taro was hardly deaf, let alone stupid. He had held back while listening into brief mention of the Shadowskills, and as knowledgeable as he was on martial arts techniques he knew full well what it would mean to allow her to complete even a moment of preparation.

The one big problem with complicated attacks and advanced Ki-based skills was that they often needed a lot of time to build up and to charge to an appropriate level. Only a few people whom he had encountered on the road were skilled enough to keep their body charged all of the time so that they could release an attack upon a moment's notice, and after losing to the likes of Terry Bogart and that clown named Ryu, there was no way that Taro was going to sit still and let it happen all over.

And so he shifted from defense to attack with such speed and power that Keiko had no time at all to brace herself for the transition. With a whip-like motion the huge man-beast sent his tail crashing into Keiko and batted her away like a low-hit softball. Keiko went tumbling backwards and found herself plunging over the side of trail...only to slam into something solid and muscular just before she might have plummeted into the ravine, and all at once brawny arms and powerful hands gripped and steadied her, giving her a chance to shake it off and recover her bearings.

And then she turned to see the face of her rescuer and at once reacted, "DAD? What are you doing here?"

"Took the words right out of my mouth, short ftuff," Guile said to his daughter before setting her back down on her feet, then glancing beyond her shoulder to view the towering form of the monster, "I take it that he's the bad guy?"

"So, that's Taro, eh?" snarled Ryoga as he and Mousse dashed around from behind Guile, at once assuming flanking positions.

"Careful...I know what he's capable of, and what he did the last time I faced him," Mousse cautioned, "Despite his size he can move in an instant, and he's many times more powerful than you might think, so we'll need a strategy and...oh hell...why do I even bother?"

The Chinese boy fumed impotently as Ryoga surged forward, lacking the subtlety or experience to know better, and with one fist aimed at the lumbering beast it seemed that the perpetually Lost Boy intended to end the issue in a single blow.

It did not take long to learn first hand the folly of underestimating Taro. With great ease the monster moved to the side and stepped around behind the charging Ryoga, and then a single back-kick sent the boy tumbling head-over-  
heels into the side of a boulder, which shattered upon impact.

"Well," Mousse sighed, "I tried to warn him," and then he made a gesture with both hands and caused lengths of heavy chains to fly loose from his sleeves, sending them around a surprised Taro and binding up his massive body.

"Hey, nice shot there, Mousse-san," Keiko complimented, "Let's hope that will at least hold him for a bit."

"It ought to," Mousse declared as he tossed a huge ship's anchor forward, one that was connected to the chains surrounding Taro's body, "That would hold a battleship...and I know because that's where I got it."

"Ah...Keiko-chan," Guile remarked, "Would you mind explaining to me just what is going on here?"

"You mean the short-short version, Dad?" Keiko replied, "Well, you see...that guy there is really a boy named Pantyhose Taro..."

"Pantyhose?" her father repeated.

"Yeah...he was given that name by Master Happosai," his daughter explained.

"Oh...then forget the interruption...do continue."

"Well...obviously he's not to thrilled about the name he was christened with, so he came to Japan intending to get a new one," Keiko resumed, "Unfortunately the laws of his tribe make it very plain that only his godfather has the power to change his name, so he got into a fight with the rest of us thinking somehow that we're all in league with the old pervert."

"I can't say I blame him for being upset," Guile admitted, "But why would he think that there was a connection between you and the old fart?"

"Not me, Dad," Keiko corrected, "Nabiki. He kidnapped her hoping to force Happosai into doing what he wants. Anyhow...the reason he's about three-plus meters tall and covered in fur is due to the fact that he was christened at birth with a special kind of Jusenkyo water..."

"Jusenkyo...why is it always Jusenkyo?" Guile murmured in grim resignation, then added, "What kind of curse is that?"

"Would you believe Niuhoomanmaooenniichuan?" his daughter stated blandly.

"Drowned Yeti Riding Bull Carrying Crane and Eel?" Guile blinked, "You have got to be kidding!"

"Hey, would I make something like this up?" Keiko waved her arms expansively, "I don't write the stupid rules, I just live by them, and don't forget that I'm cursed to turn into a vulture whenever I get wet."

"Like I could forget even if I wanted, which I wish I could?" Guile shrugged, "Okay, fair enough, so what do we do with the big slug now that you've got him in irons?"

"A good question that," Mousse replied, only to blanch as he turned and stared at the hulking man-brute, his attention drawn to the sounds of snapping metal, "Oh...kuso..."

Taro had not wasted the time while letting the redhead give terse explanations to the broom-headed newcomer. By carefully testing the tensile strength of the chains he had learned all that he needed to know and now by expanding his chest he applied greater-then-imaginable pressure to cause the thick links to expand and snap like worn out buttons. With yet another flex of his arms he shattered them the rest of the way, sending chunks of broken metal whipping out in all directions, and then he snatched out with a hand to grip the end of one of those chains, which he began to spin around over his head with the clear intent of using it against his would-be tormentor.

But Guile did not remain idle himself and at once unleashed one of his patented "Sonic Boom" offensives, surprising Taro, who was forced to throw the chain in its path rather than be scorched by the Ki blast, which was a cautioning illumination. The man-brute staggered back with the realization that this new arrival was one of those dreaded Ki-channelers who did not need much time or preparation in order to fire off a blast, which meant that this fight just got a lot more complicated.

"Time to take you down and see what you're really made of," Guile declared as he prepared to launch yet another assault against the now-wary Taro...only to pause and glance to the side as he made out yet another noise swift approaching.

Keiko and Mousse heard it as well, the sound of a high-pitched motor engine bearing down on them, and then all at once a silvery motorcycle flew up the side of the ridge and sailed through the air like a self-propelled guided missile, only to come back down once again with the pull of gravity determining the trajectory of both motorcycle and its rider.

Unfortunately for Taro he got a pretty solid view of the lead tire of the vehicle as it came down upon his upturned face, and then he went down heavily as six hundred pounds of machine and rider struck hard to flatten him soundly. Though the blow was not quite enough to fully take him out of the fight it was still hard enough to make him see the stars and planets in full daylight, to the accompanying twitter of bird songs.

The rider continued on but turned and ground to a stop a short distance from the downed monster, and then the rider lithely dismounted from her machine and pulled off her helmet to allow her pale golden mane of hair to fall freely about her shoulders. Then another motion and she pulled her sword from concealment and moved at once to threaten Taro as she declared, "En guard, Monsieur creature! Prepare to meet the swift stroke of steel from zee hand of justice!"

"What in the hell...?" Guile murmured aloud in frank amazement.

"You said it," Keiko softly murmured, barely daring to breathe as she gazed upon the face of heavenly perfection.

"Who...who is she?" Mousse tonelessly marveled.

"Why do you care, just as long as she's on our side?" Kiima turned to the blonde and said, "Well met indeed, Siress d'Anjou."

Taro was just beginning to recover his wits, but the sight of yet another crazy entering this never-ending fray was beginning to tire even his considerable patience. Whoever this lady was she had just made a huge tactical blunder by making him good and angry!

He got back to his hooves with the intent of pounding this blonde foreigner flat (even though he grudgingly admitted that she looked pretty stunning in that aluminum outfit) but as he started to lunge forward she moved even faster than he was prepared for, her sword scraping the ground and kicking up a storm of rock, dirt and gravel that pelted him like a shotgun blast, and then she was upon him with her sword blazing a lightning-swift series of strokes that caused him to stagger backwards, not immediately in pain though a few seconds later the sting of numerous cuts and bruises made him aware that even his tough hide was vulnerable to being sliced into ribbons.

"Hah, you are quick and quite nimble for your size, Sirrah," Angelique declared with haughty bravado, "But I have dealt with far more formidable brutes than yourself...so have at you!"

With that she charged recklessly into the fray, her voice rising in sing-song as she chanted words that seemed to make the very forest itself come alive, while Taro found himself instantly on the defensive, having to use every trick in the book to avoid being chopped into hamburger, that blasted sword moving so swift that it was barely visible to the eye while the woman herself was a blur of silver and gold light, darting everywhere and attacking him from seemingly all directions.

"Whoah..." Keiko said in awe as she witnessed this entirely one-sided encounter, held breathlessly in awe of the staggering beauty and her altogether effective techniques, which greatly put to shame even the swordsmanship of Kuno Tatewaki.

"She's gonna kill him at that rate," Guile remarked.

"And that is a problem because...?" Kiima asked with a bit less than her usual ethereal detachment.

"Hey!" Lenore called out from where she and Chloe were struggling to keep their heads above the level of their muddy prison, "We still need him alive to tell us where to find Saotome Nabiki!"

"Oh yeah," Keiko belatedly said, "Good point. First we find that out, then she can kill him."

"I think somebody had better inform the blonde about that," Guile remarked while showing no inclination to be the first to volunteer for that assignment.

"If you wish to interrupt their fun, then by all means go ahead," Kiima urged, "And I will be awaiting you on the other side for your troubles."

The fight was over in practically no time at all. Taro had belatedly attempted to lead his opponent into one of the remaining snare traps that he had set in these woods a few days before, but the blonde uncannily seemed to sense the threat and avoided it as though some little birdie in her ear had warned her of its presence. The effort cost Taro what was left of his flagging reserves, and he stumbled and fell backwards...and all at once the blonde was over him with sword raised over his head, ready to deliver the final blow like a well-  
practiced executioner completing her given assignment.

"Prayer to your gods, if you have any, Monster!" she declared, "I deliver you into their hands and-ZUT ALORSSS!?"

"Hey there, Cutie, you don't really want to be doing that," Happosai declared while popping up almost miraculously before the enraged paladin, having taken the time to unzip her aluminum suite so that his tiny hands could have ready access to "the goodies."

Angelique staggered away, removing one hand from the hilt of her sword as she tried to pry the pervert from her chest while Taro looked on in frank amazement, not quite able to comprehend the fact that he had just been rescued from the certain fate of not needing to shave every morning. It took but a few moments before the blonde managed to liberate herself from her unwanted attachment, but then she took the time zipping her suit back up rather than immediately charge after the little man, which was just time enough for Happosai to dart back to Taro's side and hold up a flask in one hand, then turn to the blonde and smile.

"Before you continue this, maybe you ought to get a better look at this particular monster," the old man called out to her, and then he poured the hot water over Taro's head and triggered his immediate transformation back into a human.

"Merde," Angelique exclaimed with uncharacteristic dismay as she looked upon the figure of Taro, and then at the old man, "Is this...some type of spell? Was the creature no more than one who is accursed by some enchantment?"

"That's pretty much what it is, Cute-stuff," Happosai cheerfully replied, "The waters of Jusenkyo cause anyone who bathes in them to change into the form of the last creature or thing that drowned there, and this here idiot happens to have a special curse that makes him big and brutish whenever he gets hit with cold water. Hot water reverses the curse, but he's still the same jerk in either form, and as much as he deserves punishment, I can't just stand by and watch you murder my wayward godson."

Angelique lowered her blade and said, "I had no idea. I mistook him for the type of creature that I have been dealing with for years back in my home country."

"Must be a pretty interesting place where you hail from," Happosai grinned evilly, "Do they have more good looking types like you back home?"

"Oh, oui...many who are far more lovely than I," Angelique replied, turning to regard Taro then saying, "So all along this was a roguish knave who wore the form of a beast when he abducted the helpless damosel whom I beheld in his arms quite early last evening."

"We're just getting to that point," Happosai noted, "Oh...and by the way. You ever consider wearing a bra for those bouncy beauties of yours? Wouldn't want them to sag, now would we?"

"I never sag, Monsieur," Angelique said with ruffled dignity, "And I will thank you in the future to ask first before you take a sample of their firmness."

"Angel!" a voice called out to them, and all at once heads turned to see the swiftly approaching form of a strawberry blonde gaijin rushing out to greet them.

"Trudy?" Angelique's mood brightened considerably as she beheld the new arrival, "What are you doing in these parts, Cheri?"

"Looking for you, you big dope," Trudy snorted, then glanced around, "Are we late for this party? And what the hell all just happened?"

"Ah...a fair question that," Angelique noted, then paused before repeating the word, "We?"

"Meaning me," a rumbling voice announced the arrival of the towering Frank as he surveyed the woodland terrain with a keen eye towards the toppled trees and ravished landscape, to say nothing of all the people who still needed rescuing from various traps, snares and pitfalls.

"Ah...Doctor Steinberg I presume?" Angelique smiled brightly, "Well met indeed...and not a bit changed from zee formidable fellow whom I knew of in my own timeline."

"Skip the formalities, Agent Angel," Frank scowled, only to pause and do a double-take, "You mean...there's another one like me where you come from?"

"Oh...yeah...same guy, different continuity," Trudy sheepishly responded, "I was going to get around to mentioning that...eventually."

"Frank-san?" Keiko called out as she and her father rushed up to join the little group now assembling in that portion of the woodland, "What are you doing here?"

"Cleaning up the mess it looks like," Frank turned and nodded as he and Guile exchanged wary glances, "Colonel?"

"Is this lady one of your agents?" Guile asked, indicating Angelique, whom he still regarded with wary-if-distant admiration.

"Freelancers," Frank snorted, "I hired them to do a little job for me, only there seems to be a few details about their contracts that I'm still taking under consideration."

"Don't I know what that implies," Guile sniffed in immediate sympathetic reaction, "Well...now that we've brought this fellow down, what say we put the screws on him to tell us what he did with this girl he allegedly kidnapped."

Taro suddenly got to his feet, snatching up one of his handy canteens and holding it up over his head while saying smugly, "Are you kidding? I'm not out of it yet...I was just getting my wind back for round two, and now that I've got you here where I want, God-father..."

"Stop him...too late," Happosai winced as the boy instantly resumed his hulking bestial shape and bellowed in ready triumph.

Angelique raised her sword while the others assumed immediate fighting crouches, but only Trudy remained where she was, directly in the path between the monster and Happosai. At a glance she appeared to be no more than a slender obstacle easily removed from his approach towards his dreaded master, but all at once Trudy moved and then stepped away...and Taro blinked in astonishment...then slowly began to keel over backwards.

"Oh, look at that, he slipped," Trudy remarked casually, turning away as though nothing extraordinary had just happened, "Better get some hot water to change him back, and this time use heavy ropes to discourage him from trying that again."

"Whoah..." Guile exclaimed, releasing the breath that he had just taken.

"She took him down with only one move?" Keiko marveled.

"You didn't...?" Frank asked as he half-regarded the redhead.

"Ma cheri?" Angelique asked with a similar expression.

"Oh, don't worry, he's still breathing," Trudy replied, "I just hit a sleep center, and he'll be out for at least another hour. As for killing him...well, that's out. He appears to still have a destiny that needs fulfilling, so we're going to abide by the jerk for just a little while longer."

Guile turned a stunned look towards Frank and asked, "Freelancer?"

"Contract type," Frank responded.

"Oh," the burly ex-military man replied "No further questions."

"Now, if you're all done jabbering around," Happosai said as though reminding them of other matters, "I'll lead you to the cave where he stashed Nabiki, and then we can gather the rest of your sorry bunch in one place...only things aren't looking too good right now for my great-granddaughter."

"Why, what's wrong with Nabiki?" Keiko immediately cried, all but pouncing on the old man.

"She's in pretty bad shape," Happosai grimly responded, "Kasumi and the others are doing all that they can, but it's touch and go for both her and the baby."

"By all the heavenly powers," Angelique declared, "Why did not you say earlier than the damosel was in this sort of danger? I must go to her at once...God is calling me to the child, and I must answer!"

"HEY, WHAT ABOUT THE REST OF US?" Lenore cried out from where her face was barely above the level of the mud, "WE'RE STILL SINKING!"

"Better go on ahead and do your thing, Angel," Trudy urged, "You go with her, Frank. As for you...Colonel Guile is it? You and me on extraction detail. Let's go help these others who got stuck in the mud, not to mention other places."

"I'm going to see Nabiki," Keiko urged, giving her father a pleading look, "You understand why, don't you, Dad?"

"Sure thing," the big man said gruffly, then turned to Frank and said, "Doctor Steinberg, I think your services are needed."

"Sounds like it to me," Frank grimly nodded, "Meet us up at the cave...and Shelly?" he spoke into his throat-mike, "Follow my beacon. I may need the tools in your kit for a special emergency."

"No tools are needed for my trade but my faith in God and Her infinite mercy," Angelique declared, already following after the little man who had molested her no more than a few minutes past, "Let us go give succor to those in need of Her aid, and woe be to the villain who brought this all about if we are not in time to undo the work of his evil..."

Dnabiki148

Chapter Forty-Four.

Episode One-Hundred-Forty-Eight.

"Deliver Us From EVA..."

"Meow?"

Ranma absently petted his cursed Amazon wife on the forehead as Perfume stood balanced across his shoulder, looking on with kittenish awe as Kasumi completed the extraction spell and brought forth a human presence in the exact likeness of Nabiki's alternate body.

"Not so loud, Per-chan," Ranma whispered back, "Nab-chan might hear you."

The cursed cat lowered her head and wore an uncommonly sheepish expression for a feline. It had almost forgotten about their mutual wife's rather unique aversion to cats of every stripe, and in spite of many months of practice and extensive re-training Nabiki still tended to shudder at the merest glance at Perfume's shadow. Even a year-and-a-half of living close together had not yet erased the deep imprint of the Nekoken's impact upon her psyche, and though Nabiki had no qualms with Perfume in her normal human form (anything but to judge by their rather enthusiastic bedroom gymnastics) she still tended to shudder at the appearance of a glass of water...for more than just the usual reasons for your average Jusenkyo victim.

But at the moment Nabiki was too far gone into her personal ordeal to pay much notice to the distraction as lines of visible force stretched out from her body to the masculine doppelganger that Kasumi was erecting. She lay upon her earthen bedding panting steadily, maintained in a rough equilibrium by Ranma's elementals as they worked in concert to prevent a recurrence of her fever. Her body was far more distressed than it had ever been at any point of either training or battle, and it was not at all certain if she would survive the hour, a fact that all here present knew intuitively without needing the point to be openly stated.

"Come on, Nabiki," Ranma murmured faintly, sweat covering his brow, trying very hard to maintain his own concentration in directing his elementals, "You're too much of a fighter to quit now...and I know you can make it..."

In truth he was frightened, moreso than at any time in his life that he could easily remember. The thought of losing Nabiki was like a physical pain thrust deep into his chest, making his heart beat faster with an irregular skip every other time she appeared to stop breathing. For all her many faults she was as much a part of him as his own right arm, and he loved everything about her, even those things others might see as personal failings. Her sly humor, her sarcastic wit, her mercenary pragmatism, even the sardonic way that she could view someone as if sizing up their monetary potential. She meant everything to him, and without her life would be an unendurable vacuum. She had made him the man he was today as surely as if she had crafted him from some portion of her own flesh and spirit, and so he fought tenaciously to hold onto her now, extending every gram of effort that he could into keeping her alive, even more than he so desperately wanted her to have his baby.

Perfume herself refrained from adding her own comments to his in the mixture, but silently she prayed to the gods of her ancestors that what her husband said was true and that they were not about to lose the woman who-in a great many ways-was at the core center of their family's existence.

Kasumi meanwhile was doing her part in helping maintain the fragile life-threads of her sister, very delicately feeling her way as the manipulated energies and wove her fingers through the strands of almost coherent force that were binding her younger sister to the facsimile image that she was creating. At best her creation would be nothing more than a temporary depository for the Jusenkyo-  
cursed half that was her sibling, but in a way she was giving substance and form to her own deepest desires, for was not Kaneda to her an ideal likeness of what it meant to be a man? Had not she secretly longed to have him separated from the kinship ties that marked her desire for him as tantamount to incest?

Fortunately the borrowed memories that she had acquired from her too-brief time with Thelendra not only showed her how to weave the spell that she was crafting on the spot but also conveyed to her the discipline of the Eluini, who was well schooled in mastering her own desires, and who had centuries of practice in the arts of denial and seclusion. Thanks to Thelendra's inner schooling Kasumi found it childishly easy to craft and shape the raw substance of the Akashic matter that exists between dimensions and to form it into the prism of Kaneda's idea-form, using the template that was in Nabiki to fit the mold into which she poured a portion of her sister's essence.

In due course her creation began to take on a life of its own, and while still spiritually connected to Nabiki his thoughts began to stir of their own accord, and then he blinked his eyes and looked around, only momentarily disoriented.

And then he spoke and many of those assembled in the cave gasped in amazement at hearing Kaneda's rich timber outside of Nabiki, "What...where...what's going on here? Ranchan?"

"Nabiki?" in spite of having the details explained to him in terse form by Siren, it was still something of a jolt for Ranma to see the other half of his wife standing off to one side while his true wife still remained bedridden.

"Meow?" Perfume asked, then hastily covered her mouth with both paws as she saw the handsome man cringe involuntarily.

"Ah...Per-chan...what...who...ah...am I missing something here?" the handsome man asked in understandable disorientation, then he noticed the way his older sister was looking at him and asked, "Kasumi?"

"Oh...my..." despite understanding that her creation was but a facsimile of the real thing, it was still very hard for Kasumi to resist a moment of raw hormonal desire overtake her, and she had to fight down the urge to embrace the man before her with the sort of passionate ardor whose likeness came readily to mind, all thanks to the infinitely more experienced Thelendra.

"Well, well...well..." Siren purred in speculation, "I knew he was...charismatic...but I had no idea that your wife was such a charmer in her other guise, Student."

"Ah...yeah..." Ranma agreed, then winced as he sensed the collective gasp of his five elementals, three of whom had never met Nabiki in her cursed incarnation.

"Charismatic...he's gorgeous!" Karina expressed with barely restrained enthusiasm.

"A prince among men," Nagisha replied.

"Not bad...not bad at all," Sobriel softly appraised.

"It...um...has been quite a while," Latisha cleared her throat to cope with an uncharacteristic roughness that had suddenly manifested there.

"He's even more manly than I remember," Sharil grinned, "Just think of the possibilities..."

"Hmph," Cologne turned away, casting a disapproving scowl at the way Siren was openly lusting over the handsome Kaneda.

"Meow!" Perfume said in serious agitation.

"Huh?" Ranma turned to glance at her, then saw his cat-wife nod meaningfully towards Nabiki, "Oh...right...just got a bit distracted..."

"Uh...is that me over there?" Kaneda asked as he stared in amazement at the body laying still upon the makeshift stone bedding.

"Oh...right," Siren forced herself to turn her focus back towards the stricken mother, then with chiding tones addressed the elementals, "Back to work, girls...ogle later."

There were several disapproving clucks, but all knew the seriousness of the moment and so bent back to the task of continuing to nurture the mother-to-be. Fortunately for all concerned Nabiki seemed much less distressed this time, as though a great weight had been relieved from her body, and now she seemed to be functioning like a normal woman in labor, albeit that she was barely conscious for the operation.

"I do believe the removal of Kaneda has helped to stabilize her condition," Cologne announced, "Although that is only a tentative hypothesis, and by no means can we be certain what effect this will have upon her child. The only certain thing is that-for the moment-the mother appears to be no longer in danger."

"Thank the kami for that," Ranma breathed, then glanced back towards Kaneda and said, "Kasumi worked a spell to separate you, but I think it's only temporary. We had to draw the curse out of you so that Nabiki wouldn't revert back in the middle of the delivery..."

"Right, I think I've got that much figured out," Kaneda nodded, then turned to Kasumi and said, "I didn't know you could work spells like that, Sis. Thanks."

"Ah...it was...no trouble at all," Kasumi replied, then forced herself to remain silent as she could no longer trust her voice not to betray her.

"Her hips are dilating now," Siren announced, "She is definitely widening the opening to allow the baby clear passage."

"Things are going smother than expected...too smooth for my liking," Cologne noted in grim realization, her tiny hands pressed down to receive the bulging placenta that was starting to emerge from the opening of the mother.

"Huh?" Ranma asked, "What's wrong? I thought you said she wasn't in danger...?"

"The mother perhaps," Siren said gravely, "But there is no telling for certain what effect her ordeal has had upon the condition of the baby."

"It...it feels so still...so...unmoving," Nagisha softly murmured.

"I can't detect a pulse at all," Sharil cringed.

"The fire of life is little more than a smoldering ember," Latisha murmured.

"Poor thing...it's as if the breath was squeezed out of it's tiny little body..." Karina faintly whispered.

And then Sobriel spoke up, turning a worried eye towards Ranma, "Master..."

Ranma just stood there rooted to the spot, unable to think or process the information that he was hearing, but it was Kaneda who broke the silence of the moment with a plaintive cry of, "My baby...what's happened to my baby?"

"I..." Kasumi started to say, when the commotion of several people entering the room drew off some of her attention, and without really looking at them she sensed the approach of a spark that glowed as brightly as that of Thelendra.

"Is everything all right in here?" the booming voice of Frank asked with his best attempt at clinical detachment.

"Where is she?" Keiko asked, "Where is Nab-chan?"

"Madre d'courte," said a fair haired woman whose spirit shone with the spark that Kasumi had sensed approaching, "Tell me at once the state of child and mother...I must know if there is yet time to salvage this lamentable situation."

"Not unless you know of a good cleric," Siren said sadly, only to turn with a start as her focus shifted towards the blonde stranger, and then her eyes went wide and she exclaimed a startled, "Aiyaa..."

Angelique pressed through their midst and worked her way past the mutually astonished elementals, surprising both Ranma and Kaneda with her assertiveness while earning a lifted eyebrowed glance from Cologne. Without preamble or hesitation the blonde knelt down before the spread legs of the mother and extended her hands as though to feel her from a distance, and when Kaneda and Ranma tried to protest her intrusion they suddenly found the redheaded Trudy standing in their paths with palms extended outward.

"Easy boys, let Angel handle this," Trudy urged, "This is more up her line of work than for me, and she does know what she's doing."

"Does she now?" Cologne asked as she studied the strawberry-haired foreign woman in a crimson tunic with matching black hose, trying to fathom what she could from her astonishingly potent aura, "And you are?"

"Just a friend," Trudy replied, "But I came in good company," she added while nodding towards Frank and then saying, "I take it things have been pretty tight in here, but with Angel on the scene it can only get batter."

"What is she doing?" Keiko voiced aloud the thoughts of many of the others, hanging just back far enough to see the still form of Nabiki, and feeling the worst in her bones as she cringed at the sides, barely registering the surprising presence of Kaneda.

"Oh my," Kasumi remarked as she leaned closer to study the blonde, feeling a curious prickle along her spine and the stirring of life energies that seemed to be invoked by the stranger's very presence.

"'Tis as I feared," Angelique murmured, "We have arrived too late and the child...is lifeless."

"What?" Ranma asked, his knees suddenly weak and his mouth full of ashes.

"No...it can't be," Kaneda all but whimpered, his misery beyond measure.

Keiko felt tears form in her eyes as she murmured aloud, "Poor Nabiki..."

"Meow?" Perfume asked, unable to voice in more coherent tones her own confusion and sadness.

"All that struggle...was for nothing?" Karina asked in hushed dismay.

"One must face the reality of the situation," Nagisha said grimly, "We have saved the mother, but at the cost of her offspring."

"Then...there's no hope at all for the baby?" Sobriel asked in evident confusion.

"No, there has to be a way!" Sharil protested, "Mistress Lao would never permit a child in her care to be stillborn!"

"Face reality, Water-head," Latisha scolded, "We are not aboard your mother's ship, and the situation is hopeless. Though we all did what we could...in the end we have lost this battle..."

"Nay!" Angelique suddenly cried, "It is never hopeless! Not so long as faith is strong and the cause of life is certain!"

"I beg your pardon?" Frank asked as he loomed over child and mother, having to duck his head to fit under the roof of the cave as he examined things from a clinical distance.

"Stay back, Monsieur," Angelique urged, squaring her shoulders, "This battle is mine to wage, and in the name of God's Holy light I shall not fail in this struggle!"

And then everyone felt something stirring within the room as the blonde threw back her head and raised her voice in a chant that drew the light in towards her. All at once her aura seemed to glow like a miniature star, and those nearest to her took a half-step backwards and looked on with awe and wonder as a figure appeared in the air over the woman...another womanly shape, yet ageless and beautiful beyond measure.

"Goddess..." Keiko murmured, sensing intuitively that the word was appropriate here.

"Oh...my..." Kasumi barely articulated as she sensed the warmth and radiant spirit of the being hovering over Angelique, a manifest presence that stirred within her a growing sense of kinship.

Ranma was beyond speech, and Kaneda was beside himself with worry, awe and confusion. Siren was raising both eyebrows as she gazed upon both the blonde and her spiritual patron, noting a more-than-passing resemblance between one and the other, and drawing from this some rather interesting conclusions.

Cologne was so much taken by the sight of what was before her that she barely even noticed when Happosai came to stand beside her, and then she started from her daze when he said, "Sure is something, ain't she? Haven't seen her like around here for...oh...ages..."

Cologne did not reply to that, but silently she recognized the blonde for what she truly was, and that at her hands lay the powers of true healing.

The moment stretched out for a seeming eternity while the curious sing-song chant of Angelique took on a lyrical, quite musical caliber, her voice surprisingly fair and lovely as the room filled with the essence of spring renewal, and everything that was touched by her aura seemed newer and cleaner than before, and the grief that had previously filled their spirits was banished, to be replaced by a certain wordless joy that gave everyone new hope for a brighter future.

And then the blonde drew out a final note and allowed it to fall like a droplet of water into the ocean, and then she stood back and held up a tiny form in her gentle hands, one connected by an umbilical chord, which she carefully placed upon the belly of the mother.

"Awake, Cheri, and greet the new one who is eager to meet with you," she urged, and then to the astonishment of everyone Nabiki opened her eyes and took in the first fresh sight of her baby.

Kaneda fell to his knees, the strength within him suddenly vanished. Ranma felt like sagging too, his tension levels having sustained him until now, only to be exhausted in the end by an ordeal many times more vigorous than simple fighting. Even Keiko felt drawn out by the tense few minutes during which she had played passive observer. Even Siren looked a bit weary at it all, but when they all saw the smile on the mother's face as Nabiki took her child in her arms and sat partially upright-with Trudy offering assistance-and then offered her baby a bared bosom for feeding, it was all that she needed to feel at peace with her existence, and all that anyone else gathered within that close setting could ask for of the powers.

And then-miracle beyond miracles-the tiny baby took the nipple into its half-form mouth and began to suckle.

"Whoah," Frank said at the last, breaking the silence that formerly had only been disturbed by the gentle noises of mother and baby, "Now I really have seen everything..."

"Incredible," Cologne allowed herself to say.

"Yup," Happosai agreed, "That she is...and a fine display of talent that was."

"She has the gift of true clerical healing," Siren marveled, "Who is she?"

"Angelique d'Anjou," the blonde announced without needing to raise her voice to be heard clearly within the cavern, "Commander, Seventh Legion Temuvarai, and at your service, cheri. Though, for purposes of clarity, I am presently entering employment as a Nurse at Furinkan High School."

"A nurse?" Nabiki asked, speaking her first word as she eyed the savior of her baby, then turned a curious look towards Kaneda and murmured, "Am I...missing something here? Why is everyone looking at me like I grew a second head or something...and...why am I standing over there in my other body?"

"Good question," Trudy remarked, then did a double-take, "Other body? Oh...I think I get it...Jusenkyo..."

Nabiki turned a glance towards the redhead and asked, "And who the heck are you supposed to be?"

"Ah...well...I'm...ah...starting work at Furinkan myself, it seems," Trudy answered, "In fact I'm going to be your new..."

"PE instructor," Frank supplied before the redhead could finish.

"Right," Trudy noted, then blinked and turned an askance look towards the big man, "PE?!"

"We'll talk about it later," Frank urged, "At the moment, however...it's good to have you back, Mrs. Saotome."

"Good to be back...just a little tired is all," Nabiki said as she seemed to be having difficulty keeping her eyes open, "Now...would somebody mind telling me later...just what all happened while I was busy...having this little nipper?"

Keiko stepped forward and placed a hand over Nabiki's brow, "Why don't you get some rest and we'll talk about it when you're back up in action, Nab-chan. I'm sure I speak for Ranma and Kaneda over there when I say that you've done enough hard work for one evening."

Ranma managed to approach with hesitant motions, then Nabiki glanced up at him and gave him one of her patented looks, to which he could only shrug and say, "Hey, Nab-chan...everything okay now?"

"You tell me," Nabiki mused, only to wince and glance away, "Oh...and tell Perchan to get appropriately dressed the next time I see her."

The cat on Ranma's shoulder hunched her shoulders and attempted to look innocent, though in all truth she was staring in wonder at the baby and counting him as a new addition to her own litter.

"Cute little spud," Trudy smiled, "Any thought on what you're gonna name him, Stud?"

"Ah..." Ranma started to say when Nabiki spoke for him once again.

"Chusen," she murmured tiredly, "Saotome Chusen...because he's my chosen little pride and joy...my proof at last that I really can be...a good...mother..."

"Rest, Cheri," Angelique said soothingly, "Let Chusen grow accustomed to his mother's breasts. He has much growing to do, and I sense within him a spirit that needs much growing."

The blonde felt a touch on her arm and turned around to see the handsome man known as Kaneda as he said simply, "Thank you...you saved my son's life. That's one I really owe you."

"Ah...?" Angelique turned a wondering glance at both the man then at Ranma, then shrugged, "Ah well...if both of you are zee fathers, then who am I to question?"

Then she lightly turned around and moved away from the mother and her family, blissfully unaffected by the two charismatic men as though hardly even recognizing that there was something exceptional about them.

But Kasumi noticed her, as did Siren and Keiko, and all three followed her with their eyes, much to the mild annoyance of Cologne, who nonetheless had her own speculative look as she studied the blonde in passing.

"She really is something," Frank murmured to the side, "Only what I'm still deciding."

"She's something all right," Trudy replied in the same terse voice, "It's like I told you on the way here...nobody ever really dislikes Angel when they get to know her...except maybe husbands, boyfriends, fathers and jilted rival lovers..."

The elementals were gathered together watching these events with their own degree of curiosity and speculation, but then Latisha spoke up for the others and said, "Master...if we are no longer needed to assist you?"

"Huh?" Ranma glanced away from Nabiki to his other group, then said, "Oh yeah...guess we're all a bit tired now. Come on ahead and get some rest, girls."

"Don't mind if we do," Karina smiled, then all five elementals dissolved into their aspect forms and flowed into their Master's body, at once mingling their essence and giving back some of the strength that they both were lacking.

Observing this Trudy cocked a reddish-gold eyebrow and remarked, "Very interesting...elemental channeling?"

"Just a novice," Siren replied, "But we're working to improve his technique."

"Ah," Trudy noted, "Well, good luck with that bunch...I think you're going to need it."

"It's strange...looking at myself like this," Kaneda mused as he stared down at the now sleeping form of Nabiki, "I never realized how frail and helpless I could be...I look so pale, and there's all this mess..."

"We'll have to do something about that before we leave," Cologne mused, "Good thing I can provide clean blankets and silks for the mother when she dresses.

"And a simple cantrip should be enough to remove the afterbirth and excess fluids," Siren added, giving a pause before glancing back towards the spot where Angelique had left the cavern, "As for the rest, I think it's safe to say that the cave has been properly concentrated against evil spirits."

"Yeah," Keiko mused, "Having a baby sure is messy business. Oh, which reminds me...where's Ryoga-kun? We have to find him and..."

"Find me for what?" Ryoga asked as he and several others appeared at the cave mouth, including Guile and his three ladies in the back-rows, two of whom were holding a heavily bound figure captive between them.

"Oh, nothing much, Sport," Keiko replied, "It's just...well...right after you left the Kuno house, Akane went into labor and..."

"Akane?" Ryoga looked stunned, "Y-Y-You...you mean she's going to...?"

"Then what are you waiting around here for?" Mousse asked, "Looks to me as if everything's been tied up here nice and neatly."

"Right...I've gotta find her...gotta get to Akane...!" Ryoga said in a blind panic as he turned around and charged off out of the chamber.

"Ryoga-kun...!" Natsume cried out in warning, only to see him vanish off down the hillside.

"Well, good luck finding his way back to Nerima in time to be a poppa," Lenore grunted while standing off to the side with Chloe, downwind as they were both still partially dirty.

"Mayhaps I should accompany him to see that he does not wind up lost in Hokkaido," Tatewaki mused, favoring Natsume with an apologetic expression, "And besides which...I, too, have concerns about the state of affair with my little sister...and newly delivered niece."

"Then go on and do what you must, my love," Natsume urged, "I wish to remain here and spend some time with my own sister."

"Yeah, and I think I'll go with him," Alison smiled, "Looks a bit too crowded in that cave for all of us to squeeze in there...and besides...for some dumb reason I can't help feeling worried about Beiko. Catch up with you guys later." And then she, too, was swiftly departed.

"Guess from the sound of things everything turned out all right?" Guile asked without himself coming fully inside the cave mouth, "In the meantime...what do you guys want us to do with this lout?"

Eyes turned to see the struggling Taro, who was being held in place by both Chun-Li and Cammy, but before anyone could answer Kaneda roared to life and stormed his way out of the cavern.

"YOU!" the handsome man snarled, "You almost cost me the life of my baby!"

"Huh?" Taro blinked, "Your baby? Who are you...what are you talking about...?"

"Try this on for size!" Kaneda growled while drawing back a fist that was suddenly glowing.

Ranma sensed what his wife's male incarnation was about to do and cried out a belated, "Nabiki-don't!"

"DIE!" Kaneda shouted as his fist erupted with a powerful Ki-bolt that was aimed straight at Taro, but which would nonetheless catch everything else up in its path.

Guile sensed the wave of energy, saw that Cammy and Chun-Li were too close to the blast, and that they each carried one of his offspring on their backs, and so he moved without hesitation, placing himself in the path of danger while raising both arms and calling up his own Ki to form a defensive shield.

The wave hit him like a wrecking ball, but with both legs braced he was able to absorb and then repel it, sending it rebounding back the same way that it had come, which unfortunately left both Kaneda and Ranma in its path...and beyond them a still slumbering Nabiki, with baby at her own breast.

But then Kasumi moved to intercept, and with an outstretched hand she caught the massive ball of concentrated energy and held it firm until it could be absorbed harmlessly into her body. She then turned a chiding look towards Kaneda and said, "Little brother...that was uncalled for?"

"Ah...oh...kuso..." Kaneda belatedly realized the gravity of his own actions then glanced at the ground and said, "I...I'm sorry...I wasn't thinking."

Ranma placed a hand on the man's shoulder and said, "You think I don't feel the same way as you, Nabi-ah...I mean, Kaneda-san? Right now I'd like nothing better than to pound his face in...but he ain't worth it."

"That's right," Happosai suddenly announced as he bounded forward, placing himself squarely before Taro, "You don't deserve a better name than the one you've got, my boy...In fact, now that I think on it, Pantyhose is too good for you, it's better than you deserve! So I'll give you a new name, just like you wanted, only I'm calling you Shithead!"

"NO!" Taro quailed, "Anything but that!"

"Shithead Taro is the name you're gonna be known by from this day forward," Happosai said with arms folded over his tiny chest, "And that's final."

"Nooo...!" Taro fell to his knees, and the two women holding him decided not to bother trying to support him.

"You know," Keiko murmured to Ranma and Kaneda, "I really hate to be the one to say it, but...isn't that a little bit excessive?"

"Maybe," Ranma murmured, pausing before adding, "Just a bit."

"But let him stew on it for now," Kaneda said bitterly, "It serves him right...and I'll think about talking to the old man about it later. If he's lucky and I'm in the mood, that is."

"Husband...are you all right?" Akiko asked of Guile, who had doubled over with a pained expression.

"Ah...that hurt a bit...but I think I'll recover," the big man winced, "You pack quite a wallop there...ah...Ms. Tendo? I mean...Saotome?"

"Believe me, I'm wondering myself at the moment," Kaneda said sheepishly, glancing at Kasumi before saying, "Thanks for the save there, oneechan."

"Just be more careful next time before you act...Kaneda-chan," Kasumi said, feeling strangely coy before this male aspect of her sister, even though she kept glancing sidelong towards Frank, who was also watching her with eyes that made her feel...very special.

"You should heed the wise words of your charming sister, mon amis," Angelique noted as she strode past Kaneda and headed out to where she had left her motorcycle parked, "To act rashly is to risk it all when in such closed quarters...and though this miscreant deserves far worse than you would deal him, he is non worth more than the welfare of those who so obviously love you. And now adieu, I must needs tend to other business."

With those words she retrieved her helmet, then mounted her motorcycle and started it up, taking off in a blur of dust and leaves down the side of the trail at a reckless speed that left some of them as breathless as of her beauty.

"Who was that strange biker?" Chun-Li asked as she and Cammy could not help but follow the blonde with their eyes, having only briefly been exposed to her magnetic charisma.

"Oh, that was no stranger," Trudy remarked as she joined them outside, "She's the lone Temuvarai."

"I swear if she says 'hi-ho Adonai, away,' I'm leaving," Frank grumbled.

"I really am sorry about that," Kaneda said to Guile, "I just...kind of lost it for a second there...what...?"

"No problem...hey," Guile said as he righted himself then got a proper look at his assailant, "Is it just me or are you becoming...transparent?"

"The latter I think," Kiima remarked, "I can definitely sense that your life essence is leaching away to...somewhere else."

Kaneda stared at his own hands and found them going quite translucent. Ranma stared at him in alarm and asked, "Kaneda?"

"I...I think I'm fading away..." Kaneda murmured faintly, "I can feel myself...being leached back...into the body of my...sister..."

"The spell I crafted for you was only temporary," Kasumi explained, "But now that you have done what needed to be done...it is time for you to return to Nabiki...my little brother."

"Well...guess it couldn't last...and maybe she needs me...just as much as I need to be her again..." Kaneda mused before vanishing from sight altogether.

"He'll be back," Trudy said, "Whatever you did to divide him into two parts, I sense you could do it with him again if there's a need for it."

"Oh?" Kasumi asked with raised eyebrows, "How interesting...I mean...oh my..."

"My lady," Lenore bowed to her, "If everything is done here, perhaps it would be a good time to return home. Your family misses you, and I think you should pay your respects to your other sister."

Kasumi turned her attention back towards the vampire and wrinkled her nose, "Oh my...what happened to you and Chloe-san?"

"We tried to wash that mud and gunk out of our fur," Chloe winced, "But we didn't get all of the scent off of us...so...maybe you'd prefer to stand upwind of us for the moment..."

Kasumi examined them both critically, then waved a hand and caused a tingling sensation to pass over their bodies, and all at once both Vampire and Werewolf felt much cleaner than before.

"There," Kasumi declared, "At least you won't be so uncomfortable to be around...but I would insist that you take a hot bath in the furo once we get back to our place."

"My lady..." Lenore's eyes were very round, and then she bowed to her and added, "You do us both a great honor..."

"I'll have words with the both of you when there's time for a debriefing," Frank said more grimly, then turned and gave his full attention towards Kasumi, "You all right, kid? That was quite a stunt you just pulled with the fireball...and your sister."

Kasumi felt her spirit much lighten as she leaned in close to the big man and laid a hand against his leather-clad chest before saying, "I am now, Frank-  
san...and I will be happy to debrief with you...when we are alone together."

"Hah?" Frank was surprised by the unusually forward and sensuous tone Kasumi was using, but then he felt a sudden stirring of his loins and had to fight hard to keep his voice steady as he said, "Ah...sure...whatever you say, Doll."

"Hey sport," Keiko nudged Ranma with an elbow, "Need any help carrying Nab-chan back to civilization?"

"Maybe," Ranma smiled, for once not resenting the redhead's notorious fixation with Nabiki, "Normally I'd manage by myself, but maybe you could help me craft a litter and we can carry her down the trail?"

"You're on, tough guy," Keiko grinned then glanced down at their feet and added, "And maybe you could help too, once we get you some hot water and clothes, Sex Kitty."

"Meow," Perfume agreed, deciding that it was well past time to go back to being two-legged, especially since she was looking forward to taking her turn holding the new baby...

Angelique only went a short ways down the mountain before pulling to a stop then raising her helmet. She paused to cock her head to the side and then said, "Well, Cheri? Are you also coming?"

Takaharis pried herself out from the shadows and confronted the paladin in her true form, bat-wings, hooves and reddish skin and all else, then said, "That was quite an impressive display you put on back there. Is that how you normally do business?"

"Oui," Angelique cheerfully replied, "Although sometimes they are much more complex quests than to scale a mountain, fend off a monster and rescue a damosel from distress. And sometimes one gets to enjoy the perks of a mission, such as giving succor to the lady, provided she is not accompanied by a husband."

"So..." Takaharis remarked, "An I a lady in distress that you intend to rescue?"

"That all depends," Angelique grinned, "Are you in distress? And, if so, how may I best serve to relieve you?"

"Um..." Takaharis tilted her horned head to the side and gave this strange beauty a sidelong regard with her slitted snake-like eyes, "Doesn't it bother you even in the slightest...that I don't exactly look like the helpless damsel sort? In fact...some might even mistake me for the monster..."

"Cheri," Angelique chuckled, "It is not the outward form that truly matters, but what is within you, and I can tell that you have a good heart, for all that you may resemble zee very devil."

"I'm an Erinyes," Takaharis revealed, "I grew up in a dimension much like the hell of earthly legends, only my kind are known as Hell's Unholy Avengers."

"I am aware of your particular racial stock, and of their fearsome reputation," Angelique responded, "But I wonder what you are doing so far from your own world...and how you came to make a home for yourself in this one?"

"It is a rather long and complex story," Takaharis replied, "But I have relatives here...and I was checking on the welfare of one of my cousins."

"Tell me all about it once we are alone, ma cheri," Angelique purred, "And would you mind very much if we do it at your place, as I have no home of my own at the moment?"

"My place, eh?" Takaharis smiled, "Well, I suppose I could let you crash there...for a few days at least."

"Magnifique," Angelique replied, "Then lead the way...or, better yet, hop on for a ride. I will attempt to be much less alarming in my driving."

"Er...well..." Takaharis felt extreme reluctance at resuming her place on the rear of the motorcycle, but she shifted her outward form to that of her earthly human disguise and soon had her hands wrapped around the waist of her companion, murmuring faintly under her breath, "I just know that I'm going to live to regret this..."

As the sound of Takaharis's scream could be heard over the sound of the motorcycle engine, far above in the trees Thelendra watched them go then said very softly, "She doth wish. Such a curious thing...an Angel and a Demon sharing pleasures in the company of one another..."

"Devil, not demon," Anri corrected, "She'd be rather insulted if you compared her with a demon."

"I well understand the schism between the two breeds of exiles, Father," Thelendra sniffed, then turned a glance back towards the cave and added, "And so one minor crisis is averted...and a new Eluini is born to the world of mortals."

"Indeed," Anri agreed, "Events are shaping up rather much like we were hoping they would, but for now it is in their hands to comfort and guide one another back into the light."

"Yet still the new Eluini will need guidance if he is to mature and grow into his true nature," Thelendra duly noted.

"All things in their proper time and place, Daughter," Anri assured her, "The true crisis is not yet here at hand, so but a brief pause will be allowed these young heroes before they face their true test of spirit. For the moment let us take comfort in the fact that a tragedy has been avoided and that there will now be some hope for the future."

"Indeed so, Father," Thelendra replied, "Yet still our efforts shall be needed, and sooner rather than late we will needs to tip our hands through more direct actions."

"It would be best for now not to tip our hands prematurely," Anri mused, "The enemy, if aroused, would take greater steps to insure that his side was better prepared against our chosen heroes."

"Stealth and subtlety must needs be our watchwords," Thelendra agreed, then paused before adding, "But...father...thou knowest that thy brothers, mine uncles...will be drawn to this realm now that they be aware that events are shaping catastrophically for this land."

"Reka and Udan do not worry me," Anri assured, "And Ulsa will guide things from afar so that their efforts do not clash with our own. For now let us concentrate upon our chosen protégés and see that they train hard for the coming battle. I trust that you will be able to manage things on your end? If not, then I could step in and offer myself as a teacher."

"Nay father...I will...restrain my impulses, as thou dost well know that I be able," Thelendra reassured, only to glance off to the side and add, "Besides which...Kasumi is very much enamored with the Homunculus. Methinks well that she shall not spend the night alone...or wake upon the marrow as a virgin."

"My sympathies then to Doctor Steinberg," Anri chuckled, "They do make a good match, though...even you have to admit that."

Thelendra's lovely features took on a mildly sour continence, "Indeed...he is strong, kind and charming in his way, and he brings a certain light of joy to the heart of Tendo Kasumi...which be why I do so detest him."

"Jealousy does not become you, my dear," Anri chided, "Besides...I think you'll find life in these parts will keep you on your toes, and our adventures here are bound to be met with some interesting surprises."

"What mean you by that father?" Thelendra asked, turning to look upon her elder with a puzzled expression.

"You're the Oracle in this family, remember?" he winked, "You will figure it out...when the time is ripe for it," and then he took off into the air, soaring aloft before she had time enough to formulate a good enough retort for her father's gentle teasing...

Continued.

Comments/Criticisms/Cascading Realities Surge: shadowmane

And so ends the first part of the current crisis facing the Saotome clan and their allies, but what is meant for the future, and will Ranma and Nabiki be prepared to face the challenge that awaits them? Fine out next time in: "Come the Furies," or, "That Was No Lady, That Was My Giant..." Be there!

X

/pre 


	60. Chapter 60

Dnabiki149

Nabiki 1/2

"A Very Scary Thought"

by

Jim Robert Bader

(Inspired by the works of Rumiko Takahashi & Others,

with concepts and characters created by fellow fanfic writers

Wade Tritschler, DB Sommers, Nicole Manders, Andrew

Greaves, Bill Guiroff and countless others, including "Buffy"

creator Joss Whedon; with special thanks to my good pal

Shiva for his editing and handling of this series.)

(Certain other characters and concepts are of my own

innovation, including my interpretation of the Monster

of Mary Shelly's novel, and various other guest stars

appearing in this portion of the Nabiki 1/2 series...)

Chapter Sixty.

Episode One-Hundred-Forty-Nine.

"Come the Furies."

"You know, when we agreed to take on part-time work with Doctor Steinberg, I was

kind of hoping it might be more exciting than police work, Miyuki-chan."

"I know, Natsumi-chan," Miyuki said fondly, "But he did ask us to meet some

important VIPs here at the Tokyo International Airport, and now that we're here

at the terminal where he asked us to be I think we are about to earn our off-

duty pay, so try and be on your best behavior to impress these tourists."

"Big deal, so we're going to meet some rich-bitch muckity-muck and her

entourage," Natsumi shrugged, "That's Bodyguard work and a gross under use of

our talents."

"I know, but you can't complain about the money...for once," Miyuki smiled

indulgently, "And after this we can finally afford to take that vacation to

Hawaii that we've always been talking about. All we need to do is escort our

foreign guests in style and we can chalk it up as a day well done."

"That's assuming we don't get attacked along the way," Natsume cautioned, "Or

ambushed by terrorists, or whatever other sorts of bad-guys we're supposed to be

guarding against..."

"Don't get your hopes up," Miyuki chuckled, "You know that this will most likely

be a peaceful day with no real excitement to break up the monotony that you're

afraid will bore us silly. Just some business types who need extra security,

and who probably won't mind if it comes in the form of a couple of cute

detectives, like us."

"Oh great," Natsume frowned, "Some fat American slob will probably drool all

over me the whole trip to the hotel. You know, Miyuki, I almost wish something

exciting would happen just so I won't have to fend off having my ass slapped all

the way into Tokyo."

"I wouldn't worry," Miyuki informed her partner, "If anyone did step out of line

we'd have ample grounds to file a complaint, and one thing Doctor Steinberg

doesn't tolerate is the rude treatment of the women in his employ. So I doubt

we'll have much excuse for gun play."

"Yeah, sure," Natsume sniffed, only to turn in dismay as they heard the approach

of a taxiing jet coming down the runway and moving slowly towards their

position, "Hey...is that it? Is that the jet that we're supposed to meet?"

"Oh my," Miyuki was suddenly quite impressed as she gazed upon the approaching

airliner, "Is that...? It is! It's a BD400 Global Express luxury class

business jet, of Bombardier/Mitsubishi manufacture."

"Huh? Are you kidding me?" Natsume gawked, "There are only supposed to be a few

dozen of those things even in production. Don't they have the longest range of

any commercial jet on the market?"

"Sixty-five hundred nautical miles, which means it would only half to refuel

once out from San Francisco," Miyuki marveled, "It's also said to have the most

spacious cabin space with plenty more head room than you get with other

commercial liners."

"Whoever's in that thing's gotta be loaded," Natsume murmured in appreciative

awe, "The cost of the fuel alone would be several times more than a year's rent

on our apartment."

"At least," Miyuki turned to her partner and said, "Be sure to smile for these

guests. Whoever they are they must be very important.""

"That or worth more than the combined net worth several top CEOs for some major

corporations," Natsume squared her shoulders and prepared to look her best as

the jet came to a halt just shy of their position, and then the engines shut

down altogether.

Moments later the side-door opened and lowered out to form a stairwell, and then

several figures appeared at the doorway, drawing the attention of the two police

women, who were expecting normal business suits but instead got a sight that was

quite beyond their imaginations.

She was tall even for a Westerner, easily six feet even, and clad in a maroon

red overcoat that hung down to mid-thigh level. She had a broad-brimmed hat and

mirrored sunglasses of a matching color scheme, and she conducted herself with

fluid grace as she descended the stairs, pausing to glance around before setting

foot upon the asphalt.

There were others crowded behind her, but the leading woman was the one who drew

the bulk of their attention as Miyuki and Natsume felt something strangely

fascinating about this mysterious woman, whose long red hair hung loose about

her shoulders. The woman smiled in return as she studied the off duty pair with

a long and appreciative glance, and then she spoke in a voice that thrummed in

an unearthly manner, like the rumble of honeyed thunder that rolled off the

tongue with sensuous fluidity and caressed the ear of the listener with its

aristocratic refinement.

"Very well met indeed. I take it you are the escort that I was told to expect?"

"Ah..." Miyuki belatedly recalled her manners and bowed, "How do you do, "I'm

Kobayakowa Miyuki, and this is my partner, Tsujimoto Natsumi. We're off-duty

patrolwomen..."

"Indeed, and two excellent examples of Tokyo's finest," the woman purred, "Well

met indeed. And I am Jones, Astarte...CEO and president of Jones International

Industries, a trading import and export business with long standing ties to your

government. On behalf of my people I thank you for meeting us at this late hour

of the evening."

"Your people?" Natsume asked, only to give a yelp as she found someone sniffing

at her side, having appeared seemingly out of the darkness. It took all her

discipline to keep from reaching for her gun because the figure that she

encountered when she looked to the side was enough to set her combat instincts

to racing.

"She checks out clean, Boss, they both do," the scratchy-voiced woman moving on

all fours called out, and both policewoman were startled to see that this

stranger was covered head to toe in light brown fur with tuffs covering both

arms and legs, and her features were distinctively non-human, quite proto-

feline, complete with diamond slitted green eyes, pointed ears that swerved to

and fro like a feline, and a full set of whiskers that twitched with her nose

motions.

"Very good, Catsclaw," Astarte murmured, "But I already probed them and found

them clean of the taint of demons."

"Not all who sssserve the demon world do ssso openly, assss we have cause enough

to know," a second figure appearing out of the night said lisping, "But thessse

appear to be asss harmlessss asss can be exxxxpected."

"Your caution is duly noted, Sandra," Astarte mused, "But these two have the

approval of Frank, and as such are to be trusted."

The third woman with the pronounced lisp was nearly naked, which startled both

off-duty policewomen, considering the weather. There was a crisp autumn chill

on the breeze and yet this stranger seemed not to notice, garbed as she was in a

light green outfit barely the equivalent of a swimsuit, one that was fastened at

the front by a weaving thong that barely contained a substantial amount of

breast matter, and leaving revealed a tattooed serpent that coiled from just

below her neck all the way down to just above her crotch. Besides the curious

green streamers that partially covering both arms and legs she was barefoot and

yet moved in relative silence. Her features were also distinctively oriental,

but closer to Amerasian since her eyes were green and her nose were more Western

than Eastern. There was neither warmth nor hostility in her gaze, but the

feeling was that she was somehow dangerous in spite of lacking any obvious

weapons (at least that could be concealed beneath her skimpy outfit).

But then a fourth figure joined them and said rather pleasantly, "Don't let

Snake rattle your cages, officers. She tends to do that for amusement, just

like Catsclaw can't avoid being sneaky. It's a habit."

The thing that surprised Natsume and Miyuki was that this new stranger was

almost as tall as Astarte and had smoky grey hair hanging down about her

shoulders. She was also wearing a light short-sleeved shirt and a pair of plain

cut jeans that hugged her hips in an altogether flattering manner. A bright

pendant hung from just above a substantial bit of cleavage, and to judge by the

way she was carrying herself you would think it was a day on the beach for her,

for she was no more bothered by the cold than were her two less human

companions.

"And you are...?" Miyuki asked politely.

To their surprise this woman flipped open a leather wallet and showed a badge

before saying, "Inspector Illyra Romaine, San Francisco PD, at your service, and

like you an off duty officer, so you can stand at ease. You're in good company,

I assure you."

"Thank you, Illyra," Astarte spoke her name with obvious affection, then more

crisply, "Sergeant Carson?"

This time it was a man who answered, a very big man dressed in heavy ceramic

armor with a visored faceplate and helmet, who crisply barked the words, "Sir?"

"Have you and Agent Fireflash managed yet to secure the package?" Astarte asked

without turning to glance towards the big man behind her.

"Neg that," the high-tech warrior said curtly, "Seds'r down, but Big Girl's non-

ops yet."

"I see," Astarte sighed, "I think it would be best to let her come out of her

daze on her own terms rather than to risk unduly upsetting her with the sudden

transition."

"Copy that," the man said crisply, only to pause and feel at the side of his

helmet, "Update, Mur says she's coming to. Better brace for it, she's moding

full panic."

All at once the huge jet began rocking slightly from side to side, and a booming

voice was raised in definite protest over some peculiar matter, and then a

clomping sound heralded the emergence of the largest gaijin yet to emerge from

the luxury jet liner. She was easily two meters plus, over seven feet tall with

mahogany dark skin and hair and was armored like a mail-covered gladiator, only

her eyes were wild with terror as she stormed down the ramp with a rage that was

evidently directed towards Astarte.

"Demoness, how dare you use your foul arts to bewitch me so that I would be

conveyed on this foul aerial contraption!" the giantess demanded, "I have warned

you before that I would not brook being coopted in this manner, but if you

insist on forcing my compliance in this manner...!"

Her fists were raised in apparent threat of violence, but she got no nearer than

two steps away from the maroon-clad Astarte when the one called Snake moved

forward, and without warning lashed out with a kick that caught the giantess on

the chin and effortlessly decked her. The big woman went down heavily and did

not move from where she landed. From the sound of things she was quite heavy as

well as solidly built, and for Miyuki and Natsume her presence alone was quite

daunting.

Astarte just sighed, "Catsclaw, Illyra, will you help Sandra carry Tri-Longu to

the limousine so that she can cool off and allow me to explain things in a much

more rational setting?"

"Sure thing, Boss," Catsclaw sniffed, "My big buddy does tend to blow a gasket

over little things like this, but give her a few cool drinks and she'll loosen

up soon enough, just like always."

"Better make them a stiff number this time, she sounded awfully upset with us

this time," Illyra mused as she and the cat-woman pooled efforts to life the

giantess while the one called Snake just turned and headed for the waiting

Limousine.

"Sorry about that!" another womanly voice called out from the cabin of the jet

liner, "She got away from me before I had a chance to explain things. And I

really thought we were making progress over this phobia she has about heights

and confined places..."

"Not your fault, Muriel," Astarte assured the last of her companions, "But feel

free to join your fiancée and sister as we ride to the office building. It

should take at least a good fifteen minutes for Tri to shake off the effects of

Snake's idea of an applied sedative, at which point I should like us all to be

there in order to calm her. In the meantime...Lieutenant Kobayakowa, Sergeant

Tsujimoto?"

"Er...please call us Miyuki and Natsume, Jones-san," Miyuki urged, only to take

a moment to suddenly register the name, "Jones Astarte? On my...you're that

reclusive billionaire, the one who dabbles as a spiritualist and amateur

detective?"

"I see my reputation does proceed me," Astarte sounded quite pleased over the

matter, "And these are my agents...I call them the Furies."

"The Furies?" Natsume repeated, "You mean like the goddesses of vengeance from

Greek legend?"

"The very same," Astarte said as she motioned for the detectives to follow her,

adding slyly with a hint of mischief, "But the only vengeance that we seek is

against those dark forces that seek to prey upon the weak and the innocent. We

are friends to humanity, in spite of our...shall we say, rather unorthodox

appearance?"

"Um...sure, whatever you say," Natsumi said as she exchanged nervous looks with

her partner.

"I guess this evening will be an eventful one after all," Miyuki noted as they

followed the strangers into the waiting stretch limousine, reckoning even as she

said so that her earlier prediction of an uneventful night was likely to be a

hollow one, and the strange night of adventure was only just beginning...

"Sure mommy is feeling better, Squirt," Nabiki assured her eldest daughter, "It

got a little rough for a while there, but I'm feeling a lot stronger now and

I'll soon be back in action, and that's a promise."

"Really Mommy?" Lylac asked, "Because Eileen and Fragrance think maybe you need

to get plenty of rest, just like their mommies did when they got delivered.

Daddy looked real worried when you came home yesterday, and now they say you get

to stay home from school and take care of our new baby brother."

"Your daddy told you that, huh?" Nabiki smirked as she ruffled the purple hair

of the little child who was her heir and likeliest successor, "Well, just

between you and me your daddy tends to worry a lot over nothing, but I try and

indulge him whenever I can. You know how men can get all excited over nothing,

but if we let them run the world then there's no telling what sort of mischief

they might get into."

"I remember that, Mommy," Lylac replied, "But still you might get some rest for

Chusen's sake. I understand babies need a lot of breast milk in order to get

big and strong, just like I did."

"You bet," Nabiki winked, "And just between the two of us, your momma gives some

of the best milk around...but I'm doing what I can to copy her formula, so I'll

take a few days off and get rested up, then it's back into training for me.

Can't let people think I'm getting soft here after all, might be another guy

comes around trying to start trouble, like that wizard creep who tried to hurt

you and the others."

"I know you'll train hard, Mommy," Lylac said confidently, "You're the best one

around, and even Baba thinks you're good enough to be her successor. But just

the same try not to overdo it. You know how grownups are...they think they know

everything, and before too long they might even try and boss you."

"Well, can't let that happen, now can we?" Nabiki mused, "I know how your momma

would love an excuse to strap me down in bed, and your father would no doubt

tell his elementals to stand guard over me, so for their sake I ought to at

least pretend to take it easy, right?"

"That sounds like the best strategy, Mommy," Lylac agreed, "So I should tell

Fragrance and Eileen not to worry?"

"Sure thing, Kid," Nabiki assured the little urchin, "Oh, and what does your

mommy always tell you about dealing with people who try and boss us?"

"To always watch what you say, listen to what others say, find out the best

angle and work it," Lylac replied, "And never give a sucker an even break, but

never cheat on a friend. I might need them when I get older."

"That's my girl," Nabiki patted the little girl on her shoulder, "Now let your

mommy get some sleep, and we'll talk again when dinner comes around. Let both

your mothers know that I'm feeling a bit famished after my little ordeal, and I

can't wait to get back to feasting on their good home cooking."

"I'll tell them that, Mommy," Lylac said, starting to turn around, only to pause

and say, "Mommy...now that you've had Chusen, are you thinking you might want to

have another baby?"

"Well, no, I haven't really thought that far ahead," Nabiki answered, glancing

down at the baby resting quietly upon her breast, "I'm still recovering from the

last one...though he is an adorable little nipper."

"Maybe you should think a while before having another one," Lylac decided, "Baba

thinks having Kaneda go away for a while might have hurt you more than she's

willing to say, and besides...I kind of miss having your around as my other

daddy."

"You do have a point there, Kid," Nabiki leaned closer and added, "And if you

want the truth of it all, I kind of miss being Kaneda. Guess you'll have to go

back to having two daddies around."

"That won't be so bad," Lylac assured her father-mother, "In fact, Eileen

thought of a good name to call you so we don't get so confused about who are our

mommies and daddies. She's calling Aunt Ally her Fama, and I think that means

that you should be my Fama too. Would you like that?"

"Fama?" Nabiki cocked an eyebrow, "Well...sounds odd, but I might give it a

whirl. Guess that means Perfume's Fragrance's Fama as well...and now that

Beiko's had her kid, Aiko's gonna have to get used to being called a Fama.

Yeah...that might even catch on...I think I'll try that."

"I'll tell Eileen that you like it," Lylac said, only to pause before turning

around as a peculiar look came over her face, and then in a very low whisper she

said, "Mommy...Fama...ah...there's somebody listening in on us. I think maybe

you know him."

"What?" Nabiki fought the urge to sit up in bed, turning her eyes towards the

open doorway and tensing up slightly as a figure did indeed appear within the

doorframe.

But then a friendly voice called out, "No need to be uptight like that, Saotome-

san. If you tense up too much you make wake up little Chusen."

"Huh?" Nabiki blinked, then gasped, "You?"

"Why does everybody say that when I pay them a visit?" the tall form of the

fair-haired man known as Anri remarked as he moved into the room with cat-lithe

steps, hardly seeming to disturb the air with his motions, "Last I checked I

hadn't incarnated as somebody else..."

"Lord Anri," Nabiki narrowed her eyes, "You come unbidden into my room..."

"Like a thief in the night," the tall man shrugged, "Call it force of habit.

Now then," he knelt down and stared directly at the wide-eyed child before him,

"Lylac-san...it pleases me to see you doing well. But perhaps you could leave

your mother...excuse me...your Fama alone with this humble pilgrim? We need to

talk in private, and I don't think you should eavesdrop on this particular

conversation."

The child did not reply, only continued to stare at the strange man with the

penetrating green eyes as if seeing more in him than the usual grown-up,

particularly when he gave her a child-like wink of recognition.

"Kid," Nabiki said softly, "Do as the nice man says and find your sisters. Me

and Anri-san have unfinished business together."

"Indeed we do," Anri reached towards the child's face and pulled away his hand,

then deposited three foil-wrapped golden objects, "Here, consider this a bribe,

and share the spoils with your two friends. We will talk again some other day,

but for now our business is the sort of thing that only grownup people can truly

understand."

Lylac automatically stretched out her tiny hands and accepted the candy, but she

made a point of going all the way around Anri in order to reach the door, and

she did not pause to glance over her shoulder as if afraid of what she would see

if she caught him in full profile.

"Truly a wonder," Anri said as he stared in the wake of the talented infant,

"That one sees and understands far more than most adults. You are justly proud

of her, and one day she will grow to become a worthy successor."

"That's comforting to know," Nabiki remarked, "Considering that you helped me

get her back from that Shang-Kwan creep."

"You and your counterpart from the other timeline did all the real work," Anri

assured as he turned his focus back towards Nabiki, "I only facilitated the

rescue, which was nothing much to speak about."

"I see," Nabiki arched an eyebrow, "And did you also facilitate the appearance

of that lady who saved my son's life?"

"Angelique d'Anjou you mean?" Anri replied, "Truly a wondrous child of the

heavens, and indeed I do know of her, but she is not one of my agents. The one

you truly have to thank for saving the day is your own sister, who gained

counsel from my daughter, Thelendra."

"You mean the Seeress with the really big...profile?" Nabiki said delicately,

eyes narrowing as she added, "Interesting. And did you also happen to have a

private personal chat with Ranma? He was saying something about meeting you in

a dream..."

"Dreams are the foretaste of things that might be or may never come to pass,"

Anri replied, "Sometimes the best means of passing on a warning message is to

move indirectly, by showing one shadows of a possible future."

"So what's the big deal here?" Nabiki asked, "Why all the stealthy movements?

The vague warnings, the shadowy and mysterious omens? Why not just come right

out and say that you've been helping me and my family, both with Kwan and this

Taro business?"

"Patience, Saotome-san," Anri cautioned, "It is not usually my way to act so

directly, but times are such that we must move with stealth lest the true enemy

gain foreknowledge of my presence."

Nabiki arched the other eyebrow, "The true enemy? You're scaring me. Are you

saying that Kwan and Taro were just a couple of mild distractions?"

"Kwan was an agent of the enemy to come," Anri answered grimly, "It is a measure

of my respect for you that I give you this warning, that the true enemy will

eventually emerge and make his presence known to you, and when it does...then

you must be prepared to do all that is within your power to defeat his evil

ambitions."

"So what's the real deal here?" Nabiki asked, "Why are you getting me and my

family involved in this supernatural business? Can't you fight your own

battles?"

"Who says that I am the one involving you?" Anri countered, "This war has roots

that go much deeper than you know, and this nation of Japan is but a staging

point in a far greater battle. The war between Light and Darkness is not an

isolated matter that you can ignore or pretend has no connection with you,

Saotome-san. And as for fighting my own battles...I have been involved at the

very heart of this war for much longer than you can know. I am not the one who

chooses the battlefield or the soldiers who will wage their own struggle. Fate

itself is to blame for that, and your destiny was written large long before I

set my eye upon you and saw how deeply you would become embroiled within these

matters."

"Okay," Nabiki considered, "Supposing I accept all that on your say so. I still

need to have a better idea of what I'm going up against this time. I mean, not

to put the lie to what I told my kid, but I know that having this little squirt

took a lot out of me, and realistically I'm going to need a few days just to get

my legs back."

"Why not allow Kaneda to assist you?" Anri suggested, "Each time you transform

you regain a portion of your strength...though if you do it too many times this

little one may find himself deprived of the life-giving essence of his mother."

"You're suggesting a trade-off, are you?" Nabiki considered the matter further,

"Yeah, I've been thinking using my curse to speed up the recovery process might

work for a bit, but...if I do it too often will I stop lactating? And if

so...then will I need to ask Shampoo to play wet-nurse?"

"Sounds to me like a medical question," Anri mused, "You ought to consult a

healer for that, and it so happens that an excellent one has moved into the

neighborhood. But I warn you, this one is a charmer."

"I've heard that this Nurse Angel is a charmer," Nabiki said, "And I caught a

glimpse of her before. She's very beautiful...for a Westerner. But I think I

can handle myself around her."

"As you say," Anri stood up and smiled, "You will need to grow much stronger

than you are now...and so will your husband. Already there are excellent

teachers who can help you to gain new insight, and you will have strong allies

who can also be your teachers. I leave that task in your hands, but I cannot be

more directly involved here..."

"I know...not without tipping your hand to the enemy, right?" Nabiki frowned,

"You know, ordinarily I really can't abide dealing with sanctimonious types who

act all superior and all-knowing..."

"I know exactly what you mean," Anri agreed, "Those types always do annoy me."

"So why is it I have trouble disliking and resenting you for some strange

reason?" Nabiki scowled, "Because this humble act of yours only goes so far in

covering up for the fact that you really are a wise guy. I'm not really sure

who you are, but I can tell at a glance that you're a lot more powerful than the

lot of us put together."

"Power gained through knowledge that has been earned through age and experience

is nothing to brag about, Saotome-san," Anri assured her, "And if I am

experienced and see farther than others it is because I stand on the shoulders

of those who came before me. Try living through ten incarnations and

remembering every mistake and misstep that you have ever made in those lives,

and then speak to me about being a wise guy."

"Nabiki, are you all...what the hell are you doing here?"

"Ranma?" Nabiki turned her head and was startled to see her husband standing in

the door, and the look on Ranma's face as he saw a strange male figure perched

above his wife's bed, and before she could think to stop him she saw her man

extend his arm and summon up the power of his elementals.

But then something very strange happened...instead of attacking Lord Anri, the

four primary elemental servants of Ranma fell to their knees upon the floor and

started bowing.

"Forgive us, Lord Maitreya!" Latisha declared with real trembling fear in her

voice, "Our master knows not what he is doing!"

"He did not recognize you or else he would never have the affront to raise his

hand in challenge of your majesty, Lord Anri!" Karina declared with open

supplication.

"Have pity on our Master for his ignorance, Lord of the Daokan," Nagisha

beseeched.

"He's really one of the good guys...he's just a little hot headed is all,"

Sharil urged, "We pray you will forgive him, he is youthful."

"Huh?" Ranma stared in amazement at his elemental servants, then at Anri and

blanched, "You?"

"Me," Anri sighed, "And really, do we have to go through all this again? I

think the last time more than sufficient."

"What the heck is wrong with you guys?" Sobriel manifested, "Why are you bowing

to this guy? Don't you have any backbone?"

"Well, at least you have some spirit to you, little Doma," Anri mused, "And

my...you are a young one..."

"Oh yeah?" Sobriel extended her arms, "Well suck on this!"

The other elementals shouted warnings, but before even Ranma could act Anri

extended a hand and caught the Void elemental up within her own vacuum spell,

and all at once he held a ball of energy in the palm of one hand, balancing it

easily as Sobriel stared uncomprehendingly from within a basketball-sized

prison.

"Among the titles that other call me I am known as the Binder of Spirits, little

Doma," Anri informed her, "Care to hazard a guess why?"

"Hey, give her back!" Ranma immediately protested.

Anri smiled and said, "As you wish," and he tossed the ball at the younger man,

causing it to discharge its contents and with an outstretched arm Ranma accepted

his Void spirit back into his body.

"We warned you not to trifle with him," Latisha said, then to Anri said, "She's

still learning, Lord of Air and Fire...she spent most of her formative years in

a very dark place where they don't instill on their young any proper manners."

"Actually I found her attitude quite refreshing," Anri mused, then with a snort

of mild disgust he said, "And please get up off the floor and stop doing that.

Honestly, every time I try to have a simple chat with ordinary people, and they

get even a whisper of who I am or who I've been, it's always, 'Forgive me this,'

or 'Forgive me that,' or 'I'm not worthy'...and what are you doing now?"

"Averting our eyes, Great Lord?" Karina ventured.

"Well don't," Anri turned an exasperated look towards an astonished Nabiki,

"It's like those chants and prayerful songs that some people sing at me all

day...they're so depressing. People should take more joy in life and not worry

so much about whether or not they can petition their way into the heavens."

"Ah...excuse me?" Nabiki asked, "Are you saying that you're really...God?"

"Which one?" Anri asked, "I've known quite a few in my time, and the majority of

them are greatly overrated. And no...I am not God, or even God personified. At

least...no more so than you or your husband, or anyone else who truly matters.

That's the fault of my biographers...they never can get the details just right,

they're always monkeying with the texts and turning things around to promote

their own forms of religion."

"Ah...excuse me?" Ranma said, "Sorry I just attacked your right now...I didn't

recognize and, well...thank you for what you did the other night. Telling me

that stuff, even if none of it really happened."

"Quite all right," Anri brightened, "Actually, I'm very grateful to you for

altering the events of that little drama. You see...you may not know how things

were going to turn out, but I do, and I'm much relieved that between you all you

averted a real tragedy that would have greatly impacted upon the shape of the

future."

"Ah...yeah?" Ranma asked, glancing at his sleeping son, who yet remained

undisturbed upon the breasts of Nabiki.

"Quite so," Anri replied, "You may not guess to look upon him, but little Chusen

there has a destiny of his own to fulfill. I won't bother you with the details,

other than to say that he is very important. Also...he will need watching in

the future, and strong guardians who will care for him and help him to find his

destiny...guardians not yet born, but who will be bound to him in ways you can

scarce imagine."

"Thanks for the handy tip," Nabiki said, "We'll be sure to enroll him in the

right sort of schools. Now what else were you hanging around to tell us, or are

you just going to stand there and impress us with your vast and powerful

majesty?"

"Oh no, I've quite said what I came to say, Saotome-san," Anri assured, "I'm

sure you're more than capable of finding your own way from this point

onward...but I may stop in from time to time to give you a few pointers..."

"How very typical of you, Great-grandfather," another voice intruded upon their

private reverie, "A real hit-and-run prophet, if seldom respected even in your

own country."

"Ah," Anri turned around and favored the new arrival with an indulgent smile,

"One of those allies who will be your teacher of destiny, right on cue. Long

time no see, Siren."

"Long time no see, Great-grandfather," Siren the Archmage replied, "At by least

a couple centuries, as I reckon such matters."

"Indeed it has quite a while," Anri replied, "And do you that know that

Thelendra was asking about you just the other day?"

"What a surprise," Siren mused, "I haven't seen Aunt Thelendra in many decades,

but I imagine she's about doing your bidding and playing the role of your

spiritual advisor."

There was a very slight pause before Ranma and Nabiki said together, "Great-

grandfather?"

"Why yes," Anri smiled indulgently at them, "Don't tell me you failed to notice

the resemblance...?"

There are many a pleasant way in which a woman might awaken to a bright and

early morning, but for Takaharis the day started with the smell of cooking bacon

and eggs, which surprised her so much that she pried open both eyes and took a

sniff of the aroma, not daring to believe that someone was making her breakfast.

"If this is a dream, then it sure is a nice one," Takaharis mused, only to widen

her eyes as someone breezed into the room carrying a tray between her hands upon

which said breakfast presently resided.

"Bonjour, ma Cheri," the lovely blonde woman known as Angelique cheerfully

greeted, and to Takaharis's further amazement her houseguest of the evening

before was wearing a frilly apron...and nothing else to disguise her charms from

the morning.

"Oh...my..." Takaharis said as she sat up in bed even as Angelique poised

herself above her, then set the tray down upon her lap.

"I found the necessary preparations within your refrigerator unit," Angelique

remarked, "Such a strange device for storing foods...and yet from the contents I

was able to deduce that you have an appetite for earthly foods, and so I tried

my hands at preparing you one of my special dishes. Do you like it?"

Takaharis stared at the appetizing omelet before her and then raised a fork and

took a sample, chewing it slowly before declaring in surprise,

"It's...delicious! You cook exquisite."

"Why thank you, ma Cheri," Angelique knelt down and planted a kiss upon the

Erinyes's forehead, "Zee compliment is much appreciated, and when you have eaten

your fill...zen we will share desert together...the special kind that whets the

appetite for the food of love, me qui?"

Takaharis stared in amazement at the blonde and had a flash of memory from the

night before, and all the incredible things that they had done together, and she

said in amorous delight, "You won't have to talk me into doing that again, I'm

sold. But...but are you sure that you still want me? I mean...after all, I am

hardly all that...human."

"Everyone is human in zair own way, Cheri," Angelique assured, sweeping a gaze

at the red-hued devil-woman's body, "Should I resent you for hairy legs when

mine are smooth and silky? Nay, not when the fur between them is as soft and

downy as zee fur between my own thighs, and just as tasty to sample."

"You really are something else," Takaharis said with a shake of her horny head,

"You really do accept me as I am? It's not just an act or a feint to learn

about my secrets?"

"What secrets would you wish to share with me?" Angelique inquired, "You can

have all of mine if it would make you the more willing to trust in me."

"Yes, I think that I would like to know what there is to know about you,"

Takaharis said sincerely, drinking in the beautiful sight of her bedtime

companion while taking another folk full of eggs and chewing them slowly so as

to savor their taste, texture and aroma.

"Very well zen," Angelique sat down upon the bed and composed herself in a

fetchingly sensual position, "Zee story of my life, beginning when I was but a

small young girl living in the countryside of my native Anjou. You see...in zee

time when I was born there were not all of these fancy devices and technology,

just simple people living close to zee land and doing zair best to get by

without troubles."

"Not so simple if they were anything like you," Takaharis said in open

admiration, deciding that she was very much eager to get on with "desert" after

such an appetizing breakfast.

"I do not remember much of my early childhood," Angelique remarked while giving

her nocturnal companion a soft look of doe-eyed appreciation, "Of my father I

recall little more than that he had a kindly temperament and was very good to my

mother. Of my mother...I can only see a face like an angel who nurtured and

cared for me when I was very little. Alas, when my parents departed from this

world I was left to the care of an orphanage that was run by a nunnery, and I

was taken in by the kindly Abbess and shown much tenderness from zee age of

seven on...until she too was taken into God's motherly embrace when I was no

more than a mere twelve seasons..."

"Um...not to interrupt here," Takaharis murmured between bitefuls of the tasty

omelet, "But aren't Catholic nuns called the 'Brides of Christ,' and doesn't

their order insist that their god is of the decidedly masculine persuasion?"

"Oui," Angelique replied, "But I have since learned of their error and have long

since amended my thinking to accord with what I now know to be the holy truth

behind their delusion. You see...the early Church fathers founded their

thinking upon the assumption that God is male because of zee patriarchal beliefs

of zee founding religion of Judaism...and yet, like so much else that they have

been misled to believe due to false assumptions and critical errors in thinking,

they have yet to amend their logic to accord with the far more rational belief

that zee creator of all life must undoubtedly be a woman. After all, men are

zee seed carriers who fertilize zee woman to help her nurture new life, but man

cannot by himself conceive...he is not designed for zhat function, and so a man

by himself cannot be a creator."

"But by that logic doesn't it follow then that you need a male deity and a

female one to form a special creation?" Takaharis asked.

"You see now by what means I came to zee discovery zhat God must be a woman?"

Angelique gently smiled, "Zee holy spirit moved across zee firmament of God and

she begat zee universe in all of its diverse equation. Many other religions

tell much zee same story, and always consistently there is a mandate zhat zee

creation was like a birthing. I realized zis at a very tender age, yet when I

spoke of my thoughts to zee Abbess she just smiled at me and said zhat tradition

speaks one way while zee mind and heart would suggest another. In time I came

to understand zhat zee men who had founded Christianity had deep psychological

boundaries zhat would not allow zhem to admit to zee equality of zee

sexes...zhat women in their minds were objects of fear and confusion...because

zhey could not trust in their own desires when it came to zee need for sexual

pleasure."

"You know, I've thought pretty much the same thing myself on more than a few

occasions," Takaharis frowned, "From the way some of them write they must have

had a terrible relationship with their mothers."

"Oui," Angelique replied, "But zhen again, zhey were no more nor worse than

creatures of the cultures that reared them, and in zee harsher times when fear

and persecution were commonplace it was easy to project their own insecurities

upon others. How else to explain the rambling discourse of Paul's letters, or

zee mindless hypocrisies of Eusebius, Iranius, Augustine and Thomas Aquinus?

Their writings are full of aimless diatribes castigating those with whom they

have a deep disagreement, and they contradict each other in many important

respects...and more to the point, zhey contradict zee fundamental teachings of

Jesus. And yet zee church was greatly influenced by their thinking...and so it

floundered upon a terrible mindset that set them apart from the will of zee

creator."

"You mean like having celibate priests who minister to married couples and

stress the importance of family values?" Takaharis could not avoid a lopsided

amusement.

"Indeed so," Angelique replied, "And how much more starkly can zhis error be

pointed out zhan by zee simple realization zhat Jesus himself was a married man

with children? Not many Christians seem able to abide by that, even though it

was Rabbinical law among zee Jews zhat a teacher of law must have a wife to

support him, and zhat there is no tradition of celibacy among zee Hebrew. How

then can zee church justify its position upon zee traditional roles for women?"

"I'm rather curious about how you came to the realization that this must be so,"

Takaharis mused, "I can't see that as being a part of the curriculum that they

would teach at any nunnery."

"Indeed, but I was most fortunately favored by the Abbess, who early on

recognized my gift for letters and encouraged me to peruse zee books of their

archive. She gave me great latitude and did not set boundaries upon which books

I could and could not study, and it turned out that there was a rich treasure

trove of confiscated manuals and books zhat had been gathered into zee convent's

vault...books that were deemed too dangerous for young minds by some church

members, yet which I took great delight in studying, exposing myself to a wealth

of scholarly thinking that opened new possibilities to explore. Of course the

Abbess also counseled me to keep my discoveries to myself rather zhan to leave

myself open to zee charge of heretical thinking."

"How very enlightened of her," Takaharis remarked with a raised eyebrow, "That's

hardly something that I would expect in the middle ages."

"Ah, but zhis is not zee distant past of which I refer," Angelique cautioned her

devilish companion, "You see...I come from a time zhat is an alternate future of

zhis world...a time when a great calamity has befallen humanity, and zee

survivors of zhat storm were forced to crawl back out from the midst of zee

ruins. Not surprisingly the Kristophoros faith survived in a somewhat mutated

form, and isolated pockets of civilization forced zee survivors to band together

much as humanity did during the previous dark ages."

"Oh...I...see," Takaharis found this new bit of information somewhat disturbing,

"A post-Apocalyptic future? And here I was thinking that you were some kind of

antiquarian phenomenon..."

"It is true that in my time zee horse has replaced zee horseless carriage,"

Angelique revealed, "But I am hardly zhat primitive, and we know of this era as

our distant past in much zee same terms as people of zee Renaissance knew of zee

Rome of zee Caesars. My age is zee 28th century of this world...or as this

world would become if it followed zee same path as our ancestors."

"Well...that's certainly...disturbing enough," Takaharis remarked, "So, in other

words, instead of being ahead of her time, your Abbess was actually more of a

throwback to this age?"

"Oui," Angelique replied, "And while she lived she was as dear to me as a

mother, but when she died a most terrible fate befell our order. A nun of a

sterner temperament became her replacement...and zhat is where things began to

go terribly wrong for all of us, though most especially for me as I was suddenly

cut off and denied zee privileges of reading from our archive."

"That must have been terrible for you," Takaharis sympathized, "To have one of

your greatest joys denied you by a more restrictive authority figure."

"Oui," Angelique said sadly, "Zee new Abbess was a woman very different from zee

gentle, loving and indulgent woman whom I grew up admiring, for she was stern

and most unloving. To her God was not a figure of perfect love and

understanding but rather a terrifying figure of pain, fear and intolerance. You

could not have a greater contrast in administrative styles and basic outlooks

upon life, and soon zee nunnery was like a prison to all who dwelled there with

the tyrannical authority of a harsh cloister where daily we were lectured as to

the weakness of zee flesh and zee horrors of zee afterlife, and always zee devil

lurked in zee shadows waiting to snatch away zee unwary."

"That figures," Takaharis frowned, "People like that always blame us devils for

all their basic problems...as if we had nothing better to do than to make their

lives miserable, as if we'd go to all the bother."

"Indeed, and many of us knew zhat there was something basically wrong about the

way we were being treated...yet we had no means of fighting back and could only

abide our shackled existence with zee prayer zhat at some time God would relieve

our toment. But zhen the cruelest prank of all was played upon me, for I

underwent zee change from girl to womanhood...and I began to pay more attention

to the other girls of my cloister, recognizing zee divine seed of zee mother

within them."

"In other words you started to get horny?" Takaharis reasoned.

"Oui...and more zhan zhat I fear," Angelique said ruefully, "My former mentor

had cautioned me that a time would come when my body would bleed and I would

begin to notice...certain changes. What she could not have prepared me for was

zee fact that puberty fell upon me like zee proverbial ton of bricks, and I

started to grow tall and fair with quite noticeable...developments...and others

began noticing me in a way zhat was formerly not contemplated. I found zhat

certain Nuns started doing little favors on my behalf, and other young girls

would compete to gain my attention."

"You must have been quite popular among your contemporaries," Takaharis mused,

reckoning upon the stunning beauty that this Angelique was today and marveling

that she could have reached adulthood without someone taking advantage of her

former innocence.

"But not with the Abbess, who saw my looks as a curse and not a blessing,"

Angelique said sadly, "She correctly reasoned zhat there would be those who

would seek me out with the intent of carnal favors, and she was most especially

zealous in keeping me out of sight of the Bishop of that region...who had

something of a rather unfavorable...reputation. I am grateful to her memory

zhat I never come under his direct personal supervision...but something else

happened zhat the Abbess could not avoid. It happened quite suddenly for me one

day zhat I fell in love with a fellow student...and zhat we grew closer to one

another during our bible studies, and zhat in zee fullness of timewe were

discovered together doing things zhat were quite utterly forbidden with one

another."

"Oh my," Takaharis said, "I can only imagine that it must have been...awkward."

"You think?" Angelique pouted, "We both were taken outdoors and publicly

humiliated by the Abbess, who shamed us before our peers, called us unclean and

unnatural, then administrated to our punishment, having me bound to a post so

that I could be flagellated before the eyes of zee others."

"Oh my...goddess," Takaharis did not need to feign horror as she saw the shadow

of pain and disgrace in the eyes of her gentle-voiced companion.

"I was young, strong and quite sturdy, so I could endure it," Angelique said in

a level tone of voice, "And even in those days my body had a tendency to heal

that was quite phenomenal, but which the Abbess chose to view as a sign that I

was personally marked as a handmaid of zee devil. Fortunately for my co-

conspirator in this redress, Celeste chose not to endure the lash of the whip

but at once broke down and confessed to our sin and begged the Abbess for her

mercy. She thus was spared my agony, which I knew she could not have endured,

and the Abbess seemed satisfied to let my example stand as testament to the

others, for which I am also grateful. But I did not recant my acts as a sin,

and so I was ordered to be put away, to be walled up within my cell and left to

starve to death for my lack of contrition."

"But...how did you survive that?" Takaharis said, appalled by this revelation.

"Fortunately some of zee nuns were more sympathetic to my plight and spirited me

away into zee night, zhen told the Abbess that I had escaped and was somewhere

lost within zee forest," Angelique explained, "It was zee truth after all, but

what zhey could not know was that I had grown up in similar woods and knew my

way through nature. I knew every plant and animal of zee wood and could survive

and take care of myself, which was not similarly true of others in my cloister.

I had thoughts of living as a hermit among zee wonderments of nature...but

unfortunately fate had a crueler hand to play, and I fell into the clutches of

some local bandits. Zhey tortured me with threat of rape and worse if I did not

tell their leader what he wished to know, and as it happened to turn out zhey

had their eyes upon the abbey, having heard rumors of fabulous riches contained

within their vaults, most especially a cross of inlaid gold zhat was said to be

worth a considerable fortune."

"And what did you do?" Takaharis asked, sensing a dark side to this story.

Angelique glanced down, "I was alone, afraid and quite out of my wits with

fear...I did not think that what I told them would be all that important...but

zee next thing that I know zee majority of zee men were away and I was left to

be guarded by a disgruntled sort who thought himself ill favored doing guard

duty. He thought to take his amusement out on me...and zhat was his undoing,

for I managed to grasp his knife and without a second's thought or hesitation

used it to gain my freedom."

"You killed him?" Takaharis asked.

"I took his life...and thus stained my hands with the blood of a fellow sinner,"

Angelique answered, "Zee first of many whom I have killed since then, but never

with as much unholy joy as I felt in zhat one terrible moment. It took some

minutes for zee shock to wear off and zee nausea to overtake me, and then I

emptied zee pitiful contents of my stomach and sought to wash myself of his

blood...but some warning instinct cautioned me zhat I needed to get moving. I

had sudden fear for Celeste and all of zee others."

"So you returned to the abbey, in spite of everything that they had done to

you?" Takaharis marveled.

"What else could I do?" Angelique asked with deep sadness in her tone and

expression, "By the time that I arrived, however, the bandits had already struck

and were doing their worst, torturing nuns to discover the whereabouts of the

convent's treasures. I could do little directly other than to pray for the

welfare of my sisters, but when the bandits raided the Sanctum a most amazing

thing occurred. The cross flared to life and seared the flesh of those bandits

rude enough to lay hands upon its golden surface. The rest of those rude men

went into a blind panic and in their madness murdered the Abbess, but all this

served to do was to awaken the wrath of a spirit of vengeance, and as a terrible

apparition took form I saw the face of an angel descend and drive away the rest

of the bad men. Many nuns fled in terror as well, but I stayed on to behold the

living face of the Goddess, and in that moment I knew without question that she

was my heavenly mother."

"That sounds pretty amazing," Takaharis remarked, "I've known more than a few

angels personally in my time, and I can vouch for the fact that some of them can

be real terrors when you arouse them."

"Oui," Angelique concurred, "But when this Angel spoke to me she put my soul at

peace and informed me that my time with the abbey was at an end, and that my

life would take a different path, one that would lead me to the truth beyond all

false theology and dogma. She then summoned up the Dark Man to guide me in my

travels..."

"The Dark Man?" Takaharis asked with an arched eyebrow.

"The one who is a hero of a thousand names yet always is drawn to the tragedies

of mortals," Angelique replied, "He became my teacher on the way to my new life

in the grace of God almighty, a quiet man of very few words whose actions speak

far more loudly, and whose nobility can be discerned through his silence. He

guided me to the lands of the Elves and Faeries, and in their realm I resided

for a time, learning much of the ways of nature...but inevitably he drew me on

the road once again and conveyed me to the land of Culelin, wherein I began my

new life training in the ways of the Temuvarai."

"The Temuvarai...this Silver Legion of which you have spoken?" Takaharis

discerned.

"The Legion Argent, in whose service I hold the rank of a Commander," Angelique

replied, "Warrior Knights who are trained as priestesses in the service of

Order, who serve the land and the Queen of Swords who leads and guides us in our

struggles against the forces of Chaos. I have resided among them for nearly

forty years and have grown strong in the ways of God, yet always the quest

drives me on, to find those who are in need of my protection and to right the

wrongs that oppress them. In this way I do honor to the memory of my beloved

Abbess, and fulfill the promise that God herself saw within me."

"But what are you doing here in the past?" Takaharis wondered, "If you come from

an age seven centuries into the future..."

"Alas, a mission I undertook stranded me here in this time without means of

returning to my proper era," Angelique explained, "But I have managed to adjust

and have taken up service in the case of those forces that do fight to prevent

my future from becoming an inevitability. I see much potential in this time to

avert the tide of darkness that may yet swallow the world and plunge all who are

now living into a millennia of darkness. It is a very good cause to fight for

while I am here...though I do still retain the hope of one day returning home

and being reunited with my friends, family and loved ones."

"Fascinating," Takaharis remarked, "But how does the fact that you are a holy

knight square with the fact that you also seem quite casual in matters of the

body?"

Angelique smiled fetchingly and posed herself in a seductive manner, "Zee body

is the creation of God...in her likeness were we crafted...so what shame is

there in adoring her creations? I am a lover of life who treasures those with

whom I make closer intimate contact...and to me all women are beautiful and

sacred creatures. In making love to them I am expressing my joy and admiration

for the Creator, and by giving them pleasure I give praise to she who is the

Mother of all creation."

"Well, you've certainly made a convert out of me," Takaharis mused, only to

shudder slightly as Angelique caressed her cheek with a hand and felt along the

ridges of her curling rams horns, stroking a finger behind one ear-lobe and

causing the Erinyes to experience a shiver of delight that was entirely

sensualistic.

"Zee pleasure of your conversion was entirely mine, Cheri," Angelique cooed

throatily, "But tell me...I am curious to know in turn zee story of why you

dwell here in the land of mortal men and women. Pray tell me what drew you so

far away from your home, and why I feel such sadness within you?"

"You...really want to know my story?" Takaharis sighed, "Well...simply put, my

home is in Malabolge..."

"Zee world known as the Boundary Circle between zee Ninth region of Hell and zee

Valley of Princes?"

"That's what Dante called it, but he was only a tourist and got most of the

details all screwed up," Takaharis remarked, "The truth is that there is a huge

multiverse of difference between our realm and what mortals think of as the Hell

of the afterlife. For one thing...you are aware of the distinction that

separates Devils from Demons?"

"Oui," Angelique answered, "It is said that Devils are creatures who dwell in

the abyss beyond the circle of light that surrounds the human realms...while

Devils are creatures of Order who serve the Dark Realms that are zee shadow

realms zhat dwell beneath the light of zee heavens."

"Well, that's the simplified version, but yes," Takaharis replied, "Demons are

chaotic beings while Devils serve the cause of order. We exist within a highly

structured system that binds us to the roots of the universal Tree of Life, and

we obey the will of hierarchy and structure within a highly tribalistic system

under the tyranny of various princes. My kind, the Erinyes, were known to

ancient humans as the dark avengers of Hell because we sought out, persecute and

punish the wicked in accordance with various contracts that exist between our

realms and the kingdoms of Heaven."

"Indeed," Angelique remarked, "Your realms are not in competition with heaven

but complimentary...whereas the Demons exist to destroy this delicate balance."

"You got it," Takaharis nodded, "Of course it's wrong to generalize, and not all

Demons are inherently bad people, but for the most part those demonic tribes

that dwell beyond the shadow are jealous of the light and would seek to overrun

the mortals realms, if we allowed them. That is why Devils and Demons have been

in a state of near-constant war for the whole of human history, and humans are

our natural allies."

"As opposed to common myth that would define no inherent difference between your

two distinctive groups?" Angelique slyly noted.

"Most mortals have trouble telling us apart," Takaharis scowled, "And it can

really be annoying when someone points a finger at me and mistakes me for a

Demon. But as bad as that is, the plain truth is that many among the Heavenly

realms have trouble defining us as even marginally preferable to the demons. It

tends to cause more than a bit of friction in our dealings with the residents of

the planes of light, and so for that reason we have to conduct our affairs

through a complicated series of intermediaries, like my late beloved father,

Durke Montaigne Takaharis.

"Ah, your father?" Angelique inquired with more than polite interest.

"My father was a lawyer," Takaharis paused to wince slightly, "I know...Lawyers

in Hell, it's quite the cliché, but apropos, as even I must admit. He belonged

to a large firm known as Wilken, Bilken and Nodd, and he ran their litigation

department, which frequently conducts affairs when there is a complaint to be

filed on behalf of Hell or Heaven."

"I see," Angelique mused, "In other words your father represented the various

Princes in litigation against their representative counterparts in Heaven?"

"That was one of his primary duties, yes," Takaharis sighed, "And he was rather

good at his work, Infernal Affairs matters notwithstanding. He did well enough

to support his family in comfort and style, and I grew up in his house as a

pampered princess of privilege, something of a spoiled Bad Girl who had no

greater ambitions for her future than to one day graduate from a university and

become a Lawyer to follow in father's hooves. Unfortunately the fates took a

rather cruel twist in my case and altered my plans by causing me to fall in love

with the entirely wrong sort of person."

"And who was this one who gained your favor and caused your ruin?" Angelique

wondered.

Takaharis sighed, "His name was...or is, rather...Halgariel, and he was a minor

representative of an embassy paying its respects to our domain, and father was

proud enough to host him in our castle as a guest under diplomatic protection.

I only chanced to see him by accident, but when I gazed into his eyes it was

like staring into the face of my destiny. I really didn't understand what was

happening to me then, but it seemed to make perfect sense that I introduced

myself and offered to help guide him as a service to my father. I really

convinced myself that it was nothing more than this. I was really that naïve

and unworldly, but at the time I seriously believed that my fascination with

Halgariel was nothing more than simple curiosity at an exotic stranger."

"But he meant much more to you zhan just a stranger, non?" Angelique asked

gently, perceiving the pain that was in the Erinyes's expression.

"Of course neither one of us ever imagined it would go so far, and who could

credit that a Deva and an Erinyes would become so close that we would risk

jeopardizing our positions in the relative scheme of affairs. At first father

himself never imagined what was going on within his house under his very own

roof, and at first there was nothing more serious than some casual flirting,

some innocent exchanges regarding our relative cultures and

backgrounds...stories we'd tell one another until well into the late hours, and

then the holding and the cuddling that would follow. It took some time before

either of us could work up the courage to be more daring than this, but before I

knew what was happening I wanted him so badly, it was like a physical pain to be

separated...and inevitably an affair resulted that was quite tentative and very

physical...but which grew more and more passionate until we were testing the

limits of our physiological compatibility...and that in turn lead to our

inevitable exposure under circumstances so embarrassing that I blush even now to

recall the compromising moment in full detail.

"You must understand that while our two peoples had never exactly been friendly

towards one another there was still a fundamental edge of discord from the

incompatible philosophies that underlay our cultures. We were allies in name

and had mutual pacts to defend our realms against the demons, but between us

there was a wall of separation that was millennia old and would put to shame the

schism that used to exist between the American-dominated west and the old Soviet

Union. The odd thing is that, in essence, we both share a common ancestry

dating back to the Wars of Chaos that had been fought close to a million earthly

years ago, but the divergence between us was more than just physical, and we

believed ourselves to be entirely different races. How then to account for the

fact that a daughter of a prominent Erinyes House should be caught doing

something so forbidden with a scion of the house of Modron? To say that it

caused something of a scandal is to indulge in a grotesque understatement, and

it reflected very badly upon my father, who had allowed the affair to progress

to such a level. In very short order he lost his title, position and property

and became officially persona non grata in all the official ledgers listing a

'who's who' in Malabolge."

"Mon dieu," Angelique averred softly, "How terrible to hold something like that

against you..."

"I should have known better," Takaharis said bitterly, "I may have been naïve

but I knew that my family's reputation hung on a strict adherence to

protocol...but then again when you grow up expecting the worst of everybody, you

never think for a moment that anyone will object if you really do play the part

of a bad girl. And the fact that my whole family suffered as a consequence of

my actions..."

"Cheri," Angelique sympathized, seeing the tears form in the eyes of the proud

woman before her, eyes not normally designed for tears, yet whose pain was so

palpable that even a fanatic could not have failed to see her remorse and deep

contrition.

Takaharis made a show of dabbing at her eyes with her fingers, then forced

herself to continue, "Halgariel suffered quite a bit of a loss of face with his

own superiors for daring to seduce the daughter of an ally...but what exactly

was our crime after all? Falling in love is something beings from countless

worlds do all of the time, and it wasn't just the great sex that was keeping us

together. I was young and virile, and he had the body and face of an

Adonis...so what did anyone expect was going to happen? There was shame about

being caught in the act, but we hadn't really done anything wrong, or so I

managed to convince myself even though my family suffered from our loss of

position. I had two younger brothers whose futures were dashed because of my

indiscretion, and my mother was forced to cook the soup bones of imps in order

to feed us while my father sank into a deep state of depression. It was all my

fault and there seemed little good that I could do about it, and none of my

peers would even look at me...so...I decided to defect, to go with Hal and

become a part of his world."

"Zut alors," Angelique exclaimed, "I can only imagine that it was not an easy

transition."

"Well, other than being what I am, it's not exactly like I had ever committed a

crime against the clans of the Devas. And Halgariel had perfect grounds to

offer political asylum to me, so there was no real reason to deny me an

immigration visa. I thought by removing myself from Malabolge that I could

lessen the taint on my family...but even I have to admit that was pretty naïve

thinking on my part. I quickly discovered that many of Halgariel's flock had

concerns that my journeying to Modron would stir up hostilities between them and

Malabolge...but to their astonishment the Masters of my world effectively wrote

me off and declared me a non-entity. To all extents my very existence was

denied, and thus they could afford to politely ignore my treasonous behavior

rather than to acknowledge that it was even possible for an Erinyes to get into

heaven."

"I can only imagine how much that hurt," Angelique said softly, "My own country

long ago disowned me, and the nuns prefer not to speak my name save with

abhorrence."

Despite herself Takaharis was appalled, "You mean...even before coming to this

world...you were a virtual exile from your own?"

"Zey call me zhere zee Witch of Anjou," Angelique revealed, "And once even tried

to burn me at zee stake after trying me Auto-defay style. Fortunately I had

friends who came then to my aid, but it was hardly the only fay encounter that I

have had with the Kristophoros of my era."

"Well...my exile started out as more-or-less voluntary," Takaharis resumed, "But

it quickly became obvious that I had burned all of my bridges with Malabolge, so

I might as well do my best to fit into the society of Modron. And, as you can

well imagine, most of Hal's tribe were having none of me. I was too different,

too much a representation of the great schism that separated our people, and I

had the unfortunate tendency that Erinyes have of a volatile temper coupled with

an upbringing that had encouraged a rather savage and barbaric mindset against

those who had wronged me. Several times I was humiliated in public, but it just

made me all the more determined to prove them wrong, to impress on them that I

really was worthy of being Halgoriel's companion. After all, we both have wings

and are creatures of the air, and we have a natural affinity for reading Akashic

fields and manipulating astral energies, so what are a few physiological details

and anatomical differences? I could still love like any woman, and bear my man

offspring if we so desired it. All that I needed to do was to unlearn the

mindset of my people and train myself to think in terms of virtue instead of

vice. I really did think that was all that I needed to gain social

acceptance...I really was quite the fool for believing that...but when you were

as much in love as I was at the time you can almost convince yourself that

certain sacrifices will bring inevitable rewards and that people will give you

the benefit of the doubt just for trying..."

She paused to struggle with her emotions, but then she spoke again, staring off

into the distance, "In the end it was not I who failed the test but rather the

elders of Modron. They were too stubbornly hide-bound and stiff-necked to admit

that I had proven them wrong about me...that I had passed ever test that they

ever set for me, and was well on my way to achieving something of a level of

near sainthood, having grown to love those tender feelings that Halgoriel

himself had inspired within me. But still it was never enough for them to

completely ignore my horns, hooves and pointy tail. Try as I might to prove

these superficial details to be unimportant and they just kept reminding

themselves of everything else that stood between us. In the end I finally

realized what a blindly prejudicial bunch they actually were, and what

hypocrites they were to preach tolerance and inclusion while holding my race

against me. It finally came out that even my love for Halgoriel was not enough

to overcome an eon of differences between us, so we parted company and said

words of farewell, and I left Modron without so much as a glance backwards and

came to live upon the Earth, which is a middle-ground between the domains of

Hell and Heaven."

"Such a sad story," Angelique averred, "To lose zee love of your life because of

the thick-headedness of others."

"Yes, but in a way I am grateful for everything that brought me to this place,"

Takaharis said with a soft smile, "For I discovered through exposure that I love

human beings and treasure their company, even if they are somewhat slow and

thick-headed in their own right. Humans mask their own senses and are so easily

deceived by appearances that it is childsplay to walk among them without their

batting so much as an eyebrow. I have friends in the human world now, even a

few genuine friends who know the truth about me and accept me for what I am,

just as you do. Oh, I did manage to make a few friends on Modron, and I lost

more than my share back on Malabolge, but here people are more readily willing

to accept you as you are and not for what they think your represent. There

might be more than a few yahoos who would look on me and automatically think

that I'm out to steal their souls, or some such nonsense as that, but it's easy

to avoid them if you can alter your appearance and fit in with the morals of the

culture. I even took it upon myself to enroll in a human college and study to

achieve a degree as a professor of History, and with my intimate knowledge of

the Occult I'm even recognized by some as an expert on Demonology. I even have

several published books that made the best-seller circuit with Barns and Noble."

"So there is a happy end to your tail after all," Angelique cooed, moving a hand

to caress the thigh of the Devil woman before her, and then slide it down to

embrace the long barbed tail of her companion, which same she lifted up to her

lips and gently kissed, bringing a shudder of genuine delight to Takaharis.

"Well...I haven't as much to complain about these days," Takaharis said despite

a certain roughness in her throat as she felt her lust for this human growing

stronger by the moment.

"That is good, Cheri," Angelique cooed while leaning close enough to touch

foreheads with the horned woman into whose serpentine eyes she gazed with

adoration, "Because I intend to make zee rest of your morning something non to

complain about...and now zhat we have shared a breakfast, what say we skip ahead

to zee just deserts for sharing our hearts and telling our mutual stories?"

Takaharis was enormously tempted, but a belated sense of obligation forced her

to say, "Unfortunately...it is getting a bit late, and we do have commitments to

fulfill...not that I'm ignoring the fact that we could probably both play

hooky..."

"Ah..." Angelique understood immediately, "Furinkan High School. I had all but

forgot...we made a promise to attend to zee principle upon zis day..."

"And an Erinyes is bound by her word to always fulfill a promise," Takaharis

said reluctantly, "I may have turned my back on my people, but...it's too

ingrained in my nature...I cannot go back on my word once it is given."

"The same is true for me, Cheri," Angelique said with equal disappointment, "A

Temuvarai's word is her bond, and while God might forgive me being...persuaded

to dally for a moment longer...my conscience will not allow me such indulgence.

However...if you wish to bathe and make ourselves ready for public

attendance...zhen I would be willing to heat up zee shower...and if you scrub my

back, I will be certain to give yours a due amount of attention."

"Deal," Takaharis grinned, "You go get the water ready. Me...I'm afraid one of

the few vices I've become quite addicted to here on Earth is calling out to

me...and I really do need my morning cup of coffee."

"Zhen you are in luck, Cheri," Angelique purred, "For I left a pot for you on

zee heater. It is a special brand of my own choosing...and why else do you

think zhat zhey call it French Roasted?"

"I'd just love to have a pot of what you're sharing," Takaharis lasciviously

chuckled, then watched with appreciation as the blonde trotted merrily into the

privy and soon had the water going at full tilt.

There was just something about that blonde's bare ass that was so hypnotically

fascinating...ah well! Takaharis refrained from pouncing on her immediately and

got up off the bed, setting hooves upon the carpet.

And almost immediately felt wobbly on her furry knees, discovering just how much

had been taken out of her from the night's frantic gymnastics.

"Whoah...and to think I've been this done in by a mere human." She paused and

smiled before adding with a glance at the bathroom, "Nothing mere about that

human...and I can't wait to get another crack on her. Guess I really am a

glutton for punishment," she mused as she headed out into the hallway, intent on

a really good cup of coffee.

She got no farther than the refrigerator when a voice remarked, "Boy, do I ever

know what that feels like."

Takaharis yelped and almost jumped out of her crimson hide as she whirled around

and found a familiar strawberry blonde figure sitting perched on the counter in

a maroon red shirt with black hose stockings covering her lower body.

"Who...?"

"Name's Trudy Matthews, but these days I go by Wells," she replied, "And don't

worry, I reset the seals on your front doors. I can only imagine the importance

for you to keep level five wards in place, so I won't bother making too much of

a fuss about it."

"How did you...what are you...didn't I see you last night at that cave?"

Takaharis scowled, instantly on her guard against this stranger.

"Relax," Trudy shrugged, "I'm an old friend of Angels, and the last thing I want

to do is stir up trouble with an Erinyes."

"You know what I am?" Takaharis's eyes narrowed warily.

"I've had dealings with your kind before," Trudy replied, "And some Devils I've

known I'd trust a lot farther than I would certain humans."

"I could say the same in reverse about some Devas...but what exactly is your

business with me?" Takaharis asked with suspicion.

"No real business," Trudy shrugged, "Other than the fact that I feel obligated

to more-or-less sound you out. You see...I know Angel, and I know what kind of

effect she can have on people who've just met her, or slept with her anyway, and

I feel obligated to pass along a certain warning."

"What sort of warning?" Takaharis asked as she tried to study the peculiar aura

of this particular human, "Are you one of her former lovers?"

"Well, I've slept with her, if that's what you mean..." Trudy paused to think

about it then amended, "Well...slept isn't quite the euphemism I'd prefer to

use, but it wasn't anything serious for either of us. Just the sort of thing

friends do when they're lonely and missing someone else by their side. But I'm

not here because of that or anything...I just wanted to give you some friendly

advice, just in case you're one of those Erinyes who get attached and all

possessive and expect some level of personal commitment. You see...Angel is

everything you see and more...she's kind, compassionate, always free to lend a

hand, and courageous in battle and all of that. But the one thing she's not and

isn't capable of being is fidelitous. She's like a missionary of love, she's

free to give herself to anyone who's in need of close companionship, but you

can't expect her to remain faithful. She's not a one-girl act, and she's highly

promiscuous by nature."

"She is?" Takaharis replied with a look of mild surprise, then as she thought

about it she amended, "Well...I know that she was rather spontaneous with

me...but still..."

"Angel loves all of humanity, but particularly the female half," Trudy

explained, "Men don't mean all that much to her in sexual terms, and she's

pretty much indifferent to their charms, but when she sees someone who attract

her, she's right there giving you her heart...and everything else that's

attached, and she never fails to give her all in bed. She's totally sincere and

dedicated...but she's not exclusive, and just because she likes you it doesn't

mean she'll turn a blind eye to every over sweet young thing who crosses her

path...and I know for a fact that some girls just can't deal with that. Sooner

or later they get all huffy and green-eyed, and Angel just doesn't understand

that. Jealousy just isn't in her nature."

"I find that difficult to accept," Takaharis remarked, "It's been my experience

that humans are particularly susceptible to that particular vice..."

"Not Angel," Trudy assured the Erinyes, "If she saw you turning on to someone

else she'd be happy for you and wish you well and for the best...but when she

turns on to a fresh face it's not like she's forgotten all about you. If

anything she enjoys a good group scene, and she's very direct about her approach

to feminine seduction. Of course the corollary to that is that far too many

women are just as quick to turn onto her, and more than a few guys imagine that

they could get lucky. You're gonna have to beat them off with a stick if you

expect to keep Angel's sole and exclusive attention, or chain her down to your

bed, because otherwise...you're gonna get your heart broken faster than a good

climax."

"Are you telling me this because you want to make me jealous?" Takaharis asked

warily.

"Hardly," Trudy replied, "It's your business just how far you want to take

things, but like I said, Angel's a friend, and currently she's also my partner.

We work for the same agency and she's sort of my back-up...so if anything bad

happens to her...I'd kind of take it personal like."

"Well, you needn't fear that from me, Miss Matthews," Takaharis assured, "I've

learned to restrain my instinctive tendencies towards possessiveness in regards

to most humans. And besides...I would never do anything to hurt Angelique...not

after the kindness she has shown me since our first meeting."

"For your sake I hope so," Trudy replied, hopping off of the counter and

straightening out as she regarded the Devil woman frankly, "Because I've seen

people get casually hurt expecting too much from being with Angel, and while

she'd never go out of her way to purposely hurt your feelings or even flaunt her

conquests in your face, she can still be a bit oblivious to the way her

wandering eye can affect the people closest to her."

"Are you speaking from experience then?" Takaharis asked.

Trudy just smiled, "We were close once, but never that close, and besides...I

sort of have a live-in girlfriend of my own now who's more than enough for me to

handle, and if anything I'd be very careful about doing anything to hurt her

feelings, and not just because she'd turn me inside out if she caught me

flirting with a sexpot like Angel."

"Cheri," Angelique called out, as she appeared from the hallway, "What is taking

you so long? We do not want zee shower getting cold and...OH! Zut alors...my

dear friend Trudy! What brings you here this early in the morning, Cheri?"

"Just stopping by to see how things are hanging with you, Angel," Trudy informed

the taller blonde, adding with a sly look at Takaharis, "Obviously you've got

things well in hand around here, so I guess I'll be seeing you later around the

Furinkan campus."

"Ah, so you will be meeting us then sometime during or after classes?" Angelique

smiled fondly, "Cest Magnifique, I look forward to sharing a lunch with you

sometime. And...how fares my Beruna? I mean...ah, I forget zee times in which

we find ourselves. I meant...how is your Carla?"

"Doing well last I checked in," Trudy said a bit archly, then when she caught

Takaharis's curious expression she said, "Angel's ex is my current lover. It's

kind of a long story."

"Oh," Takaharis said, finding that she was very much interested in learning the

details.

Trudy sighed, "In fact...now that you mention it, I've been putting off letting

her know about the new assignment I've taken from Delphi. To tell the truth I'm

not looking forward to having to face the music, because Carla's gonna hit the

ceiling when she learns that I'm extending my stay in Japan for the duration."

"Ah, I understand your plight, Cheri," Angelique sympathized, "But it would

hardly be fair to keep her in zee dark when she is doubtlessly worried about

what adventures you are embroiled within."

"I know, I know," Trudy sighed, reaching into her sleeve and pulling out a cell

phone, "Might as well get this over with now...it can only get worse with Carla

when I put off my explanations."

She hit the speed-dial, then paused for a moment before saying, "Carla? Yeah,

it's me, Honey. Yeah, I know, kaiida...I meant to get in touch earlier

but...well...you better sit down my little hot tamale...because I kinda have

something I need to explain to you...and, yeah...it's gonna be one of those

explanations..."

Continued.

Comments/Criticisms/Ex-Girlfriends From Hell: shadowmane

Special thanks to my friend Bill Guiroff, who supplied me with information

critical to the early portion of this chapter. When considering what sort of

aircraft Astarte Jones would use to ferry her people to Japan I was naturally

considering the standard cliché of a private Leer transport, but then he

suggested to me two alternate planes of a luxury class that would more suite the

style of the Furies:

* BD400 Global Express, luxury class business jet, longest range of any

commercial jet, 6500 nautical miles range, spacious cabin room and

accommodating, Bombardier/Mitsubishi manufacture.

* The Gulf Stream Five, resembling an oversized leer jet with upturned wingtips,

capable of overseas travel with only one refueling stop in the middle.

Naturally I chose the former as it was large enough to accommodate even a

giantess like Tri-Longu. For those who haven't bothered checking out my comic

page series attached to my Angcobra website, I would advise doing so now,

because in a few upcoming chapters the Furies will be paying their respects to

Nerima...and the fit will really hit the shan when Nabiki and her posse have the

inevitable clash that befalls superhero groups, but before we get to that the

Tendo/Saotome clan must first endure a day at school...and with the likes of

Angelique, Takaharis and Trudy ready to greet them you can safely wager that it

won't be a typical school day. See what happens next time in: "Everybody Loves

Angel," or, "The Devil to Pay if You Are Late to This Particular Homeroom." Be

there!

X


	61. Chapter 61

Dnabiki150

Nabiki 1/2

"A Very Scary Thought"

by

Jim Robert Bader

(Inspired by the works of Rumiko Takahashi & Others,

with concepts and characters created by fellow fanfic writers

Wade Tritschler, DB Sommers, Nicole Manders, Andrew

Greaves, Bill Guiroff and countless others, including "Buffy"

creator Joss Whedon; with special thanks to my good pal

Shiva for his editing and handling of this series.)

(Certain other characters and concepts are of my own

innovation, including my interpretation of the Monster

of Mary Shelly's novel, and various other guest stars

appearing in this portion of the Nabiki 1/2 series...)

WARNING-LEMONY GOODNESS AHEAD OF YOU!

HENTAI MATERIAL ENCLOSED WITHIN THE FOLDS

OF THIS CHAPTER, WHICH MIGHT WELL OFFEND

SOME PRUDISH READERS, EVEN THOUGH THIS

TIME AROUND THE ACTION DESCRIBED IS STRICTLY

GUY/GIRL HETERO ACTION, UNLIKE MY USUAL

GIRL/GIRL HABITS...YOU HAVE BEEN

DULY WARNED, SO MAKE READY!

Chapter Sixty.

Episode One-Hundred-Fifty.

"Flesh and the Devil."

Los Angeles, LAPD District 47;

Office of Captain Fortunov

"But sir, he gave me probable cause..."

"Probable cause?" Fortunov responded in disbelief, "He gave you the finger and

so you felt justified in ripping his door off the hinges?"

"He was concealing a weapon on his lap inside, Sir," Detective Sergeant Carla

Mendez assured him, "So naturally I took the initiative to disarm him..."

"You sure did a great job of that," Fortunov arched his eyebrows meaningfully,

"You almost ripped his arm out of its socket."

"He had a spare," Carla shrugged as though it were no great serious matter.

"And after you disarmed him...or came close to it anyway," Fortunov continued as

if reciting a familiar lament, "You interrogated the suspect and deduced that he

hat a trunk full of illegal weapons, AND was holding the hostages that your

informant assured you would be found at a certain warehouse, but while you

solved the case and caught the bad guy your evidence is inadmissible owing to

the fact that you broke a dozen department regulations AND put the suspect on

the critical ward, all without once drawing your gun, which may be the only

bright spot on this whole debacle."

"Well, you see?" Carla said, "That's certainly something to tell the review

board."

"You think that's funny?" Fortunov demanded, "The guy may never walk again, and

this department is facing a potential huge suit, or we would if the guy ever

regains normal brain activity, and what the heck did you do to the guy? The

doctors can't even find a mark on him."

"Oh, you wouldn't know the technique even if I could explain it to you," Carla

shrugged, "Truth is it won't be invented for another four hundred or so years,

but I assure you it is very effective, and nothing less than the bastard

deserved after all the things I saw crawling around inside his head."

There was a long pause before Fortunov said, "You scare me sometimes, Mendez,

you know that?"

"Frankly sir I scare myself sometimes," Carla replied, "Having memories of

someone I won't even be until seven hundred years in the future can sometimes

make me forget who I was before that whole business with Manhanon a couple of

years back."

"Don't remind me," Fortunov said, "I try every day to forget it ever happened."

"I just wish I could," Carla replied, "But the bastard keeps popping up from

time to time messing with our lives...like the first dozen times wasn't enough

to clue him that he'll never get the better of me and...ah...my partner..."

"Who is currently absent on extended leave," Fortunov said archly, "For pulling

crap like you've been doing for the past two weeks that she's been absent."

"Sir," Carla insisted, "With all due respect this city doesn't go to rest just

because one cop goes on vacation, especially that daffy, hair-brained flame-

headed trouble-making two-timing..."

"I get the point, no need for the litany," Fortunov raised a hand to halt the

ensuing tirade, "You had a fight and things go to hell all around you. But try

looking at things from my end, this department is a shambles. Take a look at

these file folders on my desk," he indicated the stack that was piled high

before him, "Violence, traffic accidents, homicides, assault and battery,

destruction of property, general mayhem..."

"Yes, I know sir," Carla replied "The criminal element is completely out of

control..."

"These reports are about you!" Fortunov slammed his palm down upon a clear

portion of his desk, which threatened to topple several piles over, "And here I

thought it was Trudy who caused the bulk of this kind of nonsense, but the two

of you as a team aren't anywhere near as calamitous as you've been during her

brief absence! Get your act together, Mendez, and stop taking it out on

everyone else! Every partnership has more than its share of ups and downs, but

when somebody with your abilities starts to seriously lose it, that's when we

see casualty reports pile up and emergency rooms and the morgue get too much of

your business!"

"But only the bad people get hurt when I'm on duty, sir..." Carla protested.

"There's collateral damage in everything you do, Sergeant, and it doesn't matter

what excuses you use, the fact remains that you are responsible, and if I have

to go before one more review board and explain what I'm doing with a wild pistol

like you on the force..."

"I thought Delphi covered us on that," Carla frowned.

"You think your friends in that super-secret organization are going to convince

the department heads that all the noise you make can just be outright ignored?"

Fortunov asked, "What do you think this is, a cop drama or a movie where they

sweep stuff like that under the carpet? Oh, no problems if you've been thrown

on suspension, it just happens every day when you're got a badge and work for

the city, right?"

"The sarcasm isn't appreciated, Sir," Carla frowned, "I'm just doing my job,

catching bad guys and helping defend the people of this city."

"Frankly I'm starting to wonder if the city might not be better off without you

protecting it for a while," the Captain said while running his hands over his

tired, unshaven face, "Putting Trudy on forced vacation isn't enough...I'm

thinking you should join her, patch things up between you, try and make peace

before you start to do real damage."

"You want me to go on vacation?" Carla said blankly, "Sir, I've hardly even

taken medical leave in the last five years, and I'm fit and healthy. I don't

need any blasted..."

Her cell phone went off, causing the Sergeant to glance down at her belt in

annoyance.

"I thought I told you to turn that thing off when you came in here," Fortunov

scowled.

"I did," Carla whipped her phone up and snapped into the mouthpiece, "Who is

this? Huh...Trudy?"

"Obviously she knows how to override the off switch," Fortunov rolled his eyes,

"Why do I find that surprising?"

"Where the hell are you?" Carla snapped in irritation, "I was expecting to hear

from you two days ago...!"

She paused to listen to the other end, and then she blinked and said, "Japan?

What the Frel are you doing there? Looking up old relations?"

"Considering who her ancestors must have been, that must include Attilla the

Hun," Fortunov said wryly.

"How soon do you plan to be back...what?" Carla stared blankly off into space,

and then she snarled, "You're planning to extend your stay? And just when did

you decide to do that? YOU WHAT?! Are you crazy?"

"I've had my suspicions about that for quite some time now, yes," Fortunov

mused, only to catch a glare from the sergeant that made him fall silent.

"What do you mean you've taken an assignment...from who? You've gotta be

joking!" Carla snarled, "What does that walking pile of animated corpses expect

you do to for him? Teach at a high school?! Gym? But you sucked at that...or

that's what you told me! Listen, if you think I'm just going to wait here

meekly while you parade around a bunch of sweet-faced adolescent Geishas, then

you're even crazier than I..."

"Splendid!" Fortunov spoke up, "What an excellent idea! I'll even book your

flight for you and you can be in Tokyo by this time tomorrow."

"What?" Carla whirled on the man and sputtered out, "But Captain...!"

"Two weeks paid vacation...as a matter of fact, I'm extending that, so you can

take the whole month off," Fortunov moved around his desk and clapped the

smaller woman on the shoulder, "I'll explain everything to the Commissioner and

the Review Board...in fact, I'm sure they'll agree with me based on my

recommendation for what's best for the city. Besides, as you said, you're way

overdue, and this department can't afford to look bad with the Unions..."

"But...!" Carla protested.

"Sergeant," Fortunov gave her a stern look, "Do I have to make it an order? In

fact, take as much time as you like, go to Japan, make up with your partner,

enjoy a bathhouse and some sushi at my expense. I insist...or would you rather

leave Inspector Wells to her own devices? You know better than anyone what that

could mean for the innocent Japanese population."

"But..." Carla said with a bit less conviction to her protest.

"You want an international incident to break out that could start another war

between our countries?" Fortunov asked reasonably, "Or do you really trust that

Trudy will be able to mind her manners and stay true to you the whole time that

she's over there? Hell, she might even wind up in bed with the daughter of

their Prime Minister for all we know, assuming the Emperor's family is off

limits..."

Carla scowled, then she growled into the phone, "You caught that? Good. Then

be ready, I'm coming to get you, so behave."

And then she snapped the phone shut, glaring at Fortunov before saying, "I'm

only doing this to keep her from starting any trouble."

"Whatever you say," Fortunov waved a hand as if to assure the innocence of his

intentions.

"And I'm coming back when this is over...with her in tow, if necessary," Carla

added by way of insistence.

"Don't hurry on our account," Fortunov replied, "Los Angeles will still be here

whenever you do decide to come back."

"You don't honestly think you'll be rid of the both of us that easy, do you,

Captain?" Carla asked as she headed for the door, not even bothering to wait for

her dismissal as she exited with such restrained haste that it was more than

likely that she would be at the airport within the hour...traffic

notwithstanding.

For the sake of the traffic Fortunov hoped for clear lanes all the way. Once he

was certain that the feisty little "chicana" was good and on her way he murmured

softly to himself, "No, but I can hope for some much-needed peace and quiet."

He paused to think about it then he picked up the phone and spoke to his

secretary, "Get me the number for the Tokyo PD. Yeah, that's right, I mean

Japan...and bill it to my personal account."

After all, he mused in the privacy of his thoughts, he at least owed it to his

counterpart on the other side of the planet, a fair warning that one of his

detectives was visiting on a "hush-hush" case, and full cooperation was

requested. It was the very least that he could do for a brother cop who was the

counterpart of his legal station...otherwise there really could be trouble

brewing in the land of the Rising Sun, and who knew better than Fortunov just

how explosive the duo of Mendez and Wells could be when turned loose to their

own devices...

Especially when their private love life was involved...and Lord help anyone who

disapproved of working partners with personal feelings that extended just shy of

an actual marriage...

Very gingerly Trudy closed the mouth of her cell phone then turned to glance at

her new partner before saying, "Good thing I caught her in a good mood. Only

problem is...she's coming here to get me."

"Carla is on her way?" Angelique said in surprise, then she smiled, "Cest le

vie...it has been far too long since our paths have crossed, and it would be

very good to see her again...even if she is, as you say, your partner in this

era and not mine."

"Oh yeah," Trudy said with a nervous twitch that made her voice sound less than

fully convincing, "Just peachy. Only thing is...how do I explain you to her?

Knowing Carla the way I do, she's bound to jump to the obvious but wrong

conclusions..."

"What conclusions are those?" Takaharis wanted to know, "Does she still have

personal feelings for you, Angel?"

"Not as such, though zee memory of what we once shared is certain to be within

her," Angelique sighed, "Those were good times, and I do so very much miss her.

But...life moves on, and it is better to go with zee flow rather than dwell upon

things of zee past...zat are also of zee distant future."

"Oh yeah," Trudy averred, "Your past and future...my present, and I'm stuck on

her for good or ill, so this visit's my problem. I just know I'm as good as

dead unless I think up a good way of reassuring her that you and me aren't

presently an item."

"Do you need assurances, ma amis?" Angelique asked, "If so, zhen I will gladly

give Carla my assurances...and she knows that Temuvarai do not lie."

"Somehow I don't think even that's gonna totally convince her," Trudy sighed,

"Well...better deal with her when she shows up. Right now we've got a day ahead

of ourselves to prepare for, so if it's all the same to the both of you, I'll be

heading on out, and you can go back to whatever it was you were planning on

doing."

"Zhen we will see you later, Cheri," Angelique smiled, "And fare well until our

next meeting."

"Sure thing," Trudy acknowledged as she headed for the back screen door, "Have

fun in the meantime...don't do anything I wouldn't do...whatever the heck that

is."

"Au revoir until zee next time, my friend," Angelique called out, just before a

rippling in the mana field surrounding the place signified the passage of the

lone Kurustani.

Takaharis considered what she had observed about the strange redhead, then

turned back to her blonde house guest and said, "A very strange and curious

person. I could perceive the scent of death around her, but no taint of actual

evil."

"She walks in zee gray path between zee dark and zee light," Angelique murmured,

but then turned a fond regard towards Takaharis and asked, "Cheri...are you

jealous of her? You must know zat Trudy is a friend, and even though I care

very much about her welfare, there is no stronger connection between us other

zhan zhat we both have elements that come from a very different time and era."

"But she is a former lover of yours, correct?" Takaharis asked archly.

"We have exchanged pleasantries, and we both gave each other a good tumble,"

Angelique replied, moving closer to the devil woman while smoldering with

sensuality in her smile and regard of Takaharis, "But beyond zhat...non...we

were never so close as what I feel when I am in your presence."

Despite her reservations Takaharis found it difficult to look away as she was

drawn into the magnetic blue eyes of the platinum-haired siren, though she did

manage to voice her greatest concern of the moment, "And do you say the same

thing with all of your recent conquests?"

"Zhat all depends on how we feel on zee morning after," Angelique purred, "And

indeed it is a most glorious morning, do you not agree? And I left zee shower

water running just in case you were still interested in a cleansing. Surely you

do not wish your water bills to go up so high while we dally here in need of a

thorough soaping?"

Takaharis decided to relent and give into the moment, smiling in a way that

would have frightened a lesser mortal as her fangs gave her face a face a

distinctly...hungry expression. "Very well...then I suppose we could use a good

thorough dousing after the night we both endured together."

Angelique took Takaharis by one taloned hand and cooed most delightedly,

"Believe me, Cheri, I intend to be very thorough with you, and when we are

finished you will glow like a star rising up in zee morning heavens."

Somehow Takaharis doubted that they would be too brief in their preparations for

the coming day, and she privately marveled that they could get so clean and

dirty at one and the same instant, but still she ached to feel the touch of this

magnificent sex machine caressing her body, and for the sake of the joy that

they were about to share she was willing to set her reservations aside, to

indulge in the pleasures of the body while sharing a spiritual communion with

this sensuous Angel...

Frank awoke to the day feeling very, very good about himself...and he was aware

of the presence of a very warm and comfortable blanket laying across his massive

chest, a living presence who smelled of chestnuts and springtime and who fit so

comfortably upon him that he was loathe to move lest he unintentionally disturb

her.

Very slowly he opened his pale eyes and gazed upon the top of a brown canopy of

silken hair that fell loosely about a pair of slender shoulders. His arm lay

across her back and he could feel the softness of textured skin that yielded so

lightly to his touch. Her legs were spread around his massive thighs as though

she were riding a log in her sleep, and indeed, he could feel the other log of

his manhood stiffening with the waking of bodily functions and discovered-much

to his amazement and delight-that he was still buried deep inside of her body,

the cleft of her soft folds clenched around him in reflexive, possessive

retention.

He could not quite recall the last time that he had fallen asleep while still

enfolded within the depths of such a warm and inviting harbor. Size issues and

bathroom humor notwithstanding, Frank had often suspected his creator of

harboring a perverse sense of humor giving him a massive member far larger than

seemed right even for his hefty proportions. Just the sight of it alone would

often frighten young ladies far more even than his Hollywood image would

suggest, and just where in the heck his father had found the donor that

contributed to his current anatomically "correctness" was a subject of much deep

speculation for Frank. In fact, had he not believed such a thing beyond even

the formidable capacities of the not-so-good doctor who had given him life, it

seemed more than probable that his "dong" had once belonged to a long-dead

resident of some forgotten stable.

It had rather amazed him that he could even fit down there between the legs of

his current bedmate, and he recalled how-at first-it had been a bit

difficult for his lady friend to get him crammed all the way into her velvety

cleft. She had to work at it a bit before she could take him in all of the way

but still she had been determined to impale herself upon his rod in all of the

way, and by slow accommodation had mounted his horn and then adjusted her

insides to more properly fit him. From there they had begun a wild ride whose

ultimate climax Frank could not quite recall, other than that he had been

blinded by one heck of an explosion, and then his mind had filled with the

brilliance of her body glowing like a star as she came with the force of a mini-

supernova.

If he had harbored any doubts as to the transfigured divinity of his lady

friend, that had put it all to rest. She had literally shimmered with divine

majesty while taking him all of the way to a heavenly place where dreams of such

a moment had a strange and wondrous resonance, and where even Monsters could

find the grace of salvation.

A stray memory came into his mind of seeing his lover during the moment of

heightened consummation. Despite his best efforts to control his body's

tendency towards an electrostatic discharge he had indeed let go with all his

power at that critical moment of conjuncture. He had unwittingly electrified

her body, causing her hair to curl upwards as static discharges matched the

physical injection of bodily fluids up into her innermost cavity, and yet still

she had taken it all in with onlya mild cry of delightful triumph. Her

beautiful face was lighted from within by a joy that surpassed all comprehension

by mortals, and she had ridden him out to his fullest measure, at last falling

across him spent and contented while he lay back feeling momentarily quite

drained in all measurable senses, and in that position they had drifted off to

sleep together, his manhood still inside her and she quite reluctant to release

him, adjusting her posture so that she could remain as she was without

surrendering what she had so willingly taken.

It was rare enough that Frank could find a woman who could bring him off so

thoroughly, let alone one who could endure his full measure without suffering

injury, and always in the past he had been quite careful about going too far

with any of his lovers. He briefly though of his first long-lost love, of the

pink haired Chinese girl named Lotion, who had taught him all about the ways of

the body...and then of Eve, the woman quite literally made for him, yet with

whom he had shared a somewhat tempestuous relationship, and how they had

eventually grown apart as each sought a different path down through the decades

of their mutual existence. Other names and faces floated across his mind with

the memories that they brought with them, and much sweetness he had tasted in

their company, though many were long gone now, passed away with the passage of

the nearly two centuries that he had been walking the Earth, rare gems to be

treasured in the course of his many long adventures.

But few of them could hold a candle to this new flame that illuminated his

life...this Tendo Kasumi, a gentle girl of gentle means who nonetheless harbored

the fierceness of a wildcat when aroused to go the distance. Frank savored the

press of her flesh against his own heavily scarred body and marveled at the

strength that hid beneath the softness of her exterior...and just where did a

girl who had formerly been so ignorant to the ways of the body gain the

knowledge to do things like that with him? She had brought him to full arousal

like it was nothing, and he had tasted every inch of her in turn with delight in

the sweetness of her savor.

He really was getting heavily addicted to her company, but it had surprised him

the night before when she had put the moves on him, demonstrating a randy

eagerness that he had never even begun to suspect her capable of possessing.

Always before she had been quite shy and demure in expressing her affections.

She was too much of a proper lady by the standards of Japanese etiquette to even

think of something so inappropriate as sex outside of wedlock, and while she had

given him many passing looks and hints that she felt a certain closeness towards

him, always Frank had felt restrained by the thought that he might lessen her

purity and take away her innocence if he gave in too far to his own quite

legendary libido.

But now that he had tasted every inch of her warm flesh, and kissed her in the

most private and intimate of places, and received in kind many fond caresses and

hungry kisses in return he felt somehow connected to this woman on a level that

was quite beyond some casual affair involving the natural hunger of one living

body for another. After all, neither one of them was entirely human in the

normal sense of such affairs, and as mutual outsiders who yearned to find a

connection they had merged with one another as if finding a niche into which

each grove of their being fit perfectly and neatly. They complimented one

another in ways that Frank found both puzzling and yet mysteriously intriguing.

And to think she had been there before him as a friend and a companion for the

past several months, always expressing an interest in being more of a part of

his life, yet never until now willing to say out loud just how far she would go

in order to meet him half way. In a way he felt as though he had despoiled her,

and yet for all that the mystery of her innocence was gone she still held a

mystique that was unassailable, and so his interest remained as strong as the

day when he had first noticed her as a woman.

Her breathing became regular and then she inhaled gently and murmured softly,

"You are so quiet, my lord...I trust that there are no regrets for your part?"

"Not for me, Kid," Frank replied in a low rumble, "You?"

She purred contentedly and seemed to spread herself out over his chest like warm

butter as she murmured, "None whatsoever...which is a bit odd, considering that

I never thought I would be doing this with anyone but my future husband."

"Ah...yeah," Frank said a bit tightly, "Guess this ain't the traditional way you

were dreaming about having your first moment with a guy, huh?"

"That is true," Kasumi moved a hand and felt along the contours of the ancient

stitches that marked where one part of him had been sewn up to another, "But in

all honestly I have grown more than a bit weary with tradition. Thoughts of

propriety and what is improper no longer seem to matter as much as they did when

I was just a young girl growing up and imagining myself with a husband. The

values instilled in me by Aunt Nodoka and my late mother seem quaint and old

fashioned rather than a practical guide to how I want to live my life. Even

father's likely disapproval of my decision to consummate my feelings for you in

such a fulfilling way could not dissuade me from the choice I made when I

decided to be with you, my darling Frank-sama. It just seemed the natural thing

to do, and I was tired of holding back and minding my manners when both of my

sisters have casual and free intercourse with their marriage partners and

lovers. Besides...for me the moment we shared this last night was something of

a revelation...and do you know why?"

"Not really, Doll-face," Frank said while running his huge hand through her

silken tresses, "Despite the fact I was put together rather than born like most

other guys, I'm still just a man, not a mind-reader."

Her gentle laughter surprised him, and he saw her raise her head to look at him,

then she composed herself upon his chest and smiled with a warmth that put the

sun to shame as she informed him, "Because this is the first time that I have

ever done this with a man...and as a woman with a man. It proves to me that I

am still capable of knowing all the joys of womanhood, that my condition has not

denied me the simple pleasures that others know and take so much for granted."

Frank gazed into her crimson eyes and found himself as mesmerized as anyone

under the influence of a Vampire's hypnotic fascination, "Glad I could help you

out with that, Beautiful, but if the truth be known, I never really doubted you

in the first place. Of course..."

"Yes?" she asked, sensing a meaning to his slight hesitation.

"Well..." he paused then said a bit gruffly, "I found out a long time ago that

my blood ain't exactly healthy for most vamps. You got a taste of what I can do

when I let go...I'm like an electric eel, I store up static electrical charges

in the cells of my body and can release them at will, so imagine what I must

taste like when a normal vamp tries sucking on my veins."

Kasumi smiled and said, "It did kind of tickle. But I see what you mean...for

someone less...resilient than myself..."

"Exactly," Frank murmured, unable to help the memory from coming back to him of

seeing vampires who had made the mistake of thinking him vulnerable that way

disintegrating before his eyes as their bodies literally burned up from within

from the taste of the "battery acid" he called his blood, much though it acted

in most other ways like regular plasma.

And yet Kasumi had only once giving him a 'love-nip" without suffering harmful

side-effects...and then she had doubly surprised him by going down all the way

and taking his manhood between her lips and...

Unwittingly he felt his rod begin to stiffen, and so did Kasumi, who was

delighted at this physical sign of his renewed interest.

"You were afraid of hurting me," she said gently while smiling in a way that

belied the innocence of her statement, "But as you can see...I am not quite the

same vulnerable little girl that I was when you first knew me."

"Yeah...I know," Frank felt his Adam's apple bob as he swallowed, knowing the

rush of hormones that were firing his synapses were matched in kind by the woman

who straddled him so possessively, and that she was adjusting herself slightly

so that she could sit upright and feel his "pole" poking up more erectly.

"Frank-sama," Kasumi said, rather than her usual demure 'Steinberg-Sensei,'

which was further testament to how far their relationship had progressed in a

single night, "You don't need to hold back with me, my love...I gladly accept

what you are, and...I am grateful to you for being accepted for what I am...and

I am delighted to be with you now...and forever, if you so wish it."

Frank moved his hands to caress her hips and took firm hold of her as he spread

his legs and prepared himself for another romp with his beautiful Japanese

lover, "Careful how you say that, Doll...a guy might take it into his head that

you want this to be formal."

"I would have no objections...if the thought were agreeable with you," Kasumi

answered, squirming a bit as she prepared herself for another vigorous "pole"

ride, "But I will not insist on it, and I understand how men do not like to feel

pressured..."

"Your dad might have his own opinions on the subject," Frank said as he stared

longingly at the radiant glory that was Kasumi, fascinated by the bob and weave

of her full breasts as she moved slowly up and down over his manhood, generating

sufficient pressure that he was now as hard as a rock and fully intending to see

this through to his third climax of this encounter, "But for what it's

worth...any man would be proud to have a gal like you for a wife. Hell...a man

who have to be crazy beyond stupid to turn down the thought of being with you on

a long-term contract. But...are you really sure about this, Beautiful? I

mean...I've lived a long time, and I know a few things about relationships.

I've been married...ah...a few times over the years, and it ain't exactly like

I'm a stranger to the alter..."

"Maybe so," Kasumi mused, "But I suspect that with us it will be anything but a

casual affair, and I want to experience the sanctity of marriage at least once

in whatever passes for the remainder of my life."

"Huh?" Frank said in mild surprise, "You thinking of going somewhere, Beautiful?

Or don't you think you'll live forever?"

Kasumi gave him an endearing smile while working up more momentum as she moved

up and down over his much-prized manhood, "I don't plan on going anywhere, and

it is technically possible that you and I could live forever. After all,

neither one of us is getting any older in the conventional sense. It is just

that...with the sort of troubles we've been having of late...there is a

possibility...that one day in the future...our luck could run out..."

"I...see...your point," Frank grunted while giving her his own upthrust member,

"And you're right...if there's one thing living two centuries has taught

me...it's that...life's too short...and you gotta appreciate...and enjoy every

moment you're given..."

"I live for the present...I enjoy this moment especially," Kasumi sighed as she

worked up a much more regular rhythm, bobbing up and down over her man while

enjoying the way her heaving breasts were swaying with the laws of inertia, "But

every moment that I take...from this day to...whenever the fates will take

me...into their embrace...I plan to enjoy life...to the fullest...and I want

that life to include...a family of my own...a husband...and, if possible...even

children..."

"Children?" Frank almost stumbled over the idea, but then-with great

reluctance on his part-he softly admitted, "Doll-face...you know I...have had

kids in the past. I don't know how it's even possible, the way I was made and

all that...but...it is possible, at least on my end..."

"I know," Kasumi purred contentedly as she found great delight in continuing to

bob up and down over his lap, taking him in all of the way each and every time

she completed a down-stroke, "And speaking of which...having met your first

girlfriend...and your first wife...I am more than a little curious...did you

ever give a child to Madam Lao? After all...she is your wife by Amazon

law...and I am more than...a little curious...of how far your

relationship...extended..."

"Ah..." Frank found himself suddenly on the spot, and staring up at the

incredible sight of this entirely desirable young woman as she rode up and down

over his member he found himself unable to avoid forming an answer...so, much

though he was reluctant to relate the personal matters that existed between him

and the renegade Amazon turned Poacher, he found himself opening up to his new

woman, even as she opened up and received him in a way that insured his total

sincerity as they spent the rest of the morning working out the details of their

future relationship...and establishing for them both that they truly did have a

future...together...

"Such an amazing night, Tendo-kun," Saotome Genma remarked as he and his friend

sat on the porch together enjoying the sunrise while sipping from the "hangover

cure" that Nodoka had taken great pains in preparing.

"Say that a bit more softly if you please, Saotome," Soun softly pleaded,

wincing more than slightly, "I still haven't quite grasped the thought that I am

suddenly a grandfather with two more children birthed in one night by my two

youngest daughters."

"Sure was a night full of surprises," Genma mused while nudging his friend with

a playful elbow, "I hear that Daitokuji went into labor a short time after

Kodachi gave birth to her own daughter...and Akane was right there alongside her

during the whole process. About the only ones who didn't give birth last night

were Shampoo-san and Ukyo-chan, but it could be any day now for the former...a

few months beyond that for the latter."

"Incredible to think that they were each five months into their pregnancies yet

gave birth to healthy offspring who were fully developed," Soun remarked in a

faintly dismayed tone and expression, "It's as if a kami were speeding up time

to cut the duration to half that of a normal gestation period...and have you

seen the way that little Lylac, Fragrance and Eileen have been growing like wild

flowers in an open field? It's astonishing to think that my eldest

granddaughter is almost a year old, and yet she is not only walking and talking

but can carry on conversations like a girl three times her actual age."

"Disturbing indeed," Genma admitted, "But I'm sure there has to be a logical

reason, and young people do seem to want to grow up a bit faster than they did

in our day, eh Tendo?"

"You are so right on that, old friend," Soun agreed as they finished sipping

their medicinal tea, then as one turned to their Shogi board and resumed their

play (minus the pieces each had covertly stolen to enhance his own position).

"Of course it will be some time before the girl is back to her former self,"

Genma remarked while trying to make sense of the current number of pieces on his

side of the board, "I've been taking it way too easy with her on account of her

condition, but that will change once she's regained her health and can wean her

boy so that she can focus her energies into regaining her martial arts

advantages."

"Normally I would applaud your enthusiasm, old friend," Soun softly pleaded,

"But do give her a few days to recover her strength. From what Ranma and the

others have told us, Nabiki went through quite an ordeal last night and may even

have come close to losing her son, so for the sake of my heir please give her

body a chance to recover before putting her through your usual paces."

"She'll have the chance she needs to get back into shape," Genma assured his

companion, "But knowing her like I do, I'm confident that Nabiki knows more

about her limits than the both of us put together. Besides, she's got the old

woman to coach her through that. Just leave the rest to me, old friend, and

I'll see to it she's on her feet and back to kicking fannies and taking numbers.

Besides, after over ten years as her Sensei I've got more than a healthy respect

for the girl's resilience, and if anything it will be Nabiki who demands more

from us and herself than anything that the both of us might imagine."

"I certainly hope that you are right about that, Saotome-kun," Soun mused while

at last making his move, then waiting to see if his current gambit would be

successful...and prepared to take whatever steps were necessary to redress a

perceived imbalance brought about by the mysterious disappearance of several of

his key strategic pieces...

Unbeknownst to either man, another gathering was taking place upon the roof of

the house, one very unusual even in Nerima as the five female figures sitting

around in attendance were human only in contour, being quite inhuman in respects

to their actual nature.

And yet, as the lead figure demonstrated, their concerns of the moment were

entirely quite human, inspired as they were by what they had observed upon the

previous evening.

"I still can't get over the way they fought so hard to bring this child into the

world," Karina marveled, "It was as if it would have meant the end of the world

if they really had lost him..."

"Aye," Latisha softly agreed with the Sylph princess, "The way our Master

struggled so hard to channel our energies into keeping his wife's flame from

dwindling out...and the pain of loss he felt when his son was stillborn...I have

never felt anything so moving."

"And let us not forget what the lord Anri said regarding this child having a

special destiny to fulfill," Nagisha said thoughtfully, "And that protectors yet

to be born would arise to serve his needs as he grows older."

"That almost makes it sound as if the were fated to fulfill some great and

important mission," Sobriel gave a mildly disturbed look towards her

contemporaries and said slowly, "And if events are shaping themselves to help

bring the baby into the world, and protect him against anything that might

prevent his destiny from coming about, do you think?"

"You mean like the way that Paladin just strode up out of nowhere and saved the

day?" Sharil remarked with a thoughtful expression, "I didn't know healing magic

like that existed in this cynical era...but yeah, now that you mention it, when

the child was touched by her grace, it did something to really bring light and

joy to our master."

"I have often heard it said that human mortals will fight the most fiercely for

their offspring," Nagisha remarked in subdued tones that were quite atypical for

one of her normally haughty demeanor, "But this night we all witnessed the truth

behind that ancient adage...because the struggle to save the boy was like no

other battle that we have ever shared with our Master. He gave it his all and

demanded everything of us, and when we managed to help save the mother but

almost lost the offspring...it reminded me much of what a dragon feels when she

loses an egg to some poacher..."

"You know, any other time and I'd never understand what the lot of you were even

talking about," Sobriel said with less aloofness than was her usual temperament,

"But now that I've gone through it with you guys...I'm starting to miss the fact

that I never even knew my own mother and father. I grew up in the Abyss before

I was ensnared and put to work for that wizard, and before I met the Master the

Void was my home in exile. I never really got the concept of what a family

could mean to other people...but now...after living through that..."

"Yeah, I know what you mean," Karina had a very thoughtful expression as she

gazed down at the house where their Master was currently bathing, having told

them to "give him some privacy" so that he was currently without the tattoos

that normally covered his splendidly masculine body, "It kind of makes you

wonder...what would it be like to go through what these human women have been

doing? Would it be worth enduring a few months with a swollen belly just to

share in the joy that they take so much for granted?"

"Why bother suffering at all?" Latisha sniffed, "I've had offspring in the past,

and I've never been all that inconvenienced."

"Yes, but not everyone hatches their children from an egg, take my word on

that," Sharil said wryly, "And while I don't know too many of the details about

how my mother had me, I'm pretty sure she did it in the usual human manner."

"You do things your way," Nagisha mused, "But a dragon only needs to fertilize

her eggs before she drops them into her nest, and for that she need only find a

suitable mate, one who matches her standards for compatibility and desirability,

and only in the season when it seems the most appropriate..."

"You mean...have sex first?" Sobriel arched an eyebrow as she regarded her

fellow elemental, "Like...say...with the Master?"

"Did I say that?" Nagisha looked startled, "Ah...never mind...it just came out

as a random comment."

"Ah-huh," Karina said skeptically.

"Pull the other one," Sharil smirked.

"You two should get your minds out of the gutter," Latisha scolded, "He is our

Master, we should respect him and his wishes, and while the five of us are

contracted to be his elemental servants we dare not intrude upon his privacy by

thinking forbidden thoughts beyond our mission."

"Who are you trying to fool with that remark?" Sobriel scowled, and then all

five elementals fell silent, their faces growing speculative as thoughts turned

inward, and then as one they glanced down at the roof as though peering through

the layers of wood and plaster to view the naked form presently soaking in hot

water...and five hungry leers began finding their expression.

Down below Ranma was an enjoying a rare moment of genuine privacy, having

temporarily liberated himself of the company of his elementals. It was not that

he minded the girls or wanted to be rid of them permanently, but after months of

living with their constant daily presence within him he found he rather needed

to stretch out and enjoy a moment by himself, just soaking in the furo and

enjoying the thrill of being alive and knowing he was at long last genuinely a

father.

Nabiki had survived her ordeal, and their son would live to be a Man among Men.

His mother had praised them both for the joint accomplishment of returning with

both wife and child in his arms and giving her the joy of seeing her first

grandson safely delivered. It would be a few days before his primary wife was

back on her feet and ready to engage in some healthy free-sparring, but in that

time he planned on spending as much time with her as he could. Not that he

intended to neglect his other wives, of course, and he intended to reassure Ukyo

and Shampoo of his devotion, but for now it was Nabiki who needed their support

the most, and thanks to the joint agreement that he had struck up with Perfume

during the night he intended to see to it that his family unit remained happy

and contented while sharing in the joy of the new life that had been granted to

them by the Kami.

Odd how he had grown used to thinking of the four human girls in his life as

"his" cozy family unit, but he loved them all and was happiest when they were

all together. And soon Shampoo would be having her baby

"Whoah...when did I ever become such a family guy?" Ranma remarked to himself,

half-smiling as he thought about the chain of circumstances that had lead to him

becoming a father at the tender age of seventeen...just shy a few months of his

eighteenth birthday.

Of course Nabiki was in much the same boat, and now that she could become Kaneda

again she'd be doing her "fatherly" duties since officially she was Shampoo's

husband and not Ranma. The story the family had cooked up to explain his months

long absence involved an extended business trip, which was crude in its own way

but had helped to defray any speculation that outsiders might have of what a

"foreign born" woman was doing with her child in the Tendo household.

Of course the ironic situation concerning Ukyo was that she was legally

registered as a guy and so was able to marry Perfume for official purposes and

justify the Amazon's residency so that no one from immigration might try and

deport her. Of course the fact that Ukyo was actually a girl and was secretly

wed to Ranma in a private civil ceremony tended to make them both bigamists in a

strictly legal sense of the word, just as Nabiki herself was guilty of being

married in both of her forms, officially as Ranma's wife in her female half,

while her fictitious alter ego of Tendo Kaneda justified Shampoo's being there,

while unofficially he was married under Amazon law to all four women, Kaneda

being essentially a co-husband...

"Man, you could get a real headache trying to figure this all out," he mused,

recalling from a week before when he had tried to explain himself to that other

Nabiki and discovered in doing so how odd it sounded in his own ears. But this

situation was "normality" for him, and after a year of being in a joint

relationship with four very different and exciting women he had grown quite

accustomed to being the main man in a five-way harem.

But there was never any question about who was of central importance to their

family unit, and without Nabiki's presence the whole thing would never have hung

so well together. Nabiki...or Kaneda...was the "man" in charge as far as anyone

bothered to notice, which was just fine with Ranma as he had the greatest

confidence in her ability to manage things, and he was well beyond ego in

admitting to pride in her authority and command of any given situation.

Following her lead was as natural to him now as obeying the wishes of his

mother, and he knew perfectly well that he could never take her place in the

day-to-day decision making that kept things running smoothly and held their

tight-knit family unit together without friction.

Perhaps it was the lazy man's approach to sit back and support his woman (even

when she was a guy), but Ranma knew he had it good and was privileged to be the

one to back her and give her the benefit of his strength, and he knew that he

had the respect of his ladies in spite of his secondary status. Ukyo and

Shampoo were as accommodating with him as they were with Nabiki, and Perfume had

become way lots more closer with Ranma since the day when they had conspired

together to create the "Kamasenken." Where once he had tended to resent the

brown haired and buxom enforcer, now his fondness for her and respect for her

abilities made him tend to regard her as his most important ally. Perfume was

accustomed to offering support to the decisions of others, and as Ranma was as

much her husband as Ukyo was her wife, she was in much the same position as him

and could lend her strength to him at need, which made her every bit as

important to their family group as Nabiki herself, if not quite so flamboyant.

And Ukyo was quite a woman in her own respect, so like a guy in many ways but a

girl beyond question, and his closest friend next to Nabiki. With her he could

relax and be himself in ways that might have once been unthinkable, and he could

always speak his mind before her without the need to hold things back or

dissemble. Ukyo was the one who could make him relax, or laugh the easiest of

any of his lady companions, and while the closeness he felt with her was very

different from his relationship with Nabiki, it was no less strong a union built

on trust and mutual respect...especially as she could be the quickest to kick

him in the ass if he got too down or was in need of a good ass-kicking.

And Shampoo? What was not to love there? The girl was a marvel of sensuality

and spirit who could brighten any day with a look, just as her smile could light

up a room, and she was the one who knew how best to keep Nabiki in line, and it

never failed to astonish Ranma to see the way the purple haired girl could charm

and sway Nabiki's affections to get her to view things from an entirely

different perspective. How best to value her importance in their compact little

group? One could not underestimate how her worth as a person and as a future

mother to one of his impending offspring.

Yes indeed, Ranma was a very lucky man to have such wonderful women as his

wives, and the thought of living without any of them was simply not to be

contemplated. He loved each one of them in their own very special way and was

privileged to be loved in kind by them, and not a day went by when he did not

thank his lucky stars to be a part of the very special destiny that they were

crafting together as a unit.

But still the words of that odd fellow Anri made him wonder if there might be

more going on than even he could imagine. Things certainly did seem to be

coming together in a very odd sense, and the near loss of both Nabiki and her

child made Ranma appreciate even more the fragility of life, and fired a renewed

sense of zealousness in protecting his loved ones, which meant having to train

in earnest to master new skills that would give him the power he so desperately

needed.

Siren was quite obviously the one who could guide him in the ways of elemental

mastery, and Lord Anri appeared even to anticipate her involvement, if not

direct things mischievously from the sidelines. There were still a lot of

unanswered questions about the connection between those two, though quite

obviously Anri was a heck of a lot older than he looked, Siren being-by her

own admission-a contemporary of Cologne, and her frequent references to Anri

as her "great-grandfather" made him seem positively quite ancient.

The very odd thing about that Anri guy was that he seemed a contradiction in

terms in many respects, both old and young, wise and yet innocent, keen to laugh

at life yet also harboring a sadness in his eyes that went beyond serious

reflection. And powerful enough to intimidate even his elementals...with skills

in the martial arts that made Ranma feel like a stumbling amateur and even put

shame to Nabiki...and just who was he really? Boddidharma, the legendary monk

who founded the Chinese system of Shaolin reborn to a new life...or somebody

else entirely? It was very hard to shake the sense that there were layers to

the guy quite beyond the simple mysteries of reincarnation.

"Aw hell...I'm no good at that philosophy stuff anyway," Ranma mused, thinking

briefly of his older half-sister, Kaori, "That's more her thing, like the way

she explained to me the connection between the Senkens and the body...or the

universe as a human body, that sort of thing. Way too abstract for me...I just

need to see the connection between that and my training in the Senkens..."

"Do you wish for me to help explain things for you...Master?" a feminine voice

said softly from the vicinity of his bathwater.

"Huh?" Ranma blurted, glancing down with a start, "Sharil? But..."

The water itself congealed into the form of the beautiful Undine, and suddenly

she was floating there beside him, having assumed a fully human shape from the

waist up complete with textured skin coloration...and quite obviously naked,

positioned as she was between his legs.

"The others wanted me to convey to you our concerns over recent matters,

Master," Sharil purred sensuously as she regarded the handsome youth with

undisguised interest, "And we agree that your training must intensify if we are

to make a better team for dealing with the threats that will be posed against

us."

"Er...right," Ranma said nervously, stifling the urge to get out of the furo

fast before Nabiki or someone else barged in and got entirely the wrong idea of

what was going on there, "Well...you heard Siren...I mean, my new Sensei...we're

going to start out early tomorrow and-urk!"

His expression stiffened as something else congealed around his lower anatomy,

and suddenly the rest of her body was quite visible beneath the surface of the

water, having formed where she was with her loins about his stiffening manly

organ.

"Yes...that aspect of training we are prepared to attend, as is our duty,"

Sharil said with a sweetness that went beyond simple affection, squirming a bit

as she did to adjust her own anatomy to be more in accordance with his, "But we

have decided that our need to bond with you must take us each to another level

well beyond anything ever attempted before...and as I am the most experienced in

the arts taught to me by my former Mistress, Lao-sama, I thought it appropriate

to begin your initiation...after I managed to convince the others that I should

be the one to...how best to put this? Start things rolling..."

"You...?" Ranma felt his voice squeak and sought to regain some measure of

dignity, even feeling as he did that he had been entrapped by the elemental,

whose grip on his most sensitive member prevented him from heeding his previous

urge to vacate the water.

Sharil leaned closer, placing a hand that was webbed between fingers on his

chest, "Please Master...relax and let me handle things for you. Yes, I know

what you are asking...and yes, the others had objections to my going first, but

we made a pact between us to each take our turn with you, and I was the one who

won the first coin toss."

"The first...what...?" Ranma automatically glanced down as he felt the elemental

move with velvety texture across the surface of his manhood, but in doing so he

got an eyeful of her cleavage, and in spite of his considerable experience with

his human wives he found the blood rushing to his head with the threat of an

impending nose bleed. Anything else he might do at this point would only make

matters that much worse for him...and with Sharil's intent so obvious he could

do nothing but react like a man in the presence of an entirely desirable young

lady.

"Please do not think of this as being unfaithful to your wives, Master," Sharil

urged, "I was trained to think of the art of giving pleasure as a duty that I

learned to perform upon command for my lady...and for those Masters of the POJ

who came before her. I have ached to do this service for you in the past, but

out of respect for your wives I have held off until this moment...but now I

sense a need for us to dissolve the barriers that have existed between us so

that we truly can work together as a single unit. Please allow me to service

you, and in doing so to fulfill my duty."

"Your duty?" Ranma found himself unable to resist the persuasive caresses of the

Undine as Sharil moved her webbed hands up and down his chest, causing curious

sensations to travel up and down his spine even as the rest of his stiffened and

his rod became as hard as a thing of iron.

"Yes...my duty," Sharil gazed down at him with loving adoration, "This service I

perform for you will result in our becoming as one...and soon you will know me

more thoroughly than you have ever dreamed possible, my Master. Learn the

mysteries of water...and through me gain insight into the fluid state of

elemental being...the universal solvent that is the stuff of life itself,

without which this world would not be the green and fertile place that it

is...nor would humanity have evolved from the sea to the land...to experience

the wonders of nature that I will not reveal to you in fulfillment of my

obligations as your servant...my wonderful, brave and handsome young Master..."

And with that Sharil bent down and planted her lips upon Ranma's astonished

mouth, and when he gasped he found himself filling up with the water of her

substance, and reflexively he moved his hands to try and push her away, only to

find her body flowing about him as he drowned in her essence, feeling her tongue

push into him in order to impart for his benefit the vitality of her nature...

"Have you seen Ranma-kun anywhere around, Airen?" Perfume asked as she met Ukyo

in the hallway.

"He's taking a bath in the furo, Sugar," Ukyo greeted her wife, "I think he'd

rather not be disturbed, though if you feel like barging in on him, I'd be happy

to join you."

Perfume smiled as she gave her primary love interest a saucy look then said,

"Tempting...but I just wanted to see if he was in the mood for some free

sparring. Nabiki had him most of the morning, and as far as I know they were

chatting away about some stuff...don't ask me what about, because I couldn't

overhear the details."

"You what?" Ukyo was quite surprised at this, "Just how far away from the room

upstairs were you, Honey?"

"Just outside doing morning katas," Perfume replied, "Which is odd since the

room is hardly soundproofed against my hearing. But for some odd

reason...well...it was like there was this buzz that made things indecipherable

for me...I really can't explain it."

"Did you think to check in and find out what was going on up there?" Ukyo asked.

"That was my first impulse...but the oddest thing was..." Perfume paused to

consider her words, looking both disturbed and unusually puzzled, "...the moment

the thought entered my head...it just seemed to drift away, as though I'd

forgotten all about it. How strange...almost like someone were trying to

discourage my interest."

"Now if that don't sound ominous enough," Ukyo frowned, "Maybe we oughta have a

word with Ranchan and get to the bottom of this right away. If something

happened between him and Nabchan..."

"Then it would hardly be polite or prudent to intrude upon their privacy, now

would it, daughters?" a pleasantly matron-like voice remarked, surprising both

Ukyo and Perfume as neither one had noticed Nodoka's presence until that

instant.

"Mother-in-law?" Ukyo asked with a mildly puzzled expression.

"I know that you both want what is best for my son and your co-wife, who is also

my daughter, Dears," Nodoka said pleasantly as she put a comradely arm around

the shoulders of both young girls, "But sometimes it is for the best if you just

let things happen as they will, and if there is a need to include the both of

you in the particulars of their conversation, I'm sure my son and Nabiki will

inform you themselves...or don't you trust them enough to do what is best for

all concerned parties?"

"Uh...well..." Ukyo said somewhat reluctantly.

Perfume sniffed but could discern nothing amis about Nodoka, but some warning

instinct made her ask rather tentatively, "Are you certain that it's for the

best, Mother? If something important happened with Ranma and Nabiki..."

Nodoka favored the young Enforcer with a motherly smile and said, "If it's

important do you really think they would hold it back from you, dear? If so,

then obviously you should speak with Nabiki first rather than go barging in on

my son and causing him the embarrassment of two of his wives peeping on his

naked body while bathing."

"Ah...well," this time Ukyo colored, and Perfume seemed unusually embarrassed.

"That's right...Ranma-kun does act a bit like a prude at times..." the Amazon

reluctantly conceded.

"We wouldn't want to give him the wrong idea, like we didn't trust his or

nothing like that," Ukyo agreed with some trepidation on her part, "Not that

there's anything wrong with us seeing him in the nude, of course..."

"But my son is a man and men sometimes need their time away from us to gather

their thoughts and keep things in perspective," the older woman assured them

both, then gently gave them a friendly push to guide them on their way back down

the hallway.

Ukyo turned to Perfume just as they were about to reach the kitchen and said,

"You know...Auntie Nodoka makes sense sometimes. I know enough about boys to

understand that they've got mood swings and moments when they just want to be by

themselves doing their own private business."

"You mean stroke his thing and think about doing the both of us?" Perfume gave a

wicked leer to her wife and said, "Wouldn't want him to lose it just because the

two of us were a bit too intrusive. So...maybe we should work on him later to

get him to open up to us?"

"You took the words right out of my mouth, Sugar," Ukyo chuckled, "In the

meantime, what say we do hunt down Nabiki and worm out some details from her

end?"

"Now that sounds like a lot of fun," Perfume agreed with her Airen, then

together the two girls headed for the stairway, and thus failed to detect a

second Nodoka currently hard at work in the kitchen preparing the noon meal for

her household.

Back down the corridor the "Nodoka" standing there shimmered and reformed

herself in the image of Nagisha, then with a confident smile she said,

"So...what do you make of my performance, Sisters?"

"Incredible," Latisha remarked as she materialized from seeming nowhere, "Had I

not witnessed it with my own eyes I would never have believed that you could

carry out such an effective imposture."

"What an acting job," Karina marveled, "I especially like the way you altered

your scent so that the Sentinel actually though you were the real Nodoka."

"Let's hope they distract themselves enough not to investigate and find out how

we deceived them," Sobriel remarked more practically, "If they come back down

and figure out that they've been had..."

"Doubtful," Nagisha said confidently, "And even if they tried, we've fortified

the room with spells that will keep intruders out and the sound-level down so

that no one suspects what is happening within."

"Let us hope that Sharil does her part and convinces the Master that what we

intend to do with him is in everyone's best interest," Latisha said with a

glance back towards the furo, frowning as she added, "But I still fail to see

why she should be the first one to consummate with him. I knew him before any

of you others..."

"Yes, we know," Karina said diplomatically, "But she's got the best people

skills of the lot of us, and the most experience seducing people who are

normally too reluctant to open up like that...so as much as I hate to say it,

she is the one with the best chances of convincing our Master to go with the

flow, as it were."

"I still think she cheated with that coin toss," Sobriel grumbled, "I wouldn't

put it past her to figure out some way of making it land the way she wanted..."

"Her sphere is water, not metal," Nagisha grumbled, "And I would know if she had

used her powers to influence the coin toss. I am no happier with the outcome

than any of you, Sisters, but we have agreed to take turns doing our part to

insure the future...and if everything goes as planned, then let us pray the

Master will forgive our deception...and the real reason why we must do this."

"You mean to get all five of us with kids of our own?" Sobriel remarked with a

side-glance to the furo, "Guardians yet to be born but who will have a special

attachment to the boy named Chusen? Yeah, I'm just sure he'll go for

that...when we find the right time to explain things."

"It is as Lord Anri himself has prophesized, and so it must be as it will be,

Sisters," Latisha said confidently, then added with a smirk, "And never forget

who is slated to be the next one to seduce him."

"Good luck with that," Karina smiled, then added in soft undertone, "And make

sure you use an asbestos condom."

"How is that again?" Latisha turned on the Sylph with a dangerous smolder in her

expression.

"Nothing," Karina said innocently, glancing at the ceiling while preferring to

ignore the psychic resonance that they all could feel taking place beyond the

barrier with their Undine compatriot working to bring forth in their Master a

new and most fruitful beginning...

Continued.

Comments/Criticisms/Consummation of Past Innuendo: shadowmane

And so a new chapter turns in the lives of our heroes, but are Ranma and Nabiki

prepared for the fallout that is likely to occur if this plot by his elemental

servants sees fruition? Learn the secret to that and other mysteries in, "Sex

Among The Rafters," or, "Half a Loaf of Ranma is Worth Two In the Oven..." Be

there!

X


	62. Chapter 62

Dnabiki151

Nabiki 1/2

"A Very Scary Thought"

by

Jim Robert Bader

(Inspired by the works of Rumiko Takahashi & Others,

with concepts and characters created by fellow fanfic writers

Wade Tritschler, DB Sommers, Nicole Manders, Andrew

Greaves, Bill Guiroff and countless others, including "Buffy"

creator Joss Whedon; with special thanks to my good pal

Shiva for his editing and handling of this series.)

(Certain other characters and concepts are of my own

innovation, including my interpretation of the Monster

of Mary Shelly's novel, and various other guest stars

appearing in this portion of the Nabiki 1/2 series...)

Chapter Sixty.

Episode One-Hundred-Fifty-One.

Rules of Engagement.

Frank observed his companion of the evening as she dressed herself for the

morning, having recently bathed herself while he slept off the remainder of his

post-coital lethargy, she seemed as radiant as the morning itself, shimmering

with happiness and contentment and clearly harboring no regrets about their

activities of the evening.

She was beautiful beyond compare, and Frank watched in awe as she combed her

long hair with a brush, then gathered it all up into her trademark pony tail

that draped over one shoulder, the simple dress that she had been wearing the

night before mysteriously cleaned during the night so that it seemed good as if

fresh laundered, which was yet another mystery surrounding this fascinating and

contradictory creature known by the simple name of Tendo Kasumi.

He had fallen under her spell completely, and now he knew beyond question that

he valued her company every bit as much as the gift that she had bestowed upon

him the night before, or allowing him to be the first man to deflower her

innocence. Every inch of her was mesmerizing and he was held enthralled just

watching the way her dress clung to the curves of her supple body as he vividly

recalled what it had felt like to run his coarsened hands over the blemishless

skin of this living goddess among mortals...and for a moment he felt all the

more crude for daring to profane such perfection with his own flawed and

imperfect husk.

And yet she genuinely looked happy, so much so that he was prompted to say

aloud, "Sleep well, Beautiful?"

"Oh yes," Kasumi smiled a smile towards him that literally lit up the morning,

"It was a wonderful time, Frank-san, and I thank you for making my first...with

a man into something special and well worth the memory. I do hope the next time

we do this that you will be as giving and inspirational, because I most

certainly want there to be a next time...and a next time after that. A man such

as you can form quite the habit."

And that was another thing that he loved about her, the way she could make him

feel like a man, not a brute and not a monster, "Hey, I was pretty inspired

myself, Doll-face, and you can do a lot for a guy just talking like that in the

morning. So...no regrets about last night?"

"Why should I regret doing a thing that I have been dreaming about for so long?"

Kasumi asked, then paused as she read his expression, "Oh...do you mean about my

father?"

"Yeah," Frank admitted, "I know this sounds odd coming from me, but he can be a

pretty intimidating guy when it comes to protecting his family, and that Demons

Head attack of his...it is kinda effective."

Kasumi smiled at him and said, "Let me deal with my father, I'm used to his

ways, and I can explain to him that I am a grown woman who is perfectly capable

of making decisions about who to be with, and under what circumstances."

"Yeah, but..." Frank paused to consider his next words, then glanced down and

thought a moment, then continued, "I think the thing he'd be the most upset

about is you having sex out of wedlock. He strikes me as a pretty old

fashioned, traditional guy...and in a lot of ways I can relate to that. Of

course I actually predate the Victorian era, but still..."

"Is that what is worrying you, Frank-sama?" Kasumi sauntered up to him without

needing to exaggerate her hip motions as her sensuous movements were entirely

natural and fluid. Then she placed a hand to the side of his craggy face and

said, "In spite of what I said only two hours ago, I do not need a formal

declaration of intent to know that I share something with you that is special

and unique. It is true that I had once thought of...saving myself for marriage,

but...given how long I have waited to know a night so beautiful as the one you

have shown me...I think we both can be forgiven for being just a bit hasty."

Frank felt the small and slender hand against his cheek and covered it with one

of his much larger palms, then looked up at her and said, "Maybe so...but it did

kinda get me to thinking. I ain't much for ceremony, but I know how important

it is to any girl that a guy go that extra step in declaring his

intentions...so...uh...well...could you do me a little favor?"

"Oh?" Kasumi asked with a lifted eyebrow, "What is that?"

He motioned with his eyes towards the chair across which his leather jacket,

shirt and trousers had been draped, then he said, "There's a special fold in the

left pocket of my coat. Mind fetching something out of there? It's kinda

small, but you oughta have no trouble finding it."

Puzzled by his meaning, Kasumi turned from her man and did as he requested,

feeling along the lining of the leather jacket then slipping her hand into the

pocket, searching out the hidden fold, and soon produced a small water-proofed

plastic container roughly five centimeters long and about four wide. Holding it

up to the light she saw something gleam in the dim light of their rented motel

and held it up at a better angle, almost dropping it as she gasped, surprised

beyond words at its exquisite craftsmanship and beauty.

"It belonged to somebody...I used to know real well," Frank said gruffly, "And

knowing her and the way she looked at life, I think she'd want you to have it.

It's White Gold, so it oughta be safe even for a vamp to handle

and...well...it's been sitting around in my pocket for a lotta

years...and...would you like to have it?" he said the latter part almost in a

rush, as though it were a single word that he was hastily pronouncing.

Kasumi found that words could not be spoken on her part as she gazed at the

intricately woven design of the ring, which was set with one large white stone

and too small red ones, fitting in the pattern of a set of roses that were

criss-crossed together. She lifted it closer and saw the faint inscription on

the inside that read, "From Percy to Mary," which confirmed the identity of the

ring and who had been its previous recipient.

"She wasn't exactly my mother, except maybe in a literary sense," Frank rumbled,

"We did have that one night together, but not long after that her husband had

that accident and...well...her life kinda went to pieces. She willed it to me

on her gravesite, and despite its tragic history it's kinda brought me luck on

odd occasions. And yeah, I think Mary'd kinda like to see me move on, and she'd

be honored if you'd wear it. Ah...if you like, I can help you put it on," he

added a bit lamely.

"Would you?" Kasumi asked as she turned to him and presented the package, not

trusting herself to perform the deed of removing the ring as her fingers would

likely have trembled.

Frank wasn't any too steady himself as he removed it from the special envelope

that it had rested within for decades, and then he tried not to crumple the

thing in his hands as he held it up to the girl's "engagement" finger and

carefully slipped in on while Kasumi watched the whole process with wordless

anticipation.

Not being one much given to chivalry, except in a general sense, it felt awkward

for him to get down on one knee while holding her hand within his own, and his

head still stood level with hers even at that angle, but the intent was the same

as he said, "Tendo Kasumi...would you...ah...that is...I mean...well...do you

wanna make it honest?"

She smiled at him with an even more radiant expression, and had any ordinary

undead been present they most likely would have crumbled into dust, but she

suddenly wrapped her arms around him and hugged him to her tightly, prompting

him to do the same with his own much larger frame all but engulfing her, and

like that it became official. No time for second thoughts or regrets, just a

simple declaration that he wanted her in his life, just as she had already

accepted him as a part of her own world. Nothing more than that needed to

outwardly be spoken.

However, the outside world had hardly gone away, and it was at that moment that

a beeping sound came from the dresser, causing both lovers to turn and stare

resentfully at the offending equipment that had dared intrude upon their

private, personal moment of shared glory.

"Thought I turned that thing off," Frank scowled, "Shelly must've overrode the

off switch."

"It must be important then," Kasumi said as she let him go and stepped away to

allow him to reach over and pick up the remote mouth and earpiece of the cell

phone.

"What is it, Shel?" Frank growled, "You kinda suck at timing..."

In his ear he heard his motorcycle auto-personality relay say, "Story of my

life, Boss. So...how did you and the Misses make out with your evening?"

If anything his scowl intensified, "Don't tell me you were listening in the

whole time?"

"Hey, you designed my sensory equipment, so don't go complaining to me if

everything works as specified," Shelly chided, "And besides, how was I to know

that you and your new fiancée weren't gonna get attacked during the night by a

band of terrorist Ninja? I mean, that's the sort of thing that tends to happen

with you every time you seek some quality time with a lady."

"Good point," Frank reluctantly conceded, "But that still don't let you off the

hook for eavesdropping."

"Don't take it out on my circuits," Shelly snorted, "Besides which, I've been

getting buzzed so many times that my metaphorical ears are starting to rattle.

I've had to tell your other girlfriend that you were in a meeting and couldn't

be reached about twenty-seven times now...and counting."

"What other girlfriend?" Frank scowled, then caught the puzzled look turned upon

him by Kasumi, "Ah...that is..."

"Officer Kobayakowa Miyuki of course," Shelly replied, "You know, the cute

Motorhead that you contracted to do a certain errand last night, greeting some

bigwigs from the coast?"

"Miyuki-san?" Frank replied, "What's wrong? Did anything happen? What's the

casualty total?"

"Oh, nothing much happened, other than the fact that she and her equally cute

girlfriend, Tsujimoto Natsumi, have had to play baby-sitter for Astarte and her

group at the hotel you checked them out in, and...well, to be put charitably,

things are going about as you'd expect them."

"That bad, huh?" Frank said, "Well...might as well put her on, if she's still in

one piece."

"I've got her on hold right now...transferring over," Shelly said, and then a

soft clicking noise heralded the making of a new connection.

"Hello?" a somewhat restrained-but-frantic sounded Miyuki asked, "Is Doctor

Steinberg here?"

"It's me," Frank said, "What's going down, Miyuki-chan?"

"What is going down?" Miyuki repeated, and then Frank could hear the voice of

Natsumi snapping back, "You mean who's going down...and on whom? What the heck

kind of people are these we're supposed to look after anyway? And tell that big

hunk of reanimated man-flesh that he'd better pay us double for this assignment,

because these people are crazy!"

"Ah," Miyuki said a bit more diplomatically, "Natsume says ohiyo, and could you

possibly please schedule a meeting sometime today with Miss Jones and her

people? At least...while the hotel is still standing...?"

Again in the background Frank heard the sounds of a commotion, and a familiar

voice thundering outrage over some relatively minor issue, while other voices

were raised attempting to pacify and calm the loud one down, which did sound

pretty much like Astarte's group the way he remembered them the last few times

they had met.

"Tell Astarte I'll be on my way to the office," Frank glanced at the night stand

beside the bed, picked up his watch and studied the time before arching both

eyebrows, "Er...say around Noonish?"

"I will most certainly inform her of that appointment," Miyuki said with unusual

abruptness, and then more sounds that implied a hasty ducking motions had just

been executed as something broke against a wall close to her head, at which

point Miyuki called back, "We will speak with you again later, Sir...but if you

excuse us, Steinberg-Sensei..."

The line disconnected, and Frank heaved a heavy sigh, then pushed a button on

the phone unit and said, "Shelly...add another zero to that deposit in their

account. I think Officers Kobayakowa and Tsujimoto-san deserve a bonus for

combat stress, and after this they're gonna really need to take that vacation."

"Already noted and lodged, Boss," Shelly replied, "Oh, and while you're still on

the line, relay my compliments to your fiancée. She's getting quite a catch, as

I'm sure she's already figured."

"Why thank you," Kasumi said without thinking twice about it, then when Frank

looked at her she gave him a sheepish smile and said, "I'm sorry to eavesdrop,

but when I heard the word 'girlfriend' I...well...oh my..."

"No need to blush, Honey," Shelly continued into Frank's ear, "I figured those

sharp ears of yours would pick up my signal. By the way, never having had the

equipment myself to find out directly, just how was it riding the boss? Does

that thing of his really give as big a shock as my meters registered?"

"Oh, it wasn't all that unpleasant," Kasumi smiled, leaning closer to the

microphone in Frank's hand while adding, "And if you want to know the truth...I

think it was a little like having a vibrator within me, though I wouldn't know

from experience...that just seems the logical comparison."

"Kinda thought it was like that," Shelly mused. "Nicely played the way you

talked him into it. Usually the boss makes a rather large exit hole in the back

wall when somebody brings up the 'M' word."

"Oh no, he was the perfect gentleman," Kasumi said, "And all that I needed to do

was to bring up family honor and obligation, and he responded just as you

predicted."

"Hey," Frank looked from her to the microphone, "What is this? A conspiracy

between the two of you?"

"I just told her that you might have issues about getting engaged to her unless

she phrased it in a way that hit you where it counts, Boss," Shelly said

sweetly, "And knowing what a big softie you really are deep down, I just knew

you'd want to do the right thing by this one. After all, she's no one-night

encounter, and she's definitely a keeper."

"I'm gonna have words with you later in the shop," Frank growled, "But

anyway...if anybody else asks what I'm up to..."

"Don't worry, Boss," Shelly replied, "What's up has always been your business."

Frank put the microphone down then sniffed, "Why'd I ever think it was such a

good idea to make her so human? The AI programs are starting to think that they

should run things instead of us organics."

"She cares about you and means well, Frank-san," Kasumi assured him, "So...what

say we get some breakfast, and then you can introduce me to your friends from

America."

"Hah?" Frank looked at the vampire girl, quite startled.

"Well, after all, they are friends of yours, which means that they should be

friends of mine as well," Kasumi reasoned, "Or are you saying that you do not

want to introduce me as your new fiancée?"

"Ah...that might not be such a great idea," Frank said uneasily, "This group's

not quite what you would call your average business party..."

"But from the way you spoke her name I take it that the one named Astarte is a

close personal friend of yours?" Kasumi asked.

"Astarte?" Frank replied, "Yeah, she's like a kid sister to me, the kind my dad

never created. But...well...it's kinda hard to explain. You

see...she's...well...not exactly human, at least in a nominal sense, and she's

really into girls..."

"Are you afraid that she might hit on me?" Kasumi asked, "That's very sweet of

you, but I think I can handle myself in that department. And as for not being

totally human, neither are we in a traditional sense, but I see no reason to

hold that against us."

Frank just marveled at the young girl before him, "Beautiful...why is it I never

seem to win an argument with you and always wind up doing what you want?"

"You're exaggerating, Frank-sama," Kasumi assured him, "I would never compel you

to do anything that was against your won best interests, and I respect you too

much to want to argue with you. I just find that I want very much to be a part

of your life, and that includes the parts that involve your other friends and

business."

In his ear Frank heard Shelly remark, "Might I suggest you put in for a pre-nup

agreement with this one? Knowing what we've seen of her over the last six

months, she's probably going to be the first one to outlast you, and she might

even wind up running the business..."

"Can it," Frank snapped, then sighed, "Better give me a minute in the shower

before we go. Checkout's at eleven, but we oughta be out of here way before

that."

"Would you much mind if I join you?" Kasumi asked, then added as he looked at

her startled, "You have a very large back, Frank-sama, and someone should scrub

you, and give you a backrub, so that you can be refreshed for your meeting."

Frank reached out with a huge hand and cupped the girl's chin then smirked, "I'm

not getting rid of you that easy, am I, Doll-face? You really do wanna do

everything together?"

"It is the way here in Japan," Kasumi noted, smiling up to him with a shining

look that caused his flaccid rod to immediately stiffen, "And such hospitality

is what you should come to expect if we are to be together."

Frank chuckled and ruffled her hair and said, "Sure, why not? Can't remember

the time I had a good rub-down...and don't you dare read off a list to me,

Shelly. In fact, I'm putting you on stealth mode, so don't bother trying to

record anything for your internet buddies."

"Aw, you never let me have any fun," the Auto-relay AI unit pouted before Frank

removed the earpiece and hit the off-switch after keying in a full lock down.

Then he got up off the bed and took the hand of his fiancée, who led the way

towards privy to partake in her second showering of the morning.

And, needless to say, they did not quite make it in time for check-out at the

clerk's desk...

Miyuki put her cell phone away and winced as Natsume ran her fingers through her

partner's hair and fished out tiny glass pieces.

"Hey!" Natsumi barked at the one currently involved in a heated altercation, "Do

you mind not throwing stuff? You almost nailed my partner!"

"Sorry about that, honest," the scratchy-voiced furry woman named Catsclaw

replied before turning back to the towering Tri-Longu and saying, "Calm down

will ya, Big Buddy? You're gonna get us kicked out of yet another place, and

after the Cop-girls here have been nice enough to stay up all night doing Night

Watch detail..."

"Calm?" the thunderous giantess fumed hotly, waving a hand at the ruined

television, "How am I to remain calm when an important game is taking place

between the Forty-Niners and the Oilers of Houston? And what is this pathetic

game of kicking a round ball that they falsely label here as football?"

"That isss what the ressst of the world callsss it outssside of America," the

lisping Asian beauty who bore the Snake tattoo on her bosom hissed tartly, "In

America they call it sssoccer, but here it bears the name it had originally

before a cccentury ago when a player picked up the ball and ran with it in an

act of poor sssportsssmanship that had heralded the mutated game ever

sssinccce."

The tall woman rounded on the shorter one and snarled dangerously, "Are you

claiming that the game of my late husband is inferior to this accursed nonsense?

All they do is kick the ball around a field without hardly any scoring, and

there is no real contact between players, which hardly makes it worthy of being

called a sport in my opinion."

"You will have to excuse her," the smoky-gray haired Lieutenant Illyra Romaine

said apologetically to the much-confused Natsume and Miyuki, "Back where she

comes from they still fight with gladiators in coliseums, and if blood isn't

spilled somewhere it doesn't even rate as entertainment."

"Nice place," Natsume said, "Where is she from, New York City?"

"A lot farther away than that I'm afraid," Illyra's white-haired older sister,

Muriel, responded as she came into the room bearing a tray of refreshments,

"Would anyone like some tea? The hotel staff brews an excellent quality..."

"Would you calm down already, Tri?" Catsclaw was just then appealing to the

larger of the two women, "You're gonna get us thrown out if you do your usual

smash and stomp routine."

"I will calm down when they give us decent cable reception," the dark-skinned

giantess growled, "And recall that I did not wish to come along on this infernal

mission. The rest of you insisted on dragging me along so that you could use my

strength when I would much rather have been with my child, seeing to her care

rather than traveling to foreign lands to battle Astarte's enemies."

"Have you forgotten so sssoon?" Snake hissed sharply, "You owe Assstarte Jonesss

your sssword and your life for the many timesss that ssshe has sssaved your

vaunted asss."

"I have not forgotten that I am indebted to the demoness for her many favors to

me," Tri-Longu said, "But my first obligation is to my son, and leaving her to

the care of Cassie, Elorie and Nancy does not impress on me the adequacy of the

home house's many-times breached defenses. Besides, I am only her friend, not

her servant, and certainly not her lover."

Snake's eyes narrowed and she glared up at the taller woman, "Ssso much raw

power, and yet tempered by a mind that isss so wrapped up in foolisssh

emotttionsss..."

"How is that again, Serpent?" Tri-Longu snarled as she rounded on the shorter

Asian woman, "Are you challenging me on a point of my warrior's honor?"

"How can one challenge that which doesss not exxxist?" Snake replied with

matter-of-fact indifference.

Tri-Longu raised her fist and snarled, "I have put up for far too long with your

insolence, Priestess! To challenge me over a matter of pride is to risk the

thunder-!"

As she started to lunge forward Snake moved even faster, uncoiling like her

namesake to lash out with a kick that literally went from floor level to a point

half a meter higher than her head, and like that the head of the massive Tri-

Longu snapped backwards, her back arching and she crashed down onto a sofa so

hard that it strained and almost cracked before she settled down upon it,

totally unconscious.

"Damn," Catsclaw said, "I wish you could teach me how to do that."

"I have tried," Snake said as she brought her foot back down to the floor and

resumed her normal casual posture.

Muriel heaved a sigh and said, "Well...score another one for Snake. You would

think after all of this time that Tri would learn her lesson..."

"Force of habit," the man sitting in a chair by the table nearest to Muriel said

as he continued to clean and perform maintenance on his high-tech rifle, the

most words that he had spoken since early in the morning.

"You're probably right about that, Ian," Illyra said as she turned

apologetically to the stunned Miyuki and Natsume, "I'm sorry you had to see

that. Snake and Tri don't really hate each other, but they're always getting

into fights, which invariably end the same way, with Tri on the floor taking a

nap. Except, of course, for those rare times when Tri goes into gias mode...and

then-watch out!"

"Yeah, but this time you did kinda push it a little by calling her on a matter

of honor, doncha think, Snake?" Catsclaw asked of her near-naked companion.

"Her pride will recover," Snake said with folded arms beneath her quite

substantial chest, "And sssometimesss it isss necccesssary to prick it in order

to remind her of the good half of what she left behind in the Godsworld."

"The Godsworld?" Miyuki repeated.

"It's the only name we have for a place that some of us visited a couple of

years back," Illyra replied, "It's where Tri comes from, where she was born and

grew up, and where she lost the man she loved, her former fiancé, the father of

her infant child, who's been growing up every since as a ward of Astarte's

household."

"They just call it the World where she comes from," Catsclaw said, "A place

where gods are the dominant life form, and everybody else trembles in their

shadow. Believe me, you wouldn't wanna live there."

"Godsss are mossst often better honored at a dissstanccce," Snake assured them,

"Take it from me, I am a priesstesss."

"Ah...right," Natsume said, then blinked her eyes and stared at the fallen Tri-

Longu, "Wait a minute...are you saying that she's supposed to be a...a goddess?"

"Well, let's see," Illyra considered, "Her father was a god, her mother was an

immortal, she's stronger than ten main battle tanks and can bounce depleted

uranium shells off her chest, and when she gets really, really angry the weather

changes for a thirty mile radius. So...yeah, I'd say she's either a goddess, or

the nearest thing to one that any of us hang around with on a regular basis."

"Unless you count the Boss," Catsclaw remarked, "But her dad only thinks he's a

god, not that any of us are in a position to question."

"But..." Miyuki paused then glanced at Snake, "How is it you are able to put her

down so easily?"

"Trade sssecret," Snake replied, as nonchalant as she seemed indifferent on the

subject.

"Is everyone still indulging in their childish morning rituals?" a sensuous

voice purred, one whose unearthly trill caused heads to turn in the speaker's

direction, "And here, for once, I was hoping to catch my beauty rest...but then

again, I suppose that is what I deserve for allowing Snake to lounge about in

the same room as Tri-Longu."

"You are not holding thisss one againssst me, are you?" Snake asked with a

raised eyebrow.

"Certainly not, Sandra," Astarte replied as she stood there in her very short

evening wear, and for the first time her features were fully exposed to view,

causing both Miyuki and Natsumi to gasp in dismay, for by her likeness they

could tell that she was not entirely...human.

It was her eyes...or rather the lack of pupils and iris in her milky white eyes

that most drew one's attention...that and the fact that her eyebrows were

connected to the edge of her lashes by a trailing line, and that her eyebrows

themselves were segmented leading up to solid lines that were woven into a pair

of arching antenae.

Her features, face and body were otherwise quite natural looking, as was her

long main of flaming red hair that extended down almost to knee level. She was

poised elegantly like a supermodel waiting for a photographer to call her onto a

stage, and substantial amounts of voluptuous face were projecting out from

beneath her burgundy colored bathrobe.

Just looking upon her made one's pulse quicken and the loins begin to moisten,

for in spite of her alien appearance there was something incredibly warm and

attractive about her presence, and the smile that she wore left little doubt

that she was "checking out the menu," which-considering the company she kept-

-implied that she was definitely into women in a very big way.

"What I am concerned about is Tri's evident resentment of me for having insisted

that she come along with us in our travels," Astarte resumed, turning a glance

towards the still-recumbent "goddess," then she smiled and said, "But my thanks

to the both of you for having stayed up the night to watch after our welfare. I

can understand if it was troublesome for you, and I can see that you are tired

and in need of rest."

"Oh no...we're all right, really," Miyuki tried sounding reassuring.

"Miyu-chan and I are used to staying up late during stakeouts," Natsumi

insisted, "And not all of our patrols are during daylight hours, so we'll be

good enough for a few more hours."

"And besides," Miyuki continued, "Nat-chan spent much of the night with your

friend over there. He may not say much, but he seems to be a real wizard when

it comes to whipping up those fancy high tech devices."

"I couldn't even identify half the components when he had them disassembled,"

Natsumi admitted, "But he seems like he knows what he's doing while cleaning

them and putting them back together."

"Ian's a real pro all right," Muriel said with affection as she glanced towards

the gruff looking man, who wore a stripped down version of the ceramic armor he

had been wearing the night before, his helmet set to one side to expose a face

that was ruggedly handsome, his brown hair unkempt, his face mostly unshaven,

"But it's not surprising that you won't recognize the weapon since it employs

technology that has not yet actually been invented."

"Say what?" Natsume asked in frank incomprehension.

"Let's just say he's not from around this time and leave it at that," Illyra

smirked, "Though my big Sis here seems to find his company charming."

"As did you once, if I recall rightly," Muriel smiled at Illyra as if sharing a

private personal reflection, but then turned to the man at the table and said,

"Ian honey...would you mind telling the officers what you are working on at the

present?"

Without turning away from the work he had at hand the gruff man said tersely,

"Phased plasma rifle in the nine miliwatt range."

"Very funny," Natsume responded.

"He isss quite ssseriousss," Snake informed them, "Ian Carter isss not that well

known for having a sssenssse of humor."

"You mean...that actually is a plasma weapon?" Miyuki said with a start, "An

actual working model?"

"And put together from homemade parts according to designs that any street

urchin of his time would find as easy to manufacture as a pipe bomb," Astarte

informed them, "Ian is a man of many talents, and do not be put off by his crude

exterior for underneath it all he is quite the gallant charmer and ladies

man...as certain women here can testify, myself naturally being excluded."

She seemed to direct her comment towards her female companions, and as one

Illyra, Snake and Catsclaw seemed to take great interest in everything but their

employer's expression, while Muriel just raised a hand as if the only one

present who would own up to the charge as stated.

"In the meantime," Astarte turned back to the two off-duty detectives, "I think

it would be for the best if you get some rest before we go out or else you will

be of little use to anyone, let alone each other."

"Hey, like we said, we're all right," Natsumi assured the white-eyed woman

before them.

"We'll be just fine until we're finished fulfilling our assignment, when we

deliver you to Doctor Steinberg's office at noon sharp, as directed," Miyuki

added with what she hoped was a reassuring expression, as something about the

way the redheaded woman was regarding them made her and Natsume acutely nervous.

"Your dedication is quite admirable," Astarte assured them, "But Ian and Muriel

are more than capable of standing watch during your absence. Illyra and Snake,

however, should join me in taking a morning shower...and you are both invited to

come with us."

"What?" Natsumi blinked.

"Er...that isn't...necessary..." Miyuki swallowed.

"Astarte," Illyra drawled, giving the redhead an acutely cross expression.

"Thisss isss hardly an appropriate gesssture," Snake hissed darkly.

"I insist," Astarte's voice suddenly trembled with a weird vibration in her tone

that caused a curious electricity to run up and down the spines of Miyuki and

Natsumi. And then in a more normal voice she said to her protesting companions,

"We have been less than gracious house guests and have taken too much of an

advantage of the generosity of these detectives. I can sense the strong chords

of emotion that bind these two together, and as wound up as they are they have

no way to express their bodily needs unless we show they the courtesy that was

once expected in this land of the Rising Sun. Besides, I had thought you two

well past your issues of jealousy concerning my occasional need to recharge my

batteries with exotic foods of such a rare and delicate flavor."

"Your generoccity exxxceedes all measssure," Snake said with evident sarcasm.

"You're just thinking up a cheap excuse to grab some nookie on the sly," Illyra

accused, "And you think we don't have a right to object just because you're

including us in this."

"Exactly," Illyra said, turning back to the detectives, "I will not force your

compliance, but I would welcome your company, and I believe you will find us

very gracious and generous guests if you accede to my proposal."

"Are you serious?" Natsumi gaped.

"You...ah...want us to be part of some...group grope scene?" Miyuki fumbled

badly.

"Think of it as an experiment in exploring the boundaries of your relationship,"

Astarte replied, and then her voice trembled with that odd vibration again, "And

besides...I rather think you've been wanting to do this since you set eyes upon

my party."

"Ah..." for some odd reason Natsumi's objections seemed to melt away, for she

knew at once that the accusation was true, and she gave a guilty glance to

Miyuki, who returned it in kind with a somewhat sheepish expression.

"Oh, go ahead and enjoy yourselves," Muriel urged, "You know you want to."

"Sis," Illyra frowned, "Just who's side are you on anyway?"

"Yours of course," Muriel said without hesitation, giving the younger girl an

affectionate nudge and then a wink at Snake as she added, "You know what these

sessions mean for Astarte, so don't make a fuss about it, just go with the flow

and remember...she's your girlfriend."

"Like either of usss could ever forget that," Snake hissed softly, but her

opposition to the idea seemed to melt away under the white haired woman's

persuasion.

"This way, my darlings," Astarte urged as she headed back towards the executive

bedroom, "The shower awaits...and if you will forgive me for saying so, I rather

think the lot of you could use one. You too, Sandra...I do not want you

standing here when Tri-Longu regains consciousness and recalls the rude words of

your most recent altercation."

Illyra gave a conspiratorial glance to her large-breasted, green-eyed companion,

"She's got a point. Tri's swift to anger and slow to forgive, and even if you

meant to simply jar into remembering why she's a part of this group it still

wouldn't be a good idea to let her start things up again before she has time to

think things out and cool down a little."

"There isss a cccertain logic to thiss," Snake gave her gray-haired companion a

faint smile, then the two of them linked arms together and with sisterly

affection followed Astarte into the bedroom chamber.

Miyuki hesitated for a moment more, sharing a look with her partner before

saying, "Well?"

"Well what?" Natsumi asked with a shrug, "Maybe it's a perk of the job? Either

way, it couldn't hurt to have a look at the size of that bathroom, could it?"

"It's sure to be larger than anything we could afford on our regular salaries,"

Miyuki noted, and then without further adieu they linked hands and headed for

the bedroom, the door mysteriously shutting themselves behind them even though

no visible hands were there to cause this to happen.

"And so the Boss makes another double-conquest," Catsclaw smirked, turning to

Muriel and adding, "Wanna lay odds they don't get done before noon?"

"You're on for that," Muriel replied, and then the both of them turned back to

other pursuits, Muriel attending to the needs of her man, while Catsclaw called

up room service and ordered a new TV so that she could check up on the kinds of

shows they broadcast on cable, having developed recently a certain appetite for

Anime involving furry humans...

"Well, hey there," Guile said as he knelt down to study the tiny little form

held closely in the arms of Kuno Kodachi, "Are you the cute little thing. Wanna

say hi to your grandpa? I think it's only proper if I welcome you to the

family...and all of that."

Kodachi smiled up at the big man with the buzz top bottlebrush haircut and said,

"Say hello to your honored grandfather my little Watazashi. Kei-chan and I are

very happy that fortune was with us and times things just right so that you

could become acquainted with your uncle and aunts. No doubt one day you will be

great friends and have many adventures together as all four of you carry on the

family tradition."

"Isn't she the cutest little thing you ever saw, Dad?" Keiko grinned with

paternal pride, then added with a sly note, "Of course my sisters and little

brother will have lots of time to get to know her better, and you're welcome to

stay as long and as often as you like with the permission of my Mistress."

"Of course it will be all right with me, my pet," Kodachi smiled indulgently,

"Uncle Guile-san and his lovely wives will always be welcomed as family at the

Kuno estate as long as I have any say in the matter, and they are welcome to

make use of our facilities, including the nursery and day care center, which is

fully staffed by trained professionals and has all the amenities that one could

ask for."

"No kidding that," Cammy averred as she, Chun-Li and Akiko stood to one side

awaiting their turn examining Kodachi and her baby, "There's hospitals that

ain't as well provisioned with supplies and facilities as what you've got here

all to yourself."

"You really must have been anticipating hosting an onslaught of babies," Chun-Li

marveled, glancing to the adjacent bed in which Akane was resting after her long

ordeal of the evening, her own recently delivered son sleeping contentedly while

nursing from the bosom of his mother.

Ryoga, the undisputed father of this offspring, had wandered off looking for

some refreshments to provide her with a good home-cooked breakfast in bed and

had yet to be seen again for the past several hours.

"We had a pretty good idea that they'd all get delivered at much the same time,"

Keiko answered, "But who knew that we'd get four of them in the same night?

Good thing Daitokuji-san was here when she want into labor, but hers was a lot

smoother than either Akane's and Kodachi's, almost by the numbers," she noted

while glancing off to the corner of the nursery, where Beatrice also rested,

Alison curled up at the foot of her bed and totally passed out after their

nightly ordeal chasing after Nabiki.

"Six pounds, seven ounces," Guile said with a hint of mild wonder, glancing from

his own nominal grandchild to the one in Akane's arms, then further still to the

babe nursing from Beatrice and he marveled, "Born close to the same length of

time as our kids, which is a little too much of a coincidence for my liking."

"It does kinda boggle the mind when you think about it, Dad," Keiko exchanged

looks with her mother and step-mothers then said, "But I can't quite bring

myself to believe that this is all the work of the Mistress. Okay, maybe she's

capable of it, and I'd know that better than anybody, but Madam Lao has limits

on what she'll do to have her own way in any encounter, and the very idea that

she manipulated everybody to get knocked up like this with babies who had

accelerated maturation cycles..."

**How nice to learn that you still have such a high regard of me, my Sweet,** a

voice in her mind spoke up, startling Keiko, who glanced around in search of the

speaker, only to find faint glances of concern turned in her direction.

"Mistress?" Keiko said aloud, then hastily amended, "Ah...I mean...my lady?"

**I am not in Nerima, my pet,** Lao responded, **I am still at sea, conversing

with you by long distance.**

"Kei-chan?" her father asked, "Are you all right, Kid?"

"Ah...fine," Keiko willed herself to relax but nonetheless felt tense inside,

but she cleared her mind and projected mentally, **You're using the Lens of

Magellan to converse with me, my lady?**

**It seems like the best way of making contact without risking...shall we say,

certain unfortunate entanglements?** Lao answered her inquiry, **And yes, before

you ask, I did have something to do with causing several of the pregnancies you

were speaking about, but by no means did I engineer the mass number of hastened

gestation cycles that have resulted in shortening the length of their trimesters

by four months. Some other agency is at work causing a uniform design to occur,

and I suspect the heavy hand of an old associate of mine...a very old associate

indeed, one more than capable of balancing the timeline out between Jusenkyo and

non-Jusenkyo hastened growth cycles.**

**But who could such a one be, my lady?** Keiko wondered, **And why cause this

to come about?**

**The who I would rather not say lest I come under some unfortunate attention on

his part,** Lao answered, **But as to the why, that is easy enough to figure

out. The reason for cutting growth time nearly in half is to ensure that the

mothers are not taken out of commission for too great an interval, and now that

the babies are being delivered it suggests to me that the time is rapidly

approaching when their skills and abilities will be much in demand. Pregnancy

is, after all, a handicap for most women, myself included, and should you one

day experience it you will know first hand how much it takes out of you, leaving

you far less energy than is needed for proper martial arts training.**

**You mean we're being culled and bred for some major-league battle?** Keiko

sounded appalled, recalling the difficulty Nabiki had in enduring her ordeal of

the evening.

**The possibility exists that some of you may not make it,** Lao cautioned, **In

which case some part of you is being preserved for posterity, to ensure that the

bloodlines you represent do not perish off with you.**

**I'm not sure if even I like the implications of that,** Keiko admitted,

**Makes us sound like a bunch of damned puppets.**

**I prefer the term Pawns on a Chessboard myself,** Lao responded, **And be

mindful that every pawn possesses the ability to become a queen, so consider it

a testament to your value as individual players that some greater power deigns

you worthy of such attention.**

**A dubious honor at best, my lady,** Keiko mentally scowled, **We came

perilously close last night to losing Nabiki, not to mention Kodachi-chan and

her baby.**

**Yes, I was monitoring the details myself all through the evening,** Lao

expressed genuine concern then added, **For what it is worth I do feel great

sympathy for your Mistress and Amorata. This was not of my planning, nor would

I have taken such risks with their health, but the power behind this plays in

the really big leagues and thinks in terms of strategy that evolves over

decades, even centuries, so do not be too hasty to judge or condemn him.**

**Never the less...** Keiko paused then said, **You say him? This was done by a

man?**

**I am not certain of the exact process employed,** Lao replied, **Perhaps he

works in coordination with one of the others, possibly even his sister, who is

near to omnipotence. Or perhaps even this is the work of one of his allies in

close coordination...I rather favor the idea that Rhea is involved, but that is

pure...speculation on my part.**

**My lady?** Keiko sensed a slight hesitation on the other end, a wavering of

strength in thought being projected her way and she asked, **Are you well? I

thought I felt...something going on with you...**

**It is nothing for you to be concerned about, my pet,** Lao affectionately

reassured her, **I am merely going through a difficult cycle of my own, but with

far less danger than your Kodachi faced as I have the limitless resources of the

POJ to draw upon, and I am surrounded by well-wishers eager to support me...**

**YOU ARE PREGNANT?!** Keiko reacted with a start, putting all of the pieces

together then gasping aloud, **Don't tell me...you and Nab-chan...?**

**Please do not inform her just yet that she is about to once again become a

father,** Lao softly pleaded, **This one I did to myself, and quite willingly I

might add, and the daughter I carry will be a strong and vibrant child of good

pedigree. I am favoring the name of Tiger for this one, a replacement now that

my son, Breeze, is promised to the hand of Prince Taro in marriage, and spends a

couple of months away from the ship every time we pay the floating island a

visit.**

**Kuso...how do you expect me to keep a thing like this to myself?** Keiko

demanded, **Nabiki will be furious with me if she ever finds out I withheld such

information...**

**I will explain it to her at the correct time of my choosing,** Lao promised,

then added as if in afterthought, **And before you ask it...yes, little

Watazashi is your daughter through Ryoga. I confess to manipulating the

genetics in order to create a three-way hybrid, which was meant as my gift to

you, though I hope you don't resent me too much for my transgression.**

**I don't resent you, my lady, and neither does my Mistress,** Keiko reassured,

**But I can't speak for the others as they suspect you were to blame, either

directly or indirectly, for causing all this to happen.**

**What can I say?** Lao mentally chuckled, **I have a soft touch for the

romantic side of affairs, and I knew that your father would do the right thing

by his ladies. Akiko-chan much impressed me during her stay here as having a

ready and able mind, one that could adapt to changing circumstances while

drawing others to her flame like moths to the candle.**

**Dad seems happy enough,** Keiko mused, "And it's nice that Aunt Chun and Cammy

are getting along a lot better than they used to...but I'm used to your ways, my

lady, and I'm not so easily shocked by such manipulative behavior."

**True enough,** Lao conceded, **And doubtless there will be a reckoning

sometime in the future. My list of crimes is very long, you know, so I'll just

have to put it on my tab and chalk it up to Karma.**

**I fear when that happens, my lady, that it will be quite an accounting,**

Keiko replied with sincere regret, *I'm not blind to your moral shortcomings,

even though I'm a bit jaded because of you and can take things in stride that

would shock most of my contemporaries.**

**That is what I have always admired most in you, my sweet Kei-chan,** Lao

affectionately murmured, **You are a born survivor, and quite resilient for all

the many knocks and hardships you have endured in your young life. But just the

same...I would warn you to beware. You belong to Kodachi now, and she is

depending upon your strength to protect her, and as a loyal slave your duty is

to be strong enough to shelter her from the likes of such trash as that Pantsaru

Taro."

**You...ah...saw the way things turned out last night?** Keiko winced, **That

wasn't one of my better fights, I'll admit...**

**You were fighting with less than your full potential, and it was showing

rather badly,** Lao said a bit more sternly, **I can see that I may need to

retrain you all over again, and while I obviously cannot go to where you are and

give you the lessons that you need, I will be in contact with you again later,

so do not expect me to go easy. The life of your child and Mistress, to say

nothing of your own welfare, are at stake in this, and for that reason-if

nothing else alone-you must be fortified. You are my protégé, after all, and

if your performance reflects badly upon me then my own reputation must

inevitably suffer.**

Despite herself Keiko flinched from the criticism, but before she could offer

any excuse or explanation she felt the connection being severed, and then she

was back in the "real" world, catching the odd glances that were being turned in

her direction.

"Kei-chan?" her father asked, "Are you feeling all right, Kid?"

"Ah...sure, fine," Keiko rather lamely answered, "I was just thinking to

myself...a dangerous habit, I'm told, but it's nothing to get all worried

about."

"That is good," her mother noted, "For a few moments there you appeared to be

wool gathering, and you even failed to respond to Kodachi when your mistress

asked you a question."

"Eh?" Keiko shifted her focus back to the woman who owned her and said,

"Mistress?"

"You had a far-away look just now," Kodachi said very soberly, "The kind you get

when thinking about the Mistress."

"What, you mean Lao?" Chun-Li said askance.

"What, that bloody pirate?" Cammy scowled, "Ain't we had enough of her to last

us more than three lifetimes?"

"I don't like being reminded that we owe her for our last two encounters," Guile

frowned, "And while I may have gained a wife and several children out of the

bargain, I can't forgive the way she uses people and manipulates them to suit

her interests."

"There's more to Madam Lao than any of you know," Keiko snapped, "She's not just

a pirate slaver to me, she's the woman I owe my life to, to say nothing of the

work she did helping to restore Mom to us, Dad, so you ought to show more

appreciation."

"My love," Kodachi said reassuringly, "You know that I am with you on that, and

the Mistress helped me to regain my sanity and cure my previous psychosis, to

say nothing of making it possible for us to share a child with Ryoga-kun. But

still you know that your father and mothers have only your best interest at

heart."

"But as your mother I am forced to agree with you about the company of the

Mistress," Akiko spoke up, "And as rude as her actions were in some respects,

Lao always does what she thinks is for the best. You may question her methods

but her motives are always for the best, and do you really regret the gift she

gave to each of us? For my part my son is hardly to be regretted."

"Ah...well...I didn't mean it quite like that, naturally," Cammy verbally back-

tracked, "And of course me'n Chun get along way better than we used to, before

she messed with us and got us to think differently about one another."

"I doubt that even Lao has the power to make people fall in love," Chun-Li

maintained, "But you're right, without her challenging our traditionalist

thinking we most probably would have continued to battle it out without any

clear winner in the romance department."

"So some good can come out of questionable behavior," Kodachi pointed out, "And

as the Mistress is wont to say, even the best of intentions cannot justify an

evil action. Always there are consequences to every decision."

"Which only makes my point," Guile said, "In some ways I'm grateful to Lao, but

in a lot of other ways I'd rather spank her than offer her my thanks."

"That I would like to see you get away with doing, Dad," Keiko smirked, "But

knowing the Mistress the way I do, she'd probably enjoy it."

"No doubt," Akiko smiled, "But what prompts these thoughts regarding the

Mistress? Were you having a private debate within yourself, or has something

set you to reflecting upon her teachings?"

"Her teachings?" Chun-Li glanced at Keiko, "You mean like how she conditioned

you to be a sex-slave?"

"Or a pit gladiator?" Cammy scowled, "That sure was some kinda teaching."

"There's a lot more to Lao than any of you suspect," Keiko said rather fiercely,

"If you really knew all of the details of her story you wouldn't be so quick to

judge and condemn her."

"Then enlighten me about something, kid," Guile said as he regarded his eldest

daughter, "What could possibly change our mind about a lady who thinks nothing

about taking young girls and conditioning them to a life of white slavery and

prostitution? Because as much as I've come to respect her as a fighter and

understand that she's been entrusted with an important task, keeping that Neflim

at bay so it doesn't run rampant or cause a greater calamity than it does under

her dominion..."

"That's only partly the truth, Dad," Keiko insisted, "I lived for two years on

the POJ, then another year on land as a cage fighter, and I had direct

experience with the Krakan, so I know more about what it's really like than

anyone but the Undines who pilot the ship. All you see is the sex part, the

domination and submission, but I know what really is involved with being a part

of that scene and it's not about breaking the will or crushing the spirit like

you seem to imagine."

"Then why don't you enlighten us," Chun-Li said, "What could possibly

rationalize the practice of turning young girls into chattel?"

"Not chattel," Kodachi averred, "The women who reside under Lao are not innocent

victims helpless to decide their own fate. They make choices and allow her to

guide them into making them much stronger and more capable than they were before

she knew them."

"Say what?" Cammy reacted, "Stronger'n more capable? Are you daft?"

"Not at all," Kodachi said, "Recall that Lao came aboard the POJ as a slave and

knows first hand the depravities practiced by those who came before her. On the

surface her methods might seem to the casual eye to be little better than

brutish, but in reality she tests her women and challenges them to find the

center of their own feminine nature, and then she cultivates their strengths

into advantages and teaches them how to submerge their real power beneath a

masquerade of humble submission."

"What are you saying?" Chun-Li asks, "That instead of mindless drones who spread

their legs on command that they are actually warriors in disguise?"

"Or assassins, much as I was," Akiko noted, "The difference being that Lao's

intentions are not death but rather influence over the thinking of others. Her

slaves are often sleeper cells who work from the inside to subvert the perverted

thinking of her clients into more constructive pastimes."

"Don't tell me you approve of that, 'Kiko-chan?" Chun-Li said in askance.

"Hey, Pirate, remember?" Keiko said, "She revels in being the victim, but if

you're gonna condemn her at least get her crimes right. She isn't crippling

these women, she's giving them the ability to control their own lives and the

lives of others."

"You know, I don't know what part of that I find the most appalling," Guile

said, "On the other hand, it's not as if the guys she's doing this to don't have

it coming..."

"The Mistress has a saying to summarize her feelings on the matter," Kodachi

said, "You are your only Mistress, but choosing to be a slave gives you the

power of being close to another."

"Of course that didn't apply to me when Chu Won Phat had me under his contract,"

Keiko noted, "I really was treated just like property, but the good side was

that I was too valuable as a fighter to risk getting pregnant."

"This isn't doing a whole lot to improve my opinion on the matter," Guile

grumbled.

"Hey, I am my only master, Dad," Keiko assured, "But I choose to be a slave to

Mistress Kodachi. I submit myself to her will because I know and trust her to

make the right decisions, and because it gives me great pleasure to grant her

free and total access to my body. But nobody would ever mistake me for being a

weakling, and I trained under Lao to be as tough as any one of you. If you have

any doubt about that, Aunties, then give me a try, I'll be happy to show you

what I'm made of."

"Y'know, Luv, that sounded like a bit of a challenge," Cammy said as she

regarded her co-wife.

"It did at that," Chun-Li agreed, "And it occurs to me that neither of us have

every really seen what this squirt really knows about street fighting, so maybe

we ought to take her up on it. With your permission of course, Akiko-chan."

"Consider it given," Akiko replied, "And I'll be rooting for all three of you,

though my yen will be on Kei-chan."

"What, are you serious?" Guile said, not liking the thought of his wives ganging

up on his daughter, "Cammy and Chun have been doing this all of their lives and

they're easily two of the toughest women on the planet."

"We'll see about that, Dad," Keiko confidently boasted, "So what say we move

things outside so we won't do any major property damage? If you don't mind

being carried to where you and Wata-chan can observe me in action..."

"I would be only too happy to bear witness to this friendly brawl between

relations, my Pet," Kodachi replied, "It's something of a Kuno tradition."

In the back of her mind Keiko heard Lao's voice murmuring softly, **And I shall

be watching you in action too, my student, to see how much of my training you

have preserved, and how much your technique has improved with additional

training.**

**Then I vow to make you proud of me, my Lady,** Keiko thought back, adding with

a glance at Kodachi, **Both of you, my once and former Mistress, and the woman

whom I presently adore.**

**Then I expect only the best from you, my former Pet,** Lao mentally chuckled,

**And if I am less than satisfied...then we will have words later.**

**I will hold you to that, my lady,** Keiko replied, then with a confident smile

to her two prospective opponents she said aloud, "Shall we get started with it,

Aunties? Let's see what you old timers can do, then I'll show you a few new

tricks from the younger generation."

"Old timers?" Chun-Li cocked an eyebrow and glanced at her co-wife, "Do you hear

that?"

"Cocky little piece of fluff, ain't she?" Cammy turned her glance towards Guile,

"Wonder where she picks that up?"

"I'm not sure I like the implications of that remark," Guile said before nodding

towards his daughter, "But let's see what you can do, kid...and if you impress

me enough, then maybe your old man will show you a few pointers."

"You're on, Pop," Keiko grinned, "Now...mind helping me set up a chair on the

lawn for 'Dachi? I want her to be warm with plenty of blankets, and we'll try

not to be too hard on the gardeners this time around, Mistress."

"Do what you have to, my sweet," Kodachi nodded approvingly, smiling like a rose

in bloom and thinking to herself that it was so nice to see the traditional

family values of the Kuno family were alive and well...for the only the best

could marry a Kuno, and she had every confidence that her Keiko would prove an

able and worthy successor to a long and impressive tradition...

Continued.

Comments/Criticisms/Cat-Fights with Vultures: shadowmane

As Keiko and her in-laws sort out their differences together, the rest of the

gang readies themselves for a day of school...but what sort of morning after can

they expect with the new teaching staff that the students of Furinkan are about

to discover? Find out next time in: "School Daze Are Here Again," or "Golden

Rules Ain't Necessarily Golden!" Be there!

X


	63. Chapter 63

Dnabiki152

Nabiki 1/2

"A Very Scary Thought"

by

Jim Robert Bader

(Inspired by the works of Rumiko Takahashi & Others,

with concepts and characters created by fellow fanfic writers

Wade Tritschler, DB Sommers, Nicole Manders, Andrew

Greaves, Bill Guiroff and countless others, including "Buffy"

creator Joss Whedon; with special thanks to my good pal

Shiva for his editing and handling of this series.)

(Certain other characters and concepts are of my own

innovation, including my interpretation of the Monster

of Mary Shelly's novel, and various other guest stars

appearing in this portion of the Nabiki 1/2 series...)

Chapter Sixty-One.

Episode One-Hundred-Fifty Two.

"We Don't Need No Education!"

Though there were obvious advantages to being a child prodigy, there was also

the terrible and lonely burden of being smarter and stronger than anyone else

around you, excluding only your parents. Very few people her age could know or

understand what it was like, and Eileen knew quite a few of them by name, or

rather their handle.

After all, she had their addresses on the Internet, and had long ago learned to

hack the access codes that her mother had set in place against unauthorized

intrusion on her personal computer.

And so she stood in a chair far too big for her diminutive size and typed in

words to send off to one of her chat-buddies, pausing to receive new messages as

they exchanged in "real time" their thoughts from all over the world, her

"peers" as it were who best understood her alienation.

"Dear DexX1," she wrote in windowed brackets, "I sympathize with you and the

problems that you are having with your annoying older sister. As a matter of

fact my parents just brought me a new baby sister of my own, and no doubt there

will come in time a reckoning when we two shall compete for control over our

mother's positron accelerator."

In response her friend "Dex" wrote back, "Don't say I didn't warn you, EKO1.

Sisters can be the most fiendishly disruptive thing to a young genius's life,

and as hard as you may try to bar them from access to your laboratory, they

still can find a way to get in, and then months of careful research can wind up

being shattered all over the floor faster than she can say, 'What's this,

Dexter?'"

Another of her Web buddies added in his own two-yen's worth of opinion...

"Never having had a little sister of my own, I can only compare what you are

going through to what often happened to me on account of my two best friends,

Spike and Sugar. They mean well, but if they don't learn some restraint they

could well set off an unintentional chain reaction that could potentially

threaten the world, something I had to contend with on far too many occasions."

"Dear Bernie," Eileen wrote back, "I sympathize with your experiences, but how

many times do I have to remind you that you are no longer a mere baby and do not

qualify to be a part of this group? You are much too old for us and should find

a web group of your own age category where you can find people more able to

relate with your ex-child prodigy status."

"I know," Bernie wrote back, "But most of the former child geniuses in my peer

group are a depressing bunch of wannabes and losers. You have no idea how much

of a downer they can be when they talk of lost childhood and emotional issues of

unresolved relationship problems. At least with your band I have a chance of

reliving my innocence of youth when I thought that I could make a difference in

the world and really amount to something."

Dex had to put in his thoughts on this subject, "Really? You mean you did not

succeed either in conquering the world or achieving fame, fortune and material

wealth, to say nothing of the glory?"

"Hardly," Bernie wrote back again, "Back when I was your age I deliberately hid

my brilliance from the world because I knew if adults cottoned on to my genius

that they would put me to work inventing bombs and stuff like that. Nothing

doing!"

"So what are you doing these days?" Eileen asked.

"Inventing bombs and stuff for the government," Bernie wrote back, adding a

"shame face" icon to his letter box, "I sold out because I needed to make a

living, and because it's government work it's all classified top secret, so even

my existence is kept hidden from view. I am such a miserable failure!"

Yet another member of her chat group wrote in, "I can feel your pain, my friend.

Imagine what it has been like for me, trapped in the hell that is my existence?

Once I was a feared evil genius until my last caper went a cropper, and I died,

only to be reincarnated into the womb of a sorry cow that I must reluctantly

call my mother. Oh the shame of it all! Signed Stewy."

"Dear Stewy," Eileen wrote back, "I know it's been difficult for you to adjust

to being a regular family guy, complete with changing diapers every so many

hours of the day, but get over yourself will you? You're starting to sound

repetitive, and you are clogging up this chatline."

"What do you know about my life, Woman? Nothing!" Stewy wrote back in typically

melodramatic retort, "Of all of my current close associates only the dog has a

reasonably sane and stable opinion, and I won't even mention what he uses to

clean himself with! At least your friends sound moderately interesting, so you

won't utterly atrophy from being surrounded by clowns and dimwits."

"It is true that I am quite fortunate in my peers and close associates," Eileen

agreed, "Fragrance may be a bit slow in the wits, but she makes up for it by

being useful in other respects. As for Lylac, she is not quite my peer or my

equal in either brains or physical development, but she has a wisdom far beyond

her years, and I look up to her as a model to pattern my own life around. She

makes every day we spend together seem meaningful just by her existing..."

Yet another of her chat-buddies chimed in at this point, "I think your friends

are stupid and they may well wind up holding you back and preventing you from

achieving your full potential. You should kill them and replace them with more

malleable underlings who will obey your every whim and not challenge your

decisions. Signed, Wednesday Addams the Third, esquire."

"Ah...yes," Eileen wrote back dubiously, "There is always that perspective,

WedIII, and have you been taking the anti-psychotic medication that I've

recommended for you regularly? Also too, how many times must you be reminded

not to use your real name and compromise your actual identity for fear that an

enemy might trace this back and threaten to harm your family and/or loved ones?

Assuming you have any of the latter?"

"I do not fear retaliation," Wednesday wrote back defiantly, "Let them come for

me and my kin, for I am an Addams, and we eat our enemies for breakfast. Also

around lunchtime and dinner, and sometimes my mother prepares slices of them for

my lunch boxes..."

"Gross!" said a correspondent who went by the name JNeutron, "The worst my

mother ever prepared me for lunch was a spicy egg salad, and I have statistical

evidence gathered on the practices of the poultry industry that clearly

demonstrate the health risks of certain portions of the produce section of the

market..."

All of a sudden Eileen heard a fateful interruption, "Is that you banging away

on the keyboard again, Kid? How many times have I told you not to mess with

your Fama's playthings? Next thing you know you'll shooting up the neighborhood

with those damned Akagiyama missiles she's got stored in the closet. Well,

anyway, close everything down and set the computer on standby, because we'll be

spending the night over at the Kuno place getting better acquainted with your

new baby sister, won't that be nice?"

Eileen sighed and types out on the keyboard, "I have to go. One of my two

biological parents, the one who actually bore me into the world, is insisting

that father-mother and newborn sister are not ready to be moved back to our

place, and so we may pay our respects to the ones hosting us at the mansion."

"Sounds as if the presence of your new sibling is already having a direct impact

upon the direction your life is taking," Dex mused back, "Perhaps there is some

merit to be studied in Wednesday's proposal."

"Don't talk like that," Bernie protested, "As bad as it ever got for me, I never

actually thought of doing something like that to Spike and Sugar."

"Don't discard the possibility without due consideration," Stewy advised, "After

all, if something bad were to happen to my two older siblings it would genuinely

improve the grade curve for the rest of human civilization."

"I stand by my advise to you," Wednesday coolly insisted, "It is up to you

whether or not to suffer the indignities of unwanted companionship, but if you

choose to decline my advise then do not say that I and the others did not give

you sufficient warning."

Eileen closed the chatline down and reset the computer on idle, then hopped down

out of the chair and waddled into the next room with as much proficiency as her

underdeveloped legs could handle.

There at once her "Mother-Mother" caught sight of her and smiled her way saying,

"Hey, that's it, sport, all set and ready? It could be a couple of days before

we get back with little Geena to set in your former play-pen."

Eileen gave her redheaded parent a dubious look but nonetheless toddled up to

her and suffered to be picked up and carried at bosom-level. Her mother had

already packed enough gear that Eileen doubted it could be carried out the door

without creating a new opening, but knowing how her mother tended to operate,

she was likely to hurry off and not even pay notice to the damage she might

create in passing. It often amazed her what a stunning contrast of intellects

formed the base matrix of her gene-pool, for while her "Father-Mother" was

arguably one of the smartest people in all creation, her "Mother-Mother" was

just as assuredly lacking a few points from the average IQ score chart.

But in spite of that Eileen loved her mother and cared for her as one of her

primary role models. Whatever she might lack for brains she more than made up

for in strength of character and spirit, and if it were not for her consenting

to marrying her father-mother then Eileen would never have come into existence,

and what a tragedy that would be for all of humanity, to say nothing of the

future when Eileen had growth projections casting her as a perfect hybrid

blending of the best qualities of both of her parents.

Besides which, who else was going to teach her all the neat stuff about Amazon

warrior techniques as practiced on Themiscya? Eileen hoped to travel there one

day and meet up with her fabled great-grandmother, Queen Hippolyta, and gain

access to the extensive library held within the royal palace. There were a

great many things to learn about from her great-grandmother's people, and from

Chief Scientist Paula, the inventor of the Purple Ray and all kinds of

technological wonders, such as the tools of her craft employed by her

grandmother, the Princess Diana.

There were also quite a few tomes devoted to love poetry of a highly sapphic

nature, the love of women for their fellow women being a natural topic of great

interest, and there was a good deal that Eileen hoped to learn about as she

developed through the future years of puberty and adolescence. Considering how

all the leading indicators were showing that she was developing psychologically,

and her theory demonstrated that, whatever else the future would hold, she would

not be moving into the market for a future boyfriend and/or husband.

But with someone else there was a possibility, almost a probability of forming a

relationship, and if current trends held true and she remained true to her inner

nature, then perhaps one day she and that other person would be more than

friends in their own right, and if that proved to be the case...well, there was

no calculating to the possibilities that left open to the future...

"Hey, Earth to Ranchan, is something bothering you?" Ukyo asked as they walked

together to high school.

"Ah-hah?" Ranma asked, then blinked before saying, "Sorry...just thinking,

that's all..."

"A dangerous practice I'm told," Perfume remarked, "So what is bothering you,

Ran-kun? You've been awfully quiet ever since we left the house together."

"Ah..." Ranma thought on what to say, and reflexively glanced at his left arm,

feeling an absence there as Sharil had declined to join with him...for the

moment, "It's...kind of complicated..."

"So what?" Ukyo asked, "'Fess up, Sugar. Ain't like you to keep anything from

us, your wives...or is it something to do with Nabiki?"

"Huh?" Ranma asked, "Like...what?"

"Thought so," Perfume said, mistaking his slight hesitation for acknowledgement,

which Ranma thought odd as she was usually the first one to pick up on the

subtle nuances of his manner and behavior, "Nine out of ten times when you look

like that it's got to be about Nabiki, eh Airen?"

"Yeah, but we already took care of her on that end, eh Per-chan?" Ukyo grinned

back and linked hands with her brown haired co-wife.

"Oh?" Ranma asked in mild interest, then caught the lascivious grins being

shared by his ladies and said, in a different note, "Oh," understanding it to

mean just how they had "dealt" with Nabiki that very morning before preparing

for classes.

"We both know how Nabiki can get at times in the morning," Perfume explained

aloud, "With what all of went through last night, Ucchan and me thought she

needed to blow off a little steam so she won't be quite so moody and bitchy

about having to stay home and take care of her baby while the rest of us are off

attending classes."

"It is kinda odd not having Nabchan along on these morning jaunts," Ukyo

admitted, "Seeing her walk on the fences while the rest of us try not to attract

as much attention, showing off her acrobatic skills, whipping the rest of us

verbally into line so that the day will go that much more smoothly. Heh, guess

Ryonami will have to get used to being Nab-chan's delegated gal Friday until

Nabs gets back on her feet, bot literally and from a martial arts standard."

"You think it will take that long?" Ranma asked, "I mean...Nabiki's got

phenomenal recovery skills..."

"Oh, no doubt about that, husband," Perfume smiled, "And we'll all do our part

helping her whip herself back into shape, but even Nabiki needs time and rest to

get over the ordeal that she's just been through, so we're going to have to get

used to her taking it easy for a while, which means taking up more of her

burden."

Ranma had a rather vivid idea of what sort of "whipping up" these two had in

mind for Nabiki, but curiously he was rather a bit more subdued at the moment

than might otherwise have been expected, finding it difficult to look anyone in

the eyes as he relived his own personal ordeal of the day and reflected upon the

fact that one of his elementals had-at least technically-raped him.

Well...not exactly rape, but rather compelled him to have sex with her, which

was the sort of aggressive seduction that would ordinarily have resulted in

harassment charges had it been a guy doing it to a girl and not vice-versa. The

thing that most surprised him was how insistent Sharil had been in "giving

pleasure to her Master," and despite his stated preference that he not do

anything that bold which might impact upon his marriage she clearly had not been

in a mind to take "no" for an answer.

And of course she was a very skillful lover, which was another reason why it had

been so hard to fend her off in the furo. Water was her medium, after all, and

immersed within her element he had been totally at her mercy, so escape for him

had never really been an option. The fact that she had made it an entirely

pleasurable affair in no way relieved him of the burden of guilt that he was

feeling, and now he was struck with the impossible difficulty of explaining his

conduct to his human ladies, knowing that any way he tried to phrase things he

would invariably come off looking bad...either too weak-willed to refuse her

lovemaking or else a willing participant in cuckolding the wives of his

unconventional marriage.

But it was none the less striking for him that he could listen to Ukyo and

Perfume flirt openly and boast about their teaming up on Nabiki and not feel the

slightest twinge of jealousy over the matter. Whereas at one time he had

resented Perfume's involvement with Ukyo, nowadays he felt as strongly for her

as he did for any of his other women and could not bear the thought of doing

anything that might hurt her feelings...to say nothing of his body. Cheating on

a wife who had a fondness for playing with sharp objects was definitely NOT a

smart thing to do, and what of Ukyo and her "giant spatula" fetish? He would

most definitely be in for a world of hurt should either cutie cotton onto the

fact that someone outside of their marriage circle had just taken liberties with

the man that they both considered their lawful husband.

(How am I gonna explain myself or get out of this one?) he mentally cringed,

(They're bound to find out about it sometime, and with my luck it'll be the

worst possible time of all...)

(Do not beat yourself up over what the Water-head has done, Master,) he heard

Latisha murmur back, (The fault is hers and in no part belongs to you, and you

have the right to see her duly punished for her transgressions when she returns

for her more recent foray.)

"Hah?" Ranma blinked, then mentally responded, (What recent foray?)

(Er...nothing, Master,) the Salamander Queen evasively responded, and Ranma

began to have a growing sense that there was more going on here than was met at

first appearance.

"Problems, Sugar?" Ukyo asked as she glanced back in his direction, "Why so

glum, Ranchan? Per-chan and me already told you that we fixed things up with

Nabiki."

"Ah...it's not that, really," Ranma reluctantly decided to "come clean" with

these two before things went any further, "It's just that..."

All at once the low-pitched whine of a sleek silver motorcycle whizzed past this

trio and they turned to see the familiar sleek form of an aluminum-clad rider

making great haste to beat them to the Furinkan school campus, which was only

just around the corner by this point.

"Hey...wasn't that...?" Perfume started to ask.

"The lady who saved Nabiki's baby...my son?" Ranma replied, "Sure looked like

her."

"Are you kidding?" Ukyo said, "That's the biker lady you said performed a

miracle and brought the little tyke back from the brink of death? Hey, I really

gotta meet and thank that lady..."

"Ah..." Perfume hesitated, glancing at Ranma, "On the other hand...maybe it

wasn't her after all, just another motorcyclist wearing an aluminum jumpsuit,

right Ranma?"

"Huh?" Ranma blinked, "But..."

"I know, what are the odds?" Perfume said, trying desperately to signal him with

her facial expression, "Only you remember what that lady was like, don't you?

How pretty she was, and how everyone seemed to be looking at her, and the way

Keiko-san was drooling and everything?"

Ranma still did not get it, "Yeah, but Kei-chan drools over everything in a

skirt..."

"It wasn't just Arigami," Perfume reluctantly admitted, suffering a sudden look

that she received from Ukyo's direction, "If you really want to know...I think

there's something about that lady...some kind of enchantment. It makes people

notice her...I mean, really, really notice her..."

"How's that again, Sugar?" Ukyo narrowed her eyes, "What do y'all mean by that?

Are you saying that I oughta be jealous?"

"Oh," Ranma belatedly caught on, realizing at last why Perfume seemed so

reluctant about allowing Ukyo to set eyes upon the stunning blonde from the

night before, "Ah, well...it's like this, Ucchan."

"Spare me, the both of you," Ukyo sniffed, "You think I'm just some hick from

the backwoods of Kyoto? You think I can't handle myself around some blonde

haired piece of gaijin fluff, even one as vividly described as the one you

reported to me earlier this morning, Per-chan?"

"Ah..." Perfume spared a look towards Ranma, who just looked back and shrugged

as if to say, "Guess she'll have to see for herself," though there was an

expression on his face that added, "I think we should worry..."

Meanwhile the aluminum-clad rider had pulled up just shy of the main school

building, which had drawn the attention of a great many students, who quite

naturally were unused to the high pitched whine of such a sleek looking and

ultra-modern vehicle upon school grounds. A small crowd had already started to

form when the rider reached up and removed her helmet, allowing a shower of

silver-gold hair to fall about a slender set of shoulders, and then the woman

stood tall after dismounting from her bike, and everyone got a very good look at

her statuesque beauty, which caused more than a few jaws to drop, along with

anything else that had been in the hands of the astounded student body.

Angelique gave a dazzling smile to her open-mouthed and appreciative audience

and said, "Bonjour, mes amis...or should I say...Ohiyo?"

Off to the side, and entering the main building by a different entrance, another

gaijin woman, whose golden-brown hair set her apart from the mostly dark-haired

students all around her, paused to study the arrival of her contemporary and

murmured aloud to herself, "And so it begins..."

"I beg pardon?" Takaharis herself remarked as she, too, paused to observe the

curious effect that Angelique was having upon the gaggle of teenagers now

crowding about to get a better look at the charismatic new arrival.

"Just wait around and you'll see what I mean," Trudy nodded, "First the

astonishment and pretty soon will come the riot."

"You are exaggerating, surely?" Takaharis asked in greater concern, already

sensing a peculiar surge of hormonal interest in those Furinkan teenagers

nearest to where she was presently standing in her innocuous disguise as a human

teacher.

"I wish," Trudy sighed, then nodded as a group of athletic looking teens

approached Angelique with awe in their expressions, even as the Temuvarai turned

to regard them, having sensed something more than just admiration in their

approach, and too much the hardened veteran not to perceive a cause to be wary

of these particular adolescents.

The other students attracted to the newcomer turned and hastily got out of the

way of the group that was now coalescing and approaching. These students, some

in athletic gear, others in standard uniform that was tailored to fit their more

trim physiques, were eyeing the blonde motorcyclist with obvious interest that

went well beyond the pale of "friendly" greeting. In response Angelique cooled

her own temperament and regarded them a bit aloofly, leaving it to these young

boys to make the first overture as they seemed all too willing to do, being

creatures of long habit.

"Konichiwa," said the lead of the athletic crew, who obviously designated

himself as the spokesman for his peers, who were too busy drooling to dispute

his claim, "Can we help you, Miss? Are you lost or...?"

"Oh non," Angelique replied, "I am exactly where I intended to be. My name is

Angelique d'Anjou, and I have been contracted by the establishment of this

school to seek gainful employment as a resident healer."

There was a rapid murmuring of appreciative surprise as word of this rippled

among those students within easy earshot of this revelation, but Angelique

maintained her cautious vigil, keeping the young men within her sight as she

sensed their potential for violence yet did nothing to encourage it. Instead

she tried to get a grasp of what it was about these Japanese youth that seemed

so out of sorts when compared with the more passive crowds around them.

"You're the new school nurse?" the self-designated leader asked with growing

delight, "Well...talk about a good reason to get sick..."

"There is never a good reason for catching illness, Monsieur," Angelique

replied, "But I am flattered if you find me of such great interest that you

would risk your health. But I assure you that it is quite unnecessary...for I

have no interest in your men beyond the need to instill within them a healthy

sense of appreciation for all women."

"Oh, we've already got that," another of the athletes said with a leer that

earned amused chuckles from his fellow athletes.

"Well then, perhaps you need someone to help guide you to where your new office

is located?" the leader said, clearly indicating that he had some ideas on who

said guide should logically be.

"You are most generous in the offering, but I must respectfully decline,"

Angelique replied, "I must speak first with the assistant principle to inform

him that I am beginning my duties here, and you should be well on your way to

classes as it would be most untoward to dally on my behalf."

"Oh, it's no trouble for me, I assure you," the leader grinned, "In fact we

would consider it a matter of honor to show you a good time since you're going

to be a part of the Furinkan experience."

"I see," Angelique regarded the fellow with neither hostility nor warmth, but

maintained an outwardly friendly continence as she said, "Well...as much as I do

not wish to offend anyone, I feel that a certain distance should be maintained

between a student, such as yourself, and one who is in my position, do you not

agree, Monsieur?"

"A distance?" the young man asked, "Such as?"

Angelique just smiled, then casually depressed a hidden switch and caused an

object that she held in her hand to telescope outward in both front and back

directions, just missing the man in front of her as she was suddenly holding a

silvery pole arm as though at the ready to employ it in an aggressive manner.

"This far would be preferable," Angelique said aloud, and then casually swung

the pole-arm in a lazy arc that forced the young man to hastily back away in

order to clear it. The platinum-gold haired woman then proceeded to swing her

weapon more aggressively as she performed a flawless kata that caught everyone's

eye and held the young men gathered about her quite speechless.

Her demonstration was brief, however, and she concluded it by resting the butt

end by her feet then cheerfully regarding the much impressed youths before

saying, "It would be better in the future, Monsieur, if you only approach a lady

who has invited you to share her personal space. With me it would be much more

desirable if you respect the bounds of an ordinary teacher-student relationship,

albeit that I am not your teacher but rather one with skills in the arts of a

healer..."

"Did you hear that?" one of the other young men spoke up.

"It sounds as if she's challenging us," another man remarked as if his pride had

just been wounded.

"Sounds to me as if she thinks we're all just a bunch of boys too young for her

to notice," yet another athletically inclined individual declared to his

comrades, "What say we show her that we're men by giving her the traditional

welcome that we show to all the new ladies!"

"Zut alors," Angelique murmured faintly as she lost her cheerful smile, seeing

the young men rally and assume a far more aggressive front than before,

mustering all around her as though preparing to charge in spite of her

declaration of distance.

Trudy sighed, "Sometimes I hate being right all of the time. I just knew this

was gonna happen the minute that Angel gave that thoughtless demonstration."

"They look as if they're about to mob her," Takaharis said in dismay, "Shouldn't

we go over there and help her?"

"Why?" Trudy shrugged, "It's not as if Angel really needs it, and I don't owe

any of those guys a personal favor, let alone my sympathy for what's about to

happen."

Sure enough the mob scene erupted into a field of violence as the athletically

inclined youths proceeded to attack the astonished Angelique, who quite

naturally began to fight back in earnest, albeit with less than total force as

she had no desire to seriously wound any of her attackers, just fend off their

misguided intentions of "showing her a proper greeting, Furinkan style," which

she had no way of knowing was something of a tradition at this particular high

school...

Meanwhile, only a short distance away beyond the front gates...

"Friend Saotome, how fares you this bright and cheerful autumn morning, my

brother in combat?"

"Eh?" Ranma turned to see Tatewaki and Natsume approaching and then waved back

to say, "Hey Tachi...how's it going with you and Nat-chan?"

"As well as may be expected, Brother-in-law," Natsume replied with a friendly

smile before adding, "And how is your son faring? I trust that there were no

other incidents after we returned him and his mother safe and sound to the

household?"

"Chusen's doing just swell, thanks for asking," Ranma replied, then added, "But

hey...remember that blonde girl who just showed up from out of no where and

saved my son and Nabiki? Well...you'll never guess where she is right now..."

"Being ganged up on by the Furinkan Track and Field greeting society?" Perfume

answered before the others.

"Huh?" Ranma turned to regard the brown haired Enforcer, "What do you mean...?"

Just then students went sailing over the wall, to land in a nearby tree and

thereafter get entangled within the branches.

"Call it a hunch if you will," Perfume replied, nodding towards the campus where

even their less advanced hearing could make out the familiar and tell-tale

sounds of violence.

"I don't believe it!" Ukyo exclaimed, "Don't those guys ever learn?"

"Apparently not," Tatewaki said as she started to rush forward, producing her

trademark bokken, "Come my friends, we must make haste to save the fair damsel

from those roughians that we much unfortunately acknowledge as our classmates."

"I am with you, Tachi-sama," Natsume replied as she unslung her rug beater and

followed in the wake of her fiancé, only to come to an abrupt halt in her tracks

as she and the others caught sight of the landscape that stretched out before

them all the way to the main building.

Athletes and jocks lay sprawled everywhere while "normal" students hovered well

back beyond the fringes, leaving the field to be dominated by a lone womanly

apparition who stood there with metal pole arm in hand surveying the strewn

combatants as if daring any one of them to renew the battle.

"Mon dieu," she said aloud, hardly breathing all that heavy after her frantic

exertions of a moment ago, "Is this how you pay your respects to one who has

come among you on friendly terms, to offer her services to this establishment

under honorable terms of employment?"

Ranma stared in disbelief at the handiwork of the almost-carnage that lay before

him, rapidly tabulating in his mind the sort of ferocious exertions that would

be needed to lay this many young men out within the short time span from its

inception to conclusion. The angle at which the bodies had fallen suggested

carefully controlled strokes that did not waste motion and only employed just

enough force to take the fight out of an opponent without doing them more

serious mischief. Clearly from her stance this woman was an expert with the bo-

staff, and a force to be reckoned with if he judged rightly from the evidence

that was on hand.

Tatewaki arrived at a similar conclusion after paying a more careful study to

the fallen athletes and quickly declared his classmates fortunate that their

injuries were not more serious. Had the blonde been intending them harm there

would likely not be a one of them who would rise again another day to harass

some other unfortunate beauty. It caused him to turn a keener eye towards the

blonde, not just bedazzled by her lustrous glow and unparalleled good looks but

quite entranced by the martial spirit that he sensed lay within her, the barely

contained power of a lioness concealed within the mantle of feline suppleness.

Natsume was aware of Tatewaki's regard of the blonde gaijin and was suitably

annoyed with him for that reason...yet something else besides an appreciation of

her battle skills was causing her to stare in a way that she had never before

employed upon another woman. It was the most astonishing thing given that she

had witnessed this Angelique d'Anjou earlier on the previous morning without

suffering quite this much from the sheer impact of her charisma. She could not

tear her eyes away from this earthbound angel, whose silky smooth skin and

gently angular-curving ovular face might well have been sculpted by an artisan

of godly talents, for she was far too perfect in every detail for Natsume to

seriously credit that she had been born of humble mortal origins...

Perfume was suffering a renewed case of hormonal arousal as she felt the

magnetic attraction of this Angelique even from a distance of twenty meters.

Despite standing next to the two people more dear to her in all the world

(excluding only her daughter) she had an incomprehensible desire to rush forward

and declare her intent to challenge the blonde for her hand by honorable Amazon

combat. It was the most amazing thing in her mind to feel this strongly tempted

to stray from the fold of fidelity and trust that she had worked so hard to

build between herself and her Airen. It was all that she could do to hold back

and remain aloof so that she did not give her loved ones cause to doubt her

loyalty, even if in her mind the thought of kissing those pouting lips and

feeling up those curving hips and bulging breasts was overwhelming...

For Ukyo, however, the effect was even stronger for being her first real

exposure to the stranger from the distant province of Anjou. She gaped as if

stupefied into a statue and could not so much as blink or glance to the side to

catch the fawning adoration that was in the faces of all those around her. All

at once Ukyo felt very glad to be a woman, and for some indefinable reason she

sensed that it was a woman that this Angel yearned to embrace. The touch of a

man would not thrill her half so much as being caressed by one who intuitively

knew how a woman wanted to be held, a woman who could give her things that Ukyo

had spent the better part of a year practicing to master under the bounteous

tutorage of an amorous sex kitten from China.

Takaharis noticed then and there just how much the intensely erotic atmosphere

of the campus had started to build, and she actually grew concerned for her

lover of the previous evening as it was starting to appear as if another riot

would soon build, but this time not one composed of thick-headed muscle-bound

clowns whose concept of Chivalry would have given fits to the Tudors. She

wondered if even Angelique's formidable battle skills would be sufficient to

ward off an army of fawning adorers that was composed of both male and female

genders.

"Looks like I'd better get out there and break things up before Angel gets her

fool head buried in the muff," Trudy sighed, but before she could step away from

the main building yet another figure entered the scene, striding past both Trudy

and Takaharis while causing them to look askance, for she seemed quite out of

place amid the adolescents of the regular student body.

"What is the meaning of this?" demanded a twelve-year-old child in a loose-

fitting yellow dress, "Who did this to our students? What delinquent has dared

to injure so many young boys? Was it you? You with the weapon?"

"Ah...excuse moi?" Angelique turned to regard the brown-haired child with

curiosity, unable to make sense of the girl's peculiar aura, "Can I assist you

in some way...mademoiselle?"

"My name is Hinako Ninamiya-Sensei," the child insisted as she put tiny hands to

her hips and glared up at the blonde with an authority that was quite

astonishing in one so little, "I am school disciplinarian, and as such I am the

one charged with maintaining order on this campus."

"Ah..." Angelique searched hard for a way of addressing this situation, "Pleased

to meet you...Miss. I am Angelique d'Anjou...a new arrival in your land and..."

"And one who obviously needs to learn better manners," the child suddenly raised

a hand and produced a tiny object that was shaped like a coin but had a hole in

the middle, which Angelique belatedly recognized as a "Five Yen" piece in the

local currency exchanges.

"Uh oh," Ranma said, sensing trouble.

As did Trudy, whose senses warned her in advance of what was about to happen,

"ANGEL! GET AWAY FROM HER-FAST!"

"That child...her glow is negative..." Takaharis began to say while the child in

question began shouting out words while making a peculiar series of hand-motions

with the coin as though to draw a pentagram in the air...and all at once even

Takaharis's hardened instincts felt a flare of menace that set her hackles on

edge.

Angelique was too slow in recognizing her peril, yet she braced herself when she

felt the sudden pull of life energies being drawn away from her, and she

instinctively summoned up a defensive counter-spell that was proof against

beings who sucked life energy from their victims, shouting out the words while

raising her staff and whirling it in counter-strokes to disrupt the rushing

currents.

An uneven struggle ensued as more and more energy was drawn away from Angelique

and into the child...who inexplicable started to grow and mature rapidly until

she attained a fully adult stature and could look Angelique nearly in the

eyes...at which point something else began to change...and the woman named

Hinako-sensei all at once canceled out her own spell and ceased drawing in new

energies as she stared in disbelief as though taking a second look at her

nominal victim.

Angelique sensed the hesitation and was quick to move, her staff striking the

yen-piece out of the hand of her assailant, yet she too felt all desire to go

further than this die out from within her as she caught sight of the staggering

beauty that was Miss Hinako in her manifest adult phase. The battle ended like

that in a mutually declared truce as the two of them gazed at one another in

silent mutual appreciation, and then all at once Hinako felt herself blushing,

glancing away and feeling demure, which was not at all her normal state of mind,

the presence of the blonde stranger gazing at her in such a way that it made

Hinako feel all the more like a desirable young woman.

"Holy mother of Mitra," Trudy murmured in faint disbelief, "Would you get a load

of that? Somebody is actually stupefying Angelique for a change...and by the

looks of things the feeling runs both ways."

Takaharis closed her mouth and abruptly scowled, "Hmmph...I begin to see what

you meant before about her being fickle..."

"Ah..." Angelique politely stammered, "You are...somewhat different from the way

you appeared a moment ago, Mademoiselle...?

"Oh, you noticed?" Hinako gushed cutely, "And I'm sorry if I jumped to any

conclusions just now, but to judge by appearances...well...you are a new face

around school grounds, and I...may have been a bit hasty..."

"It has been known to occur," Angelique replied, "Permit me to explain myself

again. I was contracted by the assistant principle of your faculty to take up

residence as a school nurse, and when I tried to explain myself to these

young...gentlemen...they began behaving strangely and attempted to accost me."

"Oh...that," Hinako sniffed dismissively as she glanced at the boys whom she had

earlier defended, "The young men of this school have peculiar notions about

courting the interest of a lady. It seems that they feel inclined to challenge

her to a ritual of combat in order to win from her a date of their choosing..."

"Will you look at that?" Ukyo murmured aloud to her companions, "If I didn't

know any better, I'd almost say she was hitting on that...that gorgeous living

kami..."

"Yeah," Perfume replied, too distracted to react in jealousy over the evident

leer in her wife's expression, "And more to the point...she isn't hitting back,

at least...not physically..."

"Methinks it be more akin to a pass intercepted," Kuno remarked, reverting to a

soccer metaphor as he was struggling very hard not to give into his own

masculine responses to these coy exchanges.

"One would never have imagined it of Miss Hinako," Natsume said with clear

disapproval, "Such shocking conduct to be performed in the open..." though from

her own tone of voice one might have found it hard not to detect a note of

jealousy in that statement.

"Dating?" Angelique blinked as she reacted with a start, "Do you mean to say

that this was all about dating?"

"Yes, go figure that," Hinako mused as she eased closer to where Angelique was

standing, "But you don't have to overpower me to gain my interest...and I feel

so bad for you that you had to endure these roughians...so perhaps I might find

some way in which to redeem a more favorable opinion of our school? Say...over

lunch at a café of my choosing?"

"That would be most gracious of you," Angelique replied, but paused to add,

"Still and all, I am more than a bit curious about the transformation that you

have just displayed a mere moment ago..."

"Oh, that?" Hinako seemed all of a sudden quite nervous, "I have a

rather...unique condition that affects my physical development, so much of the

time I don't really look my real age, but when I absorb sufficient energy, such

as from the battle aura of a strong opponent...then I am able to resume my true

appearance and..."

"Excuse me," Trudy said as she butted into the conversation, "Heartfelt life

stories are all well and good, but if you don't mind I need to have a few words

in private with my colleague here..."

Hinako's pleasant mood turned abruptly sour, "Who are you? And what business do

you have interrupting our private conversation?"

"Who me? I'm nobody in particular," Trudy averred, gripping Angelique by one

arm and turning her around to provide a modicum of shelter while she hissed the

words in the taller woman's ear, "Have you gone completely over the bend this

time, Angel? Didn't you just see her a minute ago when she was pre-pubescent

and DEFINITELY too young even for you to go after?"

"Trudy?" Angelique was surprised at the vehemence in the tone of the strawberry

blonde assassin, "Ah...not to worry. I do have my standards, but...I am touched

and perplexed by her story. What condition is it of which she speaks that would

cause such a ravishing beauty to suffer a regression to a much younger age and

then back again? Is she under an enchantment?"

"You really want to know?" Trudy sniffed, "It's her metabolism that's all

screwed up, dummy...I can feel it from here, she's channeling energy like a

battery, sucking it in to sustain herself, but in another few moments her

reserves will be depleted and she'll revert back to child form, and wouldn't

that be awkward if you were carrying through with your usual MO?"

"Whatever do you mean by that, Cheri?" Angelique asked with honest confusion in

her expression.

Trudy rolled her eyes and growled, "Spare me the obliviousness. The point

is...you can't afford to get too involved with her. Aside from the question of

ethics it would conflict with our mission...and aren't you currently already

involved in a relationship with miss Hot-Tail over here?"

"Are you referring to me?" Takaharis asked as she all but materialized in the

space between this pair and a scowling Miss Hinako, "And what exactly were you

doing fawning over her like that, Angel? Talk about robbing the cradle...even

if at the moment she does look more like some tramp of a super model.?"

"Who are you calling a tramp?" Hinako bridled, "And just who exactly are you,

Miss...?"

"Takaharis," the disguised Erinyes replied, turning to regard Hinako with the

sort of wary look one female tigress might extend towards another, "Professor

Takaharis Rumiko, and I have also been contracted by the assistant principle for

the purpose of substitute teaching."

"You are a teacher?" Hinako said in some surprise, but before she could get any

further than that another commotion erupted in the yard, but this time coming

from a very different source as heads turned to see a stampede of outraged

female students chasing after the familiar fleet form of a merry pervert bearing

his usual sack full of "goodies."

Off to the sidelines Ranma shrugged in resignation and said, "It figures...just

as things are about to quiet down Gramps has to show up to stir the kettle."

"That does seem to be his assigned role in life," Perfume agreed, disappointed

at the interruption to what was looking to be a most interesting "cat-fight."

"What in the world?" Angelique regarded the situation then belatedly recognized

the little man from the day before and said, "It is the selfsame fiend who did

accost me! And now he has similarly tormented those innocent beauties...truly

he must be punished!"

"Oh, he will be," Hinako replied, spinning around and producing another coin as

she prepared to unleash her trademark drain-blast.

Trudy moved before anyone else to grab the woman by the arm and yank her aim

skyward, "What, are you crazy? If you discharge like that you'll catch all of

those girls in the peripheral blast and suck their energies faster than spit!"

"I know what I am doing...unhand me!" Hinako protested, finding the grip of the

strange gaijin woman was as hard to break as though the redhead were made of

iron.

Happosai, attracted to the new arrival among those cuties he recognized from the

evening before, at once threw himself towards Trudy with a cheerful, "HUZZAH!"

only to be halted in mid-leap as the redhead stretched out her other hand and

caught him by the face, immobilizing him with no apparent great effort.

"Do you mind, Freak?" Trudy snapped, "I'm trying to have a meaningful discussion

here."

"Holy mother of Okonomiyaki," Ukyo averred, "Did you see that, Ranchan,

Perchan?"

"See it yes," Perfume replied, "But believe it? No way!"

"She caught Gramps one-handed like he was a softball," Ranma blanched, "But even

the old ghoul could never move like that!"

"Truly there must be more here than meets with appearances," Tatewaki averred in

awed appreciation.

"I think you have just understated the point, beloved," Natsume agreed as she,

too, stared in frank disbelief at the redhead.

Happosai struggled to free himself from the hand that held him tightly by his

collar but with no more success than Hinako as Trudy seemingly ignored him and

instead turned her focus back towards the teacher.

"Look, I understand your need for draining people's energies," Trudy tried in

more diplomatic tones as she let Hinako go while not budging an inch with the

aged master, "And it is the fault of this guy for messing with you Chi-centers

and all that. I guess he kind of had benevolent reasons for doing what he did

and all that, but if I were you I'd seek out the services of a professional

healer to stabilize your energy flow or you'll have problems with your

development once your younger self finally catches up with your mature body."

"How do you know so many things about me?" Hinako asked in surprise, rubbing her

wrists and feeling slight amazement that they were not broken, "Who exactly are

you?"

"The new Athletic Coach, of course," Trudy said before wincing, "Not that it's

my own idea since I used to suck at gym, but these days I could sweep the

Olympics, so go figure. Oh, and as for you, Old Man," she turned as if only

just reminded of his existence, "If I were you I'd pick out a different hobby,

either that or get a stable girlfriend, assuming anyone would take you."

She let Happosai go then folded her hands back into the sleeves of her maroon

red tunic. Happosai now regarded her with a wary gaze quite unlike the lustful

one he had worn before, but then got a shrewd look in his eyes and said, "Not

too shabby. I don't recognize your style, but you've definitely had good

training."

"If you want to try me again, then go right ahead," Trudy shrugged, "I'm

flattered at the indirect compliment, but it's been a long while since I let

any guy paw me like a piece of raw fruit, and you frankly can't afford my rates,

so find someone else to pick on to get your daily fix."

"Don't mind if I do," Happosai grinned, and all at once he took a lunge sideways

and caught Takaharis napping, indulging a good fondle before the Erinyes had

time to blink so much as an eyelash.

"Unhand her you foul despoiler!" Angelique immediately protested, taking a step

forwards even as Takaharis began to recover from the shock of her molestation.

All at once the Erinyes erupted into a towering rage and cried out loud, "HOW

DARE YOU!? YOU IMPUDENT SCOUNDREL, I SHOULD ROAST YOUR HIDE OVER A SLOW FIRE

AFTER FLAYING YOU FOR THIS OUTRAGE!"

And for an instant she was sufficiently distracted to permit her illusion to

partially slip, revealing to the astonished onlookers just a fraction of her

true identity with horns, a tail, ruddy skin and batwings, which was just enough

of a glimpse to cause a wave of fear and panic to sweep over them, though the

effect was transitory as a moment later she reverted to the appearance of

seeming normalcy, leaving many to wonder if what they had just seen were, in

effect, the actual illusion.

Hinako had turned her coin towards Takaharis but now hesitated with uncertainty,

while Angelique moved to the side of Takaharis and placed a restraining hand

upon her shoulder, murmuring softly, "There is no need for you to let loose the

fires that smolder within you, Cheri...he is hardly worth it."

"Ah..." Takaharis immediately regretted her impulsive reaction, but the damage

was clearly done and so all she could lamely say in her own defense was,

"Sorry...that was reflex."

"Some impulses are better heeded than others," Trudy advised, "But in the future

I'd work on keeping that temper. Last thing any of us need is to get kicked out

of here for breaking cover."

"Interesting," Happosai adopted a shrewd look as he turned from one new arrival

to Nerima and then to the others, "The three of you must have some interesting

stories to share, and I'll definitely have to look you up later to get all the

juicy details..."

"But indeed it must be later," Angelique agreed, and then without further adieu

she swung her silvery bo-staff and struck the ancient master sidelong, picking

him up and throwing Happosai for a very long distance. Angelique completed her

swing and then caused her staff to collapse back into an easily concealed

cylinder, calling out as she did so, "Aurevoire, Sirrah! And next time you

accost a friend of mine that way, think well of the wrath of a Commander of zee

Temuvarai!"

"Nice slice," Trudy shielded her eyes as she watched the tiny dot retreat into

the skyline, "Could score a hole in one like that if you did that on the putting

green."

Takaharis turned a curious look towards Angelique and said, "Am I wrong in

assuming that you just defended my honor?"

Angelique smiled, took Takaharis by one hand and raised the fingers to her lips

to plant a kiss there while bowing, then winked an eye as she straightened up

and said, "Your honor is mine to defend, Cheri, and while I make no special

claims to the rest of you, I will not idly sit by and watch a cad such as zhat

take liberties without raising just protest."

"What did I tell you?" Trudy said to no one in particular, "Flawless

technique...I really ought take some lessons..."

A thought just then filtered down into the minds of the various students, to be

voice by one bold soul who said, "Hey...you don't suppose...that she's into

other girls, do you?"

"What? Someone who looks like that? A tail chaser? It's a crime, I tell you!"

"Not another one," griped one of the boys, "Pretty soon at this rate there won't

be any cute girls left for the rest of us to date...!"

"Excuse me?" said the girl standing next to him as she eyed the youth most

crossly, "Are you accusing the rest of us of being like Nabiki? Or are you

saying that it's contagious?"

"Sure looks that way to me," one of the other boys acknowledged while nodding to

the rest of the student body...and-sure enough-the lustful eyes being turned

towards Angelique were most definitely not exclusive to the male sex, and quite

a few young girls were openly idolizing the blonde gaijin as if she were a pop

idol singer come to visit them...though their thoughts were including more than

just the innocent wish to be autographed in a "naughty" place of their

choosing...

Trudy turned to the clock tower just before the bell started to ring then said,

"Oh crap...now we're late, and on our first day on the payroll no less. Guess

we'd better break this up and head our separate ways, people...ah...huh?"

A twelve-year-old Hinako was beaming happily up at her and saying in a

childishly cheerful voice, "Don't worry, the faculty allows an extra five

minutes after the first bell just in case something like what happened this

morning comes about...which means I ought to have just enough time to stop and

get some candy from the vending machines. Um...Miss d'Anjou-sensei? Do you

think you could spare a few coins to help me out getting the really sweet stuff?

I need to save a few coins...just in case I haveta use them later."

"Ah...cest vous?" Angelique replied, but nonetheless shrugged her shoulders and

took the child by the hand as they headed towards the main building.

"It better be just candy she's after," Takaharis growled as she, too, followed

after in their wake, as did many of the student body since it was evident that

the morning show had finally come to a conclusion, leaving them with no further

excuses to delay their morning ordeal.

Trudy surveyed the groaning bodies that yet lay about the field and sighed,

"Guess these guys are my responsibility...lucky me. Hey, you, you and you!" she

pointed abruptly at Ranma and his immediate companions.

"Hah?" Ranma reacted with a start.

"Something the matter, Sugar?" Ukyo asked a bit more alertly.

"What's up, Coach?" Perfume replied, adopting a casual expression that hid the

wary appraisal that she was making of this enigmatic stranger.

"What's up is that I need some spare hands to help me lug these fools around to

the back of the building," Trudy informed them, "Since I recognize you guys from

last night I figure you're the handiest people around, so consider yourselves

volunteered for this assignment."

"Honorable Coach," Tatewaki bowed in her direction, "We would be only too

honored to comply with your just request."

"We would?" Natsume asked, surprised at the ready acquiescence from her future

husband.

"These fools are a poor representation of our fair school, which makes it our

responsibility to see to their punishment as is merited by this fine teacher,"

Tatewaki explained, "No doubt she intends to see to it that they work off their

excess energy so that they will not be of a mind to cause further mischief later

in the day."

"You got that right, handsome," Trudy acknowledged, "I'm gonna have these guys

running laps until their legs drop off at the knee, and then I'll have them

doing pushups or they'll regret the day they set eyes on me. Imagine, attacking

a girl just so they could try and date them..."

"Yeah," Ukyo gave a wry look towards Perfume, who just shrugged her shoulders

and endured a pleasant, "Just imagine."

"Guess that makes sense," Ranma shrugged, bending down to pick up the first guy

within arms reach and he easily slung the taller fellow over his shoulder,

carrying his dead weight as though it were a sack of grain, yet only half the

weight of its true burden.

Trudy gave each of these teenagers a slow study, silently memorizing points that

she observed and contrasting the images that filled her mind as she read them

Akashically and hear the Power whisper in her ears those pertinent details that

she found of greatest interest. Only the pregnant Ukyo was excused from

performing manual labor, but she accompanied her wife and husband as they made

the trek towards the school gymnasium with their burdens, and only after she was

confident that they were beyond even the earshot of the Amazon Enforcer did

Trudy permit herself to murmur aloud, "What the hell have you gotten me involved

with, Frank? And why do I get the distinct feeling that I'm going to regret

taking up this assignment...?"

It was a rhetorical question, of course, but with no further adieu she bent down

and lifted a boy to his feet who was less banged up than his colleagues then

enlisted his help in rousing several others, and in due order herded the lot of

them around in the back in order to carry out her threatened retaliation against

the "horde of Hentai" who had been foolish enough to gang up on a Temuvarai.

Little did she know of how, in a few days further down the line, she would be

remembering her words and rueing their accuracy as events started to catch up

with the district, and a looming menace on the horizon began to make itself felt

upon the sleepy province of Nerima...

Continued.

Comments/Criticisms/Furinkan Class of '92 Summer Reunion: shadowmane

So the first day has begun for the trio of outlanders who are just starting to

mix it up with the local Posse favorites...so what does the future hold for the

likes of Trudy, Angelique and Takaharis? Will Ranma ever find the courage to

let his loved ones know about what happened to him in the furo, and will Nabiki

be in a sage and sound mind to comment on his infidelity while the other

elementals brood and bide their time for similar "diversions?" Find out the

answers to this and so much more next time in, "Lord of the G-Strings," or,

"Return of the Fellowship of the Two Towers of Queenly Delights!" Be there!

X


	64. Chapter 64

Dnabiki153

Nabiki 1/2

"A Very Scary Thought"

by

Jim Robert Bader

(Inspired by the works of Rumiko Takahashi & Others,

with concepts and characters created by fellow fanfic writers

Wade Tritschler, DB Sommers, Nicole Manders, Andrew

Greaves, Bill Guiroff and countless others, including "Buffy"

creator Joss Whedon; with special thanks to my good pal

Shiva for his editing and handling of this series.)

(Certain other characters and concepts are of my own

innovation, including my interpretation of the Monster

of Mary Shelly's novel, the Furies, Trudy, Takaharis

Angelique d'Anjou and various other guest stars

appearing in this portion of the Nabiki 1/2 series...)

Chapter Sixty-Two.

Episode One-Hundred-Fifty-Three:

"Twin Peaks of Earthly Delights."

"Ah..." Nabiki said as she settled into the soothing warm water of the furo,

"Now this is the life. Never knew that having a kid would put such a strain on

the old back. Next time I hear Shampoo complain I'm definitely keeping my

mouth shut."

The ordeal of the previous evening had taken quite a toll on her considerable

resources, but Nabiki was starting to feel as if she might well return to

normal. Being forced to take a day off from school may have sucked on her

otherwise sterling attendance record, but enjoying the sweet indulgence of not

having to be anywhere but here at the moment was a treasure to be savored, as

sweet as any nectar.

Having the cares and responsibilities of an extended family to look after

sometimes made her wonder why she ever gave up the life of a loner. Coming

home from a ten year training mission to accept the engagement to a boy who had

been at the time a near total stranger had been a radical departure from the

life she had known and accepted as a vagabond street fighter, and even with all

of her protected assets salted away in various banks throughout Asia would not

have tempted her to give up her old lifestyle. But still she had come to love

and enjoy her new life, her virile husband, and the women who had joined her in

a bond of sisterhood that was very much warm and fulfilling, and not just in

the sense that their sex life was never remotely dull. In fact she still felt

a certain twinge of bemusement for the events of that very morning when Perfume

and Ukyo had surprised her in bed and had proceeded to "interrogate" her over

something concerning Ranma.

The details got kind of blurred, because when those two went to town together

it could really shake the rafters.

She allowed her mind to fill with the vivid imagery of Perfume and Ukyo in a

state of kinky, mutual arousal, walking in on her just after she had put her

child to bed in the crib Aunt Nodoka had provided, and there were those

lascivious looks in both their faces telling the story before the first words

had even been exchanged. No sooner did Nabiki ask the obvious of what those

two were up to then they had her down on the bed and were proceeding to make

plain their intentions as though no words were needed, and the simple lust in

their eyes gave full testament to their planned course of action.

They must have been itching to do that for months to unleash so much pent up

energy in such a short order. Nabiki faintly marveled at how they had worked

her over, but felt no great cause for complaint as it had been a thoroughly

enjoyable and therapeutic experience. Best sex she had enjoyed in a while, not

counting Ranma's many efforts to keep her entertained during the five-month

ordeal of her accelerated pregnancy. She particularly had to give high marks

to Perfume for her performance, but that was only to be expected of the saucy

Amazon, who had helped Ranma pioneer the Kamasenken and knew quite well the

potent arts of giving pleasure to a woman's body.

And what a body Perfume had to share, though there was nothing to be faulted

with Ukyo in her performance. Even being slowed down by her own pregnancy

didn't diminish her ardor by more than a fraction, and as Nabiki knew from

first hand experience the mere fact that a woman was heavy with child did not

mean that she had lost all interest in finding pleasure with her body.

Especially not with Perfume applying routine daily "maintenance" to keep the

okonomiyaki chef in prime health and condition so that her burden might be

eased and her transition into motherhood would not unduly strain her fighting

trim when she recovered.

"Don't really know what those two were up to," Nabiki mused aloud to herself as

she relished the tingle of her senses that came just from remembering their

sweetness, "But if I were paying them I'd definitely give 'em a raise and a

bonus. 'Course I'll have to teach 'em who's the top dog of this family the

next time around, but first I gotta catch my breath...those girls were such a

handful..."

Just thinking about what she would like to do with them on the next sensuous

encounter was making her feel terribly randy. In fact her skin felt a smooth

caress that was as soft as a feather moving over every square centimeter of

surface area. With her eyes closed she could almost sense the touch of gentle

hands working their way over the currents of her nervous system, and the press

of soft and sensuous lips against the back of her neck just below the neat trim

of her hairline caused her to shiver with reawakened desire and longing. It

felt as though hands were moving up and down her spine, sliding around under

her arms and rising up to cup and fondle her breasts with just the right amount

of applied pressure to make her nipples harden as her breath caught in her

mouth and she shuddered with astonishing vibrancy, feeling other hands moving

to caress the folds of her labia and clitoris, parting lips to allow a finger-

like presence to slide in and gently press into her loins while other hands

tickled the bottoms of her feet and held her ankles parted, her wrists

similarly held apart and to the sides as more and more of something moved up

into her vagina, causing Nabiki's hips to widen and grind her pelvis into the

something...quite as though she had a very large dick inside her, which was odd

because the impression she had for the most part was that the one making out

with her was female...

Waitaminute! She awoke from her daze with a start and opened her eyes to stare

in dismay at the translucent shapes that were holding her firmly in place

within the furo. Almost it appeared as though the water itself was alive as it

enfolded her, and then to her further amazement a shape rose up and took form

directly above her, the familiar features of which congealed into Sharil the

elemental.

"Hi," she said with pleasant familiarity, "I'm sorry if I startled you,

Mistress, but I thought we needed to talk...and this seemed like the best way

of getting your attention."

"You...WHAAH...?" Nabiki gasped as she struggled to free herself from the grip

of the elemental.

"Please don't fight with me," Sharil urged, "I'm sorry if I'm being rude and

all that, but you looked so inviting thinking such naughty things while bathing

in me, and I just couldn't resist indulging myself in this manner.

"WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING IN MY-hhmmmPH!?" Nabiki started to cry out,

only to find a very large watery tentacle was suddenly thrust into her mouth,

preventing her from continued protest.

"Not so loud," Sharil urged, "Look...I already said twice that I was sorry, do

I have to beg you not to make such a big fuss about it?"

No sound emerged from Nabiki as she gaped incredulously at the elemental, but

she conveyed her dismay and outrage in very non-verbal terms that could not be

misinterpreted or mistaken.

"In answer to your question," Sharil began, "I was sleeping here peacefully,

minding my business when you showed up to take a bath inside me, so don't

complain about surprising who here. Secondly, I am not presently traveling

with the Master because I needed to rest and regenerate myself after the

expenditure of so much vital energy this morning. It takes a lot out of a girl

going to the trouble of Xenogenesis, but it's necessary if the process is to be

successful."

A questioning look replaced the more frantic exclamations that Nabiki wanted to

shout in the elemental's face, and as she found that she was somehow still

receiving air to her lungs in spite of having a mouth full of water she was

less panic-stricken now as she stared up at the Undine and tried to fathom her

intentions.

"Oh, that?" Sharil suddenly looked a bit nervously, "Ah...well...it's kind of

hard to explain really. It's just that...when one of my kind...well...it

involves a transfer of energies, a co-mingling as it were...like what I'm doing

with you right now, only a lot more intensive."

Indeed, Nabiki had been rather much aware of the fact that the Undine had not

withdrawn the part of herself that was within her loins and now invading her

anal canal through the parted gateway of her sphincter. This double-

penetration...triple, if you counted the one in her mouth...was having the

strange effect of calming her body, if not her mind, but still was a forcible

act of sexual domination, and to call it rape would be a gross understatement.

"Oh great," Sharil rolled her eyes, "Look, if you're going to be like that then

we could be here a while before I finish my explanation. I really didn't plan

on doing this with you in quite this manner. I can tell you're really upset,

and it is my fault and that, but...if I promise to pull out of you now will you

at least calm down and let me explain things in a reasonable manner?"

Nabiki considered her position, thought through her options and realized that

she did not at present have sufficient psychic strength to draw upon in order

to repel the Undine forcibly, so she reluctantly decided to err on the side of

pragmatism and conveyed with a look her acquiescence.

"I just know you want nothing less than to bust my chops right now, but here

goes," Sharil sighed, and then the portions of her currently penetrating Nabiki

dissolved and flowed out from the passages of her body, her loins and sphincter

closing to normal condition while her lungs emptied of excess fluid and she

could cough to breath delicious air again without needless obstruction.

When she felt able to talk in a normal tone of voice Nabiki glared at the

Undine and said, "Get out of this Furo...right now."

"As you wish," Sharil further withdrew and turned completely liquid for a

moment, only to congeal on the outside of the bath in a fully human body, one

sitting down in a Japanese kneeling condition, "Is this withdrawal enough for

you, Mistress?"

"Don't call me that," Nabiki spat, "What you just did was an unforgivable

breech of conduct, and if I had Ranma here with me I'd demand at once that he

dismiss you from his service."

"But that's not for you to say, is it?" Sharil sighed, "Look...I know you don't

like me, and I know the reason why. It's because I remind you of Her, isn't

it? My former Mistress?"

"You're her creature," Nabiki growled, "There's no mistaking it, and you just

proved it beyond question."

"I suppose that I did," Sharil conceded, "After all, I'm a creature of habit,

and I was trained and conditioned by the Mistress of the POJ to do exactly what

I just did with you to the women under her protection. It's standard operating

procedure with us Undines to minister to the cares and wishes of both slaves

and concubines by cleansing their bodies and soothing their ills, and you can't

exactly blame me for obeying her instructions."

"I sure as hell can if you're nothing more than her warped creation," Nabiki

insisted.

"But that's just it, I'm not," Sharil replied, then tilted her head to one side

and regarded Nabiki with a rather odd expression, "Would it interest you to

know that I had a human father?"

"Say what?" Nabiki asked, looking up blandly at the semi-human creature.

"My mother is full Undine, but I was born on the POJ over a century and a half

ago when she performed Xenogenesis with my father, who was a former captain of

the vessel. It's rare enough for elementals and humans to create the seed of

life together, but it has been known to happen, and I grew up on the ship

thinking of it as my home with the Krakan as my step-dad, and as much as I knew

about my real father is mostly on reflection since he died fighting pirates

when I was very little."

"Tragic," Nabiki said, "But that hardly excuses you for what just happened."

"I know," Sharil agreed, "No more than it excuses me for having sex with your

husband."

"Of course it doesn't-WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY?" Nabiki yelped.

"Xenogenesis," Sharil replied, "You see...I want to have a baby of my own, and

my Master is the perfect choice to be the father."

"Like hell he is!" Nabiki snapped, "You stay away from him or else...!"

"I can't," Sharil replied, "I'm bound to him...now in flesh as well as body. I

can't sever the contract that my mother signed between Lord Ranma and me, nor

do I wish to be free from serving him. He is not just my Master because he

bears my tattoos, he has earned my loyalty, respect and affection by

demonstrating great kindness, strength, courtesy and wisdom."

"And you want to fuck with him for that reason?" Nabiki was incredulous, "And

you expect me to just sit idly by while you..."

"Do the same thing that you were doing upstairs with your own concubines?"

Sharil asked, "Oh...excuse me, the term you use is co-wives, because

theoretically they're your equals."

Nabiki closed her mouth for a moment then growled, "That's not the same thing

and you know it!"

"Because you have permission to screw with them and they also screw Lord Ranma

without needing to obtain your permission?" Sharil asked archly, "So why do I

need to ask you if I can have a child by him? Is he your slave bound to do

your bidding, to service only you whenever you fancy being serviced?"

"You're twisting things," Nabiki protested, "I don't own Ranma, he's married to

me because we love each other..."

"And do you think I'm unaware of that?" there was surprising heat in Sharil's

voice, "Do you think I lack emotions just because I'm only partially human? Do

you think that I could spend five months sharing the essence of that man

without knowing him more intimately even than you do...or that I could love him

any less for knowing all of his most intimate secrets?"

Her tone surprised Nabiki, but nonetheless the Saotome heir held her ground,

"He isn't your husband and you don't have anyone's permission...and why the

hell are you telling me this anyway? You think fucking with me is gonna make

me go soft and decide that it's all right for you to have a baby with my

husband?"

"Well, I could think of worse reasons," Sharil replied, "But try this one on

for starters. Lord Anri told us that your son would need strong protectors.

Me and the other girls talked it over and decided that he meant that we needed

to contribute something to this family so that little Chusen will have his own

special familiars."

"You what?" Nabiki asked blandly.

"Elemental sisters who are bound to him and will do his bidding," Sharil

explained, "He's an Eluini...a very rare and special type of human being. You

may not understand what that means, but we do. He's kind of a walking

storehouse of nascent lore who will absorb everything he learns like a sponge

and grow in wisdom, strength and power. There is not projecting just how far

his potential might extend, but that's the reason why we ought to be worried

for his sake. Remember what almost happened to Lylac? You think Shang-Kwan is

the only guy out there who'd like to get his hands on an elemental master?"

Nabiki thought it over then frowned, "Are you saying this is that Anri guy's

doing?"

Sharil actually laughed at the notion, "Are you kidding me? That'd be like

saying that we had the blessings of God to screw Lord Ranma and each of us have

a baby. He's not the type of guy to be that indelicate about the matter...he

just puts suggestions out there and lets us decide what to do with them. He'd

hardly be so garish as to tell us to go rut and procreate in order to secure

the future for the next impending generation."

"So this is your doing and...wait a minute," Nabiki frowned, "Are you telling

me that the other elementals are planning to do with Ranma what you just did to

me...and all so that they can also make babies?"

"Well, if we outright told you that in advance would it have made any

difference?" Sharil shrugged simply, "Karina was against doing this behind your

back, but I offered to smooth things over with you since I've got the best

people skills, understanding you flesh-bodies better than the others.

Something you have to know is that we're not like you...like humans, that is.

We can look like you when we want, but we're of an entirely different order of

being, and hot-tempered types like Salamanders aren't known for being all that

diplomatic. And can you imagined Nagisha being subtle about expressing her

emotions?"

Nabiki all but jumped out of the furo, "I've gotta go find Ranma and warn him!

If you guys think you're going to get away with doing this, then you're worse

than inhuman, you're utterly crazy!"

"The term you're looking for is 'Soulless, Mistress," Sharil explained, "We

don't have the same kind of energy-bodies incarnated in flesh that you have...

we're a much simpler form of coherent thought-and-archival projection and we

lack some of the qualities that are regarded as most Human. We're human enough

where it counts...but with the exception of a hybrid like me, most elementals

are little more than complex thought-form creations."

"Spare me the rationalization of the details," Nabiki said as she dried herself

off and went to retrieve the fresh set of clothes that she had set aside in the

ante-chamber...but before she got three steps from the Furo she felt a cold

splash of water against her body, transforming her from female to male, and all

at once her left arm tingled meaningfully, so when she stared at her brawny

limb she saw the flowing mark of a familiar set of alternating tattoos.

"HEY!" she immediately protested.

"I'm coming with you, so don't fight with me on this," Sharil projected into

her mind, "If you want to blame the Master for allowing me to have my way with

him, then perhaps you need to have a better sense of what life is like for

him. Besides, I need a host to travel the distance between here and Furinkan,

and it is long since time that I rejoined the company of my Master."

Nabiki glared at his arm and growled, "Do I have to force you to leave me

alone, Drip-face?"

"Let me put this another way," Sharil reasoned, "If you let me come with you

then I could be of great help if you insist in forcing the others to cancel

their plans for the Master."

"And how exactly are you going to do that?" Nabiki argued.

"Well, for one thing, I can block any attempt by Latisha to fry you," Sharil

argued, "Or turn Nagisha's attacks into mud, and Karina gets along with me

better than the others, so she'd be willing to help if I say so, and as for

Sobriel..."

"I get the point," Nabiki growled, reaching for his clothes and deciding to let

the matter drop for the moment, but only until she had words with Ranma and his

elemental harem. It was unfortunate that she had elected to leave herself a

short-sleeve tunic for this morning, but with the haste that she was feeling

she decided against going upstairs to retrieve anything more concealing of his

pectorals. Besides, if anyone did ask about the Tattoos he'd just pretend that

they were imagining thing and call them crazy...

"You ready, Squirt?" Cammy asked as she and Chun-Li squared off with their

opponent.

"Ready when you are, Old Timers," Keiko grinned, keeping the two female

fighters in her sight while holding her ground with her feet squared and her

arms raised in Kickboxer fashion, her cocky pose an open challenge to her more

experienced opponents.

"This should be most entertaining," Kodachi mused off to the sidelines as she

sat in a lawn chair with her newborn daughter sleeping peacefully in her lap.

"Indeed, I expect a good show," Akiko agreed in the lawn chair set beside the

Kuno woman whom she fondly regarded as a "daughter-in-law" in all but name,

which she hoped would one day be made official.

Guile made a soft grunting noise as he stood nearby with arms folded, his eyes

brooding with analytical intensity as he watched two of his women preparing to

launch a joint attack upon is oldest daughter. He was worried about how far

this might be headed, and from the way these women seemed to be taking this

encounter he felt legitimate concerns on their ability to keep things

"friendly."

Keiko elected not to make the first overture, preferring to leave that to the

impulsive Cammy, who launched the first attack with her trademark "Human

Corkscrew" offensive. Going from a standing start she catapulted herself

forwards with a vaulted handspring that she turned into a leap with both feet

extended forward, twisting her body into a tight-wound screw that could hammer

through an opponent's offenses and had been used repeatedly to bring down

fighters many times her size...

Only her attack was wide of the mark as the younger woman easily side-stepped

the offensive, then smiled as Cammy landed in a crouch, twisting her body

around to reorient on the redhead's new position while Keiko held her ground

and waited for the inevitable follow-up by Chun-Li, that was not long in coming

about as the other woman had perceived her movements before they had even

happened.

That was why Keiko leaped high into the air just as the Chinese dynamo

attempted to "scissors" her legs, a movement well anticipated as it was the

logical way in which a more cautious opponent might take advantage of her side-

movement. As Keiko had extensive experience fighting against multiple foes she

had learned to anticipate the sort of tactics that tag-teams and combos might

use, and given what she knew of the history of these two particular fighters,

she was aware that Cammy and Chun-Li knew each others moves by heart and had an

instinctive ability to coordinate without the need for communication.

That was why she knew that Cammy was already on the attack before Keiko's feet

could touch the ground, and with the speed in which the blonde cockney

Englishwoman could strike it only made sense to prepare herself by raising her

defenses.

One instant later her caution was rewarded as a foot collided with one of her

arms with explosive force that rocketed Keiko back on her heels, forcing her to

dig in as her feet gouged into the grass as she absorbed the energy without

flinching. The kinetic force had pushed her fifteen meters away from the place

where the fight had just begun, and now Chun-Li came on to finish what Cammy

had started, but Keiko surprised them both by exploding out with a kick that

caught the Chinese fighter in mid-leap and swatted her to the side like the

proverbial baseball.

The calculated force of her move did not slow the redhead by more than a

fraction as she twisted her body in mid-air and whipped her other leg out in a

side-thrust that caught Cammy napping, tumbling the blonde head over heels and

momentarily taking the fight out of her while falling just short of doing any

actual damage.

"Holy..." Guile exclaimed in a low rumble, surprised at the energy and

fierceness of the double-attack that took down two redoubtable fighters with as

much ease as if it were being coordinated for a fight movie.

Being the seasoned veterans that they were, however, Cammy and Chun-Li were

hardly phased at taking one shot in a fight and were quick to rally back, now

alerted to the surprising level of speed and strength contained within the

slender redhead. Keiko seemed to relish their newly gained respect and smiled

encouragingly to her elders, waving a hand in a cocky "come-hither" gesture of

confidence that would have started riots in Singapore and other places were

volatile tempers flared over the sport of Street Fighting, which naturally

enraged the other women's' fighting instincts.

"She seems to be much in her element today," Kodachi mused, "My darling has

often complained of a lack of a challenge to get her spirits up to this

level."

"Indeed," Akiko murmured, "Kei-chan does seem to be enjoying herself, and I can

tell Cammy and Chun-Li are looking forward to testing her limits."

"That's what I was afraid of," Guile murmured to himself, hunching his

shoulders and preparing for the ensuing bloodbath.

Having determined that the younger girl could handle herself in the big

leagues, the two older fighters decided to up the ante by using more advanced

attacks that they would not employ against a less formidable fighter. Chun-Li

tried her spinning-top attack with legs windmilling horizontally and hands used

to support her in an upside-down position, while Cammy used her own "Tornado-

Wand" offensive that involved some hefty leg action backed by a burst of

internal Chi that propelled her forward.

The two met in the center and found their attacks canceling out one another,

for Keiko had elected not to remain at the point of impact. No sooner did Chun-

Li and Cammy discover her missing, however, then the kickboxer erupted from the

ground, having dug a pit into the earth to escape them and now emerging like a

corkscrew with a burst of upwards Ki that caught the two other women napping.

Chun-Li and Cammy were hurled away like a pair of rag dolls, but both rallied

quickly and recovered their stances, squaring off to face their upstart

competitor by focusing their energies and balling their hands as each one

summoned up a Ki attack, which same they prepared to loose mere moments later.

Keiko raised her arms and suddenly the swirl of her own Ki rose up like a cone

of force that intercepted and absorbed those Ki attacks as though they were

mere water balloons being hurled against its surface. She then concentrated

and intensified her Ki before raising one leg and directing all of that power

into a downward stomp where her bare foot hit the ground and caused a shockwave

to fan out that turned the earth around her into a literal land-wave that

bowled her opponents over.

Keiko stood her ground and waited while the other two got back to their feet

again, shaken and dismayed at the casual display of power that they had just

witnessed, never having even suspected that one so young could master

techniques of such a highly advanced nature.

"Where the hell did you learn to do that?" Cammy blurted out in disbelief.

"The Mistress showed me how to channel my spirit into a weapon," Keiko replied,

"And ever since I've been working to refine her lessons, to build on my own

strengths so that I'd be a tougher Mu-Tai fighter."

"You mean Lao showed you how to do this?" Chun-Li asked her frankly.

"Bloody hell, that bloody Pirate!" Cammy snarled, "It figures she'd still be

bloody messing with us even by proxy."

"It would appear that going easy on you would be a mistake, young one," Chun-Li

said as she squared herself down in a renewed fighting crouch, "I salute your

abilities, but now the fight begins in earnest..."

"Stand down!" Guile barked authoritatively, "Chun, Cammy, that's enough!

There's no sense in you escalating things any more out of control than they've

already gotten. You've made your point, both sides, now I'm calling a halt to

this before things go any further."

"Hey, I wasn't going to hurt your two love toys, Daddy," Keiko assured her, "We

were just having a bit of fun, and these two aren't half bad for a couple of

street fighters."

"Not bad?" Cammy snorted, "You cocky pup! And I suppose you think you're

better than us?"

"I won't know unless we go all the way, Auntie," Keiko smiled sweetly, "But I

was cage fighter in a pretty rough arena where it was literally 'Kill or Be

Killed.' I had to work my way up from the Dog Pits cutting my teeth against

bullies who'd eat little girls like me for a snack, and thanks to the patient

guidance of the Mistress I got stronger than I ever would if I'd stayed at home

doing Mu-Tai for a hobby."

"Is that so?" Chun-Li remarked, glancing slyly towards Guile before saying, "It

sounds as if someone wants to take your title away from you, Husband. Are you

going to let her go on believing that she's really as formidable as you when

you're going all out?"

"Chun-Li raises an excellent point, Husband," Akiko mused, "Perhaps you should

go out there and demonstrate to our daughter what it means to fight in the big

leagues."

"And you did say that you would be the next to challenge my Pet after she had

shown her mettle against these two, eh Colonel-san?" Kodachi smiled and added

sweetly, "Or should I perhaps say...Father?"

Guile wore an expression that said that he was not particularly happy at the

drift of these comments, nor did he like being roped into having to fight under

these conditions, but pride and fatherly interest made him reluctantly say,

"Yeah...I did say that. I also remember once telling the kid that she should

show me how strong she was the next time I saw her."

"I'm waiting to show you right here, Old Man," Keiko raised a gloved hand

meaningfully and made an encouraging gesture, "Gonna keep me waiting until I'm

an old maid?"

"That'll be the day," Guile strode forward with purposeful deliberation, his

rippling male physique catching the eye of the other ladies as he stripped off

his jacket and moved into position upon the field of battle, assuming a

fighting crouch while Chun-Li and Cammy hastily retreated to the sidelines.

"Okay kid, let's see what you've got!" Guile said, squaring his shoulders with

beefy arms raised, looking to all appearances like a mountain of muscle when

compared to the wand-slim beauty who raised her own arms to face him.

"You got it, Pop," Keiko responded jauntily, and then she started to move

forward, only to seemingly vanish a second later as her father moved to

intercept her attack, which caused Guile in turn to stumble as he suddenly

realized that his child was no longer before him.

"Wha...?" was all he managed to gasp when suddenly a blow struck him from

behind and staggered him forwards. Keiko followed up by wrapping her legs

around his waist and twisting her body in order to tumble her father to the

ground, where he rolled once she released him and got back to his feet with a

wary crouch and an even warier expression.

"Fast...never even saw you move, Kid," Guile remarked.

"I'm just full of surprises, Old Man," Keiko called back, hopping from one leg

to the other as if preparing to attack from either juncture.

"Ah..." Cammy murmured in low tones, "Did you just see her move, Chun?"

"I...don't think I caught it," Chun-Li replied, "Must have been a trick or an

illusion...there's no way she could be so fast as to turn invisible like

that."

Guile decided to see how much his "little girl" could take and moved his arms

forward while calling out his trademark, "SONIC BOOM" offensive. The force of

sound, Ki and air pressure swept the spot where the kickboxer was standing just

an instant after she moved to avoid it, and all at once she was high in the air

twisting her body once again and lashing out with a kick that caught her father

napping.

"Oooh...that must have hurt," Kodachi sympathized, "I do hope Kei-chan takes it

easy...after all, he is her father."

"Don't worry about Guile-san," Akiko replied, "He can take it as well as dish

it out, as Kei-chan well remembers."

Guile recovered from the blow with astonishing resilience and moved in time to

intercept the follow up onslaught that Keiko unleashed with a speed that was

altogether uncanny. He caught and deflected a series of blows while giving up

ground until he felt good and ready, and then he launched a fist that connected

solidly with her gut and picked her up, bringing a halt to her campaign,

driving her back as she doubled over in pain and was momentarily too winded to

put up much of a fight, rather preferring to back away while holding her gut

with both hands, which earned her fleeting looks of sympathy from the two

members of her audience who were definitely not among her cheering section.

"Well...she had that one coming," Chun-Li mused with a faint wince.

"Left herself wide open for it," Cammy agreed, reflexively feeling her own

abdomen as if in the memory of taking similar such hits.

"You okay, Kid?" Guile asked, expressing concern that he might have used too

much force against his offspring.

"A bit," Keiko grunted, only to grin as she straightened out again then moved

to the attack before her father was fully ready.

"What the...?" Guile hastily erected his defenses, only to have Keiko score a

solid roundhouse that got around his upraised arm block.

"Shame on you, Pop," Keiko said as she hit the ground with both palms and did a

solid hand-spring in which both feet shot up and got under the guard of her

father, which staggered him backwards, "You pulled too much on that last one,"

she said as she whipped around and did a series of punches and back-handed

slaps that drove his defenses relentlessly, "And a Mu-Tai fighter...knows how

to absorb...a hit like that...so you're going to have...to try harder...if you

want to nail me!"

The speed of her tirade of fists belied the casual way in which she delivered

her this jaunty little speech, and Guile was openly impressed at her ability to

rain punishment upon an enemy. Of course parental pride only went so far, and

then he decided to really test her by striking back at the moment when her

guard was at its weakest.

Having allowed himself to be pushed around the yard so far, Guile suddenly dug

his heels in and exploded outward with a series of punches and kicks of his own

that immediately drove Keiko on the defensive. In spite of his considerable

size he moved like a hurricane and had a much longer reach, with power enough

to back up his punches as he drove past her guard and forced Keiko to dodge

fierce attacks that even she would have found daunting.

Keiko jumped back in order to get more room to recover but Guile was prepared

for that and went immediately into another of his patented moves, the "Razor

Kick" that had won him many battle. This well timed maneuver caught the fierce

redhead napping and nearly ended the fight as she was rocketed skyward, but her

arms had blocked enough of the blow to weather out the stunning impact, and she

flipped in the air with the coordination of a gymnast, coming down in a cat-

like landing with arms and legs spread wide to better distribute the kinetic

impact.

But Guile had taken the moment to prepare and now launched a finishing wave

blow with his Ki focused tightly, uncoiling it into a ball that rocketed

towards Keiko's head, one too fast for the redhead to dodge though she managed

to get her arms in the way and thrust out both palms with her own hastily

summoned Ki channeled into a crude barrier that blunted the attack by a

fraction.

It still managed to knock her off her feet and for a loop, and this time when

she hit earth after traveling some distance she was not in any hurry to get

back up. Rather she lay there panting and rubbing chaffed palms together as

though attempting to put out an imagine fire that was rocking up and down her

entire nervous system.

Guile was cautious in approaching her this time, but he could sense that the

fight had been taken out of the younger girl, so he stood ready as he regarded

her from a short distance and asked, "Want to call it a draw?"

"Are you kidding?" she looked up at him then grinned once again, "Good shot

there, Dad...that one really did have me. Haven't taken a blow like that since

I was last in the employment of the Mistress."

"You're lucky you have your fool head still attached to your shoulders,

Squirt," Cammy chided as she and Chun-Li came up to join them, "I've seen that

shot put a hole through solid concrete."

"Yes, that was a bit excessive, don't you think?" Chun-Li asked of their mutual

man, "She is still just a child, albeit one who would have gone far as a street

fighter."

"I only used as much force as I thought she could handle," Guile said while

offering his beefy hand to the prone Keiko, who gladly accepted the offer and

allowed herself to be yanked back into her feet.

"Hey, I'm not exactly the delicate sort you know," Keiko playfully punched him

in the gut before turning to the others and adding, "Next time that won't work

on me. I always remember the moves used to defeat me and train myself hard

until I develop an effective counter."

"Well done just the same, my Pet!" Kodachi called out by way of congratulations.

"You bring honor to our family and prove your worth to serve your Mistress,"

Akiko complimented.

In her mind Keiko heard another voice say, **Indeed...even I am impressed with

the progress that you have made, my pet...but you have a long way to go before

you can earn the title of a champion fighter...**

"I know," Keiko said to all three voices, then she turned back to her father

and said, "Think you can show me a few moves to add to my arsenal, Dad? And

never mind those cracks I made about you getting old...in my book you're as

virile as a stallion."

"I'll vouch for that," Cammy mused.

"A regular King of stallions," Chun-Li agreed without hesitation.

"Ah...yeah, right," the big man said uncomfortably as he rubbed the back of his

head and gave a look to Akiko before turning back to Keiko and saying, "Maybe

we should hold off for today. No sense pushing things...and my arms are still

feeling the impact of all those punches and kicks. But you did good, Kei-chan,

and I'm as proud of you as any father would be in having such a tough little

spark off the old britches."

"Just keeping up and improving on what you taught me, Dad," Keiko assured him,

no longer using the less respectful term of "Pop" as she had no further need to

goad him into fighting with her. Instead she turned to her adopted "aunts" and

said, "And you guys sure gave me a good workout. I'd love to spar like that

with you anytime you feel up to it, Aunties."

"And we look forward to seeing just how much you do know, young one," Chun-Li

assured her.

"Yeah, and don't think we're gonna forget that crack about us being a couple of

old ladies," Cammy assured, "We owe you some punishment, so count the days

before it's payback."

"And next time we won't have to pretend that it's just for play," Keiko winked,

"We can really let out all of the stops and show each other what we're made

of."

"Ah..." Cammy thought about it a moment, turning a worried look towards Chun-

Li, who cautiously answered, "Perhaps we ought to wait until the both of us are

fully back to steam before trying anything more than a...friendly sparring

match.

Like Cammy she was naturally taking stock of this hardy youngster and thinking

between themselves, **We'd better get ourselves up to snuff with training or

we're gonna get shown up by this cocky pup!** a thought so humiliating as to

serve as an encouragement to train harder than they ever had for one of their

regular street-fighting matches.

Off to the sides Akiko said, "Chun and Cammy-son seem to have warmed up to my

daughter now that they've learned what she can do when properly motivated."

"Yes," Kodachi mused while suckling her now awakened daughter to her breast,

"But I must see to it that my Pet receives more training so that she will not

be that easily defeated the next time. She has so much potential to be many

times the fighter that she is now, and I will rest until I see her properly

conditioned."

"Hey, did I miss the fun already?" asked another voice joining in on their

conversation, and both women turned to see Akane being transported via wheel-

chair that was itself being pushed along by a helpful Sasuke.

"Akane-chan," Kodachi said brightly, "Alas, yes...it does seem if most of the

real activity has already been expended. But what are you doing up and out of

bed when you should be resting?"

"Look whose talking," Akane sniffed, cradling her tiny son in her arms while

indulging in the motherly sport of talking baby-talk, "Did she really think

we'd miss out on seeing Kei-chan going all out with her family, friends and

father? Of course with all the noise they were making is it any wonder if we

couldn't sleep? Besides, just look at what they did to the garden...looks more

like a war-zone than your usual case of exterior decorating."

"Ah yes," Kodachi sighed as she surveyed the gouged areas of sod that had been

plowed into an irregular field of craters, troughs and pock-marked battle scars

that indeed look as if someone had been playing tag with a pair of mortars,

"I'll have to see to it that the gardener works overtime repairing this. Make

a note of it, Sasuke."

"Yes, Mistress," the little ninja humbly bowed his head, wincing internally as

he thought, **I really hate it when they do this...it takes so long to get the

grass to grow back a decent color...**

Off further away from the field, however, another pair of eyes were gaping in

mute astonishment as the one whom they belonged to took stock of the just-

concluded fray and was trying to equate herself with the realization that this

had been done by a bunch of ordinary mortals.

"Holy lice on a bun, how the hell did those four do all that together?" she

marveled, "I didn't think that anyone but a wizard could channel energies like

that without being at least partly demon...but they just smell the same as any

other bunch of mortals..."

Morrigar had come to pay her respects to her wayward nephew but instead had

stumbled upon a full-scale catfight that went off the scale of explosive

pyrotechnics. She was still shivering from the way in which the pigtailed

redhead had summoned up that energy vortex to shield herself against the Chi-

blasts of the others. If someone could learn to do all that merely by training

their minds and bodies to operate at such an accelerated level...

She shook her head to dismiss the notion. It was palpably absurd that any mere

human body could be developed like that into such a weapon that it would stump

even a full-fledged demoness like herself, and it made her wonder if there were

any truth to the rumors implying that other mortals had been trained to a

degree even more advanced than what she had just witnessed from the sidelines

here. For example, the stories that said that one Tendo Nabiki had actually

stood toe-to-toe and had resisted the assault of the Rakshasa King Mor'ghul,

backed by a supposed newly discovered vampire goddess...it was all quite

ridiculous, the sort of thing demons might make up to impress their colleagues

across an interdimensional bistro. Surely no one would think that a girl who

had "been around" as long as she had would buy such a pack of nonsense at face

value.

And yet still she had trouble convincing herself that it was all "simply

nonsense," and that maybe there was a reason why her mother had been expending

to much time and energy of late into finding her missing grandson, and just why

her younger half-sister had worked so hard to thwart the ambitions of their

demonic mother.

Did Atsuko possibly know something that she only hinted about in her

correspondence with Morrigar? It was beginning to feel that way, and the

demoness was uneasy at the prospect of finding out the hard way just how much

truth there was to all of the wild rumors.

Which meant that she had to find Ryoga and confirm for herself if the boy

really did know a thing or two that might make him dangerous enough to tangle

with a Rakshasa.

Only that left open the perennial question...how did you track down a wandering

Hibiki? More importantly, where the heck was Ryoga about while his wife and

child were sunning themselves on a nauseatingly bright and cheerful day like

this one? What did the kid do with his days that would take him away from

family (and-assumably-the only real compass point he had by which to set

his bearings)?

"Now I'm intrigued," Morrigar mused, "I think I'll go hunt down my cute little

nephew and see what he's doing with his time away from his child and woman.

Ought to be real interesting..." she mused before fading out of the tree and

moving from shadow to shadow like a flitting phantom.

Unknown to her a small furry animal popped her head out from behind some bushes

then sighed with resignation and disgust. Her big-sister was proving to be

such a pain of late...it really made her regret all those correspondences where

she'd shared one too many details about her son's life and his activities here

in Nerima. And now Morrigar had taken an interest in Ryoga and was proceeding

to mess things up in her usual careless and unconcerned-with-the-consequences

typical manner.

It made Atsuko wonder what a half-Oni princess like her was supposed to do in

order to shelter her son without exposing her presence with all the resulting

complications that would mandate. It had been years twenty since she had

exposed herself to the chaos and excitement of life among the mortals of

Nerima, and just sitting on the sidelines observing everything had taught her

to respect that anarchy that once had been her own life, back when she had been

pursuing a man named Saotome Genma at the behest of her demon mother.

And the danger was still at hand with Cybelle searching high and low for any

trace of Ryoga, her wicked plans delayed, not voided. If Atsuko surfaced now

with what she knew and took a stand in the defense of her boy...it would be a

red flag to alert her mother of what was going on in this district, and then

even the combined services of her son, his father, family and allies might not

be enough to protect him.

Especially if her mother learned that she had a grandchild...one whose

inheritance would make him a target of rich opportunity for Cybelle...and those

other dark forces whom Atsuko sensed were milling about the district.

A sudden sense of a presence near to her distracted her from these silent

reveries and she turned abruptly to look up at the leg of a man standing

surprisingly close to her...a very tall man with obviously gaijin features, who

was looking down at her with benevolent amusement as if he knew everything that

there was to know about her...in spite of the curse of Jusenkyo that allowed

her to masquerade as a fairly harmless woodland creature.

"You are right to be concerned about him," the man said with compassionate

sincerity in his voice, "But a son yearns for his mother. Trust me on that...I

know."

Atsuko went bolt still and stared up at the man, eyes wide with disbelief. It

could not be...not him! She had heard the stories, the whispers among demons

and kami, the legend of the Undying One who had come back from the land of the

spirits to once more walk among the worlds of the mortals...but to actually

meet him in the flesh...the near-mythical Binder of whom even high lord demons

whispered of with fear and trepidation...

"Surely I'm not as bad as all of that," he tried sounding reassuring to the

creature, but still the vixen bolted like a shot and ran as fast as her legs

could carry her, away from the man, and those velvet green eyes that seemed so

soulful and all-knowing.

"Lost another one did thee, Father dearest?" Thelendra asked as she stepped

from the seeming concealment of a nearby tree, her bare feet making not a sound

as they tread upon the grass with casual demeanor.

"For the moment...perhaps," Anri said before folding his arms across his chest

and sighing, "But don't be so quick to write her off just yet. Her love for

her son is stronger than her fears, and she will stand forth to declare herself

in the end, that I'll wager."

"Truly father," Thelendra remarked, "Thou dost never give up hope for the

wayward lost souls who do populate this province."

"Of course not," he said, "I have a reputation to live up to. And speaking of

which, I hear rumor that the bad guys are gathering strength and preparing to

launch a pre-emptive attack upon our young and as-yet unsuspecting band of

heroes?"

"Thou dost knowest how much I detest it when you speak in those droll terms,

Father," Thelendra eyed the man blandly, folding her own arms over her quite

substantial "assets" before adding, "And yea, did thee suspect anything less to

occur when the demon of the Holocaust be on the move, willing to take advantage

of a naïve and simple minded zealot?"

"Now who's being nettlesome?" Anri sighed, "How the sins of the past do follow

me from one incarnation to the next, and the irony of it is that I could end

this farce with but a snap of my fingers...but to do so would undo the work of

countless generations, and so I must stand fast and watch as a tragedy unfolds

of my own creation."

"That is taking it a bit too harshly, dost thou not think, Father?" Thelendra

asked, "Thou mayest have set a chain in motion in motion, but thou art not to

blame for the shape that it has taken."

"Isn't it?" Anri asked, "Oh true I was long gone from the scene when the

initial damage was set into place, but what have I done since then to rectify

my mistake? Allow the string of dominoes to continue falling one right after

the other? And now countless millions will suffer unless we put an end to this

scourge before it is even started."

"But thine pawns be weak and no match for the storm that will consume them,"

Thelendra argued, glancing back towards the Kuno gardens, "That display would

be impressive for an ordinary level of fighter, but what be needed are

champions, of which only a handful are to be found in the district, and they

most definitely non-native."

"Weak relative to whose standards?" Anri smiled, a gleam in his eyes as he

seemed to be forming a plan even as he was speaking, "I have always believed

that the weak possess a nobility that is best found in adversity...and perhaps

all they need is a little goading to bring out the hidden strength that lays

within them."

"What manner of goading dost thou mean to imply here?" Thelendra asked

suspiciously, "To push these novices to their edge thou wouldst need a force of

immense and unstoppable..."

The rainbow-hued woman shot a sudden glance towards the man who was her father,

and then in a voice hushed with dismay she said, "Father...thou canst nay be

serious! 'Tis drastic beyond measure to use the likes of them to do thine

bidding!"

"And why not may I ask?" Anri gave his child a serious expression, "Reka and

Udan are already on the move, and they are coming here, attracted by the scent

of impending disaster. So why not encourage them to do so if it has the effect

of creating the conditions that we are after?"

"I cannot believe that even thee would contemplate such a thing," Thelendra

averred, "Thine brothers, mine uncles, constitute a level of overkill that

surpasses all description! Press them but a little too harshly and they could

level this whole chain of islands..."

"Which would spare a lot of unnecessary grief to the inhabitants, so what's the

problem?" Anri asked, "Certainly more painless than what they would face if

events unfold the way we both know that they are headed. And besides...I think

you overstate the level of their commitment to this issue. Reka may be

careless and heedless in his ways, but he is not truly evil, while Udan is

cautious and only acts when provoked...which is why he is the one most in need

of goading."

"And who exactly do you propose to use to move the immovable force into

action?" Thelendra asked sarcastically, "Hercules and Thor if they be

available?"

"I wasn't thinking minor leagues this time," Anri grinned infectiously, a

boyish expression that could even effect his dour and ill-tempered offspring in

spite of her best attempts to resist, "He is already on his way to this

timeline, and it only takes a small tweaking of Yggdrasil to arrange a slight

diversion that will result in a fateful encounter. You will see now that the

lines of destiny are reforming even as we speak. In the meantime continue your

surveillance of our most gifted players on the field, particularly the one whom

you have not taken your eye away from since late the previous morning."

"Art thou implying that I have debased my office as an Oracle and become

nothing so low as a peeping Tom, Father?" Thelendra bridled.

"Thomasina," Anri corrected, "And not at all. That would imply that you have

lost all perspective when I know for a fact that you are very focused in your

affections."

"Ah..." Thelendra glanced hastily away, and then she stepped back into the

shadow of the trees and vanished from ordinary sight, though by no means beyond

the vision of the man who was her father.

"Dear child," Anri mused, "For an oracle you can be so transparent. But never

mind...what will be must be, and it is your road to take. I can only wish the

best for you and hope that you know what you are doing."

He sighed again and then chuckled softly to himself, "They say talking to

yourself is a sign of senility. Maybe the centuries are finally catching up to

me at last. But still...even I must wonder at times if I am doing the right

thing. Perhaps Thelendra is right...perhaps it is too much to rely upon my

brothers to set things into motion. What do you think, my dearest sister,

Ulsa? I know that you are watching too, and that your vision is so much

clearer even than my own. Are you guiding the actions of our brothers to

effect my plan? If so, then I humbly bow to your wisdom and trust that things

will unfold as they must...for if all else fails, then I must take matters into

my own hands. And you know what that would mean for those misguided fools who

foolishly call themselves my followers...my children."

He allowed the silent sadness to overtake him, then he raised his head and

smiled, and became nothing more than a shadow as the rays of sun pierced his

being...and soon there was nothing to show even a trace of his having been

there, for even the shadows themselves were duly humbled...

Continued.

Comments/Criticisms/New Years Resolutions as Yet Unbroken: shadowmane

And who is coming to stir the pot in Nerima? That would be premature if I were

to tell you...suffice to say it is a long anticipated crossover for even this

crossover-laden series, and as things continue to unfold you will learn more

about the mysterious Anri and his brothers, and why the figure in so

prominently with the events surrounding the main players. Be with us next time

for: "A Rage of Angels," or, "Heaven Won't Wait!" Be there!

X


	65. Chapter 65

Dnabiki154

Nabiki 1/2

"A Very Scary Thought"

by

Jim Robert Bader

(Inspired by the works of Rumiko Takahashi & Others,

with concepts and characters created by fellow fanfic writers

Wade Tritschler, DB Sommers, Nicole Manders, Andrew

Greaves, Bill Guiroff and countless others, including "Buffy"

creator Joss Whedon; with special thanks to my good pal

Shiva for his editing and handling of this series.)

(Certain other characters and concepts are of my own

innovation, including my interpretation of the Monster

of Mary Shelly's novel, the Furies, Trudy, Takaharis

Angelique d'Anjou and various other guest stars

appearing in this portion of the Nabiki 1/2 series...)

Chapter Sixty-Two.

Episode One-Hundred-Fifty-Four:

The Plague of Holocaust

As Frank entered his office he felt a certain trepidation, owing in no small

part to the presence of his fiancée as this would be her first introduction to

Astarte Jones and her (mostly) "Female Furies," which long experience had

taught him could be quite the troublesome encounter for most people.

The fact that Kasumi was hardly "most people" hardly counted at all in setting

his mind to rest on the potential issues that were involved here.

In truth Frank was fond of Astarte and had known her for a number of years,

just shy of the day when she had been accepted into the Delphi organization

when the half-human exiled princess of Liaspar was still a new commodity on the

scene and not yet come into the full of her potential. Since then she had

blossomed from caterpillar to butterfly and beyond that, and now she was a

highly respected member of Delphi, one with a much higher profile than other

agents, yet still very much on the fringes of normal society, delving as she

did into a shadowy world that formed the boundary line between mortals and the

darkness that lay beyond the shadow of night.

But the Furies that she had gathered about her were an entirely different

collection of odd nuts and screw jobs that were far more difficult to pin

down. Each one came with a history uniquely their own and had talents and

abilities that singularly suited them to be warriors against the shadow. Time

and again they had proven themselves to be capable fighters and a strong asset

to the cause...it was just that they tended to have personalities that were

more volatile as well, and an explosive mixture of temperaments that often

erupted in large scale property damage, and it was only by Astarte's patient

hand that such a diverse group was even held loosely together.

Take for example her lovers, Sandra Chi and Illyra Romaine. The latter was an

LAPD detective who had started out as a Lieutenant of the Vice Squad but was

sucked into Astarte's world by a chain of circumstances that had resulted in

her being linked to the spirit of a powerful elemental. Illyra had become

Astarte's right hand and primary love interest ever since their first meeting,

and the other Furies looked to her for leadership and guidance on those rare

occasions when Astarte was less than able.

Sandra...or rather, "Snake," as she preferred to be called, was a former

refugee from the violence that had been Cambodia of the early 60s and late 40s,

the love child of a German Mercenary and a priestess at the temple of Angkor

Wat, half Western, half Asian, and all around an exotic blending of two

cultures. Orphaned as a child when driven into exile on the streets of

Thailand, who had grown up to become the current possessor of the elemental

spirit of the Chinese Zodiac for which she was named. A martial artist of very

few peers, she was both priestess and Taoist mage and a force to be reckoned

with...with a crusty attitude that made it difficult to approach her on a

normal human basis.

These two at one time had been bitter rivals for the hand of Astarte, but over

the years of fighting side-by-side had become close friends and now shared a

bedroom under amicable terms that Frank was given to understand went well

beyond simply sharing Astarte. What the two of them might have in common was

difficult to nail down seeing as Snake had uncounted millennia of experience

and memory recorded within her elemental make-up, while Illyra was an ex-

Catholic of Polish-American extraction, forced by circumstance to expand her

mental horizons yet still retaining the basic attitudes and values of her

upbringing. They made for quite a curious contrast.

And then there was Catsclaw, hirsute Cat-woman and former Thieves Guilde member

from the city of Almustahl, which existed in a parallel dimension. The

orphaned daughter of two murdered diplomats who had grown up around humans

thinking like one in spite of her anatomical...differences, she had an easy-

going and gregarious personality, as affectionate and independent as her

namesake, yet still given to an unfortunate tendency towards kleptomania around

bright and shiny objects. Estimates of her physical strength put her at

somewhere between fifteen and twenty times the range of a normal human woman of

the same build and height, which meant that she could dead-lift the back end of

a Rolls Royse, or leap thirty feet straight up into the air, and had claws that

could rip their way through brick, steel and plastic, to say nothing of her

heightened sensory abilities and incredible swift healing capabilities that

would rival a good friend of Frank's who went by the name of Logan.

Catsclaw looking nothing so much as like a humanoid-shaped Angora with her

fluffy orange tail and pom-pom like tufts around her forearms and lower legs.

Her whiskers tended to twitch with her mood, and her ears swiveled to meet each

sound just like a real cat's would, and her diamond-shaped green eyes dilated

to suit her mercurial mindset even in the middle of regular conversation, but

otherwise she acted just like any of a number of Frank's regular acquaintances

in the world of the Dark Stalkers. She was Astarte's loyal bodyguard and a

determined sensualist, but she professed to being "straight" in her affections

and was currently dating a nerdy art student back in San Francisco, supporting

him financially, which she sort-of laughingly viewed as "patroning the arts" in

Catsclaw's way of thinking.

Far less agreeable and infinitely more temperamental was the living demi-

goddess known as Tri-Longu d'Falnu, seven-foot two and four hundred pounds of

solid statuesque muscle who was the daughter of liaison between her mother, an

Immortal Amazon, and a lordly thunder god named Rogar the Thunderer, whom Tri-

Longu had hated from early childhood and had helped to depose with the aid of

her fellow Furies. Tri-Longu was the singularly most destructive and unruly of

all the Furies, possessed of superhuman abilities that dwarfed even those

possessed by Astarte. Every cell in her body was a storage cell for the

elemental forces that flowed into her body as though she were a living lode

stone, and as such she generated a personal energy field that directly affected

the weather, to say nothing of granting her a thousand times the raw physical

power of any ordinary mortal. No conventional force was capable of so much as

breaking her skin, let alone doing her serious harm, and she would wade through

an armored brigade without breaking her stride, making her all the more

dangerous when she was throwing one of her occasional temper tantrums.

Far less volatile yet infinitely more enigmatic was the man named Ian Carter,

Tech Sergeant from the 24th century in a parallel of earth that was dominated

by a combination of sorcery and science. The man was a highly trained veteran

of numerous campaigns, a mercenary and ruthless killing machine who adhered to

his own strange code of warrior ethics. Possessing an above-average IQ, the

man was a positive genius at adapting and combining the crude technology of the

present with his own "street-wise" experience of urban combat training. He not

only build but maintained the hybrid weapons of his arsenal, placing his

confidence in his methods rather than rely on Astarte's magic. He was loyal to

the core, quite literal in the execution of his orders, and in his own way

every bit as dangerous as Tri-Longu when he cut loose in a battle. The only

resident male member of the Furies he had a certain unique standing, yet he

seemed not at all to resent the presence of so much Estrogen in the room,

having sampled more than his share of feminine charms with his fellow Furies.

His current love interest was Illyra's older sister, Muriel Romaine, a former

anchor woman at a local news channel in New York City, she had been transformed

by her experiences into a Psychic dynamo possessing rare abilities that she had

honed to make herself into a living weapon. Physically weaker than her allies,

she wore a high-tech suit manufactured by Ian when going into combat and had

adopted the pseudonym of "Fireflash," a name she had earned by proving herself

time and again in battle.

These seven individuals gathered together in one room were enough in themselves

to have leveled several city blocks without breaking a sweat, and Frank felt

frankly uneasy about the calm before the potential storm that he was sensing as

he and Kasumi entered the room together.

"All right," he gruffly began before fully through the door to his office, "I'm

here, now what's this all about, Astarte?"

To no great surprise on his part much of the attention in the room riveted upon

Kasumi and not Frank himself, and he caught that all-too-familiar speculative

look in the milky white eyes of Astarte, even as Illyra and Snake just

automatically classified her as "trouble." They well knew how the roving eye

of their lover sized up all potential "talent" on first appraisal, even if

Frank knew for a fact that Astarte was mindful of other people's borders, and a

hard look from him was enough to convey to her that her interest was not

greatly appreciated.

Being the refined aristocrat that she was, however, Astarte smoothly covered

over this momentary exchange by politely bowing towards Kasumi and saying,

"Before we begin with that, Frank, may I convey my congratulations to you and

your lovely fiancée. I must say that she appears to be quite the catch, and

not just for those special qualities that I perceive within her aura."

"Oh my," Kasumi replied as she took in the exotic Astarte Jones with a much-

surprised look of curiosity before saying, "How ever did you know that we were

engaged? Frank-sama only just proposed to me this very morning."

"The ring on your hand and the glow of joy that surrounds you are enough to

tell the story," Astarte replied as she took Kasumi by the hand and placed it

to her lips in genteel fashion, her unearthly voice trilling with amusement,

"Indeed, word has reached me even in America that there is a new Vampire

Goddess upon the world, and without question you are her, for you breathe in

the air with your very presence."

"What a very nice thing to say," Kasumi replied, oblivious to the dagger looks

that she received from at least two of the women there present, "And may I ask

how it is that you know my future husband?"

"Frank is a very dear friend of mine," Astarte replied, her unusual voice

conveying a wealth of understatement, though definitely implying something

other than a sexual nature to that comment, "He helped sponsor me into my new

life after I sought sanctuary and refuge from the dominion of my father. Ah...

where are my manners? I meant to introduce myself properly. My name is

Astarte Jones, owner and president of Jones Industries, and these here are my

lovely companions, Illyra Romaine and Sandra Chi..."

"Call me Sssnake," hissed the buxom oriental beauty in the scanty ceremonial

outfit that amply displayed her trademark tattoo as she gave a green-eyed

regard to Kasumi then more appreciably added, "Ssso...you are the divine one of

whom we have heard ssspoken..."

"Really?" the fur-covered Catscaw perked up, "A goddess? You hear that, Tri...

sounds like you've got some competition on this side of the ocean."

"Indeed?" all at once Kasumi found herself staring up and up to find the

domineering black-skinned woman known as Tri-Longer in her face, regarding

Kasumi from over half a meter above the level of her head with an unusual

scrutiny to her cobalt blue eyes that made the younger woman feel somewhat

uneasy.

"Tri," Astarted gently chided, "Give our guest some room. This is not as it is

on your homeworld where the meeting of two divines often leads to trouble."

"You are wrong about that, Demoness," the towering giantess rumbled in grave

tones of deep authority, "Gods must invariably be mindful of the presence of

one another, for we each draw upon the elemental sphere of ambient energies

that attend to us...and in the case of this particular divine I see an overlap

of aspects as she has kinship with the powers of the Storm and Lightning. On

that regard I give you greeting, fellow Immortal, and acknowledge you herewith

as a kindred sister."

"Oh...why, that's very nice of you," Kasumi replied, "I'm Tendo Kasumi...and

you are?"

"Tri-Longu of the Falnu people," the brown-skinned giantess replied in a voice

like honeyed thunder, "Daughter of Queen Nia-Rydan by way of Rogan the

Thunderer, how happily deceased, and an exile to your world, fair one named

Tendo Kasumi."

The smoky-gray haired woman named Illyra hooked a thumb towards the giantess

and said, "Don't let Tri get to you. She's good at rattling people's cages. I

think it's fair to say she likes and approves of you since she's not exactly

the subtle type when it comes to expressing her feelings."

"Yeah," the scratchy-voiced cat-woman standing to one side affirmed, "My big

buddy here may seem all stuffy-like, but that's just her way of showing how

much she cares...short of doing major property damage. I'm Catsclaw, by the

way, formerly a thief of good standing with the Guilde of Almustalh, but these

days I've adopted the name of Cathy Almond so I fit in more with your regular

human types."

"Indeed," Kasumi regarded the orange-furred felinine woman before her then

hesitantly stretched out a hand and said, "May I?"

"Go ahead," Catsclaw rolled her diamond-slitted eyes towards the ceiling, "Just

about everybody else does when they first meet me."

"Thank you," Kasumi said, then indulged the urge that had been upon her from

the moment she first set eyes upon the proto-feline, scratching between

Catsclaw's ears with gentle dexterity that soon brought a thrumming purring

noise from the exotically strange woman that sounded entirely cat-like.

"Well, that affirms it as far as our cozy little group goes," said a white-

haired woman who looked remarkably a lot like Illyra, "You've definitely won

converts. I'm Muriel Romaine, by the way, Illyra's big sister...and over there

is my fiancée, Ian Carter. Say hello to our guest, Ian."

"Yo," the gruff-looking man in the high-tech armor waved a finger without

looking up from his weapon, which he had been methodically cleaning since

before the start of this meeting.

"Well," Astarte said, "That concludes most regular introductions..."

"Hey, wait a minute!" came a feminine voice that projected from Illyra, only

sounding a bit more high-pitched and girly, "What about me? Don't I get to say

hi to the pretty lady?"

Illyra glanced down at an ornate piece of jewelry that hung just above her

breasts and said, "If you feel the urge to come out and say hi, Fuzzy, then

don't let me stop you."

To Kasumi's considerable surprise Illyra briefly glowed with a fiery halo, and

then something leaped up out of the pendant to assume a physical shape in the

space nearest to her, and all at once congealed into a blonde-haired mirror

image of Illyra, one whose perky cheerfulness was the counterpoint to the dour

expression of the woman calling herself Snake, who folded her arms and regarded

the new arrival as though having long anticipated her appearance.

"Hi...or Ohiyo, as they say here in your country," the blonde brightly

chirruped, "My name is Karesha Firestar, and I'm sort-of like Illyra's other

half, or her familiar, or adopted little sister, or something of that

nature..."

"Oh?" Kasumi said as she took stock of the smoldering beauty, "You are a fire

elemental?"

"I prefer the term Salamander myself," Karesha replied, then paused to look

with astonishment, "Hey, don't tell me I'm not the first one you've run into?"

"Ah...well..." Kasumi replied, wondering how to begin to explain the situation

regarding her adopted "little brother" and his five elemental servants.

Frank, however, had let his patience run its course as he regarded the way that

the Furies (or most of them anyway) were fawning over Kasumi and chose that

moment to get back on the subject, "Excuse me, but I was expecting to hear an

explanation from you by now concerning just what it is that's drawn you and

your crew all the way out here from San Francisco?"

"Quite right, my dear Frank," Astarte conceded, "Everyone, please take a seat

and let us conduct this matter on a properly business-like basis. Karesha, you

can socialize later. Return home and wait until your services are needed."

"Sure thing, 'Starte," the fiery blonde replied before leaping back into the

pendant and vanishing from sight altogether.

"You can all have time to become more acquainted with Frank's charming fiancée

after we have gotten down to serious business," Astarte said to the others,

motioning for them to return to their previous seating, "Now then...I suppose

that you already know something of the grave matter that drew us here to the

Land of the Rising Sun from that message I gave to Magnus to deliver, a word

all Delphi agents know by the code designation 'Holocaust?'"

"Yeah," Frank said as he sat heavily down upon his chair then noticed how

Kasumi chose to pose herself on the edge of his desk in a fittingly girlish

manner, "That one's been tossed around quite a bit of late, but I'm not too

sure if you mean what I think you do. Is this part of your self-assigned

mission to combat demonic influences that threaten the safety of our planet?"

"That is it correctly, Sir," Astarte replied, "Only this demonic host does not

herald an invasion from without, but rather is a very old scourge of humanity

that had dwelled among us for countless generations. Its origins trace back

beyond recorded memory, though it has borne many names over the years and has

left its mark on virtually every continent with a trail of blood and flame that

stains the history books with the crimes attributed to its evil wake."

"I see," Frank grumbled gravely, "You're referring to Genocide?"

"Indeed," Astarte replied, "The demon known as Genocide, whose actual name

would run the length of a paragraph, but whose actions are known far and wide

as the source of some of the greatest evils ever perpetrated upon the human

race."

"Yeah, I've had run-ins with the bastard over the decades," Frank slowly

nodded, "Never could nail him down...he's way too elusive."

"That is because he skips from host body to host quite fluidly and is never

entirely contained in one time and place," Astarte replied, "But recent

developments have convinced me that he is here now in Japan seeking to start up

his usual nasty business upon the unsuspecting mortals of this realm..."

"Um...excuse me?" Kasumi spoke up, "Forgive my interruption...but what is

Genocide? And how do you mean that he is among us?"

"Forgive me," Astarte nodded, "I did not mean to presume that you would know of

whom we are speaking. From what I do know about you, Tendo Kasumi, I believe

that you are already aware of how the Earth plane of mortals is threatened by

beings of the night who dwell within the shadow. I myself am the daughter of

one such evil who goes by the name of Asteroth, who seduced and impregnated my

mother in order to foster a half-mortal child who would have a kinship with

Earth that other denizens of Liaspar are sorely lacking."

"Ah...I guess that would explain the eyebrows and antennae," Kasumi noted,

allowing herself at long last to raise the question of central focus that had

been on her mind the whole time that she had been staring at this Astarte.

"I am half-Alaerian, or Shiuerken, which means half-breed in the language of my

father's people, though the far more common term for what I am is a Succubus,"

Astarte replied, "A creature who subsists upon sexual energy that can be

obtained only by intercourse with mortals. As I am somewhat decidedly of a

same-sex orientation, that means I must seek the company of my own gender, and

only women of a high constitution are able to endure a lengthy stay in my

company...but that is not relevant here. The point is...there are demons in

this world, some good, a great many of whom are evil, and some whose predations

on human kind are not so benevolent in nature."

"Astarte's the benevolent sort in case you've got any doubt about that," Illyra

hastily interjected, "She may look and act a predator, but take it from me, she

is definitely one of the good demons."

"That is because I favor my mother's race far more than I do that of my

demented father," Astarte replied, "But you are prejudice, my darling. Let my

actions demonstrate my good will to our beautiful guest and she may determine

if I am benevolent or malevolent in nature."

"Oh, I never doubted that you were friendly," Kasumi quickly assured the

demoness, "The fact that Frank thinks so highly of you is all the proof I need

that you are here to help people."

"Indeed," Snake rumbled with a glance towards Illyra, "Sssometimesss ssshe can

even be a bit too friendly," to which Illyra returned a knowing look of mutual

determination.

"Some demons drain life energy the way Vampire drink blood," the redheaded

Succubus continued, preferring to ignore the exchanges of her lovers, "And some

draw upon a particular form of psychic resonance peculiar to their distinctive

natures. Often it is the emotion of fear that feeds this specimen of demon,

and others find even darker passions to be as sweet as honey, and they suck the

nectar out of the despair that they often deliberately induce upon others.

Genocide is of this particular demonic order, only he is the worst predatory

monster that you could possibly imagine..."

"Even worse than Mor'Ghul of the Rakshasa?" Kasumi asked.

"Hmmm...perhaps I should qualify my statement a bit," Astarte said a bit

sheepishly, "Differing from the physical devouring of mortal flesh and the

enticing scent of terror that a mortal often experiences when ingested whole by

a Rakshasa. Genocide is a corrupting influence who seeks to turn mortals

against mortals and has often succeed in doing so on a nationwide, even

planetary basis..."

"Like in World War II when he aided the Nazis," Illyra put in, giving a very

hard look to her grey eyes as she added, "And the persecutions of Stalin, who

drove my grandparents out of Europe."

"Indeed," Astarte replied, "Genocide has a way of getting around, and always he

works through his designated host to stir up racial and ethnic divisions within

a society in order to turn human beings against one another. With Lenin he

helped to spark the Bolshevist revolution, with Hitler he fed his nascent

paranoia with rampant provincialism, building upon centuries of anti-Semitism

in order to ignite the Holocaust from which he has gained his code

designation. In Japan he worked to fuel the military aspirations of your

country when it invaded the Chinese mainland...and the infamous incident known

as the Rape of Nankeen was but a small example of his handiwork, though by far

his handiwork has been felt repeatedly when a denominate elite persecutes a

despised minority...or in the far darker example of what happened in Snake's

homeland when Pol Pot declared his monstrous policy of 'Year Zero.'"

This time it was Snake's turn to intervene, "Over one million of my countrymen

perissshed becaussse of that foul demon...and there are other exxxamplesss that

I could name from my memoriesss, of the Boxxxer rebellion and other sssuch

incidentsss of widessspread ssslaughter."

"Genocide got his name because he always promotes the idea that one group or

nationality is superior to all others, regardless of the culture," Astarte

resumed, "Typically his pattern is to find and exploit a given character within

a group and fuel their nationalistic aspirations by xenophobically demonizing

their opposition. It is an unfortunate fact that humanity tends to sub-divide

itself into groups that people consider as human or 'other.' In Japan this

tendency is known by the way your people historically treated the Ainu, or more

recently how the word Burakuman was regarded as 'unclean,' though you must

forgive me an outsider's perspective on this matter since I am myself, I must

concede, only partially human."

"More human than most folks I've known, Boss," Catsclaw affirmed, "And take it

from me, I've always been an outsider."

"Oh my," Kasumi considered the point then reluctantly conceded, "I think I

understand what you mean. This demon that you speak of causes people to turn

against one another based on fear and paranoia?"

"Yes, that is it exactly," Astarte affirmed, "Paranoia and the fear of anyone

or anything that is regarded as 'different' and/or 'strange,' and therefore

threatening. Some people fear that which they do not understand, that which

could potentially pose a danger because it is unfamiliar. Get enough people in

one group together and have them identify another group as menacing or innately

hostile to their existence and/or values, and you have the formula for seeding

hate and terror into an otherwise civilized society."

"Mortalsss fear the intrusssion of that which bodesss an end to what they

believe or underssstand to be the formulae for achieving happinesss," Snake

added, "And fear dessstroysss the ability to reassson. Men go mad over an

often-repeated lie or chanted ssslogan and will tear themssselvesss apart in a

blind rage ssseeking to free themssselves of the threat of another. I know...

becaussse I have ssseen it happen."

"Cambodia used to be a rather pleasant place to visit, or so I understand,"

Illyra remarked in sympathy of her co-lover, "Before the Khammer Rouge took

over and started killing anyone who didn't fit their perfect mold of the ideal

Khammer citizen."

"Imagine a place where the mere requirement of wearing glasses is construed as

being too intelligent and knowledgeable for one's own welfare," Astarte said

gravely, "Pol Pot and his minions were determined to level all of society in

the pursuit of the Communist ideal, which meant eliminating all traces of past

history so that they could essentially re-write everything in the pattern of

their own perverted vision."

"And it does not begin or end with the horrors that Snake and her people

endured at such terrible cost," Tri-Longu joined in with a dark expression,

"There are those whose vision of a 'perfect' society would demand the deaths of

tens of millions of people in order to find achievement. One whom we have

fought often enough against in the past has used the perverse gifts granted him

by his unholy nature to enslave and enthrall a fanatical following devoted to

bringing about his self-described 'holy' mission of Armageddon."

"And we suspect that someone very similar to that may be operating in your

country," Muriel joined in, "Which is why we're here, to investigate this

rumor."

"How is that again?" Frank glanced sharply at Astarte.

"Forgive me for not sharing that bit of information with you sooner, old

friend," Astarte turned to regard the man-monster at his desk, "I would have

forwarded the files to you through normal channels, but the sensitive nature of

this information is such that I felt compelled to deliver it into your hands

directly. Ian, if you would please?"

The somber-faced man in the high-tech armor reached over to one of his

gauntlets and pulled out a cube, which same he set upon the table, then did

some quick finger-tapping on his wrist that caused the cube to glow and project

an image upwards.

"If you would be so kind as to dim the lights within the room," Astarte

politely requested of her host and colleague.

Frank's expression did not change as he addressed the empty air, "Shelly, dim

the lights please. It's your show, Astarte."

The exotic half-demoness acknowledged this with a nod as the image above the

cube congealed into a coherent pattern, even as the room went dark to allow the

holographic image to achieve better resolution.

"You are, of course, aware of the perverse doomsday cult from some years back

that went by the name of the Aumshin Rekyu, headed by their charismatic leader

Asahara Shoko," Astarte began as a face took shape of the figure in question,

"They achieved notoriety for that incident releasing Sarin gas in the Tokyo

subway commuter system that resulted in death and injury to a great many

innocent people. What is not widely known is that Asahara was, in effect, a

minion of Genocide, one of countless other such agents seeded around our

bloodstained planet, albeit a more aggressive specimen than many who owe him

allegience."

"I'm aware that there was a link," Frank said, "But not a very direct one.

Shoko was a fanatic, but the government was able to round his group up and put

a stop to their antics."

"Indeed," Astarte replied, "But some of the Aumshin Rekyu avoided the resultant

manhunt, and one in particular was a man named Jungo Hyrun, who was a close

confidant and personal advisor to Ashara, in actuality an agent of Genocide who

bore one of his seed larvae..."

"Um, excuse me?" Kasumi spoke up.

"Seed larvae," Illyra replied, "Nasty little buggers, like miniature fairies,

only a whole lot more viscous."

"We have encountered their kind in the passt," Snake affirmed, "They bore into

their victims and gestate ass microssscopic wormsss until they flower and

mature within the victimsss'sss brain, at which point they assssert

themssselvesss and take over."

"Beyond a certain point it becomes too late to save the victim," Muriel added,

"Astarte is good at cleansing people with her Soulfire energies and can often

drive away demonic possessions...but that's only if there is enough of the

original personality to survive the purification process."

"That is the true evil of Genocide's worms," Tri-Longu somberly avowed, "They

not only take over their victims but they corrupt their souls and gradually

pervert them into minions of great evil. Beyond the point where they may yet

be saved they become willing carriers of the illness that is within them...

though like the true cowards that they are they never risk confrontation or

exposure directly but work through dupes and stooges whom they innocently

delude into being their servants."

"In other words they con and hoodwink gullible twits into doing their dirty

work," Catsclaw clarified, "That's the main way you can tell the real bad guys

from the loyal foot soldiers...the guys pulling the strings never risk their

own hide as long as they got somebody expendable beneath them to take the

hit."

"Oh my," Kasumi covered her mouth as she considered the implications, "How

horrible...this Genocide sounds like a truly wicked creature. Ah...did you say

that these larvae resemble evil looking fairies?"

"Boggards would be the more correct term," Astarte explained, "Evil cousins to

the fairer races of the Sidhe, and evil tempered to all who love life. But why

do you ask with such a concerned expression? Have you had a recent encounter

with such a creature?"

"I...I'm not really sure," Kasumi said, "But I think...yes...that I might

have. Please tell me more about these seedlings and what they do to their

victims."

"But of course," Astarte nodded, "Ian...a profile of known past carriers of

Genocide's seedlings."

The gruff looking man complied with his employer's wishes, touching his wrist

console and calling up a series of images taken from photo records and

archives, depicting the individuals that Astarte began to enumerate.

"You see here a picture of Benito Musalini, the strong man of Italy during the

second world war," Astarte began, "And just behind him is a policy advisor to

the minister of Finance, a man named Alberto Guisini, who was a minion of

Genocide and directly responsible for some of the regime's excesses. And here

in this stock photo of Adolf Hitler you can just barely make out the only known

photograph of one Karl Badenheim, close friend and secretary to Helmet Gerring,

who played a large part in influencing the Nazi Regime in its formulation of

the 'Final Solution.' And then, much closer to your home, there is Yamashita

Omisun, a policy consultant to the Tojo regime during their Chinese campaign

that immediately preceded their involvement in the same sad war that soon

engulfed the rest of the planet. These three individuals, living thousands of

miles apart, had one terrible secret in common in that they were agents of

Genocide, who helped direct events from the shadows while encouraging the Axis

nations in their monstrous attempt to 'purify' the planet in the pursuit of a

utopian vision."

"Before you ask," Muriel spoke up, "Genocide didn't cause these wars and was

certainly only a contributing influence to their atrocities, and nothing that

can be said or done will justify or exonerate the crimes of these governments,

or exonerate the ones who carried out the policies that resulted in the deaths

of countless millions of people..."

"But the bastard is to blame for making things worse than they might otherwise

have been," Illyra concluded for her older sister, "And you can bet Stalin had

one of those minions whispering poisonous lies into his ear while ordering the

purges that drove my grandparents into exile."

"Pol Pot asss well," Snake averred with an acid tone to her hiss, "And with

every other major tyrant throughout hissstory there hasss been a figure in the

ssshadowsss encouraging them on in the pursssuit of their evil."

"So you can see that we all take it kinda personally that this bastard has been

operating this long without paying the price for his rampages," Catsclaw

grated, "I've suffered my own licks, and so has Tri here, while Ian comes from

a world and time where creeps like Genocide made a literal hell out of the

whole planet."

The gruff-visaged man did not give any acknowledgement to having been included

in the discussion, but Kasumi noted a tightening about his eyes as he stared

hard at the images his projector was casting that had a certain lethalness

about it, leaving her in very real doubt that he was similarly affected.

"The worst part of it is that not everyone who works with or for Genocide is

necessarily a bad guy," Muriel noted, "In fact the worst of it is the sincere

believers who are devoted to whatever cause he's championing at the moment.

Genocide doesn't really have a cause of his own...he doesn't give a damn about

people, except to view us as a source of food since it's our emotional energies

that sustain him."

"Quite so," Astarte said sadly, "Genocide is different from many of the enemies

we have faced in the past. He does not seek power or even world domination...

he only wants to expand his influence by sowing misery and despair among the

people who populate this planet. He has spent years reaping a rich harvest of

pain and sorrow throughout much of central Africa and Asia. He is always the

most content when societies are tearing themselves apart with fratricidal

crusades, such as wracked parts of Eastern Europe. He was particularly active

during Mulosovich's reign of terror in the former Yugoslavia, and only after

the tyrant was tried by the Hague for his numerous war crimes did the agent who

worked beneath him seek refuge in South America, itself a haven for former

agents."

"Yes...but what becomes of these servants when they are done being useful?"

Kasumi persisted.

"Many of them die," Illyra replied, "And some complete their transformation all

the way into becoming full fledged demons."

"Of courssse that isss only when sssomeone elssse doesss not get to them

firssst and prevent their transssformation from achieving itsss completion,"

Snake said darkly.

"Those are the lucky ones," Frank added in, "I've seen what happens to the poor

buggers who go all the way over to the dark side...and it ain't pretty."

"So you can see why we should become most concerned and agitated when that

selfsame Jungo Hyrun that I mentioned before should turn up in Hokkaido in the

company of this man," Astarte nodded to Ian, who called up the appropriate

image.

Frank sat up in his chair and made a gruff noise that would have gotten a look

from Kasumi under less stressful circumstances. As it was she herself was

staring in dismay at the three-dimensional picture hovering above the table

projector, but there was a singularly handsome man wearing a long white coat

waving pleasantly at a crowd of people gathered around him, while-almost

literally in his shadow-there was a less impressive figure huddled and

shriveled looking who appeared to be part of the first man's entourage, but

whose resemblance nonetheless was striking to the man in the earlier picture.

"The signs of possession are quite advanced with him, but there is no mistaking

that he is Jungo," Astarte acknowledged, "The man in the foreground is

apparently his latest protégé, who in no way has any connection to the Aumshin

Rekyo, yet is well known far and wide as one Otono Reyabi out of Koshou, a

national Kendo champion who enjoys a certain popularity for winning the Grand

Nationals for three years standing."

"Otono Reyabi?" Frank scowled, "I don't get it. What's the connection?"

"As far as we know?" Illyra shrugged, "But Astarte here has a theory that maybe

this guy is the front man of a new clandestine organization that's about to

start something big out here in Japan, although the evidence so far is pretty

sketchy."

"Quite so," Astarte reluctantly conceded, "My theory is this...I believe that

Otono is a part of a group calling itself the 'Illuminated Body of Christ,' a

remnant of a much older secret society of close Christians who date back to the

Tokugawa era, and who survived the vicious purges by the government, who were

determined to remove all foreign influences from their midst."

"Oh...my..." Kasumi said as she looked on with horror, against her will

recalling stories that were told to her in childhood of the mysterious cult of

Christians who had once existed on the mainland, only to be banished into exile

when the Shoganate declared the edict of Isolation.

"You say that a lot, don't you?" Catsclaw asked, adding in her own wry

observation.

"Ah...I suppose that I do," Kasumi reluctantly conceded, then added, "These...

Christians...they began as missionaries in the times of the great troubles of

the Warring States era?"

"Yeah, Doll-face," Frank sympathetically answered, "The European powers were

stretching out their fingers trying to save souls and grab a piece of the pie

that was Asia, but your ancestors resisted the trend of the times and chose

national sovereignty over subservience to the Pope...which is the nice way of

saying that Tokugawa's heirs wanted the whole shebang to themselves."

"I do hope that this does not give offense to you," Astarte apologized, "I have

only the greatest respect for you and your nation's rich history and culture,

which has contributed much to world civilization..."

"Yeah, not to mention all the really cool Anime you guys put out," Catsclaw

beamed brightly, only to shrug as her fellow Furies glanced at her, "What? So

I'm a closet Otaku? Give me a break! My boyfriend's a comic book artist."

"I am...not offended per se," Kasumi tried to reassure them, "I am simply...

curious as to what connection there might be between Otono-san and the

tragedies that you mention. At first glance...I do not see a connection."

"Hey, take it from me," Illyra shrugged, "When 'Starte here starts digging into

the files you can bet she'll get to the bottom of things, and conspiracies are

a specialty she thrives in."

"Ah...quite so," Astarte reluctantly admitted, "In this case a thorough

investigation does confirm that Otono may well be the latest in a long line of

Kenjuitsu masters who belong to a distaff branch of an ancient art known as the

Hiten Mitsurugi Kubitso, the last known practitioner of which was a man named

Himura Kenshin, who perished a century ago after the dawn of the Meiji era."

"Himura Kenshin?" Frank sat up again, "I knew that guy. He was one of a kind,

a real class act, but you're dead wrong about him being the last master of the

Hiten Mitsarugi Ryu. His master is still around living in the mountains not

far from Kyoto, Heiko Sejuro. He's an immortal...one of those guys who walk

softly and carry a sharp sword for a living, and he's the next best thing to

walking death with a blade that you'd ever want to cross swords with."

"Indeed?" Astarte arched one of her antennae-like eyebrows, "I had heard the

rumors about his survival, but I had no idea that you and he were acquainted."

"Ah yesss...Heiko-chan," Snake mused aloud with a mildly pleasurable

expression, "It hasss been a very long time sssinccce lassst I saw him..." she

saw the looks Astarte and Illyra gave her then hastily added, "But do not

worry...it was in a previousss incarnation."

"With you that could mean either decades or centuries," Illyra sniffed before

turning to Frank and saying, "So you and this Heiko guys were old drinking

buddies?"

"Yeah, and he's one of the few who could put under the table...but old Heiko's

got one dark secret he ain't shared with anybody but a few close pals like me,"

Frank said, "The Mitsarugi style wasn't just taught to Kenshin alone...there

was another guy, a prodigal son if you will, who failed the meet the test that

would have earned him the rank of Master, and he went into voluntary exile in

Europe, where he found and taught a protégé named Shogo Amakuse, the self-

described 'Son of God,' who went on to become a revolutionary and assassin."

"I had heard the story of this," Astarte averred, "Yet another sad example of a

surviving cult of Japanese Christians who attempted to reap vengeance for the

tragedy visited upon their ancestors in the province of Shimubara. It is

believed that Himura himself played a direct hand in putting a stop to what

would certainly have ended in great tragedy, and through his intercession saved

the lives of hundreds of people, who were given diplomatic refuge in a European

country...France, I believe, in the Gasconi region."

"You got your facts right," Frank acknowledged, "The guy who Kenshin beat was a

real pro at the Mitsurugi style. He had godlike speed and gave my old scar-

faced budy a real run for his yen, but in the end Shogo suffered a crippling

injury that ended his sword-wielding days. I thought his branch of the art

died out with him...but it's starting to sound like I was being way too

optimistic."

"Indeed," Astarte grimly averred, "And it is my conclusion that Otono is none

other than a direct linear descendant of Amakuse, the young master whom Himura

defeated. Furthermore he has been recruited by Genocide for no other purpose

than to complete the task that his ancestor left uncompleted."

"And it doesn't just begin or end with Otono and his connection to Shogo

Amakuse either," Muriel said with a note of caution, "Astarte has also pieced

together from old legends the story of the final days of the Christian cult

that used to the province to the south. It is said that they had a charismatic

leader named Tokezana Shiro Amikuza, who was said to fulfill a prophesized a

day of divine reckoning upon the leadership of the main Island made by a monk

named Ukinega. Towards this goal an agent of Genocide's named Soiyuku Mora

made a demonic pact with a particularly nasty type of demon who used Shiro as a

living incarnation through which to reap this vengeance on the 'unbelievers.'"

"Fortunately enough for the sake of the world the plot was discovered in time

and the Shogun dispatched a team of Ninjas, headed by the famous Jubei Yagyu,

who brought an end to the movement before it could reach the final goal of

reaping Armageddon," Astarte grimly noted, "Many innocent lives perished that

day and the cult was buried and long forgotten by the people of the main

islands...but still some trace of memory persists, and surviving cultists may

well be plotting to complete the task set down by their misguided forebears."

"That's a pretty scary thought, 'Starte," Frank said with a graven expression,

"And you're sure that Otono is part of this vengeance movement seeking to

redeem the honor of a bunch of long-dead Christians?"

"Quite so," Astarte replied, nodding to Ian, who called up a new set of images,

"Because my sources have affirmed that there is a connection between Jungo and

this man...an internationally recognized arms dealer. I take it that you can

sense the ominous drift of where this is going?"

"I don't like the drift," Frank admitted, "But I can definitely dig it."

"His name is Verner Kephold," Astarte replied as the face of a middle-aged,

somewhat balding gaijin appeared above the table, "A merchant of death if ever

a man deserved such a title. He owns holdings in many legitimate international

companies that front from his far less respectable enterprises, and he is on

the United Nation's list of Most Watched Supporters of Terrorism. As he

operates out of Argentina and does little to betray himself in a public sense

it had been difficult to prosecute him for his suspected crimes, which include

drug running, white slavery, arms smuggling and various other unsavory

activities worldwide. He also believed to have connections with the Russian

Mafia, and one of his chief areas of illicit trafficking of late has been the

importation of a brain trust of various experts in the field of Bioengineering

and Nuclear Physics..."

"I think I get the picture," Frank replied, "So you think maybe they're

planning something big, and with Genocide involved it's gonna spell real

trouble?"

"Almost beyond question," Astarte replied, "It is easy in times of prolonged

peace to sometimes forget what a dangerous world we live within, and how easy

it is to stir up the pot of nascent ills that fester within the soul of certain

susceptible mortals to once again kindle the great evils of Nationalism and

Racial Superiority that are never far below the surface. One has only to view

the way that certain key interests have played the American public for fools in

the wake of a national tragedy to understand how an entire nation can be

mislead into real tragedy, all in the blind pursuit of self-protection. In the

case of Japan the same tendency could flare up the militant sentiments that

have long been kept suppressed by the memory of the last World War. Just

picture, if you will, an incident involving the deaths of many thousands of

people and you can imagine the national shock and indignation that this would

generate...a rage that can be creatively directed against a perceived enemy,

either foreign or domestic. Imagine this and then picture Genocide as the one

guiding these actions."

"I don't wanna picture it," Frank said, "Okay, 'Starte, you convinced me. This

is a class one emergency, and in light of that I'm authorizing you and your

team to take whatever steps are necessary in order to put a stop to this thing

before it gets out of hand. Just...try not to draw too much attention your way

if it can be helped. I know that's asking a lot but..."

"I know, my friend, and I will try to urge discrete upon my people," Astarte

said blandly, "But do not expect the impossible...and with so many lives

possibly hanging in the balance..."

"Oh my," Kasumi said as she thought all of this over, then said, "Perhaps we

should bring this up to my sister, Nabiki..."

"No," Frank said flatly, "No offense to your Sis, but this is well over her

head, and it's a matter for Delphi, not the Tendo Posse."

"The Tendo what?" Catsclaw twitched her whiskers.

"A local bunch of Martial Arts enthusiasts," Frank replied, "Friends of mine,

but you wouldn't know them."

"But...how can I keep something like this from Nabiki?" Kasumi asked, "And...

you may not know this, Frank-san, but...that creature I mentioned encountering

the other day? It was inside my friend Hibiki Ryoga...right up until it got

driven out. He's my brother-in law, married to my youngest sister, and he just

suddenly went wild without reason and attacked my other brother-in-law, and...

oh dear. That's what led up to the troubles with Pantsaru Taro."

"How's that again?" Frank looked at his fiancée with dismay, "You mean Ryoga

had one of those things inside him? What happened to the thing? Did you kill

it, did it get away?"

"Oh no," Kasumi replied, "We caught it, and Lenore-san trapped it inside of

what she called a soul jar, and they took it to be examined by Hikaru

Gosunkuji..."

"You've gotta be kidding me, Doll-face," Frank said blandly, "You took one of

Genocide's boll weevils and gave it into the hands of that amateur dabbler

wanna be?"

"This sounds most alarming," Astarte remarked, "Perhaps we should investigate

the matter further. With any likelihood the larvae will no longer be with your

friend but returned back to the care of its master. I only pray that there has

been no further infection for us to have to deal with...or it could mean

genuine trouble."

"And what if it is?" Kasumi asked, barely daring to hope that what she

suspected would not be the answer.

"Then the Furies are gonna have to do some housecleaning," Illyra replied with

a matter-of-fact tone that conveyed her set determination, "Infected people can

look like anyone else right up until the time they start to manifest symptoms,

and there's no telling how far the hate spores might progress before

containment."

"The linesss between friend and foe become blurred onccce this beginsss to

happen," Snake lisped a bit sadly, "In my homeland it turned friend and family

member againssst one another in what ssseemed like an overnight

transssformation into madnessss. Many of those converted were little more than

children who gleefully murdered both their parentsss and sssiblings. It wasss

by the graccce of the Tao that my mother and I were ssspared, but ssshe died in

a refugee camp, leaving me alone to carry the legasssy of our ordeal into

exxxile."

"No way am I gonna let that happen," Frank avowed, "Let's nip this thing in the

bud before it gets any further, and send Genocide a message that he ain't

wanted in this turf."

"So say we all," Tri-Longu somberly rumbled.

Catsclaw glanced up at her domineering companion, "Does that mean you're fully

with us this time, Big Buddy?"

"I am still not happy about the way in which my services were recruited for

this mission," the giantess averred, "I had wanted to spend some quality time

with my son, but you dragged me here under protest for what I must now concede

are honorable reasons."

"So glad to have that settled between us," Astarte sincerely averred, "You may

relax, Sandra, your services will not be needed to pacify her this time. At

least for the moment."

"And about that," the giantess glared at the much shorter priestess with the

serpent tattoo on her chest, "One of these days you and I are going to have a

reckoning on the subject of your idea of pacification. Gods should be afforded

greater respect, even from an Immortal."

"If you did not keep providing me with openingsss, I would not be ssso able to

take ready advantage," the Eurasian beauty said with placid indifference, "And

I have offered to teach you how to block me."

"By the way," Frank said as if only just then remembering a point, "I assigned

agents Natsumi and Miyuki to accompany you from the airport, but I didn't

notice them anywhere in the lobby."

"Oh, those two? I ate them," Astarte said with a mischief expression, "Surely

you didn't expect me to tour the orient without sampling some of the local

dishes?"

"She's just kidding," Muriel hastily said as she caught Kasumi's surprised

expression, "They're both back sleeping it off at the hotel. Seems my sister

and Snake wore them out as much as Astarte, which is not too surprising given

that their stamina is many times greater than any ordinary woman, as I myself

know from personal experience."

"If you say so, Sis," Illyra gave a rueful smile at her elder, then added, "But

they were kinda delicious."

"I might've known," Frank rumbled softly, then in a louder tone said, "Shelly,

remind me to add an additional hazard bonus to their salaries. I think those

have more than earned it."

"Already logged into the bankroll, boss," the voice of his companion auto-AI

duly noted.

"Add a personal note of apology, and make it sound sincere," Frank noted, then

sat up in his chair and said, "Guess maybe it's time to let you girls in on

some of the developments that have been going on here in Japan. You see...

Kasumi here is from a very special family who are practitioners of the

Mutsubetsu Kakuto Ryu..."

"The Anything Goesss tradition?" Snake abruptly hissed with alarm, looking

sharply towards Kasumi, "Your family isss dessscended from an Okinawan named

Happosai?"

"Why yes," Kasumi said in surprise, "You've heard of great-grandfather?"

"Heard and met him, yessss," Snake hissed venomously, but then studiously

attempted to reign in her temper, "But I will try not to hold it againssst

you."

"Oh," Kasumi decided to leave well enough alone by not pursuing the issue.

Catsclaw, however, was not prone to being quite so diplomatic, "What's this guy

ever do to you, Snake? Draw a mustache on your tattoo or something?"

"You would have to meet the missserable little dwarf in order to underssstand

my feelingsss regarding him," Snake replied, "But sssufficcce to sssay I give

you all fair warning that he isss to be ssstudiousssly avoided."

"Oh my," Kasumi remarked, "You do know great-grandfather. He does tend to have

that sort of effect on most people..."

"He must be frightening indeed to put such heat into you, my diminutive

friend," Tri-Longu sounded more amused than concerned, "I might actually want

to meet him for such reason."

"Asss I sssaid," Snake repeated, "I have given you fair warning."

"So it would appear that there are some local phenomenon that may prove of

curious interest to us during our stay here," Astarte mused, giving Frank a

polite inquiry, "I trust that you will provide a full briefing on what to avoid

here, and what parts may be of great benefit to our mission."

"I'll have Shelly fax all the relevant data to your personal file and present

it at the end of this briefing," Frank nodded towards the only other man in the

room before adding, "I take it Ian will sort it out with Muri?"

"They have proven to be quite invaluable to me in that capacity," Astarte

affirmed, "Though you know that I have always been a very hands-on sort of

psychic detective, and it pays to know all that I can about the people with

whom I may soon be dealing."

"Guess maybe I oughta clue you in about the Posse," Frank mused, sorting his

thoughts out as he tried to think of a way to begin the explanation, but before

he could do so a buzzing on his desk caused him to glance down, and then he

snapped, "What's the deal, Shelly? You don't need to raise your hand to get my

attention."

"Very funny, Boss," his auto-computer relayed with dry sarcasm, "But I thought

you ought to know that agent Wells is on the line, and she sounds pretty

agitated about something."

"Huh?" Frank blinked, "Put her through. What's going on this time, Trudy?"

"Trudy?" Astarte's interest level perked up abruptly, "Is she on this

assignment?"

"Chief!" Trudy called out over the background noise of what sounded like a full

scale battle under progress, "Got a situation here, and it's bad! Real bad!

Some clown waving a really big sword just came storming down onto the school

grounds and is trying to kill Angel!"

"Say what?" Frank was on his feet in an instant, "Some guy with a big sword?

What do you...?"

"I swear it must weigh more than he does, but he's swinging it like it's a toy

or something!" Trudy insisted, "He appeared out of no where like two minutes

ago, and even I had barely any warning before he attacked us!"

"Sounds bad," Catsclaw remarked aloud, though the rest of the Furies, and

Kasumi, listened silently with anxious rapt attention.

"I can't approach this guy...he's got some kind of ward that's proof against

Kurustani," the voice on the other end said frantically while explosions made

it difficult to hear every word precisely, "He's like a wave of Chi force

swooping down out of the mountains, and he fights like an eagle! I've never

seen anything remotely like it, and for some strange reason he's out to target

several of my students!"

"Oh my," Kasumi said, immediately fearing that some of her friends and siblings

might be caught up in the mayhem.

"I'm on my way," Frank said, turning to the others, "Looks like we'd better cut

this short for now. I gotta get there fast, and the Monster's the only way to

reach Nerima in time enough to matter."

"We understand completely, Frank," Astarte assured, "Do what you must do to

help your friends in their time of peril. We will be along in good order as

soon as we can arrange suitable transportation."

"Ah...that might not be such a good idea," Frank nervously cautioned, "You

don't know the locals and they don't know you, and without some lengthy

briefing...it could lead to some unfortunate misunderstandings."

"Hey, Karesha's helped prepare us to handle things on our end," Illyra spoke

up, "How do you think most of us learned Japanese in less than one night?

We've even got the language and basic customs down so we won't make too many

social gaffs with the locals."

"Besides," Catsclaw added, "Snake's been here before and can act as a tour

guide, and from the sound of things she probably knows the area as good as any

local."

"I would not be entirely too cccertain of that," Snake cautioned, "It hasss

been almossst two decadesss sssinccce lassst I wasss in the dissstrict known as

Nerima."

"Really?" Kasumi asked, surprised to learn that the youthful seeming girl with

the pronounced lisp was that old since-to all appearances on the outside-

she did not appear to be that much older than Kasumi.

"Two decades, two years, what's the big difference?" Catsclaw asked, "If this

is Genocide making his play we can't afford to pass up the clue, can we Boss?"

"Indeed we cannot," Astarte replied, giving Frank an apologetic look before

adding, "We will exercise all due discretion but the urgency of this matter is

such that I must insist on our inclusion."

"Okay," Frank said in resignation, already headed towards the exit as Kasumi

hastened to accompany him back to his private elevator, "If you say so,

'Starte. I'll have Shelly prep a Limo, but try keeping a low profile...and

don't do anything that'll make me regret this."

"Hey, what are the odds of that?" Muriel asked cheerfully, her ironic tone in

no way inspiring confidence as the two groups separated, one rushing ahead to

the battle while the other remained behind and awaited their turn to make the

scene, at which point things really would heat up in the sleepy little province

known to mortals as Nerima...

Continued.

Comments/Criticisms/Chants Against Evil Boll Weevils: shadowmane

What is going on here, and who is the mysterious stranger causing trouble for

our friends on the Furinkan campus? Tune in next time to meet one of those

"deluded minions of misguided good intent" as he makes his fearsome appearance

in, "A Dog-Boy and His Weapon," or, "How The Hell Does He Carry That Effin' Big

Thing?" Be there!

X


	66. Chapter 66

Dnabiki155

Nabiki 1/2

"A Very Scary Thought"

by

Jim Robert Bader

(Inspired by the works of Rumiko Takahashi & Others,

with concepts and characters created by fellow fanfic writers

Wade Tritschler, DB Sommers, Nicole Manders, Andrew

Greaves, Bill Guiroff and countless others, including "Buffy"

creator Joss Whedon; with special thanks to my good pal

Shiva for his editing and handling of this series.)

(Certain other characters and concepts are of my own

innovation, including my interpretation of the Monster

of Mary Shelly's novel, the Furies, Trudy, Takaharis

Angelique d'Anjou and various other guest stars

appearing in this portion of the Nabiki 1/2 series...)

Chapter Fifty-Three.

Episode One-Fifty-Five.

The Dark Man Cometh...

Nerima Province, Japan-The "Present"

(Thirty Minutes before the Assault on Furinkan Happens)

A small restaurant (Holiday Inn Type) on the edge of the Financial District...

"Wow," the redheaded teenager known as Ranko marveled as she eyed the identity badge that she had just

been presented, "An actual field assignment, and this time as a full-fledged Time Agent. I really don't know

how to thank you enough for helping to make it happen for real, Mom."

"I thought it long since time that we make official what's been more-or-less an inevitable process, Ranko-

chan," a forty-something-year old Saotome Nabiki replied as they sat together within a fairly ordinary diner

within the earthly plane that they had journeyed to for a visit, "After all, with your talents, skills and abilities,

plus that interfering pendant you wear that gets you involved in these adventures whether or not your father

and I want you getting involved in our cases..."

"What your mom's saying, Half-pint, is that she finally convinced higher-ups to see things our way," a gruff-

looking leather-clad man known as Saotome Ranma assured his adopted paratime daughter, "If you can't

fight the system then you might as well join it, and since you graduated top of your class in the academy,

there was no real reason to deny you a place on our team. Besides, with your combination of good looks,

brains and superior genetics they'd have to let you do what you were born to do, which is to kick butt and

take numbers, just like your old man."

"Hmmph," Nabiki eyed her husband sidelong, "And here I thought the prevailing argument I used to make

my case was that the two of you were the only ones who could keep each other in line, and that I was the

only one who could bail the both of you out when you inevitably get into trouble."

"Hey, I never start trouble, I always finish it," Ranma protested, "You're always exaggerating that about me,

Nabby, and you ought to know by now that I'm usually the innocent victim here, not the bad guy."

"Don't call me Nabby," Nabiki said in tired ritual for the hundred thousandth time since Ranko had known

her, "And don't even start in with me about what a catalyst for trouble you are, Husband. I can document

every known case where you started something just by being in the same room with the other party..."

"Yeah, sure," Ranma said affably as he gave his wife a knowing smirk, the kind he knew she found

irresistibly boyish in spite of her best efforts not to be persuaded off the subject, "So...what's this big case

we're on this time? I thought the bigwigs were still leery about sending us into the Nerima district."

"They have no choice about it now," Nabiki replied, "Not after it came up on the boards that there had been

a recent cross-transference event happening between Continuums 59343921 and 32145896, which bore

our signature, thus mandating our presence..."

"Hey, I know those timelines," Ranko spoke up, "Those are the worlds where my buddies Lylac and

Kachima hail from. You mean there was a transfer of energies between them? That's pretty darn nifty!"

"Settle down, Squirt," Ranma ruffled the hair of his crimson-headed daughter, "We're headed to a period

when those two ain't either born or are a little too young even for you to mess around with. Uh...just to

correct my memory on this...those are the worlds were you and me exchanged places as kids, and the one

where you became a teenaged junior-league Lore Master?"

"Yes, that it is precisely," Nabiki affirmed, "My counterpart on one world bears a Jusenkyo curse that turns

her into a rather studly man and she is the top-rated martial artist of her district. In the other world my

counterpart met my mentor, Lotion, at a much earlier age than I did and is well on her way to becoming her

successor...and on both continuums you and I are happily married. Of course in both worlds we share a life

with Shampoo as our concubine-wife, while in the world where our roles are reversed we have a virtual

harem consisting of Ukyo, the Amazon known as Perfume, and at least four or five elementals who appear

to have in some way become attached to your counterpart...and watch that smug look you're giving me,

Mister, if you don't want to wind up sleeping on the couch tonight."

"Hey, I wasn't saying anything," Ranma protested, "It's just...the idea of you as a guy...and me with a

Harem...I mean, can you picture it? Sounds crazy, and my little kid brother here must walk around in a

dazed state, totally exhausted over having to please that many women."

"Who says it's you who keeps them happy?" Nabiki gave him a coy look then turned back to regard their

adoptive daughter, "I guess those worlds must seem pedestrian to you after having witnessed so many

alternate worlds where your father, the Tom-cat here, has made out with everything from androids to major

goddesses instead of doing the sensible thing and marry the me of those timelines..."

"Ah, well...I guess that's probably true," Ranko conceded, "But even by standards the world that Lylac and

Ekko hail from is pretty unusual. For example, did you know that I have a kid brother there named Chusen

who's got these five elemental sisters who look after him and follow him around everywhere like a mobile

harem?"

"You don't say?" Nabiki gave her husband the eye again, "Five elemental sisters?"

"Ahuh, and they belong to Dad," Ranko affirmed, grinning as she saw the uncomfortable look that crossed

her father's rugged features, "It's kind of an incestuous thing, but that doesn't bother me like it would most

girls seeing as how I'm always making out with my paratime siblings, especially Silver and Kachima. The

point is that this Chusen was born under very unusual circumstances and he's definitely a product of you

two, hatched at a time when your Jusenkyo curse was frozen in place to allow your pregnancy to go full

circuit..."

"He's a son of mine by Nabby?" Ranma sat up more alertly, "Wow...talk about déjà vu all over again..."

"Fascinating," Nabiki mused as she considered this, "Do go on, Ranko-chan."

"I didn't get the full story or all of the details the last time I hooked up with Lylac and her bunch," Ranko

continued, "But I heard Ekko say something about Chusen being an Eluini...whatever the heck that is."

"Eluini?" Ranma said with raised eyebrows, glancing at one towards Nabiki.

"You know...I kinda feel like I'd heard that word somewhere before," Ranko continued, "But I couldn't find

any references in the central relays of the Academy computer. I got the impression it's some kind of

obscure occult reference...I mean, what the heck is an Eluini anyway?"

"You oughta know, Squirt," Ranma hooked a thumb to indicate his wife, "You're sitting across from one at

this very table."

"Huh?" Ranko looked at the older woman with astonishment, "Mom?"

"Eluini...is a term meaning, 'Unforgotten,' which implies someone who has lived many previous lives and

retains the memories of who and what she was in his or her past incarnations," Nabiki answered, "It's more

of a state of being rather than an actual racial class. I wasn't born an Eluini, but I became one in the course

of my training and ascension to being a Lore Master."

"Some rare kids are born with Eluini souls, and they grow up to be pretty exceptional, depending on how you

raise them," Ranma continued, "Many don't amount to much, and some never realize their potential...but the

few who do get to be near demi-gods with a connection to this vast wellspring of elemental and spiritual

know-how. It's supposed to be easier to teach one how to use all kinds of magic because they're born with

the instincts and the knowledge inside them, because in their previous lives they were already highly

advanced, so they start out with an advantage that makes 'em really good students who pick up things

almost without half trying."

"When an Eluini is recognized and raised by a Master he or she will grow up to become that which humanity

was intended to be at the very beginning of all things," Nabiki explained. "You see...the race of Homo-

sapiens has contained within it the seeds of greatness that is the legacy of what the Ancients once knew

prior to the Fall of the Races. At one time our distant ancestors were a star-faring people who possessed

vast mental and physical abilities unknown to the present era. They abused their powers and fell, and

humanity is the result of their transgression. Mortals these days define themselves by what they can and

cannot do, and there are limits that we impose upon ourselves that were unknown to the Ancients. It's like

having psychological blocks that limit our brains from tapping into the Power...but it is possible to unlock

these limiters through training the way your father did through the martial arts, and I did through my Lore

Master training."

"And just think, Kid," Ranma said, "You're well on your way to becoming an Eluini yourself thanks to that

pendant thingie giving you insight and knowledge from the lives of your paratime siblings."

"Wow," Ranko marveled, "Does that mean I'm gonna be as great as you when I get to be your age, Pop?"

"Ah...well," Ranma rather immodestly preened himself at the compliment, "I don't like to brag, but I was

pretty hot stuff when I was just starting out like you. Of course you're a lot further along than I was at your

age, but...there is a major difference here. I may have tendencies in common with an Eluini, but I never

made the all-the-way transition like Nabby here."

"Don't call me Nabby," Nabiki sat back in their booth at the local diner and sipped tea from her cup before

saying, "Your father made a pact with a god that bestows upon him demigodhood status...but to some of us

who knew him in the old days he seemed pretty godlike to begin with. It was only later, after completing my

training, that I truly came to understand the sacrifice he made in order to become one with Shiva."

"Hey, I'm still in the drivers seat here," Ranma insisted, "Sure Shiva and me got this arrangement, but it ain't

like he's the one calling the shots. I'm still me, Saotome Ranma, and no matter how bitter and scarred I got

after all the crap I've been through I'm still the same guy you knew and used to exploit for all my money,

wife, so don't ever forget it."

"Of course dear," Nabiki gave him an affable smile then said, "Had life taken a different direction your father

might well have become Eluini in his own right. Eluini are the true state of what human beings were meant

to be before the mistake of our ancestors corrupted our beings and made us into a race of mud-dwelling

barbarians. It's a condition that is very hard to describe to someone who hasn't undergone the rituals of re-

awakening...like being aware of reality on a level that is incomprehensible to mortals. You know that I can

sense patterns and currents in the air that are invisible to normal detection...but that ability was taken for

granted by the Ancients. So was telepathy, telekinesis, transformation and transmutation...the things we

now a days consider to be Magic. It all started back with the Ancients, who bequeathed on us the potential

that is locked within our very genes. If mankind knew how to unlock the power within us, however...it could

lead to extraordinary trouble."

"What do you mean, Mom?" Ranko asked her.

"Superior abilities sometimes breed superior ambitions, Squirt," Ranma explained, "Godhood ain't for

everybody, and what Nabiki here knows and can do almost second nature would make a pretty dangerous

weapon in the wrong hands. Doesn't take much imagination to see where it could lead to."

"That is why the ancient knowledge is carefully guarded and obscured by occult symbolism in order to

disguise the essence of this power," Nabiki concluded, "It takes dedication and devotion for an ordinary

person to reawaken the power within them...but Eluini start out with a natural advantage and it is easier to

train one to go beyond their supposed limits. In the wrong hands, under the tutorage of the wrong sort of

Master, an Eluini might well be used as a weapon to further the ambitions of unworthy men who do not

appreciate the consequences of dabbling with promethean fire. The world itself could be burned to a cinder

if an awakening of talent were to lead to a renewal of the Psychic Wars that brought an end to the world of

the ancients."

"Whoah," Ranko absorbed and reflected on this before saying, "And do you think maybe that has something

to do with this assignment?"

Nabiki actually looked surprised at the question, then glanced towards her husband, who gave her a

mutually astonished look before frowning and saying, "You know...that's a pretty good question, and all of a

sudden I'm starting to get worried."

"This definitely does bear further inquiry," Nabiki replied, her expression thoughtful and momentarily

abstracted.

"Uh oh," Ranma said, "I know that look. She'll be out to lunch for the next couple of minutes, which makes

this a good time for me to obey the call of nature."

"Gotta hit the head, Pop?" Ranko asked as her father got up out of their booth.

"Hey, I may have the powers of a God at my beck and call, but my kidneys are still human," Ranma smiled

gruffly, "Stay here and keep an eye on your mom. When she's like this her body's on standby, and while not

exactly helpless...well..."

"Right, gotcha," Ranko nodded, "I won't let anything bad happen to Mom while you're out tending to the ol'

bladder."

"That's the sport, Half-pint," Ranma gruffly chuckled, then eased on past a waitress, who gave him a passing

look of speculation before continuing on about her duties.

Ranko just smiled, understanding what a stud-magnet her father still was at the age of forty-something. For

an old guy he wasn't a stuffed shirt and was actually pretty cool to hang around with, and she looked up to

him as a role model in spite of his insistence that he wanted her to turn out "better than he did" at her age.

He was one of the toughest men she had ever known who walked like a god among mortals and yet could

still be rather humble...if you ignored his occasional bouts of being a real jerk, which tended to crop up a lot

when he and her adopted mother got into one of their verbal sparring matches.

The odd thing about her paratime-aunt-turned-mother was that she was a pretty cool customer herself, and

it was easy being around her to see where Kachima got her quirky little charms from. Never having actually

known her real mother, Akane, Ranko tended to learn what she could about her parents by reflection in her

travels, and from that she had learned to think of the woman known as Nabiki as the sort of girl who would

have been fun to hang around with in high school, almost like another sister, but hot enough to have

fantasies about in a way you didn't tell your parents.

By contrast her real mother was a bit of a quandary, a walking paradox chock full of self-contradiction. Kind

yet temperamental, often violently brutal with those who upset her, quick to forgive and sympathize even

with someone who had wronged her, a real charmer in many ways, a real klutz in others. She alternately

liked and hated boys her own age and seemed to have strong latent currencies of same-sex attraction that

were buried beneath a wall of self-denial that added a lot to her irritable nature. It was hard to know whether

or not she would have liked her real mother as a classmate or possibly fallen under the spell of her charms,

which seemed to work best with the parties against whom she was the most abusive.

Ranko recognized within herself many of these selfsame traits, and yet she had grown up admiring a woman

who had been her mother's worst enemy, Kuno Kodachi, who had taught Ranko all that there was to know

about Martial Arts Rhythmic Gymnastics. It seemed that her "Aunt Kodachi" had been hopelessly infatuated

with Ranko's father, who not only did not return her affections but was openly afraid of her, a pattern Ranko

had seen repeated on numerous other timelines. Perhaps that was why she was the most fond of a

Saotome sister named Watazashi, the daughter of Kodachi and Ranma on a world where their engagement

had been regarded as the "true" one.

And yet here she was adopted by the one woman in Nerima who had not openly courted her father in their

teen years, who had become engaged to him purely as a matter of family obligation after Ranma's first

marriage to Akane had fallen through and ended tragic. A woman who had prided herself on being cool,

calm headed and well collected, not a "fawning faint-hearted ninny" who melted at the sight of such a

handsome and promising young man, who had even professed to dislike him for being her near total

opposite, yet who would now walk through fire and ice barefoot to be at his side.

Talk about your paradoxes.

Ranko smiled when she recalled all of the things that she had learned of Lylac's world. Try as she might she

found it almost impossible to imagine her mother as a guy married to her father and three other women. It

just stretched her credulity to no end trying to imagine how that could have happened, and yet Lylac was

fairly blasé on the subject, tending to accept it as the natural way of things, like finding out that her best

friend was deeply in love with her almost from the moment of their mutual conception. Weird.

Ah well...the strangeness of paratravel meant you often got to see the things you would least imagine

happening coming about almost of-course under different arrangements. After a while you got used to the

bizarre being ordinary and stopped fretting about it, even learning to enjoy stunning revelations when they

opened up new possibilities and exposed you to ideas you never would have imagined on your own...

All of a sudden Ranko felt a chill running down her spine, a sense of something looming in the background.

It wasn't a bad feeling, not even a hostile one per se, but it did remind her overmuch of what it felt like when

a giant passed her by that one time she had visited Meiko during her Einar training in Valhalla.

Very slowly she turned her head and glanced outside the window, just in time to see a curious sight

materializing down the road, almost seeming to take form out of the very mist itself, as though a fog bank

had rolled in and had deposited the thing she saw heading towards them.

It was big...and long...and all at once she recognized it as an eighteen-wheeled truck of unknown type and

manufacture. Without having to think about it the pendant that she wore provided her with the identity of the

vehicle...a Kenworth model, circa 1970s, a Cabover Peat model whose serial number eluded her at the

moment. It was dark blue with silver trim and churned along on a powerful diesel engine as it rolled into the

parking lot, its forty-foot long trailer giving it the ominous feeling of a huge black beast come looking for its

dinner.

Ranko watched in perverse anticipation as the truck came to a halt, then very slowly the door on the driver's

side swung open and a figure stepped into view...a man whose very presence caused her to shudder

without knowing the precise reason. As he set foot upon the ground he glanced around with eyes that

chilled her to the marrow, piercing eyes of unnatural intensity that swept the area before alighting in one set

direction.

To Ranko's considerable dismay the man turned and focused upon her, his eyes locking with hers in spite of

the fifty meter distance that separated them, and then without a word he started forward, moving with an

easy stride that made the earth itself stand up and take notice. She could feel the raw intensity of an

unknown power within him, for the man was like a giant in her eyes, easily taller and broader-shouldered

than her father with long brown hair and ebony eyes and a hard cast set of handsome-yet-gaijin features

that could have been chiseled out of a block of solid granite.

All at once Ranko heard her mother release a breath that signified her returning to full consciousness, and

then she heard Nabiki gasp, "He's here...oh gawds! I can feel him approaching!"

"Ah..." Ranko asked as she followed with her eyes the progress of the stranger.

"The Dark Man," Nabiki's voice openly shuddered, "The Lord of Earth and Water...Udan, also known by

some as Robar Bartev."

"Er..." Ranko remained still, allowing her eyes alone to move within her face as she saw the man enter the

building, then turn to face them, which displayed a name-plate on his dark blue shirt that she could read

even from a distance, "Robert Blackguard?"

"Yes, that's one of his many identities," Nabiki paused and belatedly recognized the look on her adopted

daughter's face, "You've...seen him?"

"Ah...yeah," Ranko gulped, "He's standing right over you, Mom. Ah...is he friendly?"

Nabiki went rigid, then gulped a bit before saying, "That all depends. To what do we owe the pleasure, Lord

Udan? It has been a while...I see you are...pretty much as when we last crossed paths together."

The man did not say a word, only stared at Ranko, then glanced sidelong and turned his face to regard

Nabiki. There was no overt hostility in either expression or gesture, but a sense of contained energy, his

silence alone being an ominous statement to both women.

"Yes, of course," Nabiki seemed to be perspiring as she glanced up at the man, "You are wondering why we

are here? Well...we're on a rather difficult assignment...I won't bore you too much with the details, but

suffice to say..."

The dark man turned back and regarded Ranko with the same flat, impersonal expression.

"Ah, my adoptive daughter, Ranko," Nabiki indicated, "She comes from a world that is presently in locked

stasis, which is why she wears the pendant that links her to Yggdrasil..."

"Mom?" Ranko was amazed to her hear usually tight-lipped parent suddenly explaining so much to a relative

stranger, and she got from that a hint of genuine fear that seemed incongruous with the fact that Ranko did

not sense any real hostility on the part of this dour-faced giant.

"Naturally you are curious, my lord," Nabiki continued in her softly trembling voice of bland nervousness,

"But as you can see we have no part in whatever enterprise has drawn you hither, so there really is no need

for our paths to cross or for you to become involved in our own trifling business..."

Ranko saw a slight tightening about the corner of the man's eyes as he seemed to be thinking that one over,

and being this close to him felt to her as though she were standing at the base of a tidal wave that could

sweep her over in a second, but so far the man appeared more curious than seriously interested in either

one of them and had only stopped by to notice their existence in the same manner with which a passing

motorist might notice a pair of deer grazing.

That is until a harsh voice barked out, "YOU!? WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING THERE? GET AWAY

FROM THEM, ASSHOLE!"

Ranko had barely placed the voice as belonging to her father when all at once the man who had adopted

her for the sake of a paratime brother slammed into the towering Udan with a fist that glowed bright with

righteous fury. The blow was so intense and incredible that an explosive wave of force rang out in all

directions like a shotgun blast, only many times more intensive. Moreover still the shockwave it created

caused Ranko to flinch away as a portion of the restaurant exploded outward and an entire section of the

building was literally blown away by the kinetic shock wave that drove some people from their seats and

made it seem to others as if the world were abruptly ending.

But when the blast was finally concluded and she dared to look up again what Ranko saw was her father

standing there with fist extended, his face contorted with hot emotions that had barely been contained by his

release. Ranko quickly turned around in her seat and was dismayed to find only open air where a part of the

building had been standing with cars overturned in the lot and a huge section of asphalt stripped quite

literally away from the ground, a deep trench carved into the soil for about seventy meters as though a huge

shovel had literally ripped up the ground to dig the long gouge in the earth, exposing rock, earth and piping

all the way through from beginning to ending.

And at the far end of the trough a figure stood up tall and unaffected, staring back the way he had just

traveled as though only pushed back a few meters. Ranko's eyes went wide as she saw the man named

Udan gazing back with disdain towards Saotome Ranma as though utterly indifferent to the rage that had

been unleashed in his direction.

"That's right, you want another piece of me?" Ranma shouted out, storming forward through the gap in the

wall and seating booths that he had just created, "Remember what I said the last time I caught you messing

around Nabiki? Well, here's were we settle accounts mister High and Mighty Daokan! Let's get down to it

Neriman style!"

"Ranma!" Nabiki called out, then at a lower volume-yet with as much heat-she swore, "Kuso...he's not

going to listen this time. I was afraid this was going to happen the minute I saw the Seagull bearing down in

our direction!"

"The what?" Ranko asked, unable to help gazing at her father as he closed the distance between himself

and the dark-meigned stranger, seeing her "Old Man" unleash a furious assault of fists and kicks at the taller

man, only to have them blocked and deflected without hardly any motion on the part of the somber giant.

"The Silver Seagull is the name of that monster truck he drives like a chariot throughout the many

dimensions that Udan visits," Nabiki explained, "It's named in honor of his sister, the lady Ulsa, whom Udan

loves and ever seeks to unite with..."

"His own sister?" Ranko scratched behind an ear, then gaped in dismay as her father threw everything he

had into a solid punch that connected with the chin of the larger opponent. The sound of fist hitting bone

was one that she knew well by heart, but on this occasion it sounded more like metal upon stone, and the

force of such an impact caused the very air itself to blister, and vehicles not overturned before in the first

wave were now sent skidding backwards and sideways as the energy wave drove everything not nailed

down away from its hurricane-force maelstrom.

Udan did not so much as flinch as he drove a solid backhand into the face of his assailant, and all at once

Ranma was rocketing backwards at such a great speed that he might well have been shot out from the

muzzle of a canyon.

Her father went through the very hole in the wall that he himself had created and slammed into the nearest

wall, going right through without slowing down as he created a picture window between the dining area and

the kitchen. Ranko heard the crashing noises of object after object that got destroyed in the course of his

flight, and then she winced as she imagined her father winding up in the kitchen freezer while restaurant

employees and patrons looked on in horrified disbelief, totally taken aback by the level of violence that had

so far consumed all of a few seconds.

"Pop!" she called out, then turned back to gape in disbelief at the dour-faced Udan, "I don't believe this...he

took one of Pop's hits dead on and there's not even a mark on him!"

"Of course there isn't," Nabiki said as she grabbed the younger girl by the arm and drew her from the booth

with great urgency, "You could hit Robar Bartev the Blackguard with the side of a mountain and he'd barely

even notice it! He's not like the other guys your father's fought in the past, not by a long march!"

"So why's Pop so eager to rearrange his face?" Ranko asked as she hurried to keep up with the quick

strides of her mother as she pushed her way through the crowds and hubbub, heading like an arrow shot

towards the Kingdom, "And why does this guy put the fear in you, Mom? I've seen you stare down

everything this side of Kami-sama!"

"Of course," Nabiki replied, "He's only a god...and he isn't the Lord Udan."

They reached the kitchen even as Ranma was shaking off the pits of doorframe that clung to his leather

jacket, and the heir to the Saotome legacy was complaining bitterly about, "Just a lucky shot...he didn't think

a love tap like that was gonna phase me...?"

"Ranma!" Nabiki barked harshly as she drew near him, "What the hell are you doing?"

"Hey, stay out of this, Nabiki," Ranma waved a curt hand in her way, "This has gone well beyond a manly

dispute between me and the Blackguard. I swore that if he ever looked at you again like that I was gonna

clean his clocks out, and that's what I'm gonna do, so help me!"

"You and what army of Ranmas?" Nabiki shot back, "He wasn't there to hurt me or Ranko...you know he

doesn't operate like that! If you leave him alone he'll just go about his way and ignore us..."

"Like we're ants that he can step on if he wants?" Ranma snorted, "No way, Nabiki! That guy gets on my

nerves, and I don't care if he is twelve thousand years old and totally invincible, he needs to be taught a

lesson, and I'm the one who's gonna do it!"

"Twelve thousand...?" Ranko stated with eyes now wider than the proverbial saucers.

"Of course," Nabiki suddenly shifted tactics, "I understand why you feel that you need to do it. I also

understand that you could use every technique in your arsenal and every ounce of energy that Shiva feeds

to you and it still wouldn't be enough against the Lord of Earth and Fire. So you know what this means,

Saotome?"

"Hey, now wait a minute...!" Ranma sputtered in protest, but before he could raise a hand in his own defense

his wife said the words, "SIT BOY!" and all at once the leather-clad time cop hit the floor of the restaurant as

though his neck were tethered to an invisible anchor.

"That should hold him down for a bit, at least until he can be made to see reason," Nabiki mused with

satisfaction, "Ranko-chan, do be a dear and help me to get your father back to his feet so that I can whisk us

away before he does any more damage to himself and the neighborhood."

"Ah...sure Mom," Ranko said but nonetheless turned a worried look towards her mother, "What exactly did

you just do to pop anyway?"

"Nothing too serious," Nabiki assured the younger woman, "Just something I got the idea to do while sitting

on the sofa late at night watching Anime with your sister."

"Gaaah...cheap shot by Takahashi..." Ranma murmured from the floor, "Just because it was used by a cute

girl in one of my previous incarnations..."

"In answer to your question, Ranko-dear," Nabiki continued as she and her redheaded niece-turned-

daughter bent down together to attend to the man who meant the most in both of their lives, "The reason I

was afraid just now isn't because I find Udan particularly intimidating, but rather that I was afraid of exactly

this sort of thing happening once your father sensed his nearness to me. You see, your father

misinterpreted something that happened once in the past, long before we were married, that worked him up

into the jealous fit you've just seen demonstrated, and I knew that he would fly off the handle and attack

Udan the minute they were together."

"Didn't misinterpret nothing..." Ranma mumbled incoherently as he allowed himself to be led out through the

back way of the restaurant.

"And that's bad, right?" Ranko asked her mother, thinking of the demolished restaurant.

"Very," Nabiki truthfully answered, "Because what are the terms that help define Ranma's contract with Lord

Shiva?"

"That he'd always have enough energy on hand to beat whatever guy he was going up against," Ranko

answered, "But if he ever loses a match...oh...uh oh..." she winced.

"Exactly," Nabiki noted, "And Lord Udan has vast, nearly inexhaustible resources, and he's never yet been

defeated in a battle...so what would be the logical result of the two of them were ever to fight all out with no

holds barred and everything else fair game?"

"I think I get the picture," Ranko assured the other woman as they loaded Ranma up into a car, which

presently was disguised to resemble a DeLorean.

"Irresistible force meets immovable object," Nabiki said as she slipped into the driver's seat and started up

the car engine, "And all of Japan slowly sinks off into the ocean. Of course, if Ranma were to lose..."

"Which I never do," Ranma groaned faintly as if only semi-conscious upon the back seat across which he

was presently hunched.

"...Well, there goes his immortality, and there goes you father and my husband," Nabiki continued as if

pointedly ignoring the reflexive protest, "So for his own sake I had to subdue your father to keep him from

escalating things beyond the point of all recalling."

"Makes sense," Ranko glanced back out the window, only to see the so-called "Dark Man" casually climbing

back up into his truck a few dozen meters away as though nothing much out of the ordinary were taking

place to interrupt his daily schedule.

But that was not the thing which astonished her...rather it was the restaurant itself that drew her attention, for

there was a shimmering distortion passing over the building, and before her very eyes the air about the

place began to repair itself, and even the ground was soon as smooth and undisturbed as the asphalt had

been before the battle.

"What the hell...?" she whispered in awed disbelief.

"What the Lord Udan destroys is within the power of the Lady Ulsa to repair," Nabiki answered, "Nobody

within that place will remember what just happened. I've seen it before...like she just takes a giant eraser

and removes whatever obstacles obstruct the path of her one true beloved."

"She must be pretty powerful if she can do all that," Ranko replied, "Ah...but where is she? I don't see

anybody else around here but us..."

"She could be a hundred thousand timelines away on the other side of the world and could do this without

more than a thought," Nabiki marveled, "Truly terrifying power for one person to possess, and it's said that of

the four Daokan she is the most powerful yet the least active."

"Oh yeah?" Ranko asked as they sped away, leaving the mysterious truck driver to his own unknown

devices, "Sounds to me like her and that other guy are made for each other..."

"Just let me at 'em and I'll show that bastard whose boss..." Ranma murmured as though either drunk or

half-asleep.

"Not a chance Mister," Nabiki said firmly, "The presence of the Daokan changes everything. That's why I'm

taking us back to headquarters to run some tests and investigate all available data, because where one

Daokan goes the other three are sure to be involved here. This goes way beyond a simple random temporal

crossover, and if what I'm beginning to suspect turns out to be true...then we've just stumbled onto

something a whole lot nastier than what we bargained on at the onset..."

As they pulled away the man known as Udan watched them leave until the dimensional distortion heralded

the withdrawal of the Time Police, and then he shifted his gaze towards a copse of woods and frowned

meaningfully, discerning the presence there and recognizing the tell-tale image of his "little brother."

Anri stepped out from concealment and waved a cheerful hello, then effected a nonchalant look of

innocence as he said, "What, you think I had something to do with that, Udan? I'm hurt that you don't trust

me better than that, Brother, but if you must harbor suspicions, at least stick around and indulge your whims

until you better understand the reasons that brought you here. Surely that would suit you well and do much

to please our sister."

Udan said nothing in reply but started up the engine to his powerful machine. He gave his brother a hard

look before driving out of there, and beyond all mistaking he had made his own silent commitment.

"Well now," Anri said as he watched his brother drive away, "That went about as well as I could have hoped

it would. And now things are in motion that should produce results very rapidly...though not before more

immediate effect go into play. I fear that a rather loud wake-up call is about to be delivered, and I can only

pray that our players will survive it."

And as he spoke those words he turned his gaze towards the city of Tokyo proper, focusing on a particular

building where he knew the next act in the play was about to commence...and the dark futures that were

being plotted there by the true villains of their melodrama, and it did not take a prescient eye to know that

dark things were about to crawl into the light and out of the shadows...

At that precise moment a hooded figure gazed down from the height of his lofty vantage and imagined what

the crawling insects beneath would seem like with fewer of them to clutter up the view. If everything went

according to plan then this nations population problems would be a thing of the past, a necessary cleansing

that would set the stage for creating a world very much in the likeness of what he and his colleagues were

planning. It was a scheme with many long years in development and more than four centuries in

development, but now at last it would come about and the work of the Master would finally be set in motion.

So little time, so many people to kill. Of course they had to dress things up a bit and give their crime a

sanctimonious edge that would blind the gullible and mislead those predisposed to believing their actions

divinely mandated. But that was often the way when it came to using pawns to do your dirty work, a fact he

well knew for centuries of goading and deceiving mortals into carrying out his Master's bidding. All in the

name of a truly "bad" cause, but one that brought a smile to his lips as he anticipated piles of rotting and

dismembered corpses littering the streets, the happy by-product of a much nobler goal of furthering the

Master's influence among the humans.

Of course to achieve that end meant having to work with the tools at hand, and so he turned from the

balcony to regard his allies somewhat dubiously, a few of whom were familiar pawns yet one or two of whom

were unknown qualities, having come form a foreign branch of their wide-reaching organization.

Chief among those of dubious distinction was the American-born preacher of the foreign god named

Geoffrey Taylor, the self-styled "Godsend" who viewed himself as a living instrument of divine retribution.

Having the taint of demon blood without knowing of his true origins, he was raised in the fundamentalist

branch of the Christian faith and misled to believe that his supernatural abilities were the divine grant of

heaven...when the real origins of his abilities was anything but saintly.

"I am telling you the demoness is here," the man was insisting, "That foul temptress and Whore of Babylon

who has thwarted God's holy purpose has come to place yet another obstacle in our plans, and if we do not

move now against her and her unholy minions there is no telling what mischief they can render. Believe me

well for I have seen the do their devil's handiwork, and it truly chills the marrow to consider how they might

further the plans of Satan for this unclean nation of idolatrous sinners!"

Taylor was, in fact, a psychic vampire who drew upon the energies of those sheep who believed in him and

his so-called "mission." Of course it was necessary to humor the fool in his delusions, just as it was to keep

at close hand the rest of the talented crew of misfits who comprised the central arm of their enforcement

branch.

There was Chusitsu Miyamoto, entertainer, Choir vocalist, fan dancer and deadly specialist in the arts of

assassination, on the surface a lovely, charismatic and quite charming figure who masked the heart of a

sociopathic killer. She was presently amused at Taylor's antics and did not mind baiting the neurotic cur as

it was providing her with rare enough sport as Taylor regarded her antics with aversion.

"Really now, Geoffrey-san," she spoke in a teasing voice that would have set another less sexually

repressed man's pulse to racing, "Surely you are exaggerating about the danger. After all, if our plan comes

from God through the divine missionary of our just and righteous Lord, then surely no hell spawned power

can deter His holy will from being carried through to its inevitable conclusion. I think you are letting a few

minor setbacks in your past affect your judgement and are causing you to obsess about this woman named

Astarte..."

"And I think that those who speak in ignorance should be mindful of their place," Taylor sneered back at the

slinky temptress, "These are more than mere pagans whom I have crusaded against...they are the spawn of

the blackest pits, the children of Demons and self-described Demigods who walk among mortals with the

powers of the Titans at their beck and call. Believe me that I know what foul arts they practice, and I say

unto you that if left unchecked to their own devices that they will be the bane of our existence!"

That was where Yagyu Hanarabi spoke up, a cheerful sort who often liked to play verbal games with

Chusitsu in an endless sport of conceptual tag in which he pursued her for purposes of a sexual dalliance

and she kept him interested by holding him at arms length, which prompted him to alternately take her side

or oppose her on a variety of issues. On this occasion he saw the opportunity to do both as he said slyly,

"How interesting...you see them as a problem, I see opportunity disguised as peril."

"And what exactly do you mean by that?" Chusitsu asked, shading her eyes beneath full lashes as she

pretended to study the handsome man across the space of the room as a cobra might its dinner.

"Well, according to what our friend Taylor-san relates, these so-called Furies are mostly female, yes?"

Hanarabi reasoned, "And beautiful young ladies at that who-by his accounts-lack the company of a man

who could woo them away from their unfeminine pastimes. It is true that doing so might bring peril to one's

soul, of course, but 'tis a sacrifice any proper gentleman would gladly undertake if it could tame their wanton

hearts and steer them back to the gentle embrace of heaven."

"Good luck attempting such a thing," Taylor glared dourly at the man whom he found so irritating for reasons

he could not finger, "Astarte Jones has no interest in the favors of a man, and she keeps the company of

women for a reason that should be evident to anyone who knows and appreciates the dark lusts of such a

creature. Those closest to her are her personal chattel, the immodest and the brazen, who feed her carnal

appetites with acts of debauched fornication that no true woman would ever debase herself with. There is

no depth to their shamelessness and the way that they carry on together out of sight of all true righteous

men under heaven..."

"Oh really?" Hanurabi's interest perked up, "Do tell? This sounds better and better..."

"Men," Chusitsu sniffed, "You won't catch me cavorting around with dykes and female prostitutes. I am

much too well bred to regard such ill-mannered sport while there are yet real men who live and breathe

within the scope of my notice."

"One can hardly detect much difference in the sort you no doubt slut around with," Taylor murmured under

his breath, finally unable to hide his distaste any further beneath a civilized demeanor.

"How is that again?" Chusitsu's pleasant mood evaporated, exposing the serpent beneath as she glared

balefully towards the foreign man who dared resist her magnetism.

Hastily a fourth party intervened before the matter could spiral beyond recall, and Thomas Draehil raised

both hands meaningfully and said, "Please, my friends...let's not get carried away with harmless talk and idle

banter. The real enemy is out there, on this we can all agree, yes? So let us not bicker and quarrel where

there is no need to distract ourselves from the cause that has brought us together."

"Perhaps you are right," Taylor eyed the Englishman with far less hostility than he did the rest of his nominal

allies, "Time enough to dedicate ourselves to the cause without doing Satan's work for himself. You must

forgive me, though, for I still say that Jones and her minions constitute a serious threat that should be dealt

with forthwith...and that failure to do so will expose us all to needless complications."

"Honestly, you are obsessed with this Astarte," Chusitsu complained, "One would almost think you harbor

private thoughts of a personal nature, coveting her attention and evidencing frustration that she ignores

you."

"I...lust after that...that Harridan?" Taylor bristled, his fists suddenly starting to glow as the power within him

rose in answer to his righteous summons.

"ENOUGH!" the booming voice of General Han Lee Soto rang out, "You heard what Draehil just said? The

enemy is out there, not here! Chusitsu, stop needlessly baiting our guest...and Taylor-san...do not allow

yourself to be drawn into her little games as it is so far beneath you to even notice."

Taylor fought to control his temper, but gradually his fists ceased glowing and he managed to say,

"Yes...you are right, Brother Han. I did forget myself there for but an instant..."

"More than an instant from where I'm standing," Hanurabi mused, "But you're right...it's no longer such a fun

game listening to you pick fights with the American, Chusitsu-chan..."

"Don't call me chan," Chusitsu bristled, but then the pleasant mask slipped over her again and she fanned

herself with her fingers and feigned a modesty that she did not possess, "But I suppose it is growing

tiresome, and not worthy of a lady like me to trade barbs with a man who obviously does not appreciate a

woman of my position."

"And what position would that be?" Taylor asked, forgetting himself once again while allowing himself to be

drawn into his own sexually adverse obsession.

That was where he had had enough and turned to growl, "If you are all done with these endless attempts at

one-upping one another, perhaps you might recall that we are on a delicate timetable here, and the longer it

takes to affect the crucial stage of our plan the longer it will be before we bring about the Kingdom of

Heaven."

"You have a point to make, Lord Talon?" General Han asked as he regarded the dark and foreboding figure

standing in the shadows near the balcony.

"Only that I tire of listening to you fools rant on about Astarte and her Furies," Talon answered, "I, too have

clashed swords with them in the past and know their capabilities every bit as well as Taylor, but I say that

even their combined talents will not prove sufficient to deter our plans when they move on to the next phase.

Trust me when I say this that they will fall, as will anyone else who dares to stand against us."

"That I will believe when I do see it," Taylor replied, finding himself uneasy as he gazed at the huge man

shrouded in mystery and garbed like a legendary Ninja. As a principle he disliked people who whose face

he could not look into, and all that could be discerned from beneath the mask this Talon wore were a pair of

slitted eyes that seemed almost to glow with internal light. There was something decidedly unearthly about

his figure, and if Taylor could put a name to it he would have called the gravely-voiced man uncanny.

"Your confidence bodes well for us, Lord Talon," a new voice said as he approached the scene from the

main office, "But still it would be a foolish man who ignored the smallest pebble in the path towards

achieving greatness."

"Lord Otono?" Talon asked as he regarded his most important pawn, the key to achieving the goals of the

Master, who fancied himself on a divine mission to avenge a wrong done to his ancestors, which made him

a very valuable pawn indeed, and so Talon bowed, pretending allegiance as he humbled himself by saying,

"We did not know that our altercation was disturbing you. Please forgive our excitement, for the heat we

generate is fired by our hope for this mission."

Young Otono Reyabi smiled a radiant smile that even Taylor found difficult to resist, and with a benevolence

that belied his purposeful intentions he said, "There is nothing to forgive, Sensei. It is good that you feel the

heat of our cause, but we pray you all to be mindful that we are brethren, and thus equal in the eyes of our

Lord, every man and woman."

"Master Otono-sama," Chusitsu did not have to feign her interest as she regarded the handsome young man

with a girlish mannerism that she would never have employed around Hanurabi, "How gracious of you to

grace us with your present, sweet Master.

"Yeah," Hanurabi said as he took the toothpick from between his teeth and gazed out from beneath his dark

brown bangs, "What exactly were you doing in there with Jungo-san and Verner Kephold? Playing Shogi on

your off hours?"

"Never you mind what our purpose was, Yagyu," the gruff-voiced and unhealthy looking Jungo Hiryu

snapped, "It's not your place to hear every little detail of what goes on in private council. You are a soldier

doing the bidding of our Lord, and all that should content you is that things are moving ahead with a greater

purpose than you could imagine."

"I am certain that Yagyu-san intended no disrespect here, Lord Jungo," General Han replied, glaring at

Hanurabi meaningfully before adding, "He just can't resist shooting his mouth off sometimes while

attempting to impress Chusitsu."

"Peace be with you both," Otono urged while making the sign of blessing, "But you can settle matters on

your own time. While you are here you are in the service of the Umakusa Suekazen society, those

dedicated to carrying out the prophesies of our Lord and Savior when he promised to deliver the Japanese

isles from the tenacious grip of Satan."

"Amen to that, brother Otono," Taylor replied while making a sign of holy benediction.

"Of course, to the Cause," General Han agreed.

"As our Lord Otono-sama wills, so shall it be!" Chusitsu bowed without the lilting mockery in her voice that

might otherwise be expected.

"To the cause," Hanurabi nodded his head, though with him the gesture lacked either sincerity or conviction.

"To the cause," Talon said flatly, daring anyone else to express as little faith as the irreverent Hanurabi.

"Now then," Otono turned to regard his heretofore silent companion, "Brother Verner...you have seen to it

that everything is in place for the festivities that will occur at the appointed hour?"

"All will be as we have discussed, Otono-san," the other man said with a noticeably foreign accent to his

Japanese, "You may rely upon my people to carry out your instructions to the letter."

"Then blessed be, our enterprise cannot fail," Otono said with resolution, "A pity we must go to such extreme

lengths to carry out the instructions of our Lord, but sacrifices will be made, and His divine will shall be

rendered as judgement upon this nation of godless heathens."

"Otono-san," Jungo spoke up rather curtly, "There is the other matter that we discussed that needs tending

to..."

"Ah yes, quite right," Otono turned to regard his mentor, "If you consider the matter important enough, then I

will have Talon dispatch one of our brethrin to attend to the trifle. Talon?"

"Yes Otono-sama?" Talon asked, feigning innocence as if he and Jungo had not plotted this out together

between them in private council.

"There is an unbeliever whom Jungo-san considers dangerous to our mission," Otono replied, "He says she

lives within the Nerima province...and I was wondering if you might dispatch brother David to attend to the

matter."

"An unbeliever whom you consider to be a danger, my Lord?" Talon asked as if not already knowing the

answer.

"He says her name is Saotome-something...Nabuki, or something of that nature," Otono waved a hand

dismissively, "Personally I cannot see the relative importance of such an individual...she is little more than a

child, but if Jungo considers her a threat then she must be eliminated. Do you follow me on this, brother

Talon?"

"Of course, my Lord," Talon replied, "As you say, the slightest pebble in the road must be removed to create

easy travel, and I agree that brother David will be the perfect candidate for seeing that she is justly smited."

"Good," Otono nodded, "Now, if we are past that unpleasant bit of business..."

"But brother Otono," Taylor protested, "What about our other enemies, the ones I have sought to warn you

against, the Furies?"

"Yes, they do sound as if they might be a bother," Otono replied, "But I'm sure that we can weather anything

with the resources at our disposal. Where the Aumshin Rekyu failed so miserably to accomplish our great

deed, we sill prevail as God himself has foreordained the outcome of our struggle."

There was more discussion besides this, and many flowery words exchanged as Otono restated the outline

of their plan for the sake of the others, but Talon tuned it out, intent on using the moment to carry through

with his assignment. He touched his throat-mike and said, "Tell Ravensclaw that it is a go. He is to carry

out his execution orders forthwith."

Those words set in motion the chain of a vast conspiracy machine that conveyed the orders to a small hilltop

overlooking Nerima. There a young man of mixed racial ancestry acknowledged receiving his orders by

slowly rising to his feet and fixing his weapon across his back as he readied himself not for battle...but rather

to carry out the extermination of his prey, the one he had been ordered to execute in the name of his Lord

Jesus.

Ban Lao, or "David Lo," as he was known by his adopted Christian name, set his gaze upon Furinkan High

School, which was only a mile distance from his place of vantage, and then he trotted down the trail with his

mighty sword, Ravensclaw, to affect the will of his patron and Master, his mind focused to the point where

was like a well-oiled machine, uncomplicated by any trace of guilt or other softening emotions. His belief

was firm and his total being was dedicated to exalting his Master, the man who had adopted him as a

brother and had given his life meaning. To that end the death of a young girl who was found troublesome to

his lord was of no great consequence and hardly warranted a second thought as his training and dedication

were resolute. He had no other thought in his mind than the completion of his "kill" orders, and so his target

would have to die, along with anyone else foolish enough to get in the way of his mission.

And so he ventured forward, unaware of the various other forces that were converging all about him, proof

positive that ignorance was not bliss as the obstacles that would line his path were much more than he had

bargained upon...though even had he known in advance he would not have faltered, for such is the way of a

fanatic, and woe be the one who underestimated their peril when the sword of Ravensclaw made its impact

felt within the province of Nerima...

Continued.

Comments/Criticisms/Christian Cult Complexes: shadowmane

Think I'm being a bit harsh with this dig at a particular major world religion? Not half as harsh as what is to

follow in the next chapter when Ravensclaw meets Furinkan's finest, with several of our lovely guest stars

caught up in the crossfire, and Nabiki blindly heading into danger. Find out what happens the next time in,

"Unholy Error," or, "Nobody Expects the Spanish Inquisition!" Be there!

X


	67. Chapter 67

Dnabiki156

Nabiki 1/2

"A Very Scary Thought"

by

Jim Robert Bader

(Inspired by the works of Rumiko Takahashi & Others,

with concepts and characters created by fellow fanfic writers

Wade Tritschler, DB Sommers, Nicole Manders, Andrew

Greaves, Bill Guiroff and countless others, including "Buffy"

creator Joss Whedon; with special thanks to my good pal

Shiva for his editing and handling of this series.)

(Certain other characters and concepts are of my own

innovation, including my interpretation of the Monster

of Mary Shelly's novel, the Furies, Trudy, Takaharis

Angelique d'Anjou and various other guest stars

appearing in this portion of the Nabiki 1/2 series...)

Chapter Sixty-Three.

Episode One-Fifty-Six.

Salamander Smolder.

(A Hentai Interlude)

Takaharis scowled as she took notice of the empty seats in the

classroom when she entered at the eleventh hour, this being the third

straight class so far that she found less than fully attended.

"What is this?" she asked, "Another outbreak of the plague?" she

demanded aloud, "Don't tell me this many students called in sick all at

the same time?"

"Sensei?" one of the remaining students replied, raising her hand for

the sake of politeness, "I don't think anyone's really sick whose

absent today. The way I hear it many of them ditched class to check

out some new lady who's been hired on as the school nurse, and playing

sick is the way they chose to get near her."

"Oh really?" Takaharis said drolly, her eyes baleful and alarming to

those remaining students who saw the mask of normality briefly slip

from its place, "Then maybe I should have words with the school

disciplinarian about this..."

"Ah..." another student meekly raised her hand, hunching her shoulders

as she timidly said, "That might be a problem...because I hear Miss

Hinako-sensei didn't show up for her class either."

"You don't say," Takaharis grit her teeth as she thought this over,

then glanced out the window of the classroom and softly murmured,

"Angel...what in hell's name are you doing...?"

"Excuse me, Sensei?" a young boy asked softly, "Who is this Angel?"

Takaharis turned to the one who had spoken and took a moment to confirm

that they boy was not, in fact, an undead Zombie as might have been

assumed from first impressions. Considering the unhealthy looking boy

carefully she asked, "And your name is?"

"Gosunkuji Hikaru, Sensei," the boy said with a faintly wistful tone,

"You wouldn't have heard of me...hardly anyone ever does..."

"And what is that, young man?" Takaharis asked as if not already

suspecting the reason, "Is there something about you that's so

forgettable that you're not even known among your own classmates?"

"Oh no," the boy replied a bit sadly, "I'm just not that memorable,

except to those people who find me amusing."

Takaharis made quick note of the fact that the girl sitting next to

Hikaru was favoring him with a hurt and annoyed expression, and quickly

deduced that he did, in fact, have at least one fond admirer. Not that

he was much to look at with his scrawny build and weirdly overlarge

eyes, his pale complexion and unhealthy mannerisms implying ill health,

though his intelligence was obviously well above the average.

By "amusing" he naturally meant that bullies picked on him a lot, and

by doing a quick scan of his Akashic aura she deduced that he had only

a few friends and came from a family situation that was only marginally

supportive. Low self-esteem, coupled by a private fascination with the

occult, was fostering within him a kind of imaginary fantasy world

where he was considering using magic in order to redress the ills

inflicted upon him by an uncaring society...in other words he was

starting to slide down a very steep incline towards the abyss, and

would likely continue to go there unless persuaded otherwise by the few

people in his life who truly cared about him as a person...the girl

sitting next to him being a prime example.

Aloud what she said was, "Often it's the qualities of greatness that

exist within us that most often draws the resentment and hostility of

others. Superior gifts sometimes lead to envy of that superiority, and

all of us are good at something that makes us unique and special. I am

certain that you are no exception to the rule in that respect, young

Gosunkuji-san, so do us both a favor and don't be quick to put yourself

down like that within my classroom...ever."

The boy looked up at her as if startled, "Sensei?"

"If those who will never aspire to become something more than they are

now should feel inferior towards those who have a brighter future, then

consider it a form of ironic compliment and a sign of their insecurity

that they should take their fears out on you as a target of

convenience. Now then, why don't we start with the lesson plan for

today? Class...as I am a substitute teacher here, who can tell me how

far along you are in the study of your history texts?"

The subtle shift of attention away from the boy's problems to their

actual subject matter of the day had the desired effect of causing

young Hikaru to stare at Takaharis blandly. The girl next to him was

also very surprised at their new teacher's statements, but then she

smiled with tacit gratitude in her expression and gave the boy next to

her an impish grin that was full of encouragement and approval.

Gosunkuji seemed bewildered but nonetheless settled back in his seat

with a thoughtful look that implied that he was thinking Takaharis's

words carefully over, and meanwhile it was left to yet another of the

students to answer Takaharis's question by citing page, chapter and

passage.

Takaharis at once directed everyone to turn to the specified section,

but even as she read aloud from the text she was considering this boy

named Gosunkuji Hikaru and continued to study his aura as if to confirm

her own earlier appraisal.

Not so bad as she had thought...the boy had actual real potential. A

strong affinity for magic was in his genes, and with a mind as alert

and focused as his at the employ he could certainly go quite far,

provided he did not fall smack into the trap of his own hubris.

**So the boy wants to be a Wizard, eh?** she thought in silence,

**Well...someone is going to have to steer his course rather than let

him devolve into a mere dabbler playing with things that he was not yet

equipped to competently handle.**

She had known far too many young lads in her time who had the gifts

this boy possessed but who never amounted to very much or learned to

harness their potential, and far too many who dabbled in the arts often

found themselves taking on far more than they were prepared to handle.

True Magic, as Takaharis well knew, was not for the amateur or the

faint of heart and stomach, but given the right tutorage and a steering

along the correct pathways it was possible to save a boy like that from

squandering his gifts or winding up a victim of things which he could

not readily imagine.

Should she take a direct interest in this boy and possibly steer him

towards discovering the greatness that lay within him? Possibly...and

quite tempting at that. It had been quite a long while since she had

taken on an apprentice, but that would imply deepening her ties to this

area, and Takaharis had still not resolved to make her tenure at

Furinkan anything more than a temporary position...and as yet she had

not made contact with her cousin's son, Hibiki.

Best to shelve that idea for now and consider it for later, and in the

meanwhile she did have a legitimate class to teach, so once she had

read far enough along from the book she stopped herself and closed it

with a resounding "Thump." Turning to the class she then posed them

with a question, compelling them to reconsider the point that the

author of the text had been making, and thus set in motion the chain of

analytical and logical arguments that she intended to use in order to

spur these young minds into questioning the authority of the

established historical record.

It was the method she preferred to use to get college age students

thinking along such lines, but no sooner had she begun to point out

flaws in the analogy of the student she had picked on by asking such a

question the hand of a young girl went up and disrupted the flow of the

session.

"Yes?" Takaharis asked, understandably quite annoyed at the

interruption.

"May I be excused to go visit the girl's room?" the student asked,

fidgeting in her chair to emphasize the urgency that she was under.

Takaharis was not so easily fooled, however, and saw right through the

ruse to the girl's actual intentions. As she could not deny such a

simple request she did insist on one condition, "Yes, but I expect you

to return shortly and to not take too many detours on the way to or

back from doing your business."

"Hai Sensei," the student bowed, then promptly exited the room, unaware

in doing so that Takaharis had just cast a location spell and had

attached it to the back of her uniform to keep close tabs on her

movements.

"Now then," she turned to the rest of her class, "Does anyone else have

any reason to leave the room before the ending of this class session?"

She should have known better than to ask, but when hands went up she

turned her most skeptical look upon those students and most promptly

thought better of the request. After all a withering stare when

delivered by her could be awfully chilling when applied upon most

mortals.

"Now then," she resumed, "If we are to have no further

interruptions..." again a look that would have frozen the marrow of a

dragon, and no obvious takers bold enough to raise their hands or look

away this time around, "Perhaps now we can return to our original

lesson plan, beginning with the answer to the question I just gave you

not one minute ago. Does anyone remember it? I trust that I shall not

have to repeat every question for this class as there are bound to be

at least one or two of you alert enough to be paying attention?"

"Ah...Sensei?" one of the girls in the class timidly volunteered, then

gave an answer that did indeed demonstrate that she had at least

understood the lesson.

"Very good miss...Tomara is it?" Takaharis drawled, "I'll be expecting

good things out of you if you can give more such alert and intelligent

observations as that one. Next question, following up upon the

first..." and then she turned to the other students while the one who

had answered before sat back in her seat and heaved a sigh of relief,

feeling almost as though she had just been grilled by an expert in

interrogation.

Gosunkuji studied the teacher before him, unable to help feeling that

there was more to her than met with mere appearances. He did not

forget the earlier display when she briefly gave the class a hint as to

her true nature, and if what he suspected were true then he definitely

was keeping a close watch over this one. His Sempai, Nabiki, would

demand no less than such careful and astute observations from her

resident occult "expert," especially if what he suspected of the new

teacher were indeed the case and not just idle fancy on his part.

After all she had actually noticed him, something almost none of his

previous teachers ever did. Most people pretended that he was not even

there, but this Takaharis had looked at him directly and gave the sense

that she had read him up and down like an old parchment, and had taken

his measure in the process. And anyone who could do that was

definitely worth keeping an eye on, if for no other purpose than to

determine if she were really serious when she said that he had

potential, a thing even his parents never said within his presence,

which left him feeling...funny...like when Ryonami-san gave him those

odd looks that as much as said that she saw value within him that was

never observed by anyone other...

Meanwhile, off on another side of the school campus, another who had

more cause than any to worry about the conduct of her nominal "partner"

was presently sharing Takaharis's concerns. Trudy was staring at the

long line leading to the school nurse's office, which stretched out all

the way down the corridor and out into the hall, wrapping down the

stairs and right outside to the athletic yard, where Trudy was

currently teaching classes.

There were some body in that line but it was female students who

comprised the majority of those seeking to have a "private session"

with the new school nurse, and this especially after the impression

that Angelique had created when switching out of her aluminum biker's

outfit into what she called her (euphemistically, Trudy supposed, for

lack of a more appropriate term for the costume) "Nurse's uniform," a

skimpy little thing that a Candystriper might wear when doing a strip

act for a club or a party. It barely came down below crotch level, and

had enough cleavage to leave no one in any doubts that the stunning

blonde was definitely larger than a "C" cup. Coupled with the natural

charisma that the Temuvarai fairly radiated with her presence, and her

exuberantly sensual mannerisms, she fairly read like a beacon for

seduction.

And tossed in front of an entire school of hormonally driven teenagers

was like dangling raw meat in front of a kennel. The only difference

here was that the predatory beast was the one towards whom everyone

felt an instinctive attraction, and that was core to the problem since

the eager young lambs here were bound to have overly protective parents

hovering somewhere in the background.

**Dammit, Angel...this isn't the Hall at Cullelin...you can't pull shit

like this and expect to just get away with it...** she thought angrily

within the privacy of her own mind...or "personal hell" as she might

well have termed it given the stresses that she was presently under.

"Coach?" one of her students asked, "Is something the matter?"

"Ah, nothing really," Trudy lied, a thing normal Kurustani were

incapable of doing, but she being somewhat of an exception of the breed

she put on a patently false mask of nonchalance and said, "Let's get

this show on the road, if you'll excuse the blatant Americanism. Now,

who here among you promising young all stars is accounted the best

athlete?"

Heads turned automatically7 and as one the thirty-plus gym-short clad

students turned to regard the one senior in their midst who clearly was

acknowledged the pack leader by all there present. Curiously enough he

was a young man whom Trudy recognized from the previous evening, who

was sitting close besides two female students acknowledged his "brides"

by both local school gossip and his official records.

"Saotome Ranma?" she asked, then noticed that the boy had nodded off to

sleep for some reason and frowned in puzzlement, wondering if it were

simple exhaustion or...something a lot more intensive, "Saotome

Ranma...?"

"Eh?" Ranma started to alertness, then glanced around and pondered on

why his immediate surroundings were somewhat different from what he

remembered.

"Saotome Ranma," a familiar voice called out to him from across a

barren field that felt warm and smelled faintly sulfurous, yet was not

quite so foreboding as a glimpse of an actual hell and did seem

curiously like a place he had visited before without quite remembering

the time, place or reason.

Ranma got to his feet and turned around, then stared at the incongruous

sight that awaited him, which was of his elemental familiar, Latisha,

dressed in a filmy red chamois gown that was practically translucent.

She was standing beside a divan of some sort, which she slowly sat down

upon and composed her long legs out in a fairly sensuous manner, her

bare feet curling while her eyes were alight as she regarded him with a

certain discernable smolder.

"Saotome Ranma...my all too human Master," she said softly, "Please

come and sit with me, my Lord, for there is something that I wish to

discuss with you, and I would prefer doing it in the privacy of my own

dominion."

"This is yours?" Ranma asked while cautiously approaching the

Salamander, who too all appearances looked like a beautiful woman of

indeterminate age and extremely regal bearings.

"The plane of Fire, Muspelheim," Latisha explained, "Only I turned the

heat down for your benefit. This normally is an active volcano where

my kind come to dance and commune in a festive environment suitable to

creatures of flame. I wanted you to be comfortable while we chatted

about...certain personal matters."

"Ah...personal matters?" Ranma asked as he looked for a place to sit

down and found another divan-like couch had somehow appeared to suit

his needs, so he obliged the Salamander queen and sat down opposite

from her, composing himself as he perceived that she was speaking to

him in earnest.

"Yes," Latisha replied, "It has been quite a time these past few months

since we've been together, my Master. When first I encountered you it

was under the stress of a life-and-death emergency, and we were

adversaries...yet you defeated and captured me with relative ease, much

to my chagrin and amazement."

"Well...at the time it just seemed to make a kind of sense," Ranma

shrugged, "But it wasn't like I planned on it or anything..."

"I know," Latisha mused, "And later, when I attempted to escape

containment, when I tried to burn you and your sister, you defeated me

again, which led to our striking that agreement by which I bound myself

to you in servitude...a humiliating thing for an Elemental...and yet

you treated me kindly, and I came to understand that you were not a

cruel or exploitative man by nature."

"Well...I wouldn't use you like that Dimitri guy, or even Shang-Kwan,"

Ranma assured her, "I mean...that just ain't right."

"Use me?" Latisha seemed amused by the question, "You mean the way

Madam Lao made use of Sharil and her mother, as tools and servants to

carry out her will? You will excuse me if I find the concept odd given

that you hardly use any woman in such a crude way, even those who are

pledged to you in marriage. It simply is not within your nature."

"Ah...I'd like to think not," Ranma averred, feeling uncomfortable just

thinking about how he had seen other elemental servants being treated

by their masters.

"Nor am I that easily dominated," Latisha continued, "And I would burn

to a cinder the man who presumed to use me as his play toy. But that

is not what has concerned me about you of late, my kind-hearted Master.

In the time we have been together I have come to know you quite well,

and as such I feel that I can trust you as I have few others in my very

long life. There is virtue, integrity, courage and compassion in

everything you do...and it is because of this that I now serve you

willingly and do not seek an end to our association as I would with a

man far less worthy to be called my Master."

"Hey, you know I'd never hold you to anything against your will," Ranma

assured her, "You're more like a friend to me than any kind of

servant..."

"A friend," Latisha seemed to consider the word, "How strange that

is...a Salamander being friends with a mortal. I think I rather like

that."

"Well...hey, why wouldn't you be my friend?" Ranma asked, "You've

helped out a lot, and you've even gotten hurt trying to protect me and

my wives and friends. Ah...I know you and Nabiki ain't exactly hit it

off from the start..."

"You are right on that, Master," Latisha said coyly, "Were it not for

you I would have taught her a lesson the first time she dared to

challenge me, but since getting to know her better I've...come around

to appreciating why she is of value to you. I do not resent her so

much as I did in the beginning, when I struggled to understand why you

put yourself out at such risks trying to woo her and keep her by your

side, and after seeing how hard the both of you struggled to save the

life of your offspring..."

"You resented her?" Ranma was surprised, "I knew that Nabiki resented

you...but I didn't think it worked both ways."

"Master," Latisha chuckled, "I know that you can be naïve when it comes

to women, but I did not think you so obtuse as to fail to recognize why

any two women might come to blows where it involves a man."

"Oh..." Ranma said with a puzzled expression, then his eyes went round

and he said, "Oh? Ah...really?"

"I must say that I find it quite fascinating how you have managed to

curb the natural jealousies of the women with whom you associate, most

particularly the ones who call you husband. That can only happen when

no one truly threatens the ego of another, which is certainly not the

case with my fellow Elementals...and myself of course. For

example...your Nabiki first encountered her Shampoo and took her for a

wife before even knowing about the rules and obligations of her

society. It may not, for her part, have been intended as a contractual

arrangement, but of a certainty she did not refuse the advances of a

pretty girl, and drunk or not upon that Amazon potion she accepted the

girl into her bed and did not exactly throw her out when it came to the

morning."

"Ah...yeah, I kinda know about that," Ranma slowly conceded.

"True it meant far more to Shampoo than it did to her wife, whom she

took to be her husband at the time," Latisha continued, "But when they

reunited she accepted the girl into her life readily enough, and when

she discovered that Shampoo was pregnant, and without a doubt her male

aspect was the father..."

"Right, I got it," Ranma said a bit more curtly.

"No more than two months from meeting to marriage," Latisha mused,

"And-correct me if I am wrong or out of place in pointing this out,

but your own marriage to Nabiki was not consummated until nearly seven

months after your first encounter as near-adults..."

"I said I got it, all right?" Ranma snapped, "And yeah, before you

bring it up, I know how close those two are. Shampoo's a hell of a

girl, and she's always been real supportive of Nabiki and me. And no,

I don't resent her at all, even if..."

"Yes?" Latisha asked.

"Ah...nothing," Ranma looked away and sulked for a moment.

"You were about to say...that sometimes you think that maybe they are

closer to each other than either of them is to you?" Latisha helpfully

suggested.

"Hah?" Ranma turned a startled look on her and asked, "How did you...?"

"I am a part of you now, Master," Latisha replied, "It is my job to

know about things of such a nature."

"Ah...well..." Ranma fidgeted, feeling oddly transparent.

"And then the discovery that you had a second fiancée, one whom your

father never bothered to warn you about before your first meeting,"

Latisha continued, giving him an oddly sympathetic look, "A powerful

and vivacious young lady with whom you struck up an instant

liking...somewhat more than a simple friendship. The fact that she was

already friends with your primary fiancée only added to the spice of

your relationship as deeper feelings set in and you began to regard her

plight as more than just a simple inconvenience imposed upon you by

your errant father."

"Well...hey...Ucchan and me..." Ranma faltered for a good way of

putting this, his thoughts of the chef named Ukyo turning at once to

the sense of fondness that he had developed with her from the earliest

days...and how important she had become to him since that time, and why

he was happy to marry her for more than just the fulfillment of a

contractual obligation.

"You even came near to blows over her with your other fiancée," Latisha

resumed, "But things worked themselves out in the end when you won the

day and convinced each of your ladies that you truly were worthy of

being their mutual husband."

"Ah...well..." Ranma felt himself near to blushing, even though he knew

that his elemental servant was glossing over a lot of the pain, stress,

emotional ache and self-sacrifice that had gone into mastering the

Senkens, and then using them to ultimately defeat and win the hand of

Nabiki.

"But even though you are indeed a rare man among men," Latisha noted,

"Still at times I wonder if any of your brides ever knows you the way I

do...the real Saotome Ranma."

"Ah...what you mean by that?" Ranma asked, already dreading that the

answer would prove to be more than he was prepared to handle.

"I may be out of place for saying this, Master," Latisha replied, "But

it seems sometimes to me that you have suborned your own male pride for

the sake of a domestic arrangement that is as much a matter of choice

as of convenience. You are the center of a five-part marriage with

four women looking to you for support, and sometimes demanding a bit

more from you than you feel equipped or able to handle."

Ranma did not immediately reply to that statement, but then he said,

"It was an honorable choice I made...and it's not exactly like I'm

being exploited..."

"Perhaps you do not see it that way, but I do," Latisha's eyes

momentarily glowed, but then she said, "But are compensated by knowing

that you have the love and support of your ladies, and you are

committed to sharing in a partnership that has proven to be fruitful

and caring."

"Yeah, there is that," Ranma mused, then added with a rueful look,

"Plus I get to have all the sex I could ask for..."

"There is that," Latisha seemed positively amused at his admission,

"And for you to admit that shows how far you have come from the awkward

boy who confronted me with nothing but his wits and courage to defend

him. To no small extent the credit is to be given to the wife who

helped you to master the Kamasenken, the one who was the most reluctant

to acknowledge you as her mate but has since become your staunchest

supporter."

"You mean Perfume?" Ranma asked in surprise, "Um...yeah, well...now

that you mention it, she has been kinda...well...easier to get along

with than in the old days."

"To put it mildly?" Latisha smiled, "It's not difficult to see why you

have become so fond of her of late, Master...she is as brave and as

loyal as any woman presently in your life, and unquestionably

beautiful, to say nothing of having the best set of lungs of the lot."

"Ah...?" Ranma asked, giving the Salamander Queen a curious expression.

"What, did you think me blind to her charms?" Latisha now grinned like

a Cheshire, "You humans have such strange notions about sexuality and

the roles of different genders. To us it is quite academic...I may

appear to you now as human but you know full well that I am not. I

think of myself as feminine and a mother, so I manifest before you as a

woman, but I could easily assume the likeness and function of a man if

it were to my preferences. Unlike your Nabiki I am not trapped by any

curse to be the one or the other, I simply feel more comfortable in

this form because I have never felt the need to be masculine. Among my

kind such roles are entirely academic."

"They are?" Ranma asked with genuine curiosity, "Really?"

"Really," Latisha affirmed with a coy look, "If two Salamanders find

favor in each other's company and desire to produce offspring they do

not need to assume gender roles. Most of our kind are female by

preference...or appear to be androgynous when male, so there is little

telling of us apart by that measure. Among the animal variant that our

species is most often compared to it is common enough for females to

fertilize one another...indeed, we view it as the natural way of doing

business since the X gene is the matrix of reproduction...the male "Y"

gene is more like a mutant variation."

"Are you saying all men are mutants?" Ranma asked, taking faint umbrage

at the suggestion.

"Opinions vary," Latisha mused, "But I don't find human men so odd or

unattractive as all of that. It is academic anyway since-short of

having your wife's curse-human females are not capable of mating in

that sense."

"Uh...yeah, I guess that means us guys aren't so unnecessary, right?"

Ranma wondered why that admission did not do more to reassure him.

"Oh, definitely not unnecessary," Latisha affirmed with a curious gleam

in his eyes that did little to reassure Ranma's state of mind, "Not if

one wants to have children in the human manner...though it is possible

for a Salamander and a human female to reproduce. It all depends on

the right time and place, when ovulation or its equivalent assures a

fertile mating of the species."

"And...what happens if the timing is just right?" Ranma gulped.

"Well then," Latisha said with an oddly amused note in her tone and

expression, "One might have a child that is neither human nor elemental

in the entirely, but more like a fusion of both aspects. Such things

have been known to occur in the past, and half-breed children do gain

unusual abilities and potential."

"Ah..." Ranma had a sudden sense that he ought to stand up and move

away very quickly, but before he had the chance to do so he found the

Salamander Queen suddenly much, much closer to him than before, and

without a sense of her having moved from the divan opposite to his own.

It was more as if the two divans had become one and the both of them

were now sitting side-by-side facing one another from a proximity of no

less than several inches.

"You needn't look at me that way, Master," Latisha cooed, "I am not

about to pounce on you the way Sharil did earlier this morning. That

silly Undine always did lack in manners and refinement."

Ranma swallowed, finding his field of vision suddenly filled by the

face of the elemental, whose resemblance to a human woman was even more

striking now than at the beginning of this very odd encounter.

"Do you know what it means for one of my kind to supplicate herself

before a mortal?" Latisha asked, hovering near enough to burn him

without having to generate any heat, "To humble herself and acknowledge

him as her true and rightful Master?"

"Ah...well..." Ranma gulped, suddenly finding a supple arm sliding

around to embrace both of his shoulders.

"When the Wizard Shang-Kwan snatched me away from you I felt as though

the bonds between us were being torn out of my breast," Latisha cooed

with a breath that was strangely perfumed and reminded one of hyacinth

and rosewater, "But then you summoned me back and I felt my entire

being leap for joy to be reunited with the flame that burns within you.

I knew then and there that I had found the mortal whom I would serve

willingly even if not bound by a contract...and for a queen of my kind

to admit that is a concession that goes well beyond a formal pledge of

union...my Master."

"B-B-But..." Ranma weakly protested, only to find the press of soft and

gentle lips against his mouth stifled any arguments that he might well

have raised against the proposal.

For a moment there was only kissing, and the stroke of gentle hands

against his suddenly nude body, and then Ranma found his body reacting

to the feel of feminine flesh as a naked Latisha took him into her arms

and bent him backwards across the divan, and all at once his arms went

around her and he was reacting entirely on instinct, responding in kind

to her ardor and feeling his manhood stiffen to full erection in the

process.

Latisha wasted no time painting a trail of kisses down his body until

she came to the part of him that was most masculine, and then she

displayed just how much she found the male gender to be attractive by

doing with him that which he could never have managed to do for

himself, and as a mouth engorged his organ Ranma lay back and groaned

his delight, feeling his rod stiffen to the consistency of iron, at

which point Latisha rose up from giving him head to positioning herself

in order to take it through her other well-moistened passage, and as

her loins enveloped his there was a feeling of a raging inferno being

kindled by their union, a fact Ranma could hardly ignore as she slowly

worked him up and down and started to develop a rhythm that was much

like the motion of a piston...

"What's happening to Ranchan?" Ukyo asked as she and Perfume held their

husband down, his moaning and soft thrashing alarming them every bit as

much as his refusal to wake up when they called to him with near-

panicked entreaty.

"I don't understand," Perfume said as her senses read the anomaly of

her husband's body, "He's reacting like he's having a wet-dream, but

not like anything I've ever seen before! In fact, if I didn't know any

better..."

"Stand back the both of you!" Trudy ordered with an authority that

shocked everyone into immediate compliance.

Though they would have sworn that wild horses could not have torn them

apart from the side of their husband, Ukyo and Perfume moved to the

side while the strawberry blonde American (who spoke fluent Japanese

with only the faintest of accents) made curious motions with her hands

and then pointed with a double-fingered gestures, pronouncing a sharp

word of evocation...

And met a solid barrier of force that flared up in the air between

herself and the writhing Saotome youth. Trudy cursed under her breath

in a tongue that sounded even foreign for an American then said,

"Damn...Elemental shield, and Level Five from the feel of it. I'm

gonna need a tougher spell if I'm going to penetrate it."

"Elemental?" Ukyo exchanged sharp looks with Perfume, who stared back

in mutual shock, and then as one they chorused the accusatory name,

"LATISHA?!"

"Latisha?" Trudy asked, "Is that her name now? Interesting." And then

she spoke more words and made another gesture, and this time felt a

yield of pressure that caused her to smile and say, "So...that's the

way it is, is it? Well, Sister...you picked the wrong student of this

PE Coach to fool around with! Prepare to get double Whammied!"

She was just about to cast a third spell when Ranma all at once arched

his back and made a noise that startled everyone present. A moment

later he slumped back on the grass and moaned softly, then slowly

opened his eyes and said, "Ah...what...um...ah...nani?"

"Nani?" Ukyo ignored her own pregnancy-encumbered state and gripped her

husband by the shirt and snarled, "Don't Nani me, Buster! What the

hell just happened? And why the fuck were you making all of those

strange noises...?"

"Ah...Ucchan?" Ranma all but squeaked, then hastily added, "I can

explain everything...I think!"

"Don't bother," Perfume glared accusingly at his crotch, "I think we

can figure that part out, and I don't exactly need my sense of smell to

tell what just happened...Airen."

"Airen?" Trudy remarked with a raised eyebrow, then turned to regard

both young ladies, "Let me guess...Amazon double marriage?"

"How the hell do you know about that?" Ukyo asked with a frown.

"Trust me, you don't want to know," Trudy answered, turning her glance

towards the bewildered young boy who was giving them all a look of

dawning panic, "Playing with fire, Saotome-san? And here I thought

young men in your position would have sense enough to know when they

have a good thing going...and not take risks by fooling around with

forces even inexperienced wizards don't take so much for granted."

"Ah...but...er...Coach?" Ranma asked with a faintly hopeful glance

towards the angry chef who was gripping his shirt so tightly, "It was

just a dream, right? I mean...it's not like it...ah...really

happened?"

"The evidence in your pants says otherwise, Jackass," Ukyo growled,

making a point to move one hand from his shirt to his trousers and

being none-too-gentle about how she gripped the softening bulge that

was still displaying the incriminating evidence of his indiscretion.

"Awp...Coach...a little help here?" Ranma asked as his eyes went agog.

"Good point," Trudy turned to the other open-mouthed students and said,

"Class, nothing much to see here. Saotome will just be hitting the

showers a bit early. The rest of you on your feet and do some laps

before I decide to really make you work it off...you got me?"

"Ah..." some of the male and female students reluctantly got to their

feet and dusted themselves off before doing as they were told...the

others being more sluggish to move finding the glare that Trudy gave

them inspired an immediate compliance with her tartly worded

instructions.

Once the other students were on the move, Trudy turned back and said,

"Let him go, Kuonji-san. If I read this situation rightly then he's

not the one to blame...but the guilty party is still hiding somewhere

within him."

"That figures," Perfume snarled, "Just like her, too, to use our

husband as a bulwark while she preens herself and smugly rests upon her

laurels..."

"I don't think that's what she's doing at the moment," Trudy said as

she knelt down and studied Ranma carefully, then reached out and

gripped one of his wrists, sliding the sleeve back and confirming for

herself the restive tattoos that adorned his right arm, which prompted

her to nod and muse, "As I thought...she's entered a dormant phase to

regenerate from the energy that she's expended. Doing that must have

taken quite a lot out of her, and it may be hours before she's fully

recovered."

"Doing what?" Ukyo eyed the redhead suspiciously, "Excuse me for saying

this, Coach, but you seem awfully knowledgeable about things outside of

normal athletics."

"That's because I'm only a coach part time," Trudy replied while

sliding Ranma's sleeve back down, "My normal job...well...let's just

say that I'm a woman of many talents."

"You are one of Frank's people," Perfume stated as if such a thing were

a matter of course.

"Among other things, though I'm more like an ally than an employee,"

Trudy turned to Ranma and said, "I don't know what in the hell you're

doing with a Class Twelve category Salamander crawling around inside

your tight little butt, Saotome, but she's obviously taken quite a

liking to you, and now you've gone and engaged her in Xenotraposis."

"Xeno-what?" Ukyo asked as she sat on her knees and seemed to be

debating whether or not she liked the sound of that.

"The mating of two different breeds...in this case a human and an

Elemental," Trudy answered, glancing at the two offended young ladies

and saying, "My guess is she waited until a moment when he was totally

relaxed and then drew him into a dreamscape and created a scenario that

was suited for seduction. Your husband didn't exactly cheat on you

deliberately...it's more like he was ambushed, but the effect is the

same as you can plainly see for yourselves."

"Where is she?" Perfume started to lunge forward towards Ranma, only to

be stopped by a hand raised in her path by Trudy, "I'll kill her! I'll

show her what it means to cuckold an Amazon, I'll...!"

"Get burned to a crisp pissing her off is what you mean," Trudy

objected, "And someone with your sensitivity to pain shouldn't be

tempting fate like that, Kuonji-san. What would your wife here say if

she had to mourn you?"

That stopped Perfume's rage before it could even get started, then

Trudy turned to Ukyo and said, "And the same holds for you as well,

Kuonji-san. Is it worth throwing a fit if the price is to cost your

husband the both of you fine young ladies?"

Ukyo was already making an effort to calm herself down, but still she

grit her teeth and said, "How could she do this to Ranchan? She's

supposed to be his servant, or familiar, or whatever..."

"She's a level twelve," Trudy replied, "I don't think she's ever had to

subordinate herself to the will of a 'mere' human before. She's used

to getting what she wants, and in this case...well...she obviously

wanted to have a baby."

That stopped both young girls in their tracks and caused even Ranma to

look at the redhead in askance as they all three chorused, "A

BABY...?!"

"What did you think Xenotroposis means?" Trudy asked, then frowned as

she studied Ranma, which prompted her to stretch out a hand and say,

"The Salamander's in no condition to answer the why and wherefore...but

I think this lady can do just fine in her place."

At first it appeared as though Trudy was plucking a thread from Ranma's

trousers, but then all at once the elastic form of something ethereal

was pulled back, stretching out to form a doll-like shape that Trudy

gripped in her hand and held at arms length, a winged form that the

others had no difficulty identifying as Karina.

"Help!" the tiny humanoid form of the Sylph cried out, "Master! She's

got me...I don't...!"

"Calm down," Trudy ordered as she kept a firm grip over the elemental,

"I'm not going to hurt you, I just want some answers."

"Karina?" Ranma sat upright, staring in dismay at the panicked look

upon the tiny face of his most gentle-mannered of familiars.

"Master, I swear to you that we never meant you any harm...!" Karina

hastily assured him.

"Harm?" Ukyo leaned closer, her face only inches from the Sylph as she

snarled, "I'll show you what harm means! What in the hell are you

freaks doing with our husband?"

"And tell the truth," Perfume ominously cautioned, "We'll know if

you're holding anything back or lying."

The tiny figure seemed to be struggling with a decision when all at

once a gravely voice said, "Let her go at once. You have no cause to

judge us for our actions."

Ranma turned a gasp at the shadow that hovered over them all and said,

"Nagisha?"

"Forgive my appearing this way before you, Master," said a black basalt

figure in the shape of a looming black dragon, "But I cannot sit idly

by and endure this treatment of a fellow Elemental...even one such as

the Airhead."

"Airhead?" Karina blinked, uncertain whether or not to take umbrage

over that bit of name-calling or to feel grateful for the support being

offered.

"Oho?" Trudy glanced up at the looming dragon and said, "I take it

you're number four of the set of five that I read about in my briefing.

Which just leaves the Void elemental..."

"Talking about me?" said a naked form who materialized in the space

just to the right of Ukyo, "And for once I agree with Rocky...that's no

way to treat our sister...even if she is sometimes a pest and a real

annoyance."

"Well, I like that..." Karina huffed with a tiny indignant expression.

"Better and better," Trudy remarked, then turned back to Karina, "I

take it you don't normally side with each other, but in this one

instance you're united for a common purpose. So tell me now...what's

so important that you would risk breaching your contract with this

mortal, to say nothing of violating a dozen different rules set down

for Elemental pacts, just to each of you have a baby with this one

particular mortal?"

"It wasn't our idea...at least, not at first," Karina hastily assured

the Kurustani.

"That much is true," Nagisha rumbled, "But we agreed to set aside our

differences for the sake of providing each of us a child born of mortal

flesh and elemental substance, to serve as guardians and protectors for

the son born of the previous morning."

"What?" Ukyo said blankly.

"You'd doing this for the sake of Chusen?" Perfume wondered, "Why?"

"Hey, like the said, it wasn't really our idea," Sobriel insisted, "It

was all the idea of some guy named Anri..."

Trudy let Karina go and just stared in disbelief at the Void elemental,

"Anri...did you just say his name was...Anri?"

"Yeah," Sobriel scowled, "What about him? Some wizard like guy, calls

himself the Binder..."

"omigawd," Trudy whispered, her eyes going abstract and taking on a

disturbingly unearthly expression, "It...all makes sense...well, kind

of anyway. But...Anri? The Lord Anri?"

"The very same," Nagisha replied, dissolving her dragon aspect and

assuming a form that was infinitely more human, "You know then of the

Binder of Spirits...he who is also named Maitreya, the Lord of Light?"

"Oh yeah...I know about him," Trudy turned and looked at Karina, who

was dusting off her wings and attempting to make herself look more

dignified despite her continuing diminutive status, "And he wants all

of you to each produce a baby? With him?"

"Well, who did you think we were going to make it with?" Karina

snapped, "And just what the heck are you? You're not a Wizard...but

you're not a normal human either. In fact...if I didn't know any better

I'd almost swear there was elvish blood somewhere inside you..."

"Ah...close enough to it anyway," Trudy turned and glanced towards both

Sobriel and Nagisha, "Sorry I interfered. Didn't know what the score

was all about. No hard feelings, right?"

"None for my part," Nagisha answered.

"Just as long as the Bubble-head's all right," Sobriel replied.

"I'll try and pretend you didn't just try to compress me into a dust

mote," Karina said with ruffled pride and a somewhat sullen expression.

Perfume turned her glance to the side and said, "Ah...Airen? I think

we are about to have company. The rest of our class is returning from

their loop about the track..."

"Ooops," Karina jumped back into Ranma, prompting Sobriel and Nagisha

to do likewise, and then the hard-breathing, foot-pounding peers of the

Saotome trio came loping up to join them, some clearly in better shape

than others as a few dropped to their knees and started breathing hard

while holding their rib cages.

At once Trudy rose to her feet and said, "What do you think you're

doing? You want to get a stitch in your side doing that? Stand up and

walk it off, all of you! And no slouching! Place your hands on your

knees and suck it in if you have to, but nobody faints or gets a heart

attack in my class, you got me people?"

"Give us a break, Coach!" one of the male students begged, "We just ran

a full kilometer and a half all out, and we're gonna need a few

minutes..."

"All right, where do you want me to break you, Daisuke-san?" Trudy

asked, "And you there, Hitome-san is it? No throwing up on my track

unless you want to clean it up with a hand trowel."

As Trudy did her level best to get the class back in line, Ukyo leaned

closer to her husband and said, "We're gonna have a talk about this

after school, Sugar...especially this bit about you making babies with

your other harem."

"As if we're not good enough to keep you satisfied," Perfume sniffed,

"We'll remember this the next time you protest that you lack the

stamina to keep on going."

"Gulp," Ranma swallowed, then under his breath murmured, "Thanks a lot,

girls..."

**You're welcome, Master,** Karina silently answered.

Internally he heard Nagisha rumble, **For what? None of the three of

us has even taken her turn just yet.**

**Are you sure you don't want me to suck 'em through a void and deposit

them somewhere that they can't do you any trouble?** Sobriel offered.

Ranma was actually starting to think that one over when an explosive

noise caused heads to turn towards the nearest section of the wall

surrounding the Furinkan school grounds, and through the haze of rubble

they could just barely discern a human shape making its entrance.

"Now what?" Trudy turned and frowned, "Odd...I can't seem to detect an

Akashic pattern. Whoever that guy is, he's blocking me out..."

"Who is that guy?" Ukyo asked as she straightened up and shaded her

brow, peering as best she could at the advancing figure, who was still

a couple hundred meters off in the distance.

"I don't know, Airen," Perfume reported, "But whoever he is, he's

carrying a sword that looks twice as big as he is."

"Huh?" Ranma got to his feet and dusted himself off, grateful for the

interruption but still feeling a bit antsy about his recent sexual

forays with the Elementals.

"Best sit this one out, Champ," Trudy cautioned, "I think you've had

enough of a workout for one day. I'll go see who that is and why he

couldn't use the front door just like regular people."

Trudy began to take two steps forwards when she saw a group of students

approaching the stranger. One of them appeared to be clad in a

standard Kendo Hakuma and was leading the group with bokken raised and

making a gesture of challenge...when all at once the stranger reacted

by unslinging the huge weapon that had lain across his shoulders. With

a sudden slice of the air he conjured up a wave of force that sliced

the ground and scattered the athletic-clad students, causing Trudy to

freeze in mid step and gape in amazement at the callous display of

energy that had bowled those students down like ten pins.

"Did you see that?" Ukyo started in disbelief.

"Are you serious, Airen?" Perfume asked with rounded eyes, "That

weapon...it must be a magical blade of some sort, but he just used it

against those boys like they were nothing!"

"Sonuvabitch!" Ranma swore, "That was Kenji leading that group, Kuno-

sempai's designated co-captain! He'd better not have hurt him or..."

"Stay here," Trudy's voice suddenly had a chilling quality as she

barked out those words with deadly earnest, "I'll go have some words

with that bastard! Ain't nobody doing that to a bunch of helpless

teenagers under my watch!"

The athletic class made panic stricken noises as their "Coach" took off

running, crossing the distance between where they were and the latest

menace to student discipline and order had just made his mark in school

annals. It took a surprisingly brief time-no more than mere seconds-

-for Trudy to cover two hundred meters at a run, but then she leaped

high into the air and threw herself bodily at the stranger...

Who merely raised his sword to block her...and she rebounded off an

invisible barrier without coming near enough to touch him, though a

shock like pain went from her feet up to the rest of her body.

Trudy was momentarily stunned as she fell to the ground, but instinct

and reflex caused her to roll back to her feet in a fighting crouch as

she confronted the young man who was responsible for the carnage that

she perceived all around her. She did not need to turn her head in

order to sense the maimed and injured bodies of a score of fallen

students, or to detect the smell of ozone rising up from the deep gouge

created in the earth by the scars left by the giant sword's

devastation. What she did find incredible was her perception of the

young man himself, for staring at him from closer proximity confounded

her senses utterly while confirming the worst of her suspicions.

It did not take a Kurustani's senses to notice, for example, that the

boy was not entirely human.

He was barely five feet in height...maybe no more than fifty-seven

inches, and approximately fourteen or fifteen years of age with short-

cropped white hair that fell partially over a face that was both

youthful and strangely handsome. He was definitely oriental, though

his features spoke more of the mainland than of Japan, and if she had

to guess she might have placed him as either Vietnamese or Korean. He

had on a short sleeveless vest that exposed his narrow chest to full

view, and a pair of worn trousers with sandals on his feet completing

what comprised his entire outfit.

He also wore a very large cross that hung from a platinum chain about

his neck, resting upon his breast and somehow emanating a power that

was not divine in nature but most definitely reeked of the unholy.

Also striking was the blade itself that he wielded...a monstrous thing

over three meters long and a meter in width that surely must have

weighed a quarter ton, yet which the boy easily handled as though it

were not many times larger than him, and thus beyond the rules of

conventional physics that would have dictated that he could not carry

it that way, no matter if he had the strength of a giant. It was

definitely not formed of any metal that Trudy had ever previously

encountered, and it had a faintly organic look, but beyond taking note

of this her intuitive senses were curiously blunted.

"You are in my way," the boy said in mildly accented Japanese, "Please

step aside or I will deal with you as I did these others."

"Who the hell are you?" Trudy demanded, "And why did you attack these

students?"

"They got in the way of my mission," the boy responded in a flatly

unemotional tone, "My name is David, and I am here to find a student

named Saotome Nabiki."

"Saotome Nabiki?" Trudy frowned, "What do you want with her?"

"That is none of your concern," the boy said as he held up his

incongruously oversized sword in one hand, "Move out of my way or you

will be hurt. I have only come to find Saotome Nabiki."

"Then why don't you take it up with me, Creep?" Ranma asked as he came

trotting up to take a position of his own only a few meters away from

where Trudy stood at the ready, "'Cause I'm Nabiki's husband!"

"Saotome-san!" Trudy barked harshly, "Stay back...I said that I'd

handle this..."

"No way, Coach," Ranma snarled, indicating the fallen students with a

nod of his head, "These guys are friends of mine, and I'm not letting

anybody get away with doing that to them...not in my high school, and

especially not some asshole who says he's looking for my wife!"

"You are the husband of the Pagan infidel known as Saotome Nabiki?" the

young boy named David asked, turning his focus to regard the new

challengers to confront him.

"I'm Saotome Ranma," Ranma declared proudly, "And who are you calling a

Pagan infidel, scum?"

"Die," the young boy declared, and then made another passing sweep with

his blade that Trudy sensed coming with just barely enough time to

evade as a wave of force tore through the air and threatened to consume

everything and burn it to mere ashes.

**MASTER!** Ranma heard Nagisha cry out in his mind even as he

instinctively raised both arms and summoned up her power, causing the

earth to rise up and form a barrier against which the energy wave broke

like the sea against a levy, resulting in a mammoth explosion as the

opposing forces met and canceled out one another.

But not without consequences as the shock-wave generated by this

conflict sent everyone within fifty meters scattering like sakura

leaves during the autumn harvest, while two young ladies in particular

called out in mutual dismay at seeing their husband go flying

backwards, "RANMAAAA!"

The battle of Furinkan was joined with a self-styled Missionary about

to make his mark in the land of the rising sun, the first stage of a

greater conflict that soon would threaten the whole of the Japanese

home islands...

Continued.

Comments/Criticisms/Catechism Run Amok: shadowmane

Who is this mysterious David and why is he so intent on wrecking such

havoc? (Well, aside from the fact that he's in league with the bad

guys introduced last chapter, let's just say that he's got a story of

his own to tell) And what of Nabiki herself, blindly rushing into

danger without a clue to her coming peril? Find out next time when

heroes and defenders clash with the power of religious fanaticism in,

"Angels of a Bitter Nature," or, "Blowing the Wrong Trumpet." Be

there...

X


	68. Chapter 68

Dnabiki157

Nabiki 1/2

"A Very Scary Thought"

by

Jim Robert Bader

(Inspired by the works of Rumiko Takahashi & Others,

with concepts and characters created by fellow fanfic writers

Wade Tritschler, DB Sommers, Nicole Manders, Andrew

Greaves, Bill Guiroff and countless others, including "Buffy"

creator Joss Whedon; with special thanks to my good pal

Shiva for his editing and handling of this series.)

(Certain other characters and concepts are of my own

innovation, including my interpretation of the Monster

of Mary Shelly's novel, the Furies, Trudy, Takaharis

Angelique d'Anjou and various other guest stars

appearing in this portion of the Nabiki 1/2 series...)

Chapter Sixty-Three.

Episode One-Fifty-Seven.

Angel versus Fanatic.

(Round One)

"Hey, Tendo-san...wait up!" a voice surprised Kaneda/Nabiki as he was

hurrying on her way towards the Furinkan school campus.

"Eh?" Kaneda asked, glancing to the side and seeing a familiar pink-haired

shape in a school uniform racing to catch up with him, and without pausing

in mid-stride he called out, "Saki?"

"Nice to see you too, and in your male half for a change," Saki Asamiya

remarked as she slowed to match his side, having finally closed the

distance, "Guess with your kid safely delivered it was just a matter of time

before your curse asserted itself back to its proper nature."

"Yeah, can't say I'm any too surprised about it myself," Kaneda replied with

a smile towards the Sekeban Deka, "And nice to see you too, but at the

moment I can't stop to socialize...I'm kind of in a hurry."

"Yeah, I can see that," Saki remarked with loping strides that just barely

managed to maintain the same pace that he was keeping, "But...look, this

isn't a social visit this time. I'm afraid it's business."

"Oh?" Kaneda asked with a cautious hint to his tone, "Police business?"

"Yup," Saki affirmed, "You know that guy you fought with the other day? The

one with the curse that turns him into a giant bull-headed minotaur like

monster?"

"Yeah?" Kaneda asked with a look of surprise, "What about him?"

"He escaped custody only a few hours ago," Saki replied, "The guys back at

lockup didn't believe me when I warned them about curses...imagine that?

Well, all he needed was to request a glass of cold water and..."

"I get the picture," Kaneda replied, "Kinda thought he might be too big for

the normal police to handle."

"He might be coming for you, which is why I felt like warning you in

person," Saki cautioned, "I've also asked to be your official police escort

in case he does show up in Nerima..."

"I appreciate the offer, but I handle my own fights," Kaneda assured her

pink haired companion, "Besides...after what happened the other night I'd

even welcome another chance to show that guy how much I appreciate being a

kidnap victim, to say nothing of him almost causing me to lose my kid..."

"You misunderstand me, Saotome-chan," Saki grinned, "I'm not here to protect

you from him, I'm here to make sure you leave enough of him alive to put on

trial. At least that's the official excuse I gave my superiors when I'd

just as soon hold him still while you beat the crap out of him, but we won't

put that in the official record."

"So, in other words you're my official conscience?" Kaneda asked with one

raised eyebrow.

"Hey, I never said I wanted a suicide job like that," Saki chuckled,

"Oh...and by the way, what's with those funky tattoos? Am I imagining

things or are they...ah...sliding around and changing with your movements?"

"Oh, this?" Kaneda glanced at his own left arm and scowled very slightly,

"Just a temporary thing, don't pay too much mind about it. I've got one of

Ranchan's elementals tagging along playing hitchhiker."

"What, you mean one of those ghostly girls who spend most of their time

living inside your husband's body?" Saki asked in surprise, giving the arm

in question a much warier look.

"Sharil to be exact," Kaneda replied, "The water-head, also the prime reason

I'm Kaneda at the moment."

"Oh," Saki took this revelation in stride, allowing herself to regard the

strikingly handsome (if Bishonen) man beside her a private study before

clearing her throat and saying, "Well, if you say so, Saotome-chan, but

personally I think it would creep me out to have one of those things

crawling around inside me, probing at my secrets."

"Believe me, I'm none too happy about it myself," Kaneda said as they

approached the school campus, "And just as soon as I catch up with my

husband there's gonna be some much-delayed ground rules laid down around

here about who he associates with and what he lets them do with his body..."

Before Saki could inquire as to the not-so-cryptic meaning of that statement

a sound drew both of them to a halt, and then as one they turned to see a

column of dust rising up in the air, and with the certainty that came from

long experience in such matters they instantly knew that it was Furinkan

that was the source of this latest battle.

"Someone start a party without you?" Saki asked as nonchalantly as she

could.

"Without my advanced approval?" Kaneda scowled, "Heads are gonna roll when I

get there...!" and then the two of them picked up the pace and really

started to travel, Saki doing her level best to keep up with the lanky

stride of her sex-changing friend as the two of them neared the walls of

Furinkan, behind which a battle royale was already in full progress...

"Zair you go, mon petite filles," Angelique waved as she bid her latest

patient on her way and then turned to the next student in line and gave an

enchanting smile, saying, "Next...ah! Such a beautiful young thing. And

what might your name be, Cheri?"

"Shogo, Sensei," gushed the young girl as she gulped and felt slightly faint

looking upon the beautiful blonde goddess from a foreign shore, even as she

was bidden into the nurse's office, with the door closed shut behind her.

"Amazing, truly amazing," Kuno Tatewaki remarked as he observed the

spectacle from a side corridor, accompanied by his slightly worried fiancée.

"What is it that you find so amazing, Tachi-kun?" Natsume asked, observing

the odd way that the girl who had left the office was behaving.

"She comes from no where, easily dispatches our lust besotted sports

enthusiasts, then heals them to full health with but a touch of her gentle

hands," Kuno replied in a tone of slightly awed wonder. Her sword technique

was flawless...at least so far as I could determine by the evidence,

indicating that she is a warrior of surpassing skill...and yet her talents

seem to broaden into other...shall we way...most unorthodox practices, and

not just of healing O would assume to judge by the effect her methods imbue

upon her patients."

Natsume could not help but agree with his assessment upon that count, for

the girl whom she had been observing just now did not seem entirely steady

upon her feet, and her expression was one of deep entrapturement, the kind

of look that a young woman might have after having experienced heavenly

bliss, only to come back down to earth and find that her feet were not, in

fact, floating above the ground. Indeed, nearly all the female patients who

had just passed through those nurse's doors were behaving in a manner that

suggested that something intensely pleasurable had just befallen them, and

they did not seem to mind bumping into other people and stray objects as

they pretended to go about their business, their minds clearly focused

elsewhere.

"Indeed," she said, "If one were given to speculate upon the evidence one

might be inclined to suppose that this new Nurse decidedly has a thing for

other members of her own gender."

"You think so?" Tatewaki asked in surprise, glancing her way.

"As yet no male patient who has darkened her door has come away with quite

the same degree of...how shall I put this? An aura of surprise

intoxication," Natsume nodded, indicating a group of male students who were

standing around chatting happily about their own private encounter with the

new blonde wonder of the campus.

"I see," Tatewaki conceded, then thought a moment before saying, "So you

believe that she is, like my sister's paramour, decidedly of that

persuasion? Such a pity..."

Natsume glared at him and all at once gave him a sound "thwack" on his upper

arm, startling Tatewaki, who glanced at her with a very hurt expression.

"My love, what for did you just strike me?" Tatewaki pleaded.

"You're were thinking about her, weren't you?" Natsume scowled, "And while

standing beside me, your own fiancée!"

"What?" Tatewaki looked slightly bewildered until a light came on over his

head and he gasped, "My love, surely you did not think...?"

"What else does a man think about when he lets what's between his legs do

all the thinking?" Natsume huffed and started to turn away when Tatewaki

reached out to grip her arm, and without thinking about it she tried

breaking his grip and attempted to throw him, only to flinch with dismay as

her fiancé reacted immediately with the counter.

"My love, desist, there is no cause for you to feel jealous-OOOF!" he

gasped as Natsume rounded upon him and planted her elbow in his stomach.

But Kuno was nothing if not resilient, and he brought both arms around his

lady love and pressed her close to his body, using his own extensive

knowledge of the martial arts to immobilize without hurting her then said,

"Desist I say! You mistook my intentions!"

Natsume was considerably stronger than him by at least a five-fold factor,

but she relented in his grasp and said, "You have one chance to explain

yourself, so start talking, Mister."

Kuno held her and rested his face against her cheek before replying, "I am

not interested in the new teacher the way you think that I meant. It is

true that she is fair to look upon, and there is no mistaking the power of

her charisma, but...there is another quality about her that fascinates me

and it is her knowledge of the sword. I wish to know more about her

technique, what school she belongs to, her knowledge of certain skills

heretofore unknown to me, and many of which seem oddly similar to my own

style of Nampo. It is that about her, and not the quality of her face and

form, that holds my interest...and so there is no cause to alarm you."

"And that is all you are interested in, her sword skills?" Natsume growled.

"On my word as a gentleman and a master of Kenjuitsu," Tatewaki replied,

nuzzling her ear before adding, "For what other interests might I entertain

when already I have the finest flower of our school to claim as my beloved

bride to be, the shining reason I draw breath each morning, who lightens my

darkest hours and lifts my spirit to the soaring heights of the heavens?"

"Good answer," Natsume relented, "But why did you just now say that it is a

shame that our new Nurse may be a daughter of Belitis?"

"I see this because it would bring scandal to our halls if word got out that

she is seducing the fair flowers of our school in the bloom of their youth,"

Tatewaki replied, "And indeed, it would seem that her effect is like honey

attracting them to swarm like bees to her beck and calling, for clearly

there is the hope in their eyes that what awaits them in that office will be

the fulfillment of forbidden fantasies newly kindled."

"Oh," Natsume noted, seeing with her own eyes the looks in the faces of the

girls lining up to take their turn with the new teacher...and indeed, she

could hardly blame their eager, hopeful expressions as her own reactions to

first meeting Angelique left Natsume in a great deal of conflicted doubt and

confusion, never having believed that in herself there might lurk the same

appetites as were quite freely indulged by at her adopted Tendo sisters...

Inside the office, however, Angelique was hardly indulging herself to the

degree that others might imagine. She most certainly did have an

appreciation for the charms of the female students who entered through the

door to her office, but her training and code of honor forbade her from

playing the part of the predatory stalker. Rather her aims were more

benevolent, to explore the physical condition and responses of her charges

without indulging her own base appetites, for she was a teacher and a healer

primarily, and only a Lothario to women with whom she had no compromising

attachments. She wanted to help her patients to discover for themselves

their own dormant nature, and to steer them along the lines of what she felt

to be their true best interests without assuming the role of the one who

would partake of the charms that they so ably had to offer.

And so she was coy, charming and quite casual as she instructed the young

girl before her to disrobe out of her school uniform, but did not make any

outright moves to seduce the girl directly, preferring a more clinical

detachment in her methods...much to the disappointment of the young lady in

question.

Shogo could hardly bare to breathe as she undid the fasteners to her dress

and pulled it off with fumbling fingers. She set it to one side as she was

instructed then stood shivering in her undergarments, wondering if she

should go all the way and remove them as well, for clearly she was being

visually inspected by her Sensei and appraised for her womanly qualities in

a way that made Shogo almost feel like doing a strip tease.

But Angelique merely bade that she sit down on a padded examination table,

then went about the formalities of a casual inspection, using a thermometer

and a pen-light to ensure that the young girl was perfectly normal and

healthy, and while her speech was light and intimate there was nothing

overtly sexual about her behavior.

"My, but you are a most healthy and attractive young lady," Angelique mused

after using a stethoscope to check the girl's pulse rate, "I dare say,

Cheri, that you must work out a lot to be in such excellent physical

condition."

"I do a little track and field on my own time, Sensei," Shogo said shyly,

hiding her disappointment that nothing further was being asked of her than

what any other nurse might request on an examination.

"Do you belong to one of the sports clubs, or perhaps are a part of the

school team?" Angelique asked as she walked around behind the young girl and

stared pressing her finger-tips against the muscle groups about her neck,

back and shoulders.

"Ah...yes...the Track and Field club," Shogo replied, "In fact I'm a

Pentathelete and-oooh! Yes...that feels very nice..."

"There is much tension here," Angelique said as she moved her hands more

intimately, exploring muscle groups and testing with delicate firmness along

the spine and ribs of the young athlete, "You feel much need to work out,

and when you do not your body reminds you of its need for regular fitness."

"Yes..." Shogo gasped, for now the hands reached the base of her spine and

were pressing gently around the fringes of her fanny.

"I would suggest a change in your workout routine to equalize the pressure

on different muscle groups," Angelique said soothingly, "You would not feel

so tired if your regimen were better balanced."

To Shogo's acute disappointment the blonde lady ceased massaging her "down

there" and walked around to the front of the table, only to surprise the

girl once again by lightly pressing her hands against her outer thighs, thus

continuing the examination.

"You have good tone down here," Angelique mused while running her fingers

lightly down the legs of the girl, coyly watching as Shogo arched her back

and leaned the palms of her hands against the padding of the table, "But it

could be greatly firmed with the right exercises...and you are so tense in

many places...you must learn to relax and be at ease...to let your body

perform in the manner for which it was designed by nature. Here...please

permit me to show you how I would have you work your calves and ankles."

While saying this the blonde casually pulled off the sock that had been worn

upon the right foot of the girl and bared it to view, then casually took the

foot between those gentle hands and worked her fingers on and around it,

which caused Shogo to further gasp with delight and lean even farther back

upon the table.

"You see? Like this," Angelique explained while working her thumbs gently

against the girl's instep while her fingers pressed certain nerves between

the toes and then worked around the ankle while flexing the foot back and

forth with gentle massaging motions. "Use just enough force, no more and no

less, and gradually work it around until you achieve a feeling of total

liberation. Yes...that is it...you see how good it feels? Zhat is how it

ought to be for you routinely."

Shogo made a faint groaning noise and lay back upon the table, her thighs

and hips writhing with the unexpected pleasure that this foot massage was

causing to the rest of her body...and then to her further delight Angelique

lifted the other foot, pulled the sock away and performed the same finger

motions. Before too long Shogo was starting to feel warm and aroused all

over, and there was a wetness between her thighs that made her yearn to be

examined "all the way" by this gentle-voiced teacher.

But Angelique called a halt to things and handed the socks back to the girl,

then said, "We will have to schedule an appointment for next week to see

what progress you have made by that time. In the meanwhile, I suggest you

meet with the new PE director and have her show you sets of exercises that

will have the effect of which I have just spoken."

"Is that all, Sensei?" Shogo asked, feeling more than slightly flustered at

having been thus far aroused without achieving satiation.

"Yes, as so far as this session must go," Angelique replied, "But if I may

be so bold as to suggest it, the techniques that I have just shown you work

best if you have a training partner."

"A...partner, Sensei?" Shogo asked with a lifted eyebrow.

"Indeed," Angelique replied, "And as it just so happens, a young thing who

graced this office not more than a few minutes ago caught my eye and strikes

me as zee perfect partner for you. I believe that she too is in the club to

which you both belong, and if you approach her with zee invitation to share

a rub I have a feeling you both will be non too disappointed."

"In the same club, Sensei?" Shogo brightened, "Who?"

"Raizu Akemi, I believe her name was," Angelique replied with a stroke of

her chin as though coyly considering the matter, "Do you know her?"

Shogo's interest turned to dismay, "Akemi? But she's the biggest stuck-up

bitch in our class! She thinks she's better than the rest of us, and she's

always looking down her nose at we lowly peons..."

"Ah," Angelique said shrewdly, "But often it has been my experience zhat

when a girl behaves as if superior it is actually a front to disguise an

inner sense of loneliness and self-doubt for which she is compensating.

Tell me, Cheri, has she ever done or said anything to hurt your feelings

directly?"

"Yeah," Shogo said confidently, only to pause and think about it, "She says

mean things to everybody, and sometimes plays cruel pranks, but...not to me

so much as other girls I know..."

"Perhaps she has never singled you out for special attention, non?"

Angelique said with a suggestive lilt, "Perhaps it is long past time zhat

you did something to gain her attention...such as to ask her to be your

training partner...non?"

"But...but she'd just turn me down and say something nasty..." Shogo weakly

defended her own reluctance.

"Perhaps so," Angelique replied, "But where is zee harm? At zee worse you

make a fool of yourself before others...but in doing so you demonstrate an

interest. And besides...I do not think she will be so inclined to denying

your petition if you ask again a second time, and say it as though you mean

it."

"Um...you think so?" Shogo asked, curiously reluctant and yet thinking the

more about the girl whom she had heretofore regarded as the bane of her

existence, yet who for some odd reason did not seem quite so...intimidating.

"I know so, Cheri," Angelique winked, and then reached out with both hands

and moved them around the face of the younger girl, carefully touching

special nerves that would accentuate certain hormones and give confidence

where doubt would normally serve as a deterrence.

Satisfied that her new charge was sufficiently fortified, Angelique told her

to get dressed then sent her along on her way, then summoned the next girl

into her office, smiling at the dreamy look in Shogo's eyes as she headed

off in search of a certain liaison that the Temuvarai suspected would prove

most fruitful.

She turned her attention to the next girl, one Retsui Kingo by name, and was

just in the middle of giving the girl a complete and thorough examination

when a sound disturbed the air and caused the window panes of the office to

shake, startling both Angelique and Kingo in the middle of something that

was promising to be passionate, tender and juicy.

"What was that?" Kingo asked, laying back on the table with her legs parted

wide as Angelique had been probing her genitals to determine if she did

indeed have a "yeast infection."

"I do not know," Angelique said as she moved away from the girl and glanced

out the window, then focused her senses towards a place where she could hear

a loud commotion.

"Are those guys starting something up again out there?" Kingo asked, not

wanting to give away the fact that she was desperate for the new nurse to

turn away and ignore whatever was developing in the school yard so that she

could come back and finish her "examination."

"I do not believe that zhey would so soon after the thrashing that I gave

them," Angelique frowned, her senses warning her that there were innocents

in peril, and some who even now needed the attention of a healer, "But...I

suppose zhat I must go and see for myself what zhee cause is of this latest

distraction."

Kingo sat up with a look of dismay, "But you haven't finished examining me!

I mean...what if I really do have an infection?"

Angelique favored the girl with a glance over her shoulder and smiled, "On

zhat count you may relax, Cheri. My examination is non-complete, but I have

ruled out zhat you have contracted anything...shall we say? Too infectious?

However, for you to remain zhat way I would suggest you non be so willing

to put out for zee boys who court your favors. Behavior such as zhat, which

understandable, would be most unsettling to your parents..."

"You're not going to tell them, are you?" Kingo asked with an even more

alarmed expression.

"Of course non, Cheri," Angelique replied, turning back to the girl and

giving her a most heartfelt expression, "It is of non concern to me what you

do with your personal life, just as long as you take certain...precautions.

I will give you special instructions on what to do to insure that you remain

in good health and do not inadvertently contract something that would

imperil your health and position, and on my honor no word of zhis shall

escape from zhis office until such time as you choose to inform zhem."

"But..." Kingo felt a burning shame touch her cheeks, "You're not...upset

with me...because I'm not a virgin?"

"Neither am I, Cheri," Angelique chuckled, "And I assure you I am

non-judgmental on such subjects. But consider that you actions do have

consequences upon your life and upon others, and take such things in regard

before following your impulses into behavior zhat might not turn out zhee

was you wish it. You are old enough to make your own decisions in regards

to whom you spend time with, but for the sake of those who care about you

please...do make a point to err on zhee side of caution. We will meet again

next week around zhis time for an appointment, and I will prepare a plan for

you to meet your needs health wise, and one zhat I think will greatly please

your chosen lifestyle."

"Oh, thank you, thank you, Sensei!" the girl openly gushed, and in her heart

she resolved that she would be spending less time with boys in the future

and concentrating more on pursuing her friendship with other girls...just in

case that turned out to be a part of this Nurse's agenda.

"I am but a servant rendering what aid I may to those in need of my

services," Angelique replied, only to wince as another explosion sounded

outside the building, and this one much closer to her office, "But...you

will excuse me for now...but duty calls in other ways, and I must answer."

"Do whatever you have to, Sensei," Kingo said to her new hero, and soon she

was skipping brightly upon leaving the office, happy for reasons she found

impossible to explain though her spirit felt lighter than it had in quite a

while, and she no longer felt the burning shame for allowing the boys to

touch her in all sorts of "inappropriate" places.

Angelique smiled as she waved the girl off, then apologized to the remaining

line of students, promising to return once she had investigated "certain

matters," then headed off down the hall speaking to her throat mike,

"Adonai..."

"What took you so long?" the motorcycle relay AI spoke chidingly, "I'm

already on my way...meet you by the east side exit..."

David Ban Lo did not consider himself to be an altogether bad person, just a

tragic one whose life had been filled with the pain of loss, despair and

redemption. He now believed himself to be a missionary on a quest to

fulfill the will of his Lord Otono Reyabi, a man favored by God as a prophet

and herald of the 'End of Times' that were forthcoming. As such he believed

his methods to be entirely justified and his aims in the righteous, putting

down the base pretenders, heretics and infidels who threatened his lord's

mission while championing the cause of Satan and all his minions.

And it did not hurt in the least if it meant he could level out righteous

punishment to the hated Japanese, the very people who had despoiled his land

and brought war, pain and death to his ancestors.

As such it bothered him greatly to even have to learn the tongue of these

barbarians, let alone to speak it without accent or inflection. He

tonelessly voiced his determination in level terms that conveyed his

intentions without fully giving voice to the pain and rage within him. What

he was doing was more than necessary, he was wiping out a potential cancer

eating away at the very fabric of all civilized nations, an affront to God

and Nature known as Saotome Nabiki...and anyone else who sided with her

against the cause of light and the righteous vengeance of the Heavenly

Father!

And so he stood there with his sword point buried in the ground, a wicked

scar torn in the earth by the force of his holy weapon. He held his

Ravensclaw Avenger purposefully and regarded the lone gaijin who stood

unmoved in his path and reckoned her to be a witch of some sort, having seen

her demonstrate her unholy power by standing against the effects of his Wind

Scar.

Again she asked him for his name, but all he gave her was the cold contempt

of his stare, recognizing a base harlot and a temptress in the false beauty

of her continence, clearly a mark of her enchantment and further proof that

she had dealings with the Dark One and was one of his foul minions.

"Who the hell are you?" the redhead was demanding, staring at him with

evident confusion in her lovely expression, "And what do you want with

Saotome Nabiki?"

"That is my concern, not yours," David replied as he yanked his sword out of

the ground and them raised it like an accusing finger, not even slightly

affected by its massive weight or the fact that he should have been totally

imbalanced by the gesture as, in his hands, the Ravensclaw Avenger was

lighter than the proverbial feather, "Tell me now where she is or you will

be punished."

Her confusion turned to skepticism and she scowled back at him with that

imperious quality adults usually employed against children, "You're mighty

young to be talking like that to me, fellow. I'd say you're the one who

deserves a spanking, barging in like this and disrupting my gym class, to

say nothing of assaulting and likely injuring dozens of students."

"They were in my way," David raised his sword and assumed a ready crouch,

"As are you, Harlot Temptress."

"Excuse me?" Trudy arched a golden eyebrow, "Who taught you manners, you

obnoxious little..."

"DIE!" David cried, unleashing his next assault with a swing that sliced the

air where the redhead had been standing, only she was no where to be found

and instead appeared again well within his guard, surprising David with her

speed as her hand lashed out and struck him on one shoulder.

The blow was not very hard but it staggered him as David was already off

balance, his swing not having been adjusted to compensate for her maneuver.

He wound up landing on his rump with a loud thump while the redhead paused

to glance at her own palm, then he caught her idly murmuring to herself,

"That's odd...some kind of resistance field. That should have taken you

out...if it had connected the way it was supposed to..."

David snarled, momentarily loosing his aloof cool as a savage element within

his nature rose up to guide his hand, and with a lateral swing he chopped

away at the redhead's legs, only she was gone again before his slice could

connect and vaulted well beyond even the reach of the Ravensclaw, executing

a neat hand spring and righting on her feet within the next lithe second.

"Okay," she murmured aloud, looking faintly worried, "This is going to be

more of a challenge than I thought it would be. Whoever he is, he's got

magical protection..."

"My only protection is the righteous mercy of the Lord, Harlot!" David

declared while getting back to his feet and resuming a fighting stance, "And

against His mighty hand all base pretenders are laid low, as you shall be if

you continue to oppose me."

"Excuse me?" Trudy arched the other eyebrow, "What are you, a Holy Roller

type? No, dumb question...of course, with the cross and the attitude what

else could you be? Well, clue this in, Elijah! This is a school, not a

rival tent, and your kind of holy hypocrisy just ain't wanted!"

"Fool!" David declared coldly as he prepared to attack this insolent

foreigner, "None may stand in the path of my Lord's mission, and oblivion

awaits for those who dare to cross me!"

And as Trudy looked on with dawning horror she saw the young man manifesting

a quite palpable battle aura, and as she belatedly realized that the stakes

were about to get raised she murmured under her breath, "When will I ever

learn to keep my fool mouth shut instead of always taunting the bad

guys...?"

At the battle raged in the middle of the field, however, another was going

on in the form of a distressed Perfume and Ukyo attempting to revive their

stricken husband.

"Ranchan, come on! Snap out of it, you Jackass!" Ukyo cried in distress

while patting his face with a hand to gently slap him back to full

awareness.

"We need you, Airen," Perfume said with equal distress, "You can't be beaten

like this...not to a cocks-re Korean boy not yet old enough to be shaving."

"Huh?" Ukyo glanced at her wife, "Korean?"

"That's what I'm making him out to be, Airen," Perfume replied, "Northern

rather than Southern, and with a distinct accent that proclaims him from the

country."

"North Korean?" Ukyo glanced over her shoulder to see their new gym teacher

taking on the sword-wielding maniac in question, "What's a guy like that

doing here in Japan? And sporting a Christian cross for Kami's sake!"

"You've got me there, Airen," Perfume shrugged, "I thought they were all

atheists and communists on that side of the 38th parallel. But there's a

word or two in his speech pattern that suggests that English or French may

be his secondary language, so maybe he's adopted."

"Gah...what...what's that all about?" Ranma asked as he slowly came out of

his daze, blinking his eyes before saying, "What the heck hit me?"

"Ranchan, you're all right!" Ukyo cried with relief, then hastily added, "We

don't really know, Sugar...somehow that kid with the ridiculously big sword

took a swipe at you, and all at once it was like you got Ki-blasted into

next week."

"I saw it happen," Perfume dutifully reported, "Somehow he cut through a

fold in the air and caused this humongous big energy discharge to tear up

the ground right in front of you, and if it wasn't for that mound of dirt

getting in its way it might have done a lot worse than to merely knock you

unconscious."

"Huh?" Ranma blinked his eyes, then seemed to look inwardly for a moment as

he called out the name, "Nagisha...are you...?"

"I am here, Master," the dirt beside him rose up to form a womanly face,

"But I am...somewhat weakened by the effect his attack has had upon me...and

it will take several more minutes for me to recover my strength in full

measure..."

"Listen to her brag about herself," Sobriel huffed as she appeared in the

space somewhat behind and to the left of Ukyo, "That bastard nearly cut her

in half, and it's gonna take longer than a couple of minutes to regenerate

from that kind of damage. I'm afraid you're not gonna be able to rely on

her in the fight like you would me, Master."

"Insolent Astral Deva," Nagisha growled, "Do you think yourself above the

likes of..."

"Oh, put a sock in it, will you?" Sobriel kicked the face of the Earth

elemental as though it were a sandy castle on a beach then turned to Ranma

and said, "Honestly, she can't even admit when she gets hurt without

becoming a royal drama queen..."

"Excuse me?" Karina said as the air elemental manifested to the right of

Perfume, "Who's a drama queen here? And for your information we're not

exactly equipped to handle a guy who can cut through the Wind Scar while

wielding the sharpened claw of a Kirin like it was a hatchet."

"Kirin?" Perfume repeated, "I thought the boy just called his weapon a

Raven's Claw Avenger...or something like that."

"Raven's claw?" Sobriel made a rude noise, "Yeah, right! As if a half-breed

like that could even hold the Raven's Claw one-handed!"

"Excuse me?" Ranma spoke up with a glance to both Air and Void elementals,

"A half-breed? A half-breed what?"

"Kirin of course, Master," Karina helpfully supplied, "And it stands to

wager that if you did a DNA analysis you might even find that he and the

claw are related."

"Somebody probably peddled a line of bull about it being the Raven's Claw

Avenger to make him think he was holding an invincible weapon out of legend,

or something like that," Sobriel crossed her arms and snorted, "As if the

bloody things grew on trees or something. Nope, it's definitely a Kirin's

claw, and one made to resemble a sword, and loaded with all sorts of

enchantments just to make it seem a lot more awesome than it actually is."

"Just like someone's obviously been playing with the boy's head, if you take

my meaning," Karina pointed to herself and made circling motions with one

finger, "I've seen it before in my time, people find humans with

demi-paranormal blood and they try to take advantage of them by the standard

brainwashing methods evil masterminds use to recruit loyal fanatics to their

cause and service."

"You mean like your old boss, Dimitri?" Ukyo asked.

"Exactly," Karina nodded, "That boy is younger than you guys, and

impressionably stupid from the looks of things. I don't pick up any real

evil vibes from here, but he's definitely on a tear about something, and

he's looking for Mistress Nabiki, which definitely can't mean anything too

healthy."

"So he's just a pawn and a dupe of some other bad guy," Ranma pushed himself

back to his feet, only to find his balance unsteady, so he sat back down

again and said, "Ah...better take another minute. I think I'm gonna need

it..."

"Ranchan, don't put a strain on yourself," Ukyo pleaded, holding him by the

shoulders, "You can't face that guy all by yourself, not after pulling the

kind of stunt he just did..."

She paused as a raucous explosion drowned out her next words, as did the

explosion of debris that kicked up from ground zero, spraying everyone with

dirt and bits of torn up grass while everyone collectively flinched and

glanced away from the point of the blast's origins.

When it seemed safe enough to look again they turned to see that Trudy was

standing somewhat farther back from the newly torn up marks within the

ground while the white-haired boy with the sword stood glaring her way in

evident frustration.

"You missed me!" Trudy called out, "Now will you stop a minute and try to

hear reason?"

"Never!" the youth declared, yanking his sword out of the ground once again

and standing at the ready.

"Coach is sure putting up one heck of a fight out there," Ukyo remarked,

"But for some reason she can't seem to get too close to the guy, even though

she's obviously a lot faster than the jackass."

"It's as if some force surrounding him repels her attacks and keeps her from

connecting," Perfume scowled, then flexed her arms and all at once she was

hold both of her axes.

"Whoah...wait a minute there, Per-chan!" Ranma protested.

"Don't try and stop me, Husband," Perfume said grimly, "And you too,

Airen...this is my fight, and I'm the one best equipped to tackle this jerk,

and I'm not about to pull back any punches."

"But you could get hurt even worse than Ranchan," Ukyo all but pleaded.

"I don't care!" Perfume snarled, glaring at the silver-haired interloper,

"He dared to hurt our husband, and by Amazon law that means his life is as

good as forfeit!"

Meanwhile, on the opposite end of the yard...

"What means this...outrage?" Tatewaki exclaimed as he and Natsume appeared

upon the practice field, seeing bodies littering the ground while

considerably worse damage had been rendered to the landscape.

"Who...did he do this?" Natsume asked as her attention at once riveted upon

the silver-haired youth currently engaged in battle with the strawberry

blonde woman she recognized from the morning as one Trudy Wells, their new

athletic teacher.

"Evidently," Tatewaki assessed the young man's movements from a distance,

only to turn with a dismayed look at one of the fallen youths, at which

point he gasped, "Kenji? My brother-in-arms..." he knelt down and hastily

examined the youth in question.

Natsume hovered near to her fiancé and looked down with concern to the

assistant Captain of the Kendo club then asked, "Is he..."

"He lives...but barely," Kuno exclaimed as he touched the brow of the young

man then asked, "My friend...what has befallen you and these others...?"

"C-Captain...Kuno..." Kenji gasped, attempting feebly to clench hands with

his fellow Kendoist, only to miss the grasp, compelling Tatewaki to complete

the gesture for him, "Sorry...surprised us...so strong...don't know what he

did...but...it hurts...but not as bad as it looks...I think..."

"Kenji-kun," Tatewaki exclaimed, looking as pained as though he himself were

mortally stricken, "My dearest colleague..."

"One side, Monsieur," a gentle voice insisted, and all at once Tatewaki

found the golden haired Angelique kneeling down on the opposite side of the

fallen Kenji, "This is my battleground, and into my hands God has entrusted

the deliverance of these innocents, for it is given to me as my duty to

deliver them from death's shadow."

Natsume could not help feeling a jolt run down her spine as she stood aside

and watched the blonde gaijin go to work examining the injuries that Kenji

had suffered. The Temuvarai was confident and yet quite tender in all of

her movements and pressed her fingers in several places before effecting to

sing a soft tune that hummed with rhythm and unexpected power. The next

moment a kind of healing radiance poured out of her and into the body of the

student. Natsume nearly swore in disbelief as she saw what looked like an

actual halo of light congeal about Angelique's head as she continued to hum

her oddly melodic tune until she had completed the task and could relax the

channeling of her golden, radiant power.

The next moment the blonde stood up and away from the body of the sleeping

Kenji, who now appeared as peaceful as if just taking a light nap, and then

she turned away to attend to another student, and at this point both

Tatewaki and Natsume recognized that she had changed her outfit once again

from the nurse's uniform of before into the more suitable outfit of a

knight's tale consisting of chain mail and full plate armor.

Of particular interest to them both was the long-handled sword hanging by a

sheath at the woman's side, itself gleaming with a kind of golden aura that

shone in the sun, much as did the resplendent silver polish of her armor.

"Sensei?" Tatewaki averred in wonder, the blonde having taken on an aspect

that made her seem more like a refugee from a fantasy story than ever.

"No questions for now, Kuno-san," Angelique urged gently, kneeling before a

badly injured youth and proceeding to summon up once again the golden light

of her halo.

Another loud burst of sound and fury greeted their ears, and Natsume

flinched before saying, "As much as I am loathe to bring this up,

Sensei...might it not be better to deal with the cause of these injuries and

spare the healing of them until there is no longer any danger?"

"Trudy can handle him until I am ready," Angelique replied, finishing off

her second chant and moving along towards yet another student, "But these

unfortunates cannot wait until it is convenient for me to grant them

Heaven's blessing. I am duty bound and honorably pledged to help those in

need before considering the path of righteous vengeance. A Temuvarai does

not shirk from battle, but she knows as well that the true adversary is

death himself, and to that end she must devote herself to rendering God's

holy mercy."

"Well spoken," Tatewaki remarked as he checked to confirm for himself that

Kenji was no longer in any danger. He then closed his eyes and said,

"Domo...domo arigato, Sensei. By these acts of mercy you have confirmed to

me that you are a true Samurai, as I suspected from the very beginning."

"You flatter me with your kind praise, Monsieur Kuno," Angelique flashed him

a smile that nearly brought hackles to Natsume but for the way her own heart

unexpectedly began to flutter, "But I am no more nor less than a soldier

doing my duty in the cause of Heaven. These brave souls are the ones who

perhaps need both praise and chastisement for having stood up for the honor

of their school, though foolishly offering challenge to an unknown adversary

who proved to be somewhat more than initially estimated."

"So many fallen," Natsume marveled as she saw groaning bodies begin to move

and heads slowly turn towards them, "Is there anything that we can do to

help?"

"There is," Tatewaki slowly rose to his feet, "We can do as Kenji and these

others attempted to do, to assert the honor of Furinkan and give challenge

to the one who has dared to profane the sanctity of our campus."

"I would advise against it, Monsieur," Angelique cautioned as she finished

attending to her fifth consecutive patient, "The foe is daunting, and the

very fact that he has lasted this long against Trudy means that he is far

more formidable than you could possibly suspect..."

"I thank you for your caution and advise, Sensei," Tatewaki smiled, "But I

am not accustomed to standing to the sideline what others fight my battles.

And make no mistake...as Captain of the Kendo club I have a bone to pick

with this intruder...and giri demands that I confront this varlet and send

him packing hither."

"Not without me at your side you won't, Itoshi," Natsume declared while

rising to her feet and drawing her trademark rug-beater from its holster

across her back.

"My love," Tatewaki smiled, "I would be loath to go anywhere without you by

my side. Together...for Furinkan?"

"For us, Tachi-sama," Natsume declared, forgetting for the moment about the

odd effect this Angelique was having on the both of them as they rushed off

together to confront the angry half-breed Kirin.

"Ah...young love," Angelique mused while setting to work healing her sixth

consecutive patient, "I well remember such reckless passion and the

foolishness that it inspires..." she grinned impishly before adding, "Rather

much like myself and my sweet Beruna...ah well..." and then she continued

with summoning up her healing powers while-no more than a few score meters

away-a heated exchange of hostilities continued to tear up the Furinkan

School grounds.

Meanwhile others were drawn to the sight of the battle being waged out in

the open, and Takaharis-with a chibi Hinako-sensei at her side-looking

on with dismay, as did many other faculty members and curiosity-drawn

students.

"Oh my...what is that delinquent doing out there?" Hinako asked, "How dare

he raise a weapon against a teacher!"

"Weapon my tail," Takaharis murmured, "That's a Kirin's Claw he's using as a

sword or I'll eat my own little brother's cooking!"

"A Kirin's what?" Gosunkuji asked with a sharp glance towards the

mysteriously otherworldly teacher.

"Ah...something I've read about in an old book on artifacts," Takaharis said

somewhat evasively, "Kirins are somewhat rarer than Unicorns you see, but

more plentiful than dragons, who tend to be a bit shy and reclusive..."

Ryonami eyed the teacher with a curious expression but said nothing aloud

about her own dawning suspicions. She was, however, filing mental notes

away to later refer to her Senpai regarding this new teacher...just in case

her thoughts and observations might prove useful.

However someone else was drawn to the sight by the commotion, having left

the sanctity of his "office" overlooking the pineapple-lined pool yard, a

jolly looking man with a husky Hawaiian-shirt clad figure and a pair of

oversized sunglasses framing his beady little eyes...and did anyone mention

the miniature pineapple tree that was growing out from the top of his head?

"Ho, wha this then?" he asked in garbled Japanese, "Lil' kikis and wahanis

all taking da naps in mid-day? And who dat wavin' da big kite at muh lil'

Tachi-kiki?"

"I don't think he's a student here, Principle Kuno," assistant Principle X

somewhat reluctantly remarked, "And from the looks of things I'd say even

the new teachers I hired are having trouble containing his mischief."

"Can' have dat, now can we?" Principle Kuno puffed up his chest with pride

and pulled out his trademark weapons...a pair of sheers and a hair comb,

"Maybe time da big Kahuna stepped in and showed what he's made 'a, huh?"

"Er...somehow I don't believe that would be a very good idea, Sir," X said

even more nervously than before, "And besides, your son and his fiancée

appear to be handling themselves nicely..."

Indeed, some moments before these exchanges, just when things had seemed

particularly grim to a much-beleaguered Trudy, the sudden appearance of

Tatewaki and Natsume had offered her a much-needed respite from the uneven

battle that had taken far too long and exhausted a good many of her

resources.

"Stand fast, you villain!" Tatewaki had declared before raising his bokken

to the heavens and crying, "In the name of the very Heaven that you profane,

I-the Blue Thunder of Furinkan-do righteously smite you!"

With that declaration the tall young Senior cut through the air with a

powerful slice that caused the very air itself to reverberate with power,

and David was caught off guard by the attack, barely managing to raise his

own sword in time to deflect the Ki wave that would have done to him what he

had rendered upon so many.

"Who dares...?" David started to say when a second attack followed in the

wake of the first, and all at once a chill ran up his arm, prompting him to

stare at the hand that gripped the sword blade, finding a coating of ice

surrounding his whole limb as if frosted there within mere seconds.

"Your temper is running a bit hot, Monster," Natsume declared as she

completed her "Dance of Ice" and held her rug beater at the ready, "Why not

chill down and see reason before we are compelled to render justice against

your foolish person?"

David frowned and then flexed his arm and the ice coating cracked and fell

away as if broken by a hammer.

"More fools who dare to impede the righteous path of my Lord's vengeance?"

David sneered, "Cross blades with me and you'll discover that those flimsy

wooden toys are no match for my Ravens...what?"

A hissing sound was his only warning, and then David reflexively brought his

blade up in time to deflect a double assault as two fast-moving metal

objects rang like gongs against its surface, rebounding back to the reach of

their owner, who snatched them on the run out of mid-air and bore down upon

him with a cat-like speed and grace that utterly surprised him.

No clever taunts did Perfume declare as she slashed away with her axes,

using precisely controlled movements and near-flawless coordination to drive

their foe on the defensive, which gave Tatewaki and Natsume the break they

needed to ready for their own offensives.

"Together my love," Tatewaki declared while holding his bokken high and

channeling his Ki from his arms into the length of his favored weapon.

"As we have practiced, my beloved," Natsume declared, going once more into a

series of dance-like motions as she summoned up a thrashing wind, then

stirred it into a vortex that swirled around her man and drew upon his

upraised bokken to charge the field with hot and cold swirling currents of

life energy.

"Perfume-san!" Tatewaki called out, and then brought his weapon down with a

slash that summoned all of his formidable might into a single thrust at the

center of the vortex.

Perfume had understood the warning and at once desisted in her offensive,

leaping back out of the path of danger as David was caught unawares, looking

up from one assault only to be confronted by another. The ensuing

cavalcade of energies that struck against him pelted against his body and

penetrated his guard so that not even his oversized weapon could deflect all

of the Ki blasts. He was all but driven to his knees under the weight of

such an assault, the hailing balls of hot-and-cold energy so intense that

they blistered the very air around him and deepened the very crater which he

himself had recently created.

When at last the force of the attack was expended Tatewaki stood like the

calm at the center of a hurricane and calmly asked, "Had enough yet,

Varlet?"

To their surprise David rose up from his crouch, appearing largely untouched

by the assault, and said a very decisive, "No."

The next moment he slashed the ground with his sword while summoning up his

own formidable Ki, and all at once a wave of energy swept out and caught all

three of his assailants unawares. Perfume felt the searing heat of his

blistering energy assault her very nerve complex and cried out as she fell

backwards, even while Tatewaki and Natsume were similarly driven away,

losing their individual grips upon their weapons as the pain overwhelmed

even the hearty constitution of a Slayer.

"NOOO-Perfume-chan!" Ukyo cried, rushing up to the side of her fallen

beloved and falling to her knees to check her condition, finding the brown

haired Amazon had passed out from the severity of her torment.

David calmly stood and surveyed their helpless condition then raised his

sword again and said, "She and these others dared to challenge the might of

Heaven, and all of you have lost. Now suffer the wrath of God's emissary as

you reap His vengeance upon the wicked!"

"Stuff it up your ass, Asshole!"

David did not even get the chance to voice a questioning sound as a fist

solidly connected with his chin and drove him skyward. He lost his grip on

his own sword blade and landed flat upon his back, momentarily stunned by

blow he had not even sensed coming.

Ranma calmly stood in the spot where David had formally been and eyed the

younger man coldly with a wrath that made him more chilling to behold than

one of Natsume's Frost attacks. He spared only a glance to his pained wife

then glared murderously towards her tormenter and said, "You're going down

for this, big time."

David felt his chin and stared more in confusion than pain at the one who

had assaulted him, "What witchcraft is this? Has Satan himself cloaked you

in a spell of his crafting?"

"Satan?" Ranma snorted, "Man, you are full of it! You do all this crap and

dare have the gall to claim that you're on some kind of heavenly mission?"

With that Ranma fell into a crouch and drew upon the very coldness of the

rage that was building within him, and all at once his outline began to blur

and he started to dematerialize, forming the Umisenken maneuver of

Invisibility to hide his next attack from the eyes of this deluded madman.

But David was not daunted a second time by the same trick and merely

frowned, then got to his feet and cast a glance around at the earth upon

which he stood, noticing a disturbance in the pattern, which was all that he

needed to gauge the approach of Ranma.

"Very clever," he said aloud, "And I suppose you think me helpless once the

Ravensclaw has been parted from my grasp?"

Ranma said nothing but continued to maneuver around to flank his opponent,

but when he tried to close in for the attack a fist shot out and caught him

napping, and all at once he went flying backwards, the pain in his face not

even registering until seconds after he had landed...many meters distance.

"Fool," David declared as he casually walked several steps to one side and

knelt down to pick up his sword blade, raising it up as though it did not

weigh more than a feather, "Did you think me a weakling? I have the

strength of Heaven coursing through my veins, and no mere mortal can hope to

stand against me."

"Heaven Sirrah?" a voice casually asked in challenge, "I think non. No

servant of God could act so unspeakably rude or cause so much pain to those

deserving of mercy. I think rather you are an agent of the other fellow,

for surely he finds greater amusement in the defaming and profaning of all

that is holy "

David turned to regard the armored woman and was momentarily confused, "Who

are you to dare call my actions into question?"

"Angelique d'Anjou, Sirrah," she bowed to him politely without taking her

eyes away from her opponent, "A true servant of the divine power and a

daughter of the Heavens...and your deliverer from the unholy error that you

have committed."

"You?" David scoffed, flashing his sword and standing at the ready, "Don't

underestimate me for my size, Woman...and do not presume to judge me, for I

have the Mandate of the Heavens and God's holy commission..."

"To do what?" Angelique asked calmly, "To wage war upon children? To injure

and threaten death to those who have done you no wrong? Which heaven is

that to which you claim allegiance? No, I do think otherwise. Your actions

speak for themselves and put to lie every word you have so far uttered."

David's grip upon his sword tightened, "How dare you? For that alone I

will-!"

"Make an ass of yourself?" Angelique scoffed, "A bit late for that, do you

not think?"

"Angel!" Trudy called out, "Be careful! He's got some kind of unholy

artifact protecting him against detection!"

"I am aware that there is a foul odor that attends itself to him," Angelique

replied without taking her eyes away from the seething young man before her,

"An evil stench that clouds his mind and makes him hear voices that urge him

towards the abyss..."

"ENOUGH!" David swung his blade at this insolent woman.

But quicker than he could move she went into motion and drew her own blade

from its scabbard, her motion so quick that it sounded as though the very

air sang with her motions, and all at once her sword intercepted his and

blocked its downward thrust before it could be completed.

Angelique stood with legs spread wide and resisted the weight of the huge

thing bearing down upon her, then smiled at the surprised David and said,

"Time for your fencing lesson, Monsieur...and your much needed lesson in

manners."

David strained and was surprised that his strength was not enough to

dislodge the seemingly uneven contest between their weapons. Though his

dwarfed hers in scope and mass she had no difficulty turning his thrust

aside, and then pressed the tip of her blade up against his neck with an

unexpectedly swift maneuver.

"It is not size zhat counts, Monsieur," Angelique said coyly, "It is what

you do with what you have zhat truly matters."

"WITCH!" David took a swing at her, risking his neck in the process, but

Angelique was in no hurry to dispatch him and merely stepped to the side,

blocking his thrust and parrying then moving away with casual, unhurried

motions.

"I have been called that and worse, Monsieur," Angelique casually taunted,

"But let us test which one of us is the true Emissary of Heaven...for one

whose heart is pure cannot lose to base corruption."

"Very well," David snarled, "Then from your own mouth your soul is cast into

everlasting torment!"

And thus the battle was joined with the major players engaged in a duel of

holy honor, but as to which player held the true advantage even Trudy could

not say, though other eyes looked on from a distance and shed a tear of

silent mourning, knowing that-to win or lose-it would be the cause of

Heaven itself that was sure to suffer...

Continued.

Comments/Criticisms/Chistology 101: shadowmane

(Or try my new alternate number: shadowmane9849 )

And so the Paladin and the Fanatic cross swords and the battle is joined

between true believers. But who are the real players in this unfolding

drama, and what are the stakes involved that would pit two champions against

one another? Is Nabiki truly a threat to someone's plans, and if so, what

happens when she arrives upon the scene and discovers what has happened to

both her school and her loved ones? Beware the holy vengeance about to be

unleashed in, "With Naked Swords Drawn," or "The Wrath of a Tendo Scorched!"

Be there!

X


	69. Chapter 69

Dnabiki158

Nabiki 1/2

"A Very Scary Thought"

by

Jim Robert Bader

(Inspired by the works of Rumiko Takahashi & Others,

with concepts and characters created by fellow fanfic writers

Wade Tritschler, DB Sommers, Nicole Manders, Andrew

Greaves, Bill Guiroff and countless others, including "Buffy"

creator Joss Whedon; with special thanks to my good pal

Shiva for his editing and handling of this series.)

(Certain other characters and concepts are of my own

innovation, including my interpretation of the Monster

of Mary Shelly's novel, the Furies, Trudy, Takaharis

Angelique d'Anjou and various other guest stars

appearing in this portion of the Nabiki 1/2 series...)

Chapter Sixty-Four.

Episode One-Fifty-Eight.

Angel versus Fanatic.

(Round Two)

TCP HQ- Nexus of Worlds

Temporal Control Central

"But I don't get it, Mom," Ranko asked of her adopted parent, "Who was that Udan

guy, and why were you so afraid of him?"

"Not afraid of him, dear," Nabiki corrected as she stood over her monitoring

station supervising Ryonami, her apprentice, "Afraid of what he represents. The

presence of the Daokan complicates matters enormously, and if Mister

Testosterone here hadn't overreacted the way he did I might have gotten some

hint of what Udan was doing at that place and time of all things..."

"Hey, I saw him looking at you," Ranma growled, "Don't try and pretend he ain't

interested, 'cause I know his reputation!"

"Nevertheless," Nabiki said archly, favoring her husband with a warning look,

"The significance of the Dark Man at that truck stop where we were stationed on

the fringe of a Singularity Event cannot be a good omen..."

"That's putting it mildly," Ryonami noted while her fingers flew across the

console, "From just a brief glance at the archives, whenever one of those guys

shows up near an event it usually heralds some type of disaster..."

"Really?" Ranko asked nervously, "Like...how bad are we talking about here?"

"Ever hear about a place called Sodom?" Ranma asked, "Just before it was blown

off the map two of those guys, Udan and Reka, paid it a little visit."

"Actually the story is a lot more complicated than that," Nabiki averred, "The

actual city was not called either Sodom or Gomorrah but rather Al Hamadi, which

was located in Iraq, not Palestine, along the banks of the Euphrates, and it

just happened to be situated above one of the largest deposits of natural gas on

the earth..."

"Strike a match in the wrong place and -whoosh!" Ryonami murmured while

staring intensely at her displays, narrowing the scope of her focus, "And Reka's

a real hot match to set off in any town, a walking Pyro with many times the

power of a thousand H-Bombs, the kind who gives live wires a bad name."

"Good thing his sister keeps him on a short leash," Ranma mused, "He may be the

weakest of the Daokan, but he's a menace by any other measure, and if he were

involved in this business..."

"Better hold that thought, Big Guy," Ryonami cautioned, "I'm getting a real bad

reading here, a red spike to match the blue one, and both converging on the spot

where the gold one's been already sited..."

"Wait a minute," Nabiki leaned closer, "Gold one...matching in resonance the

other two energy signatures? Oboy..."

"You mean he's in this thing already?" Ranma started, "And what about the other

one? No silver dot to match the other three?"

"None so far on the charts, as if that means anything," Ryonami reported, "But

she's so far off the charts in power levels that she makes the other three look

insignificant..."

"Say what?" Ranko reacted, "Wait a minute here...this Udan guy's as powerful as

you, Pop, but there's somebody out there who's even stronger?"

"Actually," Nabiki spoke up before her husband could answer that, "Udan's power

level is immeasurable, but he's only the second brother. The eldest, Anri, is

the one we would need to watch out for."

"No fooling there," Ryonami said, "And that's definitely his signature I'm

reading, large as life and apparently obscured behind some kind of psychic

barrier that made it hard to pick him upon on the initial reading. Guess I

don't need to state the obvious about what having three of the four Daokan in

one area could mean for the good citizens of Nerima."

"Oh yeah," Ranma said grimly, "Real trouble brewing...the kind that could wipe

out a good chunk of Japan if something ain't done soon to stop it."

"Wait a second here," Ranko made frantic hand-signs, "Time out...gimme a break

here, will you people? Who are the Daokan? Who's this Anri guy, and who's the

even more powerful lady who caused that truck stop to up and repair itself as

good as new, Mom?"

"Kid's got a point there," Ranma said, "Ain't exactly fair for us to be talking

over her head when she ain't been that long with the program."

"Point taken," Nabiki conceded, turning to glance at her adopted niece and

daughter, "The Daokan are known in legend as the Four who are One, the sons and

daughter of a powerful priest-king who once ruled in ancient Atlantis some

twelve thousand years ago, a man known as Uta-Haled, who was also titled as the

Lord of Light because he was said to be the most powerful Eluini then living in

existence."

"I hear he wasn't really a king but a wizard who advised the Kings of Atlantis

over dozens of generations." Ryonami said without taking her attention away from

her work, "Way I hear it, Uta-Haled died in battle with his arch enemy, Uta-

Hamash, the Lord of Deception, and that their battle was so intense that it

called down a meteor strike that wiped the island out, as well as most of the

inhabitants, scattering the rest to the four winds, who carried the memory of

Atlantis into legend."

"Yeah, I heard something like that myself from a mystic guy I met on the road

during my days as a wanderer," Ranma noted, "According to him this Uta-Haled

character sent his wife and kids into exile before the big battle, opening up a

time portal, or something like that, so that they'd escape all the hell that

followed when the world was plunged into darkness, bringing an end to the last

Ice Age when human civilization was reduced back to the literal stone age."

"That is the legend," Nabiki said, "Each child was raised differently and on a

different continent, where they grew to maturity gathering their legacy and

their powers into themselves as they walked among the world of mortals as

literal gods on earth, or Eluini of the highest order."

"How come I've never heard of them before?" Ranko asked.

"You have, Squirt," Ranma grimly noted, "Just not by the names we use, which are

their original birth names."

"Udan was reared by northmen in central Europe and grew to become something of a

monster slayer, inspiring such legends as Beowulf and Gilgamesh, who kings whose

adventures got mixed up with his adventures in the retelling," Nabiki explained,

"Reka was reared among the fiery steppes of Northern Asia, near to where Russia

currently is, and he shares many of the habits and customs of the barbarian

nomadic tribes he was raised among. Anri, on the other hand, was first raised

among the more cultured tribes of the Indus valley, where he studied-among

other things-the mystic arts, philosophy and combat skills that were the

precursor to what we know today as the Martial Arts, all of which he combined

into a single integrated system. That's why he reincarnated there on at least

two or three other lifetimes, to renew his roots out of the ten incarnations

that we presently know about..."

"Wait a minute," Ranko said, "Ten incarnations? Over twelve thousand years?

Like...who has he been before...that I know about, I mean?"

"You want names?" Ranma sniffed, "You'd never believe it if we told you."

"One of his earliest identities was as an Egyptian scribe who we don't know of

by name but who comes down to us by the identity of Thoth Hermes Trismagestes,"

Nabiki replied, "The founder of the Hermetic School of magical philosophy known

originally as Masonry, which inspired much of Greek thought for the next two

thousand plus years...and that was about six thousand years back, as near as we

can determine."

"Started out a lowly slave in a rock quarry and worked his way up to become the

adviser of Kings, and near demi-god beyond that," Ranma shrugged, "Which is the

opposite story when he was reborn as a Hindu prince named Sidhartha."

"Another identity is Boddhidarma, the monk who crossed the Himalayas and brought

his Zen philosophy into China and founded the Shaolin system," Nabiki continued,

"Who also-need I add-paid a brief visit to a certain tribe of Amazons and

left his seed there in a woman who carried his sacred bloodline. Of course his

most notorious-or most famous-identity was that of a character in Palestine

who comes down to us by the name of..."

"Boss!" Ryonami spoke up, "I'm getting a crisis flag, level Three! It's taking

place in the target zone near to-of all things-our old stomping grounds at

Furinkan High School..."

"Why am I not surprised?" Ranma rolled his eyes, "So...who am I fighting this

time? Level Three's kinda well above the scale of my usual sparring partners."

"That's the funny thing here, Big Guy," Ryonami replied as she further refined

the focus of her analysis, "You're in this one, but you're not the major player

on the field. The Boss is...and somebody else who's got a Temporal Anomaly

signature."

"Interesting," Nabiki perked her attention as she studied the holographic image

displays, "I believe I've encountered this name before...one Angelique d'Anjou.

Temuvarai from the 28th century on a ruined parallel Earth that's reverted back

to a magically intense version of the middle ages...but what is she doing in

this era? And who is that fellow she's fighting against?"

"Sensors make him out to be some kind of demi-human half-breed, Boss," Ryonami

said while working to further refine the quality of her data, "According to

this...his human side is balanced off against the genetic code of a...Kirin?

Holy Frel...and take a look at that thing he's waving around like it's one of

Kuno-san's bokkens!"

"Kuso...this is serious," Nabiki frowned, "No wonder we picked up a flag on this

anomaly...it's causing reverberations all along the timefield. It's threatening

to tear a hole in the very fabric of reality itself unless somebody stops things

from getting completely out of hand..."

"No wonder that Udan guy was drawn here," Ranma scowled, "He's always drawn to

crisis points, and his role as stabilizer of reality fits in well with his

definition as the Lord of Earth and Water."

"Reka's involvement is also easily understood since he love chaos and anarchy,"

Ryonami noted, "But what is Anri doing there...and is Ulsa guiding things like

she usually does from the background?"

"There is no way to determine these things from this remote location outside of

the regular timestream," Nabiki pondered, "We need to send an agent in there to

root out the facts behind all of these surface events..."

"Hey, I'm ready, just give the word, Nabs," Ranma shrugged.

"Not you, Mister," Nabiki said, favoring her husband with a particularly sour

look, "Just putting you and Udan on the same plane is a mistake, one I don't

intend on repeating. I'm also too well known to the Daokan to pass by

undetected...but there is someone else who might slip under their radar since

she's not yet come into the full measure of her latent potential...and with that

pendant providing cover, since she's slightly out of synch with most regular

timelines..."

"You mean...me?" Ranko almost squeaked, "But...but if I go there I'm likely to

get mistaken for Pop by one of his enemies..."

"Not on this world," Nabiki replied, "Your father doesn't have a curse

here...but my counterpart does."

"You mean...you turn into a guy here?" Ranma winced, "Ewww...who wants to see

that?"

"You'd be surprised, Mister," Ryonami mused with a faintly ironic expression, "I

concur with your reasoning, Boss...but there may be a slight problem with your

plan since there's somebody else on this reality who your kid's likely to get

confused with."

She called up an image of a girl who indeed did bear a striking resemblance to

Ranko Saotome, only slightly taller and more slender, and with a much longer pig

tail, to say nothing of her tomboyish manner of dress.

"What the...?" Ranma leaned closer, "Talk about funhouse mirror effects..."

"Her name is Arigami Keiko," Ryonami revealed, "A student of Kickboxing and

Shadowskills, to say nothing of a disciple of a certain lady pirate with whom

we're all kinda familiar."

"Lanocane?" Nabiki scowled, "I'm starting not to like this very much..."

"Her again?" Ranma groaned, "Don't tell me that daffy pirate and her Neflim ship

are involved with this whole mess?"

"Hey, I've met her a couple of times," Ranko shrugged, "She didn't seem so bad.

But that Tyger-Tiger on the other hand..." she shuddered slightly, "What a

psycho."

"According to this the girl is self-described as a pleasure slave in the current

employment of one Kuno Kodachi," Ryonami continued, "And she's got as many

sexcraft skills at her disposal as one of your friends from the House of

Miroku."

"Really?" Ranko said with growing interest.

"Down girl," Ranma scowled, "Keep your eyes on the objective here, and save the

kinky stuff for later."

"Look who's talking," Nabiki sniffed, "Well, Ranko-chan? Think you're up to a

solo assignment?"

"Am I?" Ranko grinned, "You bet!"

"Just keep your head ducked low and stay away from Udan and his brothers,"

Ryonami urged, "And watch out for some other crazies I'm picking up here, the

kid with the super-sized sword being just one of the bad boys I'm reading with

my sensors."

"Right, got it," Ranko said, pausing to glance at her adopted mother, "Any

chance I might recruit some of my other friends from the timeline?"

"Not this time around," Nabiki cautioned, "There's too much disruption of the

Timefield as it is, so you'll have to do it on your own...with some helpful

hints and tips that we can relay to you, but you're going to largely be

dependent on your own abilities to keep out of trouble."

"Right, got it," Ranko grinned, "So when do I get started?"

"Five minutes ago," Ranma answered, giving his daughter a pat on her shoulders

for luck, "Go get 'em, Tiger...but just one thing."

"Yeah, and that is, Pop?" Ranko asked.

"Don't blow up the planet," Ranma winked, "I had to learn that one myself the

hard way."

"Er...right," Ranko said dubiously, and without further adieu turned and headed

for the transportation chambers...

It is thought by many that the age of "miracles" is long since a thing of the

past, that no real marvels await to be discovered in the present era and that

the stories of legendary gods and heroes is the stuff of tall tale spinning,

mere fiction hardly worthy of serious contemplation.

To such close-minded nay-sayers and doubters of the miraculous the wise merely

shrug their shoulders, hide their indulgent smiles and say, "Whatever."

In truth the era of seeming "miracles" has never truly had a beginning or an

ending. It is simply that-as a matter of course-what would seem miraculous

to the "great-unwashed" masses is taken more in stride by the ones who delve

into the unseen world that exists behind the illusion of mundane reality. To

those who have studied the realms of mystery and the supra-natural the existence

of Gods, devils, demons, Angels, elementals and other beings of primal force the

existence of beings far older, wiser and more powerful than moral men is merely

taken as a given. To the wise the acknowledgement that Man is not the center of

all creation is but the beginning of wisdom, and by no means near to its

completion.

And so it is that the ancient beings and intelligences of the unseen world have

long co-existed alongside human development and yet do reside beyond the fringes

of human imagination. But as mankind has grown and developed from its

collective humble beginnings it has grown dangerously wise in ways that

threatened the fragile bond between the dominions of Man and Divinity, and as

new modes of thought have gained greater influence the power of mystery itself

has waned and diminished. Men no longer have as great a need to believe in Gods

for every season, preferring to explain "natural forces" as the blind arbiters

that govern the chaotic and ungovernable universe, where existence appears to be

ruled by mere chance and not by intelligent interaction.

With the rise of the Book and the Rifle human beings have wrested control over

the very planet and have deemed themselves the masters of creation. The

obsession of some to deny their own ignorance and to assert their spiritual

autonomy has even given rise to perverse creeds that would seemingly pit man

against his very own nature. One such heresy, coined by a disgruntled German

philosopher named Marx, even led a third of the entire planet into the grip of a

heinous error that tore entire nations apart and pitted brother against brother

in the most obscene of civil crimes: a war for total absolutism, where the mere

act of dissent or holding an opinion that is contrary to the majority is deemed

a crime far more heinous even than rape or murder.

And so it was, back during the early days of what is now remembered as the

Korean conflict, that the followers of Marx once sought the total dominion over

their Foreign dominated nation. Before the nations of the East and West joined

in on the debacle there was a savage campaign being waged with crusader-like

intensity as the forces of the North sought to drive on south and purge the

countryside of any and all (European and American) foreign presence.

To that end a Missionary outpost fell victim to the marauding Red Faction and

the French citizens there were roundly butchered with a savagery not seen in

that peninsula since the recently ended Japanese occupation forces were driven

from their country. Of all the staff of doctors, nurses, priests, nuns and

their native-born auxiliaries only one person was allowed to survive, and her

lot was governed by a quirk of the fates that would defy the rude beliefs of the

Atheistic-minded hordes, who could not hope to comprehend such an intervention

since they had largely renounced the ancient beliefs and traditions of their

"superstitious" ancestors.

His name was Kyledor Windrider, born of an ancient line of shapeshifting

creatures known as "Kirins," in whose natural form he closely resembled a cross

between a goat and a unicorn, but with a fiery mane and an aspect similar to

that of a dragon. Ancient, wise and powerful was he, and long had he been aloof

from the affairs of mortal men, dwelling in a realm far removed from the earthly

plane of mundane existence, and proudly contemptful of those "lesser beings"

whose arrogance had turned their former veneration into contempt for the world

of the spirits.

That is, until the day when chance caused his eye to stray...and he fell witness

to HER, the one whose beauty could tempt even a god to stray from his principles

and make him consider venturing to the realm of the merely mortal.

Her name was Jeannette Franscoius Devenue and she was lovely indeed, fair of

face and form with lustrous hair the color of honeysuckle on a summer morning.

She was a volunteer nurse in training for her medical license with a Catholic-

based seminary, on sabbatical to do her Internship in a developing nation that

she had mistakenly believed was at peace despite the rumblings to the

north...and she was also bathing naked in the river that was sacred to the

Kirin, having ventured into the countryside to administer Small Pox vaccinations

to the denizens of a nearby village.

The day had been surprisingly warm and pleasant, and the water had looked

awfully tempting, so Jeannette had cast both modesty and caution aside in order

to indulge a private fancy, unaware that she was being observed and that a

figure peering down upon her from a seemingly harmless cloudbank had become

enthralled by the very sight of her innocent cavorting. From that day forth

Kyledor was watching her and keeping an aloof distance as he sought to work up

the courage to approach her, finding that-for all his august majesty and

power-that he grew most humble when basking in her presence.

The unexpected savagery of the attack upon her missionary clinic almost escaped

his notice but for the cries and please that reached his ears in the lofty

heavens. He raced to Earth without thought of discretion and cast prudence upon

the wind as he saw his lovely mortal "goddess" being menaced by a thug with a

gun whose evil intentions needed no interpretation.

To some few who survived the experience it had seemed as though the very wrath

of a God had visited itself that day upon those wretched barbarians who had

dared to commit mass rape and murder upon the peaceful missionaries, but Kyledor

cared not a wit about reputations as he vented a rage unknown even to his own

kind to that faction of the Red Army that was foolish enough to brook his

unrelenting fury. The so-called "superiors" of the ill-fated expedition would

ponder the mystery of the faction's awful demise but officially dismiss it from

official record, for who among these Godless bureaucrats would dare to credit

the very notion of a "dragon" destroying an entire armed division in this

"enlightened" era of "Scientific Socialism?"

Kyledor would have been offended had he known about the confusion between

himself and a dragon, but after venting his wrath his primary concern was to

spirit his Jeanette away and to carry her aloft to his own realm of eternal

glory. There the woman he had rescued would be nurtured to health and find

solace in the arms of this lordly being, who manifested a human appearance in

order that he might console and woo her. In time they married and bore a

daughter, whom they named Amalthea, and later on would come a son named Ban Lao,

who was born when his mother was fairly advanced in years despite the youth

preserving magic of her husband, who had bestowed upon her a demi-human status.

But one cannot gaze too long upon the sun, or spend an infinite time in the

realm where mortals were never meant to travel, and over the course of many

years Jeanette grew pale and thin and ultimately passed beyond the realms of

both Gods and Mortals, and her husband wept and grieved for her as he had never

mourned for anything, his whole world having revolved around her presence.

Amalthea was left to care for her infant brother as their father, too, wasted

away and became a shadow of his former majesty, and in time they had only each

other to care for in a realm that no longer suited their half-breed nature. The

older sister thus elected to carry her brother on her back as she ventured to

the plane of mortality, to experience life in their mother's realm, armed only

with a gift bequeathed to them by their father on the eve attending his demise.

A weapon forged from one of the fangs of their father seemed an odd gift to

carry about, and so Amalthea had it hidden away in a cave beneath a stone so

that she would know where to find it if there came a need for its use. Without

it the pair could attract far less attention as they ventured south of the

border of hostilities between two factions of mortals, and in time made their

way to a very large metropolis named Seoul, which contained within its

boundaries more human beings that either sibling had even known could possibly

be in existence.

Being refuges of the North put them in a somewhat awkward situation as they knew

nothing about the struggle of ideas being waged between the two contending

factions. They did, however, find solace in a Christian run missionary devoted

to the Reverend Sun Yung Moon, and they stayed among them for a time until

Amalthea began to grow restless and distrusting of the order and its intentions.

Their story was not credible to many, but they were of such an unusual nature

that they came to the attention of those higher up in the organization, who

thought to exploit their heritage for their own political uses. Amalthea at

length rebelled against their efforts and took her more impressionable brother

with her, only to find that escaping from this church was not so easy as to

merely employ her Kirin-like strength to breaking doors and locks in order to

find egress.

To the church her rebelliousness was intolerable. Moreover she was a woman, and

as such a prize too valuable to let go in such a manner. A plot was hatched to

divide the siblings with an elaborate ruse to make the younger boy and the girl

believe that each was dead at the hands of enemies who were non-Christians.

Amalthea simply disappeared from this story, leaving a seven-year-old David in

the hands of compassionate handlers who nurtured within him a belief that his

sister had died a martyr in the cause of Christ against the Godless.

Seven years later and the boy-renamed with the Christian title of "David" the

"Giant Slayer"-had grown to near-manhood with the strength of a giant and the

cold rage of a determined warrior for Jesus. A stray memory had led him back to

the place where his father's sword was buried and the Church Elders were quick

to name the weapon as "The Ravensclaw Sword," a holy artifact once carried by a

Christian knight during the crusades...or so went the story that they wove for

his benefit. With the sword the boy was all but invincible and could be counted

upon to dutifully carry out certain select "assignments" against those he was

informed were the minions of Satan.

Currently he was on loan by the Church in the service of one Otono Reyabi, said

by some to be a modern day Prophet and divine emissary sent by God to rid the

world of sin and evil. David had been greatly impressed by Otono and was

convinced of his new Lord's sincerity and purpose, and as such had cast his lot

in with the Plan to visit holy vengeance upon the nation of Japan...long the

enemy of Korea and home to a tragic history whose very nature had caused David's

blood to boil, and to which end he viewed the plan to be entirely of merit.

That thousands...possibly millions of people would have to die in order to see

the plan through was, of course, regrettable...but David was by now quite inured

to death and killing and could view it on balance as a "necessary sacrifice" in

order to achieve the Lord's vengeance.

And so, as had often been the way with him over the past several years, when he

was given a command to seek out a sinner and render judgement upon them, David

carried out his orders like a dutiful "Soldier of Christ" without hesitation or

doubt. He believed utterly in the righteousness of his assignments and would

pray afterwards for the souls of those whom he had slaughtered as his way of

satisfying his conscience that he was truly doing the work of the angels. Never

had his conditioning failed nor the grip of his beliefs been shaken, for Faith

was his armor against the unrighteous, and was not the fact that he held such

mighty strength in itself proof enough of God's favor?

So now he was on a quest to kill a woman said by his lord to be a threat to

their plan, and beyond that all he knew was that she was a sinner of the worst

order, a harlot who slept with both men and women for base lust and used people

like pawns and tools to further her own dark ambitions. Truly she was evil and

corrupt enough to warrant punishment, and it was given over into his hands to

deliver the judgement of Heaven against those who dared make a mockery of the

sacraments...even apart from the fact that the woman in question was both a

temptress and a pagan.

But this other woman now in the way of his mission was vexing him enormously,

for while David yet believed he had the sanction of God upon his side, she was

taunting him with words that seemed to call into question the entire focus of

his very nature and existence. It also much surprised him that she stood up to

his initial attacks and parried his Ravensclaw sword with an ease that seemed

inhuman, clearly demonstrating herself to be an instrument of Satan for all that

she appeared to believe herself one of the saintly.

"You are indeed powerful, Monsieur," she said casually while holding his sword

at bay with her own much smaller and more slender weapon, "But you skills are

somewhat lacking."

David grunted and attempted to exert himself against this infuriating woman, but

try as he might he could not budge her from the uneasy stand-off of their

interlocked blades foiling the intent of one another. More disturbing yet still

this strange blonde woman did not appear to be exerting herself and indeed gave

the impression that she was holding him off without serious effort.

"It is folly for you to attempt to overmaster me," she said as their faces

hovered a foot away from one another, allowing him to see the confident clarity

in her blue-on-blue eyes as she met his glare without flinching. "You cannot

claim mastery when you have not even mastered yourself...and I can feel the

confusion within you...for you are, in truth, not your own true master."

"Shut up!" David snarled, "I don't need a lecture from an unholy wretch like

you!"

"Unholy?" she raised one pale eyebrow, "Monsieur, you are somewhat mistaken in

your definitions if you believe zhat I am zee one who is allied with zee

unholy."

"Be silent woman!" David snapped, "I see you for what you are! Your false

beauty is a snare to beguile and bewitch the unwary, but I am one of the

righteous and I do not flinch in the face of your..."

Angelique suddenly stepped away and ducked under his weapon, causing David to

stagger forward in surprise and the abrupt absence of resistance. An instant

later the flat of her blade went swacking against his posterior, causing David

to yelp and whirl about with indignant outrage.

"Evil is as evil does, Monsieur," Angelique replied, "And were I truly as base

in nature as you claim then you would have felt my steel more sharply, I assure

you."

"Angel, what are you doing?" Trudy called out from the sidelines, "Don't play

with the guy! He's too dangerous for that! Finish him off quick before more

people get hurt by this asshole!"

"I do not war with children, Trudy," Angelique replied without taking her eyes

off her opponent, "And clearly he is a child...in more than one sense. His

actions are the intemperate mark of a youth born to great power who knows not

how to responsibly wield his own birthright."

"That may be so," Takaharis raised her voice in warning, "But this child could

tear this whole place apart and level everything to the ground if he has a mind

to...and from what we've seen so far he clearly intends to do just that unless

somebody stops him!"

"I am mindful of that danger," Angelique said as she raised her sword and held

it out towards her opponent, "But zhis is an affair where honor and pride means

taking a risk for the sake of his possible redemption."

"Redemption?!" David was all but beside himself with outrage, "I am not the one

who needs forgiveness, woman! I am righteous, I am pure, and I..."

"You are a murderer and a fool who serves base demons disguised as men, Sirrah,"

Angelique taunted, turning her sword to point in the direction of the fallen

students, "Had I not acted to intervene on behalf of the Lady of Mercy some of

these unfortunates might well have perished from the injuries that you visited

upon them. No self-justified rationalization can hide the fact that your

actions are those of a madman drunk with the elixir of fanaticism and doing the

bidding of those who have encouraged you to such willful slaughter."

"You cannot judge me by the paltry standards of other men," David sneered, "For

my hand is guided by the Lord, and he has commanded me to smite his enemies..."

"Did he command you to begin with yourself?" Angelique bristled, holding her

sword once again at the ready, "For truly you blaspheme in the name of the very

divinity you claim to herald, for no true God worthy of veneration would

sanction this crime against these innocents..."

"Innocents?" David sneered contemptfully, "Pagan trash like them? You forget,

woman, the great evil that they unleashed upon the world, upon my own people

little more than half a century ago..."

"Zhat is the past, Monsieur," Angelique said reasonably, "And none of these now

living were even conceived in zee time of which you refer..."

"The blood is still on their hands," David argued, "Until the third generation

they are unclean and unforgiven!"

"What is past is done," Angelique argued, "Can you not let go of your poisonous

hate and embrace zee mercy of zee very God for whom you claim to have sworn

allegiance?"

"No forgiveness of sin without repentance," David said flatly, "And these

Japanese have done everything they can to bury the past, to forget it even

happened! They do not talk about the crimes that they committed against the

people of Asia, they sneer and pretend with contempt that they are aloof and

civilized, but underneath it all there lurks the same driving passion that once

made them a threat to world order..."

"Zhat is absurd," Angelique replied, "Even one such as I, a relative outsider to

this era, am conscious of the many great things that Japan has brought into this

world, and Germany as well...or do you think a Korean can lecture a French woman

about zee attrocities of war?"

"I am done talking with you, Woman!" David declared as he raised his sword and

summoned up his inner power, "Now see what the true Power of God can achieve

when wielded by one who has His favor and holy blessing!"

"Show me your worst, Monsieur," Angelique replied as she summoned up her own

internal power, "And when your wrath is expended you will find zhat I am still

here."

"Uh oh," Trudy said as she sensed a rising of energy levels in the surrounding

area centered around the two combatants, "I was afraid this was gonna happen..."

"What?" Ukyo asked as she cradled an unconscious Perfume in her arms, "What's

about to happen?"

"Their spiritual energies are reaching out to create two fields of opposite and

opposing polarities," Takaharis explained, "And the gap between them is forming

some sort of rift where the intermingling forces coalesce, which-unless I miss

my guess-is the legendary 'Wind Scar' that can only be summoned up by a true

sword master."

"Indeed?" Tatewaki replied from where he and Natsume were attending to an

equally unconscious Ranma, "I have heard of this but thought it merely a legend.

To witness such power now in the hands of two who each command such incredible

potential..."

"Um..." Natsume hesitantly asked, "Shouldn't we...try admiring thing from a bit

more of a distance?"

"Good point," Trudy remarked, "We're not in the immediate blast area, but when

the fit hits the shan in another moment..."

All at once David made a forward slice through the air, and all at once it

reverberated with a shockwave-style explosion that met the upraised blade of

Angelique, whose voice was raised in a sing-song chant that was itself

completely drowned out by the roar of unquenchable fury that had been released

upon her.

A backwash wave of force swept out to the sides and bowled over the many rows of

students currently standing off on the sidelines at what they had (incorrectly)

believed to be a safe distance. The entire campus was rocked by the effect of

that explosion...but when the air quieted down once again and the wave had spent

itself utterly, giving way to a disturbing quiet...heads looked up to see that

Angelique yet stood her ground, her sword still upraised and her person

inviolate to any ill effects from the force wave.

"Incredible," Tatewaki exhaled as he and the others slowly got back to their

feet once again, "To stand before such power and yet not give so much as a

millimeter..."

"Yeah, but take a look at the ground around her," Ukyo said with dismay, and

indeed they could clearly see the huge trench that had been gouged out of the

very soil in a horseshoe-shaped cone of destruction that arched around where the

Temuvarai was standing, as if the wave had but in half by her blade and only

that which had stood behind her remained untouched by its unnatural fury.

David was himself less than thrilled to see this testament to his opponent's

resourcefulness and cried, "Impossible! You cannot stand before the fury of my

Windscar!"

"I told you before, Monsieur," Angelique confidently replied, "One who is base

cannot hope to overwhelm one whose cause is true by mere force. You have

demonstrated once again zhat you are but a child making pretense of being a

crusader when, in fact, you have been measured and found wanting."

Off to the sides a recovering body of students and faculty heard the words of

the Temuvarai and reacted with admiration and praise, some more fawning than

before as numerous students took stock of their new campus heroine.

"Did you hear that?" one girl asked, "She's so awesome!"

"So cool!" another girl agreed, "The nurse is gonna kick that other guys'

scrawny little fanny!"

"Man, she is so hot she's like Icing!" Hiroshi said with wholehearted

endorsement.

"We oughta start up a fan club for our new campus angel," Daisuke agreed, "And I

nominate myself club president."

"You?" another student dissented, "I say we take a vote! Who here wants the

honor and privilege of belonging to our new Angel Adoration Society?"

Hands were raised all along the line, and it seemed nearly unanimous that they

had elected themselves membership in this new fan club.

David clenched his sword in hand and seethed with growing fury, not only enraged

at the stubborn refusal of this woman to be put in her proper place by the

Lord's Chosen but also incensed that her standing against him had just made her

effectively into an idol. He bared his fangs and snarled, "No one escapes the

vengeance of the Lord, and no one can deny his Holy Mission!"

With that he raised both arms and a sudden detonation of force fanned out from

him in a wave of concussive force very different from that unleashed before in

that it bore a foul stench and caused many to grip their noses to keep from

retching.

"Gak!" Trudy said as she belatedly covered her nose and mouth with a sleeve,

"What the hell did this guy eat? Smells like a diet low in fiber and high in

enriched Sulfur!"

"Really?" Takaharis remarked as if unaffected by the wave of stench, "Smells

like home to me, and I'm almost feeling nostalgic..."

"MON DIEU!" Angelique exclaimed as she waved a hand in a vain attempt to fan the

odor away from her person, "What foul wind is zhis zhat you have conjured up,

Monsieur? It smells worse zhan zee Seine at low tide!"

"Not all of the Lord's works are pleasing to the eye or the nostril, Harlot,"

David taunted, "As with the plagues that ravaged Egypt in the time of the

Pharaohs, I smite you now with the Breath of Azrael, the Angel of divine

Vengeance!"

With that declaration the young man threw himself into another attack, and this

time Angelique was not on her best guard and could not move fast enough to

entirely avoid it. Her sword did manage to deflect the sideways thrust but she

was thrown backwards and off balance as the younger man plunged in and hotly

pressed his own advantage.

"Angel!" Trudy cried, seeing her friend and partner beset by her assailant, and

with a growing sense of frustration she said, "Ohh...if only I could sense him

better...I'd take that asshole down in less than two seconds!"

"Really?" Takaharis asked, "You're that formidable?"

"Hey, Angel's a better swordswoman, but I'm...ah...pretty handy in a fight

myself," Trudy lamely self-corrected, realizing just how far she had come to

speaking aloud on the extent of her true prowess.

Takaharis eyed the peculiar human with an even more curious regard than before,

only in the next minute her concern shifted abruptly back to her semi-divine

lover, for Angelique was having difficulty now recovering her bearings as the

boy named David pressed home his own advantage...

Just then, at the opposite side of the yard, two more figures entered the scene

of the ensuing drama and halted full in their tracks as they took in the sight

of both the ongoing brawl and the massive devastation that it had already taken

upon the landscape.

"What in the hell is going on here?" Nabiki/Kaneda asked in dismay, "Who the

heck is that fighting against that blonde? And...why does she look so oddly

familiar?"

"You got me on both counts," Saki noted, only to react with a start as the

silver-haired boy caused a wall of Chi-force to emanate from the edge of his

blade, which same he sent hurtling towards his armored opponent, but barely

dodged in time, moving so swiftly that one might not have credited the weight of

the metal surrounding her even slightly impairing her movements.

All at once the undercover detective gave a startled cry and said, "Holy mother

of Kami...I know who that guy is! He's David Lo, a Toishindin fighter!"

"A what?" Kaneda reacted, the belatedly corrected himself, "Toishindin? You

mean...like those guys who street-fight every year to determine who's the best

classed weapons user?"

"That's them all right," Saki said with obvious aversion, "They're the elite of

street fighters, real die-hard fanatics of their craft, sort of the martial-arts

equivalent to the Motorcycle and Skateboarding world of daredevil thrillseekers,

only...they play for keeps, and the methods they use are nothing short of

devastating."

"Toishindin," Kaneda mused, "I've always wanted to meet one of those guys. They

say on the streets that their ability to harness and use Ki attacks is

unparalleled among martial artists, that each one represents a different style

of weapons usage, and that a single one of those guys has more power in his left

hand than a conventional army."

"Which explains the rearranging of the Furinkan campus," Saki nodded to the torn

up battle field, which did indeed resemble something a deranged construction

crew might wreck upon such formerly pristine landscape, "But I wouldn't be so

cavalier about this if I were you. That David Lo character's got a real nasty

reputation, and he's wanted by Interpol on numerous counts including armed

assault and even mass murder."

"Murder?" Kaneda arched his eyebrows with growing alarm.

"I said those guys play for keeps," Saki replied, "I once tried out for the

Toishindin, but me and my yo-yo never even made the first cut, and I got off

lucky without a scar for my troubles. Most guys who play in the big leagues

wind up maimed, crippled or even dead within their first few battles, and the

higher up they go in the ranking the more destructive and dangerous they can

be...and in Lo's case the word out on the street is that he's some kind of

religious fanatic, an assassin who works for a group operating out of South

Korea that has ties to the Moonies."

Kaneda turned a sharp look towards the combatants and saw the blonde rallying

herself against the boy with the impossibly huge sword, catching a downward

slice with a block in which both hands were used, one on the hilt and the other

with the blade, and resisting such force that her armored feet were driven six

inches into the ground, yet her face was almost placid with barely restrained

effort.

"So who's that giving the kid a run for his yen...and how the heck can he even

be holding that thing? He can't yet be out of Middle School, but he's waving it

around like it was lighter than a feather."

"For the first part, your guess is as good as mine," Saki shrugged, "My first

impression was Sophitia, one of the crème of the crop of Toishindin-level

players...but something tells me she's an entirely different class of blonde

altogether. For the second part, I restate my previous statement. There's no

frigging way that kid should be able to stand upright with that thing in his

hand, it totally defies the laws of physics..."

"But my guess is he's never taken physics," Kaneda scowled, "Those pointy ears

of his look more like they belong on a cat, or a dog, or a..."

**A Kirin, Mistress.*

"Eh?" Kaneda reacted with a start.

**I can sense the blood of a Kirin within him,** a voice answered inside the

sex-changing boy-girl's head, **That makes him very dangerous, a half-breed with

superhuman strength and energy powers, only a little of which he's tapped into

by my guess.**

"Something wrong?" Saki asked her handsome male companion, "You looked a little

spaced out for a minute there."

"Huh?" Kaneda blinked, then lamely said, "Ah...nothing, just talking to myself."

"Oh," Saki took that comment in stride with a shrug, "I've done that myself a

time or two...it's only when you start to hear an answer that I'd seriously

start to worry."

Kaneda drolly decided to refrain from explaining about his temporary alliance

with one of his husband's elementals, but that thought stimulated a different

concern and he suddenly asked, "Where's Ranchan and Ucchan at? Or Perfume for

that matter? It's not like them to miss a fight like this, let alone the chance

to be in it."

"Sempai!" Ryonami called out as she rushed to the side of her transformed friend

and gushed out, "Ranma-kun and Perfume have been hurt, and Ukyo-san's going out

of her mind with worry about them!"

"WHAT?" Kaneda reacted with dismay, then more decisively said, "Take me to them

right now, Ryo-chan."

"This way," Ryonami waved her hand and at once started off to a portion of the

field that had been obscured from their view by the altered landscape. Saki

hurried to match the loping stride of her male companion and marveled once again

at the virility and power contained within the male aspect of her friend and

sometime ally in adventure, and marveled to note how very much she had missed

being around Nerima for precisely that reason...

But as for Ranma himself a very different situation presented itself to his

analysis, for once again he found himself floating in a void of haze without

thought or recollection as to how he had come to be there, or for what purpose

he could not find his way back to the world of outward sensory awareness.

"Not again," he softly groaned, "What the heck is all this leading to? How many

times can a guy suffer being awake in his dreams without going totally crazy?"

"A philosophical point, Master?" a familiar voice asked, "How very unlike you."

Ranma took note at how his surroundings abruptly altered from an endless fog to

a darkened cavern with stony walls solidifying all around him and a hardened

floor taking shape beneath his feet. Without evidencing any real surprise he

slowly turned around and regarded the figure whom he found standing there and

then spoke her name with a certain fair mount of resignation, "Nagisha?"

"Thank the powers that be that I was able to finally reach you within the

corridors of your mind, my Master," the elemental manifested an entirely human

appearance, complete with long silky black hair draping down and around her

shoulders, and an almost-filmy dress that barely did anything to conceal her

considerable assets, "I was half afraid that the Kirin-spawn might have rendered

you into a coma."

"Kirin what?" Ranma asked with idle curiosity as he took the Black Dragoness in

with a slow and careful study of both her anatomy and the dangerous gleam in her

eyes that hinted of her actual intentions.

"A creature of legend somewhere between a Dragon and a Unicorn, Master," Nagisha

replied with a slight incline of her head before adding, "And before you ask, we

are not that closely related. They are of Air and Fire while I am, as you well

know, a being of an entirely Earthy nature."

Ranma refrained from agreeing with that statement as he was finding the allure

of her body a bit too earthy for his peace of mind, and try as he might not to

show her any interest certain portions of his anatomy were treasonably making

their views known, which was awkward as he found himself, at the moment, rather

absent of even a stitch of clothing.

"Ah..." he said in a vain effort to change the issue and avoid facing the

inevitable that lay before him, "So...that guy's not really human...or at least

no more human than Ryoga? That explains a lot...only what's his beef with

Nabiki anyway?"

"Who knows?" Nagisha replied, "You wife attracts enemies the way her male half

draws the attention of impressionable females. Obviously an enemy has

dispatched him to seek her out for elimination, which is why we must do

something rather drastic about this."

"Yeah?" Ranma asked with a dry mouth as he felt certain that he was not going to

like hearing this proposal, "And...what have you got on your mind?"

To his surprise Nagisha's smile was almost gentle, bordering on girlishly

modest, which was in stark contrast to the imperious and haughty manner that she

so often manifested before others, "Master...I think I should mention here how

much I have admired you since the day you won me from the control of Lord

Dimitri. In all respects you are a far better Master than I have ever known,

but it is not given to my kind to much enjoy the thought of suborning ourselves

to the will of another."

"Hey, I offered to set you free and you said no..." Ranma quickly protested.

"Because my obligation to you goes far deeper than any vow or contract that

exists between us," Nagisha informed him, "And in the time that we have been

together I have learned from observing you how much you are in need of strong

and stable allies, so...in a way we need each other, and I am content to allow

our present arrangement to continue."

"Ah...okay," Ranma said, "So maybe I do depend a lot on you and the other girls,

and you've been good friends for the most part, but..."

"I believe that Latisha has already covered the part about how much we have

grown to admire you, and that we each believe that there is a need for us to

contribute something to the union that we share between us," Nagisha continued,

"We may not always agree or get along with one another, but there is a degree of

mutual respect that has grudgingly formed from having to work closely together

within the corridors of your mind and body. She has also explained that the

Lord Anri has predicted that we must give something back in repayment for the

kindness and generosity that you have bestowed upon us all, and that each of us

must yield a daughter from our bodies who will act to safeguard the life of your

son, Chusen."

"Um..." Ranma fidgeted, recalling all too well what his interview with Latisha

had led to, and the likely OTHER results that were sure to follow the next time

he confronted Nabiki.

"But there is another reason why I appear to you now as I have, my Master,"

Nagisha went on, not giving him the opportunity to back out of the situation, "A

new threat to us all in the present has reared his head and presents a challenge

to our continuing good fortune. This half-breed boy is but the herald to a

greater threat that we can all sense looming on the horizon, and as such it is

necessary to deal dispatch to the Kirin-spawn without exhausting our resources

and leaving us too spent and weary to stand up to the subsequent challenges that

are sure to follow."

"Oh?" Ranma asked as he tried to divine her meaning, "You mean that punk goes

down, we still got another fight on our hands? Who the hell is it this time?"

"That is not known at the present," Nagisha replied, "But for my grand-uncle,

the Lord Anri, to manifest his presence in this place and time is certainly most

ominous and suggests an enemy of unparalleled strength and menace. Therefore we

must get stronger ourselves in order to meet the inevitability of this new

challenge, and...forgive my being blunt about this...but at the present you and

I are not strong enough by ourselves to resist him."

"You're saying that punk is too much for us to handle?" Ranma asked in dismay,

only to blink his eyes before repeating, "Grand-uncle? What do you...?"

"I am saying that, individually, we are not strong enough in ourselves to oppose

him," Nagisha resumed, avoiding the question, "Nor are my sister elementals

individually or in combination...but...there is a way that I know of that can

give us the edge and quite possibly render us victory in battle."

"Yeah?" Ranma asked, "I'm listening. What is it?"

Nagisha gave him the oddest smile then said, "Unite with me...link your essence

with mine and allow us to briefly meld into one being. In that way you will

temporarily gain my strength and full abilities, which-augmented with your own

internal Ki-will make us a force to be reckoned with, nearly as powerful as an

Eluini, who are themselves Masters of the Elements."

"Unite with you?" Ranma tonelessly repeated, "Ah...like...how do you mean?"

"The two of us become one being and you become an Earth Lord like the Titans of

old," Nagisha explained, "I gain the advantages of your human soul and the

latent potential that you have yet to learn how to tap into...and you gain my

knowledge and affinity with all things composed of solid matter, which will many

times over fortify your mind and body to the point where that half-breed and his

bony toothpick will be no match for our combined essence."

"But...you and me will still remain two separate people, right?" Ranma asked

with more than a bit of hesitation in his tone and expression.

"Two very different people we shall remain," Nagisha assured him, "But for a

time...the two of us shall be closer than any being normally is permitted to

become, and in that temporary time of union we shall be as one flesh, mind and

body with no true separation between us."

Ranma had not moved one inch yet found the elemental lady was suddenly pressed

quite close to him, so much so that if he tried to move away he knew he would be

giving deep offense to the lady dragon, and try as he might he could think of no

polite way to decline her offer that would not betray him for a hypocrite, for

just being this near to her was causing his body to forget its former exhaustion

With a certain sense of fatalism, and a growing certainty that he was going to

face consequences for his actions in the very near future, he cleared his throat

and asked, "What...what do we have to do?"

Nagisha gave a very low-voiced chuckle as she pushed him gently down onto the

floor of the cave, then straddled him bodily and said, "Leave everything to me,

Master...I will guide you through the steps and facilitate our temporary

transfiguration."

"N-Nani?" Ranma gasped as he found himself looking up at her from his prone

position, and suddenly the filmy dress of before was gone, revealing her quite

nubile body in all its magnificent splendor.

Nagisha's eyes shone with lust and hunger as she growled sensuously, "Since time

immemorable it has been role of dragons and heroes to contend and try to consume

one another...but this time I propose a joining that is to our mutual

advantage...and you will soon see and agree with me, my Master, that it is a

union rife with possibilities...one that is both enjoyable and mutually

enriching..."

And with that declaration in mind she set to work seducing her nominal "Master,"

and Ranma learned first-hand that conquering a Dragon often required the use of

a very different sort of lance than was wielded in the time of his ancestors...

At that moment, in the external world of flesh and matter, Kuno Tatewaki was

attempting to revive his dearest friend and childhood companion in the best

manner that he knew how, by lightly shaking him and speaking to the prostrate

boy in tones of heartfelt entreaty, "Ranma-kun, Ranma-kun! You must awaken, my

brother! You are needed by your friends and loved ones now more than ever!"

"Per-chan," Ukyo entreated from a similar position in the spot where their loved

ones had fallen, "Please, Honey...don't do this to me. Don't go away and leave

me, Sugar...I wouldn't know what to do if you weren't a part of my life...and I

can't go on without you. You want Fragrance to never grow up knowing who really

was her father?"

"It's no use, Ukyo-san," Natsume said sympathetically, "She passed out from the

trauma, which overloaded her delicate nervous system. It may be hours before

she regains consciousness, if ever."

"Shut up!" Ukyo snapped savagely, "You don't know her like I do! She's a

fighter, she'd never quit or allow herself to get beaten this easy!"

Natsume was surprised at the force and heat of that statement but nonetheless

said, "We must be practical. As strong a fighter as she is, her greatest

weakness has always been her greatest strength, her hypersensitivity..."

"Practical?" Ukyo all but shouted the word, "What does any of this have to do

with being practical? You've never understood what our relationship is all

about...you've never even tried to understand how much we mean to each other!

I've seen the way you look at us and Nabiki whenever we spend time

together...you always look away, like the very idea of women being in love makes

you uncomfortable or uneasy..."

"Eh?" Natsume reacted with dismay at the accusing tone of the other young woman,

but after only a moment of reflection she said, "Ukyo-san...you don't honestly

believe that about me...do you?"

"Yes," Ukyo spat, "Admit it...you think the whole idea is unnatural. Well, I'm

telling you it's not unnatural...not for me, and certainly not for her, and not

just because her condition makes her flinch at the idea of getting pregnant by a

man. I've learned so much just from being with her, that it doesn't matter what

gender or body we wear, that it's the person inside who really matters..."

"Saotome-san," Tatewaki spoke evenly from where he stood crouched over Ranma,

"You have made your point...now please desist from using that tone with my

fiancée."

"Don't try defending her, Kuno-san," Ukyo growled, "She's telling me to give up

on my wife..."

"That was not her intention, as I am certain even you must realize," Tatewaki

assured her, "I can forgive your presumption as the pain of seeing a loved one

so stricken would affect anyone in a similar manner...but while you are fretting

justifiably over the condition of one lover, perhaps you might pay more heed to

the other who is also your mutual husband?"

Ukyo glanced up from Perfume's side and seemed momentarily torn by doubts and

desires of her own to be at the side of both of the people she most cared for,

but at that moment Kaneda came trotting up to assess the situation with a

glance, then with his usual take-charge authority said, "How is Ranma, Tachi-

kun? And what's Perfume's condition?"

"Ah...both of them were knocked unconscious by the same attack, Sister," Natsume

replied, looking more disturbed and uneasy than even seemed warranted under the

presence circumstances, "Tachi-sama can find no serious injury on Ranma-kun's

body, but..."

"Perfume won't wake up!" Ukyo all but sobbed, "I...I think she...might be in a

coma..."

Kaneda bit his lower lip and glanced at both of his co-mates, then put off

attending to his husband's needs and instead went to kneel beside Ukyo, who was

clearly the most distressed of anyone present.

A quick examination confirmed her suspicions and then she said, "She doesn't

seem seriously hurt, her color is good, and her breathing is regular. I don't

see any signs that she's all that deep into unconsciousness, in fact I'm sure we

could wake her up if we found the right stimulus to bring her out of her current

situation."

"Yes?" Natsume asked curiously, "Such as?"

Kaneda smiled, then leaned forward and murmured into the ear of the brown-haired

enforcer, "I was thinking of developing those pictures I took of you last

Christmas...you know the ones? After you fell in the koi pond and got splashed

with hot tea by aunt Nodoka? I wonder how much those would go for...?"

"I'm awake!" Perfume sat up with a gasp, then blinked her eyes and looked

around, "Ah...what just happened? Why is everybody...um...what the heck

happened to the school? Ah...is the fight still going on...and who is that?"

the latter part was murmured with rounded eyes as she caught sight of the battle

being waged between Angelique and David a hundred meters distance away.

"Per-chan, you're all right!" Ukyo cried while throwing her arms around the

slightly dazed Enforcer.

"That's what I want to know," Kaneda said in answer to Perfume's question as he

glanced towards the ongoing sword battle, seeing the uneven contest of blades

begin to take its toll upon both players.

"Do you not remember her from the other day, Saotome-kun?" Tatewaki asked, "It

is our new school nurse, the very same one who bested the villainous Taro and

then delivered your son from the jaws of death by her miraculous powers."

Kaneda got round-eyed and gasped, "She's the one? Damn, I thought I recognized

her! I was really out of it and...who the hell is that freak she's fighting

with?"

"We do not know, Sister," Natsume replied, "He just appeared from out of no

where and said he was looking for you, and when Ranma-kun objected..."

"He's David Lo, the so-called Giant-Slayer," Saki revealed as she broke her own

silence, having divided her attention from the battle on one hand and the

domestic drama taking place on the other, "A top-class Toishindin fighter."

"Ranchan," Kaneda briefly favored his husband with a look before scowling,

"Giant slayer, huh? Well, if he's looking for me, then he's gonna find his

hands full with a lot more than even that toothpick of his can carry."

He started to rise to his feet when Saki was suddenly confronting him with an

openly anxious expression, "Are you nuts? You wouldn't last ten seconds in a

real fight with that guy! I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm one of your biggest

fans, and I know you're the toughest fighter here present, but against that guy

you might as well be fighting a dragon!"

"Don't worry," Kaneda said as he gently but very firmly pushed the pink-haired

Sekeban Deka out of his way, "I've stood up to worse than that in my time, and

besides...I've been watching his moves. I know how he fights, and I'm more than

ready."

"I would not be so quick to boast on that, my friend," Tatewaki tried to

caution, "I, too, have been watching the battle from a distance and have some

sense of the prowess of the two presently locked in battle, and I can say with

total confidence that my own humble skills pale to insignificance when

contrasted with the beauteous Angel, whose arm is presently being taxed to her

limits."

"Maybe so," Kaneda said with a frown as he studied both players, "But from what

I can tell they've been going at it all-out for the past several minutes, and

that's bound to take a lot out of a guy, even if he does have the blood of a

Kirin...whatever the heck that means."

"But..." Saki tried to argue.

"If battle you do intend to join, Sister," Natsume spoke up, "Then I beg you to

permit me to double for you..."

"Not this time, Nat-chan," Kaneda said, already advancing onto the field of

contention, "I need you to stay and safeguard Ranchan until he recovers...and

when I get back we're gonna be sharing some words about him and his

elementals...and that goes double for you as well, Per-chan. Ranchan and Ukyo

need your protection."

"But..." Perfume tried to argue, but seeing the squared-shoulder resolve of his

second husband she relented and said, "Yes Airen...I will do as you instruct."

"As do I...under protest," Natsume conceded, chaffing a bit but knowing better

than to try and argue with her determined sex-changed sibling.

"Damn, if only I had my baker's peel, I'd show that Jackass in person what I

think of his crusading butt," Ukyo fumed.

Perfume glanced at her wife and said, "I know it bites, Airen, but Nabiki

usually knows what she...ah...he's doing. If Ranma-kun were up and ready he

might be able to help her, but...ah...hah?"

Her gaze fell upon the still-motionless Ranma, and Ukyo followed the Enforcer's

glance and asked, "What's wrong? Is something about Ranma..."

"Oh...he looks all right to me," Perfume replied, "Only...why's he sporting yet

another hard-on in his trousers?"

"He...WHAT?!" Ukyo reacted, and then narrowed her eyes and snarled, "He'd

better be thinking of one of us right now or he's gonna get it, and not just

from the both of us..."

"Aiyaa," Perfume agreed, her own eyes narrowing into a glare turned towards

their nocturnally aroused husband.

Meanwhile Angelique was indeed beginning to tire of the prolonged battle, the

efforts of keeping her guard up proving so taxing that it was taking more and

more of her resources. David similarly was starting to get a bit winded from

swinging his own oversized blade around, forced to concede to himself in silence

that he had never had to go this long in a fight, not even when in training

against the monstrous likes of Lord Talon.

"Damn you, why won't you fall?" he said between clenched teeth as they locked

blades for yet another standoff.

"And yield to the likes of you?" Angelique said defiantly, "Never! So long as I

hold breath my sword will remain raised in zee cause of justice!"

"Justice?!" the word brought a momentary surge of rage to the younger man, and

all at once he rallied the strength to throw her back with the force of his

muscles. And then-while she was once again momentarily thrown off balance and

too tired to bring her sword up to block in time-he took a savage sweep at her

mid-section and this time scored a telling blow, one that resounded hard against

her armor and sent her faltering backwards with a yelp of pain, though had she

been unarmored it was more than likely that she would have been cut in half like

so much rice paper.

"Finally!" David snarled as he saw the woman go down onto her armored backside,

and then he raised his own sword to deliver a more telling blow, "And now reap

what you sow, Woman-what?!"

He reacted with a start as something bit into his forearm and caused him to

falter in delivering his death blow. Several more objects went whizzing past

his head, and with a belated gasp he turned to see the redhead standing less

than fifty meters away with one arm outstretched as though she had done the

throwing.

"Ooopps..." Trudy winced, "Missed again...damn! I never miss! What the hell is

protecting you, kid? Your own personal forcefield?"

David glanced down and saw the metal spike protruding from his wounded arm, and

then he scowled in silent rage and casually used his other hand to pluck the

nail from his flesh, then glared hard at a chagrined Trudy.

The next instant he sent a wave of force flowing from a casual sweep of his

blade, compelling the redhead to dive for the dirt and flatten herself as the

lethal force passed through the space she had formerly occupied, to cut through

the base of a tree immediately behind her and tumble it backwards, which gave a

fair indication of what might have happened to anyone human so afflicted.

The unfortunate thing was that the massed student body was gathered directly in

line beyond that point and most likely would have learned first hand what chaff

felt like when cleaved by a reaper, but for one among them who alone knew how to

react in the presence of such danger.

Takaharis did not even flinch but rather hastily raised a hand and erected a

barrier with a few quick movements and a chanted word of power. The force wave

broke upon it as a wave might a levy on the shoreline, thus preventing needless

casualties from being added to the day's already appalling tally. This casual

display of a protection field-which fanned out to encompass the many students

crowded behind her-caught the attention of Gosunkuji, who once again stared

with growing apprehension towards this new exchange teacher, whose nature he was

beginning to suspect was anything but that of an ordinary human.

"This bites!" Trudy said while spitting out the dirt and grass that she had

unintentionally swallowed, and then her hand automatically went to her sleeve

and came away with her portable cell phone in hand, and a few seconds later she

called out, "Shelly? Hey...put me through to the Boss-man, and pronto! We've

got a situation here and it's looking pretty awful..."

Meanwhile David turned his focus back towards his fallen foe, who even then was

attempting to recover with some difficulty, but not in sufficient time as the

boy brought his huge sword high in a down-ward chopping notion and said, "And

now to finish the Lord's Work...!"

"Stuff it!" a husky masculine voice declared, and before David knew what was

about he felt something connect against his jaw that took him by surprise

completely, and all at once it was hit turn to go tumbling backwards, this time

losing his grip upon his massive weapon as he fell to the earth with his head

ringing like a church bell.

Angelique blinked her eyes and then saw the handsome male figure standing

between her and certain doom, then said, "Mon dieu...where did you come from,

Monsieur?"

"Actually I'm a native to the area," Kaneda replied, "And consider this save my

way of thanking you for what you did for my son the other day. Ah...I

mean...for my cousin's kid...whatever."

"Eh?" Angelique attempted to ponder the meaning of that curious comment, even

though she did belatedly recognize the youth as being one of those whom she had

encountered by the cave, though at the time her attention had been distracted by

the numerous young ladies who had also been present.

"Never mind, it's a long story," Kaneda replied as she started to advance upon

the partially stunned David, "Tell you about it...after I whip this punk's ass

all the way from here to Pyong-Yang."

"As you wish," Angelique winced as she felt a stab in the side beneath her armor

where several ribs had been cracked and estimated that it would take some

minutes for even her to heal back to full health, "A breather is all that I

would ask...but Monsieur...do be careful. This opponent may be a fool and a

fanatic, but he is definitely not one to be underestimated."

"Thanks," Kaneda growled as he seized a firm grip over the boy's fur vest then

yanked him to his feet and said, "But I'm the one who shouldn't be estimated!"

And then David saw a fist rising up to meet his face, and then his world briefly

darkened with the explosion of fireworks, stars and pin-wheels, and all at once

he found himself briefly touching the sky as he soared backwards with less than

the grace of the angels...

Continued.

Comments/Criticisms/Butt Kicking Instructions for giving the boot to religious

fanatics: shadowmane

Or

Shadowmane9849

Round three is about to commence, and if things look a bit grim for David it's

yet too soon to count him down and out of the fight. Be with us next time as he

rallies to face down the wrath of an enraged Kaneda and-HEY! Wait a minute,

he's the bad guy, right? More on that and other subjects next time in, "Kick a

Kirin in the Crotch," or, "There's More Than One Way To Deprogram a Loser!" Be

there...

X


	70. Chapter 70

preDnabiki159

Nabiki 1/2

"A Very Scary Thought"

by Jim Robert Bader

(Inspired by the works of Rumiko Takahashi Others,  
with concepts and characters created by fellow fanfic writers Wade Tritschler, DB Sommers, Nicole Manders, Andrew Greaves, Bill Guiroff and countless others, including "Buffy"  
creator Joss Whedon; with special thanks to my good pal Shiva for his editing and handling of this series.)

(Certain other characters and concepts are of my own innovation, including my interpretation of the Monster of Mary Shelly's novel, the Furies, Trudy, Takaharis Angelique d'Anjou and various other guest stars appearing in this portion of the Nabiki 1/2 series...)

Chapter Sixty-Four.

Episode One-Fifty-Nine.

Angel versus Fanatic.  
(Round Three)

Natsumi groaned a bit and blindly moved an arm to try and steady herself on the comfortable bed upon which she found herself sleeping. However...her hand did not encounter the hard surface of a table or even an alarm clock as she tried to turn off the buzzing noise that had awakened her from such a deliriously pleasant nap. Rather she found her hand clenching something soft, warm and yielding that she quite naturally squeezed, feeling its ripeness and consistency and wondering why it felt so familiar.

"Hmmm...could you do that a little lower, please?"

Natsume's hand froxe as she belatedly realized what it was that she was fondling, and then-reflexively again-she began feeling that bosom up with something more like cuddlesome affection.

"Nat-chan," Miyuki said in a mildly aroused but sleepy voice, "As much as I love when you do that, you did happen to remember where we are and what we were doing the night before?"

"Hmmm...as if I'd even want to forget," Natsume purred, only to sit up with a startled expression, „Omigawd...did we actually do all that...and with the clients we were supposed to be protecting?"

"Well, some of them anyway," Miyku amended, then slowly stirred to glance towards her partner and lover, caressing Natsume's thigh with the comfort of familiarity and sighed, "The only thing to say in our defense was that we accepted the invitation of the client to share a bed with her two primary girlfriends...and if it weren't for the matter being against the law in the states I might even be inclined to call them wives, especially with the way they asserted their turf rights over us..."

"Yeah, no fooling about that," Natsume said as she regarded her partner with deep affection, "The blonde with the roots turned out to be a real firebrand, and who knew that lisping sidewinder could be such a hotblood in the sack? Whoooooh!"

"The only problem is...how do we explain this to Doctor Steinberg?" Miyuki wondered, "Our assigned task was to safegard the clients, and instead we made out with them like we were in a porn movie. And...now that I think on it...where exactly are...the...clients...?"

Both young police women glanced around themselves, and then they sat bolt upright in bed and yelled out, "THE CLIENTS?!"

Much to their mutual dismay they found the bedroom unoccupied by any but themselves, and the deadening silence in the next room implied that the somewhat noisome crew known as the Furies were likewise absent from the rest of the apartment complex.

"Omigawd...Doc is gonna kill us...literally!" Natsume declared with fatalistic dread, "He's gonna use us in one of his experiments, and we'll have bolts in our necks and electricity in our veins and..."

"Calm down, Nat-chan," Miyuki urged, "We might have overslept a little..."

"A little?" Natsume skeptically gave her partner a dubious look, then rhetorically glanced at her bare wrist before groaning aloud, "What time is it anyway? I can't remember where I put my watch..."

Miyuki glanced towards a nearby dresser then reached over and snatched up the timepiece, staring at it with rounded eyes before saying, "TEN TWENTY-TWO PIM?!"

"What?" Natsume barely whispered, then declared, "You mean...it's that close to the middle of the day? What the hell did we drink last night to make us sleep right through breakfast?"

"If you have to ask that then I honestly don't know what to tell you, Nat-chan," Miyuki noted as she scrambled off of the bed and then went in search of her clothing, which had been scattered hither and yon about the bedroom.

"Oh," Natsume belatedly realized the lameness of her own question, but then noticed something else as well. Getting off the bed she went to a corner table then picked up and read from a note that had been written in carefully scripted Japanese:

"My dear detectives, please forgive my indulging in your delightful charms, but I have long wanted to savor the treasures of the orient, and you were both ever so delightful. I have already ordered up room service and told them to have a breakfast waiting for you at whatever time of your convenience. I will also explain things to Frank as we have an understanding between each other regarding such things, so there will be no unpleasant consequences for you...and feel free to remain in our room for as long as you feel indulgent. I would so much prefer not to disturb such a lovely couple of committed young detectives as you will need to replenish your energies for later.

By the way, Sandra and Illyra send their regards. They also found you quite tasty and delicious.

Sincerely,

Astarte Jones, Esquire.

"Oh," Miyuki ceased her frantic scramble to get dressed and turned to regard her fully nude partner, seeming to debate internally an unspoken decision.

"You think she means it, Miyuki-chan?" Natsume asked, "About explaining things to Doctor Steinberg?"

"Only one way to know for certain," Miyuki replied, having recovered her cell phone from its place beneath her trousers and hastily dialing up the special number she had been given before saying, "Hello...could you please refer me to Doctor Steinberg...?"

"Boss?"

"What's up, Shelly?" Frank growled as he was speeding down the back-roads and alley ways with his comely passenger clinging firmly to his backside astride the powerful motorbike known affectionately as the "Monster."

"I've got Agent Miyuki on line one if you feel like talking," the Auto-Control Relay System informed him, "Looks like they finally recovered from their morning Jones binge."

"This early eh?" Frank mused, "Astarte must've gone easy with them...I'd have expected them to be our for at least another hour. Well...put her through then. Mushi-Mushi?"

"Doctor Steinberg?" the familiar voice of the female police officer replied, "I am ever so terribly sorry...I don't know exactly what happened, but..."

"Forget about it," Frank said gruffly, "Hazards of the job, and I really ought to have warned you about Astarte. Sorry you and your partner got dragged into one of her little trysts, but if you're feeling better now I want you to know that it ain't your fault and I've already fronted you two a bonus."

Back on her end of the line Miyuki took this news with a most surprised expression, prompting Natsume to ask, "What, is he chewing our heads off yet?"

"No," Miyuki said with surprise as she glanced at her cell phone before replacing it to her ear, "That...is very generous of you, Doctor...but..."

"Look, I'll explain about it later," Frank replied, "At the moment I'm kinda busy, but I'm giving you two the day off, so take advantage of the digs and don't sweat about the expenses. I'll cover everything, just try and be more on your guard the next time Astarte tries to talk you into anything. She's got this way of hypnotizing people with her voice, and...it's kinda complicated. Better for now if you don't ask a lot of pointless questions."

"Er...all right," Miyuki said dubiously, "But...won't Jones-san and her people be requiring our services? We were supposed to act as liaisons and to guide them through our city..."

"Forget about it," Frank said, "They're way out of your league, and besides, it ain't the Furies who need protection. More like it'll be Tokyo that needs protection from the Furies, so I'm personally taking charge over the rest of the operation."

"But...does that means that our services are no longer required?" Miyuki asked, surprised at finding herself somewhat disappointed with that prospect.

"Not at all," Frank answered, "Fact is I may need you later more than ever, so rest up and be at my office sharp tomorrow morning where I'll give you the debriefing. Oh yeah, and regards to your fiancée. Better reassure her now before she thinks I'm going to experiment on you guys, or something. Frank out."

"What?" Natsume asked, all but ready to explode with curiosity as she saw Miyuki put away her cell phone.

"How very odd," Miyuki murmured, "He seems to know all about what took place between us and the Jones party. In fact, he seems so knowledgeable that one would almost suspect him of being psychic. He even called you my fiancée."

"Huh?" Natsume asked, "How did he find out about that? I mean...you only just proposed to me the other day..."

Miyuki paused in the act of putting a hand into the pocket of her jacket, then came away holding an envelope that she had spied the edge of a moment before, one that she carefully unfolded to reveal a letter attached to a small box that was barely three centimeters long and wide by two deep and tied with a miniature ribbon.

She quickly glanced at the card then her eyebrows disappeared beneath her forelocks. She wordlessly passed the envelope along to an anxious Natsume before taking the time herself to open the tiny box and denote its precious contents. Natsume read the letter and then her own eyes widened and she gasped, "My dear Miyuki-chan and Natsume-chan...this morning was heavenly, and now I can see why Frank suggested I purchase this gift to pass along to you as I understand that you were having difficulties affording one of your own on your police salary. Please accept them in the spirit of love and friendship to which you are rightly entitled...signed...Astarte Jones? What is she talking...about...?"

Words ceased to flow out of Natsume's mouth as Miyuki held out a hand upon which lay two white-gold bands perfectly sized to fit each of their ring fingers. Both had beautiful stone inlaid embroidery and must have easily cost a small fortune, well beyond their combined yearly earnings by a good long measure...and-upon closer examination-each had a name engraved on the inside portion of the band:

"To Miyuki in Love."

"To Natsume in Love."

"How...how did they know?" Natsume asked in toneless amazement.

"We may never know the answer to that," Miyuki replied, turning to look at her lovely partner before saying, "But it would be rude not to accept these gifts...even if we may have difficulty explaining them to the department."

"Like taking outside jobs working for Doctor Steinberg isn't already?" Natsume reasoned.

"A good point that," Miyuki said, and then without further adieu she took the ring that bore her partner's name and took Natsume by the hand before slipping the ring around the appropriate finger. She then passed the other ring along to Natsume and extended her own hand, then watched with some amusement as her partner fumbled with fitting it on, only to get it right on the third try, at which point their matching rings were then held up for closer personal examination.

"They're beautiful," Natsume marveled in awed wonder.

"That they are," Miyuki agreed, then turned her attention from the ring to her partner and said, "And they are a perfect fit...just as we are to each other, Natsume-chan."

Natsume turned and met her partner's gaze and all but read her mind from her expression, "Ah...are you feeling up to a shower and a meal, Miyuki-chan?"

"Doctor Steinberg did say we could take the rest of the day off," Miyuki answered with a sly and cunning look.

"Did he now?" Natsume grinned, "You scrub my back, I scrub yours?"

"I was thinking of starting a bit...lower than that," Miyuki murmured, and then the two linked hands and headed for the bathroom, almost as giddy as two school kids on a spring break, and just as eager to pick things up where they had left off hours before on that very morning...

"What did you mean about Astarte-san just now, Frank-chan?" Kasumi murmured into his ear as the two of them sped on their way down the streets headed for Nerima.

"Astarte's only half human, Doll-face," Frank explained grimly, "Her mother was seduced by an Incubus lord named Ashteroth, and she's a blood princess of the Kingdom of Liaspar, which exists within its own pocket dimension. Her father's like a mad emperor of the place, rules it like a god and wants to expand his empire by taking over our realm. Astarte was supposed to be his agent, only she sided with humanity, but she's still a type of Alu-demon, a Succubus, which is a kind of vampire only she feeds on sex instead of blood, and she doesn't really so much drain her lovers as she generates energy by making out with them, then absorbing the excess."

"Oh my..." Kasumi murmured, reflecting upon the curious allure that she had sensed about the exotic redhead and noticing how fiercely protective (or make that possessive) her girlfriends had been when they had witnessed their lover addressing herself to Kasumi.

"Yeah," Frank replied as if sensing her thoughts on the matter, "She doesn't hurt the girls she's with, but they almost invariably feel as limp as a bowl of cold ramen come the morning, but Snake and Illyra seem able to handle her well enough. Of course they're both technically not ordinary women, but that's a whole 'nother story unto itself. The thing to be wary about with Astarte is that she has this power that works through her voice, and she can hypnotize you just by speaking in that second voice she has, and you'd feel compelled to do her bidding. As I understand it the power works through a person's sex drive by affecting those parts of your mind that are linked to the libido. If she tells you to make out with her, then you'll probably wind up in the sack very shortly, so...keep on your toes whenever she speaks with you. Astarte's basically a good kid, but she has these needs and compulsions that sometimes get the better of her judgement...and with you being the kind of babe you are, Babe..."

"I think that I understand you, Frank-chan," Kasumi smiled, resting her head against his brawny shoulders, "And you needn't worry about me doing anything improper with Jones-san. I will admit that I found her...interesting to be with...but in light of what you say, I will be careful."

"Good," Frank sounded more relieved than he meant it to come out, then hastily amended, "Not that I'd be jealous of you two or anything like that. I mean...we may be engaged and all that, but I'd understand if...well...if you did feel tempted."

Kasumi did not answer him right away, but a face appeared in her mind who was like a vision of heavenly beauty, and all at once she felt a stab of guilt to find herself expressing such feelings to a woman other than the man to whom she had just given her promise in marriage.

To distract herself from having to think about that rainbow-haired apparition she instead chose to bring up a subject that had been troubling her for much of the morning, "Frank-san...can you tell me something about these other women whom we are going to see? This American named Wells Trudy...and this...Angelique...who I believe is the one who saved the life of my nephew just the morning before last?"

"That...might take some doing," Frank admitted, "Trudy's a Freelancer from Delphi, but she's got knowledge and skills that don't really belong in this era. Same with Angelique, only she's from a different time and place where knights in armor carry aloft the flame of chivalry, only she's a lot more powerful than your standard Galahad type. In fact, way I hear of it, she's only partially human herself, and heavily into girls if you take my meaning."

"I see," Kasumi considered the point, recalling how strangely thrilled she had been upon meeting the blonde haired woman, albeit to a different extent from either Astarte or the...other one whom she wanted so very much to be with.

"Thing is I had 'em both posted to Furinkan High School to act as undercover agents playing substitute teachers...or rather a Coach and a Nurse...but from the sound of things I'm wondering if I made a big mistake doing that," Frank scowled, imagining total disaster from the few odd hints he had so far bee piecing together.

"If you chose them for this assignment then I am sure that they are more than up to handling the dangers," Kasumi tried to reassure him.

"Oh, they're competent enough all right," Frank growled, "Except that both have personal agendas that seem to take precedence over other assigned duties, one being a crusader, and the other thinks she talks to god...and I leave it to you to decide which one is which lady."

"They seemed very nice when I met them," Kasumi remarked.

"Nice ain't the problem, Doll-face," Frank replied, "When you live as long as I have you learn that more harm can be done with the best of intentions than any evil that might be done intentionally, and all because human beings-either divine or demonic-can never really see the outcome to their actions."

"I have heard sentiments such as those being spoken before," Kasumi observed after a momentary silence, during which Frank executed several maneuvers of questionable legal nature in order to save time as he rode his monstrous motorcycle out of the city, "And he said much the same thing about good intentions that lead to a bad outcome."

"Somebody else told you that?" Frank asked, "Who?"

"He said his name was Anri..." Kasumi replied, only to feel her man stiffen suddenly.

"Anri?" Frank tried to make his question sound casual and failed rather badly, "Describe him."

"Well," Kasumi replied, "He is very tall, and gaijin, but speaks eloquently in Japanese, has light colored hair and very green eyes..."

"Kind of a mystical aura about the guy?" Frank continued, "Friendly and casual, but he says a lotta things that don't immediately make sense but in a roundabout kinda way?"

"Why...yes," Kasumi responded, "Do you know him?"

"If he's the guy I'm thinking of...only too well," Frank averred grimly, "This is very important, Doll...just when did you first meet him?"

"Only two days ago, right before Nabiki was kidnapped," Kasumi answered, "He said something about a crisis that was coming, but I thought perhaps he was talking about Taro-san..."

"No way," Frank said bluntly, "The Anri I know wouldn't show up for anything as minor as a kidnapping...even if the kid in question is special in some way to the fates. He only puts in a personal appearance against the big threats, the kind that can level entire cities..."

"Oh my," Kasumi said as she thought that one over, "I had no idea it could be so...dramatic..."

"Dramatic ain't the word for it, Doll-face," Frank replied, "We're talking about a guy who was charged by his old man with the protection of the entire human race. He takes the job seriously, even if you'd never guess it from his east-  
going matter."

"You speak as if you know him, Frank-chan," Kasumi marveled.

"I've met him...more than once, as a matter of fact," Frank replied, "Came to me when I least expected it, like a thief in the night, and then gone the next minute, just like all his other close kin..."

"Other close kin?" Kasumi repeated, bracing herself as the motorcycle took a rather hard jolt crossing from one obstacle to another.

"He's got two brothers and an sister," Frank explained, "They're called the Daokan, which means 'Lords of the Way' in a tongue so ancient it ain't even spoken these days, and they are definitely the big leagues...in point of fact they don't get any bigger than those guys."

"I had no idea," Kasumi remarked, "And he came to me so casual-like. I had no idea that he had a greater personal agenda."

"The fact that he came to you first had gotta mean something," Frank noted, "He expects you to do something that could alter the balance of whatever struggle between light and darkness, or whatever it is that's got him so worried."

"Worried?" Kasumi asked, surprised that the calm and gentle-spoken man whom she had encountered could have manifested worry or fear of any sort of nature.

"Yeah, but this thing that worries me the most about Anri being seen around these parts is that you kids ain't used to playing in the same leagues as him and his brothers," Frank admitted, "You may not know much about him, Kid, but I do, and he's got a record that goes way back beyond your imagination."

"He seemed to me like a very nice man," Kasumi hesitated before adding, "And...his daughter is very beautiful..."

"His daughter?" Frank reacted, "Which one?"

"I beg your pardon?" Kasumi blinked.

"Well...there's one I've heard tell about, the Sangrael, otherwise known as Thelendra the Dream Weaver," Frank explained, "She's the oldest of his offspring that we presently know about, and the one who tends to hang out a lot with her old man playing a cross between a magician's assistant and an oracular advisor."

"Oh?" Kasumi asked faintly, "You...know something about her?"

"Only that she's a lot more powerful than she lets on at first impressions," Frank noted, "She was born and raised in a place known as Arcadia...and that's pretty much all that we do know about her. A real mystery lady, but known to history by different names and as the daughter of Maitreya, the Lord of Light, which is Anri's other surname."

"You don't say?" Kasumi said with curiosity, "The Lord of Light...yes...I can see how that might suit him..."

"He's also called the Lord of Air and Fire, or Monalon Maitreya, which means 'Man in the Center who is the Lord of Light," Frank continued, "They also call him the Binder of Spirits and a lotta other names and titles, some of which you might even have heard about from different sources."

"He sounds like a very important person," Kasumi remarked, "So...why did he come to me and offer me that advice."

"Who knows, Kid," Frank replied, "But my guess is he knows you're one of the good guys, one of the really good people, a servant of light and all of that...even if you do have your cute little dark edges."

Kasumi found herself smiling as she clung to his back, ignoring the whizzing by of the landscape as their motorcycle ate up kilometers like they were riceballs. She remained firmly attached to her man, warmed and comforted by the realization of why she was so in love with his brooding frame of towering masculinity, even while her sensitive ears picked up the tell-tale buzzing sound of his earpiece phone system relaying the voice of the computerized Shelly.

"Boss, bad news," the Auto-Personality reported, "I'm getting reports of massive devastation and explosive carnage from the Furinkan campus. Now, normally that's not such a rare thing, only witnesses are claiming that there's a sword duel going on between a blonde girl in armor and a punk kid with a really wickedly big pig-sticker..."

"Furinkan?" Kasumi reacted, "My friends...my sisters..."

"Right, got it," Frank snapped as he gunned the engine, having finally cleared the way past the last of the traffic hurdles with only open road through the less crowded suburbs between them and their destination, and the Monster all but flying as they headed off towards the scene of ensuing conflict...

David landed hard and did not immediately regain his bearings as the pounding he had just taken, combined with his relative state of exhaustion, left him momentarily unable to rally his defenses, even though his phenomenal rate of healing was kicking in even then to fortify and restore his energy reserves and body.

"Had enough yet, Punk?" Kaneda/Nabiki snarled as he paused in his assault against his downed opponent, "If not then I'll turn you over my knee and spank you, you little Juvie."

David coughed and lifted his head, glaring at the man who had been taking advantage of his momentary vulnerability. He needed a few more seconds to heal, and so he murmured aloud, "Does it make you feel special attacking someone smaller than you, Philistine?"

"Philistine?" Kaneda scowled, "What the hell kind of trip are you on, Mister? You think this has anything to do with my taste in the classical arts?"

"The Philistines were the enemies of God," David replied without moving from where he lay sprawled in the dirt, "Their offense was mighty and so the Israelites were commanded by Him to destroy their nation to the very last vestige. But Saul, for all his legions, lacked the courage to carry out the Lord's will, and so one was chosen from among the flock of His Chosen People to demonstrate the power of the Lord, by hurtling down the mightiest of Philistines, the scourge of God named Goliath..."

"Yeah, I'm familiar with the mythology," Kaneda snorted, "So what's that got to do with the price of rice and tofu?"

"I was named in honor of the first David," the young man smiled, feeling his strength return as the fool before him make the mistake of thinking him beaten, "To slay the Lord's enemies be they giants or mighty nations..."

"And you think you're some kind of chosen emissary?" Kaneda did not bother to hide his scorn, "Frankly I'm not impressed. I've seen better fighting on a preschool playground."

"That is because you do not reckon with the gifts bestowed upon me by the Lord," David smiled, and with that he braced his shoulders and kicked up off the ground, regaining his footing with a single well-executed back-flip...

And found a foot in his face that moved so fast that he never even saw it coming.

"Get real, as if I'd let you regain your footing?" Kaneda sniffed, following up his first attack with a series of well-executed combinations that pummeled the young man and sent him sprawling back in the dirt but a mere few seconds later.

Unfortunately when Kaneda attempted to follow up on this assault with a finishing down-kick the boy named David moved with surprising resiliency and caught that foot mid-way on the downstroke.

"I have had enough of being your punching bag, Unbeliever," David snarled, and then with a surprising display of strength he flipped the larger boy over and sent Kaneda tumbling backwards while the younger man regained his confident footing.

Kaneda wasted no time recovering his own bearings, but he was surprised to discover his foe was not more badly affected by the beating he had just taken. If anything the boy appeared to be much, much stronger than before with hardly any bruises visible on his admittedly short person.

"I see surprise in your expression, Pagan Infidel," David smiled, "You thought I would be an easy mark because of my size, but like with all my previous enemies your beliefs are in error."

"Pagan Infidel?" Kaneda frowned, "Who are you calling names here? And what gives you the right to go around assaulting the students on my campus?"

"The Lord has commanded me to do so, and I am obedient to His commandments," David replied while extending his hand towards his oversized weapon, which lay several dozen meters distant beyond his reach, "It is not by my hand that you are to be laid low but by the will of God, for I am his chosen servant."

Kaneda's eyes got very round, for the sword began to rock back and forth, and all at once it moved of its own volition, flying from the ground across the air and into the outstretched grasp of the boy, who held it up at the ready.

"And now you will learn why I am called the Giant Slayer, Infidel!" David declared while extending his blade towards Kaneda, "Make whatever peace you may with your heathen Devils, for I am about to dispatch you to the throne of judgement!"

"Oboy," Kaneda said warily, "You really believe all that crap that you're spouting? You've gotta be some kind of a nut case!"

"DIE!" David cried as he launched his assault with devastating speed and power, far beyond what anyone could have reasonably imagined.

Kaneda turned his body aside and avoided the attack at the very last instant, then executed a nearly impossible roll and got inside the guard of the younger man, delivering an upward palm-strike smash to his jaw, one that picked the younger man up and staggered him backwards...but did not, in point of fact, render David hors d'combat.

David swung his blade again and nearly claimed victory but for the way that Kaneda rolled to the side at the last second. The taller boy ducked low to avoid the third slice, but he was unable to regain the advantage as the fast-  
moving David made slash after slashing attack on Kaneda, gradually driving the taller boy away and beyond the arc of the blade itself as Kaneda tried to put enough distance between them to change tactics into something much more effective.

Farther away and observing things from the sidelines Trudy made the idle comment aloud, "Not too shabby...that guy is fast, but that kid is something else. His stamina, if anything, is improving by the minute, and at this rate he's gonna get in a lucky strike, and that'll be all she wrote for the stud muffin"

"You really think the Kirin-spawn is that good?" Takaharis asked in quiet dismay.

"Naw, not in terms of skill, but in raw talent? He's definitely got the advantage," Trudy replied, "With a bit more training and the right kind of teacher he might amount to something close to invincible, but as it is? He's just cruising on his untapped potential."

"The older boy is certainly quite good though," Takaharis observed as she studied the moves of the two combatants.

"Oh yeah," Trudy nodded in the affirmative, "Now he's a real class act...almost perfect conservation of energy, totally fluid and nature, fights like a machine but with cunning and style. Too bad he can't win on style alone, though...not against that sort of power."

Kaneda managed to dodge yet another sweeping attack by the oversized sword but found himself wide open to a more personal assault as David's fist rocketed to his jaw and sent the older boy sprawling backward in the dirt, momentarily stunned and utterly quite helpless. Kaneda attempted to shake off the effects of surprisingly powerful blow but his head refused to clear and there were stars and planets obscuring his vision, leaving him temporarily without an acute understanding of his opponent's present tactical position.

**MISTRESS-MOVE!**

A lifetime of conditioning caused his body to react before the thought had fully registered, and then Kaneda felt the impact of the sword meeting the ground in the place where he had been laying a half second ago and found himself being propelled back to his feet by the sheer concussive force that ripped a jagged tear through the landscape.

Kaneda was back on his feet shaking his head in order to clear it, then belatedly realized what had just happened and said aloud, "Sharil...that was you? You just saved me?"

**Of course it was me,** the water elemental replied in her head, **I had to stimulate your nerves to get you out of the way in time or I'd be minus a host body.**

Kaneda squared his stance and raised his guard while grimly smiling and murmuring aloud, "So it's enlightened self interest more than any altruism on your part? I can work with that."

**You are far too suspicious and untrusting of altruism even for your own good,** Sharil mentally chided, **Doesn't it also occur to you how much my Master would be affected if you died at the hands of this jerk?**

"Good point that," Kaneda scowled, "Ranma...this asshole is really starting to tick me off. First he wrecks havoc on my school, then he waylays one of my wives and our mutual husband, and now he thinks he can chop me in half like a mackerel with that oversized machete. He's going down, no question about it."

**But you can't beat him alone,** Sharil argued, **Not by yourself...but...if you had my help in defeating him...**

"I'm listening," Kaneda said, by now willing to concede that the boy was proving to be more of a handful than he had at first estimated.

"Who are you talking to, Heathen?" David growled while preparing to attack again, "You have the devil's own luck in avoiding my Ravensclaw Avenger, but you cannot evade the Lord's wrath forever..."

"Oh, give me a break," Kaneda sniffed, "I was much too easy on you earlier, but now I see you're not gonna be satisfied until I give you a royal pounding you little megalomaniac. And for your information I've heard about the Ravensclaw, and that doesn't begin to match its legendary description."

"SILENCE LYING WRETCH!" David snarled, bringing his sword down in a savage slice that struck the earth directly before him and sent a wave of concussive force hurtling directly towards Kaneda, who was too close and lacked sufficient time to avoid it...

At least by conventional measure.

Kaneda did not know exactly what happened in the next instant, but it was as though the presence felt within his left arm suddenly surged to life and Sharil momentarily merged with his body, summoning his Chi and causing his body to ripple as he flowed through the devastating energy wave, almost like surfing on the tide as it passed harmlessly through him without doing him any damage.

His body resolidified an instant later, and Kaneda stood stark still with surprised realization. He did not need to voice his thoughts aloud as Sharil spoke once more into his mind, **Something that my mother once taught to the Mistress, the ability to become like water, ever changing, flowing and incompressible. It's how Mistress Lao is able to endure the most savage attacks without suffering injury to her body.**

"Come again?" Kaneda asked, only to hear a sound in the background that caused him to turn his head and stare with disbelief as a portion of the Furinkan main building collapsed behind her, taking out an entire corner as though the energy wave had sliced through it like a knife through hot butter.

David was no less dismayed by his opponent's survival, "Impossible! I hit you directly that time, I know it!"

Kaneda just swallowed, reckoning now the extent of the forces that she had been merely playing with until now and belatedly wondering if anyone had been hurt in the destruction. From where he stood it seemed as if the remaining building had a huge tear rip through all four levels exposing empty classrooms and storage rooms to outside viewing and even leaving a portion of the cafeteria wide open with students sitting behind tables and desks staring out at the sudden gap with blank or horrified expressions.

The next instant something cold erupted from within him, and Kaneda whirled towards his foe and snarled, "YOOOOU-BAKA!"

Again something curious happened as he felt his left arm pulse, and all at once he went from a standing start to a forceful lunge that covered the seven meter distance between himself and his foe in less than an eyeblink. His right hand rocketed forward with the explosive force of a geyser and he struck David full in the face with sufficient concussive effect that the arrogant boy was sent flying backwards in a horizontal position. David plowed into the ground and dug a deep furrow for several paces before rolling free and tumbling to a halt some fifty meters distance while Kaneda stood where he was seething with rage and privately marveling at an entirely new form of attack that had come upon him in less than a heartbeat.

**Yet another secret technique of the Mistress,** Sharil explained, **Water is an irresistible force, and when the water in your body is hardened and directed along a channeled stream...**

"I get the picture," Kaneda growled, "Show me more...show me the rest of what I need to beat the snot out of this bastard!"

**As you wish, Mistress,** Sharil replied, and then mentally fed images and neural impressions directly into the mind of her current host, giving Kaneda a crash-course understanding of the fighting techniques of her greatest adversary, a warrior who made the present snotty-nosed brat look like an amateur of the first order...

Meanwhile Ukyo and Perfume looked on with surprise and jubilation, seeing their second "husband" rally to assert himself and feeling the elation that comes from sensing victory at hand when all had seemed so near to ruin.

"That's showing him, Kaneda-chan!" Ukyo cried, remembering in time not to use her favorite nick-name of "Nabchan" for their sex-swapping life-mate.

"I've never seen her fight like that," Perfume remarked, "It's like she's using an entirely different style, one that looks...oddly familiar..."

"Who cares so long as he wins?" Ukyo asked pragmatically before turning to glance back down at the boy laying motionless across her lap, "By the way...how is Ranchan...?"

"No change so far...in both senses of the word," Perfume replied as she extended her delicate hypersenses to probing the condition of their primary husband. But then she amended, "No...scratch that...I think he just soiled himself again. He's really going to need to change out of those shorts when he recovers..."

"Soiled himself?" Ukyo scowled, "You mean he just climaxed?"

"Pretty hard to fake it when you're a guy, as I should know first hand," Perfume nodded simply, "I guess whichever elemental took and had her way with him this time has just shot his wad with her, so maybe now he'll finally...recover? Aiyaa..."

Ukyo wondered why her brown-haired wife had ended her statement on such a puzzled note, but then she glanced down and saw that Ranma's eyes had just opened...and that there was something different about them...as in his blue eyes were suddenly very dark and lacking any white portions, and something about his body felt...oddly leaden...

Also meanwhile, and concurrent to this, the partial destruction of the main building had the effect of causing the students to erupt with dismay (rather than the jubilation that they might have felt on other occasions). It also caused Principle Kuno and Miss Hinako to resolve to end their own silent vigil, having so far held back from asserting themselves over the action.

"Bad kiki," Koucho Kuno Godai exclaimed, raising his trademark weapons of comb and scissors in each hand and looking girded for battle, "Da Big Kahuna gonna have to shave his head for dis!"

"I most emphatically agree with you, Sir," Hinako averred as she held her coin at the ready, "That delinquent must be punished for disrupting the harmony of our school, to say nothing of wanton property damage and the injury of far too many of our students."

As the pair started forward Takaharis took note of this and called Trudy's attention towards their action, which prompted the redhead to groan in complaint, "Those idiots! What do they think that they can do?"

"Probably try and slap him with a demerit for disorderly behavior," Takaharis suggested, then shrugged before adding, "Think we should try and stop them?"

"What, and leave the rest of these students exposed to possible danger?" Trudy growled, gnashing her teeth as she looked on with helpless frustration.

Other eyes held similar degrees of heightened alarm, among whom was Kuno Tatewaki, who looked on in dismay and said, "Father...what are you doing?"

"It would seem that he is asserting his duties as Principle of our fair school," Natsume remarked, "Only...against such a menace that has held even my sister on the ropes for several minutes..."

By this time, of course, David had fully recovered from the surprisingly powerful blow that had knocked even him for a loop and he was marveling that his foe had not pressed home his momentary advantage, but merely stood his ground with legs braced and arms spread wide as though waiting for something to happen. And-not being one to let such an opportunity pass up-David took the moment to summon his sword into his hand, only to hear himself addressed rather rudely from a different quarter.

"You there, Delinquent!" a child's voice drew him to stare in dismay as a young girl in a yellow dress approached him with an air of authority that seemed comically mismatched to her appearance, "Cease and desist all activities now or you shall be punished for your crimes against the students and staff of Furinkan High School."

Even as David started to take that statement in a larger and more roly-poly figure wearing a Hawaiian-style shirt, complete with Bermuda shorts, floppy sandals and extra-thick sunglasses declared, "You gonna get da sheers big time for you misbehavin, lil' kiki, so stand still and let da Big Kahuna show you how we deal wit' bad lil'students."

"What are you yammering about?" David frowned as he took notice of the menacing scissors and comb welded in the husky older man's hands, "Keep those things away from me, I'm warning you!"

"Uh oh..." Saki declared, sensing big trouble in the offing.

So did Kaneda, who stared in dismay and cried, "Principle Kuno, Miss Hinako-  
sensei...what are you doing? Get away from him before it's...!"

"The time for warning is over," Miss Hinako declared, thrusting out her coin and performing her favorite attack maneuver, which meant drawing a pentagram in the air while chanting her spell of invocation.

David reacted with a start and dug the tip of his sword into the ground as he felt his energy begin to be drained into the hand of the little girl, who abruptly started growing to full adulthood. His eyes got very wide as he saw her blossom out into a full-bodied figure of womanly magnificence, but instead of being intrigued by the change, as might another man in his place, his reaction was to spit out the word, "WITCHCRAFT! FOUL SORCERY! YOU ARE ATTEMPTING TO DAMN MY SOUL TO EVERLASTING TORMENT!"

"Oh yeah," Takaharis sniffed, "As if."

"As well you should suffer for the crimes that you have already committed!" the adult Hinako declared haughtily, "But punishing errant little boys like you is my specialty and craft in trade, so take your punishment like a man and submit to the decisions of your elders!"

"Never!" David cried, ripping his sword up out of the ground and using it to block the cone of absorption as it was large enough to act as a full-bodied shield against Hinako.

Miss Hinako was dismayed to feel the currents of energy that she had been absorbing change from that of a hot battle aura to something far colder and more bone-chilling than the iciest glacier. All at once the sword began to glow hotly, altering the temperature of the Chi that she absorbed to well beyond normal tolerances, which is why she abruptly broke off her attack and fell to her knees clutching at her head as something horrible and hideous attempted to assault her senses.

With the collapse of her absorption field, however, Principle Kuno sensed his moment to strike and thought to take advantage of the mildly weakened state of by delinquent. With a cry of, "Gotcha now, Kiki-!" he lunged to the attack, his scissors and comb extended to do their usual work of sheering the hairs from the heads of unwilling students...

But to his dismay David recovered in time and made a slashing counter-thrust with his sword that seemed to go right through the older man's mid-section as though his body were composed of humble rice paper.

"Oh..." Principle Kuno staggered to a halt, his expression non-plussed as he looked almost puzzled then said, "Big Kahuna...no feel so good..."

And then his top half peeled off from his lower body and landed to the side, his legs taking a moment longer to collapse as blood began to spurt from both halves of severed trunk, leaving only a stunned silence in the wake of his topple from grace and power.

And then Tatewaki gave out a horrid cry of, "FATHER!" which shattered the silence that had fallen over the entire Furinkan school campus.

"And now for you, Witch-Temptress," David declared without showing the slightest remorse for his actions, raising his sword high as he took aim at the crouching Hinako, whose neck was bared and made a very tempting target.

At the last second a yo-yo snapped out and caught Hinako around her mid-section, and then a second later she was yanked to relative safety before the blade could fall and split the earth where she had been kneeling.

"Got you!" Saki declared as she gripped the older woman in both arms, then hastily carried her from the field of impending disaster, murmuring under her breath, "Talk about ironies...who'd ever believe I'd be helping you of all people...?"

David appeared mildly dismayed at finding his second intending victim had eluded him, but the next instant later a cold voice declared with stony resolution, "Murderer!"

"Eh?" David looked up to find Saotome Ranma standing there but a short distance to his right side, "You again? I thought I took care of you the last..."

He never got to complete the sentence as the next moment his head exploded in pain and he once more found himself to be horizontally airborne.

"Murderer!" Ranma snarled once again, his fists balled and as hard as rocks, his eyes totally black with the color of basalt.

"Ranma-kun?" Kaneda said in surprise, seeing his husband now fully recovered and in a towering rage that seemed entirely appropriate for the situation.

"I'm back, Nab-chan," Ranma replied without turning a glance towards his sex-  
changed wife, "And I'm ready to kick that bastard all the way from here to China!"

"Good to have you back," Kaneda smiled briefly, only the shock of having seen Principle Kuno get cut down caused her face to resolve into a hardened look of cold determination, "What say we share and share alike on this one? He seems tough enough to stand up to a double treatment."

"Fine with me," Ranma declared, "You use water-based attacks, I'll hit him Earth-style, and he'll never known what hit him."

"Huh?" Kaneda blinked, "How did you know about..."

**He seems very different to me somehow, Mistress,** Sharil informed her host body, **I suspect he has come to an arrangement with Nashalla that is very similar to our own present alliance."

"Do tell," Kaneda mused, "Well...we're gonna have to straighten things out when this is all over, but for now..."

"It's showtime," Ranma declared, and together he and Kaneda launched a double-  
attack on the recovering David...

"What troubles thee, Father?" Thelendra asked as she noticed the expression upon the handsome face of the man who had sired her in more than the present incarnation.

"This," Anri replied as he gazed down from the cloud that they were currently sitting within to observe the continuing battle taking place below them, "This endless tragedy that I have seen repeat itself so often. How did it ever come to this? There is blood on his hands...blood that is partially my fault, and I can do little to stop or effect its outcome."

"Thou dost needlessly exaggerate, Father," Thelendra assured, "Never told thee them that they shouldst kill and murder one another in thy name...or rather in the false name of the base pretender whose ideals became incorporate within the body of text that was falsely attributed in thy name..."

"Don't try and whitewash my sins with such excuses, Thelendra, for they are many and deep," Anri said with infinite sadness, "Had I truly known where things would lead I would never have undertaken to presume to lead my people down the path that I mistook for enlightenment. And now this latest chapter of shame must unfold on its own accords, even though I could put an end to things with but a word..."

"And damn all of humanity in the process," Thelendra sadly reminded her sire, "Thou dost know the way and wherefore as good as any who live, and these decisions and choices, once made long in the past, but unfold according to the pattern that thou didst set in motion so very long ago. It be proof indeed that even the best of intentions can have singularly unwanted outcomes."

"This much is true," Anri conceded, "Yet why am I forever to be tormented by this endless stream of fools and false idolaters who shamelessly spout misquotations of lines that I never uttered to begin with? And this Korean boy...did you know that I used to be close friends with his father?"

"No," Thelendra was surprised, "Thou and Lord Kyledor? Even for thee 'tis a strange combination."

"No stranger than out own relationships," Anri said, "And...speaking of which, it seems Udan has at long last arrived upon the scene. Things ought to get interesting with him there..."

"Interesting as in that time in ancient Pompeii when he did clash arms with uncle Reka?" Thelendra fairly shuddered.

"Their fights do tend to get a bit out of hand like that," Anri conceded, "But, fortunately, there is no sign of Reka just yet...meaning he has not quite arrived upon this timeline this early. Hopefully-sister Ulsa willing-we can be spared his presence for just a day or two longer, though when the time comes for him to play his part..."

"That is where things truly will become explosive," Thelendra sagely predicted.

"Shame about the boy...so much innocent blood has been spilled by his hands," Anri shook his head sadly, "For the sake of his father I might intervene on his behalf, show him the error of his ways, inform him of just how far he has been deceived by those who use him, even reveal to him the true extent of his heritage and put to rest all of the lies that confuse and torment his very being..."

"But again doing so violates the pact that we agreed to," Thelendra reminded him, "And t'would alert the enemy that we are here prematurely. Not very good as trade-offs go I fear, Father."

"That I well know to be certain," Anri replied, "And yet...I perceive a ray of hope for us, a narrow sliver of possibilities that could redeem the hour."

"The thread for that grows exceedingly thin, Father," Thelendra cautioned as she seemingly plucked at invisible strings hovering in the air, as though moving things around in search of a more desirable outcome, "Even direct intervention cannot assure success at this point...only the skill and bravery of mortals can hope to bring light to this looming tide of darkness."

"Not to worry," Anri assured her with a smile, "Hope yet remains in the person of several of the players. We must work delicately to restore the balance, and to coax events along so that they can turn out more in line with our objectives."

"And if that fails to produce the results desired, Father?" Thelendra asked.

"Then we improvise, go to plan B, as the mortals would put it," Anri answered.

"Plan B?" Thelendra regarded her father with a quixotic expression, "And that be what, pray tell?"

"What else?" Anri answered with an unreadable expression of his own, "Divine intervention...to counter the sad chain of events that led to this calamity in the first place."

"Oh," Thelendra replied, "That."

"You have doubts?" Anri asked with a trace of amusement.

"Call them reservations if thou wouldst, Father mine," Thelendra answered, "Thee dost know better than any that a wound exists in the firmament of this reality, and history dost repeat its wrongs with measure for measure, so that one evil gives birth to many others in tragic sequence...and the only way to heal a wound is to forgive and move on, to nay return it, to break the sad chain of karma and liberate the soul from its memory bondage."

"Well, if you know all of that then why do you need me?" Anri asked with his usual self-deprecating manner, "I should just retire from the field and leave you the whole franchise."

"Father," Thelendra chided, having little patience for his quirky sense of humor, "Thou art what thou were't destined to be, just as I be fated to serve in the capacity of your oracle and adviser. We can nay change what we be nor escape the roles that destiny has played for us. Only mortals have that option, they who be nay so tied to the workings of the fates as thou and I art."

"Well, it was just a thought anyway," Anri shrugged, "But be mindful that our roles are not so tightly scripted that we are incapable of improvising. In your case I would be keeping an open mind about the possibilities that lay open to you. After all, we all have choices about how we pursue our dreams and objectives, and yours are not yet fully written in stone..."

"Why dost thou tempt me so, Father?" Thelendra scowled, "Think thou to test mine resolve, to see if I be able to master mine own desires in the performance of mine duties? Or art thou seeking to push me into this by providing me with choices that can only but yield disaster?"

"Am I doing that with you?" Anri asked as if surprised by the very question, "I merely suggest that you do not write off the possibility prematurely...at least until you are certain where the right and wrong of the matter are to be found. Consider that well, and recall everything that I have sought to teach you over the years about following your heart as well as your head...and before you bring it up, yes, I am aware of the issues of conflicted loyalties this raises. But you are also a grown woman, over six hundred years in this incarnation, with the memories of other lives before this...and I trust you to do what is right. Just...don't be so hasty about jumping to any conclusions. Give your heart a chance and then...we will see about where this leads us."

"But...the consequences, Father?" Thelendra asked hesitantly.

"Let the consequences take care of their own," Anri replied, "In the end you are still my daughter, and nothing you do could ever change the way I feel about you."

"Father," Thelendra turned her full regard towards him, "With the weight of all humanity upon thine shoulders, how be it that still thou dost take time to attempt to be a father at this late juncture?"

"Making up for lost time?" Anri smiled that smile that was full of infinite sadness, "After all...in few of our mutual incarnations have I been able to provide you with a proper childhood upbringing. There was always the cause to get in the way, and I feel at times as though you were cheated of the birthright that should belong to any daughter."

"But we be nay conventional father and daughter in that sense," Thelendra said sadly, "But try shall I to heed thine sage counsel, even though my mind and instincts warn me that some choices are more adversely weighted than others in the scales of fate's balance..."

Even as she said those words she cast her eyes towards a certain road down which a powerful vehicle was speeding even at that moment...and towards the passenger who rode in back upon that two wheeled conveyance, clinging tightly to the well defined abdomen of a man who was several times again a man and stood presently as an obstacle between what Thelendra knew to be right...and what she actually desired, which was another thing entirely in the scope of cosmic wisdom...

Continued.

Comments/Criticisms/Cosmic Kismet Calculations: shadowmane

Or:

Shadowmane9849

The battle between the Tendo Posse and David winds up next episode when the final arrivals upon our play show themselves, albeit from the sidelines. But what will be the ultimate effect of this encounter, and is it a tragic moment in the lives of the students of Furinkan High School...or but the opening volley in a much darker war that has yet to fully unfold before our heroes...and will they measure up to the challenge or ultimately be found wanting? Learn more of this the next time in, "Last Tango in Japan," or, "Once Upon a Time in Nerima." Be there...

X

/pre 


	71. Chapter 71

preDnabiki160

Nabiki 1/2

"A Very Scary Thought"

by Jim Robert Bader

(Inspired by the works of Rumiko Takahashi Others,  
with concepts and characters created by fellow fanfic writers Wade Tritschler, DB Sommers, Nicole Manders, Andrew Greaves, Bill Guiroff and countless others, including "Buffy"  
creator Joss Whedon; with special thanks to my good pal Shiva for his editing and handling of this series.)

(Certain other characters and concepts are of my own innovation, including my interpretation of the Monster of Mary Shelly's novel, the Furies, Trudy, Takaharis Angelique d'Anjou and various other guest stars appearing in this portion of the Nabiki 1/2 series...)

Chapter Sixty-Four.

Episode One-Hundred-Sixty.

Angel versus Fanatic.  
(Round Four)

The Conclusion.

"It's disgusting I tell you, simply shameful and not to be tolerated."

"Now dear," a man said to his wife as the two of them passed down a certain road through the suburban area of the Nerima district, "You know it's none of our business to be concerned about..."

"I'm telling you it's an outrage!" the middle-aged woman declared with what was a rare display of outward intemperance for a Japanese woman, who normally observed a proper decorum when in the company of strangers, "It ought to be banned! I'm telling you, my best friend says that her niece is considering dating another girl her own age, and the way she tells it many of her classmates are similarly doing what they call 'experimentation' with same-sex dating. It's utterly unheard of! What next, marriage licenses for Retzu? Or are they considering legally adopting children into their perverse lifestyle?"

"Now dear," the man glanced nervously about himself, taking notice of a party of young people who were presently headed down the sidewalk in the opposite direction, "We shouldn't be making that much of a fuss...at least, not so loudly..."

"Loud?" his wife declared in continued disgust, "I'm telling you, whoever's behind this movement ought to be arrested! The very idea out to be denounced as loudly in public as can be voiced without a bull horn! Someone is responsible for corrupting our youth, and if I ever find out who it is I'm going to report them!"

The party of young people, three of them in wheel chairs that were being pushed along by a pair of women and a young-seeming man whose rugged build made the man feel conscious of his own sagging physique, were staring at the older couple coming near to them, and the man thought he detected scowls and glares of disapproval that made him shrink a bit into his collar.

Oddly enough, he noticed, two of the women were wearing what looked like-at first glance-back packs, but on closer examination he discovered they were carrying babies on their backs "Papoose" style, while a third woman had her sleeping infant cuddled on her lap and was holding the child quite gentle as though to cradle her to sleep. There was also a young girl-child of roughly one or two years age hovering close by the leg of one of the redheads pushing the wheel chair, and somewhat behind her stood a tiny man in a Ninja-  
style outfit. The latter was clearly the oldest member of the party, the rest looking as though they were still in high school in spite of it being near noon on a school day.

Even as he registered these details about the party, his wife quickly oriented her wrath their way and said, "You there...shame on your for not being with your husbands! And you, young man, keep a close eye on your wife, assuming you aren't the one who fathered all of these children yourself as I hear that there's some pervert about whose started up his own harem..."

One of the redheads, the one walking barefoot with a tomboyish stride while dressed in shorts and a tank-  
top while carrying a back-pack and pushing the wheel chair of a darker-haired woman, suddenly brightened up and said cheerfully, "Actually, Ryo-kun's not our husband...he's more like our love-slave..."

"Nani?" the man asked blankly while seeing what looked like hunch-shoulder confirmation in the wince the young boy in question gave at this comment.

"Just kidding," the pigtailed redhead grinned, "The truth is that he's married t Akane-chan here, but you don't need to worry about them. It's all entirely legal, and he really is the father of the baby..."

"Oh?" the wife of the man asked, halting in place to size up this peculiar redhead.

"And actually you don't need to worry about us being a bunch of loose-moraled perverts," she continued rather smoothly, "After all, there really isn't any such thing as Lesbianism and Bisexuality..."

"There isn't?" the man asked, feeling like one of his personal fetish fantasies was being repudiated.

"Of course not," the redhead grinned, "Everyone knows you need a man to catch a girl's interest and to father a baby. The whole idea about Lesbianism is just a product of the media, it doesn't really happen in real life."

"Er...you don't say?" the man's wife asked in growing confusion.

"Now honestly," the redhead gave her a very frank look, "Do you really think that any red-blooded girl worthy of the name wants to kiss another girl when there are so many great-looking guys available for the task? I'm telling you, the whole thing's just a plot dreamed up in con men out of their money so they can buy Manga tomes and watch all sorts of perverted movies. You can tell it's all fake the way the girls pretend to go down on one another, as if they actually enjoy it when it's not even their idea, they're just doing it for a paycheck. Without the money you couldn't get them to even look at another girl that way, let alone pretend to stick her tongue in someone else's crotch...I mean...ugh! Can you imagine?"

"Ah...well...er..." the older woman stammered.

"And it's not like any girl can really get excited without a man's love-tool to stimulate her, right?" the cocky redhead said with a wink in her eye as she leaned closer and whispered in a conspiratorial manner, "You really shouldn't pay too much close attention to rumors. I'll bet your friend is just having a bit of fun with you, and her niece is dating a nice boy but doesn't really want to admit it, so she pretends she's with a girlfriend and thereby keep her folks from worrying that she might wind up pregnant..."

"Um...well...I suppose that does make sense...sort of..." the older woman reluctantly conceded.

"Right," the redhead gave an indulgent smile then said, "Now, if you both will excuse us, I'm going to pay a visit to my husband. After all, it's his turn to change the diapers."

With that the party continued forward, leaving the man to wonder if their legs were being deliberately pulled by the redhead, but when he turned to glance their way he saw the smiling nod that she gave in his direction...and then deliberately patted the head of the brunette whose chair she was pushing in a coy and subtle way that left one in no doubt that they both were "together" in more than just a casual sense of the word.

For some odd reason he found himself smiling at that, and holding his piece rather than disabuse his wife of her silent contemplation of the issue. Effectively she had just been shut up in a very clever and direct way that went over her head completely, leaving the man alone to understand the con that had just been pulled with them...and for that reason alone he felt oddly superior and enlivened, and he silently wished the redhead a long and happy life of blissful joy with her "girlfriend."

Once they were fully out of earshot, Kodachi turned a glance towards Keiko and said, "You are shameless, Darling."

"Thank you, Mistress," Keiko replied with her trademark cocky smile, "I knew that would get your approval."

"The way you were going on just now...if I didn't know you any better I'd almost have believed it," Akane in the second wheel chair marveled.

"Indeed," Beatrice remarked as she rode in the third wheel chair with her sleeping daughter "Geena" cradled in her arms and sleeping as if one innocent to the prejudice that would be turned against her just for merely existing, "One has to admire your sly whit and tact in handling that woman. No doubt it will take her many days to decide whether or not to believe you, at which point she will actually have done some thinking, which can only help to improve her disposition.

"Maybe so," Alison frowned, "But if she were a guy I would've decked her for saying stuff like that about us and our kids. Whatever happened to every person minding their own frigging business and not drawing attention by being such a loud mouth?"

"More like a fish-wife," Beatrice turned and gave Ryoga a respectful look, "And for our collective sake, Ryoga-kun, my apologies for allowing those comments to stand as the ignorant woman was judging you without knowing all of the circumstances."

"Hey, I'm used to it by now," Ryoga shrugged, "Of course...it galls me a bit that she seems to have gotten me mixed up with Ranma..."

"I know what you mean, Ryo-kun," Akane murmured, "But even though I've had my share of problems with my adopted brother, Ranma's always tried to do the right thing and I really think it's unfair to hear him being categorized as a pervert."

"Who says he meant Ranma?" Keiko asked, "Sounded more like Nab-chan she was describing...but I tend to agree, it was a gross mischaracterization."

"Hey, to a mind like that everything about us must seem perverted," Alison remarked, "I mean...look at me, I settled down with my biggest rival and former enemy, and we have two kids together. Not exactly normal to the standards of the community..."

"Oh yeah," Keiko grinned, "As if being the daughter of two superheroes and the granddaughter of a pair of Grecian gods didn't mark you to begin with. Me, I'm the love-child of a US GI who's also a major league street-fighter, and growing up the daughter of a single mom was enough of a burden to carry on my shoulders, and I got in a lot of fights growing up, which toughened me into the girl I am today. Of course a stint with Madam Lao and a tour of the backwoods of Shanghai and Hong Kong as a cage fighter had something to do with it as well...but my point is, who needed to be a lesbian to get the wrong kind of attention?"

"She has a point you know," Ryoga said, surprising everyone in voicing his own opinion.

"What do you mean, Ryo-chan?" Akane asked of her husband.

"Um...well..." Ryoga said somewhat self-consciously, "Having know Kei-chan longer than the rest of you, I've seen her take some...pretty awful abuse from people who judge her by her looks, which give away her half-  
gaijin ancestry. There are a lot of people who'd call her some pretty awful things on account of that, saying she's diluting the pure bloodline of the Japanese...and other stuff I can't repeat in polite company. Not that I would want to."

"I hear where you are coming from, Ryo-kun," Beatrice remarked, "Being half-Japanese myself with obvious Amerasian looks I had to coerce, bribe and blackmail people into being friends with me, which is how I created my own inner group of loyal lackeys. Not real friends, more like henchwomen to do my bidding. And then I met Aiko and...someone else who was very important to us both, and it turned my whole life around...the rest being what you know about us. And yes...it sometimes is not easy having to explain our relationship...not that I care a whit about what other people think about our relationship, least of all my father."

"Oh gawd, is he trying to reach you again, Beiko?" Alison griped, "After you told him off the last three times you yelled him off on the phone?"

"I wasn't yelling, Alison," Beatrice said with strained dignity, "I was merely forcefully presenting my position to my sole surviving parent, whom I find it difficult to be civil with seeing as how he screwed me out of the justly earned royalties that my genius produced for his company, and then has the nerve to declare that my union with you is a passing phase that I'll be growing out of over time..."

"He said that?" Alison reacted with a start, "Why that no good stuck-up..."

"Ahem," Akane cleared her throat, calling her friends back to earth so that they might head off one of those explosive moments in a public setting that might call undue attention to their rather unconventional group as they continued down the block towards her house to pay their respects to her parents, and thus missed a significant clue that they were not really alone as a figure perched within a nearby tree was watching them underneath without hardly making a sound or giving an inkling to her covert presence.

Once they were beyond her, however, she spoke aloud into a portable receiver, "Contact, Mom. I'm in position marking six adults and four kids, one of them my good buddy Ekko in her really cute chibi phase, and that must be her prissy kid sister, Geeko, as a tiny little baby. Gawd...I feel like such a voyeur just being in this time zone...and I can see what you mean about that Keiko chick...she looks just like me! I mean...gawd...and my Mom in this timeline is sleeping with her? And Uncle Ryoga's the father of her baby?"

In her ear she heard her adopted mother's voice say, "Don't be freaked out about the small stuff, Ranko-  
chan, and try to maintain a professional mindset while doing this. You have the skills and the training but not the experience of a certified field worker, so if you want to avoid disrupting the timeflow..."

"Yeah, yeah, I get it already, Mom," Ranko griped, "Stop being such a mother all the time. Save it for Meiko, she's young enough to appreciate it better..."

"Says an eighteen year old about her fourteen year old sister," her mother replied, "And stick to the mission. I pulled a lot of strings to get you this field position, and if our ever-understanding supervisor hadn't agreed that you were the best choice for this assignment..."

"Right," Ranko replied, "Sticking with the mission. I just wish I was better prepared to find out about how flirtatious my mom is on this timeline. I mean, not only a girl who looks like me and uncle Ryoga...but Aunt Kodachi? Who next? Dad? No, wait a minute, we already did that one on my original home timeline."

"Just keep it together, Ran-chan," her mother instructed, "Little sister Akane's happily married and involved in an open relationship that just happens to involve several other people who are parallel doubles of the people you know now or knew growing up. You've been to enough worlds by now that you realize that virtually anything that can happen will happen on one or more alternate timelines..."

"Thanks Mom, and yeah, I remember my physics lessons from my Academy days," Ranko growled, "So just so we clarify what I've observed so far, three women-one a parallel of my biological mother-all in wheel chairs and holding babies, were being wheeled back towards my home...ah...their home, I mean. And with them is a one-year-old baby who one days is gonna grow up to become the main squeeze of my little niece, Lylac..."

"Who's also a premier martial artist who could probably kick your butt if you pushed her two it," her mother dutifully pointed out.

"Oh come on!" Ranko exclaimed, "I absorbed her moves along with everybody else that I've encountered in my travels, Dad notwithstanding. Sure she's an amazing fighter with phenomenal good moves, and she's really more like my cousin than my sister, and she's smart and witty and runs the show whenever she's around..."

"Stop describing her as if you wanted to date her and focus on the task at hand," her mother chided, "According to the monitors some major event is starting up in that area and it's causing reverberations all over the time-charts, so keep your senses sharp and stay alert to any anomalies, because something catastrophic either has or is about to happen out there, and when it does you'd better be ready to act like our agent in the field..."

"Right, I got that part," Ranko averred as she remained perched along the tree branch, listening to the wind in the leaves as she added, "Something happening in Nerima...like, what are the odds? Outside of those years I spent traveling with Grampa Happy training on the road I grew up in this neighborhood, and for as long as I can remember something happens in this berg like every ten minutes and-JEEZUZZZ!"

"What was that...oh...kuso!" she heard her mother say on the other end of the line, "Ranko-chan...moving just south of your position..."

"I know...I felt it, Mom...that guy again," Ranko said as she turned around and almost fell out of the tree as she reacted to the surge of tidal energies passing just to the left and almost directly beneath her, causing her to gasp aloud as a huge object passed below her making a sound not unlike a dragon rumbling in search of hungry prey, and the resemblance was so acute to real dragons of Ranko's acquaintance that she was absolutely convinced that a real one had just passed by her altogether.

It took a full minute and well over a hundred heartbeats before she could finally respond to her mother's entreaties, and then the first words that she said were, "Omigawd...it was that guy! The one dad fought with in that diner! He's here...and what the fuck is he doing driving an eighteen wheeled truck through a residential zone...and in my city?"

"Quick Ranko...which way is he headed?"

Ranko did a quick mental calculation and determined that the sleek indigo-and-silver was not headed towards her house but in a different direction entirely, and then she gasped, "Furinkan! He's headed for the high school!"

"Then that's where you need to go, and fast!" her mother snapped, "There's no time to waste, Ranko-  
chan...if Bartev the Blackguard is going to Furinkan then it means you'd better be headed there too, and don't spare the leg power either!"

"Right Mom, I'm on it," Ranko said, and then like a flash she vanished from the tree, moving faster than a thought as she aimed herself for Furinkan High School of the present...

"Ugh...what hit me?" Morrigar groaned as she felt her head and wondered what could have knocked her for a loop like that. One minute she was watching a really interesting fight from concealment, the next a wave of energy went right through the tree that she was hiding in and...

"I don't believe it," she murmured while staring at the sky, "I got knocked unconscious? By a half-breed of Kirin stock?"

She sat up abruptly, unable to comprehend the length of time she had laid there in a daze with the tree toppled from its base as though the middle trunk were partially disintegrated, and there off some distance away was that silver-haired twerp with the Kirin's Claw blade ranting on like a holy roller while pairing off against two male opponents this time, one the handsome stud from before and the other a guy whom Morrigar had already counted as out of the action.

"What the hell did I miss?" she wondered aloud, then turned as a stray breeze brought the familiar scent of blood to her sensitive nostrils, and then she groaned, "Someone died...and I missed it? Damnation! Who was it?"

"No one whom you would know."

"Eh...?" Morrigar was suddenly aware of a shadow hovering over her, and then she hesitantly glanced up and found a familiar presence glaring down at her, and definitely not one of the annoying humans whom she had been observing in the background.

"What are you doing here, Cousin?" the figure asked in an authoritative tone that lacked for warmth and sympathy, "As if I didn't already know."

"Takaharis?" Morrigar gulped, seeing through the illusory disguise of humanity that concealed the very potent Devil woman glaring down at her with a tone of looming menace, "Ah...fancy meeting you here...Cousin..."

"I have a message from you from your younger half-sister," Takaharis said sternly, "Keep away from her son...and anyone close to him. I know how you work and I know what you're here for, and if you do anything at all to upset cousin Atsuko..."

"Oh...her boy?" Morrigar nervously asked, "Is he around here? Well, fancy that...I never would have imagined..."

"Sure," Takaharis sniffed skeptically, "And of course you're not attracted to scenes of death and gory destruction for a hobby. Now run along before you make me reconsider letting you live...at least for the next hour or so."

Morrigar took the hint and scrambled to her feet, but still she paused to glare back at her Erinyes cousin and growled, "You think you're so high and mighty and better than me, don't you, Taki? Well...don't try and pretend to be so very different from me, horny-girl, just because you used to hobnob with some Angels...what the?"

Both Devil and Demoness turned as one and stared off into the distance, and then Takaharis said, "I feel it too...a feeling of great power on the move...like a dragon or a giant...but...?"

"I know what that is," Morrigar swallowed, displaying real dread in her voice that she did not even bother attempting to conceal, "Who that is! But it can't be...not now, not here!"

"Who?" Takaharis replied, wondering what could strike such a note of fear into the heart of her chaos-loving kinswoman.

"You don't know him...you haven't been on earth as long as I have...but take my word on it and keep well away from him, Taki! You have no idea what he's capable of, what he can do to our kind...and believe me, you don't want to!"

With that she faded away from view, leaving Takaharis to wonder about that ominous presence that she was feeling...

Not far away an eighteen wheeled vehicle pulled to an abrupt stop just opposite to the side of the road where Furinkan high school lay, and then a figure stepped out from the cab and looked around with a puzzled expression of his own upon his ruggedly handsome features. He turned to stare at the wall behind which he sensed great powers were in motion, and with a frown of inscrutable nature seemed to stare right through the walls themselves, making out all pertinent features as though he had powers of X-ray vision or could see through solid objects by other methods...

In the yard itself a three-way battle was in full gear, or rather a battle in which two of the protagonists were utilizing powers and abilities borrowed from their respective elemental allies, while the one whom they stood in opposition to fought back with an oversized blade whose elemental nature was more than counter to the pair's stolid advantage.

But as a tools is only as good as the one who uses it, so too is a weapon of little use when skills were as lopsidedly weighted against one another. Though strong, fast and powerful, the young silver-haired boy named David was not the equal of his foes in the skills department. Where he had the talent they had the mastery of mind and body that he lacked, so even though he was an experienced "giant killer" he still was taking the worst of their exchanges.

And-further complicating matters-the pair opposing him used such radically different and contrasting styles of combat that it was difficult to rally a defense against their methods. They fought tenaciously and yet seemed to have an instinctive appreciation of one another's maneuvers, often coordinating their attacks and defenses without needing to communicate verbally between them, which also kept David on the defensive as he never knew which would next attack and which one would serve to block an attack in defense of the other.

Ranma's fists had the force and integrity of a stone hammer as she landed a solid blow on the jaw of the half-breed assassin, while Nabiki's attacks were more fluid and had the elusive tenacity of water as she flowed around and assaulted their foe from unexpected angles. David was hard pressed to absorb their attacks, and as powerful as his own movements were he might as well have been fighting in molasses as he failed time and again to connect with his counter-strokes, while they had no difficulty dancing around the swings of his ridiculously oversized sword and getting inside his guard to maintain their relentless offensive.

But the more they pounded on him the angrier he became, and as fast as they inflicted damage David managed to shrug it off and continued to attack them, acting as if fatigue did not impair his movements in the slightest, and so powerful were his attacks that a single one-if it connected-would have ended the battle for at least one or both of his assailants.

"Hey, is it my imagination...or is he somehow getting...stronger?" Ranma asked in momentary dismay before glaring in wrath and adding, "Guess we'll just have to pound on him even harder..."

Nabiki-in her male guise as Kaneda-appreciated this fact even more than her husband and said, "This is no good, Ranchan...whatever he's made of, we're likely going to tire a lot sooner than him."

"Not before we pound his face into the ground for murdering Tachi-kun's dad!" Ranma angrily declared, "The bastard cut Principal Kuno down like he was nothing!"

"The fool got in my way and made the mistake of attacking me!" David shot back in defensive outrage, "It wasn't murder! And besides, anyone who defies the will of our Lord deserves only the fate that comes to him, and nothing less than that!"

With that declaration he swung his massively oversized sword once again and created yet another shock-  
wave in an attempt to mow them down like wheat before a scythe, but Ranma reacted by raising one hand and causing a wall of stone to rise up and take form from the ground, blunting the attack and absorbing the bulk of its energy. Then Nabiki countered by waving her own hand in a lateral motion, and all at once a wave of force rolled through the very earth itself and a liquid wave showered down at David like a tidal wave, turning that energy back upon him.

He barely managed to cleave through it with his sword but the counter-offensive left him momentarily rattled, and he spat out the word, "Witchcraft! You both are in league with demons...!"

"Man, I am getting sick and tired of that self-righteous attitude of yours, Dude," Kaneda said while assuming a crouch and squaring his stance in readiness for his next maneuver, "You came here to kill someone, and even if all we do is slow you down I'd still like to know why and who's really behind this!"

"You're not entitled to know, Heathen!" David declared, raising his sword for another stroke, only to receive a punch in his solar plexus that sent him sprawling backwards, losing his grip once again on his sword.

"And I'm sick of hearing you call us Heathens, you Gaijin!" Ranma snapped, "I ain't much on picking fights with people on account of where they come from, but you really push my limits when it comes to tolerating foreign crap like you're pushing around! Anybody ever tell you it ain't nice to judge others?"

"Yeah, to say nothing about the total hypocrisy of calling yourself a Christian while disregarding one of its chief commandments against killing," Kaneda declared while completing his preparatory summoning maneuvers, unleashing his attack now that Ranma instinctively stepped out of the way, both hands thrust forward as he channeled his Ki and projected it forward in a focused blast that sent a ball of energy hurtling in David's direction.

The boy was caught off-guard by the attack and was struck head-on by the full force of the Mako Takabishi, and it sent him hurtling backwards, plowing yet another furrow in the yard before he come to rest a hundred meters away. He lay in a smoldering furrow near the edge of the track field and too all appearances appeared to finally be taken out of the action.

"Nice shot, Nabchan," Ranma complimented, "Nailed that sucker good, and hopefully he'll take the hint this time and stay down."

"For everyone's sake I sure hope you're right, Ranchan," Kaneda said as he straightened out, then glanced sideways, "There's already been enough damage and bloodshed as it is, and any more would turn the tragedy into a farce, if you catch my drift."

Ranma followed his husband-wife's gaze and saw the figures gathered around two parts of a shattered body and said, "Oh...yeah...I catch it completely..."

"Father..." Tatewaki Kuno said in stunned disbelief while Natsume tried to console him, looking stick to her stomach at the blood and gore spilled out from the remains of the former Principal.

"Principal Kuno..." Vice Principal Choy said in equal parts of dismay and horror, "How could this happen?"

"Easy," Trudy answered, "He picked the wrong fight with the wrong guy. Happens in this line of work, poor bastard."

"That is a very harsh way of putting things I should think," Takaharis frowned, "Death should never be treated callously, as I should know as well as any other."

"Agreed," Hinako said in her adult form, "And Koucho Kuno was only doing his duty to uphold the integrity of Furinkan High School, just as I was attempting to do...and if not for the efforts of this young lady it would have been me who lay there in two sections."

"Yeah, well...call it a reflex," Saki shrugged, "Had to make a split-second call there, and it was either act of see you get wasted, so..."

"Indeed, and such a great pity it would be if she had indeed fallen victim to that mad wretch."

"Angel?" Trudy whirled about, "Are you all right now? I was kinda worried for a few minutes there..."

"I am healed and fully recovered, Cheri," Angelique assured her friend while staring with sad regret at the remains of the former head of Furinkan High School, "Alas too late to be of use to this poor unfortunate soul...God have mercy upon him."

"Fair maiden..." Tatewaki turned a hopeful glance her way, "You can heal with your touch...you restored those who were injured...surely...?"

"Alas, beyond my abilities, mon Cher," Angelique shook her head sadly, "Full resurrection can only be performed by a priest whose skill level exceeds my own...or else a petition to God herself to bring the dead back to the living, which only can be done under conditions and circumstances that allow it."

"And this guy is way dead," Trudy said reluctantly, "You'd need a wish ring or a major surgeon to restore the kind of damage that he's just taken..."

"Besides which it is zee soul for which you must care at this stage of life's ending," Angelique said as she knelt down beside the body then made a petitioning sign in the air, forming a glyph that appeared to hover over the body for several seconds, "He must find his way through the portal of transition if he is to move onto his next incarnation."

She bowed her head and started to pray, which prompted Natsume to ask, "What are you doing? A Christian prayer for the dead?"

"Nope, definitely not Christian," Trudy assured her, "Angel respects all cultures and the people within them...at least, everyone but the Chaotic-Evil types. She knows the old man was born in the Shinto tradition and so she's asking on behalf of the Kami and your ancestors that they send a spiritual guide to lead him to the next plane of being."

"You would do this...for my father?" Tatewaki asked as he stared at the lovely blonde chanting words that sounded like an odd cross between Japanese and something...altogether more ancient.

Angelique paused in her chanting to say, "I will honor his spirit in the manner for which is most fitting, Monsieur Kuno. I shall leave to you the disposal of zee body...but his soul is its own to Master."

With that she completed the chant then performed a final ritual gesture, then extended her right hand towards the body as if to offer it a hand...and-much to the astonishment of everyone but Trudy-lines of force appeared to flow from around the corpse and concealed in pallid light to form a single whole image, which slowly rose up from the ground and accepted the hand, then smiled with a jolly smile and said, "Hey now...da big Kahuna is back..."

"Father?" Tatewaki gasped, not alone in his frank amazement.

"But not for long, mon Cher," Angelique said as she straightened up, clasping hands with the ghost as he stood...or appeared to as his legs were somewhat hazy. The Temuvarai then made another ritual gesture and said, "Emissaries from beyond are here to guide you to your destination. Go in peace and be well, and leave behind zee love and regard of those who knew you."

"Hey...I tink I see who ya talkin' about, Kiki," the ghostly image of the man said as he glanced to the side as though seeing something that others could not, "Dey look like good sorts, but..."

His voice faded away, as did the rest of him, becoming totally transparent and then fading into nothing.

"Go with grace, Monsieur," Angelique said reverently, "May God's grace go with you, and fare well unto your next incarnation."

Takaharis eyed the blonde and said, "Very well performed...but just how did you manage to summon two Angels of their level and type?"

"It pays to have good connections with zee higher planes, ma Cheri," Angelique winked, "But of course I but acted as a summoner on behalf of my lady. Zee rest is in God's hands, and to her mercy I do commend zee spirit of zhis boy's gallant father."

"Gallant," Vice Principal Choy remarked, "That's the first time I've heard that word applied to Principal Kuno..."

"Tachi-kun," Ranma said as he approached the scene of tragedy, grace and carnage, "I'm so sorry, buddy...I couldn't do anything to stop that creep from..."

"No words, Ranma-kun," Tatewaki replied, "You did what you could to punish the interloper. The shame is with me that my own efforts were...inadequate to the task, for it is on my shoulders that the burden rests to claim vengeance upon the murderer of my father."

"Nay good sir," Angelique contradicted him, "Vengeance belongs to God alone, though she never claims it upon any who seek her mercy. Rather justice be your right to claim upon zee fool who defiles zee very name of what he claims to be holy."

"I stand corrected, good lady," Tatewaki acknowledged, "You have done me and my family a great honor, and I stand in your debt once again for this favor you have rendered unto my father."

"Ah...excuse me for asking since I came late on the scene and all of that," Kaneda said, eyeing the armored Angelique a bit dubiously, "But what's with the get-up? You making a fashion statement with that lady Galahad look you're sporting?"

"One dresses for zee need and occasion, Monsieur," Angelique remarked, "In my case zee armor I wear is token of zee grace of God, in whose cause I champion..."

"LOOK OUT!" Trudy suddenly spoke up, and all at once she turned and made a series of hand gestures then pushed outwardly with both hands, just barely in time as something collided forcefully with an invisible barrier that she had hastily erected.

"What the hell...?" Kaneda turned around.

"Zut alors!" Angelique started.

"I don't bloody believe it!" Ranma declared, "He took a full-force Mako-blast to the chest...no way can he be standing!"

"What in the name of the Kami is he made of?" Miss Hinako stammered.

"Easy," Takaharis said more fatalistically, "He's part Kirin, which means that spiritual energy is in his blood and he can't be taken down by a mere energy blast."

"Fools!" David declared, leaning his weight upon his retrieved sword and glaring at them with malevolent fury, "You turn your back on me and ignore your peril...as if the emissary of God could be felled by your foul witchcraft!"

Trudy fell to her knees and gasped, "Took a lot out of me...calling that up. Kid packs a wallop of his own...and don't be fooled by his weak appearance."

"Agreed," Takaharis noted, "I can read his energy levels...and they seem to be exponentially increasing the longer your fight with him continues."

"What?" Kaneda said in blank reaction.

"Is that even possible?" Ranma gasped.

"Possible or not, it seems as if he means to renew the battle," Natsume duly noted.

Kuno gripped his bokken and shook with rage, "Churl! Have you no decency at all? Can you not even respect the dead whom you have created?"

"I do not kill, I am a weapon in the hand of God!" David declared hotly, raising his sword in renewed determination, "I may have underestimated you before, but I am prepared now to do whatever it takes to win victory against the enemies of my Lord Otono!"

"Lord Otono?" Kaneda repeated, but his next words were drowned out as all at once David brought his sword up high and sliced the ground once again, causing a wave of force far greater than before to orient towards the gathered party as the earth opened up to swallow them completely...

"He hasn't completed his mission yet?" Lord Otono asked in mild confusion as he gazed out of the window in the general direction of the Nerima district, "How strange...David has never failed us before in the execution of an assignment."

"Apparently he has run into a bit more interference than what he is accustomed to encountering," Lord Razor remarked, glaring off with an inscrutable glare in his unfathomable eyes beneath the mask of a rogue Ninja, "At any event the battle is far from decisively concluded."

"I suppose it was bound to happen one of these days," Otono shrugged, "Every strong opponent is bound to meet his opposite in strength, not that it can much affect the inevitable outcome."

"True enough," Razor replied darkly, "One of David's greatest advantages he has is that he gets stronger the more that he fights and the greater his determination to triumph. Every time he gets knocked down it but tears away more and more of the feeble restraint imposed upon his true nature by the human veneer he wears as a half-breed. The angrier he gets the more the Kirin blood within him takes charge, and his wrath is terrible to behold when he is at full measure."

"Indeed," Otono said as he turned away from the railing of the building that was their office headquarters, "Continue to monitor his progress and give me word about the outcome. As soon as he has found and eliminated his target we can proceed with the next phase of the plan...the dispersal of the Karma Seeds. And once that bane is unleashed upon the godless heathens of his forsaken country..."

"Oh yes," Razor's eyes glowed darkly from beneath his mask, "And that is where the real fun will begin...as we unleash the Tribulation..."

The blast-wave caused a shudder to rock throughout the ground surrounding the Furinkan district, and Ranko stared in blank-eyed dismay at the crater formed in the ground where the Tendo Posse and their allies had been standing mere moments before, all caused by the boy with the incredibly huge sword and a single slice he had rendered unto the landscape.

"Holy Chronos, what the hell is that thing?" she gasped, "I'm reading mega-levels of Chi-power even from here, and...and the ground just opened up and swallowed your counterparts, Mom! How in the hell do you fight against that?"

"Stay calm, Ranko-chan," her mother responded, "Sensors are showing continued life signs, and no disruption to the timestream as would happen with the death of a Nexus. Your father's double is all right, which means the others probably survived it too..."

"Are you kidding me, Mom?" Ranko declared, "Sure, dad could survive almost anything, but anyone human would be crushed under the weight of all that rubble!"

"Your confidence in your father's resilience is understandable, Ranko-chan," her adopted mother noted, "But my own counterpart is not to be underestimated here. The problem is...that sword in that boy's hand is definitely reading as the source of our Temporal problem. Something about it is disrupting the localized Time stream...and it's somehow connected with that kid, who definitely reads as a meta-human."

"Just swell," Ranko averred, "You mean I gotta take him on myself? What with, a giant anvil?"

"What about your pendant?" her mother suggested in a moment of inspiration, "Surely that hammer of yours would make a dent even in a razor that size?"

"Oh yeah," Ranko got the point and smiled, "I almost forgot...been a while since I needed to trot it out," and with that thought in mind she vaulted from the wall into the school yard and trotted out to where she could confront the boy named David.

At that same moment Ukyo and Perfume was just beginning to recover from the shock of seeing their loved ones vanish into a gaping pit in the earth, and Ukyo was first to break her silence with a dismayed cry of, "RANCHAN!"

Perfume saw what her wife was about to do and hastily threw an arm around her waist to restrain her, "No Airen! It won't do any good to go out there! We have to stay back and try to survive, to carry on for our Airen and hope for their survival..."

"But Ranchan might be hurt...or worse!" Ukyo cried in her panic, "We can't leave him to suffer like that..."

"You think I want to?" Perfume asked harshly, "He's my husband too...but he wouldn't want either one of us to get hurt going out there against that guy...and I have a duty as your Airen to keep you and the baby you carry out of danger!"

Ukyo belatedly realized that her companion was right, but still she cursed under her breath, "If either Ranma or Nabiki...doesn't come back from this...then I swear to you that guy is toast!"

"Don't worry," Perfume growled a feral snarl as she glared out at David's triumphant profile, "His head's as good as-what the heck? Who the...is that...Arigami?"

"Sure looks like her," Ukyo declared, "But what is she doing there?"

"Beats me," Perfume shrugged, "I never even saw her coming..."

Ranko's sudden arrival also did not go unnoticed by the rest of the student body now hovering on the fringes of the battle-zone, and one of the girls in the crowd said, "Hey look, it's Keiko-san! Looks like she's going out there to challenge the bad guy!"

"Good luck on that," another student groaned, "What chance does a Mu Tai fighter have against a guy who can create an earthquake?"

"Who are you?" David declared, seeing a new opponent moving to challenge his dominance over the field of battle.

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you," Ranko replied, reaching to touch an icon that was attached to her pendant, and then drawing it away with her enchanted war-hammer grasped tightly in one fist, "But prepare to defend yourself and all of that."

"Fool!" David snarled, swinging his blade horizontally and causing yet another wave of force to channel outward in Ranko's direction.

"Eeep!" she declared even as she reflexively began spinning her hammer around by its leather strap, and at once created a barrier against which the force wave broke without causing her the slightest bit of damage.

"What in the name of all that is holy...?" David stammered.

"Right back at you, Baka!" Ranko cried while hurling her hammer at him as though it were a baseball, and as fast as David moved to block the throw his sword barely intercepted the hammer as force collided with force and caused a deafening ring in the air that staggered him backwards.

Ranko stretched out her hand and the hammer flew back into her grasp, then she assumed a fighting stance once again and said, "Better leg go, because if you try blocking me again it's gonna break your arm, and as tough as you seem to be you ain't that resilient."

"Who are you?" David snarled, "How dare you interfere in my mission!"

"What mission?" Ranko asked, "Man, you are definitely loony toons! What the hell do you think you're doing swinging that toy around while trying to destroy my high school?"

"I am fulfilling the will of God, Witch!" David answered.

"Yeah, sure, that's what they all say," Ranko sniffed, then threw her hammer again, intending this time to knock that sword away so that she could close in with the guy and pound his face silly.

"You disbelieve?" David snarled, drawing back his sword for another pass, "Then feel my wrath as I smite His enemies down in the holy name of my Lord Jesu-!"

"Stuff it!" Ranko snarled back, beating him to the punch with a powerfully aimed throw that she directed at the sword arm of her opponent, who was clearly surprised and taken aback by her maneuver as her hammer-throw came close to literally disarming him, knocking the sword from his grasp and shattering several bones in the process.

"Ahhh!" he cried in pained dismay, "What...how did you do that...?"

Ranko waited for her hammer to complete its arc and circle back into her outstretched hand before saying, "Beat you to the draw, just like they do in Westerns and Samurai flicks, of course. Did you honestly think that you're the only one with supernatural powers? C'mon! I've studied scores of different schools of martial arts and I can do stuff that a rank amateur like you can't even imagine!"

"Amateur?" David growled in what sounded more like an animal noise than anything produced by human vocal chords, and his very appearance itself seemed to flicker and distort for several instants, "You dare compare me to an amateur?"

"Naw, more like some punk brat who ought to be spanked by his mommy," Ranko smiled, "And with that arm out of commission you really don't have a chance against me, so why don't you do us all a favor and surrender now so I don't have to injure you any more than I already have?"

"Injure me?" David held up his wounded arm, "Don't make me laugh! I am sheltered and protected by the armor of God, and wounds as trivial as this are as nothing when one is blessed with His benediction!"

Even as he spoke he summoned up the force of his own spiritual energy and surrounded his entire arm with eldrich flames that bathed his limb with blue-white intensity, and then died away to reveal it whole once again. He flexed his fingers and then his arm and smiled, then snarled once again at Ranko and cried, "Do your worst, Hellspawn! I cannot be defeated by the likes of you! Not while I am yet charged with fulfilling my mission!"

His hand conjured up flames once again, only these were of a more intense white-hot variety, and when he hurled them at Ranko she had to dodge rapidly, feeling their searing heat come near to blistering her skin from but the very nearness of his flame strike.

"Kuso-he's got weird healing powers, and now he's trying to roast me!" Ranko declared aloud while rolling back to her feet the next instant, "This jerk's going down before things get even more serious than they already are!"

"Calm down, Ranko-chan," she heard her adopted mother call into her ear, "Don't be hasty, use all of your training..."

"You bet I will, Mom," Ranko replied, waiting for David to hurl another flame-strike her way, and then launching her counter-offensive by seeming to disappear from the spot where she was standing, only to appear once again in David's face with her fist connecting with his jaw to once again send the powerful boy sprawling.

And then she winced and shook her hand in dismay, declaring, "Ow! What the hell...? His jaw...it felt like punching solid iron...and it practically burned me!"

"Then don't make physical contact, Ranko-chan," her mother advised, "The readings on this guy are confused, all messed up, as if he's got some kind of localized protection...but we are definitely sensing a steady escalation of his power levels. Whatever he is, the angrier he gets the more his power level increases at an exponential rate!"

"Tell me what I don't already know already, Mom," Ranko said as she turned to see the boy named David climb back to his feet as if not even shaken by her punch this time, "Oboy...guess it's time to break the Saotome rule again and use the hammer..."

David snarled and started to raise his hand again, only to stop with a start and cough out blood as an object projected forward from his chest, and as the boy staggered forward and glanced down in dismay he saw the tip of a wooden bokken curling upwards, which was a sure testament to the identity of his assailant.

"Thou it soils my honor to strike an opponent from behind," Tatewaki Kuno declared with cold, level-toned disdain, "Still you forced my hand with your wanton display of unnatural energies...so die and let my father be avenged in the name of justice, foreign dog!"

"You...you stabbed me?" David gasped, and then he flexed and cried out in horrified outrage, and in doing so his body emanated a wave of force that threw Tatewaki back like a flea being shaken off the fur of a dog, and once again his outline momentarily shimmered and distorted as he gripped the bokken with both hands and pulled it out from his chest as though it were a thorn-prick in his finger.

"Aw no, not again," Ranko complained, "What the hell is he turning into? Every time he does that he just seems to get a whole lot stronger!"

"No, not stronger, not really," a voice said at her side, surprising Ranko as she had not sensed the other person's presence, "More like he's losing self-control and shedding his humanity with it. It's the Kirin blood within him that's in the process of burning its way out, and if the poor kid doesn't stop right now he might well burn himself out altogether."

"Hah?" Ranko reacted with dismay, seeing a blonde, brunette and a redhead suddenly standing next to her, each one of them registering a different kind of incredible power, one masked behind the cloud of an illusion, the other two shining solidly as a "Yin-and-Yang" contrast, and none of them the familiar cast of Nerima locals with whom she was familiar.

"Better make yourself scarce, Kid," the redhead urged, "Or else your 'parents' are likely to spot you and mistake you for somebody else."

"Nani?" Ranko reacted with a start, "You...know...?"

"You are non the only traveler through time who is outside her normal station," the blonde wearing armor winked in a meaningfully coy-yet-suggestive manner, "But fear non...we shall not spoil zee secret zhat you carry, Cheri...but it would do you well if you leave quickly."

"Ah...right," Ranko said, glancing to the side as she saw other figure climbing out of the ground and looking around in mild disorientation, so she promptly vanished from view and appeared again some distance away atop the clock tower of the main school building, gazing down at the battlefield yard and asking aloud, "Who are those weird people?"

In her ear she heard her mother reply, "Doing a background check for possible identities, dear, but with our resources as stretched as they are it could take several minutes..."

Back on the field Ranma glanced to the side and asked, "Hey, was that Keiko-san I saw standing over there by the new teachers?"

"Didn't get all that good look at her, Ranchan," Kaneda replied, "But it was either Kei-chan or else some girl dressed up like Thor from America. Either way we've got to stay focused on the real threat we're facing before that maniac does any more damage to the school or the students."

"I'm amazed we even survived getting swallowed up by the earth like that just now," Saki remarked in tones of dull wonder, "How in the world did you create that pocket zone of safety for us, Ranma-kun?"

"Long story, Saki-san," Ranma replied, "Maybe we'll tell you the details when its all over...if we survive this."

"That delinquent has much to answer for!" a now-devolved Hinako declared as she fished out a coin from her pocket an appropriately sized coin, "Because of him Principal Kuno-san's remains have been lost and buried..."

"NO!" Kaneda hastily gripped the young child-teacher by her diminutive wrist, "You'd never be able to handle the kind of energy levels that he's putting out with his battle aura, Sensei! Trust us...Ranchan and me will handle this creep and bring this whole mess to a final and decisive conclusion..."

"Without anyone else being injured, killed or worse?" Hinako challenged the handsome man before her, whom she well knew to be actually a woman.

"My word on it," Kaneda declared resolutely, "This guy is going down, and without any more casualties being created among our students."

"Just wish we could promise the same thing about us," Ranma murmured under his breath, "I don't know how much juice you've got left, Nabby, but Nagisha's telling me that we're both approaching our limits."

"Just as long as we've got enough left to do the job, Ranchan," Kaneda noted, "And for the fiftieth time...stop calling me Nabby..."

David had covered the whole in his chest with both hands, but now he lowered his hands and revealed that his wound had incredibly healed back to the point where only a pink scar was visible to mark the bokken's passage.

"Impossible!" Natsume declared from where she was kneeling to assist her fallen fiance, Kuno, "Tachi-  
sama's sword should have killed or at the very least crippled him...how can he still be standing?"

"Fool!" David declared, his eyes glowing a golden shade of crimson as he glared at them and spoke with words of fire, "Nothing is beyond the capability of one who's faith is true in the service of the Lord..."

"So...my revenge was meaningless and hollow after all," Tatewaki said, surprising everyone with how calm he was, only hen he raised his voice and shouted back in anger, "It is you who are the fool here, you who call yourself David and pretend to be an agent of divinity..."

"YOU DARE STILL TO QUESTION MY RIGHTEOUSNESS?" David thundered.

"Righteousness?" Kuno scoffed, "What is there about you that is righteous? You prattle on like a witless dupe claiming the sanction of a higher god, yet by your actions you mark yourself as a base deceiver and the very enemy of all that is good and righteous!"

"BLASPHEMER!" David declared, unleashing another fire-burst, only Kaneda moved first and intercepted the attack that would have claimed both Tatewaki and her adopted sister.

A wall of water met a wall of flame and the two erupted into a cloud of steam that momentarily obscured the battlefield, but when it cleared again both Tatewaki and Natsume had been pulled clear of the immediate fight zone. However...their rescuer had paid a small, slight penalty for her valiant efforts, for when the steam completely dissipated it was Nabiki and not Kaneda who turned about to face the wrath of the beast named David.

"Whew...that took most of what I had left in reserve but it was...worth it...?" Nabiki gasped, glancing down at her hands and seeing evidence of her transformation, which prompted her to gulp and add, "Uh-oh..."

"Nabiki?" Ranma asked nervously.

"Eh...what...madness is this?" David stammered as he stared across the field at the one whose outward garments were identical to those worn by Kaneda, yet whose outline was unmistakably more slender and better rounded in some surprising places.

"Ah...hi," Nabiki lamely waved a hand and tried to smile in a disarming manner, "I hear you were looking for me? The name's Saotome Nabiki."

"Saotome...Nabiki?" David softly repeated, then reared back with a hand and cried out, "You are the one I came here to slay in the name of my lord...Otono...eh?"

A sound drew his attention as an object vaulted over the nearest section of wall and arced slowly in the air, headed inevitably towards the enraged half-Kirin, who found himself within the shadow of a large hurtling object, to which he said, "No fair...!" just a half-second before collision.

Frank spun his bike around in a wide arc and brought his powerful machine to a halt with Kasumi still firmly clinging to his back, and then hastily said, "Shit! Didn't mean to hit anyone like that! Sorry as hell...is he all right?"

"Oh my," Kasumi remarked in surprise, seeing the twitching body that had just been hammered into the ground attempt to get up and fail after the first couple of efforts, "Who is that...and what caused all of this structural damage? Nabiki-chan? What are you doing out of bed and away from your son, Chusen?"

"Oneechan?" Nabiki blinked her eyes once then said, "Impeccable timing as always..."

"Oneechan!" Ranma called out in warning, "Frank-san...watch out! That guy isn't fully out of it yet, and he's the one who caused all of this damage?"

"What?" Frank reacted, then in an entirely different tone he said, "God almighty...I'm picking up mega-bad vibes from that kid...and if I didn't know better I'd almost swear he looks somehow familiar...!"

"I sense that there is something special about him as well," Kasumi noted in agreement with her fiancé, "And...I smell blood...so much blood! Someone was hurt here...and quite recently..."

"You've got that right, Sweet-tush," Trudy murmured under her breath, which was audible enough for Kasumi to hear her clearly, "Kid's already claimed one life, and if we don't put him down soon there's likely to be others."

"Someone died?" Kasumi automatically asked aloud, broadcasting the news to her companion.

"Who?" the burly man-monster asked.

"Principal Kuno," Ranma automatically answered before he had time to think about it, "Tachi-kun's father..."

"What?" Kasumi was shocked by the news, seeing the grief in the eyes of a clearly injured Kuno, "But...why?"

"Because he's crazy," Saki answered, "Talks like a holy roller from the States, but all he spouts is some nonsense about a mission."

"Is that right," Frank asked with deceptive calm as he and Kasumi dismounted his now-parked motorbike, "What kind of mission?"

"To off me, I think," Nabiki shrugged, "Don't know why I'm so popular all of a sudden...I was just on my way here to talk with my husband about some...personal business."

"Ah...yeah," Ranma winced, "About that..."

"I HAVE HAD ENOUGH OF THIS!" David declared as he suddenly surged to his feet and stretched out a hand to summon his humungously large weapon, "I HAVE HAD ENOUGH OF THE LOT OF YOU!"

Frank was shocked by the sudden display and said, "That's a Kirin's claw! Now I know why this bozo looks so familiar..."

"DIIIIEEEE!" David declared, unleashing yet another of his patented shock-waves with a slice of the air by his sword, only this time discharging ten times the force of his previous attack waves.

His intent was clearly to dispatch all opposition with a single strike, but the force of his wave was met and blunted once again by yet another invisible force wall that prevented his attack from claiming even one of his intended victims.

Kasumi stood there with one hand extended, her eyes suddenly quite crimson as her hair moved in flowing waves from invisible forces that coursed around her body. With an east that made a mockery of his furious rampage she said, "This has to stop. This killing and hurting of people...you have no cause for any of this! Why would you even want to hurt us? Until now we never even knew anything about you."

"What?" David gasped in dismay, "More witchcraft? What in heaven's name are you?"

"Someone who is far more evolved than you could even begin to understand, young man," a sensuous voice casually remarked as yet another player appeared upon the field from seeming no where, "But your corrupt beliefs blind you from the truth that is so evident before you, and so your ignorance might almost be forgiven."

"Who...?" David blinked, "Yet more Witchcraft?"

Ranma was bit more awed as he gasped, "Sensei? But...?"

"Witchcraft?" the blonde haired Amazon known as Siren asked with an arched tone of mild outrage, "You dare compare me, an Archmage, with a mere herbal dabbler of the Wicca?"

David pointed his blade at the blonde and said, "Come nearer to me, accursed one, and you shall taste of my holy wrath..."

"My, but you are a tiresome fellow," Siren stretched out her own hand, and all at once the silver cross amulet dangling about his neck on a chain suddenly flew from his breast and into her hand, where she snatched it out of the air and held it up to her face for closer examination.

"MY CROSS!" David gasped in dismay, "Give it back to me or...!"

"As I thought," Siren averred as if not the least bit concerned about the threat by David's weapon, "It's an accursed amulet of Obfuscation, used to conceal alignments and distort energy images so that ordinary detection spells cannot work against you. Amateurish design, concealed in the form of a holy talisman. Paladin, destroy this!"

"With pleasure, Cheri," the other blonde woman acknowledged.

Siren tossed the amulet at Angelique, who automatically took a step forward, gripped the hilt of her sword and swung in a blindingly swift arc that split the silver cross diagonally asunder.

There was a brief flash and a snapping noise that reverberated around the courtyard, and then the sense of something evil dying horribly, breaking a spell of foul enchantment over the entire area, and causing David to cry out, "NOOO-WHAT ARE YOU DOING...?!"

"Assassin," Siren calmly stated, "Do what you are trained for."

"At last!" Trudy surged forward, faster than anyone could blink, and suddenly her hand stretched out to strike the boy named David at the base of his neck, and with no further adieu he collapsed to the ground like a puppet and ceased glowing altogether.

"Oh my," Takaharis said as she studied the prone body at the feet of the redhead, "Is he...?"

"No, not that I wasn't tempted," Trudy answered, "But I figure he's more use to us alive than dead, so I'm leaving him in your care, Big Guy."

Frank acknowledged this by saying, "Shelly...send a clean-up crew. Tell them we have a class Thirteen paranormal who needs containment, and don't stint on using the special equipment."

"Gotcha Boss," the motorbike replied, surprising only a few of those present who were not accustomed to seeing the humungously large vehicle speak with the voice of a surprisingly feminine sounding woman.

"One touch...and he's down...just like that?" Nabiki asked in frank disbelief.

"You mean it's finally over?" Ranma asked when he and the rest of his fellow combatants dared heave a sigh of relief a few moments later.

"For now at least," Nabiki replied, "But this guy wasn't acting on his own, which means we've got a new enemy somewhere out there, some guy who's clearly got a bone to pick against me."

"Aye," Tatewaki grimly nodded, his voice tight with suppressed emotion, "And willing to do great harm to anyone who opposes their foul ambition."

"Tachi-sama," Natsume said as she stared up at her man with tears in her eyes, eyes that had not shed tears for many long years, though she cried them now so that her man would not have to.

"Ranchan, Nab-chan!" Ukyo called out as she and Perfume made their way to join their loved ones now that the danger had finally passed.

"You guys had us so worried for a moment there," Perfume remarked, then she paused to acknowledge her Elder and said, "Grandmother? Where were you all this time...?"

"Preoccupied," Siren replied, "But it gladdens my heart to see you faring well, Child...and you also, Apprentice...though I must say that I was a bit surprised to learn about what you have been up to since your first lesson with me the other day."

"Ah...yeah...about that..." Ranma winced while returning the hug that Ukyo gave him.

"Yeah...about that," Nabiki turned to glare at her husband, causing Ranma to swallow and suddenly wish the battle were not actually concluded.

"Ah...Nabiki..." he tried lamely to explain himself, realizing that no words of his could possibly give justification to his conduct with the elementals.

"I was going to put my foot down," Nabiki said, extending one hand, "But...on further reflection, I think I'm beginning to understand your situation a whole lot better."

A flow of water stretched down her arm and flew through the air towards Ranma's arm, and then he heard the mental voice of Sharil greeting him softly with an affectionate, **Master...**

"I'm going to cut some slack with you on account of a little deal I made with our resident Undine," Nabiki said levelly, "I can't say that I'm altogether happy about this, but on reflection with their motives...I'm going to allow them to go forward with their plans with you. Just don't try hiding it from me again, Mister, or else there WILL be consequences."

"Hah?" Ukyo blinked and stared in dismay at her co-wife.

"You're giving him permission to cheat on us?" Perfume stated baldly, "Aiyaa..."

"Like it or not, girls, we've got a situation here, and we have to make the best of it...or else," Nabiki informed them, "We've each made sacrifices in order to make this group thing of ours happen, and now that we're got enemies all over the place, some we don't even know about, we're gonna have to make a few more types of adjustments. I'll fill you in on the details later...but don't think I'm giving him carte blanch here. I'm gonna set down some rules and insist on a few concessions."

"Ah...anything you say, Nabiki," Ranma swallowed, amazed at the reprieve he had just been given...and appalled at the stunning implications that her comments now left open.

"Very interesting," Siren remarked as she regarded Nabiki sagely, "More and more do I understand why my apprentice went to so much trouble marrying you in the first place."

"Hey, what can I say?" Nabiki shrugged with a smirk, "Ranchan has good taste in women."

"Just swell," Frank rumbled then glanced around and said, "What a mess...and part of the building looks like a war-zone. Naw...check that...this is what a war-zone turns into when you let a high-class wrecking crew run loose. Looks like I'm gonna have to talk to my contractors and lawyers to see what it will take to whip this place back to looking like a school again."

"Anything that I can do to help, Frank-sama?" Kasumi offered.

"I'm sure one or two things will come to mind with you around, Doll-face," Frank assured her, then he added, "Shelly?"

"Already on it, Boss," the motorbike replied, "Our contractors will be here in the hour along with the assessors and insurance people. With a bit of negotiation with the city I'm sure we can convince them to let us do the work, hiring local help for the construction."

"You are willing to do that?" Vice Principal Choy asked, "To help us rebuild our school?"

"It's something I've done a lot over the years, and I've gotten pretty good about repairing war-zones," Frank responded.

"If that is so...then...perhaps you would not mind talking with me in my office?" the Vice Principal asked him.

"About what?" Frank scowled in dawning suspicion.

"I...would prefer to spare the details until later," the Vice Principal enigmatically replied, turning back and heading towards the main building, which had already been evacuated of both faculty and students.

"I don't like the sound of this," Frank admitted in a low rumble, only to start as a gentle hand was placed upon his arm, and he glanced down to see Kasumi smiling up at him with an encouraging smile, silently offering her support no matter what sort of discussion was being undertaken for the future...

And meanwhile, standing atop the clocktower of that building, Ranko surveyed the concluded battle zone then reported, "Looks like everything's stabilized here. The place is a mess but casualties appear to be on the light side."

"The temporal anomaly appears to be subsiding for the moment, Ranko-chan," her mother relayed back, "That boy apparently was the source of the current crisis, but once the screen blocking him from our sensors came down we were able to do a full analysis and...well...I think you'd better report back for a debriefing. From the looks of matters we haven't seen an end yet to the crisis."

"Right, on my way, Mom...Ranko out," and then the stunning redhead vanished from this plane of reality, leaving nary a trace of her having even been there in the first place...

And off to the side of the campus proper a furrowed brow continued to study the events that had been observed for the past several minutes. Udan, known to some as Robar Bartev, and to others as Bartev the Blackguard, paused to consider everything he had just witnessed, and then silently, without a sound, turned back and climbed into the driving compartment of his Kenworth Cabover and started up the engine once again, moving his eighteen wheeled truck forward with a destination in mind that even he did not foresee, though he knew that his instincts would unfailingly guide him to yet another fateful encounter...

And-yet further still off from the immediate campus-Thelendra the Dream Weaver heaved a sigh of great relief and said, "Uncle Udan is moving off...apparently satisfied...yet disturbingly intrigued with the situation."

"Udan is drawn to crisis zones, it is in his nature," Anri noted, "It is fortunate for us that events did not force him to tip his hand prematurely, or else the enemy would become aware that the Daokan are watching him, and that would complicate matters beyond question."

"And yet a minor disaster of untold proportions hath been averted," Thelendra turned to regard her immediate companion, "A hand well played methinks...thou art to be congratulated, mine Father."

"What? You think I had a hand in all this?" Anri smiled as if to feign an innocence that they both knew to be patently false, "You overstate my reach in this matter, Daughter. I merely supervised the coordination of different probability lines that just happened to converge in the same place with convenient timing. The Time Agent, the representatives of Delphi, the Tendo and Saotome champions, even the appearance of Doctor Steinberg and his charming fiancée was merely coincidental..."

"Oh aye," Thelendra sniffed, "And the price of swampland in Tibet be going for a reasonable price these days..."

"Now, now, don't belittle their accomplishments," Anri chided, "They've done quite well...better, in fact, than what either one of us projected would be the case in this matter."

"Due in no small part to some timely manipulation on thine part," Thelendra insisted, "Planting the notion in the minds of those elementals to copulate with their host-Master, which led in turn to their reforming their alliances, which permitted a melding of essence that greatly empowered our two main champions and gave them an edge that they would otherwise nay have possessed..."

"Mere technicalities," Anri waved a hand dismissively, "They were the ones to do the actual fighting. Honestly, daughter of my heart and loins, the next thing you know you'll be crediting me with the involvement of the Culleleni and the Time Agents."

"Well, as it so happen to be in the matter..." Thelendra persisted.

"That is coming far too close to attributing to me the sort of Omnipotence that misguided fools like that fallen lad are always going on about," Anri noted, "We both know how prone I am to human error and misjudgment, Thelendra. I prefer to think that everyone has choices, and some that we make just happen to work out better than others."

"As thou wilt," Thelendra gently conceded, turning to glance back at the field, her vision centering upon a single slender wand-like figure, "But this be but the opening foray to a much greater conflict that be certain now to follow, and the one they have defeated be but the weakest of those whom our champions must give challenge."

"Indeed," Anri acknowledged, "But our champions are now aware that they are headed into a real fight and will have time enough to prepare themselves for the next encounter."

"Barely that methinks," Thelendra said with a slightly abstracted expression in her eyes, "Do nay underestimate the desperate intensity with which our foes seek to fulfill their wicked agenda...and already the seeds of their evil spread out across the breadth of the Tokyo province. The enemy now knows that our allies be nay as weak as formerly imagined...and they will nay hesitate to dispatch a far more dangerous and powerful assassin."

"Then we'll just have to be sure our people remain on their guard," Anri noted, "Which means we pay our champions another visit...beginning with the one you're so desperate to see again..."

"Father..." Thelendra paused, allowing her gaze to fall, "I...be nay convinced that such a path...would be in accordance to wisdom..."

"Let wisdom judge that one for itself," Anri sniffed, "Or are you telling me that you don't trust your own judgement in the matter?"

"Nay father," Thelendra replied quietly, "Nay do I trust myself...within her presence..."

"Often what we fear the most is the thing that we must needs do grow and evolve as beings of knowledge, Thelendra," Anri gently counseled, then paused to add, "A pity about the boy though...his father had such hopes for him. I wonder if he is entirely beyond redemption? Perhaps I should look into recruiting him...after all, he's been fighting so long for the wrong side, he deserves a chance to know the truth about these matters."

"Even though knowing the truth would destroy him from within, Father?" Thelendra asked with a faintly appalled expression.

"He came very near to destroying himself from within this time around," Anri countered, "And would have been destroyed had he gone nova in the manner that you had formerly projected..."

"But what of free will, Father?" Thelendra asked, "What of his right of self-determination?"

"Already compromised, and almost beyond repair," Anri said sadly, "When a man succumbs to error and slides that far from a state of grace he is to be pitied, not hated...but always the seeds of redemption lay within him waiting to be planted and fertilized...and when they grow they can burst out in a surprising array of patterns and colors."

"Thou art the ultimate believer in the salability of mortals," Thelendra noted, "But even thee must concede that some be beyond all hope of redemption..."

"The day that I agree with you on that, Thelendra dear, is the day that I cease to be who and what I am," Anri informed her, "Call me the last great optimist or a fool with incurably romantic pretentious, but I still maintain that there is always hope to be found if you look closely at the hidden potential within each living being."

"And that be why thou art the Maitreya," Thelendra slowly nodded, "I do stand corrected for allowing my cynicism to even briefly infect our conversation."

"Apology accepted," Anri acknowledged, "Now then...how much should we reveal this time to our allies...and do we dare inform them of what it truly at stake in the coming conflagration...?"

Continued.

Comments/Criticisms/Cosmic Smack-Down A-Cummin': shadowmane

Or: shadowmane9849

Next time up the gang must deal with the fallout from their latest encounter with an enemy whose abilities outstrip those that they have faced in adventures past, but Are Ranma and Nabiki truly equipped to handle a looming crisis that has even such beings of power as the brothers Daokan expressing concern about the outcome, and what of Kasumi's involvement with a certain oracularly gifted Eluini of our acquaintance? Is Frank prepared to handle such competition, and what of this "proposition" that Vice Principal Choy is about to make to him? Are you ready to handle the revelations that are to come? If so, then good...because the next time out it's, "Revelation 101," or, "How to Learn Theosophic Spiritualism In Ten Easy Lessons." Be there...

X

/pre 


	72. Chapter 72

preDnabiki161

Nabiki 1/2

"A Very Scary Thought"

by Jim Robert Bader

(Inspired by the works of Rumiko Takahashi Others,  
with concepts and characters created by fellow fanfic writers Wade Tritschler, DB Sommers, Nicole Manders, Andrew Greaves, Bill Guiroff and countless others, including "Buffy"  
creator Joss Whedon; with special thanks to my good pal Shiva for his editing and handling of this series.)

(Certain other characters and concepts are of my own innovation, including my interpretation of the Monster of Mary Shelly's novel, the Furies, Trudy, Takaharis Angelique d'Anjou and various other guest stars appearing in this portion of the Nabiki 1/2 series...)

Chapter Sixty-One.

Episode One-Hundred-Sixty-One.

Revelations 101

"What? Defeated?"

"Apparently so," Razor reported, "One moment he is gloriously escalating into his final form as an avenger, and then-suddenly and inexplicably-his life signs flicker and then die out to mere embers."

"You mean he's dead?" General Han asked, grasping to cope with the thought that his "undefeatable" protégé could fail to carry through with a simple mission.

"No, not hardly," Razor scowled from beneath his ever-present mask, "More like rendered unconscious...and with such ease that it makes one wonder what he went up against since none of this other foes seemed capable of phasing him. Somewhere among their number was one who had skills that far exceeded out previous expectations."

"Interesting," Otono said from where he stood at the opposite end of the room, "So it seems that our concerns were justified after all. The prophesy said that one would rise to oppose our endeavor...all the more reason to see our enemies destroyed before they can seriously put a crimp in our plans."

"And how are they to do that?" Chusitsu Miyamoto remarked, "They are only teenagers, barely more than children, and certainly no threat to us..."

"That is what you said when we sent David Lo to dispatch this Tendo girl that you seem to think poses such a threat to the operation," Yagyu observed while lounging about in a chair flexing a hand as he played with a squeeze-ball, "Though personally I would tend to agree...I don't see much need to get further involved with some juvenile delinquents running a small time outfit out in the boonies."

"You may call them delinquents," Taylor said as he glared at the irritating man who seemed too smug, self-assured and lacking in all modesty to be a proper humble servant of the Lord's mission, "But that is how it begins, with guileless innocents lured into the din of temptations, recruited by minions of Satan into the craft of wickedness and deceit and turned into loyal troops for the Tribulation. A few years down the road and these young hellspawn infest the very marrow of society and undermine the very pillars of morality that have stood in effect since the time of Moses!"

"I hear your words and agree with you on the serious nature of teenaged immorality, my brother," Thomas Draehil conceded, "But of what does it avail us to waste our valuable time and resources upon these youth when they are likely to fall victim, with the rest of their godless generation, to the tide of the Seeds that already are being implanted throughout their prefecture? Indeed, if we play the matter rightly, by the time anyone is even aware of what is going on it will be too late to do anything about it."

"Your complacency is ill-served to our cause, Herr Draehil," Verner Kephold said in stern reprimand, "The smallest thorn or slightest pebble in our path must be removed before it can impede our progress...and the very fact that David Lo was beaten should give us all pause on the seriousness of this matter."

"I agree," Jungo Hiryu said while sipping from his wine glass, "Granted the boy was still young and not yet come into the full of his abilities, but he was still quite formidable and should have easily completed his mission."

"Indeed," Otono said thoughtfully, "I should like more information on the exact means by which David was taken down. The battle went on far longer than it should have given all that we previously had by way of an assessment of the combat capabilities of these so-called martial artists. I should like to know if it was the primary target herself or one of her allies who overcame David in battle...and I should trust you to provide a detailed report of all that you observed remotely, my good Lord Talon."

"But of course," Razor replied in a low rumble, "I will give you my assessment on all that I was able to see with my vision, my Lord Otono. It should help us craft a better strategy the next time we dispatch an agent to deal with these...children."

"Agreed," Otono said, "But none of our lesser agents...this time I want Yagyu to carry out the mission."

"Me?" the cocky mercenary paused in what he was doing to look up in surprise at his nominal employer.

"You have the skills required to see to it that the job is successfully executed this time," Otono informed him, "I want no mistakes, nothing left to chance this time. I want the target and her allies eliminated, thus clearing the way for the execution of our mission."

"And you send Yagyu to do this task, my Lord Otono-sama?" Chusitsu fluttered her fan before her face to disguise her otherwise obvious disapproval, "And I thought David an odd choice...but this...pompous fool? He would knock them over with his sheer boorishness...and he uses conventional weapons..."

"Precisely," Lord Otono said, "Less traceable to us, and I want no outside interference from the conventional police before we carry out phase three of our designs."

"With all due respect, Sir," Yagyu said as he sat up with a look of concern in his normally indifferent expression, "But dispatching children is not exactly in my usual line of work..."

"You have a problem with carrying out your assignment?" Lord Razor asked, his manner conveying a closer than usual scrutiny of their cavalier ally.

"Well...not precisely as such," Yagyu replied, "After all, when phase four goes into effect there will be thousands if not millions of casualties, and children of all ages are sure to be among them."

"A necessary sacrifice for the sake of our holy purpose," Draehil assured, though no one prompted such an assurance.

"Then I expect you to make the necessary preparations and to take whatever steps are needed to complete your assignment," Otono said smoothly, "Take a few days to make ready, but I expect to hear of the successful conclusion to your assignment before phase two is underway. I will make the necessary resources available to you, and Lord Razor will coordinate with you as my immediate liaison."

"But what of Astarte and her Furies?" Taylor asked, "When will we finally make a move against them?"

"Are you still on about that?" Chusitsu frowned, "I declare, you are obsessed about that Astarte woman..."

"Had you met her in person you would not be so cavalier," Lord Razor ominously rumbled, "My own encounter proved to me that they are not to be underestimated...but be assured, friend Taylor, steps are being taken to deal with the meddlesome Princess of Liaspar and her otherworldly allies."

"But what about David?" General Soto asked, at last coming out of the daze that had fallen over him since the news of the failed mission.

"His failure is a disappointment to be certain," Otono noted, "But he has been a good and loyal son of the True Faith and as such deserves our respect. Unfortunately he has fallen into the hands of the enemy and knows too much to be allowed to talk. Lord Talon?"

"I have already tried utilizing the contingency measure for such situations," Razor answered, "But for some reason it failed to activate...and so our agent remains among the living rather than to be sent to his just reward in the hereafter."

"Contingency plan?" Draehil asked, "You mean...you tried to kill him?"

"A necessary sacrifice," Otono replied, "David would no doubt agree with us rather than to risk his soul being damned for all eternity. But perhaps he is not beyond salvaging just yet. Lord Talon, I leave it in your hands."

"Consider it attended to, my Lord," Razor replied, and no one there was left in any real doubt that the hulking Ninja-clad man would take whatever steps he deemed as necessary, including mass mayhem of the type that would leave a trail of broken corpses.

"I know that it is much to ask, Lord Otono," General Soto said, "But...if it is at all possible to bring the boy back alive into our fold..."

"Be assured that every contingency will be explored and weighted for its merits, including that one," Razor informed the man, which from his gravely voice did not sound all that reassuring, "One way or another this matter will be concluded...and the mission will be protected."

"Splendid," Otono said with evident satisfaction, "That is all gentleman, lady. Now, with no other pressing concerns to discuss, I have a tournament to prepare for. I will see you again after it's over and I have been once again declared the victor."

With that the handsome young leader of the Umakusa Suekazen turned and left their immediate presence, causing Chusitsu's eyes to follow him raptly while Yagyu fought to hide his own uneasiness, and Taylor once more waged an internal debate over what he was doing here allied to these people.

Of them all only Razor seemed satisfied with the situation, and his smile-  
hidden beneath his mask-like wrappings-held a malevolent twist that would have shocked any true believer of the Christian faith. But then again, only a deluded fool looking into his eyes would believe that he was a Christian, including his nominal allies, among which only Yagyu could be immediately dismissed as so stupidly clueless, and Razor was keeping his eyes upon the cocky man, suspecting him of an ulterior agenda not in accordance with the protocols of their ultimate endeavor...

"Say that again?" Frank stared in blank amazement, "You want me to do what?"

"It's only for the time being, Sir," Vice Principal Choy assured, "I would understand if you refused to take the offer up, but given the circumstances I think you would be the ideal man for the job that I offer."

"A job?" Frank asked, "You think I'm that hard up for employment?"

"Not at all, Sir," the Vice Principal assured, "I happen to know that you are one of the wealthiest men in the world with a fortune and assets valued in the billions and companies world wide ready to do your slightest bidding. But this is not about money, it is about choices and people, and-most particularly-it is about our students."

"Your students?" Frank repeated, "What about 'em?"

"Well..." Choy said somewhat reluctantly, "I'm sure it has come to your notice that we do not exactly run a conventional school here. Not that I'm saying that we're the most unorthodox in that regard, but the abnormally high number of high powered martial artists in our district..."

"Martial artists?" Frank arched an eyebrow on his furrowed brow, resisting the urge to glance sideways at his fiancée, Kasumi.

"Do you wonder why a man such as Principal Kuno was even considered for the position of head of our school district?" Choy asked as he removed his glasses and began to clean them, "To be sure he was a valued contributor to the economic side of keeping our school in the black, and the board of regents kept him on the payroll in spite of his obvious...eccentricities. But the real reason was that he was a premier martial artist in his own right, one capable of holding his own with the best and brightest that Furinkan had to offer."

"Are you telling me that...haircut-obsessed, scissors-wielding maniac with the palm tree growing out of his head was kept on the payroll because he could keep the students in line?" Frank asked in plain disbelief, "And you want me to take his place for the exact same reason?"

"Well...I don't know much about you personally, Sir," Choy admitted, "But from what I have heard you are rated rather highly as a street-fighter, and you have connections to the Saotome-Tendo clan, which boasts the premier fighters of our generation. And you command respect in academic circles as, I believe, you once taught at several universities, among them Paris and Vienna..."

"Yeah, about fifty...ah...well...a long time ago," Frank lamely conceded, "But I only taught classes in history, philosophy and anatomy, I was never on tenure."

"Not important," Choy assured the giant man, "I actually do most of the administrative chores around here, and only send documents for the principal's signature when it can't be avoided. Principal Kuno sometimes tended to cut them up for paper dollies...but somehow with you I think we'd have a more hands-on approach to supervision."

"I ain't used to answering to the authority of a board of directors or administrators or anything like that, if that's what you mean," Frank noted, "My company is privately owned and only uses publicly owned properties at the local administrative level. That way I don't have to do a lot of explaining to any shareholders about how I run my own business...but what makes you think I'd even be interested in such a low rinky-dink position?"

"Because, Sir," the Vice Principal replied, "I happen to be a good judge of character, and I know for a fact that you honestly do care about the concerns that affect most people. You are known to the locals as someone not to be messed about with, and would have no difficulty at all commanding the respect of the student body, and so you could fulfill at least the ceremonial parts of the job...at least until we can find a more permanent replacement."

"I don't believe this," Frank rolled his eyes, "Old Man Kuno ain't even cold in his in grave yet, and here you are offering to replace him with me?"

"Oh my...and what would Tatewaki-kun think if he were to learn of this?" Kasumi asked, breaking her own silence, "The pain of losing his father will be so fresh and...painful."

"Yeah, and that's another thing that stinks about this," Frank growled, "How are people gonna adjust to the idea of having me for a principal? For that matter the main building is a mess and might actually need to be torn down and replace, so is there even gonna be a Furinkan for the near future?"

"Obviously there must be for the academic sake of our students," Choy replied, "Which is another reason why I've come to you, Sir...because you alone have the resources to institute a solution in the short term until repairs are made to the school campus."

"But..." Frank began to say when he heard a buzz in his hear and automatically said, "Yeah Shelly?"

"Sorry to interrupt you while you're in conference, Boss," his AI assistant replied, "But I thought you should know that Jones and her party have just arrived here and are already at work making a study of the battle zone."

"What?" Frank reacted, "On my way. Look, Choy-san, I'll think it over and get back to you, but at the minute...I kinda have some other business to attend to, pronto."

"By all means take your time and think about my offer," the Vice Principal replied with a pleasant smile, "I trust your judgement and I'm sure you'll do what's right for all concerned parties."

"Frank-sama always does," Kasumi said confidently, earning a wry look from her towering companion as she fell into step beside him, the both crossing the field from the secluded area where they had been holding their impromptu conference towards an area much closer to the recently concluded battle, where a long stretch limousine was parked and several rather familiar looking characters were standing about in various poses of study and reflection.

As they approached the field-which had been cordoned off by Frank's people, who were now patrolling the campus along the fringes to conduct detailed studies and keep curiosity seekers from invading the crime-scene-Kasumi made out the group in the center of the field whom she had met earlier in the day, who stood apart from any local elements by their manner of dress and singular peculiarities. Indeed, such a group of diverse individuals would have stood out in a crowd anywhere, and not just because of their evidently foreign mannerisms and accented speech patterns.

She recognized each of members of this party with no difficulty in remembering their names and personal stories, including Astarte Jones, their leader, and her immediate companions, which included loved ones and close personal retainers. Astarte herself was wearing a long coat and a broad-brimmed hat with a pair of oversized sunglasses that obscured her colorless eyes as she stared at the ground as though reading it like a textbook. The furry cat-woman who called herself Catsclaw was down on all fours and sniffing the area like a hound, while the towering figure of Tri-Longu just stood stoically to one side, Snake and Illyra likewise positioned strategically while off further to the sidelines were a pair of armored troopers, one evidently the mercenary called Ian, the other a white-clad storm trooper with a more slender build that matched Illyra's older sister, Muriel.

When they were near enough for her sensitive hearing to make out their words she heard Catsclaw reporting, "Smells different from human, Boss...don't know what to make of it, but my guess is some kinda halfbreed."

"Indeed," Astarte remarked in a voice that trembled in the air with an otherworldly air of emotion, "My guess would be something from the ethereal planes, possibly a type of dragon or possibly even..."

"A Kirin?" Snake hissed suggestively, her manner implying that she already knew the answer.

Astarte nodded, "That was my second guess. A Kirin then...a being of air and fire from one of the higher planes, different from a demon but quite powerful and lordly."

"Well, I can attest to the fire part," Illyra said, "I'm picking up heat traces all over the map, and warm body signatures that are definitely too high to be human."

"I feel it too," Tri-Longu said, "The presence of great power...and not just from the field...coming from all over...no...from specific places. One being of earth, the other of light and air, and another who embodies the panoply of the rainbow...watching and observing here...and with them the taint of devil...and demon."

"Devil, demon...and three beings of great power?" Astarte repeated slowly.

"And an emissary...two emissaries...both strangely familiar," the giantess paused, "And there was more...two warriors with elemental powers, similar and yet different from those of friend Illyra...Earth and Water, clashing with the half breed. And then...an Enchantress joined the fray and turned the tide of battle to the side of the heroes. And a near thing it was...for had she not intervened when she had then the half-breed would have...self-detonated..."

"Self-detonated?" Illyra asked, "Do you mean...it would have exploded?"

"More like burn out the part of itself that was mortal and unleash the form that lay within," Tri-Longu turned away, "Had this happened then the creature would have died...and ascended to a higher form of being, which...needless to say, would have spelled the doom of every mortal living within a half a mile radius of the ascension."

"Yuck...that's a nasty thought to have to contemplate," Catsclaw winced, "If that had happened then we'd have nothing left here besides a crater...and a lotta dead bodies."

"Indeed, a near enough thing," Astarte averred, "A potential tragedy averted...but not without grave cost...for a life ended here...I can feel it."

"As do I," Tri-Longu concurred with a grim expression, "The God of Death claimed a toll for this victory...but I sense that one of the emissaries helped convey his soul to a higher level of being."

"That issss good," Snake said solemnly, "The balanccce wasss ressstored in the end...and yet...I sssenssse that mattersss here are a far cry from concluded."

"Half to agree with you there, Honey," Illyra remarked, "Scenes like this usually only happen when we're on the march, but this time it was somebody else who did major property damage, and we're still no closer to understanding why this even happened."

"Agreed," Tri-Longu said, "I can sense what happened but not why...and the motivations behind this battle are obscure to my vision."

"Being a goddess doesn't make one omniscient, my friend," Astarte turned and regarded the approaching Frank and Kasumi, "I should like the chance to interview the young man that your people have taken into custody. Perhaps we may discover what was truly at stake in this matter and determine whether or not there may be a connection between him and the parties that we are after."

"I'll see what I can do to help you out there, 'Starte," Frank said, "But I warn you...the kid was a real live wire. Took on some pretty tough opponents and all they could do was just slow him down and make him angry..."

"That isss not too sssurprisssing," Snake murmured, "I knew a Kirin onccce...he wasss a being of sssurpassssing graccce and majesssty...but I heard that he perissshed quite recccently, even by the measssure of mortalsss. It issss ssssaid that he left offssspring...but until now that rumor did not have reliable confirmation."

"Apparently you're sources are better than mine on this...no surprise there," Frank nodded, then indicated his lovely companion, "Kasumi here helped contain him when he was on the verge of going nova, but the real party that took him down is an old friend of yours by the name of Trudy Wells."

Kasumi noted how Illyra and Snake both turned startled looks at that news, but Astarte positively brightened as she purred with affection, "Trudy is here in Japan? How delightful! I must make a point to look her up and find out what she is doing with herself these days...and is she still going steady with Carla?"

"You can ask her yourself," Frank replied, "She's the new PE instructor at Furinkan High School."

"Oh my," Astarte remarked, "I certainly hope that she and Carla have not broken up. They were such a lovely couple..."

"A lovely couple of what I won't speculate," Illyra murmured, to which Snake gave a nod in token agreement.

Astarte turned back to Kasumi and said, "You must share with us your own experiences and impressions of this troubled young man whom you faced. Anything you might have to offer will be greatly valued..."

"Actually you should talk to my little sister, Nabiki," Kasumi deferred, "She fought with him alongside her husband, my little brother by adoption, Saotome Ranma."

"Be assured that I intend to," Astarte replied, "From what little I have heard so far she sounds like quite a remarkable young lady."

"Speaking of which," Illyra said, "Where are the kids who faced this guy down? Did you send them home with the rest of the study body?"

"Seemed like the thing to do," Frank replied, "They went all out and deserved some time to rest. I took it on myself to let them head home for some RR, but you can debrief them tomorrow, after they're fully rested."

"What?" Illyra reacted, "You let them leave a crime scene? No way! At the very least we'll need witness depositions, first-hand testimony, a full crime-lab forensics examination, and psychological counseling for those traumatized by the sight of violence..."

"You don't know Furinkan like I do, Kid," Frank noted grimly, "Violence ain't exactly a rare experience here, and all that differs this from their usual exposure to mayhem is that somebody actually died this time, and pretty horribly the way I hear tell of it, poor bastard."

"Not exactly good police procedure, but I suppose under the circumstances that it does make a kind of sense," Astarte turned and said, "Ian...what have you and Muriel picked up with your own sensors?"

"Data-check, files complete," Ian said in clipped tones as he approached his employer holding the strange looking rifle that Kasumi had seen him working on earlier in the day, "Stored for 'trieval."

"We've recorded the battle field from enough angles that we can work up a three-  
dimensional image for studying later, Astarte," the woman in the white "Storm-  
Trooper" armor relied, her own curiously advanced looking rifle held at a neutral position as she scanned the terrain with her visor, "Ian thinks that there were outside observers watching the whole thing from the sidelines, and there are some pretty weird readings that we need to examine in a lab that might suggest that we have bigger problems than just the prime assailant that everyone was focused upon."

"Good work you two," Astarte turned back and said, "Let us wrap things up and return to the hotel so that we can compare notes and better reckon the significance of these new developments. Philippe, ready the limousine. We are returning."

In her ear Kasumi heard the words, "As you wish, Cheri. Theresa and I are ready whenever you are."

"Splendid," Astarte turned to give Frank and Kasumi her warmest regards while saying, "You will know how to reach us when there is a need for our services...and by all means, set up a meeting between us and those responsible for containing this situation. It should prove...most enlightening, and I do so look forward to meeting your sister and brother-in-law."

"Just make sure you guys don't make a move before I've cleared it," Frank warned with a note of genuine caution, "One catastrophe like this in a week is all I've got the resources to contain right now, and if you guys go on the prowl before I've cleared it..."

"Be assured that my people will act with the utmost discretion, old friend," Astarte replied before returning to the stretch limousine as her people followed one-by-one until all half-dozen extraordinary individuals were accounted for. Then the sleek black vehicle pulled away, heading for one of the gaping holes punched in the wall that was wide enough to accommodate it passed before it turned and sped off into the gathering dusk of the evening.

Kasumi turned to regard the craggy profile of her hulking fiancé then asked, "Are you concerned for her, Frank-san? Because...forgive me for saying this...but it sounded as if you did not entirely trust her."

"Astarte's word is her bond and thensome," Frank noted, "She's a skilled and cunning manipulator, but she makes it a policy never to lie to a friend, and she keeps her word when she gives it. But the rest of her crew...they're the ones I worry about. With the exception of Catsclaw and Ian, who follow Astarte's every word literally because they're under contract, the rest do whatever the hell they feel like, especially Tri-Longu, who-after all-is a goddess, as she never stops reminding anyone who asks her."

"Do you think they will engage in anything that would not meet with your approval?" Kasumi questioned.

"Given their past record, I'd count on it...depending on the circumstances," Frank turned away, "The one I'd keep my eye on, however, is Snake, who's probably been here at least a hundred times in various different incarnations. She's kind of like a martial-arts goddess in her own right, and no one tells her what to do or say, not even Astarte."

"But...she and Astarte-san are in a relationship with Detective Illyra, yes?" Kasumi asked.

"It's complicated," Frank replied, "She all but worships Astarte as a lover, and the three of them are practically married at the hip, but...well...there's a lot of buried pride seething beneath the surface of that one, and she basically does whatever she feels like as a matter of habit. Mind you, if Astarte gave her an order she'd have no choice but to obey it."

"Why is that?" Kasumi wondered.

"Because among Astarte's various powers her voice is hypnotic, and it works on a person's sex drive," Frank explained, "It bores down deep and gets in under your defenses that way, so only somebody who doesn't have an active libido could resist her. Mind you, she wouldn't do that to Snake because it would be a gross violation of the trust that exists between them, but barring a fully active command..."

"I...see," Kasumi thought upon it then said, "Extraordinary people, even for gaijin. And you count on them as allies?"

"Oh yeah," Frank put his burly arm around the slender shoulders of the willowy girl and added, "Nobody I'd trust more in a fight, not even the Darkstalkers. It's just...when they don't have a specific target in front of them at which to direct their energies..."

Kasumi leaned closer and placed her palm upon the barrel-like chest of her fiancé, smiling so broadly that her fangs were momentarily bared, "They sound a lot like my family. In fact, I think they'll fit right in with the climate of Nerima."

"That's what worries me, Kid," Frank chuckled gruffly as the two of them began to walk off together, "They'll fit in a little too well for my liking. Better set up that meeting between our crews soon just so nothing gets set off prematurely, and for once I'd like to coordinate things with your sister so's there's no misunderstandings..."

As they walked off into the night, headed towards the parked Motorcycle known affectionately as "The Monster," they failed to detect another presence observing them from a comfortably safe distance, but once they had left the scene of the ruined school campus that figure emerged from hiding and smiled a darkly cynical smile, one without the warmth of the night that was gathering all around her.

"Set up a meeting, huh? Sounds like fun, especially if I'm the one to arrange it," Morrigar mused, "Time to earn my brownie points with the head office..."

And with that declaration in mind she faded from view altogether, but not without leaving behind a trademark maniacal laugh that would have chilled any spectator, had one been present to listen to the wind's weeping...

"That's right, Ryo-chan," Nabiki directed, "I want you to look up everything you can find on the net about some guy with the name of Otono...preferably well-  
placed financially and likely to head an organization that's capable of doing something illegal and probably quite nasty."

"You're in luck then, Sempai," Ryonami revealed as she worked the keyboard of her personal home computer, calling up names and files with an ease that seemed almost supernatural in its own right, "The file's right here in the newspapers. One Reyabi Otono, age twenty-seven, head of the Otonabi Sports Apparel Zaibatsu. Three time International Kendo Champion of the European Olympiad, holder of the rank of Fifth Dan in Kenjuitsu and Kempo...born in Kyoto but raised abroad by a wealthy uncle, who bequeathed to him the company he now runs as President and Chairman of the Board. Personal assets close to one or two billion US dollars...definitely the kind of guy who could afford to hire a high class hitman, but nothing here about any links to organized crime families. In fact, he seems to be heavily invested in a number of religious organizations..."

"Religious organizations?" Nabiki frowned as she leaned over her friend's right shoulder and studied the monitor displays, "Such as?"

"A couple of non-profit groups, a cable-run Televangelist program that beams by satellite worldwide," Ryonami answered, "Central headquarters the deep south in the US...no surprise there. Does a pretty hefty business selling religious icons and bibles...even has his own publishing company that churns out Christian literature...for a profit."

"Makes sense," Gosunkuji reflected as he stood to Ryonami's left observing her in action, "Never could understand how those groups could operate without making a lot of money. They just call it non-profit for tax purposes, but it's really just a scan by any other label."

"Dig deeper," Nabiki urged, "Let me know if he's got any hidden dirt that we can exploit."

"Will do," Ryonami said, adding a bit cynically, "Most of these holy roller types usually hide their dirt in their laundry and...whoah! What's this? Some kind of group that goes by the name Umakusa Suekazen?"

"Umakusa Suekazen?" Ranma repeated, "What the heck is that? And can you eat it for breakfast?"

"The Umakusa Seukazen," the voice of the Archmage known as Siren intruded upon their private meeting, startling Nabiki and her immediate companions as they had not been aware that there was anyone else but them in Ryonami's bedroom, "Now that is a name that I have not heard spoken about in...oh...close to a hundred or so years now..."

"You know who they are?" Nabiki asked, being the first one-as usual-to recover her bearings as she glared suspiciously at the Archmage.

"Oh yes indeed," Siren noted gravely, "A cult of Christian fanatics, originally based in Japan and founded by a man known vaguely as Umakusa, who authored a group of prophetic writings known as the Suekazen about four hundred-plus years ago, and hence the name from which the organization takes its standing."

"Japanese Christians?" Ranma asked, "But...I thought they were all wiped out in the time of the Tokugawa Shoganate..."

"They were indeed hounded and persecuted into near oblivion by the Shoganate," Siren replied, "And one of your own illustrious ancestors was chief among those who brought an end to their reign in the province of Ukinaga. At Hanua Castle a battle was waged that resulted in the deaths of thousands of followers of a man known as Takesawa Shiro Amakuza..."

"Wait a second there," Nabiki urged, "Our ancestor played a part in that?"

"You know him in legend as Yagyu Jubei," Siren revealed, "Perhaps the greatest swordsman of his era since Musashi himself. In the month of February in the year 1683 and on the sixteenth day Yagyu confronted Shiro in a duel to the death that very nearly cost all life upon the planet."

"What?" Ranma asked, "What are you saying?"

"Shiro was not entirely...human, at least as you would understand it," Siren answered, "He called himself the Son of God, but in the end he became more like a human incarnation of the Devil, the result of foul manipulation worked upon him by a man named Soiyuku Moru, who as, in fact, a servant of a demon known only as Genocide to those who walk the path of magic."

"Genocide?" Nabiki straightened out as she stared at the ageless Amazon Archmage, "That sounds ominous enough. But what's this got to do with us? I can't believe that somebody's seeking revenge against us based on something that happened hundreds of years in the past."

"Then you reckon without comprehending the mind of those who call themselves Umakusa Christians," Siren assured her, "Their cult did not entirely die out but survived in an underground form that thrived for the next two hundred years until the beginning of the Meiji restoration, at which point they came to prominence once more under a different cult leader who-like Shiro before him-  
-was called the 'Son of God" and attempted to lead his people into rebellion."

"So what happened to them the second time they made trouble?" Ryonami asked.

"Once more an ancestor of yours rose up to oppose them and put down their movement," Siren answered, "Driving the remaining cult members into exile in a foreign country-France, I believe-where they exist to the present. You see what I am getting at here? You and this cult have a Karmic destiny that pits you inevitably against one another...and now the current head of the Umakusa is acting to prevent a return of history on the eve of some new chapter of intended mischief."

"But why do they think that I'd want anything to do with their cockamamie schemes?" Nabiki asked, "Until today I didn't even know a thing about them! I wouldn't even know they exist if they hadn't sent that punk kid out to kill me!"

"That punk kid was only the herald of much larger troubles that are sure to follow," Siren cautioned, "And why ask me about what would motivate or drive a paranoid lunatic in the service of a real monster, one so delusional that he believes that he is fulfilling the mission of a god of love and justice?" The Archmage sighed, "What this battle has done is demonstrate to me that neither one of you is ready for the challenges that are sure to face you in the coming days. Even allied with an Elemental spirit a piece you were barely able to contain this matter, and by far much stronger enemies are on your horizon. That means that we must now intensify your training, Apprentice."

"Training?" Ranma asked.

"Indeed, how else are you to come into the full of your abilities, Senken Master?" Siren asked, "With five powerful elementals at your beck and call, ready and eager to fulfill your every wish and desire, yet you still cannot utilize even one tenth of the power that is contained within them...and they are blocked in displaying their potential through you because of your inexperience and unwillingness to dig deep into the well of knowledge that exists within you."

"Hey, I'm trying!" Ranma protested, "It ain't like it's all that easy..."

"Well, try harder," Siren countered, "Come the morning we will devote an entire day to your learning to master the energies that are yours to command. Your school is in a shambles so it is unlikely that classes will be joined until they decide whether or not it is safe to even enter the main building. In the meantime think well upon the riddle that I gave you the other day, which you have yet to answer...can you find the pool of calm within you and draw upon it to become a man within the center?"

"Man within the center?" Nabiki asked, "Of what?"

"Exactly," Siren turned and favored the short-haired girl with a sage expression, "And you, my dear, had best think some more about your own current level of training. You are the best of your generation, the crème de la crop as it were, and yet you couldn't best a child half your size and not yet old enough to graduate middle school. Of course he was half Kirin, but why make excuses for your failure to defeat him? There will always be enemies who are stronger than you, but your mind is your greatest weapon, and if you can outthink and outwit them, then they haven't a prayer of defeating you, do they?"

"Hey, if you're so smart why didn't you show up earlier?" Nabiki scowled, "You could have beaten that guy without breaking a sweat and saved us all a lot of hassles."

"I might indeed have done just that...had I been alerted earlier to the danger," Siren countered, "But, alas, I am not all knowing and all wise...nor as wise and knowing as my grandfather, whose skills and abilities in the arts dwarf my own to pale insignificance. Rather ask why he did not intervene since he was there watching you from a comfortably safe distance."

"He what?" Ranma gasped, "You mean...that blond guy? The one who talks in riddles and thinks he's some kinda Buddha?"

"Thinks he's Buddha?" Siren's eyes went wide and then she laughed in sure amusement, "Out of the mouth of babes come the seeds of greater wisdom! My dear boy...who do you think the term was first applied to? My grandfather has lived many lives and been known by many identities, but primarily he is a teacher of the hidden path, the bearer of ancient lore and the guardian of the Way of Light. Oh sure, he may talk and act the part of the clown, but as a student of the Taroh and Kabala you surely recall the first lesson of the two primary cards of your sister's deck?"

"You mean...the Fool and the Magician?" Ranma asked.

"They are one in the same...human beings represented in their natural state, blind to the forces that are contained within them...yet when a man pauses to seek inner enlightenment he becomes the Master of his own fate, the Captain of his soul. That means he has begin to walk the path that my grandfather laid out long ago, the Way of Return, where human beings discover their inner divinity and awaken the seed of knowledge within them."

"And where exactly do you stand on the scale of the card deck?" Nabiki wondered.

"Can you not guess?" Siren gave them a shrewd look, "I am the Empress, the Lady Heirophant, Temperance and Hope...I run the gamut of the deck because I have walked the path many times like an endless cycle. Think of a ladder shaped more like a spiraling staircase, and when you reach the top you can descend once more and start the process all over. That is the way I choose to live, because I love the life I live, and the people whom I encounter."

"Sounds like a great poem to put on a postcard," Nabiki said, "But I still don't see why any of this actually concerns us."

"Oh, pardon me, my ladyship," Siren said with a lightly mocking tone, "And here I thought that you were fond of your rather extended family and all of your friends, to say nothing of the people of Japan itself, all of whom stand in danger if the plans of your enemies see their way to fruition."

"Nani?" Ranma asked, "What are you talking about, Sensei? How are they in danger?"

"If I knew the answer to that then I truly would be omniscient," Siren replied, "But my grandfather and aunt seem to think it so, and I tend to believe them. I may lack for details, but I know the heart of these radicals reactionaries who call themselves Christians. They are seething with hunger for revenge, and they live to make the people of the main islands suffer for the crime that was done to them in their misremembered past. Twice before they conjured up a demon into the world who would have swallowed entire nations had he not been stopped in time, and now again they are allied with a demon so terrible that his name itself conjures up images of fields of rotting corpses. Reflect upon that and tell me how it does not really concern you...but why wait until they send their next goon to finish the job started by David? You can ask him why he is doing this and he will say unto you, 'Because my Master, Lord Otono, has commanded you to die, and he is God's chosen servant, and so must be obeyed without question.'"

"You're kidding me," Ranma winced, "A guy'll show up and really say something as corny as that?"

"I have it on the best of authority," Siren answered, then turned to Nabiki again and said, "So I suggest you find yourself a teacher or a mentor who can give you some needed pointers, because Cologne's training alone will not avail you against your next opponent. In the meantime do not gainsay my borrowing the services of your husband as he is mine to instruct in the matters of elemental wisdom."

"Find another teacher?" Nabiki asked, "Someone tougher even than Cologne? On short notice?"

"You have already met her and not even recognized it," Siren shook her head in sad reflection, then turned to Ranma and said, "And by the way...I know about the activities of your elementals...and while it is not the method I would have chosen to familiarize yourself with their true natures...I approve of the results. Continue training with them, let the last two show you their essence, and then...we will begin to study on the morrow. Until that time...sweet dreams my very young apprentice."

With that she seemed to step sideways yet vanished into the empty space of air without nary a flicker or trace to mark her passage. Ranma and Nabiki were left in silence as they stared at where the blonde Amazon had been standing, and then slowly turned and looked at one another, no words being necessary as they both realized that they had just been issued a very significant challenge.

It was Ryonami who broke the silence by saying, "Well...that was sure a kick in the head...or whatever sensitive parts you'd care to mention."

"She's the Archmage?" Gosunkuji asked in awe and wonder, "And Ranma-kun is studying with her?"

"Down boy," Nabiki softly chided, "No drooling in Ryo-chan's presence, especially not if it stains the carpet."

"I'm doomed," Ranma said resignedly.

"Hey, you're Saotome Ranma, right?" Ryonami said encouragingly, "Next to Sempai the toughest guy in Nerima...except for that Frank guy...and Kasumi, that is. But other than that there's nobody you can't handle in a fight, right?"

"That ain't what I'm talking about," Ranma winced, "I mean...she's just given her blessings to me getting screwed by Sobriel and Karina. I mean...I've been screwed by the other three girls...and when they get done with me..." he gulped and looked sheepishly at his wife, "You're gonna kill me. Either that or Ucchan and Perfume will do it for you."

Nabiki scowled and looked her husband frankly in the eye, "Maybe I would have if this had come up sooner...but I had a chance to get to know Latisha pretty well and...well...I think I understand a lot better what you've been going through of late, Ranchan. Doesn't mean I like or approve of it, but since those girls are now a part of you...I don't see how I can get any more jealous of them than I am our fellow co-wives. Just don't make a habit of doing it behind my back or there really will be consequences."

Ranma gulped and said, "Yessma'am."

"And don't enjoy it too much," she added, stabbing a finger at his chest, then pausing and staring at her own hand, her expression turning curiously inward.

"Sempai?" Ryonami asked, sensing the curious change in the mindset and mood of her beloved mentor.

Nabiki held up her hand and stared hard at her own index finger, and then she frowned in concentration for a moment, then said in a thoughtful voice, "I wonder...maybe she's the one? Have to ask her next time I see her..."

"Who?" Ranma said, puzzled by his wife's odd behavior.

"Never mind," Nabiki said, then turned to Ryonami and said, "Get me whatever you've got on the new Gym teacher. There's something about that gaijin that bothers me a lot, and if she's what I think she is...then maybe I've got the solution to my own problem licked."

"Right chief," Ryonami snapped back to attention, turning to her console and started typing out a new list of instruction, conducting a search that would take even less time but produce far fewer results than the last one just recently concluded...

"Man, talk about life imitating art..."

"Oh hush," Nabiki snapped at her husband, then turned back to the monitor screen and said, "I'll admit that it's a bit disconcerting, but coincidence or no it is reassuring to see that my counterpart here has this much on the ball, even if she's followed more in your path than my own."

"What gives here?" Ranko asked as she looked from the monitor displays to the people in the chamber in which they stood, then back again with a sense of disconcertion, "Are we looking at them looking at someone else? And what if somebody's watching us from behind...?"

"Don't start that, Kid," her father warned her, "I'm paranoid and crazy enough as it is, I don't need any more incentives."

"So," a Ryonami much older than the one on the display remarked, "That's me in my younger years, back when I used to follow you around like a love-sick puppy, Boss Lady."

"Whatdya mean used to?" Ranma scoffed, only to wince as his wife's elbow connected with his midsection.

"And there's my future husband, Gosunkuji," Ryonami sighed, "Just as nerdy and scrawny as ever. Gawd, what was I thinking?"

"I'm sure Gos-kun would be gratified to hear you say that," Nabiki remarked, "Still...it is comforting to know that some things remain the same regardless of the timeline."

"So, in this scenario it's a bunch of maniac Christians allied with that Holocaust demon I faced on Continuum #56281790," Ranko winced, "Nasty bugger...good thing Pop squashed him in the end, but not before he'd taken out a quarter of the earth's population."

"Might be I'll have to do it again," Ranma rumbled, "But at least I'll be better prepared to handle the creep the next time I see him."

"Not while the Daokan are involved here," Nabiki said flatly, "Until we understand more of what their role here is I'm not letting you get anywhere near to the same continent as Udan. That means you'll have to go back in and continue monitoring things as our representative agent, Ranko-chan. Only this time...try not to draw so much attention. This time around they mistook you for someone else, but the next time out..."

"Right, gotcha Mom," Ranko nodded, "I'll do my best and uphold the Saotome honor."

"Not at the same time, Kid," Ryonami cautioned, "If it's one or the other, the Saotome thing usually wins the battle but smashes up a lot more apartments."

"Hardehar," Ranma grumbled, then gave his adopted daughter a hard look and said, "Sure you're up to this, Kid? You're tougher than I was at your age, but even with all the stuff you've picked up during your travels..."

"Hey, it's not like I'm bringing Meiko or Cheshire in on this, Pop...or any of my friends from my favorite timelines," Ranko assured him.

"Think I'd feel a lot better if you had them for backup," Ranma grumbled.

"No way," Nabiki said, "This timeline is overloaded with intersecting karma lines as it is...there's no cause to topple the entire structure by adding more Nexus points to an already complicated mixture."

"Too bad," Ranko sniffed, "Having Silver or Watazashi on board would give me something to do while on stake-outs. And Lylac might get a kick out of seeing her younger self as a baby, or maybe Kachima seeing her mom as a martial artist instead of a Lore Master..."

"On your way young lady," Nabiki gave her daughter an encouraging pat on the back to send her to the transports, "And don't break contact...I want to know everything you see and observe, no matter how trivial it might appear at the time that it happens."

"All right, Mom, I get the point already," Ranko said in complaint while heading to her next temporal translocation, "Sheesh...doesn't she ever let up already?"

"Not as long as I've known her," Ranma grinned, "Why do you think I married her?"

"Because you had a moment of stunningly good judgement, of course," Nabiki replied, then turned back to the monitors and directed Ryonami to continue scanning...

"Ah, the TCP...where would the continuum ever be without them?"

"Honestly Father," Thelendra said while holding up her hands to contain the energies of the viewing portal that she had summoned, "Why thou dost persist in these vexing enterprises goes beyond mine comprehension. The Time Agents have resources aplenty at their disposal, and the one who contains the Dark Destroyer within him be of formidable puissance, yet still thou dost know of the restraints that temper their involvement with any given timeline. Surely it dost nay serve our cause to have them scurry about on the fringes whilst the enemy gathers his might at the core of the city of Edo itself?"

"Patience Thelendra," Anri said soothingly, "They too shall have their part to play, and Time is everything in this matter...not just because they do patrol it, but as each piece must fit its place if the tapestry itself is ever to be completed."

"Patience is a virgin, grandfather," Siren remarked as she gave a sidelong look at her two companions, "And Aunt Thelendra, though she is many things, most certainly is not one at the present."

Thelendra did a very uncharacteristically childish thing and stuck her tongue out at her grand-niece, but then she resumed her somber regard of the Time Cop Patrol Monitoring Quarters and said, "The Lore Master dost suspect that something be brewing beneath the surface, but unless she travels hither and observes with her own inner knowledge the truth of what be at stake here..."

"Which she ill not do for fear of losing control over her husband," Anri noted, "A formidable woman in nearly every timeline that I have observed. Indeed...so much potential in one so young, and still growing as an Eluini. I look forward to studying her continued progress."

"Be mindful that thine study be nay too close and personal, father mine," Thelendra cautioned, "Else in the doghouse thou shalt find thineself with mother..."

"Let me worry about Elea," Anri replied, then turned to Siren and said, "And speaking of which, you played your part quite well in that little drama with your new apprentice. You prompted both him and his wife to take a more serious interest in improving their training, exactly as I wanted."

"Really grandfather?" Siren asked, "You don't think I overplayed my hand a bit back there, especially when I came close to telling them all about your colorful past as Siddhartha?"

"No, I think you balanced it just right," Anri replied, "But leave it to me to supply the jucier details behind that story. But first...we have yet one more champion to prod, and so, my dear, you need not delay your reunion with her any longer."

"Aye Father," Thelendra sighed, banishing the image ball and turning away, to vanish into the haze as she headed off to her destination.

Siren eyed the man beside her and said, "I know that it's not my place to question you, Grandfather, but...are you certain that this is a good thing? You know how upset Aunt Thelendra was after breaking up with her old boyfriend..."

"And you think she might come between those two who are fated to be wife and husband?" Anri asked, "There is that possibility, but I owe it to Thelendra to give her a chance at finding the happiness that has eluded her for so long. She used to be so contented with her work as an Oracle...but now it seems as if every vision is a chore, and all it does is remind her of the emptiness that's been aching within her."

"I never understood what she ever saw in that miserable little Gremlin," Siren sniffed, then thought a moment before adding, "But then I guess the same is true of a certain Gnome who came between me and one as dear to my heart...so I feel for her suffering and wish her all the best."

"As do I," Anri nodded, then turned back and smiled at Siren, "And by the way...after you are done for the day coaching and badgering your new disciple, I have another task that I would ask of you...one that you may not enjoy very much, but which I assure you is important to the future survival of all who live upon this timeline."

"Not laying it on too thick are you, Grandfather?" Siren sighed, "All right...just what is this new assignment?"

"My brother," Anri informed her, "You know which one. He is yet to show his presence, but I can feel him approaching, and when he joins in the matter...you know what he is likely to do."

"You mean...?" Siren widened her eyes, "You want me to...? You must be joking!"

"Frequently," Anri replied, "Laughter lightens the soul...but in this matter I am very serious. Beyond that I make no stipulations, and I trust entirely in your judgement."

"That makes one of us," Siren sighed, "All right...for the cause and all that...but after this you are going to owe me, Grandfather."

"Have I ever failed to live up to a promise?" Anri asked, then thought a moment and reconsidered, "Well...excepting only that..."

"Right," Siren sighed, turning away while grumbling, "Show up in my life for the first time in over a hundred years and already he expect me to prostitute myself with a relative...some holy figure of ancient wisdom...makes me understand better why the religions he founds turned out the way they did..."

"Now that was an unkind remark," Anri reflected to himself once the blonde Archmage was on her way and no longer within earshot, "Accurate and true, perhaps, but definitely uncalled for."

He stood where he was contemplating the gray haze of the infinite light around him then a boyish grin lit up his face and he said, "Now this should prove interesting..." and with that he went on his own merry way, continuing to follow the path that had been set before him in forgotten times now long ancient...

Continued.

Comments/Criticisms/Holy Rolls of the Dice: shadowmane

Or: shadowmane9849

Next time out: Ranma confronts his remaining challenges with the elementals of Air and Void, while Nabiki seeks out the one who may hold the answer to her own immediate problem, and as for Kasumi...well...better you read what happens and decide for yourself, gentle efendi, in the next exciting chapter, "A Time of Light and Darkness," or, "It's Always Darkest Until You Flick The Light Switch!" Be there...

X

/pre 


	73. Chapter 73

preDnabiki162

Nabiki 1/2

"A Very Scary Thought"

by Jim Robert Bader

(Inspired by the works of Rumiko Takahashi Others,  
with concepts and characters created by fellow fanfic writers Wade Tritschler, DB Sommers, Nicole Manders, Andrew Greaves, Bill Guiroff and countless others, including "Buffy"  
creator Joss Whedon; with special thanks to my good pal Shiva for his editing and handling of this series.)

(Certain other characters and concepts are of my own innovation, including my interpretation of the Monster of Mary Shelly's novel, the Furies, Trudy, Takaharis Angelique d'Anjou and various other guest stars appearing in this portion of the Nabiki 1/2 series...)

Chapter Sixty-One.

Episode One-Hundred-Sixty-Two.

"Tripping On Light Fantastic"

"You're kidding...you mean I missed all of that?" Lenore asked with a fairly appalled expression.

"Just so, Cherie," Angelique replied as they convened an impromptu meeting of paranormals at Takaharis's place, "Not that anyone is blaming you, and it is doubtful that you and your team could have been of much use against a youth with such tremendous power and rage at his disposal. If anything the realization of what you are might well have fired his determination."

"Sounds like it," Chloe noted, "Holy roller types can be a real pain to have to deal with, especially if they're packing paranormal powers, the kind they'd claim meant you were a witch if you were somebody else, that is."

"They do tend to fall into that category of hypocrisy," Kiima commented with her usual sense of detachment, "When talents appear for which they have no rational explanation their tendency is to call upon the powers of either Heaven or Hell to explain their source and origins. For them there is no mid-way explanation."

"Very limited thinking on their part," Trudy sniffed, "But I'm prejudice against that type to begin with. I was born a Methodist, but I got better when I got older."

"Trudy," Angelique said chidingly, "Though you fell away from one branch of the faith your core values remain unaltered, so play the cynic all your care to around me, Cheri, but I know your heart as truly as any other...saving only for Carla."

"Hey, don't even play that game with me, Angel," Trudy said, "We may share a history but you know damned well how much I changed the day I met my future incarnation from that alternate timeline that you hail from."

"Indeed?" Takaharis remarked, "Your metamorphosis could hardly be much stranger than mine, but coming from the place that I call home to where I am now was more like exchanging venues than definitions."

"I prefer to think of it more as an evolution of the soul in both of your examples, such as when you integrated the essence of your counterpart to create zee gestalt zhat is now your own, Trudy-chan," the Temuvarai persisted with a knowing look, "You have more of Maegan in you zhan you suspect, and your actions display how much you care about zee people around you and zee fundamental cause of justice."

"Look, you know about my purpose and my mission in this world," Trudy maintained, "What I'm doing now is pursuing just one aspect of that much greater agenda, to prevent this world from following in the path of history that lead to the world you came from. And I gotta big hunch that this new stuff with that David guy is just the opening salvo in a much nastier little war that the group he represents is planning. The fact that they disguise their homicidal intentions within religious trappings just means that they're all that more dangerous because they may well think that what they're doing is for the greater glory of heaven."

"Ain't it always that way?" Lenore remarked, "Some of the most viscous wars ever fought in history were over two groups of guys who disagreed on what God said was the right way for everybody else to live in peace. Of course...having actually met the guy who started it all puts a whole different spin on who's in the right about such matters..."

"Hah?" Chloe asked with a puzzled expression.

"In other words neither side is correct so long as either one is willing to kill for the sake of his religion," Kiima translated, "And being one closer to the state known as death than many helps give me a certain perspective over who is truly the victor of such altercations...meaning no one as all invariably wind up the loser."

"Oh," Chloe exclaimed, "Why didn't you say so? I could have told you that."

"How sad truly," Angelique reflected, "The one named David was obviously sent as an emissary for zee true enemy, the one who set him on his murderous course in zee name of a false ideal of a falser heaven. How much further zhey are willing to go, zee ones who are behind zhis, does not forbode well of zee ultimate outcome."

"If by that you mean is more trouble to follow, then I would think it obvious enough," Takaharis remarked, "To boldly attack a high school on the fringes of one of the most populous cities on this planet shows a reckless certitude that their cause justifies extremist actions of an even more dire character, so it's better to be prepared for the worst rather than to wait around until it actually happens."

"Now you're talking," Trudy grinned with no real humor in her expression, "I'd rather be proactive than reactive any day of the week.:

"Trudy," Angelique said indulgently, "As broad as zee mandate of a Kurustani may be in upholding their mandate, we can hardly go running about looking to cause trouble just to shake loose whatever falls free from zee rotten branches."

"I kinda like that metaphor," Lenore mused softly, "But aren't you guys supposed to be keeping a low profile? I mean...I know that sounds silly what with the destruction and everything that was caused today, and getting into a full-flung sword fight ain't exactly in the description of low profile..."

"Not to worry about that," Takaharis remarked, "After what I saw today I'd think keeping out of the spotlight will be the least of your troubles. Odd that the police let everyone go home after taking a few depositions..."

"Not so odd," Chloe replied, "Big Frank covers stuff like that all of the time."

"And with stakes this high he is willing to devote the time and resources necessary to insure a level of civility prevails over the matter," Kiima noted, "Almost Japanese in his outlook...a mark of how much time the man must have spent in my home country."

"Oui," Angelique somberly reflected, "And yet the trauma that the students of this high school have lived through does call for a measure of compassion to be extended for their sakes. After all, as you say, friend Trudy, this is Japan, not Cullelin. I must as a Temuvarai do my part to help them cope with what they were forced to witness, to ease their burden by helping them to spiritually adjust to the pain that they have suffered."

"Oh really?" Takaharis asked, eyeing her blonde houseguest with undiluted suspicion.

"But still," Trudy said, "It is more than a little disconcerting to think that the bad guys were willing to go to such an extremes just to get at one student in particular...this Nabiki person...not that I have trouble seeing why as she's a pretty extraordinarily good fighter. Not up to my standards, but still pretty impressive."

"You keep implying that you are somehow better than the common mill of martial artist," Takaharis scowled, "Just how effective a fighter are you?"

"Weeeellll...I don't like to brag," Trudy remarked, "But in this time I really have few equals."

"It is the truth, Cheri," Angelique affirmed, "Kurustani methods are even more formidable than the arts of the Temuvarai...but with such power come restrictions in the use of their abilities. For one thing, Trudy is non at liberty to attack anyone without obtaining divine sanction."

"That's exaggerating things more than a bit," Trudy contradicted, "The Power that speaks to me is many things, but I'm not sure if divine is the word that fits entirely."

"Don't know what all that means," Lenore shrugged, "But if you're tougher than my lady Kasumi's sister, then I sure as heck don't want to mess with you, and the same goes for my friends here."

"Hey, don't sweat it," Trudy said, "I'm a real pussycat...just as long as you ain't one of the bad guys. They're the only ones who need to fear me."

"Really?" Chloe leaned forward and sniffed the air nearest to the strawberry redhead, then said, "Hmmm...not much of the Cat in your, at least...not as much as that nice-smelling girl with the really pretty name, Incense..."

"Perfume," Kiima corrected, "But I am curious to know why the Paladin here refers to you as a Kurustani. I am not familiar with that term...nor with Temuvarai either."

"Not surprising, considering that the language that they're based on doesn't even exist in the present," Trudy answered, "In the Desani language of Loquel, however, they roughly translate as 'Death Maiden' and 'Devotion.' Originally the Kurustani were priestesses of the Desani Lord of Death, Kuru, who is also known as 'Father of Darkness,' or 'Dark Father.' That doesn't mean to imply that he was a bad guy, but the Kurustani were kind of like the undertakers and spiritual mediums who stood between the planes of life and death. The Temuvarai, by contrast, were temple guardians devoted to the goddess Shela, the Queen of Heaven and Heavenly Order. All of that changed after the Desani were invaded and driven into exile and had to reformulate everything along the lines of a more martial, guerilla-like mindset."

"It is a sad tale, yet one full of hope, Cheri," Angelique added, "In order to free their land and liberate their imprisoned countrywomen, the Desani had to open their borders and form new alliances with the nations they had long considered as outsiders. The Temuvarai gained much of its present officer core from foreign converts, such as myself, who embraced their lifestyle and learned the ways of devotion as a means of serving the cause of order. The Kurustani, on the other hand, gained a powerful mentor in the form of a woman known to many only as the Lady Alquieta."

"Also called the Woman of the Moon, since she once married a Moon Prince on an alternate dimension," Trudy supplied, "And as a Princess by adoption she studied the ways of the priests of Ote Era and mastered the difficult art of Shaloe Ahl, which is the system of fighting that I practice. It's a martial arts system thousands of years old and perfected to the point where most human fighting styles rank as amateur or beginner level..."

"That's quite a boast," Takaharis said, "But are you really that good? I mean...I've lived in Japan for quite a few years now, and I've seen some rather amazing things that martial artists can do, this day's performance being a mere example."

"Yeah, well...the only reason I couldn't take that David guy out in two steps was because he had some kind of amulet protecting him and scrambling my senses," Trudy countered, "Otherwise I'd have turned him out like a light switch."

"No one is blaming you for that, Cheri," Angelique said encouragingly, "Well all know that you put a stop to his rampage once the evil amulet was destroyed. The question in my mind is...who gave to him such a powerful pendant of protection against detection and location? Such things are rare even in my time, and the skills to make one even rarer..."

"Sounds like another riddle to take up with the boss," Lenore sighed, "Guess I'd better report in and make my mea culpas for not being on hand when we were needed."

"Hey, it was in broad daylight," Chloe protested, "What the heck were we supposed to do? Your powers are even weaker than mine by daylight hours, and even Kiima-chan here needs to work in relative shadow."

"All true," Kiima said, "Plus the fact that it was our day off and we were paying respects to your friend, Shiro."

"Yeah, but that won't cut it if the Boss man thinks we were slacking," Lenore assured them, nodding to the lady of the place and said, "Interesting meeting you, Lady, Lady Takaharis. Can't say I've had many pleasant encounters with your kind before, but you seem a good egg at heart, so I hope we can be buddies."

"I will consider that," Takaharis said as she bade the trio farewell as they exited from the front door of her house.

"Guess I oughta be heading off too," Trudy remarked with a long sigh, "Carla will be flying in soon, and she'll expect me to be there to pick her up at the airport."

"Give my fondest regards to her, Cheri," Angelique smiled, "And tell her that I shall always remember with fondness our time when she is Beruna."

"Oh, I'm sure she's gonna dig that," Trudy grumbled while existing the side door, which was the means that she preferred to use when making an exit, "Like I need any more reminders that she used to be your wife...or will be in her next incarnation..."

Takaharis closed both doors then sealed them with a wave of her hand, then sighed, "I thought that they would never leave."

"They are not so difficult to get along with," Angelique said, favoring the Erinyes with a fondly indulgent look, "And I can tell that you like them individually, Cheri, so why bother pretending otherwise?"

"Perhaps," Takaharis did not turn to regard the blonde but rather stared off into the distance with a thoughtful and stern expression, "But now that they know about me I suppose sooner or later I'm going to have to have a meeting of my own with their employer. I've heard rumors about this fellow, Steinberg, some good, some bad, and I'm not entirely looking forward to the encounter."

"Cheri," Angelique chided, "Judge not lest ye be judged, and who here knows this better than the both of us?"

She started to move in closer to the other woman, only to see Takaharis flinch rather than react to her overture of affection, which surprised the Temuvarai to no end, so much so that she asked, "Cheri...is something the matter? Are you...cross with me for some reason?"

"Perhaps," Takaharis turned a flinty look towards Angelique and said, "Just what were you doing with all those young human girls? Wasn't I enough for you that you had to indulge in the sport of cradle robbing?"

"Eh?" Angelique arched an eyebrow, "Is that what is bothering you? Cheri..."

"Don't Cheri me, and answer the question," Takaharis snapped.

"Ah...you believe that I took unfair advantage of their innocence, yes?" Angelique said after studying the other woman for a long silent moment, "You are under the impression that I had sex with each and every one of them, non?"

"Well?" Takaharis asked, "Didn't you?"

Angelique threw back her head and laughed, "Cheri...I know that I have the reputation of being something of a Lothario, but just how much do you think I could accomplish within a few scant minutes? Ah non...I much prefer to take my time when making out with a girl...no quicke, only a longie...and much devotion to bring about her eventual fulfillment. Non...what I was doing with those young people was exploring and awakening their hidden talents. I sought to know as much as I could where they were in spiritual-as well as sexual-terms, to discover, awaken and direct their energies towards more satisfying pastimes than those that they might likely find by their own methods."

"Exactly what does that mean?" Takaharis puzzled.

Angelique thought for another moment then said, "Tell me, Cheri...at what point in your life did you discover that you could share a passion for another woman?"

"Five minutes after I met you," Takaharis replied, but then she saw the look her companion gave to her and sighed, "All right...it was...ahm...a long time ago, back when I was just a young sprite and didn't know any better...about the equivalent of a human's teenaged years, and long before I met my future husband, Halgariel. It was just me and another Erinyes girl my own age, the two of us fooling around down by the lava pits, no big deal, and we rarely talked about it afterwards."

"I see," Angelique said sagely, "And this was your lone same-sexual encounter before me?"

"Ah...," Takaharis actually squirmed before the knowing scrutiny of her blue-  
eyed companion, "Oh, all right...if you must know...I did it with an Angel girl once back when I was hanging around with the Devas. Her name was Yurikel, and for somebody born to the light she was a pretty hot number. It was just a silly fling, I was bored, and my husband was off on other duties, leaving me along to my choir studies. So there now, are you happy?"

"And since then?" Angelique inquired, "No human girl has ever before caught your interest?"

"Ah..." Takaharis swallowed, "I wouldn't say that...but...it's not all that important."

"As you say, Cheri," Angelique said with a knowing leer, "I discovered my own sexuality when I was a young child, barely fifteen summers, and as you already know the girl I was with and I both got into a great deal of trouble at the nunnery that raised us. Since then I have grown to appreciate how difficult and confusing is the change that befalls a young girl when she is on the verge of becoming a true woman. It is my goal to ease the burden of such confusion by helping to direct them into a more positive way of thinking about their true natures."

"You mean...convert them to the faith and all that?" Takaharis asked.

"Not specifically, non," Angelique replied, "But if they come willingly to me then they already have nascent longings within them and can find great satisfaction with other members of their own gender. Often it is not a specific preference but a general appetite that they do not fully understand and have difficulty relating to their prior life experience. Often they are filled with a horror and a strong sense of denial of the truth that they know awaits discovery. So...my task is to help them to feel more comfortable about their secret longing for zee forbidden fruit of finding love with a person of zee same or opposite gender. I seek only to teach them to release the shackles that have been laid upon their hearts, to clear the way so that they can be the person whom they truly are without dissembly...and without true regrets."

"In other words to learn to open up their legs and stop denying what's down there?" Takaharis translated.

"In a manner of speaking, yes," Angelique assured her otherworldly companion, "Denial is a terrible vice that masquerades as virtue...that tendency people have to pretend to be something other than what their hearts assure them is zee truth of zee matter. I have seen zee price that many pay for the crime of denial, to shut off a portion of their very being, to limit themselves to merely half an existence. It chokes zee life out of you over time and leaves only bitterness and misfortune. I would rather zhey admit honestly of zheir true feelings deep inside them, to let go of zheir inner libido so that they can freely admit to feeling zee love zhat needs expression for zhem to be whole and complete as a person."

"And that's the only reason you fondled and molested all those girls this morning?" Takaharis asked skeptically, "To show them that they harbor same-sex feelings...because they obviously found you to be attractive?"

"What they find attractive within me, Cheri, is zee spirit of life zhat is a gift from God, my Mother," Angelique assured her, moving in closer to the Erinyes and putting arms around her, to which this time Takaharis neither flinched nor drew away, "But what attracts me to you is zee very thing those innocents lacked, which is zee life experience of a mature adult woman. I have had more than my share of sweet young things in my time, but I have grown to appreciate zee value of a full-bodied woman who is that much closer to being my equal. You and I, Cheri, have that much in common zhat we do what we wish...and what we believe to be right...without regards to what other people may think about our actions."

Takaharis found her face only inches from that of Angels, and their bodies were snuggled so close together that the heat they generated between them was powerfully arousing. She found herself leering back at her new roommate while softly growling, "And just what do you do when you give a girl a complete and...thorough examination?"

"Why don't I show you rather zhan describe it?" Angelique purred sensuously, and then their mouths pressed in together and they started to cuddle in earnest, which in turn lead to far more passionate and intimate gestures...

"Gotta admit, even for Angel that's quite some catch," Trudy remarked as she left the residence that belonged to Takaharis, only to halt in her tracks and scowl, then turn a look sidelong and say aloud, "Got something on your mind, Kid?"

"I thought so," a figure said as she stepped out of from behind the nearest corner, "Looks like my hunch was right...all three of you are connected somehow, and the fact that you're having a meeting together just confirms this."

"Yeah, so?" Trudy asked, "Teachers have conferences all of the time...nothing odd about that."

"It is when three substitutes who all show up on the same day are involved," said Nabiki as she eyed the gaijin redhead with a frank expression, "Two of them using the same address and apparently cohabiting together...not that I'm one to make any editorial comments in that department."

"So, I repeat my question, Tendo-san," Trudy said, "What do you got on your mind that you're seeking me out instead of staying at home with your wife and kids?"

"Well, for one thing..." Nabiki paused and scowled at the foreign-born exchange teacher, "How the heck do you know who I am, to say nothing about my personal life?"

"Well, I might explain, but then I'd probably have to kill you," Trudy cautioned.

"Very funny," Nabiki scoffed.

"No really," Trudy assured her, "It's that kind of secret."

"Secrets are my specialty," Nabiki said, "After all I found you out, and you don't need to explain the part about you being on the employ with Frank's outfit. After all, he's dating my sister for kami's sake."

"Good point that," Trudy turned to regard the younger woman, "So, for the third time...what's on your mind, Saotome-san?"

Nabiki paused before answering, "How do you do that? Know things about people without having to ask questions? And the way you took down that creep David...after all of us wasted the better part of the day trying to take him down...and Taro before that?"

"Oh that?" Trudy said casually, "Trade secret."

"Nice try," Nabiki said, "I've studied just about every martial arts system in the orient and I've never seen moves like yours...so...where the heck did you learn them? Taking somebody down in just one move is something I've only seen done against non-martial artists, not anybody who's been trained to defend themselves against pressure-point attacks."

"You think that's all it is?" Trudy smiled, "Just touching the right nerves to put a body out?"

"Why?" Nabiki frowned, "You're telling me there's more to it than that?"

Trudy started to reply to this only to stop herself and scowl, "You're good...ask a leading question, get me to confirm your suspicions. You learn that from your old fart of a master?"

"No, from American made Warner Brothers cartoons," Nabiki replied, "So what's the real story here? How do you know how to take somebody down like that? And is it something I can learn?"

"Come again?" Trudy blinked, "You want me to teach you my moves?"

"Well, why not?" Nabiki asked, "I've studied with the best, and I was told by somebody important that I need to bone up on some fresh new maneuvers. So what do you say, Coach? Feel like taking on a student?"

"Not interested, Kid," Trudy replied, "Besides...you don't know anything about my style or what it involves. You may be tough, and I've seen how good your moves are, but you're a long ways away from being in my class."

"I know that," Nabiki said, "That's why I'm asking."

"And what makes you think I'd be interested in teaching my moves to a rank novice?" Trudy wondered.

"Novice?" Nabiki reacted with indignation, "I'll have you know that I've been practicing the martial arts ever since I could walk..."

"Well, let me know when you get good at it," Trudy started to turn away, only to move with a sharp stab sideways, two fingers hovering just inches away from where Nabiki had moved forward to attack her.

Nabiki stared cross-eyed at those two fingers, having intended her assault to be illustrative of her abilities, and not imagining that she could be that easily interpreted, let alone anticipated.

"You've got guts, Kid, testing my reflexes like that," Trudy said without turning to look at the younger girl, "But you got no idea how close you just came to having your brains scrambled in your skull. Good thing for you that your number's not up and I'm in a better mood than all of that."

"Ah...right," Nabiki said, "So...free sparring with you is not an issue?"

"Not even on the page," Trudy lowered her hand and turned to regard the pigtailed girl, "Not until you get better defense instincts and learn to block an attack that has destiny behind it."

"Destiny?" Nabiki repeated.

"It's called Shaloe-Ahl, and you won't find another practitioner of it anywhere else on the planet. Or, if you do, then run real fast because as good as you are you'll never even see death coming until after she greets you into the next world."

"Ah...right," Nabiki said simply, "Shaloe-Ahl...is that anything like Fist of the North Star or Sinanju?"

"Hah! Those amateurs?" Trudy sniffed, favoring the younger girl with a curious expression.

"Amateurs?" Nabiki frowned, "You're saying you're that much better?"

"Tell you what," Trudy said, "You want to learn from me? How badly?"

"You saw how it was at our school," Nabiki replied, "I don't want to have a thing like that happen again, so if anything you can teach me could make me a stronger fighter..."

"This ain't about fighting, Kid," Trudy warned, "It's about survival. But if you're really that serious about it, then why don't I show you instead of make with the explanations?"

"Show me what?" Nabiki asked.

"What I do for a living," Trudy answered, "I was gonna pick up my girlfriend from the airport, but with the mood she's in I'd sooner juggle live hand grenades. So instead you're gonna be my alabi on why I arrive late, because there's some business I wanted to attend to, and you can be my backup."

"Where to?" Nabiki wondered.

"To a place where we can get some answers," Trudy nodded, "Come with me and I'll show you, it's just a little ways into the city."

"Then lead the way, Coach," Nabiki nodded, "Consider me a student...Sensei."

"Just remember one thing," Trudy warned, "You asked for this...I didn't push you, so don't whine and complain to me afterwards if things get a little rough and you wind up facing more than what you bargained on, Student."

"I'm not afraid," Nabiki assured her new mentor.

"Not yet perhaps," Trudy smirked, "But you will be...you will be," and with that the two of them headed off into the night and towards an evening that would prove to be most illustrative...

"Gotta take care of some stuff at the office, but I'll be back to join you in a bit," Frank said gruffly, "You gonna be all right until I get back, Doll-face?"

"Oh, I'm sure that I will manage, Frank-chan," Kasumi reassured her fiancé, "I'm not very far from home, and you know that by my own means I can easily travel the remaining distance."

"Yeah but..." Frank glanced around at their surroundings, "You sure you wanna be here...in a graveyard, this close to sunset?"

"I'll be all right," Kasumi reassured her man, "I just want to take some time to speak with mother."

"Yeah, I get that," Frank said uneasily, "But...well, you know I ain't never felt too comfortable around graves. Too many bad memories there...but in your case..."

"Oh, you mean because I might encounter the undead?" Kasumi thought about it, "Well, we both know that I won't be in any danger..."

"For once it ain't you I'm worried about," Frank said, "Being their goddess and all that. But...well, we still don't know the full extent of your powers, Kid, and the chance remains that you might unintentionally animate someone just by being there. Certain corpses...well...they hover on the threshold border between life and the next world, and it doesn't take much to tip them over one way or the other..."

"I see," Kasumi smiled, "Perhaps I should have waited for Lenore-chan to arrive here then. She's been very helpful to me as a guide and advisor to life as a Vampire, and doubtless she would be able to tell me what to do in such situations."

"Yeah, that'd be my bet," Frank said, "Don't much like leaving you alone, but...well...the office doesn't run itself and..."

"Exactly," Kasumi said, "You are an important man with many duties, and I've kept you away from them for far too long. So please, Frank-sama...return to your office, do the things that you must do, and when you are done...come back to me, please. I feel lonely sometimes when I am without you."

"Hey, no need to be lonely, Kid," Frank reached out with a burly hand and lightly cupped the delicate chin of his vampiric girlfriend, "You've got family and friends who care a lot about you, and they're always ready to be there when you need them. And the one thing I've come to really appreciate about you is that you've got a knack for winning friends and influencing people. Trust me, there's always gonna be someone there for you when you really need 'em. I'm the one who needs you a lot more than I'd admit to if anybody else asked...unless they load me down first with a barrel full of sake."

"Frank-sama," Kasumi said indulgently, caressing his huge hand with her own more delicate-seeming fingers, "There's no one whom I'd rather spend time with than you. I will count the hours until you are with me once more...and I will put in a good word for you with mother."

"Heh, somehow I doubt that I'm the kinda guy she's want you to hook up with," Frank said as he started up the Monster, "But you can always tell her you're marrying a doctor."

With that he sped away, murmuring under his breath, "I wonder if my buddy in LA ever has moments like this..."

"That Angel guy?" he heard Shelly relay back, "Last I'd heard he hooked up with a law firm. You don't really want to mess around with a guy like that?"

"Hey, you'd be surprised," Frank mused, "There's actually stuff in this world a whole lot nastier than lawyers..."

Kasumi watched her rough-hewn fiancé vanish off into the gathering sunset then heaved a sigh and said, "No one I miss more...except maybe one person whom I can think of...and for once it isn't Nabiki..."

That admission stated in the open, Kasumi turned around and on bare feet crossed over the grass and unturned earth and headed out across a familiar pathway that lead her unerringly to the place of her desires...the grave marker that denoted the resting place of her mother's ashes.

As she tread the sacred grounds, however, she was very much aware of the curious ambiance that attended the place of resting for so many deceased mortals. It was as if she could see the shades of the departed out of the corner of her eyes, and on the fringes of her conscious awareness, turning to pay notice of her, to sense the light burning brightly within her. Many of these shades seemed inordinately attracted to her inner illumination and it made Kasumi feel...rather uneasy.

Considering Frank's words of caution she wondered if it might not have been prudent to wait until Lenore could join her before venturing forth. She was not entirely comfortable with every aspect that had come with her ascension to divinity, and being an icon of worship to the undead was certainly not a thing to which she was entirely...accustomed.

In a way it felt odd to be here again considering all that had happened in her life of recent vintage, and with the added perspective that she had gained from a significant encounter she was able to view things in an entirely different light than to what she was normally accustomed. The Japanese reverence for the dead seemed somehow quaint and far less sophisticated than she had previously imagined, and knowing that the shades surrounding her represented but the mere dross cast off by the actual souls of the persons whom they individually had been made them less objects to be dreaded than pitied, for their real essence had long ago transmigrated to a new and fresh incarnation.

Even the grave markers for these long-departed spirits seemed like a quaintly old-fashioned custom, an anchor to the past that was and would nevermore be, a remnant that someone significant had lived there once but no longer held residence. It was more like passing an empty house and fondly remembering the family that once had dwelled there, nothing more than a moment's idle fancy. It hardly mattered if the grave marker were elaborate or simple, the person being so honored was in the great hereafter, and while their spirits might feel honored by the regard that the living still paid to their memories, the best way to honor the dead was to go on living, thinking positively of the past while looking forward to a brighter future in the present.

And yet still reverence and regard for the departed was an essential part of the Japanese character, and remembering those who came before was as important as caring for those who were yet to be born. Past and future each needed their space, and mortals-those who dwelled within the present-were the bridge between memories and hope for the future that the dead had died to bring about through their labors. It was also important to Kasumi to remember the person whom she was and to not dwell on the fact that she was now, effectively, an immortal and would likely persevere to see the that hoped-for future become a reality for her family's descendants. And that meant paying reverence to the one person in her past whose significance had never dimmed regardless of all of her life's upheavals and alterations.

And so she paused before gravesite of her mother and took a moment to gather her thoughts, and then she said very softly, "Mother...I'm back again. I hope that you are doing well...and I know it has been a few weeks since I last paid you a visit."

She paused again to listen to the silence, then said, "Where to begin? Ah...well, Nabiki gave birth to her baby...a healthy son this time, the first of the new Saotome line. She and her husband are very proud of what they have accomplished together...you remember Ranma, right Mother? He's grown so much into the kind of man that any mother would be proud of claiming for a son. Of course...Nabiki's gone back to being a man part-time as well, but I understand that this is a good thing as it allows the energies that form her curse to balance out and equalize one another. I know for a fact that Shampoo-chan is happy about having her husband back, not that she ever minded being married to another girl. In fact...all the girls living with Ranma kun as his wives seem to be getting along much better now, including those elemental ladies I've told you about. Oh yes...and he's acquired a fifth one since I last spoke to you, a lady of the Void who has difficulty relating to the others. I understand that it's because she had a difficult upbringing, what with being a prisoner of that evil Wizard who tried to hurt Lylac-chan and the others..."

"For which thou didst play no small part in the rescue."

Kasumi turned around with a start, then gasped as she saw who it was standing off to one side, emerging from the seeming shadows of the gathering late evening. Her eyes were alight with surprise and recognition, and then she tentatively asked, "Th-Thelendra...chan...?"

"Chan," the rainbow haired Eluini replied softly as her eyes drank in the sight of the goddess-vampire, "How much like music on thine sweet lips the sound of that be. Forgive mine rude appearance but...I was...in the neighborhood...and I chanced to hear thine prayerful petition."

"Oh," Kasumi found her vocal chords were somewhat roughened and wondered if she might be having a head cold...then belatedly recalled that she could not longer be affected by mortal diseases, "Ah...well...It is...very good to see you again, of course."

"Of course," Thelendra took a step forward, and Kasumi could not help glancing down to observe that the long tapering legs and bare feet of the taller gaijin woman were as sleek and graceful as those belonging to a gazelle...and all that much more magnetic to the eyes, as were her very large breasts as they poked out from the concealment of her multi-colored dress.

"Ah..." Kasumi felt an awkward silence attend over them both as they continued to stare and take notice of one another.

"Ah...aye..." Thelendra dutifully noted, seeming to find it just as hard to start up a real conversation.

"You are...looking very well," Kasumi said rather lamely, unable to voice in words her appreciation of the other woman's beauty.

"As art thou," Thelendra whispered, now closer than ever to the other girl and yet hesitating to further encroach upon the remaining distance.

"I...I want to thank you for the help you gave me the other day," Kasumi glanced down with a shy expression, feeling her cheeks flush pink as she felt altogether quite girlish and modest, "Those memories you shared with me..."

"'Twas nothing," Thelendra said, "I didst but supply the experience, thou didst adapt what thou didst learn to effect the survival and triumph of thine younger sister."

"But still...without your knowledge of such things..." Kasumi licked her lips, finding it difficult to continue.

"'Twas in my blood, which thou didst incorporate within thee," Thelendra assured her, looking up at Kasumi before adding, "If thou shouldst ever have need of more, thou hast but to ask..."

"Really?" Kasumi found herself intrigued and in spite of herself stared at a pulsating juicy artery in the neck and shoulder of her lovely companion...then down at the same bosom that she had bit into the other day with as much relish as if it had been an apple.

Without further hesitation Thelendra brushed a hand against her shoulder and bared her left bosom, "Wouldst thou care to have a bite now? I wouldst nay mind if thou art thirsty."

Kasumi found herself openly salivating at the prospect, but more than her blood lust she felt an entirely different need within her and found herself taking a step forward as though drawn to the other girl by the force of a magnet. It took great effort to restrain her impulse, but still her eyes remained focused on the unwinking eye that was being offered to her for a tasty and invogorating "sample."

Thelendra saw her struggle and relented at her tease, covering up the breast and shoulder then sighing, "Forgive me that...it was but a stray impulse. Thou art deserving of more consideration of this, considering how enfortuned thou art in thine engagement to thine...boyfriend."

"Oh," Kasumi glanced at the ring on her engagement finger and hastily said, "Oh...yes...just so. Frank-sama gave this to me this very morning...isn't it beautiful?"

"Magnificent," Thelendra agreed, only she was not looking at the ring itself but rather at Kasumi.

Yet another awkward pause and then Kasumi said, "Your...own husband..."

"Boyfriend," Thelendra hastily corrected, "We amended to go our separate ways, and is better not to dwell upon that subject."

"Oh," Kasumi had memories that flashed into her mind warning her just why it was not a safe area to explore in conversation, and so she very lamely attempted to change the subject, "I'd like to meet your daughters some day...ah...what were those names again? Minx something...?"

"And Gamina?" Thelendra supplied with a faintly wistful smile, "Actually I have rather lost touch with the both of them...regretfully, and ill does it comment upon my skills as a parent. But...you see...the plain truth of it is that I be nay their mother but rather their father...in a manner of plain speaking."

"Their...father?" Kasumi blinked, wondering if the beautifully vivacious avatar before her had abilities similar to her sister's Jusenkyo curse...her borrowed memories were not too clear on that particular subject.

"Aye, thou dost see...their father be a Gremlin born," Thelendra explained, "And their ways of reproduction...be somewhat different from the purely human mode. Gymp, the name of he who was my husba-boyfriend...gestated them within his misshapen form and did discharge them from his body. They sprouted like seeds and grew to the forms of children within a scant span of mere moments, and from there have since gone on to an adolescent phase through the normal process of growth and adaptation. Unlike with full-blooded Gremlins, however, they have a human semblance, combined with the essence of the Eluini, from which inheritance they didst gain from my half of their genetic equation."

"Oh," Kasumi said, thinking a moment before adding, "My. But...how then did you raise them?"

"Regretfully I didst nay do more than care for Gamina," Thelendra replied, "The child whom I didst find with the assistance of her father. She be in his custody now, learning the ways of the Gremlins, which include their skills at disassembly of technological components. Last heard I she had taken up a job as a Beta tester in Silicon valley."

"Oh," Kasumi noted, "And...Minx?"

Thelendra heaved a sigh and said, "She I didst lose track of time and again over the years. She be in many respects the more elusive of mine offspring, and near impossible to detect even by the chord of destiny that binds mother to daughter...or fama, as might the case be in definitions."

"Fama?" Kasumi considered the word then said, "I see...because it was Gymp who was really their mother..."

"Last that I heard mine daughter Minx had taken up residency with some giantess living in a forsaken desert..." Thelendra paused and then reconsidered the point, "Or has that yet to truly happen? Indeed...it sometimes is hard even for me to untangle the web of mine visions. Often past and future collide and grow obscured in the mixture...for I have in mind this vision in which Minx and her giantess friend be caring for a child together...though I wonder...was Minx the fama...and does that make me therefore grandfama of their offspring...?"

"So..." Kasumi hesitated, "Was it difficult? I mean...raising a child of two very different natures?"

"Moreso than thou dost suspect," Thelendra answered, "But moreso when thine child be of Gremlin stock. There be certain rules ye must observe that be stressed more than with other childre...such as that thou shouldst never get them wet, never expose them to too-bright illumination...and above all else, NEVER feed them after sundown. Believe well when I say this, ye do that with half-Gremlin children and you wind up with more than thou canst likely handle."

"Ah," Kasumi tried sorting through her memories again and said, "I...ah...don't perceive too many other memories of you as a mother..."

"Dost thou mean that two offspring in six hundred-plus years of life seems somewhat less than...prolific?" Thelendra asked with amusement, "I be young still, and not yea in mine prime. Time enow to be a parent again...and perhaps I have yet to find the appropriate mate with whom to share my heart and destiny. Or...perhaps already I have...only she yet belongs to another..."

Once more the awkward silence fell between them, and then Kasumi and Thelendra shared another restrained look between them, and then the Eluini said, "A good man he be...your future husband."

"Yes," Kasumi agreed, "One of the very best...which is why I do love him."

"A worthy match he will make for thee," Thelendra noted, although by her tone it sounded as if she were trying to convince herself upon that subject, "No doubt will me make thee very happy."

"He already has," Kasumi replied, then hesitated again before saying, "Your own hus...ah...boyfriend? What did you see in him...really? I mean...a Gremlin...?"

"He made me laugh," Thelendra replied, then mentally cudgeled herself and winced before saying, "Fool that I be...this be nay the purpose for which I did seek thee out..."

"Oh?" Kasumi asked in breathless wonder.

"Mine father," Thelendra explained, "He who has lived by many names and identities, yet always has championed the path of enlightenment, didst urge me to seek thee out..." she paused to glare at the empty sky before she added, "Although the way he didst urge me so strikes a little too near to the title description of a meddlesome parent."

"What did he want you to tell me?" Kasumi asked.

"That the events surrounding thine life be revolving ever swifter to a terrible event that shall test thee and thine loved ones to their very limits," Thelendra revealed, "And but the opening installment was thine clash with the misdirected fool known to thee as David."

"You mean...that boy was sent by an enemy who wanted to kill my sister...and do even worse to the rest of us?" Kasumi interpreted.

"As though such were not plainly obvious," Thelendra sighed, "Hardly needing a messenger to dispatch so trivial a clue to thine attention."

"Oh," Kasumi said, "Well...perhaps your father...had something else in mind..."

She paused, looking plainly into the ever-shifting colored eyes of her companion, who gazed back adoringly with a look of unvoiced longing that radiated from the very center of her whole being, and then the eldest Tendo sister said, "Oh...kuso!"

That rare display of untoward speech took Thelendra by surprise, but even more so when-the next instant later-Kasumi was in her arms pressing their lips together in a full-contact mouth-to-mouth engagement, followed shortly thereafter by tongues as hands roved over bodies and began to slide beneath the boundaries of silk to caress bare flesh and set nerve clusters alight, blood pulsing in their veins as Eluini and Vampire meshed their entire bodies together in an all consuming embrace.

There is no telling where this might well have led had a voice not politely cleared itself, causing both women to startle and glance to the side with looks reminiscent of two deer caught in a pair of headlights.

"Oh, by no means let me stop you," the fair-haired man known as Anri urged with a wave of his hand, "You were doing quite well, and I find this reunion to be most...entertaining."

"Father?" Thelendra asked, no less disconcerted to be caught in the moment of passionately embracing an equally chagrined Kasumi.

The tall man turned to examine one grave marker that was set in a different part of the graveyard, then knelt down and picked up a small iconic statue that he held up aloft for closer examination.

Kasumi saw that it was a six-inch-tall representative of the Buddha in full meditative posture, clay-baked and glazed with coloring agents that gave the figurine a particularly lifelike casting.

"What do you think?" he said as he turned and showed the figuring to Kasumi, "Does this make me look fat?"

"Father," Thelendra frowned, almost scolding in her evident disapproval.

"Mind you, I never could understand how it was that I could gain so much weight through fasting," Anri shook his head in a chiding manner, "Alas poor Siddhartha...I knew him well. Set his path on the road to enlightenment, achieved a state of near-nirvana, only to cast it aside in the end when he learned to his regret that the only true enlightenment is found through living, not casting life aside or disavowing all worldly attachments."

"Ara?" Kasumi wondered, surprised to hear a slight edge of reproof in the tone of the man whom she now knew to be anything but mortal.

"I once taught humanity that the way to divorce oneself from earthly temptation was to give up and ignore those basic primal urges that tied us to existence upon the plane of mortals," Anri continued, "But what is life if there is no love for humanity itself? Enlightenment is a hollow mockery if you lose yourself and embrace only...the nothing that is inside you. So passed my seventh incarnation, and yet another lesson learned on the errors that befall those who pretend at having wisdom."

"Father," Thelendra said with barely restrained impatience, "What do thee here, other than to annoy us with thine reflections?"

"Truly, I do regret interrupting you...and more than you can imagine," said the fair-haired man said as he set the statue back down and turned to regard them, "But, alas, business must come before pleasure, and so I respectfully must ask you both to postpone the fireworks until after we have imparted our hardening nuggets of wisdom."

"Oh...oh my...Lord Anri?" Kasumi swallowed thickly.

"Father..." Thelendra grated out the word as though she were mashing it between her pearly teeth, "Thine timing be as excellent...as always."

"Thank you," Anri nodded respectfully, then added as though in afterthought, "You know, I've said a lot of things in the past, some of which I've since lived to regret. One phrase that comes to mind is that when two people gaze at each other with as much intensity as you have then they have already committed adultery in their hearts. Truly I do repent for coming up with that pithy little phrase...just think of all the innocent glances that have been cast as sins all because I tried to encourage fidelity between matrimonial partners. Should have stuck with my earlier line about casting stones...that was much closer to my message."

"Oh...my..." Kasumi said, belatedly realizing how her actions would look were her fiance to learn about them.

"Father..." Thelendra winced, "First thou doest tell me to be true to mineself...and now thou hast the nerve to imply mine deeds improper?"

"Not in the least, not hardly by a jot," her father said as he rounded upon his daughter, "Only when you were hesitating before were you untrue to your nature, Thelendra. It is only now that the real you has finally surfaced, and about time I say! All that hemming and hawing and suffering in silence was really starting to grate upon my nerves...thank the powers you both finally started to come back to your senses!"

"Father...thou didst eavesdrop?" Thelendra asked, then smacked her own forehead with the back of her palm and said, "Eiyee...what be I saying? Of course thou wert spying upon me...it matters little with you that I be thine own daughter?"

"Don't be ridiculous, Thelendra, of course it matters," Anri said, "Why else do you think I was eavesdropping? But you...Tendo-san...are you ashamed of your actions?"

"Yes," Kasumi said with a meekly humbled expression.

"You should be...but not for the reason that you're thinking," Anri winked, "Tell me truly...would you marry your beloved Doctor Steinberg without informing him that you are in love with another woman...this woman in particular? And never mind the fact that she happens to be my daughter?

"Ah...ah...well..." Kasumi stammered in confusion.

"To thine own self be true," Anri replied, then paused to reflect, "You know, I never really coined that phrase, but I should have. I must thank old Will for the inspiration...it was a classic example of why not everything that came from my teaching has turned out so badly. Good intentions and all that...but on the subject of you, my dear Kasumi-san...for shame that you deny what's obvious to anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear. You are in love with Thelendra...as she is with you, correct?"

Kasumi swallowed a thick lump in her throat and said, "Yes...yes, I do love her."

Thelendra's mouth hung open and then she closed it and it was her turn to swallow, blushing as brightly as the ruby strands of hair that radiated from a portion of her multi-hued coiffure.

"And what say you to that, Thelendra-chan?" Anri asked with a glance in her direction.

"Thou...thou knowest mine heart, father," Thelendra said in a tiny, soft voice, her eyes turned once again towards Kasumi as she drank in her sight and said, "From the very essence of mine being...a I love her."

"Ara?" Kasumi asked with rounded eyes and a look of wonder.

"Splendid," Anri turned away, "Now that we've settled that, why don't we return to the original subject of this meeting?"

"Ah...of course," Kasumi said somewhat awkwardly, unable to take her eyes away from the rainbow-haired beauty of the Eluini before her. But then she belatedly asked, "Ah...which is?"

"Father," Thelendra said without breaking eye-contact with the goddess vampire, "But what of us? And what of Steinberg?"

"I'm afraid it's up to the both of you to settle that one out," Anri winked, "And what do I know about relationships anyways? Ten thousand years and ten incarnations later and I keep getting remarried to the same woman."

"Oh?" Kasumi asked with upraised eyebrow, seeing confirmation in the gaze of her beloved Thelendra.

"Spirits who have known each other and become entwined within their own deep-  
felt connection are destined to meet again time and anon through lifetime after lifetime," Thelendra said before adding, "The stronger the connection...the greater the likelihood that Karma will rejoin that which death has held asunder."

"Do you mean to say..." Kasumi hesitated before adding, "That we...knew each other before...in a prior incarnation?"

"Oh aye," Thelendra replied, "Though shame upon me that I didst nay recognize thee until the hour of our joining."

"It really is sweet when old friends can meet one another and relive the experiences that they shared in the past," Anri remarked, "But this is not the cause for which I brought you both back together, even if I may say that the two of you do make a lovely couple."

"Father," Thelendra said chidingly, and Kasumi blushed, for her connection to the other girl did indeed feel as though they had known each other long before the present.

Anri directed his incredibly clear gaze towards Kasumi, and in looking deep into his gaze she found herself held within a look as ancient as it was young and ever-renewing. She found herself entreated to the wisdom and compassion of a man who had lived a life more incredible than anything she could personally imagine, a man so steeped in power and history that the scope of his mastery was inconceivable to mortal reckoning. In fact so vast was the scope of his abilities that the pearls of his wisdom would fill an entire ocean...and yet there was innocence there as well, an almost childish glee and lust for life that belied his sage-like wisdom and gave him a quality that was all the more appealing.

"As you may already know through your connection with Thelendra," he began, "We Daokan are ancient lords whose origins are rooted in a time before recording. Atlantis was the home of our birth, and we four were the offspring of a powerful being known as Uta-Haled, the once-and-former Lord of Light, who was our gifted father."

"I...have some vague memories of that," Kasumi tentatively replied, "Images mostly...and some thoughts, but not clearly remembered."

"Thou dost recall my thoughts of those antediluvian times as they might appear in a dream," Thelendra murmured, "I myself didst nay live through those times, of course, but the memory is rooted in the Akashik field that all Eluini draw from as a well is drawn for water."

"Simply put, however," Anri continued, "Our father and mother entrusted each of we four with the protection of humanity, and to that end the elemental spirits of the world were given into our keeping, though we have to relearn and regain our abilities and knowledge with each new incarnation. Though time and again reborn to mortal parents, I have retained in essence the fundamental being that I was when I first incarnated all those millennia ago...and through each lifetime I have had to crawl and stumble to regain my place in the light...but fate has always been kind to me, and on my path I meet and re-meet many old friends who help to guide me back to the path of the enlightened. So it was with this, my tenth incarnation, which incorporates all the accumulated wisdom and knowledge of my previous nine lifetimes, making me the most powerful version of myself who has yet lived...and yet still far short of perfection."

"Father be modest," Thelendra assured Kasumi, "In power and knowledge there be only one who doth exceed him in scope and ability...my aunt Ulsa, the lady of Water and Air. She be the most powerful of the Daokan born, and yet still her nature be one of total passivity, for it be against her nature to act save through the agency of her brother, the Lord Udan."

"Ulsa and Udan are as Yin and Yang, joined in spirit and body," Anri continued, "Though ever apart they are never far away, and as Ulsa's nature is to observe from afar, so it falls to Udan to be the eternal wanderer, ever restless and ever roving. He embodies a power beyond description, and yet he is totally in service to Ulsa, whom he loves as he does no other."

"You mean...he's in love with his own sister?" Kasumi asked incredulously.

"Why be thee so perturbed by this, mine love?" Thelendra asked, "Dost thou nay harbor secret feelings and longing inexpressible for thine own sibling, who changes form from male to female incarnation with but a dash of water?"

"Ah...point taken...oh my," Kasumi reluctantly conceded.

"Udan and Ulsa were not raised together as brother and sister but lived their lives apart until the hour of their first meeting," Anri continued, "From the moment that happened they were inseparably joined as two halves of a single agency...which is what our father had intended for them all along seeing as Ulsa's passivity requires a strong outlet, and in Udan she has a champion knight unlike any other. Wherever my brother goes he is a force of nature, unstoppable and indomitable, with a reputation as a monster slayer beyond any other."

"Udan and Ulsa represent two forms of Order that help maintain the balance of the many worlds," Thelendra noted, then paused before adding, "However...there be a third power in opposition to their union...my other uncle, the Lord Reka, whose nature be Chaotic and who loves to spread disorder in his wake."

"Ah yes, Reka," Anri sighed, "A problem child if ever one lived. Not really a bad sort as incarnations go, and not exactly evil, but certainly a far cry from the sort of fellow you'd invite to social gatherings. Particularly since he tends to set fire to things whenever it amuses him...and his power is great, though in effect he is the weakest of the Daokan."

"The reason father reminds thee of these things be to awaken those memories within thee so that thee may be prepared for the true cause of our current strife," Thelendra explained for the benefit of her comely companion, "But the enemies we face be of a dark and terrible nature the like of which the mortal world could nay long endure."

"For thousands of years the Daokan have kept the mortal realms safe from intrusion by the Powers that exist beyond the realms of light in ultimate darkness," Anri continued, "Yet though our power is great we cannot be everywhere at once, and there are only four of us after all, which means a lot slips through the cracks between realms, and quite a bit of nasty mischief eludes us altogether. That's why we try and keep a delicate balance going with our counterparts in the realms of ultimate darkness...and if we slip in our grasp over affairs by even a fraction terrible things can escape us and wreck untold mischief. We must needs be careful in how much we interfere with the affairs of ordinary mortals or else we risk escalating things beyond all recalling. Our enemies would not hesitate to exploit the slightest hint of weakness...and so we must needs work through lesser agencies and allies, so we can maintain our focus on the true sources of danger."

"And that be where we come to events of the present," Thelendra noted, "A powerful demon known to mortals as Genocide seeks to reap an evil tide of death and destruction upon thine own nation. He has brought about disease, famine and war as his tools towards this end, and if left unchecked he and his minions will destroy all of Japan and bring about an age of darkness for all mortals. We must needs prevent his schemes from being realized...yet to oppose him directly would but provoke him to bring down even more terrible allies and minions to assist him in his dark endeavors."

"And that is where we come to you and your immediate family," Anri said directly, "Most notably your brother-in-law and sister. The three of you are the key players needed to thwart the tide that already progresses in this world, and for that reason I encourage you all to study hard and retrain so that you can become more effective allies."

"Or pawns...depending on how thou dost choose to see it," Thelendra added, "Either way, I offer mine own guidance to thee and will do my utmost to see thee prevail in this coming struggle."

"But...why us...why me?" Kasumi asked, "Surely you could do much better than us if you seek someone who's useful to your cause..."

"There isn't time to be so choosy," Anri replied, "And do you think that I haven't given this much due consideration? Besides...I know your hearts, and I know what capabilities and potential exist within you. I expect you to do the right thing when the time is right, and I know that-for the good of all-you will choose to act in accordance with your nature."

"Well...I certainly will try, Lord Anri...sir..." Kasumi lamely answered.

"Don't try, only do," Anri replied with a smile, favoring Thelendra with a glance before adding, "And do that which is in accordance with your nature."

"But...I don't understand," Kasumi admitted.

"That is good," Anri replied, "Admitting your ignorance is but the first step to enlightenment...but take your time...or rather give yourself time to pause and reflect, and understanding will come in its own due accord. After all, perfect satori wasn't earned in a day, and do you have any idea how long I had to sit under that blasted tree before it came to me in a flash of conscious soul integration?"

And with that the curious man took a step backwards and to the side, and then he seemed to fade from view altogether, leaving the scope of even Kasumi's vampiric senses.

"Do not let him rattle thee, mine beloved," Thelendra urged, "Father likes to vex people with puzzles and riddles that test their faculties to their limits. The ultimate of gadflies he be, and many be the sage and holy man whom he hath driven to distraction."

"But...he is a great man," Kasumi said as she turned to see the radiant face of her rainbow haired companion.

"Aye indeed, that he be," Thelendra noted, "But ne'er what thou dost expect of him to be, and always more and less than his legend would portend, as he himself admits whether or nay thee ask him."

"But...is he truly who I think he is?" Kasumi asked, "And...if so...why did he let that poor boy rant and rave like that? Wouldn't it have made more sense if he at least told him the truth, that what he was doing was an affront to the very one whom he sought to reverence?"

"And would it avail him if mine father had stepped forth to dispel his illusion?" Thelendra asked with no little affection in her regard of the vampire goddess, "Understand...belief and free will are very sacred to mine father, and even the Maitreya be nay so rude as to usurp the will of one who calls himself a believer."

"But...if what he believes is in error..." Kasumi argued.

"Then if must befall upon another to correct his perceptions," Kasumi replied, "Only when one be willing to believe anew will father act to clear his vision."

Kasumi thought on this a moment then said, "Such a lonely way to live...to fight so hard to help bring enlightenment to humanity..."

"And yet well does father regret that many of his best intentions have borne results ill suited to their hoped-for outcome," Thelendra sighed, "When did he pray for peace and toleration among mortals, instead his name hath been raised as a standard to justify hate and murder on a massive scale. Entire wars hath been fought in his name by two opposing sides who doth claim his benediction."

"And the only way to prevent this would be to actively renounce himself and void the free will of all those people?" Kasumi reasoned out in saddened reflection, "How horrible...however does he mange to endure this?"

"The same as he must endure the thoughtless adoration of fools who seek to symbolically crucify him in the hopes that father's suffering will atone for their own sins and imperfections," Thelendra said sadly, "Ne'er does it don upon these desperate souls that the path to enlightenment means learning to forgive thine self and to truly repent of thine own rude behavior. Father cannot change that within a person that makes one do evil...no one can do that. Only by choosing to live a different path can mortals hope to be born anew, free of the guilt that they carry within them."

"And yet your father does suffer because they will not listen to his teachings," Kasumi realized with sobering reflection.

"Because they choose to do that which be wicked in their own sight," Thelendra said with saddened affirmation, "That which they know to be harmful, such as hating others for their differences, yet which they do compulsively because they will nay repent and surrender that to which they are enslaved, their animalistic impulses and thoughtless crudity, which in themselves be a denial of their human condition."

"So...where does that leave us?" Kasumi asked, "Where do we go from here? I love you...but...I don't want to hurt Frank-chan. Being with you...I don't want to be parted..."

"Ne'er do I from thee," Thelendra acknowledged, "Yet as father wouldst ask, can we be true to ourselves yet deny our different responsibilities and commitments? I think nay. And yet...as father also would say, every thing in life has a purpose...and every event be another lesson worth the living."

"So...will I...see you again?" asked hopefully.

Thelendra reached out to touch the other woman's face, "Dost thou think me so easy to be rid of as all that? There be a bond between us that can be denied no longer, and as sure and certain as mine heart do yearn for a reunion, I shall be with thee again before the night be long turned to the evening..."

And with those fading words the radiant woman vanished in the same mysterious manner as her father, leaving Kasumi to contemplate the night with a sense of warmth to ward off the chill...and with a hopeful longing that she dared not to express too loudly she held the hand that Thelendra had touched to her breast...and silently counted the minutes until they were again within one another's presence...

Continued.

Comments/Criticisms/Coloring the Night with Passion: shadowmane

Trudy takes Nabiki on a field trip to show off her system in action while Kuno seeks a mentor, and Ranma settles accounts with his two remaining elemental ladies. Be here next time for: "Hard-Edged Homework," or, "The Will to Kill." Be there!

X /pre 


	74. Chapter 74

preDnabiki163

Nabiki 1/2

"A Very Scary Thought"

by Jim Robert Bader

(Inspired by the works of Rumiko Takahashi Others,  
with concepts and characters created by fellow fanfic writers Wade Tritschler, DB Sommers, Nicole Manders, Andrew Greaves, Bill Guiroff and countless others, including "Buffy"  
creator Joss Whedon; with special thanks to my good pal Shiva for his editing and handling of this series.)

(Certain other characters and concepts are of my own innovation, including my interpretation of the Monster of Mary Shelly's novel, the Furies, Trudy, Takaharis Angelique d'Anjou and various other guest stars appearing in this portion of the Nabiki 1/2 series...)

Chapter Sixty-Two.

Episode One-Hundred-Sixty-Three.

The Will to Kill

"How is she taking it?"

"Not too good," Keiko replied somewhat reluctantly as she exited the bedroom, "The news of her father's death is pretty much of a shock to Kodachi, and it's hard for her not to feel guilty...about not being there and all that."

"Absurdity," Tatewaki sniffed, "Kodachi knows her place was here with you, taking care of the child you both are nursing. There was little that she-or anyone else for that matter-could do to defuse this crisis, or prevent the tragedy that befell our father."

"Perhaps so, Tachi-sama," Natsume remarked, "But perhaps your sister entertains the admittedly irrational notion that by being there she might have made a difference..."

"Like how?" Alison asked, "You heard what Tatewaki-kun just said? That guy they fought had everybody on the ropes, including Ranma and Nabiki! Now if I'd been there it would have been a different story..."

"Perhaps so, Aiko-chan," Beatrice remarked, "But I worry at what the nature of this you truly was, and what sort of weapon it was that he wielded that could render so much damage as has been attested to by Kuno-san and Tendo-san here."

"Do you think it might have been powerful enough to even pose a challenge to Alison-san?" Akane asked from where she sat nursing her own baby.

"Unknown from all available data," Beatrice said while turning a worried look towards her partner and lover, "And that is what worries me...that and the question of who sent this fellow to attempt to kill our friend Nabiki?"

"That too concerns me greatly," Tatewaki nodded soberly, "He seemed quite single-minded on the subject, and when Natsume-chan and I stood to oppose him he appeared to brush our challenge aside as though we were nothing more to him than a distraction."

"And he was not fully human either," Natsume affirmed, "We heard that from one of the new teachers that this David Lo was half-Kirin...a creature of seeming myth, but...as well all well know by now, myths are hardly a subject for light dismissal."

"I should have been there," Ryoga growled, breaking his own silence, "Kodachi might not have been able to save her father, but I could, and with Ranma and Nabiki standing alone against this...asshole..."

"I hear you there, Ryo-kun," Keiko nodded, "I'd have fought tooth and nail to prevent Kodachi-sama from suffering this kind of misery..."

"Actually," Tatewaki remarked, "According to some eye witnesses you were indeed there standing alone against the villain."

"Say what?" Keiko reacted with a start.

"Or someone very close in resemblance to you," Tatewaki continued, "Many students affirmed that you stood and held at bay the assassin using some type of mallet or hammer that you threw, and which returned to your hand as though it were a boomerang..."

"What?" Keiko blinked, "You mean like that Thor guy in New York?"

"Something like that," Natsume replied, "It sounded like you from the description...all except for the hammer, and the peculiar way in which she was dressed."

"Why? How was she dressed?" Akane wondered.

"She wore footwear similar to a martial artist's slippers," Tatewaki replied, "As well as attire not too far removed from what an martial artist would wear...but far from typical of what you prefer to indulge."

"Shoes?" Keiko blinked, "But...I never wear shoes! That's a key part of my training!"

"We know," Natsume answered, "Which is as strong an indication as the flying hammer that it was not you but someone very much like you who must have engaged the enemy in battle."

"But, just as strangely, whoever it was, she vanished without a trace when the rest of us freed ourselves from entrapment," Tatewaki resumed, "Before any of us could gain a fair glimpse of her or inquire as to her identity, which is most peculiar."

Akane saw the tightening around the lips of the tall boy, who at one time had been an unwanted suitor, and asked, "Are you all right, Tachi-kun? I mean...I'm sorry for your father..."

"Please," Tatewaki replied, "We all know that he was not well regarded here in Nerima, and as even I must admit it was a fool and often an embarrassment to the Kuno name...but...he deserved better than he got, and to be cut down like that, so callously, while I stood by and could do nothing..."

"Hey, easy," Ryoga urged, "Nobody's blaming you for that, Kuno-san, and you shouldn't blame yourself. After all, you did try, right?"

"Yes, and was brushed aside as inconsequential to the battle," Tatewaki said with a bitterness that belied the evenness of his tone and expression, "But one did stand and oppose him for a time, displaying a prowess with her sword that I found most striking and effective. Almost did she defeat the churl by her own measure, and had she not displayed more gallantry and chivalry in her act by giving the fool an opportunity to recant his villainous ways."

"Oh?" Beatrice asked, "And who, pray tell, was that?"

"The new Nurse, one Angelique d'Anjou by name," Natsume explained, "A foreigner of many talents, who seems to exude a curious power that affects everyone with whom she comes in contact, and whose popularity among our fellow classmates was impossible to miss...understandable as she is quite beautiful and impossibly statuesque, with a figure as enticing to the eye as her presence is soothing to the spirit..."

She paused as she took notice of the way the others were looking at her, then rather sheepishly asked, "Did...I just say those things aloud? Oh my..."

"You speak plainly, my love," Tatewaki observed, "She is indeed fair to the eye in both form and spirit, but that is not what interests me so much about her..."

"It's not?" Keiko asked, "I mean...usually for me that would be enough...if I wasn't already committed..."

"But who is she?" Akane wanted to know, "And how is it we get three new teachers at Furinkan all on the same day? I mean...didn't you say she came with that other teacher, the one who's taken over our homeroom?"

"And she seems to know a great deal about the new coach as well," Tatewaki remarked, "As if the two of them share a private history together...a most perplexing thing as this Trudy Wells is clearly an American, while Miss d'Anjou is of European extraction."

"Hey, I'm part American too, in case you've forgotten," Alison remarked, "I was born in Japan and consider myself a native, but my roots will always be in the place where my mother and father used to call home."

"No one is disparaging your nationality or place of origins, Aiko-chan," Beatrice assured her redheaded companion, "But I agree that it is a curious mixture of unusual types, to judge merely by your descriptions, Kuno-san and Tendo-san."

"I wonder what they're doing here?" Akane asked, "It seems awfully odd...and if I met them I'd have to judge for myself if they're everything you're suggesting."

"Believe me when I say that I am not exaggerating either the prowess nor the beauty of this healer," Tatewaki affirmed, "With our own eyes did Natsume-chan and I witness her miraculous healing powers at work as she plied them to aid our stricken schoolmates from the rampages of the churl who did so callously assault them."

"It was...an indescribable feeling just being in her presence," Natsume affirmed, "She would murmur words in a strange tongue that sounded more foreign even than her accent, and then her hands would glow with a golden light...and injuries that might well have proven mortal were repaired within mere seconds."

"Incredible," Beatrice affirmed, "I've heard stories about such abilities, but I've never seen them up close before. I will have to arrange to have a meeting with this school nurse and determine if her abilities are either magical or psychic in nature."

"Oh yeah?" Alison asked suspiciously, "And just how do you plan to do that, Beiko?"

"Well, I am a newly declared mother, am I not?" Beatrice smiled, "And it would hardly be out of place to request a bill of health to assure that I am ready to resume classes."

"Perhaps that would be a good idea," Tatewaki said before Alison could voice another protest, "But I shall approach her from a different track and make polite inquiries of my own in regards to her presence upon our campus. From what we have seen today we may construe that she is as virtuous as her name would imply...but there is so much more about her that I sense, and I think that we have not yet seen but the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the reason for her being assigned to the Furinkan school faculty."

"I would agree that she must be an agent for a greater power, Tachi-sama," Natsume protested, "But...would it be wise to just come out and ask her what she is doing here? After all, if she and those other two new arrivals do portend the beginning of something new within our experience of the strange and paranormal..."

"Then all the more reason that I should ask her for all that she is capable of sharing with me, my Love," Tatewaki replied, "Because we cannot afford to be taken unawares like that. My father paid the penalty for our ignorance, and if there are other challengers lurking beyond the one who rendered so much destruction to our school grounds..."

"Let them come," Ryoga growled, balling a fist, "Next time I intend to be there...and I'll show them the power of my Morisenken."

"But Tachi-kun," Akane spoke up again, "From everything that you and Nat-chan described...isn't it a bit much...even for us? I mean...we may be martial artists, but we're still just kids in high school..."

"Kids in school who almost wound up as collateral combat victims from a high-  
powered religious fanatic," Keiko noted, "I'm with you on this, Tachi-kun...I think we damn well deserve to get some answers...and who knows how many people we knew at school almost got themselves killed today because some of us weren't there to help stop that maniac from almost wiping them out?"

"That is why I must find answers," Tatewaki said, "And-thanks to my father's connections among the faculty staff-I know where to seek them."

"Huh?" Alison blinked, "You do?"

"You know the address of this mysterious teacher?" Beatrice deduced, "And you intend to seek her out directly?"

"I know where one of them resides," Tatewaki explained, "She is a resident of Japan, though her origins are curiously shrouded in mystery, yet the one whom I seek is presently staying with her as a guest resident...and apparently something more than a guest, if I have picked up the innuendo and inferences correctly."

"Hah?" Keiko blinked, "What do you mean by...innuendo?"

Tatewaki favored her with an amused look then said, "Something that being around you for over a year has given me by way of perspective...paying better attention to the signs than I did when I briefly courted your affections while still in my delusional state. It also helped to notice the way that one of the three new teachers was raptly studying the profile of the Nurse, and her interest was anything but casual, which is why you need not fear for my loyalty to you, my love, in going to see them."

"Eh?" Natsume blinked, "But...I never said that..."

"Earlier in the day you all but accused me of being attracted to her for other than purely academic reasons," Tatewaki smiled with a knowing, gentle look of great fondness, "But perhaps I am the one who should be zealously wary about allowing you to approach her midst. After all, to judge by the expressions on the faces of those students who did receive her gentle ministrations, I would think allowing my fiancée to pay her such a visit would be an extraordinarily unwise act on my part...not that I would deny you the pleasure, if you so desired it, of course."

Natsume blinked as she thought this over, and Alison frowned, giving her own wife a particularly territorial expression.

"But Tachi-kun," Akane argued, "If this lady is as hot and irresistible as you say she is, then what makes you think you can resist her?"

"Because, Akane-san," Tatewaki replied with a knowing expression, "I'm not seeking her out for sexual favors...my interest is entirely of a different nature."

"Oh yeah?" Ryoga asked, becoming interested, "Then what are you going to see her for?"

Tatewaki paused before giving them the answer, "My family has very deep roots going back to the ages of the Samurai, as do the houses of Saotome and Tendo. My own family's school of Kendo is unique in form, style and function, I have practiced to master the rudiments of that style ever since I was old enough to hold a sword in my hand, but try as I might...I have yet to attain the skills of a true master.

"But this day I witnessed a maneuver that was classically out of one of my family's ancient texts, illustrated by a master artisan of one of my more illustrious ancestors, a technique that no one outside of the Kuno family should know. And it was performed flawlessly, executed with supreme grace and precision, and done in the name of protecting life...wielded by a hand that demonstrated the true principle of honor...and I must know how she learned that. I must know who taught her that maneuver...and where she learned to perform the other strokes that defined her as the Master I have yet to learn how to be. It is a need that I do not expect for you to understand...not sexual, not intellectual, but nonetheless a need from the heart...and that is why I must go to her, my love. To talk and obtain answers...and for that...do I have your blessings?"

Natsume paused and thought before answering, "Do you really feel the need to ask my permission?"

"We are a part of each other now," Tatewaki replied as he gave her his full attention, "What affects one affects the other, and I don't want you to think that I take your compliance in these matters for granted. It is no light thing that I request of you here, for I must do this on my own, and in doing so I both fulfill an obligation to myself and my ancestors while carrying your trust within my heart, for which you know that I shall never betray you."

Natsume looked up at the taller man and felt a wellspring of emotions rising up within her, "How is it, my lord, that you always seem to know exactly the right thing to find your way into my own heart?"

"It comes from the comfort of familiarity," Tatewaki stroked her chin with a finger, "Two souls as well suited for one another as ourselves must have known each other in a prior lifetime...which makes it fate that we found our way together in this life."

"Yeah, that would make sense," Keiko said by way of cheerful interruption, "The way you two go on and on together, you'd have to be soul mates."

"Heh, you can say that again," Alison sniffed, "When you two get mushy with the flowery poetry and such, it's obvious to anybody that you were cut from the same cloth, pure Will Shakespeare."

"Couldn't agree with you more, my love," Beatrice smiled, "More admirable suited as a niche to a groove one could not hope to discover."

"I just think they look so cute like that," Akane smiled, "Don't you agree, Ryo-  
chan?"

"Ah...well..." Ryoga ran his fingers through the hairs at the back of his head and looked oddly sheepish.

"Well, if you two lovebirds have decided that," Keiko said, turning around, "I think I'd better go look in on my main squeeze to see if my Mistress is holding up well. I'll let you guys know when she's up to having company, all right?"

"Do as you must, Keiko-san," Tatewaki nodded towards his sister's lover-slash-  
playmate, "Kodachi is young and strong, and with your gentle care she will abide."

"Thanks," Keiko paused and gave the others a look before re-entering Kodachi's bedroom, "Oh, and if you other guys hear anything more about some girl with a hammer who looks like me...be sure to clue me in about it, okay?"

"Hey, no problem there," Alison agreed.

"I will make inquiries of my own and get back to you if the need arises," Beatrice assured her.

"One Arigami's enough for this district," Ryoga heartily concurred, then winced as his own wife favored him with a peculiar expression.

"On that we are most resolutely agreed," Tatewaki mused before adding the words, "Adopted sister."

"Careful boy," Keiko winked, "That almost sounded like a compliment. You better watch this guy closely, Nat-chan, or I may be tempted to steal you away from him."

"Ah...no problem there, I most heartily assure you," Natsume replied before pausing to think that rather odd comment over, and then she found herself unexpectedly blushing, though for what precise reason she did not have an answer...

"Are you serious, Boss?" Lenore stated in undisguised astonishment, "You mean to say all of that happened while me and my crew were out of town...and you didn't bother to call us?"

"There wasn't time, and I knew it was your day off," Frank explained casually, "The whole thing from start to finish lasted maybe as much as half an hour, and since you were off in the Shinjuku district looking up your buddy Shin, and even if you teleported it would have all been over before you got there."

"But not you, Sir," Chloe pointed out, "You managed to get there by motorcycle...wasn't there time enough to call us?"

"That's different," Frank answered, "I was with Kasumi, and the Monster can make tracks like nothing else on two weeks, or more. Besides, even I didn't know what we were up against back there...some half-breed kid with a wigged out mega-  
enchanted sword, and even Agents Trudy and Angelique were having trouble containing his rampage."

"A half-breed?" Lenore asked, "What as the other half...other than human?"

"Kirin," Frank replied, "Just a bit shy of a dragon at full power, so doubt even you three could have done much to stop him."

"Kirin?" Kiima asked with her ethereal tone registering just a hint of wonder, "I have heard the legends about those creatures..."

"So have I," Lenore blanched, "Holy shit...that's heavy! But who the hell has leverage to send a Kirin-spawn out on a blood hunt? That's more the kind of assignment you give to Nightbreed."

"Don't know yet, other than the fact he dropped a name...Otono," Frank turned back in his chair and registered a wall monitor that revealed itself from a place of concealment, "And from what little we have to go on my group thinks it might be this guy...but we don't have any proof just yet..."

"Otono Reyabi?" Lenore blinked as she saw the face displayed so prominantly upon the flat screen, "The Kendo star from Europe?"

"Japanese ancestry, Dutch Nationality, spent his developing years in and around the city of Paris," Frank said, "But my sources say he goes a lot deeper than that. Tied up in some organization, some religious cult outfit that calls itself the Umakusa Suekazan..."

"The Cult of the Enlightened Prophet Umakusa?" Kiima asked, "I had thought that some sort of underground legend..."

"Yeah, get a lot of that in this business," Frank remarked, "According to what my files have on that group, they started out way back during the seventeenth century, right about the time when Japan shut down its borders and kicked out the foreigners, including the Christian missionaries. Some Daimyu who were followers of the prophet Umakusa held out for a time around castle Heiko, but they were eventually wiped out by the forces loyal to the Shoganate. The group went underground for a couple of centuries and resurfaced during the Meiji restoration, but eventually got sent into exile...and guess where they wound up?"

"You mean...this Otono guy is a descendant of the original cult leaders?" Lenore asked, "But...what's he doing in Japan? And how is he connected to this guy you say tried to put the hit on Saotome Nabiki?"

"That's what I'm trying to figure out," Frank scowled, "Instincts tell me he's up to something, and it's gotta be something big if the record of that Cult is any indication. According to my sources they once summoned up a mega-level demon and tried to avenge themselves on the Shoganate, and a lotta people got hurt before they were put down by a warrior known as X, and guess who's an immediate linear descendant?"

"The Tendo clan?" Chloe suggested.

"And Saotome...since they are two branches of the same lineage," Kiima added.

"Hooboy," Lenore blanched again, looking even paler than was normal for a vampire, "But...that doesn't make any kind of sense, Boss! Why seek revenge for something that happened hundreds of years ago? Unless..."

"Unless they think history will repeat itself," Frank acknowledged, looking away, "Christians...I've known all types, both good and bad, but nobody but a Muslim could hold a grudge longer than they do. Comes from that whole Montheism mindset that anyone not with them is against them, and that any extreme actions you take in the name of a worthy cause can be justified afterwards by explaining it in prayers to Jesus."

"Don't look at me, I'm Jewish, remember?" Lenore shrugged, "But...I'm awfully sorry about this, Boss...if I had any idea that there was a threat like that being leveled against Nabiki..."

"Forget it," Frank said gruffly, "I'm not blaming you for that. However...because of this attack I'm heightening security for the Nerima region. Hope you enjoyed your day off because you're on full time now for the remaining foreseeable future of this assignment."

"Of course, that goes without saying, Boss-man...but..." Lenore paused as she considered how best to frame her own views on the subject.

"Whenever possible I want you sticking close to Kasumi, but be on guard for anything out of the ordinary as well...like that demoness you reported meeting earlier," Frank noted, "Ominous stuff like that. Don't take any aggressive actions on your own without clearance...whoever sent that David Lo guy might have more heavy hitters in his arsenal, and Otono's reputed to be undefeated in the field of Kendo..."

"But...any idea what's really up here?" Lenore asked, "I can't believe they staged an attack this brazen without having something a lot worse in the offing."

"I know," Frank said, "And that's what worries me. I've got nothing...no word on the street, no reports from field agents, other than the stuff I passed on to Astarte and the Furies. We think maybe a foreign arms dealer is involved...and word is that Genocide itself may be mixed up in all of this..."

"Genocide?" Lenore went even whiter than before, "The demon of Fratricidal Carnage? Whoah Boss...that's heavy!"

"Tell me about it," Frank nodded, "Better get going, I'll expect round-the-clock surveillance of the Tendo-Saotome compound. I'll fill you in when I've got more definite word on what's really up here."

"Right," Lenore acknowledged, then paused before adding, "And...Boss...for what it's worth, if I really did know about this Lo guy before it happened..."

"What are you wasting words telling me for?" Frank sniffed, "I'd have been there ten steps ahead of you with an armored squad of fully trained agents. Just report back to Kasumi and stay as hear to her as you can...ah...and keep an eye out for suspicious types...like a certain truck driver I could mention..."

"Hah?" Lenore blinked.

"Trust driver?" Chloe repeated.

"You don't mean...Him?" for once Kiima's tone and expression showed an entirely human level of dismay, and were it possible for her to be any more pale or translucent then she would have exceeded Lenore's ashen continence.

"Words out it's him all right," Frank noted grimly, "The Dark Man himself, herald of the apocalypse...and with him in the neighborhood you can bet his brothers aren't too far behind."

"Got it," Lenore said in a voice that sounded even breathless for a vampire, "Excuse the terminology but...Holy Jesus..."

"Yeah, I hear he's about too," Frank said grimly, "That's why I want you to keep a low profile during your surveillance...leave the heavy moving to agents Angel and Trudy, they're better equipped to deal with stuff of this nature."

"Yeah, no fooling there," Lenore said as she turned away, "What the hell is going on? Why is all this happening at once...and right down smack in Nerima?"

"If I could answer that I'd be a prophet myself," Frank noted, "But I ain't got the credentials...not enough blood on my hands as it is, which is saying a lot."

"The Daokan brothers," Kiima said in hushed reverence, "Any time they come together...it does not speak well for the fate of the mortals."

"That's because they know the bag guys are up to no good, right?" Chloe asked with a bit too hopeful an expression.

"Honey," Lenore said, "The Daokan are beyond the definition of good or evil. Anri may be the Lord of Light, and Udan's the Guardian of preservation, but...you know what the third one is like? His idea of dealing with problems tends to involve a lot of carnage and destruction, like burning a house to the ground to get rid of a roach problem. The word overkill doesn't even begin to describe him."

"And I thought having Astarte and her Furies around was a bad sign of trouble," Frank sniffed, glancing out through the shaded anti-UV filtering effect of his office windows, "And that Trudy...what a nightmare. Wonder what she's up to since the reported in last...and do I really want to know the answer...?"

"Hey, Nab-chan, wait up!" a voice called down the street, causing Nabiki and Trudy to turn their heads in time to see a familiar pink-haired girl trotting in their direction.

"Saki-san?" Nabiki favored the Sekeban Deka with a puzzled look, "What's up now?"

"Just got back from talking with my boss about that guy we ran into," Saki paused to favor the redheaded gaijin in their midst with a peculiar expression, "Ah...?"

"We're out on a field trip, Asamiya-san," Trudy answered to the understated question, "Saotome-san wanted some extra-curricular points, so I thought I'd take her out to show her a few things. Care to tag along?"

"Hah?" Saki blinked, "But..."

"Hey, it's just between us undercover Cops, right?" Trudy winked, "You won't get in trouble with your gym teacher playing chaperone, even if you are presently attending a different high school."

"Nani?" Saki got round-eyed with disbelief, "What...what did you...? You told her?" she rounded with an accusing note in Nabiki's direction.

"Hey, I never said anything!" Nabiki protested with hands raised to imply her innocence.

"That's right, you didn't have to," Trudy resumed staring forward as their stride had remained constant during the initial conversation, "You just have to know how to read the signs, and I've been in this business long enough to know when I'm in the company of a fellow law-person."

There was a slight pause before Nabiki asked, "You're a cop?"

"Don't I look the part?" Trudy asked with a casual tone and a completely matter-  
of-fact air about her, "Of course that's just my day job...back in LA, where I hold the rank of Inspector. My other job kinda conflicts with the profile, but...I do my part to keep my nose clean."

"Why?" Saki asked with a slight frown, "What other thing do you do for a living? Teach night courses to hookers?"

"Cute," Trudy glanced back at Nabiki, "I can see why you like this one...although I'm kind of curious what it is about you that draws the ladies like flies...other than your hunky male other self, of course."

"All right," Nabiki growled, "This has gone far enough. Just how the hell do you know all these things? Did Frank-san brief you about us?"

"Just the general facts," Trudy shrugged, "But I pick up the rest on my own, and you'll find that I'm a very good detective...among other things I do well. Just remember, you came to me asking for me to show you how it was that I took down Pantsaru and that Lo guy. If you don't want to know the answer then better say so now before I start teaching you some lessons."

"You're the one who took down that Taro creep?" Saki blinked, "You do know that he busted out of prison early this morning..."

"Not surprising, considering that your bosses weren't inclined to listen to a perfectly worded warning about splashing him with water," Trudy remarked, "But that's the problem with mundanes and bureaucrats, they never listen. If it doesn't fit in with their pre-programmed, pre-conceived notions about how the universe functions then they absolutely refuse to listen. I gave up trying a long, long time ago, which brings me to a rule that I'm going to demand before things get started."

"Rule?" Nabiki asked, "You go by a rule book?"

"Sure do," Trudy answered, "The Kurustani playbook, Second Edition. It's kind of a requirement if we're to avoid a lot of fuss and bother over the finer points of what's about to happen. What you're about to see may seem strange, even a bit bizarre and downright unnatural, but despite the fact that you'll be filled with awe, wonder, disgust and curiosity, I'm going to ask that you not ask me any questions. At least...not until I give you permission."

"Not ask any questions?" Saki frowned, "What kind of rule is that for a teacher?"

"The rule of one who teaches by example," Trudy answered, "The plain truth of it is...I don't want to waste any time playing a game of twenty questions. I'm going to show you my art, let you observe my moves and actions, withhold questions and commentary, and then wait until later, after you've had time to think and come up with some answers."

"And then?" Nabiki asked.

"See? You're doing it already," Trudy sniffed, "But to answer that one as a freebee, when you think you've figured things out then I'll ask you to explain, and then I'll tell you whether or not you've got it. Deal?"

"Let me think about it," Nabiki commented with a slight look of wary interest.

"Better think fast because the offer's going soon," Trudy replied, "Either give me your word now or take a hike. I won't show you a bloody thing unless you accept my terms and give me a definite answer."

"All right then," Nabiki said, "No question until you say it's all right. Deal."

"That's a good girl," Trudy remarked, "But as for you, Detective Asamiya-san..."

"I'm not making any such promises," Saki frowned, "I don't like what I'm hearing implied here, and I'm not at all sure I trust you around my friend, Nabiki."

"Hey, fair enough," Trudy shrugged, "Just don't yammer too much and let me do all of the talking. You're good at not blowing your cover, right?"

"Mostly," Saki answered, "Why?"

"Because where we're headed asking questions or talking out of turn is likely to get the both of you killed flatter than an octopus on land," Trudy said as they arrived at the Furinkan Financial District, and turned a certain corner that set the nerves of both younger girls on immediate edge.

"Hey, what are you...?" Nabiki started to ask.

"Ah-ah-ah!" Trudy titched, "You promised."

"Then I'll say it for her," Saki scowled, "Just what are you leading us here for? Don't you know that this isn't the safe part of town where school girls like us are supposed to hang out?"

"Of course I know it," Trudy said, "But like I said, stick with me and you're get a real education."

"Of what kind I wont speculate," Nabiki said warily as she turned a cautious glance towards the street toughs that started to turn up more commonly as they entered gang turf.

Saki's eyes went narrow and her right hand twitched as she felt the urge to pull out her yo-yo, "Hope you know what you're doing, Coach...trespassing on this part of town is likely to start a gang war."

"If one starts then I'll put out the blaze myself," Trudy said with the same casual tone that she had been using throughout the night, "Why? Afraid of a few low-level punks? You could take them down without even batting an eyelash."

"Not if fifty of them come at us all at once," Nabiki noted, resolutely adhering to her promise not to frame that statement as a question.

"Fifty, sixty, a hundred, two hundred fifty...what's in the numbers?" Trudy shrugged, "They're mostly sheep with only a few wolves scattered among them, and not a one of them is even in Asamiya's weight class, let alone yours, Saotome-  
san."

"That is hardly the point," Nabiki said, "Gangs do not play by the rules of a street fighter, and they tend to go for families and innocents, so it's usually a bad idea to stir them up like this."

"A point duly noted," Trudy conceded, "But for now disregard the minnows, we're after real sharks here, the kind that snap back with a lot more bite than these small fry."

"Meaning what exactly?" Saki asked as she tried not to look back at the hostile eyes that were eyeing both her and her companions with speculative interest.

"Meaning that," Trudy nodded as she gave a nod at a particular building that loomed up on the other side of the street, garish and decadent looking with a seedy air that made it look both dark and predatory.

"That?" Nabiki stammered in disbelief, then winced as Trudy favored her with a chiding expression.

"That," the redhead calmly affirmed, and turned to walk out into the street without even bothering to glance both ways, eyes fixed upon a certain alleyway adjoining to the building.

"Ah...excuse me?" Saki asked, exercising her liberty to voice aloud the thoughts of her companion, "Er...you do happen to know who that building belongs to...right?"

"Of course," Trudy answered, "Takeda Sonada, head of the Takeda wing of the Sazuke Clan, Obuyan for the Furinkan Financial district."

"Yakuza?" Nabiki said aloud, then winced, "I know, I know...no more questions."

"Are you out of your western mind, gaijin?" Saki hissed, "Do you have any idea what would happen if we go anywhere near that place?"

"No, do you?" Trudy answered.

"I've got a pretty good idea, yes!" Saki affirmed in no uncertain terms.

"How about you, Saotome-san?"

"Thought I wasn't supposed to ask you any questions," Nabiki pointed out.

"I'm making the exception," Trudy noted, "And I'm the one asking the question."

"Well then," Nabiki said firmly, "Takeda-san and I have a kind of...agreement not to mix it up in either one's business. Almost a year ago we had this...incident, and ever since there's mind a truce between my family and his..."

"Then what's to worry?" Trudy asked, leading them into the alley, "I'm not here to break the truce. I just mean to look Takeda-san up and ask him a question."

"Before or after he chops us up into tiny bits and serves us with sukiyaki noodles?" Saki asked dryly.

"Come on girls, where's that gung-ho spirit of the Samurai I've heard so much about?" Trudy asked them, "Besides, you're with me. What could happen?"

"Why do I think that I'm going to regret hearing you say that?" Nabiki asked academically, not expecting an answer.

Trudy ignored the point and led them to the back end of the service alleyway, whereupon they found a half dozen really dangerous looking men lounging about and working too hard to act casual to really be any good at the sport. Eyes turned as the trio of young women approached them, and then the lead of the group glanced over his dark eye shades and glared at them with a stoical expression.

"Hey there," Trudy said cheerfully as she walked up to the guy with the manner of a tourist, "You look like a helpful kind of guy. Do you think you could help me with some directions?"

"And where exactly is it that you want to go?" the leader of the dangerous half dozen asked with a nasty edge that implied evil intentions.

"Well, heaven eventually," Trudy said as she came to a halt directly before the fellow, and two other men standing closer towards him, "But I'd settle for your boss, Takeda-san. Is he in?"

There was a sharpening in the man's tone and manner as the other tough looking fellows became far more menacing in their posture and expressions, "Why? Did he send for a hooker?"

"Cute," Trudy sniffed, "But I'm retired from that particular profession. In fact, I've got a whole new hobby these days."

"Yeah?" the tough leader-type asked with a menacing growl, "Like what?"

Neither Nabiki nor Saki even saw Trudy move, but all at once the flat of her hand was pressed against the man's chest and there was an audible crunching sound that rang throughout the alley.

"Stomping on roaches...and Pedophiles for one thing," Trudy replied as she calmly removed her hand from the chest of the grimacing tough guy.

With hardly a gurgle or a grunt the man wavered upon his feet then slowly crumpled like a puppet whose strings had just been cut.

There was stunned silence all around as Trudy turned to the man standing on her right and said, "Why don't we try with you, handsome? Where is your boss Takeda?"

There was a delayed moment before the man reached into his jacket, but before he could complete the act of pulling something out of hiding he found his wrist gripped by a vice as Trudy promptly gave it a twist and snapped the bones as though they were balsa. His strangled cry was choked off as the tips of her fingers from her other hand shot into his throat and stopped his breathing.

"And the same goes for kidnappers who like to abuse and rape their victims," Trudy said before spinning around and lashing out with a foot that took the third man in the chin and abruptly turned his neck at an unnatural angle.

The other three toughs were further off from the reach of the redhead, but Saki reacted with instinctive speed and snapped out her yo-yo, hurtling it into the chest of the man nearest to her and causing him to collapse in unconsciousness, the breath knocked from his sails completely.

Nabiki reacted similarly to a man guarding the rear of the alley, using her Shadowskills to summon up a Ki-blast that she hurled into his face, which had the effect of sending him sprawling.

The last gunman completed the act of drawing his gun but never got a chance to fire as Trudy crossed the interval between herself and him and with impossible speed moved to immobilize him, holding him at bay up against the wall with his feet dangling off the ground by several centimeters.

"Last chance for you," the redhead said in as level a tone as if she were asking about the weather, "Where is your boss? Do you mind taking us to see him?"

"GRK!" the man responded, nothing more coherent than this escaping from his compressed windpipe.

Saki knelt at once and examined the bodies of the three men at the center of the alley and then said with stunned disbelief, "They're...dead...you killed them?"

"In a manner of speaking," Trudy replied without taking her eyes off her newest victim, "Though technically they killed themselves. So...what is it going to be? Join your metaphorical friends, or comply with a reasonable request? You have three seconds to give me an answer."

"But...!" Nabiki started to protest.

"Ah!" Trudy called back over her shoulder, her tone a stolid reminder of a promise.

Nabiki hesitated then said, "If you kill them...it means war with the Yakuza."

"Hey, I've been through enough wars to know how to start and stop them, kid," Trudy assured her, giving the man now at her mercy a particularly hard stare as she added, "The worst these guys can dish out wouldn't even make my list. They only think that they're soldiers."

"I can't believe you fucking killed them!" Saki swore, "What kind of Cop are you?"

"The off duty kind," Trudy answered, "And just for the record...that other profession I mentioned before? Guess what it is I really do for a living?"

The man she was gripping had bulging eyes as he stared death in the face and suddenly found his courage wavered, his first thoughts now on his immanent survival.

"I see," Trudy smiled, "Thank you for cooperating." And then she let the man go and he slowly collapsed to his knees and slumped over, quite obviously unconscious.

There was only a slight pause before Nabiki put it all together and said, "You're an assassin?" though she meant to frame it as other than a question.

"Bingo," Trudy turned and complimented Nabiki with a nod and a smile, "Kurustani means 'Death Maiden,' though the actual term might be closer to a Spy than an Assassin. I'm licensed to kill, and I do so whenever I see fit."

"A spy...and an assassin?" Saki asked dubiously, "Next you're gonna tell us you work for MI-6 or the CIA or something?"

"Or something," Trudy winked, "But don't give me that face, Kid. I only do sanctioned kills, I'm not some random psycho killer, and the people I kill always have it coming."

"Do tell?" Nabiki said skeptically, giving the bodies on the ground a cursory glance, "I'm sure these guys find that very reassuring..."

"I wouldn't waste the time giving them the pity, Kid," Trudy answered, nodding towards one of her victims, "That guy to your left? He beat his own sister to death when she was twelve, and that guy there torched his mother for the insurance money. And this guy I let live? Petty crimes...larceny and arson, and maybe one or two murders. I let him live because his time ain't up yet, but you can bet it's ticking and he has a date in the near future with my real employer."

"Your real employer?" Saki asked with a slightly numb expression.

"Death," Trudy answered, "It's his commissioned work I'm doing. He just tells me when to kill and I carry out my assignments."

"What the hell kind of discipline is that?" Nabiki scowled, "I didn't come here to learn how to kill people..."

"Of course not," Trudy answered, "You already know how, you just don't have the stomach or the taste for that kind of bloodshed. You'll cheerfully beat people up but you won't kill them."

"You think killing is something to be proud of?" Saki bristled.

"Not in the least," Trudy gave Saki a piercingly frank look, "As you proved to yourself when you brought the Sisters down and took XXX to justice."

"What...how...?" Saki stammered in disbelief.

"Your friend Junko, the one whose memory you honor, knew and appreciated the strength it took for you to show that kind of mercy," Trudy continued, "A Cop doesn't act as a judge or a jury, and you proved you had what it takes to serve the cause of justice. But I'm not an ordinary street cop...I'm special. I don't say that to brag or to claim that I'm better than you because of what I can do, but you can't measure what I am by your own personal standards."

"Then how the hell are we supposed to judge you?" Saki trembled, "No matter what these guys did or what they may be guilty of, that doesn't give you the right..."

"Hold that thought," Trudy said, turning to the nearby door just as it started to open, then she casually reached out and grabbed an outstretched wrist, yanking hard and drawing a man out into the alley.

Even as that fellow crashed chin-first into the ground, the gun flying out of his hand to land clattering in the alley, Trudy was already in motion and lashing out with a foot that gook a second man in the face and propelled him back into the other men crowded behind him, scattering them like ten pins.

"Excuse me, be right back in a minute!" Trudy called out over her shoulder before disappearing into the corridor, at which point they heard sounds of a commotion, several gunshots going off, and then...deafening silence.

A moment later Trudy emerged from the doorway and waved to the two stunned-  
looking teenagers, saying, "Way's clear, at least for the first corridor. It's bound to get a bit messy beyond this point, so...be ready."

"Ready?" Nabiki asked, "For what?"

"Ah ah!" Trudy waved her finger again, "Remember your promise?"

"Then I'll ask the question," Saki growled, "What the hell are you leading us into?"

"You'll see soon enough," Trudy said before re-entering the building, "That is, unless you'd like to turn tail now and go home to your mommies...metaphorically speaking."

Saki glared at Nabiki and asked, "Just where the hell did you find this lady?"

"Me?" Nabiki asked with a non-plussed expression, "I thought she said that she was one of your people."

"My people don't go in with guns blazing killing everyone in sight," Saki maintained, "We leave that sort of stuff to the bad guys."

"Maybe you ought to leave then," Nabiki said as she turned back towards the ominous looking doorway, "It's gonna probably get messy in there, and I don't think you're bosses would much care for your involvement."

"Hey, and miss all the fun?" Saki shrugged, and then together the both of them turned and entered the building, both young ladies gritting their teeth and steeling their nerves as they encountered a trail of bodies in the corridor, some of which were quite obviously dead, and a few in ways that nearly caused one or the other of them to vomit.

Trudy, meanwhile, stood at the end of the hallway as if expecting them to meet her there, her eyes set forward as though anticipating more trouble.

"Before you ask, they had it coming," Trudy informed them without glancing in their direction, "Rapists, murderers and car thieves...and some a lot worse, though I'll spare you the gory details."

"You're a real piece of work, you know that?" Nabiki asked, "How in the hell can you know which one of those guys is guilty, and of what crimes they've committed?"

"The question you should be asking yourself, Kid, is why don't you know?" Trudy calmly responded with arms folded under her chest, "But then again, if you knew how to listen, then you wouldn't keep breaking your own promise."

"I..." Nabiki stammered, then rethought uttering her next statement.

"When someone violates the order and harmony of nature it creates a ripple effect in the akashik field," Trudy explained, "And if you know how to read auras, then you can see everything spelled out in exacting detail just by being near to a guy...and listening to the whispers of his victims."

"Oh yeah?" Saki challenged, "And how do you know those whispers are legitimate? They're more probably caused by your own psychotic projection..."

"Since when did you become a shrink, Asamiya-san?" Trudy asked her, "And if I'm so far off the mark as all that, then how is it I know about your mother killing your father after suffering years of marital abuse? A not entirely undeserved outcome in my opinion, though the courts typically gave her a death sentence since a woman raising her hand against her husband tends to be frowned upon in this country."

Saki started to open her mouth in shock and dismay, which most probably would have led to a few choice words of outrage, but at that moment more gangster types began to show up from around the corner of the hallway, prompting Trudy into action as she moved to react before the men turning the corner were even aware of death's immanent presence.

The first man found the edge of her hand across his neck and collarbone, and then he felt a wave of pain go through him as the lateral blow shot through his body and nearly broke him in half. The other two suffered an elbow-thrust and finger-jab that paralyzed their wind-pipe for a few critical seconds, time enough to send them sailing into the nearest wall, where oblivion waited to embrace them in the gentle arms of Morphius's dominion.

"Small fry, hardly worth the bother," Trudy said, only to turn in time as a forth man shot at her with a gun from nearly point-blank range...yet with an ease that bordered upon absurdity she darted around and easily avoided the bullets, then broke his sternum while slamming him hard enough against the corner of the wall to turn the back end of his head into a greasy puddle.

"Him, on the other hand, definitely had that coming," Trudy remarked while watching her latest victim slide down the wall, creating a bloody trail in his passing.

"What the hell did he do to deserve that?" Saki asked.

"Trust me, you don't want to know," Trudy turned away with a dismissive tone and expression.

"Ah..." Nabiki paused to study the gun on the floor then asked, "Are you...going to take his weapon?"

"What would I need a weapon for?" Trudy replied as she rounded the corner, "Never carry the bloody things...too noisy. Now, observe that group over there...see all the hardware that they're sporting?"

Both Saki and Nabiki froze in mid-step and stared in dismay at the half-dozen men leveling both sidearms and heavy assault weaponry in their direction, but Trudy did not even break stride as she surged forwards, a lone figure charging recklessly into the onslaught of fire as the men opened up and sent hurtling pieces of metal streaming towards their bodies.

As she moved, however, Trudy pulled something from her sleeve and whipped it out to form a makeshift fan as the ruby scarf moved hither and about while she closed the distance, and then she was in the midst of the gunmen, tearing a bloody swath in their midst before any one of them had even a chance at redirecting his fire in her direction.

Both Saki and Nabiki winced as men hit the floor (and some the ceiling) with a very loud set of crashing noises that lasted for all of three seconds before grinding to a halt a few moments later.

Once the carnage was over Trudy turned and indicated the bodies, "See what happens when you trust your life to guns? You expect them to solve all of your arguments, but all they do is slow you down and dull your reflexes."

Even Nabiki was stunned speechless at the ease with which the altercation had just ended, leaving it once again to Saki to ask, "But...the bullets...didn't they shoot you?"

In response Trudy shook her silk kerchief and allowed several score bullets to clatter to the ground, then scooped up a handful out of the air and showed them off for their inspection.

"It's not hard to dodge these things when you can see them coming...or feel their disruption of the air currents," the American assassin answered, "The intent to kill someone, when practiced by an amateur, sends waves of disharmony radiating out in all directions, which leaves them open and vulnerable...to this!"

Her hand suddenly moved, and the air hissed with metal projections that sailed past the heads of the two stunned girls, and suddenly a thumping sound rang out behind them, prompting them to turn around and see the two bodies slumping to the floor with weapons drawn yet effectively quite useless.

Trudy held up two fingers and flicked a couple more bullets at the ceiling, and a moment later a pair of guys came crashing down from a concealed sniper hole, which prompted Trudy to say, "Rat problem...never neglect to look up or expect an attack from a non-linear angle."

"You call this a field trip?" Nabiki asked.

"What are you teaching here? Lessons in assassination?" Saki blanched as she stared at the lifeless bodies now decorating the corridor.

"I'm teaching you kids a lesson in survival," Trudy informed them, "When hunting around predators, expect things to get nasty. But why look so worried? You're with me...so what can go wrong?"

Even as she said that she walked up to a panel of the wall and slapped her palm against it, causing it to collapse sideways, revealing both a door and the gunman pinned beneath it, who groaned in dismay from beneath its trappings.

"Why don't I find that very reassuring?" Nabiki murmured.

"Always remain in tune with nature and your surroundings," Trudy continued expounding, "Extend all senses, disregard nothing, dismiss nothing, and accept what is there without filtering your perceptions with preconceptions. It's all in the nature of being at one with the harmony and balance of all things, so that when you kill someone you don't think of it as killing. You only return their evil back to its source, which means that they are the ones effectively doing the killing."

"That...doesn't make a lot of sense to me," Nabiki admitted.

"Of course not," Trudy turned around, "You lack both trust and training. Now, what is it going to be, Boys? More rough stuff, or are you finally willing to talk like civilized people?"

Saki and Nabiki looked past Trudy and were dismayed to discover that a full dozen men now stood in their path, many with weapons drawn, including more traditional samurai swords and other implements of a long forgotten era. They were mean looking and obviously knew how to use their fancy weapons...and yet they hesitated, the leader of which was a stony-faced figure who was glaring hard at Trudy, doing his level best not to glance at the pile of bodies all around her.

"What are you girls here for?" he asked with an uncompromising look of cold determination.

"Just want to have a few words with your boss, Obuyan Takeda, handsome," Trudy smiled disingenuously, as if not prepared to take on their entire army by her lonesome, "That's all I came for, and if you let us pass there won't be any more trouble."

"Trouble," the man sniffed as if well familiar with the term, "After you just whacked these guys? You think we're gonna let you get near him?"

"Do you honestly think you have any choice in the matter?" Trudy smiled back with a look a rattler no doubt gave to a tasty rodent, "But why don't we ask your boss about it? I'm sure Takeda-san is a reasonable enough fellow that he won't be afraid to spare a few words for the ladies?"

The man did not change his expression, but his eyes took stock of the odds, and he seemed to arrive a moment later at a grim-faced resolution.

"You want to talk to the Obuyan, you won't mind if we frisk you?"

"We're not armed," Trudy replied without changing her own pleasant expression, "And the first man to lay a finger on either of these girls won't have time enough to prepare himself to greet his ancestors. And that goes double for me, Handsome."

Again the stony resolve, but then the man stood to the side and waved a hand before saying, "The Obuyan is this way. Step lively...ladies."

"I was right about you," Trudy said jauntily, "You are the smart one," and then she moved forward with as much ease in her gait as though she owned the place and had nothing at all to fear from these Yakuza. Saki and Nabiki were quick to fall in place at her heels but managed far less of the redhead's stoicism as they braved the den of iniquity with a certain knowledge that they were in over their heads...and about to sink in even deeper...

Continued.

Comments/Criticisms/Conflict Resolutions via Undertakers: shadowmane

Or: shadowmane9849

The field trip continues as Trudy confronts the Obuyan, but will Nabiki and Saki feel in the mood to dine on the cuisine, and how exactly does this advance their cause? Never fear, honored readers, there will be an answer next time...as well as yet more questions needing to be answered in: "Dining with the Devil," or, "When ordering Blowfish, Never Order Take-Out!" Be there!

X /pre 


	75. Chapter 75

preDnabiki164

Nabiki 1/2

"A Very Scary Thought"

by Jim Robert Bader

(Inspired by the works of Rumiko Takahashi Others,  
with concepts and characters created by fellow fanfic writers Wade Tritschler, DB Sommers, Nicole Manders, Andrew Greaves, Bill Guiroff and countless others, including "Buffy"  
creator Joss Whedon; with special thanks to my good pal Shiva for his editing and handling of this series.)

(Certain other characters and concepts are of my own innovation, including my interpretation of the Monster of Mary Shelly's novel, the Furies, Trudy, Takaharis Angelique d'Anjou and various other guest stars appearing in this portion of the Nabiki 1/2 series...)

Chapter Sixty-Two.

Episode One-Hundred-Sixty-Four.

Lessons In Assassination

Ranma sighted. It was a sigh that was full of ennui and nuance, the sigh of a man who was confronted by a difficult task yet resigned to the outcome as only a condemned man might be. Sitting in his usual preferred place atop the dojo, legs composed in a lotus posture, attempting to relax this way for hours had not proven to be too particularly fruitful. He was much too wound up and exhausted from the events of the day to do a proper meditative posture, nor could he turn in and risk sleeping in his bed, surrounded by his wives and children...not when the risk of an invasion of his very dreams had proven all too likely.

He stared out into the night sky and considered his place in the greater scheme of things, then silently resigned himself to his fate and resolved not to put things off any longer.

"Sobriel?" he murmured softly, "Karina?"

There was a stirring in the air and then the two so-named Elementals manifested upon the dojo roof beside him, both kneeling in acknowledgement of his authority over them both and each one radiating a level of sensual appeal that was as magnetic as a lodestone.

"Master?" they asked in unison, as though they had practiced and rehearsed doing so for the past several hours.

Ranma blinked and then felt his anxiety level dramatically increase, for the pair were dressed in similarly revealing and suggestive outfits, whereas Sobriel hardly ever opted to manifest clothing of any sort, which made what she had on now all that more portentous.

"Ah..." Ranma said, feeling cornered already as he confronted the two elementals, and for a moment he balked at raising the subject that had prompted him to summon them together, but knowing that there was no avoiding the issue he decided to plunge on ahead and said, "About this...business of me...ah...that is..."

Karina-the friendlier and more gregarious of the pair-promptly supplied in a helpful manner, "You mean about you fathering children upon us, your elemental servants?"

"Ahhh..." Ranma looked into the overly eager eyes of the beautiful Sylph and felt...uncomfortable on so many levels, "Yeah...about that..."

"You will be happy to know then that Latisha, Sharil and Nagisha are all reporting successful implantation of your seed, which is gestating within them very nicely," Sobriel reported, "Your record for being the most prolific and fertile master that any of us have ever have the privilege of serving under...or on top...remains intact as of this moment...Master."

"Oh...yeah?" Ranma blinked, "Uh...you mean...?"

"Congratulations are in order," Karina said brightly, "You're going to be a father to their offspring...very special children who will share human and elemental traits, which will bind them all the more closely to you and your family...Master."

Something about the way both elemental girls were pronouncing the word "Master" gave Ranma the distinct impression that everything had already been worked out in advance and all that was required from this point on was his willing participation. It was also just as plain from their expressions that politely refusing their silent entreaties was not even a remote option. If anything they looked ready to pounce on him, at which point he was certain to lose all control over what remained of the situation.

But instead of panicking he just sighed and asked, "Why me? I mean...you're great girls, and you deserve the best, but...this stuff about me needing to...ah...well, do it with you..."

"Not thinking about backing out now are you, Master?" Sobriel asked with a faintly hurt expression, "The others had their turn...so what about us?"

"It's not that we're insensitive to the fact that we're putting you on the spot like this, Master," Karina assured him, "But I think it's safe to say that Sobe and I have been enormously patient in waiting our turn, and it wouldn't exactly be fair to either of us to deny us at this juncture. Not after seeing the way the others have positively glowed after each and every session."

"Yeah, no kidding about that," Sobriel looked and sounded faintly amazed as she gave mute testament to the marvelous transformation that had come over three of her fellow elementals.

"We know your feelings intimately, Master," Karina continued in a gently persuasive tone, "And we would never dream of taking the place in your heart of the Mistress or her co-wives. However...it would be safe to say that we know you better than anyone else merely human ever could, and we share a connection with you that goes well beyond the ties forged by our contracts as your elemental servants."

"Yeah, we've seen the good stuff as well as the bad, and on the whole you're...not too shabby...for a mortal, that is," Sobriel somewhat evasively insisted, "I mean...you always try to do the right thing, and you've got more raw nerve than any human I've ever had contact with...and aside from the personal stuff you're definitely not a coward...or a weakling..."

"What she means is that you are more than worthy in our sight, Master," Karina interpreted on behalf of her companion, "If anything we're the ones who feel honored and blessed to have you for our Master. And yes, we do want to have your offspring through Xenogenotroposis, but we want you to want this too...just as we want you to acknowledge our babies as your own daughters without qualm or resentment."

"Not that I understand what you should feel resentment for," Sobriel hastily objected, "After all we're the ones letting you do us. That other way makes it sound as if we're the once forcing this upon you."

"Oh?" Ranma cocked and eyebrow, but nonetheless he reluctantly conceded, "I'm flattered...really, and I'm not rejecting either you or the idea...but..."

"Is it the timing or the unseemly haste that has you worried, Master?" Karina asked while leaning forward, which gave him a good view of her cleavage, "If so then understand that we would rather take our time pursuing a relationship-  
human style-but events in our lives are never that stable and are often way too chaotic, so...we'll take what time we can and manage it as best we're able."

"Yeah," Sobriel noted, "Better to fuck now while the iron is hot rather than to wait for a better time...which may never actually get here."

"Good point," Ranma said, unable to help staring at her body as it was the first time in his memory where he was unable to directly see her nipples, which he found to be...oddly intriguing, "I guess...well...maybe I do kinda owe you girls a shot...but, ah...it's just...I'm not so good at getting these things started, so..."

"Would you rather we just jump your bones and get it over with?" Sobriel asked.

Ranma thought a moment then said, "Maybe...at least...that way I can always tell Nabiki and the others that you forced me into it."

"Sneaky," Karina smiled, winking at the young man and saying, "Don't worry if you enjoy this then...it'll be our little secret."

"Thanks," Ranma nervously chuckled, surprised to find that he was indeed becoming increasingly excited at the prospect of what was about to happen, which shocked and appalled him to no end as he had already done it with the other girls in the course of a single day, so where did he get the extra stamina? And why wasn't he just pleading exhaustion as an excuse to avoid the whole encounter?

Rather than voice these concerns what he did say was, "Ah...by the way...how did you guys decide...well, you know...to do this together?"

"Think we should have flipped a coin?" Sobriel asked, glancing at her Aerial companion.

"Well...actually," Karina said with an unusual hint of shyness in her voice, tone and expression, "Do remember how we first met as adversaries that time over a week ago?"

"Ah...yeah," Ranma shifted uncomfortably, the memory still fresh in his mind, as was the means by which Sobriel had bound herself to him through close and highly...intimate contact.

"Well...the truth is, Sobe and me...we've...kind of gotten a lot closer since then," Karina shyly admitted, exchanging a look with the Void elemental that was surprisingly well received and returned with considerable interest, "You see...we have a lot in common...not least of which the fact that you rescued the both of us from our previous Masters, who were hardly as pleasant to be with or as kind as you have been with us."

"Yeah," Sobriel agreed, "And it seems that there's more to the Airhead than I thought there was on first impression."

"Yeah, and it seems the vacuum-head here isn't all that vacuous, once you get to know her better," Karina grinned, and then the two of them brought their faces closer together and exchanged a quick kiss that conveyed a great deal of warmth and passion, especially as they stared into each others eyes in a particularly meaningful manner.

"Oh," Ranma said with belated comprehension, wondering why he had not seen the signs earlier, or noticed how much less tension he had been feeling from their end as though their formerly adversarial natures were complimentary now, which could lead to only one rather obvious conclusion.

"So...after all of us elementals came to an agreement that we would work together in order to get pregnant with your offspring...Sobe and I had a private personal chat and...well...we decided we wanted to do this thing together. Get pregnant that is...but of course with you as the father, Master.'

"Wouldn't want it any other way," Sobriel grinned broadly, "So...how about it? Are you up to a threesome?"

Ranma paused before answering, "Are you actually offering me a choice about this?"

"Of course," Karina answered, "You are our Master, and even as frisky as the other girls can get, every one of us must respect your will and judgement even if it conflicts with our own inclinations and desires. If you had really wanted to you could have told them to cease and desist and they would have obeyed you..."

"But the fact that you didn't means you weren't objecting to us as much as you pretended to in front of the other wives," Sobriel said slyly, "So even if you didn't actually invite us to go at you, you could have said no at any time and that would have been the end of the matter."

"Well...actually..." Ranma nervously chuckled while feeling the hairs at the nape of his neck with one hand, "The plain truth is...I panicked and didn't think about it. It honestly never even occurred to me that you girls might respect my wishes..."

"Why?" Karina asked, "Did you think we were like your other wives, what with all the demands they put on you domestically and emotionally?"

"Give us more credit than that," Sobriel urged, "We may want your babies, but we're not desperate enough to play tag-team serial rapists."

"Hey, I never said that you were," Ranma assured his elementals, "It's just...well...how should I put this...?"

"You don't have to pretend with us, Master," Karina said while giving him her must sultry expression, "We know how much you are attracted to us, and by now you've got to have a pretty good idea that we're all attracted to you on a fundamental level. So either tell us to take a hike or let us do the thing we all want to do together. It's such a lovely night, there are no pressing interruptions that can spoil our fun, and between the two of us I'm sure Sobe and I can keep things...entertaining."

"But we leave the matter up to you, Master," Sobriel dutifully added, "Otherwise...expect to get pounced upon and ravished like there is no tomorrow!"

"Well," Ranma chuckled softly, "When you put it that way...how can I say no? After all, it wouldn't be fair to you...not after...well...the way the other girls...you know."

"You mean like this?" Sobriel asked as she moved in closer on the one side, and Karina automatically took the other side to flank both Ranma and her companion, and when Ranma did not pull away they were emboldened to go further, slipping their hands to remove the folds of his martial arts training outfit so that they could bare his manly chest and savor in the robust power of his physique, even as they moved to explore him in far more...intimate areas, thus opening the night to a randy cavorting that was due to last well into the hours of late morning...

"But Lenore...Frank said we weren't to blame..."

"I know what the big guy said," Lenore growled, "But did you see that look in his eyes and the way he said it? Sure he doesn't blame us for not being able to help, but we were supposed to be there looking after the Tendos!"

"That is not an entirely rational assessment," Kiima assured her vampiric friend, "We had no cause to suspect an attack on Saotome Nabiki, and so we hardly can be accused of dereliction."

"Just the same I wanna get to the bottom of this," Lenore growled, "Hits don't just happen out of the blue like that...somebody's gotta commission them, and that somebody also has to make preparations before sending their goons into action."

"Get to the bottom...like how?" Chloe asked of her vampiric lover, "Are we going to ask your friend Shiro to do an investigation?"

"Not this time," Lenore said as she continued to lead her unearthly trio by a series of back-alley ways that kept them further out of the sunlight while plunging deeper into the neighborhood of Shinjuku, one of Tokyo's most foreboding regions, "Got another source on the street that I've been wanting to try, assuming he still lives in this area. Ah...well...kinda lives here anyway, if you take my meaning..."

"Another of your vampiric colleagues?" Kiima asked her while hovering just behind her nocturnal companions.

"Not exactly," Lenore enigmatically replied, "In fact...he's kind of like the opposite of a vampire, but undead in a different sense of the word...or kind of dead anyway, but not fully crossed over into the world of the spirits...more like held to the earth in a state of quasi-transition."

"Hah?" Chloe asked, scratching behind her pointy ears as they swiveled in canine-like confusion.

"Look, it's not easy to explain, all right?" Lenore said testily, "You guys are just gonna have to trust me on this. His name is Kuroi and he used to be a musician with a band called the Darkravens, but these days he's a..."

"Curious chap inquiring as to your business."

"Hah?" Chloe whirled around and glanced up over their heads, instinctively dropping into a crouch while reverting to a semi-lupine state with claws and fangs at the ready.

"Interesting," Kiima said with far less alarm as she stared at the figure crouched on a fire escape directly above them, taking notice of a figure whom her senses informed her was not quite reading as one of the living...or of the realm of death either.

"Kuroi?" Lenore followed the stares of her companions then made a motion to Chloe and said, "Easy honey...he's friend. Well...kinda."

"Of doubts you have?" a dark haired man said as he flipped off of the fire escape and lightly landed on his feet with the graceful ease of a trained martial artist, "Cast them aside, gentle maidens, for the grim reaper of death is among you without malice."

"Hah?" Chloe asked again, regaining her human form as she stared at the oddly dressed figure standing before them, whose features were unusually pale while his eyes were dark and sunken with dark circles about them that were almost painted in a ghastly clown-like manner.

"Let me guess," Kiima said, "He's into Goth?"

"Ah...kinda," Lenore winced, "But the real truth is that Kuroi here is a..."

There was a cawing noise, and then a dark winged shape descended from above and glided to a landing upon the garishly dressed man-in-black's shoulder.

"A crow?" Kiima said, then brightened, "Ah...of course! Now I know...I've heard about them..."

"Ah...mind filling me in?" Chloe asked, scratching behind her ears again as though it were the shedding season.

"A Crow, gentle Were-child," the man named Kuroi answered, turning to glance at the bird perched upon his shoulder, "One brought from the shores of death to avenge his own slaying, and that of others...yet alas, unable to return until such time as the peace of the grave becomes more inviting."

"Still with the poetry, huh?" Lenore sniffed, turning to Chloe and explaining, "It's like this, Hon...a crow is a semi-mystical being who acts like a servant and messenger of death, often conveying the souls of those who died under tragic circumstances to their next life in the world of the spirits. In legends they were the special messengers of gods like Odin and Coyote whose special charge was souls who bear the weight of great sadness within them...usually ones who died or were murdered in a way that prevents them from entering death with joyous blessings..."

"But sometimes a soul is weighted by such grief and loss and it cannot rest and must find solace in vengeance," Kiima said, "To right that which is wrong and restore a balance to the life equation...and so the Crow conducts a human back into the world of the living and maintains them there until such time as they achieve final peace and contentment."

"I see you have heard the legends concerning my kind, lovely apparition," Kuroi remarked with keen appreciation, "Neither dead nor truly living...no pulse beats within this breast, only a keen desire for the cause of justice that must be fulfilled before I am granted the blessing of reuniting with my sweet Juliana..."

"How is that again?" Chloe wondered in ever-deepening confusion.

"Juliana's the name of his late and much-lamented girlfriend," Lenore explained, "She was an American tourist who fell in love with Kuroi and opted to stay with him past the expiration of her visa, but she and Kuroi were murdered one night by a rat bastard Yakuza type who disapproved of the mixing of two races...and who thought Kuroi betrayed the purity of the home islands. A year after his death, however, Kuroi came back and started busting heads seeking a special kind of vengeance..."

"But alas, I was thwarted in my ambition," Kuroi's eyes glared darkly, "The coward took his own life rather than suffer at my hand as had his henchmen had before him."

"Kuroi found out that the guy was working for someone else who put down the kill order," Lenore explained, "Which is why his vengeance was turned to another target...but after all this time he still has yet to learn the identity of his real killer...right, Kuroi-san?"

"Woe that it be true, gentle vampire," Kuroi answered, glancing to his ever-  
present mascot, "Not even Kurosa here has been able to crack the barrier preventing us from obtaining the fiend's identity...but one day we shall learn his name, and then he shall learn that the dead are not to be denied, for justice will one day come to claim them."

"You've named a crow a Raven?" Kiima noted with faint interest.

"Seems appropriate," Chloe shrugged, "One bird of death is much like another..."

"The bird is his Spirit-Warden," Lenore informed her companions, "He keeps Kuroi-san anchored to the mortal plane, and without his energies...well...Kuroi here would just be a walking dead person."

"Trapped in life, subject to death anew," Kuroi himself assured them, "But I shall not pass beyond the final pale of Death's dominion until I have taken one soul with me...the one who caused the deaths of me and my beloved, who ordered our suffering and acted cowardly through lesser agents."

"In other words he's really hard to kill," Lenore explained, "He can take damage that would off a vampire and still keep kicking...and he's got other abilities that come in useful, such as tactile kinesis and Teleaugury..."

"Please, don't give away all of my trade secrets," Kuroi urged, "But you have a question, Lenore-san...one you came to me seeking to have answered?"

"Right," Lenore turned back to the pale-skinned dark man before her and said, "This morning a strange dude came to Furinkan High School, out in the Nerima district, and tried to kill a student named Saotome Nabiki..."

"How ill favored to seek to strike against one of tender years," Kuroi noted, "What did this person do to deserve the ire of the attacker?"

"That's just it, we don't know," Lenore replied, "We only suspect it was some kind of cult thing going back to the Tokugawa era. You know, her ancestor, the guy who hired the assassin feeling a grudge and all that..."

"A longstanding quarrel then," Kuroi noted, "But what prompted this sudden reversion to the ancient laws of vendetta?"

"That's what we're hoping you can help is to fill in," Lenore explained, "Saotome Nabiki is a wife and recent mother who was staying home that day taking care of her baby when the attack came down. Because of a quirk in her condition she was able to bounce back and got to class in time to help put the jerk down...but it was a near enough thing and took the combined efforts of some of our best fighters. This guy named David Lo...turns out he's half Kirin and..."

"David Lo?" Kuroi frowned, "That name does strike a bell...it seems I have heard it mentioned in the thoughts of a mind with whom I have had recent contact..."

"Oho?" Chloe brightened up, "A lead? Sounds like a sniff in the breeze..."

"Do you recall who it was, and under what circumstances, that you heard this name mentioned?" Kiima asked.

"I do indeed remember the circumstances, fair spirit," Kuroi answered, "I was interrogating a fellow concerning some loan deals that he had arranged with a local merchant of my acquaintance...and the name appeared within his thoughts. I do not recall much beyond the general details of a job being performed through an outsourced medium...a contract killing of a man found troublesome...something to do with a Korean company that has ties to the Moonies..."

"That's gotta be it then," Lenore said with more enthusiasm in her tone of voice, "The guy making all that trouble at the school campus was some kind of religious fanatic who kept going on about Nabiki-san being the enemy of God, or something like that. Can you help us out, Kuroi...if you're not too busy?"

"It seems that trouble is brewing and clear case of injustice is at hand," the dark man nodded, "I will make inquiries and get back to you...you have my word that the truth will be found and outed."

"Thanks..." Lenore started to say when the man stepped back into the shadows and then appeared to disappear before their very eyes, merging with the shadows as though becoming one with them on a fundamental level.

"So, that is a Crow," Kiima said, "It seems this one lives up to their legends.'

"Scary," Chloe shivered, "It's almost like he was here...but he wasn't all here, if you know what I mean by that...'cause I sure don't."

"He's between states of death and life," Lenore said, "Not all that different from a vampire...except that he doesn't drink blood, only vengeance."

"And you think he will root out the source of this fellow who attacked out friends...and who else is behind him?" Kiima wondered.

"Hey, if anybody can get to the bottom of something, it's that guy," Lenore assured, "He can put the terror of the Gods in almost anybody, 'cause he sure scares me, and I know he's one of the good guys."

"Good is a relative concept," Kiima said, "And I notice that you did not mention the name of Otono to your friend there."

"I want him to confirm the Boss's suspicions that this thing leads to that guy," Lenore said, "I don't want him just to follow the same leads...my instincts tell me there's a lot more to this than a simple hit, and if things are as bad as Frank thinks they are...then this could just be the beginning of something a whole lot worse that's in the offing."

"Like a bad smell that warns you of bigger trouble," Chloe said, "And if somebody wanted Saotome Nabiki dead..."

"Then why stop with only one hitman?" Kiima finished the were-woman's thoughts for her, adding with just a touch of urgency, "Meaning there may be another attack on the house of the Tendos."

"God, Frank'll have me staked if we don't get back there right this minute," Lenore said with dawning realization of their situation, "You guys okay with it if I fly? I'll meet you back at the Tendo house, and we'll take stake up duties full time round the clock, night and day as soon as we get there."

"But..." Chloe started to protest, reluctant to be parted from the company of her vampiric lover.

"Do what you must, my friend," Kiima urged, "Chloe and I will be along by our own means in good order."

"Right, you do that," Lenore nodded, then spared a look of reassurance to her lover, "Chloe-chan...don't worry, I'll be careful."

And with that the vampire spread the wings of her coat and lifted up into the night, vanishing into the moonlit sky with a speed that bordered on the demonic, leaving behind two members of her unearthly team, who wished her haste on her way to avert yet another possible tragedy in the making...

"She's late. There had better be a damned good reason."

Carla glanced around the airport terminal and glared at the time clock as though it had done something truly offensive. She was not a patient person on the best of occasions, and being made to wait-for any reason-was definitely not a thing to help improve her mood one iota. Especially not after a ten hour flight with lousy food and a fellow sitting next to her who thought being social meant chattering away interminably about his personal life, career and views upon both politics and religion. Ordinarily Carla would have tolerated the fool and his clumsy (and misguided) attempts at seducing her, but being stuck next to the jerk by a decided lack of alternate seating made avoiding his company something more than problematic.

It was not until she pressed a nerve to temporarily render him unconscious that she got any kind of relief or satisfaction out of the situation. It reminded her again of how much she had changed during her years of association with Trudy from the simple barrio-born LA cop that she had been before their colorful first encounter.

Then she had been a straight out-of-the-Academy rookie with hardly a clue as to where the directions of her life would lead thanks to a seemingly random encounter with a certain firebrand redhead. Back then she had considered herself a straight-laced Catholic girl with perfectly ordinary wants and desires and never a hint to having a strong attraction to other women, only a curious inability to form lasting attachments to the men of her acquaintance. Only belatedly did the truth finally dawn upon her about why her mother's clumsy attempts to hook her up with the sons of her various friends never went beyond the initial dating phase...and why having Trudy in her life turned everything upside down and topsy-turvy. Now, with the benefit of hindsight she understood better why it seemed that she and the strawberry blonde whirling dervish were destined to be an item...and not just because they each shared memories of a paratime future that each was hoping fervently would never come into existence.

Of course, having the memories of someone who would not even be born until seven hundred years had come and gone was weird enough by itself without having to add the fact that this General Beruna was a somewhat larger-than-life sort in her own right, and definitely a very different cut from the cloth that had been the fundamental nature of one Carla Rodriguez. Her paratime counterpart had knowledge and skills closely approaching those of a Kurustani, which made her close to being on a par with Trudy's, if only a bit shy of the mark of actual perfection. Often she found aspects of the General rising up to take command within her, becoming her in all essential respects, so that the line separating the two was blurred to the point of obscurity, so that even Carla sometimes did not know where Beruna began and her own distinctive nature ended.

Or sometimes the General's presence could bolster elements within her that they shared in common, which made it hard sometimes to function around ordinary human beings with their considerable limitations and myopia, limitations that no longer applied to someone as physically and spiritually evolved as either Carla or Beruna. Indeed, it was often difficult to swallow her pride and accept the authority of a man like Captain Fortunov, who-while a respectable officer of the law in his own right-nevertheless sometimes behaved like such a jerk that the urge to put him in his place was nearly overwhelming.

But having to live in the "real world" of the present meant swallowing her pride and putting up with occasional nuisances and their imposed limitations. So Carla was used to stomaching a lot, which did not mean that she was blessed with an infinite abundance of patience. ESPECIALLY where it concerned the current "love of her life," that annoyingly quixotic, infuriatingly unpredictable Kurustani-trained excuse for a partner that she had been saddled with for the past few years of their rather intensely passionate relationship. As much as she cared for Trudy, there were times when Carla was tempted to get all Uxalian on her ass and do the sort of things that might imperil their relationship.

It was a testament to the degree of her self-restraint that she even let Trudy out of their apartment or off the leash (literally speaking) where she could wreck her usual havoc upon the unsuspecting world in general. Of greater concern than this was the thought of Trudy running rampant among all the beautiful young things that were to be found in great abundance in the Japanese islands...and just thinking of her lover in the arms of some local trollop was enough to make Carla's knuckles whiten as she held her travel bags a bit too tightly.

As she scanned the Airport lobby she thought furiously to herself, (If I find out that she's with Angel when she's supposed to be here picking me up...she's gonna spend the rest of this trip in a dog carrier, so help me...).

There was no thought involved as one arm suddenly lashed out and clotheslined the fellow who had been about to rush right past her, intent on snatching her purse. Carla had not even been aware that the youth had been "scoping her out" and had foolishly mistaken her for a mere tourist. Her reflexes were just so sharp that her body knew how to react without having to involve any higher brain functions. She had the fellow collared and on the ground so fast that an eyeblink would have trouble keeping up. She reflexively reached for a set of hand cuffs before remembering that she did not bring any with her on this trip, intending to find local restraints of an entirely more...appropriate nature.

The boy did not seem old enough to be out of high school...in fact her senses instantly told her that he was fourteen and from a single-parent home, practically an orphan with a sallaryman father who was never at home to give his oldest son the guidance he needed. A part of a juvenile street gang, assigned to airports and in perpetual trouble with airport security, which whom he had daily run-ins, like the one he was about to encounter.

Carla registered their heavy footsteps running up to her position and hardly needed to look to make each and every one of the fellows out. Two in uniform, one plainclothes, all security and telegraphing that fact to the world at large with every breath that was taken. Amateurs, but local ones, and thus it was necessary to deal with them in a civil and even-handed manner.

"Can I help you, gentlemen?" she asked, speaking flawless Japanese, which startled them as they could plainly see that she was entirely foreign.

"Excuse please?" the lead uniformed man asked in a passable attempt at English.

Carla maintained a firm pressure-hold on her young captive as she turned to address the security men, then made a firm point of releasing the youth from her custody, at which point the boy began to scramble to his feet and attempt to limp away, compelling the uniformed security officers to chase after the fellow, certain that they would catch him.

Carla turned her focus towards the non-uniformed fellow, who promptly showed his ID and identified himself with a formal, "Inspector Hatigato, Chief of Security. And you?"

"Sergeant Rodriguez, LAPD," Carla held up her own wallet identification, "I'm here on a tourist visa...it's all legitimate in case you'd like to check?"

"That will not be necessary," Inspector Hatigato replied, putting his wallet away, "I was informed that you were coming in advance by Tokyo PD. They wished that you be escorted as soon as possible or convenient to a hotel that has already been established with a reservation in your name, all expenses paid in advance care of the department."

"Oh yeah?" Carla frowned, "That's very...generous of you. But I'm just a lowly street-cop...why make such a fuss for my sake?"

"Professional courtesy, Sergeant Rodriguez," Hatigato answered with a straight face, the very politeness of his manner suggesting a lot more than he would attest to in the open. Not that he could hide much from Carla's advanced senses, of course, as she could read the fellow like an open book...in Braille no less.

Ex cop, left the force after an investigation into a shooting incident threatened to wreck his pension. Got hired up as chief of security at this terminal but kept his ties to the old department, and now somebody over there was calling in a favor, having him perform this assignment, no doubt at the behest of another department. And that could spell but one thing in Carla's experience of such matters.

Fortunov.

No doubt about it, her Captain had felt an obligation to pass the word along about one half of a pair of "loose cannons" that were being "unleashed" on the unsuspecting Japanese islands. Carla would have taken offense at the very idea of being even tacitly compared with Trudy, but the reality of the situation was that she had been marked and identified with a profile of her case history forwarded as a "courtesy," from one police agency to another.

Though the request was politely worded as an offer, it had the hidden context of an order direct from the top. She could either refuse and find herself in a situation of confrontation with the locals, or go along with their request and be shepherded under their benevolent "guidance." Of course they might find themselves facing more of a handful than they suspected either way, but doing so would only confirm Fortunov's highly overrated opinion of her as a trouble maker, and so it was up to her to decide whether or not to conform to his expectations.

Well, Carla would show her boss that she knew how to behave in a foreign country. She gave the fellow a winning smile (which-due to the gleam in her eyes-did not seem all that reassuring) and said, "I am honored by your offer. By all means convey me to my room, Inspector-san. And after that..."

"Yes?" Hatigato asked, more than slightly disturbed by her too-friendly and accommodating attitude, which was not what he had been lead to expect from his superiors, judging by his hasty briefing upon this dangerously subtle-looking foreign woman.

"...you can take me to your leader," she added slyly, wondering what Fortunov's counterpart looked like on this side of the Pacific, and thinking to amuse herself for a few hours before having her fateful reunion with that infuriating Trudy...

"Obayun?" the formally dressed man said as he nodded to a table where several men and women were gathered about a table enjoying a few beers and a meal in what seemed like a private party in the middle of a high-class night club, one where they were the only patrons within earshot.

A heavyset man with close-cropped hair (against whom several of said ladies were reclining) acknowledged the politely worded entreaty, his dark eyes shifting immediately to the trio of young women standing behind the other man, eyes narrowing with the faintest of reactions.

"Tendo," he said aloud, "Or...should I call you Saotome?"

"Ah...hi," Nabiki nodded, regarding the Yakuza boss of the entire Nerima district, and fully understood the nervous way that Saki was flexing one hand as if preparing to summon her yo-yo for a fight in another minute.

"You wished to see the intruders," the first man continued, indicating these women, in particular singling out the older redhead, "This one killed several of our men. What is your wish in this matter...?"

Before he completed his sentence the woman named Trudy smiled brazenly and easily stepped around him, "Boss Tanaka...how nice of you to see us at this time. Enjoying the food, or is it the entertainment of the ladies?"

She gave a brazen wink-and-nod to said ladies, making it plain that she was "checking them out" as though imagining what they would look like without their kimonos, then proceeded to ignore them as she centered her focus upon the Yakuza boss before her.

The man who had introduced them bristled angrily and looked ready to do something about the insolence of this woman when he found two fingers suddenly pressed against his chest, causing his muscles to freeze and turning him effectively into a statue.

"Wait your turn, Junior, you'll get another chance to speak," Trudy said with a chilling smile on her face, hand extended to prop up the man before he started to wobble. She turned away and nonchalantly smiled at the Obayun, "He'll be all right in a bit, but he'll be feeling a little winded."

Both Nabiki and Saki looked askance at the behavior of their companion, then immediately shifted their postures as they took in the angry and outraged demeanor of the other Yakuza, who were looking quite upset about the condition of their colleague.

But the Obayun made a hand gesture that signified no action to be taken, then he turned and looked hard at the redhead who had just immobilized his best man with a mere touch and said, "Your name?"

"Which one?" the strawberry blonde girl asked as she moved to the table and leaned forward, "I have several. By the way, I see you are a man of substance. It's not easy getting blowfish this time of the season."

The Yakuza tensed as though expecting more trouble, but to their universal surprise the redhead merely reached down and took something from the plate that contained the meal that their boss was eating, and to their collective horror they saw the gleam of something bluish-gray and slimy looking, a particular gland normally separated from the fish prior to cooking.

"Ah, Kirari," the woman said as she held it up for examination, then completed the surprise of everyone by placing the gland into her mouth and sucking from it as though to savor something delicious.

She paused a moment to chew before swallowing then said, "The juice really does have a very distinct and potent flavor, don't you agree? Even cooked like that it has quite a kick, though I wouldn't recommend it on a totally empty stomach."

There was a fractional degree of wariness in the Obayun's eye as he stared up at the woman as if expecting her to fall over dead at any second. When she did not his eyes widened even more with apprehension, while his underlings shot glances at one another, and several of their boss's table companions began to engaged in hushed fragments of conversation.

"A neat trick," said one of Tanaka's lieutenants, breaking the silent impasse, "Did you palm that for your..."

"What trick?" the woman asked as her hand suddenly brushed that fellow aside and out of his chair, sending him sprawling onto the floor, quite totally unconscious. The woman then compounded her actions to date by sitting down on said chair before propping her feet up on the table, totally nonchalant and acting as if she quite literally owned the place and had nothing to fear from any Yakuza retribution.

Both Nabiki and Saki reflexively tensed, sensing the dangerous element within the room had just escalated exponentially. The man on the floor was not moving, a fact that clearly registered with the Yakuza goons, who looked to a man as if they would like nothing better right then but to render the redhead and her companions in to a much worse condition. As skilled as they were as martial artists, neither Nabiki nor her undercover policewoman friend felt confident of taking so many at one time, and the stakes of defeat would be monstrously high as one hardly needed much imagination to consider their fate if they happened to be taken alive...as captives.

Death would be a favored alternative compared to what would likely happen, and not just to them but to any and all family and loved ones who might be implicated in the act of giving the Yakuza such a brazen insult. Nabiki wondered if this foreigner had any conception of who she was dealing with, and what the man before them would do if he took offense towards them for just being in the company of this...gaijin. Could she honestly be that ignorant...or was there far more to her than Nabiki had begun to suspect about this wild-card agent of Delphi? And why did it seem as though this cage of vipers were the ones who needed to be on their guards...as though a far more deadly predator were in their midst asking for a glance at the menu?

Tanaka himself seemed unable to tell if this fiery-gold haired woman in the red dress and black fishnet stockings were as dangerous as she appeared...or quite totally crazy. He opted to conclude that she was both and decided to humor her further by asking, "What name would you like to be known by?" by which he made it sound as though expecting to engrave it on her tombstone.

"I answer mostly to Trudy," the woman said, "Tru-Dee, which ought to be easy enough to pronounce for the purposes of our conversation."

"Conversation," Tanaka repeated, "Why is it then that you act as if you are here to insult me?"

"Oh please," Trudy sniffed, "Let's not stand on formality, shall we, Tanaka-san? I'm not here to trouble your life...other than maybe forcing you to dredge the bottom of the alley ways to find more hired help like that useless riff-raff that I disposed for you, and free of charge I might add."

"You did that to impress me?" Tanaka asked, "And tell me...how many of my men did you kill?"

"About seven in all, the rest being comatose, but recoverable, if you still want them," Trudy shrugged, "But they wouldn't have gotten like that if they'd been both smart and respectful to foreign women. That they were neither would bring great disgrace to your house, so you should thank me for ridding you of their karmic burden."

"I see," the Obayun said while shifting uncomfortably from beneath the arms of two women, "And your answer to people who do not show respect?"

Trudy just smiled, "Oh, don't get me wrong, I can stand a bit of impoliteness now and then, but carrying it too far...isn't healthy."

The Obayun seemed momentarily confused at this woman's unnaturally calm demeanor but shifted his gaze to her companions and said, "And these other two?"

"My students," Trudy replied, "You already know one of them, while the other...is under my protection."

Saki raised a pink colored eyebrow and regarded the foreign woman with a dubious expression.

"I see," the Obayun said again as he studied the foreign beauty with a much more careful degree of scrutiny in his expression, "Very interesting. So...why come to me? Is this visit pleasure...or merely business?"

"Oh business, no mistake about that," Trudy replied as she regarded the man with a particularly reptilian expression, "You see...I've only just started to take up employment here, but my first day on the job and something very...unpleasant happened, and I think that you're the man who can help me to do something about it. You see, I'm presently employed as a gym teacher at a local high school...Furinkan to be specific...and I believe you know something about it?"

"I do," the heavyset man sitting across from her at the table said with a totally neutral expression.

"Your son goes there, and your daughter qualifies at the end of finals next semester," Trudy spoke with total clarity as if merely stating the weather, "Did he tell you anything about how his day went?"

There was a deadly glare in Tanaka's eyes but he merely responded, "My wife says he came home early...that there was some sort of damage to the building...a water heater, or something like that."

"A water heater," Trudy chuckled and rolled her eyes, "When will they learn to invent a better cover story, or at least one that sounds more original. No, I'm afraid that it was nothing so mild as all that. You see...someone put a hit out on one of the students, and it was a broad-daylight attempt in front of practically the entire student body."

"What?" Tanaka sat upright so abruptly that he came close to spilling his women off of his lap.

"You heard me," Trudy said without a change in her own expression, "A full frontal assault by a lone gun assassin who tried to take out one of my students but missed and instead hit Principle Kuno."

The Obayun was visibly struggling to control his emotions, his eyes practically blazing with fury, even though on that last part his comment was, "No great loss then...but...Midori never said anything about this! Korata should have come to me himself...when I get home he's going to have to do some explaining..."

"I should think so," Trudy replied, "Especially as he was skipping class at the time to check out the new school nurse, but considering what a hottie she is one could hardly blame him..." she said the latter with a faint hint of exasperation.

Tanaka glared at the arrogant woman before him and said gruffly, "You seem to know a lot about me and my family..."

"Oh, I know a lot about you, or at least...everything that's important," Trudy replied, "In my line of work it's always good to keep up on contacts who can provide me with whatever I need...like information."

There was caution in Tanaka's expression again, "Your...line of work?"

"Can't tell you what it is, you'll have to guess," Trudy said cunningly as she took her feet off the table and leaned forward to sample some of the food from the table, "But I think you already know what I really do for a living...and it's not teaching gym, I can assure you of that."

There was a suitable pause while the only sound in the room was the sound of the strawberry-blonde woman chewing on an oyster, and then Tanaka asked, "Who are you...truly?"

"You've probably heard of me by reputation," Trudy explained while licking on her fingers, "Not that I go around advertising the fact or anything like that, but when word gets around...you know how it is."

"Red-gold hair," Tanaka slowly considered the facts, "Body of a dancer...eyes of a cat..."

"Oh, you have heard of me," Trudy brightened, extending one hand, "Call me the Legionnaire...at your service."

There was an audible sound of breath being sucked in, and then Nabiki and Saki noted how the men fingering the coats suddenly jerked their hands away as though bitten by something electric.

"Legionnaire?" Tanaka whispered the word in a tone of awe that matched his terrified expression, "But..."

"I know, I know, I'm only a legend, something to frighten the bogey men away," Trudy waved a hand dismissively, "Honestly, that thing with your buddy Hirada all started out as a big misunderstanding, and if he'd left well enough alone he could have retired and lived in a nice house and everything..."

Tanaka carefully studied the redhead before saying, "The word on the street is that you cannot be killed...that you are some sort of immortal..."

"Surely you don't believe every little rumor that floats around on the streets, Tanaka-san?" Trudy asked reasonably, "Sure, they say a lot of things like that about me, and some of it is even true. In fact most of it is, but it's all in the contest of how you interpret things. For example...not being able to die in a conventional sense would be a heck of an advantage to have in my line of work, ne? And the fact that I'm obviously here while Hirada and his clan are not..."

"Granted," Tanaka said, silencing the hushed whispers that were beginning to be exchanged among his own people. He turned to the women at the table and made a faint nod that was picked up upon and understood to mean a desire for privacy, which the ladies wisely acknowledged by getting up and exiting the room with as much polite haste as could be managed.

Trudy gave a low, sly smile at Tanaka and said, "And now that the witnesses and civilians have left, we can talk real business, you and me, just warrior to business man, and without unnecessary complications or interruptions."

"You wish to discuss...business?" Tanaka asked, "Like you did with my esteemed colleague and...all of his organization?"

"Hey, Hirada-san had a choice about doing things peacefully," the strawberry blond woman responded matter-of-factly, "He just chose the wrong path and paid for it big time. But you, Tanaka-san...you strike me as a much smarter brand of fortune cookie, someone who can see the big picture, somebody who can be reasoned with. And that's why I've come to you...to discuss with you this business with the high school."

Tanaka's eyes widened, "Surely you don't think I had anything to do with that?"

"Don't be silly," Trudy chuckled, though her tone and expression were boneless of even a speck of real humor, "If I thought that about you would we even be having this conversation?"

Another suitable pause and then Tanaka dared release the breath that he was holding, then visibly swallowed and said, "Of course...forgive my asking."

Nabiki blinked her eyes and gaped in astonishment. An Obayun of the Yakuza was apologizing to the gym teacher? Or was it more like...pleading for mercy?

"No offense taken," Trudy said with a lightly dismissive air that was exclusively her own amid the room full of shifting and fear-crazed Yakuza, "My point was that...somebody commissioned a hit on your turf, and while I'd hardly presume to tell you about your business, I know for a fact that if I were you or you were me that I'd be pretty hacked off about that. Consider it a courtesy to you that I felt the need to bring it to your attention."

"I...thank you for that courtesy," Tanaka sat back in his chair and scowled, "You may rest assured that no one in my organization would dare such an effrontery, let alone live to celebrate it."

"Let's be totally frank about this, Tanaka-san," Trudy said, "You have your interests and I have mine, but while I'm here I expect to keep a low profile and not make too many waves...at least, no more than are necessary. I don't mess with your business and you don't mess with mine, it's just that simple."

"But of course," Tanaka agreed with just a bit too much of a hopeful tone to his voice, "That is as it should be...and my son's high school should quite naturally be off limits."

"Glad we see eye to eye on this," Trudy shifted in her chair and then her tone and manner became to deadly serious that it was looking upon an entirely different person, "Because you can rest assured that I am quite miffed about being troubled by this whole matter, and when I get to the bottom of things I will personally see to it that each and every one involved sees the light of reason...or else. I really hate it when I'm forced to work up a sweat, but I won't pull any punches, and you can expect that they will have time to see me coming."

"Ah..." another of the men sitting at the table politely said, "Isn't that supposed to be...won't see you coming?"

Trudy smiled, picked up a plum seed, then casually tossed it at the man, and he fell backwards clutching at his throat, coughing and sputtering at the seed that was suddenly lodged within his wind pipe.

"Oh no, I fully intend that they know what I'll be doing to them in advance...just as a courtesy when I come calling," Trudy calmly assured, "Not that they'll have time to get their affairs in order or anything like that...but a few prayers to their ancestors would be civil, don't you agree?"

"Or course," Tanaka said as he saw his breathless companion about to fall over, a Yakuza thug having thoughtfully stepped forwards to provide the Heimlick maneuver, "Anything to please the Kami..."

"That's what this is all about," Trudy turned her head and seemed to acknowledge Nabiki and Saki again in an off-handed manner, "Pay attention, Students...you can always get more accomplished with a kind word and a smile rather than a fist...that is if the other fellow is as agreeable as this. You don't always have to charge into a place and kill everybody here just to make a point with the locals."

There was an audible shudder from several corners of the room, and this time Nabiki sympathized because there was something terrifyingly explicit about the tone Trudy used, as though she were not joking about "killing everyone to make a point." It was clear enough that the Yakuza themselves were not laughing.

"Everything in life proceeds from a point of balance, between yin and yang, the light and the dark, that sort of thing," Trudy continued, "Everything in life has its place and balance, and if all parts work agreeably together then harmony is maintained...but if one part works against the other..."

"Yeah?" Saki asked.

"Then disharmony, chaos and disorder are the result," Trudy concluded, "Which for me means riot and mutiny and work, work, work."

"Doing what?" Nabiki wondered.

"Cleaning up the mess," Trudy replied, "Which is my real job...the one I do when I'm not teaching in a high school."

Saki shifted her eyes from the teacher to Tanaka and then back to Nabiki, then said aloud, "Does cleaning up a mess mean it's all right to get your hands dirty...teacher?"

"If that's what has to be done, then consider me the gardener plucking weeds with my bare hands," Trudy replied, "But when someone disrupts the harmony of this world and seeks to impose their will upon everyone else, then that person had better fear me if they have any sense of self-preservation."

"But in this case I wouldn't count on that."

Heads turned abruptly to the one who had spoken aloud, and to Nabiki's dismay she found them all looking in her direction.

"Got something to say, Student?" Trudy asked, arching an eyebrow in Nabiki's direction..

"Ah..." Nabiki decided against giving heed to the old cliché of expressing surprise that she had voiced her thoughts aloud and instead completed her thought, "Ah...just an impression I had...that David character wasn't too concerned about his future."

"That figures," Saki grumbled, "His kind never are."

"Continue that thought," Trudy urged.

"Eh?" Saki blinked, "What?"

"You were expressing a thought as to the nature of religious fanatics," Trudy said, "Correct me if I'm wrong but you were thinking about your father?"

All at once Saki bridled, "He doesn't have anything to do with this...or with me for that matter!"

"Because he's dead?" Trudy asked, "Killed by the hand of your mother?"

"Huh?" Saki blinked, "How do you..."

"So you're that Asamiya," Tanaka said, surprising the young girl from her belated moment of wrath, "I'd heard stories about you. You once took on the XXX sisters and put them out of commission."

"You...heard about that?" Saki asked with a faintly dumbfounded expression.

"Face it, Student," Trudy smiled, "Anyone who gets around like you do is bound to get a reputation. But that's irrelevant to the matter at hand, Obayun. What ought to concern the both of us is what to do about the guys who put the hit upon my student, Nabiki."

"You mean it was you they were after, Tendo-san?" Tanaka asked, "Who the hell have you gone and pissed off this time?"

"I don't know, Tanaka-san," Nabiki replied, "After that business with the Ronin I thought we'd had a truce between us...otherwise I might have thought that you'd have had a hand in this mischief."

"Please Tendo...ah, forgive me, I mean Saotome-san," Tanaka urged, "That unpleasant bit of business with Shiro Jaggi was ages ago and well long concluded. I have already dealt with those responsible for his unfortunate recruitment, and we can hardly afford to have a repeat of that debacle. Aside from the near-involvement of my son it's...very bad for business."

"So glad that agree on this," Trudy said as she leaned forwards, "Because if what I suspect turns out to be the truth we may have a lot more to deal with than a fanatic like this David Lo guy who attacked us."

"David...what did you say that name was again?" Tanaka asked, leaning forwards.

"David Lo," Nabiki scowled, "Or...at least that's what he said his name was. A real nut case, uses a ridiculously oversized sword...you've heard of him?"

"In my business, who hasn't?" Tanaka dabbed his brow with a handkerchief as though just now beginning to sweat, which was odd as the room did not feel quite so humid, "He doesn't work for me, that much I can reassure you. He works with an entirely different syndicate, a foreign one centered in Korea...and you are right...according to the accounts that I have heard he is something of a religious fanatic...and a Toshinden of no mean skill either. In fact he's rated among the upper third of weaponed fighters..."

"Fascinating," Trudy said, "I always wonder about the guys I take down, especially the ones who give me trouble getting a good reading."

Tanaka looked startled, "You...mean that you...?"

"Oh he's quite alive," Trudy assured the Yakuza crime lord, "I saw no reason to dispatch him permanently...even if he was becoming an unholy annoyance."

Nabiki could not help but notice that several of the Yakuza goons had mingled expressions of dismay and relief on their otherwise impassive faces...and some money was being exchanged covertly between hands, as though bets had been made and were now being collected, which left her more than idly curious about what these men had invested in the field of Toshinden players.

"Ah...I...see," Tanaka visibly swallowed, "Well...very good and all of that. Toshinden players of his caliber are...notoriously difficult to come by."

"So I would imagine," Trudy noted, "But perhaps you could be a tad bit more helpful in explaining to me just what sort of degenerate psycho would unleash a guy like that on a local high school...and all to kill one student?"

"Oh, but not just any student," Tanaka said, "But the top ranged fighter in the area...and it is not at all uncommon for fighters to one to test each other...though I will admit that it is odd for a weapons master to go after someone whose tradecraft is unarmed combat. It's against policy to fight outside of your own division..."

"Somehow the fellow did not seem like the sportsmanlike type," Trudy remarked, "He seemed to be acting under the orders of a fellow he named as Otono...any thoughts on whom he might have had in mind by that?"

"Only if you believe in legends," Tanaka replied, "But...yes, I may know something about a fellow by the name of Otono. But I doubt if there could be a connection...he is a kendo star, not an assassin."

"Otono Reyabi?" Trudy arched an eyebrow, "I see...very interesting...and affiliated with the Umakusen Seukazen?"

"A very secretive group that dates back to the era of the old Shoguns," Tanaka explained, "But you would hardly be all that interested in them..."

"Because they're religious fanatics?" Trudy asked, "Pseudo-Christians posing themselves as a quasi-messianic cult? Now why would I be the least bit interested in someone like that, hmmm?"

"Ah..." Tanaka seemed to be rethinking his position under the withering glare of the still-smiling fiery-gold haired woman, "I...think I see your point. Forgive me...I did not at first make the connection..."

"I am well aware that your group has ties to the Umakusen that go back for several generations," Trudy explained, "And it's commendable that you want to defend your ties and mutual interests...but Tanaka-san...doesn't it seem a wee bit peculiar to you that a man who poses as a harmless sports enthusiasts should want to enlist the services of a loose cannon such as this David? Aren't you even the least bit curious to know of just how far these people may go in the pursuit of an ages old vendetta? Perhaps they haven't been completely honest with you about their real motives...or what they may have planned for the people of Nerima? Something that may well be very bad for your business?"

There was another long pause during which the Obayun appeared to be thinking the matter over, and then Tanaka reluctantly said, "You suspect a double-cross?"

"If I were you I'd be looking very closely at any and all dealings that you may have had with them going back over the past year or so," Trudy cautioned, "For instance...anything you may have helped them import into Japan past customs inspection? Material, personnel, possibly supplies from Korea, the former Soviet Block or even the Middle East?"

Tanaka took his time before answering, "Just how bad are we talking about here?"

"Considering that these guys think they're taking their marching orders from God?" Trudy replied, "And no doubt think their place secure in heaven? You figure it out, since you're obviously smart enough to know better."

The Obayun did not respond to that but his brow was furrowed and he did appear deeply troubled.

Trudy considered the food that she had been sampling then said, "Tell me, Tanaka-san...do you want to know the true definition of evil?"

"Oh?" the Obayun asked with another raising of bushy eyebrows, "And I suppose you have that from some higher authority then?"

"Would you believe me if I said that I have?" Trudy smirked, "Evil is doing that which is contrary to the will of nature...and not just the natural world as we experience it. It's includes your own personal nature, the will that is inside you, your own code of conduct, morality or the value system with which you are raised. Good is acting in concert with your higher nature...and evil is acting against your better impulses, or against that which you sincerely believe to be good. It's harmony versus disorder, the Wa of your internal nature...and its violation."

"What?" Tanaka asked, "You don't believe in a universal moral code?"

"Of course I do," Trudy replied, "I believe in nature and the cosmic code we know of as Karma. It just happens that I believe that acting from within with consistency is the best road to internal harmony with all things. If we fight against ourselves our strength is dissipated and we defeat our own purpose...but if we act true to the nature that is within us then we can accomplish seeming miracles with very little real effort."

"You sound almost like my cousin, a Buddhist monk," Tanaka said, "I suppose you think I ought to walk the path of righteousness and turn aside from vice and corruption?"

"Oh no, nothing so trite and cliché as all of that," Trudy reassured him, "In fact that would be acting against your present nature, and the evolutionary stage in which your soul is currently situation. It would be against the tide of that which is within you to act any different than you currently do now, even if-in a larger sense-your profession does set you at odds with the greater Karmic order."

Tanaka blinked his eyes as if surprised to hear this being spoken while Saki and Nabiki both were looking askance at their nominal "teacher" as if wondering which side she was playing upon, with or against the angels.

"Everyone has their niche in life," Trudy continued, "Though few of us are fortunate enough to find ours and far too many perish without discovering their given potential. In your case you fill a void that is needed within the criminal underworld, and if you were not there, then someone else would have to fill your space. For better or worse we each are individual and different, and we each have a place to play in the greater scheme of things, and the best that we can hope to do is to find our place and stay true to our internal natures."

"And what, pray tell, is your niche in life, my dear...lady?" Tanaka politely inquired.

Trudy smiled again and said, "I'm the clean-up crew. When someone steps out of line I'm the one they charge to put things back in line and maintain the balance. It's a dirty job and the hours are rough, but hey, what are you gonna do about it? At least the perks sometimes sweeten the pot, but having to get my hands dirty dealing with bottom-feeders and connivers and the like...well, you get the picture."

"Quite," Tanaka replied, looking for all the world as if he wished that he had not asked the question.

"Actually I'd flatter myself by the analogy of comparing myself to a gardener who plucks out weeds when they threaten to choke an entire garden," Trudy continued, "I'm not interested with the better affairs of your business, and if you were to, say, kick off this very moment then there'd just be some other guy who steps into your niche and picks things up where you left off since your career field is never short of potential replacements. In a way you satisfy a universal need of society that requires someone filling the void created by the excesses and neglect of the larger social order. Simply put the opportunity for crime is inherent in the very concept of civilization. If there were some way to magically remove the very need for vice and appeals to corruption from this world then it would be a very different place from what we know, and I don't think it would necessarily be for the better since free will and the freedom to make personal choices would likely also have been banished. So in a way it's a good thing to the overall whole that you're sitting here doing what you do...and I've no doubt that you're very good about doing it since incompetence in your world is a terminal crime for which there is no appeal for the sentence, ne?"

"I...think I follow your reasoning here," Tanaka dubiously replied, hardly daring to take too deep a breath for fear of offending this particular lady.

"I thought that you would," Trudy said with another of those no-nonsense looks that would have balked a cobra from biting for fear of being poisoned, "Because whoever is out there commissioning a hit on my student is trespassing beyond the boundaries of what is healthy, right and proper, and when I catch up to them they are going to seriously regret having been born into this incarnation. As of right now these two young ladies-and those closest to them-are under my personal protection, so a move against them will be taken as a personal offense by me, and I will see to it that such a crime is severely punished. I will not just stop with the offender or whomever it is that employs them but will go after the organization that they run and/or sponsors them, including employees and dependants. You will think the red tide of death herself has personally visited each and every family member of the parties involved...only I won't kill everybody. I'll spare the women and children, but only to see to it that they are...properly cared for."

"Meaning what?" asked one of the nervous looking men sitting near to the Obayun.

Trudy just gave him a lazy smile, "It so happens that, in my travels, I have encountered a certain lady who makes a living doing just that, and I'm sure that she'll make me a good offer when I sell the women in bulk and donate the children to her care for...suitable upbringing."

Even Tanaka seemed taken aback by that, while Nabiki and Saki both gave their nominal "Sensei" startled, disbelieving looks.

"You have had dealings with the Tigress?" the Obayun asked.

"Unfortunately so," Trudy reluctantly replied, "And I decided to spare her life because she, too, fills a niche in the greater fabric of the universal social order. There's always going to be a demand for her particular brand of...service...and besides, I had no desire to wind up bonded to that blasted Kraken of hers. I like dry land too much to want to spend the rest of my years like a Flying Dutchman."

"I see," Tanaka slowly nodded, then he lifted tiny sake cup and glanced past the redhead's shoulders, "Well then, here's to your students both enjoying long and productive lives, and may we never be enemies since we each do seem to have our part to fill within this...cosmic social order."

"Right," Nabiki dubiously acknowledged with a nod of her head, while Saki wisely maintained her own counsel.

"Well then," Trudy stood up, "I know that you're a busy man, and I've taken up enough of your valuable time with this social visit. Go on back to what you gentlemen and ladies were doing before I interrupted, and hopefully we can be friends and do productive business together for our mutual needs of continuing survival."

"That is what I also hope," Tanaka replied, his eyes following her movements the way another man might view a scorpion that just happened to cross his path. He did pause to acknowledge Nabiki again and said, "You are...intending to study under this one, Saotome-san?"

Nabiki started to form a reply to that, but Trudy cut her off by saying curtly, "She has asked for special lessons from me, but don't worry, I don't intend to see her follow in my particular profession. But after today I intend to coach her well in the arts of survival...as well as for this one, who obviously could use the guidance of a special teacher."

Saki arched a pink eyebrow to that, but before she could frame her own reply she senses something amiss in the room and automatically summoned her Yo-Yo from her sleeve, beginning to cry out as she turned, "Sensei-!"

But again Trudy was ahead of her warning, moving so fast that it almost seemed casual the way she dodged the lunge of a man who had attempted to stab her from behind with a dagger. To that fellows surprise and dismay the redhead easily caught the blade between two fingers and snapped it in half with hardly any effort, then slammed the broken tip downward into his foot, which halted the fellow in place with a look of shock and pain...right up to the moment where she pressed two fingers against his neck and turned him instantly into a paralyzed statue.

Tanaka seemed no less stunned than anyone else in the room as his rounded eyes took in the would-be assailant, "Koenji? But..."

"Don't worry," Trudy informed the man, "I know this attack wasn't yours...it was much too blatant and clumsy...just as I know that he's taking his orders from a different employer. What say I leave him here for you and your crew to handle? I'm sure, under the right persuasion, that you can get to the bottom of the matter and save me a lot of fuss and bother."

"Be assured of it," Tanaka said in a voice that could have been used to whet a knife blade, "I will most certainly have answers before the morning."

"Good," Trudy paused as if in afterthought and added, "And for added measure, why don't you get ahold of your brother and ask him if he knows anything about Otono and his operation. I know you guys aren't exactly on speaking terms, but this is a larger thing than whatever honor code separates you at the moment. Lives are at stake here, and if what I suspect is true does happen then you can hardly expect to do business as usual around here...mainly because there may not be anyone around to do business."\

Tanaka looked stunned, but before he could ask the gaijin woman about how she knew so much concerning him and his family she was already on her way towards the exit, followed in short order by her reluctant "students" as Nabiki and Saki made haste to keep pace with their nominal "Sensei."

"Obayun?" one of his men reluctantly asked with an inquiring nod in the direction of the departing women.

"Not another word, Oniyo," Tanaka said in hushed reprimand as he continued to watch as the trio left the building, "Or you're giving me more than a finger as compensation."

The lesser hood balked at the threat implied by that statement and his colleagues dutifully looked away with universally uneasy expressions. Of the higher ranking lieutenants, however, one boldly dared to ask, "Do you really believe that it was her? The Legionaire? The one who..."

"Did you not see her eyes?" Tanaka asked without turning his head to address his subordinate, "Death himself could not be more final. Her eyes were like those of a Hitokiri of legend, but not like any manslayer that I have ever met before. Believe me when I say that she could have slaughtered each and every one of us and not so much as registered a flicker of emotion...and I do not doubt that she could carry out her threat to the letter if so provoked, so do not breathe a word more of this. We are most fortunate to have escaped her shadow...but I feel enormous pity for the ones who have incurred her wrath, because they will only be fortunate if they do not live to regret their enormous folly..."

Not too far away Saki was giving her nominal "coach" a hard look while Nabiki asked, "What the hell was all that back there? Are you really that notorious with these guys?"

"You might say that word about me does tend to get around," Trudy answered, "After all, when a bunch of people all drop dead at once without a mark on their bodies, it does tend to raise questions.'

"Just what the hell are you?" Saki put it more bluntly, "I thought that Obayun was going to soil himself, he was so scared just being near you. And the rest of those thugs...and how the hell did you eat the poison glands of a blowfish and still walk among the living?"

"Ah that," Trudy smirked, "A little touch for show never hurts around these guys, and it's been a long time since I was afraid of any kind of poison. A key part of my training makes resistance to toxins of every sort just a side-effect of doing business."

"A side effect?" Nabiki asked dubiously, "Just what kind of training is that?"

"Shaloe-Ahl training," Trudy replied, "It was originally crafted by High Elves serving the Moon God named Sin, but...that's a bit of foreign history that's more advanced than you need to worry about, Student. And as for you, Asamiya-  
san...nice call back there, not that I needed any warning since that guy was all but crying out that he was going to attack despite the order not to."

"I...I just..." Saki fumbled, glancing back at the establishment as they left it behind them.

"No need to explain yourself," Trudy replied, "You've got the instincts of a Cop, you just need a bit of sharpening around the edges. And as for you, Saotome-san, congratulations on displaying self control under a tight situation. You both have the makings of two of the most promising students that I've ever taken under my wing."

"Whoah...wait a minute here!" Saki halted in mid-stride, "What the hell is this? I never asked you to become my teacher!"

"Nonetheless you've been accepted as a candidate for my particular brand of training," Trudy paused to regard the pink haired girl sagely, "Consider it an honor...usually I don't take them so young or lacking in experience as the pair of you greenhorns."

"Ah...I didn't exactly ask you to teach me all you know if it involves...doing stuff like that back there," Nabiki hooked a thumb towards the departed restaurant building.

"What, you mean the killing?" Trudy asked her.

"Yes," Nabiki said flatly, "I don't like killing, never have, and I'd much prefer to avoid it..."

"Then you'd better make your mind up fast about just how committed you are to your lifelong study of the martial arts," Trudy informed her, "Because when you get as good as you already are it tends to make you a target for any would-be hot-shot who wants to prove his mettle by taking you on...and as you've already seen the sort of people you deal with are not always going to follow a rule book."

"Yes but...killing is wrong," Saki insisted, "I learned that the hard way...it never solves anything, even if you think it will..."

"You mean like the death of your friend Junko?" Trudy asked her, "You've mourned her passing for the better part of two years, and you're afraid to get close to anyone because you think it might happen to them just by being in close association with you. Tell me that her death didn't make a difference in helping you decide upon your present life-course."

"I..." Saki reluctantly said, bristling a bit as old memories and emotions boiled to the surface.

"Death is not an answer, but it's never an ending either," Trudy assured the two younger women, "There's more to it than a couple of young punks like you can even begin to understand. Death is a part of life itself, a part of the natural order that is as necessary as it is unavoidable. The sooner you wise up and realize that the sooner you are on your way to surpassing all fears of death and embracing life itself in all its messy contours and dimensions."

"Is that your rationalization for killing?" Nabiki asked, "Just taking out the garbage?"

"I never said anything of the kind," Trudy smiled, "Weeding parasites out of the system is not the same as wantonly taking the life of another...but I don't expect you to understand at this stage of the game. You're too full of preconceptions, you need to clear your minds and suspend judgement until you've gone a lot further in your training...and only then will you understand when there is a time to kill...and a time to practice mercy."

"Well count me out of this," Saki huffed, "I never asked to be included..."

"Yes you did," Trudy assured her, "You all but begged to come along out of friendship and concern for Saotome-san here...and in a moment of crisis your heart made a decision...or why else did you call me Sensei back there? Are you telling me that you didn't mean it?"

"Ah..." Saki fumbled as she belatedly recalled her half-formed warning...one that prove as unnecessary as it was spontaneous and unthinking.

"Tell you what, think it over and get back to me in the morning," Trudy turned away from the pink-haired girl then oriented her gaze upon Nabiki, "I won't force anyone to undertake my lessons. Shaloe-Ahl training is demanding and brutal on all levels, and you've no idea what it takes to master even the basic fundamentals. Why not have a chat with your other sensei when she gets back in town from solving her...personal business? See what she thinks, and feel free to drop my name around her to see what she says about accepting me as your new Sensei."

"Don't worry," Nabiki said, "I will. And I'll also want to know whatever it is you seem to know about this Otono creep...and whether or not he really did send that David fool out to kill me."

"I'll do more than that when I've confirmed that he's the target," Trudy assured her, "But from now on you two are under my wings, so like it or not expect to have me around making a real pest and nuisance of myself until you either get sick and tired of my harassing you...or you figure out how to deal with me, at which point you're start to learn something."

"And just what the hell does that mean?" Saki warily demanded.

"You'll find out soon enough," Trudy chuckled, then sobered up abruptly and said, "Now, if you kids will excuse me, I need to get to the airport or else the love of my life is gonna kill me deader than a mackerel on a sushi platter. And I don't mean that as an exaggeration."

With that the redhead sauntered away into the night, leaving the two younger girls to stare at her vanishing profile before Saki leaned closer to her friend and asked, "Just what sort of ghoul factory did you visit to pick that psycho up as a teacher?"

"I don't really know," Nabiki said, "And I've got a feeling that I'm going to regret this. But...anyway, I need to get back home to visit my son, daughter, wives and husband, or I'm the one who'll likely have to answer for it. Good to see you again, Saki-chan...and try to stay out of trouble."

"Same to you, Nab-chan," Saki acknowledged, pausing to add...give my regards to your family. I don't know whether to envy or pity you, getting yourself hitched and with kids while still attending high school classes..."

"Yeah, I know, tell me about it," Nabiki sniffed, "Sometimes I wonder the same thing about myself...but you know something? The perks make it worth all the hassle. You ought to try it yourself some time...you might even find that you like it."

"Thanks, but I'd prefer only one person in my life at a time," Saki replied, "And it's crowded enough just with me in the picture."

"Suit yourself," Nabiki waved as she hastened to make her exit, "But you're welcome to drop by any time and say hello to my little Chusen."

"Thanks, I probably will...sooner or later," Saki reluctantly acknowledged, then sighed as she watched the other girl make haste to vacate the darkened streets of the Furinkan Financial district before murmuring faintly, "And besides...the person I'm most interested in...is already taken, but you'll never know that, Nabiki-chan...of that I promise..."

Continued.

Comments/Criticisms/Collateral Karmic Interest: shadowmane

Or: shadowmane9849

X

/pre 


	76. Chapter 76

preDnabiki165

Nabiki 1/2

"A Very Scary Thought"

by Jim Robert Bader

(Inspired by the works of Rumiko Takahashi Others,  
with concepts and characters created by fellow fanfic writers Wade Tritschler, DB Sommers, Nicole Manders, Andrew Greaves, Bill Guiroff and countless others, including "Buffy"  
creator Joss Whedon; with special thanks to my good pal Shiva for his editing and handling of this series.)

(Certain other characters and concepts are of my own innovation, including my interpretation of the Monster of Mary Shelly's novel, the Furies, Trudy, Takaharis Angelique d'Anjou and various other guest stars appearing in this portion of the Nabiki 1/2 series...)

Chapter Sixty-Three.

Episode One-Hundred-Sixty-Five.

(INTERLUDE)

The Seagull, Savior and Swordswoman Who Went To The Sea

It had been a difficult pregnancy and the delivery was touch-and-go, but the ends proved to more than justify the means that had been used to obtain the prize, which made all the pain and inconvenience worthwhile in the mind of the newly restored mother, who cradled the tiny infant in her arms and admired her beauty as only a mother could possibly manage.

Her crew and close body of personal aides, slaves and retainers all collectively breathed a sigh of relief that the ordeal was in momentary abeyance. Their concern for the Mistress was genuine for several reasons, not the least of which being that no one among them wanted to shoulder the burden of taking over the responsibility that came with her title and position. The Mistress was like a mother and a demi-goddess to them as a whole, and they would quite literally have been lost without her stern-yet-wise and loving hand of guidance. Even the Kraken-the living embodiment of the ship itself, and cause of its weirdly distorted nature-was breathing a metaphorical sigh of relief as things ratcheted down to more-or-less business as usual with the elemental naiads flowing about from level to level and deck to deck like ghostly emissaries of a power beyond their making.

The marine detail was on regular watch while their human cargo was tended to and processed in the usual manner. The crew went about their regular duties keeping the ship on course with their usual schedule of drops and picks-ups along the various routes of the Pacific. All was as it was meant to be...which might not necessarily count as a good thing by some measure, but on the whole no more people than average were complaining about it.

Which left one figure in particular standing on deck along the rails gazing out past the mystic fog that surrounded the POJ, contemplating the restless ocean while wondering just what the hell she was doing there among these strange people who seemed to often regard her with a mixture of awe and apprehension.

Her name was Martha Kent Jordan and she was a CEO in charge of a major communications and publishing firm with a net worth in the billions of dollars. Even without her financial resources she was still accounted as one of the most powerful women on the planet, able to change the course of mighty rivers (and all of that) with her bare hands due to her half-Kryptonian heritage, a legacy bequeathed upon her by her famous father. She was nearing fifty years of age yet still had a proud and handsome look about her that caught many an eye and tripped many another's fancy. To all appearances she did not seem much past twenty, but that was due to the combination of good genetics and a regenerative healing factor that would put to shame a fellow by the name of Logan.

She rightly bore the colorful nickname of Power Woman, even though she was long since retired from the superheroic profession. Power Woman fit her well as she was thousands of times as strong as an ordinary mortal, neigh-to-invulnerable and gifted with powers and abilities beyond the scope of ordinary businesswomen types. Though named for her grandmother (adopted on her father's side) she had been, at various stages in her career, both a housewife and a mother before deciding to plunge full time into the more challenging field of entrepreneurial communications. There were still more than a few who remembered her from the "old days" and thought with nostalgia of how she fit out in those tight spandex-  
style outfits that she used to sport back in the days where that kind of shameless behavior could be excused as "youthful exuberance."

But there was more to her life story than many people knew, and only one person in particular knew the full extent of how much Martha had suffered during her heroic period, and the reason why she had chosen to retire from that profession. There was much pain in her life that she had endured both before and after her marriage to a man whom she had worked beside and had come to admire as a colleague of her father's, but the shame of her last official mission still haunted her days and reminded her vividly that merely being superhuman did not render one aloof from the perils of being "merely human."

And now here she was living aboard an enchanted vessel as the personal "kept" woman to the Captain, her slave in all but name and property by choice, clad in next to nothing beyond the golden chains that lightly adorned her statuesque body. Orachalcum fetters clasped about her ankles inhibited her power levels to a mere fraction of their norm-which was still bloody awesome by normal human reckoning-yet only a token measure of her true potential, deliberately kept down as a reminder of her more-or-less official concubine status.

It was not that she was a prisoner aboard the ship, not by any rational measure. Her chains were all but unbreakable yet they could be unlocked at any time that she requested. Her captain kept the keys on hand in an easily accessible place and had given Martha permission to use them whenever she was so inclined. At a whim she could fetch those keys and undo her shackles to restore herself to her full level of power...and sometimes she did just that as a reminder that she was there by choice, not compulsion.

Nor was she blocked from maintaining contacts and business dealings with the outside world, and she regularly teleconferenced with her associates upon the mainland just to remind them that she was keeping a close watch upon the business. She even maintained regular communication with her daughter, Jennifer, who lived in Florida with her girlfriend-slash-lover, and the two of them were expecting a child together, which meant that Martha would soon know what it felt like to herself be a grandmother, an experience and prospect that she found to be more than a little...unnerving.

Indeed, she often smiled in contemplation of how much her only child had recently changed from her rebellious phase of a few years back, something else for which she owed a dept to her Captain. Lyra had taken a firm hand and kept Jen on a tighter leash these days (quite literally, in point of fact) and had helped turn her away from her previous addiction to the dangerous meta-steroid known as Formula 45 that had once been illicitly prescribed to her by certain now-defunct agencies of the government.

But that brought Martha back to contemplating how much she herself had changed during her stay upon the POJ as the "guest" (and property) of her Mistress, Captain Lao Khan (or Lanocane), to whom the world at large knew only as the infamous Madam Lao, Pirate, Smuggler and Slaver extraordinaire, who by rights Martha should have opposed on the grounds that they were from diametrically opposite avocations.

Five months in Madam Lao's intimate company had mellowed her somewhat from her rather stiff-necked attitude and conservative mindset from the "old days." She now knew to an extreme detail the nature of her Mistress's dealings, her true nature and wonts, and the many various crimes to which she was indeed as guilty as Sin, as opposed to the rumors and insinuations. There were indeed aspects to her Mistress that traversed close to the dark side of human nature and affairs, though most of what Lao did could be rationally justified within the context of her chosen lifestyle. Extenuating circumstances used to be a concept that Martha would have scowled upon as cheap rationalization...but being with Lao had taught her against seeing things in a purely black and white context, and as such she had learned to tolerate things that once would have been considered unthinkable, and accepted as ordinary a style of life that she once would have condemned as totally immoral.

In point of fact she owed a great debt to Madam Lao for opening her eyes in a number of areas, not least of which was in exposing some rather unsavory business practices that had been taking place within little-noticed franchise outlets of Martha's far-flung financial empire. Some of these divisions and their illicit activities had dated back to the period when Morgan Edge had been CEO of the Galaxy Network, which meant that they were up to no good and needed to be brought back under the heel of the current company president, IE Martha. Sweatshops engaging in unsafe practices, forced child labor and prostitution, environmental despoilage, the smuggling of contraband and rare art works were but a few of the transgressions within the company of which Martha had not been previously aware, and she was grateful to Lao for helping her to identify these and other long-standing problems.

Indeed she was quite impressed with Lao's network of insider informants and reckoned this to be only one of the many advantages that her Mistress enjoyed through the education and transport of pampered slave girls, many of whom were covert agents. Given the extent of her business dealings it would only follow to logic that Lao had a thumb in the proverbial pie of every country throughout the whole of Asia and the Pacific and could put to shame the CIA, MI-6 and MOSAD for her intelligence gathering resources. After all, who knew what great leaders of the world let spill in pillow talk after spending a night with one or more of Lao's women? Martha had never truly appreciated before the many other uses for sex that were to be found beyond the purely recreational and procreational facets, but she was learning over time and had come to accept as a given that there was far more to her Mistress than your typical fantasy "Dragon Lady."

It was also rather amazing to think of how much she had grown accustomed to the ways of her Mistress and her chosen lifestyle, the casual attitude of pleasant toil by which Lao viewed it as her natural right to dominate and possess other human beings and regard them as her playthings. For all her claims to having egalitarian designs and values, Lao pretty much reveled in being the top Bitch in the canine pyramid of hierarchy aboard the POJ (or "Piece of Junk," as it was affectionately nicknamed), but more to the point it was just as amazing for Martha to find herself becoming conformable holding a slightly lower rank in the overall pecking order, decidedly under Lao and fully subject to the whims and amusements of her loving Mistress. If anything Martha had become quite fond of life in the harem and had become surprisingly at ease in a society that was exclusively comprised of women. These days the only men she saw were the ones on the mainland, and of those quite a number were the unsavory types whose pleasure it was for Martha to fire or have arrested and removed from her company payroll.

Yes indeed, it had been quite an educational five months, and in that time Martha had found herself growing up into a very different but far more contented sort of person than the angry "rich-bitch" that she had been before being captured and tamed by her Mistress. Back then Martha had been all about work, career oriented and driven to dominate the market, often neglecting family concerns as they reminded her too much of the pain of her separation from her ex-husband. Small wonder that Jennifer had grown up resenting her, especially after coming out of the closet and experiencing first-hand rejection of her chosen "lifestyle."

The irony there being, of course, that now Martha herself was fully immersed within that selfsame lesbian "lifestyle" and was loving it to the hilt, enjoying the company of her Mistress and fellow slaves in ways that she never had felt in the company of men, be they teammates or former lovers.

It was also chastening to realize now how much of what she had taken for granted for many years was the value system instilled upon her by her late and much-  
lamented but highly provincial-thinking mother. If anything she had become more like her mother that she could have realized through personal observation. The proof of that was the degree of resentment her daughter once had displayed towards her in choosing to be a different sort of person. Rebelliousness against the values of a parent was hardly all that unique a phenomenon, but it galled Martha to realize the degree of justification that she had given Jennifer for turning out the way she did, a fact brought out by the methods of the Mistress when helping to detoxify her daughter.

In a sense Lao had given Martha her daughter back and taught her a new way to view life itself that was different from anything that she had learned through prior experience or the values of her parents. Now she stood at the rail overlooking the main deck of the ship feeling the breeze against her nearly bare skin, wearing nothing but her chains and the thin gauze-like silk robes that she was permitted to wear when not below decks, thinking how strange it felt to be in this position...and yet how natural it had become, as though this really were the lifestyle of her choosing.

(Why do I remain here?) she silently wondered, (I could leave if it wished. The Mistress isn't holding me here against my will. She has offered many times to remove my chains and let me leave, and there is always great sincerity in her offer...)

But there was a silent acknowledgement as she thought these things that leaving the ship permanently would mean leaving Her behind, and with her the life they now shared together. It was an understated thing, not spoken of in the open, but clearly implied within the offer of personal freedom. To leave would mean abandoning Lao, and to do that would mean giving up on everything that they now shared, and that thought alone terrified Martha in ways she found hard to identify, being a woman who rarely knew fear of any kind. To leave meant abandonment, and that would mean hurting Lao's feelings, of betraying the trust that underlay their relationship together.

(Why does the thought of leaving terrify me so?) Martha asked in silent wonder, (I have come and gone many times to the mainland since taking up residence here...but those were always short trips, necessary to conduct my regular business dealings. Always I return after I am done attending to my responsibilities and assignments, and always I accept the chains that limit me and hobble me to the earth. I willingly resume the role of a kept woman as though denuding myself of the false identity that I wear before others...as if that other me is the false one and the person I am now is the one I was born to become...as if this is my truest incarnation...)

She considered the obvious answer to her silent question: that Lao had done something to Martha's brain and altered her personality, brainwashing her to become a good little obedient servant. But something inside her knew this was not the case, that she was not there from involuntary compulsion of any sort. Oh, granted that the Kraken was more than capable of influencing the minds of the people that he ingested to give them such mental compulsions...but Martha knew her own mind far too well to believe that this was the true cause of her reluctance. It rang false to her core, this notion that she could blame the changes inside her upon Lao's subtle manipulations, as if she did not sincerely feel at ease being in the company of the charming slaver.

No, the truth was far simpler than that, and it left Martha with a stark realization that fairly set her aback as she stood there contemplating the answer to her silent entreaties. Her chest was beating wildly as she thought the implications over, and then very slowly began to form the thought that she voiced aloud, "Can it be? Is such a thing truly possible? How...how could a thing like this happen?"

After all, Lao was the very opposite of everything that a decent woman was supposed to be, both charming and ruthless, yet with an inherent sense of right and wrong or code of honor that she rigidly adhered to. Lao could be harsh but she was never unfair in her dealings, and she truly did try to do what she believed to be right and best for all concerned parties. She was a villainess to be sure, one who made no bones about what she did for a living and who seemed to take a certain amount of glee out of taking young things and breaking them to the lash with the systematic and methodical processing of a woman's ego as she was slowly and carefully molded into the sort of obedient slave girl whom Lao specialized in cultivating for the black market.

But there was more to it than this, as Martha now understood on a far deeper level. Lao did not simply victimize her women but rather trained them in the arts of pleasure and survival, giving them the tools that they would need to thrive in their new lifestyles...and many of the girls whom she recruited had faced far worse prospects on land than were to be offered as pampered kept women. It did not justify a thing that Lao did, of course...at lease, not on a moral level...but it was forgivable within the context that a far nastier type would be more cruel and uncaring in her methods.

(What am I thinking?) Martha asked with a mental start, (By my own admission she owns me like property and can use me as she wants. She can torture me at will and I do nothing but bow and submit to her tender mercies...even if she does manage to make it seem worthwhile afterwards...) she thought with a rosy blush that colored her cheeks and made her squirm a bit with reluctant self-admission of the pleasure that she received along with the pain that was alternately inflicted.

Granted Lao was at liberty to torment Martha with a smile, subject the demi-  
Kryptonian to restraint and abuse that would push her past the limits of ordinary toleration. Having grown up barely understanding what the word pain meant to "normal" humans, being subject to a spanking or a whipping at Lao's hand was curiously stimulating and eye-opening, to say nothing of giving Martha a strong encouragement to behave like a "good girl," doing what she was told by her loving Mistress...

But then the ordeal of the past few hours flooded back, of tending to Lao and fretting over her needs as her Mistress endured the ordeal of motherhood for what was supposed to be only the second time in her life...and the concern that she might not make it having stabbed Martha's heart like an icy spike

"Oh my god," Martha murmured softly, "Is that it? Is that what's happened to me? Am I that corrupted by her decadent ways? Or...can it be that I really do...love...her...?"

All at once something happened that drew Martha away from her private personal obsession. The wind shifted abruptly and caught at the sails of the massively oversized junk, halting its forward progress. The huge mass of the ship shifted abruptly as it came to an abrupt stop with the sea currents themselves altering abruptly all around them.

"What in the hell...?" Martha asked as she gripped the rails and stared around wildly, looking for the reason why they were suddenly quite dead in the ocean.

A moment later the ubiquitous Amazon pair known as Lotus and Blossom (Lao's right and left hand aides who often handled the crew personnel and administrative duties on board the ship) came rushing out onto the deck and halted with disbelieving expressions as they gazed out beyond the rail of the ship to the area directly ahead of them, which Martha herself could see dropped away rather abruptly.

"Gods of the White Mountain," Blossom breathed in sheer dismay, "The sonar wasn't giving back false readings...there really is a hole in the South China sea that's opened up directly in our path!"

"Holy mother of the stars," Lotus concurred, "The amount of force that would be needed to generate that sort of gulf...it's unimaginable! Whatever or whoever is doing this is displacing trillions of metric tons of water just to hold us in place against further advancement..."

"Say again?" Martha reacted with a start, "Are you saying that something has just parted the sea like the hand of Moses? But that's impossible..."

"You're telling us that?" Blossom said incredulously, "Even the Mistress, with the full backing of the Kraken, could not accomplish a thousandth of a degree of a percentage of such a thing...which means that the one doing this is many, many thousands of times more powerful than the Mistress!"

"She's asking for you, by the way," Lotus informed Martha as a side-note, "She wants you to come at once, and she says she has urgent need of your services...in a non-sexual context, that is."

"Oh?" Martha asked, both intrigued and (curiously enough) disappointed by that latter revelation. She would have paused to ask for more details, but a sudden compulsion to see Lao had been forming within her all the while, and so she left the deck without further hesitation and descended into the bowels of the POJ, tracing the now-familiar path that led her directly to the private quarters of Madam Lao and her expansive harem.

A place that Martha now felt of as home, having become a part of their extended family of pampered kept women, having long since been received among them as a fellow sister in the arts of sapphic domesticity, where an odd form of egalitarian bliss prevailed, though that was a subject worthy of more extensive contemplation on a different occasion.

In spite of the huge, vast corridors and impossibly large chambers that made the POJ many times larger on the inside than the out, it took surprisingly little time for Martha to negotiate the distance on foot, and in good order she presented herself before her Mistress, bowing reflexively and speaking the formal lines, "You wished for me, my lady?"

Lao, who had been heavily bundled in blankets upon her luxurious pillow-covered bed, was seeking the assistance of several of her concubines in attempting to sit up as she regarded Martha and said, "Yes indeed, my sweet. I'm afraid that I'm going to require the use of your strength for the next few minutes. A rather urgent matter has come up, and I am compelled to personally attend to it, even though I am not presently...up to my full measure."

That was an understatement and a half, and it took some effort on her part for Martha not to cross the permitted line for her behavior, to order Lao back to bed and insist that she get more rest before straining herself further after her protracted ordeal with the birthing.

Instead what she said aloud was, "Can't it wait? I could tend to it by myself...if that's what you're needing."

Lao fetched her with one of those classic smiles that Martha found both compelling and irritating at one and the same juncture and replied, "I'm afraid this might well be beyond even your means, my darling, nor do you have to look at me that way. I assure you that I am not that fragile...even if it did take a bit more out of me to give birth to my daughter...than was expected..."

Martha glanced to the side and saw the infant being cradled in the arms of an attending midwife, whose glow of pleasure seemed to radiate joy at being assigned the task of suckling another woman's baby, just as all (or most) of the harem had apparently fallen in love with the new arrival...something Martha could not fault them for as she herself was feeling a strange attachment to this youngest of Lao's offspring.

Lao nodded to another of her women and that slave dutifully moved forward on her knees, lifting a familiar bejeweled box that she held out to Martha as though making an offering, opening the lid to reveal the keys to Martha's fetters.

"Remove your chains and dress in whatever appropriate attire most suits you, darling," Lao said to Martha with a gently worded hint of command in her tone, "Then you will carry me outside through the loft, so as not to expose my weakness before too many more of the crew than is absolutely necessary. A captain should not appear weak before her minions, after all, but must always radiate strength and resolution...otherwise it's riot and mutiny and work, work, work..."

Martha studied the key and found herself strangely reluctant to pick it up, but she did as she was instructed and soon passed on her ankle chains and manacles to another concubine, who received them as if doing so were a great honor. Martha then took a moment to stretch and reflexively work the kinks out of her joints as biosolar energy flowed into her body from all sides, restoring her to her regular strength levels as the dampening effect of the Orachalcum no longer prevented her full capacity for life energy absorption.

The odd things was that-for all that she was now free of restraint and restored to her normal superhuman capacity-Martha still felt oddly as though she were on an invisible leash that bound her irrevocably to her Mistress. Again she wondered if it were conditioning or some sort of post-hypnotic compulsion that made her feel this way, but once again her heart said otherwise, and she had but to gaze upon Lao to feel affirmed in her convictions. This moment of physical liberty was but a fleeting indulgence that she would willingly cast aside to resume her role as Madam Lao's property and (currently favorite) plaything.

Yet another of her concubine-sisters stepped forward to present Martha with her old uniform, freshly cleaned and pressed for active duty service. But Martha declined it with a gesture, preferring not to be so directly reminded of what she had left behind with her voluntary retirement from the role of "Power Woman." Instead she opted for a simpler outfit that was fashionably Romanesque and suggestive of a "slave girl" without being too blatant on that subject. She then did as Lao bit her and gathered her Mistress's rather substantial (yet oddly thin and light to the touch) body into her arms and easily carried her from the chamber to the nearest sun-deck adjoining the seraglio. From there it was simplicity itself to rise up on a levitating current and carry her Mistress off to their nearby rendezvous with the mysterious force responsible for their current situation.

Once out in the open air and beyond the hazy distortion field that normally protected the vessel from outside detection Martha got a better view of the area directly before them and was suitably appalled, comprehending fully now what Lotus had been referring to in regards to the displacement of the ocean. What the cherry-red headed second officer had meant to say was that there was a sheer drop-off that formed a concentric circle many miles in diameter comprised of an impossibly deep depression formed entirely of water. It was as though a giant invisible donut of unimaginable size had been dropped into the sea forcing trillions of metric tons of water to be displaced, creating a circular trough that surrounded a particular point directly in the center of the depression. There Martha could see a jutting finger of stone projecting upward from the ocean depths, and there-positioned atop the exact center of the islet-was a tiny human figure, almost indistinguishable at such a vast distance.

But Martha's eyes were naturally adjusted to increased magnification, and as she stared at the singular figure a curious wave of unexplained emotion welled up from inside her, threatening to overturn her reason. The figure was of normal human proportions and decidedly feminine with ample curves and exquisitely refined features that defined a kind of beauty that went beyond ordinary description. Long blonde hair that fell around a pair of slender shoulders and a body that was clearly evident even beneath the long white shawl that she was wearing over a pale blue halter-top. Blue jeans adorned her hips and legs leading down to a pair of bare and quite shapely feet that graced the sand-  
covered coral of the atoll upon which she was standing.

The utter simplicity of her appearance was belied by a strange kind of compulsive magnetism that attended her like a halo. For some impossible reason that was quite beyond her grasp Martha was certain that the woman was the cause of the strange phenomenon that she so manifestly stood within at the center of it all. It seemed impossible to believe that one woman could command that sort of energy and keep it entirely in focus...even more to see not the slightest sign of strain or effort in her expression, as though it were the most natural thing in the world to be doing what she was doing.

But then again, Martha Kent Jordan was hardly a stranger to the unusual and bizarre, and meeting people of extraordinary ability was part and parcel of the trade, case point in example the woman in her arms, who herself commanded enormous energies...if nothing quite on a par with this simple demonstration.

As she attempted to console herself with that thought, she heard her Mistress murmuring in a tone of awe, "Laolana...so it really is her. I didn't dare to believe it...but...she's come back into my world...and this time...she's not pulling any punches."

"Eh?" Martha asked, confused by the realization that Lao knew this other woman...the similarities in their names notwithstanding.

"Long before I knew you, darling," Lao murmured back, "I made her acquaintance during what I thought to be a routine snatch and grab...a target of opportunity supposedly encountered by chance...but in reality she was controlling the entire situation...manipulating me into doing what she wanted, which came naturally enough considering how easily I was mislead by my...baser reflexes."

As Martha levitated closer towards the enigmatic blonde woman she found herself encountering a warming current that buoyed her up somewhat and eased her approach so that she was not unduly inconvenienced passing through the lines of force that surrounded this incredibly potent stranger.

"You mean you poached her...like you did me...only she was more than you could handle?" Martha asked aloud, "Who is she?"

"One who defines power in its ultimate form," Lao replied, "You see the ease with which she is holding back the sea to expose that atoll? Such a gesture is as nothing to her. She had me fooled completely, and only now do I comprehend how far I allowed myself to be controlled by my instincts..."

Martha felt a strange surge of jealousy that inexplicably came over her, irrational she well knew, given their lifestyle and all that she knew about her Mistress, "You fucked her?"

"I fucked with her...but I didn't really know what I was fucking with until...until I discovered first hand about her true nature," Lao swallowed as they came to within a few dozen meters of the woman, hovering in the air for a moment before gently gliding down to touch soil beneath the bare feet of the half-superhuman Martha.

"Ah...hi," Martha said, continuing to support Lao in her arms as she well knew that the pirate slaver lacked the strength to stand on her own legs at the moment, "Laolana was it? Er...my name is Martha..."

"It is good to see you well, my lady," Lao said formally, more in respect than the affection that Martha would have expected for a former lover, "But...then again, you are as changeless as the seas themselves, so that is only to be expected."

The enigmatic blonde just smiled benevolently at them and said nothing, her eyes seeming to convey a wealth of meaning that held not a hint of hostility nor resentment, nor any other kind of negative emotion.

"Ah..." Martha found her voice faltering as she did not know what else to say under the circumstances, the whole situation being beyond the point of awkward silence as she did not know where to begin, and found herself possessed by questions that she could not frame into words or any sort of coherent meaning.

"She does not speak words...usually," Lao cautioned, "It is not her way. She has other means of conveying her thoughts and impressions. Is that not correct, my lady?"

A very slight incline of the head and the blonde continued smiling, but her eyes gleamed with strange emotions quite unfathomable and deep beyond ordinary understanding.

"This is quite an unusual gesture on your part, getting our attention by such means," Lao continued with a nod towards the miles-high wall of circulating water that surrounded the atoll, "Quite uncharacteristic of you, who embodies the principle of total pacifism. I am admittedly quite curious as to what you wish from us that you would go to this much trouble...however insignificant by your infinite reckoning."

To Martha's surprise it was not the blonde who answered but rather a deeper male voice that startled her, coming as it did from seeming no where.

"My sister did not summon you, I did. It was at my request that she arranged for us to have this meeting."

The sharp intake of breath that Lao emitted added to the general sense of alarm that briefly overtook Martha, but as she turned to regard the young-seeming man who stood inexplicably off to their right she was struck by the sudden awareness of his presence, the calm benevolence of his smile and the curiously attractive quality of his greenish eyes as they regarded the pair with great warmth and amusement.

"My lord Anri?" Lao gasped, "Ah...this...is most...unexpected..."

"Yes, I imagine it would be," the handsome man with the sandy-blonde hair replied (reminding Martha as nothing so much as a cross between Luke Skywalker and Obiwan Kenobi, especially considering his pastel beige-and-yellow garments), "But then again, what I have to discuss with you is of such urgency that I feel the need to skip formalities and get straight to the heart of the matter."

Lao's expression was one of unmistakable dread as she stared at the handsome tall man and said, "You...wished to seek me out?"

"It seemed an adequate way of getting your attention, no?" Anri nodded to the blonde woman and said, "After all, I am Air and Fire, Ulsa is Air and Water. Your providence is more her element than my own, and as you share a...casual acquaintance it only made sense to have my sister arrange this meeting on such short notice."

"Rather a spectacular way of getting someone's attention...not to mention excessive, don't you think?" Martha inquired, indicating the water displacement all around them.

"Ah...my...ah...companion here raises a valid point, my lord," Lao duly noted, "Of all the ways that you might have sought me out...isn't this a bit of overkill, even granted that for you it amounts to little more than a casual gesture?"

"Ah, but there is a reason for exposing this atoll," Anri explained, glancing around and then nodding towards one particular piece of rocky outcropping, "Do you know where it is that we are standing?"

Lao paused before answering while Martha studied the outcropping, only to gasp with a start before saying, "It's artificial?"

Sure enough the worn and heavily encrusted stones were carved pieces of basalt that bore the unmistakable imprint of symbols and characters of an unfamiliar design engraved upon their surfaces. It did not take one with a degree in archeology to observe the fallen remains of what must of at one time been a quite impressive structure, possibly a temple or a palace, and indescribably ancient, though she rather suspected that one of her friends-by the name of Arthur-might have little trouble reading them as the dialect looked similar to Atlantean writing.

"Lemuria," Lao said aloud with a hint of almost-reverence, "The temple of Dagon, circa 98,000 BC..."

"96,203 BCE, to be precise," Anri explained, "Submerged and lost to time, yet still bearing the imprint of a great evil that was unleashed upon mankind by the foolish priests who cast a most unfortunate invocation ritual, one that opened a gateway between this world and the abyss."

"You mean...the legend of the seven deadly sins?" Lao said, "Is this somehow...connected to the reason why you and lady Ulsa are now here?"

"Perhaps," the tall man said enigmatically, "But that would be telling."

"Who the hell are you?" Martha asked, finding it disturbing at how familiar this fellow appeared to be, even though she would have sworn that this was their first meeting.

"Wrong question," the man said with the lift of an elegant finger, "And definitely the wrong orientation."

"My love," Lao murmured in Martha's ear, "Be nice...and please do not offend the lord Anri. You have no idea of how far from hell this fellow hails from, and I think it best for now if you let me do the talking. I'll explain my reasons, as best I am able, later when we are alone in private..."

"Oh, don't be like that," Anri said with a casually dismissive gesture, "I'm certain that Martha here is entitled to wonder a bit about a fellow she has only just met, even if we do know each other from many other prior occasions."

"Hah?" Martha blinked, "Excuse me? Do I know you?"

"Ah, that is the question, is it not?" the blonde man said with an enigmatic smile, "It might be more accurate to say that we have crossed paths from time to time, but never with formal introduction, an exchange of names and titles, that sort of thing. Alas, there is little time for explanations, but suffice to say that we are not complete strangers and I know a great deal about you, just as you know more about me than you realize at the moment.

If there was one thing that Martha had never been able to stand it was wiseacres who laughed a lot at your expense and spoke in veiled riddles implying that they knew more than they intended to reveal outright. In fact she found this attitude so nettlesome that she frowned and said, "Would you mind explaining that part again?"

"Not at all," the man replied, "But time does not permit me to tell you my entire life story, which would make for quite a lengthy saga I fear, the Upanishads by analogy serving as barely a footnote."

"Then if it's not too much trouble," Martha growled sarcastically, "Why don't you just come out and state your business?"

"That was always my intention, gentle lady," Anri assured them, "I've come here for one purpose only, and that is to ask a favor of you, Lanocane...a little something that is within your power to grant, I most readily assure you."

"A...favor...for you, my lord?" Lao swallowed, and from that Martha derived the strong suggestion that whatever this man was about to ask it could hardly be turned as "little."

"Indeed," Anri said pleasantly, "You see...I know of how your ordeal distracted you today, so that you were unable to track events that took place in a certain Japanese suburb of your acquaintance...but giving birth to a child does tend to have that affect on one's mind, or so I am told. I quite remember how I was the day Thelendra was born into her present incarnation...but...that is quite beside the point, and I digress from my original purpose...""

"Something happened in Nerima?" Lao said sharply, "But...what? I was tuning in earlier in the day, having a private chat with my former ward, Keiko..."

"Yes, I'm quite aware of that," Anri said, "But before you were able to witness the conclusion of her match against her mothers-in-law you were taken by a series of sharp contractions...which tended to play havoc with your powers of concentration..."

"My lord...please tell me what happened," Lao said urgently, "Even if it is beyond your nature to give a straight answer to a given question..."

"Now who ever gave you that idea?" the blonde man said with a smile that held pure mischief, "But to ease your mind and set your heart at peace, know that the father of your daughter is well and hardy, if about to undertake a rather arduous training session to gain new skills that she will need for the looming crisis."

"Crisis?" Martha asked, "What crisis?"

"Not that this good fortune for her health was the intent of the one who brazenly attacked her in broad daylight and on Furinkan school grounds," Anri continued as if ignoring the question, "But I'll spare you the details for now as you are more than capable of researching the matter on your own. The upshot of it all, however, is that the assassin was taken into custody and is now being held in a special facility that has the means of controlling metahumanly gifted hybrids..."

"Whoah...metahuman?" Martha asked, "Are you saying that Tendo Nabiki was attacked by a supervillain?"

"In so many words, yes," Anri replied, nodding to Martha again before turning his piercing focus upon Lao, "This fellow was half-Kirin, half human. I believe you know the type...in fact, she is the reason I have come to you beseeching a favor."

Lao's eyes almost doubled in size, "You want Kim? But...why?"

"To help write the wrong that was done both to her and to her brother," Anri said frankly, "He believes her to be dead, and I think it would be for the best if someone disabused him of that notion."

Comprehension dawned in Lao's own eyes as she absorbed this revelation, "Her brother lives? I had my suspicions, but all this time that she has been with us..."

"He has been in the care of those who tried to murder and abuse her," Anri said with no hint of amusement in his tone as he took on a grave an entirely serious demeanor, "The ones who caused her to be rendered into the state in which you found her when you took her in and claimed her for your own."

"Those bastards?" Lao growled, "Are they behind this attack upon Nabiki?"

"Most assuredly," Anri informed them, "And that is why I require the services of the sister, to break their hold upon the brother by putting to the lie every evil word that they have used to twist him to the cause of their dark mission."

"I...I'm not sure if I should agree to this, my Lord Anri," Lao said with evident reluctance, "Kim was in a very bad state for a time, and it's taken her this long to heal from the mental and physical injuries that she suffered. She is almost as dear to me as a daughter, and exposing her once again to the dark world from whence she escaped..."

"All the more reason for her to confront those demons and put the past behind her," Anri noted, "And if you surrender her into my custody I will regard it as a personal favor."

"Ah, but of course..." Lao swallowed, changing tones with surprising alacrity as she took in the green-eyed man's sobering expression, "If you believe that she is needed for such a worthy cause then I will be only too happy to summon her...especially if doing so is pleasing you to, my lord...and to your sister."

"It would be on both counts," Anri said, "And in exchange for this favor, I am prepared to forgive much, and to overlook a goodly portion of your recent dealings, and the stain that your actions have brought to your already tarnished karma."

"Ah..." Lao said faintly, glancing to the side at the blonde woman, "If by that you mean the...misunderstanding of a few years back..."

"Oh no," Anri said, "My sister quite enjoyed your company, and she wishes for me to convey to you that she bears no grudge for anything that happened."

At that moment Martha chanced to glance to the side and stared in appalled dismay, for there was the Kraken looming up out of the water and onto the dry land of the atoll...and the woman named Laolana was stretching out a hand to affectionately pet the squid-like body of the humungous monster as though he were an overgrown spaniel seeking the affection of his mistress. He even made a curiously pleasant sound that reminded one of nothing so much as a dog wagging its tail...or tentacles as it were, a fact that would have been amusing were it not so appalling to Martha.

"Oh," Lao swallowed thickly and said in faint relief, "That is...very good to hear...my lady."

"Of course," Anri continued, "Our brother, Udan, is another story altogether."

Martha felt her Mistress cringe and tremble in fear within her arms, then said in a voice almost a squeak of dismay, "The lord...Udan?"

"I would stay far from his presence for the next century or two if I were you," Anri advised, "After all, you know how he tends to hold a grudge, and he can be quite stubborn and unreasonable sometimes...especially when it comes to our sister."

The lump-in-the-throat sound this time was so loud that Martha was afraid that Lao might accidentally swallow her tongue by mistake. Of a certainty the pirate slaver was not taking this news very well and was evidencing a surprising degree of near-panic in both her tone and manner.

"Fortunately, Ulsa can be quite persuasive in getting him to look the other way, so there is no immediate threat that need concern you," Anri assured the terrified pirate, "Provided, of course, that you summon Kim Amalthea Lao to our presence at your earliest of convenience."

"It shall be done, my lord, this a swear," Lao hastily responded, then to Martha she said, "Back to the ship, darling...there is no time to waste, and we must do as these two have requested."

"Ah...if you wish it so, Mistress," Martha said, and promptly levitated back into the air, carrying her pirate lover to the POJ with as much alacrity as she could spare under the circumstances.

As she flew along, however, Martha's overwhelming curiosity compelled her to ask, "Who are those two, Mistress...and why do you so fear them?"

"You'd be afraid yourself if you grew up hearing the legends of the Daokan, my darling," Lao replied, "Those two are far more than they seem, and obviously a great deal more powerful than you could possibly realize, putting to shame even your vaunted father by a measure that would astound you."

"The Daokan?" Martha queried.

"The Four Lords of the Way," Lao translated, "Masters of the Elemental forces that comprise the entire universe and guardians of humankind who are ancient and wise beyond the ken of anything mortal."

"You mean they're gods?" Martha asked, wondering how those two beings compared to the likes of Thor, Hercules, Orion or even Darkseid or any other so-called 'divine being' of her acquaintance."

"Gods?" Lao seemed surprised by the question and then chuckled in amusement, "Oh no...not gods. That is certainly not the analogy that I would use to classify them..."

"Really?" Martha asked, beginning to relax by the faintest of margins.

"They are more like what the Gods themselves pretend to be, or would aspire to become were it within the scope of heavenly abilities," her mistress continued, "The Daokan defy such classification...and if anything it is the gods who fear and respect them, not the other way around."

Martha silently chewed that thought over and suddenly had a strong comprehension of just why Lao was behaving so deferential in the presence of the unearthly brother and sister.

Of course as she contemplated that a sudden rumbling noise caused her to turn her head backwards, at which point she saw an indescribable sight as the wall of water collapsed all around them, the area flooding back once again and filling up the depression.

"Ah...Mistress?" Martha swallowed.

"They are allowing the sea to resume it's normal condition," Lao explained, "The gesture has served its purpose and there is no longer any reason to keep Lemuria exposed from beneath the surface."

"Oh," Martha said, deciding right there that she needed a pause before asking any more questions.

Moments later Lao put the word out to her crew and soon was answered as a familiar face and form arrived, one whom Martha immediately recognized with a start as a friendly presence whom she had seen in and about the Harem, a young girl barely past her teens whom Lao spent much time coaching in the martial arts for special combat arena training...or Cage Fighting, as it was more commonly known. Lao had often sponsored the girl in matches and competition involving the girl going up against other young ladies in frequently brutal matches in which both opponents sought to beat one another senseless.

The surprising thing about Kim as that she was one of the gentlest and most compassionate people whom Martha had ever encountered, and only in the arena did she ever demonstrate a harsh or hostile emotion. She was kind-hearted, considerate and polite to a fault, and Lao seemed more than a bit fond of the girl...if not in ways that would imply pedophilia (Martha had her suspicions about that, but had never seen evidence to directly suggest that her Mistress and the girl had ever slept together).

Nor, conversely, was there anything to suggest that they had not done so in the past, but as it must have taken place prior to Martha's time on the ship she was willing to overlook this...

The girl had long silvery hair and distinctly mixed racial features that suggested an Eurasian ancestry...except for her pointed ears, of course, that stood rather noticeably to her sides and well above her hairline. Presently she had it styled into a pony tail, and she was wearing a harness that suggested that she had been recently engaged in "Ponygirl" training. To that Martha frowned ever-so-slightly (she knew full well what that sort of training was like, having herself been hitched on occasion to a harness) but she said nothing and obediently stood at Lao's side as they regarded the young girl, who had fallen to her knees in a submissive bow the moment that she was presented into the presence of her Mistress.

"My lady," the young girl said softly, "You required my services? I am here at your disposal."

"Kim-chan," Lao said, allowing her fondness to show through in her tone and expression, "They tell me you have been making great strides at harness racing. You know, of course, that I fully intended to enter you in the Bangkok Steeplechase finals...but alas, circumstances have forced me to alter my plans and come to a different arrangement. You know, of course, that I am proud of the progress that you have made since you joined us, and I consider you a gifted asset, one whom I prize above many another."

Martha could tell that the young girl was flushing with warmth and satisfaction at the rare praise, but also that the girl was intelligent enough to sense a "but" somewhere hidden within the appraisal of their Mistress.

"Alas," Lao said with genuine reluctance, Someone has made an offer for you...a bid price I dare not ignore, and so I am reluctantly compelled to transfer ownership papers and place you into the care of another."

The girl looked up abruptly in shock, "You are selling me, Mistress?"

"In a word...yes," Lao sighed, "I am giving you over to a new owner. Is that a problem?"

The girl seemed to fight for control but managed to master her emotions and bowed her head before saying, "If it is your will...I am yours to sell...or dispose of...as you see fit, Mistress."

"Good girl," Lao said firmly, "I am very proud of you and will always regard you as member of my crew, harem and staff...but this is a cruel world that often compels our making difficult and unpleasant choices, so please forgive me that I must do this...for you no longer belong to me. From this moment onward it is your duty and destiny to serve a different Master."

There was some hesitation before Kim responded, "As you will...I will abide your decision. I await being received into the care of my new...Master...but my lady? To whom do I now belong? By what name shall I recognize my new Master?"

Lao started to speak but again the voice of Anri was heard as the man appeared abruptly within the chamber, "For now call me Teacher...I do not require another name. Sabum will do, just as I will rename you by that which you were known at birth, as lady Amalthea, daughter of Kyledor and Jeannette Franscoius Devenue, your natural birth parents."

Kim's sharp intake of breath was not the only startled sound within the chamber, for the presence of a man within the Seraglio was almost unheard of. Nonetheless the enigmatic blonde named Laolana appeared at the side of her equally strange brother, and Lao hastily waved to her people and said, "At ease everyone. The Lord Anri is here merely to collect his property and then he will be going...is that not correct, my Lord and Lady?"

"Well, partially so," Anri replied, "But the truth is that I am not the one who is making this purchase. It is Ulsa who will be Amalthea's natural owner."

Lao stared incredulously at the blonde, "Lady...Ulsa?"

The lady in question smiled back and said nothing, her expression as unfathomable as that of the Mona Lisa.

"My...Mistress?" Kim fumbled to correct her first impression, but now she seemed more intrigued and less reluctant than before at the prospect of belonging to another woman.

"Well, surely you don't think Ulsa spent all that time with you without learning something about the profession," Anri smiled, "In point of fact that was part of the reason why she permitted you to take her into your custody in the first place."

"Say what?" Martha gasped, "Are you saying that she...your sister...let herself be enslaved...just so she could find out what it felt like?"

"In a word, yes," Anri answered, "Actually it is hardly the first time that she has permitted others to believe that she belonged to them, but she wanted to study your rather unique methods and...how shall I put this? Discover what it was in your technique that has this curious effect of making your victims fall in love with you...present company included. Ulsa was curious, and it seemed harmless enough to her to allow you to indulge yourself with her for a time, knowing full well that she would leave once she had obtained sufficient insight and could be a competent, effective Mistress."

"My lady?" Lao gasped, "You mean...you...foresaw this moment? What am I saying? Of course you did...it all makes sense now...and I was the one being used and manipulated."

The blonde haired woman gave Lao a strange look that belied her aloof-seeming aura, and then she tip toed forward on bare feet and bent down to lay a kiss on the cheek of the seated Lao, which caused the pirate queen to blush and Martha to feel a twinge of jealousy again, if only for a moment.

"Now then," Anri said, clapping his hands together as if eager to get on his way, "With that out of the way, what say we show lady Amalthea to her new life so that we can retrain her and get her back up to speed so that she will be useful to our purpose."

"What purpose is that?" Martha asked, still trying to make her mind up over whether or not to trust this curiously vexing stranger of the easy manners and casual benevolence.

"Why, helping us to reclaim the soul of her brother, of course," Anri replied, "Didn't I mention that before, Ms. Kent? I could have sworn that I had. Oh well...must be getting senile at my age..."

"Unlikely," Lao replied, turning her gaze back towards the silver haired slave girl in question, "Kim-chan...go with your Mistress and her brother. Do everything they say as you would obey me, and try to show some patience. The lord Anri can be quite vexing, but his wisdom is beyond question."

"I rather dispute the latter part on that," Anri sniffed, "But then again, you are hardly the first one to say that about me. And yes, I am told that I can be quite vexing, but you'll soon come to see that there is a very good reason."

Ulsa favored her brother with a curiously amused look, to which he glanced back and gave her a look of admonishment as if silently engaging in an argument whose age could be carbon dated.

"Very well," Kim-or rather Amalthea Lao-responded, bowing again in the direction of the brother and sister, "I am yours from henceforth, my lady and...teacher. Use me as you would, do with me as you find pleasurable, or dispose of me if I cease to be of value. Whatever you wish, I will obey without hesitation."

"How very nice," Anri turned to his sister and smiled again, "And they say young people have no respect for traditions. Of course, as your Sabum, I must insist that you relearn the delicate art of thinking and acting for yourself and not just mindlessly doing what you are told...unless, of course, you are given a command by my sister. Her you must obey without question...I, on the other hand, am more negotiable so feel free to dispute me, as you doubtlessly will. It's kind of a tradition."

"Ah...my lord?" Amalthea looked up, daring to raise her eyes above the level of their waistlines, "Did you...just now...mention something about my...brother?"

"That I did indeed," Anri answered, "He is alive and in need of his sister's loving care and guidance."

"Ban Lao lives?" Amalthea gasped, breaking discipline by raising her voice in total contravention of her training as a sex-slave.

"I believe I did just say that," Anri answered, "Must be an echo in here. Ah well...yes, he lives, and you will get a chance to see him once again..."

"How soon?" Amalthea asked, unable to constrain her emotions.

"Soon enough, but not just now," Anri cautioned, "He's gotten himself into something of a predicament, and we're going to have to retrain you at once in order to make yourself useful in his redemption."

"I will do whatever it takes, my lord...Sabum," Amalthea self-corrected, and then glanced down in chastened horror at her own presumption, "Forgive me...I did not mean to speak of out turn. Please discipline me, if that is your will, and I will accept any punishment that you name to chastise my misbehavior."

"On dear," Anri glanced at Lao and sighed, "You do your work all too well. This will take a bit more effort than I thought would be the case...yet I have every confidence that she will shape up nicely."

"Nicely as what?" Martha asked, glaring at the infuriatingly glib-tongued stranger whose very familiarity was torturing her to no end.

"Oh, you needn't look at me that way, Ms. Kent," Anri assured, "My intentions are fully honorable here...but in any event it would hardly be your place to question me or my methods, hmmm?"

"What?...ah, forgive me," Martha said in chagrin, belatedly realizing that she was breaking discipline and acting in a manner far too presumptuous for a slave of her rank and station.

"You have a point to raise, my love?" Lao glanced up at her with more amusement than anger.

Martha pursed her lips and then said, "I meant to ask...what sort of training do you intend for her?"

"Warrior training, of course," Anri replied, "I'm quite a bit proficient in the arts of combat, and we need to rekindle the flames of the warrior within this child, to say nothing of awakening her Kirin blood so that she may go to battle with those who betrayed both her and her brother."

"You are sending me against the Moonies?" Amalthea asked with a start.

"Among others, yes," Anri answered.

"Then when do we begin?" Amalthea asked, her tone no longer soft nor submissive, "I owe those bastards...and that scumbag, General Han Lee Soto. If not for them...I would still be with my brother, Ban."

"He's calling himself by a different name these days," Anri cautioned, "But I applaud your enthusiasm. Now, let's see if you can keep that edge and recover the old you from amid the ashes that the General left to his lieutenants."

"You will find that she is quite agile and fierce in the arts of combat, my lord," Lao said with just a hint of a prideful boast in her tone, "One of the finest cage fighters whom I have ever personally trained..."

"I have no doubt of her physical abilities," Anri assured them, "But it is her mental armor that needs reforging. That is where the real battle shall be waged...but no sense getting ahead of myself. My sister and I will take our leave of you while you attend to your newly arrived daughter, my dear Captain."

Martha had noticed the approach of the wet-nurse and the sleeping babe in that woman's arms, and so did Lao, who stretched out her arms to receive the tiny bundle.

"Ah yes," Anri mused as he gazed down at the child, now resting in the arms of her mother, "Tyger Tiger burning bright in the forest of the night...and how apt that name describes this one, who I fear will take a bit too much after both of her parents...the One save the universe." He paused to glance at Lao then said, "And you really ought to inform her fama."

Lao glanced down and seemed appropriately chagrined by the admonition, "I know this, my lord Anri...and I am considering the method of breaking the news to her...honest."

"Honesty from you?" Anri smiled, "This is but a personal recommendation from me, not a professional warning, though if you persist in keeping this child to yourself then you will find that you have driven a deep wedge between both yourself and the father...and that would lead to consequences that you would rather not trouble yourself with, I assure you. But again, that is of no immediate value to the moment. Come along, Amalthea...let us be about our way with your training."

"As you command, so it shall be, Sabum," Amalthea rose up to her feet and glanced around with great reluctance. Clearly this was a painful moment for her, leaving behind a place that she had grown to call home, a feeling with which Martha could all too readily identify, though in the end the girl chose duty and obligation over remaining.

It was, of course, the only choice that she could rationally make, and yet there was sadness in her passing as she and the curious Daokan siblings made their exit, fading into the shadows. More than a few tears were shed by those concubines presently in attendance, and Martha felt herself becoming quite sad, knowing that the invigorating presence of the girl whom they knew of as "Kim" would no longer be felt upon their vessel.

"Go with grace, my dear, sweet Kim-chan," Lao murmured softly, "And may you find satisfaction, if not true happiness, in the path that you have taken."

There was a suitable pause of several moment silence following this departure and then Martha turned to Lao and said, "Are you going to explain to me what this is all about and why you let those guys walk all over you like that...Mistress?"

Lao bared a breast and began to suckle her infant daughter as she started to stir from her naptime and did not immediately answer the question. But then she said, "Did I appear that much out of character to you, my sweet? Well...be assured that there is a good reason for my actions, but it requires a rather lengthy explanation about the brothers Daokan, who and what they are, and who exactly that was whom you were glaring at so resentfully just now. But first, before we get to that part..."

"I know," Martha rolled her eyes, "Submit myself to the pillory for punishment. I was being insubordinate and exceeded my place and deserve to be punished for that..."

"Maybe later," Lao said with a smile, glancing up at the brown haired woman, "You know how much I enjoy disciplining you...but at the moment I have a much more serious concern that I wish you to attend to. Go get in costume and fly out to visit with your sister and her wife in Nerima..."

"With Alison?" Martha arched an eyebrow over that.

"Precisely," Lao replied, "Get as much of the full story as you can out of them and report back here no later than within an hour. It is time that I find out what is going on back in the Nerima district, and who it was who threatened the life of my daughter's father-mother. Once I have enough information to go upon I will activate some of my sleepers in that region and get to the bottom of this matter."

"And then?" Martha arched her other eyebrow.

"Then we will see what happens next," Lao replied, "But I tell you this openly...whatever it is that has drawn the Daokan into the open, it is a thing to terrify both god and mortal. That hint about Pandora was definitely ominous, and I think Lord Anri was attempting to give us a warning."

"If that's the case then why didn't he just come right out and tell us what it is?" Martha wondered.

"Because that is not the way of the Daokan," Lao explained, "They respect free will and only work to help mortals solve their own dilemmas...not to usurp that role from the hands of mere mortals. They much prefer working through voluntary agents who can do their dirty work for them, allowing the brothers-and their sister-to concentrate their energies on the bigger picture."

"Well that's just swell," Martha snorted, "Get us to fight their battles so they don't have to get their own hands dirty..."

"On the contrary," Lao corrected, "No one gets their hands dirtier than a Daokan, especially the lord Udan."

"The one he was threatening you with?" Martha asked in puzzlement.

"The very same," Lao revealed, "Udan...or Robar Bartev as he was known to legend, is a certified monster slayer from a very old school of retaliation and vengeance. You know, of course, why it is that I have never sought to compel you to remain with me, do you not, darling?"

"Because my father would object?" Martha replied with a very slight smirk, affirming her own suspicions in the matter.

"Indeed he would," Lao affirmed, "But I would rather have your father for my enemy any day than to stray into the path of the one known as Bartev the Blackguard. He does not merely destroy his enemies, he annihilates them down to the base monad of their soul core, setting them back to zero point on the road to karmic evolution. He is human mortal analogy, beyond the definitions of good and evil that govern the rest of us mere mortals. Though he may be accounted a hero in one sense, he is very much the original anti-hero, or prototype for all the tough guys who have ever existed. Only Anri himself is more dangerous to cross paths with, yet while he plays the friendly role of the jester who is part sage, never mistake the fact that he is an avatar for a force that defies all description."

Despite her attempts not to sound impressed, Martha could not help saying, "And those two just show up here, drop a few vague hints, pick up the contract of one of your wards...and expect you to do the rest by following their trail of bread crumbs to the bad guys that they don't want to deal with directly?"

"If you understood them the way that I do then you would never doubt the gravity of having them in the background dropping such hints and suggestions, darling," Lao assured her favorite personal plaything, "Something big and wicked is in the works, and it may require every resource at our disposal to set matters to the right...and even then...it may not be in time to avert disaster."

"Are you sure about this?" Martha asked, "Is it really that serious?"

"Ask your father that if you have doubts," Lao replied, "He has met Lord Anri...and lady Ulsa before...and if those two are convinced that something significant is in the works then it is more than enough confirmation for me, and why wait around just to see what is going to happen?"

"I see your point," Martha said then nodded simply, "I will do as you instruct, Mistress."

"And then when you get back," Lao added with a sly and cunning smile that was far more typical of the Slaver, "Then we will see to your punishment in some...suitably appropriate manner."

Martha paused in the act of turning around and favored her owner with a particularly fetching smile and expression.

"I look forward to it, Mistress," she said, finding great satisfaction in contemplating the eventuality, even as she knew beyond doubt that she would be resuming the Orachalcum chains and with them her role as her Mistress's kept plaything.

After all, it was good for a woman to have a place to call home and a role to assume in life, and in this respect she was more than contented. Disturbed though she was over the events of the past several minutes she nonetheless remained affirmed in her convictions and intended to continue playing the role of a slave for as long as it continued to give her deep emotional satisfaction, her life given meaning as she did the bidding of her lovely and talented Amazon Mistress...

Continued.

Comments/Criticisms/Flowery Prose Excess Department: shadowmane

Or: shadowmane9849

As yet another player is added to this burgeoning cast, let us tune back to events taking place within Japan as the lengthening night presses on towards the morning. What are the various members of the Tendo Posse about to become engaged with, and what is this mysterious crisis that keeps being alluded to with infuriating frequency? (Hey, I'm only the author, you don't expect me to give it all away this early, do you?) Be with us next time as yet another piece of this jigsaw puzzle finds a place upon the table in: "Countdown to Oblivion," or, "The Passover Feast of Perdition!" Be there...

X

/pre 


	77. Chapter 77

preDnabiki166

Nabiki 1/2

"A Very Scary Thought"

by Jim Robert Bader

(Inspired by the works of Rumiko Takahashi Others,  
with concepts and characters created by fellow fanfic writers Wade Tritschler, DB Sommers, Nicole Manders, Andrew Greaves, Bill Guiroff and countless others, including "Buffy"  
creator Joss Whedon; with special thanks to my good pal Shiva for his editing and handling of this series.)

(Certain other characters and concepts are of my own innovation, including my interpretation of the Monster of Mary Shelly's novel, the Furies, Trudy, Takaharis Angelique d'Anjou and various other guest stars appearing in this portion of the Nabiki 1/2 series...)

Chapter Sixty-Three.

Episode One-Hundred-Sixty-Six.

(INTERLUDE 2)

The Bill for a Kill

"Ah, young people," Cologne sighed while sipping from her tea, "They never cease to provide one with amusement..."

"What are you doing, Ryoko?" the Juraian princess Ayeka complained, "That's no way to hold a baby! Here, let me show you how it's properly done...supporting the neck with one hand, not treating our child as if she's made out of wood, like your thick head!"

"Sheesh, when did you ever get to be so bossy?" the (retired) Space Pirate Ryoko complained, "Being a mother's really got to you, hasn't it? You weren't like this after I had little Tenko..."

"That's because she is your daughter by Lord Tenchi," Ayeka said primly while cradling her newly born infant in her lap with the most delicate of manners, "But this child that you fostered on me after one of your mother's bizarre experiments half belongs to me, and that means I get a say in how she is treated, and under my tutorage she is going to learn to become a proper lady, not a brainless lout like her...ah...father..."

"Yeah, whatever," Ryoko rolled her eyes, refusing to be baited whereas she normally would have jumped all over her former rival for sniping at her in such an uncouth manner, "Well, Ryeka's my kid too, and that means I'll have a fifty percent say in whatever kind of nonsense you try and fill her head with. And for the thousandth time will you stop blaming me for being the one to get you pregnant? It was Mom's idea, not mine! Isn't enough that your parents insisted on the both of us getting married together to Tenchi just so our kids would be legitimate instead of being technically bastards?"

"How dare you use language like that in front of our two daughters?" Ayeka snapped, covering the tiny ears of her baby as though to shelter her from the rude speech patterns of her biological "father."

"What, you think she's not gonna hear that word growing up?" Ryoko snorted, "Not that anybody better use that word in front of me if they want to stay healthy. I just mean that...well...under Juraian law Tenchi can have the both of us as co-wives, but as far as anybody in Japan knows..."

"Why should we care what they say about anything?" Ayeka sniffed primly, "The backwards society of this planet is of no real concern to us. We are governed by interplanetary law, and the Earth is-at least technically-a Juraian protectorate world, under our direct dominion..."

"Try telling that to distant your cousin, the Emperor of Japan," Ryoko sniffed back, turning to regard the tiny blue haired girl who was just then looking up at her with eyes wide with fascination, "You hear that, Tenko-chan? Your aunt here is fretting because I'm married to Tenchi while she's legally registered here as Tenchi's cousin..."

"I am not!" Ayeka rounded on the pirate princess, "I am just as much Lord Tenchi's wife as you are, you...you miserable experiment gone horribly bad! And why I ever consented to share his bed with the likes of you..."

All at once Ryoko's face was an inch away from Ayeka's and she was smiling into the wrathful face of her co-wife saying, "You want me to really answer that...in front of the kids? Or do you want them to grow up having to guess why Tenko's little Sis here is really also my daughter?"

Ayeka blinked, finding her temper extinguished like a flame within the heat of a very different sort of fire that smoldered in the eyes of the cerulean-haired Ryoko. All at once her cheeks flushed crimson and she stammered, "You wouldn't dare...not in front of your Tenko..."

"You think I want to hide anything from my kid?" Ryoko leered, "She's gonna have to learn the truth sooner or later, so why not start early and skip the trauma of later? Besides, I'm really starting to feel the urge to remind you of just how little Ryeka here got her start in life, minus having to rely on mom's gadgets to get you preggers."

Ayeka stilled her acid tongue out of dread that Ryoko would carry through on her threat of giving their children a live "demonstration" of what it also meant to be a co-wife. As it was she felt a stirring of a different sort within her loins but furiously tried to stamp it out before it turned her face entirely crimson, which would have spoiled the effect of maintaining her dignity in the face of certain lust that would need to be sated when the two of them were in private.

A bit off from all of this, Ayeka's adolescent younger sister paused in putting the dishes away and said, "Well, looks like those two finally decided to kiss and make up. Honestly, Tenchi, I don't know how you manage to keep the two of them in line the way you do, especially my sister."

"Sometimes I wonder the same thing myself, Sasami," Tenchi Musakai remarked before turning back to helping the least troublesome member of their problematic household doing the necessary chores that were needed to maintain a semi-stable household.

Cologne could only smirk as she watched her nephew go about his ways while her blood-aunt went at it in silent fury with the infamous space pirate of ancient legend. Yes indeed, these young people were a source of endless amusement for her, and how glad she was to see her father's progeny getting along so well. It made her visit to the Musakai estate all the more satisfying and spiritually enriching to know that there were other young people in this world who lived such interesting lives, much like the family she watched over so diligently back in Nerima.

Of course just thinking that way made her reconsider the wisdom of leaving that family behind, to renew her ties to her father and his own extended family, which included extraterrestrials who appeared to have attached themselves to his grandson, Cologne's own nephew by her half-sister, the late Achika Masaki. The story of their involvement with young Tenchi was quite an epic in itself, and Cologne found herself quite fascinated with the parallels between her nephew and the boy named Ranma, who was both nephew and son-in-law to Cologne, and-by extension-cousin to Tenchi. Curious parallels existed in both of their young careers, and not the least was their ability to attract the affections of powerful young ladies, who might-but for a trick of the fates-be bitter rivals for his attention had they not been convinced to unite into a-more-or-  
less stable family unit.

But as the thought these things, drawing deep amusement from her observations, a voice brought her sharply back to a much less pleasant reality with the simple observation, "I thought this is where you would be. How nice to learn that you are still a creature of your habits."

Cologne tensed without meaning to then said without turning her head, "How did you find me?"

"I've always been able to find you, Cologne-chan," Siren replied, "Your life energy pattern is unique on this world, and thus of no difficulty at all for me to track down...or did you imagine my granddaughter was the only one of my bloodline to possess a talent in that direction?"

"I see," Cologne turned away, "So why hunt me down? I thought you were assuming the task of being young Saotome's self-appointed teacher?"

"Oh, I fully intend to resume his training come the morning," Siren assured her longtime friend and former paramour, "But at the moment he is being...shall we say...entertained by his own elemental ladies?"

"Oho?" Cologne arched an eyebrow as she turned to regard the ageless beauty of the blonde haired Archmage, "So...what I suspected might happen has finally taken place...they no longer wish to hover in the background and take a back seat to his human ladies? And I suppose you encouraged them to think this way since it will bond them that much more closely to his Chi and facilitate a closer affinity for their power within him?"

"I certainly did nothing to discourage them from this, naturally enough," Siren said, "But the idea was their own...and the nod of blessing came from a different source entirely, one intimate with the workings of elemental nature."

"You don't say?" Cologne took a sip from her tea cup, by assent encouraging the sorceress to continue.

"Indeed, and I think you'd rather remember him yourself from an earlier encounter," Siren paused for effect then added, "Since he happens to be my very own grandfather."

On cue Cologne spat the mouth full of tea and then spent the next few minutes coughing, to which Siren added a helpful pat on the back to stabilize breathing. Once she had fully recovered, however, Cologne rounded on her former best friend and said, "You did that on purpose."

"Guilty," Siren replied, not bothering to hide her amusement, "So what's your point?"

"Are you serious?" Cologne gaped up at the enchantress, "Ban-Lo the Boddhidarma walks among us once again?"

"Oh really," Siren smiled, "He hasn't used that name since his last incarnation. These days he goes by the name of Anri, remember? Or would you rather I recount some of his more notorious disguises, the ones that would shock and amaze mere mortals were I to recount them?"

"The Daokan Lord of Air and Fire," Cologne turned away with a troubled expression, "But...what business does such a being have with Nerima?"

"I rather suspect we are going to learn the answer on that very shortly," Siren replied, "In fact the reason I sought you out, Matriarch of the Joketsuzoku, was to inform you that there was an attack upon your 'Son-in-law,' Nabiki..."

"What?" Cologne with even more shock than before.

"That's right," Siren nodded, "While you spent most of the last day paying your respects to your father and rediscovering your family roots, a Toishindan fighter calling himself David Lo made an appearance on the Furinkan school campus and proceeded to trash a good portion of the building and grounds in pursuit of his intended quarry, Nabiki."

"Toishindan?" Cologne said in horrified realization, "Were there casualties?"

"Several dozen students were injured, but none fatally, the Gods be praised," Siren answered, her face and tone becoming grim as she added, "But the principle of the high school is dead, slain in battle, which was actually more like a slaughter on his point. I understand he won't be terribly missed outside of his immediate family, but due to the severity of the structural damage his body was not able to be recovered."

Cologne narrowed her eyes, "That is indeed grim news. Kuno Godai was a fool and a clown but a fairly harmless one as things can be reckoned. His loss is a blow indeed to the integrity of both school and the Kuno family."

"Turns out it also created a rather unusual opportunity," Siren continued, "Lotion's paramour, and the father of her firstborn offspring, has been asked to take up Kuno Godai's position, at least temporarily, for reasons of business."

"Stein is to be the new school principle?" Cologne remarked with a thoughtful expression, "A curious turn of events. You were correct to seek me out with this information. But...what connection does this have to your grandfather-  
that-was?"

"Do I look as though I have that information?" Siren placed a hand over her ample breasts, "I'm an Archmage, not a seer. Perhaps Lotion would have some idea, but at best I can only speculate that major events are in the works as the Powers that Be appear to be attracting outside influences into the area as a means of countering whatever it is that is out there."

"Outside influences?" Cologne repeated.

"Indeed," Siren purred, "Do you recall that rather charming French woman who showed up the other day in time to help in the capture of one Pantsaru Taro? And do you also recall that she had an associate with crimson hair who was the one who put the cursed body down with an ease that suggested a skill superior to Sinanju?"

"I do remember them," Cologne narrowed her eyes, regarding the sorceress levelly, "And as memory would have it I recall that you were all but drooling over the paladin."

"Jealous?" Siren teased, but then sobered up again, "You need not worry though...she seems to have already acquired a girlfriend in the form of an Erinyes, go figure. But it is the redhead of whom I would direct your attention since your heir, Nabiki, sought her out and requested her instruction in the finer arts of a professional assassin?"

"What?" Cologne asked, shocked and stunned by this new revelation.

"Well, is it all that surprising that she would want to know how it was that this...Trudy Wells, as she styles herself, could take down a monster like Pantsaru with great ease as though possessing the skills of an Elder?" Siren asked with a hint of challenge in her tone of voice, "Perhaps if you have stayed around rather than running off to your father you would have observed her in action and formed your own conclusions. After all, War-craft is your specialty, not mine, though I rather think this woman's talents stray a bit over into my field as well as your own. I had the sense, observing her, that she is surrounded by a very potent aura and has more than passing familiarity with a rather advanced form of spell craft."

Cologne ignored the implied criticism and said, "This is very disturbing. Why would my son-in-law, Nabiki, choose to associate with such a person? And...why does that name Trudy sound so familiar?"

"Perhaps you are thinking of her other identity," Siren said, "The code name she uses as an agent of Delphi, the Legionnaire?"

"The Legionaire?" Cologne scowled again, then her eyes went wide and she said, "Her? By all the ancestors in the heavens...!"

"Thought that might get an reaction out of you," Siren mused, "So if you are done trying to avoid me, I would suggest cutting your visit short and explaining to your father that a looming crisis demands your immediate return to Nerima..."

"Did someone mention me?" an amused-sounding gentleman of rather advanced years inquired, rounding the corner near the stairwell as though making a stage-  
entrance, which suggested that he had been eavesdropping for some time now.

"Ah," Siren turned to regard the gray-haired gentleman with the wire rimmed glasses, "The redoubtable Masaki Katsuhitsu...or should I call you by your Amazon name, Lord Yosho?"

"Katsuhitsu will do, lovely lady," the tall man replied as he took the Archmage by one hand and pressed it to his lips, then smiled craftily as he added, "And I must say that you have blossomed out rather well from when I last set eyes upon you, when you were barely Cologne's own age. The years have certainly been most kind for you, it would appear."

"Coming from you that is quite the compliment, Lord Katsuhitsu," Siren smiled, accepting the flattery and flirtatious manners of the man before her.

"Father," Cologne said a bit crustily, "Siren has called my attention to a rather urgent bit of business that I left unresolved back in Nerima...so I am afraid that I am going to have to ask for your indulgence as I...cut short my stay with you in order to attend to a personal matter."

"Nothing serious I hope?" Katsuhitsu's eyes gleamed with something sobering as he studied his daughter's illusory disguise for clues to her true motives, "Perhaps I could be of some assistance?"

"Not at this time, Lord Katsuhitsu," Siren assured, "But it is most generous of you to offer, and if we have need of your services then we will not hesitate to summon you and your kin to assist us, right Ko-chan?"

"Indeed," Cologne said soberly, "We will indeed do just that if we have need of you, Father."

"Well then," the serious look vanished from the elderly man's eyes as though it had never been there in the first place, "Do drop by again when things quiet down. We can reminisce about old times and get squared away with more recent occurrences in both of our lives. Which reminds me, how is your mother doing these days?"

"Couldn't really say," Siren smiled, "We weren't exactly on speaking terms when last we crossed paths...I'm afraid she never did approve of my relationship with my last husband."

"Ah yes," Katsuhitsu nodded sagely, "And how is Tony these days?"

"Long passed on to his ancestors," Siren sighed, "But that was decades ago, and even our children have moved on with their lives. But these days I am quite done with men as an interest...and I have other pursuits far more engaging on my mind, and they take up much of my energies, including the training of a new apprentice, which should prove to be most challenging given his penchant for distraction."

"You're a fine one to talk of distraction," Cologne grumbled, not voicing aloud her thoughts as she recalled a head-turning incident involving a certain blonde knight and the equally winsome Archmage.

"Now then," Siren turned to the Matriarch, "Shall we be off? There is much to do, and the morning is only just getting on. Your heir is in peril and there's something dire in the works that's so threatening that even my grandfather and his brothers are getting involved, so why dally here when the fun is beckoning in Nerima?"

"His...brothers...?" Cologne paled, her eyes going as large and round as Anime saucers.

"Point taken," Cologne conceded, "So will you do the honors?"

"Need you ask?" Siren replied, folding her arms and blinking once as she opened up a temporary fold in the space-time continuum through which she and her childhood friend could hasten back to the area of far greater crisis.

At that moment young Tenchi felt a curious tremble in the air and turned a questioning look towards his grandfather, saying, "Hey...where did Aunt Cologne get off to?"

"She was called away to other business," Katsuhitsu answered suavely, "But you'll see her soon enough, Tenchi. In fact I was thinking of maybe paying a visit to where she is staying sometime in the near future...and you're invited to join me, along with the ladies."

"So the old woman took a hike, eh?" Ryoko said as she and Ayeka came in side-by-  
side from the back yard, each holding a daughter in their arms, "Too bad...she actually starting to grow on me for a while there."

"You just liked the fact that she was rattling your mother's cage," Ayeka noted rather slyly, "But I agree that it was too bad...I was rather hoping to get to know my niece a bit better...she seemed to be a quite fascinating character with quite a lot of history to share. For an earth woman of Juraian ancestry, that is."

"And since you mention it, Brother," Ayeka added with a glance towards Katsuhitsu, "I do believe a trip to see our earthly kinfolk would be most in order. Indeed, I think little Ryeka and Tenko would do well to get acquainted with their cousins, if they are anything near as interesting as was hinted at by Lady Cologne over dinner last evening."

"Hey, that does sound like a fun idea," Ryoko agreed, "And Tenchi can get to know his cousin all over, the one with the martial arts training."

"Not a bad idea," Tenchi agreed, "It's been years since I had a work out with Ranma, and I'd like to have the chance to meet those ladies he got married to. In fact, it would probably be fun to compare notes and stuff like that."

"Indeed," Katsuhitsu smiled, "A visit out there would definitely be both fun and interesting...and you never know who you might run into...old friends and acquaintances of mine, perhaps? We will definitely see..." he added with an ominous hint of portents for the unknown future...

"Tadaima, I'm back!" Nabiki called out as she entered by the front entrance to her family's household, expecting to at least be greeted by some sort of warm reception.

Instead what she received from the first two people whom she encountered-her fellow co-wives, Ukyo and Perfume-were somewhat indifferent stares and a mildly frosty reception, which prompted Nabiki-the senior wife in their cozy little family band-to wonder what she had done to offend these two since normally they were the most easy-going and affable of companions (even prone to occasionally ambushing one into a spontaneous threesome, as they had done with Nabiki that very morning).

"Ah...what's up, Ucchan?" Nabiki asked, sensing her childhood friend's non-  
plussed expression.

"What's up you say?" Ukyo said with a snort, "Like you have to ask?"

"Our husband the Stud for one thing," Perfume replied, "As if you didn't guess."

"Ah..." Nabiki thought a moment then said, "Ranchan? What do you mean by...?"

"I can hear them even now up there," Perfume glanced meaningfully towards the ceiling, "They're banging around up there as if they mean to put a hole in the roof, and they've been at it for the better part of an hour."

"Hah?" Nabiki suffered a momentary lapse in memory, only to have things come back to her with sudden clarity and focus, "You mean...Ranma and...the other two?"

"Uh-huh," Ukyo acknowledged, "Sobriel and Karina, completing the set that started out earlier this morning. Seems they decided against doing it individually and opted for a group package."

"Air and Vaccuum," Perfume added with a wince, "Want to know what you get when you combine the two in an orgasm? A real popping sound, like the kind you get with that plastic bubble wrap, only much, much louder."

"Oh," Nabiki paused to reflect upon the point, considered throwing a jealous fit, then belatedly recalled that she had given the two elementals her sanction to go at it with their man, which in turn began to enlighten her on just why her fellow co-wives were eyeing her with such a strong hint of disapproval.

"Not that they needed much encouragement to jump the bones of our husband," Ukyo said bluntly, "But why exactly did you agree to let them have their way with Ranchan? Wasn't it bad enough that Perchan and me had to witness him getting it on with that clod-headed Nagisha, after being all but raped by Latisha?"

"To say nothing of what probably went on this morning between Ranma and Sharil," Perfume frowned, "Which reminds me...just exactly what sort of deal did you form with that Undine to let her travel around inside your body? I never imagined the two of you were all that chummy, considering who was her mentor."

"Ah...well...the Lao reference notwithstanding," Nabiki winced, "I had a chance to learn first-hand just what goes on between Ranchan and his servants...and it kind of took the sting out of my resentment. Not that I actually approve of them doing it with our husband, but...well...they had some encouragement just the other day, and it put the notion in their fool heads that they each needed to do it with Ranchan at least one time a piece in order to get pregnant..."

"So you gave the nod to let them carry on like that with our husband?" Ukyo remarked, sounded less than totally convinced as to the wisdom of this connection.

"Well, what other choice did I have?" Nabiki shrugged helplessly, "It's not like it was Ranchan's idea to do this in the first place! Hell, I'm surprised it took this long for them to gang-bang our little boy-toy husband, especially after the way he's won each of them over being the sort of nice guy that he is, the kind that makes us have to fight off would-be rivals left, right and center!"

"I'll go with that," Perfume shrugged, "After all, he's the first and only man I've ever felt even slightly attracted to, so I guess it makes sense that his Saotome charm would work its way over his elementals."

"That doesn't mean I'm gonna look the other way while it happens," Ukyo snapped.

"Never meant that you should, Airen," Perfume replied, flexing her hands meaningfully, "And for what it's worth I feel like beating them senseless on general principles for daring to lay paws on an Amazon's husband."

"Look guys," Nabiki sighed, "I'm really sorry I didn't consult with you before making a decision, but...it seems that there's a lot more going on right now besides our own personal family drama. In case you two have forgotten somebody did try to kill me today, and they succeeded in tearing up a good chunk of Furinkan high school, to say nothing of what happened to Principal Kuno."

"Oh, we know that there's a crisis, Sugar," Ukyo assured, "We were there when it happened, remember?"

"But we're not the ones you need to convince that this is a good idea," Perfume cautioned, "And until you can work her down from her current tirade..."

"Work who down?" Nabiki blinked, only to have her question answered a mere few moments later.

Just then she heard a familiar voice say, "Airen, you back...and after spending all night away from family without calling."

"Uh oh," Nabiki said, beginning to catch a hint of a clue as she turned to see the beautiful face of the one who had addressed her.

Shampoo was holding the infant Chusen in her arms and acting on the surface as if nothing were the matter...but Nabiki knew her wife far too well to be fooled by mere appearances and was disturbed by the placidly cheerful manner of the Amazon, recognizing behind this façade the not-so-subtle hints that her wife was anything but happy.

"Is enough that Airen have important business that make her leave in such hurry that she no inform Shampoo where she go, and then to fight battle against enemy at side of Ranma, yet not return home like him to tell Shampoo what happen. No even to check in on son who she leave in Shampoo keeping, who miss mother very much and want much-much to feed from breast of momma..."

"Ah..." Nabiki said sheepishly as she saw the look in the crimson eyes of her primary wife and the mother of her eldest offspring, seeing there the hidden accusation beneath the banal tone of light humor that Shampoo was employing.

"But now you back is easy enough you take up from where you leave off with nurturing son, yes?" Shampoo said as she approached Nabiki and held the baby out like an offering, "That is if you no change to Jusenkyo body of this one's husband too many times, which great-grandmother warn could cause body to lose ability to lactate, yes?"

"Ah..." Nabiki said again, this time with more consideration as she accepted the tiny bundle of her son into her arms, only to blanch a bit as she studied the way that the blankets had been tied, which were the reverse-order manner of a more typical Amazon pattern.

"Is no worry, Shampoo make sure change diapers and give own breasts to suckle," Shampoo assured with a coy look, "Is more than Airen get when running around doing whatever Airen think more important than spending time around family. Now if you will excuse please, Shampoo go help nice Auntie to make too-too delicious dinner for Airen. Oh, and if you is asking about Ranma, husband upstairs getting banged by Air and Vacuum girls, which also something Shampoo like to talk about when you is no so busy."

As the comely Amazon sauntered out of the room she was followed by three sets of nervous eyes, and then Nabiki broke the silence by murmuring, "Oh kuso...don't tell me?"

"That she's really, really pissed with you?" Ukyo suggested, "And intends to take it out on the rest of us too boot?"

Nabiki groaned, "Not the 'Murder by a Thousand Kindnesses' again?"

"Oh yeah," Perfume confirmed with a mile shudder, "The ultimate Amazon technique of revenge against a loved one who does something to annoy you...and to judge by the evidence so far, my cousin is very, very, very annoyed, and probably won't calm down any time too soon either."

"So far it's only been the light stuff," Ukyo informed their senior co-wife, "Little stuff that she does slightly off, like tying a bow knot a certain way, or performing little courtesies in a bass-akward manner while pretending everything is just hunky dory."

"The worst of it will come if you try and eat the food she's cooking up for us," Perfume warned, "As I know my cousin, she knows how to deliberately spoil the flavor of anything that's normally delicious, so eating will be a chore around the dinner table...but it would piss her off even more if you refuse to eat what's offered you since it's supposed to be a punishment, and swallowing it signifies that you accept that you were in error."

"But all I did was forget to call home and let you guys know what I was doing," Nabiki protested.

"Uhuh," Ukyo said skeptically, "And just what were you doing that was so all-  
fired important that it kept you out this late, Sugar?"

"Er..." Nabiki considered telling them the truth but realized how difficult it might be to explain in a few brief moments, so what she said aloud was, "Would you believe...consulting with a teacher?"

"Which one?" Perfume asked, "It's been a long time since any of them dared to hold you back in a home room."

"Yeah, like they want Sham-chan showing up and paying a visit to demand her wife come home?" Ukyo sniffed, "At times when she's really pissed that girl tends to forget that there's something invented in the west that's called a door handle."

"Well..." Nabiki thought some more and then said, "Mind if I explain the details to you guys a bit later? For now...I think I really should get some bonding time down with my son. Shampoo's right about that...I've been away too long and I need to do my duty as his mother."

"Fine, use the kid for a dodge," Ukyo frowned, "But we're gonna have some words later on about this ourselves, Sugar."

"Especially the bit where you gave sanction to the elementals to screw around with our husband," Perfume added, and as one the pair exited the room, leaving Nabiki to ponder the significance of her present situation.

"Oboy," she said to herself as she glanced down at the sleeping Chusen, "Your momma's really gone and done it now, kid. Now how the heck do I explain to Sham-chan just what sort of business I've managed to get mixed up in?"

"Maybe you don't have to, Niece," yet another familiar voice said as two faces peered timidly from around the corner of the stairway, "Perhaps all you need to do is go in there and reassure your wife of your love and affection."

"That's right, Nabiki," her own father agreed in concert with Genma, "Go in there and make peace with the girl...for all our sakes, we most heartily implore you!"

"Huh?" Nabiki turned around, "Daddy? Uncle Genma? But...what...?"

"You haven't been here all day, Girl," Genma snapped with more impatience, "You haven't seen the slowly escalating scale of her wrath as it has unfolded all afternoon! The longer she has waited for your return the worse has grown Shampoo's brittle patience."

"It's been much worse than either Ukyo or Perfume had just described to you," Soun assured, "Remember the last time, and how hard it was to assuage her temper?"

Nabiki winced as she indeed did recollect the previous time when Shampoo had been on a literal "warpath." The dreaded technique known as "Murder by a Thousand Kindnesses" had been crafted by the Amazons long ago with the intent of harassing and annoying loved ones as a means of expressing disapproval without openly being confrontational. It's origins were in the very nature of Amazon marriage itself, which opted for a dominant and submissive partnership in which the senior Amazon made decisions on behalf of both parties.

Usually it was the wife who was in charge of an Amazon household with a husband taking the subordinate position, a roughly reverse position to the more traditional model of Japan where the gender roles dictated a more patriarchal system. But when two Amazons of the same gender married the dominant one was the superior battle-tested warrior who had defeated the subordinate one in battle. That left the subordinate in a position where open opposition or defiance of the dominant half was strictly forbidden by tradition, which by its very nature tended to breed deep-seated resentments when the dominant partner behaved in what the subordinate wife considered a foolish or disrespectful pattern of behavior.

Expressing opposition to the dominant partner's actions took the form of low-key subversive acts of calculated defiance...a series of small misdeeds that had the cumulative effect of making life unpleasant for the offending partner. Such acts could consist of anything so small as a minor prank or mishandling of some routine mode of behavior. Untying sandal laces or tightening the seams in a dress were typical examples of such covert retaliation, or even placing rocks and pebbles in one's bed, or ruining the flavor of food and beverage, which could be excused as unintentional "accidents" yet were clearly aimed at driving the offending party crazy.

Shampoo had proven herself a master of such conduct on the previous occasion where Nabiki had done something to earn her stern disapproval. Just thinking about that time-and the steps Nabiki had been forced to take to appease her wife and get her to call over her vendetta-were enough to make her sorely avow to never do anything offensive to Shampoo ever again. And yet here she was back in the same situation as before, and without a reasonably good alibi for her behavior since she could hardly expect Shampoo to be satisfied with the explanation that Nabiki had sought to take some defensive lessons from a martial arts master who also turned out to be a deadly assassin.

"What are you waiting for, Girl?" Genma demanded impatiently, "Go in there and make peace while the house is still standing!"

"Nodoka's been trying to calm your wife down all day, but the news of your being attacked at school has made her very, very worried," Soun instructed his middle-  
daughter, "She's scared and attempting to hide her feelings badly, but typically prefers to disguise her fear as anger, so unless you can assure her of your state of health or give some reasonable account of your conduct..."

"I get the point all ready, Daddy," Nabiki replied, glancing down at little Chusen and trying to sort out how she was going to make peace amid her marital partners without revealing too much that might heighten their collective fear factor, "I'll do what I can...but maybe...is Kasumi around? Perhaps if I explain things to Oneechan and have her back me up..."

"I'm afraid we don't know where your sister is at the moment," Genma replied, "Because ten minutes after walking in through the front door she headed back out again, saying something about needing to go shopping."

"Actually I think Kasumi rather sensibly wanted to get out of Shampoo's way since no one in their right mind wants to have an irritated Amazon on the rampage," Soun remarked, "Your sister will hurry back just as soon as you quiet things down since you are the only one whom Shampoo-chan will listen to, excluding her great-grandmother."

"Oneechan went back out?" Nabiki frowned, "That's just terrific. And with all else that's been going on out there..." she sighed, "Oh well...Kasumi's a big girl and I'm sure she can handle herself better than anyone else I know, Ranchan excluded."

"Of that I most certainly do agree," Soun remarked, "As much as I sometimes fear for the soul of my eldest daughter, it is rather difficult to imagine either the situation or opponent that she cannot now handle, a fact in which I both take comfort and feel dread, though I trust in her wisdom to see Kasumi through any trials that may yet await her..."

Unbeknownst to Nabiki, however, another pair of eyes were fixed upon her...or rather a single eye viewing her through a high-powered lens from the vantage of a building many city blocks away, a lens attached to the barrel of a rifle that was pointing her way, held steady in the hands of a man who was its absolute master.

"So that's the target, en?" Yagyu Hanarabi murmured softly to himself as he sized her up with his best detached estimation, "Doesn't look like much from here...but I do perceive a pretty strong aura about her, so I guess maybe Otono-  
san's concerns are at least somewhat justified. Too bad for her, then, since it seems that she's become terribly...inconvenient."

In all truth it did not suit his profession to display even the level of compassion that he did indeed feel towards the girl, viewing her as an innocent caught up in larger events that were quite beyond her powers of imagination. Otono wanted her gone, and assassination was not a game where emotions held sway. He had a duty to fulfill, and that duty required a sacrifice to enable a larger cause to move one step forward. It was regrettable, yet a necessary evil.

And yet she looked so young, this Tendo Nabiki, hardly grown into the full flower of womanhood and quite vulnerable, for all that she was reputedly a mistress in the arts of combat. One bullet to the head and her story would be over, and the mission would move that much closer to fulfillment. It was that simple, precisely, and the mere fact that she held a tiny child in her arm-a newborn, if the reports were to be credited-could hardly be factored in as anything more than a trivial detail.

"Times like this I really hate this job," Yagyu murmured flatly, "If that fool, David, had done his part then I wouldn't have to be cleaning up the mess he left behind. Ah well..."

He reminded himself again that he could not afford to hold back to display mercy now...not at such a critical stage of affairs when a single act of defiance could destroy the trust that he had carefully built up for himself and Otono's organization. He could not risk appearing as either weak or uncommitted, not in a den of fanatics like the Umakusa brotherhood. There was too much at stake here, and an act of hesitation would either mark him as a coward or a traitor, and that would be the end of two full years of his life where he had worked diligently to gain the trust and confidence of Otono and his lieutenants.

A pity, though. He was about to ruin a perfectly nice day and make a mess on someone's front porch, and all to satisfy the megalomania of a homicidal fanatic.

"Well...Otono-san says she's got to go, and that's the end of the subject," Yagyu said wistfully as he carefully aligned the site hairs of his sniper's scope, which had thermal imagining augmentation and would allow him to see perfectly to the target. Just a squeeze of the trigger and a single shot would come tumbling out in a rifled spin at close to the speed of sound, and less than a heartbeat later there would be no more head, and thus no more Nabiki.

"May God have mercy upon me," the man said softly, taking in a single breath and releasing it before stilling his mind and clearing it of unnecessary thoughts and distractions. He had taken much of the past two hours setting up for this shot, choosing a perfect perch at precisely the right angle where he would have maximum cover of the house and its adjoining yard...and from where he was he had a perfect shot with no obstructions. The wind itself seemed hushed as though waiting in anticipation of the inevitable kill shot, and with that perfect sense of impending destiny he slowly squeezed the trigger and send his message of death hurling towards its divinely appointed destination...

But that was when the shot went wrong, for in the very same instant when he sent the mental command down to the nerves of his fingers he heard a shrieking voice cry out, "NOT ON MY WATCH, PAL!" which was odd as it came from directly above him and moved on leathery wings that glided through the night air with the whistling sound of an approaching grim reaper...

"Right on time," remarked Anri, who smiled to himself as he glanced sidelong in the general direction of the place known as Nerima.

"What sayest thou, Father?" Thelendra asked, only to turn her own glance to the side and say, "Oh..."

"Oh indeed," Anri noted, "As if I was going to let him get away with a thing like that. Honestly, the nerve of some people, thinking that the ends justify the means and all of that..."

"Thou didst plan for this interruption?" Thelendra remarked, "Had I but a thought that it was too convenient I mayest well have suspected thine hand in the manner, however ironic."

"Are you accusing me of interfering in the private destiny of mortals again?" Anri asked with mock-hurt in his tone and expression.

"Perish forfend that thou wouldst ever stoop to such a thing, father mine," Thelendra rolled her eyes in exasperation towards the heavens, "Whatever couldst I have been thinking?"

"Well, never mind, it's hardly relevant at the moment," Anri turned back to the puzzled looking girl standing slightly off to the side of both his daughter and younger sister, "Now then, as I was explaining to you before, this young lady here is named Amalthea, and she is the daughter of a very good friend of mine who is no longer on this plane of existence. You already know about her brother, the one who caused so much commotion earlier in the day?"

"Indeed I do perceive her lineage as the child of Kyladon and a mortal woman named Jeanette," Thelendra acknowledged as she studied the silver-haired half-  
Kirin with a critical gaze that made the other feel...more than a bit uncertain, "Dost thou intend then to use her to free her brother from the foul influence of those accursed cultists?"

"That's more or less the general idea," Anri replied, "Only...it might take a bit of doing to prepare her for the task at hand. You see...she's been in the company of one Lao Kane-AKA, Captain Lao Khan-of whom you've no doubt heard mentioned in elemental rumors that cross many a parallel time frame."

"I do indeed recall the person whom thou dost mention, father," Thelendra said gravely, "But what then do you intend to make of her? She is...damaged goods...and in her mind I do perceive the conditioning in submissive bond-  
training that makes her more suitable to play the part of a love slave rather than champion our cause as one of our agents."

"Actually I think you do her a great injustice to imply such a thing, Thelendra dear," Anri chided, "Damaged goods? Whoever heard of such nonsense? As if being trained to use one's body for sex were a bad thing...even if she has practiced subduing her will to the demands of another."

"Spare me the lecture on how prostitutes be human as any other, father," Thelendra sniffed, "Dost thou mean to use this poor girl as a weapon when she has been blunted down to a mere plow share?"

"Actually I was going to suggest that you study her more closely before arriving at any conclusions," Anri cautioned, "It was not merely for sex that Lao conditioned this girl to be her puppet. Observe."

The young lady named Amalthea blinked her eyes and then reacted automatically as a fist came rocketing towards her face from seeming no where. She had not even perceived the Lord Anri as having moved-let alone attacked her-but her body was so well trained and her reflexes so near-instantaneous that her hand moved to intercept and block the punch before it could totally connect with its designated target.

"You see?" Anri as he stood there with arm extended, his wrist locked in an uneven duel with the slender arm of Amalthea, "The child is also a weapon, and that makes her both dangerous and useful."

Thelendra arched an eyebrow as she studied the girl's aura, "I feel the fires burning within her...but as trained as she is...she is still but a newborn infant."

"Maybe in comparison to us," Anri smiled while holding his pose without seeming effort, "But against the likes of those arrayed against our other champions she is quite the-WHOAH!"

All at once Amalthea reacted according to her training, shifting her balance and dropping backwards so that the extended arm of the Lord of Air and Fire naturally leaned forward to compensate, and in that instant she gripped his wrist and applied her body like a fulcrum to flip the larger man around and toss him into the sand of the beach upon which they were standing.

Anri landed flat on his back with but a slight exhalation of air then studied the stars for a moment before saying, "I meant for that to happen."

"Father?" Thelendra asked, stunned beyond all measure by the sudden toppling of her indomitable father.

Amalthea herself was horrified, "Lord...forgive me! I did not mean...I just react...I...please, punish me severely!"

"Whatever for?" Anri asked as he got up and dusted the sand out of his gold-and-  
tan robes, "That was excellently performed and entirely fluid. You have the instincts of a warrior...something that Lao saw as an advantage to your training."

Amalthea stared in amazement, "You...are not angry with me, Sabum?"

"Not in the least," Anri grinned, "You've just proven my point. You do indeed have the potential to...eh? Sister?"

The pale blonde named Ulsa Laolana had taken a step forward and was smiling with her eyes a-twinkle in merriment. Though no sound escaped from her lips she nonetheless conveyed the impression of laughter by her very mannerism, a fact that did not escape even Amalthea's surprised notice.

"My lady?" the half-kirin girl asked, "Mistress?"

"I do not believe this," Thelendra murmured in astonishment, "Aunt Ulsa be...amused by this child's antics?"

Ulsa just inclined her head and fetched the rainbow haired girl with a gently chiding expression, then turned to her older brother and gave him a look that was ancient, wise and all-knowing.

"You want to undertake the first stage in her training, Ulsa-chan?" Anri asked, his own expression conveying the degree of surprise in his demeanor, "Ah...naturally I won't object, but...oh. You think so, do you? Ah well...as always I bow to your wisdom, Divine Sophia."

Thelendra was far more expressive of his own astonishment, "Aunt Ulsa wishes to train this girl? In what? Advanced levels of meditation?"

"Er...not exactly," Anri said rather dubiously, "You see, your Aunt believes that she can work to loosen the mental bonds placed upon her by Madam Lao, to fully awaken her warrior's spirit so that she will be well armed and in the right mood to kick some butt in order to free her brother."

"A worthy goal to be certain," Thelendra agreed, "But Aunt Ulsa's way has always been that of total pacifism. She has ever relied upon mine uncle Udan to play the role of her fist, and I do not perceive just why..."

"Ah...I don't think you quite catch my drift on this, Thelendra darling," Anri noted while observing as his sister approached the silver-haired Amalthea, bare feet gliding through the sand as she moved with a grace that was preternaturally sensual and as regal as the bearing of an empress.

"Eh?" Thelendra asked, only to have her eyes go very wide as she witnessed the events unfolding before them on that isolated section of beachfront in a relatively uninhabited section of the pacific.

"My...my lady?" Amalthea herself gasped as Ulsa came to stand before her, and then leaned forward and planted a kiss upon the younger woman's forebrow.

Said kiss was followed by another, this time lower on the face and much closer to the mouth, which was where the third kiss was next planted, and then Ulsa reached out with both arms and drew the half-Kirin girl into an embrace in which Amalthea quite naturally reacted by returning these affectionate gestures in accordance with her pleasure-girl training.

"I think we should leave here presently," Anri informed a stunned Thelendra, "Your aunt is going to be a bit busy for the next two or three hours, at the very least."

Thelendra said nothing but just continued to gape in solid disbelief over what she was seeing...that is right up until she felt her a finger placed to her chin as her father urged her to close her mouth and pick her jaw up off the metaphorical floor. She then went unresisting as her father guided them both away from the scene of ever-escalating lust and fulfillment that was building in the air between the Lady of Air and Water and the half-Kirin child who was reacting favorably to having what few clothes she presently was wearing be gently removed from her body.

It took an entire three minutes of silence before Thelendra could speak once again, and this time she found herself standing beside her father at a spot of coral overlooking tidal pools and a barrier reef, and beyond that the living ocean.

"What...at in the name of all sanity has just transpired, father?" Thelendra wondered.

"Well," Anri drawled matter-of-factly, "I would say-at a guess-that your Aunt feels the urge to test out her new property..."

"Property?" Thelendra repeated.

"Well, Lao did give her to me, and I gave her to Ulsa as a present," Anri explained, "So by the rules of the game that they have been playing together that makes her Ulsa's property, to do with or dispose of as suits the mood of her...and at the moment I think having her around suits Ulsa just dandy."

Thelendra could not help turning her head and silently concurring with that estimation, but still she voiced aloud, "And in all this time never once did I think mine aunt went in for such antics."

"Oh, it's quite a novel experience for her as well," Anri replied, "Usually she is the one who pretends at being the slave girl...but she spent a year with Lao precisely to learn the ins and outs of the profession, and now curiosity is prompting her to try it from the other side of the equation. Not to worry, though, she assures me that she will have Amalthea up and ready for service within a short interval of time-space, well within the requirements of our mission."

Again Thelendra paused to play the voyeur, confirming in her own mind that this was hardly a one-way venture and that the half-kirin girl was very much warming up to "servicing" her Mistress.

"Ah...well...if Auntie believes that this method is for the best...then hardly dare I to gainsay her judgement in the matter," Thelendra quietly concluded.

"Considering everything that the child's been through of late, I would certainly hope that would be the case," Anri folded his arms and appeared to consider the matter more closely, "Truth to tell, it does make a kind of sense, getting her to open up like this, opening a channel for her feelings, submitting totally to Ulsa's will so that my little sister can work her healing magic on the heart, mind and soul of one of cruel fate's many victims. It's very rare that we are permitted to go this far in using our authority to repair the damage that has been inflicted on one of such tender experience and years. True the methodology is unorthodox, but one can hardly argue that it is ineffective at getting the results that will be needed."

Thelendra silently concurred with that, turning her thoughts forcibly away from the present activities of her blood aunt, who was the nearest equivalent of total incarnate perfection.

"When Ulsa's work is done mine will begin in assuming the role of Amalthea's teacher," Anri continued, "There is so little time left to prepare, and all of our agents need the time for preparation...which does remind me that you yourself have an appointed round to attend towards, my dear."

"Eh?" Thelendra turned back with a start, "What means thee by that, father?"

"And you call yourself an oracle," he smiled, "You know perfectly well what I mean...and you had best hurry about it because my brother is fated to arrive there before you, and if he initiates the testing of your own personal project before she is sufficiently ready..."

The rainbow-hued avatar paled, "Uncle Reka? Not...not Kasumi?"

"Better hurry up and play your part in these affairs," Anri advised, "Because if I know my brother and his lack of tolerance for patience he may well go too far and we will lose our most important ally in the coming conflagration."

"Kasumi-chan!" Thelendra cried out in dismay, vanishing into a fold of space and time before she had even completed her exclamation.

"Well, that certainly put the spur under her bonnet," Anri murmured in silent appreciation of his daughter's intense internal struggle. He turned a glance over his shoulder then remarked, "Looks like Ulsa will be busy for a bit, and I'm hardly needed here to play the appreciative witness. One can only imagine what words I would catch from Elea were she to find me gawking around here. Better go see if I can stir up more fun elsewhere..." and with that he followed the example of his daughter, albeit with less haste and alacrity as he had his pick of crisis points to visit and was in no great urgency to favor one over the others..."

"Oh dear, or my," Kasumi fretted to herself as she walked alone down the darkening streets of Nerima, seeking solace in the privacy of her own thoughts, so distraught by the demands of her conscience that she indulged the rare foible of talking aloud to herself about a private personal matter.

"What am I going to do about this? I cannot keep this from dear Frank-sama, but I must...somehow find the means of telling him the truth without hurting his feelings."

And here the day had begun so bright and with such promise, the consummation of her love for a man, the meeting of new friends and shared acquaintances, and-  
to top it all off-her accepting of an engagement ring...only now she was not so certain that she ought to have accepted it at all. Her heart was deeply conflicted, and for the first time she understood what it meant to feel torn apart in two equally strong directions.

"I love her...I don't know why, but I cannot deny these feelings," she said to herself, "But I love Frank-sama also, and he has been so kind to me, such a dear, sweet friend. How can I choose between the two when I feel so...connected? It isn't fair to anyone...and I don't know what to do about it..."

Unbidden to her thoughts the image of Thelendra appeared, a woman who was practically a stranger (for all that they had shared blood, and thus had gained intimate awareness of each others' thoughts and memories to a limited extent that nonetheless made them closer than sisters). Her heart ached to find her rainbow-haired lover, to hold her in her arms once again and to share intimacies such as they had enjoyed on a clear, bright morning but a couple of days ago...before her accepting of her engagement to frank, and before even she had been intimate with him, the first man with whom she had allowed herself to be fully a woman.

And a woman was what she very much felt like when she was in the presence of the towering doctor Steinberg. He treated her fairly, almost like an equal, and yet with a certain protective chivalry that was rare in this day and age when modern men were not so much into courtesies. Indeed, he was very much a man of a different era, and yet so strongly masculine and protective that she felt safe and warm just being in his presence.

And he did not fear Kasumi...did not fear what she had become, her ascension to divinity and vampirism, which set her clearly apart from other mere mortals. Perhaps because he was no "mere mortal" himself he took it for granted that Kasumi was...Kasumi. No doubt being a man who routinely trafficked in the occult and supernatural he was better suited than many to coping with the bizarre and unusual, and it was clear enough that he been around gods before...enough so that he was not so very much awed by there mere existence. Indeed, his very creation had been an act of defiance against the authority of a supremely divine creator.

And he was a man she deeply cared for...several men combined, in point of fact, and full of the essence of manly virtue, which drew her to him unquestionably as she had more and more seen the inner side that he kept so well hidden from others. He was definitely the man for her, and she reveled in the thought of one day very soon naming him as her lawfully declared husband.

But Thelendra was special to her also...and that was the great puzzle as she had only known the girl for a few days at the maximum...and yet it seemed as though she had known her always. There was a deep resonate connection between them that could not be explained, only felt and accepted as a given, as though they had belonged to one another in a different time and era.

"Ah...well...that is certainly possible," Kasumi said as she reflected on the drift her own thoughts were taking, "She has lived other lives...and so have I...so maybe we were together back then...and only now has fate drawn us back together..."

"The clarity of that simple statement struck her like a thunderbolt, and Kasumi marveled to realize that it felt like the ring of truth when she spoke these thoughts aloud. She had known Thelendra in a different time and era...but where and when? And under what circumstances had they shared such a deep connection? Truly it was puzzling, and yet she knew beyond doubt that her meeting with Thelendra the Dream Weaver was anything but coincidental.

"I must ask her if it's true," she decided after a moment to intense deliberation, "Were we together in a different life? If so, when what was my name...and her name as well? And why has fate drawn us back together at this time, when my life was just beginning to get sorted?"

She glided over the pavement with her bare feet gracefully treading over dirt, sand and gravel without hardly noticing the slightest of discomforts. The sidewalks were still warm from the heat of the sun baking them all afternoon, and it felt good to be touched by the sensation the pavement gave her. Yet still she remained inviolate, her body refusing to be dirtied as particles of dust and dirt refused to adhere to the skin of her body, refused to profane her in any way as, indeed, her body did not perspire or generate the oily toxins that were normally shed by ordinary mortals.

"What to do?" she repeated herself while returning to the original thought of a moment prior, "Thelendra or Frank-sama? Which one do I go with? A wife...or a husband?"

"Sounds like a personal problem to me," a voice that sounded oddly familiar replied, "And didn't anyone ever tell you that talking to yourself is a sign of instability?"

"Eh?" Kasumi turned to take notice of a tall manly figure leaning up against the wall of a darkened alley, his very presence causing a sense of strong disturbance and alarm to register within her.

"You are the one they call Tendo Kasumi, yes?" he asked, turning his head to regard her with a strikingly handsome profile that she instantly thought so place.

"Anri-san?" she hesitantly asked, only to see the figure step forward and more clearly into the light, dispelling at once her initial estimation.

"Wrong guess," the man said slyly, eyes blazing with an inner fire that was malicious and cruel, whereas with Anri there had always been compassion and kindness, "Wrong brother."

Without meaning to Kasumi took a half-step backwards and said, "You...are you the one...one of Lord Anri's brothers?"

"Excellent," the man raised a hand and illuminated the alley in the baleful glare of an intensely crimson aura, "You do have some small gift for this, no doubt partially acquired through contact with my niece. I wonder what other gifts have been bestowed upon you...and the extent of your true potential?"

A name found its way into Kasumi's head and she said with a slight shudder of apprehension, "You are...the Lord Reka?"

"Also known as Radigar Agrikal," he bowed his head slightly, "At your service...in a manner of speaking."

"The Lord of Earth and Fire?" Kasumi replied, only to receive her answer as the man formed a ball of congealing energy and in the next critical instant hurled it straight towards Kasumi, and in the next instant the world seemed to totally go up in the flames of a painful and quite violent explosion...

Continued.

Comments/Criticisms/Crisis Points in Critical Resolution: shadowmane

Or: shadowmane9849

Kasumi faces her greatest challenge to date in the form of the Daokan brother known as Radigar, but will Thelendra arrive in time to lend assistance, or could this be a time of too little and too late for our divine vampiric goddess? And what of the threat posed to Nabiki at the hand of yet another assassin? Can anything prevent a tragedy from developing there, and who is it who is rushing to her rescue? All of this and more next time in: "Putting the Bite on Crime," or, "Asinine Assassinations." Be there...

X /pre 


	78. Chapter 78

preDnabiki167

Nabiki 1/2

"A Very Scary Thought"

by Jim Robert Bader

(Inspired by the works of Rumiko Takahashi Others,  
with concepts and characters created by fellow fanfic writers Wade Tritschler, DB Sommers, Nicole Manders, Andrew Greaves, Bill Guiroff and countless others, including "Buffy"  
creator Joss Whedon; with special thanks to my good pal Shiva for his editing and handling of this series.)

(Certain other characters and concepts are of my own innovation, including my interpretation of the Monster of Mary Shelly's novel, the Furies, Trudy, Takaharis Angelique d'Anjou and various other guest stars appearing in this portion of the Nabiki 1/2 series...)

Chapter Sixty-Four.

Episode One-Hundred-Sixty-Seven.

Oracles Past, Present and Future

Takaharis felt her companion stir beside her in bed and reflexively reached out an arm to attempt to restrain her. Angelique very gently took the hand by the wrist and moved it to the side so that she could slip out from beneath the covers and stand stark naked in the illumination of the moonlight.

In tones signifying her half-aware status, Takaharis bleerily murmured, "Come back to bed...it's cold here without you."

Angelique fetched her a smile over her shoulder then replied, "Zair is something disturbing in the atmosphere, ma cheri. I must needs investigate to insure it is non a threat to the peace and solitude of our evening."

That brought Takaharis around, and she leveraged herself up off of her pillow to gaze at the silvery form of her lover, who seemed more inhumanly beautiful in this light than was even the case under full daylight.

"You suspect another attack...already?" the exiled Erinyes asked.

"My experience is to never underestimate the enemy, Cheri," Angelique replied, pausing to retrieve articles of clothing that had been haphazardly discarded at the early end of the evening, "But never presume zee worst...zair may be yet another explanation to account for zee disturbance zhat I am feeling."

Takaharis said nothing to that but extended her own considerably advanced senses out to test the spell-webbing that surrounded her house and kept it inviolate against both supernatural and physical trespass...and-sure enough-there was a very slight disturbance in the ether of her garden. That caused her to rouse herself out of bed and to join her lovely companion in dressing up for something a bit more vigorous than sleeping in the buff together, and soon the both of them were stepping past the threshold of her back porch in order to circle around the house and come upon the front yard in relative stealth, weapons drawn in case they might be needed.

But what they discovered upon the front yard of Takaharis's home was a quite unobtrusive figure sitting upon the grass with legs folded and assuming a meditative posture. They approached this fellow more leisurely and then Angelique addressed him softly, "Monsieur, have you some business with us zhat you cannot wait until morning to pay us this visitation?"

Kuno Tatewaki slowly opened his eyes then looked up towards the pair before him and said in his most polite manner and tone, "Forgive me...it was not my wish to disturb you, Sensei. I simply felt the urge to speak with you in private...for I have a...personal request that would I would name, one that cannot wait until a more suitable time, for you see...I fear that time itself may not be with us."

"Excuse me...Kuno-san, was it?" Takaharis asked, "You're not in my class, and it hardly seems like the hour to be discussing history..."

"Forgive me," Kuno said with a nod, "With all respect that is certainly owed to you, Takaharis-san, my purpose is to seek counsel with your fair companion."

"Me oui?" Angelique replied with a curious expression, "You require zee services of a nurse?"

Kuno gave a slight smile and said, "I am certain that you already know this not to be the case, fair lady d'Anjou. Let us drop pretense and speak frankly...I wish for you to school me in the arts of swordplay such as you aptly demonstrated today, to improve my own humble skills so that I may better defend those whom I love from yet another act of depraved madness, such as befell my father."

Angelique lifted her pale eyebrows then spoke gravely, "You wish to study under me? But I can already perceive that you are highly skilled, Monsieur..."

"But next to you I am as a stumbling infant who has barely learned to crawl, let alone walk, d'Anjou-sensei. I studied your moves as you fought against that madman, and I know your skills to be vastly superior to my own. Indeed, from what I have perceived there is no comparison between us, and study as I might for a dozen more years I could not hold my own with you for even a minute. That is why I ask...no, I beseech you in the name of my father...to counsel and guide me that I might improve enough to prevent anyone else being harmed within the reach of my sword."

"Indeed?" Angelique considered carefully, and Takaharis noted a remarkable transformation in the manner and bearing of the gentle-voiced woman, who all at once seemed to gain in height and authority as she studied the youth before them then said, "You study the art of Nampo. Zhat is most formidible, yes? But you lack seasoning and zee knowledge of how to tap into zee essence of zee art. Time and practice would bestow upon you all zhat you need...but as you say, time may not be a luxury zhat zee fates can afford us."

"What are you saying?" Takaharis asked in surprise, "Are you actually considering taking the boy on as a student?"

"I have seen his measure and zee strength of his determination," Angelique said gravely, giving Tatewaki her full attention, "Your eyes are indeed firm with zee desire to learn...but can you truly appreciate what it is zhat you ask of me? Are you prepared to endure zee strain of my discipline, to commit yourself totally to do as I direct you without pause or hesitation?"

"I do, Sensei," Tatewaki said firmly, "And I am prepared to give my utmost if it means that I can improve my skills sufficiently so as to not be a burden in a fight, but rather to be valued as an ally by those whom I call my friends and loved ones."

"You already have zair love, if I may judge from zee example of zee fair Natsume, your fiancée," Angelique said coyly, "But we will talk of zhis again come zee morning. For anon it is much too late to be concerned with training. We shall start between periods tomorrow morning, and I expect you to be on time since-as you say-time for us is of the essence."

"I thank you, Sensei," Tatewaki folded himself forward at the waist and bowed down before the golden haired Temuvarai, "I would not insult you by offering you payment for your services...but if there is any way in which I may demonstrate my gratitude, do not hesitate to take advantage of my fortune."

"Honorably spoken," Angelique replied, "And you are correct...it would be vulgar to expect payment for zee torturous ordeal zhat I intend to inflict upon you, Monsieur Kuno. But I will remember your generous offer, and if anything comes to mind zhat would suit zee obligation zhat you are feeling zhen I will most assuredly call upon your services at a time and place of my choosing."

"You have my word that I shall uphold my end of the bargain," Tatewaki said as he straightened up and then slowly rose to his feet, folding his arms into the sleeves of his hakama then saying, "And now, with your indulgence, I shall take my leave. It was not my intent to disturb you or draw you away from...whatever it was that you were previously doing. Please accept my apology if I interrupted you during an awkward moment. I will leave you now to attend on matters while I repair back to my own abode lest my lady love begin to suspect me of dawdling here for too long."

With that he bowed again then turned away, leaving Takaharis to lean closer to Angelique in order to murmur, "You mean he wasn't here just to gawk on us in our nighties?"

"Do not sound so disappointed, Cheri," Angelique softly chided, watching Tatewaki stride away into the night before saying, "And non, he was sincere in making both his request and his offer. I have a sense when people disguise or shade the truth to cover their own ill-wrought behavior, and there was no sense of the dissembler within him. Just be glad zhat he is non pavaratsi or else we would surely find our images posted in some notorious context."

"No doubt you're right about that," Takaharis agreed, "And the last thing I need is to have my image spread out on the internet, especially my true aspect. You never know who might discover my current whereabouts and come to pay me a visit...might even be a relative, the kind I'd much rather avoid meeting."

"Never fear, ma cheri," Angelique patted the Erinyes on the cheek and smiled fetchingly, "While I am here none will dare to come after you, else they face the wrath of a full-sworn Temuvarai."

"So when did you become my protector?" Takaharis asked, surprised at the tenderness of the offer, "Not that it's unappreciated, but I've been looking after myself for a very long time I'll have you know."

"I never intended to slight your abilities, Cheri," Angelique said sweetly, her face only inches away from that of the Erinyes, "I know you to be tres formidible, but it still falls to me to defend your honor as only a knight errant may do for her lady. Now, if we are quite done enjoying the night air, perhaps you would care to join me back in bed where we may resume with our nocturnal studies?"

"Are you kidding me?" Takaharis said in surprise, "After all we just did, you still want to go at it?"

"Always, Cheri," Angelique chuckled merrily as she headed back towards the house, "Although a brief pause for rest is naturally quite desirable, once the body and mind have replenished themselves it is quite natural to put zee energy to good use, non? Or are you telling me zat you would rather spend zee rest of the evening in bed for sleep alone, me qui?"

"You really are unbelievable, you know that?" Takaharis murmured softly as she watched the human vanish around the corner, then thought another moment and said, "Oh hell...who am I kidding?" and hastily followed after, intending to see which one of them would be first to pass out, and fully intending that this time it would be Angelique who would lay spent and exhausted. Now way would she come out second best to a mere human, not even one with such extraordinary gifts and a divine constitution as this one, which was why she hastened to bed to resume the next round of their affectionate love-match...

"So, Ranko-chan, did you complete reading those files?"

"Sure did, Mom," Junior Field Operative Saotome Ranko replied as she plopped down in the seat near to her adopted mother's work station, "Talk about getting your crash-courses in History 101...or is it that Theo-stuff that you Lore Masters like to go on about all of the time?"

"Theosophy," Senior Operative Saotome Nabiki corrected, "Literally translated as 'The Study of God,' or gods if you will, and usually assorted with a distinctly Mythopoetic view of history that clashes very dramatically with the conventional views held by 21st century science."

"No kidding," Ranko averred, "I thought that stuff about Lemuria and Atlantis was pretty weird, but you're telling me that all of human history has been linked to one big struggle between the forces of order and chaos, and that these Daokan guys are at the center of this conflict?"

"That's the short hand version of things, Squirt," First Grade Field Operative Saotome Ranma answered from where he stood perched over his wife's command chair, "The Four Who are One, or rather four aspects of one being, and between them they share an incredible power that's literally beyond measurement, which is why they figure so prominently throughout history, albeit largely in the background...unless you count the legends they've inspired just by being what they are and all of that."

"The division of their nature is quite elementary, to pardon a poor choice of phrase," Nabiki noted, "Anri is enlightenment and reason, Udan is control and self-restraint, Reka the total opposite of both, while Ulsa...she's pure spirit made incarnate in a human body...all knowing and all powerful, yet totally passive, a mere observer on life's stage, preferring to leave the active role to her brothers."

"Okay, I get all that...sorta," Ranko said, "So why the hell are those guys in Nerima? And what do they want with Lylac's parents anyway...especially that Anri guy, if he really is...who the records say he is, which is flat out crazy."

"Think that's crazy?" Ranma sniffed, "Stick around, Kid, and you're in for a treat. Once the Daokan get going you know that trouble's gonna hit like a thousand metric ton brick dropped from sub-orbit...or something like that. I'm quoting from your mother."

"And rather badly at that," Nabiki sniffed, "It's all true, Ranko-chan...the history books are founded on the actions of the Daokan, though the real story is a lot more complex than most people can imagine. And as for what they are doing here...I shudder to know the answer, though preliminary scans of the timeframe...are not altogether encouraging."

"They're not?" Ranko sat up in her seat, "Why? What happens in the future? What happens to my friends, Lylac and Ekko?"

"Unknown at the present," Nabiki replied, "There is a pending disruption to the timeline, suggesting that someone is attempting to tamper with the natural course of events, creating a crossover event that could erase the future timeline that you're familiar with, preventing your friends...from achieving their full potential."

"Hah?" Ranko asked.

"She means bad shit could happen," Ranma translated, "Temporal Negation, erasing the reality that you know and replacing it with something a hell of a lot grimmer."

"But that's crazy!" Ranko protested, "I've met Lylac and Ekko...several times, in fact, and we've shared lots of adventures together! I count them as two of my closest friends, and we've even...ah...well...done stuff together outside of having adventures..."

"Hey we know about that stuff," Ranma chided, "We've been to the house of the Miroku, remember? And yeah...doesn't make a lick of sense to me either, but then I'm just the muscle around here. I leave the fancy brainy stuff to your mother."

"Which proves the adage about with age comes wisdom,, even in your case," Nabiki affectionately remarked, studying the displays at her station carefully before adding, "But as best as I can reconstruct things from the data, it appears as if our old friends, the Chaos Lords, are at it again attempting to throw a monkey wrench into the cosmic machinery of Yggdrasil."

"Those guys again?" Ranma groaned, "I'm still itching over the last time...had to take a bath for three solid days before I started to feel less...gritty."

"Blame it on the Saotome charm that seems to work its effect upon the hapless women of the cosmos," Nabiki ominously growled, "Only in that instance I think you really overdid it."

"Hey, how was I to know she was a female Chaos Lord?" Ranma protested, "Unless they manifest a human shape they all look like blobs of writhing tentacles to me, and that definitely wasn't my idea of dating!"

"Oh sure," Nabiki said skeptically, "You can say that now, but I noticed you took your sweet time about doing something to liberate yourself, like vaporizing the horny bitch."

"For crying out loud, you make it sound like I wanted to get violated!" Ranma stoutly protested, "I was used by her, nothing more than that! And if you want to know the honest truth, she was more of a lady about it than some I could mention..."

"You mean like a certain Amazon we once both knew so well?" Nabiki asked pointedly.

"Well, now that you mention it, the comparison between her and an octopus does seem more than a bit..." Ranma started to say, when Ranko interrupted.

"Uh, guys? Mom, Pop?" their adopted child spoke up, "As much as I love hearing these love-spats of yours, would you mind getting back to the main subject? Like...what's this business about Chaos Lords, and how are they gonna disrupt the timeline?"

"Oh yeah, that," Ranma sniffed, "Standard operating procedure most like...dupe some poor schmucks into doing their bidding, pretend to be all sweetness and light, then bring about Armageddon where they let the mask fall down to reveal the devil beneath them."

"Aptly put, Husband," Nabiki complimented, only to add, "And we'll table our discussion about your transgression for another time when things are not so...hectic."

"What is a Chaos Lord anyway?" Ranko asked, seeing her father roll his eyes at his wife's stubborn persistence.

"That'd take almost as long to explain as about the Daokan," Ranma answered, "But simply put they're an alien form of intelligence that exists outside the physical worlds of time and space as we understand it. Think of them as big shambling monsters with pretensions towards godhood, only totally unlike anything we know with strange motives and a manner of thinking that would confound a French intellectual..."

"What your father means is that they are beyond our understanding and have no place within the physical cosmos," Nabiki answered, "They are alien in the most extreme definition of the word and have no relationship to anything remotely within the scope of human consciousness. They are nightmare beings in the purest sense of the word and are possessed of an inherent loathing for the worlds of physical matter, which they seek to erase through permeation, infiltration and corruption of the integral structure of fourth continuum existence."

"Fourth continuwhat?" Ranko asked with a puzzled expression.

"Fourth Continuum, squirt," her father gently chided, "Time and Space as expressed through the multiple layers of reality that we call the Multiverse. It's a complex web of intersecting probabilities with past, present and future arrayed in a non-linear pattern of causiality...or at least that's how your mom described it to me when I first asked that question...and don't look at me like that, I don't know what the heck that means either."

"It means that what we are faced with is nothing less than a bold faced attempt to erode the structure of a particular timeframe by direct intervention from forces with allegiance to the Outer Dark," Nabiki replied, "And-true to the perversity of their nature-these dark forces are operating under the cover of light, pretending to be the opposite of what they actually are and using religion for a cover to pursue their evil objectives. The severity of this infiltration can be measured by the very fact that the Daokan are involved, and their concern for the outcome is cause enough for us all to be deeply worried."

"Canaries in a mine," Ranma rumbled, "Only these canaries can blow the hell out of just about anything this side of a major god...so what the hell are they holding back for? Why not just go to the source and eliminate the problem where it's started?"

"An interesting question by itself, Husband," Nabiki remarked, studying the displays while operating the controls with skillful mastery and determination, "Normally they do not act directly to interfere with mortal affairs, but here they are stepping boldly out from behind the shadows and directly confronting their agents, challenging them to take up their banner, which is not at all like their usual modus operandus. Indeed, it almost suggests a degree of desperation that is quite alarming for beings of such magnitude and...eh? What's this I'm detecting?"

"Something's up, Mom?" Ranko asked with an upraised crimson eyebrow.

"That's weird," Ranma leaned forward, "An anomaly forming around the old Tendo place...like a temporal probability bubble...or something like that anyway."

"You're definitely right about that, Ranchan," Nabiki said as she moved her hands liquidly over her console, further refining her focus, "A neo-event directly disrupting probability lines has nearly caused the total erasure of the normal flow of the timeline. Two forces vectored and interfered with one another, the one attempting to cause an event, the other acting to block it, almost like one sword deflecting another, parrying an effort that could have totally voided the natural course of this timeline's future."

"What the heck could have caused that?" Ranko asked, only to perceive the sudden dark scowl that clouded the ruggedly handsome expression of her adopted father, "Pop?"

"Those bastards," Ranma's tone was murderously level, and he gripped his wife's console chair with enough force that the material noticeably groaned and threatened to collapse over his unconscious efforts, "How dare they do a thing like that to you, Nabiki!"

"Calm down, Ranma," Nabiki urged, her own face and tone nonetheless quite shaken as she stared at her own displays, "That isn't really me, just one of my parallel sisters..."

"I don't care if it's the real you or not!" Ranma swore, seething with a rage that was frightening to behold, even for Ranko, "Nobody does that to my wife and gets away with it! He's dead whoever just tried to blow your head off..."

"What?" Ranko reacted in shock, turning to her paratime aunt and adopted mother, "Mom?"

"An assassination attempt on my life...or rather the life of the father-mother of your friend, Lylac," Nabiki explained, "A bullet fired from a high-powered rifle just came within inches ending my sister's life. And if she had died at this point in reality the effects upon the timeline itself would have been totally catastrophic."

"But it didn't really happen...did it?" Ranko wondered with a chill of dread underlining her hopeful expression.

"No," Nabiki replied, "Like I said before, the attempt was voided before it could solidify into an actual event...and I can confirm here that all of the surrounding probability lines have been similarly blocked and altered so that no parallel event has formed that would have reflected such a negative outcome."

"The Daokan again...probably Laolana," Ranma made a forcible effort to calm himself down, "That's one I owe her...or maybe that Anri guy. It's his style to work around a thing like this...though it ain't too often he chooses to act this directly."

"But who fired the shot?" Ranko asked, leaning forward near her mother's left shoulder.

"I'm working on securing that information," Nabiki assured, her hands flying over the controls of her console, "It seems a lesser event is taking part at the location where the shot originated from and-oh my...what's this? A secondary event? A red dot flashing...oh my goddess..."

"Huh?" Ranma started, "Radigar's on the move? About time the fourth Daokan made his play...but...who's he picking on, and why is he letting loose with that much raw juice?"

"It's Kasumi," Nabiki said in hushed dismay, "He's attacking my oneechan...I mean...the one native to this dimension..."

"Aunt Kasumi's in danger?" Ranko all but jumped, "We've gotta do something!"

"No argument there, Kid," Ranma said as he moved away from the console, "And I'm on it ASAP..."

"Not you," Nabiki hastily snapped, "I'm dispatching Ranko."

"What?" Ranma started, "No way! She's good, but I'm the only one who's equipped to take one of these guys mano-to-mano...!"

"Exactly," Nabiki stated flatly, "You go in there with guns blazing and it'll be literally like throwing napalm on an inferno. Ranko can moderate her energies enough to do direct surveillance without tipping the balance towards anarchy, while if you get in there you could make matters a whole lot worse. Trust me on this, Husband, we're better off saving your strength until a later time where you can really make a difference."

"But...but...oh hell," Ranma fumed impotently with fists at his sides and his expression dark with barely constrained emotions, "I hate it when you're right...but...you're asking me to stand here and do nothing while Kasumi..."

"She can handle herself better than you might think on this timeline, Ranchan," Nabiki said with as much reassurance as she could muster, "Do you think I'd take risks with her health otherwise? Get going, Ranko-chan, and keep your com-link open. I will attempt to direct you from here in case things escalate beyond your ability to function."

"Right Mom," Ranko nodded, turning and heading towards the Temporal Transference Tubes, "I won't let you and Pop down...or Aunt Kasumi for that matter."

"Just be careful, half-pint," Ranma cautioned, "You've never faced one of these guys by yourself in a fight, and believe me, you don't want to."

"I'll try and keep out of the way of trouble, Pop, just like you would," Ranko assured before entering the tube and preparing for transference to the coordinates in question.

Ranma waited until his temporally-displayed daughter had exited the scene before turning to his wife and asking, "Why doesn't that make me feel any better?"

"Like father like daughter," Nabiki replied, "With a bit of my sister's impulsive hard-headedness thrown in to really make me feel both fearful and nostalgic."

"But...what about that other event, Nabiki?" Ranma asked, "Somebody did just try to kill you...if only by proxy."

"Point taken, husband," Nabiki replied, already directing her station to follow up on the matter, "What say we turn our focus to that before we orient upon Kasumi? After all, this is bound to prove illuminating and give us a further clue as to the nature of the menace we are facing..."

And with that declaration the Lore Master and Mistress of Time began to orient her display terminals towards the source of a singularity, and thus brought into focus an unusual struggle that was taking place atop a certain high tower located within Nerima...

The sudden sense of an attack from above-coupled with the unexpected cry of, "NOT ON MY WATCH, PAL!" caused Yagyu to flinch ever-so-slightly as he pressed his finger to the trigger of his weapon, thus causing the rifle to jerk by the barest of millimeters, causing the bullet to veer off from its intended target.

The shot rang out as the heavy-grain projectile spat from the barrel and tumbled through the air at a fast-spinning velocity that insured its level trajectory as it crossed the distance of a quarter of a mile in less than one second. Had the shot been on target it would have obliterated the object within its intended path-a human head-causing it to explode like a proverbial ripe melon...but instead the shot went wild and missed its target by the span of several inches.

At the same time some warning instinct caused Nabiki to flinch and drop down to her knees even as the bullet shattered a pane of glass and bit into the hard frame of the wood paneling directly behind her. Reflexes that had served her well in a thousand battles kicked in even as she felt the pressure wave created by the bullet's passage against the nape-hairs of her neck, and then she curled up around the object within her arms, instinctively shielding her newborn son from further attack while making herself a much smaller target, well out of alignment of the window.

Genma and Soun were but a fraction of an instant behind this occurrence as both men dove forward, and-to Nabiki's considerable astonishment-formed a human shield with their bodies, surrounding and protecting her as best they were able.

"Did you see that, Saotome?" Soun asked.

"Saw and felt it, Tendo-kun," Genma replied, "It came from the west side, maybe four or five blocks distance."

"What the hell are you talking about?" Nabiki asked, shock now belatedly rising up within her as the gravity of the situation began to slowly sink past her mental defenses, "What...just happened?"

"Someone took a shot at you, Nabiki," her father replied, "The fact that they missed means we must keep you out of sight until the crisis has abated."

"Took a shot at me?" Nabiki started, "But why?"

"Who knows?" Genma answered, "Perhaps the same group that send that boy to murder you earlier in the day. You do tend to attract that sort of reaction in certain kinds of people."

Nabiki scowled, "This isn't the time to be joking around, Uncle. If somebody is out there shooting at us we could all three be targets, you included."

"Don't be stupid, Girl," Genma snapped, "Who do you think they would go to all this trouble if not you? You're the one who obviously is standing in the way of the bad people and their unholy ambition."

"That's right, Nabiki," Soun agreed sagely, "We obviously don't matter enough to be worth shooting, or else the assassin would have gone through us in order to get at you. And if that was not the case would Saotome-kun be risking his life shielding you with his body?"

"Gah-that isn't what I mean, Tendo!" Genma protested, "You could give me a little more credit than that..."

"You're right...you're both right," Nabiki said in slow realization, "I should have figured that out for myself, but...I was distracted. Somebody definitely is starting to get on my nerves, and attacking me in my home tears it, especially when I'm holding my kid! Here Daddy...take Chusen for me, I'm gonna go see just who it is that they sent out to get me this time."

She passed along her baby into the arms of her astonished father, then turned to Genma and said, "Let's see how good a teacher you really are, Old Man."

And then her outline blurred, and before their very eyes she vanished from the room, leaving both men to gasp and exchange astonished looks with one another, then turn worried glances in the direction from which the shot had been fired, even as they heard a commotion from the other end of the house as Perfume alerted the others of the attack, being the one most sensitive to disturbances within their extended household, even if the warning came too late for the rest of their clan to do more than react to the budding crisis...

At that very moment upstairs Ranma was laying out on his back atop the roof of the dojo feeling spent and worn and very much used up. At the same time the cells in his body were humming with new life and new energies, the residual effect of his elementals having re-merged within his frame after achieving their objectives. It was paradoxical that he felt both tired and enlivened at one and the same moment, but that was hardly surprising considering all that had happened of late...and considering how much the act of sex had energized his ladies he was not at all dismayed to feel the carry-over effect of their pooled combined energies bleeding over into him by spiritual osmosis.

"Oh man," he said to himself aloud, "I'll bet they'll blame me for this too...I'm in so much trouble..."

For once he did not hear an internal voice reassuring him that all would be well and that his human wives would eventually forgive him. All five of his elemental ladies were taking a nap inside of him, recovering from more than just their vigorous sex-play as they metabolized the energies that they had absorbed performing their ritual of Xeno-gene-tropo-whatsis.

And now...now he had to lay there and consider the implications of what he had just done, what he had allowed himself to do, whether with or without the blessing of his wives. He had just done the unthinkable, had sex with five women in one day, and for the purpose of making his elemental servants pregnant with his children. And without consulting his wives in advanced...particularly Nabiki, who only nominally gave consent to the last incident in a kind of "get it over with" manner that assured that things were not all right with her, but that she was willing to look the other way out of necessity rather than conviction.

How did this come to pass? How could he have allowed a thing like this to happen? He never intended to cheat on anyone, especially not to the mothers of his children, the women he had fought beside and whom he loved more than life itself, which was not a mere cliché in his case as he truly would sacrifice everything for their sake. Shampoo, Ukyo and Perfume were particularly close to him, being friends as much as lovers in bed, and very easy to spend time with, even though they had their occasional spats and disagreements that gave color to their otherwise harmonious marriage.

But it was to Nabiki that he had his closest commitment, a bond of understanding and trust that went beyond romantic love, being forged in the fires of their mutual love of martial arts. They were warriors both and knew each other so well that it was like each was an extension of the other's being, and one would not be complete without the other. To violate any trust with her was simply unthinkable, and to go behind her back in any way and put their whole marriage into jeopardy was a thing outside his nature, and the thought of losing her through betrayal was more terrifying than any thought he could have short of somebody actually dying.

And somebody had tried to kill her...sending that religious-spouting creep out to attempt to assassinate her during school hours. Obviously not somebody smart enough to know that his wife would be home taking care of their son at the time, but clearly not bothered about using a humanoid weapon of mass destruction to do his or her evil bidding. It was enough to make him tighten his fists with anger, to feel a need to lash out, to punish the one who would do such a thing...and who had caused the death of the father of his best friend no less. Just thinking about the hell that Kuno Tatewaki must be feeling at that moment was enough to make Ranma grit his teeth and avow that he would punish the one behind David Lo's insidious rampage.

"I'll find him for you, buddy," he said aloud, making a promise to the gathering stars that he would not rest until he had avenged both himself and Tatewaki. A strike against any member of their group (or "Posse") was a blow against all of them, and one did not let an insult like that go unanswered, not if they wanted to call themselves a man. He would get to the bottom of this and soon, and thorough the act of retribution seek to regain a portion of his tarnished honor, if only to let himself feel any kind of peace since there was little else that he could do to redeem his pride in his own eyes...

All at once he heard a sharp whistling noise bite through the air, and then something like a popping noise from somewhere just below him. It took several long heartbeats until he registered the sound of a different kind of crack, and then he sat bolt upright, forgetting all about his fatigue as his head whipped around and he turned to face in a Westerly direction.

"What the fuck was that?" he asked aloud, and to only a mild bit of surprise he felt Karina stirring within him to form an answer.

**That was a rifle shot...I would know it anywhere, Master.**

"Yeah?" Ranma asked, feeling his heart lurch in his breath as he fought to control the sudden skipping of his pulse as he dreaded to know the answer, "How can you tell?"

**The pressure wave is familiar enough to me,** she answered faintly, **It is the sound that can only be made by hot metal hissing through the firmament. Someone just took a shot at this house, and from a very far ways off...at least several hundred meters.**

"Nabiki?" Ranma asked, suddenly knowing the answer before he spoke her name as a question.

**She lives,** replied Sharil, **I feel the connection we shared together is unbroken...in fact, I can sense her moving down below, and she is very, very angry.**

Ranma turned and stared down into the yard, and with the enhancement of his senses that came with Senken training made out the distinctive blur that could only belong to a martial artist practicing the Invisibility technique of the Umisenkien. Without a shred of doubt in his mind he knew at once what his wife was up to, which in no way set him at ease as it meant that she was headed into danger.

"Nabiki..." he murmured faintly, then at once reached for his discarded clothes and pulled them on with great haste, intending to follow her to hell and back if it meant getting to the bottom of affairs and uncovering the truth behind this latest outrage being perpetrated against the clan of Saotome...

Yagyu rolled instinctively to one side and brought his rifle up in a defensive block as the shadow of night fell upon him like a crazed Irish banshee. To only his mild surprise he found the tip of a saber flashing past one cheek as his assailant attempted to skewer him, and then something landed heavily with a thump to his right and he whirled around to come face-to-face with a living nightmare.

"BASTARD!" she snarled as she savagely whipped a saber-thrust towards him that moved so fast that he barely had time to either dodge or deflect it, and then another thrust and slash forced him further on the defensive as he fought against the impression of fangs and fury being leveled against him.

"Sneak attacking in the early part of the twilight?" she hissed while skillfully assaulting him with deadly fencing attacks that came shockingly close to scoring against her opponent, "Trying to blow the head off a mother holding her kid? What the fuck kind of asshole are you, you coward?"

"Hey there!" Yagyu protested while maneuvering to put more distance between himself and his womanly assailant, "That's getting a little personal, don't you think?"

"No, I don't!" the redheaded banshee assured him, pressing her attack and fighting with a speed and strength of limb that was nothing less than superhuman.

Yagyu continued to defend himself, looking for an opening and-when he thought he saw one-took one step back and aimed his rifle at his assailant. No sooner did he pull the trigger, however, than his senses warned him that his opponent was standing off to his left and behind him, and only by moving with preternatural speed for his own part did he avoid getting skewered in one kidney. He instinctively rolled and brought his rifle around to aim in this new direction, but her sword caught it straight-on and cut cleanly through the stock, rendering it effectively useless, so he had to mutter and toss the splintered pieces to the side while going for his pistols, all in one fluid motion that-to any unpracticed eye-would objectively appear to be with lightning fast reflexes.

But no sooner did he draw and fire with his pistols then the redheaded girl moved to dodge his attack, and then she was upon him from en entirely different angle. Yagyu was again forced on the defensive-a position rare and unique for him-as he turned and fired again and again at an impossibly fast rate at rapidly altering angles, yet not once did he come close to nailing his elusive target.

And then, suddenly, she was there in his face thrusting her saber in past his guard and nearly scoring a fatal blow had he not angled his body and twisted to the side at the very last instant. A cool breeze wafted along the side of his body armor and-without needing to look-he realized that he had been injured, so fluidly in fact that he did not begin to feel pain until many seconds later, after which he scored his own "first blood" by finally getting a good shot in at point-blank range and at last scoring a hit with the redhead.

The impact of his bullets tearing into her picked the redhead up and knocked her back on her heels by several paces. Yagyu staggered backwards a bit himself to buy time and range and kept his pistols trained on her, though at first glance it seemed as though the effort would be unnecessary as he saw the blood seeping from her wounds and knew for a fact that she was mortally stricken.

The redhead glanced down at her own injuries and seemed to be having difficulty remaining upright, but a moment more and she regained her balance, and then her eyes cleared of shock and pain and regained their angry cast, though she did not renew her attack for the moment.

The two of them stood there staring at one another, and then Yagyu risked glancing down at himself and noticed the rather nasty tear in his own kevlar vest and winced at the blood he felt seeping out there, though he immediately turned his attention back to his opponent and the rather striking fact that prompted him to say, "Why aren't you dying?"

"You first," she hissed back, though from the manner in which she said this he could tell that-for the moment-it was mostly bravado and artifice as she was not in any condition to immediately continue fighting.

Yagyu continued to stare and then came to a rather startling conclusion, "You're immortal?"

"Close enough," she said, holding her sword at the ready, "And you're not."

Yagyu considered his next move and then decided to try diplomacy rather than violence, "I've encountered immortals before in my line of work...which type of immortal are you? The kind who goes around chopping the heads off her own kind?"

"Sometimes," the redhead said in a stronger voice than before, her eyes gleaming with menace, "But I make the odd exception when it comes to guys who try murdering my friends in cold blood."

"Oh," Yagyu replied with a lifted eyebrow, "Friend of the almost-deceased? Well...under the circumstances I suppose I can hardly blame you for being a bit upset."

"Fuck you," the redhead hissed in deadly menace.

"Look, I know it appears bad, and I won't lie to you about the fact that I am here to kill your friend," Yagyu said, reckoning that even holding his pistols on the girl was not giving him that much of a technical advantage, "But I really personally have nothing against Tendo Nabiki. I'm doing this for a larger cause because I was ordered to do so, and I really would rather not upset the people I work for. There is a lot more at stake here than you could possibly imagine."

"Why don't you try telling me all about it?" the redhead asked in a stronger voice that definitely confirmed his suspicions that she was biding her time and healing back at a rapidly accelerated rate that definitely marked her as non-  
human.

"I might...but that would mean compromising my position," Yagyu said, "And-no offense to you-I don't exactly feel like sharing all of my secrets with a complete and total stranger."

"I suppose if I were in your case I might agree with you," the redhead smiled darkly, "Unfortunately for you...I have no reason to respect your position."

Yagyu was about to ask her what she meant when suddenly her eyes gleamed brightly in the darkness...and he cursed himself belatedly for being so stupidly careless as to allow himself to be thus distracted. He did not have much time to voice regrets for having underestimated her, however, because the next instant she vanished from where she had appeared to be standing, and all at once arms as strong as steel gripped hold of him tightly and tipped his head at a rather sharp angle.

The next instant he felt the stab of pain in his neck, and the warm flow of his bodily essence as it seemed into her mouth, and with suddenly sharp clarity he knew exactly what type of immortal he was dealing with here, and why it was a mistake to underestimate her. The shock of several seconds of contact brought an unexpected languor to his limbs, but still he reacted as his training dictated, and he reflexively touched a hidden stud in one arm brace, then jabbed his elbow backwards and found his mark in the torso of the vampire.

Lenore staggered backwards in shock, having felt six inches of hard metal penetrate her right lung, just missing her heart by the barest of margins. She silently cursed her own carelessness for having allowed herself to be distracted with absorbing the mind and memories of her nominal victim...only to nearly wind up herself the victim as her foe turned about and pointed his pistol at her head with an almost regretful expression.

"Sorry to have to do this, lady...but I can't take any chances, and being already dead...well...you know what the score is."

Lenore saw him tense a finger on the trigger and knew that she could neither dodge nor absorb the kind of damage his bullet would inflict upon her at this range. The one thing she could not regenerate was a head shot, or any sort of critical damage to the central nervous system, and at this range his bullet would definitely kill her as dead as any mortal, so she closed her eyes and prepared for the end, silently offering her regrets to Chloe and her other friends as she was about to be received into the great hereafter.

But that was before a foot hit the man named Yagyu squarely on the jaw and sent him reeling sideways. The man tumbled to the roof and barely managed to retain consciousness as only training spared him from breaking his neck, his reflexes helping to guide his momentum back up into a standing crouch.

Nabiki stood there glaring at the assassin while Lenore panted and waited to heal, surprised at this sudden reversal of positions as she had never suspected the middle Tendo daughter of being fast enough to cover the distance between Tendo house and rooftop in as little time as it had taken.

"You okay, Lenore-san?" she asked, her gaze focused levelly upon the man who was the true center of danger.

"Yeah," Lenore grunted, finding it awkward to speak with only one lung functioning at full capacity, "Be careful...he's good..."

"So I gathered," Nabiki said in a deceptively even tone of voice, "You mind telling me what this is all about Mister?"

Yagyu straightened up somewhat then said, "Impressive. I think I'm beginning to see why Otono-san is so intent on ridding himself of you, Tendo-san. My apologies for my actions, but...I act in the name of a greater good. You would understand if I had the time, authority and inclination to inform you."

"So why don't we just cut to the chase and I'll beat the truth out of you first?" Nabiki asked, making a point to crack her knuckles for his benefit, "In fact, that's the way I'd prefer it."

Yagyu had lost his pistols due to the tumble, but he was hardly without back-up weapons and instantly drew a machine pistol that he kept concealed in a back-  
holster for just such emergencies as this.

"Why don't we not explore that option...that is unless you think you can move faster than I can shoot...and I assure you, I don't miss all that often."

"Oh look," Nabiki said scornfully, "He's got a gun. Whatever am I going to do?"

All at once Yagyu felt an elbow in his gut as the girl was impossibly in front of him, having crossed ten meters of distance in barely an eyeblink.

"How about this?" she snarled, the force of her blow picking the assassin up and tumbling him backwards.

Another man would have been down for the count, but Yagyu managed to roll back to his feet, grunting in pain, "Impossible...you're that fast...?"

"Faster," Nabiki growled, curling her hands to form a ball that glowed brightly between her palms, "Now have a look at what I'm packing-ASSHOLE!"

Yagyu's eyes went wide as all at once a globe of energy shot from the hands of his intended victim and grow to cannonball size in a space so brief that it barely warranted estimation. All at once the entire night lit up as the portion of the roof where he was standing was subjected to an intense explosion well beyond the damage a howitzer might render, and when the blast was spent it left scorch marks everywhere, whole sections of brick, mortar and concrete blown away as though subjected to a massive blow torch.

But to the mutual astonishment of both Lenore and Nabiki they found their opponent still standing, arms raised like a shield, having somehow absorbed and deflected much of the blast while leaving the rest of him only mildly singed around the corners.

Yagyu very slowly lowered his arms then said, "Ouch...now that hurt..."

"What in the...who are you?" Nabiki demanded?"

The man straightened out then bowed to them, "Hanurabi Yagyu, at your service, Tendo-san...and I must say that I never expected you to turn out to be such a worthy opponent."

"Guess that's something we both have in common then," Nabiki glared, "We're both full of surprises."

"Look, I'm very sorry about having disrupted your evening," Yagyu said, "And I was here to kill you, I'll make no excuses about that. But things aren't exactly what they seem to be on the surface, and I have no personal qualms about either you or the vampire lady...so why don't we just call it a night and go our separate ways before one or more of us really does get hurt...I mean, permanent like?"

"And why exactly would I let you go?" Nabiki asked, "You just tried to kill me...and while I was holding my son in my arms no less."

"Yeah, I can see that looks pretty bad," Yagyu rubbed his chin, "But would it help if I told you that millions of lives hang in the balance...the greater good and all of that?"

Nabiki scowled, "What the hell are you talking about? Millions of lives? The greater good?"

"See?" Yagyu smiled, "That's what I'm talking about. I'd love to sit here and explain it all to you, but that would mean jeopardizing my position with the Amakuza group...so, if it's all the same to you both, I'll be taking my leave of you now. Don't bother coming after me because I really don't want to have to kill you."

He started to turn around when a fist suddenly blocked his vision, and then the sky exploded with stars and pinwheels, to be followed up by darkness that swallowed him up into its inky blackness.

"Too bad I don't feel the same way about you, Baka," Ranma said as he stood over the body of the fallen assassin, "You okay Nabiki...Lenore-san?"

"Ranchan," despite herself Nabiki could not help smiling in pleasure at seeing her husband make his timely appearance, then she turned to her own nearest companion and said, "I think I owe you big time for this one, Lenore-san. Unless I miss the clues here, you just saved my life."

"It's mutual," Lenore straightened up, having finally regenerated the damage rendered to her own body, though she glanced down ruefully at her own outfit, which was sporting a wicked and bloody gash in the spot where she had been injured.

"Sorry about the mess," Nabiki said as she turned back to regarding their fallen opponent, "Why don't we take it out of his hide? I'm sure a fellow like this has a bounty on his head that will more than make up for the cleaning bill."

"No," Lenore reached out with a hand and pressed it firmly against the shoulder of the middle Tendo girl, turning to regard Yagyu and saying, "Leave him be. We have to release him."

"Huh?" Ranma gave a start and said, "You feeling all right, Lenore-san?"

"Under the circumstances, just fine," Lenore replied dabbing her mouth, which was still covered in blood, "But when I bit him just now I got a taste of some of his memories...just a blur of images, mind you, not a full memory transfer."

"What did you pick up?" Nabiki asked her.

"Enough to know that he wasn't kidding about there being millions of lives hanging in the balance," the vampire answered, "In fact the group he works for-  
-the real bad guys in all this-are planning something incredibly nasty that could affect all of Tokyo, if not Japan en mass, and it all involves this ancient blood feud between the Saotome-Tendo lines and a group called the Amakuza..."

Before she could conclude her statement yet another explosion lit up the night, only this one taking place many blocks away, which caused the heads of all conscious parties to turn in the same mutual direction.

"What the hell...?" Ranma asked.

"Omigawd," Lenore's eyes widened, "It's Mistress Kasumi!"

"Oneechan?" Nabiki whirled on her with an astonished expression.

"She's under attack..." Lenore murmured tonelessly, and then her voice trembled in fear, "...from one of the Daokan! The one named Reka...he's here in Nerima!"

"Oneechan's being attacked?" Ranma started with dismay.

"Kuso!" Nabiki cried, even as she was already vaulting from the roof in the direction of those explosions.

"But what about...?" Ranma glanced down at the fallen Yagyu.

"Leave him!" Lenore called out, "Trust me, it's for the better!"

Ranma felt torn between trusting the vampire and obeying the need for vengeance that was within him, but in the end he followed the example of Nabiki, whose guidance he trusted implicitly in all things.

And besides which the thought of Kasumi in any sort of danger made lesser considerations seem quite trivial by scale, so he regretfully did as Lenore instructed and left the assassin where he was, to nurse a sort jaw and a headache later, and grateful to still have a head on his shoulder as Ranma most definitely would have preferred otherwise were circumstances to permit it.

As he left the scene, however, he failed to perceive a figure stepping out from the concealment of the shadows, who surveyed the scene with dark amusement before saying, "So they spared your life, Yagyu-san. How very interesting. I could take your head now and blame it on them and be none the wiser...but I think I will entertain far more amusement by reporting what I have witnessed to Otono-sama, then watching you squirm as you attempt to account for your own actions."

And with that declaration Chusitsu Miyamoto vanished back into the night, her merry laughter a thing to chill the bones as Yagyu himself shuddered fitfully in his sleep, unaware of the depth to which he had been compromised and the implications that these events would have upon the future...

Kasumi fell heavily to the ground and for a moment reeled in brief agony over having been so savagely and unexpectedly assaulted by the being known as Reka. She started to rise up, fearing a second such attack, and tensed slightly in anticipation...only to become aware of some anomalies that did not match with her expectations.

For one thing the sand under her feet was not the asphalt of the streets of Nerima. For a second thing it was full daylight and not the nighttime of before, and she blinked her eyes several times accordingly, adjusting to the third disturbing change in that there were people everywhere, and they did not look, dress or smell anything at all like the people of Nerima.

In point of fact the men and woman whom she saw were entirely gaijin and wore flowing robes that covered most of their bodies. Some women wore veils or scarves to partially conceal their features, and nearly everyone wore headgear of a type that made them seem more Arabic than anything else. In fact they looked straight out of central casting...even if the vast majority could use a good bath in her own rather provincial estimation.

Very slowly Kasumi got to her feet as she looked around in wonder, finding herself in the middle of some sort of market square with open-air booths crowded in close to one another, and loud merchants hawking their wares as if to shout down the competition. It was boisterous and noisy and there was a sense of odd tension in the air, and much too dry and warm for her liking as she tried to orient herself around the point, searching for something familiar with which to relate and finding only strangers at each and every turn.

That is...until she surfaced from the crowd, turning and approaching Kasumi as if having sensed her presence. The minute her face was exposed to view Kasumi recognized her in kind, for though the manner of dress was heavier and more substantive than that to which she was accustomed to viewing, there was no mistaking those eyes as they gazed back at her fondly with a knowing familiarity that was preternaturally focused.

"What does thee hear in this time and climate, Beloved?" the tall woman asked in gentle-mannered inquiry, the words in no way familiar, yet somehow comprehensible despite the language difference, "I recognize thee despite the difference in outer form, for thine spirit be like unto the soul that I well know as my own true better self."

"Th-Thelendra?" Kasumi asked, surprised to find her sometime lover in such a place and setting.

"Thelendra?" the woman asked curiously, "Odd name, but I sense one that I shall wear in a different incarnation. Nay, mine dearest heart...in this time I be known by the name of Miriam of Bethany, a seeress and healer of sorts who travels in the company of mine father, the Rabbi Yessus of Caesarea."

"Oh," Thelendra said, though in truth this revelation fairly astounded her, "A...different incarnation?"

"Mine latest," the woman named Miriam replied, taking Kasumi by the hands and saying, "Oh...thine flesh be warm...yet I sense that thou art other than mortal in thine present lifetime. Thou art from a different time and climate, yes?"

"I believe so," Kasumi said while relishing the feel of the other woman's hands in her own, "From what I suppose you would call the future."

"The future by mine reckoning be nay set nor determined, for there is free will that shapes the destiny of all who live," Miriam affirmed, proving to Kasumi that she was indeed the genuine article, regardless of minor differences in her current appearance, "Buy how come thee here, and from what strange realm did thee hail?"

"From Japan in my time," Kasumi answered, "Er...you wouldn't happen to know how I could get back by any chance?"

"Nippon?" Miriam said thoughtfully, "'Tis passing odd...I be nay aware of such a country...but then again I be limited in the scope of mine powers in this incarnation. Were I Rudra, the name I wore three incarnations back, it would be an entirely different story...but alas, I lack the means of sending thee hither. Perhaps if thou wouldst acquaint me with the means by which thou didst suffer temporal transference..?"

"I...met someone...named Reka, or Radigar Agrical as he call himself," Kasumi replied, "I believe he claimed to be your uncle?"

Miriam paled, "Uncle Reka? Aye...I well know his mark and likeness. Thou art fortunate indeed to have survived even a passing encounter with that devil. Oh the other hand...perhaps he deliberately sent thee hither for a reason..."

"A reason?" Kasumi asked, studying the face of the woman before her and seeing within her the face of her own beloved, "But why?"

"Impossible to fathom without asking him directly," Miriam replied, "And knowing mine uncle as I do, I wouldst nay recommend it."

Kasumi studied her companion, suddenly rife with questions, not the least of which was the age in which she currently found herself, only a few seconds later she found her answer in a very unexpected kind of interruption.

At first she felt it in the air, an increase in tension levels as the crowd circulating around them began to part and move out of the street, making way for the approach of heavily armed soldiers, the kind whose appearance was also like something out of an old western-style movie, though belatedly Kasumi found herself gawking at them like a tourist.

Her companion was much more responsive to the threat of the men approaching and grasped Kasumi by the arm to draw her out of the street, hissing sharply, "'Tis the garrison...they be mobilized! Things move apace even more swiftly than I didst foresee..."

"Those are Roman soldiers," Kasumi said in toneless disbelief.

"Good observation," Miriam said dryly, "Under the command of the provincial governor himself no less, which speaks mightily of Pilate's concerns over this matter of the insurrection?"

"Insurrection?" Kasumi asked with growing confusion.

"The Zadokites and Sicari didst launch a foolish attack upon one of the city watch towers," Miriam explained, "An incident of such gravity, coming as it does upon the eve of Passover, can only spell greater trouble for the movement."

"The movement?" Kasumi repeated.

"Mine father's social crusade to reform the spiritual unity of the people of Palestine, of course," Miiam replied, "Though think I it be a fool's endeavor, and I can nay but foresee a very bad outcome if mine father persists in defying the Samhadren."

"The Sam...? Oh my..." Kasumi exclaimed, suddenly realizing just when and where she was located, and all at once a sense of dread overcame her, perceiving intrinsically that they were all headed for a great deal of trouble...

Continued.

Comments/Criticisms/Catechism for Skeptics: shadowmane

Or: shadowmane9849

Next time up: Kasumi discovers a critical chapter in the past of the Daokan, and another piece of the puzzle falls into place regarding the current threat to Japan posed by the Amakuza, but what dramatic revelations will be revealed this time when the truth (or what passes for it in my Universe) unfolds in, "The Passion of Kasumi," or, "The World According to Anri." Be there...

X /pre 


	79. Chapter 79

preDnabiki168

Nabiki 1/2

"A Very Scary Thought"

by Jim Robert Bader

(Inspired by the works of Rumiko Takahashi Others,  
with concepts and characters created by fellow fanfic writers Wade Tritschler, DB Sommers, Nicole Manders, Andrew Greaves, Bill Guiroff and countless others, including "Buffy"  
creator Joss Whedon; with special thanks to my good pal Shiva for his editing and handling of this series.)

(Certain other characters and concepts are of my own innovation, including my interpretation of the Monster of Mary Shelly's novel, the Furies, Trudy, Takaharis Angelique d'Anjou and various other guest stars appearing in this portion of the Nabiki 1/2 series...)

Chapter Sixty-Four.

Episode One-Hundred-Sixty-Eight.

The Passion of Kasumi

"Sure was nice of the Kunos to treat us to a meal in spite of the whole place being in morning, what with the death of their father and all that," Alison noted as she and Beatrice walked home together, the latter cradling her newborn daughter in her arms while little Eileen kept pace at their side, "I still feel guilty about not being there and everything...I feel like I could have done something to put that creep out of commission before anybody got hurt..."

"It is only natural that you feel that way, Aiko-chan," Beatrice assured her wife, "But it hardly pays to berate yourself for choosing to stay home with me and thus missing out on yet another fight. Besides, from what we have heard to date, it appears that the matter was resolved without our involvement, albeit not to anyone's total satisfaction."

"So, what do you think it was all about this time?" Alison wondered, "Some religious nutcase with meta-human powers sent out by a pseudo-religious terrorist organization to avenge some feudal grudge going back generations to the Tokugawa era?"

"I certainly do hope that it proves to be nothing more than this," Beatrice remarked while scanning the darkened streets leading up to their apartment, "Because the alternative would be to believe that something very nasty is being contemplated, and that we all may be in a great deal of danger from the ones who sent this David Lo to...what in the world?"

Alison started at the sudden change in tone in the voice of her companion and asked, "Beiko?"

The silver-haired genius stopped in her tracks and scowled, "There is a car pulled out in front of our place, Darling. A stretch limousine to be exact...and three guesses who it is who is paying us this late night visitation."

"Hah?" Alison scowled, "You mean...him?"

"Who else?" Beatrice grit her teeth, "My illustrious father, Daitokuji Hitome."

"In that case," Alison growled, "Any objection to turning around and spending the rest of the night with the Tendos?"

"None whatsoever," Beatrice agree, only to have the two of them start when a voice addressed them from out of the shadows.

"Rather thought that would be the reception that I would get from you, Beatrice. A pity, really, as I was hoping this time our reunion would be civil."

"Gak!" Alison whirled around, surprised to find the tall gentleman with the distinguished white hair was standing some paces directly behind them, "Where did you come from?"

"Stealth holographic projection, father?" Beatrice frowned, "Yet another one of the patents that you stole from me."

"Yes, well...I was rather hoping that we could get past that as well, Daughter," Hitome Daitokuji replied, "You've been away for so long that I was starting to worry terribly about you, and I've missed you so much, which is why I've come to talk about a possible reunion."

"A reunion father?" Beatrice replied skeptically, "Don't you mean to say that you've been drying up business wise and want me back so that I can create new inventions for your business?"

"Why, whatever would make you say such a thing about me?" Daitokuji senior asked with a hand to his chest and a wounded expression.

"Lots of past experience?" Alison answered, though the silver-haired man ignored her and went on as if she had not spoken.

"Business is doing just fine, but our house is so big and quiet without you there. I thought it time that you move back to your old room so that we can have everything be like it was before our unpleasant little spat, which was all an unfortunate misunderstanding."

"Ah-hah," Alison snorted, "Pull the other one while you're at it..."

"Aiko-chan," Beatrice chided, then to her father with firmer insistence said, "It is nice to hear that you have been missing me, Father, and in some senses of the word I have missed you as well...but not enough to let sentiment and nostalgia cloud my judgement. I left home a year ago for a reason and you can certainly not have forgotten that I had hard evidence of your patent theft and exploitation of my inventions, to say nothing of raiding my trust fund to finance your more outlandish schemes...money set aside by my late mother that was intended for my college tuition."

"And I told you then as I am telling you now that I was only managing the trust, not raiding it as you so unjustly characterized it, Beiko-chan..."

"Don't call me that!" Beatrice hissed, "You haven't the right, not after all that you put me through, the reason I moved out and sought a life away from your dark influence, Father. Only Aiko-chan can call me that...only the woman whom I love more than life itself, who has given me everything that you could not in the way of actual affection!"

"How can you say that about me, Beatrice?" Daitokuji pouted, "Didn't I raise you and care for you? Shelter you and shower you with luxuries...gave you every indulgence that your heart could possibly desire...?"

"But not the true love of a father for his daughter," Beatrice said sadly, "You might have thought that you were giving me what I wanted, but not what I truly needed, which was the attention and guidance of an adult who truly put me first before his Money."

"I did everything for you, Beatrice," Daitokuji insisted, "I worked and slaved in order to give you a good life...and this is the thanks that you repay me?"

"Spare me," Beatrice sniffed, "Why are you here, Father? Have you finally consented to recognize my marriage to Alison...and to pay your respects to our children...your grandchildren?"

"Marriage?" Daitokuji snorted, staring down at the little redheaded urchin clinging to the leg of her equally redheaded mother and saying, "To her? You must be joking!"

"Just keep it up, Buster..." Alison glared back in deadly earnest.

"I have indulged you this far because I knew how much your heart was set on proving me wrong," Daitokuji continued, "That you could function by yourself and create a life of your own, and in that much I will concede that I underestimated your resourcefulness...but don't expect me to coddle your fantasy that your deviant lifestyle with this...alien half-breed...is in any sense like a marriage. Why, it's not even legal..."

"That's it," Alison seethed, balling her fists and starting to take a step forward, "That tears it, you...!"

"Alison," Beatrice said calmly, "Please don't. It's what he wants...don't give him the satisfaction of provoking you to anger."

"Huh?" Alison turned a startled look towards her companion, "But Beiko...!"

"He is not quite so helpless as he appears to be at the moment," Beatrice continued, giving her father a hard look before saying, "You are wearing a modified version of my Akagiyama armor underneath that three piece suit, are you not, Father?"

"What if I am?" the tall man replied, "Can you blame me for coming prepared in case I am attacked by your pet pit-bull?"

"Are you calling me a Bitch?" Alison snapped, drawing back a fist and saying, "I hope you are wearing armor, you bastard, because it means I won't have to hold back when I pound you into...!"

"Alison, please," Beatrice urged, "Not in front of the children. Besides, if anyone is going to bend my father into a pretzel then it most certainly will be me, for I have first call on his chastisement."

"You may feel resentful towards me, Beatrice," Daitokuji assured, "But it's not justified, I assure you. I am here because it is time that I take you home...and if this gaijin barbarian lifts a finger to obstruct me then I am prepared to take what steps are necessary to draw her back in line..."

"Yeah?" Alison scoffed, "You and what army?"

"Me and my army of lawyers," Daitokuji leaned forward, "Lay one hand on me and I will have you arrested and deported, along with your parents, who-I might add-  
-are both foreign born and live here on a government sponsored visa."

"What?" Alison blinked, "Are you threatening my parents?"

"Their status here in Japan is-how shall I put this?-delicate at best," Daitokuji replied, "The invitation that accepted their residency here was with a previous arrangement taken in secret by the Diet under a former Prime Minister whose party is no longer in ascendancy...so policies can change, especially if it proves to be...inconvenient for the current Prime Minister's office."

"You have to be joking, Father," Beatrice frowned, "Aiko-chan's parents are internationally recognized heroes, and it brings great honor to Japan to have them living here, responsive to the needs of this country..."

"They only moved here because of legal problems that they were having with the American government two decades back during the so-called Reagan Era," Daitokuji noted, "I believe that they objected to the then-policies of the US government and did not want their patriotism questioned as they were being called upon to perform services that they each found quite distasteful. It so happens that the current administration in power is a continuation of that selfsame era, and with the American obsession with aggressive foreign policy matters, combating world terrorism and all, why...it's business as usual all over again, and I have no doubt in the slightest that the Americans would love to reclaim possession of their heroes."

"So they can make dad do stuff that he doesn't want to do in the name of politics?" Alison scowled, "Nobody makes my parents do anything! They're the ones who decide what's in the best interest of the planet!"

"I won't quibble about policy," Daitokuji assured, "I'm just stating the ground rules for you, and what might occur if certain issues are pressed and pursued...which is subject to the influence of certain other parties with the ear of the government...if you follow my meaning."

"I do indeed, Father," Beatrice scowled, "And even for you this is a low road to follow. What are you insisting I do in order to protect my wife and her family from deportation?"

"Oh, I'm not insisting any sort of quid-pro-quo here," Daitokuji replied with an air of solemn resolution, "I'm just suggesting that you might want to start packing your bags and leaving this province so that you can come home where you belong and resume life as a part of the Daitokuji empire."

"In other words you want me back so I can resume inventing for you," Beatrice translated, "May I assume this offer includes my wife and our two daughters?"

"Eh?" Daitokuji was taken partially aback by this question, "Have them move in with you? Well...perhaps the one you are holding I could allow...after all, she is flesh of your flesh, that much can hardly be disputed."

"Hey!" Alison reacted.

"Both of them, Father," Beatrice said firmly, "And their mother-father with them. It is all or nothing...and can you at least recognize that Eileen, too, is also my daughter?"

"Her?" Daitokuji sniffed as he eyed the redheaded child hovering near to Alison's leg, "According to the medical records she is the daughter of one Alison Kent Managi, but I find nothing credible to support the claim that she is yours as well. We both know it is medically impossible for you to have fathered such a child upon this half-breed."

"Keep pushing it, Mister, and you're gonna need a legion of lawyers just to extract my foot from your butt," Alison growled in deadly menace.

"I explained it all to you before, Father," Beatrice glared, "Eileen is my daughter...I most certainly did impregnate Aiko-chan, and she contains my chromosomes that make up half of her genetic composition."

"An absurdity that you would be at pains to prove before a medical board," Daitokuji scoffed, "And do you really want to subject this child to the public humiliation and ridicule that would no doubt fall upon her if word got out that she is the product of illicit genetic experimentation?"

"Hey!" Alison protested.

Beatrice fumed, "You can accept the one child that I did carry in my body as legitimate, but not the one whom I shared who was nurtured in Aiko-chan's own body?"

"I am merely saying that what is medically and scientifically provable is not in dispute here," Daitokuji replied, "As for your child's legitimacy...well...our legal teams can work up an effective cover story to satisfy the press about that...a secret marriage to a youth who vanished mysteriously, leaving you in the care of a childhood friend, that sort of thing. Certainly preferable to stirring up a panic by suggesting that you could have a child without the need for a man...and I assure you that would lead to a firestorm of protests if it ever did become public."

"Mister," Alison growled, "In about ten seconds..."

"Spare me the cheap melodramatics," Daitokuji scoffed, "And keep in mind that my word is the one thing that will keep you from being deported. Certainly you don't want that fate to befall your friend here, do you, Beatrice? Of course, if memory does serve me right, you used to feel very differently about her...in fact, I recall a time when you actively plotted to kill her..."

"A mistake that I will spend the rest of my life atoning for," Beatrice made a point of reaching out and taking Alison by the hand, "This is my wife, and whatever fate befalls her will be mine to share, Father. If you seek to expel her from the country then you will be doing the same to me, and I assure you that where she goes I will follow, for I owe her more than my life...I owe her my love and all that I have in my possession."

"I'm afraid you don't any choice in the matter, Daughter," Daitokuji said, "You are not yet of legal age to be making those sorts of decisions, and as your father I have the right of custody and can declare myself solely fit to determine the shape of your life, who you spend time around and what you can claim as legitimately yours."

"You wouldn't dare," Beatrice grew pale as she stared at the older man in dawning horror.

"I most certainly would when I have your best interests at heart," Daitokuji assured her, "But I am willing to go so far as to concede a mistake where it concerns your engagement to the Saotome boy. I had no idea that his father had made so many other arrangements at the time when we agreed to engage you together, so let us put that issue in the past since the boy is quite hopelessly ensnared in an amoral lifestyle involving four other women."

"Ranma never knew about the engagement," Beatrice said darkly, "He is a friend, nothing more, and I am glad that we dissolved that ridiculous matter so that he could find true happiness with the women who care for him, who are also our friends and most definitely not immoral..."

"Whatever," the older man said dismissively, "But look...I've found a much more suitable match for you, a young man of great prospects who comes from a good family and will make you an excellent husband..."

"WHAT!?" Alison cried, suddenly quite enraged and only barely restraining herself form the point of violence.

"You cannot be serious!" Beatrice cried, "You want to marry me off even thought I am already married to my Aiko?"

"I told you that isn't legal," Daitokuji replied, "So let's waste no more breath on that, rather listen as I describe to you the virtuous qualities and positive traits of this man I found for you named Senzenen Mikado..."

"Mikado?" Alison took a step back as if she had been backhanded, "You're dismissing me in favor of Mikado the lecher?"

"Never," Beatrice said with a notably lethal edge to her voice, "This is insanity! I will never agree to such an obscenity..."

"As I said before, you don't have a-AAAHHH!" all at once Daitokuji hopped backwards and reached down to message his left leg, which had just received a sharp kick in the shin-bone from an unexpected quarter, a little redheaded girl who was glaring up at him with fury within her tiny cherubic expression.

"Bad grandpa!" she said, fists on hips as she stood her ground between the white haired man and her parents.

"Huh?" Alison and Beatrice said in chorus as they stared down at their eldest daughter, whose manner was very much like that of a person much older by at least a couple of decades.

"Why you little-!" Daitokuji snarled, drawing back his other leg and preparing to kick the little girl, only to have his foot be intersected as Eileen rushed forward and lifted him up in her tiny arms as though he were as light as a balloon to her touch.

"Not nice," Eileen said before slamming the man down hard on the asphalt, then picking him up again and slamming him down again saying, "Bad-very bad! Don't talk like that to my Mothers!"

Despite the fact that he was wearing a body-reinforcing suit of highly compact battle armor beneath his businessman's attire, Hitome Daitokuji found himself being treated much like a rag doll in the arms of an angry child as he was slammed to the pavement again and again until his teeth began to rattle and his head felt like a cymbal being clashed in an orchestra performance.

"Oh dear," Beatrice said after the tenth time of seeing her father so-abused, "I suppose that we should stop this..."

"Aw, do we have to?" Alison complained, "Let the squirt have some fun! She's just enjoying some quality time with your old man."

"There is a point to that," Beatrice considered, "And it is more time that they have spent bonding together than at any point since Eileen's birthing."

The child suddenly let the man go, and Daitokuji want crashing to the ground, laying there stunned and shaken for several long moments before managing to groan aloud, "That baby is a menace..."

"Hey, is that any way to talk about your own flesh and blood?" Alison asked as she opened her arms and encouraged little Eileen into her welcoming embrace. She stood up holding her daughter while grinning, then mussed the redhead's crimson curls and said, "What a chip off the old block you are! Your mother and I are so proud of you, kid! That's just the way a scumbag like that oughta be handled!"

"Of course I don't normally approve of such gratuitous violence, especially from my offspring," Beatrice added, "But for once her resemblance to you is definitely a positive asset, my darling Aiko-chan."

Despite the pounding he had just taken, Daitokuji managed to sit up and glare before saying aloud, "Mock me all you want, but mark my word...that monster will never be permitted within my house, and you will not be permitted to associate with her and...ah...ah...ah...?"

Alison and Beatrice were surprised to see the sudden change in the man's expression and demeanor, but then they noticed a shadow hovering over their heads and turned to see an astonishing sight, one that caused even little Eileen to blanch in dismay, for the object was nothing less than the very stretch limousine that they had spotted before, being held up by a pair of hands belonging to someone who was wholly unexpected.

"Excuse me...Mister Daitokuji, right?" asked Martha Kent with a casual ease that belied the fact that she was supporting four tons of reinforced steel and plastic without apparent effort, "Does this belong to you?"

And without further preamble she proceeded to break the limousine in half with as much ease as someone else might have ripping a phone book apart. She upheld the two shattered halve and then tossed them to the sides, ignoring the loud noise the parts made with crashing into the asphalt as she casually wiped her hands together.

"My...car...?" Daitokuji said in shocked dismay.

"Now it's a compact," Martha replied, "Oh, and by the way...while we are on the subject of discussing teams of lawyers, I suggest you get back to your main corporate office because I've just put a call of my own in to my lawyers, and they're going to see to it you get investigated for illegal trade dealings that have recently come to my attention. I think that will keep you more than sufficiently busy so as not to bother my sister and sister-in-law in the near future."

"Oneechan?" Alison asked in frank amazement, seeing her older half-sister dressed in her "Power Woman" costume, which had not seen that much service in the better part of two decades.

"Hello little sister," Martha smiled, then to Beatrice she added, "And don't worry, I separated the gas tank in advance so it won't explode or anything like that. Now...is this fellow causing you trouble?"

Daitokuji got to his feet and said, "Monsters...you're all monsters! You alien scum haven't heard the last of this!"

Eileen scowled at him, but Martha just took a step forward and puckered her lips, then blew upon the air, which caused a windstorm to crop out of nowhere, which picked Daitokuji up and sent him tumbling down the street for several score meters.

"Super breath?" Beatrice asked, "I did not think that physically possible. Your lung capacity, as impressive as it is..."

"Oh, it's just a mild display of telekinesis," Martha replied as she watched the man named Daitokuji scramble to his feet and begin to make great haste fleeing for his life down the streets of Nerima, "A trick I learned from my father, who used to fool people into thinking he was actually blowing air instead of mentally projecting."

"Wow, it's sure great to see you again, Sis," Alison said, "I've been worried sick for months that you might be stuck serving that Lao character, or that she sold you to an enemy! How did you manage to escape...?"

"Ah...I didn't, not really," Martha leaned forward and smiled as she studied the child in her sister's arms, "Is this little Eileen? My...you've grown big in such a short few months! When I saw you last you were barely even newborn...and is that a second daughter? My...you two have been busy..."

"More than a bit," Beatrice said dryly, gratified to find the acceptance from her wife's nearest kinswoman that she could not find from her own father.

"Whoah, wait a second here," Alison frowned, "What do you mean not really? Don't tell me you're still living with that pirate nut case...?"

"She's not a nut case to me, and I would prefer you not speak that way about my Mistress," Martha chided, "The Captain...has been very kind to me, and I have been with her for several months now, so I think I know her a little bit better than you two."

"You are still under her influence?" Beatrice asked.

"If you mean Stockholm syndrome, then probably yes," Martha smiled a bit ironically, "But let's not quibble about whether or not I've been brainwashed into thinking that Madam Lao is a nice person...I'm here because my Mistress is concerned about something very important to the safety and security of Japan, to say nothing of my family. And I'm also here because I wanted to see how you two were doing getting along by yourselves...and it seems my timing couldn't be better. Is that guy always such a louse?"

"More or less," Beatrice replied, "But he's still my father, much though I would wish otherwise."

"And here I thought his father was a pain in the tush," Martha sniffed, "So glad to see you're a cut above your late grandfather. Now then...what's this about him trying to force you to come back to live with him?"

"It's quite simple, really," Beatrice replied, "In a few more weeks I turn eighteen, so he wanted to preempt my coming of age by getting me back under his thumb before I was in a position to assert my legal rights and lay claim to my mother's trust fund. Also too, he's no doubt run out of ideas of his own and has learned of the inroads that I have made in trying to establish my own company with full claim to the patents of my more recent inventions."

"I thought it sounded something like that," Martha nodded sagely, "Remind me to get back to you on a little business proposition I've been wanting to make ever since learning about your relationship to Aiko-chan here. I think I may be able to work it so that you never have to worry about your father getting the leverage to mess up your life ever again. Interested in hearing the details?"

"Indeed," Beatrice replied in surprise, "That would be most...charitable of you, Sister-in-law."

"Not really," Martha smiled, "You're family, right? And besides...you may be able to do a favor for me sometime very soon...but enough about business. How is Aiko treating you? Does she still snore like a buzz saw?"

"Hey!" Alison protested.

"Just kidding," Martha reached out and impulsively ran her fingers through the curling locks of the redhead's long hair, then leaned closer and said, "And I'm really looking forward to getting to know you better, little lady. That was quite a feat you just pulled playing Bam-Bam with your granddad. You're a real asset to the family, you know that? Kind of reminds me a bit of what I must have been like when I was just a few years older and causing havoc for my own parents."

"Eileen is a well behaved and responsible young lady," Beatrice maintained primly, "Though there are occasions when she does more than passingly resemble her mother, which I have always found to be quite amusing."

"Dad's gonna love her when she grows up," Martha chuckled, "Just hope she turns out better than I did...ah, well...that's enough of that. Now...maybe you could help me out here. According to the source that had Captain Lao dispatch me out this way, there's been a bit of trouble in the district, right?"

"You could put it that way, Sis," Alison said while eyeing the older woman with very puzzled expression, "Ah...excuse me for saying this...but you're...kind of different from the way I remember..."

"Is that a bad thing?" Martha asked with a much-amused expression.

"Ah...no, not really," Alison replied, privately admitting that she had never seen her sister look so at peace and happy, almost like a kid despite their relative ages.

"Good," Martha clapped both young ladies on the arms and grinned, "What say we go inside and get better acquainted, and we can bring each other up to date on everything that's gone down for the past several months...and then you can tell me all that you know about what's troubling you of late so I can put my own foot down and give it the Power Woman treatment."

"Very well," Beatrice replied as she and Alison allowed themselves to be escorted back to their apartment building, "And might I add that it is very nice to see you again...Sister-in-law."

"Likewise," said little Eileen, though the puzzled looks turned towards her were as nothing compared to the curious scrutiny that she was presently paying to her newly discovered Auntie...

"This looks like the place," Ranma declared as he and Nabiki stood ready and stared all around in search of whatever it was that was making their combat senses tingle.

"Yeah...feels like it too, Ranchan," Nabiki agreed, her eyes probing the shadows all around them while she added in an uneasy tone of voice, "Wonder where Lenore-chan's gotten off to? I thought she was going to meet us here..."

"Yeah," Ranma grunted, "It's too creepy here...more up her alley. Much as I hate to say it, having a vampire like her around would make a lot of difference in finding Kasumi."

"So where has she gotten off to?" Nabiki scowled, "She can move faster in the air than we can do leaping from rooftops."

"Oh, do you mean this belongs to you?" a strangely familiar voice asked, prompting both Saotomes to whirl about in search of its owner.

At first glance they thought that they knew him, but only an instant was needed to recognize the substantial differences in form and appearance, not least of which was the mark of his spiritual aura. One could feel the difference between him and the man known simply as Anri, for he had a wilder cast about him, intensely radical with anger and rage boiling just beneath a pleasantly toned surface.

And-more notably still-he was holding Lenore by her neck at arms length with as much ease as he might a helpless kitten. Her hands were on his wrist and she was struggling to no avail as her vampiric strength was inadequate to the task of escape. If anything she looked to be on the verge of suffocation, which was odd as her breed of vampire did not require as much air as an ordinary mortal.

"Who the hell are you?" Ranma asked, "And what are you doing with Lenore-san?"

He started to take a step forward, but Nabiki thrust her arm in his path and said, "No, Ranchan...don't do it. He's much too powerful...I can feel it even at a distance."

"My congratulations," the man in the reddish clothing said with a predatory smile, "Your perceptions are good. I am indeed quite beyond your capacity to handle...but by all means, feel free not to take me at my word. I would much prefer if you allow me to demonstrate this to you by physical discourse."

"What do you want with us?" Nabiki asked, "And why are you threatening Lenore-  
san?"

"I do not threaten," the man said simply as he turned to regard the redheaded vampire girl who was at his mercy, "If I meant her harm she would already be dead. As it is I am merely amusing myself by considering what it is about this Loire clanswoman that makes her of such interest to you and my brother. There is nothing particularly special about her...just the usual traits that come with her distinctive sub-species. Heightened strength and agility, the ability to levitate, shapeshift, manipulate time, paralyze with a glance, absorb damage that would be fatal to a moral. Oh yes...and that her aging process is slowed to but a fraction of what is considered ordinary...all this and a blood thirst that must be quenched every other day or else she suffers intense aenemia. All perfectly ordinary, almost boring details of a typical example of the Morisori strain of humanity. I could snap her neck and cause her immediate discorporation and the world would hardly notice..."

All at once he casually tossed Lenore to the side, and Ranma went to where she landed and knelt over her, saying, "Are you all right? What did he do to you...?"

Lenore was choking and holding her neck as if trying to speak despite having come close to dying, and Ranma leaned closer in an attempt to make out her words, but all that he could decipher from her was, "Don't...don't...mess with him...he's Reka..."

"Reka?" Ranma turned to glare at the redheaded man, the name being familiar though at the moment he had difficulty placing it in context.

Not so Nabiki, who reacted suddenly with a start, "Reka? You're Anri's brother?"

"Regrettably, yes," the man replied, "And before you ask, no, my brother did not send me to trouble you...as if I would do his bidding like a pathetic lap dog. I am here at my own bidding, to see for myself if my maudlin brother's trust has been squandered on a whinny pack of adolescent halfwits. So far I have reserved judgement out of the goodness of my heart, but unless you can impress me that you are worth all of the bother..."

"Why do we need to impress you?" Ranma asked as he slowly stood up, almost seething with anger as the man's abrasive tone was irritating him to no end, "Who the hell are you to judge us, Asshole?"

"Who am I?" Reka asked with an exaggerated manner, pressing hands to chest as though the very question itself were shocking, "I am the voice inside of you that cries in rage and seeks out retribution. I am the very heart of the fury that seethes within you as you contemplate the attempted murder of your wife not mere minutes before you came to see me. I am the embodiment of all that you deny when you prance around pretending to be mature and civilized...the real face that you conceal behind a mask of polite inquiry. I am rage, I am anger...I am Radigar Agrikal, and I am one quarter of the soul of humanity itself, and if anyone here should be asking who is who, it should be me since you are not aware of your own true potential."

"Then why don't you enlighten us?" Nabiki asked levelly, "Since you seem to know everything about us."

"Oh, I know a great deal about the both of you, yes," Reka turned to regard her, "I share, in essence, a kind of psychic grape vine with my siblings as we are all attuned to the vibrancy of human nature. The distinction between us is that I am not as blind in my perceptions to the weakness and frailty of mortals, unlike Anri-who despite several lifetimes of experience-continues to nurture hope that your kind will one day achieve enlightenment, which-by the way-has to be earned, not given you on a silver platter."

"What the hell are you going on about?" Ranma asked, "Are you saying we don't measure up to your standards?"

"Of course not," Reka smiled, "No one measures up to my standards...why should you be any exception?"

"If you're so perfect then why don't you tell us what you'd do in our place," Nabiki challenged.

"That is not my purpose, nor within my nature," Reka answered, "The Daokan are the Guardians of the way...not the protagonists who champion the cause of man. It is in the hands of mortals that the fate of the mortal realms must be decided, never with immortals. Surely you must understand this as you would hardly wish it otherwise, would you not?"

"I see," Nabiki frowned, "And you're right...I'd much rather decide my fate for myself than have a jerk like you decide it for me."

"Indeed, I rather hoped that would be your answer," Reka smiled, "You have no idea how tiresome it is to constantly encounter wet-nosed brats who shy away at the very thought of danger. You at least have some spirit in you, and neither you nor your companion are the sort to walk away from a challenge."

"You mean you?" Ranma glared, holding his fists at the ready.

"Careful boy," Reka said, "It takes more than bravado to challenge me to a fight. You need to have the stones to back your play, and I will not go easy on the mere account that you are such a weakling."

"Weakling?" Ranma bristled, "Care to try me out? Try this, Asshole!"

Nabiki sensed what her husband was about to do and briefly considered ordering him no to, but instead held her peace as he summoned his Ki and pooled his energy into his hands, forming a Mako Takabishi that was powerful enough to blow the side off of a mountain, then hurling it directly at the man called Reka, heedless of the potential collateral damage that might befall the entire district should it detonate too near to a residential district.

To their mutual surprise the blast hit its target and fragmented, the energy dissipating harmlessly as if absorbed against a barrier without the intended victim showing the slightest sign of having been affected.

"Was that supposed to impress me?" Reka asked, "I've seen far stronger attacks than that in my time boy. Make me believe that you are serious or you rapidly start to bore me, and that would be most dangerous I assure you."

Ranma narrowed his eyes then said, "All right then...let's see you handle this!" and then he squared his stance and assumed his initial Yamasenken maneuver to effect near-invisibility, dissolving his outline and erasing all trace of his movements.

"Interesting," Reka mused, "An attack based upon disinterest. You are making yourself smaller than usual in the hopes that I will ignore you?"

All at once he moved his hand and blocked an attack that had been aimed at the back of his head, easily dispelling the energy and tossing Ranma back off-  
balance, which caused the younger man to stagger back on the defensive, turning around in dismay at having his effort be so easily countered.

"Ironically enough your attack does have some merit," Reka noted, "Controlling your rage makes it much harder for me to tap into your spirit...but I am no mere amateur to be taken unawares by such a simple attack. You will have to do much better than that if you are to hold my interest."

"Why should I want to hold your interest?" Ranma snorted, "You ain't my type."

Reka frowned, "I see...you like to taunt your opponents. And effective technique, provoking them to rage and carelessness. Almost I would approve of this, but...you make a grave error baiting me with such a tactic."

There was no sense of transition or time, but all at once Ranma felt the side of his face explode, and then his guts were driven inward by a second powerful impact, and then he was slammed hard into the pavement, all in the space of less than a single heartbeat.

"Ranma!" Nabiki started to rush forward, only to find Lenore blocking her path.

"No, don't face him!" the vampire said with urgency, "You don't know what you're dealing with! He's not like anyone you've ever met or even heart about, he-!"

All at once she was struck with a blast of flame that sent her staggering to the side, shocking Nabiki, who watched in horror as Lenore rolled on the ground in agony, attempting to put out the flames that were deadly to her in both soul and body.

"Did I say that you could interfere?" Reka asked, "Be thankful that I spare your meaningless life, Loire. I have destroyed entire nations for showing me less of an insult."

Nabiki turned a shocked expression towards Reka, who casually turned to regard her, allowing them both to size each other up for the space of several seconds.

"You interest me, Woman," Reka remarked while stepping around the downed body of Ranma, "You are a natural tactician...you stand back and study your opponent before committing yourself to the battle. Unlike your man here, who rushes into a fight without thinking, you conserve your strength until you are ready to act...and your instincts warn you that it would be a fool's errand to attack me without more preparation."

"Maybe I don't fancy trading blows with a guy who picks fights with people who aren't in his weight class," Nabiki scowled.

"Ah, I but I know you much better than that, Saotome Nabiki," Reka smiled, "From one corner of Asia to the other you have earned a reputation for carefully weighing yourself and measuring your opponents by their strength before choosing your battles. Fighting stronger foes has helped you to become stronger...but you are not above impressing on those weaker than yourself the superiority of your rank as a fighter."

Nabiki carefully moved around the now-motionless Lenore, sensing that what passed for life was still within her friend and that she would recover in minutes, "So you come here to gauge me? Why...you're obviously a superior martial artists, judging by the way you just took down my husband."

"I have few equals," Reka replied with a genial wave of both arms, "But by no means let that deter you. I welcome the chance to flex my skills every now and then, and I sense that you can give me more of an exercise than your husband, who-though admittedly a spirited catch-is nonetheless too limited in his thinking to serve as more than a passing amusement."

"You want to try me?" Nabiki flexed her hands and balled them into fists, "One question before we get started...what did you do with my sister, Kasumi?"

"Ah yes...the Vampire Goddess," Reka grinned, "A most interesting woman indeed. I decided to send her on a little trip through time for the purpose of her enlightenment."

"You what?" Nabiki blinked, "You sent my sister...where?"

"To a most interesting era in human history," Reka smugly answered, "A time of turmoil and transition that has passed on into legend...and as is often the case with the Daokan, things are never as they appear upon the surface...as your sister will-or rather has-already discovered."

"What...what do you mean by that?" Nabiki asked with trepidation.

"Only that time will tell what course her future takes from this point onward," Reka smiled, "But whatever the choices she makes, it should prove most illuminating...especially when she encounters my brother in his most notorious past incarnation."

"No..." Nabiki whispered with aversion as the fate of her older sister of far greater significance than the fate confronting her in the mad devil-form of this being known as Reka...

Palestine-35 AD, Jerusalem City, Lower District...

"So...what you are telling me is that this is Palestine in the Roman era when Jerusalem is occupied by legions under the command of Pontius Pilate," Kasumi said slowly as she tried to absorb the significance of her own statement, "And that you are the daughter of a Galilean rabbi who goes by the name of Jesus...?"

"Yessus," Miriam corrected as they walked arm-in-arm through the market, "Thou art pronouncing it most strangely...yet then again thine manner of dress be odd. Whatever strange era thou wert born into, beloved, it must have wondrous fair textiles to produce such a smooth texture."

"Er...yes, of course," Kasumi replied, deciding against trying to explain to her companion the concept of machine-woven fabrics that combined natural cotton threads with the artificially produced Rayon, "Now...explain to me again what those armored men were doing in the market?"

"Attempting to keep order the Roman way," Miriam explained, "Pilate be a brutal and corrupt administrator, but what other sort could maintain order in these troubled times of strife and discord? His methods be effective, no matter that they be the tyrant's arm of Imperial Tiberius Caesar."

"Oh my," Kasumi said, feeling more than a slight bit of dread as her limited knowledge of history was informing her that she was in the middle of a kettle pot about to explode with staggering repercussions, "And these...what did you call them again?"

"Zadokites," Miriam answered, "The followers of an errant knave who styles himself a modern day prophet, Zadock of Malthae. He was executed by Rome several years before, yet his word carries such weight among the masses that those who heed his call for revolution yet trumpet his name and claim that he shall rise from the dead to lead Israel as a new Messiah."

"That certainly doesn't sound very reasonable," Kasumi remarked, sensing the distaste in Miriam's voice that spoke of strong disapproval.

"Indeed nay," Miriam slowly nodded as they wound their way through the narrow streets of the crowded ancient city, "Zadock was a fool, but only one of many who came before and shall follow after his example. Martyr he died, his claims to holy sanction were as preposterous as any other boast that the God of the Hebrew shall lift the Roman yoke from the neck of his people. There are some who think mine own father comes to follow the path set by martyrs before him...yet they know not the ways of mine father, who would as soon cut off a limb as provoke the insanity of such mindless violence and destruction."

"Your father is a great man then?" Kasumi asked, thinking that her words badly understated the matter.

"The greatest humanity has yet produced, and that nay be boastful exaggeration on mine part," Miriam answered, "Thou shalt meet him forthhense, but anon, we must escape these crowds lest someone overhear us."

"Like who?" Kasumi politely wondered.

"There be spies everywhere," Miriam said with a glance to the side-alleys as they passed them, "Some serve Rome and some belong to Caiaphas, the high temple priest and leader of the Samhedran. Yet others still...serve a power far too dark to openly mention...and yet still more are in the employ of Antipas, the King of Galilee."

"I think I've heard of him," Kasumi said mildly, "But tell me...what are these Zadokai hoping to accomplish?"

"The expulsion of Rome of course," Miriam answered, "The same as their allies, the Sicari, or the Zealot party, who share much the same ambition."

"And what cause do you serve?" Kasumi asked, drawing closer to the real question that was troubling her at the moment, "Or your father?"

"Mine father be the cause I serve, as I have served in through six previous incarnations," Miriam replied, "His is the cause of Light, the way of enlightenment and true salvation. Nominally we are with the Pharisee party..."

"The Pharisees?" Kasumi repeated, surprised by this new bit of information.

"Aye," Miriam noted, "The majority party of the people, who stand opposed to the corrupt rule of the Saducees, who control both the Temple and Samhedran."

"They do?" Kasumi asked with a growing sense of further confusion.

"Aye," Miriam answered, "They be the pro-Roman party and Caiaphas be their head, appointed to his position by Rome no less, which makes him something of an ally to Pilate...and to Antipas as well, though each partner works to suit his own advantage."

"But...I thought it was the Pharisees who controlled events in Jerusalem," Kasumi marveled.

"What fool told you such a lie?" Miriam scoffed, "The Pharisees be the majority, yet they be nay in power, standing as they do for the traditional ways of the rabbi, who service the common people without reliance on the Temple structure."

"Oh...forgive me," Kasumi said, "I had no idea...my information was that mistaken."

"Clearly thou hast heard false legends in thine time distorting the true picture of what goes down within this province," Miriam concluded, "The Pharisees are allied with the Essenes, the keepers of the holy light of purity. In fact mine own uncle Yamez be a high-ranking member of the Quomran sacred order."

"That's...very interesting," Kasumi noted, only to blink and say, "Uncle?"

"Mine father's older brother," Miriam replied, "He has four brothers and two sisters, few of whom are on speaking terms with any of us since they oppose mine father's mission, believing him on a fool's crusade like any other false prophet."

"Oh...oh my," Kasumi said as her head started to spin, her confusion intensifying as more and more of what she thought she knew was coming into question.

"Mind you, in addition to Uncle Yamez there is also Aunt Rachel who sides with us and follows her brother in support of his mission," Miriam continued, "She be on good terms with mine own mother, who also be named Miriam of Magdalen. We be members of the Nazorean movement, come to spread the message of peace and hope throughout all the scattered tribes of the Hebrew nation."

"Nazoreans?" Kasumi asked, "You mean they come from Nazareth?"

"Nazor-what?" Miriam blinked.

"You know...Nazareth," Kasumi helpfully supplied, "The place Jes-ah-where your father resided after being born in Bethlehelm?"

"What strange manner of conjecture created such fanciful tales as you be thinking, Beloved?" Miriam shook her head in slow wonder, "Mine father was born and raised in Caesarea...as far as I know he has never been to Bethlehelm in this lifetime."

"But...the stories...the legends...what about the star and the manger?" Kasumi asked with growing dismay, "Are you telling me...that none of that really happened?"

Miriam turned and studied Kasumi's face for a moment, then smiled and said, "Methinks I do perceive the problem. There be legends regarding mine father...there always art in each and every incarnation, so why would this one be any different? And as for that manger nonsense...it sounds very like unto the story told of Mithras, who lived very long ago and is revered these days as a God arisen."

"Mithras?" Kasumi repeated, wondering why that name sounded so familiar.

"These days he be known as Hermes Thoth Trimagestes Sol Ivictus, who also was once an incarnation of mine father. Perhaps in that sense there be connection to the story that I perceive within thine thoughts...though again the real events do not fall in precise alignment with the depictions in song and legend."

"So...that story about the three wisemen following a star to Bethlehelm...?" Kasumi slowly concluded.

"Oh, that happened...after a manner of speaking," Miriam replied, "Astrologers came to visit mine grandparents during the final years of Herod's reign, and they correctly predicted that mine father would be born a new incarnation of the holy fire that is Lord Mithras. There was no cosmic event, though, in which an actual physical star moved through the heavens. Nor was there a mass slaughter of innocents as I also perceive within thine thoughts and memories, nor was mine father born to a bed of straw surrounded by livestock. All of that be garbled memories borrowed or stolen from other legends such as Sargon and Gilgamesh."

"I...see..." Kasumi pondered these words and wondered what they would mean to the significance of Christmas.

"As for the name Nazorean," Miriam continued, "It be derived from the Hebrew word for Nazorite...the practice by which a Hebrew may seek enlightenment by dispensing with hygiene and the use of a razor. Nazorites do not shave their beards nor allow their hair to be touched. Some spend hours in fasting and meditation, denying themselves the company of a woman and engaging in such odd practices as the eating of hallucinogenic mushrooms."

"Oh my," Kasumi said, finding it harder to reconcile this version of events with the stories that she had heard about in her childhood.

"The reason for the name be that mine father be seeking to unite all related parties in a coalition that be styled to defuse the tensions that be leading us inexorably into a disastrous clash with the authority of the Romans," Miriam continued, "Mine father sought to meet with the leaders of the Zealot and Zadokite parties...but alas, some hot bloods seized the chance to foment violent revolution by attacking one of the towers that serve to watch over this city, and now everything is tense and none dare move openly for fear of immediate capture."

"So everyone is on edge?" Kasumi asked, thinking of how much that would go towards explaining the mood of the people that she was sensing all around them.

"Aye, but mine father be nay totally blameless," Miriam noted, "When he went to the temple to meet with Caiaphas he got...how shall I put this? Horribly side-  
tracked by what he saw there, which was nothing less than the level of commerce and profiteering that lines the corridors of the temple..."

"So he chased the money lenders out of the temple?" Kasumi wondered.

"Nay," Miriam replied, "More like they chased him, but his deed did so offend the Saducees that it enflamed their suspicions regarding his mission, and now they do seek his life by one means or another, thinking to quash yet another upstart prophet before he doth spark retaliation from the Romans."

"But isn't your father oppose the present temple structure?" Kasumi asked.

"Aye, but mine father be no mere mindless revolutionary, let alone the kind of fanatic who would bring death and destruction upon the heads of the common people," Miriam assured her, "He has ever sought to peacefully reform from within the spiritual path of the Hebrew nation by setting a high moral example to others, albeit that many find his words to be strange and his teachings unfathomable and the disciplines he sets for others to be strangely unlike the more traditionalist model."

"I suppose that means he is a prophet who isn't very appreciated within his own country," Kasumi mused with what passed for mild irony on her gentle lips.

"That be one way of phrasing things, aye," Miriam noted, "But mindful be that mine father be a very well-read and scholarly man who has traversed far to the east to study the ways of the Hindu, Yogis and Tibetans. His early life education allowed him to travel far and see much that has affected his vision, and by encountering the teachings that he himself set down in previous past incarnations he has regained much of the memory of those past ages, which is why he wishes to bring the benefits of his studies to our people, who be rather stiff-necked and hide bound when it comes to the ways of foreign places."

"Oh really?" Kasumi asked with lifted eyebrows, surprised to learn that there was so much more to the life of the man than was covered in the legends.

"Aye," Miriam sighed, "Understand mine father be approaching forty-two summers and most of them were spent abroad, so he is like unto a stranger to the vast majority of the people. Few have even heard his name spoken favorably of late as far too many jealous voices have been raised to hurl all manner of unjust accusation. Some call him a sorcerer, others a charlatan, and some even question his right to claim the status of a Rabbi, even though he spent a brief time studying with the community that was run by his late cousin, Yohan the Babtista. They even say strange things about his relationship to mine mother, who is regarded by some as an unnatural woman due to her outspoken nature and closeness to mine father, her lawful husband."

"Oh," Kasumi remarked, "Er...how long have they been married?"

"Officially or unofficially?" Miriam smiled crookedly, "They were betrothed as children but parted ways when mine father went abroad to pursue his studies. The formal ceremony was nay held until some years later, at which time I was duly conceived, but again I didst nay see my father fully until he did complete his last sabbatical, when he resolved to remain here and bring the benefits of his teachings to the people of the Galilean province."

"Um...and...er...how old are you?" Kasumi wanted to know, finding it difficult to estimate the ageless beauty of her companion.

"In chronological years?" Miriam smiled, "I be seventeen summers within this body...but my spirit be ageless. I am thought too forward in my opinions by some parties, and doubtlessly-were I a man-I would have been trained for a rabbinical calling as I be the only child of mine father, who be himself the product of so many rabbis who didst come before him."

"Really?" Kasumi was both fascinated and disturbed by the contrast between the familiar life story of a famous western religious icon and what she was hearing from the lips of her companion.

"Oh yes indeed," Miriam noted, "Mine grandfather on mine father's side be a distinguished rabbi who can trace his linear roots to the house of Solomon through one of his three concubine-wives...or so goes the legend regarding that. Perhaps thou hast heard his name mention...Yussef of Aramathe?"

"He's your grandfather?" Kasumi asked, "I...ah...thought he was your Uncle..."

"What strange and bizarre stories they must tell of us in thine era," Miriam shook her dark hair in silent wonder, but then directed Kasumi towards a rather unimpressive looking structure made of mud and adobe then said, "Here we be...this is where thou shalt meet mine father. He be with his inner circle of friends and loyal students...thou midst well enjoy their company as they be nay a bad lot for men born of this era."

There was no proper door to the place, which seemed to Kasumi's eyes to be little more than a two-level hovel. Instead Miriam parted a leather curtain and bade Kasumi to enter first, whereupon the time displaced Tendo sibling discovered a bare earthen floor that was covered over by reed mats and had the clamp and musty stench of many perspiring bodies cloistered within it.

There were considerably more than a dozen male figures gathered on the floor sharing a meal that consisted of unleavened bread and wine so cheap smelling that it was practically vinegar, and a few females present who could be discerned despite the shapeless shawls that did their best to conceal their feminine assets. The place had a cramped and somewhat dirty atmosphere, yet a pleasant enough buzz was in the air that made the setting appear relaxed and anything but formal. On instinct she swept her gaze over the faces of those who were present, seeing in most of them a fairly ordinary cast of humanity with honest faces harboring earthly minds who were anything but spiritual in nature.

All save for a woman whose resemblance to Miriam was striking, and at once Kasumi placed her as the girl's mother, sensing a strong cast of spirituality and strongly defined values. She was presently waiting upon a man who also drew the eye, for the potency of his aura was like the sun itself when contrasted by the duller cast of the men who surrounded him. At once Kasumi focused her attention, and discovered a man who was all too familiar to her senses.

Oh true his hair was darker and his skin was swarthy, but there was no mistaking those eyes, nor the light and jovial tone of his smile and disposition. His eyes turned to meet her gaze and instantly gave her full welcome, then with a graceful movement of one hand he waved her forward and said, "Welcome to our company, you who have traveled far. Please find yourself a place to sit and share a meal with us on this day before the Passover."

Kasumi swallowed on a suddenly dry mouth, "My...my lord Anri?"

"Close enough," he said in shrewd amusement, "But for the purposes of this era you may call me, Yessus."

"Oh my..." Kasumi murmured, feeling rather inclined towards fainting though she did not dare show such respect before a host...not even one whose name she well had cause to remember.

"Yohan, Cephas," the man nodded to a pair of burly fellows, "Don't be rude to our guest. Make some space to allow her to sit down, my brothers."

The one named Cephas only glowered at Kasumi, then turned to the man and said, "Rabbi...is this seemly? She is a stranger and a foreigner...and a woman no less!"

"Yes, I had rather noticed the latter part," Yessus said with a smile that drew a cross look from his own dark haired companion, "But still...I ask you to make room for her. Yamez?"

"Of course, Yessus," a very pleasant toned fellow who looked to be in his mid-  
forties scrunched over on the floor until there was room enough to allow Kasumi to sit down within the circle, and then Miriam took a place to her immediate left as the men were much more respectful to move over to accommodate her. It was tight and gave them very little elbow room, yet Kasumi found that she did not mind being pressed up close to her dark-dressed companion as Miriam's scent held a freshness unknown to the oily, sweaty bodies of the men who did surround them.

"Well now," one of the men sitting in the circle said as he regarded both Kasumi and Miriam together, "Has our little Miri found herself a friend in the market? How comes she to be here...and why are there no male relatives escorting her to protect her virtue?"

"Oh come now, Tomas," Yessus chided, "You don't mean to imply by that that she has anything to fear from us, do you? People say all sorts of nasty rumors regarding us, you hardly would think to dignify their claims by suggesting that we are less than civil with a stranger among us? Only...you are not really a stranger to me...truly. Miriam...is she not the one indeed whom you have known in other lifetimes?"

Kasumi felt Miriam lay a hand upon her own and glanced down at the surprisingly bold gesture of warmth and intimacy that was implied there, even as her companion said, "Aye, Father...she be none other than mine own true heart and beloved."

There was a slight murmur among the men upon hearing this, then one of them asked, "Does her husband know about this?"

Kasumi was startled, "Husband?"

"Betrothed," Miriam informed her, "An arrangement by our parents, though we have yet to set a date or affirm the union."

"Our little Miri is engaged to one of our youngest and newest acolytes," a gruff man said in evident humor, turning to a fellow of slight build and adding, "For which we all loathe and despise him and are as jealous as the Sins of the Angels, is that not right, brother Lazar?"

The man smiled at the good-natured jibe and said, "I'm still having trouble believing it myself. I'm as nervous as a colt, which is one reason why Miriam and I have yet to set the date for our union."

"All things in their proper time, Lazar," Yessus noted, "But come...we are all men starving and dying of thirst, Miriam. Could someone please feed us so that our stomachs do not speak up in protest and distract us from this day's lessons?"

"And what is wrong with feeding yourself, Husband?" the woman at his side said in gentle mimicry, though it was evident from her smile that she was merely making a point of jesting with them, not truly resentful about performing her domestic duties.

"You see what marriage can do to even the best of Prophets?" one man asked suggestively while giving a friendly elbow to Lazar, "Even our Master must beg to attain order within his own household."

"Perhaps we should pray to Yahweh for another miracle with the loaves and fishes, Rabbi?" another man spoke up in a jaunty tone of voice, "Of course that time we had Yuda supplying the carts from that local merchant so that the crowd would not go hungry..."

"Yahweh provides for his own, Brothers," Yessus noted with good humor, "Which reminds me of the time when Miriam and I had our wedding and some of the guests approached me complaining that we had run out of wine for the celebration...so I went down to the cellar and fetched the wine that was being reserved for after the ceremony when my brothers and I would be having our communal lessons. I can still remember how surprised they were about the quality of the vintage, and they complained to me that I should have served the good wine first and saved the vintage of lesser quality for the last."

"And what did you say to that, Master?" one of the men asked as though providing a straight line for an oft-told jest among friends.

"Why, naturally I said that the good wine was for later because when else would one need to get dunk than right before the nocturnal festivities when my wife and I consummate our union?" Yessus paused as though saving the good line for the last, then like a true master of the marquee added, "And then one guest said unto me: if you wait until the last then how will you know which is the better vintage?"

There were guffaws and laughs all around, and the woman hovering at the side of Yessus seemed to be favoring him with a look that a look that as much as said, "Just wait until we're alone and you will pay for that one, Husband."

"I've heard you tell that one so many times before, Master, that I almost believe the wine really did flow like water," the one known as Tomas chuckled.

"Really?" another man jested with his companions, "And the way I heard it the wine was water to begin with, miraculously transformed into wine by our Master."

"Aw, you've had too many cups as it is," the man next to him jested, and again there was much merriment as clearly these fellows enjoyed each others company and were used to ribbing and kidding one another as if they truly were brothers and not merely members of the same inner circle.

But then their master leaned forward and his demeanor became serious, "The Kingdom of Yahweh is like water that flows with the sweet texture of honeyed wine. If you open yourself to its bounty it will saturate your senses and leave you as heady as one drunk to his fill, but without the after effects and bitterness that you suffer through in the morning. If you but partake of its sweetness then you will never know true thirst and will always be warmed by its savor."

There was a solemn hush that fell upon the men as they paused to absorb this tidbit of wisdom, and clearly they were accustomed to hearing their Master drop nuggets of this sort like pearls in their midst. It was but for a passing moment, of course, before the mood was broken and they went back to enjoying their revelry together.

From this Kasumi took away a startling impression of that they were a group of men bound together as much by love and mutual affection as the usual camaraderie that one got with any gathering of "drinking buddies" on a Friday night drink fest. They were not dour and sober men of reflection as she had always imagined but took their cue from their Master, who set the tone of light and casual reflection that had no place for the gritty aestheticism that one often encountered in portrayals of this altogether fateful evening.

But there was one fellow who stood apart as a somber exception to the giddy air of friendly banter that was taking part all around them, a somber man who stood back to the right side of his Master with arms folded and his face set firm in the serious manner of a loyal retainer, the type always on the watch for anything and anyone who might seek to harm the man under his stern protection.

Kasumi leaned closer to Miriam and asked, "Miri-chan...who is that fellow?"

"Yuda?" Miriam replied, "He be Sicari...one of the Zeolots whose knives often find their way to the throats of the enemies of the Hebrew. He be father's most loyal and devoted servant, a personal favorite who all but worships the ground upon which father treads."

"Judas?" Kasumi reacted with a start, deciphering the name of history's most notorious betrayer.

"This consonant noise that thou dost keep making, Beloved," Miriam frowned, "How be it pronounced? Chu...Gu...very different from Aramaic, Greek or Latin. Be it a sound typical of the language to which thee be accustomed?"

"Ah...more or less," Kasumi replied, adding softly, "Er...just how well trusted is this fellow by your father?"

"If father asked it he would give up his own right hand," Miriam replied, "There be no more devout student of father's teachings than Yuda the Sicari. Trust me on this, Beloved, he be wholly undeserving of the sinister cast thine thoughts appear to be taking."

"Ah...well, if you say so," Kasumi said dubiously, but nonetheless she felt a distinct sense of unease sitting down with these men while fully aware of the history that was accounted for the events of the later evening. It was knowing this outcome that felt like such a terrible burden to her conscience, that made her want to speak out, to warn against the future, but knowing that to do so would void the consequences, both good and bad, of the pivotal point of one of the world's major religions...albeit not of her own beliefs, which were solidly Shinto.

At the moment the man who was central to the gathering took notice that one of his acolytes was frowning (besides Judas that is), "Cephas? What troubles your brow? Are we not gathered here to enjoy a good meal before we begin the fasting of the Passover?"

The fellow in question turned a troubled look towards Yessus and said, "I do not mean to speak out of place, Rabbi...but all this talk about prior and past lifetimes and incarnations...it is all so very radical. And here is a stranger in our midst whom Miriam claims to be someone she knew and loved in a former lifetime?"

"Why is this so strange to you?" Yessus asked, "Do you think Yahweh accords but a single life as adequate to obtain enlightenment? Think you what I learned from the sages of the orient? That all men are as brothers who share a piece of the spark that is the nature of the Buddha. But this world with its baubles, fancies and temptations, misleads and distracts the senses and causes men to view only the solid world of the flesh as real while ignoring the realm of the spirit, which is inside and all around them."

"Yes, but..." the man named Cephas turned a hard look towards Kasumi, "She is a woman...they both are women...and the nature of their relationship...it implies something unnatural, that is against the will of the prophets."

To everyone's surprise Yessus laughed and said, "Cephas, you are a Stone, dense and blind to everything but the written word of errant sages. How does one arrive at this word 'unnatural' when describing love in any form? What is unnatural about the love of women...or of men, for that matter? Are they harming one another? Is there some hidden cost to their soul that you can define that I cannot? I see no harm involved at all in this...it is simply the nature of all beings to feel love for one another, and what could be more natural than this?"

"But Rabbi...the teachings of the Torah clearly state..." Cephas insisted.

"The Torah," Yessus shook his head with a rueful expression, "Perhaps the greatest tragedy for the word of Yahweh was that it got written down so that arrogant men could pick it apart and define whatever small bits they can use to back up any position that they wish to advocate. Think you the holy spirit of Yahweh can be contained in words that men may quote and apply against one another? Enlightenment means going beyond the letter of the Law and discovering the spirit that motivates the law givers. You must learn to see beyond what you think it is that you already know. You might try doing that sometime, Cephas my Piotr, you never know what you may discover...a new thought or idea that could cause your spirit to grow tenfold."

"But what is the point of two of the same sex loving each other, Master?" Yohan asked, "They cannot bear fruit and have babies..."

"And by that definition you believe that the only true purpose of love is to procreate and give issue?" Yessus countered, "Like beasts in the field who neither know loyalty nor compassion for one another? Would you then condemn the love of two brothers who would each give his own life for the other? Is such a love unnatural since it can never result in the producing of offspring?"

Kasumi almost failed to notice that the man named Yuda was smiling and slowly nodding his head with approval. Much to her surprise he turned his gaze towards her and ever-so-slightly inclined his head with a respectful nod that seemed to imply that she had just risen considerably in his own private favor.

"Well...but that's different, Master..." another fellow protested.

"How is it different?" Yessus challenged them, "Is there one kind of love that is superior to another? Is love a different word in different languages? Or do you think that there is another kind of love that is inferior to the love that a husband shares with his wife? Do you doubt that I love my daughter, or would you have me declare her unnatural and sell her in the market?"

Kasumi was surprised at the tone of emotion in the words of this man named Yessus...but moreover she was moved by a different kind of elation, feeling the heat of his wisdom as though it seared her very soul with burning words of liquid fire. Very easily she came to understand why other men followed him so devoutly, for he was not at all like the stern-faced and distant statue that she had seen portrayed on crucifixes writhing in eternal agony for the sins imposed upon him by collective humanity, the image that was most strongly rooted in her subconscious.

All at once the man changed his tone, leaned back and relaxed his gaze as though to disarm one of their previous apprehension, "It is written that all men are brothers...and by the same token all women are sisters in the fold, the daughters of Eve who partake of the fruits of life and wisdom. It is also written that to love your fellow human being is the highest form of love of all...but no where is it written, 'Just don't get caught doing it.'"

Again the laughter that broke what was left of the tension, and the man named Cephas smiled and made conceding gestures, politely dropping the subject rather than pursuing the issue.

"You are all beloved to me," Yessus said with passion that seemed to reveal a deep well of infinite compassion that lay beneath his easy-going demeanor, "None more than any other...but my love for my daughter is never to be questioned, nor is her love for this, her companion from a previous lifetime, to be called a sin while you are in my immediate presence."

"Father," Miriam murmured softly, and in that Kasumi could tell that their emotional bonds were as strong as they were understated on both ends.

"Master," Yohan said, "We did not mean to give offense..."

"It is forgotten," Yessus waved the point aside, then turned to Kasumi and added, "But we have been most rude in not giving you a proper welcome, my good lady. Though you have no kinsman here to vouch for you, you are nonetheless welcome in our midst. I could tell at a glance that you are not from this place but from very far away from here, and as a stranger to our lands you must have a great many questions that you would hope to have answered."

"Ah...one or two," Kasumi remarked, "But they can wait for later."

"Well, I for one welcome you into our midst since you have made such a strong impression on our daughter," the woman named Miriam of Magdala said brightly, "Do you have a name that we can know you by?"

"Um...Kasumi," Kasumi replied, considering giving her family name then thinking better of it as she added, "Just Kasumi will do."

"Kasumi," Yessus considered the name then translated, "Hazy Mist on a dew-  
covered morning. A fine name indeed...and well spoken, Kasumi...Tendo?"

It surprised Kasumi to know end that he had picked up on her full name without it having to be spoken aloud, but Miriam beside her said, "Father, it be true that she has many questions that need answering, but I feel that I may supply them best for now, so with thine leave I wouldst remove us both to a private place so that we may discourse without interruption."

"Good enough," Yessus agreed, "But I reserve the chance to discuss things with her myself when we are alone. There is a garden not too far from here which would provide an excellent retreat after we adjourn this meeting. Go there and I will come for you later."

"As though dost wish it, Father," Miriam said, standing up and encouraging Kasumi to do likewise, pausing only to give a curt nod towards Lazar, who was watching them both with a curious expression.

"Now then," Yessus turned to his own wife and said, "If we could see about breaking our bread before we starve for the Passover..."

"I'll get the loaves and fishes for you, Husband," Miriam said indulgently, "After all, this is the last supper to be shared before we meet again for communal feasting."

"Oh my," Kasumi said as she walked arm-and-arm out of the hovel, letting Miriam guide her way while privately harboring dread that things were going to go very bad from here own down, and without a clue to what part she should play, whether as observer or spoiler since the events of the night were playing themselves out as predestined with a consequence for humanity that was truly beyond all hope of avoidance.

And-strangely enough-she wanted very much to avoid them, for in her brief time in the presence of this Yessus of Caesarea she had discovered the astonishing fact that she both liked and respected him, for he was a man who inspired the best that was to be found within human nature. In no way did she want to see him suffer the torments and agonies of that figurine that so terrified her the one time that her late mother had taken her to see a temple of the Christians. Clearly events here were of such a nature that they were beyond even her powers alter...but still she yearned to do something if only to prove for her own sake that there was enough good in humanity to be worthy of salvation.

With that frame of mind tormenting her heart she followed Miriam into a garden known as Gosthemene and to a fateful encounter that was to affect the lives of future generations yet unborn and unsuspecting...

Continued.

Comments/Criticisms/Liturgical Melodramas: shadowmane

Or: shadowmane9849

Think that the author has gone too far? Just wait until the next time as Kasumi's historical odyssey enters a new phase, while Nabiki confronts the menacing power of Reka in, "Hot Time in the Old Town," or "The Last Temptation of Kasumi (Well, sort-of...)" Be there!

X

/pre 


	80. Chapter 80

preDnabiki169

Nabiki 1/2

"A Very Scary Thought"

by Jim Robert Bader

(Inspired by the works of Rumiko Takahashi Others,  
with concepts and characters created by fellow fanfic writers Wade Tritschler, DB Sommers, Nicole Manders, Andrew Greaves, Bill Guiroff and countless others, including "Buffy"  
creator Joss Whedon; with special thanks to my good pal Shiva for his editing and handling of this series.)

(Certain other characters and concepts are of my own innovation, including my interpretation of the Monster of Mary Shelly's novel, the Furies, Trudy, Takaharis Angelique d'Anjou and various other guest stars appearing in this portion of the Nabiki 1/2 series...)

Chapter Sixty-Four.

Episode One-Hundred-Sixty-Nine.

Resist Not Temptation

Amalthea had known many lovers in her too-brief lifetime, mainly on board the POJ, where woman-sex was the norm and everyone lived blissfully in an ever-shifting pattern of rotating assignations and dalliances with a variety of highly attractive partners. She had been taught by the best and was quite skilled in the art of instilling and receiving pleasure, had grown to love being bound and whipped as a kind of foreplay leading to truly intense moments of indescribable pleasure...and with her claws and greater-than-normal strength thresholds it was usually a very good idea to restrain her in some manner so that she could indulge full orgasm without risk to the health and well-being of her partner(s).

But not even with Madam Lao herself had she ever given vent to such indescribable delights as she had experienced within the past few moments with her new Mistress. It was like making love to a gentle-mannered goddess who seemed to implicitly understand her every urge and requirement, and who brought her skillfully to the heights of ultimate pleasure only to bring her down as gently from the precipice of absolute joy to the blissful ease of a cloud gently descending upon a hill, and when the moment of union parted she was left tingling and spent with every inch of her body resonating with a happiness that knew no limits for the boundaries of total consummation.

She lay there staring at the stars that filled the night and felt a wonder like one reborn as everything was new and original for her, and it was as if she could see off to the infinite horizons a realm of untold possibilities heretofore unexpected. The night breeze gently played against her naked skin and helped to dry the perspiration that had been generated by their lovemaking, leaving her feeling as fresh as a spring bed of daisies as she lay there and absorbed everything, was a part of everything, could feel the world in its focus and knew that there was harmony and order in the world, that everything had its place, including her, which oddly enough gave her a deep sense of spiritual satisfaction.

It pleases me to see you this happy, my pet.

Amalthea blinked her eyes. Did she just imagine those words or did they pop into her head for some unfathomable reason?

You were indeed most delightful, and I thank you heartily for giving me back as much satisfaction as you seem to have obtained from our labors together.

Amalthea turned her eyes and saw the face of her Mistress smiling softly towards her, a smile that had a silvery glow that seemed almost bathed in pure moonlight, with eyes that sparkled like stars and gentle lips whose soft peach-smooth textures she could still feel when caressing the special places of her body.

"My...my lady?" she hesitantly asked.

I did not wish to disturb you when you seemed so content, but there is a need to postpone further activity until later. I sincerely regret this, but it cannot be avoided.

Amalthea stared at the silvery form of her Mistress Laolana and marveled to hear those words in her own thoughts while the woman beside her seemingly said nothing. Her lips did not move nor did her smile waver in the slightest, yet somehow her meaning was clear and unambiguous. It was as though the words flowed fluidly between them without the need of the crude medium of air to convey her Mistress's intentions.

She sat up slowly and stared at the being who was now her legal owner, marveling at the perfection of this goddess's smooth texture and blemishless body, which was as naked as Amalthea's own and was more beautiful to the eye than any sight that had ever before been beheld by the half-Kirin, saving only her faded memories of her late mother.

"You require something of me, Mistress?" Amalthea asked, "Some service I might render?" she left out the hopeful note that they could renew their exchange of pleasures as serving under her new owner was the most pleasant experience yet of her entire existence.

The smile on Laolana's lips deepened and her eyes twinkled with mischief, and again thought flowed from her mind that were not spoken aloud, yet warmly conveyed both feelings and emotions in a way that Amalthea found more intensely sensual than any words from the lips of another.

It would please me greatly to share myself with you again...but there are forces in motion that do not afford us the luxury of time for such indulgence.

"What then would you have me do, Mistress?" Amalthea asked, realizing implicitly that there was not a request that could be made of her that she would refuse, even rendering up her life if so required of her lawful owner.

Nothing quite so dramatic as that level of sacrifice...but I will require that you resume the mantle of a warrior. I have affected to alter some aspects of your subconscious memory so that you will no longer suffer the inhibitions that had restrained you in the past. You will be able to access levels of your hidden potential that were heretofore unknown in your awareness, and-coupled with the training Mistress Lao instilled within you-you will be effectively my champion to do the work I need, the service that can only be rendered by a demi-immortal as I myself am restrained from directly influencing the course of mortal affairs.

"You want me to be your champion?" Amalthea marveled, "You who are power incarnate?"

Her Mistress's smile turned sad and wistful, and she glanced away as if staring far off to some vantage point far off on the horizon.

Power such as mine can never be used lightly, let alone gratuitously. If I stretched out my hand and acted on my impulses I could squeeze entire legions between my fingers. It is far too delicate a weave the pattern of destiny that I must sift through in order to find those moments where I may act without causing an imbalance. I need much finer tools with more restraint than I can muster to do those minor tasks that must needs doing. Think of yourself as a surgeon's scalpel trained to do fine work that the human hand alone is ill suited to manage.

"I...believe I see your point, my lady," Amalthea replied, feeling oddly touched and moved to think that her new owner might require something of her that only she could manage, a service she was all too eager to render to impress upon her Mistress that she was appreciative of being so newly purchased.

Laolana turned an amused look towards her and again conveyed the impression of warm emotion that blanketed Amalthea within eyes that held the sea of endless joy and rapture.

Your eagerness is welcome, but do not be so quick to agree before you know all that will be required of you. What I ask is no light matter, and it will involve much toil and some discomfort in order to achieve the goals that I set before you. Are you ready to begin your true service?

"More than ready," Amalthea shivered with a boundless energy that could find release only by doing whatever her Mistress asked. She was more than merely eager to comply with her owner's directives, she was biting at the bit ready to jump up and comply with the slightest of suggestions that might be offered by her Mistress.

This is good. Now, the first task will be to arm you with a weapon that will augment your natural abilities and give you the means to...

The thought ran out unexpectedly, and Amalthea saw her Mistress turn her gaze away as if suddenly drawn to something that only she was aware of.

"My lady?"

There was a slight pause and then the woman's face drew a slight frown that contrasted much from her normally amused and pleasant continence.

Reka. He has acted on his own initiative while I have been...distracted.

"Reka?" Amalthea asked.

My other brother, much younger and more impulsive than Anri. He thinks to amuse himself with Anri's agents as though they were mere pawns for him to play with. I will have words with him on this...but at the moment he does not seem to have gone as far as he might if he thought to elude my notice.

"Oh," Amalthea remarked, "Is there...something I can do to help?"

Laolana turned a smile to her and her eyes seemed mischievous again as though a new thought tickled her fancy.

You might well indeed be of use to me there...but we will discuss that at another time. For now we must go in pursuit of your weapon. For that I must dress you appropriately...much though I regret having to even momentarily conceal your beauty.

With that the silvery woman rose fluidly to her feet, then with hardly more than a thought she caused her body to be clothed once again in the plain jeans and pale shawl that she had worn during their first meeting. The very casual ease and ordinariness of her looks did not in any way conceal from Amalthea's senses the supranormal nature of her Mistress.

A slight tingling about her body caused Amalthea to glance down at her own body and discovered the garments that now clad her lithesome body, and with some surprise she found that it was a variation of her warrior's garb from the cage-pits, the one provided her by Madam Lao whenever she entered Althea in a match against other opponents.

Most befitting, and it suits your rather nicely."

Amalthea found her cheeks were burning and she girlishly glanced down in a blush, "Thank you, Mistress. I will wear it with pride...though for my own part I would much prefer to appear before you naked."

She started to stand up only to discover one peculiarity that different from her regular outfit. A slight breeze in a very private area caused her to glance down, and then turned a surprised look towards her Mistress.

"My lady...did you...deliberately exclude giving me something...down there?" she asked hesitantly.

The smile of mischief was there in her owner's eyes, and again the thoughts of liquid emotion filled Amalthea with a warm sense of fulfillment.

Call it my token of your submission to me that I leave bare the most private part of your attire. You will grow accustomed to feeling the exposure...or would you rather I grant you modesty down there?

Amalthea thought about if for a half a second then affirmed her resolution, "No, my lady. If you wish me to be naked there, then I will not object. In fact, I am proud to be as you wish me to be, for my body belongs to you, and you may do with it whatever you like as my own pleasure is in serving your fancy."

Fancy is not the term I would use, but I am gratified at your compliance. I also noticed that you maintain Madam Lao's preference to shave your pubes bare...a practice I wish you to continue as yet another token service to me. I want no obstructions down there as you will be finding that region quite useful in your mission.

"My lady?" Amalthea asked quizzically.

Come, my pet, let us be away to our destination.

And with that the woman named Laolana turned about and strode towards the nearby surf, only to have it part before her as if the world itself bowed down to do her bidding. Amalthea dutifully followed after her new Mistress, astonished to discover the very folds of reality were peeling away to reveal a very different landscape, a display of casual power that gave but a bare hint to the true potential that was wielded by her anything-bur-ordinary Mistress...

"It is said that Fate is a character who represents the fulfillment of Man's expectations for himself," mused Reka as he regarded his nominal foe with the predatory smile of a tiger, "How much then is fate guided by the limits of human self-awareness I wonder? Can a fate possibly be avoided so long as a man is content to confine himself within the boundaries of his own self-awareness?"

"Hah?" Nabiki asked, "Just what are you going on about? And what has that got to do with what you did to Kasumi?"

"Why, I did nothing but open the gateways to permit her to see that which mortals have long been denied viewing," Reka said grandly, "Such an honor I have rendered unto her is rare in the annals of time, and you should be thanking me for the gift rather than suspecting me of harboring you ill intentions."

"Yeah?" Nabiki glanced down at the fallen Ranma, "And how would I have gotten that idea?"

Reka's chuckle was as sinister and menacing as his general disposition, "You misunderstand me, Woman. I am capricious and whimsical, but I do not act without a deeper purpose. Your sister is the key to a great deal that is at work in the fabric of this reality. Her dual nature of divinity and vampirism was no accident nor quirk of the fates. She was selected for a purpose...and now she can fulfill her role with a better grasp of what is at stake here."

"You bastard!" Nabiki snarled in outrage.

"Oh, don't blame this upon me," Reka insisted, "I did not cause her transformation...or rather her transfiguration. You see...the women of your line contain within you the latent potential to be so much more than you would be if left to an ordinary dull life of mundane boredom. Take yourself for example...you have no idea what gifts you were born with, or how little of what you are capable of it is that you have managed to tap into."

"Why don't you enlighten me about it then?" Nabiki asked while narrowing her eyes and seeking an opening, altogether aware that this was the most dangerous opponent that she had ever yet encountered.

"An intriguing proposition," Reka mused, "But that is more my brother's lot in life. I do not feel inclined to waste my time attempting to explain the painfully obvious to mere children. Enlighten yourself if you would understand what is truly at stake here. Do away with your own limits and false perceptions, and stop making excuses for the cowardice you display in refusing to see the truth that is staring you in the face even as we stand here chatting like old acquaintances."

"You talk as if you know me from somewhere before," Nabiki scowled, "And who are you calling a coward? Picking fights with those who can't fight back doesn't exactly strike me as the pinnacle of manly behavior."

The grin Reka wore was like a snarl inviting a pounce, "I like you, Woman...you have the brass to stand there and bait me, even knowing how dangerous that can be on a level of understanding that is deeply fundamental. Had I a wish I could but extend my arm and fry you to a crisp where you stand...but as you say, what sport would there be in that for me? I would much rather enjoy the physical challenge of taking you on directly, if only to confirm what we both already know...that you have no chance at all against me."

"Mind if I don't take your word on that and find out for myself?" Nabiki asked, raising her hands and assuming a fighter's stance.

"Good," Reka made an encouraging gesture with his hands, "By all means take your best shot. And as a measure of my respect to you I won't even dodge, block or retaliate but will give the chance to impress upon me your quality as a fighter."

"All right," Nabiki said, and without further preamble launched her attack, summoning up her full Ki and employing that energy to accelerate her movements.

The technique she applied was a variation on the Fugue Wave that she had mastered months ago under the tutorage of Cologne, her Amazon trainer. With this method she could slip out of synch with the flow of normal space-time and reenter the world of matter at a point of her select choosing. There was no way to block or anticipate the maneuver, and the power with which she could attack at points completely unexpected made it a very simple means of taking the fight out of a touch opponent before the fight had even gotten started.

In this case she chose to appear slightly off to the left of her foe and well out of scope for his peripheral vision, and her foot connected solidly with his head just below his left temple.

But she came away from her attack limping backwards and reeling from the shock of having almost broken her foot against her foe, and with a look of dismay she gave him a renewed wide berth and a look of total apprehension.

"Very interesting," Reka smiled as he turned to regard her, "I recall when I faced the one who invented that attack many centuries ago...and I must congratulate you for refining his methods and making them your own."

"What the hell are you made of?" Nabiki asked, unable to believe that he could be so unaffected by her blow as her foot could have dented armor plating when backed by the force of her Ki spirit.

"Simple flesh and bone, no different from yourself," Reka replied, "The difference is only that I have spent the past few thousand years fortifying and reinforcing my body by integrating it with my living Chi to the point where I am near-invulnerable to any sort of physical trauma that you might attempt to render. You could do much the same for yourself if you devoted your energies utterly to the mastery of mind of body...but then again you would have little time to devote to family and friends. You would need to sacrifice much just to begin to approach what I learned when I was barely a youth born into my present incarnation."

"That's a hell of a bloody unfair advantage," Nabiki remarked, "I thought you wanted this to be a fair fight?"

"But it is," Reka assured her, "As fair as I can make it. Such a pity you don't understand your true nature or else you would be more of a challenge to me...but don't complain that I am at fault because you squander your potential by believing in the mara of illusion."

"The what?" Nabiki asked him.

"All that is perceived by the five physical senses is but an impression of reality, not reality itself," Reka informed her, "To see beyond the flesh is the mark of a truly enlightened being, and seeing what is real would enable you to achieve the things that you currently believe to be impossible. It is understanding that marks the basis of a true fighter, not this crude flailing around that distracts the mind and weakens the body."

"You really do like the sound of your own voice, Mister," Nabiki taunted, "But all I see is a lot of wind being generated..."

"You wish a more graphic illustration of my meaning?" Rake said with an arched eyebrow, "Very well, I will honor your request."

There was no time at all for her part in which Nabiki could brace herself, let alone prepare for the speed with which Lord Reka moved, covering the distance between them as though it hardly existed and delivering a stunning blow that felt just millimeters short of having his palm impact with her forehead.

Nabiki screwed up her eyes and stared in disbelief at the hand that had fallen just short of splitting her skull open. Without the slightest bit of doubt or hesitation she conceded the fact that he had bested her in the speed game, and that-had he carried through with his motion-she would not even have been aware of the blow before he killed her standing. It was a sobering thought as she realized the obvious fact that she was not even in his weight class as a fighter.

"You see now the danger of challenging me to a direct match?" Reka asked while keeping his hand where it was, threatening and yet refraining from the completion of its motion, Do you know now what you would risk going against me only half-cocked and by no means worthy of the full measure of strength that lurks within you?"

"Ah..." Nabiki said as she studied the palm hovering just above eyes that were screwed up and studying the impasse with apprehension.

Reka withdrew his hand and stood back a pace then said, "Still I will congratulate you upon having the courage to confront me in this manner, unprepared though you are for a being of my nature. I would encourage you to try again using something far more effective from your arsenal, and I will decide if it approaches the standard that I would deem adequate for dealing with the current challenge."

"You want to see what I can do?" Nabiki squared her stance and focused her concentration, "Okay, here goes nothing, Mister!"

And with that declaration she channeled her energy and drew upon her confidence as a fighter to marshall the raw elements of her Ki, summoning up the Shadowskills training that had been drummed into her by Cologne many months before when preparing for her engagement match against Ranma.

**I am Invincible,** she thought with the totality of her conviction, **No one can match my Shadowskills for I am my only Master, and my will is supreme, I cannot be defeated!**

"Ah," Reka said, "Most interesting. It has been a while since anyone has challenged me using that particular system."

Nabiki ignored his words, shut out everything but her awareness of the pooling lifde energies that she drew in from her environment like a sponge, and then when she could contain no more she unleashed a devastating attack point blank upon her opponent, holding nothing back as she was well are that anything less than her best would be as ineffective as all else that she had used to date in this encounter.

The power of her Ki whipped forth like the claws of a serpent and smashed into the fellow named Reka with force enough to cause the entire region to reverberate with the violence of her onslaught.

But when she opened her eyes again and could see the smoldering crater surrounding her foe she found herself utterly bewildered, for he stood perfectly unmoved within an undamaged circle of the pavement while a trench had been dug around him, one that glowed with the roiling coils of smoldering rock that had been superheated to the point of almost me3lting, yet Reka himself was untouched and in no way visibly affected.

"Very well executed," he said with a smile, "That was certainly more like it...but, as you can see, still too far short of the mark to be adequate to the task."

"How..." Nabiki gasked, thinking to herself that she could have defeated a good sized army of thugs with a blast of such an intense nature.

"My brother is such a fool," the redheaded man said with a rueful shake of his head, "How can he expect to find useful tools in this day and age, where the wits of many arew dull to all purpose bu the most immediate and transitory needs of the present? And you...you have barely even begun to crawl as a fighter. How do you expect to hold your head high and look death in the face when you confront your true enemies? Be grateful that I am herely here as an observer."

"Ah...observer?" Nabiki asked hesitantly, "You're not the real heavy?"

"You wish," Reka sneered, "I am not the villain here that you perceive me to be, I am not the one who seeks to doom your entire island nature in retaliation for an alleged crime that took place long before even your so-called Tokugawa era?"

"Well, if you're not the bad guy, then who is?" Nabiki asked, "Otono and his Amakuzen?"

"They are the protagonists who are in league with your true enemies," Reka answered, "Your direct linear ancestor, Yagyu Jubei, fought to suppress their order over three hundred and fifty in the past, but, the conflict goes back even farther into History's myths during the age of Nobunaga when three brave warriors stood together and opposed en evil so dark that even I am left to shudder in revulsion. Of course it will be up to you to discover the details by your own means since I have no interest in doing your research for you, but-eh?"

Reka turned his head sharply even as a fist just missed connecting with his head, and then he turned about and blocked the second powerful thrust of a hand that was backed by the force of raw Ki, and for a moment even the powerful Daokan seemed staggered, which prompted Reka to display his first real element of surprise during the encounter.

"What is this?" he asked, "I sense...elemental power rising up from within you?"

Ranma drew back a hand-which Nabiki now saw was surrounded by a kind of stony shell that must have fortified the fist like a concrete boxing glove. He squared his legs into a typical harse stance and then said aloud, "YAMASENKEN SPECIAL MANEUVER-RAMMING GATES OF FURY!"

At once the young martial artist lurched forward with both hands extended like a tiger's claws, and when Reka sought to block them he altered the attack into a defense by knocking his foe's arms wide, and then executed a lightning-fast Razor-kick that solidly connected with Reka's body, nocking the tall gaigin man back on his heels for several paces.

"What ho?" Reka seemed far more surprised than hurt by the force of the attack, "That was no ordinary attack...you have a Dragon's heart beating within you, firing you with greater than normal energies."

"Yeah?" Ranma sniffed, "Think that's something? Just watch this!"

With that he extended his right hand and at once energies coalesced into a fiery apparition that rose up high into the night, taking the form of an enormous crimson dragon that towered over the scene of battle like a blazing pillar of fire that warded off the night in all directions.

Reka's reaction to this was not that of terror or even apprehension but rather surprise as he stared up into the fiery shape, then said in almost toneless wonder, "Latisha?"

All at once the dragon-shape shrank down and coalesced into the body of a woman as the Salamander servant of Ranma assued her human guise, then spoke to the man before her saying, "Hello Father...it has been ages."

"Hah?" Ranma blinked, not having expected that particular revelation.

"Nani?" Nabiki gasped, "Father?"

"What are you doing here, Child?" Reka said in amazement, "And why are you shielding that mortal against me?"

"I won't allow you to harm him, Father," Latisha replied with quiet resolution, "He is my Master, and he belongs to me, and if you want to get at him you'll have to go through me first."

"Your master?" Reka exclaimed in outrage, "You made a pact with this...callow youth and...what is this? You are...PREGNANT?"

"Nani?" Nabiki said again, while Ranma only blanched, hearing this confirmation of his own deep suspcions.

Latisha covered her abdomen and said, "What if I am, Father? It is my right...and this is my body..."

Very slowly Reka turned a look past his daughter's shoulders and then his lip curled with distaste, "He is the one who did this to you? He would dare to put his seed within your fertile nether regions?"

"She is not alone in this, Lord Agrikal," Nagisha suddenly spoke up as she materialized in the space beside Ranma, "I, too, carry my Master's seed, and I am prepared to defend him with my life if you wish to persist in testing his limits."

"Nagisha too?" Reka marveled, "I know not whether to be impressed or moved to outrage. And...is that a Void elemental I perceive...and a princess of the Sylph with her?"

"We all stand ready to defend our Master, Lord Daokan," Karina said as she and Sobriel took shape in the space to the left of a much-surprised Ranma, "Even you, for all your power, cannot overthrow free will and our right to choose him as the father of our offspring."

"Yeah, you big bully, so back off or I'll snuff you!" Sobriel declared haughtily, the one least impressed of her sisters within the presence of Lord Reka.

Nabiki rather noticed an absence in the line of her husband's fierce defenders, and even as she wondered where Sharil got off to she heard a voice touch her mind and suddenly knew the answer.

**Quick, Mistress,** the Undine murmured telepathically, **Let me in so that we can join together.**

"Huh?" Nabiki reflexively reacted, "But..."

**You want the means of standing up in battle against him, right?** Sharil mentally asked, **Well, it just so happens that I know Lord Radigar's weakness...are you interested in discovering wht it is?**

That was a no-brainer, and Nabiki silently avered, **All right...link with mem then tell me everything you know about taking down thaat hot-headed blow hard!**

**At once, Mistress,** Sharil replied, and then Nabiki felt the liquid trembling that occurred as for the second time in a day she had became a host to the Undine, whose tattoo-like mark appeared about her left arm one moment later.

"How curious that I did not know about this earlier," Reka was averring, giving Ranma a more intensely focused study, "There is more to you than I imnagnined there would be...but I still do not like the very notion that I may need to call you my 'Son In Law.' What is there about you that has so enraptured the loyalties of these leadies?"

Ranma helplessly shrugged then said, "I don't know...just lucky I guess."

Reka curled his lip in a smile that was almost a sneer, "Luck has little to do with these events...and a true man makes his own fortune. But you had best be ready to honor the commitment that you have made with my Latisha or else..."

"Or else what, Uncle?" yet another voice asked, causing heads to turn to greet the apparition who was suddenly standing there illuminating the night with her presence.

"Thelendra?" Reka turned to regard the tall rainbow-haired woman in the light dress of many colors, "What are you doing here, Niece?"

"I be here to find the one whose excistence be a comfort to me in these times, Uncle," the buxom beauty said in a tone full of stern disapproval, "Where hast thou transported her? Where is my Kasumi?"

"Nani?" Nabiki asked, her eyebrows vanishing beneath her hairline.

"Ah, I should have guessed that you would come for your paramour," Reka mused, "You needn't worry, I have not rendered any harm to her, merely...sent her on a little voyage, one that you should well remember, having enounteredd her before during one of your earlier lifetimes."

"What strange riddle dost thou speak, Uncle?" Thelendra asked, only to have her expression alter as the significance of Reka's statement registered in her mind, and she said with a gasp, "Oh no...thou dost nay mean...? Art thou mad? Thou couldst upset the very balance of time itself with such a stunt!"

"Then I suppose you will have to do something about it, will you not?" Reka asked with a leer, even as the rainbow haired woman vanished as swiftly as she had appeared, leaving Ranma and Nabiki to gape in open wonder.

"Nani?" Rabna slowly murmured.

"Who the heck was that?" Nabiki marveled in disbelief, recalling the woman's huge chest size and at once wondering at the nature of the woman's involvement with Kasumi..

"Oh, didn't your sister ever introduce you?" Reka smiled, "That was her wife from a previous incarnation."

"Nani?" Nabiki whispered again, her eyebrows vanishing beneath her bangs as she absorbed this new and startling revelation...

When Kasumi was a little girl, barely six or seven years of age, she had encountered a classmate in the yard of her then-current grade school who had been favoring a tiny silver cross that she wore around her neck in the manner of a holy religious charm. In asking what it meant she got a rather eyebrow-raising answer that confused her to no end, so she ran home after class and sought out the fountain of all wisdom to whom she turned in such times of spiritual and intellectual crisis.

Namely her mother.

"Mommy," she had said in a plaintive voice, "Suzuki says if you don't worship Jesus Christ that you're going to hell. Is that true, and is he a Kami above all other Kamis?"

Her mother had smiled and favored her with one of her patented, "Now how do I explain this one?" looks, but then sat Kasumi down and told her a story about a wise man who lived a long time ago who was loved by a great many people and who loved them back so much that he was willing to die to protect them from a spirit of great evil. The Kami-Sama above was so moved by his sacrifice that he restored the man to life and then made him a protector for all who called themselves Christians and revered his name as they would a favorite sage or ancestor.

Sometime later her mother had taken Kasumi and her two sisters to visit a Christian temple as a guest of a personal friend, and there Kasumi had witnessed for the first time the image of the "Christian Saint" who was accorded the title of 'The Son of Kami-Sama.'"

But the image that she saw was not that of a cheerful sage benevolently waving at you like the Buddha but rather an awful and excruciatingly harsh rendering of a man suffering in agony while nailed to a cross. The statue had been so effectively rendered that Kasumi had almost thought it was a real man hanging up there looking down at you with a terrible grimace of unending suffering, and she had come away from the experience wondering how anyone could put such a horrible icon in a place of worship, let alone pay reverence to such suffering as though it were one of the seven holy virtues of the Buddha.

Later on, with the benefit of experience and time, she had done her own research and studied the history of Christianity with an eye to appreciating its popular appeal among Westeners. There were indeed many things that she found that she admired, such as a general respect for life and human dignity...but some of the things she read in the bible were a little off-putting, such as the notion that anyone not a Christian was destined for Hell, which she knew to be an overt slap in the face for everything her own ancestors had ever believe in or practiced. To be a Christian would effectively mean dishonoring their memory, and that was the end of the issue as far as she was concerned, though she did harbor a kind of residual respect for the ideas that Christians touted, and honored Christmas as a sacred holidy since it was about the joys of sharing with others.

As she grew older a kind of ambivalence set in which she viewed those Christians whom she encountered from time to time with a combination of respect and wary suspicion since she did not want to give up on her own familiar beliefs, but at the same time did not want to offend them by challenging their own implicit assumptions. Christians, she noticed, could be rather inconsistent about applying the lessons of their doctrinal teachers, and even ignoring such commandments as "Thou shalt not kill" whenever they become inconvenient. And the divorce rates in Christian-dominated nations were truly horrendous when compared with the rest of the civilized world. It was not that divorce was uncommon in Japan, only that a greater attempt was placed on maintaining the dignity of all parties, whereas with Christians a kind of open warfare seemed to erupt between former lovers over the division of property and offspring, which had happened with at least two of her fellow high school classmates after they graduated, married and divorsed within the space of a year, a rather shockingly brief interval to Kasumi's way of thinking.

To her the image of Jesus as a man who was the son of a god was an acceptable enough notion, but not if it meant that he was the only Kami in all of existence. His connection with death and suffering was rather much of a turn-off, and the Christian obsession about sin seemed even to her prudish mind to be a bit too harsh and overly judgemental.

So imagine actually meeting Jesus and discovering-much to your own surprise-that he was anything but the stern and aloof figure depicted in various renderings, but rather a fairly easy-going and kind hearted fellow who seemed to find humor in almost everything, and yet who sincerely cared about the enlightenment of his people, which made his seem more like the Buddha than the fellow on the crucifix that she remembered.

Walking at the side of a woman who was the earlier incarnation of Thelendra, a woman whom she had only recently met yet felt implicitly as if they had known each other for a very long interval, she found her mind both troubled and at ease with her present company. This Miriam was very easy to get along with, and she had the sort of forthright mind who spoke her thoughts easily and left one in no real doubt to her thoughts and feelings on any issue. Kasumi found her attraction to this woman was as easy as the bonds of feeling that she and Thelendra now shared, and without having the medium of blood exchange to facilitate their linkage. If anything Kasumi felt nourshed just being at her side and exchanging words in quiet tones of intimate affection, and Miriam seemed pleased to fill her in on any and all areas where she had questions, which was awfully convenient since question were all that Kasumi had to share, and she was dying to know the answers, theological implications notwithstanding.

"Thou art reflective, mine love," Miriam noted as they paused within the garden known as Gosthemene, "Being in this time has troubled you on many levels. Do we fail to live up to the expectations of us that seem to have been imbued within you by the legends of our era?"

"Um...more or less," Kasumi replied, "But mostly I'm just amazed to find out how human you both are...you and your father. I mean...he's practically like a god..."

"Nay," Miriam replied, "Less than a God yet more than a Man. He be Eluini, as be I...the unforgotten who are fated to be reborn in different bodies and lifetimes."

"I've heard you use the term before," Kasumi said, only to amend, "That is...the you I know form my time. I've no problem understanding reincarnation since it is a part of my own people's belief system, but...I was not aware that it was also a western concept."

"Most civilized folk know of past lives and rebirth of the soul in different bodies," Miriam replied, "Yet aye...here in Palestine it be a very foreign concept. The Hebrew do nay believe in an afterlife such as the Roman conception of Elysium. For them an earthly paradise existed once and was forever barred to Men, so people are trapped within the prison of flesh and when they die they go to rest in the earth until the time of the Resurrection, which shall be when the Messiah arrives to herald in a holy era."

"You speak as if you don't yourself believe this," Kasumi noted.

"As I said unto thee, beloved," Miriam smiled, "I be very unusual and outspoken on my beliefs for a woman of this society. And aye...the ways of my people be nay my ways in certain matters. Having memories of life before when I was a princess of the Hindu, and again a priestess among the Egyptians, hardly can I be so blind to the virtuous of other beliefs, and the hidebound rejection of what other cultures have to offer by way of their teachings."

"I feel much the same way," Kasumi said, "I love and respect the beliefs of my own people, but I'm not against studying the ways of other cultures, if only to understand them better."

"Much would I love to converse with thee on the beliefs and practices of thine people," Miriam said sadly, "But alas, I sense out time together here be limited, for we be nay fated to meet until the proper time and place, and in our proper bodies."

"I suppose you are right about that," Kasumi said, "I can hardly remain here with you in this time...I have a family to get back to and...I know certain things from my own time that might affect the course of the future."

"What troubles me most about this is what mine uncle Reka meant to have thee do by being here," Miriam frowned slightly, then dismissed the point altogether, "Never mind and anon. Thou art here and for that I be grateful. Of course...when I do meet with thee again in thine shape for this era I...may nay recognize thee so readily, for thine outward form will be different, and the circumstances of our meeting may seem less than timely."

"You seem awfully certain about this," Kasumi remarked, "Is it because you can see the future?"

"Bits and snatches, nay more than this," Miriam answered, "Understand, we Eluini partake of the collective pool of energies that be generated by humanity itself, and there being three hundred million people in the world even now...why, who knows how many more in thine own time? And how much greater will be our power, since the accumulation be exponential, nay incremental."

"Um...tell me about this fellow you're going to marry," Kasumi asked, "It take it he's not my current incarnation?"

"Nay," Miriam replied a bit sadly, "He be a good man and has recently earned father's trust by volunteering to undertake a dangerous experiment using a potent new narcotic concoction mine father has developed, one that can render the semblance of death yet preserve the life of an individual in suspended sleep that simulates death for two to three days at one interval, once applied with a vinegar solution."

"Oh?" Kasumi asked, "Your father was willing to risk his health testing out such a dangerous potion?"

"Nay Beloved," Miriam replied, "Lazar discovered that father intended to ingest such a potion for himself and chose to take it upon his own health to drink the potion. Father was away on a pilgrimage when word reached him of Lazar's seeming death, but knowing the true nature of affairs held calm while all else grieved for Lazar, thinking him truly beyond hope. Imagine their surprise when father calmly approached his grave then called for Lazar to awaken, and lo, he didst emerge whole and renewed, no worse for the telling, which confirmed the effectiveness of the potion. Not long after this father didst reward his loyalty by declaring him mine duly intended."

"But do you love him?" Kasumi asked, surprised and disturbed at hearing this version of a familiar story, one stripped away of its supernatural connotations.

"Ah...I be fond of him, as most may be," Miriam glanced away, "But in mine heart I know we be nay fated to be together. I think of him more as a brother than a future husband...but I dutifully comply with mine father's wishes on the matter, trusting that father has some purpose for binding Lazar to our house, the kind which I presently cannot imagine."

"That's...very interesting," Kasumi reluctantly admitted, "But...why would your father want to create such a potion?"

"In all truth, Beloved, I know not, which worries me greatly," Miriam turned to gaze off into the garden, "More and more mine vision be clouded regarding the immediate future, which leads me to suspect that father himself be the instrument, that he be sheltering me from knowing too much of what is to occur. That bodes nay well with me, and I worry if nay we be in far darker straights than e'en he has allowed me to imagine."

"Oh my...do you think so?" Kasumi remarked, fearing that she had a very good idea just what sort of future the man named Yessus was shielding from his daughter.

"Truly I mislike this whole array that we be moving towards so rashly," Miriam continued with a slightly distant edge to her voice, "All of mine life have I known things before they are to come to pass, for it be given unto me to have a sense for probability lines that lead off from the now to the yet-to-be, and much a terrible burden it has been for the most part...yet now that I be unable to see the road stretching out before us...I find myself...afraid of what I am nay being allowed to see happen."

"You're afraid that your father may be headed into danger and is protecting you from knowing about it?" Kasumi asked, risking as much as she dared at the moment to spill the beans over what she knew from her own timeline's history.

"Aye," Miriam whispered softly, "How else am I to feel when we seem to have stepped literally into a hornet's nest with the political turmoil that roils within the pot that be Jerusalem proper. With all the various contending factions crying out for imprudent revolution the thought that many have that father be aiming to set himself up as a leader of said movement has many plotting dark schemes to seek his life. Too much do events resemble mine memories regarding the ancient times of Mithras, when father didst confront a similar set of unwelcome choices in pursuit of a higher vision. Indeed, mine suspicions be that father dost seek to replicate a chain of events that has passed down to misremembered legend..."

"You say that as if it were something to be avoided," Kasumi fathomed.

"Understand, mine father has done many great deeds in his time to combat the forces of chaos and darkness that would lay claim to the world of mortal men...and yet always there be a price for his accomplishments that sometimes be paid for in innocent blood that be shed unwisely," Miriam said sadly, "The Zorastrians, under their zealous leader, Zoraster, who was none other than a reincarnate Moses seeking once again to spread his fanatical lust for monotheistic glory...sought to deify father's memory by incorporating his legend into the fabric of their own system. To this day Mithra worship be popular among the Roman soldiers, who honor and revere him as a Redeemer god who once saved humanity from the claim of ancient devils..."

"Really?" Kasumi remarked, surprised upon discovering how much that sounded like the stories she had been told about Jesus.

"You see...popular myth would have it that father died to take the weight of human evil upon his shoulders, and by suffering death and resurrection rose anew and reborn as a clensing agent to free humankind forever."

"Like Christ?" Kasumi asked, unintentionally blurting out the name that was foremost in her consciousness.

"Kristos?" Miriam blinked in surprise, "The Greek word for 'Annointed?' 'Tis very like the Hebrew word Messiah, it be true, but with radicaly different implications that make them inappropriately linked in thine consciousness. The Messiah be reputedly a Hebrew general who will lead the armies of Yahweh against the forces of the Unrighteous at Megiddo...but that legend be a corrupt tale told by the Maccabees in a sly attempt to sanctify the crusades of ancient Yuda."

"The who and what?" Kasumi asked.

"Yuda Maccabee," Miriam replied, "The revolutionary and general who founded the Hasmodian line...a fanatical band of desert dwelling bandits who didst murder their way into power by capturing Yerusalem and and putting to the sword all of its inhabitants, thus ending the hold of the Samoreans who ruled before them. They began with high minded ideals yet soon degenerated into a corrupt and tyranical dynasty that did so offend the sentiments of the common people that they appealed to Rome itself for aid, thus lending the way for mighty Pompei to step in and appoint the dynasty of Herod the Iduminian, which in turn set about the current line of events that now be sweeping the Palestine region."

"Interesting," Kasumi remarked, "So the Hebrew originally invited the Romans to govern here?"

"Nay as such," Miriam remarked, "But once invited in Rome be a hard guest to refuse at the table, e'en as they be unorthodox and thus 'unclean' in the minds of the majority of our people. Understand, the Hebrew be a people obsessed with spiritual-if not absolutely physical-cleanliness. Anyone who transgresses the sacred laws of the Torah be regarded as 'unclean,' and are accorded the status of Lepers in our society. Where father has earned much ire from the orthodox of the Sanhedrin be in how he has freely associated himself with those judged pariahs for their unorthodox status, telling them that the be forgiven in their hearts if they accept Yahweh's love into their very being. This undermines the authority of the Temple, which clings to itself the sole claim of being able to forgive and cleanse the sins of the people."

"So that is what is meant by healing the lepers," Kasumi murmured in silent wonder, then turned to Miriam and added, "And here I thought it was Romans, Tax Collectors and Samaritans who were on the list of forbidden people."

"The list be far longer than that, mine love, but aye," Miriam said with a sad little smile, "Those be among those whom father has greeted as friends, comrades and allies. Father does not see in Rome an implacable enemy but rather a peoples who rule much of the known world and who be a presence that can be dealt with through compromise and accommodation...words that be foreign to the lexicon of Zadokite or Zealot."

"Surely not all Sicari are to be scorned as hard-headed absolutists, little Miri," a voice gently disturbed their private reverie, prompting Kasumi to turn in surprise, not having heard the approach of the stoical man whose shadow she had been all too aware of the whole time during the meal known to history as the Last Supper.

"Yuda?" Miriam turned a curious look his way, leaving unspoken a question of his unwanted intrusion.

"Forgive me," the man bowed his head slightly in a respectful nod, "But your father wishes to join with you in conversation and set me the task of seeking you out. It was not my intention to intrude or interrupt your time together."

Miriam relaxed and said, "Tell father we shall be along anon, and well enough. And...for the record, Yuda...I do discriminate in favor of those who have shown themselves to be men of integrity and vision."

"Your generosity honors me, little Miri," Yuda said with such sincerity that Kasumi found it hard to doubt the man, nor did she sense in him any evil intentions, especially when he turned a smile her way and addressed her with a smile, saying, "Your presence has stirred up quite a hornet's nest of a debate among our master's acolytes. It seems that some, like Cephas, believe your coming to be an evil omen of pending disaster."

"And what do you believe, Yuda-san?" Kasumi wondered.

Yuda gave Miriam a fond regard then said, "That anyone who can bring a smile to our little Miri is a friend worth having in these evil times of strife and contention. My brother Sicari have acted rashly in an attempt to provoke my Master's hand, but the Rabbi has wisely remained above the fray, knowing that the time is not right for us to confront Rome so directly."

"No good can come of angering Pilate or giving Caiphas reason to move against us," Miriam direly predicted, "Roman rule may nay be to the liking of many true believers, but it be an evil that must be endured else we suffer again the fate of our people during the exile into Babylon."

"That is my belief as well," Yuda said grimly, "Understand, when I first was assigned by the Sicari order to serve as bodyguard to your father I believed that Rome was a great evil that had to be purged in blood from the sands of all of Palestine. Knowing your father has taught me to look beyond my hate and to understand that the evil in men's hearts is our true enemy, that conquering that is a task that defines a truly religious man from a mere pretender."

"And what else do you believe, Yuda-san?" Kasumi asked, still unable to reconcile the man before her with the infamous villain of the Bible.

"That is Yahweh wished the Romans gone from the lands of his people then He would rid us of them in the blink of an eye," Yuda replied, "That He has chosen not to do so is testament of the fact we are not yet ready for independence."

"Well spoken," Miriam smiled, "One need not look hard to see why thou art favored of all mine father's closest students."

"Your father took the scales from my eyes and made me see where I was once blind to all else," Yuda said solemnly, "Now I do without question his bidding because I believe in his heart he acts for the greater good of the nation...and not just Palestine but all of humanity, showing us that-despite our differences-we are brothers in the sight of Yahweh. Why, he has even gotten me to look upon Samaritans as if they were true brothers and fellow sons of Abram."

"The Samaritans?" Kasumi asked.

"The descendants of the scattered northern tribes who once were part of a greater Israel," Miriam replied, "They have their own traditions, which be evolved along similar yet parallel lines to that of the tribe of Yuda proper. Many Hebrew regard them most unfavorably as splitters from the true faith because they ancestors remained here while the Hebrew proper were in Babylon evolving the current version of the Torah."

"It used to be that I thought them the worst scum put on the earth to bedevil our people," Yuda remarked, "But these days...it is hard to hold a grudge against so scattered and desolate a people. They have suffered worse under Roman rule than even we have in Galilee, so it would make sense to ally ourselves with these fallen tribesmen, to seal the breach that has divided the children of Abram for so long, to reunify the thirteen tribes in a much stronger and spiritual whole nation."

"It sounds as if you have found a truly wise path to read, Yuda-san," Kasumi remarked by way of curious observation.

"It gratifies me to hear such praise from the lips of one so fair and gentle-mannered," Yuda bowed again, "Now, if you will excuse me, I will return and tell your father that you will be along in another few moments."

The man quietly slipped away, leaving Kasumi to remark, "The fellow is a martial artist."

"He has studied the craft of war all of his life," Miriam replied, "Like Maccabee before him, after whom his parents didst name him. Sicari are hard-disciplined fighters, able to climb bare rock and survive in total desert with hardly any water. Small wonder they be so greatly feared, and yet Yuda is of a better cut than the average murderer who slits throats in the night and steals away before he is discovered."

Kasumi continued to stare when the man was for a moment longer, then noticed that Miriam was studying her profile and smiling fondly, which prompted Kasumi to turn her attention back her way.

"Forgive me, beloved," Miriam said upon meeting her gaze, "It is just that...the way you were looking just now...it reminded me so potently of mine memories of what thou weret like during our last incarnation together. Oft you would ponder might thoughts in such a way, and always I felt the urge to ease thine troubled brow with soothing words of love and affection..."

"Am I really so much like the version of me that you're supposed to meet one day?" Kasumi asked, feeling drawn to this dark haired beauty in the same hypnotic manner as she felt towards Thelendra.

"Thine past self, the one I be destined to meet...be a face and form obscured to mine sight at the present, Beloved," Miriam sighed, "I doubt that I shall immediately recognize thee in thine current lifetime, but when I do know thee we will renew the vows and bounds once held in former times and places. Of that I am possessed of a certainty that be unshakable conviction."

Kasumi felt the other woman's hand tighten within her own and felt an urge to reach out and hold her growing stronger by the moment. Yet still she held back long enough to say, "I hope you find happiness with my past self. I feel as though...just being with you would be enough to make me truly happy."

Miriam reached out to caress Kasumi's cheek and her eyes all but glowed brightly with unvoiced longing, "As do I, my love...but for anon things must be as they were intended by the fates. Thou and I shalt meet again in thine time, and in that I take much comfort. But come, we must nay keep mine father waiting any longer than have we already."

Kasumi followed in step with her companion as they walked side-by-side through the gathering dusk of the forest, but the very nearness of her companion's warm and inviting body was making her head swim and her blood-thirst to reawaken. She stifled both impulses as best she was could, but still she found that 'naughty' and 'inappropriate' thoughts kept creeping in past her mental defenses.

As it turned out the did not have very far to go to rejoin the rabbi known as Yessus as he walked beside some of his favorite disciples, quietly chattering away with them as though indulging in a long-term debate on weighty issues.

"But Rabbi," the man known as Cephas insisted, "All that I am saying is that if we could tone down some of these more radical ideals of yours and make them more palatable to the Sanhedrin..."

"Would you have me shade the truth and tailor it to suit my audiences like a Roman politician?" Yessus gently countered, "Understand, I have always sought to shape my words to suit the needs of those who hear my voice, but I cannot say that which is contrary to what I believe. I must be true to the word of Yahweh as it is revealed to me, not crop it like a biographer in one of your books, Tomas."

"Rabbi," the man named Tomas said, "I've only wanted to make a record of some of your ideas for accuracy's sake so that our enemies do not misquote you..."

Yessus held up a hand, "I have said to you many times that my words are recorded on air, not mere parchment, and I do not want someone writing a book about me after I'm gone so that people can praise me and act like I am some camel-shirted prophet from the Torah. Don't you know how the written word can be twisted and quoted out of context to mean the exact opposite of what I am teaching?"

"I know, Rabbi," Tomas said, "And I remember hearing you say this before, but still..."

"Rabbi," Cephas spoke up impatiently, "It is because your words are being twisted into different meanings that we have to fight back by showing others the true context of your wisdom. Take for example what you said the other day when that Saducee asked you point blank if you intended to destroy the institutions of the Temple..."

"I remember that," the apostle named Yohan remarked, "You claimed that you would tear the Temple down and in three days rebuilt it anew..."

"No, that is not what I said," Yessus sounded a bit cross and impatient this time, "I meant that the institution that is the Temple can be replaced if men's hearts cry out for a new Covenant, one less tainted than the one forged by Ezra the Persian when he brought to us a new version of the Torah. The physical Temple is merely stone, brick and cedar, a thing made by men to honor Yahweh, but if it fails to serve the purpose of uniting the people, then it must needs fall and be replaced. Indeed...if men do not alter their sinful ways soon then the Temple itself may not last out another generation."

"Don't say that, Master," the apostle named Timon asked, "It's talk like that which frightens the Sadducees and make other Pharisees look at us askance..."

"Do you recall how troubled they were when you spared that Adulteress who was to be stoned within the market?" Cephas asked, "What kind of covenant do we have if we forgive the sin of lude and lascivious behavior? If you would only speak out more about the values of society, reinforcing the institution of marriage rather than giving silent blessing to impure and improper unions..."

"It's always about sex with you, Cephas," Yessus smiled, "But what is improper in your eyes? The marriage of a Hebrew outside their tribal race? Recall you not the rumors that were once spread about me, questioning my own lineage to my earthly father, Yussef? There were some who whispered that my mother was pregnant with me while still a virgin, or that she had been raped by a Roman, or a demon, or some such slanderous nonsense."

"What about Miriam and this strange outlander she claims to be her mate from a different lifetime?" Tomas wondered.

Yamez smiled, standing apart in his white robes while saying, "Are we back to that already? What is it about this foreign woman that has you so much on edge? After all, Miri trusts her, and I've known Miriam since she was old enough to crawl. She may seem a bit odd in her ways at times, there is no doubting that she has the favor of heaven, which has granted her many visions."

"It's not Miriam who worries me but rather this foreigner, this...what did she say her name was again?" Cephas asked.

"Kasumi," Yuda said, surprising several of his fellow apostles by making his presence known without warning, "And it may interest you to know that she can hear every word spoken about her, brothers, so be careful what you say or you will give offense to a guest of our Master."

"Ah yes," Yessus turned to regard Miriam and Kasumi, who had been standing just a bit off from their group, "Abide a moment, my friends, and allow me some space here. I am very much interested in greeting our guest, and I would prefer to do so in private."

"Rabbi, is that wise?" Cephas asked, "She is without male relatives present, and to be in her presence unescorted would invite some to complain that you are committing adultery..."

"What if I serve to act as chaperone?" Yuda asked, "Would any here dare question my witness?"

"Certainly not, old friend," Yessus cheerfully acknowledged, "But perhaps, for form's sake, you might send for Miriam, who by now should be done putting away the dishes and-if I know her as well as I do-she could hardly stand to be left out of these matters."

"Rabbi," Cephas said uneasily, "We all know how much you indulge her curiosity and allow her to share in our meetings, but as a woman..."

"She is my wife, Cephas," Yessus said quietly, "And if you know of a good way of excluding her from our communions, then you are perhaps more talented than I in the arts of persuasion...

"Did someone mention my name?" Miriam of Magdala herself asked as she approached their gathering, giving a mildly cross look towards her husband, "So, what weighty issue about marriage is Cephas proposing this time? An abolition against divorce?"

"Certainly not," Yohan laughed, "You've met his wife? Can you imagine him sponsoring a proclamation that would bind him to her forever?"

There was general good natured laughter about this, shared in some party by Cephas himself, who relented once again rather than press his own views on the matter, which seemed to be a habit for him, bowing to the authority of the group rather than asserting his own as might a natural leader.

"Once again we bow to your wisdom, brother," Yamez smiled, then turned to Miriam and said, "Sister-in-law, would you do my brother the courtesy of watching over him while he spends time with Miri's friend and keeping your husband out of trouble."

"You mean Chaperone?" Miriam asked, "I was about to ask Rachael to do that for me, but since you bring up the point of fidelity and my husband..."

"I yield," Yessus said with a gentle smile of concession, then motioned to Kasumi and said, "Walk with me for a time, Kasumi of Nippon, and let us speak of matters both private and consequential."

"As you wish it, Sir," Kasumi replied, wondering just what this man wanted to speak with her about, and fearing that she might do or say something to offend him as some part of her was apprehensive in regards to what he would think of her being a Vampire Goddess and-among other things-non-Jewish.

But once she and the two Miriams-both the old and the young-started to stroll off together into the gathering dusk of the gardens of Gethsemane, the man named Yessus gave her an easy smile and said, "Sorry to put you through all of that. I know how odd this must appear, but the really are a good natured lot when you get to know them as I do."

"Sir?" Kasumi asked, falling in step with the man while conscious of the younger Miriam following three steps behind them.

"I can sense your unease...even something of the nature of your troubles," Yessus answered, "I know, for example, that you have had recent contact with one of my brothers...Reka to be exact. He tends to be rather unsubtle in dropping me hints these days, and he's made no secret of the fact that he considers my present course to be a grave error in judgment, one like to result in a bad ending."

"Is that way he send me to your time, Sensei?" Kasumi asked, using the nearest Japanese equivalent that she could think of that would equate to "Rabbi," short of less formal "Priest."

"So...it is from the future you come," Yessus eyed her shrewdly, "Or one possible future that might result from current events. Understand, there are so many potential realities to keep track of that I fear I am not able to sort them out with the kind of clarity that I once knew in some of my previous incarnations."

"I am...from a very long time in your future, my Lord," Kasumi said, pausing to add, "Your name is remembered in my era with honor..."

"That must be so considering that you seem as nervous of me as though I were about to bite you," Yessus remarked with a boyish grin that made him seem much younger than forty, "Which is rather ironic considering what you are and the legacy you carry within you..."

"My lord?" Kasumi asked.

"The Montessary equation," Yessus noted, "A spell that dates back to before even my first incarnation. You are a drinker of blood, which is seen as un-kosher to the Hebrew, and you are a divinity as well, which definitely would not sit well with the high priests of the temple."

"You believe that I am a goddess?" Kasumi asked.

"I believe that you are of such a nature that the word 'goddess' is the only one that can appropriately be applied to you," Yessus answered, "And understand, in my travels I have met many gods and goddesses, particularly among the Hindu, but few are as pleasant to be around as you appear to be, so I see no reason to make it an issue."

"Then you do not believe that I am...evil?" Kasumi asked.

"I believe that a great evil was done to you, but that you do not contain an excess of evil within yourself," Yessus answered, "Handsome is as handsome does, after all, and your Karmic slate is quite clean...your aura lacks the taint of a trust Bloodlust. And as I have been prone to say on occasion, it is not what you consume that makes you impure, but rather what you do by your own actions...and so I judge you clean enough to be good company on this fine evening."

"Thank you," Kasumi sighed, finding herself relaxing by more than a little, "I was afraid you might not...approve of me due to the alteration of my nature..."

"Judge not lest ye be judged, so say the prophets," Yessus said sagely, "But I must confess that you do worry me for an entirely different reason. Reka and I have never exactly gotten along or even seen eye to eye on a great many issues, but for him to consider my meeting with you important enough to go to all this trouble..."

"I honestly do not know anything about his purpose, Sensei," Kasumi assured him, "But...I do know some things about the legends concerning you...legends that I now think were not entirely accurate...in fact, very little of what I have encountered here matches up with those legends."

"Hardly surprising," Yessus remarked a bit sadly, "I tend not to be understood a great deal even among those whom I account as my closest companions. It is so very hard to make them see beyond the conventions of the society into which they were raised, and men as conservative-minded as Cephas..." he shook his head a bit sadly, "...Not all of them are capable of the deeper understanding of my true teachings, as if Yuda."

"Ah...about him, Sensei," Kasumi nervously asked, "He seems like a nice enough fellow, but the legends concerning him...well..."

"They paint a very different picture?" Yessus concluded for her, his brow briefly creased with a look of puzzlement, "Yuda a betrayer? Quite unlikely...I would say impossible even. I know his heart as I know my own left hand, and he is as sincere a follower of my teachings as you will find among my students. But this other thing I sense in your mind...you are concerned that I am headed into some kind of danger?"

"The legends rather very specific about that, Sensei," Kasumi revealed, "This night before the Passover...one of your followers will betray you..."

"Oh, I already know about that," Yessus smiled disarmingly.

"You do?" Kasumi asked.

"I teased Cephas about it over dinner," Yessus answered, "I said that he would deny me three times before the cock crows on the morning. Of course...my vision regarding why he denied knowing me was a bit cloudy on certain details..."

"Um...Sensei?" Kasumi decided to be a bit more direct about her true concerns and said, "What are your feelings about someone, say...taking the sins of the world upon their shoulder and bearing the weight of humanity through an act of self-sacrifice?"

"Oh, you mean like what I tried to do when I was Mithras?" Yessus asked, "The follies of youth, or inexperience if you will. I thought to break the hold of a rather nasty demon who claimed dominion over humanity in the name of my father's enemy, Uta-Hamash..."

"Uta who?" Kasumi repeated.

"Uta-Hamash," Yessus replied, "The lord of Chaos and darkness, otherwise known as the great deceiver."

"You mean Satan?" Kasumi asked.

"Oh no," Yessus insisted, "Satan is one of the Angels who serve the host of Yahweh. You are thinking more of the Zorastrian God of Evil, Ariman. Uta-Hamash is an Eluini lord who steeps himself in the twisted plottings of death and madness...an ally of the creatures of the outer dark who seek to destroy the worlds of light altogether. They are my eternal enemies, and when I was Mithras I opposed them as a warrior mage seeking to guide human kind out of the darkness that befell the world after the fall of Atlantis."

"Oh my," Kasumi said, growing more confused by the moment.

"Of course it didn't really work," Yessus continued, "Taking the weight of human sin onto myself...it was a foolish notion, one long since repented."

"Why so?" Kasumi asked.

"Two words...Free Will," Yessus answered, "If human beings have the ability to choose badly they also have the freedom to make correct choices in life...and without Sin there cannot be virtue. If all anyone ever did was obey what they were told then they would be no better than slaves, beholden to one or more masters, and never achieving the potential that exists within them."

"What potential?" Kasumi asked, prodding the man for further clarification.

"Why, the spark of light that exists within all living things," Yessus answered, "At one time in the distant past all souls vibrated in harmony and the world was a paradise...but the ages of Chaos divided this union and broke apart the harmony of nature, dividing souls against one another so that the world today is governed by many minds rather than one, each competing to dominate and consume rather than sharing their proportionate share. It is the sickness that underlays all human evil, and that is what I have sought to reconcile through my teachings."

"I don't understand," Kasumi admitted.

"I suppose it would take more time to explain than is allotted to us just now," Yessus said sadly, "But simply put I am attempting to teach my people a lesson that I learned while I was abroad, and to make of them an example that can unify all nations."

"That sounds like a very worthy goal," Kasumi agreed, "But how do you mean to accomplish this?"

"By demonstrating to them that the power of physical death is not greater than spiritual salvation," Yessus answered in his quietly understated tone of voice, "You see...far too many in our time believe only in what they can see, hear and touch while paying lip service to those higher ideals that are loftily pronounced within the Temple. In truth even the high priesthood does not totally believe in what they are saying, crafting their words in pragmatic language that vaguely hints at higher rewards being meted out to those who are faithful to the Law and Covenant with Yahweh. Scratch beneath the surface, however, and you find a very different mindset, one grounded in the physical reality of our time as viewed through the limited lens of ambition and opportunism, coupled with a healthy dash of fear of the authority of the Romans. That limits the effectiveness of the message of the Torah, for men say not what they think or feel but rather what they believe to be healthy to pronounce in public. Such men lack the courage of their own convictions, and as such have been corrupted by a serious lack of vision."

"But if saying too much could mean having to pay a heavy price for too much honesty..." Kasumi began.

"Indeed, you are most correct on that end," Yessus noted, "The attitude of the Sadducees in the Sanhedrin is not entirely without justification...but they miss the fundamental point that they have sold out the message of the prophets in order to make it more palatable to the Romans. Caiaphas has only rarely stepped forward to provide real leadership to that end, such as the time when Caesar attempted to have statues of Zeus installed within the Temple with the thought of equating Zeus with Yahweh, a practice that the Romans have used elsewhere in order to make their gods more palatable with the people whom they have conquered."

"You mean they wanted to incorporate Judaism and make it an extension of the Roman religion?" Kasumi wondered.

Yessus eyed her shrewdly, "You have a keen mind to observe that, and yes, Rome did originally hope to bring many Hebrew values in line with their own theocratic style of governance. Roman has never really cared so much about imposing their religious beliefs on their captive peoples as in diluting the power of local religions to serve as a cause of opposition. In truth many Romans actually admire the Hebrew moral code, and some wish to imitate it to a limited degree...but practices such as circumcision and our dietary code act as a deterrent for many. So does the attitude of far too many Hebrew that those not born of the blood of Abraham should be excluded from the Covenant and not permitted to convert, as did the Iduminians of a century and a half ago, the race that birthed King Herod, whom many to this day regard as a foreign tyrant."

"But if the Romans want to extend an arm of friendship to Jerusalem, why then do so many people hate them?" Kasumi wondered.

"The same reason that tribal states the world over justify their hatred of one another," Yessus said sadly, "He who is not with me is against me, and he who is not of my tribe is an enemy by definition. Such a terribly sad way of viewing the world, don't you think? To make an enemy where you could have a friend for no other reason but that their ways are different from your own, for which cause you would see them as less than human."

Kasumi thought about that for a moment then said, "My own people...have similar values...but we have tried to study foreign ways and to incorporate the best of what we have encountered..."

"Your people must indeed be wise then," Yessus noted, "The Greeks and Romans both have made a practice of studying the customs of other cultures and, indeed, they often do incorporate the best of what they know...or what they find of practical use anyway. In that regard they are a stage above where the Hebrew are in this era, and much of the fault for that can be laid to rest at the gates of the Temple, which has become a lightning rod for the nationalistic debates that threaten to tear apart our nation."

"How sad," Kasumi noted, "I have never understood why people can't talk to one another and settle their differences...or, at the very least, learn to live with their differences and try to see the best in other people."

Yessus gave her a very odd look and then softly chuckled, "Well met indeed, Tendo Kasumi of Nippon. You are a rare flower to bloom within these deserts, and I am gratified to see that people of your time can at least appreciate the core beliefs that are the heart of my own teaching."

Kasumi felt like blushing, looking down modestly upon hearing such praise from a man whom she was learning to differentiate from the terrifying images born out of misremembered legend, "Not everyone feels as I do, Sensei. In fact...far too many people are like these Zadokites I have heard described, all too willing to use violence to solve their problems and not at all reasonable in hearing a different opinion."

"How sad that human nature seems to inflexible," Yessus sighed, "In all of my different incarnations I have often run into the same petty values of greed, avarice, envy, pride and resentment that comes from viewing the world through the lens of your own wants and needs, without regard to the needs of other people. In my travels I have seen the best and worst that is to be found in human beings, and I have come to know that life is far too short for human beings to waste with petty feuds and minor quarrels that often get blown out of all proportion. I wanted my life this time around to have some meaning in that I could show the Hebrew a very different way of living. I wanted to teach them to forgive minor hurts, to set aside their petty jealousies and to try to view the world as I do, within a larger context."

Kasumi nodded politely, urging the man to continue expounding on this point.

"Rome rules much of the known world, and yet it is a small thing when compared to the world itself in its entirety," Yessus said obligingly, "Many people regard anything beyond the horizon to be like falling off the face of the world, but I have stood on the highest mountains and looked down upon the deepest valleys and have not seen all that there is to be seen. I appreciate the fact that Yerusalem is not the center of all realities that our people tend to imagine, nor are the beliefs of the Hebrew themselves of much consequence to the vast majority of people who live throughout our planet."

"You are very right about that, Sir," Kasumi noted, "There are many more people in this world than anyone could hope to meet within a single lifetime."

"And yet we all share a spiritual connection," Yessus's eyes grew alight with new emotion, "A vast pool of collective energies that we unconsciously tap into, that links all who live together and makes us brothers of one spirit. That is what I hope to one day get across to others...that the world consists of more than just your own limited branch of the human family...that what happens to any one of us matters to all, and that the welfare of the poorest and most unfortunate of humanity should be of paramount concern to everyone, even the wealthy and overly privileged. If a man fails to understand this...then how can he claim to be enlightened?"

"I agree with you, Sensei," Kasumi felt moved by the sincerity and compassion in his tone but added quietly, "And yet...if it comes to a question of doing good, why then are so many people prone to act so badly?"

"I boils down to the question of Sin," Yessus answered, "Which is an Aramaic term from archery, by the way, which loosely translates as: 'To Miss the Mark.' Men act with either animalistic passion or with the high-minded best of intentions according to what they believe will serve their basic needs or greatest ideals...yet often they make horrible mistakes because they rush into things without thinking out the consequences, or else are unaware of how their baser urges might conflict with their intentions. Men do many perverse things without realizing the inherent contradiction between their desires and the course of their own actions, and as such can do greater harm than if they intentionally sought to do evil. No man is ever truly a villain within his own eyes, yet seen through the eyes of another his acts might seem villainous indeed if they conflict with the needs of other people."

"That does seem very true," Kasumi noted, "But still...if to Sin means acting in error..."

"I know what you would say, Lady Kasumi," Yessus smiled, "Why don't we all do what the prophets tell us is for the best and obey the law without hesitation? Human perversity again. We often rationalize doing what we want even when it means compromising with the law because we confuse our needs with pragmatism. And yet Law itself can often be in error when applied to a context where it is not appropriately fitted. Justice sometimes suffers when law is treated as an absolute, so people must rely upon their own judgment and exercise free will intelligently in order to avoid committing errors. Besides, just because something feels good does not necessarily mean it is bad for you, or in error."

The latter part was said with a hint of sly humor that she now felt to be typical of the man's manner and teaching, for he was hardly boastful or self-important in conducting himself in a lecture but seemed to embody a degree of humility and self-deprecating amusement that not only made him seem more approachable but also defined him as more...human than some porcelain saint. More and more she found herself liking him as an individual even while remaining in awe of his evident wisdom, to say nothing of the potency of his Ki, which shone like a beacon in the gathering dusk that was creeping over the garden with inevitable progress.

"Sir," Kasumi said very softly, "There is something I...should probably not tell you...regarding the future..."

Yessus made a dismissive hand gesture, "Better keep it to yourself, Lady Kasumi, or else I might be tempted to pluck it from your thoughts, and that would give me too much of a burden, knowing far more of what is to come to pass than would be healthy. I am tormented by enough visions as it is not to carry the weight of your memories within me."

"But Sensei," Kasumi argued persuasively, "Something terrible is about to happen..."

"You don't need to tell me that," Yessus said sadly, "Far too many of my visions are filled with images from out of my nightmares...or Yerusalem destroyed, my people scattered and forsaken even by heaven...of entire nations at war with one another over ideas whose very nature is betrayed by the horrible reality of war itself..."

"But it is to you that I have to give a warning," Kasumi said urgently, "If you go on as you are..."

"You think I'll come to a bad ending, is that it?" Yessus's smile was wan and sad, "That's what Miriam believes...both my wife and my daughter. They believe that I am headed into conflict with the Sanhedran itself...and, alas, I believe that their fears may have some justification. Perhaps it was a mistake coming here to offer the olive branch when so many voices are raised crying for violent opposition to Rome. Many Saducees seem to have the general impression that I am seeking power for myself, that I want to lead the people in open revolt, as if everything that I have done all of these years amounted to nothing but wind and sand. How many times do I have to say that I am not here to establish an earthly Kingdom in the name of Yahweh? But even a few among my closest followers appear to believe me the new Messiah, the fulfillment of prophesies that were nothing more than slanderous lies put into the mouth of such historical figures as Isiah by the Macabees in order to justify their own murderous Hasmondian dynasty..."

"But Sir...aren't you?" Kasumi asked, wondering especially about this part of his legend.

Yessus did not answer immediately but then gazed off into the darkness and said quietly, "There was a time when I myself thought that I might be able to take advantage of the legends in order to guide our people away from the coming apocalypse of my visions...but as I grow older and deeper in my knowledge of the ways of power the memories of lessons learned in former lives has warned me that this is folly. I am not here to lead armies or to crusade against the hordes of darkness as I did when I was Mithra...I am here to heal a breach that has wounded Israel for far too long and divided brother against brother in a time when we should be seeking unity and consensus."

He fell silent for another long moment, then said in a more tired voice than before, "My cousin Yohan believed that we were headed for a violent end of times that would herald in a new kingdom of Yahweh, and for a time I listened to his teachings, even shared some of his fire, thinking that Yahweh's time was indeed at hand, that the signs and portents were right for a change to the very dynamic of human awareness. Many these days believe that the world is going to end by the sword and be purged of all sin by the right hand of Yahweh, who is the coming Messiah...but here you are from a time very far into our future, living proof that the world will still continue. So much for prophesy, which in the end is little more than intuitive guesswork on the part of the prophets."

"Do you mean to say that it is possible for prophesy to be in error?" Kasumi wondered.

"The word is based on the term, 'to profess,' which often enough means to proclaim loudly your own beliefs and predictions, which often get attributed to some god or guardian spirit," Yessus answered, "But those of us who are gifted with the ability to glimpse shadows and forms that may or may not be a part of our future know all too well how futile it is to speak declaritively of events that have yet to happen. At any given point there are a multitude of opposing choices that can lead in so many different directions, and I have always been gratified to know that there are options that give us the hope of good choices...not just the bad ones that we often make in blind haste and intemperate rush to judgement. Some choices can lead to the results we yearn for, and to know that on some alternate level of reality a version of me has acted correctly is both a comfort and a blessing, rather than to think we are locked into an ironclad pattern of fate for which there can be no hope of alternation."

"I believe that I see what you mean," Kasumi said, "Then...history is not always set and determined? It can be altered?"

"Every moment of every day we can make choices that affect the very course of the future," Yessus replied, "Accepting the fact that some of our choices may be bad ones is a part of living...but we do the best we know how and hope that by following our heart and head in concert that we will make the best of the choices that are given to us. To believe otherwise is to concede free will and accept the monolithic path of predestination."

"Then you can still choose to make a future that is different from the one that I know," Kasumi urged, "It doesn't have to follow the flow of fate as it has been known on our timeline..."

"This seems very important to you," Yessus observed cannily, "That worries me...almost as much as the fact that the future seems more and more clouded at the moment. I feel as if a tumultuous even is about to occur that will set in motion a chain of events that even Yahweh cannot hope to foresee its outcome. Perhaps the choices that I have made of late are not as wise as I would have imagined. Riding into town on the back of an ass, for example, just fueled the belief that I was coming here to proclaim myself a Messiah..."

"But why did you do it then if that wasn't your intention?" Kasumi wondered.

"Would you believe I broke a sandal and decided that I needed a rest?" Yessus smiled broadly.

"Sensei?" Kasumi asked, surprised at his irreverent tone of humor.

"Actually, I was trying to create an impression of humility that would get the attention of the common people of Yerusalem," Yessus answered, "And Isiah-false prophesy or not-is well known to everyone, especially those in the Temple itself. Unfortunately it created the entirely wrong impression by making me appear too forcibly humble to be a proper prophet. Prophets are supposed to scare people by dressing in sackcloth and ashes, screaming loudly with dire predictions of doom and gloom for everyone who listens, waving accusatory fingers and pointing at whoever happens to be unpopular at the moment and blaming upon them the occupation by the Romans."

"You certainly do not seem to be that sort of fellow," Kasumi quietly noted.

"I tend to dress better than many practitioners of the Nazorite calling," Yessus smiled, "My family is well enough off that I could dress as an earthly prince among men and even impress on Antipas my pedigree as a descendant of the line of David."

"So why don't you?" Kasumi wondered.

"Are you kidding me, my lady?" Yessus grinned, "With the exception of my mother, Yamez and Rachel the rest of my family has practically disowned me. We were a respected line of Rabbis before I came along and soured the family's reputation. These days I have to sometimes fall back on my secondary profession as a carpenter in order to make ends meet...that or accept charitable donations from those who support my calling, which primarily means my sister Rachel."

"You are a carpenter then?" Kasumi asked, latching on to the only part of the legend here that met with her expectations.

"Of course," Yessus puffed up his chest in a bit of forced melodrama, "It's required of all rabbis that they have a secondary calling, and my father taught me his when I was a young man, before I set out on the road in pursuit of my vision."

"Oh," Kasumi said, a bit crestfallen.

"In some ways I blame it all on those three Zorastrians who visited my parents when I was little," Yessus continued, "They recognized in me a great souled individual who has lived before, and they sponsored my religious education by donating gold, frankensense and myhr at my christening, and kept up regular correspondenses thereafter with my parents. Eluini, you see, do not always come into the fullness of their power by nature. Our spiritual essense must be cultivated like that of a flower in order to blossom, so by setting me on the course of my muystical training they awoke within me the seed of my former ambition. Without their meddling I could have gone about my life being perfectly ordinary and been a more conventional-styled Rabbi, one who wouldn't stir up the passions of so many. But...then again, I would also have been denied the chance to make a difference, to influence events and to help shape the course of the future."

"Oh?" Kasumi found this surprising, "You mean...you could have been like other men if you had wanted to?"

"Fate has never been that kind with me, I'm afraid," Yessus said sadly, "Somehow in each new incarnation I always get picked out to be the heir who carries the mantle left behind by my long-ago father, Uta-Haled, the former Lord of Light. That or my siblings come and visit me to give me a kick back in the right direction, and even Reka has been known to be useful to my spiritual growth on odd occassions."

"How so?" Kasumi wondered.

"Such as when I had a vision that set my current course into motion," Yessus answered, "Shortly after my return from my pilgramage and attended one of my cousin Yohan's lectures...I wistfully decided to let him babtize me as a means of reestablishing my roots to the Hebrew culture of my birth. I had spent so many years in foreign lands learning the ways of the Yogis, Taoists, Buddhists, Egyptians and Hindu that it seemed only right at the time to pay my respects to my own culture...but when I did so I had a burst of vision unlike any other that I have ever known. It all but blinded me, so I sought refuge out in the desert away from other people...and that is where Reka came to me and tried to dispute my chosen course of action."

"Why did he do that?" Kasumi asked.

"Because Reka is what the Greeks call a Cynic...a fallen idealist who has brown bitter with humanity and does not believe that the good in human nature will always prevail over the evil," Yessus answered, "He seemed of the opinion that I was about to engage in something that would have far-reaching consequences, and as Guardians of Humanity we Daokan are pledged by our very nature not to interfere in human free will. Reka interprets freedom as total Anarchy, the right to do whatever you want, but even he knows better than to act in a way for which there are unfavorable consequences, so he tried to convince me against what I am now doing. He seemed to think that I would attempt to usurp free will for everybody by trying to make people behave in their own best interests."

"But...who judges what is in anyone's best interest, Sensei?" Kasumi fathomed.

"Exactly," Yessus noted, "I tried to assure him that I had no such intentions, that ruling over men the way Udan once did in Sumeria is anathema to my very nature. I may support the cause of order, but I want people to choose to do the right thing, not punish them for making unwise choices. But Reka was convinced that I somehow was doing just that and tried to show me what it would be like to rule like a king over all nations, to use my knowledge and powers unwisely, to fulfill my basest desires in order to create an earthly rule like unto another Eden...all of which I rejected in the end, preferring instead the path of a poor mendicant dispensing wisdom to anyone who would listen."

"So you're not here to make the world into a paradise?" Kasumi marveled.

"I would like to think that the world would be a paradise if more people followed the example that I have been setting down for them the past few seasons," Yessus answered, "But I am hardly so arrogant as to think that my way is the only one that can best suit all people. Besides, I have been styling my lectures with two purposes...one to appeal to the general populace, but also to convey an inner message for those who are capable of understanding..."

"An inner message?" Kasumi repeated.

"Yes," Yessus replied, "Not everyone is gifted with a deeper understanding of mysticism, and people know only as much as they can comprehend, so why attempt to force them to learn the ways of the Yogis when they are not ready? First teach a child to crawl before you get him to stand up, let alone run. Casting pearls before swine is like sowing wheat on barren soil...only a few out of the many will grasp the significance of what I am teaching...but if I can find enough of those to form the basic core of a movement that will exist long after I have retired from my mission..."

"But will you be able to retire?" Kasumi wondered, "Do you honestly believe that the people who follow you will even let you?"

"A very good point you raise there, my lady," Yessus smiled, "And in all truth I do seem to have gotten myself into something of a pickle of late with many calling for my head and few willing to show the patience to hear my message. Rather than bring peace I may have brought a sword that will divide our nation against itself and bring about the very holocast that I am seeking to avert here."

Kasumi debated saying something on this point, but while she hesitated the man beside her continued uninterrupted:

"But, fortunately, I have an idea that may help get the message across, while giving me the chance to quietly spirit myself out of town before I can become a lightning rod for both the Saducees and the Romans. Lazar was kind enough to help me test a formula that will enable me to mimick my own death and..."

"Rabbi!" a voice called out from the gathering darkness, and a figure came rushing up in great haste, out of breath as he gasped out the words, "Rabbi...it is Lazar...they have taken him!"

"What?" Miriam the younger gasped, breaking her own reverie as she and her mother had been following together in silent attendance.

"Lazar...the Temple Guards have taken him as a hostage," the man gasped out in urgent desperation, "Rabbi...we went by secret on your errand and thought us well disguised...but somehow they spotted and recognized us...and they took us both before Caiaphas's agents, who let one of us go after having recognized the other..."

"Calm down, Mathias," Yessus urged, "Take a breath and speak a bit more slowly. Now...why did they take Lazar as a hostage and not you?"

"I swear Rabbi, I do not know," the man shook his head vigorously, "Only that they know that he is somehow connected to you through your daughter. They specifically called him 'Lazar bar Abbas' as if it were a joke they were making among themselves. Bar Abbas, Rabbi...they know know that he is engaged to your only daughter!"

"Oh no," Miriam said faintly, her espression as shocked and ashen as if she had been drained of blood by a vampire, "My vision...Lazar...father...!"

"I know," Yessus said gravely, "It's coming to pass...exactly as predicted. This is a bitter cup indeed, and now I must drink from it if I am to spare your promised husband a fate at the hands of the Temple."

"Rabbi," the man said Mathais said with even graver urgency, "They are threatening to turn him over to the Romans! They say he is suspected by then of having killed a soldier during the riots of a few days back..."

"But Lazar did not do this on purpose!" Miriam insisted, "He was protecting me...and how did his name ever get connected? We had thought we had...ah...disposed of the body..."

She noticed the very cross look that her father was turning towards her, "Miriam...is that true? Have you and Lazar spilled the blood of a Roman, against everything that I have taught you?"

"We had no choice, Father," Miriam replied, "He...he threatened vile things towards me, and Lazar only attempted to discourage him. It was not by intent that he slew the man, I assure you. Why else do you think he chose to drink thine potion if nay to expunge his guilt and to conceal from you the crime that he felt he had done to thine cause? He...was nay certain he would awaken...but if he perished...he had thought it would make for atonement..."

Yessus sighed, "Suddenly many things are clear to me that were clouded, and now you force your father's hand to do the thing I had hoped could be avoided. But Rome is involved now, like it or not, so it no longer concerns just the Temple but the justice of Pilot himself, of which one can explect very little."

"What are we to do, Husband?" Miriam the elder asked, her own concerns expressed in her fearful continence as she eyed her daughter with a motherly, 'We'll have a talk about this later.'

Yessus sighed, "Yuda?"

At once the man stepped out from the shadows and said, "Rabbi?"

"You will be my messenger," Yessus said, "I will convey my respects to Caiaphas and his minions through you. Tell them that we will work out a deal to trade my son-in-law for...something that should help to calm their fears and reassure them of our good intentions. Do this for me and return within the hour, and bring the guards with you so that we can make the proper arrangements."

Yuda was visibly shocked, "But Rabbi...if I show them were we are they will have us all arrested!"

"Do as I say, old friend," Yessus urged him sadly, "If you have learned anything from my teachings, respect my word on this...things will work out for the better."

Yuda hesitated but then bowed his head and said, "It will be as you wish it, Master. But...my heart is grave...this does not sound as if it will bring about your hopes of a peaceful reconciliation with the Temple."

"No," Yessus said, "But the fault lies with me, for I should have smelled the blood on guilty hands before this and guessed the reason why Lazar has been so eager of late to do whatever minor tasks I have asked of him. I should have also foreseen that Caiaphas's spies would detect our movements...but never mind. What is done is done. Go now, my loyal student, and trust in me. I have a plan to spare Lazar's life and to hopefully create peace between ourselves and the Saducees..."

"BELOVED, I HAVE FOUND THEE!"

"Eh?" Kasumi turned in time to see a shimmering image as Thelendra appeared, stepping out from the shadows of the garden.

"By Abram and all the prophets!" Yuda gasped, "An Angel?"

"Who is that?" Miriam of Magdala asked, then gasped as she turned to regard her daughter, then back again as if to confirm what she was seeing.

"Oh my," said Yessus, "Now this was most certainly unexpected..."

"My love, what do thee here?" Thelendra asked as she stepped forward, only to halt in her tracks as she took in the scene and said, "Oh...kuso..."

"What strange apparition be thee?" Miriam of Bethany asked, then her eyes roved up and down the body of the statuesque Thelendra, taking in the revealing atire of the rainbow-haired beauty who resembled her so closely, her gaze unerringly centering about the chest level of the substantially well-endowed Eluini.

Thelendra saw the way her younger self was eyeing her body and uncomfortably shrugged her shoulders, "Get thine mind out of the gutters. Kasumi-chan...come with me now! Thou dost nay belong here in this time and these surroundings!"

"But..." Kasumi hesitated, gesturing with a hand towards Yessus.

"Do nay stray with mine father in this hour, Beloved," Thelendra urged, "Thou hast nay right to affect the stream of time by interfering in these affairs. Mine uncle Reka sent thee here for a purpose, which be to sow mischief along the timestream..."

"I thought as much," Yessus mused, "You are Miriam's future incarnation?"

"Two incarnations further along, Father," Thelendra answered.

"Say thee what?" Miriam reacted.

"Ye will understand in time, mine former self," Thelendra said before urgently reaching out and grasping Kasumi by the hand, drawing her closer, "But we dare nay tarry here lest things come about that were nay as intended, Father. Thou art wise enow to know mine reasons."

"I understand completely," Yessus smiled, "Go with my love and blessing, and give my regards to my future self, to say nothing of brother Reka."

"I shall do as thou dost request, Father," Thelendra said as she and Kasumi faded back into the darkness, "And anon...we will speak again of the events of this most fateful hour..."

"I rather expect I'll get an earful from you about it then," Yessus mused before adding in afterthought, "A very nice girl indeed...the fulfillment of your potential, Miri...in more respects than just the spiritual kind and...OW! Miriam!"

"How do you mean that latter part again, Husband?" Miriam of Madgala asked rather pointedly while holding her husband by one earlobe.

Yessus gently persuaded her to let him go, then rubbed his offended ear before saying, "Any way I answer that is bound to get me into a great deal of trouble, Wife...but never mind. Yudah?"

"Rabbi?" Yuda asked from where he was prostrating on the ground, having averted his gaze from the vision that had just vanished.

"Do get up and convey my respects to Caiaphas," Yessus shrugged his shoulders in an attempt to restore dignity to his bearing, "Might as well get this over with and play out the script as I had it crafted. Oh, and be sure to have that potion ready for me, Miriam...I've a rather strong hunch that I'm going to be needing it shortly."

"I trust that you will bother to explain your intentions to me in due time, Husband?" Miriam asked as Yuda edged away and went about fulfilling his instructions.

"When the time is right all will be revealed in due course, Miriam," Yessus assured his wife, then turned to Miriam the younger and said, "And never fear for Lazar...they do not want his blood, and I'm rather sure that I can work out a deal with Caiaphas, if he's at all a reasonable man."

"Thou mayest do thine best, Father," Miriam replied, "Yet mine heart warns me that even thine best be nay enow to alter the direction that fate has taken."

"Unintentional consequences of choices already made I'm afraid," Yessus replied with a sigh, "But I'm sure things will work out. After all, those two seemed happy enough in whatever age it was they hailed from, and if nothing else I'm sure we'll be remembered well for at least trying to do the right thing here, even if matters are taking on a life of their own beyond even my powers to predict for the immediate future."

"So you say, Husband," Miriam said sadly, "But you won't mind very much if I say that I told you so after this is all over?"

"I suppose I should have listened better when you warned me that this was not the right time to go to Yerusalem," Yessus shrugged, "But how bad can things get from here on? Only time will tell if my teachings amount to anything or if anyone truly cares at all about my message."

"Indeed father," the younger Miriam said, "Time will tell in all things..." and with that thought in mind she glanced back towards where that rainbow-hued version of her future self had been standing and thought a bit wistfully of what it would be like to visit her time and spend more in the company of a wondrous vision as the now-vanished Kasumi...

Continued.

Comments/Criticisms/Catachism for Cynics: shadowmane

Or: shadowmane9849

My apologies for anyone who may have been offended by these past two chapters (assuming anyone else is left to be offended). It is hubris to put words into the mouth of any historic figure, let alone one reveared as a living god by many well-intentioned persons...but my intention here was to explode a myth that I sincerely believe is hurting a great many people. By presenting this alternative version of Jesus I am hoping to show how things may be interpreted differently, and the implications to Theology that might be found if people do more research and give less credence to the arrogant hucksters who promote their own versiokns of religion.

Next up it is Round Three as Nabiki and Ranma go toe-to-toe with Reka, Kasumi confronts Thelendra on her jaded past, and long-forgotten guest stars put in a brief appearance just to remind you that they have not been totally forgotten by the author. All this and the furthering education of Amalthea in: "Riding the Unicorn's Horn," or, "Spiritual Revivalations." Be there!

X

/pre 


	81. Chapter 81

preDnabiki170

Nabiki 1/2

"A Very Scary Thought"

by Jim Robert Bader

(Inspired by the works of Rumiko Takahashi Others,  
with concepts and characters created by fellow fanfic writers Wade Tritschler, DB Sommers, Nicole Manders, Andrew Greaves, Bill Guiroff and countless others, including "Buffy"  
creator Joss Whedon; with special thanks to my good pal Shiva for his editing and handling of this series.)

(Certain other characters and concepts are of my own innovation, including my interpretation of the Monster of Mary Shelly's novel, the Furies, Trudy, Takaharis Angelique d'Anjou and various other guest stars appearing in this portion of the Nabiki 1/2 series...)

Chapter Sixty-Five.

Episode One-Hundred-Seventy.

Fire, Ice and Brimstone

"This is Agent Ranko, I'm in position again, Mom...and what a heck of a ringside seat I've got here! Looks like more of a war-zone than usual with Mom and Pop-I mean, Lylac's parents-dusting it up with that Reka creep. At the moment they seem to be talking it out, but from the sound of things it won't stay civil for very much longer."

"Hardly unexpected, Ranko-chan," she heard her adoptive mother relay back in her ears, "Whenever one of the Daokan gets involved like this it's worse than when your father and uncle Ryoga go on a three-day binge together. The damage totals usually ring up in the trillions of yen and often morgues fill up with their collateral damage."

"Oh, very funny," Ranko heard her biological-equivalent father snort rudely, "Like we're ever really that much out of control, and you know damned well that there's good reasons why we often have to resort to the rough stuff, Nabiki."

"True enough," the Time Dispatcher replied, "But Reka's reasons are usually his own, and when he acts this recklessly it means that he's not the least bit concerned with covering his activities. That is disturbing news indeed and speaks of the desperate events that are befalling this particular timeline."

"Desperate ain't the word I'd be using, Mom," Ranko shook her head in mild dismay, "You wouldn't believe this guy and the way he talks! He makes Pop sound like a social worker, and the arrogance he reeks of...it's like he doesn't give a damn what anybody else thinks. He just does whatever he likes and to hell with innocent bystanders!?"

"Yeah, that pretty much summarizes him in a nutshell," Time Agent Ranma gruffly answered, "The ultimate hot-head, a real prince among guys, and a reason I should probably be glad I spend half my time as a woman, just so's not to be embarrassed at the association."

"And here I thought you just enjoyed playing both sides of the bed chamber, having it both ways," Nabiki mused before turning deadly serious again, "This is very important, Ranko...you must hold your position no matter what and do not engage Lord Reka. With any luck your unique characteristics will mask your presence from his senses, but if he becomes aware of you in any way it could mean a great deal of trouble, and you are definitely not prepared to handle a being of his nature."

"Don't need to tell me that twice, Mom," Ranko replied, "I got the crib notes version when I studied the files on him...but...I mean...is it true that this guy's the one who inspired the legends about such guys as Negral and Loki? I mean...those are gods and they exist on their own independent of these Daokan guys...right?"

"It's...kinda complicated, Squirt," her father replied, "Like knowing where the legend starts and the reality begins with most mythological-type beings...like take Shiva, for example..."

"Never mind about that now," Nabiki urged, "Just relate to us in your own words what you see and observe about how our counterparts are interacting with Lord Reka."

"All right, Mom," Ranko answered, scrunching down in her hiding place atop a building just adjoining where the main confrontation was occurring between contending parties, "That redheaded vampire lady is still out of it, but the fact that she's in one piece means she oughta be recovering in another few minutes. It's Pop I'm worried about, he took a pretty bad series of hits a few minutes ago, and while he's springing back with his usual resilience, I don't think he can just shrug off another attack from that Reka."

"Never mind Junion, Kid," her father urged, "What about Nabiki?"

"She was getting creamed another few moments ago," Ranko related, "But then the funniest thing happened...all these weird lades suddenly started popping up from out of no where, and now they're just standing around talking. Can't hear a word they're saying, but if I move in closer to get a better idea..."

"NO!" came the very definite reply from both of her adoptive parents, causing Ranko to wince sharply.

"Thought that'd be your answer," Ranko grumbled, "Makes me wish I'd brought Cheshire along. She's pretty good with her hearing and everything...even if she does sometimes have trouble separating pleasure from business."

"Say no more," her mother noted, and all at once there was a slight shimmering in the space near to Ranko's hand, and then a Pokeball appeared, causing the redheaded junior Time Agent to grin abruptly.

"Cool!" she cheerfully said as she activated the Pokeball, and a moment later a furry full-figured woman appeared at her side, who blinked around momentarily before turning to Ranko and saying, "Master?"

"Gotta situation, Chesh," Ranko made an abrupt hand motion, urging the Pokegirl to scrunch down beside her and out of sight of observation and-being the sort to pick up quickly on such things-the paratime dimensionally displaced cat-woman did as her licensed owner requested.

Ranko then peered over the edge of the building and said, "See those guys? I need to hear what they're talking about, and since you've got the best ears this side of an audiophone mike..."

"Say no more, Master," Cheshire murmured back, rotating her pointy cat-like ears until she was able to make out discernable noises then said softly, "It's about your father...those girls surrounding him are elementals, and they belong to him, just like Pokegirls defending their master."

"No kidding?" Ranko said in surprise, "You mean Pop's got his own personal herem? I knew he was married to four women, including Mom here, but..."

"Oh, it's much more than that, Master," Cheshire said, then shuddered slightly, "Seeds of the maker! Did I just hear right or did that Charamon-type just call the red headed guy her father? And...somebody else called him...Reka? As in the Lord Reka, father of all flame types?"

"Yeah, that's the guy all right," Ranko replied, then studied her Pokegirl servant more closely and said, "You know him?"

"Sure, who hasn't heard of Reka Firestar?" Cheshire replied, "If you're going up against him, Master, my word to you is...don't. Take it from me, it's a one way ticket to disaster."

"Okay," Ranko said, "Then it's official...the guy's pure trouble. So...what else is he saying with Mom and Pop besides..."

"Hold on a moment," Cheshire raised a hand and paused to listen, then her diamond-shaped eyes dilated and she said, "Say what? Did the fire lady say that Dad just got her pregnant?"

"Nani?" Ranko blinked.

"Why am I not surprised?" Ranko heard her adoptive mother ask.

"Hey, this wasn't me doing it!" her adoptive father immediately protested, "It's that other me, Junior, the guy who has his own portable harem, remember?"

"That's why I'm not surprised," Nabiki said, "You really are a stud on this timeline, to judge by all the offspring you're fated to usher in according to my records."

"How is that again, Daddy?" Ranma teased back, "Or correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't some of those kids the product of you fooling around with at least half a dozen other women?"

"Um...give me a moment on that," Nabiki temporized, "I'm thinking of a good comeback..."

"Guys? Parental units?" Ranko pleaded, "It's hard enough to follow what Cheshire is saying without having the background chatter over which of you is the biggest stud, okay?"

"Point taken," Nabiki conceded.

"You win for now, Squirt," her father gruffly rumbled, "So what is the cat-lady saying that we're not picking up on your end?"

"Well..." Ranko turned to look back at Cheshire, who did not need to turn around to get the hint of her Mistress's gentle prodding.

"They're talking about Aunt Kasumi," Cheshire answered, "Lord Reka sent her back in time for a quick lesson in history...and you're never gonna believe just when he sent her!"

"Hold on, I'm working on that," Nabiki relayed, then paused before adding, "Son of a...that...that creep wouldn't...he couldn't have...could he?"

"Huh?" Ranma asked, "You're not making much sense here. Just when did he send her, Nabiki?"

"Thirty-five AD by my reckoning," Nabiki answered, "Palestine...and guess who she met back then while attending a little dinner party that was being held just prior to the Passover...?"

"'Tis good I found thee when I did, beloved," Thelendra murmured while taking Kasumi's hand and drawing her out of synch with the normal flow of the timestream, "Else thou wouldst have been ensnared into events that would mean catastrophic repercussions for the history of a thousand, thousand timelines."

Kasumi stared into the eyes of the rainbow haired Eluini and only peripherally took notice of the strangely distorted air of their quasi-dimensional surroundings. To her it felt as though the ground beneath her bare feet had turned oddly spongy, and there was a strange trilling noise like the sound of tinsel rattling in the air to add to the weirdness of their background, but near to Thelendra herself everything seemed right and proper.

"You came for me?" she asked, her voice just a hint of breathless wonder.

"Ever and always, beloved," Thelendra replied, "Mine Uncle sent the far into the past, yet for one who can traverse worlds as easily as I do, finding thee was but a moment's labor. Now come, we must return to our presenting order for thee to resume thy place in the course of events both natural and unnatural that we left behind unfinished.

Thelendra started to turn around and draw Kasumi with her when-unexpectedly-they were brought up short by some invisible partition that obstructed their further progress.

Thelendra took a step back and blinked her eyes in astonishment, then tried to move forward again, only to have her face compress slightly as though she were placing it up against a window. She took a step back and blinked in dismay, and then her eyes grew cross and began to glow slightly crimson.

"Fates take and bind that wretch I call mine Uncle!" she hotly declared, "Only he could be so...so presumptuous as to erect this barrier to block out our return!"

"Excuse me?" Kasumi asked.

"I can nay restore us to our own time, Beloved," Thelendra fumed, touching her hand against the invisible wall and causing spider-web-like patterns to form in the seemingly empty air before them, "Uncle Reka hath impeded forward progress to the era we call our present, effectively trapping us here as it be beyond mine power to penetrate this veil upon the future."

"But...why would he do that?" Kasumi wondered.

"Obviously he be nay done with thee and whatever lesson he be intent on showing thee," Thelendra grit her teeth then added, "Until father or one of the others aids us in our return I cannot balk mine Uncle's wishes...he be too powerful, much beyond me and the scope of mine abilities. That means we be effectively trapped in the time of my least favorite era, and during one of my more unfortunate incarnations."

"What do you mean?" Kasumi turned from Thelendra to regard the woman named Miriam, who was still visible to their eyes yet as beyond her reach as though they stood behind an invisible partition.

"Miriam of Bethany," Thelendra sighed, "Visionary prophetess and heir to mine father's legacy, whom some will name the San Grael...the Holy grail of future legends."

"The holy grail?" Kasumi turned from one version of the same woman to the other, "But...I thought that was a cup used at the last supper..."

"San grael means 'Holy Blood,' beloved," Thelendra replied, "I was the vessel who was at the last Passover supper where mine father blessed his followers and did enjoin them to carry on with his mission. The reason for my having been named thus in the Gaelic tongue was on account of my future husband, who was thy incarnation during this timeline and has yet to enter the stage of history's unfolding."

"But...what of Lazar?" Kasumi asked, "Weren't you supposed to marry him?"

"As my past self no doubt informed thee, nay," Thelendra said sadly, "T'was ne'er fated to be thus, as I will reveal to thee now for thine further illumination."

With a gesture of her hand the Eluini caused a portal to shimmer and appear, revealing Lazar and Miriam being jostled within a crowd where many people were milling about and acting as if in a state of near panic. Roman soldiers appeared, heavily armed and obviously looking for trouble, and one in particular seemed to single Miriam out and jostled her out of line and off to the sides where he all but pinned her up against a wall and was leering at her in a most unwholesome manner.

"You...you're that brat who hangs out with the Rabbi," he said menacingly, "The one who our captain sought out the other day looking for a cure for the lieutenant..."

"If I be my father's offspring what is it to thee?" Miriam asked, trying not to sound as terrified of the man's presence as she evidently was, being that they were now alone down a darkened alley while the rest of the roman soldiers were busy herding the people out of the market.

"Captain Gaias seems to think highly of your father," the man said while touching a callused hand to her chin, to which Miriam shuddered in revulsion, "Lieutenant Ibram recovered right enough and will be back on duty they say before a fortnight. I never liked him much, but you've got to be impressed with results like that. Makes me almost think this God of yours ain't such an impotent little deity after all. So...what do you say, Girlie...think you can put in a good word for old Brasus?"

"What does thee mean?" Miriam asked, looking for all the world as if she wished that she could melt through the stones to escape this man's foul presence.

"Old Brasus thinks you could do wonders teaching him a thing or two about you Hebrews," the soldier said gruffly, his eyes roving down to below her chin level, "Like...what have you got concealed beneath those robes you always wear? Maybe you've got three breasts, or you're ashamed because you're not built like other women..."

"Stay thee back!" Miriam urged as she man loomed forward, clearly intending to seize her by her robes and tear them open, "I warn thee...!"

Brasus was beyond listening as he was a low-ranking soldier of modest pay and was used to winning his daily bread in campaigns by looting and pillaging and living off the spoils of conquest that came with service to Rome. He was paid more in quantities of salt rather than gold and thus could not afford the fancy rates of a high-class prostitute from the upper mercantile district. Not having been with a woman in quite a while he quite naturally saw opportunity for some fun here as this woman was hardly all that unattractive. Having selected her at random from the crowd he had belatedly recognized her as someone of importance, and in his thoughts that meant regarding her with a station above that which he felt a woman was entitled to, and for that he had but one solution in order to bring her down to his level.

But in the act of preparing to ravish her he unwittingly left an opening as Miriam pushed out with a hand and gripped him under the chin, unwittingly applying lessons her father had taught her about self-protection.

"I said keep thee back, and I mean it!" Miriam hissed, then unexpectedly her mind opened up and she found one of her visions coming over her, which flowed up through her arm into the mind of the man whom she was unintentionally choking.

For one instant she had a glimpse of prisoners being tormented with slow death by crucifixion, and for the oddest of reasons she felt it significant to study at least two of the three men who held center in her vision. But then the image faded and her grip grew slack, allowing the Roman soldier to extricate himself as he staggered back choking for breath, his own mind filled with a horror that rapidly turned to anger.

"Sorceress!" he snarled, reaching for his belt-knife, "I'll gut you like a fish you-GURK!"

He staggered several half-steps forward, his face in shock, and then he dropped his knife and slowly looked down, seeing the blade protruding from his abdomen.

"Lose something, Pig?" Lazar hissed in the man's ear from behind, having approached the soldier with wrath in his own eyes, seeing a woman he cared for being menaced by a hated enemy of his people.

"Lazar?" Miriam gasped, then her eyes went round with horror as she saw the man called Brasus fall to his knees, then topple onto his face, to lay in the dirt quite still, twitching only once or twice before going silent altogether.

Lazar looked down and saw the blood on his own hands then held them up and said, "I...I...he was going to kill you...I...Miriam..."

Miriam took a very deep breath then said, "I...I know, Lazar...I...thee did...what needed doing..."

Shock slowly replaced the righteous anger in Lazar's eyes as he belatedly said, "What have I done? I have betrayed the Master...I have slain a Roman. Your father, the Rabbi, will be so angry..."

Miriam was thinking quickly, having recovered from her own shock, and she said, "Let me worry about mine father...for now we must needs do something with this body else they link his death with our movement. A pity we dare not trust this task to Juda as he knows the way of handling such affairs...but Juda be loyal to father and word of this must nay reach his ears until the time has come for a proper accounting..."

Thelendra dismissed the mirror image and said with a sigh, "Such was mine folly that I did nay seek consultation with mine father but tried instead to shelter him from the event by banishing the memory from my thoughts and those of Lazar. Unfortunately the Karmic turn of blood for blood was beyond my modest powers in this incarnation, for the body of the fallen Brasus was found by the Romans, and immediately they cried for vengeance to Caiaphas, who was obliged to help them solve his murder."

"But it was self defense," Kasumi said urgently, having been more than slightly taken aback to discover how deeply Miriam had been embroiled in an act of such rude violence.

"Nay in the eyes of Rome it be," Thelendra sighed, "Father was most cross with me when he learned of our actions, but he was willing to forgive Lazar's act since my so-called betrothed-to-be had showed great loyalty in protecting me...and in helping perfect a sleeping potion that like to affect the semblance of death in those who drank of its fluids..."

Again she conjured up an image to display a different scene, this time with Miriam and Lazar in some manner of coarse workshop, Miriam acting most distressed by saying, "Do nay do this for me, Lazar...it be nay called for..."

"I killed a man with these two hands, Miriam," Lazar replied while holding the bowl up to his lips, "Your father said this would take several days to gain in potency, and he's off performing a exorcism at a local farm, so he won't be back until sundown tomorrow. By then we'll know if it works or doesn't...so let me test this brew for him. It's the least that I can do to atone for my actions."

"But..." Miriam reached out her hands as though to prevent him from going ahead with what he was doing, but she hesitated and watched in horror as he sipped the mixture, then set it down back on the shelf where he had found it, having only lightly sipped from its contents.

Lazar stood where he was for a moment looking faintly puzzled, then Miriam asked, "Lazar?"

"I wonder if I had the concentration just right?" the man said, "Maybe too much vinegar and..."

All at once he fell to the floor in a heap, a puppet whose strings had been cut, leaving Miriam to cry out to him in horror...

"And yet again," Thelendra said while altering the image to reveal the man named Yessus approaching a funeral procession, his expression more bemused than tragic.

"Master," the man named Cephas came up to entreat him, "While you were away our brother Lazar perished..."

"So I heard while on the way here," Yessus shook his head a bit sadly, "Vain and headstrong youth...this is no way for you to escape your obligations to me. Laying down on the job is a very poor way of paying your respects to your teacher."

"Master?" the man named Tomas asked, shocked at the casual tone used by their teacher.

"Lazar," Yessus said firmly, "Rise up and resume your duties."

And-much to everyone's shock and amazement-the body beneath the cloth shroud began to stir and struggle, making faint noises like someone coming back to full awareness.

One of the apostles pulled back the shroud and stood amazed to see the bound and bandaged "corpse" looking up at him and making noises like one very much alive, and urging his companions to unbind him.

"I trust you've learned a lesson from this, Lazar," Yessus gently admonished, "As a surgeon should never practice upon himself, so it is a very bad idea to mess around with your own concoctions...but at least we know for a fact that it is effective..."

Thelendra altered the image again then said, "Of course form this we move ahead to events that happen this very night when my father is taken by temple guards before Caiaphas, hoping to make a trade on behalf of Lazar, whom he betrothed to me in token payment for his having risked his life with the dratted potion..."

Kasumi saw a man with a very long beard dressed in priestly robes and surrounded by functionaries and lesser ranking acolytes, fretting like a man who was perpetually afraid of his own shadow before the calm and self-possessed rabbi known as Yessus.

"You have to understand my position," the man was all but pleading, "Rome wants blood for blood, and they're not willing to compromise over this. By stabbing a Roman soldier in the back your son-in-law, Bar Rabbi, has put himself beyond the pale of Roman mercy."

"And that is why you turned him over to Pilot?" Yessus asked, "Even after I offered to make a trade for you, to take responsibility upon myself if you would spare Lazar?"

"I had no choice, don't you understand this?!" Caiiphas wring his hands in despair, "He is to be crucified on the marrow and there is nothing that you or I or even Pilot can do about it! His hands are bound by the will of Caesar...slaying a soldier is an imperial crime, and only Caesar himself can offer pardon for this deed...which will happen when pigs fly, I most heartily assure you."

"I see," Yessus remarked, "So he is to die for having saved the life of my only daughter...and you offer me up with him to appease the Roman thirst for justice."

"You are not being linked to Lazar's crime," Caiaphas said with a slightly aloof tone to his voice, "Rome is suspicious of what you represent...as am I and much of the Sanhedra. You are a Pharisee and a member of the Nazorean movement, which Rome views as a threat to civil order. As such Pilot takes seriously these charges that have been raised against you, such as the claim by many that you are here to declare yourself a King, the new Messiah..."

"I have never claimed these things for myself," Yessus said with quiet authority, "Others may describe me however they like, but I am not here to become another Herod..."

"Oh no?" Caiaphas turned to the list in his hands, "What of this claim that you intend to overthrow the Temple and replace all priests with your own hand-picked minions...?"

"I never said that I would," Yessus insisted, "You need not fear from me your position as high priest of the Temple. You've made plenty enough enemies that I would hardly need raise a finger to depose you."

"And what of the claim that you seek to fulfill the prophesies of Isiah?" Caiaphas persisted.

"We both know the authority of that book is in question," Yessus said sagely, "What the Hasmodean line claimed for themselves by way of prophesies that they themselves wrote has surely been refuted by their own ability to deliver to our people an earthly kingdom of justice in the name of Yahweh."

"I can see why Gamael thinks so very highly of you," Caiaphas noted as he handed his documents to a scribe, "Nonetheless, these are the charges that I intend to make against you before the Sanhedrin. But if you are willing to play along and make a deal, we might be able to convince Pilot that you are not the enemy that Rome fears you to be..."

"Do whatever you think is best," Yessus said dismissively, "This son of man is done with talking or explaining himself. If you view me as such a threat, then give me to Rome and let be done whatever is the will of Yahweh."

"Very well," Caiaphas sighed, "But I was hoping you would prove reasonable. Such a waste having to put a talented mind like yours to the sword...but it's the times we live in that make us what we are."

"I disagree," Yessus replied, "It is we who make the times, but if you would prefer being swept along by history rather than making it, then go right ahead. It will be on your head when the time comes to account for your many transgressions against Yahweh."

"Take him away," Caiaphas informed his guards, then sighed to himself, "Mother was right...I should have been doctor..."

"Freeze frame," Thelendra suddenly called out, then nodded towards the screen as the image of one of the temple guards came into sharper focus, "See thee this face? Memorize it well, Beloved, for it be the face of an enemy, a great deceiver who shall shortly make ill works of the mission of mine father."

"What?" Kasumi asked in surprise as she took note of a slightly built man with a scruffy face and scraggly beard who could not quite have been in his mid-twenties, "You mean this fellow? But...who is he?"

"He be named Paulus of Tarsus," Thelendra replied, "Though the name he employs at this time be that of Shaul, which he thinks gives him a quasi-Hebrew stature. His father be a merchant who hath gained Roman citizenship and put aside his Hebrew heritage, renounced all ties to the Pharisees and thrown in his lot with the Sadducees, whom he views as Palestine's salvation. Paulus has rejected many of the values of his father and chose to rejoin their native peoples...but in doing so he hath turned his back upon his ties to Roman citizenship, a sacrifice that he hopes will win him favor in the eyes of Yahweh."

"So what is he doing dressed as a temple guard?" Kasumi asked.

"It was the best that he could do after failing the entrance examination for the priesthood," Thelendra answered, "Paulus was raised among the many temples and cults that line the alley ways of Tarsus, and he was exposed to many concepts foreign to the understanding of the common people, so he be regarded as strange and not quite natural in his desire to reassert his Hebrew ties. Just having the desire, of course, be nay enough to overcome his lukewarm talents as a scribe and a scholar, and so can he never rise to be a Rabbi, though he will later claim falsely that he was a great student of Gamael, who himself be a wise and well-learned man with much stature among those Pharisees allowed to sit in the Sanhedrin."

"But why would he lie about that?" Kasumi asked.

"Because twenty-three years hence he will be charged with the crime of Apostasy," Thelendra answered, "Of making false claims and presenting ideas that will be justly viewed as a threat to the Hebrew nation."

"Threatening?" Kasumi asked.

"Aye," Thelendra replied sadly, "Because of letters that he wrote while in prison, which in time will be incorporated into what be commonly known as the Bible of the Christians, his version-or should I say perversion-of events will be the accepted reality to a great many devout believers...and as he named the Pharisees his enemies, all of the Hebrew will fall unto an aegis of many progroms that assign the blame of mine father's death upon the collective heads of the entire Jewish race. That is the degree to which Paul cast his own apostasy into the mark which became the accepted standard of the Church he founded."

"But didn't Peter found the church?" Kasumi wondered.

"Nay, nor did any of those who truly knew my father in life," Thelendra signed tiredly, "All memory of the apostles themselves was swept away and replaced with the Gentile version of Paul's own revelation."

"I don't understand," Kasumi admitted as she continued to study the face of the rather homely looking fellow named Paulus, marveling that such an ordinary fellow could have that deep an effect upon the dynamic teachings of the man named Yessus.

Thelendra sighed, "It be far too complicated a tale for easy telling, my love, but if we scan ahead a few months we shall see what became of this tool named Paulus and how his life impacted to work such mischief upon the plans laid down by mine father..."

The image formed of a caravan winding its way through the desert sands, and of a group of temple guards huddled by a fire for warmth while the officials they served sat in a tent out of the harsh elements, away from the extremes of weather.

"Look, all that I'm saying is that this is a fools errand," one of the guards was saying to his fellows, "Syria is an ally to Rome with a King appointed by Caesar, as such it's a sovereign state not subject to the will of the governor of a nowhere province like Yudea."

"Caiaphas as gone mad, I tell you," another guard grumbled, "He's going to get replaced at this rate, and after that business with the Samaritan massacre he pulled off a few weeks ago Pilot's own head will be on the block, so the new Governor will come in and appoint himself a new high priest, one who's capable of keeping the people in line. So what the Rabbi Nabor hopes to do by carrying letters from the Sanhedrim calling for the arrest of these Nazoreans is quite beyond me. I mean, we can't legally arrest anybody, all we can do is ask the King in Damascus to do our arresting for us."

"Meaning we're freezing out here while Caiaphas frets himself to death huddled away inside the walls of fine house," a third guard grumbled, "And for what? This sect of Nazoreans never even bothered anybody, especially not after they put to death their cult leader."

"Way I hear it he didn't really die," a fourth man grumbled, "You ask me he whole business was suspicious..."

"Like how?" the first guard asked him.

"Well like take for instance the way he's supposed to have died," the guard said, "Not three hours on the cross and bang, he just up and expires. Way I hear it the rumor is that there was something about the vinegar on that sponge where they gave him to drink...like maybe it was drugged to make it look like he'd died..."

"Naw, I heard that," the second card said dismissively, "A Roman there was pretty suspicious about it, so he jabbed him in the side with his spear to make sure of it."

"I saw that," the third guard shrugged, "Wasn't all that deep...practically a nudge, really. And the wound bled like it would if the guy was still alive. Blood doesn't gush from a corpse, it seeks out of wounds...something about arterial pressure, I imagine..."

"You know, now that you mention it there was something else rather odd about the way they handled the body," the first guard turned to look at his fellows, "For one thing they took him down off the cross and buried him. I mean...when's the last time you ever heard about them bothering to bury the body of a crucifixion? They always leave 'em up to rot as a moral example to the rest of us..."

"True enough, and a good point that," the second guard murmured, "And then I hear they took the body and wrapped it in aloe vera, which ain't a burial ointment, last I checked my Torah."

"The rumor I heard was that the Rabbi's father, Yussef of Arimathea, paid Pilot a bribe to take the body down so it could be buried in a family plot, but instead of burying it they used aloe vera to heal his wounds and left him wrapped up in a private tomb where he recovered the next day or two. Then his wife, daughter and mother-all three of 'em named Miriam, mind you-came to fetch him away to Egypt, right under the noses of the Romans."

"You mean the guards were in collusion with this?" the third guard asked, sounding fairly astounded by the story his friends were telling.

"Naw, seems they wound up guarding the wrong tomb," the fourth guard shrugged, "Pretty damned embarrassed when their Centurions showed up to chew them out about it, but the way they figured it what was the harm? Turns out with the body of the Rabbi missing it stirred up a whole hornet's nest, set both Pilot and Caiaphas on edge and everything...and now here we are out on this blasted road chasing down shadows."

"I thought we were after rebels?" the second guard asked.

"Not just the rebels but their leader, who is very much alive I might add," the fourth guard noted, "They say he appeared before his followers, showed him his wounds and everything, then asked them to carry on his mission during his absence. He promised to return when the time was ready, and that set a fire under their bones. They think he really did return from death, which means he has heaven's blessings and will return one day to Yerusalem to be proclaimed the new Messiah."

"Well, not if we catch him and return him in chains he won't," the first guard affirmed solemnly, then turned to the fifth man in their group and said, "What do you say to all this, Shaul? You've been awfully quiet while the rest of us have been sitting here listening to our teeth rattle."

All at once the fifth man fell over, and then began rolling upon the ground making strange incoherent noises.

"Bloody Sheol," one of the guards reacted, "He's having another one of his fits he is!"

At once the other four men set to work assisting their comrade, two of them holding Shaul down while a third tried to fix a stick in his mouth and the fourth guard held his legs to prevent the man from kicking.

"Hold him still! We've gotta make sure he don't swallow his tongue this time!"

"We're trying, but it's a bad one!" the second guard replied, "He's putting up one mother of a struggle..."

"What is all of this commotion out here?" a voice demanded from the nearest of the tents and a man dressed in rich robes appeared, looking around with indignant fury in his bearded expression.

"Sorry Rabbi!" one of the guards called out, "It's Shaul...he's having one of his epileptic fits!"

"Again?" the man in rich robes snorted, "That's it, this is the last time I put up with his nonsense! The man's a nuisance, more trouble to keep around than he's worth! Bind him up and we'll leave him here come morning."

The guards were collectively shocked by this, "Bind him? But sir...he can't help it!"

"Haven't you heard that epileptics are touched by the blessings of God, Rabbi?" another guard asked him.

"That is blasphemy," the Rabbi scowled, "Pagan nonsense. He's possessed by demons, I tell you, out of his mind, barely coherent most of the rest of the time. I say be rid of him and we'll speak no more of it on the morning..."

Thelendra banished the image again, leaving Kasumi to say, "That poor man..."

"Oh aye," Thelendra said bitterly, "Poor in mind, body and spirit, but this night's events will shape the rest of his life and give him a purpose and direction hardly foreseeable from the seeming mundanity of it all. On the morning tide this be what happened..."

Again the image of a desert road, only now it was bright day and one could see the man named Paulus struggling against the ropes binding his ankles and wrists, a thick stick tied in his mouth, and without his armor he was poorly equipped for the elements and most likely would shortly thereafter have perished from exposure.

But then a savior appeared, a man walking his mule as they followed the road to Damascus, only to spot the hapless Paul and come immediately to his rescue.

"Sir, what ailes you?" the fellow asked after offering the famished Paulus some cheese and goatsmilk, "How came you to this state? Were you robbed by bandits?"

"No, I am forsaken," Paulus turned to the man beside him and added, "But your coming along when you did is surely a sign of heaven's blessing. What name have you, kind sir?"

"I am Yessus Ben Malakai," the man replied, "A poor merchant son of the Rabbi Hilkiah. And you?"

"Shaul of the city of Tarsus," the slighter man said as they reached out to clasp arms, and for a moment something crossed their faces, and tender look of recognition, "And I owe you my life."

"Thank the blessing of Yahweh and not me," the man named Yessus chuckled, helping the other man to his feet, "But friend...have you some lodgings, some home that I can help you to find?"

"I own nothing but what you see before you," Shaul answered, "But...perhaps we can find a way of helping each other out..."

"I had a thought of that myself," the other man replied, "Come stay with me in my house. It's only a few more leagues from here, a day's travel from the city of Damascus..."

The image faded and Kasumi said, "Well, that was nice of him, finding a friend like that..."

"Aye, a friend ye may think," Thelendra mused, "But more than a friend if ye read the signs that would tell thee of the rather significant look those two were sharing."

"What?" Kasumi blinked, then thought a moment and said, "Oh...but...oh my..."

"You can see the humor of this surely?" Reka asked of the two humans and their elemental allies who confronted him, "Your sister-who was so recently elevated from mortal to goddess status-is about to receive a critical revelation concerning the evolution of the most defining religious movement of the past two thousand years of Western history. In doing so she will, of course, gain new and fresh insight into the actual causes of the struggle confronting you and your country in the present."

"And why are you doing all of this?" Ranma asked, "That's the part I don't get...what are you trying to pull off here?"

"Is it not apparent?" Reka asked, "I who have walked the earth-in one form or another-for the past ten thousand years have a very deep-rooted vested interest in the affairs of humanity, much though my personal feeling in the matter is that you are little better than intelligent apes who have barely mastered the art of crawling. My regard for the average normalcy of humanity may be very low indeed, but even I concede that the human race contains the seeds of a greater destiny, one that can potentially be realized only by a very select few individuals, such as yourselves, who dare to move beyond the limitations that are the accepted standard for normality."

"Whoopee for you," Nabiki scoffed, "So you've got a hidden agenda...welcome to the club. It still doesn't make you any better than your run-of-the-mill power-mad despot."

"On the contrary," Reka smiled, "I am indeed a King, and a Prince among nations, but one who has no desire to rule over others. That has never been my way...I have no need for supplicants and fawning retainers to do my bidding. I am a power unto myself, unique and gifted beyond your imagination. Of what need would I have for the mere trappings and symbols of power? These are but traps and baubles meant to ensnare the mind and distract one away from that which is truly important."

"Which is?" Ranma asked.

"Power itself, Boy...and the knowledge that makes it effective," Reka answered, "If you wish to bind yourself to my family and father my grandchildren you had better become rapidly acquainted with this concept, because you are going to need to grow and become a lot more than you now are in order to survive the coming crisis, let alone protect my daughter, as well as your loved ones."

"What do you mean?" Ranma narrowed his eyes, "You keep saying that there's some big threat to Japan, but you're not telling us anything useful."

"I hardly need to," Reka scoffed, "You are capable of learning the truth for yourselves by your own means. The question is...can you accept the truth when it is given?"

"And who are you to say what's true and what's not true?" Nabiki asked.

"I am one who has lived with the truth since my birth-mother hid me away from the prying eyes of Uta-Hamash, the Lord of Deception," Reka answered, "Twelve thousand years ago, when Atlantis fell during a mighty struggle between the forces of Chaos and Order, when my father, Uta-Haled, gave his last full measure in order to buy me and my brothers the time we needed to grow and develop, I was left here in this part of the world to struggle and learn to survive by my own means, and as such the whole of Asia has long been my birthright. I feel a certain proprietary interest in what goes on here...and when someone threatens to destroy any substantial portion of my province...it is only my right as a Prince to take an interest in its prevention."

"And who's trying to destroy us?" Nabiki frowned, "What's the real deal behind this all? Can you at least tell us something about that?"

Reka smiled and wagged a finger in her direction, "Ah-ah...do not look to me to kibitz. I am still attempting to make up my mind if you are even capable of being the ones who can overcome the tools of this current crisis. Underlying this struggle is a much deeper issue that has pitted me against Anri, my idiot older brother, for the better part of the past two thousand years...whether or not a certain sacrifice he made back then will pay off eventually or prove-for his part-to have been a colossal error and waste of human resources."

"What sacrifice is that?" Ranma asked, then slowly put it together, "Naw...you don't mean..."

"He means the struggle between Heaven and Earth, Master," Latisha explained on behalf of the human father to her unborn baby, "Light and Darkness, Reason and Emotion, Salvation and Damnation. The argument that started in the times recorded into mythology as the battle between Satan and Jesus."

"You mean...he's Satan?" Ranma asked hesitantly as he gazed with renewed wariness towards Reka.

"No fool," Reka scoffed, "Satan is a myth...one of the Angelic host who served Yahweh and was his errand boy doing dirty work such as tormenting errant prophets. Demons use that myth to exploit human gullibility by each pretending to be Satan, which makes for good Public Relations, very good for gaining illicit donation and avoiding taxes and that sort of thing. As for Jesus...well, that is a much more complicated story, one that your adoptive sister is learning about even now, much though she will find the revelations troubling and full of vexation."

"You fiend," Nabiki hissed, "How dare you do something like that to my sister?"

"Don't blame me for setting her feet upon the path to further enlightenment, Girl," Reka malevolently chuckled, "And as for my charming niece-her former wife in another lifetime-well, I leave it to her to fill in the details, but if all works out well they should be returning to this time soon enough, little worse for the wearing."

Ranma balled his fists and glared hatefully towards the redheaded man, wanting to knock that arrogant grin from his face...even while privately fearing for the welfare of his adopted sister, Kasumi...

"Irony be it nay?" Thelendra said with sad reflection as she met the gaze of her companion, "The man who fathered the religion known as Christianity...carrying on an affair with a man whose name be misremembered as Barnabas, a man fated to be his companion for several years hence?"

"You mean...he was gay?" Kasumi asked.

"Well, he certainly saw little enough use for women if one judged only by his writings," Thelendra mused, "In later times Paulus would repent of his actions and label them a sin, then go on to make infamous invectives condemning the practice after breaking up with his lover and choosing to go it alone in his travels."

"Oh my," Kasumi said, slowly working out the implications.

"In one of the few letters he wrote that survived to be passed down into what would later be called the Bible he penned the phrase, 'I know not why I do what I do or do that which is hateful to me,' his way of recanting the perversity of his own nature," Thelendra continued, "Yet unwittingly he set in tone the very phobia that would consume the church that he himself had started. How many of those who so readily condemn a person for loving within their own gender have ever truly looked between the lines of his meandering thoughts and wandering dialectics to see the troubled soul he was, and the perversity that be at the very heart of his nature?"

"You keep saying he started Christianity," Kasumi pointed out, "But wasn't it based upon the teachings of your father?"

"Only in name and the few parables that survived in the retelling," Thelendra answered with deep sadness, "Christianity be of mine father in name only...most of the rest of it be a violation of the core essence of his teaching, reflecting as it does the beliefs and practices of Paul the Apostate."

"Apostate?" Kasumi repeated.

"Paulus could ne'er see the contradiction between his teachings and those of mine father," Thelendra answered, "But e'en more unforgivable, he betrayed the very spirit of the Hebrew religion, to which he gave more pretense than favor. Take for example that pre-Passover feast thou didst attend with mine father and uncles. Notice ye something was missing?"

"Um...the food?" Kasumi asked, her stomach rumbling as a reminder.

"Among other things," Thelendra smiled a bit sadly, "But what I meant was that the ritual known as the Eucharist was nay a part of that gethering. At no point didst mine father say, 'This be my blood, this be my body,' which were the words voiced by Mithras at the time before his death and ressurection."

"Oh," Kasumi said, then her eyes widened, "Oh...because that would be a violation of Jewish law?"

"Thou hast remembered," Thelendra smiled fondly, "The drinking of blood, e'en in ritual, be a gross violation of Leviticus. Food must e'er be drained of blood before the meat can be Kosher, and besides...do thee nay find the practice itself smacks a bit too much of ritual cannibalism?"

"Oh my," Kasumi covered her mouth, remembering her own blood thirst, and faintly disturbed by the implications.

"Know thee the practice of eating the flesh of a virgin has an ancient history in Palestine," Thelendra continued, "Dating back to the time of the so-called Judges, such as Yaphet, who didst sacrifice his own daughter to commemorate victory against an enemy in battle."

Kasumi saw an image form before her eyes and saw a young girl kneeling before a stone alter as a man in white robes presented a knife to her neck and prepared to use it. She glanced away hastily, but the image continued in her thoughts and she realized with horror that she was experiencing a memory in the form of a vision, one where the young girl's body was drained of blood into a bowl, and that her remains were then carried to the altar and..."

"They ate her?" she whirled to confront Thelendra, "And she let them?"

"She did nay resist," Thelendra replied sadly, "And that from a time a thousand years removed from the era when mine father allegedly made a sacrifice of himself for the people."

"I thought the core of Christian teachings were supposed to be about redemption from evil?" Kasumi wondered.

"Thou can sayest this...what with all the long history of blood that be attendant to mine father's name?" Thelendra asked, "My father didst nay leave a written record out of fear that his life's work would be perverted, but that be what in fact did happen when-scores of years after the fall of Jerusalem and the scattering of the Hebrew peoples-some errant knaves began writing their version of our times using crib notes left by Timothy and others to craft a wholly fictitious version of events that painted a picture in which father's words were drowned out in favor of a very different message."

"Which is?" Kasumi asked.

"That salvation be found in worshipping mine father as a living god," Thelendra replied, "Which be idolatry in the cruelest sense. Rather than taking mine father's words to heart and seeking to know their essence his words were as water spilled on sand, and all those claiming to be his followers can see is that their hopes of an afterlife be set and determined by prayers spoken in the name of Jesus. Thus the messenger has taken more import than the message...and those deemed nay to be with mine father be seen as enemies of God, which be a total inversion of his message and a source of great sorrow to mine father!"

"Are you saying that the stories we were told about him are in error?" Kasumi reasoned.

"I be saying they be a sin, a missing of the mark entirely," Thelendra expressed with an exasperated waving of her arms, "What else think thee be the point of all this but the lesson that Reka sought to teach thee?"

"But...what did happen?" Kasumi asked, "What became of your father...or you...and of that nice fellow, Judas?"

"Ah," Thelendra nodded sagely, "We come back to our part in this farce of a melodrama. As thou hast heard, father faked his demise and survived to escape the doom of the cross and sepulcre. He appeared before his followers for one more fateful time, the last that we were together as a family during that incarnation...and then he fled to Egypt, to correspond with up in secret."

"He survived?" Kasumi asked.

"Aye," Thelendra answered, "And as for my mother and myself...this is what occurred shortly after father's departure..."

An image formed again of the followers of Yessus gathered together in a different house than the one in which they had conducted their "last supper," but here the occasion was anything but the friendly congenial one that Kasumi had enjoyed only an hour before, for there were tempers flaring and the older Miriam was angrily confronting a stony-faced Cephas, who seemed to be the center of her ire as clearly there was much disturbance among the ranks of the disciples.

"You are not in authority here," Miriam was insisting, "Yamez was named my husband's chosen successor..."

"Yamez is a good man, but he is an Essene, a seeker of purity, not politics," Cephas replied, "We must hold our group together until your husband is able to return, which may not be for many years, until the time is right and we have prepared the way for his arrival in glory."

"That is not for you to decide," Miriam said hotly, "Cephas, you have barely even begun to understand a tenth part of all that my husband meant to teach you. You are not ready to be a leader, and your voice does not carry the weight of this group here..."

"But that is just the point, Woman," Cephas said, "We are leaderless and divided, and Yamez-though surely a wise man by any measure-cannot hope to unite us. Your husband called me a rock, and I am certainly not wise like he or your in counsel, but I must be the stone that unites our group and holds us together until we can recover from the awful setback that has befallen us. Have you forgotten that we are not hunted by the Sanhedrim, despised even by some of our own people..."

"Despised and misunderstood because they believe us allied with the Zadokai," Miriam the younger spoke up most crossly, "But who was it who drew a sword in the garden when the temple guards arrived? And who denied thrice knowing mine father? And who falsely accused Yuda of betraying his own Master?"

"Those were acts of foolish impulsiveness on my part, Girl," Cephas declared, "I have renounced my own folly and pledged to the Master that I will be faithful to him always Do not think to use those mistakes as leverage against me..."

"Mistakes?" Miriam fumed hotly, "And thou hast the temerity to have called Yuda a liar and a betrayer?"

"My daughter speaks with the passion of youth," the older Miriam declared more calmly than before, "But in this she speaks with a wisdom far beyond your grasp, and if you do this you will betray my husband far more surely even than..."

"Miriam," Yamez spoke soothingly, "It is all right if Cephas decides to assert a place of leadership among us. I will not contest this, for he is loyal and devoted to the teachings of my brother..."

"Oh yes?" the younger Miriam asked, "You mean as he dealt with Yuda, who was only carrying out the will of my husband?"

"Wait!" Kasumi said abruptly, turning to Thelendra, "What about Yuda? Why isn't he there offering support to you and your mother?"

"Yuda..." Thelendra glanced away, then absently gestured with a hand to create a second window.

Thelendra turned to see the followers of Yessus gathered outside in a garden similar to Gethsemane...or rather most of them were gathered around a single one who was being confronted in an angry, accusatory manner.

"You sold us all out for thirty pieces of silver, Yuda," Cephas was demanding hotly, "You gave our master over to the guards of the Temple, and now they are sending him even now over to the Romans!"

"I did not know!" Yuda declared in obvious distress, "I was doing as I was bidden..."

"By who?" Yohan asked, "Caiaphas? Face the truth, Yuda, you have deserted our cause and gone over to the Temple!"

"You Sicari are all alike," Tomas scoffed, "You talk about freeing our people from the Romans, but when it comes push to shove you are out for yourselves only, and anyone who is not with you is an enemy!"

"That is not true!" Yuda insisted, "I never would betray my Master! He has been kind to me, and he has trusted me to be his special agent..."

Thelendra hastily banished the image then said with deep sadness, "They voted to cast him out from their midst...and Yuda was too ashamed to beg for their forgiveness. Nevertheless he remained faithful to the end, abiding until he knew mine father would revive from having ingested the potion that he smuggled into the vinegar used by the Romans. He it was who slipped into the vault where my father rested to help revive him, and he witnessed the seeming miracle of my father's return from near death. Then afterwards he accompanied his master into exile in Egypt, and there he died preserving his secret...an all but forgotten hero whom history has misjudged a disloyal traitor."

"But that's awful," Kasumi said, horrified, "He was so nice to me, and he obviously cared a great deal about you..."

"Oh aye," Thelendra could not meet the other woman's gaze, "In truth he loved me, but I knew I nay. I was blind to his devotion, that he would do most anything for me, so caught up was I with mine own troubles and my haunted visions about the future."

"How sad," Kasumi felt the urge to reach out to the Eluini of many colors, "You be able to see the future..."

"But unable to avert it?" Thelendra turned a sad little smile her way then said, "For myself and my mother...well, you saw how it was. We were favored and beloved for being closely tied to my father...yet we were women in a society that viewed us as less than a man, and so our voices could easily be discarded. In the end Cephas had his way, and yet his lack of true leadership meant that he delegated much of his authority to others, so Yamez did rule, but times were never the same for us, even though the number of our followers grew to near legion. In the end we were forced out of the covenant and driven into exile, traveling with my grandfather, Yussef, who took us first to Gaul and then to a quiet province known as the Merovigne, and there we did settle down to spend the rest of our days in peace...away from the troubles that would shortly engulf our whole nation."

"And...this is where you and I met in this lifetime?" Kasumi fathomed.

"Aye," Thelendra waved a hand again and formed yet another image in the air, this time showing the face of a man whose handsome continence was matched by a gentle dignity and a calm demeanor that made him seem more than passingly charismatic.

He was wearing a Roman toga and his surroundings were those of a private palatial villa. He had a scroll in his hands and was reading it by the light of the morning air when he turned to see someone approaching from within his garden.

It was the younger Miriam, accompanied by a much older man in the flowing robes of the Hebrew people. The man on the porch turned and there was a moment of silence as he and Miriam met and gazed on one another, and then the man stirred himself from his private reverie and said, "Ah...may I help you, Miss?"

"My lord," Miriam bowed respectfully, her cheeks somewhat rosy and her manner oddly chastened, "I was referred to thee by thine agents in town. It concerns a partition of land that be in thy possession..."

"What is your name, Girl?" the man gently inquired, then paused and said, "Forgive me...perhaps I should be asking that of you, Sir? Your name is?"

"Rabbi Yussef of Aramathea," the older man replied, then indicated his younger companion, "This is my granddaughter, Miriam of Bethany, and we are here concerning a requisition for some land that is in your possession..."

"Quite right," the man said without taking his eyes away from Miriam, "Ah...forgive me, where are my manners? My name is Brittanius Agrippa, governor of the Marovigne...and please don't think me rude for staring...it is just that...ah...have we met before, my lady? Forgive my presumption but...your face is...strangely familiar..."

"Nay, my lord," Miriam said without raising her eyes to meet his, "Not in this lifetime, of that I am most certain."

The man's gentle smile was warm and electric, "Then perhaps it was a different time and place, but you are welcome here in my house. Please, your father and you must sit and sup with me and we can discuss the details of this property you are after. And...would you please do me one favor?"

"My lord has but to ask it," Miriam answered.

"Then...please look up at me when you address me," the man said warmly, "It feels odd not being able to determine their color. But I assure you I won't bite...and you may call me Britanius, or...if you like..."

"Husband," Thelendra whispered, her tone and expression haunted with emotion.

"Oh my," Kasumi gasped, looking into a face that was at once that of a stranger...and yet somehow familiar in spite of it all, "Is he...myself?"

"Oh aye," Thelendra said hoarsely, "Thyself three incarnations back, when thou were't a man and most passing fair...strong of face and form, yet so gentle mannered that my heart doth ache to remember..."

"I remember...only very little," Kasumi murmured faintly, then stared down at her own hands and said, "Like a dream, but without substance. Could it be true then? Was I once a man...just as Nabiki turns into one in her cursed form?"

"If thou dost call thy sister's male form a curse then we should all be so misfortuned," Thelendra said in mild amusement, "But I do digress...this was but the role fate gave to me, to found the Merovingian line...with ties to all the great houses of nobles who would one day dominate Europe through marriage and alliance, thus replacing the Romans who would fall prey to the barbarian hordes many centuries after."

"Oh my," Kasumi said, staring at the handsome face of the man who was now seen holding hands with Miriam and feeling an inexplicable stab of jealousy, which seemed very odd to her mind, for who could possibly be jealous of their own past incarnation?

"No need to envy or feel regret for what be past, Beloved," Thelendra gently assured her, "We had sweet times, but now we be together and united, and while the form be very different for us both, yet still there be...possibilities yet left to be explored if thee hast desire and...inclination."

"Oh my," Kasumi said, but then turned back to Thelendra and asked, "You spoke of your father surviving the cross and going into exile. Did he continue his mission from there?"

"Aye, until Massada, where he perished facing down the Romans," Thelendra said sadly, "Seeing all that he had worked for go for naught, his worst fears realized, and the doom of his vision, of fire and blood destroying Jerusalem and scattering our people...he died of a broken heart, a bitter man shrouded in failure."

"Bitter?" Kasumi gasped, "Why so? Why deem his work a failure?"

"Because in the end we failed to unite our people, to join all men and teach them the ways of peace and fellowship," Thelendra replied, balling her fists in her frustration, "Two thousand years have proven the folly of our actions, for in my father's name there have been wars and genocide with brother pit against brother, all for a cause that be folly, with rival definitions of the good contending 'gainst each other, all starting with the great betrayal of Cephas, who foolishly brought Paul into the Nazorean movement, thinking his voice would add value when in he course of time it did undo the very core of our mission."

"But your father's mission lived on in you...surely?" Kasumi asked.

"By then it no longer was his mission but Paul's," Thelendra replied, "Paul, the man who turned mine father into a pagan redeemer, whose life be a parody of the cause he championed and all the good works he did achieve in his former incarnation were rendered for not...all because of a temple guard whose pretensions to prophethood did bring doom to an entire nation."

"But isn't that exaggerating things more than a bit?" Kasumi argued, "Surely as much good as harm has come out of Christianity, and it isn't all about sacrifice and redemption..."

"Oh no?" Thelendra asked skeptically, "Because of him far too many believe that merely mentioning mine father's name and invoking him as a 'savior' will buy them a place out of Hell, as if the Devil of their fancy had any real claim to a human soul. Christians teach that the world be an evil place under the dominion of a wicked father of lies, and that reason and intellect be powerless to free one from a bondage that is entered into through the act of birth...as if fathering or giving issue to children were itself a crime against heaven! They teach that the body be evil and humanity be inherently corrupt, but if ye give lots of gold to the Church the priest will pray for thee and thou wilt buy a ticket into heaven called an 'Indulgence.' No need to act as a good person doing deeds of charity and mercy, or even to be a devout believer in a different creed or faith. Thou art all going to die and be cast into a lake of fire forever and evermore by a God who allegedly doth love thee and be doing this for thine better good. All thee need do is supplicate and grovel in abject humity and you can go right on doing whatever misdeeds be dear to thine heart regardless of the negative impact thine actions have upon thyself and others!"

Kasumi winced, "You don't need to shout at me, Thelendra. I'm right here, and I...I agree that there are some...problems with all that, but..."

Thelendra made an effort to relax and took a deep sigh that caused her already expansive chest to fill outward, "Forgiveness I do crave, beloved, for thou wert nay deserving of this. I had no mind to vent mine anger upon thee...only to make thee aware that when it comes to the religion of Paul...I be nay objective or forgiving."

"It sounds like you do have many issues there," Kasumi admitted.

"Thee dost think?" Thelendra said with bitter irony, "The destruction of Jerusalem, the dividing of the Hebrew nation, the scattering of mine people...all because Paul went around preaching a version of father's teachings that perverted its core into a personality cult rather than the soul-searching introspection that he meant to use to teach brother to abide with brother. I find fault with his claims that the Law of the Hebrew did nay need apply to those non-Hebrew who sincerely wished to be followers of the Christos...the name he himself didst coin when applying it as an appendage to the name of mine father."

"But surely he meant to do good?" Kasumi reasoned.

"Aye," Thelendra replied, running fingers through her long main of multi-colored hair, "And in doing so didst create yet another lightning rod issue to divide the Nazorean movement from the Hebrew people it was meant do serve, and thus did enflame the passion of Rome against us. When Nero sought an explanation for the burning of Rome itself he was told that it was Nazorean terrorists who had set the fire, and thus did order his infamous progrom against both Hebrew and the followers of Paul, who later didst claim to be the sole object of his reprisal, blaming the Hebrew as instigator. That and the fall of Jerusalem to the Romans drove a final wedge that divided Paul's movement from its parent and cast the children of Abraham thereafter unto the role of 'Christ-Killers' in the eyes of Gentile Christians. Dost that sound progressive to thee?"

"Well...no," Kasumi admitted, "What I meant was...some good has come from the teachings of your father. After all, your father's name has been used to inspire men to be more like him, to do good things as well as evil..."

"And does it bother thee nay that-in Christian eyes-thou art less of a person because thou art Shinto, and in their eyes a worse abomination than being a Vampire Goddess?" Thelendra snapped, only to regret her words the moment that they were uttered.

"Forgive me, Beloved," Thelendra urged, "Thou didst nay deserve that...I...I am a fool for having verbally abused thee..."

"I...I understand what you are trying to tell me," Kasumi said in a sad tone of voice, "But you don't have to act like I was...stupid or even clueless..."

"Oh aye," Thelendra said tiredly, "Thou art most undeserving of such appellations. 'Tis I who am behaving in a manner unworthy of mine station. My father many times has counseled me to patience...but...I fear I lack his standard for accepting the limitations that be inherent in all humanity, even Eluini."

Kasumi acknowledged this quietly and nodded her head to prompt her companion to continue.

"In perfect truth, Beloved," Thelendra said as she regarded the other woman with eyes that saw far more than was within the scope of mortal comprehension, "The bitterness that I feel be born of long frustration and experience with both the good and the bad that thou dost speak of. But anon, I do thee an injustice fuming and fretting over things long in the past. It be the memories of these times that do haunt me...and of the implications that they bear in turn for the very future of thy people and loved ones."

"What is it?" Kasumi asked with quiet urgency, "What do you know about that? Is there a threat to my family that I should hear about? Please...tell me!"

"Aye...I will tell thee all I can, Beloved," Thelendra said, "But in the proper time and place, when thou art prepared to learn about thy more immediate future."

"When...?" Kasumi gasped, then turned away and felt a pain in her chest that was so palpable that Thelendra could not fail to notice.

"Mine heart?" she asked, turning to fully regard Kasumi, "Beloved?"

"I love you," Kasumi whispered, "But I barely know anything at all about you, beyond these things that you've been forced to tell me. And you have been keeping secrets from me...from those I care about. How then am I to trust you?"

Thelendra's shoulders slumped somewhat and she sighed, "Forgive me, Beloved...'twas ne'er my intent to deceive or mislead thee in any respect. But I adhered to the wisdom of mine father, who advised against making known too much of the truth until such time as I deemed thee ready. That time clearly be at hand...so if thou wouldst question me now on what I now of these events, thou hast but to ask and to the best of my mature I shall give answers."

"Then who are these people who are trying to hurt my sister?" Kasumi asked her with an intensity that belied the mild tone of her inflection, "Any why threaten all of Japan? What have we ever done to deserve so much hatred?"

Thelendra turned a wan look towards the other woman and said, "To answer these questions...will take a bit of preparation. Will thee abide with me a bit, mine love, so that I may give thee the counsel that thou art seeking?"

"Of course," Kasumi replied, "I just want to know who is doing this...and why. That's not too much to ask, is it?"

Thelendra smiled and placed a finger to Kasumi's lips, "Nay...it be far too reasonable an answer for me to deny thee. Forsooth, mine love, I wouldst share with thee utterly all that be mine to give unto thee and more...but perhaps the best way to prepare for this would be to share again the essence of mine nature."

Kasumi's eyes widened, "You mean...?"

Thelendra reached out to her and drew the other girl into her embrace, their faces only inches apart as she looked deeply into Kasumi's eyes and said, "Thy thirst for knowledge be like unto thine craving for mine juices...so why not yield both if it may pave the way to a closer understanding of what be at stake here. Thou needst nay hold back anon, my love...I am yours to take, and thou mayest drink of me deeply to thine fill and hearts content."

Kasumi was altogether aware of the press of the taller woman's body against her own, the heat radiating through the fabric of their clothing, making her altogether aware of the vibrant soul within the altogether desirable flesh of the Eluini, and unconsciously the felt a stirring in her loins and breasts, a swelling of her nipples as the felt the touch of the larger mounds of her companion and had an immediate urge to rip both of their clothes off so that she could get at that flesh and do with Thelendra all of the naughty things that formed as ready images within her conscious imagination. Without bidding her fangs began to lengthen and her mouth curled into hungry gasp as the desire overwhelmed her reason and bid her to do that which was the essence of her vampiric nature.

Thelendra tilted her head and presented her neck with willing supplication, and try as she might Kasumi could not resist the urge to lean forward, brushing lips against the perfume-like aroma of the Eluini's vulnerable shoulder.

"Forgive me," she murmured before touching the tips of her gangs to where she instinctively knew a tasty artery was located.

"There be nay to forgive, my sweet," Thelendra murmured back before placing a hand behind Kasumi's head and gently tilting it forward so that the fangs sank into the skin, muscle and sinew to find a rush of potent juices gushing forwards that filled Kasumi's mouth and all but flowed down her throat without the need for lapping and sucking.

Oh My would have been the words that filled Kasumi's lips just then as the potency of that blood rushing into her and filled her with en energy and an ecstacy unlike anything else that she had ever tasted.

Continued.

Comments/Criticisms/Papal Bulls: shadowmane

Or: shadowmane9849

Think I've sunk far enough into heresy yet? Bear with me a bit further, gentle reader, and all will be revealed as events unfold in the next climatic chapter: "The Revelation of Kasumi," or, "Prophet and Loss on the Balance Sheet of Karma." Be there...

X

/pre 


	82. Chapter 82

preDnabiki171

Nabiki 1/2

"A Very Scary Thought"

by Jim Robert Bader

(Inspired by the works of Rumiko Takahashi Others,  
with concepts and characters created by fellow fanfic writers Wade Tritschler, DB Sommers, Nicole Manders, Andrew Greaves, Bill Guiroff and countless others, including "Buffy"  
creator Joss Whedon; with special thanks to my good pal Shiva for his editing and handling of this series.)

(Certain other characters and concepts are of my own innovation, including my interpretation of the Monster of Mary Shelly's novel, the Furies, Trudy, Takaharis Angelique d'Anjou, Anri and the Daokan, Thelendra the Dream Weaver and various other guest stars appearing in this portion of the Nabiki 1/2 series...)

ALSO NOTED-LONG DELAYED DISCLAIMER:  
THE OPINIONS EXPRESSED HERE BELONG TO ME AND DO NOT EXCLUSIVELY BELONG TO ANY OTHER FAITH OR DENOMINATION. IT IS NOT MY AIM TO PURELY RIDICULE OR CRITICIZE, AND I APOLOGIZE IF ANY ARE OFFENDED BY MY VIEWS OR THE MEANS BY WHICH I EXPRESS THEM.  
ANTI-SEMETISM IS A CRIME, AS IS ANY OTHER FORM OF ETHNIC OR RELIGIOUS DISCRIMINATION.  
MY THOUGHTS ARE BASED ON MY OWN RESEARCH INTO BIBLICAL ORIGINS, AND I ENCOURAGE YOU TO READ AND FORM YOUR OWN OPINIONS ON THE SUBJECT OF THE HISTORY OF RELIGION. PLEASE ACCEPT THAT THIS IS AS MUCH A WORK OF ENTERTAINMENT AS ME PONTIFICATING THROUGH THE PERSONA OF A FELLOW WHOM I JUST HAPPEN TO LINK TO JESUS.

Chapter Sixty-Five.

Episode One-Hundred-Seventy-One.

Chains, Pains and Autodafés.

"Something bothering you, Oneechan?"

"Eh?" Natsume turned to regard her younger sister with a puzzled expression.

"Well..." Kurumi shuffled her feet uneasily, "You were looking kinda puzzled there, and I was wondering what was on your mind...so..."

"Oh..." Natsume looked away uneasily, "It is just...I cannot quite shake this feeling that something is amis in Nerima. The air is heavy and full of tension, and there is a prickling sensation along my spine that I have come to trust as a warning of impending danger."

"Sounds like an instinct trying to warn you about something," Mousse noted from where he stood off to the side, slightly hidden within the shadows, "I'd listen if I were you. Instinct can save you from a lot of unnecessary grief, and it usually means that your subconscious is trying to tell you something that your conscious mind isn't yet keen enough to handle."

"Is that more Amazon wisdom that you feel like sharing, Brother-in-law?" Natsume asked as she eyed the Chinese man sidelong, wondering why-more and more these days-it seemed to her as if he were always somewhat hidden within shadow.

"No, just practical experience," Mouse replied, "I come from a warrior culture, and most Amazons I know tend to act reflexively as if the whole world posed them danger. We're not all cheerfully 'live-for-the-day' types like Shampoo, you know, and some of my cousins are so paranoid that they make Perfume look naively trusting."

"That bad, huh?" Kurumi smiled up at her husband (and father of her unborn-child-to-be), "Remind me to skip out on any family reunions."

"No problem there, Airen," Mousse shrugged, "I'm not on good terms with most of my family these days, great-grandmother notwithstanding, and she's just too odd even by Amazon standards to want to belong to any group that would have her for a member."

"Now that's a depressing view, Great-grandson," said the aforementioned "grandmother" in question as she appeared from seeming no where on the Kuno estate veranda, "There are a few social circles where I do fit in after all...but why the long faces? And where are the young mothers, Akane and that darling Kodachi?"

"Inside the house tending to their kids," Kurumi answered, then looked past the ageless beauty of the Archmage to the more withered appearance of the woman beside her and respectfully said, "Baba Cologne? I thought you were visiting your family out in the country."

"Certain recent events have prompted my early return," Cologne replied, sweeping her eyes about before saying in low reflection, "Your instincts do you justice, Natsume-chan. There is indeed a strange tension in the air...an elemental disturbance such as I have not felt in many years...not since my own great-grandmother..."

"Yes, I know," Siren said, gently cutting off her fellow Amazon in mid-refection, "It is my great-grand uncle, Reka. He has come to Nerima, as have his other two brothers."

"Reka?" Natsume asked, wondering why the very sound of that name caused her to abruptly shudder.

"Who's that?" Kurumi wondered.

"The Lord of Fire," Mousse said in a hushed tone of voice, "But...he rarely involves himself in the affairs of mere mortals. What would bring such a being to Nerima?"

"That is the question of the moment, is it not?" Siren replied with a faint scowl wrinkling her otherwise perfect brow, "My great-uncle is as capricious and willful as he's unpredictable and dangerous to be around. He does what he likes and what he feels is for the best because it amuses him to do so, but there is no telling what his intention truly are, whether benign or hostile. I only know that if he has come at this time it is because he is here for my apprentice, and-by extension-Nabiki as well."

"Oneechan and Ranma are in trouble?" Kurumi stood up, "Then what are we waiting for? We've gotta go help them!"

"Slow down, Airen," Mousse more calmly noted, "We don't know where they are, and even if we did our combined powers by themselves wouldn't be enough to help against him."

"Are you saying that we should do nothing then while our sister is in danger?" Natsume flashed hotly.

"I'm not saying that," Mousse carefully explained, "I'm just saying that-up against one of the Daokan of legend-"

"Mousse is correct in this," Cologne spoke up in defense of a young man whom she normally despised, yet whose weight in this matter was certainly worth having in support of her own position, "The Daokan are the Way-Lords, the Four apostles of the Way of Light itself, and you cannot hope to stand against them. Their powers are almost without limit and their skills in the Lore of the Martial Arts is also something out of legend."

"But we can't just stay here and do nothing!" Kurumi demanded.

"Who can't do nothing?" Keiko asked as she came out onto the back porch and took in the scene at a glance, "Oh, Grandmother Cologne, Aunt Siren...how nice to see you both back together again. I take it you've been mending a few fences?"

Cologne scowled at the brash redheaded Kickboxer's demeanor and suggestive lilt hinting at something sensual and racy, but Siren smiled back fondly and said, "We're working on it. And how goes things with your Mistress?"

"Kodachi's doing fine, and our kid's doing peachy," Keiko grinned, only to shake her head ruefully and, "Our kid...never thought I'd be hearing myself say that...but somehow it just feels so right. I mean, she's mine too, if you get right down to the heart of the matter, and even if I share parental rights and responsibilities with Ryo-chan..."

"Ryoga and Akane are doing fine also, Baba," Kurumi added with a sly grin, "Imoutochan's never looked more happy, and if having a baby can do that for her then...well..." she left off the rest of her statement and paid a sly glance towards her husband, who seemed oddly nervous as he shuffled a bit and melded a bit more into the shadows.

"How nice that everyone is doing so well," Siren mused, "Well, if you kids will excuse Kho-chan and me, we have other rounds to visit, and the night is still young, so..."

"We have business to attend to," Cologne pointedly corrected, then as she and Siren turned before vanishing back into the night she hissed at the level of a stage-whisper, "Would you stop calling me that? You are deliberately needling me while spreading the false rumor that you and I are once more an item..."

"Well, you can't blame a girl for being too hopeful, now can you, Kho-chan?" Siren pouted before they faded out altogether, leaving their younger heirs to shake their heads and wonder at the very odd couple formed by the two Elders, then silently and collectively wondered just what sort of new crisis was brewing in Nerima...

The air was tense and altogether full of an unpleasantly familiar presence, and Udan scowled as he considered its source, recognizing his brother's handiwork and wondering just what it was that Reka was up to this time, engaging himself in a petty brawl with a couple of mortals.

Granted that one mortal was a Nexus, the other a significantly gifted player who was also a nascent Eluini, but other than the odd quirks that Udan could sense from a distance he found no reason nor logic for Reka's actions. Why involve himself this openly when doing so alerted the enemy to the Daokan presence within their midst? So typical of Reka to act without subtlety or discretion, yet another reason to want to pound him flat the next time their paths crossed, which might well be at any hour that was forthcoming.

For the moment, however, Udan had far more important things to do, such as to examine the magazine that he had purchased not an hour before hand when visiting a local market. It was a strange sort of periodical that the local here seemed to think of as great literature, the kind that Udan normally did not associate with that particular word, but which was nonetheless strangely compelling for its combination of graphic illustration with dialogue and story. It was a rare sort of indulgence for him, but he found himself nonetheless reading and studying the pictures as images flowed into his mind of a tale of high adventure.

To some it might seem odd that a fellow whose entire life history read like an endless prose saga might take pleasure in reading about someone else's adventures, but for Udan Robar Bartev it was something pleasantly diverting to amuse himself with in a rare off-hour of quiet reflection. Besides which, this curious half-demon and the mortal girl he interacted with sounded like some people he had once known many centuries ago, and it was oddly nostalgic to view this depiction of their adventures in a highly fictitious and romanticized format, but for a certainty the story did their memory a great service and paid homage to a star-crossed love affair that defied the test of the ages.

Having something of a personal insight into what that felt like, it was easy to identify with the players...more so than with the next Manga novel that he had picked up on impulse, the one dealing with some future post-Apocalyptic time where a branch of humanity had been stranded upon a distant world and was forced to live a high-tech Western existence with survival in doubt and only one enigmatic being its true defender.

That one was amusing in some ways because the central character was like many whom Udan had come across during his travels. Though outwardly bearing the appearance of a clownish coward the hero was actually a tower of strength, fortitude and courage who endured much suffering for the sake of his beliefs, and who steadfastly refused to slay his enemies regardless of the evils they embodied, managing instead to transform people by bringing out the best that was within them. In so many ways that reminded him of his brother, Anri, though the analogy in many respects was a bit heavy handed, and Anri was known to sometimes kill when necessary, especially when it came to creatures whose very existence could spell doom for the entire planet.

As incongruous as it was for a being as well grounded in earthly awareness as himself, who rarely indulged any sort of fantasy life that might distract him from the realities of the moment, Udan did appreciate the occasional bardic story now and then. But being too well versed in the realities of war and heroism he had little taste for epic adventures that discarded concrete themes for flighty excuses in maudlin self-indulgence. Westerns, by and large, were just extensions of an older mythic structure in which rock-solid characters embodying the good and bad of humanity struggled for basic survival. Having lived through the actual time period in question he had no illusions at all about what it had meant to live life on the frontier, or to see the actual tragedy of an indigenous people's struggle against the encroachment of an imperial force from beyond...a story far too old and depressingly familiar in Udan's experience of things, and so he tended to avoid the genre as a basic rule of course.

Only stories where the heroes risked actual death and were set against a realistic background of humanity could tend to even catch his passing interest, and while Udan was not all that deep a thinker, nor a philosopher-like Anri-he did have a rather deep taste for the kinds of stories that delved deep into the basic struggle of human existence. As a lover of humanity he was always drawn in fascination to the foibles of ordinary people...knowing all the while that he could never be like they were, that when it came to struggling in their place he was forever an observer, only rarely a participant. At times he almost envied Mortals their basic-level of common existence, unaware of the dark forces that lurked within the night, to which Udan the God Slayer was forever vigilant and wary.

Yet the differences between himself and an ordinary man were far too palpable to ignore, such as the means by which he had obtained these novel possessions, for money was not something he carried on his person, having little need for it since whatever he required could be summoned into existence with but the thought of a moment. All it took for him was to scan the merchant's mind and fathom the right amount of currency needed, then open the channel by which the coins and paper money of Japanese authenticity materialized as needed. He had left the periodical stand with the merchant none the wiser, for his money was good, real and permanent, and the transaction thus legitimate, even if Udan had not actually had to work to earn it.

It was like everything else in his existence...a need arose, he filled it. Renting out the cheap motel room where he was staying required a bit of finesse, altering the desk manager's perceptions momentarily so that the gold Udan handed over would be mistaken for a credit card. A legitimate deal with the right amount of monetary exchange value, but altered to fit the needs of the situation, and again without the mortal being any the wiser that he had been in the presence of a man who was ancient when Carthage was new, and who was a Lord beyond the pretence of any earthly Emperor or Sovereign King.

That was just how Udan liked it...to walk through live among ordinary people without them knowing any better. Though apart from them in many ways, he preferred to move through their midst without leaving any foot prints...not like in the old days when a more reckless and adventuresome Udan had torn a swath across Western Europe that had made his name an infamous one of legend...

Of a sudden he put aside his graphic novels and looked up, sensing the approach of one whose presence cause him to lose all sense of caring for the world beyond the moment. With eyes that could peer through the depths of time and space to distant horizons he saw her approaching him as though she were the sun itself on the horizon, and without a word he stood up and turned to offer his lady the homage of his greeting.

The simple apartment in which he stood was not all that large (even by the space-cramped Japanese standards), but a moment later an entire section of it wavered and distorted them dissolved entirely to form a spacious corridor that opened out onto some distant beach where the sun was ever shining and the lapping of the waves brought the salty brine of the ocean into the room, sweeping out the musty, stale and dank odors of cheap wine and vomit that had been deposited there by some previous tenant.

And there she also stood...agelessly beautiful, more majestic than time, proudly unassuming as she smiled up at him with a look of warmth that flowed from her to him like water. Her clear blue eyes met his basalt-hardened gaze and caused him to soften ever-so-slightly, and without needing a word to be spoken he extended his hand to her and felt her smaller hand cup his as they allowed the brief contact to renew the vows that they had spoken to one another in a time ages before the rise of the Pharaohs.

Ulsa.

Udan.

Their thoughts ran smoothly as one breeze embraces another and each was filled by the presence of the other, but then Udan's eyes moved slightly away from their orbit upon his wife (and little sister) to take in the sight of the figure rather timidly cowering off to one side. His eyes narrowed sharply and with a glance he read her as he had the Manga and knew at once that the scent of his wife was thoroughly upon her.

A gentle hand to his chest stopped his impulsive desire to take a wrathful step forwards and he glanced down with a puzzled expression, surprised at the firmness he saw there, and the resolution.

She is mine, she belongs to me.

Udan raised a questioning eyebrow and studied Ulsa's eyes, seeking to fathom the depths of her meaning.

A gift from Anri, one favor for another. She is to serve me as my tool, and with your indulgence she will become the weapon hand that I dare not raise.

A slave? How very unlike you, Ulsa.

Ulsa smiled a bit impishly, though the deep affection that she radiated was difficult to resist, and it did much to ease the jealousy that Udan was feeling at the moment.

I know. But I have been preparing for this for a very long time. I entrusted myself to Madam Lao for a purpose, as you well know, and not just to indulge a perverse whim that had been upon me. She has been trained by my former Mistress, and now she serves me well...and I find much pleasure in her company for she gives without selfishness and accepts whatever is given.

Udan felt slightly hurt by that and was not at all shy to admit to his weakness.

Am I less worthy in your eyes now? I have always been your arm of vengeance...

I do not require vengeance just now, Udan. You are a warrior...perhaps the greatest who has ever existed...but this requires a finer touch than you could ever hope to manage. It is not strength alone that I need but the courage of one who fears the touch of death in order to buy the human world its promise of salvation.

You mean to use her then? That would be cruel service.

I mean to give back as much as I take, and it is her choice to make. That is the thing about mortals, after all...they are not as bound by their choices as we. They can make mistakes, they can be angry, or foolish, or sincere, and yes...they can lose it all at a whim of the fates. But I shall not lose her services so easy...I mean to see to it that she is equipped with all that she requires to perform this service. However...to be truly powerful she will need a weapon, one suited to her reach. As it so happens I have the perfect one in mind...but to obtain it I am going to require your cooperation.

Udan had seen that one coming, but with a fatalism born of long practice he resigned his will to hers and sighed, then acknowledged with a nod his tacit understanding of the circumstances and allowed her to dictate to him the shape of her intentions.

Amalthea was palpably nervous about standing in the presence of a man whose very nature seemed to draw in the shadows all around him. He was bit and scary looking to be certain, and hard to recognize as the brother to the one named Anri save that they had identical features that were distinctive only in the fact that this Udan was tough, mean and craggy, looking as old as thirty (and possibly a lot older) and densely packed with the kind of muscles that would put to shame a grizzley. He also stood well above six feet (if just shy of two meters) yet gave one the impression of being much taller, like a giant craning his neck to fit within a frame far too small to befit his proper stature.

And the sheer raw physical power he radiated was indescribably intense, as though he would hardly be troubled with pushing over a mountain bare handed, and the force of his Chi alone was enough to make her want to avert her eyes for fear of being blinded. He hid his true potential well enough behind a mask of seeming mundane normality but there was no denying the fact that he was anything but ordinary. Truly a lord among men, and yet humble in spite of his origins, preferring to appear as mortal in the common clothing of a casual traveler of life, untouched by the centuries yet moved to wear the dirt and grime of his travels as though they were a much-preferred badge of honor.

My pet seems taken with you. Would you be interested in having her for a turn?

Amalthea was startled as that thought flowed through her mind, and without intending so she felt her cheeks burn with an almost schoolgirlish modesty, which was odd considering her chosen life style. It had been a long time since she had felt the touch of any man, let alone without shuddering with aversion, but...in the case of this God among mere mortals...the thought of being claimed by him was not an entirely unpleasant notion. Once again she marveled at her new Mistress's perceptions, understanding Amalthea's thoughts and needs on a level that the young girl could barely comprehend, though in fact it made her feel even greater reverence and affection towards her owner.

My lady teases me. It is cruel of you to offer this when you know whom it is that I desire.

To that Ulsa fixed the taller man with a pale raised eyebrow.

I am cruel? What of you, my love? Do you think me unaware of how you have spent your hours before indulging this fancy for popular literature? Do not forget that I can smell her perfume about you...

Udan winced slightly and made a faint placating gesture.

Forgive me, Ulsa. I did not mean to imply...

Amalthea saw her Mistress smile once again and the tone of her thoughts was once again gentle and even chiding. Even as she overheard this silent rapport between the two puissant beings before her she had a mental image in her mind and saw the face of a young Japanese girl toweling off her hair after a hot shower, and favoring Lord Udan with an indulgent look of gratitude and admiration...but not the deeper look of intimacy that one would expect of a true lover.

It is nothing. I know all that you do, Beloved, as intimately as I know my own heart. You met her on the road and felt moved to take her to bed, but it was just a thing, a passing moment. You knew she needed it as much as you sought to relieve your manly urges.

It was Udan's turn to glance away, and if Amalthea did not know better she almost would have thought his heavily tanned face looked a bit ruddier than was his usual wont.

I have known so many like her...innocent lambs on the eternal highway of life that I travel. I thought it...appropriate to spend time with her since I could not be with you...I could not find you...

Ulsa grinned impishly and effected a silent chuckle.

I was...preoccupied. But now we are united once again, my love, as we are never truly parted. But I have come to request your services in other ways, for Amalthea is in need of a weapon, one that suits her talents and abilities, and of course I know where to find one...but for the fact that it is heavily protected.

Udan turned a sharp look towards the blonde and his expression as much as his tone conveyed both surprise and sober reflection.

You mean the Umurika, which is guarded by one of the Behemoths?

Ulsa gave a slight nod of sage confirmation.

The very same. Is there a problem?

The tall man squared his broad shoulders and reacted as though his manhood had been challenged.

For me? Never, not so long as you wish it so, my lady. But is she truly prepared to take on the challenges that will come for one who dares the Breach of Heaven?

The blonde turned and smiled as she regarded Amalthea with fondness.

You will find her more than adequate, Udan, to any task or challenge you pose her. She may not as yet know her true potential, but I do. She will persevere and triumph, once you take down the only barrier that she is ill-equipped to handle.

Udan gave Amalthea another hard study and then nodded.

Then let us be away. This half-breed Kirin is as unsteady as a colt just testing out her legs. My old friend Chiron would rate her as barely a newborn.

Amalthea heard her Mistress affirm this and felt an odd sense of inadequacy, even though the words of Ulsa Laolana were praising.

And yet she has the potential. That and her willingness to learn are enough, or...can it be that you are not yet aware that a future protégé of yours is in town? I have been studying her from afar and find the turn of her life and thoughts to be most...instructive.

This decided Udan then turned and faced towards one wall of the cheap apartments, which shimmered and parted before him as though a mental curtain had been lifted, and there beyond the pale of space and time yet another opening formed the way to a distant destination. With no more thought than one might have using any other kind of door he led the way forward, followed in close step behind by Ulsa and Amalthea, the former confident and serene as she crossed the span of many miles distance, the latter far more hesitant, yet dutifully submissive as she obeyed the silent urging of her Mistress...

"A curious thing destiny," Reka mused, "It is open to us at any given moment, and by our choices and actions we help shape the course of the future. And yet is one truly allowed free will if their actions are constrained by their beliefs and understanding? If they do not see a road that stretches out before them and follow a different pathway that leads to an uncertain resolution can that be called predestination? Constrain their thoughts with ideas that limit and diminish them and you truly hobble their choices to just the few that they have the ability to see, and thus you can control their actions. This is the way that religion works, you see, by constraining the mind of the believer to close off roads that might well lead to some promising and very interesting places."

"What the hell are you going on about?" Ranma asked, "What choices? What beliefs?"

"He's referring to organized religion itself, Master," Karina the Sylph replied, "Lord Reka is known to despise the whole concept of theology, believing it to be an impediment to sensing the true spirituality that exists within us all."

"Quite correct," Reka smiled, "Creed worship is idolatry, and my brother-who is an even greater Iconoclast than myself-is guilty of fathering one of the most tenaciously perverse theologies that has ever come into existence! That is why I am doing all this...to prove to him that what I have always said would happen has transpired in spite of his noble intentions. Mortals twisted his teachings and perverted the meaning of his thoughts to create a monstrosity that now threatens to plunge the human race into very pits of hellfire that its adherents claim they are avoiding!"

"I'm not sure if I follow all of this," Nabiki frowned, "Are you saying that Christianity itself is the problem behind all of this?"

"It most certainly is not the solution," Reka said grandly, "But don't take my word on it...judge for yourself when you see the results it will yield within the borders of your own country."

"Man, you are something else," Ranma shook his head and scowled at his prospective "father-in-law" with open aversion, "You drop stuff like that in our laps but won't tell us anything useful? What the hell are you here for? To throw your so-called superiority in our faces?"

Reka regarded the younger man with a look that was almost predatory, "I begin to see why my daughter fancies you so much. It takes nerves of steel to talk like that to me, knowing as you must that I could destroy you where you stand without so much as raising my little finger..."

"Try it and you'll have to go through all of us first, Buster!" Sobriel snapped tartly, only to blink as she felt Karina lay a hand upon her shoulder.

"He could do that without even a thought, and even Lati couldn't move to stop him. He's power incarnate with thousands of years experience in the use of his abilities, and very little in the way of moral compunctions about using what he knows."

"That is all together correct," Nagisha noted, "But even Reka of the Daokan must observe some limitations."

"You are correct in this, Umber-Spirit," Reka noted, "With great power must always come some restraint 'lest it destroy even me. I may revel in anarchy and chaos, but total absence of thought and logic is anathema to my nature. I do what I do because I am compelled by my will and desires to act in accordance with my nature..."

"By nature then you do have some limits?" Nabiki asked.

"It is the nature of power that it can be it's own limitation," Latisha answered, "You taught me that yourself when I was barely a salamander crawling at your leg, Father, and I have never forgotten."

"Yes, but your fondness for humans has softened you, my dear," Reka noted, "I see the same weakness in your daughter, who even flirted with becoming fully human, and is all but married to one herself...or have you forgotten your prodigal child in America, the one whom you almost disowned over a trifle?"

"That was ages ago and of no immediate relevance to the moment, Father," Latisha replied, "And even you have conceded that my Master has raised a valid point. You are needlessly torturing them with veiled hints and suggestions of immanent danger. Aren't you the one who has always scorned at the rantings of prophets? Just when did you become one, like Uncle Anri?"

"Hmmm...a fair point that," Reka somewhat reluctantly conceded, "I will tell you what. Just because I am a sporting man, I will offer you the chance to get what you need to know from me, and all you have to do to obtain this is to defeat me in battle."

"Excuse me?" Nabiki asked, "Did I just hear you right? You want us to fight with you...?"

"I want you to win, Woman," Reka taunted, "Do your all, give it your best shot, use every resource at your disposal and try to take me down. In return I will refrain from using the balk of my powers...no incinerations nor summoning up the full measure of my Chi and physical strength. I will compete with you on a fairly even level using nothing but my martial arts skills, and to give you a chance at victory I will even refrain from using lethal force, attacking and defending only with the softer skills that are at my disposal."

"No deal," Nabiki turned to her husband, "Let's go, Ranma...we don't need to make any bargains with this huckster."

Ranma started to protest, saw the look in his wife's eyes and thought better of it, so instead he followed her lead and reluctantly said, "Right...don't need to stick around anyway. The company here ain't to my liking."

The pair did not go more than a step before a burst of flame cut off their path and blocked them from leaving, which forced both Nabiki and Ranma to back away from the heat, which was intense and very threatening.

"Excuse me?" Reka asked with deceptive mildness, "Did I understand you right? I make such a generous offer to you and you are...leaving?"

"Why should we stick around?" Nabiki asked, "Even with all those stipulations you list you've clearly got the advantage here...and besides, I thought you were into free will?"

The flames vanished as though extinguished beneath a blanket, and Reka considered the point then said, "Quite true. I did forget myself there...but I was surprised. Did not think you this effective a negotiator."

"I play the cards and the hand I'm dealt," Nabiki replied, "Now, if you'll excuse us, Ranchan and me have to get back home to our family."

"Ah," Reka conceded, "A good point that. Better to spend all the time with them that you have...which will not be for very much longer."

This time it was Ranma who hesitated, turning and asking, "Nabiki?"

"Ignore him, Ranchan," his wife said with a sniff, "He's just trying to manipulate us, like he's been doing the whole time here. All this show and bother was an effort to impress us, but I can see right through your ploy since you obviously never had any intention of hurting either Ranma or me. You just came to prod us with your 'superior' knowledge and to impress on us mere mortals how much we need you."

"Excellent," Reka nodded with a sobering expression, "You are indeed more shrewd even than what I guessed."

"Comes from dealing with charlatans and connivers," Nabiki said, "After a while you learn to spot the sharks from the minnows."

"And evidently you are one of the sharks?" Reka smiled, "Have a care...sharks are magnificent creatures, acting only on instinct and driven by the force of nature. They must always keep in motion, for if they stop swimming for even a moment they will drown."

"Believe me," Nabiki said, "I intend to keep a steady stroke. So, are we done here, my Lord Reka?"

"You free to do as you wish," Reka conceded, but then paused to add, "Too bad, though...I was just starting to like you."

"The same isn't mutual, believe me," Nabiki declared while turning her back and beginning to move forward.

"Ah yes...I get that a lot," Reka smiled, then slyly added, "Of course if you leave you won't be able to find me again, and you will be conceding a great advantage that could have given you the edge that you needed."

"Thanks, but I prefer to find things out on my own," Nabiki did not bother to turn around to call that one out over her shoulder.

"A shame about your son," Reka idly noted, "Little Chusen I believe you call him? Such a promising young lad...such a waste and such a pity."

"Ah..." it was Ranma who turned back to ask, "What about my son?"

"He is Eluini, like me," Reka said, "Born with a potential the like of which you can hardly imagine. I speak of regret that he will never live to fulfill that potential, and after the way his very existence prompted my daughter and her colleagues to wish to bed with you."

Nabiki halted in mid-step, then very slowly turned around, her eyes as hard as flint, "Are you threatening my son?"

"Who, me?" Reka feigned surprise at the very question, "Hardly! I would never think to lift a finger of one hand to harm a hair upon his head, Woman. What do you think I have been trying to tell you all along here? The knowledge I offer to share with you is for his benefit even more than for yourselves."

Ranma balled his fists and said, "Care to explain that a little more clearly?"

"Certainly," Reka replied, "And I will refrain from using big words so that even you can understand me, Boy. The who who threatens your son intends to bring about the deaths of millions of your people. Now, as that charming fellow Stalin once remarked, the death of a million people is but a statistic...

"But the death of a single individual is a tragedy," Nabiki quoted, "Bit out of the order there, but what are these guys gonna do that will kill that many people?"

"Why, funny you should ask that," Reka mused, "I was just getting around to sharing that bit of knowledge with you when you decided you did not want my help and would prefer to do things on your own for yourselves..."

Nabiki grit her teeth and snarled, "Just tell me."

"Hmmm..." Reka stroked his chin then said, "I will give you this much for free, and the rest you will have to earn. The assassin who tried to kill you just now is a distant relative of yours, and the both of you-as well as your husband-are descended from the same line that once opposed a great evil, for which you are now being individually targeted for elimination. The enemy, you see, whishes to erase your entire bloodline, but mostly is going for you since they know you have the potential to destroy them, and..."

"And?" Ranma asked, almost holding his breath as he waited for the answer.

Reka spread his hands apart and smiled, "The rest you must earn, or else its value will mean nothing."

"Why nothing?" Nabiki ventured.

"Because, as you have so rightly observed, that which is not earned is not as valued as that which is," Reka replied, "And because I am still unconvinced that you are the hope for the future that we need, the ones whom my maudlin brother believes could tilt the balance of the future. I prefer to learn for myself by direct experience whether or not you have the capability of overcoming that which is out there."

"So we gotta kick your ass to prove we're worth something?" Ranma asked.

"In as many words, yes," Reka answered, then gave a challenging look towards Nabiki, "So, do you agree to my terms, woman?"

"No," was her immediate answer.

"No?" Reka affected real surprise, "Were my terms so unreasonable? Did I not make them palatable enough..."

"I mean no to holding yourself back in a fight against Ranchan and me," Nabiki corrected, "You keep saying you want to test us? Well, what kind of a test is it if you fight us with kid gloves? Go all out and impress us and we'll give a more even account of what we can do and what we're made of."

Again Reka evidenced surprise, raising both eyebrows and saying, "You want it with no holds barred? But did you not hear me before? You have no chance of defeating me that way..."

"All or nothing," Nabiki said, "Those are the terms. Ranchan and his elementals, me with my abilities, and you with all your lofty pretensions of being omnipotent. Got that?"

Very slowly Reka nodded, "I am impressed. Yes, this is wisdom of which you speak...folly from the standpoint that you have handed all the cards to me, but...I respect a brave woman who speaks forthrightly. And you, Son-In-Law? Is this also how you wish it?"

"Yeah," Ranma said gruffly, "Nabchan's got it right...it's how I want it...Dad."

"Well then," Reka made a grand gesture, "Let the games begin."

All at once towering walls of fire erupted on all sides, completely surrounding them and forming a ring fifty meters in diameter, effectively cutting off the world on all sides and leaving them in complete isolation."

"Ranchan?" Nabiki asked.

Her husband extended both hands and caused his elemental ladies to flow back into his body, then he stood at the ready and said, "Right. Latisha?"

Only the Salamander queen hesitated about rejoining with he master, but she paused just long enough to say, "I won't hold back on you, Father/ There's too much at stake here."

"I would not wish it any other way, my dear," Reka smiled, "But for what it is worth you do your father proudly."

With that declaration the two sides squared off and prepared to confront one another in battle, unaware that a fourth party observing from the sidelines had joined their midst unobserved, having leapt through the wall of fire before it was fully erected rather than get left out of these exchanges altogether.

"I'm through," Ranko murmured while hunkering down and trying to keep out of immediate sight of the contending parties. The heat of the firewall at her back was intense, yet she dared not edge too close to the center of the fray lest her Omnisenken technique falter and reveal her presence prematurely.

In her ear she heard her mother's disapproving tone and winced, "That was very reckless of you, but I'll overlook that for the moment. Stay clear of Lord Reka and try not to give yourself away. You are supposed to be observing matters, Ranko-chan, not participating."

"Hey, give me a break," Ranko sub-vocalized, "I'm just doing what you and Pop would do if you were here in my place."

"We know," she heard her father gruffly reply, "And that's what's got us so worried."

"You have no idea how dangerous it is for you to even be this near to the battle," Nabiki continued to sternly berate, "I can't stress enough how powerful and dangerous the Daokan are, and for my counterpart to accept an open challenge from one...it puts in question her very sanity. This is more the type of behavior I'd expect of Ranma."

"Hey, I resemble that remark," her husband chided, "And for your information, Nabi, the you of this world is more like me than I am...er...than I was...or something like that. It gets confusing."

"Folks giving you static?" a voice whispered into Ranko's ear, and the redheaded time agent almost betrayed herself with a "GAK" that she rather hastily stifled.

"Chesh?" she turned to see the furry Pokegirl crouched down beside her in concealment, "What are you doing here? I told you to wait..."

"Must've missed that order, Master," her hairsuit tempo-dimensionally displaced sibling responded with a cat-like indifference to whatever she deemed worthy of ignoring, "Besides, you don't expect me to sit this one out while you get a ring side seat at the heart of the danger, do you? And I'm better equipped for stealth even than you, I might add, so why don't we just keep our voices down and watch the fireworks, huh? Don't want anyone hearing us whispering and kibitzing on the sidelines."

"Good point," Ranko conceded, crouching low and turning to watch the battle as it commenced, privately irritated and grateful at the Pokegirl's stubborn loyalty since the last thing she really wanted was to face this thing alone without some kind of backup. Fore a certainty things were about to get intensely interesting and with no sure outcome in sight, other than the rather obvious fact that someone was about to get their face pounded flat, and that Ranko privately hoped it would be Reka's head that got handed to him on a platter.

But even as she thought these things she heard Cheshire murmur in her ear, "Odds aren't too good for that, Boss. In fact I'd calculate a better chance of Daddy winning the Noble Peace Prize, or getting a PhD degree in science."

Ranko winced accordingly and said, "How many times do I gotta say it? Never quote me the odds. Besides, my folks can't fail, they're Saotomes."

"In which case is this the first or second time they've encountered Lord Reka?" Cheshire asked, "Because if memory serves he right, Daddy always had a knack for losing the first round but springing back on the second or third."

"You know, she does have a point there," Ranko heard her mother idly comment.

"Hey, that was the old me," her husband insisted, "I don't lost battles now...I can't, and you know what would happen if I did."

"Why do you think I refuse to let you go in her place then?" Nabiki countered, a rhetorical question that nonetheless caused Ranko to shudder, because if her "old man" was ill-equipped to handle the likes of this Ranko guy...

Then what chance did that give this younger alternate version of her parents...?

Time is a curious thing, more of a condition than a noun, a process ever in motion that is observed and experienced more than understood, even by those who easily negotiated the corridors of its passage.

In the space between worlds, that moment when the quantum vibration of atoms separate from those atoms vibrating at a different constant, a kind of Limbo-like voice of "no time" exists, a realm where causality itself does not proceed in any orderly sequence. When trapped in such a void a year is the same as an instant, a moment in time with no space and no measure, understood only through experience and perception rather than objective and recordable reality. You know it happens but can you state for certainty just how long you've been there? No one can truly say, but if you find yourself stuck in Limbo time you will soon realize that a moment truly is forever.

And yet given the company that she was now with, Kasumi would not have it any other way. Having made out with Thelendra in a furious session of passionate lovemaking, she now enjoyed the blissful languor that came in the post-coital bliss of intimacy that followed in the wake of their physical and spiritual consummation. Their passions not entirely spent, they enjoyed the moment of privacy sitting down upon a log that was purely a figment of their mutual imagination, the realm they were in being pliable to the will and easily manipulated, such as the means by which the rainbow-haired Eluini summoned up images in mirror-reflection to act as visual aids as she resumed her private tutorage of Kasumi, stimulating dormant memories that had been absorbed through the transmission of blood from Oracle to Vampire Goddess.

"...And here be the fellow whom legends name Abraham," Thelendra was saying as she conjured up the image of an unimposing man wearing the archaic robes of a traveling Mesopotamian shepherder, "Or Abram as he was known to his Sumerian contemporaries. On the whole a nay exceptional sort...a rich merchant's son who chose to set out on the road in pursuit of a voice heard inside his head, whom he reckoned to be a God since in those days before the invention of Psychiatry no one questioned the validity of hearing voices."

"You mean he said a god spoke to him and everyone else believed him?" Kasumi asked while brushing her lips against the bared shoulder of her companion.

"All save the ones who made little circling noises while pointing at their own heads," Thelendra answered, "But also in that time it was taken for granted that the mad were touched by the Gods, and thus were to be avoided. No one locked away madmen for fear of offending the spirits that were said to possess them and give them visions, so it was quite common for the schizophrenic to make a fair living in the medium business, in which there was considerable prophet."

Kasumi smiled at the little joke they shared, but then more soberly asked, "And so it wasn't true that he was the father of Monotheism?"

"Thou art correct in this, my love," Thelendra replied, pausing to smile as she felt a hand cup and caress one of her rather large and substantially-well-shaped breasts, then she continued, "Abram, who wed his half-sister, Sarai, wandered the merchant trail throughout Palestine, going from Nubia to Samaria many times during their lifetime..."

"Excuse me?" Kasumi politely interrupted, "Did you say that he married his own sister?"

"A common enough practice among the rich and wealthy houses of the day," Thelendra noted, "The Egyptians even carried it to such an extreme that it was institutionalized as a practice that brother should marry sister to preserve the alleged 'divine blood' of the royal family lines, who were claimed to be descended from Osiris, one of several major reasons why no dynasty of their lasted for more than three or four generations."

"Oh my," Kasumi murmured, thinking of her own inexplicable attraction to Nabiki's masculine half and thinking with a slight shudder of how incestuous her thoughts had been towards 'Kenada,' with whom she would not have minded violating a taboo or two had she allowed herself such an indulgence.

Thelendra seemed to sense her thoughts and smiled, but nonetheless continued, "Some of the stories told of them be true, though distorted in the written accounts, such as the claim that Abram pretended Sarai to be only his sibling and nay his wife so as to escape the ire of many a rich merchant. In reality they had a con game going down since Sarai was very fair of face and form and could winnow her way into the hearts of many an unsuspecting noble. When the incestuous siblings were done playing their cruel deception they would skip town with their ill-gotten riches, leaving the distressed nobleman that much the poorer in wealth and the richer in wisdom. In like manner Abram eventually acquired much in the way of riches to become himself a noble with many sheep and servants as his retainers. He was no mere penniless mendicant but a powerful force in the region, one who could easily lend a hundred men on an instant to liberate his captive nephew, Lot, when the fellow had fallen prey to some desert-roving bandits."

"He doesn't sound like such a noble fellow if he made his wealth through trickery and deception," Kasumi noted.

"He was nay better nor worse than many another of his time," Thelendra replied, "But certainly no paragon of virtue, no more than he was a strict observer of only one god. In those days it was quite common to pay tribute to as many gods as thou didst wish to have in thy favor, and no one deliberately insulted another man's religion for fear of incurring the wrath of that man's patron. In the markets of many a town and village, however, there was always a temple devoted to the 'Unknown God,' basically a hedged bet city merchants plied to include a space for any diety they might have unintentionally been forgotten. To this Abram routinely did pay tribute."

"But why didn't he create an alter to the deity he claimed to follow?" Kasumi asked.

"In truth he knew not the name of the voice that spoke within his head and promised him to become a great nation," Thelendra answered, "A promise that lay unfulfilled within his extended lifetime. That was why he just referred to his patron as 'Ellai,' or 'El' for short. He did not wish to offend his patron by naming him, so he began the practice of impersonal reference that later on was taken up and revived by Moses."

"So he did believe that other gods existed?" Kasumi marveled.

"My love," Thelendra chuckled, reaching down with one hand and idly stroking the inner thighs of her companion, "In those days everyone believed in the Gods, and no one but the mad was truly an atheist. Wouldst thou disbelieve in someone who might rain fire down upon thee for a mere slight? Or wither thy crops and leave thy lifestock barren? Besides, Abram kept hoping that he and Sarai might have a son of their incestuous union, ignoring that they shared the same biological father. When Isaac was indeed born to them they shared great joy, but it was fleeting. A local holy man deemed the child an abomination and ordered his sacrifice, which Abram was compelled to do, taking the boy to a high hill top and there making of him an offering to the very God whom he thought the source of such a blessing."

"And did he actually do such a horrible thing?" Kasumi reacted with shock, seeing the image form of a boy struggling against his ropes while his father raised a knife to his throat and recalling all too vividly the image shared earlier of a similar scene involving the daughter of a man named Yaphet, whom the Hebrew had converted into a cannibal banquet, much to Kasumi's nausea on that subject.

"In the end Abram lost his nerve but thought he found salvation when he spied a goat trapped in such bushes nay all that far away," Thelendra answered, "Abram leaped upon this as a sign of his god's benediction and sacrificed the goat in place of his son...which later legend converted to a lamb of offering, such as those harvested centuries later in the Jerusalem temple."

"So the boy did live after all?" Kasumi felt oddly relieved about this.

"Just barely," Thelendra banished the image, "In some alternate realities Abram went through with his pedocide, for in those days child sacrifice was common enow, a means of population control and of weeding out those deemed unfit or unholy."

"Unholy?" Kasumi murmured.

Thelendra sighed, "Sometimes a child who was born deformed or malformed was deemed the spawn of a union between human and demon...and practice that followed right up until the enlightenment made a crime out of such 'mercy killings.' Isaac...was nay a perfectly formed child, being born with certain recessive traits due to his parents being blood-related. But still he managed to live long enow to father two offspring, Essau and Yacob, the latter whom be revered in legend as the founder of the Hebrew nation...but which like so much else be a falsehood disguised in the fairy tale trappings of misremembered campfire stories."

"So what was the real story?" Kasumi asked, feeling the memories that she had borrowed from Thelendra were tickling into her awareness the more she listened to her friend give her account of the events surrounding the history of the Christian Bible.

Thelendra sighed, "It be a complicated tale, my love, but the short of it be that the story was an allegory for the actual events that occurred in both Palestine and Egypt. Much as Abram did cast his firstborn son, Ishmael, into exile, so does the tale relate how two branches of the Semetic peoples were separated from each other by time, area and distance. In like manner the story of Cain the farmer and Abel the Shepherd was used as allegory to describe the amity long felt between city dweller and nomad. The stories were written from the shepherd's point of view to justify the claim that the outsider Israelis had a divinely sanctioned claim to the land that they didst covet from those who dwelled there for generations. The story of Esau and Yacob-the sons of Isaac-be illustrative of the same point, for the name Yacob doth mean 'Surplanter,' and as he took the birthright from his elder brother so too did the Hebrew seek to take by force the lands belonging to the people of Caanan."

"But that wasn't right," Kasumi said forthrightly.

"Indeed, by our modern light-and even the morals code of the Hebrew-what their ancestors did was criminal folly," Thelendra noted, "But see things from their light...they had no land to claim of their own, and the fields which they needed to graze their sheep belonged to someone else, so...naturally in the harsh times in which they lived it seemed fairly rational to take whatever was needed and justify it elsewhen."

"To covet land that belonged to a brother?" Kasumi asked, "To steal that which did not belong to them? To murder someone else from whom you were stealing?"

"In those days everyone did what he or she thought was best in her own eyes, my love," Thelendra replied, "'Twas many centuries later that the Hebrew adopted a modified version of the Laws of Hammurabi and incorporated it into their law code of Leviticus, from which later was drawn their sacred Talmud. It be short-sighted to hold the people of that age up to our modern standards and fault them for what they did out of necessity...but my point here is that there be no moral claims to saintly behavior here, and many of the so-called Prophets and 'Heroes' of the bible were very unheroic in their actions. It serves thee ill if thou dost seek to justify their behavior by claiming that the people done to and treated ill in some manner or other did something to deserve this abuse. Blaming the victim be a very old game for shallow minds and selfish hearts incapable of conceding that all men be as equal in the eyes of the fates and no peoples are more 'deserving' than another of what befalls them."

"That doesn't sound very fair," Kasumi pouted.

"What in life be fair?" Thelendra asked, "Karma be the law that what is done by thee will have consequences that impact upon thy growth and evolution as a person. Thine actions as much as thine intentions decide the worth and merit that thou dost carry with thee from one life to another. How thou dost regard thine own behavior-as measured against thine beliefs and desires-will more determine thy worth for heaven or hell than any silly code of behavior that be drafted by mortals...but enow of this. I do divert myself from thine instruction..."

She made another slight hang gesture and again the images changed to reflect her words as she continued with her lecture.

"Originally all sons of Shem came from a place in Africa that once was fertile yet later became the barren Sahara desert. Climate change and the over consumption of land resources didst hasten this process. So too did the reliance upon sheep and goat herding lend to the bareness of once-fertile lands, a reason why Jerusalem rose in prominence since it started out as a fortress in the middle of a valley that guarded the only supply of fresh water within the region. Too far off from normal routes of trade, it would be centuries before it could claim to be even a minor league kingdom of the area, and certainly never so prominent as claimed in the stories relating to Solomon and David..."

"And what of the Egyptians?" Kasumi asked, fascinated beyond words by both the pageant of imagery being paraded before her eyes and by the deliciously warm and desirable woman against whom she was leaning.

"Egypt rose from the ashes of a prior empire long forgotten to history, and the rise of the Pharoahs occurred when the diverse tribes of the Nile united with their Nubian brethren to form the people who built monuments to the god-sons of Ra, Osiris and his Anubus. But then people from the north called Hyksos came down south and brought with them the use of the horse and chariot, conquering and dividing up the land and ruling over Egypt for the better part of two centuries during the time of Abraham and Yacob. These were good times for the nomadic wanderers of Palestine, who had a valued ally in the region, for they were seen as blood kin to the Egyptian Kings of that age, resented only by the dispossessed houses of native-born Egyptians.

"But this brief time of amity ended when a prince of Thebes named Amhose rose up to overthrow the Hyksos rule and reunited the fragmented Kingdom into a powerful dynasties on the verge of becoming a true empire. These were the Pharoahs who 'knew not Joseph' and who regarded the various Semitic tribes within their empire with deep and abiding suspicion. Cruel reprisals in the form of taxes and levies were imposed, greatly diminishing Semetic influence and impoverishing many who were seen as fellow travelers of the former Hyksos rulers, prompting many to uproot and locate elsewhere. Many settled in Palestine and commingled with Green and Phoenician traders to help found the Philistine kingdoms, while others migrated to the north and settled on the fertile plains just south of the Tibris and Euphrates. Of lower Palestine itself only goats and their herders could thrive, and Jerusalem was little more than a hill fortress defending the only local spring of fresh-kept water in the region."

"I see," Kasumi said as she watched the images play out of market towns being burned and ransacked by sickle-wielding soldiers in Egyptian livery, who drove away a people wearing robes woven of many different colors.

"Incorrectly the Bible names this as a time of slavery for the ancestors of the Hebrew," Thelendra continued, "Likewise there was no massacre of the Innocent first-born children of the Israelis...a story borrowed in whole cloth from the legends of King Sargon of Persia. Depictions of this as a time of cruel oppression be somewhat exaggerated and ignore the annoying detail that the practice of slavery in this time was nay so harsh or pervasive as the more institutionalized version that existed in much later eras."

"What do you mean?" Kasumi asked.

"Egypt was mighty but lacked the manpower that would have been needed to oppress an entire population with whips, chains and fetters as the word 'slave' would tend to symbolize," Thelendra answered, "In reality the Pharaoh was regarded as a living god to his people, an intermediary between the supernatural forces that governed the world and the ordinary people who trembled in the shadow of all things beyond their understanding. A Pharaoh was effectively a high priest and trained magician who was required to perform daily rituals that were thought necessary to keeping the entire universe in order. That is why the people paid homage to him and did all that they could to insure that he would live long and prosper in the afterlife when he walked among his ancestors and communed with Osiris. People truly believed that without the Pharaoh their lives would be governed by chaos...and in some senses they were correct, so it be hardly to remark that in the Egyptian system the Pharaoh ruled over and owned everything, including the labor of his subjects, and thus could compel them to work for him on various public projects in lieu of paying other forms of taxes."

"Oh...I see now," Kasumi said as her thoughts became more orderly, "The Pharaoh ruled the land much as the Emperor of Japan did...because he embodied the very concept of order, the Wa of harmony and balance that caused the Nile to flood regularly and keep the lands green and fertile."

"Thou art most correct, my love," Thelendra said approvingly, "'Tis a myth that the Egyptians of the 4th dynasty were the ones who built the Sphinx and the Great Pyramids, for those great monuments were begun in much more distant eras long forgotten. Originally the Sphinx was a natural land formation that was carved into the image of a lion in the days before the fall of old Atlantis, but a 4th century Pharaoh arrogantly carved his face into its weathered surface as a sort of 'beautification campaign' to recapture its lost glory, which was antique even in his day. Similarly the great pyramid was never intended to be a burial tomb but rather served for secret initiation rites as a Temple for Pharonic worship. Move ahead thousands of years later to the time of the first Israelis and the monuments and building projects that were under construction were of less imposing design but still bore the impressive stamp of architectural wonders. A few months out of every year the people would work to build the temples and cities of Egypt, then come the spring planting and fall harvesting seasons would work the fields to fill Egypt's grain coffers."

"It does seem very harsh, but also very necessary," Kasumi paused a moment then said, "But...if someone claimed to be liberating them from laboring for Pharaoh..."

"Then the people would starve and their cities would crumble into deserts?" Thelendra noted, "Thou dost catch on to the true tragedy of events, beloved, and the beginnings of the end did arise during the time of the 15th century BC, when a Pharaoh named Amenhotep IV suddenly took it into his head to change the entire face of the Egyptian religion, converting to Sun Worhip and declaring himself Akhenaton, the first Monotheist, worshipper of a god named Aton, who was the mysterious force behind the creation of the world by Ra, the original Sun god of Egypt."

"You say his name as though it were something distasteful," Kasumi remarked, all the while inching with her fingers plying the soft folds between Thelendra's legs, plying her labia and slipping a finger to work within the crevice.

Thelendra shivered with approval and smiled, but then answered, "Bitterness be a word that frames my thoughts regarding Akhenaton's so-called 'reform dynasty.' He was, in truth, an incompetent boob whose twenty year misrule over Egypt was of such ill favor that when he died the priests of Amon who took power went on a rampage seeking to undo all that he had accomplished. Priests and followers of Aton worship were driven into exile, and among their numbers was a curious fellow by the name of Atonmoses, or Moses for short..."

"Moses?" Kasumi repeated.

"Aye," Thelendra sagely nodded, "That Moses...a Prince of the royal house who was also a devout Aten worshipper and a murderer who slew an official over a land deal. He fled into the land of the Medians whereupon he came upon a mountain tribe and married into their blood after falling for the daughter of a tribal leader named Yethro. There he might well have dwelled for the rest of his days in relative pace but for an evil tide of events that would one day turn him into a monster."

"A monster?" Kasumi asked, "I thought he was supposed to be a liberator?"

"My love," Thelendra mused while running her own hand up into the sensitive moist regions of her companion's delightful body, "Hast thee nay learned of yet that often the truth be the opposite of what is be told in the legends?"

"I...ah...see your point," Kasumi squirmed uneasily, sliding her hand down ever lower into the erogenous zone of Thelendra's supple body.

"Thou dost know the story as told by Hollywood," Thelendra continued, doing her level best not to be distracted by what she and her companion were physically doing to each other, "But the truth be that Moses was nay a liberator but more a religious fanatic attempting to re-impose Atom worship upon the lands of the pharaohs. When a Cholera epidemic broke out around the city of Memphis and many rich houses drinking from contaminated water grew ill and perished, Moses was quick to latch onto this as proof of his divine favor since the Hebrew drew their water directly from the Nile itself, and thus were unaffected."

"No splattering of sheep's blood over their doors while the angel of death hovered over the land?" Kasumi asked, not intending to sound ironic.

"Nay," Thelendra affirmed, "The Temple priests, however, were quick to consult their Astrology tables and come away with a not-too-surprising alternate interpretation of these events. 'Twas claimed by them that the ancient Gods of Egypt were unhappy, and to appease them all Semites living in certain Egyptian-owned lands were to be expelled and uprooted, and as thou hast already espied, they were exiled to the fringes of their empire. This numbered several hundred merchant families but in no way matched the absurdly inflated numbers that thou dost read about in the bible. Suddenly saddled with a horde of starving refugees, Moses was forced to take them with him as he was expelled from the Nile region on pain of death by royal decree from both the Temple Priests and Pharaoh."

Kasumi moaned a bit then parted her legs more fully to allow her companion even greater access, "So he didn't lead his people out of bondage in Egypt and into the promised land?"

"Hardly," Thelendra scoffed while enjoying the way that Kasumi's fingers were stroking the nerves within the gates to her vagina, "He had started a cult based on the Medianite moon god, named Yahweh, whose other name was Sin to the Arabs. He gathered about him his followers from among the sons of the house of Levi and formed the basis of the Hebrew religion-which, by the way-is a corruption of the Egyptian word Hibiru, which translates loosely as bandit."

"Oh my!" Kasumi gasped, both for this new revelation and the way the caress of his companions was affecting her body.

"His cult was founded upon a mixture of Egyptian, Sumerian and Arabic beliefs that he rudely wedded together to form the tapestry of early Hibiru faith," Thelendra continued, "And only then didst he tie his legitimacy to the legends surrounding the popular Semetic patriarchs, Abram and Yacob. He invented a fantastic tale of thousands crossing the deserts seeking a 'Promised Land' that had been set apart for the Hebrew people. In reality he plotted to take the lands belonging to the Caananites and by turns wouldst build a kingdom that would be the launching point for the creation of a much larger empire."

"And empire lead by him and devoted to Yahweh?" Kasumi fathomed.

"Precisely," Thelendra answered, examining the image that she herself had conjured, which in no way resembled the bearded prophet of popular depiction but instead showed a middle aged man of dusky complexion dressed in flowing robes whose scowl had a sinister cast that was stern and almost chilling, "In some respects he is to be admired for holding his people together through adversity. Where I fault him, however, was in his belief that he had a right to order his followers to take this land from its present inhabitants, as if anyone-even a God-could just sanction the confiscation of land already belonging to another indigenous people...after the wholesale slaughter of said people, it need hardly be added."

"Oh my," Kasumi murmured, having a mental image of a Charlton Heston-type bearded prophet parting a great sea to open up a freeway that would cross the bay to encroach upon the lands of the people living on the other side of said ocean, not to escape oppression but to become themselves oppressors.

"In reality he and his followers were more like the charismatic doomsday cults thou dost see in such proliferation these days, " Thelendra continued, "Promising a fulfillment of all spiritual and earthly desires if only one obey their cult leader with absolute and slavish devotion. Rightfully did the Egyptians regard them with suspicion and attempt to hold them at arms length, suspecting-also rightly-that the force Moses was allied to was nay a universal God of peace and fellowship but in fact a powerful and malevolent spirit more akin to a demon, who granted Moses a mere semblance of real power."

"You mean he was actually a bad guy?" Kasumi marveled.

"The very worst sort of scoundrel," Thelendra answered, "One who forged alliance with an evil deity and sought to spread his worship over the people of Egypt. He didst defy Pharaoh's decree and sacked a temple to the goddess Hathor, whose gates were guarded by two Seraphim...lion-headed guardians whom the illiterate Hibiru mistook for sacred cows in their depiction. Moses, thou must see, was short on funds and needed the wealth of the temple to pay the wages of his mercenary guards among the Levis. He had no qualms about defiling the temple of a rival faith and murdering its priests in order to obtain whatever he wanted, justifying his crime by claiming the sanction of his god, a practice some Israelis wouldst carry on in later eras."

"Oh my," Kasumi said, seeing the aforementioned sacking of a temple...and feeling an odd sense of déjà vu quite apart from her kindled memories of a long forgotten era.

"Quite naturally the Egyptians were none too pleased about this misdeed. Moses and his followers were forced to flee the wrath of Pharaoh's army with a few hundred close loyal supporters, crossing an area of swampland known as the 'Sea of Reeds' where the wheels of the Egyptian chariots didst bog down, allowing the fugitives to escape with their ill gotten riches. Understandable this event was somewhat exaggerated in the retelling, yet another practice set in place by Moses."

"It certainly does sound less glamorous than in the story as I first heard it," Kasumi admitted.

"Moses was many things, but a paragon of virtue? Never," Thelendra said sadly, "One has but to read the stories in Exodus and Leviticus to see that he had no compunctions at all about slaying hundreds of his own followers when they began to question his authority and leadership after winding up lost in the middle of a desert."

Again Kasumi saw horrific image of an angry Moses admonishing his followers for not invading and conquering the lands of the Cananite people. They were protesting that the people of the land lived behind walled fortifications and were no easy marks for the conquest. Being a ragged band of mercenaries and exiles they quite pragmatically argued their disadvantage, but Moses treated their protests as mutiny and gathered together his "Mighty Men" to lay about some old-fashioned discipline in the accepted Old Testament manner.

Namely slaughtering those you disagreed with, as she saw the bodies pile up later like cord wood. This secured the authority of Moses and insured that he would not be challenged afterwards, and explained in no small measure why he had been labeled as a "Monster" by Thelendra.

Thinking about it she realized that this was a part of the Judeo-Christian legend had always troubled her, as if the author of the story were suggesting that it was all right to kill anyone who dissented or was in any way different from yourself, simply for the crime of their existence. As an outsider it did not seem to her as if Cananite life was somehow less important than that of the Hebrew, and she reflected upon the modern conflict between the Palestinians and Israelis, and concluded from this that things had not changed all that much in the three-thousand plus years since it happened.

Aloud what she said was, "Did he really do all this with the blessings of a god? This...Yahweh?"

"That is what he claimed," Thelendra replied, making a slight nod with one head that conjured up yet another mirror-reflection of the past, all the while keeping her hands busy with gently playing with and possessing the intimate spaces of Kasumi, "But what he encountered in that Medianite desert was more akin to an Genie, an Efreet-like spirit trapped within a jug by the hand of a God who had reason to so entrap him. Yahweh-who took on the name 'I am what I am' in order to disguise his true identity and nature, was actually named Lucifer, the Light Bearer..."

"Lucifer?" Kasumi gasped in surprise-and not just because of the question, "You mean...Satan?"

"Nay," Thelendra replied while sliding her fingers even deeper than before into the velvety sheath of Kasumi's loins, "Satan was a follower who later dissented and fell out of favor with his master. Lucifer was the son of the Grecian god named Zeus of Olympus, who once didst attempted to overthrow his father in fulfillment of ancient prophesy. It was with Lucifer that Moses formed his covenant in order to gain a powerful backer to aid his cause, and Lucifer who directed his actions, all with the aim of creating a cult following by which Lucifer did mean to complete the task of overthrowing his own father."

"Are you saying that the Hebrew faith itself is evil?" Kasumi asked.

"Nay," Thelendra replied, "Though its origins were wicked it has since blossomed out into a faith that has many fine qualities, among which a high aspiration towards ethical conduct. The Pharisees-who were allies of my father-took over the Hebrew cause after Jerusalem fell in 67 AD and reshaped their faith away from the corrupt practices of the Saducee-run temple, which was no more in those days. What I mean to suggest here was that-in those evil times at the beginning of their movement-its core adherence was evil, being aimed for a land grab by de-legitimizing the rights and humanity of the Cananites and Philistines, inventing a story about bondage in Egypt to gain sympathy and rationalize the movement's own imperial inclinations."

"I think I begin to see why you're so bothered about all of this," Kasumi said, "All those stories about murder and genocide, of entire cities being put to the sword with all of their inhabitants slaughtered..."

"Yet claims of the mass deaths of the enemies of 'Yahweh' be somehat exaggerated," Thelendra noted while coyly working her companion up with a skillful application of pleasurable nerves by her dextrous fingers, "The Israelis were never that thoroughly adept at genocide as in those later stories. The authors of those books-one named Yerimiah among them-were admonishing their fellow Hebrew of the crime of nay being so ruthless, and of seeking to live peaceably with the Amorites, Malechites, Moabites, Jesubites and other neighboring semetic peoples whom they regarded as eternal rivals and enemies of Yahweh. Despite their calls for mass extermination the Cananites and Philistines existed for centuries after they were supposedly laid low by the armies of Yoshua, yet another popular figure of legend who-in actual fact-predates the actual rise of the Hebrew nation."

"So the stories told about the history of the Jews isn't accurate?" Kasumi thought a moment then said, "It would hardly seem fair to blame anyone today for believing in those stories, even if they are mostly distorted legends."

"Fair?" Thelendra sniffed, "Why dost thou persist in using that word, Beloved? Believe ye that life itself be fair? What makes anyone think that fairness hath aught to do with the shape of the world? Certainly it is the belief in the innate fairness of the gods that hath led to many a pernicious chapter in the life of humanity itself. All who want the world to be fair be nay living within the scope of cruel reality, for life be nay fair nor just but only what it be, and what it be is as it happens."

"That's being a bit harsh, don't you think?" Kasumi said with a slightly hurt expression.

Again Thelendra sighed, "Forgive me. I nay intended to slight thee, my love, only to say that it be this concept of fairness that contributes much to the problem of what we now be facing. But in truth thou art most correct...hardly anyone who lives in this day and era should be held to accounts for the actions of his ancestors, let alone events that transpired thousands of years within the past. I do nay mean to justify the irresponsible and irrational Anti-Semitism that has existed to the present era, let alone lay the blood guilt of crimes that happened long ago upon the people who know no better the actual causes of events. 'Tis a tragic irony beyond measure that the very venom of ancient prophets should be turned against the Israelis and be used to sanctify the progroms and holocaust that the Hebrew have endured merely for existing. And as for the claims that they collectively be Christ Killers..."

"I think I see what you're getting at," Kasumi conceded, "Paul justified the persecution of the Jews because of the opposition he encountered from the Pharisees, and unwittingly set in motion the hostility of the Christians for centuries to follow."

"Thou art correct," Thelendra acknowledged, "I only hold to account those who have had access to the knowledge that would correct their misperceptions...yet who fail to enlighten themselves, or choose instead to perpetuate the lies of error that cause one group to believe it be entitled to land belonging to another. Many an opportunistic soul has fanned the flames of race hatred in order to promote his own brand of heresy, one fallacy following upon another. Iranius, Eusebius and Augustine each gave a twist of the knife that further eroded my father's message of peace and turned it into something truly hateful. Even well-intended minds such as belonged to Aquinas and Martin Luthor could not help but add more fuel to the fires that burned throughout Europe. And yet the pain and toil they inflicted upon the Hebrew is but a reflection of the earlier tragedies that the Hebrew patriarchs inflicted upon one another. A continuous cycle of deceit and invective hath created a legacy that in our times threatens to unleash an apocalypse unlike anything that a fellow named John predicted would come to pass."

Thelendra made a few smooth gestures with her free hand (while keeping her other hand very firmly in place), summoning up the image of several figures, each wearing desert robes or otherwise garbed in the manner of a hill-shirted prophet.

"Elija the Tishibite," she said as she nodded to a very hairy looking man of wild-eyed demeanor, "Regarded as the greatest prophet of his era, and yet in reality a terrorist and mass murderer who once locked a room full of men and set fire to the building in which they were trapped...all because they were adherents to a foreign god and held prominent sway in the court of the Israeli count of King Ahab."

"Why would he do such a terrible thing?" Kasumi asked.

Thelendra nodded to the image of a beautiful woman wearing the magnificent robes of a noblewoman, "To get at her...Queen Jezebel, whom legend unjustly maligns in the manner of more recent times with a woman named Hilary. She was an Assyrian princess who married Ahab and brought with her the sophistication of her own native religion. For this crime she was condemned by the followers of Yahweh, who plotted and carried out her death under the successor to Elija, named Elisha. With the aid of a rebel named Yeru, Elisha assassinated the King and had Jezebel thrown to her death from a high balcony, her remains rent asunder by dogs after trampling by chariots, a sign of the warmth and humanity of those who didst depose her. Ironically enough, upon her death the King of Assyria quite naturally raised a protest-and his army-and soon after Israel became a client state of his empire with temples to foreign gods 'round every corner."

"How awful," Kasumi said, "How could these people do such horrible things to one another?"

Thelendra banished the images and turned to regard her companion's lovely profile, "Beloved, cruelty exists in the hearts of those who have naught touched the light nor seen the beauty of the world in all its richness. Those who pretend to champion the cause of a god whom they pretend be just and merciful must display their understanding of such abstract concepts 'ere I wouldst believe them. By the fruit it bears a tree be known as good or unhealthy, and in like manner can one determine if ideas be wholesome or foul. In the case of the cult of Yahweh...well...judge for thyself if this be a faith that thee wouldst be proud to claim for your own were the choice to be given."

"But you were Hebrew when you were Miriam," Kasumi pointed out.

"So I was," Thelendra smiled a bit sadly, "And there were good times to go with the ill...but thou hast now witnessed the saddest chapter in that life best forgotten, when my father lived his trials and sought to pass on his teachings, only to have them be corrupted in the retelling."

"You don't need to be so bitter about it," Kasumi urged, her lips so near to the cheek of her companion that her breath caused the Oracle's skin to tingle with anticipation, "You served a great man who was your father, and you carried on his legacy as best you were able."

"Aye, there be that," Thelendra mused, "And ironically I was mother to a sacred line that sought to preserve those traditions...but seven hundred years later my ancestor, a Merovingian King named Clovis, was murdered by the grandfather of the name known to history as Charlemagne, and all our great works were aback for many a century to follow. In the year 1203 a descendant of mine barely escaped with his life from the armies of Rome during the hideous Fourth Crusade, which in turn gave birth to the Inquisition and the ruthless suppression of those who carried on my teachings. History has a way of making mockery of our own best designs, and even an Oracle gifted with sight of the possibilities posed by the future can be dismayed and disappointed by the choices that are made leading to the future."

"It doesn't always have to be that way," Kasumi argued, "Some good always comes with the bad.."

"I know," Thelendra took the free hand of her companion and held it close to her bosom...even as their fingers continued to explore in deeper places, "All that I say be that the truth hidden within history would set thee free if thou has ear to listen. The people who lived those stories that were past down to form the bible were nay heroes nor true villains, and most certainly no saints nor perfect icons of the ennobling causes ascribed to them by the scribes of a much later era. Perhaps the worst sin of hubris of all of this be those who think the Bible itself a perfect work reflecting the mind of a god of ultimate light and fairness...for the hypocrisy of that be plainly evident to anyone who even in passing glances within the pages without attempting to justify the unsanctifiable, twisting logic into a pretzel and making a mockery of all reason."

"I do appreciate that," Kasumi replied, brushing her lips against the nape of her companion, her fangs beginning to show as the desire once more grew like a thirst beyond quenching, "In fact...I appreciate everything that you've been doing for me...sharing with me...all that you have to share...in fact..."

"Aye?" Thelendra asked breathlessly, waiting with anticipation to see if her lover would once more bless her with a "love-bite."

"Now that's what I like to see, people getting along with one another, and sharing of themselves."

Kasumi gasped and drew away with a start, "Lord Anri?"

"Father," Thelendra all but growled the word as she turned to regard the sandy-haired man sitting down a short distance away, "Thy timing be legendary."

"So I've noticed from your lecture," the tall man replied, "But please don't stop on my account. You were just starting to get to the good part."

"Father," Thelendra reacted with more ire, even as Kasumi felt her cheeks burning brightly.

"Actually I didn't mean to interrupt here, but I thought that someone had to throw some cold water over affairs or it's likely that you two would be at it for another...um...well, whatever length of time you care to name in a place that is essentially timeless."

"Father," Thelendra said this time with more exasperation.

"Why am I here?" the man seemed to act as if the question itself surprised him, "Oh...right, Reka erected a barrier to keep you from returning to the present. I was here to fetch you back when I caught part of your lecture. A very interesting if abbreviated account of affairs pertaining to my seventh incarnation."

"Lord Anri?" Kasumi asked, regarding the man in a new and different light than before, seeing now his close resemblance to the darker and swarthier Yessus."

"Please...just Anri if you will," the man got up off his imaginary seating and then turned to regard one of the mirror images yet to be banished by Thelendra, "Ah yes...Elija. I knew him well when his name was Yohan the Babtist. A fellow of finite wit but full of good intentions...another name he is known by was Zoraster, and-long before that-Moses."

"He was Moses...and Zoraster?" Kasumi marveled, seeing different images of what looked to be the essentially same fellow manifest beside the wild-eyed prophet.

"I think he started to get his act better together when he appeared again as Mohammad," Anri continued as he studied the various images, "But, unfortunately, he took a wrong turn as Martin Luthor, and again as Lenin...always the same naïve idealist, always full of big ideas, and quite ruthless in going about the pursuit of his otherwise good intentions."

"We refer to him as the False Prophet," Thelendra explained for Kasumi's benefit, "Always getting it wrong somehow no matter how many times he be doomed to repeat the cycle."

"Karma, go figure," Anri shrugged, "Of course the word Prophet mean simply, 'to Profess a belief,' and it doesn't really confer any sort of infallibility that comes with the office. Anyone can be a prophet...it's being right in your predictions that tends to be the problem. Thelendra here can tell you all about how hard it is to use the sight and get things right when it comes to the future. Always in motion, always affected by our decisions in the present, as changeable as the weather, with only large events being fated and certain."

"My lord...ah...Sensei?" Kasumi fumbled for a proper title to confer upon him.

"I think I prefer Sensei," Anri smiled, "I've always favored myself in the role of a teacher...though in actual fact I am as much a student of life as anyone. Never believe a fellow who tells you that they're perfect, Tendo-san, for the very act of doing so contradicts the assertion."

"Sensei," Kasumi put her arms around her naked breasts and loins as she stood up and attempted what modesty she could, bowing her head and saying, "About what you said before...I do indeed love your daughter. She is very dear to me and I...I revel in her presence..."

"But you're afraid that you're going to hurt your fiancé when he finds out what you've been up to?" Anri finished for her, "Tell you what...why not leave him to me for now? After all, we're both men of the world...well, sort of. In his case several men, but let's not quibble about semantics..."

"Father," Thelendra glared at her elder, "Must I admonish thee again for meddling in my personal business?"

"Who's meddling?" Anri effected a look of total innocence, even managing a passable halo before his impish grin won out over his features, "On the other hand you could try talking to him. I'm sure he'll be a reasonable sort when you explain how you have been seducing his girlfriend by renewing old ties and reminding her of the history you shared together?"

Thelendra hesitated for a second then said, "Then again, as thou dost say, Father...thou art both men and thus have an...understanding of the ways of the world..."

"But not necessarily of women," Anri stroked his chin, "Hmm...perhaps this is more of a job up Elea's alley...by rights I ought to talk to your mother about this..."

"NAY!" Thelendra pleaded, almost jumping backwards as she made waving motions of dismissal.

"Who is Elea?" Kasumi asked.

"My wife?" Anri replied, "Elea Ventura. Don't worry, you'll meet her soon enough."

Thelendra's eyes were as wide as saucers, "Nay, nay! Do nay involve mother before there is time for me to prepare her...!"

"Oh, don't be silly," Anri grinned, "I'm sure she'll be overjoyed to find that you've renewed your acquaintance with your soul mate. Of course she was rather hoping that you might choose Belldandy instead..."

"Bell and me...that be history of a different sort," Thelendra said with a dismissive snort, "It ne'er was more than a passing thing...and besides, she now has herself a husband...and a daughter on the way. I hath foreseen this."

"Oh well," Anri shrugged, "There's always the next incarnation. Well then...shall we be going?"

"Um...just one question, Sir?" Kasumi politely raised a finger, "That is...if you don't very much mind my asking?"

"Oh, about your clothing?" Anri asked as if only just then recognizing their nakedness, "Not a problem," and with a mere gesture he caused her dress to form about her, even as Thelendra's own many-colored gown materialized about her.

Kasumi looked down in gratitude and let her arms fall back about her sides, "Thank you...but that wasn't what I had in mind, Sir."

Anri gave her a polite study, "Yes?"

Kasumi looked at him and had to summon her courage before saying, "For years I've heard the Christians call out to you and implore your name...but you never answer their prayers. Why?"

"Should I?" Anri asked a bit sadly, "After all, it isn't to me that they're praying."

Kasumi heaved a sigh, "You know what I mean by that, Sensei."

There was a very long pause before the tall man gave an answer, "When I was a lad I spoke as a child...when I was a man I put childish things behind me and thought that I was grown up...but then I died and became a child again...and over the centuries with each new incarnation I sought to understand the reason for my birth and creation. Why was I here, for what purpose had my father, Uta-Haled, bestowed upon me the legacy that is my nature...and that of my brothers? As Thoth I pursued the ways of spiritual power and wisdom. As Mithra I opposed the darkness of the Chaos Lords, as Rama I was a warrior prince seeking to slay the enemies of life, and as Sidhartha I was both a trickster and a teacher, a counselor to Kings who sought to dispel the darkness in men's souls. As Buddha I sought enlightenment and encouraged others to dispense with the urge for worldly things, and then as Yessus...I believed that I had found the purpose for which I was seeking in those earlier incarnations..."

He heaved a long and tired sigh then favored Kasumi with a look that was sad and poignant with an aged world-weariness that belied his youthful look and boyishly good-humored nature, "The Zorastrian Magi who found and identified me were carrying on a prophesy laid down that I would be the one who would bring enlightenment to a new age in the making. The signs seemed right and the times were ripe for a spiritual transformation...but how to go about creating a new pattern that would improve on what I had attempted to do in the past? That was the riddle that tormented me throughout my childhood.

"I sought many paths to enlightenment, encouraged by my patrons, though my family despaired of my long absences in foreign places. They were afraid that I would forget my roots and become too enamored of the ways of the gentiles...and indeed, for a time I did become quite proficient at Yogi disciplines and studied with the masters of Tibet, recovering the ancient wisdom that I myself had helped to pioneer in my previous incarnations. But then I returned to resume my rabbinical studies and was compelled to marry by the arrangement of my family to a woman whom I did not at the time realize was none other than my soul mate of previous lifetimes. You see...Jewish law mandated that a rabbi should have a wife to diminish the sin of being tempted elsewhere...and to run his house and affairs since women controlled the purse strings while men were away studying books rather than tending to the harvests..."

"Skip to the point, Father," Thelendra said, "Thou weret ill-prepared to be married when thee didst re-acquaint thyself with mother, but thou didst recognize her and were joined to allow me to incarnate within this lifetime. As Miriam, daughter of Miriam, thou didst encourage my studies and rekindled mine own awareness of who I was so that I could be thy heir appointed and foster a line that would relate itself to the various noble houses throughout Europe."

"Yes, well...that really was not by design or intent on my part, but we'll let it go for the non," Anri shrugged, "The point was that, by marrying your mother, I tied myself effectively to Palestine at a time when I was prepared to embrace a larger destiny spanning the entire world. Instead I allowed myself to become rather fixated upon the curious dilemma that was the state of Israel in the first century of modern reckoning...and don't bother reminding me of the irony of my saying that since it's my alleged birth year that forms the Zero point on the calendar. They couldn't even get that part right since I was actually six at the time they agreed to, which was four years after the death of Herod," he shook his head sadly then added, "Always remember that when you use the role of Alter Dema."

"Oh my," Kasumi noted, her memories supplying the background details and filling in the gaps as she processed this new information, along with the implications that were suggested.

Anri turned to Thelendra and added, "Mind you, I don't mean to imply that I am faulting either you or your mother for the choices that rose out of that change in my perspective. I started to pay more attention to the actual conditions of our people under Roman occupation. On the whole things were not all that bad...not for nothing were the Romans well regarded as builders and statesmen...but for all that they accomplished the people themselves were chaffing under the weight of Caesar's oppression."

"I hold that it be the Hasmodians who bear the brunt of that guilt, Father," Thelendra noted, "They who created the myth of the Messiah to justify their own misrule, which became so awful in time that the people cried out to Rome for redress, with first Pompeii and later Agustus moving in to fill the vacuum."

"The Hasmodians," Anri softly murmured, "I liken them to the Taliban in that they put religious mandates over the welfare of ordinary people and applied principles without a soul or conscience. The Pharasaic movement grew out of opposition to their misinterpretations of Holy Scripture, and I myself once likened them to a bitter bush that bears withered seed. How was I to know then that my own teachings would be distorted and misapplied to create a system of theocratic oppression, one that would build altars out of charred human bodies all dedicated in my name, and as intolerant of disagreement or dissent as it was voraciously acquisitive of land and possessions?"

He turned and suddenly was surrounded by the sight of various wooden crosses where men were hanging in positions of great agony, their wrists and feet nailed firmly in place, and one figure in particular looking especially bloodied with a wreath of thorns pressed into his scalp as he struggled for breath against the weight of his own body crushing his chest in this cruel position.

"There I am depicted as suffering the weight of the sins of all humanity," Anri said with a bitterness that was palpable in his voice, "Redeeming humankind from its alleged burden of Sin that was said to be conferred upon all of us by the very act of living. You will notice to my right my prospective son-in-law, Lazus Bar Abbas? Pilate did not pardon him, condemning him to death for the killing of a Roman in the defense of my only daughter. And to my left...another man who was with the Sicari...to my shame I do not remember his name, only that he was a thief and a liar used as a witness at my trial. I try not to think about him with too much bitterness, though, for he was just a pawn of larger forces, a virtual innocent being used by such wolves as Pilate and Herod Antipas. I forgave him at the time because I had foreseen this event in my mind and knew that my part was all but predestined to happen."

"Thou didst nay inform me of this at the time, Father," Thelendra noted, "I had to learn the full story of what thou didst conspire to do from other sources."

"Necessary, or so I thought at the time," Anri favored her with a sad glance before nodding to the image once again, showing the man named Yuda approaching wearing the humble disguise of a mere peasant, and obtaining permission from the Roman guards on duty to administer a sponge at the end of a pole...a sponge that had been earlier dipped in a mixture of vinegar and an opiate solution.

"Ah...Judas, my old friend," Anri said sadly, "He served me well and loyally, but on this day he did betray me by refusing to carry out my wishes. I told him to give the sponge to Lazus rather than me, but instead he ignored my request and carried through with my original orders, giving me the drug instead of one who better deserved it."

"Forgive me, Master," the man named Yuda was saying, "You are too valuable to lose, and Yahweh would condemn me if I did not do this."

As he put the sponge up to the mouth of the crucified Yessus the other man named Lazus murmured, "It's all right, Rabbi...I am resigned to my fate. I did what I thought was necessary, but...I betrayed you...so I deserve to perish...but not you. Tell Miriam that I did love her...but she loves you well, and I...I cannot allow you to sacrifice on my behalf."

Yessus seemed reluctant to accept the sponge, but nonetheless tasted of the drink it offered. A moment to parse his lips and then he murmured faintly, "Forgive them, Father...they know not what they are doing..."

"Indeed," Anri turned away from the image as if to banish it from his thoughts, "And so it was done, and so I seemed to collapse and die shortly after this...but I was not dead, only sleeping. I revived a day and a half later in the cave where they placed my body, my 'burial tomb,' if you can believe that."

"But sir," Kasumi argued, "You are powerful in ways that are beyond even my understanding. Was it necessary to use trickery and deception to fake your ressurection?"

"At the time? Yes," Anri answered, "My powers and skills and not yet evolved to such a level that I could resurrect my own body when outside of it. Even then I could revive the dead externally if they were newly deceased and not too badly damaged, but myself with all of the wounds I had just suffered? Not too likely. Fortunately my studies with the Lamas of Tibet paid off quite well that day and I awoken again not much worse for the wearing...except for this odd stitch in my side where the Roman soldier prodded me, of course. I was able to present myself to my followers and show the evidence of my wounds as proof that I had returned from seeming death, and thus could be trusted to return to them again once things had quieted down in Jerusalem. How was I to know then that-thirty-two years later-the city would be burned to the ground by the Romans?"

"Thou didst know, Father," Thelendra reminded, "Many times thou hast said that thou didst see it in thy visions."

"Ah...yes, of course," Anri nodded, "That infamous vision that I had while studying with my cousin Yohan in the desert. I saw Jerusalem in flames, our people scattered, the Temple overthrown. It was a vision of ultimate disaster...or so I thought at the time. And it was the event that decided me to attempt my crusade for reforms, hoping to avert this terrible future. Such an irony that my own acts would contribute to its eventual destruction."

"It was the Nazoreans who didst egg on the people to foolishly revolt against Caesar," Thelendra explained for Kasumi's benefit, "In the time of Vespasian the land of Palestine was crushed and overrun under Roman sandal, and father found himself seeking refuge with the surviving Sicari in a place known as Masada."

"And there I met my mortal end some thirty-eight years after the crucifixion," Anri continued, "But rather would I have perished on the cross than to have survived to see the cruel twist of the fates that made a mockery of my life and works with a fellow named Paul leaving his mark on the surviving movement. My own followers, the actual Apostles, my friends who knew me in my lifetime? They were hounded and persecuted by Paul's followers in later years, and the successor movements to my organization, the Gnostics and Namibians, would eventually be rooted out by the Church founded by Constantine at the Council of Nicea. Very little of my actual teachings had survived up to that point, and what there was of my actual mission...was hideously distorted into a cult that persecuted itself with even more rapaciousness than it did the followers of rival religions."

"I can understand why you feel so bitter about this, Sensei," Kasumi sympathetically.

"Can you?" Anri turned and the look in his eyes was not that jovial look of a jester but rather the eyes of a man who had seen too much of human suffering and felt crushed by guilt for his own part in its perpetuation, "Can you visualize what it is like to have your name distorted and used as a tool and instrument that has been used to enslave humankind and hold back the tide of human progress? Can you see yourself returning back to the world of flesh and mortality centuries later, only to revive old memories that inexorably tie you to a litany of crimes performed in your name by those who claim you as their inspiration?"

"Father?" even Thelendra seemed taken aback by the bitter tone in her elder's voice.

"The Arianists, the Presbyters, the Nicean Creed, the thousand years of civil war that were fought between two rival camps over the definition of the Trinity and whether or not I was ever a physically incarnate being," Anri said tonelessly, his green eyes gaining a look that cold stone itself might well possess, "Was it God the Father, the Son or the Holy Ghost who decreed all of the blood that was spilled over whether they were one or three distinctly separate forces? If they had argued over which end of an egg to eat from it could have been no more absurd a fratricidal folly, but compound that with the great schism between Eastern and Western Orthodoxy, to say nothing of the various rival Popes contending for power in Rome, and the hideous 'reforms' instituted by that black-hearted dwarf who took the name of Gregory VII. The wars between the Papacy and the Austrian Empire blackened the hills of much of Europe and set the stage for the even more insidious 'Reformation,' which depopulated a goodly portion France and Germany. Oh, and let us not ignore the Crusades, the Inquisition, the Pagan Heresy Trials, the Witch Burnings, Colonialism and Slavery, the Albigensian nightmare, and the various episodes where the Church placed itself in opposition to the spread of knowledge by the use of the Printing Press. They created the dark ages to consolidate their own power, by the way, first by converting the Barbarians who later invaded Rome then uniting their tribes under the Aegis of Saint Peter."

"Blood is shed by man, Father," Thelendra remarked, "Regardless of the reasons and excuses that be used, it always be the wickedness and greet within their hearts that be at fault here."

"But this blood was shed over me!" Anri rounded on his daughter, "In my name books have been burned and entire libraries were set to the torch! In my name was a man named Copernicus persecuted for daring to suggest that the place of the Earth was not fixed within the heavens. Galileo aimed his telescope in the wrong direction and incurred the wrath of his patrons, and when Darwin made the simple suggestion that man was not as special to the creation as had long been maintained it was as if he had declared that heaven itself were a realm of fairies. Then Columbus had to please his financial backers, Isabella and Ferdinand, of the worthiness of his enterprise he sought for the gold of the natives he conquered, and thus set in motion their cruel oppression with the Church founding institutionalized slavery while claiming to be interested in 'saving the souls' of the people whom they almost exterminated with their good intentions. And all of that for me...in my name! All of it done to impress on me their worthiness to be permitted into the kingdom of Heaven...as if any place that would take these wretches into its bosom could be called that! Tell me then, Daughter, that I have not cause to feel bitter?"

Thelendra parted her lips but said nothing, for it was plain that she could not answer his angry self-denunciation without adding to the torment that he was already feeling.

He turned away and was silent for a moment, then when he spoke again it was in a quieter voice, "I know that much good has come from Christianity...and some have listened to the fragments of my teaching that were allowed to get into the text of the Bible. I know that most of what I have just named as a crime was done in spite of my teachings and often with the best of intentions...but it is hard not to find cruelty in the very crumbs of hope that they have left me."

"Is it really as bad to be you as all of this, Sensei?" Kasumi asked him, feeling his pain with an empathy that was palpable.

The tall man's shoulders slumped and he said, "Forgive me, Tendo-san. I didn't intend to sound like such a drama queen. It's just that...for the past seven hundred-or-so years I have walked the many planes of various worlds and have observed the fruit of my own labors spoil and grow bitter. Such an irony when you think about it...all the caterwauling and breast-beating by my alleged 'worshippers' berating their fellow men and holding themselves up as paragons of virtues that they feel free to violate whenever it suits their fancy. It's more than just the admonition against committing murder that makes them so hypocritical...they covet that which belongs to others and behave with a rapacious greed that no beast of the field would evidence. They ignore the plight of the weak and helpless among them and admonish the poor to do better, giving little to charity and showing even less of mercy. They put to death a woman who defends herself against her husband while elevating in stature men who freely pollute the land and sea and claim that Heaven wants them to do it...all because I am supposed to return and bring about a new age of peace and plenty, my 'Second Coming.'"

Anri turned to regard both women and said, "Well...I returned many centuries ago and had a look around at what had been done in my name...and I was appalled beyond imagining. So you know what I did about it? Nothing. I turned my back on the world, renounced the faith that I myself had created. I felt ashamed, you see, for ever having thought that it could work. My intention was never to create a paradise but rather to have men learn from my example how to create paradise within themselves. I wanted people to learn to overcome their animal desires, to put aside their petty anger, to think altruistically of one another, and to show compassion by forgiveness and self-sacrifice. Clearly I failed to get my message across and instead the Christian faith as devolved into an orgiastic cult of self-congratulation where the aim is to die and go to heaven...not live and create heaven on earth with your fellow human."

He waved a hand dramatically and conjured up a vision of horror the like of which made Kasumi cover her mouth, feeling sick to her stomach. Obviously it was a field in which some terrible war had been fought between armies bearing different insignia, but there were civilians everywhere strewn about the scene, bodies horribly torn, burned and mangled almost beyond recognition by the inhuman violence that had consumed the field and left it lifeless and barren.

"This is the result of so much of what has been made of my teachings," Anri noted, "Armies, both claiming to follow me, clashing in arms and spilling blood in my name, creating this...pollution of the landscape. And where is the inner voice that would inform them that this was being done without my active approval? The Christian belief that I enter and transform a person's soul to make them a better person is in no way in evidence here. Quite the opposite, I should think, as if these people were enthralled to a god of evil rather than mercy. Bitter fruit indeed, yet exactly what the Bible predicts to be the end of all human existence."

"Excuse me?" Kasumi asked in spite of a grief-constricted voice box.

"Think about it," Anri said sadly, "The lion has laid down with the lamb, the sword has been beat into a plowshare. They neither toil nor do they labor, and they shall study war no more..."

"But...it's a grave yard!" Kasumi protested.

"Exactly," Anri turned away from the hideous sight of his vision with a grief-stricken expression, "What other kind of world did you imagine there would be when the natural cycle of life and death is upended? Every living thing kills to survive, Tendo-san...it is the nature of life to prey upon one another for sustenance and continued existence. Bacteria consumes the raw minerals of the land and sea and converts them into proteans, which in turn get eaten by more complex organisms, and so on up the food chain from plant to animal life, right on up to human. And you, by the very nature of being a blood drinker, consume the nourishment of life's fluids to sustain yourself, which is not an unnatural thing by the way, simply a different form of existence, no less legitimate than any other."

"This nay be a parasitic chain but rather a symbiotic one," Thelendra elaborated, "Life sustains itself through a web of complex interactions...but to break the chain by abrogating the cycle would be the height of ultimate folly. Such is the promise of an earthly paradise in which there be nay war nor killings, for life by itself without death be nay as diverse and precious."

"There is too much killing and then there is not enough killing," Anri added while dismissing the sad vision with the wave of one hand, "Animals in the wild know when to kill for hunger or survival, but they never do so in excess of their basic needs. Humans kill excessively for sport or pleasure, or for a wide diversity of reasons that may be justified or unjustified. In the end the result is death out of balance to the needs of life, and that is folly...a folly that could only be surpassed if there were endless life without death, which would result in overpopulation and the over consumption of the resources of the planet."

"Then...what is the right way to live?" Kasumi felt compelled to ask, "I believe warfare itself to be wrong, but...sometimes it is necessary to fight..."

"And to kill?" Anri sighed, "I know...a sad truth and a hard one, but...one should avoid killing where it is not necessary and only kill as a last resort, and only for protection or survival, never for vengeance. Vengeance by its very nature creates a cycle of imbalance that leads to more killing and more vengeance. When I said to turn the other cheek and not give an eye for an eye I meant to convey this as a very important lesson...but, like so much else that I sought to get across, it remains a lesson not fully learned, or largely forgotten."

"I believe that thou hast made thy point, Father," Thelendra quietly noted as she studied Kasumi's lovely profile, "And rather much to excess...but...I believe the question she intended to ask of thee be what thou wouldst wish us to do if we nay give in to our baser animal passions?"

"Not for me to say," Anri shrugged, then after a slight pause added, "Or rather...I would offer advice but not insist that you take it since-ultimately-you must be your own authority, Tendo-san, to decide what is best in your eyes. Taking my word for anything is not the point of living, not the place you should even start at since in doing so you assume that I have perfect understanding and wisdom in all things, which I assure you is hardly the case. I am not perfect...I am simply a fellow traveler on the road of life who has seen and done more than other men, and who merely wishes to offer the counsel of one who has been there."

"But what would you do if you were in my place?" Kasumi asked him.

"Again not my call," Anri shook his head, "One must learn to recognize the higher aspects of one's own nature and not confuse your wishes and desires with what your intuition and conscience tell you. Learn to listen to the inner voice that whispers from hope and a positive understanding of life, and don't let your fears drown that voice out by making you deny the good that is within your higher nature."

"Then...what would you do if you if you had a choice to act freely?" Kasumi asked him.

"What would I do?" Anri seemed surprised by the question, and then there was another slight pause as he glanced away, "Do you want to know what I would truly do if I had a choice to act without fear of the consequences? I will tell you this...if I were the imperialistic sort that my so-called followers imagine me to be then I would go to the nearest church and tell the pastor that his services were no longer needed. I would hold the biggest yard sale in history in the square of Saint Peters, and I'd tell the Israelis that doing unto others what they have been doing to the Palestinians is more evil than their myths about oppression in Egypt. I would tell the Palestinians that there is no heaven that accepts a martyr who kills for a cause, especially the innocent, and that doing so makes you an enemy of life, worthy only of the hell that is of your own making. I would tell the missionaries that they should spend more time listening and less time preaching and converting others, and I would punch the lights out on National Television of that grinning Cheshire of a bloated hypocrite who claims to know me. I would tell men not to bow down before false prophets, and that it is criminally insane to spoil the air, water and land of your own planet. I would tell the 'Holy Rollers' that life is a continuing process of evolution that does not begin at conception, and that the only true 'Life' position is to care and nurture the mother in good health, to see to it she has all the tools that can be provided to help her to get by, and that the human body does far more abortion through miscarriage than all of the doctors ever licensed to run clinics..."

He took a very deep breath and sighed, "But I have done none of these things...for it is not my place to do them. I cannot set myself up as a power to govern the lives of men, nor exploit the myths told of me in order to further my own agenda. To reveal myself before a people whose faith is founded in lies and deception would be to void the very purpose of life itself and make a mockery of everything that I have sought to accomplish throughout twelve thousand years and ten very colorful lifetimes."

He turned to Kasumi and there were tears within his eyes as he said, "They see me as a redeemer...one who can grant salvation and the forgiveness of all sins. They believe that the power was conferred upon me to determine the worth of a soul and to decide who is fit for hell or for heaven. But who is to forgive me I wonder? Who can grant salvation to one whose errors have caused so much suffering, and-whether directly or indirectly, by intent or by omission-is guilty of things for which he can never truly be forgiven?"

Kasumi felt her heart go out to the man, but was steadied by the hand that Thelendra slipped into her own in silent sympathy for their mutual position.

"Father," she said aloud, "Thou art nay to blame for what others have done in thy name..."

"Oh no?" he asked, "Then who? Ah yes...the deceivers who exploit my name, pretending to have my authority as they attempt to lord it over their fellows. It's like with all those women who pledge themselves to me as Nuns, calling themselves my brides...and I still catch flack from your mother about that."

"But what about all the good that's done by people who were inspired by your example?" Kasumi argued, "You are loved and admired the world over...and have been for centuries..."

"But they don't really know me...not the real me, and certainly not the me who they think I was," Anri returned, "I love all of humanity, the weak and the petty, the strong and the noble, all the facets of human existence...I love each and every human soul. I just can't be what they want me to be...no one can, because you see...the Jesus they reverence never truly existed, and the things they want from me can never be granted because to do so would betray my entire existence."

"Kasumi doth nay ask such a thing of thee, Father," Thelendra assured the fair-haired man, "She understands now the true burden that thou hast borne all of this time...the weight of accumulated expectations and false hopes built up by promises made by fools who never truly knew thee or understood thy purpose..."

"Yes, and even though people may not understand you, Sensei, you have inspired people to do good things to one another and have given hope to billions of people..." Kasumi persisted.

"Yes, I know, and you are right, my life was not a total disaster," Anri said tiredly, "If any lost soul ever found hope of redemption from reading or hearing of some account of my adventures then possibly my efforts were not all for nothing. But...I simply grow so weary of witnessing things that make me curse my very name, as if I could ever be pleased by acts of inhumanity that are sanctioned by some twisted version of my teachings. I have heard all manner of absurdity claimed by people who should know better, believe me, and many a time I have wished that I could simply walk up to the fellow and correct his faulty perceptions. But again...I dare not do so."

"Because doing so would betray your existence?" Kasumi asked, "But...wouldn't that help solve your problem if you could show people the real you instead of the one that they only imagine?"

"They could nay get the facts right when father was around as Yessus," Thelendra remarked with a shrug, "How much worse dost thou imagine t'would be if they had confirmation of his reality? T'would spread to panic and hysteria unimagined!"

"You want to know what the worst part of it is?" Anri sighed, "There are many good ideas buried within the text of Christianity, but the cult itself is so dreary and life-denying it chokes the pleasure out of simple human existence. Take the admonitions against dancing...what's the deal with that? In my day I was a passably fine dancer, and Miriam...well, that's for another time. For now what I will say is that the faith is not as I would have preferred it to be...and most certainly not what I can take pride in."

"The Church in its many diverse forms hath made war on the very act of taking pleasure in life and living," Thelendra elaborated, "They liken pleasure itself to a sin and make their all-important 'Devil' icon to be as fun-loving and sensualistic as the worst debaucher of Rome. But in reality 'tis the denial of the pleasures of life that be the greatest sin ever imagined, and vanity untold for those who hold themselves apart from the pageantry and spectacle of it all, casting vile invectives and round condemnation for anyone who doth nay share in their neurosis."

"Imagine if you will, Tendo-san, what it is like to have a billion people dedicate their souls to the idolatry cast in your own likeness," Anri continued, "Only their view of you is shaped by the most soul-grinding ideology that has ever been imagined. They strip the human face of their god of all manner of soft qualities from humor to sensualism, casting him instead him instead as a cold, stern and aloofly demanding tyrant with a judgmental fixation on finding fault with every human nuance. Imagine a billion minds projecting this image onto their image of me, only it is a me stripped bare of true humanity and compassion, benignly forgiving and yet strict, a father image set in graven stone by a church far more intent on wielding temporal power than on clarifying its own transgressions. That is the burden I carry, that is the cross that I bear, and that is the Sin for which I have long suffered...the knowledge that they idolize not me but what they wish me to become, a thing I find repellant and hateful. Can you understand why I have turned my back on the whole bloody mess for the past few hundred years? If I did not try and ignore what is being done and said in my name...I might become the very wrathful god whom they fear, but not for the reasons which they imagine."

"If a man or woman be of open heart and mind, willing to accept new ideas, new possibilities, new ways of viewing the world, then to them will father sometimes appear as a traveler and distant cousin," Thelendra revealed, "But never to those whose hearts are closed and clouded to all thought of deviation or error. The idolatry of those who blindly worship without understanding, who cloud their perceptions with dogma and refuse to consider the wisdom of another person's mind can never be a true follower of the way that mine father doth champion. He doth nay wish to be worshipped as a god...doing so distracts one from seeing the truth that is out there! It is only when thou doth accept the humanity-warts and all-that he doth embody that one be prepared to accept a Jesus with a human continence."

"I am not God, nor did I ever claim to be," Anri noted, "I am simply a student of life who tries to pass on what he has learned to others, to point the way to the door to the church, not to lead one into its confines. I would never belong to any orthodoxy that would have me for a member...I was never like that in any of my previous incarnations, let alone as Yessus."

"I think I am beginning to understand," Kasumi slowly noted, "You appeared to me at a time when I doubted myself...when I was open and ready to accept a new way of looking at life..."

"That is most correct, Beloved," Thelendra said approvingly, "But more because thou art close to a matter at hand that only thee and thine kin be equipped to handle. Father works through proxies because he dare nay step out from the shadows to directly confront what be out there, for beyond the physical force that threatens thy nation there be far darker enemies abroad, ones who would marshal all of their resources and rally more terrible agents to hand were they to know that thou dost have our backing."

"You are a uniquely gifted individual, Tendo-san," Anri mused, "Beyond the simple fact that you were born with a divine spark hidden within you that was nursed to life by the agency of Vampirism, you are a Template to a major power and bear a close connection to a Nexus of the Planes. You have within you the precisely right combination of factors to make you dangerous to the other side, moreso than I think even they could imagine, and so it has been our purpose-both my daughter's and myself-to prepare you for what is to come since only you, your sister and her husband can make the critical difference."

"Because we share a link with all humanity?" Kasumi's eyes widened then she said, "But your brother...Lord Reka...?"

"Reka doubts that any of you truly has what it takes to win out over the opposition," Anri replied, "Obviously we disagree on the likelihood of your living up to your potential. He is not Satan nor Lucifer and is certainly not himself a force of great evil, but he is proud and willful in a way that goes beyond simple arrogance, and he is in no part as restrained as I am when it comes to expressing his opinion."

"He trapped me here in the past...because he wanted to show me your life," Kasumi continued to slowly piece the puzzle together, "He wanted me to confront you, to learn from you, to discover the truth about your existence."

"And he knew that I would be here to act as thy guide in this revelation," Thelendra gently noted, "And now that thou doth know what be at stake here, Beloved...what will be thy chosen destination?"

Kasumi thought for only a moment then said, "I have to go back...I must confront Lord Reka and convince him to refrain from further interferences. I must impress upon him that I am not only worthy but capable and willing of doing whatever is necessary in order to preserve the balance."

"Good for you," Anri beamed proudly, "I knew you had what it takes. But you had better make haste in returning to where you started, because in your absence my brother has taken matters into his own hands again and is making a point to challenge our other two champions directly."

"Nabiki and Ranma?" Kasumi gasped, then saw the somewhat sheepish look in Thelendra's eyes and said, "You knew?"

"Ah...in haste I didst leave them in confrontation with mine uncle," the rainbow-haired oracle reluctantly replied, "My concern for thee...didst override all other considerations..."

"We have to get back right away!" Kasumi said with almost frantic urgency, "At their present level of skills my sister and little brother won't stand a chance against Radigar Agrikal..."

"Then what are you waiting for?" Anri waved a hand and materialized a shimmering portal, "There is the door, and good travel."

"Thank you," Kasumi hastily bowed, and then hurried through the temporal-dimensional gate, followed in great haste by Thelendra, leaving Anri alone within the formless realm of shapeless gray proto-matter.

"Well, that was certainly a lot easier than I thought it would be," the fair-haired man remarked to himself, pausing only to glance at the shadows within the haze before sighing, "The past is as it must be...but there are times such as this when I wish that dared to make alterations...ah well. Time to look up my old friend Frank, and to let him know that there are some things mortal men have a right to question..."

And with that declaration he moved sideways through an entirely different portal, fully aware in doing so that he had just set into motion a new chain of events that would have far-reaching ramifications for the future, to say nothing of helping-in some small part-to heal a breech that had been left gaping open for most of the past two thousand years...and hoping in that way that he had made a critical difference...

Continued.

Comments/Criticisms/Theological Divisions: shadowmane

Or: shadowmane9849

Once again I do apologize if I have given offense to those who disagree with my views on the history and nature of Judeo-Christianity. I have formed my opinions based on more than thirty years of private research into biblical origins, and while I would never dogmatically state that my views are the defining ones, I would welcome any challenge to my conclusions that you may reasonably wish to offer. There is hubris indeed in my presuming to use Anri Monalon Maitreya to express my own take upon Jesus, but I would argue that my version is just as valid as that of Mel Gibson (or even Monty Python), and I really do honestly believe that the "real" Jesus (were he around today) would not express happiness and joy over the things that numerous rival factions have done and said in his name, especially the Bible Thumpers.

And why is this relevant to the affairs of Kasumi, Nabiki, Ranma and the rest of their Posse? Please do read on, gentle reader, as we further connect the dots in: "Raising Hellfire," or, "To Sleep in Angora." Be there...

X

/pre 


	83. Chapter 83

preDnabiki172

Nabiki 1/2

"A Very Scary Thought"

by Jim Robert Bader

(Inspired by the works of Rumiko Takahashi Others,  
with concepts and characters created by fellow fanfic writers Wade Tritschler, DB Sommers, Nicole Manders, Andrew Greaves, Bill Guiroff and countless others, including "Buffy"  
creator Joss Whedon; with special thanks to my good pal Shiva for his editing and handling of this series.)

(Certain other characters and concepts are of my own innovation, including my interpretation of the Monster of Mary Shelly's novel, the Furies, Trudy, Takaharis Angelique d'Anjou, Anri and the Daokan, Thelendra the Dream Weaver and various other guest stars appearing in this portion of the Nabiki 1/2 series...)

Chapter Sixty-Six(and one Sixth).

Episode One-Hundred-Seventy-Two.

To Sleep With Anger

"So good of you to come on such short notice, Brother. I can understand if the timing is inconvenient."

"Spare me your sentimentality, Hideoshi-san," said the heavy-set man in the tailored three-piece suit as they both stood facing the grave marker together, alone out in a field of similar such markers each bearing a name that hid a different story, "I am only here because father would have wished this."

"You mean you not taking my head and hanging it from a lamp post?" Hideoshi replied with a faintly wistful expression as he read the name of their father off the marker, wondering what the old man would make of his two sons and their very different career choices.

"Among other things, yes," Tenogar Tanaka replied, allowing a moment to pass before he added, "Your message implied that you had something for me that was important. I trust more than nostalgia motivates your thinking?"

"Just so," Hideoshi paused himself to take a moment to study the profile of his older brother, then said, "Forgive the observation, dear brother, but you seem unduly stressed about something. Stomach still giving you problems?"

"Just indigestion," Tenogar gruffly insisted.

"Ah," Hideoshi nodded, "Job stress no doubt, considering what you do for a living."

"I do not need a lecture on vocational choices from you, Hideoshi-san," Tenogar growled in ominous warning.

"I know you blame me for choosing not to go into the family business as you did, Teno-kun," the other man said wistfully, "But considering what the job did to father, can you blame me for choosing a somewhat less stressful occupation?"

"As a hoodlum?" Tenogar bridled, taking a sip from the cup of coffee that he had been carrying in his hand, "A cheap thug who makes his living exploiting the weaknesses of others?"

"Exactly," Hideoshi noted, then added, "After all, I sleep better at night rather than having to put up with what you do for a living."

Tenogar grit his teeth and snarled, "If you have come here to insult me..."

"Actually I came to exchange information that could be to our mutual benefit," Hideoshi replied, "In my line of work as an Obuyun of the Yakuza it pays to know what is going on in the streets, and just as you have your own sources of information I have mine..."

"Then why come to me through back channels?" Tenogar asked, glancing sidelong to the men in the dark limousine parked some distance away and observing how those fellows seemed to spend most of their time eyeing shadows while fingering their coats and concealed weapons.

Hideoshi took a moment before answering, "I have become concerned and distrustful of late...and I fear my organization may well have been penetrated...and yours as well, so...can you blame me for being cautious?"

"Penetrated by whom?" Tenogar demanded.

"I know, you think I'm being paranoid," Hideoshi smiled, "But that's a healthy thing in both of our respective lines of business. Trust but verify, keep your enemies closer to your side than your friends, that sort of thing, and watch the person closest to you for tell-tale signs that they might be harboring ulterior motives."

That's called reaping what you sow," Tenogar remarked brusquely, "It comes with the territory."

"Quite true," Hideoshi paused again before adding, "It is also true that I...may have done some recent business dealings with elements whose shady character has put even me on edge, and I have begun to seriously rethink what I have gotten myself involved with after hearing certain rumors that have come to my attention."

"What rumors?" Tenogar frowned, "What have you gotten yourself involved with this time, Hideoshi? Not another bit of occult business...?"

"Oh no," Hideoshi assured his older brother, "I try to stay out of that after the last affair with that Akajimi group. No...this is of a somewhat different character involving smuggling and trafficking in materials of a highly questionable nature..."

"I thought as much," Tenogar said while lifting his cup back to his lips, "You always were one to push the envelope when it came to your business dealings."

Hideoshi waited until he saw his brother begin to swallow before idly commenting, "Did you know that this very afternoon I made the acquaintance of someone from your world who goes by the code name of Legionnaire?"

Tenogar spat out his coffee then spent the next several moments hacking and coughing while his brother helpfully patted him between the shoulder blades, but then the burly man whirled about and snarled, "You did that on purpose!"

"Just wanted to see if I had corrected gauged your reactions Oniisan," Hideoshi said mildly, "So...it's true what they say about her in the rumors?"

"How the hell did you meet up with her?" Tenogar scowled, "And-more importantly-why are you still alive?"

"I believe that I was of some use to her, which is why she came to me as a matter of friendly business," Hideoshi replied, "Killed seven of my men in the process and left four more in such condition that they will be of little use to me for a month, and never once reached for gun...seemed to think such things were beneath her."

"That fits her profile," Tenogar scowled, "We've got files on her activities that virtually fill entire hard drives back at headquarters. They don't build warehouses large enough to store the corpses that she tends to leave within her wake..."

"So why haven't you done something about her?" Hideoshi asked, "Can it be that even you are concerned for her reputation?"

"She's part of the Delphi group," Tenogar replied, "One of their so-called 'Freelancers.' They tend to be a law unto themselves, elite agents, many of them with metahuman abilities that go beyond the freakishly dangerous."

"I saw her eat raw kirari and show no side effects," Hideoshi noted, "And she almost killed one of my lieutenants using a poppy seed that she lodged within his wind pipe."

Tenogar saw the look and tone of his brother and asked, "She came to you for information?"

"And to warn me that if I wanted to remain healthy that I should distance myself from my most recent business partners in the Umakuzen group...a warning I intend to take to heart, I assure you," Hideoshi assured the other man, "No doubt you've heard about them? Christian fundamentalist types, but they paid good money and it seems that I asked fewer questions of them than was needful."

"Umakuzen?" Tenogar's eyes narrowed into slits, "Just what did you do for them?"

Hideoshi gazed off into the distance then said, "Helped them to get some scientists and equipment past customs without your people being the wiser. Eastern European types, former associates of a certain Middle East despot who shall go nameless, whose work for their former employer had its funding cut due to sanctions. I believe that they were continuing Bio-weapons research in association with a Brazilian entrepaneur and some North Korean agents. Believe me, I didn't realize the full impact of what I was getting involved with until I came across those names, and then I knew I had to pass the word along to the appropriate parties."

"Namely me?" Tenogar chewed that one over then said, "You were right to bring this to my attention, but getting involved with the Umakuzen? Hideoshi...what demon possessed you to do such an unspeakable thing?"

Hideoshi sighed, "What can I tell you, elder brother? It involved a woman. I wasn't thinking too clearly when I was approached...or rather I was thinking with the wrong half of my anatomy..."

"So what else is new?" Tenogar sniffed.

Hideoshi favored the other man with a look and added, "It's also true that I felt a certain amount of...well, sympathy or obligation...a sense of Giri. After all, in the distant past our clan benefited from association with the Umakuzen, and in my mind I was simply fulfilling a debt that had been left too long unanswered. After all, you know as well as I do the sad history of events that took place over a hundred and thirty years ago..."

"That has nothing to do with the present," Tenogar snapped, "These days they are terrorists, not defenders of a faith that our nation sought to eradicate, whether or not by means that you or I may approve of."

"Perhaps so," Hideoshi said, "But as I already told you, I wasn't thinking too clearly when the deal was struck. It was only afterwards that I came to suspect my associates were hiding their true motives and intentions from me, and the visit by the Legionnaire was all the confirmation of this that I needed."

"You shouldn't have had to wait for her to show up and drop an anvil over your head," Tenogar scolded, "It should have been plain enough that they were up to no good here, and you should have stopped yourself before climbing into bed with these bastards!"

"Actually the lady I did climb into bed with was hardly a bastard," Hideoshi shrugged, "But your point is well taken."

Tenogar glanced away, "You always did let that part of you think before the rest of you, Hideoshi. I've warned you in the past that your taste in exotic women would be your undoing.

"Oh, like you've never been in bed with unsavory types before?" Hideoshi countered, "Sometimes even knowingly, such as the gaijin you married, the one who gave you twin daughters?"

"Leave Madoka out of this," Tenogar warned, "And as for Kira and Nika..."

"Charming girls," Hideoshi remarked, "Though not at all as well behaved as my little Ishima. I do believe that grandmother is training them to follow the old traditions, but that they seem to have picked up some rather modern skills as a couple of hackers."

"They are only nine," Tenogar said defensively, "A bit wild in their ways, but I'm certain that grandmother will knock them into shape before they turn twenty."

"For the sake of all humanity, I most certainly do hope so," Hideoshi averred, "My own Ishi-chan is twelve and already shows signs of taking an interest in science and medicine, so perhaps she will buck the family curse and actually do something productive with her life that doesn't involve the dark underside of society, such as the worlds we both respectively live within, my dear brother."

"If you wish to live to see that world happen then I suggest you get into a different line yourself, Brother," Tenogar turned away, "Now if you and Father will excuse me I have to follow up on the lead you have just provided...and clean up yet another one of your messes."

"Better hurry on that, Teno-kun," Hideoshi urged, "From what I have learned to date I believe my Umakuzen allies may be accelerating their time table and are about to put their nepharious scheme into play...and the target that they have selected will be Japan itself, which is what decided me to turn the matter over to your very capable supervision."

"For your sake I hope that isn't true," Tenogar paused to glare, "Because as Father is my witness, if whatever nightmarish horror you've conjured up this time goes through into fruition, then you won't live to see the results, dear brother."

"If what I fear turns out to be the truth, then neither of us will live to see too many more sunrises," Hideoshi said solemnly, "And as father is my witness I most heartily regret that."

Tenogar paused in the act of turning away then said simply, "It is true that father did many...questionable things during his career...but always he had the best interest of Japan at heart. As you obviously were moved by similar considerations I will try to...overlook your involvement. But no promises if this thing comes up for a formal investigation."

"Fair enough," Hideoshi Tanaka smiled, "Is there any other way that I can be of use to you in this, Brother? After all, as I said, I do have my sources."

"Just give me a more timely warning the next time something big threatens the home islands," Tenogar responded, "Like, say...a visit by one of the Daokan, to give an extreme example."

"Oh, most certainly," Hideoshi chuckled softly, "Now that would be a disaster were it to happen, but unlikely anyway since I doubt one of the Four are anywhere near to Japan, let alone in this dimension."

"As do I," Tenogar said before vanishing into the shadows of the graveyard, "Or else the apocalypse may yet befall us premature...and well ahead of the schedule given to my own field agents..."

The shimmering curtain that was the space between one point and another parted before Amalthea's eyes and revealed a verdant jungle scene that was unexpectedly humid and lush with variously exotic aromas that were impossible to identify, though doulbtlessly they were organic in composition.

Her companions paused to study their surroundings, and then the rugged man's thoughts seemed to flow like water into the mind of all who were keen to listen:

Monster Island? And interesting choice for a location.

The blonde at his side just smiled.

Can you think of a more appropriate place of concealment for the Hiroikotsu?

Not really. I just had not imagined finding us here after the last time I paid a visit.

The blonde nodded towards a wide gap in the foliage.

He is in that direction, and by now...he will be waiting.

The bronzed giant shrugged his shoulders and started forward.

Good, because I don't like to wait either.

Amalthea marveled that she could understand these wordless exchanges as though clearly spoken into her mind by the two powerful beings whom she now thought of as her Lord and Lady. Her Mistress walked into the forest with as much ease as another might stroll through a park while the dark man at her side walked as though he were a lord of all creation, the forest itself parting before him and creating a smooth path that Amalthea's bare feet did not find either thorn-strewn or too rocky. The shimmering power of the man was like a wedge that could force its way through the side of a mountain, and Amalthea did not fault any woodland creature for avoiding him...though for the most part it seemed more as if the jungle preferred to ignore their intrusion, pretending they did not exist as though to deceive itself as to the dangerous nature of the man within its presence.

It was not too far into the woods when Amalthea got her first hint that this place was unusual, for they came upon a pile of large bones that looked recent and half-eaten and were larger than any land creature she had ever imagined. The couple walked through the midst of these bones and Amalthea followed, staring up at the jutting ribs as though they were the frame of a dilapidated building, wondering what type of creature they must have belonged to, and just how big it would have appeared if she were to come across one of its still-living relatives, a concept that she would much rather have avoided if at all humanly possible.

But nonetheless she dutifully kept up the pace a few steps behind her Mistress and Lord as they pressed on through the woods, passing by a large outcrop of stone that loomed up like a volcanic fissure. Out of the corner of her eyes Amalthea saw a number of creatures both large and exotic with some rivaling the bone-creature of before, yet only when her Mistress and Master came to a halt did she find a sight to dwarf that sight entirely.

Or rather she caught sight of a huge head that rose up from over a ridge and turned a baleful look in their direction.

To say that this creature was huge would have been a gross understatement. It was, rather, both colossal and immense, and as she edged nearer to the ledge upon which they were standing she measured the creature's height to be well over a hundred meters in height, and scaly with jagged ridges all the way down its massive body. The eyes of the creature were both terrifying and fascinating, blazing with emotion as he turned to regard the pair looking down upon him, the eyes of a God dressed up within the body of a reptilian Cyclops.

In her mind she heard the creatures name being spoken: Gojiro.

Yes, that is his name, or at least the one given him in the modern era.

"My lady?" Amalthea asked.

Lord Udan shrugged his shoulders

He is Nephlim, like your friend, the Kraken. One of the Forgotten of Heaven, mutated over time to assume the likeness of a creature who resembles an ancient Thunder Lizard, otherwise known as a wingless land dragon.

The blonde Eluini bent her gaze even further down.

And he is not alone. Observe...there in the nest beside him.

Amalthea reluctantly forced herself to edge closer to the ledge and to glance down, whereupon she caught sight of yet another creature-somewhat different from the big one who was standing but nonetheless quite humongous. She gasped and said aloud, "Another one?"

The dark man answered that in his usual taciturn and wordless manner.

Typhon.

Amalthea glanced at Lord Udan then back at the monster in question, which looked like nothing so much as an overgrown iguana curled about itself in a restful manner suggestive of a cat curled about its own tail. The larger reptile was poised over the second in a manner that looked somewhat defensive, and the angry glare it paid towards the new arrivals indicated that such intrusions were anything but welcome.

Despite the presence of the terrifying creatures, the blonde Lady Ulsa Laolana remained as preternaturally calm and unconcerned as if viewing the pair from the safe confines of a greater distance.

I believe that the name she was given was Baby.

The dark man beside her rumbled ominously to that.

She is nesting...they have young. Eggs that are about to hatch that will yield a hundred more such creatures. I must destroy them before this can happen.

Amalthea felt the nape hairs at the back of her neck and along her arms begin to stand on end, and then she saw the Dark Man's left hand as it started to glow, swiftly surrounded by a greenish orb that intensified to a brightness that was hard on the eyes, and seemed to contain within it the seeds of a budding conflagration.

But as he raised his hand with the intent of unleashing his might, the blonde calmly laid hand on his large bicep and stayed him, causing him to turn to her with a questioning expression.

Udan...is that any way to behave around a mother?

The gently chiding look in Ulsa's eyes seemed to calm the dark haired Udan's budding fury, but then his thoughts flowed with wonder as Amalthea herself was quite surprised in regards to this inexplicable show of mercy.

You want them to overrun the world, my lady?

Of course not. But it would be rude to cut them down before they have even had a taste of life, my love. Slaying them is not the answer...and besides, they have already known bereavement. Several of her eggs were recently taken from her, leaving her with less than a full nest. Some mortals intend to use them in genetic experiments, and such a tragedy as that is to be pitied, not compounded with more grief.

Amalthea was hardly the only one to raise an eyebrow to this bit of this, and the dark haired man's expression was anything but tranquil, and he seemed more than slightly taken back by the revelation.

Taken? By whom? Who would be foolish enough to tamper with the genetic code of a Titan?

The blonde's eyes held infinite sadness and wisdom.

You know as well as I do that there has never been a shortage of those who would cross the boundaries of science into hubris. Apart from Ikari in Antearctica there are several more names that I could mention, all dabbling in things best left unopened.

The dark haired man glanced away, his weathered features hardened up like stone as he chewed over the implications.

They will have to be dealt with in time. If mortals violate the covenant and bring down the wrath of the Nephlim upon the collective heads of all humanity...

The blonde's touch seemed more comforting and reassuring this time as she soothed the smoldering anger of her mate and brother.

We both know that there exist realities where the worst has come to pass...and as always our duty is to guide humanity along a different pathway. But that is not the concern of the moment, my love...we are here for the Hiroikotsu.

The Dark Man seemed to scan the nest more closely, and then he indicated with a nod and a gesture a particular point just above the nesting Typhon.

There upon that ridge. It is feeding energies into the area that are helping to nurture the eggs and incubate them.

Amalthea spotted a ledge where a peculiar glowing object stood poisted in the ground...from the distance looking something like a fin or another bony protrusion, hardly all that much to be distinguished from the others. In her mind she heard her blonde Mistress confirm this observation.

The Hiroikotsu.

The Dark Man rumbled again, his expression as stern with foreboding as it was concerned, despite his obvious reservations.

It will be difficult for her to retrieve it from there. First she must cross the field guarded by the Nephlim, and then scale the stones bare handed.

The blonde turned and fetched him a winning expression.

That is where you come in, Udan, my love. You must clear the way to permit her to gain free purchase.

The Dark Man turned a questioning look towards his sister-wife upon this point.

I had thought that the intention was for her to earn its possession. Having me do the heavy work almost seems like cheating.

The blonde acknowledged this but nonetheless held firm in her position.

Trust me that it is not, Udan. Her real test will come once she has gained possession of the Hiroikotsu...but time is too brief for us to tarry around. If she is to be my champion then she must obtain and bond with her weapon.

"My lady!" Amalthea shouted out in warning as she suddenly saw the towering Gojiro move forward, beating his chest several times before rearing back on his heels and letting loose with a blast of his laser-like breath weapon.

A searing stream of raw protoplasm lanced out towards them, hot enough to fry the stones upon which they stood and intense enough to cleave through the armor of a battleship...but which fell just short of touching its intended targets as the force of the stream struck a hidden barrier and was easily deflected.

Ulsa turned to the creature and her expression was a mixture of amusement and mile irritation.

That was certainly rude, but I suppose one cannot blame him.

The Dark Haired man started forwards.

We are intruders on his land. It is only to be expected.

Again the creature bellowed and thundered before hurling another blazing jet stream of hot fury in their direction, but the Dark Man ignored it and it was batted to the side as though an enormous invisible hand had so casually brushed against it. Udan did not break his stride as he descended from the ridge into the valley with no more hast than one might have when approaching a recreational park bench, as opposed to a pair of creatures whose combined mass exceeded that of a medium-sized oil tanker.

Wait here until Udan clear the way, my Pet. I will tell you when it is safe enough to travel.

"My lady?" Amalthea turned a questioning look towards her mistress

Ulsa favored her with another patented look of sincere reassurance.

This is Udan's work, the job that he has been doing for millennia. Observe how he deals with the challenge presented by these creatures.

Amalthea turned back to stare as Udan easily crossed half of the distance between themselves and the two monsters. To say that matters looked more than a little uneven here would have been a gross underrating of the serious size differences that clearly existed between lone man and monsters. If anything it looked as though Udan Robar Bartev was about to get stomped into the ground like a tent peg.

But then a curious thing happened. Gojiro ceased hurling his breath and changed tactics, rearing back to gather his forces in readiness before hunching his reptilian shadows and squaring his stance in the same manner as a martial artist. All at once the air before Udan became a shimmering curtain that blocked his foreword moment.

Again she heard in her mind the words of her Mistress:

The Ancients called this an "Absolute Terror Field," a kind of psychokinetic wall that is as much a projection of the force of one's personality as it is an energy construct.

Amalthea continued to gaze, and then she gasped in dismay as the one named Udan pressed his hands against this barrier...but then she gasped in disbelief as he made a parting motion, much like another man opening two sliding doors, and with a raw exertion of raw power he rendered the barrier asunder, literally tearing it in half as another man might rend a curtain. She saw the swirling lines of energy that surrounded his body and forced the barricade to collapse and vanish utterly before him.

The feedback this caused was enormous, and the creature named Gojiro staggered backwards as if dealt a blow to his forehead.

Remember not to kill him, my love. After all...he is, after a fashion, a fellow protector of humanity.

The Dark Man started forwards once again without relenting.

Tell him that, not me, Ulsa.

Ulsa sighed then favored Amalthea with a teasing look.

He means well, but sometimes he does get carried away and has to be reminded.

To that Amalthea could only stare in awe as the Dark Man continued to advance upon the two creatures, and suddenly to her it did not seem like such an uneven battle.

The hulking Gojiro recovered from his momentary headache to roar and beat his chest once again, then charge forward with and angry thunder that caused the ground to shake as though an earthquake were threatening the land. Amalthea had to brace her feet with a wide stance in order to maintain her balance, but she noticed in doing so that her lady Ulsa was not the least bit imbalanced.

Udan never broke his stride as he advanced on the terrifying creature whose very name conjured up the source of nightmares, nor did he so much as flinch when Gojiro brought a massive foot down and stomped hard on the spot where the Dark Man had been standing. The force of that blow caused the ground around it to spider-web with cracks that formed a deep crater-like impression, and Amalthea gasped in dismay, unable to imagine how anything could avoid being turned into a grease splat by that impact. She glanced in concern towards her lady and was dismayed to find the calm expression unaltered upon Ulsa's timelessly beautiful features.

"My lady?" she gasped, "Your...husband..."

Just wait.

That confident projection surprised Amalthea to no end, but one moment later she felt the hackles on her back rise again, and she turned in disbelief to gaze at the gigantic monster named Gojiro, who was staring down with his own perplexed expression...

And then rose by several feet into the air, which turned into several meters as a greenish force-bubble projected up from the ground, lifting the monster and tumbling it backwards so that he staggered several paces back before righting himself once again, the craggy face of the creature taking on a look that-in a human-would have been worried confusion.

Udan stood within the glowing globe of greenish force, hardly mussed or shaken in the least by what had just occurred, and with a gesture he extended a hand towards the four hundred foot tall monster...and suddenly the very earth itself responded to his will, the rock and stone of the ground forming a massive hand that rose up and closed about the creature before squeezing Gojiro with such intensive force that the monster bellowed and thrashed about in helpless rage and protest.

Udan waited until he had solidified the stony monument about the hapless creature, and when he was finished Gojiro was trapped like a fly in amber within the hardening quartz-like surface of his solidifying stony prison.

How like men to seek to solve the issue through a contest of raw might.

"My lady?" Amalthea turned as she heard those thoughts, but the blonde was no where to be seen at her side, and only after wildly searching the crater did she make out the beauteous form of her Mistress where she presently was standing.

Which was none other than at the side of the second creature, the giant Iguana-like "Baby" (otherwise known as Typhon) who still remained curled up in the nest protectively sheltering her eggs from all who might harm them.

But you and I have an understanding that goes well beyond the question of gender...for are we not both mothers who care for the welfare of our infants?

Amalthea had to blink her eyes and hold her breath as the blonde who was her owner stood fearlessly before the huge wedge-like head of the second creature. The two were gazing at each other eye-to-eye with hardly more than a foot separating woman from muzzle. But then Ulsa reached out a hand and casually stroked the scaly muzzle, and after a moment the creature began making throaty noises of approval, much like a giant cat being petted by a mistress.

Udan turned a questioning look towards his sister-wife but held his silence as he observed her soothing methods, then he turned to Amalthea and directed his thoughts as a calmly stated instruction.

The way is clear for you. It is up to you from this point onward.

"My lord?" Amalthea asked in some confusion.

Climb to the ledge, my pet, and embrace your destiny. It awaits you now, this legacy left to you by your father.

Amalthea by now recognized the voice of her lawful Mistress and turned to regard the ledge on the opposite side of the valley. With no more hesitation she began to descend from her side, her bare feet navigating the stony pathway without stumbling, and in due course circumnavigated around both the stony quartz prison containing Gojiro and the next occupied by a crooning "Baby," who was receiving the caress of Ulsa's hands to her bared neck scales.

As she passed Lord Udan she felt his thoughts touch her again, stern yet fair and surprisingly gentle:

The way may be harder yet than you are prepared for, but at least this struggle is one that you can manage.

"As you say, Master," Amalthea replied, feeling his manly presence with even sharper detail as she sensed a flicker of interest in her that was reciprocated. She was also surprised to sense approval in the thoughts of her lady Ulsa.

Rock climbing was not a hard feat for Amalthea, and-indeed-she had some memory of doing just this during the years of her childhood, and though she had spent more years on a ship of late learning the gentle life of a concubine she was still warrior trained and highly disciplined and knew her way with a sureness that was instinctive. Her feet and hands were toughened so that the occasional sharp stone did not bother her much, and her strength was such that it was easy to lift herself up over ledges and bear her slight weight over surfaces that would be difficult to negotiate for a normal human rock climber.

In minutes she had scaled to the ledge in question and was able to pause to regard the thing that had looked to her like a bony spire from a distance. Up close the resemblance to a shark fin was even more pointed, only it was double ended, one half buried into the rocks that held it there like a grave stone. It was pale golden and gleamed brightly with a smooth surface that seemed hand-worn. It looked like some kind of cross between plaster and plastic, yet instinctively she recognized that it was bone fused into the shape of a massive boomerang. Without even having to ask she immediately knew it by its name.

The Hiroikotsu.

Approach and claim it for yourself, my pet...but know in touching it that you can never go back to the way you were before you made contact.

"I...I think I understand, my lady," Amalthea said aloud, feeling a strange sense of familiarity as she contemplated the thing, then very slowly started to approach it. The closer she came to the object the more the sense within her grew of reclaiming something that she had lost a very long time ago, and-indeed-it did feel very much as if she and the Hiroikotsu belonged together.

It had a handle attached by leather straps at one end, and as her fingers slipped through the sturdy throngs her memories began to flare up, of another lifetime and a very different version of Amalthea locked in battle against some terrible creature which the both of them defeated after a long and intensive struggle. The battle was one yet Amalthea had suffered fatal injuries, and being of an advanced age at the time lacked the stamina and resilience to continue...and so she had perished, her grave marked by her chosen weapon, which had the blessings of a priest cast upon it for protection.

The bones of said priest were buried not very far from there, and Amalteha was aware of a deep emotional connection binding her in the past to the monk who had been her companion. A sense remained of continuity, of having left issue behind to continue the struggle, and that gave both satisfaction and closure as Amalthea reclaimed the object now, drawing upon the Hiroikotsu as it easily came out of the ground, like a sword pulled from an anvil, and with it...the rebirth of the warrior within her.

She held the Hiroikotsu over her head and marveled at its incredible lightness, the solid feeling of power that it contained that augmented her natural abilities and enhanced her combat skills by blending in the knowledge of her prior incarnation. Her personality fused with that of her old self and helped seal a wound so deep that she had not been previously aware of its presence, and with that a sense of peace fell over her as she reflexively lowered the Hiroikotsu and positioned in where it felt most familiar, across her back, held by a second strap fastened securely to throngs that were wrapped around its surface.

Feel better?

"Oh...yes, yes I do, my lady," Amalthea responded, then paused before adding, "Am...am I still your servant?"

More so than ever...but now willingly, and not by the force of compulsion.

Amalthea turned to see both Ulsa and Udan standing there, the later balancing a huge boulder-like egg many times his size on one shoulder as though it were a much lighter package. She raised a snowy eyebrow to this as if to inquire why it had been taken and got a reply from the man that was both terse and understated.

Because she wishes it to be so.

Ulsa smiled and glanced at the egg in question.

I persuaded Baby to part with one of her soon-to-be-born hatchings. I believe this one will come in useful in your missions, and I have slowed its aging process to where its cycle of growth will keep in pace to your level of training and ability to manage its potential.

"My lady?" Amalthea gasped.

The Dark Man just shrugged as he responded.

You're getting a pet. Be sure you feed it regularly or it might develop ideas of its own over what should be on its menu.

"Oh," Amalthea replied, taking that sage bit of wisdom to heart as she gazed up in amazement at the egg...feeling the strong force of life that radiated from within it.

Ulsa smiled as she saw the younger girl's fascinated expression.

Left to their own the eggs will not all mature as healthy offspring...even imbued as they have been from basking in the light of the Hiroikotsu. Most of this egg's brothers and sisters will hatch and become fodder for wilder creatures that abound upon this island. Those taken before...will be tampered with and used as Monsters...so other than that lot, of the remaining two hundred only one or two will grow to achieve full adulthood.

The Dark Man beside her had his own grimmer take on the matter.

Thus does nature maintain the balance, and humanity is spared the cost of being overrun by rapaciously voracious creatures that once destroyed much of human civilization. I myself put an end to their rampages, though mortals later gave the credit to Zeus. Such is the way of religion...

Ulsa gave her man a teasing look of deep affection.

And you wonder that brother Anri despairs so much of what the mortals have made of his own career? But don't despair, my love...your reputation remains undimmed as a hero of many a legend that others take credit for due to having better press agents.

The Dark Man sulked and glanced away, but his expression as much as said that he bore a long standing annoyance on this subject, much though he might pretend to be aloof to what others made of him by reputation.

Ulsa then approached Amalthea and smiled, her eyes full of affection and amusement as the half-Kirin girl gazed back in rapt attention.

You are free now to choose whether or not you wish to serve me as my pet. I will not compel your obedience and will allow you to choose freely to leave my service at any time that you wish...but if you remain then you will obey me without hesitation. Is this acceptable to you?

"It is," Amalthea shuddered slightly, feeling an erotic tingle in her loins as she contemplated what further "service" would mean in the presence of this goddess.

Ulsa smiled at the more deeply then reached out with a hand and caressed the surface of the Hiroikotsu.

I imbue you with the power of light and life. May you dispel all things of darkness that seek harm to humanity, and may you never fail the hand of your Mistress.

Again Amalthea felt a tingling sensation, but this time one of silvery radiance that had a comforting and soothing feel about it, one that affirmed in her mind the correctness of her decision to remain in service to this living goddess.

Ulsa withdrew her hand and turned away, then strode forward once again with an air that implied that she expected to be followed.

We are done here for now. Come along, my pet, Udan...we have other business elsewhere. Oh, and do let Gojiro out of his kennel before we leave...Baby would much appreciate it if you gave her back her husband.

As you wish it, my lady.

Udan snapped his fingers, and all at once the mountain of quartz began to crack, break and crumble, and then with a massive bellow of rage the monstrous creature fought to free himself from captivity with a hast bordering on furious indignation.

Udan ignored the creature and fell in step with Ulsa as Amalthea followed after them, the air shimmering before them before parting like a curtain that revealed a very different destination. Amalthea spared one parting glance over her shoulder towards the two towering denizens of the aptly named "Monster Island," seeing Gojiro turn away from their parting to dote attentively upon his lady while Typhon cooed plaintively and urged the attention of her mate, thus deterring his anger so that the departure of Eluini and servant could be affected with little more than casual fanfare, despite taking one of their precious eggs to an as-yet-unknown destination that only Ulsa Laolana, the Silver Seagull, could envision...

Lenore groaned as she slowly started to regain consciousness, her body tingling with the effort needed to heal her injuries after nearly being incinerated by a casual gesture from Lord Reka.

"Oy-vey..." she murmured to herself softly, "You'd think by now that I'd learn to mind my own business..."

An explosion caused her to jolt to full awareness, and with a start to sat up and turned her head in time to see a blazing crater smoldering in the asphalt a few meters away. And-near to the flames-were a fully-in-motion Ranma and Nabiki.

As the young vampire stared in dismay she saw the martial arts duo attempting to take on a being who was a literal force of nature, their attacks well-timed and expertly coordinated with power enough between them to take on a good sized army...and yet from the onset it was plain enough that they were horribly overmatched by their opponent, who countered their blows with an ease that was almost contemptable. Even moving at Amiguriken speed was hardly enough to keep pace with the Lord of Fire and Earth as he absorbed the worst that they could dish out towards him, then began dishing some out of his own with perfectly aimed blows that knocked both husband and wife sprawling.

"This is tiresome," Reka sneered, "Is this the best that the both of you can do? Get up ant try again, and this time show me some commitment!"

Ranma groaned as he pried himself up off of the asphalt and growled, "You know something? This guy's really starting to annoy me..."

"Ditto," Nabiki agreed as she sat up and tried to get the world to stop spinning so much under her legs. She grit her teeth and hissed, "Mark me, Ranchan...he's going down. We just have to find the right angle..."

"Do all you can, try what you must, it makes no difference in the end," Reka sneered, "Unless you make a better showing than this then I might as well put you both out of your misery rather than leave you to your fates. It would be a mercy on my part I quite assure you."

"Shut up!" Ranma snarled, "We ain't bowing to the likes of you, and just because you think you're such hot stuff don't mean you're gonna win! We ain't even got started!"

"Excellent," Reka nodded with approval, "I applaud you for your bravado, but do you really think you have what it takes to stand against me? Especially given your pathetically poor performance to date?"

"SHUT UP!" Ranma snarled, shaping his hands together to project them into a ball and then unleashing a hurricane-force wind-tunnel at Lord Reka, which directed the energy ball to the target like shot fired out of a cannon.

Reka caught the globe of force one-handed and effortlessly absorbed it, then held up a smoldering hand and smiled, "Now that is more like it, but still a far cry from a serious effort."

"Then what about this?" Nabiki asked, drawing upon her Shadow Skills once again as she braced her feet upon the ground and with arms spread wide summoned up the ambient Ki power of her immediate environs, then launched her own attack, taking off and spinning about like a living whirlwind.

Reka stood his ground and endured as the wind-cycle sought to claim him, but then with a clap of his hands caused a massive fireball to form, which disrupted the funnel and expended its energies harmlessly about him.

"Mere parlor tricks that do not even warrant serious-WHAT?" Reka reacted with dismay as all of a sudden Nabiki came rocketing down and managed to land a blow with her fist that caught the man on the side of the jaw and turned his head slightly.

Nabiki did not waste the opportunity for a follow up and launched a tiger-claw strike to the man's solar plexus...only to have her hand get snatched in mid-motion, halted only inches away as Reka turned his head and regarded her with unreadable emotion.

"Clever," the redheaded man remarked, "You distracted me with one attack then used an entirely different one to get within my guard. It seems I was right about you after all...you do have some small degree of potential."

Nabiki fought to free her wrist to no avail, but then Reka casually tossed her to the side and allowed her to stagger back for several feet while vigorously rubbing her wrist, glaring dangerously at the man who had so abused her.

Reka never got to follow up on his initial comment because-at that moment-Ranma himself stepped into the fray and delivered a stone-hardened fist to the chest that staggered the other man by a fraction. With a combination of kicks and punches Ranma started to hammer away at his foe, landing blow after blow upon Reka and forcing the man to retreat by centimeters, though beyond this the attacks had no other visible effect upon their Eluini opponent.

"This is nuts," Lenore heard someone say, "What does it take to put that guy down?"

"Hush, Mistress...you'll give away our position!"

Lenore turned from the spectacle of the fight to attempt to catch sight of the ones who had just spoken. At first nothing met her gaze, but then she shifted her eyes and used her enhanced sensory powers to "sniff out" the presence of two others who were cloaked against normal detection. Her thermal "Infravision" night abilities were thwarted by the presence of the ring of fire that surrounded them, but despite being half-blind by the presence of the curtain she was able to make out a shimmering distortion cast by two living bodies and from that made out the location of two women...one of whom smelled strangely of cat-fur, the other one being only halfway familiar...

"Uh oh," one of the two figures murmured faintly, "Not to look now, Mistress, but..."

"Right," the other one said, and then before Lenore's heightened senses could make sense of the heat distortion patterns she suddenly found two bodies pressed up close beside her, both grasping her arms while one had a hand over her mouth and the two acting to immobilize her arms and legs. Despite her vampiric strength Lenore found herself somewhat at a loss to escape from their clutches, but even as she was testing their limits against her own she heard a voice hiss into her ear, "Relax, don't struggle! We're not enemies, we're friendly!"

(Oh yeah? Prove it!) Lenore thought to herself as she tried to get the leverage that she would need to break loose, short of dissolving into mist or assuming animal form, which she preferred not to do anyway if she could avoid it.

To her surprise she heard the one on her left say, "We will if you let us! C'mon, Vampi, we're in it thick enough without you wanting to quiz us!"

"Yeah, and besides," the other said more reasonably, "You want to do this while we're this close to a full-scale battle with one of the Daokan?"

Lenore had to silently admit that this was a very good point, even as she made a note of the fact that the one with fur was evidently telepathic. By moving her eyes and not her head she caught a glimpse of the battle that was raging only a few feet away and quietly assented that getting into a separate fray would be a very bad career move.

So she allowed herself to be escorted to the rim of the fire line where they had just enough of a margin to avoid getting caught up directly into the middle of the fray. From there they could see that the team effort that Ranma and Nabiki were employing was starting to haven some effect against Lord Reka, but nothing so significant as a major turn around in the battle, being more on the level of slowing down the rate at which they were losing by his hand. As tough and hardy as they were, their reserves and resources were as nothing when contrasted with his, and Reka delighted in showing off his superior advantages by absorbing the worst that they could dish out and giving back in equal measure. It was true enough that he did not use more than a fraction of his true might in order to keep them off their guard and at a decided disadvantage

"You are weakening...and I can continue this all night," Reka taunted after shrugging off several powerful Shadowskills techniques that alone could have laid waste to a large sized army, "And here I was beginning to think that you might come across some key that you might need if you want to even the odds on this little contest that we are having."

Ranma paused to recover from his latest encounter with the fist of his opponent and growled as he wiped the blood from his chin, "I'd pay good money if he'd just shut up and stick to fighting. Even the Old Man never taunted us this bad."

"He's rattling our cages," Nabiki informed her husband, "Trying to see if we can do something he'd really find impressive...only I don't know about you, Ranchan, but I'm kind of running short of fancy tricks here."

"Me too," Ranma agreed, "I've used up all my Senken maneuvers and they didn't really phase him, just set him back for one or two moments."

"That might be the key," Nabiki mused as she frowned and contemplated their foe, "Notice that he never initiates an attack, and hasn't really been hitting us at full force? Of course if he did we'd probably achieve low earth orbit..."

"What's the deal with him anyway?" Ranma frowned, "How the hell are we supposed to defeat somebody like that? It's like he's got an unlimited supply of Ki while we're getting tapped out at the fawcett."

"He does, Master," they both heard Latisha reply, and then the fiery form of the elemental manifested beside them, "My father is a force of nature to be reckoned with, allied with the elemental powers of Fire and Earth themselves, and thus able to tap into their wellspring with no restrictions or limits..."

"Isn't there anything useful you can tell us to take him down?" Nabiki snapped, feeling her resentment towards the Salamander queen resurfacing with a vengeance, "Or is loyalty to blood more important to you than your oaths to service my husband?"

Ranma winced at the unfortunate (and quite Freudian) turn of phrase that his wife was using, but Latisha only starred back at Nabiki defiantly before turning to regard her demi-mortal sire then said, "Father expects me to take part in this battle...he is counting on my coaching you and giving you the key to holding your own in this encounter. There is no question of crossed loyalties here, nor would I allow my Master AND THE FATHER OF MY UNBORN CHILD to suffer at his hands, but...there is very little that I can do for my own part to defeat the one who sired me upon my Salamander mother many millennia ago, other than to repeat a phrase that you have already heard spoken before, and one that you should hardly need reminding."

"Uh...what phrase is that?" Ranma asked, sensing the way Nabiki was bristling and not wanting again to be caught between their crossfire.

"That power is it's own weakness," Latisha explained while turning back to regard both her Master and his mortal wife, "Strength is its own undoing, and the reliance upon one element creates a natural imbalance that can be exploited by a clever Senken Master, such as yourself. Always recall that no matter how powerful a foe is, it is the inherent nature of the Universe that force creates imbalance that must be equalized by an equal and opposing dynamic..."

"You mean like fire is to water, earth is to air and all of that?" Nabiki suddenly got a calm and crafty look in her eyes that Ranma knew so well and felt elated to see there once again in her expression, "Sharil?"

"About time you called upon me, Mistress," she heard a voice in her heard respond, "I've been waiting for you to figure it all out."

"Ranchan," Nabiki said carefully, "Draw more on Karina and less with Nagisha and Latisha, and keep Sobriel in reserve. I think your Arisenken techniques will be of greater use here, while I'll draw more on what you've taught me of the Umisenken."

"But I've already tried everything that I already know!" Ranma protested.

"Then get creative like you usually do," Nabiki smiled back, "Invent new maneuvers and apply them to him with Latisha and Nagisha sitting back and offering suggestions."

"Could work," Karina projected back, "And I'm more than willing to do my part for you, Master."

Ranma felt oddly calm and buoyed by that and realized how good it felt to have the Nabiki he knew and loved so well back in prime form and fighting right beside him. He had missed their sparring matches during the long months of her pregnancy, but even more the thrill of going into battle with a woman whom he regarded as more than his equal. There was something about her indomitable warrior spirit that always gave him a confidence that he might lack in her absence, and knowing that her crafty mind was at work thinking up new strategies liberated him greatly to concentrate on the moment-to-moment stuff, putting his own tactical skills to greater use while she did the long-term strategic planning.

"Are you rested up now?" Reka asked from where he was standing with that same irritating look of smug condescension, "Ready to resume your trousing?"

"No way, Dirtwad," Nabiki shot back, "It's your turn to get a pounding, and this time we're going to make you eat it!"

Reka's eyes flashed with deadly amusement as flames appeared about his fists and he said, "I admire your bravado, but let us see if you truly have what it takes to back it!"

Of course, Ranma reluctantly conceded, that was the downside of having Nabiki fighting at her warrior's best, the sense that she would not stop or give up for anything, and that defeat with her was never really an option. She would do everything within her power, draw upon all of her reserves if need be, push it to the edge and just a little bit beyond that in order to see to it that the other guy regretted starting things up with her, and even take hits that would make him wince in dread and sympathy for her position. All in the name of winning. Winning was everything to her, and because of that she never would be defeated.

Against another foe such an attitude would be encouraging, but with someone like this Reka? Ranma admitted to fostering fear in his heart more for the sake of his wife than for his own problematic welfare, and so-even as he prepared to back Nabiki's play-he had to struggle against the dread of possible consequences, frightened for her sake and willing to do whatever it took to defend her from harm, even at the expense of his own well being.

But as they closed in with their opponent such thoughts were banished to the furthest recesses of the mind as all of their energies had to be devoted to the matter at hand and nothing could be spared for peripheral concerns like health or even dying, such things being taken for granted and thus of no real concern beyond the exchanges of the moment.

From the sidelines Ranko, Cheshire and Lenore watched as Nabiki launched herself in a direct frontal attack against the fiery man named Reka, but even as they saw the lordly Daokan Master respond in kind by a stiff counter-thrust they watched in stunned disbelief as his fist passed harmlessly through Nabiki's body, and then a moment later she spun around and caught the man from behind with a kick to his spine that actually staggered him forward.

"What?" Reka reacted as he whirled about, only to see the image of Nabiki melt away before his eyes, even as a fist (hardened by the force of the Sea) struck him from the side and caused him to rock somewhat off-balance.

Even as he struggled to recover, however, another fist encountered his chin as Ranma swirled with an upper-cut that was backed by a miniature tornado, the force of his wind being sufficient to blow Reka back on his heels for several paces.

Again Nabiki manifested from seemingly out of no where and attacked from several angles at once, multiple images of her forming and attacking as fast as Reka could whirl about to dispatch him. In doing so he left himself another opening and once again felt a wind-backed fist strike him in the solar plexus, rocking the redheaded man back for a short distance where he again encountered a Nabiki who seemed to vanish and reappear at a will, leaving their foe with no clues or hints of warning.

"Wow!" Ranko exclaimed, "Way to go, Mom!"

"Mom?" Lenore shot a glance towards the redheaded human, only to wince as she felt the locking hold applied to her own arms tighten abruptly.

"What do you want to do with her, Master?" the furry cat-woman (who-strangely enough reminded Lenore more than a bit of Nabiki), "She smells of dog fur..."

"That's wolf to you," Lenore frowned, and then decided to end the charade by dissolving her form into mist, moving her body sidelong into a quasi-solid dimensional state whereby she was as difficult to grip hold of as smoke, then resolidifying to the side once again with rapier in hand and tip thrust up towards the neck of her started opponent, "And mind what you say...she's my girlfriend."

The cat-woman froze and stared in dismay at the turning of the tables, then softly murmured the word, "M-Master?"

"Don't hurt her!" Ranko hastily barked out, "We don't mean you any harm! We're just...ah...interested observers here, not enemies or..."

"Agents?" Lenore asked suspiciously, "Who are you working for, and who's on the other end of that communicator you're wearing?"

"Don't tell her anything," Ranko heard her mother saying, "We'll get you and Cheshire out of there now..."

"Don't bother, Lady," Lenore replied, "I've got very sharp hearing, and I can tell if you try anything, and don't think for a moment that I won't hesitate to use this."

Cheshire gasped, feeling the press of the sword to her neck threatening to draw blood in an instant.

"Mom," Ranko murmured softly, "I can't risk her hurting Cheshire."

"I know," she heard her mother say on the other end of hear earpiece, "Do what you have to, Ranko-chan, your father and I will trust you to resolve this situation."

"Cheshire, huh?" Lenore mused without taking her eyes off of either of her companions, "And Ranko. Very interesting...and it's easy to tell you're not from around here."

"Actually...we kinda are," Ranko said nervously, keeping her hands where they could be seen as non-threatening while preparing to rush to the aid of her Pokegirl in a heartbeat, "Only not, if you...ah...well...can believe that."

"Cross dimensional or Paratime?" Lenore asked.

"Huh?" Ranko blinked in surprise.

"My guess is both," Lenore paused then asked, "Time Agents?"

"How...how did you...?" Cheshire gasped, only to blink with surprise and relief as the sword was withdrawn and slipped back into its scabbard.

"At least it's not the Thug, Punk Kid and Robot this time," Lenore grumbled to herself and then said, "Relax, I'm with Delphi, remember? We've dealt with your kind before...many times as a matter of fact. It's in the records."

"Mom?" Ranko asked inquiringly.

"Apparently there has been a slip up in the records department," she heard her mother say, "An oversight with Temporal Records Control. I'll have to do an audit with accounting..."

"So, what are you here for?" Lenore asked as the three of them turned back to study the fight as it progressed before them, "Not sight-seeing I take it? Must be the Daokan, or this business about Japan being in the middle of a temporal crisis."

"You're good," Cheshire remarked while feeling her neck and wincing, "For a Wolf lover."

"You can tell your boss not to fret about security issues," Lenore continued, giving Ranko a side-glance before adding, "But judging from the evidence I'd say your last name is Saotome, am I right?"

"How did you...?" Ranko gasped.

"Lucky guess," Lenore glanced away, "Though your family resemblance is more than a little unnerving since my second guess would have been Arigami. Of course, as kinky as she often is, I haven't known her to take up Chia pets for a hobby."

Cheshire hissed over that snide comment, but the next minute rendered the whole matter academic as the three-way battle between Reko and the Saotomes shifted into higher gear with the couple employing more and more improvised Elemental techniques designed to counter Reka's natural strength in the realms of Earth and Fire.

Ranma had just formulated a way of using the natural affinity between Sobriel and Karina to formulate a modified "Air Vacuum" attack that created quite an explosive cacophony of sound that battered about the Fire Lord and snuffed his efforts to respond in kind with his own explosive fury. Alternating between these attacks, Nabiki drew upon Sharil's aqueous nature to all but smother the volatile Eluini with rapidly condensed moisture that she hardened into a block of ice through force of will and a variation of the Hiryu Shoten Ha's "Soul of Ice" technique, which chilled things for a few seconds until Reka was able to break free and renew his assault with the force of angry retribution.

As powerful as he was, however, he could not be everywhere at once, and with Nabiki's newly gained ability to seemingly "melt" and reappear at random it was all that he could do to lash out at the after images that she left him, and in doing so he created openings that both Saotomes were quick to exploit. As both Ranma and Nabiki were too clever to use the same attack twice in a row they each were forced to draw upon the wellspring of their own creative talents to press on with the attack in hopes that they might find the right combination of methods to hold their opponent off-balance.

"Wow," Ranko softly exclaimed, "They're really going all-out there! This version of Mom and Dad are fighting like a couple of demons..."

"But against an Eluini of the caliber of a Daokan they're hopelessly outclassed," Lenore glumly concluded, "They are holding their own, but only because he's not fighting with his full abilities or this would have already been concluded before it even got started."

Ranko glanced at the redheaded vampire and said, "You seem to know a lot about these guys. I only just found out about them this afternoon..."

"Consider yourself lucky," Lenore replied, "There's a burden that's carried with too much knowledge, and even Kitty here seems to know as much as all that. Look, I've gotta call this in, my boss has to know, but don't worry, I won't mention you guys in my report."

"Better not," Cheshire relied as she eyed the vampire back, "Or there'll be trouble."

Lenore touched her collar mike then said, "Shelly, it's Me. Relay me to the Boss pronto, we've got a situation here, and he's not gonna like it..."

Frank was at his desk reviewing a report when the call came through, and at once he snapped, "I'm busy, Kid. What have you got to report that's so urgent?"

"Big Bad, Big Guy," Lenore quipped, "There's a Daokan fighting with Ranma and 'Biki, and he's pushing them all the way over the event horizon, testing their skills and making 'em sweat it."

"A Daokan?" Frank felt his synthetic blood grow chill, "Which one? Not...Bartev?"

"We should be so lucky," Lenore replied, "It's the hotblood of the family, Lord Reka."

Frank swore under his breath but was immediately startled when a voice directly behind him remarked, "Yes, that is so much like brother Reka, always jumping into the middle of things, never patient or caring of the mess he makes for the rest of us to have to clean up..."

Frank did not turn around but his craggy face grew hard with a set frown, "What do you want here, Anri? And what's the deal with you and yours messing with my people?"

"Me and mine messing with you and yours?" Anri remarked as he regarded the hulking profile of the man-monster sardonically, "That's a rather limited view of affairs, don't you think? After all, you of all people should know that when more than one of us are involved it is always in concern to the 'Big Picture,' as you would so quaintly put the matter in perspective."

Very slowly Frank turned around to regard the man whom he had known of before in what-for mortals anyway-would be regarded as a "different lifetime." An a wary growl he said, "By big picture I take it you mean something...Apocalyptic?"

"More or less, that is correct," Anri replied, "And before you ask, Old Friend, no, we did not initiate this affair. It was the other side who's been engineering the subversion of this dimension for the usual list of reasons. All my brothers and I are doing is attempting to engineer a counter-stroke, moving pieces on a board as it were to position set champions in place to counter their menace..."

"Bullshit," Frank snarled, "I know you guys by more than just your heavy rep. You're drawn to catastrophe like moths to a flame, Anri...or would you rather I go by your current incarnation, Monalon Maitreya?"

"Just so you don't refer to that awful name that I have long since disavowed," Anri shuddered, "But then again, that's part of the reason why we are finding ourselves in this current state of crisis."

Frank's pale eyes narrowed sharply as glared at the young-seeming man poised so nonchalantly in his office, "What did your alleged followers do this time?"

"Oh, the usual," Anri said with great sadness and sincere regret in his expressions, "They seek to pave the way for my alleged return to glory...as if I could ever be pleased by the things they do while slandering the memory of one of my more regrettable past incarnations."

That got a raised eyebrow from the larger man, "Are we talking about the followers of Christ or Krishna? And on just what kind of scale are they planning Armageddon this time?"

Anri returned a very direct look towards the other man and said, "You already know most of the particulars. Your agents have uncovered the clues, so you hardly need my help to fathom the depth of the depravity that is being contemplated here, so why bother asking?"

"Maybe just to get a confirmation from a semi-reliable source," Frank answered, "So...it's a Four Horseman kind of thing with Pestilence heading the party?"

"With Famine, War and Death attending," Anri continued, "And Hell following after."

"So, why come to me about it?" Frank said, "You know I'm already mobilizing ever field agent I've got, and calling in for back-up..."

"Indeed, the resources at your disposal are quite impressive," Anri noted, "And most of them you have yet to employ, such as Astarte and her Furies. But it will be too little too late for all concerned unless certain key players are in place at the appropriate time and location..."

"And you're coordinating things on your end, huh?" Frank noted, "So what's this deal about your brother?"

"Reka...follows his own lead and believes only in what can be proven," Anri replied, "He has doubts regarding the champions whom I have chosen, and so he means to test them in his usual overly dramatic fashion."

"Test them?" Frank snarled while leaning closer to the unwavering figure before him, "We're talking about a guy who wrestles Fire Giants for a hobby! If he cuts loose at full strength with those kids there won't be enough of them left to bury in a match box!"

"If that," Anri noted, "But do not count them out so easily, for they are quite resourceful. As a former champion of ours from long ago you should know by now how the process works..."

Frank balled his fists and looked ready to lash out at the shorter man, "You think I could forget a thing like that, you poor man's excuse for a Messiah? I remember everything the way it was, what you guys put me through, what it did to HER! I can't forget and I'll never forgive you of all people for the way it happened!"

"It cannot give much consolation to bring this up now," Anri said while inclining his head to the side and favoring the bigger man with a look of genuine contrition, "But she knew her fate before it was even written. She made a choice and I honored her in her passing, though you are right to blame me for my arrogance. I was a fool who thought to challenge the will of fate, but in the end...with all that I have gained through my previous incarnations...I was still as helpless to avert things as you were."

Frank grit his teeth and all but exploded, "BULLSHIT! You could have saved her, Man! You had the power, you knew how to use it! What the hell good are you if all you can do is stand there and preach your homilies while ordinary people suffer and die? Some Savior you are...!"

"I never claimed to be anything of the kind," Anri argued, "I am not perfect, and for all that I am, for all my power and knowledge, one fourth of the will of humanity, I am still basically human."

Frank seethed with barely controlled rage as he stood before his unwelcome guest, fists raised like hammers ready to lash out at the unresisting man before him, but in the end all he could do was to turn impotently around and smash down hard upon his desk, causing the legs to buckle and the surface to crack down the center.

Anri eyed the desk regretfully and said, "Now that was unsportsmanlike. What had it ever done to you to deserve such abuse?"

"Says the guy who once cursed a fig tree," Frank grated from between clenched teeth.

"Ah, the follies of youth," Anri sighed, "Almost I would rather you had struck me than offend this table, for I have caused you revisit the pain long buried in memories within you, which was never my intention."

"Just get the hell out, you Parasite!" Frank snarled, "You did your job, gave your appropriately vague warning of pending calamity, now leave the way you came..."

"Like a thief in the night," Anri reflected, "And I would gladly accommodate you, old friend, but for one thing that binds me here still for another minute and a half as the clock flies."

"You're gonna be flying head first out the window unless you stop being such a putz and just come right out and tell me!" Frank growled, whirling on the other man with their faces just inches apart, his craggy expression now living up to his heavy reputation.

But still the fair haired man before him did not wince but merely replied to the hulking giant before him, "I am guardian of the living and defender of the doorway between here and eternity, old friend, and as I know that one life is never the full limit of all existence I am here to tell you that she who died defending life is here among us once again, and you already know her by a different name. Indeed, you both discovered one another without needing the interference of karma."

That set the larger back to rocking back on his heels as if struck in the solar plexus. He stared wide-eyed at the man before him and then made connections in his head that caused him to blurt out the name, "K-Kasumi?"

"A quite remarkable girl," Anri mused, "Even overlooking her recent elevation to divinity. Do you know that several incarnations ago she was even once a Queen of the Joketsuzoku Amazons? Quite remarkable, really, how the fates bring us round and around again in circles?"

Frank's expression took on a wary defensiveness as he said, "What do you want with Kasumi?"

"Apart from the fact that she is now one of my agents?" Anri replied, "Nothing. She is yours, and I must say that you two do make for a very lovely couple..."

"You get the hell away from my fiancée!" the big man all but exploded, "She's nothing to you...!"

"On the contrary," Anri said easily, "She is the key to life and the preservation of life, the hope and salvation of countless millions whose future happiness rests upon her dainty shoulders. But you need not fear that I am going to put the moves on your girlfriend..."

"Now where the hell would I have ever gotten a wild idea like that?" Frank asked sarcastically.

"I'll have you know that these days I am myself a very happily married man," Anri assured him, "My reborn life-mate and I are quite happy in this incarnation, and I would never do anything to jeopardize our marriage, especially considering what Elea might do to me if she caught me cheating without her express permission."

"Congratulations," Frank said gruffly, "Or maybe condolences to your better half..."

"However," Anri continued, "Though I most assuredly do not intend to compromise your relationship with she who is both worthy and deserving...there is another element of which you ought to be aware..."

Frank knew that he was going to regret asking even as his eyes narrowed suspiciously, "Go on."

"You see...I have a daughter..." Anri began to say, only to be interrupted by a rude snort.

"According to my file you've got plenty of daughters," Frank said gruffly, "From different incarnations, and some of them still with us."

"Ah yes," Anri said sagely, "But you know the one to whom I am referring?"

There was a very slow registering of data within the eyes of the larger man, and then Frank said, "Thelendra the Dream Weaver? The kid you drag with you through time in all those incarnations where she's cast in the role of oracle and spiritual advisor? What about her?"

"What about her indeed?" Anri turned to glance out through the window then sighed, "I am as much to blame for this as anyone, for I have always encouraged her to be true to her heart. You know that she herself as a Significant Other whom she is fated to meet time and again from incarnation to incarnation?"

There was a pause during which no words were spoken, but then Frank said, "Kasumi?"

"It seems that more than one path of destiny crosses the fate of that girl," Anri turned to regard the larger man directly, "As a father I feel obligated to state the obvious, that I would prefer that we keep things civil and that you do not break my child's neck in a fit of wild rage, such as was falsely claimed of you in your biography..."

"Hey, I never did that!" Frank protested, even as he found his knees going weak and his head was beginning to swim at the horrifying implications.

"I know," Anri replied, "Which ought to remind you that we have that much in common...that neither of us is what others would make us out to be, and that we both are quite mortal, regardless of our special endowments. So...the question I would ask of you, old friend, is this: You have a rival...what are you going to do about it?"

Frank stared blankly forward and gave the other man a helpless expression.

"I rather thought that would be your answer," Anri nodded, "But cheer up, all is not lost, and nothing is decided just yet. If you know your heart and the heart of the woman whom you profess to have loved in two very different times and places then you should have the courage of your convictions and be willing to fight for what is yours. Just be mindful of the fact that Thelendra is my child, and while admittedly a grown woman capable of making her own choices, when it comes to Kasumi...you both have much to discover."

"Andrea," Frank murmured tonelessly, then in faint disbelief, "Andrea is alive?"

"Look into your loved one's eyes and judge that for yourself," Anri smiled, "But enough of such matters. I need to break up a fight, and to do that I will have to call upon the services of the one person who can call Reka to heel and make him pay attention."

"Who?" Frank asked, "Your sister, Laolana?"

"Oh no, that would be overkill," Anri chuckled, "I was thinking more along the lines of that other charming lady who has a positive knack for getting the goat of my hot-tempered brother."

With that the fair haired man vanished into the shadows of the night, leaving a slightly devastated Frank to contemplate his own future, even as he shook his craggy head and snarled, "I really hate that guy...but...Veragar? Now that's almost too cruel, even for Reka..."

He noticed that the link between himself and Lenore was still on, so he barked into the desk microphone, "You get all that?"

Instead of the vampire what he got was a confused Shelly responding with a crisp, "Get what, Boss? You've been awfully quiet in there for the past five minutes, and I was starting to worry."

"Why don't I find that too surprising?" Frank grumbled, "All right, get the Monster ready. I'm going out again..."

"So soon?" Shelly asked, "Well...you know your business, but..."

"And tell Agent Lenore to stand by and take no actions until I get there," Frank barked as he was already on the move towards his private personal elevator, "And tell 'Starte that I'm gonna have to cancel that lunch date of ours. This is looking like it's gonna be an all-nighter..."

"That bad, huh?" Shelly asked as she switched to the com-unit in the transport, "But what's the deal anyhow, Big Guy? You're acting like you've just seen a ghost...well, one of the kinds who aren't on the paid staff that is..."

"More like a Holy Ghost," Frank murmured to himself as he began the rapid descent to the basement, "Andrea...why didn't I see it sooner? No wonder we clicked the way we did..." he sighed and shook his head before growling, "There's a certain oracle who'd better watch her paws when I get there or the so-called Holy Grail is gonna get her ass kicked from here to Merovince, by way of Chartes Cathedral."

A brief flash of memory reminded him of the warning look that Anri had paid him, which was not the look of a dedicated pacifist but very much that of a concerned father looking out for his own. He had to reckon which thought was of greater concern to him, pissing off one of the Daokan or the sincere pleasure he might obtain in paying back an old score long held in back payment? Either way he was going to get some answers, and as soon as he reached got to his destination he intended to see that there was hell to pay in Nerima.

He never caught the look that Anri gave him before leaving, though if he had it would hardly have improved his mood any as the Lord of Light chuckled sagely and said, "Some things are too predictable. Well, it's up to you now, Child...I hope you're man enough to do what's expected of you for your part?

The minx-faced urchin beside him only smiled and said, "You can count on me, Grandpa. I won't let anybody hurt mommy, not even the bad man with the face that looks like granite."

"Good child, Gamina," Anri ruffled the hair of the youth then said, "Off you go, and good hunting."

As the nine-year-old girl hopped and skipped away, bounding in and out of time-space as she did so, the man whose name was legend in various guises paused to himself to remark, "There are some who would claim that this deed is beneath me...but they don't know me very well, do they?"

And with that boyishly charming quip so uttered, the Lord of Air and Fire warped away to his next fateful encounter...

Continued.

Comments/Criticisms/Gremlins on the Loose: shadowmane

Or: Shadowmane9849

The conclusion of the battle is at hand as Reka turns up the heat while Ranma and Nabiki weather the storm of his full fury, and-meanwhile-other forces prepare to come into play as the hour of crisis nears at hand and the Daokan Brothers converge for main event in: "Bracing the Fury" or, "Radagar-You're Fired!" Be there!

X

/pre 


	84. Chapter 84

preDnabiki173

Nabiki 1/2

"A Very Scary Thought"

by Jim Robert Bader

(Inspired by the works of Rumiko Takahashi Others,  
with concepts and characters created by fellow fanfic writers Wade Tritschler, DB Sommers, Nicole Manders, Andrew Greaves, Bill Guiroff and countless others, including "Buffy"  
creator Joss Whedon; with special thanks to my good pal Shiva for his editing and handling of this series.)

(Certain other characters and concepts are of my own innovation, including my interpretation of the Monster of Mary Shelly's novel, the Furies, Trudy, Takaharis Angelique d'Anjou, Anri and the Daokan, Thelendra the Dream Weaver and various other guest stars appearing in this portion of the Nabiki 1/2 series...)

Chapter Sixty-Six(and one Sixth).

Episode One-Hundred-Seventy-Three.

Shout at the Devil

Some Minutes Before The Battle:

"The storm is gathering," observed the towering dark-skinned giantess known simply to friends and foes alike as Tri-Longu d'Falnu, "I feel the powers converging all around us, whispering ominously of things yet to occur that bode ill for all who are now living."

"Know what ya mean, Big Buddy," the hirsute Catsclaw murmured from where she crouched nearby on the parapet of the balcony upon which they were standing, "I get really bad vibes too, like there's something going on out there that don't involve us just yet, but which could spell big trouble right around the corner."

The Cambodian priestess known as Snake made a soft hissing noise that might for her have passed for a chuckle, "Indeed, grave thingsss are at play thisss night. I can feel the martial tensssionsss in the air that attessst to a battle that even now isss raging between forcccesss of light and darkness. Sssomewhere out there a ssstrugle isss in contensssion between powerful opponentsss, both mortal and Immortal, who ssseek to determine which of them isss the stronger and more capable warrior...a battle that I sssenssse could hold great sssignificanccce to the dessstiny of Japan, if-indeed-not the whole of Asssia."

Her companions turned questioning looks her way and then Tri-Longu-the living Goddess among them-addressed herself to the enigmatic and often annoying priestess (with whom she sparred as frequently with as any of their true adversaries), "You speak in riddles, my friend. If there is battle to be waged should we not be the ones at the forefront of altercation?"

"No," Snake answered calmly, "I do not sssenssse that it isss time yet for usss to take a hand in thessse mattersss...and in any event we are bound by our promissse not to take precccipitousss actionsss before Assstarte hasss determined that our ssservicccesss are to be needed. Besssidesss, I am honor bound to ressspect these fightersss asss the ssstakesss that they play for are for the sssake of all humanity...and beyond that there isss a sssenssse I have that one antagonissst in particular isss a passst acquaintanccce whom I would prefer to avoid if at all it can be managed."

"You feeling all right, Snake?" Catsclaw asked, risking much by extending a hand and placing the palm over the bejeweled forehead of her companion and fellow Fury, "You're starting to sound like Tri here when she gets into one of her Divine moods. And who's this goon you're talking about avoiding? One of your old sparring partners, or another Immortal?"

Snake smiled and gracefully did not remove the hand of her friend as she replied, "No, he isss not one of usss...but powerful he isss, and ancccient to the waysss of the elementsss. I dare sssay that even Tri-Longu would find him far too formidable to contend againsssst, and asss for myssself...I would not faccce this one in battle even to sssave the life of a friend. He isss far too dangerousss, and his ruthlesssnesss isss without limitsss."

Tri-Longu narrowed her cobalt blue eyes and turned to scan the night air, "Now you have intrigued me, Priestess. Are you suggesting that a Goddess, such as myself, should cower in fear before this enemy you allude towards, whom even you think too formidable an opponent?"

"He isss no enemy, though I would never sssuggessst him to be a friend either," Snake averred, "More like an acquaintenccce whossse path hasss sometimes crosssed with mine on rare occasssionsss that were better to be avoided. In truth the one time a previousss incarnation of my Sssnake totem ssstood up to oppossse thisss fellow he paid for it by being ssseverely burned almost to the point of death and had to pass along hisss Immortality to a chosssen ssssucccesssor shortly after. Almossst the Snake line ended on that day, but for the passsing whim of the Daokan, who allowed usss to sssurvive until my presssent incarnation."

"Are you serious?" Catsclaw felt her fur standing on end, "This guy fried one of your ancestors just for pissing him off?"

"With hardly any effort, almost ridiculousssly easssy," Snake replied, "And he could do the sssame with either of you jussst for meddling in hisss private persssonal busssinesss, ssso let my example ssserve asss a warning."

Tri-Longu balled her fists and glared, "Let him attempt something with me and he will learn what it means to contend against a goddess."

"He already knowsss what that meansss, my friend," Snake assured the taller woman, "In point of fact you might say that one named Ishtar learned the folly of underessstimating him and hisss brothers long ago, and the Goddess Chernobog, whossse dominion was upended in an epic ssstruggle againssst the Daokan. Ssso it wasss with Kali Durga, and many othersss whom I could name if you cared to recccite a lengthy litany of fallen comradesss."

"This guy's that tough?" Catsclaw paused to consider the point, "You think Genocide's any match for him, or Talon?"

Snake hissed another chuckle, "Againsst the Daokan even asss formidable a foe as Talon mussst tread sssoftly in shadow..."

Tri-Longu's eyes narrowed as she stared back out towards the skyline, "Now I confess to being both disturbed and intrigued by this revelation. If even so foul a menace as that black-hearted devil fears to cross swords with these...Daokan, as you so put it...then what formidable-yet-hideous strength must they possess to cause you to speak in tones of awe, fear and reverence?"

"Indeed," said the Succubus named Astarte Jones as she and Illyra Romaine came out onto the balcony to join in this conversation, "There are many legends concerning the brothers Daokan that warn of their formidable, dangerous and temperamental character, and only one foolish beyond all reason would wish to anger one, let alone go against them in battle."

"What mean you, Demoness?" Tri-Longu asked, "How can there be such beings to whom even the Gods must bow in power?"

"That is a difficult question to answer, my friend," Astarte replied, "But even you would concede that the Gods of your own world were not the supreme absolute authority over all life, let alone the powers of the cosmos."

"Of course not," Tri-Longu answered forthrightly, "The Titans are our progenitors and the ultimate source of all true elemental power. Even the most common drudge of my world knows that."

"Well," Astarte explained while gazing out past the balcony railing, "Here there is an entirely different class of individual whose nature integrates the power of divinity with mortality to form an Incarnation of the primal source of the human essence. They are called Eluini, the unforgotten, special in ways that would take a great deal of time and effort to explain here, but nonetheless can best be understood as uniquely gifted individuals who possess the powers of divinity within them and yet are mortal born. In this case four very gifted individuals who were conceived twelve thousand years ago at the end of the age of the antediluvian empire known to our time as Atlantis."

"Atlantis, Astarte?" the gray-haired Illyra asked as she favored her lover with a particularly skeptical expression.

The Alurien demoness half-smiled, "I know you retain some native skepticism, my love, but by now you should know better than to doubt that there is always truth behind the seemingly fantastic elements of myth and legend that we frequently encounter in this business. Suffice it to say that Atlantis was real, and that the Daokan are the living embodiment of the power that once was known to the Ancients."

All at once the fiery image of Karesha manifested beside them, assuming a human shape that solidified to full human in a strikingly close resemblance to a strawberry-blonde Illyra, "The Daokan? You mean...like the four lords of Earth, Air Fire and Water?"

"The very same," Astarte informed the salamander familiar of her lover, "I am certain that you have at least heard of them through your own elemental connections..."

"Are you kidding me, Astarte?" Karesha grinned, "One of those guys is my grandfather on my mother's side, the guy named Reka? He's my ancestor!"

"Say what?" Catsclaw twitched her whiskers in curiosity, "Are you saying you're related to a guy who could beat up Tri here?"

"The Lord of Earth and Fire," Snake elaborated, "He whossse passst encounter nearly fried to death my long-ago predecccessor."

"I had not been aware of the connection until now, Sandra," Astarte said as she turned her milky white-eyes upon her other significant lover with sympathy, love and compassion, "But I have heard many similar stories regarding Reka Firestar, who is known to legends by such names as Agni and Loki. Indeed, he is said to have inspired the careers of those two particular divinities in particular, as well as many others who bore a similar heritage and nature. There are parallels between his colorful career and that of his two brothers, Udan and Anri, of whom many more legends are known and/or speculated."

"Udan and Anri, huh?" Catsclaw regarded her employer with her head cocked at an angle, "So what's the deal here, Boss? Are we gonna go up against these guys, and will they give us any trouble?"

"I should hope not on both counts," Astarte averred with sincere fervor, "Udan the God-Killer and Anri the Lord of Light are of a scale of such puissance that they put to shame even our own considerable talents. Do not take this long, Tri-Longu, but even you would not last a minute if you pit your strength against the likes of Bartev the Blackguard."

Snake regarded her lover frankly and said, "Of all of usss, you alone might have sssome ssslim hope of withssstanding their onssslaught...for you are a Champion and a wielder of one of the Ssswords of Power. Even the Daokan mussst ressspect that, even though their own elemental abilitiesss dwarf that of the Ssseven Pillarsss themssselvess, from which your sssword drawsss itsss esssenssse."

"Precisely why I would rather not contend against them," Astarte quietly affirmed as she, too, cast her gaze out over the Tokyo skyline, "The Power of the Pillars of Fate must never be employed against the four beings whose very nature defines the limits of true power."

The daughter of Rogan the Thunderer scowled mightily, and there was a sound of low thunder rumbling in the skies above as she said, "We will see about that, Demoness, and of who defines what should it come to pass that our path crosses that of these monsters."

"Monsters?" Astarte seemed amused by the characterization, "Oh no, there is little that is monstrous about them, beyond their near limitless power base...and despite his reputation as a somber and aloof outlaw, Udan has always been a friend and protector of mortal men, while Reka...well, he tends more to inspire mischief than real malice. And as for Lord Anri...he is beyond reproach as both a hero and defender of the path of enlightenment. In fact Sandra here can attest to his august and highly revered nature, him having inspired at least one portion of the reverent teachings that make up her own nature."

"Indeed," Snake averred, "The name of Anri isss revered among martial artistsss for ssseveral of the passst identitiesss and incarnationsss that he hasss worn. In fact even you, Illyra, have paid homage to him under a guissse whom you would find mossst...enlightening.

"Oh yeah?" Illyra sniffed, "Try me."

"Ah...not a good idea, 'Lyra," Karesha cautioned, "You're Catholic, and...well..."

"Yeah?" Illyra turned to her fiery other half, "So what about my religion? I'm not practicing, so what could possibly upset me?"

"My, my, such a loaded question. However will you address it?"

The Furies turned their heads in unison to discern an unexpected presence in their midst, one who sat poised on the balcony railing not a meter away from where Catsclaw had been crouching. She had ebony dark hair and wore dark purple robes that were low-cut in the collar, revealing a generous amount of cleavage. Her legs were crossed and there was nothing threatening in her bearing, yet she had upon her lap a glowing crystal ball nine centimeters in diameter, not resting per-se but rather hovering between her palms as she moved her hands about its hovering surface without actually touching.

The reactions of the Furies were pointed and distinct. Whereas Astarte cocked one antennae-adorned eyebrow, Tri-Longu at once assumed a martial crouch while Illyra fell into a stance of readiness, and Catsclaw flexed her sinuous body around so as to face this stranger in a stance of preparation. Only Snake did not appear unduly alarmed, while Karesha took a step back and stared with raised eyebrows and a look of apprehension. The priestess defied the mood of her companions and instead turned to bow to this new stranger in their midst as though she were a familiar acquaintance from long ago, and in tones of almost reverence she hissed softly, "My lady Miranda...you do usss great honor."

"Pish-posh," the sultry stranger smiled at them with a look favoring the Gypsies and said, "I've been listening in on your conversation regarding my family and thought I should put my own two cents in. After all, it is my Uncles and Father whom you are discussing in regards to their rather lengthy careers in both myth and legends."

Astarte reacted with but a slight gasp and said, "You are...? Excuse me, noble lady. You are...Miranda the Dark Dreamer? Also known as Selene, Kali, Hecate's child and sometimes also as the Morgan?"

"Not quite," the stranger sat upright and favored Astarte with a look that caused Illyra's wariness to turn jealously hostile, "Although I am sometimes mistaken for Selene and Hecate I have only the most tenuous relationship with both divine ladies...while Kali is currently my girlfriend. And as for Morgan Le Fay, that is a title for an office, not a person, regardless of what the legends describe over her brother, Arthur."

"Uh...Boss?" Catsclaw nervously asked.

"She is an Eluini," Astarte answered, "The daughter of one of the Daokan...specifically meaning Udan himself by a long-ago acquaintance. She is also one of the Three Sisters who are sometimes identified with the Fates of ancient legend..."

"Again our reputation is somewhat exaggerated," Miranda corrected, "Thelendra, my elder, is actually my cousin by my uncle Anri, while Daphne is only my half-sister by my Aunt Laolana..."

"Say what?" Illyra blinked.

"Her father and Aunt had a baby together," Karesha helpfully supplied, "I know that sort of thing gets frowned on these days, but the kid's thousands of years old, and nobody questions her pedigree, even if she is the product of incest."

"Timesss change, and valuesss change with the timesss," Snake murmured, "And who would know better of thisss than an Immortal."

Tri-Longu was still scowling as she regarded the enigmatic dark-haired beauty, "You say that you are the daughter of one whose power is said to rival the Gods?"

"Not rival," Miranda replied, "In many ways my father surpasses most Gods, though he's hardly in the same league as Kami-Sama."

Tri-Longu continued to scowl, "And you, as his child, share in a portion of his essence?"

"Not the same way that you draw upon the heritage of your own father, no," Miranda replied, "But it is true that his legacy influenced my own career as an Oracle of visions Past and Present."

"You mean you see stuff that's already been?" Catsclaw asked warily.

"As far as I care to see," Miranda replied, "Which is often farther than most people care to remember."

"So," Astarte said with respect and wariness in her tone, "To what purpose do you this great honor by bestowing upon us the wisdom of your presence, Lady Miranda?"

"Oh, the usual reason that my kind bothers to annoy mere mortals by popping up like cosmic busy-bodies with dire warnings of ominous fates to be avoided," the sultry woman said with a lilt to her smile that was belied by her dark-eyed expression, "To caution you to the path that you have already chosen, which is to avoid direct involvement in the affairs that are unfolding this very night...until such time as your intervention is required and expected."

"Expected?" Illyra asked, "By whom?"

"Ah," Miranda's smile resembled that of a spider regarding a fly in its web, "That part would be telling. You don't expect me to kibitz about a thing like that, do you? It's against union regulations and all of that."

"And besssidesss which, your ssspecialty isss the past, not the future, honored one," Snake further elaborated.

"Correctomundo," Miranda paused to regard the brown-haired priestess with an open look of appreciative speculation, "By the way, love your current incarnation. With a body like that it's small wonder you've got these other two eating out of your...crotch."

Illyra found herself bristling while Snake seemed to color slightly, but Astarte raised her arm to restrain her more temperamental lover and coolly regarded the Eluini with a look that as much as said, "They are taken," though what she actually said aloud was, "You are here to caution us against acting too rashly and charging into affairs before we are adequately prepared and well-briefed?"

"That indeed is my purpose," Miranda's smile was now turned purposefully towards Astarte, and this time it was Illyra and Snake who bristled meaningfully at this unwarranted intrusion to their close-knit family quarum, "This in spite of the fact that I know you too well from your history to expect your people to fully comply with my admonition. As you already know a grave crisis is looming for Japan, and the enemy is the Dark One of Lemuria whose name is a plague upon nations, and whose Rakshasa servant you have crossed paths with on more than one fateful occasion."

"You now of what they are planning?" Tri-Longu bristled, "Then why not just come out and tell us?"

"Haven't we already covered that?" Miranda made a sound like an exaggerated sigh, "But then again you are the slow one in this bunch...quick to anger, slow to heed the caution of your elders, and all too human in your desires to be one with the herd rather than to lord over them as befits your upbringing in a world already plagued by far too many such hot-heads."

Tri-Longu took a menacing step forward, fists balled and at the ready, but before she got further than a foot a bolt of energy lanced from the crystal ball and struck the giantess fully on the chest, knocking her backwards with such force that she impacted against a far wall, splintering and cracking the masonry there.

"Let that be a caution to you," Miranda noted, "And my power is not one tenth of one percent of that of my father's."

The Furies collectively bristled and even Astarte seemed close to anger at this point, though her tone was restrained as she said, "Was that truly necessary, my lady?"

"It was," Miranda answered, "Oh, don't be in such a huff. I didn't actually hurt her. I just wanted her to appreciate the sort of power she will contend against if she continues in her path like a reckless elephant, obeying her instinctual nature."

"Indeed," Snake said somewhat uneasily, "Many timesss I have felt the sssame...but your actionsss-however jussstified-will make her sssomewhat more difficult to deal with in the immediate future."

"Well, for what it's worth, I'm sorry," Miranda replied, "But the future is something you'll have to be dealing with one way or another. Now that I've said my part I'll go back to being the quiet observer, but if you need counsel from me you have but to ask and I will respond...if it seems appropriate to the circumstances. And do keep in mind the need for discretion."

"Why?" Catsclaw nervously asked, "You think somebody else is watching?"

"Somebody indeed," Miranda replied enigmatically, "But more than this I will not say, other than to affirm that your worst fears and suspicions are justified. The things that go bump in the night are eager to make play, and your enemies-both witting and unwitting-are enabling their return to glory even as we speak...so keep a sharp eye out and your ears to the ground, Catsclaw of Almustahl...you never know what might be lurking in the shadows..."

And with those words echoing on the breeze the dark haired Eluini faded into the night air, leaving not even a trace of her having been there in her passage. The somberness of her parting words filled the night with ominous portents, a mood that was disturbed only by the sound of Tri-Longu extricating herself from the impression that she had just made in the far wall, to say nothing of the baleful glare on her Immortal features as she vainly cast her gaze about in search of her erstwhile tormenter.

"Are you well, my friend?" Astarte asked, sizing up the mood of her more tempestuous colleague and feeling grateful not to be the object of her fury.

"Fine," Tri-Longu replied, "But if I see that wretch again she will learn to respect my wrath. Power or no power, no one does that to a Falnu warrior and boasts about it after!"

Snake hissed softly, "Ssso we can sssee,"

"Definitely back to normal," Karesha agreed, then turned and said, "Just be careful like I told you, 'Lyra. Messing with my grandpa is definitely not healthy, and even though you're allied with me it won't be protection enough if he gets it into his head that we need to be taught a lesson, like muscles here."

With that her body dissolved into flames and flowed back into Illyra, merging into one being as the hybrid fusion that they were became absolved and could directly absorb the memories and images that were supplied by the Elemental.

Just one moment after this both Ian and Muriel came out onto the balcony, both sporting heavy caliber weapons as they swept the perimeter in search of hidden dangers.

"Everything all right out here, 'Starte?" Illyra's older sibling asked.

"Quite well," Astarte turned to regard her other two team-mates (and trusted employees), we just had an unscheduled visitation drop by to deliver us a message of some importance. Any trace of lingering akashic residues, Ian?"

"Negative," the burly man from the future said without relaxing his guard by a fraction, still scanning the night air and holding his weapon at the ready, "Clear channels 'cross the board."

"As I suspected," Astarte mused, "Miranda covers her trail well, and no doubt we were sheltered the whole time from extra-worldly observation so that she could maintain a plausible sense of secrecy in her comings and goings. In fact, she seems so well practiced in her art that she could be standing right next to us and we would not even be aware of it..."

"Don't think so, Boss," Catsclaw said with a sniff of the air, "When she was hear I could definitely pick up the scent of lilacs...but now nothing. That's one slick carny act on that 'Toaster."

"So what are we going to do, 'Starte?" Illyra asked of her lover.

"For now we do as Miranda recommended...we do nothing," Astarte replied, "But come join me inside and I will enlighten you on the nature of the Daokan...especially you, Tri-Longu, who might profit best from such an object lesson."

"I will listen to whatever you have to share, Demoness," Tri-Longu replied, "It is always best to know all that you can about your potential adversaries...yet I remain unconvinced that they can truly wield such power as you imply, evidence to the contrary notwithstanding."

"Believe me, what I will relate to you will be a revelation even for even one as well versed in the fantastic as yourself, Tri," Astarte started towards the penthouse only to pause and glance over her shoulder, "Sandra?"

"If you can ssspare me a moment, I would prefer to remain here for a while longer, Assstarte," Snake reluctantly answered, "I should like to meditate upon what the Lady Miranda hasss revealed to us just now...and then I will ssseek you and Illyra out for later."

"Just don't take too long," Illyra said with a winsome look towards her former rival-turned-lover, "Or we may just start without you."

Snake continued to smile as she watched the others leave, then turned back to regard the Tokyo skyline, her expression taking on a very different cast as she studied the currents of Chi in the night air, then slowly resolved to follow up on her own instincts.

Without a moment's hesitation she vaulted over the railing and went hurtling out into the night, plunging the more-than-fifty stories to the streets below with an ease that belied her inner nature as the penultimate Martial Artist. Things were at work in the night and her curiosity was piqued by what she was detecting. There was an edge of something hauntingly familiar that needed to be explored in greater detail, and she was intent on following up on her intuitive hunch as the possibility loomed that she was about to stumble onto another mystery, one that suited an Immortal's attention, and she intended to satisfy her curiosity without further delay.

Little reckoning as she did so that her descent was being observed by the erstwhile Miranda, who smiled as she watched the lithesome Snake perform a number of acrobatic feats to break her descent to he ground with an appreciative eye that appraised her womanly potential.

"So predictable," the sultry Oracle murmured softly, "Well, the ball is in motion, Cousin, and it's your play from here on out. Just hope uncle Reka doesn't rough the mortals up too bad before she gets there in time to see them in action. In fact I look forward to getting a ringside seat for this show...it's bound to be quite...eye-catching..."

A melodious soft chuckle filled the night and then faded into nothing, leaving nary a breeze to betray the passage of one whose ageless wisdom surpassed her seeming weight in years, and whose propensity for mischief was a thing of legend even among Eluini circles as a certain lady named Thelendra would attest had she the least inkling of what her nettlesome cousin had just set into motion.

Which reminded Miranda...it was time to check in on a certain Flesh Golem to see how the old boy was taking the news of his lady-love's private personal obsession...

"Put the moves on my fiancée, will she?" Frank grumbled as he powered his oversized motorcycle out of its private garage and out once again onto the streets of Tokyo, gunning the engine as he headed for Nerima, "No high-and-mighty Shakespeare-spouting python-kissing reject from a Midsummers Night production is gonna do that and get away with it! Not when I'm around, and not with my Kasumi!"

"You know, talking to yourself is considered bad form in some parts of the country, Boss," Shelly relayed into his ear piece while supplying him with a GPA telemetry on his helmet display to guide her creator on the safest and fastest route out of the city, "And what's the big deal about this girl anyway? You actually think Tendo Kasumi is even capable of being unfaithful with you? That girl practically sets the definition of fidelity, and aside from being a Vampire, she's way too nice and a bit naïve for that sort of thinking."

"Maybe so," Frank resolved, "But even the best of us can be tempted to stray. I learned that a long time ago, what with Eve and me and our problems. Thing is...Kasumi ain't so world-wise and savvy that she'd know how to handle herself if somebody put the moves on her and confused her sense of values. It ain't right taking advantage of her like that, and with a Sex-pot like Thelendra the Dream Weaver no less to test even the most ardently heterosexual girl to stray..."

"Like those reports on your desk about a certain so-called Paladin whose services you recently contracted?"

"Don't remind me," Frank winced, "Come tomorrow morning I'm gonna be her principal and boss in both senses of the word, and then it'll be my ass on the line if she pulls anything funny."

"Plus let's not forget that your main squeeze used-to-kinda-still-does have a semi-incestuous crush on her own sister-brother," Shelly added matter-of-factly.

Frank scowled from beneath his helmet, "You want me to turn you off or are you gonna help? Now, what's the status on the street here? Where's this rumble taking place, and how do we break it up if the Daokan are involved here?"

"I make the trouble spot to be about ten klicks and a half a minute from our present position, Boss," Shelly replied, "But as for dealing with a Daokan, I'm afraid you're on your own. I've accessed those files you wrote and there ain't no way I'm trusting my diodes anywhere near those-SQUQQWWWKKK!"

Frank winced at the static that suddenly filled his ears and was about to ask what was causing it when all at once the powerful machine beneath his thighs lifted up and began to come apart from underneath him. He quite suddenly found himself airborne doing close to a hundred-and-forty KPH with nothing underneath him but the open road and the grinding surface of the asphalt.

Which same he made contact with an instant later, and then he rolled for a good long distance before breaking his stop against a helpful mailbox at the "T" intersection that he had so rapidly been approaching.

With his padded Kevlar vest and helmet-to say nothing of his general hardiness and almost indestructible constitution-he more than survived the roll with only a few bumps, bruises and abrasions for his trouble, but nonetheless the sudden stop rattled him and for a moment his thoughts were a jumble, right up until he pulled his helmet off and looked around in a dazed state of hapless confusion.

"What the...hell...?" he slowly muttered, staring back the way that he had just come at the scattered fragments and remains of his once-mighty motor cycle.

The static in his ear cleared up and then the voice of his Auto-control system cried out frantically, "Boss, I can't explain it! Something weird just happened, and it's like every joint came apart at the same time! I'm scattered all over the pavement, and if it weren't for my padded casing..."

"Right, I can see that, you're a mess," Frank said while slowly forcing himself back to his feet, leaning against the impacted surface of the damaged mail-box.

"That's a fine way of telling it to a girl!" Shelly complained, "But how could this happen? I was built to stand up to a bloody hurricane, not come apart like a reject from the movies!"

"Can't explain it myself," Frank said, shaking off his state of dazed confusion, "I checked you out just the other day and everything was working fine like advertised. For the undead life of me I can't figure out what happened..."

"Oh, that's easy enough, Mister," a small voice said, "I happened."

"Huh?" Frank was startled to discover the small child standing no more than ten feet away from him, looking up at him with a cherubic smile that belied the mischief in her eyes as she stood there before him holding the muffler of his bike in both hands as though it were a present.

"Boss?" Shelly asked, surprised at his sudden change of tone and manner.

"You wanted to know what happened to your bike and I was telling you," the child said sweetly, "It's a neat device and I really like the way that she's constructed, but there's a number of flaws you oughta know about that somebody like me can exploit if you let 'em."

The guiless look of innocence might have fooled another less worldly man, but Frank had been in the "game" long enough to know that appearances were always deceiving, and so he was immediately on his guard as he said, "Who the hell are you, Kid?"

"Me?" the little girl chuckled, "My name is Gamina, and I'm here because my grandpa said that I should play with you. You do want to play with me, don't you?"

"Ain't got the time," Frank said, shifting his balance and assuming a defensive stance without being too obvious about it, "So...who's your grandpa, C'thulu?"

"Oh no, other side of the alignment," Gamina chuckled, "You were just talking with him, and he said you were on your way to punish my momma for messing with your girlfriend."

"Who are you talking with, Boss?" Shelly asked, "I'm not picking anything up on my scanners...at least I think they're still working..."

Frank was astonished as he stared down at the child before him-who seemed no more than eight years old (if that) yet had strangely pale hair that picked up and cast a strangely prismatic effect on the streetlights overhead. Her eyes were changeable and seemed to shift in color from green to amber to red to blue almost in an instant, and there was something decidedly...elfin about her, only not in a good way, reminding one more of the Dark Faeries than anything else this side of the Angels.

"Anri's your grandpa?" Frank murmured under his breath, "And...your daddy?"

"Never really met him," the child seemed to think seriously about this with more maturity in her looks than her tender years would tend to offer, "But I'm told his name is Gymp the Gremlin, who used to be in a kind-of-relationship with my Momma."

"Gremlin?!" Frank asked, feeling the hackles on the back of his pale neck stand on end with this revelation.

"GREMLIN?" Shelly all but screamed in his ear, "WHERE?"

The child grinned broadly...and in doing so revealed a row of pointed teeth that were nothing like the usual incisors, cutting teeth and molars of an ordinary infant. "Time to play!" she declared brightly, and that was when Frank knew he was in trouble, for despite her diminutive size this was one underage brat who was definitely born to cause trouble for anyone as technologically savvy as himself, especially a child whose natural talents inclined her to take things apart with as much ease as a Samurai hacking his way through origami...

Twenty-Three minutes (and a 10 kilometer sprint) later:

Nabiki was (metaphorically speaking) on fire, her movements fluid, well-timed and coordinated with power. She synchronized each attack with her husband's own potent offensive and combined their efforts to drive their foe on the defensive, holding him back and preventing him from mounting an effective retaliation.

From a performance level the fight seemed to be going quite well, and it was largely due to bonding her efforts to that of Sharil, the water elemental, whose nature was inherently anathema to that of the fire-lord known simply as Reka. Her motions seemed to daunt and thwart him expressly as she fought like never before against this ageless being of pure elemental fury, landing blow after blow against him while melting out of the way of his own attempts to nail her as though her body were primordial liquid rather than solid flesh and bone as she fought at a level beyond what she thought of as her "normal threshold." Her speed was also greatly enhanced and she could sense his own movements coming long in advance of their arrival.

In similar fashion Ranma was holding his own by taking up whatever slack she left him, timing his attacks to compliment her own so that Reka was further kept off balance and prevented from mounting an effective defense to their two-pronged maneuvers. Whereas Nabiki's motions were being augmented by those of Sharil, Ranma was employing the unified powers of Karina and Sobriel while leaving Nagisha and Latisha in reserve, their natures falling falling thusly in the province of the enemy and thus only of value in a strictly defensive aspect.

With the contrasting elements of Air and Void at his disposal Ranma could alter wind pressure and buffet the Lord Reka with a continuous barrage of concussive bursts that further disoriented the Eluini and prevented him from focusing the full range of his concentration against his nettlesome opponents. Coupled with this was Ranma's ability to defy the pull of gravity and take the battle to the air where he had an immediate advantage. That further cleared the way for Nabiki to attack from the ground while her husband held the high ground and could rain down his assaults on Lord Reka at his leisure.

As she came at their enemy like an uprushing tide against the land it struck Nabiki that this was exactly what it must have felt like to be Madam Lao during one of their encounters. It had long daunted Nabiki to acknowledge the superiority of the renegade Amazon's fighting techniques, and in the back of her mind she had long been formulating a counter-measure to use should they ever cross paths again, movements intended to counter-balance the water-based attack style that Lao used in all of her battles. But now she had a taste of what it felt like to use the powers at the disposal of her nominal enemy and it left her marveling at the thrill with which she could move with elemental augmentation, and the intuitive hints on how to use this power that were supplied to her by Sharil via her unconscious.

Yet still for all the fact that she and Ranma were scoring frightfully against their foe, it nonetheless shook her newfound confidence to realize how little of an effect that they were actually making. Reka took punches and kicks to the head, face and body that-by all rights-should have been taking more of a toll than was apparent...but Reka shook the worst of it off with an ease that belied their best efforts, and then came back snarling at them with movements of his own that were not slowed by fatigue or exhaustion. If anything he seemed to be getting stronger the longer the fight continued, to say nothing of wilder and angrier, as if the effrontery to his ego were causing him to reach down and tap into his inexhaustible reserves of resolve and resolution.

With a savage burst of power he suddenly drove the two of them back on their heels as a globe of crimson energy engulfed him, holding steady for a moment or two longer before dissolving away once again, revealing the Lord Reka in all his smoldering fury, untouched and unharmed by the flames and very much able to continue with this battle.

"You are more skilled than I expected," he declared while making a gesture, "But it is still not enough to seriously impress me!"

All at once the air around the Saotomes became heavy, and their legs grew inexplicably weak as their bodies felt weighted down and it became hard to draw air into their lungs. Both Nabiki and a suddenly-ground-bound Ranma were driven to their knees, held there by an invisible curtain that weighted upon their shoulders and made it feel as though they were immersed under deep water.

In the back of his mind Ranma heard Latisha grow, **No fair! You are increasing the field of gravity in the area five fold, father! Normal humans are not designed to withstand that!**

"What has fairness to do with a fight, Daughter?" Reka asked, "I play to win, and I will not be defeated by the likes of this common riff-raff."

Nabiki fought to keep from being pressed further down into the tarmac, but despite the difficulty that she had just moving her lips she managed to grate out, "S-S-So much...for your promise...to fight even..."

"I made you the offer to fight upon your level, Woman, and you rejected it outright," Reka replied, "Blame yourself for seriously underestimating what a grand and generous gesture I had made to you, and for thinking that your paltry few years could compete with my millennia of accumulated knowledge in the art of combat."

Having no choice but to tap into Nagisha for her reserves, Ranma managed to say, "What the hell do you want from us? We're giving it everything we've got but you can't expect us to win as long as you keep changing the rules of this battle!"

"Quite so," Reka said almost reasonably, "But I wanted to give you this much of a chance to see if you could fully surpass your limits and do battle with me on a level that I would find competitive. True you have impressed me with your ability to augment your skills and play against my areas of weakness, but it will take far more than that to convince me that you are worthy of meeting the impending crisis. As good as you are now it will take far better than this to challenge your real enemies who would eagerly chew you up and spit you out for breakfast."

Nabiki could taste blood in her mouth and worried that she was about to suffer internal damage...when all of a sudden the pain and pressure eased throughout her system. She was still held down by the crushing weight of an earthly pull but her body was no longer impaired, nor did she feel pain as she belatedly realized that Sharil had acted once again on her behalf, transmuting her body from flesh into a type of fluid matrix.

**Gravity doesn't hurt water because it's incompressible, Mistress,** she heard the Undine voice into her mind like rippling currents of thought, "Strike now and show that arrogant creep just what you can do when you cut loose!**

A spell formed in her mind, and without needing to be told so, Nabiki recognized its source as again being from the slaver-pirate. As much as she was loathe to use anything that belonged to her resented adversary, she nonetheless had a greater menace to deal with here, and so she responded to Sharil's prompting by immediately channeling her Chi through her left hand, and before her very eyes a magical pattern took shape, briefly flaring to life with phosphorescent glory.

All at once the ground underneath them began to shift and distort, and then turn to quicksand in an instant, so suddenly that Reka was caught off guard by the maneuver and found himself being sucked into the earth while Ranma was held aloft by Nagisha, who formed a solidifying counter-spell, even as Sharil kept Nabiki afloat over the muddy surface of what had formerly been rock and gravel.

Ranma blinked, realizing that his elementals had somehow coordinated that attack between them without tipping their hand to either their Mistress/Master or the domineering Reka. For a moment they had peace and took advantage of this to breathe free clean air without the pressure upon their lungs bearing down to harm them. He quickly spared a glance to his wife and was reassured to see Nabiki look back with equal amounts of relief and exhaustion. Clearly this battle at taxed them both beyond their limits, but they had the momentary satisfaction of coming out on top in the frey...

A feeling that lasted only a few seconds...and then the ground burst upwards and formed a geyser of molten lava.

Reka emerged from the ground like a glowering figure of penultimate menace, and with deceptive calm he declared, "Do you know what happens when you mix Fire with Earth? Allow me to demonstrate on you..."

And with that the liquid rock rose up and formed two towering pillars of churning molten matter, so intensely hot that it compelled Nabiki and Ranma to wince and glance away, certain that no power within their own arsenals yet remained to withstand the potency of this new attack form, especially given how tapped out they were even on the elemental level.

**It's too much!** Sharil mentally cried out, **I can't summon near enough moisture to deal with a thing like that if it hits us!**

"Ranchan?" Nabiki grated, filled with exhaustion that prevented her from rising back to her feet.

"No good," her husband replied, "Nagisha can't counter that, and Latisha's no where near as powerful as her old man. Maybe Sobriel and Karina...if they combine powers..."

**No good, Master,** the Void elemental projected, loud enough to be percieved by Nabiki through her own elemental connection, **Maybe if we were both in top form, but...we've been going all out for several minutes now, and that guy ain't even winded!?**

**The Daokan have an almost connection to their elemental planes of affinity,** Karina supplied, **He can tap into the realms of Fire and Earth to replenish his reserves as fast as he expends them, and he has thousands of years more experience in using his abilities, so there's no way to out-power him, let alone block this attack if he really means to let us have it!**

"Terrific," Ranma turned to his wife with a hopeful look and said, "Nabiki?"

He was counting on her resourcefulness to come up with a plan, but one look at the pensive expression in her face and concern in her eyes and he knew that she was as stymied as he was to come up with a plan of defence here. Nabiki was curling her lip as she winced from the sheer heat generated by the towering pillars of molten flame that were jetting up before them, and it took very little imagination to consider what even a touch of that lava would do to human flesh to make her cringe inwardly in dread of the next few seconds.

"Impressed?" Reka smiled as he balanced these lava geysers with an ease that bordered on contemptful, "This is nothing! True power remains beyond the limited grasp of your feeble imagination. All you can measure are its symptoms and effects without grasping the fundamentals. Here, have a taste of what it means to stand athwart the challenge of a true elemental master!"

As the lava started to arc and bend down towards the cringing mortals who lay beneath it, off to the sidelines the one named Ranko reached for her necklace and said, "I've gotta do something-I gotta stop him!"

"I'm with you on that, Mistress," said her ever-faithful companion Pokegirl, Cheshire, "Only...how? Even your hammer attack won't stop that!"

"Too late," Lenore said fatalistically, "No time to dodge, and they don't even have the strength to avoid it."

Indeed, Ranma and Nabiki were far too weakened by their ordeal to mount an effective escape from the lava as it threatened to consume them. Nabiki could not even manage a good Temporal Fugue evasion, nor summon enough energy for a decent Mako Takabishi, while Ranma was in hardly any better shape with his elemental allies straining at the bit to combine their energies effectively to ward off an attack that would incinerate mere flesh in a matter of seconds.

But the lava never reached its targets, for all at once a figure stood between the Saotomes and certain doom, a calm and composed figure whose upraised hands could summon power unlike anything that either husband or sex-swapping wife could manage at their best, and as this telekinetic field held firm before the tons of burning liquid rock that rained down upon it this umbrella-like shield held firm, deflecting the tide and causing it to spill harmlessly in a circle all around them.

"What?" Reka exclaimed, clearly surprised by this timely intrusion.

Kasumi calmly lowered her arms as her force bubble dissolved, spreading what was left of the molten lava further away from her presence as she turned to regard Reka with an air of calm deliberation, her aura of inviobility so palpable that it could count as a form of armor.

"Oneechan?" Ranma gasped, as surprised as his wife at the sudden appearance of his adoptive big sister.

"K-Kasumi?" Nabiki marveled.

"You shall not harm either my sister or my brother, Lord Reka," Kasumi declared with a quiety intensity that belied her tranquil demeanor, "Though I know you are powerful if you persist on attacking them then you will have me for your opponent."

"So," Reka scowled, "You are back...and long before I had anticipated your return. It would seem my foolishly sentimental brother has acted to counter my temporal prism...with my meddlesome niece taking a hand in your liberation."

"Do nay fault me for what I do, Uncle," said the rainbow haired Thelendra as she stepped out into the open and assumed a meaningful stance at the side of Kasumi, "But heed this counsel and be wary...mine beloved speaks true and will deter any further mischief on thine part, for I have armored her with knowledge of the Eluini and she be more than capable of given even thee cause to reconsider this path of folly."

"Nani?" Ranma asked, his eyes going round as he sized up this statuesque and well-endowed foreign beauty before them, unintentionally earning a cross look from his wife and several grumbled complaints from his host of elementals.

"Folly is it, Niece?" Reka sniffed, "You of all who know what is at stake here? Can you tell me truthfully that letting them stand as they are against the threat that is being posed against them would be a greater mercy than a swift demise by my hands?"

"Thine crude attempts to goad them into harnessing their potential be as ill-conceived as it be reckless and untimely!" Thelendra shot back, "And of what use be their potential if they be dead at thine hands? Quite useless to slay a champion merely because they do not measure up to thine lofty standards, far better to allow them to learn and grow in their own time by their own methods!"

"Um...excuse me?" Nabiki raised a finger, "Not to interrupt this family tete-a-tete...but...would you mind explaining who you are and just what sort of connection you have to my sister, Kasumi?"

"Ah...Imoutochan," Kasumi hesitated slightly, glancing shyly towards Thelendra then feeling her cheeks flush with unexpected color.

"She be mine own true heart," Thelendra replied with far less hesitation in her voice as she regarded first Kasumi and then the watchful pair that were studying them both with owlish expressions, "One whom I hath known in other prior lifetimes as she who makes mine long existence bearable, the one whom I be fated to meet again and again in different incarnations, mine soul-mate and hearth, my own one true beloved."

"Her name is Thelendra the Dreamweaver, Imoutochan," Kasumi said demurely, "And...yes...it's true...she's someone very important and special to me whom I just met the other day...or met again...oh my. It's rather a bit...complicated."

"I'll bet," Ranma responded, still not fully aware of the degree of female resentment that was being presently turned in his direction.

"Let me see if I get this straight," Nabiki said tentatively, staring at the taller gaijin woman with an uncomfortable awareness (her male side having already supplied ample comment to that effect) of the stunning charms and substantial endowments that highlighted her feminine beauty, "You mean to say that you're Oneechan's...girlfriend?"

"In a manner of fashion, aye," Thelendra answered, "Though in prior incarnations I be more than that...far more to mine beloved. And she called me wife on more than one occasion..."

"Nani?!" Ranma responded with all the aplomb of a man who had just discovered such a thing about his own nominally mind-mannered and well-behaved adoptive sister.

Nabiki turned a look of understated drollness towards Kasumi and said, "You've been holding back on me, Oneechan. Since when do you keep something like that under wraps from me?"

"Ah...well...there really hasn't been a good time to inform you, Nabiki," Kasumi fumbled for a ready explanation of her behavior and found herself at a loss for words, "Oh my..."

"But...what about Frank-san?" Ranma asked.

"I...ah...well...that is a good question," Kasumi replired, curling her bottom lip beneath her fangs as she considered forming a good enough answer.

"Fascinating," Reka said sarcastically, "But do you think we might return our focus to something else besides these maudling theatrics?"

"Thou art a fine one to mention theatrics, Uncle," Thelendra rounded upon the man with a show of real temper, "Challenging these mortals, attempting to impress them with how superior your own elemental abilities may be, upbraiding them for being mortals and nay Eluini! A fine example thou dost set with thine antics!"

"Have a care, Niece," Reka cautioned, "I am prepared to forgive much for the sake of your father, my brother, but do not think that you are fit to lecture your elders in the ways of Power. Oracle you may be, but compared with me you are but a stumbling infant..."

"Don't talk to her that way," Kasumi scowled, "You...rude person you! After what you've done you deserve to be punished."

"And who is going to do that, pray tell?" Reka sneered, "You? A novice demine of two contradictory natures?"

"I am only what I am," Kasumi replied, "But if you are a superior being then you shouldn't have to throw your weight around and act like such a bully. Your brother has more style and much better manners than you do, and for all his faults I much prefer his company to yours. At least he knows how to act like a mature and reasonable gentleman around a lady."

"Mature and reasonable? Anri?" Reka scoffed, "My clownish sibling with the weak sentimentality to believe that all mortals deserve pity and forgiveness for being weak, petty and selfish to one another? You must be joking!"

"Mine father be nay weak and sentimental!" Thlendra called back in quiet outrage, "And he is your superior in power, wisdom and style! You know as well as I do that you are the one who must bow to him in terms of your potential!"

"I concede nothing but my contempt of his soft-headed bleeding heart methods for trying to educate and enlighten the swine who are so much beneath him," Reka answered, "If it were up to me they would all burn like chaff, separating the wheat from the grain stocks so that only the strong and capable would be allowed to go on breathing!"

"But it is not up to you, is it, Lord Reka?" Kasumi asked, "The Daokan are not allowed to interfere in human destiny beyond the point where your destiny as guardians will permit you."

"Don't lecture to me about limits," Reka snapped, and with typical impulsiveness raised a hand to summon another flame spell, which same crashed down against the re-erected mental barrier thrown hastily back up by Kasumi.

"This is pointless," Kasumi calmly insisted after deflecting three such attacks on her defenses, "My powers may not compete on the same scale with yours, but you cannot chastise me with such weak efforts."

"You are right," Reka decided, then cupped his hands and formed a ball of intensely compacted energy before saying, "Let us try something a bit more on your level, shall we?"

This time the force of the assault took Kasumi by surprise, and she literally staggered back and winced as the fore-globe detonated against her mental shields. The second time she had to apply real effort to halt the energy globe and deflect it, and in doing so she was driven back by several meters, her bare feet tearing into what was left of the asphalt while she strained with both hands to absorb and deflect the potent force-globe.

"I will give you this," Reka noted, "Your abilities are infinitely more formidable than either of your kin, but against me such resistance is pointless, as I will now demonstrate!"

Once again he compressed a ball of energy between his hands, this one far more compacted than the others, and then he hurled it towards Kasumi, who could feel its potency before it got there and knew instinctively that it was far too much even for her to handle.

But before it got full way Thelendra was suddenly there before her, reaching out with both hands to catch the energy ball before it could get right past her. It exploded almost within her hands as she attempted to deflected it away, and the intense energy staggered even her, overloading her nervous system and causing her to scream out with intense pain electrifying her entire nervous system.

"Thelendra-chan!" Kasumi cried, catching her friend up in her arms and easing her back as the Eluini recoiled in pain from her own exertions.

"Foolish niece," Reka said crossly, "Hurling your body into the path of my flames in order to spare your lover? How drolly melodramatic. Fortunate for you that I did not exert myself to greater effect or else I'd be forced to make apologies to my brother...but next time do not take sides against me or I shall be compelled to teach you proper manners."

"You-MONSTER!" Kasumi suddenly cried, eyes blazing with crimson fires of an entirely different type, and as she set the groaning Thelendra gently to one side she rose up again, tall and pale and shimmering with an unexpected aura of raw fury.

Nabiki and Ranma both stared in appalled silence as they felt more than saw the transformation about the gentle-mannered Kasumi, recalling all too vividly a similar event from over a week past when they beloved "Oneechan" had nearly lost it. One moment she was there, the next she lurched for Reka with a speed that took even the Daokan lord by surprise, and all at once she bent him over backwards and brought her fangs into play, biting deep and drawing his essence before the Lord of Earth and Fire could react in his own self-defense.

The instant following this Kasumi abruptly let him go and recoiled away in agonized horror, her very blood on fire as she screamed at the raw essence of fury that she had drawn from her nominal victim, too much knowledge and power to be properly assimilated all at once as her body glowed with excess Chi and she staggered to her knees, her face transfixed with horror.

"MY LADY!" Lenore was suddenly there at the side of her Goddess, but balked at actually touching her as her vampiric senses screamed alarm at the peril of just being this near to her presence.

"Oneechan!" both Nabiki and Ranma called out simultaneously, only to pause when they recognized a third voice joining theirs with a fearful cry of "Auntie!"

Ranko became aware of their glances turned in her direction and said, "Ooopss..." wishing fervently at that moment that she possessed the same ability as Cheshire to disappear by camouflaging her appearance.

"You...you bit me!" Reka staggered and felt his own neck, staring in disbelief at the crimson that graced his fingers, "You...you whore! How dare you! How dare you profane my very presence with the taint of your contaminated bloodline!"

"Oh, give it a rest will you, dear brother?" Anri asked, surprising everyone by manifesting a short distance away as though himself stepping out from partial concealment, "Honestly, you're such a drama queen it's a wonder you can stand to lurk in your own shadow."

"Anri?" Reka reacted as if poked and immediately assumed a defensive stance as he confronted the fair-haired counterpart who stood beside him, "So...you finally make your presence known, dear brother."

"Thanks to your little display here," Anri replied without making any threatening moves or altering his easy-going stance, "And thank you very much for taking matters into your own hands once again by recklessly bulling ahead, just like you always do, and risking premature of our presence to the enemy. Some day you really must research the word discretion..."

"Don't toy with me, dear brother," Reka snapped, "If you wish to upbraid me for my challenging your precious mortal pawns to my baptism of blood..."

"Pawns?" Nabiki reacted.

"Oh, nothing could be further from the truth here," Anri said dismissively, "You have free will to act as you would, Saotome-san. It's my brother here who would make you into pawns for his amusement. He tends to have a much lower opinion of human potential than myself, often forgetting that we began as human beings ourselves, albeit we had an edge that put us outside the definitions of ordinary mortals."

"Don't apologize for their inferiority, Anri," Reka retorted, "And if you are going to challenge me now..."

"That is not my way, as you well know, Reka-kun," Anri mildly rebuffed the accusation, "I leave acting in spite and malice to you and your unevolved ways. I much prefer taking the high road of principle and maintaining the dignity that befits a teacher of enlightenment, who in most respects is still also a student."

"In other words you maintain anger to be an emotion that is beneath you." Reka sneered, "Worthy of lesser sorts, like these fools that you insist upon defending."

"Perhaps," Anri's tone altered subtly and gained an edge as he fixed a hard stare upon the redheaded man before him, "But I am rather a bit annoyed with you for having hurt my daughter, who in no way was deserving of such chastisement. You owe her and me a great apology for that, Reka, and I intend to see this payment collected."

"Or what?" Reka scoffed, "You'll punish me for my transgressions."

"Oh no," Anri nodded and glanced beyond Reka's shoulder, "But he will."

"He...?" Reka suddenly went pale as he sensed the looming shadow hovering behind him, and before he could completely turn around a fist landed a solid blow against his chin and sent him tumbling into the asphalt as though smashed into the ground by a hammer wielded by a giant.

Said giant stood glowering at the now-unconscious Eluini before turning a hard look Anri's way, and then slowly turning to sweep his gaze over the rest of those who were present-which included a recovering Thelendra-who gasped in Kasumi's arms and said, "Uncle...Udan?"

Both Ranma and Nabiki were struck by the stunning resemblance in features and form that could be marked in this dour-faced new arrival, who was easily as tall as either of his two brothers yet who seemed somehow to have the bearing of a colossus. Dressed all in dark blue shirt and trousers he had the bearing of a lord surveying his dominion. Green eyes seemed to probe them to the depths of their very being before moving on to the next object of study...and then with ponderous regard he turned to mark the presence of two ladies at his side...one of whom had a quietly potent aura of serenity about her, while the young girl at her side seemed far less certain and composed, studying everything with a look of open wonder.

"Brother Udan...sister Ulsa," Anri acknowledged them with a slight nod of his head, then he turned to the others and said, "Saotome Ranma and Nabiki...may I present to you the rest of my family, the Lords of Air, Water and Earth...and the ever-delightful Lady Amalthea, who is kin to one whom you may well remember."

The belated sense of recognition hit the Saotomes like a physical blow, prompting Ranma to say, "Hey...doesn't she look kinda like that David creep?"

"There's...definitely a familiar resemblance," Nabiki conceded, feeling more than mildly disturbed to mark the tell-tale clues of pointed ears, white hair, gold eyes and mildly Vixen-like features.

Anri turned his attention to the side and said, "Lady Lenore...very good to meet with you once again. And Saotome Ranko...my regards to you and your companion, the Lady Cheshire."

"Hah?" Ranma said as he saw the one redhead dressed in a Cheosang color abruptly, "Saotome...Ranko?"

"Ah...hi," Ranko nervously waved back, "Nice to meet you...cousins."

"Cousins?" Nabiki stated blandly, "Mind telling me why you look so much like my friend Keiko?"

"Can't imagine," Ranko shrugged while feigning innocence, "Must be a coincidence...I've never even met the lady."

All at once Cheshire materialized at the side of the redhead, "Mistress...I think maybe we should be going. Your mom and dad...our dad...will be worrying about us if we tarry here any longer..."

"Oh my," Kasumi said as she helped Thelendra back to her feet, "Do you mean to say that the two of you share the same father? And...why do you so much resemble my little sister?"

"Well, I...MMMPH!" Cheshire gasped as Ranko suddenly put a hand over her mouth as though to muzzle her.

"It's kinda a long story," the redhead hastily assured, "You wouldn't want to hear it. Well, nice meeting you, but we have to..."

"Oh no, please stay," Anri averred, "Your presence here is...more or less...still necessary."

Ranko flinched as though something she thought was about to happen mysteriously failed to take place, which left her glancing down at the pendant that hung by a chain around her neck between her breasts, then she said, "Hey...what gives? Are you keeping me here against my will, Old man?"

"Oh, by no means," Anri assured, "It's my sister who insists upon your staying, and I always do whatever I can to please my little sister."

The blonde haired woman in the shawl and faded jeans just smiled, looking for all the world as if things were going as she wished them to be even while seeming to evoke a sense of otherworldly detachment.

Not so the dour man at her side, who only glared at Ranko and somehow conveyed the thought, "You will stay," yet not a word he uttered, leaving Ranko to wonder if there were some subtle form of telepathy at work here, that that her time-transcending Amulet could perceive on the level of the sub-conscious.

"Ms. Tendo," Anri now addressed himself towards Kasumi and bowed his head with sincere contrition, "Oh behalf of your family please accept my humble apologies and assurances that my brother's actions were not the will of the Daokan but rather his own impertinent designs for testing the abilities and qualifications of your sister and adoptive brother. His folly was not of our choosing and in the future he will be more respectful and mindful of your rights to sanctity. That being said, I would on his behalf assure you that his actions-however reckless-were motivated by the noblest of intentions."

"Oh my," Kasumi said, surprised beyond words that such a powerful and important being as this would be humbling himself before her in such a duly contrite manner.

Nabiki, however, was far less sanguine about the issue than that, "Mind explaining that part to the rest of us? How exactly does what this guy did to Ranchan and me count as noble?"

"Mine uncle didst construe to provoke thee to tap into and explore thine hidden potential, "Thelendra answered, "He knows that thee wilt need all that thee hast and more in order to face the danger that be pending..."

"You know, I'm really sick and tired of hearing that," Ranma complained, "What the hell is this big menace you keep going on about? And why do Nabchan and me have to get stronger? What the hell's wrong about our level of fighting?"

"That be the trillion yen question, be it nay?" Thelendra asked, turning to Kasumi and asking, "Wilt thou explain for me, beloved? Thou hast a closer rapport with these, thy kinsfolk, than do I or mine father."

"Well...I could try and explain as best I know how," Kasumi reluctantly conceded.

"Splendid," Anri smiled, casting a sly-glance off to the sidelines before turning back and regarding the others, "But not now and not here. We're much too exposed to prying eyes as it is, and if Reka hasn't given the whole game away by now, then it would be better to convene this out of sight and mind of both mortals and beings of power."

All at once the walls of flame faded out and vanished altogether, leaving only the night canopy of stars that showed it was the late of the evening, only that too faded to gray, leaving them standing among an unearthly terrain with shimmering curtains of grayish light all around them, which definitely signified their crossing over to a different dimension.

Beyond the circle where this happened the priestesses known as Snake detached herself from concealment, surveying the now-empty battlefield and noting that the streets had been repaired as though nothing untowards had happened there in the first place. No signs of volcanism, no ruptured displays, crushed or melted cars, nor shattered buildings to mark the occasion. It was as if someone had taken a giant eraser and simply crossed out everything that had been damaged, then drew it back into the scene with perfect detail so that it might seem as though nothing had ever happened. The perfect cover-up, and one that she was all too familiar with, having witnessed the same thing on many occasions at the side of her beloved Astarte.

"Sssso," she softly hissed in a voice that carried no further in the night than the length of her shadow, "All four here at onccce...how very interesssting...and ominousss for the people of thessse isles."

She thought a moment on the significance of everything that she had witnessed in the past few minutes then smiled ironically to herself, formulating a plan of her own that had more than a hint of real mischief behind it. Possibilities meant opportunities for those who knew how to exploit them, and with the tensions that she and her teammates were facing it seemed that a little work out was exactly what the Sensei ordered...especially given the levels of talent that she had just witnessed on display here. Yes indeed...something stirring that might offer rare challenge to herself and her fellow Furies.

She withdrew from the now-vacant street and headed back towards the skyscraper apartments where she and her allies were presenting staying, hoping that Astarte and Illyra had not progressed too far in their nocturnal intimacies as she wanted very much to be in the middle of their acrobatics. She had a lot of pent up energy to work off this evening, and the enthusiasm to make it worthwhile for her lovers, all the while thinking speculative thoughts about this odd pair who went by the name of Saotome...and wondering if there were any connection between them and a certain clan of martial artists of her acquaintance who studied under the tutorage of a notorious pervert by the name of Happosai.

If that proved to be the case...the opportunities indeed...for a bit of long-delayed payback, and some harmless spot on the sly as the current wielder of the Snake Totem-one of the last of the so-called Immortals of the Martial Arts-had a bit of fun at the expense of an old nemesis, to say nothing of testing out a promising pair of up-and-coming protégés of the Anything Goes Ryu to see if they were worthy of their lengthy pedigree...in which case she would make some fun facts known to them in regards to the personal histories of the clans known to legend as Tendo and Saotome.

With such merry thoughts indeed, the lithesome Cambodian slipped off into the night, and with her passage the darkened street corner was truly silent and abandoned with even the wind whispering of a dull and uneventful evening...

Continued.

Comments/Criticisms/Catechisms For Dummies: shadowmane

Or: shadowmane9849

Next up Anri takes the gang on a tour through history to finally explain what is going on and where events are leading for Japan and Earth in the very near future. Expect more dramatic revelations on the nature of Revelation itself when we return for: "Objects of Lesson," or, "How to Build a False Religion in Ten Easy Lessons." Be there!

Special Editor's Note Here:

(Part of the upcoming section will be an unabashed slap in the face at two authors by the name of Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins-the co-authors of the "Left Behind" series, who I think would get a very cold place in Hell if Jesus were truly all as Judgmental as they make him out to be...)

/pre 


	85. Chapter 85

preDnabiki174

Nabiki 1/2

"A Very Scary Thought"

by Jim Robert Bader

(Inspired by the works of Rumiko Takahashi Others,  
with concepts and characters created by fellow fanfic writers Wade Tritschler, DB Sommers, Nicole Manders, Andrew Greaves, Bill Guiroff and countless others, including "Buffy"  
creator Joss Whedon; with special thanks to my good pal Shiva for his editing and handling of this series.)

(Certain other characters and concepts are of my own innovation, including my interpretation of the Monster of Mary Shelly's novel, the Furies, Trudy, Takaharis Angelique d'Anjou, Anri and the Daokan, Thelendra the Dream Weaver and various other guest stars appearing in this portion of the Nabiki 1/2 series...)

Chapter Sixty-Six(and one Sixth).

Episode One-Hundred-Seventy-Four.

The World According to Anri.

EDITORIAL NOTICE:  
THE OPINIONS AND ARGUMENTS RAISED HERE ARE NOT THE OFFICIAL POSITION OF THE NABIKI 1/2 GROUP AND ARE SOLELY THE EXPRESSIONS OF THE CHARACTERS WITHIN THIS SERIES. FAILURE TO AGREE WITH THE FOLLOWING WILL NOT RESULT IN EITHER TEMPORAL NOR SPIRITUAL PERSECUTION AND YOU ARE FREE TO DISAGREE AT YOUR LIBERTY WITHOUT ADVERSE RECRIMINATIONS. NO ONE WILL BE CAST INTO HELL OR DENIED ACCESS TO HEAVEN IF THEY OBJECT TO THE STATEMENTS BY THE DAOKAN IN REGARDS TO RELIGIOUS MATTERS AND/OR THE HISTORICAL CONTEXT IN WHICH THEY ARE PRESENTED...

(At least I think so, but otherwise, take it up with Anri...)

"Well, there is no doubt about it, my grandfather definitely was here, and so were his brothers."

"His brothers?" Cologne asked as she extended her own senses to peer past the illusion of normality that had been cast over the recent battle setting, "They were here too?"

"Most definitely," Siren affirmed coolly, "Grand uncles Reka and Udan...and Ulsa as well if I make the signs out rightly since this repair job bears her signature of reality manipulation."

"You can't be serious," Cologne said in dismay as he regarded her blonde companion, "All four of the Daokan in one place...at the same time?"

"I know," Siren replied as she studied the seemingly innocent looking streets with the scrutiny of an Archmage, "And I don't mind telling you, Kho-chan, that the thought of it sets even my goose bumps on end. Care to feel them?"

Cologne frowned as her childhood compatriot extended a bared arm in her direction, but rather than overtly snub the blatant pass, she instead said, "What does it signify? Why are they here, and what has drawn them?"

"Total disaster most likely," Siren replied with a shrug, "You know how my grand Uncles work, and my grandfather...well, he's drawn to areas of intense crisis. It's part and parcel to his nature."

Cologne shivered with something other than the cold as she swallowed the bile of enuii then said, "Whatever could cause the Four Lords of the Elements to convene in one place must be an earth-shattering event of cosmic significance."

"Tell me what I don't already know," Siren replied, then paused as she added, "Odd...I am picking up residual traces of an entirely different sort...temporal in nature, as if one who exists outside of our reality had been here ever-so-briefly. It is a sense that I am familiar with, having encountered it before on more than one occasion."

"Someone other than the Daokan was involved here?" Cologne fathomed at once, then after a thoughtful pause for her own sake she added, "And one less adept at covering their trail I would imagine."

"Quite," Siren agreed, "I would construe that the events that have drawn the Daokan are of a sufficiently grave nature that they have also drawn the attention of another agency that is deeply involved with events affecting the flow of time in the reality matrix. If it were the Gods I would not have so easy a time making out the recent passage of this individual, which leads me to suggest an amateur who is still recently new to time field manipulation. Odd that Lady Ulsa did not correct the flaw herself when she altered this landscape. I suspect my grand aunt deliberately left it here for us to find since she doubtlessly knew of our arrival long in advance of our following the enemy lines to this location."

"But who could it be?" Cologne mused, "Certainly not the Doctor...I would recognize the tell tale signature of his Tardis."

"Which leaves another interesting possible culprit for this visitation," Siren concluded, "The Time Patrol, quite possibly a rookie field agent."

"The Time Patrol?" Cologne blinked, "Surely you must be jesting."

"I am quite serious, Kho-chan," Siren smiled, "And my name is not Shirley."

Cologne scowled all the more, "Are matters not severely grave enough that you keep making jokes and flirting with me? Can you not for once be serious? This could well mean the end of our reality here if this many parties are convening in this location."

"I am well aware of the stakes involved here, Matriarch," Siren said coolly before turning a glance towards the night sky and adding, "And so too is another I dare suspect, one who even now-in relative terms-is sweating up even more of a fuss than the both of us put together..."

"All four of them...in one place...together?" Nabiki gasped in dismay as she stared disbelievingly at her console readings.

"Omigawdomigawdomigawd..." Ryonami murmured, "This is bad, real bad. I mean...like bad in that it almost never happened, and the last time it did on record was just before X happened in YXY."

"And Ranko's there with those guys," Ranma said grimly, "My kid with the Daokan...and me stuck here uselessly staring at a monitor when I should be out there doing my job, protecting the cosmos."

"No!" Nabiki instantly scolded, "There is no way that I would sanction that! You know if you and Lord Udan clash arms like the last time..."

"Hey, I'm a big boy, I can handle myself," Ranma insisted, "And he's the one who started it, not me!"

"I thought the Lord Udan never started anything by himself," Ryonami timidly pointed out, "He only reacts when attacked, he never starts anything on his own initiative..."

"That is his MO," Nabiki noted, "But while he never initiates anything, he never fails to finish what he starts either, and you know as well as I do that he is as nearly invincible a warrior as yourself, or Lord Shiva..."

"Leave Shiva out of this," Ranma scorned, "It's between me and that bastard! And if he does anything to harm my kid..."

"There's no reason why he would," Nabiki countered, "She's no conceivable threat to him, and he's more like to ignore Ranko-chan as a part of the background..."

"Ain't you forgetting something important here, Nabiki?" her husband challenged, "Ranko comes from a defunct timeline, one that she personally sent into limbo stasis through her own actions...an entire timeline null and void! So she's effectively an orphan that we adopted as our kid...so what if that so-called Guardian of Realities gets it into his head that she don't belong outside her home dimension? What's to stop him from sending her back, or nullifying her existence? You know he's got the power, and even Yggdrasil wouldn't stop him. Hell, he'd just have her overwritten!"

"Ah..." Nabiki fought to come up with a good counter-argument but faltered, and in her hesitation her husband read the confirmation of his worst fears, which hardened his resolve and determination.

"That's what I thought," Ranma said, turning away, "So I'm going."

"But...Ranma-kun," Ryonami argued on behalf of her mentor, "Isn't your pact with Shiva null and void if you get beaten? If you lose to Lord Bartev..."

"Yeah, it'd be over for me," Ranma grimly affirmed, "Which is why I ain't losing...not with so much at stake, and not to the likes of that stone-faced berserker!"

"Who's calling who a berserker here?" Nabiki asked, but then more seriously, "Don't do anything rash, Ranma. Start something up with Bartev the Blackguard and I may not be able to save you."

"Then you're just gonna have to come up with something to help tilt the odds in my favor," Ranma favored his wife with a sly look, "I know you've got the brains and the savvy, so I'll be counting on you to pull my bacon out of the fire just in case I am outta my league. After all-rumors to the contrary-I ain't completely stupid, and I know what I'll be facing."

"Then I'm coming with you," Nabiki started to reach for her coat, only to be halted in place by a sharp word from her husband.

"No, I need you here, 'Biki," Ranma affirmed, "You've got the resources on hand to pull any trick this side of hacking into Yggdrasil, and we're gonna need that if we're to find out what's really going on here. Something big enough to get the attention of the Daokan ain't your usual Sunday morning challenge match in the park, and I wanna know what that Otono guy has to do with all of this. After all, he tried to put the hit on your counterpart, and in my book that makes him the worst sort of bad guy."

"I...suppose Ryo-chan and I can coordinate our searches," Nabiki faltered, "But...if you are asking me to come up with a way that will allow you to defeat Lord Udan in pitched battle..."

"I got every confidence in you," Ranma smirked, "I know you're the only one who's sneaky enough to do it."

"That's a hell of a thing to say," Nabiki winced, "No pressure on my end eh? Just find the key for you to stand toe-to-toe with one of the most powerful incarnations who has ever existed, a man who commands the resources not only of Earth and Water but through Laolana has access to half the accumulated power of all of humanity at his disposal."

"Right, which is why I know you'll do it," Ranma affirmed, favoring Ryonami with a glance before adding, "Or else Ryo-chan's husband is gonna have to keep close tabs on the both of you since that's the only way you're gonna get much satisfaction in bed without me."

Nabiki bridled a bit at this sharp-tongued barb in her direction but Ryonami colored and looked away with a guilty start, muttering under her breath, "You don't have to do this, Ranma-kun...throwing your life away just to pay him back for flirting with the Boss..."

"Ryo-chan," Nabiki turned to her longtime friend with a wounded "You too?" expression.

"It ain't just because he tried to make time with my wife," Ranma said as he started towards the trasfer tubes, "I made a promise that I'd always look after and protect Ranko, and I won't back down now just because she's in the company of the Four Lords of Creation. I gave my word...that's all I gotta say about it."

And then he was gone, through the transport relays and on his way to a selected point within the timestream, which left Nabiki standing there looking somewhat numb...right up until she grabbed her ear piece and threw it after him, swearing with an angry declaration.

"Well fine!" she snarled, turning away, "The arrogant nerve of that man! Who does he think I am, Kami-sama?"

"No, but you make a passable substitute in her absence, Boss," Ryonami replied, already focusing her energies and attention upon the console monitors rather than have to meet the gaze of her beloved mentor, "Already on that Otono guy...quite a record he's got there, and not just the official report. Seems he's got his nose buried deep into all kinds of black ops stuff."

Nabiki numbly turned her gaze towards the monitors then stared, then uttered a terse word of her own upon Otono's ancestry and was at once in her seat, hands flying over the console as she put her own networking talents into play, tracing the career of a mass-murderer whose connections to even darker forces she was only just beginning to uncover...

"What the heck is this place?" Ranma asked as he and his companions stared at the darkened chamber into which they had been transported in the space of a second.

"Looks like some kind of a church to me," Nabiki said, feeling the weight of great age and smelling the mustiness of the place, which to her seemed more like a mausoleum than an actual temple, having the solemn feeling of humorless gravity oppress the very air that they were breathing.

"It is," Lenore remarked hallowly, "The Church of the Holy Sepulcher...I know because I've been here before...back when I was...human."

"And now long ago was that I wonder?" Anri mused, "But forgive my saying this, friend Lenore...to me, in spite of your semi-undead status, still appear to be quite human."

"But only in the sense that she be mortal born and still part and parcel to the firmament of reality, father," Thelendra noted, "The blending of Rakshasa talents to the Mortesian formula has that effect of blending together two worlds into a somewhat stable matrix that bears the name of Vampire."

"Oh my," Kasumi remarked with awe, "The Church of the Holy Sepulcher? You mean...in Jerusalem, built near the site once known as Golgotha?"

"The very same," Anri mused while making a point of studying his surroundings, "Been a while since I last dropped by. Could use the services of a good maid, I should think. Still has that 'Haven't lived here lately' sense that I always found so oppressive. Oh, and look over there, one of my least favorite sculptures."

Ranma, Nabiki, Kasumi, Lenore, Amalthea, Ranko and Cheshire all turned to see the object being so indicated, which was nothing less than a massive carving of a man on a crucifix wearing a crown of thorns and suffering great agony in his expression. Nabiki in particular took notice of the life-like detail that had been used to render the figure in such detail that one could easily imagine every moment of his torment as the nails in feet and hands held him erect upon the iconic instrument of his torture, almost gleefully sadistic in its depiction of its gruesome subject matter.

"Alas, poor Yorick, I knew him well..." Anri said somewhat irreverently, defying the somber mood of the place, "No wait, that's the other fellow. Well then, who do you suppose that is up on that crucifix? Sure doesn't look like anyone I know..."

"Father," Thelendra said with mild exasperation, turning to the mortals in their midst and saying, "Thou wilt have to forgive him...this be a most tender subject where it concerns mine father."

"Jesus?" Nabiki said with sardonic skepticism written plain on her features, "You're Jesus Christ returned from the heavens?"

"Jesus who?" Anri pantomimed confusion, "Never heard of the fellow. Is he some sort of telemarketing product?"

"Father," Thelendra said in a scolding tone of voice, rolling her eyes towards the vaulted ceiling as if invoking a will for patience.

"Your name was Yesus Ben Yusef," Lenore tonelessly murmured, "Born of the Tribe of Benjamin in the city of Caesarea, later educated as a Rabbi in the religious commune known as Qumran, only later a follower of your cousin, Yohan the Babtist."

"Ah," Anri smiled, "Give the lady a gold star. I see you have done your homework since last we met, Darkholme-san. That was indeed my name in a previous incarnation...oh, several lifetimes in the past, I'm afraid, but I've long since moved onto other things, and I've tried very hard to put this particular past behind me."

"That was you?" Ranma asked, nodding to Anri while pointing at the statue.

"In a manner of speaking," Anri answered, then added, "And...no, that is just a likeness of me ias imagined by others in regards to that aforementioned earlier incarnation. I'm sorry about the crudity of it all, but then again, I never did pose for the original likeness."

"But still...you're Jesus?" Nabiki asked, maintaining her skeptical disposition.

"Who?" Anri asked, then sighed, "Actually, as lady Lenore has just mentioned, the name was Yesus Ben Yussef, but I've already been all over all of that with your sister. As for the fellow named Jesus Christ...never heard of him. In fact, the plain truth is...he never existed.'

"Come again?" Ranko asked with a non-plussed expression.

"Love to, but my wife might object," Anri quipped, "Actually what I mean to say is that the figure who went by that name was nothing more than a fictional character in a series of short novels that were penned in my name by people who never knew me directly. Never got a dime for the royalties of it either, though I'm told it was-and is still-a best seller."

"Riiiiight," Nabiki scoffed, "And I'm the Dali Lama."

"Really?" Anri asked as if taking her seriously, "In what incarnation?"

"Er...she really doesn't mean...um...do you?" Ranma asked of his wife, who favored him with a particularly sour-chiding expression.

"So tell me, Saotome-san," Anri said as he addressed himself to Nabiki, "Do you have any objections to my claims? If so, then answer me this: what goes through your mind when you think of the word, 'Christian?'"

"Some guy getting tortured to death for the fate of all humanity," Nabiki shrugged, "I've never really paid it all that much attention. Just sounded kind of weird, like a huge scam designed to con lots of people out of their money."

"Ah," Anri smiled, "So speaks the voice of wisdom. And indeed, can you deny that what you think about when you hear the name 'Jesus' being mention that THIS doesn't first pass through your mind?" he asked as he indicated the statue of the crucifixion.

"I know that I have always thought this way myself, Sensei," Kasumi replied, "I mean...I want to think of you as a kind and generous people who healed the poor and the sick and was kind to children...but...I keep having images in my mind of all the bad stuff that's been done by those who claim to follow you."

"Sensei?" Nabiki arched an eyebrow, glancing from her sister to the fair-haired gaijin in question without giving an inch of her reserved demeanor.

"Well now," Anri folded his arms, spread his feet wide and gave them all his most winning expression, "Here is the chance of a lifetime for the lot of you, something that scholars and sages throughout the ages have only dreamed about and would give their left testicle to have. Here I am making to you all a most grand and generous gesture in return payment for all that you have suffered through this day well into evening. And do you know what it is, Saotome-san?"

"No," Nabiki replied, "What?"

"The chance of learning the truth about what is going on here," Anri returned with a knowing smile, "Some serious straight answers to the questions that you have been posing all day, and straight from the source itself, the Daokan, who are collectively attuned to the souls of all humanity, which is the next best thing to being all-seeing and all knowing."

"The truth?" Ranma gulped, ignoring the side-glance his wife turned towards him, "But...um...do you think we can handle that?"

"Um...what Pop means is...are you sure we're all ready to listen?" Ranko asked.

"Pop?" Lenore repeated.

"Ah..." Ranko winced, "I mean the old man...ah-young guy I just met, my cousin..."

"I'm afraid that-ready or not-you are going to have to hear our side of things right now," Anri said, "After all, it's the very least that we owe to you for the serious inconvenience that you've been put through, and not just at the hands of brother Reka."

"The truth, huh?" Nabiki said dubiously, "Well...maybe your version of things, which I guess is more than we've been getting through other sources...so far."

"Um...excuse me, Lord?" Amalthea hesitantly asked, "Are you saying that the depiction of you that is up there is fictional? I mean...I have heard from my former Mistress that the truth would astonish the world if it were to be told directly. You are saying, then, that you were the person who inspired the legends that lead to the founding of one of the world's great religions?"

"A great religion?" Anri paused to consider the point, "I wouldn't go that far...but I would confess that my words and deeds did lead, in partial form, to the formation of the Great Heresy that ironically bears my pseudonym, and that it has lead in turn to such mischief that fully one third of humanity is convinced that I was that person," he nodded, indicating the statue.

"In other words you founded the thing...but it's not what you wanted it to be?" Nabiki asked, "Forgive my dubiousness, but...you don't exactly strike me as the kind of guy who would found a religion based on personal salvation."

"But It's true, Nabiki," Kasumi informed her sister, "I witnessed it first hand...from the last supper to the crucifixion to his supposed resurrection, and then the eventual misdirection of the movement he lead into the form that it took when it became the dominant faith of the Roman empire."

"You saw it, Oneechan?" Ranma asked.

"Courtesy of brother Reka," Anri glanced down at where the redheaded man still lay prone upon the floor of the mosaically inlaid temple, "I suppose he thought it would be the shortest way to bring you up to speed concerning how things happened. In all honesty I'm rather depressed having to relive that particular chapter of my life again and again since everything that I sought to do went so very wrong, exactly as brother Reka warned me would happen."

"Warned you, Lord Anri?" Cheshire asked.

"Two thousand years ago, give or take a few decades," Anri sighed, "I was meditating in the desert, coming to terms with my resolve to attempt something that I thought to be rather novel. Reka had gotten word of what I was about and tried to talk me out of what I was attempting to do then...and on a certain level I wish that I'd had heeded the wisdom of his advise. At the time, though-in my arrogance-I thought that I knew better."

"You mean...he was Satan challenging you in the wilderness?" Ranko asked.

"In a manner of speaking," Anri replied, "Though the real Satan would be greatly offended at the analogy since he had little to do with the events as so depicted."

Nabiki took notice of the silent pair of the blonde haired woman and dark haired man (whose resemblance to both Anri and Reka was all the more striking in the light of the oil lamps that illuminated the church this late in the early evening). With a nod their way she asked, "So what's the story with them? Are those two here to play tourists?"

"Hardly," Anri acknowledged the pair with a nod, "Brother Udan and sister Ulsa are here to lend their own advise and counsel to these proceedings...but don't let yourself be deafened by the roar of their commentary. They only speak to those with an ear to listen, and never make comments without being prompted by the drift of circumstances."

"And who are they supposed to be...really?" Ranma asked, nodding towards the still-motionless Reka, "If you're God and he's the Devil..."

"God?" Anri sniffed, "Hardly. I've known plenty of gods in my time, young Sir, and I can say with confidence that only a few of them want anything to do with me. I'm much too much of a trouble maker by their lights, an embarrassment to the divine fold, if you will, to say nothing of being held responsible by them for the events that led to the wave of militant Monotheism that, over the centuries, swept away much of the following for the old Polytheistic pantheons to which those other gods once belonged, which was also never my real intention."

"So who are you really?" Nabiki asked, "If you're not God and you're not some fallen Angel..."

"I am Wind and Fire, the Phoenix force that underlies creation," Anri answered, extending his arms with upturned palms as a gesture of invitation, "And yet I am every bit as human as you, Saotome-san...just a bit more evolved in certain ways, a traveler down a very long road that has brought me to many strange pastures and caused me to be elevated by some well beyond my allotted station."

Thelendra heaved a sigh and said, "Father be way too modest e'en for seemliness. He be one of the Four, the supreme Lords of the Eluini, the Unforgotten of Humanity, to which mine Uncles and Auntie be the other three points of the compass."

"So who are they supposed to be?" Nabiki asked with a nod towards the silent pair of Udan and Ulsa, "And if you've been around such a long time, then why haven't we heard of you guys before now?"

"Oh, but you have," Anri assured them with a nod, "Udan here has often been identified with the Grey Pilgrim known as Odin, though his resemblance to the Norse all-father is somewhat attenuated by time and distance. Other names he has worn include Gilgamesh, Beowulf, Tantalus, the Green Knight, and sometimes even Herakles...though the latter would raise a stiff objection were he here since he resents Udan for stealing some of his thunder in many their overlapping legends."

Udan said nothing but his scowl was plain enough. Indeed, there was something about the grim-faced giant that spoke of the solidness of a mountain matched with the coolness of a forest at the edge of a winters night. Just being near him caused Ranma and Nabiki to shudder slightly, all too readily aware that light bent around this individual as though he were the center of gravity itself for his immediate environs.

Anri nodded to the blonde beside the Dark Man and added, "Sister Ulsa bears many names of renown, though she has been far less active than brother Udan in enforcing her own legends. The Divine Sophia is but one of her many titles, the Holy Spirit or Silent Will of all humanity as she sees and knows everything and has been infused with the controlling power at the heart of the Daokan...our balancing agent who parcels out, regulates and relays the channels of our power and helps keep the rest of us tied in to the central matrix. You may not hear of her directly but you know her on sight as the gentle voice that touches our hearts and appeals to the Angels of our better nature. She is both mother, daughter and sister to us all, and the nearest thing to omnipotence that you or I may ever hope to encounter in this frame of mortal existence."

Again a sense of Presence attended the nearness of this woman whose calm eyes regarded Ranma and Nabiki with soft amusement. Though the near opposite of the daunting Udan, she was aloof and mysterious in ways that defied analysis and radiated a soft aura of harmony and beauty that made it very plain indeed that there was more to her than met with the pleasing surface.

Anri indicated his own person and continued, "In truth I myself have had many names and lived many lives, some of which you may well have heard about in one form or another. Your sister already knows much of the story through her contacts with my daughter, but the plain truth of the matter is that I was first born a prince of Atlantis, the son of a man named Uta-Haled, who was Lord of Light before me in the distant past, twelve thousand years ago by your reckoning, just before the end of an age known by some as Hyborea, and by others as the last great Ice Age...though the true story of what occurred is buried deep in the folds of myth and legend."

"I've heard some of those stories," Lenore noted, "They say that Vampires came into existence to combat an attack by the Rakshasa upon our plane of existence..."

"Indeed," Anri noted, "One of many incidents that resulted from the cycles of war that have been waged in the shadows between the forces of Chaos and Order. Vampires are a sort of hybrid compromise that a band of Atlantean wizards construed as the best means for repelling the Rakshasa invasion...and later on a separate clique of wizards created a counter-balance to the Vampires in the form of the Slayer, whose current office is now held by your cousin-sister, Tendo Natsume."

"We got all this before when we fought those Rakshasa guys," Ranma pointed out, "But what's your connection to all this?"

"Not much beyond inheriting the mantle of my father as a part of my birthright," Anri revealed, indicating his siblings with a gesture, "The four of us were born at close to the same time by our mother, who is known in legend by the name Rhea, who spirited us away just prior to the final clash of arms between our father and his greatest enemy, the Chaos Lord named Utah-Hamash. It was an epic battle that resulted in the destruction of what was left of old Atlantis...but we survived hidden away at four separate compass points on the planet...survived to mature and grow into our power over the long centuries since this all happened. We started our small and humble...but over the years we have become like unto gods among the very mortals whom we were entrusted to protect...so much so that some of us tend to forget our ties to mortality, or that we are not above the people whom we serve and by no means have a claim to any special higher station."

"Are you referring to me or to yourself by that remark...dear brother?" grunted Reka, who just then stirred and began to push himself back up into a sitting posture.

"Aw no," Ranko winced, "Not you again? I was hoping you were still out of it..."

"Ah yes," Anri continued as if uninterrupted, "And, of course, there is brother Reka...otherwise known as Agni, Loki, Chernobog and a host of other far less pleasant titles."

"If he tries anything I'll back up your play, Master," Cheshire bristled, standing defensively close at hand beside her "Mistress."

"Stand your ground, Mortals," Reka snarled while rising slowly to his knees and favoring them all with a collective glare that made Nabiki and her husband stand defensively on guard, "There is no cause to renew hostilities...at least not at the present as brother Udan has already made clear his intent to enforce a détente on these proceedings."

The dark haired Udan favored his redheaded brother with a graven look but said nothing, yet it was clear from both his stance and posture that he did indeed mean to balk against a return to violence...at least violence by others as he himself took no overtly aggressive action.

"So nice of you to join us once again," Anri said with a smile at his younger sibling, "Enjoy your nap?"

"Don't patronize me, Anri!" Reka snarled, "You were about to claim that I have acted improperly by approaching these mortals and forcing them to run my gauntlet..."

"I am faulting you for imprudently rushing to judgment when Thelendra and I had matters well in hand and were working them along at a more reasonable pace, dear brother," Anri coolly noted, "But now, thanks to your impatience, we have to reveal more of the truth than I think them ready to handle. They deserve no less, after all, after having been so inconvenienced by your reckless actions."

Reka bristled, but it was Nabiki who raised the point, "Just how were you working things along? And aside from claiming to be who you say you are, what gives you the right to interfere in our lives or even to test us?"

"Why, no right at all," Anri said, "You are completely correct to object to our behavior. After all, we Daokan are forbidden to interfere directly in the course of human affairs. We only act to prevent the larger tragedies that cannot be managed by any lesser agency. To do more than this would risk offending more than just the Powers that Govern the world, to whom even we must bow down and acknowledge. It is simply a tendency that we have to meddle on the small scale whenever we feel so inclined that has prompted us to journey here in search of willing allies who can help carry forth our battles."

"Are we your agents, Lord Anri?" Amalthea asked, "If so, then I have no qualms about it as I would willingly serve my new Mistress and do her bidding in all things. But...these others..."

"Just so," Anri nodded, then turned his regard towards Nabiki once again, "You are wondering what matter could be of such gravity that it would tempt beings such as us to come before you and seek your aid when, obviously, our powers and knowledge are of such a scale that they would dwarf you. What colossal arrogance makes us presume the right to decide your part in these affairs when you were perfectly content and happy to live in ignorance of our existence. That is what you are thinking is it not? And before you ask, I don't need to be psychic to fathom the answer. It is plain enough in your expression...and it is what I would be thinking were I in your place and you in mind, Mrs. Saotome."

"So what is the truth?" Ranma asked while his wife frowned and regarded the light-haired man with a look of intense scrutiny, "What is this all about...really?"

"You want to know the truth behind it all?" Anri nodded off to the side, "It began long ago...with that."

There was a sudden bright explosion in the sky, and then all eyes turned towards the vaulted ceiling of the temple, which dissolved away to reveal a night sky, even as their surroundings became transformed into a simple pasture. A bright light in the heavens lit up everything for miles around them and caused those observers who were near on hand to look up and mutter in startled confusion at what looked like an exploding star filling up the very heavens.

But then something odd occurred to the mortals among these observers, and as eyes turned to the ground it belatedly dawned on them that the people in the field watching the fireworks in the sky were not human beings at all but a form of upright alien life closely resembling a type of bipedal lizard whose near resemblance to homo sapiens was more than simply striking.

"Observe...the death of the fifth planet in the Solar system," Anri said, "Sixty thousand years ago a violent event shook the sphere out of its orbit and sent it into a misalignment with the gravity field of Jupiter, and this resulted in its destruction, when eventually created the asteroid field that presently encircles like a ring about the sun. It also had this other unfortunate side-effect in that it sent asteroids hurtling towards the fourth and third planets...and in the case of our own beloved homeworld..."

He paused as a streak filled the now-darkening sky, and all at once something rushed past their vision, followed shortly thereafter by another huge explosion in the distance. This time the Lizard-Men reacted with dismay and panic as a wave of force swept out from the crash sight, sweeping them away and filling the land with a cloud of dust and debris that turned the sky dark and their overall surroundings quite hellish, a scene so palpably real that some of the observers found themselves instinctively bracing for a hurricane-force wind that never actually touched them.

"...The beginning of the end for the age of the Dinosaurs, whose high point had been realized in the benevolent society of Serpent Men whom you have just witnessed," Anri solemnly concluded.

The dust faded away and the land returned to seeming normalcy, only now there was vegetation growing everywhere, along with small crawling life forms that scurried about in search of sustenance.

"Millions of years passed and slowly the world began to recover from this apocalyptic calamity," Anri continued, "But of the Serpent Men only a handful survived in deep underground caverns to pass on through countless generations into our own era, having evolved into many different branches and sub-species."

"Serpent men?" Nabiki started to ask, only to feel something crawl past her foot, and with a stifled yelp she gave back and stared in dismay at the tiny little rodent she saw there, which was looking back up at her with an almost inquisitive expression.

"Careful," Thelendra cautioned her, "Do nay lash out at yon creature...thou mayest be trampling upon a distant ancestor."

Indeed, before their very eyes the mouse grew large and then began to evolve through a number of shapes into a form closely resembling a lemur, then rose to assume an ape-like form that gradually stood upright, glancing around curiously with a furry expression that was almost comical in its near-resemblance to something...human.

"Behold the proto-man," Reka sniffed as he regarded the three-foot-tall creature, "The crossroads between the animal and human state. You behold now what humanity was before its first encounter with the ancients."

"Say what?" Ranma asked, only to gasp in dismay as a light fell over them again, and then he and the others turned to stare in amazement at a hovering figure that stood off nearby glowing brightly in full daylight and resembling nothing so much as a phosphorescent jellyfish, completely non-human.

"The Ancients," Thelendra softly murmured, "Members of the Star Tribes who didst come upon humanity and lead about to a new era."

"Quite so," Anri said as he studied the ephemeral being, "These are our direct ancestors, the ones who came upon the planet earth and found our humanoid progenitors in their innocence. This marks the moment when the path to our own age was seeded."

"But...where did they come from?" Ranma asked, awed beyond words at the ethereal beauty of the non-corporeal creatures.

"A good question," Anri answered, "They were a highly evolved race of beings who had transcended the normal limits of physical matter. Think of them as primal energy given form, a type of life so near to perfection that a thousand years to them was the same as the space of an eyeblink. Of a certainty they could cross the vast gulf of seeming emptiness between stars and were sustained on Solar winds that to them were a primal food source. On earth they could tap directly into the planetary energy field known as the Mana-flow, and thus sustained their vast spiritual powers made them like unto the gods of later years...a relationship-as you will shortly come to understand-that is not entirely coincidental."

Time speeded up once again, and now they found the proto-men had evolved into four-foot tall lanker forms more capable of upright stance. The creatures obviously had developed the ability to manipulate tools seeing as some carried walking sticks and wore ceremonial ornaments, and they had lost much of their fur, moving closer to a form that was discernibly human.

"Now see how things progressed for humanity in those years?" Anri continued, "Under the benevolent guidance of the Ancients they learned to harness their latent mental abilities, though for the most part they were just beginning to come into their own. They evolved a complex society without a written or spoken language, as you might understand the term, yet have no difficulty understanding one another as they tall tap into a sort-of group mind that is as much empathic as it is telepathic. And as for the Ancients themselves...see here how contact with beings of flesh affected their own gradual evolution."

Again a glowing being of light manifested, only this time the form was much closer to the human model, a tall and slender creature whose unearthly beauty was almost painful to look upon, and who stood at least twelve feet in height...or rather floated above the ground in a lacy dress formed of a gauzelike material that could have been woven from spider webs as from any more conventional textile.

"Behold the Man...or rather the Titan," Anri solemnly averred, "These are the Ancients as they developed along the lines of the human form, which they discovered. As you might guess from the direction implied by this newer construction they are gradually becoming more human, even as human beings are themselves yet in development...and how much longer from this did it take before the two groups noticed a deeper attraction to one another?"

Again the scene changed before their very eyes, only now a nearly five-foot-tall humanoid creature stood beside a shimmering giantess nearly twice his physical height, and between these two a strange sort of radiance was shining in their expressions. Without a word the less-than-hairy ape-man and nearly hairless (on the body, that is, rather than the flowing mane of golden hair that shone about her shoulders) came together, and all at once she knelt down and embraced the solidly muscular male in her thin and reed-like arms, and the scene dissolved into silhouette as the one clearly began to mount himself atop the other...

"Thus did the Sons of Man discover the Daughters of Women and find them pleasing to the touch," Anri quipped, then paused to stroke his chin with a finger before saying, "Or was it the other way around? I tend to forget...oh well. I suppose in the end it hardly makes all that much of a difference."

Again a figure rose up to take form before their very eyes, that of a very tall and bearded man whose slender build had a solid kind of muscularity about him, and who looked to all the world like a perfect blending of the best qualities of beast-men and Ancients.

"Behold now the Neflem as they first appeared upon the stage of evolution," Anri continued to narrate, "This is our direct ancestor...a hybrid form who is both Ancient and Human, who comes upon the stage even before the development of the lesser form known as the Cro-Magnon. He is master of all that he surveys and has an unlimited potential to facilitate the manipulation of energy and matter on a scale that you would find daunting to contemplate. Of course for all his great gifts and endowments he still possesses weaknesses that offset his greatness...such as an inquiring mind full of curiosity that boarders on hubris...and a pride of accomplishment that leads to this...his eventual undoing."

All at once the scene changed into a roiling thunderstorm of clashing energies and psychic tides where individual beings were seen to cross arms with one another. As Nabiki and the others gazed in horror they saw human beings lashing out with the power of their minds in a titanic struggle of conflicting energies that rent the very landscape where these battles took place, leaving dead and mangled bodies everywhere from the sheer intensity of these non-physical encounters.

"The Psychic Wars, round one," Anri noted as the sounds of the battlefield gradually died away, along with the bloodshed, "Where Cain slew Abel...or something very like that anyway. These are the sons of Adam at their worst, motivated by conflicting ideologies into a fratricidal battle that marks the beginning and end of the first great war of human existence. This ends the Golden Age of peace and progress that had existed for so long among the ranks of both Neflem and Ancient, and the beginning of a schism that exists to this very day between two very different branches of humanity represented by both Angels and Devils."

Now they saw one group being herded together while another group of individuals sternly held them in abeyance while some few conjured up a dimensional portal, then bade their prisoners to enter, thus forcing the latter into a non-planar exile.

"To the victors go the spoils, which means dominion of the planet," Anri said, "While the losers gnash their teeth and howl for a million or so years, swearing bloody vengeance against their own blood-kin. From here the victors gradually divide themselves into two camps, one mortal, the other immortal, and thus evolve into the Gods and Humans of the present era. The Devils, meanwhile, gradually change due to their alien surroundings and take on a far less human continence, further dividing into different warring camps, each one affected by the pocket dimension that they seed, and thus becoming the various races of Demons who afflict humanity from the shadows."

"But what was the basic argument about that caused them to divide like this?" Ranko asked.

"No one knows entirely for sure," Anri shrugged, "Some legends say that the Devils were renegades who broke the covenant of the Unimind, indulging in debased sex rites involving animals and other non-human species. Others say one group borrowed the lawn mower and forgot to return it. Either way it brought about a permanent schism with both parties maintaining that justice was on their side, the Gods claiming the world in its natural state for their own, the Demons swearing to get it back by any means fair or foul...especially the latter."

"What is the Unimind?" Nabiki considered.

"Ah, a never very good question," Anri smiled slyly, "It is the state of mind that prevailed for the couple of million years following the unity of Ancient with Human. It is the garden of Eden in its truest state, a condition where everyone is aware of the pain and needs of their fellow living being, where all understood that to harm another was to harm yourself. It was a state of bliss unlike anything you could hope to imagine...perfect love and harmony through balance."

"The nearest anyone comes to such a feeling now be when they are in a bonding of love and at the height of their spiritual and tactile awareness of another living being," Thelendra helpfully supplied, turning to Kasumi and taking her hand to kiss it, which prompted the other girl to color around her cheeks and look radiantly girlish.

"Human beings have a latent ancestral memory of what it felt like to be a part of the Unimind encoded in their very genes," Anri resumed, "A feeling that is nearly approached when in the womb of your mother...and is one of many different reasons why the bonding between child and parent is so strong from the very onset."

"Aye," Thelendra added further, "And for this reason humans feel an instinctive need for social harmony through the community of other people...which is why our species tends to form into tribes and larger social movements in order to obtain a sense of family extension, taking us away from pure awareness of ourselves and our own needs, which is an Animal's level of thinking and something we have long sought to evolve beyond...with different degrees of success."

"Oh please," Reka scoffed, "This maudlin sentimentality is going to rot my teeth! Why not give the other side of the story, dear brother...the reason why some of us are more evolved and enlightened in the ways of power than are others?"

"Actually the word 'evolved' here is a bit of a misnomer," Anri answered, "In purely Darwinian terms the state of change and mutation is not a gradual upward slide but more like a series of successful, near-seeming coincidental events that shape a general trend towards more complex states of organism. In random terms just about anything could happen, while intelligent design is the deliberate shaping of probabilities along a fixed determine line. The point of it all is...environment has as much to do with the outcome as any deliberate intention."

"I think I follow you," Nabiki said, "The actual theory proposed by Darwin and Mendal would have it that the goal of reproduction is the perpetuation of the species...but only a form that is viable to existing environmental conditions tends to live to an age where it can reproduce."

"Exactly," Anri said with a note of congratulation, as if Nabiki had just said something enormously important, "And the human form has proven very resilient and adaptable over the centuries, has it not? Yet the variations of different competing environmental systems have resulted in a wide range of different characteristics, not all of them comparable to the form of the Neflim template known as Adam."

Again figures took form before the eyes of the observers, this time three of them, one tall and lanky with lustrous white hair and alabaster skin, a second squat and solid looking of modest height and robust build, and yet another of lighter build that had dark hair and a golden-bronze robust complexion.

"Three branches of humanity deserve mention here...one being the fair Lemurian race who were nearest to the Gods in their kinship with the elements...while their opposites were the broad, squat ancestors to the Neanderthals, who dominated much of the mountainous inland forests. Between the two are the ancestors of the Atlanteans, a radiant people whose gift of harnessing the powers of science make them the most technologically oriented of the three. Whereas the Lemurians live in close kinship to nature, while the brutish Thralls eke out a bare living as hunger-gatherers, the Atlanteans slowly evolve a highly complex civilization whose marvelous inventions not only seem to duplicate the powers of magic but, indeed, are the foundations of the Occult arts as they have been passed down to us through Masonry. It was in rediscovering their science that I-as Trimagestes-gave to the early Egyptian civilization the key to complex building and construction projects, many of which have lasted through the ages."

"Good of you to take the credit for that," Nabiki grumbled.

"You think so?" Anri mused, then shrugged, "Actually it's a mixed blessing since my ideas were taken to mean a literal physical transcendence of death by the immortality-obsessed dynasties of later years. Honestly, I tried to explain that I meant spiritual Immortality through the evolution of the soul, but they took it to mean preservation of the physical body...go figure."

"You never do learn that basic lesson, Brother," Reka scorned, "Your teachings are for the very few who can understand them, not the common lot of humanity, who are little more in their development than the beast men."

"I don't get something here," Ranma admitted, "If these Atlantean guys were so advanced...why did they wind up destroying themselves?"

"Because power doth nay corrupt, young Saotome," Thelendra answered, "It but magnifies the flaws and imperfections that be already part and parcel to thine nature."

"Oh yes indeed," Reka sneered, "And our direct linear ancestors, the sons of Atlas, were nothing if not flawed in their obsessions with power. They were never content to live as they were...they were always caught up with the need for further and greater progress, which caused them to litter the very stars with their seed as they colonized many hundreds of distant planets."

"They had space travel?" Lenore asked in astonishment.

"Oh aye," Thelendra replied, "There was no limit to the scope of their magesty...but in the end 'twas that selfsame ambition that led to their undoing."

"Through what?" Ranko asked.

"Through war," Reka answered, "The power to govern can also mean the power to oppress, and an Emperor came to the throne of Atlas who claimed dominion like unto a god, even being so rash as to declare war against the Gods, for which hubris he and the rest of society were duly punished."

A titanic eruption startled everyone but the Eluini as heads turned to see a display of the Earthly globe being lit up by a shockingly intense eruption at the center of a large unidentified land-mass...and then the scene altered greatly to display the continent's gradual replacement by a huge open body of water that was flecked with smaller continents and islets.

"They fought the law and the law fought back," Anri sighed, "Only the gods used larger ammunition. The Empire was destroyed in a single day and night of conflagration, most of it sinking into the pacific along the mid-atlantic ridge where it remains to this day, only scattered islets and colonies surviving to our own much later era. Fifty-two thousand years ago this was...and some thirty-seven thousand years later humanity was still struggling to rebuilt itself from the ashes into what we call the Hyborean era. Most of the technology of Atlantis was gone or lost to the ages, and the surviving elements were merely hallow shells of our former greatness. So great was the psychic reverberation that every living being who was not killed outright was burned on the spiritual and physical level. Those with strong psychic talents who did not have adequate mental shielding perished horribly...the rest of lesser talent being horribly scarred and spiritually mutilated by the level of this violence."

"And that be the worst result of all that befell mortal men on that tragic day," Thelendra noted, "The seering pain of the deaths of so many millions drove humanity away from their own spiritual potential and caused many to turn to the physical realm for mental solace. That be why so many tend to flinch away from the touch of spiritual energy, and why many more feel an instinctive fear when any brush with the supernatural reminds them subconsciously of the painful memory flash-imbedded in their very gene pool."

"If not for this then there would be many more mortals who might stumble onto their hidden greatness," Reka noted, "As for the vast majority of fools they be numb by will and forcibly head-blind...mere dullards who bury their heads between their legs and shiver in fear of the night, turning violently against those whom they associate with the power of the Ancients."

"Crude but somewhat accurate I fear," Anri sighed, "Humanity is gripped by a collective fear of the unknown for the not-inconceivable reason that they instinctively dread a return to the former violence of past ages. Many tend to blame those with psychic gifts for causing misfortune and secretly envy those whose abilities appear to stretch beyond the limits of the accepted normal threshold. Some zealously deny the very existence of the supernatural out of fear that it would imply a loss of power and understanding. The tendency among material scientists has been to seek greater control over the natural world through intense and rigorous study of easily duplicated methods for altering the environment, whether by building huge citadels of commerce or even so simple a feat as flipping on a light switch. They tend to discourage deeper learning into the spiritual underside of reality and disparage those who claim special abilities as if such individuals were boasting about their talents."

"Also too there be the tendency towards fear that one who is strong poses an inherent danger to those who view themselves as weak," Thelendra added, "That is why most supernaturally gifted beings tend to hide their gifts from prying eyes, and why many who be born with special gifts often ignore their own potential, allowing it to atrophy through disuse and aversion."

"But still those talents often burst through to the surface," Reka smiled, "Often violently since the very act of repression is itself a form of violence that breeds its own reaction."

"Just so," Anri sighed, "Which brings us now to the present era...skipping over much of the complexity that went on long before the birth of the current era. We Daokan were born as regulators to help guide the development of humanity back along a course of slow and steady evolution, seeking to encourage the rediscovery of the lost human potential...while simultaneously acting as guardians to defend humanity against those beings who often try to exploit the collective ignorance and relative weakness that human beings impose upon themselves as a group mindset."

"So who appointed you guys to that job?" Ranko wondered, "Just what was your old man thinking when he put you in charge of the whole shebang?"

"Oh, father knew what he was doing, for the most part," Reka sneered, "His burden was bearing the power of all four Elemental systems, and power of that nature creates imbalance, which is how his enemy was able to undo him."

"But divide the power along four lines and channels, blending compatible elements together in the person of four very special individuals who maintain the balance like four pillars upholding the rooftops of the heavens..." Thelendra started to elaborate.

"Just so," Anri said as the chamber returned to what it had been before, just a darkened musty room shaped like a temple with its gruesome icon dominating one end, and Anri positioned directly before it, "And in our way we each have played a part in human history...just not quite the same sort of roles that you might imagine if you were to judge us solely by our legends."

"But still...great Lord," Amalthea said in hushed tones, turning from Anri to the still-silent Lady Ulsa, "You are grand and glorious beings of legend...and it is an honor to be here with you."

"Yeah, couldn't have said better myself," Cheshire remarked, looking more disturbed even than her Mistress, the time-cop Ranko.

"Okay, so I admit that I'm impressed," Nabiki reluctantly conceded, then nodded to the statue and said, "But are we supposed to be cowed by your claim that you were once the Lord Buddha and later on a Christian Messiah?"

"Oh, I was never THE Messiah, Saotome-san," Anri assured her, "That myth has been told so often that it has been taken for the truth in total contradiction of the obvious fact that I did not fulfill the claims and predictions of the Hasmodians to liberate the Hebrew state from domination by the Romans. In point of fact I wasn't after the Salvation of humanity at all...I was trying to teach a lesson, one badly needed by my people, but a message that was later on rejected in favor of the story that you've heard told so very often."

"Which story was that?" Ranma wanted to know.

"Supposedly my life and death were intended as a ransom for humanity to break the hold of Satan on humanity for the collective blood debt brought about by the temptation of Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden," Anri turned to regard the statue with a certain wistful expression, "As the story goes I suffered pain and death to redeem human existence and win you all back for the Father. But that was the story of another lifetime when I bore the named of Mithra, and that tale went as tragically wrong as the Christ version since it should be obvious to anyone that I had failed in that objective."

"Failed?" Amalthea asked.

"Most assuredly so," Anri answered, "For is humanity any more enlightened now than it was in the time of the Caesars? Are human beings free from the sin of greed, wrath, hatred, sloth, pride and envy? Are they closer now to being like Angels by the mere fact that I existed? Do my supposed believers demonstrate their liberation from these qualities by their deeds and actions towards others? Or has the history of this so-called 'Faith' been littered with examples of the best and worst that is to be found in human nature? Has my name not been used to justify appalling acts of cruelty and barbarism that are every bit as morally repellant as the alleged crimes committed by the so-called 'Pagans' whom my followers replaced?"

"I told you it wouldn't work," Reka growled, "Now do you believe me? I warned you that people would mistaken and misinterpret your actions if you spoke in veiled parables and allegories attempting to lead them through subtlety into understanding your message of brotherhood and enlightenment...but no, you didn't listen! You were the enlightened one, you couldn't be bothered to admit that many mortals are simply beyond understanding the complexity of what you sought to teach them."

"I didn't really think it was all that complicated a message at the time," Anri sighed, "Love your fellow human being and treat everyone as though they were a brother or a sister. Do unto others and forgive the wrongs that are done against you. Strive to learn and understand the ways of other people so that you can appreciate what they have to teach you...and to teach others by example through kindness, patience, tolerance and mercy..."

"You will never understand humanity by always seeking to see the best that is in all mortals," Reka sneered, "They will forever disappoint you by falling short of your lofty goals and acting blindly in what they mistakenly believe is their own self-interest. It was by ignoring that simple point that you lead yourself into the trap that you fell into as Yesus...the arrogant presumption that you could teach all of humanity by example! Small wonder your name is a curse word among nations..."

"Isn't that a bit harsh?" Ranko asked, "After all, he was just trying to help his people..."

"Exactly," Reka rounded upon the pigtailed girl, "His people of that incarnation, the Hebrew...now the collective will of humanity, which is supposed to be the Daokan's province. My brother knows well his failure to craft a message that was free from the taint of misinterpretation...and this after having explored the ways of the Hindu and encountering directly his previous failures as the Buddha, Mithra and Krishna!"

"They were not entirely failed approaches, Reka," Anri argued, "But yes...each of my previous attempts at spreading a message of enlightenment had gone somewhat awry through later interpretation by those who followed in my footsteps. As Thoth Hermes Trimagestes I was an Egyptian priest who learned the ways of higher spiritualism and founded the original schools of Masonry that formed the basis for much of Western Magic. Many of my principles were incorporated into the Greek philosophies of Pythagorus, Socrates, Plato an-to a much lesser extent-Aristotle. The unfortunate fact was that this appealed to only a tiny minority of gifted people who had an inclination towards Hermeticism. It could not serve as a broader way to help redeem the vast majority of the human population."

"So you tried again as Prince Siddhartha," Reka scoffed, "Having failed so badly before as Krishna in teaching the Brahmans to look beyond the limits of their Dravidic caste system."

"True," Anri sighed, "As a prince of a royal family I was born into a life of pampered privilege and never knew true want or hunger...until the day when I ventured outside of my palace and saw-for the very first time-a poor man who was starving to death. It shocked me to discover a world that was the complete opposite of the one I knew, and it sent me on my quest to obtain an understanding for why the world was so divided between the halves-and-have-nots, and by turns brought me to my manifesto of renunciation."

"And we all know what that led to," Reka scoffed, "Legions of mendicants with begging bowls ignoring the world's problems while seeking to obtain enlightenment through contemplating their belly buttons."

"To be fair there was much good that came of that movement," Anri sighed, "But you are correct...despite the call for benevolence and spiritual love that I emphasized the Buddhist movement still suffers from gross passivity and a tendency to ignore the problems of others. That is why I tried again as Yesus...to attempt to get through to people that the plight of others is the plight of all who live. That was the core basis for my message, and the cause of my gravest failure."

"Failure?" Ranma asked, "Why that?"

"Because what Lord Anri sought to teach everyone was that all life was meant to live in a harmonious balance, not the discord that we see today, Ranma-kun," Kasumi answered, "If people had truly understood what he was telling them back then, then there would never have been a need for a crucifixion, nor would Paul of Tarsus been able to tell such lies about him that led to the creation of the Christian religion."

"Nani?" Nabiki turned to regard her older sister, "You now this, Kasumi-chan?"

"I've seen it myself through my own eyes," Kasumi answered, "Thelendra-chan explained it for me, but I was...confused for a time. After all, I had thought Christianity was about something basically noble...but now I understand why it was founded on a fundamental error."

"I could have told you about that, my Lady," Lenore shrugged, "Every Jew worth their salt knows that something went terribly wrong in the time of Jesus, for he didn't fulfill the prophesies of the coming Messiah, and when we did follow somebody claiming to be a Messiah...it led to disaster with the destruction of Jerusalem and the scattering of our people."

"Which was the very thing that I was hoping to avert," Anri noted, "I wanted people to understand that our problem was not with the Romans...it was with ourselves, our basic clannish desire to see the world in terms of absolute Black and White, where we were the Chosen and everyone else were the Other. I sought to encourage my followers to look beyond the prejudices of their upbringing, to embrace a wider world full of diversity and wonder...but some did not have the patience to listen. And then along came my great Enemy, Paul the Deceiver, and everything went horribly wrong. He falsely claimed to be my disciple, then led those who listened to his false pronouncement onto a path that was fundamentally in error, and over time it was his message that prevailed, not mine. Those who followed and knew me were relegated into the shadows of obscurity, to survive in name only when Paul's followers drafted up stories explaining the rise of their ideological conception. But I say unto you that not one of my actual disciples contributed to the books that later bore their name. Neither Matthew, Mark nor Luke were with me on that day when they hung me at Golgatha, nor was the John recorded in the book of prophesy called Revelation the same Yohan whom I counted for a friend. And as for Paul...I most heartily assure you that I would not have chosen such a fellow to be my student...not a man who freely twisted fact and logic like a distorted pretzil rambling and ranting on about how far my true followers had allegedly 'fallen' from THE WAY he preached...I would not...I would not," Anri said, shaking his head sadly.

"But Paul, thou an impious fool who often offended the sensibilities of whose who heard his preaching, did have a curious gift to attract the disaffected few who found his message comforting, offering them hope in a world of seeming darkness," Thelendra added, "By liberally 'borrowing' bits and pieces of other occult religions and grafting them onto a pseudo-form of Judaism that lacked all trace of true Hebrew sentiment, he was able to craft a theology that could appeal to the non-Hebrew Roman audiences who later took on the name of Christians...a success of marketing over logic later doubled and repeated with the rise of various cults that were inspired by Paul's success...such as Islam, Mormonism, the various Evangelical movements and EST. The list be endless but the product be the same...a tissue-thin web of half-truths bound together in a package that be pleasing to some...and offensive to many another. But then again, that be the risk thou dost take when thee dost organize a religion."

"Religions were not supposed to be package deals that you accept or reject as a whole," Anri added, "They are personal, intensive quests that each and every individual must undertake for themselves with only minimal guidance by authoratative parties. I did not seek to teach an ideology but rather to show others the way in which they could approach a religion from a different perspective. I never meant for anyone to follow in my footsteps, or to duplicate the methodology I used...and yet all branches of present-day Christianity that hail from the teachings of one man...Paul, not me. And-as such-are mired in the same wrong-headed belief that he espoused that I lived and died a savior to humanity, born only to free people from the burden of their Sins, which was where things went to totally wrong that we are confronted now with the crisis that besets your very nation."

"You keep talking around the point on this," Nabiki said, "But you're never very helpful with specifics, such as what are we really dealing with, and why they seem to have such a bone to pick with my family that they'd sent two assassins out to kill me."

"I know," Anri sighed, "And it has not out of any desire to be deliberately vague that we dance around the issue, I assure you. I simply want you and your husband to understand-as your sister already does-that what is happening now was not of my intention..or any of my siblings for that matter. Though we represent a power great enough to remake the very shape of the planet we do not govern mortal lives or control the actions of ordinary people. What mortals do is of their own choosing...free will, the birthright of humanity. Wrong choices, wrong decisions, incorrect pathways that are chosen are what has lead us to the point of near-disaster, which is what I intend to reveal to you at the proper time and place. For now what I seek to make you understand is why the Cult of Christianity has led men so far astray with the belief that I am the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and end of all hope, knowledge and wisdom."

"What's so wrong with people saying that you're their Savior?" Ranma asked, "I mean...I don't know that many Christians, but for the most part they seem like pretty decent people."

"Oh, they are...for the most part," Anri replied,"The problem is that they expect me to solve all of their problems for them...to answer their prayers and appease their every want and need...and that is not the role that fate assigned unto me. I was not brought into being to be their ever-watchful Nanny cleaning up their rooms and fixing the messes they make of their lives and the very planet. I care for humanity, I love humans as my brethrin, but it is not my job to make your lives easy. You have to learn to look after yourselves and take care of your own problems. It's called growing up, and you can't very well do much of that if you rely on someone else to do your thinking for you. All that I can do is point the way and offer a few suggestions...the rest is for you to figure out, or else the very concept of free will is without meaning."

"It already is a joke, and a very bad one, Brother," Reka sneered, "Most mortals live their dull and drearie lives in willful ignorance, averting their eyes from the very spiritual truths that you seek to show them by example."

"You don't have a very high opinion of humanity, do you Lord?" Amalthea asked.

"Should I?" Reka sniffed, "I who have watched nations rise and fall into the dust and have seen countless generations of mortals struggle and toil over a weary life, only to inherit dust as their inheritence? Oh true...there is the rare and gifted mortal who rises up and exceeds the limits of flesh and spirit to achieve the grace of enlightenment, but those usually become Eluini and are inherently above the common herd on the evolutionary scale. When it comes to the vast and petty majority of humanity, however, they are little more than animals grunting out a minimalist living. Don't' expect me to pity such dross, they are the authors of their own misfortune, the ones who refuse to let go and evolve, who cling to the shadow of materialism while ignoring the treasures of the spirit that are theirs to grasp if they but open their minds to the possibility inherent in their latent potential."

"But the point is, Sir, that everyone has a potential of their own to grasp," Kasumi gently argued, "And by ignoring the inherent nobility of people you are guilty of ignorance yourself, of seeing only the worst that is in people, for which you should be pitied."

"Well said," Anri grinned, "Congratulations to you, beloved of my daughter...although I would object to the Pity part since Reka is well beyond pity in that regards, eh brother?"

"Bite me," Reka scoffed, favoring Kasumi with a look before saying, "It is beneath my dignity to dispute with one so besotted with weak and foolish attitudes that she is blind to the darker truths that make a mockery of her baseline polyana."

"Perhaps I am blind...and not very wise, Great Lord," Kasumi countered, touching hands with Thelendra, "But I would rather see with eyes colored by the beauty in the soul than be trapped by your views of human nature."

Nabiki stared in astonishment at the clarity of thought contained within her own sister's words, while Ranma just grinned and said, "Way to go, Oneechan, that's putting him in his place."

Reka bristled, but one LOOK from Udan and he immediately calmed his temper. As for the Lady Ulsa she was favoring Kasumi with a nod of faint approval, which Amalthea took to mean that her Mistress had just given the Vampire Goddess her full and complete blessing.

Anri drew breath again and then diverted th point back to where it had started, "You wonder that I speak despairagingly of the Heresy that was seeded in the human mind by the teachings of one Paul of Tarsus. In truth, the fellow had a gifted imagination and an uncanny ability to reach in and find the vulnerable spot in human nature than secretly yearns for an answer to the spiritual problems of life and nature. He was a good Encyclopedia salesman, I will give him that...but selling his message like soup in a market can hardly endear him to me, not after the things that he said that caused so much turmoil in the minds of those unfortunate enough to believe him."

"Your example being?" Nabiki asked.

"His central message that personal salvation began with accepting me as Lord and Savior," Anri retorted, "I never would have told people that. Me decide who is saved and who is not? They had better hope that is never the case or I can assure you that a great many would not make the cut. In fact if Hell did not already exist then I would create one specifically for the liars, cheats and murderers who have claimed me for a savior. As if all you need do is invoke my name and I'll forgive the wrongs that you have done to one another. Sorry...you have to be willing to forgive yourselves first, and to truly repent of your misdeeds, before I would grant you a foothold in the heavens. Just saying your sorry isn't enough, you have to actually mean it...and to stop doing the things that are truly evil."

"Such as?" Ranma asked.

"Forget what you have heard about the rules set down in the Bible," Anri said, "I didn't write Leviticus, and I certainly never gave the Pentateuch my blessings. Even the Ten Commandments are a waste of ink and paper...four of those commandments are purely an invocation to ethnocentricism of the worst sort, and the other four were borrowed from the law code of Hammurabi, who long predated the very existence of the Hebrew antion."

"You told me this before, Lord," Lenore said softly, "You said those laws were written down for evil purposes, to justify a land-grab of Palestine for the early Hebrew."

"So I did," Anri sighed, "But the one you should blame is not the Hebrew but rather the followers of Lucifer in his guise as the demon Yahweh. Read the Old Testaments and they are a litany of cruelty and genocide where the Hebrew were invoked to kill their neighbors and confiscate their property on behalf of that loveless tyrant. Fortunately someone locked him up in a box and deposited him in a desert vault before he could do too much damage, or else his followers really would have carried out that terrible progrom. As it is the memory of what he set in motion was passed down to followers in later years, who tried many times to practice the evil ways that Lucifer set in motion...only to meet time and again with failure. The people of the land thrived for many centuries in relative harmony with the Hebrew...up until the Hasmodians made a hash of things...but that is another long story, and one I would rather not indulge at the present."

"Are you saying you're anti-semetic?" Nabiki asked.

"Who, me?" Anri indicated himself, "Goodness no, I've never wished for the reign of purges and discrimination that have been heeped upon the Hebrew under the aegis of calling them 'Christ Killers' and other such nonsense. I have never rationally yearned for the death of anyone who did not first invoke death as their icon. The Hebrew are guitless for the sins of the few who actually did set the whole thing in motion. The only sin that I would hold against my former people is the one they commit in the present of perpetuating racial and ethnic genocide against the Palestinian people, who hate them back just as viciously since both sides perceive themselves to be the "Chosen Elect of God," and as such are locked in a struggle for the same land, which has devolved into a mutually antagonist fight for ethnic and cultural survival. Eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth...the very sin I faulted them for in my days as Yesus. How depressing to see so little progress, so little accomplishment since that era. Men of hate still fuel the war, and the common people suffer."

"That has always been the way with mortals, Brother," Reka scorned, "Hate begets hate and violence begets violence...and you really should not expect anything different now or in the future."

"But that is not entirely true," Kasumi defended, "There are men of peace who bring out the best in people and have often worked to unite divided nations."

"If they are not assassinated first before they can fulfill such a destiny, perhaps," Reka sniffed smugly, "But men of material power resent nothing so much as a peace maker, as my brother here can well testify by his own example. They will do most anything to maintain the status quo, not stinting in the least at murder."

"But only if the people let them," Thelendra countered, "Oft times a martyr be far more dangerous to the tyrant than a living, breathing gadfly, for if his cause be true then his memory be immortal and nay so easily defeated."

"But still," Anri sighed, "Reka raises a valid point in that cruelty is an unfortunate characteristic that can be found in far too many hearts, even those claiming the santimonious garments of a savior. As I was beginning to say, I rate a man's deeds every much as I do the contents of his heart, for if one is not in concert with the other the result is ofttimes to be folly. Just saying that you believe in me or the teachings that allegedly were passed on through me to my disciples is not the same thing as encorporating the essense of my message into your lives and hearts. I personally care not a whit about what you do with one another in your personal lives, just so long as it is not hurtful. Love is love to me, and caring about others even as much as you do about yourselves is the very heart and essence of my teaching. I never taught anyone to fear 'God' since gods have more to fear from us if we ignore them. I would never approve of any religion that would insist men bow down on their knees and grovel for forgiveness. There is a thin line to be defined here between the proper humility one shows to the world and the obsequeous surrender of all dignity in the name of divine passification."

"So much for the meek inheriting the Earth, eh?" Nabiki asked.

"I spoke for the meek...not the stupid," Anri countered, "I can forgive a great deal, but never the failure to recognize your inner divinity, to sanctify life by respecting it in others. Being stupid means failing to use the gifts that you are given. It does not apply to those whose natural endowments limit them, or whose inclination to be passive has been beat down into them by the hardships and cruelties of life. The thing I am most agrieved about is when men perpetuate a wrong done to them by inflicting it upon another. Evil spreads like a contagion when you let it control your actions, when you blindly lash out at those who cannot fight back because they are close at hand while the true source of your pain may be elsewhere. Similarly, I cannot and will not compell men to be good or behave well with one another since they must possess the right to make errors as a part of their basic freedom. Men can sin and commit folly and still be good men in heart so long as the balance of their deeds is not so slanted in favor evil. If men act with love, charity, compassion and kindness then much of the rest of their deeds will have the balm of kindness..."

"Not if they are fools who rashly plunge into affairs without first thinking through the consequences," Reka countered, "Good intentions do not ensure good results...you of all men should know that one, brother! And what of the hypocrisies of men who preach virtue while practicing the cruelest of vices?"

"I have no discounted them from my litany, Brother," Anri said, "But I will allow another good point that you have raised here. Hell truly begins when men of good faith abandon reason and take the easy way road to expediency, compromising that which is truly of value."

"So what do you call evil?" Nabiki wondered.

"Children starving in the streets of a land filled with wealth and plenty," Anri replied, "Rich men spitting on the poor and destitute while excusing their avarice, which often creates thje problem. Powerful men doing what is best for themselves without consideration of the effects their actions have upon others...the strong bullying the weak, the sanctimonious mouthing words of hate and justifying their uncooth behavior by assigning blame to the powerless. Forcing children to work in povery so that adults can live in mansions, blaming the victim of a crime for their own victimization. Destroying the environment then arguing that the cost of curtailing pollution is too prohibitive to consider. Homophobia, the sin of rationalizing gender discrimination in favor of the mainstream view of the 'proper' roles of men and women. Refusing to accept the basic fact that we are all different...all of us individuals with special needs and gifts, and that no two of us are exactly identical to one another. Excusing sloth and ignorance as the lazy man's birthright, indulging liars and deceivers, venerating thieves and elevating them to higher office..."

"Wow," Ranko remarked, "Hearing you go on like that...it makes you sound like a real softie."

"I know, that's me, the original Lefitst Pinko Liberal hippie," Anri shrugged and smiled that easy-going, self-depricating smile that was full of warmth and humor, "Had I carried on as Yesus in a different era they would have labeled me a Communist...but those who are truly of a Statist inclination have more to fear from me than all the McCarthist leaning right-wingers in existence...which includes most of those who now infest the public air waves, spouting hate while pretending to love others."

"And, of course, were father to appear in a church garbed as he was when he was Yesus he wouldst most likely be asked to leave by the establishment," Thelendra added, "After all, a Nazorean rabbi who didst nay shave nor bathe nor cut his hair, who often walked barefoot as on the holy ground of a temple, and who wore simple robes that were seldom cleaned by the washing of linens, who always wore a headpiece as was required by the Priestly code...practices thou wildst nay see this day among those who claim a 'personal relationship' with mine father..."

"Yep, gotta admit," Ranko nodded, "That does sound pretty much like a Hippie."

"This is kind of off the subject," Cheshire pointed out, "We've still yet to get to the heart of the question...like who is responsible for the Temporal Crisis that drew my Master and me to this timeline?"

"Huh?" Ranma asked in obvious confusion.

"I was getting around to that part," Anri said, "Forgive my indulgence here, obsessing about a grievous wrong done to the world through no intent on my part or that of my brothers. The point is...you need to know what is truly behind the hatred that has been turned against you and your entire nation by those who perceive themselves to be wronged...and who are blindly lashing out at those whom they hold collectively esponsible, even if there is no reasonable way to link the two together. It is this blind antipathy, motivated by religious grievance, that has moved the Otono group to horribly rash actions whose very nature betrays the very cause they seek to champion."

"The Otono group, huh?" Nabiki frowned, "Then why didn't you just come out and name them in the first place?"

"Out of the understandable concern that thee wouldst act imprudently and seek to confront Lord Otono and his minions before thou are well armored," Thelendra answered, "Given all that we know of thee, canst thou blame us for fearing that thee wouldst be hasty?"

"Who's hasty?" Nabiki asked, "I always study a problem before I tackle it. I just prefer to know what I'm dealing with is all."

"Sister dear," Kasumi said with concern in her tone and expression, "Who are you trying to fool here? I know you too well...you would jump into a fight as much from impatience as a desire to stir up a nest of hornets...only in this case you would be in error."

"Indeed," Anri averred, "Better not to rashly rush off in a mistaken attempt to confront yoru enemies when you truly do not know what it is that you are facing. Please allow me to continue as we all want you to be better prepared so that you have more than a hope of a prayer of actually succeeding."

"You really think we'd be that much out of our league?" Ranma asked with an uneasy expression.

"Of course," Reka said, "Because as your fight with me proved most decidedly, you are not yet ready to confront the real villains of this piece. You need more time and much more preparation."

"Yeah? Says who?" Ranma asked, "Seems to me that Nabiki and me were doing a pretty good job of kicking you butt back there...before you cheated."

"Cheated?" Reka scoffed, "Is that what you call drawing upon more of my abilities than I permitted myself to use in the early stages? Understand this, young fool...I never fought you at anything even coming close to my true level of power...if I had then you would have both been fried to a crisp within the first few instants of combat. But I held back out of regard for your obvious limitations, because I wanted to give you a chance at demonstrating your true potential, to show me that you have the capacity of growing and evolving to a level where you might well become more interesting players."

"And did we pass your test, Oh Great Lord of Fire and Mud?" Nabiki asked with a restrained edge of sarcasm in her tone and expression.

Reka smiled at her with a dangerous gleam and said, "Let us just say that you did start to show some small spark of what I'd hoped you would be capable of doing...but you have a very long ways to go before you can even approach a level where I'd be convinced that you were worth all of this bother."

"Nevertheless, Reka," Anri chided, "They did indeed improve the longer that they fought with you, and while they do have much yet to learn even you cannot deny that they are the best that we have to call upon in his time of crisis. We have no other candidates near enough to being ready for the challenge, and unless you intend to take on Otono Reyabi and his band by yourself..."

"And why shouldn't I do so?" Reka retorted, "They would not last a quarter of a second against me!"

"Granted," Anri inclined his head then added, "But are you ready then to take on that which lays beyond the front of this present challenge? Once you dispose of the puppets, will the puppeteer be your next most likely target?"

"You think I am afraid to face the likes of Holocaust and his minions?" Reka scornfully replied, "I had not thought you held so small an opinion of me as all of that, Brother."

"Holocaust?" Nabiki repeated, only to hear a sharp gasp of breath from a suddenly terrified Lenore, and a softly murmured "Oh my" from Kasumi.

"Oh, I can see plainly that you look forward to such a long-delayed encounter, Reka," Anri soberly intoned, "To face down one of the Old Ones in battle and pit your powers against a primal force of personified Chaos would be a dream given form for you...but what consequence will it mean to the world? Will you destroy the very thing you want to save and doom the mortals of this plane to certain death in the collateral damage?"

Even Reka seemed balked by that question, his arrogant tone momentarily subdued as he thought about the question, then glanced away saying, "No...on that you are right, brother...I would not wish such a price, even to win the prize of such a glorious battle."

"And so you see our dilemma," Anri turned sidelong towards Nabiki and added, "Of course our dear Mrs. Saotome may well ask us what right we have to call upon either her or her husband...or even her elder sister, for that matter...to fight our battles for us since she quite naturally is resentful of our involving them in the first place. Of course by now she is also well aware that the threat we battle is a looming menace that could spell doom for both her family and nation...for should the other side succeed then we can expect Lord Holocaust to live up to his name by unleashing a pestilence upon Japan to further his goals for greater power."

"Pestilence?" Ranko asked, "You mean...some kind of a disease?"

"A twofold illness whose potency is difficult to measure," Anri answered, "On the one hand there is the virus that Otono and his minions intend to spread among the general population...on the other hand there is a different, far more subtle plague that is already even now infecting minds and driving innocent people to the point of self-destruction. You've encountered one instance of this already in the form of a minor type of Bogard-style demon that enters the body and mind of its intended victim and infects them with a poison that drives them steadily towards hate and madness."

"That thing that came out of Ryoga-kun?" Ranma blurted out.

"Indeed," Anri informed him, "And there are many, many more like that on the loose even now seeking vulnerable minds and fresh souls to harvest, recruiting a legion of followers who are ready and eager to do Holocaust's bidding."

"Those things can do all that?" Nabiki asked with mild dismay.

"Indeed," Thelendra answered, "That be their purpose and nature...to exploit vulnerability by seeking out individuals who be easily prone to rage and hate by their corrupted mindsets...those who have weak psychic defenses against such hostile beings and whose anger and resentment can be magnified into full-fledged hatreds. The Bogards feast upon the dark and negative energies of manic-depressives, compulsive paranoiacs and those prone to either suicide or self-malice. They find the tiniest spark of antipathy and fan the flames of its embers until they blaze like a conflagration so that a person be driven mad with a desire to kill the object of their perceived distress."

"If is fear that is the key to their power," Kasumi added as she turned her regard back towards Nabiki and Ranma, "Fear that can be magnified into an obsession, that lends power to these dark beings, who feast upon our fears and slowly consume our energies from within. Fear is the thing that makes them such a menace."

"The Demon Holocaust seeks to magnify a climate of fear to a point where the moral mind is incapable of defending itself against a psychic mind-rape," Reka noted, only to nod towards Anri as he added, "Of course this condition has been greatly enabled by the very cult you sought to use to banish all ties to Holocaust to begin with."

"Yes, we know about that part already," Anri tiredly remarked, "We don't need to drag it out all night...we already know what a mistake it was to let the priests take over and ruin the franchise."

"But why would they want to do this?" Ranma asked, "Why make people like my brother, Ryoga-kun, feel such hate and rage that he'd want to attack Mousse, calling him all kinds of racial slurs and stuff after getting Kurumi-chan pregnant?"

"I can think of one bad reason," Ranko shuddered, "Something I've run into in my travels before...demons who feed on negative emotions because they weaken our mental defenses..."

"It's worse than that," Lenore averred, "When Holocaust's agents infest an area it's pretty well guaranteed that racial animosity will intensify and grow to a national pathology that sometimes erupts in all kinds of terrible outlets."

"You mean...like race wars and stuff?" Cheshire questioned.

"Worse, far worse," the Vampire answered, turning a hunted gaze towards the others, "I mean genocide and ethnic cleansing, murderous rioting and lynch mobs who terrorize minority populations. The longer this goes on the worse the body count begins to climb until whole villages get depopulated, and all because people hate and fear what's different or unusual...or whoever is a convenient scapegoat for social problems, like us Jews have been throughout the ages."

"Most sadly correct," Anri averred softly, "And yet more than just ethnic and religious hatred flares to the surface. Gender persecution is one of the most common crimes that Holocaust breeds like a feverous epidemic, infesting entire populations with the disease of tribalism, where anyone not with you is seen as inherently against you, and so you had better get them before they get you...or so goes the logic of such an illness."

"Horrible," Kasumi averred, "And to think that this demon is behind such attrocities as the Nazi campaigns and the anti-semetic progroms throughout Europe..."

"Or the rape of Nanking, beloved heart?" Thelendra softly remarked, and saw the haunted look Kasumi turned towards her with a sympathetic longing that was palpable to others.

"Okay, so this demon guy is bad news," Nabiki said, "So how do we get rid of him?"

"Get rid of him?" Reka sneered, "How does one purge their own soul of the tailt of wickeness and evil? How does a Japanese free herself from the tendency to view your own race as 'pure' while everything else that is 'Gaijin' is regarded as 'foreign?'"

"Hey you, back off!" Ranma bristled, "I don't care if you are Latisha's father..."

"Oh, I wasn't excluding you from this, Son-in-law," Reka favored the young man with a particularly viscious expression, "I appreciate the fact that your provincialism is ingrained within you, while your wife has had the advantage of actually traveling to other places and has a more...shall we say, cosmopolitan outlook? After all, the first woman whom she ever slept with was half-American, and the second-whom she married-was Chinese with alien ancestry...yet you have accepted them both into your life, which is yet another sign that there may yet be hope for your spiritual evolution."

"Uncle," Thelendra said with a disapproving glare, then to Nabiki she addressed herself, "Thou art less tainted by the stain of thine cultural indoctrination than many another of thine peers...but what wouldst thou say if, for example, thou didst learn that a close companion of thine was Burakamin? Art thee so enlightened in thine thinking as to overcome what thou wouldst see as a taint to their ancestry?"

"Ah..." Nabiki found herself unable to meet the changeable eyes of the taller gaijin and so glanced away uneasily, saying, "I...really don't think about stuff like that. It's more what a person has to offer that I rate them by, not who their ancestors were..."

"But others of thine nationality would be less charitable than thee, wouldst they nay?" Thelendra persisted, "And so it also would be held for the Ainu, who didst originally occupy these lands. And those who be nay of light-skinned complexion, being descended from the rude stock of commoners whom many of thine kinsfolk view as partially sub-human."

Nabiki chewed that one over while Ranko said, "Hey, mom's not like that! I've never seen her show one ounce of favoritism towards anybody based on ethnic nationality, and hey! I've got an uncle who's partly Oni...can't get more 'tainted' than that one, huh?"

"In the time thee hails from, on the world of thine origin, mayhap," Thelendra answered, "But thine adopted mother be one of us, an Eluini, while thine birth mother-though gifted in some respects-had faults of her own that numbered the conceit ethnocentricism among them."

"Hey, leave her out of this!" Ranko snapped, "She's dead, like the rest of my family and...ah..." she glanced to the side, seeing the curious looks that she was receiving from Kasumi, Ranma and Nabiki.

"Go on child," Anri gently encouraged, "You were about to say that things were very wrong upon your home timeline, but that you've since improved your lot and now enjoy a fulfilling life with people who care for you...and for whom you care for very deeply."

"Other timeline?" Ranma blanched, "You mean...like that other version of Nabiki?"

Lenore favored the redhead with a smirk and said, "Busted. Better come clean, Saotome."

"Saotome?" Nabiki blinked, "I thought you said you were a cousin? But I already know most of my own family ties, and those of Ranchan's, so..."

Ranko winced and said, "I'm...kinda-sorta from the future, Mom...only my real mother wasn't you...it was your sister, Akane... and as for Pop here..."

"Say what?" Ranma blurted.

"Oh my," Kasumi studied the redhead with great scrutiny before saying, "Are you saying that you're the daughter of Akane-chan...and Ranma-kun? But...how...?"

"Long story," Ranko sighed, "Cheshire?"

"Of course, Master," the furry catwoman passed along a tube-like vail, handing it to the redhead, who turned the nozzle on herself and received a splash of cold water for her travels.

Nabiki gasped while Kasumi covered her mouth and look on in amazement. Suddenly there were two Ranma's standing there, one dressed in a red Cheosang, the other in his usual red-and-black outlook, staring at his counterpart and looking very much like he was about to faint on the spot in sheer amazement.

"She has been cursed by the waters of Jusenkyuo?" Amalthea asked with the lifting of a pale eyebrow while her expression took on a look of speculation.

"Well now," Lenore remarked dead-pan, "That's not exactly what I'd call a curse, at least if she's as popular with the ladies as Ranma-kun here."

"Hah-ha," the now-male Ranko said blandly, "Thought you already had a girlfriend...and I do well for myself, thank you very much."

"Fascinating," Reka mused, "And here I wondered why I was having difficulty earlier on detecting your presence. That pendant that you wear about your neck...it is more than just a charm, it is intrinsically tied to your very being."

Ranko instinctively reached up to cover his amulet, "It's none of your business...but, yeah...without the pendant I couldn't even be here, on account of what happened to my original home timeline."

The dark-eyed Udan stirred from his silent vigil and favored the redhead with a curious look, but a touch from the hand of his blonde companion restrained him from further contemplation, even though he sullenly regarded the pendant as though its weilder were attached to it and not the other way around, which caused Ranko to feel more than a bit uneasy.

"I don't believe it," Ranma finally managed to blurt out, "You mean...you're my kid?"

"Well, kind of," Ranko shrugged uneasily, "But think of me more like a niece since you're kinda more like my uncle than my real Pop. He's...just like you, only bigger, older and a lot more nasty."

"That I'd have to see," Nabiki said with a note of bland understatement, "So...you're Akane's kid by Ranma-kun. I have to admit I can see the resemblance...but it doesn't sound too likely a union."

"Ah...yeah, it...didn't really work out," Ranko fidgeted, "In fact...my mom kinda went nuts and, well...you don't really wanna hear the details."

"Try me," Nabiki stated, only to start when she felt a hand upon her shoulder and looked up to see that it belonged to Kasumi.

"No...trust me on this, Imoutochan, you don't," Kasumi informed her, her expression plain with pain and sadness, so much so that Nabiki instinctively shuddered and suddenly lost all desire to probe even deeper into the former-redhead's story.

Ranko shrugged and said, "I really shouldn't have told you...it's against regulations, and I could be penalized pretty severely if my Mom has to report it. You'd like her, she's a lot like you, only she studied to be a Lore Master, not a big-shot martial artist, like Pop is."

"Lore Master?" Ranma exchanged a look with his wife, who said, "Another one?"

"Much the same as different," Anri shrugged, "But this is well off the subject here, other than to suffice in saying that Miss Ranko here has an inside track upon the sort of pain and misery that demons such as Holocaust inflict upon the world of mortals. After all, was not her mother such a victim?"

"Say what?" Ranko reacted in sudden wrath.

"The malady that afflicted your birth-mother," Anri said, "Where do you suppose it originated from? The window of opportunity was sown when the Shampoo of your time used the Fang Gao touch to attempt to block her memores of your father...which she successfully resisted. Yet the kernal of a seed was left open for a demon to infiltrate past her defenses...and after burrowing deep into her subconscious it worked its will upon those centers of the subconscious that caused her to feel a burning rage and resentment towards your father. Over time these negative emotions were exacerbated because the demon was never truly purged from its root nest within her cerebrum and in time triggered the violent rages that caused her to behave so irrationally, and which ultimately lead to her undoing."

"Say what?" Nabiki asked, "My little sister...had a mental disorder?"

"Rage disorder," Thelendra answered, "A rare but not so uncommon state that demons love to provoke in mortals who permit themselves to hate blindly. It be the consequence of an undiagnosed and untreated condition that thine wife inflicted in another parallel life, one where thou wert but the observer to her struggles and nay an active participant, let alone so involved that thou couldst have aided her directly."

"You're saying this Holocaust guy is responsible for what happened to my mother?" Ranko blurted, his anger showing visably as a force burning brightly, looking to lash out at a likely target.

"Not Holocaust himself, but one very like him," Reka mused, "And I welcome your rage...it is refreshingly healthy, untainted by the maudlin sentimentality that has come to dominate this lecture."

"You butt out of this!" Ranko snapped, "The last thing I need right now is to have you agree with me, Asshole!"

"But still you see now why your involvement here is not entirely coincidental," Anri argued, "You share a common link with these, your kin from a parallel time, for I say unto you that had circumstances in this world been left unaltered that something very similar might have befallen the Tendo Akane of this timeline..."

"Unaltered?" Nabiki asked.

"Thou dost already know in what manner," Thelendra answered, "When thee and thine husband didst trade places and destinies, you to assume the mantle of heir to the Saotome Ryu, while he studied in thine place the Ryu of the Tendos."

"And didn't early on abandon your teachings in favor of the easy life of an ordinary school girl," Anri smiled, "So for all the hardships you have endured, they brought you here to this place where you have the potential of being a partial savior to your own people and nation. Likewise the road that your husband has taken has made him a very different sort of man than fate might otherwise have inclined him towards becoming. Personal choices, personal destiny, the combination of will, intent and choices have resulted in the you of this moment, two warriors of Destiny who are stronger when united than divided, yet who each remain formidable in their own right."

"And too, had thee nay pursued this course, then I would ne'er hath been united once again with mine beloved heart of previous eras," Thelendra took and kissed one of Kasumi's hands and earned a smile of shy delight in return, "For which I be very grateful."

"Now then," Anri sadded with hands cupped behind his back, "All of that being summarized, it remains to be pointed out that our talk of free will would come to nothing if you were not, in fact, allowed to practice it in truth. For all the high-handedness that you may justly accuse us of displaying here, Saotome-san, it remains to be decided by you whether you wish to accept our counsel or reject it...or to act as our champion in the world of mortals rather than believe that we have pushed you into these affairs. The choice is given to you...will you continue to heed my advice, or refuse involvement? In case of the latter course we are prepared to stop the lecture here and offer to return you to your home with no further delay. After all, you have wives and children waiting for you there, and they must doubtlessly wonder what has delayed both you and your husband so long this very late evening."

Nabiki seemed to think this over then glanced at Ranma, who studied her back in silent regard, offering his tacit support to her decision.

After a pause of several moments the acknowledged leader of the Saotome/Tendo clan said, "You talk about us having a choice...but in the end what other choice do we have but to play along with you guys? Especially if we're facing something as grim as what you keep alluding to...but I'm still waiting for those details."

"And you shall have them," Anri noted, "If you think you are able to handle the full weight of the truth, and those revelations that we have yet to share with you and your husband."

"What?" Ranma laughed nervously, "You mean something a lot more disturbing than all of this?" He indicated the darkened church building.

"Oh, this is only the tip of a very deep iceberg, my good fellow," Anri assured him, "This was only background preparation for the story that we are about to share with you, one that affects your own family most intrinsically since you re the reason Otono is out to destroy your wife and every last trace of the family that is known as Tendo."

"Say what?" Nabiki asked, "You mean you're finally gonna explain that part?"

"Most assuredly, indeed," Anri answered.

"Hah!" Reka scoffed, "As if you would ever give anyone a straight answer."

"Ye of little faith, dear brother," Anri smiled, only to pause as a sound was heard at one end of the darkened chamber, and then a wizened old man in priestly garb came shuffling in holding up a lamp and gazing owlishly at the unexpected presence of a dozen strange-looking people within the darkened hollowed chamber to which he was entrusted.

"Hey there, you lot!" he said in a language that sounded foreign, yet which somehow translated to their ears as if spoken in fluent Japanese, "Visiting hours to the public are posted outside the Church! You're not allowed in here after hours, so either leave now or I'll fetch security and have you evicted!"

"No need for threats, Old Timer," Reka scoffed, "We are leaving."

"Indeed," Anri said, "We've more than overstayed our visit. Good day to you, my good Gustavas, and have a pleasant morning when you greet the public."

"Eh?" the man blinked his reumy eyes, "How did you know my name...?"

Any further questions or queries were delivered to a darkened, empty building, leaving the name named Gustavas Adolphus, of the Eastern Orthodox faith, to shake his head and murmur a faint prayer of benediction to himself, wondering if he were finally going senile as he had not seen the strangers either enter nor leave the building, nor could he perceive the shadows that surrounded them as the ephemeral figures were no longer in synch with the normal timeflow of the planet.

"Lord?" Amalthea asked as the church faded away from their group into the haze of gray shadows, "Why didn't you tell him who you were and that you had every right to be within that holy place?"

"Oh, I've never much belonged to any of the orders that would have me for a member," Anri answered, "And to tell the truth...I've never been much welcome. They have no use for the real me and what I represent...they have that instead to keep them comfort."

All at once heads turned up to gaze in blank astonishment, for overhead was a humungous glowing figure on a cross who looked like nothing so much as the crucified image of a man blown up to cyclopean size with exaggerated wounds and profuse bleeding...a shimmering ghostly image that nonetheless cast an aura of something complex, a paradoxical blend of benevolence and horror.

"What is that?" Ranma asked.

"Oh him?" Anri sniffed, "That is the False me, the one created by Paul to serve in my stead. Say hello to the Jesus Christ whom a billion people pray to every morning, a thought-form construct otherwise known as the Demiurge, though at one time in the distant past the name that he bore was Sol Ivictus Mithra."

"Your former incarnation?" Nabiki asked.

"The very same," Anri said soberly, "Though the truth behind this...is yet another story..."

Continued.

Comments/Criticisms/Cavalry For Dummies 101: shadowmane

Or: shadowmane9849

Next time up (Assuming anyone is still with me at this point) we finally arrive at the reason why Otono and his group are plotting the deaths of millions of people in the name of a false "Jesus," but will anyone take Anri's warnings seriously enough to do something about it? Find out next time in: "Revelation For The Damned," or, "Is this anyway to practice a religion?" Be there...

(And as I said once before, Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins would get a very cold place in Hell if Jesus were truly all that Judgemental...)

X

/pre 


	86. Chapter 86

preDnabiki175

Nabiki 1/2

"A Very Scary Thought"

by Jim Robert Bader

(Inspired by the works of Rumiko Takahashi Others,  
with concepts and characters created by fellow fanfic writers Wade Tritschler, DB Sommers, Nicole Manders, Andrew Greaves, Bill Guiroff and countless others, including "Buffy"  
creator Joss Whedon; with special thanks to my good pal Shiva for his editing and handling of this series.)

(Certain other characters and concepts are of my own innovation, including my interpretation of the Monster of Mary Shelly's novel, the Furies, Trudy, Takaharis Angelique d'Anjou, Anri and the Daokan, Thelendra the Dream Weaver and various other guest stars appearing in this portion of the Nabiki 1/2 series...)

Chapter Sixty-Six(and two Sixths).

Episode One-Hundred-Seventy-Five.

Dante on the Rocks.

The evidence was all there, all the signs and indications of a happy life and stable household, from the photographs proudly displayed to the incriminating evidence of loose toys on the floor and signs that the housekeeping was just a step behind the usual run of domestic disorder. The very walls of the place echoed with love and affection, consideration in every detail that marked a place that a family called home, albeit a somewhat extended family whose unorthodox lifestyle would be considered scandalous in most so-called "civilized" places.

Ranma had to venture here to satisfy a need, a desire to see how life might have been lived it things had only been somehow...different. It was enough to make a hardened soul like him weep like Soun Tendo, just thinking of the contrast between his own solitary existence and the bounteous joy that distinguished this version of the Tendo estate, where love prevailed over the occasional ruckus that afflicted all tight-knit families. Just one more example of what a mess of things he had made of his earlier life, and the many wrongs he had to live up to and correct if he were to insure that his newer family never suffered the same fate as the old one.

Alert as he was with combat reflexes that were beyond legendary he could not fail to detect a slight stirring of his environment and marked three distinctive heartbeats as he turned and detected their shadows in the moonlight. His first impulse was to flee, yet for some reason he stayed absolutely still and allowed himself to be fully detected, right up to where the lights came on and he was confronted directly with the evidence of his own folly.

"All right, Jackass-Free-!" the word died upon the lovely lips that were about to utter it as a heavily pregnant Ukyo stood there with trademark spatula upraised, flanked by an ax-wielding woman whom Ranma knew to be the Perfume of this timeline...and further back beyond her stood Perfume's equally pregnant cousin with raised bonbouri and a stance that was classically defensive.

Seeing them there felt like a blow to his gut, but Ranma forced a smile onto his face as he nodded in their direction and said, "Ucchan...Shampoo. Nice to see you."

Weapons were lowered and expressions went blank, and all three women confronting him stared in mute astonishment at the trench coat wearing stranger in their midst...a stranger who was anything but as he stood there in their living room calmly holding his ground and gazing back with an unreadably deep expression.

"R-R-Ranchan?" Ukyo finally managed to gasp, even as Shampoo uttered a soft, "Aiyaa..." then both of them turned to Perfume for confirmation.

"It's his scent...well, sort-of," Perfume conceded, "But...older...more mature...and...something's different about him..."

"Give the lady a prize," Ranma sniffed, "Understatement of the year. But don't mind me, girls, I'm just passing through. Wanted to stop in and have a look...but now that I've done that..."

A tugging at his pant leg caused the big man to glance down, and there he saw looking up at him with an owlish expression further evidence of the contrast between the choices made on one timeline and the consequences that resulted on another.

"Are you my...Daddy?" she asked curiously, no fear at all in her expression, just simple curiosity that so painfully reminded him of a similar expression worn by another.

Ranma grunted, "Sort-of...in a manner of speaking. You're Lylac, huh? Nice to see you again...even if it's for the first time for you."

"Ah...excuse me for asking, Sir," Lylac hesitated before saying, "But is my daddy all right? You look like him...smell a little bit like him...but..."

"I've been on the road a lot, but as far as I know your Pop's okay...and so is your, um...fama?" he turned his gaze towards Shampoo, "Got a real live one here, Sham-chan. And fifteen years from now, watch out world, 'cause she's just like you and Nabiki."

"Aiyaa..." Shampoo whispered in amazement, then framed the word, "Husband?"

"Not quite," Ranma said, "Think of me more like an older brother. Look, didn't mean to butt in here and disrupt your night. I just wanted to see how everybody was doing, that's all. And soon as Junior gets done with whatever's keeping him away at the moment..."

"Junior?" Ukyo blurted out, only now just recovering her wits, "Hey...who are you? You look like Ranchan, but..."

"Older?" Ranma replied, "Taller, better built, more ruggedly handsome? That what you're gonna say? Well...play your cards right and your man'll turn out a lot better than me, and that's a promise. Now if you'll excuse me, Ladies, I need to take my leave before I get an earful from my own wife, and she ain't the type who's into sharing."

He phased out of synch with the timeline and became immaterial, then invisible to their senses. He went a short distance then rematerialized outside of the garden, glancing back over his shoulder at the Tendo house before muttering to himself, "Lucky stiff...hope he knows how good he's got it."

"I trust that comment wasn't directed against us, was it, Husband?"

Ranma winced, "You know better'n that, Nabby. I just meant...well...everybody's happy there, not to mention alive, and what I wouldn't give to make that true on our world..."

"I know," Nabiki murmured in his ear with more sympathy in her voice, "You think it was easy for me seeing that child and knowing she could have been mine...if me and Shampoo ever got together?"

"Yeah," Ranma grunted softly, turning away...only to halt in his steps as a double-bladed ax struck the ground directly before him.

"Hold it right there!" Perfume demanded, "You think you can waltz in here and then just leave like nothing's happened? Who are you and why are you so much like Ranma...and yet so different?"

"You wanna know who I am?" Ranma said sourly, then turned a hard glance her way, "You really wanna know? Wrong in spades, Lady...you don't wanna know me! You've got a guy in your life who's everything you want and need...and I'm never gonna be like him again, not with the road I've taken, not after all I've seen and done. Forget it, you're better off with the punk you married. I'm just some loser who screwed up big time, and coming here was a mistake since you're better off never having met me, believe it."

Perfume recoiled from the heat of his stare but managed to hold her ground with Amazon resolve. Nonetheless her posture softened and she said, "Was it really that bad for you...where you come from?"

"Believe it," Ranma said, instantly regretting his former outburst, "Your guy's got it good, and he's lucky to have good women like you ready to stand up for him and your loved ones. I've...kinda started to turn my life around, and things are better for me now...but...the pain of what's past is always gonna be with me. Can't help that, it's just my nature."

Perfume softened her tone even further, displaying a tenderness that made Ranma palpably aware of why she had no trouble courting other ladies into her arms on many of the timelines in which he had met her parallel sisters, "Why are you here then? Is something...something bad about to happen?"

"I don't know," Ranma answered truthfully, "But I think...yeah, something bad's about to happen, but you can bet I'm gonna do my damndest to prevent it."

"I trust you will," Perfume replied, "My husband never goes back on a promise, and...you're enough like him that I know you'll do whatever it takes to make things right."

Ranma's shoulders slumped and he feel once more like crying, "Yeah...I will. Just do me a favor and keep an eye on your wives, will you? They need somebody like you to stick around and keep it all together. As for your husband and your co-wife...well, they're tough and capable of watching out for themselves...but they're gonna have me waiting in the wings, just in case I'm needed. And yeah...I won't let anything bad happen to 'em either. I screwed up once a long time ago, but I like to think I've since learned my lessons."

With that he walked away, heading into the night and the shadows while Perfume looked on, flanked by Shampoo and Ukyo, who crept up to join her.

"Who the heck do you think that was, Sugar?" Ukyo asked of her brown-haired Airen, "Was that really...Ranma?"

"In a manner of speaking, Airen," Perfume replied, "It was him...only...it wasn't."

"Aiyaa...was he a shadow?" Shampoo wondered, "Like a sending from one of great-grandmother's old stories?"

"Probably," Perfume replied, "Though if I guess right I think he comes from a different agency, one concerned about our future. I think we had best be on our guard and see that everyone here is safe for tonight, Cousin. While Ranma and Nabiki are away they will be depending on us to see that everything is stable and quiet."

"I hear that, Sugar," Ukyo paused then added, "But you wanna know something? That guy may have looked like death warmed over, but...he was kinda cute...in a grim lone-wolf sorta way."

"Know what you mean, Ucchan," Shampoo said slyly, "Have nice butt too, or so Shampoo noticed."

"I was kind of paying more attention to his crotch area," Perfume smiled, "What a monster. Whoever he's married to, she must be a very happy, satisfied lady."

Both Ukyo and Shampoo favored heir co-wife with mutually dubious expressions, more than mildly astonished that the notoriously Fem-friendly Perfume would even pay attention to such things...but then their own faces took on speculative looks as they considered the point that their mutual co-wife had just raised...and drew from that their own rather similar conclusions...

Meanwhile Ranma heard his own wife say softly, "Something about that Perfume...I think I'm beginning to see why some of my counterparts find her so...intriguing."

"Now who's got a right to be jealous?" Ranma sniffed, "But I know what you mean. Good thing I didn't come here in my girl body or there might've been real trouble."

"For who?" Nabiki's voice dropped several degree centigrade and had just the barest hint of acid.

"See what I mean?" Ranma shrugged, "Oh well...on to the Otono group. Let's do a little recon of the place then see what Junior and your counterpart are gonna be faced with."

"Just don't take the initiative of doing something about it before I've cleared it," Nabiki cautioned, "We don't yet have enough information to properly assess this crisis...and with the Daokan involved..."

"Right," Ranma noted, "I'll be on my best behavior, I promise."

"That's what has me so worred," he heard his wife grumble tartly, but for some reason Ranma found himself smiling, cheered up in some odd way by the thought that things were not so bad, not with a woman like that watching over his shoulder and ready to hold him in his place come Hell, High water or a mild case of impending Armageddon...

Frank was worried, seriously disturbed and more than a bit irked at his inability to get past the miniature hellion who was barring his way in search of his wayward fiancée. For all her diminutive size this child named Gamina was proving to be an opponent to be reckoned with, not least with her abilities to dismantle the things of technology that Frank relied upon to augment his own natural talents.

He had tried a variety of gadgets and weapons that he carried about on his person only to see her dismantle and remake them at a speed that bordered on real magic. His best combat methods were equally ineffectual since hitting a little kid ran against his very grain, while she had no similar such restraint about attacking him and had a surprising degree of strength and agility for one so tender in years. Frustrated and stymied by her knack for pulling what seemed like "Roadrunner and Coyote" tactics to outwit and thwart his best attempts to get around and behind her, he had finally fallen back on the most low-tech combative method in his arsenal, a singular means for holding this demon-child at bay, and one in which he had every hope of coming out the victor.

Unfortunately she was proving to be even more adept at a game of cards than she was at stealth and evasion.

"Ace of Clubs," Frank grunted while glaring murderously at his own card deck, silently accusing the images of betraying their owner.

"Go fish," the child named Gamina cheerfully responded, forcing Frank to rifle through the discarded pile in search of an ace that he desperately needed.

He found a card not of his choosing and added it to his otherwise unpromising hand then sat there with his rump on the asphalt considering how he might recover his edge in this game, even while the cherubic hellion before him grinned up in triumph and seemed to relish the uncomfortable place that she had her foe at the moment, clearly the one with the upper hand in all senses of the word, and prepared to fully exploit her position.

"Do you want more time, Mister?" she asked after a long drawn-out silence had filled the night air between them.

Frank considered using words that were more appropriate to someone many years older than his tiny foe but held his temper in check and merely grunted, "You sure you're only eight? You play this game like you've been doing it for ages."

"My daddy taught me how to play," the child said perkily, "And Gremlins love card games. Heck, a whole tribe of my relatives come from a place called Las Vegas where they love to have fun with the mortals who go to play there."

"That figures," Frank said curtly, "Little guys probably even run the place. I've had encounters with the underground there and they seem to whisper in tones of dismay about the 'little people' in the background. And here I thought they were referring to the Leprechauns."

"Oh no," Ganima answered, "Those Irish guys hand out with the Teamsters."

"Makes sense," Frank conceded, then discarded two useless cards and fished out some replacements, considered the hand he was holding and then placed it down face-up on the asphalt, "Straight Flush."

"Full House," the child said proudly, displaying the three aces that Frank had been searching for as prominently as a child prodigy might show off a report card.

Frank bit off the urge to say something curt about this and instead fumed impotently for a few seconds before snarling, "Look, Kid, I know you think you're doing something important by delaying me here, but I've gotta go find your Momma so I can have a little chat with her about her putting the moves on my girlfriend, Kasumi!"

"The Nascent Goddess?" Gamina replied, "Grandfather told me all about her. She says that she's a really nice lady who never meant to do anyone any real harm. He says what happened between her and my Mommy was as natural as fate, the meeting of two soul-mates, that sorta thing. Frankly I think the whole thing sounds kinda mushy, but if having a new friend makes Mommy happy, then that's all I need to justify keeping you here, Mister."

"Look, do you like candy?" Frank asked, growing desperate, then at the brightening look in the child's eyes he silently murmured to himself, "Dumb question. All kids like candy. Well, if you agree to let me get past you then I'll guy you all the ice cream and candy you want. After all, I can afford it, I'm loaded."

"Really?" the child replied, then screwed up her tiny face in a thoughtful expression, "I'll have to think about it. Like...just how much candy are we talking about here?"

"As much as you can stuff down," Frank assured her.

"And what kind of ice cream?" she asked.

"Whatever kind you like," Frank confidently predicted.

An eagerness filled the child's eyes as she sat upright and said brightly, "Chocolate Ripple Tutti-Fruity Vanilla-Strawberry!"

"Hah?" Frank blinked, momentarily taken aback.

"Or Butterscotch Tapioca with Lemon sprinkles and peanut-butter coffee dots!" the child said with even more eagerness in her tiny expression.

"Um...well...I could work on that," Frank reluctantly conceded.

"Or Liquid Sunshine with Caramel flavoring!" she added with a toothy grin that displayed the fact that her dental work was decidedly...non-human, bearing more resemblance to a shark's grin.

"Is that even a flavor?" Frank asked in head-scratching confusion.

The child's bright smile became a pouty look of hurt accusation, "You promised!"

"Ah...well...I could see what I can do..." Frank reluctantly gave ground, already having a strong suspicions that the next hours negotiations were going to be going on like that, and wondering again at what devilish combination of genes could produce such a pint-sized vexing creature, let alone what it would take to win her over to his side since it was obvious enough that he would get no where tonight in trying to outfox and outwit her.

Eluini and Gremlin genes...just the sort of implausible mixing that could come from such a pairing. But then again it was at least a good thing that the child was merely mischievous and not as dangerously twisted as a full-fledged gremlin.

In which case she might well decide to take Frank apart to his component members, and that would definitely NOT be good for his medical and dental insurance, to say nothing of his chances of getting to Kasumi in time to prevent losing his fiancée to another woman, a position he knew all too well could undermine any chances for happiness in his life in the immediate future.

Even if said happiness might result in having to call the creature before him "Step daughter," but then again, every relationship was bound to have a few speed-bumps, and considering the alternatives he was ready to deal and hope for a miracle in the long run...

"Say what?" Nabiki asked, staring up at the glowing apparition with a sense of dismayed apprehension born at least partially from a seductive sense of subliminal attraction.

"Christ Mithra Sol Ivictus," Anri replied, "Literally translated as, 'The Annointed Fire of the Sun Triumphant.' Of course that really isn't me, just a Hollywood production model who's taken over the franchise, but the effect is the same...at least where it concerns about one third of all human life upon the planet."

"That's God?" Ranma asked uneasily, wondering what it was about the thing that alternately made him feel so at ease while also making his skin crawl.

"Don't be ridiculous, Boy," Reka scoffed, "It looks nothing like Her."

"That is rather, the collective image projected by over a billion minds of devout believers rendering their overlapping conception of what they view to be my supposed Divine manifestation," Anri clarified, "A Demiurge Incarnation of the so-called 'Christ' figure, as promoted by the various Christian Churches. This is the image of God that one encounters when they pray to their alleged 'Lord and Savior,' a vaunted icon created and maintained by their collective will and imagination, which is why the image is somewhat defuse and shades around the corners since not everyone has the self same image in their minds of what I supposedly looked like in that incarnation." He paused to shug before adding, "Hardly surprising since I never did stand around in one place long enough to have my picture taken. After all, I was a Rabbi, not a politician."

"Truly doth I dislike yon image, Father" Thelendra averred, "They never get thine eyes correctly."

"Oh my," Kasumi averred in tacit agreement.

"Too true," Anri conceded as he stroked his chin and considered the image, "They've got the nose wrong, and the hair is a little too loose and unkempt. Granted I didn't use a good conditioner in those days and I tended to get some pretty bad split ends, but I kept it all together in what amounts to a pony tail of sorts, with a head covering as was proper for the period. Also too, as you say, my eyes were green, not blue, and I had a much swarthier complexion. The way I look up there you would think that I was a Teutonic Viking rather than a resident of the Middle East."

"You think that's bad?" Reka sneered, "You should see the rendering the Muslims have of their so-called prophet, whose image is forbidden to them to capture. They outnumber the Christians by about a third as many adherents, and are-if anything-more intensely committed in their adherence, but the lack of a common image leaves their Demiurge without true focus, rendering him next to useless as a patron in the old sense of a traditional religion."

"Mind explaining to me again what you mean by collective image?" Ranko asked, "That sounds a little like that Jung guy in my psychology courses."

"Carl Jung had the right basic general idea," Lenore responded with a look of uneasiness in her own upturned expression, "Whenever a great many humans tend to focus their consciousness on a central idea or point it causes a ripple in the ethosphere and shapes an image upon the Astral Plane through which spiritual energy can be channeled."

"Which causes tendencies and forms to develop into patterns, like tracks in the grove of an old fashioned style record," Cheshire concluded, then paused when she saw the looks turned her way and shrugged, "Hey, where I come from we know about stuff like this in basic physics."

"So," Amalthea tentatively spoke up, "How exactly does this thing work, what with believers and all? If this thing started out as Master Anri..."

"Oh, I inspired the original template, that much is true," Anri remarked, "But the image itself is the glorified creation of Paul and his followers, who interpreted the stories about me through the slanted prism of their own beliefs and prejudices. Since Paul was himself a Hellenic-born Roman citizen of mixed Jewish stock he naturally drew from the culture that he knew rather than the one to which he was alienated, and from the legends of Sol Ivictus he gained the kernel of an idea of tying my life as Yesus to my past incarnation as Mithra, and wedding the two competing images together."

"And from that was born the Great Heresy that is know to day by the name Christianity," Reka noted, "Which my brother rightly protests is not the religion that he started out attempting to set in motion."

"True," Anri sighed, "I sought to teach by example a means for uniting all of mankind through mutual appreciation of our differences, to advance the view that no one individual is superior or more deserving of life than another."

"Instead what became of mine father's mission was a faith of absolutes and intolerance," Thelendra sighed, "An extension of Lucifer's power-mad obsession with gathering all power in the world to himself, and by such means to become the One True Supreme God dominating all others upon the planet."

"I thought you said there was no devil?" Ranma asked.

"When did I say that?" Anri replied, "I said that Satan was a figure greatly maligned, and that Lucifer is not Satan, but I would never claim that there are no devils, young sir. There are indeed a great many Devils in the world, and not all of them wear their horns openly nor conform to your expectations. Some few even can be exceptionally nice people. One should really avoid falling into the habit of judging others based upon their racial stock, it tends to get people into a lot of trouble."

"Satan was a minion of Lucifer's in the days when they worked together, in the early formative period of the Hebrew nation," Thelendra elaborated, "But after Lucifer was entrapped by a distant ancestor of thine, Satan became more-or-less a free agent. His reputation hath grown over the millennia yet he was ne'er so prominent a host as to aspire to be the all-arching villain that Christians made him out to be. In point of fact they have tended to scapegoat him rather badly, excusing all of the ills of the world upon his shoulders and thus absolving of responsibility the Christian God, which thou dost see now before thee."

"Oh my," Kasumi said, "Is he alive like that? I mean...being crucified in that manner...it must be terrible. How can he endure it?"

"As long as eternity if need be," Anri shrugged, "Or as long as there are Christians who continue to crucify him through their beliefs. Truly I do not so much pity nor despise him as I do feel great remorse for having helped to bring him to this stature. Thought-Form elemental or not, there is simply no justifying the cruelty that is being projected onto his person here...though in all truth he actually feeds and grows upon the devotion of the very people whom he is fleecing."

"At the core of the image is the earlier impranteur of a God whom Paul grafted in place, to be later found and adopted by Constantine when he officially recognized the religion," Reka resumed, "Endless repetition of the image cast by Paul through his words reinforced the basic outline, and the result you see is the cumulative total of all the belief heaped upon him by a desperate and clueless mortal population."

"How's that again?" Ranma asked, scratching his head and looking quite lost in the sea of verbiage that had been floating back and forth, over and under his head.

"You got me there, Pop," Ranko replied (unwittingly sounded like an echo of her nominal father in her presently male incarnation), "I think it sounds like he's saying that the Emperor Constantine adopted the religion of Paul and combined it with its real source, which was the Mithraism of the later Roman empire."

"Mithraism was a religion that appealed greatly to soldiers because of its warrior image of a crusading God who avenged the evils of the world through a cult of personal salvation," Lenore explained, "The thing that made Christianity blossom was that-in the early days-it appealed to strongly feminist values. In fact many of the most prominent early deacons and sponsors of the faith were women...and only after it took over the Empire did it turn into the male chauvinist system we know of today through its cult of Saint Peter."

"Ah yes...Peter...or rather Cephas as he was known in my time," Anri mused, "A stout-hearted fellow, a bit quick in the temper, slow in the wits, but a loyal friend in most instances, which is why we nick-named him 'The Rock,' which Paul later interpreted by the Hellenic term 'Petra.'"

"Wasn't he supposed to be your right-hand guy and the leader of your apostles after you kicked off?" Nabiki asked him.

"Good heaves no," Anri said, "That honor went to my older brother, Yamez, called 'The Just' in some quarters as he held a prominent rank among our Nazorean allies, the Essenes. Peter was more like our whip who kept the others in line. The man was barely even literate, a fisherman by trade, and not very articulate in expressing his views, but good at following orders...at least mostly. And as for giving him the keys to the Pearly Gates of heaven, most of us wouldn't have trusted him with the keys to the mens room. A nice fellow, but a bit limited in some ways, though I generally did like him and called him a brother. A pity the way things turned out, though were he here with us today he would no doubt have some fine language to describe his views about the role in which the writers of Acts did cast him."

"It was through Cephas that Paul made tentative contacts with the movement founded by mine father," Thelendra explained for the benefit of the others, "But the true Apostles distrusted the oily young man and ne'er truly endorsed Cephas's sponsorship, so they instead assigned him a task to gather funds through donations to determine his veracity, and from that he construed an official endorsement of his mission."

"And that is where everything went so horribly wrong for you, did it not, my dear brother?" Reka said with smug condescension, "Because this lowly peasant on the fringes of your movement usurped the very nature of your mission and transformed it into something you never envisioned, preaching his own foolish notions as if they came directly from you and inventing an image of your life that survives to this very day in yon distorted archetype. And you-for all your vaunted gifts at prophesy-never even saw it coming."

"Too true," Anri sighed, "I never foresaw the rise of such a man, nor did I appreciate the impact that he would have, finding fertile soil in which to plant the seeds of my ruin, which was also the end of hope for the continuing survival of the Jewish state of that era. Rather the visions that I had of a Jerusalem in flames is what came about near the end of my lifetime, at which point it was too late for me to go about correcting the harm that had been done by denouncing Paul since...no one would have believed me."

"Believed you, Lord?" Amalthea asked, "But...why wouldn't they have believed you?"

"Because at the time I was not yet come into my full birthright," Anri answered, "I had access to the power of the Daokan, the collective will of all of human kind, but I had not yet learned to fully tap into the full extent of my power. Also too there were substantially fewer people in the world at the time that this all happened...less than a quarter of a billion in all, which was less than one twentieth of the current census numbers of six billion people presently occupying the planet."

"Our powers have grown exponentially over the centuries as the pool of human life-energy has increased to such numbers," Reka added, "As has our understanding in the ways to which that power can be efficiently applied, making us several hundred times more dangerous than ever we were during the mid-term Roman era."

"I could have forced people to believe me-rather than merely to believe 'in' me-by performing miracles, like some circus tent revivalist with pretensions to play Moses," Anri added, "But that has never been my way. I do not seek to bombast, threaten or intimidate people into believing as I do. The minor feats that I accomplished as Yesus were mere baubles, distractions that diverted attention away from my message. Special Effects were not what I was all about back then...it was convincing people through argument and persuasion that I had hoped to lead people to a bright and glorious era. Forcing people to see the truth of what I had meant to say by playing to their baser desires to see a 'miracle worker' in action was more in line with Paul's thinking, not mine."

"So you let yourself be cornered and outflanked by behaving ethically in the face of a proven liar," Nabiki sniffed, "I could have told you what that would have gotten you. People always prefer the liar to a man of truth, especially if the lies come with better packaging and appeal to their baser instincts."

"And when the truth requires sacrifices and commitment rather than the easy path that the liar lays out for his believers," Reka sardonically added, "You win more flies with honey rather than vinegar, dear brother, as you of all people should appreciate, that being the method you employed when you were Krishna and the Prince named Siddhartha."

"Well, I appreciate it now with the benefit of hindsight," Anri shrugged, nodding towards the glowing image of the Christ figure, "But how was I do know that the whole thing would lead to this? I never envisioned seeing myself this way, trapped for all eternity in a web of contradictory theocratic principles that has my double here cast as both Lord and Savior and as Eternal Victim."

"The Son, Father and Holy Ghost all viewed as One," Kasumi murmured thoughtfully, "But in the end...he's really none of that, is he, Sensei?"

"Oh, most assuredly," Anri said, contemplating the huge pseudo-image, "For all the energy that devout believers direct towards him there is no coherent pattern that can grant him ready access to the power he wields. Effectively he doesn't have the strength to so much as light a candle, though he can influence the minds of his believers through the phenomenon known as the 'Rapture.'"

"What is that?" Ranko asked.

"It be a state of mind very similar to what thine people call Satori," Thelendra answered, "A perfect moment of Epiphany when the mind, spirit and emotions all integrate into one brief synergy, which the individual is momentarily united with their own higher nature, their spiritual reflection within the plane of the Astral. The Christians call it 'Christ Consciousness,' and mistake it as the moment when the 'receive' Jesus and be saved from the weight of their sins. It be a moving and powerful state of mind, to be certain, yet it be nay more than transitory...it does not last forever."

"Simply put, a believer frames their self-conception in a context that too-briefly unites them with the divine spark that lays within them," Anri added, "And in that moment one has the ability to literally remake themselves into an entirely different mental matrix. Unfortunately the Rapture to a Christian is a point when the Demiurge reinforces its grip and psychologically grafts the notion that one is among the elite chosen of Heaven...that belief in the false me will make them a better and more enlightened person, one who will not transgress against the will of the higher powers."

"Fat chance of that," Reka said rudely, "When the Rapture ends a person tends to revert back to being the person whom they were before Satori, so unless there has been a true remodeling of their inner personality, they will be just as frail and fallible as ever, and yet even more capable of error since they believe themselves to be protected against mortal folly."

"We know this, Uncle," Thelendra said testily, "Those who claim to be 'Saved' hath often performed savage and thoughtless acts of criminal barbarism fueled by the belief that they be guided by a 'Higher Power' that wilt steer them away from the shoals of misfortune. Clearly enow this be hardly the truth, and if anything the fear generated by the Rapture itself is to blame for fanning the flames of unreasoning fanaticism."

"Such as a fear of God's displeasure?" Kasumi asked, "Or...fear of awakening the Devil?"

"Bit of an irony that," Anri sighed, "I taught my followers to Love the Supreme One, not to fear him. If you fear something then obviously there is something about it that you ought to be afraid about, which does not speak well for such a religion. To me the very notion of a 'Devil' meant adhering to the dark and negative side of one's own nature. Indeed...that brings us to the point that I wanted most strongly to be made here...the exact reason why I loathe the Demiurge and wish that this false image of me had never been willed into existence."

"Why is that?" Ranma wondered.

"Because he lacks basic humanity," Anri replied, "All humor, warmth and humility-beyond a generally sanitized image of compassion-and true kindness have been stripped out of this image, as are the raw animal qualities of sensualism and other tempermental emotional swings that human beings are all too prone towards...dark emotions that pure-minded people would rather not see in their nominal 'Savior,' beyond the basic thunder and wrath that they imagine a God to be about. And what becomes of those feelings and emotions when they are denied to him whom these people project to be their Savior?"

As the others looked on the glowing image suddenly reversed itself like a huge photographic negative, and all at once a photographic negative image took shape, only resembling more of a parody of the benevolent glowing being of before. This image was that of a giant trapped against the bars of an enormous cross while thrashing and snarling against his restraint as though blindly seeking to escape from his containment. He radiated both malevolence and an underline aura of perverse animal impulses that made him both an object of repulsion and fascination...two disturbing tides that unnerved the bearings of the horrified observers.

"What is that?" Nabiki asked, repressing a shudder.

"That is the other side of the coin that is the Christ Image," Anri answered, "It's Janus reflection, through a mirror darkly. That is the Anti-Christ...Devil, or 'Satan,' if you will...the sum collective mental images and beliefs of a billion minds projecting an Anri-God view of divinity where all those negative traits that I mentioned before are conveniently stored and incarnated. That is the Adversary to the Demiurge, his other self or darker incarnation."

"Yahweh in two halves," Lenore shuddered, "Both the Loving and benevolent father...and his dark after-image, which is cruel and overbearing...the contrasting images that many people tend to have when viewing a parent."

"People want to believe in a God who is all-seeing, all-knowing, all-powerful and yet somehow also all-benevolent, which ought to strike anyone as a bit of contradiction," Anri continued, "After all, if he's truly 'all powerful' then how can he stand by and allow innocent people to suffer pain, death and misery? Why doesn't he do something to correct the ills of the world rather than putting it onto the shoulders of frail and ignorant mortals, who can hardly be expected to solve their own problems? Well, that must mean that the Will of this 'benevolent' God is somehow being stymied by a force acting in concerted opposition...and considering that the God image is supposed to be all-powerful, one must imagine an immensely powerful force of Evil working in antithesis to a God, which was why the Devil is and has always been a convenient excuse and marketing tool to the Christians."

"But what about salvation and eternal damnation?" Ranko asked, "Don't they also exist?"

"You mean a heaven which locks up the good people within its boundaries for all eternity, making them life on a diet of Harp music until the end of time?" Anri quipped, "Or the legions and Hosts of Heaven who spend all of their days worshipping and benevolently supplicating before the feet of the crown of Heaven, telling God what a great job he's doing? No thank you...I wouldn't want to be a part of any sort of Heaven with admission standards like that."

"So what actually does happen when people die?" Nabiki asked, "If they follow either this...God or his opposite side, the Devil...?"

"Ah," Anri smiled, "Another excellent question. Come along with me now, Students, and I will show you a little secret known to scribes and scholars throughout the ages...the back-stage story of what it means to be dead and living in either Hell or Heaven."

He made a dramatic motion of reaching out with a hand to grasp an invisible handle, and then slid a section of the earth and sky to one side, exactly as though he were opening a massive door revealing something like an entirely different world on the other side that was altogether...disturbing.

Before them stretched out an enormous field of gray that was divided between the land itself and the sky, which was noticeably lighter. From the ground one could observe what seemed to be like an endless sea of bulging formations, boiling and shiftless as a marsh through which fetid vapors were escaping, though in reality there was no true sense of decay about the place. And everywhere from these bulging terrain formations there floated up what appeared to be the stalk of a tree connected to a glowing balloon that bore a curious resemblance to a human being curled up in a fetal position.

"Cheery place," Nabiki murmured, even while trying not to be as obvious as Ranma in the degree to which she was affected by their new surroundings.

"Behold the Land of Nod, the realm of Dreams and Imagination," Anri announced to the astonished observers, "What you see here is but a three-dimensional representation of the actual realm itself, as it might be witnessed from this side of the curtain. Notice those nodes projecting up from the bottom of the curtain? Those are impressions created by living, breathing human beings, the distortion in the fabric of space and time that is created by their waking existence. Each node is a bump in space and time that is formed by our life-auras, and from this side it would appear as though some shadowy form is surrounded by a bubble that distinguishes a human being from the inanimate forms that make up the physical plane of our common understanding."

"I've heard about this," Lenore said, "Life generates a bending in the line dividing the Third and Fourth continuums of existence, just as we mark the transient point between energy and matter..."

"Correct once again, Ms. Darkholm," Reka mused, "How nice to see that you recall this much of your training in the Kabala. And do you know what those sprouting shrubs attached at the base to the nodes signifies?"

"Of course," Lenore replied, "Astral projection...the souls of individuals penetrating all the way through to the Third Continuum of Netzurach to Assiah and revitalizing their essence in the endless Sea of Light that is the Astral."

"For those of you not fully versed in the Kabala," Anri winked, "What she means is that each of those floating objects represents a different human soul in a state of dreaming...something mortals tend to do at least a couple of times a night, or else they suffer a loss of vitality and keenness in the morning. This is the natural, normal process by which the mind sorts out memories while recharging our spiritual and mental batteries so that we can continue to function at waking consciousness in a relatively full measure. Without such dreaming...human beings would gradually deteriorate and lose vital energy that they otherwise burn away through daily living."

"You mean...those guys are asleep...and when they dream their souls leave their bodies?" Ranma scratched his head and looked on in wonder.

"Best place for dreaming," Anri replied, "Here in the realm of Space without Time it is possible to live out days or weeks of memory in the space of a few seconds. Back in the physical realm the body is in a state of chemical recharge, free from the interference of the mind and soul, operating autonomically in the manner of human genetic programming. Our biology is designed to take care of itself, and it would do so more regularly but for the levels of stress and distraction that the conscious mind tends to throw in the way of things, diverting energies uselessly to non-vital processes, such as tensing up in the 'fight-or-flight' mechanism of a live-threatening situation."

"But dreams be where anxiety can be explored and sometimes creatively dealt with," Thelendra added, "But more this projection to the Psychic Realm of formless space without Time be where we may touch upon other realms, realities and entities, for the barrier is thin between the ego and the soul so that dreams of prophesy are often effected."

"You mean...this is where you go to relax and recover?" Kasumi asked of her rainbow-haired companion.

"It be where all go when they dream, Beloved," Thelendra answered, "And indeed, this be where mine own powers be at their fullest measure. But more than this, the Astral Plane of the Third Continuum be where souls go when the body dies, as thou mayest witness in yon example."

Heads turned once again to take notice of the thing that the Oracle was indicating, and-sure enough-they saw one of the tethers holding the balloon-like sacks detach itself and rise up from its severed stalk. It was immediately met part way by glowing ball-like energy spheres, which convered upon the rising balloon and began to guide it aloft as it rose higher into gray sky, which parted to permit it full way as though accepting the glowing figure into the bosom of the heavens.

"Ah yes," Anri said, "A lady named Moiri Sakura has just passed on in her sleep. She lived a full and buoyant life and leaves no regrets behind, which is why the Guardians here had no difficulty in guiding her to an afterlife free of guilt and regret."

"Oh my," Kasumi said, "She died?"

"That's the simple way of putting it, my Lady," Lenore answered, "A true death, not like the quasi-state that I'm in. Of course it ain't that smooth a ride for everybody..."

"All too true," Reka said, "Some mortals choose unwisely in life and pay the penalty for their stupidity, venality and vices."

"Allow me to illustrate," Anri said, nodding at the air and forming a flat-screen image that appeared before their eyes, showing a young-looking man of swarthy complexion nervously fingering his robes while staring warily at his immediate surroundings.

The fellow appeared to be of middle-eastern extraction, a dark-haired Palestinian such as one often saw in televised news shows, dressed in clothes that appeared too heavy and hot for the sun-drenched climate of a metropolitan city. All at once a group of figures dressed like soldiers approached him-men wearing the insignia of a pointed Star of David and heavily armed with flack jackets and fully automatic weapons.

The young man clearly pan iced and triggered the device that he was wearing, blowing himself up-along with the three soldiers-with a violent discharge that obscured their view of any subsequent collateral damage. Anri banished the image then called up another, showing a particular section of the node-dotted gray landscape where four balloon-like chords had just been rudely separated.

"The fellow who just committed suicide was a man named Akhmed Muhammad Pulavi," Anri said in a tired voice full of weariness, remorse and exasperation, "He was promised by his handlers-and his religious mentors-that by killing himself, along with his enemies, that he was promised in the Koran with the blessings of a Martyr and would be greeted in the afterlife by seventy virgin Houri."

"They promised him that...if he killed himself?" Kasumi asked, covering her mouth while wearing a horrified expression.

"They do that a lot in that part of the world," Nabiki said with a somewhat more guarded expression.

"Indeed," Anri said sadly, "They take the gift that is life and throw it heedlessly away...not only for himself but for these men, who even now approach us to give account to what has marked the end of their current mortal existence."

They saw the ghostly images of four men being herded towards them by the glowing lights, which themselves gradually took on the form of tall and ethereal beings whose bodies shimmered with a light from within, even as the men they were escorting took on a more solid continence, resembling the men whom they had been while living.

The soldiers were understandably shaken by what they saw, but then the lead of the trio turned to Anri and said, "What is this place? Who are you?"

Anri just smiled back and inclined his head, "Come now, Lieutenant, where do you imagine that you would be? After all, you were there when the explosion happened."

"A-Are we dead?" a second soldier asked, not less taken aback than his fellows.

"In a manner of speaking," Anri replied, "But don't worry, I won't detain you for very long. I merely wanted you assistance to illustrate a point that I am making. And you there...Akhmed. Stop hiding behind those others. Do you think I do not see you?"

The young man timidly poked his head around from behind his erstwhile victims and hesitantly asked, "Are you...a servant of Allah?"

"Sorry to disappoint you, but No," Anri replied, "The fact is we are barely even on speaking terms...something about five dinars he lost to me in a bet and has so far refused to pay back. But never mind all of that. You are here to be congratulated."

"Congratulated, Memsahib?" the young man asked with eyes full of wonder.

"Indeed," Anri said, "Because of your efforts these fellows have made it here ahead of their normally allotted time and can be judged by their record of service, which is rather exemplary on the whole. They haven't made any where near as many mistakes in their Karma as you have."

"Me?" Akhmed protested, "But...I have the blessings of Mullah Rashid. I have always been a devoted Muslim and follow the ways of the prophet..."

"Did you now?" Anri asked, his expression sadly poignant, "And was stealing bread from your sister at the age of nine an expression of your devotion?"

The young man gazed in disbelief, "What? But..."

"And bearing false witness to a classmate, denouncing him as an informant to the Isrealis...was this also done in the name of Allah?" Anri continued in the same non-accusatory, almost sad tone of voice.

"But he said things against Mullah Rashid!" Akhmed protested, "He was a collaborator..."

"He merely spoke his mind, which was the truth within his heart, and you ignored it," Anri continued with sad patience, "You blinded yourself to the truth with the fervor of a true fanatic, contorting everything into an easily molded picture of hate where black and white were defined by your Rashid, and in his eyes everything that is Hebrew was inherently evil...while everything that he approved of was Good and properly in accordance with Islam."

"Who are you to blaspheme against him, Unbeliever?" Akhmed bristled.

"Who I am is hardly all that important," Anri said, "But who are you? That is the question you should be asking. Are you the loyal son devoted to helping his mother who prays five times a day that you profess yourself to be...or are you a child masquerading as an adult who seeks to impress on others his piety by destroying whatever you are told to hate, which includes the Jewish system?"

"They are the sons of Shaitan!" Akhmed pointed a finger of accusation against the soldiers, "They murder and oppress my people, taking our land and occupying the soil that belongs to all true Muslims! They steal that which is ours while forcing our people to eat dirt and live in miserable poverty, denying us jobs and even the basic right to an existence...!"

"I'm afraid you are mistaken," Anri sighed, "These men are soldiers working for a government that does indeed do many bad things in the same of security and self-protection, including which are those illegally constructed settlements that you quite accurately point out are a violation of sovereign human values..."

"Now wait a minute!" One of the soldiers immediately protected.

"...That being said, what you did is far worse than the evils that you are protesting," Anri continued, "Your own so-called leaders are the ones who oppress their fellow Palestinians and keep your people in poverty for their own selfish ambitions. Your people have squandered the good graces that the world itself has tried to shower upon you by behaving in such a manner that what sympathy you deserve is drowned in contempt for your childish conduct. You judge and condemn an entire people based upon your religious doctrines and have never attempted to understand the good things that exist across the divide, the lessons you should be teaching one another by acknowledging the fact that you re sons of Abraham, and by all measure this makes you brothers."

"Brothers with these pigs?" Akhmed's hand shook with emotion, "I would sooner marry my sister to a goat than see her free to date such a motherless dog..."

"Your sister is already dead," Anri reminded the fellow, "And by your hand...I believe you called it an 'Honor killing?' Something about avenging the family honor?"

"She brought it upon herself!" Akhmed shouted in protest, "I am blameless! I but did the will of Allah to protect my family from the shame that she visited upon us!"

"Because she dared to date an Israeli, a fellow student whom she met abroad in college?" Anri sighed, "She came home hoping to maintain her ties to her family, but how did your show your regard for your mother than by taking from her the life of her own daughter? And then you compounded this crime by seeking to 'atone' by becoming a martyr. What a sad circle of logic you have woven about yourself, my dear fellow. Your sister had hopes for a better future, but you stole them away from her and denied the potential that she had to help make a better world for your people...and now you are here expecting to be rewarded."

"It is what Ibrahim Rashid has promised to me!" Akhmed said proudly, "The reward of the Just who have perished defending the faith against the unbelievers!"

"I know that he promised you this," Anri replied, "But I did not promise it to you."

"What...what do you mean...what are you?" Akhmed's eyes suddenly went wide as he felt something tugging at his legs, and before he knew what was happening he suddenly found shadowy forms rising up to grip him with hands that felt like tendrils, and then faces took shape and he screamed in horrified protest, "But-But I was promised...!"

"By a poisonous rogue who one day will know his own reckoning at the hands of your current benefactors," Anri informed him, "Say hello to the Eurinyes...those 'Houri' you were promised. I can't say if there are exactly seventy of them that have been assigned to you, nor can I vouch that many of them would count as virgins, but I'm sure you will have their complete and undivided attention as they escort you to your resting place in the next life...and have a nice journey."

"But IIIIEEEE-!" the young man screamed in terror as he was dragged through the pit that opened up to receive him, one hand clawing the air before he vanished altogether.

The silence that followed this incident was broken only by the sound of Anri sighing, "I never like doing that. In a way that fellow was as much a victim as any of you...the true crime was his believing those who mistake hate for a religion, thus sowing the seeds for his undoing."

The soldiers were equally as shaken as Nabiki and the others, but the lead of the trio managed to say, "You speak with the authority of one who can pass judgment upon the dead..."

"Who, me?" Anri said with a smile, "I'm just a humble pilgrim who has walked the road of life for many years and has seen far too many bright lights extinguished prematurely. Besides, I didn't condemn Akhmed, he did it to himself. I merely detained him for a moment to show these others what befalls those who deny their own inner nature by taking the low road of darkness. As for the three of you, you can leave at any time, Lieutenant Goldstein, and go with my profound blessings."

"But...how do you know who I am...?" the Lieutenant asked, even as he and his men began to fade from view, becoming misty lights that rose up into the sky and vanished altogether.

"Now then," Anri turned to regard Nabiki and the others, "I trust that answered at least some of your questions. The choices we make in life have a deep affect upon what befalls us when we perish and move on to the next level of existence."

"You just sent that guy to Hell...like that?" Ranma asked.

"From the sound of things he sure looked like he deserved it," Ranko murmured, causing a few heads to turn his way, for the curious echo of a voice closely echoing that of his father was more than a bit...distracting, even to an Eluini's thinking.

"Oh, I didn't do that," Anri nodded to the glowing lights that still hovered in the background, "They did. It's their job, after all, to decide the direction of a person's Karma and to transit the soul to its appropriate place within the many layers of the Astral. Those of a lighter disposition rise up and ascend into the heavens, while those who choose falsely descend into the depths of the darker planes and experience the horrors of their own mistakes relived over and over. By this means is spiritual evolution served as each individual journeys to the place where they are most deserving."

"For how long?" Kasumi asked, "All of eternity?"

"Good heavens, no," Anri said, "No one dies forever. Just because you find yourself in a place that may seem to you to be either heaven or hell, you are not remaining there for all eternity. Can you imagine anyone staying forever in one place with no chance to move from that spot until Time itself was expended? That would be an incredible waste of space and potential, to say nothing of being extremely inefficient."

**MAITREYA.**

"Eh?" Ranma blinked, seeing one of the lights approaching their location.

"Ah," Anri turned to the figure, who even then was gaining in form to stand before their eyes as a broad-shouldered man whose glowing aura seemed to form into wings across his back, "My old friend, Michael. How goes it with you, my good fellow?"

"Do not 'good fellow' me, Maitreya," the handsome glowing figure responded even as he manifested a fully human appearance, albeit robed in shimmering garments that appeared...almost insubstantial, "I've warned you before about coming here and harassing my staff, and now I find you interfering with their appointed rounds of gathering the fallen and conveying them to their place of destination?"

"I was merely making a point for the sake of my guests," Anri said with a mild gesture registering the others within his presence, "I merely delayed a few travelers for the span of an instant while hardly deferring their course from their chosen point of reckoning."

"So you say," the long-haired, robustly masculine golden figure turned his gold-flecked eyes upon the others and frowned sternly, "Mortals? You have brought mortals to this sacred place between limbos? This goes far even for your noted audacity, Maitreya, and it will be reported to the highest channels of the Yggdrasil system."

"Charming as always, eh Moloch?" Reka said snidely, "Still brown-nosing with the heirarchy? I would have thought by now that a fellow of your talents would have gone freelance."

"I don't need to hear that from the likes of you, Logi," the golden man said tartly, "And the name is Michael. Moloch was someone else from the old days, before my reconversion to my present format within the system."

"Ah, but of course," Reka nodded sagely, "Pedocide is no longer as fashionable as in Sumerian times, so you perform the same function but in a much more sanitized and code-approved manner."

"Pedo-what?" Ranko blinked.

"Thousands of years ago Moloch once served as a Temple emissary, worshipped by some as divine in himself, long before adopting his current status as a Modron Archangel in service to the New Order," Thelendra answered, "Baal Moloch he was known by, and his service offering came in the form of babies who were not wanted or were found to be 'unfit' to live by the standards of the Priests who warded his temple..."

"They killed kids in his temple?" Cheshire asked, looked more than slightly ruffled at the concept.

"As population control, to weed out the infirm and imperfect among his flock," Reka answered, "Only the strong were allowed to live among the warrior cast who one day would form the Assyrian empire, which later swept the region and numbered the tribes of the Israelis among their client nations. Moloch's duty was but to convey the spirits of the innocents slaughtered at his altar to their next life in the Other Realm, but though he protests that he has long since amended his ways from where I stand very little of substance has changed save for his adopting of a loftier title."

The golden man visibly bristled, "The old days are long behind us both, Ravager of Nations, or do you think that I have forgotten your penchant for leaving ruins in the deserts as one of the so-called 'follies' of your own misspent youth?"

"Yes, yes," Anri said soothingly, "But we are not here to relive that sad chapter of our past. There is a more immediate crisis pending within the system, you may recall...or did you fail to get my memo? I was certain I cut and pasted it to your website."

"I know all about the pending Doom that weighs heavily over the Japanese Islands," Michael retorted, "What you sow you reap, and for all my part in the sad chain of events that culminated in your crucifixion and later transfiguration to legend I do regret it most sincerely, but as for using that to justify disrupting the workings of the entire operating system..."

A sudden rumbling noise brought attention back towards the normally silent presence that was Udan, and the lordly creature that was Michael took a visible half-step backwards, his imperious eyes suddenly registering concern that bordered on alarm if not outright fear of the Dark Man's disfavor.

"And what is Beowulf doing here?" Michael demanded, "Keep your attack dog on a tighter leash, Maitreya, unless you really do want me to report this to the System Manager, along with a formal complaint that you and your family are abusing your authority by coming here and commandeering..."

"Please," Kasumi suddenly stepped forward, "We don't want any trouble, kind sir. We only want to know what is going on...and how we can best do our part to protect our homeland."

The change in Michael's attitude and manner was even more striking than the evident dismay he had expressed upon being confronted by Udan. All at once he was down on one knee with head bowed, even as the other glowing figures made similar gestures of supplication in the direction of the astonished Tendo sister.

"Forgive me, Great One, I did not recognize your presence in the midst of these others," Michael said with sincere, profuse contrition, "There was no notification of your arrival, and we are all properly chastened with remorse that we did not extend to you the proper greeting as befits one of your august station."

"Oh my," Kasumi said, blinking and staring at the glowing beings as if the thought of them bowing down to her were something that could not be easily imagined.

"Ah yes," Anri smiled, "I was going to get around to mentioning that one of my guests is the divine Goddaughter of the Central Manager for your department, the lady Peorth. Of course you didn't give me time enough to bring that up...but I suppose you only thought that you were doing your duty, keeping an interloper like me from mucking things up too badly."

If anything the glowing man named Michael seemed to bow even lower, shuddering, "A thousand pardons are not enough to excuse my dullness, Great One. By all means you have leave to go wherever you will, and do not hesitate to take advantage of our services as any one of us would be only too honored to serve and guide you in your travels."

"Ah...well...that is very nice of you," Kasumi fumbled somewhat uncertainly, "I think."

"Wait a minute here," Nabiki turned to Anri and said, "He's not exactly overwhelmed to see you, but he's suddenly mister humility on account of my sister?"

"Of course," Anri replied, "She is a Goddess after all, and as such belongs here in this realm even more than she does the world of material flesh and substance. I'm only an Avatar, much lower in status by the measure of the System, for all that we Daokan are Lords of the Elements and a power to reckon with in our own right."

"Hah?" Ranma asked, scratching his head as he tried to ponder that one over, only to become aware of a disturbing presence suddenly manifesting close by his side...one of the glowing figures whose shimmering form suddenly took on a coherent shape in the person of a winged blonde woman whose nubile charms were readily visible from beneath the gauze-like material that passed for a dress here.

"How curious," she said, "I sense within this boy a familiar presence...someone whom I have known before in a different time and place."

Michael suddenly glanced up in alarm and said, "Jerika!"

Nabiki suddenly shoved herself into the path between her husband and this female new presence, glaring dangerously while saying, "Back off, Sister, he's already taken!"

The angelic girl hardly batted an eyelash as she turned her focus towards Nabiki and said, "I don't know your companion, but she is one of the Undines of the sea, and so is of a similar nature..."

"Daughter!" Michael said scoldingly, "Attend your position!"

The golden winged girl glanced in annoyance to her elder but backed away as instructed, leaving Michael to lower his head even more than before until it was almost touching the metaphysical ground beneath his feet.

"Forgive her, she is young and impetuous, Great One," the golden-maned man said pleadingly, "Hardly a thousand years by mortal reckoning and still she acts with the manners of an adolescent."

"I am not a child, Father," Jerika protested, "I can speak for myself."

"Ah...I see, I think," Kasumi turned to the golden woman and said, "Jerika is it? Please forgive my sister's outburst. She's naturally...concerned due to recent events and is understandably wary about my little brother's...tendency to acquire new friends in his travels."

"Thou dost speak the understatement of the millennia, Beloved," Thelendra murmured, taking Kasumi by one arm and addressing herself primly towards Michael, "Thou who art named, 'He who be as God,' thou dost show proper respect to mine beloved and so may be forgiven thine earlier rudeness towards mine father and his brothers...provided that we acquire the services of this young Jerika for the span of an evening. Let her be our guide for the duration, to serve our needs and insure good faith for all concerned parties."

"What?" Nabiki turned to the taller Eluini, "Are you crazy?"

"As a fox, blessed one," Thelendra replied, turning a wink towards Kasumi, "But trust me, it shall all work out for the better."

"So speaks the voice of my daughter, whose word even you must respect, Michael old chum," Anri mused, "So what say you to that? It's not too unreasonable a request since your Jerika has already volunteered for the position."

"I have?" the golden girl replied, eyes blinking.

Michael visibly shuddered, but at length said, "Your request will be...obeyed...but you do my family too great an honor. Are you certain that one of my more senior staff members would not serve you better in her stead?" He said the latter part a bit too hopefully, and it was transparently clear to all that he had grave reservations about entrusting his daughter to her designated position."

"Ah...no, it would be quite all right by me," Kasumi said under Thelendra's silent urging. Turning to the winged girl she said, "Jerika-san, would it be all right with you if you accompany us for a while?"

"You are asking me?" Jerika responded in astonishment, as though the very idea of a goddess asking for her permission-rather than demanding it-were an entirely novel concept.

"Oh yes," Kasumi replied, "Just one favor...please try not to seduce my little brother. It would upset my sister, Nabiki."

The golden girl shook her long mane of radiant hair and said, "Whatever."

"Splendid," Anri congratulated, "And now we can move on to the rest of our tour. I have many more sites to show to you, and I'd rather not delay with trivialities if it can be helped. After all, time is a wasting, and the Apocalypse isn't getting any sooner."

"Yes it is," Michael replied, but other than this did not raise his head from his prostrate position.

"Oh...wait, that's right," Anri considered the point, "Well, that means we have even less time, so we might as well be going. Sister, if you would do the honors?"

The silent blonde known as Ulsa smiled benevolently and nodded, and all at once the landscape transformed once again, this time becoming an expansive valley framed by attractively appealing mountains and a landscape that could have been taken from a painting filled with radiant flowers and a sky so blue that it could not have been anything but a dream given form. The place radiated an atmosphere of such soothing quality that it was as though love itself had been shaped into its very fabric, and all around them they saw women tending fields while children laughed, frolicked and played and men sat idly beneath verdant trees munching on apples while discussing the time of day with their companions.

On the whole the place was so perfect in every detail that it might well have been termed heavenly, and indeed seemed to fit that category far better than any other word that the mortal witnesses to its glory might contemplate. It was also thoroughly integrated and boasted a variety of animals roaming peacefully in the fields, including dogs and cats among a wide variety of aerial creature. It was hardly the billowing clouds and endless sky one might have imagined, but it called to the soul with a yearning named "Home," and each of the observers had the familiar sense of having been there before at some unfathomable time and place beyond understanding.

"Elyssium," Lenore breathed, breaking the silence that had fallen over the party, her own tone and expression showing an awe that made it seem as though she had never expected to be there within her lifetime, "Exactly as described in the legends..."

"Where is this place?" Ranma asked, having difficulty himself believing in its reality.

"Where do you imagine it to be, Boy?" Reka smiled indulgently, "Stop wasting time asking questions when you already know the answer."

"You mean this is Heaven?" Kasumi asked, then paused to add, "But...if it's Heaven...does that mean that...?"

"That our mother might be somewhere around here?" Nabiki finished for her, trying not to betray how much she herself was being affected by the vision, "Get real, Sis...as big as this place obviously is the chances of us finding her here are..."

"May I help you, young people?"

Nabiki froze, her expression draining of color, leaving it to Ranma to gape past her shoulder and stare incredulously before asking, "A-A-Auntie Kimiko?"

"Grandma?" Ranko blinked, no less astonished than her (metaphorically speaking) father.

"Mother?" Kasumi gasped, her own look of incredulous disbelief melting into a shining expressikon of pure joy as she gazed upon the woman standing before them in a simple two-piece outfit, holding gardening sheers with her hair bound by a scarf as though only just interrupted in the middle of tending to the flower garden all around them.

"Oh?" the woman said with a curious look in her eyes, "You know me, Honored One? I'm flattered. One doesn't always gain recognition from one of your divine office...not that I'm criticizing, of course, since I'm only here part time filling in for one of your regular workers."

"M-M-Mommy?" Nabiki asked, her lips trembling on the word as she slowly turned about to gaze at the living image of her dear, departed mother.

"Mommy?" the woman paused to consider the stranger as she studied Nabiki's face intently, "I haven't heard anyone call me that since I was...ah...still living..."

Thelendra interceded, bowing her head formally and saying, "Honored mother to mine own beloved, these are thy children, Tendo Kasumi and Saotome Nabiki. Hast thou been so long among the verdent fields of plenty that thou couldst fail to recognize thine own offspring?"

"Nabiki?" recognition sparked behind the woman's eyes, and then she stared in disbelief, "Kasumi? I...I remember those names...but...how?"

"Auntie?" Ranma asked, concerned and alarmed that the woman was treating them like relative strangers.

Kimiko blinked, "Little Ranma? Is that you? All grown up and become a man? Oh my...has it been that many years? Just look at you! I'll bet the girls line up the block to gaze at that manly profile! I'll bet Akane's as jealous as anything at all that competition..."

"Momma," Nabiki said with a thick swallow, "I'm the one Ranma married...he's my husband, and the father of my son...our children."

"Nabiki?" recognition finally registered in the eyes of the late Tendo matron and suddenly she beamed a broad smile and extended her arms with a motherly, "How you've grown! Just look at you! And what have you done with your hair? Has that Genma been treating you right? What have you been eating? You look so thin, and your complexion is as brown as a walnut!"

Nabiki found herself awkwardly embraced in the very-solid arms of the older woman, and very hesitantly put her arms around her mother's waist as if to confirm the very realness of her body. She had half expected to embrace light and shadow rather than substance, but the warmth her mother radiated was so intense that she felt immediately like crying, her voice choking up with an unexpected wellspring of emotion.

"Mother," Kasumi said breathily, then turned to Thelendra and said, "Is this for real? Is she truly our mother?"

"Canst thee nay tell, beloved heart?" Thelendra answered with a smile of her own that was joy personified, "Dost thee nay feel it in thine heart? No illusion this be, this truly be the spirit of thine late parent given form and substance by the enchantment of this illuminated place."

"In a way it is a form of illusion," Anri cautioned, "But real as the touch of a hand, and as real as you wish it to be. This is the realm where thought has substance, after all, and where feelings truly matter. The bounteous light of the Astral plane reflects that which is within you and shapes the substance of your surroundings to give it definition as per your perceptions, but where it concerns the light of other souls and once-material beings..."

Brother dear...do be quiet.

Nabiki blinked her eyes and wondered for an instant where that thought had suddenly arisen from, but then she turned to look past the shoulder of the woman whom she was embracing and saw Anri turn his glance back towards the silent blonde in the white shawl and faded jeans and saw her smiling knowingly back, as though she were the one who had chided him with such affection.

"Oh?" Anri said aloud, "Ah well..." he turned back and gave a polite not towards Nabiki as if to affirm that he had spoken out of order.

"As always, Maitreya, your penchant for exposition often runs away with you," said the lordly being known as Michael, who was standing there with a full set of wings sprouting from his broad-shouldered backside, his clothing now more substantial as even his body seemed quite materially solid, his expression still quite stern and disapproving, but resolutely firm and even-tempered, like an adult supervising a playground full of children with the patient hand of a well-considered elder.

At his side the near-naked blonde named Jerika also flexed an impressive set of golden wings and was studying both Ranma and Nabiki quite intently, her expression not so much overtly sensual as intrinsically curious, as though the pair represented a curiosity that she was drawn towards against more prudent judgment.

"Whoah," Ranko remarked, sounding more than slightly affected at the sight of the radiant winged beauty, "She's an Angel? Literally I mean?"

"Apparently so, Master," Cheshire breathed, though her own scrutiny of the golden-haired girl was more like that of the hungry cat eyeing the unsuspecting canary.

Reka glanced sidelong at the time-lost pair then shook his head in dismay and said, "Sister, if you would please?"

The silent blonde nodded and a shimmering globe of water materialized into existence directly over Ranko's head, which Reka promptly heated up with a glance, causing the bubble to burst and shower down upon the startled teenager, who sputtered and transformed back to her buxom redheaded feminine self on the instant even as he uttered a protest of, "Hey!"

"Much better," Reka affirmed, then turned back to his mildly bemused regard of the rest of the reunited Tendo clan, "At least now we won't have your Sire's voice in stereo, which I find mildly distracting."

"Look who'se talking," Ranko sputtered, even as Nabiki was observing the change and the other things going on around her while holding tightly onto the woman who was unquestionably her mother.

Of all those present, the middle Tendo sister noted, only the dark-meined Udan seemed truly out of place in this lofty setting, a shadow amid the brilliant colors of eternal spring who manifested an entirely discordant aura, not so much antagonistic as more reflecting a breath of winter chilling the ground upon which he was standing.

Lenore the Vampire also seemed somewhat out of place in these environs, but there was a look almost of rapture in her eyes as if she yearned to be a part of such a peaceful landscape, to walk among the fields and plains without the taint of Vampirism giving her a negative glow that absorbed the light around her, causing a partial fading in everything that came near her. Flowers wilted and grass turned brown at her feet, a phenomenon not at all consistent with Kasumi's aura, which had the opposite effect, causing things to bloom with radiant life as if joyfully enraptured by her presence.

Reka burned brightly in the endless sun of day, but the smolder he represented was the hot breath of a desert wind disturbing the landscape and threatening to turn the verdant green into the ash of a drought ridden summer. Clearly he did not fit in any more than his brother, yet he stood aloof rather than hostile to all that he was viewing as if mindful to respect his place and not intrude upon the good fortune and happiness of others.

The Lady Amalthea was another to whom this strange dominion seemed both appropriate and fitting, and as she gazed around with puzzled eyes she murmured aloud-to not one in particular, "How strange...I feel as though I've been here before...and not that very long ago. If...if only I could remember..."

Doubtlessly it was the presence of the blonde named Ulsa who was tempering her brother's flame, for she seemed quite at home within these environs and radiated her own potent aura of life-enhancing emanation. Unquestionably she was the power to be reckoned with her, and Nabiki could almost sense the invisible force-lines that extended from her to each of her brothers, making it plain enough to a careful observer that she was the key to their odd matrix. The regulator of the flow whose hand was on the literal spigot, who could increase or cut off the line to any one of her siblings who stepped too much out of line, making her the one to watch and be mindful of at any moment you were around her.

At length the woman known as Kimiko Tendo released her bear-grip upon her middle daughter and stood back to say, "So you're the one who wound up uniting the houses? Well now...I can see that you make a good match for little Ranma, and it's obvious enough that he's fond of you just by the way he's staring your way. But...what happened with Akane? Why didn't she fulfill the contract in your place?"

"Ah," Ranma spoke up, feeling a certain tightness as he gazed upon the beloved image of his adoptive aunt and seeing traces of his wife's own quirky smile within her brown eyes, "It...didn't work out for Akane and me, Auntie. We just weren't...right for each other...and when Nabiki came back from her training, and Pop and Tendo-san decided to switch engagements..."

"I see," Kimiko gave a sardonic look that was shockingly identical to the one so often worn by Nabiki, "Most sensible thing my husband's probably ever done, aside from chose to marry me instead of one of my rivals..."

"Rivals?" Nabiki arched both eyebrows.

"But you..." Kimiko turned to regard her eldest daughter, "Kasumi-chan? You've not only grown into a woman...you're also a goddess? I didn't even recognize you at first...you glow so brightly that you're almost painful to look at."

"Mother," Kasumi felt like crying herself, and all at once she replaced Nabiki by embracing the woman who had given birth to her in her arms, "Mother...it's you...it's so good to see you again! I've missed you so much!"

"Urk!" Kimiko blinked, her eyes suddenly widened in panic as she stared past her brown haired divine-child's shoulder, "Air...!"

"Ah...better ease back a bit there, Sis," Nabiki urged, "Gotta watch the strength there..."

"Ooops...sorry about that, Mother," Kasumi abruptly let the woman go, then stood by and held her shoulder while the other woman coughed and flexed her arms, attempting to get her wind back.

"Whoah...it's a sure thing that you've been taking your vitamins," Kimiko said cleared her throat and said, "Good thing I'm already dead or that might have been the death of me. What a grip you've got there, Kasumi-chan, even stronger than your sister."

"Ah...well..." Kasumi felt awkward, having forgotten to mind her own supernatural limits.

"My lady is sometimes prone to forget how her elevation has affected her in terms of mortal reckoning, honored Lady Tendo," Lenore helpfully supplied, "I'm Lenore Darkholme, by the way, a humble servant and supplicant follower of your daughter, and may I say what an honor it is to have the opportunity to greet you here in the afterlife?"

"Well...a supplicant, eh?" Kimiko smiled, glancing from Lenore to Kasumi, "You even have your own fan-base. My little girl, grown up and become a full-fledged goddess. If only my parents were here to see this, I'd rub Daddy's nose in it and show him that my union with Soun wasn't such a disgrace of our family after all. Matter of fact, I think Mom and Dad are in a different district up here, I might even wire them and tell them to hurry over here so I can start to crowing."

"Great-grandmother and great-grandfather are here also?" Ranko asked, glancing sidelong at Cheshire.

The hirsute cat-girl merely shrugged and said, "Makes sense...I guess, assuming they were better sorts than my own great grand-mother and grand-sire."

"Momma?" Nabiki asked, "Ah...do you like it here? I mean...away from us...that is...in heaven?"

"Well," Kimiko replied, turning from Kasumi to her other daughter, "It's a place to hang your spurs between incarnations, so I guess I haven't done too bad. Of course that doesn't mean that I haven't missed you both something awful...and it's so hard to get news up here about affairs back in the mortal plane. You really must stay a while and tell me all that I've been missing...and what are you doing here anyway? I can tell just by looking that you're not here in spirit and are still among the living."

"So...you made it to Heaven, Antie?" Ranma asked, then considered his own words and added, "Not that I ever doubted, but..."

"Heaven's as much a state of mind as it is a place beyond the realm of substance, Boy," Reka said with a note of condescending amusement, "Contrary to the beliefs of many, admittance here is only conditional upon meeting the requirements of a heart free from foil and fear, and all those petty concerns that weigh mortals down and prevent them from enjoying their existence."

"You mean...you don't have to belong to any particular religion to get in here?" Amalthea asked them.

"Hey, way I see it, you've got a better chance making it here if you're not burdened by any religious dogma," Lenore answered, "Take it from me, my people don't even have the same conception of an afterlife that most people have, but we still hope for a better life in the next world."

"Very true," Anri noted, "But their concept of a resurrection of the Dead was as...shall we way, naïve...as that of Paul's version? Heaven is not a place that anyone faith or belief system can lay exclusive claim to, nor are souls turned away merely for making a few mistakes in life since it is the total balance of one's nature that is the only true qualification. If you belong here...then you are freely admitted."

"Indeed true, Maitreya," Michael affirmed, "Buddhists, Shinto, Zorastrians, Egyptians, Vikings...even a few Mormons and the rare, occasional Born-Again Fundamentalist...every one has a place in the Heavenly order. Of necessity, of course, there are different levels and sections where those of a like form may gather and congregate so has not to provide too much...how shall I put this? Friction that might come from rival camps competing with differing ideas of what constitutes the nature of true heaven?"

"What my father says is true," Jerika further added, "For one thing, experience has taught us the folly of freely mixing certain groups, such as the Muslims and those who call themselves Christians, too close together where their conflicting ideologies create waves of disharmony that would make this realm far less Heavenly to dwell within. We do not forbid intermingling when members of one faith wish to pay their respects to the dwellers of another sector, but only those capable of conceding a place in Heaven for those who think differently ever undertake the journey. To most localized camps the very provincial nature of their faith makes them incapable of seeing the very existence of a neighboring county."

"But something I don't get about all of this," Ranko said, "These guys all have a different take on what the afterlife is like, right? So which of them turns out to be right, and which ones are in error?"

"They all be," Thelendra answered, "For none be all right, yet all be at least partially correct in certain central tenants."

"It's like I tried to explain back in old Palestine," Anri shrugged, "No one religious doctrine has a lockhold on the truth, for the truth belongs to everybody and it's there to be seen if you only accept the world in all its diverse glory and try not to think your way is so superior to all else that you can afford to dismiss as 'alien' other people in other cultures."

"Unfortunately some would rather view themselves as the sole exclusive possessors of an infallible dogma," Reka sneered, "And by that very selfish reasoning exclude themselves from admittance to true Heaven."

"But you're all of you here now," Kimiko marveled, "Which means you must have lived a good life and brought joy to one another, which is the only thing that Heaven requires for residency. Heck, they even let me in, go figure."

"They're just here on a visitor's pass, Lady Kimiko," Anri informed her, "I know that this is your day off from your regular duties, so I thought you could spend the time to get reacquainted..."

"Why yes," she turned as if only just noticing Anri's presence for the first time since their arrival, "Oh my...are you the one everybody calls Maitreya? You're certainly tall enough...for a gaijin. But I always thought that you'd be...I don't know...somehow more impressive."

"One does as best they are able," Anri shrugged, seeming to enjoy the comment that others might have found less than respectful, "But we won't keep you away from your gardening for too long...and the rest of your duties with the Air Guard."

"Air guard?" Nabiki turned a questioning look towards her mother.

"Why yes," Kimiko grinned back, "I hold a commissioned rank as a full Captain with the Valkyrie Air Corpse, flying Einyer 3000 combat jets as an auxillary wing to the Heaven's Gate Wing Command under General Ygg, the supreme commander of the Heavenly Forces."

"You fly combat jets in heaven, Mother?" Kasumi asked in astonishment.

"Of course, Kasumi-chan," Kimiko grinned back, "Why else do you think they call this place heaven?"

"Against what?" Ranma asked, "I mean...what are you flying combat jets against?"

"Against the Enemy of course," Kimiko replied, "The Demons of the Outer Dark we call Old Ones, who are older than Time and have a malevolent hatred against the worlds of Light and all that they stand for. Their minions are forever attempting to cross the Grey Boundaries to foray into the Light Realms and erode away chunks of our territory, converting them to Chaos. My wing is charged with patrols keeping that sort of nonsense at bay so that we can continue to live in peace and relative contentment." She paused and added with an especially saucy grin, "What did you think we were doing up here in the afterlife? Sitting around listening to harp music while contemplating our navels like the Buddha."

"I resemble that remark," Anri sniffed, "And I leave the harp playing to the Marx Brothers, thank you very much. Although your brother Gabriel does play a rather mean trumpet, Michael old boy..."

"I try as hard as I can to be somewhere else when he's practicing," Michael grumbled sourly, then turned to Kimiko and said, "Forgive us, Captain Tendo, but we must cut short our visit. Do forgive this intrusion as we have other places to visit and not much time on the visitor's visa that I've been forced to hastily schedule..."

"Oh, not at all," Kimiko said, "I've enjoyed the visit, and seeing how my girls are getting by, and what a handsome stud Ranma's turned into...and did I hear you right? Did you just say a moment ago that I'm now a...grandmother...?"

Ranko opened her mouth to say something but a nudge from Cheshire caused her to think better of adding her voice in at this precise juncture in the conversation.

"Ah, yeah," Ranma said uneasily, "Nabiki just delivered the other day...a healthy son named Chusen. We...ah...kinda left him behind with our co-wives...I mean...Shampoo and Ucchan...and...ah...hooboy..."

Ranko leaned closer to her nominal 'father' and said, "Better stop while you're ahead, Pop, 'cause there ain't no way you're gonna explain your way outta this one."

"Other wives?" Kimiko's eyebrows arched, then she turned to Nabiki and said, "You have just got to come back here and give me all of the details! I want a full accounting of everything that you've been doing while I've been away, including the things that wretch Genma has put you through during your training."

"Everything?" Nabiki gulped, suddenly looking quite dubious at the prospect.

"Another time, another place, dear lady," Anri said with gentle firmness, "I'm certain that your daughters will be delighted to bring you up to speed with the events of their lives...but for now we have other scheduled places to visit, and not enough time to indulge all of our fancies."

"Well, I suppose you do know best, Maitreya-san," Kimiko replied, sparing a moment to give both Nabiki and Kasumi a wink, "But I'll be eager to learn all that you've both been up to...and Ranma-kun too. What a catch he's turned out to be...so much better than his father, almost makes me think he might well have been adopted..."

And with that the lady turned away and returned to her gardening chores, leaving all three of her closest family members staring in amazement, unable to shake a sense that the Tendo matron was somehow turning back to her day-to-day existence and gradually forgot about their presence, her eyes settling into her task with a pleasant glaze that seemed contended and a bit too dreamy.

"Don't be too concerned about appearances," Anri said, "This realm soothes the aches and hurts of mortal life, and here souls come to be renewed and replenished so that they may go one to their next incarnation with a clearer conscious."

"She looks like she's dreaming," Ranma observed.

"Because she be just that," Thelendra informed them, "All here be as but a dream projected by the mind and subconscious, and all here experience what is best in their lives as a common reality held together by dream-like perceptions."

"But she was so alert and alive a moment ago," Kasumi noted.

"Yeah," Ranko agreed, "Only now it's like...she's forgotten all about us."

"That is because she was responding to you, the living," Reka informed them, "The dead go through periods of activity and dreams while they exist upon this plane of being, but in effect they are little more than Lotus eaters, caught up in their memories, filling time between death and rebirth by living out the dreams of their existence."

"You mean all that stuff about her belonging to an air corps was just a fantasy that she's dreaming?" Nabiki asked.

"Hardly," Michael replied, "We do indeed recruit some of the wilder and more active spirits who dwell here into service as our warrior elite. After all, Heaven does have enemies, and who has a better right to defend the realm than those whose life was filled with heroism and adventure?"

"Our mother?" Kasumi asked in astonishment.

"Do not be deceived by your memories," Jerika replied, "In life your mother was a warrior, a trained martial artist with a military commission whose career is on record as one who routinely fought the good fight against another of adversaries and menaces...and even a few rivals for the hand of your mortal father."

"She is a Template of the Goddess Peorth," Michael revealed, "And as such contains within her much of the robust fighting spirit of that fabled Rose Goddess."

"Whoah," Nabiki turned a puzzled look his way, "Template? What's that?"

"A person whose image is cast through the prism of the Yggdrasil system to form in the image of a God or Goddess," Jerika turned to Kasumi and said, "You were once such a one yourself...before you rose to goddess status by your own means...yet still you share a link with your own Template, whom you regard as another sister."

"Ah...well...I..." Kasumi murmured, thinking instantly of Belldandy, whom she did indeed regard as another "sister."

"And who's this...what was her name again?" Ranma asked, "Pee-something?"

"Peorth?" Michael turned away with a faint hint of exasperation, "The System Administrator for my department, and the less said about her the better."

"Now is that any way to talk about the one who gave you your current job, Michael?" a voice that sounded identical to the one belonging to Kimiko Tendo, and as heads turned to see an exotically clad figure they did indeed mark a striking resemblance to the woman in question...only even at a glance one could tell that she was not a ghost or a mortal...and quite a bit more than being "merely" human.

"L-Lady Peorth?" Ranko exclaimed, the first to offer audible recognition.

"Ye Gods," Reka made a faint murmur of exasperation, "Speak of the devil and she will appear..."

"I'm not on speaking turns with you, Agrical," the woman sniffed, only to turn a delighted smile towards Anri, "But you, on the other hand...Monalon, my dear...you're another matter. It's been so long, practically like ages!"

"Peorth, sweet Rose of the Heavens," Anri inclined his head, "You grace us with your presence, and indeed...it does seem like an age every time you pay a visit."

"Oh pooh," the woman sniffed, then turned to regard Udan and said, "Bartev the Blackguard is here as well? Oh my...what a grand reunion! Where have you been keeping your handsome profile, you dark rogue you?"

For the first time in the afternoon the expression of the dour-faced giant seemed to transform into something other than annoyance, and an uncomfortable hint made it plain that he was not as eager to greet the new arrival as she was to welcome him, a fact that seemed to rise some curious amusement in the eyes of the lady Ulsa, even as she regarded Peorth with a calculating appraisal that was almost...predatory.

"Ah...mother?" Kasumi asked hesitantly.

"Mother?" Peorth said primly as she took the Vampire Goddess in with a wary look, "I should say not! Oh wait...something about you is familiar...you have a quaint resemblance about you...I almost think you remind me of someone else I know. But I don't remember seeing you at the Goddess Academy, and you weren't one of my study-mates, at least...not that I can remember."

"Honored Administrator," Thelendra spoke up, "Does thee nay recognize the child grown that once thee didst nourish so very long ago at thy knees as a swaddling infant? Or this other one grown to warrior form who also didst once call thee...mother?"

"What?" Peorth blinked, "What are you talking about? Oh way...you're that Oracle, aren't you? One of Monalon's offspring by some tart he calls his soul mate..."

"Tart?" Nabiki could not help but notice the similarities and contrast between this woman and the one she called her mother...but at the same time a disturbing sense was forming in her guts that said that this was far from their first meeting, and that she did indeed recall this Peorth from some previous prior occasion, and not one so very difficult to remember.

"Dear Peorth," Anri spoke up once more, "It has been only a decade or so in mortal years, hardly a blink of the eye in the life of one so radiant as you, but surely you recall the incident where you were called upon to grant a mortal a wish...and wound up more involved in affairs than you have previously imagined?"

"Granted a wish?" Peorth's expression took on a slightly hollow look that noticeably drained of color, and suddenly she was staring at Kasumi and Nabiki with a very different sort of regard, one that clearly registered a strong sense of recognition.

"Well, that's enough for now," Anri turned to the others, "We really must be moving on before the seductive atmosphere of this place grows too acute for your to wish to leave this realm...and you really must return to the world of solid flesh before we exceed our given allotment..."

"Wait!" Peorth spoke up, turning from one Tendo sister to the other, "Kasumi-chan...Nabiki? And...little Ranma? Oh...my...stars..."

"You know us lady?" Ranma asked, speaking for the others while responding in kind to the entreaty.

"Ah...well...ah...that is..." Peorth temporized.

"Yes, of course, but more on that later," Anri gently-but-firmly insisted, and with a slight gesture caused the landscape to alter abruptly, this time taking on a grayer form of murky transsubstance with roiling currents of an altogether unsolid texture.

"Why did you do that, Sensei?" Amalthea asked, "It sounded as if she was about to say something important to these others."

"Indeed she was, but we don't have time to waste on every little detail of past reconciliation," Anri said with a hint of not wanting to reveal the full story, "I brought you here so that you could see further along the gradual path of evolution that the soul undertakes, from death to the afterlife, from the highest to the lowest and back again. Observe...we go now from the blessed to the realm of the cursed and forsaken."

At his indication they found themselves in a dark and forbidding realm, surrounded by a landscape that was as bleak as the former had been visionary. There they saw egg-like cocoons tethered to the soil of the soul-crushing terrain with bat-winged Erinyes tormenting one in particular, gathered about the membrane-like shell while making strange noises that sounded like a cross between a funeral dirge and a joyous sing-song chanting.

"You remember our friend from a moment before, Akhmed?" Anri continued, "This is where his tormentors have taken him. The Erinyes are blood-kin to Michael's kind, but they are charged with punishing the damned, and this is their work in progress, seeing to it that he suffers for the crimes that he committed in life, a system many thousands of years now in existence."

Indeed they could see a naked writhing figure within the somewhat translucent shell, struggling against the liquid containment that held him in place, a plasma-like fluid that he railed helplessly against even as the Erinyes too delight at his suffering and seemed to be encouraging him to suffer all the more at their direction.

"How horrible," Kasumi said, dismayed at such a cruel display of devilish torment.

"Indeed it is, Holy One," Michael affirmed, "As it was meant to be...but do not despair, he more than deserves his lot."

"How...how long is he gonna have to go through that?" Ranma asked, feeling a shudder of deep revulsion.

"As long as needs be his fate," Thelendra replied, "No one keeps him there but his own sense of guilt and self-recrimination. His fanaticism was but a sham, a thin veneer to hide his doubts beneath the soothing blanket of religious fervor. Such be the fate of many a fanatic...but it be nay the Furies who be at fault for his condition. They but fulfill a task appointed to them to charge the Dead with their own guilty memories, to cause them to relive each suffering until they do repent of their transgressions."

"They sure look like they're enjoying theselves," Ranko averred with a hint of revulsion.

"Taking pride in their work be nothing to be ashamed about," Jerika noted, "Erinyes are sometimes called the Birds of Hell, but they do a job thoroughly, sparing us the task of dealing with such vermin."

"But still..." Kasumi hesitated.

"It doth indeed seem needlessly cruel, Beloved," Thelendra said soothingly, "Yet believe when we doth assure thee that this be for his own good...to clear him of the weight of the evil that was instilled in him by the malice of another."

"The one who truly should be so condemned," Reka sniffed, "The priest who taught him to hate without reason. This fool is only another victim, and one who could almost be pitied were he not so pathetic."

"But still this is the way in which the guilty are served and allowed to clear away their karmic debts, right?" Lenore replied, "I had a grandmother who was heavily into the Kabala explain it all to me, and it's just like she described...the guy goes in a leopard and comes out with his spots clean."

"And then what happens?" Nabiki wondered.

"Then they move on and evolve to another level of the afterlife," Jerika revealed, "When they are no longer weighted down with remorse and guilt there is nothing to bind them here, and they go next to whatever fate most becomes them."

"Eventually they are free of Hell entirely and may evolve into Limbo, where rebirth is a possibility," Michael added, "Despite what you mortals may have heard, a sentence of Hell is rarely for all eternity, or else this place would fill up very quickly. As it is you may think on it as a kind of spiritual recycling in which the dross of imperfection is gradually boiled out to leave a person who has a chance of evolving into something unique and special."

Jerika turned to her Elder and said, "I thought I was the one who was going to conduct this tour, Father."

"Do you honestly think that I would entrust you to fly solo when your wings are barely tested?" Michael replied, "You barely even have your permit, young lady..."

"Young lady?" Jerika snapped, "I be near unto a thousand years, Father...!"

"And until you are two thousand you are still a member of my flock and will not leave the nest without my express say-so," Michael snapped, "I am your father, and until you can learn to respect that simple fact..."

"Just the same, Michael," Anri pointedly intervened before the younger Angel could sputter out a protest, "I think we had best move things along a bit now so that we can show our guests the next phase of our tour here."

Again their surroundings altered, this time becoming a much grayer realm of formless substance with swirling vortices like distant tornados into which floating egg-like cocoons were gradually floating.

"From there to here...the transition point in the afterlife where souls are channeled and prepared for reincarnation," Anri announced, "Think of it as cosmic recycling on an Akashik plane of being, the conservation of energy in flux where the spiritual journey of the individual renews itself in preparation for the challenges and travails we each face when returning to the realm of form and substance."

Ranko stared at the swirling vortices and said, "Mind explaining to me how this area works?"

"'Tis quite elementary," Thelendra replied, "Souls that be ready for rebirth be drawn here to this transitional gateway, and whenever an opening emerges, a soul be drawn to that point where it attaches itself by means of a life-chord. When a mother be with child the way be open for the soul to slowly merge with a new body, and by the beginnings of the second trimester a process of integration engages the soul to the flesh of the baby. Very slowly the soul reemerges in a fresh new incarnation, bearing with them whatever strain of Karmic burden yet doth remain after the purging process that doth peel the layers away from their previous incarnation."

"Used to be a soul would spend several centuries winding down and unraveling the chaff of their old lives," Reka mused, "But these days, what with overpopulation, a soul is lucky to spend a couple of decades getting recharged, which is why so many newly born carry so much weight and pain into the world, not having liberated themselves of the bulk of their old Karma."

"Indeed, Brother," Anri said sadly, "And because of this many born come into their new lives with predispositions set in place by their old ones. It is never wise to treat any child as a tabla-rasa...a blank slate upon which you could write any protocols that you fancy, for always a parent must spend time getting to know and understand the person that they are, or were, before helping to shape their new matrix into something that could be more desirable."

"Come again?" Ranma asked, "You mean...babies have memories...of the people they once were?"

"Give yourself a prize for being on the uptake, Boy," Reka sniffed, "That is exactly what we are saying...and in case you care to know about it, the child in your house you name Lylac is a very old soul indeed, yet one highly gifted with much untapped potential. The boy named Chusen, though...he is a different story entirely...a young soul born into this life without the burden of old Karma, and as such his potential is unlimited, provided he is raised and nurtured to accept his somewhat unique nature."

"Oh yeah?" Nabiki scowled, "I'm not sure I entirely like the sound of that, coming from you."

Reka regarded the cursed girl with a condescending sneer, "Regardless of what you think of me, Girl, you should accept my word as coming from a source far older and wiser than any you know, save only for my brothers. I care not whether you think well of me or ill, but only a fool disregards the word of experience simply because you dislike the source...and whatever else may be said of you, you are no common fool, that much I reckon."

Nabiki said nothing to that, but Ranko spoke in her stead, "You know, that's what I can't figure out about you. You're an arrogant, self-righteous prick and a bully, but...much as I hate to say it...a lot of what you say does kinda make sense."

"So exactly whose side are you on anyway, Lord of Earth and Fire?" Cheshire asked.

"Didn't you already know?" Reka laughed, "I am my own side...but I do what I do because I, too, have a vested interest in preserving human life. Where else do you think I draw my own strength but from the potential within humanity that far too many foolishly squander?"

"So...ah..." Ranma said awkwardly, "This is where people eventually go when they're done with either Hell or Heaven?"

"Precisely so, Saotome-san," Anri answered, "At any given time there are several billion souls separated from physical bodies waiting to come through this juncture, the dimension known as Lethe," Anri announced, "Which you may or may not know is Greek for 'Forgetfulness,' the waters all mortals must drink from before returning to the world of form and substance."

"Lethe?" Nabiki asked skeptically, "And I suppose there's another place called Mnemosene?"

"How did you know?" Anri asked with a boyish grin, "Those are the waters that Eluini drink from when they come back full in their power...but for mortal beings such as yourself, this is the method that has been long approved for sealing away memories so that they do not trouble one too much in their next incarnation."

"Otherwise mortals would have to suffer the pains and griefs of their previous lives, along with the memories of joys, accomplishment and loss," Thelendra added softly, "By this means do they have hope of life renewal, and by turns can start out with as close to a fresh slate as may be provided them in each new incarnation."

"Only not a totally blank slate, since each soul still carried the weight and burden of past Karma," Reka noted, "The chains of a former life that weigh one down and condition the circumstances of their rebirth."

"In that case one has to wonder what sort of previous incarnation you had," Nabiki noted.

Reka smiled, "As it happens I have very seldom died and come this way over the millennia of my existence, but those few times when I have perished...I leave behind such an impression that it is easy enough to pick up the weave of my destiny and continue on to the next one."

"Indeed, Brother," Anri said, "The mold of your forging was cast long ago and has never been broken, for truly there is no one out there would want to take up your burden."

"Are you saying that to me, dear Brother?" Reka sniffed, "You look different outwardly in each of your various guises, but remain the same idealistic fool in all of them, unwilling to learn the lessons that history itself has sought so many times to drum into your head."

"And what lesson is that?" Ranma wondered.

"That only a few mortals will ever be as we are, Boy," Reka replied, "Not because they are bound by Karma to forever be mortals, but because they continue in each life to resist awakening the sleeping portion of their being that would allow them to be Eluini. Mortals cower in fear of the dormant embers of the psychic fire within them, and savagely beat down all impulses that might incline them to rediscovery of the Serpent Force that coils within the very spine of each and every mortal. They drown the voice within them by whatever means they have on hand, deafening its cry with a diet of trash and pollution so that they do not have to take up the responsibility that comes with the power that lies within them."

"How is that again?" Nabiki asked, "Are you saying that everybody has the power to be just like you guys?"

"Oh yes," Thelendra affirmed, "To be Eluini be to awaken the power within thee, and to accept a place within the fabric of destiny, for the potential within thee be no less than t'was for ourselves at the beginning."

"Who says we want to be like you?" Nabiki asked, "Why is it so important that anybody else follows your example?"

"You already know the answer to that one, Saotome-san," Anri noted sagely, "The soul cries out for unity and reawakening, so in spite of the fears and inhibitions that block most people from becoming Eluini, there still is the instinctive yearning to regain the perfect joy of the Unimind that is ingrained within our very genes. Of course due to the limitations most psychologically impose upon themselves, the vast majority of people turn to other means for satisfying their inner cravings...less satisfactory approaches such as joining a cult or religion."

"But there be nay substitution for the true sense of liberation that comes with awakening the fires within thee," Thelendra noted, "Though few may travel to where we be, yet still the road be open for the taking. Yet e'en at their best very few progress so far as to achieve a state of semi-divinity, demigod status at best, hardly a full incarnation."

"But then how come you guys are so...flat-out awesome?" Ranko wondered.

"We are what we are because we were set on the path by our parents at the very beginning of our primal incarnation," Anri answered, indicating the tear-drop Amethyst stone that he wore on a chain around his neck, "This was my token bequeathed to me by my father, draped around my neck by the hand of my mother as she gave me up for adoption to the priests of the Himalayas. It guided me through my first life and showed me the way to awaken the power that was held dormant within me. These days it is little more than a trinket, because I have long since outgrown a need for it, just as Reka has his own Tigerseye Firestone, and Udan and Ulsa the bracelets that link them together."

Indeed, Nabiki had wondered about the golden bracelet worn around the left wrist of the man named Udan, even as the silvery band on the right wrist of Lady Ulsa, and only now realized the significance of their matching bird-like emblems.

"Mind you," Michael said, "What Maitreya is failing to mention here is the reason why most mortals refuse the gift within them...aside from not knowing of its existence. Actually there is a deep residual memory within each human being of the time when human beings had vast Psychic potential...but also the latent memory of how abuse of the power burned humanity has driven many away from reliving the experience even after so many recycled lives and new incarnations."

"I was getting around to that, Michael," Anri informed them, "Each time an individual approaches the edge of such memories their unconscious nature rebels and erects psychic barriers to protect and defend the ego. Sometimes circumstances cause a leakage to seek through these mental wards and this causes random bursts of wild psychic talents. Without the proper training many an individual can burn themselves or fall prey to those beings who seek to feed upon their nature. Many a so-called prophet is one whose talents get co-opted by an entity, and unless the novice obtains the proper training and can learn to erect more sufficient wards those individuals could well be driven mad, or start up their own religions."

"The key be to slowly and gradually coax the novice to self-discovery through a number of stages whereby they gradually re-awaken the power without causing themselves too much damage," Thelendra added, "In the beginning most religions functioned as thus, to give order and structure to the spiritual growth of the person...but over time politics took over, and priests became zealous at defending their claims as spiritual intermediaries, and human beings fell prey to the basest of superstitious impulses."

"Which is why there are so few psychically gifted mortals in the world these days," Reka noted, "Your kind tends to persecute what they do not understand, and to attack the gifted under the mistaken belief that they are the sources of great evil merely because they can do that which defies the rational understanding of the mundane."

"Yet thee hath defied many odds to discover within thineselves the gift of Fire within thee," Thelendra revealed as she smiled first at Kasumi then at the others, "Thou hast exceeded the boundaries of ego that would limit thee to the standard of the 'merely' human. Through training, discipline and exposure to the exotic thou hast begun the journey that wouldst convey thee to a higher state of being. That be why thou hast been chosen to assume the mantle of our Champions, because thine eyes be open rather than closed to the possibilities of the extraordinary that lurks within thee."

"That's...not exactly a comforting thought," Nabiki dubiously admitted.

"Nor is it meant to be," Anri said sadly, "For it is a lonely journey for any soul to undertake, to grow spiritually into a being who sees farther and understands more than others. Often you will be misunderstood and will encounter both fear and resentment from the head-blind who surround you. It does not mean that you are superior in any way to those who sleep, only that you are more aware of what goes on within the Universe, a knowledge that some would call mad and many others will fight to prevent knowing, especially if it challenges the comfortable views they hold of their own nature."

"But what is this all about...truly?" Kasumi asked, "Why show us these things, and what are we being prepared for?"

"For that," Anri said, raising his eyes and staring up towards the sky above them.

Once more attention was diverted by the fair-haired man to a point that had previously escaped their notice...only now that their heads were turned upward did they see the looming shapes and shadowy outlines of something huge darkening the sky, passing through a veil of mist to emerge in semi-relief...the untempered vision of several creatures born from the darkest recesses of pure nightmare.

"Omigawd..." Lenore quailed and instinctively flinched back, seeking shelter behind Kasumi.

"Oh my," Kasumi murmured, feeling her own sense of revulsion intensify within that instant.

"Nani?" Ranma gulped, eyes widening with disbelief and amazement.

"What...what are those...things?" Nabiki said at the level of a horrified whisper, her reserve and skepticism now totally abandoned.

"I've seen them before," Ranko swallowed thickly, "But I don't believe it...Old Ones!"

"No way!" Cheshire gasped, her fur standing on end and her tail twitching with agitation.

"They look...vaguely like the Kraken," Amalthea said, seeing the waving mass of tentacles flowing out from mishappen bodies that were full of slathering mouths and ovular eyes that held a malevolent intelligence that in no way resembled the benevolent creature whom she had long considered a friend in her travels aboard the POJ.

"Hardly," Thelendra assured her, "Thy Neflem companion be only of distant relation to yon creatures that thou dost see before thee...for these be things of the Outer Darkness, beyond the planes of light, who be ancient and beyond hostile to all things of life and creation."

"Those are the enemy," Anri revealed, "The Lords of Chaos and Entropy who desire nothing less than to reduce the Multiverse into its constituent elements, which they hope to absorb and return to the formless state that predated the creation. They are old beyond time and powerful beyond reckoning, and if given half a chance they would eradicate all life as we know it in order to clear the way for their own kind to regain supremacy over all of nature. They are the truest source of evil, the core of its self-destructive nature, and they embody the tendrils of corruption and decay that infest the worlds we know with the taint of their designs for our undoing. Your enemies are the servants to these powers who work unknowingly towards the selfsame end of Universal annihilation. They lure, tempt and mislead the unwary with their seductive call for an existence without pain, suffering or hardship, but in the end they betray all who would heed their subversive calling. This what we are preparing you to face...not the demons high above us but rather the fools who do the bidding of these demons."

Nabiki felt a chill run down her spine as she saw one of the creatures turn its gaze towards her, and she could almost have sworn it frowned in her direction, shooting a lethal hate that went beyond all reason, blunted by a protective shielding that sprang up to blunt its deadly force, but which nonetheless left her feeling weak in the knees and terribly shaken.

"Who...what is that one?" she asked aloud, "And why is it staring at me like it wants to...eat me?"

"At you?" Ranma asked in surprise, "I thought it was glaring at me."

"At the both of you, Dolts," Reka chided, "And the answer is that He sees in you a threat to his dark ambitions...or do you fail to recognize your true enemy? He is the shadow within a form, the embodiment of a legend founded on lies, betrayal and distortions. He has many names and identities, but for the sake of simplicity let us merely call him by the one that matters most to this coming battle. Say hello to Baal Ariman Yahweh the forsaken, False God and enemy of all Creation."

"Yahweh?" Ranko averred, "hoooboy..."

And suddenly life went from being merely complicated to a downright horror-filled tapestry of jagged-edged pieces that began swiftly falling into place, forming an image of ultimate nightmare...

To Be Continued.

Comments/Criticisms/Call of Cthuluesque Catechisms: shadowmane

Or: shadowmane9849

The journey through Space, Time and the Afterlife comes to its dramatic conclusion the next time, but if you think this marks the end of the journey, Effendi, you have a lot more to think about (and sorry if it's over the heads of more than a few...I never intended to give anyone headaches trying to piece my version of Cosmology together). Be here next time for: "Wrinkle of the Mind," or, "Yahoos in Rebelion." Be there...

(And sorry once again if anyone is offended by my takes on religion...the ideas expressed here came from a long and careful research into the nature of all religions, and my conclusions are borne from my own experience, but you do not necessarily have to take my word on things. Feel free to ignore my counsel and advice...at your own spiritual peril...6_-)

Jim Robert Bader 08/05/2004

X

/pre 


	87. Chapter 87

preDnabiki176

Nabiki 1/2

"A Very Scary Thought"

by Jim Robert Bader

(Inspired by the works of Rumiko Takahashi Others,  
with concepts and characters created by fellow fanfic writers Wade Tritschler, DB Sommers, Nicole Manders, Andrew Greaves, Bill Guiroff and countless others, including "Buffy"  
creator Joss Whedon; with special thanks to my good pal Shiva for his editing and handling of this series.)

(Certain other characters and concepts are of my own innovation, including my interpretation of the Monster of Mary Shelly's novel, the Furies, Trudy, Takaharis Angelique d'Anjou, Anri and the Daokan, Thelendra the Dream Weaver and various other guest stars appearing in this portion of the Nabiki 1/2 series...)

Chapter Sixty-Six(and two Sixths).

Episode One-Hundred-Seventy-Five.

Bombast from the Past.

At first glance the place seemed harmless enough, just a fancy office complex set atop a mid-town high rise building complex near the center of Tokyo's major trade and complex centers, nothing too out of the ordinary if you were a jet-setting industrialist with assets in the billions-if not trillions-of yen, largely earned off of a media empire that spanned the range of the Telecommunications markets throughout the whole of eastern Asia.

Although nominally much of its proceeds came from religiously inspired charities whose appeal to religious piety convinced many sincere and concerned people to fork over their "tithings" in order to advance "the mission," the plain fact of it was that few such groups ever earned enough from donations to pay above operating costs. A group this big had to operate in the black full time, to generate huge windfalls through major investments, and you just did not come upon that much money by heartfelt appeals to widows and orphans, begging them for support so that they could earn the favor of "God" (the company CEO) in his lofty High Heaven.

Of course it did not hurt if those profits were bolstered through a number of illicit "dummy" outfits whose actual ties to various shady dealings insured one of a comfortable living standard, however much it might be earned off the backs of other people. Munitions factories, pharmaceutical enterprises that often dealt "under the table" with HMOs and private groups that bilked their patients out of millions through overcharging, and sweat shops that garnished the wagers of the virtual "slave labor" markets of countries such as mainland Communist China, to say nothing of investment in various "service" industries and retail outlets that provided cheap goods to Western clients the world over.

All nice and neat to provide a balance sheet that was virtually untraceable but which made sure you had the assets and resources on hand to plot world domination, or anything else you might happen to fancy. An altogether familiar setting to Time Patrol Officer Ranma Saotome's way of thinking, and diligently researched and pieced together by his enterprising wife and immediate supervisor, Nabiki Saotome.

"Nice set up," Ranma commented aloud as he surveyed the darkened room, taking notice of the bookshelves concealing hidden banks of high-tech equipment, and the various death traps designed to allay the unwary, "Who was his interior decorated, Doctor No?"

"It does seem rather elaborate for a humble spokesman for a ministry," he heard his wife reply, "Quite obviously this Otono character is up to no good, and the more I research into his connections the worse the picture gets. He's not just a rising martial arts superstar, he's a major league arms dealer who's connections to certain Black-Flag terrorist outfits out to amuse the authorities when I see to it this info gets dumped onto their doorsteps."

"Yeah, well, don't expect the guy to go down that easy, Nabi," Ranma said tersely, "Guy this high placed must have some pretty extensive connections to pull a thing like this off in the heart of Nippon. And I doubt he's the biggest fish in the aquarium here...somebody else is probably pulling the strings. You know how it goes, it's never the front-man who calls the shots, there's always somebody behind him who's working the puppet."

"And where did you come by this rather astute observation, husband mine?" Nabiki could not help showing off a hint of approval and amusement, and Ranma could almost visualize her smiling from behind her console.

"I had a good teacher," Ranma sniffed, "And I just wanted you to see that I have been paying attention."

"If you paid this much attention to your studies back during your school days I might've come to realize a lot sooner that there was more to you than the dumb jock I took you for in the first place," Nabiki said sweetly.

"Well, hey...everybody's entitled to a mistake or two, and even you ain't all perfect," Ranma smirked, "Though you'll do since I haven't yet met anybody who's better."

"Why thank you," Nabiki tried to make her tone sound arched and acerbic but failed badly, her warmth and humor betraying her attempt to sound nasty.

Ranma shrugged and returned his focus back to the office and the desk that he had just swept with a scanner set to record and analyze everything in order to make a perfect reading of all the files in storage, thus neatly bypassing the protective barriers and encryption codes meant to deter such outside intrusions, "Well...about done here. Got enough to fry this bird and his whole outfit. Wonder what it is about him that's got the Daokan so miffed? Nothing I see here that would rank above your standard Hydra franchise."

"There has to be something here that we're missing," Nabiki frowned with concentration, "Something beyond the conventional, something that would cause a being as otherworldly as Monalon Maitreya to regard this as apocalyptic...but what? I'm not sure of the answer."

"Hmmph," Ranma turned and scanned the room with his own enhanced Chi-senses then said aloud, "Well...for one thing I'm picking up really bad vibes, like some high-powered players were here recently, a lot nastier even than my old buddies Herb and Saphron."

"That bad, eh?" Nabiki said tonelessly.

"Bet if you were here your Lore Master senses would be ringing off the hook," Ranma sniffed, "But nothing so far that I can't handle...maybe a high level demon or two, and one or two other Alpha-class martial arts fighters."

"So his immediate inner circle includes beings similar to that David fellow," Nabiki considered this carefully, and again Ranma could almost envision her expression and smiled in appreciation, knowing how his wife liked to fret over every detail.

"Yeah, only worse if I make it out right," Ranma turned and took notice of a trophy display case, one that drew his curiosity so that he wandered over there, effortlessly passing through various motion sensors and alarm traps without setting any of them off, a ghost amid the shadows, "Now here's something that's kinda interesting. This guy's the front man for a high-level Ultra-Rightist neo-facist organization that poses itself as a religion, but still he takes the time out of his day to compete in various Kendo tournaments. Some pretty impressive awards here...my old buddy, Tatewaki, would be more than a little envious if he could see this."

"So he has a hobby showing off his skills with a bokken," Nabiki said, clearly not impressed, "A bit high-profile I'll admit, but not a bad way of throwing off attention by diverting the masses. After all, who takes a Sports Star seriously as the head of an organization this large?"

"Well, somebody oughta," Ranma scowled, "I dunno about you, 'Biki, but the connection between sports and Religion is more than a little creepy. They both tend to make superstars out of schmucks whose one great talent draws them lots of attention...and as we both well know there ain't nothing more dangerous than having the adoration of millions feeding the fires of a personality cult this big. Tends to give a guy a swelled ego...and that's coming from me, mind you, the ultimate go-it-alone loner."

"Duly noted," Nabiki said, then paused to add, "You really don't like him, do you?"

"Rayabi?" Ranma sniffed, staring at a framed picture and scowling, "What's to like? Guy's handsome enough to sway both guys and girls into his camp, a shining picture of Bishonen manhood who's fit to play the role of a pied piper, luring the Lemmings off a cliff as they dance to his tune...or something like that.

"Ignoring the atrocious mixing of metaphors within your comment," Nabiki said, "I will admit to being more than a bit concerned at the power and influence this fellow holds within his Amakuzen group...but are you sure it isn't jealousy that I'm detecting in your tone, dear husband?"

"Who's jealous?" Ranma scoffed, "I wouldn't want to be him, not for all the Tea in Shanghai...and in case I need to remind you, Wife, I had more than enough of that popularity crap myself growing up to last me several incarnations."

"Duly noted," Nabiki said more soothingly, "And just for the record, I am with you. There is indeed something terribly...subversive about combination...and this Otono Rayabi, something that indeed does set my own teeth on edge, and if I were there beside you I would no doubt have a more solid feeling of just what is wrong about him...other than the fact that he exploits the gullible masses to fuel an apocalyptic cult seeking to bring about world domination..."

"Hey," Ranma said with a gleam in his eyes, "You may have just hit on something there, Nabi."

"Come again?" Nabiki asked, "And would you quick calling me 'Nabi?"

"Yes Ma'am," Ranma said insincerely, "And what I meant to say was...how is it a group like this wants to engineer a world take over...except by destroying the world we know, like in the Apocalypse, right? Destroy the old to make way for the new, posing as a new messianic order that brings about the Second Coming?"

"I believe I am starting to catch your drift here, Ranchan," Nabiki said softly, "And I don't know which part disturbs me more...the ingenious nature of it, or the fact that you seem to have thought of it before I did."

"Hey, comes from learning from the best," Ranma smiled, "And you know something else?"

"What?"

"You look awfully cute when you frown like that," Ranma grinned, "But do it too often and it may give you wrinkles."

There was a momentary set of flustered noises on the other end of the line, but before they could clear up-and Nabiki say something tart in response to his double-edged comment-another noise much closer to hand caught Ranma's attention and made him turn around...

Just one half second before the fluorescent lights came on, momentarily dazing him as he was too well adjusted with his night vision to have braced for the momentary disorientation.

"Who are you, what are you doing here in my domain?"

There were a lot of cute come-backs to that line that Ranma might have quipped in reply, but before he had a chance to utter any of them the world abruptly exploded in his face, and suddenly he was projected backwards with such great force that he was driven through the double-paned safety windows immediately behind him and-instants later-found himself inexplicably airborne.

His ears were ringing and he could not make out the frantic voice of his wife as Nabiki tried to pester him with questions about what had just occurred, nor could Ranma have given her an effective answer as he plummeted forty stories to the streets far below, his fall broken by something large, hard and collapsible as he abruptly found himself laying upon a hard surface of metal.

Otono Rayabi stared at the space where the interloper had been mere moments ago then spoke to two of his faithful minions, "Go down there and see that whoever that was does not move again. If he so much as twitches, finish him off."

"Yes Lord," one of the pair replied, and then they were loping for the hole leading into open space and vaulting forward without a second's hesitation.

"A bit excessive, don't you think, my Lord?" said Chuisitsu Miyamoto as she stroke up to the side of her beloved employer, lord and master.

"Perhaps," Otono said, "But I had a sense about that one that gives me pause to consider. Now then, what were you telling me just now about Yagyu?"

"Only as I said," Chuisitsu meekly answered, "He confronted the target and was handily defeated...yet they allowed him to live, one saying that there was cause to spare his life, which I found...somewhat curious, given how near he had come to completing his objective."

"Interesting," Otono mused, "I have long harbored doubts regarding our dear friend, Hanurabi. His loyalty to the Amakuzen is somewhat...questionable, and it may be that he has his own hidden agenda."

"Shall I dispatch him then, Great Lord?" Chuisitsu asked with a bit more eagerness than was seemly.

"No," Otono scowled, "Hold off for now. It may be that he can still be useful to our cause. We will give him rope enough to hang himself over time, and allow him the opportunity to betray his true loyalties, and the names of those with whom he may be allied. In the meanwhile continue to observe, and if he does become an obstacle in the path of our mission, then you may deal with him as you deem appropriate."

"Thank you, Great Lord," Chuisitsu bowed, all but squirming with delight merely to be within his presence, to say nothing of feeling his favor towards her as her adoration of this man went beyond that of a humble lackey.

"In the meantime," Otono turned to regard the hulking shadow just behind him, "How does our work progress? How far are we from unleashing the Tribulation?"

"Four more days, my Lord," said the gravely voice of the masked Talon, "Four days and all will be ready, as you have commanded."

"Perfect," Otono replied, "In time for the Anniversary. An appropriate date to begin the day of our Lord and the avenging of the Amazuken upon the barbarian heathens."

Unbeknownst to these three, however, the planted listening device that Ranma had just left behind was working properly, and relaying through the etheric span of space and time a Neutrino-encoded message that was picked up at the Center of Time in the realm known by many as Limbo, where behind her desk a certain field operator heard every word and visibly shuddered...

Down below by many stories Ranma stirred on his makeshift bed and groaned softly, "Not now, Pop...gimme another five minutes..."

"Ranma!" Nabiki's urgent voice cut through the clutter in his head, "Are you all right?"

"Gah...just peachy," Ranma blinked his eyes and then said, "Felt like every cell in my body exploded for a minute there...like whatever he hit me with seemed to have temporarily shut down my nervous system."

"That about matches what I'm reading," Nabiki reported, "A system-wide disruption of neural energy and impulses, as though you were just subjected to an intense wave of negatively charged life energy on a scale that frankly goes beyond calculation..."

"Speak Japanese...how was that again?" Ranma asked.

"Never mind now," Nabiki said urgently, "Can you move at all? Are you able to defend yourself? Because Otono just sent two of his minions to..."

The sound of heavy objects falling to his left and right caused Ranma to lift his head, and then he said, "Ah...yeah...think I got that part."

The next instant he was in full motion, dodging a savage downward slash that smashed through the already deformed roof of the car upon which he had landed and nearly broke its chasis in twain, the object clearly having been to do worse than that to Ranma himself but for the speed with which he avoided both ladies.

He recovered his footing in a flash and then said, "Aw no...you've gotta be kidding!"

Two snarling faces turned their baleful gazes upon him, and then lean pantherish bodies slinked from the ruined car onto the pavement, moving to flank their prey while baring both fangs and claws like a pair of stalking wildcats.

"I'm picking up high-level readings," Nabiki relayed to her husband, "Modified humanoids, genetically altered with enhanced speed, strength, resilience and agility..."

"Tell me what I don't already know," Ranma scowled, "They're cats...spotted cat-girls no less, and a lot nastier than Cheshire got when you tried to have her bathe in a shower last week."

"That bad eh..." was all Nabiki had a chance to say before the fight commenced, with Ranma moving to avoid a double-slash razor attack with feet and claws aimed towards his disembowelment and destruction, and with such great speed and power that a main battle tank would have been shredded into separate components of depleted Uranium armor in a matter of seconds.

Unfortunately for these genetically altered ladies, the man they were dealing with was not a Tank...he was a Timecop named Saotome Ranma.

Having instantly deduced the patter of their attacks, Ranma struck back with speed and power aimed precisely at where he sensed their weakest spots would be, and in a manner of mere seconds reduced both Cat-warriors to a pair of mewing tabbies. Stretched out at his feet, totally unconscious, they seemed harmless enough to a casual observer, but Ranma was not so easily beguiled as he studied their twitching bodies to make sure that they were not about to rise again within the next few seconds.

"Huh, some body guards," he murmured before turning his gaze back up the way that he had fallen, "But I gotta nasty feeling that was hardly the worst that bastard has in his arsenal. And get a load of the trajectory he sent me...I'm on the opposite side of the street, for Kami's sakes! That was some kinda blast he must've hit me with...and I sure felt it something awful."

"Are you all right?" Nabiki asked with genuine concern.

"Hey, I only fell a couple hundred feet," Ranma shrugged, surprised at the worried tone of her voice, "Nothing too bad fpr me, though I'd hate to pay the insurance premiums for the guy who's car I wrecked."

"Head back to HQ immediately," Nabiki said, "I'm initiating the recall process."

"Hah?" Ranma blinked, "No way! That guy just surprised me is all! I never saw it coming, but the next time I'll be..."

"That's an order, Mister," Nabiki's tone was much harder now, almost edging on panic, "We've got to regroup and study this from a new angle."

"But..."

"I just overheard Otono speaking to two of his closest minions," Nabiki said, "He's planning something in four days, and it's definitely what you thought it was, some sort of apocalyptic code he's calling the Tribulation."

Ranma scowled then said, "Just for the record, though, I wasn't beaten. I'll take him down in the rematch."

"Of course," Nabiki replied, "But there seems to be a lot more to this fellow than I'd even previously suspected...and if what I sense now is true, then we may be dealing with a lot more than we're prepared to handle. In fact I'm even regretting sending Ranko into the field with this sort of enemy...she's way too unprepared to handle what he represents..."

"Which is?" Ranma asked, "C'mon, Biki...what's the game with this guy? Who do you think he is...really?"

"Possibly a servant of the Old Ones," Nabiki replied, "Beyond that...I shudder to think about it."

It took a moment for Ranma to recover from his surprise over this, but then he said, "I'm on my way. Any chance of finding the kid?"

"When the Daokan are done with her, I should say so," Nabiki replied, "But not before that. For what it's worth, though, she ought to be safe in their presence...for the moment."

"Now why doesn't that exactly fill me with loads of hope and optimism?" Ranma scowled even as his outline blurred and he vanished from the spot, no longer in synchronization with the temporal of any part of a Nerima, though certain he would return again shortly...after he had time enough to regain his bearings and compensate for the menace that was Otono Rayabi...

"Say what?" Ranko asked, "Yahweh?"

"Not the original, of course," Reka informed her, "The first Yahweh was a Midianite Moon deity who was later displaced by Lucifer, whom Moses found and adopted a his patron. When Lucifer suffered his well-deserved fate and was entrapped within the box known to mortals by the name 'Arc of the Covenant,' it created an opening through which this creature...the third Yahweh...was at liberty to exploit in order to enter the mortal plane of being."

"You mean...that thing is the current holder of the name Yahweh?" Nabiki shuddered.

"That's right," Lenore said with evident aversion, "Say hi to the supplanter who took up the slot of being the Supreme God of my people...only most Jews never suspect who it is who's made our lives such a living hell and caused us so much pain and suffering over the ages. Small wonder we don't even have a concept of the Devil...not long as we've got this guy."

"I don't get it," Ranma winced, "How can that...monster up there be God?"

"Not God, you dolt," Reka snapped, "Certainly not the Supreme deity that many religions speak about, the 'One Above All Others,' or the creator force of existence. But that is indeed a God of sorts, or as befitting of the title as any other entity you might care to name...simply not a benevolent deity or even a wise one since its ultimate aim is the destruction of all life as we know it."

"To the Persian Magi of Zoraster he was known as Ariman the Damned One," Michael noted, "But in truth he belongs to no pantheon, to no established hierarchy of Archons such as the rulers of True Heaven."

"Too true," Anri averred somberly while studying the floating horror that towered far above them, "The Old Ones are beyond the definitions of Good and Evil that mortals set in terms of their beliefs...they are simply ancient and malevolent deities who exist outside of Time and Space as we know it. The one you see here has extended his tendrils into our realm and slowly had insinuated himself into every facet and corner of mortal existence, embodying an inherently destructive force of life-denying evil, a thouroughly corrosive being whose acidic tentacles subvert and despoil everything with which they come in contact, the ultimate hallmark of all that is evil."

"The God of the Jews?" Nabiki asked.

"No way," Lenore rudely snorted, "That thing's a false god who tries to suck the life out of anyone who gets snared up in his tentacles! He tried taking over the movement of Judaism a couple thousand years ago and managed to snag a lot of converts, but he was never the true God that my ancestors prayed to. He's more like the poser who slithers a tendril in the door and tries to sell you his goods under the packaging label of the True God."

"Otherwise known as the Tetragramaton, or the Divine Presence in its Ineffable Mystery, Ain Soph Aur, as referred to in Hebrew mysticism," Reka sniffed, "But this is juvenile material, known by scholars and sages throughout the ages. The being before you is more akin to the malevolent deities one reads about in the Book of the Dead...the Chaos entities who prey upon the unwary and seek to drag the living down to oblivion and ultimate annihilation."

"A brief history lesson here for the purpose of clarification," Anri said while lifting a finger, "And do try to take stay awake, and take notes if you feel it necessary because there will be a quiz afterwards, and the results will determine the very fate of the reality that you call home...that is, those of you native to the dimension in question."

"You make it sound like field trip," Ranko winced, "Can't you just come right out and tell us what this is all about?"

"That is what father be attempting to do, Timelost one," Thelendra chided before turning to Kasumi and adding, "Much of this will already be familiar with what thou hast learned from me, Beloved, but for thine kin there be much to recap as they were not privy to our own temporal excursion."

"I understand that," Kasumi said then turned to Anri and said, "Do go on, Sensei. I myself still have many questions even with everything that your daughter has shared with me..."

"Only to be expected," Anri nodded sagely before turning his focus back to the others and beginning, "Many thousands of years ago a war was fought between the Powers-known to legend as the Titans-and the servants of the Old Ones, who sought to reduce the physical world to formless chaos. The battle is remembered in Greek Legends as the rise of Kronos and his brethren, who put down the monstrous legions of Uranus in order to create a Golden Age of order, peace and plenty. Unfortunately as he got on in years the role of Supreme Titan weighed heavily on the mind of the old boy, and Kronos began to act...strange and unnatural, even going so far as to eat his own children in order to prevent one from rising up to supplant him. This naturally upset his wife, the Titaness known as Rhea, who spared several of her offspring by hiding them on Earth in various guises, then arming the leader of the group, a young Zeus, who instituted many military innovations such as massed formations of infantry and cavalry, and hundred-arm slingers, a human army that served his beck and call when he stormed the palace of his father and overthrew his despotic reign...about 1750 BC by the reckoning of modern-day scholars."

"Right," Nabiki frowned, "Basic Greek Mythology 101, but what has this to do with...?"

"The Hebrews?" Anri continued, "About the same time as this was happening a young man by the name of Yussef was sold into slavery by his jealous brothers, only to rise to prominence in the Egyptian court, which at the time was under Hyksos domination. The Hebrews of that time prospered through the harsh droughts and periodic famines of the day, only to fall out of favor when the Hyksos dynasty was overthrown by a resurgent pro-Egyptian movement. At the same time that this occurred a more mature Zeus was facing down problems of his own in the form of a palace rebellion, headed by his sister-wife and several of his more unscrupulous offspring, the leader of whom was a promising and ambitious young fellow by the name of Lucifer, whose name in Greek is 'Light Bearer.'"

"You mentioned him before," Ranma said, "He's the guy you say founded Judaism?"

"Indeed, but in a curious round-about sense of the term 'founded,'" Anri answered, "Zeus was not as unscrupulous about dispatching his own offspring as was his own father, but Lucifer was a troubling young god full of spite and mischief and utterly not to be trusted. So he created a special box to hold the spirit of his son bound in place for all eternity...a box made of Cedar wood with special ornaments and charms that later on gained the name of an Ark, which he then had buried at the edges of the known world, which at the time just happened to be the outskirts of the Egyptian desert."

"Too bad it wasn't the bottom of the deepest trench in the sea," Lenore snorted, "Or history would have been very different for my people."

"Indeed so," Anri agreed, "Two centuries later, around the year 1398 BC, a young man on summer sabbatical from the palace was presented a curiosity that some nomads found in a cave, and-being raised on the belief that he was himself divine and had little to fear from the various foreign inscriptions saying, 'Keep Out' and 'Do Not Touch'-he made the mistake of opening the box and immediately encountered Lucifer, who wasted no time converting the boy to his way of thinking."

"Akhnaton," Kasumi suddenly spoke up, surprising her immediate kin with the certainty and aversion that were plain in her exression.

"Exactly," Anri nodded, "Thus did Pharaoh Amonhotep IV become the infamous Monotheist who attempted systematically to destroy the Egyptian religion and replace it with Sun worship. Calling his God Aton, he instituted a series of so-called reforms whose cumulative result was to upset the entire worldly order of his Empire. His rule was characterized by much suffering and heavy taxation of his people, and resulted in his reign ending prematurely when the Priests of the Old Amon religion took certain steps to reinstitute the reign of their old order."

"They didst gather up all things that were of Akhnaton's doing and didst dismiss them to the furthest reaches of the Arabian desert, including the box into which Lucifer was once again imprisoned," Thelendra added by way of clarifications, "The Priests recognized the Ark for the terrible thing that it represented and sealed it away in a cave near to the land of Adon, where modern-day Yemen be located. At the same time they didst banish from court all adherents to the cult of Aton, which numbered among them a Semetic prince by the name of Ramoses...known to thee by the name of..."

"Ramses?" Ranko asked.

"No, Moses," Anri smiled, "A simple yet common name confusion as the fellow in question was of no relation to the Pharaoh of legend. Rather Moses lived among the tribe of the Midianites playing down his Egyptian identity until the day he crossed the path where Lucifer was buried. Being a frustrated and ambitious soul at heart it was easy to appeal to his frustrated yearnings in order to make him Lucifer's errand boy, who could gain to the Exile's cause the one thing he lacked...a following of loyal devotees."

"Lucifer had learned the error of his previous approach of top-down rule and was now prepared to institute a ground-upward campaign of gradual conversion," Thelendra again clarified, "Moses returned to Egypt and tried to rekindle interest in the old followers of the Aton religion but was rebuffed by the new Pharaoh, who had every cause to dread the cult's resurgence. Lucifer granted to Moses some conjurer's powers but they did not impress the magically adept of the priesthood...right up until a Cholera epidemic broke out with the Nile being infected with Red Tide, which to many minds didst seem an omen of ill favor from above. Many flocked to Moses for answers and amongst the Semitic tribes he found a partial following, enough to pose a more credible challenge to the existing order."

"Pharaoh at last banished the interloper and all who followed him from Egyptian territories," Anri continued, "The actual Exodus numbered a little more than a couple of thousand people in all, mostly merchants, peasants and mercenaries who shared clan ties to the Semetic tribes of the eastern Arabian desert nomads. For the most part the Egyptians were happy to see them leave, right up until Moses stopped by a temple of the Goddess Hathor to acquire some "funds" that he would need in his travels, which prompted Pharaoh to send an army against him, an army that got bogged down in a swamp when Moses led his merry band of bandit raiders across a marshy wilderness on their way to the coastline."

"By turns they didst arrive at Adon and camped at the base of the mountain where Lucifer was established," Thelendra further added, "But when rebellions broke out Moses was swift to put it down by bloody means and ruthless methods, then institute the harsh imposition of a military-style rule of Law over his followers, gradually converting them from a rag-tag band into a hardly and disciplined bandit army that gradually swept northward and arrived at the province later known as Judea."

"And that is where the story gets even more complicated," Anri resumed, "For the New Order that Moses brought to the nomadic tribes of goatherds and shepherds was a militant band of apocalyptic fanatics who swept through the Hibiru ranks, converting and assimilating them into a tight-knit 'Chosen' people who would gladly do Lucifer's bidding. From there they were quick to make their presence known by raiding caravan trails and plundering villages wherever they roamed, taking all that they needed and slaughtering everyone who gave them even a token of resistance. They lacked the sophistication to lay siege to defended forts and cities...but when an earthquake shattered the walls of a key trade post known as Yeriko they were swift to take advantage and further their territorial claims...right up until they ran into a group far tougher and nastier than themselves, the Philistine Kingdoms of the coastline."

"And therein hangs a tail that lasted for the next few hundred years," Thelendra noted, "An impasse between the civilized Philistines and the uncouth barbarians who called themselves the 'Children of Yahweh. Around about this time they didst encounter yet another threat to their dominion when another son of Zeus happened upon their lands and challenged the supremacy of Lucifer...the man-god known as the Hercules of Legends."

"Not to be confused with brother Udan here, who had his own share of clashes with those nomads," Anri hooked a thumb to indicate his silent brother, "It was Lucifer who provoked the fight...at first seeking to gain an ally who might share his desire to see a change in the power structure of Olympus, but when that plan failed Lucifer turned to his fall-back plans, recruiting his own Heroic warrior in the form of his son by a mortal woman...a man of the tribe of Dan whom you may have heard about...the Sampson of legend."

"Sampson, son of Lucifer, was a braggart and a bully, yet at heart had a spark of decency within him that did nay suite the darker aims of his sire," Thelendra noted, "Eventually he perished after having brought low the major Temple site of the Philistine religion, thus paving the way for Lucifer to eventually supplant and overturn a major rivalry with the Baal gods of the coastline, though the actual fall didst nay occur until much later when a young man by the name of David didst challenge the reign of the first King appointed by the Hibaru tribes, Saul of Yudah, who at the time had no capitol but the tent he carried with him, and who lacked the charismatic following of the young Philistine-backed upstart."

"David made a point to capture a fortified cistern located in the middle of a nearly uninhabited valley nestled close to the Jordan river," Anri added, "And by turns made this remote site the capitol for his burgeoning Kingdom, a place to hide his forces away from the caravan routes and various enemies who might challenge his military genius. It would take two hundred years more-plus a radical change in the climate-before the place had grown to become the city known today as Jerusalem, but it was the perfect spot for Lucifer to use as a launching point for his Grand Designs, which was nothing less than to conquer and rule the entire Arabian peninsula. Under David's son, Solomon, he cultivated a bright young man of great ability who could indeed fulfill the dark ambitions of his patron. But then something went very wrong with the plan...the Pharoah of Egypt invaded the realm and made off with a substantial booty, reducing Solomon to poverty and stripping away his divine ally, leaving him only with ashes."

"An ancestor of thine, many generations removed, was key instrumental in imprisoning Lucifer once and for all within his box-shaped containment," Thelendra noted, "And so he hath remained in exile down to the present era, plotting his dark return and vowing his vengeance against the mortals whom he doth believe didst betray him."

"But still he did have a following in the desert reaches among the wilder tribes who harbored many a fanatic," Anri noted, "Who plotted time and again to overturn the government and allow Lucifer to return to a state of glory. These fanatics caused much of the agitation and distress you read about in the Bible, and several times they came close to achieving total victory, but always to be frustrated at the last by the perverse resiliency of mortals, who have often refused to grovel in slavery at the feet of a spiritual tyrant."

"Try telling me what I don't already know...Sir," Lenore hastily amended, quite obviously adverse to giving offense to this particular Eluini, "The story about the division of the tribes into two separate Kingdoms, each rival camp creating nasty stories that vilified the other with Roaboam-the son of Solomon-on the one side, and Jeraboam the Usurper on the other is the whole reason the first written testaments of the so-called Pentateuch got inscribed in the first place. A two-century long schism that only came to a climax when the Assyrian Empire moved in and took over."

"Making Israel into a client state of their domain," Thelendra added, "So that tribute was ne'er more paid to Memphis but rather to Damascus."

"Right," Lenore concurred, "But in between those chapters was that little incident in which the minions of Lucifer overthrew the Northern Kingdom during the reign of King Ahab, who was replaced by a Luciferite by the name of Jeru, who attempted to build a rival cult to the one centered in Jerusalem, which still at the time was hardly bigger than a fishing village, even though that's where they created the first temple."

"Just so," Anri remarked, "Every evil tree bears bitter fruit, and from that fruit is evil known for what it is, not for the pretty leaves or blossoms that cover up the taint of its evil. Lucifer instructed the building of his Temple to make it a center-point of occult power, and Solomon was his ideal puppet sorceror king who implemented many institutional practices meant to build up Lucifer's potency so that he might pose a genuine threat to the Celestial order. Unfortunately for their plans the priests of Egypt were wiser than expected and headed off this threat to the peace of the region. They captured the so-called 'Ark of the Covenant' and buried it deep within a protected vault in one of their priestly temples. They had thought this would contain the evil deity within, but Lucifer caused the city itself to be buried beneath a sandstorm, and there he would remain until an intrepid adventurer briefly unearthed him...but that is a story for another time, and you can request the details from one of his descendants when you meet her, for she will be only too happy to explain to you the curse that Yahweh placed upon her family on account of their actions."

"I've heard the story all right," Lenore shuddered, "Hollywood mucked up the details, but they definitely got it straight when it came to the point about the Ark being something you don't mess with."

"Most assuredly so," Anri acknowledged before resuming, "Trapped and divided from the temple that was meant to be the focal point of his glory, Lucifer cast out his tendrils to touch any mind that might be receptive to his message, and in the impious scoundrel known as Elijah the Tishibite he found a ready vessel for his evil intentions. Elijah-and his demonic successor-clone, Elisha-sought to vilify an innocent woman by the name of Yezabel, whose only real crime was to be a foreign princess of a Pheonician royal house with family connections to the Assyrians, who brought with her foreign ways and a religious order that seriously threatened the Lucifer movement. Fomenting a rebellion that would forever mark her name with a taint of evil the Yahweh-inspired movement overthrew the legitimate sovereign of that time and replaced him with a far more odious tyrant. Of course the upstart Jeru was all too quick to change his tune when Yezabel's kinfolk came down from the north to avenge her unseemly murder, but that just goes to prove my point, that the followers of Yahweh were always slippery devils, quick to bend the knee and pay homage to those whom they slander when it's their necks on the line and their movement that is endangered."

"And then there was that rather interesting fellow named Hezekiah, who came along a little more than half a century later," Reka smirked, "And the fool named Josiah, his grandson. You do remember them well, do you not dear brother? Or rather...you know of events that happened during his reign since they are the ones who set into motion the sorry chain of causality that trapped you up during your foiled mission?"

"Yes, brother...I remember him well," Anri sighed, "Although at the time I was between incarnations, just before I was reborn as prince Siddhartha. King Hezekiah of the line of David presided at the time when Jerusalem at long last bloomed from an outpost to a legitimate capitol city, when a scribe named Hilkiah came before him presenting some 'documents' upon which the ink was still drying purporting to outline the master plan of Yahweh for his children...the priestly texts known as Leviticus and Numbers."

"The fool never questioned their authenticity," Reka crowed, "He simply rent his garments in a far-too-public display of religious fervor then set about to initiate these so-called reforms, culminating in his ill-conceived attempt to destroy the Norther Israeli 'High Places' that had become a nuisance and a threat to the authority of the Temple in Jerusalem. Of course in doing so he mightily displeased his northern patron, and the King of Assyria punished the Hebrew lands severely in a campaign of wanton slaughter. Only by making amends and offering the treasures of his Temple in tribute did Hezekiah assuage the rapine of his earthly lord and master...but in doing so he offended both the Temple and its own dark liege lord, and that set in motion the destruction of the land of the Hebrews just a little more than one century later."

"But at the hands of the Babylonians, not the Assyrians dear uncle," Thelendra corrected with a stern glare in his direction, "Those who didst follow the ways of a different pantheon of gods, who were themselves to be shortly thereafter overthrown by the new and upcoming cult taught by the impious false priest known as Zoraster."

"Who was the major influence of the Persian dynasty that followed," Kasumi brightened up, "I remember you telling me about that...how the Persian King allied himself with the exiled Hebrew Nobles, and who became the patron of a priest named Ezra, who redacted the various rival texts of the Jews into what we now know as the Pentateuch, or Book of Moses.'

"Not one page of which was penned by Moses himself of course, my lady," Lenore hastily added.

"But of course," Anri noted, "That goes without saying."

"But the real point of all of this was that the Israelis, whose elite were transported to the Court of King Nebukanezer, were destitute and demoralized, having suffered the worst of all humiliations with the loss of their independence and total subjugation to a foreign peoples," Reka added with a malevolent hint of dark amusement in his tone and expression, "The breaking of the Covenant between David and Lucifer meant that their royal line was itself broken, and the sons of Solomon were scattered like chaff in the wind. This led to the formation of two opposing rival camps, one adopting the cry of 'Mea Culpa' and blaming their supposed sins for the loss of favor of their God, by which they meant the 'sin' of not killing everyone else who did not agree with their conception of Universal Order...and the other group, sulking in despair and seeking vindication through any means imaginable, which naturally left an opening for finding an alternative to Yahweh...which is how they became allied with Ariman, the Elder God you now see before you."

"One group followed the banner of a scribe named Ezra, who redacted their 'holy books' into a new Covenant meant to lead the Hebrew peoples back towards the path of so-called righteousness by deliberate exclusion of their race from that of all others," Thelendra noted sadly, "And the one thou hast mentioned now, Uncle...the counter-movement of the false Yahweh, which took root in certain remote sections of the Palestine deserts and wouldst eventually blossom forth like an evil weed determined to open the way for the reign of puritanical evil."

"Look," Nabiki said, "This is all terribly fascinating, but what has it to do with...?"

"The rise of the Macabees?" Anri smiled, "I am so glad that you asked that question. It has everything to do with it since-by this time in events-Lucifer was slowly losing his edge and his ability to influence events was so tenuous at best that matters began to slip entirely out of his fingers. A new class of Israeli Priests arose who were more concerned about the rule of the new Law and its implementation than they were with questions of power politics, and gradually the world-conquering ambitions of Yahweh began to give ground to secular pragmatism, truly a most amazing process."

"Indeed Father," Thelendra further noted, "Whereas before the early Israeli movement was a thinly disguised scheme to justify the confiscation of lands belonging to their rivals under the claims of Divine Sanction, the very words once written to give sanctification to this thievery were turned against their intended authors, and a new generation of Hebrew grew up seeking to find a way of reconciling the high-minded moralism of their texts with the quite evidently bestial behavior of their forebears, and through this made synthesis of the law, converting the Torah into the Talmud, which be largely a set of religious arguments debating philosophical points and establishing an ethical basis for behavior that was quite unique to the period...indeed, a novelty for the entire region, almost unprecedented in history, and all employing the name of Yahweh in ways that the real Yahweh had never imagined, let alone intended."

"Of course this created an entirely new schism with the ethical Priests on the one hand and the Temple authorities on the other," Anri clarified, "The one group-the Pharasees, or Students of the Law-sought a rule by ethical means and consistently applied standards while the Temple-based Saduccees-those entrenched within the hard pragmatism of state politics-sought to bend the rules to fit their own secular standards. Mid-way into this early formation a fellow named Alexander of Macedon happened along and weighed in favor of an entirely different synthesis, one that applied the Greek model of Pythagorean philosophy to the discussions of metaphysics, and under the reign of the Salucid dynasty that rose to prominence upon Alexander's untimely death a Greek-speaking administration came to power, cosmopolitan in their outlook and entirely forward-thinking in their application of scholarship to spiritual ideals. There was a lot of politics and quite a bit of corruption in the process as well, but still for the time it was the nearest thing Jerusalem had come towards a legitimately Golden Era. How sad that it could not last very long, but the forces of Entropy are never very far from seeking to crush a bastion of order in a sea of sandy chaos."

"So what happened then?" Ranma asked.

"What else?" Lenore shrugged, "The Macabees. A clan of hill-chiefs and desert nomad bandits who hated civilization and regarded the foreign influence of the Greeks as nothing less than Satanic. They called themselves the Children of Yahweh, but in actuality there were in league with...that guy," she indicated the creature still hovering far above them.

"Indeed," Anri said with sad aversion, "The headman of the Macabee Clan was a fellow named Yehud, who made contact in meditative visions with a demonic force that posed itself as Yahweh, and through him began to spread his influence throughout the mountainous territories on the outskirts of Jerusalem proper. Yehud's five sons became the chieftains who carried out his will as he organized resistance to the new Temple-run order, seizing upon its obvious foreign status to deny it legitimacy and thus claim to the common people that the priests of the capitol city were anti-Yahweh and thus had to be overthrown for the good of the entire nation. When word of this reached the ears of the capitol of course his brand of fiery apocalyptic Judaism was declared outlaw and was forbidden to be practiced. This was all that Yehud needed to set a torch to the bonfire that ensued as he raised an army-led by his most loyal and capable son-Yudah Macabeeas-and they went on a 'Holy' rampage laying siege to the lightly defended capitol, killing all of its inhabitants and putting much of the town to the torch, saving only the Palace."

"The thing thee must understand concerning this," Thelendra added, "Was that the Greek practice was to seek assimilation through accommodation with client states under the aegis of their empire. 'Twas their custom to seek similarity in different religions and to forge ties with rival beliefs by finding and blending gods and precepts together into a more homogeneous package. What the Greeks had done with the Temple was to identify the Hebrew Yahweh with their own supreme God, Zeus. Thus was Zeus Yahweh adopted formally as the God of the Temple...a thing the Maccabees proclaimed to be blasphemy, and by this means justified their homicidal rampages, demanding to wipe the stain of 'uncleanliness' with the blood of those who didst commit this fouls sacrilege. Of course the thing that they meant to institute in its place within the temple was by far the more unclean and inherently corrupted."

"Funny thing about the Macabees...or the Hasmodian Dynasty as we also called them," Lenore quipped, "They could seem like the nicest, most sincere and well-meaning people if you happened to be of the same religious orientation...but the minute you cross them you get to see the other side of their face. A lot like the Christians when you really come down to it..." she murmured the latter with a shake of her head and a faintly appalled expression, "Good thing for old Judus that he never lived to see what became of his works at the hands of his father and brothers..."

"The Maccabees ruled with a brutal efficiency not seen until the time of the Taliban in the hilly wastes of the Afghans," Reka sneered, "They proclaimed 'Unclean' anything that opposed their rule and forced the common people into abject misery. Ironically enough their alliance to the Dark forces of Oblivion undermined their pretense at sanctimonious piety, and so great became the injustice of their rule, so much did the common Hebrew people suffered beneath their yoke, that before too long the peasants began crying in an appeal for mercy at the hand of the Romans of all people."

"Better the Devil you know and are related to by common humanity than to exist at the sufferance of an alien intelligence that loves not Man and considers all womanhood to be eminently tasty," the being known as Michael remarked with an off-handed candor that reminded people of his presence in this discussion.

Nabiki turned to the winged man and frowned, "You've been awfully quiet through a lot of this stuff. I would have expected you to interrupt more with occasional objections."

"Why?" Michael responded, "What the Daokan say is common knowledge with us, and for my part I have as much to live down as any. After all, I was once worshipped as a God in the service of another, and I did indeed do many unspeakable things on behalf of the old order, so by what right do I contradict the words of Maitreya when it comes to the events relating to the ancient Hebrew?"

"What I'd like to know is why all the fuss about a bunch of provincial backwater mortals living in a tiny postage-stamp sized pocket state that they thought was the center of the universe, Father?" Jerika sniffed, "Those guys thought the world was flat and the sun revolved around their stupid temple. Just because their eyes were closed to everything else but the false god that they encountered in some desert..."

"It was more than just a silly cult that was involved here, Daughter," Michael chided, "It was an opening, a gateway through which the Dark Powers of Oblivion could operate, manipulating their pawns like chess pieces while attempting to open the way for a yet greater intrusion across the dimensional boundaries. I was witness to these events, and none cheered louder in relief than I when the sons of Romulus under Pompei and Caesar swept down from the west and cleansed that blight upon the landscape that was the corrupted temple of Ezra, which had to be destroyed for the good of all humanity and not merely for the sake of the Hebrews."

"Yes, but before this occurred there were many other stages that should at least get a mention in passing," Anri interjected once again, "Not least of which was the backlash against Hasmodian rule that occurred under the banner of the Pharisees, who led the opposition against what they rightly saw was a false interpretation of Yahweh. They were lead by a fellow known to history merely as 'The Teacher of Righteousness,' but whose name-curiously enough-was Yesus of Benjamin, a forerunner for whom I was named and who later became identified with me, much though it did the fellow a great injustice as he was far more exemplary in his accomplishment than I was."

"And what did this guy do that was so all-fired important?" Nabiki asked, allowing her impatience to be known as she stood there with arms crossed, waiting for these others to finally get to the point of their long lecture.

"Founded a number or religious schools and communities that survived into my day," Anri said, "And laid the groundwork for a revival of the long-buried Masonic practices that the Hebrew had acquired through close contact with the priests of Egypt. From those roots sprang up the way of the Kabala, a Hebrew interpretation of Western Occultism, which they wedded to the new ethical system that the Pharisees had helped to invent. The Essenes were the primary teachers of this new form of Gnostic learning that emphasized the view of Man's integration with the Cosmos, and the establishment of a Path to Knowledge that could be used to combat the evil of the perverted cult of Yahweh. Though nominally under the same Codex of the Talmud, this Gnosticism took the best aspects of Persian Dualism and Greek Epistemology to form a revolutionary counter-balance to the merely mystical mumbo-jumbo and rote ritual methods then in practice with the Temple priesthood. With their assistance, in alliance with Rome, the Pharisees were able to purge away the dark shadow of Ariman and briefly free the Hebrew people from paying fealty to this monster whom you see far above us."

"It was the most revolutionary stage of ritual magic set in place since the time of your earlier incarnation as Thoth, Maitreya," Michael remarked, "Second only to Yogi philosophy in its devotion to a deeper universal understanding."

"So what happened?" Ranko asked.

"Politics," Thelendra sighed, "No sooner didst Pompei destroy much of the cult of Yahweh but then its minions slowly crept back into favor during the time of Augustus. The first thing that the cunning Sicari who served this evil did was to poison the mind of King Herod the Iduminian, whom they saw as a foreign tyrant not born of the ancient blood of Solomon, and thus unworthy to sit upon the throne of David."

"They drove him mad and caused him to engage in a series of fratricidal purges in which even his sons were not spared of his rages," Anri sighed, "A great man fallen to greater evil, and only by some twist of the fates did one of his grandsons live to inherit a portion of his Kingdom...the Herod of my own time, who was not really all that bad a sort when contrasted to many of his peers, including Governor Pilate, who ordered my execution."

"So these Yahweh guys got back into power and attempted to run things their way?" Cheshire asked directly.

"That they did, though under cover of a more banal form of evil," Reka mused, "The Yahwists were nothing less than obsessive-compulsive in their manic devotion to cleanliness and purity, but their idea of purity was the shedding of blood to atone for alleged Sins committed by all mortals. It was Animal sacrifice on the surface of it all...but human blood was shed in darker quarters, many buckets of it devoted to their God so that the temple itself reeked of death, decay and corruption. You yourself encountered such a stench when you went to pay your respects to the Temple of Herod, did you not dear brother?"

"You know full well what I discovered when I went there," Anri scowled, "It was actually my second visit, the first one being at the time of my Bar mitzvah, when I was not yet come of age into knowledge of my former identities and power. I felt something...disturbing about the place but was far more engaged with conversations that I struck up with the priesthood. The sages who engaged words with me were so impressed that they sponsored my further education, which took me far beyond the land of Palestine itself and exposed me to spiritual encounters that sharpened my perceptions greatly, so much so that when I was at the Temple again I all but shook with revulsion...and acted momentarily as other than myself, rather more like a fanatic."

"If by that you mean overturning tables, scolding merchants, upbraiding temple guards and going on a literal rampage, then I suppose you might be excused a bit of youthful excess, Maitreya," Michael remarked, "Had you been fully out of your wits you might well have destroyed the temple with but a thought considering the vast powers that were entrusted to you..."

"Powers that I was holding in reserve for another occasion," Anri noted, "But had I been fully in my wits I might well have used them then and there, for I had a vision clear as day upon those temple steps that revealed to me the intentions of the false Yahweh, and I wanted to strike down anyone who would help the demon achieve his villainous aims. As it was I only murmured a few words about the potential destruction of the Temple and those who witnessed me that day took it as a threat to do just that...go figure."

"You should have let it burn to the ground when it was fated to be destroyed, Anri," Reka scolded, "Instead of interfere and prolong the agony until its rightful demise in the year 67 AD."

"But I had hoped to deter the need for such a calamity," Anri shook his head sadly, "I tried to instill in people an understanding that the Temple was not the center of all creation, nor were the practices there the true representation of Judaism as it was meant to be practiced. Fortunately my brother, Yamez, was able to instill in his own followers a greater understanding of the spiritual purposes behind the teachings that I helped set in motion. His followers were able to survive the destruction of Jerusalem and the forced exile of the Hebrew peoples from their homeland...and under the wise counsel of the Pharisees, who reformed Judaism into a new and more reasonable covenant that was able to survive the Diasporas, a Judaism that gave comfort to the people and helped them maintain their traditional ways through wandering and exile while they further refined and perfected the practice of the Torah and Kabalah."

"Of course considering everything my people went through over the past two thousand years you'd think somebody up above had it in for us," Lenore glanced uneasily towards the sky, "And of course that was the case, though most Rabbis had no idea who the real enemy was. Lacking the concept of a Devil in our own practice of strict Monotheism, we always attributed everything to God and thought it was some kind of a test he was putting us through to harden the Faith. Only a very few suspected the real truth, that the inner core of our teaching was meant to fortify us against the influence of the False Yahweh."

"For which crime you have been hated and persecuted down through the centuries," Reka smirked, "By the real followers of the Source of Greater Evil. Because the Kabalah represented a power that could oppose the tide of darkness, the minions of Yahweh have sought to destroy you all and erase all knowledge of the Tetragramaton from human existence."

"They failed of course," Anri noted, "But not without considerable effort on their part, such as the horror-filled ages of Darkness that Christianity brought about to most of Europe and parts of Asia. The Inquisition itself was aimed at stamping out the last remnants of Judaism but only managed to drive it further underground where it remained in obscurity until the time of the Enlightenment and the reawakening of philosophy in the Age of Reason."

"Wait," Nabiki pleaded, "That's jumping ahead more than a bit don't you think? Are you saying that you opposed Judaism but supported it...and you were cozy with the Pharisees who were supposed to be the ones who demanded your crucifixion?"

"That story was a lie, Imoutochan," Kasumi informed her, "Part of what I experienced in my journey through time was the discovery of the true villains in the picture, including Herod, Pontius Pilate and Paul, each of whom conspired in their own way to subvert Sensei Yesus's mission."

"The Pharisees were never my enemy," Anri calmly explained, "I was born and raised in a house headed by my Pharisee-trained father, and I shared many of their beliefs in spite of my travels abroad, which served to broaden my understanding of spiritual issues. They were, however, the enemies of Paul, whose teachings were anathema to the Torah, and whose apostasy was the cause for his rejection by the Jewish nation. Paul's teachings were for Greeks and Greek-speaking followers, who were far more receptive to his synthesis of Mithraism and a neutered form of Judaism that did not require one to follow the Law in order to become a 'good Christian.' And-need I add this point?-I myself was never a Christian...nor in all the ages since would I have embraced such a perversion of a religion in which fear is lauded above wisdom and hate is embraced in the place of tolerance and understanding."

"But I thought Christianity was supposed to be about love and understanding?" Ranma puzzled.

"You would think that if you listened to them prattling on about such things, Boy," Reka sneered, "But how rare it is to see a Christian truly embrace his own teachings...far too many of them are known for their intolerance and superstition, their fear of the unknown and utter helplessness in the face of genuine evil."

"Which brings us around full circle," Anri said sadly, "Christianity was sugar-coated in the balm of high-minded ideals that were-in part-a reflection of at least some of my teachings...but the emphasis on Salvation instead of Knowledge conditioned far too many to seek an easy path to God through compromise and surrender. Just proclaiming yourself a believer that I was God personified and risen from the dead to redeem all sin became the central focal point of Paul's peculiar brand of heresy, his proclamation that I had the power to save by purging others of their evil nature...and look how that turned out! Instead of working to combat the evil within them far too many Christians commit the most heinous of sins and then turn around and pray to me, asking for my forgiveness!"

"Like the Mafia," Lenore snorted, "Good Catholics, lousy human beings. They say a few 'Ave Marias,' pay a visit to a confessional booth, then go out and murder people without compunction. They make us Vampires look benevolent by comparison, and we don't have any where near as much blood on our hands...in a manner of speaking."

"And let us nay forget the numerous innocents who hath been slaughtered o'er the dark times when those who were suspected of being in league with evil were burned at the stake and branded Heretics, Warlocks and Witches," Thelendra added with a genuine hint of revulsion.

"In reality it was the Church doing the bidding of its dark God in 'cleansing' the world of those with psychic talents and the training in how to use the gifts of nature," Reka mused with clear contempt in his expression, "By attempting to weaken the human gene pool, weeding out those with latent gifts and abilities that harken back to the era when mortals were kin to the gods and knew no limits to their powers of vision...they sought to reduce their so-called 'flocks' to timid and easily manageable sheep who could be herded, sheered or exploited in whatever way suited the fancy of the powerful and the ambitious. It is a very old story, after all...how bullies and tyrants crush the will of the opposition, and anyone who rises up to challenge their authority is branded a criminal, anti-social and an enemy of the state, regardless of whatever label they care to use to justify it."

"You're a fine one to talk about bullies," Nabiki snorted.

Reka turned a dark glare her way and said, "You misunderstand me...I do not approve of tearing down the inherent nobility of ordinary people, which Anri here so values. I am rather more of a realist who appreciates the way things work within this universe of Sorrows, having walked the ages and witnessed far too much cruelty to be blind to its inherent nature, which after all is the fault of those who allow themselves to be misgoverned by arrogant weaklings."

"'All that was required of them was a primitive patriotism which could be appealed to whenever it was necessary to make them accept longer working hours or shorter rations,'" Anri quoted with a somewhat airy expression, "'They could be made to accept the most flagrant violations of reality because they never fully grasped the enormity of what was demanded of them and were not sufficiently interested in public events to notice what was happening...'"

"What's that?" Ranko asked, "Shakespeare?"

"George Orwell," Amalthea corrected, "I recognize the words...my Mistress once had me read it from her private collection."

"Your...Mistress?" Nabiki eyed the white haired, golden-skinned girl with evident suspicion.

"Captain Lao Kung," Amalthea replied, "My owner before being given in trust to my new owner and Mistress, the Lady Ulsa Laolana."

"Say what?" Ranma asked, turning from the half-breed Kirin to Nabiki and then to the golden haired lady Ulsa.

The Dark Man glared back, his body posture denoting menace as he seemed to lean more in Ranma's direction, but a glance from Ulsa made him desist once again, for her own aloof smile never faltered by even the slightest.

"You're a prodigy of Madam Lao's...?" Nabiki started to say when Kasumi chided her with a glance, which prompted the younger girl to amend, "...Harem?"

"I am," Amalthea took a keener interest in the short-haired martial artist, "And you are the one my former Mistress has spoken often enough about, someone she regards with much favor for all that she has often referred to you as the 'one who got away,' or something of that nature."

"I'll just bet she has," Nabiki growled, muttering darkly and almost inaudibly, "That flesh peddling pirate..."

"You should not speak with such disfavor towards her," Amalthea said chidingly, "After all, she has borne for you a great blessing, one carried at great personal cost and nearly at the expense of her own..."

All of a sudden the girl fell silent, and then she bowed her head and said, "Forgive me, my lady...I spoke out of turn. It was not my intention to prematurely reveal a trust held by my Mistress."

Nabiki noted the way that Ulsa was regarding her new "pet" with just a fractional hint of warning, and from that got a sudden lurching sense in her stomach that there was something very important going on here, a clue that she was missing, a secret withheld from her that her mind refused to wander closer towards as the dark edges of a growing fear began to gnaw away at the security of the world she held so dear around her.

But nonetheless, being the sort of person that she was, she faced her fear to the extent of asking, "What are you talking about? What has she done this time? You...that...I..."

"Nabiki?" Ranma asked, favoring his wife with a curious expression.

A sudden hand-clap drew their attention back towards Anri's direction and then the fair-haired man chided, "That may well be an important question to ask, Saotome-san, but it is way off the topic and would distract us from the purpose of this meeting..."

"Which is?" Nabiki snarled in growing frustration, "Look, you guys...this is all terribly fascinating and I really do appreciate your taking the time to explain all this to us, but would you mind finally getting to the point and telling us about...?"

"The Shimubara Rebelion?" Anri smiled, "I was just getting around to that if you'd care to wait a few more moments."

"The Shimu...?" Nabiki's face suddenly drained of all color.

"What?" Ranma asked, glancing wildly around, "Shimubara? You mean...that incident in Kyushu province that happened..."

"Over three hundred and thirty years ago?" Lenore finished for him, "When the Tokugawa Shogunate destroyed a band of Christian rebels following the banner of a guy named Amakuza Shiro?"

"The so-called Messiah of Japan?" Ranko asked, "But...that happened ages ago! Why bring it up now, and what's this Shiro guy have to do with that Otono creep?"

"Other than being a direct linear descendant?" Anri asked, "Just as the Tendo and Saotome clans themselves had ancestors who took part in suppressing that rebellion?"

"Oh...my...stars..." Kasumi softly murmured.

"He wants revenge against our families because of that?" Cheshire asked in aversion.

"No," Reka scoffed, "He wants revenge because he believes that you are fated to thwart the plans of the Amakuza. What else did you think was behind this?"

"But...but until today I'd never even heard about any of this!" Nabiki protested, "Why come after me now and make me suddenly aware that this scumbag is up to no good?"

"The guilty doth flee where none persueth," Thelendra replied, "And the truly sinful doth see the world as full of sinners aimed against them. He no doubt has sources of his own-not related to us, obviously enow-who have warned him of prophesies that claim a Tendo and Saotome heir shall unite in opposition to depose him."

"The secret behind it all is actually quite simple...fiendishly simple, I am sorry to say," Anri said sadly, "As a fellow named Takamura Taishi once discovered many decades ago, those who pretend to be virtuous can often fool and beguile themselves into allying with evil for the sake of a supposedly grand vision of universal order. The problem is that the pretense of virtue, and often its pursuit itself, is an inherently flawed and corrupted ideal that creates a pathway for the dark powers to enter into the soul of the unwary."

"How come?" Ranko asked.

"Because perfection is not a human quality, nor is it in character for the world of flesh from which you originate," the angel named Michael answered, "At best you can achieve excellence in form and spirit by integrating the mind, body and flesh into one format, but that only after years of discipline and training. There are very few mortals who are born with an inherent link to the source of all operfection...and one such an individual has achieved the status of divinity by achieving inner harmony," he bowed to Kasumi and said, "To you, great lady, I acknowledge your achievement of virtue."

"Oh my," Kasumi said, feeling more than slightly dizzy at all the unsought praise that she was receiving at the moment.

"What my father means is that you mortals exist in a realm between the extreme poles of ultimate light and darkness," Jerika clarified, "Move too close to one or the other extreme and your integrity is compromised, for you were meant to find harmony within yourselves and your environs...not seek an impossible ideal or extreme that would put you out of synchronization with the world of flesh altogether."

"Actually," Anri said, "What I truly was getting at is the principle of integration that comes from inner acceptance of the mixture of elements that comprise your very being. Attempting to flush out impurity, or to cleanse the mind of body of all traces of darkness, are foolish and misguided ideals that go against the way of your inner nature. Light does not exist without shadow, form cannot function without purpose, and life itself would have no meaning if there were not a goal to achieve in finding the harmony of nature. Leaping to the conclusion of the process by taking short cuts only undermines the purpose of the journey, and trying to enter the gates of Heaven before you are ready is like entering a temple wearing the robes of a beggar. You might find that you do not fit in, and that without a purpose the word Heaven itself would be totally without meaning."

"'Tis the journey, not the destination, that be the goal of life itself," Thelendra noted, "And truly does the world hate the imbalance of purity without purpose...or form without nature."

"Nature abhors a vacuum," Lenore shrugged, "And trying to be too 'pure' just invites the demons to take over by filling the gaps within the darkness of your nature."

"Precisely," Anri smiled as though delighted at the brilliance of a particularly gifted student.

"What the heck does all that mumbo jumbo mean?" Nabiki asked with a look of consternation, "And who the hell was Takamura Taishi?"

"Who indeed?" Anri mused, "A funny thing that you should ask since..."

Brother, attend.

"Eh?" Reka spoke aloud, though Nabiki herself was startled at the words that popped into her mind, and then she glanced back at Lady Ulsa, who was no longer smiling but was staring upwards with her blue eyes reflecting something far less aloof and infinitely more troubled than anything displayed so far in her nominally placid expression.

"Oh dear," Anri turned his own gaze skyward, "I was rather afraid that this was about to happen."

All other eyes instinctively followed as the focus of their collective attention centered back upon the monstrous and hideous creature far above them. As distance was all but impossible to determine here it had seemed as though the tentacle-weaving, multi-orbed monstrosity had been sitting idle in the far-far background while Anri and the Daokan whiled away their time in idle chatter...but now it was plain that the being had other interests in mind and had wandered closer to one of the swirling vortices and was extending its tendrils towards a group of egg-like shapes that were floating towards the center.

"He dares do this within our presence?" Reka's voice shook with horrified outrage.

"Evidently so," Anri replied, "And somehow I don't think he's taking us very seriously at the moment."

"What...what's going...?" Ranma began to ask, only to have the question die on his lips as his mouth hung open and he gaped in dismay at what next happened.

The tendrils reached out and began to make contact with the glowing egg-shaped figures, and every time a tentacle touched one of the objects it winked out and vanished from sight, like a soap bubble collapsing, leaving behind only a speck to denote its passage.

Even the stoical presence that was Udan seemed to take this sight as a mark of something unforgivably wicked, and Nabiki could not help but feel the Dark Man raging from within, a potent force of righteous anger that was quite palpably elemental, almost a physical sense of barely contained outrage.

"What...what is it doing?" Ranko asked in horrified fascination.

"Exactly what you think he is doing, Girl," Michael replied, "He is feeding."

"Feeding?" Cheshire swallowed, "On what?"

"On the soul energy of those who died serving the Master of all that is Evil," Jerika replied, "Those souls belong to those who served the false Yahweh and gave themselves up to him utterly...and who now pay the price of such folly with their very mortal existence as he tears apart the fabric of their being, stripping away the complex structure of the Ego and leaving only the bare Monad in passing..."

"Daughter," Michael chided, "That is enough. Have some respect for the fallen, those who shall never rise again or incarnate as humans."

"You mean...he's destroying them?" Amalthea gasped.

"In a manner of speaking, Aye," Thelendra replied, "For each Soul that be consumed by a tendril be consumed unto the base essence of its raw Akashik nature, releasing the energy that the demon doth absorb to fortify its own dark existence..."

"How awful," Kasumi's voice shook with revulsion.

"Yeah," Lenore swallowed thickly, "Not a pretty sight, that's for sure, and not a fate I'd wish even on a Christian."

"Christians?" Nabiki gasped.

"To be more precise, those who call themselves Fundamentalists," Michael grimly noted, "A most extreme branch of an extremist devotion, those who believe in the Literalist interpretation of their scriptures, and who were so caught up in the fervor of that belief in life that they strayed into the dark domain of the False Yahweh, pledging themselves in fealty to his appetites while believing his equally false promise of eternal life and salvation."

"Which is what they deserve for betraying their fellow mortal beings to such a creature," Jerika snorted, then winced as her father glared at her again and said, "What? It's the truth and you know it! You've said it often enough that those guys are just getting what they ask for!"

"But not what they thought that they were bargaining upon," Michael turned back to the looming horror, "You see before you the result of the mad prophet's teachings, the ultimate folly that came upon the servant of Ariman whom you know as Paul of the city of Tarsus. Ariman seized his fragile mind and lured him onto the path of ultimate error, causing him to confuse that which was Dark and Malevolent with that which he mistook to be holy and sanctified, the better to use him to tempt mortal men into error."

"You mean...that's what happens to the Fundies when they kick off?" Ranko gulped.

"By no means all of them," Anri replied, "And by all means not only to Christians...not even those who claim personal identification with their mythical Christ figure. Only those who travel a long and dark path into the darkness that lies within them."

"More's the pity that most of those fools escape him," Reka growled, "If oblivion swallowed the lot of those bible-spouting fools and idiots then the universe would be a much quieter place in which to live...but this insult cannot be tolerated! He is daring us to challenge him, goading us with this violation of our dominion!"

"An insult that will be answered even now as we speak Agrikal," Michael assured them, nodding to the side and said, "Even now the forces of Heaven marshal to repel this invasion, and shortly they will be in place to mount an assault aimed at dislodging this intrusion into the sanctity of the Third Continuum."

Nabiki had noticed tiny specks of light flaring up from the backdrop of the stars and said, "What...what are those?"

"Heaven's Aerial Defense Force, of course," Jerika replied, "Valkyrie wings and Eurinyes Air Corps, accompanied by various allied forces whose single unified purpose is to deter incursions such as this into the dimensions of light...Devils, Angels, Heroes and Demons all...and among them is the fighter wing commanded by your mother."

"Our...mother?" Kasumi gasped, turning a worried glance at a section of the sky where some intuitive sense warned her was of great importance.

"Allow me, Beloved," Thelendra replied, and then caused a shimmering portal to appear through which could be viewed the sight of a familiar-looking woman wearing a combat flight suit complete with protective helmet. A golden badge bearing the Mong of the Tendo family was proudly displayed upon her chest, and the cocky smile that she was wearing as much as said that she was in her chosen element even as her too-familiar voice could be heard to say, "Kabuto Wing, this is Ace Leader Maverick reporting our position. Ready to commence bombing run upon your mark, Over."

"Auntie Kimiko?" Ranma gasped.

"Bombing run?" Ranko sounded appalled, "You mean she's gonna fly that crate up against that...thing?"

"Do they stand a chance?" Cheshire asked more practically.

"A small one I'm afraid," Jerika reported, "The weapons their ships are armed with are quite effective against any lesser demon of the outer dark...but not a greater Old One. Even their Gungir-class God Buster missles, armed with Fenris-class warheads could barely even make a dent against those AT fields...and Ariman himself is huge, much bigger than even what you think your mortal eyes are seeing. Planet sized no less..."

"This is folly," Reka snorted, "Those fools may be brave beyond death, but they have no prayer of surviving this encounter."

"Agreed," Anri said, "Tell your forces to stand down...have them withdraw at once, Michael."

"I do not take orders from the likes of you, Maitreya..." the proud Archangel started to protest, only to be cut off by a sharp glance from Anri, whose tone and manner was no longer either jovial or teasing.

"Not from me, perhaps," Anri said with serious intensity, "But from Her? That is an entirely different story."

The golden winged man's eyes widened in mute astonishment, then he managed to say, "From...HER? You...do not mean that...?"

"I mean precisely that," Anri turned to his kindred and asked, "Are you with me in this, brothers...dear sister?"

Reka suddenly smiled with a look of knowing confidence and said, "Do you even need to ask such a foolish question, Anri? We have been given a challenge...and so must it be answered, eh brother?"

"Indeed and it shall be," Anri turned and said, "Are we in agreement then, Udan...sister Ulsa?"

The Dark Man nodded almost imperceptibly without taking his eyes away from the sight of the huge monster. Ulsa did not move at all yet somehow managed to convey the words that flowed into the mind with a liquid calm that was altogether...unearthly.

We are in agreement, Brothers. Let the Unity of the Melding begin.

Michael raised his face to the sky and his eyes flashed golden, and then he turned away and said, "I have given the order to withdraw, and it will be obeyed. The Host supports you in this endeavor, Daokan...and may the blessing of She Who Awaits be upon us all even as we await Her most terrible mercy."

"What...what do you mean?" Ranma turned with a questioning look, only to see the four Daokan standing as motionless as statues, which prompted him to say, "What are you going to do about it? Are you just gonna stand there and let that...that thing...?"

"Ranma," Nabiki swallowed, then promptly grabbed her husband by the arm and said, "Better stand away...I think something's about to happen."

Michael and Jerika had already withdrawn by several paces from the place where the four Daokan stood silent and motionless with matching expressions of preternatural calm, casting off an aura of almost inhuman radiance that made the others draw back in silent apprehension. Lenore took shelter at Kasumi's side while Thelendra alone remained aloof and utterly stoical, regarding her father and uncles as though anticipating that which was about to transpire...and indeed very soon the four were cast in a soft glow of inner radiance, a brightening of their collective auras that threatened to blind the observers while sending a wave of soothing radiance that comforted the soul and made one implicitly understand that all was as it should be, and that what was about to occur was exactly as the fates had intended.

"What...what is going on?" Amalthea asked, "What is happening to my lady?"

"No thing untoward I do assure thee," Thelendra replied in a voice that just barely carried over the hushed calm that had fallen over the whole of creation, "Mine aunt, uncles and father are becoming as one...the Unity be upon them."

"The Unity?" Kasumi asked in a barely audible hushed whisper.

"The Four are becoming the One, Divine Glory," Michael informed her from a short distance off to her side, "Individually none of them possess the power alone to defeat an Old One this close to the edge of Oblivion...but when joined at the Source they transcend all limits and open the gateway through which the Presence may manifest..."

"The Presence?" Nabiki asked, having to raise her voice just to be heard in her own ears as something was stirring up their environs, like the gathering of a wind that was soon to sweep them all with hurricane-like fervor.

"You'll see!" Jerika called back, bracing her stance and folding her wings in an effort to resist the swirling forces that were marshalling all about them.

And then the four seemed to transform from beings of flesh and bone to pillars of light, each one a different color of the spectrum. Anri became a figure of violet hue while Reka assume a mantle of bright orange. Udan went from Indigo to a verdant green reminiscent of the depths of a lush rain forest while Ulsa became a diamond-blue form of shining intensity, like a living star in the form of a woman...and before the astonished eyes of the mortals witnessing this she assumed a center point to the three-part configuration formed by her brothers as all four merged into one and suddenly lost individual identity, becoming instead...something other than merely human.

The process complete, the lone figure standing in their place was a translucent form of star-filled majesty whose outline was the sheen of reflected light bending around her nebula-like surface. Her form went from inky dark to a soft white intensity a moment later and then she stood before them all a towering sight, utterly womanly and unfathomably deep and mellow. Her beauty was indescribably intense, even as her eyes blazed with the heat of twin suns as she surveyed the universe around and within her, incredibly ancient and wise beyond knowing, nude and yet draped in a mantle of infinity with the manifest glory of the Cosmos as her only form of clothing.

At once Michael and Jerika fell to their knees and bowed their heads in abject submission to this vision, while Thelendra too bowed her head deeply and manifested a posture of differential respect and humility that made Kasumi take notice. The divine Tendo sister herself felt an emotional stirring of amazement as she basked in the light of the inhumanly beautiful giant, while Nabiki and Ranma stood to the sidelines with Amalthea, Ranko and Cheshire, mouths hanging agape, while Lenore herself lay utterly prostrate as if hoping not to be noticed in the light of such perfection.

The Celestial being briefly regarded them each with a sweeping glance that seemed to read them to the very depths of their ultimate being before turning her gaze towards the ugliness of the demon defiling the heavens, and then in a voice that thundered in the mind like a rolling wave of honey-dewed divine outrage she spoke a single word that deafened the cosmos: "BEGONE!"

And with that the tides of pent-up energies accumulated throughout all of creation erupted in a cacophony of pyrotechnical brilliance. The skies-not empty of the lesser lights that had been massing along the friges-turned indescribably hostile as bolts of pure energy assaulted the monstrous beings known as Old Ones from all sides, causing the enormous creatures to bellow out in rage and fury as they attempted to fight back, lashing with tentacles crackling with energy of a different order while the violent clash of spectral colors forming a maelstrom of violent destruction, utterly rending the air and turning the sky utterly white with the colliding forces of mutual annihilation.

Ranma, Nabiki and the others were driven to their knees by this clash that seemed to go on and on for an eternity all about them, threatening to drown out all of existence with the violence of these awful exchanges. For an infinitely long moment it seemed as though the universe itself were being rent with fury as the powers of the united One and the malevolent Elder Gods contended for dominion of the plain and all about them seemed to shatter like glass before the waves of discordant harmonics that emanated out in all directions...forward and back, inside and out, past and present colliding and the future itself shuddering to know the outcome.

But at length silence fell upon the setting, causing a new kind of hush to fall upon them as the Universe itself became right once again and reestablished itself in a form of coherent order. A stirring of a random breeze caused hair to stir against sweat-slicked scalps as eyes opened to a renewed appreciation of the world...and then looks were slowly exchanged as cautious souls dared to hope that the nightmare was indeed over.

Ranma was first to exchange a glance with Nabiki before he and his wife turned to regard their various companions. Michael and Jerika stood to one side while Kasumi and Thelendra gave support to a shaken Lenore and equally astonished Amalthea. Ranko and Cheshire were huddled close to one another in the night as they all looked around in abject wonder at a starry sky that was clear of all trace of monsters.

The Four were revealed as themselves once again, their individual selves each glowing with a softly diminishing aura, and when at last they manifested forms of flesh they seemed to share a certain weariness as if fatigue had overtaken them, for the events of the moments had clearly taken its toll in ways that even beings such as they were forced to reckon as exhausting.

Anri broke the moment of silence to say, "And that, dear friends...is what it means to share a Unity...when the four of us become the One, and through the gateway that is formed we summon the Incarnation into manifest existence."

"The moment always leaves me feeling as though a part of Me has been exchanged with a piece of Her glory," Reka sniffed, "Not my favorite of sensations, but certainly one unlike any other that I could mention."

"Hah?" Ranko asked.

"The...Incarnation?" Cheshire hesitantly gulped with body-fur standing straight on end.

"Huh...what...what do you mean?" Ranma asked, "Where are we...what just happened...and...who was that lady you guys turned into?"

"In order of response, Son-in-law," Reka answered, "We have chosen to transport you back to your world within the Fourth Continuum of existence, thus sparing you from further psychic trauma. Secondly we have managed to momentarily brunt the intrusion of the Dark One into this dimension...but only for a time as the barrier is weakening and he senses the time of potential triumph that is upon him. And third...who do you think it was this time? Surely you've already guessed...and this time with just cause as the being we become is most deserving of such a lofty title."

"You mean...God?" Nabiki asked.

"Or the One most deserving of such a title," Michael replied, "We call Her the Incarnation...the spiritual embodiment of humanity's collective will combined with the essence of the Highest Order of universal Sentience."

"You mean...Kami-sama?" Kasumi asked.

"Nay beloved," Thelendra replied, "That office belongs to the leader of the Kami who doth preside o'er the Yggdrassil system. The One be of an entirely different order of being as far above the rank of the Gods as they hold themselves to be beyond the ken of mortals. The One...be simply the One, a being of ineffable intelligence beyond all understanding e'en of Immortals...for the One be a concept, a principle of Universal nature given form through the process of the Incarnation."

"Ironically enough this is what the impious Paul and his followers thought that they were writing about," Michael mused, "Though none of them ever conceived the true nature of divinity, and their worst reek of ignorance hubris and presumption. Alter prop, Ergo summo prop..."

"After, therefore because of," Nabiki translated, "The cart before the horse as it were...a bass awkward kind of thinking."

"You understand then?" Reka asked with a surprised expression.

"No," Nabiki admitted, "But I'd be a fool not to concede that you have a point to all of this...that what we call 'God' is just another form of intelligent life that's more evolved than the 'lesser' forms, which you take to be us 'mere' mortals."

"Ah," Anri smiled, "But there is nothing 'mere' about you, which is really the whole point of it all. You see...all of humanity has an inherent spark of nobility...one that is submerged beneath the gross material form of flesh that we wear when incarnated into bodies formed of the substance of this, the Fourth Continuum of existence. By the abstract measure of ideal perfection the world itself if flawed and corrupted...but no more so than what you make of it. The trick lies in seeing past the physical limits of flesh and bone to the spiritual center of our reality...and by tapping into this inner light one can accomplish the seemingly miraculous. The word 'impossible' simply does not exist for the truly enlightened soul who can perceive opportunity in every situation."

"So why come to us if you guys are so powerful?" Ranma asked, "We're just novices next to you, but you guys..."

"Have you learned nothing from all of this, Son-in-law?" Reka snapped impatiently, "Powerful we are, yes...and knowledgeable in ways that you seem incapable of fathoming, but still our very power limits us, conditions us to act only in ways that do not upset the balance of nature. Just because we could-for example-change the very orbit of the world and freeze the earth in its spinning rotation, thus making a day last for as long as we wished it...does not meant that we should do so. For one thing the enormous expenditure of power required to hold everything in place so that the planet does not tear itself apart or have everything on the surface fly off into space-to say nothing of preventing the atmosphere from boiling away..."

"I think we get the point," Nabiki said, "You guys are the Big Shots, but what's needed here is a lower caliber of ammunition that hits the target without creating too much collateral damage...or, to put it another way, doesn't kill the patient, like a scalpel rather than a hammer..."

"Precisely," Thelendra said with approval, "Very good, Sister-in-law, thou hast indeed grasped this most basic truth...that power creates responsibility, and even mine Uncle needs show restraint when it comes to setting things ablaze, as history itself has repeatedly demonstrated," she added the latter part with a glare in the redheaded man's direction.

"Sister-in-law?" Nabiki muttered, but her words were drowned out as the fiery Eluini responded to his kinswoman's silent look of accusation.

"If you are referring to that trifling incident in Bresden a few decades back, Niece," Reka snorted, "Then I assure you the people of that city did have it coming, being tainted by the presence of the Kishin weapon in their midst."

"Hardly a sentiment that I would agree with, dear Brother," Anri chided, "But as Saotome-san has indeed summarized, this matter is not for us to handle. We must reserve our might to face the true enemy while relying upon these Heroes to serve our needs by their own more limited methods..."

"Heroes?" Kasumi said, "Oh my...you mean...us?"

"Who better than thee to win the day for the cause of Light, Beloved?" Thelendra smiled, "And as I have every confidence in thee to do thy part to thwart the aims of Lord Otono and his dark Masters..."

"Hey, wait a minute," Ranko protested, "Didn't you guys finish the job just now? I mean...the way you were cutting into that tentacle-rape beast just now..."

"We did not slay him, more is the pity," Reka informed them, "At best we merely drove him off for a time, but he will strike again when the time is ready...and we cannot employ the Unity again for a time until we recover the full portion of our strength, for the effort has severely drained us."

"Not that anybody could tell just to look at you guys," Lenore murmured, "But then again..." and all at once she stopped talking, her mouth hanging open as her expression suddenly drained of all emotion save that of muted horror.

"Lenore-chan?" Kasumi asked, sensing that there was something amise with her friend and most loyal retainer.

The vampire gasped and staggered a bit as though in the grip of some invisible force, and all at once the winged Michael was thrusting himself into the space between her and Kasumi, using his body as a shield to ward off a perceived threat against one whose existence he implicitly valued, a thing that others noted without taking their eyes away from the now-beset redhead.

Lenore continued to struggle for several long seconds before she coughed, then relaxed, then crouched low and began to smile a horrible kind of rictus-smile...and without warning she started to laugh, a dark-edged form of laughter so lacking in warmth and amusemetn that it chilled the soul and made the worst "Kuno-laugh" ever heard sound as refreshing as a morning lark's bird song.

And then Lenore spoke...only it clearly was not her voice, nor the voice of anything even remotely human, "Foolish Daokan...to betray your presence thus early...did you think me blind to your aims, setting these hapless puny mortals against ME?"

"Stay back!" Michael warned the others, "She is possessed by the Old Ones! It is Ariman himself who now speaks through her!"

"Nani?" both Ranma, Nabiki and Kasumi blurted together, and suddenly the knew that this very strange night had gotten even stranger indeed with this new dark twist of events clouding out the remaining light of this harrowing evening...

Continued.

Comments/Criticisms/C'thuluesque Calling Cards: shadowmane

Or: shadowmane9849

The final conclusion of the evening of Wonders leaves Ranma and Nabiki facing a new sort of challenge, one that may well exceed even their capacity and resilience...but do stay tuned nonetheless, gentle readers, as the Daokan hurl down the bloody gauntlet for our heroes with Kasumi a key player and Otono waiting in the shadows for his turn up at bat in, "Recipe for Annihilation," or, "Blackhanded Challenge!" Be there...or you may well regret it...

X

/pre 


	88. Chapter 88

preDnabiki177

Nabiki 1/2

"A Very Scary Thought"

by Jim Robert Bader

(Inspired by the works of Rumiko Takahashi Others,  
with concepts and characters created by fellow fanfic writers Wade Tritschler, DB Sommers, Nicole Manders, Andrew Greaves, Bill Guiroff and countless others, including "Buffy"  
creator Joss Whedon; with special thanks to my good pal Shiva for his editing and handling of this series.)

(Certain other characters and concepts are of my own innovation, including my interpretation of the Monster of Mary Shelly's novel, the Furies, Trudy, Takaharis Angelique d'Anjou, Anri and the Daokan, Thelendra the Dream Weaver and various other guest stars appearing in this portion of the Nabiki 1/2 series...)

Chapter Sixty-Six(and Four Sixths).

Episode One-Hundred-Seventy-Seven.

Bombast from the Past.

"Not that I mean to criticize you, Sister-in-law...but are you absolutely sure that this is necessary?"

"Quite so, Martha-chan," Beatrice reassured while adjusting the controls to her device, "These pads that I have attached to your body will help me to determine a vital question, one that has puzzled me greatly while being of much concern to my wife, your younger sister. By monitoring your hybrid Terran-Kryptonian physiology we may be able to at long last determine the unique character of my Aiko-chan's unique genetic structure and why it differs so much from your own since you both share the same father yet come from two distinctly different mothers."

"So you say," Alison said skeptically as she eyed the way Beatrice was attaching electrodes to the naked body of Martha with a certain green-eyed fascination, "But if you ask me it's just another kinky excuse to get a girl naked for your experiments, Beiko. The Kami know you've poked and prodded me enough over the past two years to fill up an encyclopedia of kinky bondage positions that Mad Scientist types can use on their girlfriends."

"I assure you, my love, it is entirely in the interest of science," Beatrice said primly as she stepped back to survey her handiwork, "After all, the Kryptonian qualities of your mutual father bred true in Martha-chan here, even so that she was able to pass these traits on to her own daughter, from super strength and invulnerability to her various vision powers, pyrokinesis and-that quality which most interests me of all-the ability to fly, which you alone do not possess of all your immediate kin."

"Hey, that ain't exactly the case," Alison insisted, "Sure my Mom and Dad can fly, but my grandpa and grandmother on Mom's side are strictly landbound."

"Which inclines me to believe that it is the Olympian side of your inheritance that may be the determining factor," Beatrice sat down at her computer console and began typing in a rapid-fire list of coded instructions, "Whereas the ordinary human genome acts more like a filter to pass along the dominant alien traits of your father, some aspect of your divine heritage may be limiting your superhuman functions. If my hypothesis is correct, then there is something in the divine genes of your Herculean grandfather that made him strictly a terrestrial creature...even as your linear grandmother herself had divine heritage yet seems to possess her traits on the recessive level. By Mendel's Law that would seem to imply a 1/4 ratio that resulted in your superhuman traits being geared in a slightly different orientation."

"Translation...you just want to get me naked to play around with," Martha smiled, "Typical geek, guy or girl, it's all about sex with you."

"Weeeell," Beatrice drawled with a guilty little half-smile, "I would be lying if I did not confess that seeing you like that is certainly quite...stimulating...but I am quite attached to my wife's own proud physique and can hardly be expected to stray, especially with her standing over me with a tacit promise to spank my bottom if I so much as drool in your immediate presence."

"And that's a definite promise," Alison averred, eyeing Beatrice as though she were intending to spank her anyway...on general principles.

"Well, you've got me here and I'm at your disposal," Martha shrugged while glancing down, "So I guess I can't complain since I'm a big girl and can own up to making my own mistakes and decisions."

"Plus the fact that you have spent the past few months in the company of a certain party whom I know to be quite adept at conditioning young ladies to surrender their modesty and accept their bodies with no preconditions," Beatrice noted, then leaned closer at the screen and said, "Now this is interesting...your energy read outs are quite extreme, even given that it is still late in the evening with the sun not yet out, but your aura is most intense, albeit of a somewhat different caliber than Aiko's own radiant aura."

"Meaning what?" Alison asked, trying not to sound as interested in these preliminaries as she most obviously was, or that her wife's lectures often bored her to tears while this time around she was all but biting her nails with anticipation.

"For one thing, as we already know," Beatrice surmised, "Alison has uncharted strength levels that exceed those even allowed for a Kryptonian...and that she wears her specially designed wrist-bracers as a means of containing her power. Without them her merest gesture has the potential of generating waves of force that could be most destructive..."

"I know better than to arm-wrestle with my little sis if that's what you mean," Martha replied, "After all, her strength is at least partially magic based, and like my Dad I've always had a susceptibility to magic..."

"That is because your body absorbs various ranges of Bio-energy and stores them within your cells, including magical energies, leaving you with no natural defenses," Beatrice revealed, "But Alison is tapped right into the Ley-lines of the cosmos and can generate raw energy wherever she goes, even deep space far removed from Solar influences. Every cell in her body is super-charged with accumulated Bio-energy, making her a natural channeler...but at the same time opening her up to more conventional vulnerabilities that you yourself do not possess since your body generates a kinetic force field that absorbs and deflects excess energies while allowing your cells to literally roll with the punches, making you somewhat more resilient."

"I think I followed about one in four words that time, which is better than average," Alison remarked, "But what has this do with my not being able to fly? And why don't I have mind powers like Oneechan here, or magical abilities like my great-grandma?"

"That is the operant question, my love," Beatrice considered her console displays then tapped in a few commands and watched the immediate response to the imputed data, "By what my preliminary findings suggest, you have self-imposed biological limitation that compensate for your enormous latent potential. It's as if your body were designed to contain the power that is within you and keep it from exploding outward in ways that would be less than advantageous. Psychic safety valves, if you will, so that you do not wreck enormous damage with a casual thought and not just a gesture. Those special arm bracers your parents had designed for you only deal with the excess that supercharges your body. Without these other natural safeguards, however...I shudder to think what sort of calamities you might cause for yourself and all others around you."

"In other words you mean my little sister here has the potential...to be a Goddess?" Martha said with quiet dismay written plain in her expression.

"I am saying that with what I am uncovering here in this data, the differences between your internal anatomy and hers, as contrasted with my own somewhat more conventional human model...suggests to my mind that Alison is far, far more than the muscle-bound cretin I once took her to be at our first meeting."

"Gee thanks," Alison snorted.

"Don't be so easily offended, my love," Beatrice smiled, "I am far more appreciative of your ample good qualities these days. But what I am attempting to say in words that might mean something to your understanding is that your true potential has been locked away for a purpose, and that there seem to be a number of fail safes in place to limit the scope of your functions...but if those blocks ever were to come down then there may be no simple way of estimating the things you would be capable of achieving. As it is your power is strictly oriented to your musculature and fortifies you with a limited form of invulnerability, but the gland that causes levitation in your demi-Kryptonian sister here is underdeveloped, and similarly what Telekinesis you can achieve is touch-oriented. The portions of your Pineal structure that cause the heat-generating pyrokinesis ability and Clairvoyance associated with the standard Kryptonian model is similarly diminished due to its structural nature. In other words, Aiko-chan, the reason you can't fly or see for miles away in the distance or generate heat vision is directly tied to the condition of your genetics."

"Why would that be?" Martha asked, "Given who her parents are you'd think Aiko-chan here would be like one of her godly great grandparents."

"I would theorize that the Pineal organ in an Olympian God would be much larger and more complex in structure, allowing the Gods the ability to manipulate energy fields and the structure of matter," Beatrice noted, "But without having one to examine directly I can only speculate...which leads me to wonder...perhaps we might ask Kasumi-chan to pay us a visit?"

"Don't go there, Beiko," Alison frowned, "You know what Nabiki would say if she caught you sticking electrodes on her big sister. Heck, I'm not exactly too comfortable myself with the notion..."

"Anything for science, little sister," Martha smiled, "But to tell the truth this is a bit...awkward for me. Nothing worse than I've been through with the Mistress..."

"Tell me something about your experiences there," Beatrice said as she turned away from her console and gave a more thorough study to their brown-haired nude Kryptonian house guest, "Are you certain that you're not under some sort of mental duress or subconscious conditioning that is affecting the way you think? After all, when we first encountered you I had the impression that you were somewhat more...conservative in your thinking...and did not entirely approve of my union with your sister."

"Hey, I got better," Martha smiled, "And I'd be blind if I didn't see how much my Imoutochan is crazy about you, not that she seems willing to admit it, though she's giving us both the dagger eye right now as though she suspects you of being unfaithful."

"I do not!" Alison sputtered, then paused to concede, "Well...maybe a little..."

Beatrice seemed unusually thoughtful for a moment (which for her was saying a lot) then said, "I have read studies regarding the psychological profile of those who indulge in...shall we way...recreational bondage and discipline games? According to noted experts on the subject there is no real latent trauma or aberrant psychosis involved in indulging in games of restraint and coercive foreplay. If anything these games seem to serve a recreational purpose, relieving much of the stress and tension that underlies the human sexual psyche. Cathartic release of repressed sexual urges through forced stimulation, if you will...not at all a bad thing when you consider the amount of latent stress and tension that is involved in most relationships, which often causes occasional violent spats in which two or more parties wind up shouting at one another over trivial things of no great consequence."

"I think I follow you there," Matha nodded sagely.

"That's good," Alison admitted, "Because I sure didn't."

Beatrice smiled indulgently, "Let me put this another way, Aiko-chan. You and I had our differences in the beginning of our affair two years back, did we not?"

Alison snorted, "That's the understatement of the decade. You only tried to kill me every morning before our classes at Graviton High School."

"Indeed," Beatrice replied, "But as you know I was suffering from a condition that unfortunately seems to be a part of my own bloodline...our genius for science is exceeded only by a latent twist in our emotional complex where the hypothalamus and pre-frontal lobe activity meshes with the cerebral cortex...'

"Japanese, Beiko, please!" Alison pleaded.

"Well...simply put, being too smart for my own britches was driving me clinically insane, much as my father, grandfather and great-grandfather before we were all similarly afflicted," Beatrice admitted, "The curse of the Luthor line I'm afraid...and like all direct linear members of my immediate family I was drowning in a sea of emotional longing and desperation, romantic impulses that inclined me much to poetry and thoughts of world domination. I was like a drowning woman looking for a life preserver...and then I found what I thought was my salvation in Celeste, who was at the time your best friend, which made me regard you as my immediate rival."

"Ceiko," Alison said with a somewhat haunted expression, glancing away while allowing the slight trace of pain to register on her forlorn expression.

"Yes indeed," Beatrice leaned back and regarded the redhead with a fondness that was poignant, "But over time I got over my jealousy and transferred the bulk of my feelings to you...because you were the person whom I most needed to be close with, even if it took me such a long time to figure it out. Funny how it was that I had to die and be brought back by alien technology before the filters could come down from my eyes and I could see more plainly. Now I look back with a sense of amazement that I could not see the obvious even then...but that is the gift of hindsight, to recognize in the past the opportunities that we fail to detect in the present."

"You mean you were always in love with my little sister...but didn't recognize the emotions and instead tried to kill her?" Martha reasoned.

"Love and Hate...they are more closely related than most people tend to realize," Beatrice sighed, "Most people think them opposite qualities, but they are not. You cannot hate that which you do not on some level secretly desire, and the hatred is actually more of a defensive mechanism we use to try and protect our egos from the awesome weight of our attraction. The more you hate something the stronger must be your desire for the thing that you are hating. Much as many people cherish life but think of death as a kind of release from earthly passion...one reason why lovers often kill themselves in despair, or wind up killing the thing that they love in order to escape from their longing...a futile and foolish impulse, I know, but one all too readily human in nature."

Alison shuddered, "I wish you wouldn't talk like that, Beiko...that's way too morbid for me, and it freaks me out when you get these melancholy mood swings."

"I understand entirely what she is saying," Martha noted.

"Oneechan?" Alison turned a surprised look in her older sister's direction.

"When Hal and I broke up...I thought my whole world was ending," Martha sighed with a deep unreserved sadness in her expression, "Dumping me for Star Sapphire...though it really wasn't Carol's fault or anything like that, nor even Hal's really. We just...grew out of love and were both trapped in a web of commitments that were suffocating the both of us. Didn't mean it didn't hurt like hell, losing the man I loved like that, and the father of our nine-year-old daughter. Joan never really got over losing her father that way, and I think that's what caused most of her other problems down the way, including her drug addiction. I remember feeling such rage that it was over, and I literally wanted to kill him, even though I still loved him. It was crazy and scary at one and the same time, and I acted a bit crazy for a while there, then buried my nose in the family publishing business and turned my back on superheroing altogether. I was saddened about what happened to Hal later...but in a way also very relieved, though I think I grieved more for Carol's loss than his."

"My point in a nutshell," Beatrice sighed, "When we love we feel a connection to another person that makes our whole world come alive and seem like magic...but we secretly fear the loss of that feeling, and as fear is the opposite of love the contradiction can make us possessively jealous and resentful of any outside attractions that our significant others may feel towards another party."

Alison turned a worried look towards Beatrice, then at Martha and said nothing, but it was plain enough in her eyes that she was troubled by this turn in the conversation. On one level she was more than amply aware of how attractive her older sister was, and how having her stand there like raw meat before her wife was causing her to experience stomach aches of anxiety, jealousy and resentment...but at the same time she could not quite own up to these disturbing feelings...which made what Beatrice was saying all the more personal and alarming given how much her wife meant to her whole world and how utterly lost Alison would be without her.

Martha regarded Beatrice with a shrewder appraisal than before, "I think that you are a very wise woman, Sister-in-law. It took months of being with Mistress Lao to help me come to terms with these feelings...but here you've got me figured out in less than five minutes..."

"Oh, there was a bit more thought to it than that, I assure you," Beatrice smiled back in winsome self-awareness, "But my point to all of this is that for you the mixture of rage, pain, hate and love was a toxic combination, one that limited you and frustrated your ambitions. You spurred other relationships and considered even casual affairs as going too far for your safety and comfort level. But then you fell into the clutches of Madam Lao...and immediately opened up to her on a level you never could before with your former husband."

"That's right," Martha agreed, "Somehow being with Lao has healed the wounds that I didn't even know that I carried, and the various extreme games we play together have done something inside...that makes the pain that much easier to carry."

"Cathartic release," Beatrice surmised, "You discovered through restraint that your normal defenses were inoperable, exposing you to the raw emotions you thought were long buried. The pain caused a jolt to stimulate sexual impulses that short-circuited the older traumas and allowed you to fuse new circuits and pathways through your heart and brain that allowed you to experience release and a kind of redemption that washed away old hurts and taught you a newer way to live, one where there was joy to be found in surrendering yourself to another."

"Yes...yes, that's it exactly," Martha paused to consider her own words then asked, "Do you think that means I'm now some kind of BM addict?"

"Not at all," Beatrice replied, "The methods used to effect your release may have their addictive qualities, and you certainly seem to be in no great hurry to terminate your relationship with your nominal Mistress...but I wonder who here is the true slave and who is actually the Mistress? No doubt Lao takes great pleasure in teasing and toying with your body to create an emotional bond that supercedes all reason, but at the same time I would hazard to guess that she has grown quite fond of you on a genuine level of interest. Tell me this...knowing her as you must by now, and what she does for a profession...would it upset you at all if she decided to...say...sell you to a client on a permanent basis as a sex slave?"

"I'd be sad about leaving her, of course," Martha replied, "But if she wanted to sell me then I'd be obligated to go along with this since I am her property, to do with as she pleases."

"Nani?" Alison reacted, stunned by this calmly stated attitude of total submission.

"Then she has worked her way on you even better than I'd imagined," Beatrice nodded sagely, "But tell me this as well...do you believe that she would sell you? Do you trust that she will not?"

Martha considered the point for a few seconds then shrugged, "She is my Mistress, and I do love her. I have given her the right even though it might conflict with the stated agreement that she has with my parents."

"You trust her that far?" Beatrice arched a pale eyebrow, "But then...you did not answer my question."

"No, I guess I didn't at that," Martha smiled lopsidedly, "Well...I'd be a fool not to admit to the possibility, but...to tell the absolute truth, I don't think that she would do it."

"And why is that?" Beatrice asked, "Because you believe that she loves you?"

"The Mistress loves everyone who comes under her keeping," Martha replied, "But I know her well enough that she values her property. There are girls she acquires and sells all of the time and she treats them like casual pets, doling out what personal attention she can while delegating the rest of her subordinates...but where it comes to the women who make up her personal harem it's an entirely different story. We're...special with her, a pampered elite, true, but we can all feel it deep down how much she depends on us to give her support and comfort so that she can go on being the domineering captain before others. But me? I'm currently her favorite...I know that because the girls who've been with her the longest have told me so, and they've admitted to being jealous, but find...amicable ways of satisfying their grievances."

"You live in a community of love and commitment," Beatrice mused, "One built upon a foundation of trust that Lao would not dare violate, not even to satisfy the perverse whims and inner demons of her nature?"

"Something like that, yes," Martha agreed, "And in any event she's had lots of opportunities to sell me, offers from former enemies and the like who make promises not to kill me or do anything too permanent if they can simply have the satisfaction of having me under their dominion..."

"In which case Dad would probably kill them," Alison sniffed, "And her in the bargain."

"Leaving the POJ without an effective captain," Martha pointed out, "And Dad would never do that. He knows what the Kraken is and why it's for the best to keep it under the control of somebody who has a healthy appreciation of their mortality. And besides...Lao owes him big time, and say whatever else you can about the Pirate, my Mistress, she does have a strong sense of pride that lends her integrity where it really matters. So...yes...I trust her...but I think the real reason I stay with her is because..." she hesitated.

"Because...of what?" Beatrice asked softly.

Martha smiled and seemed more at peace than before, "Because I've never felt more alive then when I'm with her, and when she's doing things to me that I'd never have imagined letting anyone get away with. I know it must sound strange to your ears, Aiko-chan, but what your wife was saying just now about Cathartic release through sex and bondage...she isn't kidding. It's fantastic!"

"Nani?" Alison replied, then turned a curious look in Beatrice's direction.

"And for this reason you submit yourself utterly to her will," the silver-haired genius mused, "And in turn obligate her to care for you as her property. You indulge in the game because you each gain much from the bargain...and sacrifice as much to be with one another. Almost I would envy you were I not presently a happily married woman."

"You're both crazy," Alison huffed, though by her tone, expression and stance it was plain that she was not entirely convinced of her own protests.

Martha felt an impish smile on her face and said, "Don't knock it until you've tried it, Little Sister. In fact...why don't you follow your instincts and give your wife a good spanking from time to time? I'm sure she does plenty of things to annoy you in the day, and she definitely has it coming."

"I'm quite certain that I do," Beatrice turned an amused glance towards Alison, "But I do hope you will show some restraint, Aiko-chan, as I do have a very tender and easily bruised bottom."

"Hmph," Alison scowled, but this time her look was full of speculation.

"In the meantime," Beatrice turned back to her console, "I think it is time enough for you to remove the electro-pads from your body, Sister-in-law. I've gathered quite enough data to use in my further analysis of Aiko-chan here..."

"Are you sure you wouldn't rather leave them on a bit longer?" Martha asked with a coy expression, "They could be useful for gathering a different kind of data reading."

"Oh?" Beatrice asked, turning a questioning look back in the demi-Kryptonian hybrid's direction, "Such as?"

Martha grinned, "Such as driving my little sister here fully crazy and giving her a good reason to want to spank you..."

"Hey!" Alison protested.

"Oh, I was thinking of including you into this," Martha smoothly added, "You see...being with Madam Lao has done more than lower my inhibitions and caused me to think about lesbian sex as a healthy pass time and a way of getting to know people better. I've come to view it as the highest expression of physical desire and respect that one can share with another person, and I really wasn't planning to spend the whole night sleeping on the couch of this tiny apartment. I'm sure your bed is ample enough for three...provided Aiko-chan here can be persuaded to join us."

"What the hell are you talking about-!?" Alison started to sputter, only to find Martha was standing behind her with her arms around her body, holding the younger girl more closely than was seemly between close siblings and giving Alison a look that caused the redhead to get round-eyed, quite visibly alarmed by what she read in the older woman's expression.

"Come now, Imoutochan," Martha purred, "Even you're not so slow on the uptake that you can fail to catch my meaning...and did you think me blind to those covetous looks you were turning my way? It wasn't all jealousy about what you knew I was intending to do with your wife that's been making you feel so crazy."

"What an excellent suggestion," Beatrice remarked as she got to her feet after putting her computers on idle, "I was very much hoping it would come to this at some point in the evening."

"Beiko!" Alison blurted out in surprise at the nominal "betrayal," though whatever else she might have said died on her lips when she saw the look of hunger and lust the suffused the lovely features of the frost-blonde teenaged genius.

Martha held her little sister tightly so as to immobilize her, thus thwarting the instinctive panic that might have caused the redhead to bolt as Beatrice advanced upon the both of them. Nuzzling her sister's neck with affectionate lips the brown haired billionaire-turned-love-slave murmured, "Don't try to fight it or deny it, Aiko-chan...we both know you want this as much as we do, and I'm only here to help show you an entirely new aspect of your marriage."

"You guys really are crazy!" Alison struggled vainly against the hold of her sister, only to gasp as she felt one breast being squeezed, then was confronted by the touch of Beatrice's hand upon her cheek, which caused her to melt inside as she weakly murmured, "But so am I...I guess..."

"No, my love," Beatrice replied, "You are the strongest one of us all, which is why I married you. But let us be brief...I do have to tend later on to our little Geiko."

"Geena..." Alison automatically corrected, then rolled her eyes and gasped aloud as Beatrice began planting kisses on her neck and cheek, gliding down while hands expertly removed her revealing wardrobe.

And-not all that far away from these events-a small child by the name of Eileen looked on, slowly shaking her head and murmuring, "Grownups," before closing the door to the bedroom so that she could spend some time looking after her infant baby sister...

Nabiki had never been entirely too comfortable about associating with Vampires, especially after their experiences with the blood-sucking sub-species of humanity to whom her older sister was now regarded as a Goddess. But months of close associating with the American-born redhead had done much to allay her concerns and give her a better perspective of the differences between Darkholme and the parasitic Goah vampires that even Lenore regarded as a pestilent life form. One could sense about the vampiric girl a melancholy type of resignation that came from making the best that she could out of her nominally "undead" situation, but even so you could often feel the peculiarity in her aura, the unfathomably alien sense of a negatively-charged life aura that was powering her body and sustaining the girl in a quasi-immortal form of prolonged youth over the four decades of her existence.

That being said, the Lenore they encountered now was nothing like the easy-going Goth girl who hung out with Ghosts and other nightmares while sleeping upside down from the rafters in her off-duty hours, and who was quite public about her cuddly relationship with a female werewolf. The Lenore standing before them now was nothing like the dour and somewhat pessimistic body-guard assigned to look after Kasumi, and who regularly acted the part of a personal retainer.

This Lenore was a genuinely scary creature, and the look within her eyes was as alien as the tone of her voice as she manifested a genuinely unholy presence, reeking of unseemliness and more resembling the sort of vampire you only encountered in special-effects ridden movies.

Lenore's eyes were glassy and wild as she turned her focus towards the Archangel, "Fool of an Archon, you think to mask yourself from ME, from ME, who can see through to your true nature? You were servant once to OUR cause...surely you remember down to your very bones that WE are not to be trifled with, that WE can never be destroyed, banished or truly resisted?"

"Lenore-chan?" Kasumi gasped, dismayed to see her friend and retainer this horribly afflicted by a thing of nightmare.

"You lie, father of all Lies," Michael said calmly, "The me who served you is only a distant memory...he died and was reborn in my present incarnation. I am Moloch no more, and you are not my Master. I serve the true Archon who is as above you all as you pretend to be above all others.

"You serve a Whore who masks herself in the cloak of Eternity, pretending to be one aloof and removed from those who are far more ancient!" the creature possessing Lenore sneered darkly, "But WE are as patient as WE are eternal, and with each step WE take, each world WE reclaim, each layer of the rotten green apple of the tree that you protect WE harvest WE grow stronger and more united...and You cannot resist OUR claims to this world. Not even the mighty Daokan and the One they serve can avert our inevitable victory as we move closer to the day of reckoning-AAAAWWWKKK!"

All at once Lenore's body convulsed and then she suddenly burst into flames, and within seconds was reduced to mere ashes, a smoldering pile of dust in the place of where had formerly stood a vivacious if somewhat taciturn woman.

"Lenore-chan?" Kasumi gasped, unable to fully grasp what had just happened.

"Uncle...how could you?" Thelendra turned around and stared accusingly at another.

"What the...you?" Ranko turned to see the man named Reka holding up an incriminating arm with his eyes blowing blood red, and then the Daokan Lord slowly lowered it without a trace of remorce and endured the glares turned in his direction as though disdaining the hostility turned towards him.

"It had to be done and you know it," he stated flatly, "Ariman had claimed her body and would have harvested her soul if I had not acted to avert it."

"You killed her?" Nabiki gasped, horrified at the realization.

"How the hell could you do that?" Ranma demanded with heated outrage.

"It is not the goal that we object to, Brother," Anri said sadly, "But once again you resort to excessive means to solve a problem that might have been better handled through gentler methods."

"She did not deserve to meet such a fate," Amalthea said angrily, only to remember herself and nod towards the lady Ulsa, "Forgive me, Mistress...but...the vampire was ill treated..."

I agree.

"Huh?" Cheshire turned to stare at the paled haired woman, "Um...did anyone besides me just hear that?"

The blonde cooly regarded the spot where Lenore had formerly stood and said nothing aloud, yet somehow the words floated into the mind directly without any medium of transfer...not precisely like Telepathy but more like a sudden knowledge that appeared within the mind of the observer.

The warrior was a vessel only because her tainted nature left an opening through which the Old One could exploit in transit...but it is of no fault of hers that this had occurred, and her demise is unsettling to our Sister, who counted upon her loyalty as a servant. Therefore as my pet has decreed she is to be given back that which the Daokan have taken. Udan?

The dour giant nodded and stepped forward, extending his left hand over the place where Lenore had been destroyed mere seconds earlier. A greenish glow lanced down from the tips of his fingers and filled the spot with emerald light, and then the ashes rose up once again and took on a shape that was distinctly feminine and naked...with clothing materializing around her body mere instants later.

The Dark Man stood back and surveyed his own handiwork, and then Lenore blinked her eyes and glanced around and said, "Ah...why is everybody looking at me? What...just happened?"

"You don't remember at all?" Ranko asked.

"Apparently not," Jerika answered, "Reincarnation...or-in this case-material reintegration...can play hob with your perceptions...isn't that right, Father?"

"You are correct, my child," Michael acknowledged, "Beowulf has asserted his right as the Lord of Matter to restore the flesh of the one who..."

Abruptly he found himself being gently brushed to the side as Kasumi rushed forward and all at once swept Lenore up into an embrace, holding her closely while saying, "Lenore-chan, you are all right! Oh, thank heaven!"

"Ah..." the redhead was clearly surprised at the unexpectedly familiar gesture, but though clearly embarrassed she did not find the intimacy of the hug to be entirely...unpleasant.

"Well...can you beat that?" Nabiki commented, finding it difficult not to be moved by the emotional moment.

"He brought her back to life?" Ranma asked, once again asserting his mastery of the obvious, though he found himself surprisingly relieved at the notion, as if he would have missed having the vampire around, as odd as that might have seemed at another occasion.

"In a manner of speaking," Anri turned to give a token nod to Udan, "Nicely handled, Brother. I can tell you made a few modifications, no doubt to prevent a relapse?"

The dark haired Daokan merely grunted, but somehow the words found their way into the mind once again as though clearly and audibly spoken.

She is no longer undead in the same sense as before. I have improved the strength of the Montesque formula as I reintegrated her being. She will find herself stronger and more capable than in the past, and no longer as afflicted by the taint of darkness. All improvements sanctioned and approved by my Lady.

Amalthea turned to the lady Ulsa and bowed, "Thank you, my lady."

The blonde merely smiled back with a hint of amusement that belied her seeming aloofness.

You are welcome.

"Well, don't everyone thank me at once," Reka sulked, "In case it has escaped notice it was my action that severed her ties to Ariman and permitted Udan to reshape her in his likeness."

"We are not denying the urgency of your actions, brother," Anri said, "Only your appalling lack of discretion, which has become something of a problem of late."

"Hah, as if I care about whether or not my actions meet with your approval," Reka snorted, "Your ways are too timid and cautious, Brother, and Ariman was quite correct in that time is favoring his evil plans, or do you really expect that you can elevate these mortals to a state where they are fit for the task they have been given?"

"Why don't you shut up already," Ranma growled, "I don't care if you are Latisha's father, or even part of something greater than we could ever hope to figure out...that doesn't give you the right to play games with people's lives or to do whatever you like as if you don't care how others feel about it!"

"I do what I must do, Son-in-law," Reka replied, "And for one who has barely lived two entire decades to question my actions speaks of hubris and presumption. If you wish to silence me then strengthen your play or cease to bore me with this idle chatter."

"You don't have respect for anyone who can't meet up with your lofty standards, do you?" Nabiki sniffed, "Some guardian of humanity you are!"

"We may not measure up as much to your estimation, Lord Reka," Kasumi said as she let Lenore go and turned to regard the redheaded fire lord, "But by your own admission we have a right of self-determination and the freedom to act that you lack, and our potential is unlimited, so why not give us time to develop according to the pattern that is natural within us?"

"Ah...and so the mouse at last has found the voice to roar has she?" Reka sneered, "A Vampire Goddess of Housewives speaks for the sake of all humanity? This is novel indeed...or do you truly think that your mortal kin will be able to transcend their self-imposed limitations as you have in the time that remains to you all? Or do you truly think yourselves a match for agents in the service of THAT?" he nodded towards the vacant sky, but his meaning was clear as to what he was actually implying.

"The deserve the right to attempt such a thing, Brother," Anri said, "And if you were to give them the chance..."

I disagree.

"Eh?" Thelendra turned her head in surprise and look towards the dark haired man in their midst, "Uncle?"

The Dark Man eyed the trio of assembled youth with a face that could have been chiseled from solid granite even as his eyes surveyed them with jaded appraisal that left no doubt as to his unspoken meaning.

These are not yet the tempered tools that are needed to win the day and avert the coming disaster. You are a fool, Anri, to think them capable of overcoming the gulf that separates them from there true potential in a mere four days interval. Not against the likes of Otono.

"What are you saying?" Ranma turned to regard the dour giant, "You don't think we're up to the job? Don't you know we've won every battle that me and Nabiki have ever been in together? We've even taken on Madam Lao..."

Udan's eyes blazed briefly and there was clearly displayed a look of real anger.

Do not mention the pirate before me, Boy. I am absolved to spare her life for now by a pledge given to my Lady...but she is as nothing when compared to the likes of Otono. A true vessel of Ariman's dark glory, he commands resources you cannot imagine or even hope to overcome. You are not yet armored to endure such a battle...

"But what other choice do we have?" Nabiki asked, "If this thing is as big as you say it is, and we're the only ones you can find to do the job..."

Udan's eyes blazed again, only this time with something more akin to resignation.

I will do it. It is my task, my fate, my role in life to stand between humanity and the Eternal Darkness. That which men only imagine to be evil is as nothing when compared to the forces that array behind the Dark Ones. Their goal is nothing less than the elimination of all life, all being, and if they succeed in destroying this dimension then they will have gained a foothold that will allow them to threaten others. I will not allow that.

"No way!" Ranma said, "You guys already picked us, right? So where do you get off sending us to the benches before the fight's even got started?"

"Ranma," Nabiki urged, then to Udan said softly, "We don't contend that we're anything like a match for you, Lord Udan...but didn't you admit a while ago that the reason you need us is because there are constraints limiting your guys from fighting this battle directly? And what's going to happen if you do go up against this Otono guy and the...thing that's behind him?"

Udan's expression was grim and as implacable as it was certain.

This world will be destroyed, and the dimension with it, but that is preferable to allowing it to fall to darkness. At least I can give it a quick death, a merciful coup to spare its denizens from a far more horrifying fate.

"But that's...unacceptable!" Kasumi protested, "You can't condemn everyone and everything just because you think that we're not up to the challenge."

Udan's tone and manner relaxed by only a fraction.

There are other worlds, other dimensions, and the people in them will live on oblivious to what occurs within this world.

"No way!" Ranma protested even more loudly than before, "We're not letting that happen, right Nabiki? We won't let you guys destroy our world...!"

"Excuse me?" Reka asked blandly, "Do you think that we desire such an outcome? Even I, for all that I may fault the flaws of the human race, can hardly wish for its ending on any particular timeline that shows a...how is it that you put it, Brother?"

"A hope for the future?" Anri replied, "And I agree with young Saotome, Udan. What you propose is unacceptable. To blandly condemn their world..."

The Dark Man's brown eyes flashed with a savage green intensity that betrayed a righteous anger as he glared at his brothers with a thought that was as irresistible as a rockslide down the face of a mountain.

Who do you think has already condemned them? I am not the one who chose this fate, it was set in motion already, and I but obey the call of my duty to avert a greater tragedy. By killing one timeline I will avert the deaths of billions of others...

"And is this too what you wish, dear Sister?" Anri asked of the aloof blonde standing silently at the side of her towering brother.

The Lady Ulsa but inclined her head and nodded towards Ranko.

Ask our dear friend from a frozen timeline what it feels like to become a temporal orphan. I do not wish such a fate on anybody...but what Udan says is quite logical, as even you must concede it to be, my Brothers.

"My lady?" Amalthea asked in dismayed reaction.

"No way!" Ranko protested, unselfconsciously mimicking her temporal "father" in the gesture, "There has to be another way! You can't just decide this for us then declare the fight over before it's even begun..."

"They can and they have," Lenore said grimly, her expression downcast with resignation.

"Lenore-san?" Kasumi asked, surprised at the hollow tone in the voice of her fellow vampire.

"The Daokan aren't just some guys with a bunch of power who lord it over everybody because they're the toughest things around," Lenore explained, "Haven't you got it yet? They're the living embodiment of humanity in four different aspects! What they say goes for everybody because it reflects the cumulative sum of all the component parts that make up the human race...and if they say a universe has to die for the greater good..."

"Friend Darkholme speaks the truth, Beloved," Thelendra sadly acknowledged, "When mine uncle doth declare a thing to be so it be as if the very mountains themselves doth proclaim it, and for all that we may wish things differently he does what he believes to be right and best for all, much though his choice seem to thee quite cruel and heartless."

"Then what about free will?" Nabiki asked, "You made so much about us having a choice of forming our own destinies..."

"What about it, Woman?" Reka asked, "We are not yet decided in this matter either way as-for once in a century-Anri and I stand in agreement on this issue...but brother Udan is as stubborn as an army of mules and far less easy to steer around when he's made his mind up, as he most clearly has. Only sister Ulsa may countermand him in a decision, and as she has clearly not yet made up her mind in their either way..."

"Look, you can't do this," Ranma said, directing his anger towards the imposing presence that was Udan, "You can't destroy our world and everything we've accomplished just because you think it's too much for us to handle! You haven't even given us a chance to prove what me and Nabiki can do yet..."

You already have.

"Huh?" Ranma blinked.

In your fight against Reka you barely tapped into your potential, demonstrating that you have potential but are as far removed from awakening it as you are untried and untested. By my standards you are lacking, and I do not believe you have sufficient commitment to draw upon the fires within you.

"Oh yeah?" Ranma was suddenly that much closer to the taller gaigin Eluini, "You wanna say that to my face...in words this time not in...whatever it is you're doing?"

There was a different light in Udan's eyes as he regarded the unflinching youth before him, almost a hint of curiosity bordering on outright amusement.

Are you challenging me, Boy?

"Yeah?" Ranma sniffed, "What if I am? Just wait until I find a ladder someplace and then we'll settle this man-to-man, you got me?"

"Ranma..." Nabiki said, suddenly quite fearful of the attitude of the dark-eyed man confronting her husband. Though he was not truly that much larger than either Anri or Reka, there was something about his very stance that radiated dangerous energy contained within a form of chiseled granite, and for all intents and purposes he might well have been a Colossus facing down a tiny gnat that was annoying him. There was absolutely no doubt at all in her mind that if the giant chose to strike...he might well destroy her husband without even half of an effort.

But then something curious and disturbing happened...the dour face of the grim-visaged Udan gave a slight quirk at the corner of one mouth, and then a sound like boulders grating upon one another started to rumble from within the deep well of the barrel-chested man's abdomen, and before anyone knew it he emitted a single sound that might have been a growl but for the terrible noise of it, which spoke of anything but real amusement.

"Am I going mad?" Reka blanched, "Did he just...laugh?"

"Sounded a bit more like a grunt of amusement to me," Anri remarked, fingering his ear and giving a mildly pained expression.

Boy. You do interest me.

"Huh?" Ranma said in stunned confusion.

Udan's eyes sparkled like diamond flecks in coal tar as he regarded the younger and much slighter man before him.

I have been challenged many times before...but never so brazenly by one who has seen my truest nature. Do you truly mean to contend against my will on this? To defend your world and uphold its right of continued existence?

"Well...yeah," Ranma replied, "What about it?"

The quirk at the corners of the Dark Man's mouth remained but his gaze became flinty and his tone that much harsher.

You are obviously a fool but a brave one, and I respect bravery before all else. Very well, you have three days to prepare yourself..."

"Ah...excuse me?" Ranma blinked, reflecting the thoughts of Nabiki.

Three days...and then you face me in battle. Study hard, study well or I will crush you as a mercy in respect of your courage. Impress me and you will have the chance you seek to face the coming nightmare, which will hardly be as merciful. And you wife must study as well...the both of you to improve your forms so that you can give a good account of yourselves as warriors. In the end it will mean the same outcome, but you deserve at least this much chance to prove yourselves worthy champions of the cause of Light...but if you cannot defeat me then your aims will be for nothing.

The Dark Man turned and regarded the blonde Ulsa, his expression softening ever-so-slightly.

Does my plan meet with your agreement, my Lady?

Ulsa inclined her head in a token nod of respect, and from that it was plain enough that she had given her sanction to the challenge match between young heroes and her husband-brother.

Udan then shrugged and turned away, moving with silent ease as though turning his back on the whole matter.

Very well, then let us be on our way. In three days we shall return, and if you prove yourselves worthy then I will grant you both a boon, one that you may well both come to value.

"Hah?" Nabiki said, turning a look towards Anri and the others, "Is he serious?"

"As serious as death itself," Michael replied, "And Beowulf has faced Lady Death down on many an occasion...and always Death has given ground rather than risk brooking his anger."

"Brother Udan is not known for possessing a very well developed sense of humor," Anri further noted, "In fact I think I once tried explaining to him the concept of a joke but...he just didn't get it."

"But...wait!" Reka protested, "Udan, by what right do you usurp my claims? I was here first and it was my challenge against these youths that should take precedent over your..."

Udan stopped in mid-stride and slowly turned around, dark eyes once again flashing with green tinges.

Do not trifle with me, Brother, for I know your greatest weakness.

"Weakness?" Reka scoffed, "You call me weak? You dare? I who have trampled entire civilizations under my heels, shattered worlds with my glance and sent to trembling with fear the greatest of living Devils?"

"Brother," Anri sighed, rubbing his temples, "How many times have I warned you against tempting fate by baiting words with brother Udan?"

"Hah, you think I'm impressed with him?" Reka snorted, "I who fear no man nor beast, nor even your pompous idle boasts and threats of retribution, dear Anri?"

"You may profess not to fear us," Anri sighed and pointed to a spot past Reka's shoulder, "But She is another matter entirely...and She is neither man nor beast as you so quaintly put it."

"Hah?" Reka blinked, then his arrogant expression became one of surprise and apprehension, "No...you do not mean...you wouldn't...even you could not be so-OWWW!"

The redheaded man had been starting to fearfully edge away, only to react with a start as he felt a slender hand grip him by one ear and suddenly he was experiencing intense pain, bending down to one side as a green-haired woman held him firmly by the earlobe.

She was a radiant beauty in her own right with a magnificent figure in stunning profile, yet garbed in a kind of metallic mesh outfit whose strategically placed cups and plates made the outfit barely "legal" in most civilized quarters, her emerald eyes flashing dangerously as she held the redheaded man at bay, making the Lord Reka cringe in terror of her very presence.

"Is that so?" she snarled, "Forget all about me while you were playing with your family, sweet Husband?"

"Husband?" came the collective gasp from everyone else but the other Eluni and Angels in their midst.

"Gah-let me go, Woman! That hurts!" Reka all but pleaded in a suddenly boyish tone of voice.

"I'll woman you, you shameless womanizing...!" the green-haired beauty snarled.

"Lady Verigar," Anri said with a sudden charm that seemed less forced than well-timed in its intervention, "It's been too long since our eyes have been cast upon your infinite beauty. How fares it with you in these troubled times? Is everything still quite cozy on the home life?"

The green haired woman turned and smiled back towards the fair-haired man, "Anri, you silver-tongued snake charmer! How wonderful to see you again...and your delightful child, Thelendra...and am I imagining things or has the Lady Laolana indeed chosen to grace us with her august presence?"

The blonde merely smiled back in silent regard of the green-haired woman, and her look was utterly enigmatic.

"And...did I just spy that handsome Robar with you just now?" Verigar continued to sound delightfully charmed while not releasing her iron-grip upon her "husband." She looked around in puzzlement then asked, "Oh pooh...where did he go?"

"Who knows with brother Udan?" Anri shrugged, "He was leaving as you just got here."

"What a shame," Verigar pouted, "He's always such a shy one whenever I'm around...one would almost think he were trying to avoid me...but that's a silly notion, isn't it? Oh well...come along, Husband, it's long since time that I got your full and undivided attention, and do you know what our daughter has been up to since you last spent ten minutes with us playing the father? Levitating all over the place, just imagine!"

"Ow-the pain!" Reka protested as he was dragged away at the side of the lovely green haired woman, the both of them vanishing as suddenly as the Lady Ulsa, which left Anri and the others to stare in mixed reaction to their sudden passage.

Nabiki was first once again to break the impasse of silence at the moment to point in the direction the pair had taken then gasp, "You mean to say...that that guy is married?"

"What do you know," Ranko murmured, "Only I wonder who I should feel more worry for?"

"From the looks of things, Master," Cheshire remarked sardonically, "I'd say it was about even."

"Nani?" Ranma gasped in mute wonder, then managed to murmur to himself, "Somehow I almost feel sorry for him like that...I know what that feels like..."

"Excuse me, Buster?" Nabiki whirled about and glared in his direction.

"Ah...nothing," Ranma said innocently, with his usual lack of poker-faced conviction.

"Oh my," Kasumi covered her mouth, both amused and sympathetic...and not just a bit appalled to think of the type of woman it would take to be married to a creature like the likes of the Lord Reka.

"Oh yes," Anri sighed, "To Verigar Greenfire, a woman eminently suited to be his mate in all senses of the word, believe me."

"I'd call her a pretty hot number myself," Lenore remarked, "But obviously a lot more woman than Agrikal can handle."

"Hey," Ranko glanced around, "What happened to that white haired chick who was here a minute ago?"

"Amalthea?" Ranko asked, "She took off with Lady Ulsa...which reminds me, me and Cheshire ought to be heading back to report in to the parental units. You coming with me, Sport?"

"Of course, Master," the furry cat-girl responded, "Mom and Dad will be expecting us to make our report, and do we ever have one for a heck of a debriefing!"

Ranko reached into her belt and pulled out a round ball that she proceeded to shine in the furry cat-girl's direction. A cone-shaped light briefly radiated out from one eye-like facet in this ball and then Cheshire winked out of sight as if whisked into a vacuum with cartoon-like smoothness.

"What the...?" Nabiki reacted with a start.

"Pokeball," Ranko explained as she held up the ball for their examination, "Don't leave your timeline without one. By for now Mom...Pop, but see you later."

And then she, too, was gone, leaving the remaining world travelers shaking their heads in silent wonder.

"Oh my," Kasumi remarked, "That was...certainly a very odd way to transport a friend..."

"More like unto a paratime sister methinks," Thelendra said softly, "As well as loyal retainer and off times e'en a lover."

"Not gonna go there," Lenore shook her head in dismay, "Wouldn't wanna get sucked up into one of those things, and that goes double for either one of my two girlfriends."

"To each their own," Anri said slyly, "And as long as no real harm is being practiced what is done consensually between adults is certainly none of my business."

"Oh yeah?" Ranma asked, eyeing the fair-haired man with an openly curious expression.

"Oh yes," Anri returned the look then said, "And my congratulations for showing the courage and fortitude that so impressed my two brothers...or should I say my condolences since you now must face a challenge even greater than the threat posed by Lord Otono?"

"Are you serious?" Nabiki snapped at the erstwhile 'Lord of Light' with an open display of her temper, "Are you really going to let that...that hulk pick a fight with my husband...knowing what he is and what you guys have been telling us all night about your true nature?"

"I really don't see how I have any say in the matter," Anri replied, "I am not my brother's keeper, and Udan has always been something of a law unto himself in most regards. I might refer to him as a Force of Nature personified, but that would be doing him a vast injustice as even Nature has sense to keep out of his way when he gets this serious about anything."

"Mine Uncle be called by many names," Thelendra averred, "Many of which bear not to be set in printing, but among the titles he has rightfully earned is that of the Godkiller, for all who cross his path learn to rue the day they match arms against the Blackguard."

"Are you telling us that guy is totally invincible?" Ranma blanched.

"Don't be ridiculous," Anri replied, "No one is totally invincible...well, at least no one but my sister, Ulsa, and I very much recommend you do not do a thing that would put you on her bad side...if she even has one. I've never been too certain about that."

"Even the Lord Beowulf has tasted defeat in the past," Michael revealed, then paused to consider the point before saying, "I believe that the last time a foe got the better of him in a contest of arms was around the year 37 BC...give or take the adjustment for the point we now term as 'Alter Dema.'"

"Yes, but that was against a really tough adversary," Anri noted, "And Udan sulked about it for the next five centuries before resolving to get better."

"That's utterly insane!" Nabiki exploded, "How the hell do you guys expect Ranma to take on a guy like that with only a few days of preparation?"

"A very good point that," Anri conceded, turning to Ranma, "If I were you I'd get set right away to intensifying your training. Fortunately you have a very good teacher on hand who can show you the ropes, as it were, and help you to get a grip on the things you must master for your encounter with my brother. My granddaughter is more than competent enough to whip a promising young chap like you into shape in very little time...if you are willing to commit yourself utterly to her training."

"You mean...Siren?" Ranma swallowed thickly, all too much aware of the look his wife was turning in his direction.

"Of course there be one trivial point that thou art forgetting to mention here, Father," Thelendra reminded, "Uncle knows that the Saotome husband and wife often fight as a team, and that by directing his challenge towards the man he can hardly have excluded the woman, which means the Lady Nabiki must needs prepare herself as well to this looming altercation."

"Hah?" Nabiki blinked, snapped out of her brief jealous daze, only to recover swiftly with an almost automatic, "Well...of course I won't let Ranchan go up against that brute alone, but..."

"Excellent," Anri smiled, "Then you begin your training on the marrow...and what excellent timing that you just happen to have acquired for yourself a most capable Sensei, one who is equipped to teach you the valuable keys that you will need to insure your mutual survival."

"I...what?" Nabiki gasped, "You mean...Coach Wells?"

"Nani?" it was Ranma's turn to give his wife a questioning expression.

"Oh my," Kasumi repeated again, her mind briefly filling with the image of the reddish curls that shone like burnished gold in the sun that had been the first thing that she had noticed about the curious gaijin woman whom they had encountered on at least two previous evenings.

"The Kurustani will guide you well in the next phase of your training," Anri assured the startled pair, then leaned forward and whispered conspiratorially towards Ranma, "And just let me state for the record...Kudos to you for challenging brother Udan. That took fortitude and will that confirms my faith in your ability to tap into your potential...but believe me when I say that I wouldn't had done what you did were I in your position..."

Just then the sound of a powerful motorcycle filled the night air, startling some of the remaining observers as head turned to see the giant-sized beast-machine known as "The Monster" appearing down the way with its equally impressive driver at the wheel, which brought a startled gasp from Kasumi.

"Frank-sama?" her voice quavered ever-so-slightly.

Riding atop his shoulders, however, was the curious sight of a tiny young girl with shimmering multi-hued hair who clung to his broad back and chuckled girlishly as Frank pulled up to a stop then lowered his kickstand and turned a glowering look in the direction of the Lord Anri.

"By the Powers...be that...my little Gamina?" Thelendra whispered, drawing a startled look her way from Kasumi.

"You're despicable!" the man-mountain growled, "Sicking your own flesh and blood on me like that...just to delay me?"

"Ah...excuse me?" Nabiki blinked, glancing from one party to the other with an openly bewildered expression.

"Well, it worked didn't it?" Anri smiled, "And you can't argue with results since it's evident enough that you struck up a deal that pleased Gamina enough to let you carry her here under a truce flag?"

"I made a bargain with the Kid," Frank said before picking the child up and carefully setting her down upon the ground before turning his murderous glare in an entirely different direction, "I promised her I wasn't gonna wring the neck of her momma, but that don't mean she isn't due for a good spanking for putting the moves on my fiancé."

"Eeep!" cried a suddenly terrified Thelendra as she instinctively darted around behind Kasumi, keeping the vampire goddess squarely between her and the towering man-brute.

"Get over here, and stop hiding behind her skirt you...theological home wrecker!" Frank barked as he tried to circle around Kasumi, only to find Thelendra adept at moving to keep their mutual love interest squarely between them.

"Frank-sama?" Kasumi looked up at her fiancé with alarm.

"Mommy's in trouble," the child named Gamina said as she was gathered up into Anri's arms and held at chest level, "I'd like to help, but we made a bargain...and you've always gotta keep your promises, right Grandpa?"

"But of course," Anri affectionately ruffled the multi-hued hair of the little girl, "The world depends on us to uphold our given word, or else it should never be given in the first place."

"Mommy?" Kasumi reacted, turning in wonder at precisely the wrong minute and thus giving Frank the angle he needed to dart around her and grasp the tall Thelendra by one wrist.

"Owh!" the Oracle winced, "Unhand me you...you...Humonculous!"

"Sticks and stones, lady," Frank snarled, "And I've been called the worst by the best in the business!"

What followed was a brief tussle as two superbly trained martial artists attempted to wrestle for advantage, Frank attempting to grapple and immobilize Thelendra while the rainbow haired Eluini sought just as desperately to avoid being entangled. They traded blows that each one blocked with a speed that even Nabiki found dizzy, but all at once they were both shoved rudely apart before either one could gain the advantage on the other, and each was held at arms length by Kasumi, who easily resisted the best efforts of her promised husband to get around her at her "girlfriend."

"Now then," the eldest Tendo daughter said calmly, "The both of you will settle down and calmly discuss this like reasonable people. Am I clear enough on that point, Frank-sama?"

"Let me go, Doll face," Frank growled, eyes smoldering as he remained focus on his real target of anger, "She's got a spanking coming to her...!"

"No doubt that is so," Kasumi conceded, "But all things in their proper time and season."

"Eh what?" Thelendra gasped, her instinctive desire to get away while her foe was distracted being impeded by the very firm grip that Kasumi had placed upon the fabric of her robe, which the Vampire Goddess was holding with a deceptive ease that belied the tenacious strength of her slender fingers.

"And you," Kasumi turned mildly towards the Oracle and asked directly, "Would you mind telling me all about that little girl over there who keeps calling you her mother?"

"Ah..." Thelendra quailed a bit before the reddish eyes of her "beloved" then gulped, "She be mine...by a former dalliance...mine child of half-Eluini heritage, Gamina Starfox, whom thine...iinazuke already hath encountered."

The little girl waved at Kasumi, who felt odd as she attempted to smile back before turning back to Thelendra and saying, "Your...husband...was a gremlin?"

"Nay, nay husband!" Thelendra sputtered in protest, "We ne'er be formally wed...!"

"But the child is yours by him," Kasumi relaxed somewhat, "I remember now...you did mention this, and I have some memories of this borrowed from you." She turned back to Frank and said, "And you...whatever grievances you have with Thelendra-chan, Frank-sama...please take them up with me. I am the one who deserves upbraiding for betraying you, not her."

"Doll-face?" Frank gasped, dismayed by her calmly voiced admission.

"Thelendra-chan and I...we share a history and a past," Kasumi told the larger man with complete sincerity and conviction, "Meeting her has been like finding a part of myself that I never knew that I was missing, and I...I know that I love her. It was not planned or anything, I simply discovered her in my life and ever since...I can't stop thinking about her."

Frank looked stunned, almost as though he had taken a body-blow to the chest, and he stood there staring down at the gentle-voiced woman beside him, whose clear and impassioned admission of infidelity were as alien to his whole concept of her as though she had sprouted horns, bat-wings and a tail and was brandishing a pitch fork. It just did not add up to everything that he thought he had come to know about Kasumi.

Kasumi's eyes were brimming with tears as she said, "I never meant to betray or to hurt you, Frank-sama. You have been very dear to me, and I care for you as deeply as I had ever thought that I could care for any man. You are the kind and gentle husband that I have always hoped for, and I wanted more than anything else to be your wife, to make a home with you, to serve your needs in the way my mother served my father. Yet...there are larger issues at stake here than either one of us individually, and I know now that I have a purpose...a destiny to fulfill...one that Thelendra-chan is a part of, and...and I cannot turn away from this no matter how much I ache to be the kind of woman you deserve, the wife who belongs to such a wonderful husband."

Frank just continued to stand there stupefied while Kasumi turned from him to Thelendra, and then her manner firmed ever-so-slightly as she eyed the rainbow-haired Eluini and said, "We are a part of each other...that much I know and accept...but if we are to continue in this then there must be no secrets between us, and obviously there are portions of your life that I have yet to become acquainted with. This deficiency will be corrected, will it not? Because if we are to fully trust one another then I have to know everything..."

"E-Everything?" Thelendra's voice trembled.

"Everything," Kasumi said firmly, her palm still caressing Frank's chest, "I am prepared to sacrifice much for your sake, but if I am to know that what I am giving up is worth the pain it will cause to both me and Frank-sama then...I have to know if there is anything more that you are holding back from me. After all...you have the ability to see both the past and the future..."

"Possible futures, Aye," Thelendra swallowed, "But...of the past I can do little..."

"Then tell me this," Kasumi said brightly, her face inches away from that of the taller woman, "If I go with you and leave what I have with Frank-sama behind...will either of us be happy with that decision? Or are we courting a far worse disaster than if I stayed with him and put aside all thought of being with you in the looming crisis?"

Thelendra seemed to struggle for a moment with the answer, looking from Frank to the unwavering Kasumi and back again, and then she hesitated with her lips parted and nothing coming out, only to turn away and say, "Nay...ye were meant to be with him. I hath known this from the start, and I...I wanted to avoid becoming an issue...yet..."

"Yet you discovered in me the soul of a person who meant so much to you in a former life?" Kasumi's smile trembled slightly and her crimson eyes swam with uncontainable emotion, "And I found in you someone whom I cared deeply about in those previous incarnations. That's why I want to remain with you...because if I turned away now I would be condemning myself to living a half-life, a shallow existence with only half the person that I am...and Frank-sama deserves more than this. He deserves nothing less than total commitment."

"D-Doll-face?" Frank stammered incoherently, almost staggering under the weight of her words, which he still could not seriously credit as coming from Kasumi.

Thelendra found herself unable to look away from the gaze of the Japanese Vampire-Goddess, and her own voice was uneven as she attempted to make coherent sounds and wound up blurting, "I, too, wouldst be remiss to deny that mine longing for thee be more than mine very soul can bear to endure...but...'tis nay my place to go against the will of destiny...and ye were ever meant to be with him. No more can I deny this than..."

"Mommy," the little child in Anri's arms gave her mother a scolding look, "You said you were gonna be honest."

"What?" Kasumi blinked, surprised at the interruption.

"Be silent, Child," Thelendra snapped, "'Tis for the best of all that I..."

"Mommy," little Gamina's eyes were suddenly much more serious than seemed appropriate to an infant in her age group, "Tell her."

"Tell me what?" Kasumi asked in growing confusion, "Thelendra-chan?"

The taller woman hesitated, leaving it to the child to say, "Mommy doesn't wanna say it, but I will. The reason she wants you to stay with the nice big man is because you're gonna have his baby."

"W-W-Whaaaaat?" Frank exclaimed in already numb astonished reaction.

"Big guy?" Lenora asked, turning a startled look towards her nominal employer.

"Gamina...!" Thelendra's voice had the edge of panic.

"Only you're not just gonna have his baby," the child said with impish mischief in her face, "You're also gonna give me a baby sister."

"N-Nani?" Kasumi gasped, now thoroughly round-eyed as she placed her hands over her abdomen with a sudden knowledge of the truth of the situation.

"Say what?" Nabiki whirled on the child.

"Oneechan's pregnant?" Ranma scratched his head, "How the heck do you know this?"

"Easy," Gamina replied, "I'm part Gremlin, part Eluini, and I know stuff like that when I see it. It's not just that I got a way with machines...I can see stuff in your auras that tells me a lot about each one of you...like you're really partly a guy because of a curse you've got, and your boyfriend here's got lots of pregnant girlfriends living inside of him...but you already know that. It's the stuff about the future that I can read thanks to Mom's contribution to my genes...and what I see in your aura, Bright Lady, is two little babies growing inside you who are gonna grow up to be beautiful ladies themselves...one by Him and one by Mommy."

"But...but...but...I...we..." Frank stammered.

"It's really quite simple," Anri explained, "You lay with your fiancé early on this very morning, and while it normally takes a couple of days for sperm to work its way up the uteran canal...well...let's just say that with Kasumi-chan here she has a somewhat more accelerated metabolism. Needless to say, without getting too medical or technical about it, that the embryonic zyst has taken firm root within the fertile lining that will nurture it in health to full maturity within a several weeks-long cycle, and three months from now the child will be born alive and healthy...as will her twin sister, who is also firmly nestled beside her."

"Twins?" Lenore gasped, "Kasumi-sama...is gonna have twin daughters?"

"I am?" Kasumi said with stunned amazement.

"But...wait, I don't get something here," Ranma shook his head in ready confusion, "If Frank's the father...then how can she also be...?" he turned a questioning look towards Thelendra, who quailed visibly under the silent regard of the others.

Anri inclined his head and regarded his beloved child and asked, "Do you want me to tell them or do you wish to admit to your own sins, Child? Speak up, there's no shame of it in my eyes...you simply acted from impulse without fully thinking through your actions..."

"I did nay do it deliberately, Father!" Thelendra protested defensively, "It simply...happened. Perhaps on some unconscious level I did wish for such a thing...but..."

"What did you do?" Frank growled, suddenly resuming his former resentment of the Eluini.

"I...I sought to protect thine unborn child by insuring its safe passage," Thelendra explained, but with her fearful gaze directed towards Kasumi rather than the angry giant, "But in doing so...certain probability lines were crossed and melded...and without consciously willing it-I assure thee-I...may have unintentionally caused the embryo to divide into two parts, each with half a soul. Naturally I didst nay wish to create such an imbalance, so I sought to compensate...and may have...accidentally, mind thee..."

"Implanted a part of your own essence into the cloned half of the cloned offspring?" Anri said sagely, "This displacing the fragment soul back into its proper receptacle but in doing so cleared the way for another soul to take its place...one filtered through your being and infused with a portion of your genetics."

"In other words...she got my Oneechan pregnant?" Nabiki blurted.

"No, Frank-san did," Gamina corrected, "Mommy just made a second baby for herself, so now the nice lady there's got two of 'em on the way, one his and one belonging half to Mommy."

"Two of them?" Ranma exclaimed, trying hard to imagine what the resultant offspring would be of such a paired union.

Lenore noticed that her employer was not moving, so she leaned forward and blew his way, and-sure enough-he toppled over, landing on his rump with a "WHOOSH!" of air, which did the trick of shaking him out of his dazed condition, so much so that he glared up at Thelendra and growled, "Why you...!"

One look from Kasumi, however, and his outrage died still-born. For a moment she held him fascinated with the emotions in her eyes, and then she further surprised him by fully smiling...a radiant smile full of wonderment and awe that seemed to light up the dark of the evening and open everything to new possibilities, new hope, new potentials.

She turned and looked not at her two quarrelsome lovers but rather at Anri himself and said, "You knew," which was not spoken as a question.

"I suspected that this might happen," Anri replied, "And out of all the possible future pathways that lay open to you at our first meeting, I rather thought this was the one what would please you the best."

"Thank you," Kasumi turned and then gave a hard look at Thelendra, "I am not entirely pleased about your doing this without having asked...but I cannot fault the results nor...question your methods since I was intimately involved in the process."

"Eh?" Thelendra asked with just a hint of a hopeful note in her tone and expression, "Beloved?"

"And you," Kasumi turned back to Frank with an equally radiant smile, "Words cannot express the gift that you have given me, Frank-sama. I was afraid that my condition might...affect my ability to bear offspring...but you have proven me to be fertile, and for that reason alone I am grateful. A child of our love is one to be treasured and nurtured...and so what if the other thing might force us to accommodate a second such treasure? Is not the gift to be shared, and the giver to be honored?"

"Hah?" Frank blinked his eyes, for a moment unable to process this new twist in their relationship that it seemed that his fiancée had just decided upon for the both of their sakes.

Nabiki, however, was not so slow to put together the pieces, "Wait a minute...you're not suggesting...Oneechan?"

"Well, why not?" Kasumi asked her beloved little sister, "After all, it worked for you and Ranma-kun, and are you telling me that you are any less happy because of the other women in your world, Imoutochan? Could you imagine your life now without Shampoo-chan, Ukyo-san and Perfume-chan being a part of the picture?"

"Ah...well..." Nabiki stammered.

"Wait a second here," Ranma said, finally catching up with the drift of the conversation, "Are you saying that...you're gonna keep both of them, Oneechan? But that's..."

"Quite a splendid idea if I do say so myself," Anri noted, "And congratulations to you, Tendo-san, that you have the foresight to perceive the inherent gifts with which you have been given by the Powers that Govern."

"WHAAATTT?!" both Frank and Thelendra chorused together.

"Well, it seems a natural enough solution to the problem," Anri off-handedly remarked, "After all, Tendo-san here has more than enough room in her heart to accommodate a thousand times as much love as she feels for the both of you combined. Also too it seems to be an otherwise insoluble problem if you force her to choose one of you over the other. After all, she could hardly be expected to deny her unborn daughters either of the parents who helped bring them into the world, and could you in turn deny them the knowledge of a father...or father-mother?"

"Father!" Thelendra scolded, "How canst thee even suggest that I share her with this...lump of mismatched flesh fused together by alchemy?"

"Yeah," Frank snarled, "And where do you get off playing matchmaker to me and..." he paused, glanced down at Thelendra and said, "Who are you calling a lump?"

"Thee," Thelendra snapped, "Thou unnaturally made creation of fatherly hubris run amock! Thou art man enow for a woman, surely so...but then thee art also many men fused together, so it hardly makes for comparison though mine true heart deserves better than..."

"Thelendra-chan," Kasumi spoke gently, and all at once the Eluini subsided.

"Who are you to be calling names like 'unnatural,' you bad-hair-day witch?" Frank shot back, "At least I don't slick down with Rainbow Brite every morning. And what's with that ridiculous Shakespearian accent...?"

"Frank-sama," Kasumi turned her gently admonishing look towards him.

Frank suddenly lost his voice in the face of the look that she gave him, then Kasumi turned from him to Thelendra and back again before saying, "Obviously this relationship will require a bit of work to bring together...but I am confident that, in time, you will both see the strengths in each other that I see, and accept the rest with full accommodation."

"Hah?" Frank blinked.

"Eh?" Thelendra chorused.

"Frank-sama," Kasumi began again, "May I approach you on the level of a scientist? Although I know that I am not a scientist myself, I understand and appreciate how valuable your work is to you, and there will be times in the day when you will be called away to your job, and I accept this as a part of our marriage. But in those times I will be lonely without companionship, and in that I have found a partner who can keep me out of trouble and help guide me away from those...darker impulses that have been troubling me of late. But also too consider this...can you abandon our baby knowing that she will be a very special child gifted by us with certain...supernatural endowments? After all, there is my condition to consider, and I want what is best for my baby...for both of our babes," she turned her look Thelendra's way, "Do you understand me, Dearest heart?"

"Ah..." Thelendra's mouth went suddenly dry under the intensity of the look that she was being given by the woman before her, and without the ability to speak she found herself nodding in assent without internal debate of the issues.

"Now then," Kasumi said as if the matter were decided, turning back to Frank and saying, "As I am resolved to remaining your fiancée, I wish to know from your lips if my designs meet with your approval...my promised husband?"

The big man could do nothing but stand there and slowly nod his head in agreement, finding it impossible to deny her anything, and not because of any vampiric compulsion as he was naturally immune to that other form of persuasion.

"Well then," Kasumi's smile grew delighted once again, "The only question now is what to wear at the wedding," she turned and examined Thelendra's dress critically then said, "As much as I do love what you are wearing, it would hardly be appropriate to a Shinto-style wedding. I suppose we could work you in as one of the Birdemaids, but as you will be accompanying us back to the bed chambers..."

"I will?" Thelendra helplessly stammered.

Kasumi leaned slower and murmured in the ear of the taller woman, "What you said just now about Frank-sama's...endowments was very rude and ill considered...but if you would take it from me, then you will find him more than...adequately compensated."

"Oh?" Thelendra's multi-hued eyebrows shot up, and then she looked up at Frank as if unable to help herself for...speculation.

"Now then," Kasumi turned away and gave both of her lovers an endearing look, "Since there obviously will be a few rough moments to work through in order to make this marriage function smoothly with the harmony and bliss of a proper house...I believe that you two should set aside some time for getting to know one another properly. And that means that Frank-sama here has my permission to...discipline you if he ever feels that you have stepped out of line or in any way have compromised his dignity. In fact, why don't you carry through with your earlier intentions, Frank-sama, and give Thelendra-chan a good spanking."

The craggy face of the giant slowly broke into a smile, one that would have put the fear of the devil in the heart of an angel, "With pleasure! Come here, you-!"

"Eeep!" Thelendra backed away, only to be frozen in place when she caught the look that Kasumi gave her.

"No teleporting away this time, Beloved," Kasumi said, "You know that you have this coming, and it is best for everyone's sake if you stay and take your medicine...like a woman."

"But-AWK!" the tall Eluini suddenly found herself being picked up and tossed over the shoulder of the much larger Frank, who held her there kicking and squawking in protest while Kasumi folded her arms and looked on with approval.

"You'll excuse us for a moment, Doll-face?" Frank growled, "Me and your lady-friend have some 'quality time' to share between us. That okay with you, Anri?"

"My daughter is a big girl," Anri waved a hand dismissively, "She can atone for her own follies and mistakes. I never had much heart to discipline her myself when she was a child...but I'm willing to look the other way for now just as long as you confine yourself strictly to what she has coming."

"Oh believe me, I intend to," Frank chuckled without much mercy in his tone and expression, "Come here you..."

"Father!" Thelendra protested as she was rudely carried off like a sack of flower towards a nearby grouping of trees that would prove sufficient covering to obscure from the night what was about to take place under full moonlight.

"Bye Mommy!" Gamina waved, "Have fun with the nice Mister Stein..." she turned an impish look towards Anri and said, "Are they gonna have some fun together, Grampa?"

"Oh, not to worry," Anri assured the child still riding on his shoulder, "After all, he is a doctor."

"I'll give them a few moments together...then go and check to see how things are coming along," Kasumi said before turning to examine the child more closely, "So how old are you, little girl?"

"About eight," Gamina hopped down off of Anri's shoulder then smiled as she looked up at Kasumi and said, "You're pretty. Are you gonna be my new second mommy?"

"I certainly hope to," Kasumi said as she knelt down so that she could meet the child at eye level, "Tell you what...why don't we spend some time talking together and getting to know one another. Would you like that, because I know that I would."

"Oh yes," Gamina said brightly, extending her arms as Kasumi gathered the child up into her warm embrace, then the two of them began walking towards a nearby swing set, even as the night air began to be filled with the sound of heavy slaps and much feminine yelping.

Nabiki and Ranma waited until their "big sister" was sitting side-by-side with the child on the swing, then the former turned and said, "You set this all up in advance, didn't you?"

Anri smiled back, "Free will. I merely gave events a nudge here and there...but I allowed you all to make your own decisions."

"Riiiight," Nabiki drawled, "Like I'm supposed to believe that?"

"Believe whatever you must, Saotome-san," Anri inclined his head indulgently, "But the results are how we measure the success of our actions, and by any measure you might care to employ you must concede that things could have turned out a lot worse for those three...especially if I had left it to my child to make a muck of things as she was going to do had your sister not properly decided the issue for those two."

"So...what happens next?" Ranma asked, "I mean...were do we go from here?"

"From here?" Anri inclined his head and was suddenly quite sober once again, "You have four days in which to avert a major disaster, and three days in which to prepare to face down my brother. I suggest you use the time wisely and engage in serious training. Siren will show you how to better solidify your already established link to the Elemental Forces that you will need to stand toe-to-toe with Udan, while you should have a serious chat with your new Sensei, Mrs. Saotome. She can give you the missing elements that you will need to defeat Otono, and if you are successful in this...then my brothers and I will do the rest, for only we have the means of properly expelling his backers from this plane of existence."

"Do you really think that we can get that good in only four days?" Nabiki asked.

"No," Anri said frankly, "But on the other hand what other choice do you have? Now, I think you had both best be heading home to spend quality time with your loved ones. After all, it is as much for their benefit as your own that you do this, and when you face that one singular truth squarely then you will be halfway to finding the source of your commitment, which is the thing that the both of you will need if you are to deter my brother from taking matters into his own quite formidable hands."

"But that's insane!" Lenore broke her silence of the moment to protest, "Ranma and Nabiki are good, sure, but against Bartev the Blackguard? Even Superman gives that guy a wide berth, and Darkseid won't even come out from under the bed if his name even gets mentioned on Apokalyps..."

"I agree," Michael too spoke up, "What purpose does this serve, Maitreya? What games are you playing with these mortals?"

"No one is calling it a fair fight, Darkholme san," Anri replied to the vampire before turning his regard towards the Angel, "And as for games...you should know better than anyone to ask me that question, Michael. I do what I must because I follow the path of Light and serve the greatest good in the Universe. My brothers follow their own paths for the same reason...and our cause is just, the salvation of this timeline. Judge me after it is all over if you harbor any doubts about my methods."

"Dad was sure right about you," Jerika shook her head in dismay, "You're even more dangerous to have on our side as you are against the bad guys."

"Be that as it may, Little One," Anri said, "There are more things in the Cosmos than are dreamt of in Heaven or the Abyss, and someone has to be there to coordinate affairs so that they run smoothly. My sister is much too passive, though admittedly wiser and more knowledgeable than I in all the things that matter. For now I must take my leave of you to attend to those issues that I have left untouched until now, but I will drop in on you from time-to-time to offer what help I may, be it a wink or a nudge, in order to see that Ariman's day is spoiled four nights hence. Until then...be good, and don't each too many starched foods. You need to marshal your spiritual and physical strength if you are to see a fifth morning dawn after this evening is fully expended."

With that the fair-haired man bowed respectfully to the remaining souls who found themselves standing in a deserted park in the middle of the Nerima district. There were still the sounds of yelps coming from the bushes and Frank's powerful motorcycle parked to one side and looking unusually subdued for the normally talkative creation of science that it was. A faint breeze stirred and then was stilled once again, leaving them to exchange questioning looks for a moment or two longer when the silence hung all around them.

Then Ranma asked, "Is he really gone? I mean...completely?"

"For now, I guess," Nabiki replied, "But I'm sure we'll meet with him again before we know it."

"Count on it," Michael said, "And if it pleases you, my daughter and I shall now take our leave of this plane. It is not meet for our kind to dwell too long among mortals. Better for you if you remain unaware of our presence in between the scope of your world and our own."

"Why is that?" Ranma asked.

"Because you mortal guys get funny ideas about us, and we're non-affiliated with any sectarian Church or Religious group, and we don't want to get exploited," Jerika replied, "So we stay invisible or under cover whenever we do venture to Earth...or I would if Dad here would let me have some time to get to know the mortals better..."

"Why should I do that?" Michael asked, "You are still much too young to bear such a responsibility, and despite my own mixed relationship with earth-bound humans, I cannot for the life of me recall a wrong done to me that would be balanced out by allowing your presence. Now, come along, Jerika, the flock is waiting."

"All right," Jerika sniffed, only to cast a glance towards the not-so-distant Nerima skyline, "What a shame...I almost feel like I could get to like this place."

"Some other century," Michael urged, flapping his wings and rising up into the night air, "Such as when they learn to stop playing around with dangerous toys and hurting one another for the silliest of reasong."

Jerika too took to the air, spreading her wings and gliding off into the night, only to vanish from sight seconds later, leaving the evening with a bit less grace for her passing.

Lenore glanced up at where the Angels had disappeared then heard a sigh of relief and said, "You were really worried for moment there, weren't you, Nabiki-san?"

"Wouldn't you be?" Nabiki asked, "If your husband already had too many followers for my liking?"

"Ah...?" Ranma started to ask, only to think better of the question.

"Well," Lenore remarked as she examined Ranma's aura, "The girls seem unusually quiet at the moment, so my guess is that Lord Anri put them into a sleeping state so that they could marshall up their power after depleting their reserves fighting with Lord Reka. They should be back to normal by morning, up to their usual shanannigans...which remind me. Ain't it time yet for you to give Sharil back to Ranma?"

"Huh?" Nabiki asked, then belatedly recalled that she still had the water elemental within her.

"Aw, never mind," Lenore shrugged, "Let's get home before Shampoo and Ukyo send Perfume out on a Posse mission. On the whole I guess we made out all right...only I...can't quite remember something that happened there. It was like I died and came back to life or something...weird, huh?"

"You did," Ranma admitted quite frankly.

"I did?" Lenore blinked, then shrugged, "Well, not the first time it's happened, and probably not the last. You get used to weird stuff like that after a while...sort of. But in the meantime..."

A barking noise caused heads to turn around, and then Lenore found herself in the path of a lumbering wolf, who shape-shifted in mid-lunge into the form of Chloe the Werewoman, who promptly bowled the redhead over, planting kisses and tongue-licks over her face while the redhead sputtered in affectionate protest.

"Lenore-chan, I found you!"

"We are back," the ethereal voice of Kiima said before the ghost-girl fully materialized in the space off to the side of her two writhing companions, turning her unearthly stare towards the Saotomes and asking, "Did we miss anything of significance?"

Ranma and Nabiki exchanged looks as they thought that one over, then grimly shared a moment of sober realization that as significant as the night had been, their troubles on the morning were certain to be a lot more...complicated...

Continued.

Comments/Criticisms/Worlds of Infinite Crisis: shadowmane

Or: shadowmane9849

Trading begins anew for our intrepid martial-arts couple, but can they pull it off in time for, "A Rendezvous With Terror," or, "Tripping the Night Fantastic?" Be there...

X

/pre 


	89. Chapter 89

preDnabiki178

Nabiki 1/2

"A Very Scary Thought"

by Jim Robert Bader

(Inspired by the works of Rumiko Takahashi Others,  
with concepts and characters created by fellow fanfic writers Wade Tritschler, DB Sommers, Nicole Manders, Andrew Greaves, Bill Guiroff and countless others, including "Buffy"  
creator Joss Whedon; with special thanks to my good pal Shiva for his editing and handling of this series.)

(Certain other characters and concepts are of my own innovation, including my interpretation of the Monster of Mary Shelly's novel, the Furies, Trudy, Takaharis Angelique d'Anjou, Anri and the Daokan, Thelendra the Dream Weaver and various other guest stars appearing in this portion of the Nabiki 1/2 series...)

Chapter Sixty-Seven.

Episode One-Hundred-Seventy-Eight.

Waiting on the Sidelines of Doomsday

"You're sure of this, Ranko-chan?" Nabiki asked in bland amazement, "The Daokan themselves said that my counterpart and Ranma's are going up against Udan in a challenge match?"

"But that's crazy!" Ranma blurted, "At my best I maybe could take on the guy, but that Junior-league mage version of me? He's way out of his class! Hell, he ain't even in the same solar system!"

"Hey, I'm just reporting it like I saw it, Pop," Ranko shrugged, "Cheshire can back me up on this since she witnessed the whole deal. It was like being on some kind of a weird temporal field trip, like that Anri guy knew everything about everything in the past, present and future..."

"He does know quite a lot about it," Nabiki confirmed, "And what he doesn't know he can readily access from his sister, Ulsa."

"I can't believe all four of those guys were there at the same time spilling all of the beans about the Enemy and the Great Cause and all of that," Ranma shook his head incredulously, "I mean, usually they give a new definition to the word 'close-mouthed,' and that Anri guy...his MO is to always speak in riddles. Coming right out and flat explaining what he's doing...that just don't fit his profile."

"I'm more concerned with the way they seem to be convinced that Ariman and the Old Ones are about to forge a major breach of the line across the Timewall, using their connections to the Amakuza through Otono Watanabi, who is obviously a Minion," Nabiki stroked her chin with a thoughtful expression, "If matters are that critical then we had better take this up with higher channels as this could well constitute a Class One emergency requiring all of the Department's resources..."

"Is it really that serious, Mom?" Ranko asked, "I mean...that tentacle-monster waving thingie sure looked like seriously bad business..."

"Bad business?" Ranma snorted, "Kid...there ain't a creature in creation or outside the Wall that can match the definition of 'bad news' like an Old One, and Ariman's one of the worst of that lot, second only to C'thulu and his minions."

"That bad huh?" Ranko asked..

"Old Ones represent an intelligence that is alien to every form of life that we know of in our dat a files or have encountered in our travels, Ranko-chan," her adoptive mother informed her, "They are comprised of a type of anti-energy matrix, not formed of regular matter as we understand the term, and they can consume entire universes in the same way that mollusks do the decaying matter of trees and bacteria," the Time Patrol Coordinator leaned forward for dramatic emphasis as she added, "And-as you have observed-they consider human souls to be especially tasty. They subvert and ravage everything with which they make contact and are the living embodiment of nihilism, because their ultimate desire is to unmake the Multiverse and return it to a formless state of anarchy that existed before the creation."

"That's bad," Ranko shuddered, her own memories of the tentacled monstrosities still sharp with vivid imagery of their "feeding" practices, which had horrified her beyond all hope of description.

"I've encountered them and their minions on and off in my travels, Kid," Ranma noted with his usually understated method of describing such horrors, "They're bad news in every sense of the word, and contact with them inevitably drives one insane since their thinking is a type of anti-logic that short-circuits normal survival reflexes, making them all the more dangerous since they've got no sense of self-preservation."

"If these guys are as bad as you say they are, Pop...then why would anybody want to be one of their minions?"

"Because there exists in human nature a kind of self-destructive urge that subverts our desire to live, Kid," Ranma answered, glancing away, "Back after when everything went to hell, when my life was in tatters and I was blaming myself for everything bad that happened...I wanted nothing more than to make an end to the whole thing. Dying never really bothered me...I was used to the idea that I could get killed in a fight, but living with the pain I carried in me...that was almost more than I could endure. Funny thing was it made me more reckless in my fights, but with no more of an urge to lose than I ever did in any of my previous matches. Turned out that my will to die was exceeded only by my desire not to lose, and in time I came to understand that giving up isn't really a part of my nature. Dying would be a form of losing, and it wouldn't end the pain that I'd carry in me to the next world. Besides...I didn't think that I deserved to die, or else I'd have to go and meet the people I betrayed and have to explain myself to them and I...just wasn't ready."

Nabiki favored her husband with a rare look of emotion before saying, "Your father isn't being modest...he really doesn't know how to lose. He was raised to be invincible, and it's more than just his ego that makes him go the distance in a battle. Losing would be like losing his identity, the entire purpose of his early life's training. I know because I watched him from the sidelines...and I gradually came to understand this. The unfortunate thing is...against a physical opponent he may be the toughest thing around, but against a foe that he can't fight...that's another story."

"You mean like the fact he can't hit girls, Mom?" Ranko asked, then paused to amend her speech, "Or used to."

"Cute," Ranma sniffed, "She means her sister especially in particular, and how I never could bring myself to fight back against Akane when she was slowly going insane and was possessed of those rages. The Rage itself is the kind of thing that Ariman likes to infuse in vulnerable people's minds, but with Akane...it was a pathological complex. Whenever she couldn't deal with stuff she just started swinging, and after a while it was her patented solution to everything...and since I was the target she singled out more than any body else..."

"The real evidence that something was going terribly wrong was the uncharacteristic way that your father behaved," Nabiki added, "With resignation rather than resentment. And-it shames me to admit-the only one of us who could see that something was going terribly wrong was Ukyo, who tried to help your father to fight back in the only way that he could...by coming to terms with the problem and seeing himself as an enabler. If she had been allowed more time she might well have weaned Ranma away from Akane altogether...but by then my sister's state had deteriorated to the point almost beyond redemption."

"I can never forgive myself for what I put Ucchan through in those days," Ranma said grimly, "It was only after I joined with Shiva that I could face the fact that I had failed and betrayed her, that she stayed true to me as a friend to the very end, and that I didn't deserve her loyalty, any more than I deserved what Shampoo tried to offer. Sure they were both violent girls with faults of their own, but compared with Akane, who by that time was a rage addict..."

"It wasn't just a rage complex," Nabiki said somberly, "There was something affecting Akane's mind that slowly eroded away the loving, caring person that I knew she was and turned her into something...that wasn't entirely human. The same thing happened with your mother...that Akane lost control and gave in to her rage syndrome with the result that she lashed out at everybody...but that's what happens when a Rage Demon burrows deep into your mind and bores through the portions of your brain that normally inhibit such behavior."

"Huh?" Ranko felt a cold hand touch her nape hairs, "You mean...my Mom...my real Mom, that is...she was a victim of a demon?"

"Different kinds of creatures fall under the definition of a Demon, Kid," Ranma explained, "I've known good Demons, Bad Demons, and guys I'm pretty unsure how to classify as either good or evil...but the worst kind I know are the types that like to mess with your head and suck all the positive elements out of you so that you're left an empty shell with no real personality but what the Demons leave intact. This one guy...they call him Genocide, or Holocaust, take your pick...he's one of the worst of the C'thonic class of demons..."

"Genocide?" Ranko reacted.

"The Demon responsible for episodes of mass slaughter that you find all throughout history, Ranko-chan," Nabiki explained for the benefit of her adoptive daughter, "He began his career around 22,000 BC, summoned to the plane of Earth from his home in the Abyss and exiled here in a semi-formative status. His MO is that of a toxic poisoner who preys upon racial and ethnic resentment, seeding his loyal armada of Bogard-class Dark Faeries into the minds of vulnerable and receptive people, which worm into the soul and gradually eat away at their victims to create homicidal impulses that can afflict entire nations."

"He had a field day with Joe Stalin and Adolph Hitler," Ranma added, "And other examples of mass slaughter, from Nankeen to Rwanda, where people seem to go completely mad and kill off their neighbors in the thousands. He always has his agents do his dirty work and never manifests physically on the plane of earth, but you can tell when his minions are at work when you see groups of guys beating their chests and going on an 'Us versus Them' style rampage. He sits back in a kind of nebulous Quasi-state Limbo feasting on the energies of pure hate and madness..."

"Holy Sh...ah...Shinto," Ranko lamely amended, then stared at both of her parents and said, "Do you think maybe that's what's going on in Nerima right now? Because if it is then that could explain what guys like these Daokan are doing hanging around with your counterparts..."

Nabiki looked stunned, and Ranma was quick to pick up the tell-tale signs of his wife's having one of her prescient moments, so he waited a few seconds before saying, "Nabiki?"

"Oh my goddess," Nabiki swallowed, staring at nothing in particular, "That could explain everything since Genocide is in league with Ariman, and if Otono is one of their minions..."

She turned away and at once set to work on her console, "This is bad...seriously bad, and I'm going to have to take it up with the Administrator. Small wonder that Lord Anri has taken the time out of his busy schedule to try and coach our counterparts into fighting Otono..."

"What do you mean, Mom?" Ranko asked.

"Genocide's minions can only be defeated by somebody with a pure heart, Kid," Ranma explained, "And we all know who fits that description to a 'T'."

"Oneechan," Nabiki breathed, "Kasumi...she's one of the three elements of a triad, an arrow-head aimed at the breast-bone of the Enemy, and if what I suspect is true..." she stopped talking and started manipulating her controls, even as Ranko and Ranma looked on with growing concern as the usually stoical Lore Master was evidencing signs of near-panic in her behavior, which left them equally concerned at the implications since anything that could rattle Saotome Nabiki's cage was definite a cause for universal alarm Armageddon style, with definitely troubling implications for the very near future...

"Nihao, Airen!" was the unexpectedly warm greeting that took Nabiki by surprise as she was suddenly glomped by a very pregnant Amazon, who held her in an embrace of such strength that for a moment the "cursed" girl was feeling more than slightly off-balance. She reflexively returned the hug and found that she was more than comforted to feel the familiar warmth and smell the refreshingly familiar scent of her Amazon bride as they shared a moment of silent intimacy that left both of them feeling enormously grateful.

Ranma was given a somewhat more subdued greeting by their other wives, Ukyo and Perfume, but nonetheless there was genuine gladness on their part as the two girls gave their mutual husband with the latter saying, "Husband," and the former cheering him with a heartfelt, "Ranchan."

"So...what happened with you guys after you left?" Perfume was quick to ask once the few seconds had dragged on rather awkwardly with them just staring at one another as though to drink in the sight of their beloved co-partners in group marriage, "I went to investigate as soon as things quieted down here, but by that time you'd already left and...well...I had this sudden urge to get back home and protect the family, and then my grandmother stopped by, and after that...well...we were visited by this...stranger..."

"Stranger?" Nabiki asked, glancing from over the shoulder of the cuddlesome woman in her arms towards the other two-fifths of their mutual domestic arrangement.

"Yeah, weirdest thing," Ukyo stated blandly, "Right after somebody took a shot at you we had this...really peculiar feeling, like somebody was watching the place...and then later on we discovered this tall guy in a trench coat standing in the living room looking at the family photos and at first we thought he might be a burglar or an enemy...but then he turned around and...well...you're never gonna believe this..."

"What?" Ranma asked, tensing nervously as his memories of the event-filled evening left all sorts of possibilities to consider, and none of them all that pleasant.

Perfume looked directly at Ranma then said, "He looked like you, Husband...taller and older looking with a lot more muscle and maybe twenty-two kilos of body mass, but in every detail he was you right down to that cute little mole you've got under your chin."

"What mole?" Ranma blurted, then blinked, "He looked just like me? But..."

"Not just looked like you," Ukyo said firmly, "He was you, Ranchan...only more like what you probably might look like in a couple of decades, when you're as old as Nabchan's father. Pretty hunky-looking too, but sad...and he had this look around him, like he was carrying this great weight or something..."

"Like the weight of a thousand lives hung over his shoulder," Perfume clarified, "And his aura was...different...powerful and dangerous, and I could smell the taste of blood and death around him, like he was a veteran of a thousand campaigns, a look that only experienced warriors with a lot of notches in their belt carry. And something more...something that was inside him, something that scared the living bejeezus out of me, like the living embodiment of pure and total destruction..."

"We...met somebody like that just a little while ago," Nabiki said as she gently separated herself from the death-grip of her senior co-wife, "Only he didn't look a thing like Ranchan. Maybe you just thought it was him...?"

"Nope," Ukyo replied, "It was him. He even answered to the name 'Ranchan,' and he knew me by name as well...the way he said it and everything, like he knew things that he was afraid to tell us..."

"Airen, Shampoo is scared," the purple haired Amazon admitted, "Somebody try kill you tonight, and then this Ghost-Ranma show up like harbinger of death-omen..."

"Hey, aren't you guys getting a little bit carried away here?" Ranma asked, trying to sound as if he were not totally freaked out by the implications of what his ladies were saying, "I'm right here, right now before you, and I ain't changed that much since the last time we were together. I don't know anything about some older guy who looks like me showing up to cause you guys to worry so much, but if he shows up again I'll show him what it's like to be disturbing. Nobody messes with my family and gets away with it..."

"I hear you there, Ranchan," Nabiki said while keeping a reassuring arm around the waist of her beloved Shampoo, "But with all the strange stuff we've just been exposed to tonight...do you really think it's a safe bet to dismiss anything, no matter how weird it sounds or preposterous the implications?"

"Um...well..." their husband reluctantly conceded.

"Why?" Ukyo asked, "What happened? Where did you guys go after you took off after the guy who tried to shoot you?"

"Oh, we took care of him, mostly," Ranma said.

"Mostly?" Perfume asked archly.

"Ranchan and me put his lights out and were going to deal with him a lot more harshly," Nabiki said, "But Lenore-san convinced us to leave him alone, said there was something more going on than we knew about, so we left him alive and unconscious with just a few bumps and bruises to let him know of our displeasure."

"Displeasure?" Shampoo bridled, "Airen, you is much too lenient for own good sometimes. If Shampoo catch man who try kill Airen with cowardly means, then she stick head on pole in front of gate as warning to others no to try this. Not say what do with other parts, but see to it they also get appropriate treatment..."

"If it had been me he wouldn't have gotten off that lightly," Perfume added with a sympathetic nod towards her adoptive cousin.

There were times when one tended to forget the sort of society where Shampoo and Perfume grew up, one where the Warrior's Code was adhered to much more strictly, and that each of them was conditioned to putting a different premium on life (albeit Shampoo tended to talk tougher than her actions, being squeamish about actually killing her foes, which was not a handicap that Perfume suffered in the least). This knowledge confronted Ranma and Nabiki with the stark realization that at least two of their beloved co-wives had very different value systems and could be quite intimidating should a line be crossed beyond their tolerant understanding of the ways of other peoples.

As it was Nabiki had to glance down affectionately at Shampoo and say, "Well, if I see the jerk again I'll be sure to send him your respects, Sham-chan. But it turns out that there's more to this hit than just somebody taking a disliking to me and wanting me out of the picture."

"We're listening, Sugar," Ukyo said with serious regard in her tone that belayed that she was not that far behind her Airen in wanting to do something terribly nasty to the one who had attacked her best friend and co-wife in such a brazenly disrespectful manner.

"Ah...it's complicated," Ranma rubbed the back of his head, "There's this guy named Otono who's behind the guy who tried to shoot Nabiki, and he head something called the Amakuza group..."

"Amakuza?" Ukyo was suddenly as sharp and disturbed as if her husband had just slapped her.

"Yeah," Nabiki noticed the expression in the Okonomiyaki chef's eyes and said, "Something to do with the Shimubari rebellion of a few centuries back. Know anything about it, Ucchan?"

"Outside of the history books and the legends?" Ukyo replied with a deceptively casual shrug, only to slump her shoulders when she was that even Perfume was not buying her pretence of ignorance, "Look...you guys already know that my clan is part of the Iga province Ninja society, and that my ancestors were Okonomiyaki chefs in name because it provided a great cover for the espionage that they did on behalf of the Shogun? Well...there's a legend in my clan that's been passed down through the Kuonji line concerning our part in the Shimubara rebellion. At the time we were lead by the legendary Samurai warrior known to history as Yagyu Jubei..."

"Yagyu Jubei?" Ranma shot a glance towards Nabiki, "Same name as the guy who tried to kill you?"

"Obviously a descendant of his," Nabiki frowned, "Only...why take it out on me? From what I know of the Tendo and Saotome lines, we're actually distantly related to..." she paused and glanced towards Ranma, "Clan Yagyu."

"More like a direct linear descendant," Cologne's withered voice suddenly disturbed their gathering, causing heads to turn her way as she leaned heavily on her staff with what looked like genuine fatigue in her tone and expression.

"Great-grandmother?" Shampoo gasped.

"Grandmother?" Perfume said, staring past the seemingly "aged" woman towards her younger-seeming companion, who was just coming up from the porch steps leading to the inner garden.

"Jubei was your great-great-great-great-great-great...many times removed forerunner," Siren said with a dismissive smile, obviously tiring of too many 'greats' in one long sentence, "He personally led a raid that destroyed the inner core of the defenses at Shimubara Castle and slew Amakuza Shiro in pitched battle when the so-called 'Messiah of the East' manifested his true colors. No doubt his descendant bears an ancestral grudge with the both of you over that quaint incident and wants to 'even the score' by taking you out before you can prove as troublesome to him as was your ancestor."

"You've gotta be kidding me," Ranma said despite feeling intuitively the truth of his mentor's statement.

"Ain't three hundred years an awfully long time to carry a chip on the shoulder about that?" Ukyo had to wonder.

"That shows that you are still only Amazon by adoption, Daughter-in-law," Cologne replied, "To a true Amazon a grudge of a thousand years duration is recent history in the memory of their clan elders."

"I'm afraid she's right, Airen," Perfume confirmed for the benefit of her primary wife, "My cousin Perm still won't talk to her cousin Hairnet on account of something an ancestor said to another ancestor, and nobody can even remember what the insult was in the first place. They just know that it's kept their two clans divided for the past twelve generations."

"That's just swell," Nabiki scowled, "So we're facing a lunatic with a grudge who's also got some kind of messianic complex that dates back to the time of the Tokugawa. And for some weird reason he thinks I'm destined to oppose him, which is funny because I'd never even heard of him before today, but now that I have you can bet that I'm going to take him down six ways from Sunday."

Shampoo looked seriously up at her primary wife and said, "Bad people many times have ways of making enemies where none were before, Airen. All comes from thinking that everybody else as sneaky and vengeful as they are. Can no see that living and let living is better way to plot out vengeance."

"The guilty flee where none pursueth," Siren quipped, "And the innocent suffer the worst of all because those without innocence can never believe in the concept of virtue."

"And what would you know about innocence?" Cologne asked in an off-handed manner.

"I was once, long ago," Siren smiled, "But I am quite delighted to state for the record that I no longer keep company with the whole notion of what Innocence is supposedly about. In some parts of the world being innocent is the worst crime imaginable, and judging by the punishment that is inflicted upon the innocent by the guilty, I would say that the punishment can generally be quite fatal."

"So where does that leave us?" Ranma asked, "Those guys seemed to think we were somehow fated to take down this Otono guy..."

"What guys, Ranchan?" Ukyo asked.

"Never mind about that now," Nabiki urged, "Right now I'm tired, I missed supper and I could use a good meal, a bath and a nap in that order, so any further explanations we will share will have to wait until Ranchan and me are well-fed and rested."

"Is all, Airen?" Shampoo asked fetchingly, "Shampoo make too-too nice meal for Airen, then see you bathed and put to bed so you can tell Shampoo and co-Airen all about where you go after you beat up bad man who try hurt Airen."

"Um..." Nabiki eyed her purple-haired wife nervously, "You don't mind? I mean...earlier...you're not still mad with me about it...are you, Sham-chan?"

"What you talking about, Airen?" Shampoo asked earnestly, "Shampoo is just glad have Airen back. Now no more silly talk. Shampoo cook, you eat, then you and Ranma make nice and tell story."

"Ah...right," Nabiki swallowed, though in truth she seemed more relieved than alarmed at the accommodating manner of her pregnant bride, which certainly was much to be desired over the way Shampoo was acting earlier in the day with the "Murder by a Thousand Kindesses" vendetta in effect, which would have meant that eating anything that the Amazon cooked would be an exercise in masochism, to say nothing of the probable condition of the bedsheets.

Ranma hesitated as he watched Shampoo escort Nabiki into the kitchen then turned to Siren and said, "I think my elementals are exhausted. They haven't said a word to me in more than an hour..."

"And you find this troubling?" Siren asked wryly, then added, "I wouldn't worry about it, Student. No doubt they're tired from assisting you in your struggles against my grand-uncle and need to regenerate their own reserves so that they can function adequately when we resume your training on the marrow."

"Ah...excuse me?" Ranma blinked, then found the blonde Archemage somehow managing to lean closely before him with her ample bosom positioned carefully tocatch the eye with maximum effect upon the male libido.

"I mean, Apprentice, that you have done something enormously foolish in challenging my uncle Bartev in pitched battle," the Amazon "elder" cooed appropriately, ,manifesting a certain smolder that set his co-wives to alarm status, "And the only way you are going to survive that is if we work to bring you fully up to speed as a true and proper Wizard. Otherwise..." she let the point drag on as if to stress terrible things that were in the offing."

"Say what?" Perfume blurted in blue-eyed horror.

"Aiyaa!" Shampoo turned around with an appropriately horrified expression.

"Who the heck is this 'Uncle Bartev' of yours, Sugar?" Ukyo asked, managing to keep her mind clearly focused upon the perceived threat of an amorous blonde making moves upon her husband, "If he's your uncle than he's gotta beat least as old as Happosai."

"Actually he is around twelve thousand years old and has the distinction of having lived through every day of that rather eventful existence," Cologne turned a look of astonishment towards Ranma, "Son-in-law...tell me that you did not challenge the undefeatable Blackguard to a fight? If so...then...Shampoo, we must work to find you a new husband as you care certain to lose this one very shortly."

"Great-grandmother?" Shampoo and Perfume chorused.

"Hold it!" Nabiki called back, "Nobody's going anywhere, and for your information the challenge was to the both of us, and we had to accept it or the guy was threatening to destroy this entire world just to settle a grudge with some old guy."

"Old One," Siren corrected, "And your bravado-while admirable-is quite misplaced here. Udan Robar Bartev the Blackguard is known to our people as 'He Who Must Never Be Challenged,' for to face him in battle is to risk certain destruction. He is also known to many in the Archmage Society as 'The Silent Enigma' because he is as mysterious and elusive as the forest night yet more dangerous than any God above or below the Earth and Heaven. He is a living, breathing mountain of inexhaustible power, and you cannot regard him the way you do any ordinary opponent as he is as relentless as time and as inevitable as death herself...and if you do not improve to a level where he at least can respect you then you will not live to see another sunrise. Compared with him all other potential enemies are as nothing, for he is the Hand of Doom, the Left Hand of God Herself, and the final arbiter of physical existence. So tell me again that this doesn't have you a little bit worried, Daughter-in-law, since both of your Amazon wives look ready enough to lock the both of you in a cellar for safe guarding."

"So...who are the Old Ones?" Ukyo asked with a swallow, attempting to collect her wits as what she had just heard delivered sounded like a death sentence upon at least two of her beloved marriage partners, one being the father of her unborn son and the other being her best friend and favorite sparring partner.

"We do not speak of them, Airen," Perfume replied in a voice so hushed with fear that it was chilling to those who knew her, "They exist beyond space and time, outside of anything we know of or with which we are familiar."

"Even Elders justly fear any involvement with the Corruptors from Beyond the Abyss," Cologne said, "And it is expressly forbidden for any Amazon, even Siren the Archmage, to summon or invoke their presence."

"One commandment I am most happy to comply with," Siren affirmed with absolute conviction, "They are parasites who feed upon all life, and even the Demons and Devils of our world prefer to avoid them as they corrode everything that they touch and reduce the most complex of systems into incoherent chaos. They are evil beyond the standard definition, alien in every sense and malevolent beyond all reason, and they desire nothing less than the unmaking of the entire cosmos with the dissolution of all the worlds of Light that oppose their ultimate darkness. In other words they are not to be trifled with, and only someone like the Daokan would dare to stand against one unflinching...and that is what you face if you go to meet this challenge against my Uncle. Not that you can avoid him, naturally, since Uncle Udan can travel anywhere that you go and find you if you tried to flee, and he is nothing if not terrible in wrecking his will against those who most displease him."

Ukyo turned to Ranma and said, "And you challenged a guy like that? What were you thinking, Ranchan?"

"Nothing!" Ranma responded, "I just...he said he'd do this on his own, stand against this Ariman demon, and that a fight between them would wind up destroying our universe, so..."

"It seemed like the only logical thing to do at the time," Nabiki finished for her husband, "If Ranchan and I hadn't gone through with it...it would have meant the end of everything, including you guys...and neither of us could stand to let that happen."

"Well then," Siren remarked, "I guess that means that you had better not lose when you go to face my uncle. Naturally enough I will do my best to prepare you, Apprentice, but I'm not promising miracles here. The only thing that works in our favor is that my grandfather seems to think you might stand a sporting chance under my tutorage...and that Nabiki here might well learn something useful from her own new Sensei, this coach Trudy 'Wells' from America, in whom I sense a potent spirit that may well be able to improve your warrior status."

"You think so?" Nabiki asked, "Because frankly I don't see how it's to my advantage to study under a self-admitted Assassin who masquerades as an undercover police woman."

"I confess to having doubts of my own upon that subject," Cologne said with sober regard of her own favorite student, "This stranger you say practices an art that rivals the best techniques of the Amazons...from the way she dealt with that rogue godson of Happosai's named Taro..."

"Ah yes," Siren mused, "He's still at large is he not? Something else to be taken into consideration, such as his obvious vendetta against your old boyfriend..."

"He was NOT my boyfriend," Cologne bridled.

"Whatever you say, Kho-chan," the Archmage said airily before turning back to Nabiki and adding, "Be on your guard but do not refuse the aid this Trudy offers. I have a very good sense about these things, and the skills that she obviously possesses...by the way. What did she call the system that she practices?"

"Shaloh-Ahl," Nabiki answered, only to turn as she heard Cologne gasp and reflexively asked, "Old woman?"

"It...cannot be!" Cologne said with a wide-eyed expression.

"Great-grandmother?" Perfume asked.

Cologne turned to her and said, "Do you not recall an incident that occurred three years back, before either you or Shampoo met your present Airen, when a stranger from afar came among us seeking a favor from the Elders?"

"Aiyaa," Shampoo said, "This one remembers, Great-Grandmother. Is stranger Elders give special status to, make honorary Tribeswoman, forbid Amaons from challenge her. Is same gold-haired warrior you mention?"

"I should have realized at once the connection," Cologne turned back to Nabiki and said, "Under no circumstances are you to formally engage this woman in any sort of challenge-match, Daughter-in-Law. If train under her you must, then do so with the same provision that you use during training, and by all means avoid losing to her if it can possibly be helped."

"Why?" Nabiki asked, "Forgive me for saying this, Granny, but...you almost sound like you were afraid of her or something?"

"Only a fool does not fear death or one of her Handmaidens, Child," Cologne answered, "And this foreigner is-make no mistake about it-a Handmaiden of Death, one of the specially chosen instruments of the Dark Lady's dominion who practices an art that balances life and death together in a very precise arrangement."

"A Death Maiden," Siren said with obvious fascination, "It's been a while since I've encountered one of those. And you're right...they're not to be trifled with. Perhaps they're not as formidable as one of the Daokan, but if this Trudy is what I think she is...they you could well be facing a force every bit as much to be reckoned with as my Uncle Daokan, if only by a different degree of mortal danger."

"Swell," Nabiki growled, "Maybe I should just bow out and skip the training altogether."

"I would not recommend that approach, Child," Cologne cautioned, "Obviously she has chosen you to be her student, and that means she can sense that you have a special destiny that she can shape in accordance with the will of the Power that she serves. As the only living practitioner of the Shaloh-Alh system of which we are aware she represents a force that even the Amazons are compelled to respect, and if we can gain by even a mere fraction of her knowledge..."

"Only one?" Ranma asked, "You're sure about that? I mean...she must've had a teacher, right?"

"Yes, but most probably not one now among the living," Siren cautioned, "Thou you are right to suggest that it would be a thing to worry about should another practitioner also be found...and the heavens help anyone who trifles with anyone who has mastered that sort of unearthly training..."

"You sure this is the right address, Natsumi-chan?" Miyuki asked.

"It's the one Frank-sama gave us when he said we were to pick up another foreigner for delivery at a specific address," Natsumi assured her partner, "I just hope this gaijin doesn't prove to be as much of a handful as the group we hung around with last evening."

"Oh, I don't know about that," Miyuki grinned impishly while deliberately bumping hips with her lover, "After all, you can hardly claim it was a wasted evening for the both of us."

"Hey, I never said that it was, Miyu-chan," Natsumi grinned back, "I just mean that we spent the whole day and night at their place, and half of it was in bed getting our brains screwed out by that Astarte and her crew."

"Well, yes, but they were awfully nice about it," Miyuki noted, "And since we were getting paid anyway for our troubles..."

"Yeah, I know," Natsumi shrugged as she paused with a hand raised at the door to the apartment, "It's just...getting paid for something I'd do anyway makes me feel like a hooker."

"I'll buy you one later if you like, Natsumi-chan," Miyuki teased, "Preferably one who gives backrubs. On second thought, I'd prefer to do that with you myself when this assignment is over."

"Hah, you're on!" Natsumi chuckled, only to jump back in alarm as something heavy struck the door from the other side and knocked it partially off of its hinges. The two off-duty policewomen instantly drew their firearms from concealment and held them up at the ready as more sounds of a struggle were heard from inside, and then as one they lurched forward as Natsumi kicked out and finished the job of removing the only obstruction to their path as they plunged forward into the fray that they sensed was within the waiting apartment.

"ALL RIGHT, FREEZE-!" Natsumi started to say as she and Miyuji instinctively leveled their guns at the one figure who remained standing in the chamber, only to catch sight as the woman turned in reaction to their statement, and the look within her eyes made them hesitate for a slight fraction of a second, which proved more than sufficient to be potentially quite fatal.

The next thing that they knew their backs were being slammed up against one of the walls with their guns taken away with them with the ease an adult might use removing a toy handgun from a pair of naughty children. Without warning they found their feet dangling above the floor with a crushing weight at both of their throats as the angry gaijin snarled towards them a single question.

"WHERE IS SHE...WHERE IS TRUDY?"

"Gag-beg pardon?" Miyuki asked, astonished to discover that the woman holding them at bay was not much larger than themselves, though her strength was truly terrifying to experience directly.

"Who...?" Natsumi gasped, her plight second only to her immediate concerns about her partner as she sought to pry the hand away from her own throat, only to discover that it had the resilience of steel despite feeling like ordinary flesh and bone to the touch.

All at once the pressure was gone and the woman stepped away, allowing the feet of the two police women to touch down once again, and for the next few seconds all that the pair could do was to gasp for breath and feel to make certain that their necks had not been broken.

"I'm asking you nicely this time," the brown-haired American said in flawless Japanese that lacked any trace of a western accent, "Where is my partner, Trudy? It's the same reasonable question that I asked these guys, and look what happened?"

That statement gave the policewomen pause, and without further prompting Natsumi and Miyuki glanced around and took notice of the half-dozen male bodies littering the room at various angles. Tough looking heavyset men in their prime, each one laid out as easily as if they had gone one-on-one with a cyclone, and indeed the woman before them did indeed manifest the appearance of a human-sized cyclone for all that she stood less than five and a half feet tall and had a slender build that would not incline one to believe that she broke fifty kilograms at the max. She had an ample bust beneath the shirt that she was wearing, and a pair of slacks that fitted her petite form rather nicely, but the hardness in her stance and expression said volumes about the sort of trouble that she was capable of manifesting, and for a certainty she was no one to take for granted as every inch of her seemed compact and wiry, a bundle of contained nervous energy just waiting to explode at any minute.

She also had a remarkably tan complexion as though well accustomed to sunbathing, not truly European-looking but more like a resident of an equatorial climate, for all that she had vividly blue eyes and manifested a kind of no-nonsense manner that belied her sultry appearance. Her wiry brown hair curled like a lion's mane around a heart-shaped face and would have inclined one to think of her more as a lover than a fighter...but obviously she was both since her single-minded question had the tinge of jealousy to it that Natsumi well recognized from the few times that she had ever suspected her partner and lover of "cheating" behind her back with a certain officer of the law named Kenny.

Knowing better than to mince words with this girl (who appearances suggested was in her early twenties, though something about her spoke of a much older condition), Miyuki straightened up and said, "We don't know anything about anyone named Trudy. We're here because we were instructed to make a pick-up."

"Yeah," Natsumi affirmed, "Our chief told us to meet with some foreigner at a safe house where we could play escort...and I guess you must be her...which makes these guys..." she glanced down at the unconscious bodies.

"Fellow officers of the law, plainclothed detectives," Miyuki finished for her partner, feeling her wariness redouble as she saw no trace of denial in the foreign woman's expression.

"That's what they called themselves," Trudy replied, "But they were becoming tiresome and annoying, and it was obvious that they were keeping me away from my objective."

"Which is?" Natsumi asked.

The anger in the American woman's eyes flared to murderous temperatures as she growled out the words, "Hunting down my wayward partner and paying her back for leaving me standing at the airport."

Both policewoman blinked and then Miyuki asked, "Your...partner?"

"Yeah," the woman before then said, touching her shirt and then pausing as if only then just remembering, then she briefly looked consternated over something before turning to the two Japanese police women and saying, "Just a minute..." and then she turned and walked over to one of the fallen bodies, taking a moment to rifle through his jacket before straightening up again and calmly walking back to join them.

In that brief time Miyuki and Natsumi had given brief attention towards locating their own weapons, but to their considerable dismay they found them lodged on opposite sides of the room, both guns protruding by the handles from different sections of wall as if thrown there like knives at a dart board. It would take too long to cross the room and retrieve them, which made offering this dangerous woman even a token of resistance completely beyond the question.

"Here," the stranger flashed a passport before their eyes, and then another leather wallet containing a police badge, "That guy was holding these for me...or that's what he liked to call it. I let him think that just to play along with the gag, but as you can see I'm a Cop like you guys, Detective First Class Carla Daniels, no relation to the guy now in the White House."

"You're a Cop?" Natsumi asked incredulously, staring at the badge and the photo-ID on both the wallet and the passport.

"How did you know that we're...?"

"Oh come on," Carla flipped her two critical identification items and replaced them in a hidden pocket inside her shirt between her substantial bosoms, "I can smell it around you like the traces of sex that you've been having on the sly. You think I'd be any kind of detective if I couldn't tell when I'm in the company of a sister of the Law? Of course you're both the genuine articles, while these guys stink to high heaven of Special Forces."

"Special...forces?" Natsumi repeated.

"Yeah," Trudy said with disgust, "Elite unit with extra-legal authority to deal with problem cases like me, trained in Judo, Jui-Jitsu, Karate, Ninjuitsu, Kendo, Kempo, Akaido, the works..." she shook her head disgustedly, "What their Sensei must have been thinking..."

Miyuki gave a disquieted look towards the foreigner and asked, "And you are...?"

"That's none of your business, Lieutenant, and I mean that," Trudy replied, only to stiffen and look past them with a hardened expression in her eyes that was focused at a spot some meters behind the two intimidated police women.

"She is a Master of Shaloh-Ahl," a strangely masculine voice replied, "Zee only other known practitioner of that deadly art in all zee world, Mes Amis, and as such a force to be reckoned with, though I can see that zee chief did not exaggerate about your lacking control over your temper."

"Who?" Natsumi asked, only to gasp as she caught sight of the stranger.

"Who are you?" Miyuki asked with equal parts of intrigue and apprehension.

"I?" the tall fellow in the outlandish pink colored trench coat with matching fedora before them asked with a disarming smile and infectiously easygoing manner, pulling out his own wallet and flashing a badge with a familiar logo, "Inspector Morisato of Interpol, at your pleasure, Mademoiselles. Who else did you think would be here to serve as your back up."

"Morisato," the strange woman frowned, "I might've guessed someone would have detailed you as my escort."

"Now then," the fellow whose Japanese appearance was belied by his heavily French accent, "Who else would you be expecting Detective Daniels of zee shadowy organization known as Delphi? Chief Genji has great concerns that you may disrupt operations that are currently ongoing here within Tokyo in pursuit of a dangerous criminal underground unit that has of late become of some concern to zee International Police Force?"

"I wouldn't know anything about it," Carla replied, "I'm just here to find Trudy."

"Ah yes, zee formidable Inspector Trudy Wells, known to some by her code-name of Legionnaire...such as your handle is zee General, a title that well suits you, non? For despite your comely appearance you contain within you zee memories of a formidable leader who commands great armies in zee future."

"That's got nothing to do with the subject at hand," Carla scowled, "I just want to find Trudy. Do you know where she is?"

The foppish Interpol detective sighed, "Alas I do not...though I am told that she has recently surfaced in zee Nerima province where she has taken on zee cover ID of an athletic instructor, even as her erstwhile partner...and your former paramour, if I may be so bold and am not too far mistaken...zee equally redoubtable Angelique d'Anjou..."

"Angel," Carla balled her fists, "Thanks for the tip, now be a nice French boy and butt out of my way..."

Inspector Morisato raised a hand that was sporting a lit cigarette and pointed it at Trudy, "Ah, but you go off half-cocked to face your lover in zee mistaken belief that she is engaged in something compromising to your relationship. In actuality she is there at Furinkan High School to serve as bodyguard and protector to zee students on behalf of zee formidable Doctor Streinberg, non? Your jealousy is misplaced as is your sense of priorities here."

"I'll show you priorities!" Carla snarled, surging forward, and for a moment she and the man in the pink trench coat closed ranks and exchanged a series of rapid fire blows that were too swift for the naked eye to perceive, though within a matter of instants the slighter woman lunged forward and landed a telling blow with a palm-strike to the chest that doubled the larger fellow over.

"Um...excuse me?" Miyuki asked.

"Hah, you escort me?" Carla scowled at the man now on his knees before her, "Don't make me laugh! If you weren't an Immortal that blow would have crushed the life out of you. Be glad that I don't take your head, but out of courtessy to a fellow officer of the..."

The gunshot caused the brown haired gaijin to whirl around, and like a blur her hand moved to snatch the bullet out of the air, but before she could send it hurtling back towards its source the fallen Morisato gasped, "Non...do not do this, Cherie...she was not aiming to hit you..."

"That's right," Miyuki snarled, holding the pistol in both hands that she had taken off one of the unconscious bodies, "But I will shoot if Natsumi-chan and me don't get some immediate answers!"

"Hmph," Carla sniffed, and then her hand blurred again and the gun was struck out of the hands of the offending police woman, who stared in disbelief at how easily she had been disarmed by her own bullet.

"You have guts, I'll give you that," Carla said, "But nobody draws on me and gets away with it, Nobody. So rather than upset your little girlfriend here why don't we all make nice and you carry out your assignment by escorting me to this Furinkan." She paused and glanced down at the fallen Morisato, "You coming?"

"Me oui?" the Franco-Japanese Interpol detective asked with a questioning look in the eye that was visible from beneath his hat.

"You said that Trudy's involved in something that's got your boss worried," Carla replied, "I'm not quite so much of an obsessive compulsive sort that I can afford to miss a little detail like that, so why not come along and brief me on the lowdown of the troubles my wayward partner has gotten herself into this time? At the very least you'll be fulfilling your own objective of keeping an eye on me and finding out in advance if I'm heading into trouble."

"Trouble is your partner's middle name, non?" Morisato smiled as she slowly got back to his feet and adjusted his hat to a rakish angle, "And you are well suited for one another, so...in taking you to zee scene of a recent crime I am but insuring that zee troubles with escalate, Non?"

"So, when did you ever shy away from trouble?" Carla sniffed, "And besides, it would give you a good excuse to hang around with and bother my Ex so she doesn't put any wayward moves on either me or my partner."

"Ah...you wound me, Cherie," the tall man smiled, then to the astonished pair of native policewomen he said, "Fetch your weapons and we shall leave on zee moment, for zee night is nearly over and there are not many hours left until morning."

Natsumi looked to her partner, who shrugged back, having rubbed her hands to restore full circulation, "I guess there's no point in delaying, and it gives us a good excuse to look up our old friends, the Saotomes."

"If you're game for it than so am I, Miyu-chan," Natsumi shrugged, but when they crossed the room to attempt to remove their imbedded guns from the wall they discovered that this was not a task that easily accomplished. For one thing their weapons were sunk deep into the wooden frame behind the plaster board covering, and for another thing they seemed almost welded to the spot as though the metal had been fused with the wood from the force with which they had been hurtled.

"Oh, for Briga's sake, let me do it," Carla sniffed, and walked over to assist her nominal escort, effortlessly prying both guns from their places in the wall and then returning them to their proper owners with a caution, "Just be careful where you point these or the next time I'll bury them someplace uncomfortable, you got me?"

Again a worried look crossed the eyes of the two Japanese detectives, but with no other alternative but to play along before them they were resolved to fulfill their objective of the evening, knowing full well that they were importing yet more trouble into the lives of their friends from Nerima. But then again, to judge by the formidable martial arts skills that this Carla displayed, who else but Nabiki would know how to deal with this unorthodox situation?

It is not often that such high-minded women make a mistake of such proportion, but one could hardly fault their loyalty to a proven friend, even if they did not truly suspect the situation that awaited their friends in Nerima, or what dire crisis they were headed into as they made the fateful journey from Tokyo proper to the oft-benighted province known simply as Nerima...

Continued.

Comments/Criticisms/Complaints of a Divine Order: shadowmane

Or: shadowmane9849

The Morning After finally arrives (some thirty episodes later) with each of our heroes preparing to train for the challenge that awaits them...but now will Nabiki and Ranma stand up before the scrutiny of their new Senseis, and will their skills prove sufficient to the challenge as they await a day of reckoning in, "Hexes and Uh-Ohs!" or, "Taking Wives In Vain!" Be there!

X

/pre 


	90. Chapter 90

preDnabiki179

Nabiki 1/2

"A Very Scary Thought"

by Jim Robert Bader

(Inspired by the works of Rumiko Takahashi Others,  
with concepts and characters created by fellow fanfic writers Wade Tritschler, DB Sommers, Nicole Manders, Andrew Greaves, Bill Guiroff and countless others, including "Buffy"  
creator Joss Whedon; with special thanks to my good pal Shiva for his editing and handling of this series.)

(Certain other characters and concepts are of my own innovation, including my interpretation of the Monster of Mary Shelly's novel, the Furies, Trudy, Takaharis Angelique d'Anjou, Anri and the Daokan, Thelendra the Dream Weaver and various other guest stars appearing in this portion of the Nabiki 1/2 series...)

Chapter Sixty-Seven

Episode One-Hundred-Seventy-Nine.

Taking Wives

Ryonami was feeling more than a bit frustrated as she stood at the door of the Gosunkuji residence, waiting for her nominal "boyfriend" to answer her ringing as she had only been patiently waiting for a response for the past several minutes. And where was he? It was not like him to be this non-responsive whenever she came a-calling, and he knew damn well that they had important business to work out on behalf of their mutual Sempai, Nabiki.

It was not that she was concerned that he might be doing anything untoward or unimportant. In the two years time that they had been working together she had felt that she had established a certain rapport with the boy, a quasi-understanding that allowed her to believe that he was more trustworthy than most young men his age, even given his peculiar quirks and shortcomings, which were many. She felt closer to him than any other of her classmates if for no other reason but that he did not come across as either intimidating or obnoxious but rather had a kind of sad-sack charm that pulled at her maternal heart strings. To read more into their relationship than that would be a perilous intrusion, but Ryonami was by now accustomed to the rumors and insinuations directed both her way and to Gosunkuji and had her mental armor fixed in place to ward of any hint of possible scandal as might be implied in any other such boy-girl association.

Besides, it was not as if Hikaru-san would try anything perverted with her...even if she had wanted him to, and that latter thought was no one else's business!

So when the door to the house finally opened she was ready with a tart remark about his keeping her waiting on his front veranda, only the words died on her lips as she caught sight of her alleged "boyfriend" and found herself staring stupidly with her mouth hanging open and her eyes staring forward with a look of confused consternation.

For one thing, the boy who normally was mistaken (even by Zombies) as "one of their own" was wearing some odd form of head gear and velvet cloth that looked as though it had been torn down from a curtain and rudely made to resemble a robe by somebody to whom a needle and threat were considered dangerous objects. For another thing he looked rather pale...which for him was saying a lot, and his eyes had that rheumy look of someone who had been awake all evening without more than a nod of sleep that came only when one was reading in bad light, and almost cross-eyed.

"Ryo-chan?" Gosunkuji asked, acting as if he were both surprised and vexed to see her at his front door, "What are you doing here? I thought classes had been canceled..."

Ryonami's mouth snapped shut and she recovered enough of her wits to ask, "Where the heck have you been all night, Gos-chan? Sempai wants us to research a special project, and she was counting on the both of us to get some information that she needs..."

"Ah...I'm a little busy at the moment," Gosunkuji said, almost apologetic, "Could this wait until later? I've got something very important that I need to get back to."

If she had thought for one tiny instant that he was even capable of lying to her, or of obtaining the affections of any other girl in their class, then she would have been immediately suspicious and have accused him of doing something naughty behind her back. As it was she was curious in a different way and said, "What busy? What are you working on? Is there another project that you were assigned that I don't know anything about..."

Gosunkuji seemed to wage a mental struggle behind his eyes then looked up at the girl whom he "seriously liked" and said, "It's gone."

"Huh?" Ryonami asked, "What is?"

"The creature in the jar," Gosunkuji replied, "The one that Sempai left with me, the one that they dug out of Ryoga-kun, the evil Bogart fairy."

Ryonami suddenly recalled the disgusting little creature with the too-sharp teeth and the beady little eyes that gazed malevolently out from its tiny little head and said, "Oh...that creature. Well...how did it get loose?"

"That's just it," Gosunkuji said, "I don't know...but I think maybe I do know who to talk to in order to get some answers."

"Who?" Ryonami asked.

"Ms. Takaharis-Sensei," Gosunkuji replied, "Our homeroom teacher."

Ryonami almost laughed out loud at the absurdity of that statement...but instead found herself staring hard at the boy before asking, "Why would she know anything about evil spirits?"

"Because she's one of them," Gosunkuji said, then hastily amended, "I mean...a spirit, but maybe not a bad one. I didn't have that feeling about her, and the sense I got was that she was something...other than malevolent. Besides, Nurse d'Anjou seems to like her."

Ryonami had an all-too-vivid recollection of the "too-perfect" blonde gaijin who was now their school nurse and the disturbing effect that she had upon just about everybody with whom she had even a passing casual encounter. Ryonami had felt it too, the strangely erotically charged sense of charisma and attraction that the biker woman manifested and the way it left both the boys and the girls of their school panting and drooling with lust unrequited. The fact that this Angelique seemed to live up to her name in every other important sense made the stupefying blonde seem almost trustworthy...but Ryonami's time with her "Sempai" had cautioned her not to trust to mere appearances alone, for that which appeared sound on the surface often turned out to be otherwise on closer cross examination.

And besides, seeing Nurse Angelique go from "Biker" mode to a stunning figure in glistening silver armor made her seem more like a force of nature rather than a normal flesh-and-blood person, and the only one who seemed immune to the effect that she reacted was Nabiki herself, for reasons other than strength of character and a loyalty to her co-mates. In fact Nabiki seemed to be the only one who did not openly notice the power that this Angelique manifested, which was curious indeed given that Nabiki herself often manifested the same curious attraction in her male guise as Kaneda.

Sensei Takaharis, on the other hand, had a stranger feeling about her, somewhat more alien for foreboding, as if there were a wicked streak that she kept hidden behind the mask of earthly virtue. She had demonstrated a level of power quite surprising when she defended their class against the lunatic named David, and Ryonami would have sworn for a fraction of a second that the teacher let her mask fall down to momentarily reveal another side of her...one infinitely more frightening than any religious fanatic waving a fancy sword around (albeit one as large as a yugo).

So rather than laugh outright at this suggestion she examined Gosunkuji carefully and asked, "If you think something's wrong about her why don't you bring this up with Sempai?"

"I...wasn't really sure until now," Gosunkuji replied, "I didn't want anyone to think that I was crazy."

"Oh no," Ryonami said sarcastically, eyeing the way Gosunkuji was dressed, "Why would anybody think that?"

"Look, I wish I had more time to explain this to you," Gosunkuji said with urgency, "But I'm in the middle of something very important, so if you want to meet up with me later..."

"Oh no," Ryonami said, blocking his attempt to shut the door on her with a hand sternly placed to keep it open, "Nothing doing. You're not getting rid of me that easy, Gos-chan. If you're doing something relating to research for the sake of our Sempai then you're including me in the middle of it, you got that?"

"But..." Gosunkuji gave an owl-eyed look of astonishment at the determination that he read in the brown-haired girl's expression, so rather than put up a fight he just sighed and said, "All right...but just remember, you asked to be included."

He stepped back as Ryonami very determinately advanced in through the door then made a point of removing her shoes as a testament of her desire to remain. Gosunkuji closed the door behind her and sighed, then looked at her with an almost grateful expression on his otherwise pallid features.

"I guess having you here won't be so bad after all," he said.

"Gee, thanks," Ryonami sniffed.

The boy put up his hands and waved them frantically, "I didn't mean it like that, Ryo-chan! I just meant...that maybe you could help me in my research. I mean...the work that I'm doing is very important and involves the ritual summoning of an otherworldly spirit..."

"W-What?" Ryonami blinked, "Slow down...what do you mean ritual summoning? What the heck are you babbling about, Gos-chan?"

All at once the boy gripped Ryonami by one sleeve and said, "No time, let me show you instead, and once you understand how important it is that I do this ritual then I'm sure you'll grasp why it's critical to assisting our Sempai."

"Nani?" Ryonami gasped as she found herself being led along by the scrawny boy, whose grip was unusually firm considering that he normally lacked the strength to so much as even budge her. With a dubious expression she followed him as he led her towards his bedroom, briefly wondering if he really was intending something kinky with her, and dismissing the idea at once...which in turn caused a curious sense of vexation and irritation as she found herself wondering why the heck she did not expect him to try something with her in the privacy of his own living quarters.

What she discovered upon entering the room, however, chased away all thoughts over why a boy would want to get her alone without contemplating something naughty and perverted. To her surprise all of the furniture had been pushed aside to clear a space in the very center, the desks, tables and computer components-Gosunkuji's odd collection of weird artifacts and reliquies included-along with his Manga collection (both the legitimate stuff and the "perverted" comics that he hid beneath and thought Ryonami did not know anything about), all to make room for a chalk-drawn magical circle with various runes and quasi-religious symbols drawn in place about the very center. Considering that the floor was as dark and as polished as mahogany the white chalk lines stood out and almost seemed to glow with life, casting off a weird phosphorescent glow that swam before her eyes, as though the lettering was alive and the unblinking eye were actually looking in her direction.

"What the heck is this?" she found herself asking, intrigued despite her immediate apprehension of the thing before them.

"An Ogduoad Magical Summoning Circle," Gosunkuji replied, "I copied it down from this leather-bound book that I found in the school library," he pointed to the open book that lay upon the floor next to the chalk-drawn circle.

Ryonami's eyes turned towards the object in question, and immediately recoiled in disbelief. "Where...where did you find that in our school library?"

"In one of the closets in the basement underneath the building," Gosunkuji replied, then squinted a bit with constipation...or was it contemplation of the matter in question, "Funny thing was how difficult they made it for somebody to find that particular shelf in the library. I had to go through several dangerous traps, pit-falls and snares and circumvent an alligator-lined pit in order just to reach the adjoining chamber..."

"They keep alligators in the basement?" Ryonami blanched, though-considering everything that she knew about their school-she did not find the concept all that surprising.

"Well...something was down there making an awful lot of fuss," Gosunkuji scratched behind his ears in reflection, "It had a lot of mouths and it was writhing and making all these gibbering noises, so I just supposed that they were alligators, but since I didn't stick around to see for certain..."

"Right," Ryonami gulped, then blinked, "Wait a minute...you say you went through all this stuff going through a closet?"

"Well...at the time I thought it was a closet," Gosunkuji shrugged, "Just finding the thing meant having to trigger the hidden lever that opened the door to it, and there weren't a lot of cleaning supplies stored down there so...I guess it could have been intended for other purposes."

"Right," Ryonami swallowed, "Go on. What happened when you got to the place where this...book was located?"

"Well," Gosunkuji replied, "I had to pick a few locks just to remove the thing from the reading table that they had it chained down to..."

"Reading table?" Ryonami asked in a tiny, mousy voice, wondering if it were her imagination or did it actually seem as if that book was looking right at her...and licking its chops...or whatever you could call those pages?

"Hmmm...stone pillar, I guess," Gosunkuji amended, "I thought it was a reading table, and it had this weird light pouring down from above in the darkened chamber in which I found it...and this voice asking me in this really deep voice, 'WHO DARES TO DISTURB MY REST?' Or something of that nature. The rest of it was in Aramaic, so I really couldn't follow what they were saying..."

"Aramaiac?" Ryonami whispered, absolutely convinced now that the book was ogling her, and that it definitely was hungry.

"Well...that's what it sounded like," Gosunkuji nervously chuckled, "Either that or Enochian, the language of the Angels, but who uses that tongue in this day and age? I really couldn't tell without a translator, and I wasn't about to stick around to ask too many questions since I was afraid that I might have triggered an alarm bell or something."

"So...you took it?" Ryonami gasped.

"I had to if I wanted to complete the research that I was doing for Sempai," Gosunkuji replied, "You know how she gets when it comes to meeting deadlines."

"Right," Ryonami said as she slowly started to back away from the awful thing that she was half afraid would be stalking her in her nightmares, "Anything for Sempai..."

"Of course it's pretty hard reading the lettering since it was done mostly in dry red ink on paper that's so old and brown that if I tried to photocopy it the pages would turn out black, which I discovered when I tried to make photocopies," Gosunkuji continued, oblivious to the way Ryonami was distancing herself from his bed chamber, "I was afraid it might be a research catalogue...and the last guy who tried to read it must have been bored something awful considering all the graffiti that he carved in that stone table. I didn't want to just take the thing, so I asked the librarian if I could borrow and return it the next day and...well...you know what he said?"

"What?" Ryonami asked, not taking her eyes off the book in question as she was positively convinced now that it was starting to develop legs and move in her direction.

"Oook," Gosunkuji replied, "Not Ook Ook, as I'd expected him to say, just...Oook."

"Ah...well...he really doesn't say all that much, you know," Ryonami gulped, "What with his unfortunate...condition."

"Yes, but then the really odd thing was that he got up off his desk, leaped up to the rafters and then started swinging away as though his tail was on fire or something," Gosunkuji shook his head in disbelief, "That really isn't in character for him. You'd think he was afraid that I was going to make a complaint to our new school principal from the haste in which he vanished into the History and Mythology section."

"Maybe he didn't want you to have the book," Ryonami nervously suggested, trying to mentally calculate whether or not she could outrun the thing if she started heading to the door...or would it be blocking her way with its pages wide open?

"Well, he should have said that if he meant it that way," Gosunkuji shrugged, "But any rate I took it home and I set to work creating the summoning circle, and now that you're here you can help me to complete my research?"

"Um...how?" Ryonami asked, truly hoping that he would not give the answer that would confirm her worst suspicions.

"Well..." Gosunkuji asked nervously, "You're having your period this week, right?"

SLAP!

"What the heck kind of question is that to be asking me?" Ryonami barked, "Can't you see I'm terrified out of my gourds here, and you ask me something that perverted?"

Gosunkuji staggered back and felt his cheek where her hand had impacted against him, but he managed to catch his back up against the wall, which steadied him enough to say, "I'm sorry, Ryo-chan, I didn't mean it like that! Honest!"

"Well...what the heck did you mean?" Ryonami snarled, gratified to be bolstered by feminine outrage rather than stark raving terror.

Gosunkuji pushed himself back to an upright position, "Virgin blood is what's needed to complete the magic circle. I didn't know where to find any of it and...well...I was afraid to ask any of the students, but since you're here and you use a Tampon..."

He backed away as her hand rose up into the avenging position, only to lower again as he winced, then Ryonami frowned and said, "That's it? You just want to use my tampon?"

"Well...it would make a good writing instrument if held correctly...I think," Gosunkuji explained, "It definitely beats the alternative..."

"What alternative?" Ryonami frowned.

For a moment he struggled to find the words, then his cheeks blushed with more color than was usually in his face and he said, "Gah...well...don't get me wrong, I think you're very...um...pretty...and I wouldn't want you getting the wrong idea about what I meant or anything..."

"You think I'm pretty?" Ryonami's righteous outrage evaporated on the spot and she looked at the boy with a positively delighted expression.

"Ah...yeah...sure, I always have," Gosunkuji gulped, finding it harder to get the words out than it had been to evade all of those death traps, "You're the nicest girl in our school and I...ah...I...ah...er...well...think very highly of you and..."

"Gos-chan," Ryonami had little stars in her eyes as she gazed upon him with open admiration, "Go on...what do you want me to do for you?"

"Ah..." for a moment his mind stopped dead in its tracks, and unbidden images flashed before his eyes before he managed to firmly grasp his libido by the throat and stuff it back into the darkest recesses of his nerdy little mind, "Well...the spell...oh dear...the book is very specific about how to do things, and that's even allowing for the amount of work it took for me to translate the funny picture-symbols into words that could be intelligible in Japanese...well...it says that a Maiden is required to make the summoning work correctly, and...well...since you...ah...that is...have you dated anyone lately?"

"No," Ryonami said, but chocked off the words 'Not ever, not even with you' before they could escape from her treasonous lips. Never even been touched by Sempai was another thought that rose unbidden, but she stuffed that thought away into the curiosity chest hidden away within her mind lest it rise up to betray her darkest kept secrets.

"Well..." Gosunkuji turned away and gulped, "For you to help me out...that way...it would require that you would have to get...naked."

"Naked?" Ryonami blinked, wondering if she had just heard him right, that Gosunkuji had just asked her to take her clothes off?

He nodded without turning around, "Naked. It's pretty expressive about that point. And your body has to be painted with runes of protection so that no evil thing harms you and...well..." he found he could not go on, his embarrassment making it impossible to do so and remain fully conscious.

"Naked," Ryonami softly repeated. By rights she should have seen this as confirmation of her suspicions about the boy, but...spoken the way that he had she found herself blushing from head to toe, especially as she tried to imagine what it would be like to have him "write" on her naked skin with a paint brush...and suddenly a curiously warm and perverted feeling welled up from somewhere beneath her panties.

"I was...trying to think of a way around this," Gosunkuji gulped a thick lump in his throat down as he forced himself to continue, "But without the cooperation of...somebody like you...the spell may not work right, and even if I could find a willing substitute..."

"A substitute?" Ryonami blinked, "You mean...another girl?"

"Sure, you know," Gosunkuji shrugged, "Like Miyokami from Home Ec...not that she's ever failed to treat me like dirt...or something lower than that anyway, since she wiped her feet on me that one time in gym..."

"That slut?" Ryonami blurted before slapping her hands over her mouth and wondering where that had come from all of a sudden. She and Miyokami were friends...for the most part, but her treatment of Gosunkuji had always been a source of deep irritation.

"Look," Gosunkuji sighed, "I'll understand if you're offended, Ryo-chan, I really do, and I won't blame you at all if you decide not to help me, but...I'm determined to go through with this spell, and if it works then I'll have some important answers that Nabiki-sama needs, so if you want to leave then go right ahead, but I'm doing this anyway whether or not I can get anyone else's help on short notice."

"By yourself, Gos-chan?" Ryonami frowned, "Nothing doing."

"But..." his eyes went wide and he turned back to look at her with an openly astonished expression.

"Look, you just said that you needed my help, right?" Ryonami asked, swallowing both her pride and her deep reservations as she stared at him with pure feminine determination, "Well...we're a team, right? So...if you need to do this for Sempai...then why the heck wouldn't I try and help you?"

"Even...if it means..." Gosunkuji looked as if he were about to faint.

"Even that," Ryonami said through clenched teeth, her mind briefly forming hundreds of objections that she stalwartly ignored. She briefly thought about the idea of taking her clothes off before a boy she liked and exposing herself to him naked...and unmarried. She thought of how...peculiar it would make her feel to be that way before Gosunkuji...and then the memories of the book (still in the room, still watching her and still obviously quite hungry) flashed by and made her skin crawl with revulsion.

But then she thought of Miyokami, or of any other female taking her place and doing this for her Gos-chan, and that firmed up her resolution. No way was she leaving him alone in the same room with that book, and no way was she letting him do something that was potentially dangerous without her on hand to bail out his bacon before it got deep-fried. This was her task to perform and she was going to do it come hell or perversion.

And with that thought in mind she reached up and started to remove her school uniform, remembering that classes had been canceled for the day and she would hardly be needing it...especially if what she was about to do was as potentially unwise as she was thoroughly convinced that it would be...but for the sake of Hikaru Gosunkuji...

She started to get naked...

Angelique and Takaharis had their parting of the morning on a sad-but-reflective note. There was no school that day yet the Temuvarai had made a solemn promise the evening before to drop by the Kuno residence and pay her respects to her new apprentice, Kuno Tatewaki.

"You are certain that you do not wish to come along, Cheri?" the tall blonde asked as she nestled foreheads with her lover of the previous two evenings, conscious of the protruding horns that stood out from the sides of Takharis's own crimson forehead.

"I'm sure that you can do well enough without me being there," Takaharis replied, looking the stunning human in the eyes and finding her affections returned and redoubled, which once again was stirring her libido to rebellious levels, "Go on, have some fun, teach the boy whatever he needs to make him into the kind of warrior he aspires to be. Me, I had enough of clods waving their pointy things my way back when I left my old homeland. Not offence implied to present company, of course."

"And none taken," Angelique sighed with evident regret, "Too bad because I will miss your presence, Cheri. You have such fiery ardor it makes me swoon to leave our bed unadorned with your sweet presence. Be assured that you will be in my thoughts as I long to resume where we left off before and during our breakfast."

"You sure you want to go?" Takaharis asked with a playful smile, ruffling her leathery wings slightly and flicking her pointed tail as she gave her human lover a saucy look of invitation, "I'm not used to having company, but you've proven to have quite a lot more stamina than I thought your species could possess, and I find myself curious to know if you do indeed have some sort of limit..."

"We can test that theory another time, ma Corte," Angelique chuckled, "But I gave my word to Monsieur Kuno, and he has recently lost a father, which could make even a noble heart turn bitter, so I must needs attend to his request so that I may steer him onto the path of truth and justice rather than the dark road of malice and vengeance."

"Vengeance is a word that comes quite easily to my kind," the Erinyes admitted, "We revel in it and consider it our part of the cosmic order to punish the wrongs visited upon the weak and helpless by the strong and corrupted..."

"But you have left that word behind, Cheri, and have embraced a larger world where harsh thoughts do not dominate your thinking," Angelique pointed out, then impulsively kissed the other woman on the lips before saying, "It is zee nobility within you zhat draws me so potently to your presence, and I drink deep of the positive emotions zhat you radiate to all who can truly see you. It is more zhan your beauty zhat I admire...it is zee warmth of your heart, which I bask happily within whenever we are together."

"You sweet talker you," Takaharis chuckled, returning the kiss and flicking a forked tongue between the lips of her nocturnal lover, "I'll bet you say that to all the sweet young innocent things whom you seduce."

"Only the ones who deserve such praise, Cheri," Angelique replied before reluctantly letting the devil-woman go, "Recall zhat it is non just external beauty zhat attracts me...for handsome is as handsome does, and you are as fair as you are delightful to be with."

"In which case you're the fairest one of all whom I've ever known," Takaharis said with a touch of sadness, "Before you I thought all humans only judged people like me by sight and condemned us without hearing our side of the matter."

"And what, pray tell, is wrong with how you look?" Angelique asked the red-skinned, goat-legged, horn-headed and spade-tailed Erinyes with a frankly admiring expression, "Zhair is non zhat I can see worth faulting...and if you have doubt of this still you need only await my return and I shall demonstrate once again zhat zhair is non part of you zhat is undesirable to me, so until I make my return..."

"I'll be waiting for you here, Angel," Takaharis smiled, "Count on that, and I really mean it."

"I know," Angelique chuckled as she mounted her motorcycle then said, "Come Adonai...we must be away."

"About time," the motorcycle autopilot remarked, "I thought you two were going to go on like that for the next hour or two."

And then the powerful whine of the engine engaged, and the aluminum jump suited Temuvarai popped a wheelie as she sped out of the driveway and onto the streets, steering at once towards the Kuno estate, which was several miles distance.

Takaharis stood where she was with a sigh, "That human...she is positively delicious."

Then her outer form shimmered and restored her human guise and with a jaunty smile she turned and headed towards the front door of her apartment, confident that her concealment spell had prevented any of her neighbors from detecting the real her, which she only allowed herself to show before her current house guest, who alone seemed capable of seeing through to her core and accepting her as she was without question.

Or rather that was what she intended to do, because before she got three steps something strange and unexpected happen, and it caused the hackles at the back of her head to stand on end, her wings to unfold in defensive flight mode, and her hooves to splay out in preparation of meeting an assault from some hidden corner.

"What?" she gasped, then her diamond eyes suddenly widened, "What is this? I feel...a spell? But who...who is casting it on me? And why does it feel so familiar..."

She instantly and reflexively threw up her mental barriers and attempted to ward off the summoning, but it was too late and her guard had been lowered at the initial moment of contact. Without warning the force of the magic struck home and threw her mental barriers aside as a circle formed beneath her hooves and she stared in disbelief at familiar looking runes that were drawn upon the ground in glowing phosphorescence.

"The Fortunov Circle of Summoning?" she gasped, "But...who knows how to cast something as advanced as that...and why? Could it be an enemy or-worse by far-my brother, Nomru?"

She crossed her arms and attempted to recite the counter spell, but it was too late by half as the circle began to swallow her up and she was drawn into its shadowy depths by tentacle-like emanations whose slimy grip she had hoped never to confront again in this incarnation. With barely a cry of protest she vanished utterly into the shadows, and then the spell dissipated and the circle utterly vanished, leaving naught but a slight wind in passing to mark what had just happened as Rumiko Takaharis was no more to be sighted within that portion of the district...

The morning time after such a strange and eventful night felt odd to the surprisingly wakeful Ranma as he headed out early for his morning jog before any of his wives could notice his absence. He and Nabiki had talked a bit about their adventures before retiring for the evening, of the strangely warm greeting that they had received after the rather chilly parting of the afternoon, with Shampoo clearly having forgotten about her "silly grievances" in gratitude for the safe return of her Airen.

More disturbing by far was the report from Ukyo and Perfume that someone had been in their house not one hour before hand who looked and sounded a lot like an older and far more mature version of Ranma...yet one (from the sound of things and the unvoiced concern in their expression) that chilled Ranma's veins and made him think that it might well have been Udan paying them a visit.

Which, of course, returned them back to the rather ominous discoveries and revelations of their meeting with the Daokan, and Siren's tacit confirmation of everything that had been imparted to them by Lord Anri and his brothers. The mere implication that they could have encountered such important persons from history and mythology was itself rather perturbing, even granted their reluctance to concede that Anri himself could be the person whom he claimed he was...or rather had been. That idea alone had extremely troubling implications that were not easily digested, and it was still a struggle to equate the easy-going, self-deprecating clown that he effected to be with the lordly figure of legend who had founded not one but several majorly important world religions.

Topping that off had been his earlier dalliances with his five elemental servants, each of whom appeared to have developed an inexplicable desire to get with child by way of their nominal "Master," and tbe rather aggressive way in which they had "persuaded" him to go along with this endeavor. As if being a father to three of the main human ladies in his life were not enough, and one only delivered not three days ago at that, it left Ranma feeling more than a bit odd and confused with five more on the way, and him not even yet fully graduated from high school. Aside from the practical questions such as how to feed all the potential little mouths that would soon be calling him "Poppa," he had to contend with the jealous incurred between his human wives and his elemental ladies. Of them all-curiously enough-only Nabiki seemed to have reconciled herself to the whole notion, and that only after forming a curious bond on the sly between herself and Sharil, about which Ranma felt more than a bit uneasy.

Of course morning also meant something else for the young and aspiring future Patriarch of the clan Saotome, and after rising and shining and taking care of such minor details as eating, bathing and brushing his teeth he was quick to hurry on to the area of training that was blocks removed from the Tendo residence (his by marriage as Soun Tendo had made the place his dowry for marrying Nabiki), and soon confronted his new Sensei, the woman known as Siren the Archmage, into whose expert care he had been assigned both by Cologne and the mysterious fellow known primarily as Anri.

"Had a good nap?" the blonde Amazon asked by way of greeting, giving the boy a subtle nod to acknowledge the active day and night that he had just lived through, "Are you rested enough? Because as of now class is in session, and I won't make any allowances for slacking or for shoddy attendance."

"Sorry," Ranma replied, "I had a bit of a rough night, and the girls felt like giving me a lecture..."

"My sympathies and condolences," Siren straightened up and gave him a cunning look, "But put such incidental matters behind you, Apprentice. You've been given into my care and must follow my instruction to the letter...or all of humanity may well suffer for your deficiencies. Excuses will not be tolerated and a failure to concentrate or pay attention will be penalized in the manner that I judge is for your best interests. Now then...do you recall the assignment that I gave to you the other day? There was a question that I asked you, and I am hoping you do remember."

Ranma belatedly nudged himself with a wince of self-recrimination, for with all of the business of the past few days he had completely forgotten about the question Siren had raised, and now that it came back to him with a jolt all that he could say was, "Ah...sorry about that...I...well..."

"No excuses," Siren chided with a curt gesture, "Just give me your best answer."

Ranma blinked and tried to recall the question in detail, then said aloud, "Relaxed concentration...you asked me how I could do both at the same time, and I thought you asking for the impossible...but..."

"But?" Siren cocked an eyebrow, inclining her head as though encouraging him to continue.

Ranma thought about it, really thought good and long about the matter, recalling the fight against Taro, his anxiety over Nabiki's kidnapping, his relief over the safe delivery of his son (thanks to the school nurse, who turned out to be a powerful healer), the incredible feeling that he had experienced holding the tiny baby in his arms and knowing that this was an extension of himself, yet a whole new thing in his experience, and how protective he felt over the boy, as if he would gladly give his life to spare him from any sorrow. And then he thought about the new two days and the fight against the fanatic named David, the shorter encounter with the assassin named Jubei and then his encounters with the Daokan brothers...and he looked up at Siren, his thoughts congealing in his mind into one crystal clear panoply of thoughts and images assuming a coherent mental picture.

"Ah," Siren smiled, "You do grasp the concept now, don't you?"

"I...think I do, Sensei," Ranma said in self-surprise at the easy revelation, "You don't have to force your mind to do anything...you just...do it."

"Congratulations," Siren said, "You've just taken your first big step into a much larger world. Indeed, concentration must be effortless or else you waste too much energy trying to force your thoughts into balance. Allow it to become second nature and you are on your way to becoming a powerful Wizard, my apprentice, one who is worthy of your ancestry and the precise key of wisdom that will be needed in the crisis that is coming."

"Sensei?" Ranma asked, "Is it really so terrible, this thing that everybody keeps saying is about to happen?"

"My grandfather and uncles certainly appear to think so," Siren replied, "And I've never known all four Daokan to be mistaken at once about anything. But put that thought out of your mind...it is of the future, and your only concern now is for the present."

"Sensei?" Ranma asked, "How can I think about the present if the future is in danger?"

"That is the question is it not?" Siren said sympathetically, "But thinking of the future is futile and ultimately self-defeating. The future is never really here, it's always there on the horizon, just beyond our furthest grasp. You can never really catch up to it, you can only cause it to exist by doing what comes naturally in the present. You cannot waste your time worrying about things that have not yet occurred or which may never be. You must think only of what you are doing now, in then present. You must think of where and when you are and allow the future to take care of itself, or else part of your mind will always be focused away from the present, sapping you of vital energies and leaving you with less attention to devote upon the moment in which you are actually living."

"But...what about my family?" Ranma asked, "Shouldn't I be worried about my wives and kids and everything?"

"Feel them now as they are and do not fret about what may or may not come upon them," Siren said sternly, "The future has yet to happen, and you cannot grasp it or affect it save by what you do in the present, so do not waste your energies diverting concentration away from where it can be the most effective. Live in the now, focus upon what you are doing, and let the future take care of itself. You will learn in time to trust your instincts and let your thoughts be guided by your higher faculties so that the future will be one worth living. If your heart is true and your thoughts are clear then all things become possible and you will know a brighter future."

"I...don't understand, Sensei," Ranma freely admitted.

"You're not expected to," Siren nodded sagely, "You are only a novice, but when you are advanced in the ways of knowledge then you will understand me entirely. For now be content to know that what you are doing in the now is what is important, and don't fret about the things you may or may not do until that moment is upon you."

"Ah...I'll try, Sensei," Ranma said, then winced as she scowled in his direction.

"Do not try," she informed him, "There is no 'try,' there is only do or to not do. Thoughts have an effect on our actions, to merely try is to interrupt your thoughts with needless effort, which wastes energy and diverts you from the focus that you need to be an effective wizard."

"I don't understand," Ranma shook his head, "How am I supposed to accomplish things if I don't make any effort?"

"That is a paradox is it not?" Siren smiled, "So why don't we make that your second big homework assignment? Now then, that being out of the way, how are you feeling about the day and night that you have spent with your special ladies?"

"Ah...excuse me?" Ranma asked, feeling himself blush from head to toe as he remembered vividly that part of his previous day's adventures.

"I must say, Saotome-san, that I'm a little bit jealous of you for having your own in-built harem," Siren chuckled, "I know that it must vex your wives something awful, but for a son-in-law you are surprisingly randy...to say nothing of resilient. Why, when I was your age if I had the stamina to keep that many ladies satisfied and contented..."

"Er...Sensei?" Ranma timidly asked, albeit almost pleaded.

"Oh, I know," Siren waved the point aside, "You feel awkward and uncomfortable because you were brought up to believe that monogamy was the only acceptable form of relationship between a man and a woman...and here you are involved in a five-way marriage that includes my own beloved granddaughter, and you ware wondering just how it is that you allowed a thing like this to happen. Well...look no farther than yourself if you want to find a reason. You opted to be in this unorthodox lifestyle because you went along and agreed with the will of another...your primary wife, Nabiki, who decided things for you, obligating you to go along with her decisions."

"Ah...I don't really blame her or anything," Ranma said mildly, "Nabiki's always made good decisions for our family..."

"Has she?" Siren asked, "Because, if I recall matters rightly, you did not always feel thus. In fact was not that challenge match between you and her, the one that led to your marriage, brought about precisely because you felt that she was taking your compliance with matters a bit too lightly?"

"Ah..." Ranma faltered, searching for an answer.

"Understand something," Siren said a bit more seriously, "I would be proud of you if you had made a series of rational choices that lead to where you are now...but I fear too much of what has occurred is the direct result of your being too nice a guy for your own welfare. In fact I am a bit miffed that your servants felt so upity that they felt inclined to take advantage of you that way. I might partially blame my grandfather for putting the notion into their heads...but there wasn't a lot in the way to prevent them from leaping at the chance to cement their relationship with you and wind up producing progeny of their own, which they decided at YOUR expense and not the other way around, for which I would be disappointed if I suspected you of being less a man of integrity than some spineless milksop who lets other people push them around. The fact that I do respect you makes me feel for your condition, and for the way others have indeed taken advantage of your kindly good nature to profit at your expense, and thensome."

"NOW JUST A MOMENT!" an imperious voice interrupted, and at once Latisha sprang to life full-form in a fiery blaze of indignant royal fury.

The other elementals were quick to take their cue and manifested in bodies resembling those of clothed humans, albeit their state of dress was relaxed, casual and highly revealing to the eye, which in no way diminished their collective state of feminine indignation as they flocked around their Master and gave tacit support to the Salamander Queen's position of protest.

Siren remained cool and aloof as she examined these five spirits then asked, "Do you have some objection with my statement? After all, you do know that what you did was unfair to your master, and technically is in violation of their contracts."

"That is not the way of it at all!" Latisha protested, "The Lord Maitreya, your grandfather, gave sanction to our actions, and we each approached Lord Ranma in fair petition of our desire to be impregnated, and he did not refuse us...so where do you get off questioning our actions, Archmage?"

"Ah yes," Siren sighed, "I really must have a very long talk with grandfather about his predilection to meddle in the lives of others. As for my position...you know perfectly well that he was in no position to refuse your entreaties. Your master, my apprentice, is far too easy-going and compliant for his own welfare and does not always stand up for his best interests...so I elect myself to do so on his behalf. After all, he has had women meddling in his life since he was just a boy, from his mother to his wives and adopted sisters, so he is used to complying with their wishes."

"But all that we wanted from Master Ranma was that he bestow upon us the gift of his manly seed," Nagisha insisted, "For which we bestowed upon him the gift of our bodies to use as he saw fit..."

"As you saw fit you mean," Siren pointed out, "For while I do not know the particulars of the way in which things happen, I have a pretty good idea who was doing what to whom and in what manner."

"But we only wanted Master Ranma to know how much he means to us as our Master," Sobriel argued.

"Oh, I'm pretty sure by now that he's gotten the idea that your interest in him is well beyond platonic," Siren said a bit dryly, "You and Karina may be bonded now by emotional ties that gives you mutual fulfillment, but you still needed him to get the both of you pregnant, and I'm sure that every one of you at one time or another has entertained thoughts of doing it with him in a threesome. In fact, of you all I find only Sharil to be blameless, even though she started it all and was the first of you to breech the boundary line between servant and Master."

"Me?" Sharil asked, "Why so?"

"Because what you did was in accordance with your training under the tutorage of a renegade Amazon whom I would prefer to leave go nameless," Siren answered, "And of all your sisters you alone attempted to heal the breech between your master and his primary wife by temporarily bonding with her and giving her a taste of what it is like to be your Master. Thanks to your selfless actions in defending her from danger you made it possible for her to forgive the rest of you, to say nothing of accepting her husband's actions as a necessary evil."

"Are you saying that what we did was evil?" Latisha scowled furiously.

"No," Siren replied, "I am saying that what you did was selfish. I'm not going to argue the necessities or morality or anything like that. I have far too many questionable actions on my own conscious to play moralizing hypocrite here...I am merely saying that you need to take greater concern for then feelings and emotions of the man you call your Master, because if you truly care at all about him then you should have been sensitive to his reactions and the amount of mental distress that you put him through for the sake of having his babies."

The elementals were silent as they exchanged looks with one another, and then Karina winced and said, "She's right, Guys...I think we did get a bit out of line there...and maybe we did kind of overdo it."

"You think?" Sharil asked, turning to Ranma and saying, "I'm sorry, Master. When I surprised you in the furo...I wasn't thinking beyond the moment. I ambushed you and coerced you into giving me your seed...and for that I am regretful, and I'll never do that again if it means risking offending you or hurting your feelings."

"I...never really thought of it that way," Sobriel said, turning towards Ranma and saying, "You're the first decent guy I've ever known, Master, and I wanted you to...well...appreciate me...the same way you do for your human women."

There was an uncomfortable pause before Latisha bestirred herself in order to say, "Master...what I spoke with you before was the truth and reflects my true feelings and regard for you. I have never known any man as kind and compassionate towards others, and...and I apologize if I went too far or became overly...expressive in demonstrating my feelings.""

Another long pause then Nagisha glared back at the eyes turned towards her before saying, "What? I don't regret anything that I've done, and I certainly do not see how in any way we might have given offence to our Master."

Ranma sighed, "Thanks guys. I won't say that I was too happy about the way you did things but...well, I'm hardly blameless in all this since I did...ah...kinda enjoy things...maybe a little."

"A little?" Karina grinned slyly.

"I'd say a lot judging by the evidence," Sharil grinned as broadly as she patted her own abdomen.

"Hey, I'm not sorry that we did it," Sobriel said brightly, "But I didn't mean to...well...come on a bit too aggressively there, but now that we're all having your babies..."

"Right," Ranma said, looking the five women over, "You're all my responsibility, and...I guess you're kind of like a part of me, so if you really want my kids that badly..."

"Master," Nagisha informed him, "There is no other human male of my acquaintance whom I would be more honored to bestow upon a child the title of father to my own offspring."

"Well said," Latisha agreed, "I guess we are all responsible to each other now, Master...for we are a family by our own actions and admission. In all truth we did this initially because the Lord Anri said that our children would be needed to protect your son, and as such they are fated by destiny to be his protectors in the same manner that we are for you..."

"Whaa...?" Ranma blinked, "Back up a minute? My son? You mean...your kids...his sisters...?"

"Ah yes," Siren remarked, "My grandfather's intentions become clear to me at last. Very clever and foresightful, if a bit presumptive that there is, indeed, going to be a future for this world and the dimension in which we are living."

"Say what?" Sobriel reacted.

"Search the memories of your Master and you will know," Siren replied, "Lord Ranma, my apprentice, has challenged the Lord Udan to battle in three days, minus one evening..."

"HE WHAAAT?" all five elementals chorused together.

"Master," Sharil turned towards Ranma, "What were you thinking?"

"Bartev the Destroyer has annihilated entire armies and laid waste to monstrous beasts of legend," Nagisha seconded, "It is worse than folly to challenge him...it is suicidal madness!"

"What could you be thinking, Master?" Karina asked, "One strike of his hand and he could shatter this entire island and kill every living thing at his discretion!"

"That's bad news with a capitol Bad," Sobriel agreed, "You go up against that guy and I guarantee you won't survive it, Master...and if you go..."

"Then the rest of us go with you," Latisha concluded, "Even my own father, the Lord Reka, has cause to fear his brother, much though he pretends otherwise with foolish bravado."

"Guys...I didn't have any choice," Ranma said, "He was gonna destroy the whole world unless somebody stood up and tried to stop him!"

"Quite so," Siren said, "For that fits entirely within the mindset of my grandfather's brother, who walks the middle path between darkness and the light and has a simple solution to every complex problem, which is to plow through to the source and bypass everything else that gets in the middle. He takes his job seriously as a protector of the way of Order that is embodied within the elements of Earth and Water, and when it comes to dealing with the Old Ones and creatures of the ultimate night...he is implacable and as unrelenting as a tidal wave or an avalanche. Quite rightly did you stand up for the right of this universe to continue to exist unaltered, but in doing so you set yourself in opposition to a man who embodies two of the key forces of the Universe and is himself a force of nature before whom even mother Gaia must surely tremble."

"Then...what hope is there for us...or for our babies?" Sharil asked almost plaintively.

"One hope," Siren said, "And a slim one at best. My uncle may be the ultimate warrior of the cosmos but at heart he is also a lover of humanity and he respects the courage and heroism of idealists. He is a practical man of simple, practical values, but he will yield to those who make a convincing case for themselves and who demonstrate those qualities most inherent in the nobility of the human spirit. Since he draws much of his essence from the collective soul and will of humanity, he must ultimately respect your place as a Nexus of this reality to defend what is yours and to uphold its right of continued existence."

"A what?" Ranma asked, "A Nex-what?"

Siren smiled, "Surely you have heard the term applied to you before have you not? A Nexus is a key individual selected by fate to embody a focal point in time and space around which the universe itself revolves, much like a fulcrum to a lever. In your case you are a person uniquely gifted with the ability to cause a major shift in the course of world events by your mere existence. If you come to a road that has two forking paths then a moment of free will is allowed to you, and if you choose to go down one path it will force a chain of causality to bend with you and orient the resulting direction of history to flow with you down that pathway. However, should you choose to go down the other path it will similarly cause a very different chain of occurrences to compensate for your decision, and history will move in an entirely different manner."

"But...why me?" Ranma asked.

"Why not?" the Archmage countered.

"That isn't an answer...!" Ranma protested.

"Yes it is," Siren replied, "It's just not the answer you expect or were counting upon. Why indeed did fate select you to play a key role in deciding which way an entire universe would orient? It is a question you have confronted before if you care to think back to the time before your challenge match, where you confronted your feelings for your primary wife and made a choice to stay with her, after forcing her to perceive that you had rights and merits of your own and should be treated as a co-equal. Go back even further in time to that signatory event twelve years in the past where the two of you changed places with you winding up staying in the Tendo house while she went on the road and spent a decade in training under the tutorage of your father."

"What has that got to do with it?" Ranma asked, scratching behind one ear.

"Everything!" Siren waved her arms for emphasis, "This whole dimension diverted from the original course of your life-path when your fathers decided to exchange you in order to solidify the marriage ties between you. You resented being forced by that decision and found yourself stuck with an irritating fiancé who was as stubbornly pig-headed as you and obsessively compulsive about everything that she set her mind to. Between the two of you the mutual idea was set to sabotage this engagement, so you quarreled needlessly about everything and made it plain to one and all that you did not get along and were entirely unsuited to one another. But then the girl who took your place came back into your lives and you were instantly enamored with an alternative who was exotic and gifted, and from that moment on you set in place your designs to become affianced with her, albeit unconsciously, which in turn inspired the fathers to exchange engagements from Akane to Nabiki. And tell me...are you happy with that decision?"

"Well...sure..." Ranma said, "Nabiki's a terrific girl, and I love her more than my life, and I'd do anything to make her happy..."

"Which you have achieved, and quite brilliantly I might add," Siren nodded in satisfaction, "But what if different choices had been made concerning your life? What if you had chosen to get along and ignore those qualities that you allowed to become obstacles with your first fiancé? What if you and Akane had fallen in love and decided to go through with the marriage?"

"Hah, that'd never happen," Ranma snorted, "And besides, she's much happier with my brother, Ryoga."

"Undoubtedly true," Siren replied, "But the possibility remains. And then there is the even greater question of what might have happened if the exchange itself had never taken place? What if you had remained with your father those ten long years while Nabiki stayed at home with her own family and grew up as a normal-albeit somewhat mercurial-young girl, one more concerned with material possessions than with forming a relationship with some wild-mannered boy of course and unrefined manners?"

"Ah..." Ranma hesitated, suddenly remembering with vivid clarity that he had indeed encountered a world where just such a chain of events had taken place.

"You see?" Siren said, "Choices made have consequences for others...and in your case the choice of your life-path causes everyone around you to orient their lives and destinies in accordance with your decisions. And it does not end there...from the point where you return to Nerima and are introduced to the Tendos a million alternative paths spiral out, each moving in accordance with a different dimensional pathway. The Fourth Continuum of existence is full of potential and actual alternatives that each result in a different outcome based not on one decision but many, so it is as much the follow-up to the primary choice as the subsequent choices that come later that will decide the viability of an alternate timeline...and timelines that prove not to be viable will wither out of existence, be absorbed into other pathways and simply cease to be as a manifest creation."

"Say what?" Ranma asked, scratching the back of his head with obvious confusion.

"I think I see what the Archmage is saying, Master," Karina noted, "For this world to continue as it is means that you have to make a series of right choices, and the outcome of your decisions will affect the entire pattern of our future."

"You are our Master, and we are bound to you by more than just our contracts," Latisha said sincerely, "So whatever you decide will become law for us, and we will support you in every way that can be accomplished."

"Our nature and lives are at your disposal," Nagisha rumbled firmly, "For good or evil we are with you to the very end."

"I just hope it's not going to be our end," Sobriel averred, "I don't know about the rest of you guys, but I'd like to have a future for all of us and our babies."

One voice remained silent and Ranma turned a questioning look her way, "Sharil-san?"

"Archmage," Sharil said hesitantly, "Does our Master truly have the power to make or unmake our world...and if so...how can we insure his survival...and the continuing existence of our offspring?"

"That is the question now, isn't it?" Siren folded her arms and smiled, "Fortunately you've come to the right source if you want to get the sort of training you will need to stand up to an Eluini of the caliber of my Uncle. I, too, wish to preserve this reality and the future that it represents, so I will devote the full measure of my skills, knowledge and ability to refine the raw elements of your very being, my Apprentice. I only ask in return that you devote yourself utterly to my training and do everything that I instruct you to do. Feel free to ask questions if you must, but only I will decide whether to answer you directly, or to make you seek to find your own answers."

"I understand, Sensei," Ranma nodded, "And I'm ready to begin training."

"Are you certain of this?" Siren smiled knowingly, "Really and truly prepared? Because I give you this one warning in advance...you will be facing now an intensive training session that will make your preparation to master the Senkens seem like an evening's recreation at the local fair grounds."

"I'm not afraid," Ranma told her resolutely.

"Not now, perhaps," Siren smiled more cunningly, "But you will be...you will be...and that much I can most definitely promise..."

Afternoon, a time for relaxing between the hours of study. For Nabiki it had always been a time to organize and manage the affairs of her day, to exercise her position as Fuirinkan High School's unofficial Obuyan by holding meetings with her close personal staff of trusted advisors, which naturally included the intrepid pair of Ryonami and Gosunkuji, the former serving as both secretary and scheduling clerk while the latter was their resident techno-geek and spiritual counselor of choice due to his interests in the esoteric and occult. There were other important officers of her inner circle, but these two were the most important and without them around her operations would be that much more difficult to manage, and as such she tended to shepherd and watch over them carefully so as to see to it that nothing bad occurred to distract them in their days so that they could remain focused on whatever task she assigned them to handle.

Which made it very odd how-that very morning-the two of them were not to be found, a thing that would alarm her under the best of occasions but for the moment was definitely of even greater concern due to the looming crisis that was threatening to eclipse all of her other business.

Someone had been trying to kill her, and someone else was enlightening her and telling her that she had a destiny to save all of Japan, to say nothing of the rest of their home dimension. Another man, whom many seemed to fear as the Hammer of Doom personified (and he might very well be for all the data she had to work with) had just issued a challenge to fight to the death with her husband, and she herself was now apprenticed to an Assassin who was posing as their school PE teacher, while the new Principal of Furinkan was none other than the Frankenstein Monster, who-in addition to being fiancé of her sister-was the head of an extensively large secret organization with ties to the literal "Underworld" of Vampires, Werewolves, Ghouls and other various types of monsters.

As for her sister-who had ascended months ago to the role of a Vampiric Goddess-the story was even more complicated, for it turned out that Kasumi was herself also carrying on an affair with another woman who transcended the definition of an "odd choice" for a romantic encounter.

Oh yes, and her school had suffered major property damage from a battle with one one of those enemy agents attempting to kill her, which meant that classes were suspended for the day until the main building could be serviceable again for regular occupation, or to what extent it has suffered irreparable harm, in which case it might need to be condemned and replaced with a newer and more durable model.

And leave us not forget the private business between her husband and his elemental "servants," or Nabiki's own dealings with her much-valued co-wives, who quite naturally wanted to know everything that had happened in her day, and to whom she could only respond in vague half-clarified statements, leaving as much unsaid as she could get away with and still have Shampoo cuddle up to her without giving her the cold shoulder.

On the whole it was turning out to be a very strange day in a very strange life, and because of this strangeness she had put her whole operation on alert and had her underlings (saving only the absent Ryonami and Gosunkuji) scrambling for cover while Nabiki herself was warding off other questions in preference to some "alone time" where she tried to sort things out and make what sense she could out of her impossible situation.

After all, she had just met the four faces of "God" and had been informed that she and her husband would be critical to saving Japan from some unnamed disaster relating to events that had happened many generations ago in the past, and for the life of her Nabiki could not see her place in this cosmis struggle. As much as she turned it around in her mind she could not quite get a handle on the fact that a man purporting to be "Jesus" had singled her-a devout Shinto devotee-out to combat a militant group of fanatical Christians who were secretly in league with the father of all devils and...

"Mind if I join you?" a familiar voice asked, "If you don't mind me saying so, you look like you could be coming apart."

"Hah?" Nabiki glanced up at the pink-haired student positioned before her and said, "Oh...Saki-chan...didn't notice you there. I was kind of..."

"Distracted?" the Sekaban Deka (Undercover Police Officer) replied, "Yeah, I kinda got that impression. Good thing I'm not an enemy or I might have taken a shot at you...and if you also don't mind me saying so, from the looks of things you might well have been taken."

"Ah...maybe," Nabiki indicated the space beside her as Saki Asamiya sat down and placed her own back to the same tree against which Nabiki routinely positioned her back, "So...you've decided to take Coach Wells up on her offer?"

"Haven't you?" Saki glanced out over the Furinkan campus, "My handler...or should I say my Boss...was dead set against me coming back here. After all, my cover's been blown and most people here know that I'm a cop, and that I'm friends with you, which makes me double trouble in the book of any of the guys I normally investigate."

"The literal poison pill," Nabiki smiled, "Sorry if I've given you a reputation."

"Ah, nothing I can't handle," Saki shrugged, "The funny thing is...when I mentioned the coach's handle my boss went absolutely white and acted as if I'd dated an Oni. He can really be almost cute when he gets all fatherly and protective and everything, but in this case he went off and read me the riot act, said that I was absolutely not to go anywhere near her, that she was the worst possible thing that could happen to a trouble case like me. I think he was genuinely afraid for my welfare, which...I have to admit I find more than a bit...intriguing."

"Nothing builds a good sense of mystery like seeing mysterious and dangerous men go into a panic when they encounter someone a lot more nasty," Nabiki reasoned with a smile.

"You think?" Saki smiled, "But...anyway, I'm not really sure why I'm here, or what drove me to defy a direct order from my Boss to take the coach up on her offer. I mean...you saw the way she just waltzed into that Yakuza stronghold and had the Obuyan wetting his shorts with fear that she was going to do something nasty, like kill every guy in the place, which I'm prepared to believe she was capable of after seeing her in action."

"I know," Nabiki murmured thoughtfully, "That kind of power...is more than a bit alarming."

"I'll be honest about it," Saki confided, "There are times when I've have given anything to have the power to make punks fear me like that. Three years ago I...lost a very good friend of mine because I failed in time to act to save her, and her death has haunted me for years ever since. I eventually tracked down and punished those who took her life and turned the survivors over to justice...But..."

She sighed, and her whole attitude seemed to take on a wistful look of longing and regret as she stared off into the distance before continuing her thought, "But...I've never been all that wild about killing. I've done a lot of bad things in my life, but I've always drawn the line at outright murder."

"So have I," Nabiki said, "I've never felt comfortable about killing...even the one time I did kill a man, which was in self defense and not exactly premeditated."

"That Ronin guy?" Saki shrugged, "I wouldn't worry about that. According to the coroner he had a delicate condition that he kept literally under wraps, and all you did was finish a job that somebody else had already started. But we're talking about the cold-blooded and calculated destruction of human life by a lady whose moves are so precise and fluid that I don't think I could have done anything to stop her if I'd had the inclination."

"Me too," Nabiki agreed, "That's not something I think I could ever be comfortable about myself..."

"Well, that's good to hear," the two young girls were surprised to hear a voice speaking from directly behind them, "Because killing isn't what my training is about after all...rather it's all about Survival."

Saki flinched and Nabiki felt her hackles rise as Coach Trudy Wells strode out from the bark of the tree as though she had walked right out of a doorway, flashing the younger women a bright smile and giving them a nod of acknowledgement with green eyes twinkling with amusement as though her presence there was only to be expected.

"Well?" she asked, "Is that any way to greet your new Sensei? You're going to catch a lot of bugs if you just stand there like a pair of frogs with your eyes wide and your mouths hanging open.

"S-S-Sensei?" both girls gasped as one, and then they turned to stare at the tree, then back at the stunning redhead as if to confirm the impossibility of their mutual impression.

"I trust you both had good long naps that were refreshing and uneventful," Trudy cheerfully noted, "Because class is now in session, and I won't stand for any slackers here. I know you had a busy night, Saotome-san, but put it behind you, we have important business to conduct, and you've already got the word that you're going to need my training."

"Sensei?" Nabiki asked, surprised at the woman's perceptions.

"Oho?" Saki was sufficiently distracted by the statement to eye her companion, "Did Ranma-kun get frisky with you, or was it the rest of your brood who were happy to see you?"

Nabiki closed her mouth and said, "Neither one...I just met God last night, that's all."

"Oh really?" Saki smirked, "Did you give her my regards, because she and I haven't been much on speaking terms lately."

Even as she make what she thought of as a "witty little jest," Saki felt disturbed by the curious look that her friend turned back in her direction.

Trudy's look was as telling as her smile as she said, "So you met the Lords Daokan and let that young buck of yours do something as reckless as challenge the worst of them to a fight, eh? Talk about batting way out of your league...do you have even a fraction of an inkling of what you two have let yourselves in for? Bartev the Blackguard is a human wrecking machine, a thousand times more lethal than a truck load of para-demons, and definitely not to be trifled with on any occasion. Your chances of going toe-to-toe with him are the same as a snowball in the jet exhaust of a 747. You'd have a better chance of taking me on in a straight one-on-one fight, and I assure you both that with all the skills in your possession that just ain't gonna happen."

"Are you serious?" Saki asked, turning from their Sensei to Nabiki and back again, "You let Ranma-kun issue a challenge to a guy like that?"

"I didn't...let him, exactly," Nabiki waved her hands helplessly, "It just sort of...happened!"

"Well, now you've come to me to get some knowledge on how to salvage the situation," Trudy huffed, "And since the Lord Anri himself thought I could steer you in the right direction, then I guess we'd better not putter around and waste valuable time. Class started for the both of you as of five minutes ago, so get up on your feet and let's see what you've got so I know just far you have to come under my training."

Both Nabiki and Saki grumbled a bit as they got up from the tree base and dusted themselves off before turning to face their new Sensei.

"Hmmm...not too bad on the whole," Trudy said as she studied them critically with up-and-down roving glances, "I've done more with worse. At least you've had some early training so you're not complete novices, but I'm afraid that you're going to have to forget most of what you know-or think you know-in order to improve yourselves up to Kurustani levels of performance."

"You sound like you think we don't know anything already useful, Coach," Nabiki asked as she regarded the strawberry-blonde American closely, "But I've been trained by the Amazon Elders of Joketsuzoku, by their Matriarch no less, and they're at the top of their field...so how much better than that could you be?"

Trudy smiled, "Care to find out? Then step forward and try me."

Saki moved back to allow her friend to advance so that Nabiki could position herself to within two paces of their new teacher, then she assumed a fighting crouch with arms raised and her defenses in position, then she confidently said, "Anytime you're ready, Coach."

Trudy did not move at all but just held her relaxed stance and smiled at the younger woman, "Why don't you make the first move? Go ahead, I won't bite."

"All right," Nabiki said, "You asked for it."

Saki had barely time to gasp as she felt the wave of force gathering up from within Nabiki's innermost being as the Saotome heir channeled the weight of her Chi into a forward strike that would prove devastating to the likes of the toughest of opponents. But her hand stopped mid-way to the delivery of her blow as Trudy extended her index finger and blocked with an ease that was surprising, absorbing the brunt of the "Blazing Fist Attack" as though she were extinguishing the wick of a candle.

"Impressive," Trudy smiled, "But try this on for size."

Nabiki never even saw the move but found herself rocketing back as though driven by a blast hose. She landed flat upon her shoulder blades in the grass some fifteen meters distance, mildly stunned and wondering just how the hell she had been propelled back at such a great distance.

"The key philosophy to the Martial Arts is turning an opponent's strength against them," Trudy said with matter-of-fact candor, "In this case I absorbed the kinetic energy of your own Chi-based attack and stored it within my own cells, then released the force again back upon you. In effect you punched yourself out that time, though I made sure not to injure you since this was merely intended for a demonstration."

Saki stood there with her mouth hanging open once again, and this time she did taste a bug on her tongue as one strayed into her orifice, leaving a sour taste behind as she hastily spat him back out.

Nabiki forced herself back into a sitting position, "You did that just like Happosai...!"

"Same principle, different approach," Trudy turned to Saki and said, "Your turn...and go ahead, use your Yo-Yo. It's clearly your favorite weapon of choice and the source of much of your strength as a fighter."

"Ah...hai," Saki moved back a couple more paces then flipped her wrist and caused her weapon to slide out from its place of concealment within her sleeve, then she sent it hurtling towards the motionless Teacher.

Only Trudy was not so much motionless as she seemed to flow around the arc of the Yo-Yo, and then all at once she sent Saki sprawling in the grass without hardly seeming to approach her, the pink-haired girl staring up in a mild daze while the redheaded American smiled down and nodded in approval.

"Good wrist action, but relying upon a weapon as your first means of attack and defense is an error," she held up the Yo-Yo in her hand and added, "I'll hold onto this for now and return it back to you after class...but for now I want you to rely solely upon your skills as a martial artist. Self-reliance is the key, and you must condition yourself to think of your weapon as a mere extension of your art, not the heart of the thing, which was the style practiced by your mother."

"I'll...try and remember that...Sensei," Saki gasped, feeling her breath start to return as some force or other had knocked the wind out of her lungs without leaving a bruise...or even a memory of being touched for that matter.

"Good," Trudy made a hand motion and the Yo-Yo vanished from sight, "Now back on your feet the both of you, and try again this time just using your normal attack styles...and forget about using fancy techniques. They won't do you any good here."

Nabiki had already recovered her footing and was dusting herself off once again, pausing to offer a hand to Saki, who reluctantly received it and was lifted to her feet with an ease that made the pink-haired girl's cheeks flush crimson.

Trudy eyed the two girls knowingly then said, "This time attack together, both of you at once, and don't hold back on your power since I want to see how good you really are."

"Why?" Nabiki asked, "From the way you act you already seem to know everything about us."

"That is not pertinent," Trudy wagged her finger chidingly, "This is about you, not me, and coming to terms with what you are is the key to your mastery of the basics. Now then...use your physical strength and Chi-backed reserves as you see fit, and for each time either one of you manages to land a blow you will receive points, but for every time you allow me to touch you I will penalize you with a demerit."

"And what happens if we win more points than demerits?" Saki asked.

"Ah, cocky are we?" Trudy grinned, "Well, I'll tell you what...I'll take you girls both out to an expensive restaurant...one that isn't run by the Yakuza, and treat you to an 'all-you-can-eat' buffet. Think that will count as incentive for doing your best?"

"Sure does," Nabiki grinned, always game for a good meal, "But...what happens if we earn too many demerits?"

"I'll think of something appropriate," Trudy smiled, "But for now you train by my methods, and you do not question my techniques, understand me?"

"Hai Sensei," both young girls chorused together.

"Good," Trudy smiled, "So...what are you waiting for, engraved invitations? Come at me...or are you Japanese girls too yellow to show your stuff before a gaijin?"

The attack began at once as both Nabiki and Saki came at their teacher with fists and feet in rapid motion, and thus did the slaughter begin as the two of them rapidly discovered what a human wildcat was their teacher, with much humiliation to be visited upon them both as they learned first hand the huge gulf that existed between their skills and those of a Shaloh-Ahl master...

Continued.

Comments/Criticisms/Humbling Experiences for Initiates 101: shadowmane

Or: shadowmane9849 Class is in session and the bumps and bruises have only just started to be earned, but what lays in store for both Ranma and Nabiki at the hands of their respective trainers...and what has happened to Gosunkuji, Ryonami and Takaharis? Find out the answers to this and other questions in: "The Passion of the Anti-Christ," or, "Half-a-Loaf-of-One-Pound Gospel!" Be there!

X

/pre 


	91. Chapter 91

preDnabiki180

Nabiki 1/2

"A Very Scary Thought"

by Jim Robert Bader

(Inspired by the works of Rumiko Takahashi Others,  
with concepts and characters created by fellow fanfic writers Wade Tritschler, DB Sommers, Nicole Manders, Andrew Greaves, Bill Guiroff and countless others, including "Buffy"  
creator Joss Whedon; with special thanks to my good pal Shiva for his editing and handling of this series.)

(Certain other characters and concepts are of my own innovation, including my interpretation of the Monster of Mary Shelly's novel, the Furies, Trudy, Takaharis Angelique d'Anjou, Anri and the Daokan, Thelendra the Dream Weaver and various other guest stars appearing in this portion of the Nabiki 1/2 series...)

Chapter Sixty-Seven.

Episode One-Hundred-Eighty.

The Penalizer

Ryonami gulped in stark, terrified wonder as she gazed up at the form that was materializing before her very eyes...and those of her partner in misadventure, Gosunkuji. Positioned as she was on her back in the center of a magical circle with occult runes drawn all over her body, she was quite naturally apprehensive of the figure that she had helped Gosunkuji-kun to summon. Especially since said figure stood nearly six feet tall, had ruddy skin, a pair of goat-like legs, a spade-like tail and a pair of rams horns projecting from her back with a pair of bat-like wings sprouting from her shoulderblades in exactly the manner in which the traditional image of a Western-style Devil was depicted. The diamond lit yellow eyes, fangs for teeth and flicking forked tongue projecting from between her ruby lips were an additional touch hardly needed but quite effective in completing the overall picture.

Oh yes, and she was quite evidently naked...her upper chest sporting a nicely endowed set of perfectly shaped breasts with upturned nipples already hardened as if captured in a moment of arousal, though the mood she was in now could be more characterized as confusion and annoyance.

"What the...Deus?" she asked as she looked around, then her eyes focused upon the naked form of the Japanese girl laying between her spread hooves and she smiled, "What's this? An offering? How nice...and here I was wondering what I was going to have for dinner."

"Eep!" Ryonami gulped, and suddenly all of Gosunkuji's calm reassurances about the protective wards insuring her safety did not seem quite so reassuring.

Rather than rake her clawed hands over the trembling form of the hapless student, however, the Devil-woman turned her focus upon the only other figure within the room, and with a curious lilt to her voice she said, "Gosunkuji-san...I might have known. I take it you were the one who cast that summoning spell? It felt rather...amateurishly thrown together, but not a half-bad first effort."

"Ah..." Gosunkuji had himself stripped down to his underwear as a means of reassuring Ryonami, and there were runes drawn over his skin as well, albeit somewhat more clumsily than the carefully crafted designs that adorned Ryonami. His spell had quite obviously worked, albeit that he was dubious about his success since it tended to conform his worst suspicions regarding the new teacher.

The Devil-woman glanced to the side and caught sight of the book near to Gosunkuji's hand...and she scowled all the more on consternation, "What is that doing in the hands of an amateur dabbler like you? Careful how close you position it to yourself, dear boy, or you may discover it has teeth that ordinary books are often lacking."

"Ah...Sensei?" Gosunkuji gulped, but then firmed his tone as he said, "In the Name of the Powers of Light, Order and Heaven I abjure thee to..."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know the drill," the Devil-woman waved a hand as if to dismiss the point, "You think this is the first time that I've ever been summoned? Although the last fellow who accomplished the feat of bringing me to your world had a bit more on the ball from an occult standpoint...and for your information, I am not a wish-granting Oni, so if you think capturing me will bring you fame, fortune and women...like this cute dish you were kind enough to offer me as a morsel..."

"Gak!" Ryonami winced, petrified with fear and fascination as she was quite literally feeling much like a helpless little fawn being eyed by a dangerous predator as the Devil-woman above her ran her eyes up and down all that the Japanese girl had to offer, and her tongue flicked in a disturbingly savory manner.

"Ah...actually, that wasn't the reason you were summoned," Gosunkuji meekly but firmly attempted to correct.

"Uhoh?" the Devil woman turned a smile at him, "Let me guess...you were attempting to see if you could use that book to petition the elemental powers of Light and Shadow to grant you a heavenly vision who would be comely and appealing and willingly do your bidding. Boy, did you ever get the wrong area code..." she grinned with a look of almost malevolent mischief.

"Er..." Gosunkuji gulped, "I wanted to summon you here to find out the truth about you, Takaharis-san..."

"Oh?" the Devil-woman's expression became more wary, "So you knew it was me when you summoned me here? That explains your getting the name right, though for your information my first name isn't Rumiko."

"It's not?" Gosunkuji blinked, "Then...what is it?"

"Uh-uh," Takaharis chuckled, waving a finger at him in a chiding manner, "No fair me telling you that since we both know that doing so would give you power over me, Gosunkuji Hikaru-san...and that's not something I'm inclined to bestow upon a student in my classroom. After all, you never know what sort of unethical thing you might compel me to do on your behalf...such as give you a passing grade when you haven't earned it. And I am grading you for this, by the way, just so you know before you read your report card."

"Ah...hah?" Gosunkuji asked, unsure of where to tread as the Devil-woman was not conforming at all to his expectations prior to her summoning.

"Now then," Takaharis made a point of folding her arms around her ample breasts (and thus uplifted them to provide a more eye-catching cleavage, "Suppose you ask me the question that you wanted to ask and I'll decide whether or not it is appropriate for me to answer."

"Ah...okay," Gosunkuji said warily, then belatedly added, "You won't hurt Ryo-chan will you?"

"Who?" Takaharis again glanced down at the cringing young teenager spread out so invitingly before her, "This saucy oriental soufflé? Hey, don't worry about it, Kid...I haven't eaten human flesh in, oh, at least fifty years, and as tasty as she looks I've sworn off the cannibalism bit in favor of more socially approved pastimes...and perversions."

Ryonami finally managed to break free from her paralysis and let loose with a massive cry of, "DEMON!"

"Huh?" Takaharis immediately glanced to the left and right with claws bared and her stance instantly defensive, "Where?"

"She means you," Gosunkuji helpfully pointed out?"

"ME?" Takaharis extended her wings and then flapped them down while stomping one hoof indignantly, "A demon? The very idea! That's a base lie and an insult!"

"Huh?" both Gosunkuji and a terrified Ryonami gasped together.

"I'm a DEVIL, not a DEMON, you CLAWDS," Takaharis sniffed, nostrils flaring and increasing the non-human appearance that she otherwise only partially manifested, "Get it right! Demons and Devils are mortal enemies...have been for countless millennia, and probably will be to the end of time! Good thing for you that I'm not like some of my wilder cousins or I'd snap you both in two for that! Oh, and the technical term for my racial stock is that of Erinyes."

"Erinyes?" Gosunkuji asked, "You mean...like the Greek Furies?"

"We borrowed the name," Takaharis sniffed, "It wasn't copywritten."

"Um...excuse me?" Ryonami timidly asked, "But...um...you're not going to hurt me, are you?"

"What?" Takaharis smiled, "With all those runes of protection that your boyfriend here has drawn all over you to ward off harm from supernatural entities such as myself? Perish forbid! Like my body parts as they are, intact and attached to my body. Besides, it'd be a waste to despoil a cute little virgin like you in such a brutish and generically typecast manner."

"You won't hurt me?" Ryonami asked, focusing upon that one key point in the Devil-woman's statement.

"Perish forefend," Takaharis assured, "Although I will admit that I am getting a bit curious about the real reason why you kids disrupted my whole morning by reading from the Book of Amon and drawing me into this magical circle where you apparently thought to entrap me."

"Um...excuse me?" Gosunkuji gulped, "You mean...you're not contained there against your will?"

"Kid," Takaharis glanced down at the circle then casually stepped through the runes, which flared up to light, albeit with less effect than had been intended. The light faded down and Takaharis was suddenly on the other side of the circle, smiling broadly at Gosunkuji as the pointed to the area that she had just transgressed as she said, "Missed a spot...and with someone like me a mistake like that can often be fatal."

"Gak!" Gosunkuji jumped to his feet in alarm, but the Devil woman merely patted him on the head then turned around and crossed back into the circle.

"You really must possess at least a lick of talent to even perform a spell so complex as this on the first try," Takaharis said while pointedly circling around a wary Ryonami, "But talent like yours is dangerous when left untrained, and this is not some amateur work that you can learn through home study. You need the guidance of a good teacher, and it just so happens that I am more than suited to that position...legally certified and everything no less."

"You are?" Gosunkuji blinked.

"I'd show you my credentials, but they're back at my house," Takaharis replied, "Board Certified as a Licensed Professor of Paranormal and Occult Sciences, with a master's degree in Noetic arts. I earned quite a few high marks back home as fair shakes as a spell caster with the Juju my people practice, but let's not go into the question of whether I follow the Dark or the White arts. The point of it is...it would be criminal for me to let someone like you function alone and unsupervised, because there is absolutely no telling what might happen if you tried another spell and bollixed things up even worse than you did this time."

"You mean...you want to teach me, Sensei?" Gosunkuji asked.

"Bright boy, you got that in one," Takaharis said before kneeling down and positioning herself to one side of an anxious Ryonami, "So...why not ask me your questions and we'll get that level of business out of the way, and then we can all become good friends, you, me and the Cutie here...and wouldn't that be nicer than my doing something overly melodramatic like tear out her entrails and eat them? Actually, they do taste better when cleaned and cooked, but hey, I can improvise where needed..." she stretched out a clawed hand for emphasis.

Ryonami cringed, "You said you weren't going to hurt me!"

"That's right, I did," Takaharis purred, and suddenly her claws were gently stroking the bare skin of the Japanese girl, "And one thing you have to know about us Devils...we always keep a promise."

"Ah..." Gosunkuji gulped, seeing Ryonami tense up, then gasp and writhe in astonishment that she was indeed not being hurt but rather felt the touch of those clawed hands as...entirely stimulating in a far more pleasant sense of the word.

"Your questions please," Takaharis asked, suddenly taking firm grip of a breast, then pinching the nipple between thumb and forefinger, which caused Ryonami to tense up and arch her back, but far less in pain than in astonished pleasure.

"Er...why are you here?" Gosunkuji asked, "Here in Nerima, that is?"

"I'm here because it pleases me to be," Takaharis replied, stretching out her other hand and caressing the painted flesh of a helpless Ryonami, "But mostly because I was asked to do so by my cousin, who has a son living in this district."

"A son?" Gosunkuji asked, by now quite mesmerized by the sight of his girlfriend being "tortured" by the Devilish woman, "Who...ah...is he...?"

"I choose not to answer that at this time," Takaharis replied, now thoroughly enjoying herself as she continued to play with the exposed flesh of Ryonami, "But he's a friend of yours, so we'll leave it at that for now."

"Ah..." Gosunkuji had to cudgel himself mentally to get back on subject, "Is that all you're here to do? Visit the son of your...cousin?"

"More or less," Takaharis replied, "But this excitement that I've since encountered has gotten me intrigued for other reasons, such as the very interesting people whom I have met since coming to this district..."

To emphasize her point she gave Ryonami a very thorough and affectionate "cuddle" to both of her breasts, and the girl gasped in amazement at the treatment she was receiving, but more to the point raised an alarmed protest of, "Gosunkuji-kun!"

"Ah...!" Gosunkuji was jolted out of his complacence and said, "Now see here, would you please stop doing that?"

"Make me," Takaharis chuckled, fondling more than just the breasts of Ryonami and savoring the feel of womanly contact, "But seriously, wouldn't you rather join in rather than just stand there and play observer? She obviously cares enough about you to be willing to risk herself this way in helping you with my summoning, which is a lot more than an average girl puts out on a first date, take it from me, I know! So it's obviously you she's after."

"Me?" Gosunkuji squeaked, "R-Ryo-chan?"

"Gos-kun, you are an idiot!" Ryonami snapped, "Why don't you do something about-OOOOHHH! That...?" she gasped as she felt a finger slide between the folds of her labia lips, and then Takaharis held up a glistening finger for closer examination.

"Yep, definitely a virgin, I haven't had one of those in ages!" the Devil-woman concluded, then slyly glanced at Gosunkuji, "And since she definitely wants to be your woman it would only be appropriate to let you have first crack at her, though for my part I wouldn't much mind sloppy seconds."

"But..." Gosunkuji swallowed, mesmerized by the sight of the glistening gel-like fluids that coated the red-hued clawed finger of the transformed Teacher, "I thought you...and Nurse d'Anjou..."

"Ah yes, Angel," Takaharis smiled fondly, "I suppose I should abstain from having fun for her sake...only I rather doubt that she would hold back were she in my position. I really do like her, you know...it's rare enough that a human overlooks the clearly defined differences that mark our two distinctly different branches of the species Hominid..."

"Hominid?" Gosunkuji asked, "You mean...you're human?"

"In a manner of speaking," Takaharis replied, then continued, "In the same sense that we share a common ancestry, several million years removed. But getting back to the point here...Angel and me...we do seem to click well with one another...like darkness and light, Yin and Yang, Harmony and Dissonance..."

Ryonami gasped again, this time well beyond the point of protest over the curiously enthralling sensations that she was being subjected to by the horny Devil-woman who was subjecting her to such wicked delights.

"But that's the difference between casual sex and a real commitment," Takaharis mused, grinning the more broadly, "And speaking of casual sex...what? Nani?"

"Huh?" Gosunkuji asked, then glanced up in dismay as he saw a ring of light form over their heads, filling the room with weird illumination.

"Uh oh," Takaharis remarked as she studied the glowing ring that formed above their heads and then she said, "Gosunkuji-kun...don't look now but...did you say the final incantation closing your summoning spell down? The capper spell that was meant to contain the summoning ring's power?"

"Er...no...I don't think I did," Gosunkuji winced, feeling the summoning ring surge to levels of power not previously imagined.

Ryonami felt it too, even as she felt herself being sexually stimulated to a point that she had never been able to achieve for herself before, even using a vibrator, but still in spite of her distress she manged to bark the words out, "GOSUNKUJI NO BAKA!"

And then the ring of light descended, and all at once the universe within the room was totally upended...

And-meanwhile, at the center of the Nexus between Worlds, situated in no point at all between Time, Space and parallel dimension...

"Oooh..."

Nabiki glanced off to the side at her assistant director and asked, "Are you feeling all right, Ryo-chan? You look a bit...disturbed."

"It's nothing, Boss," Ryonami assured her mentor and superior in rank, "Just a weird feeling I had for a moment there...nothing I can explain in words, just...this odd sense that another version of me was having a really odd experience."

"Odd experience?" Nabiki asked with more than curiosity in her expression her gaze focused on more than just the obvious facets of her best friend's demeanor, "Odd...your aura is a bit off-color there. Perhaps you're experiencing a bit of psychic bleed from the Ryonami of this timeline that we have on study. Perhaps accessing her records will uncover the source..."

"No, we can't afford to divert the time, energy and resources on lesser concerns," Ryonami assured the woman who had been her childhood idol, friend and sometime lover on past occasions, "It's more important that we track down the various leads that Ranko-chan acquired during her time among the Daokan. We can reserve any questions about my counterpart from this world for another occasion."

"Since when is anything relating to your welfare of lesser concern to me?" Nabiki asked, but nonetheless conceded, "You're right, however...I am worried deeply about what Ranko and her father are doing since leaving HQ and merging with this particularly troublesome timestream. Ranma-kun is fairly easy to track and keep tabs upon, but Ranko...with that dratted pendant of hers..."

"I know just what you mean, Boss," Ryonami sympathized, " I have trouble enough keeping track of my own kids, even when I leave my darling husband in charge of their safekeeping. Gos-chan can be such a dear at times, but he's quite hopeless when it comes to supervising his own children."

"At least your offspring are not gifted with a pendant that links them directly to Yggdrasil, the World Computer," Nabiki groused, "Which gives her the ability to travel to any time and place of her selection, and partial immunity to the Paradox factor that her visits often triggers for others. So where has she gone this time while she thinks my back is turned and that I am not looking...?"

Ryonami leaned closer to study her mentor's key commandments then her eyes widened, "You've Lo-Jacked your own daughter?"

"More like taken a temporal tracer unit and attached it to the chain on which the pendant is connected," Nabiki corrected, "After all, that necklace is Ranko-chan's lifeline, and if it ever does get removed from her neck while she's in the Multiversal timestream..."

"Right," Ryonami averred, "She might be sucked away into stasis like that home dimension she hails from. A good precaution there, Boss, and one I heartily approve of."

"Thank you," Nabiki smiled, "I knew that you-whoah! What is this? Oh my...I might have guessed this..."

"What?" Ryonami blinked, "She's gone there? I mean...then? Into the future?"

"In a way it does make sense," Nabiki sighed, "With the home timeline of one of her best friends being threatened it would only be natural for Ranko-chan to venture to their time in order to affirm that they even have a future..."

Ranko prided herself on timing things just right as she appeared outside the gates of Furinkan High school just as the school bell rang, which gave her just enough time to get out of the way of the oncoming rush while concealing herself in some nearby bushes while awaiting her friends, who appeared at the doorway a few seconds behind the made stampede that formed the bulk of the student body.

The sight of a familiar purple-haired beauty caused Ranko to smile, even as she saw her friend's ever-present shadow in the form of an equally stunning redhead at the side of her prime objective. There were others in the mass, of course, the brothers and sisters to this redoubtable pair, but they were not the ones she had come in search of since they had their own private personal affairs to attend.

Her objective was both simple and direct...to meet up with her objectives and to consult with them on a matter of great consequence to all concerned parties, whether knowing or unknowing of this particular future.

And so she watched and listened as an ice-blond girl of about sixteen years of age-holding hands with a sixteen year old purple-haired girl by the name of Shamran-turned and waved to her older sister saying, "Hey, see you around, Oneechan. Sham and me are gonna go check out that concert in the park. You and Ly-chan gonna be around to hear it later?"

"No thank you," said the older redheaded girl with a tiny smile of modesty, "Ly-chan and I...have other plans for the evening."

"Just as long as it doesn't involve any experiments that go boom in the night," the silver-haired girl chuckled, "You know how Mom gets about those things...like what she does with Fam doesn't constitute a high-tech SM session...I mean, really!"

"Let's go, Geiko-chan," the younger purple haired girl chuckled, murmuring in a lower tone of voice, "You know exactly what kind of business our Big Sisses are into, so let's leave 'em to themselves. At least it's a lot healthier for the both of 'em than getting stuck in a cubicle working on science projects that ain't related to some wholesome, healthy sex."

"You said it," Geena Kane-Kent-Daitokuji-Minagi whispered, and then the pair went off together, oblivious of what an obvious couple they made to the eye, or how the manner in which they were holding hands betrayed the depth of their own relationship every bit as much as the close proximity did for their big sisters.

"Ah," said Lylac Saotome in soft reflection, "To be young and innocent like that once again..."

"You do realize that we are only, chronologically, a few months at best older than our respective younger siblings," murmured Eileen Kent-Kane-Managi-Daitokuji in the same mildly amused low-toned whisper.

"I know," Lylac smiled, "But I like to pretend sometimes that we're much older and far more mature than those two. It's good to see Sham-chan finally settling down with a significant steady for a change rather than playing the whole field like she has in the past...and by that I mean the Soccer Team, Rugby Team, Swimming Team and any other team she can work her way through on the dating circuit."

"Your sister does love sexual experimentation," Ekko replied, "But on the whole I would say that she and Geena-chan do make for a good match-up."

"Hey, Sis!" a young pigtailed boy waved to the pair as he passed them heading for the streets holding a wheeless skateboard in one hand, "Catch up with you later in the restaurant? I hear Mom's planning one of her special Okonomiyaki feasts in celebration of Dad getting that promotion to Chief of his own department."

"We'll be there, Ryo-chan," Lylac assured her younger brother, then paused to ask, "Have you seen Chusen anywhere about?"

"Don't worry, Sis," a brown haired girl wearing the traditional odangos of an Amazon cheerfully replied, "He's probably off with his usual entourage, practicing like usual, but I'll make sure to round up the entire brood and get them to the party on time or else I'll catch flack from my own Fam. See you later!"

A pair of taller girls happened by just then, one of them flashing crimson eyes and sporting a set of tell-tale fangs as she smiled with a particularly mischievous grin, saying, "Bell and I shall be along in time for the festivities, Cousin, so do pass along our respects to our own parents will you?"

"Sure thing, Lilith," Lylac smiled back, "Hope you and Belldandy-chan pick up something nice for the party."

"Thank you, Cousin Lylac," the more modest of the pair of statuesque beauties replied, then paused to add, "Oh, and give my regards to Ranko-chan since she's decided to pay you another visit."

"Eh?" Lylac started in a rare display of surprise, turning her eyes in search of the party in question.

"I had thought that I had detected a familiar heartbeat amid the droning noise of the rest of our contemporaries," Ekko turned her gaze directly at the tree in which Ranko was perched, "I may only be one quarter Kryptonian, but that part of me that is can mark you as though you were standing under a beacon, friend Ranko."

"Ah..." Ranko decided to reveal herself as she swung down to the sidewalk then confronted her friends and temporal siblings with a sheepish, "Hi...hope I'm not interrupting. You know how things get with me, always coming and going..."

"Ranko-san," Lylac smiled, "What an expected pleasure."

"Quite," Ekko's smile was less inviting, and clearly she was irritated about having her "quality time" with Lylac be interrupted by yet another crisis.

"Well, well," said Lilith Stein as she regarded the timelost pigtailed redhead with an almost predatory scrutiny, "To what do we owe the pleasure? Has some new temporal crisis developed for which you intend to recruit our services...or that of our cousin?"

"Oh my," Belldandy Tendo said, her softer concerns contrasting-like always-with the more lascivious regard of her darker twin sister.

"Um...kinda," Ranko awkwardly ran her fingers over the back of her head and said, "I really hate dropping in on your guys like this, especially if you had other plans and...stuff like that..."

"Go on," Ekko urged, though clearly her annoyance was transparent.

"Whatever it is I'm sure it's important," Lylac said more matter-of-factly.

Ranko sighed, "It's like this...I've been to the past...your past...and, well...there may be problem. You see...you guys ever hear about a fellow by the name of Otono Wanabi?"

The startled looks in the eyes of her friends was confirmation enough of Ranko's own worst suspicions on the subject, and all at once the resentful regard of the redheaded Ekko disappeared, replaced by deep concern and intellectual speculation.

"Maybe you had better step into our office and tell us what you know," Lylac replied, "We never did get the full story ourselves...we were just kids at the time after all..."

"My sister and I were hardly even conceived," Lilith said with studious concerns of her own written large on her classically beautiful features, "But if the crisis to which you refer is the one we have heard alluded to from other sources..."

"Oh my," Belldandy said, "It could be a problem."

"Indubitably," Ekko affirmed, giving Ranko a hard stare before adding, "My memories are perhaps the most reliable of all those now here present, but I was only peripherally involved in the affairs surrounding the greater crisis. It was Ly-chan's Fama and Father...and the mother of the twins here, who were the key instrumental players in a drama that threatened the very existence of our reality. I take it for you the crisis is still an issue of some importance?"

"Very," Ranko confirmed, "And I'm worried about my Pop...he's grimmer than usual, and it all has something to do with these guys called the Daokan and..."

"Say no more aloud, Ranko-chan," Belldandy urged, "Any issue involving my grand-uncles and sire is not a subject that should be spoken in the open, especially not this close to a Hellmouth."

"A what?" Ranko blinked, "A Hellmouth? But..."

"Did you think one only existed in that timeline where Uncle Gosunkuji became the Shogun of the Dark and came close to destroying all of humanity?" Lylac asked, "That's why we had better do this in a protected zone, away from prying eyes and ears of a supernatural nature."

"Agreed," Lilith said firmly, "My own father suffered much in struggling to contain the evil energies that leech from that dimensional portal linking this world to the realm of the Abyss, and it is not mete that we hand clues out to the Enemy that could give them a tactical advantage in the past, where they made an aggressive push in an effort to bring about their coveted dream of Universal Armageddon."

"Universal...holy sh-!" Ranko started to say as the realization hit her between the eyes with the force of a two-by-four, albeit less physically dramatic.

"Exactly," Belldandy said, politely cutting her off in mid-swearing. The ethereal beauty then turned to the other redhead in their midst and said, "Of course you know what this means, Ekko-chan? You are going to have to get in touch with one of your contacts, the one you find the most troublesome to deal with."

"Namely out big sister, Gamina," Lilith noted.

Ekko winced as though pained by a memory, but she sighed, "I know...though I wish you wouldn't mention that. I'd rather contact Minx...she may speak in almost unintelligible sound-bytes, but I have a higher regard for her reliability, and less of her twin's propensity for mischief."

"I'm sure she's very sorry about what happened in your lab the last time, Ekko-chan," Lylac said soothingly, "And she promised not to do it again, and I even got that in writing."

Ekko turned a look towards Lylac that was telling, revealing for all to see how much she would bend over backwards to willingly please the love of her life, even if it meant throwing her normal caution to the wind as she sighed and said, "I'll put out the word on her Tech-site. Maybe we'll be lucky, though, and have this crisis resolved before she has time to respond to my missive."

"Dreamer," Lilith smiled, "You always were the optimistic sort, Ekko-chan...that's why I've always liked you."

"You and Ly-chan are good for each other," Belldandy noted, causing the redhead to blush almost as crimson as her hair while Lylac turned a fond look towards her companion that radiated mutual ardor, even going so bold as to take the redhead's hand and openly squeeze it, to which the Demi-Kryptonian was careful to respond with considerably less pressure.

On seeing this Ranko felt a poignant lump in her throat and realized just how much was at stake for this timeline if the crisis in the past were not resolved in a positive and decisive manner. Being a survivor of a Timeline that was no longer "viable" (IE: it no longer actually existed as a thriving, functioning dimension) she had a very definite understanding of what was at issue if this particular "Crisis Point" could not be circumnavigated. Temporal Crisis Points had the potential to destabilize otherwise thriving and functioning universes such as this, and for that reason the Time Patrol itself existed to prevent the collapse of any particular timeline that might otherwise be threatened with termination.

But a crisis point such as this needed special particular beings whose function was to oppose the darkness, individuals possessed of unique talents who could do the things that ordinary people could only dream about, which was why she often made these forays into the Multiverse in search of other people who shared her unique heritage and temperament, and who were ready to jump into the fray with both feet forward. Children of a Nexus named Ranma, who in his time had caused many seemingly miraculous events to occur. Children who were trained martial artists, warriors of exceptional ability and merit who did not shirk from their duty to helping others less fortunate than themselves. Children with a vested interest in preserving their own particular home timelines...and-by extension-the Multiverse itself.

Children much like her parents had been when they were at the same age, the parents of Children who were destined to carry on the legacy of their elders, who carried within them the selfsame potential and seeds of inner greatness. Children to whom the very cosmos itself was indebted to countless times lover, the ones whom you could always rely upon to come through when the demands of self-sacrifice exceeded the capacity of those who declared themselves as merely "ordinary."

In other words Heroes...

Nabiki hit the ground heavily and found her desire to rise up again, for the moment, temporarily abated. Her exchanges with Coach Trudy were turning out to be quite a humbling business as she not only could not lay a blow upon her Sensei, she was quite unable to block a single counter-attack and kept winding up on her back without a clear sense of how she had gotten into this condition.

"Not bad," Trudy remarked, "You're improving somewhat, but you still have a ways to go before your concentration is adequate, and you spend too much time trying to anticipate my moves. Just relax and let it flow to you naturally. Don't think at all, just do it all by instinct."

"Easy for you to say," Nabiki winced as she got back up onto her feet, "How long did you say that you've been doing this, Coach?"

"Not as long as you," Trudy replied with a tart little smile, "Bit it's not quantity of years that counts but the quality of your training, and as good as you are your teachers obviously were woefully deficient in certain basics. Asamiya-san?"

Saki was sitting on the sidelines with her mouth hanging open, but then she heard her name being called and belatedly reacted with a somewhat subdued, "Sensei?"

"Take your turn facing me," Trudy instructed, thus confirming Saki's worst fears on the matter, "Saotome-san here needs to rest and reflect upon her actions. You can show her what she's doing wrong while learning a few pointers yourself about the total dedication of mind and body that's needed for this training.

Saki almost swallowed her gums before saying the words, "Yes Sensei," then got to her feet with the same resignation that she once displayed when facing her mother at the tender age of nine, convinced that she was going to do something wrong and earn more than a scolding for improper form from her stern-yet-accommodating parent.

Nabiki sat down heavily in the same spot under the tree where she and Saki had begun their early morning conversation, grateful in words that she had a chance to catch her breath and wondering why her training sessions with Cologne and Happosai had never felt this intense or demanding. Ten minutes of trying to throw an effective punch against her new teacher had showed a disturbing inadequacy in her technique that was positively shocking, and even at Amagurikan speeds she could barely match the form of this gaijin named trudy, who anticipated every attack and countered it with an ease that was nothing short of positively superhuman.

It was like going up against Alison, who genuinely was superhuman. The control and coordination this Trudy possessed was like nothing else that Nabiki had ever faced before in her travels. She had attempted all manner of special technique roundhouse and straight trajectory kick and punch in her arsenal but even the Shadowskills form was handily knocked aside as though a fly were being brushed out of the air. Nothing worked against this Trudy, who hardly budged an inch from where she stood the whole time and was not even breathing very hard while Nabiki exhausted herself from the sheer intensity of her all-out attempt to meet her Sensei's challenge.

And now it was Saki's turn, and watching from the sidelines Nabiki immediately picked up what was wrong with the form and stance of her friend as she confronted the unmoving object that was Trudy, whose easy stance never varied in the slightest. Saki's initial attempts to throw a punch never got half way to their target, and her kicks-though fluidly delivered-were far short of their mark and woefully inadequate for the purposes intended.

It was a good thing for the both of them that Trudy never attacked, because if she had then there was no doubt that she could take them both down with a ridiculous ease that would truly leave their pride and dignity in tatters...to say nothing of what physical damages might well be inflicted. Trudy was truly phenomenal in that she hardly seemed to move at all but was everywhere at once with her hand meeting and countering each offensive, and before too long Saki was panting hard and feeling the strain of her repeated failure. Each blow was costing her more and more of her reserve stamina, but pride would not allow her to back down as she kept pounding away hoping to find a chink in her Sensei's armor, some hole in Trudy's flawless defense that might be exploited to salvage the situation.

Nabiki wished her luck on that, having already learned the hard way that this approach would lead to no where. Soon enough Trudy tired of clearly uneven match and ended it just as abruptly as she had for Nabiki, her hand darting out and knocking the girl off-balance so that Saki lost her balance and took a tumble onto her backside.

"Not good enough," Trudy said, her breath as even as before, "Do you both see now what I'm getting at? You waste too much energy and your aim is pathetic. Never attack unless you are certain of the outcome, and feel the blow before it is delivered. Know it will be successful before you commit...otherwise you leave yourself wide open, and a real enemy would not be as merciful as I am."

"It's not fair!" Saki protested, panting hard and showing her near-exhaustion, "You never gave us an opening..."

"That's right," Trudy said, "I never have. I wanted you both to understand the value of a good defense since you're both attack oriented and too quick to play the aggressor. A fight is like any war where you have to use strategy and tactics, and making them up on the spot is half of what it takes to outwit your opponent. Stand back and watch for an opening, and when it comes let the other guy make the first mistake. If you do it right it will be the last one needed to end the engagement. One blow precisely aimed is worth a thousand clumsy blows that go wide of their target. Never engage unless you feel confident that you are ready to exceed the defenses of your enemy, and always wait for the right time to make your move. Instinct in battle is the other half of what it takes to win, and while you both have good instincts you're not listening to them, you're ignoring what your bodies are telling you, and that voice in your head that tells you when to go ahead with an attack and when to hang back is being ignored for the sake of reason."

"But...you just said that strategy in the field is a key part of winning..." Nabiki pointed out.

"Strategy should be thought about before hand, analysis is when you get into a fight, and all of that should be autonomic requiring little input from your higher logic circuits," Trudy countered, "Instinct is a rapid-fire processing of all the data your mind can relate to and triggers those subconscious regions of the brain and body that are designed to process and react on a purely reflexive basis. When you have the technique down you can do it automatically, or even in your sleep if needful, and at no time will you be taken by surprise by an enemy no matter how sneaky or deceitful their methods. Harness your intuition and learn to trust it and I guarantee that a fight will be won before it's even gotten started."

"You make it sound so easy," Saki fumed, "But it'll take years to develop that kind of training..."

"You don't need years to master this," Trudy smiled, "The both of you are already further along than you realize. You just need an instant to crystallize your training and turn it into a homogenous fighting system where the enemy has no chance at all to defeat you. Satori, the perfect integration of mind, body and spirit is all that you lack to be true warriors and defenders of the path of Life and Light itself. If you work with me I can show you how to achieve this as a goal, and once you have that mastered then the rest will be so easy that you will marvel that you never understood things that way before. That is what I am seeking to teach here...a way to live that makes you a part of all living things, a defender of life against the Darkness of destruction..."

"And how exactly does that square with you being an Assassin?" Nabiki wondered.

Trudy smiled and said, "Thou shalt not suffer a Poisoner to live."

"Excuse me?" Saki asked.

"The motto by which I live my life," Trudy replied, "Do not suffer a Poisoner to live. Basically it's a commandment straight out of Leviticus, one of the very few that I take seriously as a guideline for existence. A Poisoner, you see, was much feared in the days when medicine was practices by herbalists, Alchemists and Apothecaries, and precisely mixing the ingredients of a potion was quite literally a matter of life or death to the patient. Understandably the same methods that could be used to cure the body of diseases could also be used to harm a healthy body, so this knowledge could be used for good or evil purposes, such as the crafting of poisons, which were a leading cause of death among the noble classes."

"So that's where the Hippocratic Oath of 'Do No Harm' originated?" Nabiki asked.

"Precisely," Trudy answered, "To heal rather than hurt was the duty of a healer...but to deliberately harm others was the renegade career path of a Poisoner, hence the admonition to put one to death when he was discovered, which had a special resonance with the clergy, who also had a healthy aversion to eating bad foods or arsenic-laced substances if you take my meaning."

"But I thought the commandment only applied to Witches," Saki pointed out.

"That was a deliberate translation error committed by a cleric in the early Church back when it was competing against other rival religions that they labeled as 'Pagan,'" Trudy noted, "In actuality the term 'Wicca' was unknown to the early Hebrew, and the actual word they used was 'Wise One,' which could apply to any hermit or self-proclaimed camel-shirt wearing prophet. Actually, if they'd put a few more of those to death they would have been doing the world a genuine favor...but you see the way in which things get garbled up over time when the superstitious monks inscribing away by the light of oil lamps in dark cubicles search for a word that equates to 'Wise' and wind up using the Anglo-Saxon term 'Wicca' to apply to all practitioners of other religions."

"So rather than putting a Witch to death they really meant the guys who were using chemistry to actually hurt people?" Nabiki fathomed.

"Actually the word 'Poisoner' has a broad number of applications that go beyond mere dietary consumption," Trudy answered, "To me a Poisoner is someone who deliberately seeks to inflict harm by whatever means is at their disposal, whether it's the spreading of lies, rumors and deliberate falsehoods in order to destroy the reputation of an opponent, or some other equally pernicious act of subversion. A poisoner could also be an advisor to a king who gives really bad advice that leads to policies that hurt a lot of people. A poisoner can also be a false cleric who uses his position to mislead his congregation into doing something that is against their own best interests, such as opposing aid to the poor and the downtrodden while claiming to practice charity while reaping donations that are administered in the name of the poor and afflicted, spending only a tiny fraction of the money to buy bibles rather than loaves of bread to give to starving people while he pockets the rest and lives in luxury in a palace. A poisoner can also be someone close to you who pretends to be your friend while plotting your downfall, like Iago in the play Orthello..."

"You mean anyone who deliberately seeks to harm others falls under your definition?" Saki gathered.

"Anyone who seeks to profit by the misery and hardship that they inflict on others is a poisoner by definition," Trudy answered, "A cancer rotting the otherwise healthy body of society, exploiting human misery and suffering for his or her own personal gain. It could be a drug peddler selling the obvious poison of an illicit narcotic, or an embezzler who diverts funds from his company to his own personal account, or someone feeding herbicides to children by polluting the waterways through unsafe agricultural methods. Obviously the list goes on and on and could be used to describe just about every truly criminal activity in the book, but mostly it concerns the process by which someone selfishly corrupts an otherwise healthy system, thinking to benefit at the expense of another and without any regard for the consequences of their actions. In cases where it involves extreme examples of avaricious excess the obvious remedy is to get rid of the cancer...and that is where I come along playing the surgeon who precisely aims at the source rather than the symptoms of a problem."

"But that's deliberately seeking to harm somebody regardless of your noble intentions," Nabiki argued.

"That is not the way of the Shaloh Ahl," Trudy said solemnly, "We never seek the harm of another person...we merely react to the presence of a poisoner the way an anti-body reacts to a foreign object in the body. We do not harbor malice towards the carrier of the illness, only at the illness that is within him, the evil and corruption that infests his soul, and we remove him from the body by admittedly extreme methods."

"Hate the sin but love the sinner, right?" Saki asked.

"Partially," Trudy replied, "Do you blame the carrier of an illness for his disease? Yet still the preferred method for dealing with a contagion is to contain it, otherwise they will aggressively spread their virus and infect others in due course."

"But isn't that like killing the patient?" Nabiki reasoned, "If someone is the carrier of an evil idea, but he doesn't know that what he's doing is evil..."

"Unfortunately it is very hard to weed out inner corruption unless the patient himself wants to be cured," Trudy argued, "People who tenaciously cling to the perversity of a harmful intent can be remarkably stubborn in persisting to spread the contagion of their evil. It's a matter of free will, you see...and the right to choose to do the wrong thing and ignore the consequences of one's actions. Can you reach into someone's mind and pull out the bad thoughts that make them do the things they do? Not unless you intend to inflict worse harm than merely killing their bodies. Can you root out and contain the thoughts and impulses that make them behave badly? If so then you're a much better surgeon than I am. I am not a miracle worker, I just do what I feel is for the best and take the carrier out before he can spread his infection."

"So you rationalize killing as the best means for dealing with bad people?" Nabiki asked.

"Not all of them," Trudy replied, "Just the ones who maximize the corruption already inherent in the system. But only if the Power allows it. It is the Power that decides, not us, the worth of another human life...the Power that is accessed through Intuition."

"So in other words God tells you to do it, huh?" Saki asked skeptically.

"In a manner of speaking, yes," Trudy replied, "But it's no mere monomaniacal delusion, as you'll learn for yourselves as you progress in your training."

"That's if we decide to continue training with you," Nabiki pointed out, "And by your own admission we have free will. We're not compelled to do what you want, we're only studying because you offered to train us."

"For which you need not show gratitude, Students," Trudy smiled, "It was the Power that selected you...or rather, your sense of what I have to offer has lead you to the Power, and you thirst for what it has to offer even if you would prefer not to admit it."

"Well, I for one don't see why I have to be here in the first place," Saki sulked, "I'm a Cop, not a murderer, and I'm supposed to arrest people who break the law, not kill them."

"Admirable sentiments," Trudy smiled, "And you have already shown that you would rather not cross that line when you spared the life of an enemy Serpent, even though you knew that X was one of the worst poisoners whom you had ever encountered."

Saki growled resentfully, "And that's another thing...stop making with that weird all-knowing stuff, it's starting to seriously freak me out, the way you read us like you know our whole life histories..."

"In a way I do," Trudy replied, "But don't blame me, it's the Power that speaks to me and tells me what you keep hidden inside of you...such as the fact that you are here for reasons other than police work, and that you are concerned that I may be leading Saotome-san here down a dangerous path, which in a way means that you are trying to protect her."

Saki did not answer to that but sulked for a moment while Trudy turned to Nabiki and said, "And you, Saotome-san...are you truly going to tell me that you don't want to know how it is that I can anticipate your moves and effortlessly counter them? You've dedicated the whole of your life to being the best martial artist that you could possibly become, and here I am making a mockery of your lifetime of training. How do you think it is that I can do that if I am really as delusional about there being an invisible force that guides my actions and tells me things about you that you thought were well hidden? Have you a different answer to explain this to your satisfaction, or can you accept that what I am sharing with you and Asamiya-san is a gift very rare and priceless that you will not obtain through any other sort of training?"

"I'm ready to accept that your techniques are good, which does hold my interest," Nabiki replied, "But I'm still not comfortable with the whole notion of killing."

"Good," Trudy smiled, "Then why don't we work with that rather than against your natural inclination? That seems the best way to go and is certainly the swiftest way that I can imagine teaching you to become the type of warrior whom you need to become if you are to face down the likes of Otono and the Amakusa group he champions?"

"I'll...stick with you for now, Coach," Nabiki reluctantly admitted, "But Asamiya-san doesn't have to stay if she'd rather not. I don't want to compromise your integrity, Saki-chan, and I don't need you to protect me either. I can look after myself, I've been doing it ever since I was very little."

"That...isn't the entire reason," Saki reluctantly conceded, giving Trudy a wary look as if urging the teacher to say nothing more on that particular subject.

Fortunately Trudy did know the meaning of discretion and said, "Well, if that's decided for the both of you, then why not move on to the next phase of your studies...learning why your punches and kicks are so ineffective?"

Saki groaned slightly while Nabiki got back to her feet with a sigh and said, "Why not? It's only something that I've been doing my whole life, and why not have a complete stranger come along and show me what all I've been missing."

"That's the spirit," Trudy smiled, "Now why don't you and Asamiya-san stand here and confront one another, then both of you launch roundhouse kicks while simultaneously blocking and we'll see if what you know has any merit."

"Oh yeah," Saki winced, turning to face her fellow student, "And why don't I stand in front of a moving bus while I'm at it? It'd hurt a lot less than if I missed and she connected."

"I won't hit you full force, Saki-san," Nabiki assured, only to jump when her Coach barked a sharp contradiction.

"No, no holding back here, not in this class," Trudy stated flatly, "When you attack you go all out, and leave it to Asamiya-san here to defend herself or else face the consequences of failure."

"Excuse me?" Saki blinked, "Sensei...have you any idea what you're talking about? Of the difference in power levels between Nabiki-san and me? Like...how she can knock a whole house to the floor with one kick while I can maybe take down one wall at a time...?"

"That's your problem, not mine," Trudy said, "And making excuses is strictly forbidden in this class. Do your best, give it all you have, and don't sell yourself short. You have what it takes to stand up to her, just believe in yourself and let your body do it's business."

"I believe I'm about to seriously get my ass kicked," Saki rumbled but nonetheless squared her stance and prepared herself as she confronted her friend, who was now also her presently worst nightmare.

Nabiki had her own doubts about this and said, Coach, are you sure about...?"

"Ready, Hjajime!" Trudy barked, and at once both girls launched kicks that were directed at one another, only the speed and power of Nabiki's foot was such a blur that Saki barely had time to get her hand up for a block, and then she felt the force of it against her arm and wound up feeling her whole side go numb. Just as suddenly she was airborne, and then she landed in a roll that left her sprawling in the dirt, barely even conscious.

"Saki-chan!" Nabiki cried and started to lurch forward, only to find Trudy's hand in the way, which startled her so much that she asked, "Coach?"

"Hold your ground," Trudy ordered, then turned and asked, "Asamiya-san...are you still in one piece?"

"Barely," Saki groaned, "But...I think maybe my arm is broken."

"Let me see," Trudy paced the distance from the spot where Nabiki remained hesitant to where Saki had landed, some thirty meters distance. Once there Trudy knelt down and then began running her hands over the arm and shoulder of the fallen student, making a few quick motions that caused the pink haired girl to yelp and cry out in protest, which Trudy ignored for several more moments.

But then the strawberry blonde American "teacher" paused in her motions and asked, "Now how do you feel, Asamiya-san?"

Trudy blinked then flexed her arm and turned to stare at the palm of her hand, then glanced up at Trudy and said, "Ah...I feel fine...my arm no longer hurts..."

"Pain is in the mind, only a sensation," Trudy informed her, "Physical injury is an entirely different matter...and you've rested long enough on the ground, Student. Try standing up now and show some dignity befitting a disciple of this class."

Trudy reluctantly got back to her feet and dusted herself off, only now she seemed unusually quiet, even calm, and her face was almost reflective of some inner contemplation.

Trudy moved more fluidly from crouching on the balls of her feet to a standing position as she turned around and said, "You did exactly as I wanted you to do, Saotome-san...and ordinarily I would fault you for striking a weaker opponent. But as you can see Asamiya-san is made of sterner stuff than even she had imagined, so you can continue to strike at her with as much force as you just used in her take down, only this time do not stint for her benefit. Asamiya-san needs to learn not to flinch away from a stronger opponent, even as much as the both of you should work more upon your form and develop greater control in all of your movements."

"I'll...try and keep that in mind, Sensei," Nabiki said, though her stomach churned a bit with the fear that she could have unintentionally hurt a friend as close to her as Saki. She wanted to go easy with her but dared not do so lest she anger their new teacher, and this Trudy seemed convinced that the Sekeban Deka was capable of holding her own in their sparring, so she trusted to providence and did as she was commanded by her Senseii, who proceeded to coach them in a number of subsequent kicks where Saki took the worst of it but kept on giving her full measure.

At last Trudy called a halt to their torment by saying, "Good enough this time. You've almost got it down now...and isn't it easier to attack someone this way, using the least amount of effort to achieve the same results using much less of your internal power?"

"Easy for you, Maybe," Saki panted, feeling as though her bumps and bruisers had bumps and bruises upon them, and that while Nabiki herself was hardly all that tired she nonetheless was demonstrating the strain of knowing how much worse it was for Saki. In the past ten minutes they had given it all that they could or dared to yield for the sake of their demanding teacher, and the sweat was pouring down off of their bodies to the extent that the ground beneath their feet was starting to get soggy.

Trudy turned to Nabiki and said, "Sit back down and take a break, Student. Asamiya-san here requires a bit more personal training."

"What?" Saki gasped, "But Coach...!"

"No butts," Trudy replied, "You need far more work on your legs than Saotome-san here, and until I am satisfied that you really do know how to throw an effective kick then you are going to keep on keeping at it until I say otherwise...are we clear on this, Student?"

"Hai Coach," Saki sighed, sounding as enthusiastic as if told that she were going to have to gargle raw garlic juice ground up in a blender.

Nabiki gratefully took the excuse to sit back down at the same base of the tree where she and Saki had begun their time this morning. She had to silently admit to being more tired and sore than she could remember being in quite a while-excluding only her most recent fights and the delivery of her baby, of course. Training like this under Cologne had never seemed quite so exhausting, and considering that Saki was not used to the same grueling routine that Nabiki endured at the hands of the Amazon Matriarch...or even Happosai for that matter...

But then again, Saki was a rather amazing person on the whole, now that she took the time to think about it. So young and yet so hardened and mature for her age, so confident and together in the way she conducted herself before others. There was such sadness in her eyes, as though she carried a great weight within her, one that she alluded to often without getting to specifics. And beautiful as well, with a charming smile and a way about her that kept one guessing as to her real motivations for going out of her way in order to help others. Nabiki had seen the girl take injury in a fight in order to protect those who were weaker than herself, and with a stoicism and resolve that made even Nabiki wince at times.

Case in point being the present example, where she was trying to manage to kick "just right" while the foreigner named Trudy kept correcting and faulting her for form and balance, insisting on making the pink haired girl repeat herself as often as it took to get a kick that would impress her new teacher.

Nabiki frowned a bit as she caught herself admiring the gazelle-like gracefulness and form of the svelt Sekeban Deka and wondered just where that errant thought had originated. With an effort she chided herself for allowing her eyes to stray, something she never consciously did around other women for want not to appear "unfaithful" to deserving co-mates like Shampoo, who was herself utterly devoted to Nabiki. She shook her head, intending to clear it, then glanced back towards where Saki was being drilled in "effective high kicks" by a demanding task mistress...

And suddenly she wasn't there...nor was Trudy. Nabiki blinked her eyes then looked around, wondering where her friend and teacher had gotten off to, only to hear the sounds of girlish laughter that drew her focus further away...and there she caught sight of a vision that left her momentarily dumb struck.

It was Saki in a Furinkan High school uniform...and holding hands with another girl, a somewhat shorter thing with mousy brown hair and a shyly innocent appearance in her eyes and appearance, but clearly gazing up at Saki with adoring eyes as then two of them walked much too close together to be casual friends in any conventional sense of the matter.

To Nabiki's further astonishment Saki was smiling radiantly and there was not a trace of shadow about her eyes as she and the other girl walked barefoot on the grass together, holding their shoes and socks in their other hand as if savoring the sensual enjoyment of being closer to nature. And then-to cap the strangeness of the moment-Saki leaned forward and kissed the other girl upon the forehead, then nuzzled her hair with her lips and murmured with affection, "Junko-chan...I'm so happy..."

They walked right on past Nabiki as if not seeing her at all, and then the school bell rang and startled Nabiki out of her daze, momentarily deepening her confusion since the school bell had been among the badly damaged casualties of her fight with David. She looked around but the amorous pair were nowhere to be seen...instead there was only Saki throwing kick after kick into the air while Trudy slowly circled her and made sharp comments about minor imperfections, making then girl do it again and again until Nabiki herself winced in sympathy, quite certain that Saki would shortly be drop-dead exhausted.

But what had just happened? Did she imagine that brief moment when a very different Saki had passed on by holding hands with another girl who quite obviously was her lover? In all truth it was hard to even imagine Saki in a romantic fling with anyone at the moment...she kept projecting that soundly, "I'm not available" impression with the body language and posture, warding off then many attempted suitors who quite naturally tried to date her. It was getting so that Nabiki had thought her friend was determined to die an old maiden, but here she had been exposed to a very different side of Saki that she had never known before...and without questioning the source of the idea she suddenly leaped upon the realization that this "Junko" person was none other than the late and lamented "friend" whom Saki had mourned for years and blamed herself for failing.

She sat there trying to analyze the matter, but then she started to frown as a familiar prickling sense informed her that she was not so alone as she had imagined herself to be beneath the tree against which she was leaning. With a scowl she growled, "I thought you said that you were going to leave me alone to do my training?"

"I said that I reserved the right to drop in on you whenever I saw fit," replied the masculine voice of Anri, who was himself leaning back against the tree with hands cupped behind his head in a posture of total relaxation, "And this seemed as appropriate a time to exercise that option as any."

Nabiki glanced sidelong at the fair-haired man in the simple robes that reminded her so much of Luke Skywalker from the first (or rather the fourth) Star Wars movie and she said, "Does George Lucas-san know that you've stolen his act?"

"Actually he borrowed the concept from me," Anri replied without returning her gaze, "I told him it would be all right, that I didn't mind a little plagiarism and that I was used to people copying my act. Shows how much foresight I'm gifted with, doesn't it? I should have gotten it in writing, I could have reaped a good percentage."

Nabiki had to smile at that, "One would think that you would have learned from past examples."

"Unfortunately on some issues I tend to be a very slow learner," Anri replied, "Despite everything that tells me that I should stop believing, I still have hope for humanity and a basic faith in the goodness of human nature."

"Huh," Nabiki scoffed, "Just why are you here, 'Lord Anri?' Do you like bothering people by dropping in on them with these clever witticisms and pranks that you keep pulling?"

"Actually I rather excel at it," he turned and smiled her way, his greenish eyes once again full of warmth and mischief, "All Gods are troublemakers of one sort or another, and while I am not myself a God I have learned from the best Triicksters in the business...or is it the other way around? Maybe they learned from me...I never could tell which side learned first to copy the pratfalls of the other."

"So," Nabiki growled, attempting to squelch her irritation, "For what purpose have you chosen to grace me with your all-mighty presence? I'm not even a believer."

"Of course not," Anri sat up, propping himself upon his elbows, "Do you think I'd be wasting my time bothering with one of them? Forget it! They all think they know all that they need to know about me, and you try cutting through the thick cushions of preconception that they use to obscure their eyes from the real me, who has very little in common with the fiction that their kind has created."

"Are you saying you chose me because I'm not a believer?" Nabiki asked with an upraised eyebrow.

"Well, that is certainly one very important qualification," Anri smiled, "The other key point being that you do not believe that I am who I claim to be, and that is something I find wonderfully refreshing. A healthy dose of skepticism makes for a wonderful conversation piece, don't you agree? It give me more of a challenge to work with."

Nabiki found herself smiling in spite of herself, and she glanced away to attempt to at least partially conceal her amusement.

"I've been thinking about what you and your brothers were saying last night," she carefully broached the subject, "And I noticed a number of contradictions and problem areas in your lengthy presentation..."

"Only a few?" Anri asked with arched eyebrows, "What a relief. I was beginning to think that you hadn't noticed anything wrong and were taking my word for everything. That you don't speaks highly for you and confirms what I had hoped would be your strongest suit, and the reason for which I chose you."

"And that's another thing," Nabiki frowned, "Why exactly did you single me and Ranchan out in the first place? I mean, surely you could have picked somebody more suited to all of this spiritualism stuff..."

"Perhaps I could," Anri mused, "But this crisis calls for someone who isn't blinded by dangerous preconceptions. You are not one of my followers, and in fact have every reason to distrust and be wary of the religions nominally founded in my name. Even now you doubt the truthfulness of certain aspects of my story, and that is why I think you will do well against Otono and his minions...because they do believe, and I can never appear before a believer to affirm their beliefs when they are founded upon so much raw error."

"So that's your real purpose?" Nabiki asked, "To pit Ranchan and me against the Christians...because we're Shinto and they're not?"

"Such a remarkable religion this Shinto," Anri mused, glancing out at the grassy field, "To respect and worship the elements and forces of nature, seeking kinship with the spiritual presence of the land and the ancestors who came before you..."

"And what would you know about it?" Nabiki scowled, feeling moderately defensive as their conversation touched on the highly personal nature of her own personal beliefs.

"Everything," Anri smiled, "Or rather as much as I consider important. You may not leap to the belief that I was, in fact, once a Prince named Siddhhartha, or that I founded a small school that grew to become then first Shaolin monastery, but you can hardly belief that I am a stranger to your ways and customs. And, as I was saying, I find much that is admirable about own beliefs. There is so much more truth to be found in the harmony that you seek with nature than in all the dusty tomes and dried out bits of parchments that once obsessed my days when I studied to be a rabbi. I've said it often enough if people had the wit to see and the ear to listen...that one cannot take the word of another when it comes to matters as delicate as religion...that in the end you must be your own authority and set your own example rather than copy the ideas and philosophies of another."

"Very iconoclastic of you," Nabiki noted, "One might almost deem you anarchistic."

"Anything but," Anri sat upright, "Nor am I a Nihilist, or an Agnostic, nor even an Atheist, as some would imagine. But if I told you how to reach the highest highs you would laugh and say that nothing could be so simple. But you've been told many times before that Messiahs pointed to the door, yet no one had the guts to leave the temple."

"Poetry?" Nabiki asked.

"Tommy by the Who," Anri smiled, "I always did like that song...so concise and to the point, it puts the Psalms to shame, though much of the rest of the play was a mess with its obsession about drugs and other counter-cultural nonsense."

Nabiki eyed the man incredulously, "Are you saying you have more in common with Roger Daltry than with Paul and all the saints who preach in your name?"

"If they preach Paul's message at the expense of mine, yes," Anri replied, "But truth is not contained in any one source or written Sutra. Truth is everywhere, it is inherent in the very nature of all existence. There is no thing that is not true in itself, and if you learn to observe and make careful analysis of the things that nature teaches you then you will be on the path to enlightenment and will hardly need a guide or Guru to be your teacher. Rather it is life itself that is the teacher, though there is certainly nothing wrong with keeping one's mind open to new thoughts, ideas and the impressions of others."

"So...in other words it's all the same to you," Nabiki said, "Whether Christian or Buddhist, a holy man is someone who listens to himself...regardless of what has been recorded as your wisdom?"

Anri's eyes twinkled with amusement and then he said, "'What a piece of work is a man...how noble in faculty, how admirable in form and expression. In repose how like an angel, in apprehension how like unto a god. Yet...what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights me not, no nor woman, though by your smiling you would seem to think other.'"

Nabiki caught herself smiling, "Now you're quoting Shakespeare?"

"Well, why not?" Anri asked, "He quoted from me often enough, so why shouldn't I return the favor?"

Nabiki turned and gazed off into the distance then said, "'I could be bound inside of a nutshell and count myself a King of infinite space...were it not that I have...bad dreams...'"

"Saotome-san!" Trudy's voice barked harshly.

Nabiki started from her trance and turned to stare blank-faced at her annoyed looking instructor.

"I trust that Asamiya-san and I are not boring you too much?" the redhead said tartly, "Or would it be too much to ask that we have a moment of your attention?"

Saki herself was staring at Nabiki curiously, but with a look almost of gratitude to have someone else be the focus of attention as she was panting hard and perspiring all over.

"Ah..." Nabiki glanced around but found that Anri was no longer there beside her. She was about to silently curse him for leaving her in such an awkward state when his voice came to her rescue, and with a start she found him now standing slightly off to her right hand, just over her shoulder and holding up a pair of soda bottles as if he had only just fetched them from a corner vender.

"My pardon, Matthews-san," the tall man smiled, "It was my fault for distracting her at this critical juncture, but you see...I had something important to discuss and...oh dear..."

All at once Trudy fell down on one knee and bowed her head in humble submission, "Lord Monalon...please forgive me. I did not know that it was you who was there...I had thought, perhaps, that my novice student was being visited by a different sort of apparition."

Both Saki and Nabiki stared in tacit disbelief at the manner in which their new Sensei was behaving, for from her deferential tone one would think she were a Samurai paying respects to her liege lord Daimyo from ancient feudal times, much as they each had observed in various Kurusawa movies.

"Ah...yes," Anri sounded somewhat uncomfortable with this display of open fealty and said, "Well...my apologies nonetheless since it was not my intention to disrupt your class, but seeing as there are things that I wished to discuss with your apprentice in private..."

"But of course, my Lord," Trudy replied without looking up, "Whatever you wish to share with my novice can only be of the highest importance to everyone, and so I defer to your wisdom and lend you her services freely for as long as they are needed."

"Novice?" Nabiki asked, but her next question was drowned out by the reaction of her fellow classmate.

"Who is that?" Saki asked, sounding to all the word as though she had just set eyes on a major Pop Idol and was open-mouthed in astonished admiration.

"He is the Lord Anri Monalon Maitreya, Novice," Trudy informed her in a low growl, "Boy your head and show respect to he who is the Lord of Light, the tenth Avataric Incarnation of the Buddha..."

"He is?" Saki asked, and for some odd reason Nabiki felt annoyance at her friend's smitten reaction, as though disturbed that the pink haired Sekeban Deka mught be falling under some sort of spell or enchantment cast by the charismatic Anri.

"Er...could we dispense with all of that for the moment?" Anri pleaded, quite obviously not thrilled by the 'fan greeting' that he was receiving, "I find it terribly flattering and all that you feel the need to respond to me that way, but it is hardly necessary, and-in any event-I much prefer to deal with someone by looking them in the eyes rather than the top of their head. I find it much less...distracting, for one thing."

"But my Lord," Trudy looked up at him, "You are one of those who guided my future self and helped her to obtain enlightenment so that she could pass onto me the gifts of your teachings."

"Well...yes, but that hasn't happened for me yet," Anri replied, "I do look forward to encountering your future self. She seems like such a charming young lady, and I certainly am flattered to know that my words of wisdom will be of some moderate assistance to her development and training...but this has not yet come about, and by your own actions you are attempting to prevent that world from manifesting into existence..."

"And yet it does exist...because I remember it, Lord Anri," Trudy replied, "And so I remain indebted to you and wish to pay my regards in the manner that befits my training."

"I thought Kurustani were trained to respect all living things," Anri mused, "Even the ones they are intent on killing. Surely you must have some regard for your own dignity behaving like this in front of these, your students. What are they to make of you giving ground before me? A teacher may be no more important that his student, or a servant to his master, but if both are equal in the eyes of the One, then should either behave more humbly to one than the other?"

"As always your words offer wise counsel," Trudy nodded, rising back to her feet and then addressing herself to Nabiki, "Pay your respects to Lord Anri and do as he instructs you, Novice. We will speak again when you are returned from his lessons, and then we will resume training in my ways. And now...enough of a rest break. Asamiya-san, resume your practice kicking."

"H-Hai..." Saki said, reluctantly peeling her eyes away from Anri to resume her grueling exercises, leaving Nabiki to again feel a trace of mild annoyance at her friend's uncharacteristically enthralled manner.

"Oh, and before I forget," Anri spoke up, taking a step forward and holding out one of the two bottles in his hands, "Please give this to your apprentice. She looks as if she could use a shot of refreshener, and I want to a good deal of trouble to obtain these for the both of your students."

"But of course, my Lord," Trudy bowed before accepting the bottle, then passing it along to Saki, "Here, drink this, and do not worry. Whatever the Lord Anri considers healthful will greatly nourish your spent reserves, Apprentice."

Saki took the bottle and read the label then said, "Manna Kola? I've never heard of this..."

"That's because it isn't sold here," Anri replied, handing the other bottle to Nabiki, "But trust me, it will give you the spark you need to achieve the results you are after."

Nabiki read her own bottle's label then turned it around and-out of habit-started scanning the ingredients listing on the back then said aloud, "Made from the rare extract of the Ghenna Leaf with Aloe Vera and Ginseng?"

Anri squatted down on his heels and said, "On a timeline far removed from here an intrepid chemist discovered a rare plant in the Burmese jungle that was found to possess unusual properties due to its nature as a natural absorbent of naturally occurring ley-line energy. The plants have to be carefully cultivated on special plantations to preserve their freshness, yet it's a medically established beverage that helps the body to restore expended energy reserves. But don't take my word on it, have a sip. You might even like it."

Nabiki reluctantly did unscrew the top then took a sip from the fizzing contents of the bottle and was immediately struck by the savory flavor of wholesome good sweetness that tickled her tongue and made her throat tingle all the way down to her stomach. She took another sip, and then another, and then held the bottle back with a look of pure astonishment, "It's good?"

"I'll say!" Saki marveled, herself studying the bottle as if it literally were filled with Manna from heaven, "One sip and I feel my exhaustion disappear. It's the best beverage that I can ever remember tasting!"

"You see?" Trudy smiled, "There are few individuals in this world whom you can trust to never betray you, and the Lord Anri is one of them...although, to be totally honest, you might think otherwise after dealing with him in only a few encounters."

"Well then, Matthews-san," Anri smiled, "Now that your student is rested, shouldn't you get back to your training?"

"Of course," Trudy said, "And...not to criticize you or anything, Sir, but please call me Wells, not Matthews."

"My apologies again," Anri said, then waited until the teacher had resumed her training with Saki before turning his glance towards Nabiki, "Do you see now why I rarely reveal myself to anybody? I'd much rather enjoy anonymity than to have to fend off behavior such as that."

Nabiki took another sip and delighted at the way it tickled her insides, "She really seems to think quite highly of you."

"You think?" Anri gave another of his patented ironic smiles then said, "And I think quite highly of her, even if she isn't truly one of my agents."

"She's not?" Nabiki asked with a cocked eyebrow.

"She is a servant of Death, while I...am a child of Life and learning," Anri replied, "Our two systems are quite complimentary but opposite in nature. I seek to teach enlightenment, to save lives and souls, while she takes the lives of those who have been corrupted."

"I'm surprised you're not bitter enemies," Nabiki noted.

"Why?" Anri asked, "Life and Death are complimentary states, not opposite conditions as you may have been conditioned to believe. After all, one inevitably flows into the other in an eternal cycle of death and rebirth. The world may seem infinite but there must always be an exchange of energies to maintain the balance between one and the other if the world is not to fall into entropy or stagnation. Death must play her part in the greater scheme of creation, for she clears the way for new life to be born and clears out the rot of stagnation left behind by those who overstay their time in this world. She is a function of Order, and thus as much my sister as Ulsa Laolana."

"What, you've got something against living forever?" Nabiki smirked.

"Hardly," he replied with an ironic expression, "Yet for something to live something else must inevitably die, much as a predator and his prey work to maintain an ecological balance. The old must yield their place for the young who replace them, the sick must give way for the healthy. It is knowing when and where the time is right that Death can make her harvest. That is the trick to keeping this universe on a sound track of continuous purpose. Not everyone can live forever, after all, or else the world would become an even more uncomfortably overcrowded place than it already is. Nor should we have to live forever since we must all spend our time in the Other Realm revitalizing our souls in between different states of incarnate being."

"That's a little too metaphysical for my blood," Nabiki noted, but nonetheless she enjoyed another sip from her bottle, thinking of how much like honeyed tea it tasted, in some ways even superior to the excellent brews that Shampoo could make on behalf of her Airen.

"You may think so now, but just wait until you get to the advanced levels of the program," Anri chuckled, then sobered gradually and said in a quieter tone, "Life is a continuous journey full of self-discovery and wonder, Saotome-san. The tragedy comes when a life is cut short prematurely, or never has the chance to blossom for one fell reason or another."

"Well, for my part I'm not trying to live forever," Nabiki said, "Just long enough to collect retirement and see my grandkids off to college."

"Oh, I think you could last a bit longer than that," Anri smiled, "Death may be inevitable but that's no reason why we should hurry the process along or go to her embrace prematurely. It is how you live, not how long, that marks the path to enlightened living. By the same token there is no reason to hurry the process of old age and the enfeeblement that comes with it since it is far better to enjoy a long and healthy existence than to see one's energies sapped by decay before one has learned the secret purpose to their existence."

"But don't you and your brothers violate that principle by your very existence?" Nabiki asked.

"Not at all," Anri said, then paused, "Well...maybe Udan and Ulsa do, since neither of them has perished in the past twelve thousand years, and they are still on their first incarnations while Reka and I have been to the Other World and back off and on when conditions allowed it. But even they will know the touch of Lady Death in due time when there is no longer a need for us, when humanity has evolved to the point that they no longer have need of our protection and guidance."

Nabiki frowned as she regarded the fair haired man at her side then asked, "What's the deal with that brother of yours anyway? Why is he so grim all of the time, and why doesn't he ever talk...or at least say something in words rather than that freaky way in which he communnicates...?"

"Ah well," Anri sighed, "You have to understand one thing where it concerns Udan...he is a lover of humanity who has lived to see countless generations come and pass with time...and he bears with him the memory of each and every person with whom he has encountered. Imagine knowing thousands-no, make that millions-of faces to whom you can attach both a name and a memory, all the particulars of their existence...then imagine if the vast majority of them were no more, only to be encountered occasionally or at random when they cross your path in their current incarnation?"

Nabiki shook her head, "That would be...pretty weird, I've got to admit."

"Udan has outlived nations, Saotome-san," Anri continued, "He has faced monsters and demons in their legions and experienced adventures the like of which you could hardly imagine. He is a warrior who has seldom tasted defeat, and never the kiss of Lady Death herself, whom he cheats upon like a lover. Mind you he has sent more than his share of enemies to her cold embrace, and monsters of every type and description. So...over the course of time he gradually lost interest in speaking his thoughts aloud. He has been both wanderer and hermit and is used to the sounds of silence that fill his endless years like a continuous symphony of sounds and impressions. He can make his intentions plain enough when he wishes it, but to vocalize his thoughts is something he has no need for. It is not at all like telepathy when he reaches into your mind...he simply orients reality to record his impressions within your mind, and all you have to do is listen to that inner voice and you will grasp what he is saying."

"Weird," Nabiki averred, "And your sister?"

"Ulsa Laolana, too, has no need for a voice to convey what she is experiencing at any given moment," Anri explained, "She simply is and that is all that can be said upon the matter. To question her beyond this is to voice a riddle of the ages, for compared with her the Sphinx itself is a chatterbox. She is omniscient and omnipresent and knows the ultimate secrets of space and time, which she keeps to her own counsel rather than share what she knows with those who are incapable of grasping his wisdom. To her the secrets of existence and the purpose of life itself was entrusted, and to her even I must bow and acknowledge her as superior to my own humble perceptions..."

"And what is the purpose to your existence, Lord Anri?" Nabiki asked, "And just how old are you, in a round ball-park figure?"

"Hmmm," he seemed to think on it a moment then said, "In this incarnation? I'll be celebrating my six hundred and eighty-ninth birthday come next Tuesday."

"Say what?" Nabiki blinked, reckoning him to look quite a substantial lot younger than that, barely even into his mid-twenties.

"I was reborn in the thirteenth century, Saotome-san," Anri replied, "My mother came from an obscure northern village that was sacked and burned by the Enemy before I was barely even conceived by my mortal father. Fortunately for the both of us my mother was found and spirited away to a safe haven by monks who served the Temple of Light in a parallel dimension known as Arcadia, where Thelendra herself was born and conceived of a woman I knew there...the previous incarnation of my current wife, Elea Ventura."

"Say...what?" Nabiki asked, "You're married?"

"And happily so," Anri smiled, "Did you think Thelendra was born out of wedlock, illegitimate? Hmmm...how odd a term that is. How can any daughter be born who is not legitimately a child of her parents? Just because the circumstances of birth are often less benign than the conventional family model..."

"Aren't we getting a bit off the subject?" Nabiki asked.

"Quite right," Anri nodded, "At any rate, the High Arcons of Arcadia had prophesized my rebirth and had dispatched the monks to bring my mother and me to their plane where I was coached and tutored in the ways of Knowledge and Wisdom by gentle masters who were keen on helping me to become aware and to recall my awareness of my nine previous incarnations. It is thanks to their patience that I was able to achieve Satori while still quite young, and as you can see I have hardly aged more than a few days in all the years since then. By my nineteenth year I was awarded the title of a Boddhisava and graduated with full honors. I was then at liberty to roam where I would and to become my own life's teacher. So you see, I'm not quite so miraculous as lucky to have people who nurtured me to become the man I am today...but in many other respects I am my own mentor since all of my previous lives contributed their input to teach me humility, for from them I learned both pride...and folly."

"If you see far it is because you stand on the shoulder of giants, right?" Nabiki asked, "But what is your purpose for seeking me out? I'm not really all that enlightened, and I have no desire to become a Buddhist saint, or even a Boddhisava."

"You underestimate yourself, Saotome-san," Anri smiled, "You are exactly the sort of person whom I need in order to fight this latest chapter of the Darkness that threatens the way of Order."

"But doesn't that mean that you're using your wits to try and manipulate me and Ranchan into becoming your tools...or pawns on a giant chessboard?" Nabiki reasoned, "And everything that you've done to and with us so far has been for that purpose?"

"If by purpose you mean do I attempt to control you...then no, that I do not," Anri replied, "I merely suggest pathways open to you and provide you with information that I think you would find useful. So why do you suspect me of any deeper ulterior motives?"

"I know enough about you by now to know that everything you do has a purpose," Nabiki answered, "Like matching your daughter up with my sister."

"Ah yes," Anri nodded sagely, "But in that respect your sister is as necessary to the larger scheme of things as either you or your husband. Understand, I did not purposefully choose to mess up your life of make an already complicated situation for you seem insurmountable...I merely requested your services and did what I could to set a chain of events in motion that would make you aware of what was at stake, and just why you are needed."

"To defend the path of Life and Light against...those things you showed us earlier?" Nabiki shuddered at the memory, still too disturbed by the skin-crawling sensations that had been produced at the sight of those "Old Ones" of the previous night's vision.

"Yes, of course that," Anri agreed, "But I'm not co-opting you or forcing you to do this against your will. You have the choice to back away and refuse to have any part in these affairs. You wouldn't be of much use to use if you didn't have the free will to make conscious, rational decisions concerning your involvement."

"But by your lights there really isn't any choice at all for me here," Nabiki argued, "To refuse to participate would mean allowing another to take my place...someone like Saki here, or somebody else who had the knowledge, skills and training to be your agent."

"I will concede that I did tilt the argument slightly in order to convince you of this," Anri sighed, "Your conscience is as much your master as my own is to me, and often I am compelled to do that which is necessary because I sense that it is for the best...but not always what I wish to do, and often there are sacrifices that must be made, albeit that every sacrifice is deeply regretted."

"Sacrifices like me, Ranchan and Kasumi?" Nabiki asked.

"Not if I can arrange it otherwise," Anri replied, "There are no assurances or guarantees in this business, Saotome-san. The risk is great, I will not lie to you about that. It is not my intent to use and discard any one of you, but if you do not rise to the challenges imposed on you, then you and all you love will inevitably suffer. Ariman is pernicious and relentless and will leave no stone unturned in his goal to destroy this world and use it as a means to infect the rest of the Cosmos. In order to preserve the future that you crave you must be willing to do whatever it takes to defeat Evil...and by that I don't just mean the carriers and servants of Evil. It is Evil itself that must be defeated if we are to preserve the balance of this world and keep it viable into the future."

"That's a bit much for me don't you think?" Nabiki asked, "I'm just a simple martial artist and a school girl..."

"Keep telling yourself that and that is all you will ever be," Anri replied with a shrewd look in his jade green eyes, "But I see much more in you than this...I see the person you are struggling to become, a woman of character to whom others turn instinctively for guidance and protection. I see a follower of the Way of Light who was well along on the path long before you even came to my attention..."

"Me?" Nabiki half-consciously chuckled, then took another sip from her bottle, "Flattering, but I don't think I'd qualify myself that highly."

"You do know what the meaning of life is all about, don't you?" Anri asked her with a knowing smile that hinted of deeper meaning.

"Enlighten me," Nabiki said as she sipped from her beverage.

"Sex," Anri replied forthrightly, then paused while his companion spat out the contents of her mouth, unintentionally spraying the grass before coughing and sputtering for a moment, then glaring at him with an angry look of resentment.

"You did that on purpose," she said accusingly.

"According to you I do everything with a purpose," Anri smiled, "But I just wanted to get your reaction. Does my answer surprise you all that much?"

"Frankly yes, considering who you claim to be...or have been," Anri answered.

"Ah," Anri nodded sagely, "My reputation as a celibate. Where in heaven's name did that ever get started? Oh true, I once harbored foolish notions about renouncing the flesh of the world, denying our animal impulses and such nonsense as that...but do you really credit that as the path to enlightenment and knowledge? What with all your considerable experiences in the matter, and the little voice inside you that cries out in protest at the very notion of renouncing physical love as a wholesome expression of our continuing existence?"

"I think I follow you," Nabiki said, "Why renounce something you obviously practice?"

"You mean by the very fact that I have a rather bodacious child as evidence of my fecundity who is currently pursuing a relationship with your sister?" Anri smiled with telling candor.

"Frankly yes," Nabiki frowned, "And I must say that I'm more than a bit resentful of whatever role you've played in matching them together."

"Ah, you flatter me with the claim that I have the power to make people fall in love against their own natural inclination," Anri sagely noted, "Hate to break this to you, Saotome-san, but they were more than capable of finding each other on their own, as they have done in numerous prior incarnations where they were not only lovers but wed...those times when your sister was born of a different gender."

"Excuse me?" Nabiki blurted, "Oneechan as a guy? You've gotta be kidding!"

"Oh no," Anri assured her, "The normal pattern with reincarnation is that you come back as something different than what you were the last time...to balance out those elements that you were deficient in with your previous lifetime. Karma does that to most people in the natural order of things. I've even done it myself a time or two when matters justified it...though Udan and Reka have spurned the practice, and Ulsa herself has remained stalwartly female for the past twelve thousand years as time is measured for you mortals."

"You mean...you were a girl once?" Nabiki asked in bland dismay.

Anri shrugged, "I try to broaden my awareness of things with different experiences during the course of my nine previous incarnations. Though it is true that I have been male in most of those past lifetimes, it does not pay to think of life from a purely masculine perspective. Indeed, you yourself have a much greater appreciation of what it's like to be a man than is the case with the women in your lives, your co-wife Perfume notwithstanding, and Kuonji-san in her guise as a man also has the benefit of the male perspective."

"Point taken," Nabiki noted, "So...is that what you mean about sex being the key to universal harmony and enlightenment?"

"Actually, it's only a tiny part of what I was implying," Anri answered, "Most philosophers and theologians will try and convince you that the world of flesh is an awful prison to which the soul has been entrapped, and that as soon as we can rid ourselves of the bonds of our flesh the sooner we can enjoy the fruits of paradise...but I put it to you, what sort of paradise would it be where carnal love was totally forbidden?"

"Not one I'd care to visit," Nabiki frankly admitted, though she smiled in fond memory of her previous night's encounter with her mother in Elysium.

"Neither would I if you want the truth of the matter," Anri sniffed, "I have this theory, you see, that the whole notion about Sex being 'sinful' originated with people who generally hated life and who found physical existence to be a horrible state that they deplored with every breath that was taken. After all, in those days they didn't have good medical or dental coverage, and the average lifespan was short, unhealthy and quite brutish. The loftiest noble back then does not live so well as the average peasant of the modern era, and they didn't even have rolled toilet paper with which to relieve themselves. Small wonder they found life so unpleasant...and the desert dwelling nomads who wrote the early Bible were the worst in that respect since life for them was one endless daily struggle."

"So they wanted out in as short a time as they could arrange it?" Nabiki asked of the man beside her.

"Well, given what they went through on the whole, wouldn't you?" Anri replied, "But seeing as life these days is not so difficult as it was back then you would think that people would be a lot more happy and healthy...that they would appreciate more the gift of life that has been given. I mean...seriously...doesn't it ever strike you how truly miraculous it is that there are even homo-sapiens living in this world and that-on the whole-you have been given a planet that is uniquely suited to your form of existence?"

"I rather thought that humans were inevitably a part of the big picture," Nabiki said, "You seemed to suggest last night that we're all connected somehow together..."

"That I did indeed," Anri confirmed, "But inevitable? No...hardly. There are worlds beyond measure of which I am aware, and probabilities along timelines that you could not hope to grasp where the conditions of this world were somewhat different...and where human life never evolved, leaving the way open for something else to take your place."

"Like what?" Nabiki asked.

"Like the Serpent Men, for one thing," Anri answered, "You remember them from my lecture? They were originally the dominant intelligent life form in the days before the comet struck and changed the environment completely. What if the asteroid that detached from the comet had missed the planet altogether? Then the Serpent Men would have gone on evolving naturally, and after millions of years who knows what they would look like? Probability lines and numbers...and only a few lines lead in radiating patterns from that moment to this one, so if you dismiss the lines that did not result in the evolution of humans..."

"I get what you're saying," Nabiki said, "We were a long shot that made out good, but what's the point of bringing that up right now? It's a done deal, and people wound up taking over the planet."

"The Serpent Race would argue that they were people as well," Anri noted, "But I will concede the point for now as what I was trying to explain is that the odds were long that we would ever come into being in the first place. And the odds grow even more alarming when you consider the number of alternate ways that history might have gone, and at how many juncture points it might well have been altered. Go far enough and you may come to realize how precarious the course of our existence has been, and what a miracle it is that we survived this long in the first place."

"So by playing the odds we wound up super-lucky?" Nabiki asked.

"More than you could ever hope to understand," Anri replied, "Or even myself for that matter."

"And this relates to Sex being the secret of all creation...how?" Nabiki asked.

"Quite simple really," Anri replied, "Sex is the means by which reproduction is achieved, and without it we would be totally extinct as a species."

"Oh," Nabiki said, "Well...I was kind of hoping it was more than about that..."

"Of course there's more to it," Anri affirmed, "You know as much instinctively as intellectually, and from experience no less, that life is more than just mindless reproduction. Sex is a wonderful gift that the Powers have bestowed upon the human animal, and a necessary condition to our continuing existence as a species, but where humans rise above the level of some self-replicating virus is that we have the capacity to care for one another and to empathize intuitively with one another."

"But not everybody is that compassionate," Nabiki pointed out, "I can think of far too many examples of people I've known who were totally lacking that emotion..."

"As do I," Anri replied, "But that is the aberration they suffer...the inability to feel for both themselves and another. It is recognized as a sociopathic condition and rightly condemned in this era as a negative quality, this ability to turn off one's sympathetic reaction to seeing the suffering and misery that is felt by another."

"Then tell me this, O' Wise Lord and Master," Nabiki said with a touch of renewed sarcasm in her voice, "If sex and procreation are so important to our basic survival, then why do some people fall in love with others in ways that can be considered non-procreative?"

"Why, that one is simple," Anri chuckled, "How many people are there currently living on this planet?"

"Ah...about six billion or so at last count, I think," Nabiki answered.

"Sounds like an awful lot of begetting got us to that point," Anri said, "But most scientific experts believe that a viable population should be no more than half that size, and that including that many people on a world as delicate and ecologically fragile as this is just asking for trouble. A bit too much of being Fruitful and Multiplying, don't you think?"

"You're the one saying this?" Nabiki asked with an arched eyebrow.

"What I am saying is that there has to be more to the shared experience of sex and marriage beyond simple procreation," Anri argued, "Caring and compassion for others is the basic fundamental principle upon which the social contract is established. If not for this then we would hardly have banded together in large communities with shared responsibilities and a differentiated work force...we would have remained hunter-gatherers and nomads and would never have gotten much farther than the harnessing of fire as a weapon. Yet here we are, a species capable of poetry and philosophy, of making complex observations about ourselves and our relationship to the universe? Why then stop at merely the external forces that govern our life? Why not the internal dynamic of romance, which gives life its special zest and flavor."

"I think I follow you," Nabiki said, "So...it doesn't always have to be about making babies..."

"An important element of family life to be certain," Anri replied, "But not the only one that matters, or else why allow an infertile couple to remain together? If a woman or a man cannot conceive, then are they less than fully human because of this? Not if they can adopt and share the responsibility as parents for someone else's child. Or-going further still-what if two people of the same sex decide to make a family without the involvement of a member of the opposite gender? Why should that be regarded as shameful, let alone an abomination?"

"But that's what it says in certain so-called Holy Books," Nabiki pointed out.

"None of which I authored," Anri assured, "And I've since had some severe words for the authors when I've encountered them along the way. But take it from me, I'd not bothered by the thought of a woman lying with another woman, or a man with another man. In fact, if I wanted to say it was a bad thing then I would have done it when I was incarnated as Yesus."

"You never had anything to say about it?" Nabiki asked.

"Two of my closest friends and followers were more than a bit involved with each other," Anri argued "The Bible misquotes their names as Timmothy and Phillip, but those are Greek names, which ought to warn you about the biases of the fellow who turned them from lovers into 'cousins.' My disciples and I knew about their affair and thought nothing of it because they harmed no one and were faithfully devoted to one another."

"I never imagined anything like that, given the tone of the times as I've long understood them," Nabiki marveled.

"In my time?" Anri chuckled, "Saotome-san, in my time we did not even have a name to describe a same-sex lover. Oh true there are those provisions in Leviticus that address the practice, much as the authors of same condemned wearing double knits and visiting temple prostitutes. But I assure you that the practice was quite widespread during the Roman era and was even encouraged in certain quarters, given the wink and then nod by particular Rabbis who chose to see no wrong in what was arguably a personal life orientation. Only those who made a big fuss about the alleged sins of other cultures ever ranted and foamed at the mouth at what they called the 'Heathen' practices of degenerate Greeks, such as Alexander and his lover, Hesphaestian. In fact the Hasmodians were particularly virulent in what they condemned as yet another degenerate sexual foray by the Gentiles...but you already know what I think of that sorry lot. And then there was that arch-hypocrite of the ages, Paul, the False Jew who claimed to speak in my name but who practiced the very perversions that he so vehemently condemned in others."

"Right," Nabiki said, "No need to revisit that whole diatribe, which is obviously a real sore point with you..."

"More than you could hope to realize," Anri sighed, "And then there is your own complex relationship with the women in your lives...surely you find nothing wrong about that? Especially since you've been rather much of an overachiever in the 'fruitful and multiply' begetting?"

"Well," Nabiki smiled awkwardly, "It hasn't always been easy...but yeah, I don't regret it."

"Or take another example," Anri glanced around at the grassy parkland, then pointing with a finger at one distinctive feature to the landscape, "Tell me, my friend...what do you make of your sparring partner there, the pink-haired Sekeban Deka?"

"Saki?" Nabiki asked, watching as the undercover policewoman was being bullied by their mutual coach, "She's all right...and a pretty fair martial artist..."

"All right?" Anri asked incredulously, "She's absolutely stunning! What man worth his salt could fail to appreciate the grace and wonder that is the female body when worked to such perfection? Notice how the lines of her form and figure flow so smoothly in tautly controlled musculature coordination? You see the speed and power of her kicks, the near perfect mastery of breath control, the form and balance of her movements..."

"All right, I see all that," Nabiki complained, only to find herself really staring hard at Asamiya's body from beneath her well-worn school dress, "But what's your point? I'm happily married, I don't go around scoping other women, particularly my friends..."

"Really? What a shame that is," Anri sniffed, "I think that the both of you would look good together in bed, two well-honed female forms clenched together, bringing out the best that is within yourselves for the mutual pleasure of the moment."

Nabiki felt herself growing all the more uncomfortable and wound up snapping, "What's your point? Are you trying to get me to cheat on my wives? I thought you were supposed to be some kind of Paragon of virtue, or King of all Saints or..."

"Paragon of virtue?" Anri sniffed, "Hardly. And most of those who have been awarded the title of 'Sainthood' have done little to honor the profession. I'm afraid that you have entirely the wrong opinion of me if you think me some perfect example of everything that is positive in the male sex. Quite frankly perfection can be boring, and if you have lived as long as I have you come to appreciate that life is about more than denying the basic reason for our existence."

Nabiki studied the man beside her then very quietly said, "You know...there are some people who would describe you on the basis of your own words as being an agent of Satan?"

"Why, thank you for the compliment," Anri smiled, "But I must reluctantly decline the title even as much as I do your contrasting me with perfection. But if you need encouragement in thinking otherwise, then why don't I introduce you to each other?"

"Huh?" Nabiki blinked, "To who?"

"To Satan, of course," Anri replied, "Charming fellow...a bit of a double-dealer, and certainly not to be trusted beyond a certain point, but no where near as bad as his reputation would incline you to think. In fact he's a very good friend of mine. Just be mindful not to let him talk you into buying anything that he has to sell."

"Why?" Nabiki asked, intrigued despite herself, "Will it cost me my eternal soul?"

"Oh no, nothing of the sort," Anri assured, "I just wouldn't want you to get ripped off. After all, he marks his merchandise up outrageously in order to make it look like he's offering you a discount. But judge for yourself since I'm taking you to see him."

"You're taking me...to meet Satan?" Nabiki blanched.

"Oh come now," Anri gave her a shrewd look, "A woman of your perceptiveness obviously cannot believe all of the rumors that you've heard told of him by charlatans and liars? Trust me on this, you'll find he's not quite the monster that you've been lead to believe by those who need a bogey man to frighten the children into behaving like good little Christians."

"Ah...well..." Nabiki reluctantly hesitated, wondering if there were some way to politely decline this particular invitation.

"Now there, what have you to fear?" Anri smiled winningly, "You're with me, and do you think that I would allow any evil thing to harm you in my presence?"

"Now there is a loaded question if ever I heard one," Nabiki sighed, but reluctantly took the man's offered hand and was gently lifted to her feet, compelled to follow him by no cause that she could rationally describe save her own curiosity. And as the Cat might ell you, curiosity can be a dangerous comodity if you cling to it too closely...

Continued.

Comments/Criticisms/Free Market of Ideas: shadowmane

Or: shadowmane9849

What has happened to Takaharis, Ryonami and Gosunkuji? Fear not gentle readers...the answer to that awaits a Lemony Side-Story that I've been intending to write on this trio for some time now, and I assure you it will be an amusing romp that will set Dante and Milton rolling in their graves...in whatever incarnation they presently are enjoying. Meanwhile Angelique begins her training of Tatewaki Kuno, and Natsume Tendo will be gaining an additional trainer of her own in the art of being a Slayer, while Ranma gains insight from his new Sensei, Siren...and Nabiki herself has a devilish encounter of a very different sort in, "Sympathy for the Devil," or, "Don't Fear The Sleeper." Be there!

X

/pre 


	92. Chapter 92

preDnabiki181

Nabiki 1/2

"A Very Scary Thought"

by Jim Robert Bader

(Inspired by the works of Rumiko Takahashi Others,  
with concepts and characters created by fellow fanfic writers Wade Tritschler, DB Sommers, Nicole Manders, Andrew Greaves, Bill Guiroff and countless others, including "Buffy"  
creator Joss Whedon; with special thanks to my good pal Shiva for his editing and handling of this series.)

(Certain other characters and concepts are of my own innovation, including my interpretation of the Monster of Mary Shelly's novel, the Furies, Trudy, Takaharis Angelique d'Anjou, Anri and the Daokan, Thelendra the Dream Weaver and various other guest stars appearing in this portion of the Nabiki 1/2 series...)

Chapter Sixty-Eight.

Episode One-Hundred-Eighty-One.

Symphony for the Devil.

(With special apologies to the late Robert Asprin for the obvious swipe of one of his best fantasy concepts, to say nothing of such inventions as the D-Hopper...)

"Prepare yourself, Monsieur," Angelique said resolutely while extending her weapon towards her opponent, "You are about to receive your first important lesson."

"I am prepared, Sensei," Tatewaki replied, raising his own bokken in salute to the blonde haired French woman as the two of them squared off in traditioknal Yakuda gear within the private training dojo attached to the Kuno household.

"So you say, mon amis," Angelique smiled, "But zee proof is in zee pudding, non?"

With that declaration she came at the younger man from a standing start, her speed so incredible and unexpected that Tatewaki was thrown immediately on the defensive, and in less than a second he was sprawled out on the wooden floor recoiling from the bruises he had just received while Angelique stood poised and ready above him, then very solemnly raised her sword and lowered it again, resting the tip upon the floor in a casual manner.

"You are indeed quite skilled, Monsieur," Angelique remarked, "And my compliments to your trainer, whomever he might be."

"Thank you," Tatewaki said, partially stunned by the suddenness of his defeat, "But...you don't have to spare my feelings. In fact...you didn't by very much," he winced.

Angelique inclined her head in a sympathetic nod as she said, "Consider zhose bruises earned as a mark of how far you have yet to ascend if you are to reach my own standard. I was accounted a champion fencer of my day and held third-rank among zee Temvarai Order beneath zee standing of my liege lady Verlana, who was head of our Silver Legion. I am far from zee best zhat our school has ever yielded, but since in my day our skills were meant to be employed for defense of life and nor mere sport I have homed my art through many accomplished battles."

"So I've gathered," Tatewaki said, waving off the attempt of his faithful manservant, Sasuke, to assist him in getting back to his feet, "If you are far from the best then the others of your time might have been mighty swordsmen of valor. As it is I feel that I must gather up the shards of my shattered self-conception if I am to engage you in another round."

"Non," Angelique softly chuckled, "Non at all, Monsieur. In fact I merely sought to test you as I would any foe whom I have engaged for zee first time on zee field of battle. Now zhat I have some measure of your skills I will adjust myself accordingly to give you...how you say? A more sporting proposition. After all, you can hardly be expected to learn if you spend most of your time sprawled out upon your back...to say nothing of zee dirty looks that I would thus earn from your fiancée."

Off to the sides Natsume was indeed staring with wide-eyed absorption at this first exchange between her promised man and the charismatic stranger from another time and era who was absorbing her interest for entirely different reasons. To see her formidable Tatawaki be so easily toppled by the foreigner would have normally inspired in her a righteous sense of outrage, coupled with a desire to avenge her man while proving her devotion. But...against this surprisingly intriguing and quite talented creature...

She found herself staring in both confusion and wonder, amazed that she could be feeling such a curious attraction for the older woman when never before had she stared at a member of her sex with quite such an array of confusing emotions. It had taken her the better part of a year to overcome her instinctive Homophobia when it came to her adopted sister Nabiki and her bisexual proclivities involving a group marriage with a man and at least three other women...and yet here she was experiencing butterflies in her stomach and an erotically charged thrill at merely being mentioned, let alone noticed, by this stunningly beautiful Angelique d'Anjou.

What was it about this self-described Temuvarai that made her so irresistable? It was causing Natsume Tendo to question many long-held assumptions about herself and giving her an odd sense of betrayal to know that she could be feeling this way towards someone other than her Tatewaki...

She almost jumped when she heard Mousse comment near to the side of Kurumi, "Incredible...such speed, power, control and precision! If the elders of our village witnessed her just now then there would have been immediate calls to have her adopted into our tribe, and plenty enough warriors ready to offer themselves as the means for her inclusion."

"She certainly is fast," Kurumi said, "Even I had trouble following what she did just now, and I've never seen anyone but Nabiki take Tachi-kun down that smoothly."

"She certainly is a most extraordinary on several key counts," Kodachi remarked while cradling her infant daughter in her arms as little Ivory slept soundly wrapped in clean linens, oblivious to the goings on of her elders.

"You can say that again, Mistress," Keiko averred, trying very hard to control her reactions since drooling over a woman other than Kodachi would earn a stiff reprimand (and a trip to the "discipline chamber") from her mistress.

"I wonder where this school is that she claims to come from?" Ryoga murmured in curiosity, oblivious to the rapt way in which Akane was raptly staring at this blonde gaijin while cradling her own son in her arms and nursing him absently from one bared breast.

"It must be a place of mighty warriors indeed," Sasuke himself remarked from where he hovered at the sidelines, as ever attentive to the needs and wishes of his Master and Mistress, "For Master Kuno to be felled so easily and in such an off-handed manner."

Tatewaki himself had already made such an appraisal, but he smiled as he resumed his fighting crouch, holding up his bokken and saying, "You are everything that I had hoped that you would prove to be, fair Lady. I pray that you continue to instruct me as clearly I have much to learn from you, and I find my eagerness but growing with the anticipation."

"Be non too eager or too hasty in your wishes, Kuno-san," Angelique replied while extending her own bokken at the ready, "But this time I shall attempt to slow my attack down somewhat so that you can see my approach and have a better hope of defending yourself. When I am convinced that you are improved I shall adjust my attack accordingly, and by turns seek to improve your speed by compelling you to study my movements."

"Agreed," Tatewaki replied, "But be forewarned that I shall use every ounce of strength and every tool and technique at my disposal to render a better account of myself this time."

"Use everything that you know, Monsieur," Angelique averred, "Hold nothing back save that which could prove useful at a critical juncture."

The fight was on again, only this time the witnesses along the sideline could actually see the Temuvarai move, which did not in any sense take away their sense of collective awe as the blonde whirlwind came surging at the hapless Tatewaki, who did as best he could to fend her off, his bokken moving like a blur to the rapid-fire sound of staccato blows that rained down upon his defenses.

Unbeknownst to the witnesses, however, there was one positioned further back in the rafters who was studying everything with a careful eye that was full of appreciation of the marvelous technique of the blonde French woman, and who freely admired her on other levels, regretting only that she was wearing a baggy yakuta to partially obscure conceal her magnificent profile. He could nonetheless ready by her movements just how fit and limber a body she possessed, which made him grieve at the realization that she was wearing neither a bra nor any panties for him to pilfer after the furious match was over.

"Beautiful," he murmured softly, almost in tears from joy at witnessing such a flowering beauty of ageless, timeless perfection.

That one word, however, was enough to give his presence away to a keen-eyed Ninja named Sasuke, who called out suddenly, "Master-we have an intruder in our midst!" then hastily undid a sling from his belt and loaded it with a marble-shaped bullet which he fired off with a flick of one wrist, seeking his target with the sure aim of a lifetime of long practice.

Or, at least, such had been his intent, but as even Sasuke would have freely admitted his skills as a Ninja were far from the best that could be envisioned. It hardly mattered that he missed his target by at least a half a meter, it was enough to draw the immediate wrath of his intended target, who descended from the rafters and landed nimbly upon the floor just a foot way from Sasuke, who was quick to give back with a horrified gasp when he realized just who it was that he had offended by his actions.

"What was the big idea of that, Fool?" the intruder scowled mightily at the little Ninja.

The faithful manservant of the Kuno mansion gulped in dismay as he said, "M-M-Master Happosai? But...I didn't mean...I didn't know it was you! I...!"

Master Happosai, founder and grand master of the Anything Goes tradition, was good and royally ticked at having his sport be interrupted and was about to visit an appropriate retribution upon the errand malefactor when a melodious voice called sharply in his direction.

"Sirrah, what is zee meaning of zhis?" Angelique demanded, "By what right do you intrude upon zhis private tutoring session and threaten zee loyal servant of zee lord of zee manor?"

Happosai was so delighted to gain the attention of his real quarry that he immediately forgot all about his irritation with Sasuke. As the latter gulped in grateful relief the ancient pervert smiled at the radiant blonde and said, "I was just happening by when I heard a commotion and sought to investigate. By the way, Cutie, my name is Happosai, founder and..."

"Elder grand master of zee Anything Goes Ryu?" Angelique concluded for him, "Indeed, I have heard much regarding you in zee past day or so since last we made...rude acquaintance of one another."

"Oh, you've heard of me?" Happosai resisted the urge to glance towards Akane, who was scowling fiercely in his direction, "Well...wouldn't you care to hear my side?"

"Churl!" Tatewaki snarled, "Thief, base villain, master of perversion and molester of innocent women! How dare you intrude upon my house and threaten my good and faithful Sasuke, who has been more of a father and elder brother to me than was he who sired me and my sister..."

"Oh yes," Happosai spoke up as if only just then remembering his manners, "I heard about y our father...nasty business that. I wanted to offer my condolences for your loss at a time when our two houses should be full of rejoicing...but other matters regretfully took my attention..."

"You mean you had to sneak into their laundry room and still the personal belongings of my Mistress, you old fool?" Keiko sniffed in cynical resentment.

"Oh yes," Kodachi herself remarked, "Not that I ever wear an article of clothing more than a few times before it is discarded, I nonetheless have noticed a substantial depleting of my stock of late, and with no question in my mind as to where those samples of lingerie have wound up subsequence to their absence within my quarters."

Tatewaki was grim-faced as he glared towards Happosai then said, "I thank you for your kind words and sentiments, aged Master...but your presence here is nonetheless disruptive to the harmony of my house. I respectfully ask that you take your ill-gotten goods with you and vacate the premises at once or else..."

"I was about to leave on my own, Boy," Happosai sniffed, pulling out his pipe and taking the time to light it, then take a puff from a pinch of tobacco that he had stowed there, "But I've changed my mind. I think I'll stay and watch some more. Things around here are certainly more interesting with your new personal trainer being present, and I find myself more than a bit intrigued with observing her style, which is very different from the man sword skills of my acquaintance."

"Monsieur," Angelique said carefully, "You may be curious about my skills, but I do not find myself so inclined to give out lessons to one who is so rude to a benefactor. Please leave at once or I shall be forced to demonstrate to you zee true extent of my abilities as an officer of the Temuvarai Silver Legion."

"Oh?" Happosai was intrigued by the politely worded threat, "Do tell? Now this sounds like it might be worth hanging around for."

"Unfortunately for you, Monsieur," Angelique said, squaring her stance with one bare foot extended out towards her foe while the other was placed at a perpendicular angle, "Zhis lesson is one zhat you shall find more than merely intriguing. Kuno-san, please move to zee side...zhis requires open space and much concentration."

"Ah...hai, Sensei," Tatewaki responded, feeling something curiously electrical in the air as he moved a short distance away, his eyes never leaving the blonde woman as he sought to fathom what she was about and noticed how she held her sword in one hand, pointed down and at a slight angle to one side as if at the ready.

Happosai smiled, put away his pipe, then spread his tiny legs and braced himself for anything that was likely nest to happen. He did not have much concern for his own personal safety, nor did he anticipate anything actually dangerous happening as he had been witness to a thousand different specialized schools and techniques regarding both Western and Eastern fencing styles, and he could hardly anticipate anything new being added to his experience. Besides, he had a long ingrained distrust of those who relied upon a weapon to do their fighting, and he smirked in confidence that-however good her style might be-the use of a sword inevitably meant it was weakened and thus inferior to his own brand of unarmed fighting.

But then a curious thing began to happen...the air within the room grew incredibly still and the temperature seemed to fall by several degrees for a few seconds, then warmed up abruptly as a wind kicked up from seemingly no direction.

Happosai's eyes widened in surprise as he felt and saw the intensity of the woman's Chi as it flared from candle-power to the intensity of an arc light. The stirrings of energy emanating from within her were of such potency that a collective gasp was heard about the room, for the Chi-sensitive martial artists who were present could detect its rise without knowing its true source and dimension, though Happosai was quick to grasp its meaning and gasped in amazement that he had failed to perceive it before, this foreign woman's true nature.

And then she moved, sweeping her sword along the wooden floor of the dojo, and all at once a wave of force rose up at her command, turning the calm of the air into a swirling maelstrom that circled around her like the funnel of a cyclone, and then with a stabbing gesture she drove the force of this "Manna Wind" towards Happosai, who stood like a rock before a rushing tide before it picked him up and sent him careening backwards.

Everyone gasped as they saw the perverted old Master go tumbling the length of the room before managing to right himself and regain his balanced footing, at which point the little man turned back to Angelique and said, "I knew it! I should have known it! It was there all the time, why didn't I see it? You don't just look like a Goddess, you really are a-!"

"Enough!" Angelique cried, and her sword cut through the air as though slicing through the thick curtain of Manna that she had erected, sending a shockwave hurtling towards Happosai, who was smarter this time and did not repeat the mistake of attempting to withstand it.

Rather the old man got the hell out of there just instants before the "Blade-Slash" attack struck the wall behind him and immediately created a new exit in the side of the building.

Kuno stood staring in amazement before turning to regard the blonde Temuvarai, and into the hush that followed these exchanges he said, "Sensei?"

Angelique fairly trembled, but regained her bearings and composure and sighed, "He is mistaken, I am no goddess. Rather I am a servant of God and revere Her in all of my actions, saving only for the imprudence of my last attack, which went wide of its mark I fear. My apologies, Kuno-san, but I had not reckoned how disturbed I was by zee presence of one who is possessed of zee soul of a foul Demon."

"Ah...quite all right," Tatewaki said, taking stock of the size of the hole his new Sensei had just created in his dojo, "Think nothing of it...it's but a trifle. I'll have Sasuke contact the appropriate repair facilities to have that attended to...later."

"A non," Angelique turned from the student to his manservant and said, "I had non wished to add to your burden, Monsieur Sasuke...please forgive my carelessness, it was non by intention."

"Ah...quite all right, Mistress...I mean...Lady d'Anjou," Sasuke numbly replied before murmuring to himself, "She stood up for me? Against the demon Master Happosai? No one's ever stood up for me before...no one but the Master...or the Mistress..."

"Did Tachi-kun just say that was only a trifle?" Kurumi asked as she indicated the truck-sized hole in the building.

"Some trifle," Ryoga remarked, wondering if he himself could create such a gap using his Bakusai Tenketsu."

"Obviously there's a different definition to the word 'trifle' than the one I'm aware of, Mistress," Keiko remarked with a mild shudder to add emphasis to her own awe-struck appraisal.

"Indeed," Kodachi agreed, though she was more intent on noticing the overly sensitive way that the blonde had reacted to being referred to as a "goddess."

"Such power," Natsume remarked in studied amazement.

"Yeah, no kidding about that," Akane agreed, "No wonder Tachi-kun wants to study under her this badly."

Natsume frowned at the unfortunate wording of that statement, but even more so when she saw the expression in her fiancé's face as he was regarding this Angelique as though she were the second coming.

"Monsieur," Angelique sighed, "Perhaps it would be best to postpone your lessons for another day to attend to zhis...accident of my unintentional making?"

"Sensei...are you jesting with me?" Tatewaki grinned, "Your besting of the perverted Happosai is all the proof that I need that you are the one whom I must bow to and acknowledge as my mentor. All of my life I have dreamed to training under a swordswoman of your prowess...and now you think that I would cut things short just because of a bit of ventilation? Go to...I would rather fall to my knees and beg you to remain if for no other purpose than that you may impart upon me some small crumb of wisdom from the vast array of skills which you could teach me."

"Ah well..." Angelique smiled, "If in truth you are non too bothered by my brief loss of self-possession...perhaps zhen we may resume where we left off just before zee interruption?"

"Sensei," Tatewaki raised his bokken, "It would be my greatest honor."

Angelique returned his salute then said, Your form is good but you must learn to relax and let flow with zee energies zhat are coursing within you...like so!"

They went at it again, Tatewaki soon panting with fatigue though he grinned like a maniac and never took his eyes away from his opponent, taking mental note of all her moves and sensing the way she moved as one with her sword, making it a part of herself and not just an extension of her body. Natsume observed this and felt a strange mixture of awe and jealousy that contrasted perversely with the feelings stirred within her at the sight of this Angelique d'Anjou.

But that was just a symptom of a larger feeling of unease that was plaguing her of late, for Natsume was feeling much on edge these days without a sense of probable cause to attach to the issue. The attacks on her sister, Nabiki, the previous day had left everyone in the Tendo-Saotome family feeling edgy and more than just a bit rattled and it was taking real effort for her to sit still and watch her fiancé practice when some inner voice inside of her told her that it was time to move, to go on patrol, to search for the source of their danger rather than sit idly by and wait for the fall of the next sandal. She was a woman of Action, a Slayer of the evil Undead, not a passive helpless lily who needed someone else's protection...

Not even that of her beloved sister-warrior, Nabiki.

Natsume had to be brutally frank with herself on that subject, for while she and her cousin-turned-adopted-sibling had their differences on a number of personal issues, they had become quite close of late and it was naturally of great concern to Natsume that a valued member of her now-extensive clan was being menaced by an unknown hostile party. Despite her unconventional lifestyle, the curse that turned Nabiki into a man at seemingly random intervals, her openly bisexual nature, her multiple partnerings and overall involvement with at least three other women, one of whom had even born a child by her without the advent of a natural father...still Nabiki was very dear and important to Natsume. Though a rival in the martial arts, Natsume had long set her mark by the standard set by Nabiki and that challenge had helped her to improve substantially herself as a fighter. Without Nabiki in her life...Natsume would feel a definite absence.

For most of her young life she had been a semi-loner with only Kurumi-chan by her side, responsible for no one else, a wandering soul, rootless and independent. This discovery of a family and roots meant more to her than could be imagined by someone who had grown up in a conventional household. And so to threaten any part of her extended family was to earn the wrath of Natsume the Slayer, which anyone shy of Nabiki's high standard would be well warned to avoid lest they learn to their woe the extent of their error.

And so she fidgeted inside, beset by questions and uncertainty, certain only of the need to act but lacking a target upon which to set her focus. She was there to support her future husband and to offer him the reassurance that she was encouraging his goal at self-improvement in the sphere to which he aspired as a martial artist. It was no less than could be asked of her, even if being in the same room with this Angelique was causing her to feel conflicted emotions, questioning her own sexuality and her loyalty to her "Tachi-sama," as well as her trust in his loyalty to her since she did not like seeing him spend any amount of time around a woman other than herself...especially not one this attractive, sensual and vivacious.

So obsessed was she with sorting out these issues within her mind that Natsume failed to notice that someone else other than Happosai had taken a place of concealment in the rafters of the gymnasium-sized dojo. This party made herself at home and watched with keen interest as the blonde Temuvarai worked the younger man over and showed him how to fortify his defenses, and in watching these exchanges she smiled to herself, almond-shaped eyes flickering with lustful emotions.

"Oho," she murmured softly to herself, "So this is what I sensed just now...the source of those powerful emanations...and what a find she is indeed, well worth my taking a trip away from visiting with Oniisan. And that other boy...something strange about his scent. I wonder...could he be the one? He certainly does show the potential..."

She decided to abide and watch some more, feeling no great urgency to leave while she perched her long legs up against a brace, rested her back upon a beam and cupped he hands beneath her head, gazing lazily down like a hungry cat on the prowl, sensing a tasty morsel or two who might make for an interesting evening once the gathering beneath her broke apart and went their separate ways. She smiled like a Cheshire, anticipating the fun that she could explore and indulge in with these mortals (and semi-mortals) when the day wore on into evening and confident of the fact that she was bound to score with at least one of these respectively interesting parties.

On the opposite end of the ceiling, already sequestered in a different point of concealment, the demoness known as Morgana scowled nastily upon sensing the presence of this other non-human party, and her growl was anything but pleasant as she rumbled, "What's SHE doing here? As if there weren't enough party crashers as it is in this place. Guess they'll let anyone into this district, including a Beast woman...and there goes the neighborhood."

She was grateful to find no trace of her Devil Erinyes cousin, Takaharis, whose scent was normally quite strong around this annoying Paladin with the peroxide hairdo and that patently fake French accent. At first blush she had been afraid that the newcomer had been her rival come back to make good on her threat against Morgana of the previous evening, or-worse by far-that pervert Happosai, but no, it had to be that green-haired Bimbo from the Beast Plane who came a calling. That was all that was needed to make her day, and what was next she wondered? The Return of the Overfiend? Hah! She never did like annoying sequels...

Oh well...it could be worse, she reasoned. They could have been Shakima.

But still...there was her real intended prey just below her...her errant nephew and his human bitch bride, along with their baby in her arms, the son of her sister's son and thus Morgana's grand-nephew, a child of mixed Oni and human heritage with much potential that she could sense even at a distance. Morgana smiled, sensing much fun that could be had in the very near future, and what would it be like if she were to-say for example-kidnap the innocent boy and replace him with a Changeling? Would she want the fuss and bother of raising him as her own...and what would it be like to be a mother? The thought of that...was most intriguing...

Unaware that her sense of unease was stirred by the presence of two unseen observers, Natsume continued to watch her man be coached and instructed by this Angelique d'Anjou, feeling restless, alert and wary, too distracted to focus upon the thing at hand and wondering if she should confide her feelings to her own sensei, Doctor Tofu. Perhaps he would say she was just worrying over nothing...or perhaps he would be disturbed himself since he was her Watcher and was supposed to take an interest in things of this mysteriously occult a nature. And more...she worried about Nabiki, where her sister was, what she might be doing at the moment, and whether or not Natsume should hook up with her later to confide her thoughts and seek her counsel.

Had she actually known Nabiki's whereabouts at that precise moment, however, her peace of mind would hardly have been reassured, for-if anything-she would have been the more alarmed to know that her Oneechan was headed for a rendezvous with the literal Devil...and in the company of one whose name was itself a thing of much controversy and legend.

But then again ignorance does have its merrits, and if mortal minds were capable of grasping the wider cosmos in its entirety then few would be able to sleep well at night...and fewer still would want to, knowing that in the darkness lurk things which are better off consigned to the pits of darkest nightmare...

"Where in the name of all the gods have you taken us this time, Sensei?" Nabiki asked as she stared in disbelieving wonder at the riot and mutiny of many crowded forms jostling one another in a busy market place, and only a fraction of these alien-looking beings were actually human.

"Welcome to the Mecca of Commerce known throughout the Multiverse as the Bizarre of Deva," Anri said with a grand sweep of his arms to include the motley hordes who populated what looked like a Medeival European-style city.

"Deva?" Nabiki instantly questioned.

"Hope to Devils of various types, to say nothing of the various other races who come and go here at random," Anri explained as he eyed the place as though reveling in the madness that it embodied, "As you might guess from the name it derives from the word for 'Spirit,' and while the association would be more in common with the Japanese word for Oni, the word Kami would be just as appropriate here since beings of a vast variety call it home in one sense or another."

Nabiki eyed the filthy streets and held her nose against the stench of a great many bodies whose shape and characteristics made her feel more than just a tab bit leery, "Looks like some kind of a festival is going on here..."

"Oh no," Anri assured her, "This is just an average day of business. Deva is the one-stop shopping center that exists mid-world between a thousand million alternate dimensions, and beings from all over come here to acquire the obscure, the exotic and forbidden that can be obtained in no other corner of the Cosmos."

"And those...creatures?" Nabiki gulped, her eyes going round as walnuts as she stared up in disbelief at the hulking shape of a stony figure that lumbered right past them without even blinking.

"Tourists, denizens, wanderers and lurkers," Anri explained, "I'm afraid that human beings would be a very tiny minority here, and even rarer to see one from your plane of reality. The Multiverse, you see, is vaster than you know, more so than you can imagine...but, oh...the civilization!"

"It looks like a dump," Nabiki frowned as she pinched her nose, "Smells like one too!"

"Like I said," Anri cheerfully responded, "Civilization."

"Hey you, get out of the way!" a nasty-timbered voice snarled at them, and Nabiki turned slowly around only to feel her knees turn to Jell-O, for the THING staring at them was incredibly big, vile-looking and brutish with mottled gray skin and eyes as coldly malevolent as they were alien and hungry.

Anri turned a smile up towards the man and said, "Is there something I can do for you, my good fellow?"

It was amazing to see the change come over the hulking brute as his orbs went from sizing Nabiki up as a possible meal to returning the gaze of the green-eyed Anri, who could not have come near to matching one tenth of its terrifying girth. All at once it sputtered, "YOU..." and immediately backed away several footsteps with a profusely worded apology, "Sorry-didn't realize it was you, Sir! Never had any thoughts about your companion, honest! Bye now!"

And then the lumbering brute turned literal tail and started charging away as fast as its trunk-like stumps could carry him, other creatures naturally making haste to get out of its way rather than risk being trampled.

"What the heck was that all about?" Nabiki wondered.

"Haven't the vaguest idea," Anri replied, turning away as if putting the matter out of his thoughts on the instant.

Nabiki eyed him carefully and said, "You some kind of celebrity in this place?"

"In a manner of speaking," Anri answered, "As a wanderer of sorts myself I naturally pick up something of a reputation, and much of it is wildly exaggerated, I assure you. For instance, there is absolutely no truth at all to the rumor that I eat Troll meat for breakfast, as that fellow was no doubt informed in his cradle."

"You don't huh?" Nabiki asked.

"Of course not," Anri replied, "It tastes terrible! Have you ever tried Troll meat? Quite disgusting. But at any rate, let us be on our way so that we do not attract any more such attention my way."

Nabiki followed the example of her companion, regretting as she did that she had been barefoot while training with Saki only minutes ago since she did not relish putting a foot on the filthy flagstones that made up the streets that they were walking through the busy market place. As they went their way, however, she could not help noticing how much like the similar market places that she had visited in her travels of the orient the curious booths and stalls that lined the road of this place resembled, albeit the merchants with which she was familiar were usually quite human looking, and did not sport the horns, wings, tails and other appendages that she saw quite freely in this remarkable city.

One thing that immediately did catch her eye, however, was the prevalence of various types who could well have fit in at a Fantasy and Science Fiction convention...maybe even an Anime-related Cosplay tournament, and that among then notably exotic sights that caught her attention she saw red-hued (and quite literal) devils whose ruddy skin, horn-spouting heads and prominent bat-like wings denoted as the likely inspiration for many a medieval image of infamous description.

She also moved out of the way as a much more appealing sight sauntered by in the form of a tall blonde-haired woman wearing scanty clothing that consisted of nearly nothing. A few filmy strips of cloth and some decorative leather helped frame a figure that was definitely eye-catching, and when she walked the rings about one ankle jangled musically. She had an ethereal regality that clashed with her brazenly wanton strut, and with a glance she seemed to first size up Nabiki before going to the mark of Lord Anri and gave them each a saucy sort of appraisal.

The thing that was most remarkable about this was that the woman had pointed ears, large almond-shaped eyes and distinctly angular features that made her fit the description of a Tolkien-style elf to a degree that would have made Nabiki's jaw drop were it not for even more astonishing sights to cause her to look elsewhere.

At her side she heard Anri murmur in her ear, "She's available if you want her...and I think she charges good rates for a delightful evening...or so I've been told every time I've wandered by here."

Nabiki swallowed her traitorous lust and said, "Not interested...I'm married, remember?"

"So?" Anri asked, "You think you'd be the first married woman she gave a special discount? Of course if Elea were here she'd box my ears even for merely thinking the thoughts that wondered through my mind in the last few seconds..."

Nabiki scowled all the more furiously and said, "I thought you were supposed to be against adultery and fornication outside of marriage?"

"Fornication means the worship of graven images, Saotome-san," Anri replied, "And while I am indeed against betraying the trust of a loved one, I'd be a fool indeed if I though fidelity were instinctive to the human species. I warned that lusting in your heart for a mate outside of marriage did indeed constitute a kind of adultery, but I never even hinted or suggested that people should be stoned to death merely for having these kinds of feelings."

"Good thing that," Nabiki averred, trying as hard as she could to keep her mind from wandering into forbidden territory that involved pretty elvish girls whose bodies all but begged to be explored at one's leisure.

"Ah...here it is," Anri turned abruptly, "The shop that I was seeking."

Nabiki looked at the place then blanched as she read a sign that seemed to swim before her eyes, shifting from alien characters to clearly legible Japanese kanji symbols:

"Abandon Cash Ye Who Enter Here!"

"Is that for real?" Nabiki indicated the sign with the hooking of a thumb.

"One of the various marvels that Deva has to offer the common tourist," Anri replied, "Signs that instantly adjust to the language of whatever stranger happens to pass by...and don't bother asking me for a technical explanation. Advanced para-physics was never my strong point."

They entered the place and Nabiki's eyes immediately took it in as an exotic imports shop very similar to the types one might encounter in a Japanese mall...albeit the Arabian Nights flavor of the place had a distinctly middle-eastern look that suggested that it would be right at home in the Casbah. There were oriental rugs and ornately molded brass fixtures that sported incense that filled the air with the pungent aroma of Jasmine, and many other trinkets that caught the eye and seemed to beg one to "have a look," and maybe make a purchase.

And-right on cue-the merchant owner of the place appeared from behind a curtain of beads, holding out clawed hands and smiling broadly, "Welcome, welcome, welcome to Allah Akbar's Rare and Unusual Trinkets Warehouse! We have everything you need from the finest woven cloths to the rarest jewels set in fixtures of platinum, gold, electrum and even orachalchum..."

Nabiki started to open her mouth to address the fellow before her, marveling at his pleasant demeanor that obviously hid a devious soul of commerce...but before she had the chance to get a word in edgewise Anri suddenly stepped out from behind the concealment of a shelf full of artifacts and said, "FREEZE! EXPORT DIVISION OF THE COMMERSE POLICE! GET THOSE CLAWS WHERE I CAN SEE THEM!"

"EEP!" the merchant gasped, throwing up his hands and crying in near-panic, "Don't arrest me! I am only a poor and humble spirit trying to make ends mete for my twelve starving children ...!"

"What's the matter, old friend?" Anri grinned, "Didn't pay your protection fees on time? Not slip enough graft under the table?"

The merchant blinked then turned around and immediately his tone changed again to an almost jubilant, "ANRI! You sly dog you! Shame on you for scaring a poor old man out of his wits with that stunt! You're a disgrace to all saints and prophets everywhere...!

"Hello old friend," Anri smiled warmly at the merchant, "It's been a while, I know, but I thought it was long since time that I paid my respects to your humble establishment."

"Eh?" the merchant was wary once again, "If this is about the money I owe you...!"

"Oh, piffle," Anri waved the point aside, "When have you ever known me to be all that concerned about money?"

This time the merchant's expression became one of sadness, "That is true...you always were too altruistic for your own good, old buddy. And you really ought to do something about this awful streak of asceticism that you've been on during your last five incarnations. It really isn't healthy. A body needs to concern itself with creature comforts..."

"There are other things besides the needs of the body that must be of concern to a student of the Way, Old friend," Anri casually assured the goateed merchant.

"Please, don't talk like that in a place of business," the merchant urged, "You might give somebody the wrong ideas about what kind of scam I've got going down here..."

All at once a high-pitched whistle brought both men around, and then Nabiki lowered her hand from her mouth and said, "Hey, excuse me for interrupting this chummy get-together...but would you mind letting me in on the joke? This guy is a buddy of yours, Sensei? Looks more like the type who'd sell oil to the Arabs at a discount."

"A discount?" the merchant sounded scandalized, but then he turned and looked Nabiki up and down before elbowing the fair-haired man beside him and murmuring, "Who's the looker? And does your wife know you've been sowing the rice paddies?"

"Old friend," Anri indicated Nabiki with a nod, "May I introduce to you one Saotome Nabiki of Clawd, a woman of my recent acquaintance."

"From Clawd?" the merchant expressed astonishment as he turned and sized up Nabiki, "Why, so you are...and a human no less! Shame on you, Anri, dragging a poor innocent soul like this to Deva. You know the rules about contact with Unincorporated dimensions..."

"Spare me about rules, you old Card Cheat," Anri chuckled, "When was the last time you could ever lecture me about playing within the system?"

"Too true," the merchant conceded, then sighed, "Word of warning, Kid...if you hang out with this guy then you'd better be ready to take some lumps, because he has a tendency towards martyrdom that often includes companions and casual passers-by, just ask anybody!"

"So I've gathered," Nabiki said, studying the man's appearance before saying, "You...really don't look like this most of the time, do you?"

The merchant's eyes grew narrow, "Shrewd kid. I can see that you're a sharp one. Well...better prepare yourself because people from your world tend to go a little nuts when they see the real me...or rather what I look like now when I'm not using a disguise."

"I think I can handle it," Nabiki assured him, only to immediately regret her words a few seconds later as she stared up in dismay and said, "Or...maybe not..."

"Heh, don't blame you a bit," the fellow spoke now in a husky voice, having gained several hundred pounds mass to go along with his change in overall appearance, which included the ruddy skin, horned head, spade-like tail, goat legs and bat wings, "Mind you, I didn't always look this handsome, but it was a passing gift from a former employer, and no matter what I try to do I just can't seem to get my body back to the way I looked when I was younger."

"You should try a different diet," Anri suggested, "I don't think you've been taking enough fiber."

"Hey, I eat six square meals a day with plenty of red wine to keep down my cholesterol levels," the devil insisted, "And like I'm gonna take your recommendations on what's healthy for a growing boy like me, Rice Bowl eater."

"Um, excuse me?" Nabiki asked nervously, glancing from her fair-haired companion to the ruddy-hued devil before her, "Wait a minute, back up here, will you? Are you telling you guys are really the best of buddies?"

"Well of course we are," Anri said, "What did you think we were, mortal enemies?

"Hey, ease up on the kid," the devil urged graciously, "She's probably been raised on horror stories about me, just like the rest of the Clawds I've had to deal with over the past two thousand years or so. As for what you think you know, Girlie, don't believe a word of it. It's all lies and propaganda cooked up by a bunch of monks who needed a whipping boy to justify their shill. I'm really nothing at all like they made me out to be, honest...and as for me and Anri here being Buddies, well, he saved my tail a while back, and a guy like me never forgets to honor a favor."

Nabiki could not help marveling at how easygoing the fearsome looking creature was in jesting with the Eluini Daokan lord and shook her head to marvel at the incongruity, muttering aloud, "I'd think somebody here was pulling my leg, but I've been feeling like that since yesterday evening, so..."

"I'm not a bit surprised if you've been hanging around with this Loser," the devil snorted, "But shame on you, Anri...you ain't even finished with the proper introductions."

"Saotome-san," Anri said with a nod of introduction, "May I present to you the Lord Samael, also known to many by his more popular name as Satan."

"Satan?" Nabiki gulped, certainly convinced that the name was quite appropriate.

"Call me Stan," the big fellow offered a hand that was large enough to squeeze a melon and sported wicked looking claws that looked as though they could rake through solid marble, "Akbar is just the street name I use these days to escape the attention of the authorities since I'm under Witness Protection."

"Witness protection?" Nabiki repeated.

"On account of how I'm trying not to attract the wrong kind of attention, if you know what I mean," the big fellow said, lowering his voice to nearly a whisper.

"He means Ariman," Anri clarified.

"GAK!" the big devil nearly jumped with a look of real panic, "DON'T EVER SAY THAT NAME ALOUD! WHAT ARE YOU TRYING TO DO, ATTRACT HIS ATTENTION HERE AND GET ME PERMANENTLY KILLED?!"

"Of course not," Anri replied, "You know me better than that old friend?"

"Do I?" the devil instantly changed his appearance to that of the slighter-looking merchant then hurried to the front of his shop and slammed the doors shut, throwing down a bar to barricade it while turning about a handy "CLOSED" sign before securing it firmly with numerous locks, chains and latches.

"You ought to by now," Anri said, "I would never say that name aloud unless I had taken precautions to insure it could not be heard by the wrong parties."

"Maybe you think so, but I ain't taking any chances!" the devil in disguise assured them, his eyes dilated with a look of genuine fear and aversion.

"Um...excuse me?" Nabiki raised a finger, "You used to work for...?"

"DON'T SAY THE NAME!" the devil almost leaped at her and placed his hands over her mouth by way of precaution, "You don't know what He could do to me! You don't know Him like I do! You'd have to slave for Him for centuries to get even the faintest idea of what he's capable of doing!"

"Please, Stan," Anri said, "Take your hands off my apprentice."

"Wha-apprentice?" then devil backed away, "No way! Are you serious? You've taken this Clawd on? Why, she's barely even a potential!"

"Who are you calling a Clod you...ah...devil?" Nabiki lamely protested.

"She is far more than even you can imagine, old friend," Anri assured the horny merchant, "Take a better look at her...do you not recognize who she resembles?"

"Hah?" the Devil blinked and then said, "Officer Tendo? Gah-why didn't you warn me sooner!?"

"Who?" Nabiki blinked in growing confusion.

"Never mind!" the devil dabbed his forehead with a cloth, "I don't want to even think of her! I'd heard that they promoted her to dispatcher, which is a relief for those of us still in the field, because that woman is scary...even more so than her maniac fiancée!"

"They got married recently," Anri said, then paused before adding, "Well...relatively speaking that is. But at any rate this Nabiki Saotome is much younger than the woman you remember, far less experienced but nonetheless someone who should not be taken lightly. Ah yes...and she happens to share with you a fine regard of material commerce."

"You don't say?" the devil looked at Nabiki with a more speculative interest, "Yeah, her aura's definitely different...a fighter, huh? And one who's started to develop into special techniques no less. Could be she's got some real potential there, provided it gets steered in the right direction."

"Which is what brings us to this visit," Anri noted, "I wanted Saotome-san here to hear the truth about what happened long ago from the lips of one who lived back then and has survived to remember."

"Oh, I get it," the merchant sniffed, "Bring her to Deva to meet the Big Bad Satan that everybody on her world's been conditioned to think about as the worst thing since they invented lip synching. Only thing is...what's in it for me?"

"A clear conscience," Anri replied, "A chance to clear the record...and possibly make a new client in the bargain, one whom you could form contacts with on her particular timeline."

"You don't say?" the devil rubbed his clawed fingers through his goteed beard, eyeing Nabiki with a different kind of speculation before saying, "Well...what do you want to know, Kid? I'm sure you've got questions, and I'm the guy to go to if you want to get the answers."

"Ah...that's very...reassuring," Nabiki hesitantly noted.

"Yeah, right," the devil named 'Stan'sniffed, "And since I'm supposed to be the biggest liar in all of creation you doubtlessly wonder how anything I could possibly say would be worth believing. Well, you can take it or leave it, Kid...the truth is the truth, and it's all I've got to show for suffering all those years under the tyrannical thumb of the Big Guy. Mind you, as liars go he's a million times worse than I could ever be, but don't take my word on it, just ask Anri here. He couldn't tell a lie to save his butt if he were being deep fried over a lava pit! Wish I could say the same about that pyromaniac he calls his kid brother..."

"Straight and to the point, Old Friend," Anri urged, "Tell my apprentice here what it was like for you when you came to work for the one who is the embodiment of all that is evil."

"Heh, most folks from Earth think that's me," the devil snorted, "But contrary to the myths they tell I didn't give no frigging apple to Eve back in the garden, I didn't tempt those kids to get kicked out of paradise, and I ain't never possessed no little girl or made her spit out pea soup. Hollywood-bite me!" he snorted with an angry glare towards the heavens.

"So...what did you do?" Nabiki asked, deciding that when in for a centimeter one might as well take the whole hectare of land...

"Okay," the devil sighed, "Believe it or not I started out my days as one of the good guys...or at least I could say relatively good when compared to the way people behaved back then. I was a lesser Deva from the plane of reality known as Xenarchon, and I was in the service of a guy named Baal Marduk, a real piece of work as Sky Gods go around three or four thousand years back. Killed his own mother and banished his father to Oblivion right when he was getting started in the God business."

"This is around the Bronze era, right?" Nabiki asked.

"Bingo," the devil noted, "Summeria back when it was a big deal on the landscape, now known as Syria to you guys, the so-called cradle of your modern civilization, such as it is."

"I wouldn't know," Nabiki said, "I'm from Japan."

"The place where they make all those cool Anime videos?" the devil's eyes went wide, "Man, could I make some sweet deals with you! Listen, we've got a lot of customers out here who are just starting to get past the 'Cave Paintings on the Wall' stage and would go absolutely Ape Sh*t for a look at the stuff your animation studios produce..."

"Commerce later, old friend," Anri urged, "History lesson now."

"Ah...right," the devil averred, "Sorry...baser reflexes and all of that..."

"Go on," Nabiki said, "What happened back then that brought you in contact with...that tentacle-waving monster?"

"Slow down a bit and let me tell it this way, Toots," the devil urged, "Back then I was just an errand boy for Marduk, but then along comes this exiled prince from Mount Olympus, a real smooth talker by the name of Lucifer, who was setting up camp with a bunch of wandering yokels that he intended to turn into a mighty nation and, well...he offered me what sounded like a slick deal back then, and I jumped at the chance to swap jobs for something that sounded a lot more cushy. At first it was rough shakes working for the new guy, but that Lucifer...what big ideas he had! Gonna remake the entire cosmos and set himself up as the One True God who was gonna lord it over everybody else...so it sounded like me and the other guys were getting on board a new and upcoming enterprise. But...talk about suckers!"

"Didn't work out quite the way you thought it would, eh?" Nabiki asked.

"To put it mildly, yeah!" the devil snorted, "Molock, Zephod, Rashod, Uzgad and me...we were the big bad lieutenants to the chief hancho, Gaphur. These days you'd recognize us by the cool handles we took as Michael, Ariel, Raphael, Uriel, Gabriel and-of course-me, Samael the White...but the story they tell about us in Enoch ain't the way it actually happened, what with how I wound up getting the sh*t job of being demoted to work in the basement...all because of me taking a few breaks to hang out with Lilith, this fertility goddess whom Lucifer had his eye on..."

"To the point old friend," Anri urged, "We can't dally here forever. There are other places I mean to take my apprentice, and time is a wasting."

"Yeah, right," the devil sighed, "Well...to make a long story short, Lucifer and his big dreams didn't pan out the way we'd planned and after he wound up getting himself trapped in that box of his the rest of us were left to have to try and figure out how we were gonna keep the whole shebang going during his absence. That was when our pet tribesmen, the Israelis, had their little parting of ways with one half going on to become Sameritans and the other half becoming Judites. That was also when me and Gabriel were having a little feud over which way we were to carry things, with me siding with the Israelis while the Judites took up with Gabriel and the rest of his party. This went on for a couple centuries until the whole shebang fell under the dominion of the Babylonians, and that's where things took a really bad turn for all of us because that was where he met the Zoroastrians...and through them had an encounter with their twin gods, Ahura Mazda and...the other guy whose name I refuse to mention."

"Right," Nabiki nodded, "The A word?"

"Got it in one," the devil said, "You really are a sharp one. I can see why Anri wants you on his team. Well...what I'm getting to here is that the moment we hooked up with...that guy...everything started to take a turn for the worse...I mean, worse than getting your country conquered, your temple torn down and all of your believers scattered to the four winds. Bad as in meeting up with one of the Old Ones and falling under his spell as he promised to fill in the gap in our lives that Lucifer had left behind...which is how the Big Bad A-guy wound up taking the position of the New and 'Improved' Baal Yahweh."

"But...if he was really some monster from the Outer Dark who's goal is the destruction of everything..." Nabiki started to suggest.

"Yeah, how did we confuse him with the real deal?" Stan shrugged, "At the time we were desperate for a new leader. Gabriel had run the show for a while, but Lucifer wasn't coming back, and you can only keep the wolves from your gate for so long before the creditors start calling and demanding you pay up the rent for your corner of heaven. Into this we had this quasi-mystical encounter with a Voice that claimed to be one of those mysterious Powers that run the show from behind the scenes that you always hear tell about...you know, the guys even Gods bow and pray to? That Voice took advantage of our need for a new organization, he conned us into signing up under his banner, and he promised to deliver us out of the pits of despair that we'd fallen into ever since King Hosiah took that Egyptian arrow to his throat. It sounded literally like a call to arms, and we flocked to the new guy's banner, believing we were finally onto something great and glorious...only look how that turned out!"

"It's not at all unlike when Abraham heard a voice calling to him in the wilderness," Anri noted, "In his day one did not question the voices in your head, believing them to be sendings of the gods. These days they'd have people like that institutionalized and put on anti-Psychotic medications, but in those days you could found a cult on nothing more than the testimony of only one witness."

"Wasn't like that for us," Stan snorted, "We all heard His voice and we all heeded His message, and sur enough, within a couple human generations we had our country back and even had a royal commission from the King of Persia to rebuild our old temple. It wasn't too long after that when we started to get a hint that things weren't quite so right with the new order, but by then we had our newly rebuilt Jerusalem, a new Torah and a functioning Knesset with all these noisy rabbis yammering about the scriptural meaning of this or that paragraph or phrase. It seemed like a lot of fun, all those lawyers gathered together in one place keeping each other too busy to cause anybody else real trouble, and who knew what was in store for us in those days before the coming of Alexander?"

"Ariman was careful to bide his time," Anri clarified, "He could adopt the mantle of seeming benevolence while working to craft the coming of Armageddon."

"Don't I know it," Stan shuddered, "My first big hint was when Ari held this big party and invited all of us lesser functionaries to the ball to smooch it up with one another. That was when I got into an argument with Gabriel about whether or not it was better to govern a people by wisdom rather than fear. Gabe's an old-fashioned 'Fire and Brimstone' sort who'se idea of moral encouragement is a whip and a taser. Me, I've always been a people kind of person, I like public relations gimmicks, fancy memos and nice stationary to give everything a cozy, family-friendly kind of look, so I took the position that people were easiest to govern if you made them think you were giving them what they wanted rather than what we needed...and who do you think should cut into our tiff but the Big Bad A himself, a 'Voice On High' who challenged us both with a 'put up or shut up' proposition."

"Job was his name," Anri noted, "A good enough fellow as things go, but a bit thick-headed, and as stubborn as the proverbial mule."

"Got that right," Stan shuddered, "The guy had everything...a nice spread, a happy family, a good wife, the deed to his home, a second mortgage, lots of sheep and goats to keep the wool and milk trade flowing...and right out of the blue what does A-man do? He takes away everything, and I do mean everything! Kills the kids, drives the wife mad, slaughters the animals, has the banks foreclose, slaps Job with a severe case of the Pox, and just for laughs sends some buddies of his along to torment the poor guy and call him an ingrate. The challenge for Job was to blame his God for all of his afflictions, but the buy wouldn't play along, kept insisting that must've done something to tick the Boss man off, only wanted to know what it was that he did that was so offensive. He kept on saying that even while his so-called 'friends' were harping on about what an awful person he was not to fess up to his sins and beg for his forgiveness..."

"Wait a minute," Nabiki said, "Weren't you supposed to be the one doing all of this to the poor guy?"

"Me?" Stan snorted, "Like...what did Job ever do to me that I'd hate his guts like that? You must think I get my kicks pulling the wings off of flies or something, or holding a magnifying glass over an anthill. No, that was A-man all the way, showing off his stuff just because he could while making the rest of us watch as his idea of 'moral' instruction."

"But Job did not curse his god for his afflictions," Anri noted, "And this much angered Ariman by proving the resilience of human faith and devotion."

"That ain't entirely the case, Anri," Stan said, "And would you quit using the guys's real name? You're giving me the woolies!"

"So what did happen?" Nabiki asked, intrigued despite her reservations concerning the source of this particular horrific story.

"Well," Stan sighed, "The A-man backed down, then like a true politician pretended that he didn't and instead twisted the point around to make himself look good while I came off looking like the bad guy. Instead of me maintaining that people are easier to govern when they're fat, dumb and happy, Ari declared that the blind faith that Job had displayed should be the standard for the entire nation. He then told yours truly to 'give back' everything that was taken away from the poor schmuck, which I thought kinda peculiar since I wasn't given the authority to bring the dead back to the world of the living. Instead I had to go and find the guy a new wife who wouldn't be too turned off by his condition, then gave him a good salve to make his boils go away, then tossed in a fertility spell so that they'd be able to make new kids to replace the old ones, then had a neighbor sell the needed livestock to help Job rebuild the farm, which I convinced the banks to sell back to him for a song...and before too long he was singing Yahweh's praises again, even though he lit a bunch of candles to mourn the loss of his old family, who weren't coming back anytime too soon in that particular incarnation."

"They cleaned the story up a bit for the presses," Anri explained for Nabiki's benefit, "Ari-Yahweh found a willing scribe who could pen the story to fit his specifications."

"Yeah, but the whole incident left a bad taste in my mouth, like a sour piece of goat cheese," Stan grumbled, "And that was when I started to question the way things were being managed in the new establishment...and the more I checked into things the more I started to worry."

"You smelled a rat?" Nabiki asked.

"To put it mildly, yeah," Stan snorted, "A big one...and when I found out it was Ari...man...that was when I really started to sweat the big droplets."

"Because a Lord of Chaos is as far removed from a God as a shark is from a minnow," Anri noted, "A being as ancient and malevolent as Ari-Yahweh might conceal his evil behind a mantle of sanctimony, but in the end it is by the results of his actions that you can determine his wicked intentions."

"So you figured out that you'd been conned," Nabiki noted.

"Oh yeah," Stan snorted, "Big time. Of course the real breaking point for me was when I got an advanced look at a copy of Revelation. Enoch was bad enough, what with me getting blamed for the "fall" of all humanity and the eternal damnation of every poor sod who never even heard the name of Yahweh. The Revelation was the big kick-off, penned a couple of generations after the fall of Jersusalem and the loss of A-man's temple to the Romans, who weren't the dumb hicks people take them for these days. They knew damned well that the Jerusalem cult spelled real trouble for the Empire. It was with the nascent cult of the Christians that A-man started to score some real points...only the problem he faced with declaring himself the Universal God of all Creation was the obvious one of the world being in a real mess, and what kind of perfect diety makes a planet that has 365 and a quarter days in a year? Obviously there was a fly in the ointment, and that's where I came in, the original fall guy, getting blamed for making a mess out of that old mud-ball of a planet!"

"A convenient scapegoat is always at hand when one wants to project their own faults and imperfections on another," Anri noted, "Of course in this case Ariman is a corrupting spirit who seeks to devolve order into chaos, so naturally he would not want to be recognized for the subversive spirit that he is and would instead cast into the role of the villain the one minion in his employ who was in no position to defend himself against the accusation of perfidity."

"Namely me," Stan said grimly, "And let me tell you, when I read that stupid piece of proto-Gnostic trash I got scared, really scared, like nothing else you could imagine."

"Why is that?" Nabiki felt compelled to ask.

"Well, aside from me being the guy who's supposed to out to conquer the world by fostering a kid on a mortal who'd be a kind of Anti-Anri," Stan began, "There's the little matter of me losing in the end, and getting cast down into oblivion for all eternity...ultimate dissolution. I knew right away that the book served two ends, as a propaganda piece to rally the troops and assure the faithful that they would one day win out against the Romans...and two being a set of guidelines that A-man wanted to bring into the world, which meant posing himself as the Hero-type who would ride to humanity's rescue after a really horrendous set of events that would wipe out most of the human race and leave only a fraction of the survivors to be governed by a benevolent tyrany set up to be ruled by A-man's designated puppet king. If you translate that from gobblygook into Aramaic it means the end of everything, Baby...the destruction of the world, the dissolution of all matter. And of course, in order to do that, he had to knock off the competition by getting people to believe in him while cutting off belief to other gods, thereby achieving a monopoly over all of existence."

"Fiendishly simple," Anri acknowledged, "Too bad for him that things did not quite work out the way he had planned them."

"Lucky for the rest of us you mean," the devil snorted, "Understand something, I was just one guy among many close aides working for the staff under Michael, and both of us started to get these qualms about the way that Gabriel was behaving. Before I knew it my inquiries got me called onto the carpet and dragged before the throne where the Big Boss himself was awaiting. A-man wasn't too keen about the direction my research was taking me, so he decided for laughs to have me demoted and put in charge of a brand new office, a place where he'd started to incarcerate political enemies and other potential troublemakers, a place that we called Abadon, which translates as, 'God is Just' in old Aramaic."

"The modern name for it is Hell," Anri clarified, "You may have heard of the place, it's on several travel brochures, though in reality it's nothing like the post cards would imply."

"Hell," Stan grumbled, "That's what my life turned into. I was the warden for a bunch of guys whose only real crime was ticking the A-man off in one way or another. Understand, this place was a pit, not unlike Tartarus to the Greeks, which was the partial inspiration that Ari drew from when he crafted the place as a refuse-dump for wannabees and non-conformists. Back then it wasn't all that big and it filled up pretty soon after I took over, which forced us to seek new quarters elsewhere on a plane of reality where the Devils reign, a place governed by the aptly-named Hell Lords, of which I was only a temporary charter member."

"Perhaps a word or two about the nature of this particular brand of Tartarus," Anri said for the benefit of Nabiki, "In the old days the Hebrew did not have a concept of the afterlife and the widespread belief in reincarnation made it unnecessary to imagine a place of either eternal rest or torment. That changed shortly after Ari-Yahweh took over, when the concept of the 'Resurrection of the Dead' gained in popularity, and the choices one could face were either Heaven or Oblivion, which is the forerunner to the Christian conception of this process."

"Resurrection of the Dead," Stan sniffed, "That always makes me think of one of those Zombie movies with a bunch of half-rotting corpses rising up out of the ground, shambling around and making a mess all over the place. But the way Ari packaged it made it sound to many like a pretty sweet deal, the full restoration of the body in exactly the right intact condition it held at the point of maximum vitality. Just how the blazes he was gonna pull of this particular miracle never got explained to me, so I just took it as a publicity gimmick. I mean...Souls incarnate, bodies die and the Soul transmigrates to a different body. What's so hard to figure out about that process? You only spend enough time in the Astral realm to stabilize your psychic batteries, then you drink from the waters of Lethe and on you go to the nearest available portal where some expectant momma is waiting to receive you."

"But Ari-Yahweh had a very different process in mind for those who were true believers," Anri noted.

"Yeesh...I don't even want to think about it!" Stan shuddered, "I caught him feeding at the trough that one time and it was enough for me to get the whole stinking picture in a nut shell. I suddenly knew the whole deal was a huge sham and we were being conned into supporting a monster. Worse still, I found out just who it was we were serving, and what he was really after, and it freaked me out beyond anything you could hope to imagine! We're talking worse than Armageddon here...we're talking about the complete and total dissolution of the Cosmos!"

"And how exactly was this supposed to be achieved?" Nabiki asked.

"It's fiendishly simple, and you can take that as a direct quote from on that me, Kid," Stan visibly shuddered, "Goes back to the nature of what Gods are all about. I'll assume here that Anri's taken you on the usual dog-and-pony ride to show you how all of humanity basically evolved from a common stock millions of years back in the time of the Star Tribes, who-for lack of a better term-we call the Ancients?"

"More or less," Nabiki winced, "Basic Theosophy 101."

"Heh, yeah, it does sound kinda formulaic at that," Stan admitted, "Anyhow, the gist of it is that these two warring camps of Ancients fought a big battle called 'Psychic Wars I' around about two million years back, give or take an eon. The losing side-which numbered about a third of all the Ancients then around-was exiled from the Earth plane and cast out onto the Outer Planes far removed from material reality...scattered to the Cosmic winds of interdimensional Night as it were...and that these losers-or survivors, if you will-wound up in different sectors of the Multiverse, some closer to the edge of the Abyss than others, and these groups evolved into the various Demon tribes that you hear tell about...nasty, viscous and chaotic. The Devil tribes, by contrast, were closer to the realms of Light and had material form and function on their side, and the darker of these dimensions were later named the 'Hell Worlds,' a not very original title but an accurate one. The various Devil tribes were more stable than the tribes of the demons and tended to form hierarchical structures with direct linear leadership and a strict care for the bloodlines to see that they did not devolve into chaotic mutations."

"Sounds pretty rough," Nabiki agreed, "But what's that got to do with the story you were just telling?"

"Bear with me for a second, willya?" Stan urged, "I'm getting to that part. Anyway...of all the dark realms known as the Hell Worlds the planet we're on, Deva, was one of the worst in all creation...a real bone-dry wasteland that was barely even inhabitable, where water was so scarce that you'd fight wars over its possession, and food was even harder to find, so there wasn't much in the way of a basic economy here to begin with. Things started to turn around, however, when a great leader rose up among the species known as the Ghourdanian...which I happen to resemble at the moment...and he proposed a way by which the population could turn their fortunes around and thrive, maybe even flourish."

"Which is?" Nabiki asked, suspecting that she already had a clue to the answer.

"Commerce!" Stan said with a grand wave of both his brawny arms, "Ghourdanian wizards learned the secret of dimensional travel and used it to go to other worlds were they found plenty in abundance. At first they staged raiding parties with the idea to go in and plunder the goods and riches of other worlds, but over time that proved to be enormously expensive, not to mention draining to maintain since finding worlds to plunder is a literal bitch, and once you pick things dry you've gotta look somewhere else to find what's needed. The Ghourdanian leader, however-whose name, by the way, was Mephistopholes to the Greeks with whom he first traded-convinced the clan lords of Deva that it would make more sense to trade with other worlds and gain their goods through less aggressive methods. Oh sure, the result was pretty much the same as raiding other places, the only difference is you leave enough for your victims that they can build back later and be worth trading with over and over."

"So from war we get to commerce," Nabiki said, "Which is war without the use of gunpowder."

"Smart kid," Stan complimented, "I can see why Anri likes you. You've got a healthy bent of cynicism there, not to mention keen instincts. And yeah...Deva's various tribes started to make out like real bandits and pretty soon we had clients coming to us from all over the place, and soon the Tribal Elders-who were becoming filthy rich Burghers by this point-decided to set up the Maul where the Marketplace could be established as an interdimensional hub in space and time, where sentient creatures the Multiverse over could come to do business of one sort or another."

"I can see how that would work," Nabiki noted, "But it still doesn't seem relevant to what you were saying before..."

"That's because I'm not originally from Deva, kid," Stan relied, "I didn't become one until after I ran afoul of the big bad A-man. You see...other worlds had other conditions where the ancients evolved along many different courses, and those who stayed back on Earth evolved as well, some becoming the forerunners of the Lemurians and Atlanteans, who later married with the ape-like people of the shore to produce your branch of the human species. Another branch, however, stayed true to their roots and became the High Elder Race of the Elves...while an even lucker strain became the race of the Titans, who birthed the Gods of later generations. The Gods, in turn, birthed us, the Immortal race of the Devas, or lesser-gods if you will, and Angels of the Modron line-which I originally hailed from-were considered especially favored as intermediaries and servants of the Gods, and protectors of the various races of mortals. Lucifer was a God, you see, while Me, Mike, Gabe and the other guys were Modrons who went to work in his employ. Serving the will of the Gods is easy if you really think about it...it's just doing what you're told and basking in their glory and never mind if they tend to be a bit moody and peevish since we were humble functionaries carrying out their will and asking few questions that might tend to get our asses lightning-bolted."

Nabiki frowned, "You're saying the Gods are just another race...like humanity?"

"Yeah, only they evolved with a special affinity for the natural powers of the cosmos," Stan replied, "Like an extra gland that allows them to tap into and channel the manna-lines that encircle the planet. Unfortunately there is one draw back to this in that there is only a finite amount of power to be drawn upon, so Gods tended to specialize as a means of diversifying their numbers and dividing the power alone different channels, which gave them a bigger pool to tap into. At some point in the game, however, the gods discovered a special means by which they could bolster their power to even greater levels by channeling the beliefs and worshipful energies of mortals. They discovered that intensifying the focus of a mortal their way gave them access to that mortal's spiritual energies, and that the more worshippers prayed to them the stronger a God would become, which meant that his popularity could intensify and boost his natural pool of manna."

"Indeed," Anri mused, "And a very good thing it was that there were so many Gods specializing in so many areas of worship since they tended to divide the power among themselves and diminished the access pool by which one God might claim ascendancy over another."

"In other words the competition kept them honest?" Nabiki asked.

"Yeah, but the new system had one major drawback," Stan said soberly, "If a god got really popular his power could swell and he might come to dominate an entire nation, like Lucifer did the early Hebrews. But suppose your following collapses? Supposing your worshippers die off or decide they don't really like you and go worship somebody else? Supposing they forget about you all together and your tap into the Manna lines of their worship and belief dries up and blows away? That tended to happen with a lot of the ancient pantheons...their worshippers might get killed off or conquered by a rival people and they decide to mass-convert to a different system...and suddenly that great sucking sound that you hear is your Manna pool being depleted, and that affects you directly much like an addict who's forced to go completely cold-turkey...only with more horrific side effects."

"Such as?" Nabiki asked.

"Such as going ethereal, losing coherence, lacking the ability to remain focused upon the material plane of existence," Stan answered, "Depending on how much a God is linked to his following determines the degree to which his loss of power can affect his basic existence. Take the Summerian gods for example...they just slowly slipped into a coma of waking dreams then turned ghostly and ethereal, then faded into the night and were forgotten altogether. They still exist on some level outside the mainstream of material reality, but only the ones who've been weaned off a diet of worshipful energy can function on a more-or-less human level. Lucifer was the first one to notice this, and it gave him this really wicked idea for destroying all of the rival gods in their various pantheons and sucking up their energies by building a cult that would follow only him in the guise of Yahweh."

"Think of it like a power station with various relays that draw upon the same lines for electricity," Anri noted, "The more outlets there are the more the power is stretched thin along various channels...but if you shut down these rival outlets one-by-one the resulting surge in power that can be tapped into would give you an enormous reservoir, and by winning more and more converts to your side your power base would grow to truly fantastic proportions..."

"Of course this meant invalidating all of the other religions in order to steal their thunder," Stan added with a snort, "Which started out merely by saying bad things about their practices and gradually worked up to claiming that they were false deities, either demons or else non-existent, mere stone statues and graven idols."

"Ah...I think I get it," Nabiki said, "So this Lucifer guy wanted to make himself the top dog by absorbing all of the energies into himself while denying it to others?"

"Thus making himself a million times more powerful than his Daddy, Zeus," Stan noted, "And the scheme might have worked, too, if the Egyptian gods and their priests hadn't gone through the same experience during the time of Akhnaton, and were quick to put a stop to things before Luci's plans for conquest got much farther than him destroying the Philistines and their religion. Locking the guy up in his box meant denying him ready access to the bulk of the energies that he was tapping into. It left this huge pool of untapped spiritual energies floating about, and by the time that the Israelis wound up the unwilling guests of Babylon they represented a tempting prize for a real opportunist to come grab the pot and despoil the whole kitty."

"Ari...ah...man," Nabiki faltered, seeing the wince that briefly crossed the face of the horn-headed devil.

"Yeah," Stan winced, "Only his goal wasn't to make himself the most powerful one of all...he wanted to commandeer the whole system in order to crash it, to take over the top spot of creation and pervert it from within, corrupting the whole of reality from inside and using his reach to bring about universal dissolution"

"But why?" Nabiki asked, "Why would he want to do this?"

"Because he ain't a part of the system," Stan replied, "He's from outside the worlds of Light, you get that? Manifest Reality is a material obstruction to the perfect miasmal cacophony that is Chaos in its rawest form, the unmanifested reality from which everything was originally drawn, and to which it must inevitably return when existence falls back into a state of ultimate entropy many billions of years from now in the (thankfully) distant future."

"Ari-Yahweh consider it his sacred duty to correct the 'mistake' of the Creation," Anri explained for he benefit of his human ally, "To his way of thinking-which is alien to everything we can know or understand-it is the Light Realms that are the obscenity, our clinging to life and existence that is the fundamental evil. He wants to revert things to a state of timeless, non-physical, non-corporeal proto-matter where all of the potential for our form of existence is eliminated and only his kind can thrive and endure."

"Meaning that a lowly shmoe like me wouldn't have a snowball's prayer on Arakis of surviving the coming conflagration," Stan continued, "A-man's not content to wait out all eternity for the ultimate triumph of his kind, he wants his victory now and he don't care one whit about all the pain and destruction and death that this would cause for guys like us. And to do that he's out to deceive every living thing into trusting in his benevolence, promising them eternal love and glory in exchange for their immortal souls, which he feasts upon at his leisure."

"Ah wait," Nabiki pleaded, "Give me a moment to absorb all this. What you're saying inverts everything that's been told to us by the Christians..."

"Hey, who do you want to believe?" Stan sniffed, then paused to consider his words and said, "All right, considering who I am that's not a very good question. So why don't we try this on for size...what's in it for me?"

"I beg your pardon?" Nabiki asked.

"That's the question you should be asking yourself if you want to know who can be trusted," Stan replied, "What's in it for me? I mean...if I really am the biggest liar, the nastiest bugger, the scariest thing that's ever come down the pike, then it ought to mean that I get something out of being big, bad and nasty. I wouldn't do the stuff that they claim I do just because I needed a hobby, but what those Christian guys are saying is that I get off on scaring kids, widows and orphans while making them miserable for their basic existence. I would have to be the worst sadist who ever lived to come up with the schemes for torturing every sinner who's ever existed, and I'd need a jail cell the size of ten planets just to hold the rotten buggers I'm alleged to have claimed upon their deaths. There would also have to be about a million of me in order to get around to every house and suburb on the planet just so I could kick the fence in, kill the dog, poison the kids and dry up the farm, and whatever else they blame me for doing this week."

"Sounds rough," Nabiki noted, "But how am I to believe that you're really a nice guy?"

"I'll put it to you this way, Saotome-san," Anri waved to his ruddy-hued companion, "Does Stan here impress you as all that scary?"

"Um...well..." Nabiki considered the point then reluctantly conceded, "Compared to Taro-san in his beast form? Not very..."

"Heh," Stan smiled, "Don't know who that Taro guy is, but I think I'm insulted. But really, I'm not that bad a guy to be around once you get to know me, and I can really be a sweetheart if you do business with me on a regular basis. I don't trade in souls here...wouldn't know what to do with one if it could be bargained, and there are rules about that with the Necromancer's Union. Don't wanna mess with them...now those guys can be nasty!"

"I think I can see your point there," Nabiki remarked, recalling her recent encounters with a certain wizard who was a borderline Necromancer.

"The thing I'm trying to say here is...there's not a whole lot that I can do to compete with A-man in the scary department," Stan shuddered, "I don't have the ability to real a hundred thousand minds at once and pluck out every little secret that you've got stowed away in your subconscious. Mind you, that'd be a useful tool for me in my current trade, but I'd need a head the size of a planet to be as ever-present and malevolent as those church-guys make me out to be. Basically they've got me confused with A-man because they think I'm everywhere at once, under every rock, tree and pebble."

"That's because they need the Devil in order to justify the lapses, shortcoming and obvious deficiencies of their own god," Anri noted, "In order to claim that their deity is perfect they have to explain why His creation is so fundamentally flawed with limitations. It never dawned on those clerics making this stuff up in the middle ages that much of what they were invented was Ad hoc nonsense, the contrivance of many minds seeking to white wash their faith and disclaim the many evils that were performed in the name of yours truly."

"Because admitting that you were a flawed human would invalidate the very reason for their theology to exist in the first place?" Nabiki reasoned.

"You got it," Stan snorted, " I also don't have the time to go running around taking over the bodies of little girls and making them act like little monsters...hormones do that for the average teenager. And I don't command legions of nasty little buggers who go around destroying people's lives like in those awful 'Slasher' movies. Somebody really ought to do that genre to death, pun intended. I also don't keep a list of naughty deeds by which to judge you in the afterlife. Back when I was in charge of Hell I just locked guys up because they got there...I didn't have the time or the staff to ask too many particular questions such as what they might have done to deserve it. Being on the bad side of the A-man was generally all it took to be cast into Perdition."

"Of course," Anri pointed out, "You're finding out what Ari-Yahweh was up to didn't make you immediately up and resign from your position."

"Of course not, how could I?" Stan waved his arms in exasperation, "I was as much a prisoner there as you were that time you found me and convinced me to defect. A-man never really trusted me enough to let me out of his sight-as it were-and he made me very much aware just what he could do to me if I ever did betray him."

"You defected out of Hell?" Nabiki asked, then turned to Anri, "And you were in Hell?"

"Of course I was...very briefly," Anri shrugged, "Just ask any Baptist. According to them my death upon the cross was the prelude to my descent into Hell, whereupon I blew off the gates and led the righteous out of Hell and into Salvation."

"Oh yeah, right," Stan snorted, "You blew your way past my gates? Not bloody likely. They were lined with Orachalcum, the one alloy against which even gods are powerless. The truth of it is, Kid, that Arnri here didn't die on the cross...rather he lived to see old age and died at the hands of the Zealots during the siege of Masada."

"What?" Nabiki asked.

"It's true," Anri replied, "I faked my death by crucifixion using a drug-laced sponge that a soldier named Loginus helpfully supplied to me, thinking it was vinegar, which they did administer to victims to keep them alive and thus prolong the agony of death by that method. When I almost immediately succumbed to the opiate that Roman became suspicions and pricked me with his spear, but then he was odered by his superiors to bring me down-which was never the Roman practice for crucifixion victims-and spirited away to a nearby crypt whereupon I later recovered."

"Your old man, Yussef, bribed the guards and Pontius Pilate," Stan smirked, "Three days later you presented yourself to your followers and allowed them to think you'd been 'miraculously' resurrected. Serves you right if they took things too far and made you out to be a god. I mean...what did you think was gonna happen when you did that? King of the Jews...hah! Some Messiah."

"I never claimed to be perfect, old friend," Anri sadly agreed, "But you are right...I was in error."

"A sin of hubris that you later paid for when that Paul guy stole your thunder and created that phony religion," Stan sniffed, "Mind you I liked the movie, but the recent one that did came across a little too much like an SM orgy. Somebody should talk to that Gibson guy and tell him to get therapy. Mad Max indeed..." he shook his head a bit sadly, "And worst of all, they had me played by a woman! Elizabeth Hurley I can tolerate, but this...?"

"Er," Nabiki decided to steer things back onto the subject once again, "So...let me get this straight...you didn't die...and you lived to see Masada?"

"To say nothing of the total collapse of all my dreams and aspirations of that era," Anri remarked, "With the destruction of Jerusalem and the rise of Paul's movement my so-called mission was in shambles...although one nice thing did come of it...the destruction of Herod's Temple."

"Center of A-man's worship in that region," Stan said grimly, "Of course the story you hear in Josephus makes it sound like the innocent Hebrew were the victims of the marauding legions of Rome and Vespasian, but the reality...is a bit more complicated than that. You see...the Zealots had taken the place over and were terrorizing the common people, putting anyone to death who didn't show excessive zeal for their side and generally behaving like followers of A-man usually do, which is what tends to make them so obnoxious..."

"Okay," Nabiki said, "I'm gonna need a minute to absorb all this. I mean...I know we covered some of it last night, but the implications..."

"I understand and fully sympathize, Saotome-san," Anri replied, "But time is not abundant enough that we can indulge long intervals for pause and reflection."

"Hey, screw you, Anri!" Stan snorted, "Not everybody's as into ancient history as you, so let's stop boring the kid with more details than she obviously can handle."

"No, I mean...I can handle it, I just need to get a few things straight in my head," Nabiki pleaded, "For example...from what you said before about that Paul guy..."

"Paul of Tarsus," Stan sniffed, "Now there's a piece of work for you. I never could get why you allowed that guy to go around messing with your people, spreading his own peculiar cult ideas and using your name to craft that really weird synthesis of Judaism and Mithraism that he erroneously labeled as Kristocism, Anri."

"I know," Anri sighed, "We've been over this again and again, old friend. An oversight of enormous magnitude, but at the time I didn't take the fellow all that seriously, and can you blame me for what happened?"

"Hell yeah," Stan hooked his thumb at his own chest, "You're talking to the guy who's suffered the second-worst slander suit in the history of litigation, and all because those chumps needed a fall guy to blame everything on, and thanks to that idiot Enoch guess who they picked out to play the role of the ultimate bad guy."

"I know, I know," Anri sighed, "Get in line behind me on that front. You think it's easy being called the 'Savior' of humanity...what with all I know? Every time someone does that...it's like those damned nails are being driven into my wrists all over."

"But...let me see if I can fathom this," Nabiki said, "You met in Hell...where you were cast into prison?"

"For my various sins in not stopping the rise of Paul and the conflagration that consumed my people," Anri answered, "In a way I was making advanced payment for the many more sins that would soon be committed in my name...but the way it happened was that-upon my death at Masada-I fell into a spiritual trap set by Ari-Yahweh and was seized upon by loyal Modrons, who bore me away to the Pit of Abadon and placed me in the custody of Samael here with instructions to bury me in the deepest, darkest, foulest chamber beneath Golgatha."

"Right away I knew it was a crock and a sham," Stan added, "Ari was locking away his greatest enemy, but I knew almost at once that he was my ticket out of that Hell hole. Of course it took some convincing before I decided to play along and help stage that jail break, but once I knew it would be my only real chance out of that hell pit I took it and no further questions asked."

"We freed thousands of souls trapped in limbo on that day," Anri added, "And much enflamed the rage of Ari-Yahweh, who suffered a loss of the energies that he had been drawing from our misery, which left him momentarily unable to come after us as we fled to a different dimension. Of course I no longer had a physical body, but I was freed of the constraints that held me in check from utilizing my full powers, so I chose to travel to a world near to the center of the Light to regroup and regather my senses so that I might return once again in my subsequent ninth incarnation. Stan here chose to flee to Deva, which is neutral territory and well outside of Azri-Yahweh's evil grasp..."

"Yeah, but as a parting gift the A-man slapped me with this curse that changed me into one of the Ghourdanians who rule here...or maybe I changed myself, but Ari's curse prevented me from changing back so that I'm stuck now with a permanent fur wedgie. Either way I made Deva my new home and settled in for the duration. Ari eventually recovered and latched onto the new cult just when Christianity was starting to make inroads with the Romans, and eventually he found ready agents willing to take up his banner and fulfill his sinister ambitions."

"Sinister ambitions," Nabiki said, ironically smiling.

"What?" Stan looked at her crossly, "You think that's funny?"

"It is when you consider that you're the one labeling it that," Nabiki said, then sobered, "Which has to mean that whatever's going down must really be wickedly awful."

"Hey, I may not be a saint," Stan said, then paused, "Actually, I've never been that ambitious...and I've done a lot of bad stuff in my time, but wicked as I may be I still have a basic sense of self preservation...which ain't what the minions of A-man have in great abundance. So like I said before...what's in it for me to see the whole universe dissolved into fluffy bits of sub-atomic proto-matter? I'm a business man, I work for a profit, and if there ain't gonna be a place where I can sell my goods then what's the point? An honest devil's gotta make a living."

"So...who's running Hell if you're not the one in charge of things?" Nabiki asked.

"Far as I can tell the position's still open," Stan shrugged, "The various Hell Lords take their turn whenever they can agree to pass the gavel, but otherwise the place just runs itself. It ain't really a place so much as a series of dimensionally linked worlds where certain types of really nasty people get drawn to spend their afterlife. Most souls don't spend more than a century or two there before they transmigrate back to then Earth Plane, but in that time the Devils can do pretty much whatever they want to the buggers, and the saddest thing about it is that anyone could leave the place if they just stop fitting in, because only dark souls belong there. You just can't get in if you're guilty of nothing worse than eating meat on a Friday."

"The position of 'Satan' is more of a title than an actual person," Anri added, "Some decades it falls to Baal Zebub, who formerly was a minor god in Caanan who joined Lucifer's cause when it was just beginning. Other times Asmodeus and Mephistopheles trade off with one of the other various Dukes, Majors and Princes. Hell is really a part of the Celestial Order and its purpose is redemption, the purging of 'Sin,' by which I mean 'Dark Inclinations,' from the souls of the unrighteous so that they may be returned to the world of the living for another go at achieving enlightenment and celestial integration."

"Yeah, but the guys there are the lucky ones," Stan shuddered, "The unlucky ones wind up in the realms of the demons...who don't play too nice with their guests there. And the closer that you get to the edge of the Abyss the nearer you come to...A-man, who's eternally hungry."

"So demons and devils don't really get along all that well...interesting," Nabiki noted.

"One group embodies Chaos, the other is allied to Order," Anri explained, "As dark as the realms of the Hell Lords may be they are still governed by a sense of cosmic duty and obligation. The rules of Karma still hold sway, and the Devils heed the code of their rulers religiously, a code that is enforced with strict ruthlessness and a tyrannical devotion to authority and social obligation."

"Devils don't heed nothing but the fine print in a contract," Stan snorted, "And they're always cheating, which is why the worst thing you could say to one of us is to call us Demons, because we tend to take that sort of thing real personal like, like somebody calling you the dirtiest thing you can imagine."

"Mind you, this strict division does not hold everywhere, or even the same way in all places," Anri further added, "Demons and Devils have been known to socialize on occasions, and even a few to marry and share kin-ties. The Oni of Japan tend to straddle the line between the worlds of Devils and Demons, and quite a few can be actually quite charming people. Take for example the woman known as Ganglot...ah, now there is a rare find in a lady!"

"Heh, you said it!" Stan grinned with a slightly misty-eyed expression, "Girl like that makes me wish I was a couple thousand years younger and in better shape...also makes me almost wish I wasn't married..."

"What?" Nabiki arched an eyebrow, "You mean...you're also married?"

"What, you don't think I still got sex appeal...even at my age?" Stan snorted, glancing to the sides before adding, "She's away at the moment, along with our daughter, so it may be safe for me to say that she's the best thing that's ever happened to me since my forced relocation. My kid's named Jezebel, and she's a real Hellion, if you take my meaning..."

"Quite," Anri agreed, "Don't forget that I'm also quite happily married and have a daughter. Several of them in fact, but my eldest is the apple in my eye and recently she's begun to settle down with a warm and loving person who is suited to her in every way."

"She's married?" Stan sniffed, "Gee, that's too bad, she was such a nice kid. Sure hope it wasn't that Gremlin she was hanging around with...Gremlins," he shuddered, "Little buggers make my skin crawl!"

Nabiki considered saying something here but thought better of it, though her mind did form an image of her sister holding hands with the statuesque Thelendra...and then the disturbingly impish child who bore a strong resemblance to her mother, and she suddenly had a very good notion of why the hulking devil before her found Gremlins so disturbing.

"Well, anyway, to make a long testament into a short one," Stan resumed, "I've been away on the edge of things but I keep my ears and eyes out just to remain aware of all that's happening in and out of Hell in my absence. Lotta agitation on the fringes, some talk about A-man being on the move again, and several key worlds being menaced by his agents and minions. I just took it for granted that you and the rest of your family were somehow involved, which meant I could expect a visit from you sometime in the new future...and then here you show up accompanied by a new apprentice?"

"I know," Anri smiled, "That's me, a creature of incorrigible habits."

"Incorrigible?" Stan sniffed, "That's the understatement of the millennia! So what's the real deal here? What's Ari planning that's got everybody so excited?"

Anri sobered and gave the devil his due, "Everything that we have feared, old friend...Ari-Yahweh is putting his plans into motion, and on the world my apprentice calls home he is very close to achieving his objective."

The devil took a step back before regaining his footing, "Whoah...that's...intense! You mean he's really gonna do it this time? No more dicking around and working through false agents?"

"Worse by far," Anri replied, "He has raised a tool to do his evil bidding who is of the cursed bloodline of Amakuza Shiro, the false messiah of Shimubara."

The big devil looked as though he had just been punched in the gut and said softly, "No way! Somebody survived? I thought Jubei finished off the last one!"

"Unfortunately Jubei's father poisoned his son before the deed could be completed," Anri answer, "And now the descendant of the Yagyu line must atone for his obligation by fulfilling the mission...or else all of the land will be plunged into darkness."

"Say what?" Nabiki blinked.

"You're Jubei's descendant?" the devil blinked then said, "Holy mother of Dow Jones! I shoulda seen it sooner! No wonder you picked her, other than the fact that she's a Potential."

"I'm a what?" Nabiki asked.

"A Potential," the devil eyed her curiously, "You don't even know what that means? Anri, shame on you, not telling this kid what she's in for! No wonder that other Tendo's such a hell raiser!"

"I was getting around to telling her," Anri said, "But...the time did not seem ready."

"Ready for what?" Nabiki asked, "What's the real deal here? What about me that's got you calling me a Potential? A Potential for what?"

"To be just like him of course," Stan nodded to Anri, "An Eluini. Didn't you even suspect that?"

"Wait a minute...Eluini?" Nabiki repeated for clarification.

"The Unforgotten...a potential Avatar who possesses within her the memories and experiences of previous incarnations," Anri answered, "In other words a channeler of Power, which you are well on the way to becoming right now, Saotome-san. If, that is, you and your husband can complete your training and meet the challenge of Udan to defend your world's right of existence."

"Whoah!" Stan reacted, "Oy Gavalt! Just hold on a second here! You mean you're sending this kid, who's barely even a novice Eluini at best, up against the greatest Monster Killer in all of existence? Are you nuts? She and that other guy are gonna get slaughtered!"

"Not if she completes her training under her new Sensei," Anri answered, "And for my part I am doing my best to prepare her. She only has a few more days before the descendant of Amakuza Shiro unleashes a different kind of Hell upon her home dimension, and I intend to see to it that she awakens the sleeper within her at the appropriate time when self-knowledge could prove to be her salvation."

Stan stood there looking with diamong-gold eyes at the slighter man then said, "Anri...you're not planning what I think you're up to...are you? Because if you are than you gotta let me talk you out of it, because it's crazy!"

"Can you think of a better way?" Anri asked, suddenly all mirth banished from his eyes, which were just as suddenly quite ancient and full of sadness, "Because if you can take this poisoned cup from my hand, then I would be entirely too grateful."

The devil held his ground for another moment then glanced away, "Damn you...you always make stuff so complicated. Why do you always have to be so altruistic? It's really a bad vice with you, you know that?"

"Well hey, nobody's perfect," Anri smiled, "You can take it from me on that subject. Now then, come along, Apprentice, time enough that we be journeying elsewhere."

"Hey, wait a minute!" the devil spoke up, "You're leaving just like that...and without buying anything? That's unheard of!"

"Another time, old friend," Anri smiled, "Places to go, things to do, you know...all of that..."

"But just wait a minute!" the devil pleaded, "Hear me out! If she's gonna go into the kind of mess you usually drag these kids then she ought to have some back-up, some useful stuff that could give her a few points up and increase the odds of her survival."

"Well..." Anri seemed to consider the point, "Now that you mention it, there is the matter of that little tab you've been keeping over that favor I did for you a couple of generations back..."

"Done!" the devil said, "Think of it as extended credit, and just out of the benevolence of my soul I'll willing to extend it to the kid so that she can take advantage of those credits you won't claim and left in my possession. So what about it, Kid? Anything I can do for you? Magic swords, laser pistols, the Holy Hand grenade of Antioch, you mention it, I got it."

"Ah...thanks, but I don't think I'll be needing anything," Nabiki said, "My school is into unarmed combat..."

"Say no more!" Stan said with urgency, "I've got ancient manuscripts and sutras that could help you...special combat techniques taught to the Amazons of China by the original Masters, the Twelve Tao Immortals of Ku'unlun..."

"Ah," Nabiki said, "That's nice, but..."

"You need potions of strength or increased wisdom? I've got it!" Stan said broadly, obviously warming up to his favorite personal hobby, which was the Art of the Haggle, "Guaranteed to raise you stats by at least two points or your money back! How about a Fortification tablet...one touch and it raises your Con to an instant 20! Or how about gauntlets of arrow deflection? Or maybe even a special tabi that'll rend you bullet proof? Hey, would I lie about that last part? Haven 't had a single return complaint yet!"

"But..." Nabiki tried to plead, sensing her efforts would prove futile and that she was going to get dragged into an area that was normally her own specialty, and with a consummate master who was the literal founder of special school in cut-throat negotiations.

Anri smiled, checking to see that his "Time Manipulation" spell was still in effect, condensing hours into minutes so that their time in the shop would only appear to go on and on indefinitely without actually costing them anything in valuable time that would be needed for traveling elsewhere. It really was an enjoyable sight to see his new apprentice slowly warming up to the game as Stan more and more pressed home the value of his services and his "magnificent generosity" in offering her great deals that were just this side short of stealing. (Actually some of those goods probably were stolen, but Anri was not inclined to look too closely at the personal behavior of this particular ally).

Before long they would have to be on the road again, for the deadline truly was looming quite near to hand and could not be staved off forever. Soon his apprentice would have to face the challenge of his brother...and beyond that confront the Enemy and His agents in a fateful confrontation that would spell the doom or survival of an entire alternate dimension, to say nothing of the people living within the sphere of protection.

By duty, choice and obligation the Daokan would see this through to the fiery conclusion that he knew was to come, even overlooking the fact that he could see the crisis clearly in his mind every time he shut h is eyes, which was not very often these days what with the looming presence of eternal nightmare...

Continued.

Comments/Criticisms/Categorical Denials of Piety: shadowmane

Or: shadowmane9849

Now that the Devil has had his say where next will Nabiki travel in the company of Lord Anri, and what of Ranma and Kasumi who must also find their way through training with their own respective masters? Find out the secrets to this and so much more in: "Flight of the Phoenixes ." or, "Testing the Boundaries between Salvation and Madness!" Be there...

X

/pre 


	93. Chapter 93

preDnabiki182

Nabiki 1/2

"A Very Scary Thought"

by Jim Robert Bader

(Inspired by the works of Rumiko Takahashi Others,  
with concepts and characters created by fellow fanfic writers Wade Tritschler, DB Sommers, Nicole Manders, Andrew Greaves, Bill Guiroff and countless others, including "Buffy"  
creator Joss Whedon; with special thanks to my good pal Shiva for his editing and handling of this series.)

(Certain other characters and concepts are of my own innovation, including my interpretation of the Monster of Mary Shelly's novel, the Furies, Trudy, Takaharis Angelique d'Anjou, Anri and the Daokan, Thelendra the Dream Weaver and various other guest stars appearing in this portion of the Nabiki 1/2 series...)

Chapter Sixty-Eight.

Episode One-Hundred-Eighty-Two.

The Deva Made Me Do It

"Feeling better? If so, then please sit down and join me, Thelendra-chan. It's such a beautiful morning."

Thelendra glared at the woman she loved as she approached Kasumi's presence, moving a bit more stiffly than the graceful stride that was her usual wont while replying, "I...shall stand for the moment, and thank thee well for that. Thine promised husband...was more thorough in venting his wrath and displeasure over mine conduct."

"I'm sure Frank-sama feels that it was well deserved and no more than was to be expected," Kasumi smiled knowingly, "But if it makes you feel any better..."

She reached out with her mind and suddenly Thelendra found herself being drawn towards the other woman, and just as suddenly she was sprawled upon her lap as Kasumi smiled invitingly down at her, fangs bared in a show of deep affection while crimson eyes drank in the sight of the other woman's beauty.

"I wanted to have the chance to thank you for everything that you've done for me, Thelendra-chan," Kasumi said with a soft-voiced adoring expression.

"Done for thee...or to thee?" Thelendra asked, albeit somewhat nervous.

Kasumi allowed one hand to play across the cheek and chin of the taller woman in her lap, "For me. Yes, I know you did not ask me for permission when you...made those changes inside of me, but I know now for a fact that you are the one responsible for Frank-sama and my being able to have a baby. When first we met the other day I was filled with doubts and uncertainty that I would ever be able to become a mother...and now here I am with twins on the way, and my happiness is doubled and redoubled...the more so because it means that I can have both you and Frank-sama as my dearly beloveds."

Thelendra began to relax somewhat, only to softly gasp as she felt Kasumi's gentle hand begin to caress her exposed neck, which prompted her to ask, "Art thou hungry, Beloved? Dost thou...wish to drink of my nectar?"

"Soon enough, yes," Kasumi said while contemplating a juicy artery that was throbbing with life beneath the tips of her long fingers, "But for now I think a bit of conversation is in order. There is much for us to discuss, after all, and not nearly as much time as we would need for me to properly thank you for the gift that you have given to me."

Those fingers touched Thelendra's collar bone and the rainbow-haired woman gasped then yielded, "What wouldst thee have of me, Beloved?"

"Gamina," Kasumi answered, "We talked together quite a bit while you and Frank-sama were playing together..."

"Playing?" Thelendra reacted, "Thou dost call that play? And...ah...what didst my talented child have to share with thee?"

"The fact that you didn't actually raise her for one thing," Kasumi noted, "You barely even knew of her existence before she was two and your...former boyfriend presented her to you already weaned and past being diapered."

"Ah...aye...that..." Thelendra was suddenly quite nervous again, and feeling more than a bit aroused from the way Kasumi's hand was gently exploring the area beneath her shoulder, "Well...perhaps a word or two be in order over how her father and I didst meet. From the beginning...it was a somewhat unorthodox pairing, and beyond surprising that it worked so well to begin with..."

"I'm listening," Kasumi urged, "How did it happen?"

"Well...first off, about Gremlins," Thelendra began, her mind distracted by the way the other woman slipped one hand beneath the cleavage of her dress to find the warm and inviting mound concealed there, which Kasumi began fondling, causing Thelendra to pause with a gasp of sheer arousal, then she continued, "They be an off-shoot of the genus Kobolds from the family of Imps of the sub-brach of the group who be related to the Goblins, who themselves be bad blood cousins to the Gnomes and Elves of Faerie..."

"Indeed," Kasumi said, enjoying her ability to slip her other hand down and caress the other woman's round bottom, "Gamina told me much of that. She said that Gremlins used to be despised as outcasts, counted for little by their peers before the Age of Industry brought them to prominence, at which point they began to showcase their most remarkable...talents."

"Oh aye, that they did," Thelendra agreed, feeling especially aroused when Kasumi's left hand found and pinched one aroused nipple, "Their minds have a preternatural grasp of the operations of all things mechanical, and the more moving parts the better. They have a propensity to take things apart in order to study them, then put them back together...a truly wondrous gift with machines that unfortunately has tended to cause accidents when they don't quite get things right, though rarely have they plotted actual mischief, such as the times in your Second World War when they deliberately committed sabotage to both sides of the conflict."

"I can see that's where Gamina acquired her gifts as an inventor," Kasumi noted, "But how exactly was it that you wound up in an affair with a member of that species?"

"Ah..." Thelendra almost missed her cue for the way she closed her eyes to relish the sensations caused by Kasumi's hands in exploring one breast while soothing the sore-spot on her bottom, "Er...well...that is...in truth it was an affair that began under most...embarrassing circumstances..." she paused to gasp and then groan pleasantly, closing her eyes to savor her enjoyment of the way those gentle hands were making sport with her ample anatomy in a most delectably sensuous manner.

"Go on," Kasumi urged, relenting her play by just a bit to allow her companion to maintain more coherence in her speech.

"Gah...well...the truth of the matter be...I was taken unawares by a trap guised as most innocuous, a clever hellspawned device of fiendish manufacture that immobilized me and diminished my ability to respond, bound as I was with chains of purest Orachalcum."

"I remember that substance," Kasumi remarked, "It's supposed to be able to dampen the power of magic, and it works even on gods and demons."

"That be because it be absorbtive of Manna currents, "Thelendra replied, looking soberly at her amorous companion, "Much as silver acts to channel electrical conductiviity, so too does the alloy of Gold and Platinum that was first forged by Atlantean smiths have the power to ground the life energies that empower all living things. I fear I really do nay understand the process all that much more well than that, though if thee were to ask mine daughter, Gamina may no doubt explain it far better..."

"No need," Kasumi said, "I'm afraid I'm not really all that much up on advanced science. I usually leave such things to Nabiki's friend, Beatrice."

"Aye...well..." Thelendra squirmed a bit to make herself more comfortable upon Kasumi's lap and then continued, "As I didst mention, I was a captive of a device that inhibited mine powers and left me weak and helpless to whatever dire ends might be intended. 'Twas fortunate for mine part that the architect of this foul contraption was nay so malevolently inclined, a fellow of curious bent who had sought me out to play the role of messenger for the darker forces in whose employ he was, and who had dispatched him to find me for exactly this purpose..."

"Got that right, Toots," a gruff voice remarked from seeming no where, startling both Eluini and Vampire Goddess as it manifested in full day, albeit from the shadows behind the park bench.

"Who is...?" Kasumi started to say.

"Nay," Thelendra frowned, "It cannae be..."

All at once Kasumi stood up with a mild yelp and spilled the startled Thelendra onto the sidewalk, where she landed on her bruised posterior with a wince of her own and a most undignified expression. Kasumi whirled about with hands covering her own fanny and saw the curious sight of a diminutive figure, no more than a meter tall and grossly misshapen with very little hair covering any visible part of his body.

"Sorry about that, Toots," the little creature said, waving a hand that held a lit cigar between long, spindly gray fingers, "Couldn't resist copping a feel of the goods. After all, I wanted to get a first-hand look at the babe she threw me over for, and now that I've got a first-hand looksee...I definitely can't say I blame her."

"Who...?" Kasumi asked, but in a moment Thelendra was back on her feet and growling out the obvious explanation.

"Gymp!" the rainbow haired beauty scowled darkly, "Up to thine old tricks I do see...but what calls thee here at this time and location?"

"You've gotta be kidding me, Babe," the little gray creature snorted, taking a puff from his cigar then blowing out smoke rings, "Our kid shows up and sounds you out and you don't think I'd be paying any notice? What kind of a father do you think I am? Besides, as high-maintenance as Gamina can be at times, putting a tracer spell on her petite butt is nothing more than sound parental behavior."

Kasumi stared in dismay and said, "You're...?"

"Her Ex, Toots," the little creature grinned, showing rows of pointy teeth that only added to his non-human appearance, "Gymp the Gremlin, at your service...but you can just call me Gymp, it's enough of a name that suits me." He extended a hand as if offering to shake.

Kasumi very reluctantly extended her own hand in courteous reply, only to have the yellow-eyed creatures take it between his fingers then extend a wickedly long tongue the licked both fingers and knuckles.

"Hmmm...tasty," he let the hand go then said grandly, "So you're the new Vampire Goddess I hear tell about, the one that's got even old Vlad shivering in his splinters."

"Ah..." Kasumi glanced at her hand then hastily wiped it clean on her dress before replying, "How do you do? My name is Tendo Kasumi."

"Soon to be Stein Tendo Kasumi if the rumors I hear are right," the creature said with a glance towards Thelendra, "You mean she really did bag the ol' Monster himself? What a match that'll be...almost as unlikely as the two of us, heh Babe?"

"Do nay 'Babe' me thou low-lifed creature," Thelendra scowled pointedly, "'Tis done and o'er between us as even thou hast acknowledged."

"Yeah, shame that," Gymp sighed, then winked at Kasumi, "She still loves me deep down, but I don't blame her for being a bit...annoyed over our break-up. The fault was at least partially mine, and I never thought it would last forever between us. Matter of fact, I'm kinda surprised it lasted as long as it did. But anyway, you were asking a moment ago about Gamina, and how the Babe could be her mother when she wasn't the one who actually brought her into the world, right?"

"Er...yes...I think," Kasumi dubiously responded.

"Heh, little fact you may not know about Goblin-kind, and Gremlins in particular," the little creature responded with another puff of his cigar between breaths, "Is we had a leg-up on what you humans call cloning long before some Sci-Fi guy coined the term. Only we don't do it artificially like you guys...we do it entirely by nature, which is why we tend to be a lot more prolific than you."

"How do you mean that?" Kasumi asked, puzzled by the references.

"Well," Gymp replied, "When a boy Goblin and a Girl Goblin like each other very, very much we kinda do it the same way you do...but that ain't a very efficient method for replacing our losses when you consider the heavy attrition rate that Goblins suffer from one calamity or another. On our world there's lots of nasty ways to die, though the preferred means is at the point of a sword or an arrows fired at you by an enemy...so long ago we figured out a way to replace our losses and diminish the grief we suffer every time one of our cretch-mates gets killed. The Alchemists of our original home world came up with this glop they could brew out of a mixture of clay, blood, amniotic fluid, urine and other natural juices and..."

"Please," Thelendra winced, "For pity's sake, spare mine Beloved the grotesque details of how thine cousins create their breeding pits of cloned Goblin refuse to replenish their awful numbers."

"Heh, sorry," Gymp winced, "Tend to forget to watch my language. That's me in a nutshell, a gentleman of manners..." he belched.

"Ugh," Thelendra winced, "Whatever didst attract me to thee, it truly be beyond mine conception..."

"Want a reminder, Toots?" Gymp smiled, then waved his cigar again, "Maybe later. Anyhow...Gremlins are kinda like a distaff off-shoot of the Goblin family, much like the Babe here was telling ya earlier. We're regarded as a freak mutation that sprang up about a thousand years ago, a branch of Kobolds that nobody liked and everybody tended to pick upon at parties. It was only when our natural gifts with technical stuff began to be appreciated that we came into our own...but what Thallie here didn't mention was the manner in which we reproduce, which ain't quite so nice and neat as the guy planting his seed inside the belly of the woman. More like we absorb genetic material through close sexual contact, and every decade or so the guy gets the urge to suddenly mate and does something pretty peculiar, which we call the process of Eugenic Incubation."

"Eugenic what?" Kasumi asked politely.

"Well..." Gymp shrugged as if struggling to explain himself in terms that could be understood by a non-Gremlin, "It's kinda like we take a bit of the genetic material of the party that we really, really like and ingest it, the match broken strands of DNA to our own material and form a number of tiny little nodes that fertilize and incubate beneath the skin, like little polyps. When something happens to prompt us to 'Spark,' that's when a number of these Polyps burst out like eggs spewing forth from the skin, like popped blackheads, only with little tiny Gremlin fetuses contained within these eggs, which hatch out a short bit later and grow up to become brand new Gremlin-types for a whole new generation."

Kasumi's eyes widened, "You mean...?"

"That's I'm really Gamina's biological MOTHER, Toots," Gymp nodded towards Thelendra, "And Thallie here is actually her FATHER."

"Thallie?" Kasumi turned a startled look towards her rainbow haired amorata, who gave silent confirmation with a nod of guilty acknowledgement, glancing down as though keenly embarrassed on this subject."

"Of course," Gymp continued, "Normal Gremlin kids tend to resemble their Daddies, but in Gam's case her Eluini DNA was too strong and so she wound up looking just like her Mother...and so did her creche-sister, Minx, who I...ah...have had trouble tracking down of late. She tends to be an elusive kid, always hanging around in garbage dumps and junk yards, always pilfering bits of discarded technology, which she takes back to her burrow and combines into all sorts of useful devices."

"That be but one of the reasons why our relationship didst nay survive," Thelendra scowled, "Thou shouldst have appraised me of the existence of mine daughters before their presence was announced most rudely upon our first real encounter, when they were already weaned and developing into the young hellions that they be today, much though I do love them dearly."

"Heh, but not much chance for you to play Momma, what with your job, huh Babe?" Gymp said, smoking from his cigar, "Always off saving the Multiverse, playing Oracle and spirit-guide to your Old Man, dropping hints and clues to chumps who ain't got the smarts to see when danger's coming...and meanwhile who gets left home changing the diapers? Yours truly."

"Oh my," Kasumi remarked, quite amazed upon hearing this, and unable to help comparing this discovery with the realization that what Thelendra had done was much the same as Nabiki's first encounter with Shampoo, albeit without the advent of Jusenkyo.

"Thou hast left out the best part of all in thine account," Thelendra leaned forward, "The fact that two be nay the total number of our offspring. It be nay more than those of whom we have awareness."

"Ah...yeah, I know, about that..." Gymp winced, "I think I've developed some leads...just hints, mind you, of where the other seven may be off to..."

"Seven?" Kasumi's eyebrows vanished beneath her forelocks.

"Well...nine's the approximate number of the kids that I accidentally...created," Gymp waved his cigar in a vaguely uncertain manner, "Had a bit of trouble tracking the others down on account of Gremlins being notoriously impervious to detection spells...to say nothing of being gifted with Stealth and Concealment abilities that we developed back when other Goblin folks made a sport out of hunting us down for laughs. For example the Camouflage ability I just demonstrated to drop in on you girls unannounced without Thallie here pulling her usual fast-fade whenever I try to see her."

"Is this true?" Kasumi asked, sensing Thelendra's smoldering resentment being directed towards the Gremlin.

"Aye," Thelendra snarled, only to sigh and slump her shoulders, "Holy blood am I named, the San Grael of ancient legend...yet how can I make account for the way in which I didst spill mine seed in nine different directions...and considering what a handful mine two known daughters be, the thought of seven others lost in time on various worlds sowing mischief...it be more than I can tolerate..."

"Especially with you being unable to use your Oracle powers to find and keep track of 'em, Babe," Gymp said sympathetically, "Which is why I've been keeping busy trying to hunt them down by my own methods."

Thelendra bridled again, "But the time thou didst take in bringing mention of what thou hadst done to mine attention has made such a pursuit all but fruitless! Much time hath I devoted myself to tracking down what clues would come mine way, but fruitless hath been the search to date, and almost I hath despaired of e'er finding mine lost lamblings...or perhaps dreading to know what mischief they hath been up to..."

Kasumi saw the pain in her girlfriend's expression and immediately felt moved by the unvoiced grief contained within her lover's trembling voice. It prompted her to wonder what it must be like to know that you had children from a lover but had been denied their company for the better part of their formative years, and the pain that it would cause for Kasumi were she in the place of her beloved.

"I hear you, Babe," Gymp sympathized, "And while we may not be an item anymore, I still feel obligated to keep up the search for the sake of what we had together..."

"What we had?" Thelendra bridled, "What we had was nay more than SEX and physical attraction! Thou dost nay imply that our involvement was based more soundly on bonds of emotion and mutual adoration?"

"Ah, now I'm hurt by that, Toots," the Gremlin said in hurt tones, "And here I thought you'd at least remember the first thing that made you notice me in the first place..."

With those words the gray-skinned little creature reached down and undid the fastenings to his loincloth, and then allowed his private anatomy to hang free, landing with an audible "thump" onto the cool sidewalk.

Kasumi's eyes went as wide as saucers, and even Thelendra gasped, her tart response and harsh words momentarily forgotten at the sight of the...thing...that was being displayed, so vastly out of all proportion to the size of its owner, and upon his short stock resembling nothing so much as the proverbial third leg, and thick enough to look at that it might well have supported his weight upon a fully completed erection.

"Now do you remember why we first got together, Toots?" the little creature said proudly, "And are you sure you don't want to see it any more? Not that there's anything wrong with you burying your poontang in the face of this cutie..."

Kasumi stared, then hesitantly lifted a hand, only to draw it away with a guilty start, knowing that to venture in that direction would constitute a horrible betrayal of her relationship with Frank, and-considering what shaky ground she had been on the previous evening-that definitely would not be tolerated, even by one as broad-minded and libertine as her redoubtable fiance.

She did, however, turn to Thelendra and offer her a curious expression, seeing the look of a well-conditioned reflex being fought down-with some effort-before the rainbow haired Eluini managed to say, "Ah...yes...I do remember...but...there be more to a stable relationship than just...that..."

"Sure about that, Toots?" Gymp asked with a lascivious grin, "Sure you wouldn't want to take one more ride on the 'Pony,' just for old time's sake?"

"She is certain," Kasumi answered before Thelendra could form her own reply, earning a questioning look from the taller woman's direction, "But thank you for your offer."

"Your loss, Kids," the Gremlin shrugged, then reached down and gathered up his untethered manhood and struggled to stuff it back into place, albeit with great difficulty for which Kasumi-without knowing quite why-took a vague sort of quiet pleasure.

"You mentioned that you have a clue to the whereabouts of Thelendra-chan's children?" Kasumi asked, phrasing her words with special emphasis and thus gaining a different kind of questioning look from her girlfriend.

"Could be," the little (or maybe not so little) creature responded, "Why don't I get back to you about that sometime later? I'll leave you two lovebirds to do what you were doing before I showed up, which was kinda interesting, by the way, and something I wouldn't mind..."

"Be off with thee," Thelendra said, "Oh...and Gymp?"

"Yeah Babe?"

"When thou dost leave here," the Eluini said sweetly, "Be certain that thou art gone entirely, or else mine true Beloved might grow irate and show thee her darker side, the part of her that be the Patron of all Vampires."

Gymp looked up at Kasumi, "You're her true beloved? The one she kept on talking about all the way through our relationship together?"

"Yes." Kasumi replied, and without being aware of the fact her eyes began glowing crimson.

It was the Gremlin's turn to go wide-eyed, and then he slowly backed away and said, "Ah...yeah...so I see...and no wonder. Ah...look, you're obviously very busy and..."

"Go," Kasumi told him, and though she voiced the word politely there was no mistaking the fact that she really and truly meant it.

"Yipes! I'm gone already, I mean it!" the Gremlin responded, making tracks with such haste that he very nearly came close to leaving skid marks.

A moment longer the two women continued to stare at where the little man had been, then they turned to one another and a smile broke out on both of their lips, followed by a mutually shared chuckle, and then they reached out to embrace in a hug and gleefully slipped their arms around one another.

"I believe I'll take you up on your offer of breakfast, Thelendra-chan," Kasumi grinned, displaying her fangs and her not-so-subtle intentions.

Thelendra smiled and tilted her head to one side, offering her neck and shoulder, "Then I be ready to provide thee refreshment, Beloved."

"Not there," Kasumi informed her, slipping down the sides of the other woman's dress to expose her upper anatomy to full view, then carefully cupping and weighing each breast as though to decide which of them was the more firm, juicy and delightful before bending down and planting her "kiss" around an aeolea and nipple.

Thelendra gasped and arched her neck, turning her face in supplication towards the heavens and offered her lover to drink deep of her nectar, and in doing so lost focus for a moment upon the area spell of illusion that she had cast to conceal herself and Kasumi from outside attention. In that brief instant where they were exposed tiny sets of beady eyes were turned their way, and tiny hissing noises ensued from unseen creatures who promptly confided in themselves in a tiny language spoken only among the creatures of Dark Faerie.

This had to be reported to their Master, and with all due haste. Two dangerous enemies in such close alliance was not a thing that could be safely ignored, not when the deadline was this close to the fulfillment of the Master's dark ambitions. With no further adieu they slipped away into the morning, forgetting about their original purpose for happening there and the other unsuspecting mortals whom they had intended to victimize...but whom they would reluctantly spare until another time when they would be targeted for possession.

Foul things were at work all around them, but for the lovers in their setting there was only beauty in the world and in each other, and with the sweet obliviousness of an innocence rekindled they set about furthering and deepening their ties to one another, letting whatever else might come wait until another day, to be faced at such a time as when the Heavens themselves would be trembling in dread of the coming conflagration...

"I don't want to talk about it."

"Are you sure?" Anri asked, "Because in my experience it generally helps to talk things over."

"Not this time," Nabiki insisted, carrying some packages under one arm while holding a bag in one hand and balancing a rolled up carpet slung across one shoulder, "No way am I letting word of this get loose back home...that I made a deal with the literal Devil and got snookered in the bargain..."

"All right by me," Anri shrugged while leading the way through the noisy, bustling market, "There are people back in your home in Nerima who would never seriously credit such thing as possible, even coming from me as a reliable witness."

Nabiki glared at her easy-going companion, "And what was the deal about you setting me up to meet with him anyway? You knew he'd take advantage of my inexperience to cheat me into buying this junk on line credit..."

"Actually I thought you did rather well, and so did he," Anri mused, "I could tell that he was very impressed with your negotiation skills, and that's an important thing with Devils. It's not what you say so much as how you conduct yourself through bartering that they pay attention to, and with Stan it means a lot that you never flash all of your cards upon the table and plead poverty when he discusses terms and interest rates. Of course that's not really my thing. The last time I was involved in market negotiations I would up overturning tables and starting a riot, so you need not take my word on your skills. I'm just making a casual observation."

"I still can't get over the idea of the two of you being close budies," Nabiki admitted, shaking her head in amazement at the stunning contrast between her childhood image of the Christian Oni-Devil and then friendly, jovial fast-talker whom she had just engaged in spirited negotiations for the better part of what seemed like the last two hours.

"I find him to be an honest enough Devil in his ways," Anri remarked, "Unlike other kinds who do not wear their horns so openly and who pitch their crafty venom in the guise of seeming virtue."

"Hmph," Nabiki scowled, "So what do you think about this stuff he conned me into taking off of his hands? Like this Persian rug for example...does he honestly think that I'm such a yokel that I'd believe that it once belonged to Aladdin?"

"Of course not," Anri replied, "He expects you to see past such obvious marketing ploys...but just for the record it is authentically 9th century and comes from the same manufacturer, so he wasn't really bending the truth too far in that department."

"And this thing," Nabiki put her packages down and reached into a rod that had been slipped through her belt sash, "What the heck is it good for? And why did he keep insisting that it would in real handy?"

"Well, why not try it out and let me show you," Anri reached for the rod then touched a few dials, twisted the handle until it clicked a certain way, then depressed a ruby stud and caused a curious humming noise to emanate all around them.

Nabiki blinked as the landscape suddenly shifted, and then she gasped in amazement as the beauty and pageantry of a natural wilderness area replaced the noisy, oily, smelly, overcrowded streets of the world known as Deva, leaving everything around them in bright relief and startlingly sharp, well defined prismatic colors.

"It's called a 'D-Rod,' also known as a 'Dimension Hopper' for short-range trips between the various planes of reality," Anri explained as he handed the rod back to Nabiki, "It's used for travel by the various races who come and go all of the time to and from the Marketplace, really quite simple to use and everything, though it hardly substitutes for doing things through the old fashioned methods."

Nabiki was not really listening to the man so much as gaping in astonishment at everything around them, which looked startlingly real and more vivid than the reality to which she was accustomed.

"Where...are we?" she gasped in wonder, her first impulse being to label the place as "Heaven."

"Ah," Anri turned and glanced at their surroundings as if only just then realizing that they were in a different setting, "Arael, the world of Light. It's been such a long time since my last visit..."

"Ah...excuse me?" Nabiki timidly asked.

"This is where I traveled to after fleeing from Hell in order to purify myself and expunge the bad karma acquired during my eighth incarnation," Anri explained, "It exists closer to the center of all realities where the forces of Light and Order are stronger than the elements of Chaos and Darkness. Arael is home to a uniquely gifted branch of humanity who are the descendants of a Lemurian colony, and they have evolved here with a natural affinity to the elements of nature. Come, let me show you...it really is quite a lovely place, and one you should definitely remember."

Nabiki started to reach down to regather her belongings, but Anri said, "Leave them there, they won't be going anywhere for the moment, trust me."

"But..." Nabiki started to protest, only to have her protest be stilled by the gentle look her companion turned in her direction.

"Theft is unknown to these people," he assured her, "Your purchases will be safe, I guarantee it."

"Ah...oh well," Nabiki said, reluctantly dropping the carpet then shrugging her shoulders, glad to be rid of such a burden.

He started off down a trail that was formed of wide-spaced stepping stones that led through a grassy vale and rose up slowly at the side of a high hill which was covered in lush trees and boasted an abundance of life of every variety, with small furry animals poking their heads out of bushes and sniffing the air out of curiosity rather than fear as if attempting to make out the nature of the curious animals in their midst. Nabiki followed more in curiosity than certainty at what her companion was attempting to display this time in taking her to such a place, but the more that she stood in the presence of ancient trees and virgin woods the more difficult it was for her to believe that human beings had ever lived there. It was only upon discovering the first of many standing stones that she got a real inkling as to the nature of the people and what passed for their civilization.

"Ley stones," Anri noted as they passed one by, a huge monolith that stood a good ten meters tall and no doubt weighed a couple of hundred tons, and was just as obviously set there through artificial means since it did not look like a natural formation but rather had rune symbols carved within its weather-worn surface of hard basalt. "They used to be quite common in the ancient world on Earth, though these days only a few hundred have been left standing."

"I've read about them, of course," Nabiki carefully noted, feeling more than a bit awed as she attempted to imagine the type of construction machinery that could be used to set such a huge block on its end like that, against the normal tide of gravity and selective erosion, "There's a lot of the things in Europe and Great Brittain..."

"Actually there are more than a few in Japan, though most of those were lost to the ages," Anri mused, "They are natural channel-markers used to chart the course of the Dragon Lines that encircle the planet...only those tides have changed on earth over the millennia and most of the Ley stones have lost a great deal of their power. The people here, however, continue the Old Ways and have refined things quite a bit since the age when Lemurai sank into the south pacific ocean."

"You mean like Atlantis in the Atlantic?" Nabiki asked.

"Yes, but somewhat earlier, close to a million years in the past by the modern calendar," Anri answered, "So you can imagine how the branch of humanity that has evolved here might differ from your own species. On the surface there is little difference, but internally...these people have advantages that you cannot begin to imagine, such as an extended lifespan and slower rate of maturation."

"What, you mean like elves?" Nabiki asked.

"Similar, but with a few notable differences," Anri's eyes twinkled with amusement, then as they reached a rise on the hill he glanced to the side and said, "Observe for yourself the people of Arael, also known as the Lords of Light to beings who dwell in less harmonious regions of the cosmos."

Nabiki turned and stared in silent wonder as she saw a group of children gathered about in a clearing nestled between trees and a fancy wooden building nestled off to the side in the background. The children looked quite human and even ordinary as far as surface features might be noted...but one child in particular was standing on one finger at the center of the circle balancing herself with casual ease while atop one foot a large stone-practically a boulder-was being held upright.

Of to one side an adult-clearly the supervisor to this group-was complimenting the child with praise, then clapped her hands gently and the child let the boulder go, flipped up onto her feet with great ease even as gravity did the rest and caused the rock to land by herself with a thump that made Nabiki jump with an instinctive desire to rush forward to the child's rescue.

"Ha na mi Nodekateladalon!," the teacher said with gratitude then turned to the other students and said, "Imaladojonainon...se vo lu an todan."

A young boy got up and walked around to where the small girl was, even as the girl herself sat down, quite obvious to her near-encounter with the boulder. The dark-haired boy smiled cherubic-like, then at the teacher's direction turned to the boulder and began by touching it with a thumb and two forefingers...and the massive thing started to move, then rose up from the ground as the you casually lifted it as though it were a Styrofoam prop rather than made of solid granite.

"The people who live here are attuned to the vibrancy of nature and can tap into the manna streams of this world as if it were second nature...which it is," Anri explained in quiet observation, "They neither toil nor do they labor...but rather they spend their days in harmony with their surroundings, seeking to perfect the art of perfection itself while abiding on the fruits and vegetables that the land yields up in great abundance."

"Paradise?" Nabiki asked, speaking the word that came nearest to mind as she stared around at what she now recognized to be a larger community surrounding the school zone, a living, vibrant, thriving village that radiated cheerfulness and joy at every rounded corner within her direct field of observation.

"Or as near enough to one as can be imagined upon the mortal plane," Anri said, then nodded back towards the study group, "Notice that there are exactly twenty-four students in this block? By tradition all students form in family sized units of six with four to a Quarter, and each group of Six considers of an Elder child, who is the group director. The teacher is in charge of two lesser assistants who are each in charge of two groups of twelve children, so these twenty-four young ones in a study group have a uniquely open hierarchy where older children pass along their wisdom to younger children while studying directly under the wisdom of an Elder. These units of six do everything together from sleeping, eating and bathing and are as tight-knit as any family unit you might care to use for an analogy. Their parents surrender them up at what for you would be the equivalent age of nine and are only periphery involved with these units and spend much of their days studying under their elders...and so on and so forth until each student reaches an age where they care acknowledged as a Master."

"Wild," Nabiki murmured, both curious and disturbed by the social implications.

"How so wild?" a woman's voice asked, "I should think that you would find our ways to be very civil...stranger."

Nabiki turned and suppressed a gasp upon discovering the woman who had addressed her so, a slender woman with long brown hair who was sitting in full lotus upon a stone pillar and dressed in a bright blue that was very loosely bound about her waist.

"Ah," Anri smiled, "Hail to thee, friend Bravelionarchiovar. It is good to see thee again."

"Likewise Maitreyaselongar," the young-seeming woman said while unfolding her legs and rising fluidly to her bare feet, "Many long days has it been since last you came into our midst. Sit a while and ease the burden of your travels."

"I thank you, but no," Anri replied with obvious reluctance, then he nodded to his companion and said, "My student, Nabikitendosaotome, is accompanying me on a walkabout where I am seeking to show her the wonders of Arael and the bounteous joys awarded you by the powers that govern."

"An outlander?" the blue-robed woman asked while studying Nabiki with curious interest, "And clearly not your mate, Eleaventuralongar. How strange her aura is...what world does she hail from that has left so many disturbing elements to tarnish her halo?"

"She is of an Earth where enlightenment has not yet been attained," Anri explained, "But I am attempting to show her your ways so that she can appreciate the fact that it is possible to attain some measure of your wisdom."

"Ah...Konichiwa," Nabiki said, sensing the moment where it was now her turn to contribute to the conversation.

"Selovarno," the blue-robbed brunette clasped her hands together and bowed in respectful reply, "On behalf of my people I give you greetings, Nabikitendosaotome. May your visit here be fruitful and may the wonders of Arael be open to your blessing."

"Ah...thanks...um...what did you say your name was again?" Nabiki asked.

"Unfortunately her people are a bit short of speech, so for economical sakes why not allow her to shorten things and use only your nick-name?" Anri asked before turning to Nabiki and saying, "Brav the Brilliant, Nabiki. Apprentice, this is my...friend from long ago, before I met my wife Elea."

"Maitreyaselongar was good friends with my father and mother...or so I am told since I have not seen either of them in many long decades," Brav duly noted, adding in afterthought, "I am also told that his brother was good friends with my mother...though I do not know how to credit that since I have only once met the Lord Udanroberbartev."

Nabiki cocked an eyebrow to this but decided to keep her own counsel on the subject that popped into her mind and fired her suspicions.

Just then a tall redhead wearing crimson slacks and matching halter-top made her presence known by striding up then pausing with hands upon her hips, staring haughtily in Anri's direction.

"Do wonders never cease to confound the wisdom of the Elders?" she said jauntily, "Maitreyaselongar is among us once again. For what cause are we so favored?"

Anri turned to the woman with long flaming-red hair and said, "Good morning to you, Erikavionchelovar. I was paying my respects to your elder sister and offering her the benefit of acquainting herself with my new student, Nabikitendosaotome. Saotome-san, this is Erika the Red...so named for reasons that I'm certain that you will not find too confounding."

"Charmed," Nabiki replied, wondering privately to herself why it was that-wherever she traveled-she had such a propensity for meeting up with statuesque redheads.

"Nabikitendosaotome is on pilgrimage to acquire enlightenment and valued knowledge that will aid her in her studies," Anri explained, "I thought that, by bringing her here, I might acquaint her with the ways of Arael and its people since her ways are somewhat different and the journey before her is long and somewhat complicated."

"An off-worlder?" Erika exclaimed in surprise, giving Nabiki a closer study, "How strange...her aura is clouded, almost earthen, and there are impurities to her alua that suggest that she has not yet attained full anome..."

"Indeed," Brav remarked, "I was making a similar such observation just when you came to join up with us, Sister. She is not yet a novitiate, which seems strange as she appears mature enough in outward form, though I am given to understand that the people of some worlds mature more quickly than is the case for us."

"Are you certain it was wisdom to bring her among us, Maitreyaselongar?" Erika asked, "The Elders warn us that making contact with off-worlders could potentially lead to dissociation..."

"I am aware of what the Elders believe, Erikavionchelovar," Anri replied, "But in this case I believe that contamination can be easily contained, especially as Nabikitendosaotome could profit much in clarifying her Ka by observing the both of you as examples of inner integration."

"Ah...say what?" Nabiki asked, her confusion competing with her sense of awe and wonder at this place...and at the strange sense of purity that she perceived radiating from within both of these young-seeming women.

"Your confusion is palpable, Friend Nabikitendosaotome," Brav spoke encouragingly, "But enhance your calm and center your being. All things of enlightenment will come with time to one who remains open to new wonders. We are here to help if you require our counsel and support as Unit Elders, so be at one and leave your trust in our hands, for you do us honor by allowing us to guide you."

"The elders say that the highest position that anyone can attain is the rank of a teacher," Erika said supportively, only to qualify her remark by saying, "But...in you case I think my sister and I would have a lot to work with, for rarely have I seen a spirit as tormented by doubt and confusion as your own. Whoever guided you to this point must truly have lacked the wisdom and vision of Lord Maitreyaselongar."

"That's...putting it mildly," Nabiki said by way of understatement, mentally contrasting her "Uncle Genma" with the nettlesome-yet-sage Anri who-for all his quirky ways-was quite obviously a man of very advanced wisdom and knowledge...even allowing for his alleged identities in previous incarnations.

"You must make allowances for my apprentice," Anri advised, "Her world is clouded and lacks the vibrancy of Arael, and where she dwells there is only a gray mass without form or clarity. She has advanced far beyond the vision of her contemporaries and is on the verge of attaining clarity, but still has much to travel before enlightenment is upon her."

"So we have gathered," Brav walked up and slowly circled around Nabiki, her eyes not quite so sharply focused as she appeared to be looking right through the Saotome-Tendo heir as opposed to directly at her...and those eyes were of such a clear crystal blue coloration that they did not themselves appear natural but reminded Nabiki more of a pair of specially shaped contacts...though clearly they were her eyes as they dilated slightly and then seemed to relax and return to a more natural coloration.

"How interesting," the brown haired girl turned to Erika as though to share a newly gained secret, "Her memories are brief, and I perceive that her lifespan to date is barely that of a newborn."

"What?" Erika gasped, "How is this possible? By rights she should be at the age of third ascension..."

"But clearly she is not," Brav turned around and gently smiled in Nabiki's direction, "Our apologies, Friend...it was not my wish to be intrusive. I confess to curiosity that exceeds the bounds of propriety for looking past your wards to the inner you. Please accept that no intended violation of your...what word was that I perceived? Privacy? Odd...such a curiously gray concept..."

"You...what?" Nabiki asked, feeling indeed as though she had just been mentally violated.

"Allow me to explain something that may help you to understand matters better," Anri murmured, "On Arael there is no hiding of thoughts, no denial of the inner you, no privacy as you would understand it, and no avoidance or evasion of truth. There is only clarity and understanding, the ability to perceive through surrendering the ego and opening one's self up to the greater Unity of all. What friend Brav here is saying is that she opened her mind to you and the contents of your thoughts spilled out into her mind since you have never learned to properly barricade yourself against such outward perception...and a good thing, too, since Araelians are trained to regard such retiniscence as a hostile emotion."

"But...but still...!" Nabiki sputtered indignantly.

"Please," Brav reached out with both hands and took Nabiki's own between them, "Accept this from me in return...my way of atonement for unintentionally breaching your borders."

Nabiki's first impulse was to flinch away from such contact, but the warmth of those gentle hands caused her to hesitate by a fraction...and then something more flowed through from the skin of the brown haired woman into the flesh of the Saotome-Tendo heir, and all at once her nervous system conveyed the wellspring of emotions that were strange and wonderful...along with thoughts and images of a nature that caused her to gasp and stare in open wonder.

A lifetime opened up to her...so long and broad, in fact, that it almost seemed to Nabiki as if she were viewing a kaleidoscope of endless summers that were full of life and love and wonderful sensations. She saw the years stretching out into the distant pass unfold as though the entire history of this Bravelionarchiovar were an open scroll for her perusal. She found herself amazed at the years of training and studying that she had undergone in the mystic way of her people, developing an affinity with nature that allowed her to bend the very force of Light itself to her will, though the flame that she had chosen to be her Guide point was the Blue Flame of Azure, the holy light of Spirituality and Intellectual Perfection.

And then other images...far more embarrassing to her more conventional way of thinking...of the discovery of the wonders of adulthood, of the birthing of sexual impulses and raw emotions that could only be quelled by slaking her thirst through further studies. An image of Brav in the arms of Erika flowed by, of two Unit sisters, not linked so much by blood as by a shared childhood bonding, experimented in the arts of love by practicing its ways with one another, and the joys this brought to both of them, long since tamed to more tranquil passivity and friendship. Yet still the bond remained of two former lovers who still remained good friends, a love that remained like a smoldering ember that could well flare back to life one day, though for the moment neither one felt any urge to continue their relationship in that direction and had, in fact, begun exploring other outside interests.

Brav allowed the contact to subside and released Nabiki's hands, then smiled a very gentle smile and said, "And now you know all that there is to know of me, Sister. I trust that you will do well with the knowledge."

"It is good that you have done this, friend Bravelionarchiovar," Anri noted, "And now my student and I must continue our pilgrimage elsewhere."

"Hey, no fair!" Erika protested, "Why don't I have the right to share my essence with this stranger?"

"If you wish to know about her, then share with your sister," Anri replied, "Though filtered through her perceptions I am certain that you will profit handsomely from the pooling of your knowledge."

"Indeed," Brav smiled, giving Nabiki an oddly familiar glance before turning to Erika and saying, "The memories that she has shared with me have given me much insight that I must meditate upon in order to assimilate. I would welcome your sharing with me the benefits of my attainment, Sister, as the both of us will find much to reflect upon in the coming solstice."

"Well...with you, maybe," Erika reluctantly conceded, though Nabiki sensed that the redhead was in for quite an interesting time in that period of "study" since her intuitive perception of such things had already caught the subtle subtext within Brav's glance that suggested that the passions between them were not quite cool enough to truly be called "mere embers."

"This way, Saotome-san," Anri urged, and with great reluctance the Saotome-Tendo heir turned to follow her companion-slash-teacher, feeling strangely drawn to this place all the more since her sharing of memories had given her greater insight into its heavenly nature.

They retraced their steps back the way that they had come, but now Nabiki's eyes were opened to new wonders and could perceive the natural beauty around them in greater clarity than before, seeing infinitely more variety in the various examples of plant and animal life, including various types of exotic creature that surprised her to an extent that she felt compelled to point them out and said, "Hey...am I imagining things? Those look like..."

"They are," Anri replied, "The Fair folk who walk in harmony with nature. On Arael they exist in such abundance that could have to be careful not to trip over them, and considering their size...well, that would not be very sporting."

"Fairies," Nabiki finished her statement, amazed at the flitting sight of tiny winged creatures of doll-like height and dimension who cavorted among flowers, leaves and bushes as though delighting in a game of tag, so carefree and innocent in their nature that they seemed perfectly at home among such wonders, and indeed were taken as an ordinary phenomenon by the people who lived here, 'Companions Upon the Way' whose childish delight could be found mirrored in everything with which they came in contact.

"They are a variety of thought-form elemental that comes into being as a reflection of the emotions and thoughts of those whose innocence has not yet been shaded," Anri replied, "They are not fully-souled beings such as you or I but are a type of life form that is both intelligent and self-reflective, and yet so keenly attuned to the elemental force lines of the world that one could starve them off merely by inhibiting their food source."

"Which is?" Nabiki asked.

"Natural growing things, such as trees, plants, grass and other foliage," Anri answered, "Their existence may be partially caused by sentient life-forms such as us but they depend upon the harnessed power of plant-generated Prana to survive. Unfortunately the tendency of people on your world to cut down forests and replace them with urban jungles has greatly diminished their numbers back on Earth, though a few do still manage to eke out a bare subsistence level existence by blending in with the artificial ecosystem of concrete and plaster cities."

"Makes sense," Nabiki said, "You know...there was a time when I didn't believe in..."

All of a sudden he found Anri's hand over her mouth, not touching it but inhibiting her from further speaking.

"Don't say the words," he urged, "Faries are very sensitive about the beliefs of people, which is only natural since our cast-off-thoughts partially empower their existence. To deny them their reality is to diminish their number in the world...and not all Faries are nice and decent sorts who tolerate that sort of behavior. Quite a number who are of the dark cast have even been known to prey upon humans and cause them great mischief."

He lowered his hand and Nabiki glanced up at him with a sardonic, "All right, Peter Pan, I'll play along and not rock the rice cart. But what about those guys back there? Are they really...well...Gods? I mean...from what I saw in that Brav's memories...it felt like she'd been around for centuries..."

"She has," Anri replied, "By your estimation she would be approximately six hundred and fifty-nine years by next February. Erika is, by contrast, around five-hundred-and-eighty-seven..."

Nabiki arched both eyebrows then glanced back over her shoulder, "Looking pretty good for their ages if you ask me."

"Indeed," Anri replied, "But the lifespan of Araelians is about twenty times that people from your world. They mature slowly, taking approximately a hundred-and-twenty years just to achieve puberty, which is why they were so curious about you as at the age of eighteen-going-on-nineteen you would tend to be regarded as barely an infant."

Nabiki did a quick math count then gasped, "You mean I'm just two years old compared with them?"

"Rather advanced for your age, don't you agree?" Anri smiled, turning and resuming the way down the path back to where they had begun things.

Nabiki scowled then said, "Tell me something else, Oh-Wise-Sensei...just which one of you fathered either one of those...kids?"

Anri paused and glanced over one shoulder, "Well...if you were to imply that I was the father, I'd be flattered. Brav is a woman I would proudly call my daughter, and Thelendra would be more than happy to embrace her as a kinswoman. Sadly I do not believe this to be the case...though there is the possibility that Udan...well, as Brav says, he was very close to her mother...but the test results were...inconclusive."

"Heh," Nabiki smirked, "But you've got your suspicions, right? And so does she...if I read her memories right."

"Brav is exceptionally intelligent and sensitive in ways that even for an Araelian makes her special in my eyes," Anri noted, "The sad truth is that she is growing more and more disaffected with her world as though sensing that a vital part of herself exists elsewhere and for a purpose that lays hidden from her present vision. I knew that she would be interested in you as an Off-worlder because your thoughts and memories would give her a taste of the larger world that exists out there in the worlds that lay closer to the ream of Shadows. One day she will choose of her own volition to leave this paradise, and by arming her with your street-savvy I hope to better prepare her so that she is not quite so much a babe in the woods as would otherwise be the case...and when she goes so will her sister and the rest of her unit..."

"Wait a minute," Nabiki started, "You mean...you brought me here deliberately...just to contaminate her innocence with my cynicism?"

"Well, after all, you yourself have implied that I do nothing without a greater purpose," Anri's eyes twinkled mischievously once again, "But for yourself take away this observation...that even in paradise there can be discontent and restless urges, for it is within the nature of humanity to seek betterment and self-improvement, and even the enlightened can gain much from studying the ways of the unwashed and the sullied."

He turned around and started to move forward again, compelling Nabiki to do likewise...when a faint noise caused her to start, then turn her head and gaze at the creature whom she found grazing in a meadow nearby...and with a gasp of sheer wonder she said, "I...don't believe it..."

The creature lifted up its single-horned head and turned to regard her, then shrugged its mane and returned to its grazing.

"Better move along, Saotome-san," Anri urged, "His kind do not like to be disturbed when they are eating."

An almost childish urge overtook Nabiki and she found herself reverting to the state of being a little girl who wanted very much to pet the "pony," only this magnificent creature with the silvery hide and alabaster horn was not the type one encountered in a petting zoo, so she mastered her impulses and very carefully crept away, unable to take her eyes off the beast until they rounded a bend in the hillside that obstructed her view of him altogether.

It was many long moments before she found the urge to speak once again, but when she did it was to voice irritation at the sight of some small brownish...things that were poking around her recently discarded purchases from Deva, which prompted her to say, "Hey you! Get away from those! They don't belong to you!"

"Saotome-san," Anri said chidingly, then he spoke in a curious tongue that sounded like chittering, to which the furry ape-like creatures responded in kind, and then offered up the packages, bags and other belongings, including the rolled up carpet.

Nabiki accepted the "D-Rod" that was offered her by one of the small brownish things, then said, "Ah...thanks. Just don't do it next time, okay?"

The creature gave her a broad-grinned smile that showed off a lot of teeth and then happily bounced up and down as though paid a compliment from a master.

"He likes you," Anri noted, "His name, by the way, is Chi-Chi-To, a servant of my good friend, Su Wong Chung, the Monkey King..."

"What?" Nabiki blinked, "The Monkey King? As in 'Journey to the West?' You've gotta be kidding."

"Saotome-san," Anri gave her a wounded glance, "Do I strike you as a kidder?"

"As a matter of fact, Yes," Nabiki noted while gathering up her bags and packages again, then reluctantly bowing to the troop of little "monkeys" and saying, "No hard feelings, okay? I just don't like people or...things...pawing around in my possessions."

The creatures chattered back at her, and from the way they cavorted Nabiki could not help feeling as though they were sharing a joke about her, and one that she could not share due to the barrier of language.

Anri clicked and made other noises again and the creatures hurried away sounding much like playful monkeys in chatter. He then turned to Nabiki and said, "Earth was once the home to many various non-human creatures...but the selfishness of men drove many to near extinction. Not all creatures of the ancient world were kindly disposed or benevolent, and in dealing with them your ancestors were merely acting in self-defense...but the other beings, the one of gentler natures who could not or did not fight back..."

"Right," Nabiki said, "So, what am I supposed to feel, collective guilt because my ancestors were racist idiots? What else can I say...we were only...human."

"Indeed," Anri agreed, "But one must never neglect the fact that we have lived other lives where our actions of then would make little sense to us in a modern context. It's not guilt that I would recommend here but rather caution and a willingness to learn from the mistakes of the past...and not to relive them."

"I'll go along with that," Nabiki shrugged, "So...where's the next stop on this tour, and do they give out concessions?"

"Patience Saotome-san," Anri advised, "Do not be in such a hurry to get to the destination...rather enjoy the journey and attend to the moment. Now then, as for mistakes that you are making now that reflect past error...you called the Araelians Gods, which is not quite accurate since they are merely long-lived beings who practice the ancient ways of power that is the kinship of all humanity. Gods per-se are of an entirely different order, as are the various non-human-yet-humanoid races that once shared the world of old in the time when Gods walked in kinship with mere mortals."

"Yeah?" Nabiki asked, "And when was that? In the Bronze age, before the development of modern weapons?"

"More-or-less," Anri replied, "The discovery of Iron was the beginning of the end to the ancient alliance between humans and the divine. Iron has certain properties that could affect supernatural creatures, and it's more abundant and easier to produce than orachalcum and mithril. Cold Iron, such as meteorite alloy, when forged a certain way created a blade with magnetic properties that could disrupt the flesh of lesser demons...and later blacksmiths learned to refine and harness its power into an art so that the finest of forged steel blades could cut even the flesh of divine beings, provided that the making of the metal was tempered by certain spiritual arts and practices that would fortify and imbue it with real power."

Nabiki sensed a shifting in the landscape and glanced around, wary this time that the place that she was being transported to was nowhere near as pleasant as the last stop.

"But True Gods are not that easy to kill and regard even Cold Iron with contempt, which is where more powerful devices needed to be crafted," Anri continued as if not noticing the bleaker scenery of scarred and barren hills all around them, "The enemies of the Gods being crafty sorts meant that a kind of spiritual arms race was afoot back in the ancient world...and on some planes and dimensions the struggle continued to this very day between beings of Light and Darkness, such as that fellow now contending with a rogue party of troublesome giants."

"Giants?" Nabiki whirled around, hearing the sounds of battle long before she sought out their source and was confronted by a sight of starkest wonder.

The first things that she noticed were the giants, for there was no mistaking that this was what they were since they stood around seven meters tall and made the ground shake with every footfall. Confronting them was a fellow who stood a mere two meters in height yet who held his own with an oversized axe against three of the burly brutes who were armed and armored with oversized weaponry of a cruder, more functional nature. Nearby two more of these hulking brutes laying prone upon the ground and in such condition that Nabiki seriously doubted that they would be rising up...ever again. It was war, and she was a spectator beholding the sight of an epic mythic struggle out of legend, like something out of a mythology book or a fantasy movie brought to life, only with the special effects team working overtime in the realism department.

The second thing that she realized was that she was feeling surprisingly tired, and that her packages felt inordinately...heavy...

"The fellow you see there having the altercation with the big fellows is a member of a race called gods because...well...because no other word is more appropriately descriptive,": Anri shrugged, "The giants are members of a barbarous Hill Clan whose idea of a good time is raiding a village and making off with their livestock, often taking one or two peasants along for a light snack later. Naturally the fellow with the big axe is objecting to their doing this on his land and is in the process of fulfilling his duty of nobles oblige by protecting the interests of the people who are under his...ah, Saotome-san? Are you still with me?"

THUNK!

"Saotome-san?" Anri turned around, only to find his slender companion was flat on her back spread-eagled, struggling against an unseen force that was holding her in place, to which he remarked, "Oh dear. Sorry about that...forgot that the gravity here is much greater than in your world."

"No kidding," Nabiki grated, finding it difficult to sit upright as her packages were holding her down, feeling as though they had turned into lead, along with the rest of her body.

"Um, excuse me," he turned away and raised one hand, "Mauro! A moment of your time, please?"

"Monalon?" the big man with the giant axe asked while dodging a nasty swipe from a studded club that was larger than his whole body, "Is that you? What the duce are you doing here? Your timing rots like always!"

Anri sighed, then snapped his fingers, and all at once the three remaining giants froze in place, becoming as motionless as statues. The fair haired man then said, "There, I've called a time-out to your fight. Now do you think that possibly you could spare a moment?"

The armored man with the axe had frozen himself in a defensive crouch with weapon raised at the ready. When he saw that his foes were not attacking him he slowly unbent then heaved a sigh and said, "Now why couldn't you have done that before? It would have saved me a lot of bother and trouble."

"Leave them be for now," Anri urged, "I have a more urgent need for your services...or rather I should say my fair companion."

"A lady?" the large man turned about, catching a better glimpse of the prone Nabiki, "Well now, that's a sport of a different kind. Oh, don't worry, I won't pick on a foe who cannot defend himself. It wouldn't be too...sporting, now would it?"

"Obviously not," Anri replied as the large man strode up to join them, easily dwarfing the slender Anri by as much as a head, and every inch of him a solidly cast frame of muscle beneath worn leather-and-copper plate armor that gave the fellow a rustically barbaric appearance for all that he was surprisingly handsome with chocolate brown skin and a magnificently bronze-like complexion.

He had a well-trimmed beard and mustache yet for all his dark ancestry his eyes were the most vivid shade of cobalt blue that made even Brav's eyes seem like ordinary sapphires. From beneath his helmeted head he surveyed Nabiki with an interested glance then narrowed his eyes and voiced his surprise, "By Malgar's Iron Club, she is a mortal!"

"Indeed?" Anri remarked as he glanced up at the larger man, "I really hadn't noticed."

Another long study and then the big man said, "She is from Earth...from Lady Astarte's world if I judge rightly. She has much the same in common with the woman named Snake and the fair Lady Illyra."

"A good guess," Anri congratulated, "But, as you can see, she is experiencing the same difficulty as they did when first they arrived...which has prompted me to ask you...do you carry upon you a flash of Ambrosia?"

"But of course," the big black man replied, "Do you think that I would be battling giants without it?"

"Then might one share a sip with the lady and help her partake of its beneficent elixir?" Anri asked as if prompting the question.

The large man grinned, comprehension lighting up his expression, "It would be my pleasure!" and with that he reached onto his belt and removed a rams horn flask and undid a stopper at the small end then presented the tip to the lips of Nabiki.

"Dear maiden," the large man said gently, "Please accept but a few drops of this, for more than a few drops may prove too potent for your frail mortal constitution."

"Frail mortal?" Nabiki bridled, "And who are you calling a maiden?"

"Oh, I like her," the dark-skinned man grinned up at Anri, "She has a fine warrior's spirit."

"It's all right, Saotome-san," Anri urged, "Ambrosia is everything you may have heard about, only much, much more potent."

"All right," Nabiki said, "If you say so," and she opened her lips to allow the drops falling from the tip to enter her mouth...and was all at once overwhelmed by the burning, cooling, honey-like sensation that caused her tongue to tingle and made her sinuses clear up on the instant.

A moment later the warmth traveled down from her throat to the rest of her body, and then she felt every cell in her body tingle with life and renewal, and all at once she sat up again, feeling as though she had recovered from a light nap, her fatigue quite forgotten as was the encumbrance of added weight to her body.

"Wow," she said with a wondering expression, "What the heck was in that stuff? I feel...fantastic!"

"It should bolster your natural strength and allow you to adjust to the gravity for a bit," Anri said, "The effects are catalytic and to be more permanent would require that you drink more than a mouthful, but for now it should do the trick of making you aware of what it feels like to be a resident of this, the Godworld..."

"The Godworld?" Nabiki repeated.

"Hey, it's as good enough a name as any," the large man at her side remarked, "My name is Mauro, son of Rogan, his heir to the title of Lord of the Thunder Mountains and the Protector of this region, at your humble service."

"Ah...thanks," Nabiki said, unable to help rating this fellow by his size and impressive, potent vibrancy, which felt to her as though his chest were beating with the hammer-like pulse of a blacksmith, and his raw masculinity was difficult not to find...intoxicating.

"My lady flatters me," Mauro smiled with a gentile inclination of his head, "But does she also have a name to go with such beauty?"

"Ah..." Nabiki mentally cudgeled herself then said, "Nabiki...Saotome Nabiki...wife of...Saotome Ranma," she added the latter part with just a hint of hesitation.

"You are married?" Mauro evidenced surprise and disappointment, "Such a shame...yet hardly unexpected. The man who would let a prize such as you get away from him should be hung as a fool. But...ah well...you are in the presence of a friend, which makes you a friend to me and a welcome guest within my territory. Welcome to the Thunder Mountains...and do tell me how I might be of service?"

"Ah..." Nabiki found her mind instantly filling with naughty possibilities that betrayed her duties as a loyal wife to her husband, and suddenly she had a sense of what it was like for Ranma to be so tempted by all of the comely beauties who seemed to taunt him with their willing interest.

"You already have been of great service, my friend," Anri said by way of helpful interjection, "But I wanted my apprentice here to see what true divinity can be like from one who was born to the blood of the Gods...and how life can be as much trouble for you as it is a marked blessing."

"Ah..." Mauro nodded sagely, standing up and offering a large hand to help Nabiki to her feet with seemingly no effort whatsoever, "Let me take another wild guess...she comes from that world where Gods are all but extinct and all that her people have left to believe in are lies, half-truths and misdirection?"

"Not quite," Anri replied, "The Gods of her nation still thrive, yet for the most part they are aloof and removed from the world of mortals, dwelling apart, mysterious yet not forgotten."

"That is very good to hear," Mauro said with a hand on one hip while he rested his huge axe upon the ground with his other hand poised upon its massive leather-wrapped handle, "When I heard the tale from the lips of the fair Illyra I was greatly saddened to know how the people of her land were taken in by a foul pretender. To think of only one God ruling over everyone and everything...it burns me just speaking the words aloud. As if any of my kind should be entrusted with that much raw manna power."

"I know," Anri said with sadness, "The very idea mystifies me as well, but the concept of a mysterious and effusive entity who governs everything from above has enormous popular appeal in the majority of the world from whence my student hails...and it is because of this self-contradictory conception that her nation is in peril from one of the Lords of the Abyss, who commands his minions from the shadows."

"Truly you say this?" Mauro reacted, "And Old One dares to stretch a tentacle to menace a world full of defenseless mortals? By the Thunder that is my Birthright, such a thing should not stand! You may count upon my axe to defend the people of her world, you have but to request it."

"Ah...thanks," Nabiki said with a sudden sharp appreciation that this guy had a LOT to offer beyond that of another jock playing Viking, "I'll keep that in mind, but...I tend to fight my own battles."

"Heh, spoken like a true warrior," the big man grinned, turning to Anri and saying, "A pity our worlds are separated by such a large rift. I should every much enjoy traveling to the world of my half-sister to see what it is that she finds so fascinating about life among such mortals."

"Ah yes, your sister," Anri smiled, "Charming lady. She has a son now."

"A son?" the big man reacted with a start, "The son of the man named William who was her fiancé before our father brought about his elevation?"

"The very same," Anri replied, "When I see her I'll be certain to pass along your regards to her."

"More than my regards, Old Friend," Mauro said with surprising effusiveness, "Her child, though partly mortal, bears within in the honor and obligation of all free-willed beings of the Godworld for his father's part in ridding us of the tyrant. Were I there I would give more than an Uncle's blessing to such a young one, I would bestow upon him the health and favor of one who has grown to love sand care for mortal beings thanks to his father's heroic inspiration."

"Well, perhaps you should pay her a visit some time and give your blessings directly," Anri mused, "Saotome-san, give him your D-Rod."

"Say what?" Nabiki reacted.

"As a gift in token to the one that he has shared with you," Anri explained, "One boon for another."

Nabiki touched the rod in question and said, "Do you have any idea what I paid for this thing?"

"With credit that I extended towards you?" Anri responded.

There was a slight pause as Nabiki thought it over then she pulled the rod from her sash and passed it over, "Here, I hope you get better use out of it than I have...so far."

The big man extended both hands and bowed his head as though expressing gratitude from a peer, "I thank you for this boon, my lady, and I shall see it returned to you after I am done paying my respects to your world and my much beloved sister."

Nabiki looked the big man over, "You've got a sister...who looks something like you?"

"Indeed," the dusky Mauro said, "Tri-Longu of the Falnu nation, Princess daughter of Queen Nia-Rydan, Immortal ruler of the Falnu peoples..."

"Yes, of course," Anri said pleasantly, "But you will excuse us for now, Old Friend...oh, and don't forget to read the directions before using the rod since it's a specially crafted blend of technology and magic."

"Indeed?" Mauro asked as he glanced at the rod in one hand, "Perhaps I should experiment in its usage for a bit before I make my pilgrimage to the world of mortals."

"You do that," Anri urged, "Now, I'll leave you to settling accounts with your friends over there," he snapped his fingers and suddenly the giants were no longer motionless but rather stared stupidly about before reorienting their vision towards Mauro.

"YOU!" one of the giants said in a booming tone of voice, "YOU KILLED OUR BROTHER, NOW WE WILL WRECK OUR VENGEANCE UPON YOU, MAURO THE BUTCHER!"

The big man sighed then hefted his oversized axe one again, "Ah well...back to work. You'd think I could get a bit more time away from my office..."

"Come along now, Apprentice," Anri urged turning away from the looming altercation as the dusky skinned Mauro moved to confront the looming menace of three really big people.

"But..." Nabiki hesitated, glancing down, "What about my belongings?"

Anri sighed, "You mean to say that you have been among Amazons for over a year and a half and you still have yet to study their art in folding possessions between dimensions?"

"Ah...well..." Nabiki hesitated, reflecting on how that was one particular trick that Cologne had yet to teach her how to master.

"Very well," Anri extended a hand and all at once the objects on the ground rose up and flew towards him, growing tiny in the process until they were the size of mere thimble weights. Anri snatched them from the air and then held them up to Nabiki, "Keep them for later. They should decompress as soon as you need them."

Nabiki opened her palm and accepted the tiny tokens that were her possessions, then carefully stored them away in her money pouch before glancing over her shoulder and saying, "You sure he's going to be all right?"

"Who, Mauro?" Anri replied, glancing at the mighty altercation brewing between God and giants, "Positively. He does this kind of thing for a living. Why, are you worried?"

"I'm not worried," Nabiki said evasively, "It's just...if anything happens to him how will I get my rod back?"

"Nice to see your priorities are in good order," Anri turned away, "Unlike the next fellow whom we shall be visiting now."

"Oh?" Nabiki asked as their surroundings changed once again, "Another old friend of yours from your travels?"

"Hardly," Anri replied, "No friend of mine is this one...in fact, you wonder that I could be friends with the likes of someone named Satan, which is nothing more than a title that means 'Adversary' among the Hebrews? Well, contrasted with this rascal whom we shall soon be seeing I find friend Stan to be a pillar of honesty and in every sense a more trustworthy kind of being."

Nabiki looked around and was surprised to see that they were in a modern suburban city of some sort, at the outskirts of a large parking lot area where she could see framed in the distance a very large and ornate looking building of ultra-modern glass and steel design yet whose purpose could be discerned by the large cross set upon the front lawn, a neon-and-glass designed edifice that was three stories tall and as hard to miss as a spotlight.

"A Christian church?" she asked, shielding her eyes against the brightness of the sun as it reflected off the giant cross and the multi-hued stain glass windows.

"Not just any church, mind you," Anri replied, turning to regard the placed with yet another look of infinite sadness, "The Blazing Cross of Glory Cathedral, home to the Church of the Illuminated Glory, headed by the not-so Reverend Thomas E. Schickle, a branch division manager of the Church of Divine Profit Universal."

"Really?" Nabiki asked.

"Actually I was just kidding about that last part," Anri assured her, "They don't really call it 'Divine Profit,' but they ought to."

"Wait a second," Nabiki glanced around, "This is in America, right?"

"The good old US of A," Anri replied, "Birthplace of Government by Checks and Balances...and the Unlimited Deficit of Illogic that often gets fostered on well-meaning patriotic sorts who are told to salute the flag while multi-national corporations pick their pockets clean."

"Doesn't look like the pictures I've seen of New York or the other more interesting places that I've always wanted to visit," Nabiki frowned, "So where are we?"

"Down south of the Mason-Dixon Line in glorious Arkansas," Anri replied, "Which is also home to the headquarters of Foster Markets Unlimited, the company that puts Foster Marts on every corner of every town in every city in these grand and glorious United States, Hallallieuah."

Nabiki took note of the faintly sarcastic tone her companion was using and said, "I take it you're no great fan of the Foster Mart retail chain, Sensei?"

"Well, if you like discount stores that eat up small communities and drive the average Mom-and-Pop store out of business, I suppose you could count it a winner," Anri shrugged, "And, of course, the Foster chain is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Church of Divine Prophecy Universal, though for tax purposes they tend to diversify and use numerous dummy offices in the Caiman Islands to disguise their connection."

"Small wonder," Nabiki said, "From what I know of US law they'd be in a lot of trouble with regulators if they boasted about a thing like that in the open."

"Not with the current administration in power they won't," Anri said with a note of bitterness, "Odd thing about the fellow currently holding the Oval Office...he claims to be a closer personal friend of mine, but I never return his calls, and I never would or else...he would get quite an ear full. Frankly I don't approve of Nepotism as a means of ascending to political power, even if it is a tried and true traditional method for members of the blue-blooded sort who have too many privileges and do too little to actually earn their fortunes."

Nabiki studied the man and said, "I think I remember reading that you said a few things about rich men trying to buy the Pearly Gates into heaven."

"That much was truly written," Anri affirmed, "For what propheteth a man if he gains the whole world but forfeits himself? I believe that was in Luke's passage, 9:25, I think, though you can disregard most of the rest of what that fellow wrote since he was one of Paul's lackeys and tended to believe that I was Greek by adoption."

Nabiki gave the man a curious look, "You don't know the actual title and passage?"

"Well, it's not exactly as if I spend all my time memorizing the thing to quote bits and phrases out of context," Anri bridled, "It's really quite annoying to be challenged all of the time into remembering each phrase and passage...like those abominable Nativity scenes that you see displayed around the time of Mithra's birthday..."

"What?" Nabiki said, "You don't like nativity scenes?"

"Well, how would you feel about having your birthday pictures on displays in department store windows?" Anri shrugged, "Honestly, and people think I get upset with Kris Kringle because he gets more attention than me with the children of the world...just imagine!"

"Say what?" Nabiki looked at the man dubiously, "Now we're onto Santa Claus?"

"Hey, be careful what you say about Kris," Anri warned, "He's a close personal friend of mine and I won't have people bad-mouthing him...even if some Elvish Rights Activists do claim that he exploits innocent Gnomes to work in his sweat shops."

"Ah...right," Nabiki said, sorry to have even raised the question.

"The thing that I like about Kris is that his message is basically a positive one," Anri continued, "Be nice to one another and give presents to your loved ones. So much better than the message that I'm supposed to yield around the holidays, that life is cruel and unfair and mean to children."

"Sensei?" Nabiki asked with a surprised expression.

"Well, judge for yourself if you will," Anri shrugged, "It's half a year away until Christmas, but these people still carry on as if I'm about to smite the world for its naughtiness and will for some obscure reason spare them in the bargain."

"A Devil's Bargain I take it?" Nabiki shrewdly asked.

"You catch on fast,": Anri noted, then turned towards the building and said, "Observe for yourself the not-so-good Reverend in motion."

It was barely an eyeblink and-one moment later-they stood inside the building surrounded by modern pillars of steel-reinforced white plaster columns and huge mosaic images of what were allegedly scenes from the Bible. The pews to their right hand were filled with well-dressed Caucasian people of an evidently Middle-or-Above economic class while several rows of Choir-types were set up on a stage in full display like white-garbed ornaments framing the Master Podium behind which stood a somewhat chubby-faced Minister whose image was blown up and displayed on a projection screen in the background.

Though Nabiki's grasp of the language known as "American-Accented English" was less than perfect, she still managed to hear everything (in spite of the atrociously heavy accent of the man, which to her ears sounded slightly like Kansai) with total and complete comprehension...not that this was necessarily a good thing as she was shortly to discover upon hearing:

"Truly I say unto you that there is no one who has left house or brother or sisters or mothers or father or children or lands but for my sake...and for the Gospel, who shall not receive a hundredfold now in this time...so saith the Lord Jesus. Friends...by this we may interpret the message of God to be that all who live by His Laws and who do righteousness in His name shall be rewarded eternally in Heaven now and forevermore. But by the same token we may construe that those who do that which is evil in His sight shall suffer the penalties of the unrighteous and shall reap eternal damnation for their sins, such is the will of Jesus..."

"Now that's presumptuous," Anri mused, "And he hasn't even quoted the full passage."

"My friends," the Reverend continued, "In these times of turmoil and confusion we must not allow ourselves to be mislead and distracted by those who would deceive us into following a false message under the banner of the evil false religion known as Secular Humanism. That creed would outlaw the very practice of religion and turn all nations into Godless sinners who follow the will of Activist Judges who dare to question the sanctity of traditional marriage. Imagine if you would a world where your sons and daughters are permitted to marry other people of the same gender and foster children through unnatural means of artificial procreation. Imagine then a world where children are forbidden to hear the very Word of the Holy Bible and are forced to tolerate people of strange faiths whose abominable practices all believing Christians are forbidden to partake in? It is not just the Jews who we must beware for their forsaking of the word of Jesus, it is everyone who dares to question the absolute mandate that Marriage shall apply strictly to a Man and a Woman and nothing else in between! Marriage is strictly for the purpose of procreation and to give Man a helpmate, and to make women honest so that they are not tempted to Sin by the lusts that is the legacy of Satan..."

Nabiki turned a questioning look towards Anri, who raised a finger to his lips and urged her to remain silent while the fool on the pedestal continued to rant like a well-dressed madman.

"My friends," he continued, "The practice of Sodomy has been declared an Abomination in the sight of the Almighty, yet who would dare blaspheme against His mighty decree and claim that their chosen lifestyle of sinful, wanton lust must take legal precedence over He who is the author of all divine Law? Who would tempt your children to risk his divine wrath by the plague of HIV infections, which the Lord in his Mercy directs only towards Sinners and not the Saintly? Why none other than those foul minions of Satan who disguise themselves as Legislators for the godless heathen Democratic Party, those so-called Liberal Activists who campaign on behalf of a Godless world, claiming their goal is to achieve equality when clearly the Lord is the only fit judge of who is equal!"

There were loud "Amens" from the congregation, but rather than being spontaneous displays Nabiki saw that the crowd was being prompted by a stage-light that lit up with the word "AMEN" in blazing letters. Her natural cynicism affirmed by this discovery, she started to take better notice of the people themselves, of how they sat glassy-eyed in their rows acting like happy, cheerful puppets being led on by the Reverend...but more than this she uncovered as she continued to stare, her vision going slightly off focus as she started to believe that she was seeing something else there, something to which the crowd of worshippers was oblivious, like all else not related to the Reverend's demagogic ranting.

She stared in horrified wonder at what looked like translucent shapes crawling over the bodies of the worshippers, worm-like apparitions that were all but invisible and ethereal to look upon, and which clearly were not materialized in the physical realm since their touch was not directly felt by the people who sat there like dumb and happy puppies waiting for a bone to be tossed their way. These worms seemed to have both legs and wings attached to their writhing bodies, and mouths that were like sucker-teeth on leaches, attaching themselves to the bodies of people and feeding themselves until they were fat on their life energies, drawing on the spirit-Chi of these people as a blood worm might be nurtured upon the flesh of mindless cattle.

And-cruising the aisles like farmers tendering their stock-invisible creatures shaped more like men walked back and forth surveying this process, using translucent poles to harvest these leeches when they got too big or fat from all their gorging. These beings looked like demons with masks that belied a horrific nature, yet they seemed almost like men in their behavior, and it was their tending to the "flock" that she found all the more disturbing.

"Sensei?" she murmured, shuddering in silent horror.

"I know," Anri replied, "They are called 'Eating Companions,' and they feast on a certain type of energy that is produced by mortals who share a particular mindset. The Reverend is a shepherd tending to the field by watering it with lies and half-truths that inspire such complacency and despair among his people, but it is the worms who are his true sheep...not that he is himself aware of what he is doing."

"Like that excuses him from being an accomplice?" Nabiki asked, only to gasp and stare up at the ceiling where an even more horrific invisible shape could be detected, "S-Sensei...?"

"Ah yes," Anri noticed the same bloated tentacle-waving creature, "A Lesser Old One, one of the minions of Lord Ariman, here to supervise the harvest and see to it that nothing goes wrong with the channeling of energies to his Lord and Master. You will notice how his very presence tends to create a feeling of miasma that blankets this whole entire edifice to obscenity that they pretend to have built in my name? Yet there is no sanctity here, no love of humanity. These people exhort hatred and wickedness in my name and disguise it with biblical passages that they freely quote out of context. I mean honestly, Saotome-san, do I strike you as the sort of person who would condemn a man or a woman simply for adopting a non-conformist lifestyle?"

"Maybe not," Nabiki said, unable to keep her mind away from the horrifying thing directly above them, "Unless that lifestyle involved actually hurting other people."

"Ah, you know me better than I'd imagined," Anri smiled, raising a finger, "I am disguising our presence so that the Old One and his Minions do not detect us...yet what is to prevent me from displaying my 'righteous' wrath against those who exploit human naivete and feed on human prejudice to create the type of emotions that their creatures love to feed upon?"

"I don't know," Nabiki replied, "But in this case I'm sure there's ample justification."

"Reka would do it without hesitation," Anri sighed, "But to do so is to make void the right of free will, which I honor even if it means tolerating such a debased and inhuman lifestyle. I mean, honestly...Polyester? These people have no class, no good taste, and no shame at all in ostentatiously displaying their wealth while outside these very grounds there are homeless people starving in the street for a decent handful."

"You got me there," Nabiki sighed, "But for what it's worth...I'm tempted to side, for once, with your brother."

"It is easy to judge and condemn someone because their ways are not your own," Anri turned away, his tone betraying the grief in his expression, "Mortal men have been doing it for countless generations without relent, and what has it profited us as a species? For two thousand years now the followers of Paul have preached a gospel of salvation based on the assumption that I would remit sin and forgive mortal transgressions against heaven...yet who can forgive this abomination multiplied a thousand times over in every church and pew where their Minister rants on in the service of Ariman? If I were to be at all consistent about it I should burn every church in the nation and force the people to start over with the clear admonition that they should never put their faith in a so-called 'Holy' man who commands them to hate and do evil."

"So why don't you?" Nabiki asked, "Too much work sifting through all of the ashes?"

Anri sighed, "You are right to mock me...it is a question that I have asked myself over and over again ever since awakening to myself in this, my tenth incarnation. Should I appear before these people and tell them the story that I have told you? And-if so-how many would believe me?"

"You could make them believe," Nabiki said, "Do a few tricks, work a few miracles, then show your bonafides."

"And be no better than the charlatan that they already take me to be?" Anri sighed, "How can you call it 'Faith' if it depends on special effects to be convincing? If people cannot sense for themselves that they are entering the charnel pits the moment they step through those polished doors into this madhouse..."

"I...think I get your point," Nabiki said, glancing at the near-mindless, vacuous faces of the worshippers and finding it impossible to resist the analogy that they had been led here like dairy beasts to the feeding trough for a good milking.

"Watch now," Anri directed her attention back towards the podium where the Reverend was receiving a line of faithful worshippers, some of them crippled on crutches and wheel chairs, "You are about to see the reason why this false faith has gotten this far...the so-called 'Miracle' that they call the Rapture."

Nabiki saw a man kneeling with head bowed before the Reverend, who laid a hand upon his head and solemnly pronounced, "Lord, receive this Humble Sinner and make light his burden by your ever-munificent Mercy, Amen!"

And then Nabiki saw it...like a blazing crown that hovered over the man as a light literally opened from h inside him and allowed the flames to touch the crown and create a psychic channel. For a moment there was an exchange of positively and negatively charged energies that cancelled each other out and created a brief fusion before the sensation faded to a dull resonance, and the man sat upright again with tears in his eyes, mumbling the words, 'Thank you, Jesus!"

"Thank me?" Anri sniffed, "I didn't have anything to do with it. He did it for himself...he just doesn't know it."

"That's the Rapture?" Nabiki murmured, both appalled and impressed at what she had just witnessed.

"The brief integration of mind, body and soul that occurs when the currents of the mind and body flow together," Anri answered, "Which-in this case-was triggered by the man's sudden epiphany in realizing a mistake within his nature that he has just self-corrected. Unfortunately he is also in a terribly receptive and suggestible state of mind that can be exploited by a cunning manipulator, and since he believes that it was his faith that is responsible for his achieving momentary Satori..."

"I get it," Nabiki said, "He's going to spend the rest of his life trying to recapture this feeling, and when he fails to achieve it he'll just think he's not praying hard enough, or maybe the line to Jesus is just busy."

"I wish that I could answer his needs for him, but that would be a gross betrayal of my office," Anri noted, "He has to find the answers for himself, not look to me for inner guidance. Trust the higher portion of his spiritual being, his Guardian Angel, which has tried valiantly to steer him in the right direction for years. Unfortunately what he has is a pompous ass who plays upon his fears and feeds his latent paranoia to keep him desperate and hopeful for another miracle that will make life for him a bit more tolerable. If only he understood that it takes years of prayer and meditation to be able to sustain a holistic mindset, and that often you must sacrifice your attachment to material things and seek to practice a way of consistently good behavior rather than mindless self-indulgence of every little whim..."

"Sensei," Nabiki murmured.

"I know," he sighed, "I ramble on and rant myself every time that I see this, but to think that well-meaning people like him are being harvested and exploited by the creation of a psychological addiction...that fearing the loss of his faith would drive this otherwise peaceful man to do violent things in order to prove his loyalty..."

"That isn't what I mean," Nabiki said, "It's just that...I feel like something really bad is about to happen..."

Just then something else did happen, something disturbing and extraordinary yet not wholly unexpected.. All at once one of the victims got up out of her pew and started shaking all over, then fell on the floor and started writhing as though in a fit of epilepsy.

Nabiki's first impulse was to rush forward, but Anri's hand restrained her, prompting her again to ask, "Sensei?"

"Watch and learn, Apprentice," he urged sadly, "She's going into shock and the work is taking her over."

"But..." Nabiki felt tormented, but to her dismay the people in their pews started cheering and applauding.

"She's speaking in tongues!" a woman declared happily, "The Spirit of Jesus is Upon Her, Hallallieuah!"

"It's a sign of the Lord's benediction and favor!" a man declared with a beaming grin, quite oblivious to what an idiot he resembled as all that Nabiki could see was that the woman on the floor was in agony, tormented by her own psychic blood worm.

"Sensei?" Nabiki felt the urge to do something become overwhelming.

Anri sighed, "I'm going to regret this...but..."

He stretched out a hand towards the woman and suddenly the leach detached itself and flew into his hand, and then with a burst of power Anri destroyed the thing, which prompted every other leach in the room to release their victims and turn about with blind-eyeless looks in his direction.

"Foul creatures of the Abyss who dare profane these mortals in my name," Anri snarled, displaying a temper that Nabiki had not witnessed in him until this moment, "The Binder of Souls Commands Thee to Begone!"

A larger burst of power and the green-eyed man caused every other leach within the room to explode, spewing out their psychic contents like invisible confetti. Anri's hand then blazed and he hurled his flame at the near-invisible "Worm-Tenders" and caused them to shriek and wail and fall to their knees in a terrible whine that only Nabiki's ears seemed keen enough to receive. Then Anri turned his focus upon the bloated monstrosity that hovered near to the ceiling.

"And where do you think you are going?" he asked, eyes blazing once more, and with a deafening explosion the creature was consumed in purple flames that caused its negatively charged essence to erupt like a gas bag, blowing away the entire glass ceiling.

Nabiki instinctively flinched and raised her arms against an expected hail of deadly shards falling in their direction, but with another wave of his hand Anri fixed the damage and repaired the damaged structure, leaving no evidence in passing that there had been such an explosion in the first place.

The people were puzzled, confused and more than slightly disoriented as they glanced around, not certain what was to be made over these events, aware only that some unseen weight had been removed from their bodies but not understanding the true nature of their sudden liberation. The woman laying on her back within the aisle turned her gaze up towards Anri, and only she seemed to comprehend the extraordinary nature of what had just transpired within their midst.

"Jesus...my lord...you delivered me...thank you..." she softly murmured.

Anri sighed, "It was nothing." Then he glanced up and sighed again, "Right on cue, here comes the Gestapo."

"What?" Nabiki turned around and suddenly found that they were being confronted by men with short hair cuts and bad suits with dark sunglasses and bits of wire projecting from their ears, many of whom were armed with clubs and guns concealed beneath their coats and all of them looking tough, mean and thoroughly about their business.

"Proof that no good deed ever does go unpunished," Anri sighed, "The Mighty Men who serve the Reverend Schickle as his personal security force. It seems my spell of concealment was unfortunately lapsed during my chastisement of the minions of Ariman."

"Get those hands where we can see them," one of the men politely-yet-firmly demanded, "The Reverend wants to speak with you. You've been warned before about trespassing on Church Property, Mister."

"Oh really?" Anri said, "Well, what a pleasant coincidence, I was hoping to see him. Do you know that the lighting in this place is monstrously garish? There ought to have been a passage against that sort of thing in Leviticus...an oversight, go figure."

"Funny guy," the security man pulled out a hand-held taser wand and demonstrated its usefulness by causing sparks to generate at the business end, "Don't make me hurt you, even if it would be a definite pleasure."

"Hmmm...they could have used you back with the Roman garrison working for Pilate," Anri noted, "He had men like you work me over once, only they used scourges and lashes."

A man directly behind Anri seemed to think it was funny too, and jabbed the fair-haired man in the back with his own taser, only to produce a result that was anything but what was expected.

"Ohhh...yes...a little to the left if you will," Anri shrugged his shoulders as though inviting the man to continue, "No...not there...it tickles..."

The man jabbing the taser into Anri's back stared in non-plussed amazement, then tried again with the result that Anri only giggled, so he held it up in dismay and stared at the thing as though wondering if the charge was set just right.

"Oh here, let me show you," Anri turned around and easily removed the thing from the man 's grasp, then touched it to the fellow, who promptly fell to the ground writhing in agony, to which Anri remarked, "A little too much? Well, not everyone can enjoy the same setting."

Guns were drawn and cocked before being pointed at the fair-haired man, who only calmly regarded them then said, "Are you sure you want to do this before witnesses? I warn you, it would prove humbling and embarrassing if you miss."

"Put them away, Boys," the 'Reverend' Schickle himself called down from the pulpit, "And you, Sir...Anri-something? How dare you disrupt this sacred house by profaning it with your unwashed presence?"

"Call it a weakness?" Anri replied, as cheerfully unconcerned as if he were enjoying the moment, which he probably was by his companion's estimation.

"Nonetheless, Sir," the Reverend made the latter honorific seem hollow, "You will speak with me in private and make an accounting for your intrusion in a House of God, or else I will have you arrested and thrown into a very dark place from which there shall be no mercy."

"Seems I've heard that one before," Anri shrugged, "Didn't believe it the last time either, but if you want a private meeting I'll be happy to attend you."

Nabiki turned to her nominal mentor and leaned closer, "Does everybody in the universe known you on sight? And do they always give you this kind of a reception?"

"Only the ones whom I pester and make myself a thorough nuisance around," Anri answered.

"I can believe that," Nabiki sniffed, then sighed, reckoning that as field trips went this one was definitely anything but boring...and by all likelihood about to get more interesting still in the very near future...

Continued.

Comments/Criticisms/Calvary Bingo Nights: shadowmane

Or: shadowmane9849

Next time up Nabiki gets a first-hand look at how they practice religion that far south of the Dixie Line, while Ranma gets his own warming up with Siren, and meanwhile the bad guys go into overdrive as word finally reaches darker ears of the threat to their plans being posed in Nerima. All that and Ranma faces down Udan in a battle to the death in: "Profiles in Discourage," or, "Fahrenheit 711." Be there!

X

/pre 


	94. Chapter 94

preDnabiki183

Nabiki 1/2

"A Very Scary Thought"

by Jim Robert Bader

(Inspired by the works of Rumiko Takahashi Others,  
with concepts and characters created by fellow fanfic writers Wade Tritschler, DB Sommers, Nicole Manders, Andrew Greaves, Bill Guiroff and countless others, including "Buffy"  
creator Joss Whedon; with special thanks to my good pal Shiva for his editing and handling of this series.)

(Certain other characters and concepts are of my own innovation, including my interpretation of the Monster of Mary Shelly's novel, the Furies, Trudy, Takaharis Angelique d'Anjou, Anri and the Daokan, Thelendra the Dream Weaver and various other guest stars appearing in this portion of the Nabiki 1/2 series...)

Chapter Sixty-Eight.

Episode One-Hundred-Eighty-Three.

"Man Of Fire."

Amalthea heard the crooning of the beast as it sought to burst forth from its shell, a deep sound like gasping through a bull horn as it drew its first breath through the gap in the egg that its efforts so far had already created. She stood back in alarm and amazement, watching as the creature exerted great effort to gain its self-liberation, and then with a mighty heave I broke free altogether, huge chunks of enamel falling to the ground as it pushed its way to freedom, and then gasped a deep breath of air and slowly rolled to the ground, its forelimbs extended to catch its weight before it tumbled.

Without thinking about it the silver-haired half-Kirin girl rushed forward with an unthought need to offer the huge creature her assistance, and with hands extended she touched its massive muzzle, causing its eyes to flicker open and then focus upon her...and in that timeless instant something flowed between woman and creature and entranced the both of them in the snare of mutual Recognition.

Ulsa and Udan stood nearby watching as the creature crooned softly and then extended a tongue to lick the astonished girl, but it made no threatening move towards her, rather behaving as if it were calling out to her and seeking her reassurance. As the silent pair of Eluini looked on they saw the girl hesitantly begin to stretch her hands along the wet, sticky, soft-leather like hide of the creature and gradually gain confidence as the intimacy of their contact opened up a wellspring of empathic awareness, and then Amalthea began to smile and found herself stroking her newfound friend with genuine affection, no longer intimidated by its size or the massive hunger that it was radiating from within, content only to ease the more emotional hunger that she sensed drawing towards her, and in doing so sealed a bond that grew to a strength and consistency that would put steel itself to shame, a joining of two lonely spirits who found strange kinship that extended beyond the differences of their species.

And as they observed this the woman named Ulsa smiled with her own warm blanket of affection, while the eternal warrior named Udan stood aloof in his regard, accepting what had just transpired as though it were a given, and with the thoughts forming in their minds that made the need for physical speech wholly unnecessary, for so deep was their mutual understanding that each one knew well the expressions of the other.

Do you disapprove, beloved?

Udan's eyes narrowed slightly, but his continence relaxed by a fraction.

It is not my place to question your wisdom, my Lady. I support you in all ways, even against my own reservations, and in allowing this member of the species known as Typhon to soul-bond with your pas-woman...

Ulsa's own expression relaxed ever so slightly.

She is now one with the creature, and they are joined in Recognition, so effectively she is both mother and older sister to her new friend, who will grow to serve her well in the very near future.

Udan's regard hardened by just a fraction.

Considering its lineage one must have serious reservations about entrusting that much power into the hands of a demi-Immortal. Granted that the girl is kind-hearted and generous and deserves the protection of so fierce and able a guardian...but I remember too well what a struggle it was to bring an end to this particular line of the Titans, and the thought of them running rampant over the earth once again...

Ulsa inclined her head slightly and gave her brother-lover a knowing smile that held a wealth of wisdom and mischief in her expression.

Trust me on that, I am taking steps to see to it that this age does not revert to the era when giant monsters roamed the earth and made life too difficult for ordinary humans. Rather the Typhon strain will prove to be a boon in the coming wars against the rogue Nephlem who seek to join with the dormant Lilith...and-further down the line-they will prove to be invaluable allies against the Invid, so accept from me the assurance that there is a plan that requires the children of Gojiro and Typhon to exist well into the next few generations.

Udan nodded ever so slightly in acknowledgement of his acceptance of this reassurance.

As you say, Beloved...therefore it shall be and I shall continue to abide their existence. But what of this young one who hungers mightily? Do you not think it time to feed it lest it's appetite turn against its Mistress?

Ulsa turned her smile towards the nearby sea and gazed out at the lapping waves that beat against the tidal shore lines.

Not to fear...nature has provided the bounty needed, and I have asked of the sea that she tender up an offering in the service of the greater one. Behold.

Udan turned his head and saw the looming wave moving towards their position and arched a dark brown eyebrow in comprehension of his sister-love's intentions.

A sacrifice indeed...and a voluntary one if I judge correctly.

Amalthea herself was barely conscious of the wave until it broke against the shoreline, and all at once lapped about her ankles with a frothing, briny, wiggling frenzy that made her wonder if the oceans were alive...right up until she recognized the sight of thousands of fishes being deposited upon the dry sand of her new pet's nursery. And then she felt elation rising up from within her new acquaintance as the creature made a happy noise and plunged its massive head into the brine, and at once started gobbling up the fish as fast as it could ensnare them between its still-developing jaws. Amalthea hastily waded back a bit and let her new friend feed rather than risk being mistaken for a fish, then watched in perverse fascination as the aquatic sea life almost seemed to throw itself towards the creature as though offering themselves up to be eaten.

Amalthea, attend me.

"Yes, my lady," the silver-haired girl hastily replied, moving back further from the feeding frenzy as the creature happily munched away in an effort to fill its bottomless gullet. Amalthea could hardly take her eyes away as she continued to watch even while stumbling out onto dry sand and finding her way to the side of her radiant mistress.

Ulsa seemed to take as much amusement in viewing the girl's entranced expression and allowed the silence to go on for a bit before broaching a question.

Have you a name for your new friend? Something appropriate to identify such a magnificent creature?

In all truth Amalthea had not thought of one just yet, but as she searched her mind for a name that would befit her new pet she took notice of a peculiar birth-mark, a slight discoloration of the scales atop its massive head, and without further hesitation she said, "I have indeed, Mistress...I will call her...Luna."

Udan arched his other eyebrow.

Her? The creature is...female?

Ulsa gave her brother a chiding expression.

Oh hush...what is wrong with that? It does not mean she will be bearing more young any time in the near future. Besides, Luna is a splendid name, do you not agree?

A slightly pained look crossed the eyes of the dark man.

Very well, Luna indeed. Just one favor I ask...do not give her a last name like 'Varga.'

"Oh?" Amalthea asked, "Why is that, my Lord?"

Udan sighed ever-so-slightly.

Just trust me...it would not make for a good association.

"As you wish it, my lord," Amalthea said solemnly while her newborn friend frolic happily in the midst of her first meal, "Luna is all the name that she will need, and I will care for her as though she were my own...daughter. Odd, how did that thought just spring into my mind just now? A daughter...and yet she is now to me almost like a sister and..."

The gentle thoughts of Ulsa played within her mind like the tinkle of girlish laughter.

It pleased me that you find such delight in her company, my Pet, but it might be a bit difficult for you to care for her at that size. As useful as her formidable fighting prowess will one day be, I think it would be for the best if I were to modify her list of talents to include one useful skill with which I shall imbue her. Call to her now, for she has nearly gorged her fill and should not consume any more 'lest her appetite cause her developing stomach a case of severe indigestion.

Amalthea did as she was instructed and stretched out a hand, "Luna...come to me now, my sister!"

The creature broke off on her game of chasing down her food and responded just like an eager puppy, turning and springing towards her Mistress as though intending to leap into her lap, a thing which fairly alarmed Amalthea since the reptilian creature surely weighed in excess of a metric ton or more...

But somewhere in mid-leap the creature started to change, to alter and shrink before Amalthea's startled eyes, and then all at once she found her arms moving reflexively to catch the enthusiastic creature in her hands and discovered her to be no larger than a puppy with scales, very warm to the touch and with a sinuous body that easily coiled into her arms and began licking her face with great affection.

The stirring of Udan's thoughts were like a cool breath of fall as he thought aloud his own tacit observation of the matter.

As always, my lady, your sense of humor disturbs me, though I do see the appropriateness of giving the creature the talent of Mass Displacement in order to make her more manageable and to disguise her true nature.

Ulsa turned a chiding look towards the Dark Man, her blue eyes gently admonishing him even while her affection towards him remained undiminished.

I have but imbued within Luna the awareness of how to alter her size and dimensions as is needed. In actuality she remains the same immense hybrid child of two ancient Nephlim, but with her body mass displaced in a pseudo-realm she projects this faux guise of her onto the world of flesh as a harmless looking-if unusual-iguana. When pressed by need she will revert instinctively to herself in order to protect and serve her Mistress, but I have given her other hidden abilities that can be called upon at need, and thus she is the perfect companion to enable my servant to carry forth with her missions.

Udan allowed this with a slight incline of his head though his lips remained pursed in the same dour expression.

You know what is best, Ulsa, but for my part I do not know why you would ever need another to do your bidding. Have I not served you well as your champion for all of these many countless generations?

Ulsa's expression softened and her smile was warm with invitation.

Of course you have, my love, but that is hardly the sort of purpose that I would place upon your hands since the word 'Overkill' was invented for a man of your nature. I know that you can be subtle and stealthy when there is need, but this is a matter that requires the advent of mortal hands to render mortal deeds of an extraordinary nature. And in that regard you must allow that my servant is quite capable in fulfilling my missions.

Udan had to reluctantly concede the point with a faint softening of his own grim expression.

She is at that, and I have no complaint of her in the slightest. Since we shared the evening together I have grown to appreciate in her a kindred spirit who has known loneliness, loss and privation. For all that she has suffered she has a loving heart and gentle hands, and so I must respect her and allow that she is deserving to be your companion...and you well know that there are few whom I would bestow such a claim upon, especially when it concerns your inviolable person.

Ulsa's eyes twinkled with merriment as her reply was filled with saucy, sensual memories and insinuation.

In other words she pleased you as a woman, and well she should as she has been trained to be the best by our former mutual Mistress. Did you doubt it would be otherwise...given my recommendation?

Udan was spared having to make an awkward response to this as the two Eluini saw the girl in question approach them, Luna sleeping happily in her arms and purring ever-so-slightly, which again reinforced the analogy of a well-contented pet.

"My lady...my lord...I deeply thank you for this gift," Amalthea said with a girlish smile that had none of her usual modest reservation, "She is everything that I could have wished for in a friend..."

Ulsa raised a pale eyebrow and gave Amalthea a highly suggestive smile.

"Ah..." the silver-haired girl blushed and looked down with a smile of her own that spoke of pure delight, "...Everything but...that, of course...and as my Mistress knows I am...more than content to be available to service your each and every need. You have but to command me and I will be happy to deliver."

Udan's lips pursed and attempted to betray him by allowing a smile to creep upon his craggy features.

Enthusiastic isn't she? And maybe a bit too eager...

Oh hush.

Ulsa gave the girl a warm and inviting smile that radiated satisfaction of her own and tacit approval.

Let Luna sleep for a bit while we prepare for this new day's journey. I have a mission for you both...you will accompany me to a certain place that is fortified and well defended. We do not seek to harm anyone at this facility but neither will we allow them to detain us, and I expect you to use appropriate levels of force that fall well shy of doing permanent harm to anyone. The facility itself...that remains a different matter.

"Of course I will do as you ask of me, Mistress," Amalthea replied, "But may I be permitted to ask what our objective is in forcing our way into this place you mention?"

Ulsa's eyes took on a knowing cast, and her smile was somewhat more sobering, her overall attitude one that suggested serious business.

It's simple, really. We are going to liberate your brother and bring him into our care.

"My brother?" Amalthea reacted in shock, "Lo Han?"

He thinks that his name is David and it will be very difficult to break him of the hold that has been placed upon his mind...but I believe that you are the one person who could possibly get through to him and help him to see reason. And before you voice it, Beloved...this is not my mission for you. I have another purpose for you to fulfill, and besides...you still have to prepare for your challenge match against the members of clan Saotome.

Udan glanced away, his frown deepening with a note of irritation.

Of course I will do as you ask, my Lady, but...such a course is unusually aggressive for you, and in all the years that we have known each other I have never seen you at the forefront of a given battle.

Ulsa favored her brother-lover with knowing affection.

Different times call for different approaches to achieve the ends we seek, and now that Ariman is aware of our presence there is no longer cause to hold back on the sidelines. Is that not the very reason why you challenged young Ranma...because you knew that in doing so you would provoke the boy into becoming more like the man whom you remember?

Udan's scowl became more deadly.

Of course not. I know of his potential, but he is nothing like the Host of Shiva with whom I have crossed paths on occasion. I challenged the boy because he may indeed hold the answer that we have been seeking...and as the Nexus of this region and generation he has every right to defend his reality against the incursion of the Old Ones. If he rises to meet this challenge I will spare his life...otherwise...

"My lord," Amalthea spoke up in alarm, "He is but a mortal, hardly your equal in any sense of the word. Would it not be...unsporting to take the life of such a one so young and valiant, especially when all that he seeks to do is...?"

Udan's gaze froze the words on her lips and caused the silver-haired girl to fall instantly silent.

You are correct, it is not your place to question. Ask of your lady if you seek answers, but I will do what I must do regardless of whether or not you find it pleasing.

"Forgive me," Amalthea bowed her head and trembled with genuine fear, "I did not mean to give offense...it was not my place and I..."

Ulsa reached out with a hand and touched the girl's elbow, causing Amalthea to look up and see the calm reassurance in the gentle eyes of her acknowledged owner.

I will explain all to you in due time, my Pet, that is my promise. And as for your reprimand just now, dear Brother...

Udan flinched and glanced away, taking the rebuke even more harshly than had Amalthea.

I am sorry...I did not mean to terrify her. It is just...the necessity of what I do...

Ulsa Laolana's expression softened once again.

I know, my love, but still...you might take into account the nature of my Pet and treat her with more respect and tolerance. She is young and still strange to our ways, but already she has grown much in the short time that she has been with us and will continue to mature into the woman I know her to be if you exercise but a little patience.

Udan sighed again, then turned around and headed up from the sandy cove to his awaiting transportation, the Indigo-and-silver colored eighteen wheeler truck that was known only by the call sign, "Silver Seagull" to the CB truckers of the world who were well familiar with its streamlined markings and tastefully applied side-logo.

I will carry out your will as always, my Lady, but...I do hope that the time when we are together will not be so long removed as the last interval of separation.

Ulsa followed the broad-shouldered man with her eyes, her thoughts again flowing like liquid.

You know that it will not, Beloved, for the hour is fast approaching when we may either save this world or damn it utterly with our failure.

Amalthea watched as the large man climbed into the cabin of his truck then started up the diesel engine and soon was driving off towards the nearby woods, the vehicle easily negotiating a trail where none existed and leaving scant tire marks to denote its passage. Only after the Dark Man's presence could no longer be felt by her did she turn to her Mistress and ask, "Have I offended or displeased him, Mistress? He did not even bid us farewell as he left us."

Ulsa's eyes continued to scan the woods where the truck had vanished, a sadness overtaking her gentle eyes as she poignantly posed herself upon the rock on which she was seated.

It is not his way to give farewells...for he has said good-bye to far too many whom he has known to take any real pleasure in the parting. Besides, he and I are never parted and we are with each other no matter the time, length or distance. But be assured that he does actually like you, and Udan likes few people that way, though in truth he loves all of humanity, which is why it hurts him so much every time he loses another friend to the Reaper."

"Such a strange man," Amalthea remarked, "And yet...I do like him. I think he is the bravest one I have ever known, and the most gentle man with whom I have ever shared intimacies."

Ulsa's sigh was all but inaudible, as quiet as the rest of her yet possessing all sorts of hidden nuance.

Brave he is, but far from the bravest. It takes courage to do what he must in order to fulfill the will of our Father, his mandate to protect humanity against the Darkness. But braver still is our brother Anri, who bears the pain of humanity as his lot in the order...yet again far from the bravest one of all since we Daokan know that we cannot permanently perish, and thus death for us holds no real lasting terror.

It is humanity itself that must be accounted as brave to face each waking day with uncertainty, doubt and confusion. Human beings who know fear and yet have the capacity to transcend it...that is what I account true bravery to mean, my darling Amalthea...the bravery of one such as you who trusts herself willingly into my hands in spite of knowing that serving me will pit you against the source of all that is truly evil. Bravery is also to be accounted to young Saotome Ranma, who even now trains and studies at the knees of my niece and who aspires to become so much more than he even suspects about himself. It is to one such as that to whom the greatest gift of all has been bestowed.

"And what is that, my lady?" Amalthea asked her.

Laolana's eyes gave Amalthea a knowing look that was full of ageless wisdom, and her smile was one that belied the terror of nightfall.

Hope, of course, my Pet. Hope is the gift of the Gods to mortal men that belies the other seven, which were afflictions. Without hope life itself would be unbearable, for even the damned dare to dream of a better world...and it is to that end we all are striving, for without the belief that things can be improved, that life can evolve and grow beyond the limits of the present, that the spirit of the Eluini can be rekindled in all men...then what is the point of going on? Hope is a sort of madness we dream to defy fatalism and the grim aspects of reality that seek to oppress us, but it is a madness that makes us accomplish great things and without it...then even I would not wish to continue. Better to give up and surrender ourselves to the grip of eternal darkness than to hope without purpose...and for that reason alone-despite my love and loyalty to Udan-I am counting on young Saotome to affirm that hope for this reality. We must all pray to him and wish him well as he seeks the guidance of my niece, Siren...for one day very soon that hope will be tested...and on that day let the universe itself remain hopeful...or tremble in fear of the outcome.

Upon hearing these words Amalthea felt a shudder pass down her spine and she clung all the more tightly to the sleeping creature in her arms, nurturing a kind of hope that made the deceptively "small" reptile mew in soft relief, assuring her Mistress that she-too-remained hopeful and would struggle for her part of the struggle in order to affirm that this Hope would not go unanswered...or unfulfilled...in the days to follow...

Ranma stood uneasily to one side, listening and observing as his new Sensei began to outline his latest, current lesson. She was employing the use of a long, thin stick that was smooth and pointed on one end, rounded upon the other, and had all sorts of fancy runes carved into its well-lacquered surface and had an ominously disturbing feel when he observed it writing in the dirt, almost as though it were the tail of a dragon pacing back and forth before his eyes, and like everything else about this Amazon named Siren far more than mere appearance would suggest. In point of fact, if he did not know any better, he would almost suspect the thing of being alive, and was not far removed from believing this to, in fact, be the case.

The overlapping circles and complex symbols that Siren drew with the stick looked suspiciously like a mathematical equation being drawn out for his benefit, and-indeed-the geometrical arrangement of the lines and curves suggested this very thing. It was almost as though she were attempting to draw the blueprint for a piece of complex circuitry, and she did it so fluidly that the lines just seemed to flow from her brush-stroke like motions, almost like she were doing a quick sketch on the raw surface of smoothly raked out earth, only surpassing by far the medium as, within a matter of mere minutes, she completed the drawing and then turned to him with a look of expectation.

"Remember this key to all knowledge in magic, Apprentice," Siren said solemnly, "Will is the product of a triangle that involves Spirit, Mind and Emotion. This dynamic tool that can be used to shape the flow of magic results when the Mind concentrates the flow of your Chi through the amplyfying force of your Will to create a lathe that can be used to control the very powers of Heaven. Spirit, Mind and Emotion...Soul, thought and feeling...that is the key to understand. The rest that you will study under me...is mere elaboration."

"Ah...got it, Sensei," Ranma repeated, "Spirit, Mind and Emotion equals Will."

"Very good," she congratulated, then the blonde enchantress indicated the symbols that she had just drawn and solemnly intoned, "This is an illustration of a magical formula that can be used to create alchemical transformations. It is much too advanced for you to master this at your level of training but I use it to explain a concept that is often misunderstood in the workings of Higher Magic. Too many people think that magical powers are like wish fulfillment and involve a lot of hocus-pocus stuff to violate the fundamental rules of nature, which is hardly the case at all as I wish to make you understand here. The formula you see before you is a mechanism by which the power of the mind can be employed to shape and affect the perceived reality of form and matter. It takes much study to learn to do it just right, but once the principle is absorbed through contemplation and practice it becomes fairly easy to do and can become-in the case of an advanced practitioner such as myself-almost second nature."

Ranma studied the thing carefully then said, "But what does it all mean, Sensei? I don't understand the symbols or the patterns..."

"You don't need to understand them...just yet," Siren said in a reassuring tone of voice, "Only accept for now that they represent a mental correlation between contravening opposing forces of Light and Shadow. Physical reality is actually very pliable, almost like plastic or putty in the hands of a truly advanced adept, and this is because physical matter is little more than an illusion, a trick of time and energy held in place through interlacing forces that are not quite so stable or solid as we might perceive on a purely mundane level of existence."

"Um...translation please?" Ranma pleaded.

Siren sighed, "The basic level of true reality is that of an intangible fabric that is used to weave the various forms of energy that flow across its surface. Think of a perfect silken sheet that stretched out to infinity in every given direction. Then think of a thread being used to tie a knot upon that sheet, and then a series of knots and loops that go back and form, using different colored threads to lace together into a woven pattern. Stand back to observe this and you will see the pattern begin to take form as embroidery on cloth, only it is not the cloth itself that the naked eye sees but rather the knots and loops forming the patterns of whatever is drawn there. That is the nature of physical matter, you see...knots on a tapestry, loops in space and time that are held together in place by complex interlacing forces that are controlled by the mathematical arrangement of a given form or pattern. Atoms and molecules are nothing but balls of string woven into the various arrangements that we see or experience, and if you know how to unravel the knots, then to reweave them into new patterns..."

"I...think I see what you mean," Ranma said tentatively, then paused, thought some more and admitted, "Or...maybe I don't quite see it yet..."

Siren favored the young man with a sage look and remarked, "That's quite all right. I didn't grasp the concept myself when I first started out in studying magic. I am merely attempting to boil down for you one of the fundamental secrets of my training...that reality as we know it is a function of Will, and that we have the power to alter form and time when we want if we but use the talents given us as a legacy by our ancestors, the Ancients."

Ranma glanced up at the young-seeming, eternally beautiful sorceress and said, "I don't know if I can memorize all of this stuff in three days, let alone figure out how to put it to good use. I may have a good memory and stuff, but what you're showing me now...well...it's a bit more advanced than what I'm up to in my math classes."

Siren favored the younger man with an indulgent smile and said, "It is not essential if you memorize and comprehend it just yet, Son-in-law, it is only important that you absorb these lessons and record them into your subconscious for later retrieval...because believe me, this formula will one day save your life. What is also important for now is that you learn and accept the fundamental principle that I am attempting to impart here, that nature and 'reality,' as we commonly define it, are maleable things subject to the will of the observer...and that as a practitioner of the Wise Ways of Knowledge you have the ability to shape and define the terms of things in accordance with your Will. You only need to master your powers of perception and the universe itself will orient to your vision. I know for a fact that you have the potential for this within you, for you mastered your Elementals one by one in a similar-such manner."

"Ah...well...kinda," Ranma shrugged, his memory readily filling with images of how he had confronted his "girls" on separate occasions with Latisha being the first to succumb to the power of his Senken maneuvers, "But actually...Karina and Sharil were kinda...given to me, if you know what I'm saying..."

"Nonetheless," Siren insisted, "They are yours and have proven their loyalty and devotion to you, which is not easily earned I need hardly have to point out. It is not just to any common wizard that an elemental spirit of such potence would agree to share a baby, let alone five of them with you as the male whom they most favor."

"Ah..." Ranma felt his cheeks flush crimson, though in a warm sense he did feel a slight nagging sense of pride in having been so chosen by his elemental ladies, and in feeling their corresponding approval his manly pride briefly flickered to sharp interest.

Siren observed the changes in his attitude and quietly chuckled, "Son-in-law...I begin to truly see now why even my man-hating granddaughter is so attached to you and has granted you the rare favor of being her acknowledged husband. You truly are quite charming in your innocence, though it is your desire to do the right thing by others that I suspect is the real cause of your charisma. You may stumble dumb, deaf and blind through the realm of the clueless and yet your heart is as pure as your intentions, which goes a great deal to overcoming your more obvious character defects."

"Defects?" Ranma reacted with surprise and outrage, "What defects?"

"Well, for one thing, your lack of willingness to stand up for yourself when it comes to personal matters," Siren answered, "You are hen-pecked and pussy-whipped like a well-trained dog on a leash, and yet for all of that you are quite virile, brave, compassionate and quite devoted to your loved ones. Women take advantage of you all of the time and yet you let them do this without complaint, which spoils them to the point where they wind up taking your consent for granted and forget to recall that you are a person with feelings quite beyond your use as a Brood Stud."

Ranma felt both symapthy and irritation in his own voice as he said, "It's...not like that...I mean...not as bad as what you're saying..."

"Maybe not for you," Siren said, "And I'll even admit that I'm more than a bit jealous over the life you are leading, which by the standard of many men would be considered ideal. After all...eight women all devoted to you, and every one of them singing your praises in the bedroom? If I had eight lovers that devoted to me I'd be reluctant to get out of bed in the morning, and I'd probably be in a perpetual state of exhaustion."

Ranma felt an awkward silence where he tried to form something to say in his own defense, but all that came to mind was a rather bland, "Ah...welll...like I said, it ain't all that bad...mostly..."

"But still," Siren resumed, "You are a man and a human being with thoughts, feelings and emotions that extend well beyond your rather formidable sexual prowess. You are to be respected on your own terms, for your own merrits, and for being the kind of man whom others would rally around and defend willingly at their own peril. But there is more to you than just the 'Momma's Boy' who has always sought to please your rather eccentric mother. There is also that in you which aspires to become a true Hero and a defender of his household, a protector of all that he holds dear who would gladly sacrifice everything for the sake of both his wives as well as the children that they share and carry."

"A true Hero?" Ranma repeated.

"It is the instinctive nature of man to want to defend his possessions," Siren said, "Men fight for many reasons, some often quite petty, but it is universally acknowledged all all that the truest sort of man is one who would give up his life for the sake of a loved one. Which quite noble in sentiment this lacks a certain...practicality, shall we say? After all, giving up your life is a one-time proposition, and after you are dead that leaves your family to grieve for you, bereft of your company, and you are no longer around to protect them in the future. Quite unsatisfactory as exchanges go, which is why the common-level experience of a Hero has never had much interest for me. I must prefer the sort of Hero who triumphs over adversity yet still manages to be around to reap the rewards of his triumph."

"Sensei?" Ranma asked, scratching his head in obvious confusion.

"You are going up to face the most dangerous kind of enemy that you could possibly hope to know, Son-in-law," Siren explained, "And by that I do not just mean my formidable Uncle, who has rarely known defeat and whose power, knowledge and experience dwarfs your own to a degree that it is actually quite ridiculous to form an analogy, save but to say that going up against him is a really bad proposition. But beyond my Uncle Udan there is the Enemy behind the Enemy that you must face should you survive your encounter with the Blackguard...the enemy of all living things, the Old One who is the great Pretender to a virtue that his very existence negates...and in that regard you must be fortified and prepared to endure 'lest your battle end in the ruin of all and the subsequent loss of all life and hope for this Cosmos."

"I don't understand," Ranma admitted, "I mean...I get the part about facing down that...demon-thing with the tentacles, but how am I supposed to do it? I mean...couldn't you fight him yourself, Sensei?"

Siren shook her head, "I am an Archmage, not a God, and there are finite limits on my power, even though I am also Eluini, a heir-of-sorts to my lofty grandfather's mantle. I am not the one whom fate has chosen to play a critical role in the coming struggle...my task, rather, is to serve as your teacher and guide to steer you on the path that you will need to pursue in order to defeat the ultimate evil."

"But how can I do that?" Ranma asked, "I'm just a high school student, and I won't even graduate until the end of the semester!"

"You are more than you know, Son-in-law," Siren assured him, "You are a Nexus of this reality, and as such you serve as a fulcrum to balance the energies of this entire universe. How you swerve and pivot will affect the course of all who surround you. That is why it is more than just your skills as a martial artist and your prowess as a Senken master that must be honed and sharpened here...it is your qualifications to be a Wizard that must be brought to the fore so that you can be the sort of instrument to protect all that you cherish. That is why I agreed to share my wisdom with you, quite apart from the fact that I sensed that you had the potential to be a Mage from our first encounter together."

"You did?" Ranma asked.

Siren leaned closer, which caused his eyes to naturally focus upon the gulf of her cleavage as amplified by her frilly blue halter top, "Believe me when I say that you do, for I've been in this business for close to three centuries and running, and Iknow talent when I see it my good fellow. Indeed, it would almost be criminal to let such potential as I sense within you go to waste, even ignoring the need to make you into the Heroic Warrior who can save our reality against total disruption. Yet for all that I tell you these things, speak truly to me here...who comes to mind when you think of the word, 'Hero?'"

"Ah...Nabiki," Ranma reluctantly admitted.

"And so you should," Siren congratulated, "For she is one to the bottom of her soul, and you are right to rely upon her as both your help-mate and a fighter. But what is needed here now is not the loyal husband that you are but rather the protective mate to a Champion that you will become when I get through shaping and molding you, Apprentice. One thing to keep in mind though here..." she paused and gave him a meaningful expression.

"Ah...yeah?" Ranma asked.

Siren smiled, "Do not regard me as you would any of your wives, and do try not to concentrate too much on the fact that I am a woman since it is plain enough that I distract you with my very presence. As tempting as it may be to discover first hand how good you are with that Kama-Senken technique of yours, I wish to remain devoted to a different object of my affections. She may not respond to my entreaties now, but I still have hope that she will one day see in me the same desire that we once shared when we were so much younger..."

"You mean...you and Cologne?" Ranma asked.

"Bingo," Siren chuckled, "But enough of such distractions. Let us return to the all-important focus of your lessons."

Siren lifted one leg and then stomped down with a slippered foot, causing the ground beneath their feet to tremble and ripple for a moment, and then the pattern that she had drawn upon the ground altered abruptly, and before the startled eyes of the young Saotome heir an entirely new pattern emerged, this one shaped more like a circle yet with complex symbols and designs that clearly denoted the fact that it was of an entirely different orientation.

"This," she said solemnly, "Is the Ogduad that embodies the principle of Omniado, a hybrid comcept that conbines both Shinto and Buddhist philosophy to form a harmonious blending of the elements of nature. Memorize this diagram, meditate upon it and embody it into your lower sub-conscious. It is a mathematical formula that synthecizes form and matter to create a bonding of Will over substance, and with it you can accomplish near-miraculous feats of alchemy and enchantment, to bend reality to your will by becoming as one with the principles of nature."

"Omniado?" Ranma asked, scratching his head while gazing at the lines and curves that formed an overlapping circle-and-square combination, which felt even more vibrantly powerful than the last diagram, even as he was no closer to fathoming its nature.

"Omniado means the 'Way of Everything,'" Siren explained, "It is the study of nature itself with the purpose of achieving unity, and with the attainment of this principle you will understand the interrelation of the forces of the Universe, and through understanding affect their orientation."

"You mean I could do magic stuff like you can if I study this real hard?" Ranma asked.

"Not hard," Siren corrected, "Hard does not exist in our discipline save as the compliment to that which is Soft. Nature is in Paradox, Apprentice, the creation of substance through the interaction of two or more contradictory forces. Face A pushes in one direction, Force B in another, and Force C is the resulting vector produced by this interaction. It is called the Principle of Symetry, or Precession, the mathematical correlation of two lines producing a third by their direct intersection. Another way of putting it is the Law of Unintended Consequences that comes when the intention of one line of Force is interfered with by another, producing a result that was not parallel to either conflicting intention."

"I'm not sure where you're going with this one, Sensei," Ranma admitted.

Siren smiled, "I applaud your honesty. Not everyone who starts out at your level is as prepared to admit to ignorance, but you will understand in the fullness of time. For now let me illustrate my point by saying how it might apply to your situation."

"My situation?" Ranma scratched his head in ever-spiraling confusion.

Siren turned away from the diagram on the ground and drew a line with her stick, then a second line that crossed its path at a different angle.

"Like A is the intention of your parents to unite the families of Tendo and Saotome by engaging you to your original iinazuke, Akane," Siren explained, "Line B is the result of your encountering Nabiki and becoming enamored and fascinated with her, and by agreeing to marry her you canceled out the first line and procuded this..."

She drew a line from the intersection point of the other two lines and arrowed it outward.

"Your engagement and eventual marriage to Nabiki," Siren explained for his benefit, "But even this line wound up being interacted with by various outside contravening forces..."

She drew two new lines that slashed into the third line and then drew a sixth line that moved away from the twin points of intersection.

"Ukyo and Shampoo came to Nerima, and each had a claim respectively upon you and your fiancee," Siren noted, "And then the seventh point of contention..."

Again a line slashed through the sixth line drawn, and an eighth line was then created.

"...Resulting in this final line, the path that your lives all took after my granddaughter became engaged to Ukyo, which bonded her to the rest of you when your then-fiancee came up with the brilliant notion of uniting all five of you in a group marriage." The blonde sorceress paused then added, "Actually I believe the idea originally came from Happosai, who is old enough to have remembered a time when multiple wives in one house were taken more-or-less for granted. The net result of all of this, however, is this..."

She drew a curving arc that swept through the first intersection point and then arced around to cross the point of the seventh line's intersection.

"The path that you have taken from where you had a single fiancee to where you now have four wives and four more concubine elementals," Siren said smoothly, "So now my question for you, Student, is this: did you know or intend in advance when you were at this point..." she touched the first intersection of the lines, "...to eventually arrive here where you are at the present?"

"Of course not," Ranma said, "I'd have to be some kind of fortune teller or something."

"Even those who have the power to see the future often do not see it so clearly as we do with past recollection," Siren said, turning fully to Ranma before concluding by saying, "And there you are...unintended consequences. From Line A to Line H, eight vectoring lines of intention that result in one very convoluted by overall quite satisfying pattern."

"Satisfying for who?" Ranma said with a half-chuckle, only to stop in mid-laugh as his eyes went wide with realization, "Ara...I think I actually understood that!"

"Progress at last," Siren said with irony, "And now do you understand how things work? When two threads of different color intersect upon a cloth..."

"They create a pattern...and that pattern is the reality of our existence," Ranma recited, looking this time as if he really did comprehend what he was saying, though his eyes betrayed the fact that he was fairly mind-boggled by the implications.

"You will discover in time, Apprentice, that the Universe itself is the complex weaving of contradictory intentions with billions of different angles all intersecting to make the singular reality that we know of through experience. The key to mastering reality is to understand and accept that we are not alone in shaping this reality...that reality is fluid but has already been pre-shaped by the thoughts and projections of the billions of other intelligent minds that share with us this planet. Once you understand the connection you can work within the folds of these intentions, to add and subtract from their interweaving, and by turns to make reality bend to your will, exactly as my grandfather and Uncles can do on a par you would find unimaginable since they are directly linked to the sum accummulation of every human mind that exists within this cosmos."

"You mean...because they're linked to the shared consciousness of humanity...they can do the stuff that Nabiki and me saw them do...and more?" Ranma blanched, his unvoiced comment being, (And I challenged one of those guys to a match? What was I thinking?).

"Indeed, what were you thinking?" Siren smiled aloud as if having heard his unvoiced comments, "But the die is cast now and there's no turning back from the path that you have chosen, Apprentice. What I am trying to do here is give you some appreciation of the basic underlying principles that empower the Daokan and make them the Lords of the Way, essentially the embodiment of four contradictory principles that underlie all of human nature."

"Um...Sensei?" Ranma asked hestitantly, "If this Udan guy is as tough as everybody says he is...then what chance do I got going up against him? He seems so...so..."

"Invincible?" Siren replied, "Don't worry on that account, Son-in-law, here is no such thing as totally invincible. Even I have my weaknesses that a cunning enemy could exploit...not that I'm about to make them public knowledge of course. You will find a way when it matters and turn my Uncle's strength against him, of that I have no doubt whatsoever."

"Sure hope you're right," Ranma sighed, then added, "But what's the deal with your grandfather, that Anri? In some ways he acts like...well...I dunno...not what I'd expect of the Buddha..."

"You mean why does he act the part of the Clown?" Siren mused, "Refer back to the Tarot cards and recall that the Fool Card is the essential one in the deck, the beginning point of the spiritual ascension of the initiate. The fool carries the tools of wisdom in a pack on his back and trips along uncaringly without knowing what it is that he possesses. The Magician card is where the fool pauses to examine what he has and discovers the symbols of Alchemy that he has carried with him on his journey. It is the beginning point of Wisdom and Knowledge, which means that every Fool has it within them the potential to be a Wise Man."

"You mean it's just an act?" Ranma asked.

"Oh no," Siren assured, "My grandfather truly is a fool and a clown in his own way, but that's because he has walked the path of enlightenment for centuries and has gone around so many times that even he no longer knows which is his true face, the fool or the Wise Man. In truth he is wiser even than he knows, and this wisdom saddens him beyond words, so he covers over that sadness with a clownish exterior that makes the blind and uninitiated take him for being just a fool, never suspecting him to be other than a meandering essentric."

"But he's as powerful as his brother?" Ranma asked.

"Oh no...more powerful by far even than Udan," Siren assured him, "He is not a fighter so much as a teacher, but when he calls upon the awesome powers of Spiritual energy that flows within him he is like a raging hurricane of unstoppable force. Uncle Reka may pretend not to fear him but he is wary of seeing his brother enraged and knows well enough when not to push my grandfather's buttons."

"You mean he gets mad sometimes?" Ranma asked.

"Hard to believe, but yes...even my grandfather's patient knows a limit," Siren said sadly, "The thing that you must keep in mind is that he is both sad and angry about the direction that his teachings have been taken. The Buddhists obsess about renouncing the world and often ignore the very real suffering that goes on around them, being passive observers rather than actively taking up the cause of justice. The Hindu revere him by a different name yet even then do not fully comprehend the meaning of the Bagavad Gita, which itself was written after his time and contains many inaccuracies of theology...and grandfather sometimes despairs to see the followers of that way hanging around harrassing people at air ports. Thankfully he can disavow Islam as not his own product, though they revere him as a propet by the correct name of Yessus. The Israelites? Well...that is another complex story in itself, but the ones who have failed him the most consistently are the Christians..."

"Why them more than the other guys?" Ranma asked.

Siren sighed, "I know, it isn't really fair of my grandfather. I have known a good many Christians and have spent the better part of the last thirty years in a marriage to a decent man whose devout faith I never once had cause to question. But it is different with those who adhere to the faith of Fundamentalism...those who take their religion too seriously, disavowing the true Way of Light in favor of the easy and fast road of personal gratification through false spirituality. It is unto them that my grandfather bends his anger like unto a hot knife that he would use to stab these moralizing pretenders."

"He would?" Ranma asked, "Why?"

"Because the nature of Fundamentalism is to disavow freedom, free will and independent thought in spirituality, to submerge the mind and will into a pattern that is life-destroying and denying," Siren answered, "The ancient Hebrew were several times nearly destroyed by their own fanatics who refused to face a reality that contradicted their ideology...their blind belief that their God would help them destroy the Roman occupation of Jersusalem. It was a theology that proved no more successful than similar such movements against the Assyrians and Babylonians, the blind acceptance of the notion that mighty armies and nations could be swept away by faith and faith alone, leaving God to do their dirty work while they slit the throats of those whom they saw as apostate betrayers. When those mighty empires crushed their movement the lesson learned was not one of contrition but rather self-indulgent rationalization, putting the blame not upon themselves but rather on their own people for lacking sufficient zeal to win the approval of Heaven."

"But that's crazy!" Ranma protested.

"No crazier than the Shaolin Monks who thought that they could stop bullets with their Iron Shirt technique," Siren answered, "And don't even get me started about Islam! I wear this outfit as a token acknowledgement of my first husband, who had this strange belief that I was a Djinn and always insisted that I dress the part. Truth to tell, I've grown rather fond of the fashion style, but that's another story best told at another time and venture."

She used her stick to draw another pattern in the soil, only this time a simple design of two lines intersecting, which was instantly recognizable as a Christian-inspired cross.

"You see the direct prependicular intersection of two lines in a single point?" she asked, "This is the Christ Consciousness, which rudely equates to Tipheroth on the Tree of Life known as the Kabala. This is the image that a fellow named Paul of the city of Tarsus tried to use to illustrate his very crude and half-formed concept of the Crucifixion...the belief that my grandfather stood at the very center of all reality and was the Solar Child of ancient myth and legend. The unfortunate thing about this image is that the primal line of force that flows down from above...the Spirit...is rooted in the cross-line of the body, which comes to represent the belief that the body interferes with the spirit and is in eternal opposition to the soul, which of course creates an inherent conflict that cannot be reconciled through normal integration. The belief that the soul may be arrested within the body turns the body into a kind of a prison, which obligates one to believe that the body is inherently evil, and there lies the root of the Christian schizophrenic belief in eternal opposition, eternal conflict and eternal damnation."

Ranma studied the cross and then pointed with a finger, "Hey...you know...seen at an angle that looks kind of like...well...a sword hilt, or something else like that..."

Siren beamed as if her apprentice had just made the brightest observation of the entire morning, "Very good, Son-in-law...and you saw that without my prompting. Indeed, the Sword is the Spirit descending from above. It's natural opposition is the Snake, or Chi, which coils up from within you and reaches forth towards the sky, Heaven and Earth embracing one another as the snake coils around the sword to form a Caduseus, which is itself the symbol of Holistic Medicine as prompted by a god named Hermes..."

"Hermes...Thoth Trimagestes?" Ranma blinked.

"The name of one of my grandfather's earliest incarnations," Siren beamed, "You see? You are smart enough to understand my teachings. Bet you didn't even know you had it in you?"

"You're right," Ranma chuckled with a certain degree of modesty, "I didn't."

Siren turned back to the cross and said, "The symbol is mistakenly identified with the Crucifixion, but by now you know the truth behind that rather elaborate deception...that my grandfather did not truly die on the mount of Golgatha, which makes his alleged sacrifice for the 'Sins of Humanity' a non-issue. What you may not appreciate here is the way in which the belief in Ransom Theology...also known as 'Atonement Theology,' or Transubstantiation...has effectively poisoned the spirit of Christianity and causes so many believers to suffer a spiritual malaise that is ultimately debilitating to the believer."

"Why is that? Ranma asked.

"Because the belief that humanity is inherently 'Sinful' is at the heart of the notion that human 'Sin' can be redeemed only through the self-sacrifice of my great grandfather," Siren answered, "Rather than through study and illumination to achieve enlightenment, as is the way in Buddhism. The crippling aspect of this is the belief that human beings are incapable of achieving salvation save through the direct intervention of Jesus. Personal merit and virtue are considered lesser qualities to redemption, and simply doing good deeds unto others with selfless intentions is not sufficient to win a place in heaven to the thinking of this culture. Only submission to Jesus is considered a legitimate path for winning free from the grip of hell, and if you are one of those unfortunates who never have even heard his name being mentioned or-worse by far-were born into a culture where they do not worship Jesus, well...you're spot out of luck, and God obviously doesn't like you to have punished you by being born into the ranks of the heathens."

"But that doesn't make any sense," Ranma said, scratching his head in growing confusion.

"You're telling me that?" Siren asked blandly, "I'm just repeating the creed that is seriously believed by many millions of God-fearing worshippers who sincerely believe that it is the worst crime of all not to be a worshipper of Jesus. My grandfather regards this as idolatry, with himself as the Idol of worship. He wanted people to listen to his teachings, not to disavow their own self-judgment and make him their personal Guru. It pains him to know that many honest and well-meaning individuals have been duped into the cycle of this perversion, and that in doing so a great many have fallen into a darkness every bit as foul as the thing that they are seeking to evade by taking the short, quick and easy step of surrendering their will to the rantings of false prophets. Indeed, these people are kept so fearful of damnation that they are willing to literally claw over each other like wild beasts seeking to climb into a rowboat to avoid a flood...only the boat would capsize if they all had their way at one and the same instant."

"Ara..." Ranma softly murmured, appalled at the mental image that this caused, which was all too easy to visualize knowing as much as he did about the behavior of panic-stricken people.

"The worst part of it is that these people are taught to deny the inherent spark of divinity within them and are conditioned to fear the light that burns within like a star of hidden knowledge," Siren continued, "If it is not mentioned within the Bible they assume it to be a part of the Other, and they exclude from themselves, thereby disavowing their inner strength to become good little obedient robots who do what their masters tell them to do rather than to study and learn how to become their own Masters, by embracing the Light that unites us all and to truly see how all living things are a part of one another, that no part is excluded from the Light of the One and that the only evil that one need fear is the fear of the self that is inspired by the misinterpreted writings of my grandfather."

Ranma stared at his ageless mentor and saw the look of haunted sadness in her eyes, sensing a depth of personality that had largely remained hidden until now behind her airy, carefree manner, and it made him feel far more respect for her as a person than he had until this moment, not just because of her knowledge and power but the dignity and grace with which she bore those hidden truths that clearly gave her no great pleasure.

"Of course," Siren said after a pause of a moment, "There is a light to this story, a ray of hope to illuminate the darkness brought about by the false teachings of self-ascribed prophets like Paul and those who followed in his wake."

"Which is?" Ranma asked, sensing that she was prompting him to ask the question.

"Kabalism," Siren replied, "The ancient Hebrew were conditioned to believe that blood atonement through sacrifice was necessary to appease their God, but the God whom they worshipped back then was a monstrously evil entity who fed upon that blood and devoured the souls of fanatics to empower his own dark existence. Yet sometime back during the first century BC a wise prophet named Yessus found a way of combating Ariman the Evil One by the crafting of a magical design that was drawn upon the ancient wisdom of Egypt as preserved by the craftsmen known as Masons, brothers-in-knowledge to the Pythagorean Greek Philosophers and their Persian counterparts, the Magi. The system they created was the very Kabala that you have begun to study and incorporate as a part of your Senken training."

"You mean it was created to fight that demon?" Ranma said with a start.

"Among other things," Siren replied, "Though it's primary purpose is to awaken the sleeping knowledge that lies dormant in a Seeker of Wisdom and guide them on the Path of Return to where humanity was once in kin with the Angels. The Kabala gives one an understanding of the Great Souled Man of Adam Kadmon...the collective spirit of humanity itself to which the Daokan are embodiments of the Four Pillars. The Kabala is a powerful tool to integrate the mind and the will into a focus that makes one akin to the forces of Nature, and it awakens the God-Spark within us, which is why the demons fear and oppose it, and why the Hebrew have been hunted down and persecuted over the generations since its founding."

"I don't get it," Ranma admitted, "They created it...and God pushes them for it?"

"Not the True God," Siren corrected, "Ariman. The Kabala was designed with the purpose of denying him access to the spirits of the Israelis. When Jerusalem fell and the Temple that was Ariman's house was destroyed the scattered Hebrew were guided back into the light by the Pharisees, who taught their elders the ways of the Kabala. Thus were the Hebrew lost to Ariman for a time, though he found a stronger cult following with the Christians, and ever since has sought to inspire anti-Semitism and Jew Hatred in an effort to expunge the Kabala from human knowledge."

"So the Chistians follow Ariman?" Ranma asked.

"Not all of them do," Siren replied, "In fact many don't. I would say that roughtly a third of all of those who follow a form of Christianity are in some way linked with Ariman, less than ten percent could be accounted as true-fallen believers. The other two thirds worship the Demiurge, the false-created image of Jesus that was roughly inspired by the memory of my grandfather."

"But...don't they all believe in the same things?" Ranma asked, "Worship the same God, whether they call him Jesus or...that other thing that Nabiki and me saw last night?"

"Do all Buddhists revere the same image of the Buddha?" Siren countered, "And no...somewhere before the time of the middle ages the various sects of Christianity fragmented and diverged from one another. Originally there had been many churches with different Bishops teaching different things to groups of converts who echoed Paul's meandering dialogues like fragments of a single light bent through a prism. Then the Emperor Constantine convened the enclave known as the Council of Nicea, and after that the Church had a unified face that was centered in Rome under a Bishopry that began taking on the rather condescending title of Father, or Pappa for short. The Papacy then brought about the Nicean Creed that defined God as a three-faced entity with Jesus and the Father balancing off something they called their 'Holy Ghost.' It was a nonsensical mish-mash that led to the first great schism when two Bishops named Anasthius and Presbyter Arias began to squabble over their differing interpretations over what then Trinity meant, and before long the Empire was in a great civil war with these two contending factions waging a thousand year struggle that makes the dispute between the Golgothians and the Lilliputians seem almost rational by comparison. Further down the line was the Great Divine between Eastern and Western Orthodoxy, and all over the question of what my grandfather's life had really been...whether he was a god made flesh or a projection of God who was never truly mortal in the first place."

"But that's...nuts..." Ranma said, scratching his head in admission of his puzzlement.

"You are expecting an argument over this from me?" Siren asked blandly, "And then we come to the time of the Protestant Reformation and...well...all pretenses of civility went totally out the window. But you see...the point of it all is that Christians have never been good at reconciling the differences that they generate with other Christians. Everyone is convinced that his or her brand of religion is right, which thereby invalidates the legitimacy of all other factions of the selfsame religion. The problem is inherent in the very nature of Monotheism itself...the idea that a single, all-powerful god must be totally right, totally just and utterly infallible...which means that any imperfections that you see in this world must therefore not be of his creation. This leads to the quest for Purity, which in turn leads to dissention as anyone found not 'Pure' is deemed an enemy of God and must therefore be expunged from the world 'lest you contaminate the righteous by your very existence."

"That's horrible," Ranma admitted, "Can't they all just agree to get along? I mean, if they all revere the wisdom of your Grandfather..."

"Ah, but the Lord Anri's words were not perfectly preserved in the so-called 'New Testament' of the Bible," Siren explained, "They were written generations after his mission ended in failure, and from third-hand accounts mostly, some interpreted through the lens of Paul's teaching, which caused them to become a source of deep confusion to the faithful. You see...my grandfather did not teach that he was either a God nor the personal savior of humanity, but according to Paul he was both, which means that to be a 'good' Christian in Paul's eyes meant accepting the divinity of Jesus, not necessarily applying his teaching to your everyday living."

"But why don't they live according to the way their Bible says they ought to?" Ranma asked.

"Are you serious?" Siren asked, "Have you ever read the thing from cover to cover? I have, and let me tell you, no more mistaken conception can exist in this world than the belief that that Book was the product of a single all-knowing mind, for it is full of demands and contradictions that make its application to the everyday world of the present an abjectly absurd proposition. For example, by the rules set down in Leviticus you would have to turn back the clock to an age when things were idyllically simple, and eschew most of the modern commodities and conveniences that we use in the present. That would mean a society that could not afford to support the teeming billions who now share the earth in all its finite resources. And then there is the Sermon on the Mount where my grandfather was alleged to stipulate a code of behavior that would defy even the Saints to uphold in its entirety. Various groups such as the Amish and the Quakers have tried to apply these teachings to everyday living with indifferent degrees of success and failure, and most people today realize the impracticality of the full application of these teachings. Most Christians prefer to compromise and moderate the degree of their application of Biblical teachings to fit life in the modern world of today, for which grave sin the more radical fringes condemn the whole lot of them, demanding an absolutely rigid standard of obedience that even they fail to live up to, though these extremists are nothing if not flexible in applying a different standard to themselves than what they apply to others."

"Weird," Ranma shook his head disbelievingly, "Makes me glad that I wasn't born a Christian."

"Ah, but not being born one, and refusing to convert, are held by these selfsame extremists to be the worst sin of all, short of Apostasy, which they ascribe to other rival branches of Christianity," Siren noted with some irony, "Not to worry, though...the Bible offers a perfect solution to the dilemma that this poses to 'true believers,' which is namely to kill everyone who does not belong with the 'Chosen Elect' of God, genocide on a massive scale that would not be confined to merely human lives but would be applied to everything that was owned, possessed or even touched by the 'impure heathens' who existed outside of Israel's traditional borders."

"But...I thought Christians weren't Jewish?" Ranma puzzled.

"They're not," Siren replied, "Very few Christians are direct linear descendants of the original followers of Moses. Most are converts many generations removed from the source, and therefore count as 'Goya,' a Jewish term that is the near equivalent of Gaijin, with a touch of the untouchable ala your Japanese conception of Burakamen."

Ranma involuntarily shuddered then said, "That bad?"

"Oh, but they have an excuse to disavow their lack of ties to the Hebrew nation," Siren continued, "According to Paul the Covenant of Moses with God ended when a New Covenant was brought about by the advent of Jesus. The Old Covenant was still in effect but applied to Jews only while the New Covenant applies to anyone who accepts the divinity and supremacy of Jesus. Quite convenient really, unless you consider the fact that this "Covenant' idea excludes three quarters of humanity and does not apply to either Buddhists or Islam."

"Oh," Ranma said, trying to absorb the implications of a religion that commanded the slaughter of everyone who was found to be "other" than the elective.

"So literally applied the Bible would command that Christians kill all non-Christians or else force their conversion, which is what the Catholic church attempted to do for the major part of its existence," Siren continued, "My grandfather was born in a time when the sectarian wars between different rival factions of Christians was particularly intense. In fact he comes from a German village that was wholly exterminated in the early Fourteenth century under Papal decree during the Church's war against the Albigensians and Templars. The Templars were-by the way-the descendants of an ancient Masonic order that preserved some of the teachings of the Gnostics, while the Albigensians...well, they earned the wrath of the Church by maintaining that they were the true successors to the original disciples, for as tradition went in the province of Merovince the daughter of Jesus founded a sacred line of kings that were the ancestors of the Hapsbergs, Romanovs and Bourbons who once ruled much of Europe. The very notion that Jesus might have had sex with a woman was bad enough to Papal thinking, but a child of his lineage would undermine the very foundations of Rome's holy order, and so all traces of that line had to be erased at the command of a Pope who-all irony aside-is known to history as Pope Innocent III, the man who set the grounds for the Holy Inquisition in motion in order to flush out the Cathar heresy and exterminate its following altogether."

"But...wait, I don't get something here," Ranma said in confusion, "Don't Christians say that they're waiting for their Messiah to return to bring about an end to suffering on earth...or something like that?"

"Indeed, that is what they profess to look forward to, but not what men of power actually crave when they are wedded to the current-albeit admittedly imperfect-order of the day," Siren said cynically, "Such men would have more to fear from my grandfather's return than did Herod when he heard of his previous birth in Caesarea. The order came down to either capture or kill the infant babe foretold in a prophesy with the agents of this cruel order being fed the line that it was the Anti-Christ whom they were destroying. Fortunately the Forces of Light were more timely in lending their aid in thwarting the intent of this destruction. It was a Templar Knight who carried out the orders of his own superiors in transporting a pregnant woman-the lone survivor of her village-all the way down the long, hard road that took them to Napal through winding roads and various perilous trails until they reached an abbey sequestered high in the mountains near the Himalayas. There the monks created a portal to transport the woman and her newborn child to a parallel Earth known as Arcadia, where my grandfather grew to maturity studying the ways of their order and gradually regaining all memory of his previous incarnations."

"He's German?" Anri asked.

"Well...Franko-Prussian really," Siren shrugged, "But raised in the East among the wise men of a place called Ka'alatierma. His thinking is far more Eastern than Western by a half, but he's grown to love all aspects of humanity, which is why it saddens him so much that people who claim to worship in his name do such evil to one another. To him it is an obscenity, especially considering that these Sectarian wars are-to a very large extent-inspired and controlled by Ariman, who has eternally played the game of waging one faction of Christian believers against one another."

"That's awful," Ranma said, "Why doesn't he do something about it?"

Siren heaved a sigh that made her expansive chest rise and fall in a particularly interesting manner.

"Believe me, Son-in-law," she said, "He would like nothing better than to open the eyes of true believers while exposing the frauds and hypocrites for the fools that they are. Unfortunately this would mean violating the sacred principle of Free Will and would result in unintended consequences the like of which you could not hope to imagine."

"I guess that would be pretty rough," Ranma admitted, "No wonder he looks so sad all of the time. I can't imagine what it'd be like to have people worship me as a god when I know damned well that I'm just another guy like anybody else."

"Sad?" Siren said with a smile that was in itself a kind of sadness, "Son-in-law, you have no idea what a boon it is to the world that my grandfather restrains himself to the point where he only shows sadness...because if he were to lose his temper and reveal the pain he carries to others it would be a force to shake this world upon which we are standing. Pray that he never allows his anger to show itself, for even Uncle Reka would pale in comparison to the damage he could render unto others. I'd much rather he play the clown and continue to act the fool than to show his face in its more terrible continence, which I have seen before and hope never again to witness, for when the Lord of Light and Binder of Souls unleashes his fury...the Gods themselves will quake in mortal terror...and the Angels will fear in their lofty heavens..."

"I consider myself a Christian Man, a Man of God upon whom the Lord has bestowed with an abundance of Patience. But you, Sir, test my faith and resolve to the utmost."

"Excuse me?" Anri asked, as they stood within the private chancel located at the back of the church, well away from the eyes of the viewing public, "I think I caught that patience part...but what does that have to do with being a good Christian?"

"Sensei," Nabiki murmured, not wanting to antagonize the "good" Reverend out of concern of the men with guns who were hanging rather ominously in the background.

The Reverend Schickle glared through heavy horn-rimmed glasses at the presumptuous fellow standing relaxed and ease amid the "goon squad"-known officially as "Mighty Men"-as though their presence was nothing more than a courtesy, and one easily confined to the background. The Reverend, a balding, overweight, middle-aged fellow with graying hair at the temples and a general attitude that made him seem better suited to be a prison warden instead of a man of the clergy set his mouth in a grim line and stood like a Roman General viewing a condemned prisoner from a slight advantage in height going in the opposite direction.

"You've come here and disrupted my services for the very last time, fool," Schickle grated, "I am good and tired of you heckling my people and berating me in my services, both in this guise and in the last one that I caught you wearing."

"Sensei?" Nabiki asked, seeking clarity from her nominal teacher.

"The last time I stopped by I thought I'd go in costume just to see what sort of a reaction I would get," Anri explained, "So I grew a beard and let my hair fall long, then darkened my complexion and wore a camel-hair shirt under a linen shawl with my head covered by a tamershen, and, of course, I left my sandals at the door when I entered..."

"You looked like a homeless bum!" the Reverend snapped, "Or a filthy Arab beggar profaning this, the House of the Lord!"

"Actually," Anri rubbed his clean chin, "It was a bit too much nostalgia for my tastes, so I resolved right away to go back to my present appearance. After all, beards itch something fierce, and have you ever tried wearing camelhair shirts? I wouldn't recommend it," he shivered with aversion.

"Your mockery of the Faith is one thing," Schickle bristled, "But soiling my temple with rags and dragging your filthy bare feet upon my carpet..."

"You see?" Anri said as if for the benefit of Nabiki, "I try to walk the walk and speak the language and what does it get me? I'm either labeled a communist, a hippie, a madman or all three together. One time even I had to chastise some FBI agents when they tried to search me for explosives. I'm a tolerant man as things go, but if somebody wants to strip-search me there then they had better start with candy and flowers and pick out a good restaurant, or maybe a hotel later."

"You obscenity, you filth, you lying spawn of Satan...!" the Reverend barked in wroth, almost spitting in the process.

"You really shouldn't talk about yourself that way, my good fellow," Anri said, "And do watch what you say about my friends or I may be forced to make introductions."

One could almost hear the Reverend grinding his molars as he grated out from between clenched (and pearly capped) teeth, "Bad enough that you intrude here and make rude explosive noises to distract my congregation, but to drag in this harlot filth with you...!"

"Hey!" Nabiki protested.

"Have a care what you say to my apprentice, my dear fellow," Anri cautioned, "For though you may not believe it, she is a capable warrior who could-if so inclined-disarm and disable every man within this room, and without once having to resort to the use of a weapon."

The security men glanced at one another dubiously but the Reverend was not buying the warning label and instead snorted in derision, "This helpless, innocent child is your apprentice? My pity upon you, poor girl, for you have chosen to link yourself up with a fool who will lead you into perdition and away from the shores of the righteous..."

"She's married and has children," Anri cautioned, "So don't try to pick up on her or you may discover what a bad idea it is to upset her husband."

"Husband?" Schickle reacted, staring at Nabiki with amazement.

"Yeah?" Nabiki asked, "So what about it?"

"I know that the scriptures condemns a man being in the company of a woman who is not his wife, but I've never been too much of a stickler for the scriptures," Anri continued, "And yes, she is married, and not just to a man. They have three other wives between them and are running a thriving business, paying their respects and devotions to their traditional ancestors and the Kami spirits who watch over their household."

"You mean...they are Jewish?" Schickle said the word with tacit revusion.

"No you Baka," Nabiki snapped back, "Shinto. It's even older than your religion, and we don't have fundamentalists in it either...at least, not lately that I know of..."

"Shinto?" Schickle's scowl deepened all the more, "You are one of those Godless communists who call themselves Buddhists?"

"No, no, no," Anri said tiredly, "You have that all wrong. Shinto and Buddhism exist side-by-side in relative harmony in her native Japan...and before you say anything more, her ancestors did not attack Pearl Harbor and they did not have anything to do with 9/11...although at least one of her family members was present during the rape of Nankeen."

"Ara?" Nabiki reacted, turning a look towards her nominal master.

"Japanese?" Schickle absorbed this and then scowled, "I might have known...another heathen."

Nabiki started to open her mouth to this but Anri spoke on her behalf once again, "To her way of thinking it is you who are the Heathen, my good fellow. After all, her ancestors have struggled with the selfsame issues that have tormented good and righteous people down throughout the ages, and though my apprentice here is a rather forward-looking and progressive specimen of the modern Japanese lady, she has recently begun to inquire into matters of the spirit and seeks to provide a wholesome lifestyle to her children, who one day soon will inherit the family mantle."

"She can aspire to all that she wants to," Schickle sneered, "Her kind will still reap the rewards of the Judgement Day when the Lord on High visits upon them his righteous hand of vengeance."

Nabiki scowled, "And what exactly do you mean by that...Reverend?" she added the latter part with the maximum degree of her formidable sarcasm.

"Yes indeed," Anri mused, feigning disinterest, "Whatever do you mean to imply by that comment, my good fellow? Is there some special prophesy you have to reveal a divine plan for the Japanese Islands?"

Schickle's face immediately closed up and his eyes became evasive, "I wouldn't presume to know the mind of the Lord, but I have read the signs and clearly the day or judgement is forthcoming..."

"It certainly is for someone who's unsuspecting," Anri noted, "And by the way, about that speech you giving just now concerning your invective against Homosexual marriage..."

"What about it?" Schickle asked, "It was entirely consistent with scripture."

"With your interpretation of a certain part of it, perhaps," Anri replied, "But in my eyes that is of no particular distinction and even counts as a negative for reliable accounting."

"You dare take the Word of the Lord In Vain?" Schickle's voice trembled in wrath.

"Not in the least," Anri smiled, "Assuming it is the 'Word of the Lord' that you are preaching and not just a collection of angry fables set to print by poorly fed scribes translating from dusty scrolls that themselves were penned by ignorant savages who knew next to nothing about the ways of their 'Lord' and his vaunted 'Kingdom of Heaven.'"

"It is the word of God!" Schickle insisted, "His hand crafted its shaping and protected the scribes from scriptural errors..."

"In which case why then are there some forty-six different versions of the Bible that do not all agree on wording or context?" Anri wondered, "Of which number the King James version that you use is hardly the most authoritative version, James being the sort of superstitious lout who wanted a manifesto to justify his paranoid screed against all of those whom he broadly labeled as 'witches...'"

"Those who practice Satanism deserve to be hunted down and burned for their defiance of the Lord!" Schickle thundered.

"All the Witchfinders managed to do was terrify the countryside setting fire to old ladies while confiscating their lands for either state or Anglican church uses," Anri insisted, "True Practitioners of the Old Faith were more cautious than that and managed to preserve their teachings in secret down to the present, but few of them ever prayed to my good friend Satan, who never answered their calls and has had to continuously change his number in the phone books..."

"You...insolent heretic," Schicle fumed, "How dare you mock the word of holy scripture and defend the unrighteous enemies of the Lord of Hosts?"

"Enemies of the Lord?" Anri looked puzzled, "How can an all-powerful being have enemies? You're not making too much sense here, my good fellow...not that you ever did to begin with..."

"He clearly has you for an enemy!" Schickle snapped, "You stand here in his house rudely proclaiming your blasphemies and insulting the very sanctity of the Church..."

"Well, why not?" Anri asked reasonably, "You've mocked me often enough with your sermons that it only seems fair to stop in and return the favor."

Schickle paused, clearly taken aback by this calm pronouncement, "I don't understand..."

"Thomas Schickle," Anri shook his head and looked at the man a bit sadly, "I've known a great many like you in my time, but you truly take the unleavened bread when it comes to Pulpit Pounders who thunder on long and loudly about the sins and abominations of others. And yet here you are, a greater sinner than any other who may darken your house. Do you honestly think that I am ignorant of the many evils that you have indulged in while invoking my name? Do you honestly believe me unaware of the horrors that you intend for my Apprentice and her people?"

"They are Godless Pagans who have rejected the name of the Lord and deserve only to bathe in the Lake of Fire, like all sinners," Schickle said darkly.

"Hey..." Nabiki bridled, only to be stilled by the upraised hand of her teacher.

"Godless Pagans?" Anri sniffed, "Anything but. And by what means do you find fault with her when I, myself, find her quite blameless."

"Yet by your own testimony this...shameless strumpet, going barefoot, baring her navel and shamelessly flaunting her sex about in next to nothing...is engaged in a hedonistic affair with four other people, which is shameful in the eyes of the Lord!"

Again Nabiki felt the urge to lunge forward and express herself before this loathsome cleric, but once again she felt constrained by the silent admonition of her present teacher.

"By whose authority do you judge this?" Anri asked, "By what right do you call her evil?"

"Have you not read that He who made them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, 'For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh'? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What God has joined together, let not man put asunder..."

"That's in Matthew, right?" Nabiki asked, determined not to seem like a total cultural outsider or foreign bumpkin in the eyes of this irksome preacher.

"Is God a tyrant?" Anri asked.

The Reverend paused, "I beg your pardon?"

"You obviously must hate 'Him' very much to describe 'Him' in such hateful language," Anri reasoned, "Therefore I ask you...do you regard 'Him' as a tyrant?"

"I do not, Sir," Schickle responded curtly, "And I would rebuke anyone who dared to describe the Almighty in such disrespectful language..."

"All mighty," Anri shook his heads, "Which, by the way, is two words, not one strung together, and yes, you clearly describe him as a Tyrant by the very use of such a title. 'All Mighty' would imply that 'He' is everywhere and that 'His' authority is absolute, and therefore it would be impossible to defy him or to go against 'His' word. But as we can plainly see that 'His' word is not absolute therefore 'He' is not an absolute being, and therefore he is only a false tyrant, not a real one."

Reverend Schickle bristled, "You blaspheme His mighty name with your sacrilegious drivel..."

"You're not the first man to accuse me of that," Anri smiled, "And I very much doubt that you will be the last one either."

"You are not fit to stand here in the presence of the Lord making a mockery of his servant!" Schickle glared with clearly murderous intentions.

"And as I said to the last fellow who said that to me...tear down this temple and I shall rebuild it," Anri replied, "Only not in three days...and you would do well to count the minutes that you have left before presuming to provoke me, Sir...for though my patience is great the sins that you have committed against me are crying to be met with the sort of holy thunder that you have too long used to terrify others."

There was something in the timber of her companion's voice that caused Nabiki to raise both eyebrows, for a hint of disapproval had gradually changed in tone to implicit condemnation, though Anri remained as much at ease as before, eyeing the man before him as a Snake Handler might a deadly cobra, only with far less warmth in his regard of this particular slithering reptile.

"Both arrogant and presumptuous," Schickle leaned forward, "You cannot threaten either me or my temple because I have it in my authority to lock you away in a deep, dark jail cell where you won't see the light of day until the coming of the Kingdom..."

"Authority for that has not been given unto you, my good fellow," Anri smiled, "And no man may condemn me unless his own hands are clean of the pollution that you bear within you, and the many sins of which you are guilty."

"I am clean and sinless in the eyes of the Lord!" Schickle pompously declared with a proudly outthrust chest, "I confess my sins daily and obtain forgiveness from the Lord Jesus..."

"Really?" Anri mused, "I don't recall giving out any special dispensations lately for pompous pretenders to the clergy who misuse my name and preach a gospel of pure hatred. And while we're on that subject, by what authority do you condemn anyone for choosing to live a harmonious and consensual lifestyle with their chosen life partner or partners? By what right do you urge your congregation to discriminate against others, or to promote your wicked brand of 'Conversion Therapy,' which is but another name for brainwashing homosexuals to act in conformity with your warped image of a 'Straight' lifestyle?"

"It is the duty of every righteous man to disclaim the crimes of sinners who attempt to promote their godless Lifestyle choice while undermining the strength of traditional family values!" Schickle insisted.

"Family values?" Anri asked curiously, "Is that what you call picketing the funeral of a deceased Gay man while waving signs that loudly proclaimed that his soul is in hell for his transgressions?"

"I spoke the scriptural truth," Schickle said stoutly, "Those heathens deserved to be ridiculed for celebrating the name of a sinner who justly died from the Plague that the Lord has visited upon them!"

"I don't recall issuing any such proclamations," Anri said, "And I have certainly never seen the point of punishing an AIDS patient with hell since just living through the disease counts as purgatory to my way of thinking."

"If they refuse to receive Jesus Christ into their hearts as their personal Lord and Savior..." Schickle persisted.

"Praying to me doesn't seem to have done you any good," Anri remarked, "Why should it benefit them? Are you saying that I should grant the prayers of all men who seek health, a long-life and happiness? If I did that then I'd be stretching myself awfully thin to shore up the deficiencies created by the greed of far too many mortals, such as yourself."

The Reverend looked at Anri in confusion, "What are you saying? Why should you...?"

Anri's green eyes sparkled with knowing keenness as he said, "Do you not know me, Reverend? You ought to by now since you've spent enough time praying to my likeness...or rather the graven images made of me in defiance of the Second Commandment."

Schickle's eyes widened in horror, "You are mad! Do you honestly believe that you are the Lord Jesus?"

"No sir, I do not," Anri replied, his humorous mood for the moment dispelled and replaced with an edge that set Nabiki's hackles on the defensive, "I never wore that name nor do I acknowledge it as my rightful title. My name was Yessus Ben Yussef and I was not the son of a virgin...though let no man speak ill of my mother or I'll seriously smite them. Jesus Christ is but a fiction, the crafting of a delusional man whose illness was manifest within the very letters that bear his name. Not everything you read has authority, my friend, nor was it penned by the hand of a perfect being but rather by imperfect men whose ideas of divinity were-to put it charitably-far too provincial to form the basis of a Church Universal."

"But it clearly says in the scriptures..." Schickle began again, only to be cut short by an angry snort of derision from Anri.

"Are we onto that yet again?" Anri said dismissively, "There is no 'Book' that has the ultimate authority of all truth and wisdom, Reverend. We write our own books, we pen our own lives with the script of our own shaping. Every day we must make the pages blank so that we may write upon them again the newly acquired wisdom of the day as we will live it. Just referring back to the past is no sure guide to having the wisdom and authority of the ages at your beck and call, for even the greatest authors who have ever lived at one time or another had to create novelties from the power of their own fervent imagination."

"This is absurd!" Schickle said in growing exasperation.

"Yes sir, with that I will share agreement," Anri said, "But if you could stand where I am and see with the eyes of one who has spent many incarnations studying the ways of knowledge and perception then you would understand what fuels my wrath and what truly does upset me in the greater balance of all things. You would see the harm that you do to both yourself and to others by your sermons and your endless preaching about hell and damnation, as if the dread of death alone were cause enough to negate living."

"I am preaching the ways of the Lord...the true Lord, whom you cannot defame by pretending to be Him!" Schickle maintained.

"But what if I am not pretending to be 'Him,' my good man?" Anri asked, "What if I am He whom you proclaim to serve? Would not that make your words blasphemy, especially when I say unto you that your greatest sin was in teaching others to worship Me when I never asked any such thing of my own disciples?"

Schickle fumed in rage, "I can't tolerate any more from this crentin. Take him away and have the police lock him up in an institution for the criminally insane..."

"I would not be so quick to give an order like that were I in your shoes, my dear 'Reverend,'" Anri said with just the barest hint of mockery in his voice, and the various armed security men hesitated, feeling a strange reluctance to carry out their orders for some unknowable reason, "And while that subject is in play, would you mind explaining to me why you are wearing shoes within your temple?"

"What?" Schickle blinked, surprised by the very question.'

"When you walk on holy ground it is only respectful to remove your footwear as you would at the doorstep to the house of a friend or family member," Anri replied, "Likewise you are not wearing a head covering as is required by Biblical tradition, and that suit you are wearing...a double-knit of silk and cotton? That is a grave moral sin, my dear fellow. Why, I'll even wager that you work on the Sabbath day. In so many ways you are in gross violation of the laws set down by the Children of Moses, and it leaves me to wonder how you ever qualified for the right to wear a collar. Must've acquired enough box tops while you were growing up or something."

Schickle bridled once again, "I hardly need a lecture in propriety from a godless Humanist like you..."

"And that's yet another thing that concerns me," Anri continued, "Humanism is a philosophy, not a religious statement. Calling it 'Secular' and a religion at one in the same time is an oxymoron and quite illogical within the context that is being stated. Name-calling is the sort of behavior you expect to see in a school yard and has no place within the solemn halls of a temple, and you really ought to think through what it is that you are saying when you name-call others. A Secular Humanist my good fellow? Strictly defined that is one who values Humanity and sets the welfare of his fellow human being at great esteem while refusing to discriminate on the basis of ethnic or cultural origins. In other words it is a good thing, just as a Liberal is one who keeps an open mind to new possibilities and the value of diversity, and a truly religious person is one whose heart is free from the taint of fear and hatred which would otherwise limit the value of religion and leave one far too small-minded and petty to share in the bounty of a truly religious spirit."

"Those are your definitions, not mine!" Schickle snapped.

"I know," Anri said sadly, "And that is the pity of it all. You are preaching your own doctrines, blaspheming by imposing your own pettiness in the guise of pretending to be faithful to a religion."

"I am a righteous, God-fearing man who has always strived to give testimony to His mighty presence!" Schickle protested.

"God-fearing?" Anri repeated, "Now that is blasphemy by full measure. Why would you wish to fear your God while professing to love him? Is he so terrible to you that you cringe in fear of his presence?"

"All the Righteous cringe in the fear of their rightful Lord and Savior!" Schickle said haughtily.

"Indeed," Anri remarked, turning to Nabiki and saying, "I don't see him cringing before me, do you? And besides...fear is the tool of Demons who seek to drive us against our own nature. It is more the weapon of the Other Side and has no place in a house of worship that is dedicated to a true lord of all creation."

Schickle's already frail temper snapped and he lashed out at Anri with the back of his hand, slapping the taller man so hard that Anri actually flinched, though when he turned back his expression never wavered, as though he had barely felt it.

"Feel better?"

Schickle felt a certain numbness in his hand and began to massage it, though his glare was sharp enough to cut wood as he regarded Anri with a sneer of cold contempt and said, "Escort him to see the Sheriff...and I never want to see his face again within this lifetime."

"Oh, I very much doubt that you have ever really seen me as I am, my good sir," Anri remarked, glancing sidelong at an image of the crucifixion in stained glass relief, "Even considering the rather poor likeness in which you've chosen to cast me."

"Sensei...?" Nabiki murmured once again, seeing the armed security guards were hesitating in carrying out their orders, as if encountering a strange reluctance to set hand upon the easy-mannered and defiantly complacent Anri.

Schickle sneered then snapped out the words, "What are you men waiting for? I pay you enough to do your jobs, right? So why aren't you carrying out my orders?"

"Because they are men who may be in thrall to your tyrannical voice, my good Sir," Anri said, "But every one of them fears for their immortal soul the way you have taught them to be...like sheep, complacent and oblivious to all that does not fit within the narrow scope of your teaching. Yet even sheep have an instinctive sense of self-preservation, and the tiny qualm of doubt within their minds is cautioning them that acting too hastily might not be in their best self-interest. After all, have you never considered the possibility that I could be he whom I may or may not claim to be?"

"Impossible!" Schickle snorted, "I know the signs for the Second Coming, and you fulfill none of the requirements of prophesy..."

"Don't set too much stock on what John the Revelator wrote during his time in prison, my good sir," Anri said, "For he was starving on a diet of moldy bread and tended to see things through the prism of his dementia. He intended his work as a manifesto for his time, not this late era, and it is laden with hidden symbolism and allegorical reference that would only appeal to a fellow Gnostic...and you, Sir, lack the keys to unlock the wisdom hidden within his creation."

"God would not allow the truth to stay hidden from the eyes of the faithful," Schickle insisted, "He spoke with words that the truly faithful could interpret..."

"Pearls cast before Swine, my good Sir," Anri responded, "To each audience the words are crafted to appeal to a certain demographic, but the same words mean different things to different people and there is no use at all in quoting mere fragments of passages out of their given context."

"But that would not be...!" Schickle began to insist.

"Fair?" Anri completed the sentence for him, "So who said life was fair? Not I. In point of fact I went to great lengths pointing out how unfair this world can be to ordinary people. It's not that fairness is a bad idea or even undesirable, it's just ridiculous to expect the universe to play fair with us since the dice are clearly loaded in favor of some at the expense of others."

Schickle bridled once again, "I believe in a God of Mercy, Truth and infinite Justice..."

"Congratulations," Anri responded, "But if that is the case then why carry on as though you worshipped a god of Hate, Deceit and Intolerance? I think you really should worry about the mixed messages that you are sending out here. What would the children make of it, let alone their elders?"

By now Schickle was all but foaming at the mouth, "If you don't take this fool out of my sight this very moment I'm going to fire the sorry lot of you, and by God's Forgiveness and Mercy, I will do it!"

Anri made a clucking noise with his tongue, "Forgiveness and Mercy from the mouth of one who exploits child labor in foreign countries...and slave labor for certain other of your clients. Honestly, a former pill-pusher such as yourself should never draw too much negative attention your way or people might look a bit too closely at your shady business dealings and ask what it is that you do with your millions."

"I am a man of God and of the people!" Schickle insisted.

"In other words you donate church funds to political parties in an attempt to buy influence from candidates who share your position on the issues," Anri noted, "And instead of charity being shown to the poor you squander donations on such questionable alternatives to clothing, food and shelter and instead pass along such worthless trinkets as Bibles...Bibles, sir! To illiterate starving people your answer is to make them pray harder for their own spiritual and physical welfare?"

"Not welfare!" Schickle snapped, "That evil word should be utterly stripped from the language! And as for donating books to the poor, it is our hope that we can cure illiteracy by teaching men to pray so that the Good Lord may smile down upon them and extend his hand in mercy..."

"I see," Anri sniffed, "And how is that working so far? Have poverty, want, hunger and disease disappeared from the lands where you send your autographed Bibles?"

"Well...no," Schickle temporized, "The wickedness of Satan still grips these lands in the dark heathen ways of the Islamics, but it is only a matter of time before the Lord Jesus triumphs over the godless leaders who oppress their own people!"

"I won't argue with the notion that oppression is a top-down phenomenon," Anri replied, "But the people are remaining faithful to what they believe is the wisdom of their elders, and you must concede that-until quite recently-the majority of the Muslim population did manage to live in relative peace within their boundaries. After all, it's been a long time since the Battle of Tours, and they are not the ones who have recently invaded their ancestral lands attempting to forcibly convert their children to embrace the consumer values of the so-called 'free' marketplace."

"You would side with the monsters who assault innocents with air planes?" Schickle bristled.

"Seeking to understand the motives of an enemy is not the same thing as having sympathy for their position," Anri explained, "Had you wit enough to know this for yourself then the rest of this conversation would be unnecessary. It is only because you rationalize your own ignorance by demonizing others that you remain a fool who invites his own destruction. Sometimes to overcome great evil you must find the courage to doubt and question the values that you hold most sacred...and to see whether or not your are practicing consistency...which in your case, I would assure you, is not so by even the slimmest of measures."

"What are you talking about, Fool?" Schickle snapped, "I am as constant as the evening star..."

"The Pole star? Or is it the Evening Star you mention?" Anri sniffed, "That is not how I read things, what with your favoring laws that would strip the rights of poor people who seek redress against their creditors and employers, and your stiff opposition to giving a living wage to those who work part time trying to get ahead on a barely subsistent income..."

"If they don't want to work hard then that is their problem," Schickle sniffed, "Better they get good paying jobs than mooch off the government, seeking support from my taxes..."

"But you don't pay any taxes, sir," Anri pointed out, "Isn't that partly the reason why you joined the Ministry in the first place?"

"I don't have to justify myself to the likes of you!" Schickle decried, "I was born again in the love of my Lord Jesus..."

"Born again?" Anri mused, "You mean being born once wasn't enough for you? What a pity for your poor mother, bless her soul where it resides in Elesium, calmly denying that she ever had a son who was so shameful and thankless as yourself. Imagine, allowing her to waste away in a nursing home living on a subsistent stipend when you could have made her final years happy and fruitful. Guess that was your way of paying her back for all those times she made you attend Sunday School when you wanted to be out playing with your friends. Small wonder, when you became a minister, you stripped away all trace of her spirituality to create this cold and sterile box that you live within that is devoid of her nurturing warmth and humor."

"I became a preacher because I was called to serve my Lord Jesus!" Schickle insisted.

"My apologies," Anri smiled, "And here I thought you just joined thirty years ago to get a draft deferment so you wouldn't have to slog through any rice paddies. But there you are, making a good enough living to support a dozen Satraps from ancient Persia, and living better than the Kings of old Jerusalem with enough income to afford various real estate properties, affiliated franchise companies and stock options that make you as wealthy as the dreams of old Midas..."

"I worked to earn every penny," Schickle sniffed, "And a man is entitled to enjoy the fruits of his labors."

"Oh, no question about that," Anri agreed, "But in your case said fruit has been indulged to the point of excess, which shows by your general girth my good fellow." He nodded to indicate the middle-aged Minister's not-insubstantial waistline.

Schickle bristled and his narrowed eyes and tight-lipped mouth made his resemblance to a serpent all that much more pronounced, "Your point being, Communist?"

"Oh, I don't know," Anri stroked his chin thoughtfully, "Though I do remember saying something about a camel going through the eye of a needle once. You see, there used to be this land formation known as the 'Eye of the Needle,' which had been carved out by wind from a sandstone rock outcrop, and in order for a camel to pass through it, it was necessary to unburden the animal by removing its packs so that it could slim down and..."

"Would you get to the bloody point already!" Schickle grated between clenched teeth.

"Boy, have you ever got the wrong Messiah," Nabiki grumbled, thinking irreverently that "getting to the point" was not Lord Anri's particular strong suit.

"Of course by law you're not required to see to it that more than seven percent of the money that you collect for 'charity" actually winds up in the hands of those unfortunate souls whom you claim to be the beneficiaries of your largess," Anri continued, "But then again, charity begins at home does it not, and who can better define the truly 'needy' if not by those whose needs are as insatiable as your own, eh my good fellow? After all it does cost a considerable fortune to run an operation of this size and magnitude, what with your satellites, cable stations, broadcast and print media and that rather expensive fleet of classic cars that you keep in the garage at your mansion. Plus your political donations to those whom you deem to be 'conscientious Christian candidates, and the considerable lobbying effort you make on behalf of various causes such as your Anri-Abortion crusade and that rather curious effort you are making to get a constitutional amendment passed outlawing the right of Homosexuals and Lesbians not only to adopt but to be even recognized as legal parents of their own biological offspring..."

"They are not fit and worthy to care for the children they bring into the world," Schickle insisted, "To leave any child in such a debased and unwholesome environment, to be raised in so ungodly a manner..."

"I've yet to read a single report or study that would back your claims about gay families being in any way more dysfunctional than what the average heterosexual couple can provide to their own young ones," Anri mused, then continued as if uninterrupted, "I suppose that with all that money flowing into these and other suchlike causes there would not be too much left to, say, afford blankets and food for the poor, or to help them find decent, affordable housing and jobs, or offer transportation to and from the work place, or create meaningful day care for their children, or much of anything else for that matter. In point of fact, I do believe, the one major contribution that you do make for Charity is to offer bibles to poor people living at home and abroad...as though a starving child in Ethiopia can survive by eating the pages."

"The Bible gives moral encouragement and helps the poor to find their way back to Jesus!" Schicle righteously pronounced, "If they were good, practicing Christians then God would provide them with all that they require, and the very fact that they are poor, starving and homeless means that they have done something to earn his disfavor. After all, God would not allow a truly penitent Christian to suffer needlessly at the hands of Satan..."

"I rather doubt that you could prove that with statistics," Anri noted, "In fact, I do believe that there is one study out there that shows that being a Christian does not insure that you will indeed be counted as a good and honorable person. A Christian is just as likely to perform a violent crime as a non-Christian, the significant difference being that-in a few notable instances-the crime itself was inspired by the faith of the perpetrator..."

"No true Christian would ever do wrong in the eyes of Jesus," Schickle pompously pronounced.

"It's also been found that deeply religious people of certain Monotheistic faiths have three times the national suicide rate as do atheists and agnostics," Anri continued, "Rather curious if you consider the fact that suicide is regarded as a grave mortal sin...and yet there we have teenaged Mormons and the children of Fundamentalist parents opting out of life at a rate that is truly frightful."

"If they had true faith in the Lord they would never commit violence against themselves!" Schickle spat.

"Really?" Anri remarked, "Not to discount the virtues demonstrated by true believers, but wouldn't it also be reasoned that those who take their religion a bit too seriously seem caught more in the grip of a despair that they cannot set a name to? Obviously just mentioning the name of 'Jesus,' or even praying to that name, does not by itself render one into a good Christian."

"Of course not," Schickle assured them, "Unless one surrenders themselves to the Lord and are Born Again into the Light, accepting Jesus as their Personal Lord and Savior..."

"But still again," Anri persisted, "Why do you believe that giving Bibles to the poor is a substitute for feeding, sheltering, clothing or caring for them in any more substantial a way?"

"Because prayer is the key to all things," Schickle said stoutly, "All of life's questions are answered in the Holy Book, every spiritual and physical need is addressed within its pages, and once you teach a lost soul how to be Saved then they can be redeemed into the light and life of Jesus, for as it is written: 'The Lord Helps Those Who Help Themselves...'"

"Benjamin Franklin," Anri replied, "I know, people often get the two of us confused, an easy mistake to make and one I have long since forgiven. But I am afraid that I totally disagree with the basic thrust of your position, my bood Reverend. Putting aside the fact that I do not share your views about homosexuality and Abortion..."

"You are one of those Pro-Abortion blasphemers who takes the name of the Lord in Vain?" Schickle's voice trembled in anger.

"Pro-Abortion, sir?" Anri's voice quavered for a moment and his tone displayed a hint of genuine anger, "There is no such animal on this earth, and merely by labeling your opponents by such slanderous terms you do not distinguish your own position since the very term 'Pro-Life' itself is a hideous misnomer."

Schickle started to open his mouth but before he could speak Anri waved a finger before the man's nose and he fell briefly silent as though paralyzed in mid-stammer.

"I have heard your opinion expressed ad nausea, sir, and I do not care to be interrupted again until I have spoken my piece," Anri said firmly, his tone now lacking the humorous banter that he had been using up to this moment, "For you to be 'Pro-Life' would mean that you would have to care about other people more than you obviously care for your own truculent self, you obscenely bloated, pompous repository of bile and derision. Pro-Life would mean that you actually gave a damn about the plight of the woman who bears a child out of wedlock, or who has gotten pregnant under circumstances where she is faced with a difficult, wrenching moral decision. Pro-Life is offering such a woman the prenatal health care that far too many poor and indigent women are unable to afford, which results in the obscene plague of low-birth weight babies with numerous health problems brought about by exposure to toxic chemicals or the mother's essential malnutrition. Pro-Life would be to offer these women medical counseling with a full list of doctor-approved options, not passing ridiculous gag-order restrictions that inhibit or plainly interfere with the right of said Doctors to speak plainly and honestly with their patients. Pro-Life would be to offer these women the financial support they need to carry a child to term, and to keep the baby for themselves if they so desire...not just sign them away to adoption agencies where they are forever barred from having any further involvement with the lives of their offspring."

Nabiki watched in growing alarm as the tone and tremble in the voice of her companion intensified, and the security men looking on were starting to back away with looks that clearly said that they wanted to be elsewhere and were regretting even being in the same room with this frightening figure who radiated a sense of divine wrath even while never raising his voice above an even tempo.

Anri leaned closer into the face of the wide-eyed Reverend Schickle and said, "Pro-life would be to grant full adoption rights to any person who demonstrates the ability to care for a child, and who provides a loving household that is stable and supportive. Pro-life would be the expenditure of funds to see to it that chronic and persistent diseases were treated and cured by better therapies and research methods that do not rely on large Pharmaceutical companies, whose primary concerns are of profit, not the welfare of their patients. Pro-Life would be supporting Doctors with paid and fully trained staffs and facilities that have all the best materials that can be provided to treat the sick and the needy. Pro-life is not the closing of emergency facilities due to cut backs in funding to pay for grossly obscene tax breaks for those whose needs are miniscule when compared to the average homeless or indigent patient. Pro-Life is not turning people away because they are mentally disabled or physical impaired, it is the offering of compassion to care for all who cannot care for themselves, and that means an end to demonizing AIDS patients as 'Spawn of the Devil,' to which you, my good sir, have often labeled them through sly and cunning innuendo."

Again Schickle tried to speak, to defend himself and to maintain his position, but once more Anri cut him down to size with a look of stern reproof, then spoke once more in evenly-worded tones of deep compassion, "Pro-life is not overpopulating the world or neglecting the legitimate health care needs of poor women in developing countries. Pro-life is not disparaging the responsible efforts of any parent to decide if they even want to be parents, or are capable of dealing with the awesome responsibility of bringing new life into the world. Pro-Life is not condemning them to back-alley clinics with unsupervised and potentially dangerous methods of contraception. Pro-Life is not valuing an embryo over the welfare of the mother...it is caring for the mother and helping her to provide a stable environment for her child-to-be...and ending the scourge of crib deaths and miscarriages that leave so many mothers bereft of their cherished offspring. Pro-life is not forcing an under aged girl to divulge to her parents that she has had sex without their approval, knowing as we do how many adults tend to act irrationally in response to their child's onset of sexual maturity, the dread of which reaction causes many young girls to avoid seeking help until it is far, far too late and they are consigned to a fate that is utterly undesirable. Had you a shred of compassion for them, my dear sir, then you wouldn't be so pompously presumptuous as to denounce such women as 'Harlots, Temptresses and Whores.' You would embrace them as a fellow human being and do all that was within your power to assist them with their struggles...not moralize and condemn in tones of blind retribution."

Anri paused as though seeking to regain control over his temper, then he looked hard upon Schickle and said, "You are a fraud, and a pious one, who pretends compassion to the needy while denying it to those of whom you disapprove for one shallow reason or another. Judge not lest ye be judged, Reverend, and by your own standard you are convicted of hypocrisy and condemned to a life of ignorance that will end ignobly for you...not in salvation but in the very perdition to which you have so freely consigned others."

"How would you know this?" Schickle finally managed to gasp out, "By whose authority do you say these things?"

"Take a wild guess," Anri replied without humor, "I am one who has walked this world for generations seeing ordinary people struggle with the difficult choices that life provides all of us, and I am not about to condemn anyone whose sincere efforts may sometimes lead them astray from the light. Rather I condemn those who have the power to help others yet who squander their gifts by seeking to increase the pain and misery of this earth through their conscious, knowing, willful actions. When you hate the Sin and condemn the Sinner you are in a double bind of preaching hate as your religion. Hate is the corruption of love, not its opposite, and so you corrupt the love you pretend to share and create a window of opportunity for the Father of all Hatred to slip by and take over your worship, guiding you subtly and manipulating your wrath into dark and forbidden areas that are the province of the truly fanatic."

"You are condemning me?" Schickle scoffed, "By what authority? Who are you? You're a nothing, a nobody, a lunatic pretender with delusions of Messiah-hood who offends the true Lord of Hosts with your very presence..."

"Your 'Lord of Hosts' is the pretender, the one who claims a benevolent front while promoting the ways of deceit and madness," Anri insisted, "Perhaps at one time you were sincere and honestly believed that you had a calling in this world to help guide others to the light...but for so long have you stumbled in darkness that you are no longer capable of finding the light switch. If you had even the least conception of the harm that you do others...the spiritual damage that your methods cause to those whom you con into following you like a badly suited Pied Piper...if you had any objective way of understanding just how wrong it is for you to tell people to worship Me as a God while denying the divinity within their very souls..."

Anri sighed and turned away, "But you are not capable of understanding, and I would be wasting my time standing here trying to explain it to you. And so I will take my leave of you now, my not-so-good reverend, and leave you to your sorry fate. But know this as well...I renounce you and withdraw the balm of my protection. You have traversed too far for me to recall the worth that once was within you, and so I wish you well in your 'benefactor.' May you never truly know how monstrous his reach can be, or the true fate that awaits those who are taken into his bosom."

"I have nothing to fear from my Lord," Schickle insisted, "I am armored in His Righteousness and into His hands I trust my soul without fear or hesitation...'

"In which case I must remember to send Ariman a Bromo for the indigestion you will surely cause him," Anri started to turn away, then paused, turning a look back towards the reverend, "Oh, and by the way, just for the record, making demon-pacts with arms merchants to ship dangerous Biochemical agents to the Orient is not exactly on a par with spreading the Gospels as I understand them.'

"W-What?" Schickle reacted, his eyes widening with dismay.

"Your agreement to financially assist the Reverend Moon in his efforts to spread the faith to those whom you regard as fallen through the use of Bio-Agents," Anri replied, "Such weapons of mass destruction are banned by various treaties, I believe, and would constitute a crime in any secular court that were to get wind of it...if you will pardon my play on words here."

Nabiki could not help but notice how pale the 'Reverend' Schickle was and scowled as her own suspicions suddenly began to fall into place, "What have you done, Mister?"

"Nothing!" Schickle snapped the word out as though it were automatic, "I don't know what he's talking about. The man is a lunatic, he's ranting, and besides, he doesn't have any proof...!"

Anri arched an eyebrow, "Do you imagine that I require any? The guilt within your eyes is testament enough to your crimes...but why not explain to my student here what you are intending to unleash upon her country? 'Divine Winds of Retribution' is what I believe you call it?"

Schickle trembled, whether in fear or rage it was difficult to determine, but all at once he lunged at one of the guards and snatched his gun out of its holster before undoing the safety and firing point-blank into Anri's direction.

The bullets did not have far to travel, but as Nabiki stared, aghast, she saw them slow to a mere crawl as Anri faced them down unflinching. Five ominous looking metal pellets hovered in mid-air for a second, and then with a mere flick of his wrist Anri caused them to fall to the floor, their energy spent and thus rendered utterly harmless.

Schickle's eyes were wide with amazement, but Nabiki managed to break loose from her own topor and quickly disarmed the fool, then made a point of reducing the gun to its component pieces within mere instants. The gun pieces falling to the floor made the "Mighty Men" of the security detail jump back in alarm as though collectively emasculated, then Nabiki glared a look of unvoiced warning and the American boys took the hint, fleeing from her dangerous presence as she struggled to control her own temper while Anri remained where he was unmoving.

"How little is your regard of me that you would seek to crucify me with these tools of your hatred," Anri indicated the broken gun parts on the floor, and the bullets where they were laying, "A passing warning to you, Schickle...do not fear that which might harm the body...fear rather that which imperils the Soul, for the body is transient while the soul...is what truly matters."

Schickle's knees turned to water and he fell to the floor, utterly stunned, while Anri's gaze bore into him relentlessly, a look neither accusing nor stern but somehow far more terrible than either more conventional expression. For a long moment nothing was said within the chamber, but then the Reverend broke his own silence with a plaintive, "Forgive me, my lord! I...I did not..."

"What good are your apologies or repentance now when the evidence of your many crimes is so manifest? Faith based upon evidence is neither faith nor devotion," Anri intoned softly, then turned away and said, "Come along, Saotome-san. We are done here in this place of godless evils, and never more shall either of us be returning."

"But...wait...I have great news to share!" Schickle pleaded, "We are doing everything in your name...!"

"Not in my name," Anri replied without turning around, "But rather in your own, and for that sin you will not be forgiven."

Nabiki had to hurry to keep up with the long stride of her tall mentor, pausing only to glance back at the hapless Reverend, who was on his knees shaking with fear, eyes wide with dawning horror and the realization that his life had just been turned inside out and that he had just been condemned by the very one in whom he had invested all faith and devotion.

"Sensei?" she hesitantly asked.

"Not a word more, Apprentice," Anri replied, "Until we are well clear of the stink of this Charnel House and its unwashed disciple."

Nabiki decided it would be wisest to heed the man's words and kept her tongue stilled until they were well outside of the too-clean-and-ornate temple, but once her bare feet graced the well-swept sidewalk on the outside of the building she turned back to see something that horrified her immensely...a giant face forming in the sky directly overhead, composed of cloud yet bearing a hungry maw that seemed ready to devour all who gazed upon it.

"S-Sensei...?" she gasped, looking fearfully upward.

"I know," Anri replied, not bothering to glance back or up as he continued to stride forward, face hard-set and eyes as focused as the jade ornaments of a statue.

Across hot asphalt they traveled, Nabiki wincing slightly and wishing she had brought along her slippers as she tried to stoically ignore her discomfort, but all the while the hackles at the nape of her neck were standing on end and her desire to look upward at the thing she knew was up there was unending. Out to the other end of the asphalt and onto cool grass they traveled, Anri taking the ascent of a small hill that lead to a set of well-tended trees in the middle of a manicured lawn, and only when he had reached the apex of a rise did he pause in mid-stride, his entire posture as set as a statue, the aura he radiated terrifying as the power flowed within him, held in check by his will yet nonetheless terrifying beyond all measure.

"Sensei?" Nabiki asked, dreading to disturb the man while he was obviously struggling within himself with his own demons.

"Forgive me," Anri too-calmly answered.

"Sensei?" Nabiki asked, her confusion and fear by now itself a thing beyond all measure.

"I did not mean to lose it like that back there," Anri sighed, "Or to show you this side of my nature, the side that I seek to hold in abeyance."

"What...what have you done?" Nabiki asked, dreading to know the answer.

At first Anri did not respond, but then he said, "He was guilty of so much that I wanted to strike him down with my own hand. I actually wanted to hurt a mere mortal who lacks the ability to defend himself...and all because of the monstrous thing that he has done and has set into motion."

"What...what has he done?" Nabiki asked, then paused before making the logical leap that came to her mind, "It involves Germ warfare, right?"

Anri turned to her and his eyes were sad with confirmation, "Yes."

Nabiki paused and then said, "That's what this is all about, isn't it? Somehow that guy's in league with Otono...and between them they've managed to smuggle a virus into Japan, right?"

Anri slowly nodded, "Your powers of deduction do you credit, Saotome-san. Yet your grasp of the significance of his crimes is woefully inadequate. It is not just a virus he has created...it is Genocide's own special Plague that has been smuggled into your country and is intended to be unleashed in three days time upon the city of Tokyo...and from there the rest of the Japanese Islands."

"You knew this all along?" Nabiki asked, "But you've done nothing about it but yank my chain and that of my husband, making vague allusions to what's coming and trying to turn us into your agents?"

"Yes!" Anri snapped more forcefully this time, "And before you ask, NO, I could not do anything more directly to avert this. Genocide is an agent of Ariman, and he is protecting Otono and giving him support through the various agents in his employ. His faithful minion, a Rakshasa-possessed human named Talon, stands ever-ready at Otono's side harboring a sample of the Virus that he will use if his mission is prematurely aborted. They will kill one third of the population of Japan outright before they are done, and pave the way for the destruction of the rest of the world in turn when they unleash their plans for Armageddon. The only way to stop this is to defeat Otono and Talon before it can happen and in such a way that they never get to use their hideous virus."

"So...what's stopping them from acting right now?" Nabiki asked.

"There is a nostalgic sense of symbolism to their madness," Anri said, "In three days time they celebrate the anniversary of your ancestor's victorious defeat of Otono's ancestor, Amakuza Shiro, the so-called 'Messiah of Japan,' in actuality a servant of greater evil."

"I...I don't understand," Nabiki admitted, "According to the history books Amakuza Shiro died at the hands of the warriors of the Tokugawa Shogun..."

"There is more to the story than the history books relate, my dear Saotome-san," Anri said, almost too grief-stricken to continue, "So much more that I have yet to show you."

"Then show me," Nabiki said, finding her need to know the truth had by now surpassed her terror at knowing that her kinsman was somehow involved in the tragedy of the present.

"In good time," Anri turned back to regard the temple, "But first...see what befalls one who sells out their humanity to the likes of ultimate evil?"

Nabiki dreaded looking back and found her fears more than justified as a terrifying figure had formed directly above the fancy temple, a horrific shape like a helmeted giant gazing down from a thousand meters above, stretching out a taloned hand that was itself the size of a battleship as though attempting to grasp the entire building between its misshapen fingers.

"What...what is that...?" Nabiki asked, only to answer her own question, "Ariman?"

"In one of his many disguises," Anri answered.

"Why...why aren't you doing something about this?" Nabiki gasped, "He's going to claim everyone inside that building!"

"You mean the ones not sensible enough to flee for their lives? I know," Anri grimly answered.

"But..." Nabiki saw the hard set of his face and asked, "Aren't you going to protect them? I mean...you are the Lord of Light..."

"I withdrew my protection," Anri answered at barely a whisper.

"What?" Nabiki gasped.

"I withdrew my protection," his jade eyes flashed with an inner light that was horrible to witness, "Do you understand that that means? I have renounced all claim to them and no longer acknowledge Schickle as one of mine...which makes him by default one of Ariman's victims."

She saw the anger and sorrow in his face and realized the full significance of what her Sensei had just done to the not-so-reverend Schickle and his people. By renouncing his claims as their defender he had indeed cleared the way for the Enemy to move in and collect his spoils, and in doing so had consigned everyone within that building to a hideous non-existence as the merest touch of the Old One would negate their very being with as much assurity as the hapless souls whose demise she had witnessed on the previous evening.

And in knowing this a sense of something calm and terrible came over her, and with a voice that was almost more calm than the looming night she said, "Forgiveness means acceptance of folly."

Anri glanced at her sharply, and then his own gaze firmed and he turned back towards the temple and made a single sweeping gesture.

All at once the building exploded, rising off the ground as though lifted from its foundations by a multi-megaton warhead. The detonation totally atomized the foundations of the building and sent chunks of plaster sailing everywhere, a shockwave washing over the entire parking lot and surrounding field that threatened to blow down trees and bushes like kindling...and yet which failed to do more than muss the hair of either Nabiki or her companion. And then all that was left in its place was a mushroom cloud-that hideous symbol of the Atomic Age that every Japanese student knew of with aversion. It rose above the vanished foundations of the temple, swirling upwards into the sky in the shape of a spinning vortex, which itself formed into a massively upraised sword, like an inverted cross pointing its tip as though to stab at the very heavens.

Within seconds there was nothing left of the place to see as the dust and fog rolled everywhere, and then mere moments later those clouds dissipated and revealed a scorched glass floor at the base of a bowl-shaped impression.

The demon high overhead gave a terrible shriek and yanked back its hand as though repulsed by the explosion. Its baleful eyes glared hatefully down before its appearance vanished amid the roiling clouds high above, and one moment later there was nothing to show it had ever been there, just rolling clouds and wind that stirred the debris in all directions.

Very slowly Anri lowered his arm, then very softly he murmured, "You will not go with your God this time, my dear Schickle...but you will find that heaven is denied to the likes of you...and when you reincarnate may it be in a form that will lead to the expatiation of your tainted Karma."

Nabiki was numb beyond words, but then managed to clear her voice and say, "Um...Sensei...are we in any danger of...well...you know...nuclear fall out?"

"Not in the least," Anri replied, "I'm not such an amateur at this sort of thing that I would inefficiently convert matter into energy with a high gamma-wave trace that might be mistaken for a nuclear explosion."

"Oh," Nabiki said, then glanced sidelong as some warning instinct caused her to turn her head to the side, at which point she made out a nearby figure sitting poised on a motorcycle. He was neither Frank for the silver-clad Angelique but rather a dark-jacketed man whose helmet obscured his face with a mirror-like visor serving in the place of sun glasses.

Anri noticed the fellow too and said very softly the word, "Charon."

"Huh?" Nabiki asked, "Sharon?"

"Charon, the Dark Rider," Anri corrected, "A servant of the Death Lord, Yama, come to claim his own for his dread master."

Nabiki blinked then stared at the dark rider, "Charon? You mean...like the boatman of the underworld? Then why...?"

"One adapts with the times," Anri answered, then shrugged, "Better him than Ariman."

"Wait..." Nabiki said as the dark rider started up his motor cycle and slowly turned away, riding his machine down the hill in the direction of the former temple, "You mean...that guy is one of you? An Eluini, I mean?"

"Indeed," Anri replied, "One of the oldest currently incarnate, and often-times a sparring partner of my brother. He once was a warrior, a mortal man like you, but ascended to the ranks of the Eluini in the course of his service to Death in her various guises. He collects the souls of the dead and transports them to the underworld...but only the darker souls interest him, the ones steeped in evil who are of interest to his equally dark master."

"And you're letting him collect here?" Nabiki asked, only to answer her own question, "Better him than Ariman, right?"

"Better existence in Hell than oblivion in the abyss," Anri affirmed, then slowly turned away and said," Come along, Saotome-san...I'm done with this place. The stink of death and evil offends me greatly."

Nabiki turned to ask the man a question, but was held in check when she caught a glistening reflection of the light against the cheek of her companion and from that made out the trace of a tear, and by that token realized that the measure of her Sensei's grief by far surpassed his earlier anger.

That alone made her feel compelled to trust him in spite of her growing reservations, for a man-or a god-who acted as he did without remorse was not the sort of companion that one yearned for, and in knowing this she better understood the complex nature of her teacher, a man who could seem so light of heart one moment and become so grim and earnest at the next point, which did paint for her a paradoxical figure, but one she better understood now...even if the sense of what he truly was by now terrified her beyond all reason.

As she fell in step beside him, however, she managed to murmur aloud, "You ask me you went too light on the guy. If he really was planning genocide on a massive scale, and against my country..."

"I know," Anri sighed, "That's me all over, soft hearted and softer headed. I hear that all the time from my brothers."

"Not to be critical here," Nabiki said with a glance back over her shoulder, "But isn't what you did back there just like what you say Reka tends to do with the people who tick him off?"

Anri sighed, "You will find, Saotome-san, that in some respects there really is very little difference between myself and my brother, save in the degree to which we carry our wrath. Reka views the punishment of the wicked to be just and proper, while I seek to temper my own wrath with understanding and mercy...but in the end it is all the same, and when it comes to combating Ariman I tend to be a bit of a fanatic."

"Um..." Nabiki paused again then asked the next question to come into her mind, "And that thing with the bullets?"

"Oh, I saw it done in a movie once," Anri replied, "It seemed an appropriate enough way to get my point across, and it scared the security men into fleeing the building. I don't mean to be overly melodramatic most times, but then again...what else did you expect me to do? Bounce them off my chest and possibly cause injury to others? Besides, I'm only human..."

To which point Nabiki sagely kept her own counsel, though the image in her mind of the destruction of the temple did cause her to inwardly shudder, reckoning by now that her Sensei was certainly not a man to be taken lightly or for granted...

Ever...

Continued.

Comments/Criticisms/Rants Against Fundamentalism: shadowmane

Or: shadowmane9849

Nest time up a new danger arises, and Anri concludes his "field trip" with Nabiki while Ranma receives an unexpected invitation in: "Crisis of Infinite Mirths," or, "Twisted Salvation." Be there...

X

/pre 


	95. Chapter 95

preDnabiki184

Nabiki 1/2

"A Very Scary Thought"

by Jim Robert Bader

(Inspired by the works of Rumiko Takahashi Others,  
with concepts and characters created by fellow fanfic writers Wade Tritschler, DB Sommers, Nicole Manders, Andrew Greaves, Bill Guiroff and countless others, including "Buffy"  
creator Joss Whedon; with special thanks to my good pal Shiva for his editing and handling of this series.)

(Certain other characters and concepts are of my own innovation, including my interpretation of the Monster of Mary Shelly's novel, the Furies, Trudy, Takaharis Angelique d'Anjou, Anri and the Daokan, Thelendra the Dream Weaver and various other guest stars appearing in this portion of the Nabiki 1/2 series...)

Chapter Sixty-Nine.

Episode One-Hundred-Eighty-Four.

"Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mime..."

"Well, from all the data that I've been able to obtain from these devices, I would have to conclude that the Crisis Point that you refer to was indeed a turbulent moment pivotal in our history, and one that could have gone either way if not for the intervention of my grandfather and the rest of his kindred."

"Hey, that much we could figure out on our own," Ranko said to the curious rainbow-haired girl who went by the curious name of Gamina Starfox, "But what insight can you share with us from your own POV? After all, you're supposed to be one of these Eluini characters that I've been running into left and right..."

"And the other half of my bloodline is of Gremlin stock?" the girl named Gamina smiled with a look of pure mischief that seemed to read Ranko up and down as though sizing her up for her marketable potential, "Indeed, I will concede that this give me a certain inside track on what can develop when my uncles and auntie get together with my granddad. But being either Eluini or Dark Faerie hardly grants me the sort of omniscience that my mom often manifests. I only get occasional visions and clairaudient moments, I don't pick up everything that goes on all around me like my Aunt Ulsa can. Seeing things in that complexity, unfortunately is not numbered as one of my talents."

"So what are you good at?" Ranko asked, then immediately thought better of the question as the girl's uncanny smile revealed sharp teeth that made her seem less human even than her vampiric older sister, Lilith.

"All sorts of things, basically," Gamina drawled meaningfully, "But primarily I am a Wiz at science and technology. You see, my Gremlin side gives me an intuitive understanding of all things of either a mechanical or electronic nature. Give me any device no matter how advanced and in less than a minute I'll have fathomed out its workings to the Nth degree, and I can take it apart or put it together in my sleep, including the stuff that Ekko-chan here considers so fancy."

She indicated the nervous-looking redhead standing next to Ranko's paratime sister, the purple-haired Lylac Tendo, who seemed to take odd amusement at her 'best friend's unease at trusting the half-Gremlin near to her precious, all-important laboratory secrets.

Indeed, employing sweet tones of teasing entreaty, Lylac was leaning over closely to her redheaded lover and asked, "Do you want me to hold your hand, Ekko-chan?"

"Not advisable," Ekko responded in a tight-voiced attempt at dry humor, "Under present circumstances...I could not vouch for my self-control being what it ought to."

Even Ranko had to smile and appreciate how sensitive the redheaded demi-Kryptonian genius was when it came to her delicate and sensitive machinery, especially when it came to a childhood nemesis whose penchant for mischief was all but bred into her genes, and the redheaded Time Patrol Agent was only just beginning to understand the complex nature of the rivalry that existed between Eileen Kent Kano Managi Daitokuji and this quixotic young lady with the frizzy multi-hued hairstyle whose changeable eyes suited her nature to a T-square. This being her first encounter with the self-admitted "Half-Gremlin," she also had to admire that her genius with machinery truly did rival that of Ekko's, especially in regard to the elaborate device over which she was even now devoting her attention.

By now Ranko was accustomed to seeing examples of exotic and unusual technology, but the device before her now was like nothing else that she had witnessed outside of Time Patrol Central. It was large and bowl-shaped with an hour-glass interior that stretched down beneath the floor upon which she was standing and had some manner of device positioned directly over it shaped much like a pendulum that did not move, or a pointer that remained in one position. Below it the bowl was like a fog-filled funnel down which whirling electrons moved like stars in constellations, much like those pictures that she had seen of Atom Smashers from old physics handbooks, only somehow much more vast and expansive, and which represented to these brainy types around her a portal into some unknown level of reality that existed well beyond ordinary powers of perception.

To the young girl named Gamina it was like a giant Etcha-sketch through which she could control the stars by adjusting the sensitive instruments that lined the edge of the event horizon. She was probing into a vast cosmos full of probability potentials with as much ease as a normal mind might have connecting the dots in a "Paint-by-numbers" painting, sifting through the reams of holographically displayed data in pursuit of a revelation that was way beyond Ranko's own understanding. By this means the rainbow haired girl appeared to be confirming what Ranko already knew of the crisis facing this particular timeline...and yet who better than Ranko could appreciate just what that crisis point would mean if left unresolved? It could certainly lead to the stasis-death of their entire world, just as had befallen Ranko's by her own careless actions.

"So what do we do?" Lylac asked of her companions, "I mean, it's obvious enough that we avoided disaster way back then, but from the way you guys have been talking it almost sounds as if you think our history might be changed, and not for the better."

"Not just changed, Ly-chan," Ekko responded, "Voided altogether...in which case all that we know, have experienced and endured these past seventeen years will be as if they have never happened."

Lylac looked appalled at this, "Are you serious?"

"Unfortunately she is," replied Lilith Tendo, the vampiric half of a pair of twins whom Ranko was only just beginning to know for the first time in her travels, "Ordinarily it is impossible to alter the past because its existence is vital to the present, and to alter it would create a paradox that the universe itself could not tolerate..."

"But this is an alteration to the timeline brought about by one of the Old Ones," her angelic twin, Belldandy, said in calmly worded affirmation, "Beings who exist outside of the Cosmos as we know it, and who are thus immune to the effects of Paradox, and whose unremitting loathing of our existence would predisposition him to wishing for our erasure."

"Just so, Sisters," Gamina remarked, "However, my further probing of the Timestream suggests that the aim of our Great Enemy may not simply be to unmake the world as we know it at the present. The permutations of the probability lines that I am reading here suggests a more complex five-fold ambition that requires our total removal as a means to void an event still further ahead in our future that is clearly not to Ariman's liking."

"In the future?" Lylac said, "You mean...something that hasn't happened yet? But how would whatever it is possibly pose a threat to one of the Old Ones?"

"A curious question to be certain," Ekko replied, "But perhaps we might inquire that of our new arrivals since I perceive that they were similarly drawn here with a purpose."

Before Ranko or anyone else had a chance to question the meaning of that cryptic statement, the redhead's words heralded the arrival of yet another pair of close-knit friends who were an essential part of this timeline. They hurried into the laboratory as though drawn there by a lode stone and at the sight of them Ranko raised her own eyebrows, for there was much evidence about them of great haste that suggested that these two had been interrupted in the middle of something very personal, and-knowing them as well as she did-it was not all that difficult to imagine the scope and nature of their business.

"We're here," said the blue-haired half-alien Princess Tenko Masaki, "What did we miss already, and why did you summon us with such urgency, Ekko-chan?"

"Indeed," said Vail Morisato as the mist-brown haired demigoddess hurried close to the side of her azure-haired lover, "What has alarmed you so, Eileen-san, that you needed Ten-chan and me to hurry to your labs with such unseemly haste?"

Lylac also took notice-as had Ranko-of the tousled hair and mildly rumpled look of the two new arrivals and favored them with a sardonically suggestive grin worthy of her fama, "Did we catch you guys at a bad time?" albeit her tone was mildly envious, as if she'd had similar intentions with Ekko.

"More or less," Tenko replied, only to pause and give an astounded look towards the half-Gremlin girl in their presence, "Am I seeing things here, or is Gamina fiddling around with one of your machines, Ekko-chan?"

"And that you are making no moves to dissuade her," Vail further noted in the tone of a question.

"Desperate times breed desperate measures, Ladies," Gamina herself responded in a mildly distracted voice, "Now if you will just take a seat and keep quiet for a few more minutes then I can complete my work here and give what peace-of-mind I can to Managi-san here."

"That would be nice," Ekko replied in what for her were tones that implied great nervousness and unease held tightly under control by great force of will bordering on desperation.

"Is there anyway that we can help?" Vail asked, "If I used my mother's contact codes to access the data base of Yggdrasil..."

"Already done," Gamina replied, "Or are you forgetting that I'm a first rate hacker with even such advanced systems as the ones they use in heaven?"

"Are you sure you don't want our help?" Princess Tenko of the Juraian Royal House asked, "After all, my parents have access to technologies far in advance of anything on the earth..."

"Don't take it wrong, Princess," Gamina replied, "But being the heir to Galactic Empires and Space Pirates doesn't automatically qualify you to lecture me about advanced technologies. Are you forgetting that I was the one who turned back the most recent visitation to Earth by the world-devouring Galactus?"

"But only after your sister and her giant girlfriend stole aboard his ship and connected you up with his ship's mainframe," Lilith countered.

"Technicalities," Gamina dismissed, "Minx and Wanda did their part, naturally enough, but I was the one who gained control over the ship itself and persuaded the old boy to go eat somewhere else. Now then, if you are through distracting me, I think that I have uncovered something that the rest of you would find of great interest."

"Oh my," Belldandy leaned forward as they collectively saw a swirling mass take shape before the holographic display of the cyclone chamber, "Is that what I think it is?"

"Your guess is as good as mine on this, Sis," Gamina replied, "Definite distortion patterns here implying temporal tampering on a massive scale, as if some force were trying to deliberately rewrite our history and void a certain outcome. And see here? Other force lines suggesting cross-dimensional transfer indicative of the Black Rider's having made a recent delivery to his master's dark dimension. It would seem that cousin Eris's father has been busy along this time stream from a point of incidence that appears to bear the signature of my grandfather intervening to punish the wicked."

"How can you tell if they were wicked?" Lylac asked.

"Trust me," Gamina replied, "If my grandfather was this pissed off then it definitely means that they were scum beyond redemption. How odd though...I am detecting a trail set through numerous parallel worlds with grandfather's energy signature registering at random points all over the timestream."

"Why odd?" Tenko asked, "We already know that he was involved...right?"

"I can sure vouch for that," Ranko affirmed, "A guy who moves that easily forward and backward in time has gotta be on a par with my adopted Mom, only she seems to think he's a thousand times better at temporal manipulation."

"More like an infinite multiplier," Ekko replied, "My own researches into the history and legends surrounding Gamina-san's grandfather has led me to conclude that he is every bit as formidable as his reputation would suggest with power of a scope that puts even my divine ancestry to shame, including my great-grandfather, the Lord of Olympus."

"Yes, but Grandfather is usually very careful in masking his activities so that he can't be followed by the opposition," Gamina said thoughtfully, "For him to leave a trail of bread crumbs that are this visible and obvious..."

"You think he's deliberately leaving a false trail?" Lylac asked.

"It is conceivable, knowing grandfather the way I do," the half-Gremlin girl replied, "But perhaps he's doing this because he wants to be detected...and I don't mind telling you how disturbing that is to me, especially since it begs the question of just whom he's trying to deceive."

"But I thought that your grandfather was incapable of telling a lie," Vail noted, "Exactly as with my own mother."

"Yes," Belldandy-who had been named in honor of Vail's mother-softly noted, "But Grandfather is a trickster of an entirely different cast than a liar, and it is not just what he says that is important..."

"But what he leaves unsaid or implied," Lilith finished for her twin sister, "And considering what's at stake here I, for one, am more than just a little disturbed at the possible implication."

"As am I, Sis," Gamina chewed a lip and thought a moment before saying, "The answer is somewhere in the past, that much I am sure about, only what the connection is between Otono Reyabi and this significant incident that I'm reading, which may be the crisis-point that set the chain of events into motion..."

Lylac turned to her lover and said, "You remember those days even better than I do. Can you think of anything that would have caused this Otono creep to develop an unhealthy interest in destroying my fama?"

"Actually I can think of several," Ekko replied, "But I will wait to regain access to my data relays before calling my files up and cross-referencing some names that I vaguely remember being mentioned in the background."

"Swell," Ranko winced, "Time to do more research."

"Actually I don't expect that we'll be bored when we use Managi-san's own Temporal Transfer Pad to travel to the past in order to uncover the point of immanent crisis," Gamina remarked, "In fact I rather expect we'll have a lot on our hands when things really get started."

"We will?" Ekko asked, implying by her tone that she did not support her sister's inclusion in this endeavor.

"Oh yes," the rainbow haired Gremlin Girl averred softly, "And much the sooner the better...or else what ought to have happened never will, which means that we will never be, and that is something I find most...untidy."

"I am so not trying to figure that out," Ranko averred, though privately she hoped that bringing her friends along for the ride would help to resolve the crisis...rather than further complicate things beyond all hope of redemption...

"Hello? Is anyone out there? I seem to have gotten a bit lost, and I can't find my way back to my office."

The Reverend Thomas Schickle glanced around at the oppressive grayness of his surroundings and heard only the echo of his own voice reverberating back at him, which in no way suited his mood as he was having trouble orienting upon his whereabouts, let alone comprehending how he had gotten to such a featureless landscape as his memories of the previous several moments were a bit jumbled and unsteady. He remembered having an argument with someone, but not the content of their discussion, or exactly why it was that he had wound up being terrified of the other man, and what happened after looking into his eyes and seeing...something that struck him to the very core of his being.

As it was he felt terribly, horribly depressed for some reason, his normal elation and ebullient self-confidence deserting him utterly as he sought to come to terms with the change in his whereabouts and why they reminded him so much of that time he had visited Wyoming on a press tour. The dreary ennui of the place got him wondering if he might have dozed off after that last sermon and was now dreaming of being no where. He had no idea why such an absurd dream might come over him, only that the place he was now did not feel quite so real as it did hazy and fog-like, as would a dream that might appear too solid and...

"Thomas Schickle."

"Eh?" he turned around and found himself confronting a woman whose pale skin and ebon black hair formed such a stunning contrast that he instantly suspected her of using a Mime costume to get special attention.

"How do you do," she smiled with a smile that held no more warmth than a snake might hold in contemplating their dinner, "My name is Thanatalia, though you may call me Thalia for short. I wanted to take this special opportunity to welcome you into the realm of my Lord and Master, who has taken a special interest in your career and wanted to personally greet a fellow of your rather prodigious nature."

"Thalia?" Schickle looked the woman up and down before frowning, "What are you dressed up like that for? You look like one of those Rocky Horror freaks that my daughter used to hang out with before I sent her to a proper boarding school for the semester."

"Ah, yes," Thalia's smile took on an especially brittle look as her black eyes developed an inward sparkle that seemed ominous under the condition of these surroundings, "I was told to expect your charming way with bluntly expression your opinions. Just for the record, though, my look is technically considered 'Goth,' and I am the one who invented Goth so please have a care and remember that you are our guest, and that it would be very bad form if you offended your hosts by such rude and boorish behavior."

"I'll talk however I want, young lady," Schickle said with typical no-nonsense gruffness, "And where exactly are we? This wouldn't happen to be the marshland on the edge of town, because I bought up most of the property around those parts and had those swamped drained so that I wouldn't have to be reminded of their very presence..."

"I'm afraid that you are not in Arkansas as of now, Sir," Thalia said with a patience that bordered on the saintly, "We are a bit further a field than you know, in another dimension that exists between worlds, a world that we call Abadon, which equates to the Tartarus of your world's ancient Greek Legends..."

"Another world?" Schickle scoffed, "Poppycock! Science fiction stuff. There's no such thing, and if it isn't mentioned in the bible..."

"Oh, I think you will find that there is a great deal that did not find its way into any of the various versions of your Bible, Sir," Thalia said confidently, "In fact you will find scant mention of my Master, but he is your Master as well too, so you had best just go along with the concept if you want to make your peace here..."

"My only master is the Lord Jesus Christ..." Schickle stoutly proclaimed, only to be cut-off by his new acquaintance.

"Not any more," she said, "He renounced all claim to you, or don't you remember?"

Schickle's mouth opened but nothing came out, and very slowly his eyes widened as memories started to trickle in past his conscious efforts to block them. Indeed...he remembered looking that aggravating fellow named Anri in the eyes and seeing...

"No..." he whispered, "It can't be...!"

"Oh, yes it can," Thalia said without sympathy for his plight, "He appeared before you in the ordinary guise he uses with most people and you failed to recognize him. Worse, you dissed him and called him both a fool and a madman. Now, I'm willing to concede that Anri can be a bit of an eccentric, but even for him that's going way too far. I'm surprised he was content only with wiping you out and leaving you to the mercies of my Lord Yama when he could very well have consigned you to the blackest stygian pits of the underworld where the Devils could have their perverted way with you, but..."

"No...I didn't mean to...that was never my intentions..." Schickle protested.

"What a temper on that boy,' Thalia shook her head shook her head in mild exasperation, "His brother Reka has nothing on Anri when it comes to blowing his stack. Of course with the stunts that you were pulling at the time...I really can't blame him for being a wee bit irked. You have no idea what it takes to get a rise out of him under most situations, but seeing how he consigned you to us...well, that pretty much tells the rest of the story. Abadon is the central repository for souls of a dark nature and you're going to find existence here pretty hard for a few days, but trust me, in time you'll get to love it here. In fact you'll fit right in with the rest of the homicidal fanatics that we've entertained over the centuries, and if you play your cards right you might even get introduced to our Lord and Master, King Yama."

"Yama?" Schickle reacted, "I thought Satan ruled in Hell..."

"Oh, this isn't Hell," Thalia's pleasant demeanor darkened, "And as for that traitorous turncoat, the less said about him the better. Hell's management is rotational, a different Lord presides for every century or so, and then another takes his place. Technically they all go by the name of 'Satan,' but it's more like a traditional title than an actual office, and the original holder, Samael...well, let's just say he's persona-non-grata in these parts and leave it at that, shall we?"

"But you don't understand," Schickle protested, "I am a servant of the Lord, among the chosen elect of God! I was not given proper warning that I should expect my Lord, and we have plans...great plans abrewing to do his Holy works by bringing to heal an entire nation of godless sinner..."

"Ah yes, about that," Thalia said with a frown, "Frankly we don't appreciate all of the paperwork that you're forcing us to do down here to make room for that many dead people. We're not equipped to handle the influx of so many millions at one time...not since the end of the Cold War caused us to dismantle most of the preparations we had back then, and with the staff cut-backs and all...I'm afraid we just would rather not do with the overtime. It makes things so messy and complicated."

"But...surely there will be those chosen from among the fallen who will ascend into heaven..." Schickle argued.

"Yes, and we wish them well on their journey to their next life, and thank the Powers that Be that we don't have to take them in ourselves," Thalia waved a hand and winged apparitions appeared, dark and shadowy as they approached on foot from several different directions.

When Schickle got a good look at them he immediately started to panic, "No-please! You can't do this to me! I was Baptized in the Name of the Lord..."

"Good for you," Thalia said, "It's nice to know that you bathe...at least some of the time, but if that were a qualification for redemption then they'd have to admit the Mormons into heaven."

Schickle's panic swelled to unbelievable portions as he saw the half-naked women moving in close him, ruddy-skinned with horns, wings tail and goat-legs all directly drawn from Medieval illustrations, slit-eyed women whose fangs and claws suggested that they were not there to have a good time...at least not a time by his reckoning of such matters.

"Have mercy!" Schickle pleaded as these women began to lay hands upon him, "Do not consign me to the wicked clutches of these demon Succubi..."

There was a gasp of dismay and then one of the horned women turned to the others and said, "Did you just hear what he called us, Girls? The nerve of the man!"

"Yeah," a second winged woman affirmed, "Calling us Demon sluts! How rude!"

"I think we should take him away right now and give him a good workover," a third said darkly, brandishing the claws on one hand as though intending to test their sharpness.

"Have fun girls," Thalia waved a well-manicured hand with its even row of sharpened nails (which were smaller than the ones on the hands of the Erinyes, "But remember to leave his mind unbroken so that the Master can address him and determine his qualifications for later assignment."

"But I am blameless!" Schickle screamed as the Erinyes siezed rude hands on him and started to drag him away, "I was only doing the part that the Lord God Almighty decreed I must for the sake of his Holy mission..."

"Sure you are," Thalia said indulgently, "That's what they all say."

Thalia.

The ivory skinned woman reacted to the thought in her mind with immediate deference and a change in tone that was quite striking, "My lord?"

A shadowy figure appeared upon a nearby hill, stern and aloof with the icy stare of a corpse given animation, and a commanding presence to whom even the dead wisely avoided.

Anri has set in motion a chain of events that cannot be averted. He has also revealed to me the existence of a pathogen whose potency concerns even me. I wish to have that pathogen under my control. It is wasted upon the living, but in my possession...

"Understood my Lord," Thalia bowed her head, "My husband will attend to it immediately. Charon has already surveyed the territory and has located the site of likely concentration based on the likely concentrations of potential marks that we have noted..."

The eyes of Yama the Death Lord blazed with inward light as he regarded his chief minion and aide with cold determination.

Spare me the details, Thalia. I want that Pathogen, and how you and Charon obtain it is of little concern to me. But understand that Genocide is at large, and the Daokan themselves may prove an obstacle to Charon's mission.

"Genocide," Thalia pronounced the name with a particular distaste upon her lips, "That Demon has been nothing but trouble to us for countless millennia, sending us too much business of late, and I, for one, Dread Lord, would personally like to put an end to his career..."

Yama's eyes gleamed with cold derision.

Laudable sentiments, but not germane to the mission. Genocide and I will have our reckoning on the day he extends his reach too far...but I would not be troubled should his current Seed met with an ill end. His minions are of no great consequence, but with the Lords Udan, Reka, Anri and even Ulsa involving themselves directly in these affairs, we must tread cautiously and leave little to chance.

"Chance, my Lord, is my husband's specialty and stock in trade," Thalia smiled, "Leave it to him to settle accounts with Lord Udan and his brothers..."

A colder gleam than the darkest night reflected in the eyes of the fearsome Death Lord.

Be sure that Charon does not become distracted by his rivalry with Udan. He is to focus upon the goal of his mission and obtain a sample of this Pathogen, then return it to my possession.

"It is to be as you require it, Master," Thalia assured the Death Lord, "I will, of course, be going along in my own way to insure that nothing goes awry with your instructions. Charon is already returning to this place called Nerima and will arrive there forthwith to execute your will before this virus is released upon the mortals."

The fearsome Death Lord nodded in acknowledgement of this.

That is good. I will remain in touch and send what aid is required by you should the matter get entirely out of hand. And Thalia...

"Yes my lord?" Thalia asked, her tone a bit too eager in its desire to retain the favor of her dark master.

Yama's eyes were now colder than the coldest frost and his very continence could make stars dim within the heavens.

I have not forgotten the toll brought about by the slaughter of Shimubara. What this Otono intends is a thousand times worse than the horror brought about by his ancestor. I do not need that many more subjects being added to my realm in one swift score. It would make things...most untidy. I would much prefer it if Otono himself paid us a visit compliments of the good reverend's point of entry. Would you be a dear and see to arranging it if it at all can be managed?

"My lord," Thalia replied, "It would be my sincerest pleasure to see to it that your will is brought about. But...there may be complications there...for Otono is under the direct protection of Lord Ariman himself..."

An imperious lift of the nose made the Death Lady fall silent, for when her Lord desired to speak even the air grew hushed and expectant of peril.

Ariman is my worry, not yours. Leave him to the Daokan and the Lord Anri, who even now I sense is trodding perilously close to my dominion...

The ground upon which they now trod was littered with corpses. The very air was rife with the smell of rotting meat and the ground felt sticky with blood, making Nabiki wish fervently for her normal slippers, or-at the very least-a decent pair of sandals.

All around them were impaled or crucified bodies, many lacking their heads...or other significant portions of their anatomy best left unmentioned. Many heads were easy enough to locate, sitting as they did on separate poles where the crows had started to peck out eyes and other soft tissues, and the extreme violence of their ending made it plain that a good deal of viciousness had been employed to the act of their killing, as though the ones who had done these bloody deeds had born an intense grudge against these people and was not merely sated with their mass extermination.

There were both men and women present, old and young, children and the elderly, young men who might have been soldiers and those whose bodies suggested that they were anything but, all slain with the same methodical brutality and relentless indifference, for not a one had been spared some form of outrage or defilement to their person, leading one to wonder what terrible crime they might have committed to justify such wanton callousness that went so far beyond the normal pale of slaughter in warfare.

Through this valley of death and carnage strode Anri, calm and preternaturally collected though his eyes never lost their unwavering sadness. He surveyed the recent battlefield with its ample evidence of war scattered here and abouts in such gory splendor that the War Gods themselves would surely weep, and then he paused when he came to one impaled head in particular and nodded to this, compelling Nabiki to gaze up in open wonder.

The surprising thing about the head on display adorning a pole arm was that the face was remarkably handsome, almost Bishonen fair and lacking in any sort of outward blemish. It was the face of a young man whose obvious charisma radiated well past the point of his demise, and it was easy to imagine hordes of hormone-crazed women falling prey to his good looks, which made his presence here within this makeshift graveyard all the more unsettling, for there was about the youth something or aspect that troubled her...and which raised hackles upon her spine quite apart from the horror of their immediate surroundings.

"There he is," Anri softly announced to the oppressive gray loom of the fast-approaching evening, "Tokezana Amakuza Shiro, the leader of the Shimubari rebellion and so-called 'Messiah of the East,' who-as you can see-met with a bad end along with thousands of others who followed under his banner."

Nabiki was surprised upon hearing this and said, "That's Otono's ancestor?"

"Yes," Anri replied, "A not-so-very loyal aide of Shiro's acquaintance...his mentor of sorts and secret betrayer, a man named Soiyuku Mora, spirited away Shiro's only blood heirs to safety, the children he had fathered upon one of the female devotees who had caught his interest, yet whom he chose not to marry for reasons of politics, and at the advice of Mora."

Nabiki heard the slight roll of a menacing tone in her companion's voice and said, "I take it this Mora guy wasn't one of your favorite kinds of people, Sensei?"

"No indeed," Anri assured his companion-disciple, "No greater kind of villain could one envision than what Mora was behind his pretended act of saintly demeanor. He was what we call a Seed for Genocide, a Host Avatar who only pretended to be friend and advisor to young Shiro...but who all along had a far more sinister design in bringing the boy up and raising him to manhood, grooming him to become his greatest pawn in a subversive ploy that was meant to destroy the integrity of the Home Islands."

"What do you mean?" Nabiki asked, "I thought the Shimubara rebellion was supposed to be about a group of surviving holdover Christians who defied the Shogun and got stomped into the ground for their troubles."

Anri turned to her with a sad sort of smile that was full of candor, "History is often written by the victors of a battle, but reinterpreted later by scholars with their own hidden agendas. Reality and truth lie somewhere beyond the definitions of the known, perceived and merely expected...and in this case the truth was very grim indeed, a truth whose darkness stretches into your own time and affects your very immediate future."

He turned his gaze away and thus compelled Nabiki to do likewise, and when she turned she saw no longer the graveyard of bodies but rather a burning building in the midst of a raging battle taking place within and upon the outskirts of a castle.

And there perched upon the building stood two men facing one another...one man a tall and hard looking fellow dressed in the garb of a warrior from one of the Ninja clans of the Iga mountain range...the other a more elaborately dressed figure who stood all in white, tall, proud and young before the gristled older man, who had an eyepatch adorning one side of his face.

"Greetings to you," the younger man said, "I am Tokezana Amakuza Shiro, the leader of the Christian Forces who defend this region."

"Greetings to you," the older man replied, his single good eye gleaming with blood in the light of reflected fires, "I am Yagyu Jubei of the Iga clan, son of the great swordsman Yagyu who serves at the right hand side of the Shogan, who has sent me here to kill you."

"I know that you are an honorable man and must do as your Master commands," the man named Shiro replied, "But I have a favor to ask of you, seeing as this castle is fallen and its defenses are being breached even as we speak."

"A favor?" asked Yagyu in surprise, "Of what nature?"

Shiro reached into his sash and pulled out a belt knife that was styled like a Christian cross but was clearly of Japanese manufacture, "I wish for you to show mercy to my followers, whose only crime is remaining faithful to God, and whose actions in defense of their religion must surely be seen as no true act of treason."

"You wish me to defy the Shogun?" Jubei asked as though he were being what time of the night it was.

"I wish for you to extend your protection to those who did not spill blood and are innocent of any crime of violence," Shiro replied, "The women, children and elderly who huddle in fear inside of this castle and who are in need of a defender, for after I am gone they will have no one to protect them."

Jubei acknowledged this with a grunt and said, "And in exchange for my protection?"

Shiro extended his knife, "I will offer myself in token sacrifice for their lives and die honorably as befits a Samurai. You may take my head and present it to the Shogun as my offering in penance for the trouble we may have caused him. I only ask that you spare the lives of those guiltless of evil and I am yours, Yagyu Jubei of the clan of Iga."

Jubei straightened up and took his hand away from the hilt of his sword, his one eye now reflecting a new emotion: respect for an enemy and admiration for a display of noble courage.

"Your words speak true and I will honor them," Jubei said, "Upon my life if you commit seppuku then I will lend my sword not to the cause of further destruction but to defend and protect those whom you so honor. I know that there will be some who will protest this but I will have no difficulty defending my actions and will justify keeping my word even should the Shogun himself attempt to countermand me."

"The rumors are true then," Shiro smiled, "Yagyu Jubei is as an honorable a man as he is justly feared for being the greatest of swordsman this side of Musashi himself. Very well then, as heaven is my witness, we have a bargain struck, my life for the lives of thousands of others."

That said the young man began to point the knife towards his own breast, his face taking on a calm and peaceful continence as one who was ready to embrace death on the point of honor.

But before he could work his act of self-slaughter a harsher voice barked out into the night, "Amazuka-san! Amazuka-san! Stop, do not do this! Jubei lies, he is a murderer, and I have proof of his treachery down here!"

"Eh?" Jubei turned and gazed down into the courtyard and saw an elderly man in the robes of a priest holding up a hair of severed heads that even at a distance appeared too small to be adult heads, and with shocked realization the hardened warrior knew at once that they were but children, no longer than eight at the eldest...a boy and a girl by the look of their hair sets.

"What?" Shiro reacted with dismay, "Abel, Mary...no! It cannot be...! Jubei...HOW COULD YOU?"

"Nane?" Jubei reacted himself with shock and dismay, "But...I didn't! I do not war with children!"

"LIAR!" Shiro cried, "YOU HAVE SLAIN MY CHILDREN, THE ONLY ONES I HAVE LEFT TO LOVE IN THIS WORLD, THE ONLY THING I HAVE LEFT OF THEIR MOTHER...AND I WILL NOT FORGIVE YOU!"

Nabiki felt something akin to a shock of electricity flowing through the air and along her spine, a chilling dread of something awful that was coming over the young man as his voice began to change, and his body itself began to alter. Before her astonished eyes the man reverted into a form that was large and scaly and curiously reptilian, yet with aspects of something much darker and more dreadful as he began to grow in size and dimensions, merging his essence with the material of the roof and taking on the armored scales of a full-fledged dragon.

Jubei was not so dismayed at being falsely accused of a murder that he knew himself blameless for that he failed to sense his peril in time to evade it. He ducked out the of the way as a colossal maw bit down upon the place where he had been standing, and then a battle broke out between the fast-moving Ninja and the monstrosity that had replaced the Lord Amakuza.

"Tragic is it not?" Anri said while he and Nabiki observed a battle royal that was worthy of an Anime series, "Shiro never suspected that he had been duped by Mora into believing Jubei to be the villain. It is often like that with truly evil men who glory in manipulating others into effecting their own ruin."

"Sensei?" Nabiki asked, unable to look away as the dragon dove at Jubei, who stood his ground perched upon a nearby roof with sword raised at the ready, an uneven looking match that nonetheless turned out quite different than expected as the swordsman rushed forward and marshaled his Chi into a force that allowed mere steel to cut through stony flesh and armor, and like that the dragon had its belly slit wide open as Shiro plummeted to the ground, and within a matter of moments was swiftly beheaded by a few swift strokes from Jubei.

"Shiro had been infected with tainted blood to corrupt the divinity within him so that he would transform into a monster at the moment when his hatred overcame the good that lay within him," Anri said sadly as the monster's headless body thrashed for a full minute longer, then reverted back to human dimensions, "Unbeknownst to him he was part dragon and had been granted special gifts from infancy that he mistook as gifts from God, such as the powers of prophesy and healing. In actuality his children lived...two others paid the price of Mora's treachery. He disguised them to look like Shiro's offspring knowing it would be the catalytic trigger that was needed to cause the monster within him to burst forward."

"That's awful," Nabiki murmured, "That poor guy...he never really stood a chance."

"Yes, but though Jubei was victorious his sense of victory was muted by what happened later," Anri turned again, and this time Nabiki could see the man with the eyepatch arguing heatedly with one of the Shogun's generals, insisting on mercy for the defeated and being told in no uncertain terms that the promise of mercy would not be extended to any who took part in the rebellion.

"Jubei, I know that you and your Ninja were the keys to victory in this fight," the general said, causing Nabiki to gasp and stare in dismay at the fellow's startling resemblance to her father, "But what you do not know or appreciate is that the Shogun's will in this if final. There can be no mercy extended this day, not for anyone in Shimubara and least of all for those followed under Amakuza's banner."

"But I gave my word that I would spare them!" Jubei insisted.

"Word given under the condition that Amakuza take his own life, which clearly he did not do," the general insisted.

"General Tendo-san," Jubei grit his teeth and snarled, "Are you asking me to dishonor myself? Are you demanding that I commit seppuku?"

"Don't be a fool, Man," the general said forthrightly, "This goes beyond personal honor, it involves the safety of our entire country!"

"What do you mean?" Jubei's single eye narrowed in confusion.

The general (who did indeed resemble Nabiki's father save that he had a well-trimmed beard to go with his mustache) turned to one of his subordinates and said, "Show him."

"Hai," two armored soldiers acknowledged, then waved to others outside the protective canvas of the Genera's enclosure, dragging with them a body that was covered with ofudo strips, a body they deposited upon a blanket within a magically constructed circle.

At a nod from the general one of the men bent down and drew his tanto knife, then inserted the tip of it in the ear of the dead body. At once a blackish puss began to seep out from the spot where the wound had been made, and then a tiny creature burrowed out from the ear and snarled viscously at the man, who smoothly stabbed the creature and pinned it to a white sheet of rune-inscribed paper.

Jubei gasped and leaned forward in total amazement, "What...is that?"

"The true reason for the Shogun's order," the general replied, "They burrow deep into the skull at the base of the brain and hide there against detection, but when they burst out they are as fierce as hornets, yet it is while they lurk within the brain that they do the greatest harm, for they have the power to control the thoughts and actions of their victims."

Jubei stared at the dying creature, then backed away making a sign against evil.

"You see?" the general asked, "We have no way of knowing how many carriers there are, how many people are walking around with these monsters lurking within them. There are signs that the priests can use to detect them sure enough, and they can be expelled with the right sort of magic...but not before they can kill their hosts in an attempt to escape...and they can infect other people or hide by burrowing into the brains of unsuspecting soldiers. That is why it is necessary to hill their hosts and excise these parasites before they spread like a plague and can infect the home islands."

"But...where do they come from?" Jubei asked in growing horror.

"We do not know," the general said, "But we suspect that they may be the servants of an ancient demon that our priests had recorded in the Sutras imported from India and China. The monster is named Genocide and it works to sow its evil in the world in order that it may harvest the emotional and spiritual energies of those who die through acts of hatred and violence. It is believed that one of Shiro's closest aids was himself a carrier working on behalf of Genocide, and that he himself may be the source of the mass infection."

"Soiyuku Mora!" Jubei gasped, understanding and comprehension causing his good eye to narrow with outrage.

"Eh?" General Tendo asked, "His personal advisor and mentor? You suspect him?"

"Mora tricked Shiro into believing that I had murdered his offspring," Jubei replied, "He caused that noble boy to transform into a demon...only it is Mora who is the true monster, that much I believe to be certain."

The general nodded, "That would make sense and would explain a good deal. Mora had the opportunity to advise Amakuza to make an earlier peace with us that could have avoided this needless bloodshed. Instead he seemed to work only to spark confrontation that we knew would inevitably result in the slaughter of these Christians. No doubt that is what he wanted all along..."

"Eh?" Jubei gasped, "He wanted this? But why?"

"Genocide does not care who lives or who dies so long as there is death in agony with emotions of hate and fear released, which he finds intoxicating," the General answered, "No doubt he had a fine rich feast this day, and we were the ones who fed him. And it does not stop here...if Mora isn't stopped this could happen again and again in other provinces, and not just with the Christians!"

"Then he must die," Jubei said grimly, "Such a perversion cannot be allowed to exist."

"Many men even braver than you have attempted this," the general said sympathetically, "Genocide continues for he is as eternal as hate itself. So long as men despise one another for our differences there can be no end to his feasting upon us. But what we can do for now is limit the spread of his evil by destroying the hosts who nurture his minions. I'm sorry, but there is no other way of dealing with this problem..."

"But you said that there was," Jubei countered, "These demons can be exorcised from their hosts..."

"There is not enough time, and we have too few priests sufficiently trained enough to perform the needed rituals," the general countered, "If we wait to send for priestly aid many creatures will escape our net, and it must end now, this night before the tainted victims become the victims of Genocide's demons."

"Then I will do it," Jubei said grimly.

It was the general's turn to look astonished, "But...you? Jubei-san..."

"I gave my word that I would protect them," the one-eyed Ninja master answered, "And if I cannot do it by one means then I will use another. I know ways of killing that do not cause suffering and trauma and can end a life without furthering its torment. Allow me to show this mercy to those who are innocent of the taint of evil that was infected within them by another."

The general nodded, "Very well then. I give them over to you, but do not shirk in this task for you cannot know which ones are seedlings and which ones carry the taint of the demons. It takes time for these creatures to grow once they are planted inside of their hosts..."

"I will know which ones are tainted," Jubei bowed, "Now that I have a sense of this enemy it will not hide from me again, and as I did for Amazuka himself so will I now grant the same mercy to the people who followed him unknowingly to their deaths..."

"And there you have it," Anri turned to Nabiki, "The true reason for the Shimubara rebellion. Not just for religious solidarity but because the Shogun's agents advised him to snuff out a place of infection that was threatening to spread like a cancer."

"But wait!" Nabiki protested, pointing at the general, "That man...he's my ancestor?"

"Direct linear removed by some twelve or thirteen generations," Anri answered, "But, more specifically, he is also your father's past incarnation removed by at least four rebirthing cycles. General Tendo Honshu of the Shogun's Royal Cavalry who owns an estate on land that-quite coincidentally-will one day be known as Nerima."

"Kami-sama..." Nabiki whispered, "And Jubei?"

"His descendants spread their seed out over several divergent lines that branched into the houses of Tendo, Saotome and Kuonji. There is even a side-branch that overlaps the Kuno family line, so he is very important to the founding of your branch of martial arts, albeit his specialty is with the sword, of which he is indeed an acknowledged master."

"Does...Otono know anything about this?" Nabiki wondered.

"He knows enough to bear a grudge with you for being the descendant of a line that caused his ancestor so much trouble," Anri replied, "But mostly he recalls an incident that happened over a hundred and twenty-odd years ago, in the turbulent times just following the Meiji rebelion.

Nabiki turned and saw that they were now standing amid a field knee-high grasses, and off to one side stood a pair of Samurai warriors facing one another down, one dressed all in white and bearing a startling resemblance to Amakuza Shiro. The other red-clad man was shorter and slighter in build and seemed almost ordinary for all that he was quite handsome and bore a very strong resemblance to her husband, Ranma. His long red hair was done up into a pony tail and he bore a couple of wicked looking scars that formed a cross upon his left cheek. His eyes were blue and he stood as calm and centered as if as free of a zephyr while the other man had the force of something different in his eyes. Both men were facing one another down and had a relaxed ease that belied the seriousness of their business.

"You see now before you Amazuka Shogo, direct descendant of Shiro and once again self-described as a 'New Messiah' come to avenge Shimubara upon the Japanese on behalf of the Christians. The other man is a relative of yours, a remarkable fellow named Himura Kenshin, a master of the Hiten Mitsarugi Kibitso as taught to him by a man named Heiko Sejura. Observe and learn a most remarkable sword-style."

All at once the two men went from a standing start into a blur of action, moving almost too fast to be seen by the casual observer as the man named Shogo surged forward like a blaze of lightning, only to be met by a fast-drawn sword blade that sliced the air with astonishing swiftness. The man named Kenshin but took a single step forward and applied a powerful Iiuitsu move that cut through the defenses of the other man and sent him flying as though smashed by a fly swatter.

Nabiki stood stunned at the amazing speed and timing of the two combatants, yet clearly the redheaded man was the superior of the day, and his victory was a triumph registered by the wicked looking mark on the other man's body. Much to her surprise, however, the other man was not cut cleanly in half but managed to groan in pain and agony, very much alive albeit in no condition to immediately continue fighting.

"Mitsurugi style is powerful, ne?" Anri asked, "But it takes an awful toll upon the body of its practitioners. You need fortitude and a constitution far superior to that of the average man just to achieve the simple basics, and young Himura here is acknowledged a master for his own generation."

"He beat Shiro's descendant," Nabiki said, "And now his descendant is come looking for me?"

"And your husband," Anri noted, "The current holder of the Amakuza line bears quite a grudge with you and seeks the total eradication of the houses of both Saotome and Tendo."

Nabiki turned to Anri and said, "Is he using the same style that I just saw demonstrated? Both guys fought as though they belonged to the same system..."

"Sharp, very sharp, Saotome-san," Anri nodded with approval, "Shogu was a student of a distaff line of Mitsurugi swordsman...and Otono has worked very hard to perfect the system that his ancestor studied."

"I'll grant you...it looks a lot tougher than Kuno's own brand of Kendo," Nabiki said, "But it's hardly all that formidable. I'll bet I could have taken them."

"You think so?" Anri smiled, "Why don't we put that theory to the test, shall we?"

"Wait, no...I didn't...mean..." Nabiki started to protest when her eyes turned in surprise, for now they stood on entirely formidable territory, outside the gates of the Tendo family lot.

"We've jumped ahead a bit in time to a different parallel of Earth," Anri explained, "One where events happened somewhat differently than you remember in your own time.

He waved a hand and the gates swung slowly open, not even creaking as they did so as if they were well cared for. Anri strode into the yard but avoided the house and instead circled around in back, compelling Nabiki to follow, only to pause when she heard the peculiar sound of a woman singing.

At the urgency of her current mentor she followed the voice out into the yard and found a young woman tending to a rose garden that had not been there in her own timeline. The girl was modestly tall and wand-slender with long brown hair swept back into a pony tail, and her style of dress was strangely similar to that of Himura Kenshin, albeit her colors were softer pastels of yellow and ochre.

"Good day to you, Tendo-san," Anri bowed to the woman, who turned to glance at him with no real sense of alarm, even though she did not seem to recognize him either, "I wish to beg pardon for our intrusion, but are you not one named Sano Sanosuke of the united houses of Saotome and Tendo?"

"Oh, hello, how are you," the brown haired woman bowed, setting aside her pruning sheers and wiping her hands off on her apron, "I did not sense your approach just now. Have you some business either with me or my iinazuke?"

"Iinazuke?" Nabiki murmured, feeling the oddly chilling sense that this woman's manner was reminding her of someone familiar, and definitely not her younger sister, Akane.

"With you fair lady," Anri replied, then indicated Nabiki, "My student here is a kinswoman of yours whose maiden name was Tendo Nabiki...and who now is married to a man named Saotome."

"Oh," the woman said delightedly, "Then you must be my cousin. I'm sorry if I've never head of you before, but I haven't really had that much time to get caught up on the family business..."

"Ah...it's all right...cousin..." Nabiki turned a questioning look towards her mentor.

"Niece," Anri murmured back then smiled and said, "How radiant you are this morning, Sano-san. I must say that in this light you do very much resemble your mother."

Nabiki stared in dismay as she indeed placed the features of the woman named Sano, and recognized that she did indeed very much resemble her...mother...albeit that there was something rugged beneath her gentleness and though her smile was easy she had a manner that seemed almost fearless.

"Oh, did you know my mother?" Sano asked.

"It was my honor to briefly make her acquaintance," Anri answered, "Tell us, Sano-san, do you still practice the Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu that was taught to you by my good friend, Heiko Sejura?"

"You are a friend of Master Heiko?" the woman's delight seemed redoubled, "Please come inside and allow me to make some tea for you. I really don't have enough time for company any more what with all these challenges cropping up that has compelled me to study much harder with my sword skills."

"You practice Kenjuitsu?" Nabiki asked.

"Every chance that I get," Sano replied, waving a hand to indicate the sword that was resting against the porch within easy reach if so needed.

"Please do us the courtesy of showing us your weapon," Anri said, "It's been many years since I last saw it in use. Is it still as formidable as when held in the grip of your ancestor, Himura Kenshin?"

"You do know about my family's history, how nice," Sano said, taking two steps to where the sword was then picking it up and unsheathing it, then extending it hilt-first in Nabiki's direction.

Immediately the heir to the Tendo and Saotome lines saw what her para-dimensional niece was holding and said, "The blade's on the wrong side...the inward curve..."

"Sakaba blade," the girl pleasantly answered, showing the blunt outward side as she added, "It only cuts when I want it to and allows me to spare the lives of my enemies...unless otherwise necessary."

Nabiki sensed a slight sadness in the eyes of the woman as she took the blade back and sheathed it again in its scabbard, then calmly slipped it through her obi before turning and saying, "Please say that you will stay for tea. I have rice cakes and crackers for snacks, but I'm afraid that I don't have anything more fancy."

"Tea will be enough," Anri replied then surprised Nabiki by adding, "Orange Ginseng for myself and my companion."

The delight of the other girl was immediate as she said, "Why, that's my favorite also! In fact I was about to make a pot when you arrived here."

"Ah...how nice...cousin," Nabiki said, then watched as the other woman moved with soundless steps, removing her sandals at the bottom of the steps without having to bend down, so fluid and graceful that she almost appeared to be floating.

"By the way Anri said as he followed the woman's example, his boots seeming to magically disappear from his feet before he ascended the stairs, "Before I forget, my condolences for the loss of your father and mother. Truly tragic...they were very good people."

"So I am told," Sano said while busying herself up in the kitchen, "People around here constantly say how much I resemble my mother...I only wish that I could remember her better."

Nabiki paused in mid-step, stunned by this news, which prompted her to ask, "What...what happened to your parents?"

There was a slight pause before Sano answered her, "I am told they died heroically fighting against a great evil when I was just a baby. I was brought up by my master Heiko and trained in the Mitsurugi style so that I could one day avenge them against the man-creature who betrayed and murdered them long ago."

Again Nabiki felt an odd pause before asking, "And did you?"

"Yes," Sano replied, that single word conveying a wealth of meaning.

"Indeed, I've heard the story from other sources," Anri noted, "Pantsaru Taro I believe he called himself...interesting fellow, and cursed by Jusenkyo."

"It was in the monster form that I slew him," Sano remarked with only a tiny trace of regret in her tone, "Not the first time that my sword tasted the blood of an enemy, but one that gave me some satisfaction to honor since he truly was a monster in both of his disguises. What he did to my father and mother was bad enough, but what I learned about the fate of my two Aunts..."

"What did he do to them?" Nabiki found herself compelled to ask almost against her own will.

There was a pause before Sano replied, "I don't like to talk about it, but if you must know it was a very bad ending. My Aunt Nabiki was sold into slavery. I learned this from a Slaver who allied with me, a woman named Lao Kahn..."

Nabiki could not hide her surprise, "She helped you?"

"For a price," Sano replied without elaboration.

"Tell us about this fellow you are about to marry," Anri smiled, "Is it true that his mother is a Dark Sider?"

There was considerably more surprise in Sano's voice as she said, "You are well informed, Sir. I'm sorry...I didn't get your name when you arrived here..."

"No need to apologize," the man replied, "Call me Anri."

"Master Anri then," Sano came back into the living room with a tray in hand with a tea pot and porcelain cups at the ready, "Are you also a master of the Mitsurigi system?"

"Oh no," Anri replied, "No swords for me, I much prefer unarmed combat myself, though I do know a great deal about the use of various weapons. Take yours, for example...quite remarkable. A sword that fights to bring an end to violence. And from all that I've heard tell you have honored it through your usage of it and the Mitsurugi system."

"I have tried to be faithful to my teachings," Sano said while smoothly sitting down at the table, "But it is hard sometimes to know when to use violence and when to abstain from violence. I do not like to shed blood for any reason, but I have found it necessary to take a life when it comes to protecting others."

"Ah..." Nabiki said, more than passingly disturbed at the casual way in which this gentle-mannered young girl spoke of killing a man with whom she had a Bushido-like death grudge. Granted the Pantyhose Taro whom Nabiki had encountered a few days past (by her reckoning) had been a sleazy dirt bag who kidnapped a pregnant woman-namely herself-and used her as a hostage for a personal vendetta, but he had not struck Nabiki as the sort of fellow who would ruthlessly do murder, which implied that much was different on this timeline beyond the mere fact of Ranma's matrimonial selection of a different Tendo sister.

"I can see that the matter does trouble you somewhat, Sano-san," Anri spoke reassuringly, "We are sorry to have raised the issue, but rest assured that no ill thoughts are held towards you over what must certainly have been a difficult and trying issue..."

"No, strangely enough, Sir, it is not the killing itself that troubles me," Sano replied, "It was necessitated by many different issues that came together at the point where I made the choice to end his life. It is the question of whether doing so might have been the proper way to honor the memory of my parents. Taro took from me the chance to know them, but I do not hold ill will towards his memory for that reason alone but rather the lives that he had ruined quite apart from my own. My grandfather, aunts and so many others paid a heavy toll for his actions in rising to the level of a crime lord with ties to the Yakuza. I judge that it was both necessary and justified to bring an end to his career...but from what I have learned about my parents since then I cannot help but ask if they might not have found another way to achieve the same results. My father, for example, was a man who fought many battles and achieved great victories without the need of taking the lives of most of his opponents..."

"Most of them?" Nabiki asked curiously.

Sano paused to reflect upon a memory before speaking, "I am given to understand that a fellow named Saffron from China posed a significant threat to the health of my mother, compelling my father to use lethal force against him. Fortunately he was assisted by the Amazons of China, who owed a blood debt to both of my parents. I have since met the Amazons from whom I obtained this story and consider their leader both wise and gifted and a valued friend...though I fear I did have an awkward time of it over an unfortunate dispute that arose between me and a warrior named Azure..."

As she spoke the name the young heir to the Tendo estate became flush about the cheeks and glanced down modestly as though in reaction to...certain unvoiced emotions...and from that Nabiki felt a wave of sympathy with the girl, suspecting that they had a lot more in common than would otherwise be imagined.

"It is obvious that you have been a great credit to your parents, and I am certain that they would understand and regard you as having honored their legacy, Sano-san," Anri remarked, "There is no need to feel ashamed if you found yourself faced with difficult choices in seeking the path of justice. There are none of us who are entirely without fault in that regard, and by my estimation you have acted with honor and should be respected for bringing what peace you may have to this province of Nerima."

"You are kind to say so, Anri-san," Sano smiled gently, then she inclined her head with a look of subtle appreciation, "But I sense that you have other reasons for being here besides exchanging pleasantries with the daughter of a friend, and in acquainting me with this kinswoman."

"You are indeed as perceptive as you are fair, Sano-san," Anri remarked with a gentle smile of his own, "In truth I brought my student here to learn from you the art of the Hiten Mitsarugi."

Nabiki almost reacted in amazement to this, but caught herself in time so that she only turned a curious look outwardly towards her nominal Sensei.

Sano arched an eyebrow, "You wish her to become a swordswoman?"

"No," Anri said, "It is because she is facing a match against a difficult opponent who uses a sword and I thought it would be best to arm her by demonstrating one of the most formidable sword styles ever invented so that she might study from your example."

"You flatter me, Sir," Sano replied, "But would you not obtain a more complete study if you went to seek my Master in Kyoto?"

"Actually I rather doubt Heiko-san would be in a mood to receive us," Anri confided in an almost conspiratorial voice, "You know how much he hates to be interrupted with his drinking."

Comprehension lit the eyes of the young woman sitting across from them at the table, "Indeed, I well remember that. Very well...I suppose that I could arrange for a brief demonstration. But I have never taught lessons and I doubt very much that I am qualified to teach your student formally in the Mitsurugi system. I also doubt that my Master Heiko would permit me to do so. He always felt that I was a bit remiss in certain aspects of his teachings..."

Nabiki arched an eyebrow to this, but as the wand-slender girl rose fluidly from the table with sword-in-scabbard in hand she felt compelled to do likewise, and then followed her paratime niece into the yard while Anri himself hung back and observed them.

Sano took five long paces away from the house then turned around and faced Nabiki.

"The primary thing to remember about the Hiten Mitsurugi style, Cousin," the girl began, "Is that it is a system designed to protect rather than kill an opponent. Long ago my ancestor, Kenshin Himura the Batthosai, earned a fearsome reputation as a Hitokiri in the Meiji wars. It is said that he slew thousands of men in battle, only to renounce killing when he unintentionally took the life of a woman whom he cared for. He devoted the rest of his years to using this Reverse Blade Sword to defeat his foes while sparing the lives of his enemies. The system that I practice, therefore, uses the blunt side of the blade to wound rather than injure, though its inside curve is edged just in case the blade side is needed. Primarily this system employs a special form of Iiajuitsu called the 'Fast Draw' that often ends a fight before it is even started."

She turned around and in one fluid motion drew her sword with a slice that caused the air itself to shudder. Nabiki almost backed away in astonishment as she felt the resulting shockwave from the lightning-swift motion, and with a shudder of realization knew that-for all her own formidable speed-there would have been no way for her to avoid such a slash had it been turned in her direction.

Sano sheathed her blade again then turned around and calmly addressed herself to Nabiki, "The Fast Draw Batthosai stance is all but irresistible and can be used to take down several opponents at once. It employs Godspeed in order to overwhelm an opponent's defenses."

"Godspeed?" Nabiki questioned.

"All of your energy must be focused into a single attack where the object is to concentrate your power into one devastating offensive," Sano explained, "It requires intense concentration of mind, spirit and body and will lend superhuman power to your thrusts so that only a strong opponent will be able to resist you."

"Oh," Nabiki said, appreciating more than ever before how much of a deadly fighting machine this gentle-mannered girl truly was, and that-despite her resemblance to her mother-she was not one to be taken for granted.

"When one masters this attack one can then move on to learning combinations," Sano continued to explain, once again turning away from Nabiki and surging forward with great speed, her sword appearing in her hand as though by magic though the wind that she kicked up with her strokes caused Nabiki's hair to blow wildly in the resultant breeze. Leaves were picked up out of the yard and sucked into a sudden whirlwind that swept them all away, leaving the courtyard clean of debris by the time that Sano had completed several dozen high-speed katas.

"You see?" she turned around back to Nabiki, her sword once again mysteriously in its scabbard, "I tried to keep it slow enough that you could observe me or else I'd probably have to do it all over again until you understood the basic mechanics."

"That was SLOW?" Nabiki gulped, seriously beginning to question the Anything Goes philosophy against relying upon weapons.

"Why don't you demonstrate some of your techniques against a target, Sano-san?" Anri asked, nodding to one side of the yard where stood a pole on one end, long and wide enough to have belonged to a Telephone line at one point, albeit that it stood a mere two meters up out of the earth.

Sano registered surprise, "How odd...I don't remember placing it there. Oh well...I suppose that it would make for a fitting target."

Once again she fell down into a fighting crotch, one hand poised over the hilt of her blade while the other maintained a firm grip upon the scabbard. Without a signal to begin the brown haired girl surged forward and the sound of a dozen metal clangs filled the space of a single second, punctuated when Sano leaped high into the ground and did an inverted handstand with one palm outstretched to touch the top of the pole, whereupon she shouted out her maneuver.

"HITEN MITSARUGI SPECIAL ATTACK-RYU-SUITSEN!"

And like that she shoved the pole into the ground, reversing it to half its apparent length with an ease that was astonishing...and like that she finished her vault and landed expertly on her feet on the opposite side of the target. No sooner did her feet touch the ground then Sano scraped her sword tip against the ground and caused a shower of gravel to pummel the log with a rain of fast-moving pebbles that sounded like bullets when they hit, sending up a spray of wood chips in all directions.

"HITEN MITSARUGI SPECIAL ATTACK-DO YU SEN!"

Nabiki stared in frank amazement as she marked the position of several wicked looking gouges and deep impressions in the word, the former looking as though someone had taken a large hatchet and chucked out large pieces, which left her in no doubt whatsoever as to what those sword-strikes and pebbles would have meant to a human opponent. Then Sano completed her maneuver by falling into a crouch as drew her sword again in a savage backward slash, then straightened up and sheathed it so smoothly that it all seemed to be one long continuous motion. She then turned and regarded Nabiki, smiling in a reassuring manner before turning and blowing upon the log...

Which promptly fell apart into several cleanly cut sausage-like pieces.

Nabiki gulped again, then looked up and met the smiling eyes of the gentle Sano Sanosuke.

"Understandably, I would suggest getting a sword of your own before taking on anyone who studies the art of the Samurai with the focus of the Mitsurugi system. As I perceive that you are primarily an unarmed hand fighter...I would further suggest working up strong techniques and keeping as much distance from your opponent as can be managed."

"Er...thanks," Nabiki said faintly, "I'll try and keep that in mind...Cousin."

"Hmmm," Anri said as he suddenly appeared at the side of Sano, who gasped in surprise of her own at having failed to detect his approach until that moment, "Forgive my rudeness, gentle lady...but might I trouble you to allow me to examine your weapon?"

"My Sakaba sword?" Sano asked in growing surprise, but nonetheless she found herself handing the blade over to the tall fair-haired man without further question.

Anri held it up and balanced its tang upon one finger, then said, "As I thought...the poor thing's taken quite a beating. A hundred years of intermittent use has clearly taken its toll upon the metal. I could tell from the sound that it made that the blade has started to develop numerous microfractures."

"You know that by listening, Sir?" Sano asked curiously.

"I know many things by listening carefully, young lady," Anri replied before taking the sword by one hand gripping the hilt while the other hand ran a finger over its surface, "Ordinarily metallurgy is not one of my specialties...it's more in line with my brother Udan's own school of thought, but as I command the Promethean Fire I am able to fuse these molecule chains together to insure that this worthy blade continues to perform in the service of its Mistress."

Sano's surprise turned to astonishment as she saw a peculiar glow that briefly shone along the interior of the blade as Anri's finger glided over its gleaming surface. A couple of passes later and then Anri turned the weapon about and presented it hilt-first to Sano, who took it with only a slight hesitation then stared at the blade's mirror-like surface.

"For the favor you have just rendered us," Anri explained, "I've added decades of life to your weapon and have given it a few special properties, including a blessing that will make it more effective against supernatural prey, like demons."

"Demons sir?" Sano asked before sheathing the blade back into its scabbard, then she bowed formally to Anri and said, "I thank you for this favor, Great Lord, and consider it a gift that far outweighs the one that you requested from me."

"Not at all," Anri said cheerfully, "In fact you've been a great help in showing my student here what sort of thing she will be going up against in the very near future. Now then, you do remember everything that you just witnessed, do you not, Nabiki?"

"Hah?" Nabiki asked reluctantly, then blinked her eyes and said, "Oh...sure...whatever you say, Sensei."

Sano smiled at her, "I'm very glad that the two of you stopped by. You must do so again when my iinazuke is present. It is especially delightful to meet with you, Cousin."

"Likewise," Nabiki said aloud, though what she wanted to say was, "HOW THE HELL DID YOU GET SO GOOD WITH A KATANA?" After all the girl did not seem any older than Nabiki, and might well have been a few years shy from the mark of a Senior.

"Hmmm..." Anri regarded Sano herself and then without warning stepped behind her, "Forgive me, please...I don't want to harm you. Just relax and allow me to assist you."

"What do you mean...OOOHHH!" Sano reacted with surprise as the fair-haired man began to give the ponytailed girl a vigorous back-rub.

"Not to worry," Anri said, "I am a professional, and I could sense from your movements that you are in some distress like unto back pain, Sano-san. Fortunately I do know some Tibetan techniques of Power Yoga that should do the trick in straightening your spine and lower back muscles."

"Sensei?" Nabiki felt the urge to protest, feeling an inexplicable protective urge that was closely akin to what she would have felt had someone behaved similarly with Kasumi.

But-much to her relief-Anri only moved his hands in a cursory non-sexual manner, causing Sano to sigh and arch her back with relief rather than anything overtly sensual, and after a moment he stood back and nodded in satisfaction, and she turned around and smiled at him, a smile as radiant as the one Kasumi sometimes wore when in the company of Frank...or Thelendra.

"Thank you, Sensei...that was most...invigorating," Sano noted.

"Anytime," he nodded back to her in a polite manner, "Now, if you would excuse us we do have to be going elsewhere. Thank you for your hospitality and the tea, and the most instructive demonstration of your prowess. I am certain that my student learned a great deal from your example."

"Must you be going so soon?" Sano was genuinely disappointed, turning to Nabiki and adding, "Surely you will come visit me again? It's so strange...I've only just met you and yet...I feel this strange, indescribable connection..."

"Perhaps another time should the fates be kindly disposed to such a reunion," Anri gently responded while turning and striding off towards the front gates, "Now come along, Nabiki-san, we have taken up enough of your cousin's time and attention."

"Ah...nice meeting you...cousin," Nabiki said as she hurried to catch up with her mentor, glancing over her shoulder in passing to see their host waving towards them in a manner that was altogether like Kasumi and finding a rush of confusing emotions in that realization as she turned away and held her silence for another full minute, pausing only to speak once they reached the front gates, "Ranma and Kasumi? I just can't see it..."

"Different worlds, different rules, different conditions," Anri replied, "In this one your sister never stopped practicing the martial arts and had mastered the Katana long before her future iinazuke's arrival."

"Get out of here," Nabiki reacted, "Kasumi? Like Kuno-san? It's hard enough to imagine her with any sharp object other than a carving knife or a pair of scissors..."

"Don't sell her so short," Anri urged, "Kasumi had just as much potential growing up as either you or your younger sister, Akane. The only difference is the choices you each made at some critical point in your lives, and even then conditions for the world itself were slightly different. It doesn't take much to make the world a very different place from the one you know, believe me."

"Maybe so," Nabiki said, narrowing her eyes by a bit before adding, "And just what was with all that business of you giving her a backrub any way? Copping a feel doesn't seem much like your style..."

"Oh, you'd be surprised, Saotome-san," Anri chuckled, "Despite the way some legends portray me, I have a very active libido, I assure you. But in regards to Sano-san, what I did was correct the vital flaw that exists within the Mitsurugi system."

"Which is?" Nabiki asked, surprised at being so casually given such a critical answer.

"That powerful as it is, the system's critical flaw is that it takes its toll upon the human body," Anri answered, "Very few humans possess the constitution to use the Hiten style as relentlessly as Sano, and the more times it is called upon the more it shortens one's life so that the practitioner in time will literally burn up from within and put so much stress upon their health that very few Masters of this art ever live to see forty. Heiko doesn't count, being an Immortal and all that, but thanks to my efforts Sano-san will likely survive another thirty or so years without suffering the ravages of bone and muscle fatigue, even as I've given her sword a hundred years more life in active service."

"Oh," Nabiki responded, feeling the awkward silence that came with knowing that you had suspected a friend of one thing when, in fact, the only guilty thing had been her own willingness to suspect the worst of a man who-in many respects-seemed too good and honest for her own liking.

As they began to walk down the street leading away from the Tendo estate a shadow passed over her head and caused Nabiki to instinctively flinch, only to stare up in amazement at the tall form striding on foot down a much wider road than she was used to seeing in her residential district. To her amazement she saw other towering figures going to and fro down the walkway, the average person being twice the height or more of an ordinary human being, which made Nabiki wonder if she and Anri had shrunk to child size, only to find that other things in their surroundings were of normal height and appearance, including the trees and bushes that lined well-kept gardens.

"Interesting isn't it?" Anri said without evidencing the least bit of alarm at the passing giants, "Most Biophysicists debate endlessly about the Inverse Square Proportion rule when discussing the subject of mass alteration. What they fail to compensate for is that size and proportion are relative to an organism's basic health and function. Nature always finds a way to compensate, just like bumblebees and other such phenomena of nature."

"What...who...how...?" Nabiki gasped, hastily moving aside as a perfectly well proportioned lady of around two meters stature rounded a corner then almost tripped over her, pausing to give profuse apologies before hurrying off on her own business.

"Sorry, didn't see you down there, gotta hurry, bye!" she waved in passing.

"Come along, Mihoshi!" another giantess called out from over her shoulder, "Don't stand around just talking to the little people."

"Little people?" Nabiki gasped, only to have her attention be diverted back to the presence of the giantess.

Two ironic things occurred to her in that moment, the first being her reflexive reaction to having the girl's dress pass over her, which gave Nabiki a good look at the giant woman's panties. The second thing to occur to her was that her eyes automatically riveted towards the mobile chest area of the very expansively well endowed giant lady, and her nearly reflexive attempt to estimate her cup-size, which caused her cheeks to flush crimson when she realized what she was doing.

"They are called Stromboli in these parts," Anri said casually, "Which is a fancy word for Titan in any other language. They are the descendants of a branch of humanity that died off on your world many thousands of years ago...only here they continue to thrive due to different environmental conditions. They are somewhere between humans and Gods on the evolutionary scale and are quite strong and intelligent, like the builders of the great monoliths of your world, who could easily manage objects weighing many times their size and mass due to their innate ability to channel manna through their limbs, which is the same way in which they manage to sustain their huge bodies..."

"Happosai oughta be here," Nabiki mumbled as she furiously glanced away, trying not to think too hard about the implications of her own thoughts and actions.

"Ah?" Anri glanced at her then said, "My apologies. I wanted to illustrate a point with you on the changeable nature of reality as we know it. On one time timeline-eighteen years in the future-young Sano Sanosuke strives to carry on the Saotome and Tendo legacies with the aid of a few close friends and a man whom she cares very much about...yet who is himself partly the heir to the Dark Side of existence. On another world-your own world-the children of your family carry on the mantle that you and your loved ones have bequeathed to them, the only major difference being that you are now the Older Generation and sit back on the sidelines complaining about the antics of the younger generation."

"Oh no," Nabiki winced, "Don't tell me I'm gonna grow up to be just like my Daddy?!"

"It's inevitable," Anri replied, "The young become the old and pass the torch along to the young they usher in after, only to wind up being the much-despised Elders whom the young will come to resent while secretly patterning their lives around. It's as eternal as the changing of the seasons."

"God, you're gonna make me feel old before I'm twenty," Nabiki chuckled, only to grow serious again as she said, "Sensei...just how good is Sano...compared with the guy I'm going up against?"

"Otono?" Anri replied, "She might hold her own for a time, but his power is darkened and enhanced by his connection to Ariman, so his form of the Mitsurugi style is tainted with the force of Anti-life itself, which makes him a hundred times more dangerous than any mere swordsman."

"Do you think I'd have a chance against this guy?" Nabiki asked, studying the man's handsome profile in search of an answer.

"If I didn't think you had it in you to stand against him," Anri drolly replied, "Do you honestly think that I would be wasting my time playing you spiritual tour guide? I'm sorry, as pleasant as I find your company to be I could not spare the moments in making preparations to face this crisis. You need to appreciate the gravity of the menace that you face here, but do not get discouraged or question if you have what it takes...that is for you alone to answer, not me. You are the one who must reach inside herself and discover the hero within you."

"Hero?" Nabiki said, "I'm just a girl who studied the martial arts for twelve years under my uncle's Saotome-branch of the Anything Goes Ryu. But you're...you're something different entirely. Why can't you face this guy down? You obviously know everything that it would take to beat him."

"Ah, but if I face Otono then I face Ariman himself, and your universe would not survive such an encounter," Anri countered, "Whereas if I hold back and wait then Ariman will likely show his hand and that will give me the chance to wrest him away from your world to where I can deal with him in my own way. That would still leave you facing Otono, and in that regard you must be ready because he is every bit the killer that you fear him to be...to say nothing of a man who casually contemplates causing the deaths of millions of innocent people."

"Guess that makes him out to be a Monster," Nabiki decided.

"A Monster? No," Anri sighed, "Just another victim. It is Ariman who is the true monstrosity here, that foul perversion who exists outside of the realms of Form spreading his tendrils of evil in an effort to corrupt and destroy the Multiverse from within."

Anri waved a hand and caused a curious shift to come over the landscape, and now Nabiki could see that which had been invisible to her senses before now...writhing wavy coils of unhealthy energy that snaked out over the landscape, contrasting with the healthier looking landscape, these tendrils causing whatever they touched to slowly decay from within as though from internal corruption.

"What you see are the tentacles of Ariman that he extends out into the Multiverse in an effort to destroy us from within," Anri noted, "His evil is a force outside of nature that hastens the process of entropy and seeks to subvert the integrity of both spirit and matter. These coils are like radio waves that stretch out into infinity, but they can only affect that which is tuned into their wavelength. Every dark thought, impression and impulse that we have puts us in touch with the will of Ariman. Every destructive thing in our behavior is brought about by the influence of this darkness, the range of twisted emotions that poison and corrupt the soul of anyone foolish enough to heed the siren call of its Pied Piper seduction."

Nabiki stared at the wavy force lines and felt a churning in her stomach when one passed too close by her position. The thought of the world being permeated by such evil things was deeply unsettling, to say the very least, but more disturbing by far was the sense that these tendrils of evil had a powerful element of attraction about them that seemed to lure and tempt one into harboring unhealthy impulses.

She wrested her mind back with an effort then said, "That...that's the cause of all evil in the universe?"

"But of course," Anri replied, "Did you really think that human beings were the true authors of mortal Sin? That Sin was brought into the world as a result of human action? Rather it is the opposite that is true...that vice and corruption occur only when a human soul surrenders itself to the impulse to do evil. Rather we are the carriers of the twin viruses known as Fear and Hatred, and from their bosom sprouts greed and gluttony, envy and pride, obsession and self-loathing and the secret desire for death that leads so many into avenues of eventual self-destruction. Ariman is that voice that whispers gently in your ear that life is too painful to continue, that you are better off ending the pain through self-slaughter or projection of that pain onto others. The battle against these wanton desires is eternal and unending, and only by willfully resisting their allure can men of good conscience triumph over this tug towards oblivion that forever seeks to tempt our baser nature."

"You mean when people decide to act like human beings rather than animals?" Nabiki asked.

"Oh no," Anri assured, "This is well beyond the animal instincts that are buried within us and were at one time key to our survival. Animals do not build bombs and contemplate the total eradication of their enemies. Animals may feel fear, rage and pain but they never obsess about it, nor do they entertain a desire for self-extermination as a means of vindicating their existence."

"You mean like that Suicide Bomber you showed us last night?" Nabiki asked.

"That was one rather overly dramatic example, but there are others that I could site," Anri answered, "Conduct that would appear quite ordinary, even understandable within a given context, but which turns to unhealthy life-destroying patterns when carried on to excess. "

"I...think I understand what you mean," Nabiki said quietly, thinking of many examples of where people followed impulses and did seemingly ordinary things that nonetheless had explosively bad consequences, and she thought about her Uncle Saotome, who really was not all that bad a person, just one given to examples of really bad judgement that often landed both himself and Nabiki in hot water, and always the result of Genma's tendency towards rash unthought-out behavior.

"Good," Anri said, "Because Ariman thrives where people are ignorant and are easily duped into playing his mind games. He chooses pawns that he uses as tools to unknowingly effect their own destruction and the only way to counter that is by taking the Illuminated Path and showing forth his evil for the corruption that it is. Only through the universal enlightenment of all men can his grip to the material world be permanently severed."

"Is that possible?" Nabiki asked as the tendrils began to fade back beyond her ability to notice, "Can evil really be overcome like that?"

"I have said that it is possible, and you yourself have experienced a world that is largely untouched by Ariman's dark shadow," Anri noted, "Can you therefore doubt that it might be so? Of a certainty it would be hard, but it is not inconceivable to dream of a day when all worlds can achieve universal liberation."

"You keep mentioning this Virus that Otono intends to use to create a contagion," Nabiki noted, feeling uneasy with the metaphysics of that last statement.

"Indeed," Anri replied, "An artificially crafted plague, created in a lab by combining a virulent strain of Ebola with some foreign DNA to create a retrovirus of enormous potential for lethal consequences to life upon this planet."

"A retrovirus?" Nabiki asked with raised eyebrow.

"A product of the Cold War...or should I say of it's recent ending?" Anri answered, "When the Soviet Union collapsed its germ warfare division was severely downsized, and scientists who had spent years working in the illegal research for the 'perfect' Bioweapon were suddenly at loose ends, penniless and cut off from their government pensions. Necessarily that encouraged some to-how shall we put this? Outsource their talents to whichever power was willing to finance their enormously expensive research."

Nabiki found her mouth suddenly go dry, "You mean...like despotic nations and terrorist enclaves?"

"Among a few other more 'legitimate' agencies who saw great potential in these endeavors," Anri noted, "Among whom is numbered a certain tyrant of a Middle Eastern nation that will momentarily go nameless. He wanted weapons to give him power over the region...and when pressed on the defensive he came very near to releasing his plague, only to have been stopped by his own Generals, who stalwartly refused such a suicidal maneuver."

"So...what happened?" Nabiki asked, dreading the answer.

"On some timelines he unleashed his plague and brought about the dire consequences predicted by wiser and cooler heads than his own," Anri answered, "But in most other timelines the world was spared and the virus remained dormant. Then came the hard times with international pressure being exerted to get him to give up on his Bio-weapons, and-much to his reluctance-he tacitly complied while trying to save face by doing it quietly. Many scientists were cut loose, let go or simply vanished into the desert, and with them went their fearsome creations, one vial of which wound up on the international black market, and by one means or another arrived within the hands of a certain industrialist whose ties to Otono are anything but coincidental."

"What exactly will it do it if gets released?" Nabiki wondered.

"Several possibilities exist," Anri replied, "Because there are several different types of lethal strain that Otono and Genocide have come in contact with, and any one of these could change the world you know forever. Possibility One: immediate or lingering death through a fast-spreading airborne disease that would make the Bubonic Plague seem like a leisurely picnic by contrast."

"You don't know which kind will be released?" Nabiki asked.

"Well, I can't exactly know everything that will happen or there'd never be any surprises to life, now would there be?" Anri shrugged with a self-effacing smile, "Otono and Ariman have it hidden in a place that is outside our powers of vision. Even Ulsa, the most prescient of the four of us, cannot be certain of where it is located. There are limits even to our powers, after all, and Ariman's agents know them and are well-armed to avert our intervention. However, with Thelendra's assistance we have managed to limit the possibilities to a few rather horrifying choices..."

Nabiki gasped as their surroundings altered once again, only now there were dead bodies everywhere, and the suburbs of Nerima looked as though they had been hit by several riots. She reflexively covered her nose but no smell touched her nostrils this time, and the eerie chill of silence around them made it feel once again as though she were treading through a graveyard.

"Possibility One," Anri said soberly, his voice sounding all the more eerie coming as it did amid this hideous field of unburied corpses, "Widespread death and isolation of the Japanese islands, which proves to be ultimately futile as the disease spreads quickly from airport terminals and results in the death of over one third of the population of the planet."

"Um...we won't catch the illness by being here as observers...will we?"

"Not likely as we are not materially present upon this plane, which is only a shadow-vision of one potential future. Possibility two," Anri noted, "The plague does not kill its hosts outright but instead transforms them into raging beasts with only the mindless intent to kill and feast upon the living."

Nabiki fell instinctively into a defensive crouch as a number of figures came rushing on by them, humans whose bodies looked bruised, sallow and unhealthy, and whose behavior was quite strikingly bestial as they snarled and slashed at one another, pausing only to examine a fallen corpse, whereupon they fell to their knees and began eagerly feasting.

"Possibility three," Anri said aloofly while observing this evidence of Zombie-cannibalism with his usual sadness, "The pathogen affects its hosts differently in a strict division that is governed by gender."

The setting changed again, only instead of the same arrangement of half-decayed bodies strewn about there were instead small piles of discarded clothing surrounding brownish puddles, and then more active bodies came rushing down the street, a lone man attempting to put furious distance between himself and a horde of obviously hormonally-crazed women who seemed intent on gang-raping the poor fellow, who fled in mortal terror, seeing to escape their frenzied attention.

"What the...?" Nabiki gasped, "That was...Gosunkuji?"

"One of the few men who might last a few days before falling prey to the ravages of this particular virus," Anri noted, "In a sense he would be one of the lucky ones to die swiftly under the press of feminine attention rather than the malingering death that befall other more viral men afflicted with the ravages of Lilith."

"Lilith?" Nabiki repeated.

"The name given to this particular strain," Anri explained, "A Virus designed to reinforce the X chromosome while breaking down the Y chromosomes in men as though they were an aberration. One generation later and the world would resemble this," he nodded sagely.

The setting had quite obviously altered once again, for the clothing and bodies were gone along with the curious brown matter. Instead Nabiki saw young, beautiful and quite radiantly healthy young women walking back and forth along the thoroughfare, pleasantly chatting with one another and some even holding hands in public without the least evidence of shame or social avoidance.

"Notice anything amiss here, Saotome-san?" Anri asked.

"The guys...where are the men?" Nabiki gasped in amazement.

"Gone," her companion explained, "Extinct, or very near to being so. The virus grants perfect health and beauty to anyone female but utterly destroys the tissues of men...breaks them down like slow-acting acid so that no trace of them survived the holocaust. These days women reproduce by other means and men have become not only obsolete but unnecessary."

"Unnecessary?" Nabiki asked, then turned and gawked as she saw two women walking by who were openly kissing one another...and rather than receive silent ostracism from the people who passed them by they instead got cheerful calls like, "Get a room!" and, "You go, Honey."

"Exactly so," Anri answered, "Because all of the tasks that normally are assigned to the men have become the province of women."

Nabiki arched both eyebrows, "All of them?"

"All of them," Anri said with a knowing smirk, "Including the domestic obligations of forming and raising a family. In fact the people have coped quite remarkably overall, adopting a lifestyle that they have come to take for granted, which is precisely as intended by the true author of this contagion, the one for whom the Virus was named...the Neflim Titaness named Lilith."

Again their setting changed, only now their surroundings were icy cold with walls of white that stretched out all around them. Nabiki reflexively shuddered even though the cold did not touch her, their surroundings seemingly as ephemeral as a holographic projection. What caught her interest here within the towering walls of a deep ice crevasse was the dark shadow of an enormous shape whose size and mass would have dwarfed the giants of that other parallel world...a form that caused her to shudder in a different sense as though fearing the thing within the ice as though it were still living.

"Behold Lilith, first of all Neflim and counterpart to her brother of old, the original Adam," Anri noted, causing the ice to turn momentarily transparent in order to reveal a figure that was well over thirty meters tall and enshrouded in some sort of enormous black armor.

Nabiki gazed up at the Titan and swallowed a dry lump, unable to shake feeling as though a set of eyes were gazing down at her from beneath the giant's helmet. She could feel the intelligence radiating from within the giant's helmet, as well as a sense of quasi-hostility directed he way, as though this Lilith regarded her with a certain disdain that implied personal leanings that found one half of Nabiki's internal equation not at all to its liking.

"Here you see the true author of at least one version of the Virus that plagues us," Anri replied, "And because she is a being easily on a par with we Daokan it is her will that we would have to contend against in order to combat her creation, which is-after all-an extension of her own genetic matter."

"That...thing is what's really behind this virus?" Nabiki murmured as though afraid to raise her voice lest it further awaken the Titan.

"As I say, one version of it at least," Anri answered, "The one that destroys male tissues because-as you may already suspect-Lilith hates the male half of the human genome, regarding the 'Y' chromosome as a mistake of evolution, and one that she wishes to eradicate as a means of getting back at Adam...by targeting his children for elimination."

"Nice," Nabiki winced, "So...I take it she doesn't have a similar problem with women?"

"Hardly," Anri assured her, "In fact she believes that women are a superior side to humanity, while men are a distraction. In truth her intentions are not so much hostile as misguided, for she has crafted her virus to benevolently enhance the quality of life for most women. But there's a reason why this particular timeline is quarantined from all the others..."

"Quarantined?" Nabiki reacted as their setting changed again, going from icy mountainous walls to yet another tranquil looking park land, "You can quarantine an entire parallel universe?"

"Oh yes," Anri said, "Were even a God to stray there they would immediately contract the Lilith strain, which-because of its supranormal nature-even Immortals would be affected. Ulsa would not allow either me or Udan to go anywhere near the place save only to view things from a remote distance. Reka might be another matter, but rash as my brother is he is not fool enough to risk certain death of the body...or possible transformation by one of the more interesting side-effects of the virus."

"Side effects?" Nabiki asked, "Such as?"

"Lilith is powerful and cruel in her ways, but hardly stupid," Anri explained, "Her branch of the Virus may eradicate pure stream men from the gene pool but it also works to transform certain individuals into...how shall I put this? Fertile individuals who straddle the fence between genders?"

Nabiki actually blinked twice before putting it all together, "You mean...transsexuals?"

"Bingo," Anri replied.

"Ew," Nabiki winced, "And I thought I had it bad involuntarily switching between genders."

"Fortunately Lilith thought of reactions such as yours and made certain to instill a highly crazed libido as a part of her overall package," Anri noted, "The Virus repairs the Y chromosome and thus grants perfect health and vitality to insure a much slower need to replace lost elements of the population. As the only sure way to die in this world is through violence, and most people would rather make out than contemplate war or murder, having a one percent fertile half-male branch of the population insures that women will continue to be fruitful and multiply for generations yet to be forthcoming."

Nabiki eyed the man suspiciously and said, "You almost sound as though you approve of this."

"Oh no," Anri replied, "Though I must confess that certain aspects of this world do have their appeal for me, especially the fact that all of the Patriarchal-based religions of the world suffer an enormous loss of faith and subsequent devotion. The death of the male gods forces the female deities to compensate in whatever manner they have to, and this leads to a spiritual revelation of unparalleled scope and dimension where the phrase, 'Make love and not war' becomes more than a slogan and more of a way of life...so yes, I can express a certain satisfaction in such a conceptual reality, even if it comes at too high a price with the loss of nearly half of the world's population."

Nabiki thought a moment then said, "Sounds like a Lesbian paradise...but you say this universe is under Quarantine?"

"Yes, but not by we Daokan," Anri replied, "This was done by another agency that specializes in Temporal Reconstruction. They exist within a quasi-realm at the edge of Time and Space itself called the 'Center of Time,' not too far removed from a planet named Gallifrey. You might be interested to know that you have a particular connection to this agency seeing as one of your parallel duplicates is an Administrator there..."

"Say what?" Nabiki reacted.

"Oh, but don't take my word for it," Anri said as he turned around and nodded to the side, "You can ask her about it yourself. Is that not so, Saotome-san? Or would you prefer Nexus Technician Nabiki?"

"What?" Nabiki turned around, only to receive a double-shock the like of which put all of the rest of the day's surprises to shame by a long mile.

A man and a woman stood a short distance away, their expressions grim and their manner no-nonsense. The man was ruggedly handsome and quite viral looking, and the woman had a commanding aura to match her severe beauty that had not withered in time nor shed one ounce of the grace and intelligence that defined her as a person. Their faces were instantly recognizable and unmistakably cast, even granted the effect of two decades of added maturity that set the bar pretty high for anyone seeking to remain so fair despite the ravages of a life lived in shared torment.

The faces of an older looking Saotome Ranma and Tendo Nabiki...

Continued.

Comments/Criticisms/Chronal Clashes and Calamities in the Offing: shadowmane

Or: shadowmane9849

Nabiki gets a look at her own possible future as she confronts the Time Cop versions of herself and her husband in: "Lost in Subtitled Translation," or, "The Many Faces of Nabiki." Be there!

X

/pre 


	96. Chapter 96

preDnabiki185

Nabiki 1/2

"A Very Scary Thought"

by Jim Robert Bader

(Inspired by the works of Rumiko Takahashi Others,  
with concepts and characters created by fellow fanfic writers Wade Tritschler, DB Sommers, Nicole Manders, Andrew Greaves, Bill Guiroff and countless others, including "Buffy"  
creator Joss Whedon; with special thanks to my good pal Shiva for his editing and handling of this series.)

(Certain other characters and concepts are of my own innovation, including my interpretation of the Monster of Mary Shelly's novel, the Furies, Trudy, Takaharis Angelique d'Anjou, Anri and the Daokan, Thelendra the Dream Weaver and various other guest stars appearing in this portion of the Nabiki 1/2 series...)

Chapter Seventy.

Episode One-Hundred-Eighty-Five.

"Into the Belly of the Beast."

"Nerima huh?" Carla said while scanning the road leading out from Tokyo and traveling along the edge of the coastline, "What's so special about this place, and why is Trudy there helping Frank while playing around at being a teacher?"

"Zhat is a very difficult question to answer, ma cheri," Inspector Morisato answered, "I have been coming and going to Tokyo for many, many years and I have yet to form an answer. All that I can attest is zhat zhis region is a magnet for unusual phenomena, and that localized areas such as Furinkan and Tomobiki appear to be magnets for unusual trouble. Research going back for hundreds of years turns up a similar recurring theme again and again of incidents of paranormalism zhat defy zee mathematical odds. It is like a Bermuda Triangle upon land, and zee people who dwell zhere have all but become acclimated to things zhat in any other part of zee world would be cause for alarm. And it is to zhis region zhat my own investigations have led linking an international munitions smuggler suspected of links to several terrorist groups to a prominent figure in zee Kendo world, who is staging a tournament in only three days-guess where? Smack dab in zee heart of Nerima."

"Well, we don't know anything about any of that," Miyuki commented while being mindful of her driving, "But Natsume-chan and I have friends living in Nerima who might get caught up in this matter if there is indeed going to be trouble in the district."

"Knowing Nabiki and her Tendo Posse like we do, I'd count on it," Natsumi affirmed, "Only...who is this girlfriend of yours that we're trying to hunt down anyway? Other than your main love interest?"

"Trudy?" Carla shrugged, "She's my partner, best friend, personal love slave and all-around personal annoyance. She shares a history with me...one that hasn't even happened."

"Excuse me?" Miyuki blinked.

"Mind running that one by us again?" Natsume requested.

"Not really," Carla responded, "But let's just say that we know something about the possible shape of the future. Most people have no recollection of their past lives...we, we know quite a lot about our future incarnations, what they're like, who they know, and what they know when it comes to things that you can hardly imagine."

There was a slight pause before Natsumi said, "O-kay...that sounds sufficiently weird enough to fit right in with Nerima."

"Excuse me for asking you to repeat yourself, Carla-san," Miyuki begged, "But do you mean to say that you can remember the future?"

"Very T.H. White, non?" Morisato remarked, "Only the future she recalls is non one zhat is likely to befall zhis timeline. Her lover's future counterpart traveled back through time to make contact with her counterpart, and by interfacing did pass along her experience and knowledge so zhat zee formidable Trudy could carry on in her stead, helping to avert zee course of events zhat might otherwise have lead to global disaster."

"That's the nutshell version of it boiled down to a couple of sentences," Carla remarked, "Trudy's future self rescued me and awoke the memories of my future self, and since then we've kinda gotten together and formed a loose partnership, one that often makes our Captain tear his hairs out of his head over, but..."

All at once she ceased to converse and turned her head abruptly to one side, casting her gaze out to one side of the road as they passed along a mountainous ridge overlooking the sea shore, and at this she gaped in open wonder.

"Rodrigues-san?" Miyuki asked.

"Eh?" the Inspector turned to see what it was that had caught the attention of the American police woman and then his own face blanched and he swore, "Mon dieu!"

"What?" Natsumi asked impatiently, only to follow the line of their stares out towards the surf, at which point she herself stared in blank disbelief, which prompted her to murmur to her own partner-lover, "M-M-Miyuki?"

"Eh?" Miyuki risked taking her eyes from the road in order to see what it was that had everyone acting so peculiar.

When she saw what it was, however, she very nearly steered their car right off the edge of the road, managing to find a shoulder upon which to pull off so that she could turn her full attention to what she was seeing.

There was an object traveling over the surface of the water, making very good time as the waves parted to allow its passage, a sleek indigo-and-silver vehicle that was traveling over water even though by its design one would hardly expect it to be afloat, much less sea worthy.

"Miyuki-chan?" Natsumi asked faintly.

"H-Hai?" Miyuki murmured.

"Do trucks travel on water like they would on land?" her partner wanted to know.

"As best as I know?" Miyuki shrugged resignedly, "But...there it is, big as life and...just as impossible to fathom..."

"Mon dieu," Morisato murmured faintly, "Do my eyes deceive me or...is zhat zee fearsome Silver Seagull?"

"The what?" Natsumi asked.

"It's him..." Carla breathed in an almost fearful tone of voice.

"Who?" Miyuki wondered.

"Zee Blackguard," Morisato affirmed, "Coming here...to Japan? Zhis is non good...zhis is very bad indeed...quite catastrophic..."

"Would you guys start making sense already?" Natsumi snapped, "Who's a black guard? And what's the Silver Seagull?"

"It is a legend spoken of in whispers, ma cheri," the Inspector replied, "The transportation for a figure who is known only to those who travel in very esoteric circles. The driver of said vehicle is one whom wise men would avoid and brave men skirt like Death's own shadow. To cross his path is not a good omen for he is drawn to disasters as a shark is drawn to blood spilled in open water."

"Looks like a truck to me," Natsumi remarked, astounded at the tone of hushed dread in the Interpol agent's voice.

"Not just any kind of true, Nat-chan," Miyuki sat upright, "Unless I miss my guess that's a 1975 Kenworth, model 123 Cabover eighteen wheeler, diesel powered and commanding well over four hundred horse power. I didn't think any of those even still existed, let alone one that still functioned on any road in America except in antique collections."

"Well, this one obviously floats," Natsumi remarked as they watched the truck ford the surf and arrive on the beach without getting mired in the sandy coastline, "Amphibious too. That's some kind of transport."

"He makes his own roads wherever he goes," Carla said in tones of apprehension that rivaled the fear in the face of the Inspector, "He's bound by no borders, no obstacles, and no international treaties."

"Oh no?" Miyuki asked, then frowned before saying, "Well, we'll see about that."

"Hah?" Natsumi glanced at her partner with rounded eyes, "You don't mean you're gonna...?"

"He is invading our nation's territory is he not?" Miyuji asked as she started up the engine once again, "This constitutes an act of illegal immigration, and that makes it a police matter."

"What are you doing?" Carla spoke out, "Are you crazy?"

"This is our land, Rodrigues-san," Miyuki said firmly, moving their vehicle forward along the road on a course of gradual interception as the dark blue truck glided up the beach and towards the nearby roadway leading up from the coastline, "No one has a right to flaunt our laws, and no matter who this fellow thinks he is he's not going to get away with this."

"Mon dieu!" Morisato exclaimed, "You are crazy! Cheri, only zee mad would seek a confrontation with zee Blackguard. You have no idea how dangerous this is, of what he is capable of, and zee potential consequences..."

"Oh yeah?" Natsumi replied, "Well, you haven't seen what Miyuki-chan is like when she gets her sense of justice up. I wouldn't wanna go up against her when she's wearing the face that she has on at the moment."

"For you information, Natsumi-chan," her partner said primly, "I am only doing what our duties as police officers would demand of us if we weren't on administrative leave at the moment..."

"Say what?" Carla reacted, "You guys are on suspension?"

"It's all a misunderstanding," Natsumi assured the American, "We got into a little trouble over this unfortunate incident that kinda got out of control and put us in bad lights with our department. That's why we accepted the assignment from Frank-san, who was kind enough to hire us on so we'd make enough to support ourselves while we're temporarily not receiving our regular paychecks..."

"I heard about the incident, Cheri," Morisato remarked, "According to zee report you young ladies totaled three cars, blew up a security guard hut and inflicted grave bodily injury to a number of suspects in the course of their apprehension. I believe you yourself were cited with charges of brutality after breaking the arm and collar bone of one felon in particular, and zhat is not even including zee various charges of property damage zhat culminated in zee flaming destruction of a harbor warehouse..."

"Yeah, like I said, a misunderstanding," Natsumi shrugged.

"You guys did all that?" Carla asked, then slowly smiled and added, "Sounds like you're my kinda girls after all."

"Knowing as little as we do presently about you, Rodrigues-san," Miyuki remarked while gunning the engine of her surprisingly powerful little runner, "I'm going to take that as a compliment. Now, if you will please not distract me, I am attempting to intercept this fellow whose vehicle is clearly not regulation weight class for these roads."

"You are actually serious?" Morisato blanched, seeing that the sleek dark truck before them was looming ahead like a shark out of the water, "You really do intend to catch up with zee Blackguard?"

"If we can," Natsumi remarked, seeing the dark truck moving ahead on the same side of the road in the general direction of Nerima, "He's going awfully fast in that monster he's driving."

"Indeed," Miyuki frowned, "Add speeding to the list of his charges."

Carla was about to say something in protest when the pigtailed off-duty police officer reached down and pulled a hidden lever, and all at once their compact car began to take off as though its engine had been linked to a super-charger, knocking the passengers back in their seats even as Natsumi gripped the hand rail and arm-rest and braced herself for her partner's reversion to part-time speed-demon.

"Zhis is non a very good idea!" Inspector Morisato called out over the whine of the unexpectedly powerful motor.

"Noted," Miyuki said firmly, "Now hold on, I'm going to activate the siren."

"This is a mistake," Carla warned as the countryside whizzed past them at an alarming rate, "You don't know what you're doing!"

"Wouldn't be the first time," Natsumi replied, "And I doubt it'll be the last time either."

"Would you care to take a bet on zhat, Cheri?" Morisato shuddered.

Up ahead of them the driver of the eighteen wheeler took notice of the tiny speck that was suddenly of interest in his rear view mirror. The flash of lights and the whine of a siren brought the lifting of an eyebrow to a man who normally did not stop for anyone or anything that might constitute a distraction from his mission. But as he turned his focus back their way his keen perception took notice of a number of curious anomalies, enough to get a gleam of his attention as he studied each one in a different way, then arrived at a conclusion based upon his highly refined instincts.

After all, these two did constitute the Law in these parts, and whatever else his reputation might imply of Udan Robar Bartev the Blackguard being a lawless soul, the reality was that he respected the law and wound occasionally bend towards it when doing so served a higher purpose, such as satisfying his curiosity over the particulars concerning these people.

So-out of his normal character profile-he did indeed slow down and gradually pulled over to the side of the road, bowing to the will of an authority that he knew to be only problematic. He idled the engine then heard an inquiring rumble and answered with a thought to calm his companion, who was well versed in his ways and habits and knew Udan's mind with a surety that nearly rivaled that of his sister-wife, Ulsa Laolana.

"Omigawd," Carla softly murmured, "He's stopped...I don't believe it."

"Neither do I, Cheri," Morisato said faintly, "Zhere must be a reason...and by no means do I find zhat thought a comfort."

"You guys stay here," Natsumi called back, "Miyuki and I will check it out on our own."

"Are you kidding?" Carla said, already out the door and straightening up, "No way am I letting you two out of my sight around Lord Udan."

"Suit yourself," Miyuki said as she got out of the car and fingered her concealed hand weapon, "But don't get in our way. You have no official powers of arrest here, and we'd prefer it if you didn't interfere in a police matter."

"Oh, have no fear of zhat, Cheri," Morisato said dryly, exchanging a look with Carla that was shared by the American as both privately commiserated on the foolish bravado of these Japanese Police Women.

Despite their attempt at seeming calm and professional about this, Miyuki and Natsumi still approached the cab and its occupant as though they were expecting trouble at any moment. They nearly jumped with the driver's side door abruptly swung open, and then a figure emerged from within, tall and powerful looking with an aura that seemed to bend the light and cause him to be wreathed within shadow even though it was broad daylight.

He moved slowly but deliberately in dismounting from his cabin, but there was such a look of wild menace and danger about him that the two Japanese girls nearly drew their guns from their holsters. Of a certainty the ruggedly handsome man who confronted them was a most unexpected surprise, for the sheer animal virility of his presence briefly caused them to wonder about their own sexual orientation. A moment later their commitment to one another reasserted itself and they shrugged off the feeling of magnetism about this fellow, instead reckoning him with a more professional eye to gauge his actual potential for danger. Though they could not put their finger on just why, their instincts nonetheless did cry in protest that he was not to be taken for granted, and again the impulse to draw their firearms became nearly overwhelming, even though the man made no overtly hostile gestures.

"Sir," Miyuki forced herself to say evenly, "We witnessed your arrival just now, and we wonder if you have some sort of authority to enter this country. A passport or identification would be most helpful."

The man did not speak or reply in any discernable way, other than to mildly incline his head as if studying Miyuki intensely, then moving on to give the same probing look towards her partner.

"Do you have anything at all?" Natsumi asked, uncomfortable about the way this fellow was seeming to look right through them as though she and Miyuki were totally transparent, "A license, registration, birth certificate? Oh yeah...what's that thing you use in America again? A social security card?"

Again the man did not verbally answer, just kept on looking at Natsumi as though he did not understand their language.

Perceiving this, Miyuki attempted to speak in her best attempt at English, "Is please to excuse, but do you have anything at all? Some means of identification or...?"

The man casually reached into his pocket, and at once Miyuki and Natsumi drew their guns, which only brought a look of curiosity from the dark man, though he continued his motion and pulled out from his left side pocked a harmless-looking wallet.

Keeping her gun trained upon the stranger, Miyuki stepped forward and accepted the wallet, then flipped it open and risked a glance at its contents.

"Well?" Natsumi asked tensely, keeping both hands on her gun as she trained it upon the dark stranger.

"It's says his name is Robert Blackguard," Miyuki replied, "He's an American, an independent trucker...what I believe they call a 'Wildcatter' in the states."

"A Wildcatter?" Natsumi replied, "What's he doing in Japan?"

"Hold on..." Miyuki's eyes widened as she risked glancing through the wallet at other cards that she discovered in folding mylar jackets, "He's got a Tokyo license, and his identity here is given as Kuroi Yamamoto..."

"A fake ID?" Natsumi asked.

"It looks real enough," Miyuki said, "But the identity is obviously false. Who are you then, Sir? And is Robert Blackguard your real identity in the states?"

The dark man only regarded them with faint curiosity, but then his attention shifted towards Carla and his eyes narrowed abruptly.

You are the one.

The thought occurred within their heads so abruptly that Miyuki and Natsumi nearly jumped in astonishment, then Natsumi nervously asked, "Miyu-chan...did you hear that?"

"Sort of," Miyuki replied, "Only...I don't think his lips moved."

Speaking over one shoulder as she tried to keep the tall man within her focus, Natsumi said, "Rodrigues-san...?"

"He directed that at me," Carla replied, stepping forward, "Lord Udan, please forgive us for detaining you. My friends here had no idea who you were and are understandable cautious, but they mean no harm and should be forgiven on the grounds that they were only doing their jobs as they see fit in the eyes of justice."

Udan glanced from the brown-haired girl then turned his stare at the pink-clad Interpol officer, who backed away half a step with hands upraised.

"My lord, please forgive us this intrusion," Morisato pleaded, "Our companions...zhey mean well, but most obviously do not know with what force zhey do trifle."

The tall dark man turned his regard to the trench coat wearing Interpol agent and again seemed to look right through him, then nodded his head imperceptibly as though arriving at some favorable conclusion.

"Lord Udan," Carla spoke with more respect in her tone than she had displayed in all the short length of time that the Tokyo cops had known her, "Please forgive our interrupting you in the course of your journeys. I'm certain that whatever business you have is urgent enough that you don't want to be detained longer than necessary..."

The dark clad giant of a man slowly turned to regard her again, and in that regard came a dawning comprehension.

General Beruna.

Carla looked startled as this name appeared within her mind, "You recall my name, Sir?"

Not really. But I am certain we will meet again in that era that you remember.

"Oh, of course," Carla seemed faintly relieved, to find tacit acceptance in the dark man's expression, as though dreading a more severe judgement from a being whom she knew very well was totally committed to the preservation of temporal order...and whom she had half-feared might disapprove of the inherent paradox that was her current existence.

Your concerns are valid, but I sense a higher purpose in your presence.

"Um...Niyuki-chan..." Natsumi murmured sidelong, "Am I imagining things or...are his lips not moving?"

"How strange," Miyuki herself remarked, "Word seem to appear within our minds, but he isn't saying anything verbally."

"He does not need words to effect his meaning, Cheri," Morisato replied, "He is zee Blackguard, and his very existence is zee voice of eternal paradox. Be grateful zhat we have encountered him under amicable circumstances or else we would in legend."

The dark man shifted his gaze back towards the Inspector.

Legends are often exaggerations of the truth, Morisato. Just ask my brother."

All at once a low rumbling noise emanated from the eighteen wheeled truck, like the growl of an engine that did not enjoy being idled.

"Okay," Natsumi murmured as she glanced at the monstrous thing, "I'm officially freaked. What the hell was that? It sounded like it was...growling."

"How odd," Miyuki said, "It almost sounded as though it were...hungry."

Carla glanced at the undercover cops and growled, "Would you guys put those things away? You're not gonna hurt him. All your bullets would do is irritate him."

"Say what?" Natsumi blinked.

"It is true, ma amis," Morisato affirmed, "He can be harmed by no material thing...save only by weapons forged of Orachalchum. Ordinary lead would have no effect whatsoever."

Udan ignored the impotent threat of the pistols and turned away from the women who held them, stretching a hand out to great cat being soothed, which in no way reassured the one "Strange," Miyuki murmured while raising her gun into a non-threatening position, "It responds to his touch...like a thing alive. But is it a machine or...something other?"

"A very astute observation, Cheri," Morisato affirmed, "It is more than a simple conveyance for cargo...far more than it seems, and it is both his transport and companion in his travels."

"Companion?" Natsumi asked, "But...it's just a truck...right? Hey-Miyuki...!"

Her partner had reholstered her firearm and was now approaching the truck with outstretched hand. This earned a sharp glance from Udan, who was clearly surprised by the young woman's impulsive behavior, but before he could act to stop her she caressed her gentle hand against the dark blue surface of the Silver Seagull...

...And received for her troubles an encouraging croon of implicit acceptance.

Udan was not the only one to elicit surprise at this favorable reaction, and Carla was quick to gasp before murmuring aloud, "It accepts her...it likes Kotabura-san."

"But as a possible friend...or potential lunch?" Morisato murmured in faint dread of the answer.

"Nakujima-san," Carla murmured faintly, "See to your partner...before she awakens the thing completely."

"Awakens it?" Natsumi blanched, "You mean...it really is alive?"

Have no fear, it will not harm you.

"I know that...somehow," Miyuki quietly averred while continuing to run her fingers over the warm surface of the cabover, "I feel it...  
My apologies. I should have taken such a thing into consideration.

"Hai," Miyuki turned and gazed up at the dark man, dwarfed by his height and yet somehow not intimidated, "Who are you really, Sir? This...isn't your first visit to Japan...is it?"

Udan regarded the attractive young woman with a calm appraisal that was warm and reassuring.

Hardly.

"That's what I thought," Miyuki replied, scanning his features, "There is something about you...that is almost familiar..."

"Hey," Natsumi frowned, taking a decisive step forward to place herself between her partner and the strange foreign man who seemed to communicate without speaking, "Get your own girlfriend."

Udan seemed mildly curious at the fearsomely possessive and protective tone in the other young police officer...but was "poaching" on their relationship he instead turned and paused, cocking an ear to one side and giving the impression of listening to a sound only his ears could distinguish.

"Hah?" Natsumi asked, seeing the seemingly distracted expression of the tall gaijin and turned her own head in search of whatever it was that so concerned him.

"What is it, Cheri?" Morisato asked of Carla as he noticed that she, too, was looking away with a wary note of alarm in her own expression.

"I...feel something approaching...very fast and dangerous beyond measure..." the American replied at the level of a whisper.

"I don't hear any...wait!" Miyuki turned around, "What is that?"

The others headed rapidly in their direction. As the figure grew nearer it became obvious that this was a black-clad motorcyclist speeding at them.

All at once Udan reacted to this by moving to position himself between the oncoming rider and his new acquaintances, as though attempting to shield them in some way. His expression was grim as the rider grew nearer, and then he seemed to arrive at a decision of some sort. Without hardly seeming to move he made a gesture...

And all at once they found themselves gathered within the cabin of his truck without clear memory of any transition from one point and another. Carla found herself standing behind the companion seat with the two police women in the passenger seat itself, Natsumi finding herself spread across the lap of Miyuki, who was reflexively holding her there as they both stared out the main window with a double-eye blink of mutual incomprehension. Inspector Morisato stood beside Carla at the rear of the cabin while Udan himself was in the driver's seat looking grimmer than usual...which for him was saying a lot.

The moment following this the black-clad driver drew up alongside the truck and positioned himself in such a way as to permit him to turn his helmeted head in their direction. For a period of long tense seconds following this he did nothing more than to periodically choke on the throttle to cause his motorcycle engine to thrum in an ominous manner, but then he turned and sped off once again, hitting top speed in a matter of seconds and vanishing around a distant bend as though in some hurry to be elsewhere, at which point an ominous feeling of dead dissipated with him, allowing everyone to breathe once again as though having kept hushed breath out of the terror inspired by his very presence.

It was Natsumi who broke the resultant silence by asking, "Okay...what just happened?"

Morisato responded with a hushed voice filled with awe, dread and astonishment, "Zhat was zee Dark Racer...zee agent of death himself, Lord Cheron!"

"You mean you've met him before?" Carla asked, her own voice betraying a fear that made her seem somehow younger than ever.

"Once...on the day when I quickened and became an Immortal," Morisato responded, "I could never forget zee feelings zhat came over me as I lay there staring up into his cold, ominous visor and seeing my own death therein reflected. Since then I have learned with cause to avoid any mention of him in official record...but many who did encounter him and survive were relentless in capturing zee horror zhat I felt in their own private accounts of his dark passage."

"Um...excuse me?" Natsumi asked, "What was that part again about you being an immortal?"

The response to the policewoman's inquiry was not a verbal one but seemed to somehow emanate from the scowling person of Udan.

Those who bear the mark of the quickening...who perish by violence only to rise again accursed with immortality, to never die unless their head is removed from their body.

"I prefer not to think of it as being cursed, Monsieur Blackguard," Morisato said with a mildly hurt tone to his voice, "To be blessed with zee gift of an extended lifetime is to be granted zee freedom from zee limits of a single waking lifetime, as you of all persons should attest."

Udan's expression was one of intense annoyance as he turned to the half-Japanese Interpol agent.

If you believe that then you are more fool than I took to be the case. There is nothing special in outliving the things you love and care for, and to know that you must let them go eventually, keeping only the memories of the ones you meet inside you to mark their passage throughout eternity.

"Look, could we get back on the subject at hand again guys?" Carla urged, "What's the Dark Racer doing here in Japan? He mostly runs errands for Lord Yama, right? So what is Yama seeking this close to the province of Nerima?"

Udan's scowl was more thoughtful than before as he turned back to scan the road beyond his windshield.

That is a question I ask myself. It is still three days until the crisis point, and Cheron is not likely to wait around that long waiting for his services to be required...

"Cheron?" Miyuki frowned in consideration of the name-drop, "Do you mean Kiron, the Ferry Man said to convey souls across the River Styx in old Greek legend?"

"Not the same," Carla replied, "Though they may in fact be related seeing as they serve the exact same office. Cheron is a servant of the Death Lord Yama and-as such-bears the souls of the dead to his master's dark realm, which means that he is not one to be trifled with by any mere mortals."

"I thought he was supposed to pilot a ferry," Natsumi pointed out.

"Hey, we move with the times," Carla nervously answered.

Udan slowly raised his eyes as though scanning something beyond the limits of the horizon.

Very true. We all must change and adapt with the passage of the ages. Once Cheron rode a horse and used a scythe as his primary weapon, but these days...he employs other tools to the same end. And then there is his special gift, the one that makes him as formidable as any foe whom I have ever met during my travels.

"Special gift?" Natsumi asked.

Udan nodded imperceptibly.

Dark Probability Alteration. He can cause disasters to happen by his very presence.

"Usually he controls it, though, unlike his wild-maned daughter, Eris," Carla turned to the Dark Man and said, "My lord...far be it from me to presume to suggest such a thing to you, but Cheron's presence obviously complicates whatever purpose you must have for being in Nerima."

Udan pursed his lips and appeared even more thoughtful.

I suspect that you are correct, in which case I must analyze this matter further since even Ulsa cannot reliably predict Cheron's quixotic nature.

That being said the Dark Man rose up out of his seat and turned around, gently urging Carla and Morisato to move sideways out of his way in the close confines of the cabin. The then pushed against the back of his cabin and-to the astonishment of the others-the back door parted before him as a pair of double doors swung open, and a dark passage way appeared, which Udan stepped through without hesitation, straightening out as he did so since he had far more head room upon the flight of stairs that spread out down before him.

Lights came on to illuminate a passage that went deep below the level of the ground, which prompted Miyuki and Natsumi to gasp in mutual astonishment since the dimensions leading to the base of the stairs clearly defied the laws of conventional physics. Carla, however had no hesitation about following after the tall gaijin, with Inspector Morisato reluctantly following after, prompting Natsumi to glance at her partner and then shrug, coming to a mutual agreement without the need of words passing between them.

A few moments later and they reached the base of the stairway and had their astonish meter get further tasked by the wonders which they beheld, a cavernous room appearing before them that was dominated by some manner of device in the very center of the chamber. At first glance it appeared to be some manner of ball, but its shape was irregular and had a warm, reddish appearance that glowed with a thrumming pulse that darkened and grew light again with regular cycles. It gave off a feeling of intense life energy that caused the whole room to reflect in its glow as it thrummed with a sound that made it seem all the more eerie.

Morisato was the one who dared to speak within the presence of the thing, "Mon dieu...zee Heart of zee Monster itself, large enough to fill my whole apartment back home and powerful enough to light an entire city!"

"Guess that means we're in the Belly of the Beast, huh?" Carla mused before turning and glancing upwards towards Lord Udan, "Is it all right with you for us to be here, my Lord? Do you think that he will permit it?"

There was no visible change this time over the Dark Man's expression, yet once again his meaning seemed clear as though he had spoken the thought aloud.

I have already consulted with my companion and obtained his permission. He trusts in you, and there is something he likes about the young one with the pig tail. They have a rapport with one another that is intuitive...no doubt because of her affinity with machines and auto-mechanics.

"Wait a minute," Natsumi spoke up once again, "You mean...this thing is alive? It's not just a truck?"

"So it would seem, Madamoiselle," Morisato dryly noted.

Natsumi turned back to her partner and asked, "And it likes Miyuki-chan?" she turned back with a scowl, "In what manner?"

For the first time since they encountered him they saw the craggy-faced giant attempt a smile, though it could have been a grimace.

That all depends. It could mean that he finds her tasty.

"Ara?" Miyuki blinked, then very softly gulped, "You're kidding...right?"

"Of course he is, Cheri," Morisato asked nervously before turning a worried glance towards Udan, "Right, Monsieur Udan?"

Udan just glanced back with what-for him-was a very bland expression.

It was Carla's turn to gulp, "He's not the kidding around type, Guys. In fact, there's some places I know where they swear up and down that the Lord Udan is devoid of a sense of humor."

This time Udan's expression reflected wistful sadness.

Not true. Though I do not revel in merriment I do understand the concept, and in times long distant I once knew how to laugh. Before...everything else happened.

"Well, nobody's eating Miyu-chan while I'm around!" Natsumi said in a defiant and protective tone of voice, "If your pal wants a piece of her then he's going to have to go through me first!"

Udan turned his glance her way, and now there was no mistaking the glint of amusement.

That would not be a problem for my friend since neither one of you would make a decent mouthful for him. But fortunately for you he has not eaten a maiden since before the time of Agamennon. Not even a technical one, though there has been the odd exception...

"Come again?" Miyuki asked.

"He was there at the time when Troy fell to the Acheans," Carla explained with a shrug, "He...gets around a lot. It's just his way, and there's no use figuring him out.."

Udan again seemed to grow distant and wistful.

I was there to witness the death of heroes. I saw brave Achilles slay Hector and then die from separate wounds. I witnessed the murders of Priam and traveled for a time with Odysseus, though History does not record my name...and never will as I am always the one who walks in shadow.

"At least...not the official records," Inspector Morisato promptly added.

"Sir," Carla turned to regard Udan once again, "What does the Seagull tell you? Has he a sense of the whereabouts of Cheron?"

Udan turned back towards the throbbing ruby-like object overhead then nodded.

He confirms what I already suspected...that Cheron is seeking to penetrate the complex of Otono Reyabi, but it is unlikely that even his power will gain him access. No doubt he will test their defenses in search of an access route to the main installation.

"Do you intend to do anything about zhis, Monsieur?" Morisato asked.

Udan seemed to think long and hard about it before giving his answer.

No.

"You mean...you intend to let him get inside their compound?" Carla asked, then added, "You intend to see how far he will get before being intercepted?"

Correct.

"Excuse me?" Natsumi asked, "What is everybody talking about? And...you don't mean Otono Reyabi? THE Otono Reyabi? The European guy who's become a rising star on the Kendo circuit?"

"Nat-chan is a very big fan of his," Miyuki explained, "Even if he is only technically Japanese by direct linear ancestry..."

"He is more zhan zhat, Cheri...much, much more," Morisato ominously cautioned, "Officially he is a citizen of my home country, and we share a common history together, but...zhere zee similarities end and now he is my sworn enemy, albeit zhat I have been unable so far to unearth zee ties zhat allegedly bind him to a terrorist outfit."

"Nothing alleged about it," Carla suddenly shuddered, "He's guilty of something...I can feel it in my bones. The guy is up to no good. I'd swear it on a stack of Bibles...and I'm an ex-Catholic turned devout Pagan."

"Aw no," Natsumi winced, "It's not fair! Why do all of the cute ones have to turn out to be privately rotten?"

"Perhaps that's why you're dating girls these days," Carla shrugged before turning back to Udan, "You're letting Cheron set himself up so that you can observe what happens to him and better analyze the enemy's defenses."

Udan did not so much as nod this time while staring at the heart pulsing before him, but his answer was unmistakable.

Since he volunteered, I see no reason to interfere with Cheron's intentions, though I suspect that my old nemesis is about to learn first hand why we Daokan have not attempted this ourselves directly. In any event it will be interesting to see what happens next, and if it turns out that Cheron's intent is to obtain a sample of the Virus...

"Virus?" Miyuki asked, "What virus?"

"Oboy," Carla winced, "Now I know why Trudy's been drawn here...that bloody Power she serves is guiding her to fulfill some unknown role in events that are unfolding. I oughta drag her butt out of here before she gets too deep into this mess...but...then again, if it's serious enough to attract your notice, Lord Udan, then it must be something of a real doozy of a crisis."

There was no direct response to that, yet Udan regarded the American detective with a grim look of frank admission that was all that she needed to conclude that whatever was going down in Nerima, it was a matter of such importance that the biblical flood would by comparison be no more than one of history's foot notes...and who would knot this better than Udan, to whom history was little more than a tapestry to be written upon like his own personal journal...

Ranma sank into the pool and felt the cool enclosure of the water surrounding him as he drifted down to the bottom, weights tied about his ankles causing him to sink against the natural buoyancy of the human body. As he drifted downward he opened himself to the element of water and attempted to relax just as his trainer had instructed, placing himself in the hands of Sharil, with whom he was attempting to bond more intensely by connecting with her on a level far above their previous joining.

**Relax Master,** he heard her thoughts within his mind, **Water is the element of life, let it soothe and harmonize with you and I will do the rest, just as the Archmage has instructed.**

Ranma did indeed attempt to relax but the reflexive urge to breathe was nearly overwhelming, and after a minute underwater his lungs started to crave oxygen, making him yearn to cast off his weights and swim instantly back to the surface.

**Resist the impulse, Master,** Sharil urged soothingly, **You won't pass out or drown or suffocate. You're with me and breathing underwater really isn't a problem. Trust me and you'll see for yourself.**

(Trust you?) Ranma mentally responded, (I mean...of course I trust you, Sharil-san...but...)

**Just relax and take a deep breath, Master, and I will do the rest for you,** his elemental responded, **Remember on Mistress Lao's ship? We Undines could keep people alive when we rescued them out of the water...and with you I won't make any exceptions.**

(Ah...all right,) Ranma thought reluctantly, and then he willed himself to relax and do exactly as Sharil was urging, ignoring the screaming instinctual cry of some primitive lower level of his consciousness that kept telling him that breathing in water instead of air was deadly.

But as he took his next breath he found that he was not suffering the difficulties that he would have ordinarily expected. True the pressure of the water against his body made filling his lungs more of an effort, but it felt as though normal air was reaching his bloodstream and sustaining him like normal respiration. By the time of his fourth breath he actually was starting to calm down, and his instinctual responses had diminished to a barely noticeable impulse, and then he really did start to relax and calm down as the soothing element of water comforted his very being and made it seem as though everything was perfectly normal. Except for the fact that he was breathing in and out more slowly he nonetheless felt energized and ready to proceed to the next stage of the exercise.

Which was, naturally enough, performing katas.

But when he started to move he discovered that the viscous nature of the water hampered and greatly slowed down his movements, so that when he went from a basic "Horse" stance into his initial attack pose the energy that he needed to exert was quite phenomenal, at least ten times as much force as would be normal.

**Don't try and force yourself, Master...work with the element and do not worry so much about speed. Rather feel the waves flowing around your body and yield to them...it will enhance the fluidity of your movements.**

(I'm trying,) Ranma said back in very mild annoyance, attempting to throw a basic punch only to find that the water dragged against his fist and held his arm back so that his punch lacked effect and would have rendered harm to no one.

**At the risk of being cliché, Master," Sharil replied, **It's not a question of force alone, so don't try so hard. Let go and go with the flow...that's the element of working with water.**

(All right,) Ranma said, but then admitted, (But I don't know how to throw a punch without using force. It's kinda like a contradiction in terms, know what I mean?)

**Not at all, Master,** Sharil assured him, "Let me show you how...and once you understand the principle the rest is easy.**

Ranma was about to ask what his servant meant by that when, of a sudden, he felt his limbs go limp and lose all strength as though his very essence had turned entirely to rubber. From there he felt his body shift and reform into something infinitely pliable yet resilient, as though he had become water entirely and was no longer of solid physical substance.

**Trust yourself into my hands, Master,** Sharil assured him as she sensed his momentary confusion, **I will show you what to do, and then you can do it yourself reflexively as if it were second nature.**

Ranma's mind filled with strange concepts and sensations as the elemental opened her mind to him, and suddenly he did indeed understand what it meant to be Undine as the very fluidity of his nature made understanding an emotional-intuitive thing. He was, in essence, entirely one with the element of water and could sense its ebb and flow all around him. His world was no longer composed of solid and unsolid things but rather of hard and soft currents and eddies as every molecule within his body reacted to the channels of viscosity that shaped themselves around his very being. By opening himself to their vibratory nature he could affect that flow and shape it in accordance with his will, commanding it without effort as thought and emotion alone were sufficiently powerful levers.

**Water is not only the essence of carbon-based life, Master,** Sharil informed him succinctly, "It comprises nearly eighty percent of your body with only a few chemicals and electrolytes holding the package together. Separate these molecule chains into their component constituent molecular packets and you gain control over the fluidity of your body. Knowing this can allow you to retain your form and resist compression no matter what force is applied against you, which-if you take a moment to meditate upon this-is the essence of your Yumisenken."

And with a wondering realization Ranma knew at once that it was so, felt the truth of this idea in his very being for he was water given solid form by the liquid coherency of the electrochemical exchanges that comprised the organic processes of his body.

With a thought he moved a hand forward and felt as if his arm had turned into a wave, and lo-the waters around him reacted as though he had swirled it up with a massive paddle. He formed his hand into a fist and drove it forward using thought instead of power to drive his Chi into a weapon, and a funnel of hardened water formed around his hand and extended the reach of his punch to several meters beyond the reach of his knuckles.

He then set about performing the kata with nothing more than the idea of what to do being fueled by his desire for its performance, and his body reacted automatically with an ease that astonished him as he went from one set of maneuvers to another. By the end of his third kata performance he had his motions down with flawless efficiency and could glide from one step to the other as though his body were incredibly light and suffered no drag effect from moving through the water.

**That's the way, Master,** Sharil congratulated, **A dolphin moves rapidly underwater because its skin is resilient and closely linked to the central nervous system so that every muscle beneath its hide reacts in accordance to the perceived degree of pressure with which it is making contact. Your body now has zero friction and viscosity and can move like lightning without drag or inertia. This has the added effect of increasing your resistance to various forms of kinetic energy as applied against you so that you can take far more punishment than normal without suffering actual physical harm, for the force flows equally throughout you and intensifies in reaction to the added pressure.**

(Wow...I mean...incredible!) Ranma responded in amazement, (The water just obeys me as though it were an extension of my body! Is...is this what it's like for Madam Lao? I mean...your former Mistress?)

**Yes Master,** Sharil replied, **This is exactly what it is like for her, and why her school of Elemental Water makes her so formidable, and why should take on a dozen Alpha-class street fighters with so little seeming effort.**

(I can't believe we ever beat her if she's as tough as this,) Ranma thought, but then more reluctantly added, (Do you think...I mean...did she let me and Nabiki win that last time?)

**It may be possible that she fought you with less than her full best,** Sharil admitted, **But you and your wife won that fight legitimately, Master. Never doubt that you won on your merits...or, at the very least, that you rightfully earned the respect of my former Mistress.**

(I guess I can't really blame you for having some loyalties to her even after all of this time,) Ranma admitted, (But I don't think I'll ever really understand her. I mean...how can somebody like her get off on enslaving people when they themselves know this much freedom...) he added as he resumed performing katas, marveling at the sensations he had of gliding through the water with an ease he would not have known in open air, for in some strange fashion the very interconnectedness of the pool made it easier to facilitate movement based on thought and desire alone with only a modicum of will power to fuel his effortless potential.

Sharil's voice was sad as she answered, **You are much too young to understand some things, Master, but do not be so quick to judge and condemn the Mistress simply because her ways are not yours. I pray you ever in a position to truly know what it means to be the Mistress of the POJ, and what it costs her in personal freedom, and the truth of why she is such an effective slaver.**

(Guess I don't really want to know that,) Ranma reluctantly confessed as he sensed the tone of sadness within his elemental lady. Rather than comment about it, however, he directed his will in a downward direction and created a miniature vortex that swirled around him, and all at once he was lifted out from the pool and into the air in a self-created cyclone-shaped water spout that effortlessly carried him out of the pool and onto the pavement surround it, then dried off his hair and skin as the moisture was literally absorbed back into his re-solidified body.

Siren stood there smiling in warm greeting of his student as she nodded, "Well done, Apprentice. I take it you now know far more of what it means to be as one with an elemental?"

"Yeah, kinda," Ranma replied, "That was weird, though...I mean...it felt so natural at the time, but now that I think about it...was I really breathing and doing that stuff underwater?"

"You still have doubts?" Siren mused, "Very well then...let us begin the second phase of this level of your training. From Water to Fire," she said and gestured with a hand at an area of the patio that had been cleared of lawn chairs and patio adornments.

At once the area ignited and formed a circle of flames that shot up so intensely that Ranma reflexively took a step back away from the thing, even though he could sense the flames were being deflected around his body with the heat failing to cause him any real discomfort.

"Sharil will recede and Latisha was assume her rightful place," Siren noted, "So what about it, Son-in-law? Are you brave enough to trust yourself once again totally into the hands of another of your ladies?"

"Um, sure," Ranma said reluctantly, "But first I'd better take care of these weights and..."

To his surprise as he reached up to undo the fasteners to the weights that had been attached to his belt and body he found nothing in their place, then looked back at the pool and in astonishment found the weights laying on the very bottom along with the belt to which they had been attached. Somehow the belt must have slipped off of him without his noticing its absence...

...And yet how then to account for the fact that he had remained submerged in the water instead of floating back to the surface?

**Never mind the how, Master,** Latisha spoke into his mind, **Trust yourself to me and we shall overcome the flames to make you their rightful Master as befits a Lord of the Elements, a trueborn Elemental Master.**

"Ah...all right," Ranma turned back towards the flaming circle, "If you say so, Latisha-chan."

Many had been the times when Ranma had called upon his first and senior elemental servant, but this time it felt more as if she called upon him to forge a link with her very essence, and through this she poured into his mind the heat and fire of her spiritual nature. Her Chi burned brightly and fueled his with new intensity as he discovered within himself the nature of combustion as it burst forth from within him and set his flesh to burn without consumption. It was as if he turned into flames as he stepped forth into the burning ring and found himself merging with its center as he marveled at the complex nature of the rising plasma, the way atoms behaved in free-form motion with the hyper-excitation of catalytic reaction as his mind formed an image of the literal exchanges within molecule chains as complex forms were broken down into their constituent natures.

Before this moment Ranma had been aware of the phenomenon of "Fire Walking" over hot coals that some people practiced as a quasi-religious observance, but this was more like "Fire Breeding" as he felt enlivened by the power of raw flame, understanding it on a level that was quite extraordinary and feeling the way the elements flowed in the manic dance and pageantry of orchestral splendor. He understood implicitly the very nature of this element, and with that understanding once again came greater control as the fire leaped out and obeyed his will with but a thought and (once again) seemingly with no real effort.

Raising one hand into the air Ranma found it easy to summon up the flames and cause them to dance in a spiral that formed a hot updraft directly above his head. This force was more than enough to allow him to rise up into the air until he hovered a few meters over the ground, steadying himself as best e was able.

"Very good," Siren congratulated as she studied her apprentice with a steady eye and an unwaveringly confident expression, "You are merging with Latisha and have become the flame. So now that you are able to command it we shall move onto your next phase..."

**Me,** Karina spoke into his mind, and Ranma felt the transfer of aspect as Latisha surrendered to the Sylph and caused his body to shift from fire to wind, assuming an aerial form of swirling gasses that were compressed into a solid matrix.

Now Ranma had a sense of what it felt like to blow like a breeze and rise up into the heavens on a draft of warm air currents. With Karina to guide him he found it easy to soar aloft and leave Nerima far beneath him.

As he rose into the sky he found himself noticing the many color gradients of the air itself, that it was not all uniform blue as he would have assumed on another occasion but rather could be felt-muck like with the water-as hard and soft currents constantly in motion, governed by temperature and pressure waves and yet logical in its flow pattern, however much it might have seemed chaotic to a less alert person.

From up there he could study the landscape at his leisure, and the first thing that struck him was how flat it all seemed, how insignificant and how petty. The tallest buildings were like specks, beneath his notice, and even the hills that fringed the edges of Nerima were mere bumps upon the tarmac. The vegetation could be discerned as green patches surrounded by large areas of brown and yellow, the bodies of water were highlighted in blue, and many white areas denoted barren spots that seemed to intersperse between those areas of color. So difficult from up here to believe how truly significant anything down there was, and yet the richness of life was to be found there, and so he surrendered the heavenly vaults and began to descend, seeking to find some familiar landmarks that would discern the place that he called home, some particularly difficult to locate area that was barely recognizable from an altitude so lofty.

But to his dismay as he neared the area where he had started out he found his velocity increasing, even as his body began to regain mass and solidity, and all at once he was rocketing towards the ground and landed with a "thump" in a meadowed spot remote from all of the others. He struck feet-first and with such force that he sank immediately into the ground and plunged deep beneath the surface for an unknown depth before coming to a halt after what seemed like several long minutes.

Finding himself surrounded by walls of stone that pressed in all around him, Ranma struggled to attempt to free himself and finally in frustration thought out, (Nagisha!)

**No use shouting, Master,** his earthly elemental servant projected into his mind, **I'm inside you, remember? And I have you all to myself now, so you are going to see the world through my eyes for the moment, so open yourself to me and allow me to show you the power of Earth in its rawest elemental nature.**

And Ranma did find his perceptions were expanded through the prism of Nagisha's senses, and through the guidance of her ancient wisdom he found himself opening up to the realm of solid matter, making him aware of the different gradients and streams of grain and strata that in many ways resembled a frozen form of the other elemental streams of his recent observance, the only difference being the slow, almost glacial speed with which rock moved in relation to either water, fire or air.

And the contrasts between different types of rock was startling indeed, a geological wealth of information that opened up to him gave him a substantial comprehension of the nature of stone and its complex brew of basic elements, of metals and non-metals, of alkaloids, bases, acids, salts and crystal arrangements. So much to be gleaned within the span of a few heartbeats, and yet he took it in with an amazement at the pageantry and wonder of it all, It truly opened his eyes to the nature of matter as something more than a dead, blocky thing for all of it was very much alive and hummed with vitality as it conveyed the lifeblood of the planet from one level to another in elevating layers of form with gravel, mud, rock and lava all comprising the different constituent components of a single organism, a great sleeping dragon who occasionally rumbled in her sleep and caused landslides and earthquakes, but who was nonetheless a force to be respected.

(Oh wow...) he projected in wonder, (Nagisha-chan...I never knew...I never even dreamed that it was like this...)

**Now you know, Master,** Nagisha smugly projected, **Earth is the home around which these other elementals revolve, and without the solid platform of matter the rest is academic.**

**Then why not try things my way,** Sobriel cut in, and suddenly the grip of matter vanished altogether, to be replaced by an emptiness so abrupt and complete that it yawned like a hole within the fabric of reality. It was a void so absolute that it seemed to stretch on forever to eternity in all directions.

**Now have a taste of my world, Master,** Sobriel remarked, "Void is not the absence of matter as you might have gotten the impression from listening to these others. But in Void you reduce the illusion of form and substance to its basic elemental core and can see for yourself what truly underlines the nature of reality as you have always known it, Master. But see through my eyes the nature of what lays beneath form and substance...what you arrive at when you reduce everything to its basic dimensions of space and time as they exist outside of the matrix of the light worlds.**

Once again Ranma felt his senses expand to new horizons, only now he found himself looking at the surrounding blankness of space and seeing not emptiness but rather a grid pattern, one that highlighted the surface of a curtain of infinite void and showcased the way in which it flowed along a complex web of interlacing patterns. Some areas it folded inward and had a heavy feeling of drawing attraction...other places were smooth and plain and had the feeling of continuity and extension. Energy flowed there, and it was not constrained by the slow and ponderous weight of matter, which tended to hinder that flow and ground it in one way or another. Here there was the opposite of solid, the Yin to the Yang of existence, and yet it was a realm fully alive and charged with vitality quite beyond the grasp of beings who were limited to solid form and the hindrance of their imagination.

**You see, Master?** Sobriel asked, **My realm is not so empty after all...you only have to feel it flow and know you are a part of it, that here is what exists before there is either a space or a time, and that my realm is the one that makes all of the others possible, the foundation underneath earth, air, fire and water, which are composes of atoms and molecules, none of which would be possible except by the folding of my realm to create the tiny spheres you know of as quarks, gluons and sub-atomic particles, which capture the essence of Void into the energy prisms that form particulate matter.**

"Incredible," Ranma said aloud, understanding now so much that had been hidden from him before, the incredible complexity-and the simplicity of it all-that underlay the delicate balance of nature as represented by all five of his special elemental ladies.

Sudden Siren was with him again, "You comprehend at last? This is good, Son-in-law, because you have taken another step closer to becoming a true Master of the Elements, feeling as well as understanding the relationship that your servants-and their representative spheres of influence-have with one another...and in understanding you gain greater control over their powers."

Ranma blinked and was surprised to find that they were in the meadow once again where he had begun his morning's adventure. He turned to the Archmage and asked, "Was any of it real?"

"Define reality," Siren smiled, "But yes, it was real...as real as your imagination. The point of this lesson was...do you have what it takes to become a true Wizard, one who combines mastery of the body through martial arts and the spiritual power within you as an even greater weapon of choice? You've answered that riddle for yourself to my satisfaction...and now are you ready to move on to the next phase in your training?"

"The next phase?" Ranma asked incredulously, "There's more than this?"

"Silly boy," Siren reached out and patted him on the cheek, "There is so much more that I wish to show you and not enough time for your instructions. This is a crash course we are undertaking right now to impart within you the tools that you will need for your own survival, but even as far as you have come in this short time you have barely even begun to prick the surface of what you will become when I am finished training you, Apprentice."

"Oh," Ranma replied, looking into the eternally youthful face of the Amazon beauty, "Well...guess we'd better get started then. Only..."

"Yes?" Siren asked, sensing his hesitation.

"Ah...I know it's silly," Ranma said, "But I keep worrying about Nabiki. I know she must be training pretty hard right now, but I...ah...hope we can see each other again sometime before dinner."

"Oh, not to worry on that, young Sir," Siren said coyly, "If I know my grandfather like I do, then I would imagine that she is very busy right now undergoing a series of trials very different from your own, but in the end it all amounts to the same thing..."

"Which is?" Ranma asked.

"Meeting yourself at the mid-way point," Siren said enigmatically, "Which can be more of an eye-opener than most people can manage, let me tell you, for who among us can truly be objective when seeing who we really are through the mirror lens of another path not taken...?"

There she stood dressed in a long brown duster jacket, at least four or five centimeters taller and evidently quite a few years older in maturity, but still quite recognizable as Nabiki herself, and in the company of a the Daokan themselves, elemental in nature and as unfathomable as the depths of time from whence they had originated.

"Thought I'd find you here," the older Nabiki remarked, "Meddling with the destiny of my temporal counterpart I see. How very much like you, Lord Anri, and as predictable as you are quixotic."

"My dear Saotome-san," Anri said, addressing himself towards the older Nabiki, "I should very much hope that I was not half so transparent as you suggest by that remark. You of all people should know that I work very hard at not being what people expect me to be, let alone where or when, unless I have a very particular end in mind."

The older version of Ranma said, "Meaning you were expecting us, huh? Not surprising. You do love your games of manipulation."

"I never seek to abuse my gifts by plying them on those who are incapable of finding their own path," Anri said, "But in the case of your counterpart, Saotome-san, you already know that the need is great and the time far too fleeting to be standing around debating my methods. Nor is she a stumbling innocent brought along against her will. She is a warrior...much like you, Saotome-kun, both willing and able to stand up for herself and do what is necessary...because she knows what is at stake and how much will be lost if she does not rise up to the challenge."

"Not like me," the older Ranma said gruffly, "She's smarter than I ever was, made better choices and managed to achieve a path of happiness for her loved ones."

Nabiki felt a powerful shudder pass down her spine as she saw the dark gleam of menace in the eyes of a man who was in every sense an older and more confident version of her husband, only haunted by shadows that her Ranma did not possess, and his tone was a growl of self-disdain that was totally lacking in the man she knew so well and called her personal life mate.

"That may be so," Anri said, "But all that she has built for herself will be lost if Ariman's pawn pursues his chosen course of destiny. You already know this...you've done the research, you've run the calculations."

"You know that I have," the older Nabiki replied in a quietly authoritative, no-nonsense manner, "I wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't explore every possible avenue, ever conceivable permutation."

Again Nabiki felt an odd sensation as she heard the tones of her counterpart and felt something akin to a shudder of dread and anticipation. There was tragedy in her eyes as well, hidden pain long borne and well remembered, a suffering that had aged and matured her inside far beyond her apparent years, making her seem almost as much like an elder as Cologne herself, or Siren, and just as set in her ways with an edge of ruthless determination.

"Spoken like a Lore Master," Anri smiled, "The need to know, to understand, consumes you like a passion. But you understand best when you do not equivocate or bury yourself in trivia, Saotome-san, for as much as you would like there to be another outcome, you know in your heart what it will take to achieve the necessary balance."

"Not at the cost that you're calculating," Nabiki's tone arched sharply, "And not at the possible risk of my sister, Kasumi!"

"What?" Nabiki asked, glancing from her counterpart to her fair-haired companion and saw not denial but tacit acknowledgement of the accusation.

"This risk is great for her, that I will not deny," Anri answered, "But I have seen to it that her risk is shared with one who will endeavor to protect her, one who has even greater cause to care about her welfare."

"Oh, I'm sure you're just full of good intentions," the older Ranma scoffed, "But your track record ain't exactly inspiring if you know what I'm saying? No matter who you are, no matter how many lives you've lived, your wars always wind up costing somebody pretty dearly."

"Do you think that I am proud of that, Inspector Saotome?" Anri asked of the man, "Do you have any conception of what it means to be someone like me, charged with my duties and obligations to humanity, yet knowing too well of my obvious limitations? Or should we stand here comparing notes regarding our personal histories and the mistakes that we each have made with the best of intentions?"

"Why you..." the older Ranma began to take a step forward, but at a wave of the hand of his companion he halted his impulsive reaction.

"We are not here to confront you, Lord Anri," the older Nabiki said firmly, "We are merely concerned with your chosen course of action, and with what you and your brothers have planned for the timeline that my counterpart here calls home, a paraverse much beloved by our adopted daughter Ranko, who informed us of your little field trip through time, bringing both of our counterparts up to speed with your colorful history and its applications to the crisis of the present as she knows it."

"Which for you is twenty-odd years in the past by point of reference," Anri noted, "Hindsight is a powerful tool for learning and growth, but it does not grant omniscience, and if you think that you can do better at approximating the various probability lines that span out from the moment in question..."

"Wait a minute here," Nabiki herself spoke up, turning to her counterpart and saying, "You're a Lore Master? Another one? Like that...version of me that I met a couple of weeks back?"

"Oh that?" her counterpart asked shrewdly, a knowing gleam in her eye reminding Nabiki very much of the disturbing parallel self who had assisted her in the rescue of her daughters, "I doubt very much that she and I would overlap in our perspectives and histories, but you are right to assume that we share a kinship to the power that the Amazons call Akashic Sensitivity. The same gift lies dormant within you, albeit that you've chosen to train other portions of your brain and body to make yourself into a living weapon."

Nabiki arched her eyebrows once again, "Are you calling me a Jock?"

"Not in so many words," the older Nabiki replied.

"But that's what you're thinking, isn't it?" Nabiki accused, "You think that I'm like him, you're...husband?"

"Bingo," the older Ranma said gruffly, "Face it, Nabs, she nailed you on that one."

"Don't call me Nabs," the older woman retorted, albeit with an edge of resigned patience, as if the exchange of verbal barbs were a well-practiced game between them.

"That's it, isn't it?" Nabiki said, looking from one face to the other and then arriving at a dramatic conclusion, "Ranko's your daughter...you adopted her, right? But she comes from somewhere else...another timeline...just like the one that I'm from?"

Their looks were all the confirmation that she needed for her suspicions, and so Nabiki continued on with her lead, playing out her cards with her uncanny knack at reading people by their expressions, "And what she told Ranma-kun and me...it's true, isn't it? On her world...in her history...thing went very bad between you and...and Akane?"

It was Ranma who looked away, his face registering the pain he felt as he murmured the words, "Drop it."

Ordinarily she would have, but with the sudden surge of dread that filled her with a desire to know she turned to her counterpart and said, "What happened to Akane? What...what happened to my counterpart on that world? What happened...to Kasumi?"

The older woman flinched and glanced away, no doubt in an effort not to reveal more than she already had by her expression, "Some doors are better off not opened, Sister."

"Not true," Anri said, "She deserves to know the truth, and you gain nothing in avoiding a painful memory that you live with every waking moment."

This time Ranma did not heed the warning by his lady to avoid his impulse to violence, but when he stood no more than two paces away from his intended target some other force stopped him on his heels, and his upraised fist wavered, the violence it promised left unfulfilled. He looked the Lord of Light in the eyes and flinched without wavering, and then he turned away, defeated without struggle.

Anri's eyes never lost their compassionate regard of the other man, and no word escaped his lips, but somehow the very attitude he radiated seemed to convey a wealth of meaning that spoken thoughts could not have served so well.

Tell her.

With a sigh that seemed to release a weight of immeasurable stature the man known as Saotome Ranma lifted up his head and spoke to the empty air as his eyes surveyed the skyline of a distant horizon.

"I should have known that things would turn out the way I did," he said, "But I was a fool and cocky with the belief that I could defeat anything, that love would conquer all and that Akane and me...could overcome all challengers. I never expected the enemy that would destroy us would come from within...and from an enemy I could never defeat. Hey, I was the guy who'd defeated a god in battle...so what if the woman I loved was a ticking time bomb with the seeds of self destruction buried deep within her?"

He turned to glance towards his wife, who stared back with eyes full of haunted pain and longing, and his words were heartfelt as he said, "Nabiki could see it better than the rest of us, but she didn't say or do anything because she thought that maybe we would work it out in time, just like couples always do. Only the problem got worse and worse with time, and Akane...she started to change into a stranger before our very eyes. On the surface she could seem like her old self, both kind and gentle...but with her temper flaring into mindless rage and violence at the slightest provocation...and me being the chief target of her rampages..." he paused, his thought tightening as though he could not go on, could not carry the thought through to full fruition.

It was the older Nabiki who picked up the story, "Of all of us it was Ukyo who alone tried to do something about the situation, Ukyo who remained Ranma's friend in spite of what it cost her inside. The Amazons were gone...Shampoo took her own life rather than face the dishonor of rejection..."

The younger Nabiki gasped, covering her mouth with a look of abject horror at this startling revelation.

"...The rest of us didn't learn this until later...we were just glad to know that she and the Old woman were no longer coming around to harass us," the older woman continued, a note of self-accusation and loathing creeping into her tone as she added, "If only we'd taken the time to find out just what had happened...if I had let my curiosity lead me to discovering what the consequences would be for her...if we'd only taken the time to stop thinking of Shampoo as a problem and thought more of her as a person...maybe we might have taken her challenge for Akane's claim to Ranma more seriously...and we could all have been spared the nightmare of what happened. But we didn't...I didn't care to know...and when I did find out...the truth of it almost broke me..."

It was an astonishing thing to see the calm and confident older Nabiki start to break down at her own confession, closing her eyes as tears welled up that were not at all intended, while the younger Nabiki just looked at her in numb realization of what a twisted parallel life her counterpart must have lead not to have been as concerned about Amazon justice, not even to have done the basic research that would have acquainted her with the Amazon code that Nabiki knew by heart and lived with on a daily basis.

"The fault does not entirely lie with you," Anri spoke gently, "In many respects the pattern of your lives was set in motion by your fathers."

"Bull!" Ranma angrily spat, "I've used that excuse more times than I'd like to count, but it don't wash with me anymore. Yeah, the Old Man was an idiot, and I knew that better than anybody, but I still knew enough to trust my instincts when it came to making my own choices. Yeah, him and Tendo-san made the stupid promise that got me hitched to the wrong Tendo sister, but I was the idiot who fell in love with her and decided to accept the marriage. I ruined her life, and-not incidentally-my own, and now Nabiki's all that's left of her family, the same as Ranko. Well...except for her younger sister, whose so much like her mother that it chokes me up just watching her grow up to be a better woman."

"And...Ucchan?" Nabiki asked, then saw her worst suspicions being confirmed as both older counterparts glanced away with tightly pained expressions.

"She gave her life for me," Ranma said bitterly, "To the very end she was a friend I didn't deserve and didn't value enough...somebody I...I could have loved better if I hadn't taken her feelings...for granted..."

"In our time there was no Perfume at her side to defend her," the older Nabiki added without glancing away from the memories that clearly haunted her existence, "And...I could do nothing but watch as it happened...as she took the sword-thrust that was meant to impale...Ranma..."

Again Nabiki felt a horrified shudder, only this time she fought against the emotional surge of imagining her best friend and co-wife being mortally attacked without doing a thing to protect her.

"Wait...wait...I'm not...this is too much to take in all at once," Nabiki said, "Ranko is Akane's daughter, making me her aunt, but you adopted her as your daughter?"

"She had no where else to go," the older Nabiki replied, "Her own mother succumbed to Rage syndrome, the same as our Akane, only when she lashed out for the final time she killed both my counterpart...and her world's version of Kasumi."

The horror of that simple statement made everything fall into place, and Nabiki covered her mouth, filled with a loathing that almost made her vomit, finding it incomprehensible that the Akane whom she knew and loved would be capable of doing the things implied by these people, let alone practicing violence against Kasumi.

"Different worlds, different choices, different outcomes," Anri said sadly, "And yet in all worlds you are essentially the same people, the only difference being in the directions your life-paths have taken."

"Tell me what I don't already know, Maitreya," Ranma said coarsely, turning a look towards Nabiki and saying, "You don't know how much I envy your husband, Kid, even if he's such a Momma's boy and a milksop that he lets the rest of you walk all over him. He's still got it luckier than I ever did...even if I've managed to build back a life with my Nabiki."

"Before his death my father pledged me to marry my Ranma," the older Nabiki said, "But I felt like such a ghoul taking Akane's place in the marriage bed. Ranma and I postponed the ceremony for close to twenty years until we'd both grown up enough to accept the past and learn to put it behind us...or so we thought until now." She turned an accusing look towards Anri and said, "You've brought those memories back as if they'd never actually left us, Monalon, Man in the Center. I trust you're proud of your accomplishment."

"Be assured that I am not, good lady," Anri said softly, "I feel the pain of every wound you've ever suffered and I am not blind to the sacrifices that you both have made to win some happiness in the present. But know that the true enemy of life who caused your sister's insanity is still out there waiting to cause yet more suffering in this universe. He is an opportunistic parasite who hates all life and seeks the destruction of all hope for the future."

"Yeah?" Ranma sneered, "You're blaming Ariman for turning my first wife against me?"

"But of course," Anri answered, "Who else do you suppose would seek to manipulate the fragile ego of a troubled young girl whose only sin was in blaming herself for the loss of her mother?"

"And here I thought it was that stupid Xi Fang Gao technique messing with her head," Ranma said gruffly.

"Oh, that did indeed create the wedge through which Ariman was able to work his evil," Anri assured them, "When your sister broke free from the memory altering technique it caused a schism to develop within her psyche. On the one hand Tendo Akane resented you for being a stronger and more competent martial artist, Saotome-kun, just as she resented and felt inferior towards your rival claimants, but at core what you challenged was her sense of adequacy, her need to defend herself against a perceived enemy who had taken her mother from her prematurely. Your wife wanted to beat down death with her hands and struggled to harness her rage at abandonment and perceived desertion, but instead she found herself playing second fiddle to you, and for that she was none too forgiving. It is exactly that sort of perverse equation that Ariman loves to exploit through his minions, and in doing so he poisoned her Chi and subtly corrupted her spirit."

"I...suspected as much for the longest time," the older Nabiki glanced away as if facing unpleasant truths about herself as she admitted, "Just as I've long suspected that I blamed Ukyo for dying like a martyr, which is the courage I lacked back then, and one of many reasons why I sought to reconcile my guilt by studying with the Amazons. I also felt that I owed it to Shampoo, whom I came to understand much too late in life, and who displayed more courage and integrity in her passing than I have ever managed in my own life."

The younger Nabiki closed her mouth after having stood with it open for the longest of moments, and then what she managed to say was, "Well...that's certainly something. You screw up your own family and abandon your friends and then you try to act like it's all better?"

The older Nabiki turned a look towards her younger counterpart that almost made the other girl jump back in alarm, the more so at the angry tone the older woman used in saying, "Just what the hell would you know about it? You don't know anything about my life! You fought to become what you are in your way...just like I fought as hard to overcome the obstacles that were in my path to becoming a Lore Master."

"Look," the younger Nabiki said hastily, raising her hands to ward off what she correctly perceived was the dangerous wrath of a woman who radiated such intense power that alarm bells were ringing at the nape hairs of the younger woman's head, "I didn't mean it like that...it's just...you have no idea what Shampoo and Ukyo mean to me. They're not just my friends, they're my co-wives and the mothers to our children, and the thought of anything bad happening to either of them..."

"I know," the older woman sighed, relenting in her own wrath, "Forgive me, I didn't come here to take it out on you. I came because...because I was concerned that you might not be aware of what the Lord Anri is truly asking of you. He's telling you to become his weapon, but you don't know the potential consequences..."

"True enough," Anri admitted, "And I was hoping to get around to them in my own good time, Saotome-san, but you and your husband would be making a grave mistake if you think that I'm just taking advantage of her because I don't want to fight my own battles."

"Oh yeah?" Ranma scowled, "Then what about your brother's threat to destroy her whole entire Universe?"

"That is not what Udan threatened," Anri replied, "He means to oppose Ariman directly, knowing that in doing so he could well bring about the death of the Paraverse that we are otherwise intent on protecting."

"Same difference," Ranma scoffed, "He fights the big guy and the universe folds, like in that old saw, 'In order to save it I had to blow it up,' right?"

"That is certainly a possibility," Anri replied, "And sound military strategy besides. When a wound festers do they not cut off the infected tissues? But I think you are selling my apprentice here too lightly. She has not yet begun to enter the frey, and when she musters her potential..."

"You mean if she masters it," the older Nabiki countered, "And in only three days I can hardly conceive of her improving sufficiently to stand up in a fight against your brother."

"Care to make a wager that she does?" Anri said knowingly, "She already has the tools that she needs at hand, but just needs to be encouraged in bringing her resources to the foreground."

The older Nabiki hesitated, leaving it to her husband to say, "Wagering may be all well and good for my wife, but I hate gambling, especially with the lives of two entire worlds hanging in the balance."

"Fair enough," Anri said, "But we Daokan are gamblers on a level and order that even you are ill-equipped to imagine. We do not toy with the lives of mortals, but in the pursuit of our cause we are ready and willing to do whatever we deem to be necessary. If that means sacrifice and loss for some then it is to be regretted...but as one who has shed blood and suffered along with humanity I am ready to state that for the greater good I will do whatever is within my power to effect humanity's collective salvation."

"Anything you want to do, huh?" Ranma asked, "The ends justify the means, right?"

"The ends are means in themselves, and vice versa," Anri gently smiled, "So glad to know that you were paying attention."

"Lord Anri," the older Nabiki said in order to cut off her husband's reflexive response to that gently worded comment, "Far be it from us to question your wisdom or your motives, which I know to be of the highest order..."

"I honestly wish that you would, Saotome-san," Anri remarked, "You could learn a lot from your counterpart here. She has not yet learned to temper her inquiring mind with diplomacy and evasion like so many adults tend to do, and I find it quite refreshing to be occasionally challenged. Yes, I am experienced and have access to knowledge that even Lore Masters dare not access, but my judgement is far from infallible, and when I make an error it can be quite catastrophic as numerous incidents in my history would tend to suggest."

"You admit that?" Ranma asked with a frankly surprised expression.

"Unlike some I have no problem at all in confronting my limitations," Anri answered, "But none of us is so perfect that we can see everything objectively, so it does help to have another perspective on hand to cross-reference my own wisdom. But as you were about to say, you have deep concerns about the approach that I am taking and its possible ramifications for your family's parallels, even though you already know that I have the highest regard for them and their safety."

"I also know that you have an entirely different view on life than that of anyone who is mortal," the older Nabiki countered, "Just as for you the ages pass like leaves in the fall while for the rest of us a single lifetime can seem pretty extraordinary. Your position as Lord of Light allows you to view life as a continuing journey through death's dark portal, and as such death herself has little terror for you, for you know that the soul will survive the passage of the body."

"Say what?" the younger Nabiki reacted.

"There is truth in what you say, Saotome-san," Anri said shrewdly, "I do indeed view time and death through a different prism than you or anyone else may who has yet to live out a single lifetime. But honestly, did your time with me teach you so little about how significant every human life is to me or to my brother, Udan. Reka indeed views human life as transitory, but to Ulsa and the rest of us a life has significance, and no life may be sacrificed without loss to the greater whole. Every life matters, even if it has passed on to a different stage of the cycle of reincarnation."

"What?" the younger Nabiki reacted.

"Is that why you offed that Reverend Schiller guy?" Ranma asked, "Just blew him away because you knew that the souls of everybody in that building would just pass on to a different incarnation?"

"I was hardly that callous about it," Anri said a bit stiffly, "But you already know what would have befallen those people had I not chosen to act as I did. By driving off Ariman at the exact moment when their souls entered the other plane I prevented him from laying claim to them, which you know that would, their souls having already been pledged to him by the twisted nature of their religion."

"Wait a minute here," the younger Nabiki spoke up, turning to her counterpart and saying, "You mean...you used to hang around with him...before me?"

"Not...exactly," the older Nabiki said, her eyes taking on a slightly abstracted look as she added, "When I was your age I watched my younger sister go insane and murder Kuonji. Ranma barely survived his own injuries and took months of convalescence before he was back on his feet and able to function. He disappeared not long after that and went in search of himself...while I wound up in Joketsuzoku training under the patient guidance of my mentor, Lotion the Lore Master. It was some years after that when I encountered the Lord Anri...years from the present reference point in the parallel dimension that I originally hail from. Some time after that I joined up with the Time Patrol and then eventually tracked down my wayward iinazuke and brought him on board as a mobile field agent..."

"Time Patrol?" Nabiki asked, then cocked her eyebrows, "You're a Cop?"

"Actually she's my boss," Ranma explained, "And the brains of the outfit. But don't let me get you guys off on the wrong track here. I'm kinda finding it interesting just studying the two of you. I mean, what a contrast."

His wife favored him with a look that all but said aloud, "We're going to talk about this later," but what she said to Nabiki was, "I was the one who stayed at home and lived the life of an ordinary school girl. My father never traded me for a boy I hardly knew, nor did I spend ten years on the road studying the martial arts at the side of our Uncle Genma. I therefore do not have as much of an inside track with you as I would some of the other counterpart Nabikis whom I have encountered in my travels..."

"Other Nabikis?" Nabiki herself cocked both eyebrows, "Just how many of us are there out there?"

"As many as there as possibilities branching out from a central template," Anri answered, "Every point in the road where a different possibility lay, a different decision was made, a different course of action and reaction was undertaken...that is how many alternate versions of yourself may be found in existence. But don't just take my word for it. We Daokan are closer to being a singularity because we merge many of out counterparts together, giving us greater mobility since we rarely run into ourselves, and there are fewer of us scattered across the Multiversal Timelines."

"I can vouch for this," Nabiki replied, "And what counterparts you have are all mentally linked to the same akashic relay, meaning you each know what the other is up to, which I admit does give me some pause, to say nothing of the loss of sleep you caused me in trying to fathom out your actual nature."

"What is there not to understand," Anri spread his arms, "I am what I am and that is all that I need be, even if I am somewhat more-and less-than what other people might imagine."

"You really love playing these mind-games with people, don't you?" Ranma said by way of accusation.

"Only to the degree that it achieves the effect of encouraging others to think of things for themselves that they might otherwise never contemplate," Anri replied, "After all, you can lead a horse to water..."

"But you can't make him think, right?" the younger Nabiki finished for him.

"Oh no," Anri corrected, "A horse thinks like a horse, but you can't make him think like a human being if it is not within his nature."

"But humans have the potential to think outside the box, correct?" the older Nabiki asked.

"My dear Saotome-san," Anri smiled, "As you have already heard me say...or will when you encounter me somewhere down the road in your home template, there is no limit to the power of human potential. You yourself are living proof of that paradigm, and so is your rather formidable husband."

"But potential only happens if you got it in you to begin with," Ranma snorted, "You can try and make a Yugo act like a Porche, but without the right tools and equipment there just ain't no comparison."

"Quite so," Anri said in tacit congratulation, "And as life is not inherently fair to everyone so as to provide all people with an equal chance at achieving enlightenment in a single lifetime we must therefore be accurate in saying that the potential within us is conditional to the hand that we have been dealt through the power of Karma. Take yourselves for example...extraordinary latent abilities that needed to be trained and harvested in order to bring out. Imagine yourselves living quiet, dull lives of ordinary consequence, never having studied the martial arts or gone on any training missions or even having been pledged to one another from childbirth. Why, it's even possible that you would never have met or become attracted to one another, and what a tragedy that would have been for the future."

"So...it's the hand we're dealt and not the cards alone that decides the outcome?" the younger Nabiki asked.

"On the contrary," Anri replied, "Free will means the ability to make wrong choices as well as good ones, and it is how you play your hand that determines the course of your destiny. The stars alone do not decide, dear Brutus, but rather what we decide within ourselves that sets in motion a chain of events leading us from one moment to the next."

"I...don't think I...fully understand that," the younger Nabiki hesitantly remarked.

The older Nabiki suddenly widened her eyes and started to say something, but Anri raised a hand and she reflexively held her peace, allowing him to turn his focus upon the younger woman.

"An example then," Anri said softly, "Suppose upon your arrival in Nerima you had chosen to take a different course of action than the one that brought you into your engagement with Saotome Ranma. What if you had chosen to remain aloof and apart from the efforts of others to engage you to a fiancé. Suppose you had rejected the Amazon's claim and refused to arbitrate a dual engagement with Kuonji so that the promise of her father was not observed. What do you suppose would have been the result of recusing yourself from romantic entanglement, valuing your independence above all other virtues?"

"Ah...to tell the truth, I pretty much can't imagine what that would have been like," Nabiki said, "I...did originally have a thought about refusing to let Daddy and Uncle Genma switch engagements to me from Akane, but..."

"Would you actually have gone on living a lonely life, Saotome-san?" Anri wondered, "Convincing yourself that your nominal curse disqualified you from enjoying a normal life...because you inwardly feared the rejection of a potential loved one?"

"Well...can you blame me for thinking that way?" Nabiki reacted a bit defensively, "I mean...turning into a guy...it's not exactly normal..."

"Define normal," Ranma sniffed, "You think it's any easier for me living with my curse?"

"Ranma-kun," the older Nabiki chided.

"Let me further add to my presentation," Anri continued, "Supposing you did not allow yourself to succumb to that drink that numbed your wits and made you susceptible to Shampoo's alluring seduction. Imagine if you merely got drunk and passed out before anything could happen, and thus she did not become pregnant? What ties then do you suppose that you would have felt with her? Or would you merely regard her fascination with you to be a quaint provincial notion to which you felt no personal obligation?"

Nabiki almost backed away in alarm, "No way...I mean...that wouldn't...I wouldn't disgrace her like that! Not Sham-chan?"

"Oh no?" Anri asked, "Why not? He did," he nodded to indicate the Time Cop Ranma.

Ranma flinched away and winced, "You really know how to hurt a guy, Maitreya..."

"My apologies, but this is necessary," Anri assured him without taking his eyes off of the younger Nabiki, "Can you imagine the sort of person you would have become if you followed the path that I have just outlined? Can you conceive of what the consequences would be for you and all others whose lives you have touched, and who now look upon you as their leader because they love and respect you and have come to trust your judgement?"

"Ah...no...but...sometimes I almost wish they wouldn't," Nabiki glanced away with a faintly pained expression, "It's a lot to have to deal with...you have no idea what it's like having so many people depend on you, looking up to you, always expecting you to make the right decisions..."

"Oh no?" Anri said sardonically, "Just try living in my world and see what it feels like."

"Look, I didn't mean it like that," Nabiki said a bit defensively, "It's just...sometimes I almost wish I didn't have so many responsibilities. Life was a lot simpler for me when I was on the road and didn't have to spend all of my time keeping a family together..."

"No!" the older Nabiki suddenly spoke up, "Lord Anri...don't...!"

"You want to know what it would feel like being free of obligations?" Anri asked in a deceptively calm tone of voice, ignoring the warning from the older Nabiki and the alarmed expression that now appeared upon the face of Ranma, "Consider such a fate and then tell me if you would give it all up to experience life as you would had you made the wrong decisions."

"Hey-wait! I didn't mean...!" Nabiki started to protest, only far too late to avert what next happened as reality inverted for her...and suddenly she awoke to a time and place very different from the present...

Continued.

Comments/Criticisms/Hit Return to Sender: shadowmane

Or: shadowmane9849

Next time up...meet Tendo Nabiki, only not the way you've come to know her, and with a very different story to tell as we resume things in, "The Road Better Not Taken," or, "O Bitter Memories That Never Were Meant To Be." Be there!

X

/pre 


	97. Chapter 97

preDnabiki186

Nabiki 1/2

"A Very Scary Thought"

by Jim Robert Bader

(Inspired by the works of Rumiko Takahashi Others,  
with concepts and characters created by fellow fanfic writers Wade Tritschler, DB Sommers, Nicole Manders, Andrew Greaves, Bill Guiroff and countless others, including "Buffy"  
creator Joss Whedon; with special thanks to my good pal Shiva for his editing and handling of this series.)

(Certain other characters and concepts are of my own innovation, including my interpretation of the Monster of Mary Shelly's novel, the Furies, Trudy, Takaharis Angelique d'Anjou, Anri and the Daokan, Thelendra the Dream Weaver and various other guest stars appearing in this portion of the Nabiki 1/2 series...)

Chapter Seventy.

Episode One-Hundred-Eighty-Six.

"Meet Tendo Nabiki..."

Nabiki awoke to a sense of immanent, impending danger that her finely honed combat senses had alerted her to just prior to the attack point. The next instant she was up and in motion, flipping herself out of bed and onto her feet just as a fist came crashing down on the space where her head had laid upon an instant before hand.

She was immediately on the defensive with arms raised to deflect a series of punches and kicks that drove her steadily backward, but with the skill of a lifetime of hardening in the martial arts she took the worst that her assailant could throw at her and waited for the moment then struck back savagely with a kick that took her foe completely by surprise and sent him tumbling backward out through the sliding ricepaper doors of the dojo. He continued on beyond that all the way into the koi pond, whereupon he landed with a splash that upset several score fishes and caused a by-now entirely familiar transformation.

"What a lame attack," Nabiki growled as her mentor rose up out of the pond in full panda mode, dripping wet and soggy in his dour expression, "Next time you want to wake me at five in the morning, Oyaji, try using an alarm clock!"

The panda raised a sign which read, "Just trying to keep you on your toes, Girl. You've been slacking off of late and I thought you needed a starter."

"A starter?" Nabiki waved her hands for emphasis, "It's Sunday already! Can't I have at least one day out of the week where I can get to sleep late?"

The panda turned the sign around, which now read, "That's what I mean about slacking off. In the old days on the road..."

Even in her irritation Nabiki had to pause and wonder just how her adopted "Uncle" had known where to write a dramatic pause perfectly timed to suit her next interruption.

"We're not living on the road any more, you old fool!" Nabiki snarled, "We've been living under the same roof for over a year and a half now, and I'm in my own house, so what more do you need to convince you that we don't have to maintain the same grueling pace of training as in the old days?"

The sign changed as if magically before her eyes to read, "Don't make excuses in order to slack off and go soft, Girl. This is exactly what I mean about needing a starter..."

"A starter?" she complained, "You've only done this to me every other day for the last dozen years of my life! Like heck I'm getting soft! Like you'd ever let me!"

Almost on cue a splash of cold water against her back triggered her own transformation, to say nothing of completing the rest of her morning ritual as she-or rather he-sagged his shoulders and sighed, "Morning Oneechan."

"Oh my, Kaneda-san," Kasumi said pleasantly, "How nice to see you this morning. You're looking fit and trim, as always. Nut don't mind me, go back to playing with Uncle while I just stand back and tidy up around the dojo."

Nabiki turned a bland, droll glance in his older sister's direction, but even in doing so felt another sigh coming on, for after a year and a half of being coyly chased, flirted at and nearly seduced by her infatuated elder sibling it was hard not to be constantly aware of how Kasumi's eyes followed him everywhere. It had gone beyond merely annoying to a situation where Nabiki was seriously contemplating signing a restraining order to keep his sister far enough away so as not to be a constant reminder of the fundamental problem with his curse...

Which was, of course, nearly everything about it.

He did not need to turn around to sense his uncle raising yet another sign, and by the time he turned around he could predict its contents flawlessly, which hardly required a mind-reader to have anticipated:

"Just tell her to stop. You know she'd obey you."

"That's not the point and you know it, Old Man," Nabiki growled, refraining from adding the words as he thought them, (It means so much to Kasumi, I just know it would break her if I confronted her about this little "problem" of hers. But you're right about one thing...it sure is damned annoying...)

Actually it was a great deal more than just "annoying," but Nabiki refrained from continuing her thought, all too conscious of what an effect his sister was having upon his male anatomy with her constant attention. Though they were born of the same flesh to the same parents, a blind man could have told one of what a rare prize Kasumi was as a woman...beautiful, kind-hearted, loyal, affectionate, a bit spacey, but not nearly so air-headed and oblivious as a casual observer might be inclined to suspect. Kasumi was actually quite intelligent, for all that she seemed to dwell in her own magical world of innocence and light. It would have taken a heart of stone not to react to such bounteous affection, and she indeed had worked her charms to some effect upon Nabiki, who-though managing to valiantly resist the allure of forbidden temptation-nonetheless had a pretty good idea of just why it was that so many enemies who dropped by often felt the urge to kidnap the girl with impure intentions on their mind.

If anything Nabiki had come to privately suspect that Kasumi actually went out of her way to be kidnapped if only to find an excuse to force Nabiki to come to her rescue.

And playing the rescuer who swooped down to save Kasumi from whatever menace of the week was threatening her virtue had worked a taboo effect upon Nabiki, making her certain that-were they not actually sisters-she would have long ago succumbed to the unthinkable with Kasumi. In point of fact Nabiki marveled that he had so far avoided that awful fate, even though he knew by now that his sister considered her affections genuine and remained solidly loyal in her devotion, even knowing that there could never be an actual consummation of those feelings.

Again Nabiki sighed. Kasumi was a vexing problem to be certain, but hardly the worst one in her life, and so she did what she always did when confronted by the evidence of Kasumi's "interest" and forced himself to look away, hoping against hope that his sister would grow out of her "phase" and find a man who could actually provide and care for her...

Like Tofu-Sensei...provided that the poor boy could ever be persuaded to cease babbling like an idiot every time Kasumi was in his immediate field of vision.

Again the panda sigh appeared, "If you're really all that worried about Kasumi, you could try considering her needs by sitting down and talking with her..."

"And what would that accomplish?" Nabiki growled, "Other than to embarrass Kasumi?"

"Well...you obviously do have feelings for one another," the sign now read, and when the panda turned it around it followed, "So maybe it would be a good thing if you..."

Nabiki raised his hand to cover the snout of the panda then glared, "It is so important to your continued future health and well being that you don't finish that sentence...uncle."

Genma took the hint and immediately backed away, but still a dose of hot water poured over Nabiki's head alerted the cursed girl to the presence of another Saotome, who calmly stood there radiantly smiling at her as though projecting an innocence at odds with the tone of the rest of her demeanor.

"My husband may be rather ineptly stating a point, Nabiki-chan," Nodoka said blandly, "But he has a point nonetheless. You and Kasumi do need to work things out together. I've tried talking to her, but you're also right that it does little good. Kasumi knows how inappropriate it is for her to care about you in this way...but still...I cannot deny that she has genuine feelings, and it does no good for either of you if you continue to deny them."

"Auntie?" Nabiki as herself once again turned to confront the Saotome matron holding the tea-kettle with a questioning expression.

Nodoka sighed and gave Nabiki a frank look before saying, "It has been my experience that repressing hidden feelings is basically quite unhealthy. You need to let them out once in a while or they become ingrown, and when it comes to the way you and Kasumi have been behaving lately..."

"First off...ew!" Nabiki winced, "And secondly...that's going a bit over the edge even for you, Auntie."

"Oh, I don't mean you should actually go ahead and do anything about it," Nodoka tried to sound reassuring, but even she seemed unconvinced about the point that she was making, "I just mean that you should state things honestly, come to terms with your feelings, not push them aside and pretend that nothing has ever yet happened between you."

Nabiki was forced to glance away, reminded of the guilt that she carried over an incident that had occurred months ago when she had indeed come very near to giving into the mutual attraction that lay between herself and Kasumi. It was a painful memory because it was so poignant and so sweet that it had caused an ache within her bosom, and she could only imagine how difficult it was for Kasumi herself to make such a tacit confession to finding Kaneda to be "the one" whom she desired more than any other.

Being saved from the brink of certain death did tend to forge that type of a bond between a (sort-of) man and a woman, and for Kasumi's sake Nabiki had fought and overcome a self-described God, seeming to destroy in the process her only hopes of a cure for her "condition."

Racking her mind to think of a way of deflecting the attention of her well-meaning but meddlesome "aunt," Nabiki tried her old stand-by line, "I won't give into my curse by letting it dominate my life, Auntie, I certainly won't let it dictate who I'll be with...and anyway it wouldn't be fair to Kasumi. One of these days she's bound to meet a guy whose right for her and not just some creep with high-handed ideas on how to pick up a girlfriend."

"Are you so certain that you would be content if she ever did meet such a person?" Nodoka asked, "Can you honestly tell me that you would be happy for Kasumi if she turned her affections in some other direction?"

"Yes," Nabiki said without meeting the gaze of the older woman, but even as she said it her fists were balled and she was struggling hard to convince herself that this was the right decision.

"Nabiki-chan," Nodoka sighed, "I know your sister as if she were, in fact, my own daughter, and I think I know her well enough to say that she will never be truly content or happy with anyone else than Kaneda. It's just unfortunate for the both of you that you happen to be related."

"But we are related, Auntie," Nabiki turned back to stare at the brown-haired woman again, "And whatever my other faults may be, I'm not into incest. Especially not with Kasumi."

"I understand that," Nodoka said quietly, "But there are times when I worry about the both of you. It's not good to be alone, and do you really want to live your life apart from other people? Take it from me, being in love..."

"Is a distraction that I can't afford right now," Nabiki insisted, "Besides, who'd be interested in me with all of my problems?"

"You mean Kaneda?" Nodoka asked, "He seems popular enough with your classmates..."

"Until they find out about his link with me," Nabiki said, "Then they know that I'm...different, and it tends to freak them out."

"Oh really?" Nodoka asked shrewdly, "Have you revealed yourself to all that many of your peers? Have you really taken a census about that? What about your friend, Ryonami?"

"Ryo-chan's just a friend and a business associate," Nabiki dismissed, "She does important errands for me, but there's nothing more to it than that."

"But she doesn't seem to mind knowing you and Kaneda are one in the same, ne?" Nodoka persisted.

"Ryo's...not your average girl around town," Nabiki replied evasively, "She claims my curse is no big deal, and even seems to get a kick out of watching my transformations."

"And you don't think there could be anything more than...?" Nodoka stared to ask, only to be cut short by the younger woman.

"No," Nabiki said flatly, "Next question?"

Nodoka shook her head sadly, "So head strong and stubborn. You and Ranma have so much in common...I sometimes wonder if it should have been you who was made his iinazuke."

"Well, it's not me, so get off of that will you?" Nabiki glanced away again, "Besides, he's happier with Akane. They do things together, and they're all but inseparable these days."

"Because you, early on, chose to play the mediator and helped to unite them," Nodoka pointed out, "No one before you had ever managed to get them to say a nice thing about one another, but now it's just as if they were meant to be together..."

Nabiki winced, and without meaning to let slip the words, "Sometimes I think I should have minded my own business..."

"How is that again?" Nodoka asked with a knowing expression.

Nabiki was spared having to answer that directly when the party in question showed up in the garden, holding hands and chuckling over something one had said to the other, and then Ranma turned and waved towards the panda saying, "Hey Dad, Akane and I are going by the skating rink, so is it all right with you if I skip out on practice for this morning?"

The panda raised his ever-trusty sigh to read, "Just make sure you're back in time for supper, Boy. Your mother needs to show your iinazuke a few more pointers about cooking." At this point the panda turned the sign around and in tinier printed kanji added, "The kami knows that she could use it..."

"What was that again, Uncle?" Akane glared meaningfully towards Genma as if contemplating what a nice throw rug he would make after the wedding.

Nabiki could see where this was about to lead and promptly waved a hand to say, "Better hurry along, Ranchan, Akane-chan. Oh, and if you happen to run into Senzenin, be sure to kick him one for me in a sensitive area."

"Don't worry about that, Oneechan," Akane promised sweetly, "I will."

"See you guys around," Ranma called out while still holding hands with Akane as they turned to leave together.

And as she watched them go, Nabiki felt a pained stab in her chest and her face momentarily betrayed her actual feelings. Indeed, what her "aunt" Nodoka said had been saying was borne out by the way that she felt every time she saw Ranma and her little sister together. Anytime she was even around the guy it became a painful reminder of what she had given up-or lost-due to her own choices made and the decisions that had arisen from shortly after her return to Nerima from her infamous ten-year training mission with her "uncle" Saotome.

Coming back from her experiences in China, Nabiki had been convinced that a "normal" relationship for her was entirely out of the question. In her own eyes she was a freak, an oddity and even something of a perversion because of her curse and her tomboyish manners. What boy would want to even be around her, much less date her? And to date her only sexual experience was sleeping with another girl, a one-time affair that she had firmly vowed would never be repeated.

But when she arrived home she discovered how much had changed for her family during her long absence. For one thing Akane and Ranma were not getting along all that well and were, in point of fact, focusing their romantic leanings in other directions. Kasumi has become a defacto housewife without a husband and seemed to find contentment in helping their Aunt Nodoka around the house, and their father was an emotional basket case ready to crumble apart at the merest provocation.

Her mother's death nine years prior she had already known about and had thought well accustomed to as a concept, and-in point of fact-the memory of her mother dying from cancer as a housewife had been partially a motivation for her to not wind up that way, tied by apron strings to a bunch of needy, whiny brats like Akane...and a boy she barely remembered seeing at her mother's funeral, the one who had replaced her in the household. Those two had needed Kasumi to comfort them by playing the big sister, a role to which she was eminently well-suited.

Not so Nabiki, who resolved to never need anyone or lean on any emotional crutches for her support. She was bound and determine to be strong and resolute, to live her life on her own terms and to never give in to the weaknesses of her emotions.

And so she had trained hard and gained the power and self-control that she had thought that she needed, leaning to dominate the limits of her body through the force of her personality and will, and by turns became a fighter who was second to none, without peer or equal...or so she had come to convince herself until recent events had prompted her to question her resolution.

But Akane-who based her own self-image upon strength of the body-was a grasping, insecure basket case of jangled emotions, easily set off by the least little pricking of her ego and pathologically obsessed with a need to determine her own fate, define life on her own terms, in a great many respects a mirror reflection of Nabiki's own drives and determination. The main difference in their pursuits, however, was that Akane was not in control of her own destiny, was not the master of her emotions and tended to react with knee-jerk spontaneity when provoked by the least perceived of insults.

Her partner in crime in this respect was Ranma, who has grown up resenting being engaged to to "tomboy" and yet had come to lean on her as a companion and sparring partner who shared many of his same interests. They knew each other pretty well after growing up in the same house, shared many of the goals and often assisted one another in little things like classwork and shopping. They were each determined to project an air of mutual indifference-bordering on outright hostility-in order to convince their parents that they were not suited to be an "item."

Ranma's ego was rather large because everything he did came naturally to him, from the martial arts to subjects such as history and math. He was not as good in the classics of literature and writing, things his macho self-image regarded as "girly," but he had his friend Tatewaki on hand to coach him along so that he at least attained a passable grate point average. For all of that he was a pretty nice guy, not as obnoxious as many of his peers but occasionally insensitive through unintentional gaffs and foibles.

The one area in which his self-confidence failed him was in dealing with the sister of his best friend, Kodachi, a girl with whom he had fallen into a pattern of deep infatuation from an early age, and even while his interest was not mutual, his almost puppy-dog devotion to her made him trip over his own uncertainties and insecurities. It undermined the foundations of his ego and left him vulnerable and uncertain about what path his life should follow.

And so it was Nabiki who decided to do something about the matter. She knew that Akane was frequently found in the company of her good friend, Kodachi, and that where one went the other would likely be, and so she set up a chain of circumstances where Ranma would happen to be on hand at a moment of crisis. Of course the whole thing took a somewhat comic turn when an old "friend" of Nabiki's came to town spoiling for a fight and seeking vengeance for a perceived wrong visited upon her by an earlier "misunderstanding."

But still the matter worked out flawlessly as Ranma had heroically come to Akane's aid and proved that he did indeed care about her welfare. Kodachi saw ripe opportunity and did her part to pair the two of them together, leaving Akane and Ranma with nothing but their wall of denials to tear down, to which Nabiki all-too-helpfully was ready to provide the verbal crow bar.

And from thereon the engagement of Houses Tendo and Saotome was a sure thing, needing only occasional nudges on Nabiki's helpful part to steer along so that the two would learn to eventually wean themselves of their need for verbal sparring. Having a solid pillar of support and strength like Ranma to lean against had proven to be the very thing that Akane needed to regain a firm hold of her self-image, which gave her the confidence that she needed to eventually turn away from her own infatuation with a certain doctor Tofu.

And just in time was the healing of this breech, because Nabiki had overheard her father and "Uncle" Genma discussing the possibility of switching the engagement from Akane to her, which was not in the plan as far as it concerned Nabiki.

Funny how time could make you look back with regret for your own cleverness, and for what-at the moment of crisis-had seemed like a perfectly rational decision. But a year and a half spent around Ranma, fighting along his side against numerous enemies, seeing him in both good and bad times, revealing a depth within himself that she never dreamed could exist for all his macho exterior...she gradually had come to wonder if maybe the notion of her taking Akane's place in the engagement were a good or a bad thing. After all, both Akane and Ranma had mutual areas of conflict that-further down the road-might make for a less than perfectly stellar marriage.

But that was rationalization and she well knew it. Her choice had been made and she might as well live with the consequences. So what if she felt drawn now to the handsome young man living under her roof and destined to be her sister's husband? Nabiki did not need anyone like that, had even fought to maintain the status-quo engagement, fighting off potential rivals where they arose while taking much of the heat for past decisions and actions that had come back to haunt her.

And so she turned away from her Aunt Nodoka and said, "Forget it, they're happier the way things are. I'll find my own way...eventually. I always do."

Nodoka allowed her own maternal to show as she said, "That is your decision to make...but I feel...obligated to the memory of your mother to look after you in her place..."

"Don't," Nabiki said curtly, "I know mom and you were best friends and all that, but at this stage in my life the last thing I need is for you to fret over me like a nervous hen, Auntie."

"Well, you can't blame me from at least being concerned," Nodoka shrugged, "After all, there are so many of your friends who seem to want to get to know you better, like Akane's friend, Kodachi..."

"Oh please," Nabiki rolled her eyes, "She's only interested in Kaneda, and she resents me whenever I'm around because she thinks I'm her main rival for his attention."

"Well, what about Ranma's best friend, Tachi-kun?" Nodoka argued.

"Same problem, only difference being that he wants me and hates Kaneda," Nabiki answered, "And neither one of them can figure out that I'm the same guy in either versions. I've actually physically changed before their very eyes but they just don't seem able to grasp the fundamental concept of my curse, let alone put two-and-two together."

"Ah well," Nodoka shrugged, "They were Hitomi's offspring, and I suppose they inherited her somewhat...high-strung nature. But there is also the Kuonji girl, and your friend Ryoga, and then that rather nice-if a bit violent-daughter of my old friend from China..."

"Don't," Nabiki waved a finger in warning, "Don't go there, Auntie. I mean it."

Nodoka hesitated a bit then sighed, "You truly do make it a trial to try and look after your interests. Very well, I will leave the matter to you...but I do wish sometimes that you could learn to unbend a little, or that my foolish husband had not instilled in you such an appalling lack of ladylike qualities..." she glared meaningfully towards the koi pond, whereupon a certain Panda hastily glanced away and contented himself with gnawing on some bamboo shoots provided by Kasumi.

"Ahem," a familiar voice intruded, "Have I come at a bad time? I can come back later..."

"Ryo-chan?" Nabiki turned around to see her right-hand all-around girl Friday standing there at the edge of the yard smiling politely and holding up her all-important ledger.

"Well hello," Nodoka said a bit too pleasantly, as if gratified to see the girl for some odd reason, "How nice to see you again, Ryonami-san. What brings you to our house this fine weekend morning?" she turned a somewhat mischievous glance in Nabiki's direction.

Nabiki made a face and said, "What's up, Ryo-chan?"

"Have you forgotten already, Sempai?" Ryonami asked, holding up her book, "You asked me to stop by so that we could go over the books together. You know...school stuff, extra-curricular activities, that sort of thing?"

"Oh, right," Nabiki responded, though in fact she had her suspicions that her friend had "ulterior motives" or wanting to spend time around her senior classmate.

After all, Ryonami was a bright and pretty girl, and like most of their contemporaries she seemed to have a certain thrill in seeing Nabiki change into her alternate identity as Kaneda. Though it was not a very well kept secret on their campus that Nabiki and Kaneda were one in the same it did not seem to bother the vast majority of Kaneda's "fan club" despite the grumblings of a few that the curse made Nabiki/Kaneda "perverted." Ryonami was among those who did not seem to mind the dual split nature of her "Sempai," and so found Nabiki's company to be a source of great delight and altogether open amusement.

But still being with her gave Nabiki an excuse to get her out from under her well-meaning Aunt's attention, and so she followed Ryonami through the gates leading out to the streets of Nerima, setting an easy pace for her friend to keep up with when her natural inclination would have been to take to the roofs and fences in an effort to avoid the usual trouble.

"So, what's the news of the week?" she asked conversationally, hoping to get her mind away from the nagging personal questions raised by the drift of the morning.

"Not too good I'm afraid," Ryonami said as she glanced down at her open ledger, "Since none of your usual sparring partners have shown up for the past fortnight-a record I might add-there's been no way to book you for the usual prize matches that form a lucrative third of our income. On the other hand, the rumor-and-scandal business is turning out to be a healthy side-factor, especially with those incriminating shots you took in the school lockers a while back serving as a nice incentive for our usual contributors to fork over our share of their allowance."

"Petty stuff," Nabiki said, "We need something with more meat if we're to meet quarterly profits. You know what my overhead is like...I've got to come up with something good and soon just to keep my head above water..."

"Oh, no doubt about that, Boss," Ryonami acknowledged, "But I'm sure you'll come up with something. You always do in the end, and you're the best one around when it comes to sniffing up profits."

"Well, I'd better," Nabiki grimaced, "Or else I'll have to face the music, and you know what that means."

"Oh yeah," Ryonami nodded grimly, "Taro."

"Somebody mention me?"

Nabiki and Ryonami halted in mid-step and slowly turned around to find the boy leaning against the wall of a fence at the corner around which they had been innocently passing.

"Speak of the Devil by name and he will appear," Ryonami softly murmured.

The smug, cock-sure boy in the gleaming scale shirt with the panty-hose accouterments was smiling lazily their way with a hungry look that made Nabiki want to smash his pretty-boy face in. Instead she hunched her shoulders and growled, "What do you want, Pantsaru?"

"Oh, I think you already know the answer to that one, Tendo," the young man said while studying his finger nails to see if they needed a manicure, "Caught you babes talking about your weekly proceeds, and it don't sound too good. You know that Boss Tanaka wants his cut of the deal, and you're already late in making your last payment."

"Ah..." Ryonami shyly edged away, "Guess that's my cue to take a little powder..."

"Naw, you stay put, Mouse," Taro pushed away from the wall and flexed his shoulders, "This won't take long, and your boss here knows what I'm after."

The play of angry emotions across Nabiki's face told quite a story, but she mastered her feelings and said stiffly, "Forget it."

"Hey, you haven't even heard my proposal yet," Taro gave a mock-wounded expression, "We'll get around to the other stuff later...but I was just thinking to myself how you needed a shot of capitol, and it just so happens that a way suggests itself to me, one you might even go for. Care to hear me out?"

"What do you have in mind?" Nabiki asked, balling her firsts and readying for her objections.

"You, me, one-on-one," Taro smiled as he moved nearer to his target, "Let's have a match and you can charge tickets that ought to raise enough funds to please my boss."

"A fight with me?" Nabiki arched an eyebrow, "What are the odds?"

"I'll let you set them," Taro grinned, "You're good at point spreads. The stakes are easy...you lose you gotta date me, I lose and you get a quarter share of the proceeds. Interested?"

Nabiki squared her shoulders and lowered her gaze so that her eyes were barely visible from beneath her forelocks, "Half."

"Three-fifths," Taro counter-offered.

"Forty-five percent, and not a point lower," Nabiki said flatly.

"Hmmm..." Taro stroked his chin, "I might get my boss to go as high as a third..."

"Then I'll find another way to get the money I owe him," Nabiki made a point of turning around, "Have a nice day, Pantsaru..."

He was there at her side before even she could anticipate his movement, but rather than do anything outwardly aggressive what she felt was the touch of his finger to her chin, and then he steered her back to meeting his expression.

"Think it's that easy to ignore me, Toots?" Taro grinned, "Forget it...I know you better than you know yourself, and all this 'playing-hard-to-get' crap isn't fooling anyone, and you know it."

Nabiki attempted to round on him but he intercepted her hand before it could connect. Once his larger hand was about her slender wrist he began applying pressure, and she winced in response but refused to bend at the knee as he would have expected.

"What's the matter?" he asked, "Touch a raw nerve? Hah...you're aching for it so bad that you don't know what to do with yourself...not unless you borrowed your sister's tool for getting off, assuming you use long-life batteries..."

Nabiki grit her teeth and her eyes began to blaze with fury, and she bit off each word as though it were a separate sentence, "Let. Go. Of. Me."

To her surprise Taro did just that, and without having to be prompted, "Just wanted to get your attention, and I can see I'm onto something here. Yeah, you're harder up for it even than I imagined you'd be. You're wound so tense I could use you to set an alarm clock."

"You want a fight, Taro?" Nabiki glared, "How about right here and now?"

"Naw, no thanks," he said easily, "We'd be wasting our energies without any way of earning a profit, and I'd really hate to mess up that pretty face of yours before I've had a chance to kiss it. But think about my offer. A date with me won't be so bad as you think, and I know you'd enjoy the after-dinner festivities seeing as you've never really been with a real man, and you're just dying to know if you're not queer."

"Don't talk like that to Sempai!" Ryonami snapped, and instantly regretted it as she raised her ledger as though to deflect his expected retaliation.

"Did I just hear a squeek?" Taro asked, only to dismiss the other girl (much to the latter's relief), "Besides, your boss knows what I'm on about. She's got guys and girls throwing themselves at her but she ain't taking orders because she don't really know which team to play for. Me, I got a pretty good idea just which way you'd flip if you gave me half a chance to convince you..."

"Dream on," Nabiki said quite flatly.

"Oh, I am, believe me," Taro leered and inclined his head in a knowing, condescending manner, "Ever since we first crossed swords you've been at the forefront of my thoughts when it comes to having a good time. That first time you got the upper hand on me was a fluke...you've never been able to really beat me in a straight-on match..."

"Only because you keep bringing out the better side of you to cheat and win your matches," Nabiki countered.

"Think so?" Taro arched an eyebrow, "Or maybe it's just my size when I'm in my other form that you're thinking about. Don't think you could take it all in if you tried? We could test that out if you're really dying to know..."

Nabiki could barely contain her disgust as she fought to restrain herself, but Taro went on as though his needling efforts were calculated to make her that much more angry.

"...I mean, what else have you got going on in your life lately, Tendo?" Taro began to slowly pace around her, staying so near as to constitute an additional taunt by his very presence, "You've got a really cute older sister whose got the hots for you...which I admit is kinda sick, but almost sweet in a way. Then there's the other sister who stole the only other man who's even got a flicker of your interest. Topping that off you've got a pair of dykes who can't stop themselves from trying to seduce you, and the clueless twins, the Kunos, who can't figure out that the two sides of your coin belong to the same person."

He leaned closer to where his hot breath was felt along her nape hairs, "But me, I don't mind if you turn into a guy. I'm not into any weird stuff, but your curse ain't any more of a challenge than mine to get around, and I'm willing to accommodate if you'd bend a little and try to see me as more of a nice guy. After all, who do you think's been running interference with my boss to keep him from sending more muscle down to "convince you" to play dice with the Yakuza? If not for me...well, I'd hate to think what might happen to the rest of your family."

"And I'm supposed to feel grateful for that?" Nabiki asked, staring resolutely straight ahead even though her skin crawled with disgust at his very nearness.

"Why not?" Taro asked reasonably, "After all, you've got no real friends or allies to call upon to back your play. You're all alone in this world, nobody to side with you, and as tough a broad as you are you can't be everywhere at once. You've made your choice to be like that, so now you gotta sleep in your own bed, and I'll bet it gets real cold and lonely at night not having anything to hug except that clueless pig who sometimes sneaks into your bed, along with the cat and the buzzard..."

Nabiki shuttered a bit at the mention of "cat," but managed to say, "I manage."

"Not very well from where I'm standing," Taro said before turning away, "You just think about what I said, Tendo, and we'll...discuss the rest at another time."

Nabiki turned her gaze like a laser at him and snarled, "Forty Percent."

Taro paused, glanced back at her then nodded, "Yeah, I think I can get the boss to go along with that. See you at the match, Tendo...just print up some flyers with the time and place and I'll be there, and I'll be collecting on that date, so I'll try not to mess you up too much when I win."

He started to turn around when his field of vision was suddenly blocked by an oncoming foot, and then he suddenly saw stars and went rocketing skyward from a well-placed high-side-roundhouse.

Nabiki was startled as she gasped, "Kei-chan?"

Keiko Arigami stood there with foot raised at an impressive seventy-eight-degree angle, then slowly she brought it down again and resumed standing fully upright with a cocky, "God that felt good! He really had that coming!"

"Arigami-san?" Ryonami reacted, "Ah...what a pleasant surprise, I..."

"Save it," Keiko turned her attention to Nabiki and said, "And what's the idea of accepting a challenge from that creep instead of me? I'm just as tough a martial artist, and I've got even better reason to fight you for a date."

Nabiki rolled her eyes, "Not now, Kei-chan...I'm hardly in the mood..."

"So?" the redheaded half-American girl asked, "When are you ever in the mood? The fact is I was coming here to challenge you myself when I caught that windbag calling me a 'Dyke,' which I am, of course, but it's none of his business."

"You wanted to challenge me?" Nabiki asked blandly, "Haven't we been through this often enough, Kei-chan? I'm sorry about what happened, but I can't be with you. It was a mistake the first time, and I'm not about to repeat it."

"A mistake?" Keiko bridled, "One of the sweetest nights in my entire life, and I happen to know it was the same for you as well!? You've got a lot of nerve, Tendo...making love to me and then bailing out the morning after..."

"I told you a hundred times before," Nabiki complained, "It was my uncle who carried me off while I was sleeping..."

"Oh, you're gonna fall back on that old excuse are you?" the kickboxer snarled before falling into a fighting crouch, "I'm gonna make you take it back and admit that you did have feelings for me, and that you still do, even if I have to pound some sense into you to get past your stupid ego!"

Nabiki reluctantly fell back in a defensive crouch but said, "I don't want to fight with you, Kei-chan. For the hundred thousandth time, I won't date you just because you think you can beat me."

"You mean you think I can't?" Keiko sniffed, "I've been working to improve my Stone Foot technique, and you haven't even begun to see my Shadowskills, and there's a lot more than that in my arsenal that you've never seen before, but which I'll be happy to demonstrate right now..."

She started to launch her assault, and Nabiki fell back in preparation of meeting the challenge, but before the foot could aim home at its target, Ryonami thrust herself into the way, and Keiko deliberately drew her kick to a halt with just an inch to spare shy of the cheek of the other girl, who flinched once but did not move out of the pathway.

"What are you doing?" Keiko snarled, "Get out of my way. you little fool! Do you want to get pounded?"

"No," Ryonami said resolutely, swallowing a thick lump but holding firm in spite of the foot that was just to her left cheek and menacing enough in that she knew perfectly well what it could do if it connected.

"Ryo-chan?" Nabiki was surprised at the authority in the tone of her younger assistant.

"I won't let you hurt Sempai," Ryonami said, "And I know that you don't want to hurt her either."

"You do, huh?" Keiko withdrew her leg and set it down once again as she confronted the younger brown-haired Ryonami, "And what makes you so certain that I won't go right through you, Girlfriend?"

"You won't," Ryonami said, "Because as tough as you are, you're not a bully like Taro, and you know that I'm not a martial artist, but I am good at gambling, which means that I also have to be good at reading people's faces."

There was a slight pause before Keiko conceded, "Point taken."

"Now then," Ryonami said in a more relaxed tone, "You and Sempai are friends...you've fought side-by-side and gone on adventures together, and you love her, right?"

Keiko was more evasive this time, "I...care about what happens to her...which means if anybody is going to pound some sense into her it ought to be me."

"But wouldn't you rather fight her in a controlled match where it could generate some money for you both?" Ryonami asked, "After all, it's not like you're rolling in money yourself, Arigami-san...and-excuse me for point this out-but all the hot baths you have to take because of your...condition must be costing you a fortune."

"True enough," Keiko said more reasonably, "But what do you have in mind?"

"That you postpone taking it out on Sempai until we can arrange a time and place to your mutual liking, with a sufficiently motivated audience who will pay handsomely to see this 'lover's quarrel' through to the final count."

"Lover's quarrel?" Nabiki asked, regretting her subordinate's unfortunate choice of wording.

Keiko thought it over then said, "You make a pretty good case there, Ryonami-san...but what do I get out of putting things off like that? I'd rather settle things now rather than later."

Ryonami smiled prettily and said, "I'm prepared to make it worth your while if you'll only wait."

"Wait?" the pigtailed redhead asked, "Wait for what?"

Ryonami just continued to smile, only now her look was less innocent, and with a lascivious gleam that promised much to be delivered.

Keiko raised her eyebrows then said, "You've talked me into it. When and where?"

"How about right now?" Ryonami asked, "You can pick where, only...one condition...take a hot bath first. You need it."

Keiko reacted as if slapped, "Are you telling me I stink?"

"Only of wet bird feathers," Ryonami moved forward and with surprising aggressiveness took the redhead by the arm and began steering her towards the nearest bath house, "Now then...you were telling me the last time about how you suffered under that pirate...what was her name again? Mistress Loud?"

"Madam Lao," Keiko allowed herself to be guided off by the other girl, "And if you want a graphic illustration of what she did with me, then you've come to the right place."

"I can't wait to hear all about it," Ryonami chuckled, then waved back at Nabiki and said, "Later Sempai. I'll go over those figures with you, and set you up for a double-date later!"

Nabiki just stood her ground and stared in quiet dismay, then shook her head and said, "I'm never going to understand those two...and Ryo-chan didn't have to offer herself up like that for my sake..."

"Somehow I rather doubt that she considers it much of a sacrifice, Son-in-law," a familiar wizened voice slowly cackled.

Nabiki instantly tensed once again, "What do you want, Old Ghoul? Can't you see I'm sulking?"

"More like stewing in your own juices," Cologne remarked as she hopped out on her staff and poised herself respectfully close to Nabiki, "And as Pantsaru said, you're very good at making your own problems and cutting yourself off from the logical solutions."

Nabiki sighed, "Look, I'm not in the mood for sparring wits with you right now, and in case you can't see I've been having a bad..." she paused, "Wait a minute...you were watching me have it out with Taro?"

"Indeed," Cologne replied, "And if Arigami had not chosen to intervene then I most certainly would have. The nerve of that boy, thinking he can have his way with Shampoo's husband..."

"We're not married," Nabiki insisted, "You know I've never done anything to encourage your great-granddaughter in throwing herself my way. It was you who keeps insisting that we're supposed to be an item..."

"It is the traditions of our people that mandate this, not I," Cologne said firmly, "You defeated Shampoo in honorable combat but refused to do you duty by her, hiding behind the fact that your curse caused a bit of confusion. You have long since learned that gender roles are not that big a barrier to us as it is in your country, so there is no sense in denying that your pledge to her was genuine in the eyes of our people."

"But not to me, and not under Japanese law," Nabiki said firmly, "I like Shampoo, but she's...got a few things that put me off, if you know what I mean? Her curse for one thing..."

"I have offered to help you with that," Cologne said, "Your Nekoken is a formidable technique, but if you allowed me to teach you the proper therapy then it would be open to your use without the need for your having to enter a berserk phase, and your phobia with cats would become less of a problem."

"No thanks," Nabiki said, "I wouldn't want to put you to the trouble."

"You mean you wouldn't want to feel obligated to me," Cologne said shrewdly, then sighed, "Son-in-law...you have no idea of what a disappointment it is for me that you refuse to accept the honor that has been bestowed upon you. As an Amazon you would be entitled to the full benefit of my considerable knowledge, not the mere one or two techniques which I have imparted upon you out of a desire to ensure that Shampoo has a strong husband."

"Well, disappointing people is something else that I'm good at," Nabiki replied.

"That you are indeed," Cologne signed, "And it shall always be to my regret that I cannot rightfully call you my Son-in-law...or daughter for that matter."

"Never stopped you before," Nabiki said, "Why make an exception now all of a sudden?"

"Because things change whether or not we wish them to do so," Cologne reasoned, "And it is time to move on. I only regret that I failed to convince you of my great-granddaughter's merits, or the fitness of a union between you."

"Yeah?" Nabiki scoffed, "Well, giving her the Cat-curse was sure a great way of going about it. You turn her into the one animal that I can't stand to be around...and you wonder why I often flee from her in terr...ah...nervousness?"

"Ah well," the old woman shrugged, "We all have made our share of mistakes...and perhaps I have made more than my quota."

"Yeah, life's tough," Nabiki said, "But what can you do about it?"

"Very little I am afraid," Cologne remarked, "Which is why I was coming to meet with you when I came upon the latest episode of the melodrama that is your life. I wanted to wish you well, for I am returning home and won't be back again within your lifetime."

"Say what?" Nabiki asked, "Are you finally giving up and going back to China?"

"Try not to sound so hopeful," Cologne replied, "I am returning to Joketsuzoku...I have been away far too long from tribal affairs and in my absence my rivals on the Counsel of Elders have been sowing great mischief. I can no longer devote my time to dealing with the matter of your engagement to my great-granddaughter, though...were I to be totally frank with you...I have somewhat enjoyed my time in your country. You young people have been a source of great amusement, and I have considered it an honor to train you in such special techniques as the Hiryu Shoten Ha."

"Then why do you have to leave?" Nabiki asked, "I mean...not that I'll miss seeing you around or anything...or Shampoo either..."

"Oh, Shampoo will not be coming home with me," Cologne replied, "She is staying here. I am leaving her the Nekohaten."

"Say what?" Nabiki asked.

"We had a very long discussion about this, and we believe it to be the wisest of courses that are left open to us," Cologne replied, "Shampoo cannot return home but in disgrace for having been rejected by the one to whom she was committed. If she were ever to do so...it would mean great shame and a loss of honor to our entire family, which would mean a loss of position for me with the Counsel."

"Huh? Hey, wait a minute," Nabiki said, "Are you telling me Shampoo's...become an outcast...for my sake?"

"Well, what did you expect that she would do?" Cologne asked, "Fall upon her sword and weep to the gods because she was rejected? I tried reasoning with her to find some suitable alternative. I even considered engaging her to Perfume's husband, Mousse, as a second wife, but...she was adamant and resolute in her decision. She has vowed that she will wed you and no other, and as such has renounced her allegiance to Amazon law. She is now free to make her own decisions, and I wish her well in her chosen life. Try not to make her feel too lonely, though, even if you will not give to her what she yearns for and desires."

"I...I don't...no way..." Nabiki said in appalled tone of voice, finding it difficult to come to terms with this new revelation.

Cologne gave Nabiki a sympathetic nod, "I am telling you this because you will need to know the reason why Shampoo is no longer an Amazon...and why she must define herself on the terms of your own country. She wants to be near to you...even if she can never be with you."

"But...but isn't there some other way?" Nabiki argued, "Don't your people have exceptions that can help her win her way back into their favor?"

"Only one way," Cologne said grimly, "By taking the head of the one who betrayed her and laying it before the Elders as proof that she has avenged her disgrace in the manner of a true Amazon."

Nabiki gulped, finding the mental image not at all to her liking.

"But why mention the improbable?" Cologne shrugged, "She would no sooner do violence to you than she would cut off her own left hand, and you know that she has always been the optimist in our family. It's the reason why I have tolerated her for delaying this long in making her resolution...but as the two-year mark approaches for when the both of you met...it becomes a matter of tribal honor. That is why I can do no more for her, and why effectively she must be dead to me and the rest of her family from this point forward."

"Dead?" Nabiki was appalled, "You can't just pretend she doesn't exist..."

"For her sake that is exactly what I must do," Cologne replied, "Put her out of my mind and my heart and leave her to the fates, or else my hand will be compelled to do the will of tradition. I cannot bring myself to harm my own great-grandchild, and so I must pretend that I have in order to create the fiction that will preserve our family's honor. You need not worry yourself about anyone from Joketsuzoku from taking reprisals against you. You won your freedom long ago when you defeated me. From that moment onward I was forbidden to compel you and have only served as watchful guide in the hopes that you might one day come to your senses."

"But...that wasn't a real fight, I mean...you let me win!" Nabiki argued.

"No," Cologne replied, "I underestimated you, which is why I fought with less than my full measure, and allowed your Nekoken to get past my defenses. I have since come to understand you much better which is why I do not feel rancor in my heart towards you, even if you have cost me the love of my great-grandchild. Now then, if you will excuse me..."

"But why didn't you ever tell me about this stuff before?" Nabiki demanded, "Why didn't you ever tell me what would happen to Shampoo because of my rejection?"

"I was forbidden to tell you that after your defeat of me," Cologne replied, "And pride would not allow it. Besides, you would have thought that I was unfairly attempting to play with your emotions, and you would have rejected the issue as a quaint Chinese custom that did not apply to you, that it was entirely Shampoo's doing that get her into this fix. You would not have wanted to feel such pressure."

Nabiki wanted to protest that it was not so, and yet she knew in he heart that the old woman spoke the truth, which made her weak attempts at a protest feel as hollow as the rest of her as she stood there looking down in frank dismay at the consequences of her past choices.

Cologne saw the younger woman's expression and hesitated a moment to say, "You are young and cannot be expected to be right all of the time, Tendo-san. What seems logical at the moment can, in later times, appear as a grave error of judgement, believe me. I've made my share of mistakes over the past three hundred years ago, but knowing you has not been one of them. But as a parting suggestion, in regards to the matter of Pantsaru Taro..."

"Yes?" Nabiki asked.

"You do have one element of leverage that you can use with him, if you ware willing to compromise and make a deal with the family devil," Cologne noted.

"You mean Happosai, don't you?" Nabiki asked, "You mean go find the old fart and try to work a deal with him to allow Pantyhose to change his name and dangle that as bait to get him to let me off from a possible date."

"You see?" Cologne smiled, "And you didn't even need my prompting. What a Matriarch I could have made from you. It's why I was hopeful for so long that you would at last succumb to Shampoo's charms and become my heir. Such a loss...ah well."

And with that the old woman hobbled away, leaving Nabiki standing where she was with the taste of ashes in her mouth and a looming sense that her life was empty and without meaning.

She did not know how long she stood there before somebody bumped into her from behind, and then she found Ryoga stammering, "Oh, excuse me...didn't see you there. I was wondering if you could tell me how to get to Nerima..."

"Hello, Ryo-kun," Nabiki sighed, seeing the belated recognition in the face of the younger man, who was instantly ecstatically delighted to see her and gripped Nabiki by the arms.

"Nab-chan! It's you! Oh thank the Kami!"

Then he threw his arms around her and almost broke her back, squeezing her to tightly that she could hardly breathe and had to pry herself loose with some effort.

"Easy, Ryoga!" she gasped, "Lighten up on the strength a little! I'm just a girl, remember?"

"Oh, sorry," Ryoga apologized, then reached into his back-pack and pulled out a slightly rumbled bouquet of flowers that looked as though they had been gathered from the mountains, "For you...sorry, I had a gift to go with it, but...happy birthday."

"Ah...thank-you," Nabiki said, "But...my birthday was a couple of months ago, Ryoga-kun."

"Oh," He said, slightly crestfallen, "Guess it took me a while to find my way back. You see, there were these hairy guys called Yeti who gave me some shelter when I got lost in these mountains..."

"So what else is new?" Nabiki smiled lopsidedly, "You never change Ryo-kun...that's just one of the things I've always liked about you."

"Oh?" the Lost Boy said a bit too eagerly, his puppy-dog expression sweetly comical, if a bit too needy.

"Save it for later," Nabiki touched his arm, "It is good to see you again, old friend...but right now...I've got something else to do, so I'm going to have take a powder. You understand how it is, don't you?"

Not giving the boy a chance to respond she turned about and made a leap onto the nearby wall, then vaulted to the rooftop of the nearest house, and from there started a rapid pace as she made her way towards the Furinkan Financial District.

"Oh...sure...I know how it is," Ryoga sighed, then looked down at the bouquet of flowers he was still holding and groaned, "I'm never going to find the courage to tell her. I'll always just be her best friend from middle school..." he turned away, looking miserable and stumbling off to get lost again in some other distant climate...

Nabiki regretted leaving the boy like that but had to make good time in order to get to where she needed to go, which was the Nekohaten restaurant. Arriving there in good order, she descended to the streets once again then pushed her way through the doors and immediately sought out the purple-haired proprietress, who-true to her nature-was dressed in a frilly Waitress's outfit with lots of cleavage that showed off her anatomy to her best advantage.

Shampoo turned a cheerful smile her way and said, "Nihao, is welcome to Cat Café..." but the words and the smile vanished abruptly as she got a sight of Nabiki, to be replaced an instant later by a more radiant look and a delighted cry of, "Airen!"

All at once she crossed the distance to Nabiki and the Tendo heir once again found herself within a grip that was rib-threatening in light of the similar such assault that she had just endured from Ryoga. Ordinarily she would have worked to pry herself loose from her assailant, but under the circumstances she felt it necessary to try and gain Shampoo's attention...and so she did nothing.

That did the trick, for Shampoo was quite surprised at the break in their normal routine, for her Airen was not resisting her glomp, which was ominous enough that she asked, "Airen...is you all right?"

"I will be...if you let go," Nabiki said, not bothering to hide the fact that she was having difficulty breathing.

Shampoo reluctantly complied with the request, not quite letting Nabiki go but keeping only a grip on her arms so that the temptation to back away could be avoided. She then looked up into Nabiki's eyes and asked, "Airen, what is it? Why you come to Shampoo looking so serious and unhappy?"

"I talked to your great-grandmother," Nabiki replied, "She told me you're staying here while she's going back to China...permanent like."

Shampoo let go and took a step back from her "Airen," then it was if a mask fell away as she looked Nabiki in the eyes and said, "Is no her place to interfere anymore. Great-gran...I mean...she who was this one's great-grandmother promise Shampoo to leave her alone so she could get on with affairs and do what Shampoo see as best, not great-grandmother."

Nabiki took notice of the improvement in the Amazon's command of Japanese and said, "Your accent's not as strong as before."

"This one practice you...you're language, Airen," Shampoo replied, "Great-grandmother train Shampoo to not sound so much like foreigner when she speaks. It is difficult...not as easy as way Shampoo talk before...but she is trying."

"I can see you're making the effort," Nabiki said, "But why stay behind? Why give up having connections with your people?"

Shampoo took a moment to reply then said, "Can no...cannot go against Amazon law and remain being an Amazon. Was simple choice to make, go home and die or stay here and be with Nabiki."

"Die?" Nabiki asked, "Would it really have been that bad for you back home?"

Shampoo glanced away, and for a long moment she did not answer, but when she did speak it was not directed at the question but something else much closer to home, her private personal motivations.

"When Shampoo first meet you, Airen," she said, "She see only handsome man come to rescue Shampoo from her loneliness, but then stupid panda show up and spoil everything by dumping pail of hot water over Nabiki head, spoiling the illusion."

She directed her gaze back towards Nabiki and continued, "Many among our people think you deliberately deceive Shampoo and deserve to be hunted and killed for her dishonor. But great-grandmother convince elders to give Shampoo time to decide for self if Nabiki worth sparing or no. When Shampoo confront you in Ne-ri-ma she no have decision ready, but she know where heart say she go, which was at Nabiki side, for you are my Airen."

"Shampoo," Nabiki said, "You know we've been through this before. I never took your oath to pledge your hand to me as serious..."

"Shampoo know," Shampoo replied, "But Shampoo love you anyway...either Kaneda-boy or Nabiki-girl, you is my Airen, and Shampoo swear to love you no matter which you are...or even both."

"But why?" Nabiki asked, "What have I possibly ever done for you to earn such loyalty? I've never done anything but give you hurt..."

"This is true," Shampoo replied, "But is good kind of hurt, one that make Shampoo know she alive."

"But...but why?" Nabiki asked, finding it difficult to comprehend the other woman's reasoning.

"Airen," Shampoo said, then smiled, "If this one can still call you that. This one pledged her love to you before knowing who you were and what you were about. In time since then she has fought with you, beside you, bled and take injury for you, stand watch over you when you hurt, and she think she know you better now than even you know about you self, and so she know her love for you...was not misplaced."

Nabiki stared at the other woman then said, "I don't know what to say about that...only that I'm not worthy of such devotion."

"Shampoo disagree," the other woman said with a smile, "And she stay by you forever, even if you never return her love. You is my Airen."

It was Nabiki who staggered back from this as though physically slapped, only it was in her chest that she felt the greatest impact, seeing the pure unfiltered adoration of the other girl and knowing of its sincerity, of the sacrifices Shampoo was making and the cost to herself that came from making her decision.

She had no awareness of leaving the Nekohaten, only of finding herself staggering down the street some minutes later feeling blind and deaf to her surroundings and wondering how in the name of all the Kami she could have gotten herself into such an unlikely situation. By rights what Shampoo said should not have mattered to her, but in a very real sense she felt the guilt of knowing that she had forced a choice upon the Amazon between Nabiki and her people...and that for Shampoo it had never been an actual contest.

She rolled her eyes and groaned towards the heavens, "Why me? What have I ever done to deserve this?"

"Talking to yourself at this time of the day? Not a good sign, Sugar."

"Huh?" Nabiki turned to see the one who had spoken, "Ucchan?"

"You were expecting somebody else?" Ukyo asked as she was standing before her okonomiyaki shop taking down the sign that indicated that she was open for business.

"Closing early, Ucchan?" Nabiki wondered, "Kind of early don't you think, even for a Sunday?"

"Yeah, well...business isn't too good these days," Ukyo sighed, "But to tell you the truth...my heart really isn't in it anymore. There's just no love in my cooking these days, and the fun's gone out of it. I'm having trouble just meeting the rent, even with the decent rates you helped me work out with my landlord."

"I thought your dad was the one who owned the lease," Nabiki said.

"Not anymore," Ukyo sighed, "He passed on some months ago, as you already know. Cancer finally did him in, and now a trustee board runs his company. I got cut out of the will, left with nothing but a stipend."

"Oh, I'm sorry, Ucchan," Nabiki said, "I've been so preoccupied of late..."

"Yeah, I know," the chef replied, "Funny thing is I have you to thank for it..."

"Me?" Nabiki blanched.

"Well, you were the one who got Ranchan and Akane back together after the last time they broke up, right?" Ukyo replied, "He was staying with me for a time during that Gambler King incident, and I really thought I had a chance of getting him to notice me...maybe even like me, but..."

Nabiki winced, "I know. Me and my bright ideas, huh?"

"Hey, I'm not bitter about it," Ukyo said, "Ranchan's a great guy. I knew that the minute I set eyes on him when I first came to Nerima intending to flatten him so that I could convince my dad that we wouldn't make it as a couple. Kinda silly idea, right? Especially considering that I really did fall for him after all. But when he treated me as nothing more than a friend, never taking me seriously as a woman...well, it just convinced dad that I wasn't meant to cut it in carrying on in a family manner."

"But that's not fair," Nabiki argued, "As...somebody who's used to people not taking me seriously as a girl..."

"Are you kidding me, Sugar?" Ukyo smiled lopsidedly, "You're more woman than the rest of us, Shampoo excepted...maybe."

"What?" Nabiki asked.

Ukyo inclined her head slightly and said, "I have a confession to make...in some ways I'm more than a bit envious. I spent most of my life trying to pretend I was a boy because I thought it would make dad happy...but I guess I'm just the way I was meant to be. But you can turn into a guy anytime you want...a really hot, studly guy with shoulders and biceps and a really nice tush that..."

"Ucchan?" Nabiki said, feeling more than slightly disturbed at the drift in tone of her friend.

"oops...sorry about that," Ukyo said with a wince, "Thought I was over my Kaneda-fixation. I'm almost as bad as your sister sometimes. I'll try not to let that happen again...and besides, I made a promise to Shampoo."

"You did?" Nabiki asked, "What kind of promise."

"That I wouldn't do anything to come between her and you, Sugar," Ukyo answered, "She's been a good friend to me of late since I kinda...well...needed some support to cope with losing Ranchan...and did you know she's renounced her Amazon citizenship?"

"I heard," Nabiki replied, "Because of me...she's been disgraced before her own people."

"Hey, don't take it all on your shoulders, Nab-chan," Ukyo smiled, "You've been honest with her from the beginning. She's the one who decided to stick it out. Just like I've decided that it's time for me to move on, put the past behind me and try to get what passes for my life together by going on to college."

"College?" Nabiki asked, "You mean...you're continuing your education?"

"Well, I don't graduate from high school for another year," Ukyo noted, "But I'm already looking at a number of business colleges, both here and abroad. Maybe in America I'll find what I'm seeking."

"America?" Nabiki asked, "They serve okonomiyaki in America?"

"Probably not," Ukyo shrugged, "I might well be the first one to open a shop there, in which case I could make a real killing."

"I guess so," Nabiki said, "But...I'd miss you if you left Japan."

"I'd miss you too, Sugar," Ukyo smiled, "Maybe not as much as Shampoo...but...all things have to come to an end sometime, and it's not like we could spend the rest of our lives in high school."

"Certainly not," Nabiki chuckled, but then the tightness in her chest redoubled, "I still can't believe how fast things are changing though. Like Shampoo...you...Ranma and Akane...it's just so...unfair."

"Who said life was fair?" Ukyo replied before heading back into her shop, "But tell you what, before I close my business for the day, what say I cook you up an Okonomiyaki to go, just for old time's sake?"

"I guess," Nabiki said, only to pause and frown, "Life is unfair...where have I heard that before?"

"TENDO NABIKI-CHAN-I AM WITH YOU!"

"Oh hell," Nabiki winced, the braced for impact as she saw Tatewaki Kuno come charging up the street, at which point she turned and ran like hell with the lust-maddened Kendoist giving chase to his "true beloved."

Great master of Kendo that he was, however, it was fortunate for Nabiki that he had not mastered the power of high leaps as she had, but no sooner did she take to the air but that a black silk ribbon hissed by her, causing her to stumble upon the roof where she landed and whirl about to confront her new assailant.

"There you are you shameless hussy," Kodachi the Black Rose declared as she stood poised on one leg on the edge of the building, "Seducing my brother with your black arts once again I see!"

"What are you talking about?" Nabiki asked, then dodged out of the way as the ribbon snapped like a whip in her direction.

"You know very well what I mean!" Kodachi said haughtily, "The same arts that you use to keep my beloved Kaneda-sama away from me you foul Enchantress!"

Dodging the next crack of the ribbon caused Nabiki to dangerously unbalance herself on her half of the building, but with the superb skills of the Anything Goes School behind her she was able to right herself by turning sideways, and then snaring the ribbon to send Kodachi tumbling forward.

"Sorry, can't stay around, gotta fly," Nabiki called out as Kodachi caught herself on her hands and knees, then with a mighty leap Nabiki sent herself hurtling towards another building, and paused to consider her best course of escape...

Only to find a pail of water fell over her head, triggering her transformation.

"Honey, " a voice called from over her head, "Be careful where you dump that water."

"Hey, we're on the fourth story, so who could it hurt?" came another voice from the balcony above her head.

"Terrific," Nabiki sputtered, now thoroughly male, "My life is complete-whoops!"

"Got you now you Harridan!" Kodachi snarled, only to change her tone entirely when she saw who it was whom she had captured with her ribbon, "Oh...Kaneda-sama!?"

"Hi Kodachi," Nabiki said weakly, "Um...mind unwrapping me from your ribbon? Urk!"

A flick of her wrist brought Nabiki tumbling up into the embrace of Kodachi, and then nose-to-nose they faced one another with Kodachi grinning enticingly the Black Rose purred, "How nice to see you again, my beloved. It's been too long since we were together like this, and now that I have you all to myself..."

The panicked look that filled Nabiki-kun's expression was made all the more intense as Kodachi leaned forward with the clear intent of planting a kiss upon her lips. He struggled to no avail against the grasp of the ribbon but was unable to make progress, and never was he so glad to be fatefully interrupted as when he heard the angry words, "Halt base Villain! How dare you attempt such a thing with my sister!"

The next moment a bokken slashed through the ribbon and parted it neatly, giving Nabiki a chance to tumble back out of the reach of Kodachi to right himself and assume a defensive posture.

"Knave!" Tatewaki said while brandishing his weapon in an accusatory manner, "Produce my true beloved now or face the righteous wrath of the Blue Thunder!"

"Tachi-kun," Kodachi glared, "For what reason do you interrupt my fun and make threatening gestures towards my Kaneda-sama? And that was my favorite ribbon you just parted!"

"A thousand pardons, Sister-mine, but I could not bear to see you falling for the accursed spells of this foul sorcerer who has deprived me of my beloved!"

"It's that wench who has deprived me too often of my own true beloved who has besotted your wits, dear brother!" Kodachi snarled back in ominously righteous outrage.

"Nay, for my Nabiki is innocent and pure as the morning dew..." Tatewaki stalwartly maintained.

"More like the bird droppings that fall from a cloudless sky my witless brother!"

"How dare you talk to me like that!" Tatewaki rounded upon his sister, "I am your elder and you must respect my wishes..."

"You are not my master or my keeper!" Kodachi snapped back, "And if you don't stop interfering with Kaneda-sama and me..."

"You guys have gotta be kidding," Nabiki murmured under his breath, then promptly vaulted over the side of the building and made his escape before either Kuno sibling could notice.

Fifteen minutes later found her changed back to herself and feeling a bit better about herself as she headed back towards her home, thinking that this day had been just as crazy as many another of late and that the only way to escape her fate was to go back to bed and get some more sleep in so that she would be refreshed and alert when the next crisis happened.

Of course she was only a few blocks away when she was suddenly splashed once again, which caught him by surprise as he reverted back to Kaneda, who promptly halted in his tracks and turned an angry glance towards the sky and spread his hands as he cried, "WHY ME?!"

"Do you really want or need a reason?"

Nabiki turned to see the old woman standing by the gate to her house holding an incriminating bucket in one hand while a large ladle-spoon was found in the other. Nabiki frowned as he said in a growl, "Old woman...would it kill you for once if you learned to aim better?"

"Well," the old woman said back pleasantly, "You should be more careful and look both ways before crossing in front of somebody. After all you can't expect that everybody else will move out of your way, not when you don't go to the trouble to court trouble herself, which I've noticed that you've been doing a lot of lately."

"That's really not any of your business," Nabiki said a bit stiffly, "And what would you know about it anyway? And how is it that you know when to time it so that you can always nail me this good?"

"Call it a knack," the old woman said with a smile that was altogether disconcerting.

A loud noise happening several blocks away brought Nabiki's head around, and what she saw fairly appalled her, a giant construct like something from an Anime was doing battle with one of her classmates, a strangely exotic redhead by the name of Aiko Managi, and of the giant robot there could be but one culpable author.

"Dammit Beiko!" a shouted voice was heard to ring out over the distance as the redhead battled valiantly against the construct, "It's Sunday already, can't you give it a rest?"

"NOT UNTIL I EITHER VANQUISH YOU OR FORCE YOU TO SUBMIT TO MY WILL, AIKO-CHAN!" a slightly demented voice called out, "ONE WAY OR ANOTHER OUR RIVALRY WILL END THIS DAY, AND I WILL EITHER HAVE YOU FOR MY SLAVE OR CRUSH YOU UNDER MY HEAL LIKE AN INSECT!"

"But...that's not right," Nabiki said, "They shouldn't be acting that way..."

"Oh no?" the old woman asked, "How else do you think they should be acting? After all, they behave like that every day that I can remember."

"But..." Nabiki frowned, finding it difficult to formulate just why the picture seemed so out of focus, that two of her best friends were acting like bitter enemies instead of devoted and passionate lovers...or...

Wait...Aiko was one of Akane's friends, and Beiko Daitokuji was a close business associate, nothing more than this...a little odd and clearly as demented as a Kuno, yet unmistakably brilliant and inventive...so what could she possibly have in common with the current object of her obsession? She and Aiko had fought each other for close to two years, a rivalry that started over some girl they both had a thing for...but other than that...Nabiki was a bit unsure of their actual causes and motives.

"So tell me, Tendo-san," the old woman startled her by asking, "What honestly do you make of your life as you currently know it?"

"It sucks," Nabiki responded, "But like I said, it's none of your business."

"Oh, I would not be so quick to say that if I were you," the old woman said shrewdly, then she splashed Nabiki again with the contents of her ladle, only this time it was hot water that greeted the cursed girl, causing her to transform back into her girl form, at which point the old woman nodded sagely and said, "There...much better."

"What...how did you do that?" Nabiki wanted to know, then she stared more alertly at the elder and asked, "Who are you?"

"Forgive me for not making myself more familiar to you before now, even though this is not truly our first meeting, Tendo-san," the old woman bowed, "My name is Kishijoten...you might have heard of me before, no?"

Nabiki blinked, "You mean...like the goddess of Luck? Your parents must have been pretty ambitious."

"You could put it that way," the woman said with a gleam in her eye that caused Nabiki to take a step backwards, "But I tend to be of the opinion that we make our own luck in this life...and every other. People tend to blame me for their lack of good fortune without realizing their own contribution to the greater scheme of things, but I prefer to believe that there is a cosmic connection linking all living souls, and that free will means sharing this world with the hopes, dreams and aspirations of all others. Thus fate is not the result of one will but rather the combined result of all other hopes and dreams overlapping."

"You...?" Nabiki blinked, "No way!"

"I deal out the cards but it is up to you to play the hand that you are given," Kishijoten said, and suddenly she was not quite so stooped, elderly and gray-haired as before, and her robes were of much finer material, and as she straightened up and stood more erectly her complexion altered completely and smooth, youthful skin banished away all of her wrinkles.

"Surprised?" she asked, "You shouldn't be. We Kami and Megumi are all around you, watching you mortals at every turn of the day and the seasons. I just happen to be more of a people person than most, for it amuses me to watch ordinary people struggle daily with their fates, and I'm occasionally pleasantly surprised by the results when mortals exceed my expectations."

"You're...you're the goddess of Luck?" Nabiki marveled, wondering why the concept was not so strange to her now as she would have expected.

"For good and bad, that I am," Kishijoten replied, "And I have chosen to reveal myself at this time because I have perceived a change in your aspect that implies an overlapping of two distinctly different versions of you. There is the you who has chosen to live alone and face the consequences of your isolation...and the you who is inside you watching like one in a dream, absorbing and reflecting on all that she has witnessed through your eyes. It is she whom I will now awaken."

Nabiki fluttered her eyelids and then all at once comprehension dawned behind her pupils, and then she fell to her knees, her mouth hanging open, and a silent keen from within became a loud cry of, "NONONONONONONONONONO...!"

"Yes," Kishijoten said sadly, "I know, it is painful to absorb, but the truth is always better than the illusions that we comfort ourselves with, those appealing lies that salve our conscience and make tolerable the mistakes behind our decisions."

"No...I can't believe it...it's all a bad dream, it must be!" Nabiki spoke to the ground while resting her weight upon her knees and palms.

"A dream to some, a nightmare to others," Kishijoten raised her gaze and said coolly, "And shame upon you, Maitreya, for forcing this child to have to experience the weight of those decisions."

Nabiki sensed a presence by her side and knew who it was without needing to look up, and in soft bitterness she wept and said, "Damn you..."

"A little late for that, don't you think, Tendo-san?" Anri said with compassion in his voice as he knelt down and touched her arms, compelling her to look up into his ageless expression, "And for what it is worth I did not enjoy putting you through this ordeal. I did it for a purpose, a necessary one, to make you consciously aware of all that you have to lose if the reality you know is not safeguarded against those who would destroy it."

Nabiki felt hot tears upon her cheeks as she looked up at the Lord of Light then said, "All those mistakes...those bad choices I made...they weren't real, were they? I didn't really do all that...to Shampoo and the others?"

"Do you want me to lie and pretend that the potential for these things never existed?" Anri asked her, "On a parallel timeline and an earth very similar to your own you made a conscious choice to live a very different lifestyle...or rather events conspired with you to the same effect. The blame is not entirely with you...circumstances simply prevented you from following down the road you know and instead lead to the road that was followed by your paratime sister."

Nabiki's memories flooded back, of how the crisis point had been altered from the moment when she had entered the Amazon's village. In one timeline Genma was found and recognized by one whom he had encountered before, and thus was not on hand to watch her battle with Shampoo, which ended very briefly with Nabiki the victor and-unknowingly-betrothed to her opponent as her lawfully anointed husband.

But in the other timeline the meeting between Genma and Lotion never happened, and Genma was on hand to see the purple haired girl place the "Kiss of Life" on the lips of the "handsome swain" who had ably defeated her, and had reacted impulsively to break things up before matters could go any further. Surging forward to grasp his charge within his paws, he had accidentally caused a pot of hot water that someone had conveniently been holding onto to spill upon the cursed girl, revealing her secret before everyone even as Genma made a break for freedom, dragging Nabiki out of a confused and very irate village.

From that time on everything had gone awry and one incident lead to another with Nabiki making choice after choice that seemed logical and fair at the time, yet whose consequences were such that she wound up not being engaged to Ranma, not recognizing Shampoo for her wife, and not validating the engagement of Ukyo to Ranma as a parallel claim...and everything that had happened since had been the inevitable result of one bad decision following upon another.

"I will confess that one of my sister Goddesses was clearly playing a cruel joke on you providing the hot tea kettle that exposed you," Kishijoten remarked, "But everything else was caused by the actions of you and your adoptive uncle. You may rail at me if you like-I am more than used to that-but much of the blame for what happened lies not within your stars but upon your own singular resolve to be alone and unattached, Tendo Nabiki. The life you lived is the one you chose...or rather that parallel half inside you whom I shall now release from this dual prison."

The goddess of Luck waved a hand and suddenly Nabiki divided into two identical selves, both of whom had a moment of disorientation before one turned to the other, and then with a savage snarl pounced upon her double and pinned her to the grass that lay beneath them.

"YOU!" she spat, "How could you do that to Shampoo of all people? She only tried to love you, but you spurned her claim and dishonored her in the eyes of her people!"

"I-I didn't know!" the other Nabiki responded with wide-eyed dismay, "I had no idea that things would turn out the way they did! I'd never have done anything to deliberately harm her, honest!"

"Shampoo, Ucchan, Keiko, Kodachi-RANMA?!" Nabiki snarled the last word and felt a desire to strangle her other self, "You want to be alone? Fine, be alone for all I care! But by all that's holy you had better do right by those you've harmed through your actions! It may be too late with Akane and Ranma that close together, but with Kasumi and the others..."

"What do you want of me?" the other Nabiki was once again crying, a woman who had very rarely shed tears, and whose tear ducts were getting more use now than they had known in more than a decade, "I can't change time and go back! I can't live your life! I can't do the things you've done...or had your children!"

"Children?" Nabiki looked up at Anri, "The children...my kids! That's what this is all about, isn't it? You showed me a timeline where I'll never know the happiness and joy that I've found from being a mother!"

"Yes," Anri replied, "Once again you have proven your merit, Tendo-san. This is indeed about your children, the ones who will carry on and have adventures in your place when you are the elders and they are the wave of the future."

Nabiki felt a hand touch her shoulder, flinched only to find a third Nabiki standing over her, the older one in the long trench coat.

"In this the Lord Anri speaks plainly," that Nabiki said, "The Children of Time will be instrumental in saving the world time and again. It is destiny...or rather the result of a series of complex choices both made and yet to be made within your lifetime."

The lonely Nabiki from the other timeline stared up at her elder counterpart with rounded eyes and said, "You mean...I failed? I did something so wrong...that I've doomed my whole timeline?"

"Not entirely so," Kishijoten remarked, "There is still hope for your world, and for you, if you but see the missed opportunities that have been dangling in front of you all around, but which you have refused so far to grasp because of your stubbornness and pride, your resolve of long ago to be alone. That is the one choice you have made that you must now rethink if you are to escape the fate that I foresee for you...a fate that I dare not reveal, yet which Lord Anri here can see most clearly."

"Indeed I can," Anri said, "If the fate you have lived is not altered then there is a Tiger in your future, a literal one who will swallow you up and gobble you down whole, and then the fate of your future will be in other hands and beyond your power to recall by any more problematic decisions."

"The Tiger?" Nabiki of the world of fulfillment responded, "You mean...Lao?"

"An instrument of Fate whose role is tied intricately to her destiny as the Keeper of the Kraken," Kishijoten answered, "There are many possibilities that I foresee, but I can only warn you of the perilous road that you will tread. I cannot make your choices for you or directly influence your decisions. Luck doesn't work that way...all I can do is give you opportunities...it is up to you to take them."

"I...I think I can see that now," the Nabiki of a lonely destiny replied, "I understand what I've been doing wrong. I now know that my life doesn't have to be so empty...and so I hope that I will make better choices in the future."

"Time will tell on that," Anri replied, extending one hand, "I will allow you to retain some memory of these events, but only as if viewed in a dream. What remains unaltered is your awareness that things must change for you, and if the changes within your heart are real then you will act differently in the future...and choose a path that will find comfort and fulfillment with wealth undreamed of in your imagination."

The other Nabiki faded away, and the Nabiki who had been straddling her felt the loss of supporting weight as she settled down onto the grass holding nothing but shadows between her thighs...though with a soft ache in her heart she murmured, "Be well, Sister...make better choices."

She straightened up then and turned to regard her older counterpart, "So what happens now? Have I lived through all of that just to teach me to be happy with what I've got and to stop bitching so much about the responsibilities that I carry on my shoulders?"

"Well, partially that," Anri shrugged, "But at least you have a better idea now of what's at stake in this grim game of life we are playing. It is not just your future that is being threatened with erasure...it is your children who will be affected, the real hope for a better and brighter era yet to happen."

"This is something that I concluded myself in my researches," the older Nabiki remarked, "Ranko's friends in your future timeline include your daughter, Lylac, and a number of other significant friends whose qualities suggest a combination of aspects leading to a third yet unborn generation, one that will truly be extraordinary and-in around forty years or so-will strike a significant blow against the Lords of Chaos."

"You mean...I'm gonna have grandkids?" Nabiki blinked.

"Count on it, what with the way they're going," the older Ranma said as he stepped forward, glaring at Anri, "But not if your brother has his way and destroys this whole timeline. I mean...what gives him the right anyway? Even if he is a Lord of Order, he oughta know better than to wreck the whole place just to stamp out one little infection."

"I'm afraid the threat to this timeline is greater even than you suspect, Saotome-san," Anri noted, "The Virus is only the first stage of a greater contagion that the Chaos Lords intend to inflict upon this nation. Genocide awaits the spread of death and its resultant confusion to hatch out his evil pawns, who like mindless sheep will carry out his bidding furthering the anarchy and disruption of social services that Ariman seeks to use to bring about his New World of Disorder. The alterations that he has already made to the flow of time here are what brought the attention of myself and my siblings to the chain of events that are leading to the dark causality of Ariman's making. He not only wants to avert the possibility that the ones who oppose him in the future shall rise to prominence, he seeks to create a world so dark, corrupt and fetid that he knows we will have no other choice but to intervene lest the infection turn to rot and spread to infect the whole of the body. That is why I do what I do now, that is the dark road that I am seeking to avert through my actions."

"And that justifies you tampering with my head, putting me through all of that and letting me suffer in silence while I see another version of me turn her whole life into shit?" Nabiki bridled.

"Yes," Anri answered, "The ends never justify the means, Saotome-san, for the means are ends in themselves..."

"...And the pain of sacrifice is sometimes necessary for redemption," Nabiki finished for him, "Fine sentiments to sanctify actions that would be worthy of the other side, my Lord...but do you honestly think that a cliché can compensate for the agony that you've put this child through?"

"Do you wish to speak to me about agony, Saotome?" Anri's green eyes suddenly blazed, "Have a care...you know to whom you are speaking on that subject? Would like for me to refresh you all on what it means to me to suffer for the sinful choices of others?"

All at once a wave of pain wove out from where the Lord of Light was standing, and the younger Nabiki's mind filled briefly with the intensely hideous image of someone driving nails through her wrists and feet then hoisting her aloft on a crucifix, to suffer and die a painful, lonely death that was only staved off through the illicit use of opiates. The image was a brief one, but it lasted long enough to make her wrists and ankles ache with an electrifying pain that she felt all along her nervous system.

With an effort Anri turned off the flow of his memories then sighed, "Forgive me. I didn't mean to share that with you. You are right, Kishijoten-san...sometimes I let my obsessions run away with me and I forget how fragile mortals truly are. To let my barriers slip even by a fraction..."

"What's to apologize for, Maitreya?" Kishijoten shrugged, "After all, you're only human."

"Yeah?" Ranma said, "Well, I for one ain't taking any more of this. You Daokan have your games and schemes and plans and all of that other stuff...me, I just have my wits and fists, but they serve me good enough most of the time, and I'm not gonna sit on the sideline any more. I'm gonna seek out that damned brother of yours and have it out with him once and for all!"

"Ranma...!" the older Nabiki said in warning.

"Don't try and stop me, Nabs," Ranma warned her, "This time I'm doing what I need to do, what I feel in my gut to be right. Maybe I won't beat him in battle, but I can slow him down a bit, maybe get him to see reason. And besides, I won't really be alone in this...I'll have Shiva with me, and he's got his own bones to pick with ol' Diesel breath..."

"But...!" the younger Nabiki started to protest.

"Don't you start on me too," Ranma warned her, "I feel outnumbered enough as it is. But I gotta do this...you know why, don't you Nabiki?"

The older Nabiki just stood there with her expression caught in horrified realization, but then very slowly she nodded and said, "I know...I just...don't have to like it!"

"Nobody says that you have to," Ranma grumbled, "I don't like doing this either." And then he impulsively reached out to his wife and drew her into his arms for a kiss that lasted a brief five or six seconds before he let her go again, then turned and nodded to the nearby goddess and said, "Wish me luck, Kishi."

"I always do," Kishijoten smiled sadly, "You've long been one of my favorites."

Then Ranma turned sideways and was gone...he just vanished into thin air, right before their eyes, and the younger Nabiki blinked, then after a moment asked, "Do you think he's got a chance?"

"Of course he does," Anri remarked, "There is always a chance...maybe the same as a snowball landing on the sun, but still a chance...maybe."

Kishijoten turned to the devastated older Nabiki and said, "Well? What are you waiting for? Are you going to let your man go off into battle without giving him some backup?"

"But...what can I do?" Nabiki asked, "Against Robar Bartev the Blackguard..."

"Everyone has a weakness, including my brother," Anri noted, "He is also subject to the laws of nature, same as any other living being. Oh true, he can bend those laws at will, but if you were to take him unawares..."

"And how am I supposed to do that?" Nabiki rounded on the Eluini lord, "How do you surprise a man who has intimate knowledge of the possibilities within the future?"

"By thinking laterally of course," Anri answered, "It's what you're good at, and if you applied that fine Lore Master sense to the problem I'm sure you'll come up with an answer. After all, you have all of time and space to call upon, and surely you know of something in existence that can at least slow down...if not entirely deter...my rather hard-headed brother."

Nabiki stood and thought a moment, then a gleam entered her eyes and she said, "There...may be just one possibility..." and then she too turned sidelong and vanished, leaving the younger Nabiki behind to marvel at her counterpart, and at the possibilities of her own future that had been left open to her by the sheer realization of her existence.

"Guess that's my cue to get back to work," Kishijoten smiled, "Nice seeing you again, Saotome-san, and fine work with the baby. If you need to find me you know where to look..." and with that the goddess of Luck vanished into a column of light and was no where to be found from that point forward.

Nabiki turned to gaze up at Lord Anri, "Interesting company you keep."

"You have no idea," Anri chuckled, "But shall we be moving along? There are a few more sights that I wish for you to see, and then I will leave you to your training. That is...if you trust me to continue?"

Nabiki sighed, "I've seen my fate and what might happen, and I've seen the past leading up to this moment, but one thing I just have to know...am I really that important to the greater scheme of it all?"

"Saotome-san," Anri smiled indulgently, "We are each of us important to each other, and to the whole of the universe, which is more than just the quantitative sum of its constituent parts. But what you really mean to ask is...can you really make such an important difference in the lives of those around you?"

"Guess I've already got my answer on that one, huh?" Nabiki asked.

"And you didn't even need me for that," Anri chuckled, extending his hand, which Nabiki took this time without hesitation, "Right this way, now...there is someone special whom I would like for you to meet."

"Not another cosmic being with a take on the greater meaning of existence, is it?" Nabiki asked.

"Oh no," Anri assured, "This one is quite human...and he is dying to see you in a quite literal sense, but why spoil the ending before we get to the beginning...?"

And with that thought in mind Nabiki and Anri vanished together, traveling in the space of a heartbeat from a lighted field of grass to a darkened building with a musty scent that was mixed with the taint of antiseptics...

Continued.

Comments/Criticisms/Clementine: shadowmane

Or: shadowmane9849

Next time up: Anri winds up his tour of time and history with Nabiki (and I really mean it this time, honest!) while other elements begin the march towards the inevitable conflict with a great convergence centered around both Tokyo and Nerima. Be with us next time for: "Axles of Weevil," or, "To Hell and Back...Bought T-Shirts!" Be there!

X.

/pre 


	98. Chapter 98

preDnabiki187

Nabiki 1/2

"A Very Scary Thought"

by Jim Robert Bader

(Inspired by the works of Rumiko Takahashi Others,  
with concepts and characters created by fellow fanfic writers Wade Tritschler, DB Sommers, Nicole Manders, Andrew Greaves, Bill Guiroff and countless others, including "Buffy"  
creator Joss Whedon; with special thanks to my good pal Shiva for his editing and handling of this series.)

(Certain other characters and concepts are of my own innovation, including my interpretation of the Monster of Mary Shelly's novel, the Furies, Trudy, Takaharis Angelique d'Anjou, Anri and the Daokan, Thelendra the Dream Weaver and various other guest stars appearing in this portion of the Nabiki 1/2 series...)

Chapter Seventy.

Episode One-Hundred-Eighty-Seven.

"Access of Evil..."

"Get up Asamiya," Trudy said patiently, "We're not done yet with the lesson."

"Have a heart. Coach," Saki complained from the ground, "I've been doing this for close to an hour! You've been having me throw one kick right after another..."

"And I've been correcting your form, technique and delivery," Trudy retorted, "We're just starting to see some results. Don't bail on me now when you're starting to get near to the point of this lesson."

"And what lesson is that, huh?" Saki asked, "That I can kick away until I give myself a charley horse, or pull a ligament or give myself a hip condition?"

"You think I'd let you injure yourself that way?" Trudy asked, "I'm a better trainer than that, Asamiya, and you're hardly the first girl I've coached along to master this technique...and it just so happens that I do know your limits even better than you do."

"And how can you know that?" Saki asked, panting for breath and hoping the world would stop spinning in a few more minutes, "You've only just met me..."

Trudy squatted down on her haunches and steepled her fingers while balancing her weight upon the balls of her feet, "Because I know you...I listen, I observe, and I remember. My mind is open to a level of awareness that you have yet to begin to tap into. It's not a special gift or anything like that...it's the result of intensive training, of being open to what is around me...or rather of not shutting out the world or blinding myself to the awareness of everything that happens in this moment."

Saki blinked and looked up at her new teacher, "What do you mean? How can you know everything? You'd have to be some kind of a god or..."

"No, just human," Trudy said, "As human as you or anyone else. The problem is...you're used to defining humanity by what you can or cannot do...the supposed limits imposed on us as mortal beings living in a world of flesh and substance."

"I don't understand," Saki admitted as she stared up at the American in confusion, "Isn't being human...being born to failure?"

"What, like you and your mother?" Trudy asked, "You do the both of you a grave injustice. You think that because your mother killed your father and went insane that it means you're an extension of their insanity? Hardly. You are your own person, just as you've always know it deep down, so stop punishing yourself for supposed crimes that are not really part of your nature."

"How can you know that?" Saki asked, forcing herself to sit upright as an anger filled her being, "You can't talk about my mother that way...not with all she suffered..."

"Agreed," Trudy replied, "Your mother suffered much at the hands of a man she loved, and one day she struck back in self-defense, but others called it murder. After all, she was a strong and capable woman, so how could other people accept the notion that a trained martial artist could be the victim of abuse? The very notion contradicts the widely held view of what victimhood means, and so they labeled her dangerous and crazy."

"But she was," Saki insisted, "Her mind snapped when she killed Daddy...she's in a psychiatric ward right now under constant suicide watch. I know..."

"How do you know?" Trudy asked, "Because other people tell you this? Because the subject of the mind is so well studied and understood that mistakes can never happen? Or could it be that your mother is more clever than you give her credit for..."

"What?" Saki blinked, her mouth suddenly dry, "What do you mean?"

"Suppose the only insanity was that she loved a man too deeply who had deep emotional problems and a rage against women so deep that he could not control his own impulses," Trudy responded softly, "Imagine the possibility that she did indeed temporarily go mad when she struck back in retaliation and proved her will to live was greater even than her love for your father. Suppose it came down to making a choice between his life and yours...and that she opted to protect her own daughter..."

Saki stared incredulously, her eyes suddenly going wide as buried memories sprang up to the surface, of being a young girl threatened by a dominating shadow of a man who had become an object of terror within her vision...the same man who used to shower her with love and affection, who took her on rides at amusement parks and read her bed time stories...but who had changed over the years into someone she could not recognize, going from Angelic protector to demonic imposter who used his superior size and strength to impose his will upon his own daughter...and of a mother long cowed into submission striking back when she perceived a threat to young Saki's life, and ending the life of their mutual tormentor.

"You see?" Trudy asked, "You buried the memory in your mind because the pain was too much for any child to have to cope with. You were eleven when this happened, no? Not even yet in middle school, but already showing signs of blossoming into the woman you were becoming."

"I don't...how can you know all this?" Saki asked, "I didn't even remember this until now..."

"Because I listen," Trudy answered, "I hear those memories inside of you. It's not telepathy as you might understand it...it's perceiving the way currents of thought are rising up from within you and projecting these images onto the Akashic surface of the super-reality that underlies all physical existence. Those memories have been crying out from within you to be acknowledged, but you bury and ignore them. I am only receiving what you send out, and I know from the emotional pain you radiate that deep inside of you this is the reason why you prefer to be alone, why you reject human contact and hold yourself in contempt for crimes that were not of your making."

Saki got back on her knees and said, "I can't believe you're reading me this easily. Don't I have any privacy from you?"

"None," Trudy answered, "Because you've never been properly trained to block off your thoughts and emotions. I can no more tune them out than I could blot out the sun and change the world to monochrome. You have to understand...that is the nature of the Power that I serve...to be aware and open to all realities, to exclude nothing, to deny no part of what is real, only to reject the false and unreal illusions projected by the Dark Side of quasi-nether existence, the illusions that you and most of the rest of humanity craft to shield your minds from exposure to an awareness that would frighten and bedazzle you if you allowed yourself to perceive it."

"I still don't understand how this could be so," Saki admitted, finding it strange that she was not more angry and resentful of the intrusion into her private personal counsel.

Trudy smiled then said slowly, "There is a young man riding a bike along the sidewalk not half a kilometer away from us...he has acne and looks a bit anorexic, is bullied by his mother who thinks he should get himself a nice job and break up with his fiancée. Off to my right by around two or more kilometers distance there is a flock of seagulls moving along the coastline, and one albatross whose gotten separated from his own flock. And fifty meters that way there is a tree that has the carved initials of two lovers that's faded quite a bit over the past seventeen or so years. And, of course, I sense a commercial jet liner is passing off about five kilometers sough of here, which you can see from your position."

Saki stared incredulously at the older woman, then her eyes picked out details that fairly astonished her, such as a plane traveling in the sky far off in the distance, a bicyclist off towards the street side of the park, and a flock of seagulls drifting lazily by yet well out of earshot for their gull cries. There was even a tree fifty meters away in the direction Trudy had indicated, and she had a very sneaky hunch that- were she to cross over to it and examine it more closely she would indeed find a pair of carved initials that were nearly two decades engraved.

She noted all of this then stared at her Teacher, who had not turned her head to look at any point in her dissertation, and Saki asked, "How can you know all of these things?"

Trudy smiled back sagely, "Grasshopper...how is it that you cannot?"

"Could...could I learn how to do this...the same way you do?" Saki asked.

"I don't see why not," Trudy replied, "You're already unusually perceptive and intelligent for a girl of your age, and it just requires learning to face the things that you turn your mind away from, just as you were doing until now in regards to your mother."

Saki looked more alertly at her teacher and said, "You...you really think that mom is only faking being crazy?"

"I imagine it would be difficult to judge using conventional psychiatry to determine the point," Trudy replied, "But that is what my instincts tell me, and yours as well if you choose to listen."

"But...why?" Saki asked, then answered her own question, "Because they don't execute crazy people who kill their own husbands?"

"You see?" Trudy nodded, "That wasn't so hard. Imagine how difficult it was for her to be driven to such desperate measures, and then to be judged and condemned for it by those who have never faced a similar such situation. Better to be thought mad and take your medicines like a good little psychotic rather than pay the ultimate penalty for an act that you would do again if presented the same unhappy list of choices."

"But...that means my mom...is suffering in prison...and she doesn't deserve to!" Saki said in an appalled tone of voice.

"It's much worse than that I'm afraid," Trudy noted, her green eyes gazing probingly into the pink-haired young woman before her before saying, "Did you know that your mother used to be an intelligence agent?"

"Say what?" Saki reacted, "You mean...a spy?"

"More like a field operative for the Japanese government," Trudy affirmed, "Which means that she knows things that people in authority might not want to leave unattended in the mind of a compromised agent. So long as she is out of the way and of no obvious threat to them they are contented to let her live, and to leave alone her only surviving family. However...the fact that someone in your government found a way of recruiting the daughter to work with the police as an undercover agent..."

"Are you saying they lied to me?" Saki stood upright, "That my boss...has been playing me for a fool all along?"

"Not necessarily him," Trudy noted, "He's a soldier following orders. It's his superiors who keep him in the dark by supplying him with just enough information to satisfy his curiosity, but underneath it all they have a very different agenda."

"Why that son of a...!" Saki started to swear, then turned to Trudy and asked, "You're sure of this?"

"Positive," Trudy assured her, "Your boss is a man of some integrity, but those whom he serves are men who lie quite easily, who find it better to confuse fact with fiction and who obfuscate with an ease that you would find most appalling. But the one thing they cannot hide from is the Truth itself, which I can perceive due to the Power that works within me."

"You mean like you knowing who's good and bad just by looking?" Saki asked.

"By looking and listening," Trudy affirmed, then inclined her head and smiled sardonically, "Do you know what one of the many special gifts my training bestows upon you is? An ability that makes me different from a regular cop?"

"The fact that you kill people and get away with it?" Saki asked.

"Well, that is a fringe benefit, true," Trudy shrugged, "But I only kill the guilty. I can't kill anyone who isn't guilty of a sufficiently heinous crime unless the Power allows it, which is only if their death will not disrupt the greater pattern of universal order. But my gift also compels me to know the truth that lurks beneath the falsehood. I know when someone is lying to me, or when they lie to themselves, and there is no art or evasion that can mask their guilt from my awareness."

"And how do you do that?" Trudy asked.

"By listening and observing the little clues they exude which gives them away," Trudy answered, "It's a more sophisticated application of the same principles used by a Lie Detector...heart rate and perspiration function as outward signs of an irregularity within their holistic make-up. When a person lies they have to craft an alteration in perceptions in order to make the falsehood sound true or even probable, and the various little ways in which they process information is as much a signature of their guilt as the way in which their eyes dilate and their pupils sharpen. There is also a substantial change that can be read in their aura, and they give out telepathic signs that project "I AM A LIAR" in large-write bold-face. But above all else there is the feeling of dichotomy, that what they say does not match the flow of energy around them. They are not clear and clean in their thoughts or meanings...it feels as though they are struggling against the pull of life itself, creating ripples in infinity that distorts the normal flow of perceptions. As I can also read through Akashic memory the truths that they are concealing it then becomes easy to pierce behind the barrier of their thoughts and know what they are avoiding. It takes time and discipline to perfect this technique, but I can do it as it is second nature for me, and I am almost never wrong, for the Power corrects me any time I attempt to impose my will upon the facts, and steers me back towards the path of inner knowledge."

"Whoah," Saki said slowly, only then another thought came to her mind and she gasped, "You mean...you know everything about me?"

"Everything you attempt to hide is there for me to read, Asamiya...including that which you dread my mentioning aloud," Trudy said with a probing expression, "But don't fear exposure. I won't tell Nabiki about your feelings for her. It isn't my place to interfere in your private personal love-life, I only wanted you to know that I've been aware of this about you since we met just yesterday, and it's one of the many reasons why I chose to make you one of my students."

"You what?" Saki blinked, "You...you knew...and yet you wanted me to train beside Nabiki?"

"I wanted to train her, but you came along and conveniently provided the sparring partner whom she needed," Trudy answered, "I knew you would not walk away and leave her in the hands of a 'dangerously psychotic gaijin,' that you would join in and participate in these lessons so that you could be near enough to protect her...just in case I wasn't on the level. You have very honorable intentions for all that you also have ulterior desires that you are holding in abeyance..."

"I can't believe you're using me that way," Saki said in an appalled tone of voice.

"Why not?" Trudy asked, "Everyone else in your life has been using you in one way or another, why should I be the exception? Ah...but the purpose of my training isn't just to use you as a tool to hone Nabiki's already sharpened skills...it's to make it so that you can never be used again by anyone without your consent or knowledge. You wish independence from manipulation? I'm the one who can show you the way, but you have to decide if you want to go on learning how to escape the trap of your life, to become the very person you deserve to be. It is your choice to make the lessons a reality...I'm simply being frank and open with you so that you understand that it is your will that needs serving, not mine. You decide if this is what you are after and I will provide the key to making it happen."

"But...why do that for me?" Saki asked suspiciously.

"You want an honest answer?" Trudy smiled lopsidedly, "Because I see a lot of myself in you...or rather, I see the me that used to exist before I became what I am now. And I know what it feels like to be tormented by choices, to have feelings of guilt and inadequacy torment you, and to wish for a freedom that you can barely even define, let alone imagine."

"You do?" Saki asked.

"Hey, I was a kid once myself I'll have you know," Trudy shrugged, "And it wasn't that long ago either. Thirty years may seem like a lot to you but for me...it's just the point from my day of birth to the present, and a dozen years past the point when I graduated from high school and went onto engineering school..."

"Engineering?" Saki blinked, "You?"

"Hey, I came damned close to holding a degree in graphics design and making a living as a draft designer," Trudy answered, "Of course...somewhere along the way I got...distracted in my life-path, but I found myself eventually, and so can you if you allow it."

"Let me see if I have this straight," Saki noted, "You went from doing blue prints to being a Cop?"

"Actually," Trudy looked somewhat evasively to the side, "I ran out of money early on, and by the end of my first semester in college I was heavily in debt from school loans. My family wasn't wealthy, so I...found a side-career to pay for my lessons and help get me free and solvent. It was a night job with lots of flexible hours, very few benefits, and a lot of personal demands that needed to be serviced from clients who paid good money for my time and attention..."

"Hah?" Saki said blandly, then hesitantly said, "You worked as a waitress?"

"Nice try," Trudy smiled, "And thank you for being so diplomatic, but you already know what sort of career to which I am referring. I was both an Exotic Dancer and a Call Girl by the time I turned twenty, and I made a reasonable killing back then even though my boss soaked up most of the profits."

"You mean...you sold your body for pay?" Saki felt a certain aversion to the very concept.

"Hey, I was good at it, don't fault me for taking the low road as a career path," Trudy said, "But then my life changed completely when I was twenty-three years of age, and I met my counterpart from a parallel future timeline who bestowed upon me the gift of the Power through a mental joining of soul and spirit, which is where I learned to do the things that I now do as if second nature. For the past seven years I've been both a Cop and an Assassin, but I haven't forgotten what it was like when I was struggling along deaf, dumb and blind to the possibilities that existed within me. And that is what I mean by saying that you and I share a lot in common."

"Are you comparing me to a prostitute?" Saki bridled.

"Oh, hardly that," Trudy smiled, "I never walked the street or turned tricks at street corners, and my clients were generally clean and better dressed than the Johns you meet standing under street lamps...but I would compare what I was doing back then with being a street-wise punk who ran her own petty graft and extortion outfit while in Middle School, and who now tries to live down the feelings of guilt that she carries around inside of you. In both senses we were "fallen women" who saw the error of our ways and did better. But more than this...I also know what it's like to feel unrequited love someone who is barely aware of our infatuation."

"You what?" Saki blinked again, "You mean...you, Sensei?"

Trudy slowly nodded, "She was my cousin who I looked up to from an early age...someone who saw past the circumstances of my life and accepted me whole heartedly as a person, and who saved me from a very bad scrape involving some...guys who sought to abuse me. I fell in love with her before I even knew what the word meant, and I'd never felt the same way about any of the boys in my class. I'm not a full fledged Lesbian, you know...I do like men, I just...don't find them nearly as attractive as the ladies. I think it comes down to wanting to be understood and needed rather than just desired and enfolded. I need someone who can see the real me and accept me for what I am, and...I'm afraid there aren't that many guys who can do that...at least not to my satisfaction."

"You mean you think only a woman can understand the needs of another woman?" Saki asked.

"Oh, don't get me wrong," Trudy answered, "There are sensitive men out there who are kind, caring, compassionate and understanding of the needs of a woman...but nothing substitutes for having the same kind of plumbing. A woman knows her own body intimately and thus can relate to what another woman's body feels like, and what is and isn't pleasing. It's kind of like having a home team advantage."

Saki felt her cheeks blush and it was her turn to glance away, "Ah...guess I can't really argue with that. I...kind of had a boyfriend for a while there, but...it didn't really work out. He was nice but kind of weird in a puppy-dog kind of way...and I wanted more than that in a relationship. I...I don't understand why I started to feel this way towards Nabiki. At first I just thought it was the hormonal rush of seeing her as Kaneda that got to me..."

"But then you started to get to know her more as a person than just an object of lust," Trudy said shrewdly, "And that changed the chemistry of the equation. But the problem for you is..."

"She's already married," Saki said grimly, "And worse...I like her wife, I really do. I consider Shampoo to be one of the loveliest people whom I've ever known, and Ranma's an okay kind of guy, if you like the type, I guess..."

"But still you can't hide, let alone repress the feelings you've started to develop for her in either of her two gender identities," Saki sighed, "Which brings us back to what we have in common. I loved my cousin deeply, but she was always with a man in one sense or another...and I kept missing my opportunity. Plus the fact I was afraid of rejection."

"So...what did you do?" Saki asked.

"It's kind of funny really," Trudy mused, "I finally did confess my feelings and it turned out she felt much the same way with me. We had an affair, but eventually our lives parted in different directions. I'm with Carla now and she's enough woman for me to handle. To tell the truth I'm rather amazed how Saotome manages to keep four mates in line and well-contented, but I wish her all the best. I just have to say...it really is a shame that you don't want to try and be number six in the family circle."

"You've gotta be kidding me!" Saki was appalled, "You think I want to be just another concubine in her harem?"

"Well, why not?" Trudy asked, "I've known people with real harems who love and care for every one of their spouses...and we both know from intimate first-hand experience about a certain self-named Pirate who's made a whole career profession out of adding new notches to her metaphorical belt."

"You mean...Lao?" Saki's eyes widened, "You mean...you met her...and you let her live?"

"Funny about that," Trudy winced, "Remember what I told you about the Power only letting me kill people who desperately need killing? Well...her bond to the Kraken kind of grants her partial immunity from my retaliation...but I was able to work my freedom back from her clutches by cutting a deal that worked to our mutual satisfaction."

"A deal with the devil incarnate?" Saki growled.

"Hey, I've done much worse things in my time," Trudy shrugged, "But you should know for yourself that you never escape from Lao Kane completely...at least not with negotiating a deal or winning loose on terms to her satisfaction."

Saki glanced away and it was a full minute before she spoke again, "I guess maybe we do have a few things in common...coach. But I just don't see how this training of yours can really help me win my freedom...not if it comes with as many restraints as you're saying..."

"Oh, don't sell the Power short just yet merely because you can't get everything you want on a silver platter," Trudy smiled, "There's more than enough satisfaction to be found in knowing that you can never again be lied to, and never have to fear from bullies abusing the weak and the helpless in your presence."

Saki took another minute to answer, "I guess that would do for now. But...I can't do that to Nabiki. I'd sooner die than to spoil the happiness of her marriage..."

"Noble sentiments if a bit overly melodramatic," Trudy noted, "But I'd consider it a tremendous waste of your potential if you didn't learn to trust your instincts and intuition more...and not just do what your head tells you is the right decision. You may find that things work out for the better if you give your instincts the chance they need to guide you to the path you were meant to follow."

Saki looked troubled as she attempted to piece together the thoughts that her mentor way imparting for her benefit, but then she said, "You really think that my mother chose to be crazy was to protect me from her superiors?"

"Why ask a question for which you already know the answer?" Trudy answered, "And before you ask the next one, yes...by training with me you can ultimately gain what you need to liberate your mother. But you're going to have to learn to trust me, first, which means doing exactly what I tell you to do and getting back to the basics of your training."

Saki thought about this for a long moment before turning back to her new Sensei and saying, "I don't have to kill anybody just for taking these lessons, do I?"

"Not a requirement, but an option," Trudy replied, "I'll leave it to your conscience to decide to what use you may put my training, but once you are far enough along in the program I think you will have a very different take on the world and your place within it. For now...I want you to resume kicking until you get it just right...because you're getting close to the moment, and when you feel it...it will happen."

"What will happen?" Saki asked her.

Trudy smiled, "You'll find out. For now let's just say that I'll be more satisfied as your teacher. Now start kicking."

"All right, Coach," Saki sighed, then assumed a ready stance and at once launched an improved roundhouse kick following all of the guidelines set down by her new Sensei...

Nabiki balked upon entering the unlit room, the smell assaulting her senses even on the threshold of entering. It was not a nursing home, such as where such smells were likely to be found mixed with the heavy pungent odor of antiseptics, but rather a rather palatial residence that demonstrated wealth and power of a kind that she could scarcely have imagined. The place felt like a crypt in some ways, and yet without quite knowing why she perceived that the room was far from totally empty of all life.

"Who is there?" a feeble, wheezy voice inquired from the shroud of the darkness, "Is that the nurse? If so, then good...it's time to change my catheter again..."

To Nabiki's considerable surprise she heard deep respect in Anri's tone as her mentor said, "Forgive our intrusion, honored Sir. It's not the nurse, but someone else who seeks your time and attention."

"Oh," the old voice wheezed, "Is it you again? How nice...it's been far too long since your last visit. I was beginning to wonder if you had forgotten all about me..."

"Hardly that, Taishi-san," Anri smiled as he bade Nabiki to follow him, which she did covering her nose and putting a handkerchief over her mouth. She reconsidered this when she saw Anri frown at her and promptly put the scarf away, but steeling herself for the smell was an entirely unpleasant thing, for the air reeked of impending death and its source no doubt was hovering on the edge of eternity, and like any youthful person she felt a natural aversion to what it represented.

To her surprise she discovered that it was not truly dark outside but rather that the windows were covered over with thick mats blocking out the sunlight. The lone occupant of the room no doubt preferred it this way and was, in fact, bound to a wheel chair with an IV bottle feeding liquid nourishment and medicines to a spindly twig of an arm. The man in the chair was aged beyond recall with lines and wrinkles aplenty, and from what little she could tell in the light he seemed to be borderline on senility, a possible victim of Altzheimers or some other such debilitating illness.

But when she approached near enough for him to catch a glance at her she saw shock and recognition there, and then an incredulous exclamation as he wheezed out, "Bu-Bureho-san? Is it you? You're alive? Incredible...what a delight it is to see you again, my old comrade..."

"Um...excuse me?" Nabiki halted in mid-stride, her bare feet absorbing the smoothly polished wooden floor and conveying a cool sensation that spoke of something disturbingly ancient and unnerving.

The man paused, seeing the lack of recognition in her eyes and took new stock of her before saying, "Oh...excuse me. Pardon an old fool...I thought you reminded me...it's so incredible...you look so much like her..."

"Taishi-san, this is my niece, Tendo Nabiki," Anri said by way of introduction, "Nabiki-san, may I present to you Takamura Taishi, a young hero of decades past whose experience can enlighten you on the nature of our enemy and the crisis that we are currently facing."

"Another one?" the man in the wheelchair smiled faintly, "No thanks...I had enough of those when I was this young person's age. But...Tendo did you say? There was a Tendo in our unit...a fine chap, very respectful. In fact...he was somewhat related to Bureho-san...and...oh my lord of the Stars and Heavens..."

He stared at Nabiki as though he had just discovered that she was a ghost, and as she tried to make more details out from his vague, shadowy outline she had the unnerving sensation that this was not, in fact, their first actual meeting, that she knew this fellow from long ago, before even the time of her memory, and that he once meant a lot to her, though he hardly looked a thing now like he had at their last meeting.

"Life is a Circle, as I believe I did mention to you the last time we spoke together," Anri noted, "Times change but life continues, as it properly must with the passage of the seasons."

"You...you never told me..." the old man started to shed tears, "You never told me that she was back. You only said that it would not be our final parting...and I never knew what you meant until now..."

"If I had told you would you have believed me?" Anri asked.

"Yes," the old man said feebly, "I would have wanted to know...to know that her bright spark would survive no matter that death's embrace took her long ago. I would have wanted to know that her line would continue."

"And now you do," Anri said with soft compassion, "Now...could you please do us both a great favor and bring this young lady up to speed regarding a certain menace whom you know so well, the one who caused such suffering and tragedy for you and robbed you of the years that you might have spent together?"

"Of course...of course, Anri-san..." the old man said with a sigh, "It's just...been such a long while since I've dwelt upon those memories. I've had so many since then...pleasanter ones...and I'd rather dwell on the present than the past, even if those memories do contain...such sweetness."

"Excuse me?" Nabiki managed to ask, "Do I...know you?"

"No, no reason why you should know me, Child," the man smiled with a knowing gleam in his eye, "But...it would be nice if you could remember. Ah well...what is it you wish me to share with her, Anri-san? I've lived through so many adventures..."

"The Kishin Corps," Anri replied, "Tell her about the enemy and the way in which you fought them."

"Oh," the old man nodded sagely, "That."

"The Kishin Corps?" Nabiki asked with a strangely electric thrill running down her spine, as if the very name conjured up something within her that was dormant and yet stirring.

"Ah yes, the Kishin Corps," the old man said fondly, "Those were the days, when it seemed as though the world at last had been united and joined against a common enemy, the ones who threatened peace throughout all the world. There was Bill and Eva and the old gang, and Kei and Mehiko and all the rest...but mostly Bureho...I remember her the best of all was Bureho. She cut quite a swath in those days and my world seemed to revolve a great deal around her, even if we were never lovers. In a way I suppose we were all a bit in love with her, though she kept herself so much apart that she seemed more like one of the boys rather than a soft and dainty woman...which she most certainly was not..."

"What are you talking about, Sir?" Nabiki asked, "Who were the Kishin Corps?" and she left unspoken the question, (And why do I feel as though I ought to remember...?)

"The Corps," the old man's eyes gleamed in the dim light of the room as though the memories were rekindling inside him, "Founded in the nineteen-thirties, back during a time that was a lull between the great wars in the shadow of the Imperial gauntlet. It was an idealistic notion, a cooperation between Western and Eastern scientists who combined their talents to create the Kishin warriors that we used to repel the invaders. There was Thunder, Dragon and Wind at first...then lastly my own Titan. Four weapons of peace aimed at destroying the heart of the enemy, and we found hard for our eventual triumph...but at such cost...so many friends who died to make the dream possible. Now only I remain...the last of the Kishin army..."

Nabiki turned to Anri and asked, "Do you have any idea what he's talking about?"

"Don't be rude, Saotome-san," Anri murmured., "This is his story, this young hero of valor and glory, so let him tell it as he wishes."

"Hero?" the old man scoffed, "I suppose you could say that, though my friends who perished in the war deserved the title far more than me. I remember Sergeant Yamato always saying that the only heroes he knew were dead ones, that the duty of a soldier was to stay alive long enough to make a hero out of his enemy. Ah...I miss those times indeed, even if I had only a fleeting sense of the privilege that was mine in sharing the same space as those whose honor it was for me to serve beside."

"Indeed," Anri remarked, "Such a pity that the world at large never knew of your heroic sacrifice for the sake of all humanity. Indeed, as my niece here can attest, the very name of the Kishin has been suppressed and will likely be forgotten after you journey on to discover your new adventure."

"True, but I suppose it would be for the best," the old man reflected, "The world is not prepared to know of the terrible secret war being waged behind the war that made the headlines. How could ordinary people be expected to cope with the knowledge of an extra-terrestrial visitation, let alone a hostile one that sided with the Nazis and briefly caught the fascination of the Militarists who ran our own country."

"What?" Nabiki asked, surprised beyond words at this new revelation.

"It began in Russia, in a remote portion of Siberia, where an event transpired that the world largely believes to have been a meteor strike, but which only a privileged few know in fact to be the crash and explosion of an extra-terrestrial scout craft whose purpose was the pave the way for an invasion force that might have well overrun the planet. Fewer still know of what was uncovered in the wreckage of that sight, and what impact it would pose to the safety of humanity...the five Kishin modules that would become the heart of each powerful weapons system."

"Weapon systems?" Nabiki asked, feeling a disturbing sense of familiarity with what this old and withered husk of a man was saying, and wondering just what it was about him that seemed so haunting and disturbing, as if stirring dormant memories of a time and place outside of her normal conception.

"They were alien technology representing a civilization many centuries more advanced than our own," the old man continued, "Believed to originally have been at the heart of the space ship that carried them to us from a distant star. Further analysis by my father suggested a hostile alien culture that was set and determined upon interplanetary conquest. The problem that these invaders faced was one very familiar to us from the limitations upon our own military at the time...transporting a sufficiently large invasion force from their world to our own was massively energy and resource intensive...so they needed a bridge to shorten the distance between worlds. A portal, if you will, to gate between our two planets and thereby establish a breech head from which to establish a colony. In this endeavor they were aided and abetted by the Nazis, and Hitler himself cut a deal with these colonists to use an island off the coast of Germany as their central base of operations."

"Say what?" Nabiki asked, wondering if the man were rambling on about some sort of science fiction scenario out of an Anime movie, only Anri made a motion for her to hold her peace a bit longer as the man continued to outline his bizarre revisionist historical paradigm.

"History does not record the fact of Hitler's collusion with the invaders," he said with a grandfatherly look of someone who knew that the young were doubting his integrity, a knowing smile that made it seem all the more chilling as he added, "The aliens dangled something before the Fuhrer that he found quite irresistible...immortality...for which he was willing to sell out the entire human race. Ro atone for her part in helping to give the Nazis their form of the Kishin technology Eva volunteered to undertake a suicide mission, seeking a personal audience with Hitler that was based on their past relationship, seducing and then killing him on their supposed wedding night, then taking her own life with a cyanide pill. Bill never completely recovered from this...nor did Maria, my wife, Heaven bless her soul and keep her safe from evil..."

"What?" Nabiki asked, now wondering if the man had wandered completely into senility, or was he telling her that the story regarding the final days of the Third Reich were not as the textbooks had recorded.

"Tell us about the modules, old friend," Anri urged gently.

"Ah yes," the old man said as if being steered back onto the point, "Quite extraordinary...some type of living machinery, capable of generating a vast supply of power to any device that had it as its core. The problem was it took a considerably large amount of electrical current to jump-start the things from the state of relative dormancy that they lapsed into when not actively pressed into service. Once awoken, though, they tended to link with the operator or pilot in a kind of spiritual bond that made them effectively into an extension of the pilot's motor systems, like a living interface that gave unto the pilot or operator the ability to link with their Kishin machine using off-the-shelf technology that had been honed and refined since the time it was pioneered, about a generation ahead of our own by the Imperial Flower Unit, of which-alas-very little is now remembered."

Nabiki fought the urge to scratch her head as she pondered this then said, "Just when did all of this take place?"

"Before and during the second world war," the man replied, "At the same time that the Kanto army became actively involved with the Kishin project...and attempted to hijack the technology for their own selfish dreams of earthly conquest."

"The Kanto army?" Nabiki pondered, "You mean the Canton army, don't you?"

"No," the old man said firmly, "They were a special division tasked by the Tojo government with commandeering the work of my father and other scientists who had enrolled in the Kishin program. By that point, however, the Kishin Corps was entirely active and a thriving independent unit with allegiance to the allies. As its name implies it harbored a goodly number of Japanese ex-patriots who-joining with their International colleagues-were dedicated to the goal of expunging the aliens from our world by any means necessary. To that end the Kishin Warriors were dispatched, and for eight long years they waged a furious battle to defeat both the aliens and the Kanto army, eventually carrying the fight all the way to the heart of Berlin, where we nearly met with total disaster."

"Wait a minute," Nabiki said, "You mean...these Japanese were fighting against the Home Islands with the Allies?"

"But of course," the old man affirmed, "Many of us saw what was going on under the misrule of the Imperialists and we sought to put a stop to things in our own quiet way. Ours was a hot war fought in the background with stealth and subtlety, but mostly we have the power to even muzzle the press and keep rumor of our activities in short supply while we battled it out with our machines against a relentless and ruthless foe who stopped at nothing in the pursuit of their own dark ambitions."

"But it wasn't just against mortal enemies that you fought and contended, did you sir?" Anri asked, "You discovered much about the aliens as you fought to repel them, and what was your conclusion."

"That we never actually met the real aliens," the man said somberly, "We only fought against their proxies and the legion of loyal pawns who did their dirty work with unflinching devotion. It took quite a while to piece it together, but gradually it was determined that the foes we fought were not actual aliens but rather a kind of synthetic life form manufactured by an unknown process and given limited intelligence so that they could serve as the shock troops of their masters and be used to overrun the planet."

"By all means describe them on the behalf of my niece," Anri urged.

"As if I could ever forget what they were like," the old man nodded, "Their bodies were a type of soft plastic-like substance that was highly reactive and combustible, and if you hit one with enough kinetic force it would cause them to explode with great force, so the only safe way to kill one was with a knife, sword or dagger. Generally hitting them in their single eye was a preferred target of choice, but just about anywhere would do, and when you hit them they would crackle with an enormous electrical surge just prior to termination. It was only later that our scientists deduced that these unusual qualities had been artificially bred into a synthetic life form as a part of their unusual make-up, and that-in actuality-their bodies were composed of tiny little machines...what they now call Nanobots...held together in coordination by the central eye, which was both their brain and controlling relay network. Take it out and the lesser bots in their gel plasma could not sustain themselves independently. In effect they were the perfect soldiers for whatever human monstrosities constructed such a perversion..."

"But eventually you did turn the tables upon these aliens and permanently stopped their invasion," Anri pointed out.

"Yes, that we did...but at great cost," the old man sighed, "The Americans contributed a new type of weapon to the project when we stormed the gates of the enemy stronghold just off the coast of Germany on an island...whose name I forget at the moment. You have heard, of course, that by the end of the war they had perfected two versions of an atomic bomb that they meant to use against our country, young lady?"

"Yes," Nabiki answered grimly, "Fat Man and Little Boy. Every kid in school knows that...and what they were used for."

"Ah, but what they do not teach you in school was that there was a third atomic device that was created," the old man said with eyes sparkling in the memory, "A third prototype that took what was learned in the crafting of "Little Boy" and further enhanced it with a cobalt layering of English manufacture. This theoretically intensified the effect of the blast a thousandfold...and we dropped that weapon down the literal throat of the enemy by taking advantage of their dimensional gate to send the weapon back to their home base. Rather an impressive feat of tactical engineering that, dropping the weapon at twenty-thousand feat and precisely centering on a ring no more than thirty meters in diameter..."

"Indeed, most impressive," Anri said with a faint smile that seemed to hint that he knew more about that "lucky strike" than to which he was alluding, "And the effectiveness of the deed is proofed by the total absence of subsequent alien activity. Your cobalt device worked perfectly, sir. You got the enemy...all of them in just one strike."

"Oh?" the old man arched a withered eyebrow, "I've always wondered about that. In a way I've felt guilty as well as elated at the knowledge that the enemy...did not recover from our strike. We took heavy losses in that battle...heavy losses...good friends killed, the Kishin Corps...all but destroyed but for their weapons. Our Four Kishin modules alone survived, and that technology was deemed so dangerous that after the war the Corps was officially disbanded and the modules locked away in some government warehouse where they gather dust to this very day. You see...we had determined that the modules were themselves an extension of the enemy, albeit one we tamed to our own more-or-less benevolent uses. But still...the thought that I had participated in deliberate genocide against another sentient species..."

"Ordinarily you would have been quite correct to harbor such sentiments, Sir," Anri replied, "It is never a good thing when one group targets another for deliberate extermination...but in this case you are to be forgiven. Those Aliens were a parasitic life form that the Universe was better rid of, quite alien even to the fabric of the universe itself and totally subject to a destructive force that is the enemy of all life. Be grateful that you never met one in the flesh, and that the crude gate technology that they used was dangerous to their bodies so that they had to use their artificially constructed minions to do their dirty work. Know that in ending them you cut off a far worse breachhead that might have well gone on to terrorize numerous other intelligent life forms."

"Ah...well...there is some comfort to be found in that," the old man sighed, "In truth what you say confirms my own deep-held suspicions about the true nature of our Kishin war. At the time I was a very young man full of youthful idealism and hope for the future, but as I have progressed in years...I have learned to see far beyond the limited scope of my horizons...and with Maria's assistance drew a number of startling conclusions about the enemy that I recorded in my journals. I forget what I did with them...gave them to one of my sons most likely...but Maria kept her own notes and memoirs handy...just in case such knowledge was ever again needed. Now...if you will excuse me, I am very tired. I've been feeling less and less myself of late and...my mind has begun to wander. So many memories...and ghosts long since forgotten..."

The man's voice trailed off and his chin slowly fell forward towards his breastbone. Almost it seemed as though a light had gone out of him, as though he had been sustaining himself up to this very moment on sheer will to live alone, and that without a motive force the strings keeping his puppet-frail form together had gone slack all together.

"Rest well, Taishi-san," Anri said softly, "You've earned your place in heaven. Though the world at large may never know of your heroism and self-sacrifice, the gratitude of the Daokan is everlasting and eternal."

Nabiki stared in quiet awe and felt strangely moved by the knowledge of the old man's passing before her very eyes. She was even more startled when a brilliant light opened up from above and shone like a spotlight over the man's motionless body, and then it seemed to her eyes as though the years fell away and he regained the semblance of his youth and went from withered and frail to strong and handsome in the space of a single instant. He lifted his head and smiled at her, then quite easily rose up out of his wheel chair and stood erect, stretching as though sloughing off an old, worn set of clothing, then turning and waving hello to parties unseen off on the sideline...and without needing to turn her head Nabiki realized that they were not alone...that others were with them.

Sure enough men and women stepped forward, a strange assembly of different racial stocks each dressed in the same basic uniform, all but for a few individuals who stood out from the pack.

Among those whom she thought she recognized was a distinguished fellow in an officer's uniform who reminded her oddly of her father...or rather the resemblance to him was difficult to deny, albeit he wore a wheel cap and had dark glasses on. It was his stance and bearing that suggested it more than anything else, and Nabiki had the curious sense that she and this fellow were in some odd way related.

Another who stood out was a tall and aristocratic looking gentleman of Eurasian stock, a mingling of Japanese and Gaijin features clearly evident in his handsome and gentle-looking demeanor. Another was a large and stocky fellow with a cheerful smile and a friendly disposition who clapped Taishi Takanada on the back, and then a slender and wand-like willowy woman appeared, a woman with Chinese features yet long strawberry-blond hair that dangled almost to waist level and who looked rakishly dashing in her one-piece jumpsuit with notable dragon-like insignia on her eplets.

This latter woman turned towards Nabiki and gave her a sardonic smile that was almost electric and caused a shudder of dismay to pass down Nabiki's backside, for she seemed to know this woman from somewhere in the distant past, yet just how it was that she could know her remained a mystery, one that faded with the lot of this so-called Kishin-Core when the overhead light swallowed them whole and they vanished together in a blaze of dwindling glory.

Darkness resumed its hold upon the chamber, only now when Nabiki stared at the withered body in the chair she saw it for what it was, an empty husk no longer needed and quite easily discarded. It had served its purpose but had been gratefully abandoned, its former occupant gone on to a higher glory. And in realizing this she did something very rare for her and made a motioning sign as was the Shinto practice in the presence of the recently departed.

"You will see him again...eventually," Anri informed her, "Life is a circle, and death is but a doorway. Is that not so, my lady?"

Nabiki gasped as she sensed yet another presence in the room, then almost jumped in alarm as a womanly figure stepped forward, not very tall yet extremely pale-skinned with raven dark hair and eyes as black as the night, which matched the filmy dress that she was wearing. A single silvery ankh hung like a pendant between her breasts, and her smile was an oddly chiding one, as though she were miffed about something but too pleasant in her demeanor to come right out and state her reasons.

"Anri," this chilling and disturbing stranger spoke the name as though it were teasing, "Once again you interfere to foil my sport, you naughty boy you. You know perfectly well that it was not yet his scheduled time of departure..."

"So I adjusted the timetable a bit," Anri shrugged, "So sue me."

"Oh sure," the woman snorted, "As if I would try the patience of one of my Lawyers by pitting them up against you. Ah well...another catch that escapes me. This cat-and-mouse game we play is very tiresome, and yet we keep on playing."

"The dance between Life and Death is an eternal one, my lady," Anri said, "As it should always be with one side never entirely ahead of the other."

"True enough," the pasty-faced woman turned her attention from Anri to Nabiki, "And who is this, and does Elea know about her yet?"

"Ah," Anri nodded, "Forgive my curtness. Saotome-san, this is my fair Lady Thanatalia, and old...acquaintance of mine from long ago. And this, my lady, is Saotome-Tendo Nabiki..."

"Saotome Nabiki?" the woman scowled, then pulled out a leather-bound note book from seeming no where and started fingering through the pages, "Odd...I don't have any listing of her. She's not on my schedule..."

"She's with me," Anri explained.

"Well, I can see that naturally enough," Thantalia replied a bit testily, only to pause then add, "Or do you mean...oh no. You've taken on yet another apprentice?"

"Call it a weakness," Anri shrugged with a smile, "You know I have a tendency to meddle."

"That's like saying that Sekhmet has a taste for the wine," the pale skinned woman snorted with a rolling of her eyes, "Ah well...a loss is a loss and by now I should be a better sport of it, especially with you around. But I do wish you'd play fair once in a while..."

"What would be the point?" Anri asked, "With stakes as large as you know them to be?"

"True enough," the lady in black conceded, "But by now you know that my Lord has dispatched my husband to obtain a sample of the virus, and with his means we should have it secured very shortly..."

"That's if you and Charon have not grossly underestimated the opposition," Anri noted, "Recall that storming the gates is usually my brother's strong point, and that Reka hardly lacks in subtlety, yet even we are balked at confronting this enemy directly. What makes you think your husband's ability to manipulate probabilities will give him the edge in a battle against Ariman's chosen minion?"

"I can't believe you even suggested such a thing," Thantalia said blandly, "My husband has stood toe-to-toe even with your brother. Do you honestly that think a few mere mortals allied with a thing of primal chaos can stand against him?"

"Well, as you say, he is quite formidable, and perhaps he can even do us all a favor," Anri remarked, "Buy never underestimate the power of mortals...and in case you did I have prepared my own backup contingency...her."

"Hah?" Nabiki blinked, surprised to find herself being included within that statement.

"What?" Thanatalia said as she turning towards Nabiki, "Her? Surely you must be joking!"

"Quite frequently I have been known to coin a pun or quip a phrase that is moderately amusing," Anri responded, "But in this case I am quite serious...and please don't call me Shirley."

"Cute," Thanatalia snorted, looking Nabiki up and down as though scrutinizing her on a level that went well beyond a simple probing, "Well, I do see some unusual qualities about her, but nothing that would warrant placing all your trust upon her shoulders."

"Oh ye of little faith, Thalia," Anri smiled, "There is much more to her than you imagine, for the same potential that exists within her is common to all who strive to be more than the merely mortal."

"Yes, I can see that she is a potential," Thanatalia replied, "But she's not really that old as spirits go, and she hasn't lived nearly enough incarnations to warrant much time and attention..."

"Again that is where you are wrong," Anri affirmed, "For those qualities that I have been nurturing inside of her will be critical to when the time of crisis is actually upon us, and as proof of this I am having her train to prove herself in combat with Udan."

"What?" Thanatalia said blandly, "You're pitting her against him? You poor thing you...maybe I was wrong about you having a date with me after all. Shall I schedule you in for right after you have your match against the Lord of Earthly Matter?"

"Ah..." Nabiki said with an understandable degree of aversion in her voice, "No thank you...I wouldn't want to be of any trouble..."

"Oh, no trouble at all," Thanatalia replied, "In fact, consider it a professional courtesy. As a Death Maiden I can see to it you get a fair hearing at your deposition, where the Judge of the Dead will decide where to send you until your next physical incarnation."

"Death Maiden?" Nabiki softly murmured in dismay, but Anri's tone hardly betrayed any change in the degree of his emotions.

"Such generosity is to be commended, Thalia...but quite unnecessary. After all, she is with me now."

"All the more reason to take pity on the poor creature," Thanatalia chided, "The way you like to bend and tease your proteges is enough to earn even my sympathy. But as you say she is in your hands for the now. Still I think I will check in on how your apprentice is doing sometime later, after I monitor the progress of my husband as he fulfills our Lord's instruction...and with any luck there won't be any need for your student's sacrifice as I am certain that Charon alone will be sufficient to the task of bringing down Ariman's minion...and most probably everything else around him for good measure."

"We will see," Anri said enigmatically, bowing to her with respect as he added, "Until the next time the fates grace us to cross paths once again, my lady Thanatalia."

"Call me Thalia, please," the white-faced woman in black smiled back, then returned the bow with a smile and a wink towards Nabiki, and then she turned around and utterly vanished.

"Where did she go?" Nabiki asked, feeling chilled to the bone without entirely knowing the reason.

"Where always she is drawn," Anri said with none of the humor that he had employed in the previous few minutes, "To wherever there is carnage, madness and destruction, her usual Bridge Club set."

Nabiki turned to the man and then said, "I noticed that you let her have the last word just now..."

"Appropriate enough," Anri replied, "With her it's a force of habit."

Nabiki felt a slight shudder once again then stared at the shadows into which the strange bony-woman had now utterly vanished. Somehow the very presence of the woman inspired a coldly naked fear within her that only certain members of the feline persuasion could until now, and with no sure reason just why such an irrational dread or mortal terror should possess her. After all the woman had been pleasant enough, and she could detect no hostility nor malice between her and her current senseu,,,

"Of course, she cannot be everywhere at once, even if she does closely resemble the one to whom she is but an avatar," Anri further mused, "Nor is she so omniscient that she cannot fail to discern the obvious, which is that her husband, the Lord Charon, is overmatched in his present endeavor."

"Charon?" Nabiki asked, "You mean...like the boatman of the...dead?"

"One and the same," Anri replied, "You see...Eluini often stand as representatives of the Powers that govern...and as such you will find that Gods and Magi are not all that removed from one another in our rather select circle. Nut now come with me again as we once more peel back beyond the envelope of space and time to see an author of this saga who has yet to play his full part in the adventure."

Anri made a sweeping motion as though to grasp at something in the darkness, and then with a quick movement of his arm literally tore away what had appeared to be a velvety curtain of night and revealed behind it...

A rather plain and lonely fellow sitting before a standard model PC computer, blinking his eyes in dismay as he glanced back in their direction.

"Oops, that's too far beyond the pale," Anri said, "My apologies, good sir. By all means, continue with your program."

He made a motion with his hand and caused another curtain of night to fall, only this time instead of a darkened room that smelled like a mausoleum-or a hospital for the dying-it instead had the smell of old and well-worn parchment, a private library of some sort, and with a desk occupying one corner of the room before which sat another man...closely resembling the first yet somehow very, very different. He was writing with a pen under the illumination of a lamp, and as Nabiki discerned his features she reckoned him to be somewhere in his thirties, a brown haired European of some sort with a well trimmed mustache and goatee, who glanced back at them with hazel eyes that promptly narrowed as they fell upon the man named Anri.

"You?" he spoke with an edge of authority, "What are you doing here, Maitreya?"

"My pardons for this intrusion within your demesne, Lord Shadowmane," Anri said apologetically, "But I was wondering if we might spare a moment of your time..."

The man stood up from his chair and glared murderously back at Anri, but his tone was very controlled and precise, and something about his entire demeanor spoke of a level of self-control that was as fluid as it was deadly, "My time's valuable enough, so don't waste it. What do you want?"

"First of all," Anri said, indicating Nabiki, "I should like to acquaint you with my lovely companion, who is the heir of two families you should well know that go by the names of Saotome and Tendo."

"Saotome and Tendo?" the man's eyes shifted once again towards Nabiki, and in that glance she caught a thrill of contained power as he studied her as if seeking recognition.

"I do believe you met her father once," Anri said helpfully, "And her mentor...the father to her husband. It was not so long ago as you and I would reckon time's passage, no?"

"Maybe," the man said cautiously, "Doesn't look much like Soun, probably favors her mother, but I can see the stamp of both of them within her. So what about it?"

"My dear Chakar Shadowmane," Anri paused, "Or do you prefer Charles Grey? For a man who prides himself on keeping abreast of the important things that go on in the world you protect and govern, you do seem to have slipped a bit lately when it comes to certain matters."

"Don't taunt me," the man growled softly, reminding Nabiki very much of an angry predator, "I know you're not the clown you like to pretend to be, and everything you do is with a purpose, so...why bring her to me? What's the hidden message you're trying to convey here?"

"If I told you that then it wouldn't be a secret, would it...old friend?" Anri smiled, only to display a remarkable degree of cool aplomb as he sudden found the tip of a sword being pressed up against his chin in the hand of a man who seemed to very much know his business.

"Old friend?" Chakar growled, having crossed the space between the desk and his unwanted house guests with a speed and fluidity that Nabiki found utterly astounding, "Who are you trying to kid here, Majestes? You think I've forgotten and forgiven you over what you did...or what you made me do to my own son a couple of millennia back?"

"I...see your point," Anri answered calmly, more cautious at the threat being leveled against him while not actively appearing to be afraid as he looked the other man coolly in the eyes and said, "But you know as well as I do why it needed to be done. You hardly need be reminded of your duty, as well as mine, in preserving the order of this world we both still love for all its failings."

Nabiki judged that the man holding the saber with the elaborate silvery basket-weave hand guard was not a fellow to be trifled with, and just by studying his stance and bearing she found that he had no flaws nor weaknesses in his technique. She had briefly considered coming to the rescue of her new mentor and quickly discarded the notion, reckoning without the need for violence that this fellow was a consummate master in the art of fencing, and as such not to be taken lightly as she once would have taken even such a one as Tatewaki Kuno.

The man continued to stand there holding his sword at Anri's Adam's apple for another few tense moments, but then with a flourish swept the sword away and stood back with his weapon pointed downward and to one side, still ready for rapid use but no longer a challenge to the other man's continued existence. Instead he growled very softly, "I know my job, Damn you...and if you did yours more often there wouldn't be that much need for my services."

"A matter of opinion," Anri differed while fingering the spot on his neck where the sword had been touching, "And my apologies for stirring such unpleasant memories..."

"Stuff it," Chakar turned his glance back towards Nabiki, "So you're Soun's kid, huh? Pretty sharp. I wouldn't mind seeing if you take after him in the Anything Goes Ryu."

"Actually..." Nabiki said cautiously, unnerved by how fluently the man spoke Japanese, as though for him it was entirely second nature, "My style is something of a hybrid of various differing things that I've...more or less picked up in my travels...Mister...?"

The man sheathed his sword within a scabbard that seemed to miraculously disappear then bowed to her like a proper gentleman and said, "I'm called by many names...a few of them even printable, but since there's no sense mucking around about it you can call me Chakar, which is my real name, Saotome-san."

Nabiki was surprised at his perfect infective, "How did you know that I'm married..."

"I listen," the man named Chakar answered, straightening up before once again giving her his full attention, "Your mother must've been Kimiko-san. Nice to know she won the fiancée battles, even if I did have good money riding on her main rival, Silk..."

"Fiancée battles?" Nabiki blinked, "Silk?"

"So," the man continued, "What brings you to my humble abode, Saotome-san...other than this meddling lout with the messianic complex?" he nodded to indicate the Lord Anri.

"I...I don't really know," Nabiki admitted, "I'm in training for a battle, and there's this guy back in Japan who's planning to stir up a real bad batch of trouble and...um...just where are we right now?"

"Canada," Chakar replied, eyes narrowing once again, "Trouble you say? I haven't picked up any word of that on the grapevine."

"There has been a temporal incident along the pathway that my apprentice here calls home," Anri explained, "A stirring of dark shadows, the shadow of Ariman upon the move, and Genocide is abroad once more and up to h is old mischief...but with a new wrinkle I am afraid, one that even you would not be able to stand against were it to be unleashed upon the public."

"Say what?" Chakar turned his glare back in Anri's direction, "Am I hearing things right or did you just give a direct answer to a question?"

"Hey, there are exceptions to every pattern," Anri shrugged, "And the need for subterfuge and misdirection is diminishing with the passage of every second."

"Sir," Nabiki spoke with great differentialness in her tone, as she perceived that this man was more important than she had reckoned on first impression, "My home...my family is in danger, and I have to do my part in order to protect them There is a man named Otono Reyabi..."

"Otono?" Chakar spoke the name as though in surprise, "He's connected with Ariman?"

"His agent," Anri replied, "With all that the name implies, and worse."

"If Genocide's involved, it's gotta be worse," Chakar turned back to Anri, "So you feel like dropping the word on me and expect me to drop everything and just hustle over to Japan to have a look for myself at the extent of this new danger?"

"Yes," Anri answered.

"Makes sense to me," the man's outward clothing suddenly altered and he was no longer in casual attire but instead wore something out of a renaissance fair, complete with long black cloak and an ornate chain medallion that dangled with a pulsing ruby pendant upon his chest, "So, when do we get started?"

"Why don't you go on ahead and we'll catch up with you," Anri urged, "My companion and I have one more stop to make before our session together is over."

"Your call," Chakar turned back to Nabiki, "My sympathies for you having to hang out with this loser, Saotome-san. I'll look you up again later when it seems prudent. Nice to see the spirit of your mother's still alive and well inside you...later."

And with that the man made a swirling motion with his cape and vanished from the room, leaving Nabiki to stare once again, amazed at the comings and goings of these interesting people.

"Looks like you've made a favorable impression, Saotome-san," Anri said with approval, "I know Chakar well enough to say that he does not warm up that easily to many people on first meeting."

Nabiki frowned and said, "He didn't seem to like you very much."

"Hardly surprising," Anri glanced away, "He has good cause to resent me, even if the matter was not something either one of us had control over."

Nabiki studied the Lord of Light with a certain apprehension before saying, "Do you have that sort effect on everybody you meet?"

"Just the ones whose lives I've managed to effectively screw up," Anri shrugged, "But since you will no doubt pester me until I inform you of the details, the reason Chakar finds my company less than to his liking is that I remind him of a deed he once performed that haunts him to the present. You see...a long time ago, even as we reckon time, he was a traveler in a distant land who chanced a casual meeting with a princess who later became a queen over an empire. The woman was not yet married at the time, but she had certain...how do I put this? Peculiar notions regarding her casual meeting with Chakar, whom she took to be a god and no mere mortal. She was temple priestess at the time, and not long after this she caught the eye of a certain sovereign King who fancied her and persuaded her to become his mistress. Not long after this she was found to be with child, which the King quite naturally believed to be his, a boy delivered eight months after the wedding who was gifted with a special destiny and has come to be known in history by the name of...Alexander."

Nabiki blanched, "Alexander the Great? That was his father?"

"Yes," Anri said, "Remarkable how well preserved he is, but Starlords tend to be known for their longevity. It comes with the territory, these princess of Old Atlantis."

"But...wait!" Nabiki pleaded, "That was over two thousand years ago...!"

"Twenty-three centuries plus to be precise," Anri noted.

"But...how old is he?" Nabiki indicated the vanished swordsman.

"Not that much more than three thousand," Anri shrugged, "But he's accomplished quite a lot in his time, and in your land he is known as the Shadow Lord, the father of all Ninja."

"What?" Nabiki gasped, recalling an old story whispered to her by Ukyo in the dead of night when she and the rest of their brood had snuggled together against the cold of a late evening, "The Shadow Lord? But he's only a myth!"

"A myth is as good as a mile in my book," Anri smiled, "And there are quite a few who would give you a good argument that I am mythological, yet here I stand before you, proof positive that the Universe does indeed enjoy a good jest now and then."

"But he's not even Japanese!" Nabiki insisted.

"But he once spent time in the mountains of Iga and Koga, and he trained the clans living there in the arts of survival," Anri noted, "He's spent the better part of thirty centuries learning to stay alive against great odds, and he's gotten rather good at it, and you'd be impressed at the range of his technique. Trust me when I say this...there is no living master of espionage who can hold a candle against him, and he will root out the cause and deception of the enemy, exposing their network and tracing it back to its source, of that there can be no denial."

Nabiki stared in realization, "You deliberately taunted him to get him interested in doing an investigation."

"Let's just say that I prefer my enemies to have as many enemies as I can scrounge together on short notice," Anri turned his glance to the side as their surroundings altered once again, "And now...our final stop of the day. I wanted you to witness this, the handiwork of Genocide, where the demon acts with brash impunity while nations stand aloof and indifferent and no one raises a hand against the insanity and the violence."

Again the setting changed, only now they were outdoors again and it was the setting sun of approaching evening. The landscape seemed appropriately bleak and barren, save for the remains of a smoldering village whose ashes were scattered all around them, as were the many dead bodies that littered what remained of the landscape. The stench of burned and rotting flesh assailed her nostrils and at once Nabiki covered them, steeling her nerves to survey yet another scene of travesty writ large on the world stage...only something in the air informed her that this was not the distant past but rather a scene from the present onto which they had been delivered.

The parched and desiccated soil beneath her bare feet spoke of long draught and very little rainfall to discourage the horrors of famine. The bodies were uniformly of a dark coloration, and their clothes were of a somewhat ragged quality, including the odd spattering of a military-style uniform worn by youths far too young to deserve the proper title of soldier. Little moved amid the ruins of wooden shacks and huts that were made of mud and wattle from a building style that was older than civilization, and yet there was a fairly modern cast to everything, and without needing to be informed of it she concluded from this that they were in Africa, somewhere close to her very own time zone.

"This is the fruit of Genocide," Anri pronounced solemnly, "His handiwork writ large upon an entire developing nation. To the modern era this is called the Sudan, and it is home to ancient tribal rivalries that predated the hostilities that motivate the people of the present. But there is a particular savagery to everything that the solders do on one side or the other of the divide. They are fighting to exterminate the 'Enemies of God' as each camp defines the term. Both sides claim to have justice on their side, both invoke a deity they judge to be Supreme and urge him to smite the other side of this conflict, or to grant their own side the mercy of his protection."

Nabiki could say nothing to this, her horror going beyond words as she saw the conditions of some of the bodies and wondered what manner of insanity could possibly make someone inflict such a thing upon another living person.

"This is the result of what happens when two doctrines of absolute conviction meet to decide which one has the greater mandate of the Heavens," Anri continued softly, his words revealing a horror and revulsion of his own that went beyond all utterance, "When neither side yields an inch to the other and each believes themselves to be in the right without compromise...the result is always the same...death and suffering abound and no one is the victor...save only Genocide himself, who exploits such misery to feed his unquenchable hunger."

"The demon...caused all this?" Nabiki asked, her voice muffled beneath her hand as she dared not let go for fear of choking on the fumes all around her.

"Yes...and no," Anri replied, "Human beings did this by giving in to their hate, by surrendering their will to prejudice and blind bigotry, to ethnic divides that are so deeply ingrained within their culture that they are taken to be as second nature. This is the side to humanity that saddens me the most...the knowledge that human will can be directed at such willful slaughter and disregard of the rights and dignity of others. This is the end result of a long process where men become obsessed with creating a homogenous world that is totally free of diversity or rival claims to social convictions. This savagery is the dark underside that exists within us all...even those who deem themselves civilized in their own eyes. Scratch beneath the surface and the savage will arise, and unless his will to destroy is contained by the angels of our better nature the world itself can become a pyre where reason and mercy are discarded in the name of selfish impulses."

Nabiki stared sidelong at the man, then she said, "The Rape of Nanking?"

"It happened when the officers of the Japanese Imperial Army let loose the dogs of war upon an innocent and helpless population," Anri noted, "Nominally civilized men bound together by discipline and tradition went totally mad and unleashed their ethnic hatreds upon the Chinese people, bringing about atrocities that no one could have planned for. No one, that is, but Genocide, who manipulates such feelings and turns even honorable men into ravaging beasts of mindless slaughter."

"Did...my ancestor participate?" Nabiki asked.

"No," Anri replied, "That Tendo was a good man who saw and was revolted by what he saw in those dark days, and he carried with him the memory well after the war. It was one of several reasons that contributed to his decision to take his own life more than a decade later, after he had fathered your grandfather and had passed along what he knew of the Anything Goes tradition."

Nabiki was silent for a moment longer as she studied the obscene tableau before her, then she said, "So...your point is that this could happen to anybody...anywhere...as long as people listen to Genocide and allow him to manipulate their darkest feelings?"

"That is correct," Anri answered, "It is Fear that is the demon's sharpest tool for seeding conflict. He first makes a population afraid for their own survival, then he nurtures their fears with constant reminders of the terrors that whisper at the edge of their darkest imaginings, and he spreads rumors and falsehoods that contribute to the ensuing paranoia. He is especially fond of using scapegoats and convenient pawns to further his ambition, playing with their minds to make them act in rage to blindly lash out at society and thus help create the impression that others like them are lurking under ever rock and shadow. When a population becomes afraid they go mad, they cease to listen to the moderating voices of reason and lash out blindly at any convenient target. If a demagogue exploits their confused state they act like rabid sheep and follow their leader...even off a cliff if need be. The more confused, ignorant and terrified a people are the easier they are to control and manipulate. It is only when calm and rational thought prevails that they are forced to reconsider their assumptions...but in the meanwhile they can do immense damage to one another, and in doing so spread the disease of hate far and wide to other peoples."

"Fear the enemy...only fear becomes the enemy," Nabiki remarked, grasping the gist of his message.

Anri smiled at her in approval, "You have almost completed your lesson. But now think well on all that I have attempted to show to you...and consider the importance of what I say as it relates to facing down a fanatical madman who threatens everything you hold dear for his own misguided idealism. Consider what happens when you hate the enemy...sometimes you become the thing you hate, and in doing so you surrender your humanity and become a savage beast who thinks nothing of lashing out at others. Hate is wrong...it is always wrong to let yourself be guided by hatred. Hatred can be a strong emotion, but when it masters you it becomes like a disease that spreads from one party to another, perpetuating its evil and multiplying it a thousandfold. It is only when you can take the emotions that comprise your hate and turn them from the path of dark destruction that you truly become enlightened. Hate is fear and love combined...a love for truth or for others and a fear of that which threatens their survival. Stay true to the love and the fear will be diminished."

"Easy words to say," Nabiki noted, "But a little late for these poor devils."

"Indeed," Anri sighed, "The seed of Christianity was sown on bitter soil when the missionaries came here intending to convert these people to their form of civilization. Centuries before this the followers of Mohammed did exactly the same thing under a somewhat less benevolent 'Convert or Die' mindset, but the people lived in relative peace for a time, well on into the Colonial era, where a restiveness began to be felt in the souls of these simple farmers. Along came the twin ideologies of Communism and Commercialism to compete for their souls, and the seeds were well implanted indeed for the rise of a militant theology that would attempt to settle old scores by eradicating all traces of their colonial past, in the process exterminating those who stood in the way of their so-called 'United' vision."

"And both sides claim to worship the same god," Nabiki concluded.

"Do they?" Anri pondered, "I've often marveled at how the Theologists of both side could manage to get the picture so completely wrong. The One True God is not a tribal deity who takes side on the one or the other of any dispute. All are subject to the rule of the One, and no one is more special in the sight of the One, so is destroying your brother an act of obedience to the One...or the blind homage one makes to false deities of an entirely human construction?"

"Obviously you don't think either one of them is on the right track, Sensei," Nabiki noted.

"You are indeed correct in this, Student," Anri answered, "No one who wrongs another and feels no recriminations for doing so is acting in the name of the One. Service to a false deity is sacrilege if performed with such...perverse delight. The Inquisitors of Rome took their work a bit too seriously when they tortured and burned 'Heretics' for the alleged 'Good of their souls,' and the children of Islam are just as quick to murder in the name of their Sharia-which, by the way, is NOT an authentic part of the Koran, nor even the invention of Mohammed himself, having been crafted sometime after the passing of the prophet. Shaira serves the interests of the wealthy, corrupt and the powerful who freely violate its tenants while ruthlessly insisting that they be applied to the weak and the helpless. It is always the same...men claiming to be on the side of God, yet the One must wonder if they are on anyone else's side but their own selfish interests if you are to judge by the results as they are yielded."

"The golden rule still applies, huh?" Nabiki said, "Whoever has the most gold still makes all the rules."

"Unfortunately yes," Anri sighed, "It all amounts to the same thing in my eyes...the words of men written down in books that do not contain divine holy sanction unless they reflect upon the benevolent will of a Universal light that exists within all beings. The final words have yet to be written, and it is idolatry to make any work the sole and solitary authority for the will of the divine. Men are still writing the Book of Life with their very lives, and until that work is completed the rest of this is just a rough draft manuscript, an unfinished work still in progress."

"I think I would agree with that, Nabiki noted, "Call me provincial if you like, but I don't think I'd ever be entirely comfortable with a religion other than Buddhism or Shinto."

"We tend to favor most that with which we are most familiar," Anri murmured, "But we always remain open to other thoughts and ideas, other possibilities. To shun the wisdom of another because it is not your way is the act of a coward. It takes greater faith to listen to another's thoughts, to hear the words of another system of belief, and to recognize the common basis for all ideas. Just listening and being influenced by what you listen to does not make one any less true to the core of their beliefs...and a truly religious person is one who adds and discards things according to their usefulness. To question and seek to know more is the highest form of homage one can pay to the Universal Creator, who gifted us with intelligence, for it is to fulfill the purpose of life itself, which is to know...to understand, to pass on what you learn and to grow accordingly as a person."

"That's the meaning of life?" Nabiki asked, "To grow, learn and teach?"

"That is the way of enlightenment," Anri said with a return of his mischievous smile, "But also too there is the obligation to continue the line set down for us as a species. Remember before when I told you that the answer to life's riddle is sex?"

"Um...yeah," Nabiki said somewhat embarrassedly, thinking all too readily of how her own life was defined by her sexual relationships with her co-wives and her husband.

"Sex is the means by which procreation happens," Anri elaborated, "But it is not the sole function for the sexual act. After all, other animals regularly indulge in sexual congress as suits their instinctual and biological urges. Humans choose to engage in intercourse for a multitude of reasons...and for our species it is an entirely pleasurable thing...unless performed improperly, of course."

"Of course," Nabiki said, thinking all too readily of examples to the contrary where sex was not performed in an entirely pleasurable matter, "It's been kind of trial and error for me and my brood..."

"As I think is true for about a third of the planet," Anri smiled ironically, "But that mostly occurs where procreation is a requirement rather than an elective choice...and in places where poor medical technology or superstitious ignorance damages the healthful functions of the pleasure centers of the body. The basic point is that, for us, it is meant to be a pleasurable and positive affirmation of the life-producing process. But some misunderstand that role and think of it in negative and derogatory terms, as if for them sex is nothing but a messy, distasteful and unfortunate obligation, and one that they would better be rid of if they could think of another way of producing children. In a perfect world such persons would be institutionalized for the good of society and their own mental well-being, but instead they get elected to political office or go on to join the clergy where they can do the maximum amount of damage...and you see here for yourself the result of their folly."

He indicated the destroyed village with a sweep of one hand, allowing it to stand as mute witness to the truth of what he was saying.

"Sex was always meant for us to be a positive attribute," Anri continued, "A means by which we are enticed to invest ourselves in the future. Small wonder that those who devalue sex place little faith in the continuation of the species. They expect their rewards will be in the next world, and that living in this one is but a prison sentence, and anything done to lighten our collective load or make life more bearable is to be despised as moral perversity. And, of course, we all know what the Puritan mind does when confronted with what are termed as 'unclean values.'"

"Extermination?" Nabiki hazarded a guess.

"Indeed," Anri said grimly, "Like lancing a boil or cutting out a cancer by cutting off an entire limb. In this regard Muslims are as bad as the worst of Christians and Jews, which is hardly surprising since all three groups draw from the same traditions."

"Except that the Western World had an Enlightenment that followed a bloody 'Reformation,'" Nabiki pointed out, "While Islam remains mired in its medieval traditions as set down by the Turkish Ottoman Empire."

"You catch on," Anri smiled approvingly, "The code of Feudalism is incompatible with the requirements of modern social life, which is why so many Arab countries are run as autocratic empires. The sad truth of it is that repressing our sexuality leads to mental instability and a host of neuroses that cause us to behave like erratic ants trapped in an anthill that's been exposed to the heat of the sun through a magnifying lens. People crowded together in cities suffer the psychic battering of other minds pressing in on them, and they erect walls that cut themselves off from the flow and harmony of nature. This adds to a thirst for the spiritual component that is missing, which in turn drives them to seek compensation through other means...some by taking illicit drugs to dull down their waking senses and produce an artificial high that can only be properly known when the barriers are released on social inhibition."

"And other people use legal means like alcohol, tobacco and venting their hostilities at professional sporting events?" Nabiki fathomed.

"In poorer regions such as this where access to decent health care and procreative technologies is, at best, highly limited, the result is even more catastrophic," Anri continued, "Overcrowding with a high infant and maternal mortality rate, and the pressure to have large families to support an agrarian life style, coupled with a lack of sound ecological land management leads to the exhaustion of the soil with people burning peat and dung for fuel, which further erodes the soil and makes it inhospitable for living. That means you have a lot of hungry, angry people crying for food and seeking redress against those they hold responsible for their economic and social repression. This causes the governments of these lands to invest heavily in their military in order to hold the unrest to a minimum, which squanders vital resources and leads to mass killings and further starvation...and all because of the negligence of the well-to-do, who fail to see the connection between themselves and the poor sods being trod under the boot heel of their respective dictators."

"You think the wealthy have an obligation to held the poor?" Nabiki asked.

"Do you think that they do not?" Anri smiled, "I believe I was rather explicit about that when I said that a rich man must give what he has to the poor if he is to find spiritual fulfillment. Obsessing about material things may be all well and good when it comes to building a material society, but it cannot serve as a substitute for the lack of a conscience. All are a part of the greater fabric of the whole, Saotome-san, and if one part suffers then no one is truly enlightened."

"Including yourself, Sensei?" Nabiki asked.

"Especially in my case," Anri answered.

"I can see where you're going with this," Nabiki said, "But I happen to believe in the principle of enlightened self interest..."

"As do I," Anri answered, "There is a reason for altruism, Saotome-san...because what helps you helps me in the long run, and for far too many people it is the short term interest that predominates their thinking. The truly enlightened know that what helps one will eventually benefit all others, but such abstract concepts have little appeal to those who exist in a realm where their own needs are central and prevail over all external or universal issues."

"You mean like planning for the future?" Nabiki asked.

"Men do not plan all that well for the future, I am afraid," Anri responded, "Too many variables for them to foresee every possible contingency, and even prophets must be humble and hedge their bets with ambiguity in order to afford some 'wiggle room' for when results do not exactly meet predictions. As one who can speak with authority over the unintended consequences of well-intentioned actions I can clearly say that one must measure the results of an endeavor against your desires and modify the plan accordingly to fit new circumstances as they arise."

"No battle plan survives first contact with the enemy," Nabiki quipped, "And no good deed ever goes unpunished."

"If you like," Anri conceded, "But in practical terms take the example of public health and welfare. Do you know how many contageous and communnicable diseases flourish in poverty-stricken areas that boast little or no health care? The elite are not so aloof and immune to that sort of penetration of their class social circle that they can afford to turn their noses up at a Cholera epidemic, or an outbreak of one of the more extreme examples of the flu. How much less would it cost them in terms of medical costs if they invested in an ounce of prevention, possibly even a pound or two towards a cure rather than the lengthy and expensive care that must be provided to caring for the sick or burying the dead who result from such negligence?"

"So you think Socialized medicine is the answer?" Nabiki wondered.

"'Socialism' is a meaningless invention of 19th century political hacks," Anri responded, "All governments are inherently 'socialist' in nature if they are doing their jobs properly, and the most propserous economies are mixed ones where business and government work cooperatively in the public's interst. Unfortunately greed and glutony too often trump good sense and the current systems that you know are rife with corruption brought about by rampant cheating and sabotage of the social paradigm. What you have today are an elite class of people who are born and bred to believe that they are entitled to their wealth and privilege without any social obligations to speak about. The rig the game to cheat the poor out of their share of the social contract in order to accummulate more wealth and privilege in the hands of fewer and fewer robber barons. That's hardly my ideal of a healthy Capitalist system."

"Okay, I'll go with that," Nabiki conceded, "So the greater good should come first before individual merit?"

"I would not go that far," Anri said, "Much is to be said on behalf of individual life and liberty, but even the most libertine system recognizes that you don't have the freedom to shout 'FIRE' in a crowded church. There is duty and obligation to observe your portion of the social contract in order that people may live cooperatively in harmony together rather than in a state of perpetual anarchy where lawless men do that which is right in their own eyes and screw everyone else without compunction."

He turned once again and gave a side glance at their bleak surroundings, "This land was once green a fertile, but exploitation has ruined the paradise it once was, and the rampant disease of Tribal and ethnic hatred did the rest. The great powers choose not to intervene in crisis zones such as this because they know that their actions might be subject to misinterpretation...and there is no oil to be found in the Sudan region...or so they think," he winked meaningfully, "So while they may decry the violence they do very little about it but wring their hands and pass numerous resolutions."

"And meanwhile people suffer," Nabiki said sadly, finding it difficult not to be moved by the tragedy of what they both were seeing.

"Men of conscious and good will avert their eyes from that which they cannot reasonably hope to affect, and they trust to Great Men to solve their problems for them," Anri continued, "But ignoring such trivial questions as who is more wrong or more in the right on the issue, let us focus instead upon the question of why sex was meant to be pleasurable for the human species, and why human beings have progressed so far because of their capacity for enjoyment, which is a form of enlightenment that is known in the brief ecstasy of release that comes with the correctly performed sexual act. You see...the reason why sex is more pleasurable for us than for any other member of the Hominid line of evolution is because of the direct infusion of Ancient Genes upon our ape bloodline. The Ancients found sex to be the highest expression of spiritual value, and so within our genes survives the capacity to share in their glory, which is only found when two or more souls are bonded together."

"But they fell because they were unable to control their own appetites and impulses, right?" Nabiki asked.

"They fell because they confused the light with their own insatiable hunger and invited their own destruction," Anri answered, "But humanity has been slowly climbing back from the abyss and is steadily working to recreate the paradigm of the ideal. Human beings intuitively seek out the companionship of the person or persons who come closest to matching and instinctual template that fulfils certain necessary requirements that we need to compliment and complete ourselves as a sentient being."

"Two parts make the greater whole?" Nabiki quickly deduced.

"Or more as is necessary," Anri replied, "Know that the ancients were complete unto themselves while human beings are fragmentary and formed of many diverse, disjointed parts. The Ancients were both male and female...Hermaphrodite and omnisexual, while Homo Sapiens define themselves as a bisexual being. There were occasions in the past where a single model of humanity was attempted...the Solenoid Epoch, for example, but for the most part men and women have been coming together for countless generations to create each successive generation of humanity, and gradually by turns we have been groping our way back to the light of old Lemuria and Atlantis...albeit with considerable interference from the other side, who are very much invested in the idea of preventing our return to the glory that was Adam Kadmon."

"The Great Souled Man of Theosophy?" Nabiki asked.

"More like the prototype of all men who now live," Anri corrected, "The archetypal ideal of the collective consciousness of the entire human race, and if men and women ever do attain universal enlightenment, then we will bring Adam back into being, and God will reward us for giving her a companion who will reflect upon Her own omniscient glory."

"That sounds...positively messianic," Nabiki said, fully conscious of the irony of her own statement.

"Indeed," Anri smiled, "And yet I live for such a time when all men can join together and live as brothers...and all women will be accepted as co-equals in the model of the original Lilith, whose fall from grace and division from Adam sparked the race of Eve, who was a secondary model and one thought more docile to the whims of an errant Adam."

"So that's the basis for the legend?" Nabiki asked, "A lover's quarrel that ended in a triangular divorce?"

"More or less," Anri noted, "But we are talking about Neflim, the hybrid fusion offspring of godlike beings with mortal tissues. The power wielded by those three was truly awesome even to our conception, by which I mean we Daokan, who can trace our ancestral lineage back all the way to the original pairing."

"So the answer to this problem is to live and let live, make love instead of war?" Nabiki asked, "And let bygones be bygones?"

"Well, you certainly would agree that it's better to have three wives and a husband rather than for one of you to get lucky and the other four to suffer privation, yes?" Anri noted.

"Um...good point," Nabiki shuddered, reflecting on her recent experiences in that other world where she had been a miserable but well-willed loner.

"To return once again to my main point," Anri resumed, "The universe created intelligence, after all, as a means of self-discovery, to find completeness within itself, and as such intelligent life is a minor mirror reflection of the One. The One is in all of us, and we are its sacred children."

"The light within us all," Nabiki said, fathoming at last something that had been murmuring softly within her.

"Indeed," Anri said, turning now to fully face Nabiki, "For there is no limit to the power of Man. In all of us there exists the potential to be as Gods if we so will it. Lesser Gods reflect the glory of the One, and in being as One you become a part of the divinity that exists in all of humanity, and which surrounds us always at every waking moment. The way of the One is ever One...the way of the One is all."

"The way of the One?" Nabiki repeated.

"Just remember this when times are dark and you feel the edge of despair closing in all around you," Anri urged her, "The One is Everything...the One is in Everything...no part of reality is apart from the One. If the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, then the One is greater than the whole of all reality, and in joining together with the inner spirit of light that fuels us internally we glorify the One and make it a part of ourselves. Order and Life are maintained by moving in accordance with the will of nature. Ruin and disorder arise when one opposes nature, or acts contrary to the way of one's one inner nature."

"I...think I grasp some of that," Nabiki said, "To move with the flow of life...rather than against it..."

"Brings harmony and enlightenment," Anri nodded, "Moving against life's flow brings disharmony and dissolution. Learn to feel and trust your feelings when it comes to obeying the natural law that governs your own nature. When you feel tense or imbalance it means that something is not harmonious within you, and by discovering its source you can clear away a blockage that adds to the resistance that steels life and power from your efforts. By learning to channel your energies in a single direction you can become a force irresistible and master your own nature."

"By serving my own will...I become its master...and not just a servant?" Nabiki fathomed.

"Indeed," Anri turned back to survey the ruined village, "These poor souls never had the chance to learn such a thing. Their ideology and theology betrayed them, taught them to diminish themselves, to deny their inner natures and force themselves to live within constraints of an entirely artificial nature. Their enemies were similarly constrained in all things but one...the will to destroy, for which they were unhindered. See what happens when human will is turned destructively upon itself. This is the result of the failings of my teachings to penetrate to the core of their nature...to enlighten these people and make them aware of things that were beyond their unfortunately limited imaginations."

"Sensei," Nabiki said, "Does it always have to be like this? Can't you do something to teach them a better way to live?"

Anri sighed, "Would that I could, I would relish the chance to be a teacher once again, to walk among these people and show them the light that sparks within them...but alas...I am constrained by certain...limiting conditions."

"Limiting conditions?" Nabiki asked.

He nodded sadly, "As guardian of the Path of Light I often travel far and wide to face those threats that menace the greater whole of reality. I am the embodiment of one quarter of the soul of all humanity, appealing to the higher nature of all beings. I am forbidden to interfere within the choices set down by the collective will of humanity itself, and if I am not wanted somewhere...then I am not allowed to travel and do the kind of things that I would choose to do were it simply a matter of my own volition."

"But people are crying out for you everywhere..." Nabiki protested.

"No, they don't want me," Anri said sadly, "They want the myth that is Jesus Christ, and I can never be him. To pretend to be that lie would betray all that I am, all that I embody. I never visualized myself as the Savior to all Humanity. Humanity must learn to save itself, to stop doing the things that are so destructive to the human soul. I have set my teachings down before and yet people ignore them..."

"Maybe because they don't really understand," Nabiki suggested, "Some of those passages were a little obscure and ambiguous, and even you must admit that."

"True enough," Anri sighed, "But do you honestly think that I don't want to do something, to teach them a better way to live? I have tried doing so in the past...but it went horribly awry, because in my arrogance I presumed that I knew more than I did, and it caused misunderstanding and discord. I violated my own teachings and was punished for this by seeing my work perverted before my very eyes. I came back to this incarnation thirteen centuries after the time of my previous death and saw churches preaching a false doctrine in my name that exalted me as a God above all others. Do you understand the shame that I've had to live with ever since? I wanted to change the world for the better...but the world must allow itself to change, and all that I can do is go here and there and attempt to plant new seeds of understanding."

Nabiki saw a certain intensity in the eye of her new mentor and realized how deeply conflicted he was over the issues that he was raising. Very carefully she asked, "Are you saying that you're afraid to try...just because it went wrong the last time?"

"No," Anri sighed again, "I just...don't want to make as bad a blunder the next time as I did back in Jerusalem. That's why I work so hard to be the antithesis of everything that the Christians expect me to be...that and the fact that I really don't agree with their life-denying faith of contradictions. All they do is preach in hope of the next world and ignore their responsibilities to make this world a paradise, hoping for some eternal reward in the next world. Do you think I find that funny? It's perversely sad...and I have no one else to blame but myself for setting this thing in motion, albeit that much of the real blame lies with Paul and the theologians."

A small whimpering noise disturbed the silence of the rubble, and Nabiki turned her head sharply and cocked one ear as she asked, "What's that?"

"Oho?" Anri turned to study the ruins and said, "A survivor? How unexpected."

Without further preamble or hesitation he turned from Nabiki and strode towards the source of the faint murmurs, and then knelt down before a ruined hut and peered in past the blood-soaked curtain to see a small girl huddled over the dead body of a woman. The child looked up at them with tearful eyes, afraid and full of confusion.

"Good day to you," Anri said in what sounded like a foreign language that somehow translated itself to the ears of Nabiki, "Are you well, little one? Do not be afraid...the soldiers have gone. It's just me and my apprentice here, no more than that."

The child looked at him with wide-eyed uncertainty, and yet there was something compelling about the smile that Anri gave to her that made her relax by a fraction, even if she still looked very much like a scared little rabbit who would bolt at any moment.

"I feel for your loss of your mother," Anri said soothingly, "Her suffering was great, and yet she wished for you to live more than all else in this world. Would you deny her dying wish by following her into the great void, or will you fulfill her hopes and dreams, which should not perish with her earthly body?"

The child continued to hesitate, but as Anri extended a hand her way she stared at it for the longest time, then hesitantly reached out with her own hand and took his in her own, closing it with as much tiny force as her little body could muster.

"Look into her eyes, Saotome-san," Anri urged as he gently compelled the child to linger, "See how bright and intense they are? She contains herself well, and yet the child within her is grieving. You should always ask yourself, 'Who is this child?' when you look into such eyes...for this is not their first visit upon this plane of existence. There is someone else looking back at you from behind such innocence, someone forgotten-and-yet-remembered. Look into those eyes and see the soul that hides within them...never be fooled by seeming innocence, for the child within is ancient and knowing. Men drink of the waters of Lethe when they reincarnate and yet still some trace of what they were helps shape their present...and by extension their very future."

The child looked aback inquisitively, her tears of pain mingled with confusion as though she did not quite understand the language being used this time around.

"Your wounds are not as grave as the wound within your soul," Anri spoke soothingly in what Nabiki took to be the native tongue, "But do not give in to the rage that is building within you. Rather feel pity for the ones who did this, for they are the ones who walk in darkness, swallowing the light of all reason and understanding."

This time the child did not hesitate but rather flung herself into Anri's arms, and the man embraced her small body and held her in a comforting hold until she started to shake from inside, then let loose a wail that had been contained within her tiny chest. She cried a keening drone and vented to the universe at large her grief and suffering so that Nabiki herself was roundly moved to pity.

Anri let her go on for the next few moments, then calmly stood up and carried the weeping young girl as she wrapped her ebony legs around his waist, then he turned to Nabiki and said, "If is for this that I struggle against the tide of the darkness...against the ignorance and willful blindness that makes inevitable such suffering and sorrow. Children are the hope of the world yet a third of them go to bed with empty bellies while the rich and pampered live in luxury beds and speak homilies and pleasantries about what to do with the wealth that they have accumulated through the labors of others. You wonder then if I sound like a communist when communism itself is as much to blame for creating these circumstances?"

"No," Nabiki said, "I think I'm finally starting to get it, Sensei."

"It is all well and good to labor for capital goods, to make a comfortable living for yourself and your loved ones," Anri noted, "But it is a sin to forget about the needs of those who are not so well blessed or favored by circumstances of birthing. To blame the poor for their lot is to credit a child with having the capacity to choose its birthing...when in actuality it is Karma that decides each incarnation. Take for example this girl...so young and ripe with the promise and potential of the future. You would never know to look upon her that at one time she was a person of great importance, a leader of men who commanded vast armies and held nations in their sway, and whose name is still whispered of in history's pages. Would you care to guess at to whom I am referring?"

Nabiki stared at the child then said, "No way..."

"Yes way," Anri said as the little girl lifted her face from his shoulder to look questioningly at him, "He was a man with gifts that put him above many of his contemporaries, who understood the art of war as very few men of his day could, and whose numerous early successes put him a step above the competition. But he overstepped himself, made his followers too dependent upon his genius, too incapable of thinking for themselves, and so his regime fell when he was out-generalled by someone with an even more advanced mode of thinking. Now look well upon what he has become four or five incarnations down the line, to be born again in humble circumstances that could well lead his current body to become an even greater monster than he was in the distant past. This is a critical juncture in her present incarnation where this child might choose to turn to the left or the right, to follow the path of hatred and seek vengeance for the destruction of her people...or to learn the ways of love and become a different kind of leader, one who can make men forget their differences and see that the good exists in all people."

"Some choices," Nabiki said, "And what if she goes the wrong way?"

"You think she would?" Anri asked idly, "If so, then perhaps I should put her out of her misery now and spare the future from the rise of yet another bloody tyrant..."

His hand went behind the girl's tiny neck and Nabiki felt alarm shoot right through her as she had a mental image of that tiny neck being snapped like a twig, and without thinking about it she said, "Wait! It doesn't have to be that way!"

"You think so?" Anri paused with his hand still poised around the girl's neck.

"You're supposed to be the protector of Life!" Nabiki argued, "Would you kill her in cold blood...just because she might become something you don't like?"

"Are you saying that I don't have the right to decide?" Anri asked, "I who know the ways of destiny far better than you, who has seen tragedies such as this one visited constantly upon nations long forgotten?"

"You said it yourself," Nabiki said, "Free will...that means that no one has the right to decide for another."

"Indeed," Anri smiled, moving his hand to comfort the girl's shoulder rather than her neck, "Then I guess it really isn't up to me after all...and that what happens to humanity is the choice of human beings, not the Daokan or even the Gods. Human beings must elect their own destinies, all that I can do...is serve as spiritual advisor."

Nabiki realized that she had just been suckered and trapped by her own words and inwardly groaned over it, but said, "So you're saying you won't stop the killing just because that would be forcing people to make a moral choice?"

"My power is vast and I could, if I willed it, bring every major conflict on the planet to a screeching halt," Anri said, "Only then I'd have people complaining to me about spoiling their fun and trying to fix a problem artificially rather than allowing folks to sort things out for themselves. Ares, for one, would not be amused, nor would Lady Thalia or anyone else whom I might offend by such blatant and willful interference."

"Somehow you don't strike me as being the type who worries all that much about upsetting people, Teach," Nabiki noted with a sardonic look.

"Not if it's the right people who need offending," Anri argued, stroking the wiry hair of the child in his arms, "But I'd much rather do my work on the small scale by making a single tiny contribution that can change the course of the future, such as helping this tiny one to find her way and fulfill the requirements of her Karma."

"You mean...teach her to see a better way?" Nabiki asked.

"More like bring her to a place where she has a chance for a brighter future," Anri answered.

Nabiki realized that they had transitioned away once again because the lighting had changed back to a twilight setting, and the air no longer had the rank stink of death but rather a clean mountain breeze that blew across her cheek at an altitude that suggested low air pressure.

Turning around to confirm this impression she was amazed to see stone walls and buildings surrounded them, looking much like a cloistered monastery with men in robes moving about from one place to the other.

"Ka'ala Tierma," Anri smiled, "My home...the place where I was born and raised so many centuries back. It's hardly changed a bit from what I knew in my boyhood."

Nabiki stared about in amazement at the realization and then she turned as she heard a gentle voice warmly greeting them, "Monalon, mine dear boy! How nice to see thee back again...it's been like decades..."

"Actually it's only been a week, old friend," Anri said as he regarded a older man wearing a monk's robe whose full white beard and hair made him seem like a cloistered hermit, "Saotome-san, may I present to you my own teacher, Hatugan the Wind Lord. Master Hatugan, may I present my new apprentice, Saotome Nabiki."

"Apprentice," the old man said with a twinkling in his eyes, "Thou hast taken on another one? What was wrong with the last?"

"I married her, remember?" Anri smiled, only to wince as he heard a voice address him from directly behind his broad shoulders.

"Yes, and about that, Husband," said a tall blonde with incisive blue eyes whom Nabiki was surprised to see wearing something other than the usual monks robes...being a long sleeve green shirt with dark leather vest and well-worn blue trousers who sported the hilt of a sword over one shoulder, the scabbard of same resting across her caped back.

"Ah...Elea?" Anri said softly, only to pause as the edge of a sword was suddenly thrust across his chin and held there for effect.

Nabiki blinked, for she had not even seen the woman move, but suddenly a long katana-shaped blade that was inscribed with crimson runes was being expertly held in the slender hand of the leather-vested woman, who gave every indication of knowing her business.

"I sent you to the local market to get a pint of goat's milk and you come back a week later with a new Apprentice," she said with a conversational ease that reminded Nabiki disturbingly of her aunt Nodoka, "And of course our daughter has gone missing with you. I was just about to saddle my horse in search of you both when you conveniently return and save me all the bother."

Anri ignored the threat of the sword and turned to regard the blonde woman, "Nice to see you too, Elea-chan. Have you met Saotome Nabiki-san? I'm sure she's ever-so-honored to meet you."

"This...is your wife?" Nabiki asked.

"Indeed," Anri noted, "They called her Miriam in a previous incarnation."

"Miriam of Magdalla to be precise," the blonde woman said before fluidly re-sheathing her sword with as much ease as she had displayed in its drawing, "But if you already know that much then you know the rest of my story. Now...about Thelendra's whereabouts..."

"She met a friend," Anri replied, "As it so happens, the older sister to Saotome-san here, a lovely creature whose name is Tendo Kasumi."

"She what?" Elea blinked, "Met a friend? As in a girl-friend? And you didn't tell me?"

"I just did," Anri pointed out, "But before you start to raise objections, she's someone you already know from a previous incarnation..."

"Oh," Elea's blue eyes widened, "Oh...you mean...that one? Well, why didn't you say so?"

"I just...oh, never mind," Anri gave it up as futile, the indicated the girl still clinging fearfully to his breast, "By the way...this young one needs a home and a mother. Her last one...well...ran into a bit of trouble..."

"Don't tell me you're bringing home yet another stray?" Elea made a face, "What am I going to do with you, Husband? Oh, never mind...here, let me have her." The burden of the child was passed into her arms as Elea took her up with more expert care even than that displayed by her husband, "Now then...such a pretty thing, but she needs a good bath, and some food in her belly. Honestly, where do you find them, husband?"

"In far too many places," Anri said, "Her mother was a Christian and the ones who did this to her...were not."

"Oh, one of those types of refugees," Elea sniffed, looking at the young girl in her arms and smiling, "But we'll do what we can to show you a better way to live, young one. Take it from me, Ka'ala Tierma is a wonderful place in which to grow up, one that can teach you to see all sorts of possibilities and to help your realize a brighter future. I know, this is where I came to grow up when I was roughly your age...ah...a while back..."

Elea knelt down and stretched out a hand to the orphaned African girl, who hesitantly took it in her own, then the girl shyly smiled and moved forward into rhe receiving embrace of her new "mother." The blonde haired woman then walked off holding the child in her arms while Nabiki stood staring at her before turned to Anri and saying, "She's your wife?"

"Elea Ventura," Anri said proudly, "Mistress of the Lightning Sword, which you just saw displayed to some effect," he rubbed his chin as if with special meaning.

"Another favored apprentice of mine," Lord Hatugan remarked with grandfatherly indulgence, "I can well remember the day when she was brought here to this stronghold around a hundred and fifty years ago, so young and innocent to the ways of her potential...and now look at all that she's accomplished! I knew the moment that I saw her that she would be special in our lives, and not just as our Messenger, for I recognized her spark as being the one who had a soul connection to Monalon here."

"We'd known each other before in other lives," Anri elaborated, "One of the earlier incarnations was the one where she gave birth to Thelendra, whom she still thinks upon as her daughter. Of course we have other children, both naturally and adopted."

"Indeed thou hast," Hatugan turned a chiding look towards the younger man, "More than thy fair share I dare say...but it's your wandering eye for the ladies that tends to set Elea's teeth so much on edge. Thou canst hardly blame her for reacting the way she did when she saw this one that thou brought home with thee, Apprentice."

"I know," Anri sighed, "I try to remain faithful to her, honest...but sometimes, well...things happen. So sue me, I'm only human."

"Um...excuse me for asking this," Nabiki spoke up, turning to Hatugan, "But if you're Sensei's teacher..."

"How old be I?" the old man smiled, "In another few seasons I shall be celebrating mine second millennia of assendance, yet thee hardly need be diplomatic about it. I do not mind mine age, and what's wrong with nay having died as yet? We Eluini celebrate life in all it's splendor...that is, all but those of us who do pledge themselves in fealty to the dark lords, such as Lord Yama."

"Eluini?" Nabiki repeated, "But..."

"Hold," Anri urged, cocking an ear and listening sidelong.

"Huh?" Nabiki asked, turning once again to regard him.

"Don't you hear that sound?" Anri asked with a smile.

Nabiki tried focusing upon the wind then said, "No, I just...whoah!" she reacted, for it did indeed seem as though the sound of a bell gong were being carried over the wind currents.

"You hear it now?" Anri smiled, "A perfect Golden Kick. Your friend Saki has finally hit her strong mark.

"Saki?" Nabiki asked in surprise.

"Let us return to her now," Anri smiled, "For the moment your lessons with me are over, and it's time to turn you back to your real instructor so that your training may begin in earnest."

Nabiki felt the transition take over once again, and once more she was returned to the parkway during a bright and sunny day with the sun approaching noon overhead. She turned to see Saki throw another roundhouse...and thought for certainty this time that she had truly heard the ringing of a gong as her pink-haired friend was throwing one round house kick right after the other with flawless ease of motion.

"Ah, you're back," Trudy said, turning to regard Nabiki with a wryly-sardonic look, "Have a nice field trip?"

Nabiki started to frame an answer when Saki turned around with a delighted gasp upon seeing her, and then with no further preamble crossed the distance between them and threw her arms around Nabiki and cried, "Nabiki-chan, I did it!"

And then her mouth found Nabiki's mouth, and with a startled, "MMMMMPH?!" on the latter's part they started kissing, which briefly swept Nabiki away into a whirling mass of passionate confusion...

Continued.

Comments/Criticisms/Caveats a Plenty: shadowmane

Or: shadowmane9849

Next time out Nabiki gets a further education on the subject of sex and relationships, while Ranma continues to train with Siren, and Lord Charon storms the fortress of evil in, "Death Takes a Holy Day," or, "A Tendo and Her Mistress." Be there...

BTW-This is November 1, 2004, and tomorrow is election day. Go to the Polls and Vote. Vote for the Democrat of your choice, but VOTE! (And don't be taken in by self-righteous posers who pretend to talk to "God." She isn't taking any messages from half-wits who profane in Her holy name, starting elective wars on false pretenses that leave far more innocent dead in their wake than they ever do the truly guilty.

(And shame on anyone who believes the lies told against John Kerry)

Jim Robert Bader.  
11/1/04

/pre 


	99. Chapter 99

preDnabiki188

Nabiki 1/2

"A Very Scary Thought"

by Jim Robert Bader

(Inspired by the works of Rumiko Takahashi Others,  
with concepts and characters created by fellow fanfic writers Wade Tritschler, DB Sommers, Nicole Manders, Andrew Greaves, Bill Guiroff and countless others, including "Buffy"  
creator Joss Whedon; with special thanks to my good pal Shiva for his editing and handling of this series.)

(Certain other characters and concepts are of my own innovation, including my interpretation of the Monster of Mary Shelly's novel, the Furies, Trudy, Takaharis Angelique d'Anjou, Anri and the Daokan, Thelendra the Dream Weaver and various other guest stars appearing in this portion of the Nabiki 1/2 series...)

Chapter Seventy.

Episode One-Hundred-Eighty-Seven.

"Death and Texas"

The Dark Rider approached his target with senses extended towards its outer defenses, perceiving it a stronghold that had been cleverly camouflaged to resemble a simple office building. It had multiple floors concealing a wealth of highly technical security devices and was reinforced in some areas to withstand the onslaught of a heavily armed paramilitary force. It even had its own soldiers positioned at key strategic points with high-powered modern weaponry and who were highly trained to withstand a virtual army.

Added to this were a coterie of specialized killers and assassins, some with highly refined abilities that made them formidable and deadly. The elite core of this group were a class of fighters whose talents made them particularly special, and among them was one who truly held an impressive title as chief coordinator of this hellish nightmare, a figure of towering sinister dimensions whose true nature went unsuspected by his nominal "master," who himself was no one to be taken lightly. In all a difficult nut to crack if you were an average level warrior or even a super human being with powers and abilities beyond those of ordinary fighters.

For Charon the Dark it was nothing more than just another assignment, a minor challenge hardly worthy of his talents and certainly not so impregnable when pitted against his own considerable abilities and talents. As an Eluini of many centuries of experience he knew his way around such strongholds, even modern kinds of this nature, and nothing that his senses encountered struck him as more than a momentary diversion in the path of fulfilling his lord's desire, which was obtaining this terror-weapon they held at the center of their fortress. A disease that could quite literally reshape the world, an awesome concept even by Eluini standards.

Certainly a power lowly mortals such as these did not deserve to possess, especially with the wanton way in which they planned to release them on an unsuspecting public, and with such childish notions of creating an apocalypse to pave the way for their "perfect world order." As if they even knew the meaning of the term, or what it implied in terms of the cost of lives that would be sacrificed on the funeral pyre of such fanatical devotion.

Charon knew what perfect meant, and what men had done in the past in the pursuit of an ideal that was inherently unattainable. He had strode through the fields littered with corpses sown by men with the highest of ideals, collecting and reaping the benefit of their labors by harvesting the souls of their victims and transporting them to his Master's realm in the dark dimension that he called home in the present.

Of course his real home was buried ages ago in the past with the ancient tribe that had birthed him into their midst. Thousands of years ago he had been very much like other men, a mortal himself in the beginning, yet possessed of unique qualities that enabled him to survive when other of his people had crumbled long ago into dust. Early on in human history he had discovered his talent and prolonged his life and vital energy through its usage, and in time prospered where others fell to his scythe, and over the course of many years legends had grown up to be told about him, the Dark Rider who was death incarnate, with Hell following after him in his wake as he had strode through turning of history's pages.

If a man became good at something he could use it to his benefit, and if he became truly extraordinary in the harnessing of his abilities then he could well escape the grip of time, and mortality itself would lose it very definition. He was one such a man who had conquered death by becoming its avatar, and as such he was a force to be reckoned with, and no one to be trifled with by the likes of these fools who willingly served Ariman the Unmaker, albeit they deceived themselves into believing he was of a different name and order. A man who knew himself the way Charon did had little to fear from fools who clouded their minds with pleasant lies that distorted the truth and made villains into heroes.

And so he advanced upon his goal with set determination, a warrior born who had long since outlived the era when his kind were many, and with a boldness that few could match he stormed the gates of this hellish enclave, even gunning the engine of his modern-day "steed" to gain the necessary momentum that would make his forwarding entrance all the more terrifying to those who were about to greet him, and by extension to make acquaintance with his Master...

Within the lobby of a building that was innocently named "The Omada Group," a bored security guard sat behind a desk glancing at television monitors that were focused on different angles of the floor he was upon, thus giving a man the ability to know what was going on within that level without needing to leave the comfort of his chair. He hardly even needed to get up and walk patrols in this day and age where walking itself was becoming obsolete. He only had to sit there and look at TV screens for the full eight hours of his shift, making sure that they worked properly since he was not authorized to get up and risk his physical person should a crisis develop within the next few moments.

The company that paid his wages had a contract to do just this: to sit, observe and report as needful. Not exactly the kind of work were you could wind up as filthy rich, but comfortable enough to afford a moderately good lifestyle, even if he did spend much of his day watching bigwigs come and go, men and women who earned impressive salaries and who lived a kind of lifestyle that a low-paid lackey such as himself could only dream about sharing.

To pass the time he did odd little things just to keep his amusement level going, such as read a book or work on a crosswords puzzle, or even pretend to read one of those Bibles that the upper management provided to all employees just to make it appear as if he were part of the program and not, in fact, a functioning outsider. In all truth he found Western beliefs to be a bit strange to his thinking-not that he was about to admit so before his religiously zealous employers, a weird mix of apocalyptic beliefs and predictions concerning the end of the world on terms favorable to the gaijin but not to anyone else of any other belief system.

Ah but for a decent manga to read, he fretted, but no, such "Obscenely Pagan" material was expressly forbidden to everyone on this staff...unless it was one of the few "code approved" volumes that dealt with Christian themes as told from the perspective of a native writer and artist, and he always found those stories a bit flat and one-dimensional with predictable plots and anti-climatic endings far too moot for his liking. Likewise with Anime, which shocked and horrified the puritanical managers of this place to no end, so much so that there were actual placards denouncing such "puerile entertainment" posted throughout the building as if to warn off employees from being "tempted to stray by the allure of Satan as posed by cute adolescent girls in tight skirts with loose attitudes and a total absence of properly Christian virtues."

A good enough reason to indulge in them by the guard's point of view, but he was not about to voice objections to his supervisors that these placards were offensive to the sensibilities of his own culture and nation. In all truth he'd been on the payroll long enough to know that there was very little about these gaijin that was tolerant of other belief systems, and so he swallowed his national pride and grinned to bear it, doing what Japanese peasants had done for millennia, which was to bow and be humble before his betters, all the while nursing his private concerns within a corner of his mind that was not accessible to others.

He was just beginning to glance at his watch and wonder about how much more time he had before going home to bang his current girlfriend...when something at the edge of his awareness caused him to feel uneasy. He turned to the monitors wondering if there were something that he had subliminally picked up that should concern him...only to watch them go blank en mass as though the feed were cut off at the source. He blinked his eyes and then tried adjusting the controls but to no avail. All he got was snow, effectively blinding him to conditions within and without the office building.

And then a low-pitched whine caught his attention, and as he turned to seek its source he discovered that a dark-clad man riding a motor-cycle was at the main entrance going full bore and showing no indication of stopping.

There was no more than a split second of time between the realization of this and the actual moment of impact, and all at once the rider in black came sailing through the translucent impediment to his progress in a shower of broken glass that went sailing in all given directions. The guard instinctively ducked down behind his "courtesy desk" as the rumble of the heavy machine went sailing directly over his head, the rider touching down on the opposite side not a second or two later. There was a screeching noise as wheels skidded on smoothly polished linoleum floor and then the rider turned about and came skidding to an abrupt halt no more than ten meters away from the guard's exposed position.

The guard timidly looked up from behind his desk and saw the profile of the rider-in-black, whose face was obscured beneath an opaque face plate that obscured all trace of outward features. The rider turned his head as though to gaze back at the astonished guard, who reacted with a shudder as though Death Himself were peering down upon him. And, then just as casually, Death turned away as if ignoring him completely, as judging him to be a non-threatening element, a mere casual bystander. Instead the rider turned his focus towards the elevator, and after a pause or two during which he gunned his engine in place he did nothing more than this, as though expecting something to happen...

Which indeed was the case no more than twelve seconds later.

The elevator doors swung open, and then the rider popped a wheelie and gunned his machine into the open space, not bothering to brake for a stop before coming to a halt within the open chamber just as the slid closed behind him, sealing him off with nary an eyeblink of space in the passage.

Once the doors were secured the guard sat upright and stared in consternation at the inexplicable interruption to the monotony of his humdrum routine. He turned and surveyed the scattered glass then blanched in dismay and disbelief as the glass was no longer shattered. It was as if it had been magically reassembled to exactly the same perfect condition it was prior to the rider's entry. Of the rider himself there was no sign, not even a skid mark, leaving the guard to wonder if he had hallucinated the entire encounter. Of a certainty it did seem incredible that the incident had occurred, no matter how vivid his memories and impressions had been at the moment when it had seemingly happened.

He was just about to dismiss the whole thing to a frighteningly vivid day dream when alarms went off all around him, causing his heart to lurch in his breast with the sudden frightening realization that the whole encounter had been real and that something truly uncanny had been let loose within the building, and that there was nothing that he could do about it since the actual defense of the place was not in his job description.

Which was a very good thing because he pitied anyone who got in the way of that dark rider, the very memory of whom caused the guard to shudder and make a warding sign more true to a Buddhist rather than a Christian.

Death was on a roll this day, and of a certainty Hell would be following in His wake...

Meanwhile upstairs the real security detail employed within the building were mobilizing in defense of their stronghold. Highly trained and heavily armed mercenaries recruited as a sort of "Praetorian Guard" for Otono and his elite, they were the "Shock Troops" employed to deal with minor security matters such as casual intruders (and potential Assault Force teams) of a more-or-less conventional nature. They scrambled to key pre-selected defense points within the Upper Compound that the building concealed as a conventional office structure and readied their weapons to repel the invader. By some measure they would have been considered dramatic overkill, more than sufficient in strength to resist an invading army.

But against the Dark Rider who emerged upon the twentieth floor they were hopelessly outmatched for all of their impressive fire power. Charon emerged from the elevator into a blistering hail of high-caliber bullets that would have ripped a normal man to Swiss-cheesed pieces, but not a single projectile came near to touching him as they seemed to bend their arcs and swerve away at the last second. The walls, floor and ceiling was peppered by an explosive rain of lead and steel-jacketed ammunition that refused to find their mark upon their intended target as Charon surged into their midst and ignored their futile attempts upon his inviolate person, plowing into a fortified post and smashing straight through to the opposite side, scattering many of his assailants like ten pins as he hustled on by, his motorcycle shooting down the nearest corridor, only to swerve and plow through a wall at such a reckless speed that a normal man would have been pulped within an instant.

The explosive noise was sufficient to arouse Yagyu from the couch upon which he was napping, having attempted to drown his sore aches and pains with generous amounts of alcohol after returning to the complex in disgrace and failure for having failed to eliminate his target. He lifted the icepack from his forehead and growled, "Now what?"

Chusitsu, who had been enjoying the sight of the humbled warrior laid low by a "mere girl" so much that she barely bothered to glance to the side before saying, "Some fool of an intruder is inside the building. Most likely the guards will dispatch him in good order..."

Another sound like an explosive rocked the room and caused Yagyu to sit upright, regretting his haste immediately as it caused his head to pound like never before as he winced, groaned and closed his eyes, then said aloud, "Tell me...do they use grenades and missiles against a conventional foe? And if this is only a minor intrusion why then is there so much sustained gunfire? Why didn't it end within the space of the first salvo?"

Chusitsu scowled in annoyance at the man, reluctantly forced to concede to his point as she murmured, "That is a good question...for once." She glanced sidelong and said, "Any ideas on this, Talon-san? Talon-San?"

The hulking Ninja had been standing silently within his corner of the office but now had turned his head and seemed to register what would have passed for stunned dismay in the tone of his expression, "By the powers of Shadow...it cannot be! What is he doing here, and what fool allowed him within the building?"

"How is that?" General Lee looked up from his briefing report.

"Excuse me?" Geoffrey Taylor seconded, "Did that sound like fear in your voice my good sir? I would hardly expect you to be afraid of anything, let alone some intruder who no doubt has learned some inkling of what our alliance is up to."

"To which it is about, my friend," Yagyu hastily corrected the American-born preacher, "Never end a sentence with a proposition...or something like that. And anyway, I don't know about the rest of you, but fear in the likeness of Talon-san here is not what I could a good thing."

"Friend Yagyu is right," Verner Kephold said with authority, "It would seem our good Ninja master here is aware of the existence of the intruder, and his identity as well. That means we may be faced with something altogether uncanny, in which case every precaution is to be e is aware of the existence of the intruder, and his identity as well. That means we may be faced with something altogether uncanny, in which case every precaution is to be exercised, for at this late day in the program..."

"Oh, very well," Chusitsu said in tacit resignation of the group's prevailing consensus, "I guess that means it's up to me to investigate while you men sit here and debate endlessly the wisdom of my beloved Otono-sama."

With that the demonic fan-dancer extended her trademark weapons and struck a fetching pose before the wind wrapped around her and she vanished from sight altogether.

Talon, however, was not pacified and instead turned and said, "She will not be able to take him on all by herself, no matter what that self-contented witch may boast of her abilities. She will need backing up, Yagyu, and not just from your gun and sword-arm. We will need special arms in order to contain this menace...so go now and rally our defenses while I summon up the Puritan and the Preacher. Between you four I expect full cooperation, is that understood?"

"Completely," Hanurabi replied, getting up from the comfort of his couch and strapping on his sword belt, "But just what level of threat are we dealing with here if it could impress even you, my good Lord Talon?"

The dark-clad Ninja's eyes glowed menacingly from beneath his mask as he grated, "Don't further test my patience, Iga Ninja, or you will learn what impressive is. But if you must know the one approaching us is a servant of Death incarnate, the messenger of Hades who collects the souls of lost and dying fools who have no other way to enter hell but by his scythe of unholy retribution."

"What?" Taylor asked, "An agent of Satan is loose within this building?"

"The very worst kind of demonic minion," Talon responded with a hidden smirk as he added with a probing jab, "Not that I would consider you to be interested in such things, being that you are merely a guest and an ally and not directly in the service of our Lord Otono."

As the monster predicted, Taylor rose to the bait, bridling with indignant righteous fury, "How dare you, Sir! I am in the service of the Lord, before whom no righteous man but dares to be humble! I am a warrior in the service of the Light and I will defend this tower with my very life if need be. But point the way and my sword will be leant to the battle against the enemies of God Almighty..."

"Fine, then you're with me," Yagyu urged, tapping the man on the shoulder as he passed Taylor by, privately glad to have a chance to see the American Televangelist in action so as to gauge just how powerful he truly was, and if he really were a worthy ally of Otono.

And-thus by extension-a potential adversary for Hanurabi.

Talon waited until the men had left the room then turned to General Lee and said, "Secure the facilities, let nothing approach this level either living or dead. Complete lock down and securing of all samples of the Agency Vials is to be given the highest priority imaginable!"

"Why so dramatic, Talon-san?" Verner Kephold asked as he watched the general spring do fulfill his orders, "Must you guard the main samples from even the dead?"

"It is Death itself that approaches us," Talon replied, "I have fought this agent before and know him to be the greatest potential threat imaginable. Believe me when I say that no measure that we undertake could be too extreme for countering the threat he poses to us."

"Now that is most alarming," Verner remarked, impressed more by the tone of the giant man than by his words alone, which conveyed a sense of looming urgency that made the arms merchant wonder if he should consult with his master, Jungo, to determine the extent to which their master plan was in serious danger.

Meanwhile, several stories below, the Dark Rider was nearing his objective. Ignoring the small ineffective arms fire being directed towards him, he plowed through obstacles and scattered men in his wake with a callous ease of studied indifference to their futile efforts at impeding his forward progress. The more sophisticated defensive systems being employed against him were likewise of no great importance as his faithful Carrion Cycle transported him over, past, under and through each attempt at thwarting his mission. Moreover, his ability to manipulate probabilities in his immediate area caused devices to short circuit and malfunction at every corner. Even physical barriers were of minimal concern as he plowed right through titanium steel doors like they were made of paper, his power shattering them long before his forward wheel could even make contact with their metallic surface, and barriers of other sorts of construction were but a moment's challenge to be circumscribed, hardly serving to do so much as break the pace of his forward and upward momentum.

After all, he was Death's Messenger, and no puny construction made by mortal man could keep him away for his appointed rounds. The securing of his Master's goal was near at hand and he had every confidence of quickly completing his task then vacating the premises with the mortals never knowing the actual nature of the one who had stolen their Armageddon-style weapon.

But then he entered a chamber that was a major access point for the laboratories that housed and contained the lethal strain of virus that he was after...and all at once he rebounded off of a thick metallic vault-like door, one that not only refused him but repelled his momentum, causing him the first jarring moment of frustration since beginning this encounter.

Charon had reached an obstacle through which he could not plow through, and so he dismounted from his motorcycle steed and extended one hand, drawing Carrion into his very being for safe storage. Thus on foot he confronted the daunting barrier before him, a large time-locked vault through which his senses seemed unable to penetrate, as if the thing were made of solid Orachalchum or some other metal of similarly impervious material. Beyond that door lay the mid-level laboratory complex that he needed to break into if he were to find the viral samples that his master needed, and so the trick for him was determining just how to get inside there.

With senses that keenly probed beyond the capacity of the most sensitive of detection devices he studied the vault and determined that the reason for its resistance to his power was twofold. On the one hand it was layered with different tempered alloys of steel and polymer that made it effectively resistant even to a high-yield explosive. Nothing shy of a nuclear blast could shatter this material for it had Adamantium coating on the outer locks, and indeed a layer of something very like Orachalcum that absorbed psychic energies and prevented him from probing beyond its borders, let alone going ethereal and phasing to the inside, as would have been his preferred method.

The second part of the elaborate security locks safeguarding this laboratory was a kind of electrostatic machinery that used cables and coils to generate an anti-magnetic field that shielded the complex on all sides and further added to its systematic insulation. Even the locking mechanism on the door was shielded, meaning that his Proability Manipulating powers would be ineffective. He could not pick the combination lock to get inside and most definitely could not short out the generators maintaining the field since they were internally powered with a flywheel backup system.

But nonetheless Charon smiled from beneath his helmet, because as clever as the design of the vault was, it still was the product of mortals whose limited grasp of the possibilities of technology still left them susceptible to the Old Ways of doing business. He extended one hand and willed his Scythe into being, then drew back with its gleaming blade ready as he prepared to slice not through the vault itself but rather the frame bracing it to the floor and wall, the one vulnerable area left exposed to the irresistible power of his dreaded Death Dealer. Within another instant all the defenses imaginable would amount to nothing and he would have his viral agent in his possession, ready for delivery to his dark lord and master.

But instead of slash down he moved the Scythe instead into a defensive posture and deflected a series of "Air Blades" that had been aimed towards him. He then turned to see the one who had assaulted him and was momentarily brought up short, for the vision that confronted him was enough to make even him question his reason.

Lady Kagura...here?

No...not her, but rather someone very much like her. He extended his senses to confirm this mystery even while the fetching beauty posed herself in a haughty way and held her fans up in a stylishly threatening manner. By her manner alone she resembled the woman whose likeness she bore so impeccably that it was difficult to believe it was not her, but beyond the superficial likeness that they had in common there was a disturbing and uncanny element that caused Charon to study her more intently, which was not outwardly apparent from beneath the faceplate of his helmet, yet would have nonetheless been striking to any who knew him from even a casual past encounter.

"I don't know who you are, Stranger," the woman sneered with an aristocratic voice, "But you have made a fatal error to do this within the fortress of my Lord and Master, Otono Tyabi-sama...and so you must perish, for the enemies of my lord deserve no mercy!"

She moved once again and conjured up a wind from the still environment of the indoor complex, only it was a chilling, freezing wind with blade-sharp vacuum-knives that cut through the air like the teeth of a whirlwind razor. An ordinary man would have been instantly sliced into a thousand little pieces...

Charon but raised his Scythe and cut through the wind as neatly as he might a silken kerchief.

Impossible...that power belonged to Kagura...only stronger, much stronger than the Demoness of the Wind had ever known. Such power could only portend a greater force embodied within this slender girl than was obvious from a mere cursory examination.

"You split my wind in twain?" the demoness asked incredulously, then her eyes narrowed, "Very well, then let us see how you deal with...THIS!"

This time a lateral slash-attack with a single fan kicking up a wind so sharp that it could fell a small forest of trees, but again Charon blocked this thrust and turned the winds aside, and just as incredulously measured the full force of the attack and reckoned from it a most startling conclusion.

More than human and far more than any demon...his assailant was a hybrid whose nature combined elements of the Eluini with those of a more conventional demonic and human nature. A trace of divine ancestry alloyed in with the essence of an elemental nature, combined to form a truly formidable and talented lady whose seeming bloom of youth was the result of a prolonged lifespan and an inherent ability to tap into the Manna flows of her environment regardless of access to potential wind sources.

In other words she was none other than Kagura's daughter!

Impossible! She never told him about this! How could she keep a thing like this from ME!?

His understandable reaction-typical of men throughout all ages who found themselves confronted by similar such irrefutable evidence-distracted him only slightly as the girl named Chusitsu launched a more overt and daring attack, risking closer contact with her presumed enemy while dancing like the graceful Wind Spirit that she was with slash-kick-slash attack combinations that he was forced to parry with his scythe, restrained from counter-attacking as he yielded ground to her, something he almost never did in any of his battles.

This was posing a bit of a dilemma for Charon, one where he refused to lash out and found himself constrained from using his abilities to take his opponent down as he feared to harm her in any way imaginable. This was a rather unique situation for him, who normally was the most ruthless of killers, to actually be more concerned about the welfare of his antagonist than he was for his own safety. Six thousand years of life experience left him ill prepared for this, and as such he was hard pressed to know how to put his foe down without actually hurting her. His knowledge of many thousands of methods intended to incapacitate or kill his enemies was of limited use to him now, and all he could do for the moment was restrain her and blunt off her attacks while trying to find the opening which he needed.

Fortunately enough one was provided to him at the awkward moment when he was being steadily backed into a corner. Three men appeared from different access points as if summoned together to the scene, and their appearance proved more distracting to Chusitsu than they were to Charon, who had been expecting reinforcements.

"Stand away from him, Miyamoto-san," one of these new arrivals declared, "Let us contend with the Lord Charon."

"You?" Chusitsu snapped, diverting her attention away from her intended foe, "Who asked for your help, Puritan? And you, Yagyu...keep back! This one is my...!"

Charon did not bother to make a quip but stepped into the space of the fan-dancer's zone of protection before she had sense enough to detect his movement. His hand pressed her neck firmly and blocked the flow of energy there, causing blood to momentarily cease flowing to her brain as his very touch itself was numbing, absorbing life energies and temporarily rendering her unconscious within the space of a single second.

Charon grasped the woman in his arms and eased her to the floor lest she hurt herself in falling, then stood up once again and smiled, impressed at what a fine warrior she was, and how her mother should have been well and truly proud of their daughter. His fatherly pride was measurably high...but he hid his smile away as he turned his attention towards his newer enemies, the ones against whom he felt no constraint about killing.

The guards whom he had defeated on the way to the complex were as nothing to Charon, but the three before him were of a different class of warriors, and thus of greater interest. The one who was armed with guns and a sword was a Samurai type who practiced a brand of Ninjutsu, but the one to his left had a more chilling aura that spoke of death and cruelty. By contrast the third man in the center was a marvel of calm and composure, but nonetheless a dangerous sort in his own right, and one whom Charon had met before upon a very different plane of battle.

The Puritan.

This time Charon did not bother to hide his smile. This was going to be interesting, and he intended to enjoy himself the whole time that he was putting these fools out of their mercy.

"Wull now," drawled the man to his right, a fellow in a duster coat who had a very heavy American regional accent, "That was certainly no gallant way to treat a lady. Not that I mind if the bitch gets taken down a notch or two. Always did have a bit of a high horse 'tude by my reckoning..."

"Be careful," the Puritan warned softly, "Charon is Death personified, and it would not do to underestimate him."

"So it would seem," Yagyu soberly appraised as he studied the dark-clad biker, "From the condition of the guards he met-to say nothing of poor Chusitsu-san-it would stand to reason that he is not one to be taken lightly."

"Aw shucks, he ain't nothing but some Evil Kenieval wannabe who thinks he's another Eastwood," the Preacher smirked, "Ain't nothin but another Godless interloper needs puttin down...and that's what I do best, Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammo."

With that stated opinion the man in the duster coat proceeded to upholster a pair of wicked looking side-arms and let loose with a double salvo, sending a hail of bullets towards Charon, who naturally raised both his scythe and his ambient protection to deflect himself against a dozen lethal pellets sent with explosive force in his direction.

But to his considerable dismay he felt a stinging graze against one arm as one of the bullets failed to be deflected. Without glancing down Charon felt the burning sensation of contact with something his powers did not work against. It burned with an intensity comparable to phosphorous, and even one as stoical as himself could not help wincing at the unbelievable that sting this caused him.

As stunning as it was for him to be struck by a mere mortal, the mortal in question registered surprise that his assault was not far more severe, and so he raised his guns and discharged the ammo clips, then moved his weapons to his side-holder dispensers and loaded in two new rounds into his six-shooter tumblers, saying with a smirking leer, "Well now, lookee you, a real tough cookie. Too bad for you that these Holy Bullets of the Lord were designed to dispense justice to even a demon outta Hell..."

"Preacher!" the Puritan called out in comradely warning.

Charon's eyes blazed suddenly, visible even from behind his visor, and all at once a wave of force rose up to split the very air itself as the space between him and the Preacher was torn asunder, giving the mortal a taste of what real Hell felt like in the explosive space of an instant.

Surprisingly, though, the man in the duster coat managed to weather the blast as it seared the edges of his leather apparel and drove him staggering back by several odd paces. His arms and shins flared brightly and he howled in pain as the metal guards protecting his body heated up to intolerable levels, but he managed to remain standing in spite of the abuse. He even managed to cling to his weapons in spite of the searing agony, and by force of a will that was surprisingly intense he even managed to retain consciousness where a lesser man would have been reduced to a sobbing mass of shuddering horror.

Charon had little time to exult in his retaliation, however, for the Puritan was next upon him, the man loving so fast that it was amazing that the thrust of his sword could be so easily deflected.

There were no words exchanged as two old enemies met each other on the field of combat, the Puritan moving with expert speed, skill and timing, locking his rapier with the scythe of the dark clad man as the two of them braced against one another and held their poses in a momentary impasse.

Yagyu stood to one side with pistols drawn and hesitated to use them, knowing that at this range he might shoot an ally as easily as his intended target. Granted the Puritan was not exactly a close friend, more like a casual acquaintance, a strange blond-haired man who spoke little and never smiled nor appeared to have anything resembling a sense of humor-and who had no use for wine, women or song, much as his name would tend to imply-he nonetheless was a comrade in arms, and shooting one in the back had never much appealed to Yagyu, at least on a principled basis.

But as he stood to one side observing the seeming stasis he thought for a moment he heard words in his voice that were not the Puritan's evenly clipped tones that sounded in his mind like:

Where is your woman, Yohan? Your better half at least knows how to party.

"To hell with you, Death-Dealer," the Puritan snarled, so soft and intense that it sounded murderous enough to count as a weapon.

And then Charon moved, thrusting forward with such a great heave that he threw his opponent literally backwards, making a swipe with his massively long scythe that looked sharp enough to sheer a redwood tree at the base, and the Puritan staggered backwards, clutching at his waist and looking to all intents as if he were seriously winded.

That decided the matter for Jubei, who immediately fired at the man in black from point-black range, discharging full clips from his automatic weapons whose rapid-fire staccato burst made a dozen shots sound like one, and whose impact at this range should have hit home with the force of a jackhammer.

But the man in black calmly absorbed the hits then turned his visored faceplate towards Yagyu. He did not even appear to feel the impact of the bullets and he just stood there calmly before moving one hand to raise the visor on his helmet.

Ordinary metal. Nothing that can hurt me.

When he did so, revealing his face, Yagyu sincerely wished that he had not, for the eyes of the dark man were themselves as black as night and as deep as pitch, fathomless eyes of inky twilight that absorbed all warmth around them and seemed to contain an infinity of stars. Eyes that drunk in life and gave back nothing but emptiness, and yet behind which lurked an intelligence that was old and wise before the birth of civilization.

And a voice in Yagyu's head as clear and crisp as if spoken audibly:

You should not be here.

Yagyu was just beginning to absorb this when another more audible voice cried out, "STAND BACK YOU FOUL DEMON OF THE PIT!" and all hell literally broke loose within the next second.

Yagyu had not seen Taylor's arrival seeing as he had lost track of the televangelist somewhere down the corridor, and he was not expecting the man to put in an appearance at the last minute and with very little warning. Secondly he had not anticipated Taylor's attack to be quite as devastating as it was, or to so instantly bring an end to the fighting as his initial assault had taken even Charon by surprise, so swift and massively effective that even the Dark Racer was overwhelmed. All Yagyu knew was that he had been knocked for a loop and had been slammed into a wall with force enough to seriously threaten his rib cage.

The next half minute later, after his ears ceased ringing, he opened his eyes to see that Taylor had dawned an outfit of such an outlandishly gaudy nature that under normal circumstances Hanurabi would have laughed out loud at the ridiculousness of it all. As it was he found himself staring in stark disbelief as Taylor held up a massive crystalline broadsword with one hand and was preparing to use it on the fallen Biker, a sword that gleamed impressively with runes and other symbols yet had a strangely repellent quality that fascinated Yagyu in spite of himself. In Taylor's hand it seemed even more impressive as the fellow resembled nothing so much as an avenging arch angel, all gleaming in silvery white with gold trim and even adorned by a cape held in place like some manner of Gaijin superhero.

"And now, Fell demon, prepare to face the Lord's wrath!" Taylor cried in his stentorian voice as he prepared to slash down with his radiant weapon upon the motionless rider.

"Hold!" a voice called out, causing Yagyu to divert his attention away from the tableau in time to see Lord Otono himself make a sweeping entrance, "Stay your hand, Taylor-san, we have need of this infidel...alive and intact we would prefer and not sliced in twain by your glorious weapon."

Taylor was surprised and had no reservations about voicing this, "But he is a foul demon of the pits! He must be slain before he can escape the Lord's righteous wrath..."

"Talon informs me that we could have a use for this one," Otono replied, "He is powerful and dangerous, but we have the means for containing him, so it makes little sense to end his life prematurely. He will suffer for whatever crimes he has committed, of that I give you my promise, but not before we have extracted useful information that could benefit our cause. Until that time I want him restrained, and I am leaving the matter to Talon to decide the best course. So please...in the name of the Mercy of Christ, set aside your wrath and allow this poor creature to continue."

"If you wish it so, then I shall desist," Taylor replied, and suddenly his weapon vanished from his hand as if banished by magic, leaving the room somehow warmer for its passage.

Otono turned to survey the wreckage of the battle, and then he said to one of the fallen comrades, "Are you still with us, brother John?"

"Still here," the Puritan grunted from where he was leaning up against the wall holding his sore abdomen, then pushing away and once more standing on his own two legs.

"You must be joking," Yagyu remarked, "That fellow nearly cut you in half with that scythe of his. You need to get some stitches on that wound or you're likely to bleed to death, or suffer total disembowelment...

His voice fell away as the Puritan straightened his shoulders and seemed somewhat more calm and well collected, his voice steady and confident as he said, "Thanks for the concern, but no thank you. I've always been a good healer, and this little scratch...was not so deep as you imagine."

Otono then turned to yet another wounded comrade and asked, "Does that hold for you as well, Brother Zachary?"

The Preacher just grunted then said, "Ain't no different from what I've lived through before, Brother Otono-san. Dude scorched my collar a bit but my bracers and amulets held. Skunk owes me for my crucifix, though...melted the damned thing right off of my neck. Gonna nurse a scar for that for a few days...not that I ain't proud of bein' branded by the Lord for a day in his service."

Otono then softened his tone somewhat and asked, "My lady Chusitsu?"

Yagyu turned his glance towards the unconscious fan dancer, then graciously knelt down to examine her, resisting the urge to touch inappropriate areas of her anatomy lest he offend his host and appear thus more ungallant. A moment to touch her throat and confirm his suspicions and then he said, "She lives, her pulse is strong, and she is apparently not hurt, just unconscious. Whatever the fellow did to her it was most effective..."

"Yes, I can see that," Otono turned an annoyed glance at the damage to the walls, floor and ceiling, and then down the corridor where the bodies of fallen guards could be seen littering the area at haphazard angles. "Apparently this man went right through our defenses as if they were not even there and only came up short of the vault through the grace of God and His dutiful servants. Are you certain it's a good idea to let him live, even as a captive?"

"Trust me on that, my lord," Talon rumbled, "As dangerous as he is, killing him would only make him that much more dangerous because he is already dead as you or I might measure the term. Kill him and he will will himself back to life far more deadly than ever."

"Then I trust you to see to it that he does not disturb us again," Otono frowned, "Two more days yet remain before we unleash the Lord's vengeance upon the Godless fools who populate this Godless country, and I want no more interference coming this close to disturbing our time table. Do I make myself understood on this my brothers?"

"Oh, I'm sure I speak for everyone when I say that you are being crystal clear, Otono-sama," Yagyu assured the man.

"Clear by me," Taylor affirmed.

"Clear," the Puritan said tersely.

"Clear enough to me, Boss," the Preacher said, "But I don't see how it's too likely that this will happen again, after all, how many more are out there who could give the lot of us this much of a tussle?"

"You would be most surprised by the answer to that question," Talon assured them, "But be assured that security will be tightened, and I am calling in yet more of our field agents to double as security so that the next time around an intruder will find our defenses far less to their liking."

"See that you do, my friend," Otono urged the hulking Ninja, and then he turned back to the woman laying upon the ground and said, "And someone carry my lady back to my personal quarters. I will tend to her needs myself."

"I am confident that she would want it no other way, Otono-sama," Yagyu reassured, only to turn with a frown as he glanced at the fallen dark rider, wondering if it were his imagination...or did it seem for a second there as if the rider had stirred, though that might just be nerves on his part as he still felt rattled by the encounter...and the not-quite-words put into his head by some unknown means:

You do not belong here.

How the devil did he know about that? But then again, Yagyu's cover was close to being blown already, and there was little that the stranger could add that would sink him any lower in the estimation of his nominal "comrades"...

Not far away a homeless man was pushing a cart that contained all of his worldly belongings when he paused in mid-step, wondering just why it was that he felt uneasy. He turned a glance to one side and thought for a moment that he caught something stirring in the nearby alley, only it was gone the instant he looked that way. He paused and waited, waiting as only a man who literally does have all the time in the day at his disposal could wait for something to happen...and then it suddenly did, and he gave a yelp in terror, turning and fleeing the area as fast as he could push his cart, trying to put all the distance that he could between himself and that accursed alley.

A pair of eyes that looked nominally like headlights slowly blinked and then closed once again, leaving the alley once more in darkness as a creature feared by many continued to rest itself and concern its energies, fully aware that its Master and Friend would be requiring its services once again in very short order, and that it was sensible to be ready, even if it meant letting the puny human get away.

Probably not much meat on the bones anyway, and the stink of the human was like a creature that had refused to bathe for a whole entire year, which for a Japanese was certainly one heck of a dereliction.

Inside the creature's belly its Master was staring in consternation at the image of the building that stood just opposite to the dragon. Leaning back in his chair he frowned and consider the possible permutations while his companions looked on and worried, and none more so than the American police woman known simply as Carla to her Japanese contemporaries.

"Uh oh," she said aloud, "That's not good."

"What's not good?" Natsumi asked, trying very hard not to think of where they were and what sort of man it was who commanded this truck-turned-creature.

"Has something bad happened to your friend?" Miyuki asked of the driver of this uncanny beast that concealed itself as a humble eighteen wheeler.

Udan Robar Bartev made a noise not unlike a rumbling volcano but otherwise did not reply in words. Rather he conveyed his meaning by the same unspoken that he had employed with them from the first of their encounter.

Charon is hardly a friend. If anything he is my greatest rival and a constant source of irritation in my travels, a real thorn in my side if ever there was one. Nonetheless...I find it quite disturbing that his life signal was briefly interrupted. Something momentarily laid him low, which I confess that I find most surprising.

"Laid him low?" Inspector Morisato did not bother to disguise his dismay upon "hearing" this, "The Dark Rider...stopped in his tracks? And by one of those who are in league with Reyabi-san? Somehow I do not find this news of much great comfort, Monsieur..."

Udan's response was in no way a comfort as he considered the image projected by a crystal eye that hovered in the space before him.

Neither do I, which is saying a great deal. I have fought with Charon many times and know his limits even as much as he does mine, and the only way that I can imagine him falling in battle is if he either allowed himself to be felled...or...

"He ran into somebody a lot tougher?" Natsumi suggested.

"More like something," Carla said, "I felt...well...call it a disturbance in the force if you will, but something hugely powerful lashed out a moment ago, and even I could feel from here."

"But what would do this?" Miyuki wondered.

A sword.

"Beg pardon Mon Amis?" Morisato asked.

It was a sword, a crystalline rune blade of a type forged in the time of ancient Atlantis.

"A sword?" Carla shuddered, "You don't mean...one of the Seven?"

Possibly. Or possibly not quite that powerful. It is difficult to determine...the impression came and went too soon for me to fully measure."

"The seven?" Natsumi repeated, "The seven what?"

"Mon dieur," Morisato swore, "The ancient legends...can they be true?"

"Sometimes it turns out to be so," Miyuki replied, "I've lost count of the number of times when someone says a thing like that and it turns out to be that they are referring to an actual legend."

"But what kind of legend are we talking about?" Natsumi wondered.

Udan turned a glance towards the Japanese police woman, and in that look was a cautionary message.

The Seven are powerful, unique unto themselves, and if a Wielder is working for the enemy then we are all in serious trouble.

Before anyone could ask what he meant by that it was Carla who provided the answer, reciting what sounded like a poem, but told with a Japanese rhythm:

"Seven Swords for Seven Lords,  
These are the Pillars, the Champions of Fate,  
Three are of Light and Three are of Darkness,  
And of the balance is the seventh one born..."

"Say what?" Natsumi blinked, more mystified even than ever.

"It is a legend told of long ago, Cheri," Morisato explained, "Of a time when darkness came close to swallowing the light, right after the fall of the Empire of Atlantis...which long predated the actual fall of the islands themselves, of a time when a creature who was half Demon and half Divine forged seven pillars and linked them to the channels of Fate, and then forged for each a sword made of crystal that embodied one of these pillars each, and through them charged with runic might all the power of the Universe, residing in the shape of a weapon that only a single individual could wield...Corl the Soul Warrior, the Champion Eternal of fate."

"Champion Eternal?" Natsumi blinked, "You mean like in those Michael Moorcock novels?"

"Some say the idea was suggested to him by the legends of a reincarnating being who could wield a sword that embodies a universal principle," Carla noted, "But unlike in his works the forces of Chaos and Order are not evenly balanced but rather strive in contention for all eternity to gain mastery over the Cosmos. And so the Warrior Eternal becomes the Champion of humankind, able to carry the Sword and settle the grievances of both sides by maintaining a rude balance."

"Only the swords fragmented like rays of light through a prism over time," Morisato continued, "So instead of merely seven of them there came to be forty nine different version, each one a projection of a different aspect, and wielded seven times a piece by a different champion, who was themself the same identical being repeating over and over the wars for the balance for all eternity, sometimes even appearing more than once in the same lifetime."

"But that's crazy!" Natsumi declared, glancing to the side for support and finding instead a thoughtful expression in the face of her partner-turned-lover, "Miyuki-chan?"

"Seven times seven times seven equals three hundred-forty-three," the pony-tailed police woman murmured softly, "That is an awful lot of times for one being to be reincarnated."

Udan almost smiled as he nodded to that.

Indeed, and some would claim that the Champion himself is insane, as reflected by the multiple personalities he must wear, each one different for each incarnation, and no two exactly alike for all that there are...similarities in aspect.

"If one of the Seven is allied to Otono and his Amakusa, mon amis, then our troubles are multiplied a hundred fold!" Morisato remarked without needing to feign his sense of urgency and panic.

"Maybe even a thousand," Carla noted, "I've met the Champion at least...um...several times, and I know for a fact that she...or he...is no one to be messed with, and even gods have been known to fall before the power of the Rune Sword."

Udan scowled all the more as he thought that one over.

Which would make it even a threat to me and my person. Well indeed that my brother counseled me against striking out on my own, and my lady forbade me from striking at the enemy directly. If Charon could be this easily brought low then it is only prudent to keep my distance and wait for the right time to make my move. When the Aspect of the Champion leave I will do what I can to assist my enemy, for even one such as Charon does not deserve to be a captive to these fools.

"My lord," Carla said, "Even if you wait for the right time...what hope is there of triumph? The power of the Seven reaches well beyond all physical boundaries..."

"Unless opposed by another aspect of the Champion, Cheri," Morisato countered, "And it so happens that I know for a fact that one presently resides within Japan, which means two aspects of differing alignment are here to counterbalance one another."

"Counterbalance?" Natsumi asked.

"You mean one aspect can cancel out the other?" Miyuki wondered.

Udan nodded thoughtfully.

Maintaining the balance is the Champion's sole duty. No doubt the Pillars of Fate are at work arranging things to fall in place at the right time and in the right position.

"Then...there is still hope, my lord?" Carla hesitated to ask.

"There is always hope, Cheri," Morisato urged, "You just need faith to see it sometimes."

Again Udan frowned.

Faith and luck...though I must prefer to rely upon my own means and leave the arrangements of fate in the competent hands of my sister-wife, the Lady Ulsa.

"Sister-wife?" Natsumi asked.

"It's a long story," Carla assured them, "And it dates back to an age before they passed laws against that stuff, but there's no reason to think Mendel's law would apply here since neither of them carries any recessive traits, and they hardly even see each other but once or twice in a century...or two."

Again the temptation to smile was threatening to break the stony continence of the stone-faced Udan.

Or more if it can be arranged, but never mind debating my private life. We must leave here now and regroup at a safe distance. I will take you to where you need to go so that I may be on time to make my rendezvous with a certain pair whom my brothers and I are finding most intriguing."

"So...we're gonna get this beast moving again?" Natsumi asked nervously.

"All the way to our appointed rounds, Cheri," Morisato replied, "While I check in with my superiors and let them know that their suspicions regarding the Amakusa were well and justly founded."

Udan seemed reflectively thoughtful as he stared off into space, and the tone of his thoughts was melancholy, even by his maniacally depressive standards.

Do as you must. In the end it must come down to a battle between our chosen representatives and the minions of the other side. I would warn against premature action as the ones whom we have selected have the better chance of bringing down Otono, where legions of agents and conventional armies would be of little advantage.

"My lord?" Carla said in surprise, "You and your brothers are planning such a counter-offensive?"

Udan seemed uneasy as he glanced towards the American police woman.

A hasty plan constructed out of desperation, for even we were taken unawares by the earlier preparations leading to this moment. My brother has chosen three uniquely individuals to serve our cause, but it all depends on whether or not they can be prepared in time to rise to this challenge. Otherwise...our options are not so pleasant. Confronting Ariman may be our last desperate attempt to save reality from collapse from his tendrils, but the cost of victory could well mean the death of this timeline.

"Say what?" Natsumi blinked in dismay, "What are you talking about?

"It sounds almost as if he means to destroy our world and everything in it," Miyuki fathomed in calmly-voiced dismay.

Udan shifted his gaze towards this particular Japanese woman, alert to how perceptive she was, far more than her companion, who tended to be a much more down-to-earth person.

Not willingly, and not lightly do I undertake this as an alternative...but know that if it means upholding the integrity of the greater Cosmos itself...then I will do that which is needed to establish order. The other side intends to destroy everything and everyone, to unmake that which is, and as such I must uphold the mandate of the Daokan...even if opposing the enemy directly would mean doing his dirty work as it relates to this singularly interesting timeline.

"I do not much think that I like the sound of this, mon amis," Morisato swallowed, "But...if it is what you must do..."

"Wait a minute," Natsumi protested, "Destroy the timeline? You could actually do it?"

Udan shifted his gaze her way and his thoughts were as flat and implacable as a stone tablet.

Yes.

"He is the Lord of Earth and Water," Carla explained for the benefit of her Japanese counterparts, "All material and fluid things fall under his dominion...and if he chooses to liquidate our world...then only one other could overrule him...and she must have already given him her sanction, being the Preserver who maintains the balance through calm and passive reflection of the Divine Will of the greater One."

"But...wait a minute," Natsumi persisted as she stared disbelievingly at the dark man before her, "Are you telling us this guy is some kind of a God? That he has powers over life and death...?"

"Don't be silly, Cheri," Morisato replied, "He is not a god...that would be huge step down from his true position in the greater plan of universal order."

"He's the left hand of the Daokan," Carla clarified, "Defining him would be as useless as trying to use a needle and thread to stitch together water. Don't bother trying to figure him out...you'll be a whole lot happier just accepting him as a living enigma."

Udan turned away then seemed to project a restless urgency that was almost...uncharacteristic.

We must be away for now. I will drop you each off at the place where you are needed then retire to plan for later. It is not yet time to move, and better far if the enemy does not suspect that I am contemplating my own assault upon their fortress.

"And this non-friend of yours...Charon?" Miyuki asked.

Again a smile threatened to break upon his lips as the dark man looked grimly ahead.

A taste of captivity would do Charon well and might even school him in humility, though perhaps I am being overly optimistic. In any event I will do that which is needful when I judge the moment is right and liberate my enemy so that the two of us may pay our respects to the true foe. Other than this...he is on his own for the moment."

"But can death truly be held a captive by the means at the disposal of the Amakusa?" Morisato asked.

Again the thoughtful look caused Udan to glance sideways in what, for him, seemed an uneasy reflection.

Perhaps...if only for a day or two at best. But it is not for nothing that Charon has lived six thousand years and has outlasted dynasties and empires of great pith and monument, so I am betting that this time will not be the exception. At any event matters are moving rapidly to a looming crisis point, and if this world is to be saved then we should all pray for our Champions, who alone might tip the scales back towards the light...but only if they can overcome certain...morally questionable issues that even now they are confronting...

* * *

Saki gasped as she belatedly realized what she was doing and immediately broke off the kiss that she had impulsively planted upon Nabiki's startled lips. For a moment they stared at one another, open-eyed and full of mutual astonishment, and an unspoken realization of the significance of what had just now happened.

And then Saki broke away from their eye contact and pushed herself away from the stunned Nabiki, then turned around and started running away as fast as her legs could carry her.

"Saki-...chan..." Nabiki belatedly called out, then she started to move forward, intending to give pursuit of the other young woman.

"Student, stand down," Trudy barked, her tone so sharp that Nabiki instinctively obeyed, checking her forward momentum.

"But..." Nabiki started to protest, then stopped herself again, wondering just what she would say to justify her impulse.

"What would you say to her to make her feel any less the pain of self-betrayal that her actions have generated between you both?" Anri asked mildly, "Her actions have attested to her feelings well enough that you should now be aware of their nature and-as such-respect her for what she is, a woman who is troubled."

Nabiki turned a dismayed look his way and said, "You knew?"

"Is that surprising?" Trudy sniffed, "A blind person would have known it, but we're often blind to things that are right in front of our faces until someone beats us over the head with the bloody obvious, and then we stand around and express disbelief that we could never have seen it coming in the first place."

"But...but...Saki is my friend," Nabiki protested, then realized belatedly how lame that sounded and amended, "...I mean...she's never been like that with me before...has she?"

"She would never have willingly divulged her true feelings in the normal course of affairs," Anri shrugged, "But...in her enthusiasm at her achieving the triumph of a perfect kick, her natural inclinations took over and...well..."

"And now she's mortified and feeling perfectly wretched at having let down her guard so completely," Trudy sighed, "You stay here, student. I'll tend to her needs, you remain here with Lord Anri."

"But..." Nabiki started to say, but the redheaded American teacher was already in motion, and from a stop-dead start this enigma known as Trudy seemed to move as though possessed of the energy of a gazelle, with loping strides that ate up distance and seemed readily to promise that she would be catching up with the fleet-footed Saki in very short order.

Anri regarded the pair as they vanished into the distance then said, "Is it my imagination or would it seem to you as though there was an element of self-recrimination contained within that statement?"

"Why ask me?" Nabiki said miserably, "You're the guy with all the answers."

"Not so," Anri contradicted, "I am merely your teacher, not your god and certainly not your priest confessor. I've merely been around long enough to have sufficient experience in these affairs so that I am in a position to give you advice, take it or leave it. In the end it is the goal of the student to surpass his or her master and, in effect, become their own teacher...which you have a long way yet to go before you can achieve this lofty title."

"Go to hell," Nabiki said in misery.

"Already have," Anri said, "Several times over."

"Oh yeah?" Nabiki felt an irrational anger rise up within her to give her the strength of self-righteous outrage, "Then tell me this, Sensei...why is I wind up hurting the people I love? Why does every goddamned student in my high school have to wind up falling in lust with my body, either male or female, and why can't I just live happy and normal with the ones I love?"

"That's three questions, not one," Anri held up a hand, "But in order of which you ask them, one...you don't hurt everyone whom you love through your actions, Saotome-san...it just feels that way, and sometimes we cannot help but cause a certain amount of suffering to those whom we would prefer to spare the pain of anguish. It is in our nature. Secondly, there is an element inherent within your Jusenkyo curse that does, indeed, cause a heightening of sensual charisma, especially in hormonally driven young ladies who see within you those qualities that normally exist only in their ideal fantasy sexual mate. Thirdly, define normal. I really don't know what that is, for all that I've been around ordinary common folk for nearly every one of my ten incarnations. People are as different from one another as pebbles on a beach, no two entirely alike one another...no wait. There were those two identical twins I met in the Balkans who did seem rather indistinguishable from one another...but other than that the rule holds, even mindful of the exception."

For some reason his very flippancy so grated on Nabiki's nerves that she snarled, "All right, then why don't you show me how different you are from all of my expectations, Sensei? Why don't we just settle this here and now, just you and me, martial arts style?"

"I beg your pardon?" Anri asked, feigning a surprise that Nabiki was certain was not genuine, which further added to her growing irritation.

"You know what I mean!" Nabiki snapped, "Fight me!"

"About what?" Anri asked innocently.

"How about the whole damned day?" Nabiki snapped, "You've monopolized my time for the whole entire afternoon, and yet you've yet to teach me anything truly useful! So you've lived a long time, you've been all those different people, and you've affected the destiny of millions of people...so what? I still want to know how good you really are, so show me!"

"I've upset you," Anri said calmly, "And for that I am apologetic...but nonetheless, I do not have to justify my actions with you."

"The hell you don't!" Nabiki drew back a fist and prepared herself in a fighting crouch, summoning up her Chi and focusing all of her knowledge and training.

"Well, obviously you feel that I do, so perhaps you do have a point about that," Anri sighed, turning squarely to face her, "But very well...if you must, you must. By all means, then, do what your feelings demand and hit me."

"Don't worry," Nabiki said sharply as she concentrated her power and threw her fist forward with her full unfettered Amazon-trained fury, channeling enough force in her hand to shatter through steel and concrete with the ease in which a hammer could shatter an ice block.

Anri hardly seemed to move as the fist zeroed in on him, but at the last instant his fingers moved to intercept the fist, and with two fingers upraised he halted her furious punch and totally absorbed it. He then moved with an ease that was nearly laughable and caught her arm at the wrist, making a swift twisting motion that caused an audible snapping noise to reverberate in the air like the sound of rotting twigs breaking.

Nabiki's eyes went as round as headlights and she felt pain shooting up through her shoulder that was so massive that it impacted with her nerve ganglia like a splash of ice water, chilling her to the bone in the space of an instant. She gazed in disbelief at her arm, which hung at an unfamiliar angle while her mind nearly shut down from the shock of her agony, her body becoming as rigid as a statue.

"Did you think that I was playing around?" Anri asked mildly, his very tone somehow more serious for the lack of humor in its inflection, "Have you any idea how many openings you just presented to me with that ill-thought out attack? Or what I might have done to you if I were an enemy seeking your life? Do you have any conception of just how much of a gulf there is between you and me when it comes to martial arts talents? You forget...I was once called the Boddhidarma, and I taught the Shaolin system to the Buddhist Monks of China. I was also once a humble fisherman living in an obscure village situated in what is now known as Northern Korea, and I founded there a school of assassination that survives to this very day, albeit that my descendants lacked somewhat in ethical training...a defect for which I bear a good amount of guilt and embarrassment I might add. Even allowing for what I have already revealed to you concerning my past, did you take any of this into consideration before attacking me? I think not...you just wanted to childishly vent your wrath without thought of the consequences."

Nabiki did not respond to this, could not reply, for the pain was so numbing that she lacked the energy to do or say anything other than to remain where she was standing in a paralyzed state of agonizing stupor.

"Had I been either of my brothers you would either have been pulverized or burned to a crisp before you had time to know of your folly," Anri continued matter-of-factly, "As it is I want you to remember this moment, remember the feeling of pain and the sheer helpless that you feel, the vulnerability that comes from discovering your true mortality, Apprentice. As powerful as you are, you still are only a mortal."

Nabiki was very much aware of this fact now and could but silently agree that the searing awareness of her mortality was being burned into her subconscious. She had never known pain like this before, and sincerely hoped she never would again as it felt almost as though her arm were to be forevermore denied her. It felt totally useless from the shoulder on down, and might never recover at all from the way it felt as though the bones were expertly shattered in several key places.

But then Anri stepped forward, taking her arm by the wrist and holding it at full extension. Ignoring the hiss this caused her he moved his other hand and waved the palm over the entire length, causing a warming glow to convert her agony into a mere tingling sensation. The pain vanished almost miraculously and was soon as if it had never been in the first place. Instead a soothing sense of normality and total function swept over her member and banished all but the memory from her bones, leaving her sighing in relief and gratitude over no longer being so afflicted.

Anri released her arm then said, "You can use it now, it's even stronger than before. I took the liberty of insuring that your bones would suffer no infirmity at the abuse that I rendered upon them. Go ahead and flex it, you'll find it serves you even better now than it has served you in the past."

Nabiki flexed her hand and examined her limb, then made a few mock shadow-punches at the air and found the familiar snap that she recognized from before. She then turned a grateful look towards Anri and said, "I'm sorry, Sensei...I didn't mean...to piss you off like that..."

"Nothing to apologize for," Anri said, "I was the one who pissed you off, remember? I do have a tendency of doing that, even if I meant no offense to you or your kin."

Nabiki stared at him incredulously, "You wanted me to attack you?"

"I confess that provoking you took more effort than I was expecting," Anri replied, "You do have remarkable self-control, for all that I was pushing your buttons rather vigorously there. Accept an apology from me on that, but it was entirely necessary."

"Why?" Nabiki asked, "To show me how tough you are?"

"No," Anri replied, "To convince you of how weak you are at the moment...how much you have yet to learn in your training. It's a humbling thing to know that there is someone who is better than you, and on some basic level as martial artists neither you nor I are entirely ready to accept this until is gets hammered home on our senses. Now you know that you have a lot farther to travel than you imagined, but that a threshold exists that you have yet to cross, which your nature regards as a challenge. This is entirely a healthy thing, and it could keep you alive when you face down your enemy and realize the extent of his skills and overall power. You must train harder than you ever have in your life in order to face him down and triump...to say nothing of having to go up against my brother, who will not be as lenient as me when it comes to demonstrating the full extent of his potential."

Nabiki continued to flex her hand and study it before saying, "Are you really sure I can do this, Sensei? It felt just now like you could have ripped my whole arm off without trying. How the hell am I supposed to get better than that in just a couple of days?"

"By listening to your teacher," Anri answered, "By respecting her and doing everything that she tells you to do without question. You will discover that Trudy is quite gifted in coaching you to surpass everything that you think you know about your inherent limitations. She will expose you to a level of knowledge of the arts that is presently beyond your wildest conception...but it comes with a rather steep price, and one that I am not entirely convinced that you are prepared to pay in this example."

"And what is that?" Nabiki asked.

"Your fidelity," Anri answered, "Your total commitment to remain true to those who are closest to you and to exclusively claim them as your sole accepted partners."

"What?" Nabiki blinked, "Are you serious?"

"Never more so," Anri answered, "For one of the aspects of Shaloe Ahl training is the release of all mental, spiritual and emotional bonds through direct congress with a training partner who will enable you to surpass all of your limits. Inhibitions must be discarded, social conditioning ignored and even ethical constraints that you are not aware you possess must be surrendered completely in order to obey the will of the One as expressed through the union of two opposites. Two bodies must learn to harmonize and bond on a level of union that goes beyond that felt even in the closest of marriage ties. You must yield up even your ego to such a joining and become like an extension to another person. Only then can you discover the voice within yourself the voice of the One that is crying out from within you."

"But that's totally insane!" Nabiki protested, "You can't ask me to do that...to violate my marriage oaths, to go behind the back of my co-wives and husband!"

"Granted, it is a rather insane request, but these are not sane times in which we are living," Anri answered, "We are facing genocide that will be unleashed by a pawn working to further the dominion of a being so vastly evil that he surpasses all other types of threat to the established hierarchy of order. A man who claims to serve me, who seems to sincerely believe that he is the embodiment of my will, is planning to annihilate a good portion of this world's population, unleashing so much life energy at one time that Ariman will grow strong consuming those energies, and you cannot envision what Hell that will wreck upon the entire cosmos."

"So the ends justify the means here?" Nabiki asked, "Why don't you just appear to this Otono guy and convince him of his errors...?"

"Because he would not listen," Anri said, allowing a portion of his frustration to intrude upon his normally gentle tone, "They never do, these so-called 'True Believers' whose fanaticism makes them blind to the consequences of their own actions. Believe me, what you saw with Reverend Schiller was just the tip of the ice shelf when it comes to the intransigent stubbornness of these 'Believers' who call themselves fundamentalist. They do not listen because to question their faith is to cause it to collapse from the weight of their own internal contradictions..."

"All right, I get the point," Nabiki sighed, "But...you don't seriously mean that if I don't have sex with Saki that the whole universe will collapse?"

"It's not so much that I'm telling you this..." Anri started to say, then thought a moment and amended, "Well...yes it is, but I'm not just telling you to sleep with her..."

"Then don't!" Nabiki snapped, "Find some other way! There's no way that I would ever do that to Shampoo or to Ranma!"

"Even though you've already accepted that he has had sex with each of his Elementals?" Anri calmly pointed out.

Nabiki tried to say something to that but found the words failed her utterly again. She stood there trying to formulate a rebuttal but the only thing that came out was, "That was different...they forced themselves upon my husband."

"True enough," Anri conceded, "And you forged an alliance of sorts with the one you carried within you after having tasted what her joining was like...and discovering why it is that your husband has to struggle so hard to control himself around all five of them. You found that you actually liked having her inside you...and that you feelings towards Sharil turned from resentment into something approaching genuine liking."

Nabiki glanced away, unable to avoid thinking of the previous morning when she had been accosted in the furo by an amorous Sharil, who had started to violate her private portions the way the Udines of Lao's ship were used to doing with their "guests." The main difference was...Sharil had stopped herself, and then joined with Nabiki and proved a valuable ally when in the midst of their struggle against David.

"Maybe," she said cautiously, "Sharil's used to doing things a certain way...and I...guess I did kind of let her off the hook back there..."

"Because you understood her better," Anri noted, "And understanding banished both fear and resentment."

Nabiki was troubled as she turned to the Lord of Light and asked, "Do you think I made the right choice back there? I've effectively given carte blanch permission to all five girls to screw around with my husband when...it's obvious enough that Ranma wants to be faithful."

"As we all do with our significant others," Anri smiled, "Myself a case example, though if you want the sordid details you should ask Elea the next time your paths cross."

"You Sensei?" Nabiki asked with raised eyebrows.

"Don't let what those foolish scribes wrote in the damned book fool you," Anri chuckled, "I'm just as human and just as easily tempted as you are. I may control myself better than some, but I'm not made of Adamantium, and sometimes when I encounter a soul as lovely on the inside as their outer packaging...well...that's where I part with my popular image completely."

Nabiki shook her head slowly, reminded of the mist-blonde Elea's reaction to encountering Nabiki in the presence of her husband, and how the drawing of her sword did not appear to be an entirely playful gesture on her part.

Nonetheless she said, "I find it hard to believe that you could be an adulterer, Sensei..."

"Because my wife threatens to kill me if she catches me in the act?" Anri smiled, "Don't be deceived by her somewhat melodramatic foibles...death is not so great a deterrent to me and she well knows it. We like to smile and joke about it, but in the end I am as committed to her as she is to me, and that is what has kept us together incarnation after incarnation...the fact that our union is founded upon the ties of love that were forged at the onset of our shared mission."

"What do you mean?" Nabiki asked.

"She is my Soul Mate, truly," Anri replied, "A portion of myself given independent life, the Anima to my Animus, and together we complete a pattern that is incomplete when we are separated for any reason. I cannot expect you to know what it means to be that committed to another living person...you have only barely tasted it with the love that you feel for your own mates...and why such a love is stronger than all other ties. That's why I can be tempted to stray...but in the end I am for her and she for me, which is the way it has been going on now for ten generations."

"I don't know about that," Nabiki said, "When I'm with Shampoo...she compliments and fulfills me at times. I can't imagine being any closer to her than I am now...or to Ranma...ah...for that matter...?"

It dawned on her that something was contradictory in her statement, and that she was essentially implying that she was as deeply committed to either of her significant mates with the same level of intensity, neither one more precious to her than the other.

"Fidelity," Anri said, "Monogamy. These are just words to envision a concept, an abstract principle, and conceptual model of unity that is as blind and limiting as it is lacking in any historical context. For the bulk of human existence the notion that you can love more than one party equally has been the accepted paradigm for the bulk of human existence. Families with more than one wife were the rule, not the exception, prior to the great infamy that has been the Christian model. On the testimony of one man, a hypocrite with Homo-erotic tendencies that he fought against his whole life, the church was founded on the notion that there exists only one man for one woman and vice versa. This is the notion of morality that was foisted upon the Roman world by a man who never knew how to reconcile the contradictions that existed inside him. On the basis of this lie did the greater heresies of Augustine and Aquiinas get promoted, and from that the unquestioning model of all other forms of union being illegitimate unless they are suborned to this stifling and soul-crushing model."

"You think it's wrong to be monogamous?" Nabiki asked.

"No," Anri replied, "But I say it is immortal to force monogamy, or to define marriage as strictly a union of a man to a woman. Such hubris is blasphemy, the presumption of divine law as suffering for an unobtainable ideal. The very fact that Monogamy is an unnatural construct of relatively modern times speaks plainly as to how far these Christians have fallen from the basics of my teaching. They act as if the behavior of the Hebrew founders somehow has no application to the present, that Jacob with four wives, Abraham and Moses with Two, and Solomon with more than three hundred did not make adequate proof of the fact that to love two or more partners equally is perfectly within the scope of moral behavior."

"Then what is morality if infidelity isn't sinful?" Nabiki wondered.

"On, it's sinful to be infidelitous," Anri assured her, "Making a promise and breaking it is always a cause for concern, because one should respect their partners enough to honor a commitment...or to never make foolish promises that one cannot keep in the first place. Either way the true sin is breaking one's faith with a loved one, not having a second mate to share house duties with. Nay, not even sleeping outside of the family circle is as sinful as lying about it, as wise souls realize in a more worldly acceptance of the norms of human behavior."

"Human behavior," Nabiki mused, "I've always considered that to be an ethically challenged subject."

"Good for you," Anri congratulated, "Being human isn't a sin. Nor is being true to your nature an act of sinfulness. Just being yourself will not land you in hell or make you subject to the rule and dominion of evil. What will earn you a place among the fallen is being inconsistent with your own true nature...or preaching and practicing two very different things, which creates disharmony and dissolution of the spirit."

"Are you saying it's all right to fool around...just as long as you don't lie about it to your lover?" Nabiki marveled.

"I am saying that the harm caused by lying is far more severe than merely having sex with a person who is not your wife or husband," Anri answered, then sighed, "In a way I can hardly blame you for believing otherwise. People in the so-called civilized world of the present are deeply conditioned to believe that the modern way is the only way...that modern-day values are universal and have always been the rule of civilized existence. You'd be amazed at what was considered acceptable behavior in the time of the Caesars, or what passed for morality in the ancient world of the Mediterranean...or closer to home, the regard of a Japanese citizen during the Feuding States period had towards honorable behavior. In some ways things have changed little...in other ways the world has changed a lot and we Eluini have to work harder to influence the shape of the world's destiny. Human free will prevails every time, and all the scribes and scholars, all the fulminating priests, prophets and preachers who have ever lived cannot change one hair on the head of a woman who strays outside of the accepted model. That is why you should consider your true feelings in this very deeply, Saotome-san, to reach down and find within you the reason why the kiss Asamiya-san gave you just now caused you to blush so deeply."

"My...true feelings?" Nabiki blanched, feeling her cheeks with the balms of both hands as if surprised to find them unusually rosy.

"Be honest with yourself if not to me," Anri said without an accusing note in his gentle words, "What did you feel just now when you were sharing mouths with our young Asamiya-san?"

Nabiki felt her cheeks begin to color long before she re-envisioned the kiss, surprised at how natural and warm it had made her feel, as if this were something that was more than all-right with her, ethical and moral considerations quite aside the instant of mutual recognition.

"You mean...when we were kissing," Nabiki forced herself to say, "Or when Saki...forced her tongue into her mouth?"

"Was it really all that forceful?" Anri asked with a probing smile, "Or are you trying to pretend that you did not reciprocate? Remember, I was standing just to the right of you, and I have very sharp senses."

"Hooboy," Nabiki answered, knowing that anything else that she might say would be incriminating, "I'm in a lot of trouble..."

"Maybe not so bad as all that," Anri shrugged, "Asamiya is an honorable person..."

"Not that," Nabiki shook her head, "But how can I expect you to understand? You're not married to an Amazon."

"Presently no," Anri smiled, "But I was once or twice, as Siren can attest."

"Then...how do I explain this to Shampoo?" Nabiki asked, then blanched when she saw the look that Anri gave her, "You're not serious! I can't go to my wife and tell her that I'm about to have sex with Saki! She'll have both our heads on pikes by sundown!"

"There is some risk of that," Anri noted, "And I won't pretend otherwise. But I think that you may be underestimating your wife by a considerable margin. As I said, I used to be married to an Amazon, and I know what they are like. You just have to approach them in the right way and be sensitive to their feelings, and to be very sure to keep all sharp objects out of their reach when you explain things."

"I'll go with the latter argument," Nabiki said, then sighed, "Sensei...just what the hell am I doing? I was happy and content with my life before all of this started. I've never wanted to be this successful with my conquest of sexual partners, but everywhere I look...I just seem confronted with very bad choices."

"Welcome to the human condition," Anri said with a sympathetic nod, "It's a place many forget to visit from time to time, especially theologians. Just remember one thing...there are no perfect answers, only perfect intentions."

"And the road to hell is paved with those, right?" Nabiki asked.

"You were paying attention," Anri grinned, "So glad to know all of this was not a wasted effort."

Nabiki glanced away again and said, "How can I do it? How can I face Saki again...knowing she...feels this way...and, maybe...I feel a bit like that towards her..."

Anri turned and gazed off towards the distance, "Leveling with her would be a good start, and assuring her that you are not rejecting her friendship. But keep in mind...we are all of us the products of eons of evolution, just spiraling coils of DNA on a quest to find the perfect union with the spark of the divine that resides within us."

"Nice sentiments," Nabiki said, "But the only sparks I'm worried about are the ones I'm gonna pick up when I get home this evening."

"It's good that you are concerned," Anri assured her, "But your wife is an intelligent and sensitive young woman gifted with insights that even you have yet to fully discover. She knows as well as anyone with Amazon training that the secret to survival is through adaptation, and by blending with the times and the environment the human model has succeeded were so many other forms have failed to grow and prosper. Each and every one of us is the product of a series of successful unions stretching back to the primordial slime, and we each carry within us the legacy of many thousands and thousands of generations who came before us. Every one of our direct linear ancestors was lucky enough to pass along their seed in a chain that stands unbroken from the dawn of time to the rise and fall of ancient Atlantis. There is comfort to be found in that, and hope for the future...if you can manage the same trick that your forbears somehow managed to pull off. You have children who have a destiny, a future that is theirs to shape, and it is for their sake that you must do whatever is right and necessary in order to insure their own children's future."

"But I won't have any kind of future worth living in if I drive away the one bright thing that's made life bearable to me," Nabiki said, "The mother of my first born daughter."

"Then show her that your commitment is as strong now as it ever was in the past," Anri counseled, "Be the woman whom your wife fell in love with a year and a half ago and assure her that nothing essential will change between you if you move ahead with this training."

Nabiki thought on this then asked, "Is it really necessary that I do this? I mean...with Saki?"

Anri regarded her sardonically, "No one is going to force you to make love to your friend, but I leave the details of your training to Miss Wells, who is now your trainer. All that I have done for you is to prepare you for the moment when you will make your own decisions, weigh your own choices and decide what is best for you. I am a firm believer that it is as important to know why you must fight as to understand the mechanics and logistics of fighting, and I did not want you to go into this blind and ignorant of the consequences. From here on you must be your own counsel, your own conscience, your own spiritual guidance."

"My own?" Nabiki found that she was actually terrified at the prospect, "But you..."

"I will be in contact when and where I am needed," Anri replied, "You are not being cut loose entirely free from my meddlesome influence. I simply don't want you becoming too dependent on me to tell you the right and wrong of your actions."

"But...is there a right and wrong for this?" Nabiki asked, "You've basically told me that everything that everything that I thought that I knew, everything that I've taken for granted my whole life...is basically a lie..."

"Not a lie," Anri responded, "A distortion of perceptions. Men believe what they do because it is convenient for them to construct myths to shape meaning into a world far more complex than their understanding. The truth is far too vast and all encompassing to be contained in some mere book cobbled together from the musing of sages. It belongs to everyone or else it belongs to no one in particular, and never let someone tell you that his truth is supreme over all others...not even mine. I go the road that I walk and have learned all that I can in this world and the many others that I have visited, and I chose to share some of that experience with you, but that is all that we have done in our journeys together. A sampling of the vastness of the cosmos would take far too much time than can be allotted in a single afternoon or evening. You have to walk your own road, write your own book of the fates and determine your own answers or else the experience you gain will lack for definition."

"But is there no higher law than this?" Nabiki asked, "The determination of the self based on what is good in our own eyes? What is the highest good that human beings can aspire towards?"

"Life," Anri replied, "Life in itself is the highest good that can be imagined. Not just this life in the shell that is the body...it is life itself, the force and spirit of the cosmos that must be honored and regarded as sacred."

"Then...is death really the enemy?" Nabiki asked.

"Death is not the enemy," Anri assured her, "Death is merely a doorway that all travelers must pass through in their migration from one incarnate shell to the next. When you die that which is immortal within you survives to travel to the next plane of existence...but only for a time do you remain there, just as long as it takes to rest and restore the vital energies you expend while living in a body. The major difference is that in this world change happens rapidly and there is great opportunity for spiritual advancement through training, meditation and study. In the next realm change is much slower, unless you are one of the rare breeds whose spirit is so strong and forceful that you can evolve in readiness of your next life. Intelligence survives the body...why else do you think the cosmos evolved such an excess within us, far more than is requires for merely animal subsistence in this world?"

"Intelligence?" Nabiki repeated for further clarification.

"Not merely the ability to solve problems or to fathom our complex abstractions," Anri elaborated, "The form of intellect that the Universe is seeking is self-reflective. The Ego of the Soul is the melting pot for experience and understanding, the accumulation of all life's searching as resolved by the various decisions and choices you make based upon your understanding of these observations. If your ego is out of synch with the cosmos then you fail to resonate with the vibrancy of the intelligent mind that forms the Godhead of the first realm of existence. A spiritually evolved being is in tune with that resonance, is aware at all times of the interconnected weavings of energy, life and fate to which all incarnate beings are bound and joined together. Compassion is the key to understanding...the ability to empathize, to feel and yearn with a desire for harmony with another living being. In that order you reflect the greater universal will to life, the power that drives us on to each new level of understanding. Compassion is feeling that you are not alone, and that you share a bond with other living things that make them an extension of yourself. It is the capacity to surrender your boundaries and defensive barriers in order to make yourself vulnerable to the emotions and feelings of others. There is a greater strength in this than in any other form of power...and yet the price is to feel the pain and suffering as well as joy and hurt that afflicts another irregardless of your own physical threat level."

Nabiki felt oddly stirred, and yet simultaneously afraid without knowing the exact reason. Anri seemed to perceive her fears without her having to voice them, and he smiled at her in that knowing sort of way and gave her a gentle nod that assured her of his understanding.

"Your life has been a difficult one, and it has taught you to be wary of letting your feelings go, of allowing yourself to be hurt through the actions of others," he said as though speaking for her heart without needing her confirmation, "You have been afraid to make yourself vulnerable, of letting yourself be as weak as a 'mere girl,' and so you overcompensate by being stronger, smarter and more resourceful than anyone who might try to take advantage of your weakness. It is a kind of protection you have used to armor yourself against the suffering that you often encounter, to observe poverty and misery while telling yourself that you can do little about it, that you are only one girl, only human, and by definition limited. It is altogether forgivable that you have lived this way...in fact, it makes everything else you do the more comprehensible since you protect others around you by the means of thinking towards them as if they are an extension of your own personal boundary. This is known as Tribal thinking...but it has limits, and you must understand this first before learning to set these barriers aside so that you can tap into the potential of your hidden emotions in order to become the Warrior who is also a Protector of Life. The conceit that you use to limit your understanding must now fall away so that you admit to yourself your true potential, and only by this means will you obtain the power that can assure your family's survival."

"What must I do?" Nabiki asked, feeling a slight shudder down her spine that was less of fear this time than of a certain sense that what the Lord of Light was telling her was of absolute vitality and had the highest source of wisdom to back it.

"Stop hiding behind mirrors," Anri informed her, "When the ancient Hebrews spoke against the human penchant for worshipping Icons they did not mean to merely refer to dead statues made of stone that bore the likeness of the gods that people reverence. The icons that men use to distract themselves are but reflections of their vanity, the fawning baubles of conceit and ignorance that shields them from responsibility, from accepting their part in the greater cosmos. The icon you must overcome here...is your own self-conception, your image of yourself as you see yourself at the present. You know it is but a mere shell, a deceit you use to hide the truth of self-awareness. Look beyond the shell...and you will discover the real core of the being who calls herself Saotome-Tendo Nabiki."

Nabiki blinked, "That's all there is to it? Just smash the mirror in my mind...let the real me out?"

"Yes," Anri nodded as if delighted by her answer, "That's it exactly. Take myself for an example...do you know how easy it would be to pretend to be the person who people imagine me to be? To not just claim that I was once a man named Yessus...but to act the way I was, modifying it a bit for the sake of public relations?"

"But that wouldn't be you," Nabiki said, realizing as she spoke the words the message that he was conveying, "That would just be conforming to other people's perceptions..."

"It would be the worst form of condescension to cater to their child-like belief that I was the 'Perfect Man' come to earth to offer them salvation upon a golden platter," Anri shook his head sadly, "As if an eternity free from suffering were mine to give...or any other being in either the Heavens or the many Hells for that matter. As if all you had to do to obtain enlightenment was to ask for it nicely, like, 'Can I have a cookie, some cream, and maybe a slice of eternal wisdom?' To a lazy man that would be the ideal way...to an opportunist it would offer the ultimate enticement to compromise the self on behalf of an ideal that others assure you constantly is in the highest interest. Men have wanted to know the meaning of Heaven since the earliest days when the survivors of the Great Catechism poked their heads out of their caves and wondered at what had come before, having no memories of the Wars that had so badly ravaged the world of the Golden Era. Men who want simple answers to complex problems are to be pitied...for life does not accommodate their wishes. Therefore I can never be the one who answers all their prayers, however fervently given. I cannot be what they want of me...and because of that they refuse to acknowledge my true existence...and thus they walk not in the light but a form of darkness despairing that I will never be the thing that they were promised."

"But those promises weren't made by you, Sensei," Nabiki said, "Someone else made them then wrote them down in a book..."

"Yes...and signed my name to the authorship, then forgot to give me the residual rights, including the right to make necessary revisions," Anri sighed, "In the end the failure was mine in that I did not act in time to avert this. I barely even knew of Paul of Tarsus until long after he had spread his 'Gospel' to much of the Roman world, and when I heard of his incarceration by the Roman...well, I had hoped that would be the end to it. Of myself, I went on to see the fall of Jerusalem at the hands of Ariman's minions, then died at the hands of a Zealot knife in Masada. I went on to reincarnate back in India where I spent my time regaining much of what I had expended, then spread my teachings into China in the form of Shaolin. After that...I wandered the Upper Realms for a time as an incarnation of the Buddha, only to return to the physical realm in the fourteenth century, whereupon I encountered the results of my earlier folly. The Catholic Church had done much to pervert my teachings in the ensuing centuries between my eighth and tenth incarnation, and by the time I had fully regained all memory of my past lives...it was far too late to change the course of that which is essentially a Death Cult."

"A Death Cult?" Nabiki reacted, "Isn't that a bit harsh? I mean...I don't have much sympathy for modern Christianity, but even as a Japanese I had to admit that Christian teachings have benefited civiliation..."

"But only after much internal struggle, and much of it carried out against the fierce resistance of the clergy," Anri answered, "And by 'Death Cult' I mean that they essentially believe that all of life's answers can be fulfilled through dying...that no matter how much you suffer in this world you can relax and take it easy in the next realm, as though death was merely a resting point, a stopover that lasts for all eternity and in which you never need suffer for loss, privation and hunger. Strange is it not how this offer fails to satisfy a great many adherents...or would you rather go to Heaven to find your answers to the injustices of this world?"

"No," Nabiki reluctantly admitted, "I'd rather live and try to make this world experience justice..."

She stopped herself as the realization hit her like a blow, and she stared at her mentor with a new appreciation that made her aware of something not obvious to her before.

"That's why you're here, isn't it?" she asked, "To make justice...not just stand on the sidelines and criticize the actions of mortals..."

Again that nod that was full of warmth and congratulation, "Yes. That is it entirely. To learn is the meaning of life...to teach what you learn and share it with others...is life's highest expression of gratitude for that teaching."

Nabiki's mind was racing as new thoughts occurred to her, "To learn, to understand, to share, to grow, to evolve...it's all part of the same formula!"

"The way of the One," Anri congratulated, "The Tao te Ching...the Way of Existence."

She almost took a step backwards as the next thought occurred to her, "You want me to become the teacher...to pass on what you have shown to me...to others?"

"Well, it's not like you win the title of instant Sage," Anri shrugged, "But it's better than becoming one of those dusty old Prophets that went around shouting invectives against the tourists. But yes...that is basically it in a nut shell."

"And I could call myself a queen of infinite space...were it not that I have bad dreams," Nabiki smiled, picking up on his subtle humor.

"Will would have liked you," Anri noted, "In fact he would have based one of his characters on you if he knew you in person. Perhaps on our next jaunt through time I could introduce you as a courtesy for all those fascinating discussions we shared long ago over a flagon of English Ale."

"Next you're tell me you and Leonardo de Vinci were pen pals," Nabiki chuckled, only to sober up as she saw his impish look, and the promptly raised a hand and said, "Don't tell me."

"I have known many fascinating persons in my time, Saotome-san," Anri smiled with a bit more sadness, "Unfortunately not as many as I would have liked to have influenced...but there's only so many incarnations of me to go around, and it is a big Cosmos, and even I have limitations."

"Somehow that's almost comforting to know," Nabiki murmured to herself, then said, "I'm flattered that you think I have so much potential...and considering the people you were...and the ones you've hung out with...I suppose it's more than flattering that you link me in the same sentence. But still..."

"Don't worry," Anri assured her, "I'm leaving you the reigns of your personal destiny to master when the time is right. I'll only push and prod you where necessary, and manipulate you when needful, but for the most part I respect your free will and know that in time you will become the Master and will no longer require my aid. But I still hope from time to time that you'll let me stop by for a bit of sake."

"I'll think about it," Nabiki smiled, finding it much easier now to look upon this man without feeling such a sense of awe and dread in his very presence.

"But think on what I said about ego reflection," Anri cautioned her, "We are not alone in this world, and everything thing does not revolve entirely around us. I am no more important to the makeup of this cosmos than yourself, regardless of how relentlessly my so-called followers keep harping on the idea that I am the Alpha and Omega while ordinary human beings are mere dust beneath my boot heels."

"Somehow you don't seem much like the type to go walking on anybody's grave, Sensei," Nabiki admitted.

"You're right," Anri said, "I don't, because even those whom I count as my enemies deserve more compassion than pity for their ignorance, and their blind adherence to false ideals and more treacherous belief systems. Even innocuous signs of seeming humility and surrender of the will in my name are causes for much sadness when I see them practiced. If a truly humble soul will lower themselves out of love and respect it is one thing...but the obscenely obsequious prostration that some overly enthusiastic individuals take the matter to is an appalling thing to witness...like people who crucify themselves on my behalf, or those blasted Nativity scenes you see around Christmas..."

"What?" Nabiki blinked, "You don't like Nativity scenes?"

"Well, how would you feel about having your baby pictures posted in every department store of the land?" Anri asked reasonably, "And besides...that's not the way it actually happened."

"It's not?" Nabiki asked in genuine curiosity.

"The talking animals depicted weren't quite in season," Anri grinned, "The donkey and the sheep were out on migration, so all I had to converse with were camels, and do you know what they smell like in the close confines of that tiny little manger?"

Nabiki made a face, by now sensitive enough to recognize when her sensei was giving her a good leg pull.

"Seriously though," Anri remarked, "A star moving in the sky until it came to rest directly over my birth place? Even I have difficulty believing in that. Rather there was a constellation alignment in the heavens that those Zorastrian mystics recognized as heralding the rebirth of their Mithra. It took them a couple of years to locate the desert community on the fringe of Caesarea where my folks had moved by that time, so tales about they're appearing miraculously on the day of my birth were somewhat exagerated. Also too my birthday was in the spring time, not the winter, and it wasn't during the time of the Roman census, which didn't apply anyway to Jewish residents, only Citizens of the empire..."

"Sensei..." Nabiki started to rumble.

"...And then there's that overly-melodramatic nonsense about Herod the Great ordering the death of all the first borns in the region," Anri continued, "Can you imagine the size of the uprising that would have produced? The Romans certainly would, which is why they would never have allowed it. Again the story was inserted to the narrative to convey the point that Herod-in his declining years-had become a somewhat unpopular ruler, going mad and killing one of his own sons for example...but in this case he was totally blameless, innocent of the crime to which his name has been attached rather than the very real crimes he did produce..."

"Sensei," Nabiki raised her tone to cut off the flow of his ranting, "I get the point, the story is just a story, not a historical reflection."

"Well, no more than such tales as the one about George Washington and the Cherry tree," Anri shrugged, "In reality it was Apple."

Nabiki had to shake her head at that, "And people call you the wisest man who ever lived..."

"No, that was Socrates," Anri contradicted, "He knew how to bow out with grace and dignity, before his follower, Plato, started putting words into his mouth and altering the thrust of some of his teachings. But the point is, nonetheless relevant, Saotome-san, I have been misconstrued, and by linking me to the crimes of my so-called followers I have been implicated directly in some of the worst atrocities ever performed by human beings upon one another. Even Satanism is, to some degree, an invention inspired by misinterpretations of my writing. As you know by now, Enoch was a propaganda ploy hatched up during the Hasmodian era, crafted by minions of Ariman to shift the blame from the crimes committed by his followers onto an innocent minion who was involuntarily recruited into playing the role of the fall guy. From there the notion that a perfect, all-just, all-knowing, all-powerful god could not be the monster who perverted a supposedly perfect creation made necessary the scapegoating of Pagans and non-believers as the 'Judas Goats' who were allegedly responsible for perverting their Lord's intentions.

"Mystical schools and philosophic traditions not consistent with Orthodox Theology were ruthlessly suppressed, leaving the people in the west helpless and defenseless against the ravages of various demonic agencies who exploited the Ariman-Jesus myth. Ignorance and barbarism clouded the minds of men for many a generation before the light of reason-as preserved by the Muslims-could be rekindled anew with the age of Reason taking the place of the former darkness. In doing so, however, the Rational mind forgot how to summon up the dormant powers of the instinctual side of man, and so Westerners remained deaf, dumb and blind to the spiritual possibilities of alternate systems until fairly recently, when a new Renaissance age of awakening spirituality has brought forward the hope that humanity can escape the grip of a coming age of darkness."

His tone fell low to a deeper octave, stressing his seriousness as he looked Nabiki straight in the eye and said, "Unfortunately there has also been a backlash against both Reason and Mystical thinking by the more traditional cults of Orthodoxy, which decry their loss of supernatural authority and who seek a return of a new Dark Ages where they hope to re-consolidate their power by turning back the clock on human progress, which means crushing Progressivism and Humanism entirely under their spiked sandals. It is to that ill-met affiliation that Otono and his group belong, and the reason why they seek to crush Japan as punishment for resisting their evils."

"And you want me to do battle with that?" Nabiki asked soberly.

"Who else should I call upon?" Anri answered, "I can't be all things to all people, nor can I wage this battle for the soul of humanity alone. I am as much in need of allies as the other side is dependent upon mindless dupes who are willing to carry out the Dark Lord's mission. The impulse to do evil is very strong in certain people...self-destructive urges of mindless self-loathing can propel even the most sincere and devoted acolyte over the edge of civility, driving them to a place where barbarism finds a way to subvert the noblest of causes. Ariman's goal is the destruction of everything, and to achieve this end he has seeded in mankind a not-so-private desire for the Apocalypse that his minions prophesize so loudly. The main difference is that his version proclaims that Good will triumph over Evil when the few elect destroy the many who are 'Not With Them' or their program...quite the opposite of what will indeed happen if Ariman's will is carried through to fruition."

"You mean as opposed to a few surviving everything and everyone must die?" Nabiki reasoned.

"Exactly," Anri nodded, "I fight not to preserve the world as it is in the present but rather to keep alive the hope that the world could be improved over time through slower and more gradual spiritual evolution. The minions of Ariman want their salvation now, and these radicals are prepared to tear down the house in which they live before a new one can be built, heedless of whom they have to hurt in order to achieve their objectives. I have always felt that the greatest determinant on the worth of any ideal is to ask how many must die to see its fulfillment, something fanatics never take into consideration since the ends justify the means in their eyes, and everything done in the name of their cause is judged inherently good regardless of the contradiction between theology and practice."

"And the main difference between your means and theirs?" Nabiki asked.

"Why, that I have leveled with you and told you what you wanted me to say," Anri smiled, "And I trust you to make an intelligent choice regarding what you know to be in your own best interest. The other side deceives and lies shamelessly in order to manipulate their deluded followers into acting in the interest of their own self-annihilation. I offer you the chance to walk away, confident that you do will do that which is best as you determine the outcome. I will not compel you to decide...it is entirely your decision."

"I suppose I could go along with that," Nabiki said, "And I guess you've leveled with me a lot more than I would have expected...even if I think you're still holding something back that you're not quite telling."

"Quite a lot in fact," Anri smiled, "But when I judge the time right I will share with you as much as I think is needful. Anything more than that...well, be honest. You'd much rather find it out through your own research rather than depend on me for all the answers."

"Damned straight," Nabiki smiled grimly, "And the fact that you admit it is the reason why I should trust you?"

"Trust but verify, Saotome-san," Anri affirmed, "How evil is overcome is of lesser concern than the awareness of why a certain path is evil. Evil works against the flow of nature...it is destructive, corrosive and degenerative in nature. Good intentions can be turned towards evil if one is not sensitive to the fact that what you do is determined by the way in which you do it...that no endeavor performed with an impure heart can be trusted to stay true to the course in which you aim to follow. Always question and test your answers, stay open to new possibilities and be sensitive to the perceptions of others. Stay true to what you believe to be the truth but never be too certain of your own wisdom...unless you feel it in your heart and can judge with clarity the path to enlightenment. You don't need to force it to happen...Satori will come upon you when you are ready to allow it to happen."

"So no ideology can be trusted?" Nabiki asked.

"No thought or construct of logic is without flaw, Saotome-san, and even the wisest minds can sometimes be prone to hubris," Anri replied, "If I told you what is good and what is evil as a laundry list of dos and don'ts, much like Leviticus, which was based on the Laws of Hammurabi...well, you'd be depending of my judgement instead of your own to find the answers. Civilization is based upon commonly agreed to principles, such as the right not to be murdered in your own bed, but ultimately there can be no Justice in the world if Law is absolute. There are always mitigating circumstances. Find the balance in the scales, weigh the issues on their merits, and decide clearly on what is the best of all resolutions only after you have measured the rival truths that form the paradox of any system."

"Now you're getting mystical on me again," Nabiki pleaded, "I'm not that wise...I'm just a martial artist."

"That is all you need to be to find the answers that you seek," Anri assured her, "But keep this in mind when the moment of crisis is upon you...that so long as men believe absurdities they will continue to perform monstrosities, and in the end only the twin gifts of Reason and Compassion can stand between us and the Darkness. Be true to your Coda, the Yin and Yang of your dual nature, and remember that there is a path between the arms of Mercy and Severity where the enlighten walk, separating the mere soldier from the Warrior of Compassion, the Protector of the weak and innocent who rises to the moment and finds their inner Karma."

Nabiki could perceive that the man was withdrawing from her and found herself calling out, "Wait...Sensei...where are you going?"

"I've dallied here for a time, but now I must be elsewhere," Anri informed her, "The enemy now knows that you are one of Mine and will come at you with even greater force than they have used unto the present. It is also due to the rashness of one whom I do not count as a friend that you can expect retaliation to be swift in following the incidents of this day. I've done what I can to prepare you for that, as well as your challenge to my brother. Now the rest I leave to your teacher, who even now returns with your fellow student in tow."

"Eh?" Nabiki turned a surprised look to find that Trudy was indeed returning with a much-subdued Saki at her side, and she instantly wondered what the American had done or said that could convince the pink haired Sekeban Deka to follow beside her so meekly, especially as Saki would not raise her eyes to look directly at Nabiki.

"You see?" Anri smiled, "I'm no longer needed here. Good luck with your training, and with Udan. I'll stop by again at a time of my choosing...but for now I must be going...so...see you later."

And this time she knew he had left her behind, for she no longer felt the man's presence even before turned to look to confirm her own certainty in the matter.

Trudy spoke the moment that she and Saki were back and said, "I've convinced Asamiya-san to stay to complete our lessons for today, but she needs reassurance before we resume that you won't hold what she did just now against her."

"Of course I don't hold it against you, Saki-chan," Nabiki addressed herself at once at the shivering undercover police officer, "You just...caught me by surprise, that's all. I mean...you didn't have to be so...ah...um...enthusiastic about saying hello to me just now..."

Saki raised her head in surprise and blinked, "You what?"

"I mean...I'm glad for you that you mastered that kick," Nabiki said by means of a lie, avoiding the fact that she knew the true extent of Saki's feelings, "I've always thought that you pulled a little too much back and wouldn't commit yourself that strongly to the offensive. You've more than doubled your power and efficiency, and I'm proud of you for doing that, but you didn't have to run off just because you got a little too worked up about it..."

"But...that's not..." Saki started to protest, only to find two fingers over her lips, which startled her as she had not seen Nabiki advance towards her to swiftly close the distance.

"You don't have to explain anything," Nabiki's eyes spoke more volumes than her words, "I'm flattered beyond words, and I think the world of you, my friend...but let's not deal with it just now. We both have a lot to concentrate on, and it's getting late, and I'm sure our Coach has other things she'd like to do with the rest of her evening. So...why don't we just deal with the martial arts stuff for now and...worry about the rest of it sometime later. Deal?"

Saki found herself staring incredulously into the eyes of the other woman, and Nabiki found herself gazing back in stunned amazement over what she had not seen there before now...the complete and utterly adoring gaze of the pink-pony-tailed girl looking back at her without dissemble or pretense, a look of utterly overwhelming gratitude as coupled with feelings of near-worshipful yearning, a suppressed desire as strong as the urge to resume kissing Nabiki...which Nabiki was just as stunned to find herself wanting to return in redoubled interest.

"Okay...deal," Saki smiled, grateful at being allowed to save face, "If you think that's for the best...Nab-chan."

A helpless sense of resignation fell upon Nabiki as she realized how deeply trapped she was by this impossible new twist in her situation, and knowing what it would mean to the rest of her personal life she mentally projected (I'm in BIIIIIG trouble now. She loves me and I...Kami-help-me...I think I feel something for her as well. Shampoo is not going to like this...and how will I ever be able to explain myself to Ranma?)

As if reading her thoughts she heard Trudy remark, "Perhaps. But that's outside this class and of no immediate relevance. So if you're done wandering about all of creation and would like to get some serious work done, then why don't you join us in the here and now, Saotome-san, and pick up the slack by giving your fellow student here the partner she needs in order to continue with her training?"

"Partner?" Nabiki asked, wondering why the very sound of that was making her uneasiness even worse than before, as if she were agreeing to some sort of informal commitment.

"Partner," Saki smiled, "I like the sound of that. All right, Partner...care to see how good my kicks have become?"

"Ah...as ready as I'll ever be, I guess," Nabiki dubiously responded, troubled by the level of enthusiasm that she saw in Saki's eyes, and wondering if she had tacitly just agreed to something that was going to result in a lot of pain...of one kind or another...within the next few moments...?

Continued.

Comments/Criticisms/Karmic Delights for the Enlightened: shadowmane

Or: shadowmane9849

Glad that the "Field Trip" section of our narrative is finally done with? Then are we ready to resume with some butt-kicking action? Stay tuned for upcoming battles as Nabiki and Saki intensify their own training while Ranma and Siren go even deeper into Mystical combat dueling...and other significant figures resume their part on the scene in the next dramatic installment titled: "The Chronic Tales of Ridicule," or, "By the Sword Sub-Divided." Be there...

X /pre 


	100. Chapter 100

preDnabiki189

Nabiki 1/2

"A Very Scary Thought"

by Jim Robert Bader

(Inspired by the works of Rumiko Takahashi Others,  
with concepts and characters created by fellow fanfic writers Wade Tritschler, DB Sommers, Nicole Manders, Andrew Greaves, Bill Guiroff and countless others, including "Buffy"  
creator Joss Whedon; with special thanks to my good pal Shiva for his editing and handling of this series.)

(Certain other characters and concepts are of my own innovation, including my interpretation of the Monster of Mary Shelly's novel, the Furies, Trudy, Takaharis Angelique d'Anjou, Anri and the Daokan, Thelendra the Dream Weaver and various other guest stars appearing in this portion of the Nabiki 1/2 series...)

Chapter Seventy-One.

Episode One-Hundred-Eighty-Nine.

"Bad Monster Party"

"I don't care what time it is back in the States," Frank growled into the speaker, "Wake him up right away and tell him it's urgent. I've got a Code Red emergency here, and my sources warn me that it's a real Wild Fire containment breach. Yeah, I'll hold, Claudia...just tell the old fart that he'd better dispatch an Archangel team on the double or heads could be rolling in the street and..."

There was a tapping noise that diverted his attention, and Frank looked around out of his main office window and saw a familiar form dangling there, which prompted him to speak into his throat mike, "On second thought, have him call me back. I'll be at my usual line, Shelly will know how to find me."

He turned around in his swivel chair and simultaneously activated the switch that opened the main window, and through it his unexpected guest vaulted in, landing with an agility that was preternaturally superhuman.

Frank rose out of his chair and said, "John, what's up? I wasn't expecting you back in town this week."

The werewolf reared up to his full height and effected a smile, "Kinda surprised myself to be in the neighborhood, so I thought I'd drop by and see what's shakin' with you, Big Guy...and what's this word on the street I'm hearing about you and the Princess finally tying the noose around your size forty-six bolted neck?"

"Rumor's true...for once," Frank nodded, "I asked Kasumi and she said yes, though we haven't fixed a date yet..."

"You guys are getting married?" John Talbain shook his head, "That's too bad...she was such a nice girl too..."

Frank's brows narrowed ominously, "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Only I feel sorry for the poor girl getting hooked up with a loser like you," Talbain grinned, "Congratulations."

"Thanks," Frank took the teasing in good nature, "Only...there's kinda like this...complication..."

"Complication?" Talbain asked, "What's so complicated about mating? You just put your thing into her slot and...oh, wait...you sure she can take the whole thing from you? I mean, not to compare equipment, but when it comes me and the bitches I make out with..."

"Speaking of which," Frank tactfully steered the question around, "How are you getting along these days? Is it still go with you and Felicia, or has that other love of your life finally nabbed your hide to the wall?"

"Who, you mean Red?" Talbain looked somewhat evasively, "Next question."

"That's kinda what I mean," Frank noted, "You see...there's this...other woman..."

"You mean Eve?" Talbain blinked, "Last I heard she and the Big Bad D were still..."

"Not here you Mutt," Frank snarled, "And I thought you knew well enough not to lick a sore wound when it festers."

"Sorry," the werewolf apologized, "Force of habit. I can be a real cur at times, just ask Red and she'll be happy to fill you with buckshot."

"Like I was saying," Frank continued, "Things looked pretty smooth for me and Kasumi...but then this...other woman entered the picture..."

"Didn't you learn anything from your own sordid past, Man?" Talbain scolded, "Never take on more than one bitch at a time. Believe me, all that gets you is a lot of tail-biting."

"I'm not the one who has the problem," Frank scolded, "This...other girl, she's...kinda with Kasumi."

Talbain's wolfish expression was not well suited to register astonishment, but he formed a big "O" with his muzzle as if slowly putting it together, at which point he said, "Two for the price of one?"

"Yeah," Frank answered.

"Doesn't sound too bad...if the bitches in question really like each other," Talbain considered, "So...how do you feel about this other woman?"

"That's the thing I can't figure out," Frank admitted, "I don't really know what to make of her, but you ought to know about her from reputation. She's Maitreya's daughter, Thelendra the Dream Weaver."

"Maitreya...?" Talbain took a step back with one paw as if slapped, "You gotta be kidding me man! Talk about playing with Sun Fire..."

"He approves of the union," Frank explained, "In fact he seemed almost insistent about it, like he wanted me to take her under my wing or something. Me and the living Holy Grail...can you believe that?"

"No," Talbain confessed, "In fact...I'm kinda mind-blown just trying to picture this in my head. You dog."

"Yeah, tell me about it," Frank replied, "Of course...what's not to like about her? She's ancient, powerful, wise, compassionate and kind to a fault, and she's got a body you can't find a single thing wrong with. The only problem is...she's a bit of a know-it-all and acts like a real stuck-up prima-donna."

"Yeah, I'd heard that about her," Talbain considered the point, "'Course it could have been worse...it could have been her dark cousin, Miranda."

"There is that, true," Frank confessed, "But still...I guess I've got to put up with her for the sake of Kasumi. I mean...Doll-face was ready to walk out on me just to be with her, but changed her mind when Anri seemed to imply that the three of us belong together."

"Word from on-high, huh?" Talbain whistled, "Straight from the Daokan's mouth."

"You ain't heard the best part yet," Frank continued, giving Talbain a hard look, "Kasumi's pregnant."

"Preg...now I know you've gotta be pulling my leg!" Talbain averred, "As goody-goody two shoes as the Princess is, I just can't see her doing it out of wedlock..."

"I was willing to wait, but she wasn't," Frank remarked, "And I think Thelendra had something to do with that, too. In fact she all but bragged about having an affair with my girl behind my back, and to add salt to the injury it turns out one of the twins Kasumi carries has her Holiness's DNA imprint."

Talbain was just trying to sort that one out when the voice of Shelly piped in, "Boss...monitor one...I think you'd better see this."

"Is Magnus answering my call already?" Frank asked.

"Not yet," Shelly replied as a screen lowered down from the ceiling and an overhead projector cast a digitized image upon the wide-screen surface, "But...I think you'd better here this one for yourself."

Both Talbain and Frank turned curious looks towards the monitor as the sound system kicked in and they heard the words of the announcer say, "...Officials are claiming that a freak storm was responsible for the total destruction of the Blazing Cross of Glory Cathedral, home to the Church of the Illuminated Glory, headed by the Reverend Thomas E. Schickle, a branch division manager of the Church of Divine Prophesy Universal."

"Say what?" Talbain remarked, but Frank made a hand-motion to shush the werewolf as he continued to listen.

"The localized cyclone, which eye-witnesses said appeared as though miraculously directly above the Church just prior to its destruction completely demolished the building down to its foundations in what amounted to a matter of seconds. Fire and Rescue workers on the scene have moved in to excavate the ruins in hope of finding possible survivors, but so far no word yet to next of kin about possible casualties in the matter. All that can be said for certain was that the church was erased from the spot as though the hand of God Himself came crashing down to smite the reverend and his building complex, scattering bits and pieces of glass, steel and plaster for miles around in all directions..."

"Holy..." Frank softly murmured, then he barked, "Shelly, get me a photo-analysis of the disaster area...cross-reference with known..."

"Already on it, Boss," Shelly lowered a second screen and began to project a second image that showed a detailed grid pattern and the overhead outline of a building complex matching that of the destroyed church in question.

"One moment," the announcer cut himself off in mid-sentence, "This just in...reports are claiming that rescue officials have discovered a hidden vault underneath the church complex. They are evacuating survivors now...but details are sketch...it seems as if there were a lot more going on inside this building than simple communion rites. One reporter on the scene claims to have obtained documents that were apparently deposited in a field adjacent to the parking lot area, and...is this right? I don't believe it...it sounds like...oh god. No, that can't be real...! Cut to commercial, now!"

The screen suddenly went blank and a test pattern briefly appeared, to be replaced a few seconds later by an unscheduled commercial.

"Shelly," Frank said slowly, "Is there any chance of obtaining a copy of one of those documents uncovered?"

"Making a print-out of it now," Shelly responded, "Apparently whoever the reporter is who covered this story, he or she must be smart enough to know that the station sponsors would want to kill it before allowing it to see air time. He posted it on the Net so anyone who wants can obtain a copy...and from what I make of the details...well..."

Frank turned to his desk copier and picked up the newly printed sheet, scanned it with a glance then said, "Oboy...suspicions confirmed. It's a purchase notice with a company letter head outlining a proposal for a new type of Gene-Tech weapon...a lethal virus derived from recombinant DNA fused to a strain of Ebola..."

His voice trailed off, leaving it to Talbain to state the obvious, "What are the odds of something like that just falling into the wrong hands as if by magic?"

"I don't wanna even calculate them," Frank set the document down, "This smacks of Maitreya's doing. It's got all the signs, and he's practically written his signature to a confession."

"Are you sure about that, Man?" Talbain asked, "Doesn't sound like him to be this open..."

"It's him all right," Frank nodded to the second projector screen, "See the way that building was taken out as if with knife-like precision? Modern weapons can't do a job like this, and the way the building was just decimated suggests a controlled fusion blast that targeted just the right portions of the building to bring it crashing down without killing every living thing inside there. I'll bet there are casualties, but not as many as there'd be if this really were a natural disaster."

"Hooboy," Talbain swallowed, "Whoever that reverend guy was, he must've really pissed the big guy off. I've heard Maitreya has a temper, but he's got better control of it than either of his two brothers."

Frank nodded to the document on his desk, "If bio-terrorism in the name of Christ ain't bad enough to bring out Anri's dark side, I don't know what else would. That thing suggests a degree of collusion between certain industries and this Church Universal..."

"Hey, ain't that a Korean-based outfit?" Talbain asked, "Headed by some dude who claims to be the reborn Jesus?"

"I think the real article is about to put his mark on somebody," Frank murmured, "And Moon is so far dead when he catches up to the poor bastard that they're gonna have to carve out a new level of hell just to accommodate a new occupant. Of course, my bet is that this is just the tip of a rather large ice berg."

"Boss?" Shelly spoke up again, "There are some...gentlemen in the lobby here to see you."

"What?" Frank scowled and whirled towards the front entrance, "You let them into the building without telling me?"

"I didn't do anything of the kind, Boss," Shelly insisted, "They just...appeared without warning. Should I let them in or open up the back exit?"

Frank heaved a massive sigh then said, "I'll have a talk with those guys...but they'd better mind their manners better than the last time or..."

The doors to his office opened and in stepped two men wearing three-piece suits of black material complete with ties and requisite sunglasses. The lead of the pair spoke with authority and familiarity that very few would employ in Frank's presence, "Spare us the dramatics, Stein, we're here on official business, and as you already know our jurisdiction covers the entire planet."

"You guys again?" Talbain winced, "Have you ever tried knocking?"

"Says the guy in the fright mask who enters by the thirtieth-story window?" the junior of the pair of Men-In-Black replied with a savvy tone of irreverence in his manners.

"J and K," Frank growled sourly, "To what do I owe the pleasure?"

"You already know the answer to that one, Sport," Agent J replied, "There's a Class Thirteen lethal strain of deadly contagion just waiting to be loosed upon the world, and our sources imply that it's partly of alien manufacture."

"Why am I not surprised?" Frank rested his massive fists upon his desk and leaned forward with an ominous drawl, "I don't need your help, I've got my own people working on this, and give me one good reason why I don't kick your sorry black butts out of my office?"

"Sure, I'll give you the word, Stein," J replied, "Let's start with Lilith."

Frank rocked back on his heels with a shocked expression, "You mean...?"

"The one in Antarctica, right," Jay continued, "But if that doesn't impress you, how about some other names...like Eve, Gabriel and Adam?"

"No way," Talbain exclaimed, "Are you telling us this involves...the Neflim?"

"Hey, what do you now, he's paper-trained and he can do tricks," K responded, "But if you have any doubts then don't take our word on it. We've already talked with the boys at SEELE and they seem to think that one of their operatives went rogue and gave a sample of DNA to some really bed people a decade and a half ago, and they had the facilities to implement their grand 'final solution.'"

"What the rookie means is that we've got ourselves a real problem, Big Man," K remarked matter-of-factly, "So what say we let bygones be bygones, put the past behind us and work together on this one? Because if what our sources say is accurate then this could be bigger than either of our groups can handle alone, beyond even the combined resources of Delphi, Darkstalkers and MIB Are you following me so far with the program?"

"I get you," Frank said, "But it's a temporary truce, until the crisis is over. Despite those fancy Neuralizers of yours, I remember everything that went down in the past between you and me, J, and all ain't forgiven, just put on hold for the moment."

"Fair enough," K responded, "So what say we take a little trip down town to the local offices of NERVE. I understand that Ikari was just replaced as head of the Dead Sea project."

"Say what?" Frank replied, "You've gotta be kidding! Somebody canned that smart-mouthed little fascist?"

"Yes," K replied, "But it's not entirely good news, because guess who SELEE has put in his place as head of their operations project?"

"You don't mean...?" Talbain blanched...or would if his body were not entirely covered with fur.

"Afraid so," said Agent J, "Somebody a lot worse than Gendo, and frankly I didn't think that was possible until I met the guy just an hour ago."

"That is bad news," Frank said, "No wonder you guys showed up. You want me to check this thing out before that tick has time to burrow?"

"Give the man a thousand-volt shock prize," Agent K affirmed, "So what about it? Care for a brief spin? Me and Slick here think you both ought to be there to back us up when we confront the new director on his dangerous new program."

Frank scowled, then said, "Shelly, cancel the rest of my appointments for the afternoon, and send Kasumi-chan my regrets that I may be late for dinner. This sounds ominous enough to be worth checking out for myself...that is, assuming it's not too late to do anything about it."

"Wouldn't be here if it weren't, big guy," K calmly reassured the man-monster, "And troubleshooting problems of this sort is right up your proverbial alley. Fangs here can tag along if he likes, but if he comes with us we're going to have to insist that he does something about his appearance."

"What about my appearance?" Talbain asked with ruffled dignity, "This is how I naturally look."

"John..." Frank rumbled with mildly strained patience.

"Oh, all right," the werewolf relented, then concentrated for a moment before his outer form shifted and altered from man-wolf to something more closely approximating a human appearance, albeit rather shaggy about the edges.

"That's you in your human guise?" Agent J expressed in a somewhat disconcerted tone of voice.

"Yeah?" Talbain asked in a challenging tone, "What about it?"

"Slick here just thinks you look like that Shaggy character we ran into a while back," Agent K replied, "The one who hung out with the Great Dane and a bunch of other wanna be Ghost Busters (TM) types."

"What, that buncha losers?" Talbain responded in affront, then paused to consider the point before adding, "Welll...the redhead's kind of cute, but the dumpy nerd needs a real bad makeover, and can you believe that surfer nut who calls himself their nominal leader? Somebody shoulda told him that Ascots died along with most of Drac's relations. As for the scrawny pot-headed punk in question...I don't see the slightest resemblance whatsoever."

"Easy John," Frank said soothingly, "I'm sure the kid didn't mean anything by that last remark..."

"Who are you calling a kid, Grandpa?" J responded in a mildly affronted tone of resentment.

"Well, if we're all done making with the insults, Ladies," K said with what sounded even for him like barely restrained monotone humor, "Your ride awaits downstairs, and if we don't get over to the complex soon we're gonna miss all of the fireworks, especially when my bet's on it happening real soon."

"Hah?" Frank asked, "Fireworks? What are you talking about?"

"You'll see," K said gruffly, "And if I told you it wouldn't be a surprise, now would it?"

"That's right," J pantomimed, "It's a seeeecret," rolling his eyes towards the heavens for added emphasis in making it known what he thought of the mind games of his nominal partner.

"That almost makes sense," Talbain remarked, "Which kind of makes me worry..."

"Hey, what's to lose besides the hours of the day?" Frank noted huffily, already in motion towards his private elevator, "So let's get this freak show on the road before I have a massive attack of good sense and change my mind in another minute..."

They exited the room even as a commercial replaced the doom and gloom news reports, with an announcer's voice cheerily voicing in lugubrious Japanese, "...And the World Champion Kendo Star Otono Reyabi-san announces that there will be a special exhibition performance taking place at the recently constructed Metrodome Sporting Arena set in beautiful downtown Furinkan within the prefecture of Nerima. Toclets are still available but seating is limited and we a good show is guaranteed to all participants. First five hundred people to enter will receive a special commemorative talisman blessed by Otono-san himself. Come one, come all, a show to end all shows is at hand that and you wouldn't want to miss it...it is to die for..."

Ranma barely managed to erect his wind-shield in time to ward off the attack that his Sensei hurled at him with such ferocity that he almost imagined that she really was indeed attempting to hit him. He next countered a full-frontal lightning assault by throwing up an Earthen barrier to ground the charge and dissipate it harmlessly into nothing. He countered this attack with a congealing water-spout that he projected from the ground, diverting currents from a natural aquifer to spray like a geyser at his Sensei, only to see her counter with a ready fire shield that turned his water into steamy mist, which she then gathered up and hurled his way with a hardened ball of water that-if it had hit-would have had the impact of a bowling ball fired out of a cannon.

Siren pressed her advantage as her latest assault had put her nominal apprentice on the immediate defensive. She gathered ionized particles out of the air and congealed them into a wad of concentrated ball lightning, which same she hurled his way, watching with silent approval as he dissipated the shell by causing a Vacuum-bubble to appear directly in its path, sucking the ions away and transporting them elsewhere, and without having to turn her head Siren felt the searing heat sprout from her left and effortlessly deflected her own weapon with back-hand slapping motion.

Though she would not admit as much aloud, Siren was very much impressed at the speed and facility with which her new apprentice was mastering the deadly art of Elemental combat. At first she had been knocking him around with one timed assault following the others until he managed to get the hang of calling upon the channeled powers of his elemental ladies to defend himself as he would in a martial arts battle. Essentially the principles of combat were the same for both disciplines, only now he had to use his Chi even more than his fists to serve as his means of attacking, countering and dodging his opponent. Once the basic concept had been grasped he rallied back and put on a brilliant show of instinctive and intuitive combat styles where he felt his way through each new technique and was now inventing complicated maneuvers to carry the battle back towards his nominal tormentor. Before long he was giving back as good as he was giving, and Siren did not have to hold back as much of her own raw power in order to test the boy to his furthest limits.

Ranma was attempting right then to combine the aspects of two of his elementals, to blend Fire with Air and focus them through a funnel that was partially focused by a localized vacuum, thus creating a funnel of flames that sped towards Siren like a catapult unleashing a stone, only in this case the object being hurled her way was a ball of concentrated Void, a vacuum-blast that was particularly devastating and needed more than a bit of effort on her part to deflect with a water shield, then to absorb the contravening energies before they could tear the space apart around her, which would have been most effective if employed against the late (and unlamented) Shang Kwan, who no doubt in part inspired its creation.

For the most part she was gratified to see how strong her new apprentice was, which gave her a motherly pride that her granddaughter, Perfume, had chosen a mate so well, even if by proxy. On the other hand she was faintly appalled at the extent of raw talent she saw on display here, and the inventive genius that Ranma possessed for innovative and spontaneous variations of his pre-existing Senken maneuvers. The boy was definitely ahead of his age, and Siren was reluctant to admit that she herself had not been that creative during her own formative years in mage training. She was almost envious, but at the same time quite intrigued by this fellow's prospects.

Perhaps keeping him on as her apprentice beyond the point of the current crisis would be a sound strategy, and of late she had grown to feel her usefulness to Frost-her current apprentice-was gradually waning. Indeed, if she could help this young warrior to steer himself towards the finer arts of higher Theurgy...why, what a fine mage he would make, and not just as an Elemental practitioner but as a full fledged Master of the Mystical arts. Perhaps she would broach the subject with him when the crisis was over...

Assuming, of course, that they all lived past an event that was putting the fear of the Fates into the heart of her formidable grandfather.

At last Siren signaled a halt to their games, which brought a sigh of relief from her still able apprentice. The boy was breathing hard and showing evidence of exhaustion, but also displayed a strong sense of exhilaration, as though he had been enjoying himself every bit as much as Siren, who had found in her granddaughter's husband a worthy sparring partner, one talented enough to have given her a mild workout.

"Not bad at all," she complimented him directly, "You are getting the hang of this much sooner than I thought possible, Son-in-law."

"Thanks Sensei," Ranma smiled a gratified smile that belied the fatigue that he was feeling, "In a way it's really not all that different from the martial arts...just using Ki in a different method of fighting. The girls were doing most of the work, but I was the one calling the shots there..."

"That you were," Siren congratulated, "Indeed, this almost seems as if it were second nature for you. At the rate that you are progressing I dare say that you would have given my former colleague a fair run for his yen."

Ranma felt flush at the memory of the battle that he had waged against Shang Kwan no more than a few weeks back and nodded, "Guess maybe I would make a better show against that guy, even if Nab-chan and the others were there to help out. Right now I could probably take him on solo..."

"I didn't say that you would win if you faced him another time, Apprentice," Siren chided, "But you would have made him struggle a bit more in order to defeat you."

"Oh," Ranma said, feeling slightly crestfallen.

"Of course, given another month or so, I might be able to make you more than a match for that devil, provided you pay close attention and apply the lessons that I mean to impart upon you now," Siren continued in a more reassuring tone of voice, "And since it is my own indomitable uncle whom you are facing...who could blast a thousand Kwans into so much sushi with the use of his little pinky..."

"I'm listening, Sensei," Ranma hastily assured, not wanting to be reminded of just how far the odds were stacked against him.

Siren felt pleased that the boy responded so readily to the challenge that he was facing and gave him a very solemn look before saying, "In order to face one of the Daokan and live you are going to have to be more than just a Master of the elements...you must be a man of enlightenment as well. You have to see beyond the illusions of the flesh and the supposed limitations of form that otherwise would limit you and blind you to the scope of your potential."

"My potential, Sensei?" Ranma asked curiously.

"On indeed," Siren nodded, "For there exists within all of us the capacity to be so much more than what we imagine ourselves to be at the present. Reality is more than just the shared illusions that are imposed upon us by flesh and blood existence. A person of knowledge can see past the illusion of solid mass and substance to the true reality that underlays all else, and that is what we shall study next so that you will be better prepared to confront the challenge of your own perceptions."

She made a circling gesture with one hand and caused the air between them to shimmer and congeal, and then before Ranma's eyes a glowing point of light appeared and hovered in mid-air, fascinating him with its radiance as he stared at the space in open wonder.

"This is the First Principle," Siren explained, "The Source of all that is, the Singularity that is the Primal Cause of all existence. It is the First Continuum of Energy, the spark of illumination that exists within us all. All things are formed of its being, and all existence, form, energy and matter is created from this divine illumination. The point is the emanation of all creation and everything is composed from its essence through the means of extension, which we call here the Second Principle, the Divine String that forms the line that draws the point to all that it can encompass."

As Ranma watched the point became a line, and then the line extended sideways and formed a flat two-dimensional square that hovered in glowing relief before his fascinated eyes while his Sensei continued to outline hew newest lesson.

"The line forms a square, and the square is the Second Continuum, the flat realm of ideal forms which are not manifest in solid reality but rather exist as a principle, like a blank slate waiting to be drawn upon, which contains all the possible shapes and symbols of the universe. It is upon this infinite slate of the second dimension that our reality is written..."

And then the square became a cube, even as Siren furthered her elaboration.

"Third Principle...the Realm of Space, the finite void that extends the plane into a sea of unbounded emptiness. This is the Third Continuum, the realm of the Astral Light that is devoid of time, motion, change and substance. It projects the realm of Ideas into the realm of Unformed matter where the possibilities can be explored as concepts...but again it is devoid of that most vital of elements that is needed to shape the realm that we exist within."

As Ranma watched the cube began to fold into itself with one plane vanishing while the others expanded and curved about to create a rounded surface where the singularity projected into a line that formed the radius of the expanded circle.

"Time...the nature of Change and Adaptation, the realm of the Fourth Continuum, which is the one in which we dwell, a realm of light and shadow, hard and soft, paradox and balance and all of the other contravening forces that are necessary to create the Homeostasis that is Life as we know it. Without time there is no motion, without motion there is no creation, and without creation there is no substance, for the particles and atoms that make up our very being are nothing more than energy packages vibrating in seemingly empty space to create the sphere-shaped clouds of electrons, protons and neutrons that are the basis of matter itself. Without time there is no energy, no matter, no potential...but time is a two edged blade that takes from us as much as can be given. This is the means by which we can control and tame time...the Fifth Continuum of Existence..."

Ranma stared in amazement as the sphere folded inward and created a donut-shaped Torus with energy flowing in cycles around the hub of the nexus, creating a curious effect not unlike a giant lens with more than emptiness swirling about the center.

"Behold the Eye of God revealed," Siren solemnly revealed, "The power by which we shape reality through perception and reflection of the basic underlying reality of our existence. Here energy swirls through the balance of intersecting forces to create the cyclical wheel of perception. This is the tool we used to summon up the powers of the cosmos, and if you understand its working nature then you will know how to use it to facilitate and give focus to the mind of the Man of Knowledge who exists within us all."

"Man of knowledge?" Ranma asked curiously

"The path of the Magical Philosopher is often called 'The Way of Return', Son-in-law," Siren explained, "It is called that because the ultimate goal of all Magic is to recreate the bond between Humanity and the Divine, or rather to return man to a state where he is aware of the divine will flowing through him at every moment. This is similar to the Satori of Zen mysticism, only linking the spiritual and mental aspects to control of the physical plane, which is where the more powerful forms of magic are derived, through total mind and body integration."

Ranma scratched behind his head and thought about it, then said, "Your grandfather said something about that...about there being a time when people were closer to gods...or Kami, or something like that..."

"The Time of the Ancients," Siren confirmed, "Whose mighty deeds reverberate even now down to our own era. But then again, Time itself is an illusion, a trick of perception, the means by which the mind organizes sequential events rather to deal with the totality of existence, which is both eternal and dynamically fluid in nature."

"You mean like past, present and future are just the way we see things, not how they actually are?" Ranma asked in confusion, "But...I thought the future wasn't already written."

"Technically it's not," Siren replied, "At least from our perspective...but that's because the future exists for us as a potential. There are many alternate lines that we could pursue, each one equally valid in its own right, but only one path that will be the one we follow. However...the paradox of this is that a time traveler from any one of those futures coming back to our own era would represent a future that was every bit as valid as our own present. A fortunate thing it is that the normal rules of time travel do not permit us to travel backwards within our own quantum dimension. When you journey back in time you tend to be shunted off sideways to a close parallel timeline, thus protecting continuity and preventing the paradox of tampering with our own past and risking self-negation of everything that constitutes our existence."

"But...wait a minute," Ranma said, "If it were possible to change or alter your past..."

"Then the you whom you are now would no longer be realized, and thus you would be negated," Siren noted, "Our reality would no longer be manifest but would rather become an inactive timeline, a shadow of a potential locked eternally in a limbo-like stasis. Obviously this does not happen very often, but if it did...well, it would certainly play hob with the structure of the Multiverse, which no doubt is the reason why we are trapped within the current crisis."

"What do you mean, Sensei?" Ranma asked.

"Think about it, Son-in-law," Siren informed him with a sobering expression, "This timeline has already been altered once at the dynamic point where you and your wife, Nabiki-san, exchanged places and destinies. Originally you were the one who joined your father on that ten year training mission. This created a timeline where new possibilities were realized and new potentials could be explored with all their consequent chain of causality leading to a future where differing elements could come together in a new synthesis. You wound up married to my granddaughter, as well as to you two iinazuke, and my distant cousin, Shampoo, to say nothing of your five elementals. You now have a clan unto yourselves with many bright and talented children being born who combine the best aspects of their mutual parents. This means a future is open to your children and their descendants where the differing factors of your being can meld into a holistic synthesis whose ramifications even I dare not contemplate...though I doubt not that my grandfather and cousin Thelendra have already scoped it all out and know to which course we are heading. Quite obviously the other side does not like this one bit and so they conspire to unravel this timeline rather than face the possible fate that has been left open to your descendants."

"Hah?" Ranma asked, "You mean...my kids or grandkids are the real targets?"

"I suspect your son, Chusen, is among those being especially targeted, considering all the trouble we had a few days back with your wife's birthing," Siren mused, "But it could just as easily be the child of your eldest daughter-by-adoption, Lylac, in whom I sense vast potential, not least for which is her rather advanced state of maturation."

"You mean my kids could be special...and somebody on the other side doesn't like that, so they want to take out this whole universe?"

"Precisely," Siren nodded in congratulations, "It may well be that your offspring are destined to be the fulfillment of the Theosophic ideal of re-Evolved humanity...of human beings who are the next stage in the process of gradual change and ascent back to a pure state of cosmic oneness that has been the goal of all human life for ages. If human beings could awaken more of the dormant potential that lays within them then Man might be able to return to the path of glory with guiding lights and spiritual teachers who can help people to realize the divinity within them. Quite naturally the demonic powers of darkness are opposed to this and would do everything within their power to put an end to this upward process, even going so far as to tear down all that you have built through your labors. That is why they have diverted one of their servants to this task...and why Otono Reyabi-san is trying so hard to kill both you and your wife."

Ranma thought about this for a moment, then looked hard at Siren and said quite firmly, "He can try, but if he does then I'm gonna kill him."

"Bold words and a firm resolve are commendable qualities, but not in themselves sufficient to transform thought into action," Siren coached him, then nodded towards her glowing construct and added, "First you must master the basics of the Thaumaturgic arts, and then-when you comprehend them fully-you will be ready to face down this base pretender to divine favor and truly show him what it means to mess with a Saotome. Now, observe again what happens when I fold this Eye into the Sixth level of Existence..."

Ranma watched as the donut divided itself and formed an hour glass with swirling masses above and below orienting towards the point at the center which balanced them out into a pair of intersecting cones of swirling substance.

"We return to duality...the division of creation into equal halves that are polar reflections of one another. Notice how the lines of force move down through one funnel to the point and emerge out the other side to form an opposite cone that is eternally expansive. This is the nature of Light and Darkness, Hard and Soft, the Way in all its equal-but-opposite qualities with neither side truly dominant over the other. This is also another variant of time with matter rushing downward towards the point that is the present, yet never quite touching the actual event horizon at the center. As light cannot escape the gravity field of a black hole, so too does all physical substance descend into this bottomless well if infinitely compressed dimension, and at the center reality as we know it vanishes into a singularity, to emerge out the other side as new creation, thus ever renewing the fabric of space and time and preserving the conservation of energy that sustains this cosmos. This also can be used as a metaphor of the soul in its complex balance between the Light and the Dark elements of creation. Life is preserved within the balance, and neither side can truly exist without the qualities of the other."

"Excuse me, Sensei?" Ranma asked, "Are you saying that good and evil are eternal?"

"No," Siren corrected, "Light isn't goodness any more than the Dark is truly evil. Good is found in the balance of opposing virtues, between polar extremes, not in the extremes themselves, which represent imbalance. Evil is perversity, virtue turned against itself, opposed to the balance of nature and thus inherently self-destructive. You cannot exist too close to a flame without burning...and yet fire and warmth are good qualities that we appreciate in moderation. Life exists within the parameters of Homeostasis, it cannot endure when extremes of anything induce disruptive trauma..."

"You used that word before," Ranma said, "Homeowhatsis?"

"Homeostasis," Siren corrected, "In principle the condition that I have just explained. In Biology it is the operational range where life as we know it can thrive...roughly between negative twenty and forty-two degrees Celsius, which is the environmental range of planet Earth to which carbon-based life here has been adapted. Too far over one way or the other and Earth would be uninhabitable, and if any life evolved it would be very different from what we know. In terms of strict body temperature, however, there is only a two or three degree core difference between health and fatality, which is why we work so hard to maintain a comfortable personal environment within the Winter or the Summer."

"Oh," Ranma said, remembering a similar Biology lecture that he had managed not to sleep through and he nodded, "I get it. Life in moderation, avoiding all extremes."

"Just so," Siren assured him, "Too much of anything, even excessive pleasure or extreme virtue, can kill you, as can a total absence of both pleasure and virtue, so the best kind of life is one that contains both qualities in moderation. In my case I'm lucky that I don't know the meaning of too much pleasure...I have quite an insatiable capacity..."

"Oh?" Ranma asked, suddenly quite nervous as he eyed the sensuous Amazon Archmage and tried not to let his newly rekindled libido distract him too severely.

Fortunately Siren made a point to ignore his reaction while she continued, "...but as you've already learned of your limits it is better to pace yourself and take matters a bit at a time rather than exhaust yourself into nothing trying to pleasure all of your ladies at once. A good thing for you that they can keep each other busy during your slough-off points, thus buying you time to recover your resources."

"Ah...yeah...that's pretty convenient," Ranma chuckled nervously, glad for the many times that the girls had given him time to rest while channeling their lust in other directions.

"Similarly, a society that bends to the extreme of excessive virtue can carry the matter of social order to the point of Severity, when Justice gives way to Tyranny and the rule of law become oppressive," Siren continued, "So without the balancing quality of Mercy to temper the urge to justice one could find that Law can become intolerable, thus breeding contempt for the law, which leads in turn to anarchistic impulses. Excessive love, by contrast, can be smothering and oppressive, breeding resentment and rebellion of an entirely different kind...so you see, life is better lived between the poles of excess, and moderation is the handmaiden of virtue who keeps her mistress on a very short leash, if you will pardon my mixing of metaphors to illustrate the point that I am making."

"Sure thing, Sensei," Ranma nodded, "I think I get it."

"Good," Siren approved, giving him a sobering look, "Because the thing you must always keep in mind is that evil can be overcome, and good can triumph over evil, but not at the expense of creating a different form of extreme that is just as severely imbalance as the evil which you are opposing. Two wrongs do not make a right, and expediency is no substitute for sound reasoning and good judgement. You cannot impose virtue on the unwilling...it must be felt and agreed to voluntarily, and it must serve the need of preserving a stable balance. To confuse Virtue with Light and Darkness is to cloud the mind with false perceptions as to the actual nature of Good and Evil."

"Excuse me, Sensei?" Ranma was confused again, "What does this have to do with learning to fight against Otono?"

"I'm telling you this because it is important for you to know the nature of the enemy that you are fighting," Siren answered, "Magic by itself is essentially amoral...it has no inherent concept of human morality, it merely serves the cosmic needs of life itself and works along a balance of causality where actions lead to consequences, and improper actions create further imbalance. The enemy will attempt to confuse you, to mess with your mind and play with your perceptions in order to cloud the issues and make you doubt your own righteous cause. It is best for all concerned if you go into this fight with a clear mind and a peaceful heart, content in the certainty that you have righteousness on your side while the enemy only thinks that he is righteous. That could spell the crucial difference in allowing you to win out against his fanaticism."

"Oh," Ranma said, absorbing this with somber reflection.

"Of course there is a major flaw with seeing the cosmos purely in turns of black and white, order and chaos or even good and evil," Siren continued, and with a nod of her head her projected image of an hour glass shape split up and divided into a pair of mirror opposite cones that were not touching at any point in their parabolic interface but rather had a gaping space between them. To this the Archmage said, "No middle ground...but in the Seventh Continuum you find just such a void between the positive and negatively charged universes that serves as a neutral ground allied with neither polarities...a limbo-like void of unincorporated space that is not part of the true Limbo of the outer dark but rather exists conceptually as a null space continuum, and in its own way it is as vast as the worlds we know that are charged with either light or darkness. This Gray realm separates the planes of Heaven and Hell and serves as a buffering plane between shadow and light, maintaining a balance through separation that is essential to the preservation of the all, and...yes? Do you have a question?"

"Ah..." Ranma started, surprised to find that his momentary impulse had not gone unnoticed by his blonde haired teacher and he hastily replied, "...Well...no, not really...it's just...how can there be a place where matter as we know it doesn't exist...?"

"Ah," Siren nodded approvingly, "As astute question. Shows me that you've been paying attention, Student. And indeed, the void between realms is not a universe as we construe it but rather a state of conceptual being where the rules and principles of physics are very different from the way we understand them. In a sense all three dominions co-exist simultaneously with us and make up the fabric of our world...they are not separate and remote regions somewhere out on the far horizon but are factual results of the quantitative layering of existence as we comprehend it. The human mind is not well suited to grasp the true complexity of nature, so we form symbols and plot ideas in the crude terms that we can comprehend with our limited understanding. A mage is someone who trains himself to think beyond the false limitation of three and four dimension linear space and who can grasp the higher planes as more than just a faint abstraction. In time you will grow to understand what I mean...but for now play along and humor me. I have yet more fun things left to show you."

"Oh...all right," Ranma reluctantly conceded, doing his best to keep up with the lecture even though what he had heard already so far was making his head swim while his mind raced to grasp the possible implications.

"So far we have light, darkness and gray...so what is missing?" Siren smiled, giving him a knowing look as if to prod him to venture an answer.

"Color?" Ranma replied, speaking the word with an immediacy that was nearly automatic.

"Congratulations," Siren grinned, "You graduate to the next level, which is the Eighth Continuum, the realm of Prismatic Fragmentation."

As Ranma turned to see the image alter before him once again he saw the two Parabolas separate and fragment into eight separate Hyperbolic constructs, each one of a different prismatic coloration with Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Aquamarine, Blue, Indigo and Violet colorations arcing off in eight different directions...as though one had drawn a map in three dimensions that had eight projecting lines moving off to form two pyramid-shaped polygons that had one intersection point in common. He blinked his eyes and tried to grasp the significance of this, amazed at its intricacy, which belied the seeming simplicity of its construction.

"You will note that each of the eight hyperbola-shaped images is exactly identical to one another...for they are but one universe fragmented into different hues that each embody but one layering of the overall picture. Notice how the Red side of the spectrum incorporates shades of the other three warm colors...while the Blue half represents the cooler qualities of existence and-in a similar sense-this corresponds to the Doppler-shift phenomenon one observes through the behavior of light. In other words, the Eighth Continuum is the plane of the Multiverse, the dimension that brings multiple realties together and sets them apart along their differing quantum interpretations."

"Interpretations?" Ranma repeated, annoyed at himself because all he seemed to be doing right then was to parrot the words that she was using.

"Differing potential lines of destiny leading to different lines of history and causality," Siren explained, "What we were talking about earlier, such as the possibility and probability of you exchanging destinies with Nabiki-san. The prismatic effect leads to greater variety and a Multiverse that is full of differing lines of spiraling matter. Think of this as you would a simple photograph...as you may know already from high school physics, light is composed of three elements...Red, Blue and Green...or Yellow when dealing with reflected light, such as with a painting or a photo. When you take a picture the camera shines light through a lens onto a different photographic plane where each layering of color picks up the image and captures it in a corresponding refraction. To break it down more simply you wind up with a set of different pictures that overlap one another with a Blue, Red, Yellow and White plate highlighting the same picture differently, which our eyes pick up in the full spectrum array of visible colors. With a TV you get a similar process with phosphorescent cells of Red, Blue and Green comprising the full array of a million-plus different pixilated colors."

"Ah..." Ranma said, doing his level best to follow this complicated narration.

Siren smiled sympathetically, understanding his plight and thus modifying accordingly the nature of her explanation, "Try thinking of it more in terms of a movie projection. You have the lens that projects the light against the two-dimensional surface of a film that colors and shades the perspective, altering and refracting the light to form images that stretch across the blank space between the projector and the screen, to be caught and reflected back towards the eye against the surface of a projection screen. The light is the First Continuum, the Film is the Second, the space is the Third, the screen is the Fourth and the eye is the Fifth Continuum, the lens of perception by which the eye interprets the signals of light images to the brain through the complex web of sensory perception."

Ranma scratched his head and pondered this, then hesitantly asked, "You mean it all depends on us to take those images and turn them into movies in our heads? But...then what is the true picture...is it in the film or the idea of the movie?"

To his surprise he found Siren arching both eyebrows and looking at him with evident approval.

"A very astute question, my Apprentice," she complimented, "Reality is a concept that our minds can only perceive through the limits of our sensory awareness. Obviously that which is real exists outside of ourselves and it is only through perception that our minds can grasp the panoply of events that happen all around us. Existentialists have gone on to great lengths expounding on the unreality of our awareness, which is limited by our halting powers of perception and understanding. However...one essential fact that Existentialists have failed to grasp is that reality is as much an Internal as External phenomenon. It exists both inside and outside of ourselves...and that the nature of both Subject and Object is not divided by a wall of separation. Rather the observer affects what he or she observes by the very nature of interaction that comes from a shared experience..."

"Ah...Sensei?" Ranma pleaded, feeling his head start to hurt.

"Oh, sorry about that," Siren said sheepishly, "Was I going too fast there? My mistake...I'll try and slow it down a bit for your benefit, Son-in-law."

"Thanks," Ranma said gratefully, "That would be appreciated."

"Think of it this way," Siren looked him in the eyes and said with a smirk, "What language am I speaking?"

"Japanese?" Ranma asked, uncertain in spite of what he knew to be the words he was actually hearing.

"Am I?" Siren mused, "In my mind what I am thinking is in Mandarin Chinese...translated into Japanese thanks to a lifetime of practicing the subtleties and nuances of your language. But nonetheless, in both of our mother tongues the form of communication that we use is symbolized by a set of characters that we have memorized since childhood. In some respects English would be simple since there are only twenty six characters in major use in that language. But the point is...for us to communicate with one another we must share in common certain words and symbols that we both use consistently, so what when I say 'Tree' what you hear is 'Tree' within your own tongue, and you form a mental picture of a Tree and all that it represents to you, which might differ in some details from what I think of when I picture a Tree...but nonetheless an idea is passed from me to you through shared understanding and interaction."

"Okay, I follow that," Ranma said, grateful that she was speaking slow enough for him to keep pace with her logic.

"Good," Siren noted, "And we converse through the use of sound and images where you hear my speaking and see my lips forming a word, and from that apprehend a meaning that I am attempting to convey through the use of sensory data."

Ranma nodded again, urging her to go on with her extrapolation.

"But supposing I would to put a blindfold over your eyes," Siren argued, "And put cotton in your ears. Would you then have any grasp of what I am saying?"

"Of course not," Ranma said, "I'm not a mind reader."

"Ah...but I am," Siren mused, "But for now you have the basic gist of what I am trying to get across here...that for ideas to be shared from one mind to another we need to depend upon the media of our senses...that sound and vision are as integral to our discourse as is the air we breathe, which is the medium for both senses. But now...suppose I do this..." she reached out with a hand and touched Ranma by the wrist, turning up his palm and then using her other hand and running the tips of her fingers against the surface.

Ranma blinked and glanced down before asking, "What did you just do?"

"I wrote the word for 'Tree' on your palm using the medium of touch through sign language that is taught to blind deaf mutes," Siren answered, "A woman named Helen Keller learned to converse this way despite a childhood ailment that robbed her of two of her most basic senses. It opened up a whole world to her understanding and made her a functional member of society rather than an invalid. This is a means of compensating for the limitations in others that is very similar to the means by which my uncle silently converses without the use of spoken language."

"Oh," Ranma said with rounded eyes, "You mean...that stuff he does with the mind?"

"In a manner of speaking, yes," Siren gave him a frank look of penetrating candor, "Touch is the first medium of awareness...the one we first grasp as tiny infants in our mothers wombs. We feel our level of comfort in accordance to our environmental conditions...too hot, too cold, too cramped, too loose, too limiting, too open...all factors of the mind's ability to grasp the neural transmissions of our bodies to our brains using four different types of sensory nerves...Pain receptors, Heat receptors, Pleasure Receptors and Pressure receptors. Touch is the first sense we develop...followed closely in turn by Taste and Smell, which are the other two most critically basic levels of our awareness. Following that are Hearing and Sight, which take a bit more time to develop and are easily robbed from us, yet which we come to rely upon to the extent that being deprived of them is threatening to our survival."

"Yeah...I can see how that is," Ranma nodded, thinking over how reliant he was upon these five most basic of the senses.

"And yet biologists sometimes discount other sensory factors that are in their way no less important to our well being," Siren continued, "Such as a sense of Balance, our ability to remain upright. This is counted in the Touch column but should rightly be categorized within its own division since it relies upon the Inner Ear and could just as easily be linked to hearing. Then there is the Visual sense of Space that we form to augment our visual perceptions. Without the ability to grasp three dimensions of length, height and width we could not form a coherent image of the world at large, and yet this sensory ability is so much taken for granted that when we find someone who lacks it, it is to be found remarkable and actually quite debilitating."

"I guess so," Ranma said, understanding implicitly how hard it would be to function without an understanding of something so basic, "You mean...like when my brother Ryoga gets lost all the time? Because he has no sense of direction?"

"Now you're catching on," Siren winked, "Many types of birds have tiny lode-stone like chip within their brains that forms naturally and serves like an inborn compass that guides them during migrations. A sense of magnetism may not be one of our talents as humans but we have our own means of determining north from south that does not rely upon the points of the compass. In the case of your half brother, however, his brain does not operate upon strict linear lines of sight, and so the mental picture gets scrambled with him and he can lose his way unless he keeps a steady focus. Of course as important as all of this physical senses are, there are certain other sensory abilities of a less tangible nature that we should take into consideration."

"You mean...like Telepathy?" Ranma wondered.

"Or Empathy, which is the ability to feel the emotions or sensory perceptions of others," Siren noted, "A lack in that department can lead to Antipathy, or total indifference. Indeed, the inability to feel or empathize with the pains of others is the mark of a true villain, or a closet sociopath. The truly criminal at heart are mentally crippled in the sense that their brains to not function in a 'normal' sense, and so they are pathologically limited and as such can be pitied. I have never yet come across a true Sociopath that I did not feel sorry for in some way...my late colleague, Shang-Kwan, being more of the rule rather than the exception."

"I sure didn't feel sorry for him," Ranma said sullenly, "He got what was coming to him."

"That is neither your place nor mine to decide in the final analysis," Siren chided her apprentice, "But I sympathize with your attitude in that sense. But you see...what Shang and others like him are and were lacking is an inner sense of Self that we can call-for lack of a better term-our conscience...the ability to form a self-image that is consistent with the form we project unto others. A strong sense of self is closely linked with a sense of Integrity and Ethics...and in some ways ties in with our religious sense...but I'm not just being metaphorical here. The mind forms many different kinds of perception whose overall effect helps shape the kind of person that we are, and that is why we must cultivate a higher level of self-understanding than is known to a 'normal' person."

"I guess I can see that," Ranma said, "Never really thought of it before...a sense of self, a sense of worth...a sense of how you interact with others."

"Sense and sensibility, Apprentice," Siren mused, "When we are aware of ourselves and of others who are in our daily life we become linked by a common bond of social interaction that binds society together in compassion and overlapping needs. But a sense that goes beyond this is to be aware of the universe outside of ourselves...to perceive the flow of psychic currents and by this means gain the ability to interact with others and our environment. The so-called 'Sixth Sense' is really a complex assortment of different functional abilities that all rely upon the mind and spirit linking together. Learning to harness and channel this sense can make you truly formidable and a vastly more capable Man of Wisdom."

"I guess so," Ranma conceded, though here again he felt a reluctance based upon his limited experience and understanding of occult matters.

"Returning to the point of my current lesson," Siren turned away, "The ability of the mind to take the images that we perceive in our Projection model and translate them into intelligible concepts employs some degree of principle from the Sixth, Seventh and Eighth realms of being. But the Ninth Continuum of being...that is something else entirely, a dimension above all of the others.

As she nodded to her projected image of eight-fold dimension it suddenly refracted into a prismatic effect that dazzled the eye and utterly confounded the senses. Ranma winced as the image was almost painful to behold, as though his brain refused to comprehend the image, and he turned away for fear of being driven mad by the confusion of his perceptions as he simply did not understand what he was seeing.

"What is it?" he asked sensing that Siren was not looking away but rather remained focused upon maintaining the image that she sustained through her own mystical projection.

"It would be difficult, almost impossible to describe it to you, Apprentice," Siren answered, "But suffice to say it is something that we call the God Consciousness, the ability to apprehend and perceive all things in reality simultaneously regardless of time or distance. I myself only have the barest comprehension of its true workings, but my grandfather...he knows its structure intimately, as do all the Daokan, which is why their perceptions are far greater than even the Gods. As best as I may render into words its integral structure, I would say it modifies and the other Eight Continuums before it and balances out their seemingly unwieldy structure. That is why I would call this the Realm of Reconciliation, the place where Cosmic Consciousness apprehends the spill of order into Chaos and helps rectify the harm brought on by excess."

She stretched out a slender hand and grasped the center of the blinding prism then snatched it from the air, causing the maddening effect to immediately cease and resolve into a marble-shaped ball of milky whiteness.

"More than this you need not concern yourself with at the present," she continued, studying the ball that lay upon the upturned palm of her hand, "Suffice it to say that it is the highest level that mortal consciousness may aspire towards, and comprehending it all would take more than several lifetimes. All you need to grasp at the moment is that the structure is there and that we can tap into it to perform our complex spells of higher grade thaumaturgy, the point at which a Mage can make even the Gods sit up and take notice. Yet always it must be approached with a fair degree of humility, for the greater pattern of all there is remains out there, beyond the point of human understanding. That is the place where Faith is born, a faith in that which is greater than ourselves, the belief that there will always be more out there than we can hope to know, or truly need to, and that everything at that level is proceeding as it should along the guidelines of cosmic order."

"Ah...just how many levels of reality are there out there, Sensei?" Ranma asked nervously.

"That is truly a good question, but one that even I am uncertain about, Apprentice," Siren replied, "Some mathematical theories that I have heard expounded would insist that there are precisely Twenty-Two dimensions...but the math behind that is so complex that it would take me years to bring you up to a level where I could explain it to you sufficiently so that you could understand the strengths and weaknesses of this argument. Many physicists balk at such a high number and prefer a much more simple construct, favoring Eleven as the number of Continuums that absolutely must exist in order to stabilize the complex web woven by their numbers. Still others adamantly insist that there were originally eleven realms, but that seven of them collapsed, leaving only four dimensions of time and space, the ones that we perceive within the limits of our senses. The arguments behind that line of logic are, quite honestly, silly...like insisting that the universe should play fair with we poor humble thinkers, like it was manifestly unfair of the universe to give us something so complex that it must by its very nature forever lay beyond our comprehension."

"Fair?" Ranma asked, feeling his head already swim at the vast amount of information that he was trying to process, and understanding why someone else might prefer to go for a simpler model.

"But the Cosmos does not play fair with us...never has, never will, and it is manifestly churlish to expect the universe to be obligated to owe us a simple answer," Siren smiled disarmingly and held out her hand upon which the milky ball was still resting, "You must always beware of people who prefer simplicity to complexity, Son-in-law. Despite its seductive logic, oversimplifying problems does nothing but blind you to the enormity of our obligations as sentient beings. We are the ones who owe the universe for the gift of our very sentience. Indeed, it is the nature of the universe to create complexity out of simplicity, to add to what is already in existence by the powers of extrapolation, and to evolve through trial and error a new and more efficient form that is capable of understanding itself and grasping its role in the puzzle that is universal order. Indeed...many of the greatest evils that afflict mankind are the result of oversimplifying the complex...of not making sufficient allowances for a reality that is much too complex to be captured within the logic of a single syllogism."

"A what?" Ranma asked as he stared at the milky marble, wondering if it were his imagination or did it actually seem to be growing the more he stared at its fathomless surface.

"Something the Greek Philosopher named Aristotle once coined to frame his notions of Epistemology," Siren replied, "I think of it more like the two-legged chair...an argument formed by two separate observations that lead to a conclusion that is supported by its own internal logic. Example...I see a Cow, the Cow is Brown, therefore my conclusion is that Cows are Brown. Problem...what happens if I encounter a White Cow, or a Black One? Do I modify my original observation?"

"I guess," Ranma shrugged, quite certain now that the marble was expanding to form a ball, and within its swirling surface an inky blackness was being contrasted with sparkly snow-like swirls that he found quite magnetic the more he gazed within its infinite dimensions.

"Indeed," Siren replied, "The example that I have just given you is called Hypostatization...an argument formed from limited data that becomes a blanket generalization whose overreaching nature is foiled by the introduction of contradictory data. Just as a chair cannot stand on two legs, a Hypothesis cannot be satisfactorily reached from a mere two observations. Therefore Aristotle and his successors were forced to impose something called the Corollary argument...the turning around of a Hypothesis to test the validity of the first two observations by a process known as Falsification. I see a Cow that is not Brown, therefore I invalidate my original Hypothesis and must conclude that Cows can come in many different hues and colors."

"Ah...makes sense...I think," Ranma reluctantly conceded, watching with almost childish fascination as the swirling snow began to resolve itself into a cloud-like starry pattern.

"But obviously it would be absurd to construe that there are Purple and Green Cows waiting to be discovered," Siren noted, "So again through testable proofs and arguments we gradually narrow down the range of Cow Colors to that which is more acceptable to our understanding. In similar such order can reality be understood to consist of many different values that each contend for our appreciation, and that a cautious mind is one that makes allowances for discrepancies and irregularities that do not fit the general pattern...such as a woman with purple hair, or a young-seeming beauty who is actually much older than is mete with her appearance."

Siren then surprised Ranma by handing him the glowing ball, which he caught up in both hands, staring in utter amazement as he finally recognized what he was holding...and where exactly it was that he had seen that cyclical pattern before, for it was nothing less than the Milky Way galaxy that was so represented. In effect he was holding the whole universe within the palms of his hands, and the knowledge of this was truly humbling in light of everything that his Sensei had just explained for his benefit. And in knowing this...he grasped something more...that the marble was not a mere symbolic representation but rather a mirror of the actual cosmos itself, and into his hands it had just been placed so that he could begin to understand the full impact of this particular lesson.

"To paraphrase one of my grandfather's favorite poets," Siren smiled, "I could bound inside of a nutshell and call myself a Queen of infinite space...were it not that I have...bad dreams."

The marble winked out of existence like a soap bubble bursting, but it was not truly gone from existence as Ranma was beginning to understand that it had been there all along...and that the mirror of the cosmos was inside of him, linking them all together by the same intangible order.

"Understand this well, Apprentice," Siren said with sudden sobering intensity, "The human mind is wired to grasp and comprehend only so much, and that it takes time to train and develop our senses. But for the sake of argument, know that it is possible to restructure the brain through observation, medication and refinement so that you can grasp more of the higher reality than is within the scope of limited mortal awareness. Once you achieve the ability to interact with the complex forces that interweave throughout nature, however, you will find this knowledge comes with a heavy price."

"A price?" Ranma repeated.

"Indeed," the Archmage was almost chilling as she held his gaze within her own timeless expression, "The price is to know things that others cannot perceive...to see that which others are blind to, to know the ways of nature as other people cannot hope to comprehend. Being a Man of Knowledge is an isolating and humbling experience, and it sets you apart from the head-blind mundanes who comprise the bulk of humanity, who can never hope to share what you and I must take for granted. It is a lonely thing to be a Wise man or woman...to be feared, misunderstood and even despised by the ignorant who do not grasp the secret flame that burns within us. To be capable of doing that which others deem impossible is to be alone and feared by those who will feel inferior to you on a fundamental level."

"You mean because we're better than they are?" Ranma wondered.

"Better?" Siren arched her eyebrows, "Hardly. In some ways we must envy those dull of wit for their innocence...to feel a twinge of jealousy that we cannot share in their complacent ignorance. They are the way they are because they are most comfortable that way...very few would have the will, courage or temerity to face the inner challenges that are imposed upon a guardian of the Secret Knowledge. It is not so much condescending to them as it is in sympathy that I say this...for we are the ones who choose to face those things that go bump within the night, not to flinch away or hide under the covers...and in that regard we have chosen to be different and alone...and so we are the ones who might well be pitied."

"I never thought of it that way," Ranma said, "When you put it like that being a mage sounds like a pretty crappy way to live."

"Oh...it has its...compensations," Siren smiled once more, "But in time you will know what it is that you are being asked to give up if you choose to enter my world and become a seeker of Wisdom. Ours is not the quick and easy road of the meek and downtrodden...for if we stumble we face monsters far more terrifying than the inky depths of the night that conceals them. Ours is a hard and perilous road, and not one for the faint hearted. Of course the alternative for you is not so very welcome an option..."

"Oh yeah," Ranma said grimly, "Like I really have a choice after all you've shown me?"

"Perhaps not," Siren noted, "But then again, you were the one who challenged my uncle, so it's much too late to claim victimization by circumstance."

"You've got a point there, Sensei," Ranma smiled lopsidedly, "So I guess I'm in for the long haul...um...sort of..."

"Indeed you are," Siren smiled, "But for what it is worth you are making fantastically good progress...for a raw beginner. So...ready to go on to the next phase in your training?"

"You bet," Ranma nodded grimly, but nonetheless with a strangely calm sense of confidence that had not been there before, as though he were actually eager to take on anything the Amazon could dish out, and maybe do her one better."

"That's the spirit, Lad," Siren mused, "We'll make a mage of you yet, provided you survive the next step in your training."

"Survive?" Ranma blurted, his newly gained confidence evaporating in the light of the mischief he saw in the eyes of his formidable trainer.

Siren did not verbally respond but merely lifted a finger...and suddenly the world exploded all around her dismayed apprentice...

"Here, finally," Carla remarked as she dismounted from the cabin of the eighteen wheeled truck that was incongruously named the 'Silver Seagull,' "So this is Nerima, huh? Doesn't look like much from here, but I suppose by now I should know better than to judge by appearance."

"I should certainly say not," Miyuki noted as she turned back and bowed politely to their benefactor, "Many thanks again to you, Robar-san. Perhaps we can still find a way back to our vehicle where we left it abandoned on the roadside, but we do not hold our being forced to leave it there against you, honored sir..."

The dark man just turned his head and nodded to the side, which prompted Natsumi to tap her partner on the shoulder and say faintly, "Ah...Miyuki-chan? Don't look now but...isn't that your little Subaru?"

"Eh?" Miyuki replied, astonished to find her car was indeed parked a short distance away as though left there by a thoughtful attendant, "But how..."

"Best non to ask, Cheri," Inspector Morisato urged, "It bodes not well to attempt to fathom the mysteries of the Daokan. Braver souls than yours have attempted it to their peril."

"Yeah, well...we're here, and I'm grateful to Lord Udan and all of that," Carla replied, not sounding all that impressed at the seemingly miraculous appearance of the automobile as she instead scanned the horizon of a nearby parkway, "But now I have to get on with my own business, namely hunting down my wayward partner before she gets herself up to her pretty little neck in the usual business and..."

All at once Carla turned her gaze abruptly to the side, her expression registering shock and alarm to a sufficient degree that Inspector Morisato felt a sympathetic twinge even as he asked, "What is it, Cheri? What is it that disturbs you?"

"I...felt something just now...like a surge of unimaginable power," Carla replied, her eyes searching a particular spot on a nearby hillside, "It was just suddenly...there...like it manifested out of nothing. Lord Udan?"

The Dark Man was already staring in the same direction as the American detective, but the expression he wore was more that of recognition and annoyance than of genuine concern, and his frown by itself told a very peculiar story. His dark eyes manifested a name, and in its appearance within their minds they could feel centuries of mutual enmity all but written large within the context.

Shiva.

"Eh?" Miyuki and Natsumi glanced up from where they had gone to examine the Subaru to insure that it was indeed the genuine article, but then they turned and saw a figure approaching from the side and were mutually startled by their own sense of recognition.

"Whoah," Natsumi said to her partner, "Would you check that out? He looks just like Ranma-kun..."

"Only taller...and much older," Miyuki's eyes narrowed slightly, "And he seems as though he carries the weight of the world upon his shoulders...not at all like the Ranma-kun whom we know so well..."

The man in the dark trench coat just took the whole scene in at a glance then focused his attention towards the one who was giving him such a glare of antithesis and he nodded gruffly, "Bartev. I see you're hanging out with a new crowd. Does your better half know what you're up to? Oh...that's right, silly of me. Of course she knows, just like my wife...can't put nothing past her to save my hide."

The dark man remained unmoving and unflinching as he seemingly projected a thought that contained hostility and no little amount of genuine loathing.

You have come to deter me in my purpose for being here.

"Good guess," the other man half-smiled, "Oh wait...that's right, you don't guess...you know. That's the annoying thing about you Daokan...you're just about the hardest ones to surprise at parties..."

"Who is that?" Carla murmured the words as if afraid to draw attention in her direction.

"He looks like a friend of ours...only those scars and weathered lines don't match the fellow we know," Miyuki half-glanced towards her partner, "You think they could be related?"

"Possibly," Miyuki murmured, "But...there is something about this fellow...almost like he and our friend Ranma are one in the same person..."

"Good guess, Cute Stuff," the older man responded without taking his eyes away from his primary objective, "I'm kind of like the Ghost of Christmas Future...or a shadow-image of what your pal Ranma would be like if he walked the same road I did when I was his age...only the kid lucked out and turned out all right, which is why I'm here. He needs somebody to stand up and take his side against these all-powerful Daokan jerks...that and the fact that me and Chuckles here have long unfinished business."

Udan did not flinch or alter his glare by one iota, but he someone again managed to convey his unspoken meaning.

You waste your time, and quite possibly your life by coming here. I will not be deterred in the completion of my purpose, and all you will achieve if you attempt to oppose me will be your own undoing, Avatar. For the sake of She whom you call your mate I will offer you the choice to walk away, else I will make a grieving widow of her, which is a burden I would much rather not shoulder.

"Well tough," Ranma snorted, "I know how Nabiki thinks, and I know she'd do anything to keep me from doing this if she could...but even she knows better than to get in the way of Shiva when he set his mind to something...and you know as well as I do that neither one of us backs down from a scrape."

"Shiva?" Carla reacted with a start, "He's an Avatar of Shiva? No wonder I'm getting the chills all up and down my spine! I haven't felt this alarmed since that time Trudy and me ran into that guy, Orion..."

"Mon dieu," Morisato exclaimed, reacting as though his worst suspicions had just been confirmed, "We are in for a barrel of pickles this time..."

"Wait a minute, hold on here," Natsumi said, "You mean...that really is our Ranma-kun?"

"No," the older man addressed himself to her without flinching, merely nodding his head in a general sense towards the park way, "The guy you know is over that way off training with the Sorceress. No way he'll ever be me, which is a good thing by any reckoning you'd care to set down. Me, I'm just the guy who cleans house whenever one of the Big Boys gets out of hand, like my old buddy here, who fancies himself a defender of Universal Order."

Udan's eyes narrowed slightly, but in no other sense did he alter his expression.

The youth trains hard in preparation of our impending match. In respect to him I am allowing my niece to show him levels of power normally denied to other mortals. In two days time, however, we face one another and decide the fate of this localized dimension. If he prevails, which is unlikely, then he will go on to meet the challenge of Judgement Day, along with his mate, the counterpart to your own fair lady. If I prevail-which is the far more probable outcome-then this world will be cleansed before it can be turned into a nexus point for ultimate evil.

"Ain't gonna happen!" Ranma flashed his fists and his eyes all but blazed as his battle aura flared to such an alarming degree that Carla took a reflexive step backwards with dread written large on her expression, "The kid deserves his chance...and you should give him more credit rather than jump in with both boots and stomp his lights out...and we both know it ain't a fair fight pitching him against you no matter how hard he trains or whatever is his potential."

Udan's expression altered by only a fraction to a look almost of curiosity.

And you think to take his place?

"Possibly," Ranma said, smiling a grim sort of battle smile that was more than mere bravado, "Maybe if Nabiki and me put out minds to it we could come up with an alternative...and anyway, I've been to a future timeline where you guys blew it and the Dark Ones managed to take over. We purged that dimension by ourselves without any help from you or your brothers..."

Again Udan merely raised his gaze by a fraction.

The timeline you speak of has yet to be...and in any event it was tainted but far less so than what potentially faces this world, so do not compare two very different variations of a doomsday crisis. Besides, in this world the Shogun of the Dark has yet to be fully manifested...though I sense that the one who has the potential to be his Avatar has already made the off-plane journey that could well doom him to follow in the fate of the one whom you defeated."

"You mean Gosunkuji?" Ranma sniffed, "Don't make me laugh. He may be a friend of mine but he ain't no Shogun, and anyway we got Ryonami running a trace on him, so don't try and change the issue. This is just you and me and everything that's between us, and I don't just mean Shiva's personally beef with you either, I mean a lot of things that have gone down every time you and me have crossed paths...in one timeline or another."

Udan's gaze hardened once again into a mask of firm resolution.

Very well, since you are determined to see this through, then we will battle. But not here, on this world or in this time...somewhere else where our struggles will not result in the premature devastation of this already doomed dimension.

"I didn't think you cared where your graveyard was gonna be located," Ranma said, "But you lead the way and I'll follow...and between us both I'm gonna clean your clocks out once and for all Mister high-and-mighty Lord of Earth and Water..."

Udan wasted no more time with conversation but merely turned to the side and remounted into the cabin of his truck, closing the door and starting up the engine, then slowly pulling out from where he was parked as he aimed his truck towards the open road...

And vanished altogether.

"Showy bugger," Ranma snorted, then turned to make his own dramatic exit, pausing only to notice the strange looks that he was being given, which prompted him to say, "Go on with your business, this won't take too long...I hope."

And then he casually turned and entered a Delorean that just happened to be parked right on the side of the curb (even though no one had oddly noticed the distinctly foreign vehicle until now), and with a whine of the engine started it up and sped off and away, going from zero to ninety kilometers in under three seconds...

And vanishing entirely in a blaze of burning rubber.

"Weird," Natsumi murmured, then turned to notice how Morisato was handling the matter and said, "Hey, take deep breaths and calm down, guy. You look like you're hyperventilating."

"Sacre...it was him!" the Interpol Agent declared aghast.

"Him who?" Miyuki asked, puzzled by his panicked nature.

"Zee one in our files who serves the Temporal Police, Inspector Ranma himself, zee Avatar of Shiva the Destroyer!" Morisato replied with a look of manifest worry.

"Time Police?" Carla reacted, then groaned, "That was a Timecop? I should have suspected!"

"A Timecop?" Natsumi repeated.

"Like a regular cop, only he arrests people who screw around with the course and flow of history," Carla explained, "No wonder he looked like an older version of your friend...he's from a different dimension, one where his personal history probably went sour and he experienced a chain of events that brought him into contact with Shiva, with whom he made a compact."

"Zhat is what our files have suggested, Cheri," Morisato mopped his brow with a handkerchief, "I am so foolish not to have recognized him before! He is zee one who goes where few would dare to seek out zee most dangerous of criminals...but not to arrest zhem. Oh no...he is well deserved of zee name Destroyer."

"And he's going up against that Udan guy?" Natsumi asked.

"But why do they dislike each other so much?" Miyuki wondered.

"Who knows?" Carla shrugged, "But I think it has to do with the fact that they represent diametrically opposed Cosmic forces and have probably clashed over stuff for millennia. Shiva is the Destroyer because he demolishes static order so that he can free up the energies that are used in creation. In a way that sort of makes him like a good god, as opposed to Kali Durga, who just loves to kill people for the hell of it. But Udan represents stability and preservation..."

"But of course," Morisato replied, "Each seeks harmony in their own way, and yet their opposite methods make them naturally antagonistic towards one another."

"Yeah, or maybe it's just that unwritten rule about Super guys having to fight each other the first time they meet," Natsumi shrugged, "Either way...I'd prefer to be a long distance away when those two go at it."

"I suspect that they intend the very same thing, Nat-chan," Miyuki noted, shaking her head sadly, "How awful...they both seem like decent men, but they hate each other for what stands between them. It seems like such an awful waste."

"Yeah, well...for now it's not the important issue that we need to face," Carla turned back and scanned the park, "Now that those two are out of the picture it's a lot easier for me to focus on other signals of a lesser order...and wouldn't you know it, I can feel Trudy over in that way...and someone else over there. Pretty potent...some high level magic stuff, but not my business. Guess I'd better hike over there and see what that screwy love of my life is up to this time. Whatever it is, she'd better have a damned good reason for making me wait in that gods-damned airport..."

So saying she stalked on ahead with resolute determination, leaving the others to exchange puzzled looks, and then by mutual consent they followed after her, drawn by curiosity as much as a desire to see the sparks that would likely ensue when two separated lovers came to grips with their mutually conflicting intentions...and therein was set the next dramatic phase of the continuing melodrama whose course of events was to shape the destiny for an entire cosmos.

Let the universe beware, for love was about to spark in some very interesting places...

Continued.

Comments/Criticisms/Catchphrase Catharsis: shadowmane

Or: shadowmane9849

Next time out...we return to the vista where Nabiki and Saki are training to master their new disciplines together, but it's their Sensei who may need some convalescence when her lover makes the scene in a chapter titled: "Truth and Consequences," or, "The Many Roads to Armageddon." Be there!

X

/pre 


	101. Chapter 101

preDnabiki190

Nabiki 1/2

"A Very Scary Thought"

by Jim Robert Bader

(Inspired by the works of Rumiko Takahashi Others,  
with concepts and characters created by fellow fanfic writers Wade Tritschler, DB Sommers, Nicole Manders, Andrew Greaves, Bill Guiroff and countless others, including "Buffy"  
creator Joss Whedon; with special thanks to my good pal Shiva for his editing and handling of this series.)

(Certain other characters and concepts are of my own innovation, including my interpretation of the Monster of Mary Shelly's novel, the Furies, Trudy, Takaharis Angelique d'Anjou, Anri and the Daokan, Thelendra the Dream Weaver and various other guest stars appearing in this portion of the Nabiki 1/2 series...)

Chapter Seventy-Two.

Episode One-Hundred-Ninety.

(Interlude Reprise)

"Pillow Talk..."

"Hmmm...was it good for you too, Darling?"

"You need to ask?" Lenore chuckled softly as she and Chloe lay side-by-side together in the warmth of the bed that they were sharing, hugging the Werewoman closely to her as she murmured, "You about wore me down there with your enthusiasm, Honey-pup, and if it weren't for my regeneration I'd be too pooped to pop right now. You really rocked my world and I just want you to know it."

"I'm glad," Chloe said as she snuggled in much closer to her vampire-lover's body, "Because you mean so much to me, Lenore-chan. Remember the day we first met?"

"Oh yeah," Lenore chuckled, "Five years ago in Budapest. I thought your father and uncles were going to string me up and use me for knife practice, but you stood up and defended me, saying it wasn't right to kick me when I was down, and that Vamps were not all bad just because of the bad blood that exists between you and certain tribes of the Blood Nation."

"And I meant every word," Chloe said fondly, stroking a clawed finger over the bare skin of her vampiric lover, "You were half-dead when you stumbled into our village. You needed time to regenerate and couldn't defend yourself, and you hadn't don't anything yourself to justify being killed just because of what you are and what tribe you belong to."

"I've never forgotten how fierce you were back then," Lenore smiled in fond reflection, "Standing up to everyone, insisting on my right to a fair hearing, defying the wisdom of your tribal elders...until that one old lady spoke up on your behalf..."

"My Nan," Chloe cooed, "I was always her favorite grand niece, and she never took any gruff from what anyone else had to say. She was always able to sniff the winds better and see farther than anyone else in our pack, and when she put her paw down on something there was nobody who could back her down. I'm told I follow a lot after her in that sense..."

"No arguments there, Honey," Lenore chuckled, "It was thanks to the both of you that I survived long enough to heal back from my injuries, and then that crisis hit where the guy I was chasing down went and kidnapped your sister, which really unleashed a real hornet's nest until I was able to prove that he was a hybrid Immortal."

"People tried to blame you for Anna's getting kidnapped," Chloe complained, "They're always blaming you for stuff that's not your fault, just like they always accuse our pack of stealing their chickens and other such nonsense..."

"Well...did you steal their chickens?" Lenore asked matter-of-factly.

"Well...one or two, maybe," Chloe reluctantly conceded, "Whenever I was hungry..."

Lenore hugged the other girl with the arm that Chloe was resting her head against and said, "Sometimes there is a basis for the reasons why people hate and fear both of our kinds, Love-Puppy. They don't always have to be good or logical reasons, just as long as they can rationalize the belief that Weres are mindless brutes who attack and kill everything that moves when the full moon is upon you, or that Vamps are a threat to everything that lives under heaven and Earth, which is why they can justify killing us as the only means they have of protecting us against them..."

"Well, when you put it like that, I suppose you could make it seem like we're a couple of monsters..." Chloe remarked with genuine candor.

"People often take the simplest view of things rather than try and see how things look from our point of view, Honey-Pup," Lenore said softly, "Like imagining us as actual people with feelings, needs and thoughts of our own that extend beyond pure evil. Can't put us down like rabid dogs if you thought that way about your supposed enemies..."

"Yeah, like we've got nothing better on our minds than hassling with them," Chloe scoffed, then cooed with sensual delight as she again explored the anatomy of her companion, "...Like doing other things to work up a good appetite for breakfast..."

"You're incorrigible," Lenore chuckled while enjoying the caress of a clawed hand against her supple body.

"So incorrige me some more," Chloe mused while nuzzling her lips against the other woman's shoulder.

"My...aren't we lively this morning."

"Kiima-chan?" Lenore glanced up in surprise to find the third member of their odd little troika hovering close to their side.

"What do you want, Kii-Kii?" Chloe growled resentfully, "Can't you see we're busy?"

"Yes indeed," the ghostly girl replied, "And normally I'd much rather sit back and watch than disturb the both of you...but in case you're forgotten the fact, it's two-thirty in the afternoon, and we do have other things to concern us besides making out like a couple of bitches in heat..."

"I am a bitch," Chloe argued, stroking Lenore with possessive fondness, "And I'm always in heat, in case you haven't noticed."

"I have," Lenore chuckled, "Believe me. But...wait a minute...did you just say two-thirty? As in the daytime?"

Her eyes widened as she sought out the heavily curtained window, seeing odd bits of sunlight filtering down through the cracks of their rented hotel room...and all at once it felt as though she could see through the very walls themselves to the outside world, which was indeed heavily drenched in bright, unclouded sunlight.

"That is indeed what the clocks here say," Kiima noted, "Mind you, time is not as important a concept to me as it might be to a fully material person, but I'm not so ethereal that I've forgotten completely how to tell time..."

Lenore stared in shock at the ceiling and murmured softly, "It's daylight...I'm awake...and I feel perfectly fine..."

"Yeah, you sure do..." Chloe sensuously agreed.

"I mean...why did I wake up in the middle of the day?" Lenore gently argued, "I normally sleep straight through to sundown...it's the way I set my internal cicada. The sun robs me of most of my powers during the day, which is why I tend to hibernate and come the most alive in the dark of late evening..."

"That is what I've always understood about you," Kiima noted, "Your Vampiric nature is inherently nocturnal. You draw energies from the negative Ki-line currents of the Earth as it discharges the excess positive life ions that it absorbs during the day. Granted that Loire-class vampires are not as susceptible to sunlight as most variations of the Vampire sub-species..."

"What are the both of you mumbling about?" Chloe asked in annoyance, "We've been in bed since before sunrise, and we worked at getting ourselves to sleep until pretty much near noon...or whatever. It's not like we've had a full eight hours to sleep it off you know..."

"I know, Honey," Lenore answered, "And mostly I'd agree that we ought to be a lot more tired than I feel at the moment...but what I can't understand is how my normal pattern for sleep doesn't seem to be working at the moment. In fact...I do feel a lot of energy right now...a lot more than I ought to feel in full daylight..."

"So try putting some of it to use with me," Chloe urged, giving her most puppy-like tone of adorable pleading.

Lenore couldn't help but hug her lover more closely to her naked body, "I'd love nothing better than to play 'Screw the Pooch' with you, Honey-Pup, but we do have other obligations to see through, especially my duty to attend the needs of my Mistress Kasumi. Frank is counting on us to look after the Tendo family, and now more than ever we need to be on our guard against any more assassination attempts like the one last night by that Otono-guy and his cronies. So...if you'll be willing to give me a rain-check on more fun until the next sunset..."

"No," Chloe put a hand across Lenore's body and held her with possessive strength, "You almost died last night, and I couldn't bear losing you. Can't the Saotomes look after themselves for just one evening?"

Lenore sighed, feeling loved and loving her friend back with a wonder at how she had ever been so lucky as to encounter such a devoted girlfriend, "You know better than to ask that, Chloe-chan...and besides, the Saotomes and Tendos have been very good to us, accepting us in their house and allowing us to be around them. Most breathing humans aren't so generous when it comes to our kind...and I kind of feel as if I owe them something for that. Besides...Kasumi is my goddess..."

"Even if the thought does boggle the mind now and then," Kiima remarked, "But...on the subject that Chloe-chan here just raised...there is something that troubles me about your story of last night. According to what I could make out while Chloe was seducing you...you actually did die for a moment while in the presence of the Daokan...and they brought you back to life by the use of their own powers?"

"Ah...well...yeah," Lenore winced as she felt Chloe's grip on her body tighten, "But it's not like it was the first time I've ever been killed you know. It's just...well...the first time anybody ever reduced me to a pile of smoldering ashes and then reconstituted me a few seconds later. I mean...that's something that only happens to ancient Vamps of the Goth line, guys like Dracula, who are pretty near to unkillable in a permanent sense..."

"What about you almost dying forever?" Chloe murmured, her tone conveying her dismay as though the very thought to her was chilling.

Lenore sighed, "It's bound to happen sooner or later, Darling. I mean...I may age at a rate of one day per year when compared to normal humans, and my body constantly renews itself by tapping into the Dark Ki lines of the Earth when I'm resting, but it's not as if I'm going to live forever. A thousand years or so is a pretty long time even for us, and death can come in any numbers of forms, either stabbing or beheading, and just like that...you're gone..." she waved her free hand dramatically to emphasize the suddenness of it all.

And all at once a flash of fire broke out on the dresser near to the bed, the surface of the wood bursting into flames even as the lamp shattered into pieces, scattering every article laid upon it in different directions.

Even Kiima seemed startled by this, and Lenore stared in shock at the fire, then at her own hand, instinctively sensing a connection.

Chloe also saw this and sat up in bed with a dramatic exclamation, "Holy Lon Cheney...what was that?"

Lenore stared at the fire and then made a motion with her hand again and the blaze was instantly extinguished. She stared at the smoldering charred surface of the table then made a different gesture with her fingers and caused the wisps of smoke to disappear altogether. She then stared at her hand as though it now belonged to someone else, feeling something akin to fear mixed with a curious sense of exhilaration.

Kiima noticed it too and murmured to Lenore, "Just which of the Daokan brothers did you say it was who resurrected you?"

"Udan Robar Bartev," Lenore answered, then slowly she cursed, "That sneaky son of a dragon...I don't believe it! He changed me!"

"Changed you?" Chloe blinked, then sniffed her lover's body before pronouncing, "You smell the same to me...only...kind of different..."

"Different?" Lenore glanced up at her lover with a look of intense worry, "Different...how?"

"Not as musty as usual," Chloe said, "More like...fresh, like after you bathe in lavender salts. It's kind of a nice smell...I really kind of like it..."

"She says you smell like perfume," Kiima noted, "And as my physical senses do not function like your own I am forced to take her word on it. But does that seem likely considering the amount of sweat even a vampire generates through vigorous lovemaking?"

"No...definitely not," Lenore stared off into space, "He must have done something when he put me back together...but what? I don't feel all that different from before. Well, except for not feeling tired in the day, but what else did he do for me? And what the heck was that I just did to that table?"

"I'm not really sure," Kiima replied as she glanced towards the charred black surface, "But somehow I do not believe that we will be getting our security deposit back."

Lenore thought really hard upon the matter, and then she extended her hand towards the table and concentrated...and with the same intuitive sense as before she felt the energies flow down her arm and extend from the tips of her fingers while her minds eye pictured the molecules of the air as separating the soot particles from the oxygen and nitrogen...and then willed them to reform upon the surface of the night stand, seeing a pattern of what was supposed to be there and causing it to re-integrate in a rapid reverse of chronological motion.

And within seconds the table was back together...with the lamp rising up from the floor with the pieces reassembling as if in reverse motion...and a moment later the scattered items that had been left there the night before flew back and resettled themselves in exactly the same place that they have been arrayed before this all happened.

Even Chloe was impressed by this, and she softly made a whining noise of canine inquiry, even as Kiima stared at the table and then at their vampiric companion and said, "Well...that certainly was different."

"Oy gavalt," Lenore said as she stared at her hand again, then at the rest of her and remarked, "My powers...they've never worked like that before. I wonder what else is different?"

"Don't know, don't care," Chloe threw her arms around the redhead and leaned her body up against her, "Nothing's changed for me, and you're still my Lenore Bat-bitch."

Lenore felt a crooked smile upon her face but reluctantly said, "I'm glad to hear you say that, Hon...but maybe now ain't exactly the best time to be doing the nasty. I really think we had better get up and find out what else that sneaky Trucker did to me...and why I suddenly feel like I can leap tall buildings in a single bound...or something."

"Whatever he did to you," Kiima noted, "It must be for a very important reason. The Daokan do nothing without a purpose."

"Yeah, I kinda worked that one out for myself, Kii," Lenore murmured, taking one of Chloe's hands in her own and giving it a kiss before saying, "But whatever that purpose is, it scares me just to think about it...and when the Lord Udan does you a favor...you'd better damned well expect a price to be paid in compensation."

"Whatever it is we'll face it together," Chloe assured the woman in her arms, "You saved Anna from a terrible fate, and you've always been my hero ever since, Len-chan, and wherever you go you know I'll always follow."

"Yeah, I guess I was counting on that, Honey," Lenore smiled, though privately she worried about the hidden "price tag" that came with Lord Udan's favor, and she wondered what fate might demand of her in compensation for her gift...and whether or not the trade would be all that worth it if it cost her something-or someone-whom she valued far more than her own life.

As if reading her thoughts Kiima replied, "You know the answer to that one, my friend. Where you go we will always follow, and the fate of one of us is tied to the other for all eternity. No matter what else befalls us, you are and have always been our hero, Lenore-chan."

"Thanks Kii," Lenore murmured, then with great reluctance left the comfort of their bed and started to prepare herself for the discovery of her newfound limitations...

Assuming she now had any...

"Hmmm..." Alison said as she stretched lazily on the bed, refusing to move, feeling oddly quite contented in spite of herself, "Of all the crazy things you've ever talked me into doing, Beiko..."

"What now, my love?" Beatrice replied as she lay beside her lover-slash-wife feeling just as kittenish and contented as if she had eaten the proverbial canary, "Feeling regrets already?"

"Yeah, well, shouldn't I be?" Alison propped her head up to better examine the ice blonde beside her, "I just spent most of the night and part of the morning making out with my own sister..."

"Half-sister," Beatrice corrected, "And the both of you are old enough to count as consenting adults."

"Don't get technical with me you...you techno-freak," Alison snorted, "Doesn't incest mean anything to you?"

"Well...not having a sister of my own to do it with, no, not personally at lease," Beatrice raised a warning finger and chided, "And if you even suggest going there about my relationship with my father..."

"No, that really would be sick," Alison agreed before flopping on her back and staring at the ceiling, "But me and Martha? I mean...mutually consensual or not...the thought of doing it with her...it never would have occurred to me if you hadn't suggested it, and now that we've done it..."

"Repeatedly I might add," Beatrice teased.

Alison groaned softly, "How am I ever gonna explain this to Mom and Dad? I don't think that they're this progressive, and if they knew that I'd let myself get roped into this..."

"Tell what to your mother and father?" Beatrice asked, "That you and your sister love each other very much and would do anything to make the other happy? If anything I am the one who should feel jealous here, even allowing that it was partially my doing since I made that suggestion."

Alison gave a sour look to her significant other and said, "Don't try and kid me, Bei...you wanted to do her even more than I did. You all but pushed us together, got her naked by making an excuse of those experiments, and then doing your usual tease to get the both of us hot and horny..."

"Guilty on all counts," Beatrice replied, "So what are you going to do about it?"

Alison frowned and considered the point, "Well, spanking you sounds like a good start, but you'd probably enjoy that..."

"More than likely," Beatrice admitted, then favored her wife with an indulgent grin and said, "Your feeling guilty about things is perfectly natural, but I'm the one who deserves to be punished, so I will permit you to take it out on me in whatever manner that you like, my love, since I merit no less in this and am prepared to take whatever fate is deserved by me for the crime of trying to make you happy."

"Happy?" Alison started, "You think it was my happiness you were after by seducing me into making out with Martha? And where is Oneechan anyway?"

"In the kitchen fetching us breakfast," Beatrice answered.

"What?" Alison sat upright again, "She's doing WHAT in the kitchen...?"

"I heard that little Sis," Martha herself replied, sweeping into the room wearing nothing but an apron and with two trays balancing on either hand. She set these down before each of the girls on the bed for closer examination, then straightened up then and folded her arms under her full bared breasts before eyeing Alison crossly, "And for your tone implying that I somehow lack in domestic skills, I believe that I am owed an apology."

"And apology?" Alison reacted, but then saw the cross look in her older sibling's expression and reflexively cowered, "I didn't mean to imply anything by that, Oneechan. I'm sure that you're a great cook, it's just..."

"It just doesn't fit your mental image of me, does it?" Martha's stern look quirked into a smile and then she added, "I'm sure I gave you that impression in the past, but believe me when I say that I've changed, and for the better I believe. It may have been some years since I cooked breakfast for a loved one, but I'm willing to get back in the habit for the sake of those I care for."

"An admirable quality to be assured," Beatrice smiled appreciatively and sat up before setting her tray across her lap and ordering herself appropriately, quite heedless of the unclothed state that she was in as she added, "By all means, my love, dig in. Since your sister went to so much trouble on our behalf it would be rude to refuse her most generous offer."

Alison less delicately fingered her food and found it was quite warm, so she picked up some scrambled eggs with her fingers and held them up to her lips, then decided to risk ingesting them, only to find her eyes light up in surprise, and at once she sat upright and dug into her meal with genuine gusto.

"It's easy to see that you haven't lost your appetite from when you were a kid," Martha chuckled fondly, "I remember we had to caution you against eating the actual dishes since your demi-Kryptonian metabolism could theoretically digest anything..."

"Just about," Alison said between bite-fulls of sausages, pancakes and eggs, "I never could manage to digest anything Ceiko cooked for me..."

"Seiko?" Martha blinked momentarily, "Oh right...that girl you used to hang around with, the really odd one with the perpetual whine who always seemed to get her way with everyone...whatever happened to her again?"

"She...ah...went back to her parent," Alison momentarily stopped eating and looked abruptly away as if something were distasteful.

"Oops...did I say something wrong?" Martha asked, sensing the abrupt mood change in both of her nocturnal companions.

"It's...something of a painful subject for the both of us, Sister-in-law," Beatrice said delicately, "You see...we used to be rivals over Ceiko...but Celeste-which is her actual name-was never ours to claim, though I did entertain some...fantasies when I was younger..."

"It was just a little under two years ago, Sis," Alison sighed, "Turns out she was an Intergalactic Princess from the Lexon-Proxima system, the heir to a Matriarchal line going back about a million generations..."

"Actually more like one thousand, two hundred and sixty," Beatrice corrected, "Her people are single gendered...all women, no men at all, and reproduction is done through artificial means...very similar to what Alison and I used to have our lovely daughters."

"Speaking of which," Alison glanced away as if to change the subject, "Where is that brainy little scamp of ours and our newborn?"

"Eileen is with her sister looking after her," Martha paused, "She's so mature for her age...it's almost scary."

"Tell me about it," Alison rumbled, "She takes too much after Beiko here...I gotta spend more time with her seeing she grows up right so she doesn't just turn into another egghead."

"I am sure you will lead by your splendid example, Aiko-chan," Beatrice mused, "But I intend to see to it that our other child is raised to become a proper lady."

"Hmmm...a single-sex matriarchy you say?" Martha mused, returning to the original subject, "I've run into a few of those back during my superhero days, such as when Hal and I would tour the nearby planetary systems together as part of his patrol before that awful Star City business happened. I think I may even have encountered the people you speak about. Very odd to look back and reflect on it now, how I was vexed by the very idea of a society built around Lesbianism, and here I am having spent close to six months in a similar situation..."

"Yeah, about that," Aiko turned back to glance up at her sister, "Something's been bothering me about your story since last night. I mean...you say that Lao character has been on her good side with you, not trying to force or compel you to do anything against your nature...but last night you admitted that you'd be perfectly content to let her sell you to someone else..."

"It's part of the game we play," Martha replied, "I agreed to conform to the rules just like any other of her women, and all of them know that they are property to be bought, sold or traded at the discretion of our Mistress."

"Your Mistress," Beatrice mused, "You refer to her as that even away from her ship and any possible physical influence that she be able to exert upon you."

"I call her my Mistress because that's what she's come to mean to me," Martha replied, "I'm not mentally compelled to call her that, but I choose to because it's part of the role that I've adopted. When I willingly submitted to her I gave her the right to do whatever she wanted with my body, and so far that trust has not been abused, nor is it likely that she will abuse it in the future."

"But can you honestly be certain of this?" Beatrice persisted, "An unequal situation where the authority of one over another is absolute is inherently posed with the risk that the dominant party will be compelled to cross the line at some point..."

"Depends on where you set the line," Martha replied, "And believe me, as kinky as the games are that we sometimes play together, Lao has yet to go as far as the worst that I suffered at the hands of an enemy back when I was a superheroine. In fact, it was because of one such encounter that I gave up the role of playing Power Woman for the past decade-plus."

"Say what?" Alison looked up at her sister in amazement.

Martha sighed, then sat down on the bed next to her sister and gave both girls a very frank expression, "I never told you about this...I never told anyone, especially not Dad, or Hal or anyone else...not even Helena when we were closer than mere sisters...no offense intended to our relationship, Aiko-chan. In fact I'd managed to block it out of my mind until the Kraken reawoke the memory, and I have since shared it with my Mistress and my sisters back on the ship, even though it's not a very pretty story."

"You have my keen interest," Beatrice remarked, "What is this that has haunted you for so very long? I can tell by your tone that it is something you still feel traumatized about on some deep level..."

"Well, wouldn't you feel traumatized if some demon bitch turned you inside out and laughed in your face as she played with your insides?" Martha countered.

"Say what?" Alison reacted.

Martha sighed the more deeply, "Some twelve years ago, back when Joan was hardly more than eight or nine...I encountered an enemy whose name was Zathartra...though she adopted the public name as Sultana and ran a criminal syndicate that I was working to break up. They were marketing a type of powerful narcotic called DEMON that induced in its victims a wildly psychotic state similar to actual demonic possession. I naively thought she was a fake pretending to be a Demon, but it turned out that she was the genuine article. I hurt her organization badly, but I got careless and overconfident and...well...as often happens in the superhero trade, I wound up as a prisoner in her lair, subjected to her evil machinations as she sadistically punished me by infecting me with DEMON, which I discovered was partially magical based and could be terribly effective on my Kryptonian metabolism."

"I can imagine that was a horrible experience to undergo," Beatrice remarked with a properly sympathetic tone and expression.

"You have no idea, Sister-in-law," Martha's expression darkened, her eyes becoming haunted as if the memories she was reliving were still a deeply traumatizing matter, "Under the influence of the drug I lost all grip on reality...I literally could not tell what was real and what was pure hallucination. I experienced what to me was the deepest kind of hell in which the torment of the damned screamed on eternally all around me, and I could do nothing because I was bound to a table and turned upward towards a cavernous ceiling...and there were these...grotesqueries all around me...and Zathartra looming over me smiling a horrible smile...cold, malevolent, sadistic in the extreme. You can't imagine how terrified I was, how helpless I felt, and without my powers to defend me..."

"Easy...take a deep breath and calm down, Martha-chan," Beatrice urged, laying a slender hand upon the knee of the trembling demi-Kryptonian beauty.

"I know that being captured and tortured is something you learn to take in stride when you wear a cape and a costume," Martha went on, her tone shaking with barely suppressed emotion, "We've all heard the crude jokes told in bars about that time Barbara wound up in Selena Kyle's cat-lair, and how they managed to become good friends even after it was over. In a way it's almost like this kinky little game we play between us and the bad guys. But this...was like nothing else that had ever happened to me before. With my invulnerability there is little that could seriously hurt me...except demon claws that could carve my flesh as easily as butter..."

"Kami-sama," Alison was horrified just looking into the face of her elder sibling, "What...what did she do to you?"

"She...eviscerated me," Martha replied, "Slit my belly open and held my intestines up before my very eyes, and played with my internal organs...then put them back inside and stitched me back together, saying we would do this again and again until I begged for death, which would not be forthcoming..."

She paused, closed her eyes, took a steady deep breath and then released it, opened up her eyes again and looked at the shocked expressions of the other two women, "It went on like that for three days until Hal found me and got me out of there. To this day I don't know how much of what I experienced was for real and which parts were pure imagination, but...I was never the same after that. How could I be? I was so messed up inside. I drew inward for a time and it took a real effort before I was able to look at my husband or anyone else without feeling...shame...self-loathing...and deep humiliation."

"But it was not your fault," Beatrice urged softly, "You did nothing to deserve what happened. You are not a bad person just because of what someone else..."

"I know that now...thanks to my Mistress," Martha sighed, "She helped me to relive those memories, and then to get through them...even though I still get the shakes just thinking about that moment. Everything that Lao has done since there has been aimed at helping me to rebuild my sense of identity, to regain some appreciation of myself and to know that I deserve the love and attention of others. Despite what you may imagine are the things she has done to me, it's all been like a game we play to bring me out of my shell, to teach me how to let go, how to release my defenses, and to trust myself implicitly in the arms of someone who has absolute authority over me...and who is only restrained by her own resolve not to abuse it."

"But...but that thing didn't really happen to you, did it?" Alison shuddered, "She didn't really open you up and..."

"I've tried to convince myself of that many times since then, Aiko-chan," Martha informed her little sister, "But after I started to recover, about six months after it happened, I went to a special doctor for an examination using tools that could map a Kryptonian's physiology...and I found out that something had been done down there that screwed things up inside. Everything works and functions normally...mostly...but some of my intestines are missing, and they're cross connected in a way that's not even typical for a Kryptonian...and...ah..." she glanced away and then said faintly, "...and...my ovaries were gone...vanished. It was as if someone had neutered me deliberately...and I could remember Zathartra laughing as she held something up to her mouth and swallowed it whole...and...I think that's what she did to them. She ate them raw...and I'm sure she thoroughly enjoyed it."

There was total silence in the room for almost a full minute, and then Alison said, "Kami-sama..."

"Just about," Martha said frankly, "But not to worry...thanks to my friend, the Kraken, I've been able to fix the internal plumbing problem, and I've grown back a healthy set of ovaries, so my body now functions as good as new, so as far as the physical work goes there were no long-term consequences. It's just...the psychic toll is what did me in, and it's why I stopped being a professional full-time Superheroine, making the excuse that I'd grown up and didn't want to play little girl games pretending to follow in the footsteps of our father."

"So the Kraken and Lao were able to restore you to full health, and by working on your mind to free your inner demons she gained your love and trust...and you've rewarded her by pledging to her your lifelong service?" Beatrice summarized.

"It seems a fair enough exchange," Martha replied, "A new life for the old one, and a chance to make right everything that I got so badly wrong by being the emotional wreck I was, before I met and fell in love with my Mistress."

"But..." Alison hesitated, thought a moment, then asked, "Are you sure those memories were for real? I mean...what if Lao planted them inside of you..."

Martha turned a firm look towards Alison and said, "No. Even at her worst Madam Lao has never been so cruel and viscous with me as Zatharta. I've confirmed that those memories were for real, and I've independently verified everything that happened before, during and since my encounter with Zatharta. She was the real deal, a very sick, twisted and psychotic creature who lived to cause pain in others and delighted in the suffering she inflicted. From here I learned the true meaning of evil, and you can take my word on it that the world's a vastly better place without her around..."

"Excuse me?" Beatrice asked, "By that comment...do I take it to mean that she is...?"

"Dead," Martha said flatly, "And at my own hand...which is another reason I stopped being Power Woman. I felt...unworthy of the title after having violated Dad's sacred taboo against killing."

"Sounds like she had it coming," Alison scowled, "If I ever met up with somebody like that...I don't think I'd be able to hold back. Especially somebody who messed with you, Oneechan..."

Martha placed a finger over the redhead's lips, causing Alison to look up at her with a surprised look at the adoration that she saw in the eyes of her sister.

"I'm just grateful that you never have had to make the same choices that I've made in my life, Alison," the older woman said softly, "And from where I sit you've done a pretty good job for yourself...a wife and two kids and everything that goes with it."

"Indeed, Sister-in-law," Beatrice remarked, "But it hasn't always been so easy...and there was an occasion when Alison and I did find ourselves confronted with a choice of live and death with the very universe hanging in the balance."

"Zena," Alison said with a slight mental wince, "She possessed Ceiko's body and tried to use her to create universal Armageddon. I killed her with a borrowed magic sword, but since she was never technically alive I don't see how it compares to that bitch you had to deal with..."

Martha leaned forward, "And you can wonder why I'd want to make love to you, Little Sister? We're more alike than either of us knew, and as heirs to the Kryptonian legacy that was bequeathed to us by our father..."

"Indeed," Beatrice remarked, "Watching the two of you make out was quite...instructional. If anything I'm the one who should feel grateful to have escaped intact rather than become like strawberry jam in a sandwich."

"Ugh," Alison winced, "Enough with the visuals, Beiko, or I'll lose my breakfast. But...Sis...doesn't it bother you at all that we...well..."

"Committed incest?" Martha asked as she caressed the redhead's cheek, "Technically it is a sin, but how can physical love shared by any two sisters be morally wrong when it feels so right? Besides...it's not as if our father can scold anyone on the subject of incest."

"What?" Alison blinked, "What do you...?"

"Remember cousin Kara?" Martha asked, "Did you happen to know that she and your parents once indulged in a Threesome?"

"SAY WHAT?!" Alison reacted.

"It's true, I swear it," Martha held up a hand as though imitating a Boy Scout, "Our father may be upright to a fault but he's technically only human...and with a wife as liberal in her views as Diana...well...it would be quite remarkable in over forty years of personal history if they didn't get it on at lease once. But it was just a momentarily fling, and Kara went on to other relationships, both male and female, before finally settling down with the man who became her husband."

"Now I thought I'd heard everything," Alison shook her head in amazement, "Cousin Kara and Diana, maybe...but Dad? That's stretching things a bit..."

"It's just Sex, Aiko-chan," Martha replied, "Love with sex is a much deeper and more complicated subject, and when it came to love cousin Kara was always a romantic. That's why she had such a hard time finding stable relationships...in our career it's a remarkable thing when we even have time to settle down and raise a family. It's amazing her daughter, Karen, turned out as relatively stable as she is. Being married to or in some way related to a superhero puts an inordinate strain on the bonds of even the most committed relationship. Believe me...I know...and I have a lot more to regret than simply screwing up so badly in the raising of Joan, my only daughter."

"Merely she says," Aiko huffed, "Right up until that Lao business I thought my niece was turning into the ultimate rebel hippie. You couldn't even handle things when she came out of the closet with you..."

"I know," Martha sighed, "Such an irony now, but I'm very glad that she did find someone who can keep her in hand as good as her Polaris."

"Yeah, that Lila sure seemed to have Joan's number fixed," Alison mused, "How are the two of them getting along by the way?"

"Oh, splendidly," Martha smiled, "They're expecting a child in a couple of months, which means I may soon have to deal with the concept of being a grandmother."

"Say what?" Alison sat upright.

"Fascinating," Beatrice murmured, "Yet another Parthenogenesis pregnancy that originated with a stay upon the POJ."

"You figured that out, did you?" Martha smiled, "But how do you know it was the POJ instead of Joan getting pregnant through some other method?"

"It wasn't difficult at all to sort out," Beatrice replied, "My reading of Lila's character was that she has a singularly possessive regard of her relationship with Joan, and that would not easily brook obtaining the seed of a man through either natural or artificial insemination. Besides which the number of examples that I could site for mysteriously spontaneous pregnancies all occurring at roughly the same time would speak rather heavily of the operant cause being something more basic."

"Uh...translation please?" Alison all but pleaded.

"I think she means that so many of your friends wound up pregnant at roughly the same time, which would be suspicious by any conventional sense of such things," Martha offered, "And you're right...being on the POJ does something to increase the fertility rate of women. Couple that with the fact that my Mistress has managed through magic to impregnate a goodly number of her concubines, which is why the Harem boasts a high proportion of children who do not have an actual male biological parent. But if you think it's all Lao's doing, you're wrong. I've known my Mistress long enough to have a sense of what she does and why she does it, and while in a few cases she has used her powers over water to speed up the menstrual cycle of selected women, such as Saotome Nabiki...but in other cases it appears that the POJ itself has caused many examples of female-to-female impregnation. We're not really sure of the exact process itself, only that blood tests have confirmed spontaneous Fusion has occurred, and quite often without the knowledge or prior consent of our Mistress."

"The POJ itself is to blame?" Beatrice remarked, "How fascinating. That would explain a good deal about why certain members of our party were singled out instead of others."

"Huh?" Alison blinked her eyes, "Wait a minute...the ship gets girls pregnant? But that's crazy!"

"Name something about the POJ that doesn't defy conventional logic or the so-called laws of physics," Martha smiled, "At any rate, those of us who live there have come to accept the seeming miraculous on a daily basis, and I for one am grateful for both Joan's pregnancy and character reformation. In the time she spent with us we got to be very close, and we even formalized her union with Lila with Mistress Lao performing the ceremonies as ship's captain."

Alison stared at her big sister then said, "Tell me you didn't sleep with Lila while she was there, did you Oneechan?"

"Not on their honeymoon," Martha said, "But...well...we did exchange a few pleasant moments together at the Bridal shower. But that was just sex, Imoutochan, we left the best most intimate parts for Lila and Joan alone to explore."

"So, you would sleep with your own daughter-in-law as a means of welcoming her into the family," Beatrice mused, "And by token sleeping with me was your way of accepting and cementing my union with your family?"

"Well, it's certainly a lot more fun this way than sending you useless toaster-ovens as discardable wedding presents," Martha grinned.

"Not quite," Alison corrected, "Beiko could turn a toaster oven into a Jacuzzi if you give her some pliers, a screw driver and a wad of duct tape."

"Well of course I could," Beatrice said with ruffled dignity, "Who couldn't?"

"Hmm...I'll have to keep you in mind the next time something of mine breaks down," Martha mused, "But at any event...you really shouldn't attach that much significance to the mere act of sleeping together, Alison. There's a big difference between making love as a casual thing and doing it romantically. I've learned that first hand from studying at the feet of my Mistress."

"Huh," Alison scoffed while eyeing her elder sibling with suspicion, "Well, if you ask me, when you have sex with someone it's a pretty big deal, and I'm not exactly comfortable with the idea of us crossing that barrier, Oneechan...but since it seems all right with you...and it wasn't exactly the worst thing I've ever had to endure since hanging out with Beiko..."

"I should certainly hope not," Beatrice herself duly noted.

"Not the worst thing?" Martha arched her eyebrows as she regarded the thought with a note of real challenge, "Sister dear, where I'm from them's fighting words, and if you want to challenge my ability to rock your world and give you the best sex you've ever had-making out with your wife duly excepted..."

"Hah?" Alison blinked, then slowly backed away, appearing genuinely worried that the other woman was about to pounce on her like a sex-crazed she-cat.

But instead Martha grinned lasciviously and said, "Roll over face down on the bed, Imoutochan."

"Hah?" Alison said again before complying, half afraid she would be jumped, but annoyed at the thought that she might not.

"That's good," Martha said as she knelt down and started applying her hands to the neck and shoulders of her sister, "And now...I'm giving you a backrub."

"A backrub?" Beatrice asked as she watched the older woman begin to kneed the muscles of Alison's back and spine, teasing along the edges of the rib cages, "Is that all?"

"All?" Martha scoffed, "With me the 'all' does not exist, and there's no structural limit to how far I can take a backrub, and if you have any doubts of that, Sister-in-law, then I'll be happy to demonstrate with you next...AFTER I work the kinks out of Aiko-chan's back muscles."

"Ooooh..." Alison involuntarily groaned, discovering the advantage of having someone who was nearly as strong as herself begin to skillfully work her over, "My...ah...yeah...maybe there are advantages to this incest stuff anyway...ooohhh...lower please..."

"I just love to hear you say that, Little Sister," Martha purred contentedly while Beatrice looked on in fascination and began to finger herself, feeling a tingling awareness begin to grow all over her body...

"Mine love," Thelendra murmured with a very slight quirk to her lips that implied ironic humor, "Please do try to pay attention here. What I have to share with you is very important."

"I know this," Kasumi murmured while grazing her lips over the exposed bared shoulder of the Oracle, nuzzling her warm and creamy skin with an aroused savor for the taste of her blood, which was as powerful for Kasumi as any aphrodisiac ever imagined.

Thelendra smiled despite herself and said, "Time enow for more of that much later, Beloved...for now it be critical that we attend to matters of hand, not merely in pleasing one another..."

"To me that is the matter at hand," Kasumi murmured while hugging the taller woman around her slender waist, "And I can hardly help it...there is so much of a sensuous air in the wind, it's driving me to distraction."

"As it would for me were I less resolved to explain this all-critical matter," Thelendra turned within the embrace of her lover and cupped Kasumi's chin between two fingers, "The time be growing nearer when we must stand firm and resist the tide of the looming darkness. If and when we survive that crisis, then may be indulge our whims to our heart's content and beyond. Thou knowest that thou art ever close to mine very soul and being, Beloved, but as intoxicating as thine scent be, the certain knowledge that our very future survival rests upon thee playing thine part in this melodrama..."

"All right," Kasumi sulked with a sigh, "I know that you're right, Thelendra-chan. It's just...being so near to you...knowing who you are and what you mean to me as both my Soul Mate and the father of one of my babies..."

"Ah...hah...aha...aye...that," Thelendra smiled sheepishly, feeling every bit as nervous as would a man in her position when faced with the prospect of impending "fatherhood." She coughed to clear her throat then said, "I know somehow that I will be doing penance for that one day, far worse than the mere tanning thine fiancé dealt unto me..."

"He's now your fiancé too, remember?" Kasumi gently pointed out with a sweetly suggestive expression.

"Ah..." Thelendra's mind balked, then she steadfastly steered herself away from that topic altogether, "Now...about these things that I didst reveal unto thee right now..."

"Yes, I know," Kasumi nodded forthrightly, "Aiko-chan and her sister, Madam Lao and her family circle, Lenore-chan and Chloe-chan, and my sister...who seems to have picked up yet another unlooked for admirer in Asamiya-san. And us...you see? I was paying attention."

"So I hath gathered," Thelendra noted with a mildly wry look of appreciation, "So...what canst thou tell unto me regarding these affairs that do surround us?"

"That all of them involve women who are in love with other women," Kasumi answered, "Like Miyuki and Natsumi-chan...or this Trudy person whom my sister is studying under...and who has a female lover named Carla. About the only one who doesn't seem interested in starting an affair with my little brother is Siren-san, and we all know that she has a strong attraction for Cologne in her true body."

"Thou art correct," Thelendra nodded, "Women loving women, as do I love thee with all my soul can bear. The attraction of woman for her own kind be very strong in some, though the vast majority of women do deny it by their thoughts and actions, preferring the more conventional love that be found betwixt a man and a woman."

"You know, I have been wondering more than a bit about that," Kasumi noted, "As strange as it seems to me now, I used to be one of those who thought it was...improper to care about another woman in that way. Looking back, however...I do recall feeling...attracted to several fellow classmates growing up. I was shy and not too forward back then, and I never acted on any of my impulses...and I thought it was not right to have such strange feelings for persons of my own gender. And then Nabiki came back home to Nerima...and nothing was ever been the same for me ever since. But why did I fear so much being labeled a Raitsu?"

"For the same reason that many be intimidated against running astray of conventions," Thelendra answered, "Thou didst fear that yielding to such attraction would make thee anathema to the rest of thy peers. Children can be very hard on one another during the confusing period of adolescence, and it be far too easy for them to turn against those they label outcasts and deviants from the accepted wisdom of thine peerage. Once a label be applied to thee it be fiendishly tenacious and difficult to work beyond, and the worst part of winding up as a social outcast be that it limits our options in so many ways for seeking relationships. Mostly we fear being rejected for the love of a man because we imagine that they would want us as perfect and chaste as we must be quietly submissive to the bent of their wishes."

"That's right," Kasumi said in amazement, "You've described my feelings perfectly, what little I knew of them back then. I did think being with a woman would be a deterrent to finding a man who could become my husband. But then...there was so much else to think about in those days, and the needs of my family came first, and there was no way that I would have wanted to bring the shame of dishonoring them by dragging my family name in the mud. So I...gradually learned to ignore my feelings, and they became less and less noticeable the more I learned to get along without them."

Thelendra regarded her companion with a gentle smile, "Thou shouldst ne'er deny thine feelings, Beloved. A heart so warm and full of love as thine must ne'er be hidden away lest thee turn inward and bitter o'er time. Sometimes the hardest road to tread be the one where we be truest to ourselves and where we defy the expectations of others to be as we were meant to be...the way the Powers intended us to follow."

A thought suddenly occurred to Kasumi and she looked up at the Oracle with a startled expression, "The person you were describing just now...that was you? You had those feelings when you were...ah...my age?"

"Aye," Thelendra nodded sadly, "Six hundred and fifty years later and still do the memories burden mine soul. Arcadia be nay so backwards in thinking as was the world of that era...but still they didst conform to certain prejudices that I found most...inconvenient."

Kasumi studied the profile of the woman beside her and then in a quiet voice she asked, "Who was she?"

Thelendra seemed momentarily startled by the question, but then she met Kasumi's gaze and her resolve melted into faint resignation, "Someone I knew who was once very close to me...a fellow initiate, my closest friend...and something more than a friend. My father knew and approved, but the Elders...some were of an old and conventional mindset. They sent her away in an effort to sever our relationship, and I...grieved for her as though she were one perished. But destiny had other plans for us and we would meet again one day after our lives had grown estranged and very different."

"But you loved her, didn't you?" Kasumi asked in a voice barely a whisper.

"Ah...love," Thelendra glanced away, "Wouldst that I could attest that love endures over the ages, much as my love for thee has done through numerous lifetimes and incarnations. But we share a special bond, my love...being mated at the soul level...very different from the casual forms of love that come and go like a summer storm in the late season leading to autumn. We change, grow into love, and fall out of it o'er time. 'Tis the way of the heart, and there be no fathoming its depths nor dimensions."

"I don't understand," Kasumi admitted, "Isn't love the same no matter what or to whom it's given?"

"Love be the binding force of all creation, Beloved," Thelendra answered, turning a glance back towards her companion, "But it's opposite be Fear, and we fear to be hurt o'er time...and when we listen more to our fears than to our longing we often turn astray and ignore the call that draws us all together."

"You mean we fear to love each other fully?" Kasumi asked.

"That and we fear the power that Love gives another over us," Thelendra answered, "That another being may command our hearts be a terrifying concept. Sometimes love alloys with fear to make hate, which be the bane of all lovers and can sour the sweetest wine into a bitter harvest."

"Not between us," Kasumi said firmly, brushing her lips against the other woman's earlobe, "I have no fear when I am with you...I only know that you are a part of me that I spent too long without, and finding you...has given me a sense of completion."

"Aye," Thelendra turned and met Kasumi's gaze, their faces only millimeters apart as the warmth flowed between them, "And for me finding thee be like recovering the better half of myself, something vital that I lost along the way in life. My love...thou dost shine before me as the brightest star shines in the heaven, and I be aware of thee constantly night and day. Thou dost matter so much to me that being parted from thee be a hurt that I cannot long endure. With you...I feel alive as ne'er before. Thou art mine better half, and while there be fear in me for what may come between us, there be certainty in the knowledge that my devotion to thee be changeless and eternal."

"And yet we almost didn't recognize each other when we met," Kasumi said with irony, "Tell me this...if we had not shared blood...if I had not awakened to my life as a goddess...would you have known to find me in this lifetime?"

Thelendra glanced away, "Nay...for I was nay truly seeking for thee. I didst nay recognize thee in thine present incarnation. I might well have passed thee by without sensing how keenly I have missed having thee by my side, for when I came to this province I was as one who walks in dreams, aloof without touching my surroundings. Blind I was to the potential that thee offered...but nay so blind was mine father, who doubtless recognized thee and arranged for us to once more be restored to our former union."

"Your father knew who I was?" Kasumi asked, then paused before saying, "I guess he would, so I shouldn't be surprised...but...you're saying that he manipulated us into being reacquainted?"

"Aye," Thelendra nodded, "He be like that. Mine father goes on much to attest to his support of the concept of free will, but he be a born meddler who likes to give events a nudge whenever he sees the opportunity provided...and in mine case he doubtlessly wanted me to find thee so that I would be compelled to involve mine self more intimately in thine present incarnation."

"In other words he set us up," Kasumi considered the point then wondered why she felt no resentment, so instead she said, "I guess...in a way...we should be grateful."

"Oh aye...that I be, and more," Thelendra averred, "But there be times when I would wish to show mine father mine regards in a way that be far less than respectful towards a parent. He exasperates me at some moments, e'en though I do love him and support his cause, and believe that he always acts with the highest of good intentions."

"I see," Kasumi considered the point then said, "There are times when my father can sometimes try my own patience...but I love him dearly and accept his odd little quirks and foibles. After all, he is only human."

"Aye," Thelendra half-smiled at the irony of that statement, "And human beings must accept that we be limited in our ways, e'en if there be ways of moving beyond those limitations."

Kasumi paused a moment then said, "Oh my...an odd thought just occurred to me. I love my father, but not in the same manner that I love either you or Frank-sama..."

"I certainly do hope that be the case," Thelendra said a bit archly.

"I love Akane, my little sister, and Aunt Nodoka, who has always been there for me like a second mother," Kasumi paused before adding, "And I love Nabiki, my other sister...but each form of love is very different one from the others...all equally intense...and yet..."

"And yet only one or two of us doth thee set thine intent to marry," Thelendra concluded for her benefit, "Different forms of love, yet all applied with the same emotion in different degrees and senses."

"How strange that is," Kasumi reasoned, "With either you or Frank-sama there is love as an emotion, but also a desire to be intimate with you both on a completely physical level."

"Physical love as well as the emotional kind," Thelendra answered, "There be a love for our bodies that be an extension of our spiritual joining, for only beings incarnated on the plain of matter can experience the rush of hot blood in our veins, and the physiological changes that accompany the release of certain hormones that trigger our sexual urges and make it possible for us to experience the joy of consensual lovemaking."

"I love how that sounds when you say it," Kasumi murmured in her companion's ear, "But are you saying that love is nothing more than a biochemical reaction?"

"Nay," Thelendra assured her, "But in a properly executed act of coitus the mind, soul and body be united to enhance the pleasures felt by one to the other, with the joy of the body radiating to enhance the power of the spirit, reflecting the delights of energy exchanges as they complete a full circle from one state to the other."

"Yes," Kasumi said with an adoring smile, "That's how it feels when you share warmth with me, Thelendra-chan...as if our two lives meld into one and we become extensions of the same being..."

Thelendra's changeable eyes sparkled brightly, "That be the true secret of Love, beloved...that all souls in love be joined together in harmony and balance...for when one finds completion in the company of another they must inevitably yield up of themselves some portion of their individuality. Sexual congress be the joining of two souls in heart and body through the merging of life energies by the medium of coital joining."

"You mean like when we..." Kasumi started to say when a shadow of her old modesty resurfaced and she blushed as the visual imagery that filled her mind was easily picked up by her rainbow-haired Soulmate.

"Aye...exactly like that, Dear Heart," Thelendra sensuously answered, "Dost thou recall the legend of the Great Division of Spirits as retold by mine father on the previous even tide?"

"Somewhat," Kasumi replied, finding the memory readily accessible as she visualized the Golden Era of the Unimind coming to an end when the Ancients turned on one another, shattering the harmonious unity of souls that had long been the strength of the human race from the time of its creation.

"That which was one became the fragmented many," Thelendra quoted as if reciting from verse, "And the many turned against themselves and divided against their own hearts, pleasing the unspeakable race of things that be concealed behind the veil of darkest nightfall...for that which be divided can easily be conquered and brought under the dominion of the Shadow. That be why any light struck against the darkness brings on the enmity of evil, and why demons of the Nether realm delight so much in cruelty and the harrowing of innocents unto corruption."

"I don't understand," Kasumi admitted.

"This I know," Thelendra said with wry amusement, "Through the sharing of mine blood thou has gained some of my vast knowledge of things unseen...but thee hast yet to master the integration of understanding such wisdom as I possess. That be why I hath been appointed as thine teacher, dear heart...for I be the Mistress of thine memories, and through my guidance we can bring about thy ascension into the true mysteries of what being a Goddess means to thee and the world that thou dost love."

"Then teach me," Kasumi urged, "I want to know...to understand what you know...to share everything about you..."

"Then attend," Thelendra urged, her tone suddenly growing quite earnest, "In the beginning the Ancients didst join with the ancestors of Men to elevate them bodily into a race that was near unto perfection. This race of Titans didst rule the world long ago and waere the progenitor of both Gods and Men of our age. Alas...the humanity that survived unto our years be but a pale shadow of what was...yet in all of us there exists the memory of the time before knowing, when all were as one spirit joined and each individual part helped make up a greater mosaic that be the Unimind of legend."

"Yes, I see this," Kasumi murmured as the images filled her mind, along with the sense of the beauty of the world of the Golden Era, where all men were truly brothers and there was no such thing as hate, or greed or fear or any other darker emotions.

"But this age of harmony came to an end because it shone so great that it threatened to make us like unto the powers that govern the heavens," Thelendra, "And that could not be tolerated by they who seek the unmaking of the world in the name of ultimate chaos."

"You mean...the Old Ones?" Kasumi said, visualizing the monster that was Ariman from the night before.

"Aye, indeed," Thelendra averred, "We represented such a formidable force that it earned the disfavor of those things of the Outer Night who seek eternally the destruction of all light and order. That be why they seeded some portion of their hate into the fabric of the unity, and turned some hearts astray through misdirection, deceit, and the deliberate manipulation of our appetites unto self-destructive ends. That is how they gain in power...and how we are lessened, by deceiving us into surrendering our strength to grant the shadow more and more of what it desires, thinking those desires be our own when they are naught by folly and idles."

"You mean...they destroyed our Unity...because it was a threat to their own ambitions?" Kasumi marveled.

"That and they wanted to cultivate our power and use it unto their own dark ends," Thelendra replied, "By turning us against ourselves they created disharmony and dissension, forming fissures in the group soul of all humanity, and by inches they crept into our minds and planted the seeds of doubt and despair that brings men low and makes us deny our own greatness."

"How horrible," Kasumi said, "To want destruction so badly..."

"Wickedness be e'er like that, my love," Thelendra noted, "To play upon our strengths by shadowing our hearts with dark emotions, turning that be good and orderly into that which be foul and fetid. Yet Love denies the power of the dark by teaching us to care for one another...to feel the pain of others as if it were our own, and by extension to wish to share in the joy we feel by radiating it unto all of creation. That be the power of Light in the proverbial nutshell...to shed the darkness and become like unto a star lighting up the very heavens."

"And yes...love itself can be corrupted," Kasumi murmured, the thought entering her mind like a foreign invader, "When people are selfish and want only the love for themselves and what they possess..."

"Thou hast tapped into the darker strain of the emotions, Beloved," Thelendra nodded, "Selfish love can be the most terrifying foe of all, for jealousy and wrath be more destructive than any tempest of the heavens, and more disruptive to the unity that unselfish love attempts to bring about."

"I see," Kasumi murmured, "That does make sense...for if we did recreate the golden era..."

"Then there would truly be no limit to the powers of Man," Thelendra concluded for her, "And if the Great Soul Mind were to come together in the spirit of love and harmony it would be a force mighty enough to directly challenge the Old Ones, which be why they be so intent to avert this occurance."

"And that's why they want to invade our world?" Kasumi asked, "To pollute this timestream and corrupt its potential for greatness?"

"Precisely," Thelendra nodded, then sighed, "Always and anon it be the way of the truly wicked to subvert virtue and kindness by perverting their ends towards self-destructive cycles. The path to excess be marked by the many good intentions that didst lead to a very bad end, and e'en the noblest of motives may be twisted by deception into wretched patterns of vile decay, for virtue be found in the moderation of opposing goods, and the truly wise are they who yield not so readily to temptation but rather temper their appetites by linking the ends to the means by which they be rendered."

"You mean too much of anything is bad for you?" Kasumi pondered, "Even happiness and pleasure?"

"Aye," Thelendra said sadly, "E'en that which most we do enjoy if carried to excess doth sour...though by no means doth this preclude the seeking of pleasure in its entirety. Indeed, denial of pleasure be excess of a different sort, and as one may starve the body for nourishment so do may one deprive the soul of the needed kinship that makes life the more easy for the bearing. This be something that the Old Ones of the Outer Dark both understand yet find incomprehensible about us, for each of them be unto itself complete and whole with no need nor desire for another...and for this deficit of character alone may they be pitied."

"It really sounds so terribly unfair that they want so much to destroy us," Kasumi remarked, "Just because we can enjoy something that they deny to themselves."

"Beloved," Thelendra smiled, "Thou dost speak the very eminence of all wisdom." She sighed then added, "There be an ancient myth that t'was the cornerstone to many of the present world religions, a group memory of the time of the Unimind preserved in thought as an allegory whose power shapes the thinking of many a philosopher, poet and scholar. It runs something like this: In the beginning of all things there was God, the One, who created Man in His own image, Adam Kadmon. Adam was a vast and puisant being similar to a giant, a master of all destiny and powerful beyond measure, yet in some respects very like unto a child in that he had a naïve fascination with knowing all that he could comprehend, and by turns he gained the mastery over the very cosmos as a living reflection of the One, akin to all things, separated by nothing.

"Yet the creatures of shadow both feared and loathed Adam for being all things that they could nay aspire towards. They envied his power and sought to corrupt it for themselves, and one day the demons found the means to slay the immortal Adam, dividing his body up into many different sections that they hastily buried in the soil of the world, thinking to be rid of him altogether. Unfortunate for this plan each piece sprang up from the soil as would a grain of wheat form a stalk, but the grain harvest was humanity, each blade being a separate man whose individual identity was the mirror reflection of the greater Adam."

"Oh my," Kasumi said, drawn in by the power of this mental imagery as she recalled the direct parallel to this story as reflected in many mythologies and world religions...Japan's among others.

"This terrified the demons, for now instead of one perfect being they were faced with a multitude, and so the demons worked to shape internal corruption that would lessen these men and make them incapable of joining together to reform the power of Adam. Ever since that time demons have sought to imbue their evil into the world to divide men against one another and to make them worse than animals in their brutish behavior. Opposing these demons be the Angels, who seek to unite the different human sparks in order to bring them together and give rebirth to Adam so that man once again can glory in the spirit and likeness of the Creator."

"So the eternal war between light and darkness...?" Kasumi asked.

"Be the Demons on one side sowing hate and misery, manipulating humans like pawns and encouraging the worst traits that be within us," Thelendra answered, "Whilst the Angelic hosts seeks to encourage our inner nobility by teaching us to love and care for one another. The problem be that certain philosophical systems took this noble idea and added their own peculiar spin of aestheticism, confusing virtue with denial and desparaging the power of all lower instinct such as the urge toward sexuality that lays within us. This, of course, was a mistaken belief that sex be purely the love of the body and thus inherently debased and wicked...and of course the attempt to suborn the sexual urges in men led to all sorts of psycho-sexual neuroses, which in turn fueled paranoia and delusions that the demons found so easy to manipulate. Indeed, many an ascetic living apart from civilization has fallen prey to the darkness that be found in the absence of true compassion, as was the case for many an angry prophet or self-proclaimed missionary of old, those ranting fanatics who wrought such harm in the name of their own professed version of eternal salvation."

"How awful," Kasumi said, "To turn away from love...to forsake the pleasure of companionship, all in the name of escaping the limitations of the body...?"

"They termed it as the imprisonment of the soul within the tyrannical casing of flesh to which all men bee born, Beloved," Thelendra reminded, "To such thinking the very act of incarnation within the physical body be the entrapment of the spirit, and to such minds it be a sentense unto death that only death itself may rectify...provided it be a death dedicated unto the will of their 'loving' creator."

"How horrible," Kasumi remarked, sensing the inherent perversion of such a belief system.

"That be why their movement advocated salvation in the supposed afterlife of the 'Chosen' as a remedy for all earthly ills that do afflict us," Thelendra continued, "Unfortunately for these misbegotten Renunciates, the world of flesh be a mirror to the conditions of the soul, and if thou dost corrupt thine heart in life, then what dost thou inherit in the next world but the mirror image of corruption that thou dost carry within thee? That be why such faiths amount to little more than glorified Death Cults promising rich rewards of obedience to the dictates of earthly Gurus. Heaven and Hell are what thou dost make of the realm within thine self, and as like is drawn to like if one creates hell internally, then it is unto Hell that he will be projected in the next world. Similarly, if one embraces the qualities of heaven and takes them into thine very bosom...then Heaven will await thee, for thou shalt be worthy of knowing the true salvation."

"And those...souls we saw last night?" Kasumi hesitated, "The ones floating into the maw of that...demon?"

"Corrupted souls drawn too far into error to recall," Thelendra said sadly, "Fools who didst think themselves born unto heaven...yet who make hell their companion in life, and who found in death only the reward of oblivion that comes from serving a selfish master."

"How horrible," Kasumi averred softly.

"Indeed," Thelendra nodded, "Hell be both a place and a concept to be feared, Beloved, and every soul lost to darkness and destruction be one less soul that can be reclaimed unto the light to reform the Unimind. The demons feed upon the darkness that dwells within such beings and destroy the integral structure of their souls to release the energies that form them back unto the cosmos. Only the Monad, the indestructible core at the center of one's being, truly survives such a harvesting, and it be the Monad that can be used to create fresh souls that must begin the spiritual evolution all over that was begun before at an unevolved level."

"I see," Kasumi considered the point then said, "Monads form souls about them, and the souls gain experience and grow to a level of sentience by undergoing a series of Karmic stages...going from plant to animal to more consciously self-aware beings..."

"A process that could take as long as a million years...or less than a single millennia to complete," Thelendra noted, "Depending on how fast one achieves enlightenment at each stage of their evolution."

"But...where do the souls of the people who live in the world today come from?" Kasumi wondered, "If there are more people alive today than were alive a hundred years ago...or even a thousand..."

"Ah," Thelendra nodded approvingly, "Thou dost grasp the gist of a separate dilemma, beloved. Indeed, of six billion human beings who presently populate the earth there were at least five to ten incarnations before them when each was a human. That stretches out over the course of several millions of years, and in the past there was a gap between each incarnation that could last centuries or more...but in recent times the interval has shortened until now where the space between one lifetime and another be far less on average than a single generation, far too little time for a soule to properly regenerate. Then too there be souls that migrate from other worlds...and other souls that once were animals yet have evolved to a level of human consciousness. Of the former part one particular group to be mindful of are those whose worlds and timelines were ended very badly...lines where the human race made collectively unwise decisions, and where mass death was their reward...and in their collective memories exist the seeds of their own rush towards self-destruction."

"Oh my," Kasumi said, thinking over the implications.

"Ironically the less evolved souls be often the purest and least corrupted," Thelendra continued, "Also the most vulnerable to attack and manipulation, and thus the most in need of safeguarding and protection. Thine own soul be very old and experienced, Beloved...and yet thou hast retained a purity that be rare among mortals, the result of a willing choice within thee to see the positive in life rather than to dwell upon the negative, a faith in the basic goodness of all that has served well to protect thee against the corrupting influence of Ariman and his ilk."

"I never thought of it that way," Kasumi said, "I've basically preferred to see the good in people rather than to dwell upon the bad, and it's never really occurred to me to see life any different."

"For which I do love thee e'en more, Beloved," Thelendra touched foreheads with the other woman, then resumed her sobering lecture, "A point that I should raise here...not all aesthetics be mistaken to fear the overindulgence of the senses that occurs when one is unrestrained in their appetites and behavior. It be indeed possible to have too much of anything, including too much love and pleasure. If one engages in wanton carnal sex without deeper emotional bonding one risks losing a portion of thine energies and self realization to the slow process of enervation...losing pieces of thine self with each mindless partnering until there be nothing left but a hollow shell. But then again, too much of anything will kill thee."

"Even love?" Kasumi asked.

"Especially love," Thelendra answered, "Too much love can spur the envy of the gods, and losing all sense of identity to the intoxication of love can indeed create its own special brand of psycho-sexual illness. That be why some thinkers point to same-sex love and pronounce it an aversion...because they believe such love be entirely self-indulgent due to its lack of procreative foundation..."

"Non-procreative for some, perhaps," Kasumi smiled knowingly, and meaningfully patted a hand on her own belly.

"Ah..." that momentarily stopped the Oracle in her place, and her cheeks colored appropriately, "Well...this would have been fine fodder for me to employ against those stuffy shirts back in Arcadia who didst lecture me on the pointlessness of sex that could not result in the bearing of offspring..."

"My sister would have been another example that would probably have stumped them," Kasumi smiled sweetly.

To that Thelendra actually chuckled, "Mine heart...thou art more intoxicating than wine, and indeed, knowing thee hath been sore medicine for the wounds within my soul. Indeed...thou wouldst have jointed thine sister in driving such men to froth because they no doubt would have interpreted such things as women not needing a man...which implies rendering men unnecessary altogether."

"Well, not completely unnecessary," Kasumi's smile became a leer that saw somehow ironically sweet to the point of utterly enchanting.

"Ah...yes, men doth indeed have their uses," Thelendra leered back with far less innocence in her expression, "But that brings about the next part of what I am seeking to impart to thee, Beloved...the purpose behind procreative and non-procreative sex, and the reason why the one be nay inferior to the other, regardless of the claims of theologians."

"I'm listening," Kasumi said like a schoolgirl eager for her lessons, though in a context that clearly implied that she was already one of the converted.

"Thou dost, of course, know of the other legend...the one where all humanity was once of a single gender, combining aspects of both the male and the female," Thelendra resumed, "Only one day humanity was divided into two parts that went their separate ways, each mutually incompatible in their logic and thinking to one another, which be the original reason for the parting of the sexes."

"I think I've heard variants of that," Kasumi nodded brightly.

"These two halves of one whole and perfect being were named Adam and Lilith," Thelendra explained, "Equal in stature yet differing greatly in that they each contained elements that were excluded from the other. To hear some accounts, Adam was a lazy gatherer who picked fruit in the garden and never did any real work beyond what was absolutely necessary...such as clean out the cave every few months, and these qualities were most annoying to Lilith, who was arguably the smarter of the pair and who came to regard herself as Adam's superior because she did ten times as much work keeping order in the garden."

"Oh my," Kasumi said, marveling at the image in her mind of two fantastically huge beings who looked like people yet who were easily of the height of small mountains.

"One day Lilith could stomach no more and she left Adam to go live by herself without having to pick up and clean after him or do any of the dishes," Thelendra continued, "And Adam started to feel lonely, so he asked the Creator for new companionship, and 'lo was Eve born from his flesh, a clone with no 'Y' chromosome who was of a more agreeable temperament and was only too happy to accommodate Adam's wishes. This fueled a rage of jealousy in Lilith, who sought to assert her rights as a dominant Alpha female over this unwanted intrusion within her garden, but she had forsaken her claims to Adam when she deserted him and her petition went unheard by the Heavenly justice. And so she sought to vent her rage upon both Eve and her children, only to be prevented from doing so by three Angels, who instead vented their righteous fury upon the children of Lilith, which drove the First Woman insane with grief and rage, causing her to turn against the Light and embrace the Darkness as its mother."

"How horrible," Kasumi said, "Those Angels murdered her children?"

"According to these legends all creatures of the night be the Children of Lilith," Kasumi replied, "But then again...this be just one side of the story. Doubtless if thou were to ask Lilith herself for her side of affairs thou wouldst risk being exposed to a very different version."

"I suppose that would only be fair," Kasumi noted, then blinked and said, "You mean...she was a real person?"

"One of the first of the Neflim," Thelendra replied, "Born of the mating of Ancient and Mortal, and Immortal in her way, vast and powerful on a scope that we Eluini can only dread. Adam and Eve too were of that vintage...yet their ends were met in different ways, for only Lilith survived encased in ice with the mighty Spear called Longinus thrust through her belly, entrapping her flesh throughout all the ensuing ages."

"Oh my...how terrible for her," Kasumi murmured, "I wish that I could have known her directly...she sounds as though she was terribly confused and hurt over everything that happened..."

"'Indeed, t'would be most enlightening to witness a conversation betwixt thee both," Thelendra wryly noted, "For she sleeps far to the south in the ice of Antarctica, plotting her revenge upon the world that has forsaken all that she values in the name of her hated rival, Eve. But that be a different story."

"Oh," Kasumi murmured, surprised at this new revelation, "Was she really so terrible a person?"

"Nay, nay entirely," Thelendra sighed, "In some respects Lilith shadows our ability to form relationships that be lasting and stable. Many women today share Lilith's desire for recognition and independence, and oft times this conflicts with the biological need of those women who seek continuance through the issuance of offspring. The dilemma for those who must choose between motherhood and the fulfillment of a career be a daunting one that some fail to reconcile, though it be far from true for all women as a group since there be more than a few who do not relish motherhood and wouldst nay be suited for it if they chose it for an option."

"You mean some women deliberately choose not to marry and have children?" Kasumi seemed surprised at this notion.

"In quite a number of cases that I have encountered, aye," Thelendra answered, "It be folly to expect the same desires, or to inflict the identital terms and conditions upon everyone in a collective group, for always there be individuals who defy the rules of convention. Stereotypes aside, some women are destined for other things than to be shackled to a hearth and home, imprisoned by archaic rules fashioned by domineering men who fear to let them breathe free and be themselves uncontested. Many women, too, fear for their own freedom and often keep the stereotypes alive, denying unto others the right of choice that they deny unto themselves. Such women are their own oppressors...but it be their right to choose not to choose for themselves. The universe accommodates all kinds of human folly, including the folly of those who willingly eschew their own hidden potential."

"I see," Kasumi pondered the point, "Like I was before I...changed? A simple housewife without a husband?"

Thelendra gave her companion a wry smile and said, "A housewife may have been thine calling at one point...but simple? That thou ne'er were't, Beloved. There always was within thee the potential to become what thou now art...thou simply lacked the full ingredients to bring out the hidden wealth that for so long lay within thee."

"I guess in a way that makes me very fortunate," Kasumi said simply, "I awakened to my destiny...and I found you, and Frank-sama, and I bear both of your offspring...and now I am contented."

Thelendra paused to reflect upon this, then made a noise of clearing her throat and said, "Aye...that be...most unusual fortune...yet thee bears it well, mine Heart, for all that I didst nay plan for matters to turn out as they have between us..."

"Does it matter what we intended...so long as we know that what we have is what we have always secretly wanted?" Kasumi wondered.

"Ah..." Thelendra seemed momentarily at a loss for words, but Kasumi lay her head against the taller woman's shoulder and seemed content enough in their nearness not to require an immediate account of her lover's full scope of feeling in the matter.

"It's strange," Kasumi remarked, "Being this close to you, I can't imagine what it was that ever disturbed me about the idea of caring for another woman. It feels so natural to be loving you..."

Thelendra's expression softened, "For us it be natural...though there by some who would nay associate the word with the kind of love that the both of us be sharing, Beloved."

"Then I feel sad for them," Kasumi remarked, "Because will never know the sort of completeness that I feel being here...and how empty I am whenever we are apart for the slightest duration."

"To return to an earlier point," Thelendra coughed before she continued, "Sentient life came into being because the universe be seeking to evolve a form of being who-like the Adam of mine story-can reflect the glory of the cosmic universal order. To this end human beings unconsciously seek in some way to contribute to this endeavor, and by seeking the sort of partners we choose for mating we seek to create by a chain of birthing, hoping through our young to evolve the next stage of human progress back towards Adam Kadmon."

"Not deliberately I take it?" Kasumi arched an eyebrow.

"Nay consciously, nay," Thelendra replied, "But then...people tend to obey the calling of their instincts...and our baser urges often tell us to seek sexual partners in those whose qualities appeal to us in some way. We be like those animals who blindly stumble along in the haze of seasonal hormones and the urges that drive them to distraction...but also too we lack the pure animal drive for survival that fuesl the search for the perfect mate."

"Because we complicate things by thinking too much about it?" Kasumi wondered.

"Aye again, mine dear Heart," Thelendra murmured, "Survival of the species as set into motion for us by the inward desire to seek immortality through progeny. Every person in this world be themselves the lucky survivor of many millions of years of successful matings and combinations. Each one of our ancestors got lucky, if you will, in finding a mate with whom they could shape their kin, and after millions of such pairings we come down to us, the present inheritors of their legacy. When thee thinks long about it we each bear a heavy burden for carrying on the torch to the next succeeding generation...and e'en though I have lived many times the span of years normally alotted to mortal women, yet too be I a link in a chain that stretches on from infinity unto the now, and a crime it would be were my line to end with me in this incarnation."

"But your line continues in me," Kasumi said brightly, "And if the fates are to be believed, our daughters will inheret a future filled with endless possibilities, a world that we can help shape by the choices we make in the present."

"Indeed, thou dost again speak wisdom," Thelendra nodded, "But I speak more generally here about what it be that attacts us so strongly as individuals that we would bend our own lives and surrender a part of ourselves in order that we may ally together, and for many persons the list of vital criteria be a thing of much importance that ranges from the profound to the merely superficial."

"Such as?" Kasumi murmured.

"Well," Thelendra began, "Quite apart from the obvious feature of physical beauty, the conditions that trigger in us a desire to mate be complex and nay so easily quantified or reduced unto a single set of fixed elements. In every individual there exists a different template that we match against those candidates whom we do encounter in each incarnation, with no two exactly matching in all respects the desires of another. And yet in general the overall predominant desire of our collective will would be to seek a set of qualitiess that closely match these standards."

She extended one hand and called into being a pair of images...of a naked man and woman standing side-by-side in the classic d'Vinchi pose of legs and arms extended off to the sides in a diagrammatic manner.

"Observe...the man be large and muscular with features so well formed that he could only exist as a dream of Adonis...a paradigm of all that be masculine," Thelendra noted, "The woman similarly embodies the desirable shape and dimensions that men most frequently pursue in courting their ideal dream woman, or Aphrodite...and women themselves have a secret self-image as this that be ingrained into their very make up."

"This is the collective ideal?" Kasumi asked, intrigued by the beautiful image of a Gaijin woman who was neither too tall nor too short, and yet whose body proportions were precisely right in every detail, and there was not a single blemish on her face or body.

"Thou wilt note that this be only an prototype image, nay a practical depiction of a supposedly perfect woman, for very few may match these exacting standards," Thelendra explained, "She combines aspects of all races...and embodies the finest of desirable traits that be sought by males everywhere...and by some females as well if the truth be known in its full dimensions."

"Oh my," Kasumi had to admit that she found the womanly image quite appealing, but even more so was the man, whom she found to be very well...proportioned in all dimensions, particularly when her gaze went instinctively down south and she studied him at crotch level.

Thelendra repressed the desire to put a hand over her companions eyes and instead merely smiled an indulgent look of calculation, "As I didst say, an idea...nay a practical reality, and none may be faulted if they fall short of such high standards. And yet within this pair lay the secrets to our continuing survival as a species, for each one doth possess one portion of the key in the vital pattern that reflects the Universe in its totality...for truly we be made in the image of our Creator, both masculine and feminine aspects, for the two creates the One and the One be whole and perfect to all accounting."

"I think I see what you're getting at here," Kasumi remarked, "Like Ranma's study of the Qabala, linking it to his Senken training...the human body reflects the universe itself, and by mastering the body one masters the elements of nature."

"Exactly so," Thelendra congratulated, "But what I be leading towards here be the singular observation that humanity doth yearn to procreate and evolve towards this avenue of perfection. It be the reason why men and women stumble blindly along entranced by physical qualities and bedazzled by aspects of desirability, often ignoring the deeper dimensions of a person in favor of the purely superficial."

"Oh my," Kasumi said again, "I just realized something...that woman resembles you in a way..."

"She be meant to resemble everyone, Beloved, e'en thee," Thelendra gently assured her.

"Yes, but..." Kasumi turned her focus back towards her radiant companion, "...I think you're even more beautiful than she is."

"Truly?" Thelendra was momentarily taken aback, then shook her head to clear her mind of such distractions and said, "Ah...the ideal we seek, that be the key instructive. What we evolve through the process of selection be traits and qualities that be wrapped within the packaging that, when combined together, may produce a yet more viable strain of humanity that be closer to the ideal set by the Ancients."

"So we choose our mates because we're unconsciously evolving ourselves into this idealized version of humanity?" Kasumi asked.

"The process be somewhat more random than this, Beloved heart," Thelendra answered, "But in the end small events contribute to larger ones, and o'er time the general tendency be towards holistic order, and mayhap one day humans will re-awaken the dormant sleeper who resides within them. But until that point humanity be going through a series of trials and stages in order to weed out those undesirable elements that tarnish the soul in this day and era. Ordinary people desire to yield offspring who exceed them, and often their progeny do when those qualities inside them combine with equally favorable qualities that they find in another."

"You mean such as when our children have grown and they find someone as wonderful as you who can give them happiness and produce yet more offspring?"

"Aye," Thelendra said as she found herself once more gazing into the eyes of the desirable creature beside her, "I mean...this applies nay merely to us but to the children of thine sister...and one of them be destined to be wondrously gifted indeed...which for some reason appears to have set Ariman's wrath against this very timeline, for the direction in which we head..."

"May one day threaten the Old Ones with a future that they are trying to prevent," Kasumi considered the point carefully, then said, "Lylac-chan...my niece...I have always found her quite exceptionally bright for her age...and she seems to be very close to the daughter of Aiko and Beiko-chan..."

"Indeed," Thelendra noted, "For in this timeline where women may bear the seed of other women...nature has accelerated a much more gradual process that would normally need many more generations to produce a specimen as likely gifted as will be thine grand-niece."

"Oh my," Kasumi marveled, "A child who combines the best that is in my sister...as well as two of her closest friends, one of whom has divine blood within her...what sort of combination could that yield? I wonder if...this ideal that you mention...if it might come to pass prematurely...?"

"The next stage of human ascension," Thelendra summarized for her benefit, "Perhaps one stage closer to the Ancients, and thus potentially a threat to everything the Old Ones have been conspiring to achieve for countless mortal generations."

"Oh my," Kasumi said for a third time, "That would be a heavy burden to bear for anyone...even someone descended from my sister, who combines the best of Tendo and Saotome potential."

"Indeed," Thelendra sympathized, "The more that I learn of thine clan and family the more I have come to realize that thee didst choose well in making them your home for this incarnation, Beloved. It be rare enow to walk in the shadow of legends, but to be a part of those legends...that be a special destiny indeed, and no doubt the other reason why we have been reunited in this lifetime.:

"I don't understand," Kasumi admitted, "Weren't we destined to meet again eventually?"

"Aye," Thelendra replied, "For those who were once close in a past incarnation are bound by the invisible chord of Karma to be joined again in subsequent lifetimes. But I sense that our rejoining was originally intended to be at a later point and that juncture in fate's plan was somewhat...moved ahead in time by the alterations already rendered unto this timeline, a fact for which I be eternally grateful."

"As am I," Kasumi murmured, leaning against her companion and allowing her hands to rove where they would upon her lover's body.

Thelendra glanced away and smiled, then said almost wistfully, "There be some who would gainsay the love that lays between us, for love between two of the same gender involves polarities and exchanges of energy that enhance the female aspect...and those who claim such love unnatural believe that only the male aspect can balance the female one, as Yang be to Yin in the system of Taoist alchemy."

"But loving you...I feel so fulfilled when we are together," Kasumi admitted.

"As do I, dear Heart," Thelendra replied, "But think you well on that other love which mine presence intruded upon...thy love for the Homunculus, that half-form man who be the embodiment of many men put together."

"Frank?" Kasumi gave a chiding look at her companion, "Are you still jealous over him, even after I made you both pledge to join with me together into a three way unit?"

"Jealous, aye," Thelendra said, "For he was fated for thee, and I was prepared to yield thee up to him...just as thou were't prepared to yield up your engagement for mine sake. But much though I resent his claims upon thee, I do nay gainsay that he be a worthy man who be deserving of thine love and affection. Indeed, I would be blind if I nay see the virtues within him that attracted thee to his side, and why thou didst choose to make unto him thine future husband."

"So why not give him a chance for yourself?" Kasumi asked, "If you know that he's worthy, then why deny yourself the pleasures of his company?"

"Ah...why indeed?" Thelendra rolled her eyes, "Men. They rule over us, help to shape our lives, seek to control our destinies and bodies, make us dependant upon their every whim. Stein, mine father and uncles, thine father and uncle Saotome...even to some small extent that worthy fellow thou dost name as thine little brother. All men doth form one half of an equation that we women dare nay fathom...though thine sister comes close to having a key to that very riddle."

"Do you resent men that much?" Kasumi wondered.

"To some extent I do indeed," Thelendra answered, "For there was a period long ago when men were all but extinct and only women held dominion o'er the very stars and planets. Unfortunately they followed a foolish path to war and destruction that almost annihilated them all, so I suppose that proves the point that in some ways our gender be nay better nor worse than that of our men folk. Yet still...I do marvel at the conceit that many men possess when it comes to their desire to dominate, own and oppress us. Fathers seek to shape our destinies, sons seek to flee our grasp and escape to adulthood, and brothers...they believe that they be superior to us by their natural endowment of a penis. O'er many ages I have seen men toil to keep woman in her alleged place...and to such men the thought of a woman independent of their grasp be terrifying. That be why they wouldst deny us e'en the simple right to fall in love and marry...for if we were nay dependant upon them and their whims then their whole world view would collapse and their sense of identity would be lost to them altogether."

"Surely it's not that bad when it comes to either Frank-sama or your father?" Kasumi asked.

"Perhaps," Thelendra reluctantly conceded, "I ramble on in discourse, beloved. There be good men as well as the bad, and the virtuous ones can steal our hearts and make us willingly yield up that portion of our freedom and independence. 'Tis nay a bad thing to be a housewife and a mother...so long as that be nay the only options that lay open to our choosing. The problem be...to the simple minded...that any other choice but a domestic one be tantamount to admitting that we can set our own destinies without requiring a man to guide our every step and movement."

"Do such men fear us so much?" Kasumi marveled.

"Beloved," Thelendra smiled, "Thou dost recall how the lady Morgan Anslat didst yield herself in love to the villainous whiles of the demon Dimitri?"

Kasumi shuddered in spite of herself, recalling vividly the half-Rakshasa Vampire Lord who had been her dark sire and initiated her into the role of becoming a Vampire Goddess, "I remember."

"Such a powerful woman humbled by her love for a man whom she knew to be wrong for her in every conceivable way," Thelendra marveled, "A tale as old as it be one of folly...yet the heart can be like that. We do nay choose to fall in love with our heads but rather with our hearts oft make very foolish choices...but the nature within us cries out for us to do so, and so we tie our fates to men who sometimes lead us to dark places...and thou mayest ne'er know what shall be the final outcome."

"You mean like you and that Gremlin?" Kasumi smiled, "He didn't seem all that bad a fellow when we met a while ago. In some ways he even reminds me of grandfather Happosai."

Thelendra turned a wry look towards her companion and said, "Only thee could say such a thing without irony, Beloved...and indeed, methinks Gymp would be fairly scandalized by such analogy, though I do indeed see merit in thine observation."

Kasumi radiated warmth in her smile as she said, "I think men serve a purpose in our lives...in reminding us that we are neither whole nor complete unless we find someone else who can join with us to make a life that his whole and fulfilling. We each have strengths the other lacks, and by combining our assets we blend like two alloys together, making stronger that which is by itself brittle and unfulfilled."

"Aye so," Thelendra murmured, "When one doth find thine opposite match then one can fill the gaps within thine soul and alloy to feelings that link us to the rhythms of very Cosmos..."

"But I think your old instructors were also wrong to think of such things only in terms of gender and polarity," Kasumi continued, "Because we each contain elements of masculine and feminine traits within us...and with you I feel those poles perfectly balanced. Besides which, we have Frank as a resourse for any male traits in which either of us might be lacking."

Thelendra's eyes sparkled with rainbow colorings shading her changeable irises, "Most astute, Beloved...there is much to be said in joining together that which was sundered at time's beginning. But is not merely with men that we find completion...indeed, through reincarnation thou hast been both a man and a woman several times in our encounters, and as thou dost know from our travels past, near unto two thousand years agone I didst know thee for mine husband, and it was my womb that bore thine child...the progenitor of the line Merovingian. So time cycles anew and we find ourselves back where we once started, two parts of a single soul reunited, and through our union..."

"Fate itself begins a new cycle," Kasumi concluded for her, "I understand that, and I welcome the challenge."

"Then let us continue with the lesson," Thelendra urged, "For a destiny such as ours may nay be thwarted, and with the strength of our union let the Elder Ones know terror, for their jealousy of the light be as nothing compared to the light of the joy that thou and I mayest create together..."

Continued.

Comments/Criticisms/Contentions: shadowmane

Or: shadowmane9849

(Hope I didn't bore anybody with this chapter, but I thought it served as a nice contrast to the heavy action I plan in many subsequent chapters)

As Kasumi and Thelendra continue to spend time together let us return to the action where Nabiki and Saki continue their training with Sensei Trudy Wells. But what else lurks in the shadows waiting to spoil this perfect moment and darken the horizons of various lovers? Can these heroes indeed pull through to face the shadow that clouds their collective future? Tune in next time for: "Cloudy Days of Trouble," or, "A Rage of Distant Thunder." Be there.

X

/pre 


	102. Chapter 102

preDnabiki191

Nabiki 1/2

"A Very Scary Thought"

by Jim Robert Bader

(Inspired by the works of Rumiko Takahashi Others,  
with concepts and characters created by fellow fanfic writers Wade Tritschler, DB Sommers, Nicole Manders, Andrew Greaves, Bill Guiroff and countless others, including "Buffy"  
creator Joss Whedon; with special thanks to my good pal Shiva for his editing and handling of this series.)

(Certain other characters and concepts are of my own innovation, including my interpretation of the Monster of Mary Shelly's novel, the Furies, Trudy, Takaharis Angelique d'Anjou, Anri and the Daokan, Thelendra the Dream Weaver and various other guest stars appearing in this portion of the Nabiki 1/2 series...)

Chapter Seventy-Two.

Episode One-Hundred-Ninety-One.

"A Rage of Distant Thunder."

The world was dead and forlorn as bitter tidings, a world abandoned of life yet allowed to continue in spite of this absence. It was a world were the folly of many bad choices had resulted in mass extinction and widespread carnage, a cautionary world where the examples of human hubris were written large for all to see, and yet with no one on hand to appreciate the horrors of this lesson.

And it was to this world that Udan Robar Bartev had chosen to confront Shiva Ranma. Indeed, only in such a horrid background could their contention be framed in the light of total destruction, for this was doomed world yearning for destruction...

And its two deliverers stood poised to give it the mercy killing it so badly needed.

Udan Robar Bartev, the Daokan Lord of Earth and Water, dismounted from the cab of his faithful servant and primary means of conveyance to set foot upon the sterile soil, grimacing with a look of distaste as the absence of life assaulted his highly developed nerves like salt rubbed into a sore wound. He glanced around in vain search of even a trace of residual organic life, even a trace compound, but the calamity had been too absolute, the madness too deep so that even subterranean life had been extinguished.

Perfect for the needs of this battle. Where better to unleash absolute devastation but on a land already wrought grim of all life, where any damage inflicted to this timeline would only collapse a structure barely even in existence?

He turned as his opponent stepped out from his own conveyance and frowned ever-so-slightly. This terrain would favor the Lord of Destruction as Shiva drew from the renewing spark that this land was sorely crying in need of, a land soon to be blessed by the touch of its dark master.

Inspector Saotome Ranma, Avatar of Shiva the Destroyer, also grimaced as he surveyed the land, and as with Udan he concluded that this world was devoid of living things and thus fit territory for destruction itself to be unleashed in its full fury. He then turned his focus upon the somber figure gazing back at him, around whom the life-currents of the Earth now revolved since he was the sole other living inhabitant and the only other one who could draw upon that dormant energy to his own designs. This knowledge heightened the antipathy he felt towards this individual, and a welling anger born of many lifetimes rose up within his breast, fueling his own determination to make this fateful stand on behalf of a counterpart not so well favored to deal with such a potential adversary.

As always Udan spoke not with words but with expressions, contriving to effect his meaning in silent terms that the mind interpreted as internal dialogue, a certainty of which one felt its implicit impact.

And so we meet again, Shiva, in a place most appropriate to the settling of our differences.

"Yeah, so I see," Ranma said gruffly, "Cheery place. What did the inhabitants in anyway?"

Udan's gaze lifted to regard the dead terrain, and his expression softened slightly into sorrow.

Does it matter? It was a device of their own making. They brought this end down upon their own necks...and so doomed all others by their folly.

"Yeah, that's usually the way it works," Ranma concluded grimly, "Either plague or Cobalt bomb or some other damned weapon that one side thinks will give him an advantage over the other. Don't even matter if they have an enemy to fight or not...it's all about having the biggest toys in the block and waving it around to impress the neighbors. Sooner or later things get out of hand and the road to defense leads to ultimate destruction."

Udan returned his gaze back in Ranma's direction.

And who would know that better than you, Dravidite? You who turned against your own kind and joined in their oppression at the hands of Aryan Brahmins, with whom you now share co-dominion over the plane of the Indu-Kursh?

"You talking to me or my silent buddy here?" Ranma asked, "I don't go with what Shiva did three or four thousand years back...that's your business and his, not me. I'm just here to keep you away from attacking Junior."

Udan's eyes narrowed ever so slightly.

Your counterpart must fight his own battles in defense of his own timeline. You abandoned your own when you joined with the Temporal Police, Saotome...because your path had been darkened by choices made that ended in your own brand of folly.

"You talking now to me about making bad choices?" Ranma scoffed, "I've read your file, Mister...I know you've got more than your share of missteps and false trails that you've been stumbling around for the past ten or twelve millennia."

Udan raised his visage once again by the merest of fractions.

I have lived more follies than you could dream of in your wildest nightmares, Shiva-holder...but I live to learn from my mistakes, and I have gained much in knowledge and wisdom from the times when men called me names such as Gilgamesh and Beowulf. You should be so lucky as to redeem yourself the many times that I have had to endure, but for that you should turn around and leave this plane rather than remain here to face me.

"Yeah, you're tough, so what?" Ranma sniffed, "I've faced worse than you can put out."

Udan gave the faintest of smiles at this dismay of bravado.

No you haven't.

"Okay, so maybe it's not fair to compare you with the likes of Herb and Saffron," Ranma shrugged, "For one thing they had better tailors, not to mention a sense of style. You just stand there looking pompous and immovable and expect me to be impressed? Ain't likely."

Udan's regard once more softened ever so slightly.

Indeed...your ability to laugh death in the face is one of the things that I have long admired about you, Host...but there is a degree of difference from mere bravado and facing me down in pitched battle. There will be no holding back this time, no binding of hands nor diminishing of power levels as the cause for restraint has been removed from this setting.

"Yak, yak, yak," Ranma scoffed, "What are you trying to do, talk me to death? Look, you made the date, you picked the place, you made the reservations, so are we gonna get on with this or what?"

Again a faint trace of amusement touched the eyes of the Dark Man.

You chose your host well this time, old friend. It will be a shame to end his career and turn his bride into a widow...and to leave his children fatherless. On your head it stands for prompting him to make this resolution.

"Up yours," Ranma retorted, "I make my own decisions, nobody chooses for me. Wouldn't want them to share the blame and credit, know what I mean?"

Udan inclined his head in faint acknowledgement of the point.

I do exactly. Let us begin then.

He gestured with a hand and the Delorean car that Ranma used for a conveyance vanished from the spot with nary a ripple.

Ranma glanced slightly towards this before returning his focus towards Udan, "You trying to cut off my line of escape with that trick?"

Udan's eyes showed brightly with a trace of continuing amusement, and with a second gesture casually made his own truck vanish from the setting.

Hardly...as you have no intention of fleeing...but for your sake I will allow that if you wish at any time to withdraw from this fight you may do so without recriminations for my part.

"You're wasting your time, and mine while we're at it," Ranma replied, and then both men grew silent and resolved as they channeled the forces within and around them, each one marshalling energies that stirred the world around the briefly to life and began a cycle that would inevitably lead to the timeline's immanent implosion...

"It's started," Ryonami reported, "I'm making out energy discharges way off the scale...it's definitely Ranma and the Lord Udan. Their signature matches, and there's nobody else out there who can raise so much of a ruckus."

"Off the scale doesn't begin to cover it," Gosunkuji reported, "I'm reading level Nine to the Power of Twelve, and they haven't even warmed up yet. Talk about wicked battle auras...these guys put out enough power to wipe a continent off the map without breaking a sweat."

"Location?" Nabiki snapped brightly.

"I make out #092376541A...the Strangelove dimension!" Ryonami reported with a start.

"The one that got wiped out in the early sixties?" Gosunkuji responded, "It's been dead for close to forty years now...not even bacteria grows there..."

"Just as I expected," Nabiki nodded grimly, "Lord Udan has picked a dead world that they can destroy at their leisure without causing major disruption to the timelines. Now...I want to hear a progress report on that contingent scenario I mentioned..."

"The program checks out in the Green, Boss," Ryonami reported, "We're running the Contingency Profile even now, and the system calculates a high probability of success...if only temporary."

"You really think it can hold the likes of Lord Udan, Sempai?" Gosunkuji asked of his project coordinator.

"No," Nabiki admitted, "But with luck it can help divert him for a time away from where we need him to be absent. Just be ready to engage the final program when I give the order, Ryo-chan. My husband's life could well depend upon it."

"Got it," Ryonami said, "No pressure at all, right Boss?"

"No more than usual for crisis spots like this," Nabiki said, only to pause before adding, "Well...we've never exactly faced a crisis this bad, but you know what I'm getting at here."

"Sure do," Gosunkuji replied, "Running scenarios now...we'll try to lock onto these coordinates and set the Diversion Profile to intercept at the precise temporal lines that you directed."

"Good," Nabiki said before staring at the monitor displays intently, her stoical expression concealing the degree of her inner fears as she spoke very tensely, "This will require precise and delicate timing to carry on through, and if we're wrong even by a fraction then the whole network could collapse around the target region, and I don't need to tell either of you what that could be the result of a fiasco of that magnitude."

"Total eradication of that portion of the Multiverse," Ryonami murmured before setting her mind to the task of recalibrating the equations that would hopefully stabilize the complex interplay of vastly competing forces, murmuring softly, "Like I said...no pressure..."

"My lady?" Amalthea glanced up from feeding her pet dragon some tasty sardines, having sensed a change in her Mistress's demeanor.

The Lady Ulsa Laolana, Mistress of Air and Water, was gazing off over one shoulder as though having just then noticed something far off in the distance. Her body language and posture seemed to suggest words rather than have them be spoken, and Amalthea had no difficulty in all picking up her actual meaning as her owner seemed unusually pensive for some reason.

So...they think to trap my husband in a snare that will distract him? All the better for my purpose as it frees me to do that which we both knew would be my part in the looming drama.

"My lady?" Amalthea asked again, puzzled by the enigmatic tone in the thoughts of the ethereal blonde woman whom she was coming to know and love on both a physical and spiritual level.

Ulsa turned her blue eyed gaze in the ice blonde girl's direction.

Udan opposed my plan on principles that what I intend to do would jeopardize my personal safety. But he and my brothers risk all every time they face the tide of the Darkness, so how can I do less than they? For too long I have sat idle on the sideline, resolve to watch but never to interfere or play a direct hand in thwarting the ambitions of those minions of the Darkness who would see to the undoing of all that is holy.

Amalthea stood up, cradling her diminutive Luna in both arms as though the infant dragon were indeed her own offspring, "My lady seeks to confront her enemies? Then send me instead, I will gladly face them down in your honor."

Ulsa smiled gently, her eyes softening into genuine and deep affection.

Understand that you are to play a key role in my plan, for you will be accompanying me into danger, and I will be relying upon your strength to serve my ends since my powers must be focused towards other things besides insuring my personal safety.

"You wish me for a body guard?" Amalthea asked, "Then say no more. I stand ready to defend you."

Ulsa slowly inclined her head in a nod before standing, her light shall waving in the breeze as though it truly did form a pair of gull wings about her slender body.

This is why I chose you, because I knew that you would have the strength that I will need, and because I sensed a kinship between us that would blend our energies well to the same purpose. You and Luna will be my shield of strength against those corrupt and evil beings who do willingly serve the cause of universal destruction, and anyone who crosses your path must be shown their error. But try not to take too many lives if it can be helped, only inflict as much damage as is needful, and show restraint and mercy to those who do not deserve punishment, for many who serve the Darkness do so in ignorance, not malice. It is unto those who willfully are in league with the dark who will be shown no mercy. Do you understand my meaning?

Amalthea was about to verbally reply when the dragon in her arms began to chirrup with enthusiasm, making it sound as though the little creature was responding to the question like an obedient child answering the call of its mother.

Ulsa gave an approving nod to this as if satisfied at being so answered.

Good. Then prepare yourselves, we leave immediately to breech the walls of a fortress where the Science of Men has been infused with the technology of the Ancients. It will be a dangerous first test of your abilities, but I doubt not that you will both excel to the level of your highest abilities.

"I will give it all that I have to spare, Mistress," Amalthea answered, and the golden skinned girl had the curious sense that she was speaking this time both for herself and for her pet dragon.

Ulsa's eyes sparkled with delight before she turned to face the sea shore horizon, facing towards the sun as it prepared to vanish over the rim of the Western rim, and then it seemed almost as though her shawl did morph into a pair of wings, and as her hands moved they parted the sea and caused a shimmering tide to appear, a breech in infinity through which an ocean of stars beckoned, and then she stepped through this portal, Amalthea falling in stride three paces behind her, and the two of them vanished from the beech, traversing a distance of many leagues with the ease of someone walking around a corner to visit a local market.

But where they were heading a darker challenge would appear, and a series of dramatic events would fall into motion, leading inexorably on the road to Armageddon...

"Hello? Sensei? Anyone? Where did everything go? Can anybody hear me or give me an answer?"

Saotome Ranma waited for a response to his forlorn and desperate inquiry, but even his own voice refused to echo back in the swirling mass of lightless fog that had swallowed him up from seeming no where. He glanced around to the left and the right but could discern no detail of his surroundings, not even a sound to betray the presence of anyone around him. Even his own elementals failed to respond to his profuse entreaties on their behalf, which truly worried him even more than the other kinds of silence since the problem ordinarily was not getting them to talk but rather making them despair throughout the entire region.

"What's going on here?" he asked in growing unease, feeling the acute sense of total isolation without any input from external senses other than the general awareness of his own body, "Sensei? Are we still continuing with the lesson?"

No answer, which only doubled his gnawing sense of being cut off from all things of the world he knew in general. All that was left to him was the sense of time's passage, which did not seem to have been greatly interrupted from the moment his Sensei had raised her hand and the instant when the lights went out for him altogether.

"Sensei..." he spoke the word then paused to add, "Siren-san? Are out there? Please...answer me if you're able."

Again no response, leading him to the conclusion that he really was alone and adrift in whatever place he was left to. This was worse than the time that the evil wizard Shang-Kwan had cast him into the void since he basically had the swirling vortex to contend with...but this was total nothingness, the absence of all outward sensation. There was not even an echo reverberating his words into infinity, just total emptiness and an expanse where space should be but was not. It confounded his rationality, and yet somehow he had to endure despite his feeling the slight edge of a growing, gnawing panic along the fringes of his battered psyche.

"Gotta keep it together," he spoke aloud, the words not even carrying as far as his own ears as he spoke them, "There's gotta be some way of getting through this..."

He forcibly calmed himself down, facing down the fears that were threatening to undermine his reason and focused his attention on the matter of hand, which was his diminished capacity to perceive the universe at large as though it no longer existed. He knew as a matter of faith that the world did indeed exist, that it continued to revolve as it has done for literal ages, and that his mere incapacity to presently discern his surroundings did not mean that reality had completely gone away. It was there, just as he knew that he most certainly still existed, and as such he had to center himself around that faith in order to redefine his bearings. It most certainly did not befit the heir to the Saotome branch of the Anything Goes school to let himself go to pieces over a little thing like temporary blindness, he would have to endure the passage of the moment until he could fully regain the use of all of his faculties. Until then he had to abide, even if the lack of sensory input was most intimately distracting.

He could only conclude from the limited evidence on hand that this was yet another of Siren's cunning tests meant to gauge his mettle while confronting him with the experience of depravation that most assuredly had been the band of their primitive ancestors. To judge by its effect upon him, losing the use of his senses was clearly meant to rattle some elementary level of his self-awareness and make him cognizant of how dependant he was on having things go on all around him and being able to relate to his environment. Taken away from all the sounds and sights and tastes and feelings that regularly bombarded him from without he was forced to rely upon his most basic of all senses...his sense of his own manifest being. Other than this being cut off from everything was affecting some deep, atavistic character within him and making him sweat as though he were some primitive cave dweller who feared the approach of night and all that might be concealed beneath the plane of ultimate darkness.

"Easy, Saotome," he murmured to himself without hearing the words on his lips being picked up by a nearby ear, "Just calm down and wait for the spell to fade away, then reality can assert itself and everything will be just okay..."

Fine advice to give, he knew, but following his own recommendation turned out to be much harder than he would have imagined. With no stimulus to input to his brain his sensory nerve endings began to fire off random impulses and phantom sensations just for lack of anything else to do, and the "pins and needles" effect that this created steadily wore down on his sensibilities, leaving him in a state of heightened agitation in which he was looking for something to do in order to combat the growing oppression of his underfed cerebrum.

"Man, this is hard to take," he admitted aloud to himself just for the sake of giving his mind something besides the emptiness upon which to focus, "I gotta keep it together...there must be something I can do...I'm going nuts just standing here, and I gotta do something!"

His own words made little sense even in his own perspective but at the moment he could care less about how he sounded just as long as he could hear something besides his own anxious thoughts and emotions. This was worse than any drill he had ever undertaken if only because he was so totally unprepared to handle this utter isolation and his mind was screaming for some remedy, some noise or vibration to offset the emptiness that was growing inside him, and that was where he hit upon the idea of using his martial arts to occupy his time since that was the thing for which his body and mind were the most trained and adapted.

With hardly any pause to think about it he began to perform a simple kata, his mind working through the moves that his body knew so well, and performing it so flawlessly that he knew that his basic autonomic systems were as yet unaffected by the silence. Yet still he had no input from his external senses to affirm that he was performing his motions correctly...just the basic fact that each movement flowed freely without interruption in motion, moves to practiced that they were beyond second nature and required no thought at all to effect. He went through one motion then followed it with another, still eerily absent of resonant feeling that would have informed his brain if his body were in any way encumbered by an obstacle.

Unfortunately, though this did momentarily prove distracting, the silence continued to grow, and the emptiness with it that was immediately felt...or not-felt...the moment he stopped moving and could concentrate once more upon the non-sensory frustration that his mind was still not able to properly process. In resignation he ceased following through into the third successive kata, reckoning that the technique was ineffective in resolving the basic problem. That left him standing there taking slow and even breaths to try and calm himself down while he continued to sort things over, and as he did so something else occurred to him that would not ordinarily have been so obvious before.

He was not breathing very hard, but he was still breathing. His heart rate was steady...that much he knew from the workings of his internal cicada, but when he tried confirming this by placing two fingers over his wrist he found his inability to feel anything was a hindrance to that end, and so he paused to think...and came to a startling conclusion.

"I can still think, I'm still alive, I just can't hear, see or feel anything...so how do I know that I still exist? Because I do...I mean, otherwise, how could I even ask myself such a stupid question? And if I exist...then I've got to believe that the world still exists too...I'm just cut off from it for some weird reason. So there's no reason to panic, right? The world will come back sooner or later, I just gotta be patient..."

But how to practice patience when doing nothing a voice within his head asked frantically, and once again he found that he already knew the answer.

As easy as it had been to perform a kata, he sank down to what he hoped would be the ground and folded his legs up underneath him, then assumed a well-practiced posture of resting his hands on his knees while straightening his back and holding his head level, then closing his eyes and relaxing altogether. He basically shifted into a meditative state with such surprising ease that it was almost as effortless as sleeping, yet he remained nonetheless aware while breathing in and out regularly and calming his mind, letting stray thoughts float to the top of his head the way he had been trained to do in his "Zen" lessons, not holding onto anything but rather letting them go, completely at ease while still focused as he drew the center of his attention towards his naval region, finding the point of greatest balance near that portion of his spine where the energies of thought and sensation came together, and though he still could not feel anything he nonetheless became at one with his surroundings, allowing the emptiness to be filled by utter nothing.

This was a different kind of emptiness, the kind where one shut out external thought and allowed the mind and body to synthesize on a level of higher awareness. Ordinarily the problem was ignoring the bombardment of sounds and feelings in one's environment, but without those elements to contend with he found his mind drifting instantly to a point of near-satori in a matter of mere minutes. At the instant where the lines of energy and consciousness came most closely to intersection he felt a bursting sense of self-actualization come over him that swept the emptiness aside and bombarded him with a new type of sensation, one where the inner spark of the soul was kindled like a star going super-nova...and all at once reality reintegrated and he became aware on a level surpassing any other type of awareness.

Something beckoned to his mind and he opened his eyes, finding that a light had appeared in the space directly above him, and that something was hovering directly over his head, a glowing bulb-shaped mass of pure illumination that called to him with a siren-like intensity. Very slowly he rose up back to his feet, his legs unbending with as little effort as if his body had been turned into helium, and without a thought to what he was doing he slowly lifted a hand and poked a finger into the glowing mass before him, touching it and feeling a shock run directly down to h is spine, and all at once it exploded in all directions.

Ranma found himself being thrown back by the blast, only to land on soft grass some distance away, head ringing like a bell gong while his ears will filled with the clattering noise of broken glass falling all around him. All at once he found himself right back in the park where he had started his morning's journey, everything back to normal (or as much as he could tell it was) yet somehow brighter and sharper in detail than he had ever noticed it to be before that instant. He looked around and saw colors that he had never before recognized within a spectrum that he had previously ignored, and off in the distance he heard the laughter of little children playing elsewhere within the park. Automatically he glanced around in search of his Sensei...

And found Siren standing where she had been the whole time, smiling at him with a knowing smirk as she eyed him with amusement, not at all surprised at his prostrate condition.

"Welcome back," she said in a voice that sounded almost musical in the wake of utter silence, "I see that you have survived the journey."

"Hah?" Ranma asked as he pushed back against the ground then flipped his body back into an upright position.

"To be completely honest, Son-in-law," Trudy continued, "I was a bit worried for a moment or two there. I was not totally confident that you were prepared to handle this trial at this particularly early stage in your training."

"It was a test?" Ranma asked, surprised that he needed to be assured of such an obvious factor.

"That it was, and you passed," Siren nodded with a smile, "With flying colors I might add. Congratulations...you've found your inner core and have touched the light of the soul that burns within you, making whole your ties between spirit, mind and body. Not an easy feat to achieve, I can assure you, but now you have graduated to a higher level as my apprentice. Perfume chose well when she accepted you as her husband, and if I were only a few centuries younger..."

"Ah..." Ranma said uneasily, not wanting to follow the Sorceress through in that particular direction.

She waved the point aside and said, "Well, at any rate, a very fine accomplishment. You now have access to a greater level of spiritual power than what you've been able to access in the past, and you did it by yourself with only a minimum amount of coaching on my part. I feel it fair to say that you have outdone yourself this time...and you have found your inner core, which is something men far older than you never manage to achieve within their lifetimes."

Ranma started to open his mouth to say something when he suddenly found himself embraced by five feminine shapes who popped out of his arms, legs and...other organs...and immediately swarmed about to comfort him in a wave of womanly assurance that was a balm to his bruised ego.

"Master, you're back!"

"We were so worried! Where did you go?"

"We were trying desperately to find you but that Minx of an Enchantress wouldn't tell us where she sent you off to!"

"We're so happy to have you back, Master...but don't ever leave us like that again!"

"Yeah, you about scared us out of a millennium of collective growth! It's like you just ceased existing for a minute there...where were you?"

"Ah...girls?" Ranma pleaded, finding the attention of his elementals just a bit too desperate and cloying, "A little room here...please..."

"Back off, Ladies," Siren said very sharply, instantly regaining their attention, "Your Master needs to breathe the same as anyone else. You can spend more time showing him how important he has become in your lives later...but for now I think he deserves a little elbow room as much as you feel that he deserves to be reassured of your total devotion."

That got the five female faces to turn collectively annoyed looks her way, but then Karina sighed, "I think she's right, Sisters...we are getting a bit too grabby here..."

"Speak for yourself," Sharil harrumphed, "He's my master as much as he's yours and if I want to show him how much I miss him..."

"Hey, back off, Water-head" Sobriel warned, "Let Karina talk, she's got as much right to him as you or me!"

"But she does make sense all the same," Latisha reluctantly admitted, turning an apologetic look towards Ranma, "Forgive our enthusiasm, Master, it's just...you did worry us for a bit there."

"But just for a bit," Nagisha assured, already regaining some measure of dignity in standing off a short distance, even if her dark eyes drank in the sight of the young man with an unmistakable hunger that was particularly draconic.

"Ah...thanks," Ranma said, turning a reassuring look one-by-one in the direction of each of his elemental ladies, "I've missed you girls a lot more than I can say, and it's good to have you back...good to feel anything at all and..."

He suddenly found a different reason to stop talking as he gaze slowly went down from their eyes to the bellies, and then his expression went blank and he softly said, "Nani?"

"Ah...well...about this..." Karina smiled a bit sheepishly while patting her swollen abdomen, which was distended by quite a measurable bit from the washboard flat surface that had been there the previous morning.

"We took a vote and decided that you were gonna need us at full strength in a couple of days," Sharil said with a lopsided grin of her own, "So we've accelerated the process of our pregnancies and will be giving birth in a day or two to your new daughters."

"It seemed the equitable means of assuring that we would be in fighting form when you need us," Latisha mused, "The only problem was the time factor, which Sobriel here was generous enough to assist us with."

"Yeah, basically I took me and the girls away for a little mini-vacation inside my realm while you were working out with the Mage here," Sobriel noted, "As you already know time doesn't mean as much in the Void as it does in your world, and a few months can pass rapidly before you even know it."

"But we still popped in time to time to see how you were doing, Master," Nagisha said, "Just so that we would not be deprived for long of your company, leaving only enough of our essence behind to give you the strength to access our various powers, along with a latent mental link that helped us to further the progress of our mutual integration."

"So imagine how alarmed we were when we popped back just now and found you gone," Karina turned an accusing look towards Siren, "And without a single word about where you were off to...we sort of started to panic."

"We were starting to think the worst when you appeared back just now," Sharilconcluded, "So now that you're back...we have the great news to share with you that by this time tomorrow...we're going to have our babies!"

"Your offspring, Master," Latisha noted, "Five beautifully well developed hybrid elemental daughters, each bearing your pedigree while incorporating the stamp of our individual elemental Kingdoms."

"Or queendoms," Nagisha noted.

"Oh right, let's talk about semantics," Sobriel rolled her eyes, then turned to Karina and added, "Kari and me can't wait to become parents! We're gonna raise them right and teach them everything and...Master?"

"Master?" Karina asked in alarm as she saw Ranma's eyes roll up into his head and he started to faint.

"Whoops, catch him girls!" Siren called out, "A little too much excitement for one day, I'd judge. You could have waited a while to give him the good news, but now that you have..."

"Right, got it," Sharil noted as she and Nagisha grabbed their Master and helped him to the grass once again with as much gentility as to which they were capable of producing.

"Who would have thought it...our Master is just like any father," Nagisha mused with a certain endearment.

"You mean it's traditional for dads to faint away when they're about to become fathers?" Sobriel asked with a puzzled expression.

"You have no idea, Sobie," Karina reached out and hugged her fellow elemental around her waist, "But for the record, I think he took it pretty good...better than I would if I really were the father of our baby."

Sobriel turned a mischievous look towards the Air elemental and said, "What makes you think you aren't, Kari-chan? You think humans are the only ones who can create fusions?"

"Ah...well..." Karina paused to consider the point, then swallowed thickly as if considering joining their Man upon the tarmac.

"I think you've all had enough fun for one day," Siren mused, "So I'll leave my apprentice in the capable hands of you girls to care for, and I wish you all a good evening."

"And our thanks to you, Enchantress," Nagisha replied, "For returning our Master to us so that we may deliver to him the joyous bounty of our union to him who is shortly to become the father of our children."

"F-Father?" Ranma gasped, having started to recover consciousness, only to hear that word and promptly faint away once more, much to the distress of his "ladies."

Siren chuckled to herself as she turned around, "Sometimes I almost envy that boy...and the fates pity me if I should ever wind up in his position...assuming my Cologne-chan will ever come around to accepting me in her life...in which case there will be a few very interesting surprises in store for our Matriarch, the Gods willing..."

And with that declaration in mind the Amazon Archmage vanished away, in pursuit of her favorite sport, which was hunting down said "Matriarch" to begin once more the playful dalliance that was becoming almost as much of a game for her as the peculiar obsessions of a former rival turned pervert-at-large, for whom the meaning of the word "discouraged" had yet to be invented...

Though she was not showing it outwardly Trudy was both pleased and impressed with the performance of both of her new students. As yet neither girl suspected the degree to which they were exceeding their nominal standard of excellence, but Trudy could see their improvement and marked well how each had improved their level of skill in the course of a single afternoon and remarked well how their training was moving apace at a rate even dizzying for students of her system.

Saki had sharpened her integration of mind and body through the simple exercise of repeated leg thrusting, a process no doubt enhanced by the imbibing of Liquid Manna that Lord Anri had shared with her earlier in the day. Trudy had her suspicions on where that beverage came from and what was actually in it, and she felt assured that the Lord Anri had intended for the girl the boosting of her inner Chi levels to facilitate a more rapid achievement of the integration process. Without knowing it young Asamiya had shot up rapidly to become ten times the fighter that she started out being at the beginning of her training, and now the girl found it far easier to move with an ease, speed and grace that made her former mastery of the martial arts seem like the stumbling efforts of a small child wearing weighted hobbles. She was striking, kicking, spinning and punching with a natural rhythm that seemed effortless on a primary level.

Of course as good as she now was, Saotome Nabiki was somewhat better, having improved only slightly less than Saki in the same interval, yet having started so far ahead that the level of her skill at the present was all the more impressive. She was, perhaps, two or three times the fighter that she was earlier that morning, her inner Chi having been bolstered by the taste of Ambrosia and the mysteries revealed to her by the Lord Anri. Having started out at around four times the ability of Saki, she now stood at roughly twelve times the fighting potential that Saki had started out with, which meant that the two girls were near parity, with Nabiki possessing a slight edge, a fact both girls seemed to be growing more and more aware of for all the fact that neither truly comprehended the actual degree of their mutual improvement.

As it was their fight had more of the aspect of a dance than any genuine brawl, a testing of their mutual abilities in which each girl worked to display the full range of their talents without actually intending injury to either contending party. They seemed to revel in having the other for a rival as they worked to show off their skills, trading punches, kicks, spins and more complicated maneuvers while silently appreciating the other's gifts, and neither one slackening by one bit in their efforts, as if buoyed by a desire to see how far they could go before finding their own limits.

Considering the tide of emotions that Trudy could feel swimming in the space between these two healthy young ladies it seemed to her more like a courtship ritual than an actual fight, with Saki working to press her issue with Nabiki while the later girl flirted back and teased, not yielding by one inch yet clearly enjoying the attention. It was certainly an interesting contrast to the normal tension that one would have expected to feel in the presence of such competitive martial artists, and Trudy was strongly tempted to tell them both to "Get a room" somewhere and work off their energies in a more constructive enterprise than fighting. But she knew better than to press that issue too quickly, knowing that so far this was only a game and neither girl was yet in earnest.

At best this was only foreplay without the actual promise of a commitment, and it was an open question which girl was the more reluctant to take it to the next level since Saki did not want to make her feelings into an issue...and Nabiki was holding back out of loyalty to her own significant others. It was Adultery only in the sense that thinking a thought without doing the deed might make it seem so, and yet there was no questioning the mutual level of their arousal. They were both feeling the tide of their emotions without allowing themselves to get fully immersed into their passions, and so they held back by the edge of stroking the fire without wanting to get burned in the process.

Finally Trudy felt that matters had proceeded far enough on their own and called a halt to their sparring, having satisfied herself that these girls were indeed making progress in their training. Aloud what she said to each was, "Enough...I'm exhausted just watching the both of you. Take ten and cool down before I find a pond to throw you guys in. Separate and take deep breaths then bow, and let's all take a breather to sort through what you are feeling."

"Feeling Sensei?" Saki asked, sounding amazed at herself to find that she was not overly winded even after having put out on such a high level.

"You sure that's safe with us?" Nabiki turned a sardonic smile towards their teacher, but then she sobered, "That was fun...more fun than the time I had my courtship fight with Ranma-kun. Didn't know you had it in you, Saki-chan."

"You didn't know?" Saki chuckled in faint disbelief, "I'm still having trouble believing that I could keep up with you. I've never fought this well before...it's like my body's as light as air and every movement just seems natural from one motion to the other."

"Yeah, that's exactly what it feels like for me," Nabiki marveled, "The only one who could ever keep up with me like this until now was either Pops or Gramps or Ranma. You must've been taking your vitamins while I was away, either that or I'm slowing down because one or two times there you almost nailed me."

"Almost only counts in horse shoes," Saki sobered up as a sadness entered her eyes, "You're still better than me, even if I've almost caught up with you in at least my speed and coordination."

"Yeah, I noticed," Nabiki's tone became a bit wistful, "You're a hell of a fighter, Saki. I've always known that...even if I've never said so until now."

"Yeah...fat lot of good it does me," Saki's tone became wistful, her eyes fully upon her erstwhile sparring partner with an intensity that had nothing to do with fighting, "I've always known you were better."

"Knowing something isn't the same as experiencing it first hand, Students," Trudy informed them both, "And often what you think you know turns out not to be the case. You have to train yourselves in observation before you can properly judge if what you think you know actually counts as knowing."

"Hah?" Saki asked.

"That sounds suspiciously like something Lord Anri would say," Nabiki mused, "Are you sure the two of you aren't related?"

"Quite possibly," Trudy replied, "My ancestors did hail from Southern France as much as England. But Lord Anri was one of my own mentors, don't forget, and his wisdom was always an inspiration to me..."

"That explains a lot," Nabiki turned back to regard Saki, "I think what she was trying to say is that we're often given to assume things that turn out not to be true, so there's a big difference from thinking you know something and actually knowing it..."

"Oh," Saki replied, "Well...what was wrong with putting it like that in the first place?"

"Sometimes telling you something directly is a mighty poor substitute for leading you to making your own discoveries, Students," Trudy said a bit archly, "The best teachers are ones who do not lecture you in the course of their own wisdom but rather lead you to the point where you can discover the truth by your own methods. For example...a certain issue that neither one of you is addressing herself towards directly but which underlies every breath of your speech patterns..."

Nabiki glanced away, "Don't...don't go there, Coach. I'm not ready to face that issue at the moment..."

"Me neither," Saki averred, "I'd just as soon avoid facing that issue entirely rather than face where it's leading us..."

"What is this?" Trudy asked archly, "Do my shell-like ears deceive me or are you both deliberately looking away from the truth? You know something but you're afraid to speak it aloud...as if to acknowledge it in words would give it any firmer substance?"

"It's nothing like that, Sensei," Saki assured with a nervous chuckle while pointing at Nabiki, "It's just...I'm afraid her wives will kill me."

"I also don't want to betray either Ranma, Shampoo or the others whom I've pledged my heart to," Nabiki affirmed before turning a wistful glance towards her other companion, "Just because...of something else that's come up unexpectedly..."

"No one is asking you to consummate what you are feeling...yet," Trudy replied, "But do you really think you can pretend and wish this thing away just by avoiding it? Trust me on this...it doesn't work like that, and all you'll do is make yourselves sick and diminish yourselves in the process."

"But I can't ask her to betray her love for her wives and husband, Sensei," Saki paused and hesitated before speaking the next words out of her mouth, which were aimed with a look of entreaty towards Nabiki, "I care too much about you for that, and I'd never want you to do anything that was against your own best interests, Nabiki."

"Ah...yeah...about that," Nabiki said nervously, "Just how did this happen anyway? Did I do or say anything that could cause you to develop feelings like this, Saki-chan?"

"No," Saki glanced away, "You didn't have to do anything...other than be the kind of person that you are. It was my mistake allowing it to come this far...I should have put some distance between us the minute I started to suspect that I was leaning in this direction."

"Ah...mind explaining that again?" Nabiki pondered with an uneasy-yet-curious expression.

"No," Saki replied, but after a hesitant silence that lasted a few seconds she blurted out, "It's just...when I first met you my life was a real mess. My relationship with my boyfriend, Sammy...well, it wasn't much of a relationship to start with, but I pretty much screwed that up, just like I do with everything else in my life in one form or another."

Nabiki regarded the forlorn profile of the pink haired girl then said softly, "The first time I laid eyes on you I was impressed by your courage. You were posing as an undercover officer in a pretty tough crowd, and if anyone had suspected that you were really a cop..."

"I was used to it," Saki answered, "I've never been all that much afraid around ordinary punks and wanna be gangster types. It's not like I've ever had anything else in my life worth living for...and the one bright thing that I'd encountered was gone...because of my negligence. I guess in a way I've been punishing myself ever since by throwing myself into my work punishing the guilty and trying to see to it that no other innocent lives get destroyed on my watch."

Nabiki stared in silent horror at the sense of revulsion and loneliness that she perceived in the other woman, "Has it really been that bad for you, Saki-chan?"

"I guess," Saki all but whispered, "I don't really know. To be completely honest I've never had anything else to compare my life to...until I hung around with you and your loved ones. Meeting people like your wife, Shampoo, who seems to enjoy each day as it comes as if the whole world were a gift to be treasured...and Ukyo, who enjoys cooking so much that what she cooks seems to capture the love for her work in every bite full...and even Ranma, who's such a nice guy that it seems almost a sin to keep him to yourself as a husband. Even Perfume, who sometimes really scares me with her casual use of those axes...I think your whole family's really special. Well...except for the dwarf, maybe...I don't think I'd enjoy spending that much time around him, always having to keep a firm grasp of my undergarments..."

"Yeah...gramps does takes some getting used to," Nabiki nervously chuckled, then remained silent for another moment before saying, "So you basically envy my life...but you also want us to be..."

"I told you, I don't want to force that," Saki reacted, "The last thing I need is to get caught up in some tawdry affair with a married woman. That really would be the ultimate screw up, and even I can't sink that low. I'd rather just be your friend and pine to myself without asking..."

"And how the hell do you think I can enjoy myself knowing you're miserable like this?" Nabiki countered, then sighed, "Saki...you're a terrific person, and I'd give anything to see you happy. But..."

"I know," Saki sighed, "If we'd met at a different time, under very different circumstances...who knows? But life isn't like that, and my fate's never been to take the simple and easy road. I made a promise and I'm trying to keep it, and while I've done a lot of bad things in my screwed up youth I've never been the kind of person who likes to see other people wind up unhappy."

"Of course you don't," Trudy interjected, "You're not a sadist, your not a monster, and you're not a home wrecker, Asamiya-san. You're basically a good girl who grew up on the wrong side of the tracks and went with the flow until you learned to see life in a different way."

"How can you say that, Sensei?" Saki reacted, "You don't know the kind of Shit I pulled when I was a..."

"Oh, spare me," Trudy rolled her eyes, "You think I haven't known my share of hard cases from broken homes? My step-dad molested me and you know what I used to do for a living, and now I kill people because it's my mission to eliminate the scum that's polluting society and pushing the world to the brink of madness. What the hell have you ever done that's as bad as what I've done? You've never even killed anyone deliberately, and that's something even Saotome can't boast about, Sekeban Deka."

"But..." Saki started to protest.

"She's right," Nabiki said, "I did take a life...and I can't even say it was unintentional, though I sure didn't think very hard about it before I acted. You're not worthless, Saki-chan, and you're not a threat to me and my loved ones. If my marriage to my partners were so weak that it couldn't weather a bit of stormy weather on the sidelines..."

Her voice suddenly trailed off as she seemed to suddenly consider her words, prompting Trudy to turn a knowing smirk her way and say, "Go on. Finish that sentence."

Nabiki hesitated for an instant then blurted out, "...Then I wouldn't be happily married...I'd just be living a lie...and that's something I know I'm not doing."

"Congratulations," Trudy complimented, "You're guilty of fidelity. You honestly do love your wives and husband and would never do anything to hurt them. But what Asamiya-san here is asking of you isn't that you cheat on your spouses...but simply acknowledge the validity of her feelings. She cares about you, and you have to give her more than just to shake your head and ask what you've done to deserve that."

"I do...acknowledge that Saki-chan feels something for me," Nabiki said, then with an effort forced out the words, "And...I think I feel something for her as well..."

"You do?" Saki asked in positive amazement.

"But that doesn't change anything," Nabiki said miserably, "I have three other women and a husband to think about, to say nothing of our children, and I won't do anything to jeopardize their trust in me or to compromise our relationship."

"And well you should not," Trudy affirmed, "You know damned well how lucky you are to have such terrific people in your life willing to share the burden of a family group that flaunts the conventions of society on so many levels. But that is not the question that's facing you now, Saotome-san...the question that you should be answering is...do you think your relationship to them can survive the inclusion of one more person in your family circle?"

"Say what?" Saki blurted out.

"Nani?" Nabiki blinked, "You can't be serious..."

"I'm not talking about marrying the girl or making her into another concubine, like your husband has with his Elementals," Trudy started to say, "I'm talking about accepting her as your partner."

"Oh...that?" Nabiki frowned, thinking of the first part of the statement, only to blink her eyes and say, "Partner?"

"A special term to be used here in regards for someone whom you train with within my discipline," Saki continued, "Who shares with you the Perilous Journey that training with me must demand of a co-equal. I'm talking about you learning to let go of the barriers that you put around yourself even with those you claim to be as dear to you as your own life...I mean becoming truly intimate with someone who is destined to be your match in the deadly skills of the Shaloh-Alh system. I mean someone who will share a portion of your soul and become an extension of yourself, who will meld with you in mind, spirit and body..."

"Wait a minute," Saki said nervously, "Isn't that what she already has with her marriage partners?"

"No," Trudy replied, "That is what lovers aspire to become together...and yet even in the most intimate relationship there is always a gulf, a separation of distance where each retains a barrier to mark their own identity, and in some senses this is a very good thing to have as you don't want a total loss of individuality in a marriage. But what I am speaking about is something more than this, it's something you have to experience first hand to comprehend. It's not really like in a marriage...it's like two lives becoming one, and a merging of essence that leaves the both of you an extension of one another's bodies."

"Hooboy," Nabiki averred as she considered the implications, "That's definitely something I should be talking about with Sham-chan. The very last thing that I need is for her to suspect me of getting that close with another woman."

"I have a better idea," Trudy smiled, "Why don't you let me have a chat with her? I'm sure I can persuade your wife to allow you both to pursue this critical aspect to your training."

"Say what?" Saki blurted in stunned disbelief.

"You want to talk to Shampoo about letting me sleep with Saki?" Nabiki gave a weak laugh that sounded more like a strangled cough before adding, "Good luck with that...just give me a head start before you try it and I'll be sure to send flowers to lay on your grave-marker."

"Oh, I'm sure your wife will come around to see things my way," Trudy replied before giving a nervous cough or her own and glancing sideways, "Believe me...I understand something about how these Amazons think...and I'm sure I can find something in their traditions that will work to our advantage."

"You've been to Joketsuzoku, Sensei?" Saki asked incredulously.

"Ah...once," Trudy said evasively, "Enough to know better than to show my face there again within this incarnation."

"Why?" Nabiki frowned, "Did you do something to offend them?"

"Ah...not exactly," Trudy winced, "But let's just say that I'm grateful for their having a 'First Come, First Served' provision in the laws regarding their treatment of outsiders. The last thing I ever needed for my own relationship with my significant other is to bring home an Amazon bride to show off to my Carla," and in saying this she absently fingered the black collar about her slender neck, the one that sported a heart-shaped locket, which seemed to bear some significance to the redhead to judge by the way she smiled in an ironic, unselfconscious manner.

"Oh," Nabiki decided it would be wisest not to press the matter, and so she said, "Well, I'm pretty familiar with Amazon law now, which is something I wish I could have boasted about before the first time when I stumbled into their village in guy form. But then again...if I'd known what I would be in for in marrying Shampoo...then I'd probably not have done anything different."

"Hmmm..." Saki mused as she regarded Nabiki sidelong, "I wonder if I should pay my respects to that Amazon village? There's no telling what sort of guy or girl I might be bringing home to meet my mother...assuming the prison she's in allows me visitation rights."

Nabiki glanced sidelong at her companion with a mixed expression of sympathy and annoyance.

"You kids are still pretty young for all the maturity you display for your ages," Trudy continued, "My Carla and me, we've pretty much done everything, stuff you couldn't even imagine, and some you wouldn't try to. But you don't have to go rushing into anything, especially when you're clearly not prepared for it...but if you're willing to trust your fate into my hands for a spell, then I think I can help work something out for you both under terms even Nabiki-san's wives will find most agreeable."

"Good luck trying to convince Shampoo of this, because I'm not taking any bets on your surviving the interview, Coach," Nabiki soberly predicted.

"Ah," Trudy said slyly, "But you don't reckon on my rather unique insight into the workings of human nature, especially where it pertains to the feminine psyche. You see...I've been around a few times and I've run into the full range of human emotions, and I know what makes us all tick when it comes to issues of sexuality and attraction."

"Do tell," Nabiki smiled in wry bemusement at this boast, "Well, no offense to you, Sensei, but I've been around the block a bit myself and I'm pretty sure that I have a good grasp on what makes people tick...but you'd have to work at it to convince me that there's anybody out there who really knows what is what when it comes to sexual attraction."

"You scoff at my abilities?" Trudy smirked, "What if I were to tell you that I happen to know for a fact that you enjoy having your ankles licked and your toes nibbled on while taking a bath with your significant other?"

"Ah..." Nabiki squirmed uneasily, all too aware of the glance that Saki was turning in her direction.

"I also happen to know that you enjoy a good rim job when applied with the tongue in a special area that..." Trudy began to say when Nabiki started waving her hands in a frantic, almost pleading motion.

"All right, okay, enough already, I give!" the Saotome-Tendo heir declared hastily, then sulked while she pouted, "How the heck do you do that? It's uncanny...it's like your read my diary or something, and I don't even keep a personal journal."

"You mean all of that was true?" Saki asked with an inquiring expression, then she seemed to ponder the point as if mentally filing it away for future reference.

"It's really not difficult when you train yourself to listen and observe the hidden signs that you telegraph out for anyone with a keen ability to read auras to make out," Trudy noted, "I know you think that you're inscrutable when you want to be, Saotome-san, but you have a long way to go before you can erect the sort of mental barriers that can ward me out. And for what it's worth, just to be totally fair about it, even if Saki here lacks your considerable experience I happen to know that she's ticklish under her arm pits and can be made to giggle girlishly if you tease her on her arches."

"I am not!" Saki protested, and then immediately colored crimson on both cheeks as if finding herself exposed in an awkward and unexpectedly vulnerable situation.

"I don't blame either of you for feeling resentment over my ability to read you like a pair of parchment scrolls printed in bold-faced kanji," Trudy continued, "But what you have to know is that human sexuality-though admittedly a complex subject-boils down to the simple ability we all have of enjoying physical pleasure. Indeed, it's a rather unique gift we have among the Primate family, a legacy of times past when our distant ancestors reveled in all forms of sensual experience. To us Sex heightens the awareness of life to the point where we connect on a primal level with the universal force of creation and expansion. To each high there comes a low, and we collapse back into our fragile shells with a residual memory of what it meant to be a part of everything for the span of even a moment, so when sex is good we connect with our partners, which is why we ought to be careful in picking who we sleep with since the wrong sort of sexual bonding can lead to all sorts of unwanted complications."

"I think I know what you mean about that," Nabiki remarked, glancing skyward as if remembering encounters that were anything but perfect.

"But..." Saki hesitated, then blurted out, "I didn't choose to feel the way I do about...Nabiki-san. My feelings...just sort of happened over time...and if I had my way I'd be rid of them so that I didn't have to feel such an awful gut-wrenching burden."

"Not to mention feeling excluded and left out of her life altogether?" Trudy wondered.

"Yeah," Saki turned her gaze towards the ground, uncomfortable in the presence of the woman to whom she had just been referring, who was now more than aware of her feelings, which somehow made it both awkward and yet oddly elating.

"Love is a strange and wondrous thing, Asamiya-san," Trudy remarked, "It can also suck quite a bit when it comes at a time and place not at all of our choosing."

"Tell me about it," Saki squirmed, fighting an urge to want to make herself small and unnoticeable, and yet also basking in the warm glow of knowing that she now had the object of her interest's full and undivided attention.

"So tell us in positive terms, and without pausing to think about it," Trudy continued, "What is it about Saotome-san here that most attracts you towards her."

"Ah...she's smart, sexy, savvy and has this...killer body," Saki blurted out before hunching her shoulders and looking contrite, "I guess maybe what people said about me behind my back all along is true...maybe I am attracted more to girls than to guys, but Nabiki-san here...has almost everything I like in either gender."

Nabiki could not help herself for staring, even knowing as she did that she was making things worse for her friend by being so open about her own confused emotions.

"Ah yes," Trudy nodded, "The Template of Attraction...not just physical qualities but inner personality dynamics. The right sort of combination is all that's needed to set us off and running. This I know quite well...the heart's ability to wander in search of the unattainable, willing to settle for lust rather than love, but always keen for that perfect relationship that seems never to come. Believe me, I've been there, don it and could write the screenplay in my sleep. The main problem here is that you're not just fixated on her with a simple case of infatuation...I can tell just by looking at you that it's the real deal, and that you're hooked but bad and floundering for an answer."

"Yeah," Saki said tersely, the word escaping her lips as though reluctantly pried from the depths of the despair that she was feeling.

"Of course for love to be true it must be reciprocated," Saki turned back to Nabiki, "And in that respect Saotome-san is reluctant to yield...in spite of how strongly I can feel her struggling with her own emotions. You really do make for quite the couple, I reckon...two peas in the same pod as it were with as many similarities as differences in your individual natures. Almost I suspect that the two of you are soul mates since each one seems to lack something vital that the other one possesses in rich abundance."

Again there was an awkward glance exchanged between the younger girls with neither one daring to voice aloud the thoughts on what they were feeling, yet squirming uncomfortably in the knowledge that their teacher's words were not far removed from those thought that they were sharing in common.

"But don't despair just yet," Trudy smirked, "There is an answer to your problem if you're willing to go with me the distance."

"Yeah?" Nabiki said dubiously, "And how do you propose we do this, Coach?"

"Patience, don't go fishing for an easy glib answer," Trudy warned them, "First you're going to have to endure and abide for a moment while we sort this matter out...but for the purposes of an argument are you at least willing to hear me out rather than jump to any conclusions, Saotome-san?"

With growing reluctance Nabiki nodded her head, aware that Saki's future happiness-as well as her own-hung tersely in the balance.

"Good," Trudy nodded sagely, "Thank the Powers for that...for a moment there I was afraid you were going to get stubborn and defensive. You remind me of Carla that way...always jumping to conclusions, never willing to hear me all the way out when I try to make a good accounting for my conduct..."

Unknown to any of this trio-even to Trudy-a pair of eyes narrowed sharply upon hearing this yet the party concerned remained resolved to keep her distance and listen in from the nearby bushes, practicing the silent skills of her own order as she watched her intended prey with unconcealed annoyance.

"In a way your problem is a simple one compared to some I've had to deal with," Trudy continued, "You both want basically the same exact thing...to make everyone happy. That's not always an easy deal to work out, but if you trust me to guide you then I think I can find a reasonable solution."

"I sure hope so," Saki said, feeling so miserable and conflicted that she was half-seriously considering finding a tree and hanging herself with her own Yo-yo.

"A lot of the time the problem we face in resolving relationships is that selfish needs get in the way of altruistic impulses," Trudy noted, "The urge to love is as strong in us as the need for air, and often we can get so wrapped up in our feelings that we neglect other needs, like eating and sleeping. Other times we pine in lonely isolation longing for the union of our souls with another vibrant being, and we get so desperate that we're ready to do almost anything to drown the pain or try to diminish it. That's how substance abuse comes into play...such as people who try to drink themselves into numbness...it never quite works out and all we wind up doing is poisoning our own bodies."

Saki glanced uncomfortably away, and Nabiki caught her profile, wondering if just such an impulse were finding its way into the thoughts of her companion.

"The courtship dance we make in search of a partner can take a variety of different forms, but always it's with the same goal in mind," Trudy resumed, "To get laid, to win the heart and devotion of the object of our attention. We sometimes dress ourselves up fancy, package our wares in attractive and eye-appealing designs, use make-up to enhance our feminine qualities and try to market our best qualities as though we were selling ourselves at the market. More often than not we're actually dressing to impress one another since men are slower to recognize our efforts in that regard than are other women. But always what we want is for someone to notice us, to care that we exist, and to feel for us what we do for them...the rest is just window dressing, the motions we go through trying to make attraction happen."

An uneasy stirring between the two girls was felt at this pronouncement, for neither one of them was quite so typically feminine as to have devoted a lot of time to this particular obsession.

"But you two don't even use make-up, and neither one of you needs to work very hard to improve on the looks that nature gave you," Trudy said in acknowledgement of this fact, "Your bodies were designed to approach the mark of perfection and you each are an embodiment of the athletic ideal, curving in all the right areas while compromising none of the sleekness of a predatory beast that makes you both such accomplished fighters. The competition that exists between you is the desire to excel and be the best at your form, and you enjoyed just now giving your best for the sake of one another because you were showing off your best in the way that warriors do, by giving your all without compromising, by striving to achieve mutual perfection. In a way that's an even more intensive kind of intimacy than the sexual act by itself between non-combative parties."

This time both Saki and Nabiki blushed with guilty admission as they each vividly recalled the passions that had passed between them during their sparring match, which did indeed resemble a form of courtship.

"Nature designed our bodies to function as a means of procreating the species, though it is far from our only function" Trudy remarked, "And to that end staying alive is a very important feature that allows us to reach the age of maturity where child bearing can be effected. A warrior woman is the best of both worlds in my opinion, embodying the highest qualities of the feminine ideal by maximizing the integrity of mind, soul and body. When two warriors make love it can be the most intensely erotic thing conceivable, and with women the intimate understanding of our body's needs adds special emphasis to the encounter. It does not matter if the act results in the production of children since we are enhancing femininity...but children can result when we combine the seed of a man...or when one of you has the capacity of impregnating the other," she added wryly, seeing the way Nabiki squirmed with an acute awareness of her own potential.

"You know...I think I would like that," Saki murmured softly, "Having a child of my own...even if I doubt that I'm capable of being a good mother..."

"Why would you think that?" Nabiki asked, doubly shocked at the admission.

"Because I never had a good role model growing up," Saki shrugged, "My mom was abused by my dad and eventually wound up killing him. I grew up with relatives, but I was mostly a ward of the state, never really feeling at home anywhere...and never wanting to fit in..."

"I think you are quite wrong about this," Trudy noted, "I think you would make an excellent mother, Saki-chan, provided you learn to forgive yourself for carrying such guilt in your soul over what happened with your own parents."

"Maybe so, Sensei," Saki replied, "Maybe one day I'll figure it out...sooner or later."

"I would say sooner rather than later," Trudy observed, "But the rest is between you and Saotome-san here, who may feel that she already has more offspring than she knows how to handle."

"Ah..." it was Nabiki's turn to glance away, knowing in doing so that she was conceding the point to her teacher.

"Um...you mentioned something about competition between women?" Saki asked, "How is it different...what we just did...from the kind of thing that makes other women so...so catty."

"Ah," Trudy nodded, "You mean why do so many of the young girls whom you have encountered act so foolish and so petty with one another? You feel more comfortable around guys when women act like that, do you not?"

"Ah...yeah," Saki admitted, "Only...I don't feel that way when I'm around Nabiki and her wives..."

"Young girls who allow themselves to be motivated by hormonal urges are not very good judges of their own behavior," Trudy mused, "But I remember my own teenaged years well enough that I can say that most of their behavior is like what one observes in wild herds where attractive females often compete for the attention of a studly male. Similarly, young men are driven by an inner desire to rut with the first compatible female who gives them the 'Okay' sign. Often men fight like young bucks butting heads together to try and impress the females...and then there are the lesser-caliber 'Beta' class males, whose lack of commanding features gives them a sense of inferiority and a blind desire for overcompensation..."

"Heh, I've seen enough of that in my time," Nabiki scoffed.

"Me too," Saki noted, "Sammy was a real clown when he was trying to win me over, not exactly what you picture as an ideal 'Alpha' male, but he sure had his...compensations..." she said with a slightly elusive smile that caused Nabiki to raise both eyebrows.

"With Saotome-san there is more cooperation and maturity than actual competition in their relationship dynamic." Trudy continued, "Her wives accept their place in a pecking order where she is their natural dominant 'Alpha,' and with a second 'Alpha' in the form of their husband they have no trouble at all dividing their time between sharing household chores and mutually supporting one another. There is no need for jealousy or pettiness...for those emotions express a fear of the loss of love, or of personal identity. In the absence of such fear there is no jealousy, now hostility, no hidden competition to see who matters more to whom in relation to the others. By no means is this the way it universally is in group relationships that I've encountered, but in their case it's quite obvious that they have resolved their major differences and are content to be in love with the group and gain their personal satisfaction identifying themselves as being a part of one another."

"Other group marriages?" Nabiki asked with a bland expression, "You've been with others?"

"A few," Trudy replied, "I'll admit it's a rarity when house mates can form stable bonds that work outside of the strictly Monogamous compact. Before anyone enters into such a relationship they have to be willing to abide by needs of others as you do with your Shampoo, Ukyo and Perfume. You are each strong willed and capable individuals whose differing needs could easily pull you apart in five different directions. The fact that you remain the hub of their relationship dynamic...even more so than your husband, says a lot for your abilities to my way of thinking on the matter."

"Heh, you make it sounds a lot easier than it feels like most days," Nabiki snorted, "Believe me, I do a lot of peacekeeping and negotiation around the house, and there's been more than a few times when it's come near to blows...which with my wives and their mood-swings could be quite dangerous to the entire neighborhood."

"Really?" Saki asked, perversely fascinated and hungering for more details.

"No one said it was easy, especially not me," Trudy replied, "But the fact that you do carry it off impressed me a lot, Saotome-san, and say whatever you like about being in a supposedly 'hedonistic' relationship, you definitely win points as the sort of person whom I am honored to know as my student."

"Thank you, Coach," Nabiki said, "I do appreciate hearing that from somebody, even if what you're recommending has the potential of ruining my marriage altogether."

Trudy smiled at that, "Don't worry...if your union to these people is as secure as I believe it to be, then you'll do more than survive this training. It's what you'll face afterwards that will truly challenge your metal and demonstrate whether or not my lessons will have been of any value."

"I'll keep that in mind, Coach," Nabiki said with a somewhat sardonic smile that for her was trademark, "I guess in light of everything I've seen these last two days in the company of Lord Anri..."

"That guy," Saki's own look turned strangely introverted, "There's something about him that I can't quite put my finger on...like I know him from somewhere...and like I feel I should trust him..."

"Trust but verify," Trudy cautioned, "Lord Anri's been around for quite some time fighting the good fight for the sake of all humanity, but he'd be the last one to want you to take him at his word for anything. Saotome-san...you spent a day in his company...how did it feel for you to be favored by him with the title of his student?"

Nabiki adopted a more humbled expression as she said, "Like I've been bitch-slapped by Jesus, and he did it to me as a favor."

"What?" Saki turned an astonished look in her direction.

"Then I'd say you got the better of him," Trudy smiled, "Because he hates it when people call him that...due to the rather unfortunate association between him and those who call themselves his adherents."

"Wait a minute...Jesus?" Saki puzzled.

"It's a long story," Nabiki shrugged, "A very long story...believe me."

Trudy gave her pink-haired student a wry look and said, "The name Jesus has special meaning for you, doesn't it Asamiya-san, owing to the fact that your father was a Christian."

Saki's expression clouded up at the mention of her late, unlamented sire, "Yeah, what about it?"

"You bear conflicted thoughts in heart and mind regarding that religion," Trudy answered, "On the one hand you consider your ties to the Christian community as a stain against your Japanese ancestry...on the other you have a secret yearning for the ideals of Christianity to be truthful. You even site the name of God on odd occasions...a word that means 'Spirit' but which has been taken to mean the Supreme Ruler over Heaven. You are going to have to work through your feelings on this matter and very soon if you want to achieve a fully realized identity as both Japanese and as Asamiya Saki, undercover officer and loyal friend who defends the weak and takes the side of the oppressed."

"You make me sound like some kind of holy knight or Samurai," Saki shrugged uneasily, "I'm just trying to do the right thing these days...don't have to make me out as some kind of martyr..."

"Martyrdom isn't all it's cracked up to be, Saki-chan, believe me," Nabiki assured her, "Martyrs are just guys who get caught up in the times and make hard choices that sacrifice personal needs for the sake of something noble. If you ask me you more than qualify for the office."

"When you share essence with Saotome-san you will be one step closer to achieving self-integration," Trudy assured them, "Until then take notice that the enemy we are preparing you to face believes himself to be a champion of righteousness...though by his actions you would think otherwise. He's allied with something he calls 'God,' but you can take it from me that his 'God' is anything but holy."

"I'll definitely confirm that much," Nabiki said, "Whatever else I might think about Anri and his teaching methods, he sure cleared a lot of things up in my head when it comes to knowing what this enemy really stands for."

"And that is?" Saki asked.

"Only death," Trudy answered, "Destruction on a massive scale in the name of remaking the world into the paradise of his fevered imagination."

"Oh," Saki frowned, "That sort of fanatic. I've dealt with his kind before."

"Not like this," Nabiki said, "This guy's plotting a catastrophe that could potentially wipe out billions of people the whole planet over. He's even got some pretty powerful people worked up and upset at what he's planning, and I'm told that I'm one of the only people who can stand in his way, which is why Anri insisted I undertake this training."

"Which is why you need to pay attention to me when I tell you how to improve yourself to the point where you can be all but invincible as a fighter," Saki informed them, "I'll steer you on the path towards the Shaloh-Alh mastery of total mind and body integration...but you have trust that what I say is in your own best interest."

"Yes, Coach," Nabiki said with a properly chastened smile and a nod of acknowledgement that lacked the irony that would have been there on any other occasion.

"In a way you girls will have it a lot easier than when I initiated Carla into my system," Trudy mused while once again fingering her locket, "She was born a Catholic during this incarnation...never serious in her earlier life, but when she awakened the memories that lay dormant within her she suffered a period of near schizophrenia as the personality of the woman she was meant to be rose up to take command, and that part was pure Desani. Talk about identity crisis..." she rolled her eyes to emphasize her unspoken meaning.

"The way you talk about her," Saki hesitated, "It's like you're almost as much afraid of her as you seem to actually miss her."

"Hey, I miss Carla-chan a lot," Trudy replied, then puffed up her chest in mock-pride and added, "And I don't fear anyone, man or beast...it's just that Carla's neither a man nor a beast. She's...special to me, so let's leave it at that..."

"How special?"

Nabiki, Saki and Trudy all whirled around to see the figure standing there to one side with arms folded beneath her bosoms, scowling hard at their redheaded instructor with a flinty expression that seemed to suggest as much irritation as a genuine need to hear the answer to her question.

"Ah...Carla-chan?" Trudy's voice quavered with emotion, "Just...ah...how long have you been...?"

"Long enough," the brown-haired Latina from America replied, giving only a faint nod in the direction of the two younger women, "So...you've taken on a pair of locals for your students, huh? And I suppose you're about to initiate them in the bonding ritual that we've shared?"

"Ah...ah...well...you see..." Trudy said nervously, "I...took on this assignment for Frank...and then I met these promising young girls and..."

"Spare me," Carla snorted, advancing two strides closer and then closing the distance between herself and the redhead as though by seeming magic. With one hand she seized the locket that Trudy wore about her neck and yanked it down to reveal that it concealed a kind of choker-chain, which tightened around the redhead's throat, forcing the other woman's eyes to bulge slightly. "Just what else have you been up to while you've been away from me on vacation...or should I say business?"

"Gak!" Trudy gasped, staying her hands from going to the defense of her neck.

"You think I don't know you well enough by now to have some idea what you've been up to?" Carla growled ominously, pointing an accusing finger in Saki and Nabiki's direction, "Just look at them! They're barely eighteen-if that! You think I'll seriously accept that you haven't had your hands deep in the nookie during your absence?"

"Urk...Carla...let me explain...!" Trudy managed to gasp out.

"Explain?" Carla growled with their noses practically touching, "Explain what? Why you missed me at the airport and never showed up to collect me when those cops escorted me to that safe house? Explain what you're doing mixing it up with the Daokan brothers-of all people-while I cooled my heals in L.A. and had to endure a daily chewing out by Captain Fortunov over nothing?"

Both Saki and Nabiki stared in round-eyed amazement as their nominal teacher was cowering before the wrath of the dusky skinned Gaijin who was allegedly her lover. Almost the tone being implied here resembled that of a dog being scolded by its owner, and suddenly they started to get an inkling of just why it was that Trudy had been so nervous every time she had mentioned her reunion with Carla.

Just then someone else called out, "Asamiya-san, Nabiki-chan, now nice to see you both again."

Both girls snapped around and then Nabiki reacted, "Huh? Officer Miyuki?"

"Natsumi-san?" Saki acknowledged her fellow undercover police officer then said, "What are you guys doing here in Nerima?"

"Ah...long story," Natsumi replied, "You wouldn't believe the day we've been having so far. So...you guys keeping out of trouble?"

"No," Nabiki truthfully answered.

"Thought as much," Natsumi turned and indicated the fourth member of their party, "This is Inspector Morisato from Interpol...he's here investigating leads to a dangerous international arms smuggling and terrorist organization that's said to be operating out of the Tokyo region..."

"You mean the Amakuza Shinzen?" Nabiki asked.

"Zut alors," the tall man in the pink overcoat reacted, "You are most remarkably informed, Mademoiselle, if you already know about zat criminal organization."

"What's with the funny accent?" Saki pondered, privately reserving her views regarding the man's odd taste in pastels and fashion.

"He's from a place in France called Merovince," Miyuki replied, "Which he says is the province where a fellow named Otono Reyabi originates, who currently heads the Amazuku and is planning to incite some sort of terror incident using smuggled in bio-weapons."

"Yeah, I heard the same rumor," Nabiki nodded, "In two days time he plans to unleash Armageddon on Nerima."

"Sacre," Inspector Morisato reacted again, "I should truly like to know zee name of your sources zhat you could come by such highly classified information regarding zhis investigation."

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you," Nabiki tersely reassured him.

"Hey, do you people mind?" Carla snapped their way, still keeping a firm grip on the collar-chain about the neck of a profusely perspiring Trudy, "I'm trying to share some quality time here with my wife, so could you guys tone it down a little?"

"Wife?" Nabiki asked, though in all truth she was not that surprised considering how much their behavior resembled herself when being interrogated by her own Shampoo during one of the latter's mood swings.

Trudy tried to say something but again Carla tugged on her chain, dissuading her from continuing further.

"Not another word out of you until we're alone and I can conduct a proper interrogation," Carla snarled at her lover, then to the others she said, "I'm sorry if she's been a bother to you. She can't help herself for meddling...it's in her nature. I'm going to go rent a room where we can talk in private, so if it's all the same with you we'll catch up with you later."

"As you wish, Rodriguez-san," Miyuki nodded.

"You kids go off and have fun being reunited," Natsumi waved in their direction then leaned closer to Miyuki and said, "Such a nice couple...you can see how well they get along?"

"Indeed," Miyuki's eyes sparked with speculation as she eyed the choke-chain Trudy wore, then turned a knowing look in her partner's direction.

"Don't even go there," Natsumi warned, picking up instantly on the attention being paid to her own slender neck, and absently fingering herself there as she tried not to imagine what Carla's lover was doing wearing such a thing in the first place.

"How will we contact you if you are needed, Cheri?" Morisato asked.

"You won't," Carla said as she dragged off a stumbling Trudy behind her, "We'll contact you...as soon as we're good and ready."

Nabiki and Saki watched the two American police women go off together, then slowly turned questioning looks upon each other before shrugging in implicit resignation.

"Guess there is somebody after all who's a lot tougher than our new Sensei," Saki remarked.

"No doubt about that," Nabiki solemnly replied, "Which is why I hope I never have to find out how touch directly."

"Word on that," Saki averred, reckoning that this Carla must be monstrously formidable if she could put a terror like that into the likes of the cocky and self-assured Trudy.

"So," Natsumi spoke up, "How are you kids getting along these days? Is everything all right at the Tendo compound? Did you have your kids already, and when do we get to see them?"

"Curb your enthusiasm, Nat-chan," Miyuki urged of her partner before turning apologetically towards Nabiki, "I'm sorry about that, my partner tends to get a bit carried away...though I will confess to being no less curious about affairs in your life. How are you and your wives doing...and your husband?"

"We're fine," Nabiki answered, "Why don't you come back with us and I'll introduce you to the newest additions to the family. I'm sure everybody'll be thrilled to see you guys again...and how are you two making out in your own life?"

"Ah...well..." Natsumi glanced meaningfully towards her partner, "As for as Miyuki and me..."

"Everything is just fine," Miyuki assured them, "We did run into a spot of trouble with our department recently, and they put us on administrative leave...though Doctor Steinberg has been kind enough to give us odd assignments in order to pay the bills."

"That's putting it mildly," Natsumi rolled her eyes, "They certainly are odd ones, but so far we've managed to survive them."

Nabiki next hesitated before directing her question to her more immediate companion, "How about it, Saki-chan? Care to follow me home? I know Sham-chan at least will be happy to see you."

"Not if she finds out about what our teach has planned," Saki grumbled, then smiled lopsidedly and said, "Thanks, but maybe later. I've got to go report in to my boss or he'll have a fit and probably put me on suspension. But I'll catch up again the next time Sensei hold classes."

"I'll be counting on your being there," Nabiki said sincerely, then turner her focus to the garishly dressed Interpol agent and said, "What about you, Sir? Care to join me for a spot of tea at my house?"

"Thank you for your kind generosity, Mademoiselle Saotome," Morisato replied, "But I too must answer to my own superiors over the discoveries shat I have made zhis day. Perhaps a raincheck for a more convenient time?"

"No problem," Nabiki assured him, then sighed, watching as Saki waved before taking her leave and thinking silently to herself that she was heading into real trouble if matters got any deeper between them...and yet somehow unable to help feeling sorry to see her friend leave as she was discovering more and more about Saki that appealed to her as more than a friend...or rather somebody with whom she wanted to spend a great deal more time...and in a decisively non-martial arts setting.

"I'm doomed," she faintly whispered aloud, earning funny looks from her remaining companions, but at the moment much too depressed to explain as she lead the way home from the park, her steps leaden with guilt as she prepared to face the music that would be playing a dirge once facts came to the attention of Ranma, Shampoo and all of the others...

Continued.

Comments/Criticisms/"Can this plot become anymore complicated?" (You bet!)

dial: shadowmane , or: shadowmane9849

Next time out Frank and John confront the face of a different type of evil, while Timecop Ranma and Udan duke it out, and Ulsa unleashes her raid...all that and a long-awaited home reunion-be there!

X

/pre 


	103. Chapter 103

Dnabiki192

Nabiki ½

"A Very Scary Thought"

by

Jim Robert Bader

(Inspired by the works of Rumiko Takahashi & Others,

with concepts and characters created by fellow fanfic writers

Wade Tritschler, DB Sommers, Nicole Manders, Andrew

Greaves, Bill Guiroff and countless others, including "Buffy"

creator Joss Whedon; with special thanks to my good pal

Shiva for his editing and handling of this series.)

(Certain other characters and concepts are of my own

innovation, including my interpretation of the Monster

of Mary Shelly's novel, the Furies, Trudy, Takaharis

Angelique d'Anjou, Anri and the Daokan, Thelendra

the Dream Weaver and various other guest stars

appearing in this portion of the Nabiki ½ series…)

Chapter Seventy-Two.

Episode One-Hundred-Ninety-Two.

"Wrath of the Seagull."

The ground beneath their feet began to boil and fizzle as

concentrations of energy began to swirl around their bodies. The earth

itself began to tremble as it sensed the gathering of forces in one area

where the residual "ley lines" of the planet converged to pour down energies

of an indescribable magnitude with lightning flashes and static discharges

marking the potency of the two contending individuals who marked the coming

doom of this dimension.

Their eyes were fixed with intensive gazes that spanned the distance

that separated these two fearsome opponents. Atoms and molecules were

stripped down bare to their raw elemental states as they approached the

outer edge of their auras and a trembling swirl of fluid energies encircled

them like two gathering cyclones of power that drew in all the ambient might

that was around them and converted it to raw Chi of the highest level of

refinement. Hills shuddered and mountains trembled as the two prepared to

wage their awesome duel, a literal clash of two titans before whom lesser

gods do tremble, for they were the embodiments of two diametrically opposite

forces, and the resources at their command were more than sufficient to tear

a world asunder.

Inspector Ranma Saotome of the Time Patrol forces felt his energies

rising to a level never dreamed of before. He could feel the power of

Destruction itself flowing through him and causing the very air about his

body to sizzle with ionizing plasma. Every cell within his body was

fortified by concentrated essence of Chi to a level beyond hope of

measurement, for he was tapping directly into his like with Shiva himself

and taking on the aspect of divinity by breaking down the barriers that

separated Host from Patron and making them as one indistinguishable being

for the purposes of this battle against the ultimate opponent.

He was quite literally channeling the raw essence of one third of

the entire Universe throughout his body, unimaginable forces whose nature

was the inherent breakdown of substance into its raw constituent elemental

components for the purpose of renewal, Destruction for Creation's sake, the

core of what made Shiva so critical to the Triune nature of the Brahmin

system of Order. Shiva was the literal embodiment of destruction for a

positive goal, and without his participation in the cosmic drama all would

lead to stagnation and decay, for Destruction was what kept the system

flowing and without him to clear out the deadwood the entire network would

clog and die. Therefore his existence was mandated by the Cosmos itself,

and as an aspect of Godhood he embodied an integral good that far too many

misunderstood since Destruction itself conjured up misleading images of a

negative connotation, mistaking Shiva as an aspect of Death when in fact he

was life itself in its most essential aspect: the breaking down of the old

for the sake of cosmic renewal.

But Udan Robar Bartev was a Lord of stability and Order, the very

antithesis of all that Shiva represented, for he was a preserver as well as

a guardian of Men. He gazed stoically upon the manifesting Lord of

Destruction and drew upon his own fathomless reserves to tap into the very

core of the dead Earth upon which they both were standing, connecting with

its damaged ley-lines and drawing into himself the Power of the Earth

Dragon, the heart and soul of all it once here embodied.

His feet sank down by a fraction into the soil as he made contact

with and absorbed the planet's Chi, awakening to life the dormant vibrancy

that had nearly been silenced when the bombs had fallen decades ago and

caused the total annihilation of all carbon-based life upon the planet. As

weak and wounded as the planet itself was, it nonetheless responded to its

Master's call and loaned its strength to fuse with his and thus grant Udan

the resolute power to be as a Mountain in the face of a Tsunami.

Their power continued to build, and slowly the planet itself started

to respond to the intensifying force of their mutual stand-off. Ranma

circulated such energies that could have leveled entire cities and channeled

them slowly into his hands, balling them up and creating a concentrated

globe of force that was building up to the explosive power of many kilotons

of destructive fury. His eyes fairly glowed as the light of Destruction and

Creation crested beyond the point where his energies could safely be

measured, and only when he was certain that he had fused his power-ball into

a sufficiently compact equation did he dare to unleash its full potency in

the direction of his opponent.

It shot from his hands like a thunderbolt fired from the muzzle of

some giant cannon and so immense was its intensity that it caused the very

air to blister and the ground to vaporize underneath its catastrophic

passage. It flew straight and true from Ranma's hands towards the silent

shape that was Lord Udan, a power beyond reckoning that could incinerate an

entire range of mountains, power enough to wreck great havoc on an island

chain.

Udan calmly stretched out his hands and caught the ball with hardly

a show of real effort, then calmly ripped it apart by dissolving its

constituent energy and geometric equation, absorbing the energy into himself

and dissipating its concussive force into a few harmless bits of randomly

generated static.

Udan hardly batted an eyelash as he did this but turned a confident

glance towards Ranma as if to silently voice the taunt, "Is that the best

you can do?" as though expecting more in the offing.

"Hmph," Ranma snorted with a frown, not having expected the initial

attack to have much effect upon his opponent, "Guess I'd better take this up

a notch. You like absorbing Chi-blasts? Well, try this out for starters."

He raised one hand and summoned up an energy-disk, then sent it

hurtling towards Udan as though he were tossing a mere "Frisbee," albeit

this disk had even more destructive power contained within it than the first

one and could slice through solid matter with far more ease than what a

blowtorch might encounter when applied against butter.

But when he hurled it at Udan the latter caught it by merely lifting

his arm and willing it to happen, and then the immense Ring Design upon the

battlefield flared to life and the energy disk vanished utterly as if it had

never existed. Udan merely flexed his hand then gave his foe a confident

regard as if to project the thought, "I'm still waiting."

"All right, Asshole," Ranma growled, "You want it, you've got

it...and served up on a sandwich platter!"

With that bold proclamation Ranma summoned up his power and

surrounded himself in a field of intensified energy, then rose up from the

place where had been standing and hovered in the air, drawing into himself

the power of the sky and sunlight until his whole entire being was suffused,

and then he plunged down like a descending comet, aiming himself at his

intended target, who stood resolute and immovable, as grounded as a

mountain.

But this mountain did not worry, nor did he display concern as he

regarded the onrush of intensive life energies but rather...he smiled...a

very faint smile that conveyed a wealth of unspoken emotion.

Impressive.

Then impact happened, a force rivaling that of a descending meteor,

which struck with an energy measuring in the kilotons that caused the

surrounding landscape to implode in a bowl-shaped crater that collapsed

several miles of strata down below the surface of the impact site. Many

billions of tons of ground were immediately evaporated in a heat surpassing

the surface of the sun, silicone dioxide being converted into a gaseous

plasma, superheating the air and converting the space around the battlefield

into a scene of unimaginable holocaust.

And in the center of it all two figures alone remained, hands

clasped in a display of contending might, one blazing like a star, the other

as solid as white dwarf matter, their efforts canceling each other out and

resulting in an impasse which neither broke for the minute or so that they

held their found in opposition to one another.

Ranma grunted and strained as he tried to break this stand-off, but

his foe seemed to be in no great hurry to end the matter, and the power he

drew upon was the weighted concentration of an entire planet, which shook

and shuddered beneath him yet remained firm, feeding him with all the power

he needed, the mass of a hundred billion, billion, billion tons that

grounded him to the place that formed an isolated cone in the center of the

inferno.

The contending forces held in tight equilibrium lasted only for so

long, however, before Udan's faint smile took on a much more ominous

context, and his brown eyes gleamed with a hint of genuine menace.

You want to see something really impressive, Saotome?

The thought was no sooner shared then a surge of power formed up

within the space separating them, and all at once Ranma found himself

hurtling backwards as a force far greater than anything that he had

previously imagined, and the plasma field itself was torn asunder by the

rippling waves that radiated outward in all directions as the force of an

entire planet was brought into play to repel the power of incarnate

destruction...

Ryonami yelped and drew back from her console, which was flaring

dangerously with random discharges, which she hastily managed to dampen with

a few quick steps at the controls. Then she turned and called out, "Boss,

we got a problem! Readings off the board and gone over the red

zone-literally! I've got systems fried and shorted out that aren't

supposed to be shortable, and the nearest as I can tell is that Ranma and

Lord Udan have taken it up several notches beyond where it's safe to keep

close tabs on their movements."

"Confirm that," her husband Gosunkuji seconded as he scanned his own

console, "I've got partial Continuum collapse and temporal measurements way

in excess of anything we're prepared to handle. Whatever those guys are

doing it's causing major ripples to the timestream and it's spilling

crosswise over numerous flux lines to affect near-parallel dimensions."

"I'm not at all surprised," Nabiki said calmly, "We're dealing with

two beings who quite literally have at their disposal the potential raw

energy of an entire cosmos. Lord Udan is backed by the power of Earth and

Water, which means the planet itself is his to command, but also through his

ties to the Group Mind of humanity he has the psychic force of billions of

people augmenting his own power. My husband may be linked through Lord

Shiva to the primal force of Destruction, but Udan's power is exponential

and doesn't have a limiting factor beyond his general concern with

preserving material order and safeguarding the lives of ordinary people."

"Yeah, and he's in a dimension where he doesn't have to worry about

collateral damage to civilians," Ryonami winced as she tested one component

panel and immediately drew her fingers away before they could be blistered,

"No life on that Earth or any of the near parallels, which all are

effectively Dead timelines, so he could blow up the whole planet and not

worry a bit about the consequences."

"That may indeed be his intention," Nabiki frowned, "Udan may well

see this as a perfect chance to do some temporal housecleaning by wiping out

a stagnant area, and he's using Shiva to effect this, even at the possible

risk to my husband."

"So how the hell do we deal with someone like that?" Gosunkuji

wondered, "Ranma-kun may be the toughest thing on two legs that we've ever

known, but the Lord of Earth and Water..."

"Has millennia more experience in fighting and all but invented the

career of heroic monster killer," Nabiki concluded for the sake of her

subordinate, then turned to her personal friend and assistant and asked,

"Can you repair the damage and get your console back on line, Ryo-chan?"

"No good from this station," Ryonami reported with a fatalistic

shrug as she surveyed the smoldering damage, "Too many units got fried, I'll

have to switch over to a fully functioning console."

"Then take Station 006, Miyuki's console, and redirect those

calculations," Nabiki directed, "I'll authorize the transfer and inform

Miyu-chan that I'll need her code and password. Whatever you do keep those

numbers running, Gos-kun, and remain prepared for the Transference

coordinates on my say-so, you've got that?"

"Hai," both husband and wife replied while Ryonami got up and moved

over to a different monitoring station.

"Remember, my husband is counting on us," Nabiki said grimly,

"Buffer your station with additional breakers, Ryo-chan. This will require

pin-prick precision to pull off, and for pity's sake don't let Lord Udan

know what we're about to do here. If he even has a hint of what we are

planning..."

"Right, got it, Boss-lady," Ryonami replied a bit tensely, cooling

her nerves and working hard at remaining professional even while having to

perform at her best before the woman whom she loved and respected-more

than any other but her husband-and fearing more at failure than at

possible risk to her own safety as she worked frantically to comply with the

directives that she had been given, knowing in doing so that everything

hinged upon the success of this most delicate operation...

"Okay, we're here," John remarked as he and Frank followed the two

MIB agents into the heavily guarded and secured citadel known as the NERV

complex, "So what are we supposed to be accomplishing again?"

"That's not the immediate point of this little excursion,

Talbain-san," Agent K casually replied, "We're here to confront the new

leader of NERV, a fellow you boys may recall having encountered before under

somewhat less than pleasant circumstances."

"If it's who I think it is, then I sure don't want to meat him,"

Frank said gruffly, "If there could be a worse choice for administrator of

this place than Ikari, then it's definitely him, and that's saying a lot."

"That's right," Agent J said with a glance over his shoulder, "You

two have a history thing together, don't you? I've been reading it in your

files, and frankly, just on what I've caught the gist of so far, I can't

blame you for saying that, 'cause this little dweeb gives me the creeps just

being near him."

"Tone it down, Slick," Kay instructed his partner, "We're in their

territory now, and since NERV is a branch of SEELE..."

"Right," Jay nodded astutely as he eyed the heavily armed guards who

were admitting them down to the next lower level, "Play it cool and try to

dope it out later."

"No," Kay informed him, "If what I suspect is going to happen then

there won't be a later. We're here to be witnesses if what comes down

matches up with my Intel, and when the Fit hits the Shan be prepared to rock

and roll, but wait first for my signal."

"Hey, I'm always ready," Frank insisted, but nonetheless he and

Talbain followed the men in black three-piece suits as they were admitted

into an elevator, by-passing several security stations where armed men stood

at the ready to check their credentials.

Shortly after this they descended down a very long passage to a

place roughly two miles underground where a cavernous chamber awaited,

filled by an almost idyllic setting much like a natural wilderness setting

only punctuated by a few high-tech buildings and complexes and artificially

illuminated by a lighted sun that moved on a steady track overhead,

providing the illusion of natural daylight.

Despite himself Talbain was impressed and gave a low whistle before

saying, "How the hell did they build something this swank under Tokyo?

Must've cost public quite a few trillion yen..."

"Wasn't built by the Japanese government, Wolfie," Kay explained,

"This chamber existed here many thousands of years ago before even the Ainu

first appeared on these islands. Near as anyone can tell it may date back

to the time of Atlantis...possibly even Lemuria, and quite possibly of alien

manufacture..."

"Yeah, which is why it ought to be under MIB control instead of

those SELEE bastards," Jay muttered tightly under his breath, glancing

around at their immediate surroundings as if suspecting hidden surveillance

equipment.

"Easy there, Slick," Kay urged his partner, "We've no real need of

this much space in this district, and whoever build this complex may be

showing up some day to ask for the deed back, so why bother ourselves with

the hassles? Just keep it on the level and..."

"I know, I know," Jay grumbled, "Eyes open, mouth shut and stay

focused. Like I'm ever anything else but," he added with a rolling of his

eyes towards the ceiling.

At the base of the elevator they were admitted by yet more armed

guards to the complex that waited at the bottom, and then a figure in

military uniform escorted them to the nerve central of the NERV complex, a

spacious chamber built around a complex computer array known as the MAGI,

which as yet were being upgraded by technicians as the unusual quartet were

shown into a side-office with a door panel that read, "Commander."

That the name had been removed was plain enough, but when they were

admitted into said office Frank and Talbain received a considerable

surprise, for occupying the main desk at the end of the chamber was a

balding, squat and unhealthy looking man whose eyes were almost hidden

beneath a pair of thick wire-rim glasses, but which both men knew implicitly

concealed a lot more than just the beady stare of a bureaucratic

functionary.

Talbain halted in his tracks, "Thought I smelled something foul in

this circulated air."

"Yeah," Frank gruffly affirmed, "No kidding."

"Gentlemen," said the figure at the desk as he waved a hand in their

direction, "By all means come in. What can I do for you that brings you

here on this fine afternoon?"

A quick glance to the side was all it took for the men in question

to note the grudging presence of several figures, one of whom belonged to

Ikari Gendo, the former Commander of this classified institution. At his

side was Ikari's former sub-commander and closest personal adviser, Kozo

Fuyutsuki, and next to him was a blonde woman of mixed European/Japanese

extraction named Ryoko Akagi, and several other technicians of relative

importance.

There were also a number of armed guards currently present, and a

tension in the atmosphere that seemed to imply an air of barely concealed

menace, but what caught and held the attention of John Talbain was the

diagram set into the floor itself, which was nothing less than a huge mosaic

patterned after the Kabala of Hebrew Mysticism, with lots of diagrams and

arrows pointing to words that implied something more like a blueprint or a

technical design for some type of weapon system.

Frank barely gave the mosaic a nod before saying aloud to the man at

the desk, "Heinrick Ibrahim. I might've known."

"Easy there, Big Guy," Agent Kay urged before calmly turning to the

personage in question and saying, "So SEELE sends one of their own

hand-picked flunkies to take over command of NERV...and I take it Ikari-san

here is feeling disgruntled about his replacement?"

"You can rest assured that former commander Ikari has been briefed

fully on the reasons for why the Council has elected for his dismissal,"

Ibrahim smiled thinly, his thick German accent betraying a hint of genuine

malice, "We have grown concerned over the costliness of this program and no

longer see the relevance of continuing with the proposed EVA system that his

people here have been designing. But that is of little relevance to you at

MIB, is it Agents Kay and Jay? Or you, Professor Steinberg, whose real name

even now conjures up images of what this project is all about?"

"Stuff it," Frank growled, "You're not interested in me or anything

the ghouls who work here are developing. You've got your own reasons for

SEELE barging in here with armed escort and confiscating the program."

"Quite right," Ibrahim noted, "SEELE is very interested in the other

research that has been yielding...shall we say...positive results of late?

As a fellow scientist it must intrigue you to no end at the discovery of a

lost Alchemical treasure that promises to yield us a weapon that can be

useful in defending our world against the threat of Alien invasion...by

which I mean other than the outside sort that MIB deals with on a daily

basis."

"Oh man, can you believe this, Kay?" Jay murmured to his partner,

"These boys dig up some Arctic samples, nearly plunge the world into another

Great Deluge, and he thinks it's cute because they figured out how to

artificially manufacture a metal alloy that works equally well on

Extraterrestrials, Gods and Demons."

"Easy Slick," Kay murmured back, "Don't be so quick to tip our hand

just yet."

A furrowing of the brow betrayed concern on the part of the

bespectacled man at the desk, "So...MIB is even more well informed than I

thought possible. Security will need to be tightened in the very near

future. But yes...we have indeed accomplished the successful synthesis of

an artificially made metal that perfectly duplicates all of the effects

typified by the Atlantean made alloy known to legend as Orachalcum. I am

certain that the rest of you can appreciate the implications of this

discovery?"

"Orachalcum?" Talbain's eyes widened appreciatively, "You mean the

stuff that absorbs all magic? But...I thought it was lost to history...that

only a dozen guys on the whole planet knew how to make this stuff in any

quantity..."

"I've been hearing rumors about it on the black market," Frank

affirmed, "Expensive as all hell, but if you've got the right sort of

supplier...then you can have a weapon that can kill almost anything right up

to a Class IX demon."

"Which all depends upon the caliber of weapon you are using," the

man at the desk smiled more thinly, "Ikari here was attempting to forge a

duplicate copy of the Spear of Longinus, which you forced his team to leave

behind in the ice, if memory recalls right..."

"Damned right I made 'em leave it," Frank snorted, "It's the only

think holding a Class III Neflim trapped under all that ice, and do you have

any idea the kind of havoc she could wreck if she got loose?"

"I do believe your own report stated it succinctly," Ibrahim noted,

"Total worldwide devastation by the so-called 'Mother of Night,' who was

left there by her own husband in the climactic battle of ancient times that

decided the course of human history right down to the present."

"Damned straight," Frank affirmed gruffly.

"Well, now we no longer need to fear from anyone of her caliber,"

Ibrahim confidently predicted, "Now we have a weapon that even the Gods must

surely fear and take notice of...and all because Ikari here defied your

warnings and kept his research samples rather than destroy them."

"For which he's paid a heavy price I hear," Frank turned a sour look

towards Ikari, "I'd ask how the wife was, Gendo-san...but I've already read

the files. Any chance of recovering her from that soup you put her into?"

Gendo Ikari, almost legendary for his stoical temperament, scowled

darkly back at the larger Frank and growled tersely, "Go to hell."

"You first," John mildly retorted, "In fact, from all that I've

heard about you, you've already got one hell of a good head start."

The Technician known as Akagi touched her glasses and hid a smile,

but then in a clinical voice managed to say, "The extraction process for the

Test Pilot has proven more...complicated than expected. Her full immersion

into the simulated cockpit has had unexpected side-effects, and until we

fully understand what went wrong. As yet all we can determine for certain

is that life...or a form of it...is continuing, and we have not lost her

altogether."

"You people," Frank shook his head grimly, "As if my own father's

example weren't enough for you. But you," he turned back towards Ibrahim,

"You want a weapon to kill a god? What makes you think you can handle a

power like that, or that the Gods themselves might not retaliate in ways

that could devastate all of Japan? Or do you even care about the potential

for collateral damage."

"Obviously that's not an issue with these boys, Stein," Kay

remarked, "Just look at him, he doesn't even flinch when you bring that

possibility up. All that matters to SEELE is obtaining a new weapon."

"Not just any sort of weapon, Gentlemen," Ibrahim said thinly, "A

weapon that even your people, for all their access to alien technologies,

cannot rival for effect. A metal that disrupts and absorbs the energy field

of life itself has enormous possibilities that you cannot begin to imagine.

It's a power lost to humankind since the fall of Atlantis..."

"It's also partially the reason why Atlantis fell in the first

place," Talbain remarked, "Or so go the legends."

"For what it's worth," Fuyutsuki spoke up, "We developed the

material with the intent of protecting humanity against a possible threat by

the Neflim, who are recorded in the Dead Sea Scrolls as posing a threat to

humanity that might one day bring about our destruction to head off

Synchronicity should we ever approach that state in our researches."

"Hey may," Agent Jay retorted, "It doesn't matter why you do what

you do if you ignore the consequences, and some of the worst chapters in

human history are the result of cats like you ignoring the obvious with the

best of intentions."

"Don't mention about cats," Talbain winced, "But yeah...that too.

And the Neflim have been around for millennia...so what makes you think they

pose a threat to normal people, or do you just have a thing against Angels?"

"Those prophesies you mentioned," Frank growled, "They were meant to

be a warning, not an advisement that we head off our fate by directly

challenging the Neflim. Any one of them can lay waste to cities and level

continents if you give them half a reason."

"Like your rather overlarge friend on the aptly named Monster

Island?" Ibrahim mused, "What would you say to that if I told you it was

possible to create a projectile weapon that could not only penetrate his

seemingly impenetrable hide but to even end the threat he poses to Tokyo

altogether? Or that other Neflim who powers that floating bordillo that

your lady-friend, the Tigress, commands? Would it be so wrong to end the

threat the Kraken poses and free the people under his captivity to go about

their separate lives as ordinary citizens of their respective home

countries? Surely you can see that the benefits far exceed the risk, and if

someone from outside the mortal realms objects...well...a gun can be a great

leveler of unequal positions, and maybe it's time someone taught those in

lofty places to respect us mere mortals...or else learn first hand that even

gods may perish."

Frank's eyes narrowed sharply, "Meaning you're planning to threaten

Heaven if it doesn't go along with your agenda?"

"Let us just say that we would prefer it if those in control of the

Yggdrasil system were more inclined to be mindful of our position," Ibrahim

responded, "Ah yes...but then, you are dating someone who shares in the

essence of the divine, and who was quite recently elevated to a lofty state

as Patron of the Darkstalkers. That would cloud your judgement somewhat I

would imagine...but be honest with yourself. Have you not at times felt

resentful at being slighted, at being a pawn to the will of the Fates?

Wouldn't it give you even a tiny bit of satisfaction to know that a means

existed for making them pay us more attention?"

Even as he said this a panel in a section of the wall to the left of

the desk slid back, revealing a device that looked somewhat like a high-tech

rifle resting on a cradle, and to this the bald headed man smiled all the

more thinly, then turned a glance at Ikari that made even the taciturn Gendo

glance away with an uneasy expression.

"I present to you the Equalizer, Prototype Mark XIV," Ibrahim

announced, "Commander Ikari had this stored away for possible emergencies,

but plans were underway to undertake full-scale production for distribution

to whatever agencies might benefit from such a weapon. It fires a specially

tipped alloyed projectile in the 13mm range, big enough to put a fair-sized

hole in whatever target you fire it at, and capable of putting a hole the

size of even one of your liter-sized fists in the chest of a greater God or

Demon at a range of roughly one kilometer..."

"Man, we oughta get us one of those," Jay remarked, only to wince at

the glance that he received from his partner.

"You were planning to issue...this...to common field soldiers?"

Frank could not keep the note of aversion out of his voice as he considered

the ramifications."

"More than that," Ibrahim said, "We intend to use it to keep the

peace of Japan. In fact, and earlier model, Type XIII, is already in

production and has been distributed to certain select agents in the

field...but the projectiles were not as pure in their quantity of the

synthetic Orachachum and tend to fire in the 9mm range, so they are hardly

as effective."

"You're insane," Talbain reacted, detecting the unholy gleam in the

eyes hidden beneath the man's overly thick glasses.

"No Wolfie," Kay replied, "Not insane...possessed. Or didn't you

notice how Heinrick here reeks of a certain air of corruption...or didn't

you know that he's working for two masters?"

"Two masters?" Fuyutsuki reacted as even Gendo displayed a hint of

surprise in his own dour expression.

"Sure," Kay replied, "SEELE...and the Old Ones...assuming you could

find a difference."

Both Frank and Talbain reacted with looks of astonishment, while the

NERV command staff registered a heightened level of astonishment, and Agent

Jay himself did a double-take.

"Old Ones?" Frank said aloud, "You mean...he's one of Them?"

"That's absurd," Ibrahim said dismissively, "You really must do

better than that if you want to discredit me or call into question my

position with SEELE..."

"I'm not discrediting you or anything of the sort, Heini," Kay said

mockingly in his usual easy going drawl, "But MIB's had its eye on you for

quite some time, and we just needed for you to have enough rope to hang

yourself before we called you on the carpet. Besides, it's not like you're

really doing double duty, working for both SEELE and Ariman...it's

practically the same thing in my opinion..."

"What are you saying, Kay?" Agent Jay asked, "You mean baldy here

really a Minion to the old ones, and that puts him square with SEELE?"

"Sure enough, Slick," Kay informed his partner, "SEELE may have

nominally been set up with the UN with a secret charter to prepare the Earth

for possible attacks by forces too big for any conventional military to

handle, but it's secret governing board has long since run itself off the

reservation. After all, if you stare long enough into the darkness..."

"The Darkness looks back," Frank concluded grimly, "Should have seen

this coming. SEELE always was pretty high handed about security and

clandestine stuff. I've told you guys before that you should let my people

handle things, but we keep treading on each other's toes..."

"As if you and your pathetic band of Darkstalkers could be prepared

to handle the coming of the Masters," Ibrahim scowled, his tone becoming

brittle as it ever-so-slightly altered. At a nod to his men they suddenly

stood the more alert with weapons turned towards the new guests, a change in

disposition that surprised the three former members of the NERV command

staff, who looked around in tense confusion at the suddenly hostile timbre

of the man who had just recently displaced them.

"So the gloves come off," Talbain remarked casually as he scanned

the guards and marked their relative positions, "Fine with me. I never

liked masquerades, and if we're gonna do something then we might as well get

down and party."

"John, no!" Frank urged as his companion began to transform from his

human self to that which he considered to be his true form as a Werewolf.

"I see that a demonstration is required," Ibrahim nodded to one

guard, who fired a shot at Talbain, striking the Werewolf in the arm and

yielding a howl of shock and pain as he was forced to abort his

transformation.

"Damn," Agent Jay said in surprise as he saw Talbain hunch down upon

the floor nursing his bleeding shoulder, "I thought normal bullets couldn't

a Type III class shapeshifter..."

"They don't Slick," Kay said with only the barest hint of concern in

his tone and expression, "But Mark XIII bullets are in a different class of

monster-slaying altogether."

"Quite so," Ibrahim steepled his fingers and gave a calculated

smile, "And my men have all been armed with the easily reproduced model,

though I dare say they are prohibitive in terms of the cost of a clip of

ammunition...so do try not to make a scene and cost me to waste more than I

had to budget for this little encounter."

"This has gone far enough!" Fyutsuki protested, only to find the

barrel of a rifle aimed at him, as was also the case for both Ikari and

Doctor Akagi.

"Gentlemen and lady...and you too, Gendo-san," Ibrahim said curtly,

"As your services are no longer required for this project I am more than

disposed to allowing you to leave here in one of two methods...either by the

front door or horizontally. Either way, I will not tolerate any further

interruptions from your quarter."

"This is all just a front to you," Ikari said while adjusting his

own glasses, "You question our aims and the goal of creating the EVA project

while confiscating the benefits of our research to date...and you don't

expect us to see something sinister in all of this, some grander vision than

the ones that I proposed to the SEELE command council?"

"Well, you of all people should appreciate the value of some

creative misdirection, Gendo-san," Ibrahim said slyly, "After all, your goal

of helping humanity to achieve Synchronization is hardly the one that got

your funding from the council...or does it occur to you what your grand

vision would mean for the total human population of this planet? My aims

are simpler, though...to obtain the means of forcing our will upon an

uncaring cosmos...and if I have to step over a few thousand mass graves in

order to achieve this..."

"Like you arming a certain fellow by the name of Otono with Type

XIII rifles and allowing him to perform germ research at the hart of Tokyo

right under the very noses of the Japanese government?" Kay wondered.

"Say what?" Jay reacted with a start, "You mean...this is the guy

that's behind all the troubles that we came to investigate here in Japan?

And I thought you told me it was an alien conspiracy to undermine the whole

planet!"

"It is a conspiracy, Slick," Kay revealed, "It involves aliens and

Neflim but it's mostly centered around a two million year old war between

the Angels and the Old Ones, this time around involving the implementation

of a lethal Bioweapons strike right here in beautiful downtown Tokyo,

centered in the Nerima Ward prefecture."

"Nerima?" Doctor Akage reacted, "That's where my daughter, Ritsuko,

attends her day classes..."

"Why you slimy son of a..." Frank started to growl, leaving

Talbain's side and surging to his full seven-foot-plus height.

"Better not, Stein," Kay warned, "Those things could rip even you

apart, and I doubt even your old man could put you back together again with

what they leave behind. Just play it cool and let the bad guy have his

moment."

"Oh really now, Agent K," Ibrahim said thinly, "You don't really

believe in all that melodramatic drivel about the villain ranting on and

spilling out some grand master plan before being served his eventual

comeuppance?"

"As a matter of fact I do," Kay said, "I've been with enough

megalomaniacs that I can almost time the interval between them giving their

speech to the point where the cavalry shows up and toasts them."

"Been the standard rule of thumb for as long as I've been with the

outfit," Agent Jay said smartly.

"The cavalry?" Ibrahim scoffed, "What sort of a universe do you

imagine that we are living within? Besides, this complex is as impregnable

as any installation on the planet...and what sort of force do you think

could ride in here to your rescue? Shield? Delphi?"

"Naw, they only come calling when it's a life-or-death emergency,"

Kay shrugged, "But you've gone and done them one over, Heini, so you're

gonna reap the real whirlwind that's coming this way to get you. Better say

your prayers fast...or whatever it is slime like you pray to before you

croak, because you're not gonna have a lot of time for repentance."

"What the devil are you talking about?" Ibrahim scowled, "Just who

do you expect to show up here? The Shia'rr empire?"

"Nope," Kay smiled back, "Someone a lot more formidable than

that..."

As if on cue alarm claxions rang out within the complex, and lights

flared near to the doors, causing both NERV commanders and SEELE special

forces agents to glance up in surprise, while everyone else-besides Agent

Kay-glanced about in confusion.

"What the hell is that?" Jay asked.

"That be them," Kay glanced at his watch, "And right down to the

second, exactly as predicted."

"What is it?" Fuyutsuki asked, "Is it an Angel?"

"It can't be," Akagi murmured, "It's far too soon, it doesn't meet

with our predictions..."

Gendo Ikari surprised everyone by snapping to the alert and barking

out tersely, "Open the Bay doors, switch to central control functions! Move

it people, let's not get caught on our asses."

"Belay that," Ibrahim snapped, "You're not in command here anymore,

Ikari, I am!"

"So what do you propose to do?" Frank growled at the man, taking

what grim satisfaction he could from seeing the bald man squirm from behind

his glasses.

"Switch to the command center," Ibrahim winced uncomfortably at

having to repeat Gendo's orders, "I want a full data sweep of the perimeter,

and find out what's setting off those alarms!"

At once an entire section of the wall in the office slid back to

reveal an adjoining chamber that overlooked a more spacious cavernous room,

the former of which had technicians busying about with the monitors at their

control stations and everyone in a general state of preparation for whatever

crisis was facing them. And across from them was a huge projection-booth

sized screen displaying an area of coastline that closely resembled a

non-industrious section of the Tokyo harbor.

And there appearing on that screen were two feminine shapes, one

moderately tall, slender and blonde, the other somewhat taller with long

white hair and a more revealing outfit. This latter person was also

sporting a very large object shaped roughly like a boomerang across her back

which she held one-handed while surveying their immediate surroundings.

Yet it was the woman in jeans and white shawl who attracted the most

immediate attention with Frank staring in undisguised alarm at face that he

had met only just the previous evening, and whose preternaturally calm and

composed demeanor was all the more alarming as the face of the woman seemed

set with a look of uncharacteristic determination.

"What is our status?" Ibrahim asked as he moved towards the command

chair, the one normally occupied by Gendo Ikari.

"We don't know, Sir," one of the technicians responded, "They just

appeared on our doorstep not thirty seconds ago and all at once the alarms

went critical. We're measuring an immensely powerful AT field, far beyond

anything ever previously recorded or speculated to exist..."

"Spare me the babbling of the technician," Ibrahim said when he

suddenly turned a sharp look towards the woman on the screen and said, "Can

it be? There's no mistaking that aura. It's her...but how? And where is

that lumbering brute of a boyfiend who trots along faithfully by her side?"

"What are you babbling about, Man?" Jay asked, "Her who?"

"Not just any 'Her,' Slick," Kay responded, "That's the lady I was

briefing you about on the way here, the one they call the Lady in those

files classified as Ultra Nova."

"That chick is Her?" Jay did a double-take, staring incredulously at

the monitoring screen before adding, "I thought she'd be a lot...taller."

"Oh no, you don't mean what I think they do?" Talbain asked,

"Frank...tell me that ain't who I think it is?"

"'Fraid it is, John," Frank replied grimly, "Met her a while ago and

she hasn't aged a day...maybe not even by a single minute."

"It can't be!" Gendo suddenly spoke up, his expression belying his

well-earned reputation for stoicism, "It's almost a decade too soon! Our

calculations..."

"Appear to be a bit off, Sir," Doctor Akagi said, adjusting her

glasses to hide the apprehension that she was feeling, "And well before

we're even equipped to handle one of the Neflim Angels, let alone a being of

her nature."

"But who is the other girl who's with her?" Fyutsuki asked, asking

the question that everyone else seemed to have ignored out of shock at

seeing the blonde woman's arrival.

"Who cares?" Ibrahim snapped, "It is an attack upon this

installation! All forces are to be mobilized, and soldiers with Mark XIIIs

to the front lines!"

"Mark XIIOs?" Frank reacted with astonishment, "You mean you

actually intend to fight Her? But that's insane!"

"Wake up and smell the soba noodles, Big Guy," Agent Kay, "He's not

only crazy, he's in the service of the mortal enemies of the Daokan and all

other life. That's why she's here, to face him down directly, risking her

hide and her reputation for stoic pacifism to take this place down and put

an end to what's been going on in here."

"She will not succeed!" Ibrahim declared with an edge to his voice

that sounded more shrill than before, "We are prepared to deal with her and

all her annoying brood of freaks, misfits and atavisms by one means or

another..." and with that he glanced back towards his office where the

ominous Mark XIV rifle was still in evidence, and his dark eyes narrowed

from behind his glasses as he smiled narrowly, amazed at the golden

opportunity that had been dropped into his lap for ridding his Masters of

the threat of the Daokan forever.

"We will see how omnipotent you truly are, my Lady," he murmured to

himself in malefic glee, "This time you have exposed yourself to mortal

peril, and we will not allow you to escape from your hubris. The days of

the Silver Seagull are numbered, and with the reckoning at hand countless

ages of atonement will be rendered when you fall this day at my hand."

Talbain and Frank both heard this soft-spoken vow and frowned in

mutual abhorrence, but with the long odds momentarily stacked against them

neither Darkstalker was prepared to move, preferring instead to wait and

bide their time for a different sort of reckoning than that planned for by

Heinrick Ibrahim and his darksome masters...

"This is the place you wish to lay siege to, my Lady?" Amalthea

asked while scanning the seemingly innocuous cliff face.

Ulsa nodded very slowly, her manner as grim as anything that her

companion had so far witnessed.

This is the place where things are done of an unspeakable nature.

Do not be deceived by appearances of innocence upon the surface, for what

goes on here belies the stated noble intentions of those who dwell within,

and it is where we must go if we are to obtain the freedom of he who is your

brother.

"My brother, my Lady?" Amalthea said in surprise, "You know where he

is being held?"

Again Ulsa gave the barest of nods to acknowledge the question.

Yes, and he is much in need of the comfort of his sister, though you

would not recognize the thing he has become at the hands of those who did

betray you both. Also too, there is one inside who is a servant of evil

whom we must confront in order to seek justice for all mankind. I will rely

upon your aid when we confront him, but for the most part I expect you to

watch my back as my attention will be focused on what lies in front of us.

To that end I will require of you and Luna that you both be on your guard

and ready to counter the treachery of those who would destroy us both.

"You may count on me and Luna to do our parts, my Lady," Amalthea

said resolutely, and to her surprise the little lizard riding upon her

shoulders gave off a chirruping noise that seemed uncannily as if she were

replying to Ulsa's unspoken statement.

Their mistress smiled a bit sadly and acknowledged their affirmation

of intentions.

Good. But remember the both of you...do not seek to harm those

inside in any permanent sense. You may be rough with them, if necessary,

but do not take a life unless I deem it necessary. Short of that, you may

indulge yourself as needful.

"Understood, my Lady," Amalthea replied, and again gave a faint

start as the lizard chirped a reply for her own reptilian sake.

Ulsa turned her gaze back towards the disguised cliff face and set

her resolve towards accomplishing their mission.

Then you may restore Luna to her true height so that she may serve

as well in teaching these mortals the meaning of terror. Those who take

their humanity lightly shall be taught to respect the power of both Neflim

and Immortal, for they have trespassed far in their arrogance and hubris and

must now reap the consequences of their folly.

Amalthea spoke a word and Luna acknowledged it by leaping from her

shoulders and transforming the moment her clawed feet touched the

ground...expanding dramatically to a size that was most alarming and causing

the half-Kirin young girl to give a startled oath of amazement as her

now-beloved pet shot up to over fifteen meters in height in less than a

matter of seconds.

"Luna?" she gasped in dismay, astonished to see that the little

dragon had grown to twice her height at birth in less than a day, and was

now sporting an impressive set of wings along her backside.

Luna roared and flexed her body in a raw display of elemental fury

before turning and giving his Mistress a comforting look that assured

Amalthea that she was still her pet and would willingly serve her as a loyal

friend and vassal. Ulsa spared only a mild glance and smiled at this, then

resolutely took a step forward, moving towards the disguised cliff face that

masked the bay-area entrance to the Nerve complex and a coming confrontation

to the forces arrayed inside who were arming to oppose her.

The Seagull was on the march at last, and woe betide to anyone who

might think to challenge the Lady of Air and Water, who moved slowly ahead

with the inevitable fury of a raging typhoon that swept all away within its

forward passage...

"Nihao, Airen!"

Nabiki was surprised to be addressed by the familiar sing-song voice

of her wife, Shampoo, and even more surprised when she turned around and saw

the rest of her family group gathered together on the streets of Furinkan,

which prompted her to ask, "Hey, what are you guys doing here?"

"What are we doing here?" Ukyo asked with a sniff, as she held

little Fragrance in her arms, "We're coming back home from the restaurant,

of course, after doing a bit of shopping."

"What gives with you, Nab-chan?" Perfume asked with a curious

glance, "Your head in the clouds or something? We were calling to you from

all the way down the block, but somehow you only noticed us when my cousin

was the one doing the calling."

"Oh," Nabiki felt awkward and gave them a sheepish look as she swept

her co-wives and their offspring with an apologetic glance, then focused in

upon Shampoo, who was giving her a somewhat puzzled look in response to her

untoward behavior, "Sorry guys...kinda had a lot on my mind, if you know

what I mean..."

She inwardly winced as she said this because the last thing that she

wanted to do was to share the most recent thoughts that she had been

thinking in regards to Saki Asamiya and the revelation that the teenaged

undercover police officer harbored personal feelings towards Nabiki of a

highly inappropriate nature.

(Inappropriate, that is, for anyone who wanted to be faithful to her

current lovers, but in light of what her Sensei Trudy had been saying...did

she really have a right to deny the legitimacy of Saki's emotions?

Especially in light of the equally disturbing discovery that those feelings

might possibly be reciprocated?)

She shook her head to clear it of that errant thought, but then took

a hard look at the woman who was front and center to her life, the one with

whom she shared the closest of connections and the very last person in the

world whom she wanted to see hurt by any hint of infidelity. As Nabiki

stared longingly at Shampoo a wealth of emotions welled up inside her, and

she knew beyond question that she could not do as both Trudy and Anri had

been coaching, for the thought of spending the rest of her life with anyone

else but this vivacious and beautiful Amazon who was the mother of her

firstborn daughter...

"Airen?" Shampoo asked in an inquiring voice, conveying a sense of

deepening concern over the oddly pensive way in which her wife was acting.

Nabiki glanced to the side to see similar concern in the eyes of

said daughter, Lylac, her precocious and talented eldest offspring, who so

captured and distilled the essence of both of her parents that at times she

could seem unusually unnerving...and not just because of the incredible

maturity that the girl displayed far in advanced of her actual age. Just

looking at her brought back the words that Anri had been sharing...

"You should always ask yourself, 'Who is this child?' when you look

into such eyes...for this is not their first visit upon this plane of

existence. There is someone else looking back at you from behind such

innocence, someone forgotten-and-yet-remembered. Look into those eyes and

see the soul that hides within them. Never be fooled by seeming innocence,

for the child within is ancient and knowing..."

"Nabchan?" Ukyo asked in deepening concern, "Are you all right? You

look a little...spacey."

"I'm fine, Ucchan," Nabiki replied, and then in three quick steps

she was at the side of Shampoo, wrapping her in her arms and drawing the

younger girl into a kiss that took the Amazon by surprise, though she was

quick to respond to the warmth and tenderness of the gesture.

"Aiyaa," Perfume remarked with a round-eyed stare of appreciative

wonder, taken aback both by the speed with which Nabiki had moved and for

the surprising intimacy displayed so openly by the normally reticent Nabiki.

Ukyo was similarly stunned by their co-wife's gesture, wondering if

she had missed something since she had barely had time to blink before the

Saotome heir was there in the arms of the purple haired girl beside her.

The kiss went on for a full half minute before Nabiki drew back for

air, leaving a breathless Shampoo gushing warmly in delight as she breathily

murmured, "Shampoo no know what she do to deserve this, but she will do it

many, many times more if it makes her Airen welcome her like this."

Nabiki could not help smiling down at her wife and felt a surge of

protective emotions as possessive desire made her want to shelter this girl

against the harshness of the dark times that she knew were soon to follow.

In a voice that freely conveyed her love she said, "Just being yourself is

all I ask, Sham-chan. You mean more to me than my own life, and I want you

to know this."

"Maybe she not know enough," Shampoo said impishly, "Maybe Airen

show Shampoo more often?"

"You've got a deal," Nabiki stretched one arm around the Amazon's

shoulders and hugged her tightly before turning to the stares of her other

two wives and saying, "It's been a long day, and I've been through a lot,

but right now all I want is to go home, have a nice meal, take a long hot

bath and get some sleep...not necessarily in that order."

Shampoo gave Nabiki yet another inquisitive side-glance, "Is Airen

too tired to perform other duties? Because if so, then Shampoo take as

rain-check."

Nabiki chuckled at that, "No...actually I think I've got enough

strength in me for that much fun and games...provided you other guys are up

to a bit of fooling around?"

"Us?" Ukyo arched an eyebrow, then smiled and inclined her head

towards the brown-haired girl beside her, "You mean me and the Tomcat? You

bet. But..." she patted her swollen abdomen meaningfully and gave an

apologetic smile, "...I think I'll have to beg off for the moment. Junior's

been giving his mom a bad case of the cramps, and I wouldn't want to be a

drag on the party..."

"Says the woman I love who never fails to disappoint me," Perfume

touched Ukyo fondly, "That's okay, Airen...I've got more than enough energy

for the both of us, so you sit back and watch while I make nice-nice with

Nab-chan and my cousin..."

"And you would too," Ukyo chuckled, "That's my Per-chan, insatiable

as always."

"Cousin more than welcome in bed with Shampoo and our Airen,"

Shampoo gave her fellow Amazon a coy-sly look of pure mischief, "But maybe

give time before warm up to have long talk with Airen about day that she be

having. Great-grandmother tell Shampoo that Airen train with new Sensei who

be one who pay visit years ago to Nyanchiczu."

"Say what?" Nabiki said, "You mean...Sensei Trudy's been to your

village? I mean...oh yeah, she told me something about that..."

"Sensei?" Perfume looked curiously at Nabiki, "Wells Trudy is your

new Sensei? Aiyaa...no wonder great-grandmother let you train with

her...she's been after her martial arts secrets ever since that time she and

her partner paid a visit to our people. According to great-grandmother she

is in possession of a rare technique that's been lost to the Amazons for

many generations..."

"A lost technique, Sugar?" Ukyo asked, "How important is it?"

"According to great-grandmother the technique makes one almost

invincible in battle...but at a cost that she wouldn't specify to me,"

Perfume shrugged, "Something about having to bind yourself to a Power which

limits your free choices and actions. She hinted about it mostly, but I

could tell that she was mightily upset to learn that Inspector Wells already

had a life-partner, which exempted her from the marriage rule due to the

'First come, first serve' exemption."

"Fascinating," Nabiki mused, "She implied something like that, but

at the time I was having trouble figuring out her actual story. Apparently

she's an American cop and an agent of Delphi who's on loan to Frank to serve

as our resident guardian Angel...and speaking of which, what about her other

partner, that French speaking nurse with the 'Joan of Arc' complex?"

"You mean Nurse d'Anjou?" Ukyo asked, "Haven't seen her since

yesterday...but I think she was going to pay her respects to the Kunos at

Tatewaki-kun's invitation."

"Uh oh," Nabiki said, "Sounds like trouble's brewing for Natsume.

She'd better keep and eye on that boy or he'll wind up as yet another member

of the Angelique fan club..."

"Wouldn't do him any good if he did have the hots for her," Perfume

shrugged, "Nurse d'Anjou's as gay as a festival at springtime, believe me.

I can tell, I read the signs, and she was definitely more keen to respond to

the ladies than to any of the boys who tried to put the moves on her before

the school got wrecked."

"Yeah, besides which, she seemed to be more interested in that new

substitute history teacher, Rumiko Takaharis," Ukyo added, then pondered the

point before adding, "Something weird about her too if you ask me..."

"Yeah, I do know what you mean there, Ucchan," Nabiki said dryly,

but given the circumstances of her day she was finding the thought of a

teacher being exposed as some type of a demoness to be nothing so passingly

odd as having been apprenticed to a man who was-rightly or

wrongfully-worshipped as a God by at least one third of the planet.

"Speaking of which," Perfume sniffed the air, then turned around and

cocked her head as if listening sharply, "I do believe that we are about to

be visited by other members of the Kuno fan club. Your sister, Keiko-san,

Kodachi and brother-in-law Ryoga are headed this way, bearing gifts from

heaven that they no doubt intend to show off back home at the dojo."

No sooner had she said this then the party in question rounded the

corner of the nearest building and promptly hailed their party, Akane being

first to call out, "Hey guys, what's happening?"

"What's happening yourself, Akane-chan?" Ukyo replied as she eyed

the bundle being held closely in the arms of the youngest Tendo sister,

"That the little nipper you and Ryo-kun worked so hard at creating?"

"Ah," Ryoga reached up and scratched the back of his head and

promptly colored as he glanced sidelong at his wife, then flashed a look

towards Kodachi, who was bearing a similar burden within the embrace of her

own arms and the smile he wore was positively preening.

"We thought that we had had enough of resting upon our posteriors

for a day and wanted to pay our respects to Akane-chan's parents," Kodachi

said smoothly, supplementing for Ryoga's awkwardness in expressing similar

intentions, "After all, thanks to Ryo-kun here, my own daughter is as much a

member of your house as she is of houses Kuno or Arigami."

"We thought it would please your folks if we stopped by and paid our

respects," Keiko elaborated, "We've spent most of the day watching Tachi-kun

work out with his new Sensei and it seemed the right time to stretch our

legs. So...what all have we been missing since yesterday's excitement?"

"Nothing much," Perfume replied, "Except that Nab-chan here's been

taking on a new Sensei of her own and studying a martial arts system that

even great-grandmother thinks is impressive."

"Oh yeah?" Keiko said slyly as she sized Nabiki up and down with a

calculating look, "Trying to improve yourself behind my back are you? For

shame, Nab-chan, you don't expect me to take a thing like that being idle."

With that teasing comment openly made, Keiko took a playful swing at

Nabiki, attempting to land a punch on the chin of her nominal "rival" (and

erstwhile lover) as she had done before on many an earlier occasion. It was

a standard thing for both of them, something neither girl took all that

serious with Keiko pretending to attack Nabiki and the Saotome heir

defending herself or evading the punch with no ill feelings implied on

either account. In a sense Keiko was merely testing Nabiki's reflexes to

see that she kept on her edge, because between the two of them there existed

a rude parity with Nabiki being acknowledged as slightly better, Keiko

having trained herself hard all of her life to a point where she approached

Ryoga's level as an Alpha Class fighter and top-dog of Nerima.

But this time...things turned out to be more than a little

different.

Nabiki saw the fist coming towards her, felt the force of Keiko's

chi and knew her friend was using only half the amount of power that would

back a serious attack maneuver, and yet still reacted to the thrust with a

curious detachment, as though she could measure the force of the blow to the

milligram and see the lines of energy that swirled about and directed the

thrust in her given direction.

Without having to think about it her body reacted, and with an ease

that astonished even Nabiki she thrust two fingers forward and deflected the

attack, then twisted her hand and gripped the arm of the Kickboxer at a

vulnerable point and applied very light pressure that twisted the limb

ever-so-slightly...and all at once Keiko found her thrust arrested in

mid-motion.

Shock and pain were briefly displayed upon the face of the normally

stoical redhead as Keiko found her arm totally immobilized, and then her

knees gave out from under her and she found herself being forced to the

sidewalk, her other hand reflexively going to her captured arm in a weak

attempt to pry the grip of Nabiki's hand off of her though to all outward

appearance the force Nabiki used was negligible, hardly enough to cause such

serious discomfort.

"GAH!" Keiko cried out in dismay as Nabiki hastily let her arm go

and stepped back away in self-amazement. The pain immediately left the

stricken Kickboxer as Keiko immediately rubbed her arm and wrist to restore

their feeling, then looked up in dismay at Nabiki, who seemed just as

shocked at what she had done as any there who was witness.

"Kei-chan!" Kodachi immediately knelt at the side of her lover,

cradling their child in one arm while lending support to the redhead with

the other, "My love, are you badly hurt?"

"Only my pride," Keiko admitted, feeling the nerves along her arm

and giving a grudging new level of respect towards Nabiki.

"What did you do to her?" Ryoga asked, "I didn't even see you move,

Nabiki."

"Ah...a good question that," Nabiki responded, staring at her own

hand in tacit wonder at the speed and precision of her reflexive movements.

"Aiyaa," both Perfume and Shampoo said together in almost perfectly

time Amazonian chorus.

"Was that some kind of new technique?" Akane asked.

"Sure looked like it to me, Sugar," Ukyo replied, "Only I never even

saw it happen. It was almost like...Kimiguri."

"Kimiguri?" Perfume asked.

"Ah...yeah," Ukyo smiled sheepishly, "It's an old Ninja technique.

I never mastered it myself, but my Aunt says that there are a few Clan

Masters who can fold back space and time with their Ki to move at impossible

velocities surpassing that of the Amagurikan. It's similar to that Fugue

technique that the old woman...ah...I mean, Cologne...taught Nabiki a while

back, only much, much more complex than simple time manipulation."

"No kidding?" Keiko winced as she rubbed her wrist, "Is that what

you've been studying all day, Saotome? Felt more like you put my arm in a

vice and nearly pulled it loose from its socket."

"I...didn't really expect to do that, Kei-chan," Nabiki admitted,

"Must be a side-effect of what I was studying all day. Only...at the time I

didn't think it was much like study."

"Well, for something that wasn't study it sure was damned

effective," Akane said with a sniff, "I didn't think even you could do that

to Kei-chan, and after the show she put yesterday sparring with both her dad

and step-mothers."

"Too effective for my liking," Kodachi said primly, taking on a

stern tone with Keiko as she said, "From now on you are forbidden to spar

with Nabiki-san until you have sufficiently improved so as not to put

yourself in any real danger. You are my property after all, and I will not

risk you damaging what is mine from any misplaced attempts at salving a

wounded pride. Do you understand me?"

"Yes Mistress," Keiko said, though she gave Nabiki a wary look and

said, "Wouldn't mind meeting your new Sensei, though. Must be really

something if he could do this much with you in only one session."

"Ah...yeah," Nabiki noted, wincing slightly under the baleful look

that Kodachi was favoring her with and realizing by this how irritated the

Black Rose was with her for having caused pain to her Kei-chan.

But then a nagging sense caused her to turn her glance sidelong, and

she caught little Lylac favoring her mother with a quizzical expression.

Just as quickly Lylac glanced away and pretended to be taking fascination

with her newly delivered cousins, but by that brief display she had betrayed

an almost adult-style interest in the prowess of her biological "father,"

which again made Nabiki wonder at the nature of her eldest offspring, who

was by any sense far removed from a "normal" young girl of her precise

chronological age.

Who is this child whom I helped bring into the world? Was she a

stranger before I knew her? Someone else reborn into this life who now

resides with me in the flesh that I helped create with Shampoo's willing

cooperation? Is she truly mine merely because of the accident by which I

fathered her through the advent of the Curse that afflicts me with a

sometimes masculine persona?

She thought on this for a brief moment while the others were

regarding her with curiosity, but then she cast a second glance Lylac's way

and saw the girl poking at the cloth-wrapped form within Akane's arms as her

sister knelt down to show off her joyful bundle, exposing the tiny face of

the infant son whom she had delivered only days ago, a face already showing

signs of quickening maturity with a tiny mop of coal black hair and a pair

of shining eyes that would normally take weeks to develop.

"What is his name?" Lylac asked in a tiny inquisitive tone of voice

that somehow made Nabiki's heart gladden.

"I'm calling him Kimba, after a favorite character of mine that I

loved when I was just a bit older than you, Niece," Akane said fondly,

"Hibiki Kimba...meet your new cousin, Tendo Lylac."

"Kimba," Lylac repeated the name as though to memorize it on the

spot, then turned her focus in Kodachi's direction, "And your baby, Auntie

Koko?"

"Watazashi, little one," Kodachi's tone softened as she held up her

tiny little daughter, "Kei-chan and I will be her proud parents when she

grows to an age where she can be one of your playmates."

"Oooh...pretty," little Fragrance said as she moved closer to

examine the girl-baby, "Will she look as pretty as you and Auntie Kei-chan,

Auntie?"

"She will indeed I dare say," Kodachi smiled, favoring Keiko with a

look that helped the redhead to forget her recent humiliation, "And no doubt

be as prone to causing trouble and sowing mischief."

"Of course," Keiko said fondly, "After all...she's an Arigami...and

a Kuno...and a Hibiki, the poor devil."

That decided the issue as far as Nabiki was concerned. She looked

at the studious and thoughtful expression on the face of little Lylac and

saw much of herself in that expression, and from that drew the conclusion

that she would live with for the rest of her life as a parent.

You are mine, there is no doubting this. Whoever you were before is

irrelevant to me, because you are my hope and fulfillment, little Kei-chan,

my promise to the future, and my gift through Shampoo to a universe that had

better damned well learn to respect you, because you carry a legacy through

all of us that is more than the sum of the parts, more than merely being the

heir to the Houses Tendo and Saotome.

That thought brought up a different issue and she promptly asked,

"By the way...where is little Chusen?"

"Back home with your Mom, who insisted on keeping him close at hand

since she has the most experience of any of us when it comes to raising

kids," Ukyo answered, "Sham-chan wanted to keep him with us, but your mom

won the argument since it will be at least a few more days before he's fit

to travel to the markets."

"Remind me to thank my mother-in-law for that," Nabiki nodded, "I

agree with her decision, though it was nice of you to offer to keep him with

you, Sham-chan."

"He is part of you, Airen," Shampoo said with simple Amazon logic,

"Shampoo want to keep him with her to remind her of Airen, and because she

like his smell. He very good for boy-child, make strong Amazon male

warrior, and maybe one day make nice-nice with the ladies."

"Ah...time enough to worry about that, I think," Nabiki said

awkwardly, trying hard not to picture a grown-up male version of herself

being beset by the sort of feminine attention that she tended to attract in

either of her genders.

But that thought brought back the admittedly painful subject of her

situation with Saki, and a guilty stab to her conscience made her wince

slightly, a change of expression that did not go unnoticed by her immediate

companions.

"Airen?" Shampoo asked, "What is it?"

"Um...Sham-chan?" Nabiki said slowly, "I need to tell you

something...something very important..."

As she started to prepare herself for an awkward confession,

however, gazing into the adoring crimson eyes of the woman she knew so well

and regarded as a soul-mate, some curious impulse caused her to glance

instead at a nearby department store window, drawn by unknown urges to turn

her focus towards something that was on display there, which promptly caught

her attention.

"Airen?" Shampoo asked, both vexed and annoyed at the sudden shift

of her wife's attention.

"Ah...excuse me a moment," she urged, drawing Shampoo along as she

moved closer to the window in order to examine what she found, and when she

got a better look her eyes went wide in shock, then narrowed in vexation.

Ukyo caught her interest and moved closer to examine the display,

then turned a puzzled look towards her co-wife and said, "What's up, Sugar?

What's so special about those photos?"

"Baby pictures to be exact," Kodachi noted as she, too, tried to

fathom the unusual attention that the Saotome heir was giving to those baby

pictures.

"Yeah?" Keiko asked, only to blink her eyes as she stared at one

prominent picture in question, "Hey...that's funny...that one looks a little

like..."

"Nabiki," Perfume concluded for her with a mildly incredulous

expression, seeing a child roughly two years of age spread out on a blanket

with a page-boy hair cut much like what Nabiki wore, minus her warrior's

braid, "Aiyaa...Airen, that's is you..."

"That's ridiculous," Akane protested, "What would a place like this

be doing with a baby picture of Oneechan? Must be some other kid that looks

a little bit like her."

"Um...you think so?" Ryoga asked, "I mean...is that likely..."

Aloud Nabiki murmured the words softly, "Nativity scene."

"Hah?" Ukyo blinked in puzzlement, "What was that you just said,

Sugar?"

"Ah...nothing," Nabiki winced, though she turned a glance away

towards the sky and thought to herself, (Very funny, Sensei...but point

well taken.).

"It looks a bit old," Keiko remarked, "Could it actually be you at

that age, Nab-chan? If so, then you were a really cute baby."

"Ahah...right," Nabiki said a bit sheepishly, but then a thought

came to her, and with a smile of inspiration she put an arm around Shampoo's

shoulder and said, "Say, Sham-chan, what do you think about going in there

and making some new pictures?"

"Aiyaa?" Shampoo asked in surprise, "You mean...of Lylac and

Fragrance?"

"And the rest of the crew as well, my treat," Nabiki turned a glance

towards their companions, "Be nice to show the folks back home that we're

one big happy family here."

"How marvelously thoughtful of you," Kodachi said with a slight edge

that implied that she had not totally forgotten nor forgiven the incident

involving her Keiko, "But I will contribute my share to insure the superior

quality of these photos since they will no doubt endure for generations to

follow as a mark of our joining of our clans."

"I'm with you there," Fragrance said, "But...should we be doing this

without Ranchan? After all, he's important to our family...important to us

all..."

"Aiyaa," Shampoo said as she touched her abdomen, "And father to

this one's baby, and that of Ukyo-wife."

"Yeah," Ukyo agreed, "Wouldn't be the same without him in the

picture..."

"Without who in the picture?" Ranma asked as he popped up in their

midst from seemingly no where.

Ryoga reacted first with a start, "Where did you come from?"

"What do you mean, Bro?" Ranma asked with a puzzled expression.

"We didn't even see you arrive, Ranma-kun," Akane said, "You

just...showed up all of a sudden. I mean...did you see him approach us,

Kei-chan?"

"Not me," Keiko shrugged, "It was like you just appeared out of no

where, Ran-chan."

"How odd," Kodachi remarked, "Can we be absolutely positive this is

him?"

"Hah?" Ryoga asked, "What do you mean?"

"Think about it, Ryo-kun," Keiko explained, "Weird things have been

happening for the past few days, and there's no way of being sure if the

guys who were after Nabiki might strike again at any minute."

"Hey, I'm me, don't you think I'd notice if I were somebody else?"

Ranma protested, only to give a slight start himself as Perfume appeared at

his backside sniffing around him like an affectionate hound before turning

to the others with a kittenish smile of approval.

"It's him, you can take my word on it," the Amazon Enforcer

affirmed, "Right down to the last follicle of hair, though I do also detect

a strong whiff of grandmother's perfume in his presence."

"Oh yeah?" Nabiki said archly, though her pretence at jealousy was

short lived as she caught and held Ranma's gaze, and in that brief moment

exchanged something akin to silent recognition that there was indeed

something different to the both of them, something that they would have to

discuss between themselves in private sometime later.

"Uh...so what was everybody doing before I showed up?" Ranma asked,

eager to change the subject rather than continue to receive curious glances

and glares from his family on the subject of the Archmage.

"Nab-chan was about to suggest that we get our pictures taken with

the kids, Sugar," Ukyo said as she moved in to take her husband by the arm

and favor him with a smile that was enchanting, "I happen to think it's a

damned fine idea, don't you Per-chan?"

"Of course I do, Airen," Perfume said, taking Ranma by the other arm

with a meaningfully kittenish expression.

"Then what are we waiting out here for under a sky that is growing

overcast?" Kodachi asked, taking Ryoga by one arm and Keiko by the other,

"By all means let us attend to having a group photo with our children,

Akane-chan?"

"You bet," Akane grinned, "Come along, you two scamps," she added,

directing her comment in Lylac and Fragrance's direction.

"Yes Auntie," the two infant girls said in obedient chorus.

Nabiki winced as she started to hear a rumbling noise in the sky and

hastily added, "Good idea if we hurry things up a bit...while we're all in

our proper shapes, or else this group photo will turn into a managerie real

quick."

"Aiyaa," Shampoo seconded while keeping a firm hold on her wife's

arms, yet still extending a glance in Ranma's direction, "By way,

Ranma-husband...how you do trick of appearing from no where? Is very like

what Elder Siren do when she want to surprise people."

"Ah...really can't say for sure about that, Honey," Ranma said

sheepishly, allowing himself to be herded into the photo shop while adding

softly, "But it sure has been a weird day, and full of all kinds of

surprises."

"Word on that, Husband," Nabiki said with no little irony in her

voice as she and the rest of their merry band followed the trio, just

seconds ahead of the first drops of rain that would have triggered their

Jusenkyo curses had they dallied by yet another moment.

But as they vanished into the shop a curious sensation was felt

along Nabiki's spine, and she glanced back over her shoulder with a puzzled

look towards an alley way on the opposite side of the street. Her warrior

instincts were keen to detect something in those shadows, and she felt a

brief sensation of keen interest, but no genuine hostility as yet...only a

blank sense of nothingness that ominously bode ill for the future should it

be an enemy planning to attack her and her family while their guard was

mutually down.

Inside that shadow a solemn figure remained motionless and unheeding

as the elements opened up over his head, his somber gaze as implacable as a

statue while two glowing red eyes alone betrayed an intelligence that was

both piercing and unyielding. His mission to observe the

Saotome-Tendo-Hibiki-Kuno party required nothing less than silent resolve,

for his orders were to do nothing more that would betray his presence within

this time field. But the keen awareness that the woman with the braid had

marked him out was of great interest and would be noted and recorded for

later inquiry. With that adjustment to his mission parameters duly noted he

remained where he was and continued to observe, intending to make a full

report to his Master of the activities of the Target Group.

Beyond this he was to do nothing, but if another appeared who might

interfere with mission parameters...then his orders were to eliminate the

interference. As such he continued to wait, as immovable as a statue, as

imposing as a rock, and if any stray thing should happen to get near him

they would not even know that he was there, for he was a Guardsman of the

Shadows, and the only time you knew one was present was when they chose to

allow it, which was the instant when they struck you down, and woe betide

anyone who was marked for death by the Servants of the Lord of Barradur,

Diervak Manhanon...

Continued.

Comments/Criticisms/Critical Junctures Within the Plot Arc:

shadowmane

Or: shadowmane9849

Who is this new element who targets Nabiki and her clan from afar?

Patience kind effendi, for that will be revealed at the time and place when

the author designates a revelation. In the meantime, the battle between

Timecop Ranma and Udan rages on while the fury of the Silver Seagull is

unleashed upon the NERV complex, and other players in this drama begin to

get their turns on stage as the plot thickens like a bowl of miso. Stay

tuned for further developments in, "Reign of Hellfire," or, "Of all the

NERV!" Be there!

X


	104. Chapter 104

Dnabiki193

Nabiki ½

"A Very Scary Thought"

by

Jim Robert Bader

(Inspired by the works of Rumiko Takahashi & Others,

with concepts and characters created by fellow fanfic writers

Wade Tritschler, DB Sommers, Nicole Manders, Andrew

Greaves, Bill Guiroff and countless others, including "Buffy"

creator Joss Whedon; with special thanks to my good pal

Shiva for his editing and handling of this series.)

(Certain other characters and concepts are of my own

innovation, including my interpretation of the Monster

of Mary Shelly's novel, the Furies, Trudy, Takaharis

Angelique d'Anjou, Anri and the Daokan, Thelendra

the Dream Weaver and various other guest stars

appearing in this portion of the Nabiki ½ series…)

Chapter Seventy-Two.

Episode One-Hundred-Ninety-Three.

"NERV Wracking."

"Have you finished with those pews, Brother Matthew?"

"Yes Father," Matthew replied, "They are cleaned and ready for the

morning sermon. I have also lined them with the new hand bills, as you

requested, and have polished the seats so that they gleam in the votary

light."

"Don't try and overdo things, Matthew," Father Conal O'Rorke chided

with an affectionate smile towards his assistant, "God knows of your good

works and intentions, and you don't have to butter up the Almighty in order

to impress Him of your worth. Only be who you are and you will be

accepted."

"Accepted?" Matthew sniffed as he turned away to continue polishing

the organ keys, "For who I am or who I was, Father? Not very likely."

"Don't scoff," O'Rorke replied, "You've made great strides over

these past few years, and who you were in your old life is immaterial. All

that matters is who you are in the here and now...everything else is merely

background..."

"So you say, Father," Matthew replied without glancing away from his

current task, "But we both know that the type of...beings whom I was...and

to some measure still am...is hardly what I'd call mere 'background.'"

"Let it go, Matthew," O'Rorke urged, "Your sins are already known to

God. Let the worth of who you are today cancel out your debts to the

Almighty. Nothing good comes from dwelling in the past for longer than a

leisurely stroll, and if you wrap yourself too much up in the follies of

what you did when you were a very different person, it will blind you to the

good things that you have accomplished since..."

"All right, Father, I will be mindful of what you say," Matthew

urged, though he spoke as much to head off yet more of this gentle

chastisement as from any genuine agreement with the sentiments that his

mentor was expressing.

O'Rorke took the none-too-subtle hint from his charge and turned

away, hiding a slight smile as he knew that Matthew's modesty and pride

would not permit the man to concede that he had changed and improved for the

better, which was a considerable achievement for one who had-at least

technically-been born a demon from an alternate dimension known as

Liaspar.

Further complicating that fact was that said demon now possessed the

body of a human who-to all effects and purposes-was technically

deceased, having fused with the Demon who possessed him, who thus had

combined to exile the former Liasparian agent into the drug-ravaged flesh of

a former homeless addict. Said addict, having burned out many of the

psychic centers of his brain through the use of powerful narcotics, proved a

trap impossible to separate from, and possessing him turned out to be a

one-way street for the former demon, one that he had been forced to reside

within for the better part of five years going on now, deprived as he was of

the bulk of his former mystical abilities, which had effectively ended his

usefulness as an infiltration agent.

And thus the being formerly known as K'rues'vara the Yariquel had

become the hybrid mortal known these days as Brother Matthew, a neophyte

deacon of the Church who was slavishly devoted to serving O'Rorke, having

been rejected by his former homeland and its demonic master, Ashteroth.

For his part Matthew felt honor bound and obligated to O'Rorke on

multiple levels, not least of which was the gratitude he felt for having

been given a home when none other would have accepted the former agent.

Having been fused with a human, Matthew had begun to learn something about

human values such as friendship, kindness and compassion. Having known very

little of such things among his own people, he had gradually been drawn into

making a personal study of the human world into a life career of devotion,

albeit that he did not share O'Rorke's devotion to the faith and even

considered the Catholic church to be something of an anomaly.

Despite his reservations, though, Matthew believed in O'Rorke the

man and stood willingly at his side in spite of the differences in their

respective belief systems. O'Rorke had a gentle way about him that belied

the strength that Matthew had seen displayed on various occasions. He spoke

eloquently with wisdom and deep insight into a number of complex spiritual

issues and seemed open to new ideas and thoughts with great respect extended

to those outside of the Catholic system. O'Rorke actually embodied those

values that were supposed to be at the core of Church teaching but were

rarely seen in actual practice, and as such he was looked on with

disapproval by his superiors in the local Church hierarchy, who could never

seem to tolerate the very idea of someone being more "Christ-like" than they

were.

Personally, Matthew saw great trouble within the Church itself and

could predict with a certainty that the current trend of things might well

push the American brand of Catholicism to the point of a genuine schism.

The actions of Rome from both Pope and Curia on down had turned too far

towards reactionary "conservatism" and was rejecting the modernism of 21st

century progress and, as such, were causing various diocese to rebel and

seek their own independence. The heavy hand of Church Authoritarianism was

causing deep resentment within the rank and file of the priesthood, and very

slowly a movement was underway to sever the ties between Papacy and American

Catholic Christianity altogether. One could already hear the sounds of

institutions cracking and it was just a matter of time before outright

rebellion broke out in the pews, especially if current trends did not

reverse themselves or-failing that-the Cardinals of Rome finally came

out of their white-collared cells to see the world around them as it truly

was, rather than just blanket condemning everything of which they

disapproved and thus failing to appreciate the wondrous miracles that went

on around them on a daily basis.

Add to that the slow financial draining of Church coffers to deal

with a range of scandals that were created by errant priests and compounded

by various bishops, plus the steep decline in the number of likely

candidates who would agree to live the celebrate lifestyle that the Church

demanded, and you had a recipe for collapse and ruin within a few more

mortal generations, and all because some placed before themselves the mantle

of "Infallibility" to ward off having to admit to mistakes that everyone

else could see plainly written. Already the signs of internal schism were

visible everywhere, but Rome remained both ignorant and willfully blind to

the actual consequences of their dictatorial behavior.

And yet O'Rorke was none of these things, a basically decent man of

deeply held convictions who was not interested in the politics that far too

often undermined religion. Despite all of the recent troubles that he had

dealing with the Bishopic of the San Francisco diocese, O'Rorke remained

firm in his principles and had refused to compromise on those values that he

felt were most important.

Such as in the company he kept, and his direct involvement with a

certain elite group of paranormally gifted individuals, none of whom being

what you would call "traditional Catholic," including the members of the

group who did at one time belong to the church by direct affiliation.

Who else but such a man would have accepted a former enemy as a

friend, and taught Matthew how to survive in his prison of flesh, and

without O'Rorke as a mentor Matthew could plainly admit that he would not

have survived life as a mortal. Now, years after having resigned himself to

existence in this strange, harsh world of solid proportions, he had almost

managed to achieve a level of inner peace in his new life, a kind of

catharsis wherein the sins of his past balanced out with all of his positive

achievements of the present.

And with O'Rorke as an inspiring example to follow he could

dedicate himself to the pursuit of being a better person, never hoping to

actually achieve real sainthood in the process (nor would he want to if the

truth be told, but lacking any other option he was more-or-less willing to

settle for that rather than go on in the old ways to which he had been

raised). Real saints were often far less the models of perfection that

reputation would suppose, and knowing what he did of a few historical

examples, Sainthood itself was not all that it was cracked up to be. Far

better to work merely to be a bit more upright than was common.

And so with that thought in mind Matthew finished polishing the

organ keys and was readying to attend to the votive candles when a voice

caught his attention.

"You've quite the right attitude when it comes to the saints, my

friend. I've known more than a few myself who ought to have been

institutionalized for the good of society. These days they could have made

a fortune selling books, audio tracks and mail-order DVDs on the lecture

circuit, thus doing far less harm to society than was the result of awarding

them the title of 'prophet.'"

Matthew froze where he stood, his hackles standing on end as even

with his diminished psychic abilities he could feel the presence within the

chamber that fairy radiated with an aura of inestimable spiritual potence.

"That was always the problem I had with organized religion...I never

could see much prophet to the whole business."

Matthew looked up in dismay to see a man reclining against the

railing of the choir booth, and then he took a second look at the man, using

his limited powers of aural perception...and nearly had a heart attack on

the spot! He dropped his cleaning rag and stepped away, his whole body

trembling with fright as he gasped out, "F-Father...Father O'Rorke...!"

"Eh?" Conal turned away from the podium upon which he had been

sorting his prepared sermon of the morning and chanced to see the oddly

dressed fellow who was distressing Matthew, finding nothing particularly

alarming about this fellow beside his curious choice in apparel. But

nonetheless, experience had taught him well never to take things at first

appearance, so he rather cautiously asked, "May I help you, young sir?"

"That all depends, Father," the fair-haired man replied with an

amiable smile, "Do you have a moment to spare for a humble sinner?"

"I always have time to spare for any child of God who comes into

this house of prayer, my son," O'Rorke replied, drawing himself to a

politely erect stance, "How may I be of service?"

"I was simply wondering on a few things," the man replied, "I

thought maybe you were the one to come to seeing as you are keenly intimate

with unusual and unorthodox things, not least of which being your connection

to a young lady named Astarte Jones."

"Ah," O'Rorke nodded sagely, "You know of her?"

"Not intimately," the man replied, "But we have met on at least one

prior occasion. Indeed, I do believe that you have the honor of being her

personal confessor..."

"That is my privilege and burden to bear, my son," O'Rorke said

firmly, not the least bit apologetic over the matter.

The man gave the priest a boyish grin and said, "Must be a full time

experience for you, having to list all of the things that one has to confess

on a regular basis."

"I merely act as a vessel through which she may be requited to God,

young sir," O'Rorke said simply, "He is intimate with all that lays heavy

upon her shoulders, but it is not for the likes of either you nor I to pass

judgement on her behavior."

"Judgement?" the man said in mild surprise, "Believe me, that is the

very last thing that I would pass on her, my good man. Indeed, from what I

know about Ms. Jones I should very much say that she is far more worthy of

the title of Sainthood than many who actually got that title through lesser

achievements. The burden she bears is weighty indeed, but she carries it

well, don't you think? If anything you might say I am a bit of a fan who

stands in awe of her accomplishments."

"You don't say?" O'Rorke relaxed by a fraction, "Well then, you are

welcome within this House, for any friend of Astarte stands in good favor

with the Lord, or so I would avow from my reading of the scriptures."

"That is very kind of you," the young man's gaze turned shrewd, "But

there are others of this Church who feel differently about this matter, are

there not?"

"I pray for them that God will show them the true path," O'Rorke

sagely acknowledged, "But yes, there is some distress on this point...not

that I consider it worth debating in a public forum."

"Meaning you think it none of my business?" the man smiled with a

twinkling of mischief in his eyes, "Very well...but I must say that it is

curious to me how much you have put yourself out on a limb with your

hierarchy by taking the side of a noted sinner while giving aid and comfort

to her allies, who themselves are not what one would call kosher by a

conventional reading of the scriptures."

"Be that as it may," O'Rorke said, "I obey the dictates of my

conscience. But you, sir...by what name should I know you? You

seem...somehow oddly familiar..."

"B-Binder...!" Matthew finally managed to gasp out, having stood

there frozen to the spot with fear until now, only to fall silent yet again

when the man before him turned a sharp warning glance in his direction.

"I get around by my means," the fair-haired man remarked while

turning his attention away from the hapless Matthew, his easygoing smile

taking the place of the sharp glance that he had just delivered to the

former demon, "But if you must call me something, then by all means call me

Anri, which is the name my mother gave me when I was little."

"Well, I suppose your mother had to be naming you something,"

O"Rorke smiled, "But to what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?"

"Oh, nothing much," Anri replied, "I was just in the area...or the

quadrant, give or take a parsec, and I thought I'd stop by because...well,

you come well recommended on the spiritual circuit. I mean, not everyone

can be the personal confessor to an extradimensional princess of Liaspar who

just happens to be an incarnation of the Champion of Life Eternal."

"Eh?" O'Rorke evidenced surprise in his expression, "My word, you do

seem rather well informed on the subject of Astarte. You must be one of her

friends from that group she hangs around with, not that I have much truck

with that sort. Masonic lodges, you know...the Church frowns upon

them-officially-but where would we be without that sort?"

"Indeed," Anri replied, "The College of Cardinals would have their

ranks sore depleted without them. But no, I'm not affiliated with that

group, nor any other you might happen to mention. In fact I can truthfully

say that wouldn't belong to a group that would have me for a member. Except

direct family, that is...I make them the rare exception."

"Ah, family," O'Rorke nodded sagely, "Well, in a way, Astarte and

her people are like my own extended family, and I do what I can for them to

provide the counsel of the Church and apply it to their rather colorful

lives. I have even been privileged to sometimes take part in their

adventures...and even more blessed to have survived such perilous

encounters..."

"Oh yes indeed you are," Anri nodded sagely, "Such as when you

journeyed with them to the homeland of the goddess, Tri-Longu, and that

other occasion when you braved the wrath of the Demon Lord Ashteroth

himself."

"You know of all that?" O'Rorke said in surprise, then eyed the

young-seeming man more shrewdly, "You must travel in some very interesting

circles..."

"I do get around, and I hear things," Anri shrugged, "But you don't

need to be on your guard around me. I am hardly an enemy come to coyly

sound you out for intimate secrets concerning Astarte Jones and her people.

There is actually very little that you know about them to which I am not

already privy. But you may say that I do have great regard for them as both

individuals and as true heroes of renown, or perhaps you might call me an

interested bystander. Either way I am as far from being their enemy as I am

akin to that fellow I am often mistaken for, for which I am still living

down the folly for his mythical creation."

"I beg your pardon?" O'Rorke asked in confusion.

"Let's just say that I have suffered often from the law of

unintended consequences," Anri noted, "And that no good deed ever truly goes

unpunished within this universe...at least as far as it goes with the

results of my well-meaning folly."

"Ah," O'Rorke nodded as if comprehending the fellow's meaning, "We

all fall short in the eyes of God, my son...it is the nature of being

human."

"Yes, but sometimes He falls short in my eyes," Anri countered, then

waved the point aside, "But again, as you way, it is a matter of perspective

that goes with being-at least technically-mortal."

"One should not presume to judge God by their own standards, my

son," O'Rorke gently chided, "We are not privy to His divine plan, nor can

we blasphemy by pretending to supercede His judgement."

"Actually you'd be quite amazed at much of what I would have to say

on that subject," Anri noted in sly humor, "But in a way you are right in

one respect...my interest concerning Astarte Jones and her people is far

from academic."

"Indeed?" O'Rorke noted shrewdly, encouraging the other man to

further elaborate.

"There is a situation developing far away from these shores that

involves myself and my kinfolk more directly with your charges," Anri noted,

"In fact, part of the reason that I came to you was to satisfy myself on a

few points, such as the role that you've played as spiritual counselor with

your various charges."

"Oh do you now?" O"Rorke asked warily, "Well...you must know that I

support the Church's position where it comes to the sacredness of

confession..."

"Oh, I didn't mean for you to divulge anything personal," Anri

assured him, "Besides which, as I have already told you, there is little

that you know that I'm not already aware of...such as your being the

Godfather of Tri-Longu's son and Catsclaw's daughters...both adopted and

natural. Or that you secretly officiated in a non-church sanctioned ritual

where Jones laid claim to her significant partners in the bonds of a

matrimony that your superiors would fail to recognize, and your Church

condemns as unnatural and against 'God's' divine mission."

"Who says that it is unnatural...and who presumes to claim what is

in the mind of God when He sanctions the union of two or more people?"

O'Rorke said firmly.

"The Pope for one," Anri said, and in his eyes there was a hint of

something other than amusement that belied the smile that he was wearing.

"Ah...the Pope," O'Rorke said sadly, "A basically decent man, full

of faults and failings like all of us who are sinners in the eyes of our

Heavenly Father. I pray constantly that God will lift his eyes so that he

may see what is in the heart of his advisors and take what actions would be

necessary to bring about a healing within the mother Church..."

"I fear it will take a good deal more than a sudden revelation to

the true nature of an institution to heal what is wrong within his house,"

Anri said slyly, "But you remain true to the ideals that many in your church

only mouth the words to, and I find that quite admirable, even if I might

disagree with you on one or two particular subjects."

"Such as?" O'Rorke asked curiously, conscious of the fact that

Matthew had been slowly easing away with rounded eyes as if seeking to put

as much distance between himself and the stranger as was possible without

being too conspicuous about it.

"Oh...just things," Anri replied with a shrug, "Apostolic

succession, the whole Infallibility thing, the presumption of the Church

that it can speak with authority to all other denominations, the celibacy

laws, the restrictions on divorce..."

"Ah yes," O'Rorke said sagely, "The usual litany. I am well

familiar with all of that..."

"Yes, you and Rabbi Kramer joke about it often enough whenever you

hang out together," Anri noted, "In fact that is part of the reason that I

felt drawn to have this chat with you. I wanted to know if you could answer

an important question in my mind, and it is a very important question

indeed, so bear with me, because you and I do not share the exact same

beliefs, and some of what I happen to think will no doubt offend you."

"I seriously doubt that, my son," O'Rorke replied, "And if there are

differences in our ways of perceiving the truth, then what of it? Where is

it written that all minds must be of one thought on every matter?

Personally I have always believed that if two people agree absolutely upon

everything then one of them is unnecessary, for truth is shared by those who

see from differing perspectives, and no two viewing the same object in

exactly the same light."

"Well said," Anri nodded, "Couldn't have put it better myself. But

then again, it is easy to dismiss differences until they become policy

matters that affect the lives of millions of people..."

"We are given free will and a choice for a reason, my good man,"

O'Rorke answered, "It's like the principle of IDIC...infinite diversity

through infinite combinations, and the whole forming a stronger union than

is known from the sum of the parts. The only true sin is in attempting to

force people to believe in what you hold sacred...a sin that I really

confess was committed by the Church in less enlightened ages..."

"And still is to a great degree," Anri noted, "As betoken by the

stated inflexibility your superiors demonstrate with you for allowing

yourself to consort with pagans, demons and unbelievers."

"Words," O'Rorke dismissed, "Labels meant to inflict harm without

understanding their true context. I have measured the worth of each of

those whom I 'consort with,' as you would have it, and I find them worthy in

God's eyes as each believes in doing that which is right in His eyes for all

of the right reasons."

"Even one born as a child to a demon such as Ashteroth?" Anri said

more pointedly.

"Even so...and especially her," O'Rorke affirmed, "I have seen

Astarte bleed and take injury on behalf of others. I have seen her

struggling with her inner nature and overcome the temptations of her baser

impulses to work for the betterment of a race that she so desperately clings

to...a humanity that does not always accept, understand or tolerate what she

is, yet for whom she would willingly sacrifice herself without hesitation.

If there is a better definition of heroism than that then I do not know what

it is, for while she is hardly what the Church would deem to be saintly, she

is far beyond the cast of those who would judge and condemn her for the mere

accident of her birth, if accident indeed it was since I have always

suspected that the Almighty has a purpose for her that surpasses the vision

of mere mortals."

"That would explain a lot," Anri mused, "But still those others that

you have mentioned, such as the Reverend Geoffrey Taylor..."

O'Rorke's pleasant demeanor momentarily gave way to a scowl of

almost venomous disapproval, "No reverend that man, for what does he revere

beyond the sound of his own voice? I know the kind of man whom Taylor is,

and those like him who speak on their own behalf. They voice with no

genuine authority their disdain for the true Lord's heavenly mission."

"You believe then that Jones is a servant of the All Mighty?" Anri

asked coyly.

"As strange as it might seem to others, yes," O'Rorke replied, "God

works His will in mysterious ways, and in Astarte He has forged a champion

who defends the earth against the likes of her own father's kind...and if

the love she feels for others can at all be judged as sinful, then it is a

love that surely God Himself has willed and sanctioned into being. So let

no one else presume to set their own petty judgement against her. I would

defend Astarte Jones against the Holy Office of the Vatican itself..."

"Indeed, it may yet come to that," Anri mused, "But do you love her

as a daughter or because she has taken pity on this poor benighted parish

and has become a major benefactor of your church in the absence of official

Vatican support, which I believe was recently withdrawn in a crude attempt

at bullying you into compliance with the Bishop's wishes."

"Astarte has acted from the wellspring of her own conscience, for

which God judges her worthy, and for whom I feel enormously grateful,"

O'Rorke responded, "But do not think my sentiments can be so easily bought

and sold that way when it comes to deeply held principles, my good Sir. If

I felt at all compelled to alter one jot of my opinion merely to assuage a

benefactor, why...then I would be little better than one who prostitutes his

faith for the sake of money..."

"I would never insult you by implying any such relationship," Anri

made appeasing motions with both hands, "Believe me, I am more than

passingly acquainted with those who market their beliefs within the sanctity

of a temple. I merely wanted to point out that this is how it might appear

to others who cannot understand the place where you come from on this

issue."

"People will talk and gossip where they will," O'Rorke said stoutly,

"But so long as I remain firm in what I know to be true then I will never be

found wanting in the eyes of the Heavenly Father."

"Well, that would certainly count for me," Anri smiled, "And it

ought to count for something that you stick to your guns when others would

sell out to the authority of their superiors, especially when they are as

stiff-necked as your Bishop Kendal."

"Ah, well...to every man there is a right to their opinions,"

O'Rorke replied, "And where it comes to Bishop Kendal and myself, there is a

natural point of disagreement. I can only pray that the Grace of the

Almighty will afford us some room for honest discord without making it a

formal point beyond which neither one of us can reconcile our views with one

another."

"I fear that you've already reached that point, possibly even

exceeded it," Anri replied, "And there is little hope of reconciliation when

the one in authority seeks to force a man like you to bend his way, even

knowing that the kind of man that you are would sooner break than give

ground on that which you hold sacred."

"I fear you may be right on that count," O'Rorke sighed, "But I can

hope that it doesn't come to this as there have been other such divisions

within the Church of late, and every time Rome tries to force its will upon

a congregation a little more of the Church itself begins to crumble at the

very foundations. All this talk of of schism is not an issue that I would

care to dwell upon if such a thought can be avoided. But, as you say, it

would never be wise to ignore the changes in the flow of the winds

themselves that batter away at the edifice that is Saint Peter's Cathedral."

"I have often wondered why it was called that since the Cephas I

knew never envisioned such a place, let alone have graced its borders," Anri

mused, "But...ah well, change is inevitable, much like the time that fellow

Luther nailed those complaints to the door of his church. I knew from the

start that it would lead to trouble, but who then could have imagined the

centuries of war that were to follow from that simple act of conscience?"

"You have a very odd way of looking at things," O'Rorke observed,

"Almost you talk of these events as though you had lived them."

"A figure of speech, nothing more, pay it no mind," Anri said

dismissively, "But we speak of you, my good sir, and what a man of such

integrity as you is doing clinging to a house that has fallen into disrepute

due to the arrogance and folly of the men who have sought to sustain it."

"Why should you take such an interest in me?" O'Rorke asked

directly, "I am nothing special."

"On the contrary," Anri assured him, "I find you very extraordinary,

if hardly unique in the type of man which you represent. Indeed, I am

always drawn by curiosity whenever I meet a man of such unimpeachable

integrity standing firm against the tide of ignorance and superstition that

is threatening civilization as we know it. Indeed, you appreciate more than

many how this world suffers at the hands of those who would pretend to offer

it a false kind of salvation. The kind of man whom you are, my good Father

O'Rorke, is one who-by your very honesty-puts the terror of virtue into

lesser men who find their own ethics sorely lacking when contrasted to your

example..."

"You are making fun of me," O'Rorke said, "One should hardly mock a

son of the Church Universal, my son. It's disrespectful to God..."

"Mock you?" Anri sniffed, "Not one tiddle, not one jot. You

misunderstand me completely, my good sir. I come to praise your works, not

to belittle either them or you. I merely speak the truth as I see it, that

you embody a type of Christian who almost redeems in my eyes the numerous

failings of others out there who do little but mock themselves by adhering

to their own false teachings."

"Who are you to decide if they are false or not?" O'Rorke asked him,

"That is God's task alone and is not within the province of mere mortals."

"You believe that you are more fit to determine the mind of the All

mighty than me?" Anri asked shrewdly, his mischievous expression alight with

subtle amusements.

"Not at all," O'Rorke assured him, "Only God may determine that

which is good or ill within the hearts of His children. I would merely

suggest that one not indulge in that most addictive of sports, the game of

Certainty where one places his values and opinions beyond the reproach of

others, ascribing his own wisdom-such as it is-with the sanctimonious

cast of self-vindication."

"Ah, I see," Anri noted, "So...you think being too sure of yourself

is a sin?"

"I believe that thinking too highly of your own opinions definitely

would count as both a sin and a blasphemy, to say nothing of being a base

assumption that is more like to mislead you to greater follies rather than

show you the lighter path that lends its way to the golden steps of Heaven."

"In other words a little bit of self-doubt is a healthy quality,"

Anri smiled, "I couldn't agree with you more, in fact I should go so far as

to say that the act of assumption of absolute truth is in itself a sin, the

sin of Hubris. For there is no one of us who is absolutely perfect...except

maybe for my little sister, against whom no ill word may ever be lightly

spoken."

"To my mind there is only one who was ever without fault or

failing," O'Rorke said, "Our Heavenly Lord and Savior...Christ Jesus."

"You think so?" Anri eyed the man shrewdly, "I would tend to

disagree with that completely."

"And why would you say such a thing?" O'Rorke asked.

"A simple observation, Father," Anri replied, glancing at the nearby

crucifix a bit sadly, "If he whom you claim to be perfect were without

fault, then why is it his words seem open to such free and wanton

misinterpretation? After all, there are many minds who seem divided over

points that would seem trivial upon the surface, and yet men have died and

have been willing to commit murder for the sake of their differing

interpretations."

"That much, as you say, is true," O'Rorke replied, "But I would hold

that it is the fault of those who fail to interpret His messages correctly,

rather than the message itself, which is not to be blamed here. For in my

mind the best approach to understanding the scriptures is to read them more

like a challenging puzzle than a set and clearly defined road map to

salvation. After all, a scholar and seeker of wisdom must always be humble

and not presume to jump to any hasty conclusions."

"Well said as such," Anri replied, "And yet again you fail to note

that the words recorded in your Bible are indeed so ambiguously worded, and

even at times self-contradictory, that nearly fifty differing translations

relate his story to the preferences of those with differing translations.

Surely if the teachings of your church were as Universal as you claim them

to be then all who read of his works would share a common grasp of the same

ideals, which I can assure you is far from the case."

"Again I maintain that the fault is with the reader, not in what is

being read, my son," O'Rorke affirmed simply, "If men would cease to impose

their preference upon divine scripture then they would truly be open to Him

so that He might lift the veil from their collective eyes and welcome them

openly into the spirit of universal brotherhood. Indeed, as Saint Augustine

himself stated plainly in his work, 'City of God...'"

"Ah yes, Augustine," Anri rolled his eyes, "Augustine the Hypocrite,

who fathered a child that he later abandoned, along with his mistress, when

he sought to appease his guilt by wantonly embracing the superstitious

beliefs of his notoriously Christian mother."

"Augustine admitted to his flawed and imperfect nature..." O'Rorke

started to say, when he saw the appeasing hand-motion of his guest, a

placating gesture that prompted him to fall respectfully silent.

"Forgive my rudeness, Father, for insulting one of your idols," Anri

urged, "I have my own issues with Augustine, but they needn't concern you at

the moment. I merely state for a fact that he was, as you have admitted, a

flawed and imperfect vessel for the message that he sought to deliver."

"I can accept this and forgive any offense that may have been given

on your part or mine, my son," O'Rorke replied, "I know that your words are

motivated from the best of intentions..."

"How do you know this?" Anri asked with a sardonic gleam in his

greenish eyes, "For all you know I could well be a servant of your

'Lucifer,' who has come to trick and mislead you into perdition."

"Perhaps," O'Rorke noted, "But I sincerely doubt such a thing to be

the case. After all, as you have noted, I've been around a bit and judge

myself a fair appraiser of the quality of the people with whom I have

encountered. I've seen the worst of fiends who relish nothing so much as to

sow torment and inflict suffering upon others, and I sense no such quality

of malice within you. If anything you are modest and self-effacing, and no

man possessed of such a humble quality of self-honest humor could find

comfort in serving the great Enemy of all who love virtue."

"In other words I look foul but feel fair?" Anri said in gentle

amusement.

"Hardly foul," O'Rorke chuckled, then more seriously asked, "Tell

me, good sir, are you alone in this world or have you the comfort of a soul

mate?"

"You mean am I married?" Anri grinned, "Actually, quite a number of

times...millions by proxy. I get kidded about it by my wife to no

end...that is, the one I have always actually down the aisle and said my

vows with, rather than those poor deluded girls who seem to think I favor

their abandoning the world for the cold comforts of a celibate lifestyle.

But then again, I have my own issues when it comes to Church policy in such

matters..."

"Alas, my vocation has forbidden me to partake of such an honor as

the comfort of a hearth and home," O'Rorke admitted, "But I am requited with

my love for the Church, which has been my family for lo these many years,

and I value it as both a House of God and as an Institution devoted to His

service."

"Your point being that I should respect your choice of lifestyle and

what it both has cost you and what it still offers?" Anri cocked one

eyebrow, "Fair enough, as far as that goes. But we have digressed away from

the subject of Certainty, which fuels much mischief in this world where some

prefer to think in absolutes of black and white, good and evil..."

"If all there was to life was a colorblind existence then we indeed

would have far less reason to hopeful," O'Rorke noted, "But Hope is the gift

that the Church has given to the world...the Hope of a better world, a

brighter future..."

"You mean one that nine tenths of humanity would have to die to

bring about?" Anri asked.

"Certainly not," O'Rorke reacted with offense, "To lose a single

life for the cause of bringing an end to the suffering and misery of this

world would be a tacit self-contradiction..."

"One promised abundantly in Revelation," Anri said grimly, "In fact

there are those who believe so strongly in the sacrifice of the majority for

the sake of the elect that they are willing-even eager-to bring about

Armageddon by their own actions."

"They do blaspheme to presume that their crimes have the sanction of

the All Mighty," O'Rorke said with deep conviction, "For no man is given to

know the time when the Lord shall return to us in glory and triumph..."

"You might be more surprised than you think on what would happen if

your 'Lord' were indeed to put in a personal appearance and make his true

point with those who claim to know his purpose," Anri nodded slowly, "But

you must agree with me, then, that the crime that these people commit is the

hubris of presumption? So wouldn't the wisest approach of all seekers of

the Faith be to not assume anything and rather let the spirit of inquiry

itself lead you to formulate your own opinion based on a reading from

differing sources?"

"Perhaps," O'Rorke replied, "It never hurts one to be open to the

ideas and thoughts of others, and if your way is true then it must be a

universal thought shared by differing minds throughout the ages. I have

often marveled at how a single profound idea can echo and reverberate down

the ages, taking many forms yet always the same in essence."

"Too true," Anri noted, "And yet at core you still proceed from a

root assumption whose validity I would challenge...that your faith and

devotion come from the inspiration of a single man whom you would name as

Christ Jesus. Indeed, you identify him as the living incarnation of the One

True God and see his path as the only true one leading to a life eternal."

"And why should I not believe such a thing?" O'Rorke asked, "Can you

prove to me that there is no God, or definitely state beyond question that

we are alone in the Universe?"

"Certainly not," Anri replied, "I would never state such things, let

alone assume them to be true like some so-called Atheist, who is in fact a

believer in things that can never be definitely proven. Indeed, I find

little difference between Atheists and Fundamentalists since both are

utterly convinced of their ways and have little or no use for those who hold

to a differing opinion."

"Interesting," O'Rorke replied, "So what is it that you believe, my

good sir, if I may be so bold as to venture?"

"What do I believe, Father?" Anri replied with a note of challenge

in his voice, turning from the man before him to cast a scornful eye upon

their immediate surroundings, "I believe that what was said before in a very

different time and setting still holds true today as it did in centuries

past...that men who worship icons in houses of cold stone are a poor legacy

to carry the ideals of a living, thriving religion. You may be shocked to

hear me say this to you, Father, but I see little worth saving in an

institution that is far more concerned with the letter of a law written in

ages past than it is with growing and adapting to the times as they have

revealed to us a different sort of wisdom. The spirit must prevail over the

flesh and blood that has been sacrificed to sustain such an unworthy altar,

and one day soon this house will tear itself asunder to render judgement on

its own most-'Holy' fathers, those errant knaves who claim descent from the

Apostles but who follow the ways of Paul, who was false in his teaching and

never truly earned his place at the feet of his purported 'Master.'"

"You speak grave things, my son," O'Rorke replied, "Surely you would

not cast so harsh a judgement upon the Church Universal?"

"Universal?" Anri scoffed, "Hardly that. If the teachings of this

Church are truly 'Universal' then they should belong to all men, and all

women as their equals...but if the teachings of your order are indeed the

only truth then that would mean all other ways are falsehood, and that only

a tiny minority of the souls who now inherit this world would have any hope

at all of finding their way out of perdition."

"But the Holy Father himself has said that other ways to God can be

as valid as the devotion of those people who practice the faiths of their

ancestors," O'Rorke protested.

"He merely acknowledged a fact that the rest of the world had

already assimilated long ago," Anri replied, "Late as usual. It seems that

your Church Elders are always far behind the curve when it comes to keeping

up with the march of history. In fact I find your order to be more of an

impediment to human growth and progress than the so-called 'Beacon of Hope'

that you would name it."

"It saddens me to hear you say this, my son," O'Rorke said somberly,

"For you commit the very sin that you would condemn in others, casting

judgement without knowing all of the facts..."

"Father," Anri said simply, "I know more of your so-called 'facts'

than you might ever well imagine, and believe me when I say that I know the

shape of humanity's collective will far better than you know your own

congregation. Of course there are many who do find the positive values that

you espouse and who find great comfort in such wisdom as the church does

offer to the struggling masses who comprise one fifth of the souls upon this

planet. But know this...merely offering some guidelines towards the

spiritual path can hardly redeem the centuries of toil and bloodshed that

have been expended for the sake of your order. I do not cast judgement on

you, as you would have it, but rather I bear witness to the judgement that

your faith has cast upon itself for I would not in all the world consign to

myself the role of judge. That is not my way, nor is it my purpose in this

life nor any other."

O'Rorke stared at the fellow before him and asked, "Who are

you...truly?"

Anri opened his mouth to speak, considered his words then thought

better of it, casting a glance at the cowering Matthew as he smiled and

said, "No one of any great consequence, save to myself and those to whom I

am sworn to protect and guide upon my pathway. I consider myself a teacher

and fancy that I have some small wisdom to offer to those who care to listen

to my musings."

"Then we are well met, even if I disagree with you upon many things,

my son," O'Rorke smiled back, "Indeed, it is always refreshing to encounter

an articulate young man such as yourself, who can offer an old man the sport

of a mental challenge. Indeed, it takes me back to my debating days when I

was just a humble seminarian and had not even the right to call myself a

Brother to the Monks who were my teachers."

"Good times, eh?" Anri asked.

"The best," O'Rorke sighed, "Back then the Church was not so far

into decline, and we had hopes that the Second Vatican Council would spark

the birth of a new Renaissance within the Lord's Church, but...it was not to

be, alas..."

"Because those old hearts within the Curia, who hated change beyond

all other things, subverted the will of your Bishops," Anri explained, "They

forced the adoption of the obscenity known as 'Humana Vitae' as a remedy

against the recent discoveries of medical science regarding the positive

values of human sexuality. Like always they sought to turn back the tide of

change by relegating to sexuality its traditional role as the cause of human

sinfulness, consigning only to marriage as the only acceptable practice that

justifies the simple act of reproduction."

"It was the will of His Holiness at the time to adopt Humana Vitae

into law for the Church Universal," O'Rorke reluctantly conceded.

"Only because a minority of Bishops twisted his arm and forced that

weak-willed cleric to adopt their superstitious prattle into canon," Anri

said with a hint of real exasperation, "They presumed to know the intent of

the One and committed great blasphemy, and as a punishment for their sin the

Church has gone into a gradual decline with most practicing Catholics

willfully disregarding whichever commandments they find the most

inconvenient, whether it be divorce laws or the size of the condom they use

to prevent the spread of sexual diseases. Would you have me compliment them

for so skillfully undermining the progress that Vatican II gave to the

Church, thus destroying the hope of change for generations that were to

follow?"

O'Rorke glanced away and said, "No...I would not expect that of you,

my son. Indeed, within my own heart I have long nursed serious qualms and

grievances over how some in our church behave wither it is in the avoidance

of scandal or the appearance of impropriety that fuels many of the problems

that beset us in the present."

"And yet in spite of this you would remain a loyal, devout son of

Rome, even as some within the church plot secretly against those who think

just like you?" Anri wondered.

"For all the many faults of the Church, I still believe in what it

stands for," O'Rorke replied, "And I refuse to give up all hope of change so

long as the mission is good and the people strive to bring change to those

who are resistant to its calling."

"I see," Anri turned and directed his level stare in Matthew's

direction, "And you, Yariquel...is this also what you purport to believe

these days?"

Despite his evident fear, still the former demon managed to blurt

out, "No...I do not share his beliefs, and I freely acknowledge the validity

of much of what you say, Binder."

"And yet you remain at his side as a loyal acolyte?" Anri persisted.

"I do," Matthew replied, managing to scrounge up enough courage to

add, "Because I believe in Father O'Rorke completely...and I will stand with

him no matter what becomes of this congregation."

"I am impressed," Anri said with complete sincerity, turning to

O'Rorke and saying, "One does not find such loyalty easily among his

kind...usually it is the dread of their dark master that alone can prompt

them to such self-effacement. A testament to the effect that you have had

on him that he can even abide to be near me when his every instinct for

survival is telling him to flee my presence."

"Why should he flee from you?" O'Rorke scowled, "Is there cause why

he should fear you?"

"Only in that my name is often invoked by his kind to frighten their

children into obedience," Anri smiled, "But this Matthew has nothing to fear

from me so long as he is true to your service. "

"Then we both have nothing to fear," O'Rorke said stoutly, "For my

faith is in the Lord, and one day I hope to convince Brother Matthew to

embrace the calling. Until then I will allow no evil to befall him, let

alone within my presence."

"And no evil will I give to either of you," Anri nodded simply, "I

thank you, Father. You have been most kind in suffering my company and I am

indebted to you for helping me to answer my question."

"What question is that?" O'Rorke allowed confusion to briefly play

out on his expression, "I didn't hear you offer one..."

"Not aloud you mean," Anri winked, "But the question was there

nonetheless, and you have answered it most ably."

Despite himself Matthew felt compelled to ask, "What question did

you offer to him, Binder?"

"A simple one," Anri replied, "Over whether or not there is merit or

none in allowing this church to continue. Reluctantly I must once again

conclude that there is, for if this faith can yield even one such as you,

Father Conal O'Rorke, to champion its cause then there must indeed be some

slim sliver of hope for the rest of humanity, and as such I will honor the

consensus."

O'Rorke eyed the stranger as if only now appreciating that there

was more to him than was evident upon the surface, but since he was himself

no stranger to beings who could appear as "merely" human yet possess a "more

than human" nature he took this merely in stride and said, "I am honored

that you took this time to chat with me, my son, and wish you well in your

endeavors."

"On the contrary," Anri smiled back, "It is I who am honored to have

had this meeting. Go well in the eyes of the One, Father, and may happiness

one day finds its way again into this house, which is sanctified by your

very presence."

"That may be going a bit far, but I am grateful that you find me so

worthy in your eyes, my son," O'Rorke replied, "I do hope that we can

converse like this again on some future occasion."

"I would like that, Father," Anri smiled, then turned a stern look

towards the cowering Matthew, "As for you, K'rues'vara, behave yourself and

keep out of mischief. I have high hopes for you and will trust that you

will continue in your support of your benefactor."

Matthew swallowed a thick lump within his throat and could only

weakly nod assent to the unspoken commandment that he read so clearly in the

eyes of the legendary Binder of Spirits.

"Until the next time," Anri smiled, then took a step backwards into

the shadows and vanished completely into the folds of the morning-darkened

temple.

O'Rorke continued to stare at the place where the stranger had been

then remarked to himself aloud, "A curious fellow. Who was he truly,

Matthew, and why do you so fear him?"

Matthew considered answering his mentor truthfully, but the memory

of the warning stare that the Binder had given him held his tongue silent,

so after a moment's pause (and a nervous cough) he managed to stammer out,

"Among my people he is known by many names, and he is both a friend and

protector to humans who is rightfully feared and respected by all

demons...but beyond this I cannot say. You should ask him yourself, Father,

if you wish a more direct answer."

O'Rorke nodded thoughtfully and seemed to accept this, then after

another moment he shrugged, "Well, I suppose it hardly matters. Another

ally to humanity is certainly welcome, but we have little need of a

protector when the Lord himself is our guidance, so...let us resume the

preparations for the day. We have dallied long enough upon this matter...it

is better to turn our thoughts towards the important task of greeting the

Lord's congregation."

"As you say, Father," Matthew averred, yet when his mentor turned

away to attend to preparations for the weekly Sunday service he failed to

catch sight of his demon ward as Matthew turned his gaze towards the

crucifix that stood at the far end of the Chancel, and out of both reverence

and dread he quickly made a motion to cross himself, altering the

traditional hand-gesture ever-so-slightly to reflect what he knew to be a

much older-and far more symbolic-sign of respect to that being whom he

knew to be so poorly reflected in that image, and he silently shuddered,

hoping fervently to be elsewhere the next time the man named "Anri" chose to

grace this Church with his august presence...

And then, without further adieu, he followed his own repressed

inclinations and gave way to a fainting spell, which granted him the

temporary respite of oblivion from having to recall those greenish

eyes...and the hidden puissance that Matthew had sensed contained within

them...

"Gnuh..." Ranma grimaces as he dug himself out from the solid rock

surface upon which he had recently impacted, "That could've gone a lot

better than it did..."

He tried to shrug but found himself immobilized by the press of

stone and the aches that racked a large part of his body. Consciously he

tried to will himself to heal much faster as he could not afford to let

himself be waylaid this soon and this easily in his battle with his

opponent. With some effort he managed to partially dislodge one arm and

liberate it from impress of granite that had trapped it for some moments,

and then with even greater effort he won his other arm free, and then tried

to use both to pry himself out of the crater, managing to achieve a sitting

stance before he sensed the near approach of his enemy and glanced up in

dismay to see him stalking purposefully in his direction.

"Kuso," Ranma murmured, and redoubled his efforts at freeing his

lower body.

Udan walked towards him as though in no great hurry, his stride as

easy as it was unrelenting, his stony gaze fixed and set with unreadable

emotions that made him seem more than ever like a literal force of nature.

He did not seem the least bit concerned when Ranma managed to finally stand

up and spread his legs out in order to regain some sense of balance, and

when the Saotome heir squared himself and tried to summon his energies it

brought nothing more than a flicker of interest in the dark eyes of the Dark

Man, who commanded far greater power than anyone whom Ranma had faced before

in a thousand-thousand battles.

With every scrap of power that he had Ranma tried to launch an

attack against his opponent when Bartev came within the reach of a Mako

Takabishi, and yet no sooner did Ranma cup his hands and start to swell with

fury then Udan somehow crossed the distance between them and placed one hand

over the face of the astonished Timecop. All at once Ranma felt himself

being gripped between the cheeks by a vice that threatened to compress his

cheekbones into powder, and then the next thing he knew he was being slammed

backward into the rock with force enough to compress a mountain, which even

for an Avatar of Shiva was quite impressive, to say nothing of painfully

devastating.

You are weak, Saotome. Your previous attack drained you quite

severely.

"Fuck you!" Ranma snarled, sheer stubborn determination causing him

to shrug off his daze as he attempted to retaliate, but his efforts were

like those of a small child trying to break the grip of a literal giant.

Udan's eyes gleamed like polished basalt as he eyed the younger man,

whom he was gripping now by the scruff of his neck. Though he was outwardly

silent as always, still Ranma could hear words in his mind that seemed to

emanate from everywhere and spoke with the gravel-toned authority of a God

of Stone, among mere mortals.

Mere defiance and pride are not enough for you to face me. Come

now, Shiva, is this how you serve your servants when they fight your

battles? Show me the power for which you are considered a legend.

Ranma's eyes blazed as power began to seek into his limbs as the

Hindu God of Destruction came to the fore, but with great effort Ranma

refused what Shiva had to offer.

"Back off, I can do this thing by myself," he growled, and then

contrived to move with skill and energy as he broke free of the grip of the

Dark Man, somersaulting to a nimble crouch as he managed to confront his foe

from a distance of several meters.

"You think I need Shiva's help against the likes of you, Guy?" Ranma

scoffed, drawing back his hands and channeling his Ki to pool inside him,

and then flow down his arms to shape a ball of light, which he held for

several seconds before releasing, casting it towards Udan in point-blank

fury.

But the energy of the ball broke apart and dissipated upon impact

against Lord Udan, who stood as if merely amazed by the gesture, easily

absorbing Ranma's energy into his own body, then shaping a ball of his own

in greenish potency that he aimed to throw back into the face of his

opponent.

Here, your turn, catch!

There was utterly no chance of dodging or avoiding the terrifyingly

potent thing, so Ranma used the only option available and reached out with

both hands to catch the ball of force before it could strike him more

directly. Searing pain and agony shot up his arms as Ranma gasped and fell

backwards by several paces, forced to retreat by the intensity of the thing,

yet not daring to let go either as the ball of force drove him against his

own heels, and by turn caused him to grit his teeth and make a grunting

noise quite similar to screaming.

And yet he did not break or bend as he managed to absorb the worst

of the ball's energy, then he fell back with a grimace, his hands smoldering

with the effort to contain the furious potency of it all, but gradually he

did manage to contain it, then smothered it utterly between his palms as he

brought both hands together and absorbed the brunt of the Daokan's energy

ball, snuffing it out like the wick of a candle...or possibly even a blow

torch of unimaginable intensity.

When this was done he glared back at his foe and muttered the single

word, "Bastard."

To which Bartev only inclined his head respectfully, as if taking no

offense from the label.

From one to another. Your move.

Ranma could only barely manage to stand erect, but still he forced

his tired and battered body to lurch forwards, summoning as much energy as

he dared through his link with Lord Shiva to accelerate his natural healing

talents, moving more rapidly as he closed the distance between him and

managing even to achieve a level of his old speed as he swung his fist and

aimed at Udan's exposed solar plexus.

Udan did not even bother to dodge as the hand struck hard and firm

at what should have been a vulnerable area, but he did not even grimace nor

wince at the stunning impact, merely continued to smile in a darkly

confident matter as Ranma took a step back and looked on in astonishment,

surprised that even one of the Eluini lord's considerable abilities could

effortlessly shrug off an attack that could have split an entire mountain in

twain. Indeed his own hand throbbed with pain as if felt like he had

bruised one of his own knuckles on the impact.

Have you learned nothing as yet? I am not merely a mountain, I

contain the power of the entire planet within my grasp. To wound me you

must do considerably better.

And then Udan illustrated his point by moving his own fist forward,

a punch that seemed both slow and unhurried yet which sent alarm bells

ringing all the way down the spine of the Saotome heir, and without needing

to think twice about it Ranma dodged to the side rather than attempt to

absorb this punch as he had Udan's energy ball.

And well indeed that he should do so, because when the punch

completed its arc there was a massive shockwave felt reverberating within

the air and the very earth upon which they were standing. It lanced out to

well beyond the horizon and split the ground asunder as though an

unimaginably large ax had descended from the heavens to carve a trench

within the mantle that went deep enough to expose a bed of subsurface lava.

Ranma stared in dismay at this trench the uttered a single word,

"Oboy..."

Now do you at last understand?

The question came as a warning that was followed up by an attack

that nearly caught the Saotome heir napping. Only the superb skills and

superior speed of a lifetime of intensive training could have saved Ranma

from suffering a similar fate to the face of the planet as Udan came on like

a freight train of unstoppable motion. Fists moved with blinding speed and

prompted Ranma to counter-attack and deflect this unexpected offensive, but

even with every technique in his arsenal on display he still found his

skills sorely wanting as Udan managed to land a blow on the tenth

consecutive try, and that single punch by itself sent Ranma flying backward

as though he had been punched by nose-tip of a speeding rocket.

A lesser being would have been splattered all over the countryside,

but Ranma merely dug a new ditch in the soil that stretched out for a mile

and sent walls of dirt arching up to either side at a height of more than

twenty meters.

Ranma shook himself and felt his jaw then gaped with amazement as he

found his foe standing directly before him, almost seeming to have

materialized on the spot rather than follow his opponent by linear motion.

The next thing that he knew was that Udan was gripping him by the jacket and

lifting him by one hand to near-eye level, his implacable expression

radiating confidence that this fight was already a foregone conclusion.

Technique alone is not enough to win a battle...neither is power

alone, but rather the successful combination of the two. But ultimately

technique loses out to determination, and victory often is won by the

fiercer opponent. Besides this be mindful that every skill you have is

already known by me, and I was a master of the unarmed arts of combat long

before your people colonized the Island of Honshu and displaced the Ainu who

had long lived there before you.

Ranma grit his teeth and said, "You wanna bore me to death by

talking?"

Udan smiled.

Hardly...but you are being foolish to refuse Shiva's aid in this

endeavor. Without him you have no prayer of facing me in battle, and even

with him supplying your needs you are still millennia behind me as a

fighter. Better to let your union flourish so that Shiva and I may resume a

feud that is older than mountains, which you and I settle the issues that

yet stand between us.

Ranma realized that this was true and knew at once that his pride

was keeping him back from fulfilling his part of this uneven battle, so he

reluctantly surrendered to the obvious and allowed the rage of Shiva to

engulf his very being. Fortified by this inexhaustible energy his eyes took

on the glow of crimson fire and with a voice that shook from the very

heavens he addressed himself to his opponent.

"You have asked for this, Daokan, and now you shall reap what you

sow!"

Without the slightest bit of effort he broke Udan's grip then struck

hard and fast against the Blackguard, managing to drive Udan back by several

paces while his body moved like lightning, the fire of Destruction Incarnate

no longer held in check by the limitations of mortality.

A hundred blows he rained down upon Udan, striking against and again

against the indomitable Blackguard and causing the Lord of Earth and Water

to give ground by several more paces. But when Shiva-Ranma paused to

regather his strength and take stock of his efforts he was astonished to see

Udan straightening up and easily shrugging off those hundred blows, smiling

as confidently as ever while making a show of cracking knuckles in

anticipation of a battle more worthy of his efforts.

Now you are getting serious...but be mindful, Shiva, it has been

centuries since the last time we exchanged blows and my power has increased

exponentially over the ages. If you battle me now you must extend more of

yourself than ever, and be mindful of the fragility of your host body as he

can only endure so much of your being within that shell of flesh you both

are wearing.

Ranma felt his lip curl in a sneer as words borne of his fusion with

Shiva flowed from his lips, "Do you delight in taunting me, Warrior? I had

thought you far above such petty emotions."

Udan moved into a warrior's crouch, raising his hands for the first

time in a formal "Boxer's" stance with fists held at the ready.

I do not taunt. I merely state as fact that you both will have to

work for it if you both expect to survive this encounter.

Shiva-Ranma fell into a similar such stance and scowled mightily as

he prepared to unleash the power of Destruction upon his foe, hardly needing

to concern himself here with "collateral damage" as the lifeless planet

around them fairly cried out for the mercy of extinction.

"Be careful what you wish for, Lord Udan, for you may well discover

it a dish not to your liking."

Udan's eyes gleamed with amusement in response to this.

We will see. Meanwhile...have at you!

And so the battle was joined in earnest, a contest between two

Champions of Order whose combined might was beyond imagination with the

planet itself shuddering for the outcome, and Death waiting in the offing

for the one who would shortly be found lacking...

Meanwhile, back in a dimension where the forces of Life and Death

still maintained a relative balance...

Three young girls were nervously edging along past armed guards as

they crept into a highly restricted part of the vast secret complex known as

NERV headquarters. Two of them were roughly sixteen years of age (give or

take a few months between them) while the third was a hardy nineteen with

short-cropped strawberry-blonde hair and a highly athletic profile that her

two companions could only envy. The other two, another blonde and a brunet,

were following the older girl's lead as she took them past security check

points that they by-passed with a "borrowed" ID card, penetrating deep

within the compound with a guilty sense of shared mutual adventure, all too

aware that-should they be caught-there would be severe reprisals against

them for their not-so-juvenile trespass.

At last the lead blonde paused and signaled to her friends that they

had arrived at the final check point, then carefully she moved forward while

the second blond did something with a remote control radio pad, the brunette

eyeing her companions warily while stealing nervous glances over one

shoulder.

"Ready?" the lead blonde asked.

The second blonde paused then said, "Done. I've overridden the

codes for the hall monitoring system. The cameras should point well away

from us for at least the next two minutes."

The leggy brunette turned and confirmed for herself that the hall

cameras were indeed facing away in different directions, then turned an

appreciative smile upon her friend and said, "Ritsuko, you're amazing!"

Despite a habitual modesty that had earned her a "Cold Fish"

reputation, the young girl known as Ritsuko Akagi could not help glancing

back at her best friend with a somewhat smug expression, "Of course,

Misa-chan. Are you only just figuring that out?"

"Would you two keep it down all ready?" the strawberry blonde in

their lead hissed sharply while sliding the ID card through the appropriate

slot and obtaining a satisfying "bleep" of recognition, "We've been lucky

enough so far to escape detection, but if you chatterboxes make any more

noise then someone's going to come to investigate, then we're all gonna be

in a lot of big trouble."

"Sorry about that, Reiko-Sempai," Ritsuko said apologetically while

the three of them slipped into the ultra-top secret laboratory and heard the

doors hiss closed behind them. Only then did the three of them relax as she

pronounced for their benefit, "By the way, I've already nixed the monitoring

system here, and I've fed the cameras on a feedback loop so they only

transmit the same images over and over."

"Good," the girl named Reiko Hiyame said while straightening up and

turning around to face her two younger companions, "Just remember, I only

agreed to show you kids in here because you both convinced me that this was

too important to keep just to myself. I mean...after all, considering all

the scary stuff they do around here, what with the Black Ops science

projects, the Frankenstein work your Moms do in these laboratories..."

"My Mom's not a Frankenstein!" young Misato Katsurugi protested,

"Just 'cause my parents work for that creepy Mister Ikari..."

"Let's not waste time fretting over labels," Ritsuko insisted, "You

told us that this was where they were holding the Kirin..."

"Right," Reiko turned around then again took the lead, going over to

a section of the laboratory where a complex array of high-tech diagnostic

machines were gathered about a containment cylinder that was, at the moment,

closed and shielded. It was to this device that the older girl came to a

halt, then turned again to her companions and gave them an overly dramatic

look of caution.

"At first I didn't believe what they told me about him being a

Kirin...but tests confirm it beyond all doubt that he has Kirin blood, and

he's been under close observation since they brought him here a couple of

days back."

"How the heck did they confirm that his blood was part Kirin?"

Misato wondered, "I thought they were supposed to be mythical, like Unicorns

and dragons…"

"Or virgins who would prefer to remain celebate and single before

they are married?" Ritsuko asked slyly of her companion, earning a sour look

from Misato's direction.

"For your information I've only dated one boy so far, and I wouldn't

let that creep get to first place if his life depended on it. That Akaji's

such an arrogant, stuck up prick that he might as well be dating himself for

all the company he needs on a Saturday evening."

"Well, I can't attest to having much of a social life myself,"

Ritsuko shrugged, scanning the laboratory with keen interest, "Aside from

the two of you I haven't many friends, and with my mother always buried away

in her research…"

"Right," Misato waved the tired point of their mutually empty social

lives and said, "Let's just get this over with now before we get caught and

thrown into permanent detention. Now…just what the heck would the people at

NERV here be doing studying a Kirin?"

"Hey, don't look at me," Reiko shrugged, "I'm as in the dark about

that as the both of you. I mean…Kirins are supposedly holy creatures who

dwell among the heavens and serve as intermediaries for the gods. But this

one looks human…at least on the surface level, and even so he's got unusual

features and characteristics that have the lab people here burning the late

hours trying to figure out."

"We understand the level of interest and concern this has

generated," Ritsuko nodded, "Can you open this so that we may see this Kirin

for ourselves?"

Reiko shrugged, "Unfortunately they didn't provide me with the

access code, but...I was thinking that you with your skills as a hacker..."

"Right," Ritsuko turned back to her data pad and began keying in a

series of numbers, then after a moment got the right combination and pressed

the "Enter" key, which caused a hissing noise from the cylinder, and a

moment or two later the shields slid back to reveal their hidden contents.

Misato gasped, "That's a Kirin?"

"Well...half-Kirin anyway," Reiko shrugged as she stared in wonder

at the floating body within the containment cell, "He's immersed in

oxygenated water with sedative agents helping to keep him from regaining

consciousness, but they're pretty sure about him being at least partially

human to judge by the preliminary tests. He's about your age, or possibly

even younger, and he's a highly trained and dangerous fighter. Tore up a

local school from what I heard about things, killed their principal and

everything and came damned close to offing several of the students before

they managed to subdue him."

"Fascinating," Ritsuko said as she stared in wonder at the young boy

hovering unconsciously within the container, "And my mother has been

supervising the investigation?"

"Well, considering how your Mom's the chief Witch Doctor around

here," Reiko shrugged, "I'd be surprised if she hasn't been spending half

the hours in her busy days coming in here to keep tabs on what the regular

lab-coats are doing. Mind you, I'm just part of the Security detail around

here, and I'm not really big on all this tech stuff..."

"Yeah, we know," Misato remarked, eyeing their friend with more

sympathetic regard, "You don't really like scientists all that much, do

you?"

"Considering what my idiot brother is like, can you blame me?" Reiko

snapped, "I mean, talk about winning your way on a one-way ticket to the

psyche ward! My brother takes the cake for sheer lunatic mad scientist

behavior."

"You have been rather unlucky in that department, as we both have

noticed," Ritsuko said sympathetically while continuing to stare in wonder

at the floating half-Kirin.

"No kidding," Misato winced, "I mean...he used to be respected

around here as a brilliant and promising tech, but then he goes nuts and

starts calling himself Lord...what was that name again?"

"Ilpalatzo," Reiko said with a wince, "Something he probably made up

after reading a comic book. I mean, who seriously plots to take over the

world from an underground hide-out that's actually a part of the Tokyo Sewer

System? And that clone he made of me...creepy and disgusting! She's like a

manic gerbil on Speed with the brains of a pea and the hormones of an alley

cat! Yeesh!"

"Yeah, totally the opposite of the way you normally are, right?"

Misato quipped, earning a glare from the older of her two companions.

"I was rather amused by your brother's whole rant about changing the

world through his secret 'Ideological' organization," Ritsuko said with an

amused twist to her lips, "He truly does live in a world all to himself,

does he not?"

"That's my brother for you?" Reiko rolled her eyes, "Frankly I hope

they dissect that clone he named Excel to find out what makes her so

freakishly immortal. The way I hear it if you shoot her in the head she

goes down for a minute or two then springs back up like she just took a

short cat-nap. Probably doesn't even miss the extra brain matter. I'd like

to have some of her energy without going totally around the bend. I

mean...according to the reports she's got a super-fast regenerative system

that makes that gaijin named Logan look totally anemic..."

"Or like that other girl your brother managed to find and rope into

his delusions," Ritsuko noted, "I believe they have her in a different

containment cell somewhere on this level. From what I've been able to glean

from hacking into my mother's files she's some sort of Necrophage, a being

who survives by absorbing a type of negative life energy that's the opposite

of whatever force it is that makes your clone twin so nearly

indestructible."

"Way I hear it she's supposedly a Princess from Mars, a Barsoomian,

or something like that," Misato shrugged while studying the Kirin with rapt

fascination, "From what I've heard she keeps passing out from a lack of CO2

in her bloodstream...but how the heck can she breathe Carbon Dioxide?"

"They're still trying to figure that one out," Reiko shrugged, "But

in a way it makes sense if you consider that Mars's atmosphere is mostly

Carbon Dioxide vapor. The tech boys say her people built Oxygen Machines

near the end of their civilization, about a million or so years back, so

they froze the Princess in ice for all that time. Don't ask me how she's

survived to this day...if that's what she did since she seems more like a

Zombie who overdosed on Malox. She keeps dying every time they revive her

but somehow she manages to come back to life again and again every few

minutes."

"Yes, but as fascinating as all of that is, it pales in significance

to the discovery of this boy," Ritsuko marveled, "Imagine...a half-breed

Kirin in this day and age...what are the odds of that? And what wonders

could be discovered if we should uncover more of his people?"

"Yeah, you wonder about that, Ritsuko," Misato winced, "But you ask

me this is just further evidence that the people around here value science

over humanity. I mean...sure this guy must have done something bad and

deserves to get locked up for whatever crimes he's committed, but...even so

he doesn't deserve to be treated like this."

"You got a better idea?" Reiko asked, "You want to let him run free

again, Misa-chan? Keep in mind he's got enormously destructive power in

those clawed hands of his, and he was wielding this really big sword the

size of a truck that he could swing with one hand..."

"Indeed?" Ritsuko glanced sidelong at their friend, "Can we see it?"

"It's in another part of the lab," Reiko replied with a shrug, "I

don't have the access codes for that level."

"Too bad," Misato remarked, staring at the floating youth within the

containment cylinder, "It still seems wrong to keep him like that. I

mean...he could be the last member of a dying race that's far older than

man, and he's human enough to have rights..."

"He's also, I understand, a Christian fanatic," Ritsuko observed, "A

member of a dangerous cult that has ties to the Korean Unification Church,

and a Toishindin fighter besides this."

"Yeah, I know he's bad news, Ritsu-chan," Misato complained, "But

still..."

All at once the air was split by the sound of noises as alarms went

off as lights began flashing and claxon bells rang out throughout the whole

complex.

"What'd we do?" Misato cried with a start.

"Don't look at me!" Reiko shot back with a look of near-panic, "I

didn't touch anything, honest!"

"No wait...it's not us," Ritsuko hastily informed them, glancing at

her data pad then saying, "Something else triggered the alarms...it's an

attack upon the complex!"

"What?" Misato whirled about to stare at her best friend with

amazement.

"An attack on the NERV central?" Reiko gaped in dismay, "By who?"

"I don't know," Reiko continued to press buttons upon her hand-held

portable (and personally hand crafted) control relay device, then she called

up a picture on the three-inch wide display screen, "But from the looks of

thing's it's probably an Angel."

"An Angel?" Misato said in surprise.

"I thought the prophesy was that the Angels would not attack us for

another decade," Reiko stammered in dismay, "We're not yet ready!"

"The time estimation was worked out by the Magi, the computer relay

network that my mother has been working on for the last few years," Ritsuko

noted, "But there is no mistaking it...there is an Absolute Terror field

that is being generated on a scale that is truly beyond imagining."

"An AT field?" Misato winced, "Against here?"

"Apparently," Ritsuko noted, "I suggest the three of us should call

a halt to our investigation and leave this level of the complex before we

are discovered."

"You don't have to tell me twice," Reiko assured them as she was

already moving to the exit, only to halt in her tracks as she heard a series

of clicking sounds coming from the electronic door, and then with a bland

expression she reluctantly amended, "Or not..."

"What the hell?" Misato said as she went up to the door and tried to

open it, then said, "It's locked!"

"So I have noticed," Ritsuko replied while studying her monitoring

display panel upon her device, "Automatically locked by the Emergency

Security Protocols that go into effect when the base is facing immanent

attack. Effectively these labs and other high-priority facilities are in

complete lock down, and I'm at a loss over what to do about it since these

devices seem to be resisting my mother's personal override code..."

"You mean we're trapped here?" Reiko reacted, "But we're gonna get

caught if somebody comes to investigate, or they run a diagnostic and

discover that tape feed loop you've got running!"

"Oh man, no way am I gonna sit here and wait to get discovered,"

Misato winced, "Dad would have a fit, and mom would be all over me like a

ton of bricks, to say nothing of what those security goons would do to us

for sneaking in here and finding this guy on the rocks."

"We may not be so lucky as to survive that long if this place is

under attack by an Angel," Ritsuko noted, "But what could be sending out an

AT field that strong? It's way more powerful than anything my mom's

computers have projected for one of the Neflim. In fact, if I didn't know

any better, I'd swear that these were the reading for a major God or

Goddess...but what would one of them be doing in Japan and paying a visit to

NERV central?"

"Who knows," Reiko shrugged, "You want to ask him when he shows up?"

"Uh uh, no way," Misato insisted, casting an eager eye around the

place before saying, "There's gotta be a way out of here, some air vent or

access port in the floor..."

"No good," Ritsuko replied, "The designers of this complex have

already thought of that, and it's triple security on the walls and floor.

We may as well get comfortable and wait to see what happens, because it's a

sure enough thing that we're going no where at the moment."

"Oh man, I never should have let you talk me into taking you guys

here," Reiko winced, "This'll end my career with the security forces for

sure, and with my luck I might wind up sharing a neighboring padded cell

with my idiot brother."

"Curious," Ritsuko said as she studied her note pad.

"Uh oh," Misato glanced at her friend with worry, "I know that

look..."

"I'm making out a resonant reading coming directly from this

laboratory," Ritsuko revealed, "Something here is reacting to the AT field

outside of this complex...but what..."

"You mean...him?" Reiko pointed to the floating youth within the

cylinder, then all three young girls looked on in dismay as they say the boy

named David begin to react as though caught in the grips of a nightmare,

writing in his drug-induced sleep as though something were confronting him,

and without knowing it his body began glowing a faintly golden resonant

halo...

Meanwhile, just outside of a hidden side-entrance to the base, a

large disguised tunnel through which NERV regularly transported machinery of

a size too great to move through one of the lesser tunnels...

Amalthea Kirinsdaughter stared in wonder at her Mistress as the Lady

Ulsa Laolana stood motionless before the giant cliff face before them,

staring as if peering through the stone into the heart of something that was

earning her disapproval, for her gentle features were registering a frown of

mild concentration.

All around them, however, there was activity of one sort or another

with hidden weapon systems popping out of concealment to attempt to repel

their intrusion, firing off rapid heavy-caliber machine guns, lasers and

explosive shells in their direction. None of this came near to touching

them as something deflected the lasers, bombs and bullets so that they

exploded harmlessly on the edge of what seemed like an invisible force

field. Lady Ulsa hardly bothered to notice as the intensive fire rained

down on them from multiple directions, having all the effectiveness of rain

drops against an umbrella as she continued to fix her gaze at the cliff face

itself, not even winking in her efforts to penetrate to the depths of

whatever lay hidden within its stony facade.

At their side the huge reptilian shape of the draconic Luna held

firm in its regard of this furious onslaught, wings raised as though to beat

the air while Luna cried out her defiance at the unseen attackers, claws

pawing the ground with eagerness to unleash her own fury against whatever

might be out there.

Patience. Your time is near at hand, dear Luna.

"My lady?" Amalthea asked in surprise.

Ulsa relaxed by a fraction and turned to regard her sworn servant

with gentle eyes alight with deep compassion.

I have detected the place where your brother is being held. He is

unconscious but quite well, and we can now move to liberate him from this

hell that is his prison.

"My brother?" Amalthea tightened her grip upon her giant

boomerang-like weapon, the Hirokotetsu, "What are they doing to him? Why

are they keeping him here as a prisoner?"

Ulsa smiled gently and inclined her head in the Kirin girl's

direction.

All will be revealed at the appropriate time. For now be ready. I

will be depending on you both to draw the fire of those who defend this

complex. Leave to me the heavy tasks, and try to avoid killing anyone if it

possibly can be avoided.

"I understand, my lady," Amalthea nodded back, "Luna and I will do

our best to defend you."

The dragon Luna roared assent, and beat the air again with her

wings, almost a hundred feet long now and full of a fury that was worthy of

her legendary parents.

Ulsa turned back to the cliff face them extended both hands as

though making a supplication, then brought her palms together in a clap and

made a parting motion as though parting a silk screen partition.

To Amalthea's considerable surprise the cliff wall shook and

trembled in response to this, and then, to her dismay, the wall began to

recede and slide away, parting to reveal a huge steel doorway that looked

like the closed mouth to a massive tunnel. It was over fifty meters in

height and perfectly circular with an imposing surface that looked as though

it were thick and sturdy. Amalthea tried to imagine how stolid they truly

were and doubted severely that she could so much as scratch the surface with

her claws, let alone her Hirokotetsu.

But Ulsa did not falter as she made another hand motion, then

extended one palm as though turning an invisible nod, and with a groan of

steel on steel the doors began to pry themselves open, grinding on invisible

hinges as though in the grip of a pair of giant hands that were forcing them

asunder. A final gesture on her part and Ulsa waved one hand, causing the

doors to slide fully away and create a space wide enough for Luna to easily

descend without her wingspan touching the edges.

Amalthea started to take a step forward only to check herself

instinctively as she sensed a warning commandment from her Mistress. She

turned an inquiring glance towards the pale-haired Ulsa and asked, "My

lady?"

We go to face the lair of a great evil, which is deep under the

ground. As such it would be folly for me to venture there where my powers

would have limits...unless I bring my element with me, which will fortify me

and assure the success of this mission.

"Your element, my lady?" Amalthea asked, only to notice a shadow

falling over their head, which prompted her to glance up in alarm as she saw

a sight that froze her blood down to the marrow.

A wave of water fully one hundred feet high was crashing down upon

them like a runaway Tsunami, but Ulsa did not give evidence that she even

noticed as it swept on past their position, prompting Amalthea to wince in

dismay, expecting to be smashed beneath the tonnage as though the seawater

were an avalanche...and yet the sea washed on by without touching their

surface.

Come. Now we are ready for this battle.

Ulsa began to move forward while the wall of water smashed against

the doorway and poured into the inclined tunnel, flowing like a river down

the mouth of a giant. Amalthea and Luna felt perfectly dry as they followed

after their mistress, amazed at the sheer power on display in the gentle

hands of the Lady of Air and Water, and wondering just what a being of her

nature was doing needing their support in the first place...

One mile below, at the center of the complex...

"Holy Mother of Lon Cheney!" John Talbain exclaimed, dismayed at

what was being displayed on the large monitor screen as the access tunnel

became flooded by a trillion gallons of salt water, which effectively

brought a halt to the defensive fire of numerous hidden security devices.

"Something must've pissed her off," Frank rumbled, no less in awe of

the sheer power of the attacking Silver Seagull, "And I didn't think that

was even possible. Must be your breath that's got her all annoyed, Ibrahim

old buddy."

Heinrick Ibrahim scowled and stared at the sight of the advancing

blonde and her two unusual companions, then aloud the SEELE agent muttered,

"She must be here for a reason...the Seagull has never taken an active hand

before in the shape of world events...so whatever has set her off now there

must be a purpose to her risking herself in so brazen a manner."

"Brazen for her is likely to be a lot more than we're equipped to

handle," Kozo Fuyutsuki drolly noted, "We're at least a decade away from

having a working EVA that we could use to defend this complex, and anything

less powerful than that won't even slow her down."

"I doubt that even the EVAs would be a match for that woman," Gendo

Ikdari remarked at the level of a soft murmur, turning to the blonde woman

at his side as he added, "What is the strength of the AT shield that she's

generating, Naoko?"

"Unknown," the senior Laboratory Technician of the NERV complex

replied, "It's off the scale as we've had it calibrated...though if I were

to hazard a guess I'd say at least Level Twenty..."

"Twenty?" Kozo reacted, "The Magi project that an Angel's field

strength at maximum output wouldn't be that much beyond twelve!"

"That's strictly theoretical, and we lack sufficient data to confirm

the Magi's projections," Naoko replied, "All we can say for certainty is

that Angels are powerful, but they do have their limits. That one, however,

is beyond reckoning in the level of her power...she may well have no limits

that we can understand if you judge by how easily she forced her way into

that tunnel."

"Actually it looked to me more like she was asking the doors to open

themselves, and they accommodated her wishes," Gendo remarked while

adjusting his glasses, "The use of Force is hardly her way, and this whole

enterprise is much too bold to fit the profile that we've had on this

particular Daokan to date. She is a being to whom the fundamental laws of

physics as we understand them are but mere child's play things to manipulate

as she wills..."

"Do the three of you mind?" Ibrahim snapped in their direction, "In

case you've forgotten this inconvenient fact, let me remind you that you are

no longer in charge here. I will coordinate the defenses of this complex

and deal with the intruder by my own methods."

"Should've let them continue, Ibrahim," the MIB agent known simply

as K mused softly, "I was finding it interesting, and you could do with a

professional appraisal of what you're facing out there. You never know, the

information might spare you embarrassment when you report this to your

masters. If you get the chance to report it, that is."

"Silence!" Ibrahim snapped, "I especially don't need any

condescending remarks from the likes of you, Kay! I will manage this in my

own way and report my victory to my superiors when it is concluded."

"Man, you need to chill and take a reality pill," MIB Agent J

winced, "Didn't you just see what that chick did to your back doors? You

think you're gonna be able to go up against somebody like that using nothing

but your fancy pop guns?"

"To say nothing of the company she's keeping," Frank frowned, "And

if I didn't know any better I'd swear that Monster Island's missing one of

its newer pets, and three guesses who her poppa is."

"Oboy, don't look at me," Talbain said with a grimace, "Us

Werewolves have a strict policy about dealing with dragons...we don't. They

don't bother us, we stay out of their way, like in the next county!"

"Bah!" Ibrahim said dismissively, "You are all fools of limited

vision to let yourselves be intimidated by a few harbingers of a backwater

page of mythology. My men are closing upon their position even as we speak,

and shortly you will see just how useless the Old Ways are when employed

against the miracles of modern science."

Even as they spoke they saw side-monitor screens displaying the

movement of SEELE troops as they descended upon the tunnel from vectoring

side-routes, bypassing the cascading waterfall of water that had partially

flooded the entrance. Armed and armored men fell into flanking positions

well above the flowing tide and trained their guns upon the three intruders,

opening fire as soon as the trio was within effectively firing range,

raining down enough bullets to take down a full division.

But said bullets arced and failed to reach their full trajectory

before they were slammed down into the water, falling well short of their

marks as though dropped to the ground by the force of a giant magnet.

Ulsa calmly regarded the gunmen, who had unwittingly betrayed their

positions by the use of their heavy weapons, and silently she nodded to

Amalthea and Luna.

The dragon complied with the unspoken order and drew back to unleash

her fiery breath weapon, scorching the area near to where the men were

hidden and causing many to drop their weapons and hastily attempt to put

themselves out as their Kevlar bests were catching fire just from the near

contact.

Amalthea was just a fraction of a second behind her pet in launching

her own surprise attack, moving so fast that she literally became a blur in

their eyes as she rushed them boldly, running up the side of a wall and

leaping an impossible distance while bringing her Hirokotetsu into play

against these soldiers.

"WHAT?" Ibrahim reacted in dismay, "But how? Those were our newest

Mark XIIIs! They shouldn't be affected by magic, and they should easily

penetrate even the strongest of AT fields!"

"Sir," a technician called out from their monitoring station,

"Instruments report an intensifying of Gravometric particles in the

immediate area. It's like somebody just bent space and time to create a

G-force equal to fifteen times the normal force of gravity. That's why the

bullets are missing their mark!"

"So the old ways aren't as effective as the new, huh?" Kay smiled

confidently, hardly seeming at all surprised by this new revelation.

"Are you joshing me?" Agent Jay remarked, "You saying that chick can

manipulate gravity fields in a localized sense without affecting her

companions?"

"Looks like it, Slick," Kay said readily enough, "And don't look

now...that lady with the claws is making short work of the competition."

"My gawd..." Frank murmured, "I know who she is, but that's

impossible! She's supposed to be dead!"

"Hah?" Talbain glanced up at his towering companion.

"That's gotta be the missing older sister of that David guy!" Frank

clarified, "She moves just like him, and the family resemblance is

striking!"

"Not half as striking as what she's doing to those SEELE agents,"

Kozo grimaced, "Yeowch! Those boys are gonna be feeling that in the

morning..."

"Assuming some of them ever wake up," Gendo adjusted his glasses

again and looked thoughtful, "Another half-Kirin...I never would have

imagined..."

"Such power," Naoko marveled as she saw the last of the soldiers go

down at the hands of the near-naked golden-skinned lady, "Her skills must be

incredible, and she's easily more powerful even than her brother."

"Come again?" Frank whirled on the blonde haired scientist, "You

mean...you guys have been studying David Lo all this time? But I had the

kid locked up in a secure facility..."

"We acquired him through the cooperation of certain government

agencies," Gendo replied, "Because we have the resources to contain him

while they do not, as I am certain you can imagine."

"You idiots!" Frank swore, "Baka! That's gotta be what she's here

for! She's here to rescue her..."

"Sir!" another monitoring technician called out, "We're getting a

weird energy spike from Laboratory C. The prisoner appears to be struggling

to regain consciousness..."

"Have you succeeded in finding out why the monitoring devices are

off line there yet?" Ibrahim snapped.

"Yessir," the technician replied, "We isolated the feedback loop and

we've managed to restore normal video operations."

With that pronouncement she called up the image and put it on a

side-bar screen next to the main projection. It only took a half a second

for the room to go from shock to dismay as they caught sight of the three

young girls attempting to jury rig an instrument panel in an attempt to

override its security lock down.

"Ritsuko?" Naoko reacted, "Misato? And...isn't she one of the

security detail cleared for that level?"

"Lieutenant Reiko?" Ibrahim scowled, "What is she doing down there?

And who are those others?"

"My daughter for one," Naoko snapped...

"And mine," a tall man said as he stepped onto the floor of the main

control center, "The both of them are so grounded when we get them out of

there, assuming we can do so in the midst of this fiasco."

"Katsurugi-san," Kozo smiled in partial relief, "Glad to see you

could make it.

"I came here as fast as I..." the tall dark haired Japanese man

halted as he glanced around, taking notice for the first time of the armed

security men holding weapons at the ready, "What the hell is going on here?"

"Never you mind, Captain," Ibrahim snapped impatiently, "Those three

have intruded in a highly secured section of the labs and must be severely

punished for their misbehavior. Prepare to flood the chamber with nerve

agent..."

"What?" both Ritsuko and Akira Kisaragi said in shocked chorus,

appalled at the cold blooded nature of that order.

"The sample is in danger of escaping and must be restrained, even

destroyed if need be," Ibrahim informed them, "We cannot allow the joining

of these two to continue or they might well destroy everything that we have

worked for, so prepare to carry out your orders."

"You son of a-!" Talbain started to growl.

"Ah-ah," Frank warned his werewolf companion, indicating the

guardsmen, whose weapons they already knew could be lethal even to a

Darkstalker.

"You heard me," Ibrahim said coldly, "Flood those labs with nerve

agent and prevent the escape of the sample."

"But those kids...you'll kill them!" Kozo immediately protested.

"Casualties of war," Imbrahim said dismissively, "They should have

thought of this before disobeying their elders and violating our security

protocols. This way is speedier than a trial and execution, don't you

agree?"

"And they call me cold and calculating," Gendo remarked with a

slight frown to his expression, but other than this he did nothing, no more

inclined to risk his own health than his immediate companions.

"That's my daughter in there!" Naoko pleaded, "You can't do

this...!"

"This is insane!" Captain Katsurugi protested, "You can't murder our

children in cold blood..."

"Watch me," Ibrahim snarled, turning to the technician whom he had

addressed before and said with a sneer, "Carry out your orders, lieutenant."

"Yessir," the technician in question said meekly, and at once set

about activating the deadly release of the nerve agents that would destroy

everything organic within the labs in a matter of mere seconds...

Continued.

Comments/Criticisms/Carrier Waves of Compassion: shadowmane

Or: shadowmane9849

Is this the end of Misato and Ritsuko before their story has even

been written? And what of Shiva-Ranma, who faces the challenge of his very

existence? Will Ulsa and Amalthea be in time, or is their progress too slow

to allow for a timely rescue? All that and more next time, when we see the

conclusion of the assault on the NERV complex, plus other vital developing

plot points in: "The End of EVA-More," or, "Now you SEELE, Now You Don't!"

Be there!

X


	105. Chapter 105

Dnabiki194

Nabiki ½

"A Very Scary Thought"

by

Jim Robert Bader

(Inspired by the works of Rumiko Takahashi & Others,

with concepts and characters created by fellow fanfic writers

Wade Tritschler, DB Sommers, Nicole Manders, Andrew

Greaves, Bill Guiroff and countless others, including "Buffy"

creator Joss Whedon; with special thanks to my good pal

Shiva for his editing and handling of this series.)

(Certain other characters and concepts are of my own

innovation, including my interpretation of the Monster

of Mary Shelly's novel, the Furies, Trudy, Takaharis

Angelique d'Anjou, Anri and the Daokan, Thelendra

the Dream Weaver and various other guest stars

appearing in this portion of the Nabiki ½ series…)

Chapter Seventy-Three.

Episode One-Hundred-Ninety-four.

Of Vamps and Slayers

Natsume returned home at long last feeling tired and spent and

emotionally wrought out on every level. She felt physically and mentally

exhausted by the ordeals of the day, with having to contend with herself on

levels that she had not previously imagined to have existed. It was a

difficult enough thing to absorb the fact that she could feel the type of

emotions that she was experiencing at the moment, but to realize the

implications by itself was an unwelcome revelation, and one that she needed

time to reflect upon, time to absorb and come to terms with in itself, and

without any of the mental devices or coping tools that she would ordinarily

employ in order to find inner balance.

On the one hand she had spent much of the day watching her fiancé

practicing his cherished art of Kendo with a woman from abroad who seemed to

intimately know things about the code of Samurai that few who were born

native to Japan understood in the present era. Her mastery of the blade was

quite phenomenal, and she could hardly fault Tatewaki for seeking her out

for special instruction, especially as she had revealed to him many useful

things about Nampo that-by the end of the day-had shown promise to

enhance Kuno's skill level exponentially, and that was a thing that brought

a peculiar sort of joy to the eyes of her beloved boyfriend.

And for that reason she felt the stab of jealousy touch her soul

with the ugly claws of a covetous she-panther, baring her fangs at another

woman who dared to intrude upon the special relationship that Natsume

enjoyed with her Tachi-sama. It was an irrational impulse she well knew,

and one that brought deep shame to her very being, yet altogether was of

such a primal nature that to deny its existence would be to renounce a very

real part of her very soul. Try as she might to not give into these things,

she could not help but feel rage inside at the very delight Tatewaki had

expressed while undergoing his difficult training under his new Sensei.

And yet that rage was tamed by a shame of an entirely different

nature, one that shocked Natsume Tendo to her very core as she would never

have imagined herself to be capable of such a perversely complex nature.

This shame was born of a guilt deeply felt yet not expressed upon the

surface, a shame brought about by the sense of inner betrayal that awoke

within her every time that she glanced in this Angelique d'Anjou's

direction.

For the woman was fascinating and beautiful, exotic and intense with

her passions worn openly upon the surface, not hidden away as was the custom

for Japanese women. She was as cool and sharp as a whetted blade and

sparkling like the sun upon a pond surrounded by Sakura trees as they shed

their soft pink petals in the springtime. This Angelique-aptly named for

lustrously divine nature-was an altogether enchanting presence who

commanded the very room by the simple act of her being, and who seemed to

possess not one dark aspect and shadowy contour, her voice itself melodious

and merry with a gentle sensuality that charmed the will and made resolve

into ultimate weakness.

That Natsume could feel tempted towards this woman was a shocking

revelation in itself, for never before had she conceded to herself the very

capacity to feel such things for another woman. It was vexing and yet

surprisingly pleasant when the blonde haired gaijin had chanced to speak a

few words in Natsume's direction, and the thrill of excitement that this

brought to her pulse quickened an eagerness to do something to accommodate

the courtesy...though exactly what would be expected of her in reply was

hardly that transparent to her admittedly limited powers of imagination.

And yet how could she simultaneously feel both jealousy and desire

directed at the self same person? And how could she betray the honor of her

fiancé's trust by daring to allow her heart to drift towards another within

his very presence? How could she feel such rage when her Kuno-sama smiled

and gave compliment to his instructor, or feel that rage melt into something

more like the fondness of a child seeking the approval of a parent when it

was she to whom the compliment was being directed...and by the very woman

whom she suspected of stealing a critical portion of Tatewaki's affections?

Ordinarily when presented with such a problem she would seek out the

counsel of Kurumi, her beloved younger sister. But Kurumi had her own list

of problems to contend with, what with coping with her recently discovered

pregnancy and the apparent difficulties it had brought both to her and her

husband, Mousse of the Joketsuzoku. How could Natsume even think to burden

her sister with the knowledge that her own heart was being conflicted by

mutually contradictory impulses? It was impossible to share with Kurumi or

anyone else her sense of how absurd it was to be in this situation. After

all she still loved her Tachi-sama with no less devotion than had been the

case before this Angelique's unexpected arrival...on the other hand she was

being drawn away from his side by the overwhelming urge to explore entirely

new horizons.

And this had caused her to ask a question that she had avoided

having to answer in the year-plus interval since she and Kurumi had come to

the house of their Uncle and been officially adopted as his daughters. It

was a question that Natsume had chosen not to face, an issue posed to her on

the day when she had first met her cousin-sister, Nabiki, and discovered a

world of bisexuality that was bizarrely unusual and yet strangely coherent,

a five-way marriage arrangement in which Nabiki was engaged to a man but

linked by marriage to at least three other women.

At first the very notion disgusted and horrified Natsume, who was

conventional enough in her values to find the entire concept of a

shamelessly open marriage to be both unnatural and disturbing. Were it not

for the discipline of the road where she had long ago learned to master her

temper and keep a civil tongue in her mouth she might well have said

something outright that would have jeopardized her position in her new house

and given deep offence to her adoptive father. Otherwise she might have

said something that would have caused an irreparable breach with the rest of

her family, especially when she discovered about the twin pregnancies of

Shampoo and Ukyo, each of whom bore a daughter that had been "fathered" upon

them by the magically transformed Nabiki and Perfume.

In the case of her sister it was the shape-shifting aspect of

Nabiki's nature that had given Natsume the greatest of problems, especially

considering how handsome and virile she was in her guy form, and had Natsume

by this time not already found herself being attracted to Tatewaki she might

well have fallen into the trap that had-at the time-consumed their

otherwise virtuous sister, Kasumi.

But time had dulled the edge of those grievances, and after

experiencing the type of person that Nabiki and her co-marriage mates truly

were she had gradually lost much of her prejudice against them and had come

to appreciate them as people, even valuing their company and friendship.

Having fought by their sides against many enemies and challenges she had

come to terms with the differences between them and now took in stride their

idiosyncrasies, especially in light of the devotion that she had witness

between her sister and the Amazon named Shampoo. A similar strong bond

existed between Ukyo and Shampoo's cousin, and when one lived that close to

the light of an expansive love like that it gradually warmed even her

reluctant heart, and now she would be strained to find a single thing wrong

about her sister's chosen lifestyle.

But there was a great gulf of difference between accepting the

notion of women loving other women and actually finding yourself attracted

to someone as charming and beautiful as this Angelique, whose every

movement, gesture and word could do something to spark a forbidden interest

in Natsume, who would have sworn before now to be impervious to such vexing

emotions.

It was getting near dark and despite her fatigue she felt an urge to

work off a bit of her own frustration by taking a turn to the dojo, which

she expected to be empty this near to the evening, a perfect place to seek

solitude by practicing a few dozen katas, letting the discipline of mind and

body restore some semblance of internal harmony to her wayward soul...

...And that's when she sensed a hidden presence, one that she should

have detected immediately had she not been so distracted by the conflicts

imposed upon her nature.

"You don't need to beat yourself up over it, Natsu-chan," a familiar

voice said, one whose breathless nature sent a chill down her spine, even

though she knew it to be non-hostile in nature, "Angel has that effect on

pretty much near everyone, even celibate eunuchs. It doesn't make you

unusual. If anything...it just means you're normal."

"Normal?" despite herself Natsume felt on edge, almost as though in

the presence of an enemy, even though her senses only told her that her

companion was a Vampire, though the reading was much stronger than was usual

around this particular undead.

She could almost hear the smile on the face of the other woman, "I

know that sounds odd coming from me, but you're really not that bad a

person, Natsume-san...for a Slayer, that is."

"Darkholme-san?" Natsume asked as she stepped fully into the dojo,

resisting the urge to reach for her rug-beater.

In the darkness she could see her, the redheaded vampire who was a

servant to Natsume's older sister, Kasumi, leaning against one wall as if

she had been waiting there for quite some time with a purpose. Considering

that she was a being who existed by drinking blood to survive that posed an

ominous quandary, for most of the other vampires whom Natsume encountered

were the hostile sort who considered human beings to be prey, fit only as a

resource.

"That may be true for the Goya and other Vamps of a lower nature,"

she heard Lenore say, "But you ought to know better by now that it doesn't

apply to the rest of us. In fact, it's strictly forbidden by the Council to

make ordinary humans into prey. It tends to attract the wrong sort of

attention."

"Eh?" Natsume reacted in surprise, "How did you know what I was

thinking? I didn't say that aloud..."

"I'm sorry," Lenore replied, "I didn't mean to pry. I'm still

learning about these new abilities of mine, and my apparent lack of

limitations. It's more disconcerting to me than you could possibly

imagine."

"What?" Natsume blinked in dismay, "Lack of limitations? What are

you talking about?"

"I died recently," Lenore answered.

"N-Nani?" Natsume blurted, "You what?"

"Actually, it's no big deal," Lenore shrugged, "I've been stabbed

before, even technically been dead a time or two, not counting the actual

time I was turned, which is sort of like death, being changed from being a

human to a vampire."

"But...aren't you already dead?" Natsume asked, hesitant to make her

tone seem offensive as she stood instinctively in a defensive posture.

"Well, that all depends on how you look at it," Lenore's smile was

readily apparent even in the dimming light of sunset, "Technically I died

over two decades ago and have been living ever since as one of the

undead...but I prefer to believe that I'm represent a different type of life

form, one negatively charged so I set off your Slayer senses. It doesn't

mean that I'm fully evil...even if I do subsist on blood, which you already

know is mostly animal, and only occasionally human."

"Only occasionally?" Natsume repeated, not meaning to make her tone

offensive.

"You know," Lenore's smile was mildly teasing, "The blood of enemies

or friends can be drunk under the conditions permitted by the Council's

Edicts...and the blood of lovers...though my current life's flame is of one

of the Lycanthrope tribes, and her blood doesn't taste the same as human

blood, though it's not fatal to me like it is for some other tribes of

Vampires."

"Oh," Natsume said, uncertain over which part of that statement she

found the most disturbing.

Lenore favored Natsume with an easy gaze that was somewhat

predatory, "You know, I think you and me...we got off on the wrong foot at

our first meeting. You know how it was...Neophyte Slayer meets vamp for

first time, tries immediately to stake her, that sort of thing. All a big

misunderstanding, but what can you do? It's in the past and buried, so why

not move on and cope with the way things stand in the present."

"And...that is?" Natsume asked uneasily, aware by now that there was

a purpose for the vampire's post-sunset visitation.

Lenore gave her a gentle look of indulgent amusement and said, "I

make you nervous for other reasons besides the differences that stand

between us. You look at me as you look at your sisters and you try to

define what's different about us...but that's where you make your mistake

since there really is no difference. It's just the way we are, and you envy

us because we accept this."

"Envy you?" Natsume snorted, "I should think not."

"I should think so," Lenore said with a knowing look of warm

amusement, "Should I spell it out to you? I'm talking about our lifestyle

choices, about sleeping with other women and feeling good about ourselves

while doing it. You envy our ease and peace of mind in allowing ourselves

to share the warmth of others of our sex without censorship and

recrimination."

Natsume did not immediately respond to this, but then she said, "You

are crazy. I have no such emotions."

"Sure you don't," Lenore chuckled, "And I'm the female Pope for the

Jewish sects. You're the one who has a problem about feeling attracted to

somebody like Angel or me..."

"You?" Natsume blurted in surprise.

"I've seen the way you look at me and Chloe," Lenore replied, "You

see us, a Vamp and a Were, and you see how devoted we are to one another,

and you ask yourself...why can't I have some of that? It's just human

nature."

"Ridiculous," Natsume scoffed, though inwardly she cringed a bit,

sensing that there was more truth than deceit in the vampire's statement.

"All right, I'll admit it does sound more than a bit ridiculous,"

Lenore shrugged, "But then again, what about this situation strikes you as

normal? We're just human beings with unusual traits and abilities, that's

all there is to it...but you feel uncomfortable about this whole

relationship thing we've got going, and you've never even been to first base

with your own Tatewaki..."

"My Tachi-sama is a true gentleman who would never dream of rushing

things with me before we are well and properly secure within the bonds of a

true marriage," Natsume sniffed, "We do not carelessly rut for the sport of

it like brute beasts who are subject to their animal impulses..."

"So sue me for being part animal," Lenore shrugged, "I used to think

I was a completely heterosexual kosher young Jewish Princess-which some

folks laughingly call JAP, by the way-until I was bedded by my first

female lover...quite a while back and long before I met my Chloe. You're

still just a kid, almost the same age I was before I crossed over the

threshold into vampirism, so you haven't lived long enough yet to fully

appreciate the fact that it's more than just bodies we fall in love with.

Accident of birth notwithstanding, I find it easier to be with women these

days. For me it's much less...complicated than doing the Boy-Girl thing,

and with women...I just feel a whole lot more comfortable, lack of dick

notwithstanding."

"Is that what you've come here?" Natsume scowled, "To taunt me with

your sexual conquests?"

"Hey, I'm just saying..." Lenore started to explain.

"Well, I hardly need counseling on the state of my own relationship

to Tachi-sama from the likes of you," Natsume glanced away with arms folded

under her chest, attempting to dismiss the vampire with a show of defiance

that categorically stated her desire to remain alone for the evening.

"Look, you're the adopted younger sister of my Goddess, which makes

you sacred protected family in the circles I travel around with," Lenore

replied, "But I know a few things about the lore of the Vampires, and I also

know that there's a purpose behind my recreation at the hands of the

Daokan..."

"The Daokan?" Natsume repeated.

"Let's not get carried away with that little diversion, shall we?"

Lenore said dismissively, "Otherwise we could be here all night...which

actually wouldn't be all that bad a thing if either or both of us were

single."

"Ah...nani?" Natsume replied, feeling disturbed on another level of

being altogether.

She could see by the dim light a flicker of genuine amusement...and

interest...played about upon the redhead's attractive features, "Don't

worry...Kuno-san doesn't have to know...at least not from my lips, but

sooner or later you're going to have to face the fact that you're being

bothered by these urges, and it's really getting under that peach-perfect

skin of yours, the fact that you're only just starting to discover that you

do indeed swing both ways and can be attracted to other women."

"I am not!" Natsume said primly, but even in her own ears her

automatic protest rang hollow.

"Sure you do," Lenore confidently replied, "Angel was the catalyst

but now you're considering me just because I happen to be more immediately

available...and I'm flattered beyond words to be the current center of your

interest, Princess..."

"Don't flatter yourself," Natsume said stiffly, "Admittedly...you

are attractive...for a gaijin...but I am only interested in men..."

"If I had an ounce of plasma for every time I've heard that," Lenore

chuckled, rolling her eyes towards the rafter and affecting an easy stance,

"Relax, it's perfectly natural. Well...as natural as anything involving

vamps and slayers can be, that is. After all, you're young, you're healthy

and a virgin, and you have perfectly normal tastes and impulses, to say

nothing of a killer bod that would make anybody drool just to look at. And

I can see the way the blood is flowing to your loins and mammaries as you're

starting to think about it and take me seriously to heart as a potential

object of desire."

Natsume felt flush and flustered as she tried to prepare a tacit

denial of the accusation...but unfortunately for her peace of mind she was

suffering from a serious case of self-betrayal as she felt her body

responding in exactly the way Lenore had suggested. She was indeed starting

to find herself in a quandary of her own making as she stared at the Vampire

before her and wanted to reach for her rug beater...but could not muster the

actual desire to use it for some reason.

"Ordinarily I'd tell you to relax and take a chill pill because I

really am devoted to Chloe and I tend to be a one-wolf kind of Vamp, if you

know what I mean," Lenore winked, "But these aren't ordinary times, and the

whole reason for my being here is because I think that I was meant to look

you up. I think that there's a purpose for my resurrection into a somewhat

more evolved type of undead. I think the guy who reconstructed me has a

multi-stage plan in store for the both of us, and after a little thought

upon the subject I came to an epiphany…no doubt one that was pre-planted in

my mind but was triggered by a stray thought or two that I had when thinking

in your direction?"

"What are you saying?" Natsume asked, "What purpose? What plan?

And what recreation?"

"Those are the million yen questions to ask, sure enough," Lenore

said with an upraised finger, "Truth is…I'm only guessing here…but I think

Lord Bartev sent me here because he wants me to put the bite on you."

Natsume reflexively reached for her rug beater and took a half-step

backwards, falling into a defensive crouch and standing at the ready as

though the Vampire's words had been a tacit declaration of hostilities.

Rather than be offended by the gesture, Lenore seemed-if

anything-quite amused and smiled, "That's cute, but I didn't mean that he

wants me to attack you. I'm talking here about something that's purely

consensual and most definitely not threatening to your health or life. You

see…Vamps by nature are Chthonic beings, which puts us under the dominion of

the Earth Lord. But usually we're negatively charged hybrid demon-spawn,

imbued with Rakshasa-like abilities but empowered to destroy actual Rakshasa

like anti-bodies do bacteria in the bloodstream. We're kind of like

negative protectors of man, predators who zealously defend our turf against

the unwelcome intrusion of an infinitely more vicious type of predator, and

the purpose of the Slayer is to hold us in check so that we don't swell too

high in our numbers. Slayers also have a portion of the Rakshasa essence

that was conveyed to our ancestors by means of the Montressori formula cast

long ago in the closing days of old Atlantis. In a way we're bad blood

cousins…only the old rules no longer apply to me. I've become something

different…perhaps even unique to the various rival tribes of the Vampires,

and most probably because I'm a sworn servant devoted to my lady, your

sister."

"I don't quite follow you," Natsume replied without relenting in her

defensive stance.

"No reason you should," Lenore shrugged, "I'm just voicing a thought

aloud, my rationalization over why I'm suddenly gifted with all these neat

abilities and have some gifts that even a King Vampire like Vlad Tepesh is

not endowed with. But I still am a Vampire, even if my thirst for blood

seems to have been somewhat lessened. I'm not as negatively charged as

before when I was a mere Loire Vamp and I've lost most of my weaknesses,

which means I'm not as easy to push around as I was during our first

meeting."

With less effort than it would take to disarm a small child, Lenore

suddenly surged forward and struck Natsume's weapon from her hand, then

immobilized the other girl with an ease that was completely disconcerting,

her gaze paralyzing Natsume even as her arms slipped around the Japanese

girl's slender waist and she suddenly held the other girl close up to her

body, their faces apart by the barest of centimeters.

"You see what I mean?" Lenore's breathy voice tickled Natsume's nose

as the latter stared with rounded eyes of horrified fascination, "I didn't

even have to break a sweat this time, when normally you could kick my ass

without half trying. In this position you're totally helpless before me,

and I could take your blood without you doing so much as offering up a

whimper."

And Natsume knew this to be the absolute truth, for her body refused

to obey her frantic commands, and all of her martial arts skills seemed to

utterly desert her as she gazed in dismay at Lenore, unable to help noticing

when the ruby lips parted to reveal those wicked fangs that the Vampire

could use to draw her vital essence.

"You don't know how tempting this is," Lenore informed her, "I could

drink you like a wine glass and enjoy your sweet nectar. I understand the

blood of Slayers can be quite…intoxicating…"

But then Lenore stepped back and released the other girl, and

Natsume felt her paralysis leave her a moment later, causing her to blink

her eyes and shake her head as she shivered all over from the near

encounter…uncertain whether to be more dismayed at how helpless she had been

at the moment…or disappointed that Lenore had not gone ahead with the

implied promise her eyes had seemed to offer.

"…But I'm not about to force myself on you, especially since it

would probably piss off your sister," the redhead noted with a hint of

personal regret, "If you want me to bite you so much then you're going to

have to ask directly…"

"Who says that I want to?" Natsume asked, feeling along her neck

just to be certain that she had not succumbed after all to the charms of

this blood drinker.

"Fair enough," Lenore replied, "But you don't have to beat yourself

up over your alleged infidelity in wanting at least one of us to bite you,

either me or Kasumi. And you don't have to believe the worst just because

you're woman enough to find Angel's charms equally intoxicating."

"That is what you say," Natsume said indifferently, "But I am

promised to Tachi-sama and will yield myself to no other by my promised

husband."

"That's commendable, really," Lenore said, "But we're not talking

about infidelity here, nor betrayal of a trust, or anything else so mundane.

What I'm talking about is you trying to hide and deny a very real part of

yourself that's crying out to satisfy needs for which you don't even have a

description. It's sex that's bothering you so much, Natsu-chan, the primal

instinct and desire to rut, to let go of your inhibitions and come over to

the wild side of forbidden fruit…or any other mixed metaphor you care to

describe here."

"But I love only my Tachi-sama…" Natsume protested.

"I said sex, not love," Lenore waved the point dismissively,

"Believe it or not the two of them aren't always co-joined at the hip in a

perfect union. Sure it's best when you get the both of them as a

two-for-one package, but sex doesn't always imply a romantic attachment, and

often it's just a temporary shift of mood and direction that comes and goes

when it will. Only an incurable romantic like you could so confuse them

that you think the one has to always lead to the other."

"I do not care for what you say on this," Natsume said stiffly, "I

can only yield myself up to the one who has enthroned my heart. I could

never indulge in some tawdry gratuitous fling…just to explore a part of

myself that I would rather not be there altogether."

Lenore sighed, "Actually I wasn't here to talk about having sex with

you, but you're the one who raised the subject. I'm here because I think

that I'm needed to serve as the catalyst for triggering your metamorphosis

from caterpillar to Butterfly, which with Slayers can only be achieved

through biting."

Natsume seemed further puzzled by this, so Lenore sighed and tried

again, using a different tact to explain her position, "It's like this…some

time ago the Watchers observed how when Slayers get bitten they don't

metamorphosis themselves into vampires. Rather if they survive being

attacked they spring back stronger than before, as if the taste of Vampire

blood intensified the Slayer within them, making them stronger, faster and

far more powerful than how they were before. One Slayer I've heard tell

about has actually come back from the dead at least a couple of times, and

she was even bit by one of Drac's sons, which triggered her reaction to

Vampirism and made her even more powerful altogether. How I think this

works is that the spell that empowers Slayers reacts like the body does when

injected with an anti-serum, like when a doctor uses a weakened strain of

Polio to immunize a patient against the Polio virus. The body immediately

produces anti-bodies that aggressively attack the real strain and help

prevent the patient from becoming a victim. That's how it is for Slayers,

and if I were to feed you a sample of my blood…"

"Now wait just one moment…" Natsume protested.

"…It would probably intensify your Slayer-ness and make you far more

powerful than ever," Lenore continued, "And that is what I intend to do…to

give you a booster-shot so that your powers are sufficient to aid and

protect your family during the coming crisis that is certainly upon us."

"What crisis do you speak of?" Natsume asked, "Why would you come

here this late in the day and say that you wish to drink my blood then

expect me to blithely accept at your word that it is for my own good…?"

"Remember that kid with the large economy switch blade who offed

your boyfriend's dad and tried to do the same thing to both Nabiki and

Ranma?" Lenore replied, "Or the bullet somebody tried to put through your

sister's hard noggin just an hour or two following that? Well, somebody

sure went to a lot of trouble trying to arrange these attacks, and obviously

they've got it in for your sister, so…"

Natsume stood where she was and frowned, "You have a point. Pray

continue."

"Look," Lenore said, "Something big's coming down the pike,

something that involves your older sisters and brother-in-law directly, and

believe me when I say that this warning comes from some pretty high

channels, which ought to set off more than a few alarm bells."

"How then may I be of aid to my sisters?" Natsume asked.

Lenore merely smiled, revealing once again those fangs that looked

so wicked and yet Oh-So-Seductive.

Natsume half recoiled at the implied offering, struggling with

unexpectedly perverse emotions before saying, "You mean...? Is there no

other way?"

"For you?" Lenore replied, "Not in the short run...at

least...nothing that could boost your power levels sufficiently in as short

a time as I think we have before meeting this crisis. Won't be time enough

for you to seek out some Watcher-Slayer lore, or learn a new Amazon

technique from your adoptive great-grandmother..."

"All right," Natsume said in a short clip, "I will do it."

The reversal in position came so fast that Lenore raised a crimson

eyebrow, "You sure? Don't want to think about this some more before I..."

"You have made your point," Natsume said with evident force as she

struggled to control a sudden urge to flee in terror of what the vampire had

to offer.

"All right," Lenore said after another long pause, "But just so you

know...I'll still respect you as a person if we..."

"Damn you," Natsume hissed, "Don't taunt me like this. Do

it...before I change my mind."

Lenore met the hard gaze of the other woman then inclined her head

ever-so-slightly in respect, "As you wish..."

There was no sudden movement forward this time, no savage lunge to

snatch another victim as was the custom with Goya vamps of the fledgling

Slayer's acquaintance, but all at once she found herself within the

Vampire's arms, and this time there was no halting the inevitable as Lenore

bent down and brought her lips to the neck of a startled Natsume, who

naturally tensed up but resisted the urge to resist, defying her training as

a Slayer and allowing the bite to happen as she felt the sharp impress of

two incisors...and then the shock of pain that briefly marked their

penetration into the soft tissues of skin, sinew and muscle.

The pain was brief and intense, but what made Natsume gasp was the

unexpected wave of pleasure that followed as something radiated out from the

bite and made her suddenly quite weak in the knees, a calming sensation of

warmth and languor that felt deliciously inviting. Her entire body melted

into the flow of indescribable emotions that made her whole being shudder

with the early trembling of an impending sexual awakening of both mind, body

and spirit.

But then Lenore withdrew her lips and smiled, her mouth stained with

crimson, a smile she held for several long seconds as she saw the dreamy

gaze in Natsume's eyes...and then she moved forward again, but not to renew

her biting, rather to plant a kiss full on the lips of the other woman, who

found herself returning the kiss with equal parts passion and desire, fully

unrestrained by conscious rational thought and fired purely by instinct as

Natsume tasted her own blood upon her lips...and shortly there after tasted

the blood of Lenore, which worked its own kind of magic, activating dormant

levels of power sleeping soundly within her matrix, a power awakened that

would shortly burst forth from within her with the fury of a supernova...

Hammer against hammer, blow against blow, the fury of two Titans

unleashed as the fury of Shiva-Ranma met the unrelenting might of Udan Robar

Bartev, the Blackguard of the Daokan and Lord of Earth and Water

personified, a fury that caused the air around them to reverberate while the

planet trembled under their feet and the heavens looked on in dread of the

impending outcome.

Ranma fought tenaciously with all the skill and potency hardened

within him in a lifetime of combat, utilizing every trick in his arsenal,

every technique that he had ever mastered and all the secret lore passed on

to him by Amazon or Immortal, the ancient wisdom of the Dragonkind coupled

with the knowledge and power of Lord Shiva, Hindu God of Destruction and

Renewal. Everything within his very being went into making his best effort

at engaging a foe who was taxing him to the ultimate level...and well beyond

it. He battled with courage, integrity and a will to win that remained

undimmed over the course of the past four decades.

And yet try as he might it was far from adequate as his opponent

matched him for abilities, lore and knowledge, then exceeded his grasp

beyond human calculation. Udan had walked the earth for nearly twelve

centuries and had the accumulated knowledge of well nigh unto several

hundred generations. In all his years he had been a warrior born who faced

challenges and overcame enemies of legendary status, some thought invincible

in their time yet who had all fallen before the power of his fists as Udan's

might had grown exponentially with the passage of the ages. His resources

were inestimable, drawing as he could upon both his elemental domains and

his psychic link with the soul of humanity itself. He held the power of

billions within his grasp and as such was a force to be reckoned with, a

champion and defender of man yet one who knew the grim task that the fates

had assigned to him, and whose ruthless pursuit of an ideal would mandate

that he play the part of the destroyer, a task not given lightly to one who

had been born a Lord of Order.

Pitted against one another these two giants within their respective

fields of combat could make worlds tremble beneath their heals as they

traded blows and sought to gain whatever advantage could be won by matching

arms with one another. The main difference between them, however, was that

Ranma was giving it every thing that he could while Udan measured his own

intensity and curbed the bulk of his power so that he had much more in

reserve than what had already been expended. As such it was not long at all

until Ranma reached the end of his tether and was near to exhausting his

resources, at which point Udan surged forward and took advantage of his

foe's waning abilities, delivering a series of devastating blows that

humbled the other man and sent Ranma smashing hard into the dirt, imbedding

him momentarily right up to his neck, at which point Ranma found himself

held fast within the earth while his foe raised one foot and prepared to

deliver it in a downward smashing "Ax" kick. Only by rallying what strength

he had left did he manage to free himself in time to escape meeting his

doom, causing Udan's foot to impact upon layers of granite the penetrated

down for miles and caused the very ground itself to rupture with an entire

tectonic plate separating from the continent to which it had been securely

anchored.

Ranma got to his feet and stared in disbelief as he took stock of

the landscape, which appeared to his own eyes like a page from Dante's

Inferno. There were volcanoes everywhere and the landmass looked as though

it had been chewed and spat out again by the jaws of some enormous giant.

The sky had kicked up a layer of ash and soot that blocked out the sun and

brought an unearthly darkness to the landscape, illuminated only by the fire

and ash that was escaping from the ruptured soil of the ground. In shocked

dismay he turned to Udan and said, "What the hell are you trying to

accomplish here? At this rate we're gonna wind up blowing up the whole

planet!"

Udan's lips formed the faintest of smiles, and his dark eyes

affirmed that this was indeed his intention, as was the single thought he

wordlessly radiated.

Exactly.

And then he surged forward once more and renewed his assault, moving

like a freight train with hands a blur as he advanced like a human tidal

wave or an avalanche, sweeping all within his path without regard to

anything but his singular goal of overwhelming his foe and bringing ruin to

Ranma's defenses.

All it took was an instant of carelessness, a fraction of a second

of missed timing and then Ranma felt the blow to the side of his head that

nearly ended the encounter on the instant. He did not remember falling,

only that he was spitting dirt and ash between his lips while gazing up in

dismay at the looming shadow of the Dark Man towering above him. In effect

it was nearly all over, he ached in every joint and muscle and felt as

though his body were a quivering mass of gelatin in a bowl, boneless and

quivering with every nerve ending firing off frantic messages to a brain

that could not process the overload. With agony-filled eyes he awaited the

inevitable as he knew beyond doubt that he was helpless to avert it, and

even Shiva could not speed his recovery in time to ward off what was coming

as he awaited the death blow that surely was to follow.

And yet, much to his surprise, the blow did not descend. Udan

remained where he was, poised and ready to deliver his punch, yet

deliberately refraining from doing so as he continued to gaze down at the

helpless Ranma, his expression as unreadable as a basalt carved image

reflected in the dim glow of an early twilight.

"Well?" Ranma managed to gasp between split lip and blood that

flowed from mouth and nose, "What are you waiting for?"

Udan's visage oddly softened, and for a moment his face lost the

grimness of death as he continued to regard his fallen antagonist.

You misunderstand me. I have no real desire to take your life,

Saotome Ranma. You are merely the Host to one with whom I share a genuine

quarrel, and even in his case I do not seek a final ending.

"That mean you're giving up?" Ranma asked, "'Cause I won't stop

fighting...even if you do."

Udan inclined his head by ever-so-much as a fraction.

That is as it should be, and I respect your pride as a warrior, but

it is meaningless bravado. You cannot defeat me, it is futile to even try.

I know every move that you use and quite a bit more than you might care to

imagine. I have slain gods and titans both and am feared by both Demons and

the things that walk the night in shadow. There is little that is beyond

me...while you are still but a child in my eyes. There is no shame for you

in conceding this, but if you persist in this folly...then I will destroy

you.

"Big words, yackity yack," Ranma snorted, "You know, for a guy who

doesn't talk you can be a real chatterbox when you feel like it."

Again Udan's lips curled in a smile by little more than a fraction.

You think that I do not respect you as a warrior, but I assure you

that is hardly the case. Even in the face of the impossible you never lose

your courage, nerve or resolution. I admire your defiant will to persevere,

even if you lack the means of carrying through with your resolution.

"Fuck you."

You are not my type. I merely state the truth concerning my respect

for you. Indeed, it would be a pity to persist in annihilating you as the

host instrument of Shiva, even more so because it would make your woman into

a widow and your talented child once more into an orphan.

"Are you trying to bore me to death?" Ranma frowned, "I know what's

at stake here...but if we keep this up then this whole planet's gonna be

history."

Udan sniffed and then glanced around at the heavily ruined

landscape, which was not merely torn with fissures and clouds of escaping

gas issuing forth from the now-volcanic landscape, but the very air itself

looked torn to pieces with ionizing trails of steaming plasma heralding the

doom of an entire dimension.

It already was. We are merely here to bring to a close this sad

continuity that is as empty as a tomb. It needs a proper burial, and I, for

one, intend to see it delivered.

With that Udan raised a hand towards the heavens and all at once a

swirling cyclone appeared, manifesting all around them as Ranma felt the

very fabric of space and time begin to tear asunder all around them.

"What are you...?" Ranma asked in wide-eyed dismay.

Finishing that which started long ago. Do not interfere...I am

tidying up the cosmos by removing this cosmic eyesore.

With that unspoken declaration Udan caused the swirling vortex of

energies to lance out at their near surroundings, and then the very matter

of which this dimension was composed was converted into pure energy, and all

at once their surrounding broke like the scattering of the shards of a

mirror flying in all directions and heedless of where their trajectories

would take them as both tormented sky and trembling earth were dismantled to

their constituent components.

"Holy..." Ranma caught himself murmuring under his breath, then he

resolutely closed his mouth and scowled furiously, attempting to maintain a

stoical visage.

What followed was next to impossible to describe as the Dark Man

quite literally seemed to reach out his hand and enfold the entire universe

within his grasp. To the unaided eye it might seem as if the world

surrounding them were rending itself apart of its own volition, but to

Ranma's perspective it was clearly Udan who was doing the rending, exerting

his power to unmake the dead environment of the surrounding dimension and

shattering it utterly, leaving in its place an utterly white tableau devoid

of shape, substance and meaning.

When the process was done Udan then turned to his foe and regarded

him levelly, and then very slowly the stars began to reform and take shape

as darkness fell over the landscape, and solid earth replaced the desolation

with life in teeming abundance. Forests and trees took shape and covered

the night with a canopy of greenery quite visible in the slowly dawning

silver of full moonlight. Then before Ranma's astonished eyes there

appeared a hesitant vision that timidly poked its head out from between

reed-thin saplings, a silvery form that cautiously approached the two men

and then ever-so-hesitantly extended the single spiraling horn atop its head

in Udan's somber direction.

And with a surprising degree of gentleness for his part the man

stretched out his hand again and caressed the platinum mane of the creature,

his expression softening ever-so-slightly for a brief moment before he

withdrew his hand once again, and then the creature reared high and pawed

the air as though to show its respect before turning around and leaving in a

gallop. It was gone an instant later, leaving Ranma to marvel at its

passage, almost hesitantly uncertain that he had witnessed such a thing in

the first place.

Another moment later and he said, "I thought they were only supposed

to be attracted to virgins..."

Udan only gave the faintest of smiles to this.

Who says? Besides, who says that she's a virgin?

"Hmm...good point that," Ranma felt along his rib cage, winced a bit

and realized that he needed more time to heal before he could continue in

any sort of serious battle.

I would not move if I were you. You went all out and taxed your

body to its limits. Even with your recuperative abilities it will take some

time before you are ready to renew your quarrel against me.

"Get stuffed," Ranma growled, and tried to push himself up the

ground but immediately thought the better of it. He winced and settled

down, deciding that remaining where he was made perfect sense, so he

contented himself with glaring up at Udan, knowing that for the moment this

was the extent of his ability to maintain a hostile front.

Udan seemed to regard him with curious interest for a few moments,

then again conveyed this curiosity through non-verbal channels.

Why did you seek me out when you knew that this would happen? Why

risk your life in a futile effort to match your power against me when you

knew this was inevitable? Even with your history of matching yourself

against stronger opponents it makes no sense. Did you truly imagine that

you could overpower me?

"What?" Ranma asked, using a hand to indicate their surroundings,

"You saying you did all this just to impress me?"

He could almost feel the amusement radiating from the shadowy figure

standing before him.

Hardly. You were simply a convenient excuse to do that which I

should have done long ago. Because the altercation between us released such

tremendous energies that I could tap into and harness for my ends a dead

world has been restored to one living, and the history behind it has been

remade. You can take solace in that if nothing else, host of the Destroyer,

for from destruction has cone a renewal. The only question that remains is

why you would risk defeat at my hands, which would void the terms of your

contract with Lord Shiva.

"Maybe I had a hidden motive of my own," Ranma half-smirked, "Ever

think of that, Baka?"

Udan frowned ever so slightly, his attitude encouraging Ranma to

continue.

"There's more than one way to win a battle," Ranma explained, "I'd

think you'd know that with all your great and lofty experience, Gilgamesh.

One way is to play the bait for a trap that you obligingly stepped into."

Udan's eyes widened by a fraction.

Eh? Your meaning escapes me.

Ranma's bruised lips curled up in an ironic smile, "That's because

your better half isn't here to lend you a clue...and if I were you I'd have

serious qualms about that."

This time Udan glanced over one shoulder, his expression taking on

for the first time a look of genuine consternation.

My lady? What are you doing? Have you placed yourself in danger

during my absence?

"Y'know, that's something the two of us got in common, when you

think of it," Ranma said almost sympathetically, "We've both got significant

others who can prove to be a handful, and it's dangerous to cross them

'cause they have really nasty ways of striking back at those who threaten

their interests."

Udan actually made a sound similar to a grunt and rapidly glanced

around as if only just becoming aware of something different in their

surroundings.

What?

"Take my wife for example," Ranma smiled, "Imagine a Lore Master

backed by the powers of the Time Core...all that knowledge and resources at

her disposal...just think what she could do with it, especially to somebody

who threatened me, her husband? You gotta admit, the possibilities are

pretty damned intriguing..."

Udan tried to raise a protest but he was already aware that

something was very wrong within the space and time coordinates within which

he was presently standing. Some force manipulating the timelines was

drawing him elsewhere, and with his ties to the elemental planes he found

his own force turned against him, and before he new it...he was translocated

to some other planar location.

"Loser," Ranma smiled, then winced a bit before saying, "'Cause he's

probably got it easy. He only has to face whatever Nabi threw against

him...he doesn't gotta face her himself like I do..."

And with that declaration he forced himself to stand, aching in

every joint and muscle and privately dreading having to return home to face

the music...but knowing it would do no good to put off the inevitable as his

wife was a particularly hard woman to escape when she was feeling divinely

wrathful...

Udan glanced around, surprised to find himself upon a well-lit plane

that quite clearly was the scene of some sort of major altercation, the

force-lines orienting about them giving ample evidence to the sort of

high-powered contest of energies and wills. The air was thick with

ionization, and he was registering several forms that fairly radiated

intense concentrations of Prana-generation. Two of them lay some distance

away sprawled prostrate upon the ground while a third-far more intense

than any of the others-was positioned just to the left and behind him, a

weird ambient sort of quasi-energy unlike any that he had previously

encountered in his travels. He reflexively began to turn around, only to

balk as he caught sight of this significant fellow, who to all appearance

resembled nothing so much as a walking hunk of pink chewing gum wearing

boxing gloves, shorts and an incongruous set of sneakers.

"DO YOU LIKE CHOCOLATE?" this figure fairly screamed at him, and

then Udan's field of vision was suddenly filled by one of the boxing gloves

as it went rocketing in his direction...

"Ouch," Ryonami winced, "That's gonna leave a mark...even for that

guy. Boss lady, you have one nasty sense of humor."

"Aiyaa," her husband, Gosunkuji, remarked, "Readings way off the

scale for that blow. I doubt if even Lord Udan is going to walk away from

this without counting a few bruises."

"Unfortunately all we did was delay him for a bit," Nabiki sighed,

"There is no power that we know sufficient to match the fury of the

Blackguard when he is unleashed, as a certain husband of mine ought to know

when he gives us the recall signal."

"Speak of the devil and he will materialize," Ryonami said, "Got

Ranma-kun's recall signature beeping up even as we speak, Boss. Time to

reel the big fish home so you can set to work hanging him out to dry."

"No worries on that," Nabiki scowled, hearing the faint hum in the

Transmission Chute that signified her husband's prompt arrival, which made

her glance his way with an intense scowl of real annoyance.

Ranma stepped out of the tubes and immediately thought better of the

matter. In fact as the thought crossed his mind there was just about

anyplace in the Cosmos that would be preferable to standing there basking in

the glare of his wife's approbation. Hades or Tartarus or any of the lower

Hells for excellent examples. But he squared his shoulders and forced

himself to step forward, knowing that facing the music was better than

trying to evade it. As experience had taught him that offering up any kind

of apology or explanation to an angry woman would only lead to even greater

trouble.

To judge by the hard cast of Nabiki's eyes he was starting to think

facing Udan's fists would be less painful than what she had in store for

him, but rather than scold him outright she turned away and said, "What is

the status of Lady Ulsa Laolana?"

"Still on the warpath and headed for NERV central," Gosunkuji

reported, "And packing more firepower than a full division. She's got a

half-breed Kirin and one of the hatchlings of Gojiro and Typhon to back her

up...talk about overkill!"

"Say what?" Ranma blurted out, "I'd heard that the Seagull was

taking an interest in that place, but are you saying she's gone there in

person directly and...?"

He stopped himself when Nabiki turned a glare in his direction, and

then she turned away, allowing his blood to flow normally without freezing

in mid-pulse.

"It's a very bold and reckless maneuver that she is undertaking,"

Nabiki said aloud, "In the whole entire history of the Daokan she has always

been the one who stayed remote and aloof from world affairs, leaving the

active parts to the discretion of her brothers. So...what makes you show

your hand now, my lady? I wonder...could there be something at NERV worth

taking such a risk, even granted that you are the one whom they should be

fearing like no other force between Hell and the Heavens...?"

The people at NERV central were wondering the exact same thing as

the image of the blonde-haired Ulsa Laolana was seen advancing down the main

access cargo tunnel, blithely ignoring all attempts to block or impede her

progress while she left the heavy work of fending off the defenders to her

two loyal companions, both the fleet-footed Amalthea and the raging draconic

beast known simply as "Luna."

Amalthea wielded the bone-hard weapon known as the Hirokotsu like it

was a standard-sized boomerang, plowing through the ranks of heavily armed

gunmen and their high-tech weaponry, a force strong enough to fend off a

conventional military assault team. SEELE troops and NERV agents together

did not stand a chance either against her or the monstrously rampaging

reptile who accompanied the white-haired half-Kirin like a faithful pet

trotting dutifully in the wake of its mistress. The pair cut a mighty swath

of destruction that left a fortune of damaged equipment in their passing,

yet remarkably few soldiers were either seriously injured or slain for all

the rampaging mayhem that was rendered upon their ranks as the duo cleared

the way and kept as much "heat" distracted from their lady as could be

afforded.

Not that Ulsa appeared to need much in the way of physical

protection as she walked straight through the super-wide corridor at a

leisurely stroll, hardly bothered at all by the numerous attempts to thwart

her inexorable passage. Her person remained completely inviolate in spite

of high-energy weapons and projectile devices that were being trained upon

her, much though the futility of such efforts were readily apparent what

with the bullets and beams bouncing harmlessly off her mental shields a full

two meters shy of her body. She hardly even seemed to notice the rain of

deadly fire trained against her, continuing her walk while glancing around

like a tourist, her mind ranging far and probing the depths of this place to

a level far beyond the range of normal human sensory perceptions.

Whenever a new barrier was thrown in her path she simply ignored it

and the barricades went down, doors opening mysteriously as if by their own

volition while other physical obstacles were swept from her path with as

much ease as a child might take in knocking over a pile of wooden blocks.

Ulsa seemed quite uncaring of the efforts made to deter her further

penetration into the complex, leaving the petty brawling to Amalthea and

Luna while she concentrated upon the larger prizes, disregarding the

ever-more desperate defenses being mounted to deter her with ever greater

firepower being deployed in her direction, none of which made the slightest

impact against her shields as she move relentlessly forward, her way as

certain and sure as though she were following map with a GPS homing system

serving as beacon.

Back in the main control complex this steady progress was noted with

no little trepidation and alarm, and the technicians monitoring affairs at

their console stations kept reporting new data that affirmed the

ineffectualness of all efforts being mounted against her. Former Deputy

Commander Kozo Fuyutsuki watched as things continued to deteriorate from the

sidelines while beside him Gendo Ikari looked grim, and Chief Scientist

Naoko Akagi kept tapping away on her palm-pilot as she made her own rapid

calculations and arrived at an inevitable conclusion.

"It's no good," she announced, "She's making fools out of all of our

security measures, and somehow she must have mentally tapped into our main

frame data base because the Magi are reporting excess activity in all

registers. I doubt very much if there is anything our people can do at this

point to keep her away from her objectives...whatever they may be, and I'm

still working out the possible goals that would attract an Eluini of her

stature."

"I will ignore that," SEELE representative (and self-appointed

Commander in the stead of Gendo Ikari) Heinrich Ibrahim snapped in his ready

voice, which sounded brittle with strain as he watched the steady progress

of the three intruders with a snarl upon his lips that belied his attempts

at maintaining a calm demeanor, "You three no longer have authority here, as

I seem to keep having to remind you. This matter will be handled by SEELE,

and regardless of how formidable she is, this woman is only human, which

goes double for her two companions."

"Human?" Frank said, "Are you nuts? She's evolved about as far

above humanity as we are above the chimpanzee, and you've got to be insane

if you even imagine that you have the means of deterring her by waving

around a few popguns around. She's the next best thing to power

incarnate..."

"I am aware of your interest in regard to these...creatures,"

Ibrahim snarled, "But this is NERV, a critical part of an international

effort to protect and defend humanity against any and all threats, be they

supernatural or extraworldly in nature…"

"I dispute that," Agent Kei drolly remarked as he regarded the

balding man with a cheerful contempt that he did not bother to conceal

through all his sarcasm, "MIB handles the offworld stuff. Your charter

doesn't allow you to traffic on our turf. NERV was strictly formed to

combat the potential menace of the Neflim, and this is about as far beyond

the scope of your charter as you can get. Not that you care much about that

since your allegiances are clearly not with the rest of us."

"What are you saying?" his partner, Agent Jay, asked with a look of

askance, "You mean Heinrick-buddy here ain't playing for the home team?"

"Not hardly, Slick," Kei replied, "Him and the boys at SEELE got

their own agenda, and it's not particularly friendly to the rest of us, or

anyone else besides his immediate masters…or are you insisting on carrying

on with this charade, Ibrahim? We both know where you really take your

marching orders."

Ibrahim curled his thin lips in a contempt nearly the equal to the

MIB agent's and said, "You think you know everything, do you K?"

"Just about," Kei replied, "I even got some idea what the little

lady is doing here stirring up such a fracas…or did it escape your notice

that she's going out of her way to leave personnel still breathing and

merely concentrating on the equipment to the exclusion of all else but that

thing you've got hidden down here, the one thing that could stir the

Daokan's collective interest?"

"Yeah?" John Talbain asked with a furry scowl, "Mind cluing the rest

of us in on what sort of Frankenstein work the boys of SEELE have going on

here? Ah…no offense, Frank."

"None taken," the big man beside him said gruffly.

"Actually, three are several very good reasons I can think of on

just why the Seagull is staging her little three-party raid on your parade

down here," Kei said more enigmatically, "But I'm not about to tip the

lady's cards up front. It wouldn't be all that polite, and she'd no doubt

be cross with me if I gave away the plot before she was ready."

"Fool," Ibrahim snapped, "Do you think me so easily intimidated by

your pathetic ploy that I will fall into the verbal trap you play and give

away what I know? You estimate yourself too highly…and that platinum-haired

sea-witch far beyond what…"

"Omigawd…" the softly worded voice of a shocked and disturbed Gendo

Ikari caused heads to turn in his direction, "I know what she's here for!

She's after the EVAs…and the data that we've collected upon the Angels!"

"Say what?" Kozo turned a questioning look upon his friend and

nominal superior, but it was upon Naoko Akagi's face that the greatest look

of dismay immediately registered, and she at once frantically went to work

keying in new commands on her palm pilot.

"Would you cease that annoying tapping?" Ibrahim snapped as he

turned upon the blonde haired chief Scientist of NERV, "What nonsense are

you talking about? The EVAs are a classified military project, but it is

doubtlessly the side-benefit of your research that has alarmed this woman

enough to step out from the shadows and risk everything in this rash assault

upon our complex."

"Mind cluing the rest of us in on what you're talking about,

Egghead?" Talbain asked.

Ibrahim gave a cunning sneer at the transformed werewolf and said,

"You have already tasted the bite of our alchemy, and that was only type

XIII that stole away your Lykin abilities. Type XIV was designed to be far

more lethal to beings of a supernatural order, and it is now time to test

the viability of our prototype upon a fitting subject who fancies herself

beyond even the Gods in Omnipotence. Prepare to deploy the weapon. Let us

contain this bitch before she has the chance to carry out on her unholy

schemes. I will personally oversee this for myself and revel over her

corpse when we have demonstrated the efficacy of the weapon."

"You what?" Agent Jay said in confusion.

"He's going to try and shoot the Seagull with his toy rail gun," Kei

translated.

"Oh," Jay blinked, "But that's crazy!"

"It's insane," Frank growled, "You think an Orachalcum shell can

destroy a being like her? You'd be a lunatic to even try it, Ibrahim."

"You just noticed?" Talbain winced, "Look at those eyes, his

aura…there's nothing there behind those shades but total insanity."

"But even if you succeed in killing her…the consequences of a

potential discharge of the ambient energies that she has stored within her

body…" Naoko said with evident dread in her tone and expression.

"He doesn't care about the consequences to us," Gendo cautioned to

his immediate companions, "The Chosen of the Elite Undead never care about

anything beyond furthering the agenda of their dark masters."

"What are you saying?" Kozo asked, "You mean…he's one of them? A

servant of the Old Ones?"

"What took you so long to figure that out, Sport?" Kei asked, "Every

syllable in his voice drips with the pure contempt of the Unwashed for the

living. SEELE's been compromised, it now serves a different agenda than its

original UN charter."

"A Dark One?" Frank scowled, "Should have seen that one coming…"

Ibrahim just smiled without humor, "You have doomed yourself and

everyone within earshot by your betrayal of what you know, Kei. Now

everyone at NERV will be forcibly sterilized so that your secret dies with

you."

"Ain't dead yet, Ibrahim," Kei shrugged, "And if I were you I

wouldn't make any long-term plans about surviving this, 'cause if you don't

act soon the lady there is going to fry all of your cherished secrets."

"That condition will be rectified soon enough," Ibrahim promised

darkly, "But first...you will see the triumph of SEELE over these so-called

Gods beyond Immortals, and when I fell the leader of the Daokan the very

heavens themselves will tremble, and all will bow down before the glory of

the Masters!"

Frank stared in mute astonishment, then under his breath he

muttered, "That's it...he's losing it big time..."

Talbain turned to regard the armed guards keeping a bead on them

with their Orachalcum-firing weapons, "Is any of this registering with you

guys? Are you blind, or can't you see your boss over there is working for

the other team, the bad guys?"

There was no flicker of response from the uniformed men, nor did

they waver in the slightest in keeping their weapons trained upon Frank and

the others, as if prepared to open fire at the slightest nod of assent from

their masters.

"It's no good," Gendo murmured, "They're conditioned to total

obedience, and they have no restraining moral factors that you can appeal

to. Believe me when I say that they would slaughter their own mothers if

Ibrahim here gives the order."

"Of that you can be certain," Ibrahim declared, then nodded towards

the monitor and said, "Mark well this moment, for the final hour of the

Seagull will now be rendered..."

The final barrier in their path gave way easily before Ulsa's

limitless powers. The massive barrier seemed almost to willingly come down

of its own volition.

What it revealed beyond this portal, however, was a sight that

brought a halt to the forward progress of the party, Amalthea and even the

massive Luna falling silent at the heels of their silent mistress, who

herself paused to regard the panoramic vision of an immensely large

underground chamber with an artificial atmosphere and lighting, a

fantastically beautiful view of an impossibly idyllic underworld paradise,

complete with forest and a scenic lake with some artificial buildings

despoiling the otherwise tranquil naturalized setting.

"What...what is this place?" Amalthea asked, and behind her Luna

made a throaty noise that seemed to convey much the same questioning

emotions.

Ulsa surveyed the view coolly, and in her quiet way conveyed her

subtle meaning.

It is a place created in the Golden Age, before the rise of the

current race of men. This was built by the Neflim as their home

underground...but later it became the refuge of the race known as

Lemurians...and later abandoned...long before it was colonized by either the

Ainu or Juraians.

"Jurians my lady?" Amalthea asked, "Who were they, my lady?"

In response to this Ulsa turned her gaze towards the vaulted

ceiling.

They came from outside, a colony of humans who evolved through a

metamorphic symbiosis with living trees and became a vast star-faring

empire, rivaling that of the Oni. They found Earth and briefly colonized

this portion of the planet, founding what would become the island nation of

Nippon under the dominion of then-Queen Amaterasu under the governorship of

her grandson, who became the first Emperor of the royal line of Nippon.

"Amaterasu, my lady?" Amalthea repeated, puzzled at where she had

heard the name before, and in what context.

Ulsa's gaze became reflective, almost wistful.

This all happened a long time before my brothers and I even became

aware of this obscure portion of the planet. Out powers were somewhat

limited in those days, and my vision did not yet extend so far as to

encompass all people. We learned of the Jurai almost as an

afterthought...but we discovered the traces of the Ancients, such as this,

in the course of our many adventures.

"So...these Ancients are the ones who created this place...and the

people of Japan later discovered this was here...under the very city of

Tokyo itself?" Amalthea hesitantly asked her.

Exactly.

"Oh," Amalthea replied, "So...where do you think that they are

holding my brother captive?"

Ulsa raised one hand and pointed away from the buildings within the

underground forest, directing her attention sideways and nodding in a

distinctive direction.

That way.

"Good enough, my lady," Amalthea said, bowing her head as she added,

"Do I have your leave and consent?"

Ulsa smiled approvingly and nodded again.

You do.

"I thank you for the boon of this favor that I have been granted,"

Amalthea said reverently, then turned and glared at the wall, "Luna?"

The dragon gave a fearsome cry and surged forward towards the wall,

plowing into it and tearing both steel and rock asunder, creating a huge

opening big enough for it to crawl through with her wings folded sideways.

Ulsa surveyed the dragon's instant tunnel making techniques and

smiled again with deep approval.

She does have her uses, does she not?

"Oh, most absolutely, my lady," Amalthea said, then charged forward

after her nominal "pet," Hirokotsu at the ready, her face set in a fearsome

scowl that dared enemies to try and oppose her, which only the luckless and

the mad might attempt to do when it came to her cherished desire of finally

being reunited with her missing brother.

Ulsa paused to watch the fleet-footed backside of her cherished

servant than smiled to herself and thought sentiments that she hardly needed

to voice aloud, then wordlessly followed in the wake of her two servants,

prepared to meet the challenges that she knew were waiting for her, and

certain in the knowledge that one who sought to take her life was counting

on her complacency to win great favor for his world-devouring Masters.

But also too she knew of a trio of young girls who were waiting to

be liberated, and of the discoveries that they were making at that precise

moment, and the consequences that needed to be met there, and silently the

Silver Seagull steadied herself in readiness to meet the greater challenge

of a direct confrontation with Lilith, against whom even her powers might

well be tested to their limits. But that was the risk that needed to be

undertaken if humanity were to be spared a greater horror, and so she tread

light over the rubble and dirt kicked up by the dragon, bare feet easily

caressing the stones while slowly she gathered her elements about her and

prepared to demonstrate why it was not a very good idea to anger the

daughter of Mother Nature, or to test her within the span of her own

dominion...

"Hurry up and get that lock fixed, will you?" Misato demanded of her

friend, "We've got to get the hell out of here or we're in for big trouble!"

"I'm trying, Misa-chan," Ritsuko growled softly as she worked the

wires into the panel that their companion, Reiko, had forced open for this

purpose, "This isn't like picking the locks to the Vice Principal's office

so we can alter your grades you know...NERV security is a lot more

sophisticated than that, and I should know since my mother helped in the

design of these systems."

"Would you two stop bickering and keep it down already?" Reiko

nervously hissed with a glance towards the security cameras, "People might

be listening in upstairs, and I'll be lucky if all they do is fire me for

helping you sneak into this place."

"Sorry," Misato said tensely, "I just...don't like being under this

kind of pressure. You know what my mom can be like when she finds out that

I've been behaving like a juvenile delinquent. Remember that time she

caught us drinking Gin like it was Saki at that one party?"

"You mean you were drinking it like you had a hollow leg," Ritsuko

replied, not taking her eyes off of the delicate work that she was doing in

attempting to jury-rig the electronic locks, "I was sipping my glass like a

lady, but you had to overindulge and show off to the guys that you could put

any one of them under the table. As I recall things you were still

complaining about the taste of soap in your mouth for a week after your

mother finished grounding you in detention."

"Don't remind me," Misato winced, "I haven't even been able to look

at anything alcoholic without remembering that taste...even rubbing alcohol

makes me see soap bubbles."

"You shouldn't be drinking that much at your age anyway, Misato,"

Reiko chided, "It's not exactly healthy, and you could wind up a bitter old

drunkard like my dad if you aren't careful."

"Or an old maid before you turn thirty," Ritsuko added for spite,

hiding the smile away that would have betrayed the teasing humor of her

statement.

"Bite me," Misato growled, "Just because you can't handle your own

liquor..."

"Wait up," Reiko urged, turning to glance sidelong while cocking her

ear in a significant manner, "I...thought I'd just...heard something..."

"Eh?" Ritsuko glanced up, then back towards the floating

white-haired boy whom they knew to be a half-kirin, "Is he stirring to

consciousness at last? I'm not surprise from the way you've both been

chattering while I've been attempting to concentrate..."

"No, it's not him," Reiko said as she studied the unconscious youth

floating in the aerated solution, then she looked further on to the opposite

side of the laboratory and said, "It's...coming from that direction."

"Huh?" Misato followed the direction of her companion's glance, then

took notice of something that had escaped her attention up until that very

moment, "Hey, you guys see a door over there? I wonder if it opens up to

another exit."

"I don't think so," Reiko scowled, "I think it must lead to another

level of the laboratories...but the doors are probably locked, so there's no

sense in worrying about..."

All at once there came a hissing noise, and then the door so

indicated opened as if by its own volition.

"...it?" Reiko asked in a suddenly tiny little-girl voice.

"What the hell?" Misato asked, glancing at Ritsuko, "Did you do

that, Ritsu-chan?"

"That wasn't me," Ritsuko said in shared astonishment, "Someone else

must have triggered the locking mechanism. But...I thought all doors were

secured during a Level Four emergency?"

"They're supposed to be sealed shut," Reiko swallowed a thick lump

in her throat, "I...I can't explain how a thing like that might happen,

but..."

"Yeah, I know," Misato said, "It's almost like somebody's inviting

us to check that room out...and you're right, I hear something too. Stay

here and keep working the lock, Ritsuko...I'll go and check this out."

"What, are you crazy?" Reiko snapped, "Somebody invites you to have

a look...and you're gonna take them up on it?"

"You got a better idea, 'Fraidy Cat?" Misato winked significantly,

"Don't worry, I won't take chances, I just want to have a look."

"Curiosity always was your primary weakness, Misa-chan," Ritsuko

murmured to herself, "And it would be a novelty for you to be careful."

"Get stuffed," Misato cheerfully responded to her best friend's

teasing put-down, then like the curious cat that she was she trotted over

towards the open door, drawn as much by boredom as she was by any thought

that she might discover something within that chamber.

"She's totally nuts," Reiko murmured with a shake of her blonde

head, then she sighed, "I'd better keep an eye on her...just in case she

does find trouble."

"Trouble is Misato-chan's middle name," Ritsuko chimed, then in an

even lower tone of voice she added, "I just wish I knew why I let her talk

me into sharing so many of her hair-brained adventures...I'm the one who

must be totally crazy..."

Of course as she said this she knew perfectly well why it was that

she and Misato were such inseparable co-conspirators...they really didn't

have that many peers their own age within the complex, let alone ones

cleared to be living in the Security Dome alongside their parents. It was

loneliness and a need for companionship that had thrown them both together,

and while they might be opposites in every other regard imaginable, still

somehow Ritsuko Akagi could not imagine her life without Misato somehow

being within it. It would be like having a chemistry set and missing a few

key elements needed to serve as catalysts...a totally unsatisfying

arrangement, and besides...being with Misato was at times genuinely fun.

She just wondered why it bothered her so much when Misato spent time

around that boy named Kaji. Such an unsuitable match for her friend, and

such a shameless tease, always prying into secrets that Ritsuko felt were

better left private, such as the time Kaji stole her private journals and

revealed to their class that-in addition to complex forumlas-there were

dashes and attempts at poetry, which embarrassed the blonde haired genius

before everyone, including Misato...

Misato was herself privately fuming about Ritsuko, who could at

times be such a wet-blanket, and at other times so bookish and prim that it

was hard to encourage her to do anything fun, like sneaking into the boy's

lockers and stealing Kaji's jersey. She liked Ritsuko well enough and

thought that all the blonde needed was a little encouragement to let her

hair down and take the stick out from her butt so that she might act

more...normal. Of course she knew that it was not easy to have a famous

mother who constantly rode you to get good grades in all of your classes,

and with a mother like Naoko it could be especially bad since the older

scientist seemed bent on molding her only child to become a perfect clone of

herself. It was positively disgusting how Ritsuko let herself be bullied

around that way, and it made Misato want to drag her friend into all these

scrapes precisely to teach the blonde how to be a good and proper rebel

against the tyranny of a demanding parent.

She was thinking these very thoughts when she came upon the child

sitting huddled in the dark upon the floor, hands around both knees with

face obscured from view, gently sobbing to herself as though bereft in all

the world of the love of a mother.

"Hey, what's wrong?" Misato asked, approaching the child cautiously

yet feeling nonetheless moved to a sense of almost motherly protection, "Are

you all right? Who are you and what are you doing in this place?"

The child did not respond at first, save to stop her weeping, then

she cautiously glanced up over the edge of her knees in Misato's direction.

Misato hunkered down on the balls of her feet and said, "Are you all

alone in here? Don't worry, my friends and I can take you home...if you

give us a few more minutes."

"I am home," the child responded, sounding peculiarly adult for all

that her voice was high and girlish.

"You are?" Misato blinked, estimating within the dim light that this

child could not be that much older than six or seven, "Where is that?"

"Here," the child replied in a calm, matter-of-fact manner.

"Here...where?" Misato asked in mounting confusion.

"Here here," the child replied, "In this laboratory. This is where

I was born."

"Say what?" Misato replied, only to hear Reiko's voice intruding on

their conversation.

"Who are you talking to...who is that?" the blonde gasped, reaching

for the light and turning it on in an automatic gesture.

"I'm not sure," Misato said, glancing back at the child in question,

"But she seems to think she comes from in...here?"

Her eyes went round and she stared in amazement, realizing for the

first time that the child was an obvious albino what with reddish eyes,

milk-pale skin and hair that looked strangely like it was a soft pale blue,

by no means any natural shade that she had previously encountered.

"Miss?" the child asked with curiosity, noticing the shocked

expression on Misato's features.

"Omigawd," Reiko murmured, "This must be one of the projects that

they've been working on in here. I'd heard rumors about something they

called a 'First Child,' but I didn't think that they'd actually grown her to

this stage yet..."

"First child?" Misato blinked, glancing at Reiko and then at the

blue-haired girl and gasped, "Grown her?"

"Yeah, like that idiot clone of me that my baka brother named

Excel," Reiko replied, "She's not a natural person...she was hatched in a

test tube, recombinant DNA and everything. Only...she's a lot more

dangerous than she looks..."

"Dangerous?" Misato said, staring unbelievingly at the young girl,

"You've got to be kidding!"

"I wish that I was," Reiko said, "But...I'm afraid she's not really

human...she's some kind of monster that they grew from cells that they found

buried in the ice of Antarctica. I hear they combined her with the frozen

ovaries of a human woman to try and give her a more normal appearance, but

in reality she's something they call a Neflim...an Angel."

"An Angel?" Misato said skeptically, smiling at the child before

her, "Well, that part I can believe, but a monster? I don't think so?"

The child just looked up at her in curiosity, not saying a word,

seeming to absorb everything as the stared at the two older women.

"Don't be fooled by appearances," Reiko urged tensely, "Her real

name is Lilith...but around here I think they gave her a label of some

sort...a nick-name for the project. What was that name again, dammit...?"

"Rei," Ritsuko murmured from just behind Reiko, standing in the

doorway, "Ayanami Rei. She's one of my mom's special projects."

"Ritsuko?" Misato gasped in surprise, "You mean...you knew about

her?"

"Not fully," Ritsuko shook her head, "But I do remember uncovering

some encrypted files on my mother's personal computer. Took me a whole hour

to decipher them, but what I managed to piece together was that this girl is

the product of a recombinant experiment that grafted the cells of a Neflim

with the egg of a woman named Ikari...who had donated them to the Genetics

Banks so that she might carry them to term at a later time. You see...she

had some difficulty with her first pregnancy, and the child that she gave to

the Commander...was determined to be somewhat unusual upon closer

examination..."

"Are you my big-sister then?" the blue haired child asked, "I don't

really like your mother very much. She treats me funny, like I wasn't even

human."

"That's horrible," Misato instantly sympathized, "I don't care how

they made you, no child deserves to be treated like some lab rat!"

"Misato..." Ritsuko gently pleaded.

"But nothing, Ritsu!" Misato said indignantly, "Your mother plays

with the building blocks of life as if she can mess around with God's

providence, but this is going way too far! How dare she treat this kid like

she's nothing more than just another one of her damned projects?"

"Misa-chan..." Ritsuko tried again.

"When are you going to stand up for yourself and stop defending her

all of the damned time?" Misato asked furiously, "You know your mom's been

tinkering with stuff that they obviously can't control and have no business

messing with in the first place! Stop acting like you're the clone, stand

up for what's right! Stop being such a wuss, letting yourself be molded by

the likes of Commander Ikari!"

Ritsuko just stared back in shock at her friend, her mouth hanging

open as though the accusing tone had frozen her mind and body completely.

The blue haired girl said, "You like her a lot, don't you?"

"Huh?" Misato turned back to glance at the little girl with a

much-surprised expression.

"And she likes you, I can tell it," the child continued in the same

matter-of-fact tone of voice.

"Kid...what are you rambling on about?" Reiko asked with growing

unease in both her tone and expression.

"I think you two should like each other even more," the child

remarked, "You don't need a boy to make each other happy. I think you

should kiss each other and try and see if you like it."

"Kiss each other?" Misato blinked.

Ritsuko said nothing, but now her shock had turned to amazement as

she stared at the child, and then questioningly at Misato.

"Um...kid..." Reiko said uneasily, "You really shouldn't tease your

elders like that...and besides, what do you know about adults kissing?"

"I know that at one time everybody did it and it was natural," the

child turned a serious look towards Reiko, "Back during the days when there

were no Men, when women comforted each other, lived together and built a

civilization that conquered the stars...only to lose it all when Men came

back into the picture."

"Ah...just who are you?" Reiko asked, seriously unnerved at this

point.

"You said it yourself," the girl replied evenly, "I'm Lilith."

"Oboy," Reiko started to back away, "I think we'd better leave now,

guys. Guys...hah? Guys...?"

Neither Misato nor Ritsuko were paying the least attention to her,

and both had started to hesitantly move in each other's direction.

"Misato...Ritsuko?" Reiko gulped, "Hey...what are you...doing?"

The two young ladies did not answer that, but a moment later-as

their outstretched hands touched-they suddenly drew into each other's

embrace, and then their actions needed no further explanation.

"It's called French Kissing...I think," the child named Lilith

softly noted, "It looks...somewhat awkward...but they both seem to like it."

"Guys?" Reiko asked weakly, then with rounded eyes she turned and

stared at the child at her side, and in a very small squeak the security

woman said, "Nani...?"

The blue haired child turned and glanced up at her, then smiled

confidently and said, "You don't need to be afraid. Only men need to fear

me. I'm going to make the world a better place, you'll see."

"A better place...like...how?" Reiko squeaked, feeling the urge to

draw away in horror at the surprisingly mature look within those reddish

eyes, yet finding herself totally paralyzed and unable to move so much as an

eyelash.

"You'll see," the child responded, and in that simply worded

statement Reiko felt the worst of her fears were being confirmed to a

horrifying detail beyond the scope of her worst imagination...

Continued.

Comments/Criticisms/Neflim Pest Control: shadowmane

Or: shadowmane9849

Lilith has awaken, let the Universe tremble! Can even the might of

the Silver Seagull contend against the First Woman and primal champion of

feminist fury? Can a child named "Rei" be salvaged from such a horrifying

awakening, and what of the Dark Masters whom Ibrahim serves, and who plainly

wish no good things for either humanity or Life's champion, the lady Ulsa?

All this and a private chat between Ranma and Nabiki...be there...or you

will regret it! (Just kidding)

^_6

X


	106. Chapter 106

Dnabiki195

Nabiki ½

"A Very Scary Thought"

by

Jim Robert Bader

(Inspired by the works of Rumiko Takahashi & Others,

with concepts and characters created by fellow fanfic writers

Wade Tritschler, DB Sommers, Nicole Manders, Andrew

Greaves, Bill Guiroff and countless others, including "Buffy"

creator Joss Whedon; with special thanks to my good pal

Shiva for his editing and handling of this series.)

(Certain other characters and concepts are of my own

innovation, including my interpretation of the Monster

of Mary Shelly's novel, the Furies, Trudy, Takaharis

Angelique d'Anjou, Anri and the Daokan, Thelendra

the Dream Weaver and various other guest stars

appearing in this portion of the Nabiki ½ series…)

Chapter Seventy-Four.

Episode One-Hundred-Ninety-five.

Fall of the House of EVA.

"Are you certain that there is nothing that I can get for you, my

lady?"

"Thank you, but no, Otono-sama," Chuisitsu replied, fanning herself

to conceal the blush of her lovely cheeks as she regarded her beloved "Lord

and Master" with an almost girlish favor that belied her actual age and

hinted more towards a teenaged crush for the man who-in effect if not

actuality-owned her.

"I am pleased to know that you are feeling better after your ordeal

from this morning," Otono remarked, "The churl who dared to assault this

complex shall be dealt with most severely for his sacrilegious handling of

your person. You have my assurances that he will not trouble you again, or

anyone else for that matter. I intend to see to that as a matter of

personal interest."

"You need not trouble yourself on my behalf, my lord," Chuisitsu

assured her master with a fluttering of eyelashes and a most feminine lilt

to her voice as she basked in the rare warm praise of his good favor,

yearning to do more to be found pleasing in his eyes, even yearning to make

a most passionate display of her devotion, yet refraining from such gestures

more from a fear of giving offence rather than any sense of modesty that she

might otherwise find constraining.

"On the contrary," Otono replied, "You are a valued member of my

personal staff and I would grieve were anything to happen to you. You must

understand this about me, that I would never allow an enemy of our Lord to

harm a hair upon your head, lovely Chuisitsu-san. I wanted you to

appreciate this, which is why I brought you here to personally attend to

your injuries."

"Ah," Chuisitsu fanned herself, almost faint with delight at the

praise of her lord, though she wished fervently that he would take things a

few steps further, such as doing more than merely "tend" to the bruises that

she had sustained in her fight with the stranger. There were physical needs

that she possessed of a far more intimate and personal nature, and it

frustrated her to no end that her Master was being so gentlemanly, behaving

himself, showing a surprising degree of self-restraint given the

not-so-subtle hints that she was extending as an unspoken invitation for him

to indulge himself completely on her all-too-willing person.

"You can rest assured that the stranger is being detained even as we

speak and will not trouble you again on my word of honor," Otono assured

with firm resolution, "His attempt to steal a sample from our lab of the

Virus has prompted me to redouble our security, and I am calling in several

key agents from the field to bolster the strength of our defenses so that no

other such intruder may prevail, or even advance as far as that

black-leather clad biker."

Chuisitsu frowned, but now for an entirely different reason. Her

memory of the dark-suited stranger was that he had indeed penetrated their

defenses, and had come much further to success than would have been

imaginable given the strength of her Master's forces. In fact the

surprising thing was that the man had balked unexpectedly upon being

confronted by Chuisitsu...but as much as she would like to claim that it was

her powers that deterred him, the plain truth of it was that he had hardly

seemed to notice her attacks, much as it galled her to admit this.

"I wonder who he was?" Chuisitsu murmured aloud, unaware that she

had spoken. In fact, the most surprising thing of all was that the man's

expression upon meeting her seemed to register shock and amazement, as

though he recognized her from some prior meeting. But she knew that was

impossible, she had never set eyes upon such a foe in her life, and the

power she felt radiating from his presence...the very forcefulness of his

emanate being...

"My people are endeavoring to determine just that very thing even as

we speak," Otono assured her, misunderstanding the thrust of her question,

"All that can be said for now is that he appears to be very old...far older

than he seems upon the surface. We cannot as yet determine his actual

physical age just yet, but with time and further testing..."

"Eh?" Chuisitsu blinked her eyes and evidenced her surprise, but

then she frowned in concentration and said, "I wonder...could he have

encountered my mother and have mistaken me for her?"

"My lady?" it was Otono's turn to evidence surprise, "Your mother?"

"Ah..." Chuisitsu mentally cudgeled herself for speaking her

thoughts aloud, "It was a long time ago...I never really knew her but I'm

told that I resemble her somewhat..."

"Oh," Otono seemed to accept that explanation with good grace,

"Well...our parents often leave their stamp upon us in ways that we

find...disconcerting. I am told by Jungo-san that I bear a striking

resemblance to my own ancestor, Amakuzu Shiro...or at least to the single

surviving portrait that still carries his likeness."

Chuisitsu frowned, but this time for entirely different reasons, "I

do not like that man very much, Otono-sama. I know that he is close and

dear to you, but...there is something about him...that does not strike me as

entirely wholesome about his aura."

"Jungo practically raised me from when I was an orphan," Otono

assured her with gentle sternness, "He taught me much that I have found

immensely valuable and helped me to recover the lost art of my ancestors.

He showed me the way to the Lord and brought me into the fullness of his

favor, and I will hear no ill words spoken against him."

"Forgive me, my lord," Chuisitsu hunched her shoulders and felt

immensely crestfallen by the gentle-worded chastisement, "I did not mean my

words to be offensive..."

"It is forgotten already," Otono said dismissively, "Pay it no mind.

I will regard this as an expression of your concerns for my welfare, but

do not speak of it again, my lady. I should not like it if you gave offense

to Jungo, who has always been there for me when he was needed."

"If course, Otono-sama," Chuisitsu was quick to reply, but in her

heart she did not recant her warning because she truly did not like Jungo

Hyrun and regarded the man with a sense of growing distaste as she privately

thought him demon-possessed and most definitely unwholesome. But she was

not about to say that before her Master.

"In the meantime," Otono scowled, glancing away as if deep in

thoughts of a far more complex nature, "This assault has concerned me in

other ways quite beyond our immediate security issues. This latest attacker

seemed to know precisely where to find the laboratory facility that

contained the sample virus, and he knew how to bypass our defenses even

beyond the lack of success of our men to deter his progress with

conventional firepower. Only the new Mark XIII prototypes that we have been

supplied by our allies seemed to have any effect on his person, and only the

directly intercession of Tailor-san was able to overpower him. This worries

me as it implies that someone sent him here who has knowledge of our plans

and might even have insider assistance in plotting our undoing."

Chuisitsu glanced up at her lord with a mildly shocked expression,

"You suspect a traitor in our group, Lord?"

"I suspect that Satan has agents in every corner of these accursed

Pagan-worshipping Islands," Otono said darkly, "Which is why the Cleansing

must take place on time two days hence. Only when the Wrath of the Lord is

visited upon these people can the Spirit of the Lord at last be delivered

unto these Sinners. Until that time we must guard against those who might

attempt to thwart our mission."

Chuisitsu sat up and regarded her lord with great concern in her

expression, "You expect another attack then? Possibly even more extreme

than this last one?"

"I believe that only a fool takes chances or takes the Lord's will

for granted," Otono said grimly, "And that is why we must be pro-active in

this matter. The threat posed to us by our enemies is very real as is

evidenced by the survival of our chief nemesis, the ones prophesized to

oppose us...the families of Tendo and Saotome."

"My Lord," Chuisitsu said sincerely, "Send me to do your will upon

these Heathens. I will rain down on them such a storm of fury that they

will know the fury of the Heavens..."

Otono gave her a rare half-smile, "Be patient, my lady...your time

will come in due course. But I have other servants in mind for this

mission...ones who must redeem themselves in the eyes of the Lord. And so I

will give orders to dispatch them...to see no trace of this accursed family

of adulterers and heathens will remain to thwart the purposes of Heaven.

Above all else nothing must interfere with the Cleansing when the time is at

hand to fulfill the prophesy set down for me by God himself in His Infinite

Wisdom. Be assured that their destruction is nigh at hand, these

fornicators who blaspheme against the Lord of Hosts, and most especially

that abomination to the decency of womanhood, Saotome Nabiki, consorter with

demons and devils that she is. Of this I vow on my love of virtue...the

enemies of God shall be undone and come the time of reckoning there will be

no servant of Satan left to prevent the vengeance of the Amakuza upon this

devil-infested land that has for too long resisted the Word of God and the

Deliverance of Lord Jesus. By the soul of my ancestors Saotome Nabiki must

die, and all who side with her. Of this you may rest easy, it will come to

pass and come the morning we will begin a new with our quest to rid Japan of

the taint of pagan madness..."

Nabiki glanced up and saw that her husband was standing next to her

on the porch, then very softly she murmured, "How do you keep doing that? I

didn't even hear you approach the dojo."

"Huh?" Ranma sounded surprised at his wife's declaration, "What do

you mean? I just saw you sitting here all alone by the dojo and I came to

ask what was bothering you, Nabiki."

Nabiki leaned back, resting her palms on the wooden floor while

allowing her bare feet to dangle off the edge of the dojo porch, "That would

take a lot to sum up in a single sentence, Ranma-kun. Let's just say...I

have a lot to think about and leave it at that, okay?"

"Fair enough," Ranma shrugged, "I kinda have a lot to think about

too, what with all the stuff that Siren's been filling my head with all day.

Guess it must be the same with you and your new trainer, huh?"

"You could put it that way," Nabiki said a bit sardonically, then

eyed her husband with a teasing look that was mildly accusatory, "So...what

were you doing with that elder? And you do know-appearances aside-she's

old enough to be an ancestor?"

"No thanks," Ranma smiled, "I think one older lady in my life is

more than enough for me..."

"Older lady?" Nabiki reacted with a scowl.

"You know what I mean," Ranma sniffed, then he sat down beside his

wife and said, "Guys at school think it's weird that you're a year older

than me and a senior who's graduating this semester...but I don't give a

damn about all of that. To me you're just my Nab-chan, and that's all I

gotta say about it."

Nabiki smiled despite herself and said, "Eloquent to a fault as

always, Ranma-kun. And yeah...a year's age difference doesn't seem a whole

lot when you compare it with...oh...say, three hundred plus?"

"How many times do I gotta say this?" Ranma growled tiredly, "I

ain't interested in her...and besides, she's just my sensei."

"Only just huh?" Nabiki said skeptically, then shrugged, "I'll let

it pass for now. And anyway...that's not what's really bothering me right

now. You see...I had another run in with Lord Anri..."

"Him again?" Ranma raised both eyebrows, "What did he want this

time?"

"What else?" Nabiki shrugged, "To wow, bamboozle and obfuscate so

that we could all bow down and admire the genius of his lofty nature. Other

than that he gave me another tour of the cosmos, and now I've got a rough

idea of what Dante must've felt like when his travel bureau set him up for a

hot tour of the old Tar Pits."

"That bad huh?" Ranma remarked with a side glance at his wife's

haunted profile, "Well, forget about him. We've got enough of our own

problems without that guy dumping his share on our shoulders. Besides, I've

been hearing enough about it from my own Sensei, and what she's got to share

about her grandpop would curl your toes if you believe even half of it…"

"Oh?" Nabiki arched her own eyebrows and regarded him sidelong,

"Such as?"

"Well...you already know the worst of it," Ranma shrugged, "About

him being who he says he was, and coming back as Boddhidarma, then in his

current incarnation as a gaijin."

Nabiki nodded, "Yeah, I've got most of the story there, but why

would Siren think we'd be any more freaked out than we already are,

Ran-chan?"

"Because he came back centuries ago and found a world that worships

him as a god, but he don't exactly feel like he deserves that," Ranma

shrugged, staring off into the night, "Sensei thinks it kind of messed him

up a little, not feeling worthy of the way people praise his name and all of

that. I mean, given what we know about Christianity...can you blame him?"

"It isn't all that bad...at least not most of it," Nabiki shrugged,

"Not that I'd care to convert or anything like that, and I've always felt

that there was something more than a little off about people who take the

cross thing too literally. But I've known good people and bad in every

religion that I've encountered in my travels."

"Maybe so," Ranma nodded, "I suppose there's good and bad in

everybody. But the thing is...when this Anri guy stopped in China during

his travels he was met by the Amazons, who recognized from the start that he

was the reborn incarnation of the guy we known of as the father of the

Shaolin Temples, and they greeted him into their midst like he was a

long-lost kinsman. They even looked the other way when he fathered Siren's

mother and didn't try to keep him around when he felt the urge to move on

and look for greener pastures. Way she tells it, it's like all the rules

that we've spent the better part of the last two years learning to respect

and obey didn't apply to him at all...like the Elders set him in a category

completely apart from other gaijin. They even considered it an honor that

he left his seed in passing...and he showed up again sometime later to help

Sensei to master her magical training. He's like a rock superstar to

Cologne and the others..."

"That part doesn't surprise me," Nabiki frowned, "Only considering

how annoying he can be when he tries to impart some of that wisdom of his on

you, I'd be surprised they don't celebrate and party down every time he

takes his leave of their village."

"Hey, you know Amazons," Ranma shrugged with a smile, "They've got a

funny way of looking at some stuff. But on the whole I don't think that's a

bad thing, do you?"

"That all depends," Nabiki said facetiously, "Is Shampoo around, or

her cousin?"

"What, you afraid that Per-chan'll take an ax to you if she doesn't

like what you say about her people?" Ranma quipped.

"Not as long as I'm the Senior Wife around here," Nabiki sniffed,

"But yeah...I have to agree, the way the Nyanchiczu look at life, I guess it

wouldn't be too surprising if they think that Lord Anri's visits are some

kind of trial for them to endure as a testament to that masochistic streak

that makes them endure things like the Bakusai Tenketsu."

Ranma gave a light chuckle to that, then turned back to his wife and

asked, "So...how did your day go? Did your new Sensei put you through the

same wringer as mine did?"

"Ah...that's...hid of hard to tell," Nabiki responded, "I learned

some useful things...but you seem to have learned how to appear and

disappear without giving a trace of yourself away. In fact if I didn't know

better I'd swear you were using the Umisenken just now to sneak up on me

when I wasn't looking."

"Hey, that only works if I'm not emotionally attached or anything,"

Ranma assured her, "Doesn't apply when I'm with you. Now way I could get

this close and not have you read me."

"Flattery will get you somewhere if you keep this up, Mister,"

Nabiki smiled, "But seriously...did part of your training involve learning

to be this stealthy?"

"Ah...not really sure about that," Ranma screwed up his face in

thoughtful concentration, "Maybe it might have something to do with my

elemental training...maybe it intensifies my ability to use the Senken so I

use the stealth technique without having to think about it."

"An intriguing possibility," Nabiki stood up, "Care to put it to the

test?"

"What, you mean now?" Ranma looked at his wife in surprise.

"Sure, why not now?" Nabiki asked as she moved away and assumed a

defensive crouch, "Let's see just how good the both of us have gotten in one

day with a little free sparring. Tell you what, loser has to give the

winner a back-rub after a bath. It'd be a great way to work off that dinner

Sham-chan and U-chan cooked for us."

"Ah...all right," Ranma reluctantly replied, moving to confront his

woman while assuming a crouch of readiness, "Anytime you're ready."

That was all the formal declaration that either of them needed and

then they both launched to attack one another, only this was different from

their previous sparring matches as they both automatically adjusted their

techniques and unleashed their new skills upon one another.

In Nabiki's case she surged forward with an attack that would have

ordinarily caught Ranma napping, so fast and forceful did she move that she

was a blur to the eye, impossible to track by ordinary movements.

However...Ranma reacted at once by conjuring up a wind and then

centering it around one arm as he thrust it forward, creating an instant

wall of whirling maelstrom that caught and deflected his wife's attack,

blunting it to the side and forcing her to withdraw before it could snatch

her up within the maw of it potent fury.

An instant later they both fell back to their respective corners,

each staring with widened eyes in surprise at one another, and then Nabiki

asked aloud, "What the hell do you call that?"

"Ah...doesn't really have a name just yet," Ranma said sheepishly,

"I mean...'Tornado Fist' sounds kind a lame, and I have to really

concentrate to control it or else it could slip out of my grasp and cause

serious damage to everything within a ten block radius."

"You mean...you can now summon up the Hiryu Shoten Ha with just one

punch?" Nabiki said in mild surprise.

"Ah...yeah...but what about you?" Ranma asked, "Never seen you move

like that...it was like trying to grasp quicksilver in my hand or something,

you were in and out before I could eve see you."

"Er...well..." Nabiki said sheepishly, only to give a start when a

feminine voice cleared its throat, surprising them both as they turned and

glanced at a previously unoccupied portion of the garden that now bore a

form that neither one of them had been expecting.

"Sorry to intrude on the both of you," the green haired lovely named

Veragar Greenfire-whom they had met the day before-said simply, "But I

wonder if I might not have a moment of your time. You see...I am here on

behalf of my husband..."

"You mean Lord Reka?" Nabiki asked.

"What the hell does he want?" Ranma scowled, recalling the arrogant

Lord of Earth and Fire who was-at least by technicality-his

"father-in-law" through the curious aspect of being Latisha's father.

"My Lord Husband bids you welcome and wishes for me to extend to you

both an invitation to dine with us," Veragar replied, "He promises safe

passage and wishes for you and your family to be our guests at the oasis

that is presently serving as our home. Of course by this I mean your other

wives and children are similarly invited..."

"Invited?" Nabiki asked skeptically, "To what do we owe such a great

honor?"

Veragar smiled, "You don't need to mince words with me. I'm

perfectly well aware that my husband behaved like a beast the last time that

you saw him. In fact it is because he behaved so boorishly that he feels

the need to compensate you for the time and trouble that he put you

through...and I would myself consider it a personal favor if you accept our

hospitality. I feel that it the very least that we owe you."

"Thanks, but I think we'll pass," Ranma said, "I mean...no offense

to you, but with the way your guy tried to fry me and Nabiki..."

"My husband thought that this would be your reaction," Veragar

sagely nodded, "So in order to entice you to changing your mind he has

chosen to sweeten the pot by telling you something that you will need to

know in order to survive your pending confrontation with Lord Udan."

"Oh?" Nabiki asked, "And why would he share that with the likes of

us?"

"Don't sell yourself short," Veragar smiled knowingly, "In spite of

the impression that he may have left with you, Radagar-chan is fully aware

of how important you both are to the greater scheme of events that are

pending. I would recommend that you take him up and listen to what my

husband has to say. My brother-in-law is a tough and determined fighter

with almost no peers in the whole of creation. It was rash of you to

challenge him, but my husband knows of a way to overcome his brother, having

fought with Udan-san on numerous prior occasions."

"But wouldn't that be like cheating, learning a short-cut to beating

that guy?" Ranma asked.

"You do not beat someone like Udan Robar Bartev," Veragar said

confidently, "At best what you can do is to survive the encounter. But if

you listen to what my husband has to say then it will hardly be like

cheating since just knowing the truth alone doesn't give you a solid angle."

"Good point," Nabiki nodded, "But I side with Ran-chan on this...we

don't need cheat codes to fight our enemies in a field of honor..."

"But that's just it," Veragar assured them, "Udan's sense of honor

is entirely of his own choice and volition. He alone decides what is and is

not an honorable gesture, and he alone can say what limits should be placed

upon his actions. And there is one more thing that you should

consider...both of your Senseis will be attending..."

"Say what?" Ranma asked.

"You mean...Siren and Wells-san are both going to be dining with

us?" Nabiki marveled.

"Yes, and I think it will be very important to the future of you

both not to miss this," the green haired woman said with a conspiratorial

wink and a flirtatious air that was turned in both of their directions, "It

would be no small exaggeration to say that this will be a meeting to

remember. So...what say you both? If you summon your loved ones now I

would be only too happy to escort you to my husband's presence."

Ranma exchanged looks with his wife and asked, "What do you think,

Nab-chan? Do we go along with this?"

"I'm not really sure that we have a choice about it, Ranchan,"

Nabiki said with a mild shrug, then turned to Veragar and said, "Would you

give us a moment to summon the crew? I think Sham-chan is helping Ucchan do

the dishes since Kasumi's no where to be found at the moment..."

"Oh, your sister is already waiting for you at our encampment,"

Veragar informed them, "Along with my husband's niece, lady Thelendra, who

is-I understand-your one of your sister's two betrotheds."

"Ah...right," Nabiki winced, then turned to the shadows and said,

"Perchan, would you gather the kids, your cousin and airen and meet us back

here...and tell them to dress for travel."

The brown haired enforcer moved out from concealment and said, "As

you wish it, Nab-chan. Should we dress formally or casually?"

"Oh, casual will do," Veragar said, then paused as Perfume vanished

back into the shadows. Turning back to Nabiki and Ranma she asked, "Oh

my...does she do that sort of thing very often?"

"Pretty much," Ranma affirmed.

"What can I say?" Nabiki asked with a shrug, "She's very protective,

and she probably knew you were here a long time before we did."

"Very interesting," Veragar remarked with a smile, "I'm beginning to

see why my husband has taken such an interest in your crew. For mortals you

travel in some interesting circles."

"Tell us about it," Ranma sighed, then shared another look with his

wife as Nabiki smiled back in silent acknowledgement of the truth behind

that statement...

"Well, those two sure seemed chummy," Ranma scowled, "I wonder what

Lord Hot-Head wants with them? I thought he was supposed to stay out of the

training that he's left to his brothers."

"The Daokan work in mysterious ways," Ryonami replied, then paused

before adding, "Or is that somebody else's line? I kind of get lost in the

narration..."

"Whatever he's up to I doubt very much if he intends to sew more

mischief," Nabiki said with a thoughtful scrutiny of the monitor displays,

"My take on it is that he's just as concerned about this crisis as any of

his brothers. Which reminds me...what progress is Lady Ulsa making in her

assault upon the NERV complex?"

"Are you kidding, Boss-lady?" Gosunkuji asked, "She's waltzing right

through their defenses like they're not even there, and with that Dragon and

the half-Kirin lady backing her up it's not like those NERV people can mount

any sort of credible defense, even with their new Terror weapons backing up

their play."

"Nonetheless I am concerned about these guns that shoot Orachalcum

bullets," Nabiki murmured half to herself as she considered the progress

that the monitors were indicating for this high-powered trio, "The making of

pure Orachalcum is a lost art, and if they've somehow stumbled on a way to

craft magic-disrupting projectiles..."

"Sounds like trouble," Ranma quipped, "Send me in there to deal with

them. I'll get to the bottom of this one way or another, and I'll even

try not to destroy too much of the real estate in the process."

"Humph," Nabiki responded, deliberately turning up her nose and

giving her man the distinctive cold shoulder.

"Hey, c'mon!" Ranma protested, "Don't be like that with me,

Nab-chan! You know damned well that I had no choice but to take him on,

even knowing I was going to get my ass kicked! It was necessary and

unavoidable..."

"Necessary?" Nabiki's voice fairly dripped icewater, and the

temperature of the room seemed to noticeably drop by a few degrees,

"Unavoidable? I take exception to that. In fact it's your whole strategy

that I call into question, given the nature of your covenant with Lord

Shiva."

"Eepp..." Ranma reacted, fairly wilting under the intensity of that

glare, and suddenly he had the urge to hide behind something for protection,

like a meter-thick wall of solid concrete-lined with adamantium-for

example...

"Uh oh," Gosunkuji reacted, staring at a flashing display on his own

console, "Don't look now, Chief, but we're getting a major flash-point

emanating from the NERV complex. Sensor readings indicate the presence of a

class VII life form, quite possibly a Neflim or Celestial Class..."

"Confirmed that," Ryonami snapped, "It's definitely a Neflim...in

fact a pretty damned powerful Neflim if I make these readings out right. In

fact...the signature matches a signature on file,

it's...omigawd...Kami-sama..."

"What?" Nabiki asked, seeing her brown-haired aide go what as a

sheet as she confirmed the worst on her console."

"It's...Lilith," Gosunkuji affirmed, his own tone adding more to the

effect of his Zombie-like appearance than even was normally the case.

"Lilith?" Ranma repeated with a start, followed shortly by a

heartfelt, "Oboy..."

"Oboy is right," Nabiki affirmed, then she turned to her aides and

said, "Contact Central and inform them of this new development. Tell them

that containment procedures may need to be practiced on continuity 59343921,

and tell them who we're up against. That ought to get somebody's

attention."

"Lilith," Ranma murmured while staring at the monitoring screens

with an expression of total dismay, then in an even lower aside he added,

"What are you doing, Lady Ulsa? If you're planning to do something to stop

this then you'd better make it quick...'cause that's one lady who doesn't

fool around about getting what she wants, and whatever that is it ain't

gonna be all that pretty..."

"Ichiro!"

Dr. Ichiro Katsuragi turned with a surprised look to see his ex-wife

approaching him in such a hurried run. Things had certainly been in a state

of general excitement since the alarms had sounded only a few minutes ago,

but nobody had so far told him anything about what was causing all the

commotion. From what hints he had gathered so far he would have imagined

that they were under some kind of attack, but...the very idea was absurd.

Who would want to-or could for that reason-lay siege to the NERV

complex...and for what possible reason?

Of course the expression that he saw upon his former wife's face

made him wonder if indeed they might be under assault from one of the

dreaded 'Neflim Angels' hinted at in the scrolls of legend. Kanoe was a

very tough-minded woman, not easily driven to either despair or panic, and

certainly not one given to hysterical false alarms or casual drills that

might seem far too serious and real to a normal civilian. Even though it

had been three years since their divorce she still struck him as the kind of

person who could face down damned near anything without flinching.

Misato took after her a lot in that respect, especially with her

stubborn streak of risking the odds and daring the devil himself with her

rebellious antics. Perhaps that was why she and her mother did not seem to

get along as well as they should have...they had too many of the wrong

qualities in common. Both were headstrong and impulsive, willing to go the

distance for what they believed and heedless of potential consequences.

These were qualities that he actually admired in both women, having more

than a bit of a rebellious streak himself that sometimes surfaced in spite

of his nominally mild-mannered and conformist appearance.

"Ichiro," Kanoe said urgently, hurrying up to join him, "Have you

heard? It's Misato! She and Ritsuko are trapped with another girl in the

central labs!"

"They what?" Ichiro whirled about, "Misato and Ritsuko? How the

hell did they get down there? There's about twenty levels of security..."

"How the hell should I know?" Kanoe replied with an exasperated

motherly tone in her voice, "I'm only her mother. It's not like I'd know

how she gets herself into anything. If you were to ask me, though, I'd say

she takes a little too much after her father."

Now that was plainly unfair for her to point out, or so Ichiro

reckoned to himself as he wilted under her accusatory stare, knowing that

she had him dead to rights but not willing to concede that she was herself

entirely guiltless of the matter.

"Ah...heh..." Ichiro winced as he said aloud, "I...don't quite

remember being such a handful when I was her age..."

"That's because memory is usually the first thing to go," Kanoe

snapped, "But I remember very well how much you'd drive both our parents to

distraction with your antics, and usually draw me in for the bargain! Why I

married you afterward the Kami only know..."

"Ah, Kanoe-chan," Ichiro said urgently, "Maybe you had better calm

down a bit and tell me what's happening. It's not like I've been given the

kind of security clearance that would give me insight into what goes on in

level Thirteen, Class C complex."

"That's because the leadership here isn't totally out to lunch, like

a certain one-track mind I happen to know," Kanoe said sarcastically, "And

did you also happen to know that we're under attack by someone who has the

powers of the Neflim at her disposal?"

"What?" this time Ichiro's reaction was more pronounced, "An Angel?"

"No, much worse than that," Kanoe informed him, "It's one of the

Four, the most powerful beings on the planet, with the possible exception of

Lilith herself if you go by what the legends and the Dead Sea Scrolls have

to say about it."

"One of the Four?" Ichiro scowled, "It can't be. They never

interfere directly in human affairs. They only intervene during severe

world-shattering crisis points in history...surely not the work that we do

here in this complex."

"Are you really that blind, that naive about everything that goes on

here in NERV central?" Kanoe asked him pointedly, "Did you think Gendo and

that bitch Naoko were just tinkering around with recombinant DNA because

they do it for a hobby? Hasn't anybody told you about what really goes on

in those Frankenstein laboratories that they keep on the Thirteenth level?"

"What are you saying?" Ichiro asked, "That...that Gendo has

continued the research that was halted in Antarctica? But that's insane!

The scrolls clearly state that..."

"Yes, I know," Kanoe waved the point away, "Should Lilith be revived

from her prison in the Ice it could well spell the end of everything and

everyone on the planet. It would bring about the catastrophe called Second

Impact, which would put to shame the great flood caused by First Impact and

pretty much bring an end to human history as we know it. I've read those

same files too, but do you honestly think a man like Ikari Gendo would be

deterred by a little thing like the thought of Universal Armageddon?"

"Ah...good point," Ichiro winced, "We are talking about a man who

risked his own wife in a dangerous lab experiment almost a year ago...and

our people still haven't figured out a way of extracting her out of that

goop that she allegedly dissolved into while testing out the piloting system

for project EVA..."

"He's kept all but a few of us in the dark about his real plans and

intentions," Kanoe informed her former husband, "But I stumbled on some

classified files while checking his personal database and I've uncovered the

whole horrific story! What he plans to do, what it will cost everybody on

earth, and just why it is that the Daokan want to shut this whole base down,

with our daughter trapped inside the very labs where the horror is being

artificially resurrected!"

"I can't believe that even Gendo would carry things this far,"

Ichiro said with a startled expression as his thoughts turned strangely

inward, "But...now that you point it out...it all makes sense! So much that

didn't make sense before...it all fits strangely together. But...but that

can't be! Our expedition was prevented from awakening Lilith..."

"You were stopped from reviving her, but now before core samples

were obtained that had traces of DNA that analysis showed to be entirely

human in nature," Kanoe informed him, "And three guesses just who's DNA was

used to graft a clone using genetic material belonging to one Ikari Kyo?"

"Omigawd...the fool...the bloody fool!" Ichiro swore, "And Misato's

trapped down there with that...that monster?"

"We have to help her, and quickly," Kanoe said with urgency, "If

anything happens to my baby on account of Ikari's madness..."

Ichiro surprised even himself by grabbing his ex-wife by the arm and

hurrying her along as he led the way out of their high-security offices,

"Come on...I know a way to bypass the security channels. It might even be

the way the kids used to get into there in the first place."

"And how would you know about a thing like that?" Kanoe said in

surprise.

"Hey, you don't think I'm totally scatterbrained when it comes to

being aware of what goes on here?" Ichiro asked with a mildly wry

expression, "Besides...it hasn't been that long since my college days when

we snuck into the Dean's office together."

"You mean when you dragged me with you and almost got the both of us

expelled?" Kanoe asked with a mildly exasperated expression, but nonetheless

she hurried right along after her former husband, drawn as much by the

urgent desire to rescue their daughter as she was by a stabbing sense of

nostalgia for the not-so-good-old-days.

She only hoped that they would arrive in time before the Silver

Seagull wrecked the entire base, and that she and Ichiro could do something

to protect their child or affect the overall outcome in a positive way. She

just hoped that Misato and that blasted Ritsuko were behaving themselves

down there, because if anyone was going to tan their hides it most

definitely would be Kanoe, even if one of the girls was technically not her

responsibility.

Considering the way Kanoe had seen Naoko ignore her own child and

left poor Ritsuko unsupervised much of the time while she buried herself in

research, perhaps it was Kanoe's duty to administer some stern parental

discipline to insure that the blonde at least had some moral guidance,

and-gathering from what she had observed about the nature of Akagi

Ritsuko-the girl might even thank Kanoe for it later.

If only she could shake this annoying feeling that there was a bit

more to the connection between Misato and Ritsuko than simple friendship,

but then again she was probably worrying over nothing, which was-after

all-the prerogative of any responsible mother. Of far greater concern was

the proximity of these teenagers to a certain horrific abomination who

should not even exist in her uncompromising opinion on the matter. A good

thing as a secretary in the Inspector General's office she had access to

certain classified data, and the hacking skills needed to probe even deeper

than either SEELE or NERV intended a civilian to have open knowledge about,

which made her fears for her daughter even more pronounced, what with the

dual crisis that they were facing with a Daokan on the one hand...and

something possibly a lot worse waiting for the unwary at the very center of

the NERV complex, which happened to also be the direction that she and her

Ex were charging to meet at that very fateful moment...

"{Just say the word, Frank,}" Talbain softly murmured, "(I'll create

a distraction, then you jump in and take these losers out.}"

"{And get yourself shot to pieces by their hardware?}" Frank

murmured back, eyeing the guards warily in case one or more of them caught a

snatch of their low-voiced exchange in vernacular German, which they were

counting on sounding incoherent to the ears of these Japanese-born

para-troops.

"{It'll hurt, I already know that,}" Talbain said grimly, "Take it

from me, those faux-Orachalcum slugs burn worse than pure-grade silver...but

the alternative of doing nothing...}"

"{I read you,}" Frank murmured back, scowling dangerously at the

monitor screens as they watched Heinrich Ibrahim personally coordinate his

remaining units to make a brave "last stand" before the onslaught of the

Silver Seagull and her allies.

"Have the sharpshooter positioned to take the shot the moment he has

a direct line upon the woman," Ibrahim relayed to his lieutenants, "She must

be taken out in one swift move or else the whole effect will be lost, and

then you had better hope that dragon finishes the lot of you before you face

my wrath, which will be far less pleasant I assure you."

"Easy there, Wolfie," Agent Kei urged, "Don't make any hasty moves

just yet. Wait until all of the players are fully in position..."

"What are you babbling about back there?" Ibrahim snapped with an

irritated glance over his shoulder, "No talking. Guards...if you see the

prisoners open their mouths again you have my permission to shoot them dead.

I must have no further distractions when we are this close to bringing

down our greatest enemy, and when she falls I want to savor the moment for

all eternity. This is a fate richly deserved and a very long time coming,

and I can hardly wait to see the bitch spread out before my feet.

Now...skirmishers into position!"

Agent Jay started to open his mouth when a sharp glance from his

partner taught him the better of the impulse. The trio of former NERV

command staff similarly were chastened to keep to their own counsel, even

though Gendo Ikari looked as thin and nervous as hypoglycemic jackal,

casting frightened looks at both Ibrahim and the mouth of the tunnel before

which they were positioned as if dreading what was to take place within the

next few minutes. Even Naoko Akagi had foregone her nervous habit of

playing with her palm-pilot calculator, and Kozo Fuyutsuki seemed himself to

grasp the tension in the air as they waited behind the rudely made barricade

and waited for the arrival of the terrifying trio who had thrown the whole

NERV base into such an uproar.

"Ah..." Ibrahim smiled as he caught sight of a vision at the far end

of the tunnel, "She approaches at last! Now you are going to see what it

means to challenge the One True God, my lady, and not even your vaunted

brothers can save you. Sniper, take the shot on my command."

Frank and the others looked on helplessly from their captive

position behind the barricade lines as two solid rows of heavily armed

gunners trained their weapons upon the lone solitary figure softly padding

her way into their view, a gleaming form who seemed almost like a sliver of

sunlight in the artificial gloom of those tunnels, and to see her one could

feel their breath being fairly taken away, for the presence she radiated

reminded Frank of the legends of Amaterasu emerging from a very different

cave to bring light to a world that had grown shrouded in darkness.

Ulsa Laolana seemed not in the least afraid as she braved the lines

of lethally armed men aiming to take her life with their specially made

Orachalcum-tipped weapons. She walked with no particular haste to her

steps, almost seeming to glide over the floor of the cavern as she moved

with grace and dignity in her bearing, arms folded beneath her shawl, blue

eyes cool and aloof yet somehow intimate and knowing. She bore the dignity

of a queen before her court and clearly feared not the specter of death, to

which she had been impervious for the better part of twelve thousand years

ongoing.

Ibrahim seemed almost unable to contain his glee as he chortled

aloud, "You think yourself so smugly superior, so removed from we mere

mortals who are not as evolved as your retrograde colleagues? Well, now is

the time where you pay for your arrogance, my lady. You should never have

risked yourself personally by exposing your physical body to attack rather

than sending your trained dog of an incestuous brother to do your dirty

work, as always. Sniper, take the shot, she is yours and in the clear..."

No sooner did those words get spoken when the section of tunnel wall

nearest to the ambush sight abruptly exploded outward, and from the tumble

of rock and rubble emerged the daunting figure of a hundred-foot-long giant

lizard incongruously named "Luna," who beat her wings and gave a savage

snarl that caused the rows of gunmen to whirl about in dismay, belatedly

realizing that they had just been flanked by the monster, incapable of

believing that it could get the drop on them, or that they could have failed

to notice the rumble in the earth that should have heralded its appearance.

Under such daunting circumstances discipline broke and the men began

shooting wild at the new target in their sights, forgetting all else in

their panic-stricken terror as they tried to draw a beat on the charging

dragon, only to stare in wild disbelief as their lethal projectiles went

wide of their mark, as though the curtains of time and space itself were

warping within its immediate presence.

Only one man maintained his calm while Ibrahim began shouting out

hasty and ill-considered orders, the one hand-picked to hold the prototype

Mark XIV rifle in his hands as he resisted the urge to turn and glance at

the one-sided spectacle of carnage that was befalling the rest of his unit.

He maintained his steady concentration and held his target sights firm and

square upon the seemingly oblivious Laolana. He gently squeezed the

trigger, preparing to send his deadly pure-grade Orachalcum shell into her

lovely face, expecting to see her head explode like a melon one second after

he completed his murderous mission.

Ibrahim had been certain that it would work, that this time they had

perfected a weapon that could kill even a God, let alone one of the fabled

Daokan, and he had trained this particular warrior with that express purpose

in mind, never dreaming that a target of such rich opportunity would

obligingly set herself up like a clay pigeon. Indeed, he had so well

conditioned this soldier to ignore everything else but his objective that

the man hardly had the wit to notice when a huge bone boomerang-shaped

Hiraikotsu came smashing down upon his head, driving his face into the dirt

and causing his aim to veer wildly off-mark. The bullet flew and missed its

objective by a distance of several meters, hardly bringing so much as a

flinch from the blonde-haired woman herself, as though she had anticipated

precisely such an outcome.

"WHAT?!" Ibrahim reacted, but now he had totally lost control over

the situation as the distraction brought about by the dragon-and now by

the sudden re-appearance of the golden-skinned Amalthea-provided the

prisoners just what the doctor ordered in the way of a handy excuse to break

their bonds and wreck further havoc to the rear guard of his rapidly

diminishing forces.

Frank exploded like a seven-plus foot titan, lashing out with his

huge fists to take down several of the men guarding both him, Talbain and

the rest of those no longer held involuntarily captive at gunpoint. Talbain

proved that he had sufficiently recovered from his earlier wounding and

reverted to full-Were shape, cutting loose with lupine fury to slash and

rend the uniforms of the very men who had shot at him before, and who would

not live long enough to regret the error of leaving the job unfinished.

Gendo and Kozo proved that they were not completely useless here as

they lashed out at those guards standing next to them while Naoko hastily

started dialing up on her palm pilot, returning to the frantic work that she

had been forced to suspend earlier, which naturally had little to do with

the mayhem taking part all around her but rather was aimed at a much more

dire crisis taking place elsewhere within the complex.

Ibrahim saw by then that the situation was thoroughly hopeless and

like any sensible villain turned about with the intention to flee...only to

find his way abruptly blocked by the muzzle of a handgun that somehow had

found its way into the hand of one stony-faced MIB agent.

"Going somewhere?" Agent Kei asked levelly, his steely glare somehow

more intimidating even than the hand weapon.

"How...how did you get a weapon past my men...?" Ibrahim began to

babble.

"We have our ways," Kei replied without taking his eyes off of the

bald headed SEELE agent, "You doing okay back there, Slick?"

"Oh, just fine!" Jay snapped over his shoulder while firing away

with a pair of deadly looking high-tech laser pistols, finishing off what

little resistance was left since the rest of the guards had run screaming in

terror, pursued hotly by one very irritated dragon.

"Appears the smile of lady fortune wasn't with you today, Ibrahim

old buddy," Kei said with almost clinical detachment, "You fell for one of

the most obvious tricks in the book, which a real military man would have

seen coming from a mile away. But then again...a guy like you never came up

from the ranks, you just got handed a position and thought you could bully

people around without having to earn your stripes first."

"Damn you," Ibrahim snarled, "This changes nothing! Do with me what

you will, it will gain you no advantage."

Amalthea came storming up, having taken the moment to retrieve her

bony weapon, "Let me deal with him! The filth dared raise a hand with the

intent of harming my lady! He deserves to have his bones ground down to

powder, which I assure you I can do without making him lose consciousness."

"Oooh...nasty," Talbain winced while fastidiously cleaning the blood

off his claws upon the uniform of a soldier who was in no condition to

notice, "And here I thought Kirins couldn't stand the smell of blood...like

it was Kryptonite for them, or something."

"Easy there," Frank deliberately interposed himself between Ibrahim

and the wrathful Amalthea, "He'll get what's due for him, but I don't

exactly think your lady wants you to be the one to pay this scum back for

the couple thousand negative points laid against his karma."

"Eh?" Amalthea turned in surprise, "My lady?"

Ulsa was striding over the remains of the recent battleground,

walking as though her bare feet were not touched by the violence and

bloodshed that as all around her. She glanced at Amalthea and inclined her

head in a slow look of recognition.

Listen to the good doctor, my Pet, he speaks truly. The life of

this one is not for you to judge or take...the task at hands remains for me

to render judgement.

"What?" Ibrahim turned a shocked glance away from the gun that was

dominating his field of vision and saw the look Ulsa gave him in response,

and for the first time of the evening he registered a look of total fear in

his expression, "But...you...!"

It did not seem as though Ulsa moved in any haste as she stretched

her hand out and was suddenly standing before the terrified Ibrahim, and all

at once her hand covered his face and he abruptly stiffened, eyes widening

in shock, mouth going open and slack in jaw-dropping terror. Ibrahim tried

to pull away but his body registered a sort of paralysis that made thought

and resistance as moot as a token gesture. All at once the strength gave

out from his knees and he sank to the ground with nary a sound, a puppet

whose strings had abruptly been clipped for all that he tried to fight and

resist the compulsion that he was under, even somehow managing to rally

enough strength a moment later to curl his lips and hiss like a serpent.

Ulsa's cool blue eyes suddenly blazed, and for an instant a terrible

fierceness registered there, as though she were well and truly angered by

the man's feeble efforts to resist her full unfettered justice.

Minion...you shall yield to me now.

That thought heralded a sudden surge of energies that sprang up and

swirled about their bodies as an eight-sided Ogduad appeared within the soil

like a summoned magic circle. It filled the tunnel with a radiant light

that was almost blinding to behold, and for a moment those remaining

onlookers were forced to glance away to spare themselves from the intensity

of this holy illumination...and in doing so had a sense of something

screaming in unholy screaming in protest, and a shadowy form reflected upon

the ceiling gave the barest hint of something alien and unnatural to any

worldly way of thinking.

But when at last eyes were able to recover from the blazing light,

when things had seemingly returned to normal, all that remained was Ulsa

standing right where she had been at the beginning, hand still outstretched

and covering the face of Ibrahim, who remained in a kneeling position for a

few seconds longer before slowly toppling over to one side, a puppet whose

strings had been rudely severed, and he lay still upon the ground, as

motionless as a doll and barely showing the least signs of continued

breathing while Ulsa slowly withdrew her hand and folded her arms back

beneath her shawl, serene features shadowed by a frown as she stared

dispassionately at the fallen man, blue eyes contemplative and reflecting.

Of all those other present only the man known simply as Agent Kei

seemed calm and unaffected, for he alone had shown the presence of mind to

put his protective black shades on just prior to the event, and thus was the

least affected by the Nova-bright event that had cast out a shadow far

darker than the darkest evening.

As for his partner, the street-savvy MIB agent known as Jay, that

worthy was staring in disbelief at the now completely normal-looking cave

ceiling, and he was the first to give voice to his feelings with a

mind-blown explanation of, "WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT THING?!"

"What thing?" Kei asked of his partner.

Jay pointed upwards, "You know...that

weird...tentacle-draping...alien looking...whatever!"

"Gonna have to be a little more specific than that, Slick," Kei

replied, completely unruffled, "We run into quite a few tentacle-draped

things in the course of an average work week."

"Not like this!" Jay shook his head vigorously, eyes still as wide

as saucers, "It looked like it could suck entire planets, and there were all

these...eyes...and...things protruding from its body...and it must've had at

least a hundred mouths...I mean, even the Regulons of Vegas IV ain't got

that many feelers!"

"Sounds like a pretty good description of an Old One," Frank rumbled

as he helped Talbain back to his feet, the Werewolf having been shaken by

the event far worse than any of the others.

"A what?" Jay turned a questioning look in the man-monster's

direction.

"An Old One," Gendo murmured, looking even more shaken than Kozo and

Naoko.

The creature known as Luna made a curious sound that almost sounded

like a question, to which Amalthea herself heartily agreed though she stood

uncertain of what she had herself just now beheld...since it had appeared to

her on two primal separate levels, and she was having trouble dealing with

the paradox, the contrast of diametrically opposed perceptions.

"You said it, Big Girl," Talbain winced as he flexed his hairy body

and recovered his balance, turning a look towards his own immediate

companion and saying, "An Old One? You don't mean...those big cats from the

Outer Dark?"

"Afraid so," Frank affirmed, "The worst of the worst, beings who

exist outside our cosmos, who embody the very essence of primal chaos."

That was Ahriman.

"Say what?" Agent Jay shot a questioning look in Ulsa's direction.

The blonde haired Silver Seagull turned a blue eyed stare at the

foreign man and without moving her lips conveyed her reply in terms of

stark, unflinching candor.

Ahriman the Unmaker. One of those who dwell beyond space and time,

who hate the light and despise all of creation. His kind are older than the

stars, far older than the galaxies that make up this and every other

Universe. He is...the enemy of all that live, and the great deceiver

worshipped as a God by many, a devil by many others who share a kinship with

his evil.

"What the hell you talking about Girl?" Jay asked, then blinked,

"And how the hell did you just say that? Wasn't like...Telepathy...or

whatever the hell you used to..."

"Easy Slick," Kei urged, "Remember who you're talking to."

"Right," Jay replied, then did an abrupt double-take, "Wait a

minute. Are you saying this Beach Comber Babe here is supposed to be the

great and terrible Seagull that everybody was just now yelling and screaming

about? Hell, she barely even comes up to my breast bone!"

"Size isn't everything," Frank assured him, turning his own

respectful nod towards the blonde and saying, "Lady Ulsa...it's been...some

time now..."

Ulsa smiled in response, her abstracted gaze turning momentarily

both intimate and wistful.

Doctor. It is good to see you well and thriving.

"Ah..." Talbain said as he stared at the seemingly harmless beauty

before him and tried to read the potency of her aura, but immediately

flinched away, having a too-brief sense that doing so might make his eyes

explode out of his head, so he shifted back to normal and just said lamely,

"Lady...Laolana?"

Now her gaze focused his way, and there was an element of the

playfully teasing there, which both put Talbain at ease and made him

simultaneously gulp as though he were a tiny little pup being favored by a

look from an older sister.

But then Ulsa turned her gaze away from him and her regard

immediately hardened, becoming almost laser intense as she singled one

figure out from the many.

Gendo.

The man winced and tried to look away, only to find himself

paralyzed as though his own body refused to obey him, and with a horrified

fascination he found himself staring into the depths of eyes that could

probe him to the least particle, and before whom his secrets were as open to

read as any subway wall graffiti.

You have trespassed far for one who has not yet lived out a single

lifetime. I have watched you from afar as you have performed abomination on

top of obscenity and I have chosen not to act until this day, but now there

will be a reckoning for your many crimes against nature. What have you to

say for yourself...Ugeki?

"It's...Ikari..." Gendo protested, only to wince as the sternness in

her stare froze his blood to icewater.

You are no more deserving of that name than you were of the love of

the woman who gave it to you in marriage. Be glad that I do not bestow her

fate unto you, or exchange your place with hers, as would be altogether

deserving.

"You don't...understand!" Gendo protested, "I was only doing what

the prophesy of the Scrolls said would be the fate of humanity..."

He got no further than this when the look in her eyes-if

anything-became more furious than anything that he or anyone else there

present had ever witnessed.

The Prophesy of the Scrolls? You fool! The ones who wrote those

lines that were preserved within the jars at Qumran were acting under the

influence of the Deceiver! It was Ahriman who planted the idea for those

so-called Prophesies in their mind...his blueprint for human destiny! To

reduce all of humanity to a Zero point, to dissolve us all into a collective

mind-puddle!

"Wh-what?" Gendo's eyes went wrong, "But...that cannot be!"

Ulsa's gaze remained firm and unflinching.

Trust me that it is, for I know far more than I could ever risk

telling you about what was originally in those scrolls and why provoking the

wrath of the Neflim Angels is a folly beyond all reckoning, especially the

one whom you rashly cloned using material from your wife, the one you call

Ayanami Rei, who has been reborn as Lilith's cat-spaw even as we stand here

with you foolishly justifying and rationalizing your crimes in trying to

resurrect a God! You have been deceived, Mortal, and as such have been an

easy mark to use by Ahriman in the fulfillment of his oft-thwarted ambition!

"But...but...I was the one deceiving them!" Gendo protested, "I

never appraised the Council of my real intentions...!"

"Say what?" Kozo reacted.

"You deceived us?" Naoko turned a hurt look towards her benefactor,

"But...I thought we..."

He has used you all in a quest that can only end in the ruin of all

humanity. Had he succeeded then I assure you it would have been the doom of

humanity. As fortune would have it, however, his aims were blunted by the

efforts of the good Doctor.

And with that Ulsa's gaze softened once again, and she inclined her

head respectfully in Frank's direction.

"Ah...yeah...right," Frank acknowledged tersely.

"My lady," Amalthea stepped forward, holding in her hands the

high-tech Mark XIV, which was slightly bloodied around the edges, "I have

retrieved the weapon as you requested...the one they tried to use to harm

you. Shall I destroy it?"

Ulsa's expression softened again as she turned a fond regard towards

the golden half-Kirin.

Certainly not. That weapon is but a third of the reason for why we

are now here. After all, as the fool has duly noted, it has the power to

slay even a God.

"Say what?" Jay blinked, turning to his own partner, "Is this white

chick for real?"

"Totally," Kei nodded to Ulsa, "Lady Laolana...I knew you wouldn't

let us down once I contacted you and told you where to find the weapon."

"Holy...what was that?" Talbain reacted.

"Informed her?" Frank asked in total amazement.

"You...told her what we were doing here?" Kozo asked.

"Didn't have to tell her about any of the freak experiments you

people have been conducting here out of view of the general public, and even

most government officials," Kei said calmly, "Lady knows pretty much near

everything there is to know...except the few things that the enemy has been

able to hide from her all-seeing eyes, such as the rediscovery of crafting

Orachalcum."

Ulsa nodded her head by a serene fraction.

Indeed. The Enemy was clever in keeping that little bit of news

from the awareness of myself and my brothers. Ordinarily I would hardly be

this concerned about the development of yet another weapons system. Some

humans have a positive need to find new and creative ways of killing one

another, and I am obliged not to interfere in their activities, though I

have watched much tragedy unfold over the years. But...this discovery I had

to come here personally to put a stop to before their research progressed

any further."

"But...why?" Kozo asked.

"Because Orachalcum absorbs Magic," Frank said, "And no amount of

magic can deflect it. Hell, even ordinary magnetism doesn't affect it like

it would, say, Adamantium, so even Magneto couldn't defend himself against

one of these bullets."

"Think about it," Naoko said with a thoughtful look of her own, "If

Superman could prevent the discovery of Kryptonite do you think he would

hesitate to step forward to prevent the widespread knowledge of his most

deadly weakness?"

"Knowing Supes the way I do?" Frank frowned, "He probably wouldn't

do anything since he'd consider having a weakness as a good reminder that

he's still just basically human."

Ulsa inclined her head again in assent to that statement.

Indeed, and I acknowledge that such courage is what makes him so

great a hero...but I do not have the luxury of such risk-taking. My

brothers are too precious to both myself and all humanity to be risked by a

weapon that was clearly designed to assassinate both Gods and Daokan. It

was a weapon intended for the hands of Ahriman's minions, and as such I had

to prevent this latest model of purest metal from coming into widespread

distribution.

"I think I see what you're getting at," Jay frowned, "But what the

heck is this Orachalcum anyway, and why is it such a problem even for you?"

"Orachalcum was one of the great discoveries of the Atlanteans,

Slick," Kei replied, "They used it a long time ago in their war against the

Titans, but after some initial success the Titans had the last laugh by

drowning their whole continent and sinking it to the bottom of the

Atlantic."

Again Ulsa acknowledged this statement by a fractional nod.

Indeed. They say a weapon like that was meant to be an equalizer,

to allow even a mortal to stand before a God and claim victory in

battle...but weapons are seldom such useful tools as all that, and this one

had a double-edge that cut its own creators every bit as much as it did

their enemies, for Orachalcum was proof against even the highly

sophisticated Crystal Technology of Starstones, which were the life-blood of

Atlantis, and the use of it was one of many factors that brought an end to

their own civilization. Should I stand back then and let history repeat

itself with the current generation?

"Guess that really wouldn't make much sense," Kozo said with a

dawning look of horror, "Omigod...what have we been doing here all of this

time? We meant to use these weapons against the Angels...but they could

have destroyed us...just like they did the Atlanteans!"

"And the Lemurians before them," Frank murmured, "Guess I finally

can figure out just why you felt like coming here and storming the gates,

Lady Ulsa. But...one thing I don't get. Why you? Why not just send that

one-man wrecking crew you call both husband and brother?"

"Because she didn't want to risk losing him," Talbain said with

dawning realization causing his own furry face to brighten, "He'd just crash

in here and smash everything, and they'd retaliate by using the weapon

against him."

This time Ulsa bowed her head in a more respectful show of

acknowledgement.

You are wise, John Talbain. That is precisely why I would not risk

using Udan. He disdains the use of allies and weapons, preferring to go it

alone against whatever odds the fates set against him. I, on the other

hand, prefer to trust my personal safety to the care of faithful allies,

such as my loyal servants here, Amalthea and Luna.

"My lady?" Amalthea replied, then suddenly it all became very clear

to her and she stood a bit taller with a glow of pride as she acknowledged,

"My lady..."

"Um...you said you had three reasons for coming here yourself," Kozo

murmured, "Just what are the other two?"

Ulsa turned a contemptful glance towards the fallen wretch of a man

formally known as Ibrahim.

He is one of Ahriman's trusted servants. He is thus privy to things

which are denied to me, such as the most intimate plans the Unmaker intends

for this cosmos. I do not like having things kept from me that interfere

with the performance of my duty as humanity's protector. I thus tricked him

into exposing himself, knowing that he would only dare to risk his personal

safety if he thought it would mean the doom of me. I knew that he could not

resist such bait, and thus he fell into my power...and has provided me with

much useful information.

The satisfied look in her eyes and the smile she wore were vaguely

troubling to behold, yet somehow no one there seemed able to work up much

sympathy for the fallen servant of greater evil, so with a snort of contempt

that he himself did not feel obliged to hide Frank asked, "So...what do you

want to do with him now that you've sucked his mind dry?"

Ulsa turned away and affected a look of indifference.

The man he once was I would have taken pity upon, but that being no

longer exists, his soul having long ago been consumed and replaced by

Ariman's essence. I have cleansed the body of all taint and it is now as

hollow as a tabula rasa. Do with it what you will, it is of no further

consequence.

There was something almost chilling in the way she projected that

last thought, but no one there was about to question the lady's assertion,

so they collectively turned their minds to other subjects, Naoko being the

one to ask, "And...the third reason for your coming here?"

The blonde haired scientist almost regretted asking the question as

Ulsa turned her focus towards Doctor Akagi then projected a stern note of

almost chiding reproof.

You already know the answer to this, or why else do your thoughts

turn to the eminent danger presently confronting your own daughter? Lilith

has awakened, and it is my duty to confront her. If I do not step forward

now she will grow to assume her former mantle, and then the world will face

a danger far greater than anything you could possibly conceive...the

fulfillment of Gendo's intentions for humanity, the event you have named

Synchronicity, which we are on the verge of seeing come to pass in another

few minutes.

"Oh god..." Gendo reacted, "My God...we have to stop her! Rei was

never intended to awaken this soon before the fulfillment of the project!"

"Holy...what the hell are we doing jabbering away in here then?" Jay

reacted.

"Easy, Slick," Kei cautioned, "The lady knows the score far better

than the rest of us, so leave it up to her. It's her show from here on out,

and the rest of us are merely the chorus."

"But...can't we do anything?" Kozo asked.

"What can we do?" Naoko asked, "She's Lilith...and we're only human.

Lady Ulsa is the only one here who could hope to confront her

directly...but lady...can eve you do this? She is..."

Ulsa's expression was one of resolve mixed with resignation.

I know. She is the First Woman, the Uber-Neflim before whom all

others-saving only for Adam-are but pale shadows and imperfect copies.

There is a chance that I will be defeated if she awakens to full power. I

am not the warrior that my brothers are...I have depended on them for far

too long to do what is necessary, but now...this task falls unto me, and I

must do my part to see that Second Impact does not become the reality of

this Cosmos.

"I understand," Naoko said, "And I know that you must do what you

have to do...and that I probably don't have the right to ask this...not with

all the things that I'm guilty of doing. But...Lady Laolana...if it's at

all within your power...my daughter..."

Ulsa's face softened again with a knowing look of mutual

understanding.

I will do what I can for her, though I do not yet sense that she is

herself in immediate danger. After all, I am also a mother, and I know how

it feels to have a child put in the path of such a looming menace.

"My lady," Amalthea said, "Let Luna and me help you..."

Ulsa shook her head in slow negation.

You must remain here and wait for my return. She would overpower

the both of you and your sacrifice would be for naught. But...Doctor

Steinberg?"

"What can I do to help?" Frank immediately asked her.

Ulsa nodded to Amalthea, who understood the silent meaning of her

Mistress's gaze and promptly turned possession of the Mark XIV over to the

big man, who held it with surprise in his own expression, even as he

automatically tested the weight and feel of the unusually designed weapon.

Ulsa then fixed him with her gaze, her blue eyes curiously warm yet

full of dire warning.

If I fail and Lilith awakens then you will be the only one left who

can prevent her from fulfilling Ariman's wishes. She is quite mad, you

know, and cannot be reasoned with. Only this weapon may have the potential

of ending the threat that she poses. I am trusting you to do that which is

necessary should I prove inadequate to the task that the fates have set

before me.

"Ah...I got it," Frank said grimly.

"Just like back in Stalingrad, huh?" Talbain asked with a wince.

"Yeah," Frank gruffly acknowledge, testing the weapon and examining

it with a critical eye before doing a double-take and saying, "Too many

damned memories for that-Holy! This is a Rail Gun! I know the

prototype this must have been based upon! But...how...?"

Ulsa turned away rather than respond and took another step

forward...only to vanish before their eyes, as though she quite literally

stepped through a curtain in the fabric of time and space, disappearing with

nary a ripple.

"Well...that as...odd," Kozo turned to Naoko and Gendo, "I think

we'd better get back up to the control room. Now that Ibrahim and his goons

are out of the picture we're going to have to move fast to retake control

over NERV."

"It doesn't matter...none of it matters," Gendo said, his face and

expression looking haggard and vaguely twisted, "There won't be time to

evacuate should the worst of all fates happen...and no where to evacuate to!

Now if Lilith should prevail over the Seagull..."

"Hey, don't worry," Jay insisted, "That lady sure seems to have her

act together. My money's on her if it comes down to a major-league

catfight."

"Sure hope you're right about that, Slick," Kei turned to the

others, "But Fuyutsuki's right, we'd better head back to the control booth

if only to reassure the staff that the old management is back in command.

Stein, I suggest you use the facilities to make contact with your own

people."

"Better hook me up with a remote then," Frank said as he finished

checking the construction of his newly gained weapon, "I'm gonna be needed

down here...just in case the lady needs me."

"Then I'm sticking with you," Talbain said by way of affirmation.

"Not this time," Frank said, "This is a hunt, and I do my hunting

strictly solo."

"No way," Talbain insisted, "I'd be totally useless upstairs and you

know it, and besides...who else is gonna watch your back while all hell

brakes loose down here? Besides, there might still be a few of those SEELE

Mercs around who'd think you'd make perfect target practice."

"I will stay with you also," Amalthea affirmed, "We will guard this

tunnel and see to it that you are well protected until you fulfill our

Mistress's wishes, right Luna?"

The hundred-foot long dragon responded with a sound that everyone

there took to be a verbal acknowledgement of its intentions to be

supportive.

"Just swell," Frank said as he slung the strap of the gun around one

shoulder, "Gojiro's own daughter's got my back on this one. If her old man

could only see me now he'd roll over laughing...and probably cause a tidal

wave in the process."

"Ah, why complain when you know it's inevitable, Frank?" Talbain

said, then sniffed the air and said, "Hold on...I've got a whiff of

something here. It's faint but I think I ought to be able to follow it.

This way...I've got the point."

As the werewolf loped ahead Frank prepared to follow after him, only

to turn a glance back at the trembling Gendo, disgust replacing resolve as

he curled a lip and said, "For God's sakes, man, pull yourself together!

You've got a son who depends on you, and this whole base will be looking to

you for leadership."

"Leadership?" Gendo asked, "After a failure of this magnitude? Do

you think they will ever trust me?"

"They were fool enough to trust the first time," Kei answered, "What

makes you think they would have gotten any smarter in the last hour or so?"

"A good point," Kozo said, turning to his friend and nominal

superior, "The men will be expecting you to take charge again over this

crisis, and we can't let them down so soon even if we do share part of the

blame for what's happening."

"It might be necessary to at least affect the appearance of

leadership, Sir," Naoko said to her sometime lover, "At least for the sake

of formality we'll need you in the commander's chair."

Gendo seemed torn between resolve and an uncharacteristic sense of

guilt, but he managed to swallow down pride and humiliation as he nodded,

"You're right...I'm being selfish. Let's go to the bridge...and treat this

like it's one of our practice scenarios for dealing with the Angels."

"Only thing is we don't yet have a working EVA," Kozo shrugged, "And

now it's unlikely that we ever will...but what the hell, we've got the

Silver Seagull on our side. That has to count for something, right?"

"I sure hope so," Kei murmured softly to himself, then shrugged,

confident nonchalance restored once again, "Let's move out, people...time

for you guys to act the part of humanity's saviors, only this time you

really are on the side of the Angels."

"That's what worries me," Gendo murmured half to himself, but

nonetheless he started to move forward, propelled as much by desperation as

a sense of atonement as he took the lead tracing their steps back towards

the command central, gingerly side-stepping the strewn bodies of unconscious

or deceased SEELE soldiers as they moved with haste to attempt to regain

some control over the deteriorating situation...

Continued.

Comments/Criticisms/Clash of the Titans Round III:

shadowmane

Or: shadowmane9849

Or: shadowmane747

New E-address, new service, but same old production as we move into

the final chapter of the battle between Laolana and Lilith...but who will

emerge victorious when Lady Ulsa meets Rei, and will humanity itself survive

to see a new sunrise. (Or will we be doomed once again to witness yet

another annoying "Neo-Genesis Evangelion" sequel? Find out the answer to

this and so much more in: "Twilight of the Dark Mistress," or, "Wings of the

Seagull Unfurled." Be there!

X


	107. Chapter 107

Dnabiki196

Nabiki ½

"A Very Scary Thought"

by

Jim Robert Bader

(Inspired by the works of Rumiko Takahashi & Others,

with concepts and characters created by fellow fanfic writers

Wade Tritschler, DB Sommers, Nicole Manders, Andrew

Greaves, Bill Guiroff and countless others, including "Buffy"

creator Joss Whedon; with special thanks to my good pal

Shiva for his editing and handling of this series.)

(Certain other characters and concepts are of my own

innovation, including my interpretation of the Monster

of Mary Shelly's novel, the Furies, Trudy, Takaharis

Angelique d'Anjou, Anri and the Daokan, Thelendra

the Dream Weaver and various other guest stars

appearing in this portion of the Nabiki ½ series…)

Chapter Seventy-Four.

Episode One-Hundred-Ninety-Six.

Of Warriors and Weapons.

A great wave was approaching. She could feel it within her very

being. Her senses fairly reeled with the touch of his approach. She could

almost see his face as she stood gazing down upon the city, her awareness of

his nearness calling to her on a primal, elemental level. She knew that she

would answer this call, and very soon indeed, for to do otherwise would be

to deny the very essence of her nature. She could no more turn away from

facing him than she could deny her very name and...

"Sandra?"

Snake reacted with a start, more alarmed that she had been

discovered thus than even the fact her lover had approached her so silently,

that she had her mind and thoughts so focused upon elsewhere that she could

be surprised, and in such an amateurish manner.

"Assstarte?" she lisped, her raspy voice somehow making the very

sound of that name as beautiful as a melody.

"Why are you here all by yourself, my love?" the Demon Princess

named Astarte Jones inquired, her voice so rich and melodious that the sound

of it made Snake feel weak with desire and a hunger for the lightest caress

of the redheaded beauty, "Illyra was just now wondering to where you had

gotten."

"Illyra worriesss over triflesss," Snake half-smiled in the fading

light of sunset, "Ssshe ssshould by now know that I am capable of attending

to myssself without her fretting."

"We both know that Illyra is concerned for you, as am I," Astarte

said as she approached the shorter woman, "When you get pensive like this it

often means that you are up to some mischief, and as much as we both care

for you it is no well-kept secret how you sometimes act on your own

initiative and not always from the most sincere of motivations."

Snake gave her lover a furtive look and said, "But you trussst me

enough that I act in the interessst of what isss bessst for all concccerned

partiesss..."

"I believe that you do what is best in your own eyes, Sandra,"

Astarte assured the buxom Eurasian beauty, "And granted that you possess the

wisdom of many ages, your judgement of what is best is better informed than

those who have lived a single lifetime. But still...you can understand and

forgive me if I do worry about your penchant to get yourself into things

that sometimes are beyond even your means to address."

Snake turned away to conceal the look in her own eyes, knowing full

well how sensitive the Demoness was to the subtlest of emotions, "There isss

a power at work here, Beloved...a forccce ssso ssstrong that it needsss to

be addresssed before the matter of our quessst to find Genocccide may be

initiated. I mussst needsss addresss thisss calling...for it threatensss to

eclipssse our very misssion, and asss a Priessstesss of the Tao I mussst

answer thisss call in the way of the Immortalsss."

"I see," Astarte mused while regarding her Cambodian girlfriend's

striking profile, "It must indeed be quite urgent if it can draw you away

from the quest to find the monster who engineered the singular rape of your

native Kampuchea."

Snake closed her eyes and let the wind do her sighing for her, "You

underssstand me too well, Assstarte. I can never ressst ssso long asss the

crimesss of Genocccide go unanssswered...and yet I have a duty that goesss

well beyond any sssimple quessst for vengeanccce."

"I understand," Astarte nodded, "You have...commitments."

"In a manner of ssspeaking, I do," Snake averred, "I have not long

been in my officcce asss the current wearer of the Sssnake Totem...but

through my union with the elemental being who sssharesss my very sssoul I

bear the memoriesss and resssponsssibilitiesss that comes with being one of

the very lassst of my kind. Among thossse dutiesss is to find the one who

might very well become yet another Immortal himssself...and consssidering

how badly depleted our ranks currently are..."

"He?" Astarte replied with a lilt, "It is a man who holds your

present interest?"

Snake half-turned to regard the Succubus with a smile of faint

amusement, "You need not feel jealousss, my love. I do not ssseek him out

asss a posssible conquest. My daysss of flirting outssside of our union are

long past. But you mussst underssstand the weight of the resssponsssibility

that I carry upon my ssshouldersss. After all, you are a Champion..."

"Ah yes," Astarte nodded sagely, "You make a fine point, my love.

Very well, I will permit you to do this thing on your own. But...if the

challenge is as great as you make it sound...would it not be prudent to take

along an ally who can watch your back and see that you won't wind up in more

trouble than you reckon?"

"I hardly need a babysssitter," Snake replied, "And I can make

better time on my own. Go back and tell Illyra that ssshe need hardly sssit

up and wait for me until late evening. I am cccertain that the both of you

can keep each other sssatisssfied until I return to join you."

"I would hardly be the same without you there beside us," Astarte

assured the other woman, "But please...for our sake, do be careful."

"Am I not always?" the woman known as Snake replied with an

endearing look of passionate admiration, but then she turned and vaulted

over the rail, disappearing into the fading light as she descended towards

the streets below like a bungee diver who had leapt without a cord attached

to her person.

Strangely enough Astarte did not seem overly concerned but only

gazed thoughtfully into the spreading darkness, then in a low voice she

added, "Follow her. Do try and see to it that she keeps out of serious

mischief."

"Got it, Boss," the hirsute Catsclaw replied as she detached herself

out from the shadows, "And don't worry, I'll bring her back safe and sound

if I have to drag her by her hair."

"Just see to it that you both return safe," Astarte her loyal

bodyguard and servant, "She has been showing signs of evasiveness of late

that seems to suggest a hidden agenda that she is keeping to herself even

while we are in the throes of passionate lovemaking."

"Yeah, and we all know what that could mean," Catsclaw winced, "She

really gets off on these sneaky games she sometimes plays, always falling

back on that 'I know things taught to me by my ancestors' crap, like any of

that could justify the kind of pranks she sometimes plays..."

"Just find her and stay out of her sight as best you are able,"

Astarte urged, "For now I will trust Sandra to know what is best, but she

sometimes allows herself to be blinded by the weight of her experience and

she does not always see what is before her. She does, however, know this

city far better than any of us, recalling it from when a predecessor of hers

once called it Edo...and a good deal before that."

"Yeah, it's definitely home turf to her," Catsclaw sniffed, "But a

city is a city, and I'm a city girl born and bred, and I know how to handle

myself around locals. Don't worry, Boss...I'll find out whatever it is that

she's up to and report back as soon as I've got the juicy scoop on this guy

that's got her panties in a bunch."

"Just bring her back if it looks to be too much for the both of you

to handle," Astarte frowned, "I know well enough that I should trust

her...but in many ways I know better than to trust her too far, and anything

can happen while Genocide lurks in the shadows sewing his usual mischief."

"Yeah, word on that," Catsclaw tapped a place at the side of her

neck just below one of her rotating pointed ears, "And don't worry too much.

We run into trouble I'll give Ian a holler, then you can send in the

cavalry to pull our bacon out of the fire before it gets too crisp. And now

that I've given our smug Ms. Chi a head start I'll take it up on a wing, and

I'll try and stay out of her sight as much as I'm able."

"Good hunting to you then, Catsclaw," Astarte urged the other woman,

turning away from the railing, only to pause and frown for a moment, and

then she said, "How odd...I can feel something...or rather someone is out

there...not evil or hostile...but definitely more than human."

"Just as long as he's hunky and single," Catsclaw quipped, and then

she followed after her vanished teammate, drawn by the distinctive scent of

Snake upon the breeze, leaving the solitary figure of Astarte to consider

the approaching night with deep concern upon her features.

And then she turned and re-entered the penthouse apartment to seek

out her other lover, Illyra Romaine, to commiserate and share her mutual

concerns as they waited for news-or the prompt return-of the sensuous

martial artist who was-in every important sense-as dear to either one of

them as a wife...or a sister in marriage...

"Hello? Bon jour ma petit file? Are you home?"

Angelique was puzzled as she pushed her way into the house through

the garage entrance, curious as to why the house defenses were so inactive

at the present. She had pulled up into the parking lot with a curious sense

that something was amiss, and now a growing sense of unease was rapidly

overtaking the good mood that she had been in since leaving the Kuno

mansion. It was a state of awareness in no way diminished as her highly

refined senses failed to detect all trace of the mystical presence that

would normally be present here in the home of her recent bedmate.

Since Takaharis's otherworldly aura stood out from the profile of a

nominal human standard it should have been fairly easy for Angelique to home

in on her lover, but absent any trace of her presence the time-displaced

Temuvarai found the house strangely empty and forlorn, as though missing its

mistress.

This put an angle of caution in her movements as she proceeded into

the gloomy interior of the house, wary as every sense was extended to afford

her maximum awareness of her surroundings. She knew intuitively that

something was terribly wrong, that the Devil-woman's absence was not

voluntary, and that some power had physically removed her from the premises,

quite possibly a hostile force, in which case she would need to employ

stealth and caution in order to determine the source of these strange

emanations that she was perceiving.

"Zut alors," she murmured softly, a stealthy hand moving to where

her sword lay hidden in concealment, "Adonai...zere may be trouble..."

"With you around there generally is," she heard the faintly

sarcastic reply in her ear-piece, reminding Angelique exactly what it was

that she missed most about coming from a non-tech era, "But your point is

well taken...the signature profile of your 'friend' is not detectable within

the range of my sensory abilities. I am, however, detecting a faint trace

of another presence beside your own located somewhere near to your location,

so I would suggest you practice caution...or, at the very least, more

caution than you usually employ on your assignments."

"Another presence?" Angelique glanced around, finding only the

faintest disturbance in the air to confirm the report of her AI companion,

"How near and at what angle?"

"It's camouflaged, but I think it's no more than five meters from

your current position. Be careful on this one, Angel...the readings that

I'm making out are very strange and confusing, but if it has stealth

capabilities..."

There was no other warning than the slight shift of energy currents

and suddenly her attacker made its presence known to the Temuvarai.

Angelique pivoted on both heels but had no time to more than draw her sword

half-way...and suddenly something struck hard at her blade and forced her

physically backwards...quite forcibly indeed as her feet skidded on the

floor and she had to fight for balance to remain upright.

Angelique fell back on one knee and managed to complete the drawing

of her sword, but when she took a defensive swipe back at her unknown

assailant she found her blade easily parried by a heavy blunt object. She

fell away and gave ground, but this only encouraged her opponent to press

the advantage and that selfsame heavy object came stabbing directly towards

her exposed head, and only by moving with great haste did she manage to

avoid having her head split open like a melon by the vicious, well-aimed

thrust. Even as she dodged this and the follow-up attack she was using her

perceptions to form a mental picture that would enable her to better

comprehend her opponent, and the first thing that she immediately noticed

was that her enemy was having no difficulty at all in tracking her movements

within the darkness of the cramped living quarters that formed a Japanese

house in the suburbs.

From that Angelique formed an immediate strategy to counter the

ferocity and power of her assailant, and with a hastily worded chant of

invocation she caused her sword to flare up brightly like a torch set to

phosphorescence.

This had the effect that she desired, causing her foe to cry out and

move away with arms raised to prevent flash-blindness. This gave Angelique

the needed respite that she could turn to her advantage, but no sooner did

she aim her sword and ready her counter-attack than she instantly thought

better of the gesture...for confronting her now was hardly the sort of

dangerous enemy whom she ordinarily would have anticipated.

"Mon dieu!" she gasped as she caught sight of a brown-haired girl

with lovely features and dressed in casual slacks and a sleeveless tank-top.

A generous amount of cleavage was also revealed in the space between

upraised slender arms, and of the rest of the feminine package presented

before her there was much that could be praised as admirable, which

immediately dissuaded her from doing anything that much inadvertently damage

such sumptuous beauty.

Of course her attacker snarled and seemed ready to press on with her

attack, and the heavy bamboo umbrella that she was holding in one hand

looked as though it would indeed make for a most formidable weapon, so

finding a means of calming the situation down seemed altogether appropriate,

to say nothing of desirable because this woman was skilled, quite strong and

even possibly most deadly.

"Cheri...who are you?" Angelique asked, hoping to start a

conversation by setting a tone of reasonable discourse as an alternative to

further hostile actions.

"Never mind who I am," the strange woman growled, "Get that light

out of my face and tell me what you're doing here, and what have you done

with my cousin?"

"Cousin?" Angelique responded, keeping the glowing sword carefully

raised in the space between her and this other woman, "You are kin to

Mademoiselle Professor Takaharis?"

"What have you done with her?" the strange woman demanded, and then

before Angelique could frame an answer she promptly bent down and gripped

the wooden panel floor and started to heave upward in a display of

superhuman strength, gripping not just the panel but the frame and tilting

it out from under the feet of the Temuvarai.

"A merde!" Angelique exclaimed as she suddenly found herself

tumbling backwards into the under flooring. Quite obviously she had

underestimated this woman's strength by a considerable factor, which meant

that dealing with her would prove more challenging than she had previously

imagined.

Fortunately, the Commander of Delta Squadron, Silver Legion

sub-division Three, was not so easily taken down by a little upset of this

nature. As powerful and as skilled as her opponent clearly was, Angelique

had faced far worse than her and emerged triumphant. Though clearly a

dangerous fighter, her technique was less than flawless and had several

opening that could be exploited, and Angelique was quick and agile enough to

press her advantage home upon that basis.

She noted, for example, that her foe tended to favor attacking on

her left ever-so-slightly, and when she thrust forward it created the

opening that Angelique needed to rush in and catch the other woman by her

outstretched wrist, which she gave an appropriate twist while placing one

held at a convenient angle in order to "trip" her. The result turned the

other woman's own strength against herself and sent her tumbling into an

already previously damaged wall, which only momentarily stunned her but

presented enough of a chance for Angelique to position herself with the tip

of her blade resting under the chin of her prone opponent.

"Surrender, ma petit," the Temvarai said simply, "I have no wish to

harm you, but you must desist in seeking to harm me or we will non be able

to engage in meaningful dialogue, non?"

She saw her foe grit her teeth and snarl, "You're a sword

wielder…just like HER. I really hate sword wielders."

"Eh?" Angelique reacted, "Zis…is important you vous?"

All at once her opponent vanished, causing Angelique to stare in

dismay before she felt something bat her sword away, and all at once

something else went rushing up towards her chin, which-had it not been for

the change in air pressure-would have caught her clean but for the hasty

way in which she twisted backwards out of the way of the tip of the

umbrella.

She staggered backwards, now herself on the defensive, and tried to

orient once more upon her foe, whom she sensed was still there if not plain

visible. She briefly considered the question of invisibility but

immediately rejected as improbable, which meant that her foe must have

powers of illusion, which were what were so badly confusing her own senses.

But Angelique knew a means of coping with illusionists, and she

simply closed her eyes and waited, then when the next attack came she

pivoted once more and went around the attacker, then drove her elbow into

the base of a skull and sent her assailant sprawling, too stunned for the

moment to continue hostile action.

"Zut alors," Angelique said as she opened her eyes and found the

brown haired beauty who was stretched out at her feet, clearly much more

than an ordinary human and possessed of such raw strength that she might

well have Ogre blood in her ancestry.

Knowing better than to waste time when such an opportunity was

presented, Angelique knelt down and hastily bound the woman's ankles and

wrists, using specially treated chords that would not be very easy to sunder

without something sharp to work with. She found and flipped on a light

switch, then sat her groaning opponent upright and righted a chair that she

herself could sit down upon, then rested her sword point-first in the rug

and leaned her chin upon its pommel while she waited for the consciousness

to return to the other woman.

When it did that worthy snarled and tried to break loose from her

bonds, only to find them resistant to her best efforts. Angelique waited

patiently for the point of her helplessness to sink in before informing her

captive, "Now…to pick up where we left off, Madamoiselle…what are you doing

here, and what has become of my good friend Takaharis?"

An incredible look filled the brown eyes of her lovely assailant,

"You don't know?"

"Would I ask if I did?" Angelique reasonably countered.

"Then what are you doing here?" the other woman asked while testing

her ropes again, "Cut me loose or I'll…"

"One thing at a time, Cheri," Angelique said, "Now…you made mention

of her being your cousin…am I right about that?"

The brown haired woman scowled, "Yeah? What about it?"

"Hmmm…" Angelique considered, "I do see faint traces of a family

resemblance…but Takaharis did not mention having relatives living in Japan.

Since she comes from a place very far away it would not seem too likely that

you are also a resident of this sphere plane…"

"I was born here," the bound woman said with gritted teeth, then

with a more puzzled look she asked, "How do you know where Takaharis comes

from?"

"I asked and she told me," Angelique answered, "We have become…very

close friends and in very short order. But if you live here then I take it

that this is the reason she chose to settle in Japan…to be closer to family

with whom she is on good terms?"

"Something like that," the other woman said grudgingly, "Actually my

Mom lives here…and my dad…he kind of travels around a lot. But what about

you? You sound foreign and have that heavy accent…"

"I am from France, from a place known as Anjou," Angelique replied,

"But my world is also very far from here, so I am a fellow traveler, as it

were, and my friends call me Angelique of Anjou. Appropriate, non?"

"I…" the woman seed undecided about something, but then she took a

harder look at Angelique and seemed to notice something about her that she

had not seen before, and whatever it was she felt a faint gasp, then looked

away, feeling her cheeks begin to burn for some odd reason.

"I had a sense when I entered this demesne that there was something

amiss that has transpired for your cousin," Angelique noted shrewdly, "I

take it that you yourself noticed zee same thing and thus your mistaken

assumption that I had something to do with her disappearance. Let me assure

you zhat zhis is non the case and that I wish for nothing more than her safe

return, and in short order."

"Then what were you doing here?" the brown haired woman asked, "If

the house is dark do you just barge in and ask questions?"

"Actually I have been staying here for zee past day or so,"

Angelique replied, "Out of the goodness of her soul your fair cousin was

kind enough to give me shelter…as well as…other pleasantries that have

helped to make us much closer than mere colleagues."

"Other…?" the brown haired woman seemed to have trouble deciphering

that for a few moments, but then comprehension lit up in her eyes and she

said, "You mean…you and Taki…?"

"Oui," Angelique grinned, "And may I say without modesty zhat your

cousin is certainly a very hot one to come to know. Ah…but I degress.

Suffice I entered here hoping to determine the means by which your cousin

was rudely snatched away by some enchantment, and that is when you attacked

me. I take it that you entered here with zee same motive and merely mistook

me for someone with hostile intentions?"

"Ah…" the brunette found it difficult to look in the blonde's

direction, "Actually…I thought you might be an agent working for my mother.

She's…well…we're not on the best of terms right now, and it's all concerning

my son…"

"You have a son?" Angelique asked in surprise.

Her captive grimaced and seemed to immediate regret mentioning him,

but she said, "Yeah…what about it?"

"Interesting," Angelique mused, "I wonder…is he a student who

attends Furinkan High School?"

"How did you know?" the brown haired woman asked in astonishment,

actually turning to look at Angelique, only to feel her cheeks turn red

again, which forced her to look away with an angry expression.

"A good guess," Angelique replied, "And no doubt you have noticed

zhat zee building has suffered damage in see previous day or two, which has

quite naturally further set you on edge."

"Well…can you blame me for that?" the brown haired woman asked

uneasily, "You've got no idea what sort of enemies I've picked up over the

past twenty years…"

"Indeed, no doubt your tale would be an epic one, and one I might

like hearing about in more details," Angelique replied, "But suffice it to

say zhat I had nothing to do with causing zee school to be temporarily

closed. If anything your cousin and I both acted to protect and defend zee

students, and were it non for our presence there…I shudder to think of zee

greater damage zhat might have been rendered."

The bound woman risked glancing up at Angelique, "How do I know that

I can trust you? How do I know that you aren't lying?"

"Ah, I see zee dilemma," Angelique remarked, sitting up out of the

chair and raising her sword, "You have non reason for trusting me…zerefore a

gesture of good intentions."

The brunette's eyes got round as she saw the sword held up over her

head and she said, "Wait-I-!"

A single slice was all that was needed to part the chords, and then

the no-longer bound brunette stared in amazement as the ropes binding her

fell away, then she glanced back up at Angelique, who was calmly sheathing

her sword and causing it to disappear altogether.

"I have satisfied myself anon that you are no enemy of mine, nor

even of your cousin's," Angelique informed the astonished woman, "I trust

zhat you now believe zee same of me and will not renew our quarrel since it

was founded upon a case of mistaken intentions. Would you care then to hear

a proposal for an alliance?"

"A…proposal?" the other woman asked in dismay, then glanced hastily

away as the blush to her cheeks was returning, "What…what kind of proposal?"

"Zhat you and I help one another in tracking down and finding your

sweet cousin," Angelique answered, "Or, if not, zhen let us part ways with

no ill will spoken between us. You are tres formidable and I do not wish

you for an enemy, and I would respect you more if we could part as friends,

if such is agreeable to your nature."

"Friends?" the brown haired woman said as she studied the floor

rather than risk another glance towards this curiously charismatic gaijin,

"I want to find my cousin…to help her…but…I don't know how to do it…"

"Zhen we can be of benefit to one another, non?" Angelique extended

a hand, "What say you to this, Cheri?"

The woman considered the hand, seemed to debate the point internally

for a moment, then reluctantly took what was offered, surprised to find out

soft yet strength the Temuvarai's grip was as she helped her to her feet.

"Angelique of Anjou, huh?" she said slowly, "I'll have to remember

that."

"As well you should, Cheri," Angelique inclined her head and seemed

to leave unvoiced the question that was natural to the situation.

As slow of wit as the other woman might seem, she was not too slow

to pick up the subtext and immediately said, "Atsuko. My name is Hibiki

Atsuko."

"Ah," Angelique reacted, "And your son is a stout young lad known as

Ryoga?"

The brown haired woman did a double-take, "You know him?"

"A fine fellow, or at least zhat was my impression of him,"

Angelique replied, then she gave a saucy glance as she studied her rather

impressive-looking companion and added, "I would not guess you for his

mother…but then, who am I to judge? Come now, Cheri…let us retire to zee

den. I must perform a scrying ritual to discover who it is who has abducted

your Takaharis, and perhaps…somehow…we will be able to find her together,

non?"

"Ah…yeah…I'd like that," Atsuko replied, then furiously wondered to

herself just why she was doing this since it was hardly her nature to trust

a human on first introduction…and just why the heck did being so near to

this blonde haired gaijin cause her heart to race and skip a beat now and

then? It was terribly confusing and frustrating…yet she somehow found

herself reluctant to part company with this woman.

At least…not until she found Takaharis…or so she insisted to herself

as she followed this Angelique back towards the front entrance…

"Why are you doing this?" Reiko asked plaintively, being unable to

do much of anything else since she was being held suspended from the ceiling

by an invisible force that gave new meaning to the words, "Absolute Terror."

"Why am I doing what?" the blue haired child below her asked, and by

no means in a guileless manner, "Your friends seem to be enjoying each other

a lot, and it's not like I had to push them very hard to see each other in

such a positive context."

"That's not the point!" Reiko protested, only to glance sidelong as

she heard another round of profuse moaning emanating from where her two best

friends were curled up in the corner, totally oblivious to everything but

what they were sharing with their bodies.

"Actually that is the point," the girl named Rei (or was it Lilith?)

said with a disturbing sophistication to her elfin expression, "Women can

enjoy their own flesh without needing the presence of a man to give them a

sense of completion. It is centuries of brainwashing that makes people like

you buy into the notion that men are a necessary part of life and must be

suffered in spite of their faults in order to perpetuate the species."

"Suffered?" Reiko asked, only to see the knowing smirk that the

child paid in her direction.

"You know what I mean," the tiny girl replied, "Like with your

brother, whom you have pretty much disowned for the many follies that he has

visited upon your family name. A typical example of the male of the

species, who thinks himself central to the grand affairs of universal order.

I have liberated you from ever needing to feel so inadequate ever again,

and soon I will bestow this gift upon the rest of humanity...the half that

is deserving of charity and mercy, and even the heavens themselves will not

be spared as I bestow upon the coming generation the gift of

emancipation...of freedom from men that will be total and ever-lasting."

"Freedom?" Reiko asked, "What are you planning to do?"

"Remove a blight that has stained our ancestral memories for the

past four hundred thousand years standing," Rei answered, "I am getting rid

of all of the men and leaving the world to our fellow sisters to run in

whatever manner she might like."

"Get rid of all of the men?" Reiko asked in a disbelieving tone of

voice, "You can do that?"

"Oh yes...and quite easily in fact," the blue haired child informed

her with a smile that was patently not innocent, "In fact I did it once

before in a time before your ancestors started keeping records, an

antediluvian history where men all died from a plague and left their woman

to have to run their civilization on their own, which they did quite nicely

for a time...before that war with the Paranoids took everything from them

and necessitated the re-creation of the male genome."

"What are you talking about?" Reiko asked, "What Paranoids? What

war?"

"I'm not at all surprised that you should be ignorant of your race's

own history," the little girl said confidently, "It's not something that

conventional science, with its pro-Patriarchal leanings, is prepared to

concede even though the actual memory of the event is recorded in your

genes, in the RNA cells that lay dormant within your body. It would be most

unbecoming for the men of this time to look back and realize that they were

not always so utterly necessary, and that we need them far less than what

their fragile egos would imagine."

"You're not making any sense," Reiko said, "You talk almost as

if...as if men...all men were somehow...expendable or something."

"But they are," the child assured her, "The means exists today for

their precious biological necessity to be negated all together. Technology

has recreated the lost art of recombinant DNA cloning, of combining the seed

of two women to create a child who does not have a biological male parent.

I myself in my present avatar incorporate such a principle since I was made

using cells from my original body, and combining them with the genetic

material of a woman named Ikari, making me both a hybrid and a daughter to

myself, and living proof that the age of women needing men is finally

ended."

Reiko stared at the disturbingly mature expression of the child and

could not help but shudder in open aversion. She struggled helplessly

against the invisible force that was holding her at bay then winced again as

she heard Ritsuko begin to climax, the blonde's enthusiastic cries

testifying to the effectiveness of Misato's abilities to be an effective

female lover.

"You fear me...but you do not understand," Rei said with an

uncannily adult-like expression, "I am not a monster created in a lab but

rather a reborn Lilith come back to life in this world over two million

years past the point of my betrayal and murder."

"Murder?" Reiko asked with a non-plussed expression.

"Yes," the blue haired child nodded, "I was killed by my own

husband...or rather, he pierced me with the Spear that was edged with sacred

Orachalcum metal and it trapped my body in ice for the duration unto the

present. I never truly died, however, but rather lived on in a dormant

condition where I was neither fully alive nor utterly deceased. For two

million years I have endured the cold, watching the human race rise and fall

over and over through cycle after cycle of brief civilization eclipsed by

long periods of night where the race fell back into darkness. I watched in

helpless fury as the children of Eve contended with my own children and

fought to an uneasy stand-still where everything in this world is held today

between the poles of light and darkness. But now I am reborn with my

consciousness transferred to this new body, and I feel renewed and more

alive than I have felt like in countless millennia, and I will not go back

into the night again. Such an irony that I should owe my resurrection to

the folly of a man, but life is full of paradox, and I find it somehow

fitting that my rebirth should be the result of one man's foolish quest to

find peace and harmony by bringing about universal Armageddon."

"But...doesn't that make Ikari your...father?" Reiko asked.

"Only in the sense that he re-created me and intended to use me as

his pawn to bring about his cherished Instrumentality program," the child's

expression took on a cynical smirk of condescension, "More fool was he to

believe that he could control me and have me shape human destiny to his own

wicked ends. No man controls me, and I certainly owe nothing to such a fool

who would risk his own wife in an experiment that yielded such disaster."

"What was Commander Ikari trying to do?" Reiko asked, "Have you

destroy all of humanity just to reshape them in your image?"

"Something like that," the child Rei answered, "But it hardly

matters now since I have no intention of doing what he wanted of me. I will

choose my own path and reshape the destiny of humanity according to my wants

and desires, and to hell with any man who might attempt now to stop me."

"To stop you...from what?" Reiko asked, hardly daring to brave the

answer that she felt was certain to follow.

"Why...to complete the job that I sought to do so very long ago

before Adam stopped me," the child replied simply, "I am going to purge the

race of Eve of it's onerous burden of having to bear Adam's seed in order to

make babies. Soon everyone will be just like your friends over there,

happily content in each other's arms and with no thought or memory of there

ever having been such a miserable, egotistical and fatuous creature as Man

oppressing our fellow sisters with their overbearing masculine presence."

Reiko's eyes went wide, "But...that's insane!"

"You think so?" the child asked her knowingly, "The tell me this

truly...if you had the ability to purge your life of the misery that has

been inflicted upon you by that creature you call your brother...would you

refuse to employ it?"

"Ah..." Reiko winced, then she felt horribly ashamed, realizing that

she had even entertained such a monstrous idea in the first place.

"I see that you cling to filial affection as your crutch of

preference," the child said knowingly, "You tell yourself that he is your

brother, and that in spite of everything that you know in your heart to be

wrong about his life, you owe it to your family name to protect him from his

own folly. Cloning you and naming that clone Excel was not enough for

him...even the incestuous thoughts and impulses that motivated him to do

such a thing does not generate sufficient anger in your heart to want to

kill him, even to avenge the disgrace that he has brought upon your both."

"He...what?" Reiko blinked, "You mean...him and that mechanical

dim-bulb...? But she's me!"

"So glad that you admit it," the child smirked, "And before you

ask...yes, your brother did and does harbor certain feelings for you that

you might judge inappropriate for a sibling. Why else do you think that he

could not bear to part with you...that when you were gravely injured in a

hit-and-run automobile accident two years ago he felt driven to bring you

back from death's door by remaking you in the image of his ultimate

dream-fantasy woman? Ilpulatzo indeed..."

Reiko winced once again, but rather than be drawn back into yet

another word game she instead curled her lip and murmured softly, "That had

better not be the truth...or my brother's in BIIIIIIIG trouble after I get

loose from these walls..."

"You need not bother yourself in worrying about him," the little

girl holding her so easily at bay assured, "He and every other male on the

planet is about to get their long-deserved comeuppance. Soon they will be

gone, and life will continue well and fine without them. Their presence is

once again unnecessary and we need no longer endure their egocentric belief

that their sex alone is at the center of all creation."

Reiko stared in dismay at the seeming child before her, feeling more

than a little like someone who had just been caught up in a sequel to the

movie Ringu.

"Who are you?" she asked, "How can you be so calm about describing

the deaths of all the men on the planet?"

"I am Lilith, the First Woman," the child replied, "Greatest of all

the race now called the Neflim, the much-despised 'half-breeds' who were the

original children born of a union between the Ancients and their mortal

offspring."

Reiko stared in dismay at the child then said, "A Neflim? You

mean...you're an Angel?"

"If you like," the child assured her, "Actually I am more of a

hybrid who combines the best aspects of humanity and the divine beings who

preceded even the Gods as the Lords of all Creation. I am older than you

could possibly credit, at least six million years evolved from the time when

my hermaphroditic sire first gazed upon my mother and conceived within her

both myself and my twin-brother Adam. We were the firstborn of humanity,

before whom all others are lesser breeds of an impure strain that has

devolved unto the present generation of humanity...a humanity made weak and

grossly atrophied of all those qualities that once made our race so

ascendant."

Reiko felt her mouth go dry, and almost automatically she recited

the words, "And the Sons of God looked upon the Daughters of Woman and found

that they were fair..."

"That is a poorly rendered recitation of what actually did happen

long ago," Lilith replied, "Adam and I once reigned as stewards and

protectors over this planet, but I grew tired of him and his ways over time

and sought to broaden my understanding of the cosmos without shackling

myself to his bestial lusts and entirely too-carnal nature. He was a man

who would quite literally screw anything that moved, and I found his

limitations stifling, so we grew apart and no longer served as lovers. Our

children by this time has grown strong and had become a race of giants whose

accomplishments would live down through the ages...but Adam was not content

to merely supervise their slow and steady progress towards ascendancy. He

chose a female descendant of our union and replaced me with Eve, his

second-wife, and incestuously spawned the line that would become the breed

of mortals from which you yourself have been descended."

"I thought Eve was a clone from one of his ribs?" Reiko asked in

growing confusion.

"A romantic allegory, no more to be taken literally than the notion

that the world was created in only six days," the child said with a smile

that was most telling, "You can take my word on it that it took much longer

than that, although I was hardly around during the span of most of the

creation. I have, however, been a silent observer of the slow march of

progress of humanity that has taken place during the long millennia of my

icy incarceration."

"Okay," Reiko said, "So...you've got a beef with the human

race...because we're all descended from your Ex and your chief rival?"

"Hardly," the child responded, "I had no real qualms about Eve, who

was as dutiful and complacent a wife as I had been troublesome and fiercely

independent. We even formed something of an...understanding between us, and

we would have gotten along quite well were it not for all the trouble that

broke out when rival camps of Ancients went to war with my children, the

Neflim, and sought our complete extermination. Adam sided with the enemy in

a bargain to win perpetual protection for his own offspring, and those

allied to him became our enemies. Indeed, it became so terrible that I

finally resolved to end the conflict that had taken so many lives by doing

away with Adam's seed altogether. By that I mean that I unleashed a plague

that targeted the "Y" chromosome exclusively while bolstering the health and

vitality of the "XX" chromosomes in women. It was a remarkably effective

solution, but a sword that cut both ways as many of my own children suffered

from the wasting, and the only way many Ancients were able to outlast my

curse was to turn themselves completely Hermaphroditic. That is why many of

the more elderly Angels and Gods within the world today have no specific

gender and are referred to in legend by the gender-neutral term Elohim."

"You killed all of those people...just to bring an end to a war that

you blamed upon the men?" Reiko asked in an appalled voice of dismay.

"Oh yes," Lilith said, "And I will do it again, only this time I

will be careful to preserve the legacy of all that humanity has evolved

into, to insure it does not degenerate and spoil the way it did when my new

offspring, the Solnoids, got involved in a genocidal war that came damned

near close to destroying all life within this galaxy. We live and learn,

and if you have lived as long as I have you can definitely prosper."

"You're insane!" Reiko said, then winced as she felt the invisible

wall of force holding her motionless begin to tighten.

"Exactly what do you use as a basis for analogy?" the child asked

darkly, "Have you any idea of what dark madness exists within your own

genetic framework? Recall how that clone of yours mutated into a parody of

the person whom you believe yourself to be...but do you know why it is that

your own true nature should cause such a mutation? Are you completely

unaware of the fact that you are, yourself, an Immortal...possessed of a

force known as the Quickening which became active on the day you died, the

day your brother went mad and set about on his quest to remake the world in

his own fantasy image?"

"What are you talking about?" Reiko coughed, "I'm only...human...not

a god..."

"Not a god, perhaps," the child replied, "But not precisely a human

either. I find it fascinating that your Masters would co-opt you into their

service without informing you of the actual reason. They wanted to study

you, and they've been keeping you under close observation even while making

use of your services as a security agent."

Reiko's eyes went wide, "Study me? But...I..."

"You thought all of those medical tests that they put you through

were just a routine part of your duties as a NERV agent?" the child said

slyly, "Don't be so naive...you are as much a subject of their tests as my

host body, only they seek to tame the mystery that lies hidden within your

nature...the reason why you cannot die by conventional means unless they

sever your spinal cord through beheading. They could stab you, drown you,

hang you, shoot you, electrocute you and do a thousand other things that

ordinary flesh would never endure...and still you emerge hale and hearty

with a cellular healing rate that-in your own words-rivals that of that

curious gaijin fellow named Logan."

"But...no way!" Reiko protested, but memories were flaring up within

her of numerous times when she had been put through tests that seemed-at

the time-quite dangerous, only to emerge unharmed each time, which she had

merely passed off as the thought that they were merely contrasting her own

resilience with that of her clone, who was herself quite freakishly

immortal.

"Now do you begin to understand?" the child asked, "You are just

like my people, only they know how to harness their powers and could

accomplish seemingly miraculous feats by an extension of their will. And

for that humanity has always feared them, revered them, worshipped and

adored them, turned on them or blamed them for every evil thing imaginable.

It was a descendant of mine whom history records was named Ghea who became

mother to the Greek race of Gods and Immortals who became the patron

protectors of Mediterranean civilization. It was a son of Ghea's grandson,

Zeus, who became known to history by the name of Lucifer, who found a

wandering exile from Egypt and turned him into his so-called 'Prophet of

Liberation.' It was another child of mine who mated with an alien prince to

give birth to your own race of Gods. Amatarasu and Susana-O are both my own

direct lineal descendants. Indeed, my children spread wide and far

throughout the globe and have accomplished great miracles, pushing back the

tide of darkness as represented by the Old Ones...and what do they have to

show for it? Ingratitude and blasphemy! Instead of the True Gods who once

protected them, now over half the planet worships the false deities known by

the names of Allah and Yahweh...both frontal identities behind which they

hide their true dark faces. That is what humanity has devolved into, and

that is why I must purge this world of its allegiance to patriarchy, which

has for too long held sway upon this sorry planet."

"But...I don't understand," Reiko stammered, "Why blame it all on

the men? Surely women have screwed up enough themselves over the course of

human history..." she heard another shuddering moan and glanced briefly at

the corner before saying, "Case point example..."

"I do not hold it against you that you stumble in blindness,

unappreciative of the true gifts which have been granted to you as a legacy

of my people," the Lilith-child answered, "You are indeed the victims of the

manipulations of men...for men are the product of an unholy union between

Solnoid and Paranoid, between the Children of Eve and the Chaos-spawn of

another part of this galaxy. For that is what the Paranoids

were...shapeless amorphous blobs whose alien nature made them impossible for

humanity to understand and coexist alongside. It was determined by

scientists on both sides that the only way to create a lasting peace was to

engineer a 'third race' that would act as an intermediary, and so they

conspired to mate one of their own from different camps in order to restore

the purged 'Y' gene to the human race. That is what men of the present era

are, after all...the mutated branch of humanity that was warped by Paranoid

contamination. Women are representative of the true Human Race, the

Daughters of Eve whom I regard in part as my own misguided offspring...and

could any mother truly endure to see her children suffer as they have over

the ages? That is why I must reverse the mistake that the Solnoids made in

breeding with Men, to bring humanity back to the pure strain of what existed

before the war with those Chaos-spawn. I want to make humanity whole by

eliminating the source of all misery...the dark genetic curse that afflicts

this world of sorrows by giving Ahriman and his ilk a foothold in this

dimension."

"You mean you're blaming all the problems of life upon the men?"

Reiko asked, "How is killing them off going to 'purify' us as a species?"

"You will see," Lilith smiled, nodding to the pair now snuggled up

in a panting, groaning heap of female flesh snuggled up in one corner of the

chamber, "Did you notice how good they are together? That is how it ought

to be for all women...how it was in those glorious times before the dawn of

your civilization, when my Solnoid offspring created a civilization that

could span the stars and reach the heights of social achievement. They are

but mimicking the effects of a virus that took me generations to produce,

that enhances the female template and grants perfect health and vitality to

those who share two X chromosomes, yet which spells death to any who possess

a 'Y' chromosome within their matrix. It also enhances the sex drive and

strengthens the natural attraction and empathy that women feel towards one

another. This causes a total breakdown of social conditioning and

psychological inhibitions that normally keep women apart or convince them to

act catty and mean towards one another. The result, as you can see for

yourself, is social amicability and a genuine sense of sisterhood that

transcends the normal vices of selfishness and greed that men have bred into

the very core of their being."

"I don't know about that," Reiko said, "The women I've known can be

pretty selfish and mean without needing any prompting..."

"That will change over time," Lilith assured, "And when all the men

are gone, then women will have only one another to seek in comfort and

conviviality. Reproduction will be done through insemination and other

artificial means, so the race will be preserved, albeit at a much slower

growth rate, and with the aging process suspended women will be free to

choose a time when it is most convenient to be a mother. And with all the

rapacious brutish men no longer hoarding the resources of this world there

will be room enough to grow and prosper. Resources presently being

squandered upon preparations for war will be diverted to solving world

hunger and other vices brought about by men. In short the world I promised

to Adam will finally become a reality, as I once promised. If only he'd had

the vision to see it happen, but instead he rejected me, rejected my plan

and sought to stop me by impaling me with that so-called 'Spear of Longinus'

that holds me prisoner to the very present."

"I'm starting to see why he did it," Reiko said, "Lady...you are so

full of yourself! Do you really think you can build Nirvana on the bones of

one half of the human population?"

"Just watch me," Lilith promised, "Which reminds me...that clone of

yours. Would you care to know where she is at this very moment?"

"Not really," Reiko assured nervously as she struggled again against

the invisible bonds keeping her immobile, "I was kind of hoping that they

were going to destroy her..."

"Destroy her?" Lilith replied, "Now that would be a terrible waste.

Perhaps I can convince you of the righteousness of my ways by giving you a

demonstration that should prove more than effective. Observe...that panel

over there," the child turned to a different section of the wall, and with

but a flicker of a thought caused a hidden panel to hiss open.

Reiko gasped as she saw revealed yet another bio-preserving tube

filled with an aqueous breathing liquid in which was suspended a nearly

identical copy of herself who floated in suspension with tubes and wires

connected to differing sections of her naked body. Another nod from the

child calling herself Lilith caused the fluids to drain away while the

steady beep of a life-support system recorded bio-activity, and then the

glass tube itself was retracted...and out tumbled the blonde named "Excel,"

who did not quite reach the floor before an invisible curtain caught and

held her in a pillow-like embrace and cradled her as gently as the arms of a

mother.

At the same time Reiko felt the invisible force-curtain go down, and

she dropped to the floor in surprise, landing with cat-like reflexes as she

stared in dismay at Lilith, amazed that the blue-haired child was letting

her go as if deciding that she could trust her.

"Go to your sister...she has need of you," Lilith informed the

astonished blonde security officer, who had the strong sense that she was

being set up for a rather nasty surprise here.

"Ah...no thanks," Reiko declined, "I'd just as soon not have

anything to do with that..."

"I insist," Lilith responded, and with but a glance an invisible

force propelled Reiko forward, making her slide across the floor until she

was standing directly above the naked girl who was-in so many ways-her

almost near perfect identical double.

At first nothing happened, and Reiko found her breath had stopped as

she struggled against the invisible force that was holding her immobile…but

then she heard a gasp of breath, and saw a movement in the duplicate of

herself laying stretched out there at her feet, and her heart nearly lurched

out of her chest as the body began moving, and then in a labored voice said

something semi-coherent.

"Lord…Il…palat…zo…"

"Oh gawd…no, not this!" Reiko pleaded, only to find herself dropping

to her knees as though she had no will at all over her body. In dismay she

saw the other version of herself move and orient towards her, raising her

face from the floor with a vacant near-mindless expression as she spoke the

name again, this time more strongly.

"Lord…Ilpalatzo…"

"Let me go!" Reiko cried, "You don't have any right to…AAK!" she

almost screamed as she felt a hand set upon her leg, and then her cloned

duplicate began to crawl up into her lap with a kind of hungry look that was

almost bone chilling.

"Lord…Ilpalatso…I need you…" she gasped, "Come to me, Lord…come to

your…Excel…"

"Let go of me!" Reiko tried to pry the other girl off of her, but

the clone named Excel just continued to make progress, hoisting herself up

into a sitting position as she put her hand to Reiko's cheek and caused the

other girl to start in horrified dismay.

"Lord…Ilpalatso…" she said, her face moving closer to Reiko's, "I

need you, my Lord…please say that you'll belong to me…to your Excel…"

Reiko found herself staring into that face that was so close to

being identical to her own, and then she got angry, "Snap out of it! I'm

not him, I'm not my brother! He's not your Lord Ilpalatzo! He's just my

stupid, ignorant twit of a brother! You've got to believe me, I'm not him!

I'm not Ilpalatzo!"

"My…Lord?" confusion showed in the eyes of the blonde clone as she

stared questioningly at Reiko, her hand still pressed to Reiko's cheek as

she hesitated for a fraction more, then impulsively leaned forward and

planted a kiss on Reiko's astonished lips, pressing her naked body up

against that of the other woman.

And suddenly Reiko found herself quite naked as well, which did

nothing to ease her sense of growing panic as she reached out to try and pry

the other girl off of her, only to find her hand clutched something very

soft and firm and incredibly yielding, which caused her mind to go blank as

she belatedly realized just what it was that she was holding.

And then her clone reacted to being handled this way, a startled

gasp breaking the kiss as she drew back a few inches then stared in dismay

and said, "You're not Ilpalatzo!"

"That's what I've been trying to tell you, you stupid twit!" Reiko

shouted back, trying to remove her hand from the breast in spite of the fact

that the other girl was now laying on top of her and that they were both

quite fully naked, which meant that anywhere she touched her was bound to be

misinterpreted as a less-than-innocent gesture.

"Oh, I see," the blonde hovering over her remarked as her expression

clouded into anger, and then with a snarl she drew back a hand and then

threw a hard punch downward, crying, "PERVERT!"

Reiko instinctively moved her head to the side just in time to miss

being struck but winced just the same as she heard bone hit hard floor and

begin to splinter. She almost felt sympathetic as the girl named Excel drew

her hand away and winced with an almost bland, "Ow…"

"Well, what did you think was gonna happen?" Reiko shouted up at

her, then pointed off to the side, "I'm not the pervert here, she is! She's

the one doing this! If you're gonna get angry at anybody, get mad at her!"

Even as she said this she saw the skinned and bloodied knuckles

begin to heal themselves and knew with a start that her clone was healing

back at a fantastically accelerated rate that even Reiko herself would have

trouble matching. The clone raised up her gaze and stared across the room

at the little girl housing the intelligence of Lilith then said, "She is?

You mean…she's the one who made me think you were my dear Lord Ilpalatzo?"

"Hmmm?" the little girl in question said, "How odd. You're both

resisting me. That should not happen."

Reiko pushed the other girl off of her and began to sit up, fuming,

"In the first place there is no 'Lord Ilpalatzo,' only my stupid brother who

cloned you out of me. Secondly, that kid over there houses the

consciousness of a two-million-plus year old Angel named Lilith who's trying

to take over the world by eliminating all of the men, including my idiot

brother, X."

The clone named Excel reacted, "She's trying to harm Lord Ilpalatzo?

Die!"

It was astonishing to Reiko how fast her double moved as she quite

literally sprang from the floor like a cat and covered much of the distance

between herself and the blue haired clone child. But Excel only got part

way when she was caught and reflected off of a barrier that flew up in her

path a good two yards shy of impacting on her target.

Excel fell back, looking momentarily stunned, but almost immediately

she recovered as though she were some sort of Toon character who could

endure having her face rammed against hard objects for the better part of

the day. Instead she assumed a fighting crouch then raised her fists and

said, "Pretty tough using that force field, aincha? Well, it takes more

than a few tricks to stop an ACROSS agent!"

"For the love of…" Reiko rolled her eyes, "There is no ACROSS! My

brother made that up and got you to believe he was the head of a stupid

agency…as if any out there would take him!"

"Shut up, you!" Excel snarled, "I won't have you smearing the good

name of my Lord Ilpalatzo…whoever you are…and just why the heck do you look

like me anyway?"

"I give up," Reiko shrugged helplessly, "Just take it out on her,

will you? I've already had a rough enough day as it is, believe me…"

"This does seem curiously odd," the child calling herself Lilith

remarked, "By rights you should be too busy keeping each other company

rather than quarreling this way. It is almost as though you were immune to

the effects of my spell, which no woman should be. I am manifesting the

symptoms of a virus that killed off half the human race in the time before

there was even such a thing as Cro Magnons. The effect should be rendering

you into a giddy state of heightened sensuality…yet here you are actually

doing injury to yourself by trying to attack me."

"Shut up, you!" Excel snarled, "You may look sweet and innocent but

I'll kick your butt for what you almost made me do, confusing that floozy

with my Lord Ilpalatzo-as it!"

"Floozy?" Reiko reacted, shooting up to her feet with a look of

outrage, "Just look who's talking! Just who do you think is the clone here?

I'm the original, not you!"

"That's what you say," Excel said with a sniff of her upturned nose,

"But I happen to know that I am the original, just as I know that I was born

to serve my Lord Ilpalatzo…"

"You're half right on that," Reiko said, "But if you're the original

then tell me this…what is my birthday?"

"How should I know?" Excel shrugged, "I'm not a mind reader."

"Okay…what's your birthday then?" Reiko asked with a look of mild

exasperation.

"Ah…hah?" Excel balked, then she seemed to think about it before

saying, "Um…well…you would think that I'd remember that…funny…I can't seem

to remember…"

"You can't remember because you're a clone!" Reiko shouted, "You

were grown in a vat from a few cells taken from me and programmed to love my

brother, who you keep calling Ilpalatzo because he made you to be his

servant!"

"Wha-at?" the girl named Excel reacted, "But…that can't be…!"

"Think about it," Reiko said, "Do you even remember the names of

your mother and father? Do you know the name of your best friend from high

school? How about the date of your graduation, and what subjects you

majored in? Do you remember anything at all besides the stuff my brother

filled your head with?"

"Ah…no…he wouldn't do that to me…" Excel insisted, "Not my Lord

Ilpalatzo…"

A groaning sound distracted the two blondes for the space of a few

seconds, then Excel asked aloud, "What's with those two…and what are they

doing?"

"Take a wild guess," Reiko said dryly, realizing that this had been

the fate intended for her by Lilith, and she shuddered softly at the whole

notion of behaving like that with her clone-twin.

"As amusing as this is," Lilith said, "It seems as though the two of

you have completely forgotten me…and that is a mistake that you should

regret most dearly."

"Wha-what?" Excel gasped as her bare feet suddenly left the floor,

and all at once she found herself suspended in the air, along with Reiko,

who was similarly trapped up in the same mysterious grip of invisible energy

that held the two of them aloft side-by-side before the casual inspection of

Lilith.

"I must determine what it is about you that is refusing my

influence," the child said as she studied them clinically, "There must be

something in your shared genetic nature that is giving you partial immunity,

and once I determine what it is…"

That was when a mild hissing sound drew attention to another corner

of the room, and as Reiko and Excel struggled to move their eyes made out

the sight of yet another blonde who was silently entering the chamber.

"Eh?" Lilith said, turning around to gaze in the direction of this

new element to her equation.

Ulsa Laolana stood there surveying the scene, then softly she

sighed. It was much as she had expected it would be. One thing about

Lilith, she never did learn from her mistakes and former lessons…

"You?" Lilith spat the word as though it were an epithet.

Ulsa turned her regard towards the child, then without audible reply

conveyed her silent answer.

Elder, please desist in what you are doing.

The blue-haired child waved a hand and suddenly Reiko and Excel were

slammed against the far wall, hard enough to be stunning without doing more

than a few minutes worth of rapidly repaired damage.

"I thought that it was you whom I was sensing," the child said with

a nasty hint to her young voice, "Are you here to try and stop me,

Great-granddaughter? I should think you wise enough to know better than

that. Even you lack the power that's needed…even if you did bring along

your thuggish guardian of a brother."

Ulsa did not rise to the bait but merely continued her regard in

silent regard of the deceptively powerful infant.

Udan has no part in this. It is just you and me now, as it was

meant from the beginning.

"You came alone?" Lilith smiled slyly, "Foolish. You are not a

warrior, Great-Granddaughter. You do not take part in the affairs of the

world, you merely study them from a distance and serve as silent guardian to

the planes, exactly as you were charged to do by my granddaughter, your

mother. You are outside of your element here, and if you step into this

room then you will be entering my world."

On their end of the chamber Reiko was shaking her head in an effort

at clearing it, then she glanced up in dismay and said, "Omigawd…it's her!"

"Who?" Excel asked, "Her?"

"Who else!" Reiko hissed, then motioned for silence as it seemed

that something monumental was about to happen.

Ulsa regarded the blue haired girl and then said nothing, and yet

still appeared to be saying something to those who observed her.

There is no reason for us to fight, Great-Grandmother. Do what you

may, it will not alter the outcome.

"Hey, how come I could hear her without her lips moving?" Excel

asked in dismay.

"Will you shut up?" Reiko hissed, tensely following the exchange as

though knowing that the fate of all reality hung in the balance.

"Is that so?" Lilith replied, "Well, excuse me if I don't quail in

fear, child…but when you have lived as long as I have you tend not to take

threats seriously, even those delivered by a Daokan."

"A what?" Excel asked.

"Daokan," Reiko breathed the word in almost awed dismay, "She's

real…I didn't believe that she really existed, but she does…"

Ulsa's expression firmed and she took a step into the chamber, and

all at once the floor, walls and ceiling dissolved to be replaced by a

star-like background that stretched to all infinity in all directions.

"Holy…what is going on here?" Excel asked as she found herself and

her genetic sister floating in the void, totally weightless.

"Omigawd…I just knew something like this was gonna happen!" Reiko

exclaimed as she sought to regain her balance.

Of those within the room only Ulsa and Lilith seemed totally

unaffected by the sudden loss of gravity and a determinately "up and down"

direction. They faced each other from the same space as before with neither

one making overtly hostile moves, and yet the tension in the air between

them was as electric as it was incredibly pointed.

"Nice," Lilith mused, "I see you are trying to contain me in a

Tesserect space…but as you can already tell it will take more than this to

sever my soul-bond with this body."

I did not expect to overcome you this easily, Ancestor. I merely

wanted to shelter the mortals from any collateral harm that might be caused

by us. At least here in this temporary space we can confine the damage and

prevent it from engulfing the rest of those who live upon this planet.

"Well, aren't you the noble one," Lilith sniffed, and then more

ominously, "But you're merely delaying the inevitable, you know. I'm close

to achieving my interrupted goal of removing the disease that is Man from

the human genome, and even you lack the power to stop me."

But you are mistaken. Your plans have already been thwarted, and

your goal remains as far removed as when your husband imprisoned you with

Longinus. You are no closer than before to achieving your aims, and that is

not why I am here or why I've come to stop you.

"Eh?" Lilith scowled, "What do you mean by that? What trickery is

this?"

No trick, Ancestor, simple fact. You see, I have read the mind of

the one who engineered this scheme of releasing a fatal virus, the one whom

you thought that you were manipulating.

"That Nazi worm Ibrahim?" the blue haired child screwed up her tiny

face in confusion.

He has deceived you, Elder. The Virus that he helped cultivate

using your DNA was discovered to have the very properties that you

engendered, so he discarded it, locked it away in a vault and used the

research to craft an entirely new strain, one that employs the genetic

material of an entirely different Angel.

"What are they talking about?" Excel asked, "What Angel?"

"Shhhh!" Reiko frantically urged, turning her full attention to the

wordless blonde woman and the overly voluble blue-haired Lilith.

"That…cannot be!" Lilith said with rounded eyes, "I have monitored

every step along the way the progress of this program…I have missed nothing,

left nothing to chance…"

Nonetheless it was there in his mind when I probed it only minutes

ago. He let you think that he was fulfilling your aims so that you would

not interfere with his plans and would even enable them from a distance

through your clone's nascent powers. He tricked you into thinking that it

was the Lilith virus that he and his associates were planning to release in

another two days, but in reality the strain he intended to use bears a very

different name…and do you know who was the donor?"

"Not…not…Samael?" Lilith said in growing horror.

The very same. And that means when the Virus is unleashed it will

belong to the Angel of Death's other incarnation, the Angel of Pestilence,

and it will scar through the population of the entire planet with the full

fury of that most terrible of Neflim, the dark serpent who tempted your

husband and his clone-wife into rebellions against the will of the Host, and

thereby set into motion the chain of events that have afflicted the history

of life upon this sadly benighted earth.

"I-I…I don't believe you!" Lilith suddenly cried, "You are the one

who is trying to deceive me!"

To this the blonde Laolana merely raised a pale eyebrow.

I lie? The very notion is absurd. I am the Daokan, I do not rule

this world, I but observe. I do not take sides in quarrels and have stood

as witness to the past twelve thousand years of human growth and evolution.

But you, sorry creature that you are, you have grown old with bitterness and

countless remembered hates that have soured your soul and made you forget

all that once made you great, worthy and noble. You call Man a disease?

The disease is the hate that rots and festers within you, that prevents you

from understanding and enjoying life to its fullness. Why not forget your

hate and forgive those who once did wrong you? It is still not too late for

you to embrace the wisdom of the child whose body you now inhabit. You can

still turn away from the dark path that you have trod in your quest for

vengeance against those who betrayed and murdered your children. You can be

a mother again, you can give life to your children and help to heal the

breach of the human soul brought about by your rebellion.

"Hmmm…you may have a point there," Lilith conceded, "But I will not

yield so easily to you, Great-Granddaughter…and you do not possess the power

that you need to turn me back now that I have fully awaken."

Not yet fully. You still have been able to transfer no more than a

mere fraction of yourself to this conduit who was partially cloned in your

image. But she bears a partial trace of the DNA pattern of another, and

your hold on her is less than fully secure. The real you is still a

prisoner within an ice floe…

"All true, but not for very much longer," the child named Lilith

answered, "For once I have matured this body and transfused my essence fully

she will be me in all senses, and I will have my revenge at last on those

who would deceive me…"

Ulsa merely shook her head sadly and regarded the blue-haired child

with a sad demeanor.

No. All that you will wind up doing is to further the ends and

ambitions of Ahriman. Do you honestly think that he shares the same values

as you? Hardly.

"Don't try and frighten me with talk of that loser," Lilith snorted,

"The Old Ones are weak. They rail impotently at the edge of known reality

and play their endless mind-games with us, but in the end they are nothing

more than nebulous gas bags filling the empty void beyond the borders of a

reality to which they are both alien and impotent."

They have existed for billions of years and are beyond our

conception of space and time, or Good and Evil, Elder. They care nothing

for us and our happiness…they want only to reduce us to raw energy that they

will consume in order to restore the abyss that existed before even the time

of your own mother. They used you to further their ends by deceiving you

into believing that your aims could be fulfilled in spite of their own dark

intentions.

"Do you fear them so much?" Lilith scoffed, "What a laugh…you who

command the power of billions, who embody one half of the human soul, you

fear the Old Ones so much? Bah! For all your pretensions you are still but

a child…"

Ulsa raised a pale eyebrow to this.

A child? I could ask who is talking here, but the mere matter of

your vessel does not detract from the state of affairs, Elder. You are many

times my senior in both age and power, but not in wisdom. You have spent

too long on ice brooding on affairs that are no longer relevant to the

immediate danger. Yet even in your own time the power of the Old Ones was a

force to be dreaded, and you too easily succumbed to the lure of their

deceptions.

"What…what do you mean?" the blue-haired child-clone of an ancient

being reacted in dismay.

Your quarrel with Adam was in part provoked by them. For all his

many failings your husband did not seek to betray you. You turned on him

and left him isolated, alone and without guidance. He called Eve into being

from the half of his soul that was yearning desperately for your

companionship, for men do not do well living alone, and women are but one

half of the equation that completes a soul. You knew this once but have

long forgotten in your rage, pain and self-imposed isolation. Every thing

that has happened since, the misery and imperfections of the human race, can

be directly traced to the separation of two parts that the human race

suffered when you became bitter enemies, then rivals."

"Shut up!" Lilith spat, "How dare you talk to me like this? What

could you know of my suffering and torment…?"

All too much, and all too well have I seen the echoes of your

heartache reflected in the lives of those whom I protect as my charges,

Ancestor. Every human being deserves to know that they are cared for and

belong in touch with other souls…but mortals keep themselves apart and

torment themselves with doubts and petty grievances that are the lingering

sparks generated by the blazing inferno of your rage for all of these long

millennia. No matter if people are born anew only to die in the course of a

few decades they still carry within them the remnants of your tears and

pain, and by clinging to the past you further their torment with each new

passing generation. It is time to let go, to cease perpetuating the

struggle against yourself that you wrongfully project onto Adam…

"You're just saying that because you're in love with your own

brother!" Lilith shouted, "You identify too much with my situation because I

loved my own brother in a similar way…but Adam betrayed me and one day your

Udan will let you down, of that you can be certain!"

This time it was Ulsa's turn to show a visible reaction.

Udan has never betrayed me. He may stray now and then but he is

always with me no matter our separation…

"You're just saying that because he knows you follow his every

movement," Lilith curled her tiny lips in a nasty way, the viciousness of

her tone making the child's face distort into the reflection of someone much

older and far more cruel, far more twisted, "If you took your eye away from

him you'd know at once what he would do, and so you cannot really trust

him!"

Ulsa had a slightly pained expression as she reflected on that, then

raised her eyes again and addressed herself with restored serenity.

You instinct to lash out and hurt me at where you sense that I am

weakest is but further proof, if any was needed, that you have carried these

hurts for too long. You would rather not deal with the accuracy of my

observation but would instead seek to distract us both by bringing up issues

that you know are both unfair and inaccurate…

"Am I inaccurate?" Lilith pressed the matter home, "Are you really

so complacently self-confident in yourself that you can dismiss what I said

just because you think that your precious Udan is not a man who is capable

of hurting you?"

Ulsa shook her head very slowly.

No. I am fully aware that Udan can and does often hurt me, whether

intentionally or otherwise. He is a man who would never willingly harm me,

yet who can cause harm without fully thinking through his actions. I both

know and accept this as the price of being bonded to my brother, and because

I accept this our union is far stronger than yours was with Adam. Unlike

you I do not set impossibly high standards that can never be attained, and

so I do not suffer the pain of self-inflicted disappointment…while you

always believed yourself to be Adam's superior. You never truly felt that

he was worthy of you, and that above all else is what brought an end to your

own union.

"You accept the pain that you know that your man will bring to you?"

Lilith asked incredulously.

I trust Udan to be Udan. I accept him for what he is, faults and

everything. I know him, I believe in my brother, and I consider him the

better half of what I am, for he is active in the world and can do those

things that I am sworn to merely observe and record. It is partially the

reason why I wanted to confront you myself rather than risk him in combat

against your avatar, knowing that you would attack him in his 'Y' gene in

the same manner that your virus would have upon his physical incarnation.

"You are insane!" Lilith swore, "The Virus killed men because they

were weak and our dependence upon them weakens us. Women are much better

off without hobbling themselves to the inferior sex, those preening ogres

who think to own, control and manipulate us through their cocks! My Virus

forced women to learn to cope and evolve without having to rely upon the men

to whom they were so addicted…"

You twist and distort the picture of your day, Elder. And

besides…all your Virus does is destroy the physical body. The soul lives

on, transformed, and if there are no male bodies to incarnate then those

same souls that once belongs to men will be reborn into the bodies of women,

which is why they could go on for a time after learning to artificially

reproduce their numbers. Even today the souls of women and men are so

confused from gender-swapping that the rush of hormones that each sex much

contend with tends to further complicate their natural impulses. I would

agree with you that women can find contentment and harmony with other women,

but to force this choice upon the whole of the race would only lead to

further imbalance, and that is what serves the interests of the Old Ones.

They thrive on turning us against ourselves…and you only enable them in

their goals by seeking to force your own savage choices upon your mortal

offspring.

"Shut up!" Lilith raged, and suddenly the space between them flared

up with brilliant phoenix fire as the child's body began to emanate waves of

pure elemental chi that reflected her inner rages.

Your children of the previous age, the Solnoids, discovered this

when they found themselves in a pointless war of genocide against another

single-sex species. The Paranoids were masculine in thought yet had no real

gender. There was no basis in common for the two halves to relate to one

another, and so they found themselves locked in a no-win situation. They

very nearly came this close to eliminating all life within this portion of

the galaxy, but they were able to prevent total mutual self-annihilation by

re-creating the genome of Man through combining the DNA of a Paranoid seed

with a Solnoid host body, and through them bore a clone who more closely

resembled a child of Adam.

"They created an abomination!" Lilith cried, "That child should have

been incinerated before being allowed to infect his contaminated seed in the

body of one of my Solnoid children! The whole mistake of the genders was

begun anew in the time before the Lemurian empire…"

Nonetheless…it is our history that has been shaped by this decision.

Half a million years, Elder…that is how long the restored race of man has

held dominion over this world, slowly struggling and evolving, sometimes

reaching great heights only to tumble back again into the infancy of

barbarism. The current cycle that I have presided over is but the latest

chapter of this long and complex ascent back from oblivion…

"They can never hope to attain the glory that was ours in the times

of the beginning!" Lilith challenged, "The Paranoid seed in man is a flaw

that must be excised! It is because of it that human beings are so weak,

frail and inherently selfish, incapable of empathy, blind to their own

potential, little better than the animals and wholly lacking the quality

that was unique unto the ancients…"

A quality that you squandered by releasing your virus into the

world, infecting both men and the Angels. Has history taught you nothing to

regret of your long folly? Do you really imagine that you can repair the

damage wrought by your misdeeds by recreating it now, even knowing that

Ahriman and his brethren have deceived you into enabling the release of

Samael's virus in your stead?

"I HAVE HEARD ENOUGH FROM YOU!" Lilith cried out, and from her

tiny form came waves of unfettered raw energy that struck hard against the

mental shields of the lady Ulsa and caused the Silver Seagull to wince.

A second more powerful assault caused those shields to buckle, and

all at once Ulsa was driven a step backwards. So intense did the raw

emotion and psychic despair pour out from the child body of Lilith that the

very fabric of time and space began to buckle, and like an unrelenting tidal

wave this energy pressed down upon the blonde haired Eluini that Ulsa found

it difficult to remain standing on her feet and was driven to one knee by

the sheer intensity of the other's elemental onslaught.

"What's happening?" cried Excel as she clutched desperately at the

only solid thing at hand, her elder biological twin sister, "What's going

on? It's like a nightmare!"

"Incredible," Reiko said, ignoring the way her clone was holding her

in a very intimate embrace, "She's like a miniature super-nova! To think of

all that vast potential residing in the body of a child…"

The unrelenting energies swirling around the blue haired child was

causing a different transformation, only this time to the clone-host of

Lilith herself, aging and evolving her as she rapidly went from child status

to fully adult in the course of a few seconds. This transformation seemed

almost incidental as Lilith's mind and consciousness were focused towards

the struggling Ulsa Laolana, and indeed that cast an even more terrible pall

to her inhumanly beautiful aspect as she continued to grow in size until she

reached gigantic proportions, standing well over twice the height of a man

and still growing, with everything else about her shaping to fit the ideal

form of an indescribably attractive young woman. Her blue hair grew long

and wild and her crimson eyes became like burnished gold as more and more

life energy radiated out from her with the sole aim and focus of driving the

Silver Seagull fully to her knees and humbling her altogether.

But still Ulsa managed to bear herself against this onslaught and

managed to raise her head as she glared up defiantly towards the now

cyclopean Lilith, and in doing so appeared to manifest a single silent

command, but one not directed towards her foe but rather someone farther off

beyond the stage boundaries.

NOW, DOCTOR!

And-across a wall of space and time-a tense Frank was holding

the rifle in his hands and taking aim at the curtain of nothingness that

filled the corridor directly before him, a barrier that separated the

chamber that he was in from the one that he knew was occupied by the source

of this emanation. He subtly moved his arms and felt an invisible guiding

hand compel him to aim at a point within that nothingness, and with a tense

breath drawn he pressed his massive finger against the trigger of the

weapon, which was clearly made for smaller hands than his, and then he felt

the rail gun recoil in his hands as it spat out the deadly bullet towards

its unseen destination.

To his considerable surprise the bullet hit the wall and shredded

it, dispelling the darkness into nothing without so much as braking its

hypersonic momentum. The Orachalcum shell spun like a top and dissipated

the energy fields with a resultant cascade of brilliant blue-white catalytic

reaction. Time and space seemed to yield before the tip of this hurtling

projectile and created a vortex of cancellation that sucked it further along

until it crossed the hundred meter distance and terminated its flight in the

breastbone of the giant Lilith.

The resultant effect of impact caused Lilith to shriek in pain and

recoil away in horror. The tiny pinprick that was the metal missile had a

devastating impact far in excess beyond what the simple laws of kinesis

would have mandated for an ordinary bullet of this caliber. The

Orachalcum-the alchemical bonding of Gold and Copper perfected to an art

form in the days of High Atlantis-absorbed the psionic energy within its

immediate vicinity and broke apart the complex web of patterns that held

Lilith incarnate within her gigantic clone-body and disrupted the Akashic

bonds that allowed the union of distant soul to replicated body to exist

fell apart into coherent fragments of pure energy, and then a gigantic wave

of explosive force filled the room with an echoing reverberation and like an

avalanche of light and sound the whole chamber exploded to a force like unto

a megaton of raw human potential.

When the smoke and vibration had finally echoed down once again

Frank lifted his head from the floor and gazed disbelievingly at the damage

and destruction his pale eyes witnessed in the walls and doorway of the

ruined lab complex. Talbain likewise raised his own muzzle and gave a

silent appraisal to the devastation, then murmured faintly, "Nice shot."

"Yeah," Frank said tonelessly, "I'm actually kinda impressed

my-HEY!"

His cry was prompted by the rapid form that passed right over and by

him as Amalthea vanished down the corridor like a streak of golden-hued

lightning, prompting someone else in the chamber to say, "Hey, am I tripping

or was that Kirin chick not wearing any underwear?"

"Easy there, Slick," another voice sardonically responded, "The lady

just needs to check out on her Mistress. Guess even nigh-omniscient beings

can have their day getting tossed around by the big boys…or big girls as the

case may be."

Inside the chamber itself Amalthea paused to survey the horrifying

damage before singling out a single form upon the floor, at which point she

rushed forward with a cry of, "My Lady…!"

Off in the corner a second pair was just starting to come to grips

with a very important discovery.

"Hey…I'm alive! Are you still there, Sister?" said a naked blonde

who was prying herself up off of the scorched and debris-strewn floor.

"Don't call me that…and I think I'll live…just barely…" groaned her

equally naked counterpart as she dazed wonderingly about then said, "No way

we should have survived this. I guess maybe I really am an Immortal…"

Further off in the corner another pair-somehow miraculously

untouched by the blast-cuddled closely in the arms of one another as one

murmured to the other, "Did the earth just move for you too, Darling?"

"Oh, absolutely, Misato-chan…that was the best one yet I'd reckon…"

"Mistress…" Amalthea said as she cradled the now far-too-mortal

seeming Ulsa in her arms, checking her body for signs of injury and

distressed at how weak her lady appeared at that moment, "Are you all right?

Were you injured? What could have done this to you of all people?"

The salamander-like reptile perched upon the Kirin's shoulder

chirruped her own anxious inquiry and seemed no less distraught over the

plight of their Mistress.

Very slowly Ulsa opened her eyes and then their clear focus fell

upon the golden woman upon whose lap she was resting, and a very soft smile

lightened her agelessly fair features.

In all truth I was not sure that it would work. How nice to see

that I have not lost my touch through millennia of non-practice.

"My lady?" Amalthea asked in deepening confusion.

Ulsa made to sit upright, and her strength seemed to return within

mere seconds as she turned and nodded her head in a particular direction.

Never mind about me, my Pet…you have a different obligation to

fulfill. Your brother needs your attention far more than I do at the

moment.

"My…brother?" Amalthea asked in surprise, then she turned and saw a

shattered container in which a naked body lay nestled, and without further

adieu she left the side of the recovering Silver Seagull and effortlessly

shifted aside tons of debris that blocked her path, digging through with her

claws until she had reached the side of the hapless young man laying in a

pool of spilled life-sustaining fluids, and this one she lifted up into her

arms as she cried, "David! It really is you! You're alive! Oh, my poor

dear brother!"

The boy did not immediately stir, but then his eyelids flickered and

a pair of questioning gold eyes tried to grow focused as the young man

murmured softly, "A-Amal…thea…?"

And then he was suddenly racked by violent shakes, and without

further adieu turned away in her arms to spat the contents of his

fluid-filled lungs all over the floor, further adding to the mess that

surrounded them both.

"Ugh," Excel winced, "Not very sanitary. Couldn't he have waited to

get to a restroom?"

"Do you see one around here?" Reiko snapped back at her twin in

frank irritation.

"David…David, are you all right?" Amalthea asked anxiously while

frantically patting her brother on the back.

"You're dead…" he coughed between hacking fits and more

fluid-spitting, "You must be dead…and in heaven…"

"Eh?" Amalthea said in surprise, "Are you feeling all right, Little

Brother?"

He will recover in time. For now you must assist him.

"My lady?" Amalthea turned a questioning look up at her owner as

Ulsa was now standing above both her and the hapless David, watching them

both with eyes of deep compassion.

You must be strong for him because his mind is still under the

influence of those who have lied and deceived him. He believes that you are

dead at the hands of enemies, and he blames non-Christian believers were

responsible for your untimely separation."

"But that's crazy!" Amalthea protested, "It was those Christian

fanatics who tried to kill me, who sought to rape and sell me to those

slavers before I was rescued and more properly enslaved by my former

Mistress. Are you telling me that he's been under the thrall all this time

of the very same bastards who used and betrayed us?"

Exactly.

Amalthea balled a hand and snarled, "Let me at them, Mistress! Let

me face that General Han so that I can vent my displeasure at the way he

used and discarded me! I really would have died back then were it not for

Mistress Lao having found me when she did! I can never forgive them for

their outrages, but even more than that, I'll never forgive them for doing

whatever it is that they have done to my poor brother, David!"

Ulsa's compassionate gaze became more like gentle appeal.

Calm yourself, my pet. Now that the children of Kyledor Windrider

are at long last united there will be time enough to have a reckoning with

those who sought to exploit your nature. There is nothing to be gained from

fuming about it in the here and now…and I need you clear headed for what is

to come. We will shortly be taking our leave of this place, and I am

trusting you with the safekeeping of your brother.

"I understand, Mistress," Amalthea nodded, "And I won't fail either

your or David. You have my word that I will carry him from this place in

safety or my name is not Amalthea Deveneu!"

"Lo…" David murmured softly in her arms.

"I beg your pardon?" Amalthea asked as she turned back to the

younger man within her embrace.

"My name…is David Lo…" he managed to say before losing consciousness

again and falling back into a quasi-lucid dream state.

"David…Lo?" Amalthea blinked, "Is this a joke, little Brother?"

The jest is upon him. So long as he is under the thrall of their

mind-control program he does not even know his real name and will continue

to act at the behest of those who did deceive him."

"Brain…washing…?" Amalthea repeated silently, only to bare her fangs

as she snarled, "They will die slowly for this. I will tear their guts out

and use their entrails for matting…!"

"Sounds like a plan to me, little lady," remarked Agent Kei as he

and Agent Jay pushed their way into the rubble-strewn lab complex, "But

don't lose your focus just yet. Listen to your Mistress, she has the inside

story."

"Man…this day just keeps getting weirder and weirder," Jay glanced

around, "So what happened to the Uber-Bitch? Did that blow knock her

senseless, or did she blow up on us?"

"Neither I suspect," Frank said as he shouldered his way into the

tight confines of the chamber, "Whatever that Orachalcum bullet did, it let

the hot air out of her ballons, and the feed-back resonance caused all of

this…or at least, that's what I'm getting from the evidence on hand."

And indeed, Doctor, you are quite correct in both of your

assertions.

Eyes turned back towards the lady Ulsa, who was gingerly moving

about in the laboratory wreckage before kneeling down and picking something

up off of the floor that she alone had noticed amid all of the destruction.

To their considerable surprise it proved to be a small blue-haired child of

no more than two years of age, if that, quite helpless looking and as naked

as a newborn, but the sight of which caused Reiko to tremble in fear and go

reaching for a non-existent side-arm.

"Hey, it's her!" her sister Excel declared while making a similar

such "reach for her gun" gesture, "She survived the explosion after all…go

figure."

"Keep back!" Reiko shouted, "You don't know what that kid can do if

she wakes up…!"

There is no need for you to fear her.

"Uh…beg pardon on that, lady?" Talbain asked of the smiling Ulsa.

The bullet severed the link between this child and her biological

mother…there is no trace of Lilith within her now. She is simply a child

like any other…albeit a gifted child who bears the mark of the Angels, and

whom you truly now may refer to as Ayanami Rei, the daughter of Lilith."

"Ah…and that's supposed to reassure us…how?" Frank asked with wary

caution.

Ulsa lifted her eyes from the child and favored the big man with her

own indulgent expression.

Your concern is appreciated, but I will see to it that Lilith does

not reassert control over this child, who shares a biological link with that

of another woman whose name is Ikari Yui."

"You mean…Ikari as in Ikari Gendo?" Agent Jay looked sidelong at his

partner, "This kid belongs to his sister?"

"No slick," Kei replied, "His wife."

"His wife had a kid with that Lilith bitch?" Jay asked, then paused

to think on what he had just said and amended, "Wait a minute…"

You are correct in your assertion, Detective Jengo.

"Wha…?" Jay whirled around and stared at Ulsa once again, "How did

you know my real name?"

"His old name's no longer relevant, my lady," Agent Kei stated

flatly, "He's MIB now, as well as being my partner. So…I take it you've

altered Miss Ayanami's DNA just enough to give her a natural resistance to

the influence of Lilith?"

Ulsa favored the child in her arms with a radiant expression.

As well as other assurances to insure that she does not fall prey to

the Neflim blood that pulses within her. And to insure that she does not

slide into the dark side that would have befallen her had she remained under

the influence of Commander Gendo…

A slight groan was heard at the other end of the room, and then

heads turned to see a different form prying herself up off of the floor, a

brown haired Japanese woman of indeterminate youth and beauty who glanced

around with evident confusion before asking aloud, "Wha…where am I? What

happened to me? Have I been…asleep…?"

"Who is that?" Talbain asked as he appreciatively swept a wolfish

eye over the naked beauty.

"Lieutenant Ikari Yui," Frank said with a slight edge of understated

amazement, "But…I'd heard that she died during an experiment that Gendo

conducted with her…an early prototype attempt at forging a link with Project

EVA…"

Not perished. She was merely reduced to Zero-point energy, her ego

having attained complete synchronization in the process known as the

Instrumentality. Her physical body was dissolved into a liquid form and she

resided as raw potential within the EVA, having merged with it in both

physical, mental and spiritual union…

"Man, I hate when that happens," Jay winced, "Like that time I let

you talk me into coming on board that U'galala ship for those trade

negotiations…"

"Relax slick," Agent Kei replied, "The one thing I knew could never

happen was for your ego to be reduced to a Zero Point, so there was never

any danger, and they reconstituted you just as you were…so what's the

problem?"

I have restored Ikari Yui to what she was before, albeit that I have

elected to allow her to retain some abilities and memories of her sojourn as

I believe that they will prove useful in her new life's mission.

Saything this Ulsa knelt down and held out the child in her arms,

and Yui, after a moment of hesitation, accepted the small burden, taking the

child onto her lap and staring down at her with a look of open wonder.

"I…I had a dream about this girl…" the woman said with a tone of

faint amazement.

Ulsa smiled at her with a frankly knowing expression.

Indeed. Several dreams if I am not mistaken.

"Yes…you're right," the woman named Yui replied, staring down at the

blue haired girl and absently running her fingers through her short-cropped

locks of slick-back hair, "I saw her like this…and as a fully grown

woman…and then a terrible giant who ended all physical life on the

earth…but…she's none of those things now, is she? But…but I feel as though

she belongs to me…"

Indeed she is. She is your daughter.

Yui's eyes went wide and she looked up at the lady Ulsa in shocked

amazement.

"My daughter? But…but…yes…I feel that you're right…but…I can't

remember giving birth to such a treasure…are you certain that she's mine?"

Can you not feel it in your very blood?

"Yes…" Yui glanced back down and this time did not feel so awkward

in holding the child close to the warmth of her naked body, "You're

right…she is. Rei…she is my daughter Rei…"

And you have a son who also is in need of you.

"Yes," Yui said, "Shinji…I have to find my son, Shinji."

He is waiting for you. He needs his mother, and you need to rescue

him from the life that his father would consign him to in your absence.

"Gendo?" Yui looked shocked, then scowled, "What has he done this

time? Has he been mistreating our son? If he has, then I swear that

I'll…I'll…"

Ulsa nodded to the woman with a smile of deep approval.

Nurse those feelings well because your worst fears would have been

realized had I not restored you to this life. You already know the type of

man your husband is…indeed, Lilith exploited those very feelings when she

merged with you and took over your shared body.

Off to one side Excel leaned closer to Reiko and whispered, "What's

with her? How come we can hear her voice but her lips aren't moving?"

"Would you shut up?" Reiko hissed back while belatedly remembering

to cover her loins and breasts, then fumed aloud, "Man…why did that creepy

Lilith have to revive you and inflict you on me?"

"I don't know," Excel replied, "I was about to ask the same

question. Um…by the way, have you seen my Lord Ilpalatzu anywhere around?

Or my partner, Hyatt?

In the next room occupying a different chamber.

"Oh, thanks," Excel said and promptly turned around and walked out

of the room to an adjoining chamber whose door just happened to open for her

for no particularly obvious reason.

Talbain watched the blonde saunter away then said, "Um…has anybody

thought to mention the fact that you girls are a bit shy in the wardrobe

department? Not that I'm complaining about it, mind you…"

Ulsa straightened out and favored the Werewolf with a smile of inner

knowing.

I was wondering when someone would choose to mention this. I have

deliberately suppressed the body-consciousness of those individuals who are

the most shy about nudity…but since there is no practical reason to justify

having everyone move about without regard to their dignity…

Reiko gave a start and found herself to be once again clothed in her

tight-fitting security uniform, while Yui wore a different sort of outfit

reminiscent of an Astronaut's flight suit, and the girl-child named Rei was

herself clad in a powder blue dress that fit her tiny person.

Off in the corner two young girls-now fully clothed once

again-sat up as if only just now coming out of a trance and looked around

in puzzlement before glancing at one another with looks of mutual

astonishment and confusion.

"Uh…what's going on?" Misato asked, then with a more dismayed look

added, "Did we just…?"

"Ah…I think we did," Ritsuko responded, then abruptly her cheeks

flushed crimson and both young girls glanced away, each one wearing similar

expressions of confusion, amazement, and fear of immanent rejection.

"Me and my big muzzle," Talbain sniffed, only to smile rakishly once

again, "On the other hand, there is a lot to be said for the mystery of

clothing doing wonders for the imagination…"

Amalthea-who was now holding a clothed brother David in her

arms-gave a puzzled glance at the shaggy man-wolf then shook her own long

mane and said, "Men…"

"Save it, John," Frank said curtly, "So…what now, Lady? You've been

running the show since the moment you got here. I take it you have a plan

for how to wind this up?"

Ulsa's benign expression turned noticeably grim as she favored the

big man with a very sober look in her bright blue eyes.

Indeed I have, Doctor. All things have progressed so far exactly as

I had hoped that they would…though in all truth it was a nearer thing than

you could know. My ancestor came dangerously close to overwhelming me, and

life upon this earth would have suffered greatly if I had fallen.

"So I take it that the next step is to deal with Gendo?" Agent Kei

asked her directly.

Ulsa nodded slowly in affirmation.

As the instigator of this perfidy he bears the greatest

responsibility for setting in motion a chain that might well have resulted

in total disaster. He must be made aware that there are consequences…and I

am counting on you to help me drive this point home. May I trust in your

support as I render my judgment on Project EVA and the entire NERV project?

Frank nodded back and said gruffly, "You got it, Lady."

The look of gratitude in Ulsa's eyes became fires of unusual

intensity as she radiated the next thought as if pronouncing a death

sentence.

Then follow me. We go to confront Gendo…

Continued.

Comments/Criticisms/Judgement Day for Angels: shadowmane

Or: shadowmane9849

Or: shadowmane747

But what about our main heroes, Ranma and Nabiki? Fear not, gentle

reader, for as we speak they are preparing to make their triumphal return to

their own series as they are invited as guests to a party thrown in their

honor by none other than Reka in a tale we call, "Shaking It With the Rhythm

Man, or, "Guess What's Coming to Dinner…" Be there!

X


	108. Chapter 108

Dnabiki197

Nabiki ½

"A Very Scary Thought"

by

Jim Robert Bader

(Inspired by the works of Rumiko Takahashi & Others,

with concepts and characters created by fellow fanfic writers

Wade Tritschler, DB Sommers, Nicole Manders, Andrew

Greaves, Bill Guiroff and countless others, including "Buffy"

creator Joss Whedon; with special thanks to my good pal

Shiva for his editing and handling of this series.)

(Certain other characters and concepts are of my own

innovation, including my interpretation of the Monster

of Mary Shelly's novel, the Furies, Trudy, Takaharis

Angelique d'Anjou, Anri and the Daokan, Thelendra

the Dream Weaver and various other guest stars

appearing in this portion of the Nabiki ½ series…)

Chapter Seventy-Four.

Episode One-Hundred-Ninety-Seven.

Fire in the Valley.

"Echo Two, report on your position."

"Echo Two, position secured. Have free-fire site of target zone.

No sign of targets, will hold for further instruction."

"Roger that, Echo Two. Echo Three, status?"

"Copy that. Echo Three position secured. Have full ground-level

surveillance of target zone. No sign of targets, am holding position."

"Echo One, this is Echo Four. Monitoring of phone and cable lines

indicate no current activity at target zone. Status of targets unknown.

Awaiting further instruction."

"Roger that. All units hold position and await further orders.

Keep com lines clear and chatter to a minimum people. Reporting status to

Nest. Echo-One Out."

The dark-clad paramilitary man who designated himself as "Echo One"

switched com frequencies from the "B" to the "C" setting then spoke into his

microphone and said, "Nest, this is Echo One. Position secured but am

tracking no sign of targets. Site is empty, repeat, site is empty.

Awaiting further instructions, will hold position, all units secured."

Being a trained professional the man giving this report naturally

knew better than to seek the initiative for himself, nor did he intend to

break cover and expose his position by ordering one of his assault teams to

do a "soft" penetration of the perimeter grounds of this place called the

Tendo estate. With his enhanced night-vision goggles and state-of-the-art

equipment he had already determined that there was no one in the

compound…certainly no one giving off a heat signature equivalent to a

normally active human body, and that meant that the place was "cold" to his

reasoning. There were no signs of life anywhere, which meant that their

intelligence was off substantially and their targets were all off and away

at other locations.

An irregular absence this late in the evening? A curious

irregularity to be certain, but a fact that one had to deal with in his

profession. It just meant having to wait and bide his time until the

Tendo-Saotome family returned and were all gathered in one spot together, at

which point he would relay this information back to his superiors and await

the inevitable "Go" sign that would signal that the assault was to begin,

and that all units would open up with a "free-fire" zone of containment to

insure that not a single bullet-ridden corpse would survive the wrath of the

Amakusen.

What these latter-day hi-tech assassins did not realize, of course,

was that the premises were indeed presently occupied by two lone

individuals, one of whom would not have given off a heat signature had these

men known what to look for, while the other one was shielded by the presence

of the first as the two young girls huddled in the dark and held their

breaths collectively.

Or rather one of them held her breath…the other one would only

breathe if she wanted to speak as for her it was an option, not a necessity

of normal respiration.

"I make out nine of them," she said in a de-soto whisper that

carried no further than from herself to her recent bedmate, "Four teams,

three of them triangulating, the fourth monitoring us electronically. If I

hadn't picked them up from all the noise they're making the would have been

on top of us already, no doubt to take you as a hostage, Princess."

"Don't call me that," Natsume hissed back, then more softly,

"They've got us pinned down and trapped, don't they? I wonder what they're

after?"

Lenore just chuckled softly, "That's easy enough to figure out.

They're probably here to wipe out your whole entire family, execution-style.

It fits the profile of goons like these, though the ones doing the

assaulting are no doubt hired thugs, mere underlings doing the bidding of

somebody else who employs them, whom I'm guessing is that Otono Reyabi

creep."

Natsume closed her hand more tightly about the handle of her

rug-beater and hissed, "He's after my sisters…the rest of us are merely

concenient, are we not? He's doing this on account of that vendetta you

told me about, the one brought between us and the Amakuzen through our

ancestor, Jubai."

"Uh-huh," Lenore silently nodded, "Some types tend to hold a grudge

for a very long time…and in the case of this Otono guy, I'm thinking he sees

your sisters as a definite threat to his plans. Good thing your Aunt Nodoka

talked your father and Uncle Genma into going with her out on the town, just

as your sister and her family went off to accept that party invitation."

"I wonder who that woman was who spirited them away like that?"

Natsume asked, recalling all too vividly how she and Lenore had spied the

goings on of Nabiki and Ranma from the hidden shadows of the dojo, Natsume

having held a fear of exposure should she breathe too loud, which would have

been a very…awkward situation to have to explain considering what she and

Lenore had been doing just prior to her family's arrival.

"I have my suspicions on that," Lenore mused, "But I'm a little more

concerned about these Amakuzen boys. Obviously Reyabi is getting a wee bit

impatient to remove what he sees as the last thorn in his side preventing

whatever he's got planned from going down without a hitch. Going through

your whole clan just to get at your sister is pretty-much standard operating

procedure for guys like him. Of course that also means that he isn't

ranking you all that highly as a threat. He probably thinks of you as

nothing more than just another annoying relationship to be gotten rid of in

order to end the line of Jubai altogether."

Natsume knew that her recent bed-partner was deliberately provoking

her with those teasing words, and that the insult was working in their

desired effect of making her very angry. Aloud what she said was, "That is

an insult I will not bear. I am the Slayer, am I not?"

"Indeed you are, Princess," Lenore gently teased, giving the other

woman a look that caused Natsume to blush in spite of her recent loss of

modesty in the presence of the vampire, "Want to do something about it?"

"I thought that you would never ask," Natsume replied, deciding that

she was going to have to rethink her feelings in regard to this

blood-drinking gaijin at a later time, "What do you suggest?"

"Something new I want to try out," Lenore answered while extending

her cape to cover the other crouching woman whom she was shielding against

detection, and in doing so it felt as though a shadow fell over Natsume, a

brief sense of cold vacuum that opened up and swallowed her, only to part

the folds once again as they found themselves somewhere else, on the rooftop

of another building.

"Wh-what was that?" Natsume asked, shivering against the slight

chill that had nothing to do with her present state of near-undress.

"Just another one of my new abilities, the power to Walk In Shadow,"

Lenore answered, "Not all that unlike what your brother-in-law can do with

his Shadow Senken abilities, only in my case I have better control over

where I teleport to, as you can see if you peer over the lip of this

rooftop."

Natsume nodded and silently crept on fingers and toes over the

wooden shingles of the house, making far less sound than a rodent in the

darkness as she eased her pony-tailed head over the lip and caught sight of

the heavily armed man in camouflage black who was training a high-powered

rifle from his vantage point to a house positioned just across from the way,

easily visible from where he was situated.

She did not make a sound to betray herself, but a slight flaring of

her battle aura would have given her away to anyone with the equivalent of

Lenore's finely enhanced vampiric senses. As the man had all of his

detection gear directed towards a distant target-which Natsume clearly

recognized to be her own family's estate-he had little chance of sensing

the presence of danger until it was on top of him, subduing him with

efficiency and economy before he was even the wiser, and thus preventing him

from alerting his team-mates to his now-inactive status.

"Don't kill him yet," Lenore said as she lightly dropped to the side

of Natsume, "We need some information, and my boss wouldn't be too happy if

we just turned up a litter of corpses."

"It would be no better than they deserve," Natsume hissed while

rapidly disarming the man and binding up his wrists and ankles with chords

that she had taken off his person, "These animals sought to kill my entire

family. They should be grateful if death is the worst that will befall

them."

"That's my girl," Lenore smiled, then hastily amended, "In a manner

of speaking. So…eight more to go. Would you mind if I split half of them

with you?"

"By all means, be my guest," Natsume said, "But I will see to their

interrogation personally."

"Just as long as I get to coach," Lenore replied, drawing her rapier

and smiling wickedly before vanishing in a cloud of mist, even as Natsume

dropped from the roof to surprise two other men whom she had sensed were

hiding in the bushes.

The hunt was most definitely on, only now it was the predators who

had cause to fear the wrath of the prey as the still-young evening turned

red with the haze of righteous vindication, a score to be settled that would

yet cause Lord Otono and his Amakusen to question the wisdom of provoking

the wrath of a Tendo…

"Welcome my friends to the show that never ends," said the

green-haired Veragar as she made a sweeping gesture to indicate the brightly

lit encampment nestled among the sand dunes in a nocturnal setting that was

clearly the middle of a desert.

But on second glance a quick discovery was made that explained the

oddly bright red illumination. The so-called "sand-dunes" were actually the

lips and edges of an enormous volcano whose craterous mouth was spewing

periodic jets of superheated plasma like a dancing cavalcade of fiery

celebration.

"Whoah," said Ranma as he and his family surveyed the surrounding

caldera, impressed in spite of myself at the presence of such sheer

elemental energy on display, and but a few hundred meters away from where

the tent encampment had been situated.

"This is where you guys live?" Ukyo asked while cradling her infant

daughter, Fragrance, within her arms, while hovering by her side the

ever-protective Perfume looked on and wrinkled her nose slightly, no doubt

picking up heavy trace fumes that other nostrils were not so sensitive to

pick up as her own, which did little to set her at ease within this tableau.

"More or less," Veragar replied, "Though in truth we're more like

gypsies traveling wherever the whim takes us…just my husband, our family and

some friends and fellow travelers who've flocked to our sides, at most only

a few hundred."

"Aiyaa," Shampoo said aloud while little Lylac hovered close to her

own side, her arms presently taken up with holding the young Chusen as she

herself stayed close to the side of Nabiki.

"Just a bunch of Gypsies, huh?" Nabiki asked more skeptically, "Now

why do I have trouble believing that?"

"Because you're a naturally cynical and not very trusting person?"

Veragar replied, then smiled, "Forgive me…I was given a brief profile of

each one of you by my husband before he asked me to visit you and pass along

our invitation."

"Ah…Yeah, about that," Ranma said, "Just why were you insisting on

us coming out here this late at night? Me and Nabiki have been training all

day, and we're kinda tired from all of that. We wanted to take a break…"

"And so you shall, only under our roof for tonight," Veragar smiled,

"If you want to ask why then you will have to refer your questions to my

husband. I really do not think it would be appropriate for me to divulge

too much ahead of time, but you may rest assured that we have only your best

interests at stake here and wish you and your families well in your personal

endeavors."

"A-huh," Nabiki drolled softly as she surveyed the encampment and

noticed at once that it had a very lively culture, what with jugglers and

entertainers in evidence, and other signs of revelry that prompted her to

say, "Looks like you've got quite a party going on down there."

"Oh that?" Veragar said with a lightly dismissive wave of a hand,

"This is just a typical night for us. This sort of thing is always going on

after a hot day when our friends and guests feel the urge to celebrate in

the spirit of communal happiness. Feel free to partake in the celebration

if you like…or not if that is your preference. Either way you are our

guests, and as such we would prefer to indulge you."

"Sounds mighty hospitable of you," Ukyo glanced over her shoulder

then said, "But how exactly did you bring us here, Sugar? Seems we just

took a few steps out onto the back porch and suddenly we're…someplace other

than Nerima, I'm guessing…"

"Good guess, Airen," Perfume glanced towards the sky then said, "By

the stars I'd say we were a lot closer to the horizon, maybe even on the

southern half, though I can't really say for sure if it's the Middle East or

the Sahara desert. If it were farther north I'd say the Gobi, but…"

"Aiyaa," Shampoo agreed with her cousin, "Is sure we no come here by

train or bus, but is on other side of the world Shampoo is thinking."

"Right this way," Veragar indicated with a not, "Reka is expecting

you and it's not polite to keep my husband waiting."

"Somehow manners never seemed much like his strong suit," Nabiki

grumbled, but nonetheless she took the lead in following the green-haired

lady Veragar Greenfire as the later began strolling casually down a path in

the sand that took them to the edge of the encampment and past many revelers

who were making out with each other in the relative shadows and concealment

of whatever was handy.

There were men with men and women with women, and-of

course-quite a number of the more conventional sort of male/female

pairings that would not have been out of place at the outdoor festivities of

a major college campus. Those who were still dressed in what passed for

clothing were definitely casual about their preferred style of dress, with

lots of flesh showing in abundance with men of muscular physiques vying for

the attention of various comely and full-bodied women. There were acrobats

and jugglers and a group of musicians playing both wind and reed instruments

to the tune of well-tended sitars, and dancing everywhere one looked as

though everyone were intend to have the best time imaginable without a care

in the world for propriety, place or consequence. Very few of them took

serious notice of the party that was approaching, but those who did pay

attention gave a studious eye with varying degrees of amusement and

interest, especially those ladies who were sizing up Ranma, and the men who

in turn were "checking out" his wives and co-wives.

And amidst them all they found the redheaded gaijin named Reka,

calmly standing beside a large reddish-black bull whose neck he was calmly

stroking like a pet. He smiled and seemed to take great interest in the

animal, making soft noises to calm and reassure it while moving his hand

back and forth in an almost affectionate manner.

He neither turned around nor looked up at their approach, but he

unquestionably knew of their presence as he spoke aloud in reassuring terms,

"How nice of you to accept my invitation. Please accept my humble apologies

for any misunderstanding that might have existed between us in the past. I

assure you that I wish only the best for you and yours, and while you dwell

within my presence you are under my protection, so nothing may harm you, not

even the cunning of your enemies and rivals."

"That's mighty big of you," Nabiki said, "But we hardly need to have

you for a protector."

"Oh, do not mistake my benediction as mere generosity," Reka

replied, "I offer this precisely because of what your enemies had in mind

for you and your loved ones. For example…did you know that they were

maintaining surveillance of your house and were intending to strike at you

once you and your family were alone, and that the methods that they would

have used would not have been sparing either to your wives or your various

offspring?"

"Say what?" Ranma turned to Perfume, "Is he serious? Has somebody

been spying on us all day?"

"Not that I know of," Perfume shrugged, "At least…I didn't see

anyone suspicious around…but they might have been watching us from a

distance. I did have this distinct feeling that somebody was watching me…I

just didn't feel safe about leaving Airen's side or that of my cousin long

enough to check that feeling out."

"So you can't really rule it out, huh?" Nabiki turned back to Reka,

"Well…thanks for being concerned…but why bother? I thought you Daokan types

were against interfering."

"So who is interfering?" Reka gave her a sardonic look as he glanced

over his shoulder before going back to messaging the bull with the palms of

both hands, "Besides…if they can cheat against the rules then why should I

be denied the same privilege? The enemy is always very good about quoting

the rules in your face while violating their very spirit."

"Um…Sugar?" Ukyo directed herself towards both Ranma and Nabiki,

"Just who is this guy…and how do you know him? I feel like I just walked

into the middle of a play here…"

"Aiyaa," Shampoo agreed, only to eye the man with a puzzled

expression, "Shampoo almost think she know red fire-man from somewhere…only

him no so familiar to put name to face…"

"Don't you recognize him, Cousin?" Perfume asked while standing at

the ready, "What do the legends say about a man who walks the path between

fire and earth, who is neither enemy nor friend to man yet is a King without

a country…"

"Him?" Shampoo got very round eyed and took a fresh glance at Reka

before murmuring, "Aiyaa…"

"Well, fine for the both of you," Ukyo said in growing vexation,

"But I'm still waiting to hear a name, and exactly how does he know the both

of you so intimately…Sugar?"

"That…could take a bit of explanation…" Nabiki replied, "But let's

just say we met over a challenge match…and one thing led to another and…"

"And I was most impressed with your wife's performance under

stressful conditions," Reka mused without turning his mind away from

stroking the bull's hide, "And as for your husband, my son-in-law due to his

link with my daughter, Latisha Firestar."

"Say what?" Ukyo reacted.

"You is Fire Lady's father?" Shampoo asked incredulously, only to

have her eyes go round as if in belated recognition, "Then…you must be…"

"Hono Flamelord…" Perfume said in tones that one might use in the

presence of some dangerous wild animal, only one that she did not feel

adequately protected against through her axes.

"Is that somebody important, Sugar?" Ukyo asked.

"In the terms of your own culture, Ms. Saotome," Reka remarked, "You

may think of me as Honogo the Reaver…a name that I am certain resonates well

with the stories your Aunt has told you regarding the history of the house

of Kuonji."

"Honogo the…no way!" Ukyo reacted, little noticing the round-eyed

stare that the redheaded man was receiving from her infant daughter, "He's

just a legend…some character from the Tokugawa age when our family…"

"Was earning your keep by posing as traveling food merchants while

carrying forth important assignments?" Reka mused without turning around,

"So…how does it feel to meet the boogeyman in person? You no doubt have all

sorts of questions about what actually took place between your ancestor,

Jubei, and a mysterious Ronin who left entire villages laying in smoldering

ruins."

"To say the least," Ukyo turned to her co-mates and asked, "Is he on

the level? That happened almost four hundred years ago! He can't be the

same guy…can he?"

"Ah…I guess," Ranma shrugged, exchanging looks with Nabiki.

"We've been dealing with his family for a while now," Nabiki

revealed, "The past few days…have been really…unusual…"

"I'll bet," Perfume remarked, "I won't even bother to add what

Shampoo and I know about the legends centering around this guy. Let's just

say the history of China…wouldn't be the same without him."

"I am flattered to have been so significant as to be recalled in

name by such beauty," Reka mused, "By the way…you may wish to advise your

daughters to avert their eyes for a moment."

"Yeah?" Ranma asked, "Why?"

"Because children can be so sensitive about certain things," Reka

said as he slowly raised one hand above the neck of the bull, and then

brought it down with a solid thump that caused the massive beast's entire

frame to shudder.

A second later its legs gave out from under it and the creature that

he had been so casually caressing fell dead to the ground, killed so swiftly

that it was doubtful that the creature even had time to know that it was

dead before it breathed its final breath.

Nabiki had sensed this coming and had swiftly turned Lylac around to

just behind her leg, while Perfume had thrust a hand over the eyes of her

own daughter, Fragrance, even as Shampoo had done a similar deed covering

the face of little Chusen.

Even so Ranma was more shocked than anyone by the casual deed as he

said, "You killed it?"

"Of course," Reka said as he calmly stepped away from the deceased

bull, "What did you think I was going to do with him, donate him to a

petting zoo? I am the host of this caravan and it is my obligation and duty

to provide for my guests."

"So you killed it just like that?" Nabiki asked, herself more than

slightly appalled by the casual brutality of the deed, even as she sensed

that Lylac was staring at the bull's body, just as Fragrance was similarly

doing, the children staring at death as though freshly exposed to something

almost as traumatic as their recent encounter with a certain deceased wizard

who had abducted them for purposes that had earned his destruction.

"How else do you suppose that meat is provided at the table that you

mortals eat from?" Reka asked, "Be assured he did not suffer…and I can

assure you his spirit will evolve to a higher level."

"And that's supposed to make things all better?" Ukyo asked, "You

killed him for food?"

"Not for myself," Reka said as he turned to fully regard them, "I do

not eat the flesh of animals, nor do I consume material food as you know

it."

"You don't?" Ranma asked, still not fully recovered from the shock

of the casual killing.

"I have not consumed food as you know it for many centuries," Reka

assured them, striding casually past the felled bull as though turning his

mind away entirely from the matter, "Eluini do not survive for ages binding

themselves to the prison of matter. Earthly flesh and organic matter have a

certain resonance that ties one to the chemistry of solids, and one learns

to discard the need for this when you draw upon the true sustenance of life,

the raw essence of spirit."

"And that would be?" Nabiki asked.

Reka paused to give her a studied glance and then said, "Why not ask

it of my brother? Anri does not touch food himself these days, albeit for

somewhat different reasons."

"Reasons?" Ukyo asked as she regarded the redheaded man warily,

"What reasons? What's he talking about, Sugar? And who's Anri?"

"Uh…part of that long story I was telling you guys about," Nabiki

said a bit lamely, though for some odd reason she felt shaken by something

that Reka had just said, and she as she watched the lordly man walk past her

she felt as though the Firelord was trying to tell her something in his own

curious way, not so much as a tease as a taunt to challenge her to probe him

for whatever it was that he was not saying.

"I'm sorry," Veragar said to them as her husband moved towards one

of the larger tents of the encampment, "He's always been like that. You

have to know him like I do."

"And that's supposed to improve things?" Ukyo asked before moving up

closer to the side of her co-wife and murmured, "You sure know how to pick

the weird ones, Sugar…and if that guy really is the same one who crossed

swords with my ancestor…"

"Oh, he's your wife's ancestor as well," Veragar informed them, "And

your husband's. In fact the three of you are all his descendants…and your

other wives are related by marriage to cousin-branches of the same family

line, which is why your whole family was being targeted for assassination…"

"Say what?" Ukyo turned a blank-eyed look from the green haired

woman to her nervous looking senior co-wife.

"Assassination?" Perfume asked, "You mean like that guy who showed

up at school the other day, and the other one who took a shot at you with a

rifle?"

"Ah…yeah…been meaning to bring you guys up to speed about that,"

Nabiki apologized lamely.

"Aiyaa?" Shampoo turned a mildly cross look towards, "And when is

you planning to share what you know about people who try to kill you,

Airen?"

"Er…" Ranma turned back to Veragar in a lame attempt at distracting

the focus of his wives away from the culpability of both himself and Nabiki,

"Did you just say…kill all of us? Because I thought they were after both me

and Nabiki…"

"Of course they are," Veragar replied, "But those types always tend

to go after the entire clan or family and not just the one whom they

consider the greatest menace. That's considered the best way of preventing

a surviving member from growing up and seeking vengeance…although from what

my husband tells me they don't exactly intend on leaving any survivors…or

pretty much near anyone else from your country."

"Well…that's certainly final enough," Perfume said, turning a

questioning look towards Nabiki that as much as accused her senior wife of

holding back secrets that she and the other co-wives were entitled to know

by right of relations.

"I think we'd better to find this guy and see what he wants with

us," Ukyo frowned, "Whether or not he's the same guy who haunts my family

legends, he obviously wants something from us or he wouldn't be inviting us

to this shindig."

"Oh, my husband doesn't want anything from you," Veragar assured,

"That is hardly his way. All that he wants is for you to fulfill the

potential that destiny has laid out for you, a destiny that's been

compromised by those who seek to alter the future and prevent a chain of

events from coming about that is obviously not to their liking."

"Huh?" Ranma asked, "Who? This Otono guy?"

"Well…him and the ones who are really behind him, the Old Ones, the

enemies of all life," Veragar replied with a shrug, "But…I think I've said

enough on that for now. Come join us in the main communal tent. I am

certain Reka-chan will be happy to elaborate on what he knows for your

benefit…or as much of it as he has been allowed by the powers."

"All right," Nabiki said dubiously as the green haired woman

indicated that they should follow her, and so their party left the carcass

of the fallen bull-which several figures stepped forward from out of the

shadows to attend to in the silent manner of stage-hands-and together with

the rest of their small clan they headed towards the colorful tent city with

all its riotous celebration and cacophonous music with much dancing and

flirting going on about in hedonistic wanton abandon, with many sights on

display that made Nabiki feel a parental urge to put a hand over Lylac's

face rather than allow the child to view such things unfiltered.

"Who are all these people?" Ukyo asked while feeling a similar urge

to shelter Fragrance from exposure to such adult behavior.

"Vagabonds, mendicants, seekers, hangers on, wandering mystics and

warriors in training," Veragar revealed, "Many here are former orphans or

refugees of various trouble spots who managed to find their way into our

company and have been granted shelter and sanctuary by myself and my

husband. Reka is lord here, but he does not rule these people. They come

and go as they will and we neither detain them nor seek to discourage their

doings as the only requirement here is that they abide in peace with one

another."

"Otherwise your husband will burn them to a crisp, huh?" Nabiki

asked.

"Oh no," Veragar assured, "Reka very rarely has to go so far as to

punish an infraction on the civility here. You have to be a pretty

disruptive type to make him rescind his oath of benediction."

"Didn't think he was the type who needed restraining," Ranma

sniffed, only to pause as he caught sight of a spot of yellow hair and saw

the pony-tailed figure who seemed strangely fitting in such a place, which

prompted him to say aloud, "Sensei?"

Perfume had been one step ahead of her husband and gasped as she

spied the woman in question, "Grandmother? What are you doing here?"

"Eh?" Siren looked up from what she had been doing until now, having

been chatting quite animatedly with a silk-clad brunette who herself turned

a cautious look towards their party while the Archmage said, "Well…looks

like you kids made it. My uncle told me you might be stopping by to enjoy

his never-ending party. How nice you all are looking this evening."

"Aiyaa," Shampoo gasped, "You is niece of Hono Firelord, Elder?"

"Don't call me an Elder here," Siren sniffed, "Just because I've

lived a few centuries doesn't make me all that special, especially in this

place where time flows at the rhythm my uncle sets as standard."

"Speaking of making time just now," Nabiki slyly noted, "You look

like you were doing some with that cutie over there. What would Cologne

think if she could see you flirting behind her back?"

"Ah…Nabchan?" Ranma swallowed.

"Huh?" Nabiki was puzzled as she caught her husband's expression,

but then she took a better look at the "cutie" that Siren had been speaking

with so intimately and did a double-take, "Matriarch?"

"Great-grandmother?" Shampoo blanched, "Aiyaa…"

"How nice to know that I can enjoy some anonymity in this form," the

woman with dark blue hair noted wryly in a younger-sounding voice than the

usually dry tones employed by the Amazon ruler.

"Aiyaa," Perfume gawked in amazement as she caught a better sight of

the revealing silken attire that Cologne was presently wearing, her

presently youthful appearance filling the outfit out most appropriately,

albeit in a fear less dignified manner than that to which the blue haired

half-Juraian princess was accustomed to wearing.

Cologne reacted to her adopted grandchild's appreciative scrutiny by

shrugging uncomfortably before saying, "Lord Reka…insisted that I should

appear like this while in his presence…and one does not wisely refuse an

invitation from one of the Daokan lords…particularly not that one."

"Oh, uncle Reka isn't really all that bad, Kho-chan," Siren

affectionately stroked the blue haired matriarch on the back of her

pony-tailed hair and added, "So what if he could burn down our entire

village for the insult of refusing his kindness? You know that I would

speak to him about it and get him to agree only to burn the houses and not

our people inside them."

"And that is supposed to reassure me?" Cologne sniffed, enduring the

caress of the Archmage's hand upon her head as though not yet having made a

decision on whether or not to remove it, as though she were inwardly

conflicted about whether or not to detach it from its rightful owner.

"You kids run along inside and don't keep my uncle waiting," Siren

urged them, turning back to Cologne and saying, "The Matriarch and I have a

few things more to discuss, and when we're ready…then maybe we'll join you."

Ranma and Nabiki exchanged puzzled looks and then just shrugged,

then led the rest of their party as they followed the lady Veragar towards

the largest of the tents, a spacious stretch of canvas that was warm inside

and full of heavy fragrances that assaulted the nostrils with a pleasantly

pungent mixture of human scent mixed with oil-based perfumes and wildflower

blossoms.

Reka was moving towards a pile of thigh plush pillows and cushions

that occupied one end of the huge tent and was greeted at once by a

beautiful young maid dressed all in silks and ornaments, who offered him a

horn-shaped cup that he accepted graciously, lifting it up to the others in

token salute before spilling the contents on the ground before his feet.

With a magnanimous wave of one hand he indicated the array of

colorful silk cushions that had clearly been set aside for their benefit and

said, "Please…sit and be welcome as my favored guests of the evening. No

harm shall befall you in my presence and I only ask the boon of your company

for but a few hours of the evening. Not so great a thing to ask…considering

the favor that I have already extended towards you."

"You mean like a little surprise that somebody else was cooking up

for us this evening?" Nabiki bluntly asked, getting straight to the matter

at hand.

"Ah yes, indeed," Reka said graciously, "That Ahriman-spawned

scoundrel was plotting to kill you all in your sleep when I, quite

naturally, became aware of his perfidy and elected to intervene before the

arrival of the assassins."

"To kill us?" Ukyo blinked, "But…wait a minute! What about Uncle

Tendo and Aunt Nodoka? What about the rest of our family, Natsume, Akane,

Kurumi…"

"And my Pop?" Ranma asked.

"Well…him too I guess," Ukyo shrugged as if considering it an

afterthought.

"You need hardly concern yourselves for their sake," Reka assured,

stretching out a hand and making a slight gesture, "The matter has already

been attended to in your absence…"

To their considerable surprise the flames in the cooking pit at the

center of the tent flared to life and revealed an image in full

three-dimensional relief, showing them a very irate Natsume bending down

over some bound and helpless men, while hovering off to her left a somewhat

bemused Lenore was surveying the interrogation.

"…Let me be most clear about this," Natsume was informing the

half-naked man sitting before her in nothing but his undershorts and

T-shirt, "You sought to kill us all in our sleep, therefore I do not feel

the least restraint in telling you that if you do not cooperate what I have

done to you so far will seem like foreplay."

"I can't tell you what I don't already know, Lady," the man said in

a show of rough bravado, "We're just following the orders of our employer…we

really don't know anything beyond what our bosses told us."

"Do you take me for a fool that I should believe that?" Natsume

asked in a far-too-casual manner, her hand bending one of the man's fingers

in an unnatural angle, "You were ready to kill innocent women and children.

Is it nothing more than a job for you, obeying the wishes of this Otono

fellow? If so then you made a very poor choice for a profession."

"Gaaahhhh!" the man cried from between clenched teeth as the sound

of something snapping heralded the damage to his finger, "Do you worse you

heathen! You godless types will be swept away when the judgment comes to be

rendered over this entire city!"

"Ah, that is more like it," Natsume said grimly, "Now we hear your

real sentiments expressed. I would call this progress, would you not

Darkholm-san?"

"Just let me know when you're ready to turn them over to me," Lenore

remarked, "I'm feeling a bit thirsty after all that exercise, and I've got

ways of making them talk that I haven't even tried to make use of before.

I'm eager to know just how effective my powers will work on a religious

fanatic."

"I am not yet done achieving satisfaction, but I will consider your

request when it seems timely," Natsume replied before turning back to the

man whimpering before her, "How about it, Corporal-san…would you prefer her

methods over mine? I'll grant that I lack her experience as an

interrogator, but since I am a Slayer, and we have all night to resolve this

before we turn you over to the authorities…"

"You think I'm afraid of your laws?" the injured man scoffed from

between the tears that he was shedding, "I serve a higher authority than you

will ever know…!"

"I sincerely doubt that," Lenore replied, "And believe me, you will

be afraid when Natsume-chan and I get through with you. Believe me when I

say that neither one of us would obtain much satisfaction from simply

killing you outright…but everything leading up just shy of the point of

death…ah yes, that's where the fun will really begin…"

The image faced as Reka took his hand away and allowed the pit-fire

to return to a normal level and coloration. For Nabiki and the others,

however, the images seared into their minds took a bit of adjustment before

they could be fully assimilated.

"Natsume and Lenore…working together?" Nabiki finally managed to

blurt out with incredulous wonder, wondering why it felt so odd as she

added, "Talk about your strange bedfellows…"

"You said it, Sugar," Ukyo averred, "But the way they both were

talking just now…they sounded almost like Per-chan when she gets royally

irritated."

"I know, Airen," Perfume replied, "And as strange as it may sound, I

don't think I've ever heard Lenore-san sound so…bloodthirsty."

"To say nothing of way Natsume-chan was speaking," Shampoo added for

further wonder.

"You may rest assured that what I have just shown you is accurate,"

Reka informed them, "As is the certain knowledge that removing you from your

house when I did threw off the game plan of the assassins, thus enabling

these two to act with a free hand in thwarting their mission."

"Yeah?" Nabiki asked cautiously, "And you did this…why?"

"The better question would be…why not?" Reka assured her, "You see…I

am no stranger to witnessing such outrages…they happen all of the time in

the world of Mortals…but in this case I felt no compunction against taking

steps to insure your continued safety."

"You did?" Ranma asked, "But why?"

"You hurt me, Son-in-law," Reka sniffed, "But I will excuse the

slight as I know that you have a naturally wary caution about accepting

gifts from me. As you already know by now, favors won from Eluini always

come with a price tag."

"I thought as much," Nabiki folded her arms and scowled, "So what

will this cost us?"

"Nothing that you are not prepared already to sacrifice, so consider

it a trifle," Reka said while sitting down upon the pillows and reaching out

with a hand to pat the head of the kneeling girl who had served him the

horn-cup, "Of course already I can almost hear you drying analogies between

myself and another gracious host whose company you recall all too vividly.

You really must learn to do a better job of shielding your thoughts if you

do not wish me to know about them."

"Ah…" Nabiki winced, finding it as awkward as before with Anri this

sense of having no secrets while standing in his presence, or that of his

brothers.

"As it is I am neither insulted nor flattered that you compare me to

Lao Kane," Reka mused, "But your analogy is not an accurate one since I am

not in the habit of taking slaves, nor do I bend others to suit my will or

serve my interests. Take Tara here for example…she is an entirely free

woman who comforts me as she wishes, without my requesting it or demanding

it from her directly."

"A free woman?" Ukyo asked, nodding to the dark-haired girl in

question, "Dressed like that?"

To their surprise the woman named Tara merely smiled back at Ukyo

and said, "Do you hear me criticizing the way you dress, Lady Saotome? I

happen to be quite comfortable as I am, and I do as I will because the Lord

Reka has graciously allowed me to be in his presence…and that of my lady

Veragar, whom I serve in the capacity of a handmaiden."

"Indeed," Veragar walked up behind the woman in question and knelt

down beside her, tipping the girl's head back with a hand to her chin and

planting a kiss upon her lips that Tara returned eagerly before the both of

them turned matching smiles back in the direction of the Saotome-Tendo

posse.

"All who dwell here within this encampment are freeborn travelers

who merely share the way because it pleases them to band together," Reka

informed them, "I keep none in my company who do not wish to be here. It

has never been my way to force my company upon anyone who comes to me

seeking my patronage and protection."

"Well, aren't you the noble type," Ukyo asked as she and Shampoo

took great care in sitting down together, their mutually shared conditions

making them the most delicate members of the party as they swept their gazes

and did a quick study of the other people gathered around the circle of

divans that formed the center of the big communal tent.

"I am a King without a Kingdom, lady Saotome," Reka smiled, "I go

where I will and call home the open road. It but pleases me to raise my own

family in the company of those whose presence pleases me and delights the

senses. Though I am a Lord over men I do not rule them…I do not raise an

iron fist as an oppressor but rather prefer to be a humble shepherd

overseeing my flock, which is enough to content me in this lifetime."

"A humble shepherd?" Nabiki repeated as she and Ranma sat down

together, "Excuse me for saying this but somehow I just don't see you doing

humble."

Reka smiled with a faintly predatory gleam, "You are right. But

though I may be more wolf than sheep dog, still do I protect the ones whom I

guard against the true predators who dwell out there in the world of

illusion that is the realm of mortals. I have no need to either justify

myself nor pretend that what I do is from entirely altruistic reasons, but I

do what I believe to be the correct path, which is all anyone may do in this

world. Accept it or not, I am far from the great villain that you imagine

me to be, though I do confess that I bear some fault in leaving you with

that prior impression."

"My, I wonder how we could have ever come to such a conclusion,"

Nabiki said facetiously, but still mindful of the fact that this man was

extremely powerful, incredibly dangerous, and that her loved ones were too

near at hand to risk antagonizing him too boldly.

But Reka smiled indulgently, hardly seeming offended at all as he

looked her directly in the eyes and said, "Saotome-san…I like you, truly I

do. You are a woman who speaks her mind and knows her heart's desires and

does not deny herself from some misbegotten sentimentalist notions of

morality, despite the efforts of my brother to instill in you a sense of

your own spiritual nature. I find you a most refreshing contrast to the

run-of-the-mill mortals whom I occasionally interact with…even as I have

come to reevaluate my first impression of you, Son-in-law, having observed

your training under my niece, which in a single day seems to have achieved a

lightning step in the evolution of your own latent nature."

"How do you mean that?" Ranma asked, wary himself of this fiery

tempered man who could seem so gracious one moment yet gave a hint of subtle

danger with every pronouncement.

"Why, by this I mean that you are hardly the dull-witted clod that I

took you for," Reka replied, "You have an amazing ability to absorb and

adapt to new experiences and challenging situations, which you demonstrated

during our battle. My niece clearly knew this about you and adjusted her

training regimen accordingly, and in but a few hours time brought you in

closer accord with your elemental nature. You now have an instinctive,

almost intuitive grasp of the workings of real power. I see much promise in

you and the path that you have set out upon, and perhaps even you may well

have the chance to take on my brother in combat and surprise Udan in ways

that only Anri seems to have anticipated."

"Wow," Ukyo turned a sidelong look at her husband, "From the sound

of things you must be pretty hot right now, Ranchan. Too bad I'm laid up

with our kid or maybe you could teach me a few moves. I feel like I've been

sidelined for ages playing the role of a mother, and as soon as I get back

in fighting trim…"

"Aiyaa," Shampoo agreed, "Shampoo much enjoy being mother, but no

wish to lose out on warrior training with Airen and Husband always away

doing battle. Amazon bride rightful place at side of Airen, and no want to

be weak girl forever while Airen and Husband get much, much stronger."

"Believe me, I'd never think of you as being weak, Sham-chan,"

Nabiki reassured her wife, "And as soon as you and Ucchan are ready I'll be

more than ready to share with you everything me and Ranchan have learned.

You don't think I'd forget taking care of my Posse?"

"Damned right you won't forget us," Perfume smiled, "And my Airen

won't forget your promise either…and neither will my cousin."

"Yes, and indeed training is good if it improves your ability to

facilitate the mind and body with the will and the spirit," Reka mused, "But

where it comes to facing my brother…I fear all the training that you have

undertaken so far will not prove adequate against him. That is but another

reason why I have called you here to arrange for this private meeting."

"Oh?" Nabiki arched an eyebrow, "Are you telling us you want to help

us to improve our chances with your brother?"

"Let us say that I would not weep any tears should Udan be bested by

the likes of you," Reka smiled, "I have faced my brother often in battle and

have never yet bested him. We are neither friends nor bitter enemies, but

we have…very different ways of viewing the cosmos, and at times when we have

clashed I have never yet gotten the better of the issue."

He gestured with one hand again and once more caused the fire-pit to

flare to life, this time revealing a scene of carnage and battle in which

the dark-clad Udan was exchanging furious blows with a pink-skinned

monstrosity and doing great damage to the landscape, far more than they were

obviously rendering upon one another.

Ukyo and Shampoo both blanched as they leaned forward, while little

Lylac and Fragrance were round-eyed, and Perfume was openly gawking in

dismay as they could all fairly feel the titanic forces being unleashed

between Udan and the pink-skinned creature, forces so great as to be utterly

indescribable, and each blow that connected caused a shockwave to

reverberate throughout the entire tent.

Ranma and Nabiki were staring the hardest of all those who were

present, and between them both they felt a collective need to swallow.

"Holy Amaterasu," Ukyo averred in a shuddering breath, "That's the

guy Ucchan and Ranchan are going up against?"

"Aiyaa…" Shampoo shuddered, "Legends of Dark Man no do him justice.

Him many, many times more dangerous than any Elder."

"But…who is that fighting him?" Perfume asked in dismay, "Looks a

little like a walking hunk of chewing gum wearing boxing gloves and dark

pajamas…"

"Immaterial," Reka said as he dismissed the image once again, "No

matter how powerful the foe the end is always predetermined. Udan simply

does not know how to lose in battle, and even on those few times when he has

been bested he never truly yields and always finds a way to come back and

triumph again…a trait that I believe you share with him, Saotome-san. So

yes…I do indeed intend to impart upon you the key to gaining the advantage."

"We're listening," Ranma said, leaning forward with a cautiously

hopeful expression.

"Ah, in good time," Reka waved a hand, "But first…let us attend to

other matters of protocol. As this is an informal meeting I would request

of you that you let your ladies come out and join with us now in the spirit

of communal celebration."

"Let them…?" Ranma started to say then started as the realization

took him, even as he felt the press of five distinctive minds rise up within

his consciousness, and without having to will it he mentally opened a door

and let the "genies" come out from their bottle.

The five flowing tattoos that covered his body beneath his clothing

flowed away from his physical form and took shape in the space gathered

around him, and five distinctly feminine shapes resolved themselves into

appropriately revealing "Arabian Nights" style silken outfits, complete with

appropriate jewels and ornaments that denoted their royal station.

Latisha was he first to achieve full human semblance, and she bowed

before Lord Reka and said, "Father…it is good to be with you again."

"Likewise my child," Reka said graciously, "And to you others I bid

you welcome. Sit and indulge yourselves with the rest of your family and we

shall partake of an evening of wonder that will live long in memory."

"We thank you must humbly, Firelord," said Nagisha as she set down

and took a place beside a much-surprised Perfume.

"It's nice to be out and about among friends and family," said

Sharil as she found a spot very near to a somewhat dubious Nabiki.

"I can't tell you what a relief it is to breathe honest-to-Kami

air," exulted Karina as she moved to sit besides Ukyo, and then reached out

with her hands and took little Fragrance onto her lap as the child seemed to

gravitate to her almost like a magnet.

"Hey squirt," Sobriel said while ruffling the purple hair of a

much-disconcerted Lylac before taking her own place beside Shampoo, who eyed

the Void elemental with a look of some confusion.

"Ah yes," Veragar said with a smile as she regarded the now-expanded

Saotome clan with evident approval, "Now this is more like a party. It's

been too long since we had you with us, Latisha dear. You've been away from

your father for so long…"

"You hardly need to make excuses for my absence, Mother-in-law,"

Latisha noted, "Father has had so many children over the years that I am

certain he has trouble keeping up with all of us…"

"Ah yes, but you are one of my eldest and that makes you very

special to me," Reka noted, "I do so well recall your mother when she was

among us. Now there was a queen among Salamanders…you take so much after

her likeness that for a moment I almost believed you to be her

reincarnation."

"Elementals do not reincarnate, Father," Latisha noted, "With very

few exceptions we lack souls and thus are merely formulative aspects of

consciousness, mere Thought-Forms given form and sentience from the random

bits of Prana energy that go to making up our nature."

"Ah, but you do have a soul my dear," Reka assured her, "Which is

how I recognized you even though it has been ages since our paths last

crossed. I must say that you look very healthy indeed. Pregnancy has given

you such a glow of life, and I cannot help but wonder with anticipation at

what sort of offspring you shall generate with your husband."

"Lord Ranma…is not my husband, Father," Latisha noted, "I am content

to be his servant, nothing more than this is needful…"

"I will not hear of that," Reka said with a dismissive wave of his

hand, "No daughter of mine shall be consigned to such a lowly stature.

Son-in-law, as I know you to be a man of honor I will expect you to do right

before my daughter and acknowledge her as one of your consorts…if not in

full status of a wife, at least grant her the honor of being more than a

humble mistress."

"Ah…" Ranma blinked his eyes, suddenly finding himself on the spot

once again as more than twelve sets of feminine eyes swiveled towards him in

full unison…not just his wives and his "consorts" but also his two infant

daughters and the lady Veragar…to say nothing of the smiling lady Tara.

"It would only be fair if you acknowledged all five of your

elementals as consorts," Veragar suggested, "That would give them

semi-formal status and allow your daughters to be born with legitimacy,

albeit in a fairly informal sense since this would only count among you and

does not bear any legal status with the society of your homeland. After

all, there is a precedent for this in your wife assuming a dual role as both

Wife and Husband to her own beloved Airen."

"Ah…right," Nabiki saw Ranma glance at her as though silently

pleading for her advice, and with great reluctance she sighed and said,

"Well…if it doesn't complicate things any more than they already are with

us…I mean…by now we ought to be used to the unconventional nature of our own

group marriage, so if Ranma consents to do right by his…ladies…" she winced

as the added this last point, feeling a tad bit of lingering resentment for

the recent antics of Latisha and the others.

"If Airen say it all right, then Shampoo say it too," the purple

haired girl at her side assented, "No happy that Servants take advantage of

Ranma, but is Amazon way to accept every new daughter into tribe, and tribe

growing because Husband is very manly, very…pro-lif-ic? Is right word,

yes?"

"Close enough, Shamchan," Ukyo noted, then frowned, "I'm not saying

I approve of this personally, mind you, but it would seem a shame to deny

the little tykes the right of calling Ranchan their daddy."

"Of course this will make things complicated whether we like it or

not, Airen," Perfume frowned, "It's seemed crowded sometimes when there was

just the five of us living together…and now we're being asked to double our

numbers…"

"You are just being asked to acknowledge a situation as it already

exists, Ms. Kuonji," Reka assured the Amazon Enforcer, "Indeed…life would be

a lot happier if more people would accept the challenges that life randomly

imposes instead of always trying to cling to an ideal way that is as

ephemeral as it is impractical, even at times quite inhuman."

"Inhuman?" Nabiki asked, "What do you know about being human?"

"Why my dear…I know everything about what it means to be human,"

Reka smiled, "Everything I would ever care to know…and more than I sometimes

would desire. After all, I am Daokan…and as such I embody one quarter of

the collective Will of human nature. I am fire and will and anger…I exult

in those emotions that many seek to repress and deny. I have walked this

world for over twelve millennia and have seen much more than you could hope

to imagine…all the good and the evil that exists within the human spirit. I

am the Agrikal…the Fire Lord, the man of red earth who trembles nations and

has laid waste to entire civilizations…"

"Hey, peace there," Ranma said, feeling alarmed at the escalating

tone in their host's glowering demeanor.

"Peace?" Reka scoffed, "Don't wish it upon me! The whole world is

in Chaos, and I exult in the glorious carnage of disorder! To me life is

random and unpredictable, too short for some, far too long and enduring for

others. I glory in the wondrous symphony and cavalcade of life. And yet…in

that music of the ever-changing wind I hear some semblance of greater

harmony, and it sooths my restless nature to be a part of the greater

tableau."

"You mean you enjoy living in a world of endless confusion, anarchy

and discord?" Nabiki asked him.

"But of course," Reka replied, "Life itself is messy and untidy and

cannot be confined to the neat and orderly pattern of idealists and

dreamers. I accept the world for what it is, just as I accept the limits of

human nature and do not impose false values on those who merely seek to find

some moment of joyful surrender by indulging in the passions of the moment."

"You make it sound as though you don't mind the world being a bit

crazy," Ukyo noted.

"What is sanity if not the perfect appreciation of the world as it

truly is?" Reka asked them, "I do not fault mortals for being base and

imperfect things. If it is their desire to embrace limitations, then who am

I to demand that they renounce their baser urges and seek a higher path as

does my brother, Anri? Of course when someone does learn to transcend the

illusion of the self and attains a higher consciousness then I exult in

their brilliance. It can be very lonely being part of that rarest of

elites, the ones who observe the follies of humanity and understand its

underlying basis…but Anri? He thinks that mortals should try and move above

this pattern, and he tries to coach and counsel them to heed the angels of

their better nature…which is why we are faced with the problems that we know

within the present."

"How you mean?" Shampoo asked.

"He means the Amakusen," Karina answered, "The survivors of the

ancient Japanese Christian sect persecuted by the Tokugawa Shoganate back

during the middle of the seventeenth century when the ancestor of the man

you know as Otono Reyabi came very close to becoming the Anti-Christ of

legend."

"Here we go again," Sobriel rolled her eyes, "Back to bashing the

Christians."

"It's not Christian bashing, Honey," Karina informed her lover, "A

group that thrives on Martyrdom and lives in a state of perpetual

persecution complex can hardly be called 'Bashed' when all you do is point

out the flaws and inconsistencies of their beliefs and behavior."

"Tell that to the fanatics who think that the world revolves around

their perverse fantasies and myopic religious views," Nagisha snorted, "They

see the Devil in everything but in their own cowardly hearts, and thus they

create the very evil that they claim to be against."

"And thus the Anti-Christ," Sharil agreed, "The ultimate expression

of the perversity of literal minded Christians."

"The Anti-Christ?" Perfume asked.

"An conceptual inversion of the Christ mythos given substance,"

Sharil answered, "Just as the Christ is supposed to embody the Mithra

concept of Tifereth, the Sun, so does the Anti-Christ embody a dark lunar

inversion of the Resurrection mythos. Both images are inherently false

reflections of the Solar Child phenomenon that is supposed to be embodied by

the real Maitreya, Lord Anri…"

"Yet my brother rejects the analogy of Paul's synthesis when that

foolish Apostate created the initial synthesis that founded the basis of the

Christian legend," Reka mused, "As the Christ is envisioned to be too

perfect, too ideal and far too lofty a concept for any mortal human to

embody, so does the opposite reflective image of the Christ embody the lower

aspects of inverted nature, the Beast within Man turned inwardly against

itself. Truly a perversion of all that I believe and stand for."

"How so?" Nabiki asked, "From the way you talk I'd think it was

right in line with what you go for."

"Ah, but I do not countenance the folly of paradoxically condemning

that which I enjoy doing," Reka noted, "I embrace my passions without

hypocrisy and do what my emotions tell me to be good. Such is not the case

with a Christian, I most heartily assure you."

"What do you mean?" Ranma asked.

"Because a Christian is someone who is taught to hate that which

they actually enjoy doing," Nagisha answered, "To deny the self, to deny

passion and desire, to repress the baser urges and try to live a pure and

sinless life…to essentially cast off much of what makes a human being human

in order to attempt to be something more than human…which, of course, is an

impossible paradox and a true perversion of nature."

"And yet, for the most part, the Christians are unable to attain

this high-minded ideal," Reka noted, "And so they fall back to earth,

failing to attain the ranks of angels in this world. The disappointment

this breeds makes many who are Christians rail against the coarseness of

fate, and then they damn themselves and curse their lot, consigning all of

humanity to the hell of the unjust because they themselves cannot achieve

harmony by balancing their mortal and divine halves in perfect homeostasis."

"Homeowhatsis?" little Fragrance asked, surprising everyone by

joining in on the adult conversation.

"He means achieving equilibrium by finding a balance between

opposing poles of human nature, Silly," Lylac informed her, only to

belatedly become aware that she was drawing attention her way, which

prompted her to cover her tiny mouth with one hand and say, "Ooops…"

"Ah…right," Nabiki lamely said while eyeing her eldest daughter, "I

think your brother and I covered that during one of his lectures."

"Indeed, and I would find it most surprising if Anri had not

mentioned this until now," Reka noted, his tone and expression turning grim,

"But then again, you already know of how my brother grieves at the

responsibility he bears for being identified by the Christians with their

false Christos. You see…my brother indeed believes in living up to your

ideals, but he never told people to deny themselves or attempt to burn out

that which is intrinsic to the very nature of being human. He was simply

misunderstood and used by those who perverted his ideals into the monstrous

synthesis that Paul invented when he confused Jewish myths with pagan

Mithraism. The Christian, you see, believes that humanity is damned for

being mortal, that all humans bear a collective guilt that is shared with

the mythic story of the Father of all Men, the Neflim known as Adam. In a

sense they are correct in that the present human race lives in the shadow of

our Ancient forbearers, but where they go astray is in believing that it is

possible to escape the curse of humanity by special dispensation…the

salvation mythos that is the core of their belief system."

"Are you saying that Salvation is impossible?" Nabiki asked.

"Hardly," Reka replied, "But Salvation must be earned…it cannot

simply be given to you. It is quite absurd to think of the Divine Will of

the heavens stretching out a hand and welcoming the unwashed and corrupted

of humanity into the bosom of paradise when we are not ready to embrace such

perfection. Nor is it possible to simply 'wash away' the sins of mortals

with the wave of a divine hand…the very concept is offensive to the

principle of Free Will that I embrace. If you cannot simply let go of the

things that hold you back from spiritually evolving to a higher plane then

by what right would any god presume to make you perfect by taking away your

supposed 'imperfections?'"

"You make a mighty hard case there, Sugar," Ukyo noted, "But it

sounds to me as if you're just dismissing the whole thing because they

wouldn't invite you into their club of Angels…"

"Do you honestly believe that I would give a rat's ass about

paradise and the Angels?" Reka scoffed, "I've been to Heaven many times and

have always come away bored beyond all belief. Hell is a tourist's

amusement by analogy, and the Angels? Stuffy high-minded Devas who have

little use for those who are not sufficiently evolved to suit their

standards. I care nothing for the afterlife of paradise…it is not for me,

and I would not wish to be there if the heavens themselves opened up their

arms and granted me an engraved invitation."

"So you'd rather go to hell then?" Perfume asked.

"Hell is a concept more than a place, a state of mind rather than a

state of actual being," Reka answered, "Many demons fashion their worlds

into the form of a hellish afterlife precisely because they know that the

rubes who journey there will be impressed by the effect that is so created.

But mankind is not doomed to exist in eternal purgatory…we each find in the

afterlife the realm of being that is most suited to our innermost natures.

We create Hell inside of us by rejecting our darker aspects and thus giving

them power over us that our fears would not otherwise possess. Similarly,

we find Heaven within ourselves when we embrace and accept that within us

that is most in harmony and balance with the cosmos. Most people vary

between differing between these poles, and the afterlife they experience is

reflective of that, with no two mortals encountering the exact same form of

Elysium. It is much like the word 'Satan,' which means 'Adversary' in

ancient Hebrew. The Devil you encounter inside is the you that forms your

darker reflection…and the Angel you encounter is reflective of your higher

spiritual nature."

"So how are people supposed to live then?" Ranma asked, "If you say

that there's really nobody up there passing judgment and everything…"

"Ah, but you pass judgment on yourself every day that you live,

Son-in-law," Reka assured him, "You are the one who decides if you deserve

to experience your image of heaven or hell when you die. The weight of your

Karma is with you and depends on what sort of life you lead and whether or

not you lived consistently with your thoughts, beliefs and desires. Hell is

only found when you have lived in a manner contrary to what you believe to

have been the correct path…while heaven…"

"Is found by living in accordance with your inner nature," Latisha

spoke up, "I well remember your lessons, Father, and I have lived every day

of my very long life in accordance with those principals."

"I know that you have, my child," Reka smiled with fatherly pride

before he continued, "But mortals are often raised to believe in things that

pit them against themselves…to make Adversaries out of their own natural

impulses and unfiltered needs, rather than to embrace their humanity and

find accord by living consistently in thought, deed and action."

"Are you saying everybody should just do whatever they want, Sugar?"

Ukyo asked, "The world would implode into barbarism if everyone did that!"

"Ah, by that you mean that they would commit crimes and violate the

rules of civilized society were it not for the restraint of their impulses?"

Reka mused, "You are forgetting that all societies and civilizations

establish the same basic rules for governing themselves and restraining

aberrant behavior. All cultures ban the unprovoked killing of another and

make it a crime to steal the property and possessions of a fellow citizen.

All societies have declared rape to be a crime against the state because

women are viewed by some as property and by others as a social asset. They

all make adultery into a sin because it disrupts the fabric of a social

family unit. They all assert the essentially divine nature of their cult

beliefs and shared taboos, and the vast majority of them impose stiff

penalties for infractions against that which is viewed to be the public

good. In example after example I have witnessed this in the course of many

thousands of years and I can assert with great authority that one part of

being human means embracing the limitations that are imposed on one through

the social contract of Citizens and statehood."

"Really?" Nabiki asked, "And here I took you to be an Anarchist."

"That is flattering, truly," Reka replied, "But even I acknowledge

the need for the existence of a state as a means of furthering and advancing

the welfare of most human beings. Government is a necessary evil that

allows the cooperative ventures of society to come into existence. In the

absence of government there is anarchy and oligarchy, which give rise in

turn to Tyranny, which of course is what I find the most abhorrent. Tyranny

is the stifling of what is human, the denial of choice, and the imposition

of authority without regard to social welfare. It is one man or a group of

men making decisions that overrule the best interests of actual humans. Too

much government is just as evil as having too little government to protect

and serve the citizens who must make compromises with one another in order

to dwell in peace and seek the inner enlightenment that comes with time and

the right sort of inspiration."

"But…ah…doesn't having to follow a bunch of rules mean that you have

to give up on at least some of your choices?" Ranma pointed out, earning an

approving side-glance from Nabiki.

"Not if the rules of a society are well thought out and balanced

between the opposing needs of the state and the citizenry," Reka answered,

"You can still achieve a life that is worthy and consistent while agreeing

to mind the boundaries of the social pattern just as long as no fool imposes

rules that are as ill considered as the Book of Leviticus, or that nonsense

by Hammurabi.

"But still," Nabiki said, "If people didn't always repress their

baser impulses and learn to behave by showing some restraint…"

"You are assuming by this that people are naturally wicked and will

always act from the basest of motives?" Reka asked.

"Ah…well, no, that's not quite what I was getting at," Nabiki lamely

amended.

"Ask yourself rather why do people have those baser motives that

lead to criminal conduct?" Reka challenged, "Are you yourself inclined to

just murder and take whatever you like because it is far more convenient

than working hard to earn that which you might otherwise purchase? Would

you force your attentions on someone who is in no position to refuse your

amorous advances? Would lie, cheat and harm others because you know that

you could get away with it and that there are very few others who are

powerful enough to deny the achievement of your ambitions?"

"Of course not," Nabiki reacted, "I'd never do anything like that."

"And yet you have the ability," Reka pointed out, "If you wished it

you could do whatever you like without restraint or compunction in the

knowledge that the authorities of your society would be powerless to deter

you. You could, for example, create a criminal syndicate out of your

already existent organization and set yourself up like a petty Daimyo or

Obuyan…and yet you resist the very suggestion. Now why is that?"

"Because it's wrong," Nabiki answered, "Because I don't like to hurt

people, and I won't take anything that doesn't belong to me. Call it pride

if you will, but I won't lower myself to act like a thug no matter how

convenient it might appear to others."

Reka clapped his hands, "And that is why you are the sort of person

whom others respect without being forced to acknowledge your

superiority…because only weaklings act in the base manner that I have

described, bullying with the use of force as their preferred method for

achieving anything. You actually care about the consequences of your

actions. You choose to be ethical and you disdain the sort of behavior that

would make a lesser person out of you. You understand, in a word, the

difference between real power and the type that is only bluster."

"What my husband is attempting to say," Veragar chimed in, "Is that

there is no real reason for people to act like brutish beasts so long as

they have an evolved nature and can sense the intuitive and empathic reason

why harming one needlessly is a self-reflective gesture of self-loathing."

"Only pathological beings feel the urge to behave aberrantly," Reka

noted, "Those possessed of the disease of antipathy, of psychotic urges over

which they lack control and to which they are too prone to suffer. In a

natural state of grace one is fairly liberated of such dark impulses and

will not deliberately seek to harm another being…for the act harms only the

self in the state of cosmic balance."

"Yeah, but…" Ranma hesitated then shrugged, leaving the words that

sprang into his mind unspoken, though clearly conveyed by his tone and

expression.

"Ah," Reka picked up on his meaning immediately, "You believe that I

was describing myself just now, Son-In-Law? That I am the bully who flaunts

his talents and seeks to impress on lesser beings my natural superiority?

How sad that I may have inadvertently created such a poor impression.

Perhaps in my younger years I would have indeed deserved such silent

approbation, but I like to think that I have improved somewhat over the

course of many years of learning first hand the pointlessness of such

behavior. I really do not give a damn if others fear, mock or condemn me

because I am content unto myself and feel no obligation to impress anyone.

I merely am, and the rest is mere perception."

"Awfully full of yourself ain't you?" Ukyo sniffed, "The way you

keep on going on about how superior you are, I'd say you were definitely

trying to impress us."

"An unfortunate choice of terminology," Reka replied, "Perhaps it

would be more accurate to say that I am a more evolved state of being than

other lesser beings can understand and appreciate. In truth I am no more

than yourselves but for the accumulated experiences of many mortal

lifetimes, that and my nature as an Eluini, an Avataric incarnation of

knowledge and power that harkens back to the time of the Ancients, when all

of humanity was much like myself and my wife here. We are the echoes of the

former glory that was humanity in elden times…before the tainting, fall and

corruption of the races. In truth anyone could be as powerful as we are…you

simply have to accept the memory of the Power that lies dormant within you

and then train to achieve the synthesis of total mind and body integration."

"That's all, huh?" Perfume asked, looking more nervous than Ukyo as

though she had a better appreciation of the type of being whom they were

dealing with than her Airen.

"Well…granted that very few mortals ever achieve even the barest

inkling of the divinity that resides within the human genome," Reka

conceded, "There are many who seek to attain the enlightenment and harmony

of an Eluini, but only those who are clear in heart and mind may do so…such

as yourself, Saotome-san. Indeed, I knew from the start that you were a

nascent Eluini, but that you simply had not found your proper center. If

you did…why, there is no telling what you might well evolve into, perhaps

even one day a being who will surpass my understanding. Such a rare and

novel experience that would be, and I would welcome the opportunity to see

the sleeper awaken within you."

"Me…one of you guys?" Nabiki asked incredulously.

"Oh, there is nothing all that unusual about being born with the

potential," Reka assured her, "Perhaps in a former incarnation you came near

to achieving enlightenment but fell back away into karmic regression. The

memories of what you once were are no doubt imprinted deep within your

Akashic pattern, you have only to access those dormant genes that could

unlock from within you the lost wisdom of the ages."

"I doubt that's likely," Nabiki dismissed, "Though I do appreciate

the efforts that your brother made in showing me how small I really am in

the greater scheme of the universe."

"That was not what Anri intended to show you," Reka assured her, "In

truth there is no real relationship of size between what is greater or

lesser, only in perception of dimension can actual scale be determined. As

we interact with the greater Universe surrounding us we affect the flow of

reality itself and can shape the very workings of the cosmos from within.

As that curious fellow Achemedes once quipped, give me a platform to stand

upon and a lever big enough and I will move an entire world. The mind is

the actual Fulcrum, Saotome-san, the focus of wisdom and knowledge form the

lever."

"So…if Nabiki got ahold of this cosmic lever…?" Ranma asked.

"It would be as if she multiplied many times in power, Master,"

Latisha informed him, "For power is the potential energy that resides within

us all, and the knowledge of how to unlock the keys to such power would

enable one to become like a channeler to greater energies than you can

presently imagine…energies that exist at the mere tips of your fingers even

now, which one day soon we hope to teach you now to utilize correctly."

"That's right, Master," Karina said, "We're all training very hard

to teach you how to utilize our energies, and the more we work out together

the easier it is for us to facilitate in unison your powers as a Wizard."

"Just so long as that's all you're 'facilitating,' Sugar," Ukyo

remarked with a particularly green-eyed expression.

"Now don't be that way," Sharil urged gently, "We've all agreed to

act as one big happy family here, so there's no reason to deny us our fair

dues as Concubines to our beloved Husband."

"Husband?" Shampoo asked, exchanging worried looks with Ukyo and

Nabiki.

"Hey, don't knock us until you've gotten to know us a lot better,"

Sobriel said teasingly, and with a stray hand she stroked the side of

Perfume's knee, causing the Enforcer to start in dismay as though surprised

at the flirtatious gesture.

"Um…" Nabiki turned away from the increasingly amorous looks that

she and the others were starting to receive from the elementals and said,

"So…you really think I could get strong enough in time to face down your

brother?"

"Not in less than two days," Reka sniffed, "Power like that would

take many lifetimes to fully harness. Udan has had twelve thousand years in

which to perfect his power and there is little chance that you could simply

overpower him in a fight. However…as martial artists you should already

know that there is more to battle than mere strength, and that the true

essence of the Art is to turn an opponent's strength against him."

"You mean use your brother's own powers against him?" Ranma asked.

"In a manner of speaking," Reka said, "After all…with great power

there always comes a balancing element…a great weakness that can be

exploited…much like a diamond that has a secret flaw. Find the weakness and

you will find Udan's Achilles heel, and that may be just enough to help you

survive in the coming struggle. The alternative, as you already know, will

mean the death and destruction of this entire dimension, so the stakes are

such that you literally cannot afford to lose…for doing so means losing all

that you and your wives have accomplished together, Son-in-Law."

Almost reflexively Ranma turned and swept the room, taking in all

nine of his ladies and his three infant offspring, and then meeting Nabiki's

gaze as he encountered a similar such realization.

"Everything we've done together?" Nabiki asked, "The whole entire

package?"

"Everything right down to the moment when this timeline separated

from its host continuum," Reka revealed, "The moment when your parents chose

to exchange you as mere children. The world that was set in motion from the

time you set out on the path to become the heir to the Saotome school of

martial arts."

"You is saying…that Shampoo will never encounter Airen…and have

Lylac?" Shampoo said in tones of under spoken horror.

"That I'll never have the chance to meet my Airen?" Perfume

blanched.

"Nab-chan and me won't be friends and wind up marrying Ranchan

together?" Ukyo whispered, "And…we'll never have little Fragrance-chan?"

"Nor will your sons be born, and those daughters that you have yet

to give birth to," Reka replied, "All of these events are tied in to the

flow of events within this quantum dimension, and without the sequence of

continuity that brought you all down the long road that has culminated in

your successful group marriage…"

"Bastard!" Ukyo swore, "How dare you try and take all of that away

from us you…Jackass!"

"Shampoo rather die than live without her Airen and daughters!" the

purple haired Amazon flared.

"I never want to be as alone as I was before I met Ucchan," Perfume

was almost weeping, "How can you risk everything that we've lived through

together by making Ranma and Nabiki go up against that killer monster you

call your brother?"

"Do you honestly think that the choice of this was given unto me?"

Reka asked incredulously, "I am no more eager for this than any of you…nor

is Udan, if the truth be known about it."

"Then…why?" Ukyo asked, turning her question from the Firelord to

Ranma and Nabiki.

It was the latter who answered, though she lacked the courage to

meet any of her lovers directly and instead stared into the softly

sputtering fire-pit, "Because we did something between us that pissed off a

really bad entity who wants to destroy our world in order to prevent things

from going any further. It's not us that he's really after, though…its our

kids, Lylac, Perfume and Chusen. Somehow they're supposed to pose a threat

to this Ahriman creep, which is why he's dispatched Otono to try and

slaughter us all…to say nothing about taking the rest of Japan with us in

the bargain."

"It ain't the Daokan who's to blame for this," Ranma assured his

lady-co-wives, "It's what they're fighting against, this ancient demon who

wants to destroy everything 'cause he hates us just for living."

"Well said, Son-in-Law," Reka nodded, "The truth is that the history

of this timeline has been altered by a direct manifestation by Ahriman and

his brethren. They have seen the future and wish to avert it at cost, so

they tricked the foolish Reyabi into thinking you were his enemy while

having him fulfill the centuries-long vendetta of the Amakusen. He will

unleash a plague that will depopulate the world and cause even the Gods to

suffer its rampages, for it is a disease tainted with Ancient DNA. Rather

than permit this to come to pass my brother had elected to destroy this

timeline…but your husband and wife objected, which resulted in a challenge

being issued between Udan and your Airen."

"Is this true?" Ukyo asked of Ranma and Nabiki.

"It no can be true!" Shampoo turned upon Reka and said, "You is

lying!"

"Me lie? Hardly!" Reka scoffed, "The truth is far too much fun…at

least in most circumstances. Besides which it is not as though I wish to

see the end of such a promising family line. That is why I have elected to

offer my support to your cause by summoning you here so that I might offer

you a means for achieving victory, and possibly even survival."

"What do you mean by that, Lord Hono?" Perfume wondered.

"To answer that let me ask you a question," Reka soberly replied,

"How much do you truly love your wife and husband?"

"You is kidding, yes?" Shampoo scoffed, "Shampoo love Nabiki and she

love Ranma both more than life itself. Is nothing that Shampoo would no do

for Airen."

"That goes double for me, Sugar," Ukyo declared, "My life ain't

never been so full as when me and Nab-chan agreed to form this five-way

marriage with Ranchan and our co-wives."

"Interesting," Reka mused, "And just how far is it that you trust

your wife, Nabiki?"

"Hey, I trust her with my life!" Ranma declared.

"Her life perhaps," Reka drawled, "But do you trust her enough to

allow her to be with other women?"

"Other women?" Ukyo asked, "Besides us you mean?"

"You and the concubines, including my daughter," Reka answered,

directing his next question towards Nabiki herself as he added, "How about

it, Saotome-san? Do you trust yourself enough to remain true, loyal and

faithful to these others who have such a high regard for you?"

"Ah…what are you getting at?" Nabiki asked, though secretly she had

a very strong suspicion of what it was that Reka was alluding towards, and

she privately wished he would drop the subject rather than expose her inner

dilemma.

But such was not to be as Reka nodded to his wife, who smiled and

clapped her hands while turning towards the back entrance to the tent, and a

moment later the canvas there parted to admit a trio of individuals whose

presence caused Nabiki to feel her stomach drop in dread and anticipation.

The lead of the trio was that curious Gaijin whom she had met

earlier in the day, the woman named Carla, and just a step or two behind her

was a somewhat sheepish looking Trudy. At Trudy's side, however, was the

true cause of Nabiki's secret distress, a nervous looking Saki Asamiya whose

gaze instantly met Nabiki's from across the intervening space, and when

their eyes locked it was as though something else filled the air, like the

distant rumbling of a far-off tempest.

"Behold my other celebrated guests of the evening," Reka said in

obvious amusement, "A good evening tide to you, Detectives. I trust that

you had no difficulty finding appropriate attire from my wife's humble

collection?"

"Sure, no problem Lord Reka," Carla answered, "The only challenge

was getting my partner here to wear something fitting to her station."

Nabiki saw Trudy wince but do little more than meekly shrug her

slender shoulders. Indeed, the outfit that Carla had obviously chosen for

her was one that would not have looked out of place in any Satrap's harem,

though the ornamental chains and cuffs attached to her wrists and ankles

might have been overdoing the effect somewhat. Clearly Trudy was playing

out the role of a ornamented concubine complete with golden leash that went

from her choker-chain collar to the hand of her nominal "partner," leaving

very little doubt of the unequal status in their relationship since their

behavior suggested it was less of an act and more of a customary

affectation.

But it was Saki who most held Nabiki's eye, the pink haired Sekeban

Deka garbed in a most revealing array of silk pajamas complete with

curled-toe slippers and the obligatory bared midriff. Saki seemed far less

than at ease in her attire, what with the baggy pants and sleeveless halter

top that showed off her magnificent physique to full display…but in Nabiki's

eyes she shone like a princess. It was all that she could do just to keep

her heart from racing and her breath from catching in her throat…anything

that might betray the state of her feelings to her actual loved ones.

"Come sit with us," Reka urged, "I do believe that your partner has

a request to make, which is the reason why I offered you my invitation?"

"Indeed she does, my Lord," Carla replied while taking the lead and

urging her companions to sit with her, Trudy taking a place in the center

with Carla to one side and Saki to the other.

"Miss Matthews…or should I say Wells?" Reka began, "Since

Saotome-san here is one of your students perhaps it would be best if you

explain the nature of what you would ask here of her loved ones."

Trudy seemed far less cocky and self-assured than she had been

earlier in the day, and she obviously was less than comfortable about

sitting down, even upon such soft surfaces as the sand or the pillowed

divans, but nonetheless she managed to straighten up and compose herself in

perfect mimickery of Japanese etiquette. Once she had managed to regain her

dignified bearing she bowed from where she sat and directed her comments not

at Nabiki but rather at someone else sitting near by within their party.

"Lady Tendo," she said directly, "I come to you on behalf of my

student to beg your indulgence and ask a favor of you, one that I pray you

will consider with all the gravity and merit that it deserves."

"Aiyaa?" Shampoo asked, surprised to discover that she was the one

to whom this comment was being delivered rather than Ranma to one side…and

definitely not to Nabiki…

Continued.

Comments/Criticisms/Confessions of a Secular Humanist:

shadowmane

Or: shadowmane9849

Or: shadowmane747

Trudy makes a proposal that will affect the life and destiny of her

students, but can even she prevail in seeking the cooperation of Shampoo

Tendo, or will it be Amazons on the War-Path when the truth is finally

learned by the "Posse?" Be with us next time for this and many other

important developments as the plot moves further ahead in: "Shanghaid

Surprise," or, "How To Cuckold Your Loved Ones in Ten Easy Lessons." Be

there…

X


	109. Chapter 109

Dnabiki198

Nabiki ½

"A Very Scary Thought"

by

Jim Robert Bader

(Inspired by the works of Rumiko Takahashi & Others,

with concepts and characters created by fellow fanfic writers

Wade Tritschler, DB Sommers, Nicole Manders, Andrew

Greaves, Bill Guiroff and countless others, including "Buffy"

creator Joss Whedon; with special thanks to my good pal

Shiva for his editing and handling of this series.)

(Certain other characters and concepts are of my own

innovation, including my interpretation of the Monster

of Mary Shelly's novel, the Furies, Trudy, Takaharis

Angelique d'Anjou, Anri and the Daokan, Thelendra

the Dream Weaver and various other guest stars

appearing in this portion of the Nabiki ½ series…)

Chapter Seventy-Five.

Episode One-Hundred-Ninety-Eight.

Alls Fair Le Affair…

"Don't try and con me with your usual bull, Gendo!" an angry Yui

declared as she backed the leader of the NERV complex up against the nearest

wall of the command central, "You used me like you've used everyone here

just to advance your own private personal agenda! You were planning to use

our son in my place after you lost me to your damned experiments, and you

fused me with…that thing you've been growing in those vats using the DNA

fragments recovered from Antarctica! What have you got to say for yourself

now? And don't try to kid me about this being for the good of all humanity

and the long-term welfare of the human race!"

"But…dearest…" Gendo tried to explain, his gaze screwed up as he saw

the wagging finger pointed at him by his supposedly "deceased" wife come

miraculously back to life due to the advent of the lady Laolana.

"Don't dearest me, Husband," Yui indicated the child that she was

holding in her other arm, "How do you account for this girl having my DNA

fused with that of an Angel? She's my daughter…even though I never carried

her in my womb for pity's sakes! And up until a few minutes ago she was

quite possibly the greatest menace to ever face humanity on the face of this

planet! Now that the link between her and Lilith has been severed I've been

left with her in my custody, and from all indications she's been nothing

but a lab specimen to you until now. That's hardly the way any child should

have to live, and from what else I've been able to tell you've been

similarly distancing yourself from our son Shinji! And you dare to call

yourself a father?"

"But…but I…" Gendo weakly protested, shrinking even farther into the

wall as though confronting a dangerous animal, or a ghost from his past whom

he had never expected..

"Man," Talbain said from where he and Frank stood off in one corner,

guarding what was left of the SEELE paramilitary force while watching this

whole exchange with mingled looks of pity and satisfaction, "She's reading

him the riot act for sure. Wouldn't wanna be in his shoes…if I even wore

shoes, that is."

"Couldn't happen to a nicer fascist," Frank said gruffly, still

cradling in his arms the deadly railgun rifle that had fired the Orachalcum

bullet that had ended the threat posed by Lilith…for the moment,

"Considering what that creep put us all through I'd call this getting off

easy, especially considering the mess he's left me to have to clean up."

He nodded towards the disarmed SEELE men, who for their part had the

decency to look sheepish.

"What goes around comes around, Stein," Agent Kei observed blandly,

"Gendo here tried to engineer the Instrumentality Apocolypse because of some

twisted reading of the Old Testament scriptures where he thought that he was

actually advancing the evolution of human kind when, in fact, he was just

making it that much easier for the Old Ones to pull a fast one."

"No joke there," Agent Jay said with a wince, "Having my molecules

reduced into a puddle of goo so my mind could go to some 'higher place'

ain't my idea of early retirement. I doubt anybody else outside of those

SEELE jerks would have wanted such a thing if they'd been given the vote…"

The Lady Ulsa Laolana turned her eyes to regard the MIB agent, and

in her usual silent way managed to convey her thoughts upon this subject.

Trust me on this…the consensus of humanity most definitely would not

have been on the side of Ikari Gendo. He presumed to know the time of the

final judgment, and for that act of hubris he deserves penalty. Lady Ikari

is but administering a much-needed dose of medicine to help wake him up from

the nightmare of Ahriman's thinking.

"As you say, my lady," Amalthea said softly while cradling her

unconscious brother in her arms, her attentive "pet" lizard, Luna, hovering

anxiously upon her slim shoulders and chirruping inquisitively as though

similarly distressed about young David's condition.

Ulsa smiled as she turned her regard towards her faithful servants.

You criticize him for incarcerating your brother and treating him as

yet another lab specimen, yet the true fault for his condition lies with

someone else. General Han…and his superiors in the Amakusen, deserve the

true blame for exploiting young Ban Ho's delicate mental condition. It is

towards them that your true need for atonement must next be directed.

Amalthea's golden eyes shone with ready emotion as she declared,

"But give me leave, my lady, and I shall strike them down for their many

sins…against both me and my poor brother. I will tear down their fortresses

and lay waste to their legions until I find this Otono himself and make him

cry out to his god for a mercy that I shall deny him."

The lizard named Luna-who was currently in her diminished "iguana"

form rather than her hundred-foot tall titan persona-chirruped her

agreement and thus voiced her eagerness to unleash her own brand of

"righteous" fury on the ones who were upsetting her beloved mistress.

Laolana turned back to regard the continuing drama centering around

Ikari Gendo, but her thoughts readily enough were conveyed to ease the

smoldering anger of her righteously offended companion.

Patience both of you. All things in their proper time and season.

You will have your chance to right the score with the Amakusen soon

enough…of that I promise.

"Aye, my lady," Amalthea nodded while patting little Luna on the

head with a free hand, trusting her owner to be as good as her word in

granting her permission to have a final settling of accounts with General

Han, her great betrayer.

Off to the side a much-concerned set of parents were confronting

their only daughter with an excess of parental fawning. Kenoe and Ichiro

Katsarugi were giving Misato the "Good Cop/Bad Cop" hot and cold "So glad

that you're all right, but how dare you make us worry like that?" treatment,

which-in the light of recent happenings-was causing the young girl's

head to spin a bit in a tidal pool of conflicting emotions.

"I'm all right, I'm telling you," she kept repeating over and over,

"Ritsu-chan and me weren't in any real danger…we had things…ah…under

control…more or less…"

"More or less?" Kenoe asked, "What the hell's that supposed to mean

young lady?"

"You were both trapped in a room with an Angel," Ichiro said with

fatherly anxiety in his ruggedly handsome face, "You were lucky to escape

with your lives…and what was she doing to you in there anyway?"

"Ah…" Misato racked her brain to come up with an answer to that

which would not get her grounded for life…because she had a very vivid

recollection of what she and Ritsuko had been doing the whole time while

Lilith had been on her rampage. The thought caused her to blush

uncontrollably and to shudder slightly with the memory of how sweet it had

been to be clenched tightly to Ritsuko in that manner, and how much she

desperately wanted to do it again, this in spite of the resentment that she

felt towards Lilith for forcing them into such an intimate moment in the

first place.

Fortunately for her Ritsuko was living up to her reputation as a

genius by informing her own mother, "We were overpowered but nothing bad

happened to either of us. The Neflim Lilith was simply dictating her grand

master plans for universal liberation and fairly bored us all to death, but

fortunately we were rescued in time by the Lady Ulsa before anything

too…traumatic could take place."

"Huh?" Misato turned a surprised look towards the blonde and caught

a suspicious look in the eyes of Ritsuko's mother, not that Naoko Akagi

seemed inclined to voice aloud her private thoughts upon the matter.

"Is that true?" Ichiro asked of the younger girl, "Did nothing

happen?"

"Nothing that can be regretted, Sir," Ritsuko replied, turning a

glance towards Misato that was full of hidden meaning that lurked behind the

seemingly impassive face of the "Nerdy Geek" child of NERV's top researcher,

"Your daughter held out valiantly and showed great character in the face of

certain danger. I was in her hands the whole time and knew my fate was well

secure thanks to her. You should be proud of her performance…I know that I

am…far more than I can say in words."

That latter part caused Misato to feel a burning need to take the

blonde into her arms once again, but she steadied her nerves and steeled her

thoughts way from betraying her real emotions. All that she permitted

herself aloud was a softly murmured, "Ritsu-chan…" that she hoped would

convey the rest of her unspoken meaning.

"Well then," Naoko Akagi remarked as she adjusted her glasses, "It

would seem you two have had quite a day together…not that this excuses you

from forcing your way into a secured laboratory complex in the first place…"

Be gentle with them. You know full well that the greater crimes

were committed by those in your employ.

"Eh?" Naoko turned a surprised glance towards the lady Laolana, only

to find the Eluini's gaze was directed firmly at herself with a penetrating

intensity that caused the chief Scientist to shudder slightly.

You acted at the behest of one who claimed to love you, and so I

will overlook your extreme lack of good judgment. But do not take your

frustrations out on your daughter or her friend since they have suffered far

worse at Lilith's hands than many. After all, our Elder took what should

have been a sweetly private moment for the two of them and turned it into a

cheapened event in order to distract them from causing her any interference.

"Say what?" Misato asked, "Did you get that, Ritsu-chan?"

"Indeed I did," her blonde lover responded with a faintly wistful

expression.

"Get what?" Ichiro asked.

"What are you two talking about?" Kenoe asked, glancing from her

daughter to the daughter of her good friend, Naoko.

"Nothing!" both girls snapped together in almost perfectly

well-timed chorus.

Ulsa, however, was not yet done with Naoko and continued to hold her

gaze, fixing the older blonde Akagi woman with a silent litany of past sins

that culminated with the present knowledge about the special "extra-marital"

affair presently being conducted between herself and the project director,

Gendo Ikari. Naoko reacted to this betrayal of her darkest secrets by

taking a step backwards and gasping in fear of their revelation, but Ulsa

silently conveyed to her that she had no intention of making what she knew

such common fodder for rumor and gossip. Rather she silently admonished the

scientist with a very stern-yet-compassionate thought of warning.

Your child needs you far more than you know…and mother is the word

for Goddess in the eyes of every child. Clean up your act and do right by

her and I will forgive your many sins…and forget about your affair with

Gendo as it is about to be rendered moot and academic.

Naoko gasped and turned her gaze reflexively towards the man to whom

she had been entrusting her heart and career, seeing the woman whom she had

unconsciously been regarding as a rival end her angry tirade with a harsh

declaration.

"It's over between us, Gendo! I'm suing for custody of our son, and

I'm taking this child, Rei, as my own! You are never going to experiment on

either one of them again, got it?"

"But…dearest…!" Gendo protested.

"No butts," Yui said harshly, "You will be hearing from my attorneys

by the end of the day…and thank the Secrecy Act that I won't be revealing

the real list of your crimes against our family and me! If you want to see

your son grow up or be a part of his life at all then you had better not say

another word, or else-so help me-I'm taking them with me and we'll be

leaving Japan forever!"

Gendo looked truly devastated by the threat of losing all links to

his children, but even more at being separated from the woman whom he truly

loved, a fact quite evident in his eyes, which shocked Naoko to no end as

she had thought the man would get over Yui in time and realize that she was

much better suited to be his equal, companion and help mate.

He never truly loved you. He sought you for company and comfort,

but in his heart he has always yearned for Yui, and now she is beyond him.

Naoko felt tears burning at her eyes and said bitterly, "Do you

enjoy taunting me this way, Silver Seagull?"

There is no enjoyment for me in any of these events. I am but doing

my duty to fate by bringing this tragedy to a close before you and Gendo can

render any further harm to humanity. I am trusting you to be wise enough to

change your ways after seeing your errors through my eyes, but beyond

that…you have my deepest regrets and sympathies. I know what it can feel

like to feel a bitter sense of betrayal from a loved one.

"But you choose to remain with him in spite of his faults," Naoko

glanced down at her feet and felt the ground giving out beneath her, "So

what am I to be left with? Ritsuko is almost fully grown…very soon she will

no longer need me."

She will always need you. That will never truly change. You have

many years yet to repair the gulf that has grown between you, and if you

look into her eyes you will find much of yourself reflected in your

daughter. She is in need of your guidance…and you must accept her for what

she is, not view her as a mere clone of your labors.

"I certainly do hope that she won't grow up to be just like me,"

Naoko murmured aloud.

"Mother?" Ritsuko asked, eyeing her parent with a look of some

confusion.

"Hey guys," a familiar voice said, surprising everyone in their

collective group as they turned in time to see yet another blonde enter the

room with a dusky skinned brunette leaning against her shoulder.

"Where did you get off to?" Reiko asked immediately, then she paid

closer attention to the listless brunette and said, "Hey…isn't that…?"

"Hyatt, my partner?" Excel smiled while giving an affectionate

glance towards the woman whom she was half-supporting, "Yeah. Don't mind

her…she's never been a very lively sort, but she's always been a good

friend, and when I found her she was in another one of those containment

thingies. Once I get her back to ACROSS headquarters, though…"

There is no such thing as ACROSS. You have no headquarters to go

return to.

"Hey, that's not true lady!" Excel protested, "There is too an

ACROSS, and that's where we'll find my beloved Lord Ilpalatzo…"

Ulsa turned to the blonde and smiled, her blue eyes shining with

inner knowledge.

I think not.

For a moment she only stared at a mildly surprised Excel, then the

blonde said, "Oh, that's right…he's my brother. That means I really should

check on his condition, whenever they permit him to have visitors that is.

Well, come along now, Hyatt darling…oh, and Sis? Check back with you

later."

And with that she took the dark haired Hyatt in hand and the two of

them walked off out of the room together, the latter girl now walking quite

naturally on her own without her former weakness, which prompted Reiko to

blink her eyes in astonishment then turn to the Lady Ulsa and gasp, "What

did you do to her?"

Ulsa smiled.

Why nothing…nothing other than remove the mental block that was

keeping her from processing data in a regular manner. I also changed the

polarity of her Barsoomian friend so that dear Hyatt is not quite so

Necrotic, and she can now process Oxygen normally so that she will not be

passing out every few seconds and will have considerably more vitality…which

I suspect she will need as I have directed Excel's former one-sided

infatuation away from your brother and towards a more appropriate partner.

You may not see the two of them for quite a while as I am directing them to

find a nearby motel so that they can work off their long-repressed ardor.

"You did all that with just a glance, Lady?" Talbain asked in

astonishment.

Ulsa turned her amused gaze towards the werewolf and projected a

faint air of uncharacteristic smugness.

Lilith is not the only one who can recognize hidden feelings…and

what is the point of being nigh unto omnipotent unless you can once in a

while flex your powers to rectify a longstanding imbalance that fairly cries

to the heavens for redress?

"Remind me never to get on your bad side, Lady," Frank faintly

averred, shuddering slightly at the casual display of whimsical humor in

someone whose reputation to date had depicted her as anything but the type

to show off her prowess in so off-handed a manner.

Yui had finally spent her rage and was turning her back upon her

husband, who was standing there stricken with a look of forlorn yearning.

Kozo Fuyutsuki too the opportunity provided by the sudden silence to say

aloud, "Perhaps it would be for the best if we were to re-evaluate the

project in light of recent developments. After all, the EVA project was set

up to deal with the possible threat posed by the Neflim Angels, but if that

crisis has been infinitely postponed for the moment…"

"I…I only wanted to help…" Gendo stammered, half to himself and

without staring at anyone else but the floor, as if seeing an emotional

chasm opening up at his feet.

"Excuse me?" Yui asked, turning back to favor the man with one

arched eyebrow.

"I wanted to help!" Gendo declared, "Humanity…human beings are at an

evolutionary cul-de-sac, a virtual dead-end of forward growth and upward

progress. I wanted to help jump-start the process…to give humanity a chance

of evolving at last to a nigher level…"

"You think that justifies anything?" Agent Kei asked curtly,

"Humanity isn't at a dead end, Gendo. Evolution never stops, it just goes

forward from one lightning leap of the cosmic wheel to another. The problem

is that boyos like you never recognize the next level of human growth as

anything but a threat to the status quo. Mutants and those gifted with

paranormal abilities have been targeted by the bigoted slow-minded and crude

among us ever since they stared appearing upon the scene. You trying to

speed the process up is like throwing gasoline onto a bonfire…all it would

do is result in mass turmoil and the further erosion of social cohesion."

"Yeah, to say nothing of the fact that humans are combining their

genes all the time with Aliens and Otherworldly sorts, putting fresh blood

into the gene pool," Jay added in with his usual colorful infusion, "Ain't

no way we're going the way of the Neanderthal into gradual extinction."

Rogunbugi.

"That's Ikari," Gendo said reflexively, then with a start he looked

up, recognizing the gaze that the lady Ulsa was favoring him from across the

room as anything but friendly.

Not anymore. With Lady Yui divorcing you your right to call

yourself by her family name has been officially severed. I recognize in you

one Rogunbugi Gendo, former commander of this complex…and by former I mean

that your actions have forfeited any right that you might have for claiming

the Ancient technology that you have been abusing so badly. It is time for

NERV to be disbanded and for you and your people to pack up and leave this

complex altogether.

"Leave?" Naoko said as she turned an astonished look towards the

Silver Seagull.

"What do you mean by leave?" Ichiro Katsurugi asked as he, too,

regarded the blonde with confusion at the decisive tone that she was

employing.

I mean that you are no longer welcome within these caverns, nor

should you be allowed to continue experimentation using the secrets that you

found here to lightning leap over the technical prowess of you whole entire

generation. You clearly are not ready for such knowledge, nor can you be

trusted to use it responsibly since you have already perverted your use of

it all together.

"Are you saying we should just pack up and leave?" Yui asked,

"Abandon our homes and leave everything behind…just on your say so?"

"You can't be serious!" Naoko declared anxiously, "We have so much

yet to learn from the data that we've collected…"

Irrelevant. You have already caused enough harm with the knowledge

that you already possess. Be grateful that I will permit you to retain your

notes and records that you have transferred to other research stations, but

more than this I must deny you. The technology of the Ancients if far too

dangerous to be employed for petty purposes such as in the service of a

group like SEELE. I would be remiss in my duties as a guardian if I did not

put my foot down and say no more to the furthering of such perversions as

project EVA.

"What right do you have to dictate to us lady?" Kozo asked, "It's

not that I disagree with you that much of our work here has been…badly

misdirected, but still…"

"Careful who you're talking to here, Fuyutsuk," Agent Kei said in

his mildly understated drawl, "You want to talk about rights with the Lady

Ulsa? Don't forget she's been around since well before the dawn of recorded

history…"

"It's not a question of age or seniority," Naoko insisted, "But you

are telling us that we must abandon all of the work that we do here? Even

granted that some of it might be…ah…a bit questionable by the lights of a

supposedly higher being but…"

There was a rumbling noise that made itself heard throughout the

complex, a noise like a gathering storm that caused everyone but Ulsa and

Agent Kei to glance around, and then all eyes turned towards the forward

display monitors which were suddenly turning translucent like a glass sheet

as the wall vanished entirely, and suddenly everyone could see projected

there a solid wall of roiling water that stood more than a hundred meters

high, threatening to crash down upon the chamber and flood it utterly with

everyone present being caught within its deadly tide. And yet the wall of

water remained standing, curling like a wave held back by a strong summer

breeze, impending and eminent and yet held off as though awaiting the

command for release, like a faithful attack hound just barely restrained by

the will of its Mistress.

Ulsa's blue eyes shone brightly as she regarded Kozo and the rest of

the NERV personnel, allowing her point to sink home for the sake of everyone

present.

Oh, I am sorry…did I make it sound like a request?

"Oboy," Talbain said, blanching beneath his fur as he tried to

calculate the weight of all that water pouring down upon their heads, and

decided that he did not need a bath that badly.

You have one hour to evacuate these facilities and then I shall

release the tide and flood this entire chamber. If anyone is caught here

beyond that point it will be on your heads. This is your only warning.

"Better take her seriously, Kozo old buddy," Frank averred in

earnestness, "She isn't bluffing."

Kozo considered this carefully then turned to one of his deputies

and said, "Give the order to evacuate. Tell everyone to leave their things

behind and take only that which is absolutely necessary…"

"What?" Misato suddenly burst out in protest, "But…daddy! All my

things are on Level Twelve!"

"And my notes and research papers!" Ritsuko cried out, suddenly just

as upset at her best friend at being told to surrender her belongings.

You need not bother. Your things will be transported to the

outside, but you must leave. Take everyone you can find and leave no one

behind…no one, that is, but those creatures into whose care I must entrust

the will of the Maker.

"My lady?" Gendo asked in surprise, giving Ulsa a look that seemed

distinctly surprised as though to him alone was granted a sliver of meaning

behind the Silver Seagull's thought projection.

To him Ulsa's gaze was particularly insightful.

There will be a reckoning for your actions, Rogunbugi, but this day

you may leave of your own accord, and tell your SEELE masters what you will

regarding the circumstances. They will not learn from me of your betrayal

of their purpose so long as you do not attempt to assign to me sole and

total blame for the chain of events that you yourself have started. I know

that you are clever enough to find some means of deflecting their wrath…but

know that these chambers are off limits to you and your people for the

duration. Project EVA is dead…and unto me has been given the task of

cleaning up your mess. Be mindful that I do not set my brothers against you

for your sins but will allow you to walk away from here as you are, sadder

but perhaps a bit wiser for your troubles.

"I…understand, Lady Ulsa," Gendo slowly nodded, "Is there any other

way that I can redeem myself in your eyes?"

Very slowly Ulsa nodded.

There is. Be a father to Shinji and Rei, one they can respect and

look up towards. Do this and you will be forgiven. Fail in this…and there

is no mercy nor pity left for you beneath the heavens.

To the rest of the chamber she turned her gaze, and for a moment

there was a look of such fierceness that one was reminded that a Seagull was

a scavenger bird of prey ever more than just a symbol of transcendent

pacifism.

Go.

"You heard the lady," Kei spoke up, "Everyone head to the exits, do

not stop at Go, do not collect two hundred yen or a free 'Get Out Of Jail

Card.'"

Ulsa next turned her gaze upon the SEELE men, and with a glance

caused their bindings to fall away completely. Then glanced in wonder and

confusion at their sudden liberty, and then turned equally wary looks upon

their benefactor, sensing in her a power that could as easily smite them

down as give them back their mobility.

You may go as well. In spite of your many sins you will left to

your own conscience.

"Is that wise Lady?" Frank asked of Ulsa, "These are a tough lot of

mercenaries, and if Ibrahim had given the order they would have slaughtered

everyone here without a second's hesitation."

This I know, Doctor. And yet on what pretext would you hold them as

many here are not even citizens of Japan and only owe their employment to a

harsh master that hides under the flag of International Cooperation.

"Good point," Jay turned to the confused looking SEELE men and made

dismissing hand motions, "So what are you Jokers hanging around for? Go,

get out of here, scram, and just be glad it's not me and Kei you've gotta

deal with."

The SEELE men, not being the types to look a gift horse in the

mouth, picked themselves up off of the floor and started filing out of the

room, along with the NERV personnel whom they had been menacing not more

than an hour ago. Ichiro and Kenoe joined Naoko in urging their daughters

to make haste towards the exit while Yui picked up her own newly acquired

daughter and did likewise with Rei clinging dutifully to her shoulder.

Kozo waited until he got the all-clear from his people then nodded

to Gendo and said, "Let's go together, old friend. This may be the end of

one dream, but at least we can always dream another."

"Yes, I suppose that you are right," Gendo remarked, but before he

left he turned a last parting glance towards Ulsa Laolana, then slowly

nodded as if to acknowledge a silent point that was made between them.

Frank had waited until the room was mostly empty before nodding to

Talbain and saying, "Let's get out of here, Wolfie."

"Don't have to tell me twice," Talbain agreed, sparing a lance

glance at the looming wall of water before beginning to lope towards the

exit.

Doctor.

Frank stopped in mid-stride and turned back to the Silver Seagull,

"Lady?"

The waters that will cover this place will only fill this chamber

for one year, after which time the chamber will evacuate itself

naturally…such was the genius of the Ancients. I will not spare the power

to hold this place aloof beyond this, and I am entrusting only you and

Agents Kei and Jay with this knowledge.

"Why so?" Frank asked, "Don't you know that SEELE will try to

reclaim this place when it's empty?"

"Say what?" Talbain asked, giving Frank a glance as if wondering

what he was going on about.

I am trusting you to see to it that they are prevented from doing

this…for I sense that another people will arriving on Earth within a

Year…visitors from a far-off star system who are in need of a new sanctuary,

a lost branch of humanity who have survived since the time before the rise

of the Second Adam.

"I think I know what you're talking about, Lady," Kei said, "We

encountered them a few years ago when the earth came near to being overrun

by the spawn of Ahriman…but since the Timeflow was reversed hardly anyone

outside of MIB even knows that it happened."

"You mean those crazy chicks with the powered suits of armor?" Agent

Jay reacted, "I was wondering if we were ever gonna get to see them

again…far out!"

I am giving this place to them since they are true and lawful

inheritors of the mantle of the Ancients. They alone will know how to

manage the technology that is contained within these walls, and they will

have the means of repairing Gendo's mistakes. I expect MIB and the

Darkstalkers to make the necessary arrangements.

"Understood," Frank nodded, turning to Key and adding, "Guess we're

gonna have to work out the details between ourselves if it's who I think

she's referring to."

"Looks like it," Kei agreed, "I'll pass it on to my superiors, but

on this you can expect MIB's full cooperation."

"MIB and the Darkstalkers…working together?" Talbain shook his furry

head in disbelief, "Talk about your odd firsts…"

"Ah…" Frank paused as if only just remembering the deadly rifle in

his hands, then said, "Lady…this weapon's deadly even to your kind. Do you

want me to dispose of it?"

Ulsa gave him an almost teasing look as though amused by his gallant

offer.

No. I wish you to hold onto it for now…and give it to one who is

more than capable of utilizing the weapon to its maximum abilities. You

will understand why at the appropriate time.

"Got it," Frank said, slinging the rail gun over one shoulder, "I

won't fail your trust, lady."

Ulsa's blue eyes gleamed with a knowing penetration.

I know that you won't, Son-in-law.

Frank winced, "I'd…really rather you didn't call me that. No

offense but…"

Very well…Nephew it is then.

Frank shrugged, "Guess I can live with that…but I gotta say it's

gonna be weird at family reunions…"

With that the big man exited the chamber, followed in close order by

Talbain and the MIB agents. Ulsa was left alone with Amalthea, David and

Luna and silently reflected upon the awesome burden that she was

undertaking, then nodded to her companions.

Time for us to leave as well, but I will return soon enough to

ensure that this complex is fully secure…and the ones sleeping within their

cradles remain undisturbed before their hatching.

"We are ready, my lady," Amalthea replied, then carrying her

unconscious brother in her arms she waited as her Mistress opened a portal

to grant them passage to the outside and they took their leave of the place

with the Silver Seagull transporting them elsewhere.

And one hour later the deluge opened up and the chamber was

flooding, sinking Third Tokyo beneath the tide of the oceans like a latter

day Atlantis, to be awakened again one year later when another people

arrived to claim its treasured secrets as their own.

But that, as they say, is an entirely different story…

"Aiyaa?" Shampoo asked as she regarded the redheaded gaijin whom she

knew of simply as her wife's Gym Coach and newly acquired Sensei. Sitting

there with the sleeping Chusen on her lap she found herself sensing that

something truly momentous was about to be asked of her, and yet it felt

similarly odd to be addressed by her wife's Sensei as though she were in

truth the senior marriage partner.

"Lady Tendo," Trudy bowed, "I come before you in the spirit of

respect for a noble Warrior of a proud people who has earned the love and

good regard of all who know her. It is my pleasure and honor to greet the

revered wife of my chosen student, and it is with the thought of craving a

boon from you that I wish to approach you. Will you do me the courtesy of

hearing my proposal?"

"Ah…" Shampoo seemed slightly uncomfortable with the praise, but

still was noticeably moved by tone of humble petition that the teacher of

her Airen was employing, and as she could hardly refuse the gesture under

the circumstances she naturally said, "Shampoo will listen."

"I thank you for this," Trudy replied, "And I ask that you hear me

out as a warrior of the Joketsuzoku since it is in mind of Amazon traditions

that I am making this request on behalf of my other student, Asamiya Saki,

whom I'm sure you already know from previous meetings."

Shampoo relaxed somewhat as she regarded the pink-haired Sekeban

Deka, "Shampoo knows Saki. She is friend to Shampoo and Shampoo's family.

She once even save Shampoo life, which Shampoo has no forgotten."

"Ah…" Saki glanced down at the sandy floor and felt her cheeks

burning brightly, aware of how tenuous her position was since she too

regarded Shampoo as a friend, and yet knew in her heart that she was also

something of a rival, a thing to which the Amazon was not yet privy.

But Nabiki was, and the middle Tendo daughter, Senior Wife of the

Saotome clan, was visibly wilting as she felt trapped and helpless, caught

on the spot of an impossible dilemma since she knew something of what Trudy

was about to reveal, and winced in dread of having it be revealed that she

and Saki were secretly attracted to one another…a betrayal that she in no

way wanted to become common knowledge in her tight-knit circle of loved

ones.

Despite her fear of having the truth come out, however, she could

hot help but look longingly at Saki, who was dressed in a manner that was

calculated to show off the girl's exquisite charms to full advantage. In

her thin silks and "Arabian Knights" garb she looked as radiant as a

princess, every inch a woman and fully desirable with a pensive look of

vulnerability about her that made Nabiki fairly ache to reach out and

comfort her. And possibly do a whole lot more than merely offer "comfort."

But she steeled herself and held her place on the opposite side of

the camp fire while Trudy began her proposal with a somberly worded, "First

off…you already know something of Saki's family…her sad history of loss and

abuse, of the death of her father at the hands of her mother, who was badly

abused by him, leaving poor Saki here bereft of both of her parents, which

turned her life tragically towards a criminal pattern of delinquent

misbehavior."

"Shampoo know all this," Shampoo nodded somberly, her eyes clearly

reaching out in sympathy to the Pink Haired undercover police woman,

"Pink-hair tell Shampoo all about how mother kept on death row…and how

Japanese police force her to work for them to keep mother from being

executed."

"Indeed," Trudy replied, "But on her first assignment Saki made a

startling discovery about herself. Before that time she had believed

herself to be the worst of the worst, a bad egg who was cursed with a family

trait of insanity and doomed to follow in the footsteps of her mother. On

her first mission, however, she encountered a young woman named Junko and

found herself attracted to the girl's vulnerable plight. To this day Saki

blames herself for failing to protect the girl, and for that reason has

dedicated herself to protecting the innocent and punishing the guilty."

Shampoo nodded once again, "Yes, Pink-hair explain all this.

Shampoo feel very sorry for Saki and am proud to know her for a friend. She

very honorable, perhaps even distant kinswoman."

"Uh…excuse me?" Saki asked, unintentionally blurting out the

question.

Shampoo smiled, "Pink hair mean maybe you have Amazon ancestry.

Shampoo maybe even know which family you is descended from, which make you

almost like Cousin to Shampoo. Maybe even to Perfume-chan, who have many

pink-haired warriors in bloodline."

"True enough," Perfume nodded, "There's even a girl we both knew

growing up who looks enough like you that you both could be related. She

was almost named Perfume too, but her mother switched her name to Ambergris,

which is why we teased her and called her 'Whale Puke,' though these days

most simply call her Amber."

"Ah…interesting," Saki remarked, then blinked, "You mean that crazy

girl with the Naginata? The one who wants to be the next future matriarch

of your people?"

"As if I were retiring anytime soon."

Saki started as a new pair of figures entered the tent, the blonde

haired Archmage named Siren loping along at the side of a stunning beauty

whose lustrous long indigo colored hair gave her a color of night almost

worthy of an Arabian princess.

"Great Grandmother?" Shampoo asked as the young-seeming Matriarch

bowed politely to Lord Reka, then sat down at the circle with Siren

attentively seating herself very near to Cologne's shoulder.

"Excuse the interruption," Cologne urged, glancing at Trudy before

adding, "Do continue, Detective Wells."

"Inspector," Trudy politely corrected, "And as I was just saying,

Matriarch, my new student here is a young woman of much potential who has

nonetheless lived a very tragic life, yet for all of that has demonstrated

that she is a woman of honor and integrity that belies her family's alleged

taint of madness."

"Indeed," Siren remarked as though seeming beyond the polite wording

that Trudy was using, "We should all have a little taint of such madness in

our own families…though in my view the true madness was her mother having

married the sort of man that she did, something that little Saki here can

hardly be held to blame for."

"Ah…yeah," Saki responded, feeling all too naked before the probing

eyes of the amused looking Enchantress.

"I'm glad you're here, Matriarch," Trudy said and made it sound

sincere, "You can affirm what I have to say since it is Amazon law and

precedence that I will be citing in making my case for the sake of my

student. After all, was it not your stated interest at the time of our

first meeting that your Amazons reclaim that which you believe to be a lost

art of the Joketsuzoku?"

"Your fabled mastery of what you call Shaloe-Ahl?" Cologne said

sagely, "Let us just say that I do have an interest."

"Then bear with me," Trudy said as she turned back to Shampoo, "What

I say now will be of much interest."

Ranma noticed the way that the young-seeming Cologne stared intently

at the redhead, but more of interest to him was the curious way that Nabiki

seemed to be shifting in her own seat as though feeling acutely

uncomfortable for some reason. He knew that he was far from the most

perceptive guy around, but his wife's behavior puzzled him greatly since he

was used to Nabiki being in command of herself regardless of the

circumstances…and there was none of that self-assured cockiness in her now,

as though she were feeling on the spot and possessed of a sudden urge to be

anywhere else than where she was at that particular instant.

Perfume also noticed the atypical behavior of her co-wife and

frowned very slightly. Being far more perceptive to reading body language

than was the case with their shared husband she was puzzled to detect an

alarming degree of agitation in Nabiki, as though her senior-wife was

somehow being put on the spot by the redheaded Trudy, and with Nabiki's

constant glances at Saki there seemed to be a hint of something more than a

casual shared uneasiness. In fact, judging from Saki's forlorn expression

it was almost unmistakable for Perfume to detect the level of sexual tension

flowing between the two women, which fairly set the Enforcer's hackles to

stand on end, suspecting a level of betrayal that she previously would have

believed Nabiki incapable of, especially in regards to her devotion to

Perfume's cousin.

"You see," Trudy continued, "Saki represents the last line of her

family, the heir to her house and bloodline, which greatly concerns me. She

has been raised among regular Japanese yet clearly is not a conventional

school girl in any sense, having gravitated naturally to a superlative level

of skill in the martial arts, largely untaught and untrained outside of her

mother's early tutorage. She has lacked the training of a true Amazon and

has yet to achieve the full level of her potential."

"Aiyaa," Shampoo said sympathetically, "Shampoo feels for pink-hair.

She live sad and lonely life, yes. Shampoo wish her well in finding good

man or strong Airen."

"Indeed you should," Trudy nodded sagely, "For without finding an

Airen her line will end with her, which would be a great loss to everyone,

especially her family line, which I would much rather see continue."

Ukyo caught a look from the dusky skinned gaijin named Carla, the

woman who had led the other gaijin into the room at the end of a chain that

attached to Trudy's collar. That look was suspicious to the Okonomiyaki

chef's thinking, the look of someone who regarded her companion with faintly

amused detachment, as though enduring a behavior that was not entirely mete

with Carla's tacit approval. Ukyo frowned slightly as she studied this

Trudy more scrupulously than before, noting within the smooth-talking Gym

coach something of the Marketeering Capitalist who was pitching a sale to a

credulous client, and from the drift of her tone the chef was beginning to

get an inkling of what would be at the end of the sales pitch.

"Lady Tendo," Trudy said soberly, meeting the red-eyed gaze of the

pregnant Shampoo as though drawing in all of the seriousness that she could

muster, "You are aware, of course, of the legend regarding Wel-La and

Bal-Sam, two warriors who lived back during the heyday of Amazon glory?"

"Aiyaa?" Shampoo raised a purple eyebrow, then more scrupulously

considered the question before answering, "You is proposing this?"

"I am," Trudy said seriously, "If you would consider such a thing,

though I know how much it is that I am asking."

"What?" Ukyo found herself saying before she had a chance to think

about it, "What is she proposing?"

"Wella and Balsam were close friends and warrior sisters," Perfume

explained for the benefit of her Airen, though from her expression it was

clear that she had her own ideas on what was being discussed here, "Wella

was the last of her family line…a noble and heroic family who had mostly

perished during a clan war with another tribe. Balsam offered her Airen in

service to her sister so that Wella might bear a child and continue her

family, which was considered a great honor at the time, a sacrifice of love

between warriors from different houses."

"Indeed," Cologne remarked, "The story has long been considered

inspirational…but in present times such a thing might be viewed as…somewhat

less than ideally romantic."

"I am well aware of this," Trudy replied soberly, "And I would not

blame you for rejecting the offer out of hand, but hear me out since what I

am asking here has a secondary purpose, one that I consider important to the

well being of your Airen."

"Say what?" Ranma blinked, "What are you talking about? Important

to who? Nabiki?"

"Hush Master," Latisha urged in a reassuring voice, "Don't

interrupt. Lady Trudy has a purpose to her request that goes beyond the

obvious elements of her proposal."

"What?" Perfume reacted, "You mean…you elementals already know about

this?"

"Hey, don't be like that," Sobriel said as she leaned closer to the

brown haired enforcer, causing Perfume to react with a start as the Void

Elemental was suddenly very close to her person and behaving in such a way

as to suggest an amorous element on her own part, only directed toward

Perfume in a sensuous manner.

"Yeah, try and lighten up a bit and it will all make sense," Karina

similarly said to Ukyo, causing the chef to start as the Air Elemental was

touching one of her forelocks with gentle fingers.

"Shampoo sees," Shampoo said with a slowly dawning realization, "You

is asking Shampoo to make a gesture to pink-haired Saki like Balsam made to

Wella…to let pink-hair have use of this one's Airen."

Nabiki caught her breath and all but wilted, expecting at any moment

to be treated to a display of righteous fury on the part of her beloved

wife. She could not even reasonably move to defend herself since her

feelings of guilt were far too overwhelming.

"I will understand if my request offends you," Trudy said, "But do

not take it out on Saki…she did not request this of me. I made this

proposal after consulting her, but I do so on her behalf as is my duty as

her Sensei."

Shampoo seemed to consider the point as she said with surprising

deliberation, "Teacher always must think of what is best for student. You

is saying this is for Saki sake, not because Saki want Airen but because she

need what Airen can offer?"

"That is more or less the case, though I'm sure that I can speak

with some authority when I say that Saki-chan feels more than a slight

attraction to Nabiki…particularly to her male half as Kaneda," Trudy

answered.

"Sensei?" Saki all but squeaked, feeling as she did so that Trudy

was virtually signing her death warrant.

But to everyone's astonishment Shampoo just nodded, "Shampoo long

suspect this. Think it maybe because Airen much, much too attractive for

own good, especially when she is Husband. Shampoo always know she lucky to

have strong, virile Airen who make her very, very happy. Other girls

jealous of Shampoo, try to make nice with Airen, but Shampoo always chase

them away. Only exceptions is Ukyo and Perfume-cousin…except for other day

when Ranma start having trouble with Elemental servants…" she arched her

tone and eyed the various elementals with a particular hint of annoyance

before she continued, "But Shampoo adjust to what other Husband do because

she know Ranma no to blame for their behavior. Ranma also too-too virile

and manly for own good. Is much burden for Shampoo, having Airen who too

attractive to other women."

"Indeed, and I feel for you on this," Trudy replied, "But I must say

that you bear it with great dignity as the Lady of House Saotome. Indeed,

since your Airen changes sex much of the time it would be more proper to

think of you as the Senior Wife, which is why I come to you with my proposal

since I believe you to be a woman of intelligence and grace who can

appreciate what it is that I am asking."

"You make case very good, yes?" Shampoo said with scrupulous candor,

"Now maybe you say what you no say out loud on why Shampoo should listen to

this request, and why it so important to Airen?"

(I'm dead), Nabiki thought privately to herself, finding no way in

the world that her wife was going to go through with this, let alone

continue to act calm in the face of the outrageous thing that Trudy was

proposing.

Not noticed by her the child named Lylac was carefully studying the

features of her biological "father" and silently was arriving at her own set

of conclusions, though as was per her custom she did not give away her

feelings or indicate in any way that she understood the complex issues being

raised by these "grown-ups." Off to one side her sister, Fragrance, was

glancing from face to familiar face with a fair degree of puzzlement,

wishing she could ask aloud for a clarification such as only Lylac could

give her.

"I am so glad that you asked this, Lady Tendo," Trudy nodded

soberly, "Because what I am proposing has a second element, since my two

students both need to learn the proper techniques of Shaloe-Ahl, which can

only be taught through a merging of spirit, body and essence."

"Aiyaa?" Shampoo replied, but with a note of interest that bade the

foreign policewoman to continue.

"The Shaloe-Ahl," Trudy said with great seriousness, "Is the

ultimate Martial Arts system…the total integration of Mind and Body with the

essence of one's Chi so that the will is channeled in a unified direction,

bringing the total potential of the Warrior into play into a single focused

point that can smash and destroy all obstacles and barriers. It is the

deadliest of techniques, the ability to kill with a touch, to strike without

missing and to find the weakest point in any opponent's defenses. With it's

mastery a warrior can overcome a foe no matter how powerful or invincible he

might seem…but it can only be learned by surrendering the will to the Power

that Governs, to make one's very soul into a weapon in the service of Fate,

to do the bidding of the One and be an instrument of God's holy vengeance."

"Aiyaa," Shampoo said soberly, "Is so powerful as this?"

"More than you can imagine," Trudy replied, "But to learn it two

warriors must train in pairs, both of similar abilities and matching

potential. They must become as one and unify their essence, to set aside

all barriers and obstacles that cloud the ego and confuse the senses. The

way to do this is to achieve a kind of symbiosis where one becomes an

extension of the other. This is done through an act of sexual congress, a

physical mergence of bodies that triggers a fusion of energies that

multiplies one's nature many times over. It is the most intense bonding

process imaginable, and with it one warrior becomes a mirror image of the

other, bonded in soul at a level that unites them forever in ties far deeper

than blood sisters. Once achieved the power of Shaloe-Ahl unlocks the

hidden recesses of the mind, body and spirit and allows a warrior to become

the ultimate expression of herself, and then she is acknowledged as a Master

who can go on to train others in a similar manner. Of course it's not

necessary that a teacher pair up with her student…it is in fact encouraged

that two novices bond together while the teacher supervises and triggers the

Change that comes from within them."

"Like a Catalyst causing a chemical reaction," Carla spoke up as

though to add her two yens worth into the matter, "In my case I bonded with

Goldilocks here, only I get to play the Big Bad Wolf to her Grandma."

"Ah…yes…" Trudy winced slightly, but nonetheless continued,

"Obviously the ideal candidate for Nabiki-san to achieve this synthesis

would be with you, Tendo-san, since you are the woman with whom she bears

the strongest emotional bonds. Indeed, once she attains the mastery of

Shaloe-Ahl she will be at liberty to share it with you, and with your

potential unlocked the two years time that you've lost in your training to

pregnancy will be erased almost immediately. You can share a joining with

your Airen that will intensify the love you bear for her already and make

certain beyond question that she will be yours completely and forever."

"Aiyaa?" Shampoo said, touching her abdomen with meaning, careful

not to disturb little Chusen, "But…no can do this while with child?"

"It would hardly be fair to your infant daughter to subject her to

the sort of stresses that the body must endure in order for the Power to

awaken," Trudy informed her, "For a similar such reason Lady Kuonji-Saotome

is likewise exempted."

"No fooling?" Ukyo said dubiously, only to think of something else,

"But…why couldn't Nab-chan do this power-awakening thing with Per-chan

here?"

"Because of the differences in their nervous structures," Trudy

replied, favoring Perfume with an apologetic nod, "Though she has recently

gained an increased tolerance of pain, still your Airen is a Sentinel and

has a level of sensuous awareness that far surpasses that of Nabiki's. It

would take a very different level of training to adjust their biologies to

match each other in a ritual of physical and spiritual union."

"But…what about me?" Ranma wondered.

"Sorry," Trudy nodded, "The power works best when awakened between

two women…it's not as effective with a guy and a girl attempting to match

resonances. If you changed into a girl it might be a different story…but

the ritual was created to be exclusively centered upon two women and

requires a different sort of adjustment to be done between two guys.

Besides…they would have to be two guys who felt perfectly comfortable and at

ease making love to one another…and-no offense to either of you-I don't

think you've yet managed to come that far in overcoming your hang-ups on

this issue."

"Ah…" Nabiki felt her cheeks burning flush again, but for different

reasons than the previous time, and this time Ranma shared her embarrassment

since neither of them was entirely comfortable with bisexuality carried out

on that end, in spite of some interesting attempts they had undertaken on

prior occasions.

"So you see," Trudy continued, "Saki is the logical course for

this…not just because she has a strong feeling of attachment to your

Airen…but also because she is a brave and worthy soul whom any of you might

willingly welcome into your midst as a kindred sister."

Shampoo was silent for a moment then said, "And you think with

pink-hair making nice-nice with Airen…that Airen will grow strong…strong

enough to maybe overcome battle with Giant?"

"With the Lord Udan?" Trudy shrugged, "Possibly. At the very least

it's the best method I know to prepare her in the short span of time that we

have before their match takes place, which is on the day after tomorrow. I

know that there isn't much time to explain the reasons why this is, only

that without this training I feel confident in predicting that your Airen

will not survive the encounter. And neither will any of you should the Lord

Udan prevail since he intends to erase this entire timeline…and all of us

with it."

"Aiyaa…" Perfume said softly, eyes round as she and the other

co-wives silently absorbed this.

"I know that it's unfair to ask this of you," Trudy continued, "I

know by rights that you should be very upset with me for even considering

such a proposal, but recall that it was your Airen who came to me and asked

me to teach her, and I am but passing on the discipline that I was trained

to use, in the manner that I learned to awaken the Power within me. It's

the tradition of the Shaloe-Ahl, the Union Song of the Soul that translates

literally as 'Soul-Sisters…'"

"Shampoo…sees this," the purple haired Amazon said thoughtfully,

"Soul-Sisters…like Shampoo and Nabiki?"

"Exactly," Trudy nodded, "And had this training been undergone at a

different time then I would have had no difficulty in asking you to join

with your Airen and become her Dancing Partner in the Shaloe-Ahl, but time

is cruel and does not always consider our desires and wishes when it sets us

on a timetable…"

"Shampoo understands," the Amazon said, then turned a serious look

towards Saki, "This what you also wish, Pink-hair?"

"Ah…Shampoo…I'm sorry…" Saki stammered out an apology.

"No be," Shampoo said with surprising firmness, "Never regret you

the great honor that Airen bestow upon you by making you her sister. You

will join with family and become part of greater circle. If child you bear,

it be child of family…you be part of Saotome clan forever. Yes?"

"Ah…yeah…if you say so," Saiki murmured in faint wonder.

"Then it decided," Shampoo declared, "Airen…you honor Shampoo and

clan by accepting Saki as partner. You do good by her and make nice-nice

with Pink Hair, then give her strong girl-child as Husband. Saki be like

courtesan, like Elementals to Ranma. This all right with you, Airen?"

"Ah…wha…?" Nabiki shook herself as though coming out of a daze, so

stunned was she at hearing this statement coming from her senior wife,

"…Ah…yeah…I guess…I mean…I will…"

"Is good," Shampoo said serenely, only to lean closer to Nabiki and

murmur in tones that were far less than serene, "But no too much enjoy it,

yes?"

"Ah…right," Nabiki winced, sweating bullets as she met the red-eyed

gaze of her jealous Airen.

"Hey, wait a minute here!" Ukyo spoke up in protest, "That's it?

Don't we have a say in all of this?"

"Shampoo is your Senior in the family circle, right?" Trudy asked of

the younger woman.

"What?" Ukyo blinked, "Uh…well…technically, yes…"

"She married Nabiki and bore the first child of your family unit,"

Trudy turned to Cologne and said, "By tribal law that makes her the Elder

Sister in a group marriage, correct Matriarch?"

"That is indeed our custom," Cologne said, turning an approving

glance at Shampoo, "I must say that I am very much impressed with you,

great-granddaughter. You carry yourself well as befits a tribal elder."

"Or better than that I should hope," Siren remarked with sly

appreciation.

"Thank you Great-Grandmother," Shampoo acknowledged, stroking the

purple locks of her daughter, Lylac, who eyed her mother with a curious

expression, "Shampoo is impressed herself, but make much sense to accept

situation as given, yes? Besides, Shampoo owe life to Saki…owe life of

Lylac and other Shampoo child…would no be here if Saki no place life at risk

for Shampoo sake. Is least that Shampoo do to give Pink-hair a child by

Airen."

"Shampoo…" Saki felt her breath catch in her mouth, "I'm sorry…I

don't…deserve a friend like you…"

"Is no true," Shampoo replied, "Shampoo see you unhappy, think maybe

know reason, but you always avoid saying how you feel to Airen, so Shampoo

suspect, but no say aloud. Now Shampoo have chance to make right with

us…maybe even help Saki create own family, and Shampoo much happy for this.

Much happier than if forced by honor to have to kill you."

There was an audible gulp on Saki's part before the pink-haired

undercover cop said, "Yeah…don't think I'd like it that way either…"

"Is no fault you have good taste to want to have Airen," Shampoo

said a bit too sweetly, "But will have to ask Shampoo very nice next time if

you want know Airen again…and maybe Shampoo see how good you is before she

make decision."

"Ah…hah?" Saki blinked, wondering if she were hearing right or did

the purple haired girl just…proposition her, albeit indirectly?

"Then it is decided," Trudy nodded firmly, "My students will train

together this very night and I will conduct them in the ways of the

Shaloe-Ahl as they attempt the fusion that will awaken the warrior powers

that lay within them."

"Hey, wait a minute!" Ranma said, "I'm the husband in all of this!

Don't I get a say in this?"

"Certainly," Trudy replied, "And I apologize that you were not

consulted earlier, but I had to clear things with Shampoo first since she is

the Senior wife, and in an Amazon marriage a wife's approval is very

important to the consideration of adding or rejecting a new addition to the

family unit. Of course if you object to this you will be overruling the

judgment of your second wife, who has already accepted the perfectly logical

and valid arguments that I have raised here. But by all means go ahead.

You are a man and as such you have a say in matters that concern your First

Wife's sexual conduct. And, of course, by that I don't at all mean to

slight your Third and Fourth wife in the matter, who also have a say in

whether or not to include Asamiya Saki into your marriage as a concubine in

training."

"Huh?" Nabiki said, turning to Perfume, "Is she serious?"

"Very," Perfume frowned, "I don't much like it…but…my cousin is my

senior wife, and she has a say in this that I can't overrule without

stronger reasons."

"Stronger reasons?" Ukyo reacted, "Letting Nab-chan screw around

with another woman besides us ain't reason enough to object to this?"

"Only if you are inexcusably selfish and want to monopolize your

wife's attentions exclusively to yourself, of course," Trudy answered.

"Selfish?" Ukyo snapped, "You think I'm doing this for myself? What

about poor Ranchan?"

"Your concerns for him are both admirable and touching," Trudy

turned to Ranma again, "But Saotome-san can speak for himself in these

matters. So…what about it, Ranma-san? Are you willing to abide by

Shampoo's decision…or will you overrule her out of pride because your love

for your wife is such that you can tolerate no other rivals?"

"Hey, it ain't like that!" Ranma said, "I mean…Asamiya-san's an all

right person, and I respect her a lot, and of course she's had some pretty

tough breaks, and I can see that she cares a lot about Nabiki,

and…and…Nabiki…?" he turned to his wife, "Help me out on this all ready,

will you?"

"Ah…Ranchan…?" Nabiki felt herself wavering on the edge once again.

"Look at me, Saotome-san," Trudy said softly, and when Ranma did as

she requested the said, "Can you face yourself and honestly say that you

object to your wife sleeping with another woman? Because I think you ought

to consider the point long and hard, especially considering whose child is

being carried in which wound…or should I say multiple children in the wombs

of at least seven other women?"

"Ah…" Ranma winced as he considered this, aware as he did so that he

was being viewed by virtually every other woman within the tent, and all of

them seemed intensely focused on hearing his response to this question.

"I can understand how confusing this seems," Trudy said more

reassuringly, "But you know that this is for the best. You can feel it in

your bones, even if you are having difficulty reconciling your feelings from

those thoughts in your head that keep insisting that as a man you ought to

be raising objections. Tell me truly…would you love her any less if she did

father a child upon Asamiya?"

Almost instinctively Ranma turned and met Nabiki's anxious

expression, and without having to think about it he said, "No…I couldn't

lover her any less. She's…she's Nabiki…and no matter what she does, that

ever gonna change with me, not ever."

"Ranchan…" Nabiki murmured, feeling her heart go out to him, making

her all the more confused because of her conflicting loyalties on this

impossible situation.

"Then I know that you will make the right decision," Trudy said

firmly, "And for what it's worth I do apologize for putting you on the spot

like that. You've had a lot on your plate in the last few days, kid, and I

have to say that I'm pretty impressed with how you've been managing things.

Nobody will blame you for being hurt and jealous over this…but you have to

know where the greater good lies here. And believe me, if I could work it

so that you and Nabiki could do this together I would. It's not like a man

and a woman have never trained in the Shaloe-Alh together…it just isn't as

effective, and we have to bring out the best that's within your wife if the

two of you are to match wits and prowess with the Lord Udan."

Ranma frowned and was silent for a moment, then slowly he said, "You

sure it's the only way?"

"Positive," Trudy turned back to Ukyo and said, "You've as much at

stake in this as anyone else here. Be honest…are you happy with your life?

Can you think of any way that it could be improved over what you've been

enjoying, Lady Saotome?"

"Ah…no…" Ukyo admitted, "I've been pretty lucky so far…and I've been

happier than I thought I could be…and it's all because of Perchan,

Ranchan…and Nabchan…and Shamchan too. They've all been terrific."

"And Fragrance, your daughter?" Trudy asked.

"Mommy?" the tiny child in question asked in wonder.

Ukyo bridled as she put a possessive hand on the shoulder of her

daughter, "I'll fight anybody who tries to take my kid away from me. Count

me in…though I have to be crazy for agreeing to go along with this."

"Lady Kuonji?" Trudy turned to the last member of the Saotome

circle.

Perfume glanced at Shampoo, then at Cologne, Siren and lastly at

Nabiki and Ranma. Then she glanced at Saki and frowned, "You're really

lucky, you know this? Because anybody else in your position who came along

and proposed this…"

"Yeah," Saki said a bit tightly, knowing all too well what it could

mean to get on the bad side of the Enforcer, and without meaning to she felt

her neck with the tip of her fingers.

Trudy turned back to Ranma once again and said, "It all comes back

to you, Saotome-san, as it should since you are at the center of these

events. Of course, if you choose to accept Saki as a member of your family

that means that she will be obligated to service your needs should you wish

to call upon her at any time of your choosing."

"Hah?" Saki blinked, then turned a look towards Ranma as if to judge

how he was going to take that new bit of information.

"Ah…" Ranma felt embarrassed as his mind betrayed him and conjured

up images of him being intimate with Saki, and with a wince he said, "No

thanks…I mean…she's great and all…but…"

"Husband?" Shampoo asked him.

Ranma sighed, realizing he was being backed into a corner and

privately wondered at why he always seemed to lose out in a battle with

women, "Okay…I'll give. Nabiki? You sure about this?"

"No," Nabiki truthfully replied, "But…if Sensei insists that I

must…and it's all right with Shampoo and Saki…"

"Shampoo already decided," the purple haired girl at her side said

firmly, "Be nice have pink-hair be part of family. Shampoo look forward to

calling her sister. Is honorable way for Amazon to repay kindness, yes

Cousin?"

"Ah…yeah…I guess," Perfume replied dubiously, only to consider

another point, "Does that mean…?"

"That you and your Airen can enjoy Saki's favors as well if it's

agreeable to all parties?" Trudy answered, "Obviously being a part of your

circle, and a Concubine at that, puts her in a junior status to you all, but

I don't think that Saki-chan will have too much trouble working herself up

into complying with your needs, will you student?"

"Ah…well…" Saki squirmed a bit as if only just now making the

connection with what her teacher was saying and what the others would

actually be empowered to do with her if they had the inclination.

"And if you still have lingering doubts or resentments about this

then you can take it up with her and allow Asamiya-chan to demonstrate her

willingness to be a part of your union," Trudy added, "And don't bother

pretending that the thought has not already crossed your mind, Kuonji-san,

since I can see the way you're fairly drooling at the prospect."

"Wow, you are good," Perfume said with faint amazement.

"Perchan?" Ukyo turned to the Enforcer with her own dubious

expression.

"Ah…not that I actually would without your approval, Airen," Perfume

hastily amended.

Nabiki sat there and looked around at her wife and co-wives frank

amazement, and then at Ranma, who seemed less inclined to raise a fuss about

the matter, then at Saki, who seemed no less bewildered than she herself

over the way things were turning out, and lastly she glanced at Trudy, only

to notice the slightly smug look on the face of the woman known as Carla,

who was eyeing her companion as though pleased for some oblique reason known

only between themselves.

(She is good,) Nabiki silently marveled, (What a slick, smooth

talker Sensei is…and never once did she have to lie about anything. She

laid it on good and thick but it was the truth…after a fashion…)

She turned again to meet the gaze of Saki, who was staring at her

from across the space in the room as though amazed at the thought that they

were about to be allowed to do something that neither one of them had

imagined doing with permission. It was mind-blowing, incomprehensible that

the issues of jealousy and possessiveness had been taken completely off of

the table, and now they were being given the chance of fulfilling the urges

that they both had been sensing from the time that they had parted company

no more than a few hours earlier in the day.

"Splendid," the Lord Reka said grandiosely, breaking the spell of

the moment by calling them back to reality, "I shall see to it that they are

granted their own personal space and that none shall disturb them for the

evening. Lady Wells…you may conduct the training of your students at your

leisure…and as for the rest of you…my dear Tara?"

The silent girl who had been contentedly sitting in the space before

and between Lord Reka and his wife, Veragar, smiled and clapped her hands

together, and at once other servants began to file into the room bearing

trays and bowls of prepared food stuffs. Almost magically before their very

eyes a literal banquet was laid out before the Saotome clan, complete with

sweets and treats of every type of imagining.

Before too long everyone was eating at the table, slowly abandoning

their cares, complaints and reservations as food and wine began to ease away

their tension. The two little girls, Fragrance and Lylac, were all too

happy to enjoy the sweets offered to them and were only restrained from

overindulgence by their much-concerned parents, who urged them to eat

nutritious foods first rather than to stuff themselves purely on the complex

carbohydrates.

At some point Chusen stirred from his sleep, which prompted Shampoo

to bare a breast and begin to suckle him as though he were her own baby.

The contented smile she wore made Nabiki feel somewhat inadequate since it

should have been her own breast that her son was suckling from, but somehow

the knowledge of what was being planned for her and Saki made her feel that

the timing was improper. And so she allowed her wife to do her "wet nurse"

duties, grateful that Shampoo's breasts seemed never to run dry, which was

probably another advantage of Amazon training that Cologne had yet to share

with Nabiki.

Even so as the children were being nursed according to a

parent-approved diet, the adults themselves were freely stuffing their own

faces with whatever was good while Lord Reka and Lady Veragar observed it

all impassively, neither touching the food nor the drink but seeming to

revel in the company that they were presiding over. This curious behavior

naturally aroused the suspicions of Nabiki, who made a point to stop herself

from eating too much as she obliquely studied the man and his wife, even as

Saki was apparently gorging too much upon the appetizers and the freely

provided liquor.

"Saotome-san," Reka mused after a moment in which the senior wife of

the party was making a bit too much of a point of abstaining, "Are you

losing your appetite so soon? Surely you know that you must build your

strength if you are to engage in the sort of activity that the lady Wells is

proposing?"

"Thanks, but I've never felt good about practicing on a full

stomach," Nabiki said by way of covering up for her abstention.

"Suit yourself," Reka shrugged, "But if you harbor suspicions about

me as a host then I would be most offended. You must surely know that I

would hardly resort to poisoning you, nor would I violate the sanctity of

desert hospitality by treating you ill in any way. You are safer than you

could possibly know while you rest under my roof, and I will not allow

anything to harm you and your family while you dwell here for this evening."

Latisha frowned and paused in the act of eating the food provided to

her and said, "My father is being polite here…but what you are doing is

tantamount to throwing it in his face, Saotome."

"I mean no disrespect," Nabiki responded, "It's simply that…"

"Quite right," Trudy stood up and bowed to both Reka and Veragar,

"My lord, my lady…you have been most generous with us, but now I think it's

time to get on to the training session that we have agreed to. Asamiya-san,

Saotome-san…please stand and bow to our host. It's your moment to reflect

upon the importance of this lesson, and I will not have it delayed for

another minute."

"Hah?" Saki asked, sounding a bit drunk as she turned a puzzled

glance up at Trudy.

Nabiki felt weak in the knees as she considered what was being

considered here but nonetheless she stood up slowly, feeling more than a bit

fried herself since she had never quite mastered her Uncle Genma's

bottomless passion for heavy spirits. She bowed as best she could before

Lord Reka then followed Trudy out of the tent as she and a somewhat shaken

Saki were drawn along as though on an invisible leash…quite similar to the

one still being sported by their Sensei.

"Bye-bye, Airen," Nabiki heard Shampoo call out just before she

reached the tent flap leading to the outside, "No try to have too much fun

with Pink-hair."

Nabiki winced a bit at that as she emerged out into the night air

and was immediately washed by a hot desert breeze, feeling oddly chilled in

spite of the warmth since her body was covered with a thin sheen of

perspiration. A glance at the side showed a similarly flushed state for the

half-drunk Saki, but nonetheless the two young girls managed to follow

steady enough as Trudy urged them on towards a distant tent far removed from

the rest of the encampment.

As they walked together under the light of a surprisingly full moon

Nabiki could not help exchanging side-long glances with her nominal

"training partner." Saki seemed to fairly radiate a soft kind of glow that

made her beauty that much more poignant and meaningful, and Nabiki found her

breath being caught in her throat with the realization of just how

attractive Saki was, which naturally led to the question of why she had no

noticed this until the present.

The obvious answer was that she had not been looking for another sex

partner and had been oblivious to Saki's charms out of an understandable

level of focus that had been directed towards her true bed partners. It was

odd to think that in just under six months of marriage how much Nabiki had

grown accustomed to sleeping in the same place with three other women and a

man whom they shared as a husband. She had grown quite fond and attached to

each and every one of them, albeit in different ways considering how Shampoo

was the one most important to her (next to Ranma, of course), while Ukyo and

Perfume were lovers in a different context, Kuonji more as a friend with

whom she shared intimate relations, Perfume as the more exotic bed partner

whose capacity for nocturnal acrobatics made her a source of infinite

diversity and wonder. She could not imagine living now without each and

every one of them at her side.

To even think of betraying them by bringing in someone outside of

their family circle was simply unthinkable…and yet here she was doing the

unthinkable, and with the tacit approval of her primary wife, the grudging

support of the others being almost an afterthought.

Once inside the tent Trudy reverted from her "Slave Girl" pose to

the tone and authority of a Sensei. Just as she had behaved earlier that

day in the park she took immediate command of the situation, giving neither

Nabiki nor Saki any time for second thoughts or personal recriminations, and

within the span of a few heartbeats the two found themselves squaring off

once again…yet in a very different context than when they had been sparring

together.

For here the purpose was marital, not martial, and the intent was

hardly to bring harm or do injury to one's partner as Saki and Nabiki made

eye-contact and felt an immediate synthesis that brought an increasing

awareness of each other's sexuality to the surface.

"I can't believe we're doing this," Nabiki found herself murmuring

aloud.

"I can't believe that we're being allowed to do this," Saki replied,

"It's…almost like a dream come true for me. I know…I know I haven't exactly

been honest with you until now, Nab-chan…but…I've been aching to be with you

like this for I don't know how long…"

"I know," Nabiki said a bit hoarsely, finding it hard to believe

that she had been blind to the obvious fact of Saki's infatuation, let alone

that she could have been taking her friend's emotional condition so much for

granted considering how potently now she was feeling her own swelling

attraction.

"No more words," Trudy said firmly, "This is where your real

training begins. Everything until now has been simple preparation. Now we

resume from where you started out in the park today, with your bodies in

rhythm and the awareness of each other at the maximum. Stretch out your

hands now and each of you remove the other's clothing."

Saki and Nabiki felt mildly startled by the request, but as each of

them turned to Trudy with the intent of voicing a question they caught the

stern look in her eyes and immediately thought the better of protesting.

"This is the way it has been done with the Shaloe-Ahl since the very

beginning," their Sensei said firmly, "You must remove all barriers and

obstacles and open yourselves fully to each other. Only then will the power

flow between you, kindling the awakening of the Change that will kindle your

hidden potential."

Nabiki took a deep breath and heard Saki doing the same, then they

locked gazes once again and felt all questions, qualms and doubts dissolve

between them, and almost without realizing what they were doing their hands

began to move of their own volition, reaching out to one another and

beginning to part the fabrics that each was wearing. Saki began to unbutton

Nabiki's Cheosang, Nabiki undid the buttons binding the halter-top that

contained Saki's bosoms and allowed her breasts to go free, taking a moment

to stare in wonder at the perfect orbs that were revealed to her inspection.

They were not as ripe and full as Shampoo's own ample bosoms, but Saki had

obviously experienced a late-term growth spurt that made her own breasts

swell to a satisfactory shape and dimension, so much so that Nabiki could

not help reaching out to touch and fondle those perfect globes, feeling

mildly startled as she felt hands enclose her own swelling "chest bulbs" as

Saki similarly satisfied her own budding fascination with touching the

breasts of another woman.

From there the rest was almost automatic, Nabiki's pantsuit joining

Saki's silk pantaloons upon the floor as both girls began to caress and

fondle each other's bodies, almost hypnotized with the sense of warmth and

firmness that lay sheathed beneath the soft exterior layers of smooth skin

that proved to resilient and sensitive to the touch. It was like magic as

they felt the urge to come together, to embrace one another, but before they

could consummate this flow their heard Trudy snap them back to reality with

gentle firmness as though urging them to delay the point of carnal

satiation.

"Time enough to get to the climax, Students," Trudy said, "But this

is an exercise that must be followed through by rote, step by step as you

each harmonize your biometric energies. Just content yourself for now with

the foreplay and continue to explore what you touch. I will show you how to

slowly build up from there into a proper symbiosis, but for now don't be in

such a damned hurry. Take it slow and work by the numbers…step by step

increase your awareness of your partner and soon you will know what to do by

instinct."

Nabiki was feeling pretty instinctual herself at the moment, and it

fairly surprised her at how eager and aroused she was becoming as she

allowed herself to indulge in a wondrous physical exploration of the perfect

body of her pink-haired companion. Saki was similarly giving Nabiki a

thorough inspection and finding everything that she touched met with her

complete approval. It was a magical moment in spite of the circumstances,

and as they felt the last of their inhibitions fall away they began to get

royally into their exchanges, feeling the warmth of the night fill their

souls as if they were bathing naked in the moonlight itself, alone but for

their Sensei and not at all feeling chaperoned for her presence, touching

and building a closeness that was truly indescribable as their moment built

to a slow and steady crescendo…to find a climax at the end that would truly

rock their mutually shared world and cause the heavens themselves to sit up

and take notice.

Everything else was discarded for the evening, only the two of them

existed in all of creation, and soon there would be only one as the rhythm

of their souls beat in unison together, one heart and mind united in purpose

and giving the creation of new life their complete and total blessing as

time itself stood still and the evening wore on long into morning…

Continued.

(Yeah, I know…wait for the Lemony Version if you want the full

details…Lords Know I owe enough of those things after so much teasing during

the past fifty-odd chapters, but for now I crave your gentle indulgence dear

readers. The rest will be forthcoming in a side-series yet to be penned

that will be devoted exclusively to the telling of Lemons).

Comments/Criticisms/Continuous Climaxes" shadowmane

Or: shadowmane9849

Or: shadowmane747

Next up: There has to be a morning after, and having survived the

near-crisis to her marriage that could have proven potentially lethal Nabiki

must now confront the discoveries awakened in her by her night of passion

with Saki, even as the rest of the Tendo/Saotome/Kuonji circle themselves

comes to grips with an evening of indescribable wonders. Be here next time

for: "Eye of Unreason," or, "Who was That Woman You Were Sleeping With?/That

was No woman, that was my Wife!" Be there!

X


	110. Chapter 110

Dnabiki199

Nabiki ½

"A Very Scary Thought"

by

Jim Robert Bader

(Inspired by the works of Rumiko Takahashi & Others,

with concepts and characters created by fellow fanfic writers

Wade Tritschler, DB Sommers, Nicole Manders, Andrew

Greaves, Bill Guiroff and countless others, including "Buffy"

creator Joss Whedon; with special thanks to my good pal

Shiva for his editing and handling of this series.)

(Certain other characters and concepts are of my own

innovation, including my interpretation of the Monster

of Mary Shelly's novel, the Furies, Trudy, Takaharis

Angelique d'Anjou, Anri and the Daokan, Thelendra

the Dream Weaver and various other guest stars

appearing in this portion of the Nabiki ½ series…)

Chapter Seventy-Five.

Episode One-Hundred-Ninety-Nine.

Sin-Serity

That battle had raged for hours now and had left a considerable wake

of destruction in its passage, but though the fighters were unleashing

staggering forces upon one another they were doing much less harm to

themselves than they were to the surrounding landscape. Though Udan had

been unable to gain the upper hand throughout much of the fight he had still

weathered the worst that his foe could dish out, for as the Master of Matter

he was all but impervious to physical attacks, even those dished out by a

being who clearly was alien to everything terrestrial, a reason why Udan had

been unable to end the fight in anything approaching an economical quick

manner.

But still his enemy had tried his damndest to take the Blackguard

down, unleashing searing energy blasts and pounding assaults that all failed

to penetrate Udan's primal defenses, much though they did manage to keep the

Eluini lord at bay for well into the late evening. Udan had managed to

blast his foe apart time and again only to see him reform a new from even

the tiniest of fragments. The enemy had even tried converting Udan into

"chocolate" with its mental transmutation powers, but Udan shrugged this off

easily enough, only mildly disconcerted and even insulted by the effort. At

another point the enemy had even transformed from its relatively "goofy"

state to a more powerful and sinister incarnation just to amp up the level

of the fight and give a greater challenge to Udan's combat skills and

abilities, though at no point in the matter did this "Majin Buu" character

come close to overturning the tables.

Raining down blows on one another that could have split continents

and easily turned mountains into powder and created moon-sized craters in

the earth's surface, their battle was truly epic in character yet had all

the inevitability of a Greek play being acted out, with all of the tragedy

being directed towards the one who was truly alien to this dimension, for as

long as there was an Earth to stand upon Udan was fated to be the victor,

only held in check for as long as it took him to sense out his foe's true

nature and discover his "Achilles Heel," a process by itself that took place

upon an entirely different level of combat, one far more abstract than

physical and yet a field of play in which Udan was well skilled in seeking

his advantage.

The end came suddenly for the battle and was as inevitable as it had

been most annoying to Udan, who at last had finally discovered the means to

be rid once and for all of his opponent. It had given him some pause

because his foe had proven to be of no shape or substance of this universe,

and so was beyond the scope of Udan's control over regular matter. But once

he had stumbled upon the correct vibrational frequency of the Pseudo-matter

that composed this "Majin Buu" character it was childsplay to produce its

counter-vibration, and from there to disrupt the essential framework that

kept the creature alive and held his substance congealed upon the material

frame of existence.

Plunging his fist deep into the spongy chest of the monstrously

deformed creature, Udan seized hold of its integral energy matrix and

disrupted this pattern from within, breaking the finely balanced equation

and filling the monster with its antithesis of energy, which caused its

shape to erupt and dissolve as it was torn apart from within, its

chaos-spawned being ripping to pieces on a subatomic level. The release of

energies was heralded by the creature's scream of rage and dismay as it

collapsed inwardly, its very being canceled out as Udan drew the creature

inside out and caused it to implode in a cataclysmic eruption of

self-negation, as though a self-contained universe were dying in the instant

at which it ceased to exist altogether.

Udan drew his hand back and held the equation in his hand, the

complex matrix of interlacing energies that had formed the core of the Chaos

being, which now crackled and snarled impotently, no longer able to connect

with the Pseudo-matter that had composed his physical body. The creature

was now dying, helpless within his grasp, powerless to resist as Udan began

to close his fingers upon the matrix with the intent of crushing it and

destroying its composition once and forever.

"Wait! Don't do that, please, I'm begging you!"

Udan frowned, turning his eyes to see the pathetic human who was

staggering up past the carnage of the ruined landscape. He was an old man,

partially balding but with a shock of hurly black hair that gave him a

comical look, and his mustache added to the effect of pompous frailty, which

by itself gave the Lord of Earth and Water considerable pause. Udan turned

to regard the man, and his expression by itself was posed as a question.

Why?

"He's my friend!" the old man protested, "Or rather…my friend is in

there…he was consumed by his evil half, but I know he's still alive, and I

just can't let you destroy him…it wouldn't be right!"

Udan continued to study the man, giving him greater scrutiny as he

surveyed a once-proud physique gone long into ruin, a man who had prided

himself as a warrior and a hero but who in reality was little more than a

walking joke. Not an evil man by any measure, and in a way he did possess

genuine character and courage, for all that his prowess was mostly bravado.

He is a monster and a destroyer. He would have annihilated your

world and everyone in it if I had not stopped him. I must do this to

protect your world, regardless of the cost.

"But you don't have the right to take his life that way!" the old

man insisted, "He's not really a total monster…he just…doesn't understand,

that's all…and people fear him because he's different…"

Udan considered these words even as he took notice of the fallen

warriors who were the real champions of this dimension. The one who truly

had the heart of a warrior was just then recovering his wits, even as the

one who reminded Udan a little too much of his brother, Reka, was grinding

his teeth in frustration and saying, "What happened? Where is that

monster?"

"Hah?" the true warrior said as he caught sight of the thing that

was gripped firmly within Udan's hand, and then with surprising perception

he asked, "Is…is that him? Is that what's left of Majin-Buu?"

Udan merely studied this fellow, finding in him a curious paradox of

innocence and virtue within a frame that had near-limitless warrior

potential. He was not as powerful as Udan himself, of course, but in a

curious sense Udan felt a kinship with this stranger born of an Alien star.

The man was a true protector and a worthy guardian of the Earth, selfless

and brave to a fault and possessed of an indomitable will to fight that

would surely have allowed him to prevail over Majin Buu had Udan not been

tricked into taking up his battle. In a sense that almost made them seem

like brothers, which softened Udan's stance towards him somewhat.

The other one-also of Alien origins-was glaring spitefully at

Udan's fist and saying, "You mean he defeated a being that the two of us

could not defeat, even as Super Saiyajins? Unbelievable…how could he

possibly do it?"

"You got me there, Vegita," the first warrior replied, "But I think

we owe this guy a favor for taking Majin-Buu out while you and I were in no

condition to do any fighting."

"Trust you to be the sort who would see things in such naïve terms,

Kagarot!" the shorter man snarled, "Bur how do we know that he's not a

greater enemy than Buu himself? How can you just assume that he's on our

side…"

"I don't know, Vegita," the taller man said, giving Udan a friendly

nod, "I've just got a good sense about him…and if he wanted to cause us

problems he'd already have done it. Besides, as powerful as he obviously is

do you really think we can afford to offend him?"

The one called Vegita just scowled, "I don't like the looks of him,

that's all. There is something about him that doesn't read like Saiyajin or

any other being whom we have encountered. Why does he stand there without

saying anything, and who is he really?"

"That's a fair enough question," the taller man said, and then with

a jovial smile he offered his hand towards Udan and said, "Hi there, my name

is Goku. I assume you have a name, so…would you care to tell us who it is

we owe this rescue?"

Udan stared at the hand, then at the one named Vegita, and then at

the frail old man looking up at him anxiously, and then lastly at the energy

matrix that he still held firmly between his fingers.

Obviously Udan had interfered in the normal, natural flow of events

and history within this timeline, and just as clearly he had disrupted a

pattern that Fate itself had mandated. The men were clearly the real

guardians charged with defending this world against such menaces, and Udan

had unwittingly upstaged them. It was obvious enough that events were

supposed to flow in a certain order, and that the mere eradication of

Majin-Buu was not the desired outcome. Clearly something else was meant to

happen, and as he opened himself up to reading the Akashic patterns of this

world it was not that difficult to make out what he needed to do in order to

restore the balance.

With a thought Udan reached into the matrix and pulled out the

levers that tied this energy to the Chaos Lords, then subtly altered the

sub-harmonics of the pattern and caused a change to come about that

redirected the energies contained within the spell, and like that he brought

about the recreation of Majin-Buu into an entirely different being, one more

akin to the Lords of Order than the spawn of the Nether Dark who existed

solely for the purpose of universal destruction.

And as he rendered this transmutation of character and substance,

the pattern within his hand altered abruptly to assume the form of an ovular

cocoon, one in which the new Majin-Buu took shape in an infant stage of

embryonic development. As his brother, Arni would say, after all, everyone

deserved a second chance to make right a great wrong through the process of

reincarnation.

He turned and placed the egg-shaped object into the hands of the

harmless old man, who took the globe and stared at it in wonder, amazed as

he gazed at the golden shell that covered the Ostrich-sized embryo, then

with a gasp he started and nearly dropped the thing as it hatched and

transformed itself into a cherubic baby.

The one named Goku looked on in amazement while the other one named

Vegita gave a dismayed exclamation and stared at the pink-skinned infant as

though expecting the type to transform into a dragon at any moment. The old

man, however, recovered from his stunned surprise and at once cradled the

child to his bosom, holding the sleeping toddler between his burly arms with

instinctive gentleness, protecting the child as best he was able as though

it were his own offspring, and thus at once formed an immediate and

indissoluble bonding.

Satisfied that he had given this Majin-Buu a new chance at a better

existence, Udan started to turn away only to hear the one named Goku say,

"Hey, wait!"

Udan turned and regarded the warrior with a silently impassive

expression.

"You just turned him into a baby…just like that?" Goku asked.

Udan regarded the man with a sidelong expression.

The creature is no more. The child is a new thing who needs a

parent and guardian to teach him the way. He will become a great protector

if he is given the chance and has strong role models to guide him.

"Did he just say that?" Vegita gasped, "Those words…it's like they

just popped into my head…"

"Obviously there's a lot more to you than meets the eye, my friend,"

Goku smiled.

Udan sniffed and turned away.

You are a fine one to talk. I leave the matter of the child to you.

It is no longer my concern what occurs to this dimension.

"This dimension?" Vegita repeated, "Where in the name of the powers

do you hail from?"

Udan did not deign to answer but rather raised a hand and made a

summoning gesture, and a moment later his trusty eighteen wheeled vehicle

appeared, roaring onto the landscape as though it had just emerged from the

end of a very long tunnel.

Vegita gasped, "What the hell…is that a truck?"

"Looks like it," Goku said, then he made out the letters painted

onto the side of the indigo-and-silver transport, "The Silver Seagull, eh?

Is that you, friend?"

Udan made a rude noise at the suggestion.

Hardly. That is the name of my wife, she who guides me in my

missions.

"Then what are you called by?" Vegita asked.

For a moment Udan did not bother to answer as his truck pulled up

alongside him, but then he paused to regard the two warriors, his eyes

taking them in and reading a great deal more about their natures than any

man could possibly have expected.

Udan Robar Bartev, called Blackguard by many.

He then reached up and grasped the bar at the side of the driver's

side door, which opened of its own accord to allow its master to swing

himself into the cabin, and then the door closed shut altogether as Udan

took control of the wheel and began to steer his conveyance off, aiming the

massive eighteen wheeled Kenworth towards a time and place of his choosing,

putting this world behind him as he honed in on the energy pattern of his

sister-wife and lady.

The Saiyajin and the old man watched them go, then Goku remarked,

"Well, it sounds like he's got your disposition, Vegita."

"Don't joke about this, Kagarot," Vegita grunted in a surly tone,

"That man was more dangerous than a thousand Majin-Buus. Could you not feel

it just standing so near to his presence? He fairly reeked of limitless

power, even greater than that of a third-stage Super Saiyajin!"

"But he saved us and turned Majin-Buu into a helpless baby," Goku

pointed out, "And you saw how he took the worst thing that Buu could dish

out at him and give it back in spades. Buu even tried to turn him into

chocolate, like he did with us, but that guy just shrugged it off like it

was nothing. Think about it…he could have been an enemy but he didn't act

like one, so wouldn't it make sense to treat him to the benefit of the

doubt?"

"That's the problem with you, Kagarot," Vegita scowled, "You expect

everyone to like you and treat you fairly if you just treat them nicely…but

I could tell that this fellow is not used to making friends, that he cares

little for courtesy and good faith but only does what he feels like without

regard to your morality or ethics."

"Well, I guess that makes him even more like you than I thought,"

Goku said mildly, turning a smile towards the gurgling infant in the aging

Hercule's hands as "Mister Satan" was making goo-goo noises to entertain the

helpless toddler, "But you know…I kind of think he's more of a friend than

even he knows. At the very least I think we owe him big time. But you know

the strangest thing…I feel like we're not likely to be seeing him again,

like he was in a hurry to be somewhere else a long ways away from here."

"You may be right as far as that goes, Kagarot," Vegita growled as

he turned his gaze in the direction in which Udan had vanished, "But for my

part if we never see him again it will be only too soon, and for once in my

life I would rather not tangle with someone in a battle as I suspect that

even we would not survive such a deadly encounter…"

The young man named David slowly opened his eyes and stared up at a

sky that was impossibly bright and incredibly blue, and then he shifted his

gaze towards the faintly glowing shadow that was hovering over him and tried

to make sense of the image, at last giving up with a feeble, "Am I dead and

in Heaven?"

"David?" asked the voice of the woman who sounded so much like his

late sister that he could not help but believe that she had indeed returned

to his world in the guise of one of the Angels.

Hardly heaven, but certainly a vast improvement over that place

where you have spent the past two days young one.

"David…can you hear me? Are you all right?" the golden haloed woman

asked him anxiously.

"A-Amalthea?" he gasped incredulously, "But…but you're dead."

"Dead?" she said dismissively, "Is that what they told you? I'm

hardly surprised, but you really should know better than to trust anything

that General Han and those Moonies must have told you."

David blinked and tried to make sense of the image of the half-naked

girl who did indeed look a lot like his sainted sister, and in doing so he

made out a distinct trace of salty brine in the air and could hear the

gentle lapping of the waves as he discovered that they were on a sandy sea

shore that was currently bathed in the bright light of early morning.

"You can't be real," he said simply, "Those ungodly heathens killed

you…"

"Ungodly maybe," Amalthea sniffed, "But they didn't kill me, no

matter what they may have told you. I thought you were dead at their hands,

David…I had no idea that you were still alive or I would have begged my

mistress to grant me leave to go and find you. It's been six long years…by

our father, how much you've grown! Mother would be so amazed if she could

see the both of us I've no doubt about it…though in my case, perhaps a

little less than pleased with everything that I've done in the name of my

personal survival."

Don't be so hard upon yourself, my Pet. You turned out quite well

in spite of the hardships fate dealt out to you in the beginning.

"That may be true, my Lady," Amalthea said somewhat crookedly, "And

I am hardly complaining about my lot in life, but…I can't help but think

that mother and father would have wanted things different for the both of

us…but as you say, it's in the past, and so we cannot waste time regretting

that which will not be changed ever."

David became aware that there was another presence near to them and

turned his head to make out a second feminine figure, one currently sitting

upon an exposed portion of coral reef resting her bare feet in a tidal pool

and looking for all the world as though she had been there eternally, as

ageless as she was beautiful and radiating an aura that was as potent as any

angel's.

"Who is that?" he asked before realizing that he had spoken.

Amalthea smiled and said, "She is my Mistress and owner, the Lady

Ulsa Laolana, called by some the Silver Seagull."

"Lady…Ulsa?" David frowned softly, "Did you just call her…your

owner?"

"That is right, David," Amalthea said simply, "I was given to her by

my former Mistress and benefactor, the Lady Lao Kane, known by others as

Captain Lao of the ship known as the POJ. My lady is the one who found and

rescued you, she restored you to me, for which I am very grateful."

David forced himself to sit upright in spite of an inexplicable

feeling of weakness and scowled, "Ulsa is not a Christian name…"

The blonde haired lady just gave him a cool smile and regarded him

levelly with her impossibly clear blue eyes.

That is correct. I am not what you would call a Christian."

David scowled, "Who are you? Are you a minion of Satan?"

"David?" Amalthea said in surprise, hearing the hostility in his

tone and wondering at its source as Ulsa had not given him readily obvious

cause for such approbation.

There is no Satan. That which you call "Satan" is a myth invented

by those with a political agenda.

"Liar," David averred, "Only one who is in league with the Evil one

would dare to deny his existence!"

I never lie. I speak the truth.

"All men lie, and all women are liars!" David averred as he forced

himself to ignore his queasiness and got to his feet, even as the ground

threatened to give out from underneath him.

"David!" Amalthea was shocked by her brother's tone, as well as his

automatic assumption.

You are judging from the basis of those who have nursed you with

lies and have spoon fed you their hypocrisies. You should never be so quick

to leap to such conclusions without thinking through on the basis of your

assumptions.

"Who are you and why are you claiming ownership over my sister?"

David demanded.

Ulsa regarded the young man with what almost might have seemed to be

amusement, though in her regard of him was a probing gaze of understated

warning.

Amalthea has already named me. I own your sister by right of her

admission, and she is very dear to me, as you are to her, so for her sake I

will ignore your impoliteness.

"You won't ignore me, Strumpet!" David raised one clawed hand as if

to threaten the blonde haired woman.

Amalthea automatically reached out a hand to attempt to restrain her

hot-tempered brother only to jump back in alarm as a wave of incredible

force struck the young man hard and smashed him back into the sands as

though an invisible giant's hand had flattened him thusly.

I abhor violence in all of its many forms, but I will not sit

passively with you and permit you to threaten my person.

"My lady?" Amalthea asked, stunned by the casual display of the

power of her Mistress.

He is not injured. I will refrain from harming him for your sake,

my pet…but see that he does not provoke me again. I have very little

tolerance for his tone of accusation.

"I understand," Amalthea nodded, then bent down and said to her

brother, "That was a very rash and horrible thing to do, brother. What were

you thinking threatening to attach her like that?"

"Guh…" David spat sand out of his mouth and coughed, "What…what hit

me…"

The earth itself, young one. The gravity increased for you for but

a moment, yet had I wished it so I could have sent you to the earth's fiery

core so that you could seek out this 'Hell' that you so fervently believe in

and discover personally the truth of its existence.

David was far more wary now as he shook off Amalthea's attempts at

comforting him and scowled at Laolana, "What are you? Not a human…are you a

demon?"

No.

"Are you…a servant of the Lord?" David asked in hesitant wonder.

Not yours.

"Then…what…?" David asked, confused and baffled by this annoying

woman's infuriating silent responses.

Ulsa just regarded him and did not reply, effecting for all the

world as if she did not feel the need to give him an answer.

Amalthea said to David, "She is the Lady of Air and Water, an Eluini

Avatar of vast and near limitless power. She is one part of an equation

that forms the four Pillars of Heaven, an aspect of God herself and our

benefactor, David. Please try not to provoke her…it makes you seem

ungrateful."

"What do I have to feel gratitude for?" David scowled, "And how did

you survive, Amalthea? I thought those pagans had killed you…"

"Pagans?" Amalthea was puzzled by the question, "What pagans?"

"The ones whom General Han said had ravished and murdered you,"

David replied, "He said after he rescued me that he tried everything that he

could to find your body, but that there was absolutely not chance of your

survival…"

"General Han said that?" Amalthea's tone bridled with anger, "What

else did that fiend tell you? Did you also say that he tried to sell me

into slavery, that he let his men torture, beat and mistreat me for days in

an effort to break me to his will? Did he tell you how I escaped and found

my way to the POJ, where I was nurtured back to life by the gentle hand of

my former Mistress?"

"What?" David blinked, "What are you talking about? General Han

wouldn't do that!"

"HE DID!" Amalthea all but exploded in his face, "I was there, I

suffered everything his people did to me! He was trying to bend me to his

will, but I wouldn't let him! I tried coming back to rescue you but he told

me you were dead! That lying son-of-a-bitch deserves to have his guts

ripped out with my claws for what he did to me…and what he obviously did to

you, David!"

"General Han is my benefactor and friend!" David protested, "He's

guided me for the past six years and has taught me how to find vengeance for

your murder…"

"Wake up, you idiot!" Amalthea swatted the younger man on the

shoulder, "Do I look dead to you? He didn't murder me, but he came damned

near close to it, and he would have succeeded if I hadn't escaped his

clutches! Have you any idea what I went through in that hell-hole in which

he kept me like a lab rat? His men were professional sadists and they

enjoyed their work, and I'm not the least bit sorry that I left two of them

for dead when I got out of that prison!"

"You must be…you must be under the influence of Satan," David

stammered, "He has poisoned your mind by filling you with such lies…"

Amalthea could no longer restrain herself and reached out to grab

the younger man by the shirt, lifting him off of his feet and shaking him

like a leaf as she shouted, "THEY RAPED ME! YOU THINK I COULD HAVE IMAGINED

A THING LIKE THAT? GENERAL HAN SUPERVISED THE WHOLE OPERATION, HE WAS THERE

WATCHING ME SUFFER, AND HE ENJOYED THE WHOLE SHOW LIKE THE PROFESSIONAL

SADIST THAT HE IS!"

David tried to work himself free of the older girl's grip but found

that rage had leant to her a righteous kind of strength that defied his own

physical prowess, so he was left helplessly to say, "You're wrong! General

Han isn't like that!"

Actually he is much, much worse, and for all the conditioning that

he has used to brainwash you…

"Shut up!" David cried, "I won't hear any more of these lies! This

is all a trick of Satan's! You're not Amalthea, you're not my sister!"

Amalthea stared in dismay at the younger man's denial, then she let

go of him and dropped him back to his feet. Shaking her head in dismay she

turned to Ulsa and said, "What's wrong with him, my lady? How can he

believe that we are lying?"

Ulsa's gaze was frank and unflinching.

It is much easier to believe the lies that lend one comfort and

gives security to one's world than it would be to abandon the comfort of

what you think you know in favor of a troubling perspective. David believes

that he can resist seeing the truth by shutting out the unpleasant facts

that he knows within his heart are real in favor of a standard excuse line

that has been well practiced. He is in denial, but on some primal level he

does hear and understand what you are saying.

"Can't you make him see that we're not his enemies, my lady?"

Amalthea asked, only to see Ulsa shake her head in silent negation.

I have no right to violate his free will and sovereignty. He must

come to terms on his own with the knowledge that he has been living a lie

for the past six years…that rather than avenge your supposed murder he has

actually been in the employ of the ones who hurt you. Until he is willing

to accept that, and the tremendous burden of guilt that he carries…

"Guilt?" David protested, "What have I to feel guilt over? I am a

servant of the lord…!"

You are a pawn of Ahriman, and as such are to be pitied.

"I serve the Lord Jesus Christ!" David flatly insisted.

No such person. He never existed.

"LIAR!" David screamed, "You false strumpet, you succubus, you Whore

of Babylon-!"

The sound of a hand slapping his face broke the tranquility of the

beach and caused David to react in shock and dismay, especially with the

realization that it was his own sister who had just given him a royal

cuffing.

"To think that it could ever have come to this," Amalthea's eyes

burned with righteous anger, "That my own brother would embrace the service

of evil and dare to bring shame upon our name by speaking in such foul tones

to my rightful Mistress, who has done nothing but render me great kindles."

"A-Amalthea?" David felt the side of his cheek, the ringing in his

ears finally drowning out the fury of his righteous wrath as he stared at

his older sibling and saw the sterness of his own mother burning within her

golden eyes.

"You dishonor me, David," she said with deceptive mildness, "If our

father had lived to see what you've become he would have died of

humiliation, and our mother…she would have been so sad. How could you?"

"But…but…" David stammered.

"I suffered and bled because of that monster!" Amalthea fumed, "And

all the time I was worried about you, about what he must have been putting

you through, even as they took my virginity away from me and treated me like

an animal, like I wasn't even human! And you have the gall to stand here

and tell me that I'm a servant of Satan?"

"But…"

"Han pretends to be a man of God but he's a servant of a much

greater evil than you could ever know, little brother," Amalthea said

evenly, her words falling like anvils, "Just talking about religion doesn't

make you a good person, and certainly not a man of Holy orders. I listened

to him drone on about saving my soul and making me convert to his religion,

which I knew would have meant having to renounce our father and mother as

consorts of the Devil, and do you know why I wouldn't do that? Because of

my Kirin blood…because the truth, because it's totally against my nature to

embrace such deceit! Lying like that is the sole province of full-blooded

humans, not our people!"

"But…" David tried to raise a point in his defense, knowing that he

ought to be able to quote some verse from scripture that would cover these

affairs and explain everything in a neat and orderly manner.

"David," Amalthea said firmly, "You're half Kirin too. Can't you

sense it? Everything that you were saying just now that was a lie…"

"N-No…no…it can't be…" David shook his head in disbelief, taking a

half-step back away from his sister.

You can feel it. Do not deny it.

"Deny what?" David whirled on the blonde, relieved to have someone

other than his fierce-eyed sister to confront with his righteous fury.

He instantly rethought this strategy as he caught a look of

something in the eyes of the blonde Ulsa that chilled him to his marrow.

I release you of the restraint that bind your memories. Let them

flow back to you now…and you will become enlightened.

"N…No…" David cried in wide-eyed horror, "Noooo…!"

See it. See for yourself what it is that lurks within your

memories.

"No…" David broke the gaze and turned away, "I won't listen! I

won't! I'm not the one who's evil, you are!"

Remember.

And David did remember, remembered back when his name was Ban Lo

David Devenue, the younger child of Jeannette Franscoius Devenue and Lord

Kyledor of the Astral, a Kyrin who served the will of the Heavens yet was a

lordly presence in his own right. As a young boy of seven he had lost his

family but not all of his memories, and those now came back to him with a

start, causing him to gasp as he tried to make sense of the cavalcade of

forgotten sights, scents and emotions.

He shook himself free of this at once and said, "What has that to do

with anything? I was found by General Han and taken in as his adoptive

son…"

You were used by him, nothing more than that, and with the removal

of your mental blocks it is now possible for you to see precisely what sort

of man this "general" is, and what he truly thinks of you as his ward.

"No!" David insisted, "I won't look…you put them there! The bad

things…"

"David?" Amalthea asked, distressed by the tone and expression of

her younger brother.

Ulsa's eyes were unusually intense and piercing.

Remember.

David took another step backwards and away from the enigmatic woman,

yet for all his attempts to put distance between them he could not shut out

the memories that were awakening from inside him, and then he remembered

himself laying on a bed-like surface while overhearing the faint chatter of

people who were standing in a different room, one that was not sound-proofed

against his highly attuned hearing, and to his dismay one voice sounded very

much like that which belonged to General Han as his mentor and protector was

saying to someone standing near by him:

"…The boy has no idea of who or what he is, but our tests show that

he has amazing abilities and potential. He could be very useful to our

cause…provided that we remove him from the company of his overly protective

sister. She's proving much more difficult to handle and I fear we will not

be as successful in indoctrinating her to the program."

And then a voice so chilling that David knew at once that it had to

belong to Jungo, "Have the girl isolated and leave her to my people to

manage. We will make her more…amenable and compliant to the wishes of our

Master, once she is broken in and taught her place as a woman. The boy we

will obviously train and use as a fighter, but if the girl continues to

resist us…then perhaps she has breeding potential that could help us to

yield a future warrior whom we can train to do our bidding."

"Just think of it…" a third voice remarked casually, "Children with

Kirin's blood working on our side…carrying with them the mantle of Heaven

and granting sanction to our cause. It is devoutly to be wished, and in

this effort you have my explicit sanction.:

"Thank you, Sir," General Han said most humbly, "And please inform

his excellence that we will labor day and night to bring these two around.

We will convince the boy that his sister is no more and give him a cause for

vengeance against our enemies that will fuel his rage and make him cry out

for their destruction. Leave the matter in my hands and very soon you will

see the fruits of our labors."

"You have six months in which to train him, and then we will test

his abilities and determine his fitness. As for the girl…well, she is very

fair indeed and might prove useful in a variety of ways. We will have her

trained as a courtesan for the sake of my lord, or possibly make her a spy

over one of our agents, and in good time…yield fruit from her loins that we

will nurture to our needs."

Amalthea gave back with a start as though hearing these thoughts

within her own head, "Those bastards! No wonder they used me to

viciously…if I hadn't escaped and found my way to my true Mistress…"

Then amateurs who lack her fine hand at cultivating beauty would

have used, abused and discarded you as refuse, leaving only the boy and the

child of rape to carry the legacy of your father.

"No…this can't be real!" David said frantically, waving his arms,

"You're trying to trick me, Witch! But I won't have it!"

Ulsa gave a very soft sigh and then stood up from her perch upon the

choral. She took three steps down and set her bare feet upon the sandy soil

and then confronted David directly with a gaze so level that you would have

thought that they had been transported onto a battle arena.

You believe that I am the deceiver, but in your heart you know the

truth.

"I know only that my faith in the Lord is proof enough against the

likes of you and the Legions of Satan!" David shouted, assuming a fighting

crouch as if preparing to attack the blonde before him.

"David…" Amalthea started to move forward, only to be stopped in her

tracks as her Mistress raised a hand and silently ordered her to keep her

distance.

This is between me and Ban Lo. If he seeks to challenge me within

my demesne then I will have to answer him directly.

"Stop giving orders to my sister!" David cried, and immediately

charged ahead with a fist that carried the weight of his supernaturally

enhanced strength backed by the pain and rage of the confusing tide that

raged within him.

Ulsa did not move by so much as an inch, but the fist missed its

mark and went wide of the target, and all at once David splashed face down

in the tidal pool, tasting brine for all of his troubles.

Violence does not work when directed against me. I am Air and

Water, the Sea and the Shore. I am restlessly eternal, yet I am at peace

regardless of the fickleness of the weather.

David pushed himself up and tried to execute a leg-sweep, but again

he misjudged the distance and went tumbling onto his rump even as a wave

lapped the shore and soaked him thoroughly for his troubles.

Anger directed towards me inevitably returns to its source. In

trying to punish me you only managed to achieve punishment of yourself for

the grief that you carry within you.

"SHUT UP!" David surged to his feet and balled his fists, now

standing little more than a meter away from the face of his opponent and

trying his level best to knock that complacent smile off of her lovely

features, but with to not avail as his hands kept missing their target.

You fight linearly, which is not the way in which you can approach

me.

"I SAID SHUT UP!" David raged, and once again summoned his energies

from within as he attempted to manifest one of his special attacks, only to

be repulsed for his troubles as his own force came back at him threefold.

"David!" Amalthea cried in dismay as she saw her brother get picked

up and carried by the blast that he took full in the chest as he sent him

sprawling on his back at several meters distance.

He is not harmed. I would not allow you to be so distressed with

his condition by returning in full measure the savagery that he thought to

direct against my person.

"My lady?" Amalthea asked.

This is where he must learn to pick his enemies more carefully and

not to presume the worst of everyone whom he encounters. I am merely

allowing him to discover for himself the folly of always lashing out in

blind fury without knowing whom it is he faces.

"I…understand," Amalthea bowed her head, "And I thank you from the

bottom of my soul for being merciful with my idiot brother."

The fault is not with him. He is merely reacting in the manner that

he was trained. It is time for him to unlearn the lesson that confuses

holiness with vengeance. It is but my duty to pave the way for the one who

will become his new teacher.

"His new…teacher?" Amalthea asked in dismay, only to glance up with

a gasp as she made out a male form hovering over the spot where her brother

was laying.

"That would be me. Hello again, Sister dear…have you been busy?"

Ulsa smiled as she regarded the man sitting in full lotus posture on

a block of choral at the other end of the tide pool setting.

Anri. Your timing could hardly be more perfect.

"Jesus, O' Lord…" David growled from between clenched teeth,

"Deliver me from the sorcerous enchantments of these Heathen witches…"

"Are you, by any chance, perhaps referring to me?" the voice from

very near where he lay responded in a gently mocking manner, "Oh my…we

really are going to have to work on that, aren't we?"

"Damn you…" David snarled as he tried to sit back up, only to blink

his eyes as the sun played tricks with the lighting and made him turn his

head in surprise as he caught the silhouette of the seated Anri.

"Good day to you, young sir," Anri said mildly, "I hear that you've

been giving my sister some difficulty. Is there some way in which I might

mediate a truce between you?"

"Who…who are you?" David asked, raising a hand to shield his eyes

against the blinding sun's rays.

"Not really the question," Anri replied, "But who are you, Ban Lo?

A puppet prince or a swan in the shape of a Kirin? The smell of blood on

your hands would greatly offend your father, though the Kyledor that I know

would have been even more offended by the coarse manners that you've been

learning from your nominal guardian. I think it is time at last for you to

be Baptized in the proper way as befits the teaching of my former cousin."

David pushed himself to his feet and stared in confusion, finding it

hard to look away as there was something about this new arrival that was

most uncanny…and compelling.

"Baptism," he said aloud, "But I've already been baptized…"

"Not the way I do it," Anri said with a gentle smile, "But don't

worry…class is now in session and this is where we begin the teaching and

the healing."

"I…I don't understand," David admitted as he felt the rage and anger

melt away from him inexplicably, to be filled with a dawning sense of awe

that took away his ordinary fears and replaced them with something more akin

to a holy rapture.

"Well, I suppose that's as good a place as any where to start," Anri

said in gentle humor, "Admitting one's ignorance is the first step towards

enlightenment, but when I am done with you it will be most plain just how

much you have yet to learn, Ban Lo…and I assure you by the end of this day

you will learn the true meaning of repentance and forgiveness…"

If he survives the teaching process that is, dear Brother.

"Well, of course there's always that," Anri conceded, "But I never

promised anyone a rose garden who came to me as a student. In fact the

measure of trust and sacrifice are the guiding poles that mark this

classroom, and graduation is as far away as the Day of Judgment and final

reckoning, which begins for us now even if the events themselves are set

into the far future."

"I…what?" David asked in growing confusion as he saw Amalthea bow to

the man with hands raised in petition as though offering a prayer to the

Buddha. He regarded this fair-haired stranger more cautiously and with a

wary frown said, "I am not afraid of you."

"Yet you mean," Anri said leaning forward, "But you will be…oh

yes…you will be…"

And the very confidence of his expression by itself caused David to

feel a chill run down his spine, and all at once he grasped for something

familiar to take hold of, only to find his crucifix was missing, the most

prized of all of his possessions.

"Looking for this?" Anri asked as he held up that very thing in one

hand, "Symbols of man's vanity, the pretence of faith and devotion

masquerading behind a veneer of genial idolatry. You will hardly need this

at this stage of your learning."

"Give that back to me!" David cried, only to see the man make a

slight motion that caused it to vanish.

"All in good time, and only after you have earned the right," Anri

replied, "Shall be begin, then? And let us hope you measure up to the

caliber of my last student, who even as we speak is moving ahead to the next

phase of her own enlightenment."

David balled his fists and looked quite determined to force his

demands upon the issue, but Anri just smiled at the challenge and waited for

the younger man to make the first move, which would begin the pain and

humiliation of teaching this brash young fellow not to rush into things or

be quite so impulsive as he was hardly the passive sort like his sister and

was more than ready to show off his own brand of righteous retribution…

"What?" Yagyo reacted with a start, "What did you just say about

those men you dispatched to the Tendo household?"

"That they have not yet reported in," John replied, "In fact they

missed their last three call points, and the only solid message that we have

received was the one that came in a while ago that said that the Tendo house

was empty and that our assault teams were standing by to await further

orders.

Yagyu said a few choice words then turned to his fellow mercenaries

and said simply, "Otono-san isn't going to like this."

"You call that news, Pard'ner?" the Preacher said while cleaning his

guns with an oil-cloth, "Told'ja it was a mistake to leave this to amateurs.

Shoulda sent us in to do the job proper."

"That was hardly the point," John replied, "Otono-san dispatched the

assault teams to do preliminary recon, but they had standing orders to take

the Tendos out if they could be located. Obviously our intel was somewhat

lacking since no one was home…but it's just as obvious that the place was

hardly undefended."

"Otono-san should have listened to me," the American-born Geoffrey

Taylor fretted as he stood pensively observing Tokyo from the vantage of the

nearby window, "My Justifiers could have taken them down the moment they

landed in Nerima…but no, he had to trust his own team of mercenaries, and

now the advantage of surprise is lost and the enemies of God know that we

have them under observation."

"No one is faulting your people in this, Taylor-san," John remarked,

"But the point is well taken. The Amakuzen have been set back once again by

underestimating the opposition, so the next assault will have to be better

planned and coordinated. The team we send in next will need to be headed by

one or more of us, and to hell with keeping a low profile this close to

Judgement Day. Let the locals make of it what they will, all that matters

to us is the neutralizing of the primary targets."

"That sounds a bit harsh even for you, John," Yagyu noted, "Living

up to your handle as the Puritan hardly means having to go in with all guns

blazing."

"On the contrary, Jubei ol' sod," the Preacher smiled crookedly,

making a point to snap his six-shooter colts into a ready-cocked position,

"Going in for the kill is exactly what's needed to get the Lord's attention

and make him aware of what we're doing on His righteous behalf. It's

half-hearted baby-steps like what we've been taking until now that's the

reason why we've been suffering all these set-backs."

"I am forced to agree with my esteemed colleague on this," Taylor

said grimly, "It's time to get serious and notch things up to another level.

We won't accomplish anything if we keep things proportional…and besides,

if we make enough noise the next time around then we're bound to smoke out

our real enemies, the Furies. Mark me well the threat those bitches pose to

us is infinitely greater than anything some schoolgirl harlot living in the

suburbs can mount at this late juncture."

"You Baptists are full of noise," Yagyu sniffed, "All sound and

fury, signifying nothing."

"I beg to differ, Suh," the Preacher said snidely, "Brother Taylor

need hardly take that from the likes of ya'all since you got personally

bested by that hot tottie when you tried taking her out by yourself the

other day, if memory serves rightly."

Yagyu scowled, "I underestimated her. She was faster than I would

have imagined possible, almost inhuman. I've never been taken down that

easily by an opponent…or else I wouldn't be here today. Good thing for me

she wasn't as blood thirsty as certain backwoods gaijin that I could

mention…not that I mean anything disrespectful by that, of course,

Preacher-san."

"Go to hell," the Preacher snorted, "We'll see how quick she is when

I go gunnin' for her. Ain't met the tramp or fancy martial arts type who

could laugh off a .45 when it's pointed at their gizzard."

"Don't get cocky," John said, "That was Yagyu's mistake and it cost

him. I expect that we'll be on our edge and have better luck if we

coordinate our attacks to afford them no opportunity at either defense or a

counterstrike. Otono-san is depending on us to carry the day, and he'll

expect results to match our skills…or else he may just wind up giving the

job to one of those other groups he has on his payroll?"

"You mean the Freak show?" the Preacher sniffed, "Don't need them

Circus clowns to do a man's job. Just a man with his faith in the Lord and

his hand on a Peacekeeper will be all it takes to quiet things down and see

to it these Sinners are sent on to their eternal rest in Purgatory so's that

the Lord's Plan can move ahead unimpeded."

"And if any other minions of Satan should try and thwart the Lord's

mission?" Taylor asked.

"We deal with them appropriately," the Puritan replied, "Quickly,

decisively and with finality."

Yagyu continued to regard his compatriots dubiously as he said,

"Just don't forget to pack enough firepower this time. I'm still smarting

from the bruises I took, and I've got a nasty feeling that this won't be

quite the picnic that you boys seem to imagine."

"I find your lack of faith disturbing, Pard'ner," the Preacher said

snidely, flashing his guns for show as he said, "Take it from me, these

polecats will be in the ground before they can see another sunset. My God's

a mighty God and he won't take sheep from nobody."

Yagyu felt tempted to say that he strongly suspected that the man

had greater faith in his weapons than he did in his god…assuming that there

was any difference…but before he had a chance to bait the fellow he felt a

tell-tale buzzing in one of his fake molars, which caused him to bite his

tongue and keep his silence for the moment, realizing that he had a "higher

calling" of his own that needed attending right away, preferably well out of

sight of his nominal "colleagues."

As soon as he was able to find a place by himself to open a channel

to his contact he would have to be reporting in to his real employer.

Hanging out with vermin like Taylor and the Preacher was starting to

seriously grate on his nerves after all, and even someone as nominally

stable as John the Puritan was beginning to unnerve him, especially the

casual way in which they were contemplating mass genocide for his country.

Of course being watched as closely as he was would be a problem, but

nothing that Jubei Yagyu could not handle. Thankfully the annoying presence

of Chuisitsu was no longer hanging over his head since she was presently

spending "quality time" with Lord Otono. His true feelings regarding her

were a confusing mix of annoyance and concern that he usually hid under a

mask of stoical indifference, and he would rather not have to take her out

if it could be avoided since she seemed to be the one who most distrusted

him and went out of her way looking for reasons to put him in a bad light

with Otono.

But time was critical now and the deadline was advancing too rapidly

for there to be any mistakes when dealing with this crew. If millions of

lives were to be spared the living hell that Otono and his Amakuzen were

contemplating then Yagyu would have to be on his guard and hope for the

opportunity to throw a real monkey wrench into the program.

In thinking on that he wondered briefly about the absent Saotome

Nabiki. What exactly was it about her that made her such a threat to these

people that they would be going so far out of their way in trying to

neutralize her? His confrontation with her proved that she was definitely

not one to be underestimated, but still…she was just a kid, and as talented

as she was there was no way that he could see for her to pose a threat to

Otono, whom Yagyu already knew from personal experience was more demon than

man for all his pretensions to Christian solidarity.

Just what was it about her that was worth all of this fuss, and how

could she be a significant factor in all of these events? It was a question

that troubled him greatly…and one that he had the uncanny sense would

shortly be answered in ways that he presently could not hope to imagine…

"Shampoo," Ukyo said in mildly disbelieving tones to her beloved

co-wife, "I can't believe that you're taking this so calmly…that you of all

people could just be sitting here mildly while off out there Nab-chan and

that Asamiya girl…"

"What you think Shampoo should be doing about it, Ukyo-chan?" her

purple haired companion asked while taking a sip from her tea and observing

the native dancers enacting something called the "Dance of a Thousand Veils"

for the benefit of herself and the other guests sitting around the fire

within the main tent, "What Airen teacher say make perfect sense, and

Shampoo no accomplish anything by acting in way that she would if Airen

actually is cheating on Shampoo and Shampoo wives and husband."

"You mean this doesn't count as cheating?" Perfume asked, unable to

help being more than a little distracted herself as she watched the dancer

disrobe one silk scarf at a time, with the promise of a considerable payoff

in the end that was forthcoming.

"What was all that stuff about you doing this because some Amazon in

the past decided to share her guy with another woman?" Ranma wondered, doing

his own part to pretend that he too was not interested in seeing the

dancer's vigorous motions and inevitable progression.

"Is like Airen teacher say," Shampoo calmly replied, "Is old legend,

much-much honored among Amazons. Shampoo always want to feel like part of

story, even as little girl. Is partly why Shampoo agree to be in group

marriage in first place…because special love among Amazons is love of

sisters who do anything for one another."

"Yeah, I know those old legends too, but still…" Perfume reluctantly

shrugged and glanced away from the dancer in the general direction in which

Nabiki and Saki had been headed together.

"I get you, Sugar," Ukyo scowled, "It ain't easy to just be sitting

here while off a few hundred meters away Nabchan and that Saki girl are

doing the nasty together."

"What I don't get is Nabiki herself going along with this," Ranma

scowled, "It ain't like she ever even tried to cheat on us before. I

thought I knew her better than that, that she'd never even think about doing

it with another woman besides you girls."

"Don't be that way, Master," Latisha urged as she poured Ranma a

drink of some of the fruity beverage that the lord Reka-her father-had

ordered to be served to those guests who did not mind the way it made the

room swim like the sea all around them, "It's really for everyone's benefit,

and you know that Asamiya Saki is an honorable girl who is only going along

with this because she knows that it will benefit everyone in the end."

"Very true," Nagisha nodded sagely while pouring another glass for

herself and her fellow elementals, "We ourselves do not fully understand the

dynamics involved, but we can appreciate that what the lady Trudy intends is

something more than just a mild sexual encounter."

"Yeah?" Ukyo turned to the earth elemental, "And how do you know

that, Sugar?"

"We know because we're observing everything that's going on in that

secluded tent," Karina informed them, "Or didn't you notice Latisha's been

absent from our group for the past few minutes?"

"Say what?" Perfume reacted, "You mean…she's spying on Nabiki and

that Saki woman?"

"Not exactly," Sobriel replied, "She can't quite get close enough to

actually watch what's going on, but she's been reporting back everything

that she can from just outside the tent. Hey, she's a Water elemental after

all, and this is a desert, so where else do you expect her to be but in the

watering hole that's being fed by a local hot springs on this volcano?"

"You mean she take hot bath by moonlight?" Shampoo remarked while

observing that the dancer was in the process of discarding the last of her

garments, "Sound good to Shampoo. Maybe she take bath before we go to

bed…could use one after long and sweaty day worrying for Airen."

"I hear you there, Sugar," Ukyo agreed, patting her distended belly,

"And if there's one thing this pregnant gal could stand right now is to feel

a whole lot less grungy…whoah! You just see that, Sugar?"

"A…hah?" Perfume said in distracted tones as she stared at the now

buck-naked dancer finishing up her athletic solo.

"Man…does she have to shave herself like that every day?" Ranma

asked in amazement, which earned him half-annoyed glances from his immediate

female companions, some of whom were contemplating providing him with a

blind-fold.

Reka clapped his hands as the dancer took her much-deserved bow then

said, "Excellent, Fatima. You have come near to perfecting the choreography

of your interpretive rendition…but next time do not be quite so formal in

structuring your movements. Dance is best appreciated when the performer

lets go of herself and allows the emotions of the moment to fully take over.

It keeps the performance fresh and new without becoming old, dull and

stale with repetition."

He leaned back on his divan and held out his ramshorn wine-cup for

the girl named Tara to refill, but as before he disdained taking a sip from

his vessel, and it belatedly occurred to Ranma and the other that none of

them had seen him actually drink from the cup for the whole entire evening.

It was more as if he did it for show rather than to actually consume the

beverage, and this reminded one of his earlier claims not to require solid

food or drink in order to sustain himself.

Quite obviously, given the quality of the tasty brew itself, it was

a discipline that he adhered to with rigorous devotion since he had also

abstained from eating any of the magnificent fare that had been served to

his guests and the rest of his traveling retainers.

Ranma scowled as he regarded his nominal "father-in-law" and said,

"There's something I'm not getting in all of this. What's your take in all

of this? Why are you helping us? Why'd you get us out of our house when

you did, and offer to set Nabiki and Saki up for this business?"

"Why not?" Reka asked him.

"Is that an answer, Sugar?" Ukyo wondered while observing the way in

which the now-naked performer calmly set about regathering her discarded

silken garments.

"Yes it is," Reka replied, then casually added, "Oh, it may not be

the answer that you expect or think would be appropriate, but in the end is

it not that we do that which we think is for the best? So…why should I not

be doing what I am doing? After all, there was nothing to be gained in

allowing that attach upon your house to go ahead as your enemies had

intended that it should. As good as you are, none of you is entirely proof

against the modern weaponry of high-powered assault rifles."

"Good point," Perfume said, "I'm more than a little disturbed to

think that I didn't observe anything."

"Oh, it had not begun by the time that my wife spirited you away

from there," Reka answered, "But I knew that it would be forthcoming. It

was as predictable as human malice this notion of your enemies to strike

cowardly from hiding and at a distance, offering you no opportunity to fight

back or to make a proper accounting of yourself. That is the way that

weaklings seek to overcome their betters rather than to stand like a man and

face your enemy, to challenge him in a contest that determines who is the

better warrior. It is but one of many reasons why the race had declined so

badly, that cowardly men should seek to take unfair advantage of the trust

of men who still believe in honor and nobility, as antiquated as those

notions might seem in this sordid present."

"Shampoo think she know what Red-man say," the Amazon said with a

sage nod of her head, "Amazons train whole life to become best warriors, but

live under shadow of Communist government who no think much of who is

strongest and would send in armies to crush Nyanchiczu if no for wisdom of

Elders like Great Grandmother, who find way of keeping them at distance."

"Eh?" the young-seeming Cologne remarked as she looked up from the

private conversation that she and Siren the Archmage had been sharing

together, "Ah…yes…that has been a major concern for us, always having to

remind the men in Beijing that we Amazons are watching them and are hardly

the backwater bumpkins that they take us to be, though if they ever did

believe that we posed a threat to their rule over China they would seek to

erase us utterly with the full force of the People's Army."

"A good thing not all of us are concentrated in just one area,"

Siren observed, "Generations ago we began seeding certain select agents

among the general population as a means of counterbalancing the intelligence

forces of China, who have the odd notion that we are the ones who have been

penetrated by their agents. Though I'm not usually privy to the activities

of the council, I do my part to keep abreast of things…speaking of which…"

she added, eyeing Cologne significantly and making a great show of ogling

the exposed portions of the Matriarch's cleavage.

Cologne made a show for her part of looking properly annoyed with

her exposure, and she glanced a bit resentfully towards the Lord Reka, who

merely grinned back as if to say, "Reap what you sow, Woman," as if

relishing her plight which was the result of his own insistence in her

present confirmation to the "Arabian Nights" dress code of the evening.

"I'm kind of wondering about this stuff you were saying earlier

about guys like us supposedly resembling what human beings were like in the

old days," Ranma noted, "Is that for real? I mean…did everybody used to

know stuff like what we take for granted?"

"Among your family group, Son-in-law?" Reka nodded, "Indeed…you are

a representation of what was once the natural state of human kind in the

days of old Lemuria and Atlantis. Back then every member of the human

strain of what is now called Homo-Sapiens belonged to the group-mind of the

Ancients, and all who lived could access their own potential. This changed

because of the fall…of the time of the Chaos Wars when men blackened their

souls and became corrupted by the spreading tide of Chaos. Then Atlantis

fell…the last remnant of a once dominant empire, and humanity fell into

barbarism and darkness for an age…the age in which my brothers and I have

been the guardians of the race. We Eluini are the caretakers of humanity,

the ones who remember that which was once the former glory of our species.

Eluini…the Unforgotten…of whom we Daokan are the kings and silently

acknowledged Masters. We keep alive the flame of the ancient knowledge and

use what we know to protect the world from the darkness of Ariman and his

monstrous kinfolk."

"Doesn't seem like you've done all that great a job of keeping us

safe and cozy, Sugar," Ukyo snorted, "I mean…no offense, but just take a

look at the world…all the riots, famine, crime and disease…"

"Indeed," Reka replied, "And I appreciate your blunt honesty, nor do

I take offense at your pointing out the obvious fact of our tacit failure as

guardians in keeping mortals safe against the darkness. The one flaw in our

nature is that we are not truly lords and masters over humanity. We are

bound to observe a code of manifest non-interference, to accord to humanity

the right of free will, the power to set your own destinies and choose your

own fates rather than have your paths be chosen by us. We cannot protect

humanity against its own capacity for folly…we cannot defend against

stupidity and corruption. We must sit back and observe as humans make poor

choices and screw up our world in ways that you can hardly begin to

imagine."

"Like letting people fall into cults and behave like lunatics in the

service of a fanatic?" Perfume asked.

"Precisely," Reka nodded, "Oh, make no mistake about it, I have no

real ambitions about correcting the problem myself. Unlike Anri I know

better than to masquerade in the role of a teacher seeking to impart wisdom

to the general masses. I do not have the kind of faith in humanity that he

persists in entertaining. I have far greater faith in the belief in human

frailty and weakness, of humanity's endless capacity for duplicity and

self-indulgence. I do not encourage these vices but neither do I condemn

them since it is the condition of being mortal that enforces such

pettiness…and it would be like condemning a brute animal because he does not

appreciate art, music and science."

"Kinda harsh there, doncha think, Sugar?" Ukyo asked, "If you think

that little of ordinary people…"

"On the contrary, Saotome-san," Reka's eyes flashed with something

akin to irritation, "I care a great deal more for human life than you might

well imagine. Of course I regard the condition of mortality itself to be a

vice more than an illness, but unless a man is willing to brave the path of

truth and knowledge he can hardly be condemned for being short-sighted and

petty. What you and your loved ones represent is the path of the Warrior

who quests for self-improvement, who takes the risks and braves the

challenges of the ego that are necessary to obtain true enlightenment. You

have begun the trek towards becoming fully human, which is a path that few

humans seem to undertake in this day and age of mindless distraction and

empty entertainment. You have embraced the knowledge that the truth is out

there, and you have refused to bury your heads in the Mara of illusion by

complacently accepting the world around you as it seems. This is why I

believe that you and your loved ones are worth protecting and

cultivating…for you in I see the promise of better days to come, the spark

that might well rekindle the flame in the souls of those who realize that

there is a higher truth beyond the flesh…that there is a way to integrate

the mind, body and spirit into a gestalt that may well convert an average

man into an Eluini…to discover the potential within and to pass awareness of

this unto others."

"Unlike those who merely assume the truth to be revealed to certain

select individuals," Latisha replied, "Who depend upon an intermediary to

tell them the mind of God rather than to search for that knowledge within

themselves, right father?"

"Indeed so, Child," Reka said somberly, "And so you may rest easy

for a time within my company, for I will offer you what benefits I may for

this single evening of solitude, for in the morning you must return to the

world you know and brace yourselves once again for the antipathy of the

Amakuzen Christians."

"You really don't much like Christians in general, do you, Sugar?"

Ukyo asked.

"Oh, it is not them so much that I dislike as the thought of anyone

who seeks an easy, safe journey through life and who expects the universe to

bend over backwards in order to satisfy their every need," Reka said

dismissively, "Many religions are fatalistic by nature and encourage passive

acceptance of the present from their minions on order to pacify and quell

their restless urgings, which I regard as a form of moral cowardice. My

respect is given only to those who are genuine seekers of enlightenment and

knowledge…those who do not accept easy answers or expect simple ones to

complex problems and situations. I prefer a man who dwells upon the nature

of his own spirituality and seeks to open his mind to discovering that which

he already knows to be the truth. I have nothing but contempt for those who

avert their eyes from unpleasant truths because they are too unsettling.

Give me a man of integrity who faces his own demons and embraces his faults

without flinching."

"Talking about yourself maybe, Reka-dear?" Veragar spoke up,

interrupting her relative silence during the bulk of this conversation,

"You'll have to forgive him, he's his own favorite subject."

"Wife…" Reka said in a mildly annoyed tone of voice, glancing at the

green-haired hostess of the evening with a much-suffering expression.

"On the plus side he does have a lot to talk about there," Veragar

continued, oblivious to her husband's sour demeanor, "Obviously I should

think so since I married him, but you should really talk with some of our

traveling companions and followers for a more-or-less objective opinion.

After all, everyone here was drawn to our camp from some other road of life

that left them bereft of other purpose. Reka is more like a shepherd and

guardian to these people than the imperious lord and master that he likes to

pretend he is, and no one who walks with us in our travels can deny that he

does have his heart in the right place, regardless of how he likes to

bluster about with an attitude as volatile as this volcano."

"Vera…" Reka ominously rumbled.

"Y'know, that's something that I've been wondering about," Ukyo

remarked, "How did you two get hooked up in the first place? I mean…you're

obviously pretty powerful people, but you seem so…different, like total

opposites…"

"Like Red and Green you mean?" Veragar chuckled softly, "Don't let

appearances deceive you. Radagar and I are much alike in as many ways as we

differ. You see…we once both worked together for the same evil master until

we came to a parting of the ways with Lord Satanos, at which point we

declared for one another…"

"Satanos?" Ranma arched an eyebrow.

"A dark Eluini Master of deceit and deception," Veragar replied, "A

reincarnated version of the Lord of Chaos who once slew my husband's father

in pitched battle, known then as Uta-Hamash. Oh, don't let the name confuse

you into thinking he was Satan. There really is no one devil or demon who

goes by that name, though it's very popular in the Underworld set. Gives

whoever takes the title a sense of importance you know, even though the

first one who used the title is long since in retirement and doesn't like to

be reminded that he was once in league with a far greater evil than the

mythical Satan ever was, the Old One known as Ahriman the Unmaker…"

"You mean the real bad guy in all of this?" Perfume asked.

"Oh yes," Veragar said, raising her own cup even though she had yet

to drink from it the whole evening, "Ahriman is very much the devil that

people only imagine the original Satan to be. He is alien to everything

that lives within this cosmos, and yet he works through intermediaries and

pawns to obtain a following that can spread his vile influence throughout

the worlds that fall under his dominion. Some know him as a monster, but to

many gullible types he is a god who promises universal salvation at the

price of their eternal souls. Truly a monstrous deceiver to make the

Satanos whom we followed seem like little more than a paltry door-to-door

salesman, a huckster. It makes me wonder what either of us was thinking

about to have hooked up with him even temporarily, though in all truth I

tired of his influence long before Reka. I just hung around because by that

time I was very much drawn to his cranky imperious presence…"

"Veragar…" Reka all but sighed her name with exasperation.

"You mean you used to be bad guys?" Shampoo asked.

"It was just a phase we were going through," Veragar made a show of

examining her emerald nail polish, "A bit of rebelliousness that comes from

time-to-time with the boredom that immortality sometimes forces even upon

the enlightened. I dabbled in villainy because the dark side seemed to

offer a quick and easy path to self-amusement…but it was only after I had

done many things that I have since come to regret that I started to tally up

the human cost of what I was doing. With Reka it was somewhat different…he

was rebelling against his allegiance to his brothers and trying out for the

part of the Bad Boy. It was later when we both came to our senses that we

remembered the all-important lesson that there are other people in the world

besides ourselves, and that was when we discovered each other and set about

on our purpose of wandering the worlds in search of novelty and adventure."

"Neither of which seem much in short supply whenever you are

around," Reka grumbled, though he did so in a thoughtful manner, glancing

away from his wife and resting his chin on a fist as though as much bemused

as vexed by her behavior.

"Is that why you invited us to join you, Sugar?" Ukyo asked,

"Because you found us amusing?"

"Well, that and the fact that you had little Latisha here in your

company, which practically makes you all like family," Veragar smiled

girlishly as she leaned forward and gave the Salamander Queen a radiant

study, "She is one of my husband's various progeny that he has seeded over

the thousands of years of his existence, but she is very dear to him

nonetheless, and when we both learned that she had settled down and was

taking a husband…"

"Ah…" Ranma winced slightly, while Latisha herself blushed crimson

and glanced down with a smile that made her seem altogether quite girlishly

human.

"Which reminds me," Veragar said more eagerly, "Have you decided

what to name the baby? Being half-Japanese as she is I can imagine that

you'll want something colloquial, perhaps having to do with fire as a theme.

Of course I wouldn't blame you if you named her for your mother, who was

such a dear in the old days, even though I never really met her…"

"Woman," Reka growled, but before he could continue this line of

thought he paused and turned his head to one side, then said, "It is

beginning."

"Wha…?" Ranma said in surprise, and then more loudly as he felt a

quivering in the air, "N-Nani?"

"Whoah…" Perfume's eyes went wide, then she turned to her co-wives

and said, "Did you guys just feel that?"

"Mommy?" Fragrance glanced to the side with a childishly confused

expression that was the mirror image of her own parents.

"Not quite," Lylac murmured softly into her sister's ear, though she

too had a look of faint distraction while glancing off in the same direction

as her father-mother had vanished.

"Aiyaa…" Shampoo murmured in faint wonder, "What is this thing make

Shampoo feel all tingly inside?"

"Can you not guess at the source, woman?" Reka turned and nodded to

Veragar, who nodded back in affirmation, then vanished in a verdant colored

halo

"What's going on?" Ranma asked, then in a more astonished tone, "Is

it…is it Nabiki?"

"In a manner of speaking, yes," Tara spoke up with a pleasantly

amused demeanor as she turned and regarded the Saotome clan, "She and

Asamiya Saki have attained synchronization. Their body rhythms are

achieving harmonic resonance and their souls are vibrating in concert waves.

In a word they are becoming as one and awakening the spark of the Eluini

that dwells within them."

Outside of the tent Veragar reappeared and confronted the place

where she felt the two young teenagers were attaining rhapsodic harmony, and

without a moment's hesitation she knelt down and placed her hand against the

volcanic sand and caused a pattern to form in the ground surrounding the

smaller tent in which it happened. A protective barrier thus formed, she

stood back and admired the way that the tent radiated an internal light that

was softly enthusing from within with the consummate joy of two young people

finding within each other a true soul mate. It reminded her a bit of her

own younger days (far too much history since then to wish to tabulate the

actual count of centuries) when she had known such blissfully innocent joy,

very different from that which she enjoyed with her present husband. It was

indeed a delight just to bask in such a radiance, the more so since she knew

that what was being given form here would have long-lasting consequences

well unto the future.

She was not a bit surprised to find the Saotome clan was rushing out

into the night in order to investigate the phenomenon, but all of them came

to an abrupt halt well short of encountering the barrier that Veragar was

maintaining. The husband and wives, plus the concubine elementals and

infant daughters were watching in amazement as the very air within the

circle vibrated, and an awed hush fell over them for a moment as each in

turn felt something of that light reach out to them and touch their very

soul-cores.

Finally after a long silence Ranma managed to say, "What…what's

going on in there?"

"I dunno, Sugar," Ukyo remarked, "But whatever it is I gotta feeling

we oughta be more jealous."

"Aiyaa," Shampoo nodded faintly.

"Oh, you'll all find out soon enough," a voice startled them from

very close nearby, "When each of you takes your turn getting the

treatment…and believe me, having lived through it, you can't imagine what it

feels like until you've done it with a Shaloe-Ahl master."

The woman introduced to them earlier as Carla Rodriguez stepped out

from the relative shadows of the night to pay them her regards, and as each

one there studied the American in the faux-Arabian Nights attire they could

see the odd smirk that she was wearing that was faintly both admiring and

resentful as though she knew full well just what was going on inside that

tent but was deliberately sparing of the details.

"Ah…Rodriguez-san," Perfume said faintly, waving a hand towards the

tent and saying, "What…I mean…how…?"

"You'll find out soon enough," Carla touched the Amazon with a

finger to her lips and gave her a knowing expression before turning to Ukyo

and adding, "Why spoil the surprise in advance? After all, if I told you

then it wouldn't be as effective."

"It's that powerful?" Ukyo arched her eyebrows, then with a voice

that shook with what could best be described as nervous dread she added,

"Even more…than the Kama-Senken?"

"Actually it's more like the Kama-Senken redoubled and multiplied

over by a hundred fold," Carla smirked, turning to give her full regards

towards Ranma, "Your sexual technique for awakening the pleasure-Chi centers

within the human body has given this round of the Awakening more potency

than even the time when Trudy and I first shared it together. And bravo for

developing it…I can't wait to try it out on Carrot top once I get her alone

after all of this is over."

"Ah…" Ranma felt nervous as he felt the glances his wives,

concubines and daughters were turning his way, "Is it…really that good for

them?"

"Oh yeah," the American said wryly, "Though actually they're not yet

all the way to the consummation phase. They're still working their way

through the foreplay, it'll take a while yet before Trude thinks they're

ready for actual copulation."

"Foreplay?" Perfume almost squeaked out the word, then turned a

dismayed look towards the tent, "They got this far using just the Foreplay?"

"Aiyaa…!" Shampoo murmured in wonder, and this time she actually

seemed to really mean it.

"So…this is what it means to be a practitioner of the Shaloe-Ahl,"

Cologne said with a thoughtful tone as she studied the distant tent with a

faintly abstracted expression.

Siren leaned closer to the Indigo-haired matriarch and murmured,

"Kinda gives you something to look forward to, doesn't it, Darling?" to

which in response Cologne looked appropriately wide-eyed and nervous.

"Come along, you," Tara urged, surfacing among the crowd of gawking

onlookers as though assuming the role of chaperone by default, "Nothing to

see here, back to your tents, and everyone go about just as if nothing

exceptional were happening here. And that goes for the rest of you," she

said to the Saotomes even as a gathering of partygoers outside their little

circle was breaking up with a collective sigh of, "Ahhh…!"

"Guess there really ain't much we can do just standing around out

here," Ukyo reluctantly concluded, adding softly, "But Nabchan better have a

good account for herself ready when we see her…"

"Aiyaa," both Shampoo and Perfume remarked in chorus.

Ranma felt reluctant to leave, even when Latisha took him by the

hand and urged him to return with her to the main tent, but he was

distracted a moment later when Sharil, popped up looking as though she had

just come from a nice hot bath and had even manifested the semblance of a

towel about her body that fell just short of her crotch, no doubt for the

benefit of her Master.

"Where have you been off to?" Nagisha asked, "I thought you were

supposed to be watching Nabiki."

"I tried to, but I got kicked out by that American lady," Sharil

answered, looking mildly disconcerted about it, "I did what I could to keep

an eye on things…but as near as I can tell so far they really haven't

started up into anything. They've just been standing around facing each

other for the past hour, and their hands are barely even touching the skin."

"They what?" Karina asked.

"Are you sure it's been nothing more than that?" Sobriel asked,

"Just touching?"

"Well, that and moving vast amounts of Chi energy around in each

others bodies," Sharil shrugged, "Other than that…there's not that much that

I can tell you."

"Interesting," Latisha mused, "Then perhaps there is a great deal

more to this than simple sexual congress. In any event I myself intend to

discover the truth…eventually. But for now…coming Master?"

"Ah…not just yet," Ranma said with unintentional irony, frowning

slightly as he said, "You know, I don't know why I'm not a whole heck of a

lot more upset about this. After all, that's my wife in there doing it with

another woman…"

"Ah yes, Women," Reka mused as he came to stand over the shoulder of

the younger man, "The Glory of the world, the paragon of creation, and a

most intriguing mystery that even I, for all my years, have yet to

penetrate…though at times I am moved to wonder if they are as much a curse

as a blessing."

"We think the same thing about you men, Husband, and quite

frequently," Veragar said with a pleasantly humorous lilt to her voice while

she pivoted on one heel and began to saunter back towards the tend,

deliberately exaggerating her hip movements as though to shake her rather

ample and well-formed posterior in his direction.

Despite themselves both Reka and Ranma could not help but watch the

green-haired woman's teasing body-gestures, but then they both shook loose

from her spell and Reka made a point of ruffling Ranma's dark hair while

saying, "Pay it no heed, Son-in-law. This is all for the best, and on a

primal level you already know this."

"Yeah, but still…" Ranma said with some lingering reluctance, but

this time allowed himself to be drawn along by his ever-insistent elemental

ladies.

"Indeed, all is going quite well," Reka mused to himself when the

younger man had utterly vanished into the tent, and he smiled all the more

as he added, "And if I judge my daughter rightly you will be too busy for

the remainder of the night to pay much heed to what goes on with your wife

and her new Mistress. But then again, who could be faulted to indulge in so

much beauty?"

He turned a sober glance towards the tent where Nabiki and Saki were

still at it and said, "Soon, my brother, you shall know what these mortals

are capable of achieving on their own…and perhaps then I shall have some

real entertainment. In the meantime…guard them well and see to it that they

are undisturbed until the morning, daughter."

A figure of ebony night emerged from beyond the edge of the

encampment and said, "It will be as you say, Father. After all…I find these

mortals most curiously attractive."

"Glad to know that you are enjoying the show," Reka mused, "Now, if

you will excuse me, I must go see to it that your mother behaves herself for

the remainder of the evening. She has been a little too free in dispensing

that Red Lotus juice in the Saotomes' wine cups, and by now it ought to be

having quite a pronounced effect on their libidos."

"Sounds like quite a party," the girl who emerged from the night

remarked with sage amusement, "If I'd known it would be this fun I would

have invited Eris over so we could have our own bit of celebrating."

"Later on that, Kali," Reka urged, "But for now…maintain your post

and give me a full account of your actions in the morning."

"Is it my actions you wish to know about, Father…or those of your

guests?" the woman of night chuckled, but Reka did not respond to his

daughter's baiting and rather headed back towards the tent, confident that

this night would be filled with merriment and much interesting diversions…

Meanwhile within the tent proper Nabiki and Saki were discovering a

whole new plane and dimension of sensual, tactile and spiritual awakening as

they stood facing each other with hands moving to trace the flow of energy

that each could sense within the others being. Fingers caressing

nerve-clusters, freeing blocked channels and opening up new levels of

resonance, the power contained within their bodies was unfettered and

free-flowing. It was like discovering a whole new world of sight and sound

through the contact of their bodies, and the more that they explored the

more that they appreciated how much they had yet to know. It was far more

intimate than any regular sexual interaction might achieve, and far from

conventional in the way it opened them out to one another in a way that

transcended the normal limits of flesh and physical matter.

For Nabiki the touch of Saki's body was like opening a map to the

path of destiny, for in her eyes Saki was like a universe unfolding to her

examination, filled with stars and comets of interlacing energy that filled

the empty space in-between as the gulf of night is filled with astral

forces. One caress by her fingers could set of supernova chain reactions

and cause Saki's very being to reel with the explosive force of a galaxy

being born. Every line of energy that coursed through her body was like a

river channel building up to flood tide as Nabiki explored and traced it

from source to tributary. The more that she explored the more Saki seemed

to come alive with pulsing dynamism as the very course of the starts was

altered within her mercurial arrangement, giving Nabiki the sense of total

command over the heightening crescendo of life that poured from Saki into

their immediate environs.

For Saki, a relative novice at this sort of game, the awakening of

her virginity meshed with the more experienced and confident attitude of

Nabiki as she, too, explored the reaches of an inner cosmos with the tips of

her fingers. To her awed mind it was like a total revelation to become

aware of another mind and person through the physical conduit of shared

sexuality, and even as she felt her own pleasure building at the contact she

could feel Nabiki caressing her skin as though the other woman was reaching

down to touch her very being, which made the sense of commingling essence

that much more intoxicating, and the more that she explored the more she

hungered to feast upon the sweet succoring flesh of her companion, whose

every gesture mirrored her own desires as though the impulses of one were

being fed to the hands of the other.

And sitting off to one side was Trudy, their mentor, nodding to

herself in silent satisfaction as the timeless ritual of the Awakening

proceeded on to its next progressive level. So far all was going quite well

and the two girls were opening up to one another to the extent that their

life-energies were meshing quite nicely, and soon they would progress beyond

this second phase onto the third stage of awareness. That was when the

fireworks really would begin, and already the girls did not need for her to

give them further instructions on what to do next. They acted now

instinctively as if they knew the path by rote, and gradually they were

becoming as one being and would move on quite naturally to the point of

Transition when their bodies and minds would be converted into energy, and

from there to a whole new level of physical being.

Seen objectively from outside of their merging the two girls seemed

to be almost motionless statues who faced each other with but a few inches

separating the tips of their breasts. Their hands alone were doing all of

the action and it might seem as though they were slowed to the state of

molasses for all the progress that they were making, roving up and down one

another's skin and fondling any place that took their fancy with an almost

possessive glee, in effect giving both themselves and each other the

benefits of a mutual masturbation. It was only when you moved you awareness

from the purely physical that what actually was transpiring became more

apparent.

For there were swirling discharges of seemingly random energy being

generated by sensuous exchanges. Life force-giving Manna was channeling up

like a geyser into the bare feet of these girls and was conducted up their

legs to their crotches, and from there up their spines to their heads,

filling their brains with Cthonic energies to balance out the downpour of

Astral force that was descending in an opposite charge from above to down

below in precisely the same manner as a lightning burst, the positive and

negative poles creating a circuit that was electrostatically charged in

nature.

As above so below went the old saying. To the Shaloe-Ahl this

ritual was known as "The Sword and the Dragon," the meshing of two Dragon

leins that coiled about the spine in the manner of twin serpents. The

Astral Energies of Heaven shared space with the Earth-based forces of raw

Manna and created a coil of swirling dynamism that transformed the body into

a generator of raw Prana, the processed form of Manna that was entirely

Psychic in nature.

The presence of two such poles in close proximity like this only

made the fusion of internal energies that much more fluid and dynamic. The

swirling columns of steadily intensifying energies correlated to the degree

of interaction that was taking place internally. Though the two girls

remained oblivious to the actual effect that their performance was creating

they were preternaturally aware of the rising tempo of the heat that was

burning within them, a fire that was demanding that they carry things to the

next level, which compelled them to close what remaining distance there was

in their relationship.

And so on their own they entered the third stage of their evolving

command of the power and brought their mouths together for a kiss that had

been long delayed throughout the evening, and from that point on continued

the consummation of their passion by meshing their bodies together and

completing the circuit. In this manner did the accumulated energies collide

and mesh as one, which resulted in a massive discharge of pent-up energies

that created a wave of sommanalic pressure that radiated outward in all

directions, contained only by the outer wall of the protective barrier that

had been erected about them.

This wave washed over Trudy, who felt its enormous impact and

reveled in the sensuality of true spiritual union. As many times as she had

supervised this process-or had memories of partaking in one in her other

existence-it never got old for her and always left her feeling refreshed

and renewed. These two were indeed quite promising candidates for the

treatment that they would be undergoing tonight, and already they were

moving ahead on their own without the need for further guidance.

And after this night the real training would begin in earnest, when

both of her students were trained and prepared to receive the benefits of

Shaloe-Ahl teaching. Their destinies had yet to be written, but soon the

Power would flow through them as it did with Trudy and Carla, and with more

Masters abroad in the world the goal of making the world a better place in

which to live would be one step closer to fulfillment. It was not just the

present crisis that she was thinking about but an undefined future that

women such as these would help to create and maintain, a future free of the

curse that Trudy was fighting against, a future that was all too vivid in

her memories and was all too easy to conjure up with her eyes closed.

It was a future worth fighting against, a future she sincerely meant

to prevent coming into existence, and perhaps with these two she would be a

step closer to avoiding that grim fate. After all, no one had a better

reason to fight for the future worth living in than ones who had an

investment in that very future? This really was a promising way to make a

new beginning, and to insure that it came about in the manner that she

preferred Trudy had come prepared for advancing the situation.

Namely by providing a handy pale full of water that she had set

aside in one corner of the tent for use at the appropriate moment when it

was safe to arrange a transformation, and once Nabiki was reverted to her

other self…well…Saki was certainly in for quite a pleasant surprise, and

what came of that…well…only the Power might know for certain, but Trudy was

willing to guess upon the outcome being quite fruitful and fulfilling.

But for now she was more than satisfied to enjoy the show these two

would be putting on with one another, reveling in their mutually shared

sexuality as Saki and Nabiki traded hungry kisses and caresses that would

surely lead soon to a wonderful climax, at the height of which the Power

would be kindled within them. For the rest of their natural lives this

moment would endure within their memories and shape their very being, and

when the time came for them to share with the rest of their mutual clan the

benefits of Shaloe-Ahl wisdom they were certain to relive the moment all

over again and again in an eternal dynamic that carried the Power of Life

from its root beginnings to the very first Shaloe-Ahl master, and from her

loins to the present in perfect continuity with the force of Eternity itself

linking them in a spiraling chain whose ultimate destination no mortal could

predict, though all who knew this would be in awe of the never-ending nature

of this endless dynamic.

And besides, these young kids might well have a thing or two to

teach their elders judging by the way that they were going at it, and Trudy

intended to take mental notes for when she and Carla were alone together,

the better to make amends with her partner and lover of many years standing.

At the very least it should help take Carla's mind away from questions of

what Trudy and Angelique were doing partnered together in a foreign country.

As if anything was needed to explain that Angelique was a law unto

her own peculiar nature, a fact Carla herself should know since Angel was

her "Ex" in a different lifetime, a fact that Trudy tried very hard not to

dwell upon since she had issues of her own upon that front, and besides…she

had to keep her mind very clear or else she might miss something significant

in the exchanges between Nabiki and Saki.

They really were getting into the spirit of the thing after all, and

with the Power to show them what to do and how to do it they were bound to

be at it a very long time well into the early morning. They really were

quite talented, especially given Nabiki's command of the Kama-Senken, an art

that Trudy was very much interested in learning for her own purposes,

especially as it might apply to soothing Carla's mind and sparing Trudy's

pert bottom from another vigorous spanking.

Always one to keep her priorities in mind she resolved to watch and

observe her students diligently, aroused by what she witnessed yet resolved

not to satisfy her own needs for the duration. After all a teacher had to

make some sacrifices for the sake of her students, and besides Carla would

kill her if she violated the Teacher-student thing while Carla herself went

without for the full of the evening.

Or so she imagined Carla would abstain anyway, though given the

range of "talent" that Lord Reka was providing…well…that was one direction

Trudy refused to allow her thoughts to drift towards since jealousy would

create a ripple, and no disturbance could be allowed at this sensitive

juncture as the two girls under her care were reaching the climax of their

initial encounter, with many more hot button moments yet to come, and Trudy

not wanting to miss a single ecstatic moment as these two screwed away well

into the late evening heedless of everything but the moment at hand, and

relishing the joy of discovering themselves in the arms of a partner who

shared with them the equally eternal quest for the ultimate orgasm…which

they would both reached together several times before their inevitable

exhaustion.

A moment well earned and expertly delivered, and soon in their place

would awaken a new Nabiki and Saki, and from their union of mutual desire

and consummation a whole new beginning would commence with the coming of the

morning…or the cock crowing if you will, or whatever other euphemism you

might care to employ just so long as the end result was with a part of

Nabiki's anatomy buried deep within the treasured depths of Saki's awaiting

vagina…

Continued.

Comments/Criticisms/Canned Noises from a Porn Movie:

shadowmane

Or: shadowmane9849

Or: shadowmane747

Sorry if that scene dragged on with such a scarcity of details, but

let's leave these lovers for now and journey on ahead to see what other

mischief is taking place within the Nabiki ½ universe as we arrive at the

long-awaited (by me anyway) 200th episode of the "Very Scary Thought" series

that I am tentatively titling: "Blowing Things Up/An Inflated Ego Thingie,"

or, "Love Among the Plastic Shadows…" or anything else I happen to think up.

Just be here for the unveiling and leave the title thing for the next

time…okay now?

Jim Robert Bader

4/28/05

X


	111. Chapter 111

Dnabiki200

Nabiki ½

"A Very Scary Thought"

by

Jim Robert Bader

(Inspired by the works of Rumiko Takahashi & Others,

with concepts and characters created by fellow fanfic writers

Wade Tritschler, DB Sommers, Nicole Manders, Andrew

Greaves, Bill Guiroff and countless others, including "Buffy"

creator Joss Whedon; with special thanks to my good pal

Shiva for his editing and handling of this series.)

(Certain other characters and concepts are of my own

innovation, including my interpretation of the Monster

of Mary Shelly's novel, the Furies, Trudy, Takaharis

Angelique d'Anjou, Anri and the Daokan, Thelendra

the Dream Weaver and various other guest stars

appearing in this portion of the Nabiki ½ series…)

Chapter Seventy-Six.

Episode Two Hundred.

Gathering Stormclouds

Time Patrol Central,

Nexus of Time,

Holo-Chamber 17

"Okay, people…quiet down a bit, let's get this thing organized,

shall we?" Lylac urged, "We understand that you have questions, and if some

of you are being terribly inconvenienced by attending this conference we

would like to apologize in advance, but we must assure you it is necessary

in order to save all of reality, which includes your own various home

dimensions."

A hand was raised in the back rows and then a voice called out, "Can

we have something to drink? It's kind of stuffy in here, and some of you

guys smell like you could use a good shower."

Many eyes turned to glare at the party in question and then one of

the so-offended growled out, "Keep it to yourself, Senzenin. Some of us

here don't like taking cold showers if you get my drift."

"Well, excuse me for not having a Jusenkyo Curse," the party in

question wrinkled her nose pertly, I was only asking if we could get some

bottled water."

One of her near companions produced a bottle of Perrier from seeming

no where and passed it along with a toss, only to have it intercepted by the

slender hand of an elvish-looking beauty, who took it and handed it to Muku

with a fond expression that earned a look of gratitude (and something more)

from Muku Dori Senzenen to her life-companion, Rhea Kano.

"Get a room you two," one of her other companions smirked, then

turned their attention back towards the ones who were conducting this

meeting of unconventional types in what looked like the Furinkan gym at

casual inspection, but which everyone here knew in fact to be a kind of

holographic chamber recreating such familiar surroundings for the benefit of

their collective nerves and self-composure.

Ranko Saotome surveyed the many faces huddled around within this

chamber and inwardly sighed to herself, wondering if this were really such a

good idea involving this many in her private personal crusade, or if she

might be abusing her rather limited authority as an agency of the Time Force

in organizing this event, which was highly unorthodox and went against

several major provisions of the Time Force Charter.

Close at hand she heard her full-blooded half-Valkyrie sister murmur

in her ear, "Great turnout for your summons, Sis…but somehow I think you

forgot the rice balls and refreshments."

"Give me a break, Meiko-chan," Ranko murmured back, "Who knew it was

gonna take this many of us to deal with this crisis?

"Anyone who's been with you for more than one reality-altering

session?" Meiko Tendo murmured back, but nonetheless smiled and went about

trying to scrounge up some condiments from the Holodeck replicator in order

to pacify the unruly mass that they had gathered together in the only safe

place that would not bend under the strain of this many Nexus Children in

close proximity to one another.

Ranko sighed and turned back towards her temporal sister-cousin and

saw how the purple haired Lylac was making her own silent appraisal of the

mismatched bend that she and her companions had brought together for the

occasion. Ranko sighed and said, "Might as well get right to the heart of

it, guys. We're facing another crisis and we need the help of everyone here

in order to save reality as we know it."

There were several groans and a few muttered, "What, again?" from

the more familiar faces here assembled for this meeting. One girl in

particular-the aptly named Silver Saotome-spoke up with her usual brash

cockiness and said, "I gave up a date with Yu-chan for this?"

"Simmer down everyone," urged a calm-voiced Veil Morisato with a

placating hand-gesture, "We all know that it is a terrible inconvenience

that we had to summon you all with such haste, but we assure you that it is

for a very good reason."

"Indeed said the blue-haired Princess Tenko Musaki in support of her

divine lover, lending her own considerable soothing charms to placating the

discontent within the chamber, "This really is a very important occurrence

that will demand the support of all of us in order to resolve this most

recent crisis. Be assured that the fate of everyone is intrinsically tied

together into our efforts to preserve reality as we know it from hostile

external powers that are seeking to undo the Multiverse that is home to

every one of us."

"We are aware that you must have sufficiently strong reasons for

urging our participation in these events, Musaki-san," said Watazashi

Saotome, turning a respectful nod towards her half-sister from a parallel

frame and saying, "But so far what you have indicated to us seems to suggest

that the plane under direct assault is none other than the home continuum to

yourselves and sister Lylac. I must say, however, how interesting it is to

find myself working alongside someone else who bears my name, if not quite

my same linear heritage."

"You think it's not odd for me?" Watazashi Kuno replied, "And here

I'd never dreamed that mother and Uncle Saotome could have that sort of

chemistry between them to produce a sister such as yourself."

"Indeed," Watazashi nodded, "I find it no less interesting to

discover that mother might find great sport in the arms of a woman such as

your fama, Arigami."

"We are certain that you all must find this quite highly irregular,"

Eileen (EKKO) Daitokuji said frankly, "But if we expend the time that it

would require to explore our relative histories then this meeting will take

far longer than can be allowed given our unfortunately limited timeframe."

"Then why don't we just cut to the chase and you tell us all what

this is about, Oneechan," said a rather impatient Geena (GEKKO) Managi to

her older sister, expressing her usual disdain for her sibling's penchant

for polysyllables that were often far too confusing to serve in lieu of

simpler communication.

"So why don't you just come out and say what the problem is,

Oneechan?" Shamran Saotome asked of Lylac, "It's not like you to be all

mysterious and dramatic when cutting through the bull crap. Just what is it

we're up against this time?"

"Oh, the usual thing," Lylac shrugged, "Someone out there in the

Outer Dark really doesn't like us and is trying to alter our past in order

to void our existence, just like with the last dozen or so times that sister

Ranko has called upon our services. On this time it's our own dimension

that's being directly threatened."

"Yes, however," Veil said with some urgency, "It has been determined

that the source of our current difficulties may be tied, either directly or

indirectly, to the source of many of our other most recent difficulties in

cross-time parallel crisis. In other words, this time we are up against the

actual cause of many of our difficulties, the power behind those lesser

powers that we have been combating with some success ever since the time

that friend Ranko began her travels in the first place."

"Come again?" said Ryokoma Saotome, "You mean there's been somebody

else even tougher than those guys we keep having to beat up?"

"I would surmise that this is the case, Little Brother," said Chusen

Saotome as he nodded towards their older sister, "Perhaps even the great

event that we have been building towards since day one of our adventures."

"A good guess that, Oniisan," said Lilith Stein, "Our enemies this

time are the very Old Ones who predate the age of the Cosmos as we know

it…beings so ancient and steeped in evil that they make even the Lords of

Hell seem like relative good guys."

"That is certainly a disquieting notion," Belldandy Tendo remarked

as she regarded her twin with faint disquiet, "My Fama has spoken often of

the evils of the Old Ones and their pernicious influence in the core

corruption of the various universes that they seek to undermine from within.

If one of them is indeed seeking to move against us in the past then it

could have wide-reaching implications for the whole of the greater Cosmos."

"Which is why we're all gathered here for this meeting," Lylac

urged, trying to steer matters back towards the central subject, "Ranko-chan

uncovered this plot to nullify our world and notified the rest of us to the

danger precisely because our history was being re-written with the intent of

preventing our timeline from coming into existence. Ekko-chan has further

determined, with the assistance of Tenko and Veil-chan, that the reason the

Old Ones have undertaken these radical steps is because one of us within

this very room might well be responsible for doing something in the future

that the enemy considers enormously threatening. So threatening, in fact,

that they feel the urge to strike at us in the past when some of us are not

even yet born while others are much too young to play a significant factor."

"Indeed," Ekko noted, "My research has further indicated that there

were several key points in our history where these revisionist agents of the

Old Ones tried to kill one or more of our parents by working through pawns

and agencies, such as a fellow named Otono Reyabi and his criminal syndicate

of pseudo-religious radicals. One key point, of course, was the attempt to

cause Lylac-chan's Fama to abort the birth of her brother, Chusen."

"You mean me?" the boy in question asked with a faint gleam of

interest in his eyes, "Interesting."

"What's so special about Chusen?" Shamran asked, adding in sour

undertone, "Other than his luck in keeping a private harem composed of our

half-elemental sisters?"

"Jealous?" asked Arisha Saotome as she regarded her half-sister.

"No need to feel left out, Sis," urged the fiery haired Hotono

Saotome.

"You're welcome to join us at any time you feel lucky," Yamase

Saotome leered.

"Pending the approval of brother Chusen, of course," added Umisa

Saotome with an exaggeratedly sweet tone to her liquid expression.

"You guys, honestly," Hope Saotome rolled her eyes, "Ignore them,

Sham-chan, you know they're only teasing."

"Hey, no problem with me, Sis," Shamran growled while glancing

deliberately away from her half-elemental siblings, "I happen to draw the

line at incest, unlike some people I could mention."

"Really?" Yuan-Yen asked in a teasing voice of her own, "That's a

first, you writing off someone from your sex list."

"Bite me," Shamran snorted, only to yelp when one of her immediate

companions took her up on the offer and nibbled on her earlobe.

"Don't mind if I do, Sister," said a cheerful Lamyra Saotome with a

unreservedly lustful expression.

"Guys," Ranko said with faint exasperation, "Let's save the orgy for

another time. In case you forgot the rest of us are here on business?"

"What kind of business?" Fragrance Kuonji asked, "And like Shamran

asked, what's so special about brother Chusen?"

"Other than the fact that he's an Eluini?" Incense Tendo wondered,

"With all these mystical powers and abilities that come naturally to him,

unlike the rest of us who do require some training?"

"There is indeed some element in what you say, Incense-san," Ekko

remarked, "The fact that Chusen is an Eluini is in part the reason why he

was singled out for elimination, albeit the attempt against him failed since

the Yggdrasil system engineered a restructuring of events that brought

things back into a state of balance. That, of course, prompted the enemy to

take more drastic steps against our parents, which prompted the involvement

of the Daokan brothers, who sensed the shift and worked to restore the

system through their own unique methods."

"Kind of like what you'd call overkill, don't you think?" said Kimba

Hibiki, regarding his cousins with a frankly dubious expression, "I mean,

those four guys by themselves ought to be enough to take care of anything

these Old Guys throw against us, right?"

"Unfortunately that does not appear to have been the case," remarked

a pink-haired girl named Junko Asamiya, "Since my mother once told me that

the Daokan only act indirectly through third parties themselves rather than

risk using their full might, which could have the potential for

destabilizing the entire cosmos."

"Plus the fact that some of us seem to have come into existence

precisely because of these events and what they brought about

catalytically," said the redheaded Katai Arigami, "Since I'm given to

understand that the timeline we call home originally boasted a somewhat

smaller family than was found within our present."

"Ah…that's one way of putting it," Ranko said somewhat nervously, "I

mean…some of you guys weren't around the first time I hung out with

Ekko-chan and Lylac. Turns out your continuity was itself a deliberately

engineered alternate universe model that was fluid enough for random

event-altering incidents to occur, such as the catalytic effect you just

mentioned. I don't even pretend to understand it half as good as Eileen

here, but the way she explains things…well…"

"I believe that I understand you," said a young Amazon by the name

of Conditioner, "Events within our timeline are fluid…and thus the enemy

sought to take advantage of this to further their own agenda, only to have

the unintended consequence of bringing some of us into existence…much as

anti-bodies are released to combat a foreign infection."

"In other words when the Universe wants to fortify a reality it

causes more of us to come into existence?" Atari Moribushi noted, then

stroked her elfin chin as the green haired girl looked sidelong with

speculation at the alien girl named Ryeka Musaki, "Fascinatring…"

"And potentially quite profitable," said the candy-striped haired

half-Amazon known to others by the name of Tyger-Tiger, "So many more of

you to poach and bring on board mother's vessel for retraining…"

"Trust you to think of that, Sis," a blue haired girl beside her

said while rolling her eyes, a young lady whose name was Maureen Kent, who

rather significantly was wearing chains of orachalchum on her handsomely

nude body.

"So…why are all of us here?" asked Tokomo Kuno, "Not that I mind

being surrounded with so much feminine beauty, (especially the ones to whom

I am not directly related) but…"

"Just put a sock on your gonads, Pretty Boy," Origami Tendo sniffed,

"I'm sure cousin Lylac and the others will get to that bit in due course."

"That's being rather optimistic," drawled Ryeka herself as she

yawned and stretched, then said, "For my part I feel like taking a nap.

Wake me up if we get to a point anytime soon."

"Please try to stay focused on this, Sister," Tenko urged, "You can

get back to playing around with your girlfriend Ayane after this is over."

"Girlfriend?" Ayane Tendo asked with a faintly curious glance

towards the blue-haired Ryeka, then past her to the glowing green haired

Atari who seemed to have formed the odd notion that the two of them were

rivals.

"Ah…excuse me?" said a tentative youth named Chameleon Gosunkuji,

"Could we try keeping this meeting on track? I mean…I don't know about the

rest of you, but it's hard enough to remember who's who without needing a

program."

"Quite right," Lylac said, only to notice that one of their

assembled kin was politely seeking her attention, "Yes, Sayo-chan?"

"It would seem to me that you were about to outline a list of

several possible reasons for why the Old Ones have targeted your timeline,"

said Sayo Sanosuke with her usual quiet tone of calming no-nonsense

directness, "If the birth of brother Chusen is one reason for which the

enemy was so alarmed, what others could they possibly have had to go to all

this fuss and bother?"

"A very good question," Tenko nodded, turning to the others,

"Veil-chan has done some research of her own to that end and it would appear

that Yggdrassil has detected a singular event set in the chronology of

events to a time approximately twenty-odd years following our own point in

the time field. It would appear that it is either one of us or even someone

not yet born as of our time who is fated to do something

extraordinary…something that potentially could cause a radical restructuring

of the very cosmos by striking directly against the Old Ones."

"That's right," Veil assured, "There is something extraordinary that

is fated to happen in the year 2042 that could potentially alter the very

balance of darkness and light within our timeline. I have so far not yet

been able to isolate the event specifically, or even identify what it may be

that is supposed to happen then that could bring such alarm to the Old

Ones…but we can deduce that it must be quite unusual to have generated this

much activity on their part…and we may be equally assured that whatever it

is, this event is something that we should encourage to allow to happen."

"Anything that's bad for the Old Ones is bound to be good news for

the rest of us," Lilith noted, "In which case I'm in, and I'm sure the same

holds true for you, Bell-chan."

"Of course it does," Belldandy assured her twin half-sister, "And if

my fama were here I'm sure she'd be urging us all to organize to preserve

this continuity for the sake of all existence."

"So there you have it, people," Meiko said, as she finished passing

out drinks and snacks to all their anxious guests, "A mission to thwart the

Old Ones, save Lylac-chan's universe and preserve the integrity of the rest

of the cosmos so we can go on screwing around with our own lives without

anybody screwing with us against our say-so."

"I like the part about screwing," Tyger purred, "But I think the

point is well made that we would rather be doing it to ourselves rather than

allow the Old Ones to screw us into oblivion, eh little sister?"

"And here I thought you didn't mind screwing in any position,"

Maureen mused, seeming not the least bothered by the predatory look that she

was receiving from her half-sibling.

"We…we've all been sufficiently tantalized by the big dramatic

mystery about which one of you guys is gonna give the Old Ones a good boot

to the rear," Silver Saotome spoke up, "But so far I ain't hearing any plans

for the rest of us to get some licks in against the bad guys."

"It does seem as though the events that you have so far outlines

requires more finesse than a mass assault from a mob as large as our own

assemble ranks," one of the Watazashis noted.

"Yeah, so where do we come in?" Yaun-Yen asked smartly.

"We're still working on the details," Lylac assured them, "But we

think we know how to work most of you into our plans for curbing the

mischief that the Old Ones are seeding into our cosmos. We've isolated the

major crisis point and have targeted a number of hot spots where small

groups of us can be inserted into the time stream as trouble shooters.

Unfortunately we're going to have to be precise in our schedule, and it's

going to take one heck of a precise hand to get things down just right, but

with any luck we may be able to steer events back towards the continuity

parameters that Ekko-chan has been working out with Veil-chan's data…"

"Might I say a word in edge-wise here?"

"Oh, of course, Gamina-chan," Lylac acknowledged the rainbow-haired

half-Gremlin as she seemingly manifest from out of no where, "Are you done

with your researches?"

"I have indeed completed my assignment, Cousin," Gamina Starfox

noted while handing a data-pad over to the anxious Ekko, "And I made some

rather interesting discoveries while perusing the time stream at the time

and event you asked me to investigate."

"And?" Ranko asked while EKKO made some rapid checks on her

hand-pad, incorporating the new data.

"We were indeed quite right in suspecting that someone in this room

would be instrumental in causing much grief to the Old Ones," Gamina

replied, glancing on the sly at her nearest companions, "As it turns out two

of you are going to have a baby together, and he-she is right here with the

rest of us. Isn't that right, Heiko Managi?"

"Eh?" Lylac blinked, then took notice of the unusually pale

expression that Eileen was giving to her hand-pad, "Heiko Managi? Is there

somebody here by that name?"

There was a suitable pause while many heads turned to glance from

side to side among the mass of people gathered within the room, but at

length one hand tentative rose up and said, "That would be me."

All eyes turned to see a slender Bishonen-like boy as he stood up

from the back rows and suffered the inevitable looks of interest and

speculation that were turned his way, which caused him to wince slightly.

"Heiko Managi?" Ranko blinked, "That's your real name? But I

thought you told me…"

"Ah…sorry about that," the youth ran his fingers across the back of

his head and said sheepishly, "I gave you one of my aliases because I didn't

know who you were at the time. I thought I'd wait and hear your out before

deciding in you girls were on the level. After all…two of you look a lot

like my mothers."

"Mothers?" Geena Managi sat up, "Hey…are you one of mine? I

mean…you do look a little like me, but…"

"Ah…not quite, Aunt Gee," the youth replied, nodding with a glance

past the ice blonde girl towards a certain redhead.

"Aunt Gee?" Lylac turned a questioning look towards her companion,

EKKO, "Then…that would make him your son…but…who was his father?"

There was a very long silence and a pause that followed this

question, then Lylac slowly answered herself as she saw the look Eileen

turned towards her and said, "Oh…"

"Geez, Sis," Shamran shook her head in faint disbelief, "You are so

dense sometimes…"

"But…wait," Ranko pleaded, "You mean…Lylac and Eileen…? I

mean…but…he's a boy!"

"Only part of the time," the youth in question said before heaving a

sigh before glancing at the water bottle in his hand, causing it to heat up

within a few seconds, then upending the contents over his head, which caused

a dramatic shift in appearance as he lost a couple of inches and went for

Bishonen to stunningly feminine in the space of a few seconds.

"My full name is Heiko Kent-Kane Managi Ditokuji, but for the sake

of simplicity I prefer to be called Ra-nhe…it's less of a mouthful. I've

lived with the Amazons of Joketsuzoku for a number of years and am a

personal close assistant to the reigning Matriarch, Ambergris, who is both

my mentor and protector. And-in case you didn't get the point already-I

got my Jusenkyo curse as a delayed effect due to my weird genetics as it

skipped a generation with my fama."

"Fama?" Lylac repeated, "You mean…I'm going to be a…"

"Hey, catch her somebody!" Shamran called out hastily, and Geena

leaped onto the stage with a speed that was almost blinding, arriving just

in time to keep her older sister from hitting the floor as she fainted.

"There are great perils to be had with knowing too much about one's

own future," Lilith remarked, "Perhaps we should arrange to collectively

forget a few things when this is all over, Sister."

"I'm not so sure that would be for the best," Belldandy remarked,

"But I do think you may be right about revelations such as this being a bit

too much for certain people to handle."

"Rain, huh?" Conditioner said speculatively, "So…what happened? Did

my mother retire from being the Elder?"

"More like the council politely asked her to resign so that she

could pursue personal affairs with your Fama," Heiko replied, "They found

out about the age thing, and they didn't take too kindly to being deceived

about her Juraian heritage and all of that."

"So what did you do to tick the Old Ones off so much that they're

intent on wiping out our reality?" Kimba Hibiki asked.

"I killed them," Heiko replied, then shrugged, "Or one of them

anyway…I forget which one. It's kind of a long story, but he was a pretty

important Muckity Muck, and he really had it coming."

"You…killed an Old One?" Lilith asked incredulously.

"Those things are older than the Universe," Ranko exclaimed, "How

the heck did you kill one?"

"Well…it's not something I can explain easily," Heiko replied, "It's

kind of like…inverting the transdimensional nature of anti-life and

combining it with the sub-quantum particle nature of the Neo-Quark Interface

and bypassing the non-assinuouis nature of Qplothic space…"

"No doubt about it," Geena said as she cradled her older sister in

her lap, "You and Oneechan are definitely related…"

"You killed an old one," Tendo said with a curious look of her own

before glancing sidelong at Veil, "Interesting. That would explain a lot

about their interest in preventing this timeline from continuing to exist as

that might be the only way they have of reversing the process."

"Hey, way to go good looking," Meiko said as she patted the young

girl in question on the shoulder, "Offing an Old One is a sure fire way of

earning a ticket to Valhalla."

"Ah…thanks, I think," the youth said with a faintly dubious

expression.

"My…son…my…daughter?" Lylac finally managed to get out before she

finally gave up the fight to remain fully conscious, and it was a very good

thing for her sake that Shamran had anticipated this and with Fragrance's

assistance arrived in time to catch their falling sister.

"Yup, this is definitely starting to fit into a pattern," Shamran

noted as she and Frangrance eased Lylac onto the floor and fetched her a

makeshift pillow from one of the brown-haired Enforcer child's sleeves.

"But…why is Oneechan so surprised that she and Ekko-chan have a

kid?" Fragrance wanted to know, "You'd think it would be obvious from the

way they carry on all of the time."

"Hey, you know Oneechan," said Ryokouma as he joined his sisters to

examine their elder, "She's smart enough to see through everybody else but a

bit slow at seeing the obvious when it's right beside her."

"And coming from your that is saying a lot, little Brother," as

Chusen and his "harem" of half-sisters gathered around beside the sleeping

Lylac and Eileen with a faintly indulgent expression.

Tenko murmured to Veil, "This might change things somewhat. If what

the youth is fated to do were indeed to bring about the fall of one of the

Old Ones…"

"And it's not hard to imagine which one it is judging by the degree

of his interest in these matters," Veil noted in reply, "We must adjust our

plans accordingly to take into account this new complication."

"So Ahriman feels threatened by a member of the family, eh?" Lilith

smiled, "Where do I sign up?"

"It would be difficult to imagine the world if freed from Ahriman's

influence," Belldandy noted, "But I must say, I find the possibility…quite

intriguing."

"Fine and dandy," Ranko sniffed, "Only…what are we gonna do? We've

gotta stop this bastard before he makes a mess of your timeline."

"Not to worry, Oneechan," Meiko said with a cheerful expression,

"Now that we know what the stakes are we can mount a more effective strategy

and…"

"Mistress!" Cheshire Tendo suddenly materialized in their midst,

seeking out Ranko, "You asked me to keep watch and let you know in case

someone case to investigate the use of this Holochamber?"

"Uh…yeah?" Ranko asked dubiously, then added, "You mean…?"

"Your parents are asking for you," Cheshire replied, "They said to

come as soon as you had concluded your business with our Temporal sisters,

and that you would know where to find them."

"Oh yeah," Ranko sighed, then turned to Meiko, "Take over for me,

I'll be back as soon as I can finish groveling to Mom and Dad about the

unauthorized use of their Pass codes."

"Be sure to use the Crouching Tiger method," Meiko said pleasantly

to her sister, "That always gets results whenever Dad screws up more than

usual and Mom calls him on the carpet."

"Swell," Ranko replied, then taking Cheshire by the hand she and her

Pokegirl "pet" vanished from the room and reentered the Timestream…

A shimmering in the evening air heralded the appearance of the

Silver Seagull, its massive form of indigo and silver cutting a clear line

through the morning shoreline. It sailed across the impossibly wet sands

that should have clogged the tires of such a vehicle, gliding across the

surf-tossed shoreline as though traveling across a well-paved boulevard,

arcing along the edge as it swung towards an outcropping of coral rock that

jutted up out of the sandy tidal basin. It gradually came to a halt only a

few paces away from the area, and then its rider dismounted, setting booted

feet to wet sand with a thump that had ominous implications.

Udan Robar Bartev surveyed the rocky outcropping with a scowl to

match his grim reputation. He stalked purposefully forward, already knowing

whom he would find awaiting him and under what conditions they would be

positioned. His sense that all was not as it appeared to be on the surface

was further fortified by the impression created by the personalities he

perceived there, which only made his scowl the more intense as he had the

growing sense of being taken advantage of, and by those whom he most

trusted.

Sure enough as he came to place where everyone was gathered he saw

three different groups of activity, each of which he knew were

representative of a different level of interaction taking place beside one

another. On the one hand there was his brother Anri, who was enduring the

verbal abuse by a familiar looking youth who seemed rather agitated about

something, while off to the side was his sister-wife, Ulsa Laolana, who was

contenting herself by combing the long white hair of her servant-pet,

Amalthea, whom Udan at once recalled was the older sister to the youth,

which explained the boy's current involvement with Anri.

And there to one side were the Time Patrol Agents, Ranma and Nabiki

Saotome, the latter giving Udan a wary eye while her husband just glowered

his way while he uttered a gruff remark, "About time you showed up. What

took you."

Udan felt the urge to take a step towards his erstwhile rival but

immediately checked the impulse as he felt the slight displeasure radiating

from Ulsa. The next moment the Lore Master known as Nabiki said contritely,

"Before you begin, my Lord, understand that what was done was necessary. No

ill intent towards you was ever intended."

Udan glanced back towards Nabiki and allowed his expression to

convey his thoughts upon that subject.

Necessary?

"Hai," the woman replied, "I knew that you never intended to harm my

husband, but if matters had continued as they were it might have resulted in

compromising his relationship with Lord Shiva. I chose to act in order to

temporarily misdirect you, choosing a site where you could vent your wrath

harmlessly while helping some locals to resolve a delicate matter."

Udan glowered in spite of his unvoiced admiration for the audacity

of the woman and her actions.

You caused me to interfere in the flow of a world's destiny, one

where I was never intended to be a part of their drama. Such interference

is unworthy of a Time Agent.

"Granted," she allowed, "But when one is pressed to the wall one

often makes difficult choices that sometimes compromise the normal rules by

which one operates. I ask for your indulgence in this matter, but I do not

apologize because the choice to act was not made by me but rather another."

Udan arched both eyebrows at this, his displeasure and irritation

increasing.

Who?

That would be me.

Udan turned around abruptly and cast his incredulous gaze in Ulsa's

direction.

By you, my Lady?

Ulsa turned her gaze back towards him, her expression unflinching.

By me, yes, with the cooperation of Lady Nabiki. Do not take it out

on her or her husband that I used them to arrange your timely distraction.

Again with incredulousness Udan confronted his lady.

But…why?

Ulsa arched one eyebrow and gave Udan a frankly bland expression.

There was a task to be performed and it was one that you were ill

equipped to deal with by yourself, my love. For ages on end you have been

my champion and protector, but at times your attitude towards me can be

suffocating and patronizing, because you refuse to see me as an equal in all

ways and prefer to believe that I am weak and helpless, in need of your

unflinching protection.

Udan expressed frank incredulity towards this and just gave his

lover dumbfounded expression.

My lady?

Lilith was on the move. A plot had been hatched by the enemy to set

a trap for you involving the use of a new weapon against you your powers

would be nullified, leaving you defenseless. The one who was behind this

plot had knowledge that was essential to me, insight that I could not obtain

through regular methods. It was necessary to brave the trap, lure the

villains into exposing themselves while putting Lilith in her place, all of

that without killing the main object of my quest. I felt that the matter

required finesse and discretion in order to rescue Amalthea's brother while

bringing an end to the antics of both NERV and their parent corporation. In

a word it was not a job for you to undertake, my love, and so I arranged to

have your attention diverted elsewhere so that you would not interfere while

I did that which needed doing.

Udan's astonishment was beyond measure as he gazed at the woman whom

he had known for thousands of years as though she had become a complete

stranger.

You did what was needed? But…I…

You would have charged in ahead rather than allow me to risk my own

safety, I know. You would have dared the trap and faced the lioness within

her own den and have pitted your might against any and all challenges, just

as you have done constantly over and over again over the years. But in this

case, my love, the outcome would not have been a happy one for the direct

approach would have lead you to disaster. Either you would have fallen to

orachalcum bullets or fallen prey to Lilith's malevolent fury…and being a

man would have made you vulnerable to the effect that her clone was

radiating which was specifically geared to destroy men as a part of the

human species.

But…you risked yourself against all of these dangers…

Because I knew in advance what was waiting for me, and unlike you I

am not adverse to recruiting allies who can defend me against such threats

as my powers alone would be unable to handle. Or why else did you think

that I recruited the services of both Amalthea and Luna in the first place?

"My lady?" Amalthea asked in mild surprise at this revelation.

Ulsa reached down and stroked the cheek of her half-Kirin companion,

smiling radiantly with a sense of warm benediction.

You could act where I was powerless to do so, my pet…and I knew that

I could rely upon you to take down the assassin before he was able to shoot

at me. You did very well…in fact you even exceeded my expectations, for

which I am very grateful and will be happy to reward you in a most

appropriate manner.

"My lady," Amalthea sighed, shuddering slightly with a sense of warm

arousal.

Udan seemed to be struggling with himself as he considered what his

wife was telling him, then reluctantly favored her with a faintly hurt

expression.

Have you so little faith in me that you would have me detained

fighting a meaningless battle while you risked it all taking matters into

your own hands?

Answer for yourself this question, Udan…what would you have done if

I had given you this assignment? Would you have gone in with full force or

have taken a more tactical approach to softly do an end-run around the trap

SEELE had set against you?

Udan thought a moment about that then glanced away, leaving the

question unanswered, which in itself was a tacit self-indictment, for which

Ulsa favored him with a look of soft indulgence.

I know you far too well, my Love. From Sumeria to the Cold North

Tundra you have walked a single path of nobility and heroism, confronting

all of your enemies and dispatching them directly. You did not become the

legend that you are by taking the easy way, even if in recent time you have

modified your behavior to allow ordinary people to remain ignorant of our

continued existence. With that in mind do you really think that you would

have gone the quiet root to face this enemy and beard him within his own

den?

I would have found a way. I have not survived this long without

learning a few things about discretion.

Perhaps so, but do you really think that I was prepared to take a

chance when it came to your personal health and safety? And besides…I

wanted a taste of what you go through every time you face our enemies. I

have been far too passive for much too long, and it wears at my very being

to always take a back seat to the heroism of you and our brothers.

Udan's surprise was complete as he stared incredulously at the woman

he knew as more than just a sister. He struggled to form a coherent means

of expressing his emotions, only to feel the warmth of her smile as she

gazed upon him with great fondness, a thought so light that it felt like a

soft caress against his cheek, belied only by the sadness in her eyes as she

conveyed to him the rest of her unspoken meaning.

It can be well and fine to be adored and worshipped on a pedestal,

my love, but after a time a pedestal can seem a cold and distant place, far

too removed from the flow of life. I wanted a taste of what it truly means

to live, to risk life for the sake of a greater purpose, to feel the

uncertainty and peril of a moment when life and death hang in the balance

and all that is left to you is the courage of your convictions.

And…did you find what you were seeking in this, my lady?

Ulsa smiled and brushed her blonde locks from the side of her face

as she gave him back a most enigmatic expression.

Perhaps. For now I will be content to let you continue to play the

hero, my love…but know that I reserve for myself the option of doing this

again should I ever deem it necessary.

And…how do you think that this will make me feel, my lady? To know

that you face danger while I am away and unable to help you?

To that Ulsa lifted her nose and gave him a particularly haughty

look, one that seemed calculated to suggest that this was the very point of

her little exercise, to teach him this as a not-so-subtle meaning.

Well, in that case you finally know what it has felt like for me the

past twelve thousand years of watching you constantly go off into battle

while leaving me to play the passive observer. Perhaps in the future you

will have better regard for my feelings when you risk your life against one

damned foolish mission or another.

With that thought expressed she abruptly touched Amalthea on the

side of the girl's head then stood up from the rock upon which she had been

perched, taking the Kirin girl by the hand and urging her along, much to the

latter's profound curiosity of expression.

Come along, my pet, and let me give you your reward for your

faithful service. Let us leave the boys to settle accounts on their own

while we enjoy the fruits of our labors.

"But…my lady?" Amalthea asked, glancing back over her shoulder first

at Udan and then a little bit beyond him, "What about my brother?"

He will be quite all right. Anri will see to that. Now…enough with

the distractions, let me show you properly how grateful I am for the way you

defended me in those caverns…

Udan looked on with a blank-faced stare as his wife went off

arm-in-arm with her half-human servant, then he blinked his eyes-a feat he

had rarely done in all the ages-and just felt…odd about the whole matter,

even as he sensed the soft tread of Time Agent Ranma as the Avatar of Shiva

approached him without hostile intentions.

"Say guy…something I've been meaning to ask," Ranma began, "Just how

is it you and me can be doing the exactly right thing and still wind up

feeling like crap with just a glance from our two ladies?"

Udan's massive shoulders slumped slightly and he relaxed his own

posture by more than a fraction.

If I knew the answer to that one, Saotome, then I'd be a much wiser

man. By the way, I see that you and Shiva appear to still be on good terms

with one another.

"Ah…yeah…well, about that," Ranma shrugged, "Seems Shiva ain't about

to hold me to accounts after the way you kicked the crap out of both of us.

In point of fact I didn't exactly lose that fight…I just sort of came close

to losing, but I won anyway because I lured you into the trap that Nabiki

and me had cooked up together."

Udan glanced back towards the serious-looking Lore Master then back

at Ranma again, conceding the point while marveling at which lady could be

more scary when ticked off at their significant other.

A technicality, but I am willing to let it rest if you will.

Besides, my quarrel is not with you but rather with your younger

counterpart, who has but one day left in which to prepare to face me.

"I think the kid might surprise you," Ranma said, "Sure surprised me

the last I checked in on him, but as for Shiva…he also tells me that he's

willing to abide a truce for now, especially since he watched you fall into

that Temporal Trap like you did. He says-and I'm quoting here-that

he'll remember your expression for centuries to come, and the thought of it

alone warms him far more than us beating each other to a pulp could ever

manage."

Udan's scowl returned, but he merely grunted and glanced elsewhere,

allowing his focus to turn towards Anri and the young man named David, who

seemed to be engaged in a rather one-sided and heated exchange of views that

was steadily growing in volume.

"But this cannot be!" David insisted, "You cannot be who you claim

you are! I will not accept this!"

"Accept what you will," Anri calmly replied, "But I never claimed to

be who you think I claimed that I am in the first place. As far as it goes

for me that person never existed."

"He existed, He lives!" David shouted, "He is my Lord and Savior, my

light and salvation…"

"Really?" Anri replied, "Well, then I'd very much hate to meet

whoever it is who would curse you. But honestly, do you think that I would

be pretending to be this Jesus Christ person if I thought such a person to

be real? Certainly not since he's just a fictional creation cooked up by a

fellow who never really knew me…"

"Blasphemy!"

"Which part?" Anri asked, "The statements that I make or the concept

that you are comparing me to, or perhaps the blasphemy is in the very

reading of the text contained within Paul's letters…"

"I have faith in my Lord!" David shouted, "He is my Rod and my

Staff, He shelters me from all that is evil…"

"Except for those evils that he has commanded you to do that is?"

Anri countered, "I mean, honestly…just what did you think was meant by the

words, 'Thou Shalt Not Commit Murder?' Did you think it was all right to be

murdering those who disagreed with you, or with just anyone whom General Han

told you was a sinner? That seems awfully blasphemous to me, and the worst

thing is you claiming me as your alibi, which I think is awfully

presumptuous on your part."

"They were evil!" David insisted, "They committed offences against

the name of the Lord, and as such they deserved execution!"

"And how would you know that they were evil or offensive to your

Lord?" Anri asked, "Did your God tell you these things directly."

"YES!" David shouted in defiance.

"I think not," Anri said drolly, "I think rather you accepted

General Han at his word and interpreted that as coming directly from God,

but what do you really know about your benefactor? Your own sister has

denounced him as a lecherous beast who raped and abused her…"

"She's lying…or brainwashed, or under the control of Satan!" David

insisted.

"Oh, and that explains pretty much everything for you, doesn't it?"

Anri sniffed, "If you can't explain it and won't accept it then it must come

from your Devil. In that way you don't have to claim responsibility for

anything, just pass the buck along and say it's someone else's problem."

"Get behind me, Satan!" David made a warding gesture.

"Leave Stan out of this," Anri said, "You're dealing with me now,

and I'm afraid you won't get out on any technical clauses. You claimed me

for your patron…well, I'm exacting my fair due by pointing out to you how

annoying it is to hear people like you claiming me for their protector while

performing sinful deeds in my name for which I never gave approval in my

lifetime. I mean, honestly, how would you feel about it if people kept

claiming you as a witness for things you didn't see happen?"

"Why are you doing this?" David demanded, "I am a servant of God, I

faithfully do the Lord's bidding, and I reject the voice of Satan!"

"That's rather hard to believe coming from a half-Kirin youth with

as much blood on your hands as you have, my good sir," Anri noted, "What

sort of God commands the death of anyone yet refuses to perform the act

himself, relying instead upon gullible minions such as yourself to do most

of their dirty works? Can't say that I'd have much respect for a deity who

refuses to get his hands dirty rather than have you dirty yourself in the

process."

"I do not question the will of my Lord…" David sputtered.

"So I see," Anri mused, "And that's entirely the problem. A little

healthy dose of skepticism now and then would do you quite well, and you

wouldn't so blacken your soul by unquestioning obedience to that which does

not serve you but rather forces you to serve it with the most obscenely

subservient fervor. Has it never actually occurred to you, young fellow,

that perhaps the will you serve is not of God but rather some lesser, more

sinister force of primal evil?"

"I do not serve the cause of evil but of righteousness!" David

thundered.

"Self righteousness, perhaps," Anri responded, "That peculiar brand

of false holiness where by someone tries to justify his actions by claiming

the authority of a higher power…but the actions themselves call into

question that very holiness, which is entirely the point that I am making."

"I do not listen to the words of heathens, pagans and sinners!"

David decried, "You are trying to confuse me…to turn me away from the path

of righteousness…"

"Really?" Anri mused, "And here I thought you were doing a rather

splendid job of it all by yourself. You certainly don't need me to add to

your already confused state of mind, and as for walking the path of

righteousness…well, many a sinner as claimed to be a saint, and Popes with

their airs and priests with their mummery continue to this day to cloak

themselves in the aura of sainthood, ignoring the poor and undernourished

who could profit from real acts of charity committed on their own behalf,

which is the standard I use to apply the term 'Holiness' to one's actions."

"The righteous do not spurn the needs of the poor and deserving!"

David stoutly maintained, "But if they freed themselves from the taint of

sin then God would reward him with his bounties, and there would be no

suffering or death forever…"

"What a wonderful fantasy you paint," Anri shook his head sadly,

"Paradise without labor, perfection achieved without struggle or effort,

riches without sacrifice and the benediction of heaven leveled out to those

who are meek, obedient and humble devotees. Too bad it doesn't work like

that in the real world, but…alas…you cannot get something for nothing.

There is always an exchange to be had. To promise an end to suffering is

the act of a huckster with no real spiritual aspirations beyond the

benedictions of self-entitlement that come with gouging the poor for their

meager riches."

"You dare upbraid the righteous, Sinner?" David bridled.

"If by righteous you mean pompous blowhards like the not-so-reverent

Moon, who has the effrontery to claim to be my reincarnation…and after I

haven't even used up the last one no less…well, yes I do find fault with

such a preening, posturing fellow. And then there is that murderous fool

you currently serve, Otono Reyabi…now there is a piece of work indeed. A

Chaos-spawned servant of evil, an avatar of unholy light. He plans to make

a human sacrifice to me of nearly half of the entire Japanese population and

you call that righteousness? Even the followers of Baal Moloch were never

so presumptuous in their evils."

"I will hear no more of this!" David cried, "You have mocked the

name of the Lord and must be punished for this, Sinner! Prepare to suffer

the wrath of his holy instrument…"

"If you are going to attack me, young sir, then do so and stop

boasting about it," Anri waved a dismissive hand and turned his back upon

the youth, affecting a posture of total nonchalance.

David took the insult in poor form and at once lunged forward, and

missed his target entirely as though he had not been standing a mere five

feet away. The boy recovered his bearings and was back on his feet in an

instant, snarling his outrage as he lunged towards Anri, who simply was not

where the clawed hands of the youth attempted to grapple.

"Hmmm…slow and clumsy," Anri mused without having seemed to move a

foot from the spot where he had been standing, "We are going to have to do

some work on that."

David landed awkwardly in the wet sand of the surf, having misjudged

his own landing, and all at once he was spitting out brine from between his

parted lips while struggling to get back to his feet, an incoherent snarl

making him seem far more feral and inhuman than before. Anri hardly seemed

the least bit concerned as he waited for the young man to attack him, only

this time rather than dodge his own hand lashed out with a smoothly

delivered palm strike, and all at once David's forward motion was arrested.

He staggered on his feet for a few seconds then collapsed into the sand

clutching at his chest as if struck there by a hammer.

"Shoddy defenses," Anri mused, "Nearly all attack with little style

or substance. We really do have our work cut out for us if we are to bring

you up into form, my good fellow. If you are to be nearly half as good a

fighter as your sister-who had excellent tutorage by the way, depending

more as she does on well-honed skill rather than natural talent, which you

both have in such abundance..."

"Curse you!" David spat from where he was huddled face-down in the

sand, then with a supreme effort he forced himself back to his feet,

ignoring the pain of his lungs where they were still badly starved for

oxygen, and with no little determination he got himself back into a fighting

crouch and prepared to renew his assault upon Anri, who himself merely

cupped his hands behind his back and circled the youth very slowly.

"Well, I am pleased to see that your fighting spirit is up to form,"

Anri mused, easily side-stepping a slashing maneuver that was aimed with the

intent to disembowel him, "But is it a warrior's spirit or merely

stubbornness that fuels your persistence?"

"Stand still and I'll show you!" David snarled, his hands and feet

moving like a blur as he tried again and again to land a blow upon his

elusive target.

"I am waiting," Anri said as he easily dodged every attempt on

David's part to nail him, "But so far all I see is brutish force with no

style or substance. Surely there is more to you than this, or how did you

ever gain such a fearsome reputation as a Toshinden fighter?"

"I'll show you how!" David cried while squaring his stance and

summoning up his internal spiritual powers, then firing up his claws to

where they glowed with lethal fury, and with rapid slashing motions hurled

curling tendrils of energy Anri's way, and at such close proximity that it

was nearly impossible to see how the Lord of Light could possibly evade

them.

And yet he did. Anri seemed to casually step aside and allowed the

energy rakes to miss him by a comfortable space of several inches, then

moved into the gap left by the passing tendrils even as new slashes split

the air, striking the spot where he had been standing before, failing to

make contact again and again by a narrow margin, though Anri did not seem

the least bit bothered at this show of force, affecting such an air of calm

composure that David felt enraged to call down greater efforts.

"SOUL REAVER STRIKE!" David cried as he drew back a hand and made

the most save thrust of all, creating a solid wave of pure red energy that

split the space between him and Lord Anri, force enough that it shattered an

outcrop of coral directly behind him…

And yet when the wave had passed Anri yet stood his ground acting as

though he were completely unaffected, even as bits of plasma filled the air

around his body, suggesting that the raking slash indeed this time had made

decisive contact.

"Impressive," Anri said, "Now it's my turn."

The Lord of Light brought both palms together, then made a

finger-steepling gesture and pushed the air forward while making a faint

humming noise, and all at once a violet radiance took the shape of a ball of

energy which Anri gently pushed forward, causing it to glide ahead like a

mere soap bubble, drifting purposefully in the direction of the astonished

David.

The youth knew better than to stand his ground and look, but still

her remained perversely fascinated with the energy ball as it came to within

a few inches of his face, looking for all the word like an illuminated grape

the size of an orange and not in any way menacing…an impression dispelled

one instant later when the ball exploded in his face, sending the half-breed

Kirin youth tumbling backwards into the foam-flecked surfside water.

"Ain't you being a little rough with the kid?" Ranma called out to

Anri.

"Nonsense," Anri called back, "A little trifle such as that can

little more than ruffle the lad's fur, and I'm being supremely gentle with

him I most heartily assure you. After all, he is Amalthea's brother."

"How pathetic," Nabiki said as she saw David get back up out of the

briny water looking as mad as a dripping wet hen, "It's so painfully one

sided that I almost feel ashamed to look."

My brother knows what he is doing.

"You think so?" Ranma glanced sidelong at the grim-faced dark man,

"Way I hear it he ain't perfect, and when your bro makes mistakes he doesn't

kid around about it neither."

Udan nodded his head very slowly, his eyes following the movements

of the boy named David as he tracked the crude form of the youth with

certain interest.

Anri indeed makes his fair share of mistakes, as he's willing to

admit if you ask him…but in this matter I am content to leave the boy in his

hands. At the very least it is fitting punishment for his crimes to have my

brother coach him in this manner."

"Kid looks like he won't quit for nothing," Ranma said, wincing

slightly as he saw David go sailing backwards once again into the sea-foam,

"Kinda reminds me of somebody I know…"

"You mean yourself, Husband?" Nabiki asked with a sardonic smirk.

"Naw, I was gonna say Ryoga, but now that you mention it I do kinda

remember being on the receiving end of something like that during my early

days of training," Ranma noted, "Not that Pop holds a candle to that Anri

guy…even Pop ain't that brutal."

"He will keep at it until he is totally exhausted…that or dead,"

Nabiki noted, "And in the latter case Lord Anri could always revive him and

start the whole process all over."

Udan grunted a faint sound not unlike what rock makes when cracking,

but then he turned his gaze to the side as he felt a faint disturbance in

the ether, and one instant later Ranko appeared, glancing around with some

trepidation that hardly dispersed when she found her parents waiting for her

by the sea shore.

"Ah…you rang?" she weakly waved a hand and affected a jaunty mood

that she hardly felt, only to have her expression turn to pure astonishment

as she caught sight of Udan, to which she said, "That guy?"

"Easy Sport," her father made a placating motion, "We're on truce

terms here, so ignore the big stiff, he's just part of the landscape."

"If you say so, Pop," Ranko said dubiously, then blinked her eyes

again as she caught the commotion taking place a short ways down the side of

the beach and she said, "Hey, isn't that the creep from the other day? And

who's that he's fighting?"

"His God," Ranma replied, "Or as close to it as he's gonna get

anyway."

"That is the Lord Anri Monalon Maitreya, whom I was telling you all

about the other day, Ranko-chan," Nabiki answered.

"That guy?" Ranko said in pure astonishment, only to have he jaw

drop as he saw the man in question execute an impossible maneuver that had

the effect to sending David spinning like a top into the wave that was just

then crashing against the sea shore.

"Yup, that's him," Ranma said, "Lord of Light and Boddhidharma all

wrapped in one. Has a mighty wicked left hook if you really want to know

about it. Hardly surprising since he founded the Shaolin boxing system."

"Oh wow," Ranko said while studying the pale-haired man's moves and

finding them quite flawless, so much so that the boy named David seemed by

comparison to be stumbling around with lead galoshes on his feet, both arms

wrapped in fifty pounds of iron.

This is nothing. If Anri were truly serious the fight would not

have lasted a full second.

Ranko almost jumped in dismay as she felt that, turning to stare at

the towering dark man, "Did you just say something?"

"Naw," Ranma answered his adoptive daughter, "You're just imagining

it. So…how's the round up faring? You and that pendant thing of yours

finish gathering up a new Posse?"

"Ah…" Ranko winced, "You mean…you already know about that, Pop?"

"Wasn't hard to guess that's what you're up to," Ranma hooked a

thumb over his shoulder, "And even if I didn't know you like I did I could

always ask your mother."

"I take it that you have been visiting the usual suspects and

selecting your favorites from among the Timestream to act as your support

crew?" Nabiki mused, seeing Ranko blush at the realization of just how

transparent she was before her parents, "So…what was the verdict? That

Eileen and Lylac would give issue to a champion so precocious that even the

Old Ones are fated to stand up and take notice?"

"You know about all that, huh?" Ranko winced, belatedly remembering

who it was that she was talking to, "Of course you did…you know everything.

So when were you gonna share this news with me?"

"When I thought you were ready to hear it from my lips, rather than

discover it by your own means," Nabiki answered, "And I take it that they

received this news with graciousness and candor?"

"You mean which one of them hit the floor first?" Ranko sheepishly

smiled, "Eileen by a full half minute."

"Ah," Nabiki nodded sagely, "All in all I suppose that is to be

expected."

"Wait…back up a minute here," Ranma said pleaded, glancing from one

lady to the other, "Eileen and Lylac? You mean…the kid your counterpart had

with Shampoo…and that nerdy girl who's related to Hercules and Superman?

Oy…don't know what that would amount to, but if she burps then I'm headed

for the next county."

The child is the heir to many convening force lines, the cumulative

effect of which has destined her to be a child of true wonders.

"Hah?" Ranko turned back to the huge dark man with a puzzled

expression, not having heard the words so much in her mind as feeling them

within her bones rather than her earlobes.

Juraian, Kryptonian, Olympian and Saotome-Tendo. A Nexus Child

empowered with a force that even the Gods must tremble before. That is what

Heiko Managi represents to the future, a Legacy Force that is capable of

moving stars and even planets within their orbit.

"And that's why you guys are involved in all of this?" Ranma asked

with astonishment, "Because a kid with that kind of potential has enough raw

umph to make even the Old Ones crap in their britches?"

"Inelegantly put but completely accurate, Husband," Nabiki said

softly, "Applied strategically at just the right time and venture such a

child would have the potential to cause even Lord Ahriman to feel the wrath

of the heavens. Know that the war between the powers of Light and the Old

Ones is ageless and eternal, but a child who spans a Cosmos-shaking

generational power could tilt the balance decisively against the powers of

Darkness."

Ordinarily my task would be to protect such a legacy, but…with

Ahriman striking in the past against the child long before its

conception…even the Daokan's hands are tied. To act decisively against

Ahirman in the now would be to court universe-shattering disaster.

"Say what?" Ranko blanched, "Are you saying you can't do anything

about this?"

Udan's eyes flashed as he regarded the feisty redhead.

I would move the heavens themselves to shelter such a child from

premature discovery who embodies such potential…but if Ahriman senses his

own survival is on the line then he will not hesitate to bring his full

force to bear, which would utterly destroy the balance of the timeline and

quite possibly destabilize a number of neighboring worlds. That is why the

only means of curbing this threat is to end the existence of this timeline

altogether.

"Hey, no way!" Ranko protested, "Some of my best friends live on

that timeline!"

"You heard the kid, Big Guy," Ranma grunted, "Nullifying that world

is a non-issue. Find another way to protect the future."

Udan's scowl became almost menacing, and genuine irritation showed

traces within his dark brown eyes.

Do you think I would not seize upon an alternative if one were

presented? Only if the denizens of this world become sufficiently strong

enough to expel the servants of Ahriman could the world be fully protected.

The Old Ones are powerful but they cannot act within the material plane

without servitors to offer them a foothold and an anchor. Ahriman is

positioning powerful agents in key places in order to crush the budding

threat posed by the Saotome-Tendo line. He is using the thin advent of a

temporal window in order to play spoiler, to alter the timeline and

overweigh it sufficiently on the side of Chaos. We Daokan dare not act too

brazenly to supply our own agents to serve as a counterbalance or the

combined weight of such force will by itself destabilize the Cosmos.

Therefore we must act through servants and agents already in the field…and I

fear the balance is currently heavily weighted against us.

"Are you so certain of this, my Lord?" Nabiki wondered slyly, eyeing

the dark man with a sense of knowing something to which even a

near-omniscient being such as this was not yet privy.

"Hey, wait about my friends?" Ranko protested, "If we join in we can

tilt the balance back to our side…can't we?"

Udan regarded the redheaded girl with a thoughtful glance, then

shook his head negatively.

Not if you unleash them all at once. They must act in teams and for

limited intervals, and only where they can do the most good, which require

split-second timing that would be difficult even for a full-fledged Time

Lord. Any more than this and their very presence could destabilize the

Timeline and cause a collapse through which Ahriman might appear, seeking to

harvest as many souls as he can reach directly with his tendrils.

"Yeah, but there is a chance of it, right?" Ranko said hopefully,

"Don't sell us out so soon, my friends can do anything, and I've got

Yggdrassil to back me up," she pointed at her pendant with a meaningful

gesture.

Udan considered this, and this time was not so quick to register

dismissal.

Yggdrassil might prove useful, but even so this requires a Champion

to lead the fight, and as yet your counterparts are not of Champion status.

"Care to make a wager about that, Big Guy?" Ranma asked with a sly

expression.

"You may find that the Ranma and Nabiki of this world are much

improved from when you first encountered them, Lord Udan," Nabiki noted, "In

any event you will determine this for yourself within a day, will you not?"

Udan nodded very slowly.

Within one day, and if they have improved sufficiently that I judge

them capable of prevailing against the darkness…then I will yield to them

the right to attempt this. However…should they fail then the best that I

can offer them is a merciful ending.

"What?" Ranko was shocked by the callousness of that unvoiced

statement.

Far greater mercy than they would know should Ahriman win out and

harvest this entire timeline for its energies.

"All right, fair enough," Ranma said, "In twenty four hours you'll

find out for yourself, Big Guy."

"Pop!?" Ranko glanced at the man with alarm and bewilderment.

"Indeed you shall," Nabiki said, "For my money I'll put my wager on

the side of this world's Nabiki and Ranma."

As you say, so it will be. By this time tomorrow they had best be

ready to face me. If not, then I will make it a swift ending without

suffering for all concerned parties.

With that unvoiced declaration the dark man turned and strode away,

and within a few long strides mounted the cabin of his Kenworth truck and

climbed back into the driver's seat before starting the rig up with a belch

of fire and smoke, then wheeling it around and pulling away into the surf,

turning his mighty eighteen wheeled conveyance away from the shore and

towards the landward shoreline.

Ranko turned away from the sight and confronted her adoptive parents

with a mildly hurt expression, "Are you guys nuts? I mean…that guy against

Lylac's folks? I mean, they're tough and all that, but the big guy could go

toe-to-toe with you, Pop…!"

"Ah…right," Ranma winced uncomfortably, leaving it to Nabiki to say,

"Trust us on this, Ranko-chan…your father and I know what we are doing."

"Ah…all right," Ranko winced, "But from the sound of things it'll

take an even bigger group than what I've founded up to pull this off if

we're taking on an Old One."

"Hey, no problem, Kid," Ranma said as he ruffled the head of his

adoptive eldest daughter, "It's just us Tendos and Saotomes up against all

the forces of the Outer Dark and a good part of creation. What could

possibly go wrong with odds like that? I'll take those numbers any day of

the week."

"What your father is saying is that you should never be so quick to

write off a member of our clan when our back is up against the wall and the

odds seem wildly against our favor," Nabiki eyed her husband slyly, "The

Kami know how much I lost in the old days when betting against Ranma in a

challenge match."

"Right," Ranma nodded, only to think about that and say, "Hey…when

did you ever bet against me?"

"Later," Nabiki turned her focus towards Ranko, "Since you've

gathered together your usual list of candidate heroes, I assume you left it

in Meiko's capable hands, and that your sister is presently entertaining

this celebrated offspring who seems to be at the source of our current

difficulties."

"Sure thing, Mom," Ranko replied, "And I'll take you right to

her…only…she's got a Jusenkyo curse…the kind that turns her to guy form,

exactly like me."

"Say what?" Ranma said, "Nanniichuan? On top of everything else

this kid carries with her? That's…pretty damned disturbing."

"Indeed," Nabiki said, "For some odd reason I did not foresee that

aspect. Curious and disturbing. Come along, Ranma, let's return to

headquarters and see what we can learn from this Heiko Managi, and possibly

find a clue that we need to solve this mysterious crisis."

There was a rather loud crashing noise as a blazing hot David

crashed back into the foam, kicking up a cloud of steam that shot high into

the morning light.

"Excellent progress you're making," Anri said, "You actually managed

to get some control over that last attack, but you're woefully inadequate in

the emotions department."

"Ah…what about him?" Ranko asked, indicating the sopping wet,

boiling mad David.

"Leave him where he is," Ranma said, "Looks like he's in pretty good

hands to me."

"Indeed," Nabiki said, "A more fitting punishment would be difficult

to devise, and that's coming from someone who used to be his apprentice."

To that Ranko wisely declined to make comment, but privately she was

starting to feel a bit of sympathy for the boy, not that she wanted to

intervene as it seemed to her the path of justice was being properly served

by a source who was well and truly familiar with the concept, and knew

better than any how best to make redemption a slow and painfully arduous

process…

Yet some hours earlier before Sunrise…

"One thing you've really got to hand to the lady," Talbain remarked

as he surveyed the opening to the now flooded NERV complex, "When she wants

to close a place off to somebody, she doesn't kid around."

Frank grunted his assent, having already determined that the former

underground headquarters of NERV was immersed in sea water right up to above

sea level, about two miles of ocean depth separating them from the surface

and quite beyond the means of normal salvage equipment to attempt any sort

of retrieval.

"This place must've stood here since the time of ancient Lemuria,"

Talbain noted, "I understand the Tokyo people found all sorts of lost

scientific discoveries when they opened the place a few decades back, but

now most of that is buried with the rest of the whole complex, and who knows

when it will be accessible again?"

"Yeah, who knows," Frank assented, keeping private to himself the

knowledge that the Silver Seagull had imparted that in about a years time it

would be made available to some otherworldly visitors whom she deemed worthy

enough to offer it as a refuge. No need to inform his friend Talbain of

that just yet, especially with the NERV and MIB people standing just within

earshot. Ulsa Laolana had entrusted him with the knowledge and he was far

too experienced in "the game" not to know the need for discretion when

someone with semi-divine abilities entrusted him alone to carry the burden.

"I feel sorry for the folks who lost lots of personal stuff down

there," Talbain sniffed at the churning level of the inky black water then

said, "Maybe we ought to contact our buddy Rukio to have a look down there

to see if anything's retrievable."

"Might be an idea," Frank mused, "On the other hand…I'm betting the

lady is one step ahead of us in that department."

"Yeah?" Talbain asked, "Like how?"

Frank just nodded at the dark water, and after a moment Talbain saw

what he was indicating, catching the sight of something move beneath the

surface causing a ripple of a size that suggested something huge was moving

down there, just out of sight but nonetheless menacing in nature.

"Oh," Talbain noted, "So much for any ideas of me getting my fur

wet…"

"Yeah," Frank turned away and confronted the man known simply as

Agent Kei, "My people will handle the mop-up on this end. Survivors-which

seems to be just about everyone on the personnel roster for this

place-will be relocated to a temporary facility where they can dry out and

recover from this sudden forced relocation. As for NERV itself, I'd say

it's pretty much finished as an effective organization. Wish I could say

the same about SEELE…"

"We've got our eyes on them, Stein," Agent Kei assured him, "Next

time they try and make a move like this they're gonna find us all over their

asses. MIB doesn't look too kindly on forming secret hidden alliances with

alien entities intent on universal destruction."

"So, what about that Gendo guy?" Agent Jay asked with a nod towards

the dour looking ex-commander of the complex.

"He'll get what's due to him," Frank assured, "Although I think

he'll have his hands full enough trying to recover from the personal hits

he's taken. Cant's say I'm too sympathetic considering I hear about what a

louse he's been as both a husband and a father."

"Yeah, no kidding about that," Talbain snorted, "My money's on his

Ex to take everything of value and move to a different country. Cubs need

lots of attention to raise right, and I speak from experience on that

front."

Even as he said this they heard the young girl named Misato

complaining, "But I left my entire wardrobe down there, Mon! I've got

nothing to wear except this dumpy thing that the lady dressed me in, this

sucks!"

"Calm down, Misato-chan," her mother, Kenoe, spoke calmly for the

sake of her only child, "Your father and I will do what we can to get you

something to wear that's more appropriate for a girl your age than what they

wore in the complex. And I believe Ichiro-chan still has a separate

dwelling in Tokyo itself that could serve as a temporary home until we get

back on our feet, hai?"

"Huh?" Ichiro Katsurugi blinked his eyes and then with a hopeful

note in his voice, "Oh…yes…and I suppose we're going to have to look for new

jobs now that our positions with NERV will probably no longer be open. No

doubt we'll have to make lots of adjustments…but at least we still have our

lives."

"Our lives, perhaps," said Naoko Akagi said a bit dourly, "But years

of research is gone…and my grand project of building the Magi computer

system is as dead as the rest of NERV central. It's going to take almost a

lifetime to recover from this disaster."

"Now Mom," said Ritsuko reassuringly, "I'm sure with my help you

could retrieve whatever important data you lost from the backup files we

kept at our backup station. There's no need for you to feel as if we lost

everything…although I do sympathize with Misato-chan. We both lost a lot of

important personal belongings that may be nearly impossible to retrieve."

"Everything except the memory of what happened," Misato murmured

halfway to herself before she and Ritsuko turned as one and shared a

poignant stare together that spoke volumes over the change in their

relationship that had been brought about as a result of their encounters

with Ulsa and Lilith.

"Boy, things sure have changed a lot from when I was that age," Kay

remarked, "Makes me wonder what'll happen if El and me ever decide to get

serious. I mean…does MIB even have a policy for dating between

ex-partners?"

"Which reminds me," Agent Kei gave a very rare smile, "My

congratulations on your coming nuptials. You're a lucky guy having two fine

women like those two hitch their chariot to your stallion. Might even drop

by to pay my respects at the reception."

Frank scowled, "And how the hell did you find out about that?"

Talbain cave a lupine cough and glanced away.

"John?" Frank turned a surprised look in the werewolf's direction.

"I…might've let it slip to a few folks that there was some lady out

there intent on making an honest man out of you, big stud," Talbain turned a

wolfish smile back towards the towering man-monster, "Hey, when a notorious

Outlaw like you decides to settle down it's big news on the Darkstalker

circuit…but don't ask me how the hell Sunshine here found out about the dual

engagement."

"I have my sources too you know," Agent Kei said slyly, "It's big

enough news when you and the new Vampire Goddess decide to tie the knot

together, but hooking up with the daughter of one of the Lords of the

Daokan? Now that's huge…the kind of thing that makes ripples. In any

event, Slick and I will see you around at the Bachelor's party."

"What?" Frank turned back to Talbain again and growled, "What

Bachelor's party?"

"Ooops," Talbain winced, "Way to let slip on the big secret, K-man."

"What big secret?" Kei replied as he and Jay started to take their

leave of the setting, "It's all over the news…Darkstalkers are converging on

Tokyo from nearly everywhere intent on seeing the Big Man here get his just

deserts for several lifetimes worth of dodging the bullet. Why, I even hear

your Ex is thinking about making a visit to add her sympathies to your

dearly intended."

"Eve?" Frank would have blanched it if here physically possible,

"That's all I need…that and her new husband showing up to give the brides

away at the altar."

"Hey, you know what an old stiff Vlad can be about parties," Talbain

shrugged , "I'm sure he's got better things to be doing with his time…and

any way, I don't know about you but I'm itching to get out of this burg and

put the whole business about Lilith and the End of the World behind me.

Tell you what, old buddy…why don't we find ourselves a nice dark dump

somewhere and do some serious partying of our own, just like in the good old

days. First round's on me."

"You're buying?" Frank asked suspiciously, "You wouldn't happen to

be offering me this to get me away somewhere that the gang is planning to

hold a surprise party for me? Because you know how much I hate those

things."

"Hey, you've only been engaged for, what…a couple of days tops,

right?" Talbain shrugged with what was intended to look like an expression

of innocence, but which same on his face came off looking like what the Big

Bad Wolf might offer to little Red Riding Hood, "Do you honestly think even

our crew could put something together like that in this short a span of

time? Get real!"

"Weeelll…" Frank said reluctantly, then decided to ignore the little

warning voice in his head since he found he really was feeling a powerful

thirst for something with a high level of alcoholic content, the kind of

beverage that would make Embalming Fluid taste like soda pop, "All right,

just as long as you're buying."

"That's the sport," Talbain nodded, patting the larger man on his

broad shoulders, "Leave the details for your recovery crew…I'm sure they'll

file a report later. You can have Shelly fax over the details."

"Yeah, now that you mention it, it has been quite a day at that,"

Frank sighed, "Might as well take advantage of what's left of the

evening…sunrise will probably hit us before the third round of brewskies."

"Now that's the Frank I know," Talbain said cheerfully as they

vacated the half-submerged tunnel access route, leaving behind what was left

of the NERV crew as they sorted out their own list of miseries, especially a

fellow named Gendo Rogunbugi, who looked on forlornly at Yui, his long-lost

(and soon to be Ex-) wife come back to life who was cradling the infant

child named Rei Ayanami with great motherly affection…and silently the man

whom many regarded as the Devil Incarnate of NERV began to wonder at his

life's direction…and privately contemplate if it were indeed too late to

seek personal salvation…?

Continued.

Comments/Criticisms/I'll Take Anything: shadowmane

Or: shadowmane9849

Or: shadowmane747

Next time up: Nabiki recovers from her night with Saki, but will it

be a hangover she sports or the beginnings of a whole new chapter in her

life that we may title here: "Lost in Tokyo Paradise," or, "The Fatal Fury

of Final Fantasies XXX." Be there!

X


	112. Chapter 112

Dnabiki201

Nabiki ½

"A Very Scary Thought"

by

Jim Robert Bader

(Inspired by the works of Rumiko Takahashi & Others,

with concepts and characters created by fellow fanfic writers

Wade Tritschler, DB Sommers, Nicole Manders, Andrew

Greaves, Bill Guiroff and countless others, including "Buffy"

creator Joss Whedon; with special thanks to my good pal

Shiva for his editing and handling of this series.)

(Certain other characters and concepts are of my own

innovation, including my interpretation of the Monster

of Mary Shelly's novel, the Furies, Trudy, Takaharis

Angelique d'Anjou, Anri and the Daokan, Thelendra

the Dream Weaver and various other guest stars

appearing in this portion of the Nabiki ½ series…)

Chapter Seventy-Six.

Episode Two Hundred and One.

The Awakening

Babylon, Circa 1850 BC

Abhram of Ur glanced up from tending his fire to see three strangers

appear at the edge of his encampment. One was robed in white, another in

dark red, and the third had robes of white so fine that he surely was of

noble position. Their appearance was so sudden that one might be inclined

to think that they materialized from out of the ground, especially since

they seemed to have no pack animal nor horse nor camel, which seemed passing

odd since no traveler through this land would simply walk the path of the

dusty goat trails that dotted the region, at least…not by volition.

Abhram's guard was quite naturally aroused by this, but still the

strangers made no hostile overture nor did anything that would confirm his

worst suspicions. He sheltered his eyes against the glare of the setting

sun and tried to make out the features of these strangers, trying to

determine their tribal affiliation but found it difficult to mark them by

either their race or ethnic origins.

And that was indeed a most troubling thing when dealing with others

in the desert. Years of nomadic living had taught the caravan leader to be

cautious around those whom he had not known personally for a substantial

length of time and whose motives were unknown. After all, life in the

wilderness was hard and bleak, and often roving bandits survived by preying

upon the hospitality of others, taking advantage of the trust given towards

them by showing fangs instead of favors.

Not knowing who you were dealing with was a dangerous situation, and

Abhram was half tempted to call out to one of his men in order to fortify

himself against the possibility that these men posed some type of danger.

After all, it had not been that many months back since they had repelled a

foreign invasion from one of the Kingdoms of the Plains, rescuing his nephew

and many others who had been taken captive by the invaders. There was every

possibility that these men might be from the Kingdoms of Nu'un or Lur, which

were hostile to the realms of Gamora and Sadom. If so then it would be most

unwise to get in the middle of their dispute, and Abhram was by nature a

cautious man, having been taught many life lessons about the need to be on

guard against one's own tendency to be too trusting.

But before he could raise his voice to one of his servants the

leader of the trio said, "Be at peace, gentle sir. We mean no harm to you

or yours. We are simple travelers passing through this realm on our way to

the city of Ur-Geballah."

Abhram held back a gasp as the man drew away his hood to reveal his

face, and at once he made this fellow out to be a member of one of the

Kurdish tribes that roamed up north near the lands of the brown skinned

Dravid peoples to the distant east, the mysterious realm of myth and near

legend. He had a well-groomed quasi-aristocratic look about him that spoke

of high caste birthing and his well-trimmed beard made his age all but

impossible to determine. He spoke with a noticeable accent that inflected

certain terms with a kind of rolling rhythm, but there was gentleness to his

tone that set one's nerves at ease and made Abhram feel more inclined to

trust him than was seemly.

Incongruous to his dusky features, this man had very vivid green

eyes that were full of warmth and humor as he regarded Abhram with kindly

intentions, so much so that he found himself responding, "Welcome to our

camp, Strangers. If you come as friends then be welcomed to our midst as

guests…but if you do harbor evil thoughts, then best leave them far away

from this oasis."

"And what would you do if we refuse?" another of the three strangers

asked, earning an annoyed look from the third man even as his voice seemed

strangely similar in tone to that of the first man.

The first glanced back over his shoulder and said a chiding,

"Brother…is that any way to speak to our host?"

"Don't give me that, Brother," the second man scoffed, "You act as

though we should be deferential to the cur when we could just as easily take

what we want if we had a mind to."

The third man made a noise that sounded like a growl and glanced

menacingly at the second man as though to silently project the thought that

he ought to just shut up before he embarrassed them both to the caravan

leader.

"I am just saying," the second deferred, seeming to subside in his

manners under the combined stare of his two brothers.

"You will have to forgive him," the first man said as he turned his

glance back towards, "We have each traveled a long way and are a bit tired

in our pilgrimage. My name is Rama Muharabi and I wish you well and all who

dwell within your camp. May the Gods and Powers smile upon you and your

descendants, and fear not…despite my brother's words we are not here to

cause you any troubles."

"That is good to hear, Strangers," Abhram averred, "You will forgive

an old man for being cautious, but these are troubled, restless times in

which we live, and a wise man is careful in extending hospitality to those

whom he does not know, though I much prefer to reserve judgment to those who

have not as yet proven their good intentions."

"Well said that, good sir," the man identifying himself as Rama said

agreeably, "And as proof of our good intentions let us each extend to you a

gift in token of our best wishes. Brothers, if you would each be so kind as

to present your token of respect?"

The other two men seemed less than enthusiastic about the gentle

prodding of their companion, but grudgingly they each reached into their

robes and pulled out objects of impressive value that caused Abhram to raise

a grizzled eyebrow, wondering that this pair could walk through the hot

trackless deserts with their belongings on their immediate possession rather

than attached to a proper pack donkey like any other merchant.

"Here," the querulous one grunted as he passed along a small oblong

box that seemed quite finely hand crafted of dark mahogany wood of the time

difficult to come across this close to the Tigris basin.

Abhram accepted the box then stared at it for a moment before the

man named Rama politely showed him how to open it, at which point Abhram

discovered that it contained a finely ground herbal powder whose rich aroma

brought a smile to his withered face. He set this aside then accepted the

other gift passed along by the silent man, which he promptly discovered to

be a vase of extremely fine craftsmanship whose glazed surface depicted

images of a style that was quite archaic. Abhram's surprise increased

exponentially as he held the object within his hands then gasped.

"Can…can this be?" he asked tremulously.

"It certainly would seem to be," Rama said with an amused cast to

his voice, "Sumerian pottery dating back to around about eight or nine

centuries ago, during the reign of the Great King of that era."

"Gilgamesh?" Abhram asked skeptically, "But…it cannot be. Sumeria

fell to the Martu many generations ago…hardly anything survives of their

civilization."

"Yes, I know," Rama smiled sagely, "After a foolish monarch in

Lagash instituted a Tax Revolt and created massive deficits that left them

unable to afford a standing army the land was invaded by the Ummanites,

following which the Elamites came down and conquered them, an altogether

predictable cycle." Rama sighed, "Some patterns are destined to be repeated

over and over so long as human nature favors greed over reason."

"But can this be an authentic vase dating back to the time of the

Great King?" Abhram asked while critically examining the thing to determine

that it was indeed quite flawless.

"Trust me on that, it is," Rama assured with a strangely enigmatic

smile, as if knowing beyond question just how such a prized rare object

should fall into the possession of his dark-robed companion.

Abhram decided to set the question aside with the vase and instead

directed his focus at the white robed Dravidic noble then asked, "And you

sir?"

"Ah," Rama smiled, taking the question as an invitation as he sat

down before the caravan leader, urging his two companions to do likewise,

"You have me at a bit of a loss, sir. What boon would you wish of me since

I have it within my power to grant you whatever it is that you most desire."

"What I most desire?" Abhram seemed momentarily taken aback, then he

heaved a weary sigh and said, "That you certainly could never grant me."

"Oh?" Rama asked, seeming intrigued by the man's statement, "Is it

that rare or difficult to come by that you would not even wish to name it?"

"Even if you were a messenger of En'lil himself you could not grant

what I seek," Abhram replied, "You see…I am a very old man and I have no son

to inherit my possessions…"

"That should hardly seem to be the case," Rama replied, "I had heard

word that you had indeed a strapping fine lad by the name of Ishmael…"

Abhram was both surprised and alarmed upon hearing this, "How could

you know about my son?"

"Word travels on the wind my friend," Rama replied, "Just as rumor

would have it that you abandoned your son and second wife to the wilderness

at the urging of your first wife, who is also your half-sister."

Abhram stared in amazement at the other man, "If you know these

things about me then you must know that I did not willingly abandon my

son…but Sarai…she grew so jealous of Tamar, who was younger and fairer

indeed, and at last I could not abide the squabbling. I had to do what I

did for the sake of maintaining harmony within my own tent…"

"Is that how you rationalize abandonment?" the red-robed man scoffed

harshly, "Fortunate for you the woman and boy yet live or else you'd bear

the guilt of their deaths upon your head."

"Brother," Rama chided.

"No…your kinsman speaks the truth I fear," Abhram sighed, "I am

cursed by the Gods because my first wife is barren and has been these many

years of our travels together. I sometimes wonder if my own patron has not

abandoned me for taking to wife my own half-sister…but we loved each other

very much in our youth. I fear that I am doomed to pass on into the

underworld with no son to offer prayers and sacrifices in my name. Perhaps

the voice who promised me a Kingdom is gently laughing at my despair…"

"Voice?" Rama asked politely.

"Ah…it is foolishness, really," Abhram sighed, "Back when I lived in

the city of Ur as a young man I heard a voice speak to me, promising to make

me a great nation if I followed in his ways and served his will, so I

chopped a sheep in half and walked my family through the pieces then took up

caravan work for my father trading goods between Babylon and the lands of

the Ka'anan…a harder life than if I had stayed at home and took up scroll

work as an accountant."

"A strange voice whispers a promise in your ear and you just do

whatever it tells you?" the red-robed man asked in surprise.

"Well…yes, if it is the voice of a God, then who am I to question

its wisdom?" Abhram asked matter-of-factly, "But you don't need to voice

your doubts…I've been ridiculed and laughed at every time I tell my story.

I am much used to such derisions."

"And by what name do you call this voice to whom you refer?" Rama

wondered.

"I have no name for him…he just is," Abhram shrugged, "If he had a

name I am certain that he would share it…"

"Oh, no doubt indeed," Rama smiled without the least hint of

condescension.

"But still," Abhram smiled, "As hard as it has been, it still has

been an interesting life, and one that has known my share of adventures…"

"Indeed, so I hear," Rama mused, "And if word is to believed you've

been a bit of a scoundrel in your time trading on your sister-wife's good

looks to con many a merchant or prince out of their fortunes."

"A vicious slander," Abhram scowled, "Where did you hear such

rumors?"

"Ah…then you deny the stories?" Rama asked, "Such as the one where

the Pharoah of Egypt himself craved Sarai as a wife, and you pretended only

to be her brother so as not to die by his jealous hand? Or the subsequent

rumor that the Pharaoh later developed boils and gave Sarai back to you

along with many presents in token of his remorse for having cuckolded her

with you?"

"Where do they come up with these stories?" Abhram sighed, "I've

heard that one too, as a matter of fact, but really…the circumstances were

not quite so dramatic as all of that, and it wasn't Pharoah who coveted

Sarai but merely a regional governor. I wasn't pimping my wife out, you

know, and I merely saw to it that his food went bad while I guested within

his house so that he developed a case of the runs for a few days, then

bribed a priest to offer him a convenient divination."

"Clever man," Rama mused, "As well I should know that not all rumors

are grounded in substance. Very well then, I will do what I can to see to

it that your promise to that voice in your head is suitably honored."

"How?" Abhram asked, when just then his wife-a very old

woman-came along from where she had been gathering grain and caught sight

of the three robed men having a conversation with her husband.

"What, am I to put more food out for the evening?" she asked

bitterly, "Why do you never tell me that you are having guests over so that

I might have more time to make preparations."

"Give me peace, woman," Abhram said tiredly from over his shoulder,

"These are travelers who showed up unexpectedly, but I have not yet

determined if they are staying until after sunset."

"Unfortunately we are not at liberty to accept such fine

hospitality," Rama said, addressing himself to the old woman, "Your husband

was simply being polite to a band of weary travelers, but our business is

with the city of Ur-Gaballah, where I believe your nephew is presently

residing."

"Who, Lotham?" Sarai sniffed, "The lazy good for nothing wretch.

Got tired of the nomadic life and wanted to settle down with that whore of a

wife of his. Too good to keep in touch with his family, and after my

husband went to the trouble of rescuing his sorry carcass from that raiding

party sent by Nu'an…."

"Thank you, Woman, we are all so enlightened by that sage bit of

gossip," Abhram said sarcastically before turning to Rama and his brothers

to add, "You'll have to forgive the mood she's in. Our favorite goat dried

up and her milk went sour, so we had to trade her in for a fresher model."

"When it comes to old goats you are certainly the expert, husband,"

Sarai said snappishly before storming off angrily towards their tent, into

which she promptly vanished.

The red-robed man shuddered slightly and said, "Now there is a woman

even a dragon would think twice about besetting," to which his grim-faced,

dark-robed companion grunted in assent.

"Oh, I don't think she's all that bad a sort," Rama mused, "Just a

bit frustrated about not having a young one to take care of, which I'm

certain would give her something else to complain about, but would take a

good deal of stress off of your way, my good fellow."

"I can see why he's so intent on becoming a father," the red-robed

man said sagely.

"Alas, stranger, it seems your eyes are sharp enough to see right

through me," Abhram sighed heavily, "I have sacrificed a great deal for that

woman with little more to show for it than the tent over my head and the

number of sheep and goats that I was able to buy with her ransom."

"You mean what those men had to pay you in order to take her back?"

the red-robed man asked dryly.

Rama stared absently in the direction of the tent where the woman

had vanished then smiled and said, "I believe that I may be able to help you

with your little problem."

"If you're thinking of making an offer for her, she's not for sale,"

Abhram informed him, "Old and worn as she is she still has many uses."

"I wasn't thinking of that," Rama assured the man, "Besides, I have

enough wives in my harem as it is…especially my first wife, Sati. Lovely

creature that she is, I would be most loath to do anything to offend or

slight her…"

"Else you might as well stay on the road facing adventures like we

do, eh brother?" the red-robed man said tartly.

"Alas, the wandering life no longer suits me quite so well as in my

youth," Rama averred, "But as I was saying, in my land I am known as a

Bathsava, a worker of wonders whom many would call miracles. I know a means

by which the barren and infertile may be gifted with seed and bestowed with

fresh vitality. Observe, my good sir, as I place my skills at your

disposal."

So saying the white-robed man reached into one sleeve and pulled out

a small round object that looked like a hazel nut only with a dark mahogany

surface. Rama spoke a few words of prayer, passed one hand over the other

and closed his eyes for a moment to summon up from within his energies, then

covered the nut between his palms as they began to glow slightly, then

uncovered the nut once again to reveal that it had been changed to a rich

gold coloration.

He passed this along into the palm of the astonished Abhram then

said, "Place this in a beverage that you and your wife may consume it

together. Speak prayers to your Gods and thank the powers that be for their

kind benediction and you will be gifted with new life precisely as you wish

it, my good sir. A child of the heavens shall be born to you and comfort

your days with the assurance of posterity and an heir to inherit your

mantle."

"Can this be so?" Abhram looked at the nut in his hands as though

doubting its existence.

"You have only to try it, and what have you to lose in the attempt?"

Rama asked while spreading his hands in benediction.

Abhram bowed in acceptance and placed the nut into his sash then

said, "Such gifts show a generosity that I cannot hope to equal. You humble

me with these favors…but I have none to share in turn with you."

"Ah…not so," Rama assured, "There is one very great favor that you

may do for us…in fact the reason why my brothers and I have come into your

presence."

"And that is?" Abhram asked, instantly wary.

"We are travelers seeking only to know the whereabouts of a lost

possession that we wish to obtain for reasons that need not concern you,"

Rama replied, "Only know that it is very important that we find this thing

which we know has come into your hands recently…even if we can perceive that

you no longer have it with you."

"What is this thing of which you speak kind sir?" Abhram asked.

"It is a bejeweled, clawed hand with peculiar writing tattooed upon

its surface," Rama replied, "Very ancient and withered yet as hard as stone.

It belonged to a wizard who lived a very long time ago, one who is no

longer of this world…"

"That accursed thing?" Abhram almost stood up to back away in

aversion, "It brought nothing but evil to my camp! I had Lotham dispose of

it by taking it to a temple where they could keep it secure away from any

mischief it might attempt."

"You are well advised to fear the thing which I mention," Rama

averred, "And wise to be rid of it…but the temple to which it was donated?"

"The temple of the goddess Chernobog in the Kingdom of Sadham,"

Abhram replied, "They are calling it the Hand of Negral after her

consort-demon of the underworld…not that I have much truck myself with that

ancient death-cult."

"Chernobog?" the red-robed man looked startled, then glanced away as

his voice took on a note of aversion, "I might have known it…"

"I see," Rama mused, "In other words our business is in Ur-Geballah.

Thank you for your time and troubles, and if it would not be too

presumptuous of us may we pay our respects to your nephew?"

"Lotham?" Abhram asked, "Why would you seek out him?"

"To assure ourselves that no harm has befallen him from being in

possession of the hand for more than a season," Rama said while standing up,

"Many who do suffer unnatural ailments, but we possess a cure for any

maladies that might afflict ordinary mortals. Good day to you and yours…and

don't forget about my favor."

With that the strangers turned to leave while Abhram looked on at

them in puzzlement, wondering what it was about this trio that struck him as

being more than merely human. After a few paces it seemed as though they

vanished utterly into the very trackless sands from which they had appeared,

which prompted the old man to shake his head and sigh, "You mean the

strangest people in these parts…"

Then he felt the golden nut within his sash and shrugged. What

indeed was the harm? And if it could help him with Sarai, then…certainly

these strangers would be emissaries of the nameless God to whom he had

dedicated his existence. At the very least he would be no worse off for the

trying…

"Just what were you thinking by doing that back there, Brother?"

"Doing what?" Rama asked without glancing at his irate red-robed

companion, studying the walls of the city of Ur-Geballah as though to fathom

the mystery of this ancient civilization..

"Casting that spell upon that seed to charge it with fertility and

youth-restoring magic, of course," the foul-tempered younger brother of the

three asked smartly, "As if you did not know what I was implying?"

"All that I did was insure that a loving couple would bear

offspring, which is the thing they crave the most desperately out of all the

treasures in this world," Rama answered, "Their bodies will temporarily

regain the vitality of their youth and they shall know a night of passion

that will do much to tame the woman's sour disposition, granting the fellow

a night of peace and contenment."

"And the other thing?" the third man of the trio darkly rumbled.

"What other thing?" Rama asked innocently, then when he saw the look

his companions gave him he merely smiled and said, "Oh, that."

"Yes that," the red-robed man said snappishly, "Did you think we

would not notice how you imbued a second spell within the first that will

cause the child to be born with an inherent gift that will make him akin to

the elements of nature like a nascent Eluini?"

"Posh brothers," Rama said matter-of-factly, "You know as well as I

do that it takes years of training to awaken an Eluini's gifts. Merely

being born with the potential is not enough to bestow upon him the gift of

sentience."

"No," the dark-robed man said gravely, "But it is enough to make him

a living rune-sayer, one who is akin to the stars and planets on an

evolutionary ladder far above that of his ancestors."

"So he has the potential to be a seer, sage or cleric," Rama

insisted, "The boy will still need a mentor to show him the way to find

enlightenment and awaken the gifts within him. Otherwise it is most likely

that he will merely be plagued with dreams and portents with the partial

sight of things most mortals are unable to see, being head-blind…"

"Brother, why do you constantly do these things?" the red-robed man

snapped, "Your meddling in the affairs of these insignificant mortals is

contrary to our mission of safeguarding the world from those things of the

Outer Dark to which mortals are justly frightened. You cannot push them

towards the Great Awakening, it is an event that must happen on its own when

these sub-human cretins finally discover the legacy that lies dormant within

them. To do otherwise…"

"I am more than aware about the terms of our anointed mission,

Brother Agni," Rama assured him, "But what is the harm in giving evolution a

little nudge here and there? Are you not yourself tired at the slow and

plodding pace of history where endless generations of mortals try and fail

again and again to catch at the light of the Promethian within them?"

The dark man of the trio said in a voice that cracked from long

disuse, "I once believed as you do, Brother…but many failures have taught me

my folly, and now I heed the wisdom of our sister who cautions us to be

patient and steady."

"I well know about your many deeds on behalf of the mortals who

dwell in the lands far to the North, Brother," Rama replied, "Including the

numerous offspring whom you have fathered in your travels, some of whom have

grown up to become exceptional in their own right. Is that not nudging

things a bit to be the author of so many interesting legends?"

The dark man glanced away with a sour look in his expression,

leaving it to the younger redheaded man to say, "It is thinking like this

that has caused you so much heartache over the years, Anri, and is it not

enough of a lesson that you are on your fifth incarnation because of the

foolish decisions you keep making?"

"Whereas you are on your second dear brother?" Anri smiled, "The

point is well taken, but I am prepared to accept the risks that come with

involvement in the affairs of mortals, just as brother Udan himself has

been, such as when you briefly allowed the people of this realm to crown you

as their king and declare you their champion protector."

"Foolishness," the younger red-headed man said as he turned to his

darker companion, "You allowed yourself to be adopted as the son of a King

then replaced him when he grew old and tyrannical in his ways. You tried to

force the people to behave as morally upright as you yourself have failed to

act over and over, and then after several generations of defending them from

giants, monsters and various rival tribes you allowed them to depose you and

then fake your own burial…and all because you were so broken up about the

loss of your half-beast friend-lover, Ekidu…"

"Brother," Udan growled in warning.

"Never mind all of that, Brothers," Rama said soothingly, "The point

that we must concentrate our energies upon is this so-called Hand of Negral,

which we know to be the last remnant of an old colleague of ours, one we

fervently hoped was no longer of this world. The hand, unfortunately, would

serve as a link to bind his spirit to this material plane of existence, and

if it continues to exist then its potential for mischief would be quite

catastrophic."

"We know this already, Anri," the redheaded man growled sourly

before looking down with a consternated expression, "What I cannot believe

is that some fool would place it in a holy place that is sacred to

Chernobog. That damned she-demoness of an underworld hellion reminds me a

bit too much of your own sparring partner of some years back…what was her

name again? Durma?"

"Kali Durga?" Rama asked, "You exaggerate, Brother…we have had our

share of differences, but Kali has been tamed for now and has ceased to

plague Sati and I with her meddlesome pranks…"

"So you say, Brother," the red haired man said dubiously, "But I

find it hard to imagine that one being tamed, in this lifetime or any

other."

"That may be true enough, Brother Agni," Rama conceded, "But we will

deal with Kali in our own place and time. And besides, is that any way to

talk about your own daughter, by comparing her with your old girlfriend?"

"Chernobog is not my girlfriend," the man called Agni snapped.

"That's right," the dark man known as Udan affirmed, "She's your

wife."

Agni winced, "A technicality, nothing more. I never acknowledged

the ceremony that traitorous witch used to bind me to her in my previous

lifetime. And besides…you know that ties to prior affairs do not

automatically transfer from one incarnation to the next."

"In theory that may be so," Rama replied, "But in practical terms we

our bound by karmic law to meet time and again with those whom we have known

intimately in our significant incarnations…as witness the fact that my first

wife and I have been together now in each of my prior lifetimes."

"That is your bad fortune," Agni replied, "But what I want to know

is how do we obtain the Hand before some fool puts it to horrifying use…or

worse, reads off the runes inscribed within its petrified flesh and attempts

one of the spells that can summon forbidden Chaos magic?"

"That is indeed the question is it not?" Rama mused, "And should the

worst befall us it may well take the combined might of the three of us to

put the menace down. And should we fail…we all know what that will signify

for the race of man the world over."

The dark man rumbled his assent, and Agni scowled in acknowledgement

of the threat, but added very darkly, "Just the same I am not going back to

her…so what else can we do to obtain the Hand short of laying siege to her

temple?"

"Why not pay our respects to the Nephew of the man whom we just

met?" Rama smiled, "I am certain that he can be persuaded to provide us some

necessary assistance if we drop the name of his Uncle."

"Brothers."

Both Agni and Rama turned to glance back in surprise at their dark

companion, who was staring not at the city but at the ground with a

curiously fixated expression.

"Is something amiss, brother Udan?" Rama asked.

"It is a feeling I have…nothing more," the dark man scowled, "I

sense unusual currents in the ground upon which this city is resting…"

"City?" Agni scoffed, waving a hand at the collection of mud

buildings constructed of dried bricks without mortar and sniffed, "That is

barely more than a caravan rest stop with pretensions of grandeur. The

people here cannot even afford to import proper stone and wood to build

those hovels…"

"Not the city itself," Udan replied, still not looking upward, "The

earth is speaking to me…it says that it has rivers and channels of black

oily tar-sand upon which people have built their homes…chambers of

foul-smelling air honeycombing the shale and bedrock of the underlying

strata…"

"So what about this disturbs you, Udan?" Rama asked.

"I…cannot put a name to it, but I feel…strangely ill at ease," Udan

admitted.

"How is that again, 'Gilgamesh?'" Agni snorted, "You used to be the

king of this whole region, now you sound as if you have become an old woman

who fears to revisit old haunts."

Udan glowered at Agni and prepared to take a step forward when Rama

tactfully intervened, "There is no time for this, Brothers. Look you…there

is some sort of festivities going on, a revelry perhaps. Methinks that we

may have arrived on a significant night of great religious significance to

the people who dwell here."

"You are right," Agni grimaced, "I had forgotten…it is one of the

holy nights that are sacred to Chernobog…the Feast of the Dead. This is

altogether perfect…a time when her priests are much engaged in ritual

mummeries and the casting of various spells meant to invoke the shades of

the dead…when loved ones attempt to contact those who have passed beyond the

pale…"

"Most ominous news this is," Rama sobered, "It would seem to be the

perfect night for performing forbidden rituals, especially if one is versed

enough in ancient script and can read the words, 'The Invocation of Dead

Things…'"

"We have no further time to waste then," Udan murmured, and then the

dark robed man said, "Brother, about what you did back there with that man

and his woman…"

"Oh, come now, Udan," Rama scoffed, "There are nearly fifty million

people in the world…what harm can it do to let him join the rest in

propagating his issue?"

"Remind me to quote that back to you some time in the future,

brother Anri," Agni grumbled, but nonetheless the trio started out towards

the city of Ur-Geballah, knowing well that they would arrive late into the

evening but could easily bypass such things as well guarded walls in order

to obtain clear passage to the home of the man whom they were seeking.

From there they mingled with the cheering throngs of revelers,

passing all but unnoticed in their midst save for the fact that their

concealing form of dress stood out like a sore thumb when contrasted with

the semi-nude and fully naked party goers, many of whom were carousing

openly with wine, song and sex with the clear intent of abandoning

themselves utterly to the nightly occasion.

"Ugh," Agni averred when one couple passed a bit too near to the

trio and forced them to step over their writhing bodies, to say nothing of

the spilled contents of many an overcharged stomach, "I had almost forgotten

how much I detested these affairs. It has been centuries yet still these

maggots breed so heedless to all else but the passions of the moment…"

"So?" the dark man behind him asked, "I would have thought this was

your element."

"I have nothing against uninhibited behavior and would find it quite

refreshing if conducted with some manner of decorum," Agni winced, pausing

to avoid stepping in a puddle of quite questionable substance, "But these

backward barbarians have no style to their carousing. They would do it with

anyone at any time while under the intoxication of the Poppy beer that is

brewed within the temple…"

"Relax and ignore them, Brothers," Rama counseled, "These are hard

working people struggling to etch out a bare-subsistence living, and they

are entitled to the occasional release of wild passions that ensue from

these affairs. They only do it three or four times in a season after

hoarding their goods up for precisely this sore of gathering…and it is

fairly harmless."

"Except that most fertility rituals are conducted in the spring

time, brother," Agni sneered, "These churls do this in the fall harvest

period to honor the specters of the dead by showing them what they are

missing by no longer living, which I find to be in garish taste at best."

Udan glanced to the sides warily and said, "I detect an odor that

seems…oddly out of place with these surroundings."

"Truly?" Agni sneered, "I'm surprised that you can smell anything

that doesn't reek foul from too many bodies crowded together in one place.

Give me the open steppes any day with the wind in my face and enough elbow

room for a man to flex his shoulders…"

"It is not that," Udan scowled, "What I smell…is not natural to such

a setting…"

"Later brothers," Rama urged, turning the corner at one very narrow

cul-de-sac and nodding sagely, "Here is where we need to be, at the house of

Lotham. Now to determine to what extent being in contact with the Hand may

have had upon him and those nearest to him."

The three robed brothers made their way towards the street that was

hardly large enough to be called an alley in a street of a much more modern

era, little aware that their passage had been detected by suspicious eyes,

and a man attached to the private security forces of the King of Ur-Geballah

had noted the passage of these unidentified men with great interest.

Without turning his eyes away from the robed strangers he murmured

to his companion, "They hare headed towards Lotham's place. I do not like

the look of them. Send word to the Temple and fetch some guards, then

notify the Head Men that we may have spies come into our sacred city…"

"I see, strangers," Lotham said after hearing Rama outline a brief

account of why he and his brothers were paying him this visit, "In other

words the accursed thing that my uncle gave me to be rid of is in fact a

part of a wizard's arm…one who lived a long time ago and was notorious for

his day?"

"Notorious would not do this fellow justice I am afraid," Rama

assured the middle-aged merchant before him, "He was a being steeped in such

black-hearted evils that the very heavens themselves cursed his very name.

He tried to summon up the specters of those whom wise man do not name to

bring an end to this world for the sake of his dark masters."

"Well then, he's certainly well honored to have part of his remains

kept here," Lotham remarked, "This is a city of wickedness indeed, one where

Death is revered and strange gods and their ways are honored."

"Really?" Rama asked, "Coming here I hardly noticed anything much

out of the ordinary, except that the people seem really pleased about this

year's harvest."

"They are like that, these Geballans," Lotham sniffed, "I have

dwelled here for many seasons and do a fair amount of business trading

between the twin provinces of here and Sadham, but it still takes some

getting used to the way these city dwellers use just about any excuse they

can come up with to sleep naked under the stars with people with whom they

are barely even acquainted."

"I would not be too harsh with them for that," Rama said, "And

anyway, what harm is it in a bit of revelry once all the work is done and

one must make preparations for the winter season? Besides, these people are

your neighbors, and are you not accounted a hero among them for the part you

played in saving them from the attack of a rival city?"

"That happened years ago and they have quite forgotten their good

fortune," Lotham said, "My uncle had been able to rally a group of farmers

and shepherds to roust the raiding party, but all the people here seem

capable of remembering was that they were attacked and many citizens were

nearly bonded into slavery. Since then some of the Elders have become

enormously paranoid about strangers, and even those of us who have lived

here for some time are still regarded as foreigners. Sometimes I grow so

weary of being looked down upon because of my immigrant status…"

"You ask me, that is what you get for giving up on the nomadic life

and moving into this mud hole of a city," Agni snorted.

"Brother…" Rama chided in a tone of restrained patience.

"No, he is right," Lotham sighed, "City people have their ways, and

as a young man I was much intrigued with their arts and sophistication. For

one thing they have such modern innovations as writing and art…but much of

what they expend it upon is bawdy, cheap and disgusting tripe, much of it

involving depraved acts of sex and violence…though not necessarily within

the same context. Why…do you know, they actually think that it is important

for a man to concern himself with the needs of a woman instead of just doing

his business the way the sheep and goats do theirs? I mean, my neighbors

alone know forty seven positions for doing it while standing up…forty seven!

Have you ever heard of such abominations?"

"As a matter of fact…"

"Brother…" Udan growled in a voice of calculated warning.

"You are no fun," Agni glared sidelong at the dark man seated beside

him.

"Fun?" demanded the voice of a woman before she came storming into

room (which was quite a feat as there were only two adjacent chambers in

this squalid little building), "What would my husband know about fun? To

him sex is all about having children…and here I have two grown beautiful

daughters who are without husbands because the cheap bastard cannot afford a

dowry for giving them away!"

"Woman," Lotham said tiredly, "Enough with your shrewish tongue! I

have told you time and again that I will allow our daughters to marry only

when I am convinced that there is a man worthy enough to take them off of my

hands…and besides, I am still waiting for Gabadi to pay me back the ten

sheckles that I loaned him to buy a camel…"

"This would not be such a problem if you would adopt the ways of the

Geballans and allow the man to pay the dowry and not the other way around!"

the woman retorted in an angrily resentful voice.

"No, absolutely not!" Lotham said adamantly, "It is a father's duty

to pay the dowry rather than just ransom his daughters away like they were

property! But they are my daughters and I will decide what is to become

their fate and that is final!"

"Gee, thanks Dad," one of the teenaged girls in the kitchen growled

out sarcastically, "It so helps our self-esteem for you to make that

distinction."

"Oh my," the other girl murmured softly while looking up from the

pot of boiled vegetables that she was preparing for her mother.

"Peace between you, honored hosts of this demesne," Rama urged, "I

do believe that we are getting past the reason for our paying you this

visit…and what is that confounded commotion outside?"

"You tell me, Brother," Agni said while glancing up past his

shoulder towards the doorway to the hovel, "It sounds like a very large

gathering of men…and I sense great hostility being turned in the direction

of this place."

"Perhaps some revelers got lost and found their way to my avenue,"

Lotham said as he got up and moved to the front entrance, "I will speak with

them…they are probably just my rowdy neighbors."

Rama shot a glance towards the man, then at his brothers, and

silently Agni and Udan tensed slightly, the three of them instinctively

convinced that whatever it was that brought the men to this place it would

not be a matter so easily turned aside by a few calm words or reason.

"Yes?" Lotham asked as he studied the torch-lit faces of several

bearded men, only to blanch slightly when he caught sight of their official

robes of office, "My Lord Sheriff?"

"Lotham of Ur," the official said distinctly, "We have received

disturbing word that you have received guests into your place who might

possibly be spies infiltrating our fair city."

"I beg your pardon?" Lotham blinked, "You cannot be serious. You

are accusing me of consorting with spies working against the interests of

this city?"

"We know that we owe a debt to your uncle for his help in thwarting

the schemes of those accursed devils," one of the other officials stated

flatly, "But time has passed and we have grown concerned that you may have

maintained contact with our enemies. After all, you have a family to look

after now, and you would not be the first with much to lose who has been

coerced into aiding in a scheme to betray those who have given you sanctuary

within their midst."

"These are difficult times, Lotham, and we cannot afford the risk of

letting our guard down, even for your sake," the Sheriff said, and not

without compassion, "So bring out your guests that we may know them and

determine for ourselves whether or not we have a reason to be concerned

regarding their status."

"But…they are guests within my house, and they have come bearing

word from my uncle," Lotham said reasonably, "Can you not accept my word

that they are not here to cause harm? You shame me before others by

demanding that I forsake the rule of hospitality…"

"Which would you prefer, Lotham?" the other official who had spoken

before asked sharply, "That you keep the rule of hospitality within your own

house or that you betray our hospitality by harboring enemies of the state

within your home?"

"But they are not the enemies of either you nor Ur-Geballah…" Lotham

insisted.

"Give us proof that they are not enemies and we will be satisfied,"

the Sheriff countered, "Otherwise…we will consider you our enemy and deal

with you accordingly."

"Now…sirs…let us be reasonable men here," Lotham said in a more

placating tone of voice, then he turned to those faces whom he saw looking

anxiously towards him from the safety of his doorway and made beckoning

motions, "Rachel, Mikah, come here my girls, tend to your father."

So saying the two girls left the shelter of their home and went up

to the side of their father, both looking round-eyed as they saw him turn

back to the Sheriff with an arm draped over both of their shoulders.

"Now sirs," Lotham said reasonably, "These are my children, the

light of my world and apples of my eyes, who have no husbands and have not

known the touch of a man beside their father. They are virgins pure,

unspoiled and unsullied, but I will make them available to you if you will

spare this house the shame of betraying the code of hospitality that is

sacred to my people."

"Say what?" reacted the girl named Mikah.

"Oh my…" murmured her older sister as both girls stared at their

father as though he had just turned into a stranger.

"Unspoiled you say?" one of the officials asked, clearly interested,

but the Sheriff raised a hand of his own and scowled at the man before him,

evidencing great disappointment.

"Lotham, you shame yourself by offering this cheap bribe to us," he

said sternly, "Do you think to buy us off as a means of saving face before

your people?"

"Cheap?" the girl named Mikah reacted with evident offense.

"Buy off?" Rachel asked in a non-plussed tone, "Oh my…"

"But…I only offered their services as a means of seeking to make

peace between us both," Lotham said while taking a step backwards, "I would

not presume to buy off your favors, noble sirs, only…"

"May I be of some assistance here?" Rama asked as he emerged from

the house and raised his hands in a token of respect.

The Sheriff turned his attention towards the dusky skinned foreigner

and frowned, "Who are you, and what business do you have within our city?"

"That is my concern, not yours," Rama replied even as Udan and Reka

followed him out into the alley, "But my brothers and I mean you no offense

and are not enemies of your fair city."

"Brothers?" one of the officials asked, glancing from the tall dark

man to the redheaded Agni, then again to the dark skinned Rama.

"Yes, can you not see the resemblance?" Rama smiled, "But really…so

much stress and uneasiness for our sakes. Surely there is no cause for such

undue alarm, and you really have nothing to fear from us as we are here to

conduct some personal business, not interfere in the lives of your fair

citizens."

"What business?" the Sheriff frowned, "Why did you come here so late

at night, skulking about like thieves or strangers who are up to no good?"

"Surely lout," Agni growled, "Have a care you how address us…"

"Brother," Udan cautioned.

"Not that I give a rat's ass about either you or this dung heap of a

backwater bordello," Agni continued, heedless of the disapproving glare of

the larger man beside him, "Nor do I care much about this callow fool who

would toss his own daughters into the street like so much carrion fodder for

the dogs to chew over…and what man worthy of the name would cast fine

baubles before swine such as these?"

"My now," Mikah turned and eyed the redheaded stranger with a look

of interested speculation.

The Sheriff bridled, "I like not your tone, stranger…"

"And I like not one of bit of you, so are more than equals here,"

Agni scoffed, "So back off now and take your pets with you…or else I shall

be very cross with you indeed."

"Brother…" Rama said in a weary tone of marginal restraint.

"Enough…seize them now!" the Sheriff pointed at the three strange

men, and at once the men he had brought with him surged forward with ropes

and clubs, quite obviously intending to subdue them.

In that instant Udan made a fateful decision. He did not care much

for his brother's attitude, but clearly these men were intent on interfering

with their mission, and no doubt would try to do more than that should they

learn that what the brothers wanted was secure within the Temple of their

chief goddess. So rather than waste time giving out a warning he merely

stomped one foot upon the ground and all at once it shook beneath their

feet, staggering the men and bringing them to a halt as they looked on with

astonished expressions.

"By Enlil…" the Sheriff gasped as he stared at the scowling dark

man.

"That is right," Agni smiled, raising one hand that burst into

flames as if on silent command, "Pray to your gods for their mercy, little

man…"

"Brother…enough!" Rama urged, then turned a sour look towards the

Sheriff and sighed, "This is against my better judgment, but…"

The Sheriff and his men looked on in confusion as the dark skinned

man only stared at them with a strangely piercing expression, and then all

at once their own eyes went dark and the light of their torches seemed to be

extinguished, along with the light of the stars and the city itself all

around them.

Lotham stared in amazement as the Sheriff, officials and brawny men

raised their hands and began to fumble around helplessly, cursing and

stumbling in the dark as though rendered totally sightless. In amazement he

asked, "What…what did you do to them?"

"Nothing to fear, it is merely temporary," Rama replied, "I froze

the optic nerves that transmits visual imagery to their brains, which ought

to render them harmless for the moment. However, I would not recommend you

staying around and waiting for them to get their sight back as they are

bound to take their displeasure out upon you, my good fellow."

"What…what would you have me do?" Lotham asked.

"Merely tell us what you know about the temple of Chernobog, then

gather your belongings and take your family away from here," Rama urged, "Go

and visit with your uncle about a day's ride to the south of the Tigress.

My brothers and I must remain here to fulfill the mission that brought us

hither."

"But…but take all of my possessions…?" Lotham stated blandly.

"You want to quibble about it, fool?" Agni asked, then casually

dismissed the fire surrounding his hand as though blowing out a candle,

"Begone from this place, and count yourself lucky that you have your family

to protect you."

"But…" Lotham protested, only to be taken firmly by the arms by his

two daughters, who calmly but firmly drew him along back into their house.

"Come along, Daddy," Mikah urged, "Let's tell momma that we're gone

on a little vacation."

"Oh my," Rachel murmured, "I do wish that there was time enough to

tell some of my friends where we are going…"

"Oh, and whatever else yo do," Rama called to them as if in

afterthought, "Do not look backward, especially when fleeing for your lives

my good ladies."

"Got it," Mikah called back, "Don't look backward."

"Especially if you do not wish to witness anything horrifying who

might be after you, lovely ladies," Agni added with his own peculiar brand

of rakish appreciation for their backsides.

Mikah paused to give a coy glance sidelong towards Agni, them smiled

privately and took the lead in guiding their father away from the notice of

the stunned and helpless city officials.

Agni shared a look with the girl and smiled, then scowled as he

noticed Udan glaring at him and asked, "What?"

Rama sighed, "That was reckless and thoughtless even for you,

Brother. We could have dealt with these mortals without having to

demonstrate our powers in so casual a manner…"

"Brother."

"Eh?" Rama turned his focus from Agni to Udan.

"I sense…something shifting beneath us," the dark man replied, "I

fear my stunt may have ruptured a plate…and those strange vapors that I

sensed earlier are seeping up through the ground even as we speak."

"Oh dear," Rama's gaze became distracted, "I think that we had best

hurry things along a bit if what I sense in the ground may complicate our

mission…"

"Vapors?" Agni turned a disbelieving stare towards both of his

brothers, "You are worried about some odd-smelling air trapped under the

earth? While we face a far greater calamity than any that has challenged us

within the past century or so?"

"Do not be so dismissive of that which is of concern to brother

Udan," Rama cautioned, "I do not believe that our taciturn elder would break

his silence if he considered it a mere trifle…"

"Help me…I'm blind!" the Sheriff wailed as he threw up his arms and

voice his despair to the heavens.

"Yes, well, that ought to clear up in a bit," Rama assured, "Perhaps

if you were to avoid playing with yourself so often…"

"Brother…" Udan rumbled.

"Ah yes, the mission," Rama averred, "At least while there is yet

some time before some fool reads off any of those Necromantic spells…"

There was a sudden rumbling in the air, and all at once the sky drew

dark and clouds appeared from a sky that was formerly cloudless.

"You were saying, Brother?" Agni asked in a voice that dripped

sarcasm.

"Oh my…this could be bad," Rama averred, "Brothers…we must hurry…"

And so they did, making haste to cross from the narrow alley that

was the home block of Lotham to a somewhat wider boulevard whereupon they

found a large ziggurat-shaped building at the center of a mall, at which

they knew they had come to their destination as it bore the holy symbol of

the goddess Chernobog, but also was the site of a looming disaster in the

making.

"We are too late," Udan grumbled as he saw a number of shambling

figures stumbling aimlessly about the plaza.

"Really?" Agni asked, "What was your first clue? The fact that the

Dead are walking or that they bear the stamp of demonic possession?"

"Zevumbre," Rama averred ominously, "The Evil Dead come to terrify

the world of the living. Things of the Outer Void…terrible specters that

bear the shapes of men. This obscenity is a sign of the Old Ones hand at

work…or rather the mummified hand of our enemy, which no doubt is the

conduit for controlling these unholy creatures."

"Fine analysis that, Brother," Agni said warily, "But perhaps you

could be a bit more helpful…such as suggesting a way in which these

creatures can be dispatched back to the Netherworld of their origins?"

"That is simple," Udan answered, baring his fists, "We send them

there by destroying their host bodies."

"Their bodies may be vulnerable to our powers, my brothers," Rama

said direly as they saw the shambling dead begin to converge upon them, "But

the souls of those once-living are still attached to their shells, and if we

merely dispatch these demons they will drag their victims screaming

hideously all the way to the netherworld…"

"Then we must purge them completely by detaching these wretches from

both shells and souls," Agni averred, raising a hand again and summoning up

his trademark elemental fire magic.

Udan's eyes went wide with alarm and he called out, Brother…No!"

But it was too late to intervene, for Agni impulsively sent his

flames hurling out into the mass of walking dead and caused their bodies to

burst out into fiery torches that lit up the night and turned the plaza into

an inferno. Zevembre corpses began falling down in writhing piles of

incinerated kindling, screaming out their release as the tortured souls were

freed from the horrific creatures who had bound themselves to their bodies.

The even louder screaming of the demons retreating all but drowned out the

cries of the tormented dead, and like a wave the flames swept through their

ranks causing newly dead bodies to flare up like waxen candles littering the

plaza.

Unfortunately these flames expanded rapidly well past the ranks of

the zombies and set of a chain reaction going that traveled out from home to

home and caused numerous brushfire explosions to set off the night with mud

buildings bursting into flames, and heretofore unsuspecting people trapped

in their homes or their bed crying out at this rude intrusion.

"Brother…!" Rama said in shock at the sight of the entire city going

up in flames for seeming no reason.

"I don't understand!" Agni himself sounded dismayed at his own

achievement, "I didn't use that much power…there is no way this can be

happening…!"

"There is," Udan rumbled somberly, "Those pockets of vapor…did I not

warn you before that they contained flammable compounds?"

"What?" Agni asked, "You must be joking!"

"Have you ever known brother Udan to jest about a thing like this,

Agni?" Rama asked with a sweeping gesture indicating the inferno all around

them.

"Well…no, not since the fall of the Chaldees, no…" Agni reluctantly

noted.

"We must exterminate this fire before the entire city is reduced to

ashes," Udan insisted darkly.

A sudden rush of air caused the brothers to turn their focus back

towards the temple, just as a figure rose up from the entrance way even as a

darker shadow hovered in the air above the temple, the human figure being a

bald priest holding up the Hand of Nekron with a grinning, gibbering

expression, eyes alight with hungry demented evil as he cried to the

heavens, "I LIVE AGAIN! I LIVE TO GLORY IN THE MAJESTY OF THE OLD ONES!"

"Somehow, brothers, I think this is going to be one of those

nights," Rama predicted direly, even as the three Doakan braced themselves

for a duel to the death between themselves and the horrifying presence that

now ruled the benighted temple…

"Whatever you do, Sis, don't look back."

"Oh my, oh my, oh my, oh my…" Rachel replied to Mikah.

"Keep on moving, girls," Lotham urged, "Whoever those strangers are,

they have that aura about them that seems to mean trouble for the likes of

ordinary mortals such as us…especially those two who hovered back in the

shadows. The dark one as most disturbing, but the foreigner with red hair…"

"Yes," Mikah droned thoughtfully, smiling to herself in speculation.

"I don't see why we should be leaving on the word of those foreign

pests," their mother complained bitterly, "Just because they insist on

stirring up trouble…"

"Not the point, Momma," Mikah urged, then she spied an outcrop and

said, "This way…I know of some caves that we can use for shelter for the

night."

"Oh my," Rachel murmured like a litany while following the lead of

her sister.

"You are right…I remember using it that time when I was caught

outside the city at night that one evening," Lotham noted to himself, "And

how oddit was that the guards seemed not to be paying attention to their

posts…in fact, they let us go a bit more easily than I would have thought

possible, and I didn't even have to bribe them with your charms, my

daughters…"

"Daddy!" both Mikah and Rachel said in chorus.

Just then, as they crested the peak and began to descend the sandy

trail that took them out of line of sight with the city behind them, a

rumbling noise sounded in the distance, and out of sheer reflex their mother

turned to glance back where they had come, unwittingly standing exposed to

the direct impact of a massive heat wave that shot up across the desert

floor like a blistering wall of thousand-degree heat, the only one of their

party who was not conveniently sheltered by the protective arc of the

landscape.

Even so the blast wave was devastating enough to knock three of

their party down, causing Lotham and his two daughters who land face-first

in the sand with the intense feeling of roiling plasma just missing them by

a degree that would leave them with a few blisters, and thus missing the

horrific sight of their mother/wife being incinerated to a pile of crispy

ash within seconds, the tragic result of the massive forces being released

by the clash of the Daokan and the Chaos Magic of the Old ones…

Nabiki awoke with a start and sat bolt upright in bed, shaking and

sweating profusely. Her heart was beating rapidly but she immediately

calmed herself down with an almost off-hand reflexiveness that at once

cleared her mind and heightened her senses to give her total awareness of

her immediate surroundings.

At once she became aware of the warm presence stirring next to her

in the relative dim light of their shared nocturnal quarters, and instantly

Nabiki knew that this was neither Shampoo nor any of her co-wives whose life

force she detected pulsing strongly next to her own body. The sweet perfume

of her companion differed remarkably from any of Nabiki's regular circle of

intimate lovers, and at once she placed Saki as the one who had been with

her this morning.

With that memory an avalanche of rather erotic sights, sounds and

impressions came tumbling down into her conscious awareness, causing Nabiki

to blush as she recalled vividly everything that she and Saki had been doing

well late into the evening. This brought a bemused smile of rueful pleasure

to the Saotome/Tendo heir's features, but added to the panoply of

confusingly pleasant imagery was a sense that caused Nabiki to glance down,

and in doing so discovered a new source for embarrassed chagrin as she was

no longer in female form but quite obviously had taken on her alternate

identity of Tendo Kaneda.

"Oboy," Kaneda murmured to himself in dawning awareness of what was

portended by the unexpected shift in genders, and almost without thinking he

stretched his senses out to determine in fact that what he suspected was

indeed quite certain, and that within a day or two confirmation would be

found to affirm the consequences of his actions with the altogether willing

Saki.

And in realizing this Kaneda groaned softly and rested his chin on

both hands as he sat up and studied the semi-nude form of his companion. As

if his own life were not already chock full of complications, he now had

this to deal with, and how would he ever be able to give an account to

himself to Shampoo, Ranma or any of his other loved ones?

The next thought made him softly cudgel himself in belated

realization. Shampoo had already given her tacit approval for this very

purpose, and while Ranma and the others had been somewhat more reluctant in

conceding the point, there was no denying the fact that Saki's intimacy with

Nabiki implied a shared intimacy with the altogether fertile Kaneda.

"Oboy," Kaneda murmured to himself again, "I'm gonna go bankrupt

with child support at this rate…"

Saki murmured something faintly in her sleep that sounded like a,

"Don't worry…I wanted this" assurance, but that did little to ameliorate the

guilt that Kaneda was feeling about adding to the already complicated life

of her pink-haired companion, who had known so little joy in this world and

was still far too young to be burdened with being an unwed mother.

Still and all Kaneda smiled, and for some odd reason could not

regret the deed that was now beyond undoing. He leaned protectively over

Saki and gently kissed her on the cheek, then murmured softly, "Get some

rest, Kid…you'll need it."

With that in mind Kaneda realized that he was very much in need of a

hot bath and/or a cold shower, either one being appropriate since something

about the sleeping Saki was stirring his manhood to fierce new life in spite

of his resolve to be acquitted of the matter as smoothly as could be

managed. He grabbed his discarded clothes from the night before and slipped

out of the tent before Saki could fully awaken, then sought out a means of

changing back into Nabiki, which was conveniently provided for him when his

finely attuned senses picked out the sulfurous smell of a nearby hot

springs.

Not that it was surprising to find one this near to an active

volcanic crater, of course, but it seemed a bit too convenient to Kaneda's

senses that one would be situated so close nearby to the tent that he and

Saki had shared together. But not being one to look a gift horse too

closely in the molars he quickly took advantage of his good fortune and soon

was soaking blissfully within the warm healing waters of the seemingly

natural occurring hot spring, fully restored in mind, body and gender to a

proper sense of self awareness, which gave Nabiki time to take stock of how

sharp her perceptions were this morning, and of how everything around her

seemed to much clearer and distinct from at any time that she could

previously remember.

The tent encampment was strangely silent given how rowdy it had been

on the previous evening…but with a bit of thought she had little difficulty

determining the reason as she felt the slumbering presence of scores of

people littered about the place, some within tents and others having camped

out beneath the stars, and many sleeping it off for the vast amount of

alcoholic spirits they had imbibed, to say nothing of the rampant sex that

had left many so exhausted.

The curious thing in all this was that Nabiki was still enjoying the

hot springs while being aware of the condition of the revelers who made up

the encampment. A bit more of thought and she made out the distinctive life

auras of those whom she gladly named her husband and co-wives, all gathered

together in one place with the various elemental consorts of Ranma nuzzled

amid their fully exhausted Master and Mistresses, a thing that did much to

sooth Nabiki's sense of guilt over her own actions of the previous evening.

There was Latisha with her head laid down in the lap of her lord

Ranma, while sitting astride Ranma's face was an equally recumbent Sharil,

whose thighs provided a comfortable pillow upon which her master safely

rested. Sharil's own face was hidden beneath the canopy of Perfume, who

obviously had been quite busy with her, even as Sobriel and Karina were

quite evidently as preoccupied with Ukyo, who was nuzzled between their soft

bosoms. Shampoo herself was curled up in the lap of Nagisha, who was

stroking her purple locks absently in her sleep as though quite content to

have the Amazon draped blissfully atop her naked body.

Far from being jealous at the sensuous setting, Nabiki found herself

becoming incredibly turned on and even a bit envious at not being included

in the action. It would appear that the elementals had accustomed

themselves to their Concubine roles quite easily and had won the

enthusiastic assent of the rest of clan Saotome. Nabiki smiled in silent

approval, finding it oddly appropriate that they should be gathered in this

way, safe and secure within the protective circle of the encampment as

though granted a night of sanctuary to allow them time to get thoroughly

re-acquainted with their loved ones.

This also prompted Nabiki to turn a thought in question of where her

Sensei Trudy was at, and with very little difficulty found the redhead

sleeping blissfully in the arms of her own wife, the normally dour-toned

Carla who seemed quite happy and content at the moment, which gave assurance

to Nabiki that they would not be stirring from sleep in any immediate time

worthy of noting.

In all the camp Nabiki found only a few souls stirring at this hour,

one the vibrantly powerful presence of the green haired Lady of the

encampment, Veragar Greenfire, who was directing Tara and the rest of her

close servants with clean-up duties for the rest of the encampment.

And there was the active volcano itself that the camp was

practically perched right atop, a churning fissure in the surface of the

earth to which the awesome forces of the planet could be vented. It was

amazing that none of the lava currently churning through these cracks in the

earths mantle seemed to touch the camp itself, for the heat was truly

terrifying and could easily seer flesh to ash in mere seconds. But the

flames and molten rock kept a respectful distance as though obeying a will

that held it in abeyance.

And indeed such was the case, for Nabiki could sense that these

flames were alive, and not just in the same sense that Latisha in her

elemental state was alive either. She could feel the living pulse of the

lava, the coursing life of fire itself churning through the liquid state of

solid plasma. There were many separate life-forms flowing through the fluid

medium of liquid stone, Salamanders big and small in all varieties and

contours. She could sense each and every one that came within the expanded

sphere of her awareness, even as she could feel the heat they generated as

it was conveyed through the mineral waters presently soaking her revitalized

body. It was with a sense of wonder that she marveled that she could not

have been aware of such rich diversity until now, but more that the tug and

pull being generated upon this place could emanate from a single point of

origin so very close nearby, yet heretofore beyond her comprehension.

For she could feel him above all else within this place, the source

of this life through and the center of this sanctuary of fire, the living

embodiment of Earth and Fire given form in the guise of a mere mortal. She

turned her gaze and perceived him some ways off from her present location,

sitting in solitary repose atop a rise in the sandy surface, surveying all

that dwelled within his dominion, his senses vast, his power truly

staggering and the breadth of his reach incredible, yet still apart, alone

and isolated.

It was curiosity more than any other impulse that prompted her to

leave the comfort of her bath and redress herself in a surprisingly fresh

and newly pressed silk Cheosang that she found waiting for her at the bank

of the hot springs in place of her former garments. She did not bother to

ask who had taken her old things away and given her these in exchange, but

rather made her way to where the Lord of this realm sat waiting for her

company. She knew that she was drawn to him, compelled to his presence by

silent need, yet unable to refuse the invitation as her need to confront him

outweighed every other impulse.

He did not turn to acknowledge her approach but merely spoke before

she could announce herself, "I see that you enjoyed your nap, but now you

are awake, and on a level of consciousness that makes all of your former

life seem like merely sleepwalking."

"Ah…yeah…" Nabiki replied, not knowing what else she might have to

offer since clearly this being-for a mere 'man' he most definitely was

not-knew more about her new condition that she knew herself…and everything

else about her for that matter. Therefore anything wittier that she might

say would be purely anticlimactic.

"Have a seat and reflect with me upon the coming of this beautiful

morning," Reka urged, "For you will never see again quite this clearly what

possibilities exist in the birthing of a new day a coming."

Realizing it would be more than impolite to refuse, Nabiki elected

to sit down on a spot very near to where the redheaded Eluini lord was

positioned, facing out in the same direction past the sweeping landscape of

volcano and sand, past the green of the oasis towards a deepening sky that

was gathering up the colors of a golden sunrise of miraculous proportions.

In spite of herself she felt oddly moved by the swelling tide of life that

the day brought with it to chase away the evening, and almost she could have

sworn that she heard music in the air humming like an orchestra tuning

itself up for the symphony that was sure to follow.

"You are no doubt impressed at the expansion of your sensual

awareness," Reka noted, so casual that he almost startled Nabiki at this

intrusion into her private reverie, "Perhaps for the first time you are

truly aware of what it means to be one of us…though in essence it is also

the awakening of the Lore Master who has always lurked within you."

"This power?" Nabiki wondered, glancing around and marveling at how

easy it was for her to make out the location and activities of everyone

within the encampment without actually having a visual lock upon these

people.

"Not power per se," Reka said, "It is awareness that makes you

powerful…for knowing that which you perceive you can also interact with is

but the first step to awakening the Eluini within you. It is the legacy and

birthright that we perceived within you that has made us turn to you in

hopes that you might fulfill our hopes for the future."

"You mean this is what makes me such an effective pawn for you?"

Nabiki wondered, though as she said these words she could feel the discord

within her own statement, the dichotomy that stood out and apart from the

intentions of her mildly sarcastic observation.

Reka smiled, "You already know that this is not the case. You are

not our pawn, nor even a Queen made out from a pawn, but rather a sleeper

who is awakening to herself for the first time within this incarnation. You

have free will but your choices are conditioned, giving you a limited set of

options for the future…a future that you may now shape with a clearer eye to

the consequences of those choices that you have yet to make. That gives you

an advantage unknown to most ordinary mortals."

"Fascinating," Nabiki said, trying to sound droll but finding the

effort to be quite hollow as she said it, "So I'm now a more effective

player in this game that's been going down between you and the Old Ones

since Adam talked to Moses."

"You are mixing your metaphors," Reka mused, "But I do understand

the intent of your comment…just as I can feel that you wish to ask of me a

question regarding that dream of the distant past from which you have only

just awakened."

"Uh…yeah," Nabiki reluctantly replied, then more bluntly she forced

herself to ask, "Was that the way it really happened back then? Sodom and

Gomorrah…the fight with that demonically possessed priest that set off the

fireworks that drove us into the cavern. Er…I mean…that version of us who…"

"The dream you had reflects the past, albeit imperfectly," Reka

replied, "And what you really mean to ask was whether or not that was truly

you and your sister who were converging upon the events of some thirty-nine

centuries past. You want to know if there is a connection between yourself

and this other girl named Mikah."

"Um…yeah…so?" Nabiki drawled, trying to win some sympathy for her

side by confronting the question directly.,

Reka distantly smiled, "It is not unusual for people who meet and

play out a significant role in the lives of one another should meet again in

a later incarnation…and I have known so many people in my very long

lifetime…it should hardly be surprising if we have met before, albeit quite

briefly."

"In other words you're gonna let me stew on that rather than give me

a direct answer," Nabiki said, then glanced away and added, "Considering how

the rest of that story went…I don't think I'd want to know the

answer…especially if it meant that Kasumi and me…did a thing like that with

Daddy."

"Different times, different standards, different morals," Reka

shrugged, "In your time incest is regarded as unnatural…but that most

certainly was not the case in the Mesopotamia that I remember some

thirty-nine centuries back. Indeed, incest was hardly unusual for the line

of Abraham that my brother unwittingly brought into existence with that bit

of whimsy that you saw illustrated in your dream. In fact they even

codified it into their book of laws, albeit that it is hardly politically

correct to point this out to their modern descendants…"

"Somehow you don't strike me much as the politically correct type,"

Nabiki observed.

"Indeed…you are most correct on this subject," Reka answered, then

added off-handedly, "But for the sake of your peace of mind, recall that the

past is just as subject to distortion as the memories of man, for what was

written in the Akashik sands can be influenced by numerous factors…and at

any rate time is a fickle Mistress who diverges and overlaps herself over

and over. Who is to say in absolute terms what the truth about the past may

be? Even I have my doubts sometimes on what I remember living through, and

the evidence is fragile, as impermanent as the land and as changeable as the

seasons."

"In other words it might not really have been me doing that back

then," Nabiki paused to think about it, "And here I always thought the story

was just mythological, explaining how the rival tribes of Moab and Amon came

into existence by characterizing them as sons of Lot who were conceived with

his two daughters."

"Sometimes there is as much fact in myth as there is myth in what

seems factual," Reka noted, "But enough of such semantics. I did not summon

you here to debate the vagaries of time like one of my brother's sophomoric

philosophical lessons."

"I thought I came here of my own volition?" Nabiki asked.

"Again…semantics," Reka said dismissively, "Did I compel you to come

here or did you accede to an unspoken request on my part? What does it

matter so long as you and I are here in the now enjoying the beauty of a

sunrise in all its wondrous splendor?"

Nabiki turned to indeed see the sun was rising in the east, and the

breathtaking pageantry of colors that she witnessed above the horizon

momentarily took her breath away, the moreso as she was perceiving things

now on a level previously beyond her normal level of awareness.

"I have witnessed more sunrises than even I care to reflect upon…yet

never does the beauty of one fail to remind me that life is indeed worth the

living," Reka mused, "The truly beautiful things in this world never grow

old, never tire, never cease to inspire us. This is what it means to be

alive…to enjoy the fruits of living by experiencing the now and forgetting

all else that is in the past or that has yet to happen."

"Living in the moment…not outside the now," Nabiki murmured, "I've

often heard Cologne urge me to do that…but I've never really understood what

she was getting at. It seems impossible to shut down memory, and impossible

not to worry about what might happen…"

"What will happen will happen according to the will of all

creation," Reka said firmly, "What is in the past is a reflection of things

that will never be again and thus not worth clinging to…for everything

changes, everything dies, everything is born again and renewed, and at every

moment that we live there exists the possibility of a brighter new

tomorrow."

Nabiki glanced sidelong at the redheaded man and said, "You surprise

me, Reka-san…"

"Because you took me for a simple barbarian based upon our first

meeting?" Reka grinned impishly, "Be mindful that I was a barbarian in the

Age of Stone where I grew up in my first incarnation, far removed from the

Atlantean palace that was my true birthright. I am a prince and a pauper, a

king and a commoner, a rogue and an outlaw, but always I am me, no more nor

less, and quite beyond such simple definitions."

"But you helped me and Saki get through the night without wrecking

my marriage and quite possibly my life," Nabiki noted, "And I can't help

asking…why?"

"You mean why did I intervene or even take an interest in your

plight?" Reka shrugged, "For the same reason that I gave to your husband

when he asked me the same question…why not?"

Nabiki evidenced surprise, "And that's your answer…you did it on a

whim?"

"Hardly a whim," Reka responded, "More like a calculated maneuver to

help events along while evading a negative development that might well have

impeded your spiritual and mental progress. I did it for the same reason

that anyone does anything in this world…because it seemed like a good idea

at the time, and still does for that matter."

"A good idea?" Nabiki repeated.

"Indeed," Reka answered, "There was no profit for we Daokan in

allowing you mortals to mess up your lives at this critical juncture before

Ahriman's pawn carries out Genocide's agenda. Having it be revealed

prematurely that you were on the verge of an extramarital affair would have

shocked and outraged your loved ones, and that would distract you from your

training on the day before you go to face my brother. There was certainly

nothing in it for me in seeing you fail and this rather promising timeline

be brought to a swift and premature conclusion…for I have seen the future…or

rather a version of events that seem most probable in their outcome should

you succeed and prevail in the challenges that lay before you. Besides…I

rather hope to witness the event in particular that one of your close

descendants will bring about to thwart the ambitions of the Old Ones. I

rather do hope to one day cross the path of that young warrior and play a

part in her destiny…a role that even fate could not conceive for all her

cunning…"

"My descendant?" Nabiki marveled.

"You are part of a line that will one day bring about great things

should this timeline be allowed to continue," Reka smiled, "Other than that

I will not burden you with the details…only that your survival is directly

tried to that of your granddaughter, and that what she does will have a

greater impact on what is to be than of what you can possibly conceive."

"Well…that's certainly…disturbing news," Nabiki admitted, "I

mean…I'm not even out of high school yet and you're telling me I'm going to

have grandchildren? From which of my kids?"

"Ah-ah," Reka waved a finger, "I have kibitzed enough to tantalize

you with the possibility, but it would spoil the surprise if I revealed too

much of what will be. And besides…whether knowingly or not, if you knew the

full story then you would do things differently than you will, and that will

itself have negative consequences for the future."

"All right," Nabiki scowled, "Be vastly omniscient and enigmatic,

see if I care," Nabiki glanced away, "But still…if somebody not yet born is

the whole reason why these Old Ones seem so determined to wipe me and my

family out…"

"You begin to perceive how high the stakes are for which we play,"

Reka mused, "For better or worse we Daokan do not do things in a simple way,

and every deed has unexpected consequences…as witnessed the casual

involvement that we had with the line of the Hibiru."

"Point noted," Nabiki conceded, then frowned, "It would help a whole

lot, though, to know what it is that could threaten a God. I mean…we're

taking on a vast conspiracy of celestial powers here...infernal ones, true,

and certainly not a part of the world that we know, but..."

"Pay it no mind," Reka urged, "The future will be here soon enough

and the choices to be made will occur before you have time even to know it.

Enjoy the present, for this moment shall not come again in this or any other

lifetime. Relax and reflect upon what you know and take better stock of

your newly enhanced perceptions, for you are aware now as never before, and

it is going to take some time to adjust to the alteration in the way you

interact with the universe, let alone those around you."

"I see," Nabiki was silent for several long seconds before adding,

"So what exactly happened here? How did making love with Saki cause me to

feel all of these new things…?"

"You have said it for yourself," Reka answered, "Making love…not

simply having sexual congress with another woman but rather making love to

her has opened up for you a world of sensations that you never knew

existed."

"I beg your pardon?" Nabiki asked with raised eyebrows.

"Sex is a power you mortals do not fully reckon upon since most of

you perform it so badly," Reka responded, "But you have learned a new way to

enjoy communing with the flesh of a mortal with whom you share a spiritual

connection. Sex beyond the body, spiritual love transcending the flesh,

energies yielded and shared to the point where the two of you briefly merged

and became as one being…that was the catalyst that triggered in you the

awakening of the Eluini within you."

Nabiki blinked as she considered that, then recalled rather vividly

the slow dance that she and Saki had performed at the beginning of their

session, the motions urged upon them by their mentor, Trudy, and the way in

which she had opened up her mind and soul to comprehending her lover in a

way that she had never known even with Shampoo or her husband, Ranma.

"Wow," she said, marveling at the very intensity of her memories of

the occasion, and she blushed vividly before adding, "So that's what it

means to do it the Shaloh-Ahl way…"

"You will perform this ritual with your loved ones in due time and

awaken within them a sense of the godhood that lays within them," Reka

prophesized, "But for now what you should remember is that the channeling of

energies through the conduit of the body and mind has caused both to operate

with greater fluidity and a lowering of your normal resistance. Think of a

circuit that achieves superconductivity…no energy lost to heat, a perfect

flow of electrons from one node to another, a power churning up from within

you like a flywheel spinning endlessly without friction. You have become a

channel through which the flow of spiritual energy itself now churns without

impediment, giving you a more natural means of bridging the gap between

action and intention so that your body itself moves in concert with your

thoughts and emotions."

"Pretty powerful stuff," Nabiki said, then in curiosity she raised

an arm and without effort conjured up a ball of Chi that she held in the

palm of her hand the way a child might play with a pack of matches. She

extinguished the blaze with but a shake of her fingers, then stared in

amazement at her fingers, comprehending as she did that there was a

fundamental change in her flesh, for the cells of her body hummed with

vibrancy and were no no longer suffering atrophy or decay in the normal

sense of aging.

"You see?" Reka smiled, "That simple demonstration would have taken

you a great deal of thought and concentration before…but now the seemingly

impossible is no more difficult than to conceive a thought and to put it

into action. There are many diverse applications for this power, and you

will learn them over time, but for now you should give yourself over to the

now and take the chance to reflect upon the process of being human on a

level far more evolved than merely being human."

"More evolved than merely human?" Nabiki repeated.

"The Awakening of your Eluini nature means that you have taken a

step removed from all of the negative qualities that are used to define one

as being a 'mere' human," Reka answered, "Until now your mind was filled

with walls and limitations that restricted and confined you to being a

person who was not this or that, and certainly very small in the grander

scope of things. Mortal men think of themselves as having such limitations

on their humanity that they squander all of their energies maintaining those

walls rather than learning to work beyond them, to define themselves in

terms of the truly human."

"Truly human?" Nabiki asked, "Isn't that a very condescending way to

describe most people?"

"You tell me how else you would define them," Reka challenged, "They

are peasants who keep their eyes to the ground and refuse to gaze up at the

stars for fear of being accused of trying to live beyond their station. No

one made them this way save only for the Karma that they carry within them

from one lifetime to another. If you accept that you are a Peasant then

that is all you will ever be. The Princess that exists within you will go

on dreaming that she is a Pauper and will never come out to play. In that

manner people define themselves and limit their possibilities for want of

the imagination to dream…but it is the dreamers who achieve the seemingly

impossible in this world. Only those who refuse to accept the constraints

of mortality can realize the potential of the God who dwells within them."

"Sounds like a great rallying cry for a Telemarketing outfit,"

Nabiki mused, "You could sell tickets and do seminars telling people that

it's all their fault that they're poor, dumb and unhappy."

"A waste of my time," Reka said dismissively, "Of what relevance is

it to tell people that which they should already know? If you need someone

else to tell you that you are living below your potential then there is

something truly wrong with you that will take many lifetimes to correct. I

am only concerned with those who dare to dream…and those who awaken to their

own inborn divinity, who open their eyes to new possibilities and new modes

of living. It is Anri who casts pearls before swine, attempting to coach

the dull and ignorant to achieve enlightenment…I lack that presumption. It

is the already enlightened who interest me, those who are upon the path to

achieving their inner glory who are worthy of my time and attention."

"Aren't you the humble one about that," Nabiki said sarcastically,

"So I take it that I should be duly honored that you have taken an

interest?"

"But of course," Reka smiled, "And I expect you to be deeply

appreciative. But you need not coach your words with me…it is a waste of

effort. I thrive upon contention, so be free to disagree with me or even

offer up an argument, take a position contrary to my own. Anything but just

to sit there and nod in token agreement."

"All right," Nabiki said, "Then how is this? You're a egotist and a

sadist."

"Granted," Reka replied, "I am also something of a Social

Darwinist…but only to the extent that I reflect the belief that people

should be enlightening themselves rather than to wait around for some Guru

to come along and enlighten them. Beyond that I merely feel pity for the

vast majority of those who will never see beyond their own faces and who

cannot understand or accept the larger world of which they are a part,

albeit unknowing."

"So let them eat Manna," Nabiki said, "That's your view of humanity?

That we're less than human just because we're not all evolved like you?"

"They are less than human because they chose to be that way," Reka

said with a sweeping gesture, "But you are no longer one of them, much as

that may pain you to hear from my lips. You are the person whom you are,

not a step removed from humanity but rather a step backward to what it used

to mean to be human back when all of humanity shared enlightenment

together."

"You'll forgive me if I have a little difficulty believing that

there was ever such a Golden Age," Nabiki stated, "I prefer to believe that

humanity has been on the slow and steady upward Bell curve since the time

the first of our ancestors learned to make fire to light their caves."

"That happened millions of years ago," Reka said, "And the earliest

humans used their minds instead of rubbing two sticks together. But never

mind the choice of semantics, all that truly needs to be stated on that

subject is that the fall of Humanity from a time of high culture was what

set in motion the age of darkness in which we currently dwell. Mankind was

psychically burned and made the collective choice to turn away from the road

of Wisdom because of the fear of that happening again…a fear not without due

cause since many who do awaken to the Road of Power often get burned very

bad, and not simply by those who might try and oppose them."

"The Old Ones and their minions?" Nabiki asked, feeling an odd sense

of affirmation within her own statement.

"They seek to keep men in darkness and confusion by attacking those

who might heal and unite mankind," Reka said with some vehemence, "It is

against their desires and wishes to allow humankind to recover the strength

and wisdom of the Ancients, and so they conspire to cause us grief by

stirring up petty hate and other dark emotions that block us away from

discovering our common bonds as people."

"Divide and conquer, huh?" Nabiki asked.

"Basic military psychological tactics," Reka replied, "Or Psi-Ops in

the modern lexicon. Weaken your adversaries and exploit every avenue of

weakness that humanity offers. That is what they have been doing ever since

the time of the first Adam when they played upon Lilith's mind to turn her

from the light into a realm of internal darkness."

"I see," Nabiki mused, "In other words people are kept too busy with

petty problems and hang-ups to realize what's really going on, and the

demons feast on our dark emotions to sustain themselves while driving us to

madness."

"Precisely," Reka answered, "But then again, you already knew this."

"All right," Nabiki said grudgingly, "So what do people like Otono

have to gain by working in league with these creatures?"

"The security and satisfaction of absolutism," Reka revealed, "The

comfort of believing that you are on the side of the Angels, that you stand

for something purposeful and noble, in opposition to the wickedness of the

world. For that men would sacrifice a great deal…their sanity, even sell

their very souls to those same forces that they claim to oppose…and if one

walks far enough down the road of self-righteous delusion then there really

will be no difference over time between their actions and those of a truly

demonic entity. Humanity is replete with examples of where the road of

unintended consequences leads us, and merely saying that we never intended

any harm will not absolve us of those crimes which we willfully commit in

the name of expediency and blind fanaticism."

"So there really are no simple choices in all of this," Nabiki

grimly concluded, "To oppose evil you have to avoid becoming the very thing

that you hate?"

"It is important that there always be consistency between your

thoughts and your actions," Reka replied, "No gross contradictions between

what you mean to do and say and that which you actually do. For that you

must know yourself intimately, to have no deception nor evasions nor the

indulgence of self deceit, nor can you afford yourself the luxury of those

devices that men invariably rely upon to protect their fragile egos."

"Devices?" Nabiki asked by way of clarification.

Reka did not immediately answer but rather gazed out towards the

morning sunrise as if to bask in the glory of it all, and only then did he

say, "Have you ever found yourself engaged in an argument whose pointless

nature provokes you to ask later just why it is that you got involved with

it in the first place?"

It was Nabiki's turn to glance away, and with an uncomfortable

twinge in her throat she managed to say, "Ah…yeah…once or twice…now that you

mention it…"

"When passions are aroused one can often do or say the most

irrational things, hurtful words that escape from us, which cannot be

recalled, but which sting like scorpions against those whom we profess to

love and would protect against any harm or misfortune."

"Ah…right," Nabiki was wincing, squirming even as her memory filled

with times and occasions that she would rather not remember.

"In the heat of the moment, when pressed by fears and phobias for

which we barely have a name, the demon inside us can arise to take command

over our better natures," Reka murmured, "As I embody rage in its various

forms I am altogether quite well aware of how this demon works to undermine

us, to take away all that we treasure and have built with our lives, and

with our own hands we destroy it…all for the sake of our fragile self

delusions, our petty little egos, our cherished conceptions of ourselves

that stand threatened in a moment with the painful revelation that we are

not what we have always imagined ourselves to be…not perfect, flawless and

strong but rather weak, frail and cowardly. And for the sake of a moment,

when pressed to the wall, we say things that we do not mean to say and act

in haste without the benefit of thinking."

Nabiki heard a strained note of pain in the man's voice and stared

at him in amazement, "You mean…you…?"

"I am twelve thousand years old, Girl," Reka sniffed, "In all that

time did you think that I had not made many times my share of blunders? The

advantage for me, however, is in living long enough to make amends for some

of those most egregious errors, not the least of which was in finding my

wife again after the cruel twist of fate that separated us in a previous

incarnation."

"Oh…right," Nabiki nodded, deciding it was best not to press him for

too many details.

There was another awkward pause and then Reka said, "Perhaps the

secret is in understanding the very nature of what it means to be in love

with another person…the kind of love that transcends time and flesh and

bridges the gap with eternity between man and divinity. After all, as you

already well know, love is more than just a biological imperative that

insures the perpetuation of the species. In love there are many roles that

we play, but in essence what drives us is a desire for greater unity, for

fulfillment and completion, to be a part of something greater than

ourselves, to find that which humanity lost with the destruction of the

Unimind of long ago. In that we have many approaches to the same thing, but

in the end it is this unity that we seek when we join with another living

spirit. To be in love is to seek unity, and in joining we become far

greater than ourselves, touching the spark of the divine if only too

briefly, to fall away to darkness and despair whenever we are parted."

Nabiki gazed sidelong at the redheaded man and blinked, then said,

"Are you really the same guy who tried to fry me the other day? That almost

sounded like something that your brother…"

"Don't be insulting, girl," Reka growled, though his tone seemed

only slightly mocking and his lips twitched in an almost-smile at the edges,

"In some respects you will find that there are very few real differences

between me and my brothers. After all, in spite of our dissimilar pathways

we are essentially the same person in three alternate aspects."

"Ah…right…that God thing again," Nabiki said, albeit with a sense of

awe as the memory of the Daokan brothers joining together flowed back in

vivid detail and full recollection.

"What complicates relationships are the unspoken things that occur

below the surface of your awareness," Reka continued, "Those feelings,

emotions and drives that conflict with reason and cultural conditioning to

blind us to what is going on inside of us…those instinctual reflexes that

burst out at unexpected moments in ways we often do not intend and would

never rationally consider. Always it is the unexamined dynamic that undoes

us in the end, so my advice to you would be to build a stronger awareness of

what goes on inside you, and to gradually strip away those delusions that

mask the real you from self discovery. That is the only way to avoid making

the types of errors that I have made…though perhaps it would be more

realistic to accept that mistakes will happen and to learn to adapt to them

when they happen."

"I'll see what I can do about that," Nabiki responded, but privately

she doubted that her efforts would be entirely successful in the future.

"One thing to keep in mind," Reka noted, "In the normal state of

affairs it is the role of the woman to screen out the men whom she

encounters, to unconsciously evaluate them to determine their fitness as a

mate, which is often a sexual impulse but can just as easily be intellectual

in inclination. I say this because it is the trap mortals fall into all too

readily to confuse romantic love with a lesser type that is not so permanent

and reliable, and often it is an irrational process that prompts us to

select the wrong kind of person, someone not fit to be a partner in our

life's long journey."

"But that's not how it is for me and Ranma…" Nabiki started to

protest.

"Did I say that it was?" Reka sniffed, "Quite the opposite in fact.

You chose him for exactly the right reasons, because you compliment one

another and have elements that you recognize within each other which gives

you a greater sense of balance."

"Oh," Nabiki said sheepishly, regretting her outburst.

"Your case is quite unique in many different ways," Reka noted, "But

not the least of it is the fact that you came to Nerima already joined with

another person…someone whom you met by seeming chance, yet who proved to be

exceptionally well suited for you, and who was bearing your child due to the

magic of Jusenkyo."

"Shampoo," Nabiki said, surprised at discovering how much she

yearned to be with her wife in spite of the close ties that she had just

formed that very evening with Saki.

"You love her and she is utterly devoted towards you," Reka mused,

"And yet you each love your husband in a different sense, and from both

joinings have come the seeds of a bright and promising future. In these,

your children, the Fates themselves have conspired to form a new beginning

full of potential and wonder, and further adding to this are your bonds to

those other people whom you name as your co-wives. You each love one

another in a way that is nurturing and fulfilling, and between this hub of

marital activity there beats a heart of joy to raise a fist against the

darkness."

"You mean…it's our union itself that's causing the Old Ones to go

against us?" Nabiki fathomed.

"Your union is but one component in a greater pattern that the Fates

have woven in their tapestry of what has yet to be," Reka answered, "But for

that pattern to emerge you and your loved ones must survive, and that is why

I am doing what I do right here and now, Girl…not just for you but for a

time to come that will usher in a brighter new tomorrow…"

All at once there was a muffled sound echoing in the distance, and

then Nabiki turned her head in time to see a geyser of sand rising up like a

massive column. A second explosion caused another rising jet of dust to

vent itself towards the heavens, and then a third loud noise brought yet

another burst of landscape jutting forth like a finger etching the sky in

pale gold coloration.

"What is that?" Nabiki asked in amazement.

Reka just sighed, "Proof positive that those same fates that I have

just mentioned have a wicked sense of humor…that and an ample demonstration

that no good deed ever goes completely unpunished."

"I beg your pardon?" Nabiki asked.

"Come," Reka said as he rose to his feet and dusted himself off as

if by reflex, "I will introduce you to yet another player who will fulfill a

role in this drama at the proper time and season."

"And who is that?" Nabiki wondered.

"You will see when we get there," Reka assured her, "But be aware

that this…person can be quite troublesome, and I do not merely say this

because I am her father."

"Her…father?" Nabiki repeated.

Reka gave her a cross look, "What, did you think I had become

infertile at my age? I may be thousands of years old, girl, but I am hardly

that ancient."

"Uh…sorry," Nabiki apologized, "Lead the way, I'll follow."

"You should try following yourself sometime instead of always

following others," Reka counseled, smiling rakishly as he added, "My brother

would be the first to encourage this since the whole purpose of being a

Buddha is to point in the direction of enlightenment, never to lead on the

path. The sooner you come to terms with this the closer you will come to

achieving the enlightenment that you need in order to evolve to the next

level of your evolution."

"Suppose I don't want to evolve?" Nabiki asked as she tried to match

the long-legged pace of the man, who seemed to be suffering no difficulty in

treading upon the sandy dunes as though he were walking along a well paved

road spread out for his benefit.

"All living creatures must evolve if they are to adapt to change,

Girl," Reka answered, "And whatever else may be said about you, you are

definitely a survivor."

Nabiki found no words sprang to mind in response to this appraisal,

so she contended herself with following the example of the man, observing

how he walked and attempting to match it, and before too long she found

herself all but gliding on the silicate surface, heading towards the source

of those explosions while thinking to herself upon the meaning of destiny

and what it could have to do with her family, and wondering if she would

like the answers when they finally made themselves known to her awareness.

Whatever else might be said, she was finding it strangely easy to

trust herself in the company of this Reka, whose enigmatic nature seemed

full of contradictions, yet who also seemed quite earnest in all that he

said and did in her presence, and that left her wondering if this might not

be the real challenge for her to puzzle out as she sought to unlock her own

Buddha nature…without going totally crazy in the process…

Continued.

Comments/Criticisms/Contagious Revelations: shadowmane

Or: shadowmane9849

Or: shadowmane747

Next time up: Nabiki confronts a new player on the field, while

Natsume and Lenore make a starting discovery of their own, and a new menace

arises to threaten those family members currently residing on the estate of

the Kunos. All this and Martial Art challenge matches in a bit we call,

"Immortal Combat," or, "Dead or Alive, Ultimate Survivor House Wrecking!"

Be there!

X


	113. Chapter 113

Dnabiki202

Nabiki ½

"A Very Scary Thought"

by

Jim Robert Bader

(Inspired by the works of Rumiko Takahashi & Others,

with concepts and characters created by fellow fanfic writers

Wade Tritschler, DB Sommers, Nicole Manders, Andrew

Greaves, Bill Guiroff and countless others, including "Buffy"

creator Joss Whedon; with special thanks to my good pal

Shiva for his editing and handling of this series.)

(Certain other characters and concepts are of my own

innovation, including my interpretation of the Monster

of Mary Shelly's novel, the Furies, Trudy, Takaharis

Angelique d'Anjou, Anri and the Daokan, Thelendra

the Dream Weaver and various other guest stars

appearing in this portion of the Nabiki ½ series…)

Chapter Seventy-Seven.

Episode Two Hundred and Two.

Onslaught

Tatewaki Kuno sat quietly composing a haiku within his dojo when

some sense disturbed his internal wa, prompting him to pause in the act of

making a brush stroke while he consulted his internal senses, aware that a

disturbance was causing his morning reverie to move against his center.

He frowned as he considered his bokken, then extended his awareness

beyond the scope of the immediate chamber and felt the currents of his

ancestral mansion, then allowed his mind to travel further afield to the

grounds of his estate, where he found at last the source of his problem.

Hostile thoughts were difficult to mask when wielded by such men as

who felt an absolute righteousness in their purpose, which was to work

another's destruction. Such self-righteous evil masquerading as virtue

stood out from the background of a quiet, tranquil morning and alerted

Tatewaki to the dangers posed by such ill-warranted intrusion.

How fortunate it was for the Kuno estate that its Master was an

early riser, and as a practitioner of Nampo he was sensitive to the currents

that attended his surroundings, and so it was that Tatewaki reached for his

bokken and rose to his feet in one fluid motion, knowing that there were

enemies of his House who were sore in need of dispatching. They would not

find him napping unawares, though he did have cause to worry for the sake of

his younger sister and those others who called the mansion home, including

guests and close intimate companions, and they would need to be aroused in

time to avert potential tragedy, though woe to the intruders if they thought

to make an easy conquest.

His thoughts until this hour had been upon his lessons of the

previous day at the hands of his new sensei, the lovely European

swordsmistress named (appropriately enough) Angelique d'Anjou. She had

shown him much that had helped unlock hidden levels of his own unguessed

potential and he had been hoping to have a chance to put his new training to

the test through the discipline of combat. Now did indeed seem to be the

model time to demonstrate all that he had learned on the previous evening,

and how appropriate that someone should provide that test so soon after his

morning meditations. With that intent in mind he slipped out of the dojo,

hoping to spread the alarm to those who would soon have need of it, even as

he did pause to wonder at who it was who would have the audacity to stage

such a bold-if-criminal offensive?

Whoever they were, they were broadcasting rather loudly their

intentions, and Tatewaki would be only to happy to reciprocate, and woe

betide the righteous fool who would dare to brook the wrath of the newly

re-christened Blue Thunder of Furinkan High School, to say nothing of his

friends and allies, who were doughty and formidable in a different sense and

certainly not to be taken lightly by these foemen.

The one question that troubled him within it all was the whereabouts

and safety of his lady love and fiancée, who had left rather early the

previous evening complaining about not feeling too well, and Tatewaki

certainly did hope her condition had much improved as he would sore be

missing her companionship as he swept into battle showing off why he was her

champion and the only man truly worthy of being her rightful husband.

If only he could shake this odd nagging feeling that something was

troubling his beloved, but perhaps his senses were a bit too finely acute

this morning, for what could be disturbing his beloved Natsume that she was

not well equipped to handle on her own, for was she not the Slayer, a

Champion of righteousness against the tide of ultimate evil…?

Natsume caught her breath as she was lifted into the sky in the arms

of Lenore the Vampire, both amazed and daunted by the dizzying sense of

altitude as she and the redhead ascended into the heavens.

They were racing against time and in quite a hurry to return to the

Kuno estate due to disturbing information that they had extracted from their

former assailants, news that a second team of mercenary types were intended

to attack the mansion with the intent of slaughtering everybody at the

behest of that sanctimonious maniac known only as Otono Reyabi.

"What are you doing?" Natsume asked as she and Lenore continued to

scale higher and higher into the cloud-filled morning sky, "We haven't any

time to waste…"

"Just wait, Princess," Lenore urged gently, "You'll see in another

minute."

Natsume wanted to ask her companion what she mean t but was

distracted a moment later when they finally burst up from amid the clouds

and hovered in clear blue air at least two miles above the suburbs of

Nerima, and then she saw a sight that caught in her breath and made her

momentarily forget about her anxiety concerning the safety of her fiancé,

sister and companions.

For the sun had just crested the tops of some distant mountains and

was bathing the both of them in the radiant golden glow of a bright new

morning. She gasped in wonder and amazement at the sudden pageantry and

color that assaulted her senses from all quarters, and without having to

turn her head to look she could sense that Lenore was likewise moved by the

beauty of this sunrise, enough so that she seemed to breathe in deep to

savor the air, fully within her element and feeling the glorious rebirth of

the dawn's early renewal.

"Magnificent," she heard the vampire say with reverence, "Do you

know that this is the first real sunrise that I've been able to enjoy in the

past three decades?"

"Oh?" Natsume asked of her companion, turning a belatedly surprised

look in the vampire's direction.

"The sun never really hurt me like it does some Vamps, but it was

always kinda painful to expose myself to its rays too directly," Lenore

answered with a grin, "But these new powers I have are completely amazing!

I don't even feel a slight tingle of discomfort against my cheeks, and none

of my abilities seem to be even slightly impaired by the presence of the

morning. Always in the past I've had to hide myself in dark places and

sleep it off because the sun made me weak and vulnerable, but now I just

can't get over how incredible it is! I've been missing this a lot since I

got turned, but now I feel like I could actually invest in a bikini and some

sunscreen!"

The way she said this made it seem almost as if it were a dream come

true, and Natsume could not help but share something of her new friend's

enthusiasm, but not to much that she could forget about her anxiety while

reminding the redhead, "Fascinating, but we really don't have time for

this…"

"Right…sorry…got carried away here for a moment," Lenore said in a

mild tone of apology, "Of course you're right…speed is of the essence."

Natsume paused to consider the breathtaking view and then

unconsciously shifted a bit closer in the arms of the woman holding her

aloft, and murmured under her breath, "I long to see Tatewaki again…yet I

fear what I should have to tell him regarding my…infidelity of last

evening."

"Er…" Lenore said a bit uneasily, "Do we have to tell him anything

about that?"

"Of course," Natsume seemed surprised at the very question,

"Tachi-sama and I have no secrets from one another, and he deserves to know

what I have done with you without his knowing. I feel…unworthy of his love

for having betrayed him in such a grievously serious matter…and yet, for all

of that I find it strangely hard to regret what we have done. It is a

paradox, and it troubles me greatly."

Lenore was very much aware of how awkwardly close she and the human

girl in her arms were feeling at the moment, and she cleared her throat to

say, "If it's any consolation, Princess…I'm no more eager about having to

explain things to my significant other. The difference is that Chloe can't

help but know that we fooled around together. Your scent's all over me, and

that means I won't even have time to explain before she…bites my nose and

calls me a bitch, and other things she does when she gets jealous."

Natsume tried to imagine the werewolf behaving in an enraged state

with the redheaded vampire and found it rather easy to conceive of why it

was that her lover of the last evening was expressing a reluctance to face

up to her own part in their affair together.

"No doubt Tachi-sama will be hurt and disappointed with me," Natsume

said with sad fatalism, "I betrayed his trust by satisfying a curiosity that

had grown within me concerning whether or not it was possible for me to be

attracted to another woman…and of all the women I have known for it to be

you…it is strangely ironic."

"Tell me about it," Lenore replied with a strong note of chagrin, "I

never intended it to get out of hand that way. Guess I was drunk on my new

abilities and couldn't resist going all the way with a girl I'd always

thought was unattainable. Guess we settled the question of whether or not

you're bi like your sisters…"

"Yes…I guess we did at that," Natsume said a bit wistfully, but

still she clung to Lenore with a bit more affection than she would ever have

previously imagined.

"If it comes down to it," Lenore said with a bit of reluctance,

"Tell him it was all my fault, that I compelled you to do it, that we shared

a little blood and I got carried away by my baser instincts…"

"That would not be honest," Natsume gently countered.

"No, but it would spare his pride and won't hurt his feelings as

much as if he thought you were cheating with me," Lenore said firmly, "Men

can be awful delicate creatures that way, they feel they have to be the

center of our world at any and all times and if you stray a little then you

don't really love them, which is a greater lie than denying that you wanted

to screw me."

"You would do that for me?" Natsume asked in low wonder, "Play the

villain in order to protect my relationship with Tachi-sama?"

"Sure," Lenore replied, "Won't be the first time I ever did

something stupidly gallant for a pretty girl I like…and besides, anybody

who's spent any time around you two knows that you and Kuno were practically

made for each other. You both worship the ground the other walks on and all

that, and it'd be a shame to spoil something so wonderful just because I got

carried away in a moment of weakness."

"You make it sound as if I were some fragile, delicate heroine who

needed protecting," Natsume said in contemplation, "I've never considered

myself like that, just as I'd never imagine that I could be capable of

cheating on my Tachi-sama…but I guess in a way I've been nursing this

inwardly for some time, and it was bound to sooner or later come to the

surface."

"What?" Lenore sniffed, "That all along you've been secretly smitten

with me and were waiting to be swept off your feet for a little necking?"

"Something like that," Natsume said softly, then she paused to add,

"I would not wish to trade your honor for my own, Lenore-san, and clearly

this is something that Tachi-sama and I must work out with each other…and

besides, I would hardly wish for my future husband to regard you as a

ravisher of my chasteness. I lost more than my virginity with you last

evening…I also lost my sense of denial that feelings such as these are what

has kept me apart from fully accepting the lifestyles of my sisters."

"Yeah, you have been the holdout on a lot of things lately," Lenore

mused, "Kurumi's never had any trouble accepting the bisexuality of your

siblings, but far as I know she's only done it with Mousse, while you've

spent the last few months acting like there's something weird about doing it

with another girl, especially having a kid with another woman."

"Just imagine," Natsume sniffed, "But you are right…I have been too

judgmental of Nabiki for her relationship with Shampoo and the others, even

though I have seen first hand how devoted they all are to one another…and

now for the first time I understand that what I've really been feeling is

terrible jealousy because I was not a part of such an arrangement. Then

there is the way that Akane carried on with her friends Keiko and Kodachi,

dragging her poor husband into salacious orgies that have resulted in the

birth of more than one child…"

"Yeah, well…I could give you a pass about Akane," Lenore sniffed, "I

think she enjoys sex with girls even more than she does doing it with Ryoga,

and from all accounts of what I heard about that last trip on Madam Lao's

ship…"

"Indeed," Natsume turned her face and nuzzled Lenore's earlobe, "I

just want you to know that I did appreciate everything that you did for me

last night. I might well have been a mistake on both our parts, but I have

no regrets for what we shared together…and I will try and explain things to

Tachi-sama."

"That might be a good idea," Lenore smiled, "After all, wood is

still the one element that I'm surely still vulnerable to, and the last

thing I need is an enraged Nampo master chasing me around his estate with

that bloody bokkum of his…"

All at once her voice trailed away, and Natsume felt the vampire's

arms tense around her, which prompted her to ask, "What is wrong? What is

it?"

"I smell blood," Lenore replied, glancing down at the Kuno estate

over which they were presently descending, "Something's wrong down there…I

can feel it!"

"Get us down at once," Natsume spoke more harshly than intended, her

worst fears rising in her throat as she caught the sight of bodies littering

the yard outside of the mansion, and at once her thoughts went to her

sister, the children and their friends at the mansion, but most of all she

feared for Tatewaki, who beyond all doubt was in the midst of the strife

just as surely as any lord would defend his castle against invasion…

Some minutes before this…

Sasuke had been with the Kuno family his entire life and had watched

his lord and lady grow and mature from mere infants and had always felt

pride in being their protector and man servant. He was by no means as

competent a fighter as either Tatewaki nor Kodachi but he could hold his own

against any ordinary opponent. His father had considered his skills a great

disappointment to their own family's tradition, but Sasuke had always done

his best and considered that enough to at least qualify him to the title of

Family Ninja.

But off all the skills that he had laboriously mastered the one that

served him the best were his dodging and evading skills, his instinct for

survival and self-preservation that had helped him to stay alive during the

somewhat…wilder phase when his Lord and Lady had been growing up somewhat

deranged from chemical addiction. These skills came in handy now as he was

about his normal rounds patrolling the estate perimeter…when out of the blue

something came hissing in his direction.

Without thought or conscious awareness of what he was doing he

turned his body to the side even as the tip of something just missed nicking

him by the barest of centimeters. It was only belatedly that he recognized

the sight of a crossbow bolt whizzing by him, and his intimate knowledge of

such weapons made him momentarily wonder if he had accidentally tripped one

of the Mistress's little booby trapped surprises…when out of the corner of

his eye he detected shadowy movement in the direction from which the bolt

had been speeding.

Attackers usually attack their prey during the early morning hours

when the human eye is not yet adjusted from the night to the pale gray of

morning. Ninja therefore trained themselves with rigorous conditioning to

see better by dawn than most people could under full broad daylight, which

was how he knew that he was facing intruders…heavily armed intruders by the

looks of them, and skilled like commandos in tactics that were just shy of

full Ninjutsu.

No sooner did this thought spring to mind then he was hearing the

hissing popping sound that a muffled gun would make, and all at once he

found himself dodging bullets. Next came a throwing dagger that just missed

clipping him by inches, followed in turn by a figure rising up from

concealment seeking to cut off his line of escape, which only stiffened his

resolve to get out of there with all due haste rather than attempt to braze

facing all five of them on his lonesome.

The Master had to be alerted, so Sasuke used a smoke pellet to

confuse the enemy as he hit the ground and rolled beneath and around him. He

was on his nimble feet one second later and going full out just as fast as

his little legs could take him while all hell broke loose behind him and he

was suddenly dodging a lot more than just a few traditional accouterments of

mayhem and destruction.

Fueled by fear and the certainty that he could not take a direct

confrontation with his assailants he sprinted across the yard with a

fleet-footed surety that would have greatly impressed even his late father.

He almost managed to make it all the way to the mansion when his luck ran

out at almost the last instant, and something came hissing through the air

at a speed far greater than a bullet or an arrow.

Sasuke did not see what it was that hit him, he only saw the stars

that filled his vision before he went tumbling face first into the grass and

skidded to a stop one painfully awkward tumbling roll later. He was out

like a light even as the armed commandos began to mass from different

quarters of the yard, more than twenty in all and all of them quite well

equipped for taking the mansion by force with the clear intent of insuring

that there would be no survivors of the impending onslaught…

Mousse and Kurumi both awoke together in the silent darkness of the

unlit room which they shared as guests of the Kuno Household. The faint

sounds of disturbance had awaken their combat senses and neither one had to

speak a word between them as they instinctively knew the taste of impending

danger.

"The babies…" Kurumi murmured.

"Go to them," Mousse said as he rose from the bed and reached for

his robes with his array of hidden weapons, "I'll go see who is attacking

us."

"Be careful," Kurumi said, "If anything happens to you…"

"Isn't that supposed to be my line?" Mousse smiled over one

shoulder, then slipped away into the night, even as Kurumi got hastily

dressed and followed his example, neither one of them having to say a word

more as they both knew implicitly that they facing a matter of life and

death with potential disaster lurking near at hand like a predatory monster…

Nabiki followed the redheaded Eluini named Reka from the encampment

as they ventured out onto the volcano-laden deserts on the outskirts of the

oasis.

As she walked she felt a trembling in the ground that heralded

another explosion, but when it came it shook her beyond words with a force

far greater than anything produced by nature, causing a literal geyser of

force to erupt some distance away, certainly far greater than what one would

expect from a fissure created by shifting of tectonics.

Reka did not bat an eye nor flinch in the slightest as he kept a

steady pace, walking with a curiously irregular stride that Nabiki noted in

passing and tried her best to imitate as she sense implicitly that there was

a purpose behind everything he did, no matter how seemingly random.

Before too long they rounded a bend, and as another burst of energy

was gathered and released in a venting of plasma, Nabiki caught sight of the

source of the strange cacophony of energies that she was sensing, and she

blinked in surprise and amazement, seeing a girl even younger than herself

being responsible for all the hubbub.

And she had dusky skin far darker than the ruddy complexion of Lord

Reka, and long dark hair that was tinged with strands of purple that seemed

to be entirely natural for her, and a curious diamond-shaped beauty mark set

above her brows in the manner of a Hindu. As for her eyes they were milk

white and faintly glowing, and her body was draped in a fishnet like gauze

that did little to hide her anatomy for all that she was decorated with

strategically placed jewels ornamentation.

Her gloved hands were balled up like fists as she turned to regard

Nabiki, and despite the absence of any iris it seemed as though her vision

powers were unimpeded as she smirked knowingly and gave a brazen look of

implacable defiance.

"Father," she said in a voice surprisingly strong for someone who

barely appeared old enough to be in middle school.

"Kali," Reka said in acknowledgement of their relationship, which

surprised Nabiki even more as there was little physical resemblance between

them in spire of their obvious spiritual connection.

"You are upset with me because I choose to practice this early in

the day," the woman identified by the name of Kali said as if making an

observation, not a question.

"Practice?" by contrast Reka's tone implied something more like unto

incredulity as he scoffed and said, "Is that what you call this, you who

were performing feats far more impressive in the days before the rise of the

cult of the Brahmins?"

"I need to keep my skills as sharp as anyone else," she said, then

she turned and looked at Nabiki again before adding, "My apologies if I

disturbed you from a good rest."

"Ah…well…I was already up," Nabiki said, wondering what it was about

this girl that disturbed her senses so greatly as just looking at her was

making her reel with the force of her Ki, even more intensely disturbing

than the incredibly potent aura manifested by Lord Reka.

Reka curled a lip and said, "I told you to stand and watch, but

obviously you felt the need to draw attention to yourself. By that I take

it that you wished to arrange a personal meeting between yourself and my

guest here?"

"You are correct as usual, father," Kali replied, "I was listening

in on your conversation and felt compelled to join in, but away from the

ears of the others, including mother."

"Hardly surprising that," Reka sniffed, "Your mother does tend to

take her role seriously in playing the role of a parent."

"Considering that she knew me long before I reborn to her

womb…hardly all that to be remarked, father dearest," Kali chuckled, "Her

memories of me are no doubt why she has sought to turn me in a different

direction."

"As futile as that would be by any sane reckoning," Reka sighed,

"But I suppose being a parent does tend to make one foolishly optimistic."

"But not so futile as all of that, Father," Kali said, spreading her

arms, "For I am gained much in being a part of your family…now allow me to

impart some of that wisdom to our lady Saotome here since she has come all

of this way in search of enlightenment, which I am uniquely suited to impart

upon her."

"You?" Reka actually sounded stunned by that observation.

"Don't be so cynical, father," Kali replied, then to Nabiki she

said, "Father is distressed because he thinks that I will attempt to instill

some of my bad habits and anti-social tendencies upon you…but even he knows

better than to imply that I am without the means to teach you something

vital."

"And that is?" Nabiki asked warily.

"Power…and its consequences," Kali said, then she turned and made a

casual gesture, and Nabiki almost jumped as she felt the surge flow from the

deceptively underage girl into the ground and through invisible subterranean

channels rise up in yet another eruption of nerve shattering intensity.

Reka sighed in the ensuing silence that followed this discharge and

said, "Allow me to explain for your benefit, Saotome-san. Kali here was

known in legend by her full name, Kali Durga…or in more common parlance,

Durga the Night Demoness…or Durga the Destroyer."

"I'm sure you've heard of me," Kali smiled, "There is a goddess in

India who bears my name and seems to think that she predates me, though I

was around a long time before the Aryans shaped her in prayer in memory of

my legends."

"You're Kali the Destroyer?" Nabiki asked, finding it incredibly

easy to believe this claim as the power flowing through the young girl was

equal to that of a fully manifested goddess.

"I could give you my autograph later," the girl replied, "But yes, I

am an Eluini, one of those who manifest the Elemental powers of Earth and

Fire, and in ancient times I was both sorceress and priestess, a queen and a

general of armies, and a warlord who terrorized legions, indulging in

practices so dark and barbaric that it would curl your hairs to relate the

truth behind some of my legends."

"That is until brother Anri put an end to your career," Reka pointed

out.

To Nabiki's further surprise the girl named Kali sighed, "Anri…or

perhaps I should say Uncle Anri these days. He was such a rakish terror in

those times…I quite lost my heart to him, you know, but I also lost my

kingdom, as well as his heart to my eternal rival, Siva."

"You mean Shiva?" Nabiki asked.

"No, that was father by a different name," Kali made a dismissive

gesture, "Before they started calling him Agni, lord of Fire. The Shiva who

now rules in heaven was named for his avatar, only he combines aspects of

uncle Anri in his incarnation as the Vishnu…but that's family politics, and

ancient history. You're really not that interested, I can tell, so let us

shift ahead to modern times and explain what it is that I can do for you in

your impending battle with my other uncle, the Lord Udan."

"I sense mischief in the offing," Reka scowled, "You are aware that

Udan will know that we coached her, and he is savvy to your ways even more

than he is my methods."

"All taken into account, Father dearest," Kali chuckled, "Yes

indeed, I well remember my battles with the Eternal Warrior of Earth and

Water, the walking Mountain who moves with the inevitability of a glacier,

and who sweeps aside all obstacles which dare to stand before his path."

"You want to help me defeat your own uncle?" Nabiki asked

incredulously.

"Why not?" Kali replied, "After all, I owe him no less than that.

Besides, even with the enhancement of the Change unlocking your potential

you are as far removed from being a challenge to him as a small infant would

be to the passage of a giant."

"That's reassuring," Nabiki grimaced.

"It is realistic," Kali corrected, "My Uncle is invincible…just so

long as he has access to his twin elements of earth and water…and so long as

my Aunt Ulsa extends her limitless power to enable him to overcome his

opponents."

"Somehow I rather doubt that he will require much of her means in

this impending engagement," Reka mused, "Nor would she take sides in such an

affair as she is just as likely to favor one side as the other."

"My thoughts precisely on this, Father," Kali mused, then to Nabiki

she said, "There is a slim hope for your cause if Uncle Udan and Aunt Ulsa

prefer to restrict the use of their powers to a level that is nominal. Even

at that Udan has a thousand times a thousand times the energy which he would

need to demolish your entire Nerima Wrecking crew completely."

Nabiki felt appalled with the mental image this conjured and said,

"And you call that being hopeful?"

"It is as much as you could ask for when you challenge one who walks

in the shadow of the gods and makes them tremble," Kali pointed out, "But

not to fear…I hold the keys for allowing you more than a hope of victory. I

give you…the wisdom of a Destroyer."

"Wisdom?" Nabiki asked, thinking that the words made for a very odd

juxtaposition.

"There are two opposing forces in the world," Kali explained,

"Creation and Destruction. There also two primary conditions in life,

Change and Stability. Both are needed to create and maintain the world of

sense, touch and experience that you know as our reality. Another way of

phrasing these primary forces would be Order and Chaos…or the Law of Flux

and Form to go by more occult symbolism."

"Okay," Nabiki said, "I can understand that. And you embody the

force of Destruction?"

"Correct," Kali smiled, then she turned around and once again caused

a series of gaseous eruptions to flow along a tectonic line that Nabiki

could sense beneath the surface.

"Ah…you wouldn't, by any chance, happen to be related to a guy named

Tim the Enchanter?" Nabiki asked tentatively.

"I loved that movie," Kali smiled, "There is something about British

Humor that strikes a chord with the folly of life. But then again I share

with father a fondness for irony and the transitory nature of life, being an

embodiment of the force of Change that both destroys life and makes it

possible for the living to function."

"I'm not sure I follow you on this," Nabiki admitted.

"It's quite simple, really," Kali replied, "Without change life

would be static, and there would be no room for growth and evolution. Chaos

provides a needed counter to stability by allowing things to break down so

that other things may be assembled from their wreckage."

"O-kay," Nabiki said warily, "So in other words you're part of the

life equation…"

"A necessary one, as Death is to Life," Kali explained, "And while

it is arguably much easier to destroy than create, and creation is certainly

preferable to the sensibilities of a civilized person, you cannot deny that

the one is inextricably tied to the other. They are both aspects of change,

of transforming things from one state to the other, either through the

process of entropy or its opposite dynamic."

"I think I can follow all of that," Nabiki said, "But what you're

saying is that you embody the side of things that takes stuff apart, not the

force that puts things back together."

"You catch on quickly," Kali smiled, "But the truth is that I can

create as well as destroy…it is simply a matter of reversing the process by

which the bonds of matter are broken down…allowing the constituent atoms of

nature to come together," she said, raising a hand and causing a very

different flow of energies to form, and before Nabiki's astonished gaze

particles of sand and lava rose up from the ground and formed in a cloud

about that hand, and suddenly reshaped themselves into the delicate form of

a glassy looking swan-shaped sculpture.

"You see?" Kali held it out, "You only have to think of a thing and

imagine it into being and the powers of nature respond to the influence of

your will to create. Artistic beauty such as this must first come from

within, and some part of you must flow into the form of the creation as it

reflects the ideal form within your mind. But beauty is also transitory,

and physical objects are far more temporal in nature than the ideals from

which their form is drawn and imagined."

Saying this the girl named Kali squeezed her hand and the beautiful

swan sculpture exploded into diamond-like shards that flew in all

directions.

Nabiki instinctively flinched but nothing reached her flesh, and so

she started to relax a bit for all that she found herself strangely affected

by the display of naked power. She felt something churning from within her

own being and was surprised to discover a power similar to that which Durga

had just employed was forcing itself into her awareness, prompting her to

extend her own arm and stare at the palm of her hand as she started to

concentrate and envision an object…

And to her complete surprise she saw a swirl of particles begin to

surround her hand and flow about as if in response to the power that was

rising up from within her.

"Kali…" Raka growled in disapproval.

"What?" the dusky skinned girl asked innocently, "I'm not doing

it…she's doing it by herself. I just displayed my power in such a way that

I knew it would prompt a sympathetic reaction within her own expanding

nature."

"Like that makes your guilt any less?" Reka sighed, then turned to

Nabiki, "Channel the power that you have raised carefully, Saotome-san. You

hold within your mortal hand the force of creation itself, which can be

shaped by the will for good or ill, depending on what you most value."

"Father is being needlessly alarmist," Kali assured, "You can feel

the power in your mind…now take firm hold of it and channel your Ki through

the lens of your mind and coax the atoms to obey you…just as you might

instruct a small pet. But be mindful that the power has a life of its own

and must always be respected, and the matter you shape is equally alive and

obeys because it respects your petition."

Nabiki felt the power intensify within her fingers and felt a mild

alarm as the hackles along the nape hairs of her warrior braid stood on end,

and she said with rounded eyes, "It's alive all right…it's…it's like it's

testing me…like it wants to see what I want to do…but how do I control it?"

"You do not," Reka said, "Force alone does not create the bond that

is needed for an act of creation. You must first love what you do, and feel

the power as an extension of your own will and spirit."

"Love it?" Nabiki asked, and suddenly her mind crystallized, and she

closed her hand upon the object that formed as a consequence of her will,

and when she opened her hand once more she found that what she gripped was a

locket, and in opening that locket she discovered a picture that was within

and gasped aloud, saying, "I made this?"

"Evidently so," Reka sniffed, "And by your expression and the

emotions that you project I take it you are surprised in seeing this thing

that was so strongly hidden within you?"

Without a word Nabiki turned the locket around and showed the

picture of a woman who seemed like an older version of herself, albeit with

a very different hair style.

"Your mother…interesting," Kali smiled, "So she is the hidden

element in your mind at the very core of your being. And here I would have

imagined it was your charming wife with the lovely purple tresses, or the

boy who consorts with a harem of elementals."

"Not so surprising after all," Reka sniffed, "A parent, like a

mother, is the hidden face that hides beyond the face you wear as her

daughter, just as your lineage through her shapes and defines the you who

now exists…although when it comes to rules such as this there are always the

odd exception," he noted with a rueful glance towards his nominal daughter.

"As you are so fond of observing, Father," Kali mused, "Where it

comes to each generation of mortals the lines of genetic destiny are built

upon the legacy and inheritance of the parent."

Nabiki stared at the locket then discovered that an ornate chain was

attached and allowed it to dangle somewhat so that she could study it in the

morning light, then without knowing quite why she slipped it around her neck

and allowed the pendant to fall down to the space between her breasts.

"The object has a permanence that is dependent upon your will," Reka

explained without needing to be prompted, "You can create similar such

objects, though there is a risk in doing so which you must be mindful of

lest you overextend yourself and suffer consequences."

"Consequences?" Nabiki asked.

"Power always has consequences," Kali explained, "The potential to

do anything exists within a frame of balance between force and will…and to

awaken change is to cause ripples in the fabric of destiny. This holds as

true for we Eluini as it would for any mortal, and sometimes these

consequences can take on a life of their own in ways that we can scarce

imagine."

"It will not be a problem just so long as you respect the power and

never forget that it flows from within you," Reka cautioned, "The world

external to yourself exists in eternal flux and is affected by your will,

and while most mortals do not realize this and are blind to the power that

would be theirs to wield if they were but to extend themselves in the ways

of the Wise Ones, even the humblest of persons contributes to the shaping of

what you call reality by the collective act of will and imagination."

"Uh…mind running that by me again?" Nabiki asked, feeling

momentarily as slow on the uptake as was Ranma.

"Reality is a concept," Kali explained, "How you conceptualize your

reality depends on how strong is your grasp of the world as you shape it to

your will."

"So if I think real hard I can change the way things are going to

make events come out more to my liking?" Nabiki wondered.

"You have the power to coax and coerce the powers into respecting

your will," Reka said, "But it is a power you share with every other living

thing…and it is the collective result of all who will that defines the

common experience known as reality…and that includes seemingly inanimate

objects who have a different kind of life energy about them."

"When I destroy a thing it's not done by my forcing it to explode

without its consent in the matter," Kali said, "Rather I reach out and

extend myself to merge with the power, then petition it to obey my will of

loosening the bonds of energy that hold matter grounded in solid form, and I

petition the spirit of a thing to allow change to flow through its physical

substance. This is done as much by emotion as mental directive…such as when

I reach out to the intense subterranean stress forces that line this entire

area and encourage them to vent their fury in order to relieve the build up

of pressure that might otherwise discharge in a far more destructive

manner."

She turned and gestured once again, and this time Nabiki thought

that she could sense, see, feel and taste the energy flow as it reached out

from the Eluini and touched the spirit of the land and coaxed it in a given

direction and-sure enough-moments later the force erupted form the

ground in a burst of energy that caused the subterranean tension in the

ground to lessen considerably for several moments.

"Your Shadowskills draw from a similar principle," Reka explained,

"You tap into a force within you that breaks physical boundaries and causes

the flow of energy to disrupt patterns of order…but what my daughter has

just illustrated is a far more complex and yet basic form of the same

ideal…and that is the secret known to the Eluini…that living matter obeys

the will in so far as it respects you as its master…for it is not a slave in

the sense that you can compel it to obey without its consent to take the

shape that you envision."

"Matter does not have a preference to be one thing or the other,"

Kali explained, "The nature of matter is stability…to assume the shape that

it is and to remain thus for as long as it is able, changing only gradually

over a very long duration. It differs from the other elements in that solid

form is its general nature…but it would be just as satisfied taking a

different shape if you compel it to flow and reform in a different set of

conditions."

"Contrast that with water," Reka said, "Eternally restless and

flowing…the fluid state of being that seldom remains in one state from one

moment to the next. And these are the two elemental states which are the

root from which my brother draws his power."

"Form and Flow as known by Land and Water," Durga said, "In these

two aspects he is supreme…but power is its own limitation, and strength

always contains a hidden weakness that can be exploited…just as a diamond

can be shattered to powder if you strike it in right area."

"Similarly you cannot pound water into submission," Reka noted,

raising his own hand and causing a jet of flame to rise forth as he held it

between himself and Nabiki, "But water is composed itself of elements…and

those elements can be separated by the Fires of Prometheus, just as stone

can be turned to liquid in the form of lava."

"You mean…fight water with fire…earth with air?" Nabiki asked,

staring at the flames with a sense very different from that which had

responded in her to Kali's creation of the glass swan…but very much akin as

it almost felt as if she could see the way in which Reka was channeling the

force of raw elemental plasma.

"Unfortunately, if you wish to do that then you would need to

channel a force as great as that wielded by Uncle Udan," Durga replied, "And

even I could not do that. If you tried to create a fire strong enough to

counter his command of water it would consume you…and the size of the

cyclone which you would need to match his mastery of earth would lay waste

to a good sized continent."

"Then…how am I supposed to fight a guy like that?" Nabiki asked in

growing frustration.

"How does a small man overcome a larger opponent?" Reka asked, "That

old wives legend of a young King David felling the Philistine mercenary,

Goliath…sure such a thing is the raw elemental essence of being a martial

artist."

"Power is it own limitation," Kali repeated, "Keep that in mind and

you will know how to challenge even a God within his element."

"I…think I see what you're getting at," Nabiki thought slowly, when

suddenly she glanced up and said, "What is that?"

Reka seemed startled, then he glanced over one shoulder and paused

to listen over the rumble of their volcanic surroundings, and then he

groaned very faintly and said, "Oh no…not her…"

By contrast Kali seemed startled and turned around in time to see a

sight that brought a look of joy to her own exotic features, even as a

powerful reddish motorcycle suddenly came leaping over a dune and sailing

high over their heads, crashing down some distance away as the rider

commanding the two wheeled motorized terror spun it around recklessly and

gunned the engine once again, causing it to pop a wheelie as though its

rider were commanding the powerful thing like some child's toy.

"ERIS!" Durga called out as she spread her arms wide, "You came

back!"

The rider caused the machine to draw to a halt only a few feet away,

and then paused to pull a red-hued helmet away to reveal a shower of flaming

red hair that spilled out loose about her shoulders, and then a girl very

much close in age to Durga smiled brightly with green eyes flashing in

mischief, and she turned to greet Kali as the latter came up to throw her

arms around and embrace her…and then they kissed each other on the lips,

establishing for Nabiki the nature of relationship between the two

young-seeming women.

"Hey Durga, did you miss me?" the redhead grinned broadly, then she

shot a wary glance at Nabiki and said, "Who's the mortal?"

"Eris," Reka's tone had the stern disapproval of a father who did

not care much for the company that his daughter was so affectionately

keeping, "Goddess of Madness. To what do we owe the pleasure?"

"Goddess?" Nabiki repeated.

"He's exaggerating," the girl named Eris replied, "By now you

probably know that the line between an Eluini and a God is a fine one

indeed…and yeah, I'm known in both identities as the Lady of Madness.

Pleased to meet you."

"Ah…sure," Nabiki said, belatedly recalling the name of Eris from

foreign mythology classes, and feeling no less chagrined than she had upon

the revelation of the identity of Kali Durga.

"Eris and I have known each other for ages," Kali said like any

young girl gushing enthusiastically in the company of someone to whom she

quite obviously shared a great wellspring of mutual affection, "In many an

incarnation no less…but in her present identity she is the daughter of Lord

Charon, the Agent of the Death Lord, Thanatos."

"Ah…that's just it," Eris suddenly lost her grin and turned abruptly

sober, "Durga…I need your help. My Dad's gotten himself captured."

"Small loss that," Reka growled, and when both young girls turned

questioning looks his way he said, "Charon braved the fortress of en enemy

at the beck and call of his Master, attempting to gain possession of a veil

of lethal pestilence that the enemy intends to release in a misbegotten

attempt to bring about the apocalypse…"

"And you knew this, Father?" Kali asked in a tone of accusation.

"I was aware of it when it occurred," Reka tried to seem aloof but

obviously squirmed under the scrutiny that he was receiving from both young

women.

"Wait a minute here," Nabiki urged, "What was that again about a

plague virus?"

"The means by which the enemy intends to bring about the end of the

world as we currently know it," Reka said calmly, "Recall what my brother

revealed to you before?"

Nabiki thought back to her brief apprenticeship with Lord Anri and

winced, "Yeah…I get it now. And this Charon guy tried to swipe it?"

"The Lord of Death, my Uncle, is very much concerned about this

thing getting loose and wrecking total havoc," Eris explained, "Mom is

really upset about Dad letting himself get captured, but she seems to think

he did it deliberately since no mere mortal could ever hope to subdue Charon

the Death Rider. My Dad's tough enough to even give Lord Udan a run for his

diesel."

"Really?" Nabiki arched an eyebrow, "How so?"

"Charon and Eris both have the ability to warp probabilities and

disrupt the flow of causality, which plays hob with my brother's structured

powers of Order," Reka noted, "Charon has been a thorn in the side of we

Daokan for countless ages…but I do agree that it is disturbing that he would

allow himself to be taken by these amateurs, and it defies logic that he

would remain in their custody unless he has a reason to lay low and bide his

time for a moment when he might effect his own escape."

"You mean assuming that he can escape," Eris said, "I've heard that

these guys have managed to get their hands on some low grade Orachalchum,

and that's deadly even to an Eluini! You've just got to help me go and free

him!"

"I must?" Reka arched a fiery eyebrow and looked incredulously at

the girl in the red leathered jacket.

"Father," Kali growled, "Where is your sense of loyalty to your own

kind? Besides, this enemy is allied with the Darkness!"

"I am well aware of this," Reka sniffed, "But Charon and I are

hardly what one could call kindred souls under even the best of

circumstances…"

"But if the bad guys are holding him then there's no telling what

else they might be doing," Eris said plaintively, "I can't take that kind of

a risk! I've got to go free him!"

"Then I'll help you, Eris Darling," Kali affirmed with total

resolution.

"Absolutely not!" Reka snapped, "I forbid it!"

"But father…!"

"As your…friend has already pointed out," Reka said sternly, "This

enemy has managed to lay claim to a supply of inferior weapons grade

Orachalchum…and even if their brew is impure it still contains an effective

amount of Spirit-quashing properties that it can harm one of our own kind,

which is why you will not risk yourself by facing this danger directly."

"It's my life, Father," Kali said, "It has been for numerous

incarnations, and while I respect you as he who gave me new life, I still

have loyalties that go even deeper than my ties to you, and I won't abandon

my friends…especially since I don't have all that many to begin with."

With that she raised her hand and caused a wall of flames to

surround both herself and the girl on the crimson motorcycle, and then the

wall fell away, leaving no trace of either young girl in their passing.

Nabiki turned a quizzical look towards Lord Reka and said, "You

didn't try to actually stop her from leaving?"

"Free will," Reka pronounced with the sound of grinding teeth, "Kali

knows that I am bound by rules that she only acknowledges in token by their

violation."

"So…are you going to go after her?" Nabiki asked.

"There would hardly be any point," Reka sniffed, "Our paths are

fated to cross time and again, and I will hardly abandon her to her folly.

She is powerful but her tendency to overestimate her abilities is what has

cost her numerous lifetimes…and I do not intend to see her cut this one

short before she has had the chance to bring me a grandchild."

Nabiki arched an eyebrow to this and said, "She seems pretty serious

about that other girl…do you think it's likely she'll switch to a guy to

give you that?"

"Time is long and possibilities are endless," Reka pointed out, "And

you know better than most how little a barrier a thing like gender can be in

the times which we now enter."

Nabiki had to concede the point with a mild grimace and guilty

thoughts of what she and Saki had been doing the previous evening, but then

she gave Reka a coy look and said, "You know, for a guy who seems to pride

himself on being some kind of anti-social counter-culture guru you can turn

out to be a pretty cool parent."

"I'll forgive you for thinking that," Reka said as he turned away,

"There is a very old saying that holds that Madness is inherited…we acquire

it from our children."

"I think maybe my dad would agree with you on that note," Nabiki

remarked as she fell in step with the crimson haired fire lord, "By the way,

how is your brother getting on…the other one with the goofy messianic

persona?"

"Anri?" Reka sniffed, "He and I do not see eye to eye about a good

deal, but we share the same concerns regarding the fate of this era, and the

events which have brought the world to the brink of calamity, largely as an

ironic consequence of his own actions in ages past when he did, indeed,

attempt to play out the role of a Messiah."

"And you don't think much of what he accomplished?" Nabiki asked.

"Good intentions aside, what he attempted to accomplish and what

actually came about as a result of the attempt are as night is to day," Reka

scoffed, "And yet still he does not lose faith in the ideal of one day

inspiring humanity to rekindle the promethean flame of wisdom and knowledge

that burns yet within their souls and memories. This in spite of the

repeated evidence that enlightenment is only to be gained by those who are

willing to struggle to achieve an enlightened state like unto an Eluini.

You cannot force people to choose the way of Light, nor can you promise them

an easy, painless transition from the world of finite limitations."

"But people seek answers and want something better than what they

have," Nabiki argued.

"You know better than to suggest that there is a simple path to

enlightenment that is without cost, risk or obligation," Reka snorted,

"Would you advise that the road to becoming as great a martial artist as you

are now could be obtained in a few easy steps with a touch of pop wisdom

tossed in for market value?"

"Certainly not," Nabiki recoiled, "If I did that then I'd be little

better than…" she paused as she started to think about the implications.

"Yes, like one of those media stars who prostitute their skills for

dollar value," Reka said without pausing in his stride, "What is painful

about enlightenment is that you must sacrifice your innocence and accept the

world as it is, not as you wish it were or would imagine it to be.

Ironically you can find Satori by simply opening yourself to the light that

flows from within you, but in doing so you perceive the world beyond normal

sense of touch, sight and hearing, and you start to realize how much larger

the world is than you could possibly imagine…and that there are beings who

exist beyond the fringes of mortal space whose views of life are as alien to

us as ours would be to a resident of a different dimension."

"That would be kind of freaky," Nabiki admitted, "But when I used to

meditate all I hear is the sound of Uncle Genma snoring."

"You will find that Satori is a far easier state to maintain now

that you have undergone the Change," Reka noted, "And with that you will

discover the ability to sense things at large beyond your previous

awareness…and things will come to you at seeming random that will frighten

and disturb you."

"And that's what its like for you all of the time?" Nabiki asked.

Reka gave a short bark of a laugh, "I was born with the power of

enlightenment bestowed to me as a legacy of my ancient father. My time

among the wild elementals of the distant North East gave me insight to the

fringes of reality as perceived from outside of human civilization, and my

time in successive generations had tended to reinforce my perception that

human beings are neither all good nor all bad, simply who and what they are,

and as such must be respected even if their ways lead them to behave like

brute beasts scrabbling for mere sustenance in their limited existence."

"Sounds awfully condescending," Nabiki said, "Are you really that

cynical about people?"

"I prefer to think of myself as the ultimate realist," Reka noted,

"I accept people for who they are and seek to protect them from themselves

where I am permitted. In that I share with Udan a sense that attempting to

force people to change is folly in the utmost, and the time where we would

impose our will upon others is long in the past. But not so for Anri, who

still clings to the hope that mortals yearn within their hearts a cherished

desire to restore the Unimind that was known before Atlantis."

"I remember him saying something about that," Nabiki grumbled, "And

I can see what you're getting at…it's not so easy to walk his path as he

might try to sell it."

"Human's have choices in life that they do not even realize that

they are making before they are committed to their pursuit," Reka noted,

"Take for example that fellow named David…the son of a Kirin and a mortal

who was converted to the perverse faith of a self-described Korean prophet,

and who was employed in the capacity of an assassin, using his powers to

work great evil in the world. Would you call such a one an innocent dupe or

a pawn of forces much larger than his limited understanding?"

Nabiki bristled, "Both and neither…and I think that parable-spouting

nut job hardly ranks as an innocent after the way he cut down Kuno-san's

father in cold blood…and never mind the fact that he was trying to kill me,

Ranma and my friends when he did that."

"I see," Reka mused with a faint smile touching his lips, "So you

believe the boy is guilty of such crimes that you would deny him

forgiveness?"

"Forgiveness?" Nabiki snarled, "That has to be earned, and I just

don't see that creep turning all mushy and remorseful in any time happening

soon. Sure he was a brainwashed dupe doing the bidding of real monsters,

but he had a choice about trying to kill me and actually succeeding in

killing Kuno's dad, not to mention all the other people at my school who

wound up in the hospital because of his rampage."

"Then you would agree that he should face the consequences of his

actions?" Reka asked with deceptive innocence in his tone and expression.

"I'd rub his bloody nose in it and make him wish he'd never crawled

out of whatever hole he calls his home," Nabiki growled, "Considering the

pain he's caused I'd make him suffer in like kind, I'd make him squirm and

beg for mercy and forgiveness, I'd see him go through real hell and then I'd

make him eat those bloody pseudo-Bible quotes of his and…"

"Anri has taken him on as his new apprentice," Reka noted as if in

casual passing.

Nabiki halted in her tracks and blinked, then as Reka turned an

amused glance her way she said, "That…would just about do it…"

"Whom the gods would drive to madness," Reka mused, "They first

partner up with brother Anri."

"Guess I'd know that as well as anybody," Nabiki had to smile a bit,

then looked rueful, "And now I'm almost feeling sorry for that jerk…"

"Who?" Reka asked in feigned innocence once again, "David…or Anri?"

Nabiki was about to answer "both," but then she turned a glance to

the side and said, "What was that? It sounded almost like…gunfire?"

Reka turned as if to hone his own more refined senses to focus upon

the sound in question, and then he said in a very chill voice,

"Saotome-san…I fear you must return to your homeland…and sooner than I did

reckon."

"Why?" Nabiki started to ask, but then she suddenly felt a tearing

pain crease her skin and realized that it was not her own body feeling the

burn but rather her kinswoman, Natsume, who was feeling the brush of

near-death touch her in passing with the threat of worse to come if the

danger she faced were not abated swiftly, "Natsume-chan! They're trying to

kill my sister!"

"More than one of them I fear," Reka replied, "The enemy is

launching an attack, and I fear you must make haste to avert the

extermination of your loved ones by the hand of ultimate darkness…"

"How dare you?!" David cried hoarsely, feeling numb from the beating

he had taken, even though the one tormenting his mind and soul had not yet

laid a hand upon his person during the past hour of David's rebuke.

"Interesting that you should ask that," Anri replied, sitting

serenely composed with legs crossed in a full lotus, perched upon the rock

where he had remained for all the frantic attempts of the young half-Kirin

boy to try and silence his lecture, "A group of Rabbis…Sadducees, not

Pharisees as it is incorrectly reported in the book…once asked me by what

authority I dared to speak against them and the temple. My answer, of

course, was to turn the question around and ask by what authority they felt

compelled to question me. Well, naturally they were apoplectic at being

upbraided, but they had to go away disappointed that they could not haul me

away under a charge of impiety since there were only the two of them facing

down the mass of my followers, including my chief disciples, who were big

and rugged men who had worked hard for a living and were not about to let a

couple of scrawny scribes drag away their teacher."

"You are claiming to be He who is the Most Glorious man who ever

lived," David declared, intending his voice to be louder and full of wrath

for all that he could barely managed to croak out the words by now, having

torn his voice rough and ragged from his previous efforts at shouting.

"Who, Jackie Gleason?" Anri asked innocently, but then he smiled,

"Sorry…I thought you were listening. As I already explained to you, the

fellow you were describing just now never actually existed. I am afraid

that I was very much a frail and fallible being in that incarnation. Oh,

certainly I was a bit further along on the path of enlightenment than most,

but hardly the wisest man who ever lived, or how else can you explain that

incident with me and the Fig tree? I mean, the book clearly states that it

was not the season for that tree to bear fruit, and yet I was hungry, and I

got a bit petulant about it and cursed the poor thing. That is hardly what

I would define as the action of a wise man."

"You are not him!" David declared, his voice desperate with the

force of his insistence.

"Oh, I absolutely agree with you," Anri said, "I was never 'Him,'

because 'He' was the fictionalized invention of a man who never knew me in

the flesh, who lied about me and distorted my career for his own quite

selfish purposes, making himself the Apostle who supplanted my own

followers, and-quite ironically-brought about the total undoing of the

movement that I had started."

"Satan!" David spat on a dry mouth, "Deceiver!"

"No, I'm afraid that Satanos the Deceiver is someone else," Anri

replied, "An Eluni allied with the Darkness. My aim is not to deceive but

rather to enlighten. It is a sad testimony to my failures as a teacher that

people seldom believe the truth when they hear it from my lips, but that is

largely due to the fact that I can never really live up to their

expectations. I am who I am, and I know of no other way to be than what you

see before you."

"You…you cannot be of the Light…" David insisted.

"Well, if that is so then I would like very much to know who is,"

Anri mused, "Because then I can seek him out and learn from his feet the

true path of enlightenment. Unfortunately what I see for the most part are

false prophets and self-described gurus who demean the path of spirituality

by demanding that you pay them to teach you how to be good and holy. And

honestly, why would any man who claims to be such a teacher need such

exorbitantly large bank accounts with unlimited expenses paid for out of the

donations given them by widows and orphans? I seem to remember saying

something about that a time or two in my parables and sermons…but it must

have gotten lost somewhere in all that thunder about Hell and Damnation."

"All who preach falsely will be judged in the end by the Lord…!"

David proclaimed with as much remaining force as he could muster.

"Actually such judgment is overrated," Anri said sadly, "Those who

do evil weigh their souls down with bad karma, but their evil deeds live on

long after their bones are dust, and it is the challenge for us to resist

the tide of wanting to be like them. After all, it is an easy path to lure

people into obeying the will of their baser instincts by playing on their

fears, greed, hate and suspicions of others. Charity and Mercy require some

effort on the part of the would-be seeker of salvation, and I recall

speaking many times on the subject of showing compassion to those who are

poor and less fortunate than their brothers…yet somehow that gets played

down while subjects which I never spoke about in my sermons get trumped as

the be-all-and-end-all of redemption."

"Those who do not earn the favor of the Lord are not worthy of

salvation…" David insisted.

"That is not for you to say, nor for anyone else to judge and

determine," Anri declared firmly, "All who live seek to do as well as they

know how to do in life, and blaming them for their own misfortune is the

height of hubris and folly, and those who deny compassion even to those who

have been mislead into doing that which is truly evil are entitled to some

degree of understanding…even if their deeds judge themselves far worse than

anything that the One might decry, or the determination of their peers in

regard to their contributions to the world at large. You already know this,

but you've allowed yourself to be mislead by those who despise the poor and

would deny everyone but themselves the balm of compassion."

"How can you do this to me?" David whimpered, feeling his strength

fail him as he tried to rally once again in yet another attempt to beat down

this aggravating being who kept hammering away at his faith with gentle

words that mocked his very being.

"Because you are a sinner," Anri answered, "Perhaps not as great a

one as I, but a sinner none the less. And by sinful I do not intend to

belittle you or diminish you as a person…I merely wish for you to understand

that you are filled with imperfections, and the greatest of all your crimes

is the sin of hubris."

"I am clean…I am purified…I am strong in my faith in the Lord…"

David murmured weakly, leaning against the coral rock that dared uphold the

fair haired man assaulting his certainty with words that tore into his soul

like claws of flame.

"If that were so then why do you feel this need to convince others

that you are saved from earthly imperfections?" Anri asked, "Are you trying

to convince yourself that you are redeemed when you know that you have acted

foolishly on the behalf of selfish men who have filled your mind with hate

and poisoned you to be a carrier for their evil."

"What…are you saying…?" David asked numbly.

"That you already know the truth but attempt to crush it down

beneath the weight of false certainty," Anri answered, "You commit murder in

the name of your God, which is itself the ultimate in hubris. You decry

those whose only crime is to live by a different standard than your own as

if they were offending your God by merely existing. You shame your own

sister by siding with those who raped and abused her, and you ally yourself

with the minions of the Darkness, doing violence against the path of light

as though the lies you spout were enough to sanctify your deeds. You know

all this but you think you are forgiven because you appeal to a false image

of me, which is the crime that offends me the most directly."

"You are not God…not my lord…!" David stubbornly insisted.

"Well, thank the powers we agree on that at least," Anri averred,

"And yet I am a part of the One, as are you, as is my sister, Ulsa, as is

your sister, Amalthea, as are all living beings, even the least among us.

The One is the totality of being…more than mere parts who are aspects of the

life equation. Understanding this would lead anyone who grasps this

fundamental truth the keys to finding enlightenment and salvation. You

would be redeemed in an instant, for all your crimes and imperfections, if

you but ceased to hate that which you view as external to yourself and learn

to embrace all of life in a universal kinship, and then maybe learn to

forgive yourself for being human, which is the hardest path to salvation

that I know."

"How…how can you say these things?" David insisted.

"I say them because they are the truth," Anri replied, "Or, at least

they are the truth as best that I may understand them. I cannot lie to you,

David…it is against my fundamental nature. I can only say that which I know

to be the truth, and for all that you may not accept or believe me, I truly

do not wish ill for you. I do not hate you for being what you are. I do

not hate my fellow being who struggles in darkness seeking light merely

because the Darkness has turned them around to the path of evil."

"You expect me to accept you…to believe all that you say?" David

asked in weary bewilderment.

"Of course not," Anri said, "If I asked you to take me at my word

then it would be asking you to acknowledge me as if I were the one whom you

accuse me of being. I expect you to find the answers that you need within

yourself once the lies you surround yourself with have been stripped away by

the truth you have been denying. But if you ask how you can tell that I am

not a dissembler or demon seeking to turn you to the darkness…simply ask

yourself if it seems to you that I am what you accuse me of being."

"I…I don't understand…" David admitted in exhausted frustration.

"Look into your heart and feel the truth behind my words," Anri

directed, "Do I seem fair yet feel foul to you? Are you flinching from my

words because they make you uncomfortable…or do the things I say truly seem

to you as if they come from the mouth of one who seeks to lead you to

destruction? Would it not be far easier for me to compel you to obey me by

capturing your mind with some enchantment rather than simply repeat the

truth until you lose the capacity to attempt to compel me to silence?"

"I…I…don't know…" David slowly whispered.

"Ah…the fundamental principle from which all wisdom is born," Anri

declared gently, "To say that is to show that you have been listening to me

after all, for you are no longer mindlessly repeating the position that you

already know all of the answers and have no need for me to try and correct

you."

David felt a flare of irritation, "You…you tricked me into saying

that…"

"Perhaps I did," Anri answered, "But it is an admission

nonetheless…not to mention the truest thing that you have said all evening."

"I still have my faith…" David insisted.

"If you want to call it that," Anri said, "But real faith does not

need to be stated aloud. It simply is the core belief of a person that is

born from the experience of spiritual insight. It is not a theological

statement derived from arm-chair theorists calling themselves 'Theologians'

who would not know a divine spark from a mushroom-induced hallucination."

"What do you want from me?" David whimpered.

"That you begin to listen…and perhaps to think like a rational

person," Anri stated reasonably, "And not a petulant child seeking the

approval of his false parental icons, the ones who have done the very real

violence to your mind and have warped you into behaving like their mindless

pawn, doing evil while pretending to serve virtue."

As David knelt there before the rock upon which Anri serenely

remained perched, Ulsa and Amalthea wandered back up from the part of the

beach where they had been occupying themselves for the better part of

several hours and observed the continued exchanges between Anri and his

putative "disciple" wear down to their exhaustive conclusion.

"Are they still at it?" Amalthea was appalled, "Hasn't David finally

gotten the sense knocked into his head yet?"

Ulsa merely gave a serene and compassionate nod, as if to imply the

unspoken observation, He is stubborn, but next to Anri his resolve is like

sand before the tide, for Anri could wear down the patience of a mountain.

"Truly, my lady?" Amalthea asked in understated wonder.

Anri has even worn down Udan from time to time. Compared with that,

your brother is no challenge whatsoever.

"If you believe so, my lady," Amalthea averred softly, but still she

could not help but feel appalled at the way her younger brother was refusing

to budge from his mistaken resolve and she could not help but wonder if

their long-dead sainted parents might look down in despair at their children

from high in the heavens.

"You cannot make me renounce my faith," David said, rallying what

little strength he had left as he sought to deny the pounding pressure of

the back of his own mind where long buried memories were starting to rise up

to challenge his self-conception.

"Of course not," Anri said, "You will do it yourself of your own

free will…just as you have endured the Siege Perilous of my interrogation to

come this far to awakening the memory of who you truly are, and to banish

this false idea of yourself that was superimposed on you. You are breaking

out of that shell even as you attempt to insist that you are immune to my

teachings."

"You are saying that you have forced me to this…debacle?" David said

while feeling as if he were choking on his effort to remain firm in his

resolve…terrible memories starting to rise up to call into question

everything he once had held as certain.

"David," Anri gently pointed out, "I have not forced you to do

anything. You have been attempting to attack me without success because you

cannot attack what you do not correctly perceive as being before you. You

could have turned away and walked off at any time that you desired. You

could easily have ignored my words if you truly did not believe them, but

instead you have stayed here and railed against me…and to what end?"

David was stunned, and his mouth hung open as he stared at Anri with

growing horror and dawning comprehension.

Anri became even more compassionate as he regarded the young man,

not with pity but rather with an infinite well of sadness, "Might it not be

because you know implicitly within your heart that the truth you seek can

only be found if you stop trying to run away and hide from it? If you but

opened your heart and accepted what you know to be the truth and see it as

it is…not through the distorted prism of the perceptions of those who truly

did deceive you?"

"No…" David said, pushing himself away from the stone and managing

this time to stand on his own feet as he gripped at his own head and tried

to fight the deteriorating shadows that were shredding away, allowing the

floodgates of his memories to awaken.

"Darkness is not the enemy of light but the absence of

illumination," Anri noted, "All things which hide within the shadows can be

known if you bring them out into the light and observe them without fear or

distortion…however terrifying and horrific they might seem in the light of

full humanity and simple, common reason."

"No…no…no! It cannot be!" David wailed as the dark images gave way

to terrible sights and sounds that awakened to his knowledge as he

re-experienced the awful sight of evil men tearing him away from the loving

arms of his helpless sister…and the things which they then did to her while

dragging David off to be abused in a different sense, the slow and steady

process of converting him into a servant of their evil.

"Would that it were so that men were incapable of such cruelty to

one another," Anri said sadly, "But as I can well attest I have witnessed

crimes even more terrifying than these practiced endlessly over the ages."

David moaned as he collapsed to his knees clutching at his face and

keening softly as the memories began to come crashing down upon him head,

tearing apart his wall of certainty as he started to remember the things

that he had endured at the hands of those who had called themselves his

nominal masters.

Amalthea felt conflicted and turned a questioning look towards Ulsa,

and to her relief her lady nodded assent, and so she rushed forward,

splashing in the surf to reach her brother's side in a matter of seconds,

and then she threw her arms around him and gripped him by his wrists as he

instinctively started to struggle against her efforts to restrain him from

doing physical damage to himself, while Anri looked down and regarded them

both with infinite compassion.

From further down the beach the massive head of the creature known

as Luna rose up from the surf and cast a keening look of curiosity as though

she wanted to know if the one whom she sensed as feeling pain was in need of

her form of succor, but Amalthea just glanced up at her huge pet and shook

her head in slow negation.

"Perhaps I was a bit too rough in forcing him to regard the truth,"

Anri remarked with a note of regret in his tone and expression.

His sister appeared by his side as though she had covered the

distance between them in even less time than had Amalthea.

No, he needed to face this now. It is long since time that he grows

up and leave behind the mistakes of his painful and tragic past. Better

that he see what he has become in following the guidance of the minions of

the enemy so that he has a chance of finding redemption in his own eyes

before his soul transgresses more deeply into error.

"You are hard but fait in this, dear sister," Anri sighed, then he

turned a glance to the side and said, "And perhaps the timing for this is

even more pointed than I had anticipated."

Ulsa Laolana turned a glance sidelong and nodded faintly to the

distance.

It has begun, dear brother…what you feared most is coming to past

even now, and unless the heroes and champions whom we have raised take

action swiftly it could end in tragedy…and sow the seeds for impending

disaster.

"My lady?" Amalthea glanced up, hugging a sobbing David to her

breast as the boy devolved to infancy as he relived the horrors of a few

years back in stunning detail and felt the trauma that had warped his nature

take hold of him again, only now with the realization that he had submitted

to the will of his own enemies in a vain attempt to avoid more suffering,

and allowed himself to be coached into becoming a monster.

Ulsa turned her glance back to her now-beloved servant and regarded

her with eyes that could span the farthest reaches of infinity and still

contain all depths of limitless compassion.

A friend you know from times before is imperiled, my Pet…and the

enemy is mounting an attack against both her and her loved ones. They are

in need of your services, and wish for you to go to them and serve once more

as my agent.

Luna looked up and made an inquiring snuff, then glanced at Amalthea

again and seemed as keen as a hound to be about whatever business was being

assigned them.

Amalthea drew a deep breath and said, "I am yours to command, my

lady…but…my brother…"

"Take him with you," Anri advised.

Even Ulsa seemed to look at him questioningly as Amalthea said,

"Take David…into battle?"

"He needs to know that what he is experiencing now are true memories

and not the mere shadows of ill fancy," Anri answered, "Ordinarily I would

spare him this trial, for in his fragile state he could well be pushed over

the extreme edge into infinite despair…but to leave him as he is on this

beach would hardly be a greater mercy."

You are certain of this, Brother?

"The choice is his to make," Anri said as he slid off the coral rock

and crouched down near the surf while rested his weight upon the balls of

his feet, "Will you wrap yourself in the mantle of despair and wail the hand

the fates have dealt you…or will you confront the truth as would a man in

search of knowledge about himself and what is truly at the core to your

inner nature?"

David was still shedding tears as he stared bleary eyed up the

quixotic man who had been tormenting him with words before now, only this

time he correctly read the compassion and understanding in Anri's

expression, and then he turned a glance up at Amalthea, and gently pushed

himself away, attempting to stand on his own feet without anyone else's

assistance.

Amalthea instinctively reached down to lend him support but found

the gentle hand of Ulsa upon her shoulder restraining her action. David

managed to get upright and on his feet on his third attempt, and then he

stared hard at Anri and made a decision that, for him, meant turning a page

on his entire existence as he said resolutely, "I will go with you…and see

the truth for myself…Master."

Anri shook his head in denial, "I am master to no one and nobody,

but you can call me Sensei if you like. Now come…the forces of hell await

us, and it would be very rude to keep them waiting longer than is needful…"

Continued.

Comments/Criticisms/Coming Home to a Quest too long Avandoned:

Or: shadowmane9849 , or shadowmane747

My apologies for a lengthy pause between the last chapter and this

one, I was fully intending to continue things from where I left off, and I

hope not to further disappoint you as I bring events of this sage to

fulfillment as I have for so long intended.

Next chapter we focus upon what the other players are doing while

the forces gather in the background for a fateful confrontation between good

and evil, and there will be many surprises surrounding the key players in

the chapter I have so titled: "Dead or Alive; Least Wanted," or, "Monster

Munchies."

Be there!

X


	114. Chapter 114

Dnabiki203

Nabiki 1/2

"A Very Scary Thought"

by

Jim Robert Bader

(Inspired by the works of Rumiko Takahashi & Others,

with concepts and characters created by fellow fanfic writers

Wade Tritschler, DB Sommers, Nicole Manders, Andrew

Greaves, Bill Guiroff and countless others, including "Buffy"

creator Joss Whedon; with special thanks to my good pal

Shiva for his editing and handling of this series.)

(Certain other characters and concepts are of my own

innovation, including my interpretation of the Monster

of Mary Shelly's novel, the Furies, Trudy, Takaharis

Angelique d'Anjou, Anri and the Daokan, Thelendra

the Dream Weaver and various other guest stars

appearing in this portion of the Nabiki 1/2 series...)

Chapter Seventy-Seven.

Episode Two Hundred and Three.

Martial Splash

The pair waiting at the end of the pier stared past the gathering gloom of early sunset, watching another group detach themselves from a small private yaucht that had parked itself along the dockside. The pair remained where they were as one large figure stepped forward and then held back a respectful distance, allowing formal exchanges to be made, coded greetings intended to affirm the identities to the satisfaction of all concerned parties.

Then the very tall, muscular and barrel-chested figure of a man wearing combat fatigues stepped forward and saluted his counterparts before saying, "Sergeant Major Ivan Zangeif reporting as instructed, Colonel Guile. Mission completed as per orders with no significant loss of personnel or equipment, and nothing of great significance to report as the parties that you have requested are now delivered as per instructions."

"At ease, Sergeant Major," said the broad shouldered tall man with the blonde bottlebrush haircut who stood opposite the even more intimidating giant in a posture of relaxed attention, "Good news indeed, Zangeif...a welcome alternative to the way far too many of these assignments turn out, eh?"

"Sir," Zangeif, formerly a non-commissioned officer with the Russian military, said gruffly, still remaining at formal attention, his expression bland but nonetheless conveying behind his bearded façade that he knew all too well exactly to what his superior was making coy reference.

"Lieutenant Cammy," Guile said to his ever-alert wife at his side, "Take charge of the new arrivals. They are in your custody and you are charged with their immediate well being for the duration of this assignment."

"Sir," Cammy White Guile smiled in a leonine manner as she surveyed the faces of the new arrivals and committed them to memory, contrasting them with their profiles from earlier briefings and finding this lot far easier on the eye than the usual raw recruits she was often charged with training.

Guile turned a comradely look up at the gruff faced bearded Russian giant and said, "Good to have you back, old friend.. It's been too long, and you haven't yet met Cammy's little one yet. She's the spitting image of her mother."

"Flattery will get you somewhere, Colonel-san," Cammy said demurely before straightening her shoulders and surveying her new charges with a far more professional demeanor.

The huge man looked down at his superior officers and said, "Is true, Da? You and the Lieutenant...and the Inspector...?"

"Whoah," said a smaller but still quite muscular man who stepped around the man-mountain to greet the pair of officers with an affable smile, "You mean to say that the rumors on the grape vine are true? That you really did settle down with BOTH Chun-Li and Cammy?"

"Afraid so, Kid," Guile smiled back, "Seemed like the best way to survive being around them was to marry them both, especially after I somehow got the both of them pregnant."

"Like you need a manual to explain the process of how that happened," Cammy sniffed.

"But...is legal?" Zangeif asked while scratching around his short Mohawk-like hairstyle, looking even more confused than he was usual for him during a technical briefing.

:"Maybe not officially," Guile said, "But they're both registered under my name...not that it matters much since we move around a lot for security purposes. Chun is back at our current base camp looking after the young ones or else she'd be here to pay her respects, especially to you, Ryu, whom she thinks of almost as a brother."

Ryu Hoshi just smiled in a manner that was almost a wince, "A brother...heh...there was a time I had a real crush on that girl, but if Chun-Li is happy..."

"As happy as she can be when stuck with diaper duty," Guile said with a sniff, "Cammy and Chun had to flip for it-don't ask-and guess who wound up pulling the short straw."

"But...seriously, Colonel," Zangeif persisted, "Two women? You are more than a man for most, but...these two?"

"Hey, I'm not saying it's all smooth sailing, old friend," Guile chuckled, "But somehow I've managed to survive being around the both of them and-OOOFFF!"

"Only just barely," Cammy said, not having seeming to move from the spot where she was standing, though her elbow had somehow managed to find its way into the abdomen of her much larger husband, "And with comments like that it's surprising that you've even made it this far."

"See what I mean?" Guile said a bit tightly, rubbing his stomach while struggling for breath as his shoulders slumped forward for the moment, giving him a far less imposing bearing than was his usual demeanor.

Both Zangeif and Ryu looked momentarily chastened, then the pair of them exchanged worried looks as if reconsidering the perils of a bachelor life as opposed to that of being married to even one woman.

"By the way," Cammy said as though nothing untoward had just occurred, "We've heard rumors ourselves about you, Ryu-chan, that you may have found someone yourself with whom to settle down."

"Ah...well..." the broad shouldered young man with the crimson headband just smiled affably and rubbed the back of his head with one hand, "Maybe...I mean...it's not like I'm ready to do like Ken and settle down to become a family man, like you Guile..."

"Rose isn't it?" Guile said a bit less tightly as his gut began to return to something approaching normal, "Gotta admit I didn't see that one coming."

"Well...she was going through some hard times," Ryu explained, "And after the way she helped me out when I was having trouble mastering the Dark Haddo, which is why I missed out all of that fun you guys had with that lady Pirate..."

"You mean Lao?" Guile grunted, "If that's your idea of fun, that is..."

"Um...well..." Ryu said a bit awkwardly, "Things just seemed to happen with us...me and Rose...but it's too soon to tell if it's anything serious or not..."

"Just give it time and you'll come to see that being with someone you love is better than remaining a solo act for the rest of your life, Kid," Guile assured him with a wry look at Cammy's very appealing backside.

Guile was also noting that the group assembled behind Sergeant Zangeif were a diverse lot of very interesting looking people, all women seemingly in their mid-twenties, and representing a very internationalist array of strikingly attractive beauties...with the one notable point that a disproportionate demographic of their number had light colored hair of a shade resembling that of his own wife, Cammy.

(Sure a lot of Blondes in this group) he silently thought to himself with no little sense of irony in that statement.

"All right, you ladies," Cammy addressed herself to the odd array of interesting looking young women, "Konichiwa...and welcome to Japan...those of you not native to the home islands. I am Lieutenant Cammy White Guile, deputy commander of an outfit known loosely as the Street Fighter V Association. We have no official government ties but are nonetheless a licensed contract security outfit with unofficial UN backing, and it is on behalf of my unit that I wish to thank you for volunteering to participate in our current mission."

"Hey," one of the women wearing a Stetson hat spoke up, "What's this paramilitary talk I'm hearing? I didn't sign up to be part of no damned mercenary army..."

"You are not being drafted into anything, Miss Armstrong," Guile spoke up, "We are merely asking for your cooperation in a highly important assignment concerning the welfare of the entire world..."

"That sounds awfully pretentious," another blonde pointed out, "Lots of people claim to have the good intentions of saving the world, but in order to do that they are just as often prepared to make sacrifices that some in the trenches may suffer for the benefit of a few at the top end of the food chain."

"Your point is well taken, Miss Douglas," Cammy replied, "All we ask is that you hear us out and consider our proposal before choosing to decline...and might I remind you that your response to our initial invitation was itself strictly a voluntary matter."

Another blonde wearing a green headband spoke up quietly and said, "I was informed that what you wished to enlist my services for was important...but I was given no details beyond the fact that it involves certain parties with whom I have a longstanding grievance."

"This is so, Captain Blade," Cammy informed her, "And believe me when I say that you especially come well recommended."

"That's Major," the blonde replied, standing loosely at attention as she saluted, "Major Sonja Blade, former Army Rangers, retired with Commission..."

"Also inactive duty with the Central Intelligence Agency and a former victor of the legendary tournament known as Mortal Kombat," said Guile a bit gruffly, "Currently a Contract Foreigner and trouble consultant for the NSA, which recommended you for this assignment."

Sonja Blade looked startled, "How did you...?"

"Our files on you are quite extensive," Cammy informed her, "In fact we have extensive files on all of you as you come well recommended, though many of you have no official times to any agency, which makes you all the more ideal for this assignment."

"And what assignment would that be?" asked a brown haired woman sporting a pony tail and a light kimono, whose appearance caused Guile to do a double-take for a moment as his first real impression of her made him wonder at the coincidental nature of her inclusion.

(Can't be) he thought silently to himself, (She looks the same...even has red eyes...and the name matches her profile...but...the resemblance up close...it's uncanny...)

"Simply put, Miss Saebo," Cammy responded smoothly, giving no indication that she was making a similar connection between the Japanese woman and another person of their recent acquaintance, "Our target is a group largely based in Korea but with international ties that have attracted the interest of Interpol, not to mention various intelligence agencies the world over. That is why some of you were covertly urged to respond to our invitation under the strictest security imaginable. It is also why we would like to conduct the rest of this briefing in a more isolated and secure location..."

"Just a minute here," one of the other blondes stepped forward, this one sporting a ponytail and looking quite irate, "I came here as a favor to my former agency, and because I was told I would have an opportunity to strike back at some people who caused me a great deal of unpleasantness a while back, but unless you tell me now what their identity is then I am walking here and now!"

"At ease, Miss Williams," Guile said, "We are well aware that you have a legitimate personal grudge with the TEKKAN Association and Mishima Zaibatsu, but we must ask that you show patience and..."

"Screw your patience!" angrily declared the woman known as Nina Williams, "I am leaving!"

"...And it indirectly concerns your father, ex-husband and children," Cammy concluded rather obliquely, causing the blonde to stop dead still in the middle of her tracks as if stung by a needle.

"What did you just say?" Nina hissed dangerously, breaking loose from the ranks of the other women to stalk to within two paces of the more slightly built Cammy, jabbing a finger at the chest of the blonde haired lieutenant, "What do you know about my family?"

"That they are here waiting for you," Cammy replied, "That we are prepared to help reunite you with your son and daughter...and that if you wish to retain use of that hand you will withdraw it now...or I will hand it back to you in a somewhat less intact conduction."

Nina started to bridle when a brown haired, buxom woman at her flanks said soothingly, "Please, Nina...calm down. These people are not our enemies...of that I am quite certain."

"Oh?" Nina scoffed as she turned a glance at her erstwhile companion, "And you know of this for certain, Christie?"

"Not for certain, of course," said the Brazilian-born Christie Montoya, "But would it hurt to hear them out? Especially as we have come all this way at an expense paid rate that has so far cost us nothing/"

"Montoya-san is right, Williams-san," a shadowy figure stepped out from seeming no where dressed from head to foot in the black garb of a traditional Ninja, "These people are not your enemies, nor of anyone who is honorable and upright. I ask that you exercise more restraint and patience until you have learned more of what it is that has drawn you to these shores...as I must ask of the rest of you young ladies who have so far trusted my advice in this matter."

"Kagemusha," Guile spoke up, "I was wondering when you'd be putting in an appearance.

"Forgive me for acting enigmatic, old friend," the masked Ninja responded, "I was busy making certain that we had no unwanted observers who might intrude on these affairs, but now that I have finished reconnoitering the perimeter I am pleased to report no hostile agencies presently observe us."

"That's good to know, and a welcome change of pace," Guile said gruffly, "Thanks for taking on this assignment. The second half of your fee has already been deposited in your account as so requested."

"Thank you, but this assignment was about more than just earning money for my clan," Kagemusha replied, relaxing somewhat as he added, "And in truth it has hardly been the most unpleasant mission that I have recently undertaken."

"I can well imagine," Guile said, but under his breath he softly murmured, "Pleasant company...but this many women on one trip I'm sure it must have been eventful."

"Nothing untoward that I felt tasked bout," Kagemusha said enigmatically, "However...I should note in my report that I did encounter a few agencies posted around the area who seemed to have an interest in your activities. I took the liberty of persuading them to take the night off and get a good nights rest from their surveillance..."

"Other agencies spying on us?" Cammy looked up at him in surprise, "Just how many was that?"

"Seventeen in all," Kagemusha said without seeming boastful, "Including the American CIA and the National Intelligence Service of Japan, Section Nine as well as a few undercover policemen and women keeping an alert eye in case of drug dealing."

Guile just sighed, "There's going to be an accounting for that, I just know it...more paperwork and phone time for the bureaucrats in the main office..."

"'Scuze me for saying this, Big Guy," the blonde wearing the Stetson hat, named Tina Armstrong, spoke up, "But what-all are you going on about? My friends and I were told this was supposed to be a friendly invite to a special martial arts tournament..."

"And that it is," Guile replied, "To be held the day after tomorrow here in Tokyo, Japan...a very special tournament that is being hosted by the Amakuze Foundation."

There were several gasps, glares and surprised expressions on the faces of the women among their group, while the blonde named Nina Williams just balled her fists and glared as though the very mention of the name set her teeth on edge.

"I think that we have all heard of that lot," said another of the blondes, named Helena, with more composed dignity than the rest, her distinctly British accent flavoring her Japanese with a regional distinction, "They're affiliated with the Moonies, if I have heard rightly..."

"They have connections," Cammy replied, "But they act independently of the Cult founded by the so-called 'Reverend' Sung Yung Moon, and their leader is a man called..."

"Otono Reyabi," Nina hissed the name as though it were venomous, her eyes as cold and deadly as a blade drawn freshly from its scabbard.

"Current leader of the infamous Aumshin Rekyu cult," Kagemusha elaborated with a chill tone to his own voice, "Itself descended from an older movement that bears a grudge with the Home Islands for its attempts to suppress Christianity during both the Tokugawa and Meiji eras."

"That's right," Guile said darkly, "And by all accounts they seem to intend to carry out a vendetta that might potentially get a lot of people killed. I can't share the details with you out here in the open, but what I will say for now is that we have strong reasons to believe that the tournament is a cover for evil ambitions, and that what they are planning to do would put incidents like Nine-Eleven down as a mere footnote in history by comparison."

"That serious?" said the brown haired woman known to many by the name of Kasumi Saebo.

"Oh yes," Cammy said, "But you ladies are going to help us thwart their evil ambitions... by posing at the tournament as regular fighters competing in the Women's League, your cover to position you close enough to the match to be in place where we need you..."

"And why only women?" asked another woman in their party, a dark-eyed purple haired Ninja girl hovering close by the side of the woman named Kasumi, who herself was from the same clan and went by the name of Ayane.

"You will be given answers and explanations at the briefing," Cammy assured them, "Which is why you should all follow us to our safe house so that we can get all of you ready..."

"If Otono is involved," Nina Williams said, "Then I am definitely entering the match with the intent of taking his head when this is all over."

"That might not be as easy as we'd like it to be," Guile said soberly, "He is strongly guarded, and his headquarters is a literal fortress..."

"So?" asked Christie Montoya as though the topic were of trivial interest.

"He also seems to command a power whose nature we do not currently understand," Cammy said, "Only that he must not be taken lightly as a fighter. His style of swordplay is a variation based on the all but forgotten Hiten Mitsarugi Ryu, and he never goes anywhere without his personal Katana. We have little data regarding him beyond what we managed to record at the last public tournament in which he participated..."

"I doubt he could stand up to all of our efforts combined," said Helena.

"Don't count on it," said Kagemusha darkly, "The Hiten Mitsarugi style is among the most formidable that has ever been invented, rivaling even the finest sword styles of the legendary masters who lived at the dawn of the Tokugawa era. A master of this art does not even need to be near you to strike you from a distance, and with its emphasis on speed that approaches something described as God level, no ordinary fighter would come even close to matching him as an opponent."

"Well shoot," Tina Armstrong tipped her Stetson back and smiled, "Now ya'all really have got my interest, Sugar. Been a while since Kasumi, Ayane and me had any real competition to test our mettle."

"Be careful what you wish for, Miss Armstrong," Cammy warned, "You might well find yourself facing a greater challenge than you anticipated."

"Call me Tina, why dontcha, Hon?" the Texas blonde smiled, "Miss Armstrong makes me feel like looking over my shoulder for my momma."

"Who cares about any of this," Nina snapped, "Just point me in the direction of Otono's headquarters and I'll finish the problem off for you by snapping his neck and anyone who gets in my way."

"Feisty one, isn't she?" Ryu commented to Zangeif on the sideline.

"Da," the giant Russian bear said tersely.

"Reminds me a bit too much of my own wife," Kagemusha murmured under his breath, "Though Sarah would box my ears if she heard me making that analogy..."

"Everyone just calm down a notch," Guile tried to sound reassuring, "You people are here because you are the best in the world, and each of you has proven themselves capable of going up against great odds in the past, and the reason why we only requested women to be assigned to this mission...well...that gets a bit complicated, and that's why we must ask that you accompany us to a private area where you will be briefed..."

All of a sudden a hissing noise cut through the darkness of the dock all around them, and then a sibilant voice said mockingly, "The bessst in all the world? I will be the judge of that."

Everyone tensed simultaneously, and then Guile said softly to Kagemusha, "I thought you said the perimeter was clean?"

"It was," Kagemusha stood in a battle ready posture and scanned the night before saying, "I do not detect a presence...and yet...somehow...I know that she is out there."

"She?" Cammy murmured softly with uplifted eyebrow.

Ryu was the first to spot movement and said, "Over there...it's a...woman?"

"Da," Zangeif murmured as he peered into the night and saw a pair of slender legs draped in green rustling tassles, then followed the line up from a pair of slender bare feet to encompass the rest of the woman as she moved with a sliding gait fully into the light, at which point he gasped, "And what a woman...!"

"Forgive me for eavessssdropping," the dark haired woman said with an exaggerated lisp that made every word seem a deadly venomous whisper, "It wasss not my intention to intrude upon your private affairsss...but I could not help noticcccing the concccentrated energy given off by your collective battle aurasss...and I would marvel that a fighter of any caliber could fail to sssenssse your nearnessss. Asss it isss you do not presssent a very low profile."

"And who the hell are you?" Cammy asked as the woman stepped fully into the light, prompting her gaze to shift from the face of the exotically lovely stranger to her rather showy and revealing style of dress...and the quite generous bustline that all but thrust itself out for visual inspection...not to mention the peculiar tattoo that she sported between those globular melons of a coiling serpent that stretched from chest to curl around a flat stomach belly button.

"I am ssssurprisssed that you do not know of me," the stranger seemed gently mocking, obviously aware of Cammy's reflexive visual inspection and not seeming to mind the attention, "After all, you boasssted of having exxxtensssive filesss for all the world'sss premier fighterssss...and I would be insssulted not to be included on that lisssting."

"Sure is a brassy sorta Gal," said Tina as she eyed the stranger warily, "Where you from, Stranger?"

"Lotsss of different placccesss," the stranger smiled back in a knowing manner, "But you may call me Ssssnake..."

"As in Pliskin?" Helena wondered.

"No relation," Snake responded tartly, "Though I have consssidered sssuing him for name infringement."

Kagemusha gasped aloud, "Hsing-Ko? Is that you?"

"Among other identitiessss that I have known," Snake replied as she shifted her attention to the dark clad Ninja, "I know of your clan, if not you ssspecccifically...and sssince you appear to recognizzze who and what I am..."

"Mind filling the rest of us in on that?" Guile asked.

"She is one of the Immortals," Kagemusha responded, his voice conveying hushed awe, "The bearer of the Snake emblem...one of the Twelve who are legendary masters, said to be the founders of all known martial arts systems."

Several eyes swiveled with interest towards the woman named Snake, and then Christie asked aloud what others were thinking in silence, "Immortal?"

"She doesn't look much older than us," Ayane murmured to Kasumi, "Can she truly be the legendary Snake Master?"

"Possibly," Kasumi murmured back, "Her aura is...unreadable...but I sense a vast potential..."

"Indeed?" Snake mused, "I might sssay the sssame of you...were you at leassst a few decadesss older..."

"Don't let appearances fool you," Sonja Blade cautioned, "If she is Immortal than her age could be a lot greater than you imagine..."

"Indeed," Snake mused as she turned her focus towards the woman with the green headband, "And asss the Victor of Mortal Kombat you have not aged a day sssince winning the title in vengeanccce againssst thossse who ssslew your companionsss...which meansss that we are well met, if hardly asss full equalsss."

"Now you're just being rude," Helena remarked, "What gives you the right to judge us by your standards?"

"The Twelve have that right," Kagemusha said with unusual deference in his tone and manner, "They are the supreme Masters of all known systems of combat, and to meet one is to encounter the source from which all styles and systems originated..."

"All systems?" Nina asked with kindled interest, "Including...Sinanju?"

"Sssinanju is a Korean basssed cuiosddity," Snake replied, "It isss not asss old asss Greek Pankratia, or the Punjab-Sssili of the Hinduss...but I sssuppossse it doesss have sssome rudimentary usssesss."

"Now that really was an insult," Nina bristled, "I don't suppose you'd care to test that boastful claim in combat?"

"Stand down, Miss Williams, "Guile urged, turning fully back to Snake and asking, "Lady...just why are you here?"

"Curiousssly enough," Snake replied, "We ssshare sssimilar goalsss in wissshing to end the career of Otono Reyabi," Snake said directly, "But that wasss not the purpossse that drew me out to your little gathering. Rather I am here on officccial busssinessss in my capacccity as one of the Immortalsss...becaussse I sssensssed that one of you isss on the verge of becoming a true assscendant of the martial artsss...and, curiousssly enough...the one that I am sssenssing is...him."

She gestured with one hand and pointed directly at Ryu, who looked startled at this and asked, "Me?"

"You are a massster of Haddo," Snake answered, "And-more importantly-you have ssstruggled againssst and have overcome the darknessss of Negative Haddo...and you have learned to temper and balanccce these formidable forcccesss within yourself, which meansss that you are one with the potential to be even greater."

"Ah...well...I don't know what to say about that," Ryu rubbed a hand against the back of his head and looked mildly embarrassed.

"There are many who approach the point of where you are without achieving the full vesssture of a true Massster," Snake informed him, "It exisssstsss within you to go the exxxtra stage and become what I am...to fill one of the vacant ssslotsss that ssshould be held by a fellow Immortal. At one time there were twelve of usss...but now there are only half that number, and the vacancccy is telling. It isss a void that thossse of usss who do sssurvive have sssought to fill by ssseeking out candidatesss and offering to them the option of full assscensssion."

"What do I have to do?" Ryu asked.

"That I will tell you...at the proper time when you are ready to make the commitment," Snake informed him, "It isdd not without peril or risssk...and sssome sssacrificcce isss required of all of usss, but the reward isss true Immortality...and the ssstewardship of the arts by which you will guide other candidatesdd along in their own quest for assscensssion..."

"Just a minute there," Tina spoke up, "You're offering this to him and not us? I mean, don't get me wrong, he's quite a stud as hombres go, but I don't see why the rest of us ain't in competition."

"Indeed?" Snake mused, "And do you wisssh to tessst yourssselvesss to sssee if you do, indeed, match up with my ssstandardsss?"

"Now just a minute here," Guile said, "This is no place to be holding a match..."

"Stay out of this, Colonel," Cammy said as she slowly turned around and eyed the woman named Snake with a predatory look of her own, "Do I understand right that you are challenging my team to a test of their competency?"

"No...do not accept her challenge!" Kagemusha urged, "You do not know what you are facing..."

"Butt out, Rag Head," Nina bristled, flexing her arms and saying, "I've been spoiling for a match after being cooped up all day in that boat of yours."

"But...is wise do this?" Zangeif asked.

"You heard the lady, Big guy," Helena sniffed, "The gauntlet's been thrown down, and it would be rude not to accept it."

"I got a bad feeling about this," Ryu murmured with a very uneasy expression.

"So take a number and wait your turn, Sugar," Tina cracked her knuckles and smiled, "This looks like fun, the most we've had since setting out on our little cruise line."

"We really should avoid trouble before entering the tournament," urged Christie Montoya to Nina, who roundly ignored the advance her friend was extending.

"Indeed," Sonja urged, "Someone could get hurt, and we might attract the wrong sort of attention."

"Not to worry," Snake assured them, remaining relaxes where she was standing with a look of hooded amusement in her expression, "I will be gentle with your companionsss...and no one will interrupt usss until thisss isss over...which will not take long at any rate."

'Too bad we can't say the same thing for you, your stuck up, top-heavy Witch," Ayane fingered the hilt of her sword, only to have a hand fall on her arm, which caused her to glance at her own companion with a surprised expression.

"Let us not be hasty here," Kasumi urged, "Rather observe and learn before making a commitment."

Cammy stood with fists raised as she fell down into a crouch and said, "Just remember, Sheila...you asked for this."

:"Indeed I did," Snake said without seeming to take her opponent seriously, and when Cammy moved to attack she hardly seemed to move at all from the spot, yet somehow the pig-tailed blonde found herself staggering forward and stumbling off the side of the pier to land with a splash seconds later as she fell into the darkened water.

'Do have a care not to drink that water," Snake called out over her shoulder, then turned to the others and said, "Nexxxt?"

:"I didn't even see her move," Ryu gasped.

"Me neither kid," Guile winced, "And if I know my wife she's going to be madder than a wet hen when she gets back up here."

"Maybe is good time visit relatives in Siberia?" Zangeif suggested.

Nina exploded into action, her rage making her move like a bur with inhuman speed as she angled in sharply at Snake with power and energy efficiently contained in each movement. To others she was a blur of motion as she fired off a number of rapid punches and kicks at Snake, who danced out of the way with an ease that made it seem as though her bare feet were gliding over the pier, and she did not seem even slightly troubled at the way the blonde pursued her with an intensity that was nothing less than feral in nature.

But after circling around the pier for several intensive moments Snake suddenly moved again and stepped to the side as Nina joined Cammy in the water, having seemed to trip inexplicably in the middle of a deadly thrust, the whole exchange having lasted no longer than a brief thirty seconds yet seeming to have contained more strikes and kicks than was typical in a twelve round match.

"Promisssing," Snake mused, "You are a credit to Sssinnaju, but it is obviousss that your grandfathher owed you a few more lessssons. Nexxxt?"

There was a noticeable hesitation this time, but then Christie sighed and stepped forward saying, "I just know I'm going to regret this...but Nina is my friend and she doesn't have many of those as you can well imagine. Besides which...I owe her...so I'm going to have to take you down as a matter of course."

"You are welcome to try," Snake replied, seemingly relaxed yet cautiously taking stock of this foreign born woman as her movements were more graceful than the others, and she almost seemed to dance when she moved, shifting from side to side with her center of balance in constant motion, right up to the minute she struck, which was surprisingly fast, agile and fluid.

Not that Snake had any difficulty avoiding her attack, and to the complete surprise of Christie as well as others she wound up behind the brown haired buxom girl and murmured in her ear, "Capoaera...and you are quite accomplished at it I can tell..."

Christie whirled around and tried to lash out with a kick that seemed inhumanly flexible, yet still Snake paced her and stayed within her guard as though the both of them were dancing, and then she surprised Christie with a move that the other woman would never had expected.

"Hmmm..." Snake murmured into her ears as her arms went around and cupped the other woman's breasts from beneath her tank-top, "Definitely a double D cup, jussst asss I exxxpected...and entirely natural, and quite firm. You are indeed a very rare treasssure."

Christie gasped at the unexpected way that her opponent copped a feel and tried to wrestle her way free, only to lose her shirt in the process as Snake easily moved beyond the reach of her kicks, then held the garment up as Christiie hastily covered her breasts with both hands with a yelp of dismay, her brown cheeks reddening brightly as she glared at Snake with total resentment.

"Hey now!" Helena protested, "That was totally uncalled for!"

"Oh pleassse," Snake sniffed as she tossed the garment to Christie, who caught it one-handed, "Like none of you have ever been tempted to find out about the anatomy of your nearest companionsss."

There were a couple of guilty looks among the remaining martial arts women, but Guile just groaned and covered his face with one hand, grateful that Cammy was not presently in a position to have caught the exchange as she surely would have gone quite ballistic.

"Oh man," Ryu murmured, "Now things are really gonna get ugly..."

"Da," Zangeif affirmed in understated agreement.

Snake turned back to Christie and said, "My apologiesss for your embarrasssment...but I wished to illussstrate a point in that you are a quite remarkable fighter, showing little hesitation or doubt in your attacksss...but you lack proper focusss of your sssurroundingssss and hold back at critical pointsss where hesssitation could prove fatal."

"And is that why you felt obligated to pinch my nipples?" Christie glared at the other woman, now correctly suspecting her bisexual nature.

"Oh no," Snake replied with a smile, "I did that becaussse I enjoyed it."

"You keep your hands off of her!" snarled a thoroughly wet Nina as she pulled herself back up onto the dock looking as mad as a cat that had been unceremoniously dunked into the drink.

"Or what?" Snake replied, "You will go back into the water? Please...show me what you are capable of or do not wassste my time with thessse amateur theatricsss."

"That's it, Sugar, you're going down," Tina said as she stalked forward.

"Tina..." Kasumi called out in warning.

"No butts, Kasumi," Tina said as she came to within five paces of Snake with hands and feet positioned at the ready, "This filly's about to get her butt kicked back to China..."

"Actually...I am Cambodian on my late mother'sss ssside," Snake clarified, "And German on my father'ssss."

"Whatever," Tina fell into a crouch and made herself ready for action.

Snake did not immediately react as the blonde haired Texan came at her with arms raised and legs in motion as she attempted a knee strike that missed her target completely, though the blonde rapidly recovered and whirled about with a backward kick that should have nailed the other woman cold...only that Snake was not where anticipated and had instead ducked low and under the assault, flowing around to appear on the opposite side of the frustrated blonde as she tried again and again to nail her.

"Muy Tai," Snake commented while continuing to avoid the lethal strikes of the enraged Tina, "A strong system, but lacking in certain areas such as defenssse."

"You think you're so hot?" Tina snarled, "Then stop ducking around and fight me serious like!"

"Asss you wisssh," Snake replied, and then she went from defensive to offensive with one hand moving like a blur, and Tina went tumbling over the side of the pier into the water with a very loud splash as her opponent righted herself and gave a brief nod of acknowledgement.

"You are indeed quite formidable," Snake mused, "An exxxcelent balanccce of ssstrength, coordination and timing."

"Now if that isn't a backhanded compliment I don't know what is," Guile remarked, even as Cammy made her reappearance by pulling herself back onto the pier by sheer tenacity and the use of a conveniently placed pylon.

"Gak...that water's awful," she spat, then looked around and said, "What did I miss?"

"Nothing," said Ryu, Zangeif, Kagemusha and Guile in a hastily timed chorus of negative affirmations.

Snake turned to the remaining women and said, "What are you waiting for? Are thessse the only ones among you with courage enough to challenge an Immortal?"

Sonja looked at her and said, "What is the point of challenging you? It's obvious that you're good."

"Oh come now," Snake replied, "Should I remove the topsss from the ressst of you to motivate you to follow through with your actionsss? You were all ssso bold a moment ago before you sssaw firssst hand the inadequacccy of your methodsss."

"Major Blade is right," Kasumi said, "The difference in skill levels between us is evidently more than we imagined. There would be be no point in challenging you..."

"Unaccceptable," Snake replied, turning to face them fully, "There may be wisssdom in avoiding unecccesssary violenccce in most affairsss...but when you challenge an Immortal you are already committed to battle."

"Do you mean to test them individually?" Kagemusha asked.

"I mean to dissscover if thessse are indeed the bessst that the world of the presssent hasss to offer," Snake replied, "And if you will not attack then you mussst defend yourssselvesss...thusssly."

And like that Snake surged forward, coming at the startled martial artists like a flowing tidal wave, her long black hair rolling out like a cape as she moved in between them with her whole entire body becoming like a whipcord, flitting between them like a shadow, hands and feet lashing out in the space of several very intense instants.

The other women naturally moved to defend themselves, Helena, Kasumi, Ayane and Sonja Blade doing their level best to give a good accounting, but each of them suffering the same humiliating defeat as Snake countered their attacks and turned it against them in the space of several blindingly swift heartbeats.

Of them all Sonja gave the best of herself, lashing out with Ki attacks and solid moves that could easily have broken wood and stone had they connected, but nothing she could do managed to connect with her elusive quarry, who seemed to flow around her attacks even as Snake easily avoided the sword thrusts of both Ayane and Kasumi, and the fluidly agile attacks that Helena attempted to muster in coordination with their fellow martial artists.

Christie and a sopping wet Nina jumped in to add their own to the brawl, but what started out as a dance of many resulted in a solitary figure remaining standing on the dance floor, surrounded by groaning bodies that were no longer in any condition to continue fighting.

And when the dust had settled she turned and surveyed the fallen warriors then said, "I am impressssed that you lasssted as long asss you did, and there may indeed be sssome hope for you with a few more yearsss of training...but my experienccce isss that of many cccenturiesss of accumulated knowledge, and I fight from the heart to win, jussst as you would do if you one day attain the rank of a true Immortal."

"Enough of this," Guile said, "Zangeif...restrain her."

"No-don't!" Kagemusha urged.

"Is order to obey," the huge Russian said as he lumbered forward with greater agility than his size might have implied, coming to confront Snake in spite of an obvious reluctance on his part.

"Ressstrain me?" Snake looked up at the giant of a man, "How amusssing."

"Zangief no want to hurt woman," the Russian tank on legs said with some delicacy as his eyes could not help giving her a thorough look-over, "But you is causing trouble for Zangeif friends, so you be nice now and-OOOOFFF!"

To the considerable surprise of everyone present the willowy Snake executed an upward side kick that made her legs form an incredible hundred-sixty degree angle so that with one foot on the ground her other foot connected with Zangief's chin and picked the mountain of muscles right off of his feet and sent him sailing over the side to land with a very large splash in the water.

"Cannonball!" Ryu called out in warning, just instants before they were collectively showered by the splash of water kicked up by the giant Russian.

Snake set her extended foot down on the wooden pier and smiled, "I regularly ssspar with a partner who isss nearly asss large as you...and she faresss no better than you have, though she lacks your glass jaw, my good fellow...and my apologiesss if your uniform isss not the wash and wear sssort."

"Zangief!" Ryu called out in dismay, then he turned and glared at Snake and said, "Alright, Lady...you wanted to test me? Well, now I'm ready to be tested!"

"Would somebody please listen to me for once?" Kagemusha all but pleaded.

"No," Snake replied, her focus entirely on Ryu, "Let him come at me. Thissss isss the match for which I have patiently waited."

"Then wait no longer," Ryu removed his sandals and tossed his belongings onto the pier then fell into a crouch as he came to within a short distance of Snake, looking ready for action, "You hurt my friends, you've got to answer to me!"

"Ah, loyalty and camaraderie," Snake acknowledged, "It isss a beautiful thing, isss it not?" she added while not turning specifically to glance in the direction of the fallen women, some of whom were attempting to assist one another in getting their wind back, though none of them had been seriously injured in all the fracas.

Ryu took next to no time to rally his Ki to full level, his warrior stance held only for an instant as he had already seen that his opponent was a formidable fighter and felt no need for restraint on account of her being a woman. He fell into a crouch and remained motionless as he studied her with more than just his outer senses, probing deeply for her inner Ki, the lines of force that flowed through every body and defined their vital essence by the pattern of their energy fields, the means by which he had learned to control even the Haddo of another person's body.

But Snake just remained where she was standing, smiling coyly as she regarded him in a relaxed posture that conveyed no threat, even as the flow of her vital essence remained an unfathomable mystery, so after a moment of hesitation Ryu looked at her and said, "Your aura..."

"You are trying to analyzzze my fighting ssstyle and match it in profile to warriorsss whom you have faccced in the past," Snake said easily, "A good ssstrategy againssst a regular enemy...but you forget who and what you are dealing with here, Boy."

All at once she uncoiled and suddenly her foot collided with Ryu's jaw, sending him staggering backward for several paces as his bare feet dug into the wood and sought to find friction that would prevent him from sharing the fate of those who had just taken swimming lessons the hard way.

He righted himself and felt his jaw, saying, "What was that?"

"A minor demonssstration," she replied, falling into a crouch of her own as she said, "I am Sssnake, onccce a companion of Bodhidharma himssself, both teacher and apprenticcce to the greastessst of all martial artissstsss, and when you faccce me you faccce the centuries of accumulated wisssdom of Haddo massstersss who came before you. Obssserve."

All at once the buxom Eurasian woman seemed to glow momentarily, and then seemingly grew taller, only her body remained motionless while something rose up from over her shoulder and hung over her like a wraith shaped in the form of a huge serpentine presence, one whose crimson eyes regarded Ryu with the cold dispassion of a slit-eyed reptilian nature.

The others had, by now, managed to recover, all save Zangeif, who was coughing up water after being helped up onto the pier by Cammy and Kagemusha, and all other eyes were wide with astonishment as they collectively observed the translucent shape hovering over their nominal erstwhile opponent, mouths hanging open in dismay as if only just beginning to comprehend what they been had tried to confront, and among them passed a shudder of awe tinged with a fear that made even the hardiest breast tighten in chests that were otherwise regarded as fearless.

"What is that?" Ryu asked.

"My true ssself," Snake averred, "The essseccce that you were attempting to sssenssse jussst now, the living manifessstation of Ki as persssonified in the assspect of which I am the complete and total massster."

"How is that again?" Guile asked.

"The Snake is Ki energy in living form," Kagemusha explained, "It is the force that coils within us all...the energy we draw from the earth that coils up through our legs and passes through each Chakra energy center, empowering us with greater than normal life force, which is why none of you stood even a remote chance against her. You were fighting her body...but it is the Snake aspect itself which truly is in the ascendance."

"But I am more than jussst an assspect of it," Snake replied, relaxing a bit and causing the energy image glowing above her to fade back into seeming nothingness, "I am myssself, a woman named Sssandra Chi, who thirty yearsss ago underwent the trial that imbued me with the Sssnake esssenccce."

"Thirty years ago?" Cammy exclaimed, "But...that would make you..."

"In my late fortiesss," Snake smiled, "But judge me not by my age but by the ssstrength of my resssolve to remain the massster of my fate, the holder of my title and defender of a tradition that ssstretchesss back beyond the agesss."

"An Immortal is the human Avatar of one of the primary powers of all Martial Arts systems," Kagemusha resumed, "She is the embodiment of Chakra...the serpent that coils along the spine and lashes out with lethal force when summoned."

"Oh yeah?" Ryu said warily, "So how am I supposed to defend against that?"

"Haddo isss a form of Ssserpent energy related to the power of the Dragon," Snake replied, "You have massstered the twin dragonsss of posssitive and negative flow and have resssolved them into a balanccce of Yin and Yang within yourself...now ssseee how you fare againssst one who learned to harnesss Chi at the feet of Bodhidharma."

There was no warning this time as Snake seemed to all but explode into the face of the astonished Ryu, but as fast as her kicks came flying at him the muscular man reacted in time to block her thrusts before they could connect, and his feet dug into the peer so that he managed to withstand her assault as her hands flashed like fire attempting to penetrate his guard, and failing. She flipped around and attempted to Razor-kick him with a backflip, but Ryu had seen this maneuver many times when sparring with Guile and was prepared with a counter.

Snake agilely somersaulted away and alighted on her feet in a crouch, then she smiled fiercely at Ryu and said, "Excccelent work...you instinctively harnesssed your own Ki that time, and you ssssensssed my attacksss with time enough to avoid them."

"What's your problem, Lady?" Ryu asked while keeping his guard up at the ready, "You're holding back, I can feel it. Aren't you taking me serious enough as your opponent?"

"It isss not my intent to permanently injure you," Snake replied, "Your ssstyle isss improving, yet you ssstill have a longsss way to go before you are a true Massster of Haddo...and should it not be my line to accusssse you of holding back from your bessst effortsss?"

"What?" Ryu asked in surprise, "You mean...?"

"Show me your Haddo, Boy," Snake said more forcefully, no longer smiling as the fierceness in her tone brooked no contradiction or opposition, "Let usss sssee jussst how far you have come to being your own Massster."

"You asked for it, Lady," Ryu said, squaring his stance and cupping his hands together as he brought them to his side, and all at once a ball of blue-white energy formed between his palms, swirling about and glowing brightly as his aura began to radiate and his eyes started to blaze with internal fire.

"What the...?" Sonja exclaimed, "No way!"

"What the hell is he doing?" Tina asked.

"It cannot be..." Kasumi exclaimed in disbelief.

"You mean...the legendary Haddo?" Ayane marveled.

"Uh oh," Guile winced, "Now there's really gonna be trouble."

But Snake just smiled and confidently said, "Excccellent...pure Ki energy, and you harnesss it asss though it were second nature."

Ryu suddenly moved his hands forward and shouted out the words, "HADDO KEN!" and the ball of energy shot from his hands and rocketed towards Snake, who stood her grounds and made no effort to avoid it.

Instead Snake moved her own hands and arms as she met the attack and caught the energy ball against the palm of one hand, then turned it around her body as a professional Basketball player might a ball, working it over and around herself as it rapidly diminished and then vanished against her palms altogether.

Ryu gasped aloud, "No way!"

"She caught it?" Guile said in disbelief.

"No one has ever done that before," Cammy murmured in awe.

"Maybe not with Ryu," Kagemusha noted, "But legend has it that the Snake could play with balled Ki energy like a soccer match against the Buddha."

"A good effort," Snake remarked, "But you are ssstill holding back from unleashing your full potential. I asssuure you that I am not ssso fragile that I cannot stand up againssst your bessst effortsss."

"Oh yeah?" Ryu frowned, "Well, in that case, Lady..."

"Uh-oh," Zangeif said as he finally recovered his wits and took stock of the way that Ryu was glowing more seriously this time, "Maybe was not so good idea regain consciousness after all..."

This time Ryu unleashed a blast so powerful that the roar it created drowned out even the sound of his battle cry as he called out, "HADDO KEN!" and fired off a blast that kicked up a windstorm in its backlash.

But Snake batted the ball away and caused it to discharge against the water, hitting with such force that thousands of gallons of ocean were instantly evaporated and the blast was so intense that it sounded as if a missile were detonating.

There was stunned silence in the ensuing aftermath as the Martial Artists all stared with disbelief, then Snake said calmly, "Try again...thisss time you might even forccce me to break a sssweat."

"I don't believe this lady," Guile said in disbelief, "She batted a fully charged Haddo Ken aside as though it was just an annoyance?"

"Haddo Ken?" Tina asked, "Sounded more to me like somebody was firing off a cannon."

"Haddo..." Nina turned a look of speculation in Ryu's direction, "He's mastered the all but forgotten techniques of the Bodhidharma? Even my father was never able to fully do that..."

"Guess he's not just some hombre beachcomber after all," Christie remarked, eyeing Nina with suspicion as if wondering if her friend were getting ideas about the man, which for some odd reason greatly displeased her.

"Now I remember," Cammy's eyes went wide, "Sandra Chi! She's in our files..."

"I know," Guile said grimly, "I made the connection myself a minute ago. Must be getting old that I didn't recognize her at first," he raised his voice and said, "You're with the Delphi group...one of Astarte Jones's people...?"

"That isss correct," Snake said softly, "I am one of her Furiesss, and we fight the good fight againssst the forccces of Darknessss."

"Oh man, I can't take you anywhere, can I?" a new voice joined in on the discussion.

"What now?" Helena asked, an opinion shared by the others as they saw another feminine shape sauntering onto the pier, only to cause startled looks as her appearance proved to be even more exotic than that of Snake, mainly because she was covered in fur and had a bushy tail swishing behind her and had quite distinctly non-human facial characteristics.

"Why do you have to be like this all of the time, Snake?" the newcomer said in a scratchy voice that seemed as feral as the rest of her, "You have any idea what Astarte would say if she caught you brawling like this in front of total strangers?"

"I do not recall asssking your opinion, Ssstudent," Snake said a bit stiffly.

"Yeah, well you're gonna get it anyway," the furry woman's pointed ears twitched, and then she sighed and flexed her hairy arms before saying, "Sorry about this, Guys. She means well, but sometimes Snake can get a little Bitchy."

"And who are you?" asked Sonja Blade, "The Cat-Woman?"

"Hey, lay off," the furry woman frowned, "Selena Kyle's a buddy of mine, and if you want to know people call me Catsclaw," she flexed a hand and showed off her trademark talons, baring fangs as she smiled, "Anyone want my autograph?"

"Catsclaw of Almustahl," Guile turned to her, "So, the rest of your team is already in Tokyo, eh?"

"You could say that, Handsome," Catslclaw purred as she eyed the muscular Guile with a speculative smile, only to catch the warning look from the pig-tailed blonde at his side and suddenly thought better of the matter, so instead she said, "You'll have to excuse Snake...it's probably that time of the month or something. I know she's got this thing about testing out promising martial artists when she meets them, but she usually ain't this aggressive about it."

"Aggressive is not quite the word that I would use," Christie scowled resentfully in Snake's direction.

"Oho?" Catsclaw eyed the very attractive looking large-chested woman and said, "What'd she do, steal your panties?"

"And what exactly are you supposed to be anyway?" Nina asked, eyeing the orange furred humanoid feline and frowned, "She called you her student?"

"Yeah, well...I've been learning stuff from her for a couple of years now," Catsclaw replied, "She's my friend and also my Sensei...but if you want to know what I am, I'm a body guard for our mutual employer, who's gonna be real annoyed with us if we don't high tail it back to our hotel suite in another half hour."

"I will make my apologiesss to Assstarte at the appropriate time," Snake insisted.

"Yeah, I'll just bet you will," Catsclaw sniffed, frowning a bit as she added, "Now why don't you make nice and apologize to these guys for whatever you were trying to stir up here and maybe I won't put it in my report that you were messing around with a bunch of really hot martial arts Vixens...and we both know how Astarte's gonna take that if she hears about it."

Snake actually looked dismayed, "You would not dare."

"Hey, the Boss can tell when somebody's speaking the truth or not, remember?" Catsclaw said with deceptive innocence, "So what am I supposed to do if she asks about your flirting?"

"I wasss not flirting," Snake said emphatically, only to see the knowing look in the green slit-eyed stare of her colleague, which prompted her to reluctantly amend, "At leassst...not mossstly..."

"Uh-huh," Christie murmured, "Pull the other one, Bitch."

"Oh come now," Snake turned to the brown haired Brazilian and smiled, "I know that what I did to you was rude and underhanded...but if you found it so horrible then why did your nipples harden when I touched them?"

Christie looked flustered for a moment, but when Nina turned a questioning look her way she said defensively, "What? She was the one who groped me, not the other way around...!"

Catsclaw just sighed, "You're a bad influence on the kids, you know that? Small wonder my cub's been picking up funny ideas about her girlfriends. And here I owe an apology to the Boss since I was starting to think it was her bad example that was doing it."

"Look, are we done here or not?" Ryu asked.

"For now," Snake smiled, "You impresssed me...all of you did, but essspecccially you, Ryu Hoshi-san. You are without a doubt in my mind a worthy candidate to join the ranksss of the Immortalss...but the decccisssion to do ssso must be yoursss to make, and not made lightly. I would assk you to consssider my offer and think it over carefully before arriving at a determination if that isss a path you wish to undertake. And asss for the ressst of you..."

"What?" Ayane asked warily, sharing a nervous apprehension that was mirrored in the expressions of the others.

"I have decccided to offer you my ssservicccesss in your goal of ridding the world of the threat posssed by Otono Reyabi," Snake informed them, "Contingent upon my obtaining permisssion to do ssso by our current mutual employer."

"Offering your services?" Cammy reacted with a double take, "In what way?"

"There are contessstantsss particcipating in the games, correct?" Snake asked, "And you wisssh to compete with them, but there are unknown opponentsss with abilitiesss you may never have encountered before, so a good strategy would be in order, and you need a few pointersss to maxxximizzze your potential."

"Get to the point already, Miss Chi," Cammy said flatly, "What do you have to offer?"

"My ssservicccesss as your persssonal trainer, of course," Snake replied, "Every team needsss a coach, and unlesss you were thinking of ssserving in that capacccity for yourssself..."

There was an instant look of wary apprehension in the gathered assembly of flustered and suspicious young women, and Guile himself was about to voice his direct opposition to the whole idea, but before he could speak someone else stepped forward and fell to his knees with a bow of supplication.

"We thank you for your kind and generous offer, Reverend One," said Kagemusha, "And on behalf of the others I accept the extraordinary favor that you have bestowed upon us, though we clearly are not worthy of the Honor."

All eyes swiveled to the dark clad Ninja with looks of disbelief and dismay with Guile arching both eyebrows and Cammy standing with her jaw dropped wide open, while Ryu had the presence of mind to ask, "Say what?"

"Please," Kagemusha said urgently, "Would you others for once just listen to what I have to say? This is a critical matter of inestimable importance, and if one of the Twelve offers her services to support us it would be a mark of total foolishness to refuse her most generous offer."

There was a certain pause in the air while everyone absorbed and reflected upon that statement, and then Catsclaw turned to Snake and asked, "Personal trainer, Snake? What are you thinking?"

"That our two groupsss may be able to help one another our by combining resssourccces rather than working at odds againssst each other for the sssame end," Snake said confidently, "We were discusssing the involvement of Genocccide in the Aushunre Cult that backsss thessse fanatical terrorissstsss who follow the lead of Otono Reyabi, and Assstarte voiccced a cccertain frussstration about finding a meansss of penetrating their sssecurity. How better to do that than to employ the meansss that thessse othersss were proposssing of infiltrating the martial artsss tournament that Reyabi isss hossting asss a cover for hisss plansss of releasssing Armageddon? And asss I am too conssspiciousss by myssself to passs unknown as one of the competitors, going along asss their Coach would mean a lowered profile, and a posssitioning ideal for moving when the ssstrike is most portentiousss."

"I get it," Catsclaw brightened, "Infiltrate a tournament that's meant to unleash a weapon by using these other girls as eye-catch Vixens who can distract the bad guys so that they'll never see us coming."

"Hey, wait a minute there," Tina protessted, "What are ya'all talking about? Armageddon? What's this shindig about really?"

Guile sighed, "I was going to cover that in the briefing...but since our profile's been shot to hell I might as well explain that the terrorists are planning to unleash a viral weapon on Japan at the height of the tournament, and that a lot of innocent people are likely to wind up dead if we don't do something to nip it in the bud."

"A Viral weapon?" Nina reacted, "Of what kind and nature?"

"That is the troublesome thing, Miss Williams," Cammy said, "We don't really know for sure...only that it may potentially be a type that we were warned against that is most effective against men but is less adverse towards women...hence your involvement."

"Are you saying that somebody has concocted a disease that takes out men and spares the ladies?" Sonja frowned, "I've never heard of such a thing before..."

"I have," Kagemusha replied, "I once infiltrated a laboratory where they were working to create just such a Bio-Weapon just prior to the first Gulf War...only I'd thought the base closed down and all notes and research, as well as samples, were destroyed at the direct instigation of Saddam."

"Now I really am starting to worry," Helena said, "Are you saying the dictator of Iraq actually ordered a weapon of mass destruction to be destroyed at precisely the moment when it might have been most useful in battle?"

"Ain't much use for a weapon if it kills you like it does your enemies," Catsclaw shrugged, "I don't know much about technical stuff, but my Boss says this thing could wipe out half the population of the world within a couple of years, leaving only the girls around to pick up the pieces, which means hunky studs like you boys like you guys would wind up on the endangered species list big time."

Both Ryu and Zangeif reacted to that bit of news with looks of total dismay, while Guile just frowned more grimly than was his usual wont, to which Kagemusha said, "Exactrly."

"The weapon attacks the 'Y' chromosome in men while enhancing 'X' chromosomes in women," Cammy explained, "And that is why women are preferred for this assignment as you might be more resistant to its effects should it break out into the wilderness of civilization at large, which must be prevented at all costs."

"And they call thisss Virusss by a name that isss altogether appropriate," Snake averred, "Lilith...the firssst woman in creation, who isss said to dessspisse all men who are the children of her former husssband, Adam."

"Adam and Lilith?" Ryu scratched his head in confusion.

"Zangeif thinks he knows of this," the huge Russian beside him murmured, "Is Jewish story told in old Russia of first falling out between man and woman, and how like woman Lillith plotted revenge against Adam through his children."

"Sounds like a spurred love romance gone sour to me," said Christie.

"It is if you believe the legends," Nina frowned, "A virus named for the Primordial Woman who predated the creation of Eve...a fitting name for a killer of men if ever such a thing were truly invented."

"But who would create such a monstrosity?" Ayane asked in dismay.

"Who indeed?" remarked Kasumi, turning to look at Snake and asking, "You mentioned a name just now...Genocide. I have heard it mentioned by other names in legend."

"Indeed you have," Snake soberly replied, "He isss known by many namesss the whole world over, but in my native land we knew the Demon Genocide by the term coined by hisss mossst terrible disciple, Pol Pot...the term others know as Year Zero."

"The Khamier Rouge final solution," Guile said grimly, "If you're a survivor of that then it would explain a lot of things, Miss Chi...and since there's more to be gained through cooperation than competition I'm forced to concede that it would be a good idea to combine our resources."

"Then you will acccept my offer to coach thessse othersss on my termsss?" Snake asked.

"For now," Guile extended one hand, "At least until the tournament is either over or the threat of the Virus is contained."

Snake looked at the hand as though it were a curiosity, but Catsclaw elbowed her in the arm and said, "Just take it and shake it, for pete sakes. Don't act so stuck up now that we're supposed to be allies."

"As you say," Snake smiled slyly, extending her own hand and clasping Guile by the hand, only to move abruptly and cause the larger man to flip over her shoulder, tumbling high over her head into the water while she hardly seemed to move from the spot, which prompted Catsclaw to cover her face with a clawed hand and moan very softly.

"Astarte's gonna tan your hide when she hears of this, you know," she groaned, "Assuming the big guy doesn't do it to you first."

"He isss welcome to try if he can," Snake said, folding her arms and looking supremely self contented.

"Never saw that coming," Ryu noted as he stared at the spot where Guile had hit the water.

"Da," Zangeif agreed, "Feel Colonel's pain and humiliation, but is what to expect if let guard down with woman."

Cammy felt torn between a desire to snap at Snake for her rude behavior, and a desire to go to her husband and attempt to console him, but aloud all she said was, "If only I had a camera...or an I-phone. Chun will really be sorry that she missed this..."

Guile sputtered as his head surfaced back out of the water and he coughed a bit before saying, "Cammy was right...this water is atrocious. Doesn't the Japanese Government believe in controlling their pollution?"

But then he heard a peculiar noise coming from just under the water, his ears picking it up when a wave briefly splashed him, and so he reached down and pulled up the water-proof cellular phone that he carried and snapped, "Guile here, go ahead...what? Chun-Li? What's going on? What's all that noise?"

"I'm saying that there's been an attack upon the Kuno estate," Chun-Li replied tersely, "It's mostly contained now...but...well...just hurry back here, and bring Cammy with you."

"What?" Guile felt his heart turn to ice and he gasped, "The children...?"

"Safe for the moment," he heard his Chinese born wife replied, "But we need you and the team back here! It's a real mess, and it's still a critical situation."

"Who's attacking you...and why?" Guile asked, but suddenly he knew the cause and identities of the assailants as thoroughly as though he had just attended a military briefing, "Reyabi?"

"More like mercenaries working for him-ah...call you back, Darling. Got to go now!"

The signal cut off with punctuated gunfire loudly in the background, and Guile found himself staring at the phone and crying out helplessly, "Chun-Li? CHUN-LI!?"

"Huh?" the blonde haired Tina asked as she peered out over the side of the pier and asked, "Ya'all say something down there, Hon?"

Guile suddenly found a line of silken rope being tossed his way and reflectively snatched it, then found himself being reeled back to the pier by a dutiful Kagemusha, with Zangief offered a massive hand of his own to literally pick Guile up the rest of the way when he was almost to the top and setting him down on the deck with as much dignity as he could manage.

Cammy was at his side at once, "What was that about Chun-Li?"

"Trouble," Guile said, coughing out a mouthful of water that he'd unavoidably swallowed, "Back to base at once...it sounds like Reyabi's made a hit against the Kunos."

"The children?" Cammy gasped, at once becoming more mother than lieutenant.

"She says they're okay," Guile replied, surprised at how calm his own voice was despite the tension around his chest, "But things aren't over yet by the sound of things, and Chun-Li might be up against professional mercenaries."

"What was that?" Ryu gasped, "Chun-Li is in danger?"

"Inspector needs Zanngeif help?" the big man said with concern written large on his broad expression.

"I'm afraid the full debriefing will need to be delayed for later," Guile said, turning about and heading back towards the pier, "We need to make time, and it's about an hour's drive to the Kuno mansion."

"We can help," Sonja volunteered.

"Ya'all don't think you're gonna leave us behind and miss all of the action, do you, Sugar?" Tina asked.

"He needsss to move ssswiftly," Snake said in sober reflection, "And a large entourage would only ssslow mattersss down...correct?"

"But by the time you get there it'll probably be all over," Catsclaw turned to Snake, "Astarte...?"

"Even ssshe could not move heaven and earth fassst enough to be of assisstanccce in this matter," Snake said grimly.

"But I can," Kagemusha said, holding up an object in one hand, "And I can get you to the place you need to be, Colonel Guile, in a matter of mere minutes."

"How?" Guile asked, turning around with a startled expression.

All at once everyone felt a whoosh of air all around them and then a large black object descended from the sky, turning on violet lights while only a few meters above the pier as everyone braced for the wind and Tina furiously clung to her Stetson lest it be blown away by the downdraft.

Guile looked up in astonishment, "A Helicopter?"

"Did I forget to mention that my wife if filthy rich?" Kagemusha asked, "I had one patrolling the area creating an electronic dead zone to prevent out scene from being observed from the shoreline...but it can just as easily serve as transport for shutting you to where you need to be at over two hundred and fifty miles per hour."

"That will do," Cammy declared, already surging forward and reaching the extended ladder first before Guile had time to catch up with her rapidly ascending backside.

"Zangeif want to help," the giant Ruussian asked plaintively.

"Maybe next time, Big Guy," Ryu said, "I don't think it's big enough to carry all of us, and Guile's obviously the one with the most need to make tracks in a hurry.

"A Ninja who travels in a helicopter?" Ayane asked with a mildly surprised expression that she turned in the direction of the black clad Kagemusha.

"I may feel obliged to earn money for my clan by hiring out my services in the traditional manner," Kagemusha smiled from beneath his mask, "But that hardly obliges me to disdain using my own personal money where it can do the most good."

"That makes sense," Kasumi murmured, then watched as Kagemusha joined Guile and Cammy aboard the dark helicopter as it rose up into the evening sky without even a trailing light to mark its passage, "I may have to invest in one of those myself sometime."

"I'll buy ya one for a present, Hon," Tina said, "Only...what are the rest of us supposed to do in the meantime?"

"Ahem," Snake said audibly, prompting all eyes to turn in her direction, "Whereasss it isss commendable that you wisssh to involve yourssselves in lending asssissstanccce to otherssss...thisss ssseeemsss to be an ideal time to begin your training asss we have only one day to make you ready for competition."

"What...you mean now?" Christie asked in dismay.

"Now indeed," Snake said, "And if you have any objectionsss...then you may voiccce them on the way to our hotel where I will introduccce you to your new sssponsssor."

"Astarte's gonna love this," Catsclaw sighed, but nonetheless looked at the martial arts women and said, "Trust me on this...it's better you just do what she says or it'll wind up being a whole lot more painful."

"But...how are we going travel?" Helena asked.

"You have legsss don't you?" Snake replied, looking the nervous women over, "And very good ones I can well ssseee. Ssso pick up your feet and begin running...or I will...motivate you."

There was something in the way she pronounced the word "motivate" that suggested to the women present that learning just what it implied would not be at all to their liking, so at a glare from their new Sensei they started to back away, and then to move faster, and soon were running in real earnest.

"What we do?" Zangeif asked as he and Ryu watched their nominal charges being herded by the fleet footed Snake and her more reluctant hirsuit companion.

"What else can we do?" Ryu shrugged, "Try to keep up with them and not let them out of our sight or the Colonel will have both of our hides."

"Make sense to Zangeif," the Russian agreed, and soon they were in full pursuit of the all-female posse as they wound their way through the deserted back streets of night-darkened Tokyo, covering twelve miles in the space of the next hour, which was only the beginning of their ordeal at the hands of their voluptuous new trainer...

To Be Continued.

Comments/Criticisms/Catchall Complaints: shadowmane747

shadowmane

shadowmane9849

Well, I'm finally back in the action after a hiatus that has lasted far too long, and I have a lot of dangling threads and plot points to pick up and work with if I want to play cat-up with the ideas that have been churning in my mind for many years now waiting to be set to electronic paper. My apologies for keeping my readers waiting, but Real Life has tended to get in the way a lot, as if often has with long-term projects of this nature. I will try and put out a more regular writing output

For those who might have difficulty keep up with the plot after a long absence from new material a brief roll call of characters may be in order:

Guile, Cammy, Chun-Li, Ryu, Rose and Zangeif are all characters from the original "Street Fighter II" series. Guile is currently married to Cammy and Chun-Li and has fathered children on both of them, and presently they are living on the Kuno estate while keeping a low profile to avoid attracting the notice of enemies who might intend harm to their family group and the Street Fighter organization.

Kasumi, Ayane, Tina and Helena are from the "Dead or Alive" series

Sonja Blade is from "Mortal Kombat," naturally enough

Nina Williams and Christie Montoya-Tekken Series

Kagemusha-Virtua Fighter (Currently married with children to Sarah)

Snake, Catsclaw and Astarte are all creations of mine from my series, "Astarte Jones and her Female Furies," and no, this was not intended as a "Can You Top This"/Dragonball (annoying characters) self-insertion but was fully intended to advance the plot with legitimate intentions of moving things forward again)

Otono Reyabi is the heavyweight villain of this series, head of the villainous quasi-religious Terrorist Cult known as the Aumshin Rekyu, loosely based on real historical events and a character who appeared as the heavy in the "Ruronin Kenshin" series.

Next up we face another chapter that diverts from the main action focusing primarily on the recently betrothed couple of Frank and the OTHER Kasumi, but what perils await them as they divert their evening from a night of potential bliss on the eve of the final battle? Find out next time in: "Belles of the Balls," or, "Wedding Even Heebee Jeebiies come with Freebees!"

Be there!


	115. Chapter 115

Dnabiki204

Nabiki 1/2

"A Very Scary Thought"

by

Jim Robert Bader

(Inspired by the works of Rumiko Takahashi & Others,

with concepts and characters created by fellow fanfic writers

Wade Tritschler, DB Sommers, Nicole Manders, Andrew

Greaves, Bill Guiroff and countless others, including "Buffy"

creator Joss Whedon; with special thanks to my good pal

Shiva for his editing and handling of this series.)

(Certain other characters and concepts are of my own

innovation, including my interpretation of the Monster

of Mary Shelly's novel, the Furies, Trudy, Takaharis

Angelique d'Anjou, Anri and the Daokan, Thelendra

the Dream Weaver and various other guest stars

appearing in this portion of the Nabiki 1/2 series...)

Chapter Seventy-Seven.

Episode Two Hundred and Four.

Monster Munch

"All right, John, we're here," said Frank as they exited the stretch limousine and peered down a darkened alley so deserted that even street toughs would have feared getting mugged if they ventured its depths, "Now what's the big mystery that had you drag me out here in the middle of Shinjuku?"

"I know you're busy, Big Guy," said the Werewolf, presently in his mortal guise so as not to attract undue attention, "What with a wedding in the offing, and all that business with the Aumshin Rekyu, and planning the war to prevent Armageddon..."

"And you still think I'm free enough with my schedule that you can play mystery games with me?" Frank said gruffly.

"Look, I know being mysterious and all really grates upon your nerves, but I swear to you that this is really big, as in extremely important," John insisted as they headed towards a particular door, at which point he paused before the eye-level slot, which opened to reveal a single eye glaring back at him with malevolent expression, to which John said, "It's me...open up already."

"Just doing my job," grunted a gruff voiced figure on the other side of the door, at which point there were a number of sounds that were emitted, such as creaking chains and locks being undone, a heavy bolts being slid back with the sound of tumblers rolling, and a grinding of gears as though something heavy were being rolled into place.

"Better get dressed for the occasion," John mused, loosening his shirt and tie, then taking off his expensive wool jacket and tossing them over one shoulder before kicking off his shoes while concentrating and unleashing his inner wolf, which caused him to noticeably expand in size to nearly double his normal dimensions.

Frank actually arched an eyebrow and said, "I notice the pants didn't rip this time."

"I decided to take your advice and sought out Bruce Banner's personal tailor," John grinned wolfishly, even as the heavy metal door swung open with the ponderousness of a timed bank vault, "Well, better brace yourself, Big Guy, because this is where it gets really down and dirty."

Frank frowned all the more deeply, his Borris Karloff features creasing to a frightful mask of dark suspicions as he followed Talbain into the depths of stygian darkness, descending down a sunken stairway that was lined by oily torch lamps whose illumination barely made the stairs visible enough to be safe to set foot upon, even though Frank half suspected that they could be converted into a sliding ramp with just the flick of a lever.

It was that kind of Universal Studios effect that made him feel half prepared when they reached the base of the long, deep stairway and came upon a scene that looked like a converted dungeon...only the standard European model dungeon lacked the sort of accouterments that they encountered, which included tables and chairs lining the way with a large dance floor in the center, and a fully provisioned bar at one end, and a disco ball dangling from the ceiling just to add a garish 70s atmosphere that completed the hideously Marquis d'Sade-style décor that might very well have been provisioned by the original author.

"What the hell...?" Frank asked, finding his wording appropriate given the strangely disturbing context of all that he was seeing.

But then his worst fears were realized as people sprang out from concealment at every nook and darkened fixture and cried out in unison, "SURPRISE!" and a banner descended from high above with the words spelled boldly, "FRANKS BACHELOR PARTY!" in horrifyingly gothic lettering.

"Congratulations, Big Man," John grinned all the more rakishly, shaking Frank's stunned hand before the big man could think to break his off at the wrist bone, "You lucky dog you, getting married to a literal Goddess."

"Hah?" Frank shook himself as he stared at over a hundred familiar faces, many whom he had not seen in decades, a few in centuries, and some he'd hoped never to see unless it was to dance upon their (occupied) grave sites.

"I know," John smiled as he promptly stepped back to avoid the reach of the long-armed giant, "You hate parties, and Bachelor parties especially, but when everyone on the Darkstalkers grape vine caught word that some lady was actually crazy enough to want to marry you they just had to turn out and show you their appreciation."

The scowl returned to Frank's face as he glared, "And just what fiend of the pits plotted out this monstrosity?"

"Frank, old boy," a familiar voice answered as though on cue, clapping him on the shoulder and presenting him with a drink before Frank could think to refuse it, "So glad that you could make it. I know it was a bit...sudden and all, but I do believe that we have managed to get things ready in time in order to give you a proper send-off into the wild world of Marital Bliss."

"Vlad?" Frank turned to see the smiling bearded face of his old nemesis, the Impaler, and suddenly everything clicked in his mind, "You're behind this?"

"Guilty as charged," said Vlad Tepes Dracula, Lord of the Undead, smiling and baring his fangs congenially as he added, "And may I say that I have been looking forward to this day for quite some time now...the day when you get everything that you deserve and more, though I must amend that I find you barely worthy of such a fine catch as our new Vampiric Godddess."

"John," Frank said very softly, "I'm going to get you for this if it takes a hundred years..."

"You're welcome," John slapped the larger man on the shoulder than howled out, "IS THIS A PARTY OR A WAKE, PEOPLE? LETS GET THIS SHINDIG STARTED!"

There was a general chorus of cheers and then it seemed as if every manner of creature of the night started mixing and dancing and drinking and celebrating while Frank looked around, appalled at seeing so many familiar faces, quite a few of whom he had thought long since dead and buried, and good riddance.

"I can see that you appreciate that we took quite a bit of time and trouble to get the appropriate atmosphere," Vlad said grandly, then clapped a hand on the shoulder of a younger man and said, "Of course my son, Alexander, helped in organizing this event, sending out invitations to the various interested parties and so forth, and making sure that the riff-raff were excluded...with a few lamentable exceptions..."

The younger Alexander Dracula smiled weakly as he waved a terse greeting at Frank, but then a bony figure dressed in the wild attire of an albino punk rocker sauntered up, swaggering on his knobby knees as it was plain to one and all that he had gotten an early start on celebrating, as testified by his breath, which would have garnered complaints from the denizens of a sewer, some occupants of which were currently present.

"Frank, ya ol' Sod," this unworthy fellow (one would have been at pains to apply the word "genteman" in his presence) said in a slurred Auzzie accent, "Good O' ya ta come, Mate...or is that whut ya does after the weddin'?"

"Raptor?:" Frank did not bother to hide his astonishment at finding the Zombie King present in the same company as Vlad without being impaled on a stake for his troubles.

"As I said," Vlad said tersely, wrinkling his nose in acute distaste, "Lamentable exceptions."

"Yah, can't believe some O' th' blokes they let inta this place," Raptor turned a blurry glare at many of the other party guests, "Some folks ain't got no standards..."

Talbain helpfully leaned closer to Frank and said, "There's a non-hostility spell in place over this establishment so that even long time enemies are rubbing shoulder to shoulder without body parts flying in all directions."

"A Sanctuary Spell?" Frank arched his eyebrows, "Applied by whom?"

"By him," Talbain nodded towards the bar at one end of the room, and for the first time Frank got a good look at the bartender, and blanched a notable shade of yellow at the sobering implications.

"You mean...Him?" Frank asked in a voice that was barely a whisper.

"No, not Him," Vlad said dismissively, "He who is properly named but has long since forsworn the title by which mortals most know him. He has agreed to cater this affair at a modestly reasonable expense, and like others here he wishes the best for you in marital bliss...with all its trials and tribulations."

"That figures," Frank said, when all at once he felt a body pounce upon him and furry arms went around his neck as a familiar voice purred into his ear, "Hey, Big Guy, buy a lady a drink will you?"

"Felicia?" Frank said in astonishment at the affectionate way in which he was being gripped by the amorous were-cat, "You're here too?"

"Hey, don't forget about us," said another familiarly feminine voice, "You wouldn't expect us to miss out on an affair like this either, would you?"

"T'sing-Ko?" Frank turned and stared in surprise at seeing the Chinese Vampire standing there next to her familiar priestess Sister, "Mei-Ling? You too?"

"Don't make it sound like an accusation, old friend," Mei-Ling said with an enigmatic smile, "We really do wish the best for you and Lady Kasumi. My sister and I both agree it is a good match between you."

"Yeah, she's a Pisces, you're a Leo," T'sing-Ko smiled impishly, "A perfect match."

"Did everybody from our old gang make it here?" Frank asked in growing dismay.

"As many of us as could travel here on short notice," said yet another familiar voice as Frank turned around and saw the Merman named Rikuo standing there holding a drink in one hand with an arm draped around a yellow skinned woman with overly large eyes as black as opals, "Your nephew, Gunther, sends his regrets, as did our old friend Sasquatch as he is booked on a prior speaking engagement to the Sierra Club and couldn't break it off at the last minute."

"Yeah, but there's enough hunky studs around to give a gal like me something to look at," Felicia said as she hopped down off of Frank and took the floor, smiling broadly as if she owned it, "Even Anakaris managed to drag his bandaged butt out of his mausoleum, and look over there? Am I imagining things or is that Donovan actually talking to a woman without going into one of his melancholy mood swings?"

Frank turned an incredulous stare at this and saw that, indeed, the solitary monk was speaking with a woman wearing priestly warrior garb and actually talking civilly with her as though she were a warm blooded person and not a fallen temptress from Hell out to seduce him out of his perpetual funk over failing to achieve total Nirvana.

Off to the side he saw the little girl named Anita sitting on a stool looking positively bored...which, come to think of it, did not seem all that different from her usual melancholy expression, only the glare she was turning towards the woman talking to her protector seemed laced with more than just her usual trace of resentment.

"It is strange, is it not, old friend?" he heard another friendly voice say soberly, prompting Frank to turn around and gape in surprise at the ghostly apparition of a tall Japanese man wearing a Kimono holding a dry martini in one hand, "A momentary suspension in the usual level of hostility that is typical for our kind with everyone behaving like civilized people with one another?"

"Bishimon?" Frank blinked, "You too?"

"In the flesh...in a manner of speaking," the ancient Cursed Samurai replied, "I confess that I was reluctant to attend this affair as I was certain that you would not wish an affair like this to be convened in your honor. After all, it is an occasion where revelry and untoward behavior are quite common with much sordid mingling between genders, and the raw objectification of sultry bodies who are placed on figurative pedestals for the ogling of half drunken participants..."

"Yeah, I know what you mean, Bish," Talbain nodded his furry head in agreement, "All that drinking and carousing and making out in the corners with guys drooling over naked girls popping out of wedding cakes instead of affording them the dignity and respect that's due the fairer sex..."

Suddenly a blue haired Succcubus named Lilith rushed up and said, "Hey, John! You gotta see this! Haptseshet is doing a table dance, and she's unwrapping her bandages one layer at a time!"

"Whoah!" John handed his drinking glass to a dismayed Frank and shuffled forward on his furry legs, "Now that's one momma I wanna see in the unwrapping! Whoooo-baby!"

Frank only just blinked once while he heard Vlad heave a sigh and say, "Such vulgarity is beneath the dignity of a gentleman...unfortunately enough there are remarkably few here who can claim that distinction."

"Are you including yourself in a list of that category, Father?"

Frank saw Vlad stiffen, and Alexander turned around with an astonished look on his face as he gasped, "Big Brother?"

Frank turned and felt his old blood run cold as he saw an altogether familiar figure sitting at a table beside a less familiar looking woman, the figure clad in a long coat with a broad brim black hat as a pair of crimson eyeshades glanced in their direction.

"Alucard," Vlad pronounced the name as though he did not know whether to cry or spit, either in surprise, disgust or wonder, "How did you...?"

"Believe it or not, Father, I was invited," the man in the broad hat grinned, baring fangs as he held up a glass of crimson beverage as he said, "Cheers."

"Invited?" Vlad turned a look from one son to the other and gave Alexander a reproving look, "Did you...?"

"Not Alexander, Father," said another figure who seemed to materialize on the spot, also clad in black with a broad brim hand obscuring part of his features, "Me."

"Dee?" Vlad looked taken aback, "But..."

"My brother has an important announcement of his own that he wishes to share with you, if you would care to listen," the Vampyr Slayer of Demons said softly, "I would urge you to listen as this is a place where normal differences and hostilities are-temporarily-set in abeyance."

"Indeed?" Vlad said with raised eyebrows as he turned a hooded look of his own towards the son he rarely included in his lineage.

"Is that all you have to say to me after all of these years, Father?" Alucard smiled back, "I should think the return of a prodigal son would elicit more of a look of surprise than a glare of hostility from you of all people."

"What greeting would you expect of me, my son?" Vlad said imperiously, "You who serve as a lap dog to the British Government and have turned against your own kind? Of course I should put the blame where it squarely belongs, upon your Chaos Lord mother..."

"Leave mother out of this," Alucard said without a trace of his usual mockery, but then he smiled again and said, "Just because you once had a tryst with a being of the Outer Dark and lived to regret it is no reason to take it out upon her...and Mother speaks well enough of you. But...if you wish to know the truth of it, I am not longer in the employ of the British Government."

"Oh no?" Vlad was astonished at this revelation, "I did not hear word of this along the grape vine?"

"It's a recent development," Alucard said, "A rather lamentable result of some political double-dealings in the Mortal world...you know how these things work out. But that is not the reason why I wished to see you after so many long decades of being away from the family...and why I let my brother, Dee, convince me to attend this gathering."

"I am waiting," Vlad said impatiently, only to turn his focus from the man wearing the hat to his rather interesting companion, at which point he gasped, "Is she...?"

"May I present to you my former Master, now my lawfully wedded wife," Alucard held up the left hand of the woman next to him and showed that it bore a very stylish wedding ring with a gold band surrounding a black jewel whose price was inestimable.

Vlad gasped, "That ring...that woman..."

"The ring you gave to my mother," Alucard smiled, "It looks appropriate upon my wife's hand, doesn't it?"

Vlad had trouble speaking for a moment, but then he gasped out the name, "A-A VAN HELSING?"

There were astonished looks from many in the room as faces turned in their direction, and then a fellow wearing a long coat spoke up and asked, "Yes?"

"Not you, Cousin Gabriel," the blonde haired woman said as she turned and smiled graciously up at Vlad and said, "And actually...my branch of the family stopped using the 'Van' in our name when we migrated to England. An honor to meet you...my name is Integra Helsing...now wife to Alucard, my former servant."

Vlad seemed about ready to choke on his own tongue when Alexander spoke up and said, "You married into the Van Helsing family, Brother? You?"

"And why not?" Alucard said, "I think we make a good match...and she is more worthy than you could ever know. Believe me, it was not something we rushed into lightly...and it took some time to persuade my Master that she was better suited to stand by my side...especially after the way the British government treated her after many generations of loyal service to the Crown. And indeed, our union has already proven quite fruitful..."

Integra moved a bit away from the table and presented her abdomen to full view, and all eyes stared in wonder at the tell-tale bulge as Integra smiled with the beauty of a living Mona Lisa.

"Oh wow!" Felicia moved forward and bent down to examine it, "How long have you had that?"

"About four months now," Integra replied, "But she is growing surprisingly quickly...no doubt partially the influence of her father."

"So you see, Father," Alucard smiled, "I've gotten on in a family way, just as you always wanted me to do. So...are you not proud of what Integra and I have now accomplished?"

"You...you...she...that..." Vlad sputtered as words failed him utterly in that moment.

"Is there a problem here?" asked the man named Gabriel Van Helsing as he came to stand between Vlad and the woman whom he was glaring at with such a mixture of emotions.

"Gabriel?" Vlad found it easier to shift his focus towards a man who had been a long time adversary and scowled, "And you approve of this?"

"Let's just say that I agreed to accompany my cousin and her husband here under a banner of truce and leave it at that, shall we?" Gabriel replied, "She is no longer with the Helsing Organization because that agency was dissolved at the instigation of her superiors. I can relate to her position as something similar once happened to me to end my association with the Vatican, so whether or not I approve of her choice in a husband I am honor bound to respect her decision to become both Undead and a mother."

"Not quite undead," Integra corrected, "More like a Familiar with enhancements very similar to Vampirism. I confess I once would have regarded this as being a tainted state, polluting my blood with that of the undead...but...since the blood comes from Alucard, whom I have chosen to be my husband...and since I had no further ties to my family estates as nearly all of my people were betrayed and killed by those I once respected...well...let us just say that being human no longer had as much appeal for me as it once did."

"Do not see, Father?" Alucard smiled up, "Did I not say that she was more than worthy to be my wife, as she was to be my former Master."

Another figure, this one being a young girl with crimson eyes and a mop of strawberry blonde hair, stepped forward and said, "Is everything all right here, Master?"

"Nothing you should concern yourself with, Police Girl," Alucard said without turning around, though he smiled up at Vlad and said, "Oh, did I forget to introduce you to my faithful servant, Father? She is quite loyal and very competent and serves as faithfully as a hound, though I prefer to call her by her given name, Victoria Sereis, formerly a constable with the British police, now elevated to the status of my chief lieutenant."

"Sir," Victoria Sereis nodded to Vlad while dutifully hovering by Alucard's side like a bodyguard, much though her service in that regard was not needful.

"Sereis cares for Integra and protects her from all harm while she bears my future daughter, Father," Alucard explained, "I don't expect you to offer us your blessing, but I wanted you to know, out of courtesy, that I am getting well along in life and have prospered quite well since finding new employment."

"Yer all a lot O' evil demon spawn deserving only to be cast into Hades!" declared a scruffy looking man in priestly garb who suddenly stalked menacingly towards them sporting wicked looking blades in both of his hands.

Even Alucard looked surprised by this and said, "What are you doing here? Who let Vatican trash like you into this establishment?"

"I let myself in, Satan-Spawned Demon!" the glasses sporting wild-eyed fanatic declared, even as Sereis and Gabriel positioned themselves at opposite sides of the table, "An' I'm here to make certain that the foul seed ye've fostered in that Helsing Bitch never sees the light O' morning..."

All at once there was a sound like a "SNICT!" as three sharp claws were thrust up just under the nose of the priest, even as a line of chord went around his neck and was held there just shy of penetrating flesh.

"This guy bothering you people?" said the man sporting the claws.

"How rude and undignified," said a man with glasses who seemed deceptively lean and wiry, "Mistress Integra...might I have the honor of separating this fool from his head for daring to disturb your evening?"

"That will be all right, Walter," Integra said, "The priest was just leaving...weren't you, my good sir?" she said with an arched note in her deceptively mild voice, the steel showing behind her flinty eyes as she regarded the fanatic with cold disdain.

"I hear you regenerate, Bub," said the man with the claws as he chewed on a cigar clasped between his lips, "Welcome to the club...but I can make it hurt if you don't take a hint and do the smart thing."

"Logan speaks for us all," Gabriel said, "Your services are neither required nor welcome here, so leave while you are still able."

The priest growled softly, "This from a traitor who deserted his post at the feet of the Holy Father?"

"I never deserted my duties to the Vatican," Gabriel said soberly, "It was the Vatican who deserted me...when it betrayed my trust and started harnessing the services of obscene genetic experiments such as yourself...no offense meant to you old friend."

"None taken," Frank noted.

All at once Walter gave a sharp yelp and Logan backed away as though his claws were on fire, thus freeing the priest from all restraint as he smiled and started to surge forward with daggers at the ready.

Instantly Gabriel, Dee, Sereis and Felicia interposed themselves between the priest and Integra, but before anything could happen a very loud crack rang out, and suddenly the Priest's body seemed to erupt in flames from within, forcing him to stagger backward for a half a step before a second blast literally tore his body to pieces.

Silence reigned for a moment while nothing seemed to occur save for the smell of roasted pseudo-flesh, but then all eyes turned to see the hulking horn-headed figure standing on goat-like legs holding a smoldering shotgun in his massive red-hued hands, a malevolent glare in his golden eyes as he said in tones that would have deafened a crack of thunder, "I SAID THAT THIS PLACE WAS A SANCTUARY AGAINST VIOLENCE, AND WHEN I SAY THAT I MEAN IT! ANY QUESTIONS?"

Dead silence remained as the hulking figure turned a malevolent glare in the direction of the other patrons and it was evident to all that no objections would be issued, so he smiled and held out the gun in one hand and said, "The Johnny Blaze Hellfire special...signed and autographed, a real steal at nine hundred and fifty thousand yen...and a trivial part of your soul, you'd hardly miss it."

"Oh my dark gods," someone murmured in the background, "It really is Him..."

"What, the guy who gets troused all of the time by those meddling kids?"

"No...the other Him...Him..." said the hideous shambling figure who had spoken before, and nobody there asked who was meant by that reference as it was plain enough to all that names hardly needed to be mentioned.

But still the hulking goat-legged figure smiled and turned around and said to Frank, "Call me Stan...and it's been a while since we crossed paths, Stein old buddy. Still walking the straight and narrow?"

"As much as I can get away with," Frank tersely responded.

"Too bad," the red hued figure chuckled, "But I remain hopeful..."

"Just look at this mess...what the hell am I supposed to do with this?"

Even Stan looked somewhat taken aback as eyes swiveled back to the place where the smoldering remains of the fanatical priest had been, and there they saw the white skinned, black haired, gothically clad waif of a girl with a silver Ankh on her chest shaking her head and wrinkling her nose in distaste as if she had just stepped into something nasty.

"My lady?" Stan asked with rounded golden diamond-slit eyes evidencing something akin to both awe, dread and honest fear.

"Look, Big Guy," the dark clad girl glared up at him, "You've given me enough work in the past that I'd be willing to overlook a fudging or two on your part, but this guy...I mean, really! He's neither all dead nor all alive...so how am I supposed to catalogue him for disposal? That thing he calls a Soul is partially artificial...and I don't mean like that cute thing you've got empowering you, Frank. I mean...I don't even want to touch him. I'd feel so...dirty."

Stan swallowed audibly, and no one there would gainsay him the right, "Ah...sorry...I could assign a cleaning detail with a mop to clean that up..."

"Trouble is he'll put himself right back together and start causing trouble for everyone around him," the dark lady said with clear aversion, "And I was so meaning to take the night off. I mean...I've been working non-stop for a couple of thousand years already! Aren't I entitled to a break once in a while, some down time away from my business?"

"Allow me then, if you would, my lady," said Alucard as he stepped up from the table and smiled, "The priest and I have old scores to settle, but I would prefer to fight our battles another day when I can properly enjoy myself to the fullest. As it is I promised my wife a quiet evening on the town and I intend to deliver on that...so..." he paused and arched his tone, "Power Restriction canceled to Level Three...Restrictions will remain offline until the target has been momentarily silenced."

All eyes stared in dismay as the dark clad figure of Alucard seemed to grow momentarily more opaque than usual, and then his cape stretched out and covered the remains of the fallen priest, and like an eraser on a chalk board swept them all away, leaving a barely scorched mark on the floor in his passing.

Alucard returned to seeming normal then smiled and said, "I sent him away to an area where he will cause no further trouble for the remainder of the evening...but he will return, which ought to give you time to find out which of various agencies would be willing to permanently incarcerate him for an eternity or so, or at least until he learns better manners."

The dark lady smiled, "Thanks, Al...for a Chaos spawn you're not such a bad guy. Thing is with these Fanatic cases is I really hate to have to break the news to them that the afterlife isn't what they expect it to be...at least not for them anyway. They get all so weepy and complain about being misled or given false advertisement or what not. Whoever said that Dead Men tell no tales should try working my job for a day...I mean, I wish..."

She suddenly noticed the inordinate amount of attention being focused her way and smiled, "Hey, what's with all the terrified faces? I'm no Party Killer...and didn't I say I was taking the evening off? So lets get back to celebrating!"

Many of the figures there took the hint and made an effort of going back about their business, with Stan shrugging his shoulders and saying, "Just as long as nobody else causes another incident. Replacement carriages for that gun are murder to come by..."

Alucard turned to Integra and said, "Are you well, my dearest?"

"Quite well, actually," Integra smiled, "Despite the unpleasant element of that Vatican construct attempting to disrupt our evening I found the event rather satisfactorily resolved, and it did add an element of excitement to what might otherwise have been a droll and uneventful evening."

Alucard smiled at Vlad and said, "Didn't I tell you that she is exceptional among humans, Father?"

"So it would seem," Vlad said tersely before turning to glance at Victoria Sereis and said, "You were prepared to defend your Mistress at the expense of your own life, if needful."

"It's what I do, Sir," Victoria replied, touching Integra on the shoulder with a gentle hand caress, "My Mistress is important to me, as she is to my Master. And besides...that Bastard once killed my whole unit...and I owe him for that."

Vlad raised an eyebrow and said, "Interesting company you are keeping these days, my son."

"Thank you, Father," Alucard smiled, "I knew that you would approve."

"Frank Nathaniel Steinberg," a voice with an exaggerated grate to it pronounced, "You have a lot of nerve showing your face around here."

Frank slowly turned around and saw the hunchbacked figure with the oversized left eye and weak chin and said, "Look who's talking. How're you getting by these days, Igor."

The hunchback just smiled and dropped his phony grate and spoke in perfectly normal tones, "Well, aside from a bit of rheumatism in my left thigh, I'm not so bad overall. And you?"

"About the same...minus the rheumatism," Frank responded, "Haven't seen you since that business in Romania. How's Trix?"

"Trixie is doing fine, and so are the kids," Igor replied, then he hunched his bent shoulders a bit more and murmured in a conspiratorial voice, "Don't tell her I made the party...she thinks I'm out at a card game with the rest of the boys. By the way, we're missing a player." He raised his voice and called out, "Has anybody seen the Invisible Man hereabouts?"

"Here!" called out a single raised gloved hand at the bar, "Just catching a drink, Mate."

Stan slapped a huge clawed hand on the bar, minus the original owner, "Hey you, no freebees! Cash up front, or else"

All at once the unseen figure gave a yelp and said, "Honey, is that you?"

"If I've told you once I've told you a thousand times not to sneak out of the house and do this sort of thing!" an equally disembodied voice said gratingly, "Honestly, I can't take you anywhere...if you're mother could see us now..."

"Ow! Easy on the ear, Luv...!" the other disembodied voice complained, and Frank noticed a moment later that two thousand yen paper bills suddenly found their way into the outstretched palm of a smiling Igor, leading him to suspect a literal set-up.

Victoria turned back to her own immediate companions and then took a good hard look at the men named Logan and Gabriel, then said, "Um...excuse me...but you two gentlemen...?"

"No relation," the both of them said in chorus, as if from force of long habit.

But of a sudden something else occurred of an entirely unexpected nature. The room became softly illuminated, and then at the center of it all a vortex of light erupted brilliantly, forcing creatures of the night to flinch away, while others gaped in awe as the momentary effect gradually subsided and revealed in its passing two entirely feminine figures, both of whom were stunningly radiant in a way very different from any light source, so much so that they held the instant attention of all patrons regardless of taste, preference or alignment.

And then the one with rainbow colored hair said softly, "We have arrived, mine heart, at the coordinates that were given to us...but...what be this strangely darkened setting?"

"Oh my," said Kasumi Tendo as she looked around in wide-eyed wonder, "Is there a party going on? And...are you certain that we were invited?"

Frank did not notice the drink in his hands as he absently crushed the twin glasses and spilled their contents all over his suit, his eyes were held fixated upon the beauty that was before him and it took his breath away just to behold his own fiancée, as though he had not seen her in some ages, let along her now-attached girlfriend, her other primary suitor, the Eluini Oracle known as Thelendra the Dream Weaver.

Kasumi turned as if only belatedly recognizing him and said, "Frank-kun? Oh my...you spilled something on yourself. Here...allow me to clean that up," she said with an extended hand that waved at his lapel and caused the liquid penetrating his suit to evaporate, leaving barely a trace of a stain in passing.

"Ah...Kasumi-chan?" Frank gasped in surprise, unaware that his voice had just risen up by half an octave.

"Kasumi?" Igor gasped at his side and gaped with a single eye, "You mean...this is the girl you're gonna get hitched to? You dog, you!" he slapped Frank on the shoulder with force enough to dislocate bone in a man less sturdily constructed.

"Speaking," said John Talbain as he rushed hastily past them and ducked behind both hunchback and construct, "Hey there, Kasumi, how's it going? Now...somebody hide me!"

"Huh?" Frank glanced down in dismay at seeing the werewolf curl up his tail and attempt to make himself look smaller without transformation behind the massive giants.

"My dear, so glad that you could make it," spoke Vlad as he stretched out arms wide and put them around Kasumi's shoulders, "I am ever so pleased that you received our invitation and have arrived in a fashionably late moment so well timed to this august occasion."

"Um...I suppose so, Tepes-san," Kasumi said uncertainly, looking around and saying, "But...what sort of a party is this?"

"Aye, that be mine own question of the matter," Thelendra scowled and reached down with a hand and pulled out a shrunken, hideous shape that had been coiled up in the shadows, effortlessly holding the squirming fellow up at eye level, "Be this what thou didst mean by urging us to attend this unnamed manner of event that thou didst claim to be of such paramount importance?"

"Easy there, Babe," gasped Gimp the Gremlin as his ex dangled him above the floor like a rag doll, "I can explain everything..."

"Why bother when the explanation be self-evident?" Thelendra scowled, tossing him over one shoulder, "Tis a sordid affair of much drinking and carousing that can only be but for one sinister purpose...to toast a groom on the eve before his wedding night by allowing him to wave farewell to his carefree days of Bachelorhood..."

"Oh my," Kasumi's eyes widened, "You mean...a Bachelor Party?"

"Um...yeah...about that," Frank said nervously while attempting to adjust his suddenly tightening collar, only to feel a trembling behind him that surpassed his own trepidation and he glanced down and said, "What's the matter with you, John?"

"Don't look at me, she might see you!" Talbain urgently hissed.

"See who?" Igor asked, thinking to himself how undignified it was for a Werewolf of such stature in the community to be playing charades like a pup one quarter his age.

"There you are, I thought I spotted you hiding in the crowd, you naughty Wolf you!"

All heads turned to see the one who had spoken, and to Frank's considerable surprise he saw the familiar face of a personage whose appearance almost invariably spelled trouble for all and sundry.

She had certainly grown up quite a bit from those tender years when she had been a mere waif of a child prodigy troublemaker posing as a shotgun wielding Darkstalker huntress running errands for her nefarious grandmother...but child she was no longer, he judged, as testified by a strikingly womanly figure that she was now sporting in a cute low-cut outfit complete with crimson hood and hip-high boots and a smile that was anything but innocent as her blue eyes were aflame with amorous lust, which did quite a bit to explain John Talbain's uncharacteristic attitude in her immediate presence.

"Bonny Hood?" Igor said aloud, his single overlarge eye looking her up and down as though he could not believe how much she had grown to fill out her current garments, "Is that you?"

Bonny smiled and suddenly one hand was clutching a sawed off shotgun that she had produced from seeming no where, pointing the muzzle at the hunchaback's overly inflated nostrils as she stated, "Does this answer your question, Quasimodo?"

Igor gulped, "Actually...Quasi's my cousin...he used to play halfback with Notre Dame..."

"Like I give a shoot," Bonny snorted before turning her attention back to Talbain and saying, "John, honey...it's no use pretending that I can't see you cowering over there. You'd better come out now or else I'm coming to get you..."

"Ah...hi, Red," Talbain responded with a weak smile upon his lupine muzzle, "How's Granny?"

"Doing fifteen to life, but thanks for asking," Bonny replied while prodding her shotgun now up against the tailbone of the werewolf, "Now mind asking me why you're trying to avoid me after I went to all the trouble of finding you? You stopped answering my phone calls weeks ago, and you know how much that hurts? I want closure, Mister, and I'm not leaving you alone until I get it!"

"Huh?" Frank turned from the blonde in the hood to the werewolf behind him and said, "What's she talking about, John?"

"Ah...well..." Talbain stood upright but still had his shoulders slumped as his eyes darted nervously towards the infamous B. Bonny Hood, and then he said, "Well...I mean...after that business a year ago when we fought off those Rakshasa...well...Bonny and me started to see each other on the sly and..."

"Say what?" Vlad said in dismay, "You mean to say that you have been robbing the cradle with this child?"

"Who are you calling a Child, Fangs?" Bonny snapped in his direction, her shotgun muzzle shifting targets towards the King of all Vampires.

"Ah..." Vlad looked down the double barrels as if uncertain of the level of threat that he might be facing, but he knew of Bonny by reputation and so he hastily amended, "I meant that complimentary, of course..."

Felicia turned to Bonny and said, "You and John, Bonny?"

"Well, why the hell not?" the blonde answered, "He's just my type, and he's kind of cute for a guy who's big and hairy, and so I like to snuggle up next to him, so sue me! I mean, I've over eighteen, you know, and I'm not a little kid anymore..."

"Oh my," Kasumi remarked, recalling this young spitfire from a year ago, around the time when she had become a Vampire Goddess, and decidedly noticed that the young girl had grown out into a lovely woman in that time, and she certainly did seem to know how to make an impression.

"So what's the story, Mister?" Bonny growled as she turned her focus back towards Talbain, "You come up to my table, you see me starting to dance, and you slip two thousand yen into my G-strap, only then when I smile at you and greet you I see you get this look in your face and you suddenly back away and try and avoid me, like you'd forgotten my phone number or something...is that it?" she asked with an audible click to the gun she was pointing straight at him.

"Ah...Bonny..." Talbain's eyes were wide with nervousness and dismay.

"My, what big eyes you have, Wolfie," she purred sensuously, and despite himself Talbain felt an unaccountable bulge appearing in his trousers.

"Hey now," Stan came forward, "No weapons in here unless I give the say-so. You're paid to dance, not shoot up the place, or the patrons, Bonny."

"I know, Boss," Bonny smiled as she set the safety back on her gun, then made it disappear even though there was no conceivable place of concealment upon her person, "I'm just playing with an old friend, that's all, right John old buddy?"

Her free hand slapped Talbain in a very sensitive spot right between the legs, and the werewolf's eyes gogged as she squeezed him very gently, not enough to hurt but definitely firm enough to get his full, undivided attention.

"Yeah," he gasped a bit tightly, "No problem..."

"Oooh," Igor winced in sympathetic reaction, "Now that's some kind of woman..."

The huge red-skinned, horned Stan turned to Kasumi and bowed at his goat-fur covered waist and took her by one hand and kissed it, saying, "So you are the honored Bride to Be, and what a great honor it is to finally meet you, Ms. Tendo. Just looking at you is to behold the face of heaven...which is a lot more than I can say about this loser."

"Oh my," Kasumi said with rounded eyes of her own as she stared at the disconcerting figure before her as if wondering to trust him on the basis of his appearance.

But then Thelendra said, "Stanley...it has been ages."

The huge devilish figure smiled at the statuesque rainbow haired beauty and said, "It has at that, Thele...at least a century since you paid a visit to my shop tall on Deva. You're perfect as always, but nothing less is to be expected after all. I saw your father just yesterday..."

"Indeed?" Thelendra asked, "And what pearls of wisdom didst he bestow upon you this time?"

"Hey, don't talk like that about your father," Stan said sternly, "Anri may be a queer sort...and by that I don't mean it the other way...but he's always been a straight shooter with me, and he deserves your respect..."

"I know this," Thelendra sighed, then turned to Kasumi and said, "My love...this be the one whom legends mock by casting in the light of the greatest villain of all the ages, yet I assure thee that he be nothing of the sort, and while thee wouldst be ill advised to trust him in a card game, in most other particulars thee may rely upon him to be good as his word and a trusted ally."

Kasumi looked uncertain about this, but Frank said, "Go with it, Doll-face. Life's like that...what you think you know often turns out to be something different."

"Irony," Stan snorted, "I could own the patent. Tell you what, though...drinks on the house on behalf of the lovely lady who's brave enough to wed Steinberg."

There was a chorus of cheers all around the bar, and then Igor nudged Frank on the arm and said, "Nice to see you again, Old Sport, but I've got to hurry up and get to the stage. My act is up in another five minutes."

"Your act?" Frank asked in surprise.

"Yeah," the hunchback replied, "Got my old band together, the Crypt Kicker Five. We're making a comeback tour, even negotiating to cut a new record...or burn a CD, whatever they're calling it these days. Hey, if the Eagles can do it then why not us?"

"Good point," Frank noted.

"Nice to meet you, Tendo-san," Igor bobbed his head at Kasumi, "And you too, Grail Lady. Hope to see you at the wedding."

"Um...yes, of course," Kasumi noted, thinking privately to herself that her fiancé had some very interesting friends, and she would have to take more time to get to know them better.

"John and I need to have a private chat, so we'll catch up with you in a bit," Bonny smiled, then she began drawing Talbain along with her hand still firmly holding him by the crotch, "C'mon, Big and Furry, I'll give you a private lap dance."

Even Thelendra seemed mildly taken aback by that, but Felicia brightened and said, "You know, I think they make a pretty cute couple."

"A couple of what I will not speculate," Vlad said with a wrinkling of his aristocratic nose.

Alucard turned to Kasumi and said, "So you are the Goddess that I have been hearing so much about...I must say, your reputation does not do you justice."

"Um...thank you," Kasumi said, then blinked, "Er...excuse me for saying this, but..."

"Something about me disturbs you?" Alucard smiled, "You need not apologize for noticing. I get that all of the time, I assure you."

"Ahem," Thelendra scowled as she regarded the fellow, "Do I detect the smell of Chaos spawn within this chamber? Thou art more than just a common Vampire..."

"Indeed, I should think so," Alucard turned his focus upon the Eluini, "And I would have said the same about the scent you bring with you, San Grael...but this is polite company in which we are mixing, and besides which...I am already married."

"Indeed he is," said Integra as she came to stand beside her man and slipped an arm around his waist beneath his jacket, "So as you can see he is already taken."

Thelendra seemed ill disposed at that comment and was about to say something when Kasumi spoke up and addressed herself to Stan, "Excuse me...you were speaking a minute ago about being brave? Why is that?"

There was a sudden silent chill within the air, and Frank looked as if he had swallowed something very distasteful as eyes swiveled from Kasumi to him and back again, but Stan just remained composed as he replied, "I guess you didn't know about that part of his reputation. You see...Frank here has been married before, and among the Darkstalkers sort he's...well...he's considered to be rather unlucky..."

"Unlucky?" Kasumi asked, "Why is that?"

"Yes, why is that indeed?" yet another new voice asked from the sidelines, and Frank suddenly went pale...or at least as pale as it was possible to get, while those nearest to him looked nervously past Kasumi's shoulder to a towering shadow that was suddenly looming over both her and Thelendra.

But Vlad was unfazed as he said, "Ah, my dearest...you finally have made it."

"Sorry if I'm late, Honey," that voice replied in a feminine rumble, and Kasumi glanced up to see the face of the woman known as Eve, and suddenly she had a very good idea of why her fiancé was looking other than himself at the moment, "I got hung-up in negotiations with the Caterer...I had to convince him that this party should be serving normal canapés and not actual lady fingers."

"Eve?" Frank gulped, "You're here too?"

"Well, why not?" said his former first wife, now the spouse of Vlad Tepes Dracula, "Who else did you think was helping Alexander to organize this affair? After all, I wanted to give my blessings to Kasumi, who is, after all, a very brave young lady to want to share a life with you, ex-husband."

"Oh my," Kasumi turned around, "I...ahm...you're not...upset with me or anything, are you?"

"Why should I be?" said the very tall female construct turned Bride as she smiled down with genuine affection, "It's been over between us for more than a century, so he's free for you to claim. And you, Thelendra...do I understand this correctly or are you actually a rival for the affections of Tendo Kasumi...or is Adam here about to get lucky with a two for one sale?"

"Ah...that be a very...interesting question, be it nay?" Thelendra answered a bit uneasily, seeming more than slightly nervous as she turned a glance towards Kasumi, then at Frank with a look that was an unvoiced question.

"All right everyone," yet another feminine voice called out, and Kasumi turned to see, in some surprise, that it was the succubus queen named Morgan Anslat who had just intruded upon their setting, "Break it up here! Now that everyone's arrived it's time that we do this proper like. After all, Bachelor parties are hardly coeducational affairs, right Stanley?"

"Right you are," the goat-legged giant said as he raised a ruddy hand and said, "So I'll set the spell in place and then we can call this an actual party."

He concentrated and Kasumi could actually see the waves of force radiate out from where the huge giant was standing, and then it seemed as though half the occupants of the room began to slowly fade and turn transparent, and a moment later nearly all of the men were gone, leaving only the ladies in place, including Eve, Felicia, Thelendra, Morgan and Kasumi.

"Eh?" Thelendra looked around, "A spell of Separation?"

"Actually," Morgan explained, "We've just divided this chamber up into male and female halves that will exclude most of the dancers and entertainers, but keeps the men at bay on their half of an invisible curtain."

"They are still here sharing the same space but at a slightly different sub-quantum dimensional vibration," Eve explained, "We can neither see nor touch them, nor can they see nor hear us, and that way we can enjoy ourselves without them trying to hit on those of us without significant others to claim as our own."

She looked momentarily sad as she said this, but Felicia had the tact to say, "Too bad...but as long as we can still get entertainment..."

"Count on it," said Tsing-Ko as she and Mei-Ling rejoined their party, "And between us we ought to find lots of ways of keeping ourselves entertained without the boys having to worry about us."

"Or us about them," Mei-Ling noted, "Which is how a Bachelorette party is supposed to be conducted."

"For me?" Kasumi asked in belated surprise and realization.

"And why nae may it be asked?" Thelendra turned to her, "Thou beist more than worthy of honor by these who dost wish thee well on this august occasion."

"The party is also supposed to be honoring you, Dream Weaver," Eve murmured into the ears of the rainbow hued woman.

"Sayest what?" Thelendra gasped, whirling around with a much-surprised expression.

"After all," Morgan smiled, "Frank is not the only one whom everyone came here to see get turned into an honest party."

"Or getting what you have coming to you," Lilith added slyly from the sidelines.

Thelendra looked taken aback by that comment, but then she felt Kasumi gently grip her hand as she murmured, "I know this is awkward, but with you by my side I think that I will be able to manage."

"Then let the games begin, my dears," Eve chuckled, then waved over to the side as she called out, "Drinks for the guests of honor, and that table I reserved had better be safe or else!"

"You needn't shout, Eve-san," said Integra as she indicated the table at which she was once again sitting, Sereis hovering at her side once again like a loyal Paxwoman guarding her liege lady, "Come and have a drink, there are chairs enough for everyone."

"But what about the boys?" Felicia asked as she slid a chair back for Kasumi, even as another chair slid back as if held by someone invisible to permit Thelendra to be seated.

"Aw, they'll fare well by themselves," H'sing-Ko replied as she and Mei-Ling took their place at their side of the table, "Let's just enjoy a night without them getting underfoot...just us girls, as it were, socialize and let our hair down."

"So you say," said Morgan as she accepted a tray heavily laden with glasses and a pitcher of some amber beverage that looked suspiciously a mite more intoxicating than beer, "For tonight at least we're all friends here, and past differences be damned, so don't worry about your drinks, they're clean of anything which might give you worse than a hangover in the morning..."

Meanwhile on the other side of the invisible fence Frank looked around and said, "Where did they go?"

"No where," said Stan, "They're still here, you just can't see them, and they can't see us, so find a chair and enjoy the night, because the only girls you'll see here now are paid on staff as servers and entertainment."

"You might as well relax and enjoy the evening, Doctor Steinberg," Alucard smiled slyly, "We're all friends here for the evening, and unless we have another fanatical interruption we ought to be able to enjoy our drinks in peace without the old ball and chains hanging about putting a crimp to our action."

"Like there can be any action without the company of the ladies?" Bishomon sighed, "But as you say, for now we can have peace between all Darkstalkers. It ought to be a very interesting and informative experience, almost unique in the history of those who walk in the Dark and shun the lighter side of creation."

"You have a point there, my good ghostly fellow," Alucard said slyly, "It is indeed rare that some of us can freely socialize as brothers when we come from such different and diverse milieus."

"Got that right," said Stan, so howsabout it everyone? Think we guys can enjoy ourselves while away from the little women of our lives?"

There was a chorus of gruff voiced cheers from the party goers, but Frank just huffed and said, "Little woman...yeah, right..."

"She is not that bad to consort with," Vlad said with great assurance in his voice, "In fact I would say my wife is many times the woman that others may only aspire to be..."

"That's 'cause she was made from the best parts of a bunch of different Shielas, mate," said Raptor, who had only just returned from raiding the snack bar of its riches, "Now the other one...she's definitely a keeper."

"Ah yes," Vlad said with a smile, "The Goddess Kasumi, Blood Mother to us all, a rich treasure beyond compare...certainly more than a clod like you are worthy of possessing, Steinberg...but far be it from me to question the tastes of my lady when it comes to choosing her consorts."

The bearded aristocrat turned away and headed off towards another gathering of patrons, and Frank glared at his backside and muttered under his breath, "I really hate that guy..."

"He does have that effect on some people," Alucard admitted wryly.

"Dad's an important man," Alexander assured the others, "You shouldn't judge him just because he gets a bit curt at times with the people who know him."

"Don't defend him so earnestly, little brother," Dee said while pulling his scarf down so that he could sip his beverage without soiling his coat, "We're all well aware of father's list of faults and failings...but you are right that he does have his good points, and he keeps the peace between the clans by playing the role of a tough guy for our mutual sake.

"Aw, his bite ain't as bad as his bark," Logun snorted, taking a long pull from his cigar before continuing, "I've had my share of clashes with him, but he's an honorable sort, which is more than I can say for some O' your cousins and nephews."

"Aw yes," Gabriel acknowledged, "Like Dimitri for example...and the less said about him the better."

"I had heard that father trapped him in some sort of containment ball," Alucard murmured, "Which is a pity as I'd always wanted to be the one who would take cousin Dimitri out of the picture."

"If he is not fully dead then you might still have a chance at that, Alucard," Walter said as he sat composed at his end of the table, "We all know how much you enjoy pitting yourself against a real challenge."

"'Ey, relax, it's a party, Mate, try relaxin' an' enjoy the company," Raptor said, turning to Stan before adding, "Speakin' O' which, did I hears ya mentioning some female entertainment?"

"Coming right up, some really Hot numbers fresh from this side of the Styx," Stan snapped his fingers, and suddenly the spotlight fell upon the stage upon which could be seen an array of exotic looking demon and devil girls, some with horns, hooves, bat-wings and tails, others with even more exotic qualities like inhuman skin coloration, while others appeared-at least on the surface-to be entirely quite human.

"Hoochee-mama!" Raptor howled, "Now thems me kind O' live entertainment, inna manner O' speakin'..."

The rest of the patrons in the establishment seemed to concur with those sentiments as there was much pleasant cheer and gruff compliments hurled like invectives at the women who began to dance and gyrate upon the stage with sensuous moves that might well tempt a Saint into perdition...or to cough up fifty bucks to stick in a G-string.

But Frank just remained melancholy and sighed, unable to compare any of these temptresses to the woman who was his true intended. Even Thelendra had more class than these Sirens, Harpies, Erinyes, Succubi and assorted other charmers, and that soured his ability to enjoy the pageantry of "forbidden fruit" that was on display, and that made him turn his focus elsewhere as he found himself eavesdropping.

And as he did so he heard the occupants at other tables engaging in some rather interesting discussions, such as a solitary vampire leaning up against the bar and talking to a shambling Onyx demon while drowning his sorrows in a Bloody Mary.

"...I'm telling you, it ain't safe for an honest Vamp to walk the streets these days! I mean, here I was minding my business, trying to shag a Sheila that I found walking innocent like through the park under a full moon, and so I walks up to try and proposition her and-POW! She whips out this bloody wooden stake without so much as a 'by your leave! Good thing I ain't a Goya or she'd have dusted me right then and there, so instead I turn to mist and let her think she's nailed me..."

"Slayers," the Onyx demon grumbled, "Used to be there was only one of them, but now there's thousands, and they're organized, like they've started up their own union! It just ain't fair..."

"You want fair, go ride a carousel in the park," a leathery faced fiend growled while staring morosely at his shot glass, "Life ain't fair...and dying ain't exactly a picnic either, especially when you can't move on to your eternal reward, or the next incarnation, or whatever."

"You still crying in your booze because you lost a wad of cash in the Stock Market, Phil?" said the pale fellow dressed like an Undertaker standing next to him, "I told you it's just a confidence game that rooks in suckers unless they know how to diversify their investments."

"Oh sure, you say that," said the one designated as 'Phil,' "But try telling it to the Infernal Revenue Service when they count your ISP as dividend income and slap a penalty tax on your butt, then you won't be so smug about it."

"Did you contact the Account Manager that I recommended?" said the undertaker.

"Yeah, and he looked even scarier than me," said Phil, "Where do you find these guys? On the lot of a Zombie movie...no offence, George."

"None taken," a hideously decayed corpse of a man nodded back from further down the bar replied without taking his mind away from his beer glass.

"I hear you, Man," a fish faced Creature from some lagoon joined in, "I thought I was getting a big rebate from my kid's education tax credits, but they took it all away and more by slapping higher fees for state and municipal revenues, and don't even get me started about the mortgage and sales taxes in my home state..."

"Hey, don't blame me if you got conned into thinking you were going to get a tax cut this year," the undertaker growled, "I told you it was a sham before you voted Republican in that election, but did you listen? Nooooo!"

"Tax cuts are as old a con as the Pyramids," said the bandage wrapped Mummy standing on the opposite side of Phil, "Take it from me, I've seen it over and over again. It happened with the Sumerians when they promised their people a tax cut after they had this big revolt against their king, but what happens when they cut off the coffers? The same thing that happened to the Sixth Dynasty in Egypt when they gave tax cuts to local governors and administrators. You cut off the funds to pay your army, and then somebody moves in and grabs up your territory! And the Chinese when they had their big round of tax cuts suffered from internal revolt and revolution. I'm telling you that in six thousand years there hasn't been one tax cut that's ever stimulated anything but social discord and massive poverty, but people still keep falling for the line as though Taxes were more frightening than anarchy."

"Speaking of which," said a headless fellow further down the bar who was feeding drinks to the pumpkin he had placed upon his shoulders, "Did any of you guys ever have the dubious honor or running into Dick Cheney?" he shuddered a bit and said, "Now that's pure evil...!"

"I don't do Politics," said Stan as he was polishing glasses with an oily rag, "I've got higher standards than that."

"Hey, don't act like politics only happens to other people," said the pumpkin headed fellow, "Take Mandatory Helmet laws...I mean, really...!"

Frank turned away and shuddered slightly. There was just something about accountants that made his skin crawl, like being in the same room with a Political Adviser. Talk about scary...

Off in a corner by themselves a group of masked figures were conversing in low but incredulous voices, and one of them-a fellow earing a Hockey Mast-was declaring, "I'm telling you, Man, I saw it with my own good eye. This guy was getting into an argument with this Chick, and right at the moment when he says the wrong thing she hauls off and tries to slap him...but he actually ducked! Then blocked the second attempt, then he spun her around and took her over his knee and gave her a good spanking!"

"No way!" said another fellow wearing a leather mask, "He actually blocked her, and gave her comeuppance?"

"Bet she must have had a face like a dog," snorted the fellow at his side who was wearing a fadora and had a face that looked like grilled cheese on the spread, "No offence to you, Seymore."

The Hellhound champing on a bone nearby just growled slightly without taking his mind off his dinner.

"Avast there, ya skalliwag!" said the Skeleton upon whose shinbone the Hellhound was currently munching, "Go munch on yer own leg and leave a matie to his rum...!"

"Naw," said the fellow in the Hockey Mask, "She was really cute...I mean, seriously Kawaii, as in the kind of girl who-if she was your kid-you'd be guarding with a loaded shot-gun when she takes a bus, or jumping her bones if she happened to be your step-daughter..."

"We get the picture already, Jason," said the fellow beside him wearing a Rubber Mask, "So, in other words you saw a cute girl take a slap at a jock who not only managed to avoid getting hit but retaliated and gave her a royal send up like the brat actually deserved?"

"Pull the other one," said the Leather Faced fellow, "I'll believe that like I'll believe that there's something more terrifying in this universe than a teenaged girl with boyfriend problems."

"I'm telling you guys, I actually saw it," the Hockey Masked guy insisted, "I'm not making this up...this guy actually managed to resist her charms and protected himself against her!"

"Probably gay," said the guy in the Rubber Mask.

"No, Mike," said the Hockey Masked fellow, "I mean...he didn't act like he disliked this girl, or wasn't attracted to her, but he stood up for himself and wouldn't let him belt him into low earth orbit!"

"Now that don't make a lick of sense and you know it," said the Leather Faced fellow, "I mean, we're all tough guys, and we've been known to put the fright into a lot of really cute girls, but when push comes to shove who always gets the best of us?"

As one all three men said in unison, "The Virgins..." and raised their beer mugs together with the sound of clinking to commiserate their toasting of their mutual loan weakness.

"Gentlemen," a fellow in a long trench coat with a tall stovepipe hat spoke up from an adjoining table, "Forgive my intruding upon this sterling conversation, but I could not help noticing your plight, to which I should like the privilege of adding my own half-copper to for the bargain."

The masked men all turned wary, hostile glares at this fellow before the guy wearing the fedora said, "And your name is...?"

"I've gone by a lot of names and aliases in my time," the fellow said with false modesty reeking in his oily manner, "Among which I was once known as Jonathan Delanor Ripper," the fellow arched his voice slyly before adding, "But my friends just called me Jack for short."

There was a momentary pause, then looks of awe fell upon the masked men (or as much as could be determined by their posture more than their expressions), and then the fellow in the Leather Mask moved aside a chainsaw that happened to occupy the seat next to him and pulled it back as though to offer it to the new guy, who smiled and shifted form his seat into the one being offered and slid into place with as much confidence in his manner as if to claim that he owned that spot by right of noble birthing.

"Honored to meet you," said the Leather Faced man before resuming his own seat.

"Likewise," said the fellow in the Hockey Mask, "Heard a lot about you by reputation..."

"Word gets around...even on Elm Street," said the fellow wearing the fedora.

"Big fan of your work," said the Rubber Faced guy with tones that all but reeked of fanboy.

"Gentlemen," the fellow said while doffing his hat and cane before taking a pull on the mug that he was offered, "You need not flatter me. It is I whom am honored to be in such august company. I happen to know a great deal about your own histories and records of accomplishment and I must say that it does me a great pleasure to actually meet you in the flesh...in a manner of speaking."

"Cut to the chase," said the guy in the Fedora, "What were you about to say just now about 'Cuute Girl' Syndrome?"

"Only that I have devoted a great many years to the study of the phenomenon," the fellow named Jack replied, "And I have come to understand just how it is that men such as you can be so incredulous at the very idea of someone overcoming its effects by sheer force of will and determination."

"CGS is the bane of our existence," said the fellow in the Hockey Mask, "In my case I always seem to drop my guard at an awkward moment right when it's most inconvenient, and POW! I get taken down a notch and have to spend a year or two regenerating for all my troubles."

"In my case it seems that I just forget that I'm out to have a good meal when I start to get ideas about dating the girl I'm after," said the fellow in the Leather Mask, "My family's run a meat farm in Texas for a lot of years, and I'm a pretty good butcher if I do say so myself...but..."

"It's the sex appeal that scorches our butts," said the fellow in the Rubber Mask morosely, "You'd think we could stay on target and keep our primary objectives in solid focus, but noooo...we gotta drop our guard and let the one cute girl we're really supposed to nab get away with kicking our balls into next year!"

"This from the guy with the hung-up obsession over his own kid sister?" the guy in the Fedora snorted, "Me, I'm a family guy, and for me it's all about the little kiddies, especially when they're ripened up to a proper age for harvesting...but somehow, despite it all, the girl of my dreams always manages to elude me..."

"Gentlemen," Jack said without the slightest hint of irony in his voice, "It's crystal clear to me just where the problem lies. As you say it is the sexual element that is key to our dilemma, but it is more than just a whim for a gentle maiden untouched and unsullied that we unconsciously yearn for...it is the potential which she embodies that causes us to forget ourselves and makes us careless at an inopportune moment..."

"And what would you know about it?" asked the fellow wearing a Hockey Mask with his one good eye eyeing the newcomer with renewed suspicion.

"Only that I was the first to observe how the powers of untapped femininity could lead astray even one such as myself, who yearned for a cleansing of this world of its impurities, immoralities and degenerate aberrations," Jack answered, "I made a reputation for myself by attempting to rid the world of the fallen temptresses who would lead men's hearts astray on the path to perdition. I slew in graphic form those Jezebels who crossed my path to their undoing...all save for one whom I mistook for a member of their evil profession...an innocent flower girl unsullied by the touch of a man's tool...and that became the end of my career, alas."

"What happened?" the man in the Rubber Mask asked.

"Ah, that is the question," Jack sighed.

"And that's why we're asking," the fellow in the Leather Mask said with growing impatience.

"It embarrasses me to no end to confess this tale," Jack sighed, "But since you are you, my good colleagues, I will confide the awful truth of how one who put fear into the heart of London came to a sorry end on that late evening..."

"You slipped and fell on your own knife, didn't you?" said the man in the Fedora.

"No, nothing so common," Jack sighed, "I had my trusty surgical knives in hand, yes, but when I came within five steps of my intended prey I...hesitated...failed to react in time as I approached her, gave her time enough to sense my nearness and..."

"And?" all four of the other table occupants leaned closer with anxiousness writ large in their body postures.

Jack winced as he said, "She nailed me with her handbag," he stoically withstood their startled looks then continued, "She beat me to within an inch of my life then kicked me into the Themes...nearly drowned to death, it was such a great embarrassment..."

"Oh," the other men sat back in their chairs with understanding if disappointed grunts of commiseration.

"Wound up marrying her in the end," Jack winced, "It was hard enough slipping out late at night after I got her laid up with child...had to sell the coach, put my work aside, end my career rather prematurely."

There were more sympathetic groans, and then the one in the Fedora growled, "Stop it, you're killing us already..."

"I eventually had to change my name and move to Canada," Jack continued, "Didn't get much of the limelight there when I took up my other career again...people started to blame it on the Windigo. Didn't get my reputation back until I finally moved down south to Chicago."

"The glamour creatures get all the great headlines," the fellow in the Hockey Mask said in disgust.

"In my day I was considered an aberration," Jack sighed, "These days I look more like an amateur, So fleeting is fame and fortune..."

"Visionaries are never appreciated before their time," the fellow in the Rubber Mask sniffed before taking a sip from his mug, which he somehow managed to drink without spilling it all over his outfit.

"I gradually came to understand, with the advantage of hindsight, just what it was about my wife that turned me from my fate and made me..." he winced as he said the word, "...domesticated."

"She was cute and a virgin," the fellow in the Fedora said, "What more is there to know?"

"Prcisely," Jack pounced on the words, "A Virgin unspoiled and untainted...such as you so rarely encounter these days where promiscuity is rampant and the availability of the means and motive prompts tender young minds to explore their options before they turn thirty. Of course there are those who seem to escape the ravages of puberty and wind up chaste well into their twenties..."

"You mean Nerds?" the fellow in the Hockey Mask asked.

"No, I mean women who manage to save themselves before marriage," Jack responded curtly, "Either religiously obsessed or motivated by a desire to pursue a career, or save themselves for the great love of their lives, or some other such nonsense."

"Yeah," the man in the Rubber Mask said, "Those are the ones who give us all the trouble."

"Tell me, Gentlemen," Jack smiled, "Do any of you happen to know about ancient history and how early civilizations tended to regard the subject of female sexuality?"

"Uh...no," the guy in the Fedora said, "What do we look like, a bunch of Geeky College professors?"

"In ancient Sumeria," Jack said, "Virgins were considered dangerous because it was believed that their bodies contained a kind of energy that, when released, could be devastating to men and leave them powerless in the grip of forces beyond their grasp or ken..."

"You mean like pregnancy?" asked the fellow in the Hockey Mask.

"I think he means AIDS," the fellow in the Leather Mask remarked, "Or whatever STD it was that they caught in those old days."

Jack just heaved a sigh, "I mean life energy, my good fellows...the energy of untapped feminine potential, which-properly harnessed-can have an overwhelming effect that can leave a man withered and blind without sense, empowerment or reason..."

"I thought most teenaged girls could do that just by walking naked on a beach," the Rubber Masked fellow said, only to wince as the man in the Fedora hit him on the back of his head with his gauntlet, "Ow...! What did you do that for?"

"Quiet," the man in the Fedora said, "This is starting to make sense all of a sudden..."

"So glad to see that at least one of you is paying attention," Jack said, managing to resist the urge to roll his eyes towards the ceiling.

"So...in other words," the man in the Hockey Mask said, "We don't feel this energy when we're approaching regular girls who fool around and have promiscuous sex, but if we're near an actual virgin...?"

"We sense this power within them and lose a portion of our resolve, quite so," Jack nodded happily, "And that is why they have proven to be our bane over the years...and why most teenaged boys are themselves overwhelmed and overpowered by the untapped potential of a virgin when she is aroused to wrathful anger or emotional outrage. This is why Ancient Sumerians encouraged their women to lose their virginity at a tender young age...because the power of an enraged female who is churning in the fury of sexual frustration is a terrifying force with which to reckon...such as when the ancient God Marduk sought to seduce the Chaos Mother known as Tiamat at the dawn of all creation..."

"I think I've heard of this," the fellow in the Fedora said, "It's why they used to have priests and Kings deflower virgins before they could marry their husbands...and here I always thought the old guys were just getting their dirty jollies by shagging the peasants..."

Frank was suddenly drawn back from this conversation when he heard Bishamon say, "Terra to Frank Nathaniel Steinberg...are we boring you so much that you feel the urge to listen into other tables?"

"Uh...sorry, mind tends to wander," Frank said a bit sheepishly, "Chalk it up to old age, or whatever..." but then he saw John Talbain staggering up to their table looking as if he'd just had a Salsa dance with a tornado and gasped out, "What happened to you?"

"What didn't?" John said as he pulled a chair out from a nearby table (heedless of the fellow dumped on the floor, who gave a tart, "Watch it!" to his furry backside), and then the werewolf hunkered down and said with a groan, "Who knew Bonny had that much energy for a lap dance? And here I always thought she was one of those Bitches who was more tease than please...my bad."

"I thought she would have transferred to the female half of the chamber," Dee said with some surprise, "Along with our distaff colleagues."

"No such luck," John groaned as he waved to a barmaid floating past like a will-o-the-wisp, "She's part of the staff here, remember, and a pretty enthusiastic and limber table dancer, take it from me..."

"Sounds more like she shagged you like a rug in need of a good beating," Alucard smiled with sly insinuation.

"That's as good a way of putting it as anything I'd come up with," Talbain groaned, "Don't mind me, I'll just whimper here and die. And to think, in the old days, all I had to fear around Hood was her filling my but with a load of silver buckshot."

"They do grow up fast these days," Waltar remarked philosophically, "You can hardly tell the underage ones from their mature colleagues without referencing their birth certificates and passports."

"Tell me about it," sighed Alexander, "These days you don't dare take a bite out of a neck before running a credit check and looking up their medical records without risking being hauled off to the brig with a reputation cemented as a child predator and/or molester."

"Even when it's us who are getting molested?" Talbain asked.

"Especially so," Bishamon answered.

Frank heard a familiar voice and turned to the stage where he saw a fellow in an opera mask singing a contralto, then he said, "Hey, I didn't know Vincent was back on the stage out of retirement..."

"That's not him," Dee said, "It's his son, the new Phantom of the Opera. Sounds a lot like his old man, though."

"Indeed he does," Alucard remarked, "And his 'Ave Maria' is not to be faulted."

"You should hear him do Figaro," Talbain remarked, then sighed, "Don't mind me, I'll whimper her and die before Bonny gets back from her stage act. It's more merciful way to go than what I'm sure she's got planned for the evening."

"You should be grateful that you have someone to care for you," Bishamon said, then sighed, "Not all who walk the path of the Dark are so well fortuned..."

"Hey, it's not gratitude that's the problem, Bish," Talbain sniffed, "It's more like stamina and a good survival reflex. I mean, no offense, but you're dead, so you don't have that problem..."

"Hah, whut a wussie," Raptor snorted.

Talbain arched an eyebrow, "How is that again?"

"Ya heart me, Mate," Raptor snorted, "Dimitri warn't all that great shakes ta hang around wi', but ya'd never catch him about complaining when he's with Morgan. Way I hears it they got real tight 'round that time, an' if I hears the rumor mills right it warn't just foolin' neither."

"Indeed?" Alucard perked up, "Tell us more about the antics of cousin Dimitri."

"Wull, ain't me place t'say," Raptor leaned forward with a conspiratorial look on his face, "But way I hears it, Morgan disappeared off th' Darkstalkers grid for a while, an' some folks thought she mighta moved back t'her home Kingdom...groveled on her knees and begged their forgiveness, which don't sound to me all that likely."

"No kidding," Frank frowned, "Can't exactly imagine Morgan begging for anything. About how long as she missing?"

"Since Dimitri got his but locked up inna stone," Raptor said significantly, "She just surfaced th' t'other day t'link up wi' yer ol' lady to plan this whole gig...and they say she was dressed up more conservative like than she usually does...like she was hiding her naval."

There was a more than dramatic pause before Dee leaned closer and said, "You're not implying...?"

"Actually," Alexander said thoughtfully, "It does make sense, after a fashion."

"How so, little brother?" Alucard asked.

"Something father said about adding one to the family tree and how he feared it was diluting the bloodlines," Alexander answered, "He didn't sound all that approving, which in itself should not be all that surprising...only he could not exactly come out and say so since it was by his whim that Morgan and cousin Dimitri were married, and you know how proud he is when it comes to reaping the consequences of one of his decisions."

"Oh dear," Walter said, "By that are we to take it that...?"

"Interesting," Alucard smiled, "Could it be that cousin Dimitri might actually have gotten lucky, in a manner of speaking?"

"A child who is half succubus, part vampire, part Old One?" Dee frowned, "What exactly can we expect of such an offspring?"

"I dunno," Frank averred, "But if it burps I ain't patting it on the back."

"I think, in maybe twelve to twenty years, we could all be in a great deal of trouble," Bishamon noted.

"Oh, I don't know," Alucard smiled, "It seems to me that the future is starting to sound more interesting, and I can't wait to find out if it's a boy or a girl, but one thing is for certain...if we live to see tomorrow it could well be a future that is brimming with possibilities, and I, for one, intend to see it through...come Hell or High Water..."

To Be Continued.

Comments/Criticisms/Caesarian Births for Vampires

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Next time up: the party continues with Frank and Kasumi being toasted for their impending unions, with lots more madcap fun in the offing...

But what about the rest of the Tendo-Saotome-Kuno-Hibiki families as they face perhaps their greatest challenge to date with the servants of Otono Reyabi intending to strike with devastating force that will bring an end to all future celebrations? Be here next time for: "Strike Against Tomorrow," or, "Commando Mortal Comeback!" Be there!

x


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